Daily News Roundup

RUSH LIMBAUGH REST IN PEACE

Rush’s program that began 33 years ago on national syndication with only 56 radio stations grew to be the most listened-to radio show in the United States, airing on more than 600 stations, according to the show’s website. Up to 27 million people tuned in on a weekly basis.

Mark Levin: When we looked at Rush, we looked up at Rush. Not because he was famous, but because he was an idol when we don’t have a lot of idols, anymore. He changed the conservation, because every day he would promote patriotism. He made it cool to be a patriot. He showed people how to stand up against the tide, the endless tide of tyranny. He had a wonderful family, David Limbaugh, fantastic, his parents, his beautiful wife, all patriots. And so he gave people, I think, strength, he would tell you that all he was doing was reinforcing our principles, reinforcing our faith and family and belief systems.

Mark Steyn: My father liked to caution me with the old saw that the graveyard is full of indispensable men. But, as the conventional bias of the legacy media yielded to something far more severe from the woke billionaires of Social Media, Rush remained the Big Voice on the Right, the largest obstacle to the complete marginalization of conservative ideas in our culture. All of us who labored in his shadows owe it to him to continue the fight. To modify Rush’s tag line: Talent returned to God.

David Horowitz: A great American is gone. Rush Limbaugh devoted his life and his great talents to defending the country he loved against its enemies without and within. Therefore, we have also lost a great warrior in the struggle for human freedom. For America remains – as Lincoln said, “the last best hope of earth.” In the same breath, Lincoln also warned that “we shall nobly save, or meanly lose” this hope. Rush was a shining model for all those patriots who are fighting to nobly save this great human experiment, which is under siege today.

Molly Hemingway: There was no more prominent conservative who represented the right half of the country for 30 years than Rush Limbaugh. It is not too much to say that he gave an entire generation of Americans a way to think and talk about the politics and meaning of America, and that he gave the people a vocabulary to fight back against a portion of the left that has grown increasingly anti-American.

Andrew Klavan: I was out of the country during Rush’s rise to fame, an expatriate in England for most of the nineties. Distant from day-to-day American politics, I was not even aware that my position on the ideological spectrum had changed.There were clues along the way, though. One day, for instance, I read a comment in a London paper by a famous New York literary agent, a friend of mine. She said that she would never agree to handle a book by this new radio personality Rush Limbaugh because of the no-good, very-bad conservative things he stood for. I wrote her a note telling her I thought she was in the wrong. It was voices like Limbaugh’s that were being unfairly silenced and excluded. He and others like him should be allowed to have their say. This seemed to me the proper liberal point of view. Little did I realize.

David Harris, Jr.: When people had questions to ask, Rush was who they went to for answers. He was a wellspring of knowledge. For over three decades liberals tried to find their own Rush Limbaugh including Air America. They all failed miserably. That’s because Rush was one of a kind and we will not see the likes of him for a very long time. The world has lost a prince and a gentleman today and conservatives have lost their greatest hero.

Dex Bahr: Like millions of my fellow Americans, it was like a gut shot hearing the news that Rush Limbaugh went to be with the LORD after succumbing to stage four lung cancer. At first, I was very sad, but I then got an image of Rush just beaming joyfully in the presence of God and it brought a smile to my face. I have never met Mr. Limbaugh, but I can honestly say he changed my life. He is the reason, this American, who also happens to be Black, became a conservative.

Marie Richter: Rush made sense of things that sounded old-fashioned coming from your parents. That was the draw; he bridged the generation gap. He created common ground between family members with conservative bloodlines being divided by culture and the pull on youth by liberal politics. It worked the other way, too — helping young conservatives bring their liberal parents into the fold.
Denise McAllister: Like many others who have listened to Rush since he went national with his radio program in the late eighties, I grieve the loss. He was a vibrant presence in my life — in all our lives — so much like a friend or family member, because he was with us every day on those radio waves.

C. Edmund Wright : The great Rush Limbaugh is gone. Even though it’s been inevitable for a year, it is still shocking. Rush was a true original and had a supersonic career by any measure you can think of. In addition to the obvious, he launched the careers of Sean Hannity and Mark Levin, and inspired dozens of others. He impacted elections, notably the midterm thrashing Democrats received in 1994. He first saved AM radio, then saved FM radio. That is not an overstatement. He almost saved Donald Trump’s second term, which would have been a spectacular swan song.

