RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.manhattancontrarian.com/blog/2022-1-20-when-the-administrative-state-slips-its-bonds

For the past few weeks, everybody’s attention has been focused on the looming demise of President Biden’s legislative agenda. Both the massive social spending bill (going by the Orwellian name “Build Back Better”) and the anti-voter-integrity bill, have now conclusively failed, at least in their most recent forms. A major part of the Build Back Better monstrosity was the launching of the Green New Deal, with its attendant suppression of the use of carbon-based fuels.

So, at least for now, these things are dead in Congress. But what’s happening over in the Administrative State? That’s where, in Woodrow Wilson’s progressive vision, the “experts” from various fields of endeavor have gathered in the government, unconstrained by the Constitution’s separation of powers, to make the all-important rules for a smoothly running society. Today there are hundreds of thousands of these “experts” in the bureaucracy. To a person, they appear to believe that the most pressing issue of our era is saving the world from U.S. emissions of carbon dioxide. How do they know that? Obviously, they know it because they are the “experts.”

Under what legislative authority do these “experts” operate to impose their green agenda? Excellent question. Barack Obama had a big plan for “cap and trade” legislation to lower emissions by driving up the price of all fossil fuels. (“Under my plan of a cap and trade system, the price of electricity will necessarily skyrocket.”). The legislation failed in Congress. Biden’s Green New Deal also has so far failed in Congress. There has been no relevant amendment to the Clean Air Act further empowering the bureaucracy to regulate carbon emissions since such emissions first became a progressive obsession in the early 2000s.

Clearly then, the bureaucracy must be stymied in its goal to effect a fundamental transformation of the U.S. energy system by suppressing production and use of fossil fuels, while they await Congressional authorization to proceed. If you think that is true, you do not understand the extent to which the Administrative State has slipped its constitutional bonds.

For today, let me highlight just a few of the initiatives currently emanating from the Administrative State.

https://swtotd.blogspot.com/

Like all species (or, at least, those of which I am aware), man is born with an innate trust for the female who gave him birth. We would not survive, without the care and feeding by she who gave us life. As we age, caution grows. As Sophocles said, “mistrust blossoms.” Nature has instilled in most animals a sense of wariness of danger, be it predators, fire or some other peril. This allows the rabbit to avoid the coyote, the mole to avoid the fox, or the deer to run from man. We have the same instincts. It is why the hair on the back of our neck stands up when unseen hazards lurk, or why we become suspicious when someone says, “trust me.”

Trust is akin to a sixth sense, like echolocation that allows bats to fly in the dark. It is defined as a belief in the reliability of someone or something, be it a spouse or an automobile. It reflects both emotion and reasoning, as in the faithfulness of a relationship, or the trust we have for an old car. Trust in the business world, according to a December 2021 article in The Atlantic, is about two things: competence and character. Once lost, it is hard to re-build. The article suggests three steps to help recover lost trust: the use of humor, sharing one’s vulnerabilities and promoting transparency – lessons for those who govern us. 

A September 2021 Gallup Poll found trust in government near record lows. It mimicked a Pew Research Center survey published last May. The Pew poll saw trust in government at 24% as of April 2021. That could be compared to trust in government at 68% during the height of the anti-War movement in 1968. The Gallup poll showed that a lack of trust in government extends to all branches; it is lowest in the legislative branch and highest in local governments. In the Gallup poll, a mere 7% of respondents had a great deal of trust in the media. As recently as September 2018, that number stood at 14%. Distrust in government and the media may manifest wisdom on the part of the people, but it reflects poorly on those judged.

https://www.jns.org/opinion/what-those-who-accept-the-stolen-land-myth-dont-understand/

Woke culture demands ritual acknowledgements about Native Americans. Those, however, who think this should also apply to Palestinians don’t understand that Jews are indigenous in Israel.

One of the tragicomic if all too prevalent customs of contemporary woke corporate culture is the way many groups and corporations now open meetings with ritual acknowledgments that they are on “stolen land.” It involves the convener of the gathering to begin any proceedings by first stating that those speaking are “on the lands” of whatever Native American tribe once lived there as the indigenous inhabitants of the North American continent.

That is part of the context of the claim that the State of Israel was built on “stolen land,” a phrase that was used by Hussain Altamimi, one of New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s staffers when he smeared it as a “racist-European ethno-state.” Unsurprisingly, Altamimi didn’t lose his job when this came out. Why would AOC fire someone who reflects the same hatred of the Jewish state that she and other “Squad” colleagues have often expressed?

This is a commonplace myth spread by those who believe in intersectional ideology, which deems the efforts of all oppressed “people of color” to resist the racist oppression of those possessing “white privilege” to be part of one great righteous struggle.

https://www.nysun.com/editorials/theodore-roosevelt-back-to-the-badlands/91960/

This is the week in which the statue of Theodore Roosevelt begins its journey to the Badlands from its pedestal in front of the American Museum of Natural History. Let us just say that New York’s loss will be North Dakota’s gain. The statue had come under fire as “a racist work of public art,” as a mayoral advisory commission described it. It’s hardly a “Square Deal” for TR, who did more than most in his day for racial equality.

