Did Truth Matter on January 6th? Will It Ever Matter Again? James McCoy

https://townhall.com/columnists/jamesmccoy/2021/01/18/did-truth-matter-on-january-6th-will-it-ever-matter-again-n2583269

Editor’s Note: This column is co-authored by Loyd Pettegrow

“Yes, January 6th did matter!  It remains to be seen if the truth behind that day will ever be known, and just how much truth, if any, will matter in American politics in the future.”

Hillary Clinton counseled then-candidate Joe Biden not to concede, “no matter what!” That was before myriad video accounts, poll worker claims and sworn affidavits attesting to illegal and fraudulent conduct in the 2020 presidential election. The “never concede” wise advice to Joe Biden has since been considered unpatriotic, even seditious behavior for President Trump. Ah, Democrat hypocrisy!

When President Trump called for Georgia’s officials to verify voter signatures and to make sure all voters were legal residents of the state, his request was denied. Georgia’s secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger boldly stated, “truth matters.” Does it really? That truth matters, is exactly the foundation of President Trump’s refusal to concede the election. President Reagan advocated the practice of “trust but verify.” In the wake of a global pandemic and the most problematic election in the nation’s history, one can reasonably legitimize President Trump’s reluctance to trust, and certainly his persistent call to verify. After all, a federal commission headed by former President Jimmy Carter had warned of the potential dangers of wise-spread mail-in balloting.  

To the mainstream media and the Democrats, President Trump had no right to challenge the veracity of the unorthodox 2020 election practices. Christopher Krebs, Deep State Director of the Cyber Security Agency – a department in Homeland Security, called the 2020 election the “most secure in American history.” That was certainly a bold statement coming from a man who was at the helm when the largest security data breach of the federal government was reported on December 13, 2020, several months after it occurred. His credibility was certainly questionable! 

Marginalising Conservatives Until We Vanish Peter Smith

https://quadrant.org.au/opinion/qed/2021/01/marginalising-conservatives-until-we-vanish/

Recently, miffed by its coverage of the US election and its aftermath, I wrote to The Australian:

Dear Editor, a suggestion: The cabal of your anti-Trump correspondents should get together each evening to stick pins in an effigy of Donald Trump. That might get the bile out of their systems and allow them to produce decent copy fit to read.

If you’ve noticed the newspaper’s drift to the port side of politics, you guessed it — The Australian didn’t publish my comment but, of course, I had zero expectation it would. The paper is becoming a left-of-centre rag. True, it has some decent writers. I enjoyed reading Gerard Henderson and Caroline Overington this morning. True, too, it is better than the alternatives, which is why I reluctantly still buy it.

It will also be interesting to see where the paper goes when Trump isn’t around for the hacks to get stuck into. What is clear is that it is on a pathway to leftism with the occasional dissident voice for appearances sake. Once leftists have infiltrated and reached an influential level they hire their own. That has been the history of universities, schools, public broadcasting, most of the mainstream print media and public services. The Australian, I fear, is just one more domino. Rupert won’t live forever.

By the way, I am not convinced that socialism per se is behind the movement to close down conservative voices. Socialism in practice produces an intolerance for counter views. First comes socialism then comes fascism. Right now, it seems as though the process has been short-circuited. I put it down to post-modernism and its attendant disregard for the concept of objective truth.

When there is no objective truth, my agenda can become the truth and your opposition lies. And, lies cannot be allowed to pollute the air waves. Liars can be cancelled in good conscience.

Thus, those who express the view that women must have XX chromosomes are liars and should be shunned. Those who don’t accept that free speech becomes hate speech when it offends someone of a minority group are liars. Those who believe it is discriminatory and racist to favour someone because of their skin colour are liars; unless the skin colour is white, in which case they are in good standing.

MY SAY-PRESIDENT SELECT BIDEN’S POTEMKIN ADMINISTRATION

It is obvious by now that the next four years will be Barack Obama’s third term. Virtually every cabinet post and nomination for government office will be filled by former Obama officials. The demonic rush to “cancel” the Trump administration and treat it as a parenthesis and interregnum has begun.

Here is the President-select’s to do list right after inauguration:

Biden Aide: ‘Roughly a Dozen’ Executive Actions on Day One

Plans To Cancel Keystone XL Permit

Will Ask Congress to Grant Path to Citizenship to 11M Illegal Immigrants

Biden’s ambitious 100-day plan to erase Trump’s legacy https://www.cnn.com/2021/01/17/opinions/biden-ambitious-first-hundred-days-zelizer/index.html

Andy Puzder: Biden proposal to boost hourly minimum wage to $15 would destroy jobs, hurt unemployed Any minimum wage increase should be at the state or local level — and the more local the better:https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/minimum-wage-biden-andy-puzder

Biden set to cancel Keystone XL pipeline and right out the gate enrages Canada By Monica Showalter

http://Biden set to cancel Keystone XL pipeline and right out the gate enrages Canada

Election Lawsuits Move Forward Despite Silencing Crusade Even though Trump’s fate is sealed, the Supreme Court still has time to rectify the election’s many wrongs. The only remaining question is—will they? By Julie Kelly

https://amgreatness.com/2021/01/18/election-lawsuits-move-forward-despite-silencing-crusade/

As the country looks back at the mayhem that has unfolded over the past few months, one moment stands out: The most consequential event since Election Day—hands down—was the Supreme Court’s rejection of Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton’s lawsuit against four states that helped decide the outcome of the 2020 presidential election.

