RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://amgreatness.com/2021/06/19/our-new-american-renaissance/

My favorite headline from the last week or so came from our new paper of record: “People Who Ruined World’s Economies Gather To Discuss How To Fix World’s Economies.” That’s what’s so great about the Babylon Bee, what makes it so painful-funny. You generally can’t tell where the satire ends and the documentary begins. It was just that which infuriated our former paper of record, the New York Times, which actually threatened to sue the satirical paper for being “a far-right misinformation site.” That didn’t go so well, and the pathetic excuse for a newspaper had to walk back its attacks. 

Never mind. Everything is going great. I know this because David Brooks just told us so from his shiny pulpit at the Times. “The American Renaissance has Begun,” his headline declares. COVID-19 is over and prosperity and comity are breaking out all over. Item: “[A]s more and more immigrants settle in rural areas and small towns, their presence might reduce nativism and increase economic competitiveness.” 

I rubbed my eyes, too. Was this the Times or the Babylon Bee? Can we tell the difference anymore? What about the story that points out that “as more and more immigrants settle in rural areas and small towns, crime rates and disease skyrocket.” I couldn’t find that one in the New York Times so I wrote it myself. As I did so, I wondered whether David Brooks had bothered to take a gander at what is happening at our Southern border. That’s where most of those “more and more immigrants” come from, you know. 

Never mind. It’s all wistful soap bubbles and unicorns. “People are shifting their personal lives to address common problems—loneliness and loss of community. Nobody knows where this national journey of discovery will take us, but the voyage has begun.”

Prize essay topic: What do those sentences mean? Be specific. 

Meanwhile, as we get set to enjoy the new American Renaissance, can there be any more cheerful propaedeutic than Joe Biden, our first Alzheimer’s president. Back when Biden was campaigning against he-who-shall-not-be-named—back in the bad old times before the new American Renaissance—I used to refer to Biden’s campaign appearances, such as they were, as a form of elder abuse. 

I misspoke. I didn’t understand that having a mentally incompetent president was actually a sign of what great shape the country was in. “America is back.” That has been the mantra of the administration since the beginning. In Anchorage in March, our snickerdoodle Secretary of State Anthony Blinken assured his Chinese counterpart of that interesting fact just before the Chinese rolled over him as the tanks rolled over protestors at Tiananmen Square. News reports on the G7 meeting, when they weren’t celebrating the new American Renaissance or commenting on Biden’s London fog, kept telling us that “America is back” now that what’s his name is gone and normality has reasserted itself. 

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2021/06/bill_maher_continues_to_give_voice_to_rational_leftists.html

It’s doubtful that Bill Maher will ever change his politics. He believes absolutely in fundamental leftist principles about how government should operate (and, of course, abortion). However, he’s not a fool and he realizes that leftists, drunk with power, have become their own worst enemies. Most recently, he went after Lin-Manuel Miranda, the talented composing of Hamilton, because Miranda groveled after the leftist mob attacked him for having the wrong colored people in the film adaption of his musical, In the Heights.

Most of you are probably familiar with Hamilton, even if you haven’t seen the show or heard the music. Miranda was so inspired after reading Ron Chernow’s biography of Alexander Hamilton, that he sat right down and composed what I call a “popra” – that is, like an opera, the whole thing is sung (or chanted or rapped) only with modern, rather than classical, music.

What made Hamilton stand out was the choice to exclude White people from the cast. In theory, that was a brilliant idea because it’s a reminder that the principles of America’s founding are applicable to all people of all races. The ideas of individual liberty and limited government are colorblind. They were the best ideas that brilliant men could come up with. America’s shame came from withholding this government from Blacks. Now, thankfully, these ideas are available to all in America – and again, the casting suggested that.

However, thanks to the death last year of a drug-addled ex-con, the left has dragged America with incredible force away from those ideas. Instead of being a colorblind nation bound together by a brilliant political philosophy, Critical Race Theory demands that America become a racially segregated nation with non-White victims engaged in a permanent vendetta against evil White oppressors. It doesn’t matter that there’s no factual for this narrative. Because racial schism is the vehicle by which leftists believe they can finally impose Marxism on America, reality must step aside.

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/illinois-governor-signs-bill-to-make-official-titles-gender-neutral/

Illinois governor J.B. Pritzker (D.) signed a bill this week to change the titles for elected officials in the state from “alderman” and “congressman” to “alderperson” and “congressperson” to be more gender-inclusive.

