RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://quadrant.org.au/magazine/2021/12/corruption-just-isnt-what-it-used-to-be/

“Regulatory corruption is much worse than the traditional illicit-payment type, that is to say money passed under the table, for the latter can sometimes actually help to get things done where there are official obstacles to doing them, whereas the former politicises everything and is completely obstructive, uncreative and leads inevitably to the legalised looting of the public purse on a scale that the traditionally corrupt can only dream of, the difference being between wholesale and retail. Moreover, the more traditional kind of corruption is relatively easy to spot and clearly defined, and therefore potentially controllable by means of the law, insofar as anything that is consonant with human nature is controllable by the law, while the intellectual corruption of (say) regulations enforcing positive discrimination exerts a much more baleful effect on society and requires an assault on both freedom and truth.”

A delusion is defined as a fixed false belief that is impervious to reason or evidence and that is out of keeping with a person’s cultural background. The last condition has to be added because, without it, everyone would believe that all those who disagreed with him were deluded. A Muslim would think a Christian deluded, a Christian would think a Muslim deluded, and an atheist would think both deluded. If everyone is deluded, however, no one is. It is therefore dangerous to diagnose delusion in a politician just because you don’t like him.

Nevertheless, twenty years ago I felt that there must be something wrong—medically wrong—with Mr Blair, then Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. I could not quite put my finger on what it was, however. It came to me in a flash, though, like the illumination of Archimedes in his bath: he was deluded!

The communist Chinese-inflicted COVID virus and reactions by American Democrat politicians created devastating changes in the U.S. population in 2021, according to statistics revealed by the U.S. Census Bureau on Tuesday.

The U.S. experienced a “historic” decline in the number of children that were born, and Americans fled Leftist, freedom-sucking, gulag-like cities and states where Democrat dictators toyed with their constituents the way a cat plays with a flapping bird before devouring it.

First, Americans gave birth to a “record low” number of babies in 2021, in large part due to the pandemic.

The Wall Street Journal reported that although American population replacement has been going down since the 2008-2009 recession — another Democrat-fueled disaster — with “just 393,000 people in the year that ended July 1, including 148,000 more births than deaths … it was the first year in which growth from births exceeding deaths fell below net arrivals from abroad, according to the bureau.”

And there was also a “historic” migration of citizens, whose Democrat politicians issued mandates, lockdowns, and freedom-sucking COVID edicts ever their populations. And those states notched historic net population losses as droves of Americans fled to more free states.

Look at this map from the Census Bureau.
Source: U.S. Census Bureau

The map shows the states with the worst COVID restrictions and some of the highest crime rates lost American population.

The states with the worst net population loss — New York, California, and Illinois — chased out nearly 700,000 Americans to other states. Florida, Texas, Arizona, North Carolina, and Georgia had a net influx of 713,000 Americans to their freer and less-crowded states.

The Census Bureau reported:

Between 2020 and 2021, 33 states saw population increases and 17 states and the District of Columbia lost population, 11 of which had losses of over 10,000 people. This is a historically large number of states to lose population in a year.

Oregon and Washington, whose leaders imposed ridiculous COVID lockdowns and mandates, shockingly had a virtual net neutral change according to the Census Bureau, but Americans fled the tropical paradise of Hawaii due to its draconian lockdowns and mandates.

The top spot for population loss in 2021 was Washington, D.C., which reported that 2.9% of its population got the heck out of the nation’s capital.
Source: U.S. Census Bureau

Americans have voted with their feet, and they’ve shown that they will go to places where there is more freedom to conduct their own lives.

https://townhall.com/columnists/byronyork/2021/12/22/demolishing-democratic-delusions-n2600922

Sen. Joe Manchin’s announcement that he will not support the Democrats’ giant spending bill should not have been a surprise to anyone who has been watching Manchin for the last few months. Yet many Democrats, especially in the White House and in the progressive wing of the House of Representatives, appeared shocked when Manchin told Fox News’ Bret Baier, “I cannot vote to continue with this piece of legislation. I just can’t.”

They apparently believed Manchin would ultimately come around, and do so before Christmas. When he did not, they were stunned.

