Does the Left Value Truth?: This Is at the Root of the Left-Right Divide

And why has The New York Times just received a Pulitzer Prize for what leading liberal historians have labelled its “mendacious” rewriting of American history, known as “The 1619 Project”? Because to The New York Times and the Pulitzer Prize committee, truth is less important than smearing America.

 Truth, Not Politics, Is at the Root of the Left-Right Divide - The Dennis Prager Show

"Three years ago, I wrote a column explaining left-right differences on 35 different subjects. Any one or two of them would make for a major political/cultural divide. Thirty-five make the divide unbridgeable.". . .

. . ."When it cannot stifle opponents, it smears them. Every prominent conservative or liberal opponent of the left has been smeared — which is just another way of saying “lied about” — as being sexist, intolerant, xenophobic, homophobic, Islamophobic, racist, bigoted, misogynistic, white supremacist, transphobic, etc.

"Allow me to use an example I know well: me.

"In the span of just this past year, I have written about Newsweek’s lie claiming I “mocked” Anne Frank. To Newsweek’s credit, they revised the column and published a corrected headline. Then I wrote about Purdue University’s “vice provost of diversity and inclusion,” who told a Purdue newspaper that I said in a speech I gave at Purdue, “Slavery was not bad.” I sent this person a recording of my speech proving I never said anything remotely like what he charged. After many of my listeners and readers protested to the vice provost and to Purdue’s president, the vice provost wrote me a private letter saying he was sorry if he “misunderstood” me. His charge was public, but his apology was private." . . .  More...

This Ad Lib During Biden's SOTU Speech Went Horribly Wrong. The man and why not a word he says can be believed

 “You don't necessarily need atomic bombs to destroy a nation. Politicians who value their pockets more than the life of citizens always do that every day.” ― Israelmore Ayivor 

Dumpster fire (noun, US informal): "an utterly calamitous or mismanaged
 situation or occurrence: disaster."

PJ Media   "Joe Biden had a number of gaffes during Tuesday night’s State of the Union Dumpster Fire speech. For example, calling Ukrainians “Iranian people,” was a pretty bad one, but a different one really stuck out to me.

It happened shortly after Biden essentially claimed responsibility for ending the pandemic, and promised to continue to push for people to get vaccinated.

“We’ve sent 475 Million vaccine doses to 112 countries, more than any other nation. And we won’t stop,” he said. “Because you can’t build a wall high enough to keep out…a, a, a, uhh, a vaccine—the vaccine can stop the spread of these diseases.”. . .

This is why the White House doesn’t like Joe Biden taking questions from the media. Joe Biden might think he’s being folksy by trying to speak off-the-cuff during a relatively poor speech, but it almost always ends in embarrassment—not just for him, but the entire country. . . .

 This Was the Most Infuriating Part of Biden's State of the Union Speech   . . ."The word is Joe Biden had to rewrite his State of the Union Dumpster Fire speech because of the Russia/Ukraine conflict, and you could tell. It was an awkward, choppy speech that made me cringe at times.

"But, perhaps the worst and most infuriating thing about the speech, aside from the blatant lies about his record, was what was missing.

"Joe Biden was so desperate for a 9/11 anniversary photo op that he set an arbitrary date for withdrawing from Afghanistan, without any conditions for the Taliban, causing a disastrous evacuation that resulted [in] thousands of Americans left behind and 13 U.S. service members dead.

"Yet, not a single word about the withdrawal. Not a single word to honor those who died because of his incompetence.". . .

Biden Raises Eyebrows With 'Strange' 3 Words at the End of His State of the Union

Biden's SOTU was a combination of unicorn dreams and unicorn poop 

Biden’s SOTU reassured nobody

He talked a bit about supporting “made in America.”  Those phony words out of his mouth seemed stolen from Trump; Biden never cared about “made in America.”  He only cared about enriching his family by any means necessary.  Ukraine was his, and Hillary’s, financial playground. . .

