Sorry Joe, But It’s Bidenomics That Has Never Worked We hope it takes him down before it takes the entire nation down.

https://issuesinsights.com/2023/08/04/sorry-joe-but-its-bidenomics-that-has-never-worked/

‘Trickle-down economics has never worked.”

That’s what President Joe Biden says any time he’s talking about economic policy. Assuming our Octogenarian-in-Chief knows what he’s talking about, he’s guilty of what psychiatrists call projection.

Because it’s Bidenomics that has failed everywhere it’s been tried. At home. Abroad. Throughout history. And right now in states across the U.S.

Earlier this week in our What We’re Reading column, we linked to a multitude of stories that had been published detailing how Biden’s approach to economic policy — high taxes, heavy regulation, attacks on the rich and businesses, coddling criminals, and Biden-style graft and corruption — is ruining cities and states across the country (‘Blue-State’ Model Gets An ‘F’).

For years we have been documenting how Red states — conservative states that follow the pro-growth policies Biden derides as “trickle down” — have vastly outperformed Blue states. They suffered less during COVID because they didn’t embrace the left’s lockdown mania. They recovered faster because they rejected Biden’s get-paid-for-not-working policies.

Devon Archer’s Full Biden Story VP Biden mixed the family business with his Ukraine diplomacy.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/devon-archer-testimony-transcript-house-oversight-hunter-biden-joe-biden-ukraine-a21915bc?mod=opinion_lead_pos1

As soon as Devon Archer’s closed-door sitdown with the House Oversight Committee ended Monday, New York’s Daniel Goldman emerged to give the Democratic spin: President Biden’s conversations with his son’s business partners were innocent discussions about the weather or other niceties. That was exposed as false on Thursday when the committee made the complete transcript public.

Mr. Archer is a former business partner of Hunter Biden and served with him on the board of Ukrainian energy giant Burisma. Mr. Archer described the value-added that Hunter brought to the business as the “brand,” which was the Biden name. When Hunter put his father on speakerphone with his business clients, “there was [a] brand being delivered.”

He further clarified that it was Joe Biden “that brought the most value to the brand.” In other words, Hunter was selling his father’s power in Washington. That is what Burisma was paying for, and it looks like it got its money’s worth. “Burisma would have gone out of business if it didn’t have the brand attached to it,” Mr. Archer said.

Joe Biden famously bragged of his role in using $1 billion in U.S. aid to get Ukrainian prosecutor Viktor Shokin fired during his December 2015 visit to Kyiv. Mr. Archer says Mr. Shokin, who was investigating Burisma, was not “specifically on my radar,” and that he was spun a tale how of Mr. Shokin was actually “good for Burisma.” But he also said he wasn’t on the phone with Hunter, Burisma owner Mykola Zlochevsky and Burisma exec Vadym Pozharski when they “called D.C.” after a meeting in Dubai to discuss how Washington might alleviate the pressure on them.

All of this underscores Joe Biden’s horrendous judgment in blending his son’s business with his duties as Vice President. Mr. Biden was the Obama Administration’s point man for Ukraine, which was fighting Russia’s first invasion, and he can’t claim ignorance about his son’s dealings.

The U.S. Is In Real Decline—No Kidding! Part One: Energy

https://victorhanson.com/the-u-s-is-in-real-decline-no-kidding-part-one-energy/

There is proverbially a lot of rot in any great nation, which accordingly can endure a lot of self-induced damage.

But has the U.S. exhausted its reserves? Britain after World War I denied that its empire was doomed and its standard of living unsustainable. The Soviet Union was in decline gradually, then abruptly by 1989 became doomed. In the fourth century AD, Rome had established a modus vivendi of incorporating non-Romans into the empire, defending its borders, and tamping down on corruption. A century later, the Western empire collapsed from internal decay and tribal invasions across the Danube and Rhine.

Affordable energy had been America’s strength. We are still the largest combined natural gas and oil producer in the world—but determined to forfeit that advantage on the world stage and at home damage the viability of the middle class.

We were once the premier nuclear-generated power nation as well. No longer. Joe Biden and his surrogates on the state level have systematically waged war on fossil fuels, precluding even the reasonable idea that oil, gas, and coal can serve as necessary transition fuels over the next half-century, guaranteeing the American standard of living until the advent of viable alternative and renewable energies.

The only time Biden focuses on oil and gas is before a midterm or general election, when he hurriedly will either drain more of the strategic petroleum reserve or showboat a few more new federal energy leases.

