RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://issuesinsights.com/2023/11/01/bidens-democracy-is-at-risk-scaremongering-puts-democracy-at-risk/

So, when Democrats talk about how “our democracy is at risk,” what they really mean is “our socialist agenda is at risk.”

Now that they can’t use COVID to scare the public into submission, Democrats – from President Joe Biden on down – are working on Plan B. Shouting “Democracy is at risk!” every chance they get.

That’s become the default line for the left. This weekend, when CBS News reporter Bill Whitaker asked Vice President Kamala Harris about the possibility of Biden dying in office, her response was: “Let me just tell you, I’m focused on the job. Our democracy is on the line, Bill. And I frankly in my head do not have time for parlor games when we have a president who is running for reelection. That’s it.”

Notice the contradiction in Harris’ statement? If we have, as she says, “a president who is running for reelection,” how is it that “our democracy is on the line”? Aren’t elections what democracy is all about?

Let’s assume that Donald Trump wins the Republican nomination. (That’s a big assumption, since the first primary is still months away and because history is replete with presumed front runners not getting the nomination.) Let’s also assume that Biden is the Democratic candidate. (Another big assumption.)

Trump and Biden will have to campaign for the presidency, as will various third-party candidates. They will travel the country making their case. The press will spend a great deal of time covering the campaigns – mostly attacking the GOP candidate.

https://www.thefp.com/p/waking-up-from-woke-seneca-scott-migrant-crisis?utm_campaign=email-post&r=8t06w&utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email

A black activist fights the progressivism he says is destroying his city. Left-wing Jews say “screw the allyship” after seeing fellow progressives cheer Hamas’s pogrom. Immigrant New Yorkers oppose the new migrants coming to New York “with the expectation they’re going to be taken care of.”

Today in The Free Press, three stories paint a picture of a larger political shift happening in America.

It is sometimes said of the pandemic that it accelerated preexisting trends: we were already living online more and more, reinventing the traditional 9 to 5, automating ever larger parts of the economy, and abandoning shopping malls. And the lockdowns simply turbocharged it all.

Might recent weeks be having a similar effect on our politics? Could outrage at the horrifying events in Israel, the global explosion of antisemitism, and the Hamas apologism on campuses and in newsrooms, crystallize into a big political upheaval? 

Yesterday, Elon Musk, responding to a Free Press story on X, said that “people are waking up from woke.” Last week, a similar argument was made by Konstantin Kisin in our pages with his essay “The Day the Delusions Died.” He wrote that “many people woke up on October 7 sympathetic to parts of woke ideology and went to bed that evening questioning how they had signed on to a worldview that had nothing to say about the mass rape and murder of innocent people by terrorists.” 

One person who has felt disenfranchised from the left for years is Seneca Scott, a black Oakland activist fighting for the future of his city. Scott is a former progressive who used to support defunding the police. But then he changed his mind. In 2020, “I realized how deep the damage was,” Scott tells David Josef Volodzko in a profile for The Free Press. Oakland’s leaders, “the people we had put in place . . . were just complete frauds.” Now Scott says he’s aiming to start a revolution in his city that will spread across the country.

https://www.thefp.com/p/gender-affirming-care-dangerous-finland-doctor?utm_campaign=email-post&r=8t06w&utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email

Dr. Riittakerttu Kaltiala, 58, is a Finnish-born and trained adolescent psychiatrist, the chief psychiatrist in the department of adolescent psychiatry at Finland’s Tampere University Hospital. She treats patients, teaches medical students, and conducts research in her field—publishing more than 230 scientific articles. 

In 2011, Dr. Kaltiala was assigned a new responsibility. She was to oversee the establishment of a gender identity service for minors, making her among the first physicians in the world to head a clinic devoted to the treatment of gender-distressed young people. Since then, she has personally participated in the assessments of more than 500 such adolescents.

“Early in my medical studies, I knew I wanted to be a psychiatrist. I decided to specialize in treating adolescents because I was fascinated by the process of young people actively exploring who they are and seeking their role in the world. My patients’ adult lives are still ahead of them, so it can make a huge difference to someone’s future to help a young person who is on a destructive track to find a more favorable course. And there are great rewards in doing individual therapeutic work. 

Over the past dozen or so years there has been a dramatic development in my field. A new protocol was announced that called for the social and medical gender transition of children and teenagers who experienced gender dysphoria—that is, a discordance between one’s biological sex and an internal feeling of being a different gender. 

This condition has been described for decades, and the 1950s is seen as the beginning of the modern era of transgender medicine. During the twentieth century, and into the twenty-first, small numbers of mostly adult men with lifelong gender distress have been treated with estrogen and surgery to help them live as women. Then in recent years came new research on whether medical transition—primarily hormonal—could be done successfully on minors.

https://issuesinsights.com/2023/10/31/stop-the-government-mandated-clock-changing-madness-its-pointless-and

This weekend, hundreds of millions of Americans will dutifully set their clocks back one hour, convincing themselves that they’ve “gained” an hour – despite spending at least part of it resetting all their timepieces.

