RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://issuesinsights.com/2021/12/20/ii-tipp-poll-41-dont-trust-faucis-opinions-on-covid-19/

Fewer than half of all Americans say they trust Dr. Anthony Fauci, the controversial director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, when it comes to the fight against COVID-19, a new I&I/TIPP Poll shows. But as with many other issues these days, the level of trust in Fauci is highly partisan.

The December I&I/TIPP Poll asked: “Generally speaking, how much trust do you have in Dr. Anthony Fauci’s opinions related to coronavirus?”

Of those responding, 47% said they had “a lot of trust” or “quite a bit of trust” in Fauci, while 41% said they had “little trust” or “no trust at all.” Another 13% responded they were “not sure.”

The December data were collected from I&I/TIPP Poll’s survey of 1,301 adults, which was conducted online from Dec. 1-4 by TechnoMetrica Market Intelligence, I&I’s polling partner. The poll has a margin of error of +/-2.8 percentage points.

https://amgreatness.com/2021/12/20/in-email-to-fauci-nih-dir-collins-asked-for-media-hit-piece-to-smear-fringe-harvard-stanford-oxford-epidemiologists/

Last fall, outgoing National Institutes of Health Director (NIH) Francis Collins asked Dr. Anthony Fauci in an email to pursue a “quick and devastating” media hit piece to discredit the Great Barrington Declaration, recently released emails show.

More than 60,000 infectious disease epidemiologists and public health scientists signed the declaration to express their “grave concerns about the damaging physical and mental health impacts of the prevailing COVID-19 policies.”

The document was authored by Dr. Martin Kulldorff, a professor of medicine at Harvard University, Dr. Sunetra Gupta, professor at Oxford University, and Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, professor at Stanford University Medical School, in Great Barrington, Massachusetts. All three of the doctors are epidemiologists with expertise in monitoring infectious diseases.

“This proposal from three fringe epidemiologists who met with the Secretary seems to be getting a lot of attention – and even a co-signature from Nobel Prize winner Mike Leavitt at Stanford,” Collins wrote in the Oct. 8, 2020, email, released under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) by the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Crisis last week.

“There needs to be a quick and devastating published takedown of its premises,” the NIH chief continued. “I don’t see anything like that on line yet – is it underway?”

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/12/why-hasnt-jussie-smollett-been-charged-perjury-larry-elder/

This did not wear well. On February 22, 2019, a story posted on Gentleman’s Quarterly website was headlined: “The Racist, Homophobic Attack on Jussie Smollett Is America’s Endgame. When one of the most famous black and gay men in America is not safe, the message is clearer than it has ever been.” One of the most famous black and gay men? Count me among the multitudes who said, “Who is Jussie Smollett?”

GQ.com, of course, referred to the alleged hate crime committed one winter night in Chicago against actor Smollett, coming back from Subway toting a tuna fish foot-long sandwich. He claimed his attackers were President Donald Trump-supporting thugs who yelled racial and homophobic slurs. The tale quickly fell apart, but not before the “America is systemically racist” media and political ambulance chasers weighed in.

The soon-to-be presidential candidate Joe Biden tweeted in January 2019: “What happened today to Jussie Smollett must never be tolerated in this country. We must stand up and demand that we no longer give this hate safe harbor; that homophobia and racism have no place on our streets or in our hearts. We are with you, Jussie.”

Biden’s future running mate, Kamala Harris, tweeted: “Jussie Smollett is one of the kindest, most gentle human beings I know. I’m praying for his quick recovery. This was an attempted modern day-lynching. No one should have to fear for their life because of their sexuality or color of their skin. We must confront this hate.”

https://www.city-journal.org/joe-bidens-anti-constitutional-vaccine-mandate

“In republican governments, the legislative authority necessarily predominates,” said James Madison. But what sort of government is it when the president thinks he can decree a nationwide vaccine mandate without the legislature’s involvement? Such a decree would seem to be more characteristic of an elective monarchy than a republic.

President Joe Biden’s vaccine mandate has been criticized for intrusively injecting the federal government into personal health decisions, for denying the existence of natural immunity (already obtained by perhaps half of the U.S. population), and for causing people who choose not to be vaccinated to lose their livelihoods (and at a time when the nation is already experiencing a shortage of workers). In short, it is being criticized as bad policy. But another problem with the mandate is that Biden thinks he can decide such policy questions unilaterally for a nation of more than 300 million ostensibly free citizens—and that so much of the country is willing to go along with his claim.

