RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://thefederalist.com/2021/01/22/breaking-norms-and-precedent-biden-attempts-to-purge-career-intelligence-official/

Pelosi, Schiff, and Biden have politicized a career intelligence community position by demanding the removal of a national security professional.

Hours after President Joe Biden delivered his inaugural address promising to bring unity and healing to the country, his administration began a politically charged attack on a highly respected, newly appointed career intelligence official over fears he would be insufficiently loyal to Democratic partisans. The attempted purge has thus far followed the playbook publicly laid out by top Democrats and their left-wing media enablers.

In a stunning violation of precedent, Biden’s National Security Agency (NSA) placed General Counsel Michael J. Ellis on administrative leave pending a Defense Inspector General investigation of his recent appointment, as well as an unspecified claim of mishandling of classified information. Ellis has maintained a top security clearance, without any blemish, for more than a decade. He is a trained classification official both as a military officer and civilian.

While Ellis has prominent defenders from his many years of service in the intelligence community, his detractors include high profile participants in the Russia collusion hoax, proponents of former National Security Advisor John Bolton’s attempt to publish classified information in a book, and some of the individuals who orchestrated the Ukraine impeachment effort.

https://greenwald.substack.com/p/the-moronic-firing-of-will-wilkinson

Will Wilkinson is about as mainstream and conventional a thinker as one can find, and is unfailingly civil and restrained in his rhetoric. But yesterday, he was fired by the technocratic centrist think tank for which he worked, the Niskanen Center, and appears on the verge of being fired as well by The New York Times, where he is a contributing writer. This multi-pronged retribution is due to a single tweet that was obviously satirical and sarcastic and for which he abjectly apologized. But no matter: the tweet has been purposely distorted into something malevolent and the prevailing repressive climate weaponized it against him.

Neither Wilkinson nor his tweet are particularly interesting. What merits attention here is the now-pervasive climate that fostered this tawdry episode, and which has unjustly destroyed countless reputations and careers with no sign of slowing doing.

During the Bush and Obama years, Wilkinson worked at the libertarian CATO Institute but, even then, he was not much of a libertarian. As he himself explained, he is far more of a standard-issue neoliberal that one finds everywhere throughout DC think tanks, the op-ed pages of large newspapers, and the green rooms of CNN, just with a bit wonkier style of expression and a few vague libertarian gestures on some isolated issues. That self-description was in 2012, and he since then has become even more of a standard liberal during the Trump era, which is why the Paper of Record made him a contributor opinion writer where he published articles under such bold and groundbreaking headlines as “Trump Has Disqualified Himself From Running in 2020.”

On Wednesday, the night of Joe Biden’s inauguration, Wilkinson posted this now-deleted tweet in which he was obviously not calling for violence. He was instead sardonically noting that anti-Pence animus became a prevailing sentiment among some MAGA followers over the last month, including reports that at least a few of those who breached the Capitol were calling for Pence’s hanging on treason grounds, thus ironically enabling liberals and MAGA followers to “unite” over that desire:

The next morning, a right-wing hedge fund manager and large-money GOP donor, Gabe Hoffman, flagged this tweet and claimed to believe that Wilkinson “call[ed] for former Vice President Mike Pence to be lynched.” Hoffman also tweeted at Wilkinson’s New York Times bosses to ask if they have “any comment on your ‘contributing opinion writer’ calling for violence against a public official?,” and then tweeted at Wilkinson’s other bosses at the think tank to demand the same.

https://townhall.com/tipsheet/mattvespa/2021/01/23/why-you-should-be-furious-but-also-not-shocked-by-bidens-covid-agenda-admission-n2583592

I mean, are you shocked by this revelation? Joe Biden pretty much says he no immediate plan to combat the coronavirus. None. It can be summed up in six words: “there is nothing we can do.” 

Okay, that’s not exactly fair. He said, there is nothing we can do for several months. We’re in cruise control, but that’s not what he sold on the campaign trail. He didn’t say we’re going to coast for the better part of a year with no plan to voters. It was I’m going to stop it and Trump is at fault. He should take responsibility. If you elect me, I will be the COVID killer. All of this said while he doled out talking points that mirror exactly what the Trump administration’s plan was with COVID management. 

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/megan-fox/2021/01/22/watch-freudian-slip-chuck-schumer-says-donald-trump-incited-the-erection-n1405398

We know that Democrats have had very strong feelings for Donald Trump from the first day he took office, but we had no idea they would finally admit it out loud. On Friday, Chuck Schumer said out loud, in the world’s greatest deliberative body, “Senators will have to decide if Donald John Trump incited the erection.”

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/bryan-preston/2021/01/22/biden-admin-already-caught-lying-about-the-covid-vaccine-n1405435

Feel the unity…

CNN’s MJ Lee reported Thursday that the Biden administration claimed it was having to “start from scratch” on rolling out the COVID vaccine.

That would be the vaccine that was developed under Operation Warp Speed and began distribution to the states in December. Both of those things happened under the Trump administration. Argue all you want, but those are simply facts and they do not care about your feelings about Trump.

According to Lee’s story:

“…in the immediate hours following Biden being sworn into office on Wednesday, sources with direct knowledge of the new administration’s Covid-related work told CNN one of the biggest shocks that the Biden team had to digest during the transition period was what they saw as a complete lack of a vaccine distribution strategy under former President Donald Trump, even weeks after multiple vaccines were approved for use in the United States.

“There is nothing for us to rework. We are going to have to build everything from scratch,” one source said.

Another source described the moment that it became clear the Biden administration would have to essentially start from “square one” because there simply was no plan as: “Wow, just further affirmation of complete incompetence.”

Who are these “sources” and why doesn’t Lee name them? Why don’t they go on the record if what they’re saying is true? What’s CNN’s policy on using unnamed sources? Having written for CNN in the past, I know the site has editors. Where were they?

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/rick-moran/2021/01/22/seattle-business-owners-fed-up-with-officials-for-not-condemning-antifa-violence-n1405588

Downtown Seattle business owners have had all they can take from their local government’s inexplicable failure to condemn the riots and get them under control. The last straw was the night of the inauguration, when dozens of storefronts were vandalized by rampaging antifa members—and not a peep was heard from city leaders.

More than that, the city hasn’t lifted a finger to help struggling companies. Between the draconian lockdown rules set by the governor and the riots, 160 businesses in the city have closed, according to the Downtown Seattle Association. Many of them are barely hanging on.

KoMo News:

“It’s not clear what their message is,” said Gabby Cavalcanti of Bellevue. “You don’t know what to make of it.”

“They need to arrest these people,” said John Hummer in Seattle. “When they without any consequences, they’re going to keep doing it.”

Dorelea Gaffney owns the soap box in Pike Place Market.

She said she feels violated and defenseless because of the damage done to neighboring businesses by vandals.

“It’s not hurting anyone but us, small business owners,” Gaffney said.

Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkan, even now, can’t bring herself to use the term “antifa.”