RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://issuesinsights.com/2021/05/28/bidens-wild-spending-binge-its-socialism-not-stimulus/

Of all President Joe Biden’s awful economic policies, none will have as nasty and lasting an impact on average Americans as the sheer growth he’s proposing for the federal government. His newly unveiled budget lays bare once again the Democratic Party’s sharp socialist turn.

Biden’s budget is, in a word, mammoth. It proposes a total of $6 trillion in spending next year, with a budget deficit of $1.8 trillion. That’s a 36% rise above the pre-pandemic spending of $4.4 trillion in 2019. By 2031, the Biden plan sees spending of $8.1 trillion, while annual deficits will remain above $1.3 trillion every year for all 10 years.

Numbers crunched by the Congressional Budget Office show that Biden’s spending plans would add $22 trillion to our deficits over and above current levels in the decade.

That translates into a massive, unsustainable increase in publicly held federal debt, from an estimated $22.6 trillion this year to just under $43 trillion in 2031. For comparison, it took the U.S. more than 210 years to reach $5 trillion in total federal debt. In the 22 years since then, we’ve added 3.6 times that amount.

Put still another way, our debt will go from 108% of our total GDP to over 130%, a level most economists see as fiscally dangerous, even for a country as well-off as the U.S.

“In just a little over 100 days in the White House Biden has won the mantle as the most fiscally reckless president in American history,” as our friends at The Committee to Unleash Properity put it. “He’s making Barack Obama look like a piker. If his red ink schemes pass Congress, he will have added more to the national debt than the previous five presidents combined.”

Democrats like to say, “who cares? We owe it to ourselves.”

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17412/social-media-antisemitism

People often forget that the very concept of political correctness was invented by Stalin’s Soviet Union.

Now… that social media companies have decided to become “Glavlit” — to publish only material that is supposedly truthful and passes its “community standards” — they have become more like the former Soviet Union than like the United states under the First Amendment.

This is not a call to censor anti-Semitic tweets. It is a call for the social media companies to stop censoring other speech based on criteria of supposed truthfulness, “community standards” and other such questionable criteria that are subject to political, Ideological and other biases. I want no censorship other than for material that is already prohibited by law. But if the social media companies persist in censoring, they must apply a single standard to everything. I want no censorship other than for material that is already prohibited by law.

The current social media have the worst of both worlds: they censor material that is neither dangerous nor necessarily false; and then permit material which is both highly dangerous and demonstrably false.

Social media platforms are engaged in massive censorship of matters related to alleged election fraud, doubts about medicine, vaccination, anything from former President Donald J. Trump, criticism of Black Lives Matter, doubts about transgender activities, climate change, hate speech and other supposedly politically incorrect tweets and posts. At the same time, it is open season for anti-Semitism, anti-Zionism, and the double standard toward things Jewish.

This combination — censoring many other things but not censoring anti-Semitism — sends a chilling message: If some things are censored because they are untrue, then items that are not censored must have passed some test for truth. Thus, the hashtag #HitlerWasRight, which has been posted thousands of times across the social media, must be true. So, too, must the thousands of tweets and posts that claim Israel is a genocidal, Nazi state that deliberately murders children. These anti-Semitic posts must also meet the “community standards” of the various social media.

https://www.city-journal.org/on-covid-19-origins-elites-followed-politics-not-science?wallit_nosession=1

It is a disturbing prospect, like something out of a science fiction novel, but it’s appearing increasingly plausible nonetheless: the cause of the worldwide Covid-19 pandemic, which has killed millions and cost tens of trillions of dollars, may have been a viral escape from a Wuhan, China virology laboratory.

The latest indicator pointing toward a man-made catastrophe—that, until now, has been obscured with the aid of credulous media and scientists—comes from the Wall Street Journal, which reported that U.S. intelligence found that three researchers from the Wuhan Institute of Virology were hospitalized in November 2019 with symptoms consistent with Covid-19. That is well before the Chinese government’s claim that the first confirmed case occurred on December 8, 2019. This new report echoes a January 15, 2021 State Department fact sheet that reported several Wuhan Institute researchers became ill in autumn 2019. The steady accumulation of circumstantial evidence has prompted President Biden to order a review.

