RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://amgreatness.com/2021/05/26/critical-race-theory-or-crazy-radical-tantrums/

Just four weeks ago, I wrote about the rising resistance to the woke craze and critical race theory, and much has transpired since then.

Here in California, even Disneyland has not been spared the wrath of the crazies. On May 7, the incomparable Christopher Rufo reported that “The Wokest Place on Earth” now includes employee trainings on systemic racism, white privilege, white fragility, and white saviors, and also launched racially segregated “affinity groups” at the company’s headquarters.

But just five days later, Rufo disclosed that Disney “has removed its entire antiracism program from the company’s internal portal, effectively scrubbing it out of existence.” Rufo added, “This is a major victory in the war against ‘woke capital,’” and noted that a “significant backlash from the public” was responsible for the shift. While some skeptics suggested that the policy was being “tweaked or rebranded, not scrubbed,” Rufo responded, “Possibly, but small victories start to add up. We’ve set the precedent—and forced a $329 billion company to back down.”

And then there is the math craziness. As a former teacher, I loved teaching math because there was a right and wrong answer. Feelings, opinions, and political dogma were irrelevant. 2+2=4. Period. If you have another take, sorry but you’re wrong. Now that the crazies are in charge, however, if you insist on right and wrong answers, you are racist. Really.

Until last week, in fact, the proposed California math framework recommended eight times that teachers use A Pathway to Equitable Math Instruction: Dismantling Racism in Mathematics Instruction as a resource. This radical drivel insists that addressing student errors, focusing on getting the right answer, and requiring students to show their work is a form of white supremacy. Objectivity is now racist, apparently.

However, due to citizen outrage during the “public comments” period, the state walked back some of its new math mandates, notably dropping the over-the-top Pathway to Equitable Math Instruction. The commission agreed to remove references to the toolkit from the draft framework last week, stating it was “inconsistent with teaching to the standards.” But the war is not over.  The framework has not been finalized, and the California Department of Education will hold a second public review in June and July.

https://amgreatness.com/2021/05/26/will-the-2020-madness-last/

The COVID-19 pandemic is ending with mass vaccinations. So is the national quarantine. The riots, arson, and looting of the 2020 summer are sputtering out—leaving violent crime in their wake.

The acrimony over the 2020 election fades. Trump Derangement Syndrome became abstract when Donald Trump left office and was ostracized from social media. 

In other words, the American people are slowly regaining their senses after the epidemic of mass hysteria and insanity that gripped the nation in 2020. 

But Americans will wonder whether what Antifa, Black Lives Matter, and the hard Left wrought last year will last when the nation is no longer gripped by 2020 madness. 

Teachers and academics are notorious for furious opposition to administrative bloat. For the last 50 years, administrations have proliferated, while the ratio of non-teachers to teachers has skyrocketed—to the chagrin of teacher unions. 

But in the last year, schools and colleges have gone mad in hiring thousands of “Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion” administrators. Their job descriptions may be vague. But certainly, they will not contribute to classroom education. Instead, they will monitor the speech and thoughts of those who do. 

How long will mostly left-wing teachers’ unions continue to support such vast diversions of money to armies of new left-wing non-teaching administrators?

Before 2020, the Left demanded “proportional representation” in hiring and admissions. And if minority groups and women were not represented in the workplace according to their percentages of the American population, then prejudice was automatically assumed (“disparate impact”). Reparatory measures were then made to hire by race and gender. 

“Affirmative action” was the euphemism for such quotas. It was nevertheless more or less institutionalized because proportional representation was not entirely illogical in a multiracial society. And there was still the common goal to follow Martin Luther King, Jr.’s notion of integration and assimilation to make race incidental not essential to who Americans are. 

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/05/biden-frees-al-qaeda-ally-who-plotted-smuggle-daniel-greenfield/

With inflation rising almost as fast as gas prices and the cost of a home, Joe Biden ain’t doing much for most Americans. But if you’re an Al Qaeda terrorist, he’s got your back.

Just ask three of Gitmo’s finest who are benefiting from Biden’s generosity.

Saifullah Paracha (pictured above) was a Pakistani businessman and New York travel agent with some big plans. The Gitmo inmate now being set loose by Biden wanted to “do something big against the US.”

9/11 was in Al Qaeda’s rearview mirror and its mastermind, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, was plotting a sequel. The Gitmo dossier for Paracha first details a plan to use his “textile business to smuggle explosives into the US” and these “ready-made explosives, specifically C4” would go into shipping containers full of “women and children’s clothing”.

