Incompetence + Arrogance = Woke Politically correct ideology is masking and contributing to the widespread failure of our institutions. By Victor Davis Hanson

https://amgreatness.com/2021/08/01/incompetence-arrogance-woke/

We know the nature of mass hysterias in history, and how they can overwhelm and paralyze what seem to be stable societies.  

We know the roots and origins of the cult of wokeness.  

And we know, too, how such insanity—from the Salem witch trials to Jacobinism to McCarthyism—can spread, despite alienating most of the population, through fear and the threat of personal ruin or worse. These are the dark sides of the tulip, hula-hoop, and pet-rock fads, the mass obsessions so suited to past affluent Western societies.  

But does wokeism serve another purpose as well? Specifically, does it either hide preexisting incompetence or fuel it?  

In the last 18 months, we have seen most of our major institutions go woke and spend considerable amounts of time, capital, and labor on what might be called “commissarism.” Yet in their zeal to rectify society in general and sermonize, virtue signal, pontificate, and perform to the public, many institutions are increasingly failing at what they were established to do. 

Of course, public servants have long suffered the “Bloomberg effect”—focusing on misdemeanors to virtue signal competence as penance for failing to solve the existential crises. If you cannot clear New York City of snow in a timely manner, then lecture the trapped on everything from global warming to the dangers of super-sized soft drinks. Yet wokeism is a bit different since it now pervades our societies as a pandemic of its own. 

Take Delta Airline CEO Ed Bastian. He earns $17 million in annual compensation, and lectures the state of Georgia and the nation at large on our supposedly racist voting laws. The issue at hand is mostly a requirement to show a valid ID to vote—in the manner one must present identification to enter the boarding area of Bastian’s planes. Surely if one should vote without an ID, why not then be allowed to board a Delta flight?

I also suggest the public try to call Delta’s consumer helplines to fix the airline’s post-quarantine screw-ups with credits, refunds, rebooking, and recalibrating charges. Just try it—but expect several hours of wait time on the phone. We know now Delta is woke, but what we don’t know is whether one’s past purchase of a ticket will ensure a spot on a Delta flight, or whether prior money or mileage credited will ever be returned or applied to future travel.  

A cynical observer might suggest that if Ed Bastian cannot ensure adequate consumer service, it won’t matter since he weighs in on voting laws. (Or is it worse than that? Because he pontificates on voting laws and other assorted woke issues, he thinks he can simply worry less about his own consumer services?) 

American Airlines CEO Doug Parker is woke, too. He has denounced a new Texas voting law likewise requiring tougher ID usage—although he later  admitted that he had never read the new statute before virtue signaling its illiberality.  

The Biggest ‘Super-Spreader’ Event: Biden’s Weak Border Illegals on the southern border and COVID go hand in hand. Jed Babbin

https://spectator.org/biden-the-super-spreader-border-and-covid/

If you aren’t confused and maybe a bit angered by all the COVID-related gobbledygook coming out of the Biden administration lately, you haven’t been paying attention.

The CDC has issued “guidance” that says even vaccinated people should start wearing masks indoors again, based on the fact that out of 161 million vaccinated Americans, just over six thousand have been hospitalized as a result of COVID. If you do the simple calculation, that means only 0.0038 percent of those vaccinated were hospitalized with COVID, odds lower than your chance of being hit by lightning.

The CDC also recommended that masks be worn by everyone — students and teachers alike — in K-12 schools. Good luck keeping masks on 6 or 7-year-old boys.

Meanwhile, Biden has ordered all federal civilian employees and contractors to either be vaccinated or to wear masks and get tested for the virus a couple of times a week. He would have ordered all military personnel to get vaccinated, but the law apparently prevents that because the vaccines are only approved for emergency use. Nevertheless, Biden ordered the Pentagon to determine “how and when” the COVID vaccine would be added to the list of required vaccines for members of the armed forces.

On Friday, CDC director Dr. Rochelle Walensky told Fox News that the surge in “Delta variant” cases in the southern U.S. wasn’t because of the enormous influx of illegal aliens. Walensky said:

“So as people come in, we are keeping migrants, as well as those communities, as safe as possible with the technical assistance and infection prevention guidelines from the CDC. . . . I would say that the percentages in the southern part of this country are really quite high. I don’t necessarily think we can attribute all of that to what’s going on at the southern border.”

