RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/tyler-o-neil/2020/11/12/joe-manchin-eviscerates-the-far-lefts-hopes-on-court-packing-and-aoc-is-not-happy-n1141175

On Monday, Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) put the final nail in the coffin of far-left hopes that Democrats could pack the Supreme Court and abolish the Senate filibuster in 2021. Manchin doubled down on his pledge. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) was none too pleased, while Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) voiced skepticism.

“I commit to tonight, and I commit to all of your viewers and everyone else that’s watching, I want to allay those fears, I want to rest those fears for you right now because when they talk about, whether it be packing the courts or ending the filibuster, I will not vote to do that,” Manchin told Fox News’ Special Report.

Even if Democrats somehow win both of Georgia’s Senate runoffs on January 5, giving Democrats 50 Senate seats plus a tiebreaker with Kamala Harris as vice president (the more likely outcome although the presidential results are contested), Manchin pledged to oppose the more radical policies.

The senator doubled down on this claim in an interview with The Washington Examiner‘s Salena Zito on Wednesday.

“Under no circumstances would I support packing the Court or ending the filibuster if there is a 50-50 tie,” Manchin told Zito.

https://issuesinsights.com/2020/11/13/lockdown-joe-looks-as-if-biden-wants-to-close-the-entire-country/

Should Joe Biden survive the election legal challenges ahead, he will roll into the Oval Office fully intent on doing what Democrats do – rob Americans of their liberty. We have every expectation he will try to shut down the country, not because the coronavirus makes it necessary but because the oxygen of the political left is controlling other people’s lives.

The Bongino Report tells us that Biden’s coronavirus adviser is proposing a lengthy national shutdown to mitigate the spread as positive test results climb during the early weeks of the North American flu season.

“Under a Biden presidency (God forbid) we’d return right back to a full lockdown,” writes Matt Palumbo, “and this time they’re not pretending it’ll only last 15 days.”

Apparently Biden is listening to the ravings of Dr. Michael Osterholm, who is suggesting “we” – can he please define “we”? – could “pay for a package right now to cover all of the wages, lost wages for individual workers, for losses to small companies, to medium-sized companies or city, state, county governments,” so the country could “lock down for four to six weeks.”

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/joe-manchin-slams-fellow-dems-crazy-socialist-agenda-amid-intra-party-battle-defund-my-butt/

Senator Joe Manchin on Wednesday slammed efforts by progressive members of his party to slash police department budgets, saying the Democratic Party as he conceives of it does not have “some crazy socialist agenda.”

“Defund the police? Defund, my butt. I’m a proud West Virginia Democrat. We are the party of working men and women. We want to protect Americans’ jobs & healthcare. We do not have some crazy socialist agenda, and we do not believe in defunding the police,” Manchin wrote in a tweet Wednesday evening.

Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a New York progressive who has voiced support for cutting police budgets, responded to Manchin by tweeting a photo of herself during the State of the Union address in February offering what appears to be a glare in Manchin’s direction.

Manchin, one of the most moderate members of his party, could end up being the deciding vote on a number of issues should Senate control be split between Republicans and Democrats. Two Georgia Senate races headed for runoff elections in January are expected to decide the balance of power in the upper chamber. Republicans currently have 50 seats in the Senate to Democrats’ 48 seats.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/joe-bidens-lockdown-lobby-11605223647?mod=opinion_lead_pos1

Did you enjoy the days at home from mid-March to May? The 22 million lost jobs, the shuttered storefronts, the neighborhood shops out of business, the kids unable to attend school, and the near economic depression? Well, congratulations, a reprise may be coming your way if Joe Biden heeds his Covid-19 advisory team.

We’ve told you about Ezekiel Emanuel, the advisory committee member who wanted new lockdowns during the summer flare-up in the Sunbelt states. Lucky for the country that his only power then was appearing on MSNBC.

