RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://taibbi.substack.com/p/why-has-ivermectin-become-a-dirty

On December 8, 2020, when most of America was consumed with what The Guardian called Donald Trump’s “desperate, mendacious, frenzied and sometimes farcical” attempt to remain president, the Senate’s Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee held a hearing on the “Medical Response to Covid-19.” One of the witnesses, a pulmonologist named Dr. Pierre Kory, insisted he had great news.

“We have a solution to this crisis,” he said unequivocally. “There is a drug that is proving to have a miraculous impact.”

Kory was referring to an FDA-approved medicine called ivermectin. A genuine wonder drug in other realms, ivermectin has all but eliminated parasitic diseases like river blindness and elephantiasis, helping discoverer Satoshi Ōmura win the Nobel Prize in 2015. As far as its uses in the pandemic went, however, research was still scant. Could it really be a magic Covid-19 bullet?

Kory had been trying to make such a case, but complained to the Senate that public efforts had been stifled, because “every time we mention ivermectin, we get put in Facebook jail.” A Catch-22 seemed to be ensnaring science. With the world desperate for news about an unprecedented disaster, Silicon Valley had essentially decided to disallow discussion of a potential solution — disallow calls for more research and more study — because not enough research and study had been done. Once, people weren’t allowed to take drugs before they got FDA approval. Now, they can’t talk about them.

“I want to try to be respectful because I think the intention is correct,” Kory told the committee. “They want to cut down on misinformation, and many doctors are claiming X, Y, and Z work in this disease. The challenge is, you’re also silencing those of us who are expert, reasoned, researched, and extremely knowledgeable.”

Eight million people watched Kory say that on the C-SPAN video of the hearing posted to YouTube, but YouTube, in what appears to be a first, removed video of the hearing, as even Senate testimony was now deemed too dangerous for public consumption. YouTube later suspended the Wisconsin Senator who’d invited Kory to the hearing, and when Kory went on podcasts to tell his story, YouTube took down those videos, too. Kory was like a ghost who floated through the Internet, leaving suspensions and blackened warning screens everywhere he went.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/doctors-for-progressive-conformity-11624055333?mod=opinion_lead_pos3

The American Medical Association is a lobby of doctors that’s supposed to promote policies that improve public health and medicine. But it seems to be evolving into another arm of progressive politics, like the teachers unions. See the AMA’s policy-making meeting this week.

Delegates spent much of the time discussing systemic racism in health care and adopted guidelines for workplaces to establish training requirements for explicit and implicit bias and microaggressions. AMA trustee Willarda Edwards called systemic racism “the most serious barrier to the advancement of health equity and appropriate medical care.”

Many doctors would disagree with that statement. But the AMA seems to want to enforce ideological conformity in its ranks, including on social media. Delegates also voted to encourage social-media platforms to “crack down on medical misinformation,” including by “altering underlying network dynamics or redesigning platform algorithms.”

Social-media platforms have been removing content by doctors who disagree with the progressive lockdown consensus or who suggest that the virus may have leaked from a Chinese lab. Many doctors say their videos recommending early treatment with repurposed antiviral drugs have been censored, including one from a Senate hearing.

Social-media censorship suppressed debate on important issues during the pandemic, and the AMA wants to extend the information control to other health subjects. The new AMA policy would ostensibly encourage Facebook, YouTube and others to remove posts by doctors who question progressive orthodoxy on race and identity politics.

AMA delegates also voted to endorse an intellectual property waiver that progressives have been pushing for Covid vaccines at the World Trade Organization. President Biden endorsed it last month. But even European leaders say it won’t increase global vaccine supply and will set a dangerous precedent that will retard innovation in new medicines.

None of these new AMA policy positions will help patients or physicians, and they risk eroding public trust in the medical profession. Whatever happened to “first, do no harm”?

https://www.forbes.com/sites/adamandrzejewski/2021/06/17/with-juneteenth-feder

With the stroke of his pen Thursday, President Joe Biden signed legislation giving millions of federal employees Friday off to celebrate Saturday’s new federal holiday, Juneteenth.