LENT BEGINS: ASH WEDNESDAY

Fairchild: Learn What Lent Means to Christians
Lent is the Christian season of spiritual preparation before Easter. In Western churches, it begins on Ash Wednesday. During Lent, many Christians observe a period of fasting, repentance, moderation, self-denial, and spiritual discipline. The purpose of the Lenten season is to set aside time for reflection on Jesus Christ—to consider his suffering and his sacrifice, his life, death, burial, and resurrection. During the six weeks of self-examination and reflection, Christians who observe Lent typically make a commitment to fast, or to give up something—a habit, like smoking, watching TV, swearing, or a food or drink, such as sweets, chocolate, or coffee. Some Christians also take on a Lenten discipline, like reading the Bible and spending more time in prayer to draw nearer to God. Strict observers of Lent do not eat meat on Fridays, often opting for fish instead. The goal of these spiritual disciplines is to strengthen the faith of the observer and develop a closer relationship with God. The Significance of 40 Days The 40-day period of Lent is based on two episodes of spiritual testing in the Bible: . . .
Read more at Learn Religions.

NOTABLE QUOTES

Rep. Michael Waltz (R-Fla.) a former Green Beret referring to Capitol Hill: I’m calling it Fort Pelosi at this point.

Selwyn Duke contributor to the New American wrote: Gone are the days when many understood that heroes should reflect all the virtues, those “good moral habits.” Instead, our “heroes” increasingly reflect vices masquerading as “values.” Hence did we transition from “I cannot tell a lie” George Washington — who rival King George III said would be “the greatest man in the world” if he relinquished power (which he did) — to Kamala Harris, a venal power-seeker.

Sean Hannity tweeted: TRUMP JR: Biden is Radical Left’s ‘Dream Puppet’ Because He’ll Sign Whatever They Put in Front of Him

Robert Law, a former Trump administration official responded to Biden urging that the words alien and assimilation be replaced with more welcoming language: By statute, ‘alien’ literally means a person not a U.S. citizen or national. That is not offensive, and neither is ‘assimilation.

Carmen Catanzaro contributor to American Greatness wrote: Trump voters should think long and hard before transferring allegiance to Pence.

PRESIDENT TRUMP

Catanzaro: How Loyal Was Mike Pence?
Keep your friends close and your enemies closer” is a maxim of realpolitik and other matters where the stakes are high. To be effective in practice, an enemy invited into one’s organization needs to be kept truly close—that is, monitored carefully and always held accountable. President Donald Trump appointed many NeverTrumpers and other enemies of his agenda—more significantly, enemies of his voters—to influential posts within his administration. In most cases, these appointees were not “kept close”—at least not close enough to prevent them from undermining his policies, his relationship with his political base, and his viability for reelection. A true standout amid the vipers’ nest of Trump’s enemies who benefited from appointment to his administration is Nikki Haley. As disloyalty goes, she belongs in a class all of her own, enjoying urgings from Bill Kristol to run against Trump in 2020 even as she held office as a Trump appointee. […] Given a witness as untrustworthy as Haley, the question arises: Just how loyal was Mike Pence, anyway? […] As a member of Congress, Pence was never distinguishable in philosophy, rhetoric, or policy from John Boehner or Paul Ryan. As Trump’s running mate both in 2016 and in 2020, Pence resembled Mitt Romney’s 2012 running mate—and Romney himself—more than a fitting understudy to Donald Trump. […] During Trump’s first year in office, when the president indicated he wanted to make good on his promise to pull U.S. troops out of Afghanistan, what did Pence do? […] In 2018, Trump was reported to be openly questioning Pence’s loyalty. This was when Pence attempted to install, as the vice president’s national security adviser, . . . […] In 2019, Pence was at it again.
Read more at American Greatness.

Ingrassia: Poll: 75% Of Republicans Want Trump To Play Prominent Role In GOP
The poll released Monday, just two days after the Senate voted to acquit the former president, surveyed 1,056 adults, with only 21% of Republican respondents noting their desire for Trump to not play such an outsized role in the party moving forward. The poll was conducted between February 11 and 14, as Trump’s impeachment trial was taking place.
Read more at Daily Caller.

GOP

Milikh: The Claremont Institute’s Center for the American Way of Life opens its doors.
America is currently engaged in a regime-level struggle that will preserve or destroy the purpose that has defined it. On one side stands the American way of life, characterized by republican self-government and the habits of mind and character necessary to sustain it. On the other side stands identity politics, which demands the perpetual punishment and humiliation of so-called oppressor groups combined with the unquestioned rule of the so-called marginalized. These two regimes are in conflict and cannot coexist. The regime of identity politics has already conquered nearly all of America’s major institutions and . . . . . […] The nation cannot survive this trajectory. But the conquest of these institutions does not prove that the arc of history bends left. Rather, it has occurred largely because of the weakness of the opposition. […] In the struggle between these two regimes, institutional power and political momentum currently favor the Left. The Right, at present, is not up to the fight. A new Right is needed, one that understands itself as rooted in the noble cause of the American Revolution — unabashed and zealous in its determination to restore political liberty and politics itself. A restored Right must take two broad approaches. First, . . .
Read more at American Mind.

