RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2023/02/to_leftists_great_disappointment_the_doj_did_not_indict_matt_gaetz.html

After an investigation lasting almost two years, the DOJ couldn’t make the case that a prominent member MAGA conservative was a sex predator.

At the end of March 2021, leftists were ecstatic: At the recommendation of the FBI, the DOJ was investigating Rep. Matt Gaetz, an enthusiastic, fearless member of the House’s Freedom Caucus, for sex trafficking based on an alleged relationship with a teenage girl. Interestingly, Gaetz never seemed fazed by the allegations—and now we know why: There was nothing there. Even the hyper-politicized DOJ has conceded that it cannot pursue him for sex trafficking.

On March 30, 2021, Democrats got one of the most exciting pieces of news ever: The New York Times broke the story that the Department of Justice, while Trump was still in office, had started investigating Matt Gaetz for sex trafficking a 17-year-old over state borders. More accurately, he was accused of having had a relationship with her and paying for her travel with him:

Representative Matt Gaetz, Republican of Florida and a close ally of former President Donald J. Trump, is being investigated by the Justice Department over whether he had a sexual relationship with a 17-year-old and paid for her to travel with him, according to three people briefed on the matter.

Investigators are examining whether Mr. Gaetz violated federal sex trafficking laws, the people said. A variety of federal statutes make it illegal to induce someone under 18 to travel over state lines to engage in sex in exchange for money or something of value. The Justice Department regularly prosecutes such cases, and offenders often receive severe sentences.

https://pjmedia.com/columns/victor-davis-hanson/2023/02/16/destroying-meritocracy-is-deadly-n1670988

A recent epidemic of airline near misses deserves both attention and reflection.

In mid-December, a San Francisco-bound United Airlines Boeing 777-200 airliner, just a little over a minute after taking off from Maui, Hawaii, suddenly dived. It lost more than half its altitude and came within 800 feet of crashing into the Pacific Ocean before pulling up.

About a month later, an American Airlines jet crossed the runway at New York City’s John F. Kennedy International Airport just as a Delta Air Lines plane was accelerating for takeoff. The two aircraft nearly collided.

Then in February, a FedEx cargo jet at the Austin, Texas airport just missed crashing into a Southwest Airlines airliner by a mere 100 feet.

The same month an American Airlines Airbus A321 was being towed out of the gate at Los Angeles International airport, and smashed into a bus carrying passengers between terminals, injuring five.

Related: Buttigieg on Biden’s Mental Fitness: ‘I’m Glad To Have a President Who Can Ride a Bicycle’

These near and actual accidents come amid a general landscape of aviation chaos.

After Christmas, Southwest Airlines simply canceled 71 percent of its flights. It blamed staff shortages due to storms. The airline seemed incapable of ensuring enough of their pilots, attendants, crews, and airport staff could get to work.

The Federal Aviation Administration in January canceled all flight departures from the United States for two hours due a computer safety system collapse. Thousands of additional flights were canceled, many for over 24 hours.

Something has gone terribly wrong.

https://issuesinsights.com/2023/02/16/the-newsom-nuisance/

With a classified document scandal encircling him like a vulture waiting on a wounded animal to succumb to its injuries, Joe Biden’s chances to be a presidential candidate next year are closing in on nil. So who will be the Democrats’ flagship candidate? The smart money says it will be the foolish Gavin Newsom.

The California governor wouldn’t be the only candidate, of course. A lineup for the primaries is likely to include, at the least, current vice president and former U.S. senator from California Kamala Harris, as well as previous candidates Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, and U.S. Sens. Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren. Even former First Lady Michelle Obama appears in the betting lines.

The clear favorite, though, a year before the primaries, has to be Newsom. He has the backing, the teeth, the hair, the Hollywood glam – and 54 electoral votes.

What he doesn’t have is any good reason whatsoever to be president. He does, though, have a lot of good ones not to be. He is California’s Governor, not America’s Governor, a title better suited for Florida’s Ron DeSantis.

While perfectly cast in the role as the chief executive of California, and adored in blue states on both coasts, and a few in the middle, Newsom’s appeal to red America will be less indifference than outright contempt. He is everything that those voters dislike.

https://stephenrittenberg.substack.com/p/utopian-thinking-ii-the-assault-on?utm_source=twitter&utm_campaign=auto_share&r=2k6p0

One has to belong to the intelligentsia to believe things like that; no ordinary man could be such a fool

_ George Orwell

           In our previous essay we noted the universality of utopian yearnings, the longing for a perfect world where all conflict, pain, suffering and death would be eliminated. All would dwell happily in the Garden of Eden, or Heaven on Earth-Utopia. As psychoanalysts we noted the way this yearning constitutes a regressive pull back to the earliest phase of human development, the stage when the baby and its needs reign supreme. The longing for perfect bliss in a perfect world is so strong that some of the most gifted and intelligent among us have succumbed to its siren call. Even Lionel Trilling, perhaps the greatest literary critic and social observer of the twentieth century was briefly drawn to the utopian promise of Communism in the 1930’s.

Stalin’s brutal show trials disillusioned him and in the mid 1940’s he wrote a novel, Middle of the Journey, about the lure and the disillusion. The narrator, John Laskell, an intellectual and stand in for the author, is what was known in those days as a “fellow traveler.” All his friends were either Communist party members or strong sympathizers. At the height of his intellectual powers Laskell falls ill and nearly dies. He starts thinking about the reality of his biological self and the questions his near death raises. He muses about the limits death imposes. He searches for meaning not in utopian politics but in his own individual life. He remembers a woman he loved who died young before their personal relationship could grow. Personal loss, the body’s fragility, limits, begin to feel inevitable.

His close friends, ardent Communists refuse to talk with him about the spiritual and psychological questions his illness raises. He annoys them because death is not personal for them; their friendship is not personal. Rather he is a comrade member of a great revolutionary movement. He notices and is troubled that they aren’t really interested in his uniquely individual experience, but rather in him as a member of a class in the vanguard of the coming new world.

They particularly do not want to hear him say that his period of withdrawal from the world into his illness and recovery had its pleasurable aspect. He liked being cared for and in fact enjoyed contemplating a beautiful rose in his sick room, instead of mulling over the plight of the masses. Trilling places biological reality against utopian longings.