RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.spiked-online.com/2022/04/30/the-great-american-free-speech-panic/

The American elites have come up with all kinds of convoluted reasons as to why it’s good and proper for Silicon Valley to wield its unprecedented power against those they disagree with. But those reasons keep changing in revealing ways. Before this week the argument was that Twitter can set whatever speech policies it likes because it’s a business and anyone who doesn’t like it can go elsewhere. Now they’ve suddenly changed their tune. And for all their deeply felt concern about misinformation the elites have turned a blind eye in recent years to how their war on misinformation has produced its own kind of misinformation – such as the hasty branding of the Hunter Biden story or the Covid lab-leak theory as bonkers conspiracy theories, only for it to turn out later that there was actually something to them.

This has become a vicious circle. Some of the genuinely mad movements unleashed in recent years – from QAnon to Stop the Steal to Covid anti-vax guff – are actually a demonstration of a well-worn argument against censorship. Namely, that censoring bad ideas doesn’t make them go away and can give them a glamour they do not deserve. Censorship has a way of making people think they’re on to something. Combine this with a mainstream media that now routinely prizes The Narrative over the facts – calling BLM riots ‘mostly peaceful’ and Kyle Rittenhouse a ‘white supremacist’ – and you’ve got a toxic mix. The crisis of trust in the mainstream has sent many looking for answers at the margins. And the more that do, the more censorship is meted out.

But then again this was never really about misinformation, was it? This is about America’s ruling class becoming deeply sceptical about one of America’s founding values, and deeply sceptical about their fellow citizens. So-called liberal elites simply do not believe that ordinary people can be trusted to sort truth from illusion and are now convinced that some higher power must vet their reading material for them. They believe that the answer to bad speech is not more speech, but ruthless corporate censorship. They have convinced themselves that free speech is a threat to civilisation, rather than the core of civilisation.

Remember the date: April 27, 2022

That’s when the mask came off the creaky Orwellian juggernaut that is the Biden Administration. 

The senile rictus disappeared and something far more threatening took its place. 

In Nineteen Eighty-Four, George Orwell called the enforcement mechanism of his totalitarian propaganda regime the “Ministry of Truth.” Appearing before the House Appropriations Subcommittee, the ironically named Department of Homeland Security was slightly more subtle. 

Too many people have read Nineteen Eighty-Four. Calling a government-funded effort to suppress criticism of the regime the “Ministry of Truth” would cause people to worry and complain. Instead, Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas announced the creation of the “Disinformation Governance Board.” 

No, I am not making that up. 

I sympathize with Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, who said he wondered whether this new assault on free expression was a “belated April Fools’ joke.”

Unfortunately, it’s not.  

Granted, it is as preposterous as an April Fools’ Day prank. So is its director, Nina Jankowicz, a 33-year-old anti-Trump hack, who is described—God help us—as an “internationally recognized expert on disinformation.” You can judge how expert by looking up her truly embarrassing videos on the subject (among many other subjects). 

So what will the Disinformation Governance Board actually do—besides, I mean, provide fodder for standup comics and incredulous commentators? In one sense, it is a little hard to say for sure since its actual duties and extent of its powers have yet to be spelled out.  

But one doesn’t need fine print to know that this new police force will have essentially two jobs.  

One job will be to suppress criticism. Former U.S. Representative Tulsi Gabbard (D-Hawaii) is right. This is exactly the sort of thing, she told Fox News, one expects to see in dictatorships, not in free countries. The board, she said, amounts to a “department of propaganda” promulgated by a government that is afraid of its own people. Did someone discover that the president’s son had a laptop full of compromising, and probably criminal, information?  

https://pjmedia.com/columns/rabbi-michael-barclay/2022/04/30/nazi-comparisons-n1594179

A criminal is wrongfully killed, and “peaceful demonstrations,” which are actually violent riots, break out nationwide. The flag of a radical and violent group is placed next to the national flag on government buildings. Out of fear of being canceled and losing business, individuals and corporations succumb to publicly supporting this violent organization. Mandated behavior is compelled upon threat of arrest by the political elite and leadership. Despite objections from parents, schools begin teaching an alternative “history” and embrace prejudice, anti-Semitism, and sexual permissiveness as part of the school curriculum.

A President overreaches and takes on “emergency powers,” which create an authoritarian regime that demands supportive behavior and calls any criticism “disinformation.” A new agency of the government is created to “fight this disinformation”… an agency that even has access to armed personnel. This new agency is led by a fanatic who is arguably delusional in their own self-perception and fully committed to stopping the dissemination of any information that is not part of the authoritarian narrative. And through it all the media is a willing accomplice, even striking against other media outlets that try to present opposing views.

Sound like a brief recap of the recent past in this country?

The challenge is that this is actually a description of the development of the Nazi regime in Germany almost a century ago.

If this scares you, it should.

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2022/05/new_york_trump_grand_jury_ends_not_with_a_bang_but_a_whimper.html

Two successive Manhattan District Attorneys, Cyrus Vance, Jr. and Alvin Bragg, have dug for dirt on Donald Trump, looking for something – anything – on which to indict him. And they have failed.

