RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2020/07/the_age_of_conspiracy.html

I sometimes think that when future historians look back on our time, they will label it “The Age of Conspiracy.” And there would be some truth to that. One tends to see conspiracies, plots and secret plans galore, wherever one looks, whether from the perspective of the left or the right. The left believes that the right is conspiring to promote a fascist takeover of the nation, in line with its presumed colonial history. The right sees a socialist, if not a communist, conspiracy to ignite a coup against the body politic and its political organization. There is no possibility of moderating these views. They are frankly irreconcilable.

The issue is that some so-called conspiracies are hoaxes ginned up by those who seek to alarm a docile and pliable, low-information public. And some conspiracies are precisely what they are called, real plots that can be verified objectively. The problem is how to distinguish conspiracy-mongering from representations of fact.

“Like every successful con,” Rupert Darwall writes in Green Tyranny, “maintaining audience credulity depends on preventing the audience from noticing what the trickster is up to,” a tactic known in the trade as “defining the baseline” — that is, by deceptively touting how damaged the world would be minus whatever transformation is envisioned. In all too many instances, there is no dispositive proof that such would be the case. Much to the chagrin of our false prophets, the seas do not rise to engulf our cities and low-lying islands, famine does not fall upon the land, populations do not grow extinct, the air is not becoming unbreathable, the spring does not grow silent, and the world does not end on a given date — though it may on the next given date, or the next. We can always hope.

https://dianebederman.com/if-black-lives-really-mattered/

In the latter half of the 20th century there was a newsman from Buffalo, New York, Irv Weinstein, who ended his newscast with “It’s 11 o’clock, Do you know where your children are?” Perhaps we need to amend that to “Do you know where your children are most of the day?”  Who are their friends? What do they do; where do they go? Parents of children of all colours need to have that information to keep their children safe.

We can all agree: Black Lives Matter.

But…

If Black Lives really mattered, parents would be on the street demanding that their children no longer be sacrificed in gang related shootings and would never support the Marxist call to anarchy with calls for defunding the police, the very people meant to protect your babies.

Where is the anger, the protests, over these deaths?

Eleven people were killed, including four children, and 67 others were wounded in shootings across Chicago during the Father’s Day weekend.

3-year-old Mekhi James, Chicago

21-year-old Gregory Lewis, Chicago

Natalie Wallace; 7 Chicago

On the July 4 weekend a 7-year-old girl playing with children in Chicago was shot in the head; an 8-year-old Atlanta girl riding with her mother and an 11-year-old boy running to get a phone charger in Washington, D.C. were shot. Another Chicago shooting left a 14-year-old dead.

Chicago Mayor Lightfoot, in a series of tweets, lamented another child “whose hopes and dreams were ended by the barrel of a gun.”  Whose gun? She asked anyone with information to come forward.

“As a city we must wrap our arms around our youth so they understand there’s a future for them that isn’t wrapped up in gun violence,” she tweeted. Yet she promotes the defunding of police. Is this what black parents want?

Here is a link to murders in Chicago.   As of July 18 there have been 352 in 2020; many are black.

And

11-year-old Davon McNeal shot in the head in Washington DC

Secoriea Turner, Atlanta, 8 years old, shot near the Wendy’s where Rayshard Brooks was killed last month.

Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms “We’re fighting the enemy within when we are shooting each other up in our streets.” “We’ve had over 75 shootings in the city over the past several weeks,” Bottoms said. “You can’t blame that on (the Atlanta Police Department).”

https://townhall.com/columnists/scottmorefield/2020/07/20/we-cant-stop-coronavirus-but-we-can-limit-the-damage-were-doing-to-ourselves-n2572737

I know it seems like a lifetime ago, but if you’ll think back to the beginning of this pandemic you might recall that we were originally told we needed to “flatten the curve” so that hospitals wouldn’t be overwhelmed. Ah, the good old days. Remember? The understanding was that this was a highly-contagious, fast-spreading virus that would have to run its course, but if it ran its course at current speeds hospitals would crash, thus causing anyone in need of their services to suffer as well. It seemed like most people understood that. Unless they isolated completely, most anyone who was susceptible to getting the virus was going to get it eventually. Since it was here and already spreading, there was no actual stopping it, not forever, so let’s just manage it and protect those most vulnerable to the best of our ability.

While I’ve never been for the lockdowns and in fact spoke out against them at the time, part of me could at least understand the logic of some measures to slow things down, especially given the fear of the unknown that existed at the beginning. There was some common sense in measures intended to “slow the spread,” even though in reality they didn’t actually work all that well. We had “15 days to slow the spread,” then 30 more. Then, seemingly overnight, the narrative changed. The expectation went from “slow the spread” and “flatten the curve” to, oddly enough, “no cases at all.”

