RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://amgreatness.com/2021/02/17/our-descent-into-collective-madness/

An ungracious and neurotic elite whose judgment is bankrupt and whose privilege is paid for by those who don’t have it threatens to drag us to the depths of unreason.

These are crazy times. A pandemic led to national quarantine, to self-induced recession, to riot, arson, and looting, to a contested election, and to a riot at the Capitol. 

In response, are we focusing solely on upping the daily vaccination rate? 

Getting the country back to work? Opening the schools as the virus attenuates? Ensuring safety in the streets? 

Or are we descending into a sort of madness?  

It might have been understandable that trillions of dollars had to be borrowed to keep a suffocating economy breathing. 

But it makes little sense to keep borrowing $2 trillion a year to prime an economy now set to roar back with herd-like immunity on the horizon. 

Trillions of dollars in stimulus are already priming the economy. 

Cabin-feverish Americans are poised to get out of their homes to travel, eat out, and socialize as never before. 

Meanwhile, the United States will have to start paying down $30 trillion in debt. But we seem more fixated on raising rather than reducing that astronomical obligation. 

We are told man-made, worldwide climate change—as in the now discarded term “global warming”—can best be addressed by massive dislocations in the U.S. economy. 

https://issuesinsights.com/2021/02/17/rush-limbaugh-death-of-a-giant/

Though widely anticipated, the death of Rush Limbaugh after a long battle with cancer is a major blow to conservatives. His witty, often acerbic commentary had been a daily anchor to reality for many Americans, tired of the mainstream media’s lies, bias and prevarications. But with his death, Limbaugh leaves a hole in the conservative movement that is impossible to fill.

The center-right media firmament has many bright stars. Unfortunately, none shine as brightly as Rush did. As the numerous accounts of his death and life point out, he was the most listened to radio show host in history.

He was a master of the medium, and used his three-hour daily radio platform both wisely and well. With 20 million listeners at his peak, Limbaugh singlehandedly turned more liberals and moderates into conservatives than perhaps anyone outside of Ronald Reagan. He was a cultural phenomenon.

That gave him unprecedented political clout for a radio personality. Frankly, we’re not sure who picks up the torch from here. Dennis Prager? Ben Shapiro? Mark Levin? Laura Ingraham? Dan Bongino? Sean Hannity? Andrew Klavan? John Batchelor? Michael Knowles? There are many possible candidates, each excellent and brilliant in his or her own way.

But none is likely to ever match Limbaugh’s raw muscle, reach and influence.

National Review’s description of Limbaugh’s media legacy is on target: “His lashing critiques of the Left, comic riffs, and combative ebullience spawned many imitators, but none of them came close to being his equal.”

https://www.city-journal.org/cuomo-under-fire-for-hiding-nursing-home-deaths

Something is rotten in the state of New York. And, as in Shakespeare’s Hamlet, it starts at the top. For the past year, New York governor Andrew Cuomo, with the aid of a credulous and adoring media, has touted his performance in combating Covid-19 and chided other states for their comparative deficiencies. He was rewarded with a lucrative book contract and an Emmy for providing “reliable information” in his news conferences. The cover has finally been blown on a prolonged and concerted effort by Cuomo and his associates to hide his policy mistakes.

Between March 25 and May 10, 2020, an advisory from Cuomo’s Department of Health (DOH) compelled nursing homes to readmit hospitalized Covid-19 patients without checking if they still had active infection. Health experts cautioned that the policy could lead to additional deaths by introducing infected people into closed facilities where those most vulnerable to the disease—the elderly and infirm—live. Cuomo’s responses ranged from the devil—aka the Trump administration—made me do it; to we didn’t force anything—facilities had discretion to turn down admissions; to “nothing to see here”—the policy didn’t increase the number of deaths; to “who cares” where they died.

Cuomo repeatedly and falsely claimed that the policy was directed by federal guidance.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/texas-spins-into-the-wind-11613605698?mod=opinion_lead_pos1

While millions of Texans remain without power for a third day, the wind industry and its advocates are spinning a fable that gas, coal and nuclear plants—not their frozen turbines—are to blame. PolitiFact proclaims “Natural gas, not wind turbines, main driver of Texas power shortage.” Climate-change conformity is hard for the media to resist, but we don’t mind. So here are the facts to cut through the spin.

Texas energy regulators were already warning of rolling blackouts late last week as temperatures in western Texas plunged into the 20s, causing wind turbines to freeze. Natural gas and coal-fired plants ramped up to cover the wind power shortfall as demand for electricity increased with falling temperatures.

Some readers have questioned our reporting Wednesday (“The Political Making of a Texas Power Outage”) that wind’s share of electricity generation in Texas plunged to 8% from 42%. How can that be, they wonder, when the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (Ercot) has reported that it counts on wind to meet only 10% of its winter capacity.

Ercot’s disclosure is slippery. Start with the term “capacity,” which means potential maximum output. This is different than actual power generation.