RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://amgreatness.com/2021/05/11/new-york-style-justice-disarms-the-victims/

In Times Square on Saturday, a street vendor named Farrakhan Muhammad got in an argument with his brother and tried to shoot him. With the surgical precision for which petty criminals are known, the man instead wounded three bystanders, including a four-year-old girl. One of the victims said she is unlikely to visit New York again until the city has stricter gun laws.

But New York City already has some of the strictest gun laws in the country. Muhammad was carrying an illegal gun illegally—that is, the gun was illegally owned and illegally carried. If he had obtained the gun legally, Muhammad would have been required to attend a government-approved safety class in which he would have learned that you may not discharge a weapon indiscriminately in Times Square while attempting to murder your brother (this is covered on the first day).

If the gun had been legal, it would also have meant Muhammad had paid hundreds of dollars in permitting fees, had obtained letters of recommendation from friends attesting to his good character, had been fingerprinted by the police, had waited several months to obtain the permit to purchase this particular pistol (on which he would have had to put down an advance deposit, its serial number having been submitted to the state), and he would then have had to wait a year after obtaining the permit to apply for a further permit to carry the weapon, for which he would have had to demonstrate to the satisfaction of New York a valid reason for needing to do so. 

I very much doubt that Muhammad did any of this. 

And when someone is already breaking four or five different laws, it’s hard to imagine a sixth law on the same subject being the deciding factor.

It’s also hard to imagine how gun laws could become stricter in New York. In fact, any weapon that might be remotely useful for self-defense is prohibited. That includes pepper spray, tasers, blackjacks, batons, nunchucks, coshes of any sort, including a coin purse that has a handle, slingshots, and sandbags. Don’t get caught trying to defend yourself in the city with an illicit sandbag: That’s criminal possession of a weapon in the fourth degree. 

https://issuesinsights.com/2021/05/12/joe-biden-is-turning-out-to-be-a-jimmy-carter-reboot/

Joe Biden was the first senator to endorse Jimmy Carter for president.  Now Biden appears bent on recreating Carter’s disastrous presidency. The parallels are striking.

What characterized Carter’s one-term presidency? Disasters at home and abroad. At home, the country suffered a self-inflicted energy crisis, with gas shortages and long lines. Inflation surged even as unemployment climbed, making the “Misery Index” a household term. Abroad, America’s adversaries sensed Carter’s weakness as Commander in Chief and the world was thrown in chaos – from the Iranian Revolution to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.

Carter’s response to these disasters was to tell people to turn down their thermostats. He blamed Americans for what he called a “crisis of confidence.”

What’s happened after just over three months with Biden in the White House?

Both the unemployment rate and the inflation rate have been on the rise and the world is getting more dangerous.

This week, the stock market suffered two days of heavy losses as inflation fears mounted.

Forbes quoted Sophie Griffiths, a market analyst at Oanda, as saying that “The overriding fear is that pandemic stimulus combined with reopening economies will spark a sharp drive high in inflation, forcing central banks to take action, tightening policy and potentially slowing down the economic recovery.”

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2021/05/12/the_elephant_and_donkey_go_plunging_over_the_cliff_145744.html

In the 19th century, when political parties worried about voters who couldn’t speak English or read campaign flyers, they adopted animal symbols. Despite originally being a symbol of ridicule, the Democratic Party came to embrace its inner donkey. Likewise, the Republican Party grew to love the elephant. It was an easy way to identify their candidates. Today, the elephant and donkey are less-beloved mascots and more like Wile E. Coyote, who continually plummets over the cliff in futile pursuit of the Roadrunner.

The GOP pachyderm took the plunge on Jan. 6. Outgoing President Donald Trump sat unsteadily atop the beast, where he remains, and contributed mightily to losing two Senate seats in Georgia. His behavior after the November election alienated many undecided voters and even some erstwhile supporters. He fumed and fulminated, contested the election results without winning in court, and stampeded GOP congressional leaders over the size of the next round of stimulus checks. His refusal to accept certified vote totals challenged basic constitutional norms. That behavior hurt the candidates he ostensibly backed in Georgia, costing his party its Senate majority. Outgoing Majority Leader Mitch McConnell was furious and said so publicly. Most of his Republican colleagues agreed but remained silent. They knew Trump would retaliate for any criticism and his die-hard supporters would back him.

