RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://amgreatness.com/2023/09/18/how-biden-will-circle-the-wagons/

The strategies of saving the Biden presidency from an impeachment and a Senate trial despite overwhelming evidence of his corruption are starting to emerge.

The Family is confronted with damning evidence from the laptop, from the testimonies of Hunter’s business associates Bobulinksi and Archer, from Ukrainian oligarchs and Viktor Shokin, from IRS whistleblowers, from FBI writs, from a likely pseudonymous Biden trove of 4,000 emails to his son and associates, and from the absolute paranoia of a White House that must constantly change its narrative of denials to adjust to a growing portrait of utter corruption, bribery, and perhaps even the treason of warping U.S. policy to fit Biden family interests.

The Defense in Depth 

One of their strategies is to deny, then hedge, then ignore, then grow silent—and repeat the wash/rinse/spin cycle of stonewalling as many times as necessary to evade the mounting truth.

Insidiously Joe Biden has retreated from his once loud protestations that he supposedly had no idea of what Hunter and his associates were doing. Such a patently dishonest denial set the model that the President would have no compunction about lying to the American people until the evidence of his wrongdoing becomes overwhelming.

But this first line of defense did not crumble for years—only to be replaced by a second line of denial: Biden may have known of Hunter’s shenanigans, but he had no business interests with him. That was another blatant untruth.

And that additional stalling also allowed Biden to ignore the closing walls of incrimination for even more months. When these two forward lines of defense collapsed, as the Biden consortium knew they eventually would, a retreat to a third line of defense followed: yes, Joe knew, after all, of Hunter’s miscreant shakedowns; and, yes, Joe, after all, conceded that from time to time he did meet Hunter’s business associates, and upon requests made phone calls to Hunter’s clientele. But he did not profit from such knowledge and associations. Instead an upright old Joe from Scranton was playing along with the “illusion” of influence peddling: Scranton naiveté is not D.C. criminality.

Biden’s tripartite lines of defense always got shorter and shallower as evidence mounted. But so far Biden has managed to consume 31 months of his presidency through these strategic retreats. His fourth and final line of defense will likely be that he was involved, that he had rather than feigned contact, but that he did nothing other than what scores of other high-ranking politicians do who rub shoulders with would-be miscreants, sycophants, and crooks—and so did not knowingly take “loans” and “gifts” that had strings attached.

It’s not a news story anyone in America ever expected to read, although maybe two-and-a-half years into the Biden administration, we should have learned to expect the unexpected: An unpiloted F-35 combat aircraft is flying somewhere over America on a trajectory known only to itself. The memes are wonderful, but the facts should disturb all of us.

The story sounds like a Cold War farce but, as the local Charleston paper reports, it’s very real:

At least we know that the jet, which was designed to be a stealth fighter, lives up to that reputation.

Image: An F-35A fighter. Public domain.

But, honestly, how in the world can we have a functional military that loses $80-100 million jets? It’s one thing if we design them so that the enemy can’t spot them but did anyone in the chain of command think that we might want to find them?

The contention is that the plane’s transponder was turned off. How in the world did that happen? Was it incompetence? Or are we looking at something worse, such as sabotage or even an enemy action? Perhaps the plane is winging its way to China or Russia even as we speak. And speaking of China, maybe the Chinese weather balloon can find the jet for us.

As of this writing, the search for the missing jet is continuing:

Based on the facts available, I’m also troubled by the pilot ejecting from the plane over a heavily populated area. Of course, the plane may have ceased responding to anything he did, in which case, there was nothing he could do but save his own life.

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2023/09/who_is_seth_rich_who_murdered_him_and_whats_the_deep_state_hiding.html

The Background:

Seth Rich, a DNC staffer, was murdered on July 10, 2016. The DC Metro Police attributed his death to a botched robbery. That’s tragic but straightforward. Why, then, is the FBI refusing to release the information from Rich’s laptop? Perhaps it’s because Rich is the key to understanding the Russian collusion narrative that the Democrats and Deep State used to such savage effect against Trump, up to and including the 2020 campaign, when operatives lied about Hunter Biden’s laptop. Anyone questioning the official narrative was immediately labeled a conspiracy theorist and canceled.

The Russian Disinformation Narrative – The Con:

The convenient Russian collusion claim had its roots in 2016 when the FBI knowingly used the false Russian narrative to weave together a FISA search warrant affidavit alleging that two low-level Trump campaign volunteers, Carter Page, and George Papadopoulos, were Russian assets. They were not. However, unaware of that fact, the FISA court issued a search warrant and three subsequent warrants for counter-espionage surveillance authorizations.

Special Counsel John Durham’s team thoroughly debunked the Russian collusion narrative during the trial of Attorney Michael Sussman. From the trial testimony and evidence introduced, we learned that the Russian collusion narrative was created, paid for, and leaked to the media at the behest of Hillary Clinton and her operatives, and aided by the FBI and CIA in a domestic disinformation operation.

