RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.manhattancontrarian.com/blog/2021-1-23-re2mtojknndidfelg5aio0ugr7pn5a

January 2009, when Barack Obama took office as President, was several years before I began this blog. Of course I realized from the start that I disagreed strongly with nearly every policy that Obama intended to implement. However, I also recognized that Obama had been duly elected President, and was entitled to exercise the powers of the office. Therefore, I would oppose his policy initiatives as best I could within the bounds of the law. In my case that mainly meant collecting evidence and presenting to the world what I think are sensible arguments, in the hopes of swaying some potential voters over to rational positions. Within Obama’s first term, I had the blog up and running.

Well, now it’s Biden. Time to renew the commitment.

In his inaugural address on Wednesday, Biden’s principal theme was the call for what he called “unity”:

To overcome these challenges, to restore the soul, and to secure the future of America, requires so much more than words. It requires the most elusive of all things in a democracy: Unity. Unity. . . . Without unity, there is no peace, only bitterness and fury. No progress, only exhausting outrage. No nation, only a state of this is our historic moment of crisis and challenge. Unity is the path forward. We must meet this moment as the United States of America.

And then, on the same day, Biden proceeded to execute some 17 Executive Orders to implement various parts of the program of the progressive Left. Much more of same is to come.

There is a fundamental disconnect here. The program of the progressive Left is foundationally inconsistent with the whole idea of “unity” among the people. The progressive program is a program to achieve a vision of perfect fairness and justice and utopia through force and coercion, and those who disagree or stand in the way are to be pushed aside or defeated or crushed. Suppose you disagree with almost all of of this program (like me), or even just some of it. There is no “unity” on offer to you. What is on offer is that you must surrender and accept your defeat.

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2021/01/joe_biden_signs_whatevers_put_in_front_of_him.html

EXCERPT

To begin his largely symbolic, retribution-based term of office, “President” Biden issued 17 executive orders on his first day.  There can’t be any real doubt in peoples’ minds that Biden didn’t write or conceive any of these.  The 17 E.O.s presented to him in a painfully choreographed, ostentatiously grandiose fashion on his opening day in office were quite obviously prepared by his Progressive-minded operatives well in advance, his group of unelected, unaccountable sycophants who will control the puppet strings for as long as Biden is able to sit upright and remain awake behind the desk.  Biden dutifully and unthinkingly signed each one, as his minions of O’Reillys looked on, satisfied with knowing they had put one over on the big guy, much as the 4077th’s clerk consistently hoodwinked the oblivious Col. Blake.

Looking at the list of orders, one is struck by their uniformity, their sameness: every one of them is a pander to a voting bloc, a cave to a Progressive constituency for the sake of political correctness or to further the appearance of compassion or a supposed enlightened understanding of humanity.

Missing from all of them is any concrete action that makes America safer or more prosperous or enhances our national security or improves our position of energy independence or creates jobs or reduces the tax burden on the average wage-earner or moves to strengthen our fundamental constitutional rights of free speech, self-protection, and the right to peacefully assemble.  Not a single executive order redounds to the concrete benefit of the country as a whole.  Instead, all of them amount to nothing more than political sleight-of-hand, smoke and mirrors, activity and movement without meaning.

https://amgreatness.com/2021/01/22/joe-bidens-unity-that-crushes-truth-that-lies/

Joe Biden gave one of the most terrifying inaugural addresses in American history. For friends of constitutional government, it is far more disturbing than Franklin Roosevelt’s first inaugural. 

Clothed with clichés and disguised in dull language, the 20-minute speech bristles with arrogance. What it lacks in charisma it makes up for in its cultish Karenism. Moreover, the force of Biden’s words came to life in the 17 executive orders and memoranda he signed shortly after the inauguration. 

Every American should read the speech and read it warily—that is, with a politically skeptical eye. The smooth-talking demagogue from Delaware is open in his intentions, which he stated earlier in his campaign speeches (such as they were). Even as he and his campaign blasted Donald Trump (and implicitly his supporters) for “racism” (the “most offending president ever,” Biden contended in his campaign), he proposed to increase race consciousness throughout the government and society.

