By David Gayvert

First published nearly 70 years ago, Whittaker Chambers’ Witness provides relevant, instructive, and inspiring encouragement for those currently engaged in the fight against today’s ascendant Left.  Although there is a wealth of useful insights within its covers, two stand out as central.

First, Leftist ideologies are always and everywhere about acquiring power to wage an assault upon liberal (in the classical sense) values and institutions.  Second, individual redemption after falling under the sway of these or any other malign influence is indeed possible by dint of reason, faith in a transcendent power, and the courage to follow those lights.     

Witness is most well known as the firsthand account of Chambers’ exposure of and subsequent testimony against members of the communist Ware Group, which led to the 1949-50 espionage trials of Alger Hiss, then a high-ranking State Department official.  Hiss was ultimately found guilty of perjury and sentenced to prison.

But Witness is more than just that story.  It is a poignant autobiography of a young man born at the turn of the twentieth century, coming of age in the wake of the devastation of World War I.  He became obsessed, as did many contemporaries, with what they saw as “the crisis of history” in the 20^th century.  It was despair generated by this fixation that drove Chambers to become a communist at the age of 24.  He first served in the open American Communist Party as a (mostly) unpaid writer and editor for various communist publications.  Later (1932-38), he was recruited into and served as an underground operative in the Soviet espionage network in New York and the federal government in Washington, D.C. 

Gradually learning of the ruthlessness of Stalin’s consolidation of power during the mid-1930s, and particularly the Great Purge of 1936, Chambers became increasingly disillusioned with communism, and eventually came to see it as the earthly manifestation of “absolute evil.”  After much soul-searching and careful preparation, he decided to break with the party and did so in 1938.  In fear for their lives, he and his family went into hiding.  They lived covertly for nearly a year, until the 1939 signing of the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact convinced Chambers that he must combat materially the malevolence that led to such an alliance against the Allied Powers.  He decided he must inform upon the Soviet apparatus within which he had once worked. 

He did so via an arranged meeting with Assistant Secretary of State Adolf Berlewhere he described the depth of communist penetration into key U.S. institutions, including the departments of State and the Treasury.  Berle in turn quickly informed President Roosevelt on what Chambers had disclosed to him.  FDR however, dismissed Berle’s information and concerns.  Thus, for essentially a decade — throughout World War II — communist infiltration of American government institutions continued apace through the naivete, indifference, or political calculation of senior political elites. 

Serious investigation of Chambers’ allegations by congressional committees and eventually the Department of Justice did not take place until almost ten years after Chambers initially came forward.

Witness is an intelligent and compelling, if sometimes overwrought history of the early years of the Cold War and the decades running up to it, replete with names, places, and specific events.   More important are the central themes running through it, the first of which is the implacable war waged by the totalitarian Left upon the values, traditions, civil institutions and the people who hold them imperfect but dear. 

The book makes clear that whether one is talking about the Jacobins of the 18^th century, the various revolutionaries and anarchists of the 19^th, the communists, Nazis and other assorted fascists of the 20^th  century, right down to our contemporary Antifa and Black Lives Matter insurrectionists, their goal is never to amend, correct, improve through persuasive argument, or positive law.  Their enduring determination is only to rage against and destroy by any means necessary, the root and branch of existing “power structures.”  

To the leftist mind (or better, emotions) these structures constitute the only obstructions to their goal of bringing about the truly just, egalitarian societies that history demands.  Never mind that history shows that every such time those ends have been achieved, the net result is destruction of the freedom, agency, and dignity of the human persons involved through vastly increased death, destruction, and material and spiritual misery. 

This does not mean that elite promoters of these ends are blind to the consequences. It means only that 1) they believe that societies must go through a necessary period of “cleansing” before they can rebuild a new and better social order; and 2) that elites (like them) will always be the ones doing the cleansing and never be among the cleansed.  History, once again, proves both theses false (just ask Leon Trotsky).

As conservative philosopher Roger Scrutonhas put it, it is axiomatic that leftist intellectuals and those whom they infect with their doctrines of resentment see leftist purposes, motives, and methods as innately and self-evidently morally superior; it falls to those who may disagree to demonstrate otherwise — which of course is impossible, as those making such arguments are by definition morally corrupt by virtue of their divergence from leftist orthodoxy.  That such ideology has no foundation in reality is either irrelevant, or perhaps a desired feature; reality, after all, has a nasty habit of eventually rendering all utopian fantasies just that.   

Thus rather than substantively address objections to their designs, the leftist response is invariably condemnation, ridicule, slander, libel and increasingly in our time, physical violence against any who may point out the basic unworkability of leftist ideology and the damage its pursuit inflicts on actual human beings and societies.  Such people are to be “cancelled.” 

This was the fate of Whittaker Chambers when he had the courage to openly speak out against the evil in his time; such is the fate of any who do the same in ours.  Chambers lost his job — senior editor at the once-great Time magazine — his reputation and friends, at least in the literary circles he until then inhabited — and suffered severe health problems due to the prolonged strain associated with his exposure of communist subversion.  In an era lacking our social media, the sheer volume of vituperation heaped upon Chambers was not perhaps as great as that directed today against opponents of the Left, but it certainly was no less severe or damaging.  The only response today is Chambers’ then: don’t give in and keep punching back.  Among others, our current president has learned this lesson well.   

It is telling that when as a young man, Chambers rejected the Christian faith of his upbringing, the void created was filled with communist ideology.  Once he broke with that false religion, Chambers avers that only his recovery of the faith of his youth (Quakerism) made him whole again and provided the ultimate strength that brought him through his proximate crises and indeed sustained him throughout the rest of his life.  

Therein lies the second great lesson of Witness.  Chambers willingly entered and for years abetted a deeply evil cause.  Throughout that time however, he consciously and sincerely sought truth.  Through this consistent application of conscience, he came to recognize the lies and wicked agenda he was helping to advance.  That conscience ultimately led him back to its higher source and if not to where he started in life, then to where he surely belonged.  

Interestingly, Chambers relates how when he decided to defect from his Soviet taskmasters, he remarked to a friend that he feared he was leaving “the winning side.”  Until his premature death of a heart attack in 1961, Chambers apparently continued to hold to that unhappy resignation.  Nonetheless, he never expressed regret over his rejection of communism, nor what he had done and suffered in his fight against it.  Although America in fact defeated the Soviet Union, that achievement has done little in itself to extinguish the perpetual allure of the destructive ideology which animated it. 

For those who continue to see America as founded as the last best hope for humanity, the battle proceeds apace. But it must proceed with a clear vision of the challenges ahead (and behind) and the faith and strength required to ultimately vanquish them. Witness is a valuable aid in that pursuit.

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2020/10/the_enduring_relevance_of_whittaker_chambers_emwitnessem.html

By LISA REIN AND ERIC YODER | The Washington Post | Published: October 22, 2020null

President Donald Trump has fired his biggest broadside yet this week against a federal bureaucracy he has moved to remake with an executive order that would remove job security from an estimated tens of thousands of civil servants.