The FBI retargeted the fabricated counter-espionage investigation to spy illegally, first, on candidate and, then, on President-elect Trump. The FBI knowingly failed to disclose the dual-purpose nature of these warrants to the FISA judge(s) who reviewed and issued these warrants. The FBI agents, including then-Director James Comey, lied by omission to the FISA court, as they later did in the Mar-a-Lago warrant. To this day, there has been no criminal accountability for these FBI agents.

https://www.cnn.com/2023/09/15/business/car-prices-auto-strike-uaw/index.html

Now that the United Auto Workers union has started a strike, the US auto market is about to be thrown into turmoil all over again.

Auto sales hadn’t entirely recovered from the pandemic, but car shopping in the United States could change once more.

Dealerships will stay open

You will still be able to shop for cars, even at Ford, GM and Stellantis dealers. They’re not going to shut down, as car dealerships are independent franchises that aren’t owned by the company whose logo is on the building.

What’s more, they will still have cars to sell for a while. Most of those dealers have vehicles on hand to sell for a few weeks yet, and the current strike plans will initially impact only some of their product lines, said Jonathan Smoke, chief economist for Cox Automotive. The strike’s impact will be nothing like the Covid pandemic and the computer chip shortages that largely shut down the entire US auto industry in recent years, he said.

For first time in history, union workers strike against all Big Three automakers

Besides, new car dealers also sell used cars and, even if the flow of new cars suddenly stops entirely, they will continue to do so. They also service cars, and their service operations will continue, as well, although parts supplies could be hampered.

The auto manufacturing crises of recent years have left auto dealers better prepared to deal with disruptions, said Scott Kunes, chief operating officer of Kunes Auto and RV Group, which owns more than 40 dealerships in the Midwest.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/09/18/joe-biden-uaw-strike-electric-cars-esg-green/

As the clock turned 12:01am on Friday, the United Auto Workers (UAW) began their strike against Ford and General Motors. Not all union workers left the assembly line as part of the “rolling strike,” where some workers stay on the job (and earn their paychecks) while others walk the picket line. They’ll probably be picketing for a while: the union and the auto companies are still far apart on key demands.

Joe Biden has given the union his strong backing, proudly claiming he is the most pro-union president in history. He may well be, but the irony is that most of the union demands seek to undo the damage caused by his own policies.

All Americans, including autoworkers, have faced two consecutive years of falling incomes and spending-fuelled inflation under Biden – a loss the UAW wants to make up for under new contracts. The prospect of job losses from electric vehicles – directly tied to  Biden’s aggressive environmental policies – has driven another key demand from the U. They want to protect their union jobs as the industry follows Biden’s mandates, shifts to EVs, and slices the number of hours needed to produce every car and truck.

Those demands would be hard for companies to meet under the best conditions. They are much harder because the administration’s massive, mandated disruption of the auto and truck market creates huge uncertainty for manufacturers. They simply don’t know if ordinary consumers will buy the more expensive EVs at the same pace they have bought gas powered ones. This uncertainly makes manufacturers even more reluctant than usual to offer pay hikes and job guarantees.

That’s not all the bad news for negotiators. Right now, traditional manufacturers are losing buckets of money on EVs. They are saddled with legacy costs and facilities and are forced to compete with a host of new firms without them, spearheaded by Elon Musk’s Tesla.

https://www.nysun.com/article/biden-backing-uaw-on-demands-for-wages-that-would-give-elon-musk-and-xi-jinping-the-last-laugh

In Joe Biden’s 1950s world, unions are good and corporations bad. Hence his response to the UAW strike against the three legacy automakers. “Over the last — the past decade,” he said, “auto companies have seen record profits, including the last few years, because of the extraordinary skill and sacrifices of the UAW workers.”

Yet, the president said, “those record profits have not been shared fairly, in my view, with those workers.” He added, referring to current negotiations: “I believe they should go further to ensure record corporate profits mean record contracts for the UAW.” Nothing like putting the presidential thumb on the bully scale.

In Mr. Biden’s world, because the automakers have had a few good years, they should award unionized employees huge pay hikes. Never mind that if our economy slows and demand for cars slumps, the auto firms would be stuck with higher costs that would make them even less competitive with non-union companies like Tesla or BYD in Communist China. 

Nikki Haley says presidential candidates should have mental competency tests; business IQ tests might be more useful, starting with the “sacrifices” made by autoworkers that Mr. Biden hails. It is true that during the Great Recession UAW members accepted changes in contract terms that allowed the auto makers to stay in business.

Taxpayers, already being crushed by government levies, forked over $80 billion to bail out GM and Chrysler. Much of that was eventually paid back. The country was largely sympathetic; after all, it was banks that had caused the 2008 downturn, so why should Detroit’s Big Three and their employees suffer?

https://mrctv.org/blog/craig-bannister/turnabout-reporter-ducks-questions-congressman-about-biden-scandals

The tables were turned Thursday, when a reporter ducked questions from a congressman.