Biden’s mandate is clearly an exercise of legislative power on the part of the chief executive. As such, it marks the substitution of the arbitrary rule of one man for the republican rule of law. At the same time, it represents the substitution of federal rule for state or local rule. In other words, it undermines both the separation of powers and federalism—which together form what Madison in Federalist 51 called the “double security . . . to the rights of the people.” Biden’s assertion of power is therefore about much more than Covid vaccines. It is about whether Americans will accept having the president function as a one-man quasi-legislature or will instead demand that we revert to what Alexander Hamilton, writing in Federalist 1, called “the true principles of republican government.”

https://www.nysun.com/editorials/president-trump-raises-a-serious-question-about/91836/

President Trump’s lawsuit against New York’s attorney general, Letitia James, deserves, in our view, a serious hearing. Mr. Trump complains that she’s investigating him for political purposes. That truth is so plain that even the New York Times has been warning against it. This is a moment for the robed sages to declare that they will not permit their hallowed courtrooms to be used for politics.

It’s hard to think of a more important principle. We carry no brief for Mr. Trump or any of his businesses. And we fully appreciate what a formidable opponent Ms. James is as a political operator. Without ever filing a charge, she took down, in Andrew Cuomo, the man standing athwart her own ambitions for the governorship. It’s no small thing, though, that Mr. Trump was in her sights when she was but a candidate.

During the race for attorney general in 2018, Ms. James told Democratic primary voters she was “closing in on him.” After winning the nomination, she credited her victory to her aggressive criticism of the President. Her win, she said, “was about the people but most importantly it was about that man in the White House who can’t go a day without threatening our fundamental rights.” She vowed to “stand up and fight back.”

https://issuesinsights.com/2021/12/20/math-for-demmies/

The Biden administration “Believes in Science.” But math – not so much. It seems to have a fuzzy concept of large sums of money as all being just “bazillions.” So here is a little arithmetic using nice round numbers that even the administration and congressional progressives can follow.

There are about 330 million people in the United States. So, if we say that the average family is 3.3 people (mom, dad, one or two kids), then we have about 100 million families. So, on average, each trillion dollars costs each family $10,000. And ultimately, it’s they who pay the lion’s share of taxes.

President Joe Biden recently signed into law an “infrastructure” bill that will cost about $1.2 trillion. That means that each family will pay, on average, $12,000. A person working full time for a year (about 1,800 hours) at the federal minimum wage ($7.25 per hour) makes about $13,050. So good news! You get to keep $1,050 of that for food, rent, energy, and other “luxuries.”

But now the Democrats want a “human infrastructure” bill, which, as they first proposed, would have cost $3.5 trillion, which boosts per-family costs to $45,000. Sorry, Josephine the Plumber and Lewis the Librarian, no Caribbean cruise for you this year.

But there’s more! We still have to pay for Social Security, Medicare, national defense, welfare, unemployment, interest on the existing debt, and a few sundries such as electric vehicle subsidies and endowments for the arts and humanities. Those add up to about another $3.5 trillion. So, add another $35,000 to the above. Don’t go out and buy that Tesla just yet.

The confiscation of resources from ordinary Americans to satisfy the aspirations and whims – good, bad, or indifferent – of the likes of Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez exerts an “income effect” that reflects the correlation between wealth and health.

https://pjmedia.com/columns/stephen-kruiser/2021/12/20/the-morning-briefing-manchin-exposes-dems-ignorance-of-flyover-america-n1542893

I mentioned in Friday’s Briefing that I was heading out to get my Pfizer booster that afternoon. The weekend was spent a little hungover from that and I have now played this game as far as I am going to play it. While talking to a friend the other day I said that we need to stop calling this thing a vaccine — it’s obviously not preventing people from getting the Bat Flu. There are triple-vaxxed breakthrough cases all over now. Instead, I suggested we just admit that the shots are more like preemptive Z-Packs to help lessen the symptoms and get us over the infernal thing faster.

I can live with that.

At least according to the rumors.

As we all know, the big political hubbub this past weekend had to do with Joe Manchin spoiling President Pervwhisper’s commie Build Back Better folly, which Matt wrote about.

Because American leftists are all emotionally-stunted children who are struggling with daddy issues, the meltdown on social media was an absolute delight to watch.

Rick wrote a post highlighting some snippy responses from prominent Democrats, like this one from White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki:

Senator Manchin promised to continue conversations in the days ahead, and to work with us to reach that common ground. If his comments on FOX and written statement indicate an end to that effort, they represent a sudden and inexplicable reversal in his position, and a breach of his commitments to the President and the Senator’s colleagues in the House and Senate.