. . ."The speech was a tissue of lies from beginning to end, including “let’s not defund the police, let’s fund them.”  What a crock.  His VP and most of his party have been lobbying for BLM and against law enforcement for years now. They celebrated the BLM rioters who did a couple of billion dollars of damage to numerous cities and have treated the unconstitutionally imprisoned patriots present at the Capitol on January 6 worse than terrorists.  He pretended to care about our veterans; he does not.  He has eviscerated our military with wokery and
vaccine mandates.". . . 

. . ."As many seasoned observers and legitimate journalists have long noted, Joe Biden was never a particularly smart or decent man.  He had a much higher opinion of himself than anyone else does.  He was always wrong on any foreign policy issue at hand.  He was and remains a mean man; on that score, there are too many instances to list but his attempted humiliation of Clarence Thomas at his confirmation hearings are sadly legendary.". . .

Biden addressing Judge Clarence Thomas

After last night | Power Line  "President Biden gave his long-awaited [?] State of the Union address last night. The White House has posted the text here. A few observations.

• The spectacle of Biden speaking in front of Vice President Harris and Speaker Pelosi was chilling. We are not a serious country.

• How silly and small did they look by contrast with President Zelensky and every Ukrainian official we have heard from over the past week?

• As Biden rushed through his text and slurred the words, I wondered if he was medicated.

• The text of the address provided by the White House does not reflect the speech as delivered. At one point, I heard Biden express support for the Iranians when he meant Ukrainians (“Putin may circle Kyiv with tanks, but he’ll never gain the hearts and souls of the Iranian people”). He supports the Iranians (the mullahs, anyway). Perhaps it was a Freudian slip.". . .

It’s Time for a Jan. 6 Amnesty, Mr. President. Though much too late for Matthew Perna

Who Is Responsible for the Death of Matthew Perna? › American Greatness; Julie Kelly

I asked Graves’ office for a comment on Perna’s suicide. “We typically do not comment on cases or investigations beyond what has been filed or stated in Court and have no comment,” spokesman Bill Miller said in an email to American Greatness on Monday morning.

 The Suicide of a January 6 Defendant: ‘They Broke Him’   . . ."Whenever his hometown paper, the Sharon Herald, published an article on its social media account about Perna, the majority of replies were “horrible and brutal,” his aunt, Geri Perna, told me on the phone Sunday. After more than a year of legal and public torture, Perna saw no way out. On Friday night, Matthew Perna hung himself in his garage."...

Matthew Lawrence Perna, 37, 'dies by suicide' before Capitol riot
 sentencing  as family say charges 'killed his spirit' (the-sun.com)

Matthew Perna Dies of Suicide After January 6 Guilty Confession: Report - 24sSports

"A Pennsylvania man who pleaded guilty to multiple counts related to the January 6 break-in of the US Capitol is believed to have died by suicide weeks before he was scheduled to be sentenced."

 The American Spectator | USA News and Politics

What happened to Matthew Perna must not be allowed to happen again.

"At last night’s State of the Union speech, President Biden claimed that freedom will always triumph over tyranny. He was talking about Ukraine, of course, in a speech that made one wonder if Biden knows whether he’s their president or ours.

"Matthew Perna, a schoolteacher from Sharon, Pennsylvania, wasn’t around to hear it.

"You’ve likely never heard of Matthew Perna, and were this a sane country you never would have. Matthew Perna was not an exceptional man.

"That isn’t intended as an insult. By all indications Perna was a good guy and a patriot. But he wasn’t famous, and he wasn’t going to be.

"About the only thing about Perna that would have brought him into the public eye was what happened on January 6, 2021.

"Like hundreds of thousands of Americans, Perna was disturbed by the irregularities of the 2020 election — unsettled enough that he participated in a mass protest in Washington, D.C., on that day.

"You don’t have to be a supporter of everything that happened on January 6 to recognize that the Biden regime’s reaction to it has been disgracefully out of proportion and flat-out evil.

