Displaying the most recent of 90425 posts written by

Ruth King

A Victory for Reality Articles by Carl R. Trueman

https://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2021/04/a-victory-for-reality

Karl Marx looked at the Industrial Revolution of the nineteenth century and declared that all that was solid seemed to be melting into air, but witnesses of the Cultural Revolution of the twenty-first century might be tempted to respond that the Communist Manifesto had only the vaguest idea of what such dissolution looks like. It is one thing to replace the hand loom with the factory production line, quite another to replace the material realities of the world with linguistic fictions.

In this context, I have noticed recently that numerous correspondents have begun to identify their “preferred pronouns” in the bylines at the bottom of their emails. Yet it is already clear that the notion of “preference” functions somewhat like “volunteer” did at my old school. It is really code for “required,” and any deviation or refusal might not simply cause personal offense but lead to more significant and sinister consequences.

Such was true in the matter of Meriwether v. Hartop, a case decided last week by the United States Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals. Nicholas Meriwether, a philosophy professor at Shawnee State University in Ohio, had found himself in trouble for initially refusing to use the preferred pronouns of a transgender student (referred to as “Doe” in the court filing) because this would require him to act against conscience.

Hundreds of Transgender California Inmates Request Transfers to Women’s Prisons By Zachary Evans

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/hundreds-of-transgender-california-inmates-request-transfers-to-womens-prisons/?utm_source=

The California prison system has received 261 applications since January 1 from transgender, intersex, or non-binary inmates to transfer to facilities that match their preferred gender identity, the Los Angeles Times reported on Monday.

The requests were filed after a state law came into effect allowing transgender inmates to transfer to different prisons. Around 1 percent of prisoners in California, 1,129 inmates in total, have notified the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation that they are transgender, intersex, or non-binary.

The transfers have been welcomed by transgender women who reported suffering sexual violence while incarcerated at men’s prisons. However, inmates at Central California Women’s Facility in Chowchilla told the Times that staff have warned them of potential sexual violence from men who may try to take advantage of the transfer system.

Guards said “that if we think it’s bad now, be prepared for the worst. That it’s going to be off the hook, it’s going to be jumping,” inmate Tomiekia Johnson told the Times. “They say we’re going to need a facility that’s going to be like a maternity ward. They say we’re going to have an inmate program where inmates become nannies.”

Nina McQueen, a transgender woman and inmate at Mule Creek , said she had helped prison staff identify male inmates who attempted to transfer to women’s facilities by pretending to be transgender.

Will You Be Drowned By Biden’s Coming Tidal Wave Of Tax Hikes?

https://issuesinsights.com/2021/04/06/will-you-be-drowned-by-bidens-coming-tidal-wave-of-tax-hikes/

Joe Biden’s massive $2 trillion “infrastructure plan” is in fact another giant tax hike disguised as a jobs program. Even worse, the Bidenites pretend that the taxes will hit wealthy people and big corporations hard, while the spending will provide jobs for struggling workers. Don’t believe any of it.

First, a reality check. Spending was up sharply last year, and will likely be up at least 50% this year. Yet, even the tax hikes now being discussed won’t come close to covering the spending increases.

Let’s review: During the pandemic year, the U.S. spent $6.5 trillion, a 47% surge in just one year. This year, we’ve already added about $4 trillion in new spending. Debt is now an unimaginable $30 trillion, and headed much higher. And yes, we have to pay it off, even if we “owe it to ourselves,” as some like to say.

With a deficit of $3 trillion last year and perhaps even higher this year, Americans are soon going to feel the pinch. Yes, the Fed can print more money by buying government bonds. But eventually, it all has to be paid back. And when that happens, the taxes will hit the economy hard, forcing the government to spend more (while crowding out private sector spending and investment), and jack up taxes at the same time.

The Biden administration’s great lie is that it will “go after” big companies and the rich to pick up the tab for the infrastructure spending.

Manchin Delivers a Massive Blow to Biden’s ‘Infrastructure’ Plan Reagan McCarthy

https://townhall.com/tipsheet/reaganmccarthy/2021/04/05/manchin-n2587410

Senator Joe Manchin (D-WV) delivered a blow to President Biden’s “infrastructure” plan, which is already facing a steep challenge in the Senate. Manchin said publicly that he opposes an increase in the corporate tax rate, to 28 percent, that is included in the plan proposed by the administration. 

The “swing vote” Democrat lawmaker said that the increase was a non-starter for him.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) is considering using budget reconciliation to pass the hefty infrastructure plan, in order to sidestep the 60-vote threshold, as Democrats did to pass the American Rescue Plan earlier this year. If Schumer took this route, only 51 votes would be necessary to pass the plan. Manchin warned the administration that he is not alone in opposing such a steep increase to the corporate tax rate.

“There’s six or seven other Democrats who feel very strongly about this. We have to be competitive, and we’re not going to throw caution to the wind,” he continued in the interview.

Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said that the administration’s infrastructure plan mandates that corporations pay their “fair share” of taxes.

