RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://issuesinsights.com/2022/01/18/the-murdering-of-free-speech-in-america/

In Cato’s 15th letter, the writers who compiled the series of essays under a pen name inspired by the Roman senator who stood against the tyranny of Julius Caesar argued that “freedom of speech is the great bulwark of liberty; they prosper and die together.” Today, we are watching that death play out before us.

President Joe Biden, whose growing unpopularity is well-deserved, continued to carry on last week what has become a Democratic tradition: He asked the private sector to become partners in censorship with the federal government.

“I make a special appeal to social media companies and media outlets, please deal with disinformation and misinformation that’s on your shows,” he said during a virtual meeting from the Eisenhower Executive Office Building. “It has to stop.”

Of course, Big Tech and the legacy media have been happy to oblige.

“​​When the leader of the majority party in Washington, D.C., issues a demand, the largest corporations listen,” journalist Glenn Greenwald tweeted in response to Biden’s “will no one rid me of this meddlesome priest?” proposition.

“Again: so much of the censorship from Google and other tech monopolies is done not on their own accord but under pressure and threats from Democratic Party leaders.”

https://www.forbes.com/sites/adamandrzejewski/2022/01/15/disclosures-released-dr-fauci-household-profits-exceeded-17-million-in-2020–included-income-royalties-travel-perks-and-investment-gains/?sh=281794d07d5f

Last night, U.S. Senator Roger Marshall received Dr. Anthony Fauci’s unredacted FY2020 financial disclosures. The release following a heated Senate exchange between Fauci and Marshall which concluded with Fauci called the senator a “moron.”

The financial disclosures contain a wealth of previously unknown information. For example, the Fauci household’s net worth exceeds $10.4 million.

During the pandemic year of 2020, their household income, perks and benefits, and unrealized gains totaled $1,776,479 — including federal income and benefits of $868,812; outside royalties and travel perks totaling $113,298; and investment accounts increasing by $794,369.

Here are the numbers as compiled by the auditors at OpenTheBooks.com, an organization I lead. This analysis used previously known information plus the newly released disclosures.

Investment Income: $794,369

http://www.swtotd.blogspot.com

President Biden’s two immediate predecessors fractured the nation with divisive talk. In his campaign, Mr. Biden promised unification. Instead, he has increased dissension, focusing on identity politics, federalizing voting laws and diminishing the role of the traditional family, all the while calling his political opponents misogynists, racists, xenophobes, bigots and domestic terrorists who want to destroy democracy. Such intemperate language does little to bridge legitimate differences between Democrats and Republicans – progressives and conservatives. He has wasted political capital, personally denigrating those with whom he disagrees, which has meant less time on issues that affect all Americans, regardless of Party – from the economy, inflation, education and illegal immigration at home to the consequences for the United States as to what is happening in the Middle East, Central Asia, China and Russia.

The calamitous withdrawal from Afghanistan sent a message to its allies that the United States’ commitment means little, and to its enemies that America need not be feared. The Abraham Accords, one of the Trump Administration’s finest achievements, has been stalled by the anti-Israel stand of the Biden Administration, and by a desire to reinstitute the Iranian nuclear deal. While Western imperialism of an earlier time is, perhaps justifiably, denigrated, its reincarnation in the East – in China and Russia – is ignored by the same pundits who criticize the West. Recent riots in Kazakhstan and the plight of the Uighurs in China’s Xinjiang Province are examples of unrest that are being dealt with harshly by Russia and China, while the West turns a blind eye.

https://bariweiss.substack.com/p/being-jewish-in-an-unraveling-america?token=

Last week, I met a rabbi in Los Angeles. We talked about surfing where to get the best pizza in the city and her kids and politics. At the end of the evening, she was making plans with a colleague, and they extended an invitation. Would I want to go to the shooting range with them next weekend?

I thought about the rabbi with her guns a lot over this Shabbat, as Jews who had gathered for services at Congregation Beth Israel in Colleyville, Texas, were taken hostage by a man named Malik Faisal Akram. After nearly 11 hours, thanks to earthly miracles of law enforcement and perhaps heavenly ones as well, they were freed unharmed. Akram, who had predicted his own death in his rantings captured on Facebook livestream, was dead. 

The bad guy was killed. The good guys were saved. It doesn’t often turn out that way. All the Jews I know—even the atheists—are thanking God. 

But why, despite my gratitude, do I feel so much rage? Why does it feel like there is so little comfort to be found? What has changed?

