RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/10/presidents-coronavirus-spikes-trump-derangement-lloyd-billingsley/

Last week, President Trump and First Lady Melania Trump tested positive for the coronavirus. Democrats quickly deployed their bullhorns.

“If President Trump can’t be out there on the campaign trail for the next two weeks, then he is going to rely on his surrogates and unfortunately, one of his surrogates is Vladimir Putin,” Sen. Chris Murphy told CNN. “So, unfortunately, you are likely going to see this campaign ramped up by Russia over the next few weeks to try to substitute for the president’s absence on the campaign trail.”

Senate minority leader Charles Schumer said the plan to hold hearings for President Trump’s Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett was unfeasible. Schumer also demanded isolation for Barrett and “anyone she was in contact with.”

Over in the House, Michigan Democrat Rashida Tlaib proclaimed that the president “only cares about himself and his life, NOT those around him or the people he took an oath to protect. Too many lives lost because of his deadly lies.” Last year, it might be recalled, Tlaib crowed, “We are going to impeach this motherfucker!”

Donald Trump “knows better than anyone he shouldn’t be president,” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said in 2016, and last year she derided “his own insecurity as an imposter.” After the president tested positive for the virus, Pelosi told reporters, “I have concerns about the test because obviously the tests that are happening at the White House are not as accurate as they should be.”

Stephanie Ruhle of MSNBC told the Speaker she was “second in line for the presidency” and asked whether the White House had contacted “contacted you about the continuity of government?” Pelosi responded “that is an ongoing- not with the White House but with the military, quite frankly, in terms of some officials in the government.”

https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/10/art-review-making-the-met-metropolitan-museum-of-art/

Making the Met, 1870–2020 makes the case, and no one can deny it: The Met is an unparalleled marvel.

T he new exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Making the Met, 1870–2020, commemorates the 150th anniversary of, in my opinion, the unmatched giant among museums in the world today. Its collection, curators, and educational program go from strength to strength. In 1870, the Met’s founding signaled America’s cultural ascendance from provincial to international, from the sweaty work of building a nation from scratch to a time when enrichment of the mind was seen as not only possible but essential to a good life.

From the Gilded Age to the Information Age, the Met’s mission has always pivoted toward the best, in everything it does. It almost always hits the target. Yes, it’s an art museum with intimate as well as sumptuous, grand galleries, but, well beyond that, I’ve always looked at it as a university. Its pedagogical and research functions are huge. With a million moving parts, as many movers and shakers, superb art, and a history of peaks and valleys, the Met’s story is a challenge to tell.

What is its own take on the past 150 years? Expansive but cautious, even corporate. Hygienic, as all the juicy, rapacious bits go unmentioned. Surprising? Not really. The Met’s an enormous place, or, more precisely, a big family where everyone needs to be fed. There’s a little of everything, but the story is coherent. It’s a Cliff Notes version. It shows many great things but not all the best things. It’s about the Met’s best thinking and its high points.

I enjoyed it. How could I not? It’s the greatest museum in the world. It’s the zenith of heritage preservation. It’s a learned storyteller, too, and the story is human creativity. Americans are privileged that it’s here.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-truth-about-critical-race-theory-11601841968?mod=hp_opin_pos_1

Moderator Chris Wallace asked President Trump during last week’s debate why he “directed federal agencies to end racial-sensitivity training that addresses white privilege or critical race theory.” Mr. Trump answered: “I ended it because it’s racist.” Participants “were asked to do things that were absolutely insane,” he explained. “They were teaching people to hate our country.”

“Nobody’s doing that,” Joe Biden replied. He’s wrong.

My reporting on critical race theory in the federal government was the impetus for the president’s executive order, so I can say with confidence that these training sessions had nothing to do with developing “racial sensitivity.” As I document in detailed reports for City Journal and the New York Post, critical race theory training sessions in public agencies have pushed a deeply ideological agenda that includes reducing people to a racial essence, segregating them, and judging them by their group identity rather than individual character, behavior and merit.

The examples are instructive. At a series of events at the Treasury Department and federal financial agencies, diversity trainer Howard Ross taught employees that America was “built on the backs of people who were enslaved” and that all white Americans are complicit in a system of white supremacy “by automatic response to the ways we’re taught.”

