RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17369/george-soros-covid-loan

We need to ask ourselves how “the system” — our government — facilitates this sort of racket without checks or oversight. Harvard University can be publicly shamed into returning COVID relief money, but a Soros group gets a pass? Why the disparity of treatment and accountability?

Those Americans would be repulsed at the idea [George Soros’s East-West Management Institute] getting a PPP “loan,” assuming they even knew about it — 99.9% probably had no idea

Think about it: a Soros-backed operation that manages a big chunk of the State Department’s international development operations, pretending it is like any other American “small business,” was seeking paycheck protection subsidies because of COVID. It is an insult. It is grotesque.

As reported by the Wall Street Journal on October 17, 2017, George Soros transferred $18 billion to his Open Society Foundations. EWMI is part of the greater Soros operation. Why are American taxpayers subsidizing any part of his operations?

In March, the Small Business Administration gave a $234,548 Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) “loan” to George Soros’s East-West Management Institute (EWMI).

The official description of the transaction is “to aid small businesses in maintaining workforce during the COVID-19 pandemic”, but federal grants and contracts to EWMI (its primary source of revenue) rose from $9,185,194 in FY 2019 to $14,859,293 in 2020. EWMI previously received a $226,179 PPP loan in May of 2020. As a supposedly small business struggling through the pandemic, EWMI enjoys office space at 575 Madison Avenue in New York City and 1101 Connecticut Ave NW in Washington, DC.

In November 2018, Judicial Watch published a special report, “The Financial and Staffing Nexus Between the Open Society Foundations and the United States Government.” The 28-page report is scrupulously documented with 154 footnotes citing to primary source records. A key take-away from the report concerning the activities of EWMI is that the organization manages projects for the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), a nominally independent component of the U.S. State Department.

For those interested, EWMI maintains a web page with documentation concerning their non-profit status and their financial statements. You can also view their self-described “Donors and Partners” who, evidently, were not able or willing to “loan” money to EWMI for paycheck protection. The list of donors and partners is quite remarkable — from the World Bank to Romania’s Justice Ministry, among many others. It makes one wonder why American taxpayers had to cover the PPP “loan.” It reminds one of Senator William Proxmire’s (D-WI) “Golden Fleece Award” for squandering the American public’s money.

https://amac.us/a-woke-military-wouldnt-have-won-world-war-ii/

Memorial Day traditionally marks the beginning of summer and a time for patriotic remembrance of our fallen war dead and, for many of us, fallen family members, many of whom were veterans. I have been thinking of the five sons of Victor Sowers, Sr., my mother’s brothers, all of whom served in World War II and returned, while pondering the parlous state of the military today.

The Sowers brothers would, no doubt, have joined a group of veterans and Republicans in Congress who are banding together to fight the imposition of left-wing ideology on the U. S. Armed Forces. Air Force Lt. General Rod Bishop (retired) began Stand Together Against Racism and Radicalism in the Services (STARRS) last year when the Air Force Academy football team released a video endorsing both Black Lives Matter and “antiracist” education, reports the Washington Free Beacon. After complaining to no avail, the retired general heard from many other veterans and active duty members of the various branches who were experiencing the same kinds of indoctrination in Critical Race Theory and other progressive doctrines. After U. S. Space Force Lt. Colonel Matthew Lohmeier was fired for self-publishing Irresistible Revolution: Marxism’s Goal of Conquest and the Unmaking of the American Military, a book detailing what he calls the “Neo-Marxist agenda” (and currently #4 among all books on Amazon), thirty members of STARRS sent an open letter to Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin asking him to “take action to fight back against the creeping left-wing extremism in the U.S. military.” 

          The Free Beacon reports that there is no response to the STARRS letter from the Pentagon, but the signs are not good given Secretary Austin’s own confirmation testimony that he would work to rid the military of “racists and extremists,” a statement that is ominous given the recent history of reports and statements from various branches of the military, as well as comments such as that of retired Army General Thomas Kolditz, who said that the goal should be to purge “Trump loyalists.”  Mike Gonzalez and Dakota Wood of the Heritage Foundation reported that the Defense Department is “reportedly considering hiring a private company to monitor the free speech of military personal on social media, using key words or algorithms that by their very nature reflect the perspective of those who select the words and write the algorithms.” 

