RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/19626/domestic-espionage

Almost all private companies have now entered the “spy business.”

In the old days, television and movie studios wanted to know what you watch; today, everybody wants to know what you watch, what you like, what you do, where you go, and with whom you go there. In turn, all this information is ultimately used to manipulate human behavior.

US Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers, chair of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, recently confirmed that state and federal governments regularly purchase Americans’ personal data from private companies, so that they may “spy on and track the activities of U.S. citizens.” No kind of personal information is off-limits. Government agents use data brokers to collect information on an individual’s GPS location, mobile phone movements, medical prescriptions, religious affiliations, sexual practices, and much more. It is the type of total surveillance, Rep. Rodgers alleged, that “you would expect out of the Chinese Communist Party surveillance state, not in America.” Yet it is all arguably legal or in an unregulated gray zone.

“A report published last month by the Brennan Center for Justice found at least twelve overlapping DHS programs for tracking what Americans are saying online,” demonstrating that the DHS had “veered from its original counterterrorism mission into tracking social and political movements and monitoring First Amendment-protected activity of American citizens.” — Senator Rand Paul, April 18, 2023.

In a particularly shocking example that seemed eerily reminiscent of atrocities committed by Hitler Youth chapters during the 1930s or young schoolchildren during China’s Cultural Revolution, Paul noted, “In 2021, DHS even put out a video encouraging children to report their own family members to Facebook for disinformation if they challenge the U.S. government narratives on COVID-19.”

Right now… the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence is busy capitalizing on recent Pentagon leaks to advance the RESTRICT Act, a piece of legislation that would give the Executive Branch even greater authority to track online communication and label information shared on the Internet as “dangerous.” Known derisively as an “online Patriot Act,” that power grab would come in handy for the government’s domestic surveillance operations during an era when former FBI, CIA, NSA, and DHS spooks are filling the ranks of social media companies and the FBI continues to flag more words as online evidence of potential “violent extremism.”

[D]ozens of members of Congress and their families recently sold off bank shares while they were actively meeting with regulators amid the volatile financial climate prompted by the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank.

As part of the military’s “signature reduction” program, the Pentagon even regularly hides forces carrying out clandestine assignments within private companies under false names. Due to the government’s increased reliance on contractors, a small number of corporate firms now dominate the private intelligence industry.

You put all these trends together and you get an expansive corporate-government partnership with vast surveillance powers conducting domestic espionage on American citizens — free from legal scrutiny and done in the name of “national security.”

“The best way to predict the future is to create it.” That rhetorical gem, credited to various scientists and political leaders, shows up on mouse pads and posters and wherever else suitable inspiration is found wanting. It is also a remarkably accurate mission statement for two professions: financial investors and spies. In both occupations, a person is rewarded for either (1) collecting and processing enough available information to predict future events or (2) creating a set of preconditions that will make future events all but certain.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/new-york-budget-kathy-hochul-progressives-legislature-charter-schools-gas-stoves-181e2a19?mod=opinion_lead_pos2

The Democratic left is running New York state these days, and Kathy Hochul appears to be largely Governor in name only. That’s the message from the $229 billion state budget that passed this week after months of haggling behind closed doors. The biggest losers are parents hoping for a good charter school for their children.

Ms. Hochul went into the talks with priorities she knew would be a hard lift in a Legislature controlled by progressives. They included modest bail reform, which passed, and her signature plan to expand housing by allowing the state to override local zoning laws, which was rejected.

Alas, she also succeeded in getting the first statewide ban on natural gas in most new construction beginning in 2025, which was also a progressive priority. When the Consumer Product Safety Commission first raised the idea of banning gas stoves, New York Sen. Chuck Schumer dismissed it as myth pushed by “shameless and desperate MAGA Republicans.” Care to revise and extend your remarks, Senator?

The Governor says the new ban doesn’t ban existing gas stoves. But it is the first step in making gas appliances more costly and difficult to replace. Consider this an echo of another infamous political promise: if you like your gas stove, you can keep it. This is part of the progressive method of denying that they favor an unpopular policy when it is first publicized, but then implementing it on the sly and gradually so current voters don’t get too upset.

