RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://spectator.us/want-joe-biden-attorney-general/

Whoever Joe Biden picks for attorney general is in a lose-lose situation. Why is that job so hard? At least three reasons stand out: 

The ongoing criminal investigations of Joe Biden’s family
A boiling cauldron of divisive legal questions facing the new administration, particularly immigration and gun control
Pressure to investigate everything the Trump administration ever did

All those will land in the attorney general’s lap. The first one, involving the Biden family, is especially vexing.

The probe into Biden’s grifting kin will face the AG immediately. The President-elect’s son Hunter and brother James both grew rich by trading on the family name. That, in itself, is not illegal. What they did to earn the money may be, though, and both Hunter and James are currently being investigated for serious crimes. Hunter, in particular, seems to be targeted for non-payment of taxes on foreign income, money laundering and more. Looming over the investigations is whether Joe Biden himself played a direct role, either as Barack Obama’s vice president or after leaving office. He has flatly stated he did not.

Hunter’s former partner in a Chinese energy venture, Anthony Bobulinski, has said Hunter and his father spoke frequently about business. More damning is Bobulinski’s statement that he met with Joe Biden twice, with Hunter and James present, to discuss their business projects. He has said the discussions were fairly general, but they were clearly about the Chinese business venture. (He has since spoken with the FBI and presumably told them the same thing.) President-elect Biden, for his part, has repeatedly denied discussing any business dealings with Hunter but has not said if he ever met Bobulinski. The press hasn’t bothered to ask.

Attorney General Barr has previously said that there were no investigations of either party’s presidential or vice presidential candidates. That means Joe Biden has not been implicated. If his name turns up later in the investigations of Hunter or James Biden, the DoJ’s standing rule is that a sitting president cannot be indicted.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/12/cdcs-affirmative-action-eugenics-coronavirus-daniel-greenfield/

Before the coronavirus pandemic, the CDC was too busy fighting racism to do its job. As the vaccine rolls out, the CDC decided to build the vaccine waiting list around affirmative action

Who gets to live or die? Much like in Nazi Germany, it helps to be a member of the right race.

The CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices has announced that the priorities for distributing vaccines are to prevent death, preserve society, and help those facing “disparities”, and then maybe, “increase the chance for everyone to enjoy health and well-being.”

Vaccine distribution is to be guided by four principles, one of which is to fight “health inequities” and another is to “promote justice”. It’s not the CDC’s job to fight for social justice, but to fight viruses. Having failed miserably at its one job, which it chose not to do, it’s instead pursuing racial equity eugenics by tackling “health inequities” for “racial and ethnic minority groups”.

The CDC and NIH had turned to the National Academies to produce A Framework for Equitable Allocation of Vaccine for the Novel Coronavirus which falsely claimed that “COVID-19 illnesses and deaths are strongly associated with race” due to “systemic racism” and that a “vaccine allocation framework” had to reduce these “health inequities” with affirmative action.

The report noted that the “committee anticipates that the criteria will, in practice, tend to give higher priority to lower-income individuals… and Black, Hispanic or Latin, American Indian and Alaska Native, and Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander communities.”

https://www.wsj.com/articles/soviet-politics-american-style-11608658685?mod=opinion_lead_pos5

On Christmas Day 1991, Mikhail Gorbachev, president of the Soviet Union, gave his farewell speech and more than seven decades of Russian revolutionary socialism came to an end. A generation later, the spirit of the Soviet Union has re-emerged with mass support in the U.S.

When I arrived in Moscow in 1976 to begin a six-year stint as a correspondent, I was struck by the red flags flying from government buildings and the somber streets devoid of advertising except for garish posters showing workers with clenched fists demanding an end to the arms race.

When the Soviet Union fell, it seemed the Soviet attempt to impose a deluded version of reality had died with it. Francis Fukuyama, in his 1989 essay “The End of History,” said that Marxism-Leninism was doomed as an alternative to liberal democracy. I argued at the time that the drive to make a religion out of politics had not disappeared.

For the past four years, potted histories have warned about the rise of fascism in the U.S. But the real danger is the transformation of “tolerance” into an ideology with its own courts, informers and punishments, all of them reminiscent of the Soviet Union.

