RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.frontpagemag.com/paying-iranian-terrorists-billions-in-ransom/

The going rate for an American hostage these days is around $1.3 billion. That’s what the Biden administration paid out for five Americans in a prisoner swap with the Islamic Republic of Iran this week. And with little overhead, it’s mostly profit for the mullahs.

But don’t let the term “prisoner swap” insinuate that there is any moral equivalence. These are not two normal countries trading spies or combatants. No, this is just old-fashioned extortion.

The Iranians released political hostages, snatched off the streets of Tehran after unwisely returning to visit family or attending funerals or protests. Many of them were reportedly thrown into the notorious Evin Prison for the crime of having dual citizenship. Some, like Siamak Namazi, were put in solitary confinement for over two years.

Conversely, the United States released a bunch of spies, most of them caught trying to send military and nuclear equipment back to Iran — all of them given the benefit of due process.

Having a moral imperative to retrieve American citizens from these fascist regimes is admirable. Incentivizing more kidnappings is not. So, it’s one thing for the Biden administration to contend, “we did what he had to do” and quite another for them to celebrate as if they had just signed the Peace of Westphalia.

Last week, White House National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan tweeted out a triumphant picture of the Biden team and the released hostages, writing, “seven Americans on their way home from Iran alongside a world class group of American diplomats.”

The fact that Iran, a far weaker state with little leverage, walks away with its spies and $6 billion in sanctioned cash in exchange for five innocent people does not strike me as a great diplomatic coup … at least not for the United States.

https://pjmedia.com/uncategorized/rick-moran/2023/10/01/chicago-armed-robbers-on-an-extraordinary-rampage-everyone-is-so-freaked-out-n1731381

Chicago’s criminal class is feeling a little left out these days. They’re envious of all the smash-and-grab looters that are operating out west. So Chicago’s criminals decided to go the looters one better.

In a shocking series of armed robberies throughout the city, thieves have developed new tactics that allow them to hit a dozen or more unsuspecting victims on the street and disappear before the police can scoop them up.

The robbers use stolen cars and hit specific neighborhoods, accosting people and taking their valuables while brandishing automatic weapons in their faces.

One such spree included two armed thieves hitting two discount stores and robbing employees and then stealing wallets and other items from pedestrians on the street,

The police captured one of the crooks by sheer happenstance when a citizen called in a report of two men running from a stolen Kia. But this is a “drop in the bucket,” according to the Chicago Tribune.

In the days before and after those robberies, waves of other stickups were happening around the city, including a driver accosted by rifle-toting teens as he was unloading his car in Bucktown, a woman carjacked at gunpoint in Rogers Park, students walking near DePaul University’s Lincoln Park campus and a bar worker mugged after leaving work in the West Loop.

While armed robberies are nothing new in Chicago, a disturbing new pattern has emerged in recent months where crews of robbers — many of them juveniles — toting high-powered weapons go on crime sprees, robbing or carjacking multiple victims in a matter of minutes, often using stolen cars and dressed head to toe in black.

They seem to be constantly one step ahead of authorities. Before police can even respond to one scene, more have popped up, leaving dozens upon dozens of victims in their wake.

https://www.racket.news/p/footnote-i-faucius

The piece published earlier today, “Anthony Fauci Was America’s Warmup Dictator,” prompted a few hot texts and comments that deserve responses. A common theme is that I need to own being late to the topic.

It’s true. Fauci, Covid, and treatment of people like fired podcaster Alison Morrow and censored Drs. Martin Kulldorff, Jay Bhattacharya, and Aaron Kheriaty are on my conscience. Intimidated by the science, I decided early to sidestep pandemic stories, and as a result blew off people who could have used support. Bari Weiss and Michael Shellenberger were the ones who knew to look up Jay’s name in the Twitter Files. Their focus on Covid turned out to be key in spotting the worst mischief in those documents, because so many pandemic-related removals were based on narrative rather than factual transgressions. Suppression of posts supposedly encouraging “vaccine hesitancy” created the template for true political censorship. This was the moment when platforms and government agencies learned to punish based not on what was written, but the state of mind of the writer, a next-level dystopian technique.