This makes 44 paid days off for the average federal employee annually, which is nearly nine full weeks of paid-time off each year.

Juneteenth is celebrated on June 19 to commemorate the end of slavery in the United States. The Civil War was America’s bloodiest war, with between 752,000 and 861,000 soldiers dying on the battlefield. 49 states have already recognized Juneteenth as a holiday (South Dakota is the only holdout), though only a handful give it as a paid holiday to state employees.

On Wednesday, the U.S. House passed the bill to make Juneteenth a federal holiday, after the U.S. Senate passed it the day before.

Signing it into law on Thursday, Biden made Juneteenth – observed this year on Friday, June 18 — a federal holiday for which “most” federal employees will have off.

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2021/06/mustsee_tv_black_medical_professional_denounces_crt_at_school_board_meeting.html

Critical Race Theory opponents are the new Tea Party, a grassroots phenomenon all over the country, mobilizing both activists and people with a political background at all to oppose the teaching of race hatred.  There is nothing quite as powerful in exciting passions in adults as threatening their children.  And make no mistake: Critical Race Theory harms children deeply, teaching Blacks that they are victims and can’t succeed on their own, and teaching non-Blacks that they are born evil.

If you spend two minutes and forty-seven seconds watching the following cell phone video of a Black medical professional denouncing the teaching of Critical Race Theory at a school board meeting, you will understand the panic that is starting to hit Democrats and their media apparat.  The passion and the intelligence of this self-described holder of two medical degrees, a man who worked his way through college, “up from the streets,” are inspiring.  He told the mostly White crowd gathered there that he “gives orders” to people who look like them every day, so how can he be oppressed?

https://nypost.com/2021/06/17/tide-turning-against-the-woke-liberal-blob-that-misrules-us/

For the past year, liberals unleashed on the nation an avalanche of ideological nonsense, coupled with brutal pressure to conform. Those who bucked the party line found themselves canceled and unpersoned and had their opinions subjected to mockery and claims of delusion and “anti-science” prejudices.

Until now. Because the tide is turning. And sometimes the break from the party line comes from surprising places. 

Late-night comics are usually reliable parroters of the message of the day. So it says something that last week, Bill Maher launched an impassioned critique of “woke” culture, while this week, Jon Stewart went on Stephen Colbert’s show to say in no uncertain terms that it looks like the Wuhan coronavirus came from … the Wuhan lab.

Using a term from Harvard psychologist Steven Pinker, Maher accused liberals of “progressophobia” — “a brain disorder that strikes liberals and makes them incapable of recognizing progress.”

That is, they’re unwilling to admit that things have gotten better. To hear them talk about race, you’d think we were still in the era of Selma and Bull Connor. (My dad marched with Freedom Riders and at Selma; trust me, things have changed.) To hear them talk about women’s rights, you’d think it was still 1958. And gay activists, despite “Pride Month” being celebrated by pretty much every corporation, are still somehow stuck in the pre-Stonewall era.

Maher’s right.

https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/the-screamers

You think it’s over? It’s not o-ver,” my Great-Aunt Lee used to warn me, in a singsong voice, her forced smile wrapped up with some sort of awful knowing. “Antisemitism isn’t over. It’s never o-ver.”

My dear Aunt Lee was clearly crazy, I’d think. Superstitiously spitting-after-compliments crazy. What antisemitism?

Then the mayor and city council of my hometown of Durham, North Carolina, enacted a resolution in support of what Jewish Voice for Peace dubbed “Deadly Exchange,” a toxic campaign to spook well-intentioned people into blaming Israel for policing issues in the United States. Suddenly, Durham Jews found themselves having to deny that Israeli Jews were instructing local cops on how to torture Black Americans. And deny that hating people of color was a Jewish thing. And deny that we were the most sinister, vile people on the planet. Anyone feel like going to the Hope Valley Diner while wearing a Jewish star necklace tonight?

