RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://townhall.com/columnists/christianjosi/2021/10/28/building-back-bonkers-n2598145

Were there an American Book of Bad Ideas, progressives’ old reliable fever-dream tax proposals would be chapter one. Just when we think we have seen it all, someone steps up to make the dumb story dumber. In fact, it’s happening right now as Democrats, desperate to push through some sort of legislative package that will appeal to people who aren’t entirely insane and save face before an already dubious public, now have to deal with Senator Ron Wyden’s (D-OR) bonkers “Billionaires Income Tax.” Talk about bad timing.

Of all the wrongheaded nonsense that’s floated in and out of proposed legislative vehicles for President Biden’s “Build Back Better” punchbowl, Wyden’s 11th hour turd is by far the most wild-eyed of them all. The plan would tax tradable assets (think stocks) in the name of taxing the rich. One of the many problems here beyond general obnoxiousness has to do with constitutionality. Taxation is not traditionally imposed until someone sells an asset or engages in a so called “taxable event.” The reason why Democrats want this is so they can claim they have found the money to pay for their uberwoke agenda now, and deal with trifling matters like constitutionality later.

How can Democratic party leadership not see how reckless these utterly unworkable tax-grabs look to voters? Well, in this case, it appears at least some of them can, as evidenced in Politico Wednesday:

“The jeering section includes House Ways and Means Chair Richard Neal (D-Mass.), who feels like months of work from his panel is being undercut…” 

“Rep. Dan Kildee (D-Mich.) chimed in that Wyden’s plan is ‘just a public relations idea, it’s not a substantive policy suggestion.’ Even those who support the concept, like Rep. Peter Welch (D-Vt.), complained it’s coming too late given its complexity.” 

Or, perhaps to put the sentiments of these and many other congressional Democrats in plainer terms, it’s like Dems have smoke pouring out of all four engines and Wyden is taking bong hits in the back row of the plane.

Unsurprisingly, the targets of this piece of work, which actually would be the first tax in American history on unrealized gains, aren‘t down with the Wyden plan, which is really a culmination of years of huddling and scheming between Wyden, and his partners in wack, Sens. Bernie Sanders ( D-VT) and Elizabeth Warren (D-MA). (The very thought of taxing unrealized capital gains is a preview of things to come from the party of broken supply chains and hyperinflation. When you run out of real money, just start taxing hypothetical money).

https://newswithviews.com/hell-hath-no-fury/

Yes, Shakespeare said that of “a woman scorned.” But even the English bard could never have imagined the red-hot rage of multimillions of women who learned that the children they love and protect and would give their lives for were being taught by their local friendly teachers to hate themselves and hate their country.

As everyone now knows, there has been a massive eruption of nationwide protests as tens, no hundreds, no thousands of mostly Muslim women (and a few of their husbands) have descended on School Board meetings across the country to protest the fact that Critical Race Theory (CRT)is now being inflicted on their children, starting in kindergarten.

They are telling the powers-that-be how much they resent that their children will be taught that Muslims are evil and dangerous––going back to the problems President Thomas Jefferson had with the treacherous Muslim Barbary Pirates––and that this kind of information would be used to warp the minds of their innocent children.

These impassioned Muslim mothers (and some fathers) insist that they are upright and contributory American citizens who benefit America, have been elected to high public office, and pay their taxes. And they list the historical events they insist is their prerogative—and not the role of racist teachers––to explain to their children:

The deadly bombing of Marine headquarters in Lebanon in 1983, in which 240 American Marines and 21 American seamen were annihilated, thanks to a Muslim suicide bomber.
The September 11, 2001, attack on America, in which nearly 3,000 Americans were murdered by Muslims who brought down the Twin Towers, attacked the Pentagon, and sought to obliterate the White House.
The thousands of Muslim jihadist attacks around the world, going back decades and continuing to this day.
The existence––here in America––of female genital mutilation (FGM) performed on four- and five-year-old girls, ostensibly to suppress their sexuality.
The existence––here in America––of Honor Killings (i.e., murder) to punish Americanized Muslim high school girls who dare to date an American schoolmate.
The relentless propaganda their children are exposed to, for instance a cartoon that depicts the Koranic story of Jews being turned into apes.
And just the other day, a 27-year-old Muslim man who murdered his mother because she converted to Christianity.

Who can blame these Muslim women (and some husbands) for protesting and even yelling at the School Board members and even “threatening” to take their children out of school for contaminating their innocent children with what they define as racist misinformation against what even American presidents have called “the religion of peace”?

https://spectatorworld.com/topic/joe-biden-failure-g20-cop26-rome-glasgow/

How’s the ice cream in Rome? Joe Biden is about to find out. Word is he is excited about the gelato, which is A-OK, since it may distract him from the fact that he has nothing to report when he gets there.

The president — I mean, Joe Biden — was supposed to reestablish “normality” to an office so badly bruised by the mad tweeter — no, make that “ex-tweeter” — who came before.

“Normality” was one big selling point. The other was Biden’s vaunted foreign policy experience. Reality check one: was Joe Biden’s performance at that town hall with Anderson Cooper last week an exhibition of “normality”? Or was it yet another disagreeable instance of elder abuse, parading a man suffering from senile dementia before the cameras? Is there anything normal about that angry and intemperate old man.

And here’s reality check number two: the world historical disaster that was our collapse in Afghanistan, the likes of which we haven’t seen since at least the fall of Saigon and maybe not since William Elphinstone fled Kabul in 1842 with a crew of 16,000, precisely one of whom made it out alive. Joe Biden called the evacuation and collapse of Afghanistan an “extraordinary success.”  I’m told that the Chinese are having “Extraordinary Success” printed on t-shirts, to go along with ones bearing the legend “Let’s Go Brandon.”

High on the agenda in Rome is a “global minimum tax,” a truly grotesque idea that only someone who had given up on the nation state, as many of the participants in Rome will have already done, could entertain seriously. Joe had to leave the Swamp before Congress voted on his profligate infrastructure spending bill, mostly because it is not sufficiently profligate to suit the really crazed lefties who never learned how to count. A “global minimum tax” is just a gigantic wealth redistribution scheme, but why should rich countries subsidize poor ones? They shouldn’t, and besides declaring a supranational tax is one thing; enforcing it is something else.

Biden’s lack of a vote is also going to be a problem after he leaves Rome and travels to Glasgow to talk about “climate change.” He was supposed to have lots of money for that, too. Glasgow is a good place to hold a conference on climate change, because the weather there is always changing, though of course partisans of the green agenda don’t mean “weather” when they utter the word “climate.”