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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION

50 STATES AND DC, CONGRESS AND THE PRESIDENT

Liz Peek: Biden loses control of inflation, and the trust of American people

https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/biden-control-inflation-trust-american-people

Remember how President Joe Biden wanted to be an historic president — pointedly hanging FDR’s portrait over the fireplace in the Oval Office?

Turns out, as we now officially fall into bear market territory and Americans are getting poorer by the minute, Biden’s dreams are coming true.

Already, Biden has notched some historical firsts.

For example, consumer sentiment plummeted in June to the lowest level ever recorded in the 70-year history of the University of Michigan index. It is a stunning collapse, not seen even during the darkest days of the COVID-19 scare. The index fell to 50.2 from 58.4 in May – already a recession-level reading – and was far below the 58.1 projected by economists.

Meanwhile, the New York Federal Reserve just reported that consumer expectations for inflation hit a record level in May, as did pessimism about the stock market.

It seems the country has never been so gloomy. Way to go, Joe!

These are remarkable achievements, considering that most people who want a job can get one. Almost half the respondents to the Michigan survey noted gasoline prices or inflation generally as a reason for their pessimism, but clearly there is something else going on.

January 6 for Non-Dummies The January 6 committee is pure political theater intended to crush the MAGA movement once and for all. By Julie Kelly

https://amgreatness.com/2022/06/13/january-6-for-non-dummies/

During another public hearing on Monday, the January 6 select committee featured a witness so irrelevant that his appearance should prompt even the most ardent defender of Nancy Pelosi’s illegitimate inquisition to question the committee’s real purpose. Former Fox News talking head Chris Stirewalt, fired by the network shortly after the Capitol protest for calling the state of Arizona for Joe Biden early on election night, told his sob story to a presumably slim viewing audience.

The washed-up commentator, however, is the last person with any insight into the events of January 6, 2021. Stirewalt’s performance—similar to the overwrought speechifying by committee members last Thursday—is another headfake designed to turn attention away from the truth about what happened that day and in the months leading up to the brief disturbance that resulted in the deaths of four Trump supporters.

A well-oiled fog machine operated by the Department of Justice, congressional Democrats, NeverTrumpers, and the national news media is once again pumping lie after lie into the body politic in a last-gasp attempt to destroy Trump and the powerful political movement he created.

For nearly 18 months, American Greatness has covered this issue like no other outlet. So, as the committee continues its dog-and-pony show on Capitol Hill this month with an eye toward producing a long list of legislative “fixes,” the Justice Department inexorably moves to criminally charge Donald Trump for his alleged involvement, and the media takes another extended nap on its purported fact-checking duties, American Greatness here provides the definitive list of what people need to know about January 6, 2021, and related hype.

Congress and D.C. city officials, not Donald Trump, were responsible for protecting the Capitol: It is the primary duty of the Capitol Police board—made up of the sergeant-at-arms for the Senate and the House and the architect of the Capitol—to secure the sprawling complex. The federal police force, with a budget of more than half a billion dollars, employs at least 2,000 officers and houses numerous bureaus, including an intelligence unit; the Capitol building should have been well-protected on January 6 during a controversial joint session of Congress with Vice President Michael Pence presiding.

What? Even Rachel Maddow Isn’t Drinking the J6 Committee’s Kool-Aid By Matt Margolis

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/matt-margolis/2022/06/13/what-even-rachel-maddow-isnt-drinking-the-j6-committees-kool-aid-n1605087

The January 6 Committee Hearings are just the left’s latest efforts to distract the public from the nation’s economic woes before the upcoming midterm elections, yet the made-for-TV event put on by the partisan committee has failed to impress even the most ardently leftist figures in the media.

NBC News’ Lester Holt conceded there wasn’t much new being presented in these public hearings. “A lot of these shots will seem familiar to people,” he observed.

But perhaps even worse for the J6 Committee was that not even left-wing firebrand Rachel Maddow was buying their narrative. She even admitted that the Trump rally did not directly cause the breaching of the Capitol.

“Yes, there was a pro-Trump rally, at which the President spoke, and we can absolutely talk about all the things the President said there. But the idea that that rally is the thing that got out of hand and that somehow resulted in the breaching of the Capitol—that rally was very far from the capital, and the people who […] did the initial breach that allowed everybody else to come in, they never went to that rally.”