"Perna, like hundreds of his fellow protesters, entered the U.S. Capitol. He didn’t break in. He was waved in by the Capitol Police. He had no weapons, and he attacked no one. He took pictures inside the building. He even stayed within the rope lines. And by the time Perna entered the Capitol, Congress had halted its joint session to certify the presidential election and left the hall. He disrupted nothing and hurt no one.". . .

Dems Boo After Rep. Boebert Shouts at Biden DURING SOTU - You Put Our Service Members in Coffins

Rep. Lauren Boebert Erupts At Biden’s SOTU

 Western Journal   "Republican Rep. Lauren Boebert of Colorado briefly interrupted President Joe Biden during Tuesday’s State of the Union address.

"Biden had brought up supporting veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan who have been dying from injuries sustained from their service.

"As Biden referenced deceased service members being in flag-draped coffins, Boebert exclaimed “13 of them,” in a criticism of Biden’s handling of the Hamid Karzai International Airport operation.". . .

Rep Lauren Boebert gets booed after shouting while President Biden talks about his dead son Beau Biden. pic.twitter.com/dEEIYbAJzY

— Colby Hall (@colbyhall) March 2, 2022

 Boebert could face formal condemnation for the outburst.  In 2009, Rep. Joe Wilson yelled out, “You Lie!” during President Barack Obama’s State of the Union address after Obama said that his healthcare reform plan would not insure illegal immigrants. The House then passed a "resolution of disapproval" about his remarks.

Boebert

 Nancy Pelosi sparks new SOTU meme during Biden ‘burn pits’ moment (nypost.com)  . . . .As the president delivered his remark, Pelosi was seen standing up behind him, grinning and rubbing her knuckles together as if pulling back an ill-timed clap.                                            "Many social media users spotted the odd response to the serious remarks, with some even questioning if the speaker was intoxicated. Others simply labeled it “weird.'” . . .

Here Are the Two Congresswomen Who Heckled Biden Relentlessly (townhall.com)

Psaki: Biden Didn’t “Have The Time” To Mention Our 13 Servicemembers Killed In Afghanistan During SOTU… | Weasel Zippers

Whoopi Goldberg Enters Orbit Over Lauren Boebert Heckling Joe Biden – RedState  . . ." Let’s recall that he’s trashed Republicans as racist supporters of Jim Crow because they dared to support voter ID. When you demonize people in such a disgusting way, you are not then owed respect in return. I don’t care what office you hold.". . .

"Goldberg asks of Boebert, “Who the hell do you think you are?” The answer is that Boebert is an American with the right to free speech. That right extends to heckling the president, regardless of whether one believes it was appropriate or not. It’s one thing to say Boebert shouldn’t have done it. It’s another to suggest she doesn’t have the status to question the president. That’s not how any of this works. Biden serves at the pleasure of the nation’s citizenry, for better or worse. He is not a king, and Goldberg is the last person who should be criticizing others about being disrespectful."

Biden’s Year of Failure Week at Legal Insurrection; UPDATED

There's a theme here somewhere:

 Legal Insurrection  "Biden is getting absolutely savaged in the polls. His presidency is already being described as a failure.

• Poll: Majority of Americans Think Biden’s First Year in Office Has Been a Failure
• Putin Would Not Have Moved Against Ukraine If Trump Were Still President, Say 62 Percent of Americans Polled
• Did CDC Revise Mask Guidelines to Help Mask Biden’s Failing Presidency?

"Walls work now?

• American Freedom Convoy Heads to D.C., Dems Put Up Capitol Fence Ahead of SOTU

"The situation in Ukraine is out of control.

• LIVE: Putin Attacks Ukraine, The West Will Respond With Sanctions, Strongly Worded Letters
• LIVE BLOG: Ukraine Arms Citizens Against Russia, Zelensky Gets Radio Silence From NATO
• Zelenskyy Rejects Biden Admin Offer to Evacuate Kyiv: “I Need Ammunition, Not a Ride” (Updates)

"CNN hardest hit.". . .

