RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/lincolnbrown/2022/12/08/karine-jean-pierre-storms-out-of-a-white-house-briefing-in-a-huff-n1652100

Another day, another disaster for White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre. Eventually, she is going to burn out on the continual slapstick comedy bits that the press briefings have become. She can only wipe the pie off of her face so many times before she hands in her two weeks’ notice. Then she’ll take a gig with CNN where nobody will ask her anything and she can become the star she was destined to be.

That will be a sad day, since waiting for the story of the latest flub or blooper has become a bit of a tradition. A fun, if cringe, Advent calendar, if you will. And while these moments in which the White House yet again becomes a whoopie cushion are somewhat entertaining, one stares at them with the same mixture of horror, curiosity, and fascination as one does a crash scene.

The Daily Caller reports that the latest episode of the wheels coming off a White House presser took place on Thursday. Simon Ateba is a reporter for Today News Africa. He had a question for Jean-Pierre about the U.S.-Africa Summit, in which President Biden will host leaders from 50 African nations. A perfectly reasonable expectation for a reporter from an African news agency at a White House presser. In fact, I can’t think of a better venue.

Not only did Jean-Pierre not answer the man’s question, but she also would not explain why she could not answer the question. She became so frustrated that she called an early lid and left the room. You can watch the exchange below:

https://pjmedia.com/columns/paula-bolyard/2022/12/08/breaking-new-twitter-files-dump-exposes-blacklists-secret-cabal-censoring-high-profile-conservatives-n1652131

Independent journalist Bari Weiss took to Twitter on Thursday night to unload a second trove of internal memos and documents exposing how Twitter officials silenced the voices of prominent conservatives on the platform. Radio host Dan Bongino, Stanford professor Jay Bhattacharya, and activist Charlie Kirk were among those Twitter censored or blacklisted, along with the popular “Libs of TikTok” account.

“A new #TwitterFiles investigation reveals that teams of Twitter employees build blacklists, prevent disfavored tweets from trending, and actively limit the visibility of entire accounts or even trending topics—all in secret, without informing users,” Weiss, a former New York Times reporter, wrote. “The authors [of the Twitter Files] have broad and expanding access to Twitter’s files. The only condition we agreed to was that the material would first be published on Twitter.”

She noted that Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, who tried to shed light on how the Covid lockdowns were harming children, was on a “Trends Blacklist,” meaning Twitter took action to ensure he would not appear in the Trending topics section of the platform.

https://issuesinsights.com/2022/12/09/i-am-a-misinformation-denier/

Misinformation does not and cannot – by definition – exist.Correct information, incorrect information, true information, false information can all certainly exist, as can partial, missing, complete, and detailed.Just not misinformation – same with disinformation, by the way.

So why is the term used with such vitriolic abandon?  Why not call something a lie and leave it at that?

Because misinformation is not about describing factual information but about dismissing and denigrating personal opinion and belief.  It is about changing when someone says “I think…” into “I know” and then claiming that person is spreading a factual misrepresentation.

Like the famous Jordan Peterson BBC interview in which the host over and over again said “so what you’re saying is …” to Peterson even though he had said no such thing (see the interview here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aMcjxSThD54&t=966s ), it is a fallacious rhetorical gambit. As one of the commenters put it: if Peterson had suggested going to the movies the host would have snapped back “so you think women can’t read?” a purposefully decontextualized mischaracterization intended to dishonestly ignore and negate the actual meaning of the statement – that is how the term works.

Labeling something as “misinformation” has no bearing on its relationship to the truth of a given situation – it is labeled as such because it is not a lie but simply problematic for those who wish it to be one, or at least perceived as one.

In other words, the epithet of misinformation is used most often, begging Al Gore’s pardon, to describe an inconvenient truth.

https://www.cnn.com/2022/12/08/politics/house-vote-ndaa-military-vaccine-mandate/index.html

The House voted on Thursday to pass sweeping legislation that would authorize $858 billion in national defense funding and rescind the US military’s Covid vaccine mandate. The measure passed with wide bipartisan support with a tally of 350 to 80.

House lawmakers approved a final negotiated version of the National Defense Authorization Act for fiscal year 2023, which sets the policy agenda and authorizes funding for the Department of Defense. Following passage in the House, the measure will next need to go to the Senate to be approved before it can be sent to President Joe Biden to be signed into law.

As part of its $858 billion topline for national defense funding, the measure authorizes $817 billion specifically for the Department of Defense. The massive bill includes a vast number of policy provisions. Among them, it would authorize a 4.6% pay raise for military service members. It includes provisions to strengthen air power and land warfare defense capabilities as well as cybersecurity. It also aims to bolster US support for Ukraine and NATO.

