RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://americanmind.org/salvo/liberty-falling/

Surgeon General Vivek Murthy recently sounded the alarm on the “profound risk” posed by social media platforms to the mental health and well-being of children across the country.  Murthy believes that “immediate action” must be taken to protect children. He’s right. Multiple studies clearly demonstrate the association between heavy social media use and an increased risk for anxiety, depression, loneliness, and even suicidal thoughts.

According to a new paper published in Psychological Reports, heavy social media use is also associated with a reduced preference for freedom. According to the authors of the paper, two psychologists based at Swansea University, a public research university in Wales, habitual social media users may use platforms like TikTok and Instagram to escape from the challenges and unpredictable nature of the real world.

The authors discuss users’—particularly younger users—burning desire for constant social media-driven stimulation, the negative feelings associated with excessive social media engagement, and how these negative feelings affect one’s desire to be truly free. 

Before discussing the link between social media dependency and a reduced preference for freedom, it’s important to realize just how bad the dependency problem is. Millennials, those born between 1981 and 1996, compulsively check their social network profiles, spending an average of three-and-a-half hours online every day. That works out to one full day every week, four days per month—and 48 days per year. When it comes to compulsive social media use, Millennials are bad. But the generation after them is even worse. Gen Zers spend an average of four hours on social media every day. That’s five days each month—and 60 days per year.

The word addiction often gets thrown around recklessly. But it’s safe to say that millions of Millennials and Gen Zers are addicted to social media. Addiction is strongly associated with a number of mental health issues, including depression and anxiety.

https://www.based-politics.com/2023/06/21/is-dr-fauci-still-getting-a-government-paycheck/

Many believed Dr. Anthony Fauci was retiring in December 2022, based on comments the former Coronavirus Task Force leader made last year.

But Rand Paul isn’t so sure. The senator thinks Fauci might still be working on the government’s dime.

According to Fox News, on Tuesday Senator Paul’s office sent a letter to Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra and the head of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), asking for “additional information regarding Dr. Fauci’s employment status and receipt of taxpayer-funded benefits.”

Fox News reported, “Paul noted that Fauci said in various media interviews late last year that he was ‘not retiring’ but was going to the ‘next chapter’ and ‘moving on from [his] current positions,’ which also included being President Biden’s chief medical advisor.”

Paul said in the letter, “While many interpreted these statements to mean Dr. Fauci would be ending his employment with the federal government in December 2022, it is not clear if that is in fact the case.”

“This raises questions about Dr. Fauci’s current employment status and whether he is still receiving certain taxpayer-funded benefits associated with active public service, such as legal counsel and protective services,” he added.

Fauci and Paul went toe-to-toe many times over the doctor’s handling of the COVID-19 pandemic, including famously over the potential origins of the virus.

Paul posited more than once that there was evidence that COVID-19 possibly was created in a lab in Wuhan, China where gain-of-function research took place funded by the U.S.

Fauci originally denied such claims, though later the NIH admitted such research had been conducted and the U.S. government footed the bill. Paul would also accuse Fauci of covering up the potential funding.

Paul was called a conspiracy theorist at the time when making his accusations, but by March of this year even the FBI admitted that a lab leak of the type the senator described was “most likely” the origin.

https://www.city-journal.org/article/new-york-prosecutes-another-case-of-self-defense

You may have heard of the latest installment in New York City’s new fad—arresting people for defending themselves and others against violent criminals on the city’s decrepit subway system.

Last week, while riding a northbound J train through once-posh Williamsburg, Brooklyn, 20-year-old Jordan Williams and his girlfriend were accosted by Devictor Ouedraogo, a 36-year-old ex-con who had served three and a half years in prison for an attempted robbery. After completing his term, Ouedraogo was released to the custody of the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS), suggesting that he is or was an illegal immigrant.