Americans should instead refuse to play along. Few government mandates combine such utter pointlessness and serious public health harms than the twice-a-year switch on and off Daylight Saving Time. It’s time to end the madness.

First, despite its label, “Daylight Saving Time” does not save daylight. It doesn’t even save energy. Two studies looked at energy use before and after changes in DST laws. Indiana went on daylight saving time statewide for the first time in 2006, and in 2007 when President George W. Bush’s godawful energy bill started DST three weeks earlier.

Both found no energy savings. Energy use in Indiana actually went up when it went on DST. So if switching back and forth each year doesn’t save energy, what does it do?

What is clear is that it is a real public health hazard.

A study in Health Economics found that “springing forward” causes “the suicide rate to rise by 6.25% and the death rate from suicide and substance abuse combined to increase by 6.59% directly after the time change.”

Another study published in Sleep Medicine found a significant increase in traffic fatalities on the Monday after the switch to DST, because people are sleep-deprived by having to get up an hour earlier.

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2023/10/americans_are_essential__not_their_government.html

The House has a new speaker, and now attention returns to whether a government “shutdown” can be averted before November 17.  If only the American people could place the federal government in lockdown just as the unaccountable bureaucracy did to them during COVID’s oppressive hysteria.  (So much for the people being in charge, eh?)  In response to our unmanageable debt problem, there is an online meme that is spreading faster than Biden’s human trafficking business at the border: Government Shutdown — Fifteen Days to Flatten the Curve.

Sounds like a good plan.  Shut ’er down, and we’ll see where we are in a couple weeks.  If the debt and deficit haven’t improved, we’ll just have to keep the federal government in lockdown until our unsustainable spending problem is finally under control.  For all those highly paid, partisan bureaucrats worried about their sinecures, stop being so selfish!  We’re all in this together, after all.  The experts are working at the speed of economics!

Edward Holman says it best: “Had we merely refused to raise the debt ceiling one day forty years ago, the following morning Congress would have been forced to pay the debt service because we have always collected FAR more in tax revenue than needed to service the debt.”  Americans should call the government’s “bluff that we would all drown in a lake of fire” if the Leviathan doesn’t get everything it demands.  In other words, until the federal government gains basic arithmetic and accounting skills and learns to live within a budget, shut ’er down!

But how would the war hawks continue funding death and mayhem in Europe if they can no longer use American tax dollars to pay Ukraine’s government workforce and public sector pensions?  Military strategist Larry Johnson has a good idea: President Volodymyr Zelenskyy should “make the rounds in Hollywood pitching a new soap opera — As the War Turns.  It would be the story of a beleaguered Jewish comedian thrust into the seat of power, backed up by Nazi hordes, acquiescing to be the sock puppet of a malevolent Uncle Sam in exchange for a steady supply of Colombian cocaine and bags of cash.”  Hollywood could fund WWIII all by itself!

Seriously, should American taxpayers be funding Ukrainian retirements when pension plans in the United States have been so mismanaged and dangerously underfunded that the next stock market quake will likely wipe out half of Americans’ own retirement nest eggs?

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2023/10/the_death_of_democrat_jewish_innocence.html
Having strived for centuries in America to be the best of good citizens, Jewish Democrats are discovering that their efforts are not appreciated, with dire consequences.

Jewish conservatives, while considered a bit of an oddity despite growing numbers, are commonly asked Why are so many Jews liberals?

From conservative luminaries like Norman Podhoretz and Dennis Prager to B-team influencers like me, Jewish conservatives have struggled to provide a satisfactory answer. Like any other group, we do not march in lockstep, certainly not when it comes to our religion and definitely not politically. Still, Jewish conservatives readily acknowledge that, like Black Americans, most of us tend to be liberal if not downright progressive and, regrettably, sometimes Marxist.

Books and articles have been written, and theories abound as to why this is, including, among others, the idea that Jews are liberal out of residual devotion to FDR and his pro-unionism; as pushback against the brutality they suffered under right-wing totalitarians like Hitler; and because, when Jews became secular, they replaced their religion with progressivism.

None of these quite hits the sweet spot, but they all resonate to some extent.

https://www.racket.news/p/thanks-to-a-politician-who-did-his

A new report about IRS home visits has just been released by the House Weaponization of Government Committee, chaired by Ohio congressman Jim Jordan. It outlines disturbing issues, including confirmation that IRS agents making home visits may come without warning, using aliases, and without informing local enforcement agencies of their presence.

