RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://issuesinsights.com/2022/02/10/dems-sudden-covid-flip-flop-it-aint-science-its-politics/

It ain’t science…its politics.

Polls show congressional Democrats face an historic drubbing in the 2022 midterm elections as voters inspect the COVID wreckage of the economy and civil society after just a year of Democrat control. So it should be no surprise that Democratic politicians across the nation are discovering the wisdom of ending their wildly unpopular and draconian COVID lockdowns and masking regimes.

According to the Washington Examiner, eight very blue states — California, Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York and Oregon — have suddenly reversed course and are now busy dismantling their COVID police states as they face a growing political backlash from average Americans, including members of their own party.

It’s about time. As NBC News observed Wednesday, before scheduled remarks by the White House, “The era of big mandates is over.” We’re sure the fact that President Joe Biden has a measly 40% approval rate for his handling of COVID has something to do with that.

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2022/02/09/yesterdays_sister_souljah_moment_todays_costly_silence_147159.html

President Biden’s quick trip to New York City was the perfect moment to assert a genuine commitment to public safety by calling out Manhattan’s left-wing prosecutor, Alvin Bragg. But Biden and his attorney general blew the opportunity. They said nothing, aside from the usual pablum about safe communities and guns coming in from out of state. That’s not enough, even in very liberal cities like New York.
 
Democrats simply aren’t trusted on crime. That’s hardly new, but it has become much more damaging politically now that voters consider crime one of their top issues. For years, the party has framed its policies as “pro-justice” and “anti-racism,” with little attention to “law and order.” Race gets pride of place, of course, because, in city after city, a disproportionate number of those arrested are African American, mostly young men.
 
Republicans say that what Democrats call “racial justice” really means “soft on crime.” More and more Independents are siding with Republicans on this issue. These critics not only demand safety for themselves. They point out that most of this rising crime harms law-abiding people in poor, minority communities. The arrest statistics, they say, reflect the hard reality of who commits crimes, not biased policing.
 
The parties’ sharply opposed views on crime, law enforcement, and prosecution have become central issues in American politics. It’s an issue that strongly favors Republicans.
 
Some three decades ago, Bill Clinton understood this political landscape and attacked the Democrats’ image head-on by calling out a black celebrity, Sister Souljah. In the aftermath of the 1992 Los Angeles riots, she said, “If black people kill black people every day, why not have a week and kill white people?” Clinton’s angry response reinforced a political argument he made during the campaign: he intended to deter crime by punishing criminals, severely if need be.
 

http://www.swtotd.blogspot.com

Just over a year and a half ago, June 8, 2020, I wrote a TOTD, “It’s the Culture Stupid.” It was two weeks after George Floyd died under Derek Chauvin’s knee. I wrote: “…the permitting of protesters in the wake of George Floyd’s killing was right. The failure to confront and arrest violent rioters and looters was wrong.” It is that failure to distinguish between right and wrong – a failure to punish wrongdoers and to reward virtue – that haunts our nation and its people. Driven by a sanctimonious and intolerant “woke” community, the situation has worsened over the past twenty months.

In 1992, while advising Bill Clinton on his Presidential campaign against George H.W. Bush, James Carville coined the phrase, “It’s the economy, stupid.” The economy had entered recession in July-August 1990 but had recovered by the end of the first quarter of 1991. However, job creation lagged, so the recovery became known as the “jobless recovery.” Unemployment continued to rise into mid-year 1992, which provided Mr. Carville the opportunity to conceive a phrase recalled thirty years later.

What we face is more onerous. Economies go through booms and busts, while cultures are fundamental to who we are. A self-important, moralizing wokeism offers a new and different threat. Traditionally, our culture has been embedded in families – passed down from one generation to the next. It is confirmed in civil behavior, in our schools, churches and communities. It is institutionalized in our Declaration of Independence, Constitution and reflected in Constitutional amendments. It has been enhanced as our country absorbed immigrants from all over the world. But the underlying rules and customs that allowed this country to survive and to thrive should persist – that we are all, no matter our race, ethnicity or gender, created equal and have equal protection under the law, that private property is protected, that we live in a nation of laws not men, that we should be judged by our character, not the color of our skin or gender, and that success is a function of merit, ability, effort and diligence, and that civility, respect and tolerance are necessary for a free, civil and democratic society to exist.

