RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://issuesinsights.com/2021/04/19/a-left-turn-toward-biased-ignorance/

With the extreme left culturally ascendant, many of our most treasured and valuable national institutions having become houses of progressive Groupthink. Our nation’s founding principles, basic morality, values and even science have come under sustained hostile ideological assault by both the media and academia. Bias and ignorance have been institutionalized. Sadly, according to a new report, voters bear much of the blame for this.

No question, America is a mess. But how did it get that way? The simple answer, the poll of voters suggests, is ignorance, along with pervasive media and political bias.

The study is based on a survey of voters taken shortly after the 2020 presidential election by Just Facts, which describes itself as “a non-profit institute dedicated to publishing comprehensive, straightforward, and rigorously documented facts about public policy issues.”

The group’s most recent study is eye-opening.

It shows, Just Facts says, “that the vast bulk of voters have embraced false and harmful dogmas that accord with their political views.” This, it adds, is largely due to what’s called confirmation bias, “the human tendency to reflexively accept anything that accords with one’s preexisting beliefs and ignore or twist everything that defies them.”

It’s true that both sides of the political debates have their biases.

https://news.yahoo.com/breonna-taylor-mother-blasts-black-155635973.html

Tamika Palmer, the mother of Breonna Taylor, blasted the Black Lives Matter movement in Louisville, Kentucky in a since-removed Facebook post.

“I have never personally dealt with BLM Louisville and personally have found them to be fraud [sic],” Ms Palmer wrote on Wednesday. A screenshot of the post was later published by a local media show.

She called Kentucky statehouse representative Attica Scott “another fraud”.

Ms Palmer gave credit to family, friends and local activists for supporting her family after the death of her daughter. Ms Taylor, who was 26, died following a police shooting in her home during the execution of a no-knock warrant.

Ms Scott has pushed for a ban on no-knock warrants since Ms Taylor’s death.

Ms Palmer said local activist Christopher 2x and other supporters had “never needed recognition”.

“I could walk in a room full of people who claim to be here for Breonna’s family who don’t even know who I am,” she added.

She criticised people who have raised money for Ms Taylor’s family without knowing them, writing: “I’ve watched y’all raise money on behalf of Breonna’s family who has never done a damn thing for us nor have we needed it or asked so Talk about fraud.

“It’s amazing how many people have lost focus Smdh. I’m a say this before I go I’m so sick of some of y’all and I was last anybody who needs it I’m with this enough is enough!!”

https://legalinsurrection.com/2021/04/pskai-biden-proud-to-have-un-ambassador-who-called-u-s-founding-principles-racist/

UN Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield insisted that America has to acknowledge its own human rights failure before it rejoins the UN Human Rights Council. She claimed she has seen “how the original sin of slavery weaved white supremacy into our founding documents and principles.”

A journalist asked Press Secretary Jen Psaki about the comments, but I wish she had asked the second question first.

She first asked if Biden would remove Thomas-Greenfield, especially since she basically said what China said about the U.S.

Great way to imply the journalist is racist, Psaki:

Is the president going to remove an African-American woman with decades of experience in the foreign service who’s widely respected around the world from her position as ambassador to the UN? He is not. He is proud to have her in that position. She is not only qualified, but he believes she is exactly the right person in that role at this moment in time.

I have not seen her comments. I will say that there’s no question there has been a history of institutional racism in this country and that doesn’t require the UN ambassador to confirm that.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2021/04/when-ideology-is-a-cover-for-child-abuse/?itm_campaign=headline-testing-when-ideology-is-a-cover-for-child-abuse

There are war crimes, and there are ‘culture war’ crimes.

 E ven in wars, there are standards. The United Nations defines “war crimes” as “violations of international humanitarian law (treaty or customary law) that incur individual criminal responsibility under international law.” By way of analogy, culture-war crimes constitute horrors done in the name of advancing some ideological agenda that would shock the conscience of any morally sane person, regardless of his or her political bent.

For instance, there are plenty of voices on the left (as well as on the right) who maintain that it is wrong to chemically castrate a child, stunt his natural growth, and risk his health and mental well-being by deceiving him about a fundamental aspect of his nature, i.e., his biological sex. And further, that it is wrong to subject a child to clinical experiments that will sterilize him and impair his sexual function, all because a widely contested and incoherent ideology demands that this be done.