According to eyewitnesses, Ouedraogo was verbally and physically harassing other passengers in the subway car before approaching Williams and his girlfriend, who remains unnamed and has not commented on the incident. After Ouedraogo propositioned his girlfriend, Williams verbally warned him to back off. Ouedraogo allegedly responded by punching both Williams and his girlfriend in the face.

In what sounds like a legal exercise of the right to self-defense under New York law, Williams then reportedly rose to protect himself, his girlfriend, and others from Ouedraogo, who fought back. During the altercation, Williams pulled out a pocketknife and stabbed Ouedraogo, who stumbled out of the subway at the next stop. He received medical attention but later died at a hospital. As with Jordan Neely, the homeless drug addict with a criminal record who died after being restrained in a chokehold by Daniel Penny last month, no autopsy of Ouedraogo has been released, fanning speculation that the results could indicate serious drug abuse.

Williams and his girlfriend continued their subway ride, but NYPD officers apprehended them at a station down the line shortly afterward. Williams was arrested and charged with manslaughter and “criminal possession of a weapon.” (Knives are forbidden on city transit, though this has not stopped knife incidents from increasing 126 percent over last year.)

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-american-lefts-fantastic-beasts-progressives-abortion-voting-book-ban-842c0d65?mod=opinion_lead_pos5

President Biden’s re-election announcement video warned that “MAGA extremists are lining up” to repeal “bedrock freedoms.” Uh oh—what freedoms? The extremists plan on “dictating what healthcare decisions women can make, banning books, and telling people who they can love, all by making it more difficult for you to be able to vote.”

It was a perfect expression of the paranoid state in which American progressivism finds itself. Leave aside for a moment the line about “dictating what healthcare decisions women can make,” a euphemistic reference to abortion. The other threats on Mr. Biden’s list—“banning” books, “telling people who they can love” and voter suppression—are literally nonexistent. Mr. Biden isn’t engaged in the time-honored political craft of exaggeration. He’s seeing things that aren’t there.

Liberal commentators have been ridiculing conservatives for fearing negligible or nonexistent threats for as long as I can remember: communist infiltration during the Cold War, Islamic extremism in the 2000s, illegal immigration in the 2010s, gender ideology in the 2020s. The right might or might not have exaggerated the urgency of these problems. But they were, or are, problems. That isn’t the case with an array of issues Democratic politicians and progressive intellectuals are exercised about in 2023. You often feel they’re so invested in the idea of a delusional right that they can’t perceive their own penchant for dreaming up nonexistent threats.

Mr. Biden is worried about book bans. The American Library Association recently claimed in a report that 2,571 books were “challenged” in American libraries last year. These challenges the ALA calls “attempted book bans,” nearly all of which involve a request by a patron that a public library or school library remove a book from its shelves because it is obscene or otherwise offensive. I’m not sure such requests are improper—young-adult fiction has become sexually avant-garde and shockingly coarse over the past two decades. Anyway, to ask that a taxpayer-supported library not facilitate children’s access to a sexually explicit book isn’t to “ban” it. An interested patron may buy it and read it in public if he wishes.

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2023/06/the_lefts_control_over_the_language_of_sexuality_finally_meets_resistance.html

George Orwell taught us that control over the terms used to discuss consequential subjects is a key element of tyranny.  It’s a lesson that the left took to heart as a weapon, not as a caution against despotism.

No better example exists today than the language of sex, which the left has asserted control over, immensely assisted by its dominance of the major media organs.  Calling genital mutilation “gender-affirming care” is the most blatant example of bizarro-world terminology since calling abortion “reproductive health care” and its advocacy as “choice.”  Virtually the entire medical, academic, and journalistic establishments employ the term “gender-affirming care” now.  

