RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2022/03/swimming_with_dolphins_ban__regulatory_overreach.html

“The stark arbitrariness of the ban is evident from the following: a) spinner dolphins are abundant around Hawaii, and there is no evidence of a population decline; b) dolphins, as is well known, are friendly and approach humans for benign, exuberant interactions; c) the ban applies only to tourism-related businesses, while the captive dolphin industry is exempt from it; and d) military activities, which might endanger dolphins with shelling, sonar, and underwater explosions, are also exempt.”

Who decides whether you may or may not swim with dolphins?  You may think this is determined by some environment-related law, made by elected representatives who constitute the legislature.  But the generalities of law are often translated into the specifics of practice through rules and regulations made and enforced by officials.  Not all these officials answer to the checks and balances of the democratic process.  Therein lies the scope for them to further political agendas or the interests of pressure groups unsanctified by the ballot, which alone represents the will of the people of America.  It is for this reason that a landmark lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of an arbitrary ban on human-dolphin interactions in Hawaii gains importance.

https://issuesinsights.com/2022/03/28/only-34-agree-biden-has-lived-up-to-his-vow-to-unify-all-americans-ii-tipp-poll/

One of President Joe Biden’s signature promises during the 2020 campaign was that he would “unify the country.” Now, a little more than a year into the presidency, most Americans don’t feel he has lived up to his promise. In fact, the latest I&I/TIPP Poll shows they feel America is divided, not united, under Biden.

“I pledge to be a president who seeks not to divide, but to unify; who doesn’t see red states and blue states, only sees the United States,” Biden told followers after declaring victory on Nov. 8, 2020.

That speech was seized on by many as a sign that years of bitter divisiveness brought on by non-stop investigations and two impeachment efforts against former President Donald Trump were over. The often-expressed hope was that civil political discourse would be restored, and Americans would once again show toleration and understanding for others’ beliefs.

This, in turn, would lead to a new spirit of bipartisanship and policy cooperation in Congress.

Unfortunately, average Americans don’t see things that way.

https://issuesinsights.com/2022/03/29/lies-damned-lies-and-bidens-budget/

The first line in President Joe Biden’s budget statement, released Monday, is “Budgets are statements of values, and the budget I am releasing today sends a clear message.”

Biden’s right that his $5.8 trillion budget sends a clear message. The message is that he will say and do anything, no matter how disconnected from reality it is. The rest of his statement is itself full of lies and half-truths.

For example, Biden brags that he’s cut the deficit in half in his first year, making it “the largest one-year reduction in the deficit in U.S. history.” That’s technically true but completely irrelevant.

Deficits ballooned as a result of the pandemic shutdown and the – bipartisan – rescue legislation enacted under President Donald Trump. Biden forgets that he added trillions more to the pile with his “rescue plan” and the bloated infrastructure bill.

Plus, it’s Biden’s own budget that calls for deficits to remain well above $1 trillion – and climbing – over the next decade.

By 2032, Biden’s “fiscally responsible” budget pegs the deficit at $1.8 trillion, or 4.8% of GDP – and still growing. (The post-World War II average is 2.6%.)

https://amgreatness.com/2022/03/27/the-sheer-madness-of-todays-left/

“Madness! Madness . . . madness!”
— The Bridge on the River Kwai

With that exclamation, director David Lean ended his epic film about a dutiful but vainglorious British officer who sought to display to his Japanese captors superior British discipline and morale in a prisoner of war camp. As proof of British engineering superiority, he pursues his agendas by ordering his POWs to build for their Japanese captors a strategic bridge that otherwise they could not have built—only to try to destroy the efforts of fellow Allied soldiers sent to blow-up his masterpiece. For the delusional ideologue, reality must never intrude.

So it is now. When the rock of green and woke ideology hits the hard place of reality, sheer madness always results.

The world prices of oil and natural gas are skyrocketing. At the time of a major war in Ukraine, the Western democracies have framed the conflict as existential, with a Russia/Mordor on the attack against a declining West/Gondor. 

A subtext of the struggle is that the world’s illiberal regimes—fossil-fuel exporting Russia, Venezuela, Iran, and the various Middle Eastern autocracies—are getting richer by the day while destroying Mother Earth, as noble gas and oil importing green Western nations can scarcely afford to drive or heat their homes. 

Normally, the mad Left would not object terribly to the ensuing fuel price hikes. Remember, Joe Biden bragged on the campaign trail that he would end fossil fuels during his tenure. 

Obama’s soon-to-be Energy Secretary Steven Chu said during the 2008 campaign he wished to see American gas prices match those in Europe (i.e. $9-10 a gallon). And then President Obama himself did not disagree. He meekly added that such increases should be “gradual.” He had also warned that his cap-and-trade initiatives would necessarily “skyrocket” electricity prices—without suggesting that his off-guard brag was even a gaffe of unexpectedly telling the truth. 

