RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/03/america-at-the-end-of-empire-mark-tapson/

In a recent monologue on HBO’s Real Time, host Bill Maher called Americans a “silly people” for allowing themselves to be mired in culture war struggles, such as the politically correct cancelling of children’s books, while our superpower competition China is laser-focused on political, economic, and military dominance.

“You’re not going to win the battle for the 21st century if you are a silly people. And Americans are a silly people,” Maher asserted. He then referenced the latest “cancel culture” controversy – the woke mob’s targeting of children’s author Dr. Seuss over purported racism in his books: “Do you know who doesn’t care that there’s a stereotype of a Chinese man in a Dr. Seuss book? China. All 1.4 billion of them couldn’t give a crouching tiger flying fuck because they’re not a silly people. If anything, they are as serious as a prison fight.”

Maher pointed out that China has “built 500 entire cities from scratch, moved the majority of their huge population from poverty to the middle class, and mostly cornered the market in 5G and pharmaceuticals” in two generations. Meanwhile in America, “half the country is having a never-ending woke competition deciding whether Mr. Potato Head has a dick and the other half believes we have to stop the lizard people because they’re eating babies. We are a silly people,” he continued.

“Do you think China’s doing that, letting political correctness get in the way of nurturing their best and brightest?” Maher added. “Do you think Chinese colleges are offering courses in ‘The Philosophy of Star Trek, ‘The Sociology of Seinfeld,’ and ‘Surviving the Coming Zombie Apocalypse’? Those are real and so is China. And they are eating our lunch. And believe me, in an hour, they’ll be hungry again.”

Maher’s prescient lecture came just before the Chinese delegation ate their American counterparts for lunch at last week’s U.S.-China meeting in Alaska, telling Secretary of State Antony Blinken to his face that China does not view America as operating “from a position of strength.” With a new American President so decrepit he is shielded from the public by his handlers; with our southern border collapsing under tsunami of illegal aliens; and with Americans at each other’s throats in a not-so-Cold Civil War, China’s not wrong about that.

Unlike his fellow political propagandists on late-night TV, Maher occasionally comes down on the right side of an issue, and this is one of them.

https://redstate.com/sister-toldjah/2021/03/25/joe-biden-immediately-gives-his-handlers-nightmares-after-appearing-confused-at-times-during-first-presser-n350192

EXCERPT

““Tired”? Really? We all know what tired actually looks like, and it’s an insult to our intelligence to pass off Biden’s mid-sentence freezes as nothing more than being “tired.”

As I said yesterday, that the leader of the free world essentially had to be shamed into doing a formal press conference two months into his time in the Oval Office should set off alarm bells everywhere. But when you see how things get progressively worse during these events – no matter how tightly staged they are, it begins to make more sense as to why they’re keeping him on leash in carefully controlled settings.

It’s quite terrifying, to be honest, and the more it happens the worse it looks. World leaders seem to be taking notice, too, which makes all of this even more concerning. But Biden IS the POTUS, and he should be expected to be able to appear in public and before the press and to coherently answer questions.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: Joe Biden does not just look unwell, he doesn’t appear to actually be well, either. It’s no wonder he’s turning over meetings with Vice President Kamala Harris to his Chief of Staff Ron Klain and kicking the press out when they try to get answers from him.

That they continue to ignore the elephant in the room here is a disgrace, made doubly so by the fact that they were questioning Trump’s mental fitness to lead well before he even took office.

Questions about Biden’s state of mind and mental health are issues the American people deserve answers to. It’s just too bad members of the mainstream press had an hour or so today to do just that, and not a single one of them took the opportunity to do so. They didn’t hesitate to do it with Trump, and they shouldn’t have any hesitancy doing it with this President, either.

https://redstate.com/nick-arama/2021/03/25/biden-presser-was-such-a-disaster-there-was-one-moment-that-showed-what-elder-abuse-it-was-n350185

Oh my gosh, as I type this, I’m watching this utter disaster that is the Joe Biden press conference.

It sounds like many in the press came ready with real substantive questions but Biden failed to show up with his mind, as my colleague Sister Toldjah just explained.

It seemed like he was trying to go from a script, he had reporters’ names on a list that he was calling on. Were there any prepared questions would be my question? Like this one that basically was Yamiche Alcindor praising him saying it’s his morality that’s causing them to come. Yeesh, propagandist.

