RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://redstate.com/nick-arama/2023/06/08/biden-melts-down-during-presser-when-asked-about-bribery-allegation-gives-unbelievable-answer-n758118

As we reported earlier, Joe Biden held a bilateral meeting with Prime Minister Rishi Sunak of the United Kingdom on Thursday. He needed note cards to just do his greetings with Sunak, and he got confused about what the prime minister’s position was. That raised fresh concerns about his mental ability to do the job.

Then the White House decided to throw caution to the wind and had him answer a few questions. Of course, he had a pre-approved list as he usually does, so he may also have the questions and answers in front of him as well.

But even that didn’t stop Joe from being Joe (that is, putting his foot in his mouth). Biden completely blanked out on part of what the question was that a reporter just asked him.

This, even though he appeared to have cards and at various points during the press conference, looked to be reading off them/referencing them.

He also seemed to have no idea how many people there are in Africa.

The staff was trying to get the reporters out of the room, but they were able to get in a couple more questions before he left the room. That’s where it truly went off the rails.

That’s when Biden started getting disturbed and testy when he was questioned about corruption—specifically what Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC) said about evidence that he sold out the country. A reporter asked, “Bribery allegations. Congresswoman Nancy Mace says there’s damning evidence in an FBI file that you sold out the country. Do you have a response?” Biden’s response was unbelievable.

Biden smirked, and said, “Where’s the money?” He then called it “a bunch of malarkey.” His smirk shows he thinks he’s untouchable, that he won’t be held accountable for anything.

https://issuesinsights.com/2023/06/09/how-do-we-get-back-the-lockdown-time-stolen-from-us/

Our sense of incarceration from the pandemic lockdowns was caused by more than being unable to live as freely as we had before the diktats were issued. Like inmates locked in a prison, we lost track of time. It was stolen from us by “leaders” who willingly traded our liberty for a perception of safety, and in too many cases in exchange for satisfying their authoritarian urges.

A study published late last month by Scottish researchers “found a large error for estimating the timing of events that occurred in 2021” when they questioned participants about the past events.

“The findings show that participants were less able to recall the timeline of very recent events coinciding with COVID lockdowns” and “are consistent with poor perception of event timeline reported previously in prison inmates.”

Though the authors, from the University of Aberdeen, acknowledged that “​​drawing a comparison between the prison environment and pandemic related restriction might be seen as an extreme case,” they were still confident “that there are similarities in the extent of social isolation in both situations.”

This isn’t the first research paper to reach this conclusion. A University of California, Irvine, study posted last August in an online science journal concluded that “the passage of time was altered for many people during the COVID-19 pandemic, ranging from difficulty in keeping track of days of the week to feeling that the hours themselves rushed by or slowed down.”

Previous studies had found that “these distortions have been associated with persistent negative mental outcomes such as depression and anxiety following trauma.”

https://www.wsj.com/articles/racial-gerrymandering-supreme-court-allen-v-milligan-john-roberts-clarence-thomas-gingles-alabama-7b595b78?mod=opinion_lead_pos1

Chief Justice John Roberts has wisely led the Supreme Court away from the political thicket of partisan gerrymandering, writing in Rucho v. Common Cause that he sees no “judicially discernible and manageable” standards to police it. But with an opportunity to clarify the law on racial gerrymandering, the Chief passed.

This is unfortunate, given the muddled status quo. The upshot of Thursday’s 5-4 split in Allen v. Milligan is to send Alabama back to the drawing board to create a second black-majority U.S. House district. Yet other states have tried that approach, only to be admonished by the Court that their maps were drawn with too much emphasis on race.

Alabama has seven House seats, with a black majority in one. That divides out to 14%. Yet the state’s voting-age population is 26% black. Alabama argued that when it redrew its House map after the 2020 census, it enacted only “race-neutral adjustments for small shifts in population.” But a federal district court ruled that the Voting Rights Act (VRA) requires a second majority-black district, for 29% representation.

Section 2 of the VRA says voting practices must be “equally open” and can’t give racial minorities “less opportunity” to “elect representatives of their choice.” The precedent for vote dilution is Gingles (1986), which set up a multipart test. The minority group must be “sufficiently large and compact” and “politically cohesive.” The “totality of circumstances” must suggest the political process isn’t equally open.

The trick is that Section 2 also explicitly says it creates no right for any group to have its members “elected in numbers equal to their proportion in the population.” Other High Court rulings have called racial gerrymandering “odious,” applying strict scrutiny if it’s a “predominant” factor for mapmakers. Alabama said its critics could draw two black-majority districts “only by starting with a ‘nonnegotiable’ racial target and backfilling with other redistricting criteria.” Sure sounds “predominant.”

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2023/06/a_government_at_war_with_its_people.html

Warfare requires deception.  The federal government habitually lies to the American people.  Consider that an admission that it sees itself at war with those it claims to serve.

You might have noticed that the word “propaganda” has been somewhat retired from polite conversation.  Occasionally, some State-allied news corporation will apply the term to a public statement coming from inside Russia, but otherwise, the idea that governments promote falsehoods cloaked as official truths has quietly disappeared.  

