RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://issuesinsights.com/2021/05/06/those-superstitious-democrats/

Even when they’re vaccinated against the coronavirus, Democrats insist on wearing masks and social distancing. Think of the absurd scene in the House chamber when President Joe Biden addressed Congress last week, or when Biden wore a mask on a Zoom call. The Democrats say theirs is the party of science but in reality it’s the party of fear, runaway emotions, and myth.

Not a shred of science has established that mandatory mask wearing and stay-at-home orders have been effective prophylactics against the Chinese virus. Yet the Democrats, which includes nearly the entirety of the press, have embraced both with a zeal much like that of the Salemites who hunted witches in the 17th century.

While the Democrats nagged and threw wet blankets on facts, pleasure, and optimism, John Tierney, an authentic journalist not a member of the Democratic Party’s disinformation team, dug into some research. And what did he find?

“There’s still no convincing evidence that strict lockdowns reduced the death toll from Covid-19,” he wrote in March. “But one effect is clear: more deaths from other causes, especially among the young and middle-aged, minorities, and the less affluent.”

A National Bureau of Economic Research report published last month showed what many of us knew intuitively: Lockdown policies failed. It determined that “evidence suggests that ‘households show the highest transmission rates’ and that ‘households are high-risk settings for the transmission of’” the virus.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/bidens-vaccine-patent-theft-11620255362?mod=opinion_lead_pos3

President Biden genuflected again to progressives on Wednesday by endorsing an intellectual property waiver at the World Trade Organization for Covid vaccines and therapies. This patent heist won’t end well for the U.S. or the world.

South Africa and India have been pushing a resolution at the WTO that would force pharmaceutical companies to hand over their Covid vaccine and therapy IP to manufacturers in low-income countries. The waiver is backed by some 100 other low-income countries, progressive groups and more than 100 Democratic Congress Members.

Waiver proponents say breaking patent protections is necessary to expand global access to vaccines. This is false. WTO rules already allow low-income countries to force drug makers to license their patents during emergencies, though they must negotiate some agreements with developers. Liberals says this is slowing vaccine production.

Yet U.S. and European drug companies have already voluntarily entered into dozens of licensing agreements with other manufacturers, many in low-income countries, as they work to scale up production. Merck last week announced licensing agreements with several Indian manufacturers to produce its investigational antiviral drug.

But vaccine and drug makers first need to ensure their partners can safely manufacture the complex biologic products. This takes time. So does ramping up production of raw ingredients. Even so, global vaccine production is accelerating. The U.S. has also committed $4 billion to Covax, a World Health Organization initiative, which aims to distribute two billion doses to lower- and middle-income countries by the end of this year. Yet India, a global vaccine production powerhouse, recently restricted exports to serve its own population.

https://thehill.com/policy/national-security/cia/551856-pompeo-on-cia-recruitme

Former CIA Director Mike Pompeo criticized a video recently released by the agency, saying the country “can’t afford to risk our national security to appease some liberal, woke agenda.”

“When I was Director of the CIA, we valued individuals based on their talent and skill, not their race or sexuality,” Pompeo said in a tweet on Tuesday. “I’ll never forget what one female analyst said to me: ‘Thank you for valuing me for my work. I want my abilities and achievements to define me, not my sexuality.’”

He added in a subsequent post that the “collection of incredibly talented patriots serving America at the CIA is what makes it the best spy agency in the world — and we must continue to recruit the best and brightest.”

“We can’t afford to risk our national security to appease some liberal, woke agenda

Pompeo, who also served as secretary of State in the Trump administration, was referencing a “Humans of the CIA” video from the agency in which a first-generation Latin American agent discusses her “intersectional” identity.

 “I am a woman of color. I am a mom. I am a cisgender millennial who’s been diagnosed with generalized anxiety disorder. I am intersectional, but my existence is not a box-checking exercise,” the agent says. 

https://www.wsj.com/articles/democrats-are-killing-the-american-dream-11620251334?mod=opinion_lead_pos8

President Biden’s American Families Act makes one political reality officially clear: The Democratic Party has given up on the American dream.

The Biden proposals—coming as they do with the Democratic progressives’ rise to power—present the American people with a once-in-a-lifetime decision about what kind of country they want to live in for the next half-century.

This isn’t about the culture wars or standard Keynesian stimulus spending. The Biden plan is about public policies that will redesign American society.

The American Families Plan and other recent Democratic legislation implicitly pose several important questions. Is the traditional American idea of upward mobility still important? If so, how should upward mobility happen—through Washington or individual effort? Indeed, should the habit of individual striving give way to a presumably more important goal of nationalized paternalism?

It is no surprise that a liberalism that embraced the “1619 Project’s” rewriting of the U.S.’s founding history would not stop there and try now, despite its almost invisible congressional majority, to displace the country’s originating idea of individual opportunity with a broad birth-to-death entitlement state.

