Displaying the most recent of 90901 posts written by

Ruth King

Jeff Bezos calls out Joe Biden’s latest inflation claim: ‘Straight misdirection or a deep misunderstanding’ Lawrence Richard –

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/jeff-bezos-calls-out-joe-biden-s-latest-inflation-claim-straight-misdirection-or-a-deep-misunderstanding/ar-AAZ8m8L?ocid=&cvid=15ca4f845a4442969abdac9b8359a5a1

After President Joe Biden called on companies running gas stations to lower the price of gas, Jeff Bezos accused the U.S. president of misleading the public or said he lacked a “basic” understanding of the forces that actually drive prices.

“Ouch. Inflation is far too important a problem for the White House to keep making statements like this,” Bezos said in a tweet Saturday evening.

In the initial tweet, Biden made a direct appeal to gas stations and encouraged them to simply charge less for gasoline.

“My message to the companies running gas stations and setting prices at the pump is simple: this is a time of war and global peril. Bring down the price you are charging at the pump to reflect the cost you’re paying for the product,” Biden said Saturday morning.

The president urged compliance, without any hesitation.

“And do it now,” he ordered.

Bezos said the tweet was very telling to him and may reveal how little Biden knows about the market.

“It’s either straight ahead misdirection or a deep misunderstanding of basic market dynamics,” Bezos added in his response.

Biden Plays Pretend Kenin M. Spivak

https://americanmind.org/salvo/biden-plays-pretend/

The President is economically illiterate, delusional, a liar, or all three about the probability and causes of a recession.

The Biden administration has huffed and puffed its adherence to progressive dogma and, as a result, it is about to blow down the American economy. The situation won’t improve until the Administration resolves its catalepsy.

In March, I described the substantial risk that America was heading toward a recession. A recession may already have begun, and it will certainly soon do so if the Biden White House  does not immediately change course on energy and spending.

In June, U.S. and European economies slowed sharply as surging prices weakened demand. U.S. retail sales fell in May, and existing home sales have declined for four consecutive months. Economists surveyed by the Wall Street Journal put the risk of a recession in the next 12 months at 44 percent, a level usually seen only on the brink of, or during, recessions.

The classic definition of a recession is two consecutive quarters during which Gross Domestic Product (GDP) declines. The U.S. has just completed one quarter during which GDP declined at an annual rate of 1.5 percent. The Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta is projecting a flat second quarter. If results tilt down by just one dollar, that would make two consecutive quarters of decline.

Still suffering at the pump? Get used to it — it’s Joe Biden’s liberal world order By Miranda Devine

https://nypost.com/2022/07/03/get-used-to-suffering-at-the-pump-its-joes-world-order/

If you had the unpleasant experience this July Fourth weekend of paying close to $5 for a gallon of gas, you can always comfort yourself with the idea that your pain is for a good cause: the “liberal world order.” 

So said Brian Deese, White House director of the National Economic Council, when he was asked on CNN: “What do you say to those families who say, ‘Listen, we can’t afford to pay $4.85 a gallon for months, if not years. This is just not sustainable’?”

Deese, like his boss Joe Biden, is unmoved by the suffering of ordinary Americans, more than two-thirds of whom say gas-price increases are causing them hardship, according to a recent Gallup poll.

“This is about the future of the liberal world order, and we have to stand firm” until Ukraine defeats Russia, declared Deese.

He was echoing the president, who had referenced the Ukraine war a few hours earlier in Madrid, when he dismissed a similar question: “The war has pushed prices up. [Oil] could go as high as $200 a barrel . . . How long is it fair to expect American drivers and drivers around the world to pay that premium for this war?”

Biden responded with cold indifference: “As long as it takes,” he said.

Where’s the empathy?

That’s quite some take from a president who ran on the illusion that he possesses special empathy.

Taking a page from Lenin’s playbook: Roger Kimball

https://spectatorworld.com/topic/bons-mots-and-bad-money-inflation/

I have often been struck by the number of pithy observations — revelatory, pointed or simply true — that were not said by the person to whom they are attributed. Vladimir Lenin apparently never said (in Russian or in English) that “the way to crush the bourgeoisie is to grind them between the millstones of taxation and inflation.”

Mark Twain, to whom many amusing remarks have been falsely attributed, apparently did not contend that reports of his death had been greatly exaggerated. Edmund Burke neither said nor wrote that evil would triumph if good men did nothing.

Churchill, like Twain a magnet for orphaned mots seeking parents, did not say that “the idea that a nation can tax itself into prosperity is one of the crudest delusions which has ever befuddled the human mind.

