RUTHFULLY YOURS

Say the wrong thing in America today, and the forces of “progressivism” will have your head on a pike. That recently happened to Daniel Elder, a composer of choral music. He offered the opinion that arson was not a good tactic for social change and has paid dearly for that bit of heresy.

Quillette has an excellent interview with Elder.

His publisher drafted an apology for him, but Elder declined to sign on. In the interview, he observes, “Someone that arouses the attention of the online mob rarely escapes punishment by prostrating. Stand and face your executioner.”

Elder has stopped writing music and explains that he is hoping for changes in America that will restore the artistic environment. He says, “There are some principles vital to the healthy artistic environment that I have seen under increasing threat—polluted by intolerance and groupthink. This [is] why I’ve claimed I do not currently compose music: I’m waiting for [a] healthy environment of free thought to return, since it’s necessary for deeply communicative art. I’ve chosen to look at my loss as a temporary sacrifice in the interest of helping [bring about] change. And in that changed field, I may thrive again, more than ever. As more people take a stand, I have faith this change is coming … sooner or later.”

Let us hope so. In the meantime, I wonder if anything can be done to help this young man.

https://www.nationalreview.com/magazine/2021/07/12/how-to-think-about-january-6/#slide-1

The Capitol riot was not an insurrection as federal law understands the term

What should be the penalty for insurrection? It is, after all, the most profound domestic threat to not merely national security but national survival.

To hear the Biden Justice Department tell it, the penalty for engaging in what Democrats and their media allies incessantly refer to as an “insurrection” at the Capitol on January 6, 2021, should be about . . . well . . . three and a half years. That would be comfortably within the sentencing range that prosecutors concede applies to the first major defendant to plead guilty in the case, Jon Schaffer, a founding member of the Oath Keepers militia organization. To be more precise, he is looking at 41 to 51 months’ imprisonment. Probably even less than that, because he has agreed to cooperate with investigators.

Three and a half years? For what Attorney General Merrick Garland portentously describes as “the most dangerous threat to our democracy” that he has ever seen in his career? And that, from a longtime former judge and prosecutor who, as a top Clinton Justice Department official, not only guided prosecutions of jihadist attacks that killed hundreds in the 1990s but personally supervised the investigation of the 1995 Oklahoma City federal-courthouse bombing, in which a terrorist, Timothy McVeigh, murdered 168 Americans?

McVeigh got the death penalty. Schaffer will get about three and a half years. The Justice Department expects run-of-the-mill stock fraudsters to do more time than that.

So what gives here?

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/byron-yorks-daily-memo-bid

BIDEN’S RECKLESS THREAT. For a few minutes Thursday, it appeared President Joe Biden had found a way to pass big, bipartisan legislation in Washington’s deeply divided atmosphere. “We have a deal,” Biden proudly announced in an impromptu press conference after meeting with some of the 21 Democratic and Republican senators who had negotiated a massive, bipartisan infrastructure proposal. Together, Biden said, the group would move forward to spend $579 billion on traditional infrastructure projects — roads, bridges, trains, waterways, broadband — that Republicans favor while including an emphasis on environmental measures that Democrats want.

It was a big moment. And then Biden threw it all away. In a second news conference a couple of hours later Thursday, Biden said that even if Congress passes the bipartisan bill he just touted, he would refuse to sign it unless lawmakers also pass a partisan spending measure — Democrats call it “human infrastructure” — that all Republicans oppose. For that bill to pass, Democrats would have to muster all 50 of their votes in the Senate and then rely on Vice President Kamala Harris to break the tie. Then, Biden said, both bills — the deal and the deal-killer — have to come to his desk at the same time for him to sign them.

The bills have to come “promptly and in tandem,” Biden explained. “Let me emphasize that: in tandem.” What if that doesn’t happen? “If they don’t come, I’m not signing,” Biden added. “Real simple.”

