RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://issuesinsights.com/2023/04/19/the-fda-needs-bold-reforms-instead-of-kicking-the-can-down-the-road/

When Dr. Robert Califf was selected by President Joe Biden for a second stint as Food and Drug Administration commissioner, we called it a safe but uninspired choice. Unfortunately, we have been proven right.

Califf is a distinguished academic cardiologist who specializes in clinical trial design, but the day-to-day regulatory decision-making happens at organizational levels below the commissioner, and he seems unwilling to engage with them. He has also made it clear that he’s not interested in criticism from the public, even though the FDA is required by law to consider public comments as part of the rulemaking process.

Dr. Califf did give some reason for hope last summer when he commissioned a review of the agency’s food and tobacco regulatory programs. We suspected that the report, prepared by the Reagan-Udall Foundation, would be a whitewash. But we are pleased to say we were partly wrong.

On the food front, the report echoed criticism from members of Congress, industry and public interest groups that there isn’t a single chain of command among various human food oversight offices, including the Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition and the Office of Food Policy and Response.

Now, a diverse group of stakeholders is unhappy with the reorganization plan the FDA announced in January and fleshed out further in late February, because it doesn’t fully integrate the all-important food inspection work into the new Human Foods program. 

At a House Oversight Subcommittee hearing in March, Frank Yiannas, who resigned earlier this year as the FDA’s deputy commissioner for food policy, testified that the agency’s ability to protect food safety is hindered by staff turnover, a siloed culture, and a lack of decision-making power. Roberta Wagner, the Consumer Brands Association’s vice president of regulatory and technical affairs, noted that an external study of the FDA has found the agency’s food regulation suffers from “constant turmoil” and “little motivation.”

https://issuesinsights.com/2023/04/19/signs-of-the-great-divorce-2-6-million-fled-counties-that-voted-for-biden-since-2020/

Is the country separating itself into two distinct camps? One increasingly leftist and the other trying desperately to cling to traditional American values? Census data seem to show that it very well could be underway.

Last week, we commented on recent population data showing that people have been fleeing urban areas, noting that these are mostly Democratically controlled, and we’ve pointed out that people have also been moving from red states to blue.

But we wanted to go deeper and get more precise numbers. So, we matched Census net migration data from mid-2020 through mid-2022 for all the nation’s 3,000-plus counties (or their equivalents) and compared that with how these counties voted in 2020. Our working assumption is that the results of the incredibly divisive 2020 election would be a good barometer of the devoutly held political views in those counties. 

What we found was striking: There has been a vast migration out of counties that voted for Joe Biden into those counties that voted to reelect Donald Trump.

Census data show a net internal migration of almost 2.6 million (2,584,459 to be exact) from blue counties to red since Biden was elected. (These figures don’t count immigrants or births or deaths, just those Americans moving from one location to another.)

More than 61% of the counties that voted for Biden in 2020 lost population, while 65% of Trump-supporting counties gained population.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/collateral-damage-of-a-smear-campaign-harlan-crow-clarence-thomas-texas-real-estate-americana-discourse-interview-75c89213?mod=opinion_lead_pos5

American politics lately feels like an endless game of—pardon the infelicitous word—delegitimation. The aim isn’t to convince voters that a political adversary is wrong or misguided, or even that he’s stupid or lying. It’s to assure the like-minded that he has no legitimate place in the public square and to drive him out if possible. 

The habits of delegitimation have become so familiar that it’s easy to forget how antidemocratic they are: political correctness and, more recently, cancel culture; the invention of “phobias”—homophobia, Islamophobia, transphobia—to characterize dissent as mental illness; the wanton attribution of racism, misogyny, fascism and white supremacy; and of course the easy insinuation that any political figure of whom one disapproves is guilty of crimes. 

The politics of delegitimation arose on the political left, an inheritance of 20th-century collectivist ideologies that saw no legitimacy in the liberal capitalist regimes they aimed to overthrow. But sizable segments of the American right now indulge in it, too. Donald Trump rose to power by treating his adversaries exactly as they treated him, and indeed as they had treated George W. Bush: as de facto illegitimate. Mr. Trump’s claims that Mexican-American judges have no right to rule against him, or that President Biden’s election was fraudulent, may be false. But they aren’t unique. 

