RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://pjmedia.com/columns/stephen-kruiser/2021/12/28/the-morning-briefing-the-biden-train-wreck-is-all-the-way-off-the-rails-now-n1544861

I remember listening to a doddering old man drool his way through a presidential campaign last year promising to be the Great Covid Slayer. Unfortunately, the braindead Democrat masses bought Biden’s story. Now he’s been in office for almost a year and we’re still canceling sporting events and talking about wearing masks on airplanes forever.

Yeah, things are getting worse.

Don’t take my word for it, just ask Joe Biden.

Matt has the story:

As the omicron variant of COVID-19 spreads rapidly throughout the country, Joe Biden met with several of our nation’s governors, whom he says need to take the lead in ending the pandemic.

“There is no federal solution [to COVID],” Biden said before the meeting. “This gets solved at a state level.”

Umm, what?

I’m sorry, did I miss something? Joe Biden literally campaigned for an entire year, not only blaming Trump for COVID but also for the deaths caused by it.

“It is what it is because you are who you are,” Biden told Trump during their first debate regarding the COVID death toll.

“A lot of people died and a lot more are going to die unless he gets a lot smarter, a lot quicker,” he insisted.

“We’re eight months into this pandemic,” Biden said weeks before the presidential election, “and Donald Trump still doesn’t have a plan to get this virus under control, I do.”

https://swtotd.blogspot.com/

Democrats, who have failed on so many fronts in the first eleven months of the Biden Administration – immigration, inflation, COVID-19, crime, Afghanistan, China and Russia – have resurrected their nemesis Donald Trump, as a foil to promote their claim that the Republican Party “has,” in the words of Dan Kennedy of Northeastern University, “embraced authoritarianism and voter suppression” – a red herring to deflect attention from Democrats’ efforts for self-empowerment. Trump is demonized because, more than anyone, he is seen as standing athwart the federal regulatory Leviathan progressives have erected.

There is something bizarre about supposedly intelligent and well-informed columnists like Dana Milbank of The Washington Post and Jason Linkins of The New Republic, when they claim threats to democracy emanate from the Party that embraces limited government, free markets, deregulation and low taxes, rather than from the Party that supports greater regulation, higher taxes, packing the Supreme Court, nationalizing voting and (in New York City) allowing non-citizens to vote, while urging conformity, and censoring conservative speech on college campuses. The lead essay in the January 2022 issue of The Spectator concludes: “The transformation of free societies by bureaucratic stealth, corporatization, and end-of-world doom-mongering pose greater dangers to America democracy than do China or climate change.” Yet Barton Gellman of The Atlantic, in contradiction to common sense, calls Democrats “protectors of democracy.”

Partisan progressive reporters have made the ludicrous charge that current media coverage of Mr. Biden is more negative than it was of Mr. Trump in his last year in office, an allegation my youngest grandchild would recognize as absurd. The accusation is a Trojan Horse to camouflage their own biases, displayed for four years in the discredited Russian collusion story, and now in a transformation of last January 6, from a protest that got out of hand into an alleged insurrection. Political criticism should be welcomed. But in this new world, criticism of Republicans is encouraged, while criticism of Democrats is treasonous. Jason Linkins headlined an article in The New Republic: “Is Criticizing Joe Biden a Danger to Democracy?” While he did admit that “blind fealty” is a hallmark of dictatorships (which it is), he overrode that admonition when he wrote: “…the GOP is the enemy of democracy, full stop…” Trump is an easy target. He speaks Brooklynese; he is an overweight, incurable narcissist, who speaks without thinking. Republicans have supporters in the media who are unfair in their treatment of Democrats, but the situation is David versus Goliath-like, with progressives controlling most of mainstream media, big tech companies, Wall Street, schools, universities, government bureaucracies, cultural institutions and professional sports.

https://pjmedia.com/columns/david-solway-2/2021/12/27/is-western-civ-on-the-way-out-n1544855

When a civilization decides it wants to destroy itself, it seems there is no stopping it. As Toynbee wisely said, civilizations do not die of murder but of suicide. It is in its way a perversely exhilarating spectacle: not many get to see in their lifetime a civilization coming to pieces before their very eyes, like a star going supernova. But it is also, and principally, a tragic spectacle, for this is the detritus we leave our children. In On the Eve of the Millennium: The Future of Democracy Through an Age of Unreason, Irish historian Conor Cruise O’Brien generously gives us until the third century of our millennium. He may be wrong. The momentum toward self-destruction proceeds slowly, gradually accumulating velocity until a moment arrives when the collapse appears to happen overnight. As John of Patmos warns in Revelation (18:10), “for in one hour is thy judgment come.”

The omens are all around us and are unmistakable. Nations institute crippling global warming policies, restricting travel and imposing crushing carbon levies, when all the signs indicate an impending period of global cooling. The Green crusade with its arsenal of wind turbines and solar arrays has devasted the reliable energy sector, promising exorbitant costs, power brownouts, and even colder winters. The woke and social-justice movements double down on their gender-fluidity compulsion that flies in the face of biological fact. The feminist psychosis is poisoning the relation between the sexes and destroying the family. The press has abdicated its function of reporting the news and become the propaganda arm of increasingly repressive governments. The education establishment from K-12 to postgraduate study has grown decadent, politically partisan, and likely unsalvageable. Medical fascism is on the march. The absurd and counter-productive pandemic mandates have led to soaring unemployment, school closures, the shuttering of businesses, excess deaths, social division, and devastated economies, turning everyday life into a deranged parody of itself. The daftness of these measures defies understanding.