One of the pillars of the Soviet Union was a controlled press in which all coverage was organized to confirm a mendacious ideology.

https://www.zerohedge.com/political/pork-city-here-are-most-ridiculous-pet-projects-900-billion-spending-package

As Congress prepares to pass a $900 billion COVID-19 stimulus bill rolled into a consolidated appropriations package – with funding for assistance for households and businesses, along with vaccine distribution and other pandemic-related measures, the bill also includes a ton of pork per usual.We already know about the $600 checks for each adult and dependent. This time, however, ‘mixed-status’ households where eligible citizens live with illegal immigrants, will not only receive payments – they can retroactively claim benefits after being left out of the last round.

The bill also includes $300 per week in enhanced unemployment benefits, and would extend unemployment to 50 weeks for both state and federal programs, vs. the standard 26 weeks.

And now, on to the pork… which includes billions to foreign countries, US military weapons purchases which go above and beyond their budgets, $40 million for the Kennedy Center, and nearly $200 million so that federal HIV/AIDS workers overseas can buy cars and car insurance, among other things.

FOREIGN HANDOUTS:

A minimum of $3.3 billion in grants to Israel.Also included is $453 million to Ukraine, on top of the $400 million Trump eventually released. No word on how much of that goes to the ‘big guy.’$10 million for “gender programs” in Pakistan. $1.3 billion to Egypt, and $700 million to Sudan. $135 million to Burma, $85.5 million to Cambodia, $1.4 billion for an “Asia Reassurance Initiative Act,” and $130 million to Nepal.

https://issuesinsights.com/2020/12/23/trump-should-veto-the-2-3-tril-5593-page-covid-19-stimulus-2020s-biggest-fraud-of-all/

Passage of the enormous COVID-19 “stimulus” bill is being hailed as a landmark effort to help average Americans heal from the economic ravages of the Chinese virus. It is nothing of the sort. Passed in the dead of night, it’s a pork-filled nightmare that will lead to more debt, bigger government and a dimmer future for all Americans.

The redoubtable Stephen Green did the basic math. Based on a U.S. population of roughly 330 million, the $900 billion stimulus amounts to $2,727 in spending per person.

OK, but how much of that goes into people’s pockets? A pittance: $600.

Yet, Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi committed the unforgivable sin of holding up those $600 checks for struggling American families in order to hurt President Donald Trump’s reelection chances. This is politics at its most cynical and is a prime example why average Americans today hold politicians in such low esteem.

All told, the bill for this sprawling legislation comes to $2.3 trillion — yes, that’s trillion with a “t”. Add that into Green’s earlier calculation, and the amount spent per household grows to $6,969.

Sure, but all that is going to COVID-19 relief for individuals and small businesses, right? No, not even close – $1.4 trillion from the Consolidated Appropriations Act is dedicated to the federal government’s fiscal 2021 budget.

It was all cobbled together in the last hours of closed-doornegotiations, focused on getting massive servings of pork spending and new, useless government programs added, not on COVID-19 relief. That was just the selling point to all us rubes.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/12/target-america/

China is anxious for Trump to leave — so it can return to a global status quo tolerating its myriad abuses that harm the U.S.

C hina sounds giddy at the ending of the Trump presidency. Before COVID-19, it was locked in a likely lose/lose trade war with the U.S. The American corporate world was finally starting to complain that its once easy profits in joint-ventures were now being gobbled up by an increasingly voracious China.

The Left, for all its hatred of Trump, nonetheless after 2017 grew more vocal over the Chinese gulags, the Tibetization of Hong Kong, and Beijing’s Orwellian internal police state. Too many Chinese spies had popped up at the pinnacles of American power, whether erstwhile chairwoman of the Senate Intelligence Committee Senator Dianne Feinstein’s chauffer, or, as we now learn, House Intelligence Committee member Representative Eric Swalwell’s something-or-other frequent associate, or among the Biden, Inc. clique.

With Trump the disrupter apparently gone for now, China is anxious to return to the prior global status quo — and its exemptions for systematic patent and copyright theft, dumping, currency manipulation, huge trade surpluses, and coerced technology appropriation.