While my Sowers uncles made all the jokes about the foolishness of those running the Army and Navy in the 1940s and laughed about the military censors’ sometimes senseless clipping of passages from their letters, they would not have thought what was happening now is at all funny. They fought for a country they did not believe inherently racist or unjust. They fought for a country where the perfection of freedom was sought. 

https://www.dailywire.com/news/we-are-going-to-expose-you-vets-crenshaw-cotton-create-whistleblower-doc-to-combat-woke-efforts-in-u-s-military

On Saturday, Arkansas GOP Sen. Tom Cotton and Texas GOP Rep. Dan Crenshaw, both military veterans, teamed up to release a whistleblower form for military members to fill out if they spot any “woke” training efforts.

Crenshaw tweeted, “Enough is enough. We won’t let our military fall to woke ideology. We have just launched a whistleblower webpage where you can submit your story. Your complaint will be legally protected, and go to my office and @SenTomCotton.”

Crenshaw added, “With written permission we will anonymously publish egregious complaints on social media and tell the country what’s happening in our military. For too long, progressive Pentagon staffers have been calling the shots for our warfighters, and spineless military commanders have let it happen. Now we are going to expose you.”

The whistleblower form states:

We advise that whistleblowers use your personal resources and contact information when communicating submitting this form, and that you do not use your work equipment or work contact information. Further, do not submit classified information or other information barred from release through this form or by email.

Various U.S. laws at the federal, state and local level prohibit retaliation against whistleblowers for providing information to Congress. However, you still take serious risks when you report allegations of wrongdoing. We recommend that you consult an attorney experienced in whistleblower law for further guidance. We respect your confidentiality, and we will use your contact information only to follow up with you regarding your submission. You may submit a disclosure anonymously. However, please be aware that anonymous disclosures may limit our ability to respond to the information that you provide.

https://issuesinsights.com/2021/06/02/hey-facebook-ban-this/

Last week, we learned that Facebook had been banning posts suggesting that COVID-19 originated in a Chinese lab. We became aware only when Facebook announced that it would no longer ban such posts, raising the question of why it was doing so in the first place. It wasn’t as though there was no possibility that a lab leak was responsible. There was an ongoing discussion of this.

Then over the weekend, we learned that Facebook apparently has plans to ban posts that might encourage “vaccine hesitancy.” What does that mean? Who knows. Facebook never reveals how it makes such decisions.

“Anything that questions the vaccine or the narrative regarding the vaccine, which is, you know, everyone should get the vaccine and the vaccine is good and you’re not going to get many bad side effects, anything outside of that realm is basically considered under ‘vaccine hesitancy’ by Facebook’s algorithms,” Morgan Kahmann, a former data center technician for Facebook, told Fox News.

How does Facebook justify this? It doesn’t. In one section of its “Community Standards” document, Facebook flatly denies that it removes “false news” posts. It says “we do not remove false news from Facebook but we significantly reduce its distribution by showing it lower in News Feed.”

We’ve run into Facebook’s horrible “false news” attacks ourselves. One of our posts – correctly – stated that then-candidate Joe Biden wanted to outlaw gas-powered cars. That was based on Biden’s own campaign promises. Facebook flagged the headline as false – not the editorial – based on a bogus fact check. Facebook readership of the editorial crashed as a result.

It happened again when Facebook moved to block distribution of an article we published on COVID-19 rates in the U.S., in which we noted how infection rates in Europe at the time were far higher than the U.S., yet the U.S. – or more particularly, President Donald Trump – was being blamed for a massive failure to contain the disease. As with the Biden editorial, readership crashed as soon as Facebook slapped its “partly false” label on it.

