RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://townhall.com/columnists/byronyork/2021/12/22/demolishing-democratic-delusions-n2600922

Sen. Joe Manchin’s announcement that he will not support the Democrats’ giant spending bill should not have been a surprise to anyone who has been watching Manchin for the last few months. Yet many Democrats, especially in the White House and in the progressive wing of the House of Representatives, appeared shocked when Manchin told Fox News’ Bret Baier, “I cannot vote to continue with this piece of legislation. I just can’t.”

They apparently believed Manchin would ultimately come around, and do so before Christmas. When he did not, they were stunned.

Their reaction is the latest manifestation of a mass delusion affecting Democrats in Washington. For nearly a year, since Jan. 20, 2021, they have believed they could enact a nation-changing agenda — shades of FDR and LBJ! — without having won a majority of seats in the U.S. Senate. Somehow, all on their own and without any Republican support, they could bring landmark legislation to a 50-50 tie vote in the Senate, and then have Vice President Kamala Harris break the tie in the Democrat’s favor. They seemed to forget that Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Lyndon Johnson had huge majorities in both House and Senate when they enacted sprawling New Deal and Great Society legislation, respectively.

Even the structure of their massive spending bill, which they called Build Back Better, was shaped by their lack of a Senate majority. Democratic leaders knew how hard it would be to get anything through the Senate — to keep all 50 of their own senators together — so they packed nearly the entire Biden agenda of social spending and climate projects into a one big bill. Then everyone on their side would have to vote for it, wouldn’t they?

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/la-sheriff-slams-careless-and-irresponsible-liberal-das-undoing-police-work/

The Los Angeles County sheriff slammed California’s liberal prosecutors on Tuesday, saying they are living in a “woke palace” and not facing the consequences of their decisions to undermine the work of law enforcement officers amid a surge in crime.

Sheriff Alex Villanueva said during an appearance on Fox News that liberal District Attorney George Gascon has declined to prosecute more than 12,000 cases after county deputies apprehended suspected criminals.

“So that is disheartening for any cop to think all their work is being undone by a careless and irresponsible district attorney,” he said. “But they’re not going to stop doing their job. The deputies … keep doing your job, don’t use the excuse of someone else not doing their job to avoid it – and it’s working.”

“So we’re making the effort out there,” he added. “What we need now is, we need responsible district attorneys who are going to file their cases. And if they want to play the role of public defender, they should just quit their job and go over to the public defenders – and everything they say makes perfect sense for a public defender, not a district attorney.”

Villanueva also reacted to San Francisco District Attorney Chesa Boudin’s claims that calls for action against recent crime spikes are “knee-jerk reactions” and that smash-and-grab looting in California is “not new.”

https://spectatorworld.com/topic/unicorns-crime-wave-woke-california/

A crime wave haunts blue-state America, and nowhere more so than in super-blue California. Los Angeles police chief Michel Moore is trying to assure residents and tourists that violent crime is not out of control, which is not at all reassuring. Police departments statewide are stressed, and finding able recruits is a struggle. Faced with surging gun violence and a dwindling number of police officers, Oakland has proposed $50,000 signing bonuses to veteran cops.

Since 2014, California voters have unshackled a fast-expanding criminal class that rolls expertly with the dice. Starting with Proposition 47, the state penal code has reduced many felonies to misdemeanors. Shoplifting and petty theft have been effectively decriminalized. Serious crimes go unprosecuted. Elected officials and residents alike prefer virtue theater to civic management.

One eighth of the nation’s residents live in the economic and cultural colossus of California, so what direction the state takes matters. Why its progressive leaders and their constituencies condone violence against persons and property, car break-ins, prostitution, open-air drug dealing, and aggressive begging remains puzzling.

https://justthenews.com/accountability/russia-and-ukraine-scandals/durham-zeroes-clinton-campaign-could-call-some-aides

Hillary Clinton’s team long fought to keep its ties to Christopher Steele’s dossier from public view, but Special Counsel John Durham is now making clear he has a strong interest in her campaign’s behavior during the Russia collusion probe. He is even suggesting some of her aides could be summoned as trial witnesses.

