Top Army General Defends CRT
U.S. Army General Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, defended Marxism in the military during a House Armed Services Committee budget hearing Wednesday. Milley was questioned by Representative Mike Waltz (R-FL) as to the appropriateness of a seminar at the United States Military Academy at West Point called “Understanding Whiteness and White Rage.” Republican lawmakers have increasingly begun ringing the alarm bells over the promulgation of a form of neo-Marxist ideology known as Critical Race Theory across the federal government and specifically within the U.S. military.
A clearly irritated General Milley responded to the question:
On the issue of Critical Race Theory, etc., a lot of us have to get much smarter on whatever the theory is. But I do think it’s important, actually, for those of us in uniform to be open-minded and be widely read. And the United States Military Academy is a university. And it is important that we train and understand.
If he had stopped there, simply making the point that studying is important to better understand what an enemy believes and how he thinks in order to be better prepared to defend oneself and contend against one’s foes, then this would be a non-story.
But Milley didn’t stop there, and in fact his answer only gave further credence to Republican lawmakers’ concerns. Milley continued:
I want to understand white rage, and I’m white. So what is it that caused thousands of people to assault this building and try to overturn the Constitution of the United States of America? What caused that? I want to find that out. I want to maintain an open mind here, and I do want to analyze it.
If Milley wants to understand why thousands of people were angry at what they saw as a stolen presidential election between two old white guys, assuming that they’re just rage- and privilege-filled white supremacists is exactly the wrong place to start.
As for Milley, it’s clear that he has already accepted the false premise that CRT is merely a tool useful for analysis. In reality, CRT is far more insidious than any tool should ever be; it’s a worldview that presupposes the overly simplistic and problematic Marxist ethic of oppressor vs. oppressed through which all aspects of society are to be measured. Hence the claim that inequity of outcome equals injustice.
General Milley wasn’t done, either. He continued attempting to reinforce the leftist deception that CRT is merely an analytical tool:
I personally find it offensive that we are accusing the United States military general officers, our commissioned [and] noncommissioned officers, of being “woke” or something else because we’re studying some theories that are out there. I’ve read Karl Marx. I’ve read Lenin. That doesn’t make me a communist.
Ironically, Milley undercut his own defense of CRT by seemingly (and accurately) equating it to a dangerous and deeply un-American worldview like communism.
What is truly offensive is the general’s failure to make obvious and proper category distinctions. Once again, the distinction here is the difference between reading to comprehend versus reading for indoctrination. It’s an important distinction that Milley — either intentionally or unintentionally — fails to make. The question is, are U.S. military personnel being taught about how to recognize CRT’s dangerous flaws, or are they being taught to adopt it as a legitimate paradigm for understanding the world?
Finally, General Milley’s Professional Military Reading List does not include CRT titles (yet), but last week Admiral Mike Gilday, the chief of Naval operations, was questioned about including the CRT book How to Be an Antiracist on his official reading list for Navy personnel.
~The Patriot Post
scumbag/liar-Pelosi Gets Her Hyper-Partisan January 6 Committee
Yesterday, to no one’s surprise, House Speaker scumbag/liar-Nancy Pelosi announced that the House will create a hyper-partisan committee to conduct a sham investigation of the January 6 riot at the Capitol building. She did so, she claims, because Senate Republicans had already blocked a proposal for a bipartisan commission. And she did so, as she always does, “with great solemnity and sadness.”
Said scumbag/liar-Pelosi, who will never be mistaken for Winston Churchill: “Mitch McConnell asked Republican senators to do him a personal favor and vote against the commission. Cowardly [sic], the Republican senators did him a personal favor rather than honoring their patriotic duty to protect [sic] and defend.”
Thus, in just 35 words, the speaker invented an adverb and (again) butchered the language of her own Oath of Office.
“Is there a timeline that you want this committee to have a final report to you?” asked a reporter. “Who will this committee report to, and what does that final report look like?” To which the speaker replied:
The timeline will be as long as it takes for them, the time they need to do the investigation of the causes of this. There are two actual paths. One is about the root causes of it — the white supremacy, the anti-Semitism, the Islamophobia, all of the rest of it that was so evident when you see a sweatshirt on one of the people saying, “Camp Auschwitz.”
The other is the security of the Capitol and what it means to be ready for such an insurrection. While I think we could have been better prepared, I don’t think anybody would have foreseen an insurrection incited by the president of the United States. So the timetable will be as long as it takes. We were agreeable to doing it in a time frame that the Republicans felt comfortable with, but now another month has gone by and another month has gone by so we’ll just have to make the plan and see how long that takes.
Translation: The committee will exist as long as it can effectively tar Republicans in general and Trump supporters in particular, and it’ll focus on bogus “root causes” while steering clear of the real causes, which centered on legitimate and unaddressed concerns about a deeply flawed presidential election.
