RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://issuesinsights.com/2020/12/23/trump-should-veto-the-2-3-tril-5593-page-covid-19-stimulus-2020s-biggest-fraud-of-all/

Passage of the enormous COVID-19 “stimulus” bill is being hailed as a landmark effort to help average Americans heal from the economic ravages of the Chinese virus. It is nothing of the sort. Passed in the dead of night, it’s a pork-filled nightmare that will lead to more debt, bigger government and a dimmer future for all Americans.

The redoubtable Stephen Green did the basic math. Based on a U.S. population of roughly 330 million, the $900 billion stimulus amounts to $2,727 in spending per person.

OK, but how much of that goes into people’s pockets? A pittance: $600.

Yet, Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi committed the unforgivable sin of holding up those $600 checks for struggling American families in order to hurt President Donald Trump’s reelection chances. This is politics at its most cynical and is a prime example why average Americans today hold politicians in such low esteem.

All told, the bill for this sprawling legislation comes to $2.3 trillion — yes, that’s trillion with a “t”. Add that into Green’s earlier calculation, and the amount spent per household grows to $6,969.

Sure, but all that is going to COVID-19 relief for individuals and small businesses, right? No, not even close – $1.4 trillion from the Consolidated Appropriations Act is dedicated to the federal government’s fiscal 2021 budget.

It was all cobbled together in the last hours of closed-doornegotiations, focused on getting massive servings of pork spending and new, useless government programs added, not on COVID-19 relief. That was just the selling point to all us rubes.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/12/target-america/

China is anxious for Trump to leave — so it can return to a global status quo tolerating its myriad abuses that harm the U.S.

C hina sounds giddy at the ending of the Trump presidency. Before COVID-19, it was locked in a likely lose/lose trade war with the U.S. The American corporate world was finally starting to complain that its once easy profits in joint-ventures were now being gobbled up by an increasingly voracious China.

The Left, for all its hatred of Trump, nonetheless after 2017 grew more vocal over the Chinese gulags, the Tibetization of Hong Kong, and Beijing’s Orwellian internal police state. Too many Chinese spies had popped up at the pinnacles of American power, whether erstwhile chairwoman of the Senate Intelligence Committee Senator Dianne Feinstein’s chauffer, or, as we now learn, House Intelligence Committee member Representative Eric Swalwell’s something-or-other frequent associate, or among the Biden, Inc. clique.

With Trump the disrupter apparently gone for now, China is anxious to return to the prior global status quo — and its exemptions for systematic patent and copyright theft, dumping, currency manipulation, huge trade surpluses, and coerced technology appropriation.

Or as one prominent Chinese academic, Di Dongsheng, recently conveyed his post-election confidence in the Biden first family and the return of the American establishment to power:

I’m going to throw out something maybe a little bit explosive here. It’s just because we have people at the top. We have our old friends who are at the top of America’s core inner circle of power and influence.

https://www.manhattancontrarian.com/blog/2020-12-21-christmas-present-our-political-leaders-are-killing-off-new-york-city

It’s the week before Christmas, traditionally the best week of the year to be in New York City. This is the week when tourists by the thousands flock to town, hundreds of restaurants are full and festive, the theater does peak business, the symphony and opera and ballet put on their most popular shows, concert venues are fully booked, hotel rooms are impossible to find, stores are packed, and beautiful Christmas lights are everywhere.

Not this year. Don’t even think about coming here right now. Almost all of the best things are closed, by order of our political masters. The term “ghost town” is a fair description. Here’s a small roundup:

Restaurants. After a few months of graciously allowing restaurants to have outdoor dining plus indoor at 25% capacity, last week — just as fall was about to turn into full winter — Governor Cuomo ordered all restaurants in New York City completely closed for indoor dining until further notice. That’s right, all indoor dining at restaurants is closed in New York City. Outdoor? This is December! For most of the last week, the temperature has been well below 32F (0C); today it finally got back to a little above 40F (5C). In my neighborhood, normally the best restaurant area of the City, nearly all of the restaurants have given up. A handful have built elaborate “outdoor” structures where a few hardy patrons in parkas huddle beneath highly inadequate heat lamps. The evidence that indoor dining at restaurants is a significant source of spread of the coronavirus is non-existent.

Broadway theater. All of it is completely closed. Through May 2021!

Symphony, opera, ballet, Lincoln Center. Closed, closed and more closed. Lincoln Center is bravely talking about restarting shows some time in “Spring 2021,” but they don’t give any specific date. Carnegie Hall’s most recent proposed reopening date is April 5, 2021. Watch for that to get pushed back again, and then yet again.

Rockefeller Center Christmas Tree. Yes, it is there. You can even go to see it in person — provided that you are willing to put up with advance registration, a scheduled time, mask-wearing, social distancing, a five-minute time limit for viewing, etc., etc., etc. Or you can just watch their virtual live cam, safely from your home in Peoria — which is what they strongly recommend. After all, you wouldn’t want to get too near an actual live human being this year.

http://www.swtotd.blogspot.com

Ambrose Bierce was a Civil War veteran, newspaperman, wit and satirist, not well known today, but appreciated in his time for his sardonic humor. Now in this age of political correctness, “cancelled” history, “hurtful” words and “safe” places, levity, when exercised by the Right, is disallowed. Nevertheless, Bierce’s definition of “Idiot” reminds me of administrators and faculty that populate our universities, members of the press who forsake reporting for advocating, and Washington’s politicians and bureaucrats.