Like too many Jewish organizations, the ADL been taken over by radical leftists who have subverted its original mission by promoting a progressive ideology at the expense of protecting the Jewish community. As the recent Whoopi Goldberg incident illustrates, the ADL seems morally confused.

Whoopi Goldberg was suspended from The View for two weeks for saying that the Holocaust was about white people killing other white people. According to Goldberg — who was simply repeating current woke ideology — Jews are white, and so Hitler could not have hated them because of their race. The Holocaust was, she said, merely another case of “man’s inhumanity to man.” Jews who were shocked by Goldberg’s outburst were further shocked to learn that Whoopi Goldberg was actually using the ADL’s definition of racism.

A few years ago, ADL CEO Jonathan Greenblatt redefined racism to align with woke ideology. Racism, the ADL declared, now meant the “marginalization and/or oppression of people of color based on a socially constructed racial hierarchy that privileges white people.”

Under this definition, only white people can be racists. Acts of bigotry directed at whites — now including Jews — would not qualify as racism, and hate crimes committed by people of color would not qualify as racism. This definition of racism, which derives from an insidious ideology, has infiltrated the ADL and actually feeds anti-Semitism.

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2022/02/the_capitol_police_have_been_fully_weaponized_against_republicans.html

If you visited D.C. in the days before COVID and January 6 madness, and wandered around (or got permission to go into) the Capitol, you saw Capitol police officers on duty. They were doing pretty much what all police officers do, which is to stand guard at vulnerable spots, making sure no one did anything naughty (e.g., graffiti) or downright dangerous (e.g., gun or knife attacks, etc.). However, beginning with January 6, 2021, it became apparent that Nancy Pelosi’s Capitol police officers have a different mandate: Defend the Democrat party hold on power.

On January 6, the Capitol police failed to protect the Capitol. We know this because Capitol police chief Steven Sund, after being fired on January 7, 2021, explained that he requested backup from the National Guard, which never arrived, and that his people just weren’t ready. Trump stated that he requested that 10,000 National Guard troops be deployed to the Capitol before January 6 to provide protection for his rally. According to him, congressional leaders said no. What really happened remains a mystery despite the “investigation” by the January 6 Committee. You’d think they would have figured that one out.

Also bizarrely, on January 6, someone (the Capitol police?) opened from the inside the Capitol’s 20,000-pound doors, which are secured by powerful magnetic locks. We then saw footage of the same Capitol police graciously welcoming people inside, which led many innocents to believe that they had the perfect right to be inside the People’s House.

For those of us (like me), who think that January 6 was an entrapment scheme, it would appear that the Capitol police were part of the plan.

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2022/02/the_ugly_nature_of_progressive_race_views.html

We’re entering a new era of discrimination, dressed up in better sounding terms. It must not become the new normal.

When it comes to race, we are witnessing an ugly return to segregation, unequal treatment, and forced outcomes. A re-examination of our concept of race is becoming overdue.

Race is not just the coloration of one’s skin, as it may widely vary in hue and intensity and over time in the same group of individuals. For example, not all Caucasians are fair-skinned, and not all Africans are black. Generally, we ascribe to a geographic location (original or changed by migration) a racial characteristic, whereby Europe and parts of America are majority “white,” Africa is “black,” Asia is “yellow,” etc. These are mere historical shorthand words that are visual in origin and fail to convey the true meaning of race. They are what the human eye may see or have seen, and they are incomplete descriptions, at best. Indeed, these “colorations” have become stereotypes and have been further compromised by the introduction of slur words equivalent to each race group.

So what is race and how can we best go beyond our simple awareness of it, understand it more thoroughly, and make good use of that understanding in interpersonal relationships?