RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://amgreatness.com/2021/05/12/biden-mocks-ancient-wisdom/

Human nature stays the same across time and space. That is why there used to be predictable political, economic, and social behavior that all countries understood.

The supply of money governs inflation. Print it without either greater productivity or more goods and services, and the currency cheapens. Yet America apparently rejects that primordial truism.

The United States has borrowed about $29 trillion in debt—about 130 percent of its annual gross domestic product. The government will run up a $2.3 trillion annual budget deficit in 2021—after a $3.1 trillion deficit the year before.

The Biden Administration still wants to borrow more—another $2 trillion in new social programs and “infrastructure.”

In the crazy last 100 days, the price of everything from lumber, food, and gas to cars and houses has soared. Yet many interest rates are still stuck at or below three percent.

Jobs are plentiful; workers are not. Is that a surprise when government cash handouts discourage the unemployed from taking a pay cut to go back to work?

After being freed from 13 months of quarantine, Americans are splurging. But meeting their huge pent-up demand is causing shortages.

Producers fear the Biden Administration’s loose talk of impending higher income, capital gains, estate, and user taxes, along with more regulations and cutbacks in energy development.

Are the old laws really obsolete, warning not to print money, while expanding government debt, keeping interest rates almost at zero, and discouraging employment, production, and thrift? That dangerous formula used to ensure inflation, followed by ruinous stagflation.

After the death of George Floyd while in Minneapolis police custody, many big cities slashed their police budgets. Mayors damned or defunded their departments. In terror of being fired or ruined for any use of force, patrol officers slowed down response times to inner-city violence,

The result?

In almost every major city—Baltimore, Los Angeles, New York, St. Louis, Washington—violent crimes and homicides have grown by double digits over the previous year. 

State and local governments believed that they were exempt from primeval laws of deterrence that warned when criminals assumed they would not be caught and punished, then they committed more crimes. 

The same dangers of ignoring unchanging human nature apply to foreign policy. 

Aggressive opponents such as Iran, North Korea, China, Russia, and the West Bank expect that the new Biden Administration will ignore their brinkmanship. They assume it will cut American defenses. And Biden certainly sounds to them more critical of the prior Trump foreign policy than of America’s enemies. So why not take previously unwarranted risks? 

https://www.nationalreview.com/2021/05/biden-is-off-to-a-disastrous-start/

A border crisis, inflation, a distorted job market, a pipeline fiasco . . . yet Biden’s in denial either about the existence of these problems or his role in fixing them.

P residents aren’t supreme beings imbued with the power to dictate economic conditions, pandemics, or international events. We give them far too much credit and blame for the vagaries of the world.

That said, there are some things that presidents do have power to influence. The location of MLB’s All-Star Game, for instance, is not Joe Biden’s bailiwick. This particular economic recovery is. The COVID downturn wasn’t an organic event precipitated by unforeseeable underlying economic factors. It was an event created by state lockdowns, coupled with widespread consumer fear. So, with lockdowns easing and vaccines entering arms, a vibrant economic bounce-back should be a slam dunk for the president.

Instead, Biden couldn’t resist the opportunity to stuff expensive, technocratic, completely unrelated agenda items into his “rescue” packages. And disincentivizing work and investments, threatening to raise taxes and spike energy prices, and pumping trillions into the economy tends to dampen growth.

Economists expected the country to add about 1 million jobs in April, but we came up 800,000 jobs short. March’s gains were also revised down another 140,000. Leftists pundits and wonks, as is their wont when Democrats hold power, were “perplexed” by the bad numbers. And Biden is simply in denial. “There’s been a lot of discussion since Friday’s report that people are being paid to stay home rather than go to work,” Biden explained. “We don’t see much evidence of that.”

There are 7.5 million jobs available in the United States, but only 270,000 were filled. And Americans are getting $300-a-week bonus checks to stay home. As Bank of America economist Joseph Song noted, even those making $32,000 a year would get a raise by going on unemployment. That seems like evidence.