Facebook has been not only removing COVID-19 stories it doesn’t like, but posts regarding election fraud as well, according to ABC News.

https://spectator.us/topic/who-wants-bidens-massive-budget/

President Joe Biden just proposed the largest budget (as a percentage of America’s economy) since the country was fighting Nazi Germany, Imperial Japan and Fascist Italy. He’s doing it when there is no emergency, only an overweening desire to pass progressive programs quickly, before they lose their legislative majority.

The best historical analogue to his proposed budget increase is Lyndon Johnson’s cradle-to-grave Great Society Program. It has the same flaws. In fact, Biden’s program is best understood as the next step in a long political arc, extending from Franklin Roosevelt to LBJ to Obamacare.

All of them proposed centralized government solutions to almost every social problem, particularly endemic problems among the poor.

Today, those problems are caused mainly by the breakdown of family structures, high rates of urban violence and public schooling that doesn’t prepare graduates for jobs that require higher and higher levels of education. LBJ’s programs were designed to solve some of those problems, particularly poverty and social breakdown. The direct transfer programs certainly increased recipients’ income, but the big planning schemes only made problems worse. Biden’s programs are likely to do the same.

Roosevelt and Johnson permanently changed Washington’s role in American life to achieve their goals. Again, Biden proposes to extend the core Democratic objective. By vastly increasing the government’s share of the economy, along with ever-increasing bureaucratic regulations, his programs will make America’s government and economy much more like Europe’s social democracy. That means a larger social safety net, higher taxes, and slower growth. It means less control by state and local government, and less autonomy for individuals.

Biden’s budget raises several fundamental questions.

https://amgreatness.com/2021/05/31/no-one-will-pay-for-covid-crimes-against-humanity/

It appears that Anthony Fauci’s 15 months of fame are just about up.

The ubiquitous infectious disease “expert” who became a household name and the most powerful man in the country—or is it the world?—last spring, finally wore out his welcome, even by the friendliest of hosts. For the first time in recent memory, the doctor did not make his morning rounds on the Sunday talk shows. Last week’s weekly press briefing by Joe Biden’s coronavirus task force, featuring Fauci, only earned 19,021 views, a 50 percent drop in viewership since April.

The American public, for the most part, is suffering from Fauci Fatigue; his favorability rating has dropped from 68 percent one year ago to 54 percent now. Forty percent of U.S. voters say they’ve lost confidence in Fauci over the past year. His latest tap dance about the origins of the virus while defending the trustworthiness of Chinese researchers does little to restore confidence in his integrity or self-proclaimed expertise.

House Republicans introduced a symbolic but futile bill to oust Fauci from his role as director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. Some even imagine Fauci and his fellow COVID-19 propagandists and profiteers will face charges for the incalculable damage they have inflicted on the country under the guise of virus mitigation.

But I have bad news for anyone hoping Fauci will pay a price for his incompetence, misdirection, and in many instances, straight-up malfeasance: he won’t.

Just like any number of official doomsayers, especially those who feed off the public trough, Fauci will never be held accountable for what he’s done. Last March, I compared Fauci and Dr. Deborah Birx to Michael Mann, the famous climate scientist and author of the infamous “hockey stick” model that showed a massive spike in global temperatures purportedly caused by human activity. The Penn State University professor is considered a rock star for his nonstop climate fear-mongering which has influenced public policies around the world, all in service of chasing the global warming bogeyman that has yet to decimate all the coastal cities, kill off all the polar bears, or melt all the glaciers—just to name a few environmental catastrophes we were promised.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/05/memorial-days-biden-and-barry-lloyd-billingsley/

The last American president with actual combat experience, in a conflict where the United States proved victorious, was George H.W. Bush. During World War II, Bush served as a pilot with Torpedo Squadron 51 (VT-51) and on his 58th mission he was shot down by the Japanese and rescued by a U.S. submarine.