A six-month grand jury that was convened late last year to hear evidence against Donald Trump was set to expire this week, closing a chapter in a lengthy criminal investigation that appears to be fizzling out without charges against the former president, people familiar with matter said.

Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg (D), who took office in January, inherited a probe launched by his predecessor, Cyrus R. Vance Jr., who was convinced that there was a case against Trump for crimes related to manipulating the value of property assets to secure tax advantages or better loan rates.

The grand jury was convened in November with a mandate to hear evidence against the former president. But the decision on whether to finish the presentation and ask the panel to vote on charges would ultimately fall on Bragg, who decided to pause the process, according to people with knowledge of the situation, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss information that has not been declared publicly.

Nobody wants to be publicly associated with this disappointment for Trump-haters.

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/darkest-day-yet-under-biden

DARKEST DAY YET UNDER BIDEN. The specter of recession and war settled over Washington on Thursday, on top of inflation that has already cut into the public’s standard of living and increased its worries about the future. It was, in short, a very bad day — one of the most concerning so far in the presidency of Joe Biden.

Many experts professed to be surprised by the news that the economy shrank by an annual rate of 1.4% in the first quarter of 2022. “Gross domestic product unexpectedly declined at a 1.4 percent annualized pace in the first quarter … the worst since the pandemic-induced recession in 2020,” the business network CNBC reported. “The negative growth rate missed even the subdued Dow Jones estimate of a one percent gain for the quarter.”

For his part, in the course of a single sentence, Biden tried to suggest that the drop was the result of “technical factors” while at the same time blaming events around the world — and, most importantly, not himself. “While last quarter’s growth estimate was affected by technical factors,” he said in a statement, “the United States confronts the challenges of Covid-19 around the world, Putin’s unprovoked invasion of Ukraine, and global inflation from a position of strength.”

https://www.manhattancontrarian.com/blog/2022-4-28-another-progressive-policy-disaster-homelessness-in-san-francisco

Three and a half years ago, in November 2018, the good people of San Francisco enacted by a referendum called Proposition C a new special corporate payroll tax which would raise multiple hundred million dollars per year for the specific purpose of finally and once and for all solving the problem of homelessness. During the run-up to that referendum, in October 2018, I had two posts discussing Proposition C, the nature of the progressive thinking behind it, and its prospects for success. On October 26 it was “The Morality Of Our Progressive Elite”; and on October 30 it was “More On The Morality Of Our Progressive Elite.”

Toward the end of that second post, I posed this question: “[What are] the prospects that San Francisco’s new $300 million might actually reduce the population deemed ‘homeless’?” My answer was: “Right around zero.”

In the intervening three plus years, I have from time to time checked back to see how it was going with San Francisco’s great project to end homelessness. But up until now I haven’t been able to find good information. Among other issues, the implementation of the new tax was delayed for two years by litigation. However, the information drought on this subject has now ended. On April 26 the San Francisco Chronicle ran a big feature article on the subject, with the headline “Broken Homes” (behind paywall). On April 28, that article was then reviewed and commented on by Steven Hayward at PowerLine (“California’s Ongoing Suicide Attempt”), and by Erica Sandberg at the City Journal (“San Francisco’s Housing First Nightmare”).

And the answer is: The results are far, far worse than mere failure to reduce the population deemed homeless. Since 2018 San Francisco’s spending on the homeless has soared by approximately a factor of four. But meanwhile the number of people deemed homeless has increased by somewhere between 47% and more than 250% (depending on what data you believe for the number of homeless in SF back in 2017). And, at least if you accept the Chronicle’s current reporting, the conditions under which the homeless live have seriously deteriorated. It is an epic disaster of progressive public policy.

How could everything have gone so terribly wrong?

https://quadrant.org.au/magazine/2022/04/the-left-brained-compulsion-to-buy-bridges/

Conservatives have had a tough time of it in recent years. We’ve been confronted daily by claims that make absolutely no sense at all, on everything from climate to race, and we are asked—even by some fellow alleged conservatives—to accept all of it as completely tickety-boo.

Most of these claims, of course, emerge from a cultural Left that is dominant in the media and inner-cities but is scorned throughout regional areas in Australia, the US, UK and Europe.

This scorning is for a very sound reason. People who live in Australia’s regions, with and including Aboriginal Australians, know that Dark Emu author, Melbourne University’s Melbourne Enterprise Professor in Indigenous Agriculture and self-declared Aborigine Bruce Pascoe is not, in fact, Aboriginal.

Rural and semi-rural American folk who live far from the elite-infested east and west coasts, and who often run their own businesses and farms, know that running up huge debts will send them bankrupt. So they are aware that President Joe Biden’s massive spending will likely do the same to the entire US.

