RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2022/08/did-zuckerberg-prove-fbi-created-russian-disinfo-brad-slager/

It has become a really bad week for the FBI, and by extension the DOJ. With the release of the warrant affidavit the comically redacted document only further cast the Bureau in a mocking light.  From what can be gleaned out of the fragments revealed is that now the raid on Trump’s residence was inspired not by the revelation of state secrets missing or classified nuclear intel, but by the National Archives requesting more docs after receiving boxloads, and a local news affiliate that saw moving trucks at Mar-A-Lago. 

This means that the raid was justified with the thinnest of reasons. And the purpose was to simply acquire as much as they could from the compound in an effort to find…anything. Reports of the Feds going in with a specific agenda were blown out of the water when the warrant was found to have been signed off with the intent of obtaining anything at all from Trump’s entire time in office.

Adding to the embarrassments was the news of a whistleblower from inside the FBI revealing that the Bureau had shielded the knowledge of the laptop obtained from Hunter Biden. This is a story not receiving much media coverage, a telling departure from a press corps that normally gets rather excitable at the arrival of whistleblowers. The claim being made is the FBI elected to bury the laptop story for the reason of not wanting to influence the 2020 election. Then things became even more disturbing – and more ignored in the press.

On Joe Rogan’s podcast Mark Zuckerberg revealed that FaceBook had been approached by the FBI regarding the laptop story and to be wary of how the platform treats the information. The focus has been on the move by the FBI to direct social media to avoid the story.

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2022/08/three_signs_were_in_a_banana_republic.html

Satirist Sol Luckman defines “banana republic” in his irreverent glossary, The Angel’s Dictionary, as a “lawless society where the monkeys rule.”  

Looking around the United States today, it’s hard to say we don’t fit his meaning.  Nearly 80% of Americans believe we live under a two-tiered system of justice.  Likewise, in Gallup’s recent survey of Americans’ confidence in U.S. institutions, it notes, “This year’s poll marks new lows in confidence for all three branches of the federal government — the Supreme Court (25%), the presidency (23%) and Congress.”  Of sixteen institutions tested, confidence in the U.S. Congress sits at the very bottom with a scant 7%!  Even though there is now “record-low confidence across all institutions,” confidence in the Office of the Presidency suffered the largest year-over-year drop in 2022 — cratering 15%!  In other words, not only do Americans believe the country is lawless, they’re also convinced that it is being run by a barrel of monkeys!  Clearly, Americans “get” that we’re living in a “banana republic” today.  

Just consider these three telltale signs:  

(1) Manipulation of language and mandatory leftist religion:

The political Left’s most potent weapon is its penchant for undermining the meaning of words.  For decades Democrats have branded anything antithetical to their worldview as “hateful” and banned “offending” viewpoints from civic culture altogether.  When “authorities” deconstruct biological sex so preposterously that they can’t even tell the difference between boys and girls, though, they’ve lost the plot.  One school board in Wisconsin is so fearful of the language police crashing through its doors that it has replaced all references to “girls” with sterilized language concerning a “person with a vulva.”  When “teachers” are afraid to say “girl” out loud, it’s banana republic time! 

https://issuesinsights.com/2022/08/29/the-dis-unification-of-america-continues-ii-tipp-poll/

To look on the bright side, Americans don’t disagree about everything. One issue in particular seems to bring them together in near-perfect accord: Are we a unified nation after more than a year-and-a-half of President Joe Biden? Americans overwhelmingly answer no, the latest I&I/TIPP Poll shows.

To gauge the ongoing unity zeitgeist, each month the I&I/TIPP Poll asks Americans whether “the United States is: Very united. Somewhat united. Somewhat divided. Very divided. Not sure.”

The data make for depressing reading. Among those responding to the poll, taken Aug. 2-4 from online surveys of 1,335 adults across the county, 74% described the U.S. as “Divided,” versus just 24% who called it “United.” The poll has a margin of error of +/-2.8 percentage points.

And among all survey participants, the No. 1 response was “very divided,” with 43% answering this. No. 2 was “somewhat divided,” at 30%. By comparison, just 8% of the entire survey called America “very united,” while 16% described it as “somewhat united.” Just 2% were “not sure.”

