RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://townhall.com/columnists/victordavishanson/2020/12/09/victor-davis-hanson-will-biden-give-in-to-the-hydroxy-effect-n2581263

There is as yet no known, easily accessible cure for COVID-19.

Over the past year, lots of old and new drugs and supplements — Ivermectin, azithromycin, Remdesivir, hydroxychloroquine, vitamin D, vitamin C, zinc, aspirin, Pepcid and others — have shown at least some anecdotal value in ameliorating the effects of early-stage COVID-19. Clinical physicians treating patients in hospitals often disagree with the research scientists conducting trials on the efficacy of all these treatments.

Yet only hydroxychloroquine has prompted furious partisan debate over its possible usefulness. Why?

Probably because Donald Trump endorsed its usage months ago. Almost immediately, the media, the university and government medical community, and the progressive political opposition declared hydroxychloroquine useless and dangerous. A recent media study from the National Bureau of Economic Research found that positive news stories about the research and development of COVID-19 vaccines barely outnumbered negative stories about Trump and hydroxychloroquine.

Trump’s presidential endorsement was apparent proof of rank quackery. Yet a few recent second-look studies, especially abroad, suggest that hydroxychloroquine, a dirt-cheap, time-tested anti-malarial drug, can in fact offer help in treating some cases of COVID-19.

This Hydroxy Effect — hysterical disavowal of anything Trump has endorsed — is dangerous to the country at large.

https://spectator.us/arent-celebrating-400th-anniversary-plymouth-colony/

On Saturday November 11, 1620, an ill-fitted cargo ship anchored off the coast of Cape Cod. On board were 102 quarrelsome and hungry passengers. Some 37 were religious dissidents, some servants, and a good many were would-be settlers contracted by the London Merchant Adventurers. Those ‘adventurers’, whom the Protestant dissenters called ‘strangers’ were none too happy about the voyage. They were supposed to be in ‘northern Virginia’, which may have meant Manhattan. But bad weather had driven their ship, the Mayflower, to an unsettled and uncertain place. They considered their contract with the London Merchant Adventurers null and void and were prepared, on landing, to strike out for themselves.

Cooler heads prevailed. Later that day, perhaps with the help of some strong-arm tactics, the leaders of the Leiden, Holland Congregation — the people we call Pilgrims — gained the signatures of most of the men on an agreement to stick together and govern themselves as a ‘civil body politic’. That modest document was the Mayflower Compact, and it carries outsized historical weight. It was the beginning of true self-government in the English colonization of North America. And it gave voice, or at least it whispered, some new ideas. The signatories agreed to elect their government, frame their own laws, respect their differences and discard many of the Old World ideas of hierarchy. The new settlement breathed the fresh air of equality. Masters and servants both signed the compact.

You would think this event would be anchored in American history with the solidity of, say, Plymouth Rock. And you would, in a curious way, be right. In the era of de-plinthed statues of American founders and heroes, Plymouth Rock itself was defaced earlier this year. It was spray-painted with various squiggles and the motto ‘508, MOF’, the meaning of which remains unknown, except that 508 is Plymouth’s area code. We can take it, if nothing else, as a gesture of symbolic destruction. Four hundred years later, the strangers have wreaked their revenge for having been drafted into the Mayflower Compact. Or perhaps it was one of those contingents of Native Americans tagging a boulder that Massasoit too easily ceded to the invaders.

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http://www.swtotd.blogspot.com

The single biggest change in politics in my lifetime has been the reorientation of the political parties. Historically, Democrats represented the working classes, while Republicans had the backing of the monied classes on Wall Street and the occupiers of office suites in big businesses. Labor versus capital was a simplified definition.

Things have changed. Roles have been reversed. My State of Connecticut is a proxy for wealthy blue states. It is the 5th wealthiest in terms of income and was solidly Republican when I was growing up. This year, it voted 59% for Joe Biden. The three towns in which I have lived for the past fifty years, Greenwich, Old Lyme and Essex – all in the top 12% of Connecticut’s wealthiest towns – voted between 61% and 63% for Joe Biden. November’s vote was not a one-time event. All five House members are Democrats. Connecticut’s two U.S. Senators are ranked eight (Richard Blumenthal) and sixteen (Chris Murphy) in terms of most progressive. The last Republican to serve in the House of Representatives was Chris Shays who lost re-election in 2008. The last Republican U.S. Senator from Connecticut was Lowell Weicker, who lost re-election in 1988. This Democratic Party is not your grandfather’s Party. It has become the Party of the establishment. The only two counties in Connecticut to vote for Donald Trump were Windham and Litchfield, the two most rural counties. In both counties, his margin of victory was four percentage points. Sixty years ago, Connecticut was as solidly Republican as it is solidly Democratic today.

Why has this happened? The shift took place during the 1960s and 1970s, during a period when I became registered as a Democrat. For me, in my late 20s, it was a combination of civil rights and Vietnam, and a feeling that whatever my parents were for I should be against. By the mid 1970s, when markets and the economy turned down, I realized my parents may have been smarter than I had thought – that to succeed financially, intellectually, personally and emotionally, one had to be aspirant, have a positive outlook, be self-reliant and willing to work hard.

https://mailchi.mp/5c72f39888b2/tune-in-ill-be-speaking-on-american-ingrate-tuesday-night-2517929?e=a0fa704ef6

The only inadvertent benefit of Brennan’s airtime is that it exposes how unmoored our ruling class is from the public it is supposed to serve.

Former Obama administration Central Intelligence Agency Director John Brennan lies. He doesn’t just lie in the sense of speaking hyperbolically, spinning events, or painting in shades of gray out of purported fealty to national security considerations. Brennan tells outright falsehoods, in venues from television studios to Congress, on matters of utmost importance.

