RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.city-journal.org/joe-bidens-anti-constitutional-vaccine-mandate

“In republican governments, the legislative authority necessarily predominates,” said James Madison. But what sort of government is it when the president thinks he can decree a nationwide vaccine mandate without the legislature’s involvement? Such a decree would seem to be more characteristic of an elective monarchy than a republic.

President Joe Biden’s vaccine mandate has been criticized for intrusively injecting the federal government into personal health decisions, for denying the existence of natural immunity (already obtained by perhaps half of the U.S. population), and for causing people who choose not to be vaccinated to lose their livelihoods (and at a time when the nation is already experiencing a shortage of workers). In short, it is being criticized as bad policy. But another problem with the mandate is that Biden thinks he can decide such policy questions unilaterally for a nation of more than 300 million ostensibly free citizens—and that so much of the country is willing to go along with his claim.

Biden’s mandate is clearly an exercise of legislative power on the part of the chief executive. As such, it marks the substitution of the arbitrary rule of one man for the republican rule of law. At the same time, it represents the substitution of federal rule for state or local rule. In other words, it undermines both the separation of powers and federalism—which together form what Madison in Federalist 51 called the “double security . . . to the rights of the people.” Biden’s assertion of power is therefore about much more than Covid vaccines. It is about whether Americans will accept having the president function as a one-man quasi-legislature or will instead demand that we revert to what Alexander Hamilton, writing in Federalist 1, called “the true principles of republican government.”

https://www.nysun.com/editorials/president-trump-raises-a-serious-question-about/91836/

President Trump’s lawsuit against New York’s attorney general, Letitia James, deserves, in our view, a serious hearing. Mr. Trump complains that she’s investigating him for political purposes. That truth is so plain that even the New York Times has been warning against it. This is a moment for the robed sages to declare that they will not permit their hallowed courtrooms to be used for politics.

It’s hard to think of a more important principle. We carry no brief for Mr. Trump or any of his businesses. And we fully appreciate what a formidable opponent Ms. James is as a political operator. Without ever filing a charge, she took down, in Andrew Cuomo, the man standing athwart her own ambitions for the governorship. It’s no small thing, though, that Mr. Trump was in her sights when she was but a candidate.

During the race for attorney general in 2018, Ms. James told Democratic primary voters she was “closing in on him.” After winning the nomination, she credited her victory to her aggressive criticism of the President. Her win, she said, “was about the people but most importantly it was about that man in the White House who can’t go a day without threatening our fundamental rights.” She vowed to “stand up and fight back.”

https://issuesinsights.com/2021/12/20/math-for-demmies/

The Biden administration “Believes in Science.” But math – not so much. It seems to have a fuzzy concept of large sums of money as all being just “bazillions.” So here is a little arithmetic using nice round numbers that even the administration and congressional progressives can follow.

There are about 330 million people in the United States. So, if we say that the average family is 3.3 people (mom, dad, one or two kids), then we have about 100 million families. So, on average, each trillion dollars costs each family $10,000. And ultimately, it’s they who pay the lion’s share of taxes.

President Joe Biden recently signed into law an “infrastructure” bill that will cost about $1.2 trillion. That means that each family will pay, on average, $12,000. A person working full time for a year (about 1,800 hours) at the federal minimum wage ($7.25 per hour) makes about $13,050. So good news! You get to keep $1,050 of that for food, rent, energy, and other “luxuries.”

But now the Democrats want a “human infrastructure” bill, which, as they first proposed, would have cost $3.5 trillion, which boosts per-family costs to $45,000. Sorry, Josephine the Plumber and Lewis the Librarian, no Caribbean cruise for you this year.

But there’s more! We still have to pay for Social Security, Medicare, national defense, welfare, unemployment, interest on the existing debt, and a few sundries such as electric vehicle subsidies and endowments for the arts and humanities. Those add up to about another $3.5 trillion. So, add another $35,000 to the above. Don’t go out and buy that Tesla just yet.

The confiscation of resources from ordinary Americans to satisfy the aspirations and whims – good, bad, or indifferent – of the likes of Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez exerts an “income effect” that reflects the correlation between wealth and health.

https://pjmedia.com/columns/stephen-kruiser/2021/12/20/the-morning-briefing-manchin-exposes-dems-ignorance-of-flyover-america-n1542893

I mentioned in Friday’s Briefing that I was heading out to get my Pfizer booster that afternoon. The weekend was spent a little hungover from that and I have now played this game as far as I am going to play it. While talking to a friend the other day I said that we need to stop calling this thing a vaccine — it’s obviously not preventing people from getting the Bat Flu. There are triple-vaxxed breakthrough cases all over now. Instead, I suggested we just admit that the shots are more like preemptive Z-Packs to help lessen the symptoms and get us over the infernal thing faster.

