RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://greenwald.substack.com/p/the-moronic-firing-of-will-wilkinson

Will Wilkinson is about as mainstream and conventional a thinker as one can find, and is unfailingly civil and restrained in his rhetoric. But yesterday, he was fired by the technocratic centrist think tank for which he worked, the Niskanen Center, and appears on the verge of being fired as well by The New York Times, where he is a contributing writer. This multi-pronged retribution is due to a single tweet that was obviously satirical and sarcastic and for which he abjectly apologized. But no matter: the tweet has been purposely distorted into something malevolent and the prevailing repressive climate weaponized it against him.

Neither Wilkinson nor his tweet are particularly interesting. What merits attention here is the now-pervasive climate that fostered this tawdry episode, and which has unjustly destroyed countless reputations and careers with no sign of slowing doing.

During the Bush and Obama years, Wilkinson worked at the libertarian CATO Institute but, even then, he was not much of a libertarian. As he himself explained, he is far more of a standard-issue neoliberal that one finds everywhere throughout DC think tanks, the op-ed pages of large newspapers, and the green rooms of CNN, just with a bit wonkier style of expression and a few vague libertarian gestures on some isolated issues. That self-description was in 2012, and he since then has become even more of a standard liberal during the Trump era, which is why the Paper of Record made him a contributor opinion writer where he published articles under such bold and groundbreaking headlines as “Trump Has Disqualified Himself From Running in 2020.”

On Wednesday, the night of Joe Biden’s inauguration, Wilkinson posted this now-deleted tweet in which he was obviously not calling for violence. He was instead sardonically noting that anti-Pence animus became a prevailing sentiment among some MAGA followers over the last month, including reports that at least a few of those who breached the Capitol were calling for Pence’s hanging on treason grounds, thus ironically enabling liberals and MAGA followers to “unite” over that desire:

The next morning, a right-wing hedge fund manager and large-money GOP donor, Gabe Hoffman, flagged this tweet and claimed to believe that Wilkinson “call[ed] for former Vice President Mike Pence to be lynched.” Hoffman also tweeted at Wilkinson’s New York Times bosses to ask if they have “any comment on your ‘contributing opinion writer’ calling for violence against a public official?,” and then tweeted at Wilkinson’s other bosses at the think tank to demand the same.

https://townhall.com/tipsheet/mattvespa/2021/01/23/why-you-should-be-furious-but-also-not-shocked-by-bidens-covid-agenda-admission-n2583592

I mean, are you shocked by this revelation? Joe Biden pretty much says he no immediate plan to combat the coronavirus. None. It can be summed up in six words: “there is nothing we can do.” 

Okay, that’s not exactly fair. He said, there is nothing we can do for several months. We’re in cruise control, but that’s not what he sold on the campaign trail. He didn’t say we’re going to coast for the better part of a year with no plan to voters. It was I’m going to stop it and Trump is at fault. He should take responsibility. If you elect me, I will be the COVID killer. All of this said while he doled out talking points that mirror exactly what the Trump administration’s plan was with COVID management. 

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/megan-fox/2021/01/22/watch-freudian-slip-chuck-schumer-says-donald-trump-incited-the-erection-n1405398

We know that Democrats have had very strong feelings for Donald Trump from the first day he took office, but we had no idea they would finally admit it out loud. On Friday, Chuck Schumer said out loud, in the world’s greatest deliberative body, “Senators will have to decide if Donald John Trump incited the erection.”

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/bryan-preston/2021/01/22/biden-admin-already-caught-lying-about-the-covid-vaccine-n1405435

Feel the unity…

CNN’s MJ Lee reported Thursday that the Biden administration claimed it was having to “start from scratch” on rolling out the COVID vaccine.

That would be the vaccine that was developed under Operation Warp Speed and began distribution to the states in December. Both of those things happened under the Trump administration. Argue all you want, but those are simply facts and they do not care about your feelings about Trump.

According to Lee’s story:

“…in the immediate hours following Biden being sworn into office on Wednesday, sources with direct knowledge of the new administration’s Covid-related work told CNN one of the biggest shocks that the Biden team had to digest during the transition period was what they saw as a complete lack of a vaccine distribution strategy under former President Donald Trump, even weeks after multiple vaccines were approved for use in the United States.

“There is nothing for us to rework. We are going to have to build everything from scratch,” one source said.

Another source described the moment that it became clear the Biden administration would have to essentially start from “square one” because there simply was no plan as: “Wow, just further affirmation of complete incompetence.”

