RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17013/washington-tokenism

But what does the term “minority” mean in a democracy based on equal citizenship for all? The term minority denotes “less-ness” compared to the “more-ness” of another entity. However, how could one regard some citizens of a democratic state as “less” than other fellow citizens?

[T]he United States is about “We the People,” not “We the Minorities”. Democracy is a melting pot, not a salad bar.

America… started as a space for settlers from England but was put on the way of becoming a nation by “founding fathers”: Their “one nation under God” had the distinction of being the first constitutional democracy. Its motto became: Government of the People, by the People, for the People.

To pretend that this or that Cabinet minister was chosen because of his or her skin color, religious faith or other “minority” attribution is certainly not a compliment. If the choice is based not on the individual’s competence but on salad-bar considerations, it cannot be justified on democratic grounds. If, on the other hand, such considerations played no part in the choice, why make such a song-and-dance about “rainbowism” and progressive representation?

[F]ortunately, many members of the new Washington team have impressive academic and practical resumes. It is in everyone’s interest to hope that they will see themselves not as figures in a game of ethnic tokenism but the servants of the American demos at a difficult time.

Last month, as he started shaping his future Cabinet, President-elect Joe Biden promised to form a team that offers a better representation of America as it is. Judging by the welcome that his Cabinet has received across the globe, one may conclude that he has delivered on his promise.

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2021/01/if_one_mask_doesnt_work_try_two_or_three_or_four.html

Once upon a time, my primary specialty of anesthesiology was the most scientific of all the medical specialties that actually touch patients. Then I saw that Dr. Scott Segal, chair of Anesthesiology at Wake Forest Baptist Health in Winston-Salem, North Carolina told NBC news that we should consider wearing four — count ‘em — four face masks at once. I had thought that the insanity would stop at double masking. Welcome to the new normal. Panic porn has taken over even the medical community that should know better.

Albert Einstein is credited with the maxim that “Doing something a second time and expecting a different result is insanity.” So the first step in “Will more masks help?” is to ask, “Do masks help at all?” Lots of people have done a lot of good work on the mechanics of masks. Jose-Luis Jiminez at the University of Colorado and Linsey Marr at Virginia Tech are two excellent scientists who study the mechanics of the aerosols that transmit COVID-19. Both have demonstrated that masks will markedly reduce droplets. Numerous YouTube videos have also demonstrated that quite dramatically. Masks may even slightly reduce — not eliminate — aerosols.

The problem with all this work is that it starts from two primary assumptions. First is the questionable idea that droplets are responsible for spreading the bug. The second is that if we stop droplets, we will necessarily stop the virus. When the epidemic started, we were told to worry about droplets from speaking, singing, and sneezing. But while those can travel many feet, they follow a spitball’s path to the floor, where they cause no further problems. Unless someone sneezes directly in your face from close range as you are inhaling, they can’t get inside your lungs to make you sick.

https://thehill.com/opinion/white-house/536317-by-his-own-definition-biden-is-already-governing-like-a-dictator

“I have this strange notion, we are a democracy … if you can’t get the votes … you can’t [legislate] by executive order unless you’re a dictator. We’re a democracy. We need consensus.” 

Those are the words of Joe Biden. And, no, this isn’t a matter of unearthing a clip from the 1980s or ’90s in an attempt to play a game of gotcha on some antiquated flip-flop. That’s Democratic nominee Biden, less than three weeks before the 2020 presidential election, talking to ABC News’ George Stephanopoulos about the dangers of governing like a dictator.

In President Biden’s first week alone, he has signed 37 executive orders and actions as of Thursday. That’s 33 more than the guy he indirectly referred to as a dictator, in the form of predecessor Donald Trump. It’s 32 more than his old boss, Barack Obama, and 37 more than George W. Bush, who signed zero in his first week as president. 

