RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://americanmind.org/features/lefts-war-free-speech/end-nationalism-end-america/

Today’s globalist dogma is incompatible with our country’s survival.

Twenty-First-century progressive liberalism sees the American nation as a problem. There are three core points of contention: 1) the concept of nation-state sovereignty; 2) the actual American nation itself—its culture, history, and people; and finally, 3) the prospects for constitutional republican self-government in America.

From Democratic Sovereignty to Global Governance

For decades, mainstream liberal foreign policy experts who have served at the highest levels of American government (John Kerry, Strobe Talbott, Harold Koh, Anne-Marie Slaughter) and in the academic world (G. John Ikenberry, Robert Keohane) have advocated transferring aspects of national sovereignty from nation-states, including ours, to global institutions. Indeed, President Obama himself told the United Nations General Assembly in 2016: “We’ve bound our power to international laws and institutions—I am convinced that in the long run, giving up freedom of action—not our ability to protect ourselves but binding ourselves to international rules over the long term—enhances our security.”

Harold Koh, the State Department’s chief legal advisor under Obama, recommended that U.S. courts “download” international law into American law, stating that it is “appropriate for the Supreme Court to construe our Constitution in light of foreign and international law.” Anne-Marie Slaughter, an international lawyer who served under Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, argued that nations should cede a degree of sovereign authority “vertically” to supranational institutions such as the International Criminal Court. She declared that transnational networks “can perform many of the functions of a world government—legislation, administration, and adjudication—without the form,” thereby creating what the American Bar Association has endorsed as the “global rule of law,” with transnational law logically superior to the U.S. Constitution.

Liberal scholars have recognized that global governance is often at odds with democratic self-government. The liberal internationalist argument is that nation-state democracies like the United States cannot be relied upon to develop fair “global rules” because they ignore the interests of non-citizens.

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/the-clean-up-phase-of-bidens-presidency-is-about-to-end/

“Biden has spent these early months dealing with the lingering reminders of the man he replaced. But this chapter of his presidency might be drawing to a close.”

One rarely emerges empty-handed from an hour or two in the C-SPAN archives. I spent some time the other day watching a 2009 episode of Q&A, where Brian Lamb interviewed Christopher Hitchens. A passing reference to the debate over post-9/11 interrogation methods reminded me that it is far too early to make oracular judgments about Joe Biden’s presidency — much less to classify him as a “transformative” president like Franklin Delano Roosevelt or Ronald Reagan. The event, decision, speech, or law that will define Biden in American history has yet to happen.

Presidents spend the first months of their tenure in office dealing with issues and problems left over from the previous administration. George W. Bush, for example, wanted his first tax cut to increase economic growth after the bursting of the tech bubble. Barack Obama’s first tasks after taking the oath were stabilizing the financial system and lessening the fallout of the Great Recession. Donald Trump had to manage, in his inimitable style, the portfolio of ISIS, the southern border, and North Korea that Obama handed him in January 2017.

And yet all of these chief executives will be remembered not for what they accomplished before the arbitrary and overblown milestone of the “first 100 days,” but for how they responded to challenges that did not appear until long afterward.

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/bidens-infrastructure-bill-aims-to-end-single-family-zoning/?utm_source=recirc-desktop&utm_medium=blog-post&utm_campaign=river&utm_content=top-bar-latest&utm_term=first

With the introduction of his massive, $2.3 trillion “infrastructure” bill, President Biden’s campaign to end suburban single-family zoning has begun. If you think this issue was debated and resolved during the 2020 presidential campaign, you are mistaken. It’s true that Biden’s campaign platform openly and unmistakably pledged to abolish single-family zoning. As soon as President Trump made an issue of that pledge, however, Biden went virtually silent on the issue and the Democrat-supporting press falsely denied that Biden had any designs on single-family zoning at all. Now that he’s president, Biden’s infrastructure bill openly includes programs designed to “eliminate” single-family zoning (which Biden calls “exclusionary zoning”).

How, exactly, does Biden plan to end single-family zoning? According to the fact sheet released by the White House, “Biden is calling on Congress to enact an innovative new competitive grant program that awards flexible and attractive funding to jurisdictions that take concrete steps to eliminate [‘exclusionary zoning’].” In other words, Biden wants to use a big pot of federal grant money as bait. If a county or municipality agrees to weaken or eliminate its single-family zoning, it gets the federal bucks.

The wildly overreaching Obama-Biden era Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing (AFFH) regulation — which Biden has pledged to revive — works in a similar fashion. The difference is that by adding another gigantic pot of federal money to the Community Development Block Grants that are the lure of AFFH, Biden makes it that much harder for suburbs to resist applying — and that much more punishing to jurisdictions that forgo a share of the federal taxes they’ve already paid so as to protect their right to self-rule.

https://justthenews.com/accountability/russia-and-ukraine-scandals/tuesanatomy-hunter-biden-foreign-business-deal-involving

In his new memoir, Hunter Biden declares there is a simple explanation for a life filled with addiction to drugs and alcohol. “I have the capacity and tenacity to use to excess, and a single-minded unwillingness to quit,” he writes. “That makes addiction easy, rather than hard.”