Who are these “sources” and why doesn’t Lee name them? Why don’t they go on the record if what they’re saying is true? What’s CNN’s policy on using unnamed sources? Having written for CNN in the past, I know the site has editors. Where were they?

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/rick-moran/2021/01/22/seattle-business-owners-fed-up-with-officials-for-not-condemning-antifa-violence-n1405588

Downtown Seattle business owners have had all they can take from their local government’s inexplicable failure to condemn the riots and get them under control. The last straw was the night of the inauguration, when dozens of storefronts were vandalized by rampaging antifa members—and not a peep was heard from city leaders.

More than that, the city hasn’t lifted a finger to help struggling companies. Between the draconian lockdown rules set by the governor and the riots, 160 businesses in the city have closed, according to the Downtown Seattle Association. Many of them are barely hanging on.

KoMo News:

“It’s not clear what their message is,” said Gabby Cavalcanti of Bellevue. “You don’t know what to make of it.”

“They need to arrest these people,” said John Hummer in Seattle. “When they without any consequences, they’re going to keep doing it.”

Dorelea Gaffney owns the soap box in Pike Place Market.

She said she feels violated and defenseless because of the damage done to neighboring businesses by vandals.

“It’s not hurting anyone but us, small business owners,” Gaffney said.

Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkan, even now, can’t bring herself to use the term “antifa.”

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2021/01/trump_could_and_biden_cant.html

Donald Trump has often said that he achieved more in his first term than any other president. That is not exactly true, at least not without a qualifier. The fact is FDR and LBJ both accomplished more in their first terms with their New Deal and Great Society programs, respectively. These initiatives dramatically changed government’s relationship with the country in revolutionary ways. But the changes they birthed  were not for the better whereas Trump’s were. So it is more accurate to say that Trump accomplished more positive things in his first term than any other president. 

What makes what Trump’s accomplishments off-the-chart impressive is the resistance he faced. The Democrats were not just the loyal opposition but a collection of radical progressives who proved time and time again that they were more than willing to damage the country to hurt the president. The Democrats got away with their anti-America actions due to their symbiotic relationship with the mainstream media. Instead of examining the damage Democrats were doing to the country, the media poured out lies, distortions and ridicule nonstop against President Trump. The intended coup de grâce to MAGA was the sneaky and backhanded resistance to it by the Republican establishment. 

Yet through it all, Trump got things done for the American people. How did this happen? The answer is multifaceted, with a critical aspect being that Trump was an outsider. This was both a blessing and a curse. Let’s focus on the blessing part.

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2021/01/america_is_not_so_slowly_turning_communist_red.html

Perhaps the most contemptible action of the Democrats, and there have been so many, is the desire to completely erase Trump and, by extension, his MAGA movement. 

So now “more than 250 authors, editors, agents, professors and others in the American literary community signed an open letter this week opposing any publisher who signs book deals with President Donald Trump or members of his administration.”  Such actions can only be described as emulating a dog gone mad.  It is rabies of the mind and soul.  Clearly, their politics supersede economics, and everything is upside-down in this madness. 

That people involved with ideas and  books would inveigh against the publishing of important thoughts is mind-boggling!  Even more disturbing is the ease with which they lie.  For the umpteenth time, Trump did not cage any children; Obama did, but why let the facts get in the way of left-wing censorship?

In addition, Texas Democrat Rep. Joaquin Castro announced “that he would be introducing legislation that would prevent any federal buildings or property from ever being named after President Trump.”  

In lockstep with tyrants, Castro displays the most hideous of instincts as he states, “President Trump incited an insurrection that damaged some of our nation’s most significant and sacred federal property.  Donald Trump should never become a future generation’s confederate symbol.”

How ironic that his last name is Castro, mastermind of communist Cuba and purveyor of the horrors that Cubans have endured for the past 60 years.  How stunning that he perverts history.  How very 1984. 

Then there is Ocasio-Cortez, who has decided that she and her allies will be the arbiters of what Americans will be able to access.  “We’re going to have to figure out how we rein in our media environment so that you can’t just spew disinformation and misinformation.  It’s one thing to have differing opinions, but it’s another thing entirely to just say things that are false.  And so that’s something that we’re looking into.”  This from a woman who in 2019 told Anderson Cooper on 60 Minutes that she was less worried about making factual statements and more focused on prioritizing morality.

Even so, the most salient theme of the past five years was not any challenge to democracy. The great theme of the Trump years, the one historians will note a century from now, was the failure of America’s expert class. The people who were supposed to know what they were talking about, didn’t. 