The giant splat of the elephant hitting the canyon floor was the sound of Republicans losing the upper chamber. That loss has had immense political consequences. It is the dominant fact of Joe Biden’s presidency so far. The only way to moderate his agenda, aside from court decisions, would have been Republican control of the Senate.

With their slender majority, Democrats gained control of all Senate committees and held the sole power to conduct hearings and subpoena witnesses. Since Democrats already controlled the House of Representatives, albeit narrowly, they found themselves in control of both Capitol Hill and the White House. That gave them free rein, something donkeys are unused to, and they used it to reign freely. They proceeded to do exactly what Trump had done after November: gallop at full speed toward the cliff’s edge.

http://www.swtotd.blogspot.com

Recently, while walking around Boone Hall Plantation and Gardens, in Mount Pleasant, South Carolina, my son and his family came across an alligator. They watched it, but wisely did not approach it. Risk aversion can be a wise decision. Seth Klarman, president of Baupost Group once wrote: “In contrast to speculators preoccupation with rapid gains, value investors demonstrate risk aversion by trying to avoid loss.” But as Paul Singer, another wise investor, remarked regarding the role of government in our economy: “…the forces of risk aversion and constant conflict serve to stultify and narrow the range of ideas up for debate.” We must walk the line, avoiding obvious risks, but being unafraid to speak out and take risks. “Security,” wrote Helen Keller, “is mostly a superstition. Life is either a daring adventure or nothing.” Eleanor Roosevelt’s advice: “Do one thing every day that scares you.”

Every day we make hundreds, perhaps thousands, of decisions that involve risk. Many, if not most, are subconscious – standing on one leg to put on our trousers, reaching high for a coffee cup, ignoring the slippery spot on the floor, crossing a street. Do we take the short cut over the mountain, or the longer but safer route? Determining risk is a measurement of success versus failure. In investing, businesses calculate the potential for profit against the possibility of loss, which is why the Biden Administration’s proposal to strip Pfizer, Moderna and Johnson and Johnson of their patent protections for COVID-19 vaccines add risk to all future investments drug companies make in research. If patent protection can be breached, what does that say to those who invest in scientific research, and to those who risk everything in the creative arts, all of which are supposed to be protected by intellectual property rights?

At a time when hesitancy has caused the number of daily vaccinations to decline by almost two thirds, the President, who was fully vaccinated in December, should not have worn a mask when outside and not surrounded by others. Yet he did just that last week when he and his wife left Jimmy and Roslyn Carter’s home. The message: the vaccine does not assure safety. When the FDA ordered Emergent BioSolutions to suspend production of Johnson & Johnson’s single dose vaccine because seven out of seven million vaccinated patients developed life-threatening blood clots, was the risk worth the cost of scaring people off being vaccinated? On Jimmy Kimmel’s show last week, Dr. Anthony Fauci said he was frustrated that nearly 26% of the population won’t get the vaccine, yet he said he would not dine in an indoor restaurant, despite being fully vaccinated. What kind of a message was he sending? Being vaccinated will not eliminate all risk of getting COVID-19, but it greatly reduces it. Responsible leaders lead, not inject fear.

https://amgreatness.com/2021/05/10/why-is-the-government-hiding-january-6-video-footage

Joe Biden calls it the worst attack since the Civil War. Attorney General Merrick Garland compares it to the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing. The FBI is breaking down the doors of Iraq War veterans and small business owners who have no criminal records, and some are hauled off to rot in solitary confinement in a fetid D.C. jail, for their involvement in the alleged travesty.

The event, of course, is the roughly four-hour-long disturbance at the U.S. Capitol on January 6. As mostly nonviolent Americans dared to protest Congress’ certification of a clearly fraudulent presidential election in a place that once was considered “The People’s House,” lawmakers scurried for cover as reporters and photographers captured part of the ruckus on video and still shots to wield as political ammunition against Donald Trump and his supporters.

But have we seen a full and fair depiction of exactly what happened that day? The answer, as evidenced by an ongoing coverup by the U.S. Capitol Police and the Justice Department, clearly is no.

Almost all the January 6 video seen by the public isn’t from official government sources but by social media users and journalists on the scene. For example, the widely viewed footage of protestors occupying the Senate chamber was recorded by a New Yorker journalist.