Durham’s earth-shaking revelation came inside a routine court filing this month in the case of Igor Y. Danchenko, a Russian analyst who was a primary source in 2016 for Steele’s now-infamous dossier. Danchenko has been charged with repeatedly lying to the FBI during the Russia collusion probe and has pleaded innocent.

Durham’s motion asked the presiding judge to determine whether Danchenko’s lawyers —Danny Onorato and Stuart Sears of the Schertler Onorato Mead & Sears law firm — pose a conflict of interest because the firm also represents the Hillary for America campaign as well as several former campaign officials in “matters before the special counsel.”

“The Clinton Campaign financed the opposition research reports, colloquially known as the ‘Dossier,’ that are central to the Indictment against the defendant,” the Durham team stated in the motion. “Accordingly, for the reasons set forth below, the government respectfully requests that the Court inquire into the potential conflict issues set forth herein.”

https://pjmedia.com/columns/benshapiro/2021/12/22/the-big-government-covid-19-lie-n1543449

On Oct. 30, 2020, just days before the presidential election, Joe Biden tweeted, “I’m not going to shut down the country. I’m not going to shut down the economy. I’m going to shut down the virus.” 

This was a lie.

It was a lie because nobody can shut down the virus. 

Government does not have the power to end disease, as a general matter. When it comes to a wildly transmissible coronavirus specifically, no government can end the virus. Even the sainted Dr. Anthony Fauci has admitted as much: “we’re never going to eradicate this … elimination may be too aspirational.”

Which means that government should not aim for elimination; it can aim for some level of control. That control must be balanced with countervailing concerns, ranging from suppression of economic freedom to the effects of social isolation. This means that the lowest-cost intervention was incentivization and distribution of vaccines — a service performed by the Trump administration. The worst form of control would be overbroad, coercive restrictions that fail to achieve their objectives.

And yet it is precisely those forms of control now being sought by Democratic mayors and governors, as well as the Biden administration. To make such tactics even more puzzling, Democrats are pursuing such restrictions in the face of an extraordinarily transmissible variant — some 70 times more transmissible than delta — that has far lower death rates than prior variants. 

https://amgreatness.com/2021/12/21/pentagon-issues-new-guidance-on-extremist-behavior-within-military-ranks/

On Monday, the Department of Defense, in an effort to further crack down on political dissent, is revising its previous definitions of “extremist behavior” in order to deter uniformed members from certain political affiliations, CNN reports.

The Countering Extremism Working Group, a panel that was created for the purpose of ostensibly investigating “extremism” within military ranks, issued a report outlining its findings, claiming that there are indeed some “extremists” in the military. The report alleges that there were roughly 100 instances of uniformed members who either had “extremist” beliefs or joined “extremist” groups in 2021, which the report claims is an increase from previous years.

Among other rules, the new guidance makes it harder for members to join alleged “extremist” organizations while serving. As one anonymous official said, “any way that someone could sort of actively become a member of an extremist organization, we’ve accounted for them. We don’t think there is a way to be a member of an extremist organization in any meaningful way.”

When reporters were briefed on Monday by Defense Department officials, it was clarified that the new rules are less about prohibiting certain behavior and more about more clearly defining what exactly Pentagon leadership considers “extremism” in the first place.

“We were very conscious of not focusing on any particular ideology or any political organization,” another official said, “but focusing exclusively on actions.”

