RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://thespectator.com/topic/how-desantis-can-de-program-the-blue-states/

Four years ago this week, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis presciently warned in his first inaugural address that big-spending, high-taxing states were inspiring “productive citizens to flee.” DeSantis came into office with a flimsy mandate of just four tenths of one percent at a time when Florida had 257,175 more registered Democrats than Republicans. Republicans now outnumber Democrats in the state by more than 356,000 and, in the wake of his resounding twenty-point win in November, DeSantis’s inaugural address last Tuesday felt like a warm-up for the 2024 presidential campaign.

In his 2019 speech, DeSantis spoke to Floridians, but he seemed to be addressing all Americans, urging us to reconsider Florida as a model rather than as the butt of Florida Man jokes. Republican hopes in 2024 may hinge on this effort to recast the Sunshine State. It won’t be easy, but Florida can be re-branded, though DeSantis will likely need a secret weapon he may not have considered.

Though the media likes to diminish DeSantis as a Trump knockoff, his concise, sixteen-minute address was as focused and substantive as Trump’s speeches are a gallimaufry of complaints and rants. Trump is the businessman, but DeSantis is the one who is all business. Trump uttered nearly 9,000 words in his campaign launch, while DeSantis’s speech weighed in at 1,649. Though it obviously wasn’t a campaign launch, it still sounded like one at times.

“When the world lost its mind — when common sense suddenly became an uncommon virtue — Florida was a refuge of sanity, a citadel of freedom for our fellow Americans and even for people around the world,” he said.

DeSantis spoke of the “historic number of families” who have moved to what he called a “promised land of sanity,” one of law and order, fiscal restraint, and no Covid mandates. Freedom, a word he didn’t use once in his 2019 address, was the key theme of the speech. He also never mentioned the word “woke” four years ago, but his pledge to keep Florida as the place where “woke goes to die” was his biggest applause line of the day.

https://issuesinsights.com/2023/01/11/voters-want-gop-led-house-to-focus-on-budget-immigration-taxes-and-energy-ii-tipp-poll/

In theory, the newly elected Republican House of Representatives should be working full speed ahead on the nation’s business. But because it’s taken so long to name a House speaker, it’s been delayed. Even so, Americans have a full agenda for Congress once it gets under way, the most recent TIPP Poll data show.

We asked Americans specifically what they wanted the new Congress to focus on during its first 100 days, the traditional time for a new group of lawmakers to unveil what their priorities and focus will be.

The list came from an online Golden/TIPP poll taken from Dec. 7-9 among 1,094 registered voters and having a +/-2.9 percentage point margin of error. It asked voters a simple question: “What do you want the Republican House of Representatives to focus on in the first 100 days?” Respondents were then given 15 possible answers.

Here are the top five:

“Budget, government funding, government shutdown” (37%); “Immigration/Border legislation” (36%); “Tax legislation” (27%); “Energy legislation” (26%); “Abortion legislation” (25%).

The middle five show the public is in something of an investigative mood:

“Impeach President Biden” (21%); “Investigations and hearings about Hunter Biden laptop” (21%); “Investigations and hearings about election integrity/January 6” (also 21%); “Impeach officials like Attorney General Merrick Garland (for Mar-a-Lago raid) (19%); “Investigations and hearings about IRS targeting” (19%).

https://amgreatness.com/2023/01/09/the-shameful-exploitation-of-brian-sicknicks-death/

The second anniversary of the events of January 6, 2021 came and went last week, fortunately, without a copycat attempt by behorned furries and selfie-taking Indiana meemaws to “overthrow democracy” and whatnot.

While most people somehow have managed to move on with their lives, official Washington remains fixated on the four-hour disturbance that took place two years ago. What can only be described as “insurrection psychosis” continues to grip the Biden regime, congressional Democrats, and the national news media in yet another example of the vast differences between the priorities of the ruling class and the American public.

Joe Biden held a solemn ceremony at the White House to commemorate January 6 and present more presidential awards to some of the day’s “heroes”—recipients just happened to include several individuals who participated in the January 6 select committee’s televised performances. It was the first time Biden bestowed the Presidential Citizens’ Medal, an honor reserved for those “who have performed exemplary deeds of service for their country,” Biden said.

