RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://amgreatness.com/2021/12/28/the-everlasting-covid-crisis/

In 1972, three black men, Melvin Cale, Louis Moore, and Henry D. Jackson, Jr., hijacked Southern Airways Flight 49, demanding $10 million and safe passage to Cuba. The hijacking lasted nearly 30 hours and involved multiple stops throughout the United States, Canada, and eventually, Cuba. In the process of negotiating with the FBI, the hijackers threatened to ram their aircraft, a Douglas DC-9, into the High Flux Isotope Reactor in Oak Ridge, Tennessee if their demands weren’t met.

Until that point, American airlines had resisted installing metal detectors in airports, worried that treating Americans like common criminals to board a plane would wreck their burgeoning industry. But that threat of nuclear attack, and the 130 other hijackings between 1968 and 1972, convinced the government to take a stand at last. In 1973, the FAA used its bureaucratic and administrative powers to make passenger screening mandatory. In 1974, Congress validated the requirement, ignoring passenger rights’ groups that protested the intrusive screening of luggage and persons in order to board aircraft. 

There is an important lesson here: Once the modern American state imposes surveillance measures it never relaxes them, even when the threat no longer exists. That’s why, even after American troops have left Afghanistan, Osama Bin Laden was killed, and ISIS has been destoyed, Americans are still removing their shoes in airports, treated like would-be terrorists for traveling. The humiliating X-ray machines that force grandmothers, children, and ordinary businessmen alike to stand like felons with their hands up while probing machines attempt to peek under their clothes at their naked bodies is the height of ritual humiliation.

The seeming elimination of this surveillance network’s reason to exist doesn’t mean these leftover policies of the war on terrorism are over—far from it! My children and grandchildren, barring some dramatic political shift, will be subject to the same post-9/11 security measures I grew up with. 

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/12/us-so-stupid-don-feder/

Bette Midler should wear a name tag that reads, “Hi, I’m a super-rich, Hollywood elitist who thinks Red Staters are sub-human.” But that would be superfluous.

After Sen. Joe Manchin announced that he could not support Biden’s $4.5 trillion Build Back Better/Socialism Forever Plan – which would have been gas on the raging fires inflation (now at almost a 40-year high) – Midler attacked his West Virginia constituents as “poor, illiterate and strung out.” I’m surprised she didn’t add something about their teeth and the marriage of first cousins.

Personally, I would rather live next-door to the average West Virginian than the typical denizen of Beverly Hills. (See, Bette, even though I voted for Trump twice, I can use big words.) Being called illiterate and strung out by a member of the entertainment conglomerate – who generally have the IQs of gnats and are only occasionally sober — is, to say the least, ironic.

This is not about the calorically-challenged, hideously unattractive, singer/ whatever, but the way “progressives” view us, and why the left is increasingly dangerous to life and liberty.

Bette’s tirade is only the latest chapter in the left’s war on normalcy. Back in 1993, the Washington Post described conservative Christians as “largely poor, uneducated and easy to command.”

I wrote at the time that I was a Jew who identified with the political agenda of the Christian right, owned several pairs of shoes, graduated from an East Coast university, was admitted to the practice of law in two states and considered myself an independent thinker, guided by reason.

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2021/12/harry_reid_dies.html

.I will observe the custom of waiting 24 hours after a death before making negative comments, but I have a question.

As is customary when a famous politician dies, tributes are pouring in for Harry Reid, who died of pancreatic cancer at the age of 82 Tuesday. Frankly, I have nothing nice to say about the man, but will observe the custom of waiting 24 hours after a death to offer any critical remarks.

But I wonder how long it will be until his co-religionist Mitt Romney, about whom Reid openly lied on the Senate floor claiming that Romney had paid no income taxes, offers words of tribute to him? Remember that when called out on his lie after the election, Reid’s response was, “Romney didn’t win, did he?”

According to The Salt Lake Tribune, the two men “reconciled” following the 2016 election. But as iof 5 years ago in late 2016, the two men were still exchanging barbs: Harry Reid: Mitt Romney lost all my respect. Romney: You lost my respect first.

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2021/12/dr_peter_mccullough_conducts_grand_rounds_on_covid_19.html

See and hear a brilliant man expound on a subject that he has devoted himself to for an intense, almost two years — like a half a million other interested persons, take a look at the Rumble video of Joe Rogan’s interview of Peter McCullough MD of Dallas Texas—put up on December 15, 2021 here.   Dr. McCullough described it as a” grand rounds” during the give and take of the interview, and it certainly was to me, a physician who has been at many grand rounds events in my 50 year career.  Grand Rounds is the Medical School or Hospital event where members of the Medical Department display their erudition and eloquence on matters of import—in the case of this interview Mr. Rogan was the Inquirer and Dr. McCullough the eager and well-prepared respondent.  Their performance was extraordinary on both sides—good penetrating pertinent questions by Rogan and satisfying answers from McCullough, backed by his command of the medical concepts and the research pertaining to the subject—COVID 19. 

