RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/20216/woke-cowardice-university-presidents

As Ecclesiastes observed “to everything there is a season”. This seems to be the season for woke cowardice

[These administrators] are also insensitive to civil liberties and the rights of those with whom they disagree.

It creates divisiveness on campuses that makes Jewish students and faculty fearful for their safety when their university president seems unwilling to apply the same standard to those who advocate genocide against Jews as they surely would against anyone who advocated genocide against Blacks or the raping of women or the shooting of gay and transgender people.

What these universities need now are principled advocates of a single standard, rather than leaders who base their decisions on outside pressures and the need to pander to extremist students, faculty and administrators.

One thing is clear: [university presidents] should be selected on the basis of relevant, individual meritocratic criteria— not the cookie cutter criteria of the “diversity, equity and inclusion” bureaucracies.

The forced resignation of the president of the University of Pennsylvania is a good first step in dealing with a far more pervasive problem in higher education.

The three university presidents who disgraced themselves and their universities by their abysmal testimony before the U.S. House Committee on Education and the Workforce represent a far larger concern.

In recent years, many universities have selected as their presidents woke, progressive cowards who pander to the most extreme and most vocal left-wing students and professors. They are the wrong people, at the wrong time, to be leading American educational institutions.

https://issuesinsights.com/2023/12/13/where-is-our-javier-milei/

The new Argentinian president is a radical, a far-right outsider and a right-wing reactionary, if the press is to be believed. But he’s not at all the demon that the mental-case media claims he is. Javier Milei is the type of elected official – note that we didn’t say “politician” – that this country needs. In fact, every nation on the planet could use a Javier Milei.

“No country declined as rapidly or as severely as Argentina,” Investopedia said a year ago in a post explaining the country’s relationship with socialism. “In 1989 the average inflation rate in Argentina approached 5,000%, and in March 1990 it peaked at over 20,000%.” 

Also mentioned were the country’s sovereign debt default, as well as its “political corruption and an irresponsible monetary policy.” Our friends at the Committee to Unleash prosperity tells us that 45% of Argentina’s “46 million people are in poverty and the economy is on the edge of hyperinflation” and that “over the past 50 years government spending as a share of the economy has almost doubled.”

All of these problems in what was once one of the 10 richest countries on Earth, overflowing with natural resources, have been caused not by not enough government intervention into the economy and daily lives but by too much.

Will the U.S. first have to sink to the depths of Argentina before we have a free-market champion step in? We’re not there yet, but three years of economic “stewardship” under the Biden White House has taken us dangerously close to a wreck.

For good reason “voters are “feeling horrible” about the economy under Biden. According to Fortune, a “big part” of the stock market is “unconvinced economy is going anywhere” because there is “weakness underneath the hood.” In its most recent report, the Conference Board said the leading economic indicators declined “again in October.” It forecasts “that real GDP will expand by just 0.8 percent in 2024.” The St. Louis Federal Reserve Bank expects “slower GDP growth” in 2024, and noted that “inflation remains above the Federal Reserve’s 2% target” even as it grip “appears to be breaking.”

https://townhall.com/tipsheet/spencerbrown/2023/12/11/protestors-who-want-to-see-hamas-survive-took-over-another-congressional-building-n2632256

A group of “pro-Palestine” protestors — read: those who are “demanding” a ceasefire that would benefit Hamas and give the Iran-backed terrorists a chance at surviving to launch more October 7-level attacks on innocent Israelis — occupied the atrium of the Hart Senate Office Building just steps from the U.S. Capitol on Monday morning. Their tantrum caused authorities to close the building to the public, allowing only senators and staff to enter the building. 

Demonstrators carried banners that claimed “AID TO ISRAEL = BOMBING PALESTINIANS,” a creative interpretation of reality that ignores the fact that Hamas terrorists are using Gazans as human shields and the death tolls being parroted by these demonstrators are known to be inaccurate coming directly from the Hamas terrorist-run government in the Gaza Strip.

Another fact these agitators taking over a Senate office building seemingly want to ignore: it was Hamas that violated the first cessation in fighting during which some Israeli hostages were released. That is — not that the terrorists needed to make their aims any clearer — Hamas preferred to try killing more Israelis than to lay down their arms to end the IDF’s justified strikes on terrorists, their infrastructure, and their weapons hidden by Hamas in hospitals, schools, mosques, and other civilian areas. What’s more, Hamas had a ceasefire on October 6, then launched their brutal massacre that killed more Jews in any single day since the Holocaust. Hamas again had a ceasefire for several days in late November, then chose to violate its terms and launch more attacks on innocent Israelis. Neither time was Israel to blame for setting off the war.

In addition to making noise and occupying the atrium of the Hart building, at least one demonstrator climbed a statue to continue screaming demands before surrendering his position to be arrested by Capitol Police along with his fellow agitators.