The provision to rescind the military’s Covid vaccine mandate comes after congressional Republicans pushed for its repeal. In a statement Tuesday night, House GOP leader Kevin McCarthy said, “the end of President Biden’s military COVID vaccine mandate is a victory for our military and for common sense.”

The White House declined to say on Wednesday whether President Biden will sign the must-pass annual defense bill if it includes the provision to rescind the military Covid vaccine mandate, reiterating that the president continues to support a mandate but leaving the door open to a repeal.

“We continue to believe that repealing the vaccine mandate is a mistake. Making sure our troops are ready to defend this country and prepared to do so that remains the President’s priority and the vaccine requirement for Covid does just that,” National Security Council coordinator for strategic communications John Kirby told reporters Wednesday when pressed specifically on whether Biden would sign the NDAA if the mandate stayed in the final legislation.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/brittney-griner-goes-free-russia-vladimir-putin-viktor-bout-paul-whelan-11670536789?mod=opinion_lead_pos2

The release of WNBA star Brittney Griner on Thursday from a Russian prison labor camp is welcome news. The price was high, as the White House negotiated a prisoner swap for notorious Russian arms deal Viktor Bout, but there should be relief when any American is sprung from hostile and unjust captivity.

Yes, Ms. Griner was foolish to enter Russia in February with vape cartridges containing hashish amid rising U.S.-Russia tensions. But she was clearly treated harshly, and handed a nine-year sentence, because she is American. She was arrested shortly before Vladimir Putin’s Ukraine invasion, and he viewed her as political leverage.

Some on the American right are grousing that, at the height of the George Floyd protests, Ms. Griner called on the WNBA to stop playing the national anthem before games—implying she had forfeited her right to the government’s support. But political views should be irrelevant when it comes to rescuing Americans held abroad as political hostages.

More troubling is that the prisoner swap didn’t include Paul Whelan, a former Marine and businessman held in Russia on trumped-up espionage charges. Ms. Griner is a celebrity with prominent backers, while Mr. Whelan’s public lobbyists are few beyond his family. President Biden said Thursday that Mr. Whelan is “unjustly detained”—and vowed that his Administration will keep fighting for his release.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/19212/apple-china

“Think Different”, Apple’s slogan, actually means collaborating with a Communist dictatorship where thinking differently is a crime. And it also means suppressing free speech in America.

That’s why Apple is threatening free speech on Twitter just as it’s threatening it in Shanghai.

What China had to offer was mass production under a ruthlessly totalitarian system that would, when Steve Jobs decided to revamp the iPhone a month before launch, wake up 8,000 workers at midnight for a 12 hour shift.

After Jobs’ death… CEO Tim Cook [signed] a secret $275 billion pact to help Communist China develop “the most advanced manufacturing technologies” and vowed to use even more Chinese technology in Apple’s products.

When the Hong Kong protests began, the streets filled with young men and women, most of whom… believed the hype that it was a noble company that didn’t just make gadgets, but aspired to harness human creativity for a better world. Instead, Apple quickly moved to suppress the protests by removing an app used by the protesters to avoid police.

A year before Jobs died, 14 men and women jumped from buildings at Apple’s Foxconn Chinese contractors…. workers were forced to sign contracts promising not to kill themselves. Afterward nets were hung up to catch the falling bodies.

[W]ith protests breaking out against zero-Covid tyranny breaking out in China, people were once again surprised when Apple rushed to aid Communist China’s crackdown by preventing protesters from using AirDrop to communicate and coordinate their activities.

They believed, like so many Americans and Europeans, that Apple stood for something. And Apple does. It stands for tyranny.

That’s why Apple is threatening Twitter’s place in its App Store because under Elon Musk the platform has begun to offer the very thing Apple is helping China stamp out: freedom.

Apple isn’t a great American company, it’s a great Chinese company.

The real message of “Think Different” wasn’t that everyone ought to think differently, but that geniuses are a superior group who ought to have the unlimited power to rigorously implement their vision.

The company doesn’t empower its customers, it tricks them into giving up control so that they can be better controlled.

That is why it’s coming for Twitter and threatening it over its newfound free speech.

https://pjmedia.com/columns/victor-davis-hanson/2022/12/08/does-trump-really-want-to-be-president-again-n1651792

Team Trump has sometimes compared former President Donald Trump’s current quest for a non-sequential second term to two-term President Grover Cleveland’s similar three election bids.

