RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://issuesinsights.com/2022/07/19/los-angeles-will-soon-be-in-shackles-again/

If trends continue, Los Angeles County will issue an indoor mask mandate by the end of the month. Officials are of course saying they’re just following the guidelines. But they have no regard for freedom and refuse to acknowledge the data that show mask mandates are useless.

It’s as if they get a perverted thrill out of holding in their hands the raw power to dictate the terms of other people’s lives.

Los Angeles County reached the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s high community level last week. Which is “​​determined by looking at hospital beds being used, hospital admissions, and the total number of new COVID-19 cases in an area.” If it remains “there for the next two weeks,” the Los Angeles Times reported Friday, “the county will reissue an indoor mask mandate with an effective date of July 29,” not even five months since the most recent of its multiple mask mandates was lifted.

Though she’s likely to deny it, Los Angeles County Public Health Director Barbara Ferrer, who is not a doctor, not a physician’s assistant, not a nurse, not even a receptionist at a doctor’s office, but a social welfarist, has been looking forward to July 29 for some time.

https://amgreatness.com/2022/07/17/biden-and-the-destruction-of-wisdom/

There used to be an agreed-on body of wisdom, which both Left and Right, Republicans and Democrats, generally accepted. Heated arguments and invective centered on implementations and methods of solving problems, which at least both sides agreed were problems. Both ideologies accepted a common core of wisdom, despite their radical differences in interpreting it.

Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, and especially Biden’s strange cabinet of loud Jacobin amateurs, reject the very hallowed knowledge upon which civilization is based. In that sense the public has begun to recognize them as nihilist and anarchist. Nearly two out of three Americans in some polls hold unfavorable views of the Biden Administration. They fear that it is decoupled from both the past and reality, and quite capable of destroying their lives as they have known them.

Nuke Nuttiness

Since late August 1949, a consensus emerged that nuclear powers, for good or evil, were treated differently in matters of global tensions than non-nuclear powers, given the chance of a nuclear conflagration. Arcane rules, but rules, nonetheless, grew up in the Cold War between the Soviet Union, China, the United States, Britain, France and a few other nuclear states about the trip wires surrounding conventional conflicts. 

The agreed upon wisdom from the Hungarian Revolution and Korean War to the Cuban Missile Crisis and the Middle East wars was to ensure such confrontations did not escalate to nuclear exchanges.

No longer. In the last five months, there has been more idle talk and threats about nuclear warfare than in the 73 years since the Soviet Union got the bomb. In a rational world, there would be two Western agendas amid the Ukraine war: first, how to aid the Ukrainians to resist Russian aggression without destroying their entire country; second, how to do so without either provoking or allowing Russia to use a nuclear weapon, or to encourage other powers like China to consider such alternatives.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2022/07/progressive-policies-make-new-york-city-criminal-joseph-klein/

New York City has become a haven for mentally ill and drug-addicted homeless people who live on the streets and in the subways, free to menace the general public. Dangerous criminals are released repeatedly after their arrest with no bail requirement, free to resume preying on innocent victims. There are less police officers available to protect public safety, thanks to reckless cuts in the New York Police Department budget and the departure of police officers in droves who were tired of working in a hostile environment. And New Yorkers have to walk on eggshells when it comes to defending themselves against a criminal attack. Manhattan’s radical progressive pro-criminal district attorney believes that self-defense can be charged as murder.

Just recently, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg charged a bodega worker with murder for defending himself with a knife against an unprovoked attack by an ex-con that resulted in the assailant’s death. Meanwhile, the assailant’s girlfriend has escaped all charges whatsoever for stabbing the bodega worker because, prosecutors said, she was only trying to help her boyfriend fight back against the bodega worker.

Bragg may be backtracking on the murder charge after speaking on July 12th with city bodega owners who are pressuring him to reverse course. However, the fact that Bragg would even consider filing a murder charge in the first place speaks volumes about his perverse priorities. The radical progressive district attorney has sent New Yorkers the message that they should think twice before fighting back in self-defense. Bragg has compounded this message by supporting efforts in New York to continue limiting law-abiding residents from carrying guns outside their homes for self-defense because “more guns in our communities make us less safe.”

https://issuesinsights.com/2022/07/18/progressives-carpet-bombing-of-america/

Russia has changed its war strategy in Ukraine from direct confrontation to simply reducing cities to rubble, often killing civilians. Avoiding indiscriminate death, destruction, and misery no longer matters to the Russians so long as it facilitates their conquest. Sadly, progressives here have adopted a similar approach to imposing their policies and ideologies.