But thousands of hours of real-time footage is in the hands of the Capitol Police—and that agency, along with government lawyers and federal judges, is using every legal trick possible to keep the trove hidden from the public even as clips are presented in court as evidence against hundreds of January 6 defendants.

According to an affidavit filed in March by Thomas DiBiase, the Capitol Police department’s general counsel, the building is monitored 24/7 by an “extensive system of cameras” positioned both inside and outside the building as well as near other congressional offices on the grounds.

The system captured more than 14,000 hours of footage between noon and 8 p.m. on January 6; the archive was made available to two Democratic-controlled congressional committees, the FBI, and the D.C. Metropolitan Police department. (After a request by Congress, the agency reportedly handed over footage from the entire 24-hour period.)

Capitol Police also produced selective clips for Democratic House impeachment managers to use in the trial against Donald Trump.

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2021/05/over_120_generals_and_admirals_warn_that_administration_policies_are_national_security_threat.html

A day before the Senate markup of HR1 on May 11, 2021,( the Democrats’ power grab to federalize election laws in favor of progressive candidates), 124 retired admirals and generals issued an open letter to the American people warning that “Our nation is in deep peril. We are fighting for our survival as a Constitutional Republic like no other time since our founding in 1776.”

Among the dangers facing the nation created by the Administration’s policies, the retired flag officers singled out H.R.1 and S.1. Without fair and honest elections, they warn that “our Constitutional Republic is lost”. Under our federal system, the states and not the federal government set the controls to ensure election integrity: that there is one legal vote cast and counted per citizen.  State legislatures are tasked by the Constitution with setting the election rules.

Using government IDs and verified signatures are just commonsense controls, the flag officers argue, to ensure honest elections.   But today, many are calling such commonplace controls “racist” in an attempt to avoid having fair and honest elections. The flag officers blasted as a “tyrannical intimidation tactic” the use of racist slurs to stop criticism of the Democrat power grab. The flag officers compared these tactics to those used by fascist and Marxist regimes to silence their critics. The flag officers warn that HR1 and S.1 , if passed, would destroy election fairness and allow Democrats to forever remain in power, “violating our Constitution and ending our Representative  Republic.”

The retired generals and admirals cited the Administration’s appeasement of China as the most important external danger, but they also decried the Administration’s determination to return to the disastrous Iran nuclear deal.

But the flag officers focused on the numerous internal threats created by Administration’s policies like the destruction of our border security, condoning anarchic violence, politicizing our military to create the illusion of rightwing threats, spreading the divisive critical race theory, and undermining our energy independence.

It is highly unusual for retired generals and admirals to engage in political actions. But these retired flag officers signed this letter because they still felt bound by the oath that they had taken “to support and defend the Constitution of the U.S. against all enemies, foreign and domestic.” The retired flag officers acted because “our Constitutional Republic is under tremendous assault coming from those believing in Socialism and Marxism which is the opposite of the freedoms, liberty and Bill of Rights that form the basis of our Constitution and our traditional values.”

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

White leftist politicians and hipsters have already killed wokeness in American culture.  They just don’t know it yet.

There’s been this repeating cultural joke occurring throughout my lifetime that, for some reason, never seems to be recognized by those who are ridiculed by its many iterations.  That is, when liberal white hipsters adopt any cultural fad, they manage to end the fad by making it spectacularly unpopular in no time flat.

A terrific modern example of this might be liberal white hipsters co-opting fashion and social trends that were prominent in gay culture in the early aughts.  Shows like “Queer Eye for the Straight Guy” and “Sex and the City” created what was then known as the “metrosexual” fad that swept America. Up to that point, the cultural aesthetic of the urbane, somewhat androgynous fashion trends that were highlighted on the show had largely existed among men only in the gay subculture, making it a unique expression of that specific identity.  But once it was adopted by white hipsters, it became part of the cultural status quo, and the trend died almost overnight.

Which brings us to being “woke,” and how it went from being somewhat culturally subversive to being a prerequisite of participating in today’s cultural status quo.

Before 2014, “stay woke” was in common use in the black community, writes Aja Romano at Vox, but it didn’t carry all the weight it’s dragging along today.  It simply meant that one should remain “alert to the deceptions of other people” as a “basic survival tactic.” 

https://www.nationalreview.com/2021/05/punishing-success-the-biden-administration-vaccines-and-intellectual-property/?utm_

Waiving IP protections for vaccines will destroy the innovative industry that made the pandemic-ending vaccines possible.

