RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://victorhanson.com/our-neronian-super-bowl-part-two/

The game itself was well-played and exciting. But the entire spectacle is heading into a strange and ultimately suicidal territory. Before the National Anthem, there was sung and observed the “Black” national anthem of “Lift Every Voice and Sing.” It is a wonderful song, but no substitution for our common, shared National Anthem, if such a thing even still exists in the era of a fragmenting America.

The country is supposedly “one people” with one anthem. There are now as many “Latinos” as there are blacks. So why not a Latino national anthem? Ditto Asians. But is it fair to have just one ethnic anthem and not others? What will be the criteria of segregated anthems?

How strange: If in 1960 Bull Connor had dictated to blacks (and who knows, he may have?), “you sing your own ‘separate but equal’ anthem before the nation’s National Anthem,” he would have been dubbed a racist up north and a segregationist down south. So have we come full circle?

Are we following the universities, those beacons of enlightenment and morality, which boast of multiple graduations, all predicated on race or gender? We could devote 30 minutes of pregame time to various chauvinistic anthems, or simply junk the game altogether and sing dozens of anthems ad nauseam?

The NFL bragged that its Super Bowl won 112 million viewers. But that number still counts as a million short from last year, and one million fewer than 2015, when there were about 15 million fewer Americans than now.

True, the NFL has recovered from its dismal Covid/Kaepernick years. But it seems bent to follow the descending trajectory of the NBA. Last year’s final NBA championship game earned a mere 14 million viewers. That was up from the 8.5 million catastrophe of 2020—but far below the 35 million in 1998. How, a quarter-century ago, could there have been 65 million fewer Americans and yet over 20 million more viewers! Where over the last 25 years did those 20 million viewers go?

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2023/02/24/did_us_firms_help_propel_chinas_balloon_fleet_148906.html

Sen. Mark Kelly, who previously served as a decorated space shuttle pilot with NASA, waded into the Chinese spy balloon uproar early this week after keeping publicly mum about it for several weeks.

The Arizona Democrat said it makes no sense for the U.S. military to launch expensive missiles at weather balloons or other benign floating objects. Kelly was referring to a heat-seeking, air-to-air missile used in recent weeks to shoot down several high-flying aerial objects that the administration later suggested likely didn’t pose a threat. Earlier in the month, a U.S. Air Force F-22 shot down a Chinese surveillance balloon after it breached American airspace and floated across the country, setting off a firestorm in Washington.

Kelly, who is set to be inducted into the U.S. Astronauts Hall of Fame in May, says he’s working on legislation that would require weather balloons to carry transponders that would communicate with air traffic control systems to separate research balloons from mysterious objects.

“It would really help the Defense Department to be able to sort out what is civilian science payload, what’s a weather balloon, what’s a NASA balloon, what’s a private company in the United States doing, what might be even a U.S. military,” Kelly, who was tapped to chair a Senate Armed Services subcommittee amid the balloon controversy, told the Associated Press.

Sen. John Tester, a Montana Democrat who is heading up the investigation into how a Chinese surveillance balloon was allowed to pass over crucial U.S. missile sites, including some in his state, was more forceful.

“We’re going to get to the bottom of what happened and make sure we have a plan going forward to detect and then find out what potential problems this balloon may have caused,” Tester told Fox News.

China’s high-altitude spy balloon controversy appears to have taken most Washington lawmakers and the intelligence community by surprise, but it really shouldn’t have. China’s interest in these stratospheric dirigibles has been an open secret for nearly a decade.

https://issuesinsights.com/2023/02/24/amtrak-joe-couldnt-be-bothered-to-visit-a-train-wreck/

A freight train derailed in East Palestine, Ohio, three weeks ago. Residents were ordered to evacuate and the cargo of toxic chemicals from five tanker cars was eventually released and set on fire. So far, Joe Biden hasn’t visited the scene, as is tradition for presidents when large-scale disasters strike. Instead, Biden officials have blamed Donald Trump, who hasn’t been president in more than two years, for the wreck. But even some media outlets are admitting it wasn’t his fault.

Official word from the White House accuses “congressional Republicans and former Trump administration officials” for selling out “to rail industry lobbyists when they dismantled the Obama-Biden rail safety protections as well as EPA powers to rapidly contain spills.” The administration believes Trump, who beat Biden Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg (who is utterly useless) to the site, and GOP lawmakers, owe “East Palestine an apology.” 

“Congressional Republicans laid the groundwork for the Trump administration to tear up requirements for more effective train brakes,” Andrew Bates, a deputy White House press secretary, ranted on Wednesday, “and last year most House Republicans wanted to defund our ability to protect drinking water.”

That last point must really eat at the White House. Bates issued the statement on the same day Trump showed up with 13 pallets of bottled water, nine of which he donated (and delivered by two moving companies based in Red States), for the East Palestine residents who are understandably fearful of their water supply. Seems the former president was doing the work of the federal agency that has “emergency management” in its name but had not arrived in the city until this past weekend.

https://amgreatness.com/2023/02/22/trump-grand-juror-goes-on-bizarre-media-blitz-says-multiple-indictments-recommended/

Before any indictments have been handed down, the foreman of the grand jury investigating election interference by former President Donald Trump and his allies in Georgia, is making the rounds in the media to discuss what was decided.

