RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.city-journal.org/feckless-in-seattle

Citing persistent violence, including a homicide directly in front of its main building, Amazon recently announced that it was temporarily relocating its Seattle staff to a new location. The quirky but beautiful Pacific Northwest city—boasting houseboats, good coffee, and great jazz—is following a familiar formula for urban decline.

The first step in that process is to elect a mayor who cares less about the nuts and bolts of governing a city than about an ideological agenda. The last Seattle mayor who paid attention to details and had a vision for improving everyday life was Paul Schell, who served from 1998 to 2002. Under Schell’s no-nonsense leadership, Seattle built a new City Hall and several libraries, parks, and community centers, while rebuilding its opera house and symphony hall.

Then the city drifted into progressive fantasy. Greg Nickels, mayor from 2002 to 2009, decided that he should lead the charge in environmental activism but couldn’t manage the city’s own environment—a 2008 snowstorm hurt his reelection bid, while homeless tent cities (derisively named “Nickelsvilles”) cropped up downtown. Self-proclaimed progressive outsider Mike McGinn, who served as mayor from 2010 to 2013, demanded higher taxes and marijuana legalization while making clear, amid violent riots, that Seattle had no place for police officers who did not share his views on social justice. Ed Murray, Seattle’s first openly gay mayor, began his term in 2014, but resigned in disgrace in 2017 following multiple allegations of child sex abuse. In 2017, the city elected Jenny Durkan, who distinguished herself mainly by criticizing Donald Trump and allowing the formation of the lawless Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone (CHAZ) in downtown Seattle in June 2020. (Asked how long the occupation could last, Durkan said: “I don’t know. We could have another Summer of Love!”) Following a series of political blunders and recall efforts, Durkan and Seattle decided that one term was enough. Residents can only hope that newly elected mayor Bruce Harrell, who bluntly stated that he “inherited a mess,” will break the streak of ineffective leadership.

https://thefederalist.com/2022/04/04/heres-some-of-the-garbage-democrats-funded-as-covid-relief/

Now, his administration continues to deliver on his 2009 promise. As the nation’s debt has passed $30 trillion and inflation continues to skyrocket, federal funds are being used to fund…four-star hotels and bailouts for deadbeat dads.

An Associated Press investigation discovered that the $1.9 trillion “Covid relief” package Democrats rammed through Congress last March has resulted in all manner of pork-barrel and wasteful spending programs—most of which have very little to do with the coronavirus, and all of which should outrage taxpayers forced to fund this nonsense.

Your Tax Dollars at Work

The spending spree Democrats passed in March 2021 included more than $500 billion in bailouts to state and local governments—on top of more than $400 billion in funds distributed to states in prior spending packages during 2020. These additional bailout funds, many of which have yet to get disbursed, came even though state and local government coffers were already flush by last spring, as lockdowns ended and the stock market boomed.

https://amgreatness.com/2022/04/04/garland-feels-the-heat/

If Hunter Biden is in handcuffs before Donald Trump, the attorney general, who will turn 70 later this year, will wish he had opted for retirement.

Attorney General Merrick Garland’s swan song, we can presume, isn’t exactly turning out how he had hoped.

Appointed attorney general in 2021 as some sort of retaliation against Republicans for refusing to seat him on the Supreme Court in 2016, Garland, though largely a figurehead, is getting heat from members of both political parties—including the man who nominated him to serve as the nation’s top lawyer.

According to the New York Times, Joe Biden is displeased that Garland hasn’t yet charged the former president for crimes related to the Capitol protest on January 6, 2021. “[While] the president has never communicated his frustrations directly to Mr. Garland, he has said privately that he wanted Mr. Garland to act less like a ponderous judge and more like a prosecutor who is willing to take decisive action over the events of Jan. 6.,” the Times reported over the weekend. 

Although the Times attempted to portray Biden as hands-off when it comes to the business of his Justice Department, that is simply untrue. By repeatedly describing January 6 as an act of terror and comparing the protest, which resulted only in the deaths of Trump supporters, to 9/11 and other atrocities, Biden has signaled how he expects the Justice Department to proceed. His desire to see everyone from Indiana grandmothers to Donald Trump and his family behind bars hasn’t exactly been a secret.

As the chaos was still unfolding on the afternoon of January 6, Biden addressed the nation, blaming Trump for inciting “an insurrection” that “borders on sedition” while promising his administration would restore “the rule of law.”

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2022/04/bidens-budget-lies-terrence-p-jeffrey/

“Show me your budget, and I’ll tell you what you value.”

When releasing his fiscal 2023 budget proposal on Monday, President Joe Biden said this was something his father had told him.

He then made a claim about a “value” his budget proposal purportedly advances.

“The first value is fiscal responsibility,” Biden said.

That is a lie.

In his speech, Biden elaborated on this lie.

“The previous administration, as you all know, ran up record budget deficits. In fact, the deficit went up every year under my predecessor,” he said.

“My administration is turning that around,” Biden continued.

“Last year,” he said, “we cut the deficit by more than $350 billion. This year, we’re on track to cut the deficit by more than $1.3 trillion. $1.3 trillion. That would be the largest one-year reduction in the deficit in U.S. history.”

But what do the Treasury’s official numbers actually tell us about the recent history of federal spending and deficits?

In the first three years of the Trump administration, the deficit grew — but never exceeded $1 trillion. In fiscal 2017, it was $665,826,000,000. In fiscal 2018, it was $778,996,000,000. In fiscal 2019, it was $984,388,000,000.

