RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/gregbyrnes/2023/02/03/helium-supply-chain-failure-worries-hospitals-crime-labs-welders-and-even-balloon-retailers-n1667789

The United States is beginning the third year of a helium supply-chain crisis. Some experts think it will last until at least 2024. Consumers may have noticed some party retailers going out of business, with helium prices in a few markets almost doubling. A Texas retailer reports tanks went from $195 to $365, and they can only get half tanks because of shortages. The Party City chain, where balloons were a key profit center, has filed for bankruptcy.

But helium shortages mean more than fewer fun diversions like blimps, party balloons, or Daffy Duck floating down Broadway.

Last year the Miami-Dade Police crime lab and the Medical Examiner’s Office had to pay $1,800 per tank for helium to run instruments to identify deadly drugs and complete autopsy blood tests. Helium is used by semiconductor manufacturers and welders, and of critical importance, it is used to cool MRI machines in hospitals.

Without a reliable supply of helium in medical care, the public may face hard choices: rationing, sky-high pricing, or limiting tests patients can get. All could be on the horizon. This may not represent a complete regression to third-world medical care, but the supply chain failure is not without consequences for public health and safety. That this is happening in one of the most natural resource-rich countries in the world is more than strange. If one consequence of Biden’s green energy policy is the collapse of this vital supply chain, what can Congress do to reverse course?

The U.S. is one of the world’s largest sources of helium, but with supply not meeting demand, prices are skyrocketing. Helium is captured as a byproduct of natural gas drilling, which has been targeted by the Biden administration as part of its war on fossil fuels. Currently, the United State’s helium reserve is in Amarillo, Texas, a state replete with natural gas.

https://www.realclearpolicy.com/articles/2023/02/03/joe_manchins_wifes_commission_received_200m_from_omnibus_bill_878323.html

Included in the $1.7 trillion omnibus package supported by Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) was a provision to give $200 million to the Appalachian Regional Commission, an agency headed by Manchin’s wife, Gayle.

The Appalachian Regional Commission operates as an economic development partnership between the federal government and 13 Appalachian states, distributing infrastructure grants in those states.

Its head, Gayle Manchin, makes $160,000 in her role as its federal co-chair, according to a Fox News report. She was confirmed by the Senate in 2021.

The $200 million in funding is a $5 million increase from last year.

“The West Virginia senator previously helped craft earlier legislation, following his wife’s 2021 appointment, that allocated $1 billion in funding over five years for the ARC,” Fox reported. Sen. Manchin was a key Democratic negotiator of the 2021 Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, which doubled the commission’s funding level.

Gayle Manchin defended the spending increase in 2021, claiming this funding is necessary to, “more adequately meet the overwhelming needs of communities impacted by job losses resulting from the decline in the coal industry. These grants will be instrumental to the long-term diversification and economic growth in Appalachia.”

https://swtotd.blogspot.com

“On Thursday the University of North Carolina board of trustees vote 12-0 to create a new school committed to free expression in higher education.”    Editorial, The Wall Street Journal   January 26, 2023

 As is always true, many problems confront our nation, but one is in the forefront of what divides us: culture. It is the culture wars that strike at the heart of what it means to be an American, a nation of people from every corner of the world, individuals with myriad beliefs but with one common objective: to live freely. But what happens when definitions of freedom are in conflict – when, for example, the wishes of teenagers, empowered by teachers, run counter to the desires of parents? When we disagree as to the founding principles of our nation, or when merit is subservient to racial diversity in college admissions?

“Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results,” is a saying attributed to Albert Einstein. It is applicable in the “Woke”[1] world we inhabit: Does it make sense to persist in pouring money into the gaping jaws of public education, in hopes that this time money will cure failing schools? Why do teachers, administrators, and the curriculum escape blame when students score poorly on international tests? Does it make sense to blame the weapon above the one who pulled the trigger in a mass shooting? And why are criminals so often released without bail, even after having committed armed robbery, and why is the mental health of the gunman not considered a cause for the crime. And why were interest rates kept artificially low, even as federal debt expanded exponentially?

https://thespectator.com/topic/the-ever-shifting-excuses-about-hunter-bidens-laptop/

Hunter Biden’s defense about his incriminating laptop sounds like an old joke about a trial lawyer who was accused of letting his dog bite a stranger. The lawyer’s first line of defense was that “it couldn’t happen because my dog was tied up that night.” When told there were witnesses who had seen him walking the dog, he said, “Okay, we were out walking but my dog doesn’t bite.” If that fails, then, “Well, yes, my dog did give you a little nip, but it wasn’t a bad one.” Then, “Granted, you had to go to the hospital for surgery, but you provoked my sweet pup.” If all else fails, “What do you mean I own a dog?”

That, in essence, is how Hunter Biden and his family have defended themselves against the damning information on the laptop that he abandoned at a Delaware repair shop. Or, as his lawyers might say, “allegedly abandoned in the alleged state of Delaware.” New York Post columnist Miranda Devine has aptly labeled the computer the “laptop from hell,” and Hunter is none too eager to admit ownership or culpability. Neither is his family, who see both legal and political peril in the computer’s contents.

Just look at this long list of Hunter’s defenses, one crumbling after the other, like the lawyer with a dog.

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2023/02/jiggerypokery_wokery.html

I must admit that I have grown fond of this new adjective, woke.  It saves me the time of pointing out how delusional, disingenuous, intolerant, illiterate, and religiously fanatical the woke minions tend to be.  Ultimately, to be woke means both “deceived” and “deceiving,” and for these reasons, it slides nicely into a linguistically fun Scottish phrase, jiggery-pokery, used to describe dishonest behavior.  Taken together, jiggery-pokery wokery is amusing enough to belittle the woke legions’ cult-like comportment and cut it down to size for its mindless silliness. 

Yet it is not silly, is it?  As amusing and bemusing as its zealous adherents appear, their devotion to wokeism’s edicts (I won’t call them “principles”) is deadly serious.  Any small business–owner who has had the misfortune of struggling to earn a living near the scene of some perceived injustice providing the pretense for Antifa and Black Lives Matter arsonists to unleash a new criminal campaign of burning, looting, and murdering in the name of “justice,” knows that once the woke go berserker, no innocent person or private property is safe.  The woke love to destroy whatever they touch — culture, infrastructure, social cohesion, rational thought.  To be woke is to embrace chaos and injury as a philosophy.

From an anthropological perspective, wokeism is fascinating because its practitioners believe they are creative freethinkers while they act as lobotomized sheep.  Whatever the woke wizards posing as priests tell their needy followers, the woke herds accept as truth.  Russia stole the election from Hillary!  Man-made global warming causes earthquakes!  Black police officers killing a black suspect is proof of “white supremacy”!  These assertions, thrown out to their intended audience with all the intellectual depth of a viral internet meme, are never questioned or analyzed.  They are quickly accepted as doctrinal “truths” to be defended at all preposterous costs.  Anyone caught noticing inconsistencies — say, wondering why “my body, my choice” does not deserve consideration in a debate over forced experimental mRNA injections — is immediately branded a heretic and thrown to the wolves for not displaying sufficient jiggery-pokery wokery.  In the cult of the woke, the wokiest wonks know to comply.