RUTHFULLY YOURS

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

Donald Trump has often said that he achieved more in his first term than any other president. That is not exactly true, at least not without a qualifier. The fact is FDR and LBJ both accomplished more in their first terms with their New Deal and Great Society programs, respectively. These initiatives dramatically changed government’s relationship with the country in revolutionary ways. But the changes they birthed  were not for the better whereas Trump’s were. So it is more accurate to say that Trump accomplished more positive things in his first term than any other president. 

What makes what Trump’s accomplishments off-the-chart impressive is the resistance he faced. The Democrats were not just the loyal opposition but a collection of radical progressives who proved time and time again that they were more than willing to damage the country to hurt the president. The Democrats got away with their anti-America actions due to their symbiotic relationship with the mainstream media. Instead of examining the damage Democrats were doing to the country, the media poured out lies, distortions and ridicule nonstop against President Trump. The intended coup de grâce to MAGA was the sneaky and backhanded resistance to it by the Republican establishment. 

Yet through it all, Trump got things done for the American people. How did this happen? The answer is multifaceted, with a critical aspect being that Trump was an outsider. This was both a blessing and a curse. Let’s focus on the blessing part.

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2021/01/america_is_not_so_slowly_turning_communist_red.html

Perhaps the most contemptible action of the Democrats, and there have been so many, is the desire to completely erase Trump and, by extension, his MAGA movement. 

So now “more than 250 authors, editors, agents, professors and others in the American literary community signed an open letter this week opposing any publisher who signs book deals with President Donald Trump or members of his administration.”  Such actions can only be described as emulating a dog gone mad.  It is rabies of the mind and soul.  Clearly, their politics supersede economics, and everything is upside-down in this madness. 

That people involved with ideas and  books would inveigh against the publishing of important thoughts is mind-boggling!  Even more disturbing is the ease with which they lie.  For the umpteenth time, Trump did not cage any children; Obama did, but why let the facts get in the way of left-wing censorship?

In addition, Texas Democrat Rep. Joaquin Castro announced “that he would be introducing legislation that would prevent any federal buildings or property from ever being named after President Trump.”  

In lockstep with tyrants, Castro displays the most hideous of instincts as he states, “President Trump incited an insurrection that damaged some of our nation’s most significant and sacred federal property.  Donald Trump should never become a future generation’s confederate symbol.”

How ironic that his last name is Castro, mastermind of communist Cuba and purveyor of the horrors that Cubans have endured for the past 60 years.  How stunning that he perverts history.  How very 1984. 

Then there is Ocasio-Cortez, who has decided that she and her allies will be the arbiters of what Americans will be able to access.  “We’re going to have to figure out how we rein in our media environment so that you can’t just spew disinformation and misinformation.  It’s one thing to have differing opinions, but it’s another thing entirely to just say things that are false.  And so that’s something that we’re looking into.”  This from a woman who in 2019 told Anderson Cooper on 60 Minutes that she was less worried about making factual statements and more focused on prioritizing morality.

Even so, the most salient theme of the past five years was not any challenge to democracy. The great theme of the Trump years, the one historians will note a century from now, was the failure of America’s expert class. The people who were supposed to know what they were talking about, didn’t. 

The failure began with the country’s top consultants and pollsters. Candidate Trump did almost everything lavishly paid political consultants would have told him, and did tell him, not to do—and he won. The most respected pollsters, meanwhile, predicted a landslide for Hillary Clinton. America’s best and brightest political adepts turned out to know very little about the elections they claim to understand.

Also during the 2016 campaign, an assemblage of top-tier academics, intellectuals and journalists warned that Mr. Trump’s candidacy signified a fascist threat. Timothy Snyder, a historian of Nazism at Yale, was among the most strident of these prophets. “Be calm when the unthinkable arrives,” he warned in a Facebook post shortly after the election. “When the terrorist attack comes, remember that all authorities at all times either await or plan such events in order to consolidate power. Think of the Reichstag fire.” Many experts stuck with the fascism theme after Mr. Trump’s election and throughout his presidency. That these cultured authorities couldn’t tell the difference between a populist protest against elite contempt and a coup carried out by powerful ideologues will go down as one of the great fiascoes of American intellectual history. 

