RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://asiatimes.com/2021/07/the-great-federal-debt-ponzi-scheme/

It’s like the pump part of a pump-and-dump scheme in the stock market – without the benefit of an exit strategy.

The discrepancy between raging inflation and soggy Treasury bond yields remains a cognitive dissonance in financial markets.

There’s a simple explanation (and “Inflation is transitory” is NOT a full credit answer): The Federal Reserve and the commercial banks that depend on the Fed are virtually the only buyers of US government debt.

As long as the Fed is willing (and the market allows it) to buy arbitrarily large amounts of government debt, the price of US government debt is whatever the Fed says it is. It’s like the pump part of a pump-and-dump scheme in the stock market, except without the benefit of an exit strategy.

This Ponzi game can continue until inflation rises to the point where investors flee the Treasury market, yields soar and the economy falls back into recession. If the Fed and Treasury are willing to stake the credit of the United States of America on this game, it can last for a while. No matter how big a player you are, though, no one will take your marker at the craps table forever.

Without exaggeration, the US federal debt market is the most manipulated market of importance in the world at this writing.

The US banking system is a captive auxiliary of the central bank. The Fed has flooded the banks with reserves and pays them 0.05% (5 basis points) to hold these reserves at the Federal Reserve’s repurchase facility.

https://greenwald.substack.com/p/an-ugly-war-among-leftist-youtubers?token=ey

An incredibly vicious and protracted war is being waged, seemingly with no end in sight, among numerous prominent liberal and left-wing commentators who work primarily on YouTube. The conflict erupted on May 26 when Cenk Uygur — the founder and long-time host of The Young Turks, the largest liberal-left YouTube platform — baselessly and falsely accused independent journalist Aaron Maté of being “paid by the Russians,” while his co-host, Ana Kasparian, spouted innuendo that Maté was “working for” unnamed dictators.

Maté is one of the very few left-wing journalists who reported skeptically on Russiagate and who questioned the U.S. Government’s narrative about the civil war in Syria, including by traveling to war-torn parts of that country to do so. He won the 2019 Park Center for Independent Media’s Izzy Award for his work debunking Russiagate. Yet with a one-minute rant from their insulated studio, Uygur baselessly branded Maté as someone who is “paid by the Russians” while Kasparian asserted that he “seemed” to be working for Assad and other dictators — a potentially reputation-destroying smear for a journalist and one that can be quite dangerous for a reporter who, like Maté, works on the ground in war zones.

The conflict engendered by those grotesque fabrications escalated significantly when Kasparian sent a private Twitter message to one of Maté’s defenders, Jimmy Dore, in which she threatened to accuse Dore of #MeToo-type sexual harassment from when they worked together seven years earlier. Kasparian made clear that her intent to publicly vilify Dore as a sexual harasser would serve as punishment for his criticisms of The Young Turks. Dore then revealed Kasparian’s threat on his program, and days later, Kasparian made good on her threat by accusing Dore of sexual harassment back in 2014.

Twitter Direct Message from The Young Turks’ Ana Kasparian to Jimmy Dore, Apr. 14, 2016 and June 11, 2021.

While I used my social media platforms to denounce the false accusations voiced by Uygur and Kasparian against Maté, none of this would merit an article or stand-alone commentary if not for the fact that the two weapons they chose — false accusations that someone is a paid Russian agent and exploited sexual harassment accusations — have become extremely commonplace in Democratic Party politics, liberal circles and U.S. politics more broadly. It is long past time — way past time — that these tactics be rejected and scorned by everyone regardless of ideology or personality preferences.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/07/boston-muslim-who-stabbed-rabbi-violent-and-very-robert-spencer/

Khaled Awad stabbed Rabbi Shlomo Noginski eight times on Thursday afternoon. Predictably, International Business Times reported on Saturday that “police have yet to establish the motive for the stabbing, and the investigation into the incident continues.” Yeah, this one is a real head-scratcher. Khaled Awad doesn’t seem to be a “white supremacist,” but what else could he possibly be? Help us, Merrick Garland, help us!