We began hearing rumors that similar campaigns were afoot in cities nearby. So I plunked down the $600 AIPAC registration fee and bought a long Tory Burch dress at T.J.Maxx, figuring a serious dress would help me get taken seriously. Surely someone, someone, among the twinkling constellation of Jewish muckety-mucks at that conference would listen to my story and then help me fix what left me sitting in numb disbelief on my cold bathroom floor night after night, once the kids were asleep.

My husband designed business cards for me. “Fight Back Now,” they said, with a Jewish star. We printed an optimistic 200 cards on flimsy stock at FedEx, and then to Washington, D.C., I went. I didn’t care that I’d be spending my birthday alone. It was 2019. The world was on fire.

https://www.nysun.com/national/in-europe-biden-forsook-the-american-founders/91545/

It looks like President Biden is the Group of Seven’s favorite member now. And no wonder. He gave up American tax sovereignty to let the Europeans impose on American companies big tax hikes that will do great damage to workers’ wages, costing jobs and undermining the economy.

Mr. Biden also gave up American energy sovereignty by reaffirming the Paris climate targets, which will decimate our fossil-fuel, America-first energy independence — thereby doing even greater damage to the economy and to jobs.

Then, in the semi-summit with President Putin, Mr. Biden gave up American classified secrets by releasing 16 critical infrastructure sectors, a list developed at the highest level of American intelligence and national security experts, essentially providing enemies like Russia, China, and Iran with a target list.

Mr. Biden made no effort to respond to Mr. Putin’s CNN-MSNBC talking points on Black Lives Matter, January 6, deteriorating race relations, even election reform. Nor did he make a counterattack on Mr. Putin’s lie that Russia has nothing to do with cyberhacking.

Our president should have publicly released the Russian cyberhacking criminal groups that we know all about. He didn’t, though, and, by the way, going back to that critical industries target list — a couple things that went unmentioned is American security in space and under the waters. I’m sure the Russians, Chinese, and Iranians took note of that.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17474/in-spite-of-rock-and-tempest-roar

America! Since our founding we have stood tall against every assault and every enemy. This is not the time to despair. Rather, we need to go beyond simply recognizing today’s threats and embrace the spirit of a nation that has weathered the worst our foes have ever thrown against us.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, one of America’s most vigorous patriots used the power of poetry to rally his fellow citizens and remain true to the steadfast courage of our forefathers when he penned, “The Building of the Ship.” The poem compares building a ship to building a nation and within the verses he implores us to defend it!

Their words still ring out: “In spite of Rock or Tempest roar, in spite of false lights on the shore.”

Assaults against America continue today, both from overseas enemies and from within our own borders. Further, social media has acted as an accelerant for those seeking to divide us. Political operatives masquerading as journalists have used their platforms to further advance their cynical agendas. (Sadly, this is not the first time in American history that “journalists” have sought to destroy the reputations of White House occupants such as Donald Trump. Lincoln was the subject of countless lies – but those reporters had no access to Twitter or Facebook. The damage they inflict now on our nation is incalculable.)

Our nation also is confronting the abdicators of their sacred Oath of Office; politicians, members of the judiciary and others state and federal institutions who have solemnly sworn to “defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic.” Cynically, they seem to evolve into the very enemies from whom they swore to protect us.

More damaging to our nation is that they are never held to account. Questions have been asked about matters from subpoenaed evidence that was destroyed to election laws that are apparently bypassed – with never any negative consequences for those who destroyed the evidence or bypassed the laws.

Overseas enemies of our democracy are trying to destroy us, seeking the means to turn Americans against each other. It is this author’s opinion that they are now using the anonymous power of the Internet, rather than nuclear weapons, to attack our society. Consider how North Korean hackers shut down Sony just a few years ago and how Russian based hackers forced Colonial Pipeline and the meat processing industry to hand over tens of millions in ransom.

Despite these enormous threats we should not despair. Instead we need to gather strength from our past — such as the lessons offered to us in Longfellow’s poem — and to take to heart the words that ring clear, true, and inspiring.