RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17982/confidence-in-ruler

An ancient philosopher is attributed to once observing that a nation can survive deprivation or even a battlefield defeat but it cannot survive the loss of confidence in its leadership.

As the Great Depression dismantled hopes and dreams across America, a president who had once rescued Europe from famine following World War I — and whose organizational skills as U.S. Secretary of Commerce were extraordinary — lost the confidence of his countrymen.

Hebert Hoover would lose his reelection bid to a man who inspired hope, trust, and most of all, confidence among citizens of a nation where nearly a quarter of them were out of work. Franklin Delano Roosevelt would receive nearly 23 million votes to Hoover’s nearly 16 million. The electoral vote was even more telling: 472 to 59.

Yet, as historians will remind us, Roosevelt, despite all of his initiatives, did not have the means to put an end to the Depression through most of his first two terms. What he did manage to do, however, was restore and sustain the confidence of the American people by allowing them to take pride in themselves and the belief that there was a future worth waiting for.

President Lyndon B. Johnson found a nation solidly behind him following the shocking assassination of John F. Kennedy. Yet by the time he announced he would not seek a second term, his approval ratings had sunk to 36% as the Vietnam War stalemated in Southeast Asia and anti-war protests rocked our cities.

https://amgreatness.com/2021/11/28/a-tale-of-two-cities-kenosha-vs-waukesha/

Both Wisconsin towns, Kenosha, and Waukesha, about 50 miles apart by car, were the recent sites of multiple deaths. The violence in both made national news. Yet in contradictory ways both reflected the common themes of America’s current legal, media, and societal corruption.  

The relevant public prosecutors in both were in the news for alleged ideological bias. Specifically, they habitually calibrated the charging, indicting, and trying (or not) of defendants through ideological lenses and community pressure rather than on the basis of the facts and the law.  

Kyle Rittenhouse was a 17-year-old armed youth who volunteered to protect business properties at the height of the August 2020 arson, riots, and looting in Kenosha. He was pursued and attacked by three members from a larger group who chased the armed youth, presumably either to disarm, injure, or kill him—or perhaps all three. 

Rittenhouse variously was assaulted, kicked, and had a firearm pointed at him. In reaction, he fatally shot two of his pursuing attackers and wounded a third. Kenosha prosecutors reviewed videos of the altercations. They saw clearly that Rittenhouse was running away from his assailants. He was variously rushed by one assailant, kicked by another, and struck with a skateboard by still another. Again, a final pursuer pointed a gun at him at close range.  

No matter. The Kenosha district attorney’s office charged Rittenhouse with several felonies including two first-degree homicide charges. All four whom Rittenhouse fired at—whether he missed, wounded, or fatally shot—had lengthy arrest records. Three were convicted felons; the fourth had a long arrest record. 

Given the lengthy and quite horrific rap sheet of Rittenhouse’s first attacker Joseph Rosenbaum (including multiple counts of pedophiliac rape), it is difficult to understand why the latter was not in jail (he had been released earlier that day from a mental facility to which he had been committed after a failed suicide attempt). The common denominator to the various prior convictions of his other three assailants was that they should have led to consequences far worse, given that many of their arrest charges were dropped, or bail was sometimes waived, or plea bargaining turned serious charges into merely bothersome ones. The release of violent offenders on little or no bail seems now thematic in Wisconsin. 

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/11/lethal-mix-woke-rap-and-live-nation-thom-nickels/

On December 6, 1969, Mick Jagger of The Rolling Stones looked out over the massive crowd at California’s Altamont Speedway and saw the concert security staff, the Hell’s Angels, beating up an audience member. The Angels, who were paid in beer rather than cash to act as security that day, had apprehended a man named Meredith Hunter, 27, who attempted to approach the stage. When Hunter attempted to approach the stage again, this time with a revolver, he was beaten by the Angels and then stabbed to death by Angel Alan Passaro. The melee, which was captured on film, caused a nervous Jagger to announce, “People, people, let’s be cool!”