The fascism charge was only the most acute form of the claim that Mr. Trump was carrying out an “assault on democracy.” Some semantic clarification is in order here. When intellectuals and journalists of the left use the word “democracy,” they typically are not referring to elections and decision-making by popularly elected officials. For the left, “democracy” is another word for progressive policy aims, especially the widening of special political rights and welfare-state provisions to new constituencies. By that definition any Republican president is carrying out an “assault on democracy.”

https://www.wsj.com/articles/joe-bidens-inaugural-purge-11611270791?m

The “unity” lasted all of a couple of minutes. Then, hours after President Biden pledged in his inaugural address to show “tolerance and humility,” the brass knuckles came out.

One duster was aimed at Peter Robb, general counsel of the National Labor Relations Board. Within minutes of Mr. Biden’s swearing-in, and as the new president told the nation it needed to “be better,” the new White House delivered Mr. Robb an ultimatum: resign by 5 p.m., or be fired.

The general-counsel position is a Senate-confirmed four-year appointment at an independent agency; Mr. Robb had 10 months left in his term. No NLRB general counsel had ever been fired, and the Biden White House provided no cause for the action. Mr. Robb pointed all this out in a return letter and respectfully declined to step down. So Mr. Biden (“we must end this uncivil war”) canned him.

For four years, the media and Democrats cast every action of the Trump administration as something law-breaking or verging on a constitutional crisis. This week’s headlines, by contrast, were a mass media celebration of the return to “normalcy.” Mr. Biden ran on, and won on, a promise to restore norms to Washington.

https://www.rushlimbaugh.com/daily/2021/01/20/the-establishment-thinks-they-hav

RUSH: Greetings to you, music lovers, thrill-seekers, conversationalists all across the fruited plain. Man, oh, man. I have such a range of emotion flowing through my arteries and veins, going to my heart and away from my heart. I’m watching these people at the Biden inauguration. They think they got it all back. They think they finally have vanquished all of their opposition. And they haven’t the slightest idea.

You can hear it in the words they’re saying to each other. You can hear it in the way they’re singing their songs. You can see it in the people that showed up for this inauguration who didn’t show up four years ago for the Trump inauguration, and I have to tell you, ladies and gentlemen, I just — (crowd chanting “We love you! We love you!”) Wait a minute. What’s this? That was obviously audio from a Trump rally, one of the many that occurred before the election last November. “We love you.”

Anyway, greetings, folks. It is good to have you here. We’re gonna try to get through the day here as best we can. I’m looking for the words to most perfectly capture the range of emotion that I feel. And I’m watching these people as they have assembled on the stage for the inauguration of Plugs. And this inauguration looks like what you would expect from a one-party state. This inauguration looks like the Chinese Olympics with hundreds and hundreds of flags to replace people who were not allowed to show up.

Now, why do you think people weren’t allowed to show up? People are not allowed to show up because of COVID. People aren’t allowed to show up because the threats of the National Guard might open fire on everybody. That’s not why. The reason that they put up all these replacements for people is that I don’t think they were confident a bunch of people would show up for this because I think they know. I think they know that they are not — I gotta be very careful here in the words I choose.