Get Ready for the ‘No-Buy’ List First Big Tech censored speech. Now they want to shut deplorables out of the financial system. David Sacks

https://bariweiss.substack.com/p/get-ready-for-the-no-buy-list?token=

By any standard, David Sacks is a super successful entrepreneur and venture capitalist. He’s invested in companies including Airbnb, Bird, Eventbrite, Facebook, Houzz, Lyft, Palantir, Postmates, Reddit, Slack, SpaceX, Twitter, and Uber. Now he’s a general partner at Craft Ventures.

But that’s not the reason to listen to him. It’s because he’s deeply insightful and consistently ahead of the curve on issues including free speech and Big Tech, how to amend Section 230, San Francisco’s meltdown, and more. You might remember his name from this column I wrote a few months back. 

I don’t typically recommend Twitter to anyone I like. But if you’re already there, I strongly suggest following David.

—BW

When I helped create PayPal in 1999, it was in furtherance of a revolutionary idea. No longer would ordinary people be dependent on large financial institutions to start a business. 

Our democratized payment system caught fire and grew exponentially with millions of users who appreciated its ease and simplicity. Traditional banks were too slow and bureaucratic to adapt. Instead, the revolution we spawned two decades ago inspired new startups like Ally, Chime, Square, and Stripe, which have further expanded participation in the financial system. 

But now PayPal is turning its back on its original mission. It is now leading the charge to restrict participation by those it deems unworthy.

First, in January, PayPal blocked a Christian crowdfunding site that raised money to bring demonstrators to Washington on January 6. Then, in February, PayPal announced that it was working with the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) to ban users from the platform. This week the company announced it is partnering with the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) to investigate and shut down accounts that the ADL considers too extreme. 

Why is this a problem? Isn’t it perfectly reasonable to make sure bad actors don’t fund hate through these platforms?

I’m a Jewish American who has special appreciation for the ADL’s historical role as a watchdog against antisemitism. Whether it came from the Aryan Nation or the Nation of Islam, the ADL did admirable work in combatting it. But the ADL has changed. Like the Southern Poverty Law Center, the organization has broadened its portfolio from antisemitism (or racism in the SPLC’s case) to cover what it considers to be “hate” or “extremism” in general. 

The new ADL opposed the Supreme Court nomination of Brett Kavanaugh because of his “hostility to reproductive freedom.” It partnered with such beacons of philosemitism as Al Sharpton (you read that right) to boycott Facebook for allowing “hate speech on their platform.” It opposed Trump’s executive order banning Critical Race Theory in federal government training. And it called for Fox News to fire Tucker Carlson for his comments on immigration.

Whether one agrees with any of these positions is beside the point. The point is that the ADL, like the SPLC, now weighs in on issues far beyond its original purview. 

Just as there is no set definition of “hate speech” that everyone agrees upon, the definition of a “hate group” is nebulous and ripe for overuse by those with an agenda. So it should come as no surprise that the ever-increasing list of suspects has grown from unquestionable hate groups, like neo-nazis and the KKK, to organizations who espouse socially conservative views, like the Family Research Council, religious liberty advocates, and even groups concerned with election integrity.

“Inflation” by Sydney Williams

Selected Writings of Ludwig von Mises, Chapter 9

Are we or are we not, in the early stages of an inflation surge? The question is important because the answer has consequences that affect us all – from the daily cost of bread and energy to investment and retirement accounts.