In fact, it’s easy to assume if the court had agreed to consider the petition, the melee on January 6 never would have happened.

Paxton’s case detailed the unlawful handling of mail-in ballots in Michigan, Wisconsin, Georgia, and Pennsylvania, votes that overwhelmingly favored Joe Biden. (Biden flipped those states by a combined 270,000 votes; more than 9 million ballots were absentee.) Several Republican state attorneys general and more than 100 GOP House members immediately joined the suit. There were no claims of “kraken” or foreign servers or bribed governors, just indisputable facts of what happened.

But a mere four days after receiving the 154-page filing on December 7, the Supreme Court neglected its duty to protect the U.S. Constitution, refusing to ensure that election laws codified by state legislatures were followed in accordance with the Electors Clause.

“Texas has not demonstrated a judicially cognizable interest in the manner in which another State conducts its elections,” the court wrote in an abrupt order issued December 11. (Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas disagreed with the majority’s “standing” argument and concluded the case did fall within the court’s jurisdiction.)

In a hard slap to both the Constitution and those responsible for their rise to the highest court in the land, the three justices appointed by the president agreed with the majority’s ruling.

Now that the news media, Big Tech, and lawmakers of both parties are attempting to criminalize criticism of the 2020 election—the president was impeached a second time for allegedly inciting an “insurrection” following his fiery speech to supporters gathered in the capital on January 6—the court’s denial of the Texas lawsuit looms large. As I cautioned in December, the vacuum created by inaction in the court system and the Justice Department would fuel chaos.

A Day of Hypocrisy How soon will Democrats cancel Martin Luther King Jr. for calling for a color-blind America? Daniel Greenfield

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/01/day-hypocrisy-daniel-greenfield/

The University of Oregon celebrated Martin Luther King Jr’s birthday, but four years ago it came within a hair of canceling him for being politically incorrect on his previous birthday.

The offending issue had been King’s speech at the Lincoln Memorial, “I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.” Putting character ahead of race has long since become unfashionable among a radical leftist movement obsessed with identity politics.

Today children are indoctrinated with critical race theory in kindergarten. Four-year-olds who barely have any concept of race are told that they must divide each other by color, and to feel proud or guilty of their race. They must forget character and think only about skin color.

That’s how the Democrats who claim to celebrate King and his legacy have tainted his dream.

Around the 57th anniversary of King’s speech, Al Sharpton, an illiterate bigot at the center of a racist riot, and a powerful kingmaker whose golden ring every single Democrat presidential candidate bows to kiss, held his own 2020 rally at the Lincoln Memorial. Sharpton’s most famous quote has a somewhat different message than that of Martin Luther King Jr.

Mutant Social Growths Revisited Never underestimate the fathomless depravity of the American Left. Lloyd Billingsley

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/01/mutant-social-growths-revisited-lloyd-billingsley/

“With such an addled China-compliant politician in charge, Americans might wonder if entire “classes” of people such as deplorables, Christians, and elderly people of pallor might be targeted for violence. For leftist Democrats, these are the equivalent of those mutant social growths that need to be uprooted if society is to progress in a socialist direction.”

“China is going to eat our lunch? Come on, man. I mean, you know, they’re not bad folks, folks. But guess what? They’re not competition for us.” Long before Joe Biden’s 2019 proclamation, American leftists engaged in a competition for best defender of genocidal Communist dictators.

“One must not make a god of Stalin, he was too valuable for that” wrote Anna Louise Strong in her 1935 I Change Worlds. Stalin was then busy collectivizing agriculture, and the independent farmers known as kulaks stood in the way. Stalin decreed it was time to abolish the kulaks “as a class,” and his planned famine, covered up by Walter Duranty of the New York Times, claimed more than a million lives.

“Stalin had merely authorized what farmhands were already instinctively doing,” wrote Strong, who later moved on to Communist China and defended Mao Zedong. After a life “extolling the virtues of Communism,” as the New York Times reported, Strong died in Beijing on March 30, 1970.  Two years later, when Mao’s Cultural Revolution was still going on, American socialists Janet Goldwasser and husband Stuart Dowty took a trip to China.

The result was Huan-Ying: Journey Through Workers’ China, published in 1975. “We wrote it to combat misinformation,” Goldwasser explained in 2019, “China had a different way of setting priorities in terms of healthcare and working conditions, so we intended to get information to readers who weren’t able to visit themselves.” Stuart Dowty showed up in China: People-Questions, published by the National Council of Churches (NCC) in 1975, while the Great Helmsman was still in power.