When the statue was unveiled in 1940, a New York Times editorial applauded Roosevelt’s taking “his place in enduring bronze among the monuments of this city that he loved.” The Times predicted “few, passing the newly dedicated statue and noting the firm, up-tilted chin and the eyes fixed on a far distance, will doubt” TR “would have met present problems face-forward, with high courage and clear decision.”

Eighty years later, “present problems” have dictated a change of plans. The museum recently lumped the statue among other “powerful and hurtful symbols of systemic racism” subjected to scrutiny amid “the movement for racial justice that emerged after the murder of George Floyd.” Evicting Roosevelt is a symbol of “progress toward an inclusive and equitable community,” the museum claimed.

https://www.nysun.com/national/biden-doubles-down-but-the-american-voters-are/91957/

So, no reset or midcourse changes for President Biden. That’s what we learned in the President’s presser. Big government socialist policies are alive and well. He’s doubling down.

According to Mr Biden, the polls are wrong, you see, the country really loves him and his policies. So his job is to travel around and better communicate his achievements and his goals to the American people.

That’s basically how I read yesterday’s performance. Trouble is for Uncle Joe, the public actually knows full well what his so-called achievements and policies are.

Voters are smarter than the radical left thinks. Polling is as much art as science, but seldom have I seen as much unanimity.

From Byron York’s column yesterday, the Gallup poll shows a remarkable swing from a year ago, when 49% considered themselves Democrats against 40% Republicans. Now it’s just 42% Democrats against 47% Republicans. That’s a net 14-point swing over just one year. Unprecedented.

https://www.jpost.com/opinion/article-694114

Less than two hours before a Pakistani-born British Muslim took four Jews hostage at the Congregation Beth Israel synagogue in Colleyville, Texas last Saturday, African-American Martial Simon pushed a young woman into an oncoming subway at the Times Square station in New York City.

In the first case, only the perpetrator wound up dead. In the second, it was the victim who lost her life.

These two unrelated incidents have more in common than immediately meets the eye. Both involved assailants who were well-known to law enforcement. Each was said by family members to be suffering from “mental illness.”

Let’s start with Malik Faisal Akram. Entering the synagogue during Shabbat-morning services and announcing his affiliation with Pakistani terrorist Aafia Siddiqui, the armed foreign national held the rabbi and three congregants captive for 11 hours straight. (The rest of the already dwindling flock was participating via Zoom, due to the spike in COVID-19 infection.)

For most of the day, FBI SWAT-team agents negotiated with Akram, whose reference to Siddiqui as his “sister” turned out to be an expression of ideological, rather than literal, kinship. But his emotional attachment to “Lady al-Qaeda” was strong enough for him to travel across the ocean to demand her release from the prison where she is serving an 86-year sentence for the attempted murder of US soldiers in Afghanistan and in connection with a plot to carry out a mass-casualty attack.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2022/01/joe-bidens-fractured-fairy-tales-don-feder/

Joe Biden has been called a pathological liar, Pinocchio on steroids, delusional and totally detached from reality.

That’s unfair. Instead, let’s just say the president has a flair for fiction. Think of him as a master storyteller to put Hans Christian Andersen and the Brothers Grimm to shame. Here are a few of my favorite Biden bedtime stories:

The Democrats Freedom to Vote Act will secure the right to vote for millions of Americans the GOP is trying to disenfranchise – Biden said Republicans working for election reform (secure ballots) are on the side of George Wallace not Martin Luther King. So, according to POTUS, to stand with the civil rights icon means supporting ballots mailed out en masse, casting ballots by putting them in drop-boxes, no requirement of signature verification, and no ID of any sort if you vote in person. DC now requires proof of vaccination and a photo ID to enter most indoor venues. That must mean that Mayor Bowser stands with George Wallace.
 
White Supremacy is a threat to democracy – Did white supremacists riot in more than 23 states in 2020, burning whole city blocks? (Actually, that was BLM and Antifa.) Are there hundreds of churches preaching white supremacy? (No, but there are hundreds of mosques preaching jihad.) Are foreign governments supporting white nationalism? (Oh, you must mean the way Iran, Yemen and half a dozen other Islamic states fund jihad here?) White supremacy is the Democrats’ “look-over-here” ploy to distract the credulous from Islamic extremism and leftists subversion.
 
