RUTHFULLY YOURS

http://www.swtotd.blogspot.com

Victory in the Cold War provided the U.S. a peace dividend that lasted ten years, until the attack on 9/11. U.S. defense spending, as a percent of GDP, declined from 5.6% in 1990 to 3.1% in 2000. It peaked in 2010 at 4.9% but fell to 3.7% in 2020. (In comparison, during the Vietnam war defense spending exceeded 9%.) But history did not end with end of the Cold War, evil did not vanish, and people did not become kinder and gentler. While the United States and the West gloated in victory and let their defense systems erode, China, Russia, Iran and North Korea, expanded their defense budgets.

But it is not just spending that is the problem. A smarter and more focused military means commitment on the part of the people and their representatives in Congress. While the U.S. developed technical leadership in social media platforms and video games, it fell behind China and Russia in military technologies. The U.S. graduates about 70,000 engineers each year, which compares to Russia and China, together, graduating ten times that number. The fate of Bell Labs, once known as “the idea factory,” is indicative of our technological decline. As a division of AT&T, and partnering with the U.S. government, it was responsible for world-changing technologies, from the transistor to the laser. Now it is owned by Nokia, a Finnish company. DARPA’s (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) annual budget remained flat in constant dollars over the past twenty-five years, despite significant advances in technology.

Today’s military has embraced wokeism. Soldiers, sailors and airmen are taught to be gender sensitive, to be sure to use the right pronouns. They are instructed in Critical Race Theory and told our nation is systemically racist. In appealing to activists, the military is alienating those most likely to serve.

https://amgreatness.com/2022/08/03/why-we-lost-trust-in-the-expert-class/

For years, European policy makers had assured the world that the relatively rapid “transition” to “green” energy was the world’s preordained future—regardless of the costs. 

Accordingly, many European Union governments followed the advice of green experts. They eagerly shut down coal, natural gas, and nuclear power plants to transition immediately to “renewable energy.” 

Most citizens were afraid to object that in cloudy, cold Germany solar panels were not viable methods of electrical generation—especially in comparison to the country’s vast coal deposits and its large, model nuclear power industry. 

As a result, German government officials warn that this winter, in 19th-century fashion, families will have to burn wood—the dirtiest of modern fuels—to endure the cold. And there is further talk of “warm rooms,” where like pre-civilizational tribal people, the elderly will bunch together within a designated heated room to keep alive. 

Sri Lanka may be the first modern nation to adopt deliberate policies that have led to mass hunger and bankruptcy. The government for a variety of reasons listened to foreign advocates of back-to-nature organic farming, specifically outright abandonment of highly effective synthetic fertilizers and pesticides. 

The result was endemic crop failure. Cash crops for export failed. Widespread hunger followed. Without foreign exchange, it became impossible to import key staples like food and fuel. 

Sri Lanka once had a per capita income twice that of nearby India. Now it cannot feed or fuel itself. 

Unfortunately, its incompetent government trusted radical environmental advisors, many of them foreign experts. Sri Lanka believed it could become the woke darling of the “Environmental, Social, Governance” movement, and that way draw in unlimited Western woke investment. 

Instead, it has embraced a policy of national suicide. 

Recently, a group of 55 distinguished pro-administration economists assured us that Joe Biden’s massive borrowing and new entitlements agenda were not inflationary. In September 2021, these economists with 14 Nobel prize winners among them declared that Biden’s inflationary policies would actually “ease” inflation. 

Last month, inflation spiked to an annualized rate of 9.1 percent. None of these “blue-chip” economists have offered any apologies for lending their prestige to convince Americans of the absurd: that inflating the money supply, spiking new government spending, incentivizing labor non-participation, and keeping interest rates artificially low would not cause inflation. 

https://issuesinsights.com/2022/08/04/in-battle-of-red-vs-blue-states-red-states-are-winning-handily/

In the state-level struggle for the future of America, there can be little doubt: The Red State model of free markets, low taxes, and minimal regulation is beating the daylights out of the Blue State model of top-down control, high taxes, and pervasive nanny-state regulation. But will it last?

