RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://nationalinterest.org/blog/reboot/watch-out-academia-has-declared-war-military-history-198117

Fewer and fewer major universities promote world-class work in the military history field.

Here’s What You Need To Remember: In today’s great power competition, knowledge, critical thinking and prudent judgment are as vital as military hardware, artificial intelligence, and powerful economies. In our hyper-competitive world, we need all hands—and brains—on deck.

Distinguished war historian Max Hastings recently lamented, “In centers of learning across North America, the study of the past in general, and of wars in particular, is in spectacular eclipse.” This created a bit of a buzz among “classically” educated national security professionals—i.e., those who learned the blocking-and-tackling basics of their field through the study of history.

But this “buzzing” matters little. While they would like history to be used to help keep America safe, free and prosperous, these folks don’t control how history is taught and propagated. That’s controlled by American academia, American universities have no intention of fixing the problem. Instead, they are unilaterally disarming America’s knowledge base.

Crisis! What Crisis?

Fewer and fewer major universities promote world-class work in the military history field. There are probably two basic reasons for that. One is that, in this field, universities mostly function to produce scholars for other universities. As the demand for such academic scholars dissipates, so do universities’ investments in the field. And it’s a field particularly unattractive to foreign “investors.”

U.S. universities rake in billions in foreign investments. China alone averages a billion dollars a year. Pretty much all of it goes to hard science and engineering. Military history goes empty-handed.

https://pjmedia.com/columns/stephen-kruiser/2021/12/29/the-morning-briefing-dems-will-take-an-even-harder-run-at-destroying-america-in-2022-n1545096

Let’s get back to the Dems and their antics now.

As I am often given grief for frequently reminding people, we’re still less than a year into Biden’s God-awful tenure in the Oval Office and what potential relief we have on the horizon is still almost a year away. I mentioned in yesterday’s Briefing that eleven months could very well feel like eleven years. I sincerely hope that’s not the case but I’m a realist.

One thing I know for certain is that the Dems are in an all-around panic about next November. Sure, a lot can happen between now and then but, look around, this Biden mess most likely won’t be cleaned up by then.

Democrats are more focused on the long game than Republicans, however. Just because they’re down in the dumps at the moment doesn’t mean that they’re taking their eyes off of the various insane leftist prizes that they want.

My latest column dissects an Op-Ed that appeared in The Hill yesterday, and it perfectly illustrates just how focused the Dems still are. Here’s an overview:

A professor of politics named John Kenneth White has penned an opinion piece for The Hill titled “The Constitution isn’t working.” It’s an odd article because White actually gets a couple of things right at the beginning but eventually veers off into a boilerplate regurgitation of the leftist fever-dream wish list: nuke the Electoral College, JANUARY 6, reform the filibuster…yeah he had a ghostwriter from the Democratic National Committee working with him on this.

There were some valid points that professor White could have explored differently and given readers some real food for thought. It’s nigh on impossible for any Democrat to do something like that, however, because they are all basically automatons when it comes to the approved messaging. Here’s a snippet from near the end of White’s article that I didn’t include in mine:

It won’t be enough merely to reform the filibuster, add more justices to the Supreme Court, change presidents or surrender presidential powers to Congress. A document written in 1787 is inadequate for the 21st century. The Electoral College is poised to create more misfires, with popular vote winners not becoming president, as has happened twice already this century. Territorial expansion has resulted in 16 percent of the U.S. population controlling half the seats in the U.S. Senate.

He not only wants to blow up the Constitution, he then wants to blow it up a second time just to make sure.

https://amgreatness.com/2021/12/28/the-everlasting-covid-crisis/

In 1972, three black men, Melvin Cale, Louis Moore, and Henry D. Jackson, Jr., hijacked Southern Airways Flight 49, demanding $10 million and safe passage to Cuba. The hijacking lasted nearly 30 hours and involved multiple stops throughout the United States, Canada, and eventually, Cuba. In the process of negotiating with the FBI, the hijackers threatened to ram their aircraft, a Douglas DC-9, into the High Flux Isotope Reactor in Oak Ridge, Tennessee if their demands weren’t met.

Until that point, American airlines had resisted installing metal detectors in airports, worried that treating Americans like common criminals to board a plane would wreck their burgeoning industry. But that threat of nuclear attack, and the 130 other hijackings between 1968 and 1972, convinced the government to take a stand at last. In 1973, the FAA used its bureaucratic and administrative powers to make passenger screening mandatory. In 1974, Congress validated the requirement, ignoring passenger rights’ groups that protested the intrusive screening of luggage and persons in order to board aircraft. 

