“It is disgraceful,” Senator Ted Cruz said. “And Joe Biden used to be chairman of the Judiciary Committee. Joe Biden knows it’s disgraceful. He’s literally threatening the lives of these justices by the mob they’re unleashing. It’s the same thing we saw with Black Lives Matter and Antifa riots, where the left embraced them. And now they’re embracing mob violence to get their partisan outcome.”

Thugs and terrorists in suits. These are not your daddy’s Democrats. These are full-blown, legalized mobsters, terrorists and totalitarians. Joe Biden has gone along for the ride. Do you seriously think this can possibly end well? Will an election stop these people?

It’s dangerous.

Michael J. Hurd, Daily Dose of Reason

As Russia continues its brutal invasion of Ukraine and its increasing atrocities toward civilians are revealed, most of the world is increasing moral condemnation and economic sanctions against the perpetrator. Hundreds of international corporations, such as Unilever, Coca-Cola, and McDonald’s have pulled out of Russia completely or suspended their operations there. These companies have forsaken billions of dollars of their Russian investment. Kudos to all of them.

Although many corporations curtail their operations or pull out of Russia based on what their government’s or the European Union’s economic sanctions require, the reasons to leave go beyond those. Even big tobacco companies like British American Tobacco have come to the conclusion that the moral condemnation of Russia is more important than the large Russian market and their investment there.

Yet, over 200 corporations still resist implementing their governments’ economic sanctions and continue to do business-as-usual in Russia. (A continually updated list of both resisters and those that have pulled out is being maintained by Yale School of Management).

The case in point is the Finnish tire maker Nokian Tyres which owns and operates a manufacturing plant (which accounts for 80% of its production) outside of St. Petersburg. CEO Jukka Moisio recently said that Nokian Tyres should continue its Russian operations because it produces only car tires there. If Nokian Tyres were to abandon its plant in Russia, he argued, it would be used for making tires for military vehicles for the war against Ukraine. In other words, according to Moisio, Nokian Tyres is doing more good than harm by continuing its Russian operations and shouldn’t abandon its significant assets there.

How should these companies’ actions be evaluated morally? What kind of guidance does morality offer to companies about doing business in authoritarian countries whose regimes don’t hesitate to initiate physical force against those who disagree with them, whether their own citizens or those of “enemy” countries?

Most of us understand the importance of morally condemning evil actions and of supporting the economic sanctions that add bite to the condemnations. I suspect that most, including the corporations themselves, perceive forgoing Russian energy (and paying more for the alternatives) and the financial losses from pulling out of Russia as a noble sacrifice necessary to help Ukraine.

Some likely consider Nokian Tyres’ cost-benefit rationalization as practical but not moral, because it seemingly serves the company’s self-interest (maintaining cash flow and avoiding the loss of significant assets).

But both evaluations are mistaken. Each suffers from the same fundamental error: misunderstanding of self-interest.

Nokian Tyres’ cost-benefit calculation does not serve the company’s self-interest. The pragmatic calculation constitutes abandoning moral principles – such as integrity and justice – and financially supporting a murderous regime hell-bent on taking over a peaceful neighbor, for short-term financial gain.

Pursuing self-interest is challenging—but necessary if the business is to survive and succeed (maximize profits by creating value for customers). Achieving long-term self-interest is hard; it requires a consistent application of valid moral principles, not abandoning them. Failing to morally condemn an evil regime – failing to apply integrity and justice – only emboldens such a regime and allows it to extinguish freedom completely. In such conditions, achieving self-interest is impossible.

Those who regard the refusal to buy Russian products and companies pulling out of Russia as noble self-sacrifice are also mistaken. Both actions are noble and moral, but they are not self-sacrifice, despite the short-term hardships and financial losses they may cause.

It is a mistake to do business in authoritarian countries in the first place due to the political risk it poses. An authoritarian government can nationalize foreign companies’ assets, as Iran did to the British and American oil companies in the 1950s (and as Putin is threatening to do now). Or such a government can make companies complicit in atrocities, as Nazi Germany did to German chemical and automobile manufacturers and banks. Or the government can merely funnel money from state-owned oil and natural gas companies to finance rogue, immoral wars, as Russia is doing.

Foreign companies that made this mistake in Russia have been evading reality; they cannot claim that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine could not have been predicted. The signs have been there for a long time, even before the Russian takeover of Crimea in 2014.

The least Nokian Tyres and other foreign corporations operating in Russia or trading with Russian state-owned companies can do now, is to condemn the Russian government and pull out. The same applies to dealing with the Chinese Communist government and with other dictatorial regimes.

That would be a big step toward a more peaceful and freer world in which businesses can maximize profits and the rest of us can prosper.

