RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2020/11/does_anyone_care_about_the_truth_anymore.html

Ferreting out political and historical truth from the welter of partisan voices and official disinformation, so far as this is possible, is no easy task. Not many of us are capable or desirous of doing so. This is perhaps the major debit in a prosperous democratic polity, many of whose citizens, like pampered children, have grown spoiled and lazy.

Common sense is needed, along with moral fortitude and the willingness to dig for documentary sources and artifacts that are not easily falsified. One cannot allow the media to do one’s homework for one but must instead subject what one is told to believe to hard scrutiny and diligent research. This process is not only an epistemic necessity but also a moral demand. As C2C editor Patrick Keeney writes, “we can only arrive at what we ought to do by appeals to moral reasoning.” We might say that thoughtfulness is an aspect of moral character.

In the political world especially, one must be skeptical of the left and its popular sobriquet, socialism. For socialism is all about radical egalitarianism, the expansion of welfare dependency, the destruction of the nuclear family and the establishment of single-party rule. The study of history and the current geopolitical theater is dispositive in this regard.

Opponents of the Left are regularly denounced as belonging to the “far right.” But what is called the “far right” in the current political environment is a will o’ the wisp, a false construct serving the interests of the demagogic impulse associated with the left, for there is no temporizing with the left’s totalitarian basis no matter how moderate it may appear in some of its presumably acceptable forms.

https://issuesinsights.com/2020/11/10/sacrifices-to-secure-liberty/

On Veterans Day, we honor those who have risked their lives in military service for America. Such commemorations of the valor of servicemen and women are not unique to us. But the vision that Americans have fought for sets Nov. 11 apart. From revolutionary times, our military forces have fought to defend something unprecedented – “a new nation conceived in liberty.”

A good way to honor those who have served to protect America’s unique vision is to remember Patrick Henry, because America’s “Orator of Liberty” reminds us of the cause that justifies what our veterans have sacrificed for.

Henry’s 1775 “Give Me Liberty or Give Me Death” speech sparked the revolution in Virginia. “The Voice of the Revolution” was the first person to condemn England for taxation without representation. He led the attack against the Stamp Act in 1765, and in every subsequent protest against British tyranny and every movement for colonists’ rights. He helped draft the Virginia Constitution and the May 1776 declaration favoring independence. He led in campaigning for a bill of rights. He was instrumental in bringing to life the ideal that became America, which our armed forces have fought to defend ever since.

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/sasse-beyond-disgusting-that-cuomo-thinks-its-bad-news-vaccine-may-come-out-under-trump/

Senator Ben Sasse (R., Neb.) on Monday issued a harsh rebuke of New York Governor Andrew Cuomo’s comments that it is “bad news” that a coronavirus vaccine may come out while President Trump is still in office. 

“What on earth is Governor Cuomo talking about?” Sasse said in a statement. “This is great news and everyone — Republicans and Democrats and apolitical folks – should all be jointly thrilled about the possibility of an effective vaccine.”

He continued: “After this nasty virus has killed hundreds of thousands of Americans and put millions out of work, it is beyond disgusting that Governor Cuomo would use a glimmer of hope for another worn-out ‘Trump is bad’ talking point. When we get a vaccine, we’re going to need all hands on deck distributing it as fast as possible — shamelessly politicizing this is dangerous and stupid.”

Earlier on Monday, Pfizer and BioNTech announced that their vaccine was 90 percent effective according to preliminary data, and that they could request emergency approval from the Food and Drug Administration by the end of November. Cuomo used the news as an opportunity to take a shot at the Trump administration.

“The good news is the Pfizer tests look good and we’ll have a vaccine shortly. The bad news is that it’s about two months before Joe Biden takes over and that means this administration is going to be implementing a vaccine plan,” Cuomo told ABC’s George Stephanopoulos on Good Morning America. “The Trump Administration is rolling out the vaccination plan and I believe it’s flawed. I believe it learns nothing from the past.”

“They’re going to take this vaccine and they’re going to go through the private mechanism,” he added. “Through hospitals, through drug market chains, et cetera. That’s going to be slow and that’s going to bypass the communities that we call health care deserts,” Cuomo said. “If you don’t have a Rite Aid or a CVS then you’re in trouble and that’s what happened the first time with COVID.”

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-jobs-keep-coming-11604706131?mod=opinion_lead_pos2

Friday’s labor report showing that employers added 906,000 private jobs in October again beat forecasts. The economy’s resilience is befuddling the pessimists, much as Tuesday’s election results confounded media pollsters.