Or as one prominent Chinese academic, Di Dongsheng, recently conveyed his post-election confidence in the Biden first family and the return of the American establishment to power:

I’m going to throw out something maybe a little bit explosive here. It’s just because we have people at the top. We have our old friends who are at the top of America’s core inner circle of power and influence.

https://www.manhattancontrarian.com/blog/2020-12-21-christmas-present-our-political-leaders-are-killing-off-new-york-city

It’s the week before Christmas, traditionally the best week of the year to be in New York City. This is the week when tourists by the thousands flock to town, hundreds of restaurants are full and festive, the theater does peak business, the symphony and opera and ballet put on their most popular shows, concert venues are fully booked, hotel rooms are impossible to find, stores are packed, and beautiful Christmas lights are everywhere.

Not this year. Don’t even think about coming here right now. Almost all of the best things are closed, by order of our political masters. The term “ghost town” is a fair description. Here’s a small roundup:

Restaurants. After a few months of graciously allowing restaurants to have outdoor dining plus indoor at 25% capacity, last week — just as fall was about to turn into full winter — Governor Cuomo ordered all restaurants in New York City completely closed for indoor dining until further notice. That’s right, all indoor dining at restaurants is closed in New York City. Outdoor? This is December! For most of the last week, the temperature has been well below 32F (0C); today it finally got back to a little above 40F (5C). In my neighborhood, normally the best restaurant area of the City, nearly all of the restaurants have given up. A handful have built elaborate “outdoor” structures where a few hardy patrons in parkas huddle beneath highly inadequate heat lamps. The evidence that indoor dining at restaurants is a significant source of spread of the coronavirus is non-existent.

Broadway theater. All of it is completely closed. Through May 2021!

Symphony, opera, ballet, Lincoln Center. Closed, closed and more closed. Lincoln Center is bravely talking about restarting shows some time in “Spring 2021,” but they don’t give any specific date. Carnegie Hall’s most recent proposed reopening date is April 5, 2021. Watch for that to get pushed back again, and then yet again.

Rockefeller Center Christmas Tree. Yes, it is there. You can even go to see it in person — provided that you are willing to put up with advance registration, a scheduled time, mask-wearing, social distancing, a five-minute time limit for viewing, etc., etc., etc. Or you can just watch their virtual live cam, safely from your home in Peoria — which is what they strongly recommend. After all, you wouldn’t want to get too near an actual live human being this year.

http://www.swtotd.blogspot.com

Ambrose Bierce was a Civil War veteran, newspaperman, wit and satirist, not well known today, but appreciated in his time for his sardonic humor. Now in this age of political correctness, “cancelled” history, “hurtful” words and “safe” places, levity, when exercised by the Right, is disallowed. Nevertheless, Bierce’s definition of “Idiot” reminds me of administrators and faculty that populate our universities, members of the press who forsake reporting for advocating, and Washington’s politicians and bureaucrats.

A last Saturday Wall Street Journal article, “Why Are Americans So Distrustful of Each Other” by Kevin Vallier, was sobering. In 1968, 56% of Americans “believed most people can be trusted.” In 2018, “after a half century of increasing [political] partisan division, only 31% did.” Perhaps not surprising, the level of social trust is lowest among young people – not a good sign for our future. Professor Vallier, who teaches philosophy at Bowling Green State University, wrote that social scientists have found three factors behind a country’s level of social trust: corruption, ethnic segregation and economic inequality. But none explain fully the decline in social trust in the United States today. He added: “Some social scientists are convinced that polarization increases political distrust, and it may play a role in increasing social distrust as well.”

In my opinion, there is truth in that statement. My conservative views, in “Blue State” Connecticut make me hesitant to offer opinions when in a social setting. In the same edition of the Wall Street Journal, Peggy Noonan wrote of the divide that separates elites from owners of small businesses, like restaurants and bars: “The professional class of politicians, media people, scientists and credentialed chatterers care about business in the abstract…But they have no particular heart for them.” For Democrats, this is particularly true. In their bar-bell approach to the electorate – wealthy, global, coastal elites on the one hand, and so-called “victims” of oppression on the other – they have no room for middle class Americans, who love their country and who value their families, religions and the virtue of success through hard work.