RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.realclearpolicy.com/articles/2021/03/09/kayne_west__worth_32_billion__received_24_million_in_ppp_funding_for_his_sneaker_company_766558.html

A famous singer’s shoe company, a millionaire actor’s film institute, and the California wineries of a legendary filmmaker, probably were not the “little guys” taxpayers thought Congress was targeting in last year’s coronavirus relief Paycheck Protection Program (PPP).

When our auditors at OpenTheBooks.com mapped the big PPP loans (the nearly 83,000 loans between $1 million and $10 million), a few familiar names popped up.

Kanye West, who claims a net worth of $3.2 billion, took $2.4 million for his clothing and sneaker company, Yeezy LLC, which the Wall Street Journal noted had a value of $2.9 billion, with $1.5 billion in yearly revenues.

Robert Redford’s Sundance Institute received $3.04 million in PPP loans. The non-profit’s IRS 990 lists $55.4 million in assets (FY2018).

Two affiliated companies of the legendary Godfather director and vineyard owner Francis Ford Coppola received PPP funding including Francis Ford Coppola Presents LLC ($7.3 million) and Niebaum Coppola Estate Winery, LP ($1.2 million).

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/wheres-the-outrage-over-children-in-cages/

In 2018, Joe Biden said that a “policy that separates young children from their parents isn’t a deterrent, it’s unconscionable.” Biden went on describe the child-separation policy first implemented under the Obama administration as “abhorrent,” and one that threatened “to make us a pariah in the world.” The entire media spent weeks contemplating the depth of our collective immorality. Progressives compared detention centers to Nazi concentration camps. Joe Scarborough equated border agents to SS guards. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez went to the facility and broke down in tears. Charles Blow argued that Donald Trump was a baby snatcher. “These are children!” he wrote.

When Blow wrote his piece there were around 2,000 children being detained by the Border Patrol. This week, according to CBS News, around 3,200 migrant children were being held in Border Patrol facilities – a record — with almost half being held past the three-day legal limit. The coverage, as you can imagine, has a very different tone.

Then and now, it was a complicated issue. The Trump administration incompetently implemented its “zero tolerance” policy, but it certainly wasn’t snatching children like a depraved Gestapo. The fenced detention areas were built before Donald Trump had come into office. Only parents charged with entering the country illegally and who claim asylum after being apprehended were detained. Adults who opt not to be deported after entering illegally had to wait for adjudication of their case. While this happened, the law prohibited children from being held in the same detention centers as adults. This is done to protect children. It was then, and it is now.

The difference in tone, however, tells us that much of what we saw was nothing but performative partisan outrage.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2021/03/biden-prepares-to-strip-college-students-of-due-process-rights/

Either we believe principles are the best means of fairness, or not. Biden, it seems, only believes in them for himself.

It’s always worth reminding people that if President Joe Biden were compelled to live by the standards he intends to institute for college students accused of sexual misconduct, he would be presumed guilty of rape, denied any legitimate opportunity to refute Tara Reade’s charges, and tossed from office in disgrace.

The New York Times reports today that Biden’s Kafkaesque “White House Gender Policy Council” is “beginning his promised effort to dismantle Trump-era rules on sexual misconduct that afforded greater protections to students accused of assault.” The subhead informs us that, “The Biden administration will examine regulations by Betsy DeVos that gave the force of law to rules that granted more due-process rights to students accused of sexual assault.”

The most disingenuous word here — though the piece is brimming with them — is “more.” History did not begin in 2015, and former education secretary Betsy DeVos did not invent more due-process rights in Title IX; she simply reinstated time-honored fundamental due-process rights that have guided justice systems in the liberal world for hundreds of years. The Constitution says — twice — that no citizen shall be arbitrarily “deprived of life, liberty or property without due process of law.” No means no.

It was only in 2011 that the Obama administration instituted fewer due-process rights through the force of law, denying the accused the ability to question accusers, the right to review the allegations and evidence presented by their accuser, the right to present exculpatory evidence, and the right to call witnesses. Basically, the right to mount a defense.

It was the Obama administration that asked schools to institute a system that empowered a single investigator, often without any training and susceptible to the vagaries of societal and political pressures, to pass unilateral judgment on these cases. Also, under the Obama administration rules, colleges were allowed to adjudicate sexual abuse and assault cases using a “preponderance of evidence” rather than a more stringent “clear and convincing evidence” standard.

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2021/03/joe_bidens_mental_capacity_is_diminishing_before_our_eyes.html

The worst kept secret in Washington, D.C., is that Joe Biden is suffering from serious age-related cognitive decline. In January, although some people predicated he would remain in office for up to two years before he was gently ushered out to make room for Kamala Harris, I looked at the man and thought he was going to be retired by June. Lately, though, Biden looks as if he’s heading for an April or May retirement. On Monday, he had his worst public appearance yet, when he was unable to remember either the name for his Secretary of Defense or the Pentagon.

