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Ruth King

Trumpism—Without Trump? Who has been right about Donald Trump’s final demise in the last five years? By Victor Davis Hanson

https://amgreatness.com/2021/03/03/trumpism-without-trump/

Six weeks ago, Americans were assured that Donald Trump had left the presidency on January 20, 2021 disgraced and forever ruined politically. 

Trump was the first president to be impeached twice, and first to be tried as a private citizen when out of office. He was the first to be impeached without the chief justice of the United States presiding over his trial.

His nonstop complaining about the stolen “landslide” election was blamed by many as a distraction that lost two Republican Senate seats from Georgia. Joe Biden’s current Democratic majority Congress was the result. 

Americans were assured by Trump’s impeachment Senate prosecutors and the media that the January 6 Capitol assault was his fault alone. So Trump was condemned as a veritable murderer, responsible for five deaths at the Capitol. Many of his own advisors and cabinet members loudly resigned in disgust.

Yet six weeks later, a Phoenix-like Trump brought a crowd at the annual Conservative Political Action Conference to its feet. His 90-minute blistering broadside against Joe Biden’s radical first 40 days of executive orders and hard-Left appointments enthused thousands. 

Polls show that while he has lost some support in his party, Trump still wins 75 percent approval in the GOP.

So why is a supposedly once-toxic Trump apparently back at center stage? 

The Dems’ Voting Fraud Encouragement Bill A blatant power grab. Joseph Klein

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/03/dems-voting-fraud-encouragement-bill-joseph-klein/

The Democrat-controlled House of Representatives passed the inappropriately named “For the People Act” (H.R.1) on Wednesday evening by the largely party line vote of 221 to 207. It now goes to the Senate. This bill, if enacted into law, will be a gift that keeps on giving to Democrats who care only about staying in power rather than securing the integrity of the electoral process. “This bill makes elections less trustworthy, not more,” said Rep. Dan Crenshaw, R-Texas.

The right to vote in a free and fair election requires procedural protections to ensure that elections are conducted in an honest manner. We must have guardrails to protect against potential election fraud, voter intimidation, illegal votes, and inaccurate vote counts. The American people’s willingness to accept the results of an election, whether a voter’s favored candidate wins or not, depends on their being convinced that the election was carried out in a legitimate manner. H.R.1 strips away any semblance of guardrails. Instead, H.R.1 creates multiple paths to election fraud, including the following:

Online Registrations: Let’s start with the provision that mandates online voter registration in federal elections, which would also allow registered voters to update their voter registration information online. With no more paper registration forms as backup, this is an invitation for hackers inside and outside the country to run amok. Hacking last year by one of Russia’s premier intelligence agencies of the Pentagon, intelligence agencies, nuclear labs, various cabinet department, and Fortune 500 companies should provide a clear warning that even highly secure systems are vulnerable. States’ voting registration databases will be easy pickings.

New York Public School Urges Parents to be ‘White Traitors’ Or better yet, “White Abolitionists.”Sara Dogan

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/03/new-york-public-school-urges-parents-be-white-sara-dogan/

A public school in New York City has provoked a firestorm of outrage by asking parents to become “white traitors” and promote “white abolition” in an effort to allegedly fight racism.

The controversial letter was sent by Mark Federman, principal of the East Side Community School in New York City. It included an “ethnography of whiteness” written by Northwestern University associate professor Barnor Hesse who ranks all whites on a color-coded scale of “The 8 White Identities” which range from “White Supremacist” to “White Abolitionist.”

““There is a regime of whiteness, and there are action-oriented white identities. People who identify with whiteness are one of these,’’ Hesse explains in an introduction above the list.

The 8 “White Identities” are then helpfully defined.

A “White Supremacist,” Hesse asserts, believes in a “Clearly marked white society that preserves, names, and values white superiority,” whereas an individual belonging to the category of “White Voyeurism” would not “challenge a White Supremacist” but still “desires non-whiteness because it’s interesting, pleasurable” and has a “fascination with culture (e.g., consuming Black culture without the burden of Blackness”).

FBI Goes Totally Comeytose Christopher Wray will spearhead Dems’ offensive against Trump supporters in the wake of January 6. Lloyd Billingsley

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/03/fbi-goes-totally-comeytose-lloyd-billingsley/

“We have not to date seen any evidence of anarchist violent extremists or people subscribed to Antifa in connection with the sixth. That doesn’t mean we’re not looking, and we’ll continue to look, but at the moment we have not seen that.”

That was FBI boss Christopher Wray testifying to the Senate Judiciary Committee on Tuesday. Wray claimed the FBI doesn’t care about ideology, but he left more than a reasonable doubt about how hard the FBI had been looking.

According to a January 13 FBI affidavit, self-proclaimed racial justice advocate Earle Sullivan, aka John Sullivan, “did knowingly enter or remain in any restricted building or grounds without lawful authority, or did knowingly, and with intent to impede or disrupt the orderly conduct of Government business or official functions, engage in disorderly or disruptive conduct.”