 

The President and the Federal Reserve claim inflation is not a problem. On July 19, Mr. Biden spoke at the White House: “Our experts believe and the data shows that most of the price increases we’ve seen are – were – expected and expected to be temporary.” In February, in testimony to Congress, Fed Chairman Jerome Powell said that the growth in money supply, specifically M2, “doesn’t really have important implications.” Upticks in inflation are “anomalous and transitory.” Nevertheless, one wonders. In a July 21 Wall Street Journal op-ed, John Greenwood, chief economist of Invesco and Steve Hanke, professor of applied economics at Johns Hopkins, wrote: “Since March 2020, M2 has been growing at an average annualized rate of 23.9% – the fastest rate since World War II.” The Fed’s target rate for inflation is two percent; however, for April, the CPI was 4.2%; for May, 5% and for June, 5.4%. The PCE (Personal Consumption Expenditures) price index – the index the Fed uses as their primary source for inflation – rose 6.4% in the second quarter versus 3.8% in the first quarter. If inflation is nothing to worry about, try telling that to families living on a median wage or to retirees on fixed incomes. Energy prices were up over 40% between December 31 and June 30, while food commodity prices were up close to 20 percent.

Since the start of the recession in February 2020 (which lasted only two months according to the National Bureau of Economic Research!), the Federal Reserve has retained a policy of near-zero interest rates and $120 billion in monthly bond purchases. When the Fed purchases Treasury’s they add to the money supply. Federal debt now amounts to 119% of GDP. The last time federal debt exceeded GDP was in 1946, in the aftermath of World War II, when it stood at 106% of GDP. The federal deficit for fiscal 2021 is expected to be $3 trillion, much of which will be financed by the Federal Reserve. As the Wall Street Journal noted in their lead editorial on July 29: “You don’t have to be a cynic to wonder if the Fed privately now wants more inflation to ease that rising debt burden.” Paying back borrowed dollars with cheaper ones is a policy decision. Five percent inflation means that $100.00 invested in a Thirty-Year Treasury would be worth $23.00 at maturity, while the interest payments (currently 1.93%) would amount to less than $60.00 (before reinvestment) of a depreciating currency – attractive to the borrower but not for the investor. In 1919 John Maynard Keynes, in an essay entitled “The Economic Consequences of the Peace,” wrote: “By a continuing process of inflation, Governments can confiscate, secretly and unobserved, an important part of the wealth of their citizens.” Inflation is a tax that falls most heavily on retirees and the low income.

Fifty years ago (August 15, 1971), President Nixon ended the Bretton Woods Agreement, which called for the U.S. to redeem dollars presented by foreign governments at 1/35th of an ounce of gold. Ending the agreement made it easier for the U.S. Government to finance social programs, without raising the necessary taxes, but making inflation more likely. The Dollar, thus, became a fiat currency, meaning it was backed by the credit worthiness of the issuing government, not a physical commodity, like gold or silver. Fiat currencies lose value during times of economic and political uncertainty. Their numbers can be increased, ad hoc, at the will of the government

In a 1963 talk in India, Milton Friedman observed: “Inflation is always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon, in that it can be produced only by a more rapid increase in the quantity of money than in output.” His hypothesis is expressed in the equation MV = Py, where M is the supply of money, V is its velocity (the rate at which money is exchanged), P is the price level (using either PCE or CPI) and y is real gross domestic product (GDP). Thus, when V and y are constant, an increase in M means an increase in P. On the other hand, increased GDP growth may warrant an increase in the money supply, as well as its velocity. If price stability is the desired outcome, the Fed must carefully monitor the relationship between the supply of money, its velocity and GDP.

But are they, and will they? Over the past several years, the Fed has become politicized and less independent. Today, a former Fed Chairperson, Janet Yellen, serves as U.S. Secretary of the Treasury. Since the end of the last recession in 2009, the Fed, pressured by the Obama and Trump White Houses, kept interest rates at historically low levels. In the past two years, since the onset of the pandemic, the growth in money supply has been high, driven by increased government spending, much of which has been funded by the Federal Reserve’s bond purchases. However, velocity of M2 fell by 21% during 2020, reflecting declines in consumer and business spending caused by COVID. So, inflation was not a concern in 2020. However, with the economy picking up speed, the velocity of money has accelerated, and the money supply continues to expand, creating inflationary pressures. Will that trend continue?

The Federal Government’s proposed spending plans, especially the $3.5 trillion budget plan, will require the issuance of new bonds, along with new taxes that act as a retardant on GDP growth. While GDP is now above pre-pandemic levels, economic growth in second quarter was below expectations, perhaps a warning sign. Higher debt loads have a natural tendency to increase interest rates, something Washington does not want, so there will be pressure for the Fed to continue bond purchases. Using Friedman’s formula, can GDP growth equal the increase in money supply and velocity, without an increase in price (inflation)? The truth is we don’t know, or, at least, I don’t. But I worry.