Then there’s Michael Osterholm, also a member of the Biden Covid committee, who now wants a new nationwide lockdown for as many as six weeks. Dr. Osterholm is director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota. CNBC quoted him as suggesting that we are about to enter “Covid hell” and the government should lock everyone up as we await a vaccine.

“We could pay for a package right now to cover all of the wages, lost wages for individual workers for losses to small companies to medium-sized companies or city, state, county governments. We could do all of that,” Dr. Osterholm said, according to Yahoo Finance. “If we did that, then we could lock down for four to six weeks.”

https://www.wsj.com/articles/we-dont-need-government-mandates-for-covid-vaccination-11605222059?mod=opinion_lead_pos5

Covid-19 vaccines are almost here. Pfizer announced Monday that its vaccine has proved more than 90% effective in clinical trials. But vaccines are useless unless people take them, and it’s likely many will refuse.

The drumbeat is growing louder for the government to mandate vaccination. On Saturday the New York State Bar Association urged Albany to require Covid-19 vaccines for all New Yorkers regardless of religious objection. While courts have upheld state vaccine mandates in the past, a societywide mandate would be overbroad and unduly coercive. Private initiatives will work better.

Only 45% of American adults get vaccinated for influenza annually. Concerns about side effects and doubts about effectiveness are the two main reasons people skip the vaccine, according to the University of Chicago’s NORC Center for Public Affairs Research. In a NORC survey conducted at the height of the pandemic in May, Americans expressed similar concerns about a prospective Covid-19 vaccine. While a majority claimed they would likely be vaccinated, far fewer were a definite yes. Less than half said they would definitely be vaccinated, and doubts about safety and effectiveness were common.

The Biden campaign and others have alleged that vaccine makers and the Food and Drug Administration are moving too fast toward approval—claims the FDA and drug companies vehemently deny—further eroding public trust in an eventual vaccine. A Pew Research Center poll found that the number of Americans who would definitely or probably be vaccinated fell to 51% in September from 72% in May.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/adamandrzejewski/2020/11/12/nancy-pelosis-heroes-act-gives-top-50-richest-towns-in-america-a-350-million-coronavirus-bailout-why/?sh=360dee7cc8d3
Atherton, California, is the richest town in America with an average annual household income of $525,000. Located 20 miles from Silicon Valley, the San Francisco suburb is home to the many tech titans of Google GOOG +0.1% and Facebook.
Knowing this, Americans would be right to ask why Nancy Pelosi’s Heroes Act shelled out $3.8 million in coronavirus “aid” money to Atherton. We contacted Speaker Pelosi and the Atherton city manager for comment and did not receive a response.
Atherton isn’t the only rich suburb to receive bailouts from American taxpayers. Our auditors at OpenTheBooks.com cross-referenced the nation’s 50 richest communities listed in the Bloomberg 2020 Richest Places with Heroes Act coronavirus bailouts.

We found the 50 richest places in the country received $350 million in bailouts.
In these wealthy communities, the average household income ranged from #1 Atherton, CA ($525,324) to #50 Darnestown, MD ($262,988). Other top places included:

https://www.theepochtimes.com/trump-paid-tributes-to-veterans-in-the-rain-at-arling

President Donald Trump and First Lady Melania Trump participated in Veterans Day Observance at Arlington National Cemetery Wednesday morning in the rain.

Trump was accompanied by Vice President Mike Pence and Second Lady Karen Pence. Robert Wilkie, Secretary of Veterans Affairs, also joined Trump in the ceremony.

Trump approached the wreath and saluted at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, stood for a moment of silence, then retreated and saluted again.

This is the first official public event Trump attended since the election.

“America’s veterans have fought to defend our country, its values, and its interests since the first days of our founding. They have defeated tyrants, eliminated terrorists, and secured freedom at home and abroad,” Trump said in a proclamation released by the White House.

“The gravity of their contribution is immeasurable and so is our debt to every single one of our Nation’s veterans,” Trump continued in the proclamation.

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.