RUTHFULLY YOURS

http://www.swtotd.blogspot.com

“Let no man pull you so low as to hate him.”   Sermon: “A Knock at Midnight,” 1958 Martin Luther King 

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                           “I hate you!” Who has not screamed that invective, or had it directed at them? It is generally short-lived, an intense, emotional response to an accusation, characterized by anger, contempt and/or disgust.

Such words are usually directed toward specific individuals, things, or ideas. In most cases those feelings are ephemeral. But I write about what I call ‘institutional’ (for lack of a better term) hatred, where an individual or group deliberately foments hatred toward a person, race, ethnicity, or nation. Time is a healer, even of ‘institutional’ hatred. Bill Clinton was despised by Republicans during the 1990s, and as Matthew Hennessey wrote in last Tuesday’s Wall Street Journal: “Hate is too mild a word for how Democrats felt about George W. Bush while he was in the Oval Office.” Today, in both cases, hatred has vanished.

But such hatred is not always transient. Blacks were hated by many in this Country for decades, culminating in the white-robed Ku Klux Klan, whose remnants still exist. The consequences were the killings – many by lynchings – of tens of thousands of black Americans. For more than ten years, from the mid 1930s through May 1945, Nazis maintained a nation-wide hatred toward Jews and others they classified as undesirable. The consequence was that between fifteen and twenty million civilians were imprisoned, tortured, mutilated and/or murdered, in a network of over 44,000 Concentration Camps scattered across occupied Europe.

Hatred clouds reason. Hatred of Jews is what the Nazis employed to get ordinary citizens to go along with their despicable extermination policies. Reason, on the other hand, is what permitted the Allies to ultimately defeat Nazism.

https://issuesinsights.com/2025/08/05/is-the-bls-corrupt-or-just-hopelessly-incompetent/

As soon as President Donald Trump announced that he was firing Erika McEntarfer from her job as commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the wailing and gnashing of teeth began. This was part of an “authoritarian playbook,” it was “Orwellian,” it was “preposterous.”

The correct response is, “long overdue.”

Even for government work, the BLS has been breathtakingly bad at its job, something we’ve been reporting on this space for years.

Back in 2023, we noted that the BLS had been vastly overcounting jobs created since Joe Biden took office by as much as 77,000 a month.  
In the first five months of 2024, the BLS had exaggerated monthly job growth by a cumulative total of 250,000, we noted in July of that year.
Between January 2023 and October 2024, the BLS’s monthly estimate of jobs created was off by a total of 684,000, we pointed out last November.

And these figures don’t count the “benchmark” revisions issued by the BLS, in which they go back and reset all the data for a year. In its latest revision, it cut the number of jobs created from April 2023 through October 2024 by 598,00

https://amgreatness.com/2025/08/04/trumps-unknown-frontiers/

Donald Trump’s far-ranging counter-revolution, to quote the old Star Trek mission statement, seeks “To boldly go where no one has gone before.”

Because no conservative president has dared to question the last 70 years of progressive cultural, social, economic, and political dominance, all traditional wisdom, all our renowned “experts,” and all the self-described “authorities” have no real credibility in their mostly flawed analyses and wrong prognoses.

Read what our legacy media predicted in March for this summer’s economy, or in January for the future of the border, or what would happen should the U.S. Air Force enter Iranian airspace.

Take the border. “Comprehensive immigration reform” (a euphemism for rolling amnesties and a still-open border) was the establishment’s answer to 10,000 foreign nationals storming the border during peak surges of the Biden administration.

But no president had ever simultaneously 1) pressured Mexico to close its borders and patrol ours, 2) announced a plan to complete a border wall along the entire US-Mexico boundary, 3) stopped catch-and-release, 4) ceased refugee applications after illegally entering the U.S., 5) introduced policies encouraging voluntary self-deportation, and 6) prevented all illegal entries at the border.

The result is that we do not know the full effects of these combined border policies.

So far, one million foreign nationals have lost jobs, and 2 million Americans have gained them since Trump’s inauguration. How much money will be saved in local, state, and federal entitlements if illegal immigrants return home?

How much trauma and costs will be avoided if 500,000 criminal aliens are deported?

How many serious and lethal hit-and-run accidents will be prevented?

To what degree will the idea of citizenship be reenergized once it is not reduced to the equivalency of mere residence?

