RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2022/12/covid_communism_has_been_contagious.html

Now that we’re approaching the three-year anniversary of COVID-1984’s global demolition (or “Great Reset” in World Economic Forum parlance), reality looks very different from what many people once perceived it to be.  Raise your hand if you thought “free” nations would declare the authority to close millions of small businesses until they went bankrupt and folded.  Or whether never-before-used, experimental cocktails of mRNA “vaccine” would be coercively injected into citizens.  Did you think governments would conspire to cover up “vaccine”-related injuries and deaths?  Did you expect that the Canadian government would take the unprecedented steps of invoking the Emergencies Act and seizing the private bank accounts of Freedom Convoy protesters in order to intimidate peaceful Canadians and quell dissent?  Did you predict that in the United States and throughout the West, public debate would be targeted and censored if that speech contradicted governments’ official public health “narratives”?  Did you know that COVID communism would end up being more contagious than the virus?

If you still have your hand raised, then you are part of a humble minority who were worried about the West’s accelerating attacks against personal liberty even before the rise of COVID-1984.  If you had your eyes unexpectedly opened during the last three years, though, it is all the better to have you seeing clearly now.  Around the world, the WuFlu pandemic and governments’ coordinated responses to use this health scare as a transparent pretense for ushering in the WEF’s beloved “Great Reset” have awakened hundreds of millions of people who might otherwise still be sleeping.  While our puppet master oligarchs have achieved a great deal in a short time, their in-your-face mobilization efforts to “fundamentally transform” the world have also commanded new, unwanted attention.  A growing share of the population finally understands that we are in an ongoing battle between self-government and global government and that friends of freedom must dig in their heels for the long haul.

https://thespectator.com/topic/deep-state-donald-trump-saga-january-6/

As I have said before, I hope that the new Congress, which begins its session in just a couple of weeks, will continue the work of the January 6 Committee, minus Liz Cheney and the other kangaroos. The New York Times, in its best slant-the-news-while-appearing-magisterial modality, described the Committee’s 100-plus-page “Executive Summary” as a “report into the effort to overturn the 2020 election.” But surely the far greater attempt to impact the 2020 election was the FBI’s infiltration of Twitter and other social media platforms, Mark Zuckerberg’s half a billion dollars distributed like alms to NeverTrump sororities in battleground cities, etc., etc.

All that should be the work of the new Congress. The old Congress wasn’t interested in the truth. They were interested reminding us plebs who is in charge — hint, it is not “We the People” — and, above all, they were committed, as Lonesome Liz Cheney herself put it, to “making sure that Donald Trump never gets near the Oval Office again.”

Someday, when all the smoke clears, future historians will be busy investigating how it was that a flamboyant real estate developer called Donald Trump went from being the most improbable presidential candidate since Andrew Jackson (or, maybe, since the founding of the republic) to being the most investigated and calumniated president in history.

The entire bureaucratic machinery of the state was surreptitiously mobilized against this one individual. It is only gradually that we are learning about this. Remember the Russia Collusion Delusion? The country spent tens of millions of dollars conducting a sham investigation that hobbled Trump during his first term.

https://www.nysun.com/article/the-founders-would-have-been-appalled-at-the-january-6-committee?utm_

Democrats violated the prohibition on attainder to try to force a prosecution of President Trump.

The final act of the January 6 committee, voted on in broad daylight, represents, to us, the final act in a process that the Founders of America had tried to prohibit — a process of attainder, meaning a trial on criminal charges by the legislature. It is prohibited to the Congress in Article I, Section 9. And by our lights, referring President Trump and his colleagues for criminal prosecution is an evasion by the Congress.

We understand that we are the only newspaper banging this drum (not an entirely novel situation for us). Nor are we without illusion in respect of how serious the moment is. It’s decidedly possible that the Justice Department will seek an indictment against Mr. Trump and alleged confederates and try them on charges that could put them away for years. That would be deeply divisive, as the Wall Street Journal argues, though a jury would have the last word.