As for the “root causes” being “white supremacy,” “anti-Semitism,” and “Islamophobia,” has a speaker of the House ever said anything more disgraceful, or more patently false?
Will scumbag/liar-Pelosi’s committee look into the entirety of the events of January 6? Or, supposing her tale is even true, will members focus on that lone troglodyte’s “Camp Auschwitz” sweatshirt? Our guess — make that our guarantee — is that they won’t focus on the little-mentioned conspiracy theorist who inspired the relative handful of real rioters. Nor will they focus on the only death that occurred within the Capitol — that of Ashli Babbitt, the unarmed 14-year Air Force veteran and Trump supporter who was shot by a remarkably as-yet unnamed Capitol Police officer. Nor will they focus on the despicable politicization, the media malfeasance, and the cover-up surrounding the death of Capitol Police Officer Brian Sicknick.
“January 6 was one of the darkest days in our nation’s history,” scumbag/liar-Pelosi said yesterday, for the umpteenth time, calling the riot a “gleeful desecration of the Capitol.” But her claim that it’s “imperative that we establish the truth of that day, and ensure that the attack of that kind cannot happen, and that we root out the causes of it all” couldn’t be any faker, any phonier, any more disingenuous. ~The Patriot Post
bumble/socialist/scumbag/liar-Biden’s Idea of ‘Unity’ Is an
A bipartisan group of senators has reached an infrastructure deal. Zzzzzzzzz.
But wait — there’s a bait and switch, double crossing, and intrigue to go with it. #Unity.
We’ve recounted in recent months that Democrats are bent on using the coronavirus pandemic as an excuse to continue building more of their big-spending agenda to the federal budget. Just because they’d really like to spend your money for votes, they slap the “infrastructure” label on it and demand agreement from Republicans.
So, what disgraceful suckers are the five Republican senators who thought bumble/socialist/scumbag/liar-Joe Biden was serious about unity?
scumbag/rino-Mitt Romney, rino-Lisa Murkowski, Susan Collins, Rob Portman, and Bill Cassidy ought to be feeling like complete dupes. After glad-handing and popping champagne corks with five Democrats and President bumble/socialist/scumbag/liar-Biden for having artfully crafted a “Washington is back” deal to spend $1.2 trillion on infrastructure, along comes Biden literally two hours later to pull the rug out from under them.
“In my years in the Senate,” bumble/socialist/ scumbag/liar-Biden opined, “the single greatest currency you have is your word — keeping your word.” That just moments before he completely reneged on his word.
“What we agreed on … is what we could agree on — the physical infrastructure. There’s no agreement on the rest,” bumble/socialist/scumbag/liar-Biden said. “If this is the only thing that comes to me, I’m not signing it.” He added, “I’m not just signing the bipartisan bill and forgetting about the rest that I proposed.”
In other words, he’s making this bipartisan deal conditional on passing another $3 trillion in Democrat priorities.
House Speaker scumbag/liar-Nancy Pelosi joined him by saying, “We will not take up a bill in the House until the Senate passes the bipartisan bill and a reconciliation bill.”
Patriot Post readers know full well that bumble/ socialist/scumbag/liar-Joe Biden’s 50-year reputation as a bipartisan dealmaker was phony all along. We’d like to think this would prove fraud for at least some people who voted for him because they thought he’d bring good-natured agreement back to our nation’s capital. But we can’t trust the mainstream media to really report just what he’s doing here.
That said, the editorial board of The Wall Street Journal elucidates it perfectly well:
Most politicians at least wait a decent interval to pull a double cross. But Mrs. scumbag/liar-Pelosi and Mr. bumble/socialist/scumbag/liar-Biden are trying to prevent a revolt on the left. So they are now holding a bipartisan deal hostage to the left’s demands. This is political blackmail aimed at Democrats like Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema who are part of the bipartisan Senate Gang of 10: Unless they sign on to all of the progressive tax-and-spend agenda, they won’t get their bipartisan deal. And Mr. bumble/socialist/ scumbag/liar-Biden and progressives will blame them for the failure.
This is remarkable bad faith even for Washington.
Nevertheless, we expect these five Republicans — along with Manchin and Sinema — to say, “Thank you, sir, may I have another?” and keep on playing the same Beltway game.
For those keeping score, the $1.2 trillion “deal” is about half of what Democrats wanted, and about twice what Republicans counter-offered. The national debt is $28.4 trillion and counting. Isn’t Washington great? ~The Patriot Post
Election Strategy for Republicans
Employers can’t find workers. Illegal aliens are rushing over the southern border. There’s an epidemic of serious crime in our cities. Inflation is soaring. Americans are weary over Critical Race Theory in our schools.
With all this bad news, you’d think Republicans are primed for a major sweep of the 2022 midterm congressional elections.