One of the cases outlined is my own. My home was visited by the IRS while I was testifying before Jordan’s Committee about the Twitter Files on March 9th. Sincere thanks are due to Chairman Jordan, whose staff not only demanded and got answers in my case, but achieved a concrete policy change, as IRS Commissioner Daniel Werfel announced in July new procedures that would “end most” home visits.

Anticipating criticism for expressing public thanks to a Republican congressman, I’d like to ask Democratic Party partisans: to which elected Democrat should I have appealed for help in this matter? The one who called me a “so-called journalist” on the House floor? The one who told me to take off my “tinfoil hat” and put greater trust in intelligence services? The ones in leadership who threatened me with jail time? I gave votes to the party for thirty years. Which elected Democrat would have performed basic constituent services in my case? Feel free to raise a hand.

If silence is the answer, why should I ever vote for a Democrat again?

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2023/10/28/amy_klobuchar_you_are_the_worst.html

Note: The following is reprinted with permission from Racket News.

Minnesota Senator and Hindenburg presidential candidacy Amy Klobuchar sent a letter (h/t ReclaimTheNet.org) to Jeff Bezos demanding that he enjoin Alexa from citing “unvetted sources,” specifically Substack and Rumble. No hell is hot enough for this person.

Referring to a Washington Post story complaining that Alexa cited Substack, she wrote: “When asked about the 2020 presidential election, it appears that some answers were provided by contributors instead of verified news sources.”

Amy Klobuchar is the absolute fave of the national media consensus. They love her so much, they speak in italics. “Oh, my God. She’s great. And funny, too!” gushed a cameraman to me in Winterset, Iowa, birthplace of John Wayne, four years ago. He was standing astride an AMY AMY AMY banner in a diner packed with press admirers, who are legion, everywhere. The “funny” legend came courtesy mostly of one joke she repeated everywhere she went, over and over, clinging to the one time Donald Trump bothered to mention her, tweeting about her looking like a “Snow woman.” Funny Amy’s retort?

“I wonder how your hair would fare in a blizzard,” she’d say, in a nasal voice, laugh-snorting at her own joke. In my time following her I heard the joke about five times. By the last I was ready to drive a railroad spike through my foot.

National press tried endlessly to sell the public on “funny” Amy, always emphasizing her geographic origin, as if she were the media’s running mate. The New York Times, in an interview over “dumplings” in which Klobuchar talked about how she thinks about “her own humor and power,” described her act as a “clean, ‘aw, shucks’ approach that conveys her own background as a Midwesterner.” The paper noted: Klobuchar could remember many times when people laughed at her jokes! “She laughs easily… and can recall dozens of her successful zingers.”

NPR did a segment on how “Amy Klobuchar Turns To Humor To Distinguish Herself Among Candidates,” with Mary Louise Kelly abasing herself with the intro, “In the 24-person Democratic presidential field, Senator Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota has distinguished herself as a comedian.” U.S. News and World Report went with, “How Amy Klobuchar’s Humor Sets Her Apart,” and claimed her ability to “savagely deploy a zinger” would be a “critical element in taking on Donald Trump” (!). Barack Obama gushed that Al Franken was now Minnesota’s “second-funniest Senator,” while the hometown Minnesota Post went with “Amy Klobuchar is Hilarious,” adding — this is real — the following deck:

WASHINGTON, D.C. — Amy Klobuchar can legislate, but can she tell a joke? The answer is a resounding “yes” — as in bring-down-the-house, my-stomach-hurts-from-laughing, “yes.”

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/law-enforcement-must-act-against-antisemitism-fueled-violence-and-intimidation/

Charlie’s post on the rising tide of antisemitism, as well as the indifference (and worse) to it in the media and on American college campuses, should be required reading. Until perusing it, I had missed the sleight of hand in the New York Times’ coverage of the appalling incident Wednesday at the Cooper Union, where Jewish students were barricaded in a library to protect themselves from a pro-Palestinian mob (many of them, as ever, young white radical leftists). Here’s the part of the Times’ report that stopped me in my tracks:

The tensions inflamed by the Israel-Hamas war that have roiled university campuses in the United States spilled into the Cooper Union in New York on Wednesday, with pro-Palestinian protesters pounding on one side of locked library doors and Jewish students on the other. [Emphasis added.]

In his superb news post on this incident, our reporter Zach Kessel includes the relevant video clip (from a post on X/Twitter by Jake Novak). Have a look at it.

I’ll wait — the clip is just six seconds long.

Now, if you just read the report in the Times, you would naturally assume that there was a locked door separating the pro-Palestinian “protesters” and the Jewish students, with both groups pounding on it. But that’s not what happened. The mob pounded on the door. The Jewish students were, as the Times states, “on the other [“side of the locked library doors”]. But they were not pounding. They were huddled and undoubtedly frightened that the mob was going to break through.