The directive, issued late Wednesday, strips long-held civil service protections from employees whose work involves policymaking, allowing them to be dismissed with little cause or recourse, much like the political appointees who come and go with each administration.

Federal scientists, attorneys, regulators, public health experts and many others in senior roles would lose rights to due process and in some cases, union representation, at agencies across the government. The White House declined to say how many jobs would be swept into a class of employees with fewer civil service rights, but civil service experts and union leaders estimated anywhere from tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands in a workforce of 2.1 million.

It would be a profound reimagining of the career workforce, but one that may end up as a statement of purpose rather than anything else. The order fast-tracks a process that gives agencies until Jan. 19 to review potentially affected jobs. That’s a day before the next presidential inauguration. An administration under Democratic nominee Joe Biden would be unlikely to allow the changes to proceed.

Still, the order, coming less than two weeks before the election, represents a stunning effort to reshape large parts of the nonpartisan government, which is supposed to serve as a cadre of subject-matter experts for every administration.

“President Trump is delivering on his promise to make Washington accountable again to the citizens it’s meant to serve,” Russell Vought, director of the Office of Management and Budget, said in a statement. “This much-needed reform will increase accountability in essential policy-making positions within the government.”

Critics said the latest effort, while not affecting a majority of the government, would upend the foundation of the career workforce by imposing political loyalty tests.

“I am calling this a declaration of war on the civil service,” said Richard Loeb, senior policy counsel for the American Federation of Government Employees, the largest union representing federal workers.

Political appointees ultimately call the shots on policy direction, but career employees advise them on how to follow the law and implement their priorities.

Tensions are common. But in the Trump era, they have reached a fever pitch in many offices, as career employees chafe at an agenda that has upended Washington. Political appointees have come to view many civil servants with suspicion. The new directive tries to even the score, returning the upper hand to the administration, two senior administration officials said. They spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly.

And over almost four years, the Trump administration has moved to weaken employee unions and hold them accountable for misconduct and weak performance.

The administration has been open with its frustration at the obstacles to firing poor performers. “Agencies need the flexibility to expeditiously remove poorly performing employees from these positions without facing extensive delays or litigation,” the order says.

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The White House’s earlier efforts to limit the power of federal employee unions and impose faster discipline survived multiple court challenges as it created a climate of anxiety across much of the government.

Agencies have reined in some job protections for all employees, imposing shorter timetables for correcting poor performance and appeals. They’ve dispensed with established union practices such as allowing labor officials to use agency computers for work on employees’ behalf, for example. And a long-held practice called official time, in which unions work on behalf of employees facing discipline or other action, has been all but killed.

Even if Trump loses the election, Loeb said the administration could move in fewer than 90 days to impose the order, which he worries might be designed to let Trump political appointee stay on into a Biden administration.

“This could be used to put a whole bunch of Trump loyalists in place,” Loeb said, making it messy for a Biden team to fire them.

Loeb estimated that the change could strip due process rights and protections from more than 100,000 employees.

Rep. Don Beyer, a Democrat, whose Northern Virginia district includes about 85,000 federal workers, said the order, if enacted, would usher in loyalty tests and further politicize agencies that have become deeply partisan workplaces under Trump.

“It’s an attempt to redefine the civil service as a political arm of the presidency rather than public servants who work for the American people,” Beyer said, calling the result “open cronyism that does not benefit the country, but the president.”

The order would shift the affected employees from what is known as the “competitive service” — which covers the bulk of the executive branch — into the “excepted service,” which in general applies to political appointees below the level requiring Senate confirmation.

The group would no longer be hired under competitive procedures and would lose their right to be represented by a union.

While unions said they heard rumblings of the order, neither they nor government personnel experts say they were consulted on the details.

“The order is highly troubling,” said Max Stier, president and chief executive of the nonprofit, nonpartisan Partnership for Public Service. “It appears to be an effort to remove the career merit protections around a core part of the civil service.”

Stier said that while the change would not turn the employees into political appointees, “The effect and the apparent intent is that they are moving them into that box. The discretion for both hiring and firing is so great that the merit principles are undermined and they resemble a political appointee much more than a career civil servant.”

“This is a bad idea and it was done in a bad way,” he said. “What happens next is something that the election will be relevant for.”

While it does not define which occupations will be swept into the new job classification, the order gives broad roles, including those that develop or advocate policy, negotiate with employee unions, write regulations and do legal work. The work would include “substantial discretion to determine the manner in which the agency exercises functions committed to the agency by law.”

“Career employees in confidential, policy-determining, policy-making, and policy-advocating positions wield significant influence over Government operations and effectiveness,” Trump wrote.

Among career employees, the “excepted service” mainly applies to positions in which it is not practical to use competitive processes in hiring, such as attorneys. Employees of some entire agencies, such as in the intelligence community, also are in the excepted service.

Hiring managers are not required to post these kinds of vacancies on the government’s central job board, USAJobs.gov. The jobs do not require the complex rating systems of applicants that are mandated for most federal roles. And there is no formal preference for veterans.

Unless they are veterans, employees in this group do not have rights to appeal disciplinary actions by a supervisor for two years, rather than the standard one year.

The order would not affect the roughly 6,000 senior executives in the government. But experts on the civil service said the most likely targets would be employees at the highest level of the General Schedule below that, GS-13, 14 and 15.

The new set of employees would lose the rights to due process and appeals of personnel actions against them they now enjoy — with one exception. Whistleblowers and those claiming discrimination or harassment would have more rights, according to John Berry, an attorney who represents federal workers.

The Trump administration has moved aggressively on other issues involving federal workers. It has recommended in its annual budget proposals numerous cuts to federal retirement benefits while advocating that employees pay more toward those benefits. While Congress has not accepted those proposals, the administration moved on its own authority in several controversial ways.

Trump’s new order closely follows issuance of rules telling agencies to provide only the minimal accommodations required by law to assist underperforming employees before disciplining them and to make the maximum use of their discretion in choosing discipline either for poor performance or misconduct.

https://www.stripes.com/trump-issues-sweeping-order-stripping-job-protections-from-tens-of-thousands-of-federal-employees-1.649559

EXCLUSIVE SOURCE: Biden Daughter’s Diary Details ‘Not Appropriate’ Showers With Joe As Child

“Was I molested. I think so.”

  by PATRICK HOWLEYOctober 24, 2020

National File has obtained what a whistleblower has identified as a copy of the complete diary of Ashley Blazer Biden, the 39-year-old daughter of Democrat presidential candidate Joe Biden, dating from during the 2020 presidential campaign. National File also knows the reported precise location of the physical diary, and has been told by a whistleblower that there exists an audio recording of Ashley Biden admitting this is her diary.

