RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2021/05/will_vaccine_passports_be_americas

With millions of Americans vaccinated against COVID-19, a national debate now rages over “vaccine passports” (or vaxxports) that privilege those who have taken “the jab.” These proofs of immunization take the form of a smartphone app with a personalized QR code. Those favoring such digital certification say it makes us “safer” as a society and hastens a return to pre-pandemic normalcy. But critics liken it to China’s social scoring system (Social Credit System) aimed at rewarding those who conform and punishing those who don’t. They decry it as government overreach, invasion of privacy, and curtailment of personal freedom. They believe Americans shouldn’t be required to show proof of vaccination or reveal personal information to go about their daily lives. Anti-vaxxport protesters in California’s Orange County – who are on the frontlines in this battle – even had a placard saying “‘Show Your Papers’ is a Nazi Plan.”

The Biden administration ushered in the vaxxport program deviously, freeing itself of accountability and letting private companies in tune with it to implement the agenda. The idea was floated as a trial balloon with a statement by White House press secretary Jen Psaki: “There will be no federal vaccinations database and no federal mandate requiring everyone to obtain a single vaccination credential.” But by adding that “the development of a vaccine passport, or whatever you want to call it, will be driven by the private sector,” Psaki admitted that the policy would be enforced by private companies.

The effort is spearheaded by the usual suspects – Microsoft, Oracle, the Commons Project (a Rockefeller Foundation-funded non-profit that is part of the World Economic Forum), and other corporations committed to global vaccination certification. They claim to follow an “equitable and privacy-preserving approach to verifiable data sharing.” Their project, the Vaccination Credential Initiative – a coalition of more than 300 healthcare and technology groups – is working on the upcoming implementation of a SMART health card that stores vital medical data, including vaccination records. But such record-keeping systems are at risk. In 2019, a University of California test found the healthcare reporting mechanism vulnerable to cyberattacks, data privacy breaches, and even data manipulation that could result in patient injury or death.

https://greenwald.substack.com/p/the-squad-enables-pelosis-massive?token=e

By a margin of one vote, the U.S. House of Representatives on Thursday approved a bill that allocates $1.9 billion to intensify security and increase policing at the U.S. Capitol. Among other things, the bill would boost armed security for members of Congress, fortify security protections at the Capitol, provide funds in “reimbursement” to the National Guard, and increase funding for the Capitol Police. A small portion of it would provide counseling services to Capitol Police officers dealing with trauma.

The 213-212 vote was a party line vote with six exceptions. All Republicans voted against it. All Democrats voted for the bill except for six. Three members of the left-wing faction of the House known as the “Squad” joined their GOP colleagues to vote against the bill: Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN), Rep. Cori Bush (D-MO), and Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D-MA). But the other three members of the Squad — Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-NY) and Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) — voted neither “yes” nor “no” but rather “present.” All six had previously told activist groups that they opposed the bill.

https://amgreatness.com/2021/05/19/why-does-the-left-hate-israel/

As over 3,000 rockets are fired into Israel by Hamas, the establishment of the Democratic Party seems paralyzed over how to respond to the latest Middle East war. 

It is not just that they fear that the squad, Black Lives Matter, the shock troops of Antifa, and the woke institutions such as professional sports, academia, and the media are now unapologetically anti-Israel. 

They are in terror also that anti-Israelism is becoming synonymous with rank anti-Semitism. And soon the Democratic Party will end up disdained as much as was the British Labour Party under Jeremy Corbyn. 

The new core of the Democrats, as emblemized by Representatives Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), and Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.), has in the past questioned the patriotism of American Jews who support Israel, and often has had to apologize for puerile anti-Semitic rants. 

The Left in general believes we should judge harshly even the distant past without exemptions. Why then, in venomous, knee-jerk fashion, does it fixate on a nation born from the Holocaust, while favoring Israel’s enemies, who were on the side of the Nazis in World War II? 

It was not just that the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Amin al-Husseini, was a Nazi sympathizer. Egypt, for example, welcomed ex-Nazis for their hatred of Jews and their military expertise—whether the infamous death camp doctor Aribert Ferdinand Heim or Waffen-SS henchman Otto Skorzeny. The Hamas charter still reads like it is cribbed from Hitler’s Mein Kampf. 