The failure began with the country’s top consultants and pollsters. Candidate Trump did almost everything lavishly paid political consultants would have told him, and did tell him, not to do—and he won. The most respected pollsters, meanwhile, predicted a landslide for Hillary Clinton. America’s best and brightest political adepts turned out to know very little about the elections they claim to understand.

Also during the 2016 campaign, an assemblage of top-tier academics, intellectuals and journalists warned that Mr. Trump’s candidacy signified a fascist threat. Timothy Snyder, a historian of Nazism at Yale, was among the most strident of these prophets. “Be calm when the unthinkable arrives,” he warned in a Facebook post shortly after the election. “When the terrorist attack comes, remember that all authorities at all times either await or plan such events in order to consolidate power. Think of the Reichstag fire.” Many experts stuck with the fascism theme after Mr. Trump’s election and throughout his presidency. That these cultured authorities couldn’t tell the difference between a populist protest against elite contempt and a coup carried out by powerful ideologues will go down as one of the great fiascoes of American intellectual history. 

The fascism charge was only the most acute form of the claim that Mr. Trump was carrying out an “assault on democracy.” Some semantic clarification is in order here. When intellectuals and journalists of the left use the word “democracy,” they typically are not referring to elections and decision-making by popularly elected officials. For the left, “democracy” is another word for progressive policy aims, especially the widening of special political rights and welfare-state provisions to new constituencies. By that definition any Republican president is carrying out an “assault on democracy.”

https://www.wsj.com/articles/joe-bidens-inaugural-purge-11611270791?m

The “unity” lasted all of a couple of minutes. Then, hours after President Biden pledged in his inaugural address to show “tolerance and humility,” the brass knuckles came out.

One duster was aimed at Peter Robb, general counsel of the National Labor Relations Board. Within minutes of Mr. Biden’s swearing-in, and as the new president told the nation it needed to “be better,” the new White House delivered Mr. Robb an ultimatum: resign by 5 p.m., or be fired.

The general-counsel position is a Senate-confirmed four-year appointment at an independent agency; Mr. Robb had 10 months left in his term. No NLRB general counsel had ever been fired, and the Biden White House provided no cause for the action. Mr. Robb pointed all this out in a return letter and respectfully declined to step down. So Mr. Biden (“we must end this uncivil war”) canned him.

For four years, the media and Democrats cast every action of the Trump administration as something law-breaking or verging on a constitutional crisis. This week’s headlines, by contrast, were a mass media celebration of the return to “normalcy.” Mr. Biden ran on, and won on, a promise to restore norms to Washington.

https://www.rushlimbaugh.com/daily/2021/01/20/the-establishment-thinks-they-hav

RUSH: Greetings to you, music lovers, thrill-seekers, conversationalists all across the fruited plain. Man, oh, man. I have such a range of emotion flowing through my arteries and veins, going to my heart and away from my heart. I’m watching these people at the Biden inauguration. They think they got it all back. They think they finally have vanquished all of their opposition. And they haven’t the slightest idea.

You can hear it in the words they’re saying to each other. You can hear it in the way they’re singing their songs. You can see it in the people that showed up for this inauguration who didn’t show up four years ago for the Trump inauguration, and I have to tell you, ladies and gentlemen, I just — (crowd chanting “We love you! We love you!”) Wait a minute. What’s this? That was obviously audio from a Trump rally, one of the many that occurred before the election last November. “We love you.”

Anyway, greetings, folks. It is good to have you here. We’re gonna try to get through the day here as best we can. I’m looking for the words to most perfectly capture the range of emotion that I feel. And I’m watching these people as they have assembled on the stage for the inauguration of Plugs. And this inauguration looks like what you would expect from a one-party state. This inauguration looks like the Chinese Olympics with hundreds and hundreds of flags to replace people who were not allowed to show up.

Now, why do you think people weren’t allowed to show up? People are not allowed to show up because of COVID. People aren’t allowed to show up because the threats of the National Guard might open fire on everybody. That’s not why. The reason that they put up all these replacements for people is that I don’t think they were confident a bunch of people would show up for this because I think they know. I think they know that they are not — I gotta be very careful here in the words I choose.

I think they know that this is something that’s been arranged rather than legitimately sought and won. And you can see this in their attitudes, in their smiles. You can see it, hear it in the words that they are uttering. It’s like, I remember the 1984 Democrat convention was in San Francisco. I happened to be there, I was covering it. And one of the speakers on one of the nights was the mayor of Washington, D.C. His name was Marion Barry. And the sum total of his speech was, “Tonight we’re on the inside.” Meaning, finally the minorities that really are the Democrat Party have made it to the power base. We’re on the inside. We’re not on the outside looking in.