RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://redstate.com/michael_thau/2021/01/25/report-cdc-change-in-covid-criteria-that-inflated-fatalities-10-fold-also-broke-federal-law-conclusion-n316252

Imagine if President Trump had managed to squeeze out $38 billion to fund a border wall by scaring the bejesus out of Congress with some incredibly alarming stats about illegal alien crime.

Now try to imagine that the mainstream press completely ignored the question of whether those stats might have been ginned up out of thin air precisely to get Congress to turn over all that dough.

Unless you’re on some pretty crazy hallucinogens, you can’t.

Heck, even if every single word of Trump’s story were true, not a week would pass before some New York Times reporter would be all over the news quoting her mentally defective brother-in-law as a “source familiar with the matter” who claims that Trump had not only lied about the criminal propensities of illegal aliens—whom everyone knows are better Americans than you or I and especially Donald Trump could ever hope to be—but that the dreaded Orange Man had also viciously mocked our founding fathers, flag, and Jesus Christ himself along the way.

Yet, somehow, hardly anyone in America is even aware that the CDC managed to get their initial $8 billion budget for 2020 increased by a factor of six to a whopping $46 billion by relentlessly honking the COVID-19 panic-horn. (H/t, RedState reader, Kurt Schulzke.)

https://issuesinsights.com/2021/01/27/yet-another-trump-impeachment-sorry-but-this-one-too-is-a-sham/

he Democrats are racing ahead with their third effort to impeach former President Donald Trump. Democrat House Speaker Nancy Pelosi sent the impeachment articles to the Senate on Tuesday, and the now evenly-split Senate will take it up on Feb. 8. It’s a waste of time and taxpayer money for one simple reason: It’s not even legal.

No, that’s not a mere assertion or our opinion. It’s based on the only document we know that guides how impeachments should take place. It’s called the Constitution.

We still live in a constitutional republic, which means we are bound by its laws. So is Congress.

So here’s what the Constitution says:

When the President of the United States is tried, the Chief Justice shall preside: And no Person shall be convicted without the Concurrence of two thirds of the Members present.

Judgment in Cases of Impeachment shall not extend further than to removal from Office, and disqualification to hold and enjoy any Office of honor, Trust or Profit under the United States: but the Party convicted shall nevertheless be liable and subject to Indictment, Trial, Judgment and Punishment, according to Law.

So the impeachment now being moved to the Senate is not legal, based on the clear wording and intent of the Constitution.

https://issuesinsights.com/2021/01/26/meet-joe-biden-the-job-slayer/

When running for office, President Joe Biden repeatedly proclaimed that his policies would create 18 million jobs. But on his first day in office, Biden took actions that will put millions out of work.

One of the very first executive actions Biden signed was to kill the Keystone XL pipeline, a project that President Barack Obama had blocked for years, which President Donald Trump finally approved. Biden’s reason? To combat the “climate crisis.” While canceling the pipeline won’t have any impact on global temperatures, it will kill thousands of (mostly union) jobs.

As the plumbers and pipefitters union noted: “The Biden administration has now put thousands of union workers out of work. For the average American family, it means energy costs will go up and communities will no longer see the local investments that come with pipeline construction.”

Some estimates said the pipeline would employ 11,000 American workers in 2021 and create more than $1.6 billion in wages.

The same day, Biden imposed a 60-day moratorium on oil and gas leases on federal lands. The American Petroleum Institute calculates that, if made permanent, Biden’s ban will cost nearly 1 million jobs over the next two years and cut the nation’s economic output a total of $700 billion by 2030. Oh, and it will make the U.S. more dependent on oil imports.

As ABC News reported, Biden’s “moratorium on new oil and natural gas leases and drilling permits is prompting widespread concerns in New Mexico, where spending on education and other public programs hinges on the industry’s success.”

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/op-eds/the-senates-impeachment-trial-is-illegal-and-a-sham

Democrats claim to want to unify the country, but impeaching a former president, a private citizen, is the antithesis of unity. This impeachment is nothing more than a partisan exercise designed to divide the country further.

They have brazenly appointed an openly pro-impeachment Democrat to preside over the trial. This is not fair or impartial, and it hardly encourages any kind of unity for the country.

If we are about to try to impeach a president, then where is the chief justice? If the accused is no longer president, then where is the constitutional power to impeach him?

Private citizens don’t get impeached. Impeachment is for removal from office, and the accused here has already left office.