As we began to find out just how large the infection denominator was, as death rates plummeted infinitely lower than the two to five percent many were fearing at first, as actual deaths declined and flattened to less than 1,000 a day (even using their cooked-up numbers where someone who dies of a car accident or heart disease and had COVID is lumped in as a COVID death), the media-induced panic was only getting started. California is shut down again with calls for other states to do the same, and leftists seemingly won’t be happy until masks are legally required at all times on every man, woman, and child from the wilderness of Alaska to the streets of New York City from now until the end of time.

https://thefederalist.com/2020/07/19/charles-barkley-on-antisemitism-we-cant-allow-black-people-to-be-prejudiced-also/

On the most recent episode of the news and pop culture podcast, “The Steam Room,” co-host and former NBA player Charles Barkley condemned recent expressions of antisemitism from prominent black entertainers and athletes.

Barkley used the beginning of his show, which comes out twice a month, to point out the hypocrisy of those who claim other groups are racist while promoting hatred toward both Jewish and white people.

“I want allies. I don’t want to alienate anybody,” Barkley said. “And to take shots at the Jewish race, or white race — I just don’t like it because it’s not right. And I had to call him on it because it’s really, it’s really been on my heart.”

He cited the most notable examples of recent antisemitic and anti-white comments from prominent black Americans, including Eagles wide receiver Desean Jackson, former NFL running back Steven Jackson, former host of “Masked Singer” and “America’s Got Talent” Nick Cannon, and rapper Ice Cube.

“Desean Jackson, Steven Jackson, Nick Cannon, Ice Cube. Man, what the h-ll are y’all doing? Like, y’all want racial equality. We all do,” Barkley said. “I don’t understand how insulting another group helps our cause… We can’t allow black people to be prejudiced also… I’m so disappointed in these men.”

Former NBA player and columnist for “The Hollywood Reporter” Kareem Abdul-Jabbar also expressed outrage at the lack of appropriate responses at these racist incidents. His column called out some of the same cultural elites.

Masks don’t make a difference. Remember that? It was about two months ago. The consensus of scientific experts who must be obeyed unless one is a Trump-loving troglodyte assured us that there was no need to don a silly mask. Today, masks are the Holy Grail of stopping the virus. How did that happen? What do we know in July that we didn’t know in May? Why did other countries seem to know the supposed value of masks while we didn’t?

I’ll give you another one. On February 29, Dr. Anthony Fauci, the Lord High Guru Of All Science, went on the “Today Show” and told Americans the virus was “low risk” and that we should not modify our behavior. Two weeks later we shut down the country and invited the most devastating economic collapse in generations. Again, how did that happen?

But of all the blunders by our elite intellects that must not be questioned, perhaps the most significant is one that President Trump pointed out in March only to be jeered and mocked. On March 4, the president told Sean Hannity that he had a hunch that the World Health Organization’s assertion that 3.4 percent of people who contracted the Chinese Virus would die was wrong. He said he believed the actual number was closer to .5 percent.

“Trump’s Gut Collides With Science,” mocked NPR. Even I threw shade at POTUS, not because I thought he was wrong but for using the term “hunch.” But guess what, folks? We now know that the Center for Disease Control and Prevention’s “best estimate” for the mortality rate of the virus is .4 percent. Huh. Months after the mockery of him, it turns out Trump was right. It also turns out, and I know this is impossible so I can’t explain it, the scientific experts who must be obeyed were, how should I put this…um, (leans into microphone) “wrong.”

https://townhall.com/columnists/kevinmccullough/2020/07/19/its-time-to-shame-the-covid19-liars-n2572727

They are everywhere! From Dr. Anthony Fauci slyly working yet another media opportunity to the nursing assistants in my friend’s doctor’s office to the members of the newly formed Hysterical Church of Karen on social media. 

They seek to manipulate or have been manipulated everywhere they turn, and in every direction that they look.

They are the ones who need to stop. They need to read more, dig deeper, and attempt to do some critical comparison in their thinking process.

If after doing those things they still have reasons to keep their kids out of school, stay at home out of circulation, and demand that all in their households wear masks indoors and outdoors then they can choose to do so. 

But they don’t get to make that a way of life enforced upon everyone else.

Kids have suffered, anxiety has deepened, executive powers are being abused, and enough is ENOUGH!

Here’s just some of the outrageous tidbits from just the last three days of this week:

“These New Outbreaks Doom Us.” – It is one of the more prevailing messaging points currently. “These spikes are as bad as the original wave.” This is the rationale that they use to reverse the restarts. Gavin Newsom is literally toying with his own residents in California as though they are game pieces. Shutting down most other eateries while specifically allowing his personal favorite to stay open. Allowing counties to already declare that they need to return to at-home learning for the entire 2020-2021 school year. Yet if these outbreaks are evidence of a mass problem why do our numbers not even qualify as technically “epidemic” status any longer? And for those who are being diagnosed doesn’t the fact that we have Hydroxychloroquine, Remdesvir, blood plasma and anti-cholesterols being prescribed with great effectiveness mean something?

https://www.realclearinvestigations.com/articles/2020/07/20/the_primary_subsources_guide_to_russiagate_as_told_to_the_fbi_124516.html

“If there was any denial going on it was the FBI’s, an agency in denial that its extraordinary investigation was crumbling.”