A state like California has the highest taxed and the costliest electricity in the continental United States, mostly as a result of bragging that it is self-sufficient in daytime electricity production due to massive and heavily subsidized solar and wind farms. Yet it keeps mum that after dark it must import equally large amounts of fossil-fuel-generated power from neighboring states.

One of the most bizarre developments during the Biden years has been the complete exemption given massive and growing Chinese coal use, coupled with the furor over domestic natural gas production and use.

Think of the logic: we coax and ignore our Chinese enemies who are hell-bent on record dirty coal use, while hectoring the mostly now green American public on their supposedly toxic use of clean-burning natural gas—as if we could persuade 1.4 billion Chinese to cease burning coal by showing them that 330 million Americans can sacrifice by not burning natural gas.

Here again is the ancient bureaucratic principle in play of focusing on the misdemeanor of the law-abiding, as a way to square the utter inability to deal with the felony of the law-breaking.

Every Trump indictment brings us closer to the rematch America really doesn’t need

/https://nypost.com/2023/08/02/every-trump-indictment-brings-us-closer-to-the-rematch-america-really-doesnt-need/

In a fresh blow to any hopes the 2024 GOP primary can focus on competing visions for America’s future, special counsel Jack Smith just dumped fresh charges against Donald Trump over his bid to overturn the 2020 results that might as well be designed and timed to rally Republicans behind him.

This case is on top of two others, one relating to the classified docs plus Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg’s Stormy Daniels hush-money prosecution, as well the expected Georgia indictment over his 2020-vote hijinks in that state.

We don’t want to dive deep into any of the charges here. The key is that none of it is cut-and-dried (the docs one is serious, but raises issues of selective prosecution; Bragg’s case is laughable).

Heck, we’ve slammed Trump repeatedly over his 2020 denialism and shameful Capitol Riot record, but Smith’s charges largely rely on new and questionable legal theories.

Above all: In the context of the Justice Department’s evident drive to quash any serious Hunter Biden investigation — and the failure to name a special counsel to handle it, despite the rising evidence implicating President Joe Biden in possible misconduct — most Republicans see it all as political vendettas, not a search for justice.

Media Criticism of ‘Sound of Freedom’ Now Looking ‘Awkward’ After What an FBI Operation Just Found

https://townhall.com/tipsheet/leahbarkoukis/2023/08/03/fbi-finds-hundreds-of-sex-trafficking-victims-in-major

The FBI located 200 victims of sex trafficking in a nationwide enforcement campaign, the agency said Tuesday, which included dozens of minors.  

The two-week operation, dubbed “Operation Cross Country,” also led to the identification or arrest of 126 suspects of child sexual exploitation and human trafficking and 68 suspects of trafficking, according to a press release. 

“Sex traffickers exploit and endanger some of the most vulnerable members of our society and cause their victims unimaginable harm,” Attorney General Merrick Garland said in a statement. “This operation, which located 59 actively missing children, builds on the tremendous work the FBI has undertaken over many years to rescue minor victims and arrest those responsible for these unspeakable crimes. We will continue to work with our law enforcement partners across the country to prevent human trafficking; increase detection, investigation, and prosecution of human trafficking crimes; and expand support and services to protect and empower survivors.”

National Center for Missing & Exploited Children praised the FBI and their law enforcement partners for their efforts to protect children.

“Behind every statistic, there is a person with dreams, aspirations, and the right to live a life free from child sex trafficking and exploitation. As a society we must work together to ensure the protection, support, and empowerment of those impacted by this heinous crime,” said the group’s president and CEO, Michelle DeLaune. “Their tireless efforts in combatting crimes against children sends a powerful message that child sexual exploitation will not be tolerated.”

The operation’s success comes after the media’s criticism of anti-child trafficking film “Sound of Freedom,” which was smeared as a conspiracy theory promoted by MAGA Republicans. 

The U.S. Is In Real Decline—Really! Part Two: Racial Relations Victor Davis Hanson

https://victorhanson.com/23776-2/

And on the pedestal these words appear:“My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!”Nothing beside remains. Round the decay Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare The lone and level sands stretch far away.Percy Shelley, “Ozymandias”

I say America is in serious trouble because the Left has attacked systematically all of the U.S.’s great strengths and advantages on the world stage. It apparently thinks it must dismantle the old America before it can create a “new” America, something like a European Union state, only far more radical and volatile.

One, we were the only multiracial constitutional state that had avoided the tribalism and violence of the Balkans, a Rwanda, or the Middle East. Europe, for all its public grandstanding about ecumenicalism, has yet to have a black president or prime minister. The idea that a Barack Obama could become a Russian or Chinese citizen and reach similar pinnacles of political power is absurd. (And for that matter, include Mexico and much of Asia and Latin America.)