Hyperpartisan Democrats are about to drag our great country down into the gutter of rancor and vitriol, the likes of which have never been seen in our nation’s history. Instead of doing the nation’s work with their new control of the House, Senate, and executive branch, Democrats are wasting the people’s time on a partisan vendetta against a man no longer in office. It’s almost as if they have no ability to exist except in opposition to Donald Trump. Without him as their boogeyman, they might have to legislate, and actually convince the public that their policy prescriptions are the right ones.

Democrats are about to do something no self-respecting senator has ever stooped to. They are insisting the election is actually not over, and so they insist on regurgitating its bitterness. In the past, calmer heads have typically prevailed in our history and allowed public opinion to cast blame where blame is deserved.

https://amgreatness.com/2021/01/25/does-joe-know/

For those of us watching this made-for-TV special in which a totalitarian cabal at the core of the Democratic Party takes over America while we are locked at home, one question arises: Does the mentally impaired Joseph R. Biden know that he was put into the presidency by a small committee* of hard Left operatives, and is currently serving as a figurehead, as all decisions about policy and personnel are made by others? 

Or does he think that he really is “the president,” with all that usually entails? 

Does he believe that 81 million adult American citizens voted for him after he failed to answer basic questions about what he would do in office, while hiding in his basement all summer? When he thinks about his support across this great continent, does he see the faces of those who showed up to signal assent? The crowds? The four or six or 11 people in tiny yards, in random places? How could he not know, you wonder . . . ? But, ego.

Does Joe know that he is, effectively, a hologram—a 3D projection in space, retaining outward signs of being a sentient human— whose mental processes have been taken over by the committee? That earpiece he wears, who is speaking into it? Remember, he wore it at the debate, too. How does that work? It’s hard to just repeat words as they come into your ear, with anything like normal inflection. Those dark contact lenses he is wearing—what does he see?

When he sits at the Resolute desk, with a stack of executive orders to sign for the cameras, and the sheets of paper he is signing are blank… surely he knows. Unless he sees something else. 

And let’s discuss the content of those EOs for a second: Joe Biden is an unprincipled panderer, but he is not personally hard Left. He swore up and down at his second debate that he would not end fracking or shut down the Keystone XL pipeline, putting tens of thousands of American union members out of work, thus ensuring a steep rise in energy prices. Yet he signed that order on day one. Would the real Joe Biden have signed EOs allowing China to meddle in the U.S. energy grid?  Or agree to destroy women’s sports?

The key question is, does Joe know the timeline for his departure? We can’t be sure, but the satirical news site the Babylon Bee gives him 100 days, as of January 22.  

https://amgreatness.com/2021/01/25/gop-election-fraud-deniers-face-reckoning/

So here’s the official company line promoted by establishment Republicans to defend the outcome of the 2020 presidential election: Of course the election had some irregularities like all elections but nothing that would change the result and, by the way, the country needs some major election integrity reform before this happens again.

The doublespeak designed to refute what election fraud deniers call “the big lie” was best expressed over the weekend by Chris Christie, the former New Jersey governor, failed presidential candidate, and now paid ABC News shill. While attempting to shame fellow Republicans for bolstering Donald Trump’s complaints about how the election was handled in states that flipped to Joe Biden in 2020, Christie falsely claimed there wasn’t any evidence of vote fraud. “I don’t think there’s any question that the country needs to focus on in terms of our elections is making sure we have some effective electoral reform . . . we need to make the system better for 2022,” Christie told ABC News’ George Stephanopoulos on Sunday. “But this election was not stolen.”

Others have set up a similar trap for themselves. Just hours before the so-called “insurrection” began, ex-Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) slammed his GOP colleagues planning to protest the results and demand an election audit. Like Christie, McConnell defended the integrity of the election while supporting election reform at the state level. “Last year’s bizarre pandemic procedures must not become the new norm,” McConnell lectured January 6.

Which raises the question—why not?

If the 2020 election was legitimate and, as McConnell and others insist, featured no evidence of decisive fraud outside the normally acceptable level of illegalities, then why should anything change?

Tens of millions of mail-in ballots without signature verification or documented chain of custody or other legally required proof should indeed be the “new norm” if their analysis is to be believed. Election Day will last not weeks but months; every voter will receive an absentee ballot, even those who didn’t request one, and it can be returned past Election Day without a postmark or delivered to drop-boxes manned by partisans in deep blue counties and cities.

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2021/01/mitch_mcconnell_announces_hes_willing_to_abandon_the_filibuster.html

Most of the time, Americans pay scant attention to the rules that the House and Senate choose to govern themselves. We laugh when the House decides to go for gender-neutral language, but none of us think that makes any real difference. However, in the Senate, “China” Mitch McConnell has paved the way for a rule change that will allow the Democrats to alter forever America’s long-standing structure and enable them to become a permanent governing class.

