RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.wsj.com/articles/biden-and-allies-stoked-vaccine-fears-11614295867

President Biden has proposed an “unprecedented” information campaign to persuade people to get Covid-19 vaccinations. Why, when a pandemic has killed 500,000 Americans, does the public need to be convinced? In part because Mr. Biden and his allies spent 2020 stoking fear for political reasons.

The Biden campaign and scientists allied with it impugned the Food and Drug Administration’s independence and integrity. Kamala Harris maligned President Trump’s claims about the speed of vaccine development and questioned its safety and effectiveness. New York’s Gov. Andrew Cuomo cast doubt on FDA evaluations of Covid-19 vaccines and said states should conduct their own reviews. An Aug. 27 letter from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention asking governors for help setting up vaccine distribution elicited a statement from Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer questioning the safety of the vaccines in development. Media “fact checkers” said rapid vaccine development would take a “miracle.”

Between April 1-14 and Nov. 25-Dec. 8 the share of Americans who told pollsters they were likely to consent to vaccination declined from 74% to 56%, even though Pfizer and Moderna released strong vaccine safety and effectiveness results prior to the second survey. The decline occurred in both sexes and all age groups, education levels and racial groups. Many medical workers, including nursing-home staff, are also hesitant to be vaccinated.

Medical authorities were complicit in stoking these fears. Although June FDA guidance confirmed the agency wouldn’t “cut corners” and that expedited development would proceed “without sacrificing our standards for quality, safety, and efficacy,” a Sept. 10 editorial in the Journal of the American Medical Association claimed that “some” were concerned that political appointees would “insist” on authorizing a vaccine “over the recommendation of FDA career scientists.” The concerned “some” were never named, and no citation was given.

https://dianebederman.com/islamophobia-cancel-culture-and-the-silencing-of-the-lambs/

We are living in a time when many of us are being censored – silenced for making statements or asking questions that may offend some. At a time when we have social media – an opportunity to learn from others all over the world, expand our horizons, ask more questions of people we would never have had the opportunity to meet in person, we are being bullied into silence; on social media! Not only bullied into silence but erased; literally canceled. Cancel culture, today, reminds me of Islamophobia. Both of them operate on the same level. They try to shame and bully us into silence. And they use fear, especially the fear of being called a racist, to suppress opposition to their ideologies. RACIST – the one word that enforces silence.

The terms Islamophobia and cancel culture are left wing ideologies working hand in hand to undermine and destroy the West by vilifying critical thinking.

Let’s start with the amazing success of Islamophobia.

First the definition.

This is from Canada:

“Islamophobia – Includes racism, stereotypes, prejudice, fear or acts of hostility directed towards individual Muslims or followers of Islam in general. In addition to individual acts of intolerance and racial profiling, Islamophobia can lead to viewing and treating Muslims as a greater security threat on an institutional, systemic and societal level.”

The idea that the Senate is racist is the latest brainstorm of the Democrats. It was marked by the leading headline on WashingtonPost.com Wednesday: “Many of Biden’s nominees of color run into turbulence in the Senate.” The story reports that activists for a diverse Cabinet reckon that “Black, Latino, Asian and Native American nominees are encountering more political turbulence than their White counterparts.”

If that were true, we, too, would be up in arms. There’s scant evidence for it in the dispatch in the Post, though. The controversy, it reckons, centers on Neera Tanden, who would be the first Indian American to lead the budget office. Our guess is that there’s not a single American senator — not one — who will vote against Ms. Tanden because her parents came here from India.

Ms. Tanden’s chances for confirmation dimmed this week, when Senator Manchin, the West Virginia Democrat, declared his opposition. That means she’d have to win at least one Republican. Mr. Manchin and other opponents are complaining about the cataract of insults that has gushed from Ms. Tanden’s twitter account over the years. She might as well have an advanced degree in tweeting from Trump University.

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2021/02/kavanaugh_and_barrett_john_roberts_retreads.html

All that work for, and faith in, Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett! As with John Roberts before, we are once again the victims of unrequited affection and lost labor. Like other Republicans, I expended lots of hours and effort to do my part in getting all three confirmed. I wrote articles, did radio and TV interviews, gave speeches, called Senators and asked my friends to do so, and spoke to countless people. 

I even attended the Senate Hearings for two of them; and in the case of Kavanaugh went face-to-face against a wild group of “feminists” blocking my way to the Senate hearing room, was bad-mouthed by them while in waiting-lines, and harassed in the office taken over by these “non-insurrection” protestors while trying to get my pre-arranged ticket which they had dumped. (Interestingly, when complaining to police how the “progressive” protestors had taken over Senator Grassley’s office, the Capitol Police replied: “This is a public space, open to the people, and we cannot stop them from exercising their right of speech and assembly”).

I have traveled over 800 miles, paid for motels, and over the years took off work so as to help these nominees become confirmed justices. Like so many others on our side, we believed in them. Finally, strong justices, conservative like us. The Court was finally ours… a dream come true.

Well, the dream has died and our hopes for the Great Cause have not been respected by those in whose behalf we so tirelessly worked.

https://amgreatness.com/2021/02/25/kavanaugh-and-barretts-share-of-the-shame/

With Election Day looming and early voting underway, Judge Amy Coney Barrett pledged at her confirmation hearing in October she would not act as a Republican “pawn” in any election dispute.

Democrats and the media, anticipating a close vote in the Electoral College, warned Barrett would rule in favor of the man who nominated her if the ultimate decision reached the Supreme Court as it did in 2000; Senator Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) demanded Barrett recuse herself “in any case involving Donald Trump’s election.”