One must ask: Why does corporate media continue to give someone who has proved to be a uniquely deceptive character, whose most noteworthy activity since leaving government has been spewing invective against the president on Twitter, valuable airtime?

Brennan Lies About Russiagate

In his latest public display of dishonesty, Brennan took to “Fox News Sunday” to repeat untruths regarding the Obama administration’s actions regarding then-president-elect Donald Trump and Russia. According to Brennan, “There was no spying on Donald Trump’s campaign.” There was. Of the Steele dossier, Brennan said it “was not used in any way to undergird the judgments that came out of the intelligence community assessment about the Russian actions in the 2016 election.” It was.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/12/virus-jack-kerwick/

Perhaps, at this juncture, some nine months into the COVID Scare of 2020, the only thing that will emancipate people from the fear—the pathological, obsessive, wildly irrational fear—that has consumed them for the better part of this year is access to a vaccine.

Personally, and while I am not now nor have I ever been an “anti-vaxxer,” I will not go anywhere near any so-called COVID vaccine. The reason for this is simple enough:

Since “the Virus” has never been isolated, purified, and extracted from the bio-chemical soup in which scientists claim to have found it; since, that is, COVID-19 has never been identified with the exactness and rigor demanded by the scientific method, it’s anyone’s guess as to what would be included in an alleged vaccine.   

That COVID has never been scientifically determined is borne out by two indisputable facts:

(1)The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention itself concedes, way down on the 39th page of its 59 page report—“CDC 2019-Novel Coronavirus (2019-nCoV) Real-Time RT-PCR Diagnostic Panel”—that the Virus’s existence has not been proven. 

https://issuesinsights.com/2020/12/08/america-tests-positive-for-a-raging-mental-health-pandemic/

While public officials are busy cracking down on freedom using a viral pandemic as their justification, another pandemic comes chopping and reaping, this one caused by the extreme measures that have produced no beneficial results. Both the elected and unelected who have brought this on need to be held accountable.

“Americans’ Mental Health Ratings Sink to New Low,” says the headline of a report from a recent Gallup poll.

“Americans’ latest assessment of their mental health is worse than it has been at any point in the last two decades. Seventy-six percent of U.S. adults rate their mental health positively,” that is, “excellent/good,” while 85% did in 2019. Those who said their mental health or emotional well-being is “excellent” fell from 43% to 34%.

The poll was conducted between Nov. 5 and Nov. 19, before, we must point out, before holiday-spoiling lockdowns were ramped up in much of the country.

In what we would classify as almost an understatement, Gallup said the decline in mental health is “undoubtedly influenced by the coronavirus pandemic, which continues to profoundly disrupt people’s lives.” Yes, it might “also reflect views of the election and the state of race relations.” But we’ve had elections – just four years ago the political left fell into a deep funk over the results – and race relation troubles before. Never have we had our liberties sacked as they have been since March.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/another-general-at-defense-11607470114?mod=opinion_lead_pos2

Joe Biden has picked retired Gen. Lloyd Austin to be his Defense Secretary, and anyone skimming the coverage might believe the most important recommendation is his race. But Senators interested more in substance than identity politics have plenty to think about.

Gen. Austin, 67, served the country well during his four-decade career in the Army. As commander of U.S. forces in Iraq from 2010-11, he oversaw America’s retreat from the country. The general wanted to keep tens of thousands of American forces, which is to his credit. Less defensible is his failure to anticipate the full withdrawal that Barack Obama ordered and prepare adequately, which led to a hasty exit. Mr. Biden, who worked with Gen. Austin during the Obama Administration, might be most attracted to him as a loyal lieutenant.

Gen. Austin was promoted to Commander of U.S. Central Command (Centcom) in 2013 and held the job for three years as Islamic State rampaged across Iraq and Syria. His role in the failed program to train Syrian rebels deserves attention, as does the military’s apparent surprise at the fall of Mosul and swift rise of ISIS in 2014. His spokesman denied it, but Gen. Austin reportedly told the White House that ISIS was only “a flash in the pan.”

https://thefederalist.com/2020/12/08/thats-so-fauci-failing-up-while-botching-science-and-undermining-u-s-allies/

Fauci reversed himself on the safety of the COVID vaccines, apologizing for making false statements about U.S. allies’ work with the Trump administration to save countless lives through cutting-edge medical research.

Joe Biden likes Dr. Anthony Fauci’s lockdown advice so much, he has tapped him for chief medical advisor. Biden also plans to keep Fauci on his COVID advisory board despite Democrats spending 2020 insisting President Trump’s COVID guidance, although clearly influenced by Fauci, contradicted science and hurt the nation.

That same day, Fauci reversed himself on the safety of the COVID vaccines being developed, apologizing for making false statements about U.S. allies’ work in partnership with the Trump administration to save countless lives through cutting-edge medical research.

Axios reported: “‘I have a great deal of confidence in what the U.K. does both scientifically and from a regulator standpoint,’ Dr Fauci told the BBC on Thursday after saying earlier in the day that U.K. regulators ‘rushed’ their approval of the vaccine” for COVID from Pfizer-BioNTech. The day before, the United Kingdom had become the first nation to grant emergency approval to one of three reportedly highly effective vaccines that have been developed in conjunction with massive U.S. taxpayer spending and government effort.

“In the United States, there is such a considerable amount of tension of pushing back on the credibility, on the safety and on the efficacy that if we in the United States had done it as quickly as the U.K. did — and that’s no judgement on the way the U.K. did it — …there likely would have been pushback,” Fauci word-saladed in his apology over the “misunderstanding” he created by criticizing the United Kingdom’s efforts to end the pandemic faster.

“If you go quickly and you do it superficially, people are not going to want to get vaccinated,” Fauci told Fox News. “We have the gold standard of a regulatory approach with the FDA.”