In the diary, which our source says belongs to the former vice president’s daughter, the author writes of her struggle with drug abuse. Ashley Biden’s struggle with drugs was widely publicized in 2009.According to our source, the diary also details Ashley Biden’s unhealthy relationship with sex, and the “probably not appropriate” showers she shared as a young girl with her father, Joe Biden.Joe Biden dances the hora with Ashley at her wedding in 2012After declaring she was “here for sexual trauma” in the previous entry, on page 23 of the diary, dated January 30, 2019, the author explores the topic of sexual abuse and how it may have led to her overactive sex drive. “I’ve had one of my hardest days – my sex drive is out of f**king control. Like literally, I am in heat,” wrote the author.“I know it’s not the healthiest way to deal with things but @ least it’s better than drugs,” she wrote, adding that she thought she needed “sex to feel good.”The author then explored why she felt this need to have sex, saying she believes she was molested as a child.“Was I molested. I think so – I can’t remember specifics but I do remember trauma,” wrote the author, before listing a series of potential incidents, one of which may have included Ashley Biden’s cousin Caroline Biden, as the author says she remembers “being somewhat sexualized” alongside a person named “Caroline.”The author then wrote that she remembers “showers with my dad” that were “probably not appropriate.”On page 83, in an entry dated July 22, 2019, the author wrote that she received a phone call from her father, Joe Biden according to our source, who cried on the phone while expressing his worry for her in the days leading up to July 30-31 Democratic Primary Debate.“My dad cried on the phone saying he has the debate in a week and ‘Now has to worry about [the author],’” she wrote. “And he cried. Maybe he knows what he is doing and it’s worked but my feelings of guilt often are overwhelming.”In at least two entries, the author explicitly identifies herself as Ashley Blazer Biden.National File obtained this document from a whistleblower who was concerned the media organization that employs him would not publish this potential critical story in the final 10 days before the 2020 presidential election. National File’s whistleblower also has a recording of Ashley Biden admitting the diary is hers, and employed a handwriting expert who verified the pages were all written by Ashley. National File has in its posession a recording of this whistleblower detailing the work his media outlet did in preparation of releasing these documents. In the recording, the whistleblower explains that the media organization he works for chose not to release the documents after receiving pressure from a competing media organization.This diary surfaces after Hunter Biden, the son of the Democrat presidential candidate, Joe Biden, has been exposed as having “underage obsessions” and corrupt business dealings as evidenced by emails and images provided by the New York Post and former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani.National File, as the media organization that published reports about the Pelosi family’s Ukraine dealings and the potentially illegal affairs of Democrat Senate candidate Cal Cunningham, believes the public has a right to read these entries that were obtained for National File by Patrick Howley, the reporter who broke the Veterans Affairs scandal, and the Ralph Northam racist yearbook photo.Last year Ashley Biden was profiled by The List, which claimed that her “transformation is turning heads.” She was credited as working as a “social worker, activist, and entrepreneur.”

EXCLUSIVE SOURCE: Biden Daughter’s Diary Details ‘Not Appropriate’ Showers With Joe As Child

Hunter Bidens sex/drug tape.

BREAKING: China’s GTV Releases Videos of Hunter Biden Sex Tapes while Smoking Crack

Donald Trump used this parable in 2016  to refer to immigration.The parable in full is here. People attribute this parable to their personal favorite bogeyman, including Trump himself. In my view. the snake represents Evil. And the woman represents Western society.We embraced the snake and now we are experiencing the reckoning. 

But instead of saying thanks, that snake gave her a vicious bite…
“I saved you,” cried that woman
“And you’ve bit me even, why?
You know your bite is poisonous and now I’m going to die”
“Oh shut up, silly woman,” said the reptile with a grin
“You knew damn well I was a snake before you took me in…”

by Henry Makow PhD
“You knew damn well I was a snake before you took me in…”
The creation of the Federal Reserve in 1913. We gave our national credit cards to a cartel of Cabalist Jews and Freemasons (Satanists) dedicated our destruction. 
“You knew damn well I was a snake before you took me in…”

We allowed a satanic cult, Freemasonry, affiliated with the banking cartel to infiltrate every social institution. “We corrupt in order to control (and destroy)” is their motto. 
“You knew damn well I was a snake before you took me in…”
We allowed this corruption to spread to all the institutions necessary for the preservation and healthy development of society: government, the mass media, education, church, justice system, military, police.“You knew damn well I was a snake before you took me in…”We elected criminals and perverts, handpicked by the bankers because they can be controlled. Clinton. Biden. Obama. Trump. In Canada we elected Fidel Castro’s son. In Uk, Bojo. In France, they elected Macron over LePen. 
“You knew damn well I was a snake before you took me in…”
We have had their masterplan, the Protocols of the Elders of Zion for more than 100 years but we believed their excuses. “You knew damn well I was a snake before you took me in…”
We allowed our defenders to be vilified or murdered without consequences. JFK. Charles Coughlin. Louis McFadden. We ignored the warnings of truthers. “You knew damn well I was a snake before you took me in…”
We let them destroy the twin towers on 9-11 killing over 3000 innocent Americans. Again no consequences. 
“You knew damn well I was a snake before you took me in…”

We let them spread homosexuality and undermine gender, marriage, and family.
“You knew damn well I was a snake before you took me in…”
We let Communists, who are a branch of Freemasonry disguised as liberals, to operate freely. We turned our foreign policy over to Israel.“You knew damn well I was a snake before you took me in…”We allowed them to addict us to porn, and sex in general, to distract us from defending the institutions and values we hold dear. “You knew damn well I was a snake before you took me in…”Yet you believedBill Gates, Anthony Fauci, and good cop Donald Trump on the #scamdemic and need for lockdowns, masks, vaccines and — coming soon — internment camps.
You get the picture.
You can not expect a snake to take mercy on you just because you were negligent, gullible, craven, and feckless.
They are open about their plans in order to compromise us. They have succeeded.
Satanism has only one goal. To DESTROY. We embraced the snake. We allowed Evil to invade.
Satan destroys his adherents. We are culpable.
Now we must reap the whirlwind. —Related – Satanism Explained

Now is not the time to be a good German.By Angelo Codevilla

October 23, 2020

Turkeys cheering the arrival of Thanksgiving would be only marginally more pathetic than the conservative luminaries on Fox News who cheer for the police as civilization’s saviors. The police. You know—the heroes who stood aside as mobs looted and burned Minneapolis, Portland, Kenosha, Chicago, Macy’s in New York, downtown Chicago and so on while organized mask-wearing Antifa thugs beat whoever got in the way? Yes, the police we watched tase a woman for not wearing a mask in a stadium and arresting people for singing Christian hymns in a park. The police, who don’t answer calls from people who are being threatened in their homes. Those police.

Ah! the conservative luminaries tell us: the cops really would rather protect us. They don’t want to hurt us. Yes, the police fine us and jail us on behalf of politicians who hate us. Yes, effectively, they are protecting the mobs. But that’s only because they are duty bound to obey the duly constituted authorities who also pay them. They’re just doing their jobs even if they don’t like what they are doing. What should they do, disobey orders and get fired? So, let’s give them more money and more power.

The more we think about that, the more we realize that this attitude corrupts citizens as well as police. Let us reflect.