A last Saturday Wall Street Journal article, “Why Are Americans So Distrustful of Each Other” by Kevin Vallier, was sobering. In 1968, 56% of Americans “believed most people can be trusted.” In 2018, “after a half century of increasing [political] partisan division, only 31% did.” Perhaps not surprising, the level of social trust is lowest among young people – not a good sign for our future. Professor Vallier, who teaches philosophy at Bowling Green State University, wrote that social scientists have found three factors behind a country’s level of social trust: corruption, ethnic segregation and economic inequality. But none explain fully the decline in social trust in the United States today. He added: “Some social scientists are convinced that polarization increases political distrust, and it may play a role in increasing social distrust as well.”

In my opinion, there is truth in that statement. My conservative views, in “Blue State” Connecticut make me hesitant to offer opinions when in a social setting. In the same edition of the Wall Street Journal, Peggy Noonan wrote of the divide that separates elites from owners of small businesses, like restaurants and bars: “The professional class of politicians, media people, scientists and credentialed chatterers care about business in the abstract…But they have no particular heart for them.” For Democrats, this is particularly true. In their bar-bell approach to the electorate – wealthy, global, coastal elites on the one hand, and so-called “victims” of oppression on the other – they have no room for middle class Americans, who love their country and who value their families, religions and the virtue of success through hard work.

This classic was actually filmed in Hollywood- not Morocco.
Everybody Comes to Rick’s is an American play that was bought  but unproduced by Warner Brothers.
It was adapted for film as Casablanca (1942), starring Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman. Written by Murray Burnett and Joan Alison in 1940, prior to the United States’ entry into World War II, the play was anti-Nazi and pro-French Resistance. The film became an American classic, highly successful and ranked by many as the greatest film ever made. 
 
Casablanca was directed by Michael Curtiz, and starring Humphrey Bogart, Ingrid Bergman, and Paul Henreid.
 
Screenplay by: Julius J. Epstein; Philip G. Epst…
Produced by: Hal B. Wallis

 
Music “As Time Goes By” – Music and lyrics BY Herman Hupfeld in 1931

https://www.city-journal.org/diversity-equality-of-opportunity

NASDAQ recently proposed new diversity requirements for the corporate boards of companies listed on the exchange. “Successful companies must cultivate diversity to fuel innovation and to thrive in today’s era of ongoing environmental, social and economic change,” said TechNet president and CEO Linda Moore in support of the proposal. The NASDAQ proposal arbitrarily determines that a minimum of two directors must be female, minority, or LGBT. The criteria are not linked in any meaningful way to the demographic profile of society; they merely reflect the do-gooder biases of NASDAQ executives and influencers.

The proposal, does, however, raise interesting questions about the broader implications of diversity. Whether diversity is valuable to a business—or for that matter, to a student body, university faculty, or knitting circle—depends greatly on the circumstances. Diversity may indeed serve a socially beneficial purpose by elevating underrepresented identity groups, or it may be just good PR, but other personal characteristics—intelligence, experience, qualifications—are usually more relevant to a job. At school, diversity can have educational value by exposing students and teachers to people from a wide variety of backgrounds. In government, diversity addresses concerns, judicious or not, about “fair” representation. The point is that the context matters.

Equality of opportunity could achieve most diversity goals, if the pools of candidates representing various identity groups had comparable qualifications. They seldom do, however, which has led to many forms of affirmative action. Such programs are typically zero-sum because they involve allocating a scarce resource, and in practice they typically end up as exercises in political power and greasing the squeakiest wheels.

https://townhall.com/tipsheet/katiepavlich/2020/12/21/tulsi-gabbard-rips-cdc-for-absurd-vaccine-prioritization-strategy-n2581909

Democratic Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard is ripping Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) officials for prioritizing the Wuhan coronavirus vaccine for 100 million “essential workers” ahead of elderly populations.

“Heartless, arrogant, unelected CDC bureaucrats have decided that the lives of elderly Americans just don’t count. For months the CDC has been telling us that the elderly are the most vulnerable,” she said in a post on Twitter. “But now, they are recommending a 100 million so-called ‘essential workers,’ which means healthy people working at everything from liquor stores to telephone companies, that they can get the vaccine before our grandparents can. That members of Congress like me can get the vaccine before at risk seniors can. People like my aunt, who is imprisoned in her own home because of the danger that if she catches the disease, she could die.”

“This is immoral and bad health policy,” Gabbard continued.

The CDC’s own data and presentations about vaccine prioritization show elderly populations are the most at risk for death. Yet, “experts” are rejecting that science because “racial and ethnic minority groups are underrepresented.”

https://www.openthebooks.com/improper-payments-analyzing-23-trillion-mistakenly

“Six million Social Security numbers are active for people aged 112 ; however, only 40 people in the world are known to be older than 112 years of age.”

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): $2.3 trillion.

2. WORST PROGRAMS

Billion-dollar Boondoggles: $121 billion (approximately 69 percent) in improper payments occurred within three program areas – Medicaid, Medicare, and Earned Income Tax Credit.

3. CLAW BACK

Recapture totaled $21.1 billion of the $175 billion improper payments during 2019 — roughly 14 cents on every dollar misspent. Five-year total: $103.6 billion recaptured/ $747.7 billion improperly spent.

4. TOP 10 WORST AGENCIES