“I want to put today’s job report in perspective,” Biden also explained. “Quite frankly we’re moving more rapidly than I thought we would.” So, Biden expected a bigger-than-800,000 miss on jobs? That’s quite the admission. Does anyone believe this? Former President Obama, who presided over the slowest economic recovery in history, also played this game. His Council of Economic Advisers once predicted his 2009 stimulus bill would create 4.6 percent growth by 2012. It came nowhere close, of course, yet the media kept recalibrating the definition of success. They’re doing it again.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2021/05/biden-has-emboldened-israels-enemies/

This week, well over 1,000 rockets have been launched into Israel by Palestinian terrorists operating out of Gaza. The rockets have been aimed at schools, at Israeli civilians in the highly populated Tel Aviv area, and — in a major escalation — at Ben Gurion Airport, which connects Israel with the outside world.

Due to the incredible performance of its Iron Dome missile-defense system, Israel has been able to minimize its casualties. But because no system is perfect, and with Hamas and Islamic Jihad launching hundreds of missiles simultaneously, some have managed to slip through, doing damage to property and killing several Israelis, including a father and daughter in the city of Lod and a five-year-old boy in Sderot.

Understandably, Israel has responded with air strikes targeting terrorists in Gaza and their infrastructure. Israelis go to great lengths to minimize civilian casualties. They have notified Gazans of impending attacks and have employed the practice of “roof knocking,” whereby they drop nonexplosive devices on buildings to alert residents that it is about to be targeted by an air strike so they have time to vacate. 

The terrorist groups Hamas and Islamic Jihad routinely fire and store rockets in civilian areas. This tactic has naturally put more Palestinians in harm’s way. Indeed, this is part of the strategy, as civilian casualties in Gaza help the groups to gain support among the international community, and on the American left.

The latest wave of rocket attacks came after escalating Palestinian riots in Jerusalem, which related to two separate issues, both of which have been completely distorted by the media.

One involves a legal dispute over several properties in Sheikh Jarrah, where Palestinian tenants with expired leases (or no leases at all) have been living. Israel’s lower court has ruled that Jewish owners had valid title to these properties, in which Jews lived prior to being driven out by Jordan during the 1948 war. The dispute, which is set to go before Israel’s supreme court, was one trigger for recent rioting by Palestinians.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/05/never-ending-nevertrumpers-bruce-thornton/

In the annals of American history, the campaign and ensuing administration of Donald Trump stand out for the intensity of hatred The Donald aroused not just among Democrats, but Republicans as well. That progressives would despise a president whose slogan was “Make America Great Again” is no surprise. The Left’s hatred of the U.S. has been obvious for decades. The real surprise came from self-identified conservative Republicans whose irrational attacks on Trump’s brash, demotic persona made explicit what many of us always suspected: That they have more in common with their fellow cognitive elites than they do with their political base who do not belong with the bicoastal and university-town political grandees.

Despite the wages of functioning as a fifth column for the progressive “resistance”–– the most left-wing administration in American history–– the NeverTrump Republicans (NT) are still not giving up. Congressman Liz Cheney, the chairman of the House Republican Conference, is the current prime example, and the Republican caucus should repudiate her attacks on Trump by removing her as the third most powerful member of the House Republican caucus.

Given the stakes of letting this administration keep control of the House and Senate in 2022, Republicans must marginalize those in their caucus who continue to repeat Democrat talking-points and demonize Donald Trump, for whom 75 million people voted and still support in high numbers.

A sign that Cheney is carrying water for an administration that is not liberal or moderate, but outright Leftist, comes from the praise she is getting from Dem politicos and pundits. We need to follow the principle of Antisthenes, the Greek philosopher who after being told rascals were praising him, said he felt as if he’d done something horribly wrong. When a Democrat praises Republican politicians like John McCain, Mitt Romney, George W. Bush, or John Kasich, what they’re really saying is this chump can be rolled and serve the Dems’ partisan interests.