On November 10, 1938 my late friend Lewis Gann (1924-1997) answered the doorbell at his home in Maniz, Germany. The kindly policeman had come pursuant to the Reich Chancellor’s order to collect the medals that Jews, like his father, had been awarded for their service in World War I. That day, Gann’s father was on a business trip to London. The previous night, since remembered as Kristallnacht, when regime-inspired mobs had first ransacked Jewish businesses, was the beginning of the end of safety for Germany’s Jews. Lewis recalled how his mother and the policeman vied to show respect for one another, and to reassure the other that they were both doing their civic duty by obeying duly constituted authority. 

After the policeman left, a telegram arrived from his father: “Leave everything. Come here now.” They did.

What happened beginning around three years later in Maniz and throughout the Reich? That policeman and others like him did their duty as they helped people like Mrs. Gann and Lewis’ friends do their duty by climbing into the cattle cars taking them to the camps. No hard feelings among good Germans.

Repression on the Rise

Who will protect us when those who are supposed to protect us are under mounting pressure to punish us or to stand aside as others do the punishing, or to prevent us from protecting ourselves from them, or even join them in hurting us? Do we do anybody any good by closing our eyes to the realities of policing in our corrupt regime? For us Americans, now, these are practical questions.

Begin by dismissing the idea that serious repression, criminalization of people for their religious and social identity, or for political opposition, can’t happen in America. It ishappening. And it is sure to get a lot worse because the people in charge of the permanent government, the media, and corporate entities, increasingly are united in making it happen. More so than just about anywhere, ever.

And that includes Germany in the 1930s. 

Germany’s deep state, the bureaucracy, the police, the armed forces, the school teachers, the corporate executives, were mostly the very model of meritocrats. Not ideologues, much less Nazis. Nor did they define themselves by contempt for or the desire to punish ordinary Germans. 

The Nazis were a gang of violent ideologues who took advantage of society’s weaknesses to dominate those who actually made the country run. But the Nazis always had to watch their backs lest these people, Germany’s aristocrats, oligarchs, etc. overthrow them. They came close. Yet the farther one went into Germany’s deep state, the likelier one was to find guarded remnants of decency.

Not so in America. Here, the ever-more oppressive rulers, the one percent at the top, the very ones who control the levers of power, are the source of the hate. 

In unison, they urge their retinues to hurt us. Unlike the Nazis, these unimpressive people conquered nothing. They were co-opted onto society’s commanding heights by somewhat less unworthy predecessors in a chain of negative selection. Though they claim to be morally and intellectually meritorious, they are the very model of oligarchs who rule for their own enrichment and for the pleasures of primacy. 

Over the decades, having sought rationales for their privileges and found none in their own performance, they settled on indicting the American people and our civilization as the root of all evil—and hence on imagining themselves the only source of judgment about what exclusions and penalties we merit. Being wholly self-regarding, their minds and hearts have no no limiting principles any more than did those of the Nazis.

We have already experienced that, unlike even in Nazi Germany—and much like in the Soviet Union, China, etc.—the farther up the ordinary citizen looks in the hierarchy of the American ruling class, the more likely one is to find all manner of corruption and enmity. Dangerous to our health and liberties as the police and judicial system of California may be, the FBI and the Department of Justice are worse.

Some Hard Realities

What then shall we do with and about the police? Reality imposes certain principles.

First, trust them only insofar as you pay them, can hire and fire, or frighten them. Otherwise, realize that they will serve whomever pays them. 

The justice system in Al Capone’s day served the Mob even though the cops and judges of the day were churchgoers and had been exposed to at least some moral scruples. Today’s justice system consists of people who know only sticks and carrots.

Second, take a lesson from those videos of the police standing aside. They didn’t protect the mobs simply because they were so ordered. They did it also because they were physically frightened by the mob’s use of a variety of weapons against them, as well as by the prospect of lawsuits and attacks on them and their families. 

In Louisville, a man who shot two cops in the back was charged only with reckless endangerment. Alas, the Left has shown that hurting cops tends to make them your friends. Hence, if you want respect from police who you do not control, make sure you give them lively reasons to fear you.

Third, police yourselves. Call it self-defense groups, neighborhood protection, vigilantes, friends, anything but “militias.” But the essence is the same: rely on yourself and on people who have known each other for a long time—no infiltrators, please—united and armed to take care of themselves as they think best.

Fourth and most important: strictly police your own attitude. 

You are living in territory controlled by enemy tribes. You, and all like you, must assume the innocence of anyone remotely like yourself who is charged in any confrontation with those tribes and with their authorities—until proven otherwise beyond a shadow of your doubt. Take his side. In other words, you must shield others like yourself by practicing and urging “jury nullification.” 

And, by the way, when the police—a fortiori the FBI—come to talk, you don’t know or remember anything—except that they answer to your enemies. Don’t be a good German.Share onTwitterFacebookParler

About Angelo Codevilla

Angelo M. Codevilla is a senior fellow of the Claremont Institute, professor emeritus of international relations at Boston University and the author of To Make And Keep Peace (Hoover Institution Press, 2014).

The Police and Us

he Left is smearing the cops just like they once smeared our troops.By Scott Swett

October 22, 2020

Sixteen years ago, a group of military veterans turned a presidential campaign upside down.

The Democratic Party had selected then-senator John Kerry as its nominee. His party positioned him as a war hero, backed with a glowing campaign biography by historian Douglas Brinkley. Inaccuracies in Brinkley’s account attracted the attention of Navy veterans who had served with Kerry in Vietnam. They formed a group called the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth and began to investigate and document Kerry’s activities during and after the war. They quickly found and publicized evidence that undercut Kerry’s mythology, including his oft-repeated claim that he had been illegally ordered by the Nixon Administration to fight clandestine battles in Cambodia.

But the real focus of the veterans was Kerry’s work as spokesman for the anti-military group Vietnam Veterans Against the War (VVAW). The Swift Vets noted that Kerry and the VVAW “worked closely with America’s wartime enemies, arranged multiple meetings with the North Vietnamese and Vietcong leadership, and consistently supported their positions. Kerry and his radical comrades also played a key role in defining the false, damaging image of Vietnam veterans as psychologically disabled alcoholics and addicts, haunted by the crimes they had been forced to commit in a ‘racist’ war.” John Kerry, the Swift Vets said, was unfit for command.

The message that John Kerry should not serve as Commander in Chief after smearing American troops as mass murderers resonated with the public. The leftist media tried to ignore Kerry’s veteran opponents at first, then labeled their charges as “unsubstantiated” or “discredited.” In the end none of it worked. The Swift Vets and their POW allies were the key to Kerry’s defeat.

After the Swift Vets went home, the larger pro-military movement they had inspired continued. Leftist efforts to recreate the anti-military sentiment of the Vietnam era using groups such as “Iraq Veterans Against the War” fell flat. Support and respect for the military had become the standard in America, with opposition now limited to fringe radicals and academics. Smearing the troops as baby killers had ceased to be an effective political strategy. After the election of Barack Obama, the Left gave up and shifted to attacking the military through infiltration. After 40 years, America’s most vicious anti-military disinformation campaign had finally been laid to rest.

