RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2021/05/over_120_generals_and_admirals_warn_that_administration_policies_are_national_security_threat.html

A day before the Senate markup of HR1 on May 11, 2021,( the Democrats’ power grab to federalize election laws in favor of progressive candidates), 124 retired admirals and generals issued an open letter to the American people warning that “Our nation is in deep peril. We are fighting for our survival as a Constitutional Republic like no other time since our founding in 1776.”

Among the dangers facing the nation created by the Administration’s policies, the retired flag officers singled out H.R.1 and S.1. Without fair and honest elections, they warn that “our Constitutional Republic is lost”. Under our federal system, the states and not the federal government set the controls to ensure election integrity: that there is one legal vote cast and counted per citizen.  State legislatures are tasked by the Constitution with setting the election rules.

Using government IDs and verified signatures are just commonsense controls, the flag officers argue, to ensure honest elections.   But today, many are calling such commonplace controls “racist” in an attempt to avoid having fair and honest elections. The flag officers blasted as a “tyrannical intimidation tactic” the use of racist slurs to stop criticism of the Democrat power grab. The flag officers compared these tactics to those used by fascist and Marxist regimes to silence their critics. The flag officers warn that HR1 and S.1 , if passed, would destroy election fairness and allow Democrats to forever remain in power, “violating our Constitution and ending our Representative  Republic.”

The retired generals and admirals cited the Administration’s appeasement of China as the most important external danger, but they also decried the Administration’s determination to return to the disastrous Iran nuclear deal.

But the flag officers focused on the numerous internal threats created by Administration’s policies like the destruction of our border security, condoning anarchic violence, politicizing our military to create the illusion of rightwing threats, spreading the divisive critical race theory, and undermining our energy independence.

It is highly unusual for retired generals and admirals to engage in political actions. But these retired flag officers signed this letter because they still felt bound by the oath that they had taken “to support and defend the Constitution of the U.S. against all enemies, foreign and domestic.” The retired flag officers acted because “our Constitutional Republic is under tremendous assault coming from those believing in Socialism and Marxism which is the opposite of the freedoms, liberty and Bill of Rights that form the basis of our Constitution and our traditional values.”

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2021/05/how_white_leftist_politicians_and_hipsters_have_already_killed_wokeness.html

White leftist politicians and hipsters have already killed wokeness in American culture.  They just don’t know it yet.

There’s been this repeating cultural joke occurring throughout my lifetime that, for some reason, never seems to be recognized by those who are ridiculed by its many iterations.  That is, when liberal white hipsters adopt any cultural fad, they manage to end the fad by making it spectacularly unpopular in no time flat.

A terrific modern example of this might be liberal white hipsters co-opting fashion and social trends that were prominent in gay culture in the early aughts.  Shows like “Queer Eye for the Straight Guy” and “Sex and the City” created what was then known as the “metrosexual” fad that swept America. Up to that point, the cultural aesthetic of the urbane, somewhat androgynous fashion trends that were highlighted on the show had largely existed among men only in the gay subculture, making it a unique expression of that specific identity.  But once it was adopted by white hipsters, it became part of the cultural status quo, and the trend died almost overnight.

Which brings us to being “woke,” and how it went from being somewhat culturally subversive to being a prerequisite of participating in today’s cultural status quo.

Before 2014, “stay woke” was in common use in the black community, writes Aja Romano at Vox, but it didn’t carry all the weight it’s dragging along today.  It simply meant that one should remain “alert to the deceptions of other people” as a “basic survival tactic.” 

https://www.nationalreview.com/2021/05/punishing-success-the-biden-administration-vaccines-and-intellectual-property/?utm_

Waiving IP protections for vaccines will destroy the innovative industry that made the pandemic-ending vaccines possible.

The Biden administration has apparently learned the wrong lessons from the COVID-19 pandemic. In a recent statement, U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai announced the “Biden-Harris Administration’s” support for waiving intellectual-property protections for COVID-19 vaccines — a move that will destroy the innovative industry that made the pandemic-ending vaccines possible.

It is hard to overstate the pharmaceutical industry’s accomplishments of the past year. It normally takes ten years and billions of dollars to develop vaccines for new diseases caused by novel viruses. Yet only ten months after SARS-CoV-2 — the virus that causes COVID-19 — was identified, two new vaccines were developed, tested, and authorized for emergency use by the FDA. Two months later, Johnson & Johnson added a third vaccine, and now other entrants including AstraZeneca (already approved overseas) and smaller companies, Curevac and Novavax, are waiting in the wings.

These accomplishments stem from the patent protection, including temporary monopoly pricing, that incentivizes innovation and generates the profits to fund it. Innovative new medical products often lower the effective price of health care by providing previously unavailable treatments at patent-protected prices that fall as competing products, and eventually generics, come to market. While these patent-protected prices can initially be high, they often provide effective treatment and health that was previously unavailable at any price — the first drugs for HIV were expensive but lifesaving and prices declined as competing drugs and cheaper generics became available.

COVID-19 vaccines are the only path to ending the pandemic, and their value must be measured against the pandemic’s costs. The cost of efforts to slow the pandemic in the U.S. via a nationwide shutdown of “nonessential” economic activities approach $7 trillion per year (roughly $20 billion per day), even without accounting for medical expenditures and valuation of lives lost (roughly a $2.5 trillion valuation of the 580,000 deaths so far).

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2021/05/09/the_social_justice_mob_tries_to_do_to_tech_what_it_did_to_academia_145731.html

The same tactics used to suppress dissent in academia — with the goal of making colleges “safe spaces” that feel “welcoming” to snowflakes — have graduated to the tech world.

Fortunately, rather than let activists do to their startups what they did to academia, some CEOs are fighting back.

This episode begins when a new employee at Basecamp, a Chicago-based software firm, formed a diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI, as it is known) committee to improve workplace diversity.

In short order, the atmosphere at Basecamp became so toxic that management told staff to stop pushing their politics at work.

“No more societal and political discussions on our company Basecamp account,” CEO Jason Fried announced in a blog post. “It’s a major distraction. It saps our energy, and redirects our dialogue toward dark places.”

The Verge’s Casey Newton reported that a third of Basecamp’s roughly 58 employees planned to quit.