RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://pjmedia.com/columns/philip-carl-salzman/2021/03/29/american-elites-do-not-hate-america-they-just-profit-by-destroying-it-n1435955

“It’s the fate of the nation and related matters that worries me.” Ivan C. Karp, Doobie Doo

American elites are not destroying America because they hate it, but because they profit from it. It is not that they hate America, the Constitution, or the American people, it is just that they do not care about them. What they care about above all is power and money. Their entire focus is on what brings them more power and money.

Who are these elites? They are the coastal and urban political elites, the security services, the big tech dictators, the industrial elite, Wall Street, the “heritage” mainstream media, and the academic elite, all almost entirely Democrat and increasingly far left in political commitment. Together these elites, through cooperation and collusion, form the American oligarchy that determines the state of the nation. As Lind puts it, “oligarchy’s essence is precisely the blurring and blending of public and private power in a partisan manner.”

One way that the elite gains power is through the breakdown of civil society. The Democrats have encouraged that breakdown through advocating racial, gender, other identity divisions among the population. Drawing on university-propounded academic theories of “critical racism” they have proclaimed the awful lie that America is blighted by “systemic racism.” On the basis of that lie, they demand that every child in school must learn that “whiteness” is evil and people of color are all helpless victims of evil whites and police. In other words, university professors and administrators, and Democrat politicians, applauded by the mainstream media, engage in race bating against American whites, who form the supermajority of the population. There could not be a clearer case of reverse racism. Advancing racial and gender hatred and fear among the population is the Democrat formula for drawing people to the Democrat government for protection. 

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/oh-the-horrors/

I wrote today about the dishonest attacks on the Georgia election law, and a Biden claim that has, appropriately, gotten four Pinocchio’s from the Washington Post.

If you delve even a little into this law, it is beyond belief how distorted it’s getting. Here’s a good rundown, from which I’ll pull some notable items.

Hours for early voting will be extended in many places:

One of the biggest changes in the bill would expand early voting access for most counties, adding an additional mandatory Saturday and formally codifying Sunday voting hours as optional. Counties can have early voting open as long as 7 a.m. to 7 p.m., or 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. at minimum. If you live in a larger metropolitan county, you might not notice a change. For most other counties, you will have an extra weekend day, and your weekday early voting hours will likely be longer.

The deadline for requesting an absentee ballot is moved up to avoid completed ballots not getting delivered on time:

Instead of returning an application by the Friday before election day, SB 202 now backs it up to two Fridays before. Republican sponsors of the bill and local elections officials say this will cut down on the number of ballots rejected for coming in late because of the tight turnaround.

Absentee ballots will be more secure:

The actual absentee ballot and envelopes will look different, as well. SB 202 requires absentee ballots to be printed on special security paper, and your precinct name will now be included along with precinct ID printed at the top. Once you fill out your choices by filling in the circles for your choices, you will place it in an envelope that will have your name, signature, driver’s license or state ID number (or last four digits of your Social Security number) and date of birth. The envelope will be designed so that sensitive personal information will be hidden once it is sealed.

https://thefederalist.com/2021/03/30/bidens-weakness-on-the-world-stage-is-dangerous/

A series of embarrassing incidents in recent days shows that while the left may control the media narrative, it’s not fooling Xi Jinping or Vladimir Putin into thinking President Joe Biden is strong.

Biden had a beyond-friendly interview with ABC’s George Stephanopoulos, former press secretary to President Bill Clinton, on March 16 in which he allowed Stephanopoulos to lure him into calling Russian President Vladimir Putin a “killer” with “no soul.” It would be one thing if there were some purpose behind Biden’s hostile utterance about his Russian counterpart, but it didn’t appear tied to any strategic foreign policy goal.

Other than some largely symbolic sanctions on Moscow for the poisoning and wrongful imprisonment of Russian opposition politician Alexei Navalny, Biden’s response to the January resumption of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline to Germany, which the United States had succeeded in halting under the Trump administration, has been “half-hearted.” The Biden team says it just wants to move cautiously, but observers say if they wait any longer to act against Berlin and Moscow, it will be too late.

Putin took full advantage of the blunder. After vintage philosophical musings about how Biden may be projecting his own inadequacies, he said the United States has a dark history. He quickly challenged Biden to a public debate. He condescendingly said the sooner it could be done, the better, even if Biden needed a bit of rest and time to prepare. The White House declined the offer for such a public conversation, as Putin surely knew they would.

Russia also recalled its ambassador, the first time such a move had been necessary in decades.

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/poll-majority-of-americans-see-cancel-culture-as-threat-to-freedom/

A majority of Americans see cancel culture as a threat to their freedom and are “concerned” that if they expressed their opinions online they would be banned or fired, according to a new poll.

A new Harvard CAPS-Harris Poll shows 64 percent of respondents believe that there is a “growing cancel culture” threatening their freedom, according to The Hill. Thirty-six percent said they did not view it as a threat to their freedom.