The murder of Hunter would come to be known as Rock’n Roll’s Darkest Day, officially marking the end of the 1960’s peace and love era which had its peak expression only months before at Woodstock.

The 1969 tragedy at Altamont has arguably been superseded in darkness by the troubling developments at Live Nation Entertainment – which bills itself as “the world’s leading live entertainment company.” The company’s recent production of the Astroworld Festival in Houston on November 2 saw 13 people killed and 300 injured when a crowd surge during the concert caused concertgoers to trample one another. Live Nation has a history of safety violations over the past decade. The massive concert enterprise also seems to thrive best in large Democrat-controlled cities where the urban landscape cultivates its own style of rough and tumble audiences and artists (Christian conservative rappers like Bryson Gray need not apply), especially artists who not so long ago specialized in ‘F—k Trump’ lyrics.

Consider my own city of Philadelphia.

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2021/11/undermining_democracy_with_chaos.html

America will not fall to an external enemy, but to internal subversion that will collapse the body politic. The method was advanced decades ago by two sociologists, Richard Cloward and Frances Fox Piven. They sought to create a guaranteed income by throwing the welfare rolls into chaos. They never succeeded and their obsession with it was not widely shared, but their emphasis on chaos to bring about dramatic social change found a receptive audience among Marxists and leftists.

Cloward and Piven’s emphasis on chaos had a vast appeal to Marxists because they found it impossible to organize a working class more concerned with immediate material benefits than revolution. Instead of organizing for revolution, the Marxist ideology moved to undermining democracy by creating chaos.

Not deterred by the failure of the street violence of the sixties to bring about the Marxist revolution, Piven, in 2012, was still clinging to her fantasies of violence and chaos as mechanisms for social change. As she noted, “Protest, even violent protest, is thus inextricably linked to the progress of democracy, whether in challenging dictatorships, or in keeping democratic regimes from neglecting the needs of their own people. The existential aspect of protest seems also to apply to some cases of violent protests in autocracies, and sometimes in democracies as well.”

This strain of sophistry that violence can create democratic progress, as absurd as it is, explains the tolerance of our institutions for the violence we have seen in Portland, Seattle, and Minneapolis. This tolerance of violence stimulates the revolutionary fantasies of Black Lives Matter and Antifa.  

It is not simply in the streets that chaos is to bring about leftist socio-political change, but it is also true of the embrace of chaos in our institutions. Nowhere has the institutional threat been greater than in the activities of the so-called congressional “Squad” that has cleverly branded themselves as social justice warriors while seeking to produce chaos by defunding the police, leaning on the Biden administration to insert leftists in positions of power, and seeking to deluge the economy with obscene sums of money. The Squad knows that if printing money led to prosperity, Zimbabwe and Venezuela would boast the world’s two strongest economies.

https://issuesinsights.com/2021/11/29/needed-protection-against-our-professed-protectors/

Responding to retail gas prices that have skyrocketed to record levels, President Joe Biden has decided to pose as Americans’ protector from abuses in the energy marketplace. Ignoring his energy policy resume, which includes his cancellation of the Keystone XL pipeline, limiting of drilling leases and opposition to fracking, each of which predictably raises oil and gas prices, he wants to move blame by pointing his finger at alleged price-gouging, manipulation and/or collusion. As the president’s letter to the FTC put it, “The Federal Trade Commission has authority to consider whether illegal conduct is costing families at the pump. I believe you should do so immediately.”

However, that portrayal is simply a very well-worn, calculated pretense.

Real collusion has long been illegal, which raises the question of why our supposedly vigilant regulators didn’t prevent what they suddenly want to use now as a scapegoat until after the fact. Oil and gas are heavily regulated on the premise Americans need to be protected from the risk of such industry depradations. So where was the “protection”?

There has also been a long list of past industry investigations, also timed to bail out politicians and regulators from well-deserved blame, which have produced no evidence of collusion. 