The Pentagon’s press secretary John Kirby further explained that the new guidance intends to “preserve a service member’s right of expression to the extent possible, while also balancing the need for good order and discipline.”

https://amgreatness.com/2021/12/21/whose-body-is-it-anyway/

In the latest edition of the theater of the absurd, White House COVID coordinator, Jeff Zientz, had some “stark” words for the untouchables, i.e., the unvaccinated masses. At the December 17 press briefing, Zientz commented on the incoming Omicron wave, sounding rather ominous and depressing, “. . . the Omicron variant is more transmissible and our medical experts anticipate it will lead to a rise in cases,” said Zientz. “But unlike last winter, we now have the power to protect ourselves. We are intent on not letting Omicron disrupt work and school for the vaccinated. You’ve done the right thing, and we will get through this. For the unvaccinated, you’re looking at a winter of severe illness and death for yourselves, your families, and the hospitals you may soon overwhelm.” [emphasis mine]

In one statement, Zietz divided two groups of Americans and pitted them against each other: the vaccinated and the unvaccinated. Echoing Dr. Anthony Fauci, Zietz sets himself up as a moral authority who can reward and punish at will. Offering no evidence, no nuance, and constant evasion of questions with meaningless answers, like “it’s still up in the air” and “there are a lot of confounding issues” has become the hallmark of Fauci and this regime. It all sounds like a bad meeting of government bureaucrats nodding their heads, trying to convince a skeptical man that everything is fine: “Yes, we have top men working on this. Top!” 

This is the second year of this absurdity, and it’s pretty clear that the current regime, not just in the United States but globally, is trying to create a social hierarchy based on medical status (which is really just code for obedience). Many cities in America have taken this strategy seriously, as we see in New York and Boston. This is the point where biology and politics merge, but to what end? You can’t really say that the strategy is all perfectly and seamlessly planned because many of these threats are rarely fully implemented, and when they are, the laws surrounding it are incredibly vague. People don’t know if they have any legal rights. It has become a political game, except this is not “politics as usual.”

https://amgreatness.com/2021/12/21/was-the-fbis-whitmer-chicanery-a-warm-up-for-january-6/

As questions mount about the government’s animating role in the Capitol protest on January 6, the criminal case against the men charged with conspiring to “kidnap” Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer in 2020 continues to collapse. 

Defense attorneys in the Whitmer case are carefully compiling evidence that depicts an elaborate tale of FBI entrapment; at least a dozen FBI informants were involved in the failed plot—equaling one FBI asset per defendant. FBI agents handling the informants directed every move. They funded training and reconnaissance trips, and even organized a “national militia” conference in Ohio in June 2020 to lure potential accomplices.

Several men were arrested in October 2020 when the lead informant drove them to meet an undercover FBI agent to purchase munitions, the six month-long scheme’s dramatic conclusion. News of the shocking plot made national headlines as early voting was underway in Michigan: Joe Biden, Whitmer, and the media blamed Donald Trump for inciting an attempted domestic terror attack. (Sound familiar?)

As I explained in an October column, the plan to abduct Whitmer—who had a very public feud with Trump throughout 2020—originated from Operation Cold Snap, an undercover multi-state FBI spy ring intended ostensibly to surveil “militia groups” opposed to states’ lockdown policies.

Henrik Impola, one of the FBI special agents managing the Whitmer kidnapping plan, confirmed the existence of Operation Cold Snap in sworn testimony earlier this year. 

“From the FBI through the domestic terrorism operation center, I was aware of other FBI investigations in Baltimore and Milwaukee and Cincinnati and Indiana involving other militia members,” Impola told a judge in March.  

Impola’s role in the Whitmer caper, in fact, stemmed from his work as a case agent for Operation Cold Snap. The 11-year bureau veteran has spent his entire FBI career investigating counterrorism, including “militia extremism,” which enabled Impola to designate the Wolverine Watchmen, a Facebook group with no real organization coincidentally formed just months before the sting, a “terror enterprise” to justify the government’s central involvement in rigging the kidnapping scheme.

Impola, working out of a satellite office in Flint that reports to Michigan’s only FBI field office in Detroit, was deeply involved in every facet of the Whitmer plot. His testimony is crucial to persuading a jury that the men on trial conspired to abduct Whitmer from her vacation home last year.