Early in the pandemic, conservative newspapers, like the Daily Mail and the Washington Times, and Senator Tom Cotton raised the possibility of a Chinese lab leak. The Washington Post dismissed such speculation as a debunked conspiracy theory. The New York Times labeled it a “fringe theory.”

https://www.nysun.com/editorials/nigel-farage-has-a-message-for-the-democratic/91524/

The heads-up this week to American Democrats from Nigel Farage strikes us as more newsworthy than its coverage so far would suggest. He’s warning that left-wing hostility to Israel could deliver to Democrats the kind of political catastrophe that befell Labor in Britain in December 2019. That’s when voters, reacting in part to Labor’s hostility to the Jewish state, gave Conservatives such a victory that Jeremy Corbyn was forced to resign.

On a visit here, Mr. Farage, a founding father of the Brexit movement, issued his warning in an interview Monday with Fox News’ Maria Bartiromo. He reckoned that Mr. Corbyn’s taking the Labor Party “in the pro-Palestinian, anti-Israel but clearly also anti-Semitic direction” had prompted voters in “Middle England” to say “‘we don’t like this kind of extremism,’ and it did hurt the Labor Party.”

“I think,” Mr Farage also said, “there are many instances here in the USA of members of Congress who are supporting these Palestinian protests.” He scored the Democrats for failing to condemn attacks on Jews “in strong enough terms.” He suggested that “across the western world” the left has “openly supported a Palestinian cause that behaves more like a terrorist organization,” and “decent people don’t like this sort of thing.”

https://amgreatness.com/2021/05/26/critical-race-theory-or-crazy-radical-tantrums/

Just four weeks ago, I wrote about the rising resistance to the woke craze and critical race theory, and much has transpired since then.

Here in California, even Disneyland has not been spared the wrath of the crazies. On May 7, the incomparable Christopher Rufo reported that “The Wokest Place on Earth” now includes employee trainings on systemic racism, white privilege, white fragility, and white saviors, and also launched racially segregated “affinity groups” at the company’s headquarters.

But just five days later, Rufo disclosed that Disney “has removed its entire antiracism program from the company’s internal portal, effectively scrubbing it out of existence.” Rufo added, “This is a major victory in the war against ‘woke capital,’” and noted that a “significant backlash from the public” was responsible for the shift. While some skeptics suggested that the policy was being “tweaked or rebranded, not scrubbed,” Rufo responded, “Possibly, but small victories start to add up. We’ve set the precedent—and forced a $329 billion company to back down.”

And then there is the math craziness. As a former teacher, I loved teaching math because there was a right and wrong answer. Feelings, opinions, and political dogma were irrelevant. 2+2=4. Period. If you have another take, sorry but you’re wrong. Now that the crazies are in charge, however, if you insist on right and wrong answers, you are racist. Really.

Until last week, in fact, the proposed California math framework recommended eight times that teachers use A Pathway to Equitable Math Instruction: Dismantling Racism in Mathematics Instruction as a resource. This radical drivel insists that addressing student errors, focusing on getting the right answer, and requiring students to show their work is a form of white supremacy. Objectivity is now racist, apparently.

However, due to citizen outrage during the “public comments” period, the state walked back some of its new math mandates, notably dropping the over-the-top Pathway to Equitable Math Instruction. The commission agreed to remove references to the toolkit from the draft framework last week, stating it was “inconsistent with teaching to the standards.” But the war is not over.  The framework has not been finalized, and the California Department of Education will hold a second public review in June and July.

https://amgreatness.com/2021/05/26/will-the-2020-madness-last/

The COVID-19 pandemic is ending with mass vaccinations. So is the national quarantine. The riots, arson, and looting of the 2020 summer are sputtering out—leaving violent crime in their wake.

The acrimony over the 2020 election fades. Trump Derangement Syndrome became abstract when Donald Trump left office and was ostracized from social media. 