I did not feel this way in the horrific aftermath of the Tree of Life massacre—the most lethal in all of American Jewish history.

Back then, in October 2018, it felt like the whole country grasped that a wound to the Tree of Life was a wound to the Tree of Liberty itself. That the monstrous attack in my hometown was not simply an attack on Jews, but an attack on our collective home. And that what was at stake in standing up against the deranged, conspiratorial mindset that led a neo-Nazi to the synagogue that morning was nothing less than America itself. 

What I now see is this: In America captured by tribalism and dehumanization, in an America swept up by ideologies that pit us against one another in a zero-sum game, in an America enthralled with the poisonous idea that some groups matter more than others, not all Jews—and not all Jewish victims—are treated equally. What seems to matter most to media pundits and politicians is not the Jews themselves, but the identities of their attackers.

And it scares me.

https://amgreatness.com/2022/01/16/conspiracies-as-realities-realities-as-conspiracies/

American politics over the last half decade has become immersed in a series of conspiracy charges leveled by Democrats against their opponents that, in fact, are happening because of them and through them. The consequences of these conspiracies becoming reality and reality revealing itself as conspiracy have been costly to American prestige, honor, and security. As we move away from denouncing realists as conspiracists, and self-pronounced “realists” are revealed as the true conspirators, let’s review a few of the more damaging of these events. 

Russians on the Brain 

Consider that the Trump election of 2016, the transition, and the first two years of the Trump presidency were undermined by a media-progressive generated hoax of “Russian collusion.” 

The “bombshell” and “walls are closing in” mythologies dominated the network news and cable outlets. It took five years to expose them as rank agit-prop. 

Robert Mueller and his “dream team” consumed $40 million of Americans’ money and 22 months of our time—to find the nothingburger that most of the country already knew was nothing. Yet the subtext of the 2018 Democratic takeover of the House was the media narrative that Trump, as Hillary Clinton put it, was an “illegitimate” president, due to Russian collusion. 

Former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper claimed on national television that Trump was a “Russian asset.” Former CIA head John Brennan assured the nation that the president was “treasonous,” due to his supposed “lies to the American people.”  

All sorts of politicians, retired military, and news anchors echoed the charges. The lies and myths of has-been British spy Christopher Steele made him a leftist hero. They were repeated ad nauseam as truth.  

FBI grandees like James Comey, Andrew McCabe, Peter Strzok, Lisa Page, Kevin Clinesmith, and others destroyed their careers in their obsessions over Trump. In the process of destroying themselves, they also nearly wrecked the reputation of the FBI. The Pentagon has the lowest popular support in modern memory. The CIA is more feared by millions of Americans than by our enemies. 

Steele could not produce any evidence to back up his scurrilous charges. The inspector general of the Department of Justice found little evidence to substantiate any of the charges. James Comey and Robert Mueller under oath both pleaded either memory problems or denied any knowledge about the FBI’s use of Steele and the role his fake dossier played.  

Most of the televised accusers, when under oath before Congress, admitted they had no evidence for their flamboyant charges. Representative Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), who claimed the dossier was authentic and that Trump was compromised, has repeatedly been revealed as a liar. In various televised House hearings, he kept getting caught either fabricating, misrepresenting, or warping evidence before his own committee. 

No matter. Hillary Clinton and the Left kept pounding “collusion.” The more it was proven false, the more they shouted the lie.  

Finally, special counsel John Durham’s investigations, some authentic media investigative reporting, and the preponderance of evidence showed not only that Trump did not collude with the Russians, but that the entire charge was a sick sort of projection on the part of Hillary Clinton and her vassals.  

Steele concocted the election-cycle fantasy using a former Clintonite totem in Moscow. Another source was the now indicted Igor Danchenko ( a “primary sub-source”), who was working at the leftist Brookings Institution while feeding Steele.  

A cynic might look at this sad chapter and conclude that Hillary Clinton sought to destroy her opponent by paying Christopher Steele to manufacture fantasies fabricated from left-wing and former Clinton associates. Then she used the media, the FBI, the CIA, and the Justice Department to seed the farce while hiding her own role behind three firewalls including the DNC, the Perkins Coie law firm, and Glenn Simpson’s Fusion GPS.  

The ultimate irony?  

Hillary Clinton did collude with those claiming to have Russian connections to warp an election, and she projected her likely illegal activity onto the target of her attacks. No conspiracist could trump such reality. Will Merrick Garland look at her role in this episode as he conducts his insurrectionist investigations concerning efforts to undermine an election?