There is an important lesson here: Once the modern American state imposes surveillance measures it never relaxes them, even when the threat no longer exists. That’s why, even after American troops have left Afghanistan, Osama Bin Laden was killed, and ISIS has been destoyed, Americans are still removing their shoes in airports, treated like would-be terrorists for traveling. The humiliating X-ray machines that force grandmothers, children, and ordinary businessmen alike to stand like felons with their hands up while probing machines attempt to peek under their clothes at their naked bodies is the height of ritual humiliation.

The seeming elimination of this surveillance network’s reason to exist doesn’t mean these leftover policies of the war on terrorism are over—far from it! My children and grandchildren, barring some dramatic political shift, will be subject to the same post-9/11 security measures I grew up with. 

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/12/us-so-stupid-don-feder/

Bette Midler should wear a name tag that reads, “Hi, I’m a super-rich, Hollywood elitist who thinks Red Staters are sub-human.” But that would be superfluous.

After Sen. Joe Manchin announced that he could not support Biden’s $4.5 trillion Build Back Better/Socialism Forever Plan – which would have been gas on the raging fires inflation (now at almost a 40-year high) – Midler attacked his West Virginia constituents as “poor, illiterate and strung out.” I’m surprised she didn’t add something about their teeth and the marriage of first cousins.

Personally, I would rather live next-door to the average West Virginian than the typical denizen of Beverly Hills. (See, Bette, even though I voted for Trump twice, I can use big words.) Being called illiterate and strung out by a member of the entertainment conglomerate – who generally have the IQs of gnats and are only occasionally sober — is, to say the least, ironic.

This is not about the calorically-challenged, hideously unattractive, singer/ whatever, but the way “progressives” view us, and why the left is increasingly dangerous to life and liberty.

Bette’s tirade is only the latest chapter in the left’s war on normalcy. Back in 1993, the Washington Post described conservative Christians as “largely poor, uneducated and easy to command.”

I wrote at the time that I was a Jew who identified with the political agenda of the Christian right, owned several pairs of shoes, graduated from an East Coast university, was admitted to the practice of law in two states and considered myself an independent thinker, guided by reason.

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2021/12/harry_reid_dies.html

.I will observe the custom of waiting 24 hours after a death before making negative comments, but I have a question.

As is customary when a famous politician dies, tributes are pouring in for Harry Reid, who died of pancreatic cancer at the age of 82 Tuesday. Frankly, I have nothing nice to say about the man, but will observe the custom of waiting 24 hours after a death to offer any critical remarks.

But I wonder how long it will be until his co-religionist Mitt Romney, about whom Reid openly lied on the Senate floor claiming that Romney had paid no income taxes, offers words of tribute to him? Remember that when called out on his lie after the election, Reid’s response was, “Romney didn’t win, did he?”

According to The Salt Lake Tribune, the two men “reconciled” following the 2016 election. But as iof 5 years ago in late 2016, the two men were still exchanging barbs: Harry Reid: Mitt Romney lost all my respect. Romney: You lost my respect first.

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2021/12/dr_peter_mccullough_conducts_grand_rounds_on_covid_19.html

See and hear a brilliant man expound on a subject that he has devoted himself to for an intense, almost two years — like a half a million other interested persons, take a look at the Rumble video of Joe Rogan’s interview of Peter McCullough MD of Dallas Texas—put up on December 15, 2021 here.   Dr. McCullough described it as a” grand rounds” during the give and take of the interview, and it certainly was to me, a physician who has been at many grand rounds events in my 50 year career.  Grand Rounds is the Medical School or Hospital event where members of the Medical Department display their erudition and eloquence on matters of import—in the case of this interview Mr. Rogan was the Inquirer and Dr. McCullough the eager and well-prepared respondent.  Their performance was extraordinary on both sides—good penetrating pertinent questions by Rogan and satisfying answers from McCullough, backed by his command of the medical concepts and the research pertaining to the subject—COVID 19. 

Dr. McCullough is an Internist/Cardiologist of remarkable achievements; he graduated Alpha Omega Alpha from University of Texas Southwestern Medical School and trained at top institutions including the University of Washington, University of Michigan, and William Beaumont Hospital.  He is the Editor-in-Chief of Reviews in Cardiovascucular Medicine, and has authored over 650 published studies in the medical literature—an academic and clinical physician who provides care, teaches, does research and reviews other physicians’ research, and has served on federal agency committees overseeing drug and clinical research. 

https://issuesinsights.com/2021/12/29/biden-gives-covid-the-kamala-harris-cant-do-border-treatment/

President Joe Biden, the fellow who promised to end the coronavirus pandemic if we’d just elect him to the nation’s highest office, has officially given up the battle he swore he’d win. It’s now someone else’s problem.

