RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://townhall.com/columnists/victordavishanson/2020/12/09/victor-davis-hanson-will-biden-give-in-to-the-hydroxy-effect-n2581263

There is as yet no known, easily accessible cure for COVID-19.

Over the past year, lots of old and new drugs and supplements — Ivermectin, azithromycin, Remdesivir, hydroxychloroquine, vitamin D, vitamin C, zinc, aspirin, Pepcid and others — have shown at least some anecdotal value in ameliorating the effects of early-stage COVID-19. Clinical physicians treating patients in hospitals often disagree with the research scientists conducting trials on the efficacy of all these treatments.

Yet only hydroxychloroquine has prompted furious partisan debate over its possible usefulness. Why?

Probably because Donald Trump endorsed its usage months ago. Almost immediately, the media, the university and government medical community, and the progressive political opposition declared hydroxychloroquine useless and dangerous. A recent media study from the National Bureau of Economic Research found that positive news stories about the research and development of COVID-19 vaccines barely outnumbered negative stories about Trump and hydroxychloroquine.

Trump’s presidential endorsement was apparent proof of rank quackery. Yet a few recent second-look studies, especially abroad, suggest that hydroxychloroquine, a dirt-cheap, time-tested anti-malarial drug, can in fact offer help in treating some cases of COVID-19.

This Hydroxy Effect — hysterical disavowal of anything Trump has endorsed — is dangerous to the country at large.

https://spectator.us/arent-celebrating-400th-anniversary-plymouth-colony/

On Saturday November 11, 1620, an ill-fitted cargo ship anchored off the coast of Cape Cod. On board were 102 quarrelsome and hungry passengers. Some 37 were religious dissidents, some servants, and a good many were would-be settlers contracted by the London Merchant Adventurers. Those ‘adventurers’, whom the Protestant dissenters called ‘strangers’ were none too happy about the voyage. They were supposed to be in ‘northern Virginia’, which may have meant Manhattan. But bad weather had driven their ship, the Mayflower, to an unsettled and uncertain place. They considered their contract with the London Merchant Adventurers null and void and were prepared, on landing, to strike out for themselves.

Cooler heads prevailed. Later that day, perhaps with the help of some strong-arm tactics, the leaders of the Leiden, Holland Congregation — the people we call Pilgrims — gained the signatures of most of the men on an agreement to stick together and govern themselves as a ‘civil body politic’. That modest document was the Mayflower Compact, and it carries outsized historical weight. It was the beginning of true self-government in the English colonization of North America. And it gave voice, or at least it whispered, some new ideas. The signatories agreed to elect their government, frame their own laws, respect their differences and discard many of the Old World ideas of hierarchy. The new settlement breathed the fresh air of equality. Masters and servants both signed the compact.

You would think this event would be anchored in American history with the solidity of, say, Plymouth Rock. And you would, in a curious way, be right. In the era of de-plinthed statues of American founders and heroes, Plymouth Rock itself was defaced earlier this year. It was spray-painted with various squiggles and the motto ‘508, MOF’, the meaning of which remains unknown, except that 508 is Plymouth’s area code. We can take it, if nothing else, as a gesture of symbolic destruction. Four hundred years later, the strangers have wreaked their revenge for having been drafted into the Mayflower Compact. Or perhaps it was one of those contingents of Native Americans tagging a boulder that Massasoit too easily ceded to the invaders.

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http://www.swtotd.blogspot.com

The single biggest change in politics in my lifetime has been the reorientation of the political parties. Historically, Democrats represented the working classes, while Republicans had the backing of the monied classes on Wall Street and the occupiers of office suites in big businesses. Labor versus capital was a simplified definition.

Things have changed. Roles have been reversed. My State of Connecticut is a proxy for wealthy blue states. It is the 5th wealthiest in terms of income and was solidly Republican when I was growing up. This year, it voted 59% for Joe Biden. The three towns in which I have lived for the past fifty years, Greenwich, Old Lyme and Essex – all in the top 12% of Connecticut’s wealthiest towns – voted between 61% and 63% for Joe Biden. November’s vote was not a one-time event. All five House members are Democrats. Connecticut’s two U.S. Senators are ranked eight (Richard Blumenthal) and sixteen (Chris Murphy) in terms of most progressive. The last Republican to serve in the House of Representatives was Chris Shays who lost re-election in 2008. The last Republican U.S. Senator from Connecticut was Lowell Weicker, who lost re-election in 1988. This Democratic Party is not your grandfather’s Party. It has become the Party of the establishment. The only two counties in Connecticut to vote for Donald Trump were Windham and Litchfield, the two most rural counties. In both counties, his margin of victory was four percentage points. Sixty years ago, Connecticut was as solidly Republican as it is solidly Democratic today.

Why has this happened? The shift took place during the 1960s and 1970s, during a period when I became registered as a Democrat. For me, in my late 20s, it was a combination of civil rights and Vietnam, and a feeling that whatever my parents were for I should be against. By the mid 1970s, when markets and the economy turned down, I realized my parents may have been smarter than I had thought – that to succeed financially, intellectually, personally and emotionally, one had to be aspirant, have a positive outlook, be self-reliant and willing to work hard.

https://mailchi.mp/5c72f39888b2/tune-in-ill-be-speaking-on-american-ingrate-tuesday-night-2517929?e=a0fa704ef6

The only inadvertent benefit of Brennan’s airtime is that it exposes how unmoored our ruling class is from the public it is supposed to serve.

Former Obama administration Central Intelligence Agency Director John Brennan lies. He doesn’t just lie in the sense of speaking hyperbolically, spinning events, or painting in shades of gray out of purported fealty to national security considerations. Brennan tells outright falsehoods, in venues from television studios to Congress, on matters of utmost importance.

One must ask: Why does corporate media continue to give someone who has proved to be a uniquely deceptive character, whose most noteworthy activity since leaving government has been spewing invective against the president on Twitter, valuable airtime?

Brennan Lies About Russiagate

In his latest public display of dishonesty, Brennan took to “Fox News Sunday” to repeat untruths regarding the Obama administration’s actions regarding then-president-elect Donald Trump and Russia. According to Brennan, “There was no spying on Donald Trump’s campaign.” There was. Of the Steele dossier, Brennan said it “was not used in any way to undergird the judgments that came out of the intelligence community assessment about the Russian actions in the 2016 election.” It was.