RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.foxbusiness.com/economy/producer-prices-inflation-january-2022

Wholesale prices accelerated again in January as strong consumer demand and pandemic-related supply chain snarls continued to fuel the highest inflation in decades.

The Labor Department said Tuesday that its producer price index, which measures inflation at the wholesale level before it reaches consumers, surged 9.7% in January from the year-ago period, slightly below the 12-year high of 9.8% notched in November and December. But in an unexpected turn, prices rose 1% in January on a monthly basis – well above the revised gain of 0.4% in December.

Economists surveyed by Refinitiv expected producer inflation to rise by 9.1% on an annual basis and 0.5% from the previous month.

Core inflation at the wholesale level, which excludes the more volatile measurements of food and energy, increased 0.9% for the month, well above the 0.4% estimate. Over the past 12 months, core prices were up 6.9% – nearly matching the record level hit in 2021.

INFLATION PROBABLY COSTING MOST AMERICANS AN EXTRA $276 A MONTH

https://amgreatness.com/2022/02/15/new-durham-filing-clears-the-path-for-more-indictments-in-clinton-financed-russia-hoax/

The story was bizarre, confusing to the point of incoherence, but nevertheless added to a growing constellation of Trump/Russia collusion stories that called into question Trump’s independence as a candidate. In the closing days of the 2016 election, Slate published two articles by Franklin Foer purporting to expose a channel of communication between the Trump campaign and Russia-based Alfa Bank. 

According to the Foer articles, a group of “concerned scientists,” set to work investigating whether Russia launched a cyberattack on the Republican Party like the one that reportedly struck the Democratic National Committee in late 2015 or early 2016. The concerned scientists operated under the pseudonym, “Tea Leaves,” in part to protect their “relationship with the networks and banks that employ [one of the “scientists”] to sift their data.” The article alleged, “the logs suggested that Trump and Alfa had configured something like a digital hotline connecting the two entities, shutting out the rest of the world, and designed to obscure its own existence.”

In September, Special Counsel John H. Durham signed an indictment charging Michael A. Sussmann, a former Perkins Coie attorney, with lying to the FBI while promoting the Alfa Bank smear. Sussmann denied having an interest in the story when in fact he was directly working on Clinton’s Trump/Russia collusion hoax. 

Contrary to the Slate stories, the Tea Leaves “scientists” were not disinterested, nonpartisan patriots analyzing publicly available data. One of these “scientists,” identified by Durham as “Tech Executive-1,” “exploited his access to non-public and/or proprietary Internet data,” including data obtained, “in connection with a pending federal government cybersecurity research contract.” 

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2022/02/bidenflation-continues-surge-out-control-joseph-klein/

President Joe Biden’s runaway inflation train continues hurtling out of control. The Labor Department reported on February 10th that the Consumer Price Index (CPI) rose 7.5% in January compared to the CPI level a year ago – the highest rate of increase in four decades. Excluding gas and grocery prices, the core CPI measure increased 6%.

But not to worry, said Biden. “The fact is we’re in a situation now where you should have peace of mind,” Biden declared at an event he attended in Virginia on the same day that the spiraling CPI inflation increase was announced. Americans struggling to make ends meet every day, fill their gas tanks, and put food on the table would beg to differ. They do not have “peace of mind.”

Indeed, Americans suffering through the Bidenflation are giving Biden a deserved piece of their minds. Recent poll numbers show that a majority of Americans are not happy at all with how President Biden is handling the economy, or much else for that matter.

Americans are tuning out the Biden administration’s attempt to change the subject with happy talk about robust job data. With the prices they pay for food, gas, and other necessities growing faster over the last year than the growth of their wages, the economic conditions many Americans are experiencing remain bleak.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2022/02/biden-crack-pipes-joseph-hippolito/

Two weeks before Presidents’ Day and two days before Abraham Lincoln’s birthday, a conservative outlet exposed perhaps the most singularly idiotic decision since the Constitution mandated the Executive Branch.

On Feb. 7, the Washington Free Beacon reported that Joe Biden’s Department of Health and Human Services made $29.25 million in grants available to government agencies and community groups to purchase syringes, fentanyl strips and “smoking kits” — also known as crack pipes — for drug prevention programs. HHS’s stated goal was to reduce the addicts’ risk of contracting substance abuse disorders or sexually transmitted diseases.