It might — it’s a long shot — be possible for Mr. Trump to press a constitutional objection, double jeopardy, on one charge on which he was referred, incitement to insurrection. That’s because of Article I, Section 3 of the Constitution, which says the “party convicted” in an impeachment trial shall nevertheless be liable and subject to indictment, trial, judgment and punishment, according to law. It might present a problem in prosecuting Mr. Trump.

https://amgreatness.com/2022/12/19/what-to-watch-for-in-january-6-report/

After several delays, the January 6 select committee will belatedly release the full findings of its 18-month “investigation” into the Capitol protest on Wednesday. Controversy over the contents of the final report led to infighting among staff. Strong-arming by lame duck Representative Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.), who wanted to focus almost exclusively on the conduct of Donald Trump and omit criticism of law enforcement, prompted some investigators to quit the committee in protest.

Family quarrels were set aside just in time for Christmas. Committee members will gift the Biden regime and news media with a stocking stuffed with all things January 6—shiny toys for all the naughty girls and boys desperate to sustain outrage over a four-hour political disturbance that took place nearly two years ago. Visions of perp walks now dance in their heads.

The public, however, should brace for a blizzard of false accusations, cherry-picked quotes, uncorroborated testimony, and twisted interpretations of the law to substantiate the claim that Trump engineered an “insurrection” in a vain attempt to remain in office. And contrary to the first narrative that gripped regime mouthpieces—that the president incited the crowd with his speech at the Ellipse that afternoon—Trump’s “attempted coup,” as the committee describes the events of January 6, is now said to have been months in the making.

But like the drunk uncle at Christmas dinner, committee members had to spoil their own surprise gift (to the extent any exists in the report) by holding their last performance Monday to announce criminal referrals against Trump for insurrection, obstruction of an official proceeding, conspiracy, and perjury.

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2022/12/the_most_damning_twitter_file_just_dropped_highlighting_fbi_wrongdoing.html

Michael Shellenberger has published the latest expose on Twitter, and this time, it’s not Twitter that looks corrupt; it’s the FBI, which knowingly lied to social media outlets about the Hunter Biden laptop. It’s impossible to believe that it did so for any other reason than to affect the outcome of the 2020 presidential election by hiding Joe Biden’s corruption.

Let’s get the most important point out first: The FBI knew at all relevant times that Hunter Biden’s hard drive was the real deal and that every bit of information on it—crooked dealings with foreign governments, money laundering for Joe, sexually obsessive videos, drug usage—was entirely legitimate. Nevertheless, the FBI aggressively worked with Twitter and other social media outlets to suppress this fact by falsely claiming that the hard drive was “Russian disinformation” or a hack.

Shellenberger’s Twitter thread exposing this manifest election interference is extremely long, so I’ll summarize the high points. The thread itself is at the end of this post.

1. FBI officials always knew that Biden’s hard drive was real.

2. The day before the NY Post wrote about the laptop, the FBI was reaching out to Yoel Roth on its special one-way FBITwitter line.

3. The NY Post publishes its completely accurate exposé, which Twitter and other social media companies immediately censor. What happened? The FBI.

4. Long before the NY Post story, when word was getting out about Hunter’s laptop and its intersection with Joe Biden, the FBI continuously told Twitter and Facebook to dismiss the information as a Russian “hack and leak” operation, even though the FBI conceded it had no information of hacks and leaks in 2020.

5. Twitter itself had almost no evidence of Russian intrusion on the site. The FBI, though, was so insistent about getting Twitter to share what little info it had that even Roth pushed back. Nevertheless, in Jul7 2020, the FBI gets temporary top secret clearances for Twitter executives to “share information” about election threats. The continuous pressure primed Roth to believe anything the FBI said about alleged “Russian disinformation.”

https://freebeacon.com/columns/sbf-virtue-signaling-scammer/

The former head of crypto exchange FTX, Sam Bankman-Fried, aka SBF, stands accused of many crimes. But no one has ever charged him with reticence.

