RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://amgreatness.com/2024/07/05/americans-want-to-know-who-is-really-in-charge-in-the-white-house/

In last Thursday’s presidential debate, we saw the most decisive loss ever by an incumbent American president. Biden’s performance was so abysmal that it raises serious questions about how he can continue to function as president, especially in his role as commander-in-chief.

Donald Trump dominated the debate, making important new criticisms that Biden failed to answer—especially how the surge in illegal immigration during the Biden presidency is hurting social security. Trump put Biden on the defensive, parried tough questions, and pointed out how many of Biden’s statements were incoherent.

Biden could hardly have done worse. He was incoherent, lost his train of thought and appeared confused. He offered no believable defenses for his record as president. The defenses he did provide made no sense.

The left-wing publication Slate gave this stark assessment of Biden’s performance in the debate, claiming it “revealed that [he] is indeed an old man who appears to be in no condition to be running this country, even now—not to mention in another four years.”

Many Americans had the same concern after the debate.

We saw Biden staring into space and looking slack-jawed with his eyes glazed over when Trump spoke. If Biden acts this way during Oval Office meetings, cabinet meetings, and meetings with foreign leaders, one has to ask: How is he making decisions as president?  Is Biden simply signing everything his staff puts in front of him?  Do unnamed White House advisers run cabinet meetings while Biden sits motionless in his chair?

https://www.spiked-online.com/2024/07/04/the-democrats-civil-war-has-begun/

Let the great Democratic civil war begin. The impending demise of Joe Biden and the patched-together coalition he represents is threatening to accelerate the very intra-party conflicts his presidency was meant to assuage.

In 2020, Biden was able to cobble together the remains of the old Rooseveltian New Deal coalition, along with huge support from both the oligarchic elite and the progressive left. This was possible in large part because the repellant Donald Trump alienated not only the left, including the rising Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), but also dominant elites and numerically strong moderate liberals.

Today, as the Republicans unite around Trump, the Democratic alliance has become creaky. As has been happening for decades, much of the traditional New Deal coalition has further abandoned the party. Biden’s inflationary policies and embrace of progressive cultural and environmental priorities have not gone down well with the traditional base of mostly working-class voters. This has been particularly alienating given that the majority of Democrats consider themselves moderate or even conservative.

Biden’s performance, even before last week’s disastrous presidential debate, has unsettled more than just his core voter base. It has also rattled the oligarchic elite that funded his 2020 campaign, as well as the party apparatus and its media appendages. They may still conveniently genuflect to cultural progressivism and climate-change hysteria, but are less likely to want a mass redistribution of wealth and other curbs on their power. There have been tentative signs, at least on Wall Street and in Silicon Valley, that some are now contemplating support for Trump instead. These defectors may be few in number, but they reek of money.

Increasingly, the one reliable – and vocal – bloc of Democrats resides on the far left. This faction backed Biden in 2020 against Trump, despite his relatively moderate political record. The idea was to influence his administration afterwards. It would be an ‘evolution’, as Squad congresswoman Pramila Jayapal described it. Biden largely accommodated to this agenda, at least rhetorically, championing issues from Net Zero targets to the promotion of transgender ideology.

https://thespectator.com/politics/united-states-10-4-president-biden/

In 1927, Sigmund Freud published a book about religion called Die Zukunft einer Illusion (The Future of an Illusion). As a contribution to the understanding of religion, it is, like much of Freud’s work, both banal and outrageous. But it occurs to me that its catchy title as well as its main thesis — religion, Freud wrote, was invented to fulfill “the oldest, strongest and most urgent wishes of mankind” — has a certain pertinence to the large-scale entertainment now being offered to the public by Democrats eager to salvage the reputation of President Joe Biden.

The narrative, according to which Joe Biden was “sharp and intensely probing,” had been assiduously maintained by mendacious Democrats and their sycophantic lackeys in the media since before Biden became president. Few people outside that circle of magical thinking actually believed in Biden’s cognitive competence. I and many others have been calling attention to his debility for years. But the illusion has been cynically cultivated by uniparty lieutenants much as the illusory nostrums of communist solidarity were propped up by the Soviets as their regime teetered towards is final, senescent collapse in the late 1980s. Few people believed the illusion; everyone in power said they believed it, even though they could taste the cynicism and disbelief among the masses they sought to control. That curious dialectic of disbelief and acquiescence was part of the corrosive rust that eventually precipitated the collapse of the regime.