Smearing the Troops

During the Vietnam War, leftist propagandists insisted that America was waging a racist, genocidal war against the Vietnamese people. Those who opposed the war were fighting for peace. In reality, the Left was working to undermine America’s ability to defend South Vietnam in full cooperation with its communist allies in North Vietnam and the Soviet Union.

To accomplish this goal, the Left accused American troops of routinely committing war crimes and portrayed them as unstable, traumatized drug addicts. This reduced public support for the war and for the military as an institution, weakening America’s ability to defend its interests. The peace treaty that ended American involvement in the war authorized the United States to respond to any violations by the communists, but the overwhelmingly leftist Congress elected in the wake of Richard Nixon’s resignation denied America’s former allies in South Vietnam not only military support and funding, but humanitarian aid as well. 

Seeing that America had given up, the Vietnamese communists quickly launched the final invasion that conquered South Vietnam. Genocide throughout Southeast Asia followed. The success of this communist revolution was due in no small part to the Left’s successful disinformation campaign against our troops.

The damage to the reputation of the military lingered for decades. Many American soldiers returned home from the war to find they were reviled as baby-killers, and treated as pariahs by former friends. The image of the Vietnam veteran portrayed by the media and by Hollywood—murderous, filthy, addicted, and too psychologically damaged to cope with civilian life—became an archetype. Far too few people understood that this was disinformation rather than reality.

Smearing the Police

The death last spring of George Floyd under the knee of a Minneapolis police officer touched off a massive wave of activism based on the belief that racist white cops are routinely murdering black people. This has been used to justify nationwide violence, looting, arson, and destruction. Thousands of police officers have been injured, some seriously. Hundreds of statues and monuments were destroyed. There have been widespread demands to abolish or defund police departments, to pay trillions in racial reparations, and to change our very system of government.

There is significant evidence, however, that the claims of widespread police racism in America are untrue. In 2019, the only systematic, nationwide study of fatal police shootings by race found that white police officers are no more likely to shoot minorities than non-white officers.

The researchers catalogued every police shooting in the country beginning in 2015 and obtained the race, sex, and years of experience for every officer involved in each incident. They found that the best predictor of whether black or white citizens were shot was not the race of the officer, but the rate of crime committed by each racial group. One author wrote, “If you live in a county that has a lot of white people committing crimes, white people are more likely to be shot. If you live in a county that has a lot of black people committing crimes, black people are more likely to be shot.” Between 90 and 95 percent of the civilians who were shot by officers were actively attacking police or other citizens at the time, and about 90 percent were armed with a weapon.

Under pressure from leftist activists, the authors of the study “retracted” the research report after George Floyd’s death on the grounds that “misinterpretation of the findings that resulted from language used in the paper.” That, of course, is not the same thing as disavowing the findings themselves, but it served the useful purpose of hiding the study’s results from the public.

The Tactics of Disinformation

How was the public led to believe false claims about the military and the police? Social science research offers useful insights into the process that most people use to make decisions:

• Reasoning is only a small part of forming opinions or judgments;
• Judgments are often based on inadequate information;
• Early and negative information have a disproportionately heavy impact;
• Anecdotal, easy-to-remember information is also overly weighted.

Therefore, disinformation campaigns use simple, powerful, negative, emotional arguments that tell a story. Since people resist changing their minds about emotionally-loaded topics, this narrative must be spread quickly, before the facts have a chance to catch up to the claims.

The usual trigger for a political disinformation campaign is a violent event that fits the needs of its organizers, who then use all available resources to focus attention on its horror and injustice.

In most cases, the trigger event itself is falsely portrayed. For example, the wave of black church fires that launched a media storm in 1996 was a complete fabrication. Gay icon Matthew Shepard was murdered, but an in-depth investigation found that his killer was also gay or at least bisexual, eliminating homophobia as a likely motive. The deaths ofTrayvon Martin and Michael Brown were fairly clear-cut cases of self-defense. And, appearances to the contrary, it is likely thatGeorge Floyd died from a self-inflicted drug overdose rather than the actions of the police.

Accurate reporting isn’t the goal. The goal is to make people accept the narrative and act on it in useful ways. The key to making this work is expanding and shifting the blame for the event to the larger target group. That sequence—set the emotional hook, transfer anger and outrage to the target, and then mobilize supporters—is how propagandists leverage and cash in on their stories.

Once the campaign has persuaded a large number of people, the organizers offer ways to channel their powerful feelings of injustice into political action. At this point it is extremely difficult to counter the campaign with facts or reasoning. Its supporters see any disagreement as either an attempt to defend the obvious injustice of the trigger event, or as a personal attack. Few people are capable of changing their strongly-held, emotionally-driven beliefs based on mere evidence.

Then and Now

Just as leftists used disinformation to attack the U.S. military during and for decades after the Vietnam War, so now they are using disinformation to attack the police—physically, politically, legally, financially, and psychologically. 

If these attacks are successful, the Left will be able to destabilize the American political system using crimes and violence with little legal interference. This requires “high cover” from well-placed officials: mayors, governors, and prosecutors who will support the attacks, place unreasonable restrictions on the police, and release arrested criminals back to the streets. Demonizing and undermining the police is an integral part of a larger strategy of using domestic terror to intimidate and silence ordinary American citizens.

The Vietnam era revolutionaries wanted to “bring the war home.” Their modern counterparts have at last succeeded. The Left calls for “unity” as it politicizes American pastimes such as professional sports, now transformed into leftist fundraising and propaganda centers, and demands “justice” as it dissolves the principle of equal justice under the law. These attacks extend far beyond the police. The ultimate goal is to destroy public support for America itself.

This time, we may not have 35 years to correct the problem.Share onTwitterFacebookParler

About Scott Swett

Scott Swett is the primary author of To Set The Record Straight: How Swift Boat Veterans, POWs and the New Media Defeated John Kerry and webmaster for SwiftVets.com and WinterSoldier.com. The veteran-led opposition to John Kerry in 2004 countered a long-standing leftist disinformation campaign that smeared American troops and veterans as “war criminals.”

Slandering the Police

y Chris Talgo

On October 20, the Department of Justice (DoJ) filed a long overdue antitrust lawsuit against search engine giant Google.

According to a DoJ press release, “As one of the wealthiest companies on the planet with a market value of $1 trillion, Google is the monopoly gatekeeper to the internet for billions of users and countless advertisers worldwide. For years, Google has accounted for almost 90 percent of all search queries in the United States and has used anticompetitive tactics to maintain and extend its monopolies in search and search advertising.”

Google was founded in 1998, when internet search engines were just getting their feet planted. Back then, now-defunct websites such as Ask Jeeves, Lycos, and Infoseek were the big players in the rough-and-tumble world of the internet search engine.

Yet, in just over two decades, Google has trounced its would-be competitors and now reigns supreme. It is difficult to fathom that 90 percent of internet searches performed in the United States are executed via Google. No wonder “google” has become a verb in our modern lexicon.

However, the sheer dominance of Google when it comes to accessing information on the internet is cause for concern.

As Attorney General Bill Barr said, “Today, millions of Americans rely on the Internet and online platforms for their daily lives. Competition in this industry is vitally important, which is why today’s challenge against Google — the gatekeeper of the Internet — for violating antitrust laws is a monumental case both for the Department of Justice and for the American people.”