Between 2019, when he first appeared on the scene, and December 12, 2022, when Bahamian police took him into custody—conveniently preventing him from testifying before Congress the next day—the 30-year-old MIT graduate and former billionaire would not shut up.

No audience was too small. No subject was beyond the pale. Given the opportunity, SBF would announce his veganism, discuss his fashionably liberal politics, and outline the tenets of his utilitarian worldview, his philosophy of “effective altruism.” His remarkable and short-lived career is a case study in high ideals serving as cover for low motives. It also illustrates the double-standard that liberals apply to business scandals.

Words poured from SBF’s disheveled self, faster than you can mint a bitcoin. Last year his net worth soared, reaching an estimated $20 billion. He ascended to the top rank of political donors, giving millions to Joe Biden in 2020 and contributing more money to Democratic candidates in 2022 than everyone but George Soros. Friendly media profiled “The Mysterious Cryptocurrency Magnate Who Became One of Biden’s Biggest Donors” and “A Crypto Emperor’s Vision: No Pants, His Rules.” “I have a lot of things to say,” he told New York magazine.

That’s for sure. SBF admitted to obsessive compulsion, to attention deficit disorder, to depression, and to playing Magic: The Gathering well into adulthood. He would jabber away on social media, during video game sessions, at investor conferences, and on television and podcasts. Rumors swirled about his love life, which may or may not have involved something called a “polycule.”

https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/elon-musk-remain-twitter-ceo-keep-free-speech-fight

Elon Musk is a hero of our times. Risking his personal safety and fortune, he bought Twitter and pushed back against the Left’s repugnant effort to shut down Americans’ freedom of expression. In addition, he has exposed the dangerous collusion between our social media giants and the FBI, which appears to have subverted our elections.

Now Musk is threatening to call it quits. This must not happen.

In an online poll, Musk asked the Twitterverse whether he should “step down” as head of Twitter, and promised to abide by the outcome. He tweeted soon after the launch of the referendum: “As the saying goes, be careful what you wish, as you might get it.”

The bad news for Musk fans is that 57% of the 17 million people who participated said he should indeed quit his post; 43% said he should not. 

Will the quixotic entrepreneur follow through, and abandon his $44 billion undertaking? Will he allow the Leftist thought police to resume their control of what Americans can see and read? 

We can only hope he changes course, or somehow accedes to the letter of his self-imposed plebiscite without actually abandoning the fight. Nothing could be more important.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-jan-6-inquirys-not-so-grand-finale-donald-trump-criminal-referral-justice-department-11671488663?mod=hp_opin_pos_1

The House Jan. 6 committee decided Monday that the best way to cap its 18 months of work would be a political gesture. It thus referred President Trump to the Justice Department for potential criminal prosecution for his efforts to reverse the 2020 election, which culminated in the Capitol riot.

What is this supposed to accomplish? A Congressional referral to the Justice Department has all the legal force of an interoffice memo. Attorney General Merrick Garland has appointed special counsel Jack Smith to investigate Mr. Trump’s schemes to stay in office. The Jan. 6 committee’s loud public intervention makes his job more complicated, given the clear partisan context.

The House Jan. 6 inquiry has done useful work gathering documents and putting witnesses under oath. The wiser course was to let the established facts speak for themselves, while releasing full transcripts of its interviews to provide a complete public record.

***

The questions for Mr. Smith are whether Mr. Trump’s reckless conduct was criminal and whether indicting him is prudent and good for the country. The House referral cites laws against insurrection, obstruction of an official proceeding, conspiracy to defraud the United States, and conspiracy to make a false statement to the government. But getting a conviction requires a unanimous jury, and the House theories of the case have serious problems based on the current public evidence.

https://amgreatness.com/2022/12/18/10-steps-to-save-america/

Most Americans know something has gone terribly wrong—and very abruptly—with the United States. They are certain that our wounds are almost all self-inflicted. The current pathologies are not a result of a natural disaster, an exhaustion of natural resources, plagues, or an existential war. 

