RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://amgreatness.com/2020/12/03/david-petraeus-perfect-avatar-for-americas-corrupt-ruling-class/

General David Petraeus, for many years (decades?) lauded as the greatest and most successful soldier of his generation, just insulted, in terms paradoxically both implicit and vicious, the men who made both his military renown and his post-military success and wealth possible.

“The most significant terrorist threat in the United States is not actually from Islamist extremists, it’s from right-wing terrorists in our own country,” he recently said to a gathering of elites.

This assertion, in a sense, is unremarkable given that it has become a common ruling-class talking point. It’s a lie, of course. Your own senses tell you so. When was the last time you even heard of a “right-wing” terror attack, much less one that actually inflicted mass casualties? 

Sure, the ruling class and its propaganda arm tell you that they happen all the time, but they’re lying. They don’t lie merely by predicting waves of rightist violence that never materialize—though they do predict that, often. 

Remember all those “warnings” of right-wing terror that would rock America in the event of a Trump loss? Allegedly violent Trump supporters have an even stronger case than mere loss to be angry, given the fishiness of the election and their belief that it was stolen. And yet none have so much as broken a window, much less committed any acts of terror. The one major demonstration in Washington, D.C. was entirely, not “mostly,” peaceful—that is, until leftist thugs showed up to beat on the marchers. Beatings which the same people who, naturally, never apologized for being wrong about imminent right-wing violence just as naturally never mentioned.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/12/declass-2020-lloyd-billingsley/

While Joe Biden holds forth from the newly created “Office of the President Elect,” Donald Trump remains president of the United States. The most powerful man in the world commands extensive powers of declassification, and President Trump has good reason to get busy, starting with the Central Intelligence Agency. An unclassified CIA report on the Hiss case provides helpful background.

After CIA director John Deutch resigned in 1996, President Clinton nominated his former national security advisor Anthony Lake for the post. On “Meet the Press,” Tim Russert asked Lake, “Do you believe Alger Hiss was a spy?” Lake said he had read a couple of books on the Hiss case but “I don’t think it’s conclusive.” In due course, Lake withdrew his nomination and his doubts on Hiss, who was a Communist spy, were a factor. That makes a strong case that anybody who voted for a candidate of the Communist Party USA, a wholly owned subsidiary of the Soviet Union, should not even get near the CIA door.

In 1976, the CPUSA candidate for president of the United States was the Stalinist Gus Hall, and John Brennan (pictured above) voted for him, choosing the Communist Hall over Democrat Jimmy Carter, Republican Gerald Ford, Libertarian Roger MacBride, independent Eugene McCarthy, prohibition Ben Bubar, and socialist Frank Zeidler. Four years later in 1980, Hall was again the Communist candidate and his running mate was Angela Davis, winner of the Lenin Peace Prize. That year Brennan got a job with the CIA, rose through the ranks, and in 2013 President Obama tapped Brennan to run the place. After leaving in 2017, Brennan moved to cable television and became a bullhorn for the Russia hoax.

President Trump should reveal the identity of the CIA officials who made the call to hire Brennan. The president should also declassify the bulk of Brennan’s communications, especially those made before President Trump suspended his security clearance, which no CIA boss should retain after leaving the agency. For example, in 1999, CIA director George Tenet suspended the security clearance of John Deutch for working with classified material on an unsecured computer at his home. President Trump might reveal what that was all about, then move on to the nation’s “medical CIA.”

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/12/woke-housewives-silicon-valley-daniel-greenfield/

When California store owners turned to voters to criminalize shoplifting again with Proposition 20, they never had much of a chance once Patricia Quillin threw in $2 million against them.

When Quillin paid $1 million to support Proposition 16, Asian-American opponents of the proposition, which would legalize racial discrimination against them in the form of affirmative action, protested outside her husband’s job. Her husband is the CEO of Netflix.

Netflix doesn’t have to worry about shoplifters and doesn’t care about the stores that do. Quillin and her husband, Reed Hastings, who are white, also don’t have to worry about college admissions. Quillin’s Meadow Fund has poured money into various forms of pro-crime advocacy and the Netflix CEO’s wife claims to be very engaged with “racial justice”.

Even though Quillin and her husband live in Santa Cruz, she poured $1.5 million into the campaign to elect George Gascon, a Soros backed pro-crime DA candidate in LA. That’s along with the $4.5 million spent on funding various destructive propositions that hurt Californians.