Jaana Woiceshyn teaches business ethics and competitive strategy at the Haskayne School of Business, University of Calgary, Canada. How to Be Profitable and Moral” is her first solo-authored book. Visit her website at profitableandmoral.com.

Sometimes nothing is a real cool hand.”

In the movie classic “Cool Hand Luke,” the convict Luke, played by Paul Newman, explains that to his fellow inmates after winning the pot in a hand of poker without even a pair of deuces.

President Joe Biden should take notice. For, right now, “nothing” is the hand he is looking at going into the 2022 election.

With the economy the predominant issue, the last business day of April brought disquieting news for Democrats.

“Nasdaq Caps Worst Month Since 2008,” blared Saturday’s lead headline in The Wall Street Journal. “Dismal Data Fuel Stagflation Fears,” ran the top headline in the Financial Times.

“Market Plunge Reflects Alarm of Pain Ahead,” blared The New York Times. Subhead: “Decline in April was worst in two years.”

“Trajectory in Question as Markets Tank Again,” said page one of The Washington Post. To what was the Post referring?

Nasdaq had closed down over 4%. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was down over 900 points on the day. The S&P 500 was off 3.6% Friday, raising April’s loss to nearly 9% of its value. Not since World War II has the S&P begun a year with a worse performance.

This bloodbath in the markets is piled atop an 8.5% inflation rate and a shrinkage of 1.4% in the GDP over the first quarter. If a similar decline follows in the second quarter, the economy on which Biden’s party stands or falls in November will officially be in recession.

With Biden’s disapproval rating already running 10 points higher than his 42% approval, the economic issue could bring an even larger rout of House Democrats than would be normal at the midterms.

The issue now ranked second as a national concern is the crisis on the border where 2 million illegal migrants crossed over in Biden’s first year and the “gotaways” who evaded every U.S. official while sneaking in are estimated in the hundreds of thousands.

Some 8,000 migrants now cross the U.S. border every day. And according to the Biden administration itself, half again that many will be crossing daily if Title 42, which enables border authorities to turn back migrants into Mexico for health concerns, is lifted this month.

Third in voters’ concern is the explosion in violent crime, especially “mass killings” that involve four victims dead or wounded, not including the perpetrator. This year, mass killings are nearly matching the record number set in Biden’s first year.

There was a time when mass murder, like the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre in Chicago by the Al Capone gang, or Charlie Starkweather’s murderous rampage across the Great Plains in 1958, were rare events.

Now people shooting up malls, trains and subways, and running down people with cars and trucks are daily occurrences.

Biden is not responsible for the explosion of carjackings and mass killings or cop shootings. But his party has come to be identified with its left wing’s campaign to “defund the police” and refocus on the “root causes” of crime, the social conditions said to produce criminals, rather than the criminals themselves.

The Republican Party has come to be identified with solutions that involve more police, more prosecutors and more prison cells and inmates, which, increasingly, is where the country is at.

In addition to the issues turning against the Democrats, Biden has himself become a drag on the party. His low poll numbers, verbal foot faults, visible frailty and perceived “cognitive decline” all handicap efforts to portray him as a strong, engaged and decisive leader.

The wild card in Biden’s poker hand is the war in Ukraine.

Biden has funneled $3.7 billion into the Ukrainian war effort and sent Javelin and Stinger missiles and, lately, heavy artillery. He is pressing Congress for an additional $33 billion — $20 billion of that in military aid — over the next five months of this fiscal year.

Thus far, the U.S. political class in this capital has been largely united and supportive of the Ukrainians.

But dissent is rising. Why, it is being asked, are we so focused on the Eastern borders of Ukraine when the Southern border of the United States is being breached illegally by 200,000 invaders every month, and thousands more “gotaways” — some of whom are sex traffickers, drug dealers, terrorists and members of Mexican cartels.

The future of the United States is not likely to be altered in a significant way by who eventually controls Mariupol or the Sea of Azov.

But more than 2 million migrants every year walking into the United States at will cannot but have an impact on the future character and composition of the nation that has lost control of its border.

Is whether Moscow controls Luhansk and Donetsk, which it did for the duration of the Cold War and for decades before, more important to us than whether the America we grew up in becomes more of a Third World than a Western nation?

Patrick J. Buchanan is the author of “Nixon’s White House Wars: The Battles That Made and Broke a President and Divided America Forever.”

If the inflation narrative we are being fed is true, the sanctions policy of the US government makes no sense as the worst sufferers are the American and European populations who are paying for the supply restrictions in higher prices and interest rates.

As Russia is an exporter of energy and minerals, higher prices result in more export earnings. It is Americans and Europeans hit with the high prices who are experiencing the sanctions.