What Biden’s Immigration Policies Would Do To America America’s adversaries can’t wait for this massive betrayal. Michael Cutler

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/01/bidens-immigration-policies-would-overwhelm-michael-cutler/

Not unlike Donald Trump, during the Presidential campaign, Joe Biden turned immigration into a major issue.  However, unlike President Trump who promised to secure our nation’s borders against illegal entry and ramp up immigration law enforcement to protect innocent people from  criminal aliens and international terrorists, Joe Biden has promised to do the polar opposite within the first 100 days of taking office- but no one is questioning why he would do this or how this would be beneficial to America or Americans.

On January 16, 2021 the American Thinker published an important article, Joe Biden’s big amnesty plan stuns even the open-borders activists for its ‘boldness’ and ‘ambition’ that addressed many of the reasons why Biden’s plan to provide lawful status and pathways to citizenship for what has been estimated to be a  population of 11 million illegal aliens.

As disconcerting as all of the issues raised in the American Thinker article are, the article fails to make several other points that must be considered.

First of all, the number of 11 million is far, far smaller than would be the actual number of aliens who would benefit from such a massive amnesty program.

Look at What He’s Done And You’ll Agree – You’re Going to Miss Trump When He’s Gone By Victoria Taft

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/victoria-taft/2021/01/18/look-at-what-hes-done-and-youll-agree-youre-going-to-miss-trump-when-hes-gone-n1389580

Democrat history-spinners will want to put an asterisk on Donald Trump’s presidency because of the frightening Capitol Building attack, which we learned almost immediately was pre-planned and would have been carried out regardless of what the president said on January 6th.

But if they do, they’ll get history wrong.

If there are any asterisks assigned, the venerated arc of justice will deposit one in the middle of Nancy Pelosi’s forehead. The Speaker, understandably outraged by the attack on the Capitol Building, instead of collecting the facts, rushed to judgment and blamed the president of the United States for fomenting a riot with a speech he was still delivering as the assault on the Capitol began.

Indeed, as I explained on PJ Media, the president said nothing that could be construed as inciting a riot.  And it bears noting that hundreds of thousands of the people at the Save America rally were not incited by the president to riot that day.

But Pelosi – citing the Constitution as her guide – recklessly rushed the House of Representatives into an impeachment that set a poisonous precedent for impeaching future presidents based on their constitutionally protected words rather than actual impeachable activities.

Donald Trump won’t get a gold star for comportment, manners, and speaking off-the-cuff, but the accomplishments of the 45th president are far more than smack-talk and bluster. Indeed, Trump can hold his head up and compare his accomplishments to any president, certainly of recent times.

This is a short list of his accomplishments. Get ready.

About China’s Booming* GDP *Good data mask dangerous imbalances that are growing worse.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/about-chinas-booming-gdp-11611000318?mod=opinion_lead_pos4

The economic data Beijing released Monday seems to suggest that China has met expectations that it would be the only major economy to grow in 2020. China being China, there’s much more—and less—to the story.

The top-line data make China a rare good news story in the pandemic year. Inflation-adjusted GDP growth hit 6.5% in the last three months of the year, making it 2.3% for 2020. This contrasts with the rest of the world, where social distancing and lockdowns have triggered some of the worst contractions on record and raise the specter of long and difficult recoveries.

Some of Beijing’s cheerleaders want you to believe this is mainly because the Chinese government acted so aggressively to suppress the pandemic. That story sits uneasily alongside Beijing’s slow-rolling of early information about Covid-19 when more information sharing might have helped other countries.

Beijing adopted particularly aggressive lockdowns once it did act, sealing off entire cities and even now locking down apartment buildings or neighborhoods at a moment’s notice to suppress outbreaks. To the extent anyone can trust Beijing’s data about virus spread, it appears to have Covid mostly under control.

Navalny’s Arrest and the West More than rhetorical protests will be needed to get Putin’s attention.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/navalnys-arrest-and-the-west-11611000490?mod=opinion_lead_pos3

Russian authorities detained opposition leader Alexei Navalny upon his return to Moscow over the weekend, five months after he survived an assassination attempt in Siberia. His personal courage is as notable as Vladimir Putin’s fear of his appeal.

Mr. Navalny, Mr. Putin’s most effective domestic critic, fell into a coma in August after being poisoned with a chemical nerve-agent of the Novichok group. Last month Mr. Navalny and investigative outlet Bellingcat presented compelling evidence tying the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) to the poisoning.

The dissident spent several months convalescing in Berlin, and he could have remained safe outside Russia. But he returned aware that the country’s penitentiary service recently had accused him of fraud and parole violations. On Monday a court ordered that he be held for 30 days, but given Russia’s lawlessness he could remain behind bars for years.

“I know that the criminal cases against me are fabricated,” he said shortly before being taken into custody. He has since called for mass protests. “I’m not afraid of anything and call on you not to fear anything.”

Mr. Putin and his cronies certainly fear him. Mr. Navalny built a national following by exposing high-level corruption, and this isn’t the first time he’s been arrested on dubious charges. Thousands waited to greet him but his flight was diverted to another airport.