The ceremony in reality served as an opportunity for Biden to again perpetuate one of the biggest lies about January 6: that numerous police officers, including Capitol Police Officer Brian Sicknick, died as a result of the Capitol protest. 

As a military officer read a brief summary of Sicknick’s military and law enforcement career, Biden held hands with Sicknick’s mother, Gladys, in attendance with Sicknick’s father to receive a posthumous award on behalf of their son. 

“He lost his life protecting our elected representatives, upholding the will of the American people, and defending our Constitution,” a military aide said from the podium in the East Room on Friday. “For his service and his ultimate sacrifice, we the people honor U.S. Capitol Police Officer Brian D. Sicknick.”

But that isn’t what happened. Sicknick suffered two strokes caused by a blood clot near his brain stem; the D.C. coroner concluded Sicknick died of natural causes on January 7, 2021 at the age of 42. Rather than allow his family the chance to grieve with dignity and in privacy, the media immediately seized on his untimely passing to portray Trump supporters as cop killers.

https://issuesinsights.com/2023/01/10/lets-find-out-what-the-democrats-have-been-up-to/

The 15-round vote to finally elect a speaker of the House was, we were told by the political left, an embarrassment and evidence that the Republicans are untrustworthy. It was in reality our system in action and it produced at least two important outcomes, both of which will cause discomfort for the Democrats and their communications wing known as the mainstream media.

Over the weekend, we learned that in order for Rep. Kevin McCarthy to earn their votes, the 20 holdout GOP lawmakers got a promise from the California moderate that two special investigative panels would be created. One would look into “the origins of the COVID-19 virus,” the other at the “weaponization” of federal law enforcement agencies, such as the Justice Department and FBI, Just The News reported. The panels will be select subcommittees, one in the House Judiciary Committee, the other in the House Oversight Committee.

As important as both of those subcommittees will be, there is great need for more probes. There are decades of Democratic corruption and malfeasance that need to be exposed to the public, untangled and then removed.

Look at the IRS again, this time at the agency’s targeted harassment of the poorest taxpayers who cannot defend themselves from the leviathan, and do it in light of the 87,000 new IRS employees that will be hired through the Democrats’ ​​Inflation Reduction Act passed in August.

Dig not just into the origin of COVID-19 but also the lockdowns, and vaccine and mask mandates. Such egregious violations of liberty should never happen again in this country. But they will, the next time likely in an effort to protect the climate, if the Republicans don’t start making a hard stand against government encroachment, and hold the lockdown-mask-up maniacs accountable.

https://amgreatness.com/2023/01/07/the-new-mccarthyism/

“If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again.” That seems to be Kevin McCarthy’s favorite mantra. Friday night, on the 15th vote for speaker of the House, he finally got his moist little palm around Nancy Pelosi’s still-warm gavel. Welcome to the new Republican-ish speaker of the House!

The contest was brutal, occasionally absurd, and the occasion of hilarity and consternation among the punditocracy on both the Right and the Left. The Left clucked their tongues about the “chaos” on view on the other side of the aisle. Some among the GOP agreed and wondered why “their side” could not govern as effectively as the Democrats. Would Nancy Pelosi have put up with this level of dissension among the Democratic rank and file? Others said, no, no, the 20 freedom caucus members (and others) holding up the inevitable were just giving the world a reality show, live-action look at how “democracy” (if not quite Our Democracy™) works and should work.

I am of two minds about that. My own take is that McCarthy is an unreliable ally for those on the Right. He was only too happy to shovel billions of your and your children’s money to Ukraine while doing little to secure our southern border. McCarthy is from California, so, naturally, he likes to spend money. He even got behind such improvident and mendacious schemes as raiding Medicare to pay for the U.S. Postal Service. He was happy to fund the January 6 kangaroo court, grant amnesty to illegal immigrants, and support mandates for the useless—indeed, dangerous—COVID vaccine for the military. In plain terms, his voting record is only intermittently conservative.

Kevin McCarthy, in short, is a swamp creature masquerading as a swamp critic. The Swamp loves its own, and so it was no surprise that McCarthy eventually prevailed, just barely. He did so at considerable cost to the power of the speaker’s office but also considerable benefit to people who care about accountability.

https://www.americanthinker.com/

Watching the political Establishment freak out over twenty Republican members of Congress voting their own consciences in the election for House speaker has been hilarious.  Karl Rove, Dan Crenshaw, Sean Hannity, and just about anyone else whose sinecure and preeminence depend upon religious devotion to Washington’s status quo sounded like little Greta Thunberg whining, “How dare they!”  Oh, my goodness, some congressional representatives took it upon themselves to vote as they believe their district constituents would desire and not as the Uniparty nobles who insist on ruling the nation from their petty thrones demand.  Whatever shall we do if this lowly democratic spirit sweeps the land?