Political Cartoons (townhall.com)

UPDATE: Joe Biden State of the Union: Started Well, Faltered | National Review
. . ."It went downhill once he got to the state of our union, on which Biden rambled on for another hour. He hectored Congress to pass a bunch of bills that it has already rejected. He proposed to lower the costs of various things by just calling for them to cost less. He called the infrastructure bill “the single biggest investment in history” and declared, “We’re done talking about infrastructure weeks. We’re going to have an infrastructure decade.” You could tell the pandemic is really and truly over when we saw a return to Democrats demonizing the pharma companies that gave us life-saving vaccines."

MUST-SEE VIDEO: A local TV newscast makes the most perfect mistake ever

 Andrea Widburg   "Yes, this is a puff piece. But when you spend your days reading about Ukraine, the economy, the border, and all the other miserable things in 2022, and then spend another two hours on Biden’s state of the union address (one hour listening to it and a second hour writing about it), you have to take pleasure wherever you can find it. And—oh, my goodness!—did I find it in a video someone grabbed of a local Pittsburgh news station’s report about a local crime. (Hat tip: Twitchy.)

"What you must understand is that the news report ran a few hours before the state of the union address. The TV station was clearly planning to do a quick little news piece about that upcoming state of the union address. However, some poor shlub charged with putting up the graphics got a bit ahead of himself so that Biden’s picture appeared with an actual news story that was too perfect to be true.

"I’m not going to describe any more of this because it will ruin the joke. You must take the 13 seconds to see it for yourself. Once you do, you’ll understand why, over the course of just a few hours, it managed to rack up almost two million views:

Oops 😬 🤭 pic.twitter.com/ccvp81MJfr

— GuyFrees (@GuyFrees) March 1, 2022

Here's Who's Sitting with Jill Biden at the State of the Union... And Who's Not

Townhall  . . ."If, as the White House says, Jill Biden's guests are to represent President Biden's agenda, there are a few individuals (and inanimate objects) that would be better representatives for the first 13 months of the Biden administration, such as: 

A frontline healthcare worker fired because they chose not to get vaccinated 

Families of the 13 U.S. service members killed by ISIS-K during Biden's surrender 

American citizens and Afghan allies left behind in Afghanistan by Biden

 Shipping containers stuck off the U.S. coast due to a broken supply chain 

Major Biden, the First Family's excommunicated dog

 Hunter Biden or his lady friends

 Taxpayer-bought and HHS-distributed crack pipes

 Illegal immigrants who crossed Biden's open border

 Corn Pop (the bad dude)

 The border agents sidelined by Biden's whip-gate hoax

 Biden's Build Back Better budget that Pelosi and Schumer still can't pass

 The Senate's legislative filibuster that has outlived multiple Biden bills 

Biden's OSHA vaccine mandate that was struck down by the Supreme Court

Sorry Democrats, Your Problem Isn’t Messaging

 The voters know the difference between specious talking points and effective policies.

1.The Democrats have been counting on the electorate being ignorant and/or outright idiotic since 1932. So far so good. 2. One has to be an idiot if one believes democrat policies work. From Carter, to Obama, to Biden (Clinton was smarter than all three, in that he did not try to remake America overnight, and left it intact.), they've tried, but are they expecting a better outcome? I don't believe so. Power, and not the welfare of the country, is their goal. 3. What successes? (Comment to this post)

The American Spectator  . . . "The chances that President Biden will heed this sensible advice are slim indeed if his delusional claims about Afghanistan and the pandemic are any guide. He will use his State of the Union address to exaggerate his meager successes, take credit for positive developments unrelated to his ill-conceived policies, and offer gimmicky proposals like a gas tax moratorium instead of serious initiatives. None of this will dispel fast growing doubts that Biden and his congressional accomplices have any serious ideas concerning how to improve the day-to-day lives of ordinary Americans. It is this conspicuous absence of useful ideas that has all but doomed Democratic chances of retaining their majorities in the House and Senate.