How long do you figure the Gray Lady’s reporters and editors agonized over how to frame the story so that it was literally accurate but still utterly mendacious — the “both-sides garbage” that Charlie aptly describes.

When Rich and I recorded the podcast this morning, I repeated an argument I made on X/Twitter yesterday (here): It’s not good enough for government officials (such as President Biden) to rhetorically condemn the shocking incidents of antisemitism-fueled intimidation and violence. The federal and state governments have civil-rights laws on the books that empower them to prosecute. I discussed one of them on the podcast, Section 241 of the federal penal code, which states in pertinent part:

If two or more persons conspire to injure, oppress, threaten, or intimidate any person . . . in the free exercise or enjoyment of any right or privilege secured to him by the Constitution or laws of the United States . . . they shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than ten years, or both.

The statute has been held constitutional because there is no free-speech right to threaten and intimidate people out of the enjoyment of their basic rights. That kind of incitement, that type of extortionate and intimidating speech, is an inextricable part of mob violence — such that Section 241 provides for potential death-penalty charges or a sentence of life-imprisonment if death results from the threatening conduct, as it sometimes does.

It is atrocious in the United States of America in 2023 that Jewish people are made to live in fear and be intimidated out of enjoying the basic rights we all take for granted — to walk the public streets, move about school and attend classes, attend religious services, wear clothing that signals their adherence to their faith, and so on.

https://www.thefp.com/p/tgif-it-got-worse?utm_campaign=email-post&r=8t06w&utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email

Campus has fallen: Normally TGIF feels like whack-a-mole, in a fun way. The truly crazy things that the left and right do are rare enough, and we can visit them, laugh, and move along to the weekend. These days? It feels like walking through the aftermath of an earthquake. That’s especially true when it comes to American college campuses, which are now just smoking piles of rubble. Like, here’s where the library used to be and oh my god, we’ve lost the entire field of sociology. Which we have. Read on:

Nearly 2,000 sociologists signed a letter that Israel was committing “genocide” and anything Hamas does is justified by the “context.” The University of California, Berkeley Ethnic Studies Faculty Council released a statement condemning anyone who describes what Hamas did as “terrorism,” which is offensive. The student leader of a Wellesley residential house wrote to the entire dorm she oversees: “We firmly believe that there should be no space, no consideration, and no support for Zionism within the Wellesley College community.” Harvard launched a task force to help ensure the pro-Hamas protesters feel safe and can get jobs while also berating any Jews they might find. At George Washington University, students projected onto the side of the school library: GLORY TO OUR MARTYRS and FREE PALESTINE FROM THE RIVER TO THE SEA. At Stanford, students are asking the school to pay for round-trip tickets for Muslim students to visit home: “Full round trip covered by University upon the signing of a ceasefire for students to visit their family and friends and grieve properly.” (Okay, fine, that one’s funny; just think of the Stanford Students for Justice in Palestine president calmly trying to explain preferred pronouns to a jihadi upon arrival. On second thought: TGIF will personally sponsor any queer activist who wants to fly to Iran. Honestly, I’m curious what would happen.)

At Cooper Union, pro-Hamas protesters chased a clutch of Jewish students into the library. Video from inside shows the young Jews standing, frightened, as the protesters pound on the doors. What exactly would they have done if they got in? Librarians reportedly offered to hide the students in the attic. The joke writes itself. 

The protesters trying to ram through those doors to beat up the Jewish students might even be up for some extra credit. Professors are starting to offer it to anyone who joins a pro-Hamas protest. 

Here’s Berkeley professor Victoria Huynh: “Hi everyone, We’re offering a field trip and/or extra credit opportunity: (1) Students can attend the national student walkout tomorrow against the settler-colonial occupation of Gaza (info attached below) OR (2) Students can watch a short documentary on Palestine and call/email your local California representative using this linktree. Doing so will either count as a field trip or an extra 5 points on the field trip category of your grade.” First of all: Who talks to college students about “field trips?” Anyway, UCLA professors are also offering extra credit for students who go to pro-Hamas rallies. 

And after graduation, the future that awaits these students trying to ram through the doors also looks golden: here are some of the hundreds of academic job postings for roles in various normal-sounding departments that say they’re only looking for people who want to push for “decolonization.”

Sensing the vibes weren’t right, Columbia postponed its annual Giving Day, which usually raises tens of millions for the school. It’s really hard to shake down Jewish alumni when your faculty and students are also trying to do a pogrom. The list of donors who are pulling their gifts keeps growing: the latest is billionaire Leon Cooperman, who declared on television: “I think these kids at the colleges have shit for brains.”

Hats off to Marc Rowan and everyone who has finally realized that the only response here is to stop funding the Ivy Intifada. Write to tips@thefp.com if you know of more. And to college students reading this: campus has fallen, you’re on your own, good luck!