RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://amac.us/a-woke-military-wouldnt-have-won-world-war-ii/

Memorial Day traditionally marks the beginning of summer and a time for patriotic remembrance of our fallen war dead and, for many of us, fallen family members, many of whom were veterans. I have been thinking of the five sons of Victor Sowers, Sr., my mother’s brothers, all of whom served in World War II and returned, while pondering the parlous state of the military today.

The Sowers brothers would, no doubt, have joined a group of veterans and Republicans in Congress who are banding together to fight the imposition of left-wing ideology on the U. S. Armed Forces. Air Force Lt. General Rod Bishop (retired) began Stand Together Against Racism and Radicalism in the Services (STARRS) last year when the Air Force Academy football team released a video endorsing both Black Lives Matter and “antiracist” education, reports the Washington Free Beacon. After complaining to no avail, the retired general heard from many other veterans and active duty members of the various branches who were experiencing the same kinds of indoctrination in Critical Race Theory and other progressive doctrines. After U. S. Space Force Lt. Colonel Matthew Lohmeier was fired for self-publishing Irresistible Revolution: Marxism’s Goal of Conquest and the Unmaking of the American Military, a book detailing what he calls the “Neo-Marxist agenda” (and currently #4 among all books on Amazon), thirty members of STARRS sent an open letter to Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin asking him to “take action to fight back against the creeping left-wing extremism in the U.S. military.” 

          The Free Beacon reports that there is no response to the STARRS letter from the Pentagon, but the signs are not good given Secretary Austin’s own confirmation testimony that he would work to rid the military of “racists and extremists,” a statement that is ominous given the recent history of reports and statements from various branches of the military, as well as comments such as that of retired Army General Thomas Kolditz, who said that the goal should be to purge “Trump loyalists.”  Mike Gonzalez and Dakota Wood of the Heritage Foundation reported that the Defense Department is “reportedly considering hiring a private company to monitor the free speech of military personal on social media, using key words or algorithms that by their very nature reflect the perspective of those who select the words and write the algorithms.” 

While my Sowers uncles made all the jokes about the foolishness of those running the Army and Navy in the 1940s and laughed about the military censors’ sometimes senseless clipping of passages from their letters, they would not have thought what was happening now is at all funny. They fought for a country they did not believe inherently racist or unjust. They fought for a country where the perfection of freedom was sought. 

https://www.dailywire.com/news/we-are-going-to-expose-you-vets-crenshaw-cotton-create-whistleblower-doc-to-combat-woke-efforts-in-u-s-military

On Saturday, Arkansas GOP Sen. Tom Cotton and Texas GOP Rep. Dan Crenshaw, both military veterans, teamed up to release a whistleblower form for military members to fill out if they spot any “woke” training efforts.

Crenshaw tweeted, “Enough is enough. We won’t let our military fall to woke ideology. We have just launched a whistleblower webpage where you can submit your story. Your complaint will be legally protected, and go to my office and @SenTomCotton.”

Crenshaw added, “With written permission we will anonymously publish egregious complaints on social media and tell the country what’s happening in our military. For too long, progressive Pentagon staffers have been calling the shots for our warfighters, and spineless military commanders have let it happen. Now we are going to expose you.”

The whistleblower form states:

We advise that whistleblowers use your personal resources and contact information when communicating submitting this form, and that you do not use your work equipment or work contact information. Further, do not submit classified information or other information barred from release through this form or by email.

Various U.S. laws at the federal, state and local level prohibit retaliation against whistleblowers for providing information to Congress. However, you still take serious risks when you report allegations of wrongdoing. We recommend that you consult an attorney experienced in whistleblower law for further guidance. We respect your confidentiality, and we will use your contact information only to follow up with you regarding your submission. You may submit a disclosure anonymously. However, please be aware that anonymous disclosures may limit our ability to respond to the information that you provide.

https://issuesinsights.com/2021/06/02/hey-facebook-ban-this/

Last week, we learned that Facebook had been banning posts suggesting that COVID-19 originated in a Chinese lab. We became aware only when Facebook announced that it would no longer ban such posts, raising the question of why it was doing so in the first place. It wasn’t as though there was no possibility that a lab leak was responsible. There was an ongoing discussion of this.

Then over the weekend, we learned that Facebook apparently has plans to ban posts that might encourage “vaccine hesitancy.” What does that mean? Who knows. Facebook never reveals how it makes such decisions.

“Anything that questions the vaccine or the narrative regarding the vaccine, which is, you know, everyone should get the vaccine and the vaccine is good and you’re not going to get many bad side effects, anything outside of that realm is basically considered under ‘vaccine hesitancy’ by Facebook’s algorithms,” Morgan Kahmann, a former data center technician for Facebook, told Fox News.

How does Facebook justify this? It doesn’t. In one section of its “Community Standards” document, Facebook flatly denies that it removes “false news” posts. It says “we do not remove false news from Facebook but we significantly reduce its distribution by showing it lower in News Feed.”

We’ve run into Facebook’s horrible “false news” attacks ourselves. One of our posts – correctly – stated that then-candidate Joe Biden wanted to outlaw gas-powered cars. That was based on Biden’s own campaign promises. Facebook flagged the headline as false – not the editorial – based on a bogus fact check. Facebook readership of the editorial crashed as a result.

It happened again when Facebook moved to block distribution of an article we published on COVID-19 rates in the U.S., in which we noted how infection rates in Europe at the time were far higher than the U.S., yet the U.S. – or more particularly, President Donald Trump – was being blamed for a massive failure to contain the disease. As with the Biden editorial, readership crashed as soon as Facebook slapped its “partly false” label on it.

Facebook has been not only removing COVID-19 stories it doesn’t like, but posts regarding election fraud as well, according to ABC News.

https://spectator.us/topic/who-wants-bidens-massive-budget/

President Joe Biden just proposed the largest budget (as a percentage of America’s economy) since the country was fighting Nazi Germany, Imperial Japan and Fascist Italy. He’s doing it when there is no emergency, only an overweening desire to pass progressive programs quickly, before they lose their legislative majority.

The best historical analogue to his proposed budget increase is Lyndon Johnson’s cradle-to-grave Great Society Program. It has the same flaws. In fact, Biden’s program is best understood as the next step in a long political arc, extending from Franklin Roosevelt to LBJ to Obamacare.

All of them proposed centralized government solutions to almost every social problem, particularly endemic problems among the poor.

Today, those problems are caused mainly by the breakdown of family structures, high rates of urban violence and public schooling that doesn’t prepare graduates for jobs that require higher and higher levels of education. LBJ’s programs were designed to solve some of those problems, particularly poverty and social breakdown. The direct transfer programs certainly increased recipients’ income, but the big planning schemes only made problems worse. Biden’s programs are likely to do the same.

Roosevelt and Johnson permanently changed Washington’s role in American life to achieve their goals. Again, Biden proposes to extend the core Democratic objective. By vastly increasing the government’s share of the economy, along with ever-increasing bureaucratic regulations, his programs will make America’s government and economy much more like Europe’s social democracy. That means a larger social safety net, higher taxes, and slower growth. It means less control by state and local government, and less autonomy for individuals.

Biden’s budget raises several fundamental questions.