Crushing national debt and annual deficits, spiraling food and fuel costs amid “normal” seven-percent-plus annual inflation, bread-and-circuses entitlements, a nonexistent border, a resurgence of racial tribalism, pandemic violent criminality, and humiliation abroad—all these pathologies are easily cited as symptoms of a sick patient. Our crises are not as the Left maintains—a nine-person Supreme Court, the Electoral College, or the filibuster—all distractions from existential problems the Left largely created. 

So, what are the therapies and prognoses for America?

In the spirit of constructive rather than blanket criticism, here is a partial, 10-point plan of national recovery.

Cut the Debt 

Americans’ national debt is now $31 trillion. That is about 123 percent of current GDP. The liabilities are unsustainable. We run annual deficits of $1.6 trillion. These financial obligations will eventually ensure that rising interest rates to service the debt crowd out essential spending for national defense and the general welfare. 

Or in extremis, in the not too distant future, the government will be forced to default on what it owes the “rich” bondholders and foreign debt holders. Or the government will be forced to confiscate private wealth, as for example occasional crazy suggestions to nationalize and absorb 401(k)k retirement plans into the soon-to-be-insolvent Social Security system. Or the state will simply print millions of dollars to pay off obligations, Weimar-style.

In addict style, the more we come to realize that our binging habit cannot go on, the less we can practice self-restraint. And the more it is the case that those who receive government redistributions outnumber those who pay the majority of federal income taxes, the less hope there remains to avoid insolvency.

In 2010 then-President Barack Obama appointed a bipartisan “National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform.” More commonly  remembered as the Simpson-Bowles commission, after chairmen Senators Alan Simpson (R-Wyo.) and Erskine Bowles (D-N.C.), it included private citizens and elected officials. 

The commission recommended radical tax simplifications and some cuts—along with reductions in tax deductions and credits, an increase in the gas tax, restraints on entitlement spending, and various spending caps. 

Obama and Congress ultimately rejected the recommendations and the commission’s blueprint died. But had it succeeded, the current debt would have long been frozen at the 2014 level of $17 trillion—with annual reductions ensuring that this coming year 2023 the debt would have plunged to $10 trillion and then disappeared in another decade. 

Something like Simpson-Bowles could still stop the madness and avoid the natural corrective on the horizon of financial collapse. Note that federal tax revenue has increased almost every year since 2010. Sometimes it grows by nearly a half-trillion dollars per annum, even as we sink deeper in debt. Our crisis, then, is one of spending what we do not have rather than one of declining revenue.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/the-fbis-heart-of-darkness/

“Comey was a neophyte at partisan hackery compared to our current Attorney General. AG Merrick Garland is the heart of darkness behind much of the current politicization rampant in the halls of FBI HQ.”

Our military and federal law enforcement structures are rotten. The culture of the armed forces has been corrupted by subversive campaigns to degrade our ability to confront, deter, and destroy the adversary — particularly the Chinese.

COVID mandates were designed to cull those who aren’t automatons. Liberal, compromised politicians have waged a psyops war to demoralize our troops by foisting humiliation (i.e. the Afghanistan “withdrawal” debacle) and confusion (the LGBT identity psychosis) on our military men and women. It’s a rust that erodes the chain of command and oxidizes discipline and good order.

The culture of the armed forces has been corrupted just like the culture at the FBI — by the same people.

In many respects, the FBI is a paramilitary organization. It shares a deference to chain of command like the military. And, it’s a massive bureaucracy staffed by cumbersome layers of management. It’s a top down organization just like the military.

“Defund the FBI,” has become a fashionable trope. But this time, oddly enough, the rant is coming from the right, not the left, having just run out of hot air for “defund the police.”

Would you say it’s reasonable to sloganeer for “defund the Marine Corps” just because there are politicized elements inside the Pentagon? The statement seems absurd on its face. In real, practical terms how would you replace the Marine Corps? And, even if you could perform such a herculean task, would it be any better than the storied branch of the Armed Forces that currently exists?