Thirty-six percent of Americans said cancel culture is a “big problem,” the poll shows, while 32 percent said it was a “moderate problem,” 20 percent deemed it a “small problem,” and 13 percent said it is “not a problem.”

Additionally, 54 percent of respondents said they were “concerned” that sharing their opinions online could get them banned or fired, while 46 percent said they were not concerned. 

“It is a chilling finding that most people in the country now are afraid they would be fired if they expressed their real views on social media,” said Mark Penn, the director of the Harvard CAPS-Harris Poll survey.

“The public generally gives negative ratings to social media companies and sees the movement as more about censorship rather than trying to correct wrongs. It is growing as a national issue,” he said. 

The survey was conducted from March 24 to 25 among 1,945 registered voters.

https://amgreatness.com/2021/03/29/media-fawns-as-fauci-promotes-child-abuse/

Exactly one year ago, Dr. Anthony Fauci joined President Trump in the Rose Garden to announce plans to extend the COVID-related lockdowns for another 30 days. Fauci and Dr. Deborah Birx then presented doomsday models predicting more than 2 million Americans would die of COVID-19 in a matter of months, and urged the president to keep the country shut down until the end of April. Trump, persuaded by the data, agreed.

“We feel that the mitigation we’re doing right now is having an effect,” Fauci said on March 29, 2020, referring to the initial “15 Days to Slow the Spread” initiative the White House announced on March 16. “But the decision to prolong . . . this mitigation process until the end of April, I think, was a wise and prudent decision.” Fauci bragged that he and Birx pored over the data with the president and explained why they believed it was the best course of action. “The president accepted it.”

At that moment, Donald Trump officially handed over the reins of his once-booming economy and his political future to two heartless, clueless incompetents who unfortunately remain in the spotlight to this day. The economic, educational, physical, and mental damage Fauci and Birx inflicted on the country will never be fully calculated, yet neither shows a hint of remorse for what they’ve done. And yet the virus is still here—in fact, in some areas, such as New York and New Jersey, cases are again starting to rise despite more than a year of shutdowns, masking, and social distancing.

So it’s fitting that Fauci’s year-long reign of terror culminated in his suggesting a form of child abuse disguised as more “mitigation strategies” to fight the virus.

“When we talk about what you can do when you’re vaccinated, you can certainly have members of a family if the adults are vaccinated and you’re in the home with your child, you don’t need to wear a mask and you can have physical contact,” Fauci told “Face the Nation” host Margaret Brennan on Sunday. “When the children go out into the community, you want them to continue to wear masks when they’re interacting with groups from multiple households.”

https://issuesinsights.com/2021/03/30/joe-bidens-rule-by-decree-how-far-can-he-go/

President Joe Biden’s candidacy was built on the idea that he was an old, experienced, centrist in Washington, someone who could bring two sides together. So far, with his penchant for issuing “executive orders” to fundamentally change America, he’s governing precisely as a socialist dictator would. Is that what Americans voted for?

Never mind talk of Biden’s clear symptoms of age-related dementia as he stumbles, fumbles and mumbles his way through his presidential duties. Even at 78, Biden is still our nation’s chief executive and commander in chief. He has power, and he plans to use it.

He’s already issued more than 50 executive orders, including 22 reversals of previous Trump policies. Even his aides have gotten in on the imperious act: Last weekend one of Biden’s public relations people physically interfered with Texas Sen. Ted Cruz’s efforts to film the conditions of migrants at the U.S. border. Is this the Soviet Union?

Biden’s ready to do more — a lot more. PJ Media noticed this gem from White House spokesperson Jen Psaki’s press conference last week, in reference to gun control.

“We are considering a range of levers, including working through legislation, including executive action … he as vice president was leading the effort on determining executive actions that could be taken on gun safety measures, it’s something that he has worked on, he’s passionate about, he feels personally connected to. But there’s an ongoing process and I think we feel we have to work on multiple channels at the same time.”

But it won’t just be gun control. No, he has plans for lots of “executive actions” to bring about a major reshaping of American civic, political and cultural life, whether Americans like it or not.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/a-near-call-whether-the-left-will-implode-or-triumph_3754081.html?utm_source=partner

Here’s a question that I do not know the answer to: “Is the Left on the Cusp of Permanent Triumph, Or Is It Committing Suicide?”

That’s the title of an essay by Francis Menton at his blog Manhattan Contrarian.

Menton points out that the sudden acceleration of “cancel culture” and social media “de-platforming” are only two arrows in the Left’s quiver of intimidation.

Another weapon—more bludgeon than arrow, perhaps—ratchets up the Left’s “coercive suppression of dissent” to new, Soviet or Chinese Communist levels of ferociousness.

One main tactic is the universalization of diversity imperatives. The whole “diversity” gambit was always noxious because it never had anything to do with fostering genuine diversity—which requires a sedulous fostering of dissenting opinion and open debate about contentious issues.