The impulse to delegitimate is at its ugliest any time a Republican president nominates a judge to the Supreme Court. During their confirmation hearings all of the current court’s conservative justices, with the partial exception of John Roberts, were accused of engaging in disreputable behavior or of holding opinions so bizarre and regressive as to disqualify them from service. In the stated views of their critics, these judges weren’t just wrong; they were bad.

Now that the court’s conservatives have a tenuous 6-3 majority despite the efforts of their defamers, the work of delegitimation has broadened to sitting justices and the court itself. Some recent headlines: “Supreme Court Term Begins Amid Questions about Its Legitimacy” (Washington Post), “Is the Supreme Court Facing a Legitimacy Crisis?” (New York Times), “The Supreme Court Is Fighting Over Its Own Legitimacy” (CNN). These and similar stories are manifestly intended to precipitate the “legitimacy crisis” they pretend to report.

https://swtotd.blogspot.com/

There is a sentence in P.G. Wodehouse’s The Inimitable Jeeves, in which Bertie Wooster speaks to Jeeves, that reminds me of today’s listening-challenged politicians and pundits: “On the occasion when Aunt is calling Aunt like mastodons bellowing across the primaeval swamp…the clan has a tendency to ignore me.” Like Wodehouse’s Aunt Agatha, today’s politicians bellow and do not listen; so, concerns, if they are not of the woke variety, are ignored.

What have we become? Today’s transgender movement, with a biological male winning ‘woman of the year’ and with trans women athletes competing against biological females, is like watching a 1950s Hasty Pudding show. John Kerry and his crowd, in preaching of an impending climate apocalypse, remind us of a mythological Zeus hurling lightning bolts from atop Mount Olympus. Diversity, equity, and inclusion pronouncements could have been taken from Mad Magazine. Separate and segregated college graduation ceremonies are reminiscent of Jim Crow days: Dean Karayanis of The New York Sun recently wrote “that three dozen institutions from Yale to Ohio State are returning us to the days when ‘mixing the races’ was a secular sin, implementing policies that would make the most avowed Confederate grin.” Race and gender outrank merit in college selection and corporate advancement. Minorities, women, and the LBGTQ communities are told they are victims, and that they cannot rise above that appellation.

Political arrests and prosecutions remind us of Stalin’s Lavrentiy Beria: “Show me the man, and I will show you the crime.” Mass shootings elicit the expected response from the usual suspects: a Second Amendment defense from the right and more regulated sales of guns from the left. Ignored are the estimated 450 million guns already out there, many of them illegally acquired; gun safety rules, which in my youth came with the ownership of a firearm, are never mentioned by elected officials, and neither is the disturbing emotional behavior of most shooters as a possible cause. Declining birthrates will bring future demographic challenges, as the work force shrinks and the ranks of retirees expand. But progressives are focused on the right to abortion, at any time and any place. School choice is “fine for me but not for thee.” Families have disappeared into the maws of politicized governmental ‘communities,’ which encourage a lack of individual responsibility and accountability and that discourage the dignity of work and the benefits of personal independence. Future generations will wonder at today’s absurdities when preferred progressives’ ends were used to justify regressive means. In this overly sensitive world, there is no laughter.

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2023/04/they_fear_you.html

Long before the Department of Homeland Security attempted to justify the formal recognition of a “Disinformation Czar” to monitor Americans’ speech or news broke that the State Department had been using a foreign organization called the Global Disinformation Index to censor conservative voices here at home, it was clear that the war for free speech had begun.  For years, conservative websites struggled to survive financially as shadowbans and stealth blacklisting eliminated advertising revenues and throttled user engagement.  Online trolls infiltrated comment sections posting inflammatory content that could be used as false flag justifications to legally threaten or otherwise punish conservative forums.  Conservative content creators and their readers strenuously objected to the organized censorship war being waged against them, but few politicians, reporters, or pundits cared.