Tocqueville, yet another favored repository of crisp admonitory apothegms, did not point out that “the American Republic will endure until the day Congress discovers that it can bribe the public with the public’s money.”

One thing to note about these pairings of putative author and scintillating observation is how plausible the linkage always is. Lenin certainly could have made that remark about grinding the bourgeoisie: he was keen on deploying any available millstones to destroy the class he abominated. Unlike Chief Justice John Marshall, who pointed out during the economic crisis of 1819 the great danger that “the power to tax involves the power to destroy,” Lenin thought of its destructiveness as an advantage.

As for inflation, has anyone improved upon Ronald Reagan’s warning that “inflation is as violent as a mugger, as frightening as an armed robber, and as deadly as a hitman”?

Yes, Ukraine has a Nazi problem, and its name is Andrej Melnyk by David Goldman

https://pjmedia.com/spengler/2022/07/03/auto-draft-4-n1610144

 “Donald Trump is magnificently right about Ukraine.” For all his failings—and I have not hesitated to call attention to them—Trump is a realist who wants a good deal for the United States, and he has contempt for the utopians who will risk the American homeland to propagate their vision of a new world order.”

Germany’s leading center-right newspaper Die Welt posted a banner headline at the top of its page last Friday evening just before Shabbat came in here in New York: “[Ukrainian Ambassador to Germany Andrej] Melnyk’s statement trivializes the Holocaust.” In a radio interview last week, Melnyk compared Ukrainian Nazi leader Stephan Bandera to Robin Hood and vehemently denied—in the face of massive historical documentation—that Bandera had helped to murder 800,000 Ukrainian Jews during World War II.” The Banderites also helped to murder between 40,000 and 100,000 Poles.

Poland’s embassy to Berlin also denounced Melnyk’s statement.

Yet there was barely a peep in the American press—I found a single passing mention in the Washington Post and nothing elsewhere—and not a word from any American Jewish organization.

The incident was a top item in every major German news outlet, but unmentionable in the American media, not to mention polite company. Echo-chamber-driven group-think has achieved a new dimension of control.

Israel’s embassy to Germany had declared: “The statements of the Ukrainian Ambassador are a distortion of the historical facts, a trivialization of the Holocaust and an insult to those who were murdered by Bandera and his people. The statements of the ambassador undermine not only the values that we all treasure, but also undermine the brave fight of the Ukrainian people to live in peace and with democratic values.”

A Court for the Constitution The historic Supreme Court term that ended this week was a triumph for originalism.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/a-supreme-court-for-the-constitution-originalism-dobbs-abortion-religious-liberty-11656711597?mod=opinion_lead_pos1

A funny thing happened on the way to the supposedly partisan Supreme Court finishing its term: It ruled for the Biden Administration on immigration. Somehow that case isn’t making the dastardly hit list of those eager to declare that the Court is now “illegitimate,” but the Justices applied the law regardless of the policy and decided for the executive branch.(See nearby for elaboration.)

This isn’t a partisan Court looking for preferred policy outcomes. It’s a Court that hews to the tenets of originalism, with different shades of emphasis by different Justices. The Court’s jurisprudence is focused more than anything else on who under the Constitution gets to decide policy, not what that policy should be.

This is the main reason Democrats and the press corps are furious about the Court’s decisions. For decades they have counted on a majority of Justices to deliver or bless the policy results they want: on abortion, voting rights, healthcare, racial preferences, climate and economic regulation. You name it, the Court found ways to deliver it with balancing tests, trimester analysis, and the discovery of unenumerated rights between the lines of the Constitution’s text.

For decades conservative critics have argued that the role of the Court should be different—supporting rights that are actually in the Constitution, but otherwise enforcing the separation of powers so each branch of government stays in its lane as defined by the Founders. With the arrival of three new Justices nominated by Donald Trump and shepherded to confirmation by GOP Senate leader Mitch McConnell, that Court has arrived.

The result is the opposite of judicial imperialism. In the Dobbs abortion case, the Court is trying to extricate itself from abortion policy debates. As Justice Brett Kavanaugh put it, “the Constitution is neutral on the issue of abortion.” Policy will now be set by legislators in the states as informed by voters, subject to a low-level of legal review known as the “rational basis” test.

The political result may be surprising. The right-to-life movement now must persuade voters across 50 states, and most voters favor some limits on abortion but not an outright ban. If Republicans sound like moral scolds and can’t make their case with compassion for women, they will lose the debate. If Republicans seek a national ban on abortion via Congress, the Court could strike it down. The Court majority in Dobbs has invigorated democracy and federalism.

THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE- A MAGNIFICENT DOCUMENT

HAPPY HOLIDAY In Congress, July 4, 1776 The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America, When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station […]

CANCELLING GEORGE WASHINGTON-REALLY?