“With unity we can go do great things, important things,” Biden said during his inaugural address. “Unity is the path forward. We must meet this moment as the United States of America. We’ve never failed in America when we’ve acted together.”

“Without unity, there is no peace, only bitterness and fury. No progress, only exhausting outrage. No nation, only a state of chaos. This is our historic moment of crisis and challenge, and unity is the path forward,” he also said, in a speech lauded by those on both sides of the political aisle. 

https://justthenews.com/government/security/evidence-pre-planned-capitol-attack-grows-experts-say-case-weakens-tying-trump

Growing evidence of advance planning and coordination of the Jan. 6 storming of the Capitol undermines claims that the rioters were responding spontaneously to former President Trump’s speech to supporters about a mile and a half away, according to legal and intelligence experts.

As Senate Democrats mull their options for convicting or censuring Trump and banning him from future public office for allegedly inciting insurrection, experts said their incitement case against him was dealt a severe blow this week when federal prosecutors charged three men in the Capitol attack, alleging their communication and coordination dated back to November. 

For speech to meet the threshold of incitement, a speaker must, first, indicate a desire for violence and, second, demonstrate a capability or reasonable indication of capability to carry out the violence, according to Kevin Brock, former assistant director of intelligence for the FBI.

In Trump’s case, Brock said, there were neither.

In an interview Thursday, Brock told Just the News he listened to Trump’s entire Jan. 6 speech. “I didn’t hear a single word about — or anything that would trigger a reasonable person to believe that he was inciting— violence,” he said. “He even used the words ‘peaceful’ and ‘respectful.'”

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/cuomo-blames-nursing-home-scandal-on-political-attack-by-trump-admin

In his first public comments since a scathing attorney general report finding New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s administration undercounted nursing home deaths, the governor on Friday argued criticisms of him were a “political attack” that began with the Trump administration. 

“That was mean,” Cuomo said when the federal government blamed New York and other states for the nursing home COVID-19 deaths.

“Where this starts is frankly a political attack from the prior federal administration and HHS… Michael Caputo,” the Democratic governor continued.

Caputo, assistant secretary of public affairs for the Health and Human Services Department under President Trump, fired back immediately in a statement: “Early on, experts at the Health and Human Services administration identified Cuomo’s foolish executive order as a primary cause for thousands of nursing home COVID deaths in New York. He’s right, I called him out on it immediately… Cuomo is personally responsible for thousands of unnecessary nursing home deaths and he must be held accountable.”

New York Governor Andrew Cuomo may finally be facing a partial reckoning for sending elderly Covid patients back into nursing homes, thereby spreading the disease to the most vulnerable group of all, the elderly.  New York State also has the highest Covid death toll (42,000) but is only the fourth largest state by population. Yet Cuomo has written a book crediting his performance as magnificent and has enjoyed favorable media treatment, and until now high levels of public approval.  

Thanks to a report by New York Attorney General Letitia James, it is now on the public record that the Covid deaths among nursing home residents were undercounted by as much as 50%, mostly thanks to the trick of failing to count the deaths of those who were readmitted to hospitals and died there.

CNBC writes:

The investigation found that the number of Covid deaths among nursing home residents in some facilities rose by more than 50% when residents who died in the hospital are counted. The state’s official Covid-19 death toll in nursing homes, which stands at more than 8,700, excludes patients who died after being transported to a hospital.

Democratic Gov. Andrew Cuomo has faced criticism for failing to disclose the total number of nursing-home residents who have died of Covid-19. In her sweeping report, James, also a Democrat, found that “many nursing home residents died from Covid-19 in hospitals after being transferred from their nursing homes, which is not reflected in D.O.H.’s published total nursing home death data.”

In my book, sending Covid patients into nursing homes, where the risk of disease spread and lethality was highest, was nearly criminal. I also note that there was a financial interest in killing off elderly patients, whose nursing home care in many cases fell to the State of New York, costing it tens of thousands of dollars annually per resident/patient.