But finally, there is a growing movement that has attracted at least one piece of critical support in fighting back.  It started yesterday with a grassroots tweet from a therapist named James Esses:

When his point was picked up and extended to policy at Twitter (at least according to its owner, Elon Musk), attention to the term exploded:

My understanding of the import of the term “cis-” is that it denies any status as normal to what has been normal since the dawn of human consciousness: people (and the animal kingdom) come in two varieties, male and female.[i] Thanks to modern science, we know that these two (and two only) varieties are determined by chromosomes, equally binary, XY and XX.

This exchange led to further tweets making the point that the origin of the terminology “cis-” is perversely connected with pedophilia.

It’s a target rich environment for government waste, fraud, corruption and taxpayer abuse. 

Yet, today comes a breath of fresh air!

Thanks to our honorary chairman, the late U.S. Senator Dr. Tom Coburn, the federal government’s own internal watchdog must regularly search for duplications and inefficiencies in federal spending — and report them to Congress.

Back in 2010, when President Obama was negotiating yet another debt-ceiling deal, Coburn insisted that this simple reform be part of the agreement. 

Today, the Government Accountability Office reported that $46.8 billion of duplicative spending was saved during the past year. 

 Altogether, since 2010, the Coburn Rule has saved taxpayers a collective $600 BILLION!

As Senator Coburn himself said of these reports: “Turning this ready-made list of cuts into savings is one of the best ways Congress can regain the trust and confidence of the American people. No American – regardless of party or ideology – wants to see their tax dollars fund unnecessary duplication and bloat.” 

https://www.frontpagemag.com/our-next-president-must-fix-our-military-first/

The federal bureaucracy is a smoldering smorgasbord of corruption, incompetence, and pride flag-waving wokeness, and the big questions for the next Republican president are where to start fixing it and how. There are a few things that need to happen day one to begin imposing our iron discipline upon the out-of-control derp state – pardons for every persecuted victim of the two-tiered “justice” system, orders to comply with all GOP investigatory subpoenas immediately, and firing Chris Wray. But defeating the unofficial fourth branch of government requires focus and intensity. You cannot take it down overnight because it will fight back with support from the regime media. So, you need a quick and critical win.

That’s why the first thing you fix is the military. Getting a big win relatively quickly is substantively vital – we cannot be at the mercy of China, et al. – but beating the Pentagon’s perfumed princes also demonstrates that the bureaucracy can be beaten. Fixing the military checks both boxes.

People wonder how the military went from a glorious force for freedom to a disastrous parody of itself led by a be-medaled faculty lounge on a three-decade-losing streak. They should not wonder – the military is a hierarchical and centralized organization that reflects its commander’s intent. Obama and the people currently holding dust-puppet Biden’s strings treated our military the same way the chardonnay-soaked Munchausen mommies treated their boys and emasculated it. Trump, though a supporter of a strong military, was bedazzled by the badges, ribbons, and stars of the flag officers and did not disrupt the decline. We need a 180 degree turnaround. Soldiers do what commanders check, and right now, they are checking wokeness. That’s why the military is woke. And therefore broke.

But what if we had a commander-in-chief who checked combat readiness? Its hierarchical nature means that the military is the easiest and fastest federal institution to change back. But it will take the president devoting time and focus to the task; he can win a vast victory fast if he – the commander – demands it.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/whistleblowers-bidens-doj-stopped-prosecutors-from-going-after-hunter/

A gentle slap on the wrist. That is what President Biden’s son Hunter will likely face for lying about his drug use on a federal gun purchase form and for evading the payment of hundreds of thousands of dollars he owed in federal taxes.

After five years of a bogus investigation, Delaware U.S. Attorney David Weiss’ office announced on June 20th an incredibly lenient plea deal for offenses that have sent lesser mortals without a daddy in the Oval Office to prison. That is, unless the federal judge assigned to the case, U.S. District Court Judge Maryellen Noreika, sees through this miscarriage of justice and rejects the plea deal.

When asked about the plea deal for Hunter’s illegal acquisition of a gun and cheating on his taxes, President Biden said he was “very proud” of his son. Given the president’s zealous support for gun control and for going after well-heeled tax cheats, President Biden would have been better off saying nothing at all.