How many emergency rooms will have more space for U.S. citizens? No one knows, but the consequences could be enormous.

https://issuesinsights.com/2025/08/04/so-much-winning-voters-give-trumps-leadership-policies-strong-backing-in-august-ii-tipp-poll/

While President Trump’s leadership style and policies both can at times be controversial even among his own GOP base, he continues to hold on tight to his solid overall favorability ratings among American voters, the latest I&I/TIPP Poll data show.

The national online I&I/TIPP Poll, taken by 1,362 voters from July 30-Aug. 1, show Trump holding steady, with 45% giving him a “favorable” rating, and an equal 45% giving him “unfavorable.” Another 6% answered “not familiar enough to say” while 4% were “not sure.” The poll’s margin of error of is +/-2.7 percentage points

https://goudsmit.pundicity.com/28758/the-midnight-zone

 goudsmit.pundicity.com  and website: lindagoudsmit.com 

Approximately 90% of the ocean is aphotic––without light––the midnight zone of the ocean where sunlight cannot penetrate and no photosynthesis can occur. So it is with child sex trafficking, a midnight zone where children are hidden in darkness and the traumatic abuse they suffer prevents their growth and development. The midnight zone is also aphonic––without sound––a place where these sex trafficked children are exploited and have no voice. So, what lives in the midnight zone? Apex predators like giant squid. Some have grown to 57-feet long with eight arms and eyes the size of basketballs.

The apex predators who sell and traffick children for sex are the giant squid of the midnight zone, their tentacles reach deep into American society to ensnare the children and collapse society from within. In a stunning July 24, 2025 interview Epoch Times reporter Jan Jekielek discusses, “How Traffickers Prey on America’s Youth: Jaco Booyens.” Jaco Booyens is founder of Jaco Booyens Ministries (JBM), an anti-human trafficking organization committed to protecting American children from predatory exploitation.

https://amgreatness.com/2025/08/03/bad-news-is-good-news-the-lefts-premature-celebration-over-jobs-data/

Many people described the jobs report that dropped from the Bureau of Labor Statistics on August 1 as “disappointing.”

But it wasn’t disappointing for the left and other anti-Trump redoubts. On the contrary, it was cause for celebration. Experts had expected the economy to add 110,000 jobs in July. It added only 73,000. Cue images of “The Scream” by Edvard Munch. Moreover, the robust reports from May and June were revised downwards by 285,000. Of course, bad news for Trump was good news for the denizens of the anti-Trump fever swamps.

But the joy was short-lived. Trump himself quickly weighed in to describe the numbers as “rigged.” He also noted that Dr. Erika McEntarfer, the Commissioner of Labor Statistics, drastically overstated job growth in March 2024 and then again in August and September, just before the 2024 presidential election. Those numbers were subsequently revised downwards by 828,000 and 112,000, respectively.

Trump concluded that McEntarfer had “faked the jobs numbers” and promptly fired her. Whether or not that was politic—or, more to the point, whether it was good politics—is perhaps a question worth considering. It was music to the ears of the anti-Trump squadrons, however, since it gave them something else to complain about. Professional anti-Trumper Anne Applebaum, for example, reposted a critical comment by Pete Buttigieg (remember him?), charging that Trump’s behavior was “very Soviet, except that Stalin then arrested and executed the statisticians.” Portraying Trump as Stalin is a change from the usual Trump as Hitler comparison, though it’s not exactly an upgrade.

I think there are essentially two things to be said about this jobs report.

First, notwithstanding the tocsins of anti-Trump fury, the report wasn’t really that bad. The left seized on it as one shred of possibly lukewarm economic news in the midst of an ocean of upbeat news—the deals with countries across the globe, the taming of inflation, unemployment hovering just above 4%, and the billions of dollars already realized through Trump’s tariffs: it presents a very robust picture overall.

I think Senator John Kennedy got it right when he noted that “This jobs report isn’t perfect, but I wouldn’t trade America’s economy today for that of any other country, thanks to President Trump.” Indeed. “To put things in perspective,” Kennedy said, “we had 9% inflation under President Biden only a few years ago.” Today? Inflation is about 2.5%.

https://amgreatness.com/2025/07/31/the-cincinnati-cop-outs/

Recently, a large group of black youths began pummeling several white adults in downtown Cincinnati.

The original altercation apparently broke out between a black and white male in he-said/he-said fashion.

But that dispute soon turned into a virtual free-for-all.

