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January 2022

The Truths We Dared Not Speak in 2021 At the end of this terrible year, we are left only with ironies.  By Victor Davis Hanson

https://amgreatness.com/2022/01/02/the-truths-we-dared-not-speak-in-2021/

As the long year of 2021 finally came to a close, there were a number of truths Americans on the Left found themselves privately acknowledging but unable to say in public for fear of doing damage to their political cause, their own reputations, or their sense of security. But as 2022 advances, it will become even more difficult to hide these truths. 

Collusion, RIP

No one wishes to speak of the “dossier” anymore. Everyone knows why: it was never a dossier. It was always a mishmash concoction of half-baked fantasies and outright lies, sloppily thrown together by the grifter and has-been ex-British spy and Trump hater, Christopher Steele—all in the pay of Hillary Clinton, the original architect of the collusion hoax. 

Steele himself admitted that he had no sources or notes to substantiate his “research.” Most of those who had seeded the dossier around Washington now either agree it was fake, or “partially” false, or remain silent in embarrassment. 

The perpetual NeverTrump revisionism is reduced to “The Russian Hoax Hoax,” in pathetic fashion suggesting Putin still colluded with Trump and such “collusion” is provable even without the dossier. 

The logic is Orwellian: in 2017-2020 we heard, “But the dossier shows that ….” In 2020-2021 we heard, “Whoever said the dossier had anything to do with Russian collusion?” 

The FBI—that in part used their paid informant Steele’s lies to birth FISA warrants—now disowns it. The entire 22-month, $40-million Mueller charade ended up in tragicomic style with Robert Mueller under oath denying he knew much of anything about either the purveyor of the dossier, Fusion GPS, or the dossier itself. 

James Comey when asked about it and the investigations it spawned, on 245 occasions under oath claimed he lost his memory or had no knowledge of it. 

The Russian collusion hoax will go down in history as one of the most shameful examples of Washington, D.C. mass hysteria, and of a concentrated effort to destroy an elected president, in modern American political history. 

In the end, we always come back to where we started: Hillary Clinton. 

She used the three firewalls of the Democratic National Committee, the Perkins Coie legal firm, and Fusion GPS, to pay Steele, a foreign national, likely barred by law from providing such dirt to a U.S. presidential campaign. 

Steele then grabbed Clinton and FBI money, and in lazy fashion made a few calls to the now indicted Igor Danchenko, a Russian working in Washington, D.C. at the left-wing Brookings Institution, along with a Clinton crony Charles Dolan doing business in Moscow. Presto, Steele typed up their myths, in scary intelligence white-paper fashion, and passed them off as top-secret “Russian sources.” The dossier became the “proof” needed to show that Trump, in the words of former CIA director John Brennan, was “treasonous” or, as former Director of National Intelligence General (ret.) James Clapper alleged, was a “Russian asset.” 

The Russian collusion hoax is now akin to Joe Biden’s cognitive decline; everyone knows it, but few bother to state the obvious—or rehash their now embarrassing earlier denials. 

People are dying but not the ones you think for the reasons you think By Andrea Widburg

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2022/01/people_are_dying_but_not_the_ones_you_think_for_the_reasons_you_think.html

While the mainstream media, at least in 2020, tracked deaths with the fanaticism of an insurance company, they’ve always lacked accuracy. That’s why it matters when a major American insurance company, which is in the business of accurate data about deaths, announces that Americans in the 18-64 age bracket are dying in unprecedented numbers. The same data suggests that these aren’t COVID deaths, which makes them much more sinister.

OneAmerica is a major insurance company located in Indianapolis with annual revenue of around $2 billion and total assets of around $74 billion. This is not a fly-by-night internet “insurance” company. OneAmerica is the real deal, selling both individual and group life insurance, and it has data and actuarial tables that go back 145 years. It’s also a progressive company that boasts about “Diversity, Equity and Inclusion” right on its home page. In other words, it’s not some “scary” right-wing reactionary firm.

During a news conference last week, OneAmerica’s CEO, Scott Davison, had a startling announcement—working-age Americans are dying in unprecedented numbers:

“We are seeing, right now, the highest death rates we have seen in the history of this business – not just at OneAmerica,” the company’s CEO Scott Davison said during an online news conference this week. “The data is consistent across every player in that business.”