In other words, the American people are slowly regaining their senses after the epidemic of mass hysteria and insanity that gripped the nation in 2020. 

But Americans will wonder whether what Antifa, Black Lives Matter, and the hard Left wrought last year will last when the nation is no longer gripped by 2020 madness. 

Teachers and academics are notorious for furious opposition to administrative bloat. For the last 50 years, administrations have proliferated, while the ratio of non-teachers to teachers has skyrocketed—to the chagrin of teacher unions. 

But in the last year, schools and colleges have gone mad in hiring thousands of “Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion” administrators. Their job descriptions may be vague. But certainly, they will not contribute to classroom education. Instead, they will monitor the speech and thoughts of those who do. 

How long will mostly left-wing teachers’ unions continue to support such vast diversions of money to armies of new left-wing non-teaching administrators?

Before 2020, the Left demanded “proportional representation” in hiring and admissions. And if minority groups and women were not represented in the workplace according to their percentages of the American population, then prejudice was automatically assumed (“disparate impact”). Reparatory measures were then made to hire by race and gender. 

“Affirmative action” was the euphemism for such quotas. It was nevertheless more or less institutionalized because proportional representation was not entirely illogical in a multiracial society. And there was still the common goal to follow Martin Luther King, Jr.’s notion of integration and assimilation to make race incidental not essential to who Americans are. 

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/05/biden-frees-al-qaeda-ally-who-plotted-smuggle-daniel-greenfield/

With inflation rising almost as fast as gas prices and the cost of a home, Joe Biden ain’t doing much for most Americans. But if you’re an Al Qaeda terrorist, he’s got your back.

Just ask three of Gitmo’s finest who are benefiting from Biden’s generosity.

Saifullah Paracha (pictured above) was a Pakistani businessman and New York travel agent with some big plans. The Gitmo inmate now being set loose by Biden wanted to “do something big against the US.”

9/11 was in Al Qaeda’s rearview mirror and its mastermind, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, was plotting a sequel. The Gitmo dossier for Paracha first details a plan to use his “textile business to smuggle explosives into the US” and these “ready-made explosives, specifically C4” would go into shipping containers full of “women and children’s clothing”.

Shipping Al Qaeda’s C4 to America would be more lucrative than dumping sweatshop labor sweatpants because “if al-Qaida used detainee’s textile company for shipping explosives to the US, he would likely be paid additional money beyond the standard shipping fees”. No word on whether there would have been a bonus for every American blown up.

And then things escalated from there with testimony that Paracha allegedly claimed that he, “believed he could obtain unspecified chemicals from Chinese sources”. The fellow he was talking to about the unspecified chemicals, Ammar al-Baluchi, one of the few Gitmo Jihadis whom neither Obama nor Biden had managed to release yet, had helped out the 9/11 hijackers with flight simulators, and manuals, and allegedly chatted with Mohammed Atta.

After 9/11, Al-Baluchi was looking at all sorts of plans for crashing planes into things, like the American consulate in Karachi or London’s Heathrow airport, but there were other options on the table. The nature of the chemicals out of China was never specified, but the KSM lieutenant believed they were” chemical or biological agents” that could be used “as a weapon”.

Paracha reportedly advised Al Qaeda that “one should look for a similar looking chemical and put it in between the good chemicals and it would be very easy to get [through] customs.” With his business experience, he could offer Al Qaeda tips on smuggling such as warning them about the “radiological sensors at ports or places of entry into the US” that would make it difficult to smuggle radioactive materials into the country”.

But Biden’s newest charity case wanted something bigger. The dossier describes the 9/11 mastermind’s associate and Paracha chatting about Al Qaeda getting some “radiological or nuclear items several times” because Paracha wanted “to help al-Qaida ‘do something big against the US.’”

Paracha “also discussed nuclear attacks and attacks against nuclear power plants” and had an idea for “al-Qaida to attack a nuclear power plant”.

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/four-house-dems-label-squad-statements-on-israel-antisemitic-at-their-core/?utm_source=

Four House Democrats condemned their colleagues on both sides of the aisle for fueling anti-Semitism in an open letter on Tuesday.