Ask yourself why with supply shortages, disrupted supply chains from the mindless lockdown policy, and rising inflation the US government drove inflation higher by inhibiting supply with sanctions. Is the cause of the current inflation Federal Reserve money printing or is the cause the reduction in the supply of goods and services caused by Washington’s Covid protocol and “Russian sanctions”?

Ask yourself why the Biden regime is more concerned about gangster-state Ukraine than it is about the US inflation rate and the welfare of American citizens.

Ask yourself if the current high gasoline price is really a result of sanctions preventing oil from coming to market. As far as I can tell, Russia continues to sell oil and natural gas. It is only the small US purchases of Russian oil that have stopped. The small amount of oil involved cannot explain the price rise. Most likely it is the oil companies using the “crisis” narrative to raise prices.

Ask yourself if an interest rate rise by half a percentage point is enough to cause a 1,000 drop in the Dow Jones. Presumably, the argument is that a higher interest rate raises costs and drops earnings, thus the stock market’s decline. But if higher interest rates raise costs, how are they anti-inflationary? Most likely the stock market fell because the Federal Reserve said it is halting its policy of printing money to support stock and bond prices. Instead, the Federal Reserve is going to sell stocks and bonds from its $9 trillion dollar portfolio built by buying stocks and bonds for more than a decade in order to support the New York Banks and Wall Street. When Quantitative Easing began, the Federal Reserves portfolio was $800 billion. Today it is 11 times larger. This huge increase in the Federal Reserve’s portfolio explains the long rise in the Dow Jones and the fortunes made on Wall Street.

None of the narratives we are fed are true. The narratives serve agendas that are not disclosed to the public.

It is a fiction that “Western democracies” are self-governing. Hoerw can people self-govern when they live in a world governed by false explanations serving hidden agendas?

Paul Craig Roberts

People sometimes ask me if anything annoys me about my job. I love what I do. But if anything gets to me, it’s when a client pays me good money for advice, and then doesn’t take it – returning again and again with the same problem. Far and away, the guidance most often ignored is, (1) if you want to be successful, stop caring about what others think. And (2), stop feeling that you’re obligated to do anything for anybody other than something you freely choose to do.

Not believing these two things undercuts people in business, in their personal and family relationships and in everyday life in general. I’ve spent well over 30 years trying to help people correct and/or undo the damage done by not heeding these basic rules. Yes, it’s hard to overcome misguided childhood brainwashing, but as adults we have the power to change our thinking for the better. Fresh thinking starts with a choice: “I’m not going to think that way anymore. I’ve been programmed by others and ultimately by myself. But I can change.” Truer words were never spoken.

Sometimes perfectionism gets in the way. “I successfully changed my thinking before, but I fell back in the old patterns. I can’t change.” Yes you can. If you did it once, you can do it again. It’s worth it, because willfully engaging in erroneous thinking is the worst thing you can do to your happiness.

So here it comes: What others think doesn’t matter. If someone tells you something that’s rational and logical, then by all means listen. But judge with your own mind if it is indeed logical. How many times have you said to yourself, “I followed what so-and-so said. But it didn’t work out.” You can’t blame so-and-so for your choice to follow his, hers or anybody’s advice. There are no shortcuts. If something is worth doing, it’s worth thinking about. Otherwise, you’ll never own your accomplishments – or your errors. And if you don’t own your errors, you’ll never grow.

Here it comes again (are you sitting down?): You don’t owe your life to others. You don’t automatically owe anything to anybody, unless you freely take on the obligation. If you choose to have a child, then that child is a responsibility that you chose. If you promise to do something for somebody, you should keep your word. After all, it’s your pride and integrity at stake. Saying what you mean and meaning what you say is the best way to fuel your self-interest and self-esteem. You owe that to yourself.

As for those who claim that you owe them “just because,” don’t listen! This is the most toxic nonsense known to mankind. “You’re doing better than I am. Must be nice! Give me some of what you have.” This can apply both to material or non-material things, and either way it’s wrong. Your honestly achieved success is not at a cost to anyone else. Note the words “honestly achieved”: Outside of lying or stealing, you have nothing to feel guilty about. The world is full of people – occupying some the highest offices in the land, unfortunately – who explicitly say, “Your success is something to feel guilty about. Give it away!” Take it from a mental health professional: Nothing is more destructive to your motivation, esteem or good will. The people who seek to loot your spirit (or your wallet) often have guns and jails on their side, but even more powerful is the force of unearned guilt many have been persuaded to buy into. Every well-written self-help book can be summed up this way: Don’t let abusive or irrational people make you feel guilty. It’s THEIR problem, not yours.

There’s a lot of stupidity in the world, and much of it has a toxic agenda. But as long as you keep these two simple rules in mind, you’ll havbe tremendous power that only the very smart are willing to grant to themselves.

Michael J. Hurd, Life’s a Beach