If Hunter Biden had taken full ownership of his crimes and agreed to serve some jail time in exchange for the prosecution’s agreement to accept his guilty plea, then maybe there would have been something to be proud of. But that is not what happened. Hunter is an unreformed grifter who has lived his adult life leveraging his father’s political power for personal advantage. The Biden Justice Department’s offer of a sweetheart deal to Hunter came about only because his father is in the White House.

Hunter took one for the entire Biden family syndicate by agreeing to plead guilty to narrow charges focused only on his own tax evasion and illegal gun acquisition. He avoided entangling his family members, including the “big guy,” in a web of far more serious charges like money laundering, bribery, and violation of the Foreign Agents Registration Act, despite strong evidence of such crimes. Perhaps that is why President Biden is so proud of his son.

https://issuesinsights.com/2023/06/23/russian-collusion-it-was-hillary-clinton-all-along/

After seven years of false charges and investigations of Donald Trump, both the FBI and Hillary Clinton walk away unscathed.

It was clear from the beginning that charges of “collusion” between Donald Trump and Russia during the 2016 election were phony — a cheap, and illegal, political trick. But they did their damage. While Trump beat Hillary Clinton, there has since been a non-stop Democratic Party-led campaign to tar him as a “traitor” or worse.

And, as the recent testimony of Special Counsel John Durham to Congress shows, Clinton lay behind this scheme to defraud American voters and throw an election. So, today, despite powerful evidence of official wrongdoing, we’re back where we were some seven years ago.

By the way, you might notice the headline above has quotation marks. That’s because it was the exact headline we placed on an editorial way back in August 2018. We didn’t need to change it a bit.

We wrote then: “It’s beginning to look as if claims of monstrous collusion between Russian officials and U.S. political operatives were true. But it wasn’t Donald Trump who was guilty of Russian collusion. It was Hillary Clinton and U.S. intelligence officials who worked with Russians and others to entrap Trump.”

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/adam-schiff-censured-house-false-allegations-trump-russia-collusion

The House of Representatives voted Wednesday to censure Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., for pushing claims that former President Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign colluded with Russia — a vote that made Schiff just the third member of the House to be censured since the turn of the century.

The resolution passed 213-209 in a vote — every Republican voted for it except for six who voted “present,” and every Democrat voted against it.

Immediately following the vote, Democrats gathered on the floor and chanted “Shame!” and “Disgrace!” as House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., tried to gavel the House in order for several minutes. Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., was heard calling McCarthy a “spiteful coward” and accusing him of “weak leadership.”

McCarthy then asked Schiff to present himself in the well of the House, and Democrats clapped and cheered as he approached. After being interrupted several times by Democrats, McCarthy said, “I have all night.”

Schiff then stood in well of the House as required by the resolution, and was hugged and cheered by dozens of Democrats who surrounded him. The measure also requires the House Committee on Ethics to investigate Schiff’s “falsehoods, misrepresentations, and abuses of sensitive information.”

It was the second time the House tried to pass a resolution censuring Schiff from Rep. Anna Paulina Luna, R-Fla. A resolution from Luna failed on the House floor last week because it recommended a fine against Schiff of $16 million, which Democrats and 20 Republicans opposed.

With that language removed, the resolution was able to pass on a party-line vote, which Luna said was needed to fight back against Schiff’s “lies” about Trump.

“As chair of the House Intelligence Committee, Adam Schiff launched an all-out political campaign built on baseless distortions against a sitting U.S. president, at the expense of every single citizen in this country and the honor of the House of Representatives,” Luna said before the vote. “With access to sensitive information unavailable to most members of Congress and certainly not accessible to the American people, Schiff abused his privileges, claiming to know the truth while leaving Americans in the dark about his web of lies… lies so severe that they altered the course of the country forever.”