Much of the Crossfire Hurricane investigation into Donald Trump was built on the premise that Christopher Steele and his dossier were to be believed. This even though, early on, Steele’s claims failed to bear scrutiny. Just how far off the claims were became clear when the FBI interviewed Steele’s “Primary Subsource” over three days beginning on Feb. 9, 2017. Notes taken by FBI agents of those interviews were released by the Senate Judiciary Committee Friday afternoon.

The Primary Subsource was in reality Steele’s sole source, a long-time Russian-speaking contractor for the former British spy’s company, Orbis Business Intelligence. In turn, the Primary Subsource had a group of friends in Russia. All of their names remain redacted. From the FBI interviews it becomes clear that the Primary Subsource and his friends peddled warmed-over rumors and laughable gossip that Steele dressed up as formal intelligence memos.

Paul Manafort: The Steele dossier’s “Primary Subsource” admitted to the FBI “that he was ‘clueless’ about who Manafort was, and that this was a ‘strange task’ to have been given.”

Steele’s operation didn’t rely on great expertise, to judge from the Primary Subsource’s account. He described to the FBI the instructions Steele had given him sometime in the spring of 2016 regarding Paul Manafort: “Do you know [about] Manafort? Find out about Manafort’s dealings with Ukraine, his dealings with other countries, and any corrupt schemes.” The Primary Subsource admitted to the FBI “that he was ‘clueless’ about who Manafort was, and that this was a ‘strange task’ to have been given.”

https://spectator.us/weaponization-whining-harpers-cancel-culture/

Bill Buckley used to observe that liberals always say they are in favor of entertaining opinions opposed to their own but are then surprised to discover that there are opinions opposed to their own.

Bill died early in 2008 when the species homo liberalis was already under siege, his little squeaks for tolerance, at least in principle, drowned out by an inbred horde of professional victims, drunk on the cloying nectar of their own quivering sense of virtue.

These days students arrive for their bright college years with plump mental bottoms swaddled in moist moral nappies, their mouths puckering for the grateful nipple of energizing pabulum about the horrors of racism and prejudice, their tiny minds soothed by reassuring nostrums caressing their unshakeable sense of election. ‘Safe spaces’, ‘trigger warnings’, incessant bleatings about feeling offended and threatened because someone somewhere uttered a word they dislike, someone they disapprove of was invited to campus, someone wore an unacceptable hat or shirt or cooked ethnic food without permission.

At first it seemed partly risible, partly pathetic. But then one noticed the sharpened nails on those chubby digits, the spike-like teeth growing in those suckling mouths.

Welcome to the weaponization of whining, aka ‘cancel culture’. President Trump, speaking on July 3 at Mount Rushmore, connected the dots. ‘Angry mobs are trying to tear down statues of our Founders, deface our most sacred memorials and unleash a wave of violent crime in our cities,’ he noted. ‘One of their political weapons is “cancel culture” — driving people from their jobs, shaming dissenters and demanding total submission from anyone who disagrees. This is the very definition of totalitarianism, and it is completely alien to our culture and our values, and it has no place in the United States of America.’

https://www.frontpagemag.com/point/2020/07/portland-was-peacefully-rioting-until-feds-came-daniel-greenfield/

The mayor of Portland and the governor of Oregon have decided that violent leftist thugs should have the right to smash and burn anything they want.

The Federal government however has the right to protect its property. As Fort Sumter ought to have taught Democrat states last time around.

Democrats, predictably, claim that Federal law enforcement preventing violent attacks on Federal institutions is escalating the situation.

“Their presence here is actually leading to more violence and more vandalism,” Mayor Ted Wheeler insisted.

The obvious question is what does Mayor Wheeler propose to do? Nothing. Correction, he’s going to cut off the feds from being able to cooperate with local law enforcement because Portland and Oregon would like to double down on seceding from the Republic.

The working theory that the violence will stop if the thugs are allowed to run the place hasn’t worked out very well. And the media and their Democrat allies are doing everything possible to shift the subject by falsely claiming that Federal personnel aren’t wearing identification or whining that they’re using unmarked vehicles.

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/rick-moran/2020/07/19/theyre-liars-screams-a-black-woman-as-she-pours-paint-over-blm-mural-n661163

This may be one of the most underreported aspects of the entire “conversation” about race in America that’s been happening these last few months.

It may come as a huge surprise to the liberal media, but black people can actually think for themselves. And many of them do not want what Black Lives Matter is selling.

They don’t want to “defund the police.” They think all black lives matter, not just those who die as symbols of police brutality. Most blacks who hold contrary views to those expressed by Black Lives Matter keep quiet, either because they’re fearful of speaking their minds or out of a sense of racial solidarity.

But the point is that black opinion about these matters is not monolithic and probably a lot more complex than the media is bothering to report.

A woman in New York City is under arrest for defacing Mayor Bill de Blasio’s precious Black Lives Matter mural that is conveniently located in front of Donald Trump’s hotel. What she was saying when she vandalized the mural is what’s important.