Candidate Biden swore before the entire country just days before the 2020 election that “I’m going to shut down the virus.” But not only has he not stopped its spread, under current trends it will have within a month – the coming winter of death – killed more on his watch than it did while Donald Trump was president. Nearly 385,000 have died from COVID-19 since Jan. 20, far more than the 220,000 dead under Trump that Biden said in October 2020 was a toll so unacceptable that Trump should “not remain as president of the United States of America.”

Under Biden’s standard, he should have long ago resigned from office. Instead, he’s admitted that he couldn’t handle the virus as promised, and passed the buck to the states.

“There is no federal solution,” he said Monday during a call with American governors. “This gets solved at the state level.”

This should surprise no one. Just two – two – days after taking office, Biden was already backing off his campaign pledge. “There’s nothing we can do,” he said on Jan. 22, “to change the trajectory of the pandemic in the next several months.”

Abdication of duty is typical of this administration. In one of its more well-known failures, Vice President Kamala Harris has done nothing to fix the immigration crisis on the southern border that she was appointed to resolve. Her refusal to do her job mirrors Biden’s punt on the pandemic. Apparently the work was just too hard.

We won’t blame Biden for failing to live up to his vow, though. It was impossible to keep anyway. Governments can’t stop pandemics. This should be clear to everyone by now. Viruses don’t respond to legislation or executive orders. Fifteen days to flatten the curve was meaningless to this virus. So are lockdowns. It doesn’t care which party is in the White House nor who is or who isn’t sending “mean” tweets.

But we will blame Biden for making a guarantee he couldn’t back up. He either knew he couldn’t kill the virus, yet said he could anyway, which makes him unfit for office because he used a blatant lie to rise to power. Or he simply wasn’t smart enough to know he couldn’t do it, which also disqualifies him.

https://thefederalist.com/2021/12/27/13-happenings-in-2021-that-i-never-would-have-believed-5-years-ago/

The world seemed to get closer to spinning out of its orbit in 2021. If you’d told me five years ago that men would be treated as women, criminals would not be prosecuted, and censorship would be widespread, I wouldn’t have believed you.

What were once considered the most basic, scientific truths (such as that you’re born with your sex and can’t change it) have broken down. Governments are no longer serving their primary function of providing security and protecting borders.

There are many more. As I reflected on the past year, here are just some of the many things that happened in 2021 that I never would have believed possible if someone had foretold them to me just five years ago.

https://townhall.com/columnists/larryoconnor/2021/12/28/the-biden-presidency-a-horrible-accident-of-history-n2600984

There’s an accident in the Oval Office. Not the kind of accident left on the rug in front of the Resolute Desk on a regular basis by the untrained, rowdy dogs the Biden’s sicced on the unwitting White House staff and Secret Service. I’m talking about the man who sits behind the resolute desk for his daily naps. 

Joe Biden is the accidental president. He is the result of an accident of American politics. 

His presidency will not be remembered with an asterisk, as my friend and fellow Townhall columnist Kurt Schlichter would say. No, it will be remembered… reviled… as the accident that it was, is and ever shall be. 

He became the Democrats’ nominee in 2020 by accident. He shouldn’t have even run in the first place. Everyone knows that’s true. 

If he was such a great man and gifted leader and our nation couldn’t do without him, why didn’t he just run for Obama’s third term in 2016 as the sitting vice president? This would’ve been the natural move for such a powerful, important, and wise leader to make. 

But he didn’t run in 2016. And did you notice that nobody seemed to notice? Nobody seemed to care. Even Obama sat by and let him languish as the Democrats openly joked about him and Hillary Clinton’s henchmen bullied him into officially declaring himself a non-candidate. 

At the time, the adoring and compliant media ran interference by declaring that he couldn’t possibly run for office due to the grief over losing his son Beau to cancer. Sure. Yeah. That’s what it was all about. I’m sure it had nothing to do with the fact that Biden had become a walking punchline and even then was seen as too old for the job. 

He ended up getting the 2020 nomination because the other choices at the time were Pete Buttegeig, Elizabeth Warren, and Bernie Sanders. 

Biden was the dream nominee given the nightmare of that choice. So it fell into his lap. 

Couple that accident with the very deliberate bastardization of our elections and voting protocols in 2020 under the dubious guise of fear over China’s diabolical gift to the world, Covid-19, and boom, we got President Accident.