RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2021/01/mitch_mcconnell_announces_hes_willing_to_abandon_the_filibuster.html

Most of the time, Americans pay scant attention to the rules that the House and Senate choose to govern themselves. We laugh when the House decides to go for gender-neutral language, but none of us think that makes any real difference. However, in the Senate, “China” Mitch McConnell has paved the way for a rule change that will allow the Democrats to alter forever America’s long-standing structure and enable them to become a permanent governing class.

The Senate currently is split perfectly in half, with fifty Senators who are Democrats and fifty who are Republicans. It would be nice if that created a stalemate, which would at least keep Congress from harming America, but that’s not the case. Kamala Harris is now the tie-breaking vote on any deadlocked initiative. In other words, the Senate effectively has a Democrat majority.

The only thing protecting the minority interest in a Senate the reflects America’s strong ideological divisions is the filibuster. This rule went into effect in 1806 – that is, 215 years ago. The filibuster allows a senator, or a group of senators, to block legislation from going forward by continuing to debate a matter unless “three-fifths of the Senators duly chosen and sworn” vote to end the debate by invoking cloture. Currently, the filibuster is all that stands between the Democrats adding new states that will give Democrats a permanent Senate majority and packing the Supreme Court – which will effectively nullify the Constitution.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/01/freedom-speech-slipping-away-star-parker/

As the new Biden-Harris administration assumes power, the most basic American freedom of speech and expression is under unprecedented threat.

For the first time ever, I am concerned about my freedom to do my work, to run a policy institute addressing issues of culture, race and poverty from a conservative perspective.

Technology — the internet — which was largely nonexistent just 25 years ago, now plays a huge role in our lives as a tool of communication.

In a survey just published by the Pew Research Center, 86% say they “often” or “sometimes” get their news from a digital device — smartphone, tablet or computer. This compared with 68% who say they “often” or “sometimes” get their news from television, 50% who get it from radio and 32% who get it from print publications.

According to Statista.com, the United States has 223 million Facebook users, almost the size of the entire U.S. population over age 18. Per Pew, 22% of U.S. adults use Twitter.

These developments have put enormous power at the disposal of technology firms over what we see and read.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/01/fourteenth-amendment-follies-matthew-vadum/

Democrats are so scared one of their all-time favorite boogeymen, former President Donald Trump, will run and humiliate them again they are considering banishing him from electoral politics forever through an obscure constitutional provision created in the aftermath of the Civil War to deal with Confederate leaders and soldiers.

Disqualifying opposing candidates, in case you forgot, is part of the old Barack Obama playbook from his Illinois Senate days, and, call me crazy, but Donald Trump is no Jefferson Davis.

Because leftist depravity is bottomless, it should come as no surprise that Democrats are fine with going full-on banana republic to “save” the country from the potential reemergence of a truly great, legitimate president who, unlike the phony who has (temporarily) succeeded him, loves America, and who spent his four years in office expertly outfoxing Democrats to the benefit of the American people.

And because two bogus impeachments based on absolutely nothing are not enough for these people, left-wing lawmakers, wooden stakes in hand, are demanding Section 3 of the 14th Amendment be invoked before Count Trumpula rises from the political grave.

That amendment, by the way, was ratified July 9, 1868, a little over three years after Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia surrendered at Appomattox Court House and Democrat actor John Wilkes Booth assassinated the Republican U.S. president, Abraham Lincoln.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2021/01/joe-bidens-covid-deceptions/

He has gone back on a campaign promise to change the virus’s trajectory and set as a goal a rate of vaccination that the U.S. had already met or exceeded.

P resident Joe Biden contends there is “nothing we can do to change the trajectory of the pandemic in the next several months,” which is the exact opposite of what presidential candidate Joe Biden promised voters during the 2020 campaign. And by “exact opposite,” I mean the president’s alleged plan to beat coronavirus literally said that “the trajectory of COVID-19 in America is headed in the wrong direction” and only he could fix it.

The Biden “plan” amounted to a slew of nebulous promises that would be implemented to correct the “Trump fiasco,” such as accelerating the development of a vaccine, producing more masks, and pressuring governors to sign mask mandates. Biden repeatedly promised to alter the trajectory of COVID. In a platitudinous October 23 speech, Biden pledged to “immediately put in place a national strategy that will position our country to finally get ahead of this virus and get back our lives.”

“Immediately” is an adverb meaning at once, instantly, without any intervening time. It does not mean waiting around to take credit for when the Trump-era vaccines kick in.

One of the silliest talking points pushed by left-wing pundits during the election was to say that Biden had warned us about the pandemic. Evidence of this contention revolves around a single USA Today column in which the then–presidential candidate noted that there were at “least five cases” of COVID in the United States, and there “will likely be more.” Hardly Nostradamus.

https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/pelosi-trump-impeachment-trial-gregg-jarrett

Here we go again. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi slowly and somberly walking an article of impeachment through the Capitol flanked by House managers giving their best impression of a funeral procession. Except this time, they’re wearing Covid masks.  

Let’s call it “Impeachment: The Sequel.” It is destined to be as pitiable as the original. Like a cheap movie franchise that Hollywood keeps exploiting, this sham version will be the equivalent of a box office dud. 

Mugging for the cameras, Pelosi will probably mutter something about “making history,” as she did before.  Maybe she’ll again pass out souvenir signing pens like lollipops at a town carnival.  It’s an insult to charades.  Pelosi seeks retaliation masquerading as impeachment.  

The first impeachment trial in the Senate a year ago was a baseless fiasco that ended in the easy acquittal of President Trump. Democrats did not come close to mustering the two-thirds majority votes required for conviction and removal from office.  That predictable outcome rendered the entire exercise a colossal waste of time. 

It is almost certain that the sequel will mimic the same bad ending.  Democrats in the House rushed through an ineptly crafted article of impeachment accusing Trump of “inciting an insurrection” when he delivered a speech on the nation’s mall on January 6, 2021, and criminals chose to riot inside the Capitol building. 

https://www.city-journal.org/biden-touts-california-as-model-for-america

As the Biden administration settles in and begins to formulate its agenda, progressive pundits, politicians, and activists point to California as a role model for national policy. If the administration listens to them, it would prove a disaster for America’s already-beleaguered middle and working classes.

Biden, suggests an ecstatic account in the Los Angeles Times, seeks to “make America California again,” and he will have plenty of help. Californians will run Health and Human Services, the Treasury, Homeland Security, and Energy. Former California senator Kamala Harris is vice president, and San Francisco’s Nancy Pelosi rules the House of Representatives. Progressives like Laura Tyson and Lenny Mendonca see the shift as embracing “California’s distinctive approach to market capitalism.” The Golden State, they insist, can “show the way forward” toward a more socially just future.

As a California resident for nearly half a century, I wonder if these worthies see the same state I do. California has its wonderful spots, great neighborhoods, beautiful vistas, amazing entrepreneurs, and great amenities, but it makes a poor advertisement for social democracy. It suffers the nation’s highest poverty rate and presents the widest gap between middle- and upper-middle income earners of any state. Minorities—notably African-Americans and Latinos—do worse in California’s metros than elsewhere in the country, according to a recent study that we conducted at the Urban Reform Institute. In Atlanta, African-American median incomes, adjusted for costs, are almost double those in San Francisco and Los Angeles; Latinos earn $20,000 more in midwestern and southern cities than in the enlightened metros along the California coast.