RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/02/tyrannical-lefts-sinister-conspiracy-silence-david-limbaugh/

Why does the left want to silence conservatives? Why do rank-and-file Democrats go along with this abomination? Leftists have bad intentions, but how about the Democrats who enable them? I prefer to think they’ve being manipulated.

As worried as we should be about the hyperexploding national debt and our inevitable fiscal catastrophe, I am even more worried about the left’s success in turning America into a police state (ironic, given its simultaneous war on the police).

People still able to summon their rational faculties during this pandemic have to be concerned about this insane, concerted effort to control people’s thoughts and speech. How can those who purport to rage against the fascism of former President Donald Trump, which was an abject Democratic and media myth, promote actual fascism in our culture?

It strains the mind to imagine that fair people can deceive themselves into believing that silencing and canceling people for “offensive” views is consistent with our liberty tradition. Some rationalize that because government is not the moving agency in this censorship, and because the Constitution only restricts state action, not that of private entities, there is no violation of our constitutional principles.

https://issuesinsights.com/2021/02/15/yet-another-big-lie-behind-bidens-1-9-trillion-covid-bill/

Last week, governors and mayors from around the country came to the White House with cups in hand for COVID aid and found a president eager to listen to their pleas of poverty.

“They’ve been working on their own in many cases,” President Joe Biden said, promising to come to the rescue with $350 billion in federal “relief” funds.

It was a good act.

But back home, states across the country are reporting huge surpluses, thanks not only to previous federal COVID handouts (which totaled more than $400 billion) but because tax revenues are surging as the economy rapidly rebounds.

As the City Journal reports, “Undoubtedly some states and cities have faced challenges, but nationwide, state and local governments have seen tax revenue rebound to pre-pandemic levels, even as they have continued to receive a large influx of federal funds.”

Don’t believe it? Look at this sampling from recent news accounts about states’ running budget surpluses, some of them at historic levels, many of them a surprise to local lawmakers.

https://www.nysun.com/editorials/impeachment-mcconnells-verdict/91420/

It is one of the ironies of the trial of President Trump on a charge of incitement of insurrection that the remarks most likely to be studied by historians is the speech delivered after the verdict — not guilty — was brought in. It was after the Senate ordered the outcome be sent for safekeeping with the Secretary of State, and the court of impeachment was adjourned, that Senator Mitch McConnell unloaded.

His speech is likely to go down as one of the most remarkable ever delivered in the Senate. It was a constitutional highwire act worthy of the Great Wallenda. And, not to put too fine a point on it, it might well prove to be more damning to Mr. Trump than anything said by the prosecution — more damning, even, than a guilty verdict from the Senate would have been, though that can be but guesswork.

Mr. McConnell had just finished voting to acquit a former president he has clearly come to detest. He evidently felt that he had to say something to justify, or explain, that decision. So he opened with a five-word sentence. “January 6th,” he said, “was a disgrace.” Americans “attacked their own government,” “used terrorism to try to stop a specific piece of domestic business they did not like,” and “beat and bloodied our own police.”

They also, Mr. McConnell said, “tried to hunt down the Speaker” and built a “gallows” while chatting “about murdering the Vice President.” They did this, he added, “because they’d been fed wild, falsehoods by the most powerful man on earth because he was angry. He lost an election. Former President Trump’s actions that preceded the riot were a disgraceful, disgraceful dereliction of duty.”

https://www.frontpagemag.com/point/2021/02/black-lives-matter-rioters-bite-cops-assault-72-daniel-greenfield/

It’s okay. Impeachment over that “insurrection” is over so it’s okay to start launching new insurrections.

Police arrested nearly a dozen anti-NYPD protesters and a member of the press was assaulted during a demonstration in Manhattan Friday night, according to the NYPD.

From the very neutral language, you know these weren’t conservatives. 

The demonstration was peaceful until an American flag was burned and protesters rushed at police officers, according to the NYPD.

It was mostly peaceful until the violence began.

The situation quickly dissolved into chaos as police vehicles were vandalized and a mob attacked a Daily News photographer, police said.

Lots of passive voice. Events happen for no apparent reason. The “situation” somehow becomes “chaotic”. It’s like this is a natural phenomenon with no connection to human behaviors. Imagine media coverage of the Capitol Riot describing how the “situation quickly dissolved into chaos as some protesters grappled into police while others wandered through Congress” as opposed to, “Mitt Romney was seconds from death at the hands of a mob determined to kill everyone.”

The Daily News identified the photographer as Sam Costanza, who said a group of 10 to 15 protesters attacked him. The photographer said he might have a broken nose, according to The Daily News.

That’s about as many members of the press as were injured at the Capitol Riot.

https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/trump-impeachment-trial-verdict-pelosi-schumer-jonathan-turley

There was a palpable sense of relief in Washington as the Trump impeachment trial came to a chaotic but final end. The verdict is in so now the vilification can begin.