The Cure for What Ails America?

His speech is readily summarized: My election shows that “democracy has prevailed.” To escape the “dark winter,” we need to unify to confront the virus, the hobbled economy, racial injustice, and the dying planet, and stand against “political extremism, white supremacy, and domestic terrorism.” Our sick, fragile, frightened nation needs unity, and, quoting Abraham Lincoln from his announcement of the Emancipation Proclamation, our democratically blessed St. Fauci declares: “my whole soul is in it.”

Dr. Joe Biden prescribes unity as the cure for what ails America. But that unity requires truth. “We face an attack on democracy and on truth.” And Dr. Biden somehow personifies the truth that produces unity against lies. America now will be united against the liars. Otherwise, we cannot be secure. Biden does not need to plagiarize FDR. Fifty years in public life have taught him the technique. All this, as images of (mostly) armed troops and symbols of COVID-19 deaths and absent crowds and a damaged (and deliberately unrepaired) Capitol assaulted viewers.

It is all too clear that Biden is engaging in the demagoguery that has marked his public career, going as far back as the notorious Robert Bork and Clarence Thomas confirmation hearings. By making “unity” his goal and “truth” his defense, he can label his opponents as liars and threats to democracy. These threats constitute the “domestic terrorism” he denounced along with “political extremism” and “white supremacy.” The Departments of Justice, Homeland Security, Defense, Treasury, and Health and Human Services, along with the FBI and IRS, have to be unleashed against enemies of the state. They are the domestic arm of the global war on terror. Compare FDR’s closing lines to his 1944 State of the Union Address, where he likened 1920s Republicans to fascists. 

Biden further bolsters his argument with resources other Democratic politicians lack. First, he has his vice president, sufficient just as a racial-immigrant prop. (Wouldn’t her role be more effective had her Jamaican father, the Marxist economist, been with her?) 

Abusing Augustine

Second, he quotes St. Augustine, in what appears to be the high point of his speech. After all, “History, faith, and reason show the way, the way of unity.” His occasional speechwriter, historian Jon Meacham, used a quotation he often cites in his own writing, “Saint Augustine, a saint of my church, wrote that a people was a multitude defined by the common objects of their love.”

https://thehill.com/opinion/white-house/535518-do-democrats-really-want-unity

EXCERPTS:

“Everyone in Washington, including many in Republican leadership, were a bit too eager to begin the Biden administration and to end Trump’s. However, it should be a cautionary tale, too. Democrats are moving aggressively to muscle through an ambitious agenda in Congress that may raise serious constitutional questions and cause even greater political divisions.

After noon, the real President Biden set to work on a host of executive orders. In the first two days, Biden signed almost three dozen new executive orders, ranging from stopping deportations of undocumented persons to extending a freeze on student loan payments, from mandating mask-wearing to guaranteeing access by transgender children to bathrooms and sports. Some of these executive orders, if implemented directly, could be challenged in court. However, Trump and other modern presidents have increasingly used such orders to set new priorities and policies.

What is happening on Capitol Hill is far more concerning. Democratic leaders are pushing Biden to act unilaterally, as did President Obama when faced with a divided Congress. Obama actually used his State of the Union address to declare his intent to circumvent the legislative branch after it refused to pass his legislation in areas such as the environment and immigration.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) and other Democrats have called on Biden to simply cancel student debt up to $50,000 per student, wiping out billions in debt and potential federal revenue. That is a major unilateral decision when the national debt is approaching $28 trillion — one done without debate or deliberation. (In fairness, students are being crushed by such debt during the pandemic and, more importantly, Congress previously gave broad authority to the Education secretary over debt management.)

Other calls for sweeping new decisions, from immigration to wealth distribution, are more concerning. Democrats insist they won both houses and the White House and, as President Obama once said, “elections have consequences.” However, this election was not an overwhelming victory or endorsement. Rather, it shows a country divided virtually down the middle. While voters clearly rejected Trump and his controversial leadership, they voted widely for Republicans down the ticket. The House saw a significant loss of Democratic seats and has one of the slimmest majorities in modern history. The Senate is divided literally in half, and a majority is only possible with Vice President Harris voting to break ties on the floor.

