RUTHFULLY YOURS

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.

https://issuesinsights.com/2021/12/28/build-back-betters-dead-dont-bet-on-it/

“If Republicans aren’t paying attention, Democrats will find the way. And we will be stuck with Biden’s Build Back Better monster. Forever.”

When Sen. Joe Manchin said he couldn’t vote for “Build Back Better,” it might have seemed like President Joe Biden’s multi-trillion spending spree had finally met its demise. If you think so, remember Obamacare.

Bad ideas never die in Washington, particularly when it comes to expanding the size, scope, or intrusiveness of the federal government.

And sure enough, once the dust cleared on Manchin’s announcement, rather than admit the massive Build Back Better plan was a terrible idea that would create huge new entitlements, add trillions to the national debt, and that most people believe it will do them more harm than good, Democrats immediately started plotting on how to rescue this monstrosity.

Over the weekend, for example, Maryland Sen. Ben Cardin took to the airwaves to say that his party hasn’t given up.

“There is unanimity in our caucus that we want to get a bill to the president, and we are working to see what that bill will contain,” Cardin said on Fox News Sunday. “President Biden is directly involved in these negotiations.

https://thefederalist.com/2021/12/27/its-time-for-the-black-community-to-embrace-a-post-racial-america/

This is the least racist period in the history of our country. If black Americans want to address disparity, we must start with the black nuclear family.

In some respects, I feel as if we are living through a time like Charles Dickens, “The Tale of Two Cities,” of which he wrote, “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness.”

We are bombarded with messages claiming America is overflowing with systemic racism and white supremacists. Even the National Council on Family Relations now labels the traditional two-parent family an extension of white privilege. 

If you listen exclusively to the news media, the entertainment industry, and the academic-industrial complex, you will be surprised to learn this truth: This is the least racist period in the history of our country.

Having lived in the Jim Crow south, my parents and grandparents would have loved to have grown up in the America I grew up in. A large percentage of the country has been operating in a post-racial America for many years. Across our nation, people have been interacting with each other with respect, dignity, and compassion regardless of race. They have been judging people by the content of their character.

We can pass laws that allow me to enter the front door and reserve a room in any hotel in this country, but we can’t pass laws to force people to open their hearts and their homes to people who don’t look like them. But that is precisely what Americans have done for decades. So how do we explain the differences in the realities on the ground and what we hear in the media?

My family is a classic example of the “best of times – worst of times” and of the disparity between reality and rhetoric. My children, who are now adults, grew up in a two-parent family.  They had their challenges, but they also had stability, unconditional love, and clear boundaries.

Unfortunately, there is a stark contrast with their cousins on my side of the family.  Of my four siblings, my children are the only ones who grew up with both a mother and father in the home. As a result, the lives of my siblings’ children have been interwoven with trauma and tragedy. 

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/never-say-die-trump-russia-collusion-theorists-strike-again

Call it the scandal that will not die. Or, more accurately, the scandalmongering that will not die. In the last few weeks, there has been a spate of new assertions that presidential candidate Donald Trump and the Trump campaign did, in fact, collude with Russia to fix the 2016 election. No matter that special counsel Robert Mueller and his team of prosecutors, an aggressive bunch with a big budget and all the powers of U.S. law enforcement, investigated the collusion allegation for years and failed to establish that it ever happened.

Now, there are more and more references to something called the “Russia hoax hoax.” Anti-Trump types are unhappy that Trump, and some Trump defenders, and even some who aren’t Trump defenders, now talk about the Russia investigation as a “hoax.” Calling the Trump-Russia investigation a hoax, they argue, is a hoax in itself — thus the “Russia hoax hoax.”

“The Real Hoax” is the title of a web piece by the Brookings Institution’s Jonathan Rauch. “It Wasn’t a Hoax” is the title of an article by the Atlantic’s David Frum. “The End of the Great Russia Hoax Hoax” is the title of a Deep State Radio podcast featuring prominent Trump-Russia promoters Natasha Bertrand of Politico, Michael Weiss of the Daily Beast, Josh Campbell of CNN, and Susan Hennessey of the Brookings Institution’s Lawfare website. Lawfare also produced a podcast featuring Rauch and Frum, as well as disgraced FBI agent Peter Strzok, moderated by Brookings’s Benjamin Wittes.

Why all the new activity? The Trump-Russia true believers are deeply concerned about the fallout from special counsel John Durham’s investigation of the investigation. In particular, Durham’s indictments have demolished any possibility of believing in the Steele dossier, which played a big role in the Trump-Russia investigation.

https://reason.com/2021/12/27/rip-pandemic-of-the-unvaccinated/?utm_medium=email

If you spend too much time observing the way politicians speak, you’ll pick up an almost perceptibly mechanical gear-shift in their heads when the brain-groove reminds them to reproduce an anecdote or talking point they have formulated so many times before. Occasionally the subconscious rebels against the alienating monotony with apologetic prefix clauses like, “That’s why I like to say,” or “I always tell the story that,” but the pre-sets mostly override such human twitches to deliver the desired political result.

So it was for President Joe Biden’s counterproductive “pandemic of the unvaccinated” slogan, which the White House COVID-19 Response Team introduced in mid-July, and which the president was still regurgitating inaccurately as late as December 14.

In a local TV interview with News Center 7 in Dayton, Ohio, the president was asked about whether his administration would continue fighting his contested employer vaccine mandates in court. The politician-brain quickly whirred into gear.

“This is a pandemic of the unvaccinated. The unvaccinated. Not the vaccinated, the unvaccinated,” Biden emphasized, on the same day that the omicron variant produced a one-day positive-case increase of 16 percent in highly vaccinated New York City. “That’s the problem. And so everybody talks about ‘freedom,’ and not to have a shot or have a test. Well guess what? How about patriotism? How about making sure that you’re vaccinated, so you do not spread the disease to anybody else? What about that?”

What about that indeed. New York City’s one-shot vaccination rate (of 92 percent for adults, 83 percent for kids between 13 and 17) “rivals any number in the free world,” Politico’s Jack Shafer observed last week, and yet somehow my vaccinated teen and boosted self spent Christmas under quarantine. The fact-checkers over at The Poynter Institute’s PolitiFact generously rated Biden’s “vaccinated…do not spread the disease” claim as only “mostly” false, despite epidemiologist quotes like “[the] statement is not accurate,” and “vaccinated individuals can definitely infect other people.”