Debt to GDP is at record levels for a peace time economy. Budget deficits are the highest since World War II. The fiscal 2021 federal budget outlays will represent about 29% of GDP, five percentage points higher than a year ago. Will higher government spending boost GDP growth, or will it impede the private economy? Near the conclusion of his lecture quoted in the rubric, Ludwig von Mises said, “One of the privileges of a rich man is that he can afford to be foolish much longer than a poor one.” The Federal Reserve has a challenge. It must navigate between the Charybdis of inflation and the Scylla of excessive federal spending and debt. Can they do that without debauching the currency? Let us hope so. In his 1919 speech quoted above, Keynes began: “Lenin is said to have declared the best way to destroy the capitalist system is to debauch the currency.” Is that what we are doing?

I am not predicting a return to the 1970s inflation or something worse. But I worry. As a country, we are that rich man to whom von Mises referred. Let us pray we will not be more foolish than we have been.

GOOD NEWS FROM AMAZING ISRAEL FROM MICHAEL ORDMAN

There is so much smart hi-tech innovation in this week’s positive Israel newsletter. Medical news includes novel ways to block the coronavirus and cancer growth; Artificial Intelligence to diagnose Covid severity, detect cancer, and train surgeons; and technology for amputees to use technology. There are major smart Israeli technological advances in Israeli microchips, cybersecurity, 3D-printing, agriculture, greenhouses, e-commerce and marketing. Israeli medals at the Tokyo Olympics maybe in short supply, but Israeli high school students have won many medals at the International Math Olympiad. Finally, Israeli transplant patients and new immigrants have made smart life-changing decisions that will greatly benefit their health and future happiness.

And, to add to the above captioned comments from Michael Ordman, Israel’s contributions provide hope to the injured and ill, and brighter and more efficient technology for a better future to billions of citizens in every corner of the globe.  rsk

www.verygoodnewsisrael.blogspot.com 

 

ISRAEL’S MEDICAL ACHIEVEMENTS
 
No entry for coronavirus. Israel’s Redhill has completed its Phase 2 / 3 clinical trials of its opaganib treatment on 475 coronavirus patients in Israel, Europe and Brazil. In a few weeks it will declare the results. Opaganib works on the patient rather than the virus, preventing the body from allowing the virus to enter the host cells.
https://worldisraelnews.com/israeli-research-a-simple-pill-to-treat-covid-19/
 
European approval for Covid severity test. Israel’s MeMed (see here previously) has received Europe’s CE mark for its Covid-19 Severity disease management solution. The 15-min test measures proteins from serum samples and applies machine learning to identify patients likely to suffer a severe form of coronavirus infection.
https://www.calcalistech.com/ctech/articles/0,7340,L-3913362,00.html
 
Diagnosing cancer in 17 European countries. Unilabs, one of Europe’s largest diagnostics companies, is to implement the AI-based cancer diagnostic software from Israel’s Ibex Medical Analytics (see here previously). The initial rollout will begin in Sweden and then continue to 16 more European countries.
https://www.timesofisrael.com/swiss-diagnostic-firm-unilabs-to-use-ibex-cancer-detecting-tech-in-labs/  
 
Helping amputees regain hands-on control. Israel’s 6degrees has developed MyMove – a personalized motion-based & touch-free wearable, enabling the disabled to gain intuitive control over any smart device. It also helps rehabilitate injured patients, studying movements similar to how a voice-activated device “learns”.
https://www.calcalistech.com/ctech/articles/0,7340,L-3913292,00.html   https://www.6degrees.tech/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AbZIVpv9Kp4  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ig60PQdYroY
 
Mayo Clinic to bring Israeli AI to US surgical rooms. Mayo Clinic is partnering Israeli-founded Theator (see here previously) to bring its artificial intelligence and computer vision technologies to surgical rooms in the US. Theator will support Mayo’s urologists and gynecologists with pre-op preparation and post-op debriefing.
https://www.timesofisrael.com/israel-founded-theator-to-work-with-mayo-clinic-to-bring-ai-to-surgical-rooms/  
 