Like other plans put forth by the Biden administration and Congressional Democrats, the infrastructure plan is receiving blowback from Republican lawmakers for inclusion of line-items that are completely unrelated to infrastructure.

Watch How 60 Minutes Deceptively Edited Ron DeSantis’s Full Answer on Publix Vaccinations By Zachary Evans

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/watch-how-60-minutes-deceptively-edited-ron-desantiss-full-answer-on-publix-vaccinations/

CBS’s 60 Minutes alleged that Florida governor Ron DeSantis enlisted grocery chain Publix to help with coronavirus vaccine distribution because of a campaign contribution, but edited DeSantis’s full response to the allegation.

“Publix, as you know, donated $100,000 to your campaign, and then you rewarded them with exclusive rights to vaccination in Palm Beach,” a CBS reporter said at a press conference for the governor in Orlando. DeSantis said the reporter peddled a “fake narrative” when she alleged he engaged in a “pay-for-play” scheme.

However, 60 Minutes omitted a key section of DeSantis’s response, in which he states that the first pharmacies to take charge of vaccine distribution were CVS and Walgreens, and were initially tasked with vaccinating residents of long-term care facilities.

DeSantis said that in January the state wanted to expand distribution sites and contacted other large chains with pharmacies.

“You had the counties, you had some drive-thru sites, you had hospitals that were doing a lot, but we wanted to get it into communities more,” DeSantis said. “So we reached out to other retail pharmacies: Publix, Walmart, obviously CVS and Walgreens had to finish that mission and we said we’re going to use you as soon as you’re done with that.”

DeSantis has grown in popularity among GOP voters, who view the governor as a potential presidential candidate in 2024 if President Trump decides not to run again.

Debunking the COVID Vaccine Doomsayers . By Marilyn Quigley

https://www.realclearscience.com/articles/2021/04/05/debunking_the_covid_vaccine_doomsayers_771222.html

It’s hard to ignore the wave of anti-vaccine videos circulating on social media. Curiosity makes us click, and we watch yet another doctor’s emphatic advice—“Do not take the COVID-19 vaccine if you value your life!” They all speak with the confidence and authority of spies planted last year in the Pfizer, Moderna, and Johnson & Johnson labs. Now these self-proclaimed experts—some with acceptable medical backgrounds, but others more questionable—have become whistleblowers predicting horrific outcomes from the vaccines. They look into our eyes and claim to care deeply about our health, urging, “Pass my video on to everyone you know as fast as you can.”

Having viewed several, I asked myself, “Can I find the truth?” My hands-on science training consists of dissecting and drawing a frog in tenth grade. But I can dissect long sentences and draw conclusions, use a dictionary, and apply critical thinking with logic. 

So I intensively researched respected sources and found most of the doomsayer doctors’ assertions to be wrong. Here’s what my homework found. (Note: some names are changed but the claims are reproduced accurately.)

“Dr. Whistle Blower” insists the new medication is not a “real” vaccine because it does not fit the CDC’s own definition: “A product that stimulates a person’s immune system to produce immunity to a specific disease, protecting the person from that disease.” The meaning of immunity is the hangup for him.

Dr. Blower wrongly limits his definition of a “real,” immunizing vaccine to the sterilizing type, which kills the pathogen on contact and establishes immunity by preventing any disease from entering the body. This “gold standard” has not been achieved for many diseases which, nevertheless, are no longer a threat, thanks to vaccines.

Academic Freedom Alliance On a new initiative to protect freedom of expression on college campuses.

https://newcriterion.com/issues/2021/4/academic-freedom-alliance

Booker T. Washington would have liked the Academic Freedom Alliance, a newly announced group of college faculty dedicated to protecting freedom of expression on campus. The group, conceived at Princeton last summer, has quickly scaled up into a nationwide network. Although one of its main founders is Robert P. George, himself a conservative professor at Princeton, the alliance is determinedly nonpartisan and includes liberals and progressives as well as conservatives. The actions of the intolerant mob threaten everyone, regardless of political coloration. As a tribe, academics are not conspicuous for their courage. They tend to look the other way when colleagues are attacked for expressing opinions that do not pass muster with the wardens of wokeness. The afa hopes to change that, encouraging its members to act like elephants, not zebras: when hunted by lions, George noted in an interview, herds of zebras “fly off in a million directions, and the targeted member is easily taken down and destroyed and eaten.” Elephants, he said, behave differently. They “circle around the vulnerable elephant” and protect it. Academics need to do likewise and offer support—legal as well as moral—when one of their numbers falls victim to the mob.

We welcome the Academic Freedom Alliance. Like the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (fire), it may well become a beacon of sanity in the stultifying and tenebrous atmosphere that prevails in American academia today. You can find out more about the alliance, and donate to support its activities, at its website, academicfreedom.org.

Crony capitalism and professional sports by James Piereson

https://newcriterion.com/blogs/dispatch/crony-capitalism-and-professional-sports

On public funding for professional athletic arenas.