Unraveling his extensive deals with foreign characters — some with controversial histories — while his father was in government, however, is a more complex story.

And no other anecdote illustrates that better than Hunter Biden’s brief engagement with a fugitive Ukrainian oligarch’s team in 2015, one that began with discussions about lobbying his father’s administration to make an indictment go away and ended with a separate $3 million deal and a handsome $275,000 transfer into a firm that routinely paid the younger Biden.

Following the money is a dizzying exercise, with multiple business firms and bank accounts and a discussion about one deal that ends with payment for another business opportunity.

The tale begins in April 2015, when Hunter Biden got an email from his business partner — the now-convicted felon Devon Archer — about a plan to assist the oligarch Dmitri Firtash, a Ukrainian who was under U.S. indictment by the Obama-Biden administration, and at the time, a fugitive.

The goal was to see whether Firtash’s felony indictment could be erased or eased with the help of the Obama-Biden State Department, where Hunter Biden’s father held much sway and where the vice president’s longtime national security adviser, Tony Blinken, served as deputy secretary under John Kerry, according to emails and interviews published last week by Just the News.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9444413/Kamala-Harris-not-visited-Mexico-border-taking-charge-migrant-crisis.html

The Vice President was tasked with addressing the crisis at the border amid a surge in migrant numbers
In two weeks she has only held one phone call with the Guatemalan President and offered no interviews
She did not visit the border despite traveling home to California for four days with no public commitments
More than 170,000 migrants were caught trying to cross the border in March, its highest level in two decades
Harris is yet to hold an interview or make a trip to see the ‘humanitarian crisis’ despite her new role

Kamala Harris has still to visit the US-Mexico border or even hold a press conference about her new duties in the two weeks since being tasked with addressing the migrant crisis.

The Vice President spent Easter weekend at her Brentwood home in Southern California where she baked a ‘beautiful’ roast pork with rice and peas, but did not find time in her schedule to visit the nearby border.

In the past two weeks she has also visited Connecticut for a talk with the Boys and Girls Club of New Haven, traveled to Oakland to meet with Gavin Newsom to show support amid his potential recall election, and made a trip to a bakery in Chicago.

Harris has also been busy moving into her new residence at the Naval Observatory just days after she complained about living out of suitcases while it was being renovated.

https://amgreatness.com/2021/04/06/what-would-a-real-capitol-hill-riot-look-like/

The FBI views the January 6 Capitol Hill protest as “domestic terrorism,” to quote director Christopher Wray. The bureau will work nonstop to bring those responsible to a police-state version of justice.

This included arresting Christopher Kuehne, a Missouri man who appears on security footage doing dangerous stuff like staying inside the velvet ropes and picking up garbage left by other protestors. Kuehne is a retired Marine with two Iraq deployments and a purple heart. The FBI charged him with carrying a deadly weapon, though he had none. The media falsely reported he was a member of the Proud Boys, though he is not. It appears he is being held in solitary confinement 23 hours a day without bail. His wife was kept waiting in freezing weather for hours while an FBI forensics team ransacked their home looking for “evidence.” She was pregnant and has suffered a miscarriage. That story has been effectively deleted from the internet and you won’t find it easily with a search on Google. 

The FBI isn’t alone in claiming the January 6 Capitol protest was the worst thing to happen to America since 9/11. A substantial share of nominally Republican politicians has joined that chorus. Senator Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) went so far as to say that Donald Trump will have “a place in history” for the Capitol riot: “They could have blown the building up. They could have killed us all.” 

When Graham says this, he knows perfectly well that he is lying. Trump asked the hundreds of thousands of Americans who came to show their support to walk with him peacefully to the Capitol. He made “peaceful” explicit. Nonetheless, every corrupt politician and newscaster in America has been able to find the violent subtext buried somewhere in Trump’s speech. 

Real Incitement

Well, try this on for size: Suppose if, instead of saying “let’s walk to the Capitol peacefully,” Trump instead had said what everyone accuses him of saying. Suppose he’d said, “The election is being stolen from us and I’m not giving up power.” (Remember how the Left fantasized Trump would have to be removed from the Oval Office by force?) Suppose Trump continued: “I am calling on my supporters to defend my presidency with violence. Come to Washington. Bring your guns! Bring every weapon you can lay your hands on. Don’t let anyone stop you. No justice, no peace!” 

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2021/04/milwaukee_black_panthers_racially_harass_and_force_shutdown_of_asian_nail_salon_as_media_avert_their_eyes.html

“You do not disrespect black women from our community…. You do not disrespect Black Lives Matter…. You ever disrespect a black woman again, we’re going to shut you down.”

With these and other words, a group of 10 Milwaukee Black Panthers invaded an Asian-owned nail salon and threatened it.

Later, they returned, and police arrived.  Instead of protecting the Asian owner, a female officer spoke cordially with the Panthers, addressing their leader as “General” and left the store saying, “All right, I’m sure that he got your message, sir, thank you so much.  We really appreciate you coming down.  Thank you though.”

