RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.wsj.com/articles/black-lives-matter-vs-eric-adams-mayor-new-york-city-hawk-newsome-11636670327?mod=opinion_lead_pos2

Eric Adams won the race for New York mayor on a vow to reduce crime and homelessness, and he’s already facing a threat of “riots,” “fire” and worse if he follows through.

That’s what happened Wednesday after the Mayor-elect hosted members of a local Black Lives Matter chapter to hear out their agenda. The harangue started almost immediately. “Everybody talks about ‘good cops,’” said group co-founder Hawk Newsome. “We don’t believe in good cops.” Mr. Adams spent 22 years as a cop before entering politics.

Afterward the activists tore into Mr. Adams’s plans to increase street policing. “There will be riots, there will be fire and there will be bloodshed,” Mr. Newsome told the New York Daily News, referring to Mr. Adams’s proposal to reinstate plainclothes police units. Mr. Newsome’s sister Chivona added that “We will give him hell and make it a nightmare.”

This is no empty threat. After an officer killed George Floyd in Minneapolis last year, rioters in New York damaged or looted about 450 businesses in a 12-day period, according to a New York Post tally. Many protestors marched under the Black Lives Matter banner.

Violent crime spiked in New York and other cities after the protest wave. Yet under progressive pressure, Mayor Bill de Blasio and police commissioner Dermot Shea disbanded the NYPD’s plainclothes units. These officers had seized hundreds of illegal guns each year in dangerous neighborhoods.

Mr. Adams was elected to clean up the mess. “When I ran to become the mayor of the City of New York, I said I was going to reinstitute an antigun unit in plainclothes,” Mr. Adams said Thursday. “Voters voted on that.” He vowed to move forward with the plan.

https://www.realclearinvestigations.com/articles/2021/11/11/medical_journals_pour_forth_hundreds_of_articles_on_race_and_racism_803026.html

Part 2 of 2 Articles (Part 1 Here)

The prestigious Journal of the American Medical Association and its JAMA network of other periodicals have published about 950 articles on race, racism, and racial and ethnic disparities and inequities in the past five years – about a third appearing in just the past year.

A search for “health disparities” on the National Library of Medicine’s PubMed.gov search page shows an exponential “hockey stick” trend in recent years, with articles through October already surpassing last year’s total of 10,719. By comparison, “ovarian cancer” yields 7,134 search results last year, while “aortic aneurysm” yields fewer than 4,000.

These numbers attest to the fact that the academic study of racial justice, power and privilege is no longer the sole domain of non-scientific university departments, such as sociology, literature and education. The trendy topic has migrated to peer-reviewed medical journals, where editors now view systemic racism as a leading cause of disproportionate illness and premature mortality among black people.

A PubMed.gov search for articles on “health disparities” shows a “hockey stick” trend lately.
PubMed.gov

“The rules of the game have definitely changed, and these changes can be easily seen at the highest level,” said Shervin Assari, a professor of family medicine and urban public health at Charles R. Drew University of Medicine and Science, a historically black medical school in Los Angeles.

In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic and the George Floyd killing by a Minneapolis cop, medical researchers have seized on systemic racism as a unifying theory that explains the shorter life expectancies and more prevalent chronic conditions among black Americans. The mass conversion to systemic racism as the canonical explanation for health disparities has swept through the medical profession with stunning velocity, emboldening scholarship with the certitude of a single explanatory narrative.

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2021/11/what_is_an_america_that_holds_prisoners_indefinitely_without_charging_them.html

The U.S. is facing a serious constitutional crisis over the handling of the cases of defendants in the Jan. 6 so-called “insurrection” in Washington, D.C. to protest the presidential election modus operandi and the results.  Those being held for many months without a trial are being denied their habeas corpus rights under the U.S. Constitution and even dating back to English law hundreds of years before our Constitution was implemented.  Not only are they being incarcerated without having had a trial, but there is some evidence that they are being mistreated or are being held 23 hours a day in solitary confinement, which is a punishment accorded only the most dangerous criminals, such as serial killers and terrorists.

What are habeas corpus rights?  According to the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), “[h]abeas corpus is a fundamental right in the Constitution that protects against unlawful and indefinite imprisonment.  Translated from Latin it means ‘show me the body.’  Habeas corpus has historically been an important instrument to safeguard individual freedom against arbitrary executive power.”  A citizen must be charged and cannot be held indefinitely.  A charge requires a trial, and, if found guilty in a trial, there is a sentence for a specific amount of time.

Even PolitiFact — hardly an unbiased fact-checker — relates, “The vast majority of defendants have been released from custody while awaiting trial, but some [my italics] held in jail have been kept in solitary confinement.”  The fact that exact numbers for how many are held in solitary confinement or for how long suggests to this writer evasion by the Washington, D.C. jail authorities.