The Biden administration has apparently learned the wrong lessons from the COVID-19 pandemic. In a recent statement, U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai announced the “Biden-Harris Administration’s” support for waiving intellectual-property protections for COVID-19 vaccines — a move that will destroy the innovative industry that made the pandemic-ending vaccines possible.

It is hard to overstate the pharmaceutical industry’s accomplishments of the past year. It normally takes ten years and billions of dollars to develop vaccines for new diseases caused by novel viruses. Yet only ten months after SARS-CoV-2 — the virus that causes COVID-19 — was identified, two new vaccines were developed, tested, and authorized for emergency use by the FDA. Two months later, Johnson & Johnson added a third vaccine, and now other entrants including AstraZeneca (already approved overseas) and smaller companies, Curevac and Novavax, are waiting in the wings.

These accomplishments stem from the patent protection, including temporary monopoly pricing, that incentivizes innovation and generates the profits to fund it. Innovative new medical products often lower the effective price of health care by providing previously unavailable treatments at patent-protected prices that fall as competing products, and eventually generics, come to market. While these patent-protected prices can initially be high, they often provide effective treatment and health that was previously unavailable at any price — the first drugs for HIV were expensive but lifesaving and prices declined as competing drugs and cheaper generics became available.

COVID-19 vaccines are the only path to ending the pandemic, and their value must be measured against the pandemic’s costs. The cost of efforts to slow the pandemic in the U.S. via a nationwide shutdown of “nonessential” economic activities approach $7 trillion per year (roughly $20 billion per day), even without accounting for medical expenditures and valuation of lives lost (roughly a $2.5 trillion valuation of the 580,000 deaths so far).

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2021/05/09/the_social_justice_mob_tries_to_do_to_tech_what_it_did_to_academia_145731.html

The same tactics used to suppress dissent in academia — with the goal of making colleges “safe spaces” that feel “welcoming” to snowflakes — have graduated to the tech world.

Fortunately, rather than let activists do to their startups what they did to academia, some CEOs are fighting back.

This episode begins when a new employee at Basecamp, a Chicago-based software firm, formed a diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI, as it is known) committee to improve workplace diversity.

In short order, the atmosphere at Basecamp became so toxic that management told staff to stop pushing their politics at work.

“No more societal and political discussions on our company Basecamp account,” CEO Jason Fried announced in a blog post. “It’s a major distraction. It saps our energy, and redirects our dialogue toward dark places.”

The Verge’s Casey Newton reported that a third of Basecamp’s roughly 58 employees planned to quit.

ttps://johnmcwhorter.substack.com/p/can-we-please-ditch-the-term-systemic?token=eyJ1c2VyX2lkIjo5

The Elect are direly committed to teaching us the difference between personal racism and systemic racism. It is considered the fulcrum of true wokeness to understand that racism is systemic, with the idea that to understand this is to have achieved a maximal comprehension of sorts, a kind of pure, Kantian wisdom from which we can proceed to … well, celebrating one another for having achieved it, roasting those who seem not to have, and calling that “antiracism.”

But if the mantra is that what we need to do to solve black America’s problems is “get rid of systemic racism,” we’re in trouble. That analysis, be it explicit or tacit, is based on a third-grader’s understanding of how a society works. More importantly, that analysis does not help black people and often hurts us.

* * *

First let’s review what systemic racism means. There are inequities between whites and blacks. The reason is not that blacks are inherently less capable than whites. This presumably means that the discrepancies are traceable to devaluation of black people of some kind at some point in the pathway. This devaluation, even if not conscious, is a kind of racism, and this means that the society “is racist.” Thus the way to get rid of this kind of discrepancy is to undo the racism in the system.

But note that if we take this as a succession of logical statements rather than as a musical sequence valuable primarily because the term racism is intoned within it, then we hit a snag. Just what do we do to undo “racism” that is bound up in a complex system, and especially given that the system has a past that is unreachable to us now, as well as a present?

Here, The Elect burn to insist that, well, systemic racism exists anyway! And you the reader may want to reiterate that systemic racism exists. It does. There are indeed such discrepancies. The question is not whether they exist, but what one does about them.

“Undoing the racism in the system,” in this light, is word magic, not an intelligent prescription for change in the real world. Grouchy? Not really – just grounded. Here’s an example.