RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.frontpagemag.com/trump-assassination-attempt-major-failures-token-punishment/

Sunday marks the first anniversary of the attempt on Donald Trump’s life at his campaign rally in Butler, Pa. To make the occasion, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) has issued a report on the Secret Service errors and lapses of judgment that led to the shooter, Thomas Crooks, to be able to get Trump in his sights and have a clear, unobstructed, easy shot. If Trump hadn’t turned his head at the very moment of the shot, he would have been killed on that day. And as damning as the new report is, it demonstrates definitively that the corrupt system that made the assassination attempt possible is still very much in place.

Fox News reported Saturday that “ten days before the event, high-level Secret Service officials were briefed on a classified threat to Trump. ‘Once those officials reviewed the intelligence, they could have then requested that personnel within their chain of command be briefed on the specific information.’”

But they didn’t. “Officials failed to share this information, leaving federal and local law enforcement entities planning and staffing the event unaware of the active threat, including members of the Donald Trump Protective Division.”

The big question here is why the Secret Service decided to sit on this threat. What were the political views of the officials responsible for the decision not to brief others within the chain of command? Were they leftists? Did they want Trump dead? Were officials in the Biden White House and the Democrat Party questioned regarding any possible connection to concealing this information? These are the kinds of questions that a really useful report would be answering, although the GAO’s report is damning enough even despite its careful avoidance of such matters.

The people assigned to protect the once and future president, meanwhile, were green and untested: “The Secret Service agent who was responsible for ‘identif[ying] site vulnerabilities,’ was new to her role. The Butler event was ‘her first time planning and securing a large outdoor event as the site agent.’” What an amazing stroke of bad luck, that on her first day in this important role, there is an assassination attempt on a presidential candidate! Or was that day chosen for this shooting precisely because someone knew that Trump would be more vulnerable than he had been previously?

https://amgreatness.com/2025/07/13/no-list-no-revelations-no-plot-just-epstein/

In the moderately large compendium of things I do not care about, details of the depravity of the late Jeffrey Epstein occupy a random page or two.

I had never heard of the “financier” and sex-trafficking impresario until shortly before his final encounters with the law in 2019. Like many, I received the news that he committed suicide in a New York jail in August of that year with a dollop of incredulity. Where were the jailers? Why was there a missing spot on the videotape just when the deed was done? Had Epstein threatened Hillary Clinton? What about that picture of Bill Clinton in a blue dress that was found in Epstein’s New York home?

There was plenty of food for doubt.

Unlike many, however, my incredulity was seasoned with indifference.

Okay, Epstein was a creep of the first order. He had attracted a bunch of famous men to his Caribbean island for sex romps with (mostly) underage girls. He apparently liked to videotape the proceedings. Why? In order to blackmail those stars of stage and screen was the consensus, natch. But did he?

I was glad that Epstein was nabbed by the law. I hoped his victims found recompense. But in the scheme of things, The Saga of Jeffrey Epstein was a narrative I was pleased to absorb in a highly distilled, cheat-sheet version. I’d lived through such entertainments as the anatomies of Bill Clinton’s odd taste in cigars. Epstein was worse, but from the point of view of the spectator’s interest, it seemed cut from the same bolt of cloth.

I understand that the public’s appetite for scandal is a hardy perennial. The story of who is doing what to whom—especially if the “who”s are celebrities—is calculated to give prurient interest the gratifying cover of “the public’s right to know,” not to mention an opportunity to indulge in a little tongue-clucking moral outrage.

https://www.city-journal.org/article/zohran-mamdani-artificial-intelligence-jobs

Does Zohran Mamdani, an unapologetic socialist, owe his political rise as New York City’s leading mayoral candidate to artificial intelligence?

We’re not referring to whether Mamdani, a TikTok and Instagram virtuoso, used AI to help propel himself to victory in the primaries (he may have). Instead, consider the anxieties that AI is fueling in the demographic that voted for him. Ever since ChatGPT ignited the modern AI era, we’ve seen a stream of headlines and studies predicting that AI will soon perform virtually all knowledge work. Mamdani captured his big majorities among the laptop class of middle- and upper-middle income citizens, not in working-class neighborhoods. Socialism’s central nostrum—that well-intentioned experts and ruling elites should tame the predations of market and technology disruptions—becomes more appealing during periods of social and economic upheaval.

There is no shortage of reasons for anxiety and unhappiness today, not least the intensity of political and cultural debates over “woke” ideas, “social justice,” the impact of social media, natural disasters blamed on human behavior (the climate-disaster thesis), and ongoing wars. Now, added to this already turbulent backdrop, comes the fear of an AI-driven jobs apocalypse. Few concerns, aside from health issues, cause more stress than the threat or fact of job loss. A May 2025 survey by the American Psychological Association found that three-fourths of employees feel stressed over job insecurity.

These worries are not unfounded. Recently, Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff said that the company would hire 30 percent to 50 percent fewer people because of AI, while Amazon CEO Andy Jassy aroused employee ire for observing that, with AI, “we expect the total number of employees to decrease over the coming years.” Ford CEO Jim Farley asserted that AI “is going to replace literally half of all white-collar workers in the U.S.” A Wall Street Journal headline echoed the point: “CEOs Start Saying the Quiet Part Out Loud: AI Will Wipe Out Jobs.”

https://amgreatness.com/2025/07/11/the-culture-war-goes-to-court/

June 1 marked the 100th anniversary of Pierce v. Society of Sisters. This landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision struck down an Oregon law that prohibited parents from educating their children in private and religious schools and required public school attendance.