Instead, ordinary information enjoyed and shared among regular people is now targeted for classification.  An alliance of national governments, international institutions, and propaganda engines disguised as disinterested nonprofits has sprung up to toss “unacceptable” thoughts into garbage piles for “mis-,” “mal-,” and “dis-” information trash bins.  As with everything else in modern society, the cult of expertise has even given us “disinformation experts” to decide what knowledge belongs where.  

The small coterie of “disinformation experts” recognized and promoted by governments then monitor what the common people are saying among themselves, cast their nets around anything “unacceptable,” and stigmatize those words and thoughts as deserving of censorship.  Perhaps one day soon there will be academic degrees in “disinformation” or special licenses distinguishing State-approved professionals as qualified to tell the rest of us what is real.  As a rule of thumb, if you want to know what kinds of knowledge governments fear their citizens possessing, look to the subjects that require numerous layers of authority validation before access is granted or titles are conferred.  Now the knowledge that governments fear their citizens possessing is simply information outside their control.  

In this way, officials have flipped the script on propaganda.  Rather than the people calling out governments for their lies, governments pre-emptively defame their citizens as liars.  How do governments know when their citizens are “lying”?  Easy.  They just isolate anybody who contradicts publicly announced official truths.  Like a puff of smoke vanishing in the wind, government propaganda disappears because anyone who recognizes it as such is guilty of spreading “mis-,” “mal-,” or “dis-” information.

https://amgreatness.com/2023/06/07/remembering-the-horrors-of-d-day/

Seventy-nine years ago this week, the Allies assaulted the Normandy beaches on D-Day, June 6, 1944. 

Their invasion marked the largest amphibious landing since the Persians under Xerxes invaded the Greek mainland in 480 B.C. 

Nearly 160,000 American, British, and Canadian soldiers stormed five beaches of Nazi-occupied France. The plan was to liberate Western Europe after four years of occupation, push into Germany, and end the Nazi regime.

Less than a year later, the Allies from the West, and the Soviet Russians from the East, did just that, utterly destroying Hitler’s Third Reich. 

Ostensibly, the assault seemed impossible even to attempt. 

Germany had repulsed with heavy Canadian losses an earlier Normandy raid at Dieppe in August 1942. 

The Germans also knew roughly when the Allies were coming. They placed their best general, Erwin Rommel, in charge of the Normandy defenses. 

The huge D-Day force required enormous supplies of arms and provisions just to get off the beaches. Yet the Allies had no means of capturing even one port on the nearby heavily fortified French coast. 

To land so many troops so quickly, the Allies would have to ensure complete naval and air supremacy. 

They would have to tow over from Britain their own ports, lay their own gasoline pipeline across the English Channel, and invent novel ships and armored vehicles just to get onto and over the beaches. 

More dangerous still, the invaders would ensure armor and tactical air dominance to avoid being cut off, surrounded, and annihilated once they went inland. 

German Panzer units—battle-hardened troops in frightening Panther and Tiger tanks, with over three hard years of fighting experience on the Eastern Front—were confident they could annihilate in a matter of days the outnumbered lightly armed invaders. 

Such a huge force required 50 miles of landing space on the beaches. That vast expanse ensured that some landing sites were less than ideal—Omaha Beach in particular. 

https://www.frontpagemag.com/our-dangerous-contempt-for-work/

Large numbers of younger American workers, especially Gen Z’ers, those born between 1997 and 2012, are demonstrating some dangerous attitudes about work and employment. The problem isn’t a lack of jobs. Nearly half of small businesses recently reported having unfilled job openings, nearly twice the half-century historical average. And 41% say they have raised compensation. Overall, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported 10 million unfilled jobs at the end of April, followed by 399,000 new jobs in May.

A more likely explanation is changes in mores and attitudes towards work. “Funemployment,” for example, according to Investopedia describes “those who lost their jobs and choose to use their newfound freedom to pursue leisure activities such as traveling, going to the beach, and being physically active until they find a new job.”

Taking one’s time to find a new job while drawing unemployment benefits is nothing new, but usually those who do so are working for cash to increase their income. The “funemployed” are spending money on “leisure activities,” and many live with their parents.

Then there are those who still work but practice “quiet quitting,” basically goldbricking on the job by doing only the bare minimum. Gallup estimates that half of the workforce practices “quiet quitting,” especially Gen Z’ers and younger Millennials. This attitude was facilitated during the Covid years, when the trillions of dollars in federal and state money sloshing through the economy made it affordable to blow off employment or risk one’s job. And don’t forget, during the lockdowns many employees got hooked on working from home, where supervision is lax and goofing off on the company’s dime is easy.

But again, changing attitudes toward work are more pertinent than money when it comes to a lack of respect for honest labor. According to 74% of managers in a Resume Builder survey, Gen Z’ers are “difficult to work with. . . . About half (49%) of [managers] find it difficult to work with Gen Z’ers all (11%) or most of the time (39%). Additionally, 16% say they find it difficult a lot of the time, while 20% say some of the time and 10% say not much of the time. Only 4% said they almost never find it to be difficult.

https://issuesinsights.com/2023/06/08/should-christians-declare-a-state-of-emergency-too/

“Just to be clear, we’re not advocating that Christians declare a state of emergency. Declaring something a “state of emergency” is little more than an attempt to cut off debate and characterize the other side of an issue as an enemy.”

