RUTHFULLY YOURS

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.

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.

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.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/12/pandemic-intelligence-failure-2021-report-card-lloyd-billingsley/

“I’m very sorry, but not this time. Maybe another time when this is all over.” That was Dr. Anthony Fauci last week, telling people not to invite unvaccinated family members to their home for Christmas. The Biden medical adviser also called for those vaccinated and boosted to stay away from gatherings of 30-50 people. As Fauci explained, “those are the kind of functions — in the context of COVID, and particularly in the context of Omicron — that you do not want to go to.” As 2021 closes out, those contexts have yet to gain the attention they deserve.

In early November, health workers in South Africa discovered the Omicron variant and on December 1, 2021, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) announced the first Omicron case in the United States. In November, 2020, medical authorities in India identified the Delta variant of COVID-19, which swept through that country and the UK before arriving in the United States, “where it quickly surged.”

On December 12, 2019, according to the CDC, “a  cluster of patients in Wuhan, Hubei Providence, China begin to experience shortness of breath and fever.” On January 17, 2020, the CDC deployed a team to Washington State in response to the first reported COVID-19 case in the United States. Americans had a right to wonder what their nation’s Epidemic Intelligence Service had been doing, if they knew that such a service existed.

The CDC deploys the EIS, as Diana Robeletto Scalera of the CDC Foundation explains, “to ensure epidemics in other countries do not hit American soil.” EIS disease detectives are “are the ones responsible and they take this role very seriously.”

The EIS had boots on the ground in China, but the disease detectives failed to stop the virus that causes COVID-19 from showing up in America. When the virus did show up, nobody from the EIS told the American people how that that had happened, how the EIS might have failed, or anything the EIS knew about the true origin of the virus.

The “service” itself dates back to the Korean War but in recent decades, considerable mission creep has become evident. As UC Berkeley molecular biologist Peter Duesberg noted in Inventing the AIDS Virus, the EIS came to be known as the nation’s “medical CIA.”

EIS vets have worked in the CDC other federal agencies, international bodies such as the World Health Organization, and they are also embedded in the media. EIS vet Lawrence Altman became a medical journalist for the New York Times and Bruce Dan served as a medical editor with ABC News and the prestigious Journal of the American Medical Association.

Such EIS activists rarely advertise their affiliation, and after the spring of 1993 the EIS membership directory was withdrawn from public view. As Duesberg learned, EIS members “constitute an informal surveillance network,” and can “act as unrecognized advocates for the CDC viewpoint, whether as media journalists or as prominent physicians.”

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/12/pushback-against-soft-despotism-comin

Over the last two years, many of us have been surprised and troubled at how eagerly millions of citizens have surrendered their freedoms to the shifting, contradictory, nakedly politicized diktats of various “experts” and government agencies. Coerced vaccinations, boosters, masks, and social distancing continue to be mandated and just as eagerly obeyed, even in the case of the mild Omicron covid variant. The technocratic Left currently ruling the country has wrung every ounce of unconstitutional power from the sovereign people, a large cohort of whom, especially the cognitive elites, have willingly gone along with every new crisis and command.

As the year ends, signs of a pushback are multiplying. But will such resistance reach the critical mass of voters necessary for liberating us from such “soft despotism” and its wardens?

We shouldn’t be surprised that progressives have seized the opportunity to aggrandize themselves through serial changes on the pretext of an exaggerated crisis. It has long been a truism of history that, as James Madison said in 1788, “there are more instances of the abridgment of the freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachment of power, than by sudden usurpations.”

Nearly half a century later, Alexis de Tocqueville foresaw an even more insidious stealth despotism that could arise in American democracy: “An immense and tutelary power, which takes upon itself alone to secure [the people’s] gratifications and to watch over their fate.” And he prophesized that the bureaucratic regulatory state would be the instrument of this “soft despotism”: a power “absolute, minute, regular, provident, and mild” that “covers the surface of society with a network of small complicated rules, minute and uniform.” The goal is “to keep [the people] in perpetual childhood,” for this power is “well content that the people should rejoice, provided they think of nothing but rejoicing.”

The last hundred years have seen such a regime gradually become reality. Crises such as the Great Depression, Two World Wars, and other conflicts and recessions provided the pretexts for expanding and concentrating the powers of federal agencies and their “network of small complicated rules.” And like children, too many citizens have accepted these encroachments, willingly ceding their autonomy and freedom to overseers who bribe them with the redistribution of other people’s money, and with promises “alone to secure their gratifications and to watch over their fate” from the cradle to the grave ––what we call “entitlements” but think are unalienable rights.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18088/dramatic-testimony-from-the-maxwell-case-will

You will be surprised to learn that the woman who was paid to find, bring and “groom” Carolyn was not Ghislaine Maxwell, although the above testimony was given at Maxwell’s trial. The older woman – who was well over the age of consent when she brought the 14-year-old Carolyn to Epstein – was Virginia Giuffre, the same woman who has falsely accused me of having sex with her, and who has also accused … other prominent people who have all denied the accusation.
Although Giuffre was a central figure in the Maxwell case, mentioned repeatedly throughout the trial, she was not called as a government witness. Why was she not called? Probably for two reasons: first she would be cross-examined by the defense about her own crimes in being paid to bring underage girls to Epstein; and second, she would be confronted with the numerous lies she has told under oath. Her own lawyers have disputed her and acknowledged that she was “wrong” in accusing prominent people. And her own emails, book manuscript and prior interviews with the FBI contradict her current accusations.
Moreover, prosecutors would have to explain why she is not being prosecuted for enticing a 14-year-old to have sex with Epstein…. Pursuant to the theory under which Maxwell was convicted, Giuffre is guilty of a felony carrying a long prison term.
The question is will she be indicted for perjury and enticing a minor, or will she get a pass because she may once have been victimized by Epstein? Does her alleged victimization excuse her for victimizing others? She has already been well compensated for any victimization. Estimates range between 6-10 million dollars she and her lawyers have received. Nor have those underaged girls who she helped victimize been compensated by her.
The testimony by Carolyn regarding Giuffre’s sordid role in victimizing very young girls cannot be ignored, especially since the government elicited it from their own witness in the Maxwell case. Nor can her rampant perjury, which can be proved through her own words. So, stay tuned. The truth will come out. And it may surprise you.