Yet race relations in the U.S. are at a historic low. More than 50 years of affirmative action have morphed into woke extremism, or the idea of racially separate graduations, dorms, workshops, and safe spaces. When working out, keeping a reasonable weight, camping, or showing up on time are now deemed racist, then there really is no more Civil Rights movement which has instead descended into caricature.

The more minorities reached parity with, or exceeded the income of, the majority population, the angrier and more volatile racial relations became. The operative principle seems to be something like “Before we can have racially blind relations in the 21st century, we must first make up for the racism, largely in the South, of the prior two centuries by similarly fixating on race, but in reverse fashion of granting preference to nullify past bias.”

No one dares talk about the violence of the inner city that makes 19th-century Dodge or Tombstone seem tame in comparison. No one discusses the utter failure of the inner-city schools or the need for intact families and omnipresent fathers to ensure any chance at parity. Instead, there is apparently the notion that if blacks appear in 50 percent of television commercials, such ecumenicalism will magically either curb gunslinging on Saturday nights in Chicago, or improved math scores in the Detroit or Baltimore public schools.

Why do we obsess over the supposedly suggestive illiberal themes of Jason Aldean’s, “Try That In a Small Town,” when rap and hip-hop for decades have institutionalized violent misogyny, homophobia, violence against the police, anti-Semitism, and blanket anti-white lyrics?

Orwellian censorship, coupled with deplatforming, cancel-culture, ostracism, and shadow banning, make any reasonable discussion of race taboo. The Left—instead of the old 1960s agenda of integration and assimilation—leveraged race and tribalism to create permanent constituencies, nursed on grievance and victimhood, and expectant of endless government redress and largess.

Two Sets of Laws for Two Americas Victor Davis Hanson

https://victorhanson.com/two-sets-of-laws-for-two-americas/

Two sets of laws now operate in an increasingly unrecognizable America.

Consider the matter of unlawfully removing and storing classified papers.

Donald Trump may go to prison for removing contested White House files to his home.

So far Joe Biden seems exempt from just such legal jeopardy.

But as a senator and Vice President with no right, as does a president, to declassify files, Biden removed and, as a private citizen kept for years classified files in unsecure locations.

Biden’s team strangely revealed the unlawful removals after years of silence.

It did so because the Biden administration found itself in the untenable position of prosecuting the former president for “crimes” that the current president committed as well—albeit far earlier and longer.

Impeachable phone calls?

Donald Trump was impeached by a Democratic House for delaying foreign aid until the Ukrainian government guaranteed that Hunter Biden and his family were no longer engaged in corrupt influence peddling in Kyiv.

In addition, the Left charged that Trump was targeting Joe Biden, his possible 2020 rival.

Yet Biden, with impunity, bragged that he had fired a Ukrainian prosecutor looking into his own son’s schemes by promising to cancel outright American foreign aid.

And the Biden administration’s Justice Department is now targeting Trump, currently the frontrunning challenger to Biden in 2024.

Election denialism?

A Racist Smear. A Tarnished Career. And the Suicide of Richard Bilkszto. A beloved educator was branded as a bigot in a series of DEI sessions. The Free Press reveals the details—and exclusive audio—from a story of public shame. By Rupa Subramanya and Ari Blaff

https://www.thefp.com/p/a-racist-smear-a-tarnished-career-suicide?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email

Kike Ojo-Thompson, a diversity trainer in Toronto, was explaining to her class of 200 or so public school administrators that Canada is a much more racist country than the United States.

“Canada is a bastion of white supremacy and colonialism,” Thompson said to a sea of nodding heads squeezed into Zoom. “The racism we experience is far worse here than there.”

It was April 26, 2021, and Thompson was leading attendees through a session on systemic inequity.

Thompson acknowledged that this might be hard for Canadians to accept, explaining that Americans “have a fighting posture against, at least, the monarchy. Here we celebrate the monarchy, the very heart and soul and origins of the colonial structure.”

It was at that point that Richard Bilkszto, the principal of Burnhamthorpe Collegiate Institute and Adult Learning Centre, put his hand up. (Burnhamthorpe is a high school that caters mostly to students in their twenties who previously dropped out.) Bilkszto had trained in the United States, he was a devout progressive, and he was mystified by Thompson’s comments.

“I just wanted to make a comment about the Canada–U.S. thing, a little bit of a challenge to it,” Bilkszto offered.