I can live with that.

At least according to the rumors.

As we all know, the big political hubbub this past weekend had to do with Joe Manchin spoiling President Pervwhisper’s commie Build Back Better folly, which Matt wrote about.

Because American leftists are all emotionally-stunted children who are struggling with daddy issues, the meltdown on social media was an absolute delight to watch.

Rick wrote a post highlighting some snippy responses from prominent Democrats, like this one from White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki:

Senator Manchin promised to continue conversations in the days ahead, and to work with us to reach that common ground. If his comments on FOX and written statement indicate an end to that effort, they represent a sudden and inexplicable reversal in his position, and a breach of his commitments to the President and the Senator’s colleagues in the House and Senate.

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2021/12/the_elites_obsession_with_january_6.html

Why do the Elite harbor this fevered obsession with Jan 6? For two reasons: (1) It is their magic fetish waved about in the desperate hope of warding off the return of Trumpism (with or without Trump) to the Casa Alba. (2) It reflects their habitual projection of their own evil onto the seething mass of deplorables.

Precisely what is this evil they are projecting? In a word: treason.

The US Constitution defines treason in Article III, Section 3, Clause 1 this way: “Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort.”

Are the Elite guilty of treason? Let me count the ways?

1. In Afghanistan, delivery of $85 billion in military supplies and thousands of hostages to the enemy.

2. Mass destruction in our cities. Politicians who protect the mobs are accessories after the fact and accomplices to this treason.

3. Defunding the police. The primary responsibility of local government is to protect their constituents and keep the streets safe. But the local Elites in many cities have sided with the criminal element against the law-abiding citizenry.

4. Sabotage of the military through wokification, as documented by James Hasson in Stand Down.

5. In his masterful book, The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers, Yale Historian Paul Kennedy exhaustively documents that military power is convertible with economic power. Therefore sabotaging the economy is sabotaging the military.

6. Giving aid and comfort to China, not least through the attempted Building Back Better legislation that Sen. Manchin just jettisoned.

https://amgreatness.com/2021/12/19/why-would-hispanics-drop-the-left/

A recent Wall Street Journal poll reported that if the 2022 midterms were held currently, some  37 percent of Hispanic/Latino voters would likely support the Republican candidate. An equal number polled support for the Democrats. 

Perhaps key is the 22 percent who remain “undecided” and thereby illustrate that the traditionally Democratic Hispanic vote is now up for grabs.

Remember that just a year ago about 60 percent of Hispanics voted against Donald Trump and Republican candidates in general. And by about the same margin, according to exit polls, they voted not to recall California Governor Gavin Newsom—about the same ratio as the white vote. Still, a 60-40 percent pro-Newsom margin among mostly Democratic Hispanics was striking for its erosion from a once lockstep Democratic constituency.

Most interestingly, Wall Street Journal polls also showed that in a potential (but probably unlikely) 2024 match-up between Biden and Trump, Hispanic voters would split about evenly (44 percent Biden, 43 percent Trump). Are Hispanics then following the trajectory of middle-class whites who have left the Democratic Party in droves and helped redefine the Republican Party as a more populist, working-class movement?

Because new immigration has all but stopped among conservative Cubans, and there are still relatively few numbers of wizened Venezuelan arrivals, these shifts suggest radical changes in second- and third-generation Hispanic voters. More importantly, should the border ever become de facto closed, as it nearly was by early 2020, the ideological shift rightward would likely accelerate. There would be fewer new arrivals professing fealty to the Democratic Party for ending immigration enforcement while expanding entitlements. We would likely see instead greater assimilation and integration of ascendant and ever more conservative second- and third-generation Hispanics.

Biden Discontent?

So, if the Wall Street Journal polls are somewhat accurate—and other polls have suggested the same trends—what has happened and why now? After all, open-border Republican grandees for a generation have been mistakenly predicting that Hispanics would soon vote conservatively, if only their party would push “comprehensive immigration reform” that many felt to be a euphemism for blanket amnesties and open borders.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-white-house-art-of-furious-persuasion-psaki-manchin-build-back-better-no-statement-11639947001?mod=opinion_lead_pos2

The progressive whiz kids who run President Biden’s White House don’t have much sense of self-restraint—or common political sense. Their response on Sunday to Sen. Joe Manchin’s opposition to Build Back Better was to accuse him of bad faith while saying they’ll beat him up until he changes his mind.