I wish you all a very happy, healthy and fruitful New Year.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18083/american-traitors-academics-working-for-china

China’s regime has bought America’s academic community and turned it against America.

“This case is only the tip of the iceberg in terms of what needs to be done by the U.S. government to penetrate and prosecute China’s co-option of America’s academia.” — Kerry Gershaneck, the author of Political Warfare: Strategies for Combating China’s Plan to “Win Without Fighting” and a professor in Taiwan, to Gatestone, December 2021.

“Scientists around the world, identified as leaders in areas of advanced research that are strategic priorities, are targeted by a well-funded sophisticated engagement that plays on their vanity, naiveté, and greed.” — Charles Burton, former professor at Brock University and now a leading expert on China’s infiltration of Canada, to Gatestone.

I am told there are “thousands” of professors on Beijing’s payroll in California universities.

Xi is serious about attracting talents like Lieber. In his September speech, Xi said he would “exhaust all means” to recruit foreigners.

In China’s official war on America — People’s Daily in May 2019 declared a “people’s war” on the United States — Americans working for Beijing, whatever their intention, are essentially traitors. Lieber, a traitor, has inflicted incalculable damage on America.

It took a federal jury in Boston less than three hours to return guilty verdicts on all six felony counts against Charles Lieber, the former chair of Harvard University’s Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology.

Lieber, “one of the country’s top research chemists” according to the New York Times, lied to the FBI about his participation in Beijing’s Thousand Talents Program, did not pay income tax on money from Chinese sources, and failed to report his Chinese bank account to the Internal Revenue Service.

The case against the Harvard academic was airtight. Nonetheless, members of America’s academic elite are up in arms that the Department of Justice prosecuted Lieber, and many are campaigning against law enforcement efforts.

China’s regime has bought America’s academic community and turned it against America.

https://amgreatness.com/2021/12/29/the-ungracious-and-their-demonization-of-the-past/

The last two years have seen an unprecedented escalation in a decades-long war on the American past.

But there are lots of logical flaws in attacking prior generations in U.S. history.

Critics assume their own judgmental generation is morally superior to those of the past. So, they use their own standards to condemn the mute dead who supposedly do not measure up to them.

Yet 21st century critics rarely acknowledge their own present affluence and leisure owe much to history’s prior generations whose toil helped create their current comfort.

And what may future scolds say of the modern generation that saw over 60 million abortions since Roe v. Wade, even as fetal viability outside the womb continued to progress to ever earlier ages?

What will our grandchildren say of us who dumped on them over $30 trillion in national debt—much of it as borrowing for entitlements for ourselves?

What sort of society snoozes as record numbers of murders continue in 12 of its major cities? What is so civilized about defunding the police, endemic smash-and-grab thefts, and car-jackings?

Was our media more responsible, professional, and learned in 1965 or 2021? Did Hollywood make more sophisticated and enjoyable films in 1954 or 2021? Was there less or more sportsmanship among professional athletes in 1990 or 2021?

Was it actually moral to discard the “content of our character” and “equal opportunity” principles of the prior Civil Rights movement of 60 years ago? Are their replacement fixations on the “color of our skin” and “equality of result” superior?

Would America have won World War II with the current labor participation rate of only six Americans in 10 working? Would our generation have brought all American troops home and quit World War I, in fear of the deadly 1918 Spanish flu pandemic?

https://issuesinsights.com/2021/12/30/vice-president-kamikaze-harris/

After more than 11 months in office, with inflation skyrocketing and the country’s superpower status plummeting, Americans can’t stand either President Joe Biden or his vice-presidential-beneficiary of-affirmative-action, Kamala Harris.

Every time Harris tries to help herself, she hurts herself. As border czar who for three months avoided visiting the Mexican border, Harris relented only after plans were made known of former President Donald Trump and Texas Gov. Greg Abbott traveling to the frontier – and then she briefly visited only a border patrol station about nine miles from the actual border, far removed from where masses of illegal migrants have been crossing.

To humanize her disastrous public image and connect with ordinary people, she staged a ludicrous fake meeting with child actors to tout space exploration. She chose to own Biden’s catastrophic Afghanistan withdrawal by telling the world she was the “last person in the room” when he formulated his policy. And her office has been hemorrhaging senior staff.

But on Sunday, the vice president outdid herself in self-destructive stupidity, and made it crystal clear she is unqualified to assume the presidency should the ever-more-enfeebled Biden become incapacitated or, God forbid, pass on to his eternal reward.

Appearing on CBS’ “Face the Nation,” she began by sounding, more even than Joe, like big, dumb, dangerous government personified. “Everyone has to get vaccinated,” Harris insisted at a time when the federal government’s approach to COVID is more discredited than ever, both among the populace and within the medical community, adding that “they’ll save your life.”