A civil society must be willing to confront disagreement head-on, issue by issue, even though it can be challenging. The goal should be to reconcile different perspectives constructively without unnecessary collateral damage. But progressives seem willing to die on every hill, with their desired ends seeming to justify any means and any pain along the way.

Overreach is everywhere. Progressive climate policy may be the most egregious. Even without knowing the extent of climate change or humans’ impact, the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions (GHGs) has become a widely accepted goal. But progressives are like children who want what they want now. They demand immediate, indiscriminate controls on fossil fuels, or even their abolition. They oversell renewables and conceal their true costs and environmental impact. Promoting electric vehicles, they harbor delusions of unlimited natural resources and magically appearing infrastructure. They pay no heed to the limitations of the power grid. They ignore other countries’ non-cooperation, and on and on. The American public pays a steep price for all this, now and for the foreseeable future.

Congress provides munitions in the form of trillion-dollar programs too large to allow for proper monitoring. Pet causes are slipped in – as if a small percentage of trillions of dollars is inconsequential – by hiding them in the fog of war. The resulting inflation lays waste to many businesses and lives.

https://issuesinsights.com/2022/07/18/inflation-has-now-eaten-up-all-of-bidens-covid-rescue-checks/

When he signed the “American Rescue Plan” into law in March 2021, President Joe Biden bragged about how it would put “$1,400 checks into the pockets of millions of Americans; help to keep folks in their homes; help to put food on the table.” A family of four was in line to get $5,600, he said.

What he didn’t tell the public was that the rampant inflation his “rescue” plan would unleash would cost Americans more than the $1,400 Biden was handing out. Much more.

Biden’s $2 trillion “rescue” came after the Trump administration had already rushed through two massive COVID relief bills and at a time when the economy was already roaring back from the COVID lockdowns. Which is why many economists, including liberal economists like Larry Summers, warned that Biden’s “rescue” would spark runaway inflation. 

And, despite repeated promises from the White House that such a thing would never happen, the Consumer Price Index shot up 8.3% in the first half of this year. (Going back to 1986, the average inflation rate for the first half of the year is 2.6%.) June’s reading had year-over-year inflation at 9.1%.

Under Biden, prices have been climbing much faster than wages, which means that Americans started losing ground almost the moment Biden signed his “rescue” plan into law. 

https://www.nysun.com/article/in-tilting-windmills-biden-gets-it-wrong

Remember Mr. Biden shouting — literally — about food lines under President Trump? Here’s his outcry: “My God, this is the United States of America. The idea that people would have to wait in line an hour or an hour-and-a-half to get a box of food in their trunk — it’s just unbelievable.”

Guess what?

ABC News reports those food lines are back, “as working Americans overwhelmed by inflation increasingly seek handouts to feed their families.”

The broadcaster recounts that a main food distribution center in Phoenix delivered food packages to more than 4,000 families in June, a 78 percent increase over the prior year. Reports from other states indicate the surge is nation-wide.

Sadly, about 10 percent of the people seeking assistance are first-timers. Also, many have jobs. Even so, with real wages down 3.8 percent over the past year and food prices up 12 percent, millions of Americans are struggling.

The country-wide food bank network Feeding America reports being caught off guard by the rise in demand; the economy was doing so well, the management says, Feeding America did not expect so many people to need their help. They didn’t expect inflation to hit families so hard.

Neither, apparently, did Mr. Biden, who otherwise might have been a little more judicious in blasting the emergency that occurred under Mr. Trump. And, whose policy priorities in this time of need are all wrong.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2022/07/january-6-committees-bid-to-prove-trump-criminally-liable-for-violence-falls-short/?utm_

If anything, the panel has bolstered Trump’s defense rather than undermining it.

The January 6 committee seemed to hit the point of diminishing returns this week. The Democrat-controlled panel is straining to establish that its target, former president Donald Trump, is not just morally and politically but criminally culpable for the deadly Capitol riot, but it can’t make the case. Its evidence of criminal intent is too weak, and its tactic of conflating Trump’s state of mind with the unhinged words of extremists who reacted to his rhetoric is sleight-of-hand.