Think again.
Despite many factors in the party’s favor, the GOP doesn’t have this one in the bag. And Republicans better get to work soon. November 2022 is right around the corner.
At this point, we have to take polling results with a grain of salt, though they’re worth taking the “temperature in the room.” One poll suggests that Republicans are in a good position to regain power on Capitol Hill. But a Morning Consult poll revealed that nearly a third of Trump voters aren’t enthusiastic about voting next year. If the results of this poll are accurate, we’re in serious trouble.
To their credit, Democrats aren’t giving up. In fact, they’re not taking anything for granted. For example, party leaders in Texas are pushing toward a goal of registering two million Democrats in time for the midterms.
Republicans should be just as aggressive in laying the foundation to regain the majority.
Michael Walsh highlights several steps for Republicans to take back the country, including expelling Never-Trumpers from party leadership, ensuring election integrity, and choosing the right candidates.
Republican leadership in the House did manage to oust rino-Liz Cheney from her post as conference chair, and there was unity in fighting to keep the filibuster in the Senate.
Unfortunately, Republicans in DC seem to be caught up in the political issues of the day instead of fighting to win in the long term. The Cheney saga and the fight to preserve the filibuster are both important, but GOP leaders have to see the forest, not just the trees. Should Republicans fail to take back the House and hold the Senate next year, losing the filibuster will be the least of their worries.
What’s more important is dealing with the issue of election integrity and making sure only registered voters can bubble-in their choices at the ballot box. And the GOP should fight for even more. “The only principles conservatives should accept are one man, one vote, in person, on Election Day, in public, with ironclad voter identification,” argues Walsh. “Absentee ballots should be limited to overseas military personnel only — if you’re out of town or even the country, that’s your choice.”
While Republicans at the national level may not be moving fast enough, legislatures and governors in some states have made inroads to ensure the integrity of the system and avoid a repeat of the 2020 debacle. These measures include restricting ballot harvesting, keeping voter lists current, prohibiting election officials from receiving private donations or funding, and passing voter ID requirements.
These steps are critical because Republicans are less likely to win elections if those elections are a fraud-for-all run by Democrat officials according to Democrat rules.
Yet even if the loopholes of state election systems are closed by next fall, Republicans not only have to worry about campaigning against Democrats desperate to hold onto power but they’ll also have to face a bitter fight within the GOP. Some moderate Republicans are planning to battle Trump-approved candidates for the House and Senate.
But there’s some good news: The party out of power historically picks up seats when the opposition party holds the White House, and Republicans are currently redrawing congressional districts to their advantage.
It’ll be interesting to see how this all plays out between now and next summer, but Republican leaders at all levels need to start unifying and working toward victory next November.
We know Democrats will fight to win, and Republicans need to do the same. ~The Patriot Post
COVID-19 and the Tyranny of the Bureaucracy
There are many lessons to be drawn from our ongoing battle with COVID-19: Never ever trust the communist Chinese, for example. But one lesson that gets lost in all this is to be aware of the ever-encroaching, Liberty-sapping tyranny of the administrative state.
The administrative state: that multitude of executive branch agencies run by unelected bureaucrats who are vested with the power to create, adjudicate, and enforce their own rules without any legislative oversight. As Veronique de Rugy, senior research fellow at George Mason University’s market-oriented Mercatus Center, put it:
Americans would be horrified if they knew how much power thousands of unelected bureaucrats employed by federal agencies wield. These members of the “government within the government,” as The New York Times’ John Tierney describes them, produce one freedom-restricting, economy-hindering rule after another without much oversight. These rules take many forms, and few even realize they’re in the making — until, that is, they hit you square in the face.
Hindsight being what it is, de Rugy’s observation makes sense in the wake of one pandemic-related government misstep after another. But she wrote that in 2018. She had no idea what was coming, nor how many additional Americans were killed by the deadly decision-making in blue states like scumbag/liar-Andrew Cuomo’s New York and Gretchen Whitmer’s Michigan, where bureaucrats routinely returned elderly COVID-positive patients to nursing homes and long-term care facilities, and thereby allowed the virus to spread like wildfire.
Nor do we know how many COVID-19 patients were denied hydroxychloroquine, a time-tested and supremely safe anti-malarial drug, because Donald Trump endorsed it. But we do know that Trump-deranged governors and state-level bureaucrats wouldn’t allow it — and, therefore, doctors wouldn’t prescribe it, pharmacies wouldn’t carry it, and hospitals wouldn’t administer it. One infectious disease specialist, Dr. Stephen Smith, estimates that perhaps 100,000 lives were lost as a result.
Think about that.
As for the bureaucratically driven COVID-19 rules that ended up hitting us square in the face, two in particular have been in the news lately: the masking disaster and the stay-at-home disaster.
