RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17189/should-anything-be-off-limits-to-debate

The fact that we even have to ask these questions demonstrates the precarious state of freedom of speech and the marketplace of ideas in the cancel culture….

Professors are being fired for private discussions of grades and race. Students are terrified of expressing politically incorrect views, especially about race, sex, sexual orientation and even politics. Even silence is not always an option.

There are several exceptions to this cancel culture rule. You can say almost anything negative about Jews, as evidenced by the recent Grammy awards, during which three overt anti-Semites were honored. These bigots did not even try to disguise their anti-Semitism behind the facade of anti-Zionism.

There has never been a time when respectful and nuanced debate has been more needed, especially about race and other taboo subjects— taboo unless you toe the line of political correctness.

Slate’s decision to suspend Peska strikes a blow against diversity. Yes, diversity! —which includes diversity of views about every issue including how best to deal with racism and how best to achieve equality.

Slate should end Peska’s suspension, apologize to him, and encourage debate about the issue over which he was suspended.

Slate — the online magazine known for its provocative content—has indefinitely suspended one of its star podcasters, Mike Peska, for debating with a colleague, on an inter-office messaging platform, whether it is ever appropriate for a non-Black person to use the N-word in the context of a discussion about race. It is not clear whether in the course of the discussion Peska actually uttered the word itself or just used the term “n-word.”

In defending Slate’s decision, a Black staffer argued that “For Black employees, it’s an extremely small ask to not hear that particular slur and not have debate about whether it’s OK for white employees to use that particular slur.” Not have debate?

Should anything be off limits to debate and discuss? Is this issue not reasonably debatable? Can only Black people debate this issue, as my colleague Randy Kennedy brilliantly did in his book whose title is the actual word—spelled out? Can the issue be discussed in racially mixed classrooms? Should that depend on the race of the teacher? Must a teacher who wants to have such a discussion issue a trigger warning? Is a trigger warning enough? Must he obtain permission from Black students in the class to discuss the use of the word even if the word itself is not uttered? Do these restrictions apply only to this word and only to slurs against Blacks, or do they apply as well to derogatory words against other groups.

https://thefederalist.com/2021/03/18/watch-rep-byron-donalds-says-bidens-tax-increases-will-hurt-low-income-americans/

Freshman congressman Rep. Byron Donalds, R-Fla., blasted President Biden’s for hinting at tax increases during his recent “Good Morning America” interview Wednesday.

Speaking to Jan Jeffcoat on The National Desk Thursday, Donalds explained why raising taxes hurts even lower-income Americans.

“If you take money away from people, even the quote-unquote rich, what happens is they have less money to spend. If there is less money to spend, there is less money flowing through the economy. If there is less money flowing through the economy — who does that hurt? It hurts middle-income Americans and poor Americans,” Donalds said.

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2021/03/what_weird_contradiction_will_anthony_fauci_spin_next.html

Fauci is his name, and deception his game.

Various questions remain, even a few months after the emergency use authorization of vaccines designed to target the enigma that is COVID-19.

Is the ultimate purpose of the non-FDA-approved vaccines to stop the spread of infection, or is it primarily to lessen the symptoms and severity of COVID-19?  If viral spread is at least partially attributed to asymptomatic carriers, how will a lessening of symptoms via mass vaccination prevent further spread?  And if a majority of those infected don’t have symptoms, why should they take the vaccine?  How is herd immunity achieved if the vaccines offered only lessens the symptoms?  These are just a few of the questions that Dr. Fauci has thus far insufficiently addressed.

Thankfully, Mexican comedian Eugenio Derbez is doing the job our compromised media are paid not to.  (See here, with excellent audio commentary at the 27 minute mark.)

Fauci is a living, breathing barrage of circular reasoning and manufactured confusion.  He is the Tasmanian devil of doublespeak, a tireless truth-spinner with a shameless capacity to contradict himself at every turn.  His expertise in immunology pales in comparison to his mastery of duplicity.  The scope and magnitude of his contradictory affirmations astound as Fauci continues to promote the same molecular tests he admitted are set to CT levels that produce the majority of false positives, which in turn are used to establish the perception that asymptomatic infection is the default catalyst for mass viral spread despite the fact that Fauci himself claimed that “in all the history of respiratory-borne viruses of any type, asymptomatic transmission has never been the driver of outbreaks” as recently as January of last year.  

https://amgreatness.com/2021/03/18/mixed-messaging-and-silencing-campaign-fuel-vaccine-skepticism/

It took a Mexican comedian to do the job the American news media refuses to do.

During a series of pointed questions, Dr. Anthony Fauci admitted the COVID-19 vaccines won’t stop people from contracting the virus; the shots only lessen the symptoms if a recipient is later infected with SARS-CoV-2.

“There’s a 95 percent chance you will not get a symptomatic infection,” Fauci told Eugenio Derbez last week. “We are unsure right now what the protection is against infection because it’s conceivable you could get vaccinated, get exposed, get infected, not know it . . . but you could have virus in your nasal pharynx.”

