RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://thespectator.com/topic/ever-continuing-resolution-congress-doge/

In the 1870s, Gustave Flaubert assembled Le Dictionnaire des idées reçues, a humorous collection of “received ideas” and clichés then current in French society. A new version needs to be produced for contemporary America. As in the original, the humor would often turn on the contradiction or subterfuge implicit in the word or phrase. “Affirmative action” would merit an entry, since it is supposed to be about battling discrimination when in fact it enshrines discrimination in law.

So would the current favorite, “Continuing Resolution” (“CR” among the cognoscenti). The phrase carries the aroma legislative diligence. In fact,…

A “Continuing Resolution” is the fig leaf Congress stitches together in order to conceal, or at least divert attention from, its failure to do its job and provide a fiscally sound budget in a timely manner. It has happened often in recent decades because the self-serving deadbeats we elect to govern us are, well, self-serving deadbeats. Did you know that the last time the United States had a proper budget was 1996? 

The specter of a “government shutdown” is supposed to goad any legislators contemplating a defection from the CR to get back in line. It may not be amiss to note that the phrase “government shutdown” itself deserves a place in our new dictionary of received ideas, since the government never shuts down, more’s the pity. When push comes to shove, those in favor of the CR respond to criticism by shuttering some national parks and some bureaucrats cease even pretending to work. Never mind. The aircraft carriers continue their patrols and the really essential checks, like those that pay congressional salaries, continue to be processed.

https://nypost.com/2024/12/18/opinion/benjamin-weingarten-congress-huge-spending-bill-sneaks-in-a-rescue-for-censors/

Just when Congress seemed poised to strike a blow against the Censorship-Industrial Complex, its 11th-hour maneuvering may have snatched defeat from the jaws of free-speech victory.

Tucked into the 1,547-page continuing resolution now before Congress to fund the government into March is a section titled “Global Engagement Center Extension.”

If not struck, it will prolong the life of a key government censorship cog that had been ticketed for closure.

The State Department recently indicated its plans to shutter the GEC in a court filing.

The department’s announced plan to “realign” the GEC’s staff and funding to other “foreign information manipulation and interference activities” already gave free speech champions pause — but any Deep State concession would have been significant.

GEC was formed to counter foreign propaganda and disinformation campaigns.

But like other parts of the fed-led censorship apparatus, the interagency entity underwent civil rights-eviscerating mission creep, expanding its mandate to suppress the speech of Americans guilty of wrongthink.

https://victorhanson.com/dronomania/

New Jersey is now subject to nonstop and often sensational civilian reports of swarms of nocturnal drones crossing city skies and violating the airspace of airports and military bases.

Terrified thousands demand to know what these drones are doing and to whom they belong.

In response, the Biden administration had initially kept mum.

Then, under mounting public pressure, it assured the public to be calm, given that most of the drones were likely launched by hobbyists and private citizens.

When that narrative failed to convince many, spokespeople pivoted to claims of mass hysteria and mistaken identity.

Amateur sightseers, they inferred, were subject to panic and hallucinations—supposedly wrongly confusing normal civilian and airline planes with drones.

Perhaps.

But as the sightings continued, more government narratives followed that the drones were unidentified but assuredly still harmless and certainly not foreign-operated.

Still, the mysterious sightings continued.

And the public’s initial curiosity soon turned to fear and finally to anger at their government’s silence, subsequent gaslighting, and final mendacity.

https://issuesinsights.com/2024/12/20/biden-promised-a-return-to-normalcy-looks-like-trump-will-deliver-it/

What do a $15 million settlement with ABC News, a Washington, D.C., waitress getting fired, and the Los Angeles Times planning to include a bias meter in its news stories have in common?

They are all welcome signs that the nation is embracing normalcy once again – something that Joe Biden was allegedly going to restore after Donald Trump’s supposedly chaotic years.

Trump’s first term was chaotic, but not because of what he did so much as the four-year hysteria unleashed by his opponents.

Biden, on the other hand, brought true chaos. A tainted election, foreign wars, open borders, runaway inflation, exploding deficits, shortages, censorship, weaponized justice, incompetence, two assassination attempts, rising disunity, despair.

But now that the left’s unhinged efforts to silence conservative voices and block Trump’s reelection have been soundly defeated, a return to some semblance of normalcy is actually possible.

ABC News’ settlement – which includes a public apology in addition to the $15 million to settle a defamation case over “journalist” George Stephanopoulos’ repeated assertion that Trump had been found “liable for rape” – is a sign that news media can’t do or say whatever it wants to push an agenda.