I had to start over to get through jargon-laden texts like the Slack chats of the “Proximal Origin” authors. Going back through pandemic chronology was embarrassing — I can’t believe how much I missed in real time — but also drove home how much olé journalism went on among people who supposedly covered the story every day. There was close to zero meaningful pushback in the early months to public messaging on a slew of issues like natural immunity, age-specific risk, and especially the monstrous infection mortality rate error that sent the country into a panic from which it still hasn’t really recovered:

So, yes, there was an awful lot that anyone paying even minimal attention should have known then, but many official deceptions are also only becoming clear now. An example is this past week’s Public/Racket story about Fauci’s “big tour” promoting zoonotic origin to the CIA, State Department, and White House.

https://www.racket.news/p/anthony-fauci-was-americas-warmup?r=5mz1&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web

Excerpt

Exposés in Public and Racket this week showed Anthony Fauci engaged in the bureaucratic version of witness tampering, using a dubious “Proximal Origin” paper he helped engineer to divert attention from the possibility that Covid-19, too, was a viral Frankenstein’s monster. Apart from a few conservative outlets, no one picked up the story. How screwed up is the U.S. right now? The nation’s top medical official for years worked in public and private to stifle investigation of our worst health crisis, which increasingly looks like a unparalleled man-made catastrophe. He’s going to skate on it, because upper-class America is now so deep into mass mental illness that it’s more likely to make a sex symbol of corruption than punish it.

https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2023/oct/1/house-republicans-want-jamaal-bowman-be-given-jan-/

House Republicans want Rep. Jamaal Bowman, who admitted he pulled a Capitol building’s fire alarm hours before a possible government shutdown, to get the same justice as the Jan. 6 protesters got for their 2021 breach of the Capitol to obstruct official business.

Mr. Bowman, New York Democrat, said in a statement Saturday night that he pulled a Cannon House Office Building fire alarm because he was “rushing to make a vote” and thought that activating the alarm would open a nearby door.

“I came to a door that is usually open for votes but today would not open,” he said. “I am embarrassed to admit that I activated the fire alarm, mistakenly thinking it would open the door,” he said.

The alarm’s going off led to an evacuation of the building while police checked for a threat.

It was not clear Sunday whether Mr. Bowman’s setting off the alarm specifically delayed Saturday evening’s House vote on a Republican spending bill to keep the government from shutting down. But it theoretically could have and it unquestionably came while other Democrats were using numerous parliamentary tactics to delay a vote.

“I regret this and sincerely apologize for any confusion this caused. But I want to be very clear, this was not me, in any way, trying to delay any vote,” Mr. Bowman said. “It was the exact opposite — I was trying urgently to get to a vote, which I ultimately did.”

Mr. Bowman said he also met with the Sergeant at Arms and the Capitol Police, at their request, and explained what had happened.

https://issuesinsights.com/2023/10/02/86-of-americans-want-govt-spending-cuts-including-most-democrats-ii-tipp-poll/

The government narrowly avoided closing after Congress came to a last-minute, short-term political deal to keep it open for another 45 days. With soaring spending and exploding federal debt, the latest partisan dispute was inevitable. But Americans have a clear retort, according to the latest I&I/TIPP Poll: Regardless of party, they want cuts in federal spending, and blame our dangerously soaring debt on Congress’s failure to do so.

The national online poll of 1,378 Americans, taken from Sept. 27-29, asked respondents two questions related to the current budget impasse. The first: “The national debt has exceeded $33 trillion. What do you believe bears the primary responsibility for this situation?”

The message from the poll, which has a margin of error of +/-2.7 percentage points, was clear: Overall, 66% blamed surging debt on “excessive government spending,” followed by “insufficient taxation” (13%), “slow economic growth” (11%) and “unsure” (9%).

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/20002/concerning-the-fate-of-our-nation

It appears the Federal Reserve is playing Russian roulette with our nation’s interest rates.

JPMorgan Chase’s Jamie Dimon has looked at the potential future of Fed actions and is deeply concerned that it could raise rates as high as 7%. A Bloomberg News report observed:

“If the key rate climbed to 7%, it would have serious implications for American businesses and consumers. Already, economists put the probability of a US recession over the next 12 months at 60%.”

Suggested Plan of Action by U.S. Congress:

A comprehensive “Made in America Policy” to advance and encourage construction projects and job creation, science and medical research; with incentives such as tax credits, bonus depreciation and low-interest mortgages for first-time home buyers and low-cost housing developments.
Restore energy independence, with America as an energy-exporting nation.
Eliminate pork-barrel spending to reduce our $33 trillion national debt and related interest expenses.
Bribery payoffs, dark money and other criminality should be prosecuted.
Ballot bandits and ballot-harvesting are unlawful enterprises, and offenders should be held accountable.
Engage the U.S. military to reverse open borders policies. Mexico and drug cartels should be held accountable for fentanyl deaths and the invasion of illegal immigrants.

Lawrence Kadish serves on the Board of Governors of Gatestone Institute.