I think they know that this is something that’s been arranged rather than legitimately sought and won. And you can see this in their attitudes, in their smiles. You can see it, hear it in the words that they are uttering. It’s like, I remember the 1984 Democrat convention was in San Francisco. I happened to be there, I was covering it. And one of the speakers on one of the nights was the mayor of Washington, D.C. His name was Marion Barry. And the sum total of his speech was, “Tonight we’re on the inside.” Meaning, finally the minorities that really are the Democrat Party have made it to the power base. We’re on the inside. We’re not on the outside looking in.

https://www.manhattancontrarian.com/blog/2021-1-21-whos-attacking-our-democracy

The breach of the Capitol on January 6 by pro-Trump demonstrators took Americans by surprise. There have been many reactions in the aftermath, but responses by the mainstream media completely miss — or intentionally misrepresent — the underlying issues. The Capitol breach felt like a turning point, but not because Trump supporters are particularly dangerous or violent as the media would like us to believe. If their demonstration attacked our democracy, it’s because we are living in a democracy so divided we no longer share any goals in common. As long as the party in power seizes opportunities to silence or oppress its opposition, that divide can only widen. 

Even while the January 6 events were still unfolding, the mainstream media started talking about the breach of the Capitol as a “violent siege,” conducted by a far-right mob. During the time that protestors were in the building, my iPhone was flooded with breaking news alerts from CNN, NBC, NPR all letting me know first that the Capitol had been breached, that Kamala Harris and Nancy Pelosi had been moved to a “secure location,” while those on the House floor were told to “shelter in place.” Rioters “vandalized” “occupied” and “ransacked” the building, and attempted to disrupt the certification of the Electoral College votes.

It took a few days for any counter-perspective to come out. Matt Keener, an opinion columnist who was in DC as a peaceful demonstrator, had a different experience. He wrote for American Spectator that: “the atmosphere outside [the Capitol] resembled an open air concert or festival more than a ‘riot.’” He also linked to a video of protestors being let into the building by police.  He believes “the true story [of the demonstration] is getting lost in the propaganda.” 

https://justthenews.com/government/congress/pelosis-office-wont-say-if-she-was-briefed-potential-violence-ahead-jan-6

The offices of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell won’t say whether the congressional leaders were briefed on potential violence ahead of the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol — or whether they weighed in on requesting help from the National Guard to bolster Capitol security.

Just the News reached out to representatives for Pelosi and asked if the speaker was briefed about threats of violence in advance of the rally. Her office was also asked if the speaker favored or opposed having National Guard troops help Capitol Police to protect the Capitol Building before the rally. Her office didn’t provide a response.

McConnell’s press office was asked the same questions, but they did not return a request for comment. 

Security sources told Just the News that Pelosi’s staff was briefed on threats of violence, but it is unclear if Pelosi herself was briefed directly or indirectly on the situation.

In a timeline of events from the Pentagon, defense officials wrote that U.S. Capitol Police twice said that they did not need help from the military. According to the timeline, Capitol Police confirmed that stance to Defense Department officials and to Army Secretary Ryan McCarthy. 

U.S. Capitol Police Chief Steven Sund reportedly asked House and Senate security officials if they wanted National Guard troops to assist the Capitol Police in protecting the Capitol complex in advance of the Jan. 6 rally. According to The Washington Post, House Sergeant at Arms Paul Irving said he was not in support of declaring an emergency ahead of the rally. Sund and Irving have since resigned. 

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/tyler-o-neil/2021/01/21/republican-files-articles-of-impeachment-against-joe-biden-on-his-second-day-in-office-n1403692

A House Republican officially filed articles of impeachment against President Joe Biden on his second day in office. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) — infamous for supporting the QAnon conspiracy theory on a blog before running for Congress — launched a Quixotic attempt to impeach Biden over the Hunter Biden-Burisma scandal.

“President Joe Biden is unfit to hold the office of the Presidency. His pattern of abuse of power as President Obama’s Vice President is lengthy and disturbing. President Biden has demonstrated that he will do whatever it takes to bail out his son, Hunter, and line his family’s pockets with cash from corrupt foreign energy companies,” Greene said in a statement on Thursday after filing the articles.

“President Biden is even on tape admitting to a quid pro quo with the Ukrainian government threatening to withhold $1,000,000,000 in foreign aid if they did not do his bidding. President Biden residing in the White House is a threat to national security and he must be immediately impeached,” the congresswoman insisted.