In other words, the virtual president’s “administration” wants to enable illicit drug use for the sake of public health.

“Unsafe smoking practices can lead to open sores, burns and cuts on the lips, and can increase the risk of infection among people who smoke drugs,” HHS spokesman Chris Garrett told the Free Beacon. “Safe smoking kits have been identified to reduce the spread of disease.”

Public outcry forced the HHS to reverse its course on crack pipes Feb. 9. Yet this play from the theater of the absurd contains a second act.

https://issuesinsights.com/2022/02/16/california-tyrants-self-identify-only-the-vaxxed-can-work/

It’s not law yet, but there is legislation in California that requires all workers, even independent contractors, to take the coronavirus vaccine. This deserves all of the outrage, scorn, and resistance that the liberty-minded in the state, and elsewhere, can muster.

But in California, where Democrats are accustomed to get nearly everything they want, that might not be enough.

“Long-awaited workplace coronavirus vaccine mandate legislation drops today,” Politico reported Last week. “The sweeping bill from Assembly member Buffy Wicks would apply to all employees and independent contractors, regardless of how big their employer is, and threatens penalties to noncompliant businesses.”

Wicks, a Democrat from Oakland, must have missed the truckers in Canada whose fuse was lit by a government vaccine mandate, as well as the Biden White House’s failure – thanks to the Supreme Court – to force businesses to require employees to be vaccinated and regularly tested. But then, she is a lawmaker in California, a one-party state whose “leaders” care little about individual freedom. She is also a member of the party whose voters “support harsh measures” against the unvaccinated.

https://freebeacon.com/biden-administration/biden-had-firm-at-center-of-trump-hacking-scandal-on-campaign-payroll/

The Biden campaign paid nearly $20,000 to a cybersecurity firm at the center of Special Counsel John Durham’s investigation into the origins of the Trump-Russia probe.

The campaign paid Neustar Information Services in 2020 for accounting and compliance work, according to Federal Election Commission records. According to Durham, Neustar’s chief technology officer, Rodney Joffe, accessed sensitive web traffic data that the company maintained on behalf of the White House executive office in order to collect “derogatory” information about Donald Trump. Joffe allegedly provided the information to Hillary Clinton campaign lawyer Michael Sussmann, who in turn gave it to the CIA during a meeting in February 2017. Durham charged Sussmann in September with lying to the FBI about his investigation of Trump.

The Biden campaign’s payments raise questions about whether Joffe continued snooping on Trump in the most recent election. The Biden and Clinton campaigns are the only two presidential committees to have ever paid Neustar, according to Federal Election Commission records. Biden’s campaign paid Neustar $18,819 on Sept. 29, 2020, the records show. The Clinton campaign paid the firm $3,000 in May 2015 for mobile phone services. The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee paid $3,000 to Neustar in 2017. Neustar executives and staffers contributed $17,906 to Biden’s campaign, FEC records show.

It is unclear what Neustar executives knew of Joffe’s activities on behalf of the Clinton campaign.

https://quadrant.org.au/opinion/america/2022/02/the-dog-days-of-the-biden-administration/

Tolerance and inclusiveness can be good things in government, but the Biden administration is starting to resemble the court of Caligula. Last month it appointed the gender-fluid engineer Sam Brinton (pronoun “they”) to the Office of Nuclear Energy  (budget $US1.6 billion). His role is deputy assistant secretary, second-in-charge of nuclear waste issues.

Brinton boasts of his after-hours participation in the BDSM “Pup” cult/fetish. He role-plays as handler and sex partner of a novice impersonating a dog, who commonly wears a tail anchored per rectum and is punished for making literal messes on the carpet.

Brinton’s hobby is consensual and doesn’t break any laws, in the US anyway. It can become dangerous – one Australian-born “Pup” (unconnected to Brinton) died in Seattle in 2018 as a result of silicone injections to create an over-size, dog-like scrotum and testicles.

The appointment has not attracted much publicity.  The Democrat-friendly press’s job is to shield Biden from criticism, and anyway the detail is beyond any limit of explicitness. I’m setting it out because it’s necessary here. The fullest accounts are in The Conservative American blog.

In an elaborate description of the pup cult in MetroWeekly, a gay journal five years back, Sam Brinton, then 27, was photographed as handler to a Pup called Nubi, 24, who wore a leather puppy mask.