Medical cooperation with UAE. (TY WIN & I24 News) Israel’s Sheba Medical Center has signed two agreements with health authorities in Dubai and Abu Dhabi. They cover medical research and medical tourism. Sheba is currently treating 300 UAE diabetics high blood pressure patients both in Israel and with telemedicine.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xYLN3zE2RIA
 
Six-way kidney transplant includes UAE couple. For the first time an Israeli kidney exchange has included patients in the UAE. Shani at Sheba gave her kidney to a woman in Abu Dhabi whose daughter gave her kidney to a woman in Haifa whose husband donated his kidney to Shani’s mother.  Wishing a speedy recovery to all.
https://www.timesofisrael.com/3-women-receive-kidneys-in-israel-uae-organ-exchange-1st-with-arab-state/
https://www.khaleejtimes.com/news/abraham-accords-uae-patient-to-get-a-kidney-from-israeli-woman
 
The gift of speech. Shambhavi “Sam” Jha’s cleft palate and lip her made it hard to breathe, hear and talk, despite operations in her native India. After her father moved to Israel as manager of an Indian Bank, Sam was given life-changing treatment at Israel’s Meir hospital and is now studying psychology at Tel Aviv University.
https://www.jpost.com/breaking-news/meir-medical-center-gives-indian-patient-the-gift-of-being-able-to-talk-675147
 
Israel’s global fight against Covid-19. In the past year, United with Israel (UWI) published over 2,000 articles and 60 videos in English, Spanish, French and Portuguese about Israel’s activities to combat Covid-19. UWI is a Genesis Foundation “Speak Out for Israel” campaign non-profit organization promoting the truth about Israel.
https://unitedwithisrael.org/report-israels-global-fight-against-covid-19/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9LPbpk2jgrs&t=1s

The Jabotinsky Paradox How could the man who at one point openly scorned religion also be the forefather of the political coalition that ensured for it a key place in Israeli life?The Jabotinsky Paradox How could the man who at one point openly scorned religion also be the forefather of the political coalition that ensured for it a key place in Israeli life?

https://mosaicmagazine.com/essay/israel-zionism/2021/08/the-jabotinsky-paradox/?utm_source=

In 1919, a fierce debate broke out among the Jews of the Land of Israel, much like the one raging in the U.S. at the same time, over the question of whether women should be allowed to vote in the emerging institutions of Jewish self-government. The debate pitted secular Jews against the Orthodox, and especially members of the staunchly traditionalist Old Yishuv, so called because it had been established before the Zionist pioneers began to arrive in the 1880s. Despite his reputation as a moderate, Abraham Isaac ha-Kohen Kook, the chief rabbi of Jerusalem—and soon thereafter of Palestine—came out against women’s suffrage. Vladimir Jabotinsky, a prominent anti-socialist Zionist who in 1925 would found the right-wing Revisionist movement (the precursor of today’s Likud), was incensed. To him, Rabbi Kook and his supporters were ignoramuses “who came out of a hole in the wall . . . and never heard the name of John Stuart Mill.”

Such harsh rhetoric was typical of Jabotinsky at the time. A secular Jew himself, he saw modern Jewish nationalism as part of a Western secular revolution, and he aspired to create a Jewish state on a classical-liberal model, with religion having no official role in government. In his mind the attachment of many Jews to their religious practices was a symptom of their backwardness.

But fifteen years later, in 1934, he wrote the following about Kook, with whom he had by this time become personally acquainted:

You, too, who never saw Rabbi Kook, . . . cannot but sense that behind all this stands a rare and precious human figure, a soul soaring in a singular world of sublime and noble ideals, constructing its daily life according to a timeless imperative, seeing in every tiny phenomenon a reflection of a wondrous mystery, the shadow of the shadow of the sh’khinah [divine presence].