This is what’s wrong with the People’s House, where it is still occasionally possible to elect an iconoclast unbeholden to the Leviathan’s palace guard despite mail-in ballot fraud and outside money operations distorting local races: sometimes a freethinking heretic shows up in the nation’s capital with the beastly notion that a vote is more than ornamental pageantry garnishing a foregone conclusion.  Weren’t these Republican holdouts properly instructed that Kevin McCarthy is the Uniparty’s man?  An empty vessel of mediocre intellect and flaccid beliefs, Kevin is surely the only Republican who can lead the House!  We must bring McCarthyism back to Washington, or D.C. will become home to the right-wing nuts!

What a spectacle this whole affair has been.  Pretend President Biden and Senate Republicans agree: forcing the world to watch American legislators partake in repeated democratic votes without devolving into bloodshed (despite the anger management issues of Mike Rogers) is so embarrassing.  It is much more elegant when ballots can be printed, signatures forged, and elections certified according to the wishes of the ruling elites.  The appearance of democracy in the absence of it is ideal.  The practice of actual democracy would bring the whole government’s house of cards crashing down!

https://amgreatness.com/2023/01/08/a-rendezvous-with-rwanda/

“Despite being Black, he [Rep. Byron Donalds] supports a policy agenda intent on upholding and perpetuating white supremacy.”—Representative Cori Bush (D-Mo.)

“Larry Elder [former candidate for governor of California] is the Black face of white supremacy. You’ve been warned.”—Erika Smith, Los Angeles Times columnist

America is an increasingly multiracial society. Despite its early history of slavery and racial segregation, and ongoing bias and tensions, the United States remains one of the few contemporary multiracial constitutional systems that have actually worked. Yet recently few have appreciated that achievement.

Usually multiracial nations and empires—Yugoslavia, the former Soviet Union, the Austro-Hungarian, and Ottoman empires—require some level of coercion incompatible with a democratic constitution to force calm. Brazil, India, Lebanon, Nigeria, and Kenya  may be currently multiracial democracies in theory, but in fact they are often sectarian and tribal cauldrons.

In most such places, pride, solidarity—and even safety—are only found through common religious, ethnic, and racial bonds that become all-encompassing. The individual’s primary allegiance to each particular warring group inevitably becomes incompatible with every other’s overriding loyalties.

The United States is insidiously nearing that abyss. It has all but renounced its old commitment to the melting-pot, and a “content-of-our-character” ideal of assimilation and integration within a common culture. But as we obsess on race and accordingly separate, do we really know the final consequences of what the diversity/equity/inclusion tribalism actually entails?

The first rule of tribalism is that the racial or ethnic collective superimposes solidarity over the individual, who then becomes a mere cog in racial-political wheel. Conservatives such as Larry Elder or Byron Donalds become especially despised as examples of successful individuals who reject tribal labels and loyalties. Are LeBron James, Senator Tim Scott (R-S.C.), and Representative Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) all to be black comrades first and quite different individuals second—if at all? In the same manner, do Adam Schiff, Devin Nunes, Donald Trump, and Mark Milley all share identical and overriding loyalty to “whiteness,” to the degree that we forget about their individual personalities?

https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/how-the-fbi-hacked-twitter-lee-smith

After journalist Matt Taibbi published the first batch of internal Twitter documents known as the Twitter files, he tweeted that the company’s deputy general counsel, James Baker, was vetting them.

“The news that Baker was reviewing the ‘Twitter files’ surprised everyone involved,” Taibbi wrote. That apparently included even Twitter’s new boss, Elon Musk, who added that Baker may have deleted some of the files he was supposed to be reviewing.

Baker had been the top lawyer at the FBI when it interfered in the 2016 presidential election. News that he might have been burying evidence of the spy service’s use of a social media company to interfere with the 2020 election, is rightly setting off alarm bells.