“We see a lot of ‘hes’ and ‘hims’” in state statute, said the bill’s co-sponsor, State Representative Maurice West (D).

“And now we have, you know, not just women in office, but we have people who may not identify with any gender,” he added. “We want to make sure that our voting and our election cycle process is inclusive for everyone.”

The change was included in Democratic legislation, first introduced in February, that amends Illinois’s state election code to postpone the 2022 Illinois primary until June. 

It comes after House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D., Calif.) introduced new congressional rules in January to remove all mention of gender-specific pronouns and terms like “man,” “woman,” “mother” and “son.”

Pelosi’s new rule sparked backlash from Republicans, including House GOP Leader Kevin McCarthy who wrote in a tweet, “This is stupid. Signed, – A father, son, and brother.”

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/biden-admin-takes-steps-to-offer-gender-transition-surgery-through-va-health-care-report/

Veterans Affairs Secretary Denis McDonough is taking steps toward making gender transition surgery available to veterans through Veterans Affairs health-care coverage, according to a new report.

A VA department spokesperson reportedly told CNN that McDonough plans to announce the move at a Pride event at the Orlando Vet Center in Florida on Saturday.

“We are taking the first necessary steps to expand VA’s care to include gender confirmation surgery — thus allowing transgender vets to go through the full gender confirmation process with VA by their side,” McDonough is expected to say.

The VA Health Benefits package currently covers mental-health services and sex-change hormones, but does not cover gender-transition surgery. 

McDonough’s prepared remarks note that “there are several steps to take, which will take time.” Policy changes will need to be made and the process of creating a new federal regulation can take years.

A VA spokesperson told CNN the department plans to start the federal rulemaking process to make the change this summer.

https://taibbi.substack.com/p/why-has-ivermectin-become-a-dirty

On December 8, 2020, when most of America was consumed with what The Guardian called Donald Trump’s “desperate, mendacious, frenzied and sometimes farcical” attempt to remain president, the Senate’s Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee held a hearing on the “Medical Response to Covid-19.” One of the witnesses, a pulmonologist named Dr. Pierre Kory, insisted he had great news.

“We have a solution to this crisis,” he said unequivocally. “There is a drug that is proving to have a miraculous impact.”

Kory was referring to an FDA-approved medicine called ivermectin. A genuine wonder drug in other realms, ivermectin has all but eliminated parasitic diseases like river blindness and elephantiasis, helping discoverer Satoshi Ōmura win the Nobel Prize in 2015. As far as its uses in the pandemic went, however, research was still scant. Could it really be a magic Covid-19 bullet?

Kory had been trying to make such a case, but complained to the Senate that public efforts had been stifled, because “every time we mention ivermectin, we get put in Facebook jail.” A Catch-22 seemed to be ensnaring science. With the world desperate for news about an unprecedented disaster, Silicon Valley had essentially decided to disallow discussion of a potential solution — disallow calls for more research and more study — because not enough research and study had been done. Once, people weren’t allowed to take drugs before they got FDA approval. Now, they can’t talk about them.

“I want to try to be respectful because I think the intention is correct,” Kory told the committee. “They want to cut down on misinformation, and many doctors are claiming X, Y, and Z work in this disease. The challenge is, you’re also silencing those of us who are expert, reasoned, researched, and extremely knowledgeable.”

Eight million people watched Kory say that on the C-SPAN video of the hearing posted to YouTube, but YouTube, in what appears to be a first, removed video of the hearing, as even Senate testimony was now deemed too dangerous for public consumption. YouTube later suspended the Wisconsin Senator who’d invited Kory to the hearing, and when Kory went on podcasts to tell his story, YouTube took down those videos, too. Kory was like a ghost who floated through the Internet, leaving suspensions and blackened warning screens everywhere he went.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/doctors-for-progressive-conformity-11624055333?mod=opinion_lead_pos3

The American Medical Association is a lobby of doctors that’s supposed to promote policies that improve public health and medicine. But it seems to be evolving into another arm of progressive politics, like the teachers unions. See the AMA’s policy-making meeting this week.

Delegates spent much of the time discussing systemic racism in health care and adopted guidelines for workplaces to establish training requirements for explicit and implicit bias and microaggressions. AMA trustee Willarda Edwards called systemic racism “the most serious barrier to the advancement of health equity and appropriate medical care.”