Garland has so far remained mum, but Awad’s old roommates and friends at the University of Southern Florida have been more forthright. CBS reported Friday that one of Awad’s old school chums, Eric Valiente, said that while they were in college together, Awad “started becoming violent.” And not only that: “He was very much anti-Semitic. He would say like all types of Jewish jokes. I thought he was joking at first and then I started to see seriousness in his comments. He disgusted me at that point. I wanted nothing to do with the guy. At this point, I was a little scared of him. I was scared of what he was capable of because I realize he was a very dark person.”

Awad got so violent, in fact, that his roommate, Aidan Anderson, moved out and got a restraining order against him. Before that, “we were friends, to be honest with you,” Anderson recalled. “I’m Jewish. And he knew that since I moved in.”

Might that have been why Awad began to get violent? After all, around the time of the recent conflict between Hamas and Israel, Palestinian Muslims and their supporters committed acts of violence against Jews and supporters of Israel all over the United States. In New York City, a Muslim mob screaming “Allahu akbar” attacked a Jewish man in midtown Manhattan. Also in Manhattan, Palestinians threatened violence and screamed anti-Semitic slurs at Jews. One threw a mini-firebomb. Pro-jihad protesters stormed a restaurant and spat on Jewish patrons; one of the thugs threw a bottle. A Muslim, Waseem Awawdeh, was arrested for viciously beating a Jew in Times Square.

In Los Angeles, Palestinian protesters asked people dining at the Sushi Fumi restaurant if they were Jewish, and proceeded to attack them with knives. Elsewhere in Los Angeles, two cars festooned with Palestinian flags chased a Jewish man down a street as he was leaving his synagogue.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/07/dr-fauci-americas-fallen-idol-jeff-crouere/

Dr. Anthony Fauci, the Director of the National Institute of Allergy, and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), has been a constant fixture in the media since the outbreak of COVID-19 in late 2019. 

Despite the relaxation of mandates and the falling virus death rates in the United States, Fauci continues to generate media attention.  

He loves the media, and they love his “doom and gloom” message. In recent weeks, Fauci has been advocating for all Americans to vaccinate, including young people, and warning about the dangers of new variants.

This week, he appeared on a video for President Joe Biden. He called the “Delta variant” even more dangerous than the original virus. Fauci claimed it was “more transmissible” and a “variant of concern” especially to young people. The message was to get vaccinated “before it’s too late.”

This dire warning is in direct contrast to the evidence released in the United Kingdom. Their latest government report shows the fatality rate for the “Delta variant” to be 0.1%, lower than the “Alpha,” “Beta” and “Eta” variants. Why would Dr. Fauci misrepresent the threat of this new variant? Possibly to continue the COVID-19 public hysteria and his role as the media darling.  

Fauci has served in his position since 1984, decades too long. There are good reasons to limit how long politicians and leaders of government bureaucracies should remain in office. It is an effective protection against corruption. After 37 years, Fauci has accumulated vast power and has become the highest paid person in the federal government, making $434,312 annually, an outrageous amount considering his pathetic COVID-19 track record.

While the media, President Biden and congressional Democrats have anointed him as the nation’s premier virus expert, in reality, Fauci has been a total failure. Throughout the pandemic, his recommendations have changed on vital issues such as masks and social distancing.

https://amgreatness.com/2021/07/04/the-genesis-of-our-american-collective-meltdown/

This Fourth of July holiday we might pause for a moment from our festivities to ask how we collectively lost our minds over the last 15 months—and are we yet regaining any semblance of our sanity? 

A pandemic caused by the leak of a Chinese-engineered virus and its coverup was cause enough for nationwide madness. But the spread of COVID–19 was followed by a nationalized and often politicized “flatten-the-curve” quarantine that soon ensured a stir-crazy nation. Tens of millions saw no people, and heard nothing human other than what was fed to them through television and computers. No wonder they grew paranoid, conspiratorial, and angry, and soon forgot the therapeutic nature of personal interaction and the shared humanity of being in the physical presence of others.

Our first self-induced recession came next and lasted over a year, destroying all the hard work of the prior three years. Next ensued the death of George Floyd and a subsequent 120 days of rioting, looting, and arson. The immediate costs were $2 billion in damage, over 25 deaths, 14,000 arrests, and a Lord of the Flies anarchy with no-go zones in our major cities. A McCarthyite frenzy followed, as remote-controlled America hunted down the supposed “racists” among us—while career agendas, personal grudges, and ideological hatred fueled the cancel culture. 