Patricia Quillin is part of a fundraising phenomenon: the Woke Housewives of Silicon Valley.

https://issuesinsights.com/2020/12/04/is-america-in-a-civil-disobedience-mood/

Governors, mayors, and county officials are again shutting down the activities and movements of an ostensibly free people, but this time the resistance looks like it will be more stubborn. No one is yet “up in arms.” But much of America has clearly had enough of the petty tyrants making rules for others.

Democratic Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti said Wednesday, with the iciness of a Versailles royal, that “it’s time to cancel everything.” Outdoor dining is now verboten in Los Angeles County, even though the restriction is “senseless.” (At least a clear-thinking judge has told the county that it must present scientific evidence that outdoor dining increases the risk of spreading the coronavirus if it’s to ban it.)

From her privileged and luxury bubble in Lansing, Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, another Democrat, is threatening to issue new stay-at-home instructions. California Gov. Gavin Newsom, the target of a recall effort, has delivered a similar warning. New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, whose pandemic response has arguably been the worst in the country if not the world, said he might again put out another statewide “pause” order. New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy, the third Democratic governor referenced in this paragraph, is saying that the malign presence (our words) of a shutdown “has to stay on the table.”

The Democratic governors of Oregon and New Mexico have also dropped heavy-handed restrictions on their states. And on it goes in the land that our grade school teachers told us was free.

But this time, unlike during the first lockdowns, which were to last for 15 days so we could flatten the curve of positive tests, many are not taking the undeserved punishment from their “betters” without a fight. Everyday Americans weary of being bullied from on high have been inspired by one-time Stanford University Medical Center neuroradiology chief and former White House coronavirus adviser Dr. Scott Atlas, who suggested Michiganders “rise up” – nonviolently – against Whitmer’s petty tyranny:

The owner of Eat At Joe’s in Redondo Beach, California, has been defying the Los Angeles County outdoor dining ban. “I’m not a person that easily wants to fight the system or anything,” Alex Jordan said. “I just, I hit my wall.”

https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/12/the-vaccine-storys-heroes-do-not-fit-the-liberal-narrative/

When it came to solving the crisis, progressive policies took a back seat to the institutions and forces that actually got the job done.

A ssuming that the COVID-19 vaccines work, their development will be the biggest, most high-profile public-health success story since the polio vaccine in the 1950s. A weary world has waited many trying months for this. Yet in the media’s coverage, there are a lot of mixed messages about how this happened — because the story is not one that fits comfortably with liberal narratives. Consider the big, splashy New York Times story by six reporters (Sharon LaFraniere, Katie Thomas, Noah Weiland, David Gelles, Sheryl Gay Stolberg, and Denise Grady) on the Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna vaccines, and the Stat story by Damian Garde and Jonathan Saltzman on the technology behind them. When you dig into the details, the heroes are largely (1) big American pharmaceutical corporations, (2) the Trump administration, and (3) the U.S. military. The lessons to be drawn support the conservative view of government, business, and their proper roles and relationships.

The tension is obvious early in the Times story, when it announces its intended theme: “In an era of polarized politics, science was able to break down barriers between government, countries and industry to produce one of the few pieces of good news in a year of suffering and division.” This is not supported by the facts. “Science” did not produce a vaccine, in the sense of a Jonas Salk figure having a “eureka!” moment in a laboratory some time in 2020. The Times does not bother introducing us to any of the individual researchers who actually developed the vaccine. Nor does it illustrate the breaking of barriers between countries, except by big business. The facts are more stubborn.

In fact, as the Stat story illustrates, the core concept of making messenger RNA (or mRNA) synthetically and using it to produce vaccines has been kicking around for three decades, and the crucial breakthrough came in 2005. While there were still some daunting scientific hurdles to overcome, the broader problem facing synthetic mRNA was its risky, experimental nature; only a change in the economics and available resources would make it economically viable to invest in scaling up a major trial of an mRNA-based vaccine to see if it would work.

www.swtotd.blogspot.com

Those who are hoping that a Biden Administration will rid of us the division and prejudice that have characterized the last four years, and return us to some halcyon period, are mistaken. Mainstream media will no longer be in attack mode nor will late-night television hosts, so the temperature may appear to abate. But the causes for the dysfunction we have felt do not lie with Mr. Trump but are a consequence of attempts to alter the culture that has made us a success.
The word culture stems from the Latin “colere,” to cultivate, nurture and grow. It encompasses many aspects of our lives, like music, art and literature, as well as ethnicities, religion and race. But when I write of culture, I refer to family, traditions like church and patriotism, and qualities like honor, manners, respect, humility, tolerance – universal values, acquired over time and required for civil behavior. They are expressed in axioms like the Golden Rule, the Ten Commandments and turning the other cheek.

The United States has faults, but its good qualities outshine its bad. As a nation of courageous and independent individuals, we are unafraid to speak of past and present evils, like slavery and bigotry. We should, as well, be as quick to acknowledge our accomplishments: A Constitutional government “of the people, by the people, for the people,” comprised of laws, not men; our system of free-market capitalism, which has done more to eradicate poverty than any system of state redistribution; educational opportunities not available to most of the world – two thirds of Americans between the ages of 18 and 22 are in college. To believe that race is systemic is to be seduced by accusations of white guilt and to disbelieve facts; a Pew Research survey found that 91% of Americans either shrug off or applaud interracial marriage. We are the most desired nation for migrants, with 21% naming the U.S., in a study done by the World Economic Forum in 2017. (Germany was second with six percent.)

As a nation, we are blessed with natural resources and favorable climate, but they alone do not account for our success. The crucible has been a culture that valued aspiration, risk-taking, hard work and self-reliance. It was a culture, based on a Judeo-Christian heritage, enmeshed in the traditional family and traditional values. Our universities were designed to allow the intellectually gifted to expand their minds, explore and debate ideas, to learn the “hows” and “whys” of thinking, not what to think. Students were challenged, not coddled. The concept of “safe places,” or the idea that the classroom was a place to claim victimhood and air grievances were alien to those who saw their role as imparting knowledge, to form better citizens, to help the Country grow and prosper.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/adamandrzejewski/2020/12/03/why-america-is-in-trou

Since 2004, twenty large federal agencies have admitted to disbursing an astonishing $2.25 trillion in improper payments.

Last year, these improper payments totaled $175 billion – that’s about $15 billion per month, $500 million per day, and $1 million a minute.

But what exactly is an improper payment?

Federal law defines the term as “payments made by the government to the wrong person, in the wrong amount, or for the wrong reason.”

When people or companies receive incorrect payments, it erodes trust and hinders the government’s ability to finance everything from defense to health care.

Recently, our auditors at OpenTheBooks.com published a 24-page oversight report analyzing why, how, and where federal agencies wasted our tax dollars last year.

Here are the top 10 takeaways regarding improper and mistaken payments by the 20 largest federal agencies in 2019:

1. Total Mistakes: $175 billion in estimated improper payments reported by the 20 largest federal agencies, averaging $14.6 billion per month – Total (FY2004-FY2019): $2.25 trillion

https://issuesinsights.com/2020/12/03/shocking-disparities-in-covid-19-attitudes-and-behaviors/

It should be obvious by now that the adoption of measures to prevent the spread of coronavirus SARS-CoV-2, which causes COVID-19, has become politicized. Consider the presidential campaigns: President Donald Trump held large indoor rallies with mostly mask-less supporters, while President-elect Joe Biden seemed to have a mask sutured to his face and spent much of the campaign in isolation.

Gallup surveys published in November show that partisanship remains the most significant driver of the public’s perceptions of the COVID-19 pandemic and its behaviors in response to it. A majority of Republicans think the best thing for healthy people is to live their lives normally, while most Democrats and independents think sheltering at home is advisable to avoid contracting or spreading the virus. Similarly, Republicans are the most likely to say their lives have somewhat (59%) or completely (8%) gotten back to what they were before COVID-19.

This disparity is unfortunate, because it has never been truer that “we’re all in this together,” or more obvious that we need to rev up our efforts to minimize the probability of spreading COVID-19 infections, if we are “to return to normal activities.” A key metric, the percentage of positive tests for the virus, is currently unacceptably high – the seven-day average is currently over 9%, while the target is to keep it under 3%. 

A high percentage of positive tests means there is significant community spread of the virus, which makes effective testing, tracing, and isolation difficult, if not impossible. Moreover, the seven-day average of daily new cases has been increasing sharply over the past six weeks, and is currently approximately 160,000 per day (see figure below). These are ominous signs as we approach the winter months, with people often congregating indoors in poorly ventilated spaces.