Davison said the increase in deaths represents “huge, huge numbers,” and that’s it’s not elderly people who are dying, but “primarily working-age people 18 to 64” who are the employees of companies that have group life insurance plans through OneAmerica.

“And what we saw just in third quarter, we’re seeing it continue into fourth quarter, is that death rates are up 40% over what they were pre-pandemic,” he said.

“Just to give you an idea of how bad that is, a three-sigma or a one-in-200-year catastrophe would be 10% increase over pre-pandemic,” he said. “So 40% is just unheard of.”

More remarkably still, these are not COVID deaths. Instead, they are totally different death count from the COVID count the media insisted we know during Trump’s last year and jettisoned during Biden’s first year.

Dumbing Down Minority Students By Eileen F. Toplansky

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2022/01/dumbing_down_minority_students.html

For years now, the educational establishment and the Democrat Party have colluded to damage pride of accomplishment within the black community.  Now that the Democrat Party is essentially a Marxist outlet, the drive for weakening American children’s education is on full display. In fact, “dumbing down education [is the] key to dismantling America.” It is the communists’ dream to destroy the American dream. 

As the debate over Critical Race Theory has emerged, Richard L. Cravatts, Ph.D., explains “the insidious nature of this radical new ideology now being taught to American schoolchildren and the myriad ways in which public school students are being groomed to carry out the agendas of the Left.”  It is also ultimately the pathway to pit white people against black people.

Candace Owens clearly articulates what is happening.

“…they’re trying to teach a Marxist ideology.’ Hard academics such as learning science and mathematics subjects are being replaced.

‘They’re learning how to hate white people. They’re learning how to hate their country, and this is problematic for the future. What they’re trying to do is guarantee that they have an ignorant group of people that vote based on emotion. It’s a Democrat long-term strategy, and it’s finally coming into fruition.’

And in perfect lockstep, the latest example can be found in the Arlington County School Board in Virginia, which has introduced a proposal that would eradicate the traditional grading system. 

The justification for this change is that “certain basic standards — like having late penalties — could potentially harm poor and minority children who they claim may not have access to resources necessary to complete assignments on time.” Or “students should not be graded on homework assignments because the fear of making mistakes will have a negative impact on their learning process.”

This comes as no surprise as the Left tightens its rapacious control over every aspect of society.

Should Donald Trump run in 2024? By Patrick J. Gibbs

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2022/01/should_donald_trump_run_in_2024.html

With the turn of the calendar to 2022, Republicans are not only looking to the 2022 midterm elections but to the prospect of Donald Trump running in 2024. Trump is hugely popular with the party’s base and that popularity freezes the plans of other possible candidates for the 2024 nomination. Trump’s hold on that nomination is brittle, however, because of his age. On election day in 2024 Donald Trump will be 78 years old. That is one year older than Ronald Reagan’s age when he left office in 1988.

Looking at the 2024 contest from the other side of the race, there is no reason to expect that Joe Biden will get the nomination. He has been in office for less than one year, and only diehard Democrats believe that he is not suffering from incapacitating mental deficits. The only question is which foreign adversary will take advantage of his weakness: China, Russia or Iran. So the most likely scenario is for Biden’s resignation in 2022 or early 2023.

Trump may be popular now, but once the voters have been shocked by the disaster of one  septuagenarian president why would they roll the dice on a 78-year-old Donald Trump holding office to age 82? It’s a very bad bet, especially when there are younger, capable Republicans available. Ron DeSantis is at the top of the list of strong candidates for the presidency, but by 2023 we should have other governors and several senators eager to reach for the nomination.

I believe the above makes a strong case that it would be unwise for Donald Trump to run for the presidency in 2024. That presents the big question: how to persuade Trump to play the role of “kingmaker” in late 2022 and step back from his own candidacy?

Video: Trans Swimmer DESTROYS Women in Competition! Welcome to leftist utopia.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2022/01/video-frontpagemagcom/

In this new video, JP Sears sheds light on a trans swimmer from U Penn who is destroying women in competition and setting records. Why is she so much faster than all the other women? Don’t miss the video below!