Dr. McCullough is an Internist/Cardiologist of remarkable achievements; he graduated Alpha Omega Alpha from University of Texas Southwestern Medical School and trained at top institutions including the University of Washington, University of Michigan, and William Beaumont Hospital.  He is the Editor-in-Chief of Reviews in Cardiovascucular Medicine, and has authored over 650 published studies in the medical literature—an academic and clinical physician who provides care, teaches, does research and reviews other physicians’ research, and has served on federal agency committees overseeing drug and clinical research. 

https://issuesinsights.com/2021/12/29/biden-gives-covid-the-kamala-harris-cant-do-border-treatment/

President Joe Biden, the fellow who promised to end the coronavirus pandemic if we’d just elect him to the nation’s highest office, has officially given up the battle he swore he’d win. It’s now someone else’s problem.

Candidate Biden swore before the entire country just days before the 2020 election that “I’m going to shut down the virus.” But not only has he not stopped its spread, under current trends it will have within a month – the coming winter of death – killed more on his watch than it did while Donald Trump was president. Nearly 385,000 have died from COVID-19 since Jan. 20, far more than the 220,000 dead under Trump that Biden said in October 2020 was a toll so unacceptable that Trump should “not remain as president of the United States of America.”

Under Biden’s standard, he should have long ago resigned from office. Instead, he’s admitted that he couldn’t handle the virus as promised, and passed the buck to the states.

“There is no federal solution,” he said Monday during a call with American governors. “This gets solved at the state level.”

This should surprise no one. Just two – two – days after taking office, Biden was already backing off his campaign pledge. “There’s nothing we can do,” he said on Jan. 22, “to change the trajectory of the pandemic in the next several months.”

Abdication of duty is typical of this administration. In one of its more well-known failures, Vice President Kamala Harris has done nothing to fix the immigration crisis on the southern border that she was appointed to resolve. Her refusal to do her job mirrors Biden’s punt on the pandemic. Apparently the work was just too hard.

We won’t blame Biden for failing to live up to his vow, though. It was impossible to keep anyway. Governments can’t stop pandemics. This should be clear to everyone by now. Viruses don’t respond to legislation or executive orders. Fifteen days to flatten the curve was meaningless to this virus. So are lockdowns. It doesn’t care which party is in the White House nor who is or who isn’t sending “mean” tweets.

But we will blame Biden for making a guarantee he couldn’t back up. He either knew he couldn’t kill the virus, yet said he could anyway, which makes him unfit for office because he used a blatant lie to rise to power. Or he simply wasn’t smart enough to know he couldn’t do it, which also disqualifies him.

https://thefederalist.com/2021/12/27/13-happenings-in-2021-that-i-never-would-have-believed-5-years-ago/

The world seemed to get closer to spinning out of its orbit in 2021. If you’d told me five years ago that men would be treated as women, criminals would not be prosecuted, and censorship would be widespread, I wouldn’t have believed you.

What were once considered the most basic, scientific truths (such as that you’re born with your sex and can’t change it) have broken down. Governments are no longer serving their primary function of providing security and protecting borders.

There are many more. As I reflected on the past year, here are just some of the many things that happened in 2021 that I never would have believed possible if someone had foretold them to me just five years ago.

https://townhall.com/columnists/larryoconnor/2021/12/28/the-biden-presidency-a-horrible-accident-of-history-n2600984

There’s an accident in the Oval Office. Not the kind of accident left on the rug in front of the Resolute Desk on a regular basis by the untrained, rowdy dogs the Biden’s sicced on the unwitting White House staff and Secret Service. I’m talking about the man who sits behind the resolute desk for his daily naps. 

Joe Biden is the accidental president. He is the result of an accident of American politics. 

His presidency will not be remembered with an asterisk, as my friend and fellow Townhall columnist Kurt Schlichter would say. No, it will be remembered… reviled… as the accident that it was, is and ever shall be. 

He became the Democrats’ nominee in 2020 by accident. He shouldn’t have even run in the first place. Everyone knows that’s true. 

If he was such a great man and gifted leader and our nation couldn’t do without him, why didn’t he just run for Obama’s third term in 2016 as the sitting vice president? This would’ve been the natural move for such a powerful, important, and wise leader to make. 