Clearly, voters did not support the agenda of the far left, and many seem to have preferred divided government. Yet, many on the left do not want to wait for a broader mandate to implement sweeping changes. They are pushing for the District of Columbia to be made a state, likely adding a two-vote majority for Democrats in the Senate. Even more worrisome is the push to end the filibuster. Many Democrats are calling for Schumer to end that long-standing protection of minority rights in the Senate. Schumer has refused to guarantee that he will protect the filibuster tradition, even though he demanded that it be preserved during years of Republican Senate control.

In both chambers, Democrats are calling for the possible expulsion of fellow members who voted to challenge electoral votes before the Jan. 6 riot in the Capitol. I opposed that electoral-vote challenge — but it was not “sedition” or “insurrection” to vote for it. Federal law expressly allows for such challenges, and Democrats have mounted challenges in past elections. These calls demonstrate a crisis of leadership which remains a political powder keg. We have seen extreme violence on both the left and the right for four years, from Portland to Washington itself. The Inauguration occurred surrounded by 25,000 national guard troops, due to the Jan. 6 riot by the extreme right, and it was followed by rioting in various cities by the extreme left.

EXCERPT

During all Biden’s calls for “unity,” the Left has advocated canceling, censoring, “deprogramming” and purging tens of millions of Republicans, populists, and conservatives. This is not a new development.

In collusion with its corporate state media and weaponized federal bureaucrat cohorts, the Left’s political attack upon dissenting fellow citizens was underway well before the Capitol riot, which is now being used as the modern equivalent of the old post-Civil War political tactic of “waving the bloody shirt.”

While the Left disingenuously claims there were no calls for unity in the last four years, former President Trump (starting with his inaugural address) and many other center-right voices issued #TheResistance many invitations for unity. They rebuffed every overture.

Consequently, the center-right could only hope the Left would put the country ahead of ideology, knowing all the while the chances of that were slim to none. This was despite the fact that at no time did #TheResistance’s constitutional rights come under government attack, quite unlike what happened to many of the political opponents (including journalists) of the Obama Administration. Now the Left is viciously accelerating its governmental, corporate, and state media attacks to ensure Republicans, populists, and conservatives are eradicated from American public life.

In his schizophrenic inaugural speech, Biden both labeled America as a great nation and systemically racist. This is logically impossible. A great nation cannot be systemically racist. It can only be evil. Moreover, Biden branded more than 74 million Americans as racist and simultaneously called for unity. Again, this is nonsensical. No decent person wishes to unite with racists or other such immoral reprobates.

So, which of his own B.S. does Biden believe? His professed love of country and unity that he spews for the consumption of the state press, independents, and former conservative NeverTrumpers? Or, for the consumption of the Left, his professed belief our nation is systemically racist and how evil conservatives and populists must be deplatformed, deprogrammed, disenfranchised, and destroyed?

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/stacey-lennox/2021/01/23/unity-watch-sorry-president-biden-the-honeymoon-is-over-before-it-even-started-n1406795

Most of the time, a new president gets at least a short honeymoon period. President Joe Biden is not so lucky. His approval is already underwater at -2 in Rasmussen’s Daily Presidential Tracking Poll. Usually, the country settles down after the election and gives the nation’s new leader the benefit of the doubt. Even President Trump entered the Oval Office with a +2 approval rating, which increased through the end of January 2017. President Obama went in at +8 in 2008.

It was a whirlwind of activity for President Biden in his first 72 hours. He signed an executive order to allow biological men and boys to enter women’s spaces and compete with them directly in employment, education, and sports. With the stroke of the pen, he killed the Keystone XL pipeline and even reversed President  Trump’s prohibition on the Chinese Communist Party’s involvement in the U.S. power grid.

The world is also getting more dangerous with alarming speed. China has breached Taiwan’s Air Defense Zone with multiple bombers and fighter jets. We have seen continuing riots in Portland and now one in Bellingham, Washington. Biden ended the so-called “Muslim Ban,” which actually restricted travel from several countries that provide material support for terror or don’t have the ability to vet their citizens. And ISIS just claimed responsibility for an attack inside Baghdad.