Restoring Jewish Sites Throughout Morocco Abraham Accords: The gift that keeps on giving. Hugh Fitzgerald

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2022/01/abraham-accords-gift-keeps-giving-hugh-fitzgerald/

Four Arab countries – the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Sudan, and Morocco – have now joined the Abraham Accords and “normalized ties” with Israel. While much attention has been paid to the business deals – involving trade, technology, and tourism – made between Israel and the UAE, that in the first year now amount to $675 million worth of agreements, from Morocco comes another sort of tie that binds, and that transcends business: It Is the rediscovery and restoration of Morocco’s Jewish past. A report on this effort is here: “Moroccan King Orders Restoration of Hundreds of Jewish Sites,” Algemeiner, December 13, 2021:

King Mohammed VI of Morocco recently introduced an initiative to restore hundreds of historical Jewish sites in the kingdom, according to Arab media reports.

The move is part of the rapprochement between Rabat and Jerusalem, which resumed diplomatic relations earlier this year as part of the Abraham Accords, according to the reports.

The rapprochement was helped along by the Trump Administration, which persuaded Morocco to join the Abraham Accords and, by way of encouragement, announced that Washington recognized Morocco’s claim to the western Sahara, long disputed between, and fought over by, Morocco and the Algerian-backed Polisario Front.

Morocco’s recent royals have been well-disposed to Jews. The present king’s grandfather, King Mohammed V, protected the 250,000 Moroccan Jews during World War II from both the Nazis and Vichy authorities. He prevented roundups, most famously in Casablanca. He refused to enforce Vichy’s anti-Jewish legislation. He publicly declared that “There are no Jews in Morocco. There are only Moroccan subjects.” No Moroccan Jews were deported or killed during the war.

His son King Hassan II was similarly well-disposed to Jews, and employed a Moroccan Jew, Andre Azoulay, as one of his advisors. Azoulay has for many years been the senior adviser to his son, King Mohammed VI.

Campus Struggle Sessions USA The woke Maoist enforcers are coming for those who won’t bend the knee. Matthew Vadum

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2022/01/campus-struggle-sessions-matthew-vadum/

Ritualized humiliation and self-abasement are becoming the norm for those in higher education who defy the campus enforcers of wokeness.

In a scene out of Communist China’s Cultural Revolution, current law professor Jason Kilborn and former college administrator Jodi Shaw — both white people — are the latest victims of mandatory reeducation at the hands of the race-weaponizing radicals who run the academy.

This disturbing move in the direction of normalizing academic brainwashing comes as things go the opposite way for parents nationwide who, thanks to well-publicized examples of arrogant leftist educrats’ damaging public admissions, are making great strides attacking critical race theory (CRT) at the local and state levels.

But taking on school boards over CRT doesn’t help Kilborn, a professor at the University of Illinois Chicago School of Law. He has been ordered by his employer to endure mandatory reeducation as punishment for using an abbreviated version of a racial slur in a legal hypothetical about race-based employment discrimination on an exam. The issue was whether the information concerned in the hypothetical was work product.

Students whined that the use of the term, even with 5 of its 6 letters redacted, was hurtful, and the school’s Black Law Students Association demanded that Kilborn be fired.

Sydney Williams: “Knowledge versus Wisdom”

https://swtotd.blogspot.com/
Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge?Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?”

                                                                                                                                T.S. Eliot (1888-1965)

                                                                                                                                Choruses from “The Rock,” 1934

Eliot’s concern, during the dark days of 1930s Depression, was the loss of religious faith. While faith is still missing from many of our lives in these temporal times, the more pressing concern is the lack of wisdom amidst so much knowledge. Our leaders, not only in politics but in business, the media, schools, colleges, Hollywood, Wall Street and professional sports, are steeped in the knowledge that specific jobs require, but there is a paucity of wisdom. This concern is not new. The Book of Proverbs, written around 700 BC, addresses the issue in chapter 4, verse 7: “Wisdom is the principal thing; therefore, get wisdom. And in all your getting, get understanding.”