Shipping Al Qaeda’s C4 to America would be more lucrative than dumping sweatshop labor sweatpants because “if al-Qaida used detainee’s textile company for shipping explosives to the US, he would likely be paid additional money beyond the standard shipping fees”. No word on whether there would have been a bonus for every American blown up.

And then things escalated from there with testimony that Paracha allegedly claimed that he, “believed he could obtain unspecified chemicals from Chinese sources”. The fellow he was talking to about the unspecified chemicals, Ammar al-Baluchi, one of the few Gitmo Jihadis whom neither Obama nor Biden had managed to release yet, had helped out the 9/11 hijackers with flight simulators, and manuals, and allegedly chatted with Mohammed Atta.

After 9/11, Al-Baluchi was looking at all sorts of plans for crashing planes into things, like the American consulate in Karachi or London’s Heathrow airport, but there were other options on the table. The nature of the chemicals out of China was never specified, but the KSM lieutenant believed they were” chemical or biological agents” that could be used “as a weapon”.

Paracha reportedly advised Al Qaeda that “one should look for a similar looking chemical and put it in between the good chemicals and it would be very easy to get [through] customs.” With his business experience, he could offer Al Qaeda tips on smuggling such as warning them about the “radiological sensors at ports or places of entry into the US” that would make it difficult to smuggle radioactive materials into the country”.

But Biden’s newest charity case wanted something bigger. The dossier describes the 9/11 mastermind’s associate and Paracha chatting about Al Qaeda getting some “radiological or nuclear items several times” because Paracha wanted “to help al-Qaida ‘do something big against the US.’”

Paracha “also discussed nuclear attacks and attacks against nuclear power plants” and had an idea for “al-Qaida to attack a nuclear power plant”.

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/four-house-dems-label-squad-statements-on-israel-antisemitic-at-their-core/?utm_source=

Four House Democrats condemned their colleagues on both sides of the aisle for fueling anti-Semitism in an open letter on Tuesday.

“We . . . reject comments from Members of Congress accusing Israel of being an ‘apartheid state’ and committing ‘act[s] of terrorism,’” read a letter signed by Representatives Josh Gottheimer (D., N.J.) Elaine Luria (D., Va.), Kathy Manning (D., N.C.), and Dean Phillips (D., Minn.). “These statements are antisemitic at their core and contribute to a climate that is hostile to many Jews.”

The letter added, “Sadly, we have learned from our history that when this type of violence and inflammatory rhetoric goes unaddressed, it can fuel increasing hatred and violence, and lead to unspeakable acts against Jews.”

Representatives Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D., N.Y.), Rashida Tlaib (D., Mich.), and Cori Bush (D., Mo.) have referred to Israel as an “apartheid” state. Representative Ilhan Omar (D., Minn.) referred to “Israeli air strikes killing civilians in Gaza” as “an act of terrorism” during last week’s fighting between Israel and Palestinian armed groups in the Gaza strip.

After pro-Palestinian demonstrators attacked Jews in New York last week, Ocasio-Cortez wrote on Twitter that “we will never, ever tolerate antisemitism” in the city “or in the world.”

“The recent surge in attacks is horrifying. We stand with our Jewish communities in condemning this violence,” Ocasio-Cortez wrote.

The Tuesday letter also condemned Representative Marjorie Talyor-Greene (R., Ga.), who compared a Tennessee grocery store’s rule requiring employees to display their vaccination status to the requirement for Jews to wear a yellow star during Germany’s Nazi period.

“”[E]lected officials have used reckless, irresponsible antisemitic rhetoric,” the letter states. “These include repeated, unacceptable, and blatantly antisemitic statements made by a Member of Congress comparing facemasks and other COVID-19 public health measures to ‘what happened in Nazi Germany’ during the Holocaust.”

https://www.nationalreview.com/2021/05/pompeo-slams-bidens-shut-down-of-lab-leak-probe-they-havent-lifted-a-finger/

EXCLUSIVE: The former secretary of state fires back amid reports that the Biden State Department cut short a coronavirus-origin investigation he once led.

F ormer secretary of state Mike Pompeo blasted the Biden administration’s efforts to date to get to the bottom of the coronavirus pandemic’s origins, amid reports that the current State Department had ended an inquiry from his watch concerning the possibility of the so-called lab-leak theory.