Biden To World: Russia, Oil Sheiks, And China Control The U.S. Economy Margot Cleveland

https://thefederalist.com/2022/06/13/biden-to-world-russia-oil-sheiks-and-china-control-the-u-s-economy/

President Joe Biden turned America’s financial crisis into a national security one by telling the world that foreign leaders have near-total control over the U.S. economy.

On Friday, after news broke that inflation again accelerated to reach a 40-year high of 8.6 percent, President Joe Biden turned America’s financial crisis into a national security one by telling the world that foreign leaders have near-total control over the U.S. economy.

Shortly after the Bureau of Labor Statistics released May’s price report, which in addition to reporting an 8.6 percent annual inflationary rate showed a full 1 percent increase last month, President Biden began the spin: “Today’s report underscores why I have made fighting inflation my top economic priority. While it is good to see critical ‘core’ inflation moderating, it is not coming down as sharply and as quickly as we must see. Putin’s price hike hit hard in May here and around the world: high gas prices at the pump, energy, and food prices accounted for around half of the monthly price increases.”

The president’s entire pitch struck a chord conflicting with reality. “Biden hasn’t made inflation his top economic priority,” noted Katie Pavlich soon after. “For months, his administration denied inflation was happening, saying it wouldn’t be an issue, before calling it temporary and transitory last summer.” And the skyrocketing inflation began before Russia’s January 2022 invasion of Ukraine.

Biden’s Real Deficit And his calculated deceit about it. John Stossel

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2022/06/bidens-real-deficit-john-stossel/

The president now brags that he cut the deficit!

“We’re on track,” he says, to have “the biggest decline in a single year ever in American history.”

It’s actually true.

But utterly deceitful.

President Joe Biden’s deficit will be down from last year, but that’s only because he spent such gargantuan amounts then.

For once, the media did not take his remarks at face value. Even CNN ran a “fact check” that quoted a Moody’s Analytics director saying, “The actions of the administration and Congress have undoubtedly resulted in higher deficits, not smaller ones.”

Much higher. Despite record tax revenues from last year’s booming stock markets, our national debt will increase by about $1 trillion.

Sadly, most people don’t care. These big numbers are too abstract. This will not end well.

We Salute Our Treasured Flag by Lawrence Kadish

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18614/flag-day-message

Today, June 14, is Flag Day across the United States.

It is a day that should compel us to pause, fly our nation’s flag from our homes, businesses, and public spaces in recognition of what our flag represents. Simply put, it has been a symbol of hope, freedom, and opportunity for hundreds of millions of people throughout the generations.

When our immigrant forefathers arrived at Ellis Island in hopes of starting a new life, many clutched small American flags in their hands. Today, newly sworn-in American citizens leave the ceremony proudly holding the colors of their newly adopted country: red, white, and blue.

When Americans liberated Western Europe during World War II, overjoyed civilians found the means to create handmade American flags, then draped them out their windows. It reflected their heartfelt appreciation that they were being rescued from the horrors of the Third Reich; displaying the American flag was the most powerful means they had to acknowledge the sacrifice of American GIs.

Today, American flags are still poised on the surface of the moon, planted there by heroic Apollo astronauts who also left behind a plaque reminding eternity that we “came in peace for all mankind.” These symbols have allowed the world to reflect on the fact that that a bold American adventure achieved the unbelievable and that we came not in conquest but to further expand our shared understanding of the universe.

The Pledge of Allegiance we recite today has seen several variations over time, but each word is a reminder that our nation is profoundly different from those came before it.

Biden Made His Own Mess Kyle Smith

https://www.nationalreview.com/2022/06/biden-made-his-own-mess/

The president was dealt an excellent hand and has played it terribly. He has no one to blame for the sorry state of his administration but himself.

You’d think someone whose career in national politics goes all the way back to 1972 would have noticed this, but apparently President Biden hasn’t: Unpopular presidents tend to complain that they were dealt a bad hand, and then grouse that the media are making things look worse than they are. But Biden was dealt an excellent hand; he has no excuses for the mess he’s in.

When Biden took office, the U.S. was already bouncing back from economic calamity, and tens of millions of vaccine doses were in the pipeline. If he had made smart decisions, the U.S. would be doing fine right now. Instead, he is the primary cause of the crises that are swamping his presidency. The media could scarcely be more inclined to spin things in his favor, and yet even they can’t entirely ignore the dispiriting facts.