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/congressional-dems-history-praise-group-happy-hamas-attacks-israel

Several Democrat members of Congress have a long history of public support for an organization whose leader recently ignited a firestorm over controversial comments regarding Hamas’ deadly attacks on Israeli citizens.

Nihad Awad, the executive director and co-founder of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), recently said that he was “happy to see” the October 7 Hamas invasion of Israel and that the Jewish state did not have a right to self-defense because it is an “occupying power.”

“The people of Gaza only decided to break the siege — the walls of the concentration camp — on Oct. 7,” Awad said at the 16th Annual Convention for Palestine in the U.S. on Nov. 24. “And yes, I was happy to see people breaking the siege and throwing down the shackles of their own land and walk free into their land that they were not free to walk in.”

He continued, “And yes, the people of Gaza have the right to self-defense — have the right to defend themselves. And yes, Israel as an occupying power does not have that right to self-defense.”

Awad’s comments forced the White House to scramble and scrub CAIR as a committed partner to fight antisemitism on its website. A White House spokesperson also strongly reprimanded his comments in a statement to Fox News Digital.

“We condemn these shocking, Antisemitic statements in the strongest terms,” the White House spokesperson told Fox News Digital. “The horrific, brutal terrorist attacks committed by Hamas on October 7th were, as President Biden said, ‘abhorrent’ and represent ‘unadulterated evil.'”

https://issuesinsights.com/2023/12/12/biden-puts-us-on-a-fast-train-to-nowhere/

At long last, we’re building the first high-speed rail project in our nation’s history. And it’s starting here.”

That was President Joe Biden announcing last week that us taxpayers will be ponying up $3 billion to help a private company build a bullet train from Los Angeles to Las Vegas so gambleholics can start losing money more quickly.

The L.A. to Vegas train will supposedly be finished in time for the Los Angeles Summer Olympics in 2028 — just four and half years from now.

Well, anything is possible. A private company is planning to build the thing and claims to have the route and rights-of-way all figured out. But when you consider that Biden put up $7.5 billion to get private companies to put EV chargers all over the country and two years later not a single one has been built, constructing more than four miles of complex high-speed electrified rail each and every month seems a bit optimistic. (It took eight years to build an 11-mile extension to the Washington, D.C., Metro Silver Line.

But let’s say this private company can build it that fast, and that it will be a huge win for travelers, as Biden claims. Then why on Earth are taxpayers on the hook for a third of its construction costs?

What’s more, Biden’s claim that this is the “first high-speed rail project” in the country is a flat-out lie. Or did he forget about the high-speed rail project from Los Angeles to San Francisco that California has been working on since 2008 — the one that he and President Barack Obama threw $3 billion at 13 years ago?

Actually, Biden did eventually bring it up in his remarks last week (as transcribed by the White House):

Another high-speed rail project we’re announcing today is in California. Ultimately, it’s going to take folks from Los Angeles, through the Central Valley, all the way to San Francisco, b- — in less than three hours. But today, the journey can take eight hours by bus or car. Think of how this train will transform California’s Central Valley with new businesses, new residents, visitors, economic opportunities, or what it will mean to folks who live in inland towns and commute to work in Californian coastal cities. It’s a game changer.

Biden announced that he is dumping another $3.1 billion of taxpayer money into what has so far proved to be nothing more than a monument to wishful thinking and government waste.

https://amgreatness.com/2023/12/11/not-trump-the-dictator-again/

It is “Trump Will Destroy Democracy” season again. And predictably the Left has gone hysterical, after experiencing a trifecta of frightening 2024 news.

One, current polls in the primaries and in a general election for now show that Trump would win.

Meanwhile, Joe Biden’s popularity dives below 40 percent. His policies on the economy, abroad, at the border, concerning crime, and about energy poll even more feebly. Never has an American president utterly and deliberately destroyed immigration law for the sole purpose of inviting in millions of illegal aliens, to establish political constituencies supportive of agendas that otherwise have scant public support.

Two, unequivocal evidence is mounting that the Bidens are one of the most corrupt political families in American presidential history. Hunter, the Leona Helmsley of our times, is now indicted for massive tax evasion, despite his earlier, government-aided efforts of running out the statute of limitations on the full array of his crimes.

When asked about his grifting, Biden angrily denies the undeniable. He can only become animated these days, when asked to square his denials about knowing what Hunter was up to with a multitude of facts and data to the contrary. And so in exasperation he shouts, “Lies!,” “Lies!,” and “Lies!”

There is now conclusive proof that Biden himself lied repeatedly when he swore that he knew nothing about his wayward son Hunter’s grifting business. He used several aliases to communicate directly with his son’s grifting and quid pro quo partners.