Both Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., and Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., immediately weaponized the verdict and demonized those who voted to acquit. While the Democrats insisted that all senators should “vote their conscience,” that only meant if their conscience supported their side. Pelosi denounced opposing senators as cowards while Schumer lashed out at them for holding an opposing view of the evidence or the process.

While groups are targeting members on both sides, our leaders should be calling for unity and civility after the trial. Instead, they are fueling the politics of division.

CNN and other media followed suit. While Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., denounced former President Trump and said that he could still be held accountable for any crimes, CNN hosts Wolf Blitzer and Dana Bash immediately followed his speech by denouncing him as hypocritical.

There was nothing hypocritical in denouncing Trump’s conduct as “unconscionable” while also maintaining that the trial was unconstitutional. What Democratic members and commentators would not accept is that anyone could hold opposing views on these questions and not be a shill or coward.

https://amgreatness.com/2021/02/13/yes-acquittal-is-vindication/

A little before 4:00 p.m. on Saturday, the Senate voted to acquit Donald Trump in the long-running “Impeach Donald Trump!” show brought to you by leaky Democrats and their public-relations consortium, the corporate leftist media and Big Tech. The vote was 57 to 43, largely along party lines, wholly along ideological lines. That is, the seven Republicans who broke ranks and joined the Democrats to convict President Trump are Republicans in name only. You will want to remember who they are: 

Richard Burr from North Carolina
Bill Cassidy from Louisiana 
Susan Collins from Maine 
Lisa Murkowski from Alaska 
Mitt Romney from Utah 
Ben Sasse from Nebraska 
Pat Toomey from Pennsylvania

Some of these “Elevated Conservatives”™—Burr and Toomey, for example—have announced that they will not be running again. Here’s a prediction: none will be elected again, but that is a good thing.

Well, I think it is a good thing. But then I think that an acquittal is a vindication. I know that there are some intermittently conservative organs that disagree. They believe, or at least they say, that Trump’s acquittal does not mean he was vindicated. The proposition that Donald Trump is in the wrong is an analytic truth for them. Like the proposition “all bachelors are unmarried,” they regard it as a necessary truth. It is something inarguable. 

It is worth noting, however, that these are the same organs that couldn’t stop berating Trump—the most pro-life, pro-Israel, pro-prosperity, pro-middle class, and pro-American president in decades (maybe ever)—while he was president. And they are also the same organs that, come tomorrow, will be wringing their hands over Joe Biden’s pro-abortion, pro-China, pro-totalitarian attacks on American freedom and prosperity. They prefer whining to wielding power, I suspect, and actually seem to believe that an incompetent mannequin-like Mitt Romney is somehow more preferable as president than someone like Donald Trump. 

And poor Peggy Noonan must be really unhappy. The other day, she wrote one of her signature hand-wringing columns for the Wall Street Journal informing her readers that she did not see “how Republican senators could hear and fairly judge the accumulated evidence and vote to acquit the former president.” Those who would vote to acquit, she intoned, “are voting for a lie.” She wanted the “stiffest possible” penalties, including “banning Mr. Trump from future office.”

That touches on one of the two main reasons that the Democratic machine wheeled out their impeachment wheeze yet again. They are terrified of the voters—all those embryonic “domestic terrorists” Joe Biden’s Stasi is tracking—who, ignoring the wisdom of their betters, might actually get together and vote someone else like Donald Trump—if not the Bad Orange Man himself—into office again. That mustn’t happen. 

Convicting Trump was never in the cards, even given the wobbly, thumos-starved

https://pjmedia.com/columns/philip-carl-salzman/2021/02/13/american-privilege-n1425455

It is a cliché that “travel broadens,” presumably broadens the mind. It is one of the foundational assumptions of anthropology that cross-cultural research broadens our perspectives. International ethnographic research, studying people “on the ground” in their home communities, certainly provides a basis for understanding and appreciation, as well as comparison between and among different societies and cultures.

As a college student I studied for a year at the University of Edinburgh, Scotland, and traveled around Scotland, England, and Wales. As a professor of anthropology, supported by my university and taxpayer dollars, I had the opportunity to live and carry out research in parts of the world very different from North America. For several months each I lived and taught in universities in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, in Catania, Sicily, Italy, and in Sydney, Australia. For several months, I lived and carried out research on livestock breeders in Surat, Gujarat and Jodhpur, Rajasthan, India. I lived for more than two years in the desert of Iranian Baluchistan, studying the nomadic tribe that was my kind host, and for over two years in Sardinia, Italy, studying pastoralism and local culture in highland villages, one of which graciously hosted me and my family.

In my travels, I became aware of certain American privileges. One was the security provided by being a citizen of a powerful country, a country that was respected and/or feared. I was benefitting from the many millions who had built America, and the many who had successfully fought to defend her from enemies.