Biden’s threat was news to Republicans, even some of the ones who had been negotiating the bipartisan proposal. On one hand, the president sang the praises of bipartisanship, leading Republicans to think he might actually work with them, and then Biden, citing a plan devised by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer, reneged on the whole thing.

Republican anger followed. Biden, Pelosi, and Schumer “literally pulled the rug out from under their bipartisan negotiators,” said Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell. As for the president, McConnell said, “It was a tale of two press conferences — endorse the agreement in one breath and threaten to veto it in the next.”

https://www.manhattancontrarian.com/blog/2021-6-25-new-york-has-no-idea-whatsoever-how-to-decarbonize-its-electric-grid

Earlier this month, I had a post discussing New York’s so-called Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act of 2019, and the various steps taken so far to implement the Act’s stated goals. The main goals are 40% reduction in greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in New York by 2030, and 85% by 2050. These goals apply not just to the electricity sector (which only accounts for about 25% of energy usage in the U.S.), but to the entire energy economy. My post relied substantially on the work of Roger Caiazza, who has written extensively at his website Practical Environmentalist of New York about the implementation plans for the Act currently under formulation by various state bodies.

The current status is that a series of Advisory Panels have been convened, each covering a particular sector of the energy economy, and tasked to provide advice and guidance as to how to “decarbonize” that particular sector. My prior post covered some of Mr. Caiazza’s comments on the work of Advisory Panels for sectors including Transportation, Industry, Agriculture and Residential. However, at the time of that post (June 3) Mr. Caiazza had not yet commented on the work of the most important Advisory Panel, which is the one dealing with the sector of Power Generation.

There are two reasons that the Power Generation sector must be considered the most important in the overall decarbonization plan. First, it is thought to be the easiest to decarbonize. And second, the decarbonization plans for the other sectors basically come down to requiring those sectors to be converted from using fossil fuels to using electricity. Decarbonize transportation? Require electric cars! Decarbonize residential buildings? Require replacement of natural gas heating and cooking with electric! And so forth. And the advisory panels also have recognized the pre-eminent importance of the Power Generation sector by assigning that sector necessarily more ambitious decarbonization goals than for the other sectors: for the Power Generation sector it is 70% by 2030 and 100% by 2040.

https://amgreatness.com/2021/06/25/gelding-the-lefts-trojan-horse/

Across the Left, rage and panic reign. America has seen the Marxist and racist dogma undergirding “critical race theory” and, indeed, the entire falsely labeled “anti-racist” cult. And a revulsed America rejects it.

Having pinned their hopes and put so much time, energy, and money into weaponizing race to attain their socialist aims, the Left cannot abide this rejection. Long years of failing to advance socialism led the Left to tone down its “class warfare” rhetoric—a hard sell in the most affluent nation on earth that has spent trillions in a “War on Poverty” and a social safety net for its less fortunate citizens. Instead, the Left decided to leverage the inherent decency of Americans (who have made enormous and ongoing strides to create a more equitable country) by replacing class with race.

The Marxist/Maoist roots of this pernicious doctrine are manifest: critical race theory is communist race theory. The Left has created a Trojan horse: the outward appeal to people’s sense of decency regarding race is a covert effort to subjugate Americans beneath the socialist agenda.

While burrowing its way through bureaucracies both governmental and corporate, the Left concealed the moral odiousness and pernicious consequences of is project, which succeeded as long as the vast majority of the American people were not directly impacted by it. But during the pandemic and its aftermath the Left, sure to “never let a serious crisis go to waste,” pushed its Trojan horse further into American public life. This overreach allowed daylight to shine upon their duplicitous “gift,” giving Americans the chance to peer between its decrepit, virtue-signaling planks. As a result, across the nation citizens once again are rejecting the Left’s socialist (and now racist) doctrine—which, by the way, salts America’s wounds by using their tax and consumer dollars to promote it.

https://amgreatness.com/2021/06/25/over-1000-former-military-members-sign-letter-warning-about-wokeness-in-the-military/

Over 1,000 former members of the military have signed a scathing public letter warning that the increased priority placed on “wokeness” in the military is a threat to the Constitution and the nation’s military readiness.

