RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://amgreatness.com/2021/12/18/what-happened-to-the-riots/

In the summer of 2020, after the death of George Floyd, the country was beset by protests that turned into riots. Major cities like Minneapolis, Chicago, Portland, Seattle, and Washington, D.C. were in flames, with Black Lives Matter and Antifa shock troops leading the way. Then, after the tense period between the election and inauguration, the riots mostly stopped, as if someone had flipped a switch.  

Of course, violence still exists. Violent crime is up significantly nationwide, just as it rose after the often-violent anti-Vietnam War protests of the 1960s. And, in Portland, riots and the Antifa culture of violent resistance to authority have become somewhat institutionalized. 

But, for the rest of the country, the riots have stopped. This, even though police still occasionally shoot suspects, and sometimes those shootings are controversial. And there is also still a great deal of political division nationwide. Even so, the end to the riots has been a bit surprising.

The disappearance of the Left’s riots confirms what many have suspected: that they were centrally planned. On the surface, this was hard to believe. Antifa looked like Darwin’s waiting room, a gaggle of meth-mouthed degenerates, many with criminal records and obvious mental health problems. They were augmented by ordinary street thugs, amped up by the anti-police rhetoric of Black Lives Matter. 

But it turns out both groups had a lot of support and included prominent, professional members. They also had internal organization, including encrypted communications channels, supply trucks, and extensive training for their cadres. This is all well documented in Andy Ngo’s exposé, Unmasked.

They also benefited from friendly media. The media willingly repeated their disinformation about how minor the riots were, with CNN’s use of the phrase “fiery, but mostly peaceful protests” revealing the extent of the agitprop. Antifa and BLM occupied a Seattle neighborhood for weeks, during which several people were robbed, beaten, and killed. Nonetheless, the mayor described it as having a street festival atmosphere. The media and officials downplayed the millions of dollars in damage, assaults, and murders.

https://amgreatness.com/2021/12/18/the-freedom-facade/

I have been looking back over Alexis de Tocqueville’s unfinished masterpiece, The Old Regime and the French Revolution. It is full of piquant observations, for example this from the end of the preface: “a man’s admiration of absolute government is proportionate to the contempt he feels for those around him.” How much contempt do you suppose emanates from the apparatchiks who inhabit the D.C. swamp and control our lives? How slavish is their devotion to the unfettered prerogatives of the idol they serve, the state? 

That dialectic between adulation of the sources of power and contempt for those subject to it may in one sense be perennial, a sentiment captured by the old Latin tag: Proprium humani ingenii est odisse quem laeseris: “it is part of human nature to hate those whom you have injured.” But Tocqueville translated that psychological characteristic into the realm of politics in which the question of liberty is paramount. Like Edmund Burke, Tocqueville was a supreme anatomist of the ways in which power co-opts the passion for liberty in order to counterfeit liberty’s essence. Describing the habit of “governmental paternalism,” Tocqueville notes that “Almost all the rulers who have tried to destroy freedom have at first attempted to preserve its forms.”

This has been seen from Augustus down to our own day. Rulers flatter themselves that they can combine the moral strength given by public consent with the advantages that only absolute power can give. Almost all have failed in the enterprise, and have soon discovered that it is impossible to make the appearance of freedom last where it is no longer a reality.

I think that is more or less where we are now. You still hear people talk about the importance of individual liberty, the rule of law, limited government, and so on, but increasingly, I believe, the slogans are shot through with a brittle cynicism. 

One sign of that decadence is the resignation that now greets every fresh assault on the impartiality upon which the rule of law, and hence liberty, depend. In a recent column for the Daily Signal, Larry Elder asks “Why hasn’t Jussie Smollett been charged with perjury?” It’s a good question, and it’s one everyone knows the answer to. Smollett belongs to a protected class (actually, he belongs to several protected classes). As a black, gay, celebrity (“celebrity” for some: like Larry Elder, I had never heard of him until he ran afoul of the law), Smollett is more or less untouchable. True, he was just convicted of 5 out 6 felony counts for staging his own assault, but many commentators are speculating that he will serve no jail time for committing what can only be described as a racially motivated hate crime. 

https://www.nysun.com/editorials/the-woke-constitution/91832/

To those who wonder why the Founding Fathers made the United States Constitution so difficult to amend, we commend the series the Boston Globe is publishing under the headline “Editing the Constitution.” It reckons that our national parchment “is undergoing massive changes in the Supreme Court” and that it’s “time to put the founding document in the hands of the people.”

Bah, humbug, we say. It adds up to one of the most cockamamie compendiums that’s ever been compiled in respect of the 8,000 or so words of the compact that every officer, judge, and legislator of the federal, state, and county governments must be bound by oath to support. If Geo. Washington, James Madison, and the boys ever happened onto this issue of the Globe, they’d fall out of their knee socks.