It wasn’t only Rabbi Kook who had transformed in Jabotinsky’s mind from ignoramus to soaring soul. Jabotinsky’s perspective on Judaism itself underwent a similar transformation. While he never lost his commitment to classical liberalism or to its its conception of the separation of religion from the state, in the latter part of his life Vladimir Jabotinsky abandoned his secularism, and came to see religion as a spiritual necessity for both the individual and society.

This transformation in Jabotinsky’s thinking has gone largely unnoticed by scholars (with one prominent exception), who still tend to see him as a staunch secularist—as do both his admirers and his detractors. Why did Jabotinsky undergo this change of heart? How did he reinterpret the meaning of religion and faith, and why has this aspect of his thinking been overlooked? I hope to dispense with some of the myths about Jabotinsky, especially the old-fashioned notion, which originated with his political enemies, that he was a militarist, an authoritarian, and even a fascist. He possessed, instead, one of the subtlest and most insightful minds in the history of Zionism.

It can’t happen here? It is happening here! By Patricia McCarthy

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2021/07/it_cant_happen_here_it_emisem_happening_here.html

Sinclair Lewis’s novel of 1935, It Can’t Happen Here, was published amid the rise of fascism in Europe. The book is about the political career of fictional Buzz Windrip, who is elected President in 1936, defeating FDR with a campaign promising a return to traditional values, drastic social and economic reforms (he promises every American $5k).  Once elected, he becomes a totalitarian tyrant complete with his own paramilitary force called the Minute Men!  

Windrip is Lewis’s version of an American Hitler and/or Mussolini.  But consider the parallels with the current occupant of the Oval Office. Windrip outlaws dissent (consider the Biden administration’s partnership with big tech to censor opposing opinions). He, Windrip, imprisons his critics just as Biden has jailed anyone present at the Capitol on January 6. Biden has his own Minute Men, the FBI as well a couple of other paramilitary groups in service of his agenda – Antifa and BLM.  They are his shock troops that, like Windrip’s thugs, terrorize his opponents, freedom-loving, independent thinking Americans.  

Like Biden, Buzz Windrip abrogated the rights of civilians and divided the nation into “administrative sectors” to be managed by federal “Corpo” authorities and enforced by his Minute Men.  Pelosi is now installing branches of the Capitol Police throughout the country to seek out perceived threats to members of Congress.  The similarities to Lewis’s two-dimensional dictator and the Biden regime are chilling. 

As in the novel, opponents of the Obama/Biden regime have  been found guilty until proven innocent of un-committed crimes, from Gen. Michael Flynn to Roger Stone, to anyone who worked for Trump to the 1/6 protesters, by corrupt judges in kangaroo courts whipped up by a manic, historically ignorant media that loathe anyone or anything remotely conservative or constitutional.  Viciously opposed to Donald Trump, the mainstream media covered for the massive crimes against the nation that were occurring from the day Trump became the Republican presidential candidate.  The left invented the Russia collusion narrative out of thin air.  It was pursued as legitimate by the FBI, the DOJ, the CIA and our despicable journalist class.  All of them very likely knew it was false from the outset, but they all colluded to damage a President who actually meant to represent the people, not just the ruling elite.  The swamp, left and right, was threatened and fought back with the ferocity of a cornered animal. With the 2020 election, they think they’ve won, but have they?

This quote from Lewis’ book perfectly describes Joe Biden:  

“The Senator was vulgar, almost illiterate, a public liar easily detected, and in his “ideas” almost idiotic, while his celebrated piety was that of a traveling salesman for church furniture, and his yet more celebrated humor the sly cynicism of a country store.  Certainly there was nothing exhilarating in the actual words of his speeches, nor anything convincing in his philosophy. His political platforms were only wings of a windmill.” 

Indeed.  Biden cannot utter a coherent sentence.  He is the face of a corrupt band of radicals who, along with Obama, vowed to “transform America.”  He was fraudulently installed and has little actual personal support.  The Trump presidency rendered the left well and truly deranged, without any moral compunctions going forward.  The man and his supporters had to be destroyed just like Lewis’s Buzz Windrip’s opponents had to be ruined.