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2021/12/the_elites_obsession_with_january_6.html

Why do the Elite harbor this fevered obsession with Jan 6? For two reasons: (1) It is their magic fetish waved about in the desperate hope of warding off the return of Trumpism (with or without Trump) to the Casa Alba. (2) It reflects their habitual projection of their own evil onto the seething mass of deplorables.

Precisely what is this evil they are projecting? In a word: treason.

The US Constitution defines treason in Article III, Section 3, Clause 1 this way: “Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort.”

Are the Elite guilty of treason? Let me count the ways?

1. In Afghanistan, delivery of $85 billion in military supplies and thousands of hostages to the enemy.

2. Mass destruction in our cities. Politicians who protect the mobs are accessories after the fact and accomplices to this treason.

3. Defunding the police. The primary responsibility of local government is to protect their constituents and keep the streets safe. But the local Elites in many cities have sided with the criminal element against the law-abiding citizenry.

4. Sabotage of the military through wokification, as documented by James Hasson in Stand Down.

5. In his masterful book, The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers, Yale Historian Paul Kennedy exhaustively documents that military power is convertible with economic power. Therefore sabotaging the economy is sabotaging the military.

6. Giving aid and comfort to China, not least through the attempted Building Back Better legislation that Sen. Manchin just jettisoned.

https://amgreatness.com/2021/12/19/why-would-hispanics-drop-the-left/

A recent Wall Street Journal poll reported that if the 2022 midterms were held currently, some  37 percent of Hispanic/Latino voters would likely support the Republican candidate. An equal number polled support for the Democrats. 

Perhaps key is the 22 percent who remain “undecided” and thereby illustrate that the traditionally Democratic Hispanic vote is now up for grabs.

Remember that just a year ago about 60 percent of Hispanics voted against Donald Trump and Republican candidates in general. And by about the same margin, according to exit polls, they voted not to recall California Governor Gavin Newsom—about the same ratio as the white vote. Still, a 60-40 percent pro-Newsom margin among mostly Democratic Hispanics was striking for its erosion from a once lockstep Democratic constituency.

Most interestingly, Wall Street Journal polls also showed that in a potential (but probably unlikely) 2024 match-up between Biden and Trump, Hispanic voters would split about evenly (44 percent Biden, 43 percent Trump). Are Hispanics then following the trajectory of middle-class whites who have left the Democratic Party in droves and helped redefine the Republican Party as a more populist, working-class movement?

Because new immigration has all but stopped among conservative Cubans, and there are still relatively few numbers of wizened Venezuelan arrivals, these shifts suggest radical changes in second- and third-generation Hispanic voters. More importantly, should the border ever become de facto closed, as it nearly was by early 2020, the ideological shift rightward would likely accelerate. There would be fewer new arrivals professing fealty to the Democratic Party for ending immigration enforcement while expanding entitlements. We would likely see instead greater assimilation and integration of ascendant and ever more conservative second- and third-generation Hispanics.

Biden Discontent?

So, if the Wall Street Journal polls are somewhat accurate—and other polls have suggested the same trends—what has happened and why now? After all, open-border Republican grandees for a generation have been mistakenly predicting that Hispanics would soon vote conservatively, if only their party would push “comprehensive immigration reform” that many felt to be a euphemism for blanket amnesties and open borders.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-white-house-art-of-furious-persuasion-psaki-manchin-build-back-better-no-statement-11639947001?mod=opinion_lead_pos2

The progressive whiz kids who run President Biden’s White House don’t have much sense of self-restraint—or common political sense. Their response on Sunday to Sen. Joe Manchin’s opposition to Build Back Better was to accuse him of bad faith while saying they’ll beat him up until he changes his mind.

Press secretary Jen Psaki issued a blistering statement saying Mr. Manchin’s comments on Fox News Sunday “are at odds with his discussions this week with the President, with White House staff, and with his own public utterances.” We can’t speak for his private White House talks, but Mr. Manchin’s public comments have been consistent for months. On Sunday he finally said no.

Ms. Psaki charged ahead in furious disregard: “Just as Senator Manchin reversed his position on Build Back Better this morning, we will continue to press him to see if he will reverse his position yet again, to honor his prior commitments and be true to his word.”

Maybe Mr. Biden’s masters of the universe know something about the art of persuasion that we don’t. But we doubt calling a Senator a liar is going to bring him around.