The series starts with a proposed rewrite of the first two amendments. Freedom of speech would get diluted to freedom of “expression” and have to be “consistent with the rights of others to the same and subject to responsibility for abuses.” The Globe would throw in a previously unenumerated freedom — “association” — but require all rights to be resolved in accordance with the principles of “equality” and “dignity.”

Then the Globe adds another new liberty — the “freedom from religion.” It says: “Both the freedom of religion and the freedom from religion shall be respected by the government.” Notice the subtle — or, hey, not so subtle — suggestion that religion is some God-awful pest. The words “free exercise” are freely exorcised. And the disestablishment by Congress of religions established by the states would no longer be prohibited.

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2021/12/our_political_divide_is_no_longer_between_democrats_and_republicans.html

It’s between crazed Marxists and the rest of us—and the way to change things is at the ballot box.

We are all aware of the deadly and avoidable crime wave plaguing cities that Marxists run. I am sure the people that live in these communities have been complaining. After all, how could they not? We have had two years of a rolling criminal snowball that has grown to ginormous proportions.

I noticed the uptick in the crime in New York in January 2020 when the “Bail Reform” law went into effect. Slowly on the local news, you heard about someone coming up the steps from the subway and getting cold-cocked in the face, elderly people getting thrown down and beaten, and other violent street crimes.

It grew from there and, after George Floyd’s death in Minneapolis, the kerosene was thrown on the previously slow-burning fuse. The Marxists tried telling us the crime wave was due to the pandemic but I knew—and believe others did too—that it started weeks before the first case of COVID was reported in the United States.

Like a cancer, the effects of these policies took a while to spread and then accelerated quickly. The same pattern was repeated across America as other cities implemented “Bail Reform” and defunded their police departments. All the while, George Soros and other Marxist billionaires hell-bent on destroying this country helped install District Attorneys who refuse to prosecute criminals and judges who put repeat violent offenders back on the streets. Add in governors emptying prisons in the name of Covid and—voila!—instant anarchy.

I don’t know about anyone else but I don’t care how much money Soros and his cabal put behind someone. I would never vote for anyone who advocates for emptying prisons and so-called “Bail Reform” or anyone backed by organizations such as Color of Change or The Tides Foundation. Still, enough people voted for these lunatics to give them power. Now, though, the same people regret their votes, yet no one is listening to them.

San Francisco Mayor London Breed recently spoke out against the smash-and-grab robberies that are now becoming commonplace. What’s interesting is that, when it was just the local small businesses, no leftists seemed to care. When it was retailers for people in the lower- to mid-level economic strata (e.g., Walmart, Target, and CVS), leftists shrugged their shoulders. But when it’s Nordstrom’s, Louis Vuitton, or the Apple store, now elected officials are paying attention.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/12/gen-flynn-persecutor-judge-emmett-sullivan-pivots-lloyd-billingsley/

One week after his arrest, January 6, defendant Robert Geiswein was indicted by a federal grand jury. As Julie Kelly writes at American Greatness, Geiswein “has been behind bars ever since, denied bail while Judge Emmet Sullivan delayed his trial on numerous occasions.” Embattled Americans might recall Sullivan from the trial of Gen. Michael Flynn, President Trump’s pick for national security advisor.

“We should always remember that our country, was built upon Judeo-Christian values and principles,” Flynn told the Republican convention in 2016. Hillary Clinton, Flynn said, “put our nation’s security at extremely high risk with her careless use of a private e-mail server.” On the other hand, “Donald Trump recognizes the threats we face and is not afraid to call them what they are.” That would be radical Islamic terrorists.

The “composite character” David Garrow described in Rising Star: The Making of Barack Obama did not want Gen. Flynn to become national security advisor. Obama then targeted Flynn to facilitate action against Trump.

In the course of his duties, Flynn came into contact with foreign nationals under routine surveillance by U.S. intelligence. American citizens in such encounters are normally redacted, but Democrats duly “unmasked” the identity of Gen. Flynn and leaked the information to the establishment media, a “10-year felony,” according to former prosecutor Trey Gowdy.

Samantha Power, the composite character’s ambassador to the UN, made seven unmasking requests for Flynn. CIA boss John Brennan, a Gus Hall voter in 1976, made two requests to unmask Flynn, with intel director James Clapper putting in three. On January 12, 2017, vice president Joe Biden requested to unmask the Trump pick.

FBI  boss James Comey set a perjury trap for Flynn, which led to charges of lying to the FBI. The establishment media presumed Flynn guilty, a tool of Russia, a traitor and so forth. The case wound up in court under federal judge Emmet Sullivan, a 1991 appointee of George H.W. Bush to the District of Columbia Court of Appeals. In 1994, President Clinton appointed Sullivan United States District Judge for the District of Columbia.

https://mailchi.mp/11de579bd01a/35b-from-us-taxpayers-funded-world-health-organization-58709?e=0c8ccf8e98
OUR WALL STREET JOURNAL OPEN LETTER TO MR. AND MS. TAXPAYER
Our open letter to Mr. and Ms. Taxpayer published as a full-page advertisement in The Wall Street Journal today…

In January, Democrats plan to bring back the so-called Build Back Better Bill.