So green orthodoxy dictates that the highest possible fossil fuel prices are good. Unaffordability will hasten the end of gas and oil, ensuring currently subsidized but uneconomical green energy as the only remaining alternative. 

But like most leftist top-down agendas, the details and consequences are usually hidden. After all, green wokeism usually exempts the lifestyles of its elite advocates. The Obamas currently are building a most un-green luxury Hawaiian beach mansion (their third such estate). And Al “Earth in the Balance” Gore got rich selling his failed cable outlet to a carbon-fueled Al Jazeera. 

https://justthenews.com/government/congress/democratic-led-congress-might-still-pass-bidens-spending-package-after-raising

The Democrat-led Congress might still be able to garner enough votes to pass President Biden’s massive spending package, despite already raising federal spending by more than 6% and presiding over record deficit and debt levels.

The national debt is climbing to a staggering $31 trillion for the first time in U.S. history. The federal deficit hit record numbers in FY2020 ($3.1 trillion) and FY2021 ($2.8 trillion), driven by large coronavirus stimulus measures. The deficit in the first 5 months of this year is $475 billion.

According to a recent analysis by the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, the fiscal year (FY) 2022 omnibus appropriations bill that Congress recently passed “provides $1.512 trillion of budget authority for FY2022, $88 billion (6 percent) higher than FY 2021 levels, $50 billion higher than in the Congressional Budget Office’s (CBO) most recent baseline, and in line with FY 2021 levels when adjusted for higher inflation.”

https://straightarrownews.com/cc/manchin-i-intend-to-vote-for-supreme-court-nominee-ketanji-brown-jackson/

Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) may have decided whether Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson will become the first Black woman to serve on the Supreme Court. After four days of nomination hearings with the Senate Judiciary Committee, Sen. Manchin released a statement Friday, saying, “I have determined I intend to vote for her nomination to serve on the Supreme Court.”

“I am confident Judge Jackson is supremely qualified and has the disposition necessary to serve as our nation’s next Supreme Court Justice,” Sen. Manchin said in the statement. “Her wide array of experiences in varying sectors of our judicial system have provided Judge Jackson a unique perspective that will serve her well on our nation’s highest court.”

https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2022/mar/27/most-americans-lack-confidence-bidens-ability-hand/

An NBC News poll released Sunday found more than two-thirds of Americans doubt President Biden has the chops to manage the Ukraine crisis as his approval rating hit a new low.

The poll of 1,000 adults showed that 71% have “just some” or “very little” confidence in Mr. Biden when it comes to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, while 28% said they had “a great deal” or “quite a bit” of confidence in the Democratic president.

The survey was conducted March 18-22, before Mr. Biden met last week with European allies on Ukraine and before he declared that Russian President Vladimir Putin “cannot remain in power,” an unscripted line that the administration immediately walked back.

In addition, the poll found Mr. Biden’s job approval rating fell to 40%, down from 43% in January, for his lowest score on the survey since taking office. More than half, or 55%, disapproved of the president’s performance, up from 54%.

“What this poll says is that President Biden and Democrats are headed for a catastrophic election,” said GOP pollster Bill McInturff of Public Opinion Strategy, who conducted the survey with Democratic pollster Jeff Horwitt of Hart Research Associates.

https://spectator.org/the-corruption-of-the-biden-administration-is-now-in-plain-sight/

EXCERPTS

Corruption has been around for a long time.

The problem is when we detach power from benevolent responsibility.

So, it should not be surprising that our government of the people, by the people, and for the people could and has at times become the playground of corrupt people. Even in the cabinet of Abraham Lincoln, an exceptional politician in any age, there was corruption. Carl Sandburg writes of how Rep. Thad Stevens complained that Secretary of War Simon Cameron was so dishonest that the only thing he wouldn’t steal was a red-hot stove. Cameron, of course, took offense, and Lincoln tried to calm things down by asking Stevens to retract. “All right,” goes a version of how Stevens replied, “I will retract. He would steal the stove, too.”

In the words quoted, Amos skewered the use of power to obtain sex as well as money. History confirms that this too is a proclivity of powerful people. Whether we speak of the constant parade of women through the bedchambers of such monarchs as Charles II of Britain or Louis XV of France, or of similar parades through the chambers of the Kennedy White House or of wherever Bill Clinton went, or the line of the powerful who flew on the Lolita Express, there is much evidence that power is a supreme aphrodisiac. In grimmer governments, force was used instead (which was made the object of very dark cinematic humor in the British masterpiece The Death of Stalin).

Implicit in Amos’ words is that there is an inevitable price to pay for tolerating corruption. Skilled politicians, adept at feeling the pulse of the people, lose their sharpness through their indulgences. As their corruption increases, competence decreases. Managing the many pretenses that hide its ill-gotten benefits takes up more and more time and energy. Lies need more lies to hide them and so the story keeps getting more and more complicated and less and less plausible. Leaks spring in the dike that quickly become controllable. The collapse can come very quickly.