Pointing the finger at the demonstrably incompetent Dr. Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases for the past 36 years (and, remarkably, our nation’s highest paid federal employee), the Wall Street Journal’s Holman Jenkins calls the mask mandate “a colossal disaster for public understanding.” He writes:
Until November, the official advice was the same that Dr. Fauci gave in a now infamous early email to a colleague — a store-bought mask may somewhat reduce your chance of spreading the disease if you happen to be infected. It will do little to prevent you from catching it if you’re breathing around someone who is exhaling the Covid virus.
Only in the fall did the U.S. government start claiming masks might protect the uninfected too. This appears to have been largely disinformation designed to get more unwitting carriers to wear masks. Even today, the CDC on its website stresses only one claim: “Masks are a simple barrier to help prevent your respiratory droplets from reaching others.”
Fauci, you’ll recall, is the guy who told the nation in January that wearing two masks is “common sense.”
As for being a barrier against receiving the virus, wearing one of those ubiquitous masks was like trying to keep mosquitoes away from your back deck with a chain-link fence. And yet those who protested the mask mandate were demonized. President bumble/socialist/ scumbag/liar-Joe Biden was the worst and most public symbol of this hysteria.
As the Washington Examiner reports: “When Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, a Republican face of COVID reopening, lifted his state’s mask mandate in early March, bumble/socialist/scumbag/liar-Biden chastised him for ‘Neanderthal thinking.’ Within two months, however, Texas reported zero COVID deaths.”
And yet bumble/socialist/scumbag/liar-Joe Biden’s CDC was telling us that children as young as two were required to wear masks in public, despite the difficulty it caused in breathing and despite the very low risk of children spreading the disease. For a violation of this mandate, whole families were being kicked off passenger planes. Where was the science?
Worse than all of this, though, were the stay-at-home orders — both socially and economically. Numerous studies have shown how ruinous these lockdowns were, including a brand-new one, using data from 43 countries and all 50 US states. As Brad Polumbo writes at the Foundation for Economic Education, “Lockdown orders may have had lethal unintended consequences in their own right, such as increased drug overdoses, worsened mental health problems, increased child abuse, deadly delays in non-COVID medical care, and more.”
And yet the study’s authors found no evidence that the shelter-in-place orders saved lives. In fact, they report that mortality actually increased in the weeks following the lockdowns.
“The takeaway here,” as Polumbo concludes, “is not just that stay-at-home orders are an ineffective public policy. It’s that politicians will always claim they can solve our problems if just given enough centralized power.”
Put another way, our suspicions of the government and of the administrative state are well-founded. ~The Patriot Post
Bottoms Out
Typically, when hearing the phrase “bottoms up,” there’s a celebration involving toasting a drink and emptying your glass during a special occasion. There’s nothing to pause and celebrate with what just happened to restrooms in Atlanta, though. Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms has hit rock bottom with signing an administrative order into law during “Pride Month.” More than 100 publicly available single-user bathrooms in Atlanta are now required to be gender-inclusive — available to anyone regardless of sex.
The “all-gender” restrooms will be available across city facilities, including Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport, now the nation’s busiest airport. A spokesman from the mayor’s office said the city council does not have to vote to ratify Bottoms’s order.
Last year, a federal appeals court in Atlanta ruled transgender high school students must have access to bathrooms matching their “gender identity.” Is it me, or is this transgender agenda to indoctrinate youth starting to become weird?
No one who knows Mayor Bottoms’s homosexual agenda track record will be shocked. In 2018, she created Atlanta’s first-ever full-time LGBTQ affairs coordinator. The mayor last year promoted the coordinator, Malik Brown, as the city’s first-ever director of LGBTQ affairs. The mayor also has an LGBTQ advisory board to help with developing policies for Atlanta’s LGBTQ communities.
This latest “breakthrough” for the average American citizen is a total disgrace. City officials say the order is an effort to “make public spaces safer for people who face discrimination based on gender identity.” Restrooms make people safe now? So, I guess now it’s All Restrooms Matter. The updated signage on the restrooms will read, “Anyone can use this restroom, regardless of gender identity or expression.”
It remains to be seen if the mayor’s order will lead to an outright ban of gender-specific bathrooms. Those bans are already in place in Baltimore, Philadelphia, Washington, and New York. I’m not shocked. Three of the most liberal cities in America have taken a stand to celebrate and promote homosexuality. Surprise!
Brown said he was “grateful to have a boss who uses every tool in her toolbox to move LGBTQ equality forward.” Grateful to have a coworker glorify what God calls an abomination? Mayor Bottoms had a press conference stating that she would pass the torch during the upcoming election. Instead of a celebration with “bottoms up” to the mayor of Atlanta, it’s Bottoms out! I hope she never returns to politics again.
~The Patriot Post
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