Has the uniparty changed its song about Joe Biden? There are signs that it has. In the immediate aftermath of Biden’s disastrous debate with Donald Trump last week, the narrative broke in two, or at least seemed to break in two. On one side there was horror and — word of the moment — “panic” among the Dems. The New York Times led the way in calling for Biden — for the good of the country — to resign. At the same time, there was considerable push back, encapsulated comically in the observation that dementia Joe “had a cold,” hence his gibbering incoherence. St. Barack weighed in with what appeared to be a supportive post of X: everyone has bad debate nights, he said, but “this election is still a choice between someone who has fought for ordinary people his entire life [Obama meant Biden, in case you were wondering] and someone who only cares about himself [the bad orange man].”

https://www.frontpagemag.com/two-scotus-cases-show-how-an-unaccountable-administrative-state-hurts-ordinary-people/

After the U.S. Supreme Court curtailed the powers of federal agencies in two cases last week, progressive critics predictably complained that the decisions favored “big business,” “corporate interests” and “the wealthy and powerful.” That gloss overlooked the reality that people with little wealth or power frequently are forced to contend with overweening bureaucrats who invent their own authority and play by their own rules.

In the more consequential case, the court repudiated the Chevron doctrine, which required that judges defer to a federal agency’s “permissible” interpretation of an “ambiguous” statute. The majority said that rule, which the court established in 1984, was unworkable, creating “an eternal fog of uncertainty” about what the law allows or requires, and fundamentally misguided, allowing the executive branch to usurp a judicial function.

Although People for the American Way perceived a win for “the corporate interests that have been itching to gut the power of federal agencies to protect our health and welfare,” the dispute at the center of the case complicates that picture. Two family-owned fishing operations objected to onerous regulatory fees they said had never been authorized by Congress.

In a concurring opinion, Justice Neil Gorsuch noted other examples of vulnerable supplicants who suffer when agencies are free to rewrite the laws under which they operate. He cited cases involving a veteran seeking disability benefits and an immigrant fighting to remain in the country.

Because of an arbitrary rule the Department of Veterans Affairs invented for its own convenience, Thomas Buffington lost three years of disability benefits the government owed him. Alfonzo De Niz Robles faced deportation and separation from his American wife and children after the Board of Immigration Appeals overturned a judicial precedent on which he and many other immigrants had relied for relief.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/collaborator-intelligence-agency/

It has now emerged that Gina Haspel, director of the CIA from 2018-2021, was aware of the October, 2020 letter from 51 “intelligence community” officials charging that Hunter Biden’s laptop was “Russian disinformation.” The signatories included three former CIA directors –Mike Hayden, Leon Panetta, and John Brennan, plus acting CIA directors John McLaughlin and Mike Morel. A full 41 signers were from the CIA – some still on contract to the agency at the time.  In 2022, many of the signatories refused comment on the letter or ducked the question.

Asked in early June if he would retract his signature, former director of national intelligence  James Clapper said “no.” In the recent debate with Donald Trump, Joe Biden claimed that the laptop was a “Russian plant,” which he too knows is false.

As these events revealed, American intelligence officials are willing to deploy their spycraft on the domestic scene for partisan purposes. This failure goes back to events 50 years ago, as explained by Edward Jay Epstein  who, before he passed away at 88 in January, reprised many of his books and articles in Assume Nothing: Encounters with Assassins, Spies, Presidents, and Would-be Masters of the Universe.

Epstein’s Deception: The Invisible War Between the KGB and CIA broke new ground but was released in 1989 when the Soviet empire was breaking apart. The book landed in remainder bins, because readers thought the invisible war was over. It wasn’t, and Deception remains more relevant than ever.

Epstein’s primary source was James Jesus Angleton, who served in the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), forerunner to the CIA. In the style of a fly fisherman, Angleton liked to play Soviet defectors Anatoli Golitsyn and Yuri Nosenko for all they were worth. Angleton needed to know if he Soviets’ deception loop included persons inside the CIA who could tell how the other side was interpreting the operations. CIA bosses were unwilling to believe they could be penetrated and in 1974, amid charges that the CIA was spying on Americans, Angleton was fired. For Epstein, this effectively turned the CIA inside out.