There are also some voices on the right (as well as on the left) who think that their various ideological sacred cows are more important than preventing such abuse. Whatever the cover they choose to adopt — transgender ideology, “compassion,” business interests, “limited government” — their part in this medical scandal amounts to a culture-war crime.

Enter Asa Hutchinson, the Republican governor of Arkansas, who earlier this month vetoed a bill prohibiting the prescribing of puberty-blocking drugs to gender-confused youth as well as prohibiting doctors from performing sex-change surgeries on minors. Hutchinson told CNN that this is about the Republican Party pursuing a “message of compassion.”

He is not the only one. As Isaac Schorr noted on the Corner earlier this week, Commentary magazine’s otherwise astute Noah Rothman thinks that “Asa Hutchinson Is Right” in vetoing that bill.

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/officials-one-hundred-arrested-in-brooklyn-center-riot-emergency-curfew-put-in-place/

Police implemented an emergency curfew in Brooklyn Center, Minn. on Friday and arrested an estimated 100 people as rioting broke out outside police headquarters in response to the police-shooting death of Daunte Wright, officials said.

City officials had attempted to forgo a curfew on Friday for the first time since protests began on Sunday when a Brooklyn Center police officer fatally shot 20-year-old Wright during a traffic stop. The officer, who officials said intended to discharge a Taser and not a handgun, has resigned and has been charged with second-degree manslaughter.

Mayor Mike Elliot had tried to “take a different approach” in not implementing a curfew, though rioting led officials to announce at 10:30 p.m. that a curfew would be put in place from 11 p.m. Friday to 6 a.m. Saturday. 

The directive came after rioters breached a barrier surrounding the Brooklyn Center police department around 9:30 p.m., according to FOX 9 of Minneapolis. Police responded with flash bangs and pepper spray, pushing the group back so officials could repair the fence.

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/robert-spencer/2021/04/17/leftists-try-to-cancel-zionist-leader-for-criticizing-tlaib-and-omar-and-noting-that-blm-is-anti-semitic-n1440726

The Boston Jewish Community Relations Council (JCRC), a coalition of Jewish organizations, is set to meet on April 27 to decide whether or not to expel the Zionist Organization of America (ZOA) over charges that it is “white supremacist.” Of course, everyone to the right of Pol Pot is a white supremacist these days, as far as the left is concerned. The real sin of ZOA’s national president Mort Klein is that he dared to criticize leftist powerbrokers and to point out that Black Lives Matter (BLM) is not the saintly organization of establishment media myth, but a viciously hateful and anti-Semitic group. Simply telling unwelcome truths about people and causes the left idolizes gets you lumped in with the KKK in this insane age.

It all started last year with a petition from leftist Jewish groups J Street, the Jewish Alliance for Law and Social Action, Women of Reform Judaism and others, calling for the ZOA to be expelled from the Boston JCRC because Klein had made statements that supposedly ventured into “xenophobic and racist territory,” and thus ZOA’s membership was “not compatible with and is in conflict with the mission of JCRC.”

The petition stated: “So long as ZOA enjoys a seat at the American Jewish communal table, we are collectively signaling that their views are a welcome and tolerable part of our communal life. American Jewish institutions must make clear that Klein’s pattern of abuse and bigotry can have no place in our Jewish communal life.”

Among Klein’s “xenophobic and racist statements” were critical remarks about revered, untouchable figures on the left, including George Soros, Barack Obama, and Reps. Rashida Tlaib (D-Ramallah) and Ilhan Omar (D-Mogadishu). Why, only a racist could have any remotely negative word to say about them!

The petition also claims that Klein’s criticism of Black Lives Matter “extended well beyond acceptable discourse on race.” This was because Klein tweeted: “BlackLivesMatter is an antisemitic, Israel hating Soros funded racist extremist Israelophobic hate group.” And: “I urge the SPLC to immediately put BlackLivesMatter on their list of hate groups. BLM is a Jew hating, White hating, Israel hating, conservative Black hating, violence promoting, dangerous Soros funded extremist group of haters.”

https://www.nationalreview.com/2021/04/the-supreme-thuggery-of-democrats-court-packing-scheme/

The sponsors of this plan are gaslighting the nation with nonsensical explanations.