All this was antecedent to our first election in which Election Day voting was incidental, not essential, to the outcome. This was also our first presidential campaign in which the incumbent was stricken by a pandemic virus. And his opponent, due to his age and infirmity, simply reverted to the 19th century style of staying home and outsourcing the electioneering to the Democratic-media complex. Biden’s basement became the equivalent of the “front-porch” of homebound candidates of a century and more ago. 

The derangement was then capped off, first, by a buffoonish riot at the Capitol followed by a Reichstag-fire style militarization of Washington, D.C., in a “never let a crisis go to waste” psychodrama. Then came a novel second and unprecedented presidential impeachment, without a special prosecutor, witnesses, or cross examinations. It was based on the myth of a deadly “armed insurrection” fueled by President Trump, which purportedly led to the murder of a police officer. Later most of the writs of the House impeachment were proven fantasies, from the idea of “armed” and “well-organized” to “murderous” revolutionaries. The only mysteries were the identity of the unnamed officer who fatally shot an unarmed female protester and military veteran, and why the government has still not released thousands of hours of video detailing the riot. 

https://amgreatness.com/2021/07/03/joe-bidens-happy-things/

McDonald’s has its “Happy Meals,” so it’s only fair that Joe Biden has his “Happy Times.” The Fourth of July weekend is one of those bright, smiling occasions that normally begets happiness, though in truth the White House occupant was not smiling on Friday when reporters ventured to ask him about the decision (I won’t say his decision) to turn over Bagram Airfield to the Afghans after nearly 20 years, $2 trillion in taxpayer money spent, and thousands of U.S. casualties. 

Question for the future: what did we get for all that blood and treasure? Don’t answer now, just put it on your mental to-do list. 

Anyway, the leader of the free world didn’t want to talk about Afghanistan. “I want to talk about happy things, man,” he snapped. The Taliban is such a downer, you know, and besides “It’s Fourth of July” weekend. “I’m going to celebrate it. There’s great things happening.” 

Like gasoline prices about double what they were last year? Out-of-control inflation? A humanitarian and national security crisis on our Southern border? 

Mr. Happy did not mention those items. 

Nor did he dwell on the deeper question, viz what are we celebrating on the 4th of July? After all, many college students say they are “embarrassed” to be Americans. “Are you proud to be an American?” an interviewer asked. “Hell no,” was the answer, or words to that effect. 

Not that this is surprising. Most of the major institutions of the country have been telling us that America is irredeemably racist, sexist, and exploitative. The wretched “1619 Project,” which argued that America was founded as a “slavocracy” and that the American Revolution—whose culmination we celebrate on July 4—was fought to perpetuate the institution of slavery, was promulgated by the New York Times, supposedly our paper of record. The tendentious and historically inaccurate contentions of that disgusting anti-American broadside were then packaged for school curricula by the Times and other outlets of dubious national loyalty. As of this writing, elements of the 1619 Project’s ideology are part of the curricula of more than 4,500 schools. 

Then there is critical race theory, a catechism that teaches students to hate their country and whites to hate themselves. As Christopher Rufo has shown in meticulous detail, the wild ideas of CRT are being force-fed in mandatory training sessions not only to students but also to government employees. 

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2021/07/further_evidence_if_you_need_it_of_bidens_increasing_dementia.html

Those of Joe Biden’s public behaviors that align with classic dementia symptoms are escalating. In the past few days, he strongly exhibited two symptoms: A type of belligerence that’s a cover-up for confusion and memory loss and a paranoid fear of those in charge of him.

I used to spend a lot of time in the company of doctors. What always fascinated me were the tales they told of dealing with patients with early-stage dementia. The most interesting point they made was that elderly people, so as not to lose face or admit their own fears, are superb at deflecting the questions aimed at assessing their cognitive skills and memory.

For example, one of the most common questions is “Who’s the president of the United States?” Rather than admitting that they don’t remember, people in early-stage dementia will get defensive or otherwise deflect. They might say, “That is incredibly insulting that you’d ask me that question,” picking a fight to distract from their memory loss. Others might go for flattery: “I can’t believe that a young man like you doesn’t know who’s president. That’s just a silly question to ask me.”

Biden perfectly illustrated that type of angry, defensive, deflecting behavior when reporters on Friday asked him about Afghanistan: