RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/11/uncertainty-new-normal-katie-hopkins/

One thing we all like in life, whether we admit it or not, is some degree of certainty.

Many like to be super-certain. Every little detail needs to be known, planned and re-confirmed in order for them to feel in control enough to get going.

For others, routines and norms create a kind of easy, everyday certainty that allows them to keep a handle on the muddles of life and get useful things done. It is easier to concentrate on work knowing the washing machine is empty or the parking meter is paid.

For a small minority, a passport, small bag, credit card and toothbrush are all that’s needed to feel certain they have everything they could possibly need. I put myself in this last category— although I’d add Tylenol to the packing list because pain is a secret thief of time and patience.

Whatever our own appetite for certainty, it is based on some notion of consistency in our wider lives. Whatever goes on inside our heads or our hearts or indeed our homes, we kind of expect the stuff outside our front door to trundle along in the same predictable way as it has done for years.

It is reassuring in some ways that winter will turn to spring, traffic will always be hideous on Friday, your mother will always feel left out of something and solicitors will overcharge for everything. Or, as my father enjoys reminding the family at celebratory moments, “the only certainties in life are death and taxes.” (I wonder if he realizes how old he is.)

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/11/jewish-roots-thanksgiving-ingratitude-and-anarchy-don-feder/

“The left should be barred from celebrating Thanksgiving. Their bible is a manifesto. Their God is revolution. Their turkey has been declared the president-elect.”

When we form a mental image of the Pilgrims at this time of the year, it’s usually sitting at a table laden with food (even though they starved their first year on New England’s rocky coast) or walking to church in the snow, a Bible in one hand and a blunderbuss in the other.

A picture of the Pilgrim fathers lighting menorahs and spinning dreidels does not come readily to mind.

And yet, Thanksgiving has Jewish origins. Its roots are Biblical. Philosophically, it expresses the essence of Judaism.

The first Thanksgiving took place not at Plymouth in the 17th century but in the land of Israel more than 3,000 years ago.

 In Deuteronomy (26:1-4) Moses tells the Children of Israel: “When you have entered the land the Lord your God is giving you as an inheritance and have taken possession of the land and settled in it, take some of the first fruits  of all that you produce from the soil of the land” to “the place the Lord your God will choose” and give them to the priest who will place them on the altar. This is called an offering of thanksgiving.

Who were the Pilgrims thanking? Not King James (they were fleeing his persecution) or the captain of the ship that brought them to Cape Cod, but the God who led them to that “good and spacious land.”

The Pilgrims strongly identified with their predecessors.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/11/time-give-thanks-bruce-bawer/

Dare I suggest that many of us aren’t feeling terribly inclined to be thankful this year? The months of lockdown have sapped our spirits and then some, taking a psychological toll of a kind that has yet to be fully appreciated, let alone properly diagnosed. The utterly insane Antifa and BLM riots – plus the spineless public officials who refused to quell them, and the disgraceful journalists who called them “mostly peaceful” – made many of us ask, in genuine bafflement and alarm: what on Earth has happened to America? And the possibility that rampant electoral fraud will deny the best president of our lifetimes a second term has caused widespread bitterness – not to mention astonishment and disillusion at the thought that so many American election officials could be capable of such Third World-level corruption.

There are other reasons for dismay. During the Trump years, we’ve learned that almost everyone in our national news media is simply not to be trusted. We’ve learned that Barack Obama, in an audacious act of treason that had the support of Biden, Hillary, and others, actively sought to unseat his successor. The idea that these traitors will probably get off not only scot-free but bathed in enduring adulation is grounds for a major funk.

Add to all this the prospect of a Biden-Harris administration, with everything that that signifies – including the re-empowerment of China, the reversal of Trump’s economic triumphs, a return to a Palestinian-centered Middle Eastern policy, an end to responsible border controls, and the acceleration of poisonous left-wing cultural developments at home – and it’s far from a formula for good cheer.

As 2020 approaches its close, in short, there’s plenty of cause for concern about the direction America will take in 2021 and afterwards.

All the more reason, then, to turn away from the news, at least for a day, and embrace Thanksgiving. Bah and humbug to the autocratic governors and mayors who are ordering us not to gather together. The hell with those social-justice warriors for whom Thanksgiving is nothing other than an opportunity to accuse America of racism and genocide.

https://thepostmillennial.com/jim-mattis-rejects-america-first/

Among the many things that General Jim Mattis would like to see done differently under Biden administration, a transition away from a United States international policy of America First makes the top of his list.

Former Secretary of Defense and Four-Star General Mattis wrote an op-ed in Foreign Affairs on Monday, explaining why the United States should prioritize stronger relations with its allies instead of putting its interests above those of the international community.Mattis’ contention is that, as powerful as the United States might be militarily, its interests are best served when it can count on a group of reliable allies to further its goals instead of a threat of force. 

Over the past four years, Mattis believes that an “America First” mentality has hindered the investment necessary to create that kind of international network and has left the United States disconnected.

Rep. Paul Gosar (R-Ariz.) noted that it will be hard to push through this agenda reversal when there are more than 70 million Americans who support America First.

Under the Trump administration, the United States has pulled back from NATO, demanding that Euopean nations not leave the US to foot the bill for their protection. The Trump administration pulled funding from the World Health Organization over its poor handling of informing the global community about the pandemic. The US also withdrew from the Asia-Pacific trade pact. These are actions Mattis sees as characteristic of a US-first international policy.

“Continued failure to adequately invest in relationships with allies and partners and to cooperate with them to shape the international environment risks the erosion of this network… Even worse, it could result in the emergence of other, competing networks, presaging an international order from which the United States is excluded, unable to influence outcomes because it is simply not present,” Mattis said.

Mattis’ proposal for a Biden administration would be a significant departure from the last four years—one that many, like Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.), vehemently disagree with. He stated his support of an international foreign policy that emphasizes US interests abroad.

https://www.aier.org/article/the-blizzard-of-bogus-journalism-on-covid/

This game of hunt-and-kill Covid cases has reached peak absurdity, especially in media culture. 

Take a look at Supermarkets are the most common place to catch Covid, new data reveals. It’s a story on a “study” assembled by Public Health England (PHE) from the NHS Test and Trace App. Here is the conclusion. In the six days of November studied, “of those who tested positive, it was found that 18.3 per cent had visited a supermarket.”

Now, if the alarm bells don’t go off with that one, you didn’t pay attention to 7th grade science. If the app had also included showering, eating, and breathing, it might have found a 100% correlation. Yes, the people who tested positive probably did shop, as do most people. That doesn’t mean that shopping gives you Covid and it certainly doesn’t mean that shopping kills you. 

Even if shopping is a way to get Covid, this is a very widespread and mostly mild virus for 99.8% percent of the population with an infection fatality rate as low as 0.05% for those under 70. Competent infectious disease experts have said multiple times that test, track, and isolate strategies are nearly useless for controlling viruses such as this. 

https://www.aier.org/article/death-by-lockdown/

On March 28 – very early in the pandemic – AIER published an article that I felt at the time received far too little attention. “Drugs, Suicide, and Crime: Empirical Estimates of the Human Toll of the Shutdown” by economists Audrey and Thomas Duncan cited empirical literature on the human toll of economic devastation. 

This article forecasted more than 100,000 excess deaths due to drug overdoses, suicide, alcoholism, homicide, and untreated depression – all a result not of the virus but of policies of mandatory human separation, economic downturn, business and school closures, closed medical services, and general depression that comes with a loss of freedom and choice. 

These two economists demonstrated that as bad as a virus is, policies that wreck normal social functioning will cause massive and completely unnecessary suffering and death. Because the article was so well-cited, with references to all the available literature, I thought it would make a difference. But after it appeared, it was crickets. I was amazed. Here you have a beautiful piece of research that perfectly forecasted the nightmare being created by politicians and their advisers and it made no dent in the national narrative. 

Here we are seven months later and the worst has come true. These two economists should be considered prophets. Sure enough, the Centers for Disease Control has documented a shocking number of excess deaths not from Covid. 

Scott Atlas summarizes:

Hispanic: 40% excess deaths NOT Covid related 
Black: 46% NOT Covid related 
White: 38% NOT Covid related 
25-44: 77% excess deaths NOT Covid related 
65+: 39% NOT Covid related

https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/11/operation-warp-speed-and-the-creative-society/

Its success is a reminder that there is no limit to American ingenuity when government stands alongside the people rather than in front of them.

R ecently the New York Times published an in-depth report on the success of the public-private partnership to develop a coronavirus vaccine. The program, dubbed Operation Warp Speed, devoted the resources of the U.S. government to aid private companies in the design, testing, and distribution of an effective vaccination for COVID-19. The deadline: one year after the virus’s appearance in Wuhan, China.

And it worked. If the FDA grants emergency use authorization to Pfizer in a few weeks, as is widely expected, the first shots will be administered to frontline health-care workers before New Year’s. The end of the pandemic is in sight.

Pfizer stayed somewhat aloof from Operation Warp Speed. After reporting results from its vaccine trials, a company spokesperson was quick to point out that Pfizer did not receive funding from the program. But it did call on the government a couple of times, and it agreed to sell 100 million doses of its vaccine to the United States long before clinical trials were complete. Moderna, by contrast, worked closely with the feds. “Nearly $2.5 billion in federal funds helped Moderna buy raw materials, expand its factory, and enlarge its work force by 50 percent,” according to the Times. “In return, it promised to deliver 100 million doses to the federal government.”