“They haven’t lifted a finger, as I understand it,” he told National Review in an interview on Wednesday, regarding the U.S. government’s efforts to investigate the COVID-19 pandemic’s origin. “They haven’t even raised it with Xi Jinping, and I don’t know that it was raised when National-Security Adviser Sullivan and Secretary Blinken were in Anchorage. I don’t know that they laid down their demands, nor do I know if they told them in the case that you don’t comply with these demands, here are the costs we’re going to impose on you.”

The former secretary of state’s comments came amid an extraordinary about-face concerning the lab-leak theory of COVID’s origins by major media outlets, Democratic officials, and others who previously had dismissed it. This culminated in an announcement by President Biden on Wednesday afternoon calling for the intelligence community to further investigate and report back within 90 days, noting that community has “‘coalesced around two likely scenarios’ but has not reached a definitive conclusion on this question.” This followed acknowledgement of the plausibility of the lab theory in recent days by Dr. Anthony Fauci, Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra, and a number of other key officials.

The Biden administration has never denied the findings of a January 15 fact sheet issued by the Trump administration claiming that researchers at a Wuhan lab came down with respiratory illnesses in 2019 and that the facility hosted military research. Officials have, however, kept a cool distance from these revelations, and some even alleged that the Trump administration had, in issuing the fact sheet, “put spin on the ball.”

With support for investigating the plausibility of a leak from the Wuhan Institute of Virology now growing, Pompeo suggested it was strange that others had not joined him in raising this possibility in the past. Specifically, he said that top Democratic officials likely had access to the intelligence on which he based his May 2020 claim that a lab-leak origin was supported by “enormous evidence.”

https://nypost.com/2021/05/26/enough-of-faucis-lies-devine/

Dr. Anthony Fauci was absolutely adamant that the National Institutes of Health has never funded dangerous research on bat viruses in the Chinese lab suspected of being the source of the COVID-19 pandemic, when he was questioned by Republican Sen. Rand Paul two weeks ago. 

“Senator Paul, with all due respect, you are entirely and completely incorrect that the NIH has not ever and does not now fund ‘gain of function’ research in the Wuhan Institute of Virology,” Fauci said in the fiery Senate hearing on May 11. 

He couldn’t have been more certain. 

Until he wasn’t certain a few hours later. 

That very afternoon, Fauci admitted to “a very minor collaboration as part of a subcontract of a grant we had a collaboration with some Chinese scientists,” during an appearance at Poynter.org’s “festival of fact checking.” 

It’s like being a little bit pregnant. The NIH either funded so-called gain-of-function research to juice up bat coronaviruses in China, or it didn’t. Turns out it did. And it did it by exploiting a loophole in an Obama-administration ban on the Frankenstein research put in place in 2014. 

Fauci’s defensive answer at the Poynter event this month was in response to a mild-enough question about the coronavirus: “Are you still confident that it developed naturally.” 

Rattled by the morning’s confrontation with Sen. Paul, Fauci for the first time admitted he was not at all confident the virus had ­developed naturally and maybe, just maybe, it could have come from a lab leak. But he still tried to have the last word against Paul. 

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9622767/Emails-reveal-Joe-Biden-DID-meet-Hunters-business-partners-VP.html

Joe Biden met with his son’s Russian, Ukrainian and Kazakhstani business associates while vice president, emails show.

Hunter Biden wrote to a friend before the 2015 Washington DC dinner that it was ‘ostensibly to discuss food security’, but was in fact an opportunity to introduce his potential clients and partners to his powerful father.

The shocking communications appear to fly in the face of the president’s claim that he had no knowledge of his son’s business activities.

Yet the White House has remained silent over the revelations – and has failed to respond to every request for comment about illegal activity and scandalous behavior evidenced on Hunter’s abandoned laptop, obtained and exclusively verified by DailyMail.com.

A guest list Hunter prepared for the dinner at the private ‘Garden Room’ at Georgetown’s Café Milano included corrupt, late former Moscow mayor Yury Luzhkovhis wife Russian billionaire Yelena Baturina, and a Mexican ambassador.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-virus-lab-theorys-new-credibility-11622066808?mod=opinion_lead_pos1

President Biden on Wednesday ordered U.S. intelligence to dig deeper into the origins of Covid-19, a reversal after he reportedly ordered a State Department investigative unit shut down. Mr. Biden is trying to cover for his embarrassing closure of the investigation because the dam has finally broken on the evidence that the virus may have escaped from the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV). The shame is that it took so long because the suspicious facts have been apparent from the start.**

In January 2020, international media began reporting about a virus spreading in the Chinese city of Wuhan. “The coronavirus could result in a global pandemic,” said Sen. Tom Cotton on Jan. 30, 2020. “I would note that Wuhan has China’s only biosafety level-four super laboratory that works with the world’s most deadly pathogens to include, yes, coronavirus.”