Ginsberg: ‘The Left Wants To Re-Write Our History’: Gov. Kristi Noem Criticizes MSNBC’s Joy Reid
Reid called the national memorial “the stone idol to presidential colonizers” in a Feb. 15 segment of the “Reid Out,” and condemned Noem’s relationship with former President Donald Trump. Noem hit back on Twitter, writing, “The left wants to re-write our history by attacking the leaders who made America the most special country ever.” “It’s our duty to teach our kids the truth,” she added. Noem, a possible dark-horse contender for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, . . .
Read more at Daily Caller.

CHINA: AMERICA’S MORTAL ENEMY

Chnag: As China’s Big Tech Hits America, Biden Signals Surrender
TikTok’s threat to the U.S. goes well beyond the surreptitious collection of data and censorship, however. China has used the app’s algorithm to inflame American public opinion. Engineers working for Douyin, TikTok’s sister site in China, manage TikTok’s algorithms, including those determining which videos are shown to users. That access allows the Chinese government to “boost the signal,” in other words, to curate content to get people to act in certain ways. TikTok is addictive because, through the world’s most sophisticated commercially available artificial intelligence software, it knows its users’ preferences.
That makes the app especially handy for those with malicious designs. […] The Justice Department’s TikTok and WeChat motions fit into a distressing pattern of Biden taking down Trump-era measures designed to protect America from China. The President’s January 20 executive order ended — indefensibly — Trump’s May 1, 2020 ban on the purchase of Chinese-made equipment for the electric grid. Biden’s Treasury Department has also delayed for months a November 2020 ban on Americans investing in companies linked to China’s People’s Liberation Army. […] China’s tech threat to America does not end with WeChat and TikTok. There is no greater danger than that posed by Huawei Technologies, the world’s largest manufacturer of communications networking gear. […] China, with control of 5G — the fifth generation of wireless communication — will be in a position in peacetime to spy and remotely manipulate the world’s smartphones, cars, pacemakers, thermostats, and a multitude of other devices connected to what is referred to as the “Internet of Things.” In times of war, Beijing could paralyze critical infrastructure.
Read more at Gatestone Institute.

PEACEFULLY & PATRIOTICALLY MAKE OUR VOICES HEARD

Pearce: The Three Pillars of the Resistance
We live in disturbed and disturbing times. The new regime installed in Washington DC will step up its advocacy of systemic infanticide and will continue its war on the institution of the family and on religion. It will do so with the active and tyrannical assistance of Big Tech, Big Media, and other globalist juggernauts. In such times, it is important to take a stand. It is, however, equally important to take the right sort of stand. There are three golden rules which need to be followed if we, as individuals, are to be effective in resisting the Plutocrat-Democrat monstrosity. The three rules are based on the two great commandments of Christ that we love the Lord our God and that we love our neighbour. Any resistance which is not founded on these two commandments will not only flounder but will be playing into the hands of the enemy. The first of the three golden rules is that we . . . […] In practical daily terms, the third golden rule of the resistance, . . .
Read more at The Imaginative Conservative.

Merrick: Death And Taxes Can Be Yours!
I am starting today’s piece with a segment from an article I wrote years ago. I am using it here once again in telling my story this morning. It just fits too well! We’ll talk after you have read it …. “Years ago in a Wal-Mart, I was walking past the toy department. A screaming four(?) year-old was demanding that his mom buy him the little car set he had opened and scattered all over the floor. After the young mother had several times declined and asked him to come along with her, the enraged boy threw one of the cars at her, leaving a bloody cut on her forehead. The rattled mom stood there and began slowly counting as some parents do before administering discipline. After she got to ‘five’, the kid stomped his foot and threw another car nearly hitting another shopper. The boy’s face was purple now. Mom started over with ‘one,’ and began sweetly counting again. A crowd had gathered, and a manager was looking at the mess in disbelief. The mother smiled at the boy, held out her hand and again pleaded with him to come with her. And what happened next is one reason why my wife never takes me with her—anywhere. […] You have seen incidents just like that during your own time on this planet. . . . But, guess what?! Now the little ‘Johnny’ I featured in that story is easily voting age. […] Our present day society is currently made up of mostly ripening little Johnnies. Little johnnies know nothing about real life. After spending many years being ‘educated’, they have, for starters, no grasp of history. Little johnnies are only familiar with the fabricated virtual realities that they have been fed and are ever internalizing as their own reality for their entire make-believe lives. Little johnnies (as we saw in his formative years in our opening story) know nothing about effective discipline or the godly veracity/integrity and character which follows that discipline. They only laughingly know about . . . […] While I was growing up, and to this very day, I have often heard frustrated people say, “Why don’t they do something about … (this or that)?” It wasn’t until I became a real Christian* (*having given charge of my sin, my life and my will to the real Jesus Christ), that I realized that I am a member of the “they” mentioned in that question. And that is where I find myself today. On this Earth, I am expected to be . . .
Read more at Canada Free Press.