Cleveland remains our only elected president (1884) to have lost a reelection bid (1888) — in a disputed vote — only to be reelected four years later in 1892.

Yet Trump seems determined instead to follow a different, and bullheaded, Teddy Roosevelt model.

Roosevelt left the presidency in 1908, sat out four years, and then lost a reelection bid in 1912, split and alienated the Republican Party, and ensured the election of the progressive Woodrow Wilson.

President Joe Biden’s first “corrective” two years have been an utter disaster.

Biden birthed hyperinflation. He destroyed a secure border and Trump’s energy self-sufficiency. Crime is now out of control. The United States was humiliated abroad in Afghanistan. Rising interest rates will soon spark a recession.

After promising to unite the country, Biden smeared half the voting population as “un-American” and “semi-fascist.”

In addition, almost all of Trump’s prior complaints, predictions, and assertions that the media dismissed as conspiratorial, or crackpot have proven eerily prescient.

Hunter Biden’s laptop was all too authentic.

The FBI was compromised and acted as an agent of the Democratic Party. Anthony Fauci proved a partisan.

Russian collusion was an utter hoax. It was engineered by Hillary Clinton, the Democratic National Committee, and the FBI.

The Wuhan lab did likely birth the engineered COVID virus. That possibility was covered up by the media and public health establishments.

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2022/12/a_call_to_the_good_people_of_maga_to_denounce_the_lefts_antitrump_slanders.html

For the past ten days or so, Donald J. Trump, has been falsely vilified as a White supremacist who is comfortable in the company of anti-Semites, and attacked for his “calls” to abolish or “terminate” the Constitution (despite having never said such a thing).

History, I believe, will note that the more preposterous the false accusation against Donald J. Trump, the quicker the stirred-up crowd will toss reason aside and follow the persons spewing anti-Trump slander.

So what else is new? These slurs and more have been hurled at Mr. Trump since he announced his first candidacy for president, some seven-and-a-half years ago.

Sadly, as Machiavelli pointed out in Chapter 6 of Il Principe, the logical supporters of a political reformer will be slow to defend the leader against attack from the establishment. This observation on human nature remains trenchant, after nearly 500 years since Machiavelli put his words to paper, as indicated by the reluctance of the logical allies of Donald J. Trump to stand with him against demagogic assault from the Deep State intent on crushing the MAGA (common good) movement — this apathetic attitude resulted in the Mueller investigation, and two phony impeachments, one straddling his term in office and his leave-taking.

And the reluctance to defend our best president since Reagan continues. Imagine how good the years from 2021 to 2025 would have been had MAGA populists stood shoulder to shoulder with our MAGA president who revived the populist spirit expressed by Madison in the first half of Federalist Paper No. 57.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/ignoring-lessons-learned-at-pearl-harbor/

Dec. 7, 2022 — Eighty-one years ago today, Commander Mitsuo Fuchida was preparing to lead an airborne strike force of 49 “Kate” bombers, 40 torpedo bombers, 51 “Val” dive-bombers and 43 “Zeke” fighters on the first wave of an assault on Pearl Harbor. At 0854 that terrible Sunday morning, a second wave of 167 aircraft added to the devastation. When the surprise attack was over, 3,581 Americans were dead or wounded; the largest naval anchorage in the Pacific was littered with sunken and burning U.S. warships; the best dry-dock and ship repair facilities west of California were in shambles, and less than 25% of U.S. military aircraft based in Hawaii were still operational.

The Japanese surprise attack was but the first blow in a cascade of disasters. The following day, as Imperial troops invaded the Philippines, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt proclaimed Dec. 7, 1941, to be “a date which will live in infamy,” and Congress declared war on Japan. Three days later, on Dec. 11, fascist Italy and Nazi Germany declared war on the U.S. in support of their Axis partner in Tokyo. By then, nearly half a million young Americans had already visited military recruiting stations volunteering to fight, and the phrase “Remember Pearl Harbor” was a watchword. When the conflagration finally ended in Tokyo Bay on Sept. 2, 1945, more than 16 million men and women had served in the U.S. armed forces.

Each year we praise the courage and resolve of the Americans who were in Hawaii that terrible day. Yet, few now acknowledge massive intelligence failures and lack of “situational awareness” in Washington that allowed such a horrific surprise attack to occur. Nor do they mention that America’s poor preparations for war resulted in the loss of every engagement with the Japanese from Dec. 7, 1941, until the battle of Midway on June 4, 1942.