Less than six months after President Joe Biden signed the Respect for Marriage Act, which codified gay marriages, the Human Rights Campaign declared its first-ever “state of emergency” for “LGBTQ+ people.”

Why? Because of a supposed spike in “legislative assaults sweeping state houses this year.”

“More than 75 anti-LGBTQ+ bills have been signed into law this year alone, more than doubling last year’s number, which was previously the worst year on record,” the HRC says.

But look closely. Almost every single bill on the “assault” list is legislation designed to protect children from the omnipresent and increasingly aggressive “transgender” community.

The list includes things such as bans on doctors performing sterilization procedures or prescribing dangerous puberty-blocking drugs to minors. It includes Florida’s ban on public schools teaching children under age 9 about gay sex, and removing books from elementary school libraries that are too pornographic to show on local news programs. It includes protections for girls who don’t want to share lockers with boys (who claim to be girls) or be forced to unfairly compete in sports with physically dominant males. The list includes laws that prevent schools from “transitioning” children behind their parents’ backs.

It’s our guess that most people would view these sorts of measures as reasonable safeguards, not worthy of a “state of emergency” declaration.

https://www.city-journal.org/article/the-wests-culture-of-therapeutic-individualism

Recent years have been marked by policy failures on crime, homelessness, border control, family support, education, and health care. A major cause is progressives’ ability to transform questions about the best way to reform structures into emotional referendums on individuals. In a therapeutic, interconnected, and individualistic age that prizes feelings and “emotional safety,” making policy debates personal is a winning tactic. Progressives consistently resort to the fallacy of composition to shut down competing arguments.

The fallacy of composition arises when we mistakenly generalize from the part to the whole, or vice-versa. A phone book is hard to tear, but that doesn’t mean that an individual page is. Venezuela is an authoritarian nation, but that doesn’t mean that Venezuelans are. Brazilians tend to be good at soccer, but that doesn’t mean a particular Brazilian necessarily is.

Consider the examples below:

Apart from the first example, all the rest implicate progressive sensibilities, in that a progressive might engage in the fallacy and misconstrue the collective policy proposal as offensive to individuals. We often see this in our public debates, where a normative proposal (as are those in the left-hand column) is regarded, by progressives, as an attack on certain people (the right-hand column). Progressives thus collapse a complex discussion about collective entities into a debate about the treatment of individuals. This stems in part from the moral foundations of cultural progressives, who value equal outcomes and the minimization of harm. Those committing the fallacy of composition prioritize the therapeutic, privileging the psychological feelings of sensitive individuals at the margins above the collective dimensions of social problems to impede rational, democratic solutions. The political becomes the personal.

Public morality has evolved since the mid-1960s to the point where most taboos revolve around racism, sexism, homophobia, and other identitarian versions of the care/harm moral foundation. In short, our moral landscape has tilted in favor of the Left. This permits what the scholar Cass Sunstein terms “opprobrium entrepreneurs” to institutionalize the fallacy of composition on their cardinal issues.

https://www.thepostemail.com/2023/06/05/one-word-at-a-time/

“The most dangerous terrorist threat to our homeland is white supremacy.” So said President Biden at Howard University’s commencement recently. Was he telling a bald-faced lie? At the very least, he was corrupting the language. Herein, a primer on some of the more egregious crimes against clear thought that are currently bedeviling well-meaning Americans. But first a word on precisely what the culture vandals are out to destroy.

The American Way of Life

Despite the best efforts of the neo-Marxists and their collaborators in both parties, America still possesses a distinctive way of life. Those who subscribe to it believe that “governments are instituted among men” to secure the rights of individuals, and that individuals do not exist to serve governments. They believe in the rule of law, equality before the law (as the only sort of equality government should concern itself with), and basic law and order. They believe in freedom of religion, speech, and press and in the right to bear arms. They believe in a person’s right to run his own life and in his obligation to take full responsibility for it. They believe in private property, in earning one’s keep, and in the economic freedom and opportunity afforded by capitalism. They put great stock in science and technology, and they see industrialism as an overwhelmingly beneficial human achievement. They see the family as a fundamental and essential institution, and if they are religious, they are likely Judeo-Christian. Their language is English, and they do not believe that all cultures are created equal.

Diversity

If every American subscribed to the American way of life, it would be a very bad thing, we are told. That’s because diversity is good, they say. Race, ethnicity, culture, religion, sexual identity–the more ways in which the members of any group of Americans differ from each other, the better. No valid rationale for this conception of diversity has ever been offered. Usually, it is simply asserted, as in this statement from the website of the Boston Foundation, “Diversity is core to what makes cities great.” Diversity thus conceived is always treated as intrinsically and self-evidently beneficial. In truth it is an Orwellian pseudo-concept conjured out of thin air to serve a subversive political agenda. Only a confused, compliant, or deeply cynical mind would accept it at face value.