The letter comes after Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Mark Milley defended the teaching of critical race theory in the military during a House Armed Services Committee hearing on Wednesday.

Former President Donald Trump blasted Milley as “pathetic” for defending the toxic ideology during an interview Friday morning on Newsmax.  

“General Milley – I watched his statements and it was pathetic. I watched the statements of some others – your head of the Navy. It was pathetic,” Trump said. “They didn’t talk that way when I was around, I can tell you. They didn’t talk that way or I would have gotten rid of them in two minutes. In particular Navy and Milley, just sad, pathetic statements,” the former president added.

Two military groups—Flag Officers 4 America and the Committee to Support and Defend—have joined forces to warn that the military’s embrace of the woke ideology is a major national security issue.  LTC Allen West is a member of the Policy Board of the American Constitutional Rights Union’s Committee to Support and Defend, and leads its military initiatives.

The purpose of the letter, according to a press release, is to encourage citizens and leaders “to assess the outlined public policy threats to the nation and work together to constructively and cooperatively advance freedom.”

“Over 1000 signers to date have reaffirmed that the oath they took to support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic has no expiration date, and that current military leadership promoting ‘wokeness’ undermines the military’s warfighting mission,” the Committee to Support and Defend said.

The letter, posted below in full, condemns “dismantling of the rule of law” in the United States, “the erosion of fair and honest elections,” the “politicization and ideological purging of our military,”  social media censorship, the abusive Covid lockdown policies, and the collapse of border security.

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

General Barry McCaffrey (retired, thank God), graduated from West Point, served in Vietnam, and put an end to his honorable career by attaching himself to the Clinton White House. Instead of fading decently away as old generals should, McCaffrey continues to insert himself into military politics, always with an eye to tilting the military towards the left. His latest opinion is that Tucker Carlson, a civilian, should be fired for daring to say that General Mark Milley, who is chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, is an idiot and overall disgrace to the fine tradition of the American military.

As always when I write, I need to put into place a few basic predicates:

Up until the Obama administration started meddling with it, the American military was the most effortlessly diverse and harmoniously racially mixed institution in America. Not only was the military a meritocracy, every person serving understood that a military divided amongst itself is deadly, not to the enemy, but to the troops who serve.

Were and even are there racists in the military? Absolutely. In any group of people, you’re going to have idiots who are insecure or stupid enough to assume negative things about someone based upon the color of his skin or the shape of his eyes. The military, however, has always had an efficient system for getting rid of these people because their very existence endangers the troops and the missions.

The Obama administration, however, disliked the traditional military. What it did overtly was to open the military to openly homosexual and transgender troops. There is no way to tell whether this affected military readiness, unit cohesion, or anything else because there will never be an honest report on the subject. What the Obama administration did less openly was to purge the military of officers who thought that the military’s structure was good. Ultimately, he fired almost 200 military officers.

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2021/06/maoist_thought_reform_imposed_on_first_january_6_defendant_to_be_sentenced.html

Anna Morgan-Lloyd, the 49-year-old grandmother from Indiana who strolled into the US Capitol and spent several minutes peacefully walking around, got the same message that was delivered to Chinese dissidents and “bad elements” during Mao’s Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution: confess to thought crimes, embrace the state-sanctioned ideology, and you will be shown mercy. In the case of Morgan-Lloyd, the message was delivered to her by her own defense lawyer, a public defender paid by taxpayers.  And it worked. She received three years’ probation, a $500 fine, and no incarceration beyond the two days she had spent in jail following her arrest.

Julie Kelley describes at American Greatness the imposition of an ideological test on a defendant whose own lawyer was in on the brainwashing initiative:

My lawyer has given me names of books and movies to help me see what life is like for others in our country. I’ve learned that even though we live in a wonderful country things still need to improve. People of all colors should feel as safe as I do to walk down the street.”