The Left claims it champions consensual government and believes the United States must use its soft power clout to isolate autocracies. But the Palestinian Authority and Hamas refuse to hold free and regularly scheduled elections. If an Israeli strong man ever suspended free elections and ruled through brutality, U.S. aid would be severed within days. 

If history and democratic values cannot explain fully the hatred of Israel on the Left, perhaps human rights violations do. But here too there is another radical asymmetry. Arab Israeli citizens enjoy far greater constitutional protections than do Arabs living under either the Palestinian Authority or Hamas. 

Is the Left bothered by the allies of Hamas? After all, most are autocracies such as Iran, North Korea, China, and Russia. 

We return then to other reasons for the woke furor directed toward Israel. 

President Joe Biden praised Michigan Democrat Rep. Rashida Tlaib during his latest trip to the Midwestern state this week, as the member of “the squad” demands divestment from Israel during conflict with Hamas.
https://thefederalist.com/2021/05/19/biden-praises-rashida-tlaib-as-she-pushes-antisemitic-bds-movement-during-conflict/

“I want to say to you that I admire your intellect, I admire your passion, and I admire your concern for so many other people,” Biden said at a Ford plant in Dearborn. “You’re a fighter, and God thank you for being a fighter.”

On the same trip, Tlaib confronted Biden on the airport tarmac in Detroit and reportedly demanded the president condemn Israel and support the Palestinians. Biden’s approach as Israel faces its worst attacks in years from the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas has remained largely muted, with the president only saying he hopes the conflict comes to a quick end while professing the Jewish state’s right to self-defense.

On Wednesday, Biden told Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that the White House expected “a significant de-escalation today” to reach a ceasefire.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/05/censorship-personal-story-bill-warner/

I find the biggest shift of thought in my 80 years of life is censorship. I want to share with you my personal experiences.

I have spoken as an expert on Political Islam in the US, Canada, Czech Republic, Denmark, Germany, Austria, Serbia, Macedonia, Slovakia, Kosovo, Poland, and Israel. I have spoken in the Danish Parliament and the German Bundestag. I have advised European Parliament members, politicians, heads of intelligence agencies and a future prime minister. I prepared white papers on Political Islam for the FBI.

Let me clarify my methodology. All Islamic political and religious doctrine is found in 3 texts – Koran, traditions of Mohammed (Hadith) and life of Mohammed (the Sira). The only ideas that I speak about come from Allah and Mohammed. Political Islam is the part of Islamic doctrine that deals with the non-Muslim, the Kafir. Oddly enough, more Islamic doctrinal text is devoted to politics than religion.

My books sold like crazy. I was selling books by the tens of thousands.  My Sharia Law for Non-Muslims was a #1 best seller on Islamic law on Amazon. My video “Why We Are Afraid” had millions of views on YouTube. YouTube contacted me and assigned a staff member to me to teach me how to make better videos. When you Googled “political Islam” my work filled the first 4 screens. It is impossible to dominate a topic to that degree, but I did it. What made it possible was the fact that I defined and popularized the term “Political Islam.”  Offers to lecture and for print and internet interviews poured in.

But a storm cloud appeared on the horizon. The Tennessean newspaper put out a Sunday front page article which said that I was an anti-Muslim bigot and a hater. This was followed by several other attack pieces. An organization called the SPLC, Southern Poverty Law Center, (the SPLC is not a civil rights group, is not southern, is not poor and is not a law center) declared that I was one of the biggest bigots in the US. Indeed, the SPLC said Nashville was a hate city because I live here.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/05/100-days-failure-bruce-thornton/

The Biden administration took over the government with the wind at its back thanks to Donald Trump. With the COVID vaccines reining in the pandemic and things getting back to normal, all Biden had to do was not get in the way of success. But a lingering Trump Derangement Syndrome, and a leftwing, noisy base eager to complete Barack Obama’s “fundamental transformation” of the U.S., have led at home and abroad to actions and policies seemingly calculated to compromise our interests and security and erode our political freedom.