Ms. Hochul’s most embarrassing loss was on charter schools. As a candidate she had called for raising the state cap on charters of 460 schools. She compromised with herself on that by proposing in her budget to keep the cap but eliminate the regional caps.

https://cnav.news/2023/05/05/editorial/guest/transgender-follies-madness-left/

Growing up in the 1950s, I remember distinctly that all of my high school classmates were obsessed with figuring out who they really were, males or females. Every conversation, the special clubs we formed to talk about this issue, the heated arguments we had with our parents who didn’t “get” that the children they thought were boys or girls were not at all what those dinosaurs imagined sex and gender to be, and the total lack of understanding we got from the powers-that-be, including teachers, counselors, coaches, doctors. It was truly a horrible time to be a girl or boy.

Tomboys

All that my girlfriends talked about, starting about the age of 11 or 12, was having their budding (or in some cases, formidable) breasts cut off, and the hormones coursing through their systems somehow, magically, eliminated altogether. The same with the boys. “How can we cover up our Adam Apples,” they lamented. “How can we hide our penises and put barrettes in our hair and be the girls we were really meant to be?”

After high school, I married and became a young mother at 18. And my son told me that when he was in high school in the 1970s, the same thing took place, although more intensely. “All we talked about,” he told me, was “who was a real boy and who was a real girl, and how the tomboys could become real boys and the guys who liked cooking could become real girls.”

“But at least things had progressed,” he said, “and there were teachers and guidance counselors willing to encourage the girls who were tomboys and the boys who liked cooking to stick to the genders “they were born to be and not to allow parents to interfere.”

Reality check

Please re-read every word of the above four paragraphs and know that NOT ONE WORD of them is true! In the 1950s—and for centuries before and decades after—girls knew they were girls; boys knew they were boys and that was that.

https://amgreatness.com/2023/05/03/the-new-ugly-americans/

The old cultural imperialism was supposedly greedy corporatism like Disneyland, McDonald’s, and Starbucks sprouting up worldwide to supplant local competitors. 

But these businesses spread because they appealed to free-will consumer demand abroad. They were not imposed top down. 

The U.S. presence in Afghanistan collapsed in August 2021 amid the greatest American military humiliation in modern history. A billion-dollar new embassy was abandoned. Hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of new infrastructure at the huge Bagram Airbase was dumped. 

We still do not know how many billions of dollars of sophisticated new weapons were left to the Taliban and now are making their way through global terrorists’ marts. 

Yet, in our skedaddle, the LGBTQ flag still flew high from our new Kabul embassy.

A George Floyd mural was prominent on city streets.

And gender studies programs—to the tune of $787 million in American subsidies—were showcased at Kabul University, in one of the most conservative Islamic countries in the world.

Rainbow flags and Black Lives Matter banners have hung from our embassy in South Korea. 

Such partisan cultural activism is a diplomatic first.

The woke Left has now weaponized the country’s diplomatic missions abroad to advance highly partisan and controversial agendas that can offend their hosts, and do not represent the majority of American voters at home.

American foreign policy toward other nations seems now to hinge on their positions on the transgendered, LGBTQ acceptance, abortion, climate change, and an array of woke issues from using multiple pronouns on passports to showcasing transgendered ambassadors. 

The Biden Administration in January 2022 stopped the EastMed pipeline. That joint effort of our allies Cyprus, Greece, and Israel sought to bring much needed clean-burning Mediterranean natural gas to southern Europe.

Apparently, our diplomats felt it violated our own New Green Deal orthodoxies. So we imperialists interfered to destroy a vital project of our closest allies.

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2023/05/east_palestine_derailment_update.html

We are now three months past the derailment of the Norfolk Southern freight train in East Palestine Ohio. What have we learned? On Feb. 6, 2023, Michael Graham of the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) informed the public that the derailment was caused by a broken axle on one of the freight cars. He noted that the train had a crew of three, and that the crew was able to disconnect the two locomotives and move away to a safe distance. There was no information about the potential imminent explosion of one vinyl chloride tank car, just the comment, “Once the fire is out, the railcars will be moved for further damage assessment.” Later that day, there was a “vent and burn” operation in conformance with the Federal Railway Administration handbook covering such situations. The towering column of smoke and flame caused quite a ruckus. And as is usually the case, no one wants to take ownership of the decision to proceed in conformance with federal regulations. Where was Pete “#SecretaryPete” Buttigieg?