Fauci continued spinning. Since no one knows whether the vaccine prevents transmission, Fauci warned, even vaccinated people must wear a mask if “they’re around people who are vulnerable to infection.” It will be at least a few more months before researchers know for certain the risk level of a vaccinated person infecting someone else, Fauci said.

Derbez clearly made the deified public health expert—you can now buy a t-shirt telling the world you received your “Fauci ouchie,” referring to the vaccine—squirm. Accustomed to softball interviews by swooning American journalists, Fauci was unprepared to face tough questions.

But his responses exposed the confusing, and frankly unconvincing, promotional campaign for COVID-19 vaccines. Americans generally understand vaccines to be a safeguard against getting a harmful virus, not an immunity booster to make the resultant disease more manageable. This is especially true of a highly contagious virus that can be lethal to the elderly, obese, or immuno-compromised. No one expected the vaccine merely would act as an injectable version of DayQuil or a vitamin pack but with unknown side effects.

Legitimate Questions

After a year of hyperbolic fear-mongering and warning life only could “return to normal” after widespread immunizations, the COVID chicken hawks are finally coming home to roost. Questions abound.

How will “normalcy” return when someone can still contract and transmit the virus after vaccination? What’s the point of getting the shots if you, and everyone else, must still wear a mask? If mask-wearing and social distancing must continue until we have more solid answers about vaccine efficacy, why not delay the program until more is known? If getting the vaccine doesn’t protect my family or neighbor, why bother? What about stories and data showing moderate to severe side effects, which in some cases are more debilitating than the disease itself?

Unfortunately, those rational inquiries apparently make you a dreaded “anti-vaxxer.” Americans are instructed not to doubt anything coming from the very same authorities who’ve been wrong on everything since the start of the pandemic. Suspicions are silenced rather than honestly addressed. And it all looks very familiar.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/03/kamala-harris-traitor-matthew-vadum/

Vice President Kamala Devi Harris attacked her own country as violent and racist when she appeared on the world stage with Ireland’s prime minister this week.

She kicked off a St. Patrick’s Day online summit by assailing America in what can be seen as a tribute of sorts to Barack Obama, a mentor of hers who pioneered the globetrotting national self-denunciation when he was president.

Before much was known about a deadly shooting spree at Asian spas in the Atlanta area, Harris seditiously declared on the world stage that it was a hate crime.

“It is tragic,” she told Irish premier Micheal Martin.

“It speaks to a larger issue which is the issue of violence in our country and what we must do to never tolerate it and to always speak out against it. The investigation is ongoing. We don’t yet know, we’re not yet clear about the motives, but I do want to say to our Asian-American community that we stand with you and understand how this has frightened and shocked and outraged all people but knowing the increasing level of hate crime against our Asian-American brothers and sisters we also want to speak out in solidarity with them and acknowledge that none of us should ever be silent in the face of any form of hate.”

Whether “hate” as in “hate crime” was involved in the killings wasn’t clear when Harris spoke, and still isn’t clear at time of writing.

https://issuesinsights.com/2021/03/19/have-we-ever-had-a-president-like-this-before/

Some believe that Woodrow Wilson’s wife Edith ran the federal executive branch after the president had a stroke in October 1919. Even the Obama White House said she “functionally” was in charge of the administration “for the remainder of Wilson’s second term.” At least Wilson started his presidency in a sentient state. Not sure the same can be said of Joe Biden.

It’s clear that the 46th president of the United States is impaired. He has yet to face the media, waiting longer to hold his first press conference than any president in the last 100 years. 

Biden’s team has finally scheduled a news conference, announcing Tuesday he’d be up for it on – March 25. Why the long run-up? Will it take his handlers that long to ensure that he doesn’t have a blowout while talking to the press? There’s a transparency problem, as Trump press secretary Kayleigh McEnany has pointed out. Biden aides are doing nothing to inspire the country’s confidence in the man.

But then again, there’s not much to be confident about. Some recent evidence of note:

“Bubble Biden clearly not up for tough questions – or the job,” says the New York Post headline of Michael Goodwin’s March 16 column. Goodwin reminds readers that after “Biden’s lone interview since taking office,” the White House was forced to clean up his comments about Donald Trump receiving intelligence briefings, the $15 minimum wage campaign, and Iran’s nuclear program.
In late February, Biden famously rambled on about losing track of his thoughts and wondering where he was.
Earlier this month, the bumbling president called Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin “the guy who runs that outfit.”
Biden ended his session at the House Democrats 2021 Issues Conference saying “I’m happy to take questions if that’s what you want me to do,” at which point he was given the modern-day version of the Vaudeville hook to, obviously, prevent him from making yet another public spectacle of himself.
Former White House stenographer Mike McCormick, who spent six years at “Biden’s side as he met with world leaders, delivered speeches and interacted with members of the news media,” told one-time Trump aide Steve Bannon in January that he estimated the president’s cognitive abilities have fallen by half in recent years. 
McCormick told the Washington Free Beacon last September that the Democratic candidate is “not the same Joe Biden,” and that “he’s lost a step and he doesn’t seem to have the same mental acuity as he did four years ago.”

https://www.cnn.com/2021/03/18/politics/xavier-becerra-confirmation-vote/index.html

The Senate narrowly confirmed Xavier Becerra to be the Health and Human Services secretary on Thursday, giving the former California attorney general a crucial role in fighting the pandemic.