In such times of general distress, societal upheaval, intellectual vacancy, worldwide plague, and widespread hysteria amounting to a kind of universal madness, one is tempted to turn again to the Book of Revelation with its lurid imagery and prophetic imprecation—even if one is not a believer. The fit between the ancient book and the contemporary scene is too close for comfort. Is a divine prophecy about to be fulfilled? One thinks also of the four beasts of the prophet Daniel’s vision (Book of Daniel 7:1-28), representing four mighty civilizations or empires: “they had their dominion taken away: yet their lives were prolonged for a season and time” (7:12). Civilizations rise and fall and are always at the mercy of the irruption of the bestial. 

https://amgreatness.com/2021/12/27/is-the-whitmer-kidnapping-case-about-to-be-tossed/

The U.S. Department of Justice received an unwelcome Christmas gift from defense attorneys representing five men charged with conspiring to “kidnap” Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer in 2020: a motion to dismiss the case.

The Christmas Day filing is the latest blow to the government’s scandal-ridden prosecution; defense counsel is building a convincing argument that the FBI used undercover agents and informants to entrap their clients in a wide-ranging scheme that resulted in bad press for Donald Trump as early voting was underway in the key swing state last year. What began as random social media chatter to oppose lockdown policies quickly morphed into a dangerous plan to abduct Whitmer as soon as the FBI took over.

A Michigan judge delayed the trial, now set for March 8, so defense attorneys could investigate the misconduct of FBI special agents handling at least a dozen government informants involved in the caper.

As I reported last week, the lead prosecutor recently informed the judge that three of the FBI’s top agents involved in the case will not take the stand as government witnesses. Richard Trask, the FBI special agent who signed the initial criminal complaint against six men facing federal charges—one man pleaded guilty and is cooperating with authorities—was removed from the case and fired by the FBI after he physically assaulted his wife last summer in a drunken rage following a swingers party at a hotel near their home.

The agents who managed the day-to-day activity of the case’s lead informant also will not testify. FBI agent Jayson Chambers ran a security consulting business on the side; an anonymous Twitter account claiming to represent his firm, Exeintel, dropped hints of pending arrests in the Whitmer case, calling into question his motives as a lead investigator. His partner, FBI agent Henrik Impola, has been accused of committing perjury in a separate case.

“The government does not plan to call Impola, Chambers, or Trask as witnesses,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Andrew Birge notified the court on December 17. “[The] government requests the Court exclude evidence relating to Exeintel, the unfounded allegations against SA Impola, and Richard Trask’s domestic assault charges or alleged social media posts.” 

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2021/12/reality_is_impinging_upon_the_democrats_carefully_constructed_covid_tyranny.html

Biden ran on a promise: He was going to federalize the COVID response and end COVID in America. He introduced vaccine mandates for federal employees and those doing business with the federal government and had OSHA do the same for every business with more than 100 employees. Various states, cities, and businesses, especially when it came to healthcare, followed suit. We were also told that, if we even breathed the same air as a COVID person, we had to quarantine ourselves for ten days. In the last two days, that promised federal response, COVID mandates, and quarantines have all fallen apart, thanks to the very contagious but seemingly relatively harmless Omicron variant.

Biden made a lot of promises during the campaign and the media graciously refused to demand details:

Those claims—that Biden would use the federal government to end the pandemic—went a long way with people weary of 2020’s madness. On Monday, after a COVID year more deadly and dispiriting than 2020, Biden admitted that the federal government can’t fix things:

https://issuesinsights.com/2021/12/27/ii-tipp-poll-who-are-the-real-covid-extremists/

To hear the media tell it, Americans are bitterly and broadly divided over COVID-19 and the policies enacted to mitigate its spread and save lives. But while there remain significant differences among political affiliations, the degree of agreement among Americans on COVID-19 policies is noteworthy, new data from the I&I/TIPP Poll show.

Media coverage of COVID-19 this year has often focused on the degree to which the “right” and “conservatives” have refused to heed government imposed mandates and rules to deal with the fast-spreading virus. Coverage, as numerous studies and reports have shown, has been highly politicized.

To find out if this is true, the December I&I TIPP Poll asked Americans “Generally speaking, in your opinion, how effective have the following been in controlling the spread of coronavirus?”  

Respondents rated three types of mandates: Mask mandates, lockdowns, vaccine mandates using a Likert scale — Very effective, Somewhat effective, Not very effective, Not at all effective, and Not sure.

Overall, for mask mandates, 72% of those queried said they were effective, versus 24% saying they weren’t. For lockdowns, the comparable numbers were 66% and 29%. For vaccine mandates, 63% to 31%.

The data come from the I&I/TIPP Poll’s survey of 1,301 adults, conducted online from Dec. 1-4 by TechnoMetrica Market Intelligence, I&I’s polling partner. The poll’s margin of error is +/-2.8 percentage points.

The breakdown by political ideology shows some differences, of course. Opinion is never monolithic.

On the topic of mask mandates, for instance, 61% of those who call themselves conservatives describe mask mandates as “effective,” versus 35% who don’t. Among moderates, 75% call masks effective, and 20% don’t. Liberals are the real ideological outlier here: 88% see masks as working, versus just 9% who don’t.