To be sure, these were very high deficits. But they were less than what Biden has planned for post-COVID America.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2022/04/magic-kingdom-supports-sexualizing-childhood-bruce-thornton/

Once the epitome of childhood innocence and joy, the Disney Corporation has gone full “woke,” endorsing and supporting a dangerous grammar-school curriculum that exposes prepubescent children to inappropriate sexual information. Pressured by activists, including Disney employees, Disney’s CEO Bob Chapek publicly renounced Florida’s recently passed Parental Rights in Education law––dishonestly labeled by critics the “Don’t say gay” law–– which forbids curriculum from kindergarten to third grade from including content on “sexual orientation or gender identity.” 

This assault on childhood innocence in the name of “tolerance” and identity-politics activism marks a dangerous escalation in the decades-long ideological transformation of sexual mores away from common sense, faith, and traditional morality. This escalation puts at risk children’s sexual development and psychological health by exposing them to materials and information they are not ready for, while sidelining parents’ responsibility and right to oversee this vulnerable period in their children’s lives.

This episode highlights several cultural and political developments that have been going on for many decades. The attempt to usurp parents’ right to raise their kids according to their morality and principles reflects the progressive technocratic hubris that they, rather than families or churches, are better suited for properly raising and educating children. The irony is, it hasn’t been science that supports that claim, but scientism: disciplines like psychology and sociology that oversimplify human nature and motivation, and impose ideologically loaded paradigms and practices on public schools.

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/senate-judiciary-committee-splits-on-advancing-judge-jacksons-nomination/

After the Senate Judiciary Committee deadlocked on Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson’s nomination to the Supreme Court on Monday in a split eleven-to-eleven partisan vote, the Senate chamber advanced her candidacy 53–47 Monday evening in a subsequent vote.

A simple majority of 51 votes was needed to advance her nomination, which Jackson garnered after Republican Senators Susan Collins, Lisa Murkowski, and Mitt Romney pledged their support, cementing a likely bipartisan confirmation.

Given that the balance of power between Republicans and Democrats is evenly divided in the Senate, Jackson’s prospects have been encumbered by a political tug-of-war, especially since both parties have the same number of seats on every committee. For the last two weeks, some GOP members on the committee have hammered Jackson on her record of perceived leniency on child-pornography cases during her hearings.

https://americanmind.org/salvo/the-cult-of-abortion/

As the Left abandons the meaningful existence of gender, abortion remains a sacrament reserved for women in the woke cathedral.

As we all have learned by now, women do not get pregnant and have babies—“birthing people” do. Women do not exclusively menstruate—both men and women have periods. And women do not nurse babies—“chestfeeders” do. But, so far at least, abortion is still exclusively a question of women’s health. 

In May of 2021, Representative Cori Bush testified in a congressional hearing about maternal death among black women and babies. “Every day,” she tweeted, “Black birthing people and our babies die because our doctors don’t believe our pain. My children almost became a statistic. I almost became a statistic.” But Bush, a radical socialist legislator who is sticking with “Defund the Police” as a mantra, was not using some arcane terminology in substituting “birthing person” for the usual “mother.” This substitution apparently reflects official U.S. government policy under the Biden administration, which used it in 2022 fiscal documents.  

Tampon companies have also embraced the idea that their products are, potentially, for everyone. “Fact: Not all women have periods,” Tampax tweeted. “Also a fact: Not all people with periods are women. Let’s celebrate the diversity of all people who bleed!” The ACLU has embraced “menstrual equity” as a matter of civil rights, asking, “How can we recognize that barriers to menstrual access are a form of sex discrimination without erasing the lived experiences of trans men and non-binary people who menstruate, as well as women who don’t?” Numerous colleges have installed tampon machines in men’s bathrooms, too. 

http://www.swtotd.blogspot.com

News sources seem unable to deal with more than one crisis at a time. Three months ago, and for the previous twenty-one months, airwaves were dominated by the COVID-19 pandemic. Now it is Ukraine. What has been happening in Ukraine is awful, but is it, as commentators on both Fox News and MSNBC have reported, the worst humanitarian crisis since World War II? Is it worse than China’s Cultural Revolution, which caused an estimated 20 million deaths? Is it worse than the Cambodian killing fields when the Communist-led Khmer Rouge slew as many as 3.0 million people? Does it compare to Islamic terrorism in sub-Saharan Africa where 3 million Christians have been displaced and 43,000 killed in Nigeria alone? Where is perspective? Evil is part of human nature. It was because of the existence of evil that the Founders put constraints on governmental power. Evil leaders – from Hitler, Hirohito and Stalin to Mao Zedong, from Kim Jong-un to Ali Khamenei, from Xi Jinping to Vladimir Putin – rule by forced conformity, with none of the restraints on their leadership necessary for people to live freely and securely. Dissent is not allowed. Opposition to prescribed doctrines threatens totalitarian leaders.

Lest one tags me as an anarchist, let me add that I do believe in conformity when it comes to adherence to civility – tolerance, decency and respect for others, regardless of opinions, gender or race. And I believe in the universal values, embedded in traditional concepts of virtue. It is not the superficial differences reflected in gender and race, but differences in the opinions we carry, that threaten progressives’ desire for conformity. The freedom to express those opinions in a civil manner is critical to a democracy. In his 2007 book The Lucifer Effect: Understanding How Good People Turn Evil, Stanford Professor Philip Zimbardo wrote, “Research shows that the decisions of a group as a whole are more thoughtful; and creative when there is a minority dissent than when it is absent.” It is the premise behind the success of democracies versus the failure of authoritarian rule.