But he didn’t run in 2016. And did you notice that nobody seemed to notice? Nobody seemed to care. Even Obama sat by and let him languish as the Democrats openly joked about him and Hillary Clinton’s henchmen bullied him into officially declaring himself a non-candidate. 

At the time, the adoring and compliant media ran interference by declaring that he couldn’t possibly run for office due to the grief over losing his son Beau to cancer. Sure. Yeah. That’s what it was all about. I’m sure it had nothing to do with the fact that Biden had become a walking punchline and even then was seen as too old for the job. 

He ended up getting the 2020 nomination because the other choices at the time were Pete Buttegeig, Elizabeth Warren, and Bernie Sanders. 

Biden was the dream nominee given the nightmare of that choice. So it fell into his lap. 

Couple that accident with the very deliberate bastardization of our elections and voting protocols in 2020 under the dubious guise of fear over China’s diabolical gift to the world, Covid-19, and boom, we got President Accident. 

https://quadrant.org.au/opinion/qed/2021/12/in-strine-accented-newspeak-freedom-means-submission/

“America’s founders had it right in 1791, in drawing up the Bill of Rights; the first ten amendments to the Constitution. All of these amendments had to do with protecting the individual citizen from government. How can that be? Elected by the people, for the people. It can be so because many of those seeking political power are corrupt. Their goal isn’t to serve the public, it’s to wield power. They have what amounts to personality disorders. This has to be recognised and countered as America’s  Founding Fathers tried to do. Unfortunately, as the virus has shown, they didn’t try hard enough. And that certainly applies in Australia and in most regions and countries now laughingly making up what used to be called the Free World.”

Our freedoms to speak freely, to assemble, to travel, to engage in the ordinary business of life are God-given, I’ve written. So they are, but rulers and governments can take them away, as they have throughout most of history. The people of Hong Kong are feeling it now, as are the women in Afghanistan, as did the East Germans before the wall came down, as did dissenters in revolutionary France.

But wait, there is no need for the past or foreign parts in order to tell the tale. Lest we forget: remember the pregnant lady in Ballarat handcuffed and hauled away for exercising her free speech via a Facebook post; the peaceful protestors in Melbourne bombarded with rubber bullets; and the middle-aged lady knocked to the ground and pepper sprayed in her face from close range by a male police officer, sworn to protect her, for daring to object to the rules made on high.

Normally, when selecting people for occupations which allow them to carry truncheons, guns and other means of exerting power, we recognise that bad eggs might apply. Police forces and armed forces are the prime examples of such occupations. Measures are put in place to spot and weed out thugs and psychopaths. Obviously, this is by no means foolproof, as the police thuggery in Victoria showed. Nevertheless, society is aware of the problem. It’s about time we all started to be aware of the much greater problem of dysfunctionality among politicians. And, accordingly, supported new iron-clad constitutional restraints on their power.

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/does-president-biden-know-whats-going-on-in-his-own-administration/

Vanity Fair, December 23:

On October 22, a group of COVID-19 testing experts joined a Zoom call with officials from the Biden administration and presented a strategy for overhauling America’s approach to testing.

The 10-page plan, which Vanity Fair has obtained, would enable the U.S. to finally do what many other countries had already done: Put rapid at-home COVID-19 testing into the hands of average citizens, allowing them to screen themselves in real time and thereby help reduce transmission. The plan called for an estimated 732 million tests per month, a number that would require a major ramp-up of manufacturing capacity. It also recommended, right on the first page, a nationwide “Testing Surge to Prevent Holiday COVID Surge.”

The antigen tests at the center of the plan can detect the virus when patients are at their most contagious.

Three days after the meeting, on October 25, the COVID-19 testing experts—who hailed from the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, the Rockefeller Foundation, the COVID Collaborative, and several other organizations—received a back channel communication from a White House official. Their big, bold idea for free home tests for all Americans to avoid a holiday surge, they were told, was dead. That day, the administration instead announced an initiative to move rapid home tests more swiftly through the FDA’s regulatory approval process.

The rapid-test push, in particular, seems to have bumped up against the peculiar challenges of fighting COVID-19 in the 21st-century United States. Difficulties include a regulatory gauntlet intent on vetting devices for exquisite sensitivity, rather than public-health utility; a medical fiefdom in which doctors tend to view patient test results as theirs alone to convey; and a policy suspicion, however inchoate, that too many rapid tests might somehow signal to wary Americans that they could test their way through the pandemic and skip vaccinations altogether. “It’s undeniable that [the administration] took a vaccine-only approach,” said Dr. Michael Mina, a vocal advocate for rapid testing who attended the October White House meeting. The U.S. government “didn’t support the notion of testing as a proper mitigation tool.”