What happened on January 6, 2021 was an insurrection or an attempted coup, if you prefer. – You betcha, struck at the very heart of democracy it did. Except, the only death directly attributable to the riot at the Capitol was an unarmed protestor shot by Capitol police. In fact, none of the rioters had guns. (How do you overthrow a government with supersonic jets by throwing folding chairs?) January 6, 2021 is the Democrats’ Reichstag fire. The goal is to criminalize the conservative movement and the half of the country that agrees with Donald Trump. The real threat to democracy isn’t the non-insurrection of 2021, but using the myth to crush dissent.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2022/01/bidens-press-conference-joseph-klein/

President Joe Biden began his January 19th news conference with scripted remarks boasting about his first-year performance. He continued with an eyebrow-raising, delusional self-assessment for nearly two hours, in which he claimed that he had “probably outperformed what anybody thought would happen” while blaming Republicans and COVID-19 for failing to do even more.

“Can you think of any other President that has done as much in one year?” Biden asked reporters rhetorically. In one sense, he had a strong point: it is a challenge to think of any other U.S. president who has done more damage to the country domestically and globally in his first year in office than Joe Biden has done.

Biden rambled much of the time in responding to questions from the press regarding such topics as Russia’s designs on Ukraine, the economy, COVID-19, his pledges to bring unity to the country, and the fate of his Build Back Better and voting “reform” legislation. Rampant crime in cities across the country and unremitting surges of illegal aliens across the open southern border with Mexico did not come up.

Biden made his usual share of faux pas, most notably seeming to give Russia leeway for a “minor incursion” into Ukraine. White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki quickly released a statement intended to walk back this gaffe. Biden himself followed up with his own “clarifying” statement but it was too late. “We want to remind the great powers that there are no minor incursions and small nations,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky shot back on Twitter. “Just as there are no minor casualties and little grief from the loss of loved ones.”

https://amgreatness.com/2022/01/20/the-pathetic-and-political-sedition-case-against-the-oath-keepers/

Facing intensifying criticism from Democratic lawmakers, journalists, and even some federal judges for not seeking harsher punishment against January 6 protesters, Attorney General Merrick Garland finally produced charges to appease his detractors. Last week, more than a year after the so-called insurrection, Garland charged 11 members of the Oath Keepers with seditious conspiracy.

The star of the new indictment, handed down by a grand jury on January 12, is Stewart Rhodes, the founder of the alleged militia group. (His co-defendants were charged with several other offenses months ago.)

Rhodes, described only as “person one” for nearly a year in numerous criminal indictments related to his organization, has been a free man since January 6, 2021, raising plausible suspicions that he may have been a government informant at the time. After all, the FBI has a longstanding pattern of infiltrating fringe groups such as the Oath Keepers and moving them to commit indictable crimes.

Under the definition of “seditious conspiracy,” prosecutors allege Rhodes and his co-defendants conspired to halt the “lawful transfer of presidential power by force” including not just the Electoral College certification but the inauguration, which was 14 days away.

The flagrantly political move will give the Justice Department a temporary reprieve from its loud chorus of critics on the Left. January 6 propagandists boast that the new charges finally offer some support to the heretofore baseless claim that the events of that day amounted to an “insurrection.” Beryl Howell, the chief judge of the D.C. court handling every January 6 case, recently expressed her dismay at the “petty offenses” sought by prosecutors; she undoubtedly will be thrilled with the news.

Corporate media also commend this apparently sweeping indictment. “It’s hard to underemphasize (sic) how significant this is,” former FBI official and MSNBC contributor Frank Figliuzzi told Nicolle Wallace after the indictment was announced. CNN legal analyst Asha Rangappa concluded that “even if Trump wasn’t directly involved in their ‘plan,’ his [exhortation] to his lunatic mob to head to the Capitol definitely helped them execute their operation.” 

But the real question is whether the government can make the charges stick. As my book, January 6: How Democrats Used the Capitol Protest to Launch a War on Terror Against the Political Right, details, the case against the Oath Keepers is weak. Out of the 20 people tied to the Oath Keepers (three have accepted plea deals), only one is accused of assaulting or impeding a police officer. No Oath Keeper is charged with carrying or using a weapon; the only property charge is “aiding and abetting” the destruction of government property. None are charged with directly inflicting any damage.

https://thefederalist.com/2022/01/20/a-scandal-for-every-month-the-biggest-botches-failures-and-mess-ups-of-joe-bidens-first-12-months-in-office/

It’s not hard to remember a Biden disaster for every month of his first year at the stern … or in the basement, as the case may be.

Joe Biden has been in the Oval Office (or that weird set in the Eisenhower building’s South Court auditorium with the greenscreen windows) for a year now, and he’s already managed to make his short presidency known for a long line-up of scandals, botches, and slip-ups.

It’s too hard to narrow the list down to one top failure, although his disgracefully handled Afghanistan withdrawal may be the most sobering and inflation may be the one that played the biggest role in Biden’s tanking approval ratings. Even though Biden’s mess-ups tally up to far more than 12, it’s not hard to remember a Biden-enabled disaster for every month of the septuagenarian’s first year at the stern … or in the basement.