The protagonist in Sinclair’s novel is a journalist, Doremous Jessup, who founds an organization to fight Windrip’s destructive policies.  He founds a newspaper and publishes accounts of Windrip’s abuses. Jessup’s counterparts in our alternative media are the champions of truth and there are more and more of them every day.  Big tech tries to silence them, but they are proliferating faster than they can censor them.   The massive, life-long corruption of the Biden family is now a known fact.  The depravity of Biden’s son Hunter has been revealed.  The corruption at the DOJ and FBI is being exposed.  It was the FBI that set up the fake kidnapping attempt of Gretchen Whitmer and perhaps even had a hand in orchestrating the event of January 6.  The truth will out. 

The radical Democrat media of today ignores the crimes and abuses of power by leftists but the Doremus Jessups of 2021 America do not.  The truth is out there despite the suppression tactics of this administration, its handmaidens in the media and big tech.  Like the villain of the novel, Biden has incarcerated hundreds of non-violent  people who were present at the Capitol on 1/6.  The DOJ calls them “enemies of the state,”  their protest an insurrection.  

But not one of them was armed; none have been charged with insurrection.  They are being held without bail while the hundreds of rioters/looters/arsonists of the summer of 2020 are free as birds.  This is the stuff of communist China, the Soviet Union, Venezuela and Castro’s Cuba.  Sinclair Lewis, like Orwell and Huxley, knew of what they wrote.  Tyrants are with us always and when they get power are lethal. “Tyranny is always better organized than freedom.”  – Charles Peguy

No One Can Disagree with Socialism The idea that religion must be expelled from all public places is a lie and a fraud—a Marxist trojan horse: The goal isn’t to expel all religion. The goal is to expel all competing religions. By Dan Gelernter

https://amgreatness.com/2021/07/27/no-one-can-disagree-with-socialism/

“Black Widow” star David Harbour says he doesn’t know “that there’s anyone who could disagree with socialist ideology.” So does this mean he’ll be returning the part of his multimillion-dollar salary that is beyond his “needs”? Of course not. There is no logic in ideology. He is a believer. That is enough. 

The French revolutionaries believed in reason so deeply that if you disagreed with them they’d cut off your head. 

The French Revolution began, as do all modern Communist revolutions, with the abolition of Christianity. Not the abolition of religion, or even state religion, but Christianity. The French fully intended to have a state religion, complete with “Temples of Reason” (Notre Dame was turned into one). The crucifix was replaced with a symbolic “torch of truth.” 

Fascism, which Winston Churchill called the “shadow, or ugly child of Communism,” was identical in this respect: Nazi Germany was to replace its cathedrals with Hitler Kirche, in which Mein Kampf took the place place of the Bible and the crucifix was again removed, this time in favor of a sword. 

Marxism is not and has never been an atheist philosophy. When a Marxist tells you he’s an atheist, he’s lying. Marxism is the most aggressively dogmatic religion in the world. Its struggle for ascendancy is a holy war in which Islam is the only serious competitor and all other religions seem resigned to a defensive posture (i.e., losing). 

To fight the Left effectively, we need to stop thinking of Marxism as a philosophical alternative to capitalism and instead think of it as a religious alternative to Christianity. 

Marxism is not anti-Christianity because belief in God is a crutch or an opiate of the masses. It simply recognizes that you cannot believe in two gods at once. Marxism and Christianity are rival religions, and it’s no more possible to believe in both than it is to believe simultaneously in Judaism and Islam. 

In the Marxist religious structure, the supreme leader—Stalin, Mao, Castro, Xi—is God. Leftist intellectuals are priests. Government bureaucrats are Levites, making sure the ceremony runs smoothly and the sanctuary is guarded. There is a caste (“class”) system in which some are holy by virtue of their birth and others are damned for the same reason. Ordinary citizens in this religion have no role except to believe and to do as they are told: “Believe the science!” 