Numerous male and female black youths sucker-punched a middle-aged woman and a man. Others continued to kick or body slam the victims, who were sprawled on their backs and seemingly unconscious.

There were many disturbing aspects to the beat-downs.

One, the violence broke out along racial and age fault lines. After the initial one-on-one dispute, groups of black youths swarmed solitary older white bystanders to pound them.

Two, the surrounding assembled group of black youths not only failed to intervene to restrain the bullies. They also recorded the beatings for social media and were heard cheering on the one-sided violence.

Three, there was neither a police presence nor any timely Good Samaritan interventions.

Instead, what ended the attacks was simply the fact that at least two of the targets appeared nearly comatose. So their assailants apparently concluded that their agenda of beating whites into unconsciousness was mostly complete.

Four, oddly few of the usual black spokespeople who habitually comment on interracial violence were to be seen.

During the fake Jussie Smollett attack, self-appointed leaders from Al Sharpton to Kamala Harris immediately issued warnings about so-called systemic white racism that had reared its ugly head to victimize Smollett.

Yet when it was revealed Smollett had concocted the entire charade—and even hired his own assaulters—there were few if any retractions from those once so eager to shout “racist!”

https://www.frontpagemag.com/investigating-barack-obama-and-the-2016-trump-presidential-campaign/

Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard just released a trove of apparently once-classified documents — with promises of much more to follow.

The new material describes the role of the Obama administration’s intelligence and investigatory directors — purportedly along with former President Barack Obama himself — in undermining the 2016 Trump presidential campaign. In addition, their efforts extended to sabotaging the 2016-2017 presidential transition and, by extension, the first three years of the Trump presidency.

The released documents add some new details to what over the last decade has become accepted knowledge.

Congressional committees, special prosecutors, and the inspectors general had all previously issued reports that largely confirmed the general outlines of the skullduggery that began in 2015-16.

Hillary Clinton’s campaign, later aided by the top echelon of the FBI, CIA, and the Director of National Intelligence, sought — falsely — to seed a narrative that Trump had colluded directly with Russia to win unfairly the 2016 election.

When that campaign gambit failed to alter the 2016 results, the Obama administration doubled down during the transition to undermine the incoming Trump presidency.

Next, Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s “all-star” legal team found no evidence of direct Trump-Putin collusion to hijack the election. But his investigation did sabotage 22 months of Trump’s first term, marked by constant leaks and hysterical rumors that Trump was soon to be convicted and jailed as a “Russian asset.”

By 2020, the frustrated intelligence agencies and former “authorities” now absurdly further lied that Hunter Biden’s incriminating laptop had “all the earmarks” — once again — of Russian interference.

So, what could be new about Gabbard’s latest release?

https://www.frontpagemag.com/thats-not-funny/

Left-wing comedy, especially late-night shows, took another hit recently when Paramount’s CBS canceled the Late Show and its host Stephen Colbert, whose pathetic ratings were nowhere near worth the millions of dollars the show has been burning through for years. The Dems’ press-agent media, of course, have been parroting Colbert’s claim that Paramount is carrying water for President Trump, the prime target of Colbert’s juvenile, humorless insults.

In reality, the show had a staff of 200, cost $100 million annually to produce, and lost $40 million a year. You don’t have to be Adam Smith to figure out why the show was cancelled. Once again, terminal Trump Derangement Syndrome has added another lefty Democrat comic to its growing casualty list.

More important, however, is why lefty comics and leftists in general are so unfunny? The answer is suggested by my title. Readers of a certain age, i.e. old, may remember where it comes from. Back in the Sixties and Seventies, there was a popular gag called “lightbulb jokes,” based on the question, “How many [fill in ethnic group, sex, profession etc.] does it take to screw in a lightbulb?” The punchline was something humorous, insulting, and satiric.

The feminist version started circulating about the same time, just when equity feminism had shifted from a movement for equal opportunity and rights, to its current Nurse Ratched version––a humorless, bossy, whiny, arrogant, leftwing, alpha-male-hating iteration of identity politics based on perpetual grievance and victimhood marinated in aggressive ressentiment. The joke goes like this: “How many feminists does it take to screw in a lightbulb?” The feminists’ punchline was always “That’s not funny!”

This tagline captures well the left’s humor deficit, which worsened with smug, self-righteous identity politics that flourished with “wokeism” and reflects the nature of Marxism––which is not just a political ideology, but a totalizing, deadly serious, messianic world view and way of life.