Barr is correct, this is a big deal for the American people. For far too long, “We the people” have allowed Google to attain way too much power and influence over American society.

By controlling 90 percent of the internet search market, we are at the mercy of Google’s secret algorithms when it comes to accessing and attaining information. No single company should have the power that Google currently wields over the dissemination of information.

Moreover, according to the lawsuit, Google has not become the search engine Goliath through free and fair competition. Actually, Google has gained and entrenched its power by disobeying the law.

“As alleged in the Complaint, Google has entered into a series of exclusionary agreements that collectively lock up the primary avenues through which users access search engines, and thus the internet, by requiring that Google be set as the preset default general search engine on billions of mobile devices and computers worldwide and, in many cases, prohibiting preinstallation of a competitor… These and other anticompetitive practices harm competition and consumers, reducing the ability of innovative new companies to develop, compete, and discipline Google’s behavior.”

In other words, for the vast majority of devices that connect one to the internet, Google is the one and only option for searching and surfing the web. That is not a good thing, by definition.

The crux of the matter, according to DoJ, is that, “Google’s anticompetitive practices have had harmful effects on competition and consumers… By restricting competition in search, Google’s conduct has harmed consumers by reducing the quality of search (including on dimensions such as privacy, data protection, and use of consumer data), lessening choice in search, and impeding innovation. By suppressing competition in advertising, Google has the power to charge advertisers more than it could in a competitive market and to reduce the quality of the services it provides them.”

This is where the rubber meets the road. By completely dominating the search engine sector, Google effectively dominates the distribution of information.

The consequences of one company controlling access to and dissemination of information on the internet, where the vast majority of Americans go to get information, is downright scary. It poses a dire threat to freedom.

Unlike the so-called monopolies of the Gilded Age, the monopoly power over information, as wielded by Google, is far more dangerous.

Never in the history of this nation, has one company come close to exercising the power and influence that Google currently exerts. Google’s gatekeeping to and guardianship of the infinite information available on the information superhighway must end.

Chris Talgo (ctalgo@heartland.org) is an editor at The Heartland Institute.

Read more: https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2020/10/the_united_states_of_america_v_google.html#ixzz6bgYLPjwM
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y Raymond Ibrahim

Today in history, a battle that radical Muslims of the ISIS variety all but venerate took place between Muslims and Christians in Spain, or al-Andalus.

Context: In 1085, Alfonso VI of Leon-Castile captured the Muslim city of Toledo, thereby formally initiating the Reconquista.  Great was the lamentation among Muslims and great the rejoicing among Christians.  The Muslim emirs of al-Andalus — notorious for their disunity, dissipated lifestyles, and disinterest in jihad — had to act fast, for “the arrogance of the Christian dogs,” to quote one Muslim, had “waxed so great.”

So they called on their fanatical coreligionists in North Africa, the Almorivades, a sect devoted to waging jihad and enforcing sharia.  Their elderly leader was Yusuf bin Tashfin, “a wise and shrewd man,” who had “passed the greater part of his life in his native deserts; exposed to hunger and privation, he had no taste for the life of pleasure.”  Dressed all in black with a veil covering everything but the zeal in his eyes, the 76-year-old sheikh accepted the invitation and entered al-Andalus.

The Moorish emirs quickly “acknowledged his sway,” to quote an Arab chronicler, “hoping that he would stop the victorious course of the infidel, and thus open, for the prosecution of jihad, those gates which they had hitherto kept criminally locked,” thereby “propping up the tottering edifice of Islam, and humbling the pride of the insolent Christian.”

By October 1086, a vast coalition of thousands of Almorivades and Andalusians, under Yusuf’s command, found themselves facing Alfonso and his knights at Sagrajas, near Badajoz.  (Although exact numbers are unclear, the Muslim army outnumbered the Christian one by roughly three to one.)  According to the Muslim chronicler:

When the two armies were in the presence of each other, Yusuf wrote to Alfonso offering him one of the three [conditions] prescribed by the law; namely, Islam, tribute, or death[.] … At the receipt of this letter, the unbeliever was highly indignant; he flew into a most violent passion, and returned an answer indicative of the miserable state [of his mind].

On October 23, 1086, the Christians finally charged at the frontlines of the Muslim army, where Yusuf had placed the Andalusian emirs, while he and his African warriors held the rear.  The battle soon “became fiercer than ever, and the furnaces of war burned with additional violence; death exercised its fury.”  As expected, it was not long before the Moorish frontline began to crumble and retreat before the Christians, who “repeated their attacks with increasing fury.”

Yusuf’s unperturbed reaction underscored the contempt he held for his “moderate” Muslim allies: “Let the slaughter continue a little while longer,” he told a concerned general; “they no less than the Christians are our enemies.”  Moreover, the Christians would tire themselves out, added the shrewd sheikh, “and we shall vanquish them without great difficulty.”

Before long, Alfonso and his knights had penetrated to the rear of the Muslim encampment.  Yet Yusuf was nowhere to be found.  He had divided his forces into three: one (finally) to aid the nearly routed Andalusians, and one to engage Alfonso; the last, led personally by the wily emir, had circumvented the field of battle.  “Advancing with drums rolling and banners flying,” they went straight to and put the Christian rear camp to fire and sword.

Realizing he had been outflanked, Alfonso, rather than continuing to rout his foes, ordered an about face back to his own camp.  This was a mistake.  The Christian knights crashed into their own fleeing men, even as “the Moslems began to thrust their swords into their backs and their spears into their flanks.”

Always in the background was “[t]his weird drum beating, which so dumbfounded the Christians.”  It was, in fact, part of the new tactics brought into play by the Almorivades, whereby military units rhythmically advanced to the beat of drums.  As one historian explains:

The thundering roll of the Almoravide drums, now heard for the first time on Spanish soil, shook the earth and resounded the mountains.  And Yusuf, galloping along the serried ranks of the Moors, nerved them to bear the fearful sufferings inseparable from holy war, promising Paradise to the dying and the richest booty to those who survived the day.

Soon even the effete Moorish kings who had been driven off the field had returned to the fray.  Now “the clash between the two kings was terrific.”  Now “the earth quaked under the hoofs of their horses,” writes a Latin chronicler; “the sun was obscured by the clouds of dust rising under the feet of the warriors; the steeds swam through torrents of blood.  Both parties, in short, fought with equal animosity and courage.”

Muslim accounts agree: “the stormy din of drums, the clash of clarion and trumpet, filled the air; the earth quaked [under the weight of the warriors], and the neighboring mountains echoed the thousand discordant sounds.”