Now the cat is out of the bag, and neither government agencies nor their corporate co-conspirators are hiding their embrace of viewpoint discrimination.  The FBI continues to flag more language — including words as innocuous as “red pill,” “based,” and “Chad” — as extremist rhetoric.  Google blocked Right Side Broadcasting Network from covering President Trump’s Democrat-engineered Manhattan arraignment on YouTube, claiming that the censorship was necessary to combat “elections misinformation.”  A revolving door now exists to fill social media companies with employees from the ranks of the FBI, CIA, and Homeland Security.  Meanwhile, Klaus Schwab’s World Economic Forum has announced the hiring of millions of “information warriors” tasked with the mission to “seize control of the Internet” and serve as “digital first-responders” combating “misinformation.”  Already in France, one woman faces a $13,000 fine for calling King Macron “filth” on Facebook.  

As the American Uniparty’s collaboration with Schwab’s Marxist globalists continues to grow, expect these serious violations of the First Amendment’s protections for free speech to proliferate.  After all, in a remarkable display of political and bureaucratic goose-stepping, the District of Corruption’s occupying workforce has been nearly unanimous in its enthusiastic support for and adoration of Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky and his “new Western democracy.”  No matter how many jackboots Zelensky sends to shut down churches, crush opposing political parties, or silence dissenting citizens, the bombastic Washington despots who endlessly chirp about “Western virtues” are the same ones proclaiming their full-throated support for the worst kinds of tyranny.  Welcome to the “new America,” where ruling-class contempt for freedom is no longer disguised.

https://amgreatness.com/2023/04/17/can-we-do-anything-about-americas-decline/

Twenty-first-century America was on a trajectory of gradual decline—until it began to implode.

Was the accelerant the COVID-19 pandemic and unhinged lockdowns? Or was the catalyst the woke revolution fueled by the 2020 summer of exempted rioting, looting, arson, and violence? Or was it perhaps the deranged fixation on removing Donald Trump from the presidency and destroying the rule of law in the process? Or all that and more? 

Now with the election of Joe Biden, what had been a fast-tracked decline has accelerated at such an astonishing rate we can scarcely recognize our country.

Our largest cities are becoming uninhabitable—dilapidated, dangerous, and dysfunctional. The challenge is not just rampant crime, but the realization that if you, the citizen, are stabbed, shot, or beaten up on the street, the perpetrators may well be exempt from most punishments. And the victim either will be forgotten in his misery or, indeed, blamed for bringing such violence upon himself.

Urban schools are not places of instruction anymore. That fact is accepted by teachers’ unions, whose operative principle seems to be that the more hopeless the idea of educating urban youth is understood to be, the less burdensome the workload, and the greater their hazardous duty pay.

Urban chain stores are closing down on the principle that if police cannot or will not stop consumer violence and theft, then consumers there should not have any store to buy anything, anyway. If there is no store, how can it be looted or shop-lifted?

https://amgreatness.com/2023/04/17/house-gop-needs-to-take-the-road-show-home/

The House Judiciary Committee held a raucous hearing in the Big Apple on Monday to discuss New York City’s rising crime problem. Republicans sought to highlight the poor performance of Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, who is refusing to prosecute various crimes as he instead pursues a criminal case against Donald Trump, and leaving a tide of victims in his wake.

It’s fine, and perhaps politically shrewd, for the GOP to shine a light on crime-enabling local prosecutors jeopardizing the safety of their cities in exchange for partisan witch-hunts. But for the next hearing, congressional Republicans need only walk a few blocks from their House offices to the office of Matthew Graves, the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia.

Graves, the Biden campaign advisor who was appointed in 2021 to head what is arguably the most powerful U.S. Attorney’s office in the country, is accelerating the selective prosecution of Trump supporters for any involvement in the events of January 6 while at the same time declining to prosecute dangerous criminals in Washington, D.C. as the city descends into violent chaos. And unlike with Bragg, oversight of Graves is directly under the purview of Congress.

Graves is in the unique position of prosecuting both local and federal cases in the nation’s capital. Officials bragged in the Justice Department’s 2023 budget plan that Graves’ office “has undertaken an extraordinary effort to hold accountable those who engaged in criminal acts [on January 6] and is committed to using every appropriate tool to punish those criminal acts.” Congress subsequently approved a $34 million budget increase so Graves can hire at least 80 more attorneys solely for the purpose of prosecuting Trump supporters who protested Joe Biden’s election nearly 28 months ago.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/former-champion-swimmer-riley-gaines-assaulted-while-advocating-for-women-in-sports/

The scene at San Francisco State University was surreal. A champion female athlete speaking about maintaining the integrity of women’s sports was shouted down, assaulted, and chased from a speaking engagement sponsored by Turning Point USA.