That passage is part book report, part white privilege mea culpa submitted to a federal court this month by Anna Morgan-Lloyd, one of the more than 500 Americans arrested for her involvement in the events at the U.S. Capitol on January 6

Her lawyer, Heather Shaner, also represents other 1/621 defendants, and apparently is recommending the thought reform confessions to toher clients:

In an interview with Huffington Post, Shaner explained her belief that “this is the most wonderful country in the world, it’s been great for all kinds of immigrant groups, except for the fact that it was born of genocide of the Native Americans and the enslavement of people.” 

https://issuesinsights.com/2021/06/25/which-is-the-real-party-of-racism/

The blasé response to the revelation that Rhode Island Democratic Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse belonged to a private “whites only” club and even owned a stake in it, should come as no surprise. In the Democrats’ race-obsessed world, only Republicans are racist.

Whitehouse confused the issue last week when asked about his membership in Bailey’s Beach Club and its alleged all-white membership, saying: “I think the people who are running the place are still working on that and I’m sorry it hasn’t happened yet.”

Well, it turns out, his family is among the “people who are running the place.”

As GoLocalProvidence online TV, which broke the story, noted:

“Both Whitehouse and his wife Sandra as well as their families have been members of the club for decades. Whitehouse did transfer his (ownership) shares in the club to his wife years ago, and she is now one of the largest shareholders in the all-white club. The club’s membership is a who’s who Newport, Palm Beach, and New York wealth.”

And on Monday, Whitehouse appeared to defend his membership, calling such clubs “a long tradition in Rhode Island.”

However, after those remarks raised even more questions, Whitehouse denied that the beach club was whites-only, and said that he “was assured that … the assertion was wrong, there is diversity in the membership and there are non-white club members.”

An honest mistake then? Nope. Whitehouse had been asked about his membership in the club dating back to 2006. But, as a Democrat, he could conveniently count on the media not letting such inconvenient facts intrude on his political career, and on his colleagues saying nothing.

Moreover, the club itself issued a statement saying that it had “people of many racial, religious, and ethnic backgrounds” as members, but refused to elaborate.

But Whitehouse did clarify that he belongs to a yacht club that, by his own admission, has only white members.

So, to ask the by-now-cliched question, if Whitehouse were a Republican would he get a pass from the Democrats? Of course not.

https://issuesinsights.com/2021/06/25/as-biden-bumbles-abroad-inflation-roars-at-home/

While President Joe Biden was focused on being his best European/Russia-pleasing preener at the G-7 and Vice President Kamala Harris embarrassed herself in Central America, here at home Americans are suffering the beginning of wild inflationary conditions not seen since the 1970s.

Our country is in crisis. Adding to a dangerous rise in criminal behavior across the nation and especially at our southern border, our economy is adrift. As we move out from under the destructive lockdowns owed to the pandemic, this should be a time of optimism and hopefulness. Instead, many industries are sputtering to re-open as inflation is “stealing” from returning working American’s paychecks, trading economic joy for malaise. Even the stock markets are recognizing the dangers and are beginning to readjust the prices of assets.

Super-charged inflationary pressures continued to gain momentum according to a survey by the Philadelphia Fed this month, adding to alarming price jumps recorded in April.  Eighty-two percent of manufacturing companies in the recent Philly Fed’s survey reported paying higher prices for the inputs of their products, while just one percent said costs had fallen. As a result, the diffusion index (a metric of manufacturing activity and costs) moved up four points to 80.7, the highest reading since June 1979. 

But what if the Fed continues to incorrectly apply misguided inflationary policies at this critical moment? They typically get inflation “wrong” because they misdiagnose the cause for alarming increases in prices: printing too much money. The danger is revealed in the Fed’s policies to date which will exacerbate, not retard, inflation for the immediate and longer-range future.

Nobel Laureate Milton Friedman observed that inflation is always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon and that even without the gold standard there were inherent limits to printing more money. The fundamental rule is the supply of money must be equal to the demand for money. But the demand for money is a slippery concept: it’s natural but dangerous to operate under the notion that the demand for money is endless. It’s anything but.