The jobless rate fell to 6.9% last month from 7.9% in September even as labor force participation ticked up 0.3 percentage points to 61.7%. Total employment rose 638,000 despite a 268,000 decline in government jobs—mostly education and temporary Census. No surprise, schools on remote learning need fewer workers.

Private job growth was broad-based and especially strong in leisure and hospitality (271,000), retail (104,000), construction (84,000), health care and social assistance (79,000) and transportation and warehousing (63,200). As state restrictions have eased, businesses have continued to increase hiring. Grocery and home-improvement stores employ more than they did a year ago.

Keynesians at the Federal Reserve and on Wall Street have continued to predict the economy would fall off a demand cliff without trillions in new government spending. But their forecasts keep missing. The Fed June jobless rate prediction for the end of the year was 9.3%, which it cut to 7.6% in September, but the rate is already 6.9%. Too many people are still out of work, but progress has been remarkable since the government-induced recession. The economy will continue to grow as long as the U.S. avoids policy mistakes, including another lockdown.

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/u-labor-market-extends-gains-134130082.html

The U.S. labor market strengthened in October, defying expectations for more subdued gains amid an intensifying pandemic and lack of additional fiscal relief.

Nonfarm payrolls increased by 638,000 after an upwardly revised 672,000 gain the prior month, according to a Labor Department report Friday. That compared with the 580,000 median estimate of economists surveyed by Bloomberg, and reflected a decline of 147,000 in temporary Census workers.

The unemployment rate fell by 1 percentage point to 6.9% — a bigger drop than economists projected and double the prior month’s decline — though the number of long-term jobless Americans surged and now makes up a third of those out of work.

Progress in the U.S. labor market is holding up as household savings help fuel spending and business investment rebounds, putting the economy in better shape than many analysts expected just six months ago. The improvement, though, may have come too late to help President Donald Trump, who’s on the verge of losing to Democrat Joe Biden in this week’s election.

https://www.cnbc.com/2020/11/06/jobs-report-october-2020.html

Nonfarm payrolls increased by 638,000 in October and the unemployment rate fell to 6.9%.
Economists surveyed by Dow Jones had forecast 530,000 and 7.7%, respectively.
Hospitality and professional and business services showed the biggest gains. Government job losses subtracted from the total.

https://www.nationalreview.com/magazine/2020/11/16/white-supremacy-in-a-magic-lantern/?utm_source=

An outsider’s perspective on America’s racial discontent

For several years I have marveled at, and become worried by, the depiction of America that has been playing around the world. Despite being a lifelong admirer of this country, I’ve not been in America for a couple of years, and during that time even I have occasionally wondered whether my image of America might have been wrong all along. Might the country have been — or become — what its detractors both internal and external say it is? Now I have had a month traveling around the United States, and I feel as though I may have come to a better understanding of a problem that afflicts this country. Perhaps an outsider might share a modest insight?

The problem first clarified during a conversation in New York with several people, two of whom happened to be comedians. Looking forward to shooting the breeze, I found myself instead marveling at the forensic detail in which everyone was going over the death of Breonna Taylor. Why were we talking about this so furiously? Why were comedians discussing ballistics reports? Why did everybody — whatever his viewpoint — need to have this much knowledge? And the obvious truth dawned on me that in this era every single detail of every single wrongdoing or alleged wrongdoing on the part of America matters, because the focus of light on America today operates in the manner of a magic-lantern projector. The light shining on this country today is so great that it does not just illuminate — it magnifies. Shift the tiniest detail in the picture and the image projected is monstrously altered.

Over recent years I have watched a very particular image of America projected onto the wall of the world and worried about it as much as any other friend of America. For it is an image of a society riven by many conflicts, just one of which (but worst of all) is the racism problem from which America is said to suffer. It is hard to exaggerate how starkly this is perceived by the rest of the world. While Americans argue over and eventually litigate every police interaction gone wrong, the rest of the world sees only one vast blown-up version of the problem.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/16708/shame-on-the-girl-scouts-thin-skin-instead

The Tweet was anything but partisan or political. It was a girl’s organization dedicated to educating young women about their unlimited possibilities in life. The Tweet itself was innocuous. Here is what it said: “Congratulations Amy Coney Barrett on becoming the 5th woman appointed to the Supreme Court since its inception in 1789.”