In fact, the FBI’s penetration of Twitter constituted just one part of a much larger intelligence operation—one in which the bureau offshored the machinery it used to interfere in the 2016 election and embedded it within the private sector. The resulting behemoth, still being built today, is a public-private consortium made up of U.S. intelligence agencies, Big Tech companies, civil society institutions, and major media organizations that has become the world’s most powerful spy service—one that was powerful enough to disappear the former president of the United States from public life, and that is now powerful enough to do the same or worse to anyone else it chooses. 

Records from the Twitter files show that the FBI paid Twitter nearly $3.5 million, apparently for actions in connection with the 2020 election and nominally a payout for the platform’s work censoring “dangerous” content that had been flagged as mis- or disinformation. That “dangerous” content notably included material that threatened Joe Biden and implicated U.S. officials who have been curating the Biden family’s foreign corruption for decades.

https://amgreatness.com/2023/01/05/january-6-a-day-that-will-live-in-alchemy/

A few weeks before Christmas, federal authorities arrested a Washington state couple for their participation in the Capitol protest on January 6, 2021.

The FBI investigated Scott and Holly Christensen for more than 14 months; agents interrogated coworkers, scoured social media accounts, reviewed hours of security video from inside the Capitol building and body cam footage from law enforcement, and issued a search warrant to confirm the couple’s whereabouts that day. 

“According to records obtained through legal process served on AT&T, cellphones associated with [the Christensens] were identified as having utilized a cell site consistent with providing service to a geographic area that included the interior of the United States Capitol building, on January 6, 2021, from 2:43 EST to 3:51 EST. AT&T records confirm that both devices belong to Scott CHRISTENSEN of Puyallup, Washington,” an unidentified agent on the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force wrote in a November 2022 criminal complaint.

So, what exactly did these alleged “domestic terrorists” do? They entered the Capitol through open doors as police officers stood by. Carrying no weapons, the couple took photos inside the Rotunda and wandered through some hallways; surveillance video shows Holly Christensen talking to a Capitol police officer. At another point, Scott Christensen chatted with a D.C. Metro police officer, a conversation captured on a body-worn camera. Police led the pair toward an exit door about 45 minutes later without arresting them.

For that uneventful jaunt through a public building that posed a threat to no one, the Christensens will now be destroyed by the Department of Justice, the federal court system, and the news media. Although both were charged with nonviolent misdemeanors—the same four offenses that represent the overwhelming majority of charges—journalists dishonestly portrayed the couple as traitors to their country. “Washington state couple to face Jan. 6 insurrection charges,” an Associated Press headline blared on December 12.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/a-few-new-years-resolutions-for-the-fbi/

Last year was a complete disaster for the men and women of the FBI. They’ve been betrayed by apparatchiks at DOJ, led by the mole-like Attorney General Merrick Garland who has behaved like the Grand Inquisitor to Joe Biden’s very real persecution of everything constitutional. Aside from Jim Crow — another Democrat party initiative —our civil rights have never been more threatened, abused, or abrogated.

FBI Director Christopher Wray has presided over some of the most pernicious abuses of power in the history of the FBI. The Watergate scandal, an egregious invasion of executive privilege for which no one has been held accountable, and resulted in the impeachment of President Nixon, pales in comparison to the 2022 list of malfeasance.

The invasion of Mar-a-Lago by a gestapo-like phalanx of FBI agents, directed by DOJ and FBI HQ politicians was breathtaking in its unabashed hubris. And, the deeply collusive behavior of former and current FBI agents at Twitter is profoundly disturbing. It must be noted, however, that though conspiracy theories are tempting to entertain, because they’re simplistic, it is far more likely that these bad actors aren’t conspirators so much as they share a common liberal world view.

Furthermore, it’s not necessarily a bad thing to have former FBI agents working at a social media company. In fact, the FBI does some very necessary work by liaising with big tech to share threat information and collaborate on solutions.

As the new Congress is sworn in, there may be some cause for a cautious optimism. The new Republican chairman of the Judiciary Committee, Jim Jordan of Ohio, and Republican James Comer of Kentucky, who leads Oversight and Reform have both promised hearings. Well, we’ve heard that before. The Wall Street Journal’s Kim Strasser reports that Republicans are considering the creation of a new Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government. Again, we’ve heard that before.

At this point, it’s a lot of talk. Some real action would be a welcome change from the mostly inert Republican Party.