RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://issuesinsights.com/2022/05/24/republicans-for-biden-owe-the-nation-heck-the-world-an-apology/

In the run-up to the 2020 election, the Biden campaign was gleeful about the flood of prominent Republicans who’d crossed the aisle to support Joe’s candidacy. These Never-Trumpers weren’t just expressing their disdain for President Donald Trump, they were heartily, lovingly, making the case for Joe Biden.

Back then, they were lauded as heroes by the establishment. Today, everyone knows the truth.

These Biden-supporting Republicans were utterly, embarrassingly, dangerously wrong about the man they were touting for president. And we are all now paying an enormous and rapidly increasing price for their arrogant stupidity.

Nothing better encapsulates the “Republicans for Biden” mindset than the statement issued by nearly 500 former national security officials in the fall of 2020 backing Biden.

Forget about the fact that they trafficked in anti-Trump lies such as the “Russian bounty” story and sided against Trump on China, climate change, and other issues of importance to conservatives.

What stands out today is when they claimed that Biden “is the leader our nation needs.”

“It is unthinkable,” these “experts” said in their statement, “that [Biden] would ever utter the phrase ‘I don’t take responsibility at all.’”

Would anyone make such a claim today?

Do a Google search of “Biden blames” and you’ll be flooded with examples of his refusing to take responsibility for anything.

https://glennloury.substack.com/p/unravelling-the-spiral-of-silence?s=r

Recently, I appeared on the podcast of Lex Fridman, a computer scientist who has worked on AI at places like MIT and Google. He’s a virtuosic interviewer who seems to be interested in pretty much everything. Go check out his YouTube channel, and you’ll likely be impressed by his range of guests and his ability to engage them in deep conversations about their lives and areas of expertise.

I made the trip out to Lex’s studio in Austin, Texas, and it was well worth the journey. Our conversation ranged from my own personal experiences to economics to race and politics to the really big questions, like death and the meaning of life. We talked for four hours, and he posted almost the entire thing. I must say, I think it’s one of the best recorded conversations I’ve ever engaged in.

The excerpt below is taken from that conversation, and in it Lex asks me about the effectiveness of accusations of racism. We see this everywhere. A professor or politician or some other public figure is accused of racism, and before the charges can even be investigated, poof. Their career goes up in smoke, whether or not they’ve actually done anything worthy of censure. Often it turns out they’re guilty of little more than choosing their words carelessly, and just as often they’re guilty, at least in my view, of nothing at all. This state of affairs is untenable, and I have no problem saying so. Others feel the way I do, and you’re now seeing more of them speak out against specious accusations of racism.

But there are still many, many people who recognize the terrible injustice of these accusations but fear the repercussions of defending the accused. It’s understandable. They don’t want the mob to direct its ire at them, and they may be in a position where they have much to lose and little to gain by speaking out. I worry that this widespread suppression could create conditions ripe for exploitation by some canny demagogue who could harness the resentments of a stifled electorate and, in the process, unleash something very ugly on this country. The political scientist Elisabeth Noelle-Neumann theorized the mechanisms that could bring this state of affairs about. She called it “the spiral of silence,” which I explain below.

We know the costs of remaining silent in the face of injustice. When that silence is broken, as it inevitably will be broken, are we prepared for what else may break along with it?

https://amgreatness.com/2022/05/22/the-chinese-communist-partys-terrorist-attack-on-america/

When Dr. John Cheng opted to attend church services at the Irvine Taiwanese Presbyterian Church in Laguna Woods, just 45 minutes outside of Los Angeles, California, he had no idea that he would sacrifice his prosperous and successful life to save scores of his fellow churchgoers. But that was precisely what the 53-year-old sports medicine physician and father of two did.

Cheng was attending a church service with his elderly mother. Many of the other parishioners were also elderly, prompting the heroic doctor to take decisive action against 68-year-old David Chou. Cheng sustained multiple gunshot wounds tackling Chou once it became clear Chou was planning a mass casualty attack. According to law enforcement officials, thanks to Cheng’s quick actions, the shooter was delayed from killing more people—and it gave the other parishioners time to jump into action and attack the crazed gunman. 