Plus, Trump has an intent defense: He was trying to ratchet up political pressure on Congress, not provoke a forcible uprising. And the committee is not only ignoring that defense but bolstering it (however inadvertently).

To be clear, I am speaking here narrowly about crimes involving the intent to use force, a necessary element of such offenses as seditious conspiracy, with which the Justice Department has charged several rioters. Trump’s liability for other potential crimes arising out of the events that culminated in the Capitol riot remains an open question. The committee is correct that Trump orchestrated a raucous rally on the National Mall on January 6, 2021. But the evidence that he intended the rally to turn lethally violent, as the committee implies, is slim.

To draw the committee’s conclusion, one must pretend, as the panel mulishly does, that Trump never said, during his speech at the rally that preceded the riot, “I know that everyone here will soon be marching over to the Capitol building to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard.” (Memo to the Committee: In real criminal proceedings, which, unlike scripted political presentations, have cross-examination and the right to present a defense, your case gets laughed out of court when you get caught burying the exculpatory evidence. Competent prosecutors confront the exculpatory evidence head-on. Rather than signaling fear of it, they try to persuade the fact-finder that it’s trumped by other, more compelling evidence. Being persuasive involves playing it straight to maintain your credibility.)

The president’s credibility is shot.

Before leaving for the Middle East, President Biden sat down for an interview with Israel’s Channel 12 News. Anchor Yonit Levi asked the president if he would use force to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon. “As a last resort, yes,” Biden said.

I’d like to think that Biden is sincere. I hope that he understands the dangers a nuclear Iran would pose to the Greater Middle East, to Europe, and indeed to the world. A nuclear Iran would launch a cycle of proliferation and escalation in the region. Iran’s nuclear missiles would be in range not only of America’s Persian Gulf allies but also of NATO. Iran would intensify its malign activities, from terrorism to proxy war to hostage-taking, knowing that the bomb gives it cover. A nuclear Iran means a world more dangerous, more violent, more flammable than the world is even today.

Which is why Biden is the latest American president to suggest that the use of force remains an option. An air and naval campaign to destroy the nuclear sites known to Western intelligence and to degrade the Islamic Republic’s capacity to retaliate is the best means of delaying and potentially foreclosing the possibility of an Iranian bomb. The objective of such an operation wouldn’t be regime change. The goal would be prevention. Israel and the Gulf States would support us. And Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping would pay attention. They would be put on notice: The American president means what he says.

Does he? In the spring of 2021, President Biden was asked about the record numbers of illegal immigrants who began crossing the southern border after he reversed his predecessor’s asylum policies. Biden dismissed the question. The migrant surge was “seasonal,” he said. It happens “every single solitary year.” Not like this, it doesn’t. The season ended long ago. The migration has continued for a year and a half. Last month saw the largest number of illegal crossings on record. Biden’s flippant answer was grossly mistaken, to say the least. He doesn’t seem to care. In fact, if he’s successful in ending Title 42 protocols allowing for the swift repatriation of illegal migrants, he will continue to make the problem worse.

https://amgreatness.com/2022/07/14/federal-judge-sentences-69-year-old-grandmother-with-cancer-to-2-months-in-jail-for-parading-in-the-capitol-on-january-6/

A federal judge has sentenced a 69-year-old Idaho grandmother and cancer patient to two months behind bars for parading in the Capitol, a misdemeanor.

Pam Hemphill pleaded guilty in January to one count of demonstrating, picketing, or parading in a Capitol building.  The diminutive senior was photographed inside the Capitol Rotunda.

Hemphill, a former drug and alcohol counselor, flew to Washington, D.C. from Idaho on Jan. 5 hoping to see the results of the 2020 presidential election overturned. She was arrested in August of 2021.

At her sentencing hearing Tuesday, Senior U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth, a Reagan appointee, flatly told Hemphill that she will be serving time behind bars.

In addition to the 60 days in jail, Hemphill will spend three years on supervised release. Pursuant to her plea agreement, she will also have to pay $500 in restitution toward the estimated $2.7 million in damages to the Capitol.

“I’m heading to the prison! Just know your prayers and support is keeping me going emotionally and spiritually! Love you guys dearly!” she tweeted on Tuesday.