Greene’s impeachment effort is unlikely to gain any traction, but it does once again point out the notorious Burisma scandal.

https://amgreatness.com/2021/01/21/freedoms-funeral/

In Norwegian, the word for inauguration, innsettelse, shares a root with bisettelse, the word for funeral. On the day after Joe Biden was sworn in, my friend Roger in Oslo joked that he’d watched the whole bisettelse on TV.

At a time like this, the only options for a sane freedom-lover are revolution, drugs, and gallows humor.

I watched the bisettelse, too. I thought Lady Gaga did a spectacular job with the National Anthem. She was a terrible choice, though. Her vivacity served only to underscore, by contrast, the fact that the new occupant of the White House is a walking corpse.

While he was delivering his address, I was so focused on the question of the day—would he get through it without zoning out?—that I barely noticed how vapid and mendacious the speech itself was.

But it was both of those things, in spades—vapid and mendacious.

It was ironic to find oneself listening to such a piece of drivel after four years during which the media told us, repeatedly, that Donald Trump spoke at the level of a middle schooler—and spoke too roughly and bluntly, in a style that was scandalously “unpresidential.”

True enough. He shot from the hip. He didn’t waste his audiences’ time with platitudes, with pap. Unlike Barack Obama, Trump didn’t fancy himself an orator come down from Olympus to turn mere words into glorious music.

Truth, Lies, and “Unity”

The media also said that Trump lied. Well, he exaggerated. But lies? Not really. Not about the big stuff, anyway. Biden’s speech, by contrast, in addition to being a string of clichés written on a grade-school level, was one big fat lie. And at its climax, he professed a profound love for the truth.

https://amgreatness.com/2021/01/21/let-the-senates-show-trial-begin/

So much for unity.

During her first softball briefing, Jen Psaki, Joe Biden’s press secretary, assured America that the U.S. Senate can “multi-task” by conducting its routine business and proceeding with a trial against former President Donald Trump at the same time. “[Biden’s] gonna leave the mechanics, the timing, the specifics of how Congress moves forward on impeachment to them,” the ex-Obama staffer told a Fox News reporter Wednesday.

The House of Representatives hastily impeached Trump a second time on January 13, one week after the so-called insurrection at the Capitol. The former president was charged with “willfully inciting violence against the Government of the United States” for allegedly provoking the mob with his speech prior to Congress’ formal certification of the 2020 election.

Ten Republican House members, including U.S. Representative Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.), voted for the resolution; Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), bitter after losing control of the Senate, suggested on the Senate floor last week that Trump did in fact fuel the mob.

To which I say—let the trial begin.

Republican lawmakers and Trump supporters should welcome this opportunity to expose the truth. After all, the former president has been tried in an ex parte court of public outrage and convicted of sedition by the news media, Democrats, and a sizable swath of the American public.

A Proper Defense

Trump and his supporters are denied any defense in the virtual courtroom of social media; tens of thousands of Twitter users, including the former president, were permanently purged from the site following the January 6 melee.

Not only is there a bounty on the heads of people who were involved in the Capitol violence or who even just attended Trump’s speech that day, 74.2 million Americans now are considered “terrorists” for the simple act of voting to reelect the president. Comparisons to Iraqi insurgents or al-Qaeda terrorists easily slip from the tongues of ex-military leaders and alleged “conservative” pundits. Joe Biden mentioned “domestic terrorists” in his inauguration speech. 

“Two weeks ago, when an angry violent mob staged an insurrection and desecrated this temple of our democracy, it awakened us,” Senator Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) said in the inauguration’s opening remarks Wednesday.

But more than two weeks later, many questions remain unanswered about exactly what happened on January 6. And just like every other overblown crisis intended to inflict mortal damage to Donald Trump, key parts of the narrative are falling apart while others are swept under the rug.

A Senate trial allows for the only public opportunity to vet the various charges now levied against Trump and his voters.