Clearly, there are two issues to address, the first would be to reduce the number of broken axles in the whole fleet of rolling stock on America’s railroads. Then we can look at the vent and burn strategy. This was not the first rail accident where a broken axle on a freight car carrying non-hazardous material caused the derailment of tank cars carrying hazardous fuel oil with a resultant fire and significant pollution. The NTSB even has videos and a completed report of the prior accident in Caselton, North Dakota. Two BNSF freight trains (BNSF is owned by Democrat mega-donor Warren Buffett) were passing going in opposite directions when an axle on a grain car broke and the car derailed. It fell onto the parallel track and the unit train with a string of tank cars containing fuel oil collided with the wreckage, derailed, and caught fire.

The NTSB re-creation video shows an interval of 93 seconds from the time the axle broke to when the crew of the crude oil train reported they were on fire.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/murder-manifesto-still-a-mystery/

“The investigation has advanced to the point that writings from the Covenant shooter are now being reviewed for public release and that process is underway and will take a little time.”

That was a spokesman for the Metro Nashville Police Department speaking to the New York Post last Thursday. That day marked one month since Audrey Hale, a woman who thought she was a man, murdered Evelyn Dieckhaus, 9, Mike Hill, 61, William Kinney, 9, Katherine Koonce, 60, Cynthia Peak, 61, and Hallie Scruggs, 9, at the Covenant School in Nashville, Tennessee.

Nashville police “could not give a firm date when the writings would be released.” Shortly after the murders, Nashville city councilman Robert Swope told reporters “the manifesto is going to be released. It’s just a matter of when.” In the meantime, the FBI is reportedly “processing” the material.

“It’s really not even a manifesto,” according to Nashville city council member Courtney Johnson.  “It’s diaries of a mentally ill person.” The councilwoman, a real-estate agent, did not explain how she was qualified to diagnose Audrey Hale, who carefully planned the attack for months.  “What I was told is, her manifesto was a blueprint on total destruction, and it was so, so detailed at the level of what she had planned.”

According to Johnston, “that document in the wrong person’s hands would be astronomically dangerous.” So it was the “document” that was dangerous, and Johnston didn’t understand “these claims that law enforcement is hiding something.” That should be a simple matter.

https://amgreatness.com/2023/05/02/during-fiery-hearing-gop-senators-blast-democrats-unseemly-efforts-to-delegitimize-supreme-court/

During a contentious Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on Tuesday, Republicans shot down their Democrat colleagues’ efforts to intimidate and delegitimize the Supreme Court.

The Democrat-led “Supreme Court Ethics Reform” hearing was held amid a partisan media campaign accusing conservative justices of ethics violations and conflicts of interest.

Corporate media hit pieces in recent weeks have focused on Justices Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch, accusing them ethics violations, while ignoring the allegedly larger ethics violations of liberal justices, the Wall Street Journal editorial Board argued on Monday.

WSJ writers have “examined and debunked” multiple MSM reports accusing Thomas and Gorsuch of various ethics violations in recent weeks, and have concluded that the attacks have been part of a larger effort to subject the Court to more political control.

The first sign that this is all politics is the context for the hearing. Note that it’s been triggered by easily debunked reports about the conservative Justices, especially claims that Justice Thomas didn’t properly disclose certain financial transactions.

But Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson didn’t get the same attention when she revised her financial disclosures in 2022. Her oversights were far more extensive than Justice Thomas’s. There was also no outcry in 2020 when Justice Sonia Sotomayor amended her financial disclosures after the group Fix the Court found that she hadn’t disclosed reimbursement for trips to universities.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/the-war-on-boys-and-girls/

Over the years, a cause for teen angst, suicide, etc., has reportedly been the media. But there is no definitive evidence to corroborate that. In fact, every recent generation has traditionally pointed to the media or some other cultural factor as damaging to youth. In the 1920s, it was the Charleston, and in the 1940s, the bogeyman was radio crime dramas. Then in the 1950s, it was shoot-em-up westerns on TV and the advent of rock ‘n roll. But at the end of the day, most kids grew up normally.