The Senate currently is split perfectly in half, with fifty Senators who are Democrats and fifty who are Republicans. It would be nice if that created a stalemate, which would at least keep Congress from harming America, but that’s not the case. Kamala Harris is now the tie-breaking vote on any deadlocked initiative. In other words, the Senate effectively has a Democrat majority.

The only thing protecting the minority interest in a Senate the reflects America’s strong ideological divisions is the filibuster. This rule went into effect in 1806 – that is, 215 years ago. The filibuster allows a senator, or a group of senators, to block legislation from going forward by continuing to debate a matter unless “three-fifths of the Senators duly chosen and sworn” vote to end the debate by invoking cloture. Currently, the filibuster is all that stands between the Democrats adding new states that will give Democrats a permanent Senate majority and packing the Supreme Court – which will effectively nullify the Constitution.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/01/freedom-speech-slipping-away-star-parker/

As the new Biden-Harris administration assumes power, the most basic American freedom of speech and expression is under unprecedented threat.

For the first time ever, I am concerned about my freedom to do my work, to run a policy institute addressing issues of culture, race and poverty from a conservative perspective.

Technology — the internet — which was largely nonexistent just 25 years ago, now plays a huge role in our lives as a tool of communication.

In a survey just published by the Pew Research Center, 86% say they “often” or “sometimes” get their news from a digital device — smartphone, tablet or computer. This compared with 68% who say they “often” or “sometimes” get their news from television, 50% who get it from radio and 32% who get it from print publications.

According to Statista.com, the United States has 223 million Facebook users, almost the size of the entire U.S. population over age 18. Per Pew, 22% of U.S. adults use Twitter.

These developments have put enormous power at the disposal of technology firms over what we see and read.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/01/fourteenth-amendment-follies-matthew-vadum/

Democrats are so scared one of their all-time favorite boogeymen, former President Donald Trump, will run and humiliate them again they are considering banishing him from electoral politics forever through an obscure constitutional provision created in the aftermath of the Civil War to deal with Confederate leaders and soldiers.

Disqualifying opposing candidates, in case you forgot, is part of the old Barack Obama playbook from his Illinois Senate days, and, call me crazy, but Donald Trump is no Jefferson Davis.

Because leftist depravity is bottomless, it should come as no surprise that Democrats are fine with going full-on banana republic to “save” the country from the potential reemergence of a truly great, legitimate president who, unlike the phony who has (temporarily) succeeded him, loves America, and who spent his four years in office expertly outfoxing Democrats to the benefit of the American people.

And because two bogus impeachments based on absolutely nothing are not enough for these people, left-wing lawmakers, wooden stakes in hand, are demanding Section 3 of the 14th Amendment be invoked before Count Trumpula rises from the political grave.

That amendment, by the way, was ratified July 9, 1868, a little over three years after Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia surrendered at Appomattox Court House and Democrat actor John Wilkes Booth assassinated the Republican U.S. president, Abraham Lincoln.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2021/01/joe-bidens-covid-deceptions/

He has gone back on a campaign promise to change the virus’s trajectory and set as a goal a rate of vaccination that the U.S. had already met or exceeded.

P resident Joe Biden contends there is “nothing we can do to change the trajectory of the pandemic in the next several months,” which is the exact opposite of what presidential candidate Joe Biden promised voters during the 2020 campaign. And by “exact opposite,” I mean the president’s alleged plan to beat coronavirus literally said that “the trajectory of COVID-19 in America is headed in the wrong direction” and only he could fix it.

The Biden “plan” amounted to a slew of nebulous promises that would be implemented to correct the “Trump fiasco,” such as accelerating the development of a vaccine, producing more masks, and pressuring governors to sign mask mandates. Biden repeatedly promised to alter the trajectory of COVID. In a platitudinous October 23 speech, Biden pledged to “immediately put in place a national strategy that will position our country to finally get ahead of this virus and get back our lives.”

“Immediately” is an adverb meaning at once, instantly, without any intervening time. It does not mean waiting around to take credit for when the Trump-era vaccines kick in.

One of the silliest talking points pushed by left-wing pundits during the election was to say that Biden had warned us about the pandemic. Evidence of this contention revolves around a single USA Today column in which the then–presidential candidate noted that there were at “least five cases” of COVID in the United States, and there “will likely be more.” Hardly Nostradamus.