“We . . . reject comments from Members of Congress accusing Israel of being an ‘apartheid state’ and committing ‘act[s] of terrorism,’” read a letter signed by Representatives Josh Gottheimer (D., N.J.) Elaine Luria (D., Va.), Kathy Manning (D., N.C.), and Dean Phillips (D., Minn.). “These statements are antisemitic at their core and contribute to a climate that is hostile to many Jews.”

The letter added, “Sadly, we have learned from our history that when this type of violence and inflammatory rhetoric goes unaddressed, it can fuel increasing hatred and violence, and lead to unspeakable acts against Jews.”

Representatives Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D., N.Y.), Rashida Tlaib (D., Mich.), and Cori Bush (D., Mo.) have referred to Israel as an “apartheid” state. Representative Ilhan Omar (D., Minn.) referred to “Israeli air strikes killing civilians in Gaza” as “an act of terrorism” during last week’s fighting between Israel and Palestinian armed groups in the Gaza strip.

After pro-Palestinian demonstrators attacked Jews in New York last week, Ocasio-Cortez wrote on Twitter that “we will never, ever tolerate antisemitism” in the city “or in the world.”

“The recent surge in attacks is horrifying. We stand with our Jewish communities in condemning this violence,” Ocasio-Cortez wrote.

The Tuesday letter also condemned Representative Marjorie Talyor-Greene (R., Ga.), who compared a Tennessee grocery store’s rule requiring employees to display their vaccination status to the requirement for Jews to wear a yellow star during Germany’s Nazi period.

“”[E]lected officials have used reckless, irresponsible antisemitic rhetoric,” the letter states. “These include repeated, unacceptable, and blatantly antisemitic statements made by a Member of Congress comparing facemasks and other COVID-19 public health measures to ‘what happened in Nazi Germany’ during the Holocaust.”

https://www.nationalreview.com/2021/05/pompeo-slams-bidens-shut-down-of-lab-leak-probe-they-havent-lifted-a-finger/

EXCLUSIVE: The former secretary of state fires back amid reports that the Biden State Department cut short a coronavirus-origin investigation he once led.

F ormer secretary of state Mike Pompeo blasted the Biden administration’s efforts to date to get to the bottom of the coronavirus pandemic’s origins, amid reports that the current State Department had ended an inquiry from his watch concerning the possibility of the so-called lab-leak theory.

“They haven’t lifted a finger, as I understand it,” he told National Review in an interview on Wednesday, regarding the U.S. government’s efforts to investigate the COVID-19 pandemic’s origin. “They haven’t even raised it with Xi Jinping, and I don’t know that it was raised when National-Security Adviser Sullivan and Secretary Blinken were in Anchorage. I don’t know that they laid down their demands, nor do I know if they told them in the case that you don’t comply with these demands, here are the costs we’re going to impose on you.”

The former secretary of state’s comments came amid an extraordinary about-face concerning the lab-leak theory of COVID’s origins by major media outlets, Democratic officials, and others who previously had dismissed it. This culminated in an announcement by President Biden on Wednesday afternoon calling for the intelligence community to further investigate and report back within 90 days, noting that community has “‘coalesced around two likely scenarios’ but has not reached a definitive conclusion on this question.” This followed acknowledgement of the plausibility of the lab theory in recent days by Dr. Anthony Fauci, Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra, and a number of other key officials.

The Biden administration has never denied the findings of a January 15 fact sheet issued by the Trump administration claiming that researchers at a Wuhan lab came down with respiratory illnesses in 2019 and that the facility hosted military research. Officials have, however, kept a cool distance from these revelations, and some even alleged that the Trump administration had, in issuing the fact sheet, “put spin on the ball.”

With support for investigating the plausibility of a leak from the Wuhan Institute of Virology now growing, Pompeo suggested it was strange that others had not joined him in raising this possibility in the past. Specifically, he said that top Democratic officials likely had access to the intelligence on which he based his May 2020 claim that a lab-leak origin was supported by “enormous evidence.”