He takes credit for that and then turns around and blames President Donald Trump for the surge.

But even with apparent preparation He was negative, when he didn’t know or couldn’t answer, which was a lot, he was combative with reporters, saying “Come on, man!”

It was awful, not sure how anyone could have thought he’d make it through it, it was a complete train wreck. He kept talking and talking and talking, but it was often just rambling gibberish.

But perhaps the mistake that was most emblematic of the huge problem he has is what he said about when he joined the Senate.

“With regard to the filibuster, I believe we should go back to a position with the filibuster that existed when I came to the United States Senate 120 years ago.”

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/biden-is-lying/

The Biden press conference was a train wreck and disgrace on the border. He repeated the Alejandro Mayorkas line that Trump was just pushing unaccompanied minors back into Mexico, when the truth is that they were flown home and handed over to social-service agencies in their countries. He then went even further, referring to Trump letting minors starve and die. He maintained that Trump hadn’t diminished the flow at the border, which is completely false. He gave no indication of any serious plan for us to do a better job of policing our own border, instead emphasizing building more shelters to house the migrants who are coming in record numbers. And he missed the point when a reporter asked a question about a small boy from Central America whose mother told the reporter she had sent him because she believed that Biden would let him into the United States. This performance would be roasted from beginning to end by fact-checkers — if they had any integrity.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2021/03/bidens-woeful-press-conference/

Reporters aren’t in the practice, obviously, of being particularly tough on President Biden. But at his first press conference as president this afternoon, Cecilia Vega of ABC News politely nailed him to the wall on a key failure of his border policy.

She told an affecting story of meeting a nine-year-old boy at the border who had walked to the U.S. from Honduras, and said that when she called the boy’s mother, the woman explained that she had sent him to the U.S. because she believed that Biden would let him into the country.

This, of course, is exactly why there’s been a surge at the border. Biden created an exemption in Title 42 — the public-health authority that President Trump had used to turn back migrants during the pandemic — specifically for minors, and predictably there’s been a surge of minors.

In evading this reality throughout the press conference, Biden resorted to a haze of misrepresentations, and inadvertently exposed the senselessness of his own policy.

In response to Vega, he echoed a distortion often made by his Homeland Security secretary Alejandro Mayorkas and said that Trump had dumped children into the Mexican desert. Except Biden made the charge even more lurid by alleging that Trump had let children starve to death.

This is a disgraceful and stupid charge. The Trump administration either flew back migrants to their home countries directly or handed them over to Mexican authorities to do the same. No one was pushed into the desert.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/and-the-nominees-for-best-civilization-are-11616685894?mod=opinion_lead_pos11

Progressive leftists are good at destroying traditions, careers and free expression. But after all the societal broken eggs, where’s the progressive omelette? Surely somewhere there must be a model of success given the confidence with which the wokesters of modern media condemn America’s constitutional republic.

A recent headline on this column invited readers to “Name a Great Civilization Created by Progressive Leftists.” Your humble correspondent is still happy to accept nominations and the submissions so far have been extremely interesting. The search continues for a progressive paradise. But what’s striking is that a number of left-leaning respondents—those who did not simply express resentment at the question—have nominated nations of Western civilization that are the typical targets of progressive ire. In fact a few leftists even cite the good old USA as a place created by the progressives of their day.

Perhaps this is encouraging, because it suggests that when pressed the cancel crowd acknowledges that it’s not unreasonable to judge people by the standards of their own times.

But on the substance, what about this argument that the United States of America is the answer to the question posed in that headline?

Princeton professor of jurisprudence Robert George runs the school’s James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions. In response to an email inquiry he writes that “the claim that the American founders were ‘progressive leftists’ is absurd.” Here’s the rest of his response:

https://www.wsj.com/articles/congress-summons-its-speech-regulators-11616711928?mod=opinion_lead_pos3

On Thursday the CEOs of Facebook, Google and Twitter sat before the House Energy and Commerce Committee as Democrats thundered that they should censor more political speech, and what was notable was how routine this ritual has become.

The Journal reports this was Mark Zuckerberg’s “fourth appearance before Congress since last July, and the third for both Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey and Google’s Sundar Pichai. ” The gatekeepers of online expression increasingly resemble government regulators, navigating threats and exhortations from politicians.