Their reaction is the latest manifestation of a mass delusion affecting Democrats in Washington. For nearly a year, since Jan. 20, 2021, they have believed they could enact a nation-changing agenda — shades of FDR and LBJ! — without having won a majority of seats in the U.S. Senate. Somehow, all on their own and without any Republican support, they could bring landmark legislation to a 50-50 tie vote in the Senate, and then have Vice President Kamala Harris break the tie in the Democrat’s favor. They seemed to forget that Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Lyndon Johnson had huge majorities in both House and Senate when they enacted sprawling New Deal and Great Society legislation, respectively.

Even the structure of their massive spending bill, which they called Build Back Better, was shaped by their lack of a Senate majority. Democratic leaders knew how hard it would be to get anything through the Senate — to keep all 50 of their own senators together — so they packed nearly the entire Biden agenda of social spending and climate projects into a one big bill. Then everyone on their side would have to vote for it, wouldn’t they?

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/la-sheriff-slams-careless-and-irresponsible-liberal-das-undoing-police-work/

The Los Angeles County sheriff slammed California’s liberal prosecutors on Tuesday, saying they are living in a “woke palace” and not facing the consequences of their decisions to undermine the work of law enforcement officers amid a surge in crime.

Sheriff Alex Villanueva said during an appearance on Fox News that liberal District Attorney George Gascon has declined to prosecute more than 12,000 cases after county deputies apprehended suspected criminals.

“So that is disheartening for any cop to think all their work is being undone by a careless and irresponsible district attorney,” he said. “But they’re not going to stop doing their job. The deputies … keep doing your job, don’t use the excuse of someone else not doing their job to avoid it – and it’s working.”

“So we’re making the effort out there,” he added. “What we need now is, we need responsible district attorneys who are going to file their cases. And if they want to play the role of public defender, they should just quit their job and go over to the public defenders – and everything they say makes perfect sense for a public defender, not a district attorney.”

Villanueva also reacted to San Francisco District Attorney Chesa Boudin’s claims that calls for action against recent crime spikes are “knee-jerk reactions” and that smash-and-grab looting in California is “not new.”

https://spectatorworld.com/topic/unicorns-crime-wave-woke-california/

A crime wave haunts blue-state America, and nowhere more so than in super-blue California. Los Angeles police chief Michel Moore is trying to assure residents and tourists that violent crime is not out of control, which is not at all reassuring. Police departments statewide are stressed, and finding able recruits is a struggle. Faced with surging gun violence and a dwindling number of police officers, Oakland has proposed $50,000 signing bonuses to veteran cops.

Since 2014, California voters have unshackled a fast-expanding criminal class that rolls expertly with the dice. Starting with Proposition 47, the state penal code has reduced many felonies to misdemeanors. Shoplifting and petty theft have been effectively decriminalized. Serious crimes go unprosecuted. Elected officials and residents alike prefer virtue theater to civic management.

One eighth of the nation’s residents live in the economic and cultural colossus of California, so what direction the state takes matters. Why its progressive leaders and their constituencies condone violence against persons and property, car break-ins, prostitution, open-air drug dealing, and aggressive begging remains puzzling.

https://justthenews.com/accountability/russia-and-ukraine-scandals/durham-zeroes-clinton-campaign-could-call-some-aides

Hillary Clinton’s team long fought to keep its ties to Christopher Steele’s dossier from public view, but Special Counsel John Durham is now making clear he has a strong interest in her campaign’s behavior during the Russia collusion probe. He is even suggesting some of her aides could be summoned as trial witnesses.

Durham’s earth-shaking revelation came inside a routine court filing this month in the case of Igor Y. Danchenko, a Russian analyst who was a primary source in 2016 for Steele’s now-infamous dossier. Danchenko has been charged with repeatedly lying to the FBI during the Russia collusion probe and has pleaded innocent.

Durham’s motion asked the presiding judge to determine whether Danchenko’s lawyers —Danny Onorato and Stuart Sears of the Schertler Onorato Mead & Sears law firm — pose a conflict of interest because the firm also represents the Hillary for America campaign as well as several former campaign officials in “matters before the special counsel.”

“The Clinton Campaign financed the opposition research reports, colloquially known as the ‘Dossier,’ that are central to the Indictment against the defendant,” the Durham team stated in the motion. “Accordingly, for the reasons set forth below, the government respectfully requests that the Court inquire into the potential conflict issues set forth herein.”