"The Democratic emphasis on better messaging rather than better policies is not merely a bad campaign strategy, it’s an insult to the collective intelligence of the electorate. It assumes voters can’t remember what Biden and the Democratic leadership promised them during the 2020 election, that parents can’t tell when politicians are putting the interests of their big donors before the wellbeing of their children, that consumers can’t calculate how much more they are paying for food and fuel than they were paying a year ago. It assumes that most Americans are idiots. This attitude has become the defining characteristic of the Democratic Party. Thus, the voters are about to send them … well … an unmistakable message."

Why So Many Families Are Uprooting and Fleeing to Freer States

 Intellectual Takeout  "Emily Burns had every intention of staying in Massachusetts. A longtime Boston resident, she, her husband, and three children left the city to settle in the upscale suburb of Newton in January 2020. 

"What followed were two years of ongoing disruption and frustration. Prolonged school closures and continued coronavirus policies such as mask mandates angered Burns. Initially, this mom chose fight over flight.

"She announced a conservative run for U.S. Congress, representing Massachusetts's 4th district, a long-shot attempt in a staunchly Democratic area. Her primary issue was pushing back against COVID policies, particularly those that impacted school children. Her message resonated and Burns collected more than $100,000 in donations for her campaign in just one quarter. She was an outspoken advocate for children and families and called out the Massachusetts politicians who continue to double-down on coronavirus mandates even as elected officials elsewhere eliminate them. 

"Burns was recently featured in a popular article, “Revenge of the Covid Moms” on Bari Weiss’s Substack, that spotlighted mothers who are fed up with endless virus restrictions and are taking action to end them.

"Ultimately, Burns had enough of fighting. This week, she terminated her political campaign and explained that she and her family are fleeing to Texas where her husband has an opportunity to open a new company office. 

“My leaving is entirely predicated on what is best for my family,” Burns wrote. “My trust in the political and cultural leadership of this state is totally broken. The past two years have shown me that I cannot protect my children from the ill effects of that leadership. Given the chance to escape those malign forces, I had to take it.”

"Fight or flight is a choice that more Americans are facing, especially those who live in parts of the country with continued coronavirus restrictions and the constant threat that, even if ended, those restrictions could re-emerge at any time by political decree.". . .

 Kerry McDonald is a Senior Contributor for Intellectual Takeout. She has a B.A. in economics from Bowdoin College and a Master’s degree in education policy from Harvard University. Follow her on Twitter.

Ukraine’s finest hour; About the Holodomor: A look at the Ukrainians anger toward Russia

 The Aspen beat

. . ."Ukraine is not Britain. Ukraine lies not as a naturally protected island of civilization, but at the crossroads of cultures – the juncture of two continents, Europe and Asia. It’s a precarious place.

"Ukraine is largely Slavic in an anthropological sense, as is, to varying extents, Western Russia along with Romania, Serbia, Hungary, Poland, Croatia, Slovakia and, to a lesser extent, the Baltic republics . But that doesn’t mean Ukraine is Russian. Russia is a nationality; Slav is an ethnicity.

"Russia’s claim to Ukraine is approximately the same as Britain’s claim to the United States or Ukraine’s claim to Poland. Which is to say, Russia’s claim is no claim at all.

"And so, to my friends who say that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine rightly seeks to “reunite Russia,” I say you’re full of it. You know just enough about anthropology and history to be dangerous, and just enough about morality to be impenetrably amoral.

"Ukrainians know this. They know who they are, and they know they’re not Russian. They struggled under the yoke of totalitarian Russian rule for the better part of a century. They finally broke free along with the rest of eastern Europe upon the inevitable but long-awaited fall of the Soviet Union. They have no desire, and do not deserve, to become a vassal state of backward, tyrannical Russia again.

"The Ukrainians want freedom, and they’re earning it every hour. They’ve risked everything in defying one of the mightiest armies the world has seen. They’ve driven them out of Kyiv, they’ve denied them Kharkiv.. . ."

Ukrainians hated Russia and welcomed German invaders at first   Then the Nazis blew it all by murdering Ukrainians wholesale.