Professional athletic leagues have traditionally steered clear of politics in order to emphasize the purity of their entertainment and to avoid dividing fans over partisan controversies. That has changed in the last year. Players in the National Football League have “taken the knee” during playing of the national anthem as a protest against police practices; the National Basketball Association has embraced Black Lives Matter, also as a protest against the police; and now Major League Baseball has taken this year’s All-Star game out of Atlanta as a protest against Georgia’s new voting law, though baseball executives do not appear to have studied that law. Through these gestures, formerly non-political organizations have allied themselves with explicitly political causes.

These steps are unusual and unprecedented. Business corporations generally prefer to serve inclusive markets while avoiding controversies that might divide customers for or against them. The new corporate alliance with liberals and the Democratic Party is not only new – it is also dangerous. It will politicize the country along new lines, introduce political controversies into the internal operations of corporations, encourage boycotts and assaults on all sides, and much more. Some of this is already happening. As a strategy for dividing America, this one would be hard to beat.

Professional sports leagues, while mostly operating as for-profit enterprises, nevertheless receive generous subsidies from federal, state, and local sources to build and maintain modern stadiums and arenas. Importantly, these subsidies assume that the enterprises are non-political and non-partisan in nature, otherwise they would not be granted. Are professional sports franchises violating the bargains they made with taxpayers and public authorities?

Up until the 1950s, professional stadiums were constructed with private funds provided by owners. Fenway Park in Boston was built in 1913 by the franchise itself, as was Ebbets Field in Brooklyn (1913), Yankee Stadium in New York (1923), Wrigley Field in Chicago (1913), and nearly every other professional ballpark and stadium built in that era. Many professional football franchises leased these stadiums to stage their games. It did not occur to the owners that the public might pay for their facilities. That mindset disappeared in the 1950s when owners began to ask cities and states to pay for their stadiums.

HUGE DEVELOPMENT: Hand Recount Finds Dominion Owned Voting Machines Shorted EVERY REPUBLICAN Candidate in Windham, New Hampshire, 300 Votes! Jim Hoft

https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2021/02/huge-development-hand-recount-finds-dominion-voting-machines-shorted-every-republican-windham-new-hampshire-300-votes/

Here we go.
More proof of election fraud by Dominion Voting Machines.

A recent hand recount in the Rockingham District 7 NH House Race in Windham, New Hampshire, found that the Dominion-owned voting machines shorted EVERY REPUBLICAN by roughly 300 votes.

Via Facebook

The Dominion machine counted results were wrong for all 4 Republicans by almost exactly 300 votes.

Granite Grok reported:

The Town of Windham used Dominion machines to count paper ballots and upon a believable hand recount, it was confirmed each Republican was machine-cheated out of roughly 300 votes.

You would think this would have been solved by the Dominion machine company, the Secretary of State, the Elections Unit of the AG’s Office, or the laughable Ballot Law Commission. (Kathy Sullivan, d (Term expires July 1, 2024)

Nope.

Just like every other state that used machines that alter ballot counts in favor of one political party over another – here we are.

Dominion Voting Systems owns the intellectual property of the AccuVote machines used in New Hampshire.

AMERICA’S TRUE BELIEVERS AND THEIR GUTLESS ENABLERS BY PETER SAVODNIK

ttps://mailchi.mp/59ad38187d03/krd-news-americas-true-believers-and-their-gutles

The mountain of witches is piling up. At the top of the heap is Sharon Osbourne, the Captain Underpants guy, the Bachelor host, or whatever C-list celebrity failed to condemn “Gone with the Wind” on Instagram with sufficient fervor. But by the time you read this they’ll surely be eclipsed by another faux-outrage pieced together by the microaggression-hunters poring over old text messages or yellowing screen-shots of Halloween parties past.

Most of these disappearances won’t matter much, because the disappeared are already known. Even if their contract isn’t renewed or their agent indignantly — and very publicly — cuts ties with them, they’ll be fine. They’ll resurface.

The people who won’t are the countless, less visible who have lost jobs, lost businesses, lost reputations, lost friends. The schlubs. The cautionary tales. Those who have been cautioned, made to comply, squeezed into the Procrustean Bed of identitarian absolutism.

We know who’s to blame for this surreality: the True Believers. The children of Park Slope and Echo Park with their graphic tattoos and nut allergies and an odd inability to form complete sentences. The neurotic, anxious twentysomethings who went to college to be told that “truth” is a white male construct, who seem devoid of poetry or irony, who believe mean words, words with which they disagree, are like ICBMs. Those whose lives are circumscribed by galactic reservoirs of ignorance — about the past, the culture, themselves, about why they believe what they know to be good and indisputable. Those who know only how to perform, and who rely on acronyms and slogans and logical fallacies when asked: how can you be sure of that?

But children are children. They can only be blamed so much. 

The real wrongdoers are the Enablers. The so-called adults. The tech founders and college presidents and newspaper editors and museum directors and bank CEOs who pretend that the fight for “justice” is just. Who pretend that the “equity” crusade is about fairness and not about defending the grotesque inequality between those who have been trained to think correctly and those who have not.