WUHAN FLU: IT’S POLITICAL

Parry: Life in DeSantis’s Florida: Time Travel to America
At the end of January I watched a video message from the commissioners of the suburban Philadelphia county where my wife and I reside. According to them, it may take Pennsylvania up to a year to administer COVID vaccinations to all persons over the age of 65. We oldsters (my wife and I are 76) were told to register with the county and prepare for a long wait. This information decided the issue of whether or not we should take up residence in Florida for the remaining winter months. Not only would the weather be more congenial, according to our Florida friends, but our chances of receiving the COVID vaccine in a timely manner also would increase exponentially. And, in fact, within 11 days of our arrival in Florida, we received our first jabs of the Moderna vaccine and will receive our second doses in mid-March. We are now among the 2,355,792 persons who have been vaccinated in Florida as of February 13, 2021.
The comparison between Florida’s efficient handling of COVID vaccinations, under the leadership of Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis, and that of Pennsylvania, under Democrat Gov. Tom Wolf, could not be more telling. And the favorable comparisons don’t end there. […] So what has been the response of the Biden regime to the Florida success story? According to this report on RealRawNews.com of a conversation with Gov. DeSantis and federal health officials, Joe Biden threatened to ban domestic travel to and from Florida purportedly in order to prevent the spread of COVID. The article states that, in opposing this unconstitutional and outrageous threat, DeSantis refused to address Biden as “president” and told him to “go f*** himself.” Whether or not that last part is true, Gov. DeSantis confirmed . .
Read more at The American Spectator.

Pregnant doctor celebrates taking COVID vaccine, tragically miscarries days later
A physician-advocate for the experimental COVID-19 vaccines has tragically miscarried her baby in the second trimester of pregnancy just days after publicly celebrating her reception of the injections. Dr. Sara Beltrán Ponce, a Milwaukee resident physician in Radiation Oncology, tweeted on January 28 that she was “14 weeks pregnant and fully vaccinated!” She shared that she had received the experimental COVID vaccine “to protect myself, my baby, my family, my patients, and my community! When it’s available to you, I encourage you to do the same.” Ponce did not specify which of the experimental COVID vaccines she received, . . . Such a sad scenario may have a rational explanation that was known and could be foreseen. In early December of last year, Dr. Michael Yeadon, a former vice president and chief scientist for Pfizer, along with another colleague, petitioned the European Medicines Agency (EMA) for the immediate suspension of all COVID-19 vaccine studies in Europe citing four primary concerns including dangers to mid-term pregnancies. . . . these experimental vaccines are expected to produce anti-bodies to attack “spike proteins” such as COVID-19. However, “spike proteins also contain syncytin-homologous proteins, which are essential for the formation of the placenta in mammals such as humans.”
Read more at Life Site News.

CLIMATE CRISIS: IT’S POLITICAL

cfact: Watch: Morano on Tucker Carlson on Fox News talking Texas’ frozen wind power folly & Fraud of Green New Deal
We’re going to talk to Marc Morano, he’s the publisher of Climate Depot and author of the upcoming book “Green fraud.” He joins us tonight. Mark you saw what happened in texas overnight millions left without power people died and it seems pretty clear that a reckless reliance on windmills is the cause of this disaster is that is that right do you think? Marc Morano: “That is absolutely right. All you have to do is look at the last four decades when it comes to wind power. It is chiefly driven by government policy and subsidies to the point where Warren Buffett famously said years ago that there’s no reason to build windmills without the tax breaks and without the subsidies. So what’s happened is . . .
Read the transcript/Watch the 5 minute interview.

OTHER NEWS

Prager: Given How Flawed Human Nature Is, America Has Been a Remarkable Moral Achievement
Given how flawed human nature is, America has been a remarkable moral achievement. This is the truism that separates the wise man from the fool. This is the truism that separates the left from the anti-left. Those who acknowledge how flawed human nature is compare America to reality. Those who do not, compare America to some utopian image: a country free of inequality, prejudices, intolerance, sexual misbehavior, greed, etc. This divide helps explain why those who hold a biblical worldview — usually religious Jews and Christians — are more likely to appreciate America than those who do not. It is fundamental to Judaism and Christianity that “the will of man’s heart is evil from his youth” (Genesis 8:21). I offer a partial list of bad traits inherent to human nature. When perusing it, one can only marvel at how good a country America became. No. 1: A yearning for power over others. This yearning is what has animated nearly every political leader in history. There are people who do not have a personal craving for power and seek positions of power solely because of a calling. But these people are rare. The American Founders understood this. They created . . . No. 2: . . .
Read more at PJ Media.