Stop the Fearmongering: Johns Hopkins Doctor Shreds Latest COVID Madness Peddled by CDC and Fauci Matt Vespa

https://townhall.com/tipsheet/mattvespa/2021/07/27/johns-hopkins-doctor-shreds-cdc-and-faucis-narrative-on-covid-again-n2593195

Fear is contagious. It’s almost as bad as the Delta variant. Again, is the new variant more transmissible? Yes. Is it deadlier? No. Does it make you sicker? No. Are those being impacted primarily the unvaccinated? Most definitely. So, when you want to increase vaccination rates, the government did what it did best: screw things up. Fully vaccinated people now must wear masks again in high-case areas. What constitutes a highly infectious area? Well, that’s not clear yet, but I’m sure the CDC and Dr. Anthony Fauci will make up some science fiction to justify this new mask mandate. The mandates are coming too. Not nationwide, Biden can’t do that yet due to the midterms, but federal agencies are one-by-one mandating it for workers who risk the loss of pay or their jobs if they refuse. 

Get vaccinated but also continue to live in fear. Yeah, no wonder why hesitancy is through the roof. All this move does is make the vaccine-hesitant dig in further and give anti-vaxxers all the ammunition they need to chip away at the credibility of the vaccines. You can’t be mad at the latter group when those who want us to get vaccinated offer all the ammunition to shoot that narrative down or at the very least question it—heavily.  

Well, take a break from being mad and read what Johns Hopkins doctor Dr. Marty Makary wrote about new studies about natural immunity which if ignored by Fauci and company. He also rehashed an old Fauci statistic that shreds the current push for new mask protocols and possible lockdowns (via WSJ) [emphasis mine]:

The news about the U.S. Covid pandemic is even better than you’ve heard. Some 80% to 85% of American adults are immune to the virus: More than 64% have received at least one vaccine dose and, of those who haven’t, roughly half have natural immunity from prior infection. There’s ample scientific evidence that natural immunity is effective and durable, and public-health leaders should pay it heed.

Only around 10% of Americans have had confirmed positive Covid tests, but four to six times as many have likely had the infection. A February study in Nature used antibody screenings in late summer 2020 to estimate there had been seven times as many actual cases as confirmed cases. A similar study, by the University of Albany and New York State Department of Health, revealed that by the end of March 2020—the first month of New York’s pandemic—23% of the city’s population had antibodies. That share necessarily increased as the pandemic spread.

[…]

Natural immunity is durable. Researchers from Washington University in St. Louis reported last month that 11 months after a mild infection immune cells were still capable of producing protective antibodies. The authors concluded that prior Covid infection induces a “robust” and “long-lived humoral immune response,” leading some scientists to suggest that natural immunity is probably lifelong. Because infection began months earlier than vaccination, we have more follow-up data on the duration of natural immunity than on vaccinated immunity.

‘Kamala, You’re Doing A Heckuva Job On The Border’

https://issuesinsights.com/2021/07/28/kamala-youre-doing-a-heckuva-job-on-the-border/

In the months since President Joe Biden tapped his vice president to run point on the border crisis, Kamala Harris’ poll numbers have plunged as the number of illegals crossing the border swells. Then again, her boss is the one who’s willing to spend $2 billion to stop building a border wall.

At his first press conference in March, a reporter asked Biden about the surge in illegal border crossings that just happened to coincide with his getting the keys to the White House.

“The truth of the matter is: Nothing has changed,” Biden said after he overturned numerous Trump administration border-control policies. “It happens every single, solitary year: There is a significant increase in the number of people coming to the border in the winter months of January, February, March.”

Biden even offered a weather-related causes why crossings jumped early in the year: “The reason they’re coming is that it’s the time they can travel with the least likelihood of dying on the way because of the heat in the desert, number one.”

Biden then put Harris in charge of the situation, saying that “I can think of nobody who is better qualified to do this.”

Since then, apprehensions of illegals at the border have climbed every month, even as the temperatures climbed. (See the nearby chart.)

I&I Chart

As the Albuquerque Journal notes:  “The number of migrant families they encountered at the border in June increased by 25% from the previous month even as summer temperatures rise in the deserts and mountain terrain of the southwestern borderlands.”

As of June, apprehensions had topped 1 million, with three months to go in the fiscal year. That’s more than double the number from all of FY 2020.

“It’s as bad as it’s been in memory,” the Center for Immigration Studies’ Todd Bensman told the Washington Times. “By every yardstick that exists, the border — and not just the border areas, but the interior areas now — are in crisis.”