The Wall Street Journal, deploying data from the center-left Brookings Institution, last month reported that Blue states, those governed by Democrats, were still 1.3 million jobs short of where they were before the COVID-19 pandemic. Red states, those led by Republicans, had managed to add 350,000 jobs.

A big reason for the disparity is the fact that millions fled Blue states during COVID.

“Forty-six million people moved to a different ZIP Code in the year through February 2022, the most in any 12-month period in records going back to 2010,” the Journal wrote. And most of them moved from Blue to Red states, with Florida, Texas, and North Carolina the biggest gainers, while California, New York, and Illinois lost the most.

Big, blue cities, in particular, lost huge numbers of people as soaring crime, sidewalk homeless encampments, COVID lockdowns, high taxes, and miserably underperforming schools made once-beautiful metropolises unlivable for many.

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2022/08/the_fightback_against_racial_quotas.html

Victories in court over affirmative action discrimination are accumulating, with more in prospect soon.

E pluribus unum, the traditional motto of the United States, means ‘Out of many, one.’ It asserts that our strength is in assimilation of shared values, goals, and vision. It unifies our diverse races, religions, and other groups by appealing to the ideals of a constitutional republic – freedom, equality, the pursuit of wealth, happiness and excellence through free market competition.

But the hackneyed shibboleth of the Left – Diversity is our strength – stands in direct contradiction to our original national motto. It serves their destructive aim of Balkanizing us by race, gender, sexual orientation, and other sub-groups du jour. Denigrating and rewriting our history, the Left aims to radically transform our culture: discounting merit, hard work, knowledge and experience, it wants to make identity the ubiquitous sine qua non of representation in American society.

This strategy is reified in the so-called ‘social justice’ components of environmental, social, and governance (ESG) criteria; diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) guidelines; and critical race theory (CRT) based programs. Such programs try to cure historical discrimination with more discrimination – in the form of quotas based on race, sex, and other increasingly complicated factors – a disastrous strategy that only intensifies social discord instead of ameliorating it. Under such programs, educational institutions, government, businesses and other employers are forced to sacrifice quality and excellence in favor of a diversity that discriminates de novo and is unconstitutional.

One front in the fightback against such quotas is the Californians for Equal Rights Foundation (CERF) v. Alameda County case, recently brought before the Superior Court of California. It exemplifies the conflict between ‘woke’ rhetoric and the enduring legal framework protecting the rights of all citizens – regardless of race, sex, or national origin. CERF, represented by the non-profit Pacific Legal Foundation, is challenging race-based quotas for awarding contracts, contending that this amounts to using taxpayer funds to promote discrimination.

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/the-dam-breaks-and-key-dems-run-away-from-biden-24

You’ve seen the polls showing that large majorities of Democratic voters want the party to pick a new nominee for president in 2024, bypassing incumbent President Joe Biden. Now we’re seeing the living embodiment of those polls as some important Democratic lawmakers distance themselves from, or outright oppose, a reelection run by the nearly 80-year-old president.

It’s not that senior Democrats are eager to disparage a president of their own party. They’re not. Instead, they’re being forced into it by the process of the 2022 campaign, in which they are trying to assure their own reelections. They’re campaigning, doing interviews, and taking part in debates, and the question comes up.

Start with Reps. Dean Phillips (D-MN) and Rep. Angie Craig (D-MN). Last week, Phillips appeared on radio station WCCO, where host Chad Hartman asked him outright: “Do you want Joe Biden to run in 2024? Because the number of Democrats who don’t is staggeringly high.”

Phillips began with obligatory praise of the president — any Democrat who wants Biden to leave has to say how many excellent qualities Biden has. “I have respect for Joe Biden,” Phillips said. “I think he has — despite some mistakes and some missteps, despite his age, I think he’s a man of decency, of good principle, of compassion, of empathy, and of strength.” And then: “But to answer your question directly, which I know is quite rare, uh no, I don’t. I think the country would be well served by a new generation of compelling, well-prepared, dynamic Democrats to step up.”