RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.nasa.gov/press-release/nasa-astronaut-jeanette-epps-joins-first-operational-boeing-crew-mission-to-space

NASA astronaut Jeanette Epps will be making history in 2021 as the first Black female astronaut to become a crew member on a mission to the International Space Station.

The space agency announced on Tuesday that Epps would be joining Sunita Williams and Josh Cassada for NASA’s first operational crewed flight of Boeing’s CST-100 Starliner spacecraft. Williams, who will be embarking on her third expedition, and Cassada, on his first, were assigned to the mission in August 2018. On Twitter, NASA’s administrator Jim Bridenstine said that Epps is a “fantastic addition.” Epps responded with a video sharing her thanks.

Epps was selected as a member of the 2009 astronaut class after earning her doctorate in aerospace engineering and working for the CIA. She was slated to join a June 2018 ISS expedition before the position was suddenly passed onto fellow female astronaut Serena Auñón-Chancellor, who became the first Hispanic woman to live on the ISS.

At the time, Epps’s brother Henry claimed that racism at NASA was the reason for the switch — a sentiment that Epps has never commented on publicly. NASA didn’t immediately respond to Yahoo Life’s request for comment, but responded in 2018 to Henry Epps’s claims, telling the Washington Post, “Diversity and inclusion are integral to mission success at NASA and we have a diverse astronaut corps reflective of that approach.”

NASA confirmed to CNBC that six Black Americans have visited the space station in the past, although none for an extended period of time, making Epps the first Black woman astronaut to make a six-month expedition.

Epps has shared nothing but her excitement on Twitter, writing that she is “looking forward to the mission” and sharing that excitement with her crew members

https://www.theepochtimes.com/dems-blaming-violence-in-american-cities-on-trump-is-despicable_3481871.html

More and more Bertolt Brecht’s play “In the Jungle of Cities” is becoming an apt description of today’s America.

Murder, riot, arson, destruction, you name it—America’s cities have got it. Only a very few of our major urban areas have escaped the carnage, and almost all of those barely.

This weekend we have the fatal shooting of a Trump supporter in Portland (Jack Posobiec put it well on Parler: “Antifa killed someone again last night but media tells us they don’t exist”), cops being shot (one critically) in St. Louis and a Chicago shooting (yet again and as usual) outside a South Side restaurant with one killed and four injured plus some potshots at a Trump procession in Los Angeles’ Woodland Hills.

It goes without saying, as the night follows the day, these cities have Democrat mayors. Every single one of the centers of violence from Seattle to Philadelphia do.

And yet Biden & Co. are trying to make this Trump’s fault.

Besides the obvious—that they are terrified their failure at their convention to mention what was happening in the cities could cost them the election and are trying desperately (with a lie) to play catch-up—this reveals the real, underlying problem with today’s liberal and progressive: infantilism.

Okay, I’ll be nice: immaturity. Today’s liberal/progressive (oh, how I abhor the desecration of the English language inherent in those terms) abjures taking responsibility for the actions in his/her city. In fact, he or she is terrified of so doing.

https://www.spiked-online.com/2020/08/31/in-racialising-everything-we-are-playing-with-fire/

The wave of protests sparked by the killing of George Floyd rolls on. Riots have erupted in Kenosha, Wisconsin after the shooting of a black man by police, and two protesters have been killed. The US seems as divided as at any time in its recent history. But is America really a ‘structurally racist’ country, and are its police truly oppressing black people?

Glenn Loury is an American economist, author and commentator. He was the first ever tenured black professor of economics at Harvard University, and is currently a professor of social sciences and economics at Brown University. He joined spiked editor Brendan O’Neill for the latest episode of The Brendan O’Neill Show. What follows is an edited extract from their conversation. Listen to the full episode here.

Brendan O’Neill: One of the issues with Black Lives Matter is it has given the distinct impression to people around the globe that America remains a structurally racist country. There are clearly issues that impact on African-American communities. But one of the things you have written and spoken about incredibly well is the hollowness of the term ‘structural racism’. It seems to have become a mantra wheeled out to explain every single problem that faces particular communities or even particular individuals. If someone does not get a pay rise, for example, that must be down to structural racism. If there are not enough black people on a board of directors, that must be due to structural racism, too. Explain to us why you have an issue with that term and why its overuse makes it a meaningless way of understanding contemporary problems.

Glenn Loury: These days, I am given to saying the term ‘structural racism’ is both a bluff and a bludgeon. It is a bluff in the sense that it offers an explanation that is not really an explanation at all, and in effect dares the listener to come back with a response. For example, if someone says there are too many blacks in prison in the United States and that that is because of structural racism, they are daring you to say there are too many black criminals and that is why there are so many blacks in prison. They want you to say it is not the system’s fault, but the individual’s.

https://amgreatness.com/2020/08/30/whos-on-first-with-joe-biden/

Building back better means building back greener,” sounds like the latest bromide from the Democratic Party’s chief cellar-dweller Joe Biden. But the speaker is actually World Health Organization boss Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, back on August 21.

 The coronavirus pandemic, Tedros said, “has given new impetus to the need to accelerate efforts to respond to climate change” and “given us a glimpse of our world as it could be: cleaner skies and rivers.” Yet “at the same time, we will not, we cannot go back to the way things were,” he warns. 

The millions suffering from the pandemic, particularly the unemployed, might wonder about the man who plagiarizes Joe Biden’s slogan. 

 Tedros is a veteran of the Marxist Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), responsible for atrocities against the Amhara ethnic group in northwest Ethiopia. Tedros earned a bachelor’s degree in biology in 1986, but never completed medical studies to become a physician. During his tenure as Ethiopia’s health minister from 2005 until 2012, Tedros purposely covered up cholera outbreaks in 2006, 2009, and 2011.

https://www.newsmax.com/us/coronavirus-covid-twitter/2020/08/30/id/984567/

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued a report late last week showing that just 9,683 Americans, or 6%, died with only having COVID-19 listed on their death certificates, leading to a social media trending topic on the issue.

The other 94% of deaths were listed as having at least one additional medical condition linked to their death.

Some of the underlying diseases listed by the CDC include influenza and pneumonia, respiratory failure, hypertensive disease, diabetes, vascular and unspecified dementia, cardiac arrest, heart failure and renal failure.

Twitter proponents on both sides of the issue made their case that the data either proved that CDC had been wrong all along or that that health officials have said from the start that comorbidities were more likley to cause a person to die from COVID-19 anyway. 

At least 182,885 people have died from coronavirus in the United States, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University. The CDC has long said that pre-existing health conditions can cause people to experience more severe COVID-19 symptoms.

Many health experts, including Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, have rejected claims that coronavirus deaths are being exaggerated.