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2020/10/chelsea_clinton_demonstrates_what_kind_of_a_hideous_lousy_friend_she_is.html

This week, Melania Trump’s former friend, Stephanie Winston Wolkoff, secretly recorded Melania expressing frustration with having to do White House Christmas decorations instead of serve people, and then broadcast her sneakitude to the press for adulation and book deals, literally profiting one, two, many times on her longtime friendship with Melania Trump. Who needs friends when there’s money to be had?

But not to be outdone, Chelsea Clinton has stepped forward into the spotlight, to tell everyone why she refuses to speak to her longtime childhood friend, Ivanka Trump, and it’s a doozy. 

According to USAToday:

Chelsea Clinton offered a detailed explanation about her fallout with former friend Ivanka Trump, which followed the 2016 presidential election when Ivanka’s dad defeated Chelsea’s mom.

On Thursday’s episode of “Watch What Happens Live with Andy Cohen,” Chelsea Clinton, 40, said she and Ivanka Trump haven’t spoken since 2016. During the discussion with host Andy Cohen, Clinton criticized the first daughter for “actively taking part in this administration’s everyday collision of cruelty and incompetence.”

Clinton didn’t hold back in her criticism of her former pal.

“We were in touch at the beginning of the campaign, but it’s just really hard when there’s someone who’s actively embracing their candidate, whether it’s their father or not, who is trafficking in racism and sexism and anti-semitism and Islamophobia and homophobia and transphobia and conspiracy theories and lies and is so fundamentally corrupt,” Clinton explained.

Umm, Chels, that’s not ‘actively embracing’ a candidate, that’s actually her actively embracing dad.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/10/stats-hold-a-surprise-lockdowns-may-have-had-little-effect-on-covid-19-spread/

Data suggest mandatory lockdowns exacted a great cost, with a questionable effect on transmission.

In 1932, Supreme Court justice Louis Brandeis famously called the states “laboratories of democracy.” Different states can test out different policies, and they can learn from each other. That proved true in 2020. Governors in different states responded to the COVID-19 pandemic at different times and in different ways. Some states, such as California, ordered sweeping shutdowns. Others, such as Florida, took a more targeted approach. Still others, such as South Dakota, dispensed information but had no lockdowns at all.

As a result, we can now compare outcomes in different states, to test the question no one wants to ask: Did the lockdowns make a difference?

If lockdowns really altered the course of this pandemic, then coronavirus case counts should have clearly dropped whenever and wherever lockdowns took place. The effect should have been obvious, though with a time lag. It takes time for new coronavirus infections to be officially counted, so we would expect the numbers to plummet as soon as the waiting time was over.

How long? New infections should drop on day one and be noticed about ten or eleven days from the beginning of the lockdown. By day six, the number of people with first symptoms of infection should plummet (six days is the average time for symptoms to appear). By day nine or ten, far fewer people would be heading to doctors with worsening symptoms. If COVID-19 tests were performed right away, we would expect the positives to drop clearly on day ten or eleven (assuming quick turnarounds on tests).

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/16590/colorful-american-politics

White supremacists forget that in most cases what they present as lawbreaking by blacks is primarily caused by socio-economic factors, not skin color. Even then, lawbreakers form a small minority of black Americans, who account for 12 percent of the population.

While racists, both white and black, do exist in the United States, it is wrong to talk of across the board institutional racism. A majority of Americans of all colors understand that slavery was an evil and harmed every American regardless of color. They have also seen in real life that advancing equality benefits all, not only those of any particular color.

The way world media cover the current US election campaigns may foster the impression that the nation is gripped by a crisis due to institutional racism with black Americans as victims. Professional anti-Americans even claim that the US perpetuates a version of apartheid.

How accurate are such claims?

There is no doubt that race, or skin color, remains a cause of friction with small radical groups, both white and black, seeking to legitimize their agendas by fomenting fear and loathing with racial themes.

On the right, white supremacists try to portray black fellow citizens as genetic criminals whose presence is a cause of anxiety. They cite figures showing that a disproportionate number of blacks are in prison for breaking the law.

On the left, some radical anti-capitalists try to cast blacks as victims of institutional racism and use the concept of victimhood to justify violence.

White supremacists forget that in most cases, what they present as lawbreaking by blacks is primarily caused by socio-economic factors, not skin color. Even then, lawbreakers form a small minority of black Americans, who account for 12 percent of the population.