The hearing topic was “disinformation,” and it followed the same committee’s hearing last month targeting conservative media. The term “disinformation” is elastic, covering anything from election and health hoaxes to political expression that Democrats disfavor. Rep. Mike Doyle, the subcommittee chair, said in his opening statement that the sites the CEOs oversee are “havens of hate, harassment, and division,” and declared, “we will legislate to stop this.”

That sentiment was echoed by Rep. Henry Butterfield, who said social-media platforms are “being used to undermine social justice movements.” He said Congress may have to “compel you, perhaps with penalties, to make meaningful changes” to employee composition.

Republicans also laid into the platforms, especially their impact on minors and progressive bias in moderation. But the message from the majority party was clear and unified: Clamp down on more political speech, pronto, or risk the consequences. Rep. Jerry McNerney said the removal of disinformation “isn’t happening quickly enough.”

Progressives have deputized Big Tech executives as de facto regulators of American debate.

https://spectator.us/topic/tame-press-conference-america-joe-biden/

Just a sec. Let me check my notes. Ah, right. Hurgh. ‘My message to the American people is: help is here. Hope is on the way.’

‘Can I go home now?’ he asked with his eyes.

Joe Biden looked like he wanted to call an end to his first presidential press conference before he even got started. But he soldiered on. Having prepared for a few weeks to talk to — what, seven? Eight? — carefully selected members of the press, he was not about to give up on this chance to bask in some adulation.

And boy was the adulation ever on offer. ‘Was it because you were such a a nice man that you had more success than the awful Voldemort who proceeded you?’ oozed one female correspondent.

No that’s not a direct quote. The original was more embarrassing.

Joe Biden held his press conference today because it was getting too embarrassing not to hold a press conference. One of the alphabet Dem-friendly channels said the president faced ‘tough questions‘ about his administration handling of the disaster on our southern border.

No he didn’t. He faced a few mild questions from essentially friendly reporters who were hand-picked by his minders to be sure they were on side, which is to say, on his side.

There were only a few really cringe worthy moments. Yes they were doozies.

But much more concerning was the Truman Show-like set up of the event. The air of unreality that suffused the proceedings was stultifying. Here we had an old, senile man pretending to be president while a handful of flaks pretended to be reporters. Every issue that was raised was wrapped up in a tissue of lies and misrepresentation.

Take immigration. Donald Trump had reduced illegal immigration to almost zero. Joe Biden lied when he said otherwise. Trump had closed down most of the Obama-era holding pens for children. Biden had to reopen them when he opened the border.

https://amgreatness.com/2021/03/24/the-nature-of-chinese-contempt-for-us/

Last week in Anchorage, Alaska, Chinese diplomats dressed down Biden Administration Secretary of State Antony Blinken and National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan. Both seem stunned by the Chinese broadsides. 

Apparently, as elite Americans readily confess to inherent white supremacy and racism—highlighting the complaints of BLM and Antifa—the Chinese are happy to agree that such admittedly toxic Americans should not dare to criticize China’s racist policies. 

Not since newly elected President John Kennedy was humiliated at the Cold War Vienna summit in June 1961 by USSR strongman Nikita Khrushchev have American diplomats been so roughly manhandled by a Communist government.  

China’s defiant provocations are not just verbal. Nor are they aimed only at our high officials. 

New York University students, at an overseas satellite Shanghai China campus, were manhandled and jailed by Chinese authorities. Not long ago U.S. diplomats in China were subject to Chinese COVID-19 anal swab testing—supposedly “in error.”  

These examples of continued humiliation and harassment could be multiplied. Yet they are simply the current public face of China’s insidious and systematic theft of U.S. patents and copyrights. It brazenly violates trade agreements, as well as manipulates its currency, dumps products below cost on world markets, cyber-assaults, expropriates Western technology, and stonewalls accurate information on the origins of COVID-19. 

If China gives out money, it logically believes it owns the recipient. New York University in the last five years has received some $47 million in Communist Chinese-affiliated gifts. So Beijing apparently believes that it now “owns” NYU, and can send any message it likes to its clients. 

Stanford University recently was cited by the U.S. Department of Education for failing to report over $64 million from Chinese sources since 2010. No surprise that China, in a demonstration of their contempt, recently sent a visiting researcher to Stanford, who turned out to be connected with the Chinese military. 

Hollywood claims that it is woke. But recently it was disclosed that some directors had selected their actors on the basis of skin color. They were obeying China’s requirements for American films to enter the lucrative Chinese film market, slated to become the world’s largest in 2021.