RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.spiked-online.com/2020/12/27/2020-the-year-racial-identity-took-over/

2020 was the year that a divisive form of racial identity politics, embodied in the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement, was accelerated and institutionalised.

BLM brought with it a politics of victimhood, a view of races as rigidly defined and adversarial, and a view of the past as something to be sanitised and fought against. The cowardice and capitulation of our institutions to censorious mob pressure made 2020 the year we nearly lost our collective grip on reality.

The intensity of lockdowns, under which billions around the world were confined to their houses, provided the pressure-cooker conditions for BLM’s volcanic eruption on to the global stage. The case of George Floyd in the USA appears, in this sense, merely an opportunistic pretext for an outpouring of self-righteous rage.

What was most striking was the response of the political, cultural and economic elites. BLM, a movement based on fundamentally flawed assumptions and flawed conclusions, was able to demand, and to some extent attain, significant changes to society – the removal of statues, the explosion of corporate diversity programmes, the encroachment of the ‘decolonise the curriculum’ movement – with little sustained pushback from our institutions. You only need to look to history to find several occasions when bad ideas were legitimised as the one and only ‘truth’. But how did today’s bad ideas take over?

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/matt-margolis/2020/12/28/research-finds-that-uv-leds-kill-99-9-of-covid-19-virus-n1287493

A new study from Tel Aviv University shows that the COVID-19 virus “can be killed efficiently, quickly and cheaply using ultraviolet (UV) light-emitting diodes (UV-LEDs) at specific frequencies,” according to a report from The Jerusalem Post.

“We discovered that it is quite simple to kill the coronavirus using LED bulbs that radiate ultraviolet light,” said Professor Hadas Mamane, head of the Environmental Engineering Program at Tel Aviv University’s School of Mechanical Engineering. Mamane led the study with Professor Yoram Gerchman and Dr. Michal Mandelboim.

UV-LED bulbs require less than half a minute to destroy more than 99.9% of the coronavirus on surfaces, Mamane explained. An article detailing their study and its finding was published earlier this month in the Journal of Photochemistry and Photobiology B: Biology.

Ultraviolet wavelengths, available in LEDs as UV-A, UV-B, and UV-C, are very effective at disinfecting surfaces using UV-LED bulbs.

“We know, for example, that medical staff do not have time to manually disinfect, say, computer keyboards and other surfaces in hospitals – and the result is infection and quarantine,” said Mamane. “The disinfection systems based on LED bulbs, however, can be installed in the ventilation system and air conditioner, for example, and sterilize the air sucked in and then emitted into the room.”

https://townhall.com/columnists/scottmorefield/2020/12/28/this-data-for-masked-vs-unmasked-counties-would-be-on-every-front-page-if-it-sho-n2582176

As you may have heard, we’ve sort of got a “casedemic” problem here in Tennessee. That means lots and lots (and lots) of people are testing positive for COVID-19. That’s about all we know for sure, of course. Nevertheless, hand-wringing from media, politicians, and local ‘health authorities’ is seemingly neverending, as are local reporters in my neck of the woods being filmed standing in front of that FEMA body truck they don’t bother to tell us has been sitting in front of the regional hospital, unused, SINCE MARCH. Hospitals aren’t overwhelmed by any measure, and even the death toll isn’t really all that impressive either considering that Tennessee is actually below the national average in deaths per million and most people who are dying are either already super old or super sick.

Indeed, while COVID does tragically hit some people hard, most ‘cases’ are quite mild and often non-symptomatic, driven by panic at every sniffle or people being forced to test for work and other reasons. And there is increasingly solid evidence that not everyone counted as a ‘COVID death’ is really a death caused by COVID, but rather someone who had a positive PCR test at some point in 2020 before dying. When you have a highly contagious respiratory virus going around, particularly one that is seasonal and seems to be boxing out the flu, an increasing percentage of those who die will likely have it. These ‘scary’ numbers lie at the root of the ongoing panic and give continued justification for our overlords to continue to exercise control over society.

Here in Tennessee, one of the few states without a statewide mask-mandate, much pressure has been placed upon Republican Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee to “do something.” Since lockdowns are thankfully for the most part out of the question here, the pressure has centered on establishing that mandate the mask-Karens have been longing for. Even former Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, a medical doctor, has gotten in on the action, begging Lee to pull the trigger in a Facebook post earlier this month that blamed rising case numbers not on the winter months when such viruses always tend to spread, but on supposedly unmasked rural counties.

https://townhall.com/columnists/michaelbrown/2020/12/28/there-is-no-mercy-and-no-redemption-in-todays-cancel-culture-n2582205

It is one thing when, as an adult, you are held accountable for the life you choose to live, especially if you are unrepentant. It is another thing when, as a young adult, you are severely penalized for a three-second video posted on social media when you were just 15.

But that is exactly what happened to Mimi Groves.

She was a championship-winning cheerleader in high school and was accepted by the University of Tennessee, her dream school. She was also accepted by their cheerleading squad, which was one of the top squads in the nation.

Now 18 years old, she was excited to start living out her college dream. And that’s when the cancel culture struck.

When Mimi was 15, she posted a three-second video on Snapchat while she sat in her car in traffic, saying, “I can drive, n*****s.” That was it.

Three years later, in the aftermath of the death of George Floyd in June of this year, and while a senior in high school, she posted something very different.

Using her Instagram account, she encouraged people to “protest, donate, sign a petition, rally, and do something” to help support the Black Lives Matter movement.

So, whatever her intent was when she was 15, her intent now was clear. She was saying that racial justice was important and that she would stand with the American Black community. Good for her.

But that is not how the cancel culture thinks. It does not understand the concepts of mercy and redemption. Instead, it is ruthless and unforgiving.

https://townhall.com/tipsheet/mattvespa/2020/12/28/barstool-emergency-relief-fund-n2582198

Congress has failed. That’s not hard task for the idiots we have working on the Hill. Dare I say, democracy has failed, but I won’t go down that rabbit hole. As the nation deals with the coronavirus outbreak, thousands of businesses have been destroyed, specifically bars and restaurants. Initially, I get why there was a stay-at-home order, now there are raw numbers that show these establishments are not the main source of spread. In New York, one of the states hardest hit by the virus, new data shows that bars and restaurants account for only 1.4 percent of COVID spread. Also, schools are not sources of so-called “super spread.” Reopen the damn schools and resume indoor dining. 

For months, businesses have needed aid. Families have needed assistance. Unfortunately, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and the Democrats had other plans. You see they knew COVID relief packages helped Trump. They wanted him gone, so they admitted to nuking past negotiations in order to better the chances of Joe Biden winning the election. And now, after months of economic disruption and bills stacking as high as Everest, they’re going to give struggling families $600. My eyes cannot roll hard enough.

Dave Portnoy of Barstool Sports, a media company that liberals hate for all the obvious and idiotic reasons, decided to do more than Congress has done in months to help Americans save their dream. His rants on social media about how politicians are trying to kill our right to earn a living are must-watch material. I think even the most ardent Trump hater would agree that if Americans were given a choice of getting COVID or seeing their businesses destroyed because of a virus that has a 90+ percent recovery rate, I think you know that most, if not everyone, would pick the former. Anyways, Barstool has established a relief fund that’s probably going to raise close to $10 million helping businesses have a few more weeks of oxygen, which is more than Congress is doing right now (via Fox Business):

Dave Portnoy, founder of media company Barstool Sports, has raised $ 6.3 million for 18 small businesses as of Saturday morning.