If your Congressman and your Senator vote for it, that vote says everything you need to know about who she/he represents. And it is not you.

Here is what your Congressmen and Senators say the bill costs: $1,750,000,000,000.

However, the permanent cost—as estimated by the Congressional Budget Office — to fund this pork-filled so-called Build Back Better Bill is up to $4,730,000,000,000.

So much for the president’s claim that this bill is “free” or “costs nothing.” 

Do the politicians really think we are that stupid?

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/how-our-federal-overseers-do-science/

Emails between Francis Collins and Anthony Fauci show a coordinated campaign against the Great Barrington Declaration.

Phil Magness, that irrepressible foe of statism, managed to obtain emails between White House chief medical adviser Anthony Fauci and NIH director Francis Collins in which they hatch an attack on the Great Barrington Declaration. (The GBD was authored by three well-known epidemiologists, arguing that the best approach to COVID was not locking down, but targeted protection for the truly vulnerable.)

Dissent from the federal government’s chosen strategy was quite unwelcome. “There needs to be a quick and devastating takedown of its premises,” Collins wrote in reference to the GBD. Real scientists would investigate the premises first, then decide if the declaration should be subject to a “takedown,” but no such thing ever happened. The authors were disparaged, their motives impugned, their conclusions ridiculed, but one looks in vain for anything like a scientific counter-argument.

It’s enough to make you suspect that the real objective of Fauci and friends was expansion of government authority rather than protection against disease.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2021/12/how-biden-blew-it/

It is tough to find a modern presidency that has collapsed as swiftly as this one.

I t didn’t have to be this way.

If he had wanted to, President Biden could have fulfilled the promises that he made during his campaign and set himself and his party up for a successful 2022. He could have ignored the hollow passions of Twitter and cable TV, lowered the temperatures that so mar our quotidian politics, and delivered the quiet, limited, competent leadership that he promised during his inconspicuous run for the office. Recognizing that his party enjoyed only the barest of congressional majorities, he could have scaled back his lofty ambitions and ensured that his own focus and the focus of the public at large were as tightly aligned as possible. He could have narrowed his initial COVID bill, eschewing the entreaties to go big and limiting the scope of its relief to the desperate alone. He could have made the bipartisan infrastructure bill a centerpiece, rather than an afterthought, of his first year. He could have grasped that, because federal power is so limited, his role in fighting the pandemic would be exclusively oratorical. He could have understood that people care deeply about illegal immigration and gotten serious about limiting it, even as he struck a kinder tone. Having realized that inflation was clearly not set to be “transitory,” he could have directed the sum of his efforts toward alleviating it. And, while he was doing all that, he could have paid attention to the details that his job throws up in abundance — particularly in the foreign-policy realm — and thereby avoided the catastrophic withdrawal from Afghanistan that drove a stake through his presidency within six months of his taking his oath. A little more humility, a greater willingness to say “no,” and a more acute understanding of why he won in the first instance would all have gone a long way.

https://thefederalist.com/2021/12/16/12-times-joe-biden-completely-made-up-stories-lied-or-said-something-crazy/

President Joe Biden has a long list of slip-ups in his political history, and his first year in the White House was no exception. In addition to bumbling through national addresses and mixing up the titles of world leaders, Biden infamously misremembered his past, lied, and even made up several stories to score points with his audience. Here are just a few of such incidents.

1. Joe Biden’s Made-Up Amtrak Story

At a 50th-anniversary event for Amtrak in Philadelphia, Biden said that when he was vice president, a train conductor congratulated him for traveling 1.5 million miles on Amtrak. A Fox News report out on May 5, however, pokes holes in the president’s account.

“When I became vice president, one of the Capitol Hill newspapers estimated that I had taken more than 7,000 round trips on Amtrak over my career,” Biden said. “I think that’s an exaggeration. I’m going to rely on those two conductors. … One of them was a guy named Angelo Negri.”

Biden continued, telling the audience Negri estimated Biden had traveled 1.5 million miles on Amtrak trains around his fourth or fifth year as vice president, which would have been in 2013 or 2014.

“My mom was sick, and I used to try to come home almost every weekend as vice president to see her,” Biden said. “I got on the train and Angelo Negri came up and he goes, ‘Joey, baby,’ and he grabbed my cheek like he always did. … He said, ‘Joey, what’s the big deal? One-point-three million miles on Air Force Two? Do you know how many miles you traveled on Amtrak?’ I said, ‘No, Angie, I don’t know.’ He gave me the calculation and he said ‘You traveled 1.5 million miles on Amtrak.;”

As Fox News pointed out, however, an obituary for Negri says the conductor retired in 1993, decades before Biden’s supposed story took place, while he was still a senator from Delaware. Biden’s mother died in 2010.