RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/cease-fire-now-pro-palestinian-protesters-disrupt-bidens-south-carolina-campaign-speech/

Pro-Palestinian protesters interrupted Joe Biden’s campaign speech on Monday afternoon in Charleston, S.C., calling on the president to demand a cease-fire in Gaza, where the Israeli Defense Forces are continuing their offensive military campaign three months after Hamas’s brutal assault in Israel.

Biden supporters in the audience countered the protesters’ “cease-fire now” chants Monday afternoon by yelling “four more years,” prompting the president to acknowledge that the conflict continues to roil his own base into the new year.

“I understand their passion,” Biden said from the podium in South Carolina, the first Democratic primary state in this year’s nominating calendar. “I’ve been quietly working with the Israeli government to get them to reduce and significantly get out of Gaza, using all that I can to do.”

The interruption undercut Biden’s emotional remarks from Mother Emanuel AME Church, where the president again voiced support for a ban on “assault weapons” as he spoke about the gruesome mass shooting there in 2015 that left nine people dead.

“The Word of God was pierced by bullets of hate and rage propelled by not just gunpowder, but by a poison, a poison that’s for too long haunted this nation,” Biden said of the brutal mass shooting that occurred nearly nine years ago. “And what’s that poison? White supremacy.”

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/the-protesters-dont-want-to-be-popular/

Pivoting off anti-Israel protesters’ latest effort to inconvenience as many Americans as possible, Jewish Insider’s Josh Kraushaar wonders what it is that these demonstrators think they’re accomplishing with stunts like these:

Disrupting traffice at the Holland Tunnel’

This latest disruptive display is of a piece with similar efforts by Israel’s American critics to make themselves as unattractive as possible. Pro-Palestinian protesters have attempted to shut down air travel out of some of America’s busiest hubs. They made it their mission to ruin holiday celebrations and parades. They have terrorized tourists, harassed commuters, and generally organized themselves around the principle that “joy is canceled.”

Kraushaar wonders what these protesters think they’re achieving since their activism has had almost no effect on Americans’ lopsided support for Israel’s defensive war against Hamas. Nor has their activism “dampened support on Capitol Hill for the Jewish state in its war against Hamas.” Observers might be tempted to conclude that the demonstrations have backfired, but that conclusion is available only to those who believe the protesters are motivated by anything other than their own self-conception as enlightened outsiders.

If, however, we allow ourselves to be open to the conclusion that the protesters cherish their movement’s exclusivity more than its efficacy, their tactics make perfect sense. A mass movement is a movement that is willing to make concessions. It does not make the perfect the enemy of the good. It organizes itself around one principle and seeks a handful of achievable objectives, all of which can only be durably secured through incremental progress. Does that sound at all like these anti-Israel demonstrators? Indeed, does that describe any of today’s most visible protest movements?

https://amgreatness.com/2024/01/08/a-culture-in-collapse/

In the last six months, we have borne witness to many iconic moments evidencing the collapse of American culture.

The signs are everywhere and cover the gamut of politics, the economy, education, social life, popular culture, foreign policy, and the military. These symptoms of decay share common themes.

Our descent is self-induced; it is not a symptom of a foreign attack or subterfuge. Our erosion is not the result of poverty and want, but of leisure and excess. We are not suffering from existential crises of famine, plague, or the collapse of our grid and fuel sources. Prior, far poorer, and war-torn generations now seem far better off than what we are becoming.

What is happening to us is not due to an adherence to a too strict conservative tradition but is almost exclusively the wage of the progressive project.

In short, we are seeing fissures that America has not experienced in our cultural history since the Civil War. The radical Left apparently feels such chaos, anarchy, and nihilism are necessary to topple past norms and customs and thereby adhere to a socialist, equity agenda that no one in normal times would stomach.

Some of the decay is existential and fundamental; some anecdotal and illustrative. But either way, while decline came about gradually over decades, its sudden and abrupt chaos during the three years of Biden’s presidency has shocked Americans.

Financial Implosion

As long as interest rates were de facto zero, both parties ran up gargantuan debt. Now the national debt has hit $34 trillion. But two odd things have also happened under the Biden administration that are beginning to undermine the very existence of the U.S. financial system:

1) Interest rates have soared from de facto zero and are on a trajectory to 5.5%—meaning that the interest on the debt, in theory, in the not too distant future will require 20 percent of the annual budget, squeezing out both entitlements and defense.

https://issuesinsights.com/2024/01/08/biden-takes-lying-with-statistics-to-a-whole-new-level/

The headlines on Friday were that the economy created 216,000 jobs, more than expected and a sign of continued strength in the economy.

“This morning’s report confirms that 2023 was a great year for American workers,” President Joe Biden said.

Hurray!

But wait a minute. The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) previously reported that there were 157,087,000 “non-farm payroll” jobs in November. The number of these jobs in December, it now says, was 157,232,000.

That’s a gain of only 145,000.

So how did Biden manage to claim that the economy created 216,000 jobs in December?

Easy. All you have to do is cut the number of jobs in November by 71,000 and then measure December’s gain against that new, lower number.

Et voilà!

Instead of 157,087,000 jobs in November, the BLS now says there were 157,016,000. Subtract that from 157,232,000 and you get … 216,000!