The German invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941 is remembered as Hitler’s most catastrophic military mistake. But in 1941 it didn’t seem to be a mistake at all. “Everyone thought at the beginning that the war will result in the complete defeat of the Soviet Union,” said Aleksey Bris, who was an 18-year-old Ukrainian student in 1941.". . .

. . ."But then, after a moment’s reflection, I realized that this could never have happened. The whole nature of Nazism meant that after the initial euphoria of their “liberation” from Soviet rule wore off, Ukrainians were destined to experience the Nazis as some of the cruelest conquerors in history.". . .

Not even the Communist Holodomor surpassed Hitler's genocide!

A Brief History of Ukraine-Russia Relations    

Seven million Ukrainians died during the Holodomor. Some scholars say Stalin did this to crush the Ukrainian independence movement, and the Holodomor was verboten ‌until the waning years of the USSR.  Then, in World War 2 (WW2), Ukraine’s location between the great powers turned it into a meat grinder. Having to endure both the Wehrmacht and the Red Army, many millions of Ukrainians died, millions more became homeless, and the conflict destroyed the country’s wealth.  The Holodomor translates roughly to “death by hunger” in Ukrainian. 

Holodomor Memorial, Kyiv. Holodomor means, “death by starvation

26 Horrifying Photos Of Holodomor, The Ukrainian Famine That Killed Millions (allthatsinteresting.com)

All the above to say that Ukrainians do not have a pleasant history with the Russians.

Will CNN finally stop talking about Trump?

 Silvio Canto, Jr.    "There is a new kid in town.  We are talking about Chris Licht, the apparent new boss over at CNN, the ratings-challenged network that obsessed itself into irrelevancy by talking about Trump 24/7.

"This is the story at Axios:    

Under new chief Chris Licht, CNN will dial down the prime-time partisanship and double down on the network's news-gathering muscle, top sources tell me.

Why it matters: Ratings are secondary to credibility, in the view of Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav, who's taking over CNN.

Jeff Zucker's successor at the CNN helm will be Licht -- showrunner of "The Late Show with Stephen Colbert" and a popular, pioneering producer who knows his way around America's top control rooms.

"We wish Mr. Licht well.  At the same time, let's hope that the new leadership understands just how bad things are between CNN and viewers.

"First, the ratings are terrible.  Forbes reports that Prime Time Down Nearly 70% In Key Demo.  I am no expert on TV or "demo" but down 70% is pretty bad.

"Second, and this is critical, the hosts are just preaching to the choir and the choir is losing members.  So they should replace the lineup and find some news readers who avoid controversy or opinions.  They should bring back the "Headline News" format from the 1980s or the 30-minute newscast around the clock.

"Finally, they should consider a name change. CNN is toxic. I don't know what the new name should be but anything but CNN has to be an improvement.

"It's amazing they set out to destroy to destroy Trump and ended up destroying themselves. There is a lesson there for all of us."

So silly, CNN makes for good parody:

9 Signs You're Watching Too Much CNN | The Babylon Bee  . . .2. You still think one of these investigations is going to “get” Trump. The walls are closing in. Any day now.

The Babylon Bee Presents: Top CNN Moments Of 2021 | The Babylon Bee

. . .November: CNN Reports On 'Deadly Boat Accident' At Pearl Harbor

The Babylon Bee | Fake News You Can Trust

Ukraine conflict: Israel helps evacuate Lebanese, Syrians, Egyptians

 Ukraine Conflict: Israel Helps Evacuate Lebanese, Syrians, Egyptians - I24NEWS

" 'We’ll help anyone who we can help to get to the border,' Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman says

"Israel's Foreign Ministry confirmed on Sunday that diplomats assisted Lebanese, Syrian and Egyptian nationals in evacuating from war-torn Ukraine, Haaretz reported.

"A ministry spokesperson said that citizens of several countries in the region, including those officially in a state of war with the Jewish state, boarded a bus on the Polish side of the border organized by Israeli diplomats.". . .