All of this is on video recordings, boastfully posted to Facebook by the leader of the Panthers, who styles himself “King Rick” and who refers to Black female customers as “queens.”  We know this only thanks to Jim Piwowarczyk of Wisconsin Right Now, who notes that the leader of the group is:

“Darryl King Rick Farmer II,” whose Facebook page proclaims him as, “LEADER AND BLACK GENERAL OF THE ORIGINAL BLACK PANTHERS NATIONWIDE AND OTHER COUNTRIES!”

Following these confrontations, the nail salon has been shut down, its retail space vacated, a business (and jobs) no longer in existence.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/point/2021/04/justice-breyer-joins-rbg-warning-dems-against-daniel-greenfield/

It wasn’t all that long ago that the Left and the media (but I repeat myself) were as fired up about packing the Supreme Court (and destroying its legitimacy utterly) as they currently are about rigging all the elections through HR 1 and eliminating the filibuster. The matter had gone far enough that the dictionaries were being revised as the media loudly insisted that “court-packing” was just a term that Republicans had recently made up.

Then Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the patron saint of Democrats, warned them it was a terrible idea.

“Nine seems to be a good number. It’s been that way for a long time,” Ginsburg said, speaking to NPR.

“I think it was a bad idea when President Franklin Roosevelt tried to pack the court,” Ginsburg noted.

Funny how RBG referred to court-packing and not judicial reform, or whatever euphemism the lefty media had settled on.

Anyway, back to remind the Democrats that court-packing is a terrible idea is the oldest surviving Democrat on the court.

 Justice Stephen Breyer on Tuesday said liberal advocates of big changes at the Supreme Court, including expanding the number of justices, should think “long and hard” about what they’re proposing.

His talk, Breyer said, “seeks to make those whose initial instincts may favor important structural (or other similar institutional) changes, such as forms of ‘court-packing,’ think long and hard before embodying those changes in law.”

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/04/higher-superstition-bruce-thornton/

More and more frequently we so-called advanced moderns believe things to be true that an illiterate farmer in 1800 would have known to be false. As every year passes, the self-proclaimed progressive “brights”–– those who “follow the science” rigorously, they claim, when making and supporting public policies–– endorse as proven facts beliefs and policies that are driven by ideological or venal self-interest rather than truth.

If they continue, the consequences will be the bankruptcy of our culture, economy, and political freedom.

Take this statement from CNN, a loud champion of “science”: “It is not possible to know a person’s ‘gender identity’ at birth, and there is no consensus criteria for assigning sex at birth.” Such a statement back in 1800 would have been dismissed as the ravings of a crank or the sales-pitch for some patent snake-oil. The sex of a child, with the exception of some rare birth defects, is obvious at the moment of birth, both empirically and by medical science.

But the current fad of believing that transient psychological states are what create sex identity has led to harmful outcomes, from the physical and psychological trauma caused by hormone therapy and physical mutilation, to the impact on female athletes that follows from allowing  biological males to compete against females, to the risks to women from admitting biological males into homeless or battered women shelters, or public rest-rooms and school showers.

Our economy is hostage to the same fetishizing of “science,” leading to dubious economic proposals that ignore the real science of mathematics. The first problem is thinking that economics is a science, rather than a species of philosophy that uses numerical data in its theoretical and speculative research. Any discipline that takes into account human behavior cannot be a true science able to correctly predict similar outcomes from the same methods and evidence.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/vaccine-passports-prolong-lockdowns-11617726629?mod=opinion_lead_pos9
Mr. Kulldorff, a biostatistician and epidemiologist, is a professor at Harvard Medical School. Dr. Bhattacharya, a physician and economist, is a professor at Stanford Medical School.

As tens of millions are inoculated against Covid-19, officials in places as diverse as New York state, Israel and China have introduced “vaccine passports,” and there’s talk of making them universal. The idea is simple: Once you’ve received your shots, you get a document or phone app, which you flash to gain entry to previously locked-down venues—restaurants, theaters, sports arenas, offices, schools.

It sounds like a way of easing coercive lockdown restrictions, but it’s the opposite. To see why, consider dining. Restaurants in most parts of the U.S. have already reopened, at limited capacity in some places. A vaccine passport would prohibit entry by potential customers who haven’t received their shots. It would restrict the freedom even of those who have: If you’re vaccinated but your spouse isn’t, forget about dining out as a couple.

Planes and trains, which have continued to operate throughout the pandemic, would suddenly be off-limits to the unvaccinated. The only places where restrictions would be relatively eased would be those still fully locked down, such as many live-event venues and schools. Yet even there, the passport idea depends on keeping the underlying restrictions in place—giving officials an incentive to do so for much longer as leverage to overcome vaccine resistance.

The vaccine passport should therefore be understood not as an easing of restrictions but as a coercive scheme to encourage vaccination. Such measures can be legitimate: Many schools require immunization against common childhood illnesses, and visitors to some African countries must be vaccinated against yellow fever. But Covid vaccine passports would harm, not benefit, public health.