At just the right moment, Yusuf unleashed his elite black guard — 4,000 bellowing Africans, armed with light blades, spears, and hippo-hide covered shields — toward where Alfonso and the bulk of his most stalwart knights were holding ground.  He ordered them “to dismount and join the fight, which they did with awful execution, cutting the horses’ houghs, spearing their riders when on the ground, and throwing confusion into the enemy’s ranks,” writes the chronicler:

In the middle of the conflict Alfonso attacked, sword in hand, a black slave who had spent all his javelins, and aimed at his head; but the black avoided the blow, and, creeping under Alfonso’s horse, seized the animal by the bridle; then, taking out a khanjar [J-shaped dagger] which he wore at his girdle, he wounded the Christian king in the thigh, the instrument piercing both armour and flesh, and pinning Alfonso to his horse’s saddle.  The rout then became general, the gales of victory blew, and Allah sent down his spirit to the Moslems, rendering the true religion triumphant. 

Exhausted, bloodied, and now impaled, Alfonso and his few remaining men — just 500, almost all of whom were seriously wounded — retreated, even as the relentless Muslims gave chase deep into the night and slaughtered some more.  In the words of the historian al-Maqqari, Alfonso “fled from the field of battle like the timid hare before chasing dogs, and reached Toledo, beaten, dejected in spirits, and wounded.”

Meanwhile, a grisly scene was unfolding on the field of battle.  In keeping with the modus operandi of four centuries of Islamic heroes and caliphs, stretching back to Muhammad’s treatment of the Banu Qurayza, “Yusuf caused the heads of all the Christian slain [to the number of 2,400] to be cut off and gathered together in massive piles”:

And from the tops of those gruesome minarets the muezzins called to morning prayers the victorious soldiers, now worked into a frenzy by the sight of this bestial treading under-foot of human remains, “In the name of Allah, the Compassionate, the Merciful.” 

The emir later had the now rotten heads hauled off in carts to the kingdoms of al-Andalus as material proof of victory — and a reminder of the fate of all who resist Islam.

Yusuf bin Tashfin is still revered among Muslims, particularly of the jihadist bent, for his pious exploits at this battle.  Indeed, with the exception of perhaps the battle of Yarmuk, few if any other jihads of Islamic history are as extolled in Muslim historiography as Sagrajas, though it is known by a different name in Arabic: the battle of al-Zallaqa, meaning “slimy,” a reference to the slippery conditions caused by the copious amount of blood shed on the battlefield, as echoed by an Arab chronicler: “For many years after the field of battle was so covered with carcasses of the slain, that it was impossible to walk through it without treading on the withering bones of some infidel.”

In the end, “this memorable battle and defeat of the Christian forces … inspired new life into the body of [Andalusian Islam]” and set the stage for the next century and a half, which saw the absolute fiercest fighting between Christian and Muslim in Spain.  But that is another story.

Raymond Ibrahim is author of Sword and Scimitar: Fourteen Centuries of War between Islam and the West — a book that CAIR and its Islamist allies did everything they could to prevent the U.S. Army War College from learning about.  He is a Shillman Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center, a Distinguished Senior Fellow at the Gatestone Institute, and a Judith Friedman Rosen Fellow at the Middle East Forum.

Read more: https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2020/10/the_gruesome_battle_of_sagrajas_muslims_worship_allah_atop_2400_decapitated_christian_heads_.html#ixzz6bgXTRb7I
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By Ned Barnett

August’s unemployment figures, just released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, paint a remarkably consistent picture that correlates – almost uncannily – between low unemployment rates in states led by Republican governors and high unemployment rates in states led by Democratic governors.  Drawing national conclusions from the unemployment statistics for all fifty states, those Republican-led states that have tried to follow President Trump’s lead in reopening America are doing much better in terms of unemployment than are states likely to support Biden in November.  Former Vice President Biden, while repeatedly complaining about President Trump’s actions in fighting COVID, has yet to articulate a coherent COVID policy.  

Remarkably, these early-opening Republican-led states do not have a statistically-valid comparative rate of increase in COVID deaths, as presented by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, though the three states with the lowest death per 100,000 population are led by Republican governors.

Here’s how those unemployment numbers flesh out:

Of the Top Ten states (in terms of low unemployment rates), nine are led by Republican governors while only one is led by a Democratic governor – and that’s Montana, which is an outlier for sure.  At the other end of the spectrum, unemployment in the Bottom Ten states in terms of unemployment breaks down as follows:  one state led by a Republican governor –Massachusetts, another clear outlier – and nine led by Democratic governors.  The range of unemployment by state runs from 4.0 percent in Republican Nebraska to a 13.2 in Democratic Nevada, which, after more than a decade of Republican governors, switched allegiance in 2018 by electing a Democrat to the state’s highest office.  Talk about buyer’s remorse!

Perhaps more telling than just the extremes of both employment and unemployment figures, the Top Ten states – nine of which, as noted, are led by Republicans – average an unemployment rate of just 4.94 percent.  However, among the Bottom Ten states – nine of which are led by Democrats – the average is a crippling 11.72 percent.  Ouch!

As interesting as those paired numbers might seem – nine Republican led states are among the Top Ten states with the lowest unemployment, with only one Democratic led state – that pattern is completely flipped among the worst-case states.  Of those, nine are led by Democrats and only one is led by a Republican.  However, while that breakdown seems almost statistically impossible, this same pattern repeats when looking at the Top Fifteen states in terms of unemployment – twelve are led by Republicans while only three are led by Democrats.  Flip that around to the Bottom Fifteen and you’ll find that twelve are led by Democrats and only three of the bottom fifteen are led by Republicans.  Also in there, though not counted, the District of Columbia (tied with the “best” of the bottom fifteen states) is also run by Democrats (but not a Democratic governor – the District has a mayor, not a governor).

Finally, when splitting the states 50-50, the same pattern still holds true.  The Top Twenty-Five states, in terms of low unemployment, sees eighteen states led by Republicans and seven led by Democrats.  In the bottom half, those numbers are again reversed, with eighteen of the bottom twenty-five states led by Democrats – plus the District of Columbia – and only seven led by Republicans.   Among the Top Twenty-five states, the highest unemployment score is 7.0 percent, with the best-off state reporting in at just 4.0 percent unemployment.  However; in the Bottom Twenty-five states (plus the District of Columbia), the best and lowest unemployment score is a painful 7.4 percent, with the worst one reaching up to 13.2 percent – that’s tail-end Nevada.  Florida, the other state – this one Republican – that depends so much on conventions and tourist business has that 7.4 percent unemployment rate. That’s not good, but it’s light years ahead of Nevada.

Here’s a simple chart for how that works:

Ranking

Republican-led

Democrat-led

Top Ten

Nine

One

Bottom Ten

One

Nine

Top Fifteen

Twelve

Three

Bottom Fifteen

Three

Twelve

Top Twenty-five

Eighteen

Seven

Bottom Twenty-Five

Seven

Eighteen

Figures don’t lie.  These raw numbers are published each month by the Bureau of Labor Statistics.  Anyone with a calculator or an Excel spreadsheet can easily calculate the average unemployment, top and bottom.  However, the reasons for these widely differing scores is a bit more complicated, but one bottom-line estimate that will stand up to close scrutiny is this:  Democratic-led states are notorious for imposing crippling COVID-19 lockdowns, while Republican-led states seem to be looking for ways of restoring their economies and getting their residents back to work.  The CDC offers statistics that can be looked at in terms of cases, deaths per 100,000, total deaths and several other factors. 