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-comey-clinton-document-standard-fbi-investigation-donald-trump-mar-a-lago-classified-prosecution-justice-department-11661711673?mod=opinion_lead_pos3

“If Mr. Garland can’t make a compelling case that Mr. Trump’s transgressions are greater than Mrs. Clinton’s, with enough clear and convincing evidence to warrant a criminal charge, the better judgment is not to prosecute and put the country through the trauma of a political trial that half of America will suspect is a case of unequal justice.”

When Jim Comey held his July 2016 press briefing on Hillary Clinton’s emails, his conclusion was this: “Although there is evidence of potential violations of the statutes regarding the handling of classified information, our judgment is that no reasonable prosecutor would bring such a case.”

In other words, Mrs. Clinton could have been indicted but wasn’t. That ended the Clinton email saga as a legal matter—with a lecture but without a prosecution. As we wrote at the time, this was an outrageous usurpation by the FBI director, whose role was to investigate and turn the evidence over to a U.S. Attorney or the Attorney General to decide on prosecution.

https://nypost.com/2022/08/25/kathy-hochuls-call-for-5-4m-republicans-to-leave-new-york-is-dangerous/

Gov. Kathy Hochul, who hasn’t proven shy about issuing orders, had one for the state’s Republicans this week — all 5.4 million of them: “Just jump on a bus and head down to Florida where you belong, OK?” she said. “You are not New Yorkers.”

If you can move beyond the frankly disgusting political partisanship and intolerance, her message is fiscally irresponsible, even dangerous. The governor probably already knows this, but the state’s extensive public sector is heavily reliant on personal income taxes paid by residents, and with nearly $14 billion in projected budget gaps over the next five years, it can’t afford to lose any taxpayers, let alone 5.4 million of them.

The Empire State has already lost 1.5 million residents in the past decade, and there’s no sign of that trend letting up. In fact, more than 350,000 New Yorkers relocated during the 12 pandemic-plagued months leading up to July 1, 2021.

Kathy Hochul said Republicans should move down to Florida.
Getty Images

In her attempt to be snappy, Hochul exposed a major problem that has gripped our state since the dawn of the Cuomo-Hochul era: New Yorkers are leaving, and they’re taking their tax dollars with them.

ttps://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2022/aug/27/american-civilization-is-being-destroyed-from-with/

Civilization isn’t self-renewing. It takes work and will. In America, we won’t do the work and no longer have the will.

The signs of imminent collapse are all around us:

1. A ruling class that’s opened the floodgates of uncontrolled immigration — and damn the consequences

2. Crime without punishment

3. Elites that mock the values on which our nation was founded

4. Supporting barbarians at the gates

5. Refusing to procreate in sufficient numbers to maintain our population.

A shocking video from Texas shows Border Patrol agents calmly unlocking a gate that had previously been secured by the Texas National Guard, to allow dozens of “migrants’ to enter the country. The president’s open border policies are hugely successful, with more than 2 million Welcome Wagon encounters so far this year, compared with 1.27 million for the same period last year.

https://www.manhattancontrarian.com/blog/2022-8-27-you-cant-give-the-fbi-the-benefit-of-the-doubt-on-anything

The FBI — They’re the nation’s premier law enforcement agency. We rely on them to protect us from every sort of crook and bad guy, not to mention international terrorists. When they’re investigating something important, it’s understandable that they can’t disclose to the public what they’re up to. That would give away the game, and give the bad guys the chance to escape. So we need to trust them, to let them operate mostly in secrecy, and just give them the benefit of the doubt that they are doing the right thing.

Boy, has that narrative gotten blown to smithereens over the past few years. Starting with the Russia collusion hoax in 2016, it’s been one revelation after another of the thoroughly corrupted FBI meddling in domestic politics to advantage Democrats. They’re the new armed militant wing of the Democratic Party. As far as anyone can tell from the news, the people at the highest levels of the FBI today are completely obsessed with covering up for President Biden while using their law enforcement powers to go after former President Trump on the thinnest of pretexts. Today, nobody in their right mind should give the FBI the benefit of the doubt about anything. If you assume that everything they are doing is corrupt, you are highly likely to be right.