Further, insinuations of gouging, manipulation or implied collusion rely on ambiguous terms. What evidence could prove, rather than just assert, gouging? Political assertions run in terms of charging “excessive” prices or failing to charge “fair” or “reasonable” prices, but none of those modifiers have clear meanings.

https://alexberenson.substack.com/p/new-york-declares-a-health-care-state?token=

Now this is a lie so brazen even Andrew Cuomo might hesitate to tell it.

New York’s new and unimproved governor, Kathy Hochul, last seen telling you to Get Vaxxed For Jesus (I kid you not), has now declared a “state of emergency” that will allow Health Department bureaucrats to block “non-urgent” medical procedures at hospitals. Because who needs a colonoscopy, anyway?

Hochul says the Xi – I mean Omicron, definitely not Xi! – variant is behind the emergency.

This explanation would be more compelling if even one case of Omicron had been detected ANYWHERE IN THE UNITED STATES.

Gee, I wonder what’s really causing the hospital bed shortages?

https://issuesinsights.com/2021/11/29/fauci-is-now-copying-trump-on-covid/

Donald Trump, Oct. 21, 2020: “We’re learning to live with it. We have no choice.”
Anthony Fauci, Nov. 28, 2021: “We’re going to have to start living with COVID.”

How many times did former President Donald Trump say something that was dismissed as reckless, heartless, stupid, or flat-out wrong only to find out later that he was right? Whatever the number is, add one more.

Over the weekend, Anthony Fauci, head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and the chief medical adviser to President Joe Biden, admitted that “we’re going to have to start living with COVID. I believe that’s the case because I don’t think we’re going to eradicate it.”

Fauci’s comment came amid rising cases in the U.S. and the new “Omicron” variant that has been spreading in South Africa and is apparently more resistant to vaccines. The World Health Organization declared Omicron as a “variant of concern,” and Fauci said it will likely land here.

But wait. Why would Fauci say that we have to start learning to live with COVID?

After all, Joe “Trust-the-Science” Biden said that “I will take care of this. I will end this. I will make sure we have a plan.”

Oops.

https://jonathanturley.org/2021/11/26/antifa-member-who-took-axe-to-senate-office-given-probation-and-his-axe-back/

We have been discussing the continued incarceration of many individuals for their participation in the Jan. 6th riot.  Despite claims that the riot was an insurrection, the vast majority of defendants have been given relatively minor charges. Nevertheless, the Justice Department has insisted on holding many without bail and some have received longer sentences, like Jacob Chansley (aka “QAnon Shaman”) who was given a 41-month sentence for “obstructing a federal proceeding.”

Thomas “Tas” Alexander Starks, 31, of Lisbon, N.D., faced a strikingly different approach by the Justice Department. The self-avowed Antifa member took an axe to the office of Sen. John Hoeven’s in Fargo on Dec. 21, 2020. Federal sentencing guidelines suggested 10–16 months in prison but he was only sentenced to probation and fined $2,784 for restitution . . . he then reportedly mocked the FBI for returning his axe.  Others declared him a hero and Democratic politicians pitched in for his legal defense.

Starks was caught on videotape axing the door of the congressional office. He pleaded guilty to a single charge of destruction of government property.  The case has received little attention from the media outside of conservative sites.

Starks has made clear that he was neither apologetic nor deterred from the use of such violence. He has posted under the Facebook moniker, “Paul Dunyan,” an apparent reference to his preferred use of an axe as a form of political expression.  He displays the Antifa symbol and, while awaiting sentencing, reportedly wrote: “I am ANTIFA. I will always attack fascists, racial superiority complexes built around nationalism that promotes genocide to fuel a war machine is the worst humanity has to offer.”

It is reminiscent of the defiance shown by arrested Antifa member Jason Charter, who declared “The Movement is winning” after his own arrest.

https://dianebederman.com/here-we-go-again-covid-ghettos-and-lepers-and-o-mi-cron/

Here we go again, Covid: Ghettos and lepers and O Mi Cron!

Congrats to Australia. Just coming out of 262 days of lockdowns. But wait. Here comes Omicron! And here comes government to save us. And sadly, so many want to be saved.

Australia has opened…sort of.

“However, stores selling non-essential goods won’t open until 80% of the state is double vaccinated and masks are required inside and out.”

Oh so the non-vaccinated will be the cause of keeping non-essential closed (I love that term – humans deciding that some are more essential than others – usually government employees are essential) Nothing like putting a mark of Cain or the sign of the leper on these people.

New York Gov. Kathy Hochul (D) declared a state of emergency Friday in response to a cold-weather surge of coronavirus infections and the threat of the newly detected omicron variant, making her state one of the first in the country to impose measures against the mutation that was recently sequenced in southern Africa.

Remember back 2 years? It started with a 2 week lockdown to flatten the curve. It’s all about the greater good. Dear self-righteous, sanctimonious, self-serving Liberals – you talk about caring for the other. Until the other makes you uncomfortable.  So you stood with the rules about lockdowns which wiped out the poorest amongst us. Their family businesses destroyed while all were advised to go the big box stores – it would be safer there. Really? It’s OK for hundreds to pile into Walmart – some having to take public transit to get there; you were OK with that. And the shutting down of houses of worship where people with addictions met regularly. But the liquor store and cannabis stores remained open. And suicide went up as did opioid overdose and mental illness.

Well, as we open up and let those non-essential people come back into the world, we are not done. Those unvaccinated! How dare they? We need to mark them with the Mark of Cain, or a leper. They shall not be allowed to be out and about with us!

https://www.manhattancontrarian.com/blog/2021-11-27-complete-madness-in-the-biden-administration-energy-policy

Is President Biden doing anything right? To this observer, his policies range from at best merely incompetent, to at worst malicious hatred of the country and people whose interests he was elected to advance. Somewhere in between those two extremes we have Biden’s energy policy. In this arena, appropriate adjectives would be inconsistent, incoherent, and destructive. Don’t even attempt to make sense of it. To summarize in one word, it is complete madness.

I’m old enough to remember the 1970s, and the two “oil shocks” that occurred during that decade. A brief summary of the history can be found in this 2012 piece from Foreign Policy. By 1970/71, U.S. oil production had peaked and begun to decline. 1973 brought the Yom Kippur War in the Middle East, and OPEC halted oil shipments to the U.S., Western Europe and Japan. By January 1974, crude oil prices on the world markets had “more than quadrupled” (from around $3 to $12 per barrel). Further constraints on supply in the late 70s, most notably a big drop in supply from Iran following the ouster of the Shah, were followed by a further tripling of the price, this time from about $12 to about $36 per barrel. Government efforts at price controls were largely unsuccessful at restraining prices at the pump, but did cause shortages and lines at gas stations that maddened consumers. Without adequate domestic oil supply, the U.S. became a supplicant to the big international exporters, mainly OPEC and Russia. As reported in that Foreign Policy piece, President Carter reacted by “mak[ing] energy independence the central ambition of his presidency.”

Energy independence was a bi-partisan goal of American Presidents and of the Congress, until President Obama came along. Obama had the opposite strategy. He had drunk the climate Kool-Aid, and thought that the right goals were to restrict the production of fossil fuel energy, which would cause prices to rise and thereby restrict consumption. The famous quote from Obama, uttered in 2008 during his first presidential campaign, was “under my plan of a cap-and-trade system, electricity prices would necessarily skyrocket.” Although that statement specifically dealt with electricity prices, the same principle would apply as well to all energy prices. And Obama sought to put his strategy into practice, both by putting proposed “cap-and-trade” legislation before Congress, and by attempting to use his executive powers to restrict domestic fossil fuel development. However, the cap-and-trade legislation failed in Congress, and domestic “frackers” worked around Obama’s federal restrictions to greatly expand U.S. domestic oil and gas production, mostly on private lands.