A special grand jury has recommended multiple indictments, according to the jury’s foreman, Emily Kohrs, 30, who appeared on CNN and MSNBC on Tuesday to talk about the case. Kohrs, an apparent Wicca enthusiast, has also spoken with The Associated Press, The New York Times and the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

“Can you imagine doing this for eight months and not coming out with a whole list” of recommended indictments, Kohrs told CNN. “It’s not a short list. It’s not.” The grand jury, according to Kohrs focused on Trump’s infamous phone call with Secretary Raffensperger.

“There may be some names on that list that you wouldn’t expect. But the big name that everyone keeps asking me about—I don’t think you will be shocked,” she said.

When asked specifically whether the jurors had recommended indicting Trump, Kohrs said, “You’re not going to be shocked. It’s not rocket science,” adding “it is not going to be some giant plot twist. You probably have a fair idea of what may be in there. I’m trying very hard to say that delicately.”

Kohrs said she couldn’t remember exactly how many indictments the special grand jury had recommended, but indicated that it would be more than twelve.

Asked by CNN’s Kate Bolduan whether the number of people was “more than a dozen,” Kohrs replied: “I believe so. That’s probably a good assumption.”

Portions of the grand jury’s final report, released last week, made it clear that the grand jury believed perjury charges were warranted for some witnesses. The foreperson’s identity was first revealed by The Associated Press. And earlier on Tuesday, Kohrs told The New York Times that the grand jury recommended multiple indictments, though she didn’t provide names.

https://amgreatness.com/2023/02/22/the-ukraine-wars-prelude-to-what/

The Ukraine mess is daily looking more like the Spanish Civil War of 1936 to 1939, a meat grinder that took 500,000 lives. That three-year conflict became a savage proxy war and prelude for the belligerents of World War II.

The Ukraine battlefield is proving a similar laboratory of death. New lethal weaponry and tactics are introduced, modified—and always improved—from drones to guided missiles to internet-fed artillery. 

Likewise, a similar pre-global war lineup of the eventual adversaries is emerging in preview of a much larger, much scarier war to come.

The first mission of Ukraine, the aggrieved victim of a peremptory Russian attack, was simple survival. 

But now that it has been armed to the teeth and its soldiers proved far more capable and heroic than Putin’s once-feared Russia, Kyiv now seeks to push back Russians to their 2014 Ukrainian acquired borders.

Next President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has announced that the third stage will be to eject every Russian from 2013 Ukraine. He promises to reabsorb both the Crimea and the Donbas.

That is an ambitious goal that might require preemptive attacks inside Russia and on the Black Sea.

To accomplish the last two missions, Zelenskyy needs a blank check of support from a United States that can neither control its own borders nor maintain its critical infrastructure and is $33 trillion in debt.

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2023/02/taking_back_america.html

As I travel, I constantly see tattered American flags blowing in the wind.  They are a metaphor for the state of the Union. It is emblematic of how our country is being hollowed out. We have a Manchurian leader who is gutting us of our rights.  The latest assault is Biden’s determination to put us under the domination of the World Health Organization, who will determine our health care.

Despite widespread criticism of the WHO’s response to the COVID pandemic, U.S. Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Xavier Becerra joined with WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus in September 2022 to announce ‘the U.S.-WHO Strategic Dialogue.’ Together, they developed a ‘platform to maximize the longstanding U.S. government-WHO partnership, and to protect and promote the health of all people around the globe, including the American people.’

What could possibly go wrong with America ceding its G-d given rights to an organization that could set up a “medical police state under the control of the WHO, and in particular WHO Director-General Tedros” who could “issue orders that will go all the way down the pipe to your primary care physicians?”

Consider that COVID dictators continue to look for a way out after “draconian Covid measures ruined the lives of millions of lower- and middle-class Americans while lining the pockets of the liberal cabal.”

Cultural Marxism continues to degrade every facet of our country.

With the end of the Cold War, many Americans justifiably believed communism had been defeated.  But American Marxists have gained more influence than ever before.  Cloaking their goals under the pretense of social justice, these cultural Marxists want to distort America’s history and dismantle its very foundations.

Everywhere we turn, the social justice warriors have invaded.  Endless ethics training courses are mandated in order for colleges to receive federal funding. These courses are Orwell’s nightmare of debasing language, gaslighting, and weakening common sense. 

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2023/02/a_great_awakening_decades_in_the_making.html

Over at The Conservative Treehouse, Sundance has again managed to generate a treasure trove of anecdotal history, evidence, and analysis from those who visit his site.  

Last month, he asked readers: if “[y]ou did not take the COVID-19 shot, why not?”  The thousands of personal responses were illuminating and created a kind of timeline showing how irreconcilable conflicts pitting available scientific knowledge and common sense against the government’s own actions, orders, statements, and censorship heightened public distrust of COVID mandates and “vaccines,” until various tipping points spilled over into outright rejection of political, medical, and media authorities. 