As The Intercept explained, “the FBI determined that Sullivan was not just an observer but a participant in the riot, based on a review of nearly 90 minutes of raw footage of the raid that he recorded on his phone and posted on YouTube.”  Wray likely had the FBI looking for rioters in Antifa T-shirts. On the other hand, the FBI boss is experienced at overlooking events of significance.

Back in 2019, attorney General William Barr told a Senate panel that “spying did occur” against Donald Trump’s presidential campaign. As the Associated Press reported, Barr “seemed to be alluding to a surveillance warrant the FBI obtained on a former Trump associate.”

Stop The Steal: The Case For Biden’s COVID ‘Relief’ Bill Gets Weaker By The Day ****

https://issuesinsights.com/2021/03/04/stop-the-steal-the-case-for-bidens-co

COVID-19 cases are plunging. Vaccination rates are booming. The economy is rebounding. States are running budget surpluses. Schools are reopening. All without the benefit of President Joe Biden’s “urgently needed” $1.9 trillion spending spree. So why aren’t supposedly moderate Senate Democrats standing up to oppose this Treasury theft, which will be paid for by future generations?

Just this week, we learned that Texas has dropped its mask mandate and is lifting limits on businesses. So is Mississippi. Biden said that vaccines will be available to all Americans by May. A report showed that manufacturing is growing at the fastest pace in years.

If you listen to Biden and his fellow leftist Democrats, none of this is supposed to be happening. To hear them talk, the economy is flat on its back, the virus raging, and the nation desperately in need of a massive dose of federal aid.

On Wednesday, Biden went on TV to say that “If we act now, decisively, quickly, and boldly, we can finally get ahead of this virus, we can finally get our economy moving again, and the people of this country have suffered far too much for too long.”

Pelosi’s Latest Partisan Commission After Jan. 6, she follows her financial-crisis script, creating a panel to reach a foregone conclusion.By Peter J. Wallison

https://www.wsj.com/articles/pelosis-latest-partisan-commission-11614795409?mod=opinion_lead_pos7

Yes, history repeats itself, especially when it is made by the same person, for the same reason, and with the same vehicle. Unlike the 9/11 Commission, which was praised for its bipartisanship, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s proposed commission to review the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol will mirror the unbalanced Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission she set up after the 2008 financial crisis, and will be a failure for the same reasons.

In the election following the financial crisis, the Democrats won overwhelming control of Congress and the White House. President Obama’s chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, said that “you never let a serious crisis go to waste,” and many on the left realized this was an opportunity to increase regulation and government control of the financial system. There was at least one other plausible cause for the crisis: government housing policies, pursued by the government-backed corporations Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and strongly supported by congressional Democrats. By 2008 these trillion-dollar institutions were bankrupt and had fostered the creation of a massive housing bubble consisting of at least 31 million subprime and other risky mortgages worth $5.3 trillion. It seemed reasonable to suppose that when the bubble collapsed, the failure of these mortgages had brought the whole financial system down.

Yet if the speaker’s study had concluded that the financial crisis was caused, even in part, by those subprime mortgages, that would have weakened support for more regulation of the financial system. So the commission was set up with six Democrats and four Republicans. That would assure that the commission would place the blame for the financial crisis on insufficient regulation and not interfere with the enactment of legislation—later called the Dodd-Frank Act of 2010—that the speaker and other Democratic lawmakers had in mind.

Roger Kimball: There’s no equality in equity The advent of Joe Biden is another step on the road to the destruction (or ‘fundamental transformation’) of America

https://spectator.us/topic/equality-equity-executive-orders/

It’s hard to keep them all straight, but among the many diktats emitted by the Biden administration during its first days in office, one deserves special commendation for its brazen mendacity. I mean the ‘Executive Order On Advancing Racial Equity and Support for Underserved Communities Through the Federal Government’.

The key word, as we’ve heard over and over again these last few weeks, is ‘equity’. The diktat (a more accurate term for what is happening than ‘Executive Order’) promises ‘a comprehensive approach to advancing equity for all’ by ‘affirmatively advancing,’ well, ‘equity’. If you think you discern a little whiff of tautology, you’re right.

You are also right if, on second sniff, you catch the acrid scent of contradiction. We’re ‘advancing equity for all’, you see, but we’re doing it by ‘affirmatively advancing’ an ‘ambitious whole-of-government equity agenda’ catering to ‘historically underserved’ populations, to wit: ‘Black, Latino, and Indigenous and Native American persons, Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders and other persons of color; members of religious minorities; lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ+) persons; persons with disabilities; persons who live in rural areas; and persons otherwise adversely affected by persistent poverty or inequality’.

You might like the soothing strains of the word ‘equity’. The first definition in my dictionary says ‘equity’ is ‘the state, ideal, or quality of being just, impartial, or fair’. And that’s just what the Biden diktat says: ‘The term “equity” means the consistent and systematic fair, just, and impartial treatment of all individuals…’ But it then goes on to specify that by ‘all individuals’ it means some individuals (‘Black, Latino’, etc.). In other words, we’re going to pursue impartiality by being partial to certain groups and (just as important) by penalizing other groups.