This transition began in March, when Democrats enacted a federal unemployment-insurance bonus of $300. That bonus, pushing benefits past market wage rates, indisputably is causing many to shun previously held jobs, which surely will do long-term damage to the notion of working to get ahead.

https://www.theblaze.com/news/black-lives-matter-demands-trump

https://blacklivesmatter.com/blm-demands/?__cf_chl_jschl_tk__=417c881ae

BLM’s 7 Demands
1. Convict and ban Trump from future political office:

We are joining Rep. Ilhan Omar, Rep. Ayanna Pressley, Rep. Cori Bush, Rep. Jamaal Bowman, and others who are demanding Trump be immediately convicted in the United States Senate. Trump must also be banned from holding elected office in the future. Call your members of Congress and demand they support conviction by dialing (202) 224-3121.

2. Expel Republican members of Congress who attempted to overturn the election and incited a white supremacist attack:

More than half the Republican representatives and multiple senators stoked Trump’s conspiracy theories and encouraged the white supremacists to take action to overturn the election. We are supporting Rep. Cori Bush’s resolution to expel them from Congress for their dangerous and traitorous actions. We also support steps to bar them from seeking another office.

3. Launch a full investigation into the ties between white supremacy and the Capitol Police, law enforcement, and the military:

The Capitol was able to be breached and overrun by white supremacists attempting to disrupt a political process that is fundamental to our democracy. We know that police departments have been a safe haven for white supremacists to hide malintent behind a badge, because the badge was created for that purpose. We also know off-duty cops and military were among the mob at the Capitol on January 6th. Guilty parties need to be held accountable and fired. We are supporting Rep. Jamaal Bowman’s COUP Act to investigate these connections.

4. Permanently ban Trump from all digital media platforms:

Trump has always used his digital media platforms recklessly and irresponsibly to spread lies and disinformation. Now it is clearer than ever that his digital media is also used to incite violence and promote its continuation. He must be stopped from encouraging his mob and further endangering our communities, even after inauguration.

5. Defund the police:

The police that met our BLM protestors this summer with assault rifles, teargas, and military-grade protective gear were the same police that, on Wednesday, met white supremacists with patience and the benefit of the doubt, going so far as to pose for selfies with rioters. The contrast was jarring, but not for Black people. We have always known who the police truly protect and serve. D.C. has the most police per capita in the country; more funding is not the solution.

6. Don’t let the coup be used as an excuse to crack down on our movement:

In response to the coup, Politicians have already introduced the Domestic Terrorism Prevention Act of 2021. We’ve seen this playbook before. These laws are used to target Black and brown communities for heightened surveillance. Republicans are already busy trying to create an equivalence between the mob on January 6th and our Freedom Summer. We don’t need new domestic terror laws, facial recognition, or any other new police power for the state. Our government should protect righteous protest and stay focused on the real issue: rooting out white supremacy. There are enough laws, resources, and intelligence, but they were not used to stop the coup. Our elected officials must uncover why.

7. Pass the BREATHE Act:

The police were born out of slave patrols. We cannot reform an institution built upon white supremacy. We need a new, radical approach to public safety and community investment. President Biden has already drawn on the BREATHE Act in his executive actions calling for racial equity screens in federal programs, investing in environmental justice at historic levels, and engaging with system-impacted communities. The BREATHE Act paints a vision of a world where Black lives matter through investments in housing, education, health, and environmental justice.

https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/facebook-trump-board-lifetime-ban-jonathan-turley

The decision of the Facebook board to uphold the decision to ban former President Donald Trump but reconsider his lifetime ban may seem transparently convenient for many. However, there is precedent. 

One of my favorite trial accounts is from Ireland, where an Englishman accused an Irishman of stealing a pair of boots. The guilt of the defendant was absolutely clear but the Irish jury could not get itself to rule for the Englishman. Instead, it acquitted the Irishman but added a line, “We do believe O’Brien should give the Englishman back his boots.” Case closed.

Few people thought that, after expanding the censorship of political figures like Trump for years, Facebook could ever summon the courage to declare itself wrong in the ban first imposed on Jan. 7, 2021. Instead, the board ruled that it was absolutely right to suspend Trump but it may want to reconsider the permanent ban given the absence of any objective standard to support it. So Trump will still get the boot for now.

It may be too harsh to expect anything more from a board that literally monitors one of the world’s largest censorship programs. 

Facebook, Twitter and other companies now openly engage in what they like to euphemistically call “content modification.” The decision reflects the convoluted logic of censor’s free speech review board. The company – and the board – start from the assumption that it can and should censor views deemed “misinformation” or dangerous. The starting position therefore is that censorship is justified and that content neutrality is dangerous.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/as-things-fall-apart-people-seem-to-lack-all-conviction_3801729.html?utm_source=partner&utm_campaign=RCP

The American poet Delmore Schwartz (1913–1968) had a number of good one-liners.

His mot about existentialism, for example, is hard to beat: “Existentialism,” he said, “means no one else can take a bath for you.”