Anybody who’s dealt with aging relatives unlucky enough to suffer from a cognitive decline, whether Alzheimer’s or age-related senility, recognizes what’s going on with Joe Biden. Sally Zelikovsky wrote with great compassion about what’s happening in Biden’s life right now:

Stress and anxiety don’t cause dementia but can exacerbate a dementia patient’s confusion. It can be brought on by something as mundane as a large family gathering, a change in routine, a fall, a visit to the hospital, or stress from a job.  While “sundowning” or decompensating after a family event are common fallouts from stress, the real challenge is the accumulation of stress and anxiety over time that leads to confusion and, ultimately, delusions, which, in turn, can foster increased levels of anxiety that can exacerbate the confusion experienced and result in even more delusions, and so forth and so on.  It’s a hellacious cycle.

Biden’s minders, including Mrs. Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, are doing their best to insulate Biden from the stress. However, his title means that he must get out of the bedroom periodically and play at being president. That effort must be wreaking havoc with Joe’s tenuous grasp on memory and reality.

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2021/03/jill_biden_the_meghan_markle_in_the_wh_is_egregiously_guilty_of_elder_abuse.html

The millions of Americans who were paying attention throughout the 2020 election campaign all became painfully aware of the fact that Joe Biden’s cognitive abilities were slipping and slipping fast.  His wife, as the person closest to him, should have been the one to call the campaign quits in order to reduce stress on the man.  

Instead, apparently so anxious to become the First Lady by any means necessary, Mrs. Biden continued to push her failing husband’s campaign forward as if he were mentally qualified.  Of course all those around him knew as well that he was in the throes of dementia; it was impossible to miss the signs.

They too ignored the obvious and because they always believe the American people are, as a collective, an order of fries short of a Happy Meal, they thought we wouldn’t notice.  Not only was his progressive neurological dimming clear, so was the fact that at no time throughout the campaign could he draw a crowd.  We all saw that he could not give even a short talk without a giant teleprompter.  The man was toast then.  Now he is burnt toast.  He no longer ever credibly read that jumbo teleprompter.

Each attempt to speak since Inauguration Day has been an embarrassing disaster.   And there is the not-Dr. Jill to step in to complete his sentences when she should be making the announcement that we all know is coming.  She must be waiting for the Democrats to implement that 25th Amendment they had hoped to use to get rid of President Trump.  She should be very, very ashamed of herself for allowing poor Joe to suffer the indignities of encroaching dementia in public.

https://amgreatness.com/2021/03/08/obamas-wingmen-set-to-take-over-justice-department-again/

In his first public remarks, Joe Biden’s acting deputy attorney general promised he would spare no resource in the nationwide manhunt for anyone involved in the Capitol breach on January 6. 

“The investigation into those responsible is moving at a speed and scale that is unprecedented, and rightly so,” John Carlin said in a February speech on the threat of domestic terrorism. “Those responsible must be held to account, and they will be.”

Carlin referred to the Capitol melee as an example of “violent extremism.”

If Carlin’s name rings a bell, here’s why. Carlin headed Barack Obama’s National Security Division at the Justice Department for more than two years; his office handled all the evidence presented to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) seeking permission to spy on suspected enemies of America. 

Just weeks before the 2016 presidential election, Carlin’s shop persuaded the court, based on the so-called Steele dossier authored by a British operative paid by the Democratic Party and Hillary Clinton, that Carter Page, a Trump campaign advisor, was a “foreign agent” of Russia. The dossier—consisting largely of unverified opposition research—was central to validating the FBI’s investigation into Donald Trump and his campaign.

Carlin left the agency on October 15, 2016—the FISA warrant to spy on Carter Page was approved by FISC on October 21, 2016, and reapproved three more times. An inspector general’s report later concluded the original FISA applications were filled with “significant errors and omissions,” to put it charitably; the secret court itself blasted the many failings of the Page FISA process.

Carter Page’s life was nearly destroyed, yet not one Obama-era government official responsible for initiating the crusade against him has so much as apologized. Instead, Carlin continued to perpetuate the phony Russian collusion myth by vilifying other Trump aides, including Lt. General Mike Flynn. In 2017, Carlin condemned Flynn’s “secret” conversations with a Russian ambassador as posing a threat to the country that must be investigated. 

He warned career Justice Department employees would resign if Trump fired Special Counsel Robert Mueller. As Democrats considered impeaching Trump in 2019, Carlin described Trump’s phone call with the Ukrainian president as “corrupt.”

The “Independence” Canard