Liz Cheney, or “Lynne” as her new BFF Nancy Pelosi calls her, is in trouble with her caucus for taking to the progressive Pravda, The Washington Post, to attack Donald Trump and any Republican who doesn’t join in the NT damnatio memoriae of one of the most effective––and popular–– conservative presidents since Ronald Reagan. Along the way she recycled some of the partisan political folklore that has grown out of the January 6 attempted “coup” on the part of Trump supporters who supposedly had been riled up by the president’s reckless rhetoric.

Like most NTs, Cheney’s obsession with Trump leads her to unseemly virtue-signaling. In her Post op-ed, she calls for Trump’s ouster from the Republican fold with bombastic civic piety: “Trump is seeking to unravel critical elements of our constitutional structure that make democracy work — confidence in the result of elections and the rule of law. No other American president has ever done this.”

https://www.wsj.com/articles/a-dangerous-pick-at-justice-11620860011?mod=opinion_lead_pos2

Even as the 2020 stolen-election myth continues to tear at the GOP, the Biden Administration is elevating a key figure in the campaign to delegitimize Donald Trump’s election in 2016.

Susan Hennessey of the Brookings Institution announced this week on Twitter that she is joining the Justice Department’s national security division, where Politico reports she will be senior counsel. The post doesn’t require Senate confirmation, but it can play a role in election-related investigations and enforcement.

Ms. Hennessey made her name as a commentator by hyping Russian collusion allegations. A former National Security Agency lawyer, she bestowed phony credibility on the Steele dossier after the 2016 election. In 2017 she wrote that the unlawful leak of National Security Adviser Michael Flynn’s conversations with the Russian ambassador “posed a countervailing set of extraordinary circumstances.” She tweeted in 2019 that the decision to drop charges against Mr. Flynn was “an astonishing assault on the rule of law.”

Ms. Hennessey has an undisguised partisan interest in the Russia probe, which is still being investigated by U.S. Attorney John Durham. After the 2020 election, Ms. Hennessey tweeted that Mr. Durham’s work was “partisan silliness.”

Then there’s the investigation of Rudy Giuliani, who was recently the target of search warrants, apparently over dealings in Ukraine. Leaks to the press—perhaps from Justice—claimed falsely that the FBI had briefed him on a Russian disinformation campaign. Ms. Hennessey is the wrong person to be anywhere near these investigations, or anything that involves her miles-long list of people she loathes.

https://issuesinsights.com/2021/05/13/bidens-stale-rerun-of-that-70s-inflation-show/

Among the young, hip, Woke crowd, faux-nostalgia for the fabulous 1970s is all the rage these days. Well, if it’s the ’70s they want, it’s the ’70s they’ll get. And good and hard, as the saying goes. Seen inflation lately?

April consumer price inflation surged 4.2% over the last 12 months, four times higher than expected. Core inflation, which strips out volatile prices for food and energy, posted its biggest monthly increase since 1981, for a gain of 3% over the last year and the biggest annual increase since 1996.

OK, our inflation is bad, but we’re not quite at 1970s levels yet. During that nasty decade the consumer price index averaged 7.25% annual growth.

Because of inflation, the ’70s are nothing to wax nostalgic about. Energy shortages, blocks-long lines at gas stations, soaring prices for homes, groceries, cars, and restaurant meals and everything in between made the decade a miserable one.

Surging prices decimated the stock market by cutting the real value of corporate earnings and capital gains, and pushed market-based interest rates for even credit-worthy borrowers to over 20%. Gold and other commodities prices soared as investors dumped financial assets in favor of hard, tangible goods. Real investment grinded to a halt. Unemployment rose along with prices, an ugly double-whammy.

Even worse, the ’70s were the decade that the big post World War II gains made by average workers came to a sudden and devastating halt.