We can start with our southern border. Trump’s initiatives such as building a wall, stepping-up deportations, and striking a deal that kept asylum seekers in Mexico had slowed considerably the number of illegal crossings, leading to a reduction in violence from gangsters like MS-13 that flourished in so-called sanctuary cities; the end of the catch-and-release policy that dumped unvetted aliens into the country’s interior; and limiting the cruel deaths of children on the trek north.

But these successful policies interfered with the bipartisan need for de facto open borders to provide cheap labor for Wall Street, and more voters for the DNC. More important, no matter how successful, such polices were tainted by the “wicked” Donald Trump, the populist bull that wrecked the political establishment’s remunerative china shop. So they had to go.

The result has been a return to the Obama era’s spectacle of children and teens packed into squalid holding pens, increased infestations of cartel traffickers in people and drugs, and two consecutive months of about 175,000 apprehensions of border-crossers each month––the highest in two decades. All reports from those on the ground––from border patrol agents to residents to local government agencies––indicate a serious crisis that will insidiously spread across the country. But president Joe Biden is instructed to say that such influxes happen every year at this time, that Donald Trump left a “Godawful mess,” and that “We’ve now got control” over the ongoing stampede of border-crossers.

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/chicago-mayor-refusing-to-accept-interview-requests-from-white-journalists/

Chicago mayor Lori Lightfoot is only accepting interview requests from “black and brown journalists” as a matter of policy, according to a spokesman.

“As @chicagosmayor reaches her two year midway point as mayor, her spokeswoman says Lightfoot is granting 1 on 1 interviews-only to Black or Brown journalists,” local political journalist Mary Ann Ahern tweeted.

On Twitter, Lightfoot defended the policy, writing that she “ran [for mayor] to break up the status quo that was failing so many. That isn’t just in City Hall. It’s a shame that in 2021, the City Hall press corps is overwhelmingly White in a city where more than half of the city identifies as Black, Latino, AAPI or Native American.”

“This is exactly why I’m being intentional about prioritizing media requests from POC reporters on the occasion of the two-year anniversary of my inauguration as mayor of this great city” Lightfoot added, before noting that “we must be intentional about doing better.”

http://www.swtotd.blogspot.com

Most Republicans do not want to denigrate President Trump, but neither do they want to elevate him. Benign neglect is the preferred path. The good of what he did – freeing up the economy from restrictive regulations and confining taxes, repatriating more than a trillion dollars in corporate cash, raising wages for the lowest income workers, and creating the most jobs ever for Black and Hispanic; taking real steps to resolve the border crisis; addressing the bureaucratic morass in Washington; calling out international governmental bodies for their undemocratic ways; getting NATO nations to pay a greater share of their defense; confronting enemies of freedom like Communist China, Russia and North Korea; signing the Abraham Accords and instigating Operation Warp Speed to get a COVOD-19 vaccine out in record time – was overshadowed by a supersized ego and mean-spirited, feckless Tweets.

Democrats, on the other hand, would like to keep the spirit of Donald Trump front and center. While it is true that his ardent Republican supporters do not want to give up on him, neither do Democrat leaders who see him as someone around whom they can rally their troops. Trump Derangement Syndrome helped Mr. Trump with the public when he was President because complaints about him were so outrageous. But it hurts the Republican Party and their chances today when anti-Trump opinions are voiced by other Republicans. “Prudent Republicans,” wrote Andrew McCarthy in the May 15th issue of National Review, “perceive that the best way to move on from Trump is to stop talking about him.” I agree.

If Republicans want to take control of the House and Senate in 2022, they will have to focus on issues, not on the personality of the former President. Single issue politicians detract from legitimate policy debates. In refusing to accept the outcome of the 2020 election, Mr. Trump has done no more than what Al Gore did in 2000 and Hillary Clinton did in 2016. In all three cases (2000, 2016, 2020), there were certainly electoral irregularities, but there always have been. However, from what we now know, none of those elections would have been reversed. “If questioning the results of a particular election were a crime, as many have asserted in the wake of the controversial 2020 election and its aftermath,” writes Mollie Hemingway in her forthcoming book Rigged: How the Media, Big Tech, and the Democrats Seized Our Elections, “nearly the entire Democratic Party and media establishment would have been incarcerated following the 2016 election.” It is not that Mr. Trump’s character should be ignored, but that it must be kept in perspective.