The world would learn more about Covid-19—and the WIV. But it was always reasonable to ask if the virus came from a nearby lab that handled dangerous viruses. On Feb. 6, 2020, Botao Xiao of the South China University of Technology posted a paper concluding the virus “probably originated from a laboratory in Wuhan.” But the Chinese government strictly controls research into Covid-19’s origins, and the molecular biomechanics researcher withdrew his publication.

The Communist Party then went on offense, with Beijing’s ambassador to the U.S. declaring that lab-leak theories were “absolutely crazy” and could “fan up racial discrimination, xenophobia.” After Mr. Cotton responded by calling on China to “open up now to competent international scientists,” the media chose denial: “Tom Cotton keeps repeating a coronavirus conspiracy theory that was already debunked” (Washington Post) and “Senator Tom Cotton Repeats Fringe Theory of Coronavirus Origins” ( New York Times ).

https://www.wsj.com/articles/cities-reverse-defunding-the-police-amid-rising-crime-11622066307?mod=hp_lead_pos5

One year after the movement to “defund” law enforcement began to upend municipal budgets, many American cities are restoring money to their police departments or proposing to spend more.

In New York City, Mayor Bill de Blasio said he would reinstate $92 million for a new precinct after scrapping the project last summer. The mayor of Baltimore, who led efforts as a city councilman to cut the police budget by $22 million last year, recently proposed a $27 million increase.

After attacks on Asian-Americans and a rise in homicides in Oakland, Calif., city lawmakers in April restored $3.3 million of the $29 million in police cuts, and the mayor is now proposing to increase the department’s budget by $24 million. Los Angeles’s mayor has proposed an increase of about $50 million after the city cut $150 million from its police department last year.

In the nation’s 20 largest local law-enforcement agencies, city and county leaders want funding increases for nine of the 12 departments where next year’s budgets already have been proposed. The increases range from 1% to nearly 6%.

Many U.S. cities are led by Democrats who supported protesters’ calls to defund the police—a term that activists have used in different ways, including to push for simply shrinking the size of police forces but also shifting resources from law enforcement to social services. The demonstrations, led by Black Lives Matter and allied groups, followed the murder of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer last year.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2021/05/a-closer-look-at-the-legacy-of-george-floyds-death/

It is right to condemn excessive police force. To turn Floyd into a hero of a racialized morality play is inane.

T oday marks one year since the death of George Floyd in police custody — I can never get used to invoking the term “anniversary” in connection with such dark events. There is, as one has come to expect, no shortage of vaporous talk about Floyd’s “legacy.” We should not, however, conflate the man with the event.

Floyd should not have died as he did. For their complicity in his demise, four former Minneapolis police are being held accountable, beginning with Derek Chauvin, who was convicted last month. Still, a stubborn fact remains: Floyd bore significant responsibility for the tragedy that unfolded.

There was probable cause that he committed a crime. He was not profiled or otherwise singled out for harassment by police officers acting on suspicions rooted in “systemic racism.” To the contrary, a local food-store merchant complained to police that Floyd had passed a counterfeit $20 bill. That complaint was based on a report by the young black cashier who handled the transaction and whom Floyd willfully put in an unfair position — either speak up or be personally liable for the store’s loss. Before calling the police, store employees, including the cashier, twice implored Floyd (who was parked outside) to come inside and settle the problem that he had caused. He refused. And although Floyd had serious health issues — e.g., an enlarged heart, hypertension, narrowings in major passages near his aorta, and a recent bout with COVID — he continued to abuse illegal narcotics and was at the time ingesting a potentially deadly combination of fentanyl and methamphetamine.

Floyd was a tragic figure, but not an admirable one. What happened last Memorial Day was not his first run-in with the law — far from it. In the decade beginning in 1997, when he was 23, he was arrested at least nine times. Several of these resulted in criminal convictions, generally for small-time narcotics and theft offenses. The resulting prison stints were usually short. But not all of them.