Becerra, the son of Mexican immigrants, is the first Latino HHS secretary.
The vote was 50 to 49. Maine GOP Sen. Susan Collins joined Senate Democrats in favor of the nomination. Hawaii Democratic Sen. Mazie Hirono did not vote.
During the confirmation process, Becerra stressed his upbringing, his father’s recent passing and his efforts for expanding health care access as California’s attorney general and a 24-year Congressman representing a Los Angeles-based district.

https://worldisraelnews.com/opinion-wheres-the-outrage-us-jewish-groups-mum-on-anti-israel-pentagon-pick/

“Pro-Israel groups launch blitz against Kahl nomination for top Pentagon job,” read the Jewish News Syndicate headline on March 15.

The headline isn’t untrue.

The problem is that there were just two groups, one of them Christian. How’s that line go again “If I am not for myself…”?

There should have been a chorus of protest from the American Jewish establishment at last week’s Senate hearings on Colin Kahl’s nomination for Undersecretary of Defense for Policy.

It’s an important job. As The Wall Street Journal noted, “While the Secretary of Defense handles high-level defense politics, and the deputy secretary manages the department day-to-day, the undersecretary plays the leading role setting strategy — including representing the department at National Security Council deputies meetings.”

Yet AIPAC was AWOL. The American Israel Public Affairs Committee’s excuse is it doesn’t take positions on presidential nominations.

If you’re the largest pro-Israel lobby in America and you can’t call out nominees espousing anti-Israel policies, what can you do? Kahl typifies such policies. It should be right in AIPAC’s bailiwick. As it likes to say, “policy over partisanship.”

https://weingarten.substack.com/p/tucker-carlson-military-spat-shows?token=e

Is the military more focused on winning wars, or Wokeism?

Americans should not have to ask this question.

But on account of doings of the Biden-led Department of Defense (DoD), Fox News’ Tucker Carlson was rightly compelled to proffer it. That he received any DoD response—and no less an almost parodic scolding, rather than an assurance that the military is singularly focused on crushing our enemies—demonstrates an existential problem for our country.

It shows that the progressives’ Long March through our institutions is reaching its dangerous apex.

This is a dangerous apex because when it comes to matters of national security and foreign policy, politicization literally kills.

Our military must be impervious to politicization, and particularly political correctness and insubordination, or it will lack the will and capability necessary to deter and when necessary defeat our adversaries.

Absent a military insulated from these ills, our peace and prosperity will erode. People will die.

Yet for well over a decade now, perhaps the last trusted institution in this country, the military, has shown dangerous signs that it is succumbing to the maladies of all of our other institutions.

This is an indictment not of our cherished military itself, but of those who have tarnished it through repudiating its core principles, and the civilian leaders who have abided such conduct, if not endorsed it.

The Tucker Carlson-Department of Defense contretemps broke this reality right out into the open for all of America to see.

https://thefederalist.com/2021/03/18/one-of-the-lockdowns-greatest-casualties-could-be-science/

Politicians, journalists, and scientists have transferred the disease burden onto the working class. They’ve also dangerously undermined scientific inquiry.

The COVID-19 pandemic and lockdowns have not only been devastating for society, they have had a chilling effect on the scientific community. For science to thrive, opposing ideas must be openly and vigorously discussed, supported, or countered based on scientific merit.

Instead, some politicians, journalists, and (alas) scientists have engaged in vicious slander of dissident scientists, spreading damaging conspiracy theories, even with open calls for censorship in place of debate. In many cases, eminent scientific voices have been effectively silenced, often with gutter tactics. People who oppose lockdowns have been accused of having blood on their hands, their university positions threatened, with many of our colleagues choosing to stay quiet rather than face the mob.

We tell the story here of five prominent scientists who have faced the modern-day inquisition.

Dr. Scott Atlas

Dr. Scott Atlas served as a special advisor to the president on COVID policy between July and November 2020. This would be a difficult job in normal circumstances when the science is more mature.

With his background in public health policy, Atlas’s advice emphasized balancing risks imposed by viral spread against collateral public health harms from the lockdowns in a rapidly changing scientific and policy environment. Scientists who did not share his views had every opportunity to do so responsibly by reporting scientific facts and conjectures and engaging with his ideas.

Instead, the Journal of the American Medical Association—the flagship medical journal in the United States—published an opinion article defaming him without engaging his actual scientific views. The editors of the journal then refused to publish letters supporting Atlas.