These days cell phones and social media are supposedly culpable, but scientists still don’t know to what extent they are responsible for the rising mental health issues among teenagers and whether it is the primary cause. Alexey Makarin, Massachusetts Institute of Technology economist, opines, “It seems to be the case — like it’s a big factor, but that’s still up for debate.”

What do we know?

A report from the CDC in February found that teen girls are experiencing “record high levels of violence, sadness, and suicide risk.” The data show that 57% of U.S. teen girls felt “persistently sad or hopeless in 2021—double that of boys, representing a nearly 60% increase and the highest level reported over the past decade.” About 30% had seriously attempted suicide. These numbers are dramatically higher than they were ten years ago.

Boys are suffering too. One of the main culprits for young males’ problems is the ongoing stress on so-called toxic masculinity, where feminists and the left take normal male behavior, exaggerate it, and then vilify it.

Toxic masculinity is a counterproductive term, to say the least. Boys are unlikely to react well to the idea that there is something toxic inside them that needs to be exorcised, especially as most of them identify quite strongly with their masculinity. Almost half of men said their sex was “extremely important” to their identity.

https://thefederalist.com/2023/05/02/gopers-order-blinken-to-turn-over-all-communications-with-hunter-biden-after-emails-show-he-lied-to-congress/

Following revelations that he allegedly lied under oath to Congress, Secretary of State Antony Blinken is facing calls from Senate Republicans to turn over communication records related to Hunter Biden and his shady business engagements.

On Monday, Republican Sens. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin and Chuck Grassley of Iowa sent a letter to Blinken demanding that he turn over any and all records “referring or relating to Hunter Biden, his business dealings, or his family’s business dealings” by May 15. The request comes as part of Senate Republicans’ investigation into the Biden family’s foreign business ventures.

In the letter, Johnson and Grassley document a series of emails revealing how Blinken seemingly lied under oath about his prior communications with Hunter. While testifying before Congress on Dec. 22, 2020, Blinken was asked if he had any means of correspondence —including phone calls, emails, or texts — with Hunter Biden during his time as President Barack Obama’s deputy secretary of state, to which Blinken replied, “No.”

Emails from Hunter’s laptop, however, appear to contradict Blinken’s December 2020 testimony. As documented in the Johnson-Grassley letter, Hunter emailed Blinken at his personal email address on May 22, 2015, asking if the then-deputy secretary of state was available to meet.

https://issuesinsights.com/2023/05/03/americans-reject-dei-dominated-wokeplace-schools-ii-tipp-poll/

So why is it being imposed on all of us?

American businesses and higher-educational institutions have been swept up in the “Diversity, Equity, Inclusion” trend, which bases hiring, pay and promotion decisions on such things as political beliefs, gender, race and sexual orientation. Do most Americans support this trend? The answer is a resounding “no,” the latest I&I/TIPP Poll shows.

Looking at the recent historic shifts among American commercial and educational institutions when it comes to their employment, promotion and pay practices, the latest I&I/TIPP Poll asked Americans “which of the following factors are important when it comes to hiring, raises, and promotions in the workplace?”

The list for rewarding employees included: “political belief,” “race,” “gender,” “political orientation,” which together comprise some of the essential elements of workplaces and schools that operate under the “progressive” ideals of the Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) movement.

But the other possibilities listed were employment practices still found in some, but not all, modern American workplaces and schools. These include judging employees on “quality of work,” “productivity/performance,” and “attitude toward work.”

(Note: Respondents were encouraged to select all the responses they thought were important, so the numbers reflect relative support, not absolute support, and don’t total to 100%.)

So did Americans prefer the new “woke-place,” or the old “workplace”? How about higher education?

The answer: Voters showed a clear and decisive 3-to-1 preference overall for the tried-and-true over the trendy-and-untested when it came to workplace practices.