Despite the attempt by outlets like PolitiFact to minimize the problem of solitary confinement, a number of GOP senators have voiced their concern about this problem, and even the ACLU — certainly not an outreach arm of the Republican Party — has become involved.  However, the Republican senators who are concerned do not have a specific number.  The lack of definitiveness in this area is alarming.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/california-scrutinizes-doctors-as-parents-seek-exemptions-from-school-covid-19-vaccine-mandate-11636540380

As some California parents scramble for ways around a new Covid-19 vaccine mandate for schools, the state is increasingly scrutinizing doctors issuing suspicious medical exemptions.

Dr. M. Kelly Sutton is among them, accused by the Medical Board of California of improperly exempting several students from required school vaccines. She disputes the findings though acknowledges considering parent input when granting exemptions, not a recognized reason in the state.

“I think the parent knows best, and the parent is going to live with the outcome,” she said in an interview with The Wall Street Journal. She is awaiting discipline by the board after a judge recommended her license be revoked. “I’m warning my patients to have a Plan B.”

California on Oct. 1 became the first state to require all eligible school students to get a Covid-19 vaccine after one is fully approved for their age group to attend school in person.

The use of medical exemptions by states is a longtime practice to excuse students for medical reasons from taking one or more vaccines, including measles, polio and tetanus. They can be temporary or permanent exemptions and last the duration of a child’s schooling. The Covid-19 vaccine is the latest one required in California.

Medical exemptions in California have recently increased, quadrupling over a four-year span through 2019-20 for kindergarten students, the entry grade tracked by the state and federal government, despite population size decreasing. That rate far outpaces national figures that have been flat in the same period, according to federal data.

At the same time, the state is disciplining more doctors over their exemptions, which in most cases excused children from all vaccines, a review of state medical data found.

California follows federal guidelines in determining acceptable medical exemptions, which include having a severe reaction to a previous dose or a condition that increases the risk for serious reactions. In 2016, the state stopped allowing exemptions for personal beliefs, leaving only the medical exception.

Some parents call the Covid-19 mandate the last straw in a state pushing vaccinations for children and are hunting for sympathetic doctors to write exemptions, looking at home schooling or even relocating.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention last week recommended the Covid-19 shot for children 5 to 11, increasing tensions for parents opposed to the mandate. It is under emergency authorized use, seen as a step toward full approval.

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2021/11/the_sissy_generation.html

Just 70-80 years ago we had what was dubbed “The Greatest Generation” – the people who had fought and won World War II.  Now, just a couple of generations down the road, we have unconditionally surrendered to a disease with minuscule mortality (for the vast majority of the population), and which is to a large degree treatable. How did that happen?

Roll back to the first months of 2020, when we just learned about the sinister new virus which was killing people and for which we had neither vaccine nor cure. We were scared – in the 21st century, we don’t expect to encounter something to which our medicine has no answer. A lot of things about COVID-19 were unknown at the time, but one of the first confirmed pieces of information was that this virus spares children.

What great news! Whatever calamity befalls us, children are always our main concern. Now, when we know that they are safe, shouldn’t we, adults, breathe a big sigh of relief, return to normal life and let the doctors do what they always do: treat the sick, research for a cure, work on the vaccine? I can imagine that this would have happened a few decades ago, despite the (incorrect) perception that the mortality rate was maybe small, but still meaningful, a few percentage points. Yet the only developed country that behaved more or less like that was Sweden. The rest of mankind locked themselves up and essentially stopped living normal lives.

The word that we heard the most during this time was ‘safety.’ Coming to work is declared unsafe — sure, we can stop working, no big deal. Going to school is unsafe — cheer up, kids, you are staying home today — and next week, and then month after month after month. Wear your mask everywhere and stay at least 6 feet away (better 20) from everybody. Safety is king!

How did we end up here? As very often happens the course happened first gradually, then suddenly. The worship of safety began long ago and now it’s everywhere. Everything we buy and use, from lawnmowers to toasters to toothbrushes, undergoes elaborate safety checks and is accompanied by instructions for safe operation. And not only is it a legal requirement but, for many people, safety became the most important feature of any device. There is a commercial on TV promoting gutter guards.  A woman asks her husband: ‘Do you climb a ladder to clean the gutter?” “Yes.” “But it’s unsafe!” — enough said, everybody needs to get the damn thing.

Of course, nothing is wrong with being safe, and many things that we do toward that end are good and reasonable — like seat belts, and later airbags in cars. But more and more the idea of ‘being safe’ has morphed into ‘feeling safe’, so the natural desire for safety is now abused beyond recognition. In other times, the idea of banning a group of people from entering some location would be called ‘segregation’; today the leftist students who don’t want to be around anybody with different views demand ‘safe spaces.’ When a controversial speaker is invited to speak at a university, protesters wouldn’t say ‘we hate this guy’ (which would be the truth, but ‘hate’ is a loaded word nowadays, better not to use it); instead, they declare that such an event would make them ‘feel unsafe’.