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2023/09/the_american_status_quo_as_we_edge_from_summer_to_fall.html

As we segue from the Month of the Autumn Leaf into the Month of the Pumpkin, let us contemplate a brief sketch of the status quo we face, in national defense, internationally, and domestically. And if some of these strike you as far-fetched, remember that, a mere decade ago, all of them would have struck you as far-fetched.

(1) National defense:

(a) We are at war with Russia, using Ukraine as our proxy.

(b) We are at war with China, although it has not yet become kinetic.

(c) China is preparing to invade Taiwan.

(d) China and Russia both have hypersonic missiles. We do not:

These weapons can attack with extreme speed, be launched from great distances, and evade most air defenses. They can carry conventional explosives or nuclear warheads. These weapons combine speed with the ability to fly at low altitudes and maneuver in flight, making them more difficult to spot by radar or satellite. That makes them almost impossible to intercept with current anti-missile systems. In a battle in the South China Sea, Beijing could use hypersonic missiles to more than double its reach, leaving U.S. ships in the region nearly defenseless, and could even strike Guam, home to thousands of U.S. troops and key military installations.

https://christopherrufo.com/p/the-downfall-of-ibram-kendi

During the height of the debate on critical race theory, Ibram X. Kendi, the Boston University professor of “antiracism,” attacked my work on MSNBC and other outlets. In response, I penned an op-ed for the New York Post warning that Kendi was the “false prophet of a dangerous and lucrative faith.”  

Now, a prediction I made—that Kendi’s unpopular ideology and bogus research would fail—has proven true. According to news reports, Kendi accumulated more than $40 million for his Center for Antiracist Research at BU, produced virtually no research, and then laid off nearly half of his employees, who accordingly accused him of mismanaging funds, failing to deliver key projects, and mistreating his team. In the wake of these allegations, Boston University announced an official investigation.

As I explained to John Roberts on Fox News:

This is part of a pattern that we saw in 2020. We saw record donations to groups like Black Lives Matter, to groups like Ibram Kendi’s so-called Anti-Racism Center, and now fast-forward three years and what we have seen is the BLM organization, the leaders looted it and headed to the hills. They decamped to their mansions and left the organization in shambles. And now we have Ibram Kendi’s Antiracism Center, which is the most spectacular academic failure in many years. They hoovered up $40 million and produced almost no research.

This really is at the heart of this movement. It’s empty. It’s nihilistic.

https://unherd.com/2023/09/will-hollywood-strike-back/

In the Fifties, television destroyed radio, many of whose stars were themselves survivors of the death of vaudeville, and persisted through radio and into film: The Marx Brothers, W.C. Fields. And many of the first movie stars had come first from the music halls, such as Chaplin; Will Rogers became a movie star after his pre-eminence in vaudeville.

But the movie stars were contemptuous of the New Form, and hung back until the dam broke. (I recall casting discussions in New York in the Seventies themed: “Do you think he would consider doing a Movie of the Week…?”) Still, television and film rubbed on, misharnessed, until the current amalgamation. In 2013, I wrote and directed an HBO film, Phil Spector. On hearing of it, my young son said: “Dad, you’re doing a Made-For-TV Movie. That’s shameful.”

Now the new technology has, again, upset the applecart. Streaming has forever disrupted the old means of distribution, which, after all, is the determining factor in disseminating information — and, so, in determining content. Industrial production requires and rewards economies of scale and expenditure. The corporation buys in bulk, with neither time nor interest in that which one might call artistic integrity, which a comptroller, looking at numbers alone, could only understand as insubordination. The actually talented — those disposed and able to bring their idiosyncratic vision (art) to manufacturing — are as much of an obstruction as Chinese devotees of Feng Shui would be to the Hyundai production line. (To disrupt a production line is the original meaning of sabotage.)

There is a hopscotch effect in show business — it may be universal, but this is the only racket I know. The entrepreneurs and adventurers jump on the new thing. Some become successful, and the creators, actors, hucksters and thugs may exist in some sort of equilibrium until the tide turns.

With the coming of television, producers searched out the famous, to draw the viewers, but also hired the unknowns to work cheap. Early TV scripts were farmed out, one or several at a time, to individual writers (previously known as “writers”). There was a writers’ room, generally, only in comedy shows. No writers’ rooms were required for horse operas, and Warner Television churned them out on their lot, distinguishable only by their theme-songs. With the success of The Industry, land values increased. The movie lots — belonging to Paramount, Warners, Universal, Fox — cut down or eliminated the backlots where the films were made, turning them into cash. (Century City was the backlot of 20th Century Fox.)