HR 1 Makes Election  Fraud & Chaos Permanent The Democrat legislation aims to secure their  power by any and all means necessary.  By: Louis Debroux

https://patriotpost.us/articles/78116-hr-1-makes-election-fraud-and-chaos-permanent-2021-03-03

If you liked the dozens of post-election lawsuits, the ballot recounts and audits, and the utter chaos and anger that prevailed after the 2020 elections, then you’ll absolutely love the Democrats’ top legislative priority this year — passage of HR 1, the ludicrously named “For the People Act.”

With a House vote expected this week, the 791-page HR 1 is a massive power grab by Democrats that takes the worst aspects of the 2020 elections and puts them into federal law. Democrats aim to dictate from Capitol Hill election law for every single state, county, and city. 

HR 1 intentionally weakens election security, creating the very lawlessness and discord that made the last election such a nightmare and guaranteeing that it’s the norm for all future elections.

Veteran political reporter John Fund calls it “the worst piece of legislation I have ever seen in my 40 years reporting from Washington.”

For example, HR 1 would greatly expand mail-in voting, despite election officials warning that mail-in voter fraud is “vastly more prevalent than the in-person voting fraud.” The CalTech/MIT Voting Technology Project advised states to end mail-in voting because of the “significant cost to the real and perceived integrity of the voting process.” Even The New York Times admits mail-in balloting not only makes it “much easier” to buy and sell votes but also makes voters, especially elderly voters, vulnerable to fraud, threats, and coercion.

The Wisdom in Knowing What We Don’t Know Peter Arnold

https://quadrant.org.au/opinion/qed/2021/03/the-wisdom-in-knowing-what-we-dont-know/

“The truth about much regarding the COVID-19 epidemic is that there is no knowledge. We do know what the virus does, and how it kills people. But why isn’t the virus killing entire families, as did the Spanish Flu of a century ago.We do not know how many the virus has killed. Yes, we see running tallies of deaths, but how many, especially the elderly, have died with it, not from it? There are not enough forensic pathologists in the world to have done post-mortem examinations to confirm COVID-19 as the prime cause of death.”

Regrettably, there is little knowledge — read that ‘verifiable facts’ — about treating COVID-19, about preventing its spread, about the facts of herd immunity, about its mutation potential, about any form of treatment, the efficacy of the vaccines and many other open questions. This has left experts, world-wide,  to respond in ignorance to the demands of the media for comment. I have seen some appallingly wrong (as it turned out) opinion pieces by experts.

In January, the respected scientific journal Nature asked more than 100 SARS-CoV-2 immunologists, infectious-disease researchers and virologists if it could be eradicated. Almost 90 per cent thought it would become endemic — circulating in pockets of the global population for many years.

I read through that Nature article carefully. As has been the norm at this stage of COVID-19 ignorance, it is highly speculative.

Critical Race Fragility The Left has denounced the “war on woke,” but it is afraid to defend the principles of critical race theory in public debate.Christopher F. Rufo

https://www.city-journal.org/the-left-wont-debate-critical-race-theory

The critical race theorists are feeling the heat. Over the past decade, they have had remarkable success in perpetuating the concepts of systemic racism, unconscious bias, white privilege, and white fragility in American institutions, beginning with universities and moving on to schools, government agencies, and multinational corporations. Their campaign began mostly without opposition, as most conservatives were either ignorant of what was happening or dismissed it as a campus fad.

That changed last year. The intellectual movements around the so-called Intellectual Dark Web, Quillette magazine, and the 1776 Unites coalition of dissident black scholars had laid down a theoretical case against critical race theory (CRT). President Trump elevated the debate into the mainstream, denouncing CRT by name at the National Archives, signing an executive order banning CRT-based training programs from the federal government, and sparring on the topic during a televised presidential debate. Since then, investigative journalists, including me, have reported on the negative impact of CRT in government, schools, and corporations; states such as New Hampshire, Arkansas, Iowa, West Virginia, and Oklahoma have introduced legislation seeking to ban CRT programs that promote the concepts of race essentialism, collective guilt, and race-based harassment in public institutions.

This shift in momentum against the new racial orthodoxy, which has now grown beyond America’s borders to England, France, Italy, Hungary, and Brazil, has rattled the American Left. Their first argument against this change is that conservatives are using state power to “cancel wokeness.” New York Times columnist Michelle Goldberg recently followed this line, attacking my work “leading the conservative charge against critical race theory,” declaring that the Right wants to ban critical race theory because it is afraid to debate it. This is false, of course. For more than a year, prominent black intellectuals, including John McWhorter, Glenn Loury, Wilfred Reilly, and Coleman Hughes have challenged the critical race theorists to debate—and none has accepted. After Goldberg published her column, I called her bluff even further, challenging to “debate any prominent critical race theorist on the floor of the New York Times.” Predictably, none responded, catching the New York Times in a fib and further exposing the critical race theorists’ refusal to submit their ideas to public scrutiny.