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2022/02/liz_cheney_peggy_noonan_trot_out_nevertrump_tropes_in_the_pages_of_the_wall_street_journal.html

The Wall Street Journal’s editorial page is up to its old tricks, giving aid and succor to the NeverTrump wing of conservatism in its never-ending quest to Get Trump.

On Feb. 11, they gave Republican turncoat Liz Cheney op-ed space, seemingly to intimidate Republicans into abandoning support for former president Donald J. Trump.

Proof of her aim was projected by the title: “The Jan. 6 Committee Won’t Be Intimidated.”  She claimed that “many” Republicans, following “Mr. Trump,” have abandoned “fidelity to the rule of law and the plan of the Constitution.”

She began with this glurge, hearkening as usual to her bloodlines, which is how she got her powerful jobs at State and Congress in the first place.

I keep on my desk a copy of the oath my great-great-grandfather signed when he re-enlisted in the Union Army in 1863. Like the oath given by all those who serve in government and every member of our armed forces, Samuel Fletcher Cheney swore to “support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies foreign and domestic.” Generations of Americans have sworn that same oath and given their lives to defend the Constitution and our nation.

Glenn Loury is an economist, author, academic, and one of the most perceptive critics of the progressive upsurge in politics and media.

Freddie Sayers spoke to Glenn about Joe Rogan and Whoopi Goldberg, Joe Biden’s new Supreme Court Justice, and how to fix America’s torturous racial politics.

Joe Biden has pre-announced that his nominee for the Supreme Court will be a black woman. What do you think about this? 

I think it is strange. I think no one needs to be apologetic about reacting to that announcement with a bemusement and kind of quizzical ‘what?’ This comes out of Joe Biden’s political ambition, and the character of American politics. During the South Carolina primary when Biden was uncertain of prevailing in the contest for the nomination of the Democratic Party, in 2020, he wanted to appeal to the black vote and so he made this announcement. He announced that his vice presidential selection would be a woman and that his first appointment to the Supreme Court, should he be fortunate enough to have one, would be a black woman.

You could call this craven pandering. I’m bemused by it because it unnecessarily raises questions about the fitness of whomever he might appoint, when he might have simply chosen a black woman as his nominee, and crowed about it after the fact. To avoid casting any doubt over the choice that he would have made, he could have said this is the best, most qualified person that I could find. But in any case, as he’s done it now, he’s limited his range of options to a very small percentage of the total population of people who might have been selected, and, you could say, has put an asterisk by the name of whomever it is that he might ultimately select.

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2022/02/whoopis_back_and_she_hasnt_learned_anything.html

After a highly publicized two-week pinch-on-the-wrist suspension for displaying her ignorance, trivializing and distorting the Shoah, (Holocaust) on the chick chat show, The View,  Caryn Elaine Johnson, AKA Whoopi Goldberg, returned to a highly publicized, rousing welcome from her like-minded co-hosts.

Emerging from her exile for a highly publicized non-apology apology on Stephen Colbert’s lefty gabfest, Johnson/Goldberg confirmed she still hasn’t learned anything.  And neither have the other Viewettes, who criticized their bosses for their closed-mindedness toward their pal Goldberg.

In all fairness, you can’t blame this sorry crew’s puzzled reaction — after all, Goldberg’s highly publicized, non–politically correct, equally repulsive pronunciamentos on race, religion, and sex issues never caused trouble.  Indeed, they have only enhanced her reputation over the years.

Specifically, many people are looking back on Goldberg’s defense of her friend, actor and filmmaker Mel Gibson, on The View in 2010, following his racist and antisemitic comments about Black and Jewish people — including an audio recording of the actor saying that he hoped his then-girlfriend, Oksana Grigorieva, was “raped by a pack of n——.”

“I don’t like what he did here,” she said on the show.  “But I know Mel and I know he’s not a racist.  He may be a bonehead.  I can’t sit and say that he’s a racist, having spent time with him in my house with my kids.” (snip)

We all remember or have read about Goldberg’s infamous 1993 roast held at the Friars Club where her boyfriend at the time, Ted Danson, performed in blackface and said a slew of N-words and racist jokes. Goldberg ardently defended the routine and admitted to writing some of it, telling the press that she has “never been about political correctness.”