For this post, I’ll forego a review of the FBI’s role in the Russia hoax, and just consider some of the most recent developments.

Hunter Biden laptop

https://justthenews.com/politics-policy/all-things-trump/fbis-former-intel-chief-raid-trump-home-i-think-they-are-going

The FBI’s former intelligence chief declared Friday the agency should not have criminalized the records dispute between Donald Trump and the National Archives and that the bureau appears to have failed to meet the probable cause standard for the invasive search of the former president’s Florida estate.

“I think they’re going to regret this,” retired Assistant Director Kevin Brock told the “Just the News, Not Noise” television show after reviewing a heavily redacted affidavit the FBI used to persuade a judge to allow the Aug. 8 search at Mar-a-Lago.

Brock, ordinarily an ardent defender of his former agency, has raised concerns for several days that the bureau did not exhaust other means to resolve the dispute over presidential and alleged classified records Trump kept. He said he did not believe the FBI adequately considered the possibility that Trump had wide latitude to declassify records and declare them personal.

He said Friday his concerns were only heightened by the court-ordered release of the search warrant affidavit, which he noted was still heavily redacted.

“I will caveat all of this by saying we can only see what we can see, but the first thing that jumped out to me is that the probable cause statement focuses on the nature of the documents, and where they are,” said Brock, a respected three-decade agent who rose to become the bureau’s first intelligence chief under Director Robert Mueller. “But it doesn’t, at least in the unredacted portion, address the main element of the criminal federal statutes that they cite.

https://amgreatness.com/2022/08/27/bidens-debt-transference-and-enforcement-arm/

I have two subjects for you today: debt “forgiveness” and, once again, the raid on Mar-a-Lago by Biden’s secret police.

Let’s do the student debt wheeze first. “Forgiveness” without absolution: I think that just about sums up the Biden Administration’s latest publicity gambit, videlicet, the offer to “forgive” from $10,000 to $20,000 of the debt students have contracted. Note the scare quotes around “forgive.”

It is pointless to go into the details of the program because nobody knows what the details are. Tens of millions of Americans (whoever they are in Biden’s America) are apparently eligible. You are supposed to make less than $125,000 a year to be eligible, but who’s checking? The government agency handling the program, studentaid.gov, has been inundated with inquiries, since the announcement of “free stuff!,” as usual, has acted like a handful of fresh meat tossed into a pool of piranhas. How much will it cost? Who knows?

“The White House doesn’t know exactly how many eligible borrowers will actually end up applying for loan forgiveness,” one news source reported, “or how much it will cost.” According to a study from the Wharton School, however, the total tab might exceed $1 trillion. That is 1,000,000,000,000. It’s important to appreciate the number of zeros involved. 

I am not sure the Biden Administration has admitted yet whether the economy is in recession, but it is. And it is certainly suffering from inflation—or “Bidenflation” as some wags denominate it—the worst, we’re told, in 40 years. Gas prices have moderated a bit from their highs in May and early June, but they are still more than twice what they were when Biden took office, i.e., when Donald Trump was president, and everyone thinks prices will climb again this winter. 

So, prices are rising, your money is worth less, and, oh, by the way, you have less of it. On Friday, the Dow-Jones Industrial Average lost just over 1,000 points, wiping out billions in value. And if the “Prosperity Reduction Act” (the real name of the inflationary “Inflation Reduction Act”) weren’t enough of a blow—raising taxes and weaponizing the tax farmers of the IRS—Biden has delivered another sharp jab to the solar plexus of the American taxpayer with his hare-brained student loan “forgiveness” scheme. 

True, from time immemorial, the promise of debt forgiveness has been a powerful political gesture. But as has often been pointed out since the student loan subsidy was announced, Biden’s program is not really debt forgiveness. Rather, it is debt transference. That is, the debt doesn’t go away. It is just dropped in someone else’s lap. And that someone, Dear Reader, is you.