Many doctors would disagree with that statement. But the AMA seems to want to enforce ideological conformity in its ranks, including on social media. Delegates also voted to encourage social-media platforms to “crack down on medical misinformation,” including by “altering underlying network dynamics or redesigning platform algorithms.”

Social-media platforms have been removing content by doctors who disagree with the progressive lockdown consensus or who suggest that the virus may have leaked from a Chinese lab. Many doctors say their videos recommending early treatment with repurposed antiviral drugs have been censored, including one from a Senate hearing.

Social-media censorship suppressed debate on important issues during the pandemic, and the AMA wants to extend the information control to other health subjects. The new AMA policy would ostensibly encourage Facebook, YouTube and others to remove posts by doctors who question progressive orthodoxy on race and identity politics.

AMA delegates also voted to endorse an intellectual property waiver that progressives have been pushing for Covid vaccines at the World Trade Organization. President Biden endorsed it last month. But even European leaders say it won’t increase global vaccine supply and will set a dangerous precedent that will retard innovation in new medicines.

None of these new AMA policy positions will help patients or physicians, and they risk eroding public trust in the medical profession. Whatever happened to “first, do no harm”?

https://www.forbes.com/sites/adamandrzejewski/2021/06/17/with-juneteenth-feder

With the stroke of his pen Thursday, President Joe Biden signed legislation giving millions of federal employees Friday off to celebrate Saturday’s new federal holiday, Juneteenth.

This makes 44 paid days off for the average federal employee annually, which is nearly nine full weeks of paid-time off each year.

Juneteenth is celebrated on June 19 to commemorate the end of slavery in the United States. The Civil War was America’s bloodiest war, with between 752,000 and 861,000 soldiers dying on the battlefield. 49 states have already recognized Juneteenth as a holiday (South Dakota is the only holdout), though only a handful give it as a paid holiday to state employees.

On Wednesday, the U.S. House passed the bill to make Juneteenth a federal holiday, after the U.S. Senate passed it the day before.

Signing it into law on Thursday, Biden made Juneteenth – observed this year on Friday, June 18 — a federal holiday for which “most” federal employees will have off.

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2021/06/mustsee_tv_black_medical_professional_denounces_crt_at_school_board_meeting.html

Critical Race Theory opponents are the new Tea Party, a grassroots phenomenon all over the country, mobilizing both activists and people with a political background at all to oppose the teaching of race hatred.  There is nothing quite as powerful in exciting passions in adults as threatening their children.  And make no mistake: Critical Race Theory harms children deeply, teaching Blacks that they are victims and can’t succeed on their own, and teaching non-Blacks that they are born evil.

If you spend two minutes and forty-seven seconds watching the following cell phone video of a Black medical professional denouncing the teaching of Critical Race Theory at a school board meeting, you will understand the panic that is starting to hit Democrats and their media apparat.  The passion and the intelligence of this self-described holder of two medical degrees, a man who worked his way through college, “up from the streets,” are inspiring.  He told the mostly White crowd gathered there that he “gives orders” to people who look like them every day, so how can he be oppressed?

https://nypost.com/2021/06/17/tide-turning-against-the-woke-liberal-blob-that-misrules-us/

For the past year, liberals unleashed on the nation an avalanche of ideological nonsense, coupled with brutal pressure to conform. Those who bucked the party line found themselves canceled and unpersoned and had their opinions subjected to mockery and claims of delusion and “anti-science” prejudices.

Until now. Because the tide is turning. And sometimes the break from the party line comes from surprising places. 

Late-night comics are usually reliable parroters of the message of the day. So it says something that last week, Bill Maher launched an impassioned critique of “woke” culture, while this week, Jon Stewart went on Stephen Colbert’s show to say in no uncertain terms that it looks like the Wuhan coronavirus came from … the Wuhan lab.

Using a term from Harvard psychologist Steven Pinker, Maher accused liberals of “progressophobia” — “a brain disorder that strikes liberals and makes them incapable of recognizing progress.”

That is, they’re unwilling to admit that things have gotten better. To hear them talk about race, you’d think we were still in the era of Selma and Bull Connor. (My dad marched with Freedom Riders and at Selma; trust me, things have changed.) To hear them talk about women’s rights, you’d think it was still 1958. And gay activists, despite “Pride Month” being celebrated by pretty much every corporation, are still somehow stuck in the pre-Stonewall era.

Maher’s right.