This month, Sundance asks a more foundational question: “When did you start really paying attention?”  In other words, when did you “recognize that things around you, things you perhaps didn’t pay attention to before, were not what you thought they were”?  What was the moment when “your political awakening began”?  

The thousands of responses to this simple question are a cornucopia of rich history, personal reflection, and insightful analysis.  Just as last month’s COVID question created a powerful timeline documenting the last three years of COVID-1984 insanity, this month’s more general question has generated nothing less than a near-century’s worth of details and stories tracking people’s “aha moments” as they discovered that the promises of American self-government are often but an ornamental fabrication plastered upon the stratagems of ruthless government actors pushing propaganda, accumulating power, and sacrificing American lives.  Interestingly, they come from people traversing back and forth across the political spectrum.  From a research point of view, the collected information is staggeringly comprehensive, impressive, and invaluable.  From a personal point of view, the selfless entries and recorded memories are emotional, poignant, cathartic, and often deeply revealing.  I encourage you not only to read through some of the many responses, but also to continue the conversation here at American Thinker, whose commenters, like those at The Treehouse, are well known for their crisp intellectual engagement.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/jimmy-carters-last-hurrah/

When word came that Jimmy Carter, age 98, was entering hospice care, the predictable plaudits began to pour in. Calling Carter “an inspiration,” Maria Shriver gushed that he “moves humanity forward every single day.” Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-GA) described Carter as having always “walked with God.” Rocker Nils Lofgren called him “[a]s fine a man and soul as I’ve ever seen.” And Steve Martin tweeted: “We’ve seen few humans this devoted and humble….Quietly continuing his mission,which was to do good. If you must leave us go gently . Leave your heart and bravery so we might learn.”

All of which is testimony to the power of hype.

I was nineteen years old during most of Jimmy Carter’s 1976 presidential campaign. You might have expected me to support him. Three years earlier, after all, I’d been every bit as addicted to the Watergate hearings on afternoon TV as my mother was to As the World Turns. I was besotted by the movie All the President’s Men, released a few months before the 1976 election. At the time of the election, I was a student on a college campus dominated by lefties who, purportedly jaded and alienated by politics in those post-Watergate days, embraced Carter as a breath of fresh air, a magnanimous soul uniquely equipped to make America, once again, a City on a Hill, noble in its character and great in its deeds. As Carter put it himself, “I can give you a government that’s honest and that’s filled with love, competence, and compassion.”

I didn’t trust the son of a bitch as far as I could throw him.

Yes, Nixon, aside from being a brilliant statesman, had been a wily character. The Watergate tapes had revealed his salty side. He was no saint, but then again he didn’t sell himself as a saint. What politician is a saint? What mattered was that Nixon was brilliant. He was a terrific president. He knew his stuff cold. He loved America. He hated Communism. Yes, he was often characterized as being awkward in his own body and very uncomfortable about interacting with voters on the campaign trail – which to me meant that, well, at least he wasn’t slick.

Carter was slick. Boy, was he slick. His big, toothy smile was the phoniest thing I’d ever seen. He insisted that his name appear on the ballot as “Jimmy,” not “James.” And he talked a lot more about his religion than any other presidential candidate in my lifetime had ever done. I’d never heard such sanctimony from a politician. It was while listening to him that I heard the term “born again” for the first time. Although plainly trolling for evangelical votes, he acted as if he was far too virtuous to think of doing such a thing.

https://thespectator.com/topic/victimhood-mudslinging-define-politics-nikki-haley/

The 2024 campaign has hardly started, but the air is already filled with noxious fumes, most of it from desperate cable TV hosts and anonymous social-media posters. Don Lemon’s sexist comments about Nikki Haley are the latest example, but the vitriol has spread much wider. It reveals a dank corner of American politics, filled with mud-slinging and name-calling, degrading our public square.

Donald Trump specializes in these attacks.. He has already launched several, unsuccessfully, on the man he sees as his most formidable competitor. Calling Florida’s popular governor “Meatball Ron” and “DeSanctimonious” isn’t an argument. It’s an epithet. It has the intellectual heft of giving someone the middle finger.

Lemon’s sour attacks on Nikki Haley have attracted the most attention because he has long been a prominent media personality. Why was it sexist to say she was “past her prime?” Because Haley, now age fifty-one, is actually in her sweet spot as a rising politician. What Lemon undoubtedly meant, without actually saying so directly, is that she is past her sexual prime. That is not usually considered the best reason to pick a president. Nor has it been applied to men seeking the office. When people say Biden is “past his prime,” as they frequently do, they aren’t talking about his sex life. They are worried about his mental confusion and physical frailty.

Lemon’s rant was hypocritical, as well, because he didn’t apply that same standard to his preferred female leaders. He didn’t mention it when he backed Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson for the Supreme Court. She was fifty-one at the time. He didn’t mention it when he backed Hillary Clinton for president in 2016. She was born in 1947. He never used it to criticize Kamala Harris. She’s fifty-eight. The list goes on and on.