When the Girl Scouts can’t even congratulate a woman for helping to break a longstanding glass ceiling, we know that we are in trouble.

The reason I am so angry at the Girl Scouts’ decision to withdraw their original Tweet is that it is a reflection of the divisive nature of our nation and the growing intolerance, particularly by the hard left, of dissenting speech that is seen as supporting the other side.

I don’t know why I am so mad at the Girl Scouts for having withdrawn their Tweet congratulating Justice Amy Coney Barrett for being the fifth woman nominated to the Supreme Court in its long history. The Tweet was anything but partisan or political. It was a girl’s organization dedicated to educating young women about their unlimited possibilities in life. The Tweet itself was innocuous. Here is what it said: “”Congratulations Amy Coney Barrett on becoming the 5th woman appointed to the Supreme Court since its inception in 1789.”

It was accompanied by a collage of photographs of the five women who have served on the high court – three of them liberals and two conservatives. But when a few angry leftists led by Cambridge U.S. Rep. Ayanna Pressley and actor Amber Tamblyn complained, the Girl scouts quickly removed the Tweet and apologized for doing something that could be “viewed as a political and a partisan statement.”

Megyn Kelly responded quite appropriately to that absurd claim saying:

“This is pathetic. It’s not ‘partisan’ to generically congratulate the 5th woman ever to join the High Court. It’s patriotic. Taking your tweet down is partisan, however, and a real disappointment.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/16716/autocratic-future-united-states

If institutions of democracy — the state, the judiciary, opposition parties and the free press — suppress verifiable information instead of informing the public about it — as has just taken place for more than two weeks regarding alleged financial corruption and the possible resultant compromise — by China, Russia, and Ukraine among other countries — of an allegedly financially compromised family as possible a national security threat — these institutions of democracy instead become vehicles to sabotage a democracy.

A danger to American democracy in the past years — with threats to undo the Constitution by, for example, abolishing the electoral college, banning guns and, in 2014, eliminating free speech — has therefore become imminent.

There has been talk about killing the filibuster, to pass just about anything with a simple majority, and talk about enlarging the Senate by adding more states, presumably to enable one side to hold a permanent majority. Also on the agenda has been adding more members to the Supreme Court to turn it into a branch of legislative government, eliminating America’s historic system of checks and balances. There are also plans to raise taxes on everyone (remember, “You can keep your healthcare”?), abolish fossil fuels and fracking, and establish a Marxist-socialist economy of redistribution to replace a free economy.

There seems to have been an attempt for the last four years to instill among the population a hatred of America and of the president, to present them both as a criminal and to try to overthrow them. In any event, it is the first time in American history that there has been an attempted coup d’état against a duly elected president.

If institutions of democracy — the state, the judiciary, opposition parties and the free press — suppress verifiable information instead of informing the public about it — as has just taken place for more than two weeks regarding alleged financial corruption and the possible resultant compromise — by China, Russia, and Ukraine among other countries — of an allegedly financially compromised family as possible a national security threat — these institutions of democracy instead become vehicles to sabotage a democracy.

https://amgreatness.com/2020/10/23/new-york-city-restaurateurs-can-no-longer-swallow-subjective-unscientific-covid-restrictions/

Restaurants, delis, and pubs are the lifeblood of our neighborhoods. They’re places we go to congregate with colleagues, celebrate with family, and catch up on “hyperlocal” news and gossip with neighbors. Much of the character and vibrancy of a neighborhood is found in its eateries.

On April 13, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo announced a Northeast regional plan to reopen the state’s economy in coordination with New Jersey, Connecticut, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, and Delaware: “We have reached a plateau in the number of cases and . . . should start looking forward to reopening but with a plan. The art form will be doing it smartly, in a coordinated way, cooperatively and share intelligence.”

Unfortunately, Cuomo long ago ditched the idea of coordinating the full reopening of New York City with nearby states, and the Big Apple lagged months behind other regions in the state—and in the entire Northeast—to allow indoor dining and drinking.

Coincidentally or not, days after a planned class-action suit by more than 450 restaurants in New York City got local media coverage in early September, Cuomo relented—exactly one iota—and announced restaurants in the five boroughs could offer limited indoor seating starting September 30.

Restaurants in Nassau, Suffolk, Westchester and other suburban counties have been allowed to offer indoor seating at half of maximum occupancy since the middle of June, and are subject to significantly laxer mandatory practices.