Canceled checks show the president was paid substantial sums by family members after they received money from foreign governments—for nothing other than being related to the future president. The pay-offs were hidden by “loan repayment” lies; no one expects ever to find any such evidence that there were formal loan documents or agreements between Biden and his family.

Former Hunter Biden associates, explicit messaging on his laptop, IRS whistleblowers, and bank records all explain why an opulent Joe Biden enjoyed a lifestyle impossible on either a senator’s or Vice President’s salary. While Biden toured the country sermonizing that the rich must “pay their fair share,” it is increasingly likely that he had received huge amounts from foreign governments eager to purchase him as an influencer—and never paid taxes on such occult income.

Three, Joe Biden’s cognitive decline and feebleness have reached a point where he is one fall, one bad cold, or one long brain-freeze away from incapacity. He clearly is not running the country. How could he be, when he cannot finish a sentence without mangling the syntax, slurring the vocabulary, and confusing his listeners?

https://amgreatness.com/2023/12/10/bidens-son-of-a-gun-number-one-son-might-just-toss-him-under-the-bus/

So we finally have a serious indictment of Hunter Biden. Well, half-serious. After having been stiffed by lawyers for Biden fils, special counsel David Weiss removed one glove, checked the statute of limitations clock and the north-by-northwest breezes of public sentiment, and decided that he had better slip in a valid indictment or two, ones with some semblance of teeth or at least dentures,  before time ran out on all of them.

Back in August, I wrote in this space about “the sweetheart deal to end all sweetheart deals” that Weiss offered Hunter. Weiss was, I noted, “supposed to be prosecuting the case. In fact,” I continued,

it would be closer to the truth to say he was burying it.  The full measure of sugar he shoveled into the deal is something that became known only accidentally thanks to an attentive judge. The world knew that Hunter was escaping any jail time for his tax and felony gun crimes.  We discovered that the deal also immunized Hunter against future indictment only because Judge Maryellen Noreika, who presided in the case, actually read the deal and had the gumption to say “Hey, what’s this?

It was embarrassing all around but, as William Hazlitt once observed, “those who lack delicacy hold us in their power.” Do you think that the cadaverous apparatchik Merrick Garland, Weiss’s boss, gives a hoot about “embarrassing” revelations? He’s way beyond all that. You cannot shame a man who is shameless (an observation that prompts me to note again the linguistic curiosity that “shameful” and “shameless” are nearly synonyms in English).

https://www.thefp.com/p/douglas-murray-auden-things-worth-remembering?utm_campaign=email-post&r=8t06w&utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email

Welcome back to Douglas Murray’s Sunday column, Things Worth Remembering, where he presents passages from great poets he has committed to memory—and explains why you should, too. To listen to Douglas read from W. H. Auden’s “September 1, 1939,” click below:

I want to turn today to the question of W. H. Auden and what happened to him just as the world was going mad.

Auden was hardly the only one left disoriented—shattered—by the outbreak of World War II, but I think his response to the war—his poem “September 1, 1939”—offers a uniquely powerful illustration of what happens to us when everything we think we know becomes uncertain.

The poem receded for decades—in no small part because Auden didn’t care for it—but after the attacks of 9/11, it achieved a newfound fame. It was especially popular in New York City, where the Twin Towers once stood, and because that’s where Auden wrote it. As he says in the poem’s opening lines:

I sit in one of the dives
On Fifty-second Street

That is a good opening.

What comes next is even more grabbing:

Uncertain and afraid
As the clever hopes expire
Of a low dishonest decade:

It’s a perfectly said, deeply appealing line. Who doesn’t want to feel like the poet—smoking a cigarette in a dive on 52nd street, drink and pen in hand—proclaiming boldly in the face of titanic, historical forces?

https://nypost.com/2023/12/09/news/iran-apologists-linked-to-robert-malley-got-50m-from-soros/?utm_campaign=iphone_nyp&utm_source=mail_app

Far-left billionaire George Soros has funneled more than $50 million to a network of Iran-sympathizer groups whose members have gained significant sway within the Biden White House — pushing to defang US sanctions on Tehran while advocating for a renewed nuclear deal.

A Post examination of Soros’ Open Society Foundations records shows the progressive kingmaker has given a staggering $46.7 million since 2016 to the International Crisis Group, a lefty think tank tied to an alleged Iranian plot to manipulate US policy.

Robert Malley, the former US special envoy to Iran now under FBI investigation for his alleged mishandling of classified material, was the ICG’s president until he joined the Biden administration in 2021.

“Soros has continually funded organizations that act as apologists for the Iranian regime – downplaying their severe human rights abuses while working to advance Iranian propaganda,” Gabriel Noronha of the Polaris National Security think tank told The Post.