A sympathetic-sounding author, Chris Whipple, who is writing a book about White House chiefs of staff, told NBC News that Team Biden “came in with the most daunting set of challenges arguably since Franklin D. Roosevelt, only to then be hit by a perfect storm of crises, from Ukraine to inflation to the supply chain to baby formula. What’s next? Locusts?” Biden has himself, according to the same NBC News story, been sympathetic to the why-am-I-so-unlucky view.

Biden’s Approval Rating Is Now Lowest In Gallup’s History

https://issuesinsights.com/2022/06/14/bidens-approval-rating-drops-to-lowest-in-gallups-history/

On day 487 in office, President Joe Biden set a new record. He has the lowest approval rating of all presidents at this point in their presidencies since Gallup started tracking this in 1945.

According to Gallup’s Presidential Job Approval Center, just 41% approve of the job Biden is doing. That’s worse than Gerald Ford, or Lyndon Johnson, or even Jimmy Carter on day 487. Much worse than Ronald Reagan, the Bushes, Bill Clinton, or Barack Obama.

To add insult to injury, Biden’s approval rating is now lower than Trump’s was at this point in Trump’s first term.

Biden’s oh-so-presidential response to his cratering support: he is “seething.”

Instead of accepting blame, Biden and his “inner circle” are blaming everyone around them, including the White House staff. Politico reports that: “Members of Biden’s inner circle, including first lady Jill Biden and the president’s sister, Valerie Biden Owens, have complained that West Wing staff has managed Biden with kid gloves, not putting him on the road more or allowing him to flash more of his genuine, relatable, albeit gaffe-prone self.”

Yeah, letting Biden be Biden will work.

A dangerous implosion of American politics Republican Congress facing a Democratic White House for two years would defer economic policy change until 2025 David Goldman

https://asiatimes.com/2022/06/a-dangerous-implosion-of-american-politics/

While working Americans suffer the worst decline in real income since the waning months of the Carter Administration, America’s political parties are in disarray with internal divisions almost as intense as the issues that have polarized “red state” and “blue state” America.

Neither party has a proposal – credible or otherwise – on the political agenda to alleviate the inflation that is crushing family income. And neither has the prospect of gaining a governing mandate, as opposed to a temporary majority.

It’s a national train wreck, and no one has a plan to stop it.

Unless his legal problems interfere, Donald Trump almost certainly will run for president again in 2024 and will be his party’s nominee. The Congressional commission investigating the January 6, 2021, Capitol riot may have gathered enough information to motivate federal charges against the former president, but that remains unclear.

Trump’s obsessive belief that the Democrats stole the 2020 election damages him. More ominous is that his economic policies contributed to the present disaster, and Trump has no thoughts on the subject apart from assigning the whole of the blame to Biden.

Reactionary ‘progressives’ strike again Ruthie Blum

https://www.jns.org/opinion/reactionary-progressives-strike-again/

A few ignoramuses with rainbow flags gathered on Sunday at New York City’s Chelsea Piers to protest the participation of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis in the Jewish Leadership Conference, held annually by the conservative Tikvah Fund. Other speakers at the event included former U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, former Israeli Ambassador to the United States Ron Dermer, former U.S. Deputy National Security Advisor and current Tikvah chairman Elliott Abrams, and a slew of conservative Jewish intellectuals.
The timing, at the height of Pride Month, couldn’t have been better from a propaganda perspective for the demonstrators present and behind the scenes. While countries around the Free World are going out of their way to celebrate the LGBTQ+ movement through parades, public-service announcements and all vehicles that highlight “choice” and “identity,” the very idea that any venue would dare to let DeSantis darken its premises presented a golden opportunity for bitching and moaning about victimhood.

The trouble is that this reactionary method of manipulation to silence all voices that don’t align perfectly with a “progressive” point of view works—at least, on liberals. Afraid to be labeled as Neanderthal right-wingers, the latter cave to pressure at the drop of a threat.
This is how the above conference, titled “Jews, Israel and the Future of the West,” got booted last month from the agenda of its originally planned location: The Museum of Jewish Heritage–A Living Memorial to the Holocaust. The excuse for the travesty was that the institution doesn’t “do politics.” Leaning on this phony assertion, the museum ultimately refused to sign a contract with Tikvah.