The last three days have been like drinking from a firehose as the Biden administration works to erase everything since 2016 as quickly as possible. While there is no way to find out how Americans feel about the full range of issues, Rasmussen has polled a few.

Sixty percent of Americans are expecting fuel prices to rise under President Biden. A rise in crude oil prices is already increasing costs at the pump in Texas, and they will likely trend up nationwide. While this increase will hit personal finances, rising energy prices will also make American manufacturing less competitive globally. The trend will worsen when Biden increases the amount of environmental regulation. The same poll shows that 51% of likely voters oppose Biden’s decision to cancel the Keystone XL pipeline. This number includes 58% of non-affiliated voters and more than three out of four GOP voters.

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/tulsi-gabbard-domestic-terrorism-bill-is-a-targeting-of-almost-half-of-the-country/

EXCERPTS:

“When you have people like former CIA Director John Brennan openly talking about how he’s spoken with or heard from appointees and nominees in the Biden administration who are already starting to look across our country for these types of movements similar to the insurgencies they’ve seen overseas, that in his words, he says make up this unholy alliance of religious extremists, racists, bigots, he lists a few others and at the end, even libertarians.”

She said her concern lies in how officials will define the characteristics they are searching for in potential threats.

“What characteristics are we looking for as we are building this profile of a potential extremist, what are we talking about? Religious extremists, are we talking about Christians, evangelical Christians, what is a religious extremist? Is it somebody who is pro-life? Where do you take this?” Gabbard said.

She said the proposed legislation could create “a very dangerous undermining of our civil liberties, our freedoms in our Constitution, and a targeting of almost half of the country.”

“You start looking at obviously, have to be a white person, obviously likely male, libertarians, anyone who loves freedom, liberty, maybe has an American flag outside their house, or people who, you know, attended a Trump rally,” Gabbard said.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/biden-nothing-we-can-do-to-change-trajectory-of-covid-19-pandemic-in-next-months_3668351.html

The U.S. government can’t do anything to change the trajectory of the COVID-19 pandemic in the coming months, President Joe Biden claimed on Friday.

“There’s nothing we can do to change the trajectory of the pandemic in the next several months,” Biden said during a speech at the White House.

COVID-19 is the disease caused by the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus, a novel coronavirus. The disease has contributed to the deaths of some 400,000 Americans in the past year, according to federal health data.

Biden’s remark prompted criticism. “Haven’t we been told for months that restrictions and mandates were necessary to change the trajectory of the pandemic in the next several months?” former Rep. Justin Amash (L-Mich.) wrote in a tweet.

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2021/01/so_who_ordered_the_national_guard_troops_stuffed_into_the_icy_underground_parking_garage.html

Following the strange inauguration of Joe Biden, some 25,000 to 65,000 National Guard troops brought in to guard the Capitol were in for a string of insults.  First, their loyalty was questioned.  Then their professionalism was questioned.  And with no clear purpose for so many of them to protect the Capitol, it was clear they were being used for photo op props, not the service they were sworn to.  They found themselves there not to chase off rioters, but to bolster Democrats in their political purpose of smearing Republicans as insurgents. 

The final insult came when someone ordered them to get lost from the Capitol.  Like discarded props, or no longer welcome valets, more than a thousand were ordered into an icy underground parking garage to stay out of sight, out of mind.  They had no heat, just one bathroom for 5,000 personnel, and only one outlet.  They had no internet and no beds, forcing them to sleep on hard ground in 38-degree cold.  COVID was present, making the harsh conditions a potential superspreader event.

Upstairs the beautiful people in monochrome colors, heat, fancy bathrooms, and tons of snacks carried on as usual.  It’s good to be the elite.

According to Politico, who asked a Guardsman what was going on:

“Yesterday dozens of senators and congressmen walked down our lines taking photos, shaking our hands and thanking us for our service. Within 24 hours, they had no further use for us and banished us to the corner of a parking garage. We feel incredibly betrayed,” the Guardsman said.