Justice James McReynolds wrote, “The child is not the mere creature of the state,” which summed up the majority opinion in the decision.

A century later, however, the battle continues. On June 27, SCOTUS ruled 6–3 that Maryland parents who have religious objections can pull their children from public school lessons using “LGBTQ+ inclusive” storybooks. The Mahmoud v. Taylor decision maintains that parents have a fundamental right to direct their children’s moral and religious upbringing and that parental rights don’t end at the classroom door.

Children aged 5-11 were required to read or listen to stories such as Prince & Knight, about two male knights who marry each other; Love Violet, about two young girls falling in love; and Born Ready: The True Story of a Boy Named Penelope, about a biological girl transitioning to a boy.

It’s important to note that the dissenting parents didn’t challenge the curriculum or demand that the district banish the controversial books. They simply wanted to be notified and have the opportunity to opt their children out of inappropriate and objectionable indoctrination provided at government-run schools. They did not advocate for schools to teach a specific religion or beliefs, but rather, they only asked that schools respect parents’ constitutional right to guide their children’s moral development.

Justices Jackson, Sotomayor, and Kagan dissented. In her opinion, Sotomayor incoherently argued that the majority was trying to allow parents to separate their children from experiences that are “critical to our nation’s civic vitality” and would sow “chaos” in public schools across the United States.

https://www.jns.org/kudos-to-trump-for-mentioning-the-usaf-mechanics/

An impromptu press conference took place on Monday evening, just as U.S. President Donald Trump, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and functionaries from both administrations were sitting down to their much-touted working dinner at the White House. It would be the first of several meetings this week between American officials and the Israeli leader to discuss several pressing issues. Among these was the joint defanging of the Islamic Republic’s ballistic-missile and nuclear capabilities.

Asked by a reporter about the U.S. military’s June 22 airstrikes on Fordow, Isfahan and Natanz, Trump paused to give credit to the men and women of the U.S. Air Force who carried out the spectacular surprise operation.

“We had the pilots here yesterday, as you know, and they were incredible,” he said. “And we also had the mechanics. There were, I think, 170 people, a lot of people, that had to do with that incredible journey—a journey that could have been horrible. You remember what happened with Jimmy Carter, with the helicopters and all, and ultimately hostages. We had the exact opposite. It went perfectly.”

Trump’s mention of the mechanics went unnoticed, though the people responsible for the literal nuts and bolts of the mission must have been pleased to be acknowledged. After all, it is due to their skill and their diligence that the aircraft performed properly and that all the pilots were able to return home safely.

https://lizpeek.com/daily-rant/trumps-cabinet-meeting-a-tour-de-force-ignored-by-mainstream-media/?utm_source=newsletter.lizpeek.com&utm_

The Democrat-friendly media mostly ignored yesterday’s cabinet meeting hosted by President Trump, and who can blame them? Comparisons with similar gatherings held by his incapable predecessor Joe Biden do not help their cause. After an hour and a half of newsworthy updates on the activities of this energized and aligned White House, the media focused on one question – about Jeffrey Epstein.

There is ongoing rumor-mongering about possible links between Trump and Epstein, even though the most widely-reported political connection is with Bill Clinton. Can you imagine that political opponents who were willing to fabricate the Steele Dossier to discredit Trump would blanche at exposing his ties to the dreadful Epstein? Good grief. Trump is tired of the inquiries, and said so. Enough!

Of course, Biden barely met with his cabinet, either as a group or, according to reporting in The Original Sin, even individually. During his four years in office, Joe Biden held 9 cabinet meetings; in his first term, President Trump hosted 25. Six months into his second term, he has already held 6.

Not only does Trump invite the press in for a photo op, which presidents typically do, but he also takes – and encourages his cabinet members to take — questions from the press. You would think the press corps would appreciate being given this kind of access, after four years of being iced out by the clandestine Biden team. (No, I know better.)

https://issuesinsights.com/2025/07/10/those-marxist-democrats/

They are amateur Marxists who live like barons  untouched by the depredations of real communists….rsk
What will the Democratic Party’s 2028 platform look like? The way things are going, no one should be surprised if it looks like a manifesto written by a couple of bitter, revolutionary 19th century Germans.

Marxism is no longer on the Democratic Party fringe. It is taking it over.

We see this in the unpleasantness of Zohran Mamdani, the recent winner of the New York City mayoral primary.

The callow Mamdani describes himself as a “Democratic Socialist.” Fact-checkers, who seem to never fact check the incessant claims by the media and Democratic politicians and operatives that President Donald Trump and other Republicans are fascists, say he’s no communist.

While he might not be a card-carrying member of the Communist Party, several of his known positions are inarguably in line with Marxism.

Like Karl Marx, the privileged Mamdani, who calls himself a “BMW Bolshevik,” sees the world through the lens of class struggle. The platform of the Democratic Socialists of America, of which he is a member, “fights” for “the abolition of capitalism” as well as the “social ownership of all major industry and infrastructure,” two Marxist principles that Mamdani supports.

Mamdani is also promising “free stuff” for New Yorkers, from bus trips to child care; proposes to freeze rents (to stick it to those greedy capitalist landlords, no doubt); wishes to “shift the tax burden … to more expensive homes in richer and whiter neighborhoods“; and says there should be no billionaires, though he hasn’t said what he’d do with the 123 who live New York City.

There has been some light pushback from within the party. A few Jewish Democrats in Congress have been “raising concerns about” him, says The Hill. But many in the party are aligning themselves with Mamdani, even Bill Clinton, whose “third way” policies melded ideas from both the left and right, and by today’s standards was an ultra-conservative Democrat.