On the contrary, the diversity racket was always about enforcing conformity and ideological purity.

The difference now is that what had been confined to a few administrative proclamations and particular “consciousness raising” classes has metastasized and is poised to dictate the emotional and ideological weather of entire institutions.

This development was possible only because of the Left’s “long march through the institutions.” It began in the 1960s with a handful of outside agitators.

It gained steam in succeeding decades as activists slipped into more and more positions of power—administrators as well as faculty. The puzzle was completed and fully weaponized when the government stepped in and backstopped the radicals.

Bureaucratic Instruction

They didn’t necessarily look like radicals. Many of the examples that Menton adduces are just ordinary academic administrators who, in embracing the poison of woke ideology, have trampled all over the ideals of individual rights, due process, and fostering an atmosphere where substantive, fact-based argument, not racial grievance mongering, could thrive.

https://thefederalist.com/2021/03/29/meet-the-new-pentagon-diversity-chief-who-compared-trump-to-hitler/

The U.S. Special Operations Command’s newly-hired “chief of diversity and inclusion” shared anti-Trump memes on Facebook, namely one that likens the former president to Adolf Hitler.

Upon the Defense Department’s announcement of the hiring of Richard Torres-Estrada, several volatile posts were dug up. A comparison photo of Hitler and Trump Photoshopped next to each other, holding Bibles in the air, has caught the most eyes. Torres-Estrada posted it on June 2, 2020.

Fox News host Tucker Carlson discussed Torres-Estrada’s post in a segment on Friday. “The point is, they’re the same,” Carlson said, saying clearly what the diversity director was trying to communicate. “So, this is the guy who now oversees hiring for the SEALs.”

“The Pentagon is now the Yale faculty lounge, but with cruise missiles. That should concern you,” Carlson said, harping on the extent to which the military has gone fully woke.

Carlson’s description of the military comes weeks after the Department of Defense went fully partisan and condemned Carlson for his critique of the department for introducing a flight suit for pregnant women. For some odd reason, the Defense Department decided to get involved in political affairs, and press spokesman John Kirby directed his staff to issue communications in response to the Fox News host’s claim. This is most certainly a violation of the department’s Principles of Information philosophy, which says the agency will not engage in “propaganda” or function like a public relations firm.

Torres-Estrada posted one photo of Trump on July 8, 2020, surrounded by quotes smearing him, and a “missing” sign of Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, on Feb. 19, 2021.

“Looks like the new diversity officer loves celebrating diversity with those who agree with him. Here is what he thinks of the rest of us — Mr. Torres-Estrada was not placed in US Special Operations command by mistake,” tweeted Joe Kent, a retired U.S. Army Special Forces chief warrant officer three.

https://www.blogtalkradio.com/global-patriot-radio/2021/03/26/conservative-c

One of America’s top Jewish leaders, Americans for Peace and Tolerance (APT) founder Charles Jacobs joins show host Andrew E. Harrod to discuss the state of Jewish-American leadership in the face of rising, multifaceted antisemitism.  Traditionally left-leaning politically, American Jewish communities have often thought of antisemitism as a phenomenon associated with Christian prejudice and extreme nationalism, like the European beliefs that facilated Nazi genocide in Europe during World War II.  By contrast, recent decades, particularly since Al Qaeda’s September 11, 2001, attacks, have witnessed rising Islamic and leftist antisemitism, with a focus on condemnation of the Jewish state of Israel.  Leftist political proclivities and intersectional alliances of Jewish groups like the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), however, have prevented them from correctly analyzing today’s antisemitic threats.  Jacobs will discuss the ADL’s long-developing malaise and possible reforms in Jewish leadership, among other matters.

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/kamala-harris-during-this-border-mess

The Biden administration is putting out a call for government volunteers to report for duty amid the significant surge at the border, but many are asking, Where is the person deputized to ‘fix’ the line-in-the-sand crisis? 

As the immigration mess at the southern border gets more and more out of hand, Vice President Kamala Harris remains inexplicably silent.

Even after President Biden officially tapped the VP Wednesday to lead in response to border challenges, there aren’t any plans for her to travel south or even address the issue. According to the Office of the Vice President, Harris had no events this past weekend and no mention of border-related activity.

This comes as the Biden administration is now asking for government volunteers to help manage the migrant surge. The Office of Personnel Management (OPM) has sent memos to agency heads seeking “volunteer deployments” for up to 120 days, Fox News confirmed.

“We are actively working to screen, process and deploy these volunteers while continuing our recruitment efforts and exploration of other avenues to bolster staff resources at the border,” an OPM spokesperson said.In the meantime, while government officials are preparing to volunteer their time to help keep our borders safe, according to CNN, Harris is currently frustrated with the ongoing renovations being made to the vice president’s mansion – forcing her and Second Gentleman Doug Emhoff to temporarily stay at Blair House, the president’s official guest quarters.