Press secretary Jen Psaki issued a blistering statement saying Mr. Manchin’s comments on Fox News Sunday “are at odds with his discussions this week with the President, with White House staff, and with his own public utterances.” We can’t speak for his private White House talks, but Mr. Manchin’s public comments have been consistent for months. On Sunday he finally said no.

Ms. Psaki charged ahead in furious disregard: “Just as Senator Manchin reversed his position on Build Back Better this morning, we will continue to press him to see if he will reverse his position yet again, to honor his prior commitments and be true to his word.”

Maybe Mr. Biden’s masters of the universe know something about the art of persuasion that we don’t. But we doubt calling a Senator a liar is going to bring him around.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/chuckbrooks/2021/12/18/welcome-to-2032-a-merged-physicaldigital-world/?sh=5b5d526d5e12

We are approaching 2022 and rather than ponder the immediate future, I want to explore what may beckon in the ecosystem of disruptive technologies a decade from now. We are in the initial stages of an era of rapid and technological change that will witness regeneration of body parts, new cures for diseases, augmented reality, artificial intelligence, human/computer interface, autonomous vehicles, advanced robotics, flying cars, quantum computing, and connected smart cities. Exciting times may be ahead.

By 2032, it will be logical to assume that the world will be amid a digital and physical transformation beyond our expectations. It is no exaggeration to say we are on the cusp of scientific and technological advancements that will change how we live and interact.

What should we expect in the coming decade as we begin 2022? While there are many potential paradigms changing technological influences that will impact the future, let us explore three specific categories of future transformation: cognitive computing, health and medicine, and autonomous everything.

https://amgreatness.com/2021/12/18/adam-schiffs-delusion/

Barbara Broccoli, a producer and owner of the rights to the James Bond franchise, recently entertained the implausible idea that Bond could be non-binary. I’d like to recommend a screenwriter to her: Adam Schiff (D-Calif.)

Not only was pre-Congress Schiff an unsuccessful screenwriter, but as a Congress-pronoun, Schiff has a proven track record of inventing implausible fiction that ends in failure.

If Schiff doesn’t write the script, he could at least market it, as he did with the Trump-Russia collusion lie. Arguably, no Democrat pushed the fictional Trump-Russia collusion narrative more vigorously than Adam Schiff.

In February of 2018 Schiff told reporters that there was “ample evidence in the public domain of collusion if you’re willing to see it.” This collusion was so obvious that the Democrats had to hire special counsel Robert Mueller to find it.

Two years and $32 million from the taxpayers later, Mueller concluded that “the investigation did not establish that members of the Trump campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities.” Trump-Russia collusion couldn’t be found because Trump-Russia collusion never happened.

Still, a month after Mueller’s conclusion, Schiff went on ABC’s “This Week” and repeated his lie that there was “ample evidence of collusion in plain sight.” Like a madman, Schiff refused to accept reality, and instead repeated the failed, unconvincing story he had spent years rehearsing in his own deranged mind.

While Schiff is both a liar and fraud, he is doggedly persistent–as lunatics often are.  That’s why, Schiff’s case, persistence is not a virtue, but rather a vice.

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/joe-manchin-may-have-just-killed-transformational-liberalism-for-a-decade/

Senator Joe Manchin (D., W. Va.) says he’s done with President Biden’s Build Back Better legislation. And if saying so on Fox News wasn’t enough, he added an explanation point in a statement released shortly after his appearance, in which he declared: “My Democratic colleagues in Washington are determined to dramatically reshape our society in a way that leaves our country even more vulnerable to the threats we face. I cannot take that risk.”

It is, of course, possible that once they stare into the abyss of defeat, Biden and Democrats may decide to finally cave and give Manchin everything he wants. For instance, he has indicated a willingness to vote for up to $1.75 trillion in spending, and said that he’s more open to picking one priority and fully funding it for a decade rather than starting lots of new programs, funding them for a few years, and hoping they get renewed. So there’s some reason for conservatives to keep the champagne on ice.

But realistically, this approach would require blowing up the bill that had been carefully negotiated for months just to squeak through the House, and getting progressives to swallow whatever Manchin wants whole. The expanded child tax credit that has resulted in monthly payments to families will expire at the end of the year. So trying to pass it next year — which would require every penny of the bill if fully paid for over a decade — would essentially mean creating a new program rather than extending one that’s already on the books.