Blumenthal, in essence, got his way. Democrats must be thrilled—laughing all the way to 2022 and 2024—at the de facto recusals by Justices Barrett and Brett Kavanaugh in every post-election lawsuit petitioned before the court, even those not filed by the Trump campaign.

Kavanaugh and Barrett, sold to the country as “originalists” who would counteract the bench’s Left-leaning jurists, instead joined their liberal colleagues and Chief Justice John Roberts to reject each case. In doing so, Barrett and Kavanaugh broke their promise to defend the Constitution and gave their imprimatur to lawless state elections—a clear and present danger to the future of the country.

Unilateral Action

The first sign of trouble came in December. Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton filed a lawsuit on December 7 asking the court to delay the December 14 deadline for states to certify electoral votes. It was a last-ditch longshot attempt to do the work the U.S. Department of Justice, Democratic state attorneys generals, and lower courts refused to do: adjudicate provable election fraud before it was too late.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/02/dr-faucis-new-york-state-mind-lloyd-billingsley/

According to a January 30 report by New York Attorney General Letitia James, thousands more nursing home residents may have died from COVID-19 than New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo has publicly acknowledged. As investigators learned, nursing home deaths had been undercounted, even in facilities the state health department had made public.

As ProPublica noted, “the true death toll among nursing home residents was not mentioned in Cuomo’s much-publicized memoir on his leadership successes handling the pandemic.” The story launched an outcry, even among Democrats and the establishment media.

On February 15, Gov. Cuomo defended his pandemic response and the next day, Biden advisor Dr. Anthony Fauci appeared on CNN with Jim Scietto. Gov. Andrew Cuomo, Scietto recalled, had “argued that his state was following federal guidelines when he ordered those long-term care facilities to accept patients returning from hospitals. I wonder, can you clarify that. Was he really following federal guidelines to do this?”

“You know, Jim, I can’t,” Fauci responded. “I mean, excuse me. I really am – I’m honestly not trying to erase your question, but I’m not really sure of all the details of that, and I think if I, if you make a statement, it might be wrong or taken out of context. So, I prefer not to comment on that.” In reality, Fauci had already clarified the details. As Fox News recalled, last July Dr. Fauci told PBS that, unlike other parts of the country, New York responded “properly” and “correctly” to the pandemic.

In December, Dr. Fauci appeared at a Cuomo press conference but in February, Fauci declined to say whether the governor was following federal guidelines when he ordered elderly patients into nursing homes. This from a man routinely billed as the nation’s top infectious disease expert.

https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2021/02/the-shame-of-joe-biden.php

Politicians are not, in general, renowned for honesty. Spin is universal and exaggeration goes with the territory. But actual lying–verifiable, damnable lying about an important public issue–is relatively uncommon. Unless we are talking about Joe Biden.

During the campaign, Biden absurdly alleged that President Trump had mishandled the COVID epidemic, and therefore had murdered the several hundred thousand Americans who allegedly died from that disease. The theory was that if Trump had done something differently–God knows what–the U.S. would have been the only country on Earth with zero Wuhan deaths. Reporters went along with Biden’s fantasy.

Since his inauguration, Biden has continued his assault on his predecessor by claiming, repeatedly, that little was going on with regard to vaccinations until he took office, and that the Trump administration “had no plan” to effectuate vaccinations. This, too, is a damnable lie.

https://issuesinsights.com/2021/02/26/the-democrats-woke-equality-act-another-awful-idea-that-would-radically-change-america/

“The bottom line is, this radical, divisive bill won’t unite us, but further divide us. And it’s a sad reminder that we’re only ever one election away from truly crazy things emerging from Congress. The Equality Act is one of them. What’s next?”

The just-passed Equality Act no doubt sounds wonderful to many. Who, after all, can disagree with a bill to “prohibit discrimination on the basis of sex, gender identity, and sexual orientation”? But it’s a wretched bill, one that would have many terrible consequences.

Passed Thursday by a 224-206 vote, with only three Republicans in support, the legislation now goes to the Senate, where it’s expected (but not guaranteed) to fail. After all, the same bill also passed the House early last year, only to die in the Senate, where it needs 60 votes to get beyond that chamber’s filibuster. With a 50-50 party split in the Senate, that makes it unlikely to pass this time, too.

But, like a bad meal, the Equality Act is likely to come up again.

As we said, there’s nothing wrong with “equality” for anyone under the law. Our Constitution, indeed, guarantees that under the 14th Amendment. It’s a bedrock of American jurisprudence.

But the Equality Act of today has nothing to do with “equal rights,” at least as most Americans would understand them.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-censorship-party-11614296803?mod=opinion_lead_pos1

Imagine if a pair of Donald Trump’s allies in Congress had sent a letter to cable company CEOs in 2017 blasting CNN and other progressive media outlets and asking why their content is still broadcast. Then imagine that a GOP-run committee in Congress staged a hearing on the societal menace of fake news and the need for government and business to rein in the hostile press.

The media would have treated that as a five-alarm political fire, an existential threat to a free press, the First Amendment and political norms, and a step toward authoritarian rule. “Democracy dies in darkness,” and all that. Yet that’s exactly what Democrats in Congress did this week, targeting conservative media outlets, but the media reaction has been silence or approval.

On Monday Democrats Anna Eshoo and Jerry McNerney sent letters pressing 12 cable and tech CEOs to drop contracts with right-of-center media outlets including Fox News. Two days later the Energy and Commerce Committee held a hearing about “disinformation and extremism” in conservative media. The only notable extremism on display was the majority party’s appetite for regulating and policing the free press.