John Cheng is, unequivocally, a hero. Like so many other acts of terrorism conducted against Americans, the attack brought to light the very worst and, in Cheng, the very best of humanity. But now the calls for justice must be heard. We must understand how and why this attack happened, not only to avenge Cheng’s murder . . . but to determine if the terrorist attack directed against Taiwanese Americans was an isolated event or the start of a new pattern of terrorism. 

David Chou, the suspected shooter, wasn’t just some lone wolf kook. He was part of a political movement known as the “Las Vegas Chinese for Peaceful Unification” movement. This organization is not an independent entity unique to Las Vegas, Nevada. According to reports from the Taipei Times, this organization is a “semi-official [arm] of the Chinese Communist Party with branches in several countries.”

https://amgreatness.com/2022/05/22/joe-biden-and-racial-demagoguery/

Joe Biden has had a long history of racist outbursts. Can we even remember them all? The “put y’all back in chains” insults to an audience of black professionals, his dismissal of black interviewers variously as “you ain’t black” or ”junkie,” his he-man racialist Corn Pop mythologies, his recent condescending reference to a black professional as “boy,” and on and on. 

The Left has always contextualized his racial outbursts in the same fashion his decades-long creepy touching, sexual harassment, grabbing, and blowing into the hair and ears of young women and teens were always “just Joe being Joe.”  

So it was ironic but predictable that Biden went to Buffalo on Tuesday to leverage the recent carnage from the deranged, eco-fascist, racist, and insane lethal mass shooter of 11 African-Americans. Read the gunman’s manifesto: it is an unhinged collage of green fascist, racist, and politically incoherent mishmash.  

Purported right-wing monsters usually don’t hate Fox News and Ben Shapiro or go on endless green screeds. No matter. For Biden, as his midterm rendezvous looms ominously, the Buffalo shooter was useful in smearing his own political opponents. So Biden saw a trip to Buffalo as an opportunity, in a way other mass shootings were not, and made a rare excursion out of his secluded compound.  

The Great Asymmetries 

Biden’s despicable effort at blaming his political adversaries for the deaths failed for lots of reasons. He mangled his recitations of prior white-on-black shootings by including the recent Dallas shootings of three Asians by an African-American in his catalog of white-supremacist murders.  

https://dailycaller.com/2022/05/21/bill-maher-lgbt-activists-children-monologue/

Comedian Bill Maher addressed the recent upsurge in LGBT identification, questioning the use of puberty blockers in pediatrics in a Friday night monologue.

The “Real Time” host expressed hesitancy about children using puberty blockers, citing a lack of long term studies, saying that “we’re literally experimenting on children.”

“Maybe that’s why Sweden and Finland have stopped giving puberty blockers to kids, because we just don’t know much about the long term effects,” Maher said.

“Although common sense should tell you that when you reverse the course of raging hormones, there’s going to be problems,” Maher added.

https://issuesinsights.com/2022/05/23/impeach-hillary-clinton-in-2023/

When it looked as if Democrats last year were going to try to impeach the already-impeached Donald Trump again after he left the White House, the Congressional Research Service said: “​​It appears that most scholars who have closely examined the question have concluded that Congress has authority to extend the impeachment process to officials who are no longer in office.” If so, should the Republicans take Congress as expected, they ought to impeach Hillary Clinton.

During the entire four-year Trump presidency, the American people were deluged with fake “Russia, Russia Russia” news. The mainstream media would not let up on the unfounded accusations that Trump was a stooge of Russian strongman Vladimir Putin, and there existed a dossier that proved it. It was a connection, said more than one talking head, that meant that Trump was not a legitimate president.

Of course it turned out the dossier was a literal pack of lies – and financed by Clinton and her party.

But that didn’t stop Clinton, the Democrat candidate whose “turn” it was to be president, from approving one of the dirtiest political tricks in U.S. history to, first, severely wound Trump’s election chances, then second, damage his presidency.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/hillary-clinton-did-it-robby-mook-michael-sussmann-donald-trump-russia-collusion-alfa-bank-11653084709?mod=opinion_lead_pos11

The Russia-Trump collusion narrative of 2016 and beyond was a dirty trick for the ages, and now we know it came from the top—candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton. That was the testimony Friday by 2016 Clinton campaign manager Robby Mook in federal court, and while this news is hardly a surprise, it’s still bracing to find her fingerprints on the political weapon.

Mr. Mook testified as a witness in special counsel John Durham’s trial of Michael Sussmann, the lawyer accused of lying to the FBI. In September 2016, Mr. Sussmann took claims of a secret Trump connection to Russia’s Alfa Bank to the FBI and said he wasn’t acting on behalf of any client. Prosecutors say he was working for the Clinton campaign.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/fda-seizing-seizes-baby-formula-crisis-shortage-europe-abbott-nutrition-hipp-holle-kendamil-infant-producers-11653248212?mod=opinion_lead_pos9

Hundreds of thousands of parents in the U.S. are scrambling to find formula for their babies, and President Biden has invoked the Defense Production Act, a Cold War-era national-security law to boost domestic production. Yet the Food and Drug Administration has been enforcing an effective ban on formula from Europe, the world’s largest producer and exporter.

Some of the current shortage of baby formula derives from pandemic-related labor and supply-chain problems, as well as a recall of Abbott Nutrition formula products, which knocked out a large chunk of domestic supply. The other domestic suppliers, such as Bobbie Baby Formula, simply can’t “flip a switch and just make more formula,” as CEO Laura Modi put it.

The FDA has announced streamlined regulatory approvals for European formula, but it’s unclear whether such popular brands as Hipp, Holle and Kendamil will be permitted in the U.S., because their infant formula products aren’t registered with the FDA.

European baby formulas are regulated by European regulatory authorities, and research has found that most meet FDA-required nutrient levels. They don’t meet FDA labeling and other requirements, however. Most don’t have formula-preparation instructions in English, specific labeling on iron content or instructions on how to store the product. The FDA also has concerns about European formulas requiring less water per scoop, the temperature conditions under which they are stored, and their lack of a system to notify U.S. consumers of recalls. Major European producers such as Hipp and Holle have not spent the time and money needed to comply with FDA regulations.

https://spectatorworld.com/topic/michael-sussmann-hillary-clinton-james-baker-fbi-durham/

Michael Sussmann, a senior lawyer for Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign, is currently on trial for lying to the FBI. The allegation is straightforward. As the election approached, Sussmann texted his old friend and fellow attorney, James Baker, requesting a brief, urgent meeting. Baker was the FBI’s top lawyer and Sussmann was a partner at Clinton’s election-law firm. They were friends from their days together at the Department of Justice and continued to know each other socially. According to the indictment, Sussmann told Baker he was coming solely to help the Bureau and not on behalf of any client.

To prove his case, Special Counsel John Durham and his team must show two things:

Sussmann lied when he said he wasn’t representing a client in that meeting; and
Sussmann’s lie had the “potential” to affect the FBI’s investigation. (According to the law, the lie need not actually affect the investigation; it need only have the potential to do so.)

Sussmann’s defense is to toss back the ol’ kitchen sink. “I didn’t lie. You can’t prove I lied. I had no reason to lie. And even if I lied, it really didn’t matter to the FBI.” That defense has two aims: create confusion for the jury and drag in the name of Donald Trump, for jurors in a city that voted almost unanimously for Hillary and undoubtedly loathe the former president. What Sussmann hopes for, in other words, is “jury nullification,” where the jury believes the crime has been proven but disregards the evidence and votes “not guilty.” That’s really Sussmann’s only chance.

What happened in court on Thursday should clinch the case for Durham, if the jury is fair-minded. The prosecution put on its star witness, James Baker. Baker’s obvious reluctance to testify against Sussmann makes his testimony all the more convincing. And that testimony is damning. With Baker on the stand, the prosecution introduced a text message he received from Sussmann, asking for a meeting the next day. The message is catastrophic for Sussmann’s claim he told Baker he had a client. He said, in writing, that he didn’t have one.