RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/biden-wants-blame-debt-crisis-group-cant-avoid-economic-incompetence

President Biden says Republicans want to tank the debt-ceiling talks because they know a default would bring down the economy and hurt his re-election bid. He is wrong, for three reasons: 

The economy is already barreling towards recession, regardless of the debt-limit debate;

Biden’s re-election hopes are dim, independent of the economic outlook;
Biden has it backwards. He knows a recession looms, thanks to his reckless spending, and hopes to pin it on the GOP. Hence, the scary talk from Treasury Secretary Yellen about the catastrophic impact of default.

Biden is being dishonest with the American people. When the Conference Board puts the odds of a recession over the next 12 months at 99%, a position the pre-dates the debt ceiling debate, you can bet a downturn is coming.  

President Joe Biden is trying to lay the debt-crisis blame on Republicans, despite his own big-spending decisions.

After assuming the Oval Office, President Joe Biden and his Democrat colleagues blew out trillions of dollars in unnecessary spending (long past the COVID-19 emergency), igniting an overheated economy and rampant inflation. Fed Chair Jay Powell let the embers smolder far too long, worried that raising interest rates might cost him his reappointment bid. Finally, in March 2022, he initiated one of the most aggressive rate hiking cycles in our country’s history. 

Changes in monetary policy impact the economy with a 12- to 18-month lag; we are now seeing the fall-out from 10 rate increases. Generally, interest-rate sensitive industries like housing are hit first and, sure enough, housing starts and permits are now down substantially from last year.  

In addition to housing, jacking up interest rates has led to the failures of three large U.S. banks, which has cast a shadow over credit. Solvent banks are lending more cautiously, anxious about unrealized losses on their balance sheets and deposit outflows. That slows economic growth. 

Another fallout from rapid interest rate hikes is that stock and bond markets sold off sharply last year. The S&P 500 was down nearly 20% and the bond market suffered one of the worst years ever. Financial losses impact consumer sentiment, which has tumbled, and also spending. 

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2023/05/obama_torpedoed_us_relations_with_russia__to_perpetuate_lies_about_trump_durham_report_found.html

In late 2016, Obama was angry.

Oh, not about the election of Donald Trump, of course, if his public statements were any indication.

He was supposedly angry, so angry, at Russia and its supposed interference in our 2016 election that he got out his pen and phone and expelled 35 Russian diplomats. 

Here is what the New York Times reported:

WASHINGTON — President Obama struck back at Russia on Thursday for its efforts to influence the 2016 election, ejecting 35 suspected Russian intelligence operatives from the United States and imposing sanctions on Russia’s two leading intelligence services.

The administration also penalized four top officers of one of those services, the powerful military intelligence unit known as the G.R.U.

Intelligence agencies have concluded that the G.R.U. ordered the attacks on the Democratic National Committee and other political organizations, with the approval of the Kremlin, and ultimately enabled the publication of the emails it harvested to benefit Donald J. Trump’s campaign.

The Hill reported that it was quite an array of sanctions at the time:

The measures include a slate of economic sanctions, diplomatic censure, and public “naming and shaming.” The president also hinted at possible covert cyber measures but did not provide details. 

The president also announced that the State Department will expel 35 Russian intelligence operatives and shutter two Russian compounds, in Maryland and New York, used by Russia for intelligence purposes. 

The Times added:

Taken together, the sweeping actions announced by the White House, the Treasury, the State Department and intelligence agencies on Thursday amount to the strongest American response yet to a state-sponsored cyberattack. They also appeared intended to box in President-elect Trump, who will now have to decide whether to lift the sanctions on Russian intelligence agencies when he takes office next month.

Obama even amended his own executive order to extend his powers to sanction, with travel bans and asset freezes on some Russian officials.

https://themessenger.com/opinion/wheres-a-special-counsel-when-you-need-one

Some people say nothing is certain in this life. I beg to differ, and I defy anyone to show that I have this wrong: If Donald Trump were president, and one of his sons had been under investigation by his Department of Justice (DOJ) for several years with no action, and his attorney general had stubbornly declined to appoint a special counsel — lamely contending that there was no insuperable conflict of interest for the president’s Justice Department to investigate the president’s son — that would be the lead story in nearly every press outlet. The outrage in Washington would be palpable.  

Of course, it wouldn’t come to that. The media-Democrat complex drumbeat would be too tirelessly cacophonous. Conservative pundits would concede that, while they were generally skeptical of special counsels, the Justice Department is bound by regulations to appoint one when there are (a) good-faith grounds for an investigation or prosecution, and (b) a conflict of interest that prevents the Justice Department from credibly investigating or prosecuting the matter in the normal course.

Congressional Democrats would inveigh on the Capitol steps, in its hearing rooms, and in ceaseless cable TV interviews from the Rotunda, that a special counsel must be appointed — and, if not, then the attorney general should be held in contempt of Congress or perhaps even impeached. It would not take long before the Republican-controlled Justice Department wilted, just as the Trump Justice Department did in 2017, amid the hysteria of the “Russiagate” farce and the equally nonsensical claim that Trump’s firing of then-FBI director James Comey amounted to an “obstruction” of the supposed Russia-collusion caper (i.e., the investigation that the FBI knew by then was baseless, according to the Durham Report). And just as the Bush DOJ did in 2003, in response to a manufactured controversy over the leak of a CIA officer’s identity (under circumstances where investigators already knew who the leaker was and that the leak had not violated federal law).