Joe Biden never served in the military but from 2008-2016 he was vice president to the composite character David Garrow described in Rising Star: The Making of Barack Obama. The former Barry Soetoro never served, and for the Obama-Biden team, the role of the U.S. military was not to defeat America’s enemies.

“Troops risking their lives need to be told that their goal is to ‘defeat’ those trying to kill them,” former Secretary of State Robert Gates explained in Duty: Memoirs of a Secretary of State at War. But when Gen. Stanley McChrystal announced a counterinsurgency strategy in Afghanistan, Obama national security advisor Tom Donilon “bridled,” and blasted the U.S. military as “in revolt” and “insubordinate.”  As it happens, Donilon was an advisor to Joe Biden’s first presidential campaign in 1988, and in 2012 Donilon orchestrated the move to put Biden at the head of China policy.

The previous year, Obama ordered SEAL Team Six to take out al Qaeda terrorist Osama bin Laden. Vice president Biden opposed the raid on bin Laden, and his boss did not always take a hard line on terrorists.

Back in 2009 in Afghanistan, Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl deserted his outpost and wound up in custody of the Taliban. In 2014, the composite character president traded Bergdahl for five Taliban commanders held at Guantanamo Bay. They included Mohammed Fazi, who massacred minority Shiites; Khairullah Khairkhwa, close to Taliban founder Mullah Omar and Osama bin Laden; and Abdul Haq Wasiq, the Taliban’s deputy intelligence minister and close confidant of Mullah Omar.

Once freed, they joined the Taliban’s political office in Qatar. In effect, the Obama-Biden team traded Pvt. Slovik for the German high command. Also worth recalling is the Obama-Biden response to terrorist attacks on American soil.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/05/faded-flag-bruce-thornton/

When I put out my flag for Memorial Day, I noticed how faded it was. At a time when we honor those who died defending our country and its freedom, this year my faded flag seems a portent of the dangers that lie ahead for our exceptional nation.

Nations decline the way one of Hemingway’s characters went broke: slowly, then all at once. In just four months, the Biden administration’s policy proposals, executive orders, and “woke” rhetoric suggest that we will continue to draw ever closer to that moment of “all at once.”

Many signs of decline have been evident for decades, punctuated by brief moments of revival. The Sixties and Seventies were a low point in our national morale, a time when the “best lacked all conviction, and the worst were filled with passionate intensity.” The protests over the war in Vietnam, the riots and terrorist bombings, the specious Watergate scandal, the oil crisis, economic stagflation, and the general assault on traditional virtue, faith, and morality––the Nietzschean “revaluation of all values”––  culminated in the presidency of Jimmy Carter with its rhetoric of doubt and retreat evident in his inaugural address. There he mourned the nation’s “recent mistakes,” counseled us not “to dwell on remembered glory,” asserted our country’s “recognized limits,” and preached that it “could only do its best.” He reprised these defeatist sentiments later in the “crisis of confidence” speech.

But Carter’s one term of failures––particularly his feeble and appeasing response to the Iranian Revolution, the violent occupation of our embassy in Tehran, and the taking hostage of its staff–– was followed by Ronald Reagan and his “morning in America” confidence and optimism. Reagan revitalized the economy, and his actions signaled to the world and our Soviet rival that the “crisis of confidence” was over, and America had recovered its nerve. He brought moral clarity to the Cold War by rejecting détente and coexistence, and stated instead, “We win, they lose.” A few years after he left office, the Soviet Union was relegated to the “dustbin of history” the Soviets had predicted for the democratic West.

In the Roaring Nineties that followed, however, the anti-American left was still tramping on its “long march through the institutions.” Many of today’s toxic ideas like “cancel culture” and “systemic racism” were incubated during those years in the universities, whence they infected public schools, entertainment, and the Democrat Party. More immediately dangerous, the extravagant optimism of the “end of history,” the triumph of liberal democracy over Soviet communism, reinforced the idea of a “New World Order,” the transnational, multilateral “rules-based international order” that presumably would transcend the parochial, and dangerous, interests and passions of diverse sovereign nation-states.