T hat settles it. Henceforth, for baseball, we need 13 on the field. You know, for “balance.” After all, when the big leagues started playing the World Series in 1903, there were only 16 teams. Now there are 30. If you’re going to have 30 teams, there should be at least 13 players on each side, right? Maybe even 30!

Okay, okay, it’s a stupid idea. But you’ll have to forgive me: I watched Thursday’s Rockin’ Jerry & the Wokes show on the steps of the Supreme Court, and ever since, I’ve felt much stupider.

According to Congressman Nadler (D., N.Y.) and his progressive posse, the high court must be expanded, from the nine-member body it has been for over 150 years to the 13-member tribunal they say we urgently need it to be, because there are now 13 federal circuit courts of appeal. There were only nine circuits when the Supreme Court was set at nine justices in 1869.

This is nonsense, but that is par for the course, because it is not meant to be taken seriously as an argument.

The Dems’ Court-expansion-and-packing project is not a public-policy proposal. It’s thuggery. That explains the zany rationales Nadler et al. offered for it at their presser. Maybe the number should be 13 because that’s how many times they said “racism” (though I could be low-balling here). Or maybe expanding the Court is infrastructure, or part of the existential climate crisis. Makes total sense. See, the less this has to do with logic, the more the justices will have it in the front of their minds that the Left is crazy enough to do anything at this point, so they’d better be careful how they decide these cases — and even about what cases they decide to decide.

The size of the Supreme Court has nothing to do with the number of circuits — no more than the size of the Ninth Circuit bench (29 judges) has to do with that of the First Circuit’s (nine judges), or than the geographic jurisdiction of the Eighth Circuit (seven states) has to do with that of the Federal Circuit (nationwide for limited categories of cases), or of the District of Columbia Circuit (just the city of Washington).

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2021/04/17/small_businesses_are_key_to_economic_recovery___145606.html

Alfredo Ortiz is the president and CEO of the Job Creators Network.

American small businesses are the key to unlock our national economic recovery. Small businesses account for two-thirds of all new jobs and drive much of the annual economic growth Americans take for granted. Given the ongoing economic and labor-market turmoil, small businesses are more important now than perhaps in any other time in American history. 

We have both seen firsthand how small businesses can help poor, minority, and immigrant Americans live the American Dream. We want all Americans – regardless of their background – to have the opportunity to follow in our footsteps by creating successful  businesses, especially now when they are so desperately needed.  

Unfortunately, small businesses are suffering. They were some of the most impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic and associated restrictions on activity. More than 100,000 small businesses closed permanently in 2020. By one estimate, more than 110,000 restaurants alone have shut their doors for good. In California, 40,000 small businesses have closed, with nearly half of those closures being permanent. Ordinary Americans can view this carnage with their own eyes walking down Main Street or driving past any suburban strip mall and seeing shops boarded up and bankrupt.  

Traditionally, America’s small business engine has been unbreakable, with new entrepreneurs constantly replenishing and growing the national stock. Yet bringing small businesses back this time may not be a given. With many of them barely keeping their doors open after a year of unprecedented turmoil, bad government policies like proposed tax increases and regulations threaten to put them out of business for good.  

https://johnmcwhorter.substack.com/p/the-victorians-had-to-accept-darwin

The death of Daunte Wright in Minneapolis necessitates a new mental habit among us enlightened American souls.

We embrace assorted cognitive exercises as people with access to higher wisdom, such as understanding that a disadvantaged background can make it harder to excel, or that subtle bias can infect our thinking and actions.

Okay, but we need another one.

Whenever the national media reports on a black person killed by cops, we must ask ourselves “Would a white cop not have done that if the person were white?”

Because: we are taught that white (and even non-white) cops ice black people (usually men) out of racism. It’s possibly subconscious, but in the heat of the moment, they revert animalistically to their white supremacist assumption of black animality and pull that trigger.

This is why so many can only bristle at the idea that George Floyd did not die because he was black.

It’s why now, when the cop who killed Daunte Wright not only says she mistook her gun for a taser, and is even recorded as having done so, legions of people still insist on parsing it as evidence of “racism.” The idea is, I suppose, that she wouldn’t have made that mistake, would have been more prudent, if Daunte Wright was instead a white guy named Donald White.

* * *

Here is why we need that mental exercise. Tony Timpa was quite white and was killed quite in the way that Floyd was, including it being recorded.