The lamentable unvarnished truth about our magnificent first president is that he owned slaves. That barbaric custom was prevalent then, enabled by Black African and Caribbean slave traders.

That was then and the custom was terminated by war, abolition, and laws set by Congress and courts.

Slavery, in its most brutal forms exists today in Africa and China, but that fact does not seem to ruffle the feathers of the cancel-culture groupies.

While Western nations had public, picnic like public executions and reigns of chaos and terror, our founding fathers crafted a democracy like no other. And our freedoms envisioned by George Washington still hold, however shaken by leftist intentions.

Happy Independence Day! God bless America! rsk

Biden Admin and EU Appease Mullahs, Iran Regime Employs More Terror Cells by Majid Rafizadeh

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18665/biden-eu-appease-iran

Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian bragged that he had “long but positive meeting” with European Union foreign policy chief Josep Borrell, and added that “What is important for Iran is to fully receive the economic benefits of the 2015 accord.”

“The message for the Biden administration [regarding the attempted kidnapping of a US citizen last year], which has frequently proclaimed its intention to defend pro-democracy dissidents, is that Iran and other foreign dictatorships won’t shrink from launching attacks inside the United States unless deterred….'” – The Washington Post, July 10, 2021.

The Iranian regime is not going to change until it has all the world governed under one Islamist regime — or until it is stopped. This objective comes as a part of the theocratic establishment’s core revolutionary principle: exporting its revolution to other countries.

“We shall export our revolution to the whole world. Until the cry ‘There is no god but Allah’ resounds over the whole world, there will be struggle.” — The Islamic Republic of Iran’s founding Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.

The European Union is doing all it can to revive the nuclear deal and open the flow of funds to the Iranian regime, lift sanctions against Tehran, and put the ruling mullahs of the Islamic Republic on a legal path to becoming a nuclear state.

European Union foreign policy chief Josep Borrell recently travelled to the Islamic Republic, a “top state sponsor of terrorism” according to the State Department, in order to “reverse current tensions” and seal the nuclear deal. Apparently, Borrell succeeded at resuming the nuclear talks. Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian bragged that he had “long but positive meeting” with Borrell on June 25, and added that “What is important for Iran is to fully receive the economic benefits of the 2015 accord”.

Intriguingly, Borrell’s visit to Iran came after Turkey detained eight members of an Iranian cell who were planning to assassinate Israelis. “The hitmen in the assassination team,” stated Turkey’s private IHA news agency, “who settled in two separate rooms on the second and fourth floors of a hotel in Beyoglu, were [detained] with a large number of weapons and ammunition.”

We’re not only talking about the murder of innocent Israeli tourists,” Israel’s then Foreign Minister Yair Lapid warned, “but also a clear violation of Turkish sovereignty by Iranian terror.”

Poor Cassidy Hutchinson: Naïve, used and abused… or shamelessly ambitious? By Patricia McCarthy

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2022/07/poor_cassidy_hutchinson_nave_used_and_abused_or_shamelessly_ambitious.html

“She perhaps sought fame and fortune but she was, in the end, used and abused, by Cheney, the committee at large and by the media.”

The hapless Cassidy Hutchinson “testified” before the moonbat panel of Trump haters.  Her “testimony” was fraught with “I was in the vicinity of a conversation,” “I heard something to the effect of,”  “ I overheard,”…..the girl could testify only to hearsay.  Her performance was pathetic.  She was used and abused, most probably by Liz Cheney.  The other members of the committee seemed to know not a thing about what this “emergency witness” was going to say.  She was Liz’s surprise witness and, comically, no one thought to check her story which was chock full of lies, lies that were exposed within hours of that “emergency testimony.”   

So, who is this pitiful young woman?  She was an aide to Mark Meadows, about whom she lied as well; neither he nor Guliani sought pardons from President Trump.  The Secret Service agents she cited have both denied her claims that Trump “grabbed the steering wheel” or assaulted one of them in an attempt to go to the Capitol that day.  She even identified a note as one she had written that day when even Cheney knew that was a lie; it was written by Eric Herschmann.  She was apparently hoping for a job with President Trump at Mar A Lago but then was not hired for a position there.  Could she be mad?  

As Greg Gutfield commented, her appearance “made the Hindenburg look like a fender bender.”  Keep in mind that she had testified five times before this committee previously but then changed lawyers and suddenly came up with an entirely different story.  Was she threatened?  Paid a large amount of money? Promised fame and fortune?  Maybe she just wanted her five minutes of fame.  She got less than that before her tall tale was exposed as a tissue of lies.