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2020/10/chris_wallace_caps_a_bad_week_with_a_strange_attack_against_scott_atlas.html

On Tuesday night, during the first presidential debate, Chris Wallace was weak and ineffectual.  He was also a partisan without the decency to admit it.  On Wednesday, Wallace blamed Trump for his own failings, a coward’s way out.  And Friday, he announced that Scott Atlas, M.D. is not qualified to talk about Wuhan virus policy because he is not an epidemiologist.  This almost random collateral attack has nothing to do with the important skill sets Atlas brings to Trump’s White House Coronavirus Task Force.

The real reason why Scott Atlas is in the left’s crosshairs is that he’s a new voice on the White House Coronavirus Task Force, and he’s saying things the left dislikes.  His usefulness lies in the fact that he’s a brilliant man who is a counterweight to Fauci, who is all in for locking America down indefinitely.

Although Fauci is primarily responsible for Trump’s initial approach to the virus — an approach the left now claims leaves Trump with blood on his hands — the left loves Fauci.  Leftists resent that Trump has added an opposing voice to the Task Force.

The left’s hostility to Atlas reflects a general problem with socialists: they value only their opinions (think “cancel culture”) and invariably embrace groupthink.  Groupthink creates conditions for Lysenkoism in scientific endeavors.  This can be incredibly dangerous because there’s no one to point out their factual errors or fallacious reasoning and conclusions.

Atlas’s ideas are especially repugnant for a party invested in the shutdown.

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/editorials/willing-dupes-are-funding-a-toxic-new-racial-grift-industry

Ibram X. Kendi, the author of How to be an Antiracist and Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas, recently gave a presentation to teachers and administrators in Fairfax County, Virginia. For his one hour of work, he was paid an astounding $20,000 in taxpayer money. That’s $333 per minute of his presentation.

On top of that, the school district splurged $24,000 to buy his books about critical race theory and to make them required reading for K-12 students.

This utter waste of money on ideological claptrap is, however, chump change compared to the lucre that sluices into Kendi’s pockets for his corporate work. Twitter’s Jack Dorsey donated $10 million to Kendi’s anti-racism center. Bank of America partnered with the law firm McGuireWoods to host a discussion with Kendi as part of its “diversity and inclusion” initiative.

So, yeah, anti-racism is great work, if you can get it. It would be a relief if it were only “money for nothing,” but actually, it is money for poison.

This summer, amid evidence of police brutality against black people in the United States, it has become trendy to react in ways that do nothing to advance the cause of reform. Reform is hard, and it is much easier for corporations, school boards, and other institutions to whitewash themselves by deliberately getting themselves scammed. So, they unaccountably pay outrageous sums (usually of other people’s money) to hucksters such as Kendi.

ttps://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2020/10/02/one_nation_under_woke_144356.html

Through the sweeping and indiscriminate indictment of oppression that it makes against the American republic, wokeism poses the first serious challenge to our constitutional democracy since communism. Wokeism aims to remake American constitutionalism root and branch, to transform economics, politics, education, and other institutions and practices. The free and equal individual under the rule of law will be replaced with monolithic voices, united by perceived oppression, who demand a mutating law and politics that reward their grievances with punishments against alleged oppressors and redistributed resources for supposed “victims.”

The first thesis of wokeism is that persons are reducible to their affiliated identity: above all, race or gender. In this view, we understand ourselves solely through these prisms and we apply that understanding to others and to institutions. The second thesis is that no person, no idea, and no historical account can be understood by independent human reason unfiltered by race, gender, and stories of interlocking oppression, or, as the case may be, by the acts of oppression one has shared in as a member of the dominant group. Everything comes to us and is either understood or projected by us through our racial or gender identity. The third thesis is that those who have identities that can be grouped under “persons of color” or LGBTQ possess greater authority to speak — owing to the various oppressions they have experienced and the cosmic redress required for justice and liberation —  than oppressor groups in almost every sphere.

America’s national DNA, according to the New York Times’ 1619 Project — wokeism’s anti-American document par excellence — has been encoded with slavery and anti-black racism. Indeed, America left the British Empire for the purposes of retaining the slavery regime, the project’s lead author Nikole Hannah-Jones proclaims (against historical evidence). White males stand as the grand artificer of this oppression, which has been transmitted throughout American history, informing our constitutional documents, politics, and social structures.