The woman screaming “Trans rights are human rights” needs some sort of intervention — or a straitjacket.

Gaines has become a leading advocate for women in sports and has thus had a bullseye stuck on her back by radicals.

Washington Examiner:

As Gaines shared her experience competing against Lia Thomas, a biological male who identifies as a transgender female, a crowd of protesters could be heard chanting outside. The protesters eventually made their way to the room where Gaines was speaking, forcing her to evacuate.

As she was escorted by police, Gaines said she was physically hit.

“I’m OK currently, but an hour and a half later, I’m still barricaded in a room with ambushers on the outside yelling and threatening violence,” Gaines said.

“As police escorted me out of the event space to my current location, I was hit, physically, twice by what I presume was a male individual. This only assures me I’m doing the right thing.”

Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk called the attack “unacceptable.”

“This is unacceptable at an American college campus, even in San Francisco,” Kirk tweeted. “Pray for Riley Gaines and for our brave students at SFSU.”

The Independent Women’s Forum issued a statement of support for Gaines and condemned the violence against her.

“We strongly condemn the violence perpetrated against [IWF] spokeswoman Riley Gaines on  SFSU campus. Riley was violently accosted, ambushed, and physically assaulted during a speech on sex discrimination women face in their own single-sex sports category,” the group wrote on Twitter.

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/victoria-taft/2023/04/17/portlands-controlled-demolition-into-dystopia-may-be-unrecoverable-thanks-to-george-soros-and-dumb-voters-n1687820

You can’t say Portland had good intentions because they should have known that what they were trying to do wouldn’t “solve” the drug and homeless problems in the metro areas. Free-wheeling drugs and government tents have never worked anywhere they’ve been tried. Never. Not in San Francisco, not in Los Angeles, not in San Diego, and not in Seattle. But the we’re-smarter-than-you set just threw millions more at it, ignoring that Portland doesn’t just have a homeless problem; it’s got a drug problem. And predictably, things are worse.

Oregonians can blame their “progressive” leaders, George Soros, and the voters staring back at them in mirrors for this mess.

The governmental equivalent of the Bermuda Triangle — state progressives, Multnomah county actors, and Portland activists — have worked together to dispirit the people through their lawlessness, destroy their once beautiful metro area with tents and bodies strewn about, and make it a hospitable place, as a local photographer put it, “for people to come to our city to kill themselves.”

These progressives have chased out several retailers. On Monday, Pacific Northwest outdoor outfitter REI told its members it would close its doors in NW downtown, citing break-ins and thefts.

https://nypost.com/2023/04/17/budweiser-releases-new-pro-america-ad-with-iconic-mascot-in-wake-of-anheuser-busch-mulvaney-controversy/?dicbo=v2-dStmkAs

Budweiser has released a new patriotic advertisement as its parent company struggles with controversy over its endorsement partnership with transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney.

The advertisement, which was released on social media Friday, features one of Budweiser’s famous Clydesdale horses traversing the country from New York City to the Grand Canyon, passing by scenes in the American heartland as a narrator delivers a patriotic message.

“This is a story bigger than beer,” the ad’s narrator says in the ad. “This is the story of the American spirit.”

As the ad plays, the Clydesdale horse passes by some of the most famous American landmarks, showcasing the New York City skyline, the Lincoln Memorial in Washington DC, small towns, and farmland.

At one point, the ad showcases two people raising an American flag as one places her hand over her heart.

“Brewed for those who found opportunity in challenge and hope in tomorrow,” the ad’s narrator says as the horse passes by the flag raising duo and the Lincoln Memorial.

The patriotic ad comes as Anheuser-Busch, which owns Budweiser, continues to deal with backlash over a partnership between another one of its popular brands, Bud Light, and Mulvaney.

Anheuser-Busch has suffered a financial hit as calls to boycott its brands have spread across the country, with one Missouri bar owner telling Fox Business last week that sales of bottled Bud Light dropped 30%, while draft sales dropped 50%.