Earth is estimated to be 4.5 billion years old. Modern homo sapiens arrived about 160,000 years ago, and recorded history dates back 5000 years. Do we ever consider the shortness of our own lives within this continuum of life? The physical conveniences we take for granted – communication, transportation, flush toilets, medicine, heating and cooling, photography, recreational pursuits – date back only a little over 200 years. My three-greats grandparents lived lives more recognizable to those who lived a thousand years previously than to us today. We live in what is called “The Information Age,” an historical period that followed the industrial age, beginning in mid-20th Century. It is characterized by an epochal shift from an economy based on mining and manufacturing to one based on information technology and genetic modification. Unsurprisingly, growth in technologies have exceeded our ability to adapt. We have gained knowledge, but do we understand and appreciate its consequences?

As more time has been spent acquiring knowledge, we have become less wise. Buckminster Fuller (1895-1983) created the Knowledge Doubling Curve, which showed that until 1900 the amount of information extant doubled every century. By the end of World War II, information was doubling every twenty-five years. Today, data is estimated to be doubling every year, and IBM reckons the “internet of things” will lead to a doubling of knowledge every twelve hours.  Yet, the wisdom of the ancients is unchanged and is as relevant today as when the words were uttered: Tacitus, “The desire for safety stands against every great and noble enterprise;” Confucius, “Our greatest glory is not in never failing, but in rising every time we fail;” Marcus Aurelius, “Waste no more time arguing about what a good man should be. Be one.” Sadly, the classics, which are filled with wisdom – from the Bible to the Greek poets, from Roman philosophers to Shakespeare, from Aesop to J.R.R. Tolkien – are no longer required reading in schools and universities. STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) courses have replaced them. The latter are, of course, crucial disciplines in today’s competitive, technological world, but when they are not accompanied by classics the ability to place all that knowledge in perspective is lost.

Biden at 11 months: ‘One of the worst years ever’ by Paul Bedard

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/washington-secrets/biden-at-11-months-one-of-the-worst-years-ever

All of the hope in President Joe Biden’s 21-minute inaugural address, which promised “unity, unity,” has not only evaporated in his first 11 months but left people feeling that 2021 was “one of the worst years ever,” according to the latest Rasmussen Reports survey.

In the poll previewed by Secrets, likely voters said that they not only believe the year was a bust, but that a majority feel 2022 will be bad also.

“If there’s any bright spot in the public’s grim assessment of 2021, at least it was better than 2020, which Americans rated the worst year in more than a decade of surveying,” said Rasmussen in a not so uplifting analysis.

The numbers:

74% said 2021 was a fair to poor year, with most, 48%, calling it poor.
Just 23% called it a good to the best year ever, with just 2% dubbing it “one of the best years.”
63% of Democrats agreed that it was fair to poor.
50% expect 2022 to be fair to poor, and 41% believe it will be good to the best.

The Warren-Biden Bank Heist A coup at the FDIC breaks norms and signals more political control of finance.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-senator-elizabeth-warren-biden-bank-heist-fdic-jelena-mcwilliams-rohit-chopra-gruenberg-khan-cfpb-federal-reserve-nominee-11641155812?mod=opinion_lead_pos1

Elizabeth Warren finally got her woman—that is, the Senator and her many acolytes in the Biden Administration have succeeded in ousting Jelena McWilliams as chair of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. The coup deserves attention because of its norm-breaking precedent and what it signals for bank mergers and supposedly independent regulatory agencies.

Ms. McWilliams resigned on Dec. 31, effective Feb. 4, to avoid more turmoil at the bank regulator. But as she wrote in these pages on Dec. 16, her resignation comes amid a concerted and unprecedented political effort to strip her of authority before her term as chair expires in June 2023.

***

The coup has been led by Rohit Chopra, the Warren protege who now runs the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and is one of four current members of the FDIC board (one post is vacant). The FDIC’s longstanding practice and bylaws, based on its interpretation of the law, is that the chair sets the board’s agenda.

Every administration for 88 years has honored that understanding, including the supposedly norm-breaking Trump Administration. Democrat Martin Gruenberg was allowed to continue as chair until June 2018 after President Trump took office, and no one attempted to oust him.

Enter the Warren-Biden progressives in a hurry. The Senate confirmed Mr. Chopra on Sept. 30 on a 50-48 vote, and as soon as Oct. 31 he presented Ms. McWilliams with a request for information (RFI) on bank mergers. When she said the draft RFI would have to be vetted by FDIC staff, Mr. Chopra publicly released his own RFI without authority from his post at the CFPB, which the FDIC was obliged to contradict.