Given the level of pretension that surrounded the French-German import, and given its dour currency in the academic stock market at the time, that deflationary observation was just the thing.

Schwartz’s comment seized upon something essential in that school of philosophy—its radical individualism—and then gave it a comic twist. Not the Heideggerian “Dasein,” whose essence is “being-unto-death,” but a nice warm bath that is yours and yours alone. It was nicely done.

Another comment by Schwartz has special relevance to our own situation. I mean his observation that “Even paranoids have enemies.”

I reckon that Rudy Giuliani can savor the truth of that apothegm. Likewise, Victoria Toensing. Both were raided by Joe Biden’s secret police, the NKFBI, last week.

Ditto Paul and Marilyn Hueper.

The Alaska couple were enjoying a little sleep-in on April 28, when “a dozen armed FBI agents kicked down their front door in an investigation associated with Rep. Nancy Pelosi’s stolen laptop.”

The agents, with guns drawn, handcuffed the couple and interrogated them for nearly three hours.

The Huepers, you see, had been in Washington, D.C. on Jan. 6 for the big Trump rally.

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2021/05/our_country_was_founded_by_geniuses_but_its_being_run_by_idiots.html

The eminently quotable Senator John Kennedy of Louisiana said sometime back: “Our country was founded by geniuses, but it’s being run by idiots.”  I heartily agree, and the problem is not self-correcting.  

The principles behind the formation of America’s government were and are exquisite, but the American government, like all forms of government, is corrupt as hell.  This isn’t an extraordinary statement.  Exquisite things often break, and even the noblest of institutions become distorted over time until the original purposes for their creation are eclipsed (and often contradicted) by the personal motives of the men running those institutions into the ground.  

This phenomenon is apparent anywhere there is power. 

John O’Sullivan, a senior policy adviser for Prime Minister Thatcher, wrote a short essay thirty years ago that should have made freedom-minded conservatives rethink any lingering attachments to institutional authorities.   

He asked a question we often ask ourselves: how is it that almost all institutional bodies — whether governmental agencies or purportedly “nonpartisan” scientific academies or even religious groups and charities — transform over time into left-leaning entities?  In grappling with what might seem inexplicable, he corralled three insights about organizational behavior: (1) Robert Michels’s Iron Law of Oligarchy asserting that all forms of organization, regardless of how democratic their foundations, will come to be run by an elite group of people; (2) Robert Conquest’s Second Law stating that every organization behaves as if “headed by secret agents of its opponents”; and (3) O’Sullivan’s very own First Law positing that “[a]ll organizations that are not actually right-wing will over time become left-wing.”  In other words, Michels tells us that the key to understanding any institution is its leadership, not its charter.  Conquest argues that the leadership will always have objectives at odds with the organization’s intended purpose, if for no other reason than that the leadership’s continued employment and future power paradoxically depend upon never completely succeeding.  And O’Sullivan takes this insight farther by noting that the type of person who staffs such organizations tends to disdain private profit and the historic composition of Western civilization’s free-market culture.  

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/05/federal-biden-inquisitors-lloyd-billingsley-0/

Last week, Jill Sanborn, assistant director of the FBI’s Counterterrorism Division, told lawmakers that James Hodgkinson “intended for the shooting to be his final act on Earth,” when he attacked Republican lawmakers on June 14, 2017, nearly killing Rep. Steve Scalise. According to Sanborn, Hodgkinson knew  “he would likely be killed,” a tacit acknowledgement that the FBI had indeed classified the attack as “suicide by cop,” not an act of terrorism.

“I am not aware of the rationale,” Sanborn told lawmakers. “I was not in my seat at the time, so I would have to get back to you on the specifics of what the rationale was.” In the seat of acting FBI director at the time was Andrew McCabe, a Clinton crony and major player in the Russia hoax. McCabe did not testify about the rationale for calling the attack suicide by cop. 

“If it were to happen today, we would open it as a domestic terrorism case,” Sanborn testified. DOJ assistant attorney general Brad Wiegmann told legislators that James Hodgkinson was a domestic terrorist, nearly four years after the FBI failed to do so. All told, it was quite a performance from the FBI-DOJ duo. 

Hodgkinson, a supporter of Bernie Sanders, carried a list of Republican lawmakers and belonged to a Facebook group called “Terminate the Republican Party.” Hodgkinson purchased an SKS rifle, a Russian or Chinese made precursor to the AK-47, and practiced his marksmanship. Hodgkinson also recorded a video of the field where Republican lawmakers played baseball. 

On June 14, 2017, as the Republicans practiced, Hodgkinson opened fire, seriously wounding Rep. Steve Scalise and Zack Barth, an aide to Rep. Roger Williams. The Sanders supporter then engaged the Capitol Police in a gun battle, not what one would expect from someone out to commit suicide by cop. That absurd designation recalls an episode from the composite character president David Garrow described in Rising Star: The Making of Barack Obama.