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2024/07/the_spirit_of_1776.html

Ah, 1776 — a time when the ruling aristocracy taxed Americans without their say, destroyed printing presses of those publishers demanding liberty, and jailed outspoken critics for treason.  How things have changed — not!  If there were one indispensable truth to be learned from America’s glorious Independence, it is this: governments do not give freedom; they take freedom away.  

Any smooth-talking politician who pretends that government should be praised for the “gifts” it bestows upon the people is a smiling agent of the Crown fashioning new chains for citizens to wear.  Laws, taxes, and regulations do not liberate human beings; they are the bricks and mortar trapping us inside ever-smaller cells.

Government is the destroyer of liberty.  Bureaucracies do not light the flame of freedom; they snuff freedom’s light out.  People alone (separate from the organizing strictures of the State) secure their liberty by pushing back against and restraining the otherwise ever-growing oppression of power-hungry governments.  Citizens hold the keys to their own prison cells.  They must only find the courage to open up their doors and walk outside.  This was true in 1776; it is no less true today.

What is remarkable about the period leading up to the American Revolution is how quickly public sentiment shifted.  By and large, colonists saw themselves as loyal servants of the English Crown until, suddenly, they were not.  They celebrated King George III’s birthday each year.  They formed militias to aid their king in wars against his European foes.  As late as 1775, few Americans desired anything so radical as political Independence.  The idea seemed far-fetched.  

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2024/07/the_communist_plan_that_has_subverted_our_intel_agencies.html

On June 21, the FBI declassified a 1999 video of Saudi intelligence agent Omar al-Bayoumi casing the Capitol and other Washington D.C. sites for the 9/11 attack.  How, then, did the CIA-FBI 9/11 report conclude in 2005 that Saudi Arabia was not involved in the attack?  And why did the FBI maintain — for 20 years, before its recent retraction — that al-Bayoumi wasn’t a Saudi agent?

Such willful deception, practiced increasingly by American intelligence, is the subject of former CIA agent J. Michael Waller’s new book Big Intel: How the CIA and FBI Went from Cold War Heroes to Deep State Villains.  The dramatic writing and detailing, backed by the author’s experience in espionage — in Central America and the U.S.S.R., and against jihadist conspiracies — make it a page-turner.  In 37 chapters, plus additional sections and a reading list, it presents an alarming history of how a century-old Marxist campaign has succeeded in ideologically subverting America and its intel agencies.

The results of that success are seen in today’s leftist street protests, the DEI obsession, and prevalent anti-Israel sentiment; also, in the saturation of academia and bureaucracy by Marxists.  Not so evident, because intel agencies operate covertly, is their transmogrification from valiant fighters for American freedom to an emerging state police harrying those who oppose the acceptable narratives du jour.

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 to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.–That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, –That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.–Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.

He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.

He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.

He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.

He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.

He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the Legislative powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.

He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.

He has obstructed the Administration of Justice, by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary powers.

He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.

He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harrass our people, and eat out their substance.

He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.

He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil power.

He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:

For Quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:

For protecting them, by a mock Trial, from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:

For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:

For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:

For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury:

For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences

For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies:

For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws, and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:

For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.

He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.

He has plundered our seas, ravaged our Coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.

He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.

He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.

He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.

In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our Brittish brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which, would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.

We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States; that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.

The White House payroll reaches historic highs not seen since President Richard Nixon in 1971.

BIG NUMBERS

During President Joe Biden’s four years, he spent $225 million on the largest White House payroll since at least 1971, based on headcount. White House staff for FY2024 cost $60.8 million.

Biden has a total turnover since his first year of 77-percent. A stunning 435 out of his initial 560 White House staffers left.

No White House since the Richard Nixon administration ever employed 500 staffers until Biden became president. The Biden White House employed 560 in FY2021; 474 in FY2022; 524 in FY2023; and the headcount increased by 41, to 565 this year.  

Biden employs 152 more staffers than Trump (413) (FY2020) and 97 more than Obama (468) (FY2012) at the same point in their respective presidencies. 

Between 2023 and 2024, 225 people left, a 43 percent turnover rate, only slightly lower than the 46 percent turnover rate between 2022 and 2023. 

Jill Biden’s staff increased by four employees, to 24 this year. Dr. Biden’s staff now equals Michelle Obama’s staff (FY2009) – a headcount that was controversial – and far exceeds Melania Trump staff of 11 (FY2020).