On the point of rural/urban divides, the Associated Press recently reported that the Democrat brand is

so toxic in the small towns 100 miles north-east of Pittsburgh that some liberals have removed bumper stickers and yard signs and refuse to acknowledge their party affiliation publicly … The climate across rural Pennsylvania is symptomatic of a larger political problem threatening the Democratic Party ahead of the 2022 mid-term elections. Beyond losing votes in virtually every election since 2008, Democrats have been effectively ostracized from many parts of rural America, leaving party leaders with few options to reverse a cultural trend that is redefining the nation’s political landscape.

They could try, you know, not telling Americans frustrated by enormous fuel price increases that they should just go out and buy electric cars.

https://amgreatness.com/2022/04/29/ron-desantis-leads-republican-charge-against-biden-regimes-ministry-of-truth/

Republicans hit at the Biden administration’s new Disinformation Governance Board Friday, arguing that it is an “unconstitutional and unamerican” means of crushing dissent.

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis led the charge during a press conference Friday, calling the Department of Homeland Security Counter-Disinformation Governance Board a “Ministry of Truth,” and vowing to fight it.

“You cannot have a Ministry of Truth in this country. We’re not going to let Biden get away with this one. So we will be fighting back,” he said. The Republican was  in Willston, Fla. to talk about his administration’s investment of $22 million for infrastructure in Florida.

The recently created disinformation board is being led by Nina Jankowicz, 33, a self-proclaimed “disinformation expert” and Karaoke enthusiast who helped spread the Russia collusion hoax in 2017, and supported the COVID lockdowns in March of 2020. In October of 2020, she called Hunter Biden’s laptop a “product of the Trump campaign.”

“She’s a career left-wing partisan, from her days working at the National Democratic Institute to her Fulbright-Clinton fellowship to her gig at the left-leaning Wilson Center where she routinely did media hits with NPR, CNN, PBS and so on while placing New York Times and Washington Post opeds,” the New York Post opined.

https://americanmind.org/salvo/perverting-civics/

The Biden Administration and Democrats in Congress are infusing critical race theory (CRT), so-called anti-racist (in reality, profoundly racist) teachings, and other progressive ideologies into K-12 curricula. With forceful support from progressive states, there is a coordinated assault at all levels of our educational system to indoctrinate children and professionals in far-left anti-America rhetoric. If this effort succeeds—it is making spectacular progress—our country’s values and future are in jeopardy.

The advocates of CRT and related progressive principles have spent years planning and readying their takeover of our institutions. By dominating departments of education, accreditation agencies, university administrations, professional licensing organizations, and teacher unions, they have been able to mandate ideological training at each level of education, and then coerce compliance as a condition of employment, promotion, and appointment to governing boards.

Anyone who objects is shunned as a white supremacist, and suspended or terminated for insubordination or failure to comply with conditions of employment. The institution defends its suppression of academic freedom and free speech by pointing to its accreditation and licensing obligations, and the admission requirements of universities to which its students typically apply. While the Left may suffer an occasional setback in local elections or court, over time, this strategy will ensure the implementation of diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI), which is the immediate goal of CRT.

The success and prospects for this intricate strategy deserve respect, and fear. If conservatives and moderates do not use every lawful lever of power remaining to break the progressive chokehold, there soon will be no place to turn. Even in red states, the national accrediting and licensing requirements will do devastating damage and perpetuate a cultural civil war.

https://thefederalist.com/2022/04/29/emails-surface-more-evidence-hillary-clinton-paid-for-anti-trump-disinformation-operation/

Evidence continues to mount that the Hillary Clinton campaign paid former MI6 agent Christopher Steele to launder fraudulent opposition research through U.S. intelligence agencies.

Newly published internal emails reveal that before Fusion GPS hired Steele on behalf of the Clinton campaign to dig up dirt on Donald Trump, the opposition-research firm began peddling several of the same Russia collusion lies that the former MI6 agent would later detail in the Steele dossier. This fact highlights a significant aspect of the Spygate scandal that deserves further focus and condemnation: Democrats’ outrageous exploitation of intelligence credentials and connections to launder scurrilous accusations against a political enemy.

Since early 2018, when the then-Chair of the House Intelligence Committee Devin Nunes exposed in a four-page memorandum evidence that the Department of Justice (DOJ) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) had abused the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act during the 2016 presidential election cycle, Americans open to reality have been slowly learning of the breadth of the Spygate scandal.

Attention during this time rightly focused first on FISA abuse and the FBI’s use of unverified “intel” to obtain a court order to surveil former Trump campaign advisor Carter Page. As the scandal continued to unravel, the categories of impropriety multiplied, from deep-staters illegally leaking to the media to build the collusion narrative and later to force the appointment of a special counsel, to the selection of the “right people” in the form of rabid partisans to staff the Crossfire Hurricane team.

Another underlying aspect of the scandal only became clear recently with the prosecution of former Clinton campaign attorney Michael Sussmann. Proceedings in Special Counsel John Durham’s false statement criminal case against Sussmann reveal Democrats paid credentialed individuals connected to U.S. intelligence agencies to pass, to both the press and the government, invented evidence of Trump colluding with Russia.