RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.wsj.com/articles/bad-judgment-and-bidens-pentagon-11615246787?mod=opinion_lead_pos1

Another Biden nominee with a record of intemperate tweets is at risk of sinking in the Senate, and the press is comparing him to Neera Tanden, the President’s withdrawn first pick to lead the Office of Management and Budget. Yet whoever replaces Ms. Tanden is unlikely to change the trajectory of the Biden Administration’s progressive policies.

The Pentagon nomination of Colin Kahl, a dogmatic proponent of the Iran nuclear deal, is another story. A no vote in the Senate Armed Services Committee could push the Administration toward a Mideast approach that better serves America’s national interest.

President Biden has tapped Mr. Kahl for undersecretary of defense for policy, one of the most important non-cabinet jobs in the federal government. While the Secretary of Defense handles high-level defense politics, and the deputy secretary manages the department day-to-day, the undersecretary plays the leading role setting strategy—including representing the department at National Security Council deputies meetings.

Mr. Kahl’s strategic Mideast misjudgments have been pronounced. In 2015 as Mr. Biden’s national security adviser, Mr. Kahl argued for sanctions relief on Iran, declaring they “are not going to spend the vast majority of the money on guns, most of it will go to butter.” In the event, Tehran took advantage of the windfall to increase its financing for proxies in Syria, Lebanon and Yemen.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/one-shot-is-better-than-none-11615250588?mod=opinion_lead_pos10

Dr. Marshall, a Republican, is a U.S. senator from Kansas. He is a physician.

In my four years in Congress, the phrase I’ve heard most regularly abused is “Follow the science.” Politicians, bureaucrats and reporters in Washington—many of whom, based on their comments, seem to have last attended science class in eighth grade—have a penchant for developing policies and then lecturing the opposition on the “science” that follows their agenda. Like my granddad used to say, “figures lie and liars figure.” Covid-19 policy is no exception.

In medical school, my classmates and I were taught to apply the science practically to the messy world around us, not merely follow theories as if we practiced medicine in a vacuum. Once we got out of the classroom, many of us quickly found that not every patient’s clinical course was exactly what the textbooks said. The medical school graduates who quickly became the best physicians were those who listened to their patients, called on their experience, and, yes, applied the science only as made sense in particular circumstances.

Nothing is harder for a physician to manage than a virus. Human papillomavirus, for example, often causes cervical precancer and cancer. Our obstetrics and gynecology residency program studied HPV as far back as my internship in 1987. From 1997 to 2003, by combining pap smears with HPV strain identification, doctors could employ technology that identified which patients were truly at risk for cancer, versus those who should merely be observed. But finding the correct application took roughly a decade, and as doctors struggled to use the data to distinguish who was at high and low risk, I observed the condition was often overtreated.

https://pjmedia.com/columns/philip-carl-salzman/2021/03/07/is-america-at-risk-from-domestic-terrorists-n1430573

Seriously, can we possibly believe anything that Nancy Pelosi and congressional Democrats say? Has anything that they have said during the past four years been true?

The collusion in the Russian collusion scandal was between the Hillary Clinton Campaign, the Democrat leadership, the entire Democrat press, networks, and cable news, and our own intelligence and security agencies. Nor was there any predicate for the accusations against President Trump, but rather it was a rationalization of “The Resistance” that Democrats proudly announced, as if it were not a violation of the most basic principle of democracy: a peaceful transition of power. From 2016 through 2018 there were enthusiastic daily reports confirming President Trump’s collusion with the Russians, him being an agent of Putin, and claims that the definitive evidence was about to be revealed. Of course, as we know, there never was any evidence, in spite of two years of investigation by a special prosecutor and a platoon of partisan Democrat lawyers. Since 2018, there have only been sporadic outbursts claiming that Trump was doing Putin’s bidding by Pelosi and her minions, for why let a good lie die? 

Then there were the two—two!—impeachments of Trump, for entirely imaginary offenses, one being a telephone call with the leader of Ukraine, and the other for urging his followers to express their concerns “peacefully and patriotically.” The impeachments of course were really for Trump having beaten the female Democrat candidate, Hillary Clinton, and having pro-America policies that clashed with Democrat pro-Chinese and pro-United Nations policies from which Democrats have gotten rich, e.g. the Biden crime family. In other words, the impeachments were just the next initiatives in the unconstitutional “Resistance.” 

For the 2020 presidential election, the Democrats activated a wide array of dirty tricks, many unconstitutional in the states where they were carried out, which undermined election security and opened many opportunities for manipulation of the vote. Was the election stolen from Trump? We cannot know for certain, because the substantial evidence has not been considered and adjudicated. Rather than take up the challenge to protect American democracy, courts, including the Supreme Court, flinched and dodged. And now the Democrats are hoping to pass H.R.1, a bill that would put control of elections into the hands of the Democrats in perpetuity, so that there would never be an honest election in America. 

https://townhall.com/columnists/scottmorefield/2021/03/08/the-covid-hypochondriacs-think-theyre-saving-the-world-but-theyre-actually-destroying-it-n2585854

The United States recently passed a grim “milestone” of sorts with over 500,000 deaths being attributed in some way to COVID-19. What this really means, of course, is that more than 500,000 mostly super-old and/or mostly super-sick people have died who, at some point prior to or at their deaths, discovered COVID-19 in their systems thanks to super-sensitive PCR testing that may or may not have been correct. Sadly, that’s the extent of what we know for sure at this point, though our overlords pretend they know everything while consistently being proven wrong weeks later.

Half a million is a big number, for sure, but around 3 million people die in this country every year, to the tune of well over 7,000 every single day. Yes, there have been excess deaths caused by COVID, but those are probably two-thirds of that grim number we constantly see on the TV ticker. Further, overall deaths over the coming years are likely to be significantly lower as we find that COVID-19 took many people weeks and months earlier than they otherwise would have gone.

I don’t point these things out to be insensitive or disrespectful of the dead, but I do think society has lost all sense of perspective. All death is tragic and sad, especially for those who lose loved ones, and my intention is not to minimize any of it. It is, however, my responsibility to point out that, as absurd as it sounds, a significant proportion of the population of this country seems to have forgotten that we are all, at some point, going to die. Indeed, even as 500,000 were dying of or with COVID-19, 660,000 others were dying of heart disease, and 600,000 were dying of cancer. Where, pray tell, is the national memorial for them?

https://thefederalist.com/2021/03/08/shelby-steele-talks-race-relations-on-new-fox-news-podcast-with-ben-domenech/

Renowned author and senior fellow at the Hoover Institution Shelby Steele sat down as the first guest on the new Fox News podcast hosted by Federalist Publisher Ben Domenech.

On “Shelby Steele & The Consequences of Courage,” the public intellectual broke down the nation’s latest cultural revolution on race, decrying the social justice movement as one based on the pressure to prove white innocence exploited by the left.

“Critical race theory is bogus,” Steele says. “To me as a minority, demeaning, de-humanizing, I mean, you could go on forever. But it is a currency with which whites can buy innocence in the marketplace. It’s a currency which blacks and other minorities can exercise power in the political arena.”

Steele, who is black, said Americans need to find courage to reject the totalitarian impulses of the social justice movement that demonizes the population as exhaustively racist for exclusive benefits.

“White America has to find a way to restore its moral confidence,” Steele said, emphasizing it requires the courage to “say ‘look, I’m not a racist and I don’t care what you say, whether it agrees with your or doesn’t.’”

For Steele, the consequences of such courage have been far more personal.