Associated Press (AP) Reporter Farnoush Amiri tried to get House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) to agree that Republicans launched an impeachment inquiry into Pres. Joe Biden without any evidence of an impeachable offense.

McCarthy responded like a contestant on “Jeopardy!” – by putting his answer in the form of questions.

But first, the congressman explained to AP’s Amiri that an impeachment inquiry is the not same as an impeachment – it’s just a fact-finding mission.

Rep. McCarthy then asked Amiri if she believed five items of evidence already obtained through sworn testimony:

Rep. McCarthy: “OK. Do you agree that, do you believe the president lied to the American public when he said he’d never talked to his son about business dealings? Yes or no?”

Rep. McCarthy: “Do you believe when they said the president went on conference calls? Do you believe that happened?”

Rep. McCarthy: “Do you believe the president went to Cafe Milano and had dinner with the clients of Hunter Biden, who believes he got those clients because he was selling the brand?”

Rep. McCarthy: “Do you believe Hunter Biden, when you saw the video of him driving the Porsche, that he got $143,000 to buy that Porsche the next day?

https://issuesinsights.com/2023/09/18/think-impeachment-will-help-biden-then-why-is-he-behaving-like-a-cornered-rat/

Whatever your views are on impeachment, the fact that so many on the left are acting like cornered rats is a pretty good reason for Republicans to carry on.

Over the weekend, we came across a story warning Republicans about their decision to start an impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden.

“It may well ensure that Republicans lose control of the House in 2024,” the story says. “And it could also give Joe Biden a boost as he runs for reelection, presumably against Donald Trump himself.”

In just the past few days we’ve seen a multitude of such warnings. Here’s a small sampling:

“Impeaching Biden Is a Desperate Gamble That Will Backfire”
“Republicans would love to impeach Biden. It would backfire on them.”
“How Republicans’ Push to Impeach Joe Biden Could Backfire”
“Could the Biden impeachment inquiry backfire on Republicans?”
“Will the House GOP’s Biden impeachment probe backfire?”
“This is the White House’s Dream!”

Here’s the strange thing. Every one of these headlines appeared in leftist newspapers, were penned by leftist authors, or were uttered on leftist cable news programs.

It’s almost as though these outlets all got their marching orders from a single source. Which, it turns, out, they did – the Biden White House.

An Aug. 31 story in The Hill – headlined “White House warns GOP Biden impeachment will backfire” – says that “the White House remains steadfastly confident that if the GOP goes forward with an inquiry … it will hurt Republicans more than it could hurt Biden.”

The preamble is an introduction to the highest law of the land; it is not the law. It does not define government powers or individual rights.

Establish Justice is the first of five objectives outlined in the 52-word paragraph that the Framers drafted in six weeks during the hot Philadelphia summer of 1787. They found a way to agree on the following basic principles:

“We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.”

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2023/09/a_timely_moment_to_wish_happy_236_to_the_us_constitution.html

We begin today with a “happy birthday” to the U.S. Constitution.  Maybe you remember this from your U.S. History class.  They taught it when I went to school, and I’m hoping that they still do today.  Or maybe they start today’s classes with a reminder that it was the work of a bunch of white guys who had slaves and didn’t let their wives vote.

This is the story that I learned:

On May 25, 1787, delegates representing every state except Rhode Island convened at Philadelphia’s Pennsylvania State House for the Constitutional Convention. The building, which is now known as Independence Hall, had earlier seen the drafting of the Declaration of Independence and the signing of the Articles of Confederation. The assembly immediately discarded the idea of amending the Articles of Confederation and set about drawing up a new scheme of government. Revolutionary War hero George Washington, a delegate from Virginia, was elected convention president.

During an intensive debate, the delegates devised a brilliant federal organization characterized by an intricate system of checks and balances. The convention was divided over the issue of state representation in Congress, as more-populated states sought proportional legislation, and smaller states wanted equal representation. The problem was resolved by the Connecticut Compromise, which proposed a bicameral legislature with proportional representation in the lower house (House of Representatives) and equal representation of the states in the upper house (Senate).

On September 17, 1787, the Constitution was signed. As dictated by Article VII, the document would not become binding until it was ratified by nine of the 13 states. Beginning on December 7, five states—Delaware, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Georgia and Connecticut—ratified it in quick succession. However, other states, especially Massachusetts, opposed the document, as it failed to reserve un-delegated powers to the states and lacked constitutional protection of basic political rights, such as freedom of speech, religion, and the press. In February 1788, a compromise was reached under which Massachusetts and other states would agree to ratify the document with the assurance that amendments would be immediately proposed. The Constitution was thus narrowly ratified in Massachusetts, followed by Maryland and South Carolina. On June 21, 1788, New Hampshire became the ninth state to ratify the document, and it was subsequently agreed that government under the U.S. Constitution would begin on March 4, 1789. In June, Virginia ratified the Constitution, followed by New York in July.