In looking over these CDC statistics, there seems to be no clear corollary between the Governor and the death-per-thousand rate, suggesting that Democratic governors have trashed their states’ economies without delivering a benefit (a lower death rate).  Because it is such an outlier, the city of New York is treated in the CDC figures as the equivalent of a state – the only city to do so.  In this context, New York City has experienced 285 deaths per 100,000 population, more than 100 deaths higher than the worst-off state, New Jersey.  By contrast, the state of New York – absent the five boroughs of New York City – has a rate of “only” 82 deaths per 100,000 population, ranking it seventh from the bottom among the fifty states.   Of the ten best-off states in terms of COVID deaths,

These numbers are largely supported by an ongoing study conducted by the New York Times.  This online, interactive study offers extremely detailed statistical information regarding COVID and the states.  However, because of the way the NYT chose to calculate and report the various figures, there is little correlation between their statistics and those of the CDC and the Bureau of Labor Statistics.  The NYT used different time-frames and different ways of reporting than did the other sources, which limited its utility.  Worse, intentionally or not, they often reported statistics in terms of percentages, instead of focusing on the total numbers of incidents.  In doing so, they create a false narrative regarding COVID deaths.

For example, in reporting on Nebraska, the state with the lowest unemployment level during the current COVID crisis, the NYT reported that COVID deaths during a one week period rose by an alarming 130 percent.  Every death is a tragedy, but by citing percentages instead of total deaths, they made the editorial decision to present this statistic in a way that made it sound horrible, and it would have been horrible … except …

Except that during that same one week period, COVID deaths in Nebraska rose from just three to seven.  Compared to the thousands of American COVID deaths during that same two-week period, Nebraska’s numbers are almost microscopically small, and hardly indicative of a 130 percent spike in reported COVID deaths.

Still, there is one remarkably comforting data set that speaks for itself, and which is truly compatible with the CDC and BLS numbers.  While the number of new diagnoses nationwide is climbing, the number of deaths per 100,000 population are dropping dramatically.  This trend tends to reflect society’s recent ability to significantly expand testing.  These new tests are catching millions of individuals who test positive without showing any signs of the illness.  Also, because of the drop-off in COVID deaths, either the COVID virus is weakening, or our treatments are rapidly improving.  Perhaps both reasons apply.

Look at Nevada, which in August of 2020 was in last place in terms of unemployment, by a significant margin.  What’s happened here (I say here because I live and work in Nevada) is that the governor shut down all the casinos, all the restaurants, all the shows and entertainment. Period.  He didn’t allow them to open with safe social distancing and face coverings – no, Democratic Governor Steve Sisolak shut them all down, without exception.  When things started looking better, health-wise, he very cautiously started allowing a few of these businesses to re-open in a limited capacity, only to slam them shut again at the first sign of even a modest spike in cases diagnosed. This start-and-stop-and-start-and-stop pattern by Governor Sisolak has crippled the hospitality industry on which Nevada depends for its economic survival.  Florida, which has a much saner policy toward trying to get employees back to work has an unemployment rate of roughly half that of Nevada.

Ned Barnett is, among other things, a political policy analyst, as well as a campaign consultant. During the heyday of the Tea Party, he was communications director for both the Clark County (Las Vegas) and the Nevada Republican Parties. He is the owner of Barnett Marketing Communications in Las Vegas, and the author of 39 published books on a variety of topics, including advocacy and communications.

 October 20, 2020  Lori Alexander Comments  6 Comments

“A virtuous woman is a crown to her husband: but she that maketh ashamed is rottenness is his bones” (Proverbs 12:4).

“A virtuous woman is a crown to her husband,…. One that is loving and chaste, constant and faithful, obsequious [promptly obedient] and submissive to him; that is diligent in the affairs of her house, takes care of her family, brings up her children, and is an honour and credit to her husband.

“…but she that maketh ashamed; makes her husband ashamed, by her levity [unsteady] and wantonness [lack of self-control], her negligence and slothfulness, so that he is ashamed to be seen with her, or to be known that he stands in such a relation to her…

“…she is as rottenness in his bones; a constant grief to his mind, a pressure upon his spirits, a wasting of his body, and a consumption of his estate; she is, as the Targum has it, ‘as a worm in wood,’ which rots and consumes it.” (Gill’s Exposition of the Bible)

A virtuous woman is a crown to her husband. She is loving so she lives out God’s definition of love found in 1 Corinthians 13:4-8: “Charity suffereth long, and is kind; charity envieth not; charity vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up, Doth not behave itself unseemly, seeketh not her own, is not easily provoked, thinketh no evil; Rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth; Beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things. Charity never faileth.”

She is chaste. She is free from all obscenity. She is careful how she speaks, the words she uses, and the things she watches and reads. She is careful to walk in the Spirit and not in the flesh. She is faithful to her husband until death does she part. She knows that it is her privilege to satisfy him sexually and not to deprive him.

She is constant and faithful. He doesn’t have to worry what kind of a mood she will be in since she is lead by truth rather than her emotions, feelings, or even her hormones and health. Her mind is stayed upon the Lord and His Word. She loves to glorify Him in all that she does. She is His servant and lives to please Him by serving her husband and learning what pleases him.

When her husband asks something of her, she does it as soon as she can, immediately if possible. She submits to his leadership since she knows this is how God has ordained it to be. She is a willing follower of her husband and wouldn’t want it any other way. She doesn’t try to manipulate or control her husband since she knows this is wrong. She is content in the role that God has given to her.

She is diligent in the affairs of the house. She loves to work hard in her home and is thankful for it. She loves beauty and understands that a clean and tidy home is beautiful no matter how simple it is. There are times when it gets messy due to small children but this doesn’t bother her since she knows her children are more important than having a perfect home. However, she isn’t lazy in her home keeping duties. She tries the best that she can to stay on top of them. She looks well to the ways of her household.

Taking care of her family is her first priority above everything else. She makes sure they are well fed with clean clothes before she takes on any other responsibilities. She knows she was created to be her husband’s help meet and her children’s mother so this is the ministry that she focuses upon. She puts her time, energy, and talents into being the best wife and mother that she can be. She knows that there are eternal rewards in doing this since this is exactly what God has called her to do.

She raises her children in the nurture and the admonition of the Lord. She trains, disciplines, and teaches them. She understands that teaching them the ways of the Lord is the most important thing that she can do for them since the greatest joy in life is to have children who walk in truth. She doesn’t neglect this duty since she knows her children’s eternal souls are at stake.

This is a virtuous women. Are you are crown to your husband, women? If you don’t think it’s possible, you are wrong. God tells you that you can do ALL things through Christ who strengthens you. He tells us that His commands aren’t burdensome. It’s a matter of taking every thought captive to the obedience of Christ and continually renewing your minds with truth.

Who can find a virtuous woman? for her price is far above rubies. The heart of her husband doth safely trust in her, so that he shall have no need of spoil. She will do him good and not evil all the days of her life.
Proverbs 31:10-12