Listen to Kike Ojo-Thompson’s claims about Canada in the DEI session here:

And Bilkszto’s challenge to her claims here:

Citing Canada’s public schools, tax regime, and socialized healthcare system, and no doubt drawing on his own experience teaching in a predominantly black high school in Buffalo, New York, he said: “We’re a far more just society.”

There was a momentary silence. None of the other attendees waded in.

Then Thompson, who is black, laced into Bilkszto, who is white.

“What I’m finding interesting is that, in the middle of this Covid disaster, where the inequities in this fair and equal healthcare system have been properly shown to all of us. . . you and your whiteness think that you can tell me what’s really going on with black people—like, is that what you’re doing, ’cause I think that’s what you’re doing, but I’m not sure, so I’m going to leave you space to tell me what you’re doing right now,” she said.

Bilkszto shut up.

That seemed like the end of that.

In fact, it was just the beginning of Bilkszto’s harrowing, two-year descent into an ordeal of public shaming and isolation that ended only when he took his life last month.

FBI Finds 200 Victims in Two-Week Child Exploitation Operation By Catherine Salgado

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/catherinesalgado/2023/08/02/fbi-finds-200-victims-in-two-week-child-exploitation-operation-n1715567

Soon after mainstream media mocked anti-child trafficking movie “Sound of Freedom” as a QAnon conspiracy theory, a report has come out that the FBI found 200 sex trafficking victims and over 125 suspects during just a couple weeks of a child exploitation operation. Indeed, child exploitation is a severe and increasing problem, not a conspiracy theory.

Libs of TikTok provided a nice visual of multiple leftist outlets that denigrated or scoffed at “Sound of Freedom’s” exposé of child sex trafficking, from NPR to Rolling Stone to CNN:

Stopping child trafficking and exploitation shouldn’t be a politically partisan or divisive issue.

Related: Advisor: Trump Will Reinstate Title 42 to Fight Child Trafficking on Day One

Of course, the problem of child sex trafficking is anything but a “QAnon” “fantasy fit,” despite what the mainstream media claimed. And the latest confirmation of this sobering truth is a report that the FBI found 200 sex trafficking victims and over 125 suspects during just two weeks of a child exploitation operation, “Operation Cross Country.”

NBC News reported Tuesday:

The FBI found 200 sex trafficking victims and more than 125 suspects during a two-week child exploitation operation in July, federal officials said Tuesday…

The FBI-led initiative in partnership with the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) “focused on identifying and locating victims of sex trafficking and investigating and arresting individuals and criminal enterprises involved in both child sex and human trafficking,” federal officials said.

This work should be a major priority for the federal government. Instead, the Biden administration’s disastrous border policies are actually facilitating trafficking!

The Asservo Project’s Joe Sweeney, who rescues victims of child exploitation and educates children and adults about the problem, noted in recent exclusive comments to PJ Media that the rise of social media exponentially exacerbated the problem of child exploitation. “This [human trafficking] is a global humanitarian crisis of modern-day…currently it’s over 50 million people…that are believed sold into slavery globally, boasting a $150 billion enterprise,” Sweeney told me. He also said, “The United States is the biggest consumer — and producer, at times — of child pornography in the world.”

That’s very disturbing. How did a country that was founded on the principle of liberty become a major fueler of the child exploitation crisis?

Communist Tactics and Martin Amis’s Blindness By Eileen F. Toplansky

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2023/08/communist_tactics_and_martin_amiss_blindness.html

I recently read Martin Amis’ Koba the Dread: Laughter and the Twenty Million (2002) which lays bare the enormity of the Stalinist legacy where more than 20 million people were murdered. It is deeply puzzling to read an author who documents the horror of the Left but who in 2016 also claimed that he “[was] Left of left.  Not very far left, but left, and [he] was that when [he] was 20, and [he’s] that now.”

Amis despised President Trump, whom he hated  and called a totalitarian.  But it was Trump who asserted “that America will never be a socialist country — ever.” And it is undeniable that socialism is the first step toward communism. In fact, it is Biden who seems the embodiment of all that Amis elaborated upon in his book. 

Let’s begin with attacks on religion.

In 1921 Lenin instructed a Red Army Commission to “give the most decisive and merciless battle to the [clergy] and subdue its resistance [.]”  (Amis 29).

Fast forward and repeatedly the Biden administration has nominated individuals to the highest levels of government who exhibit disdain for those they are charged to serve. Secretary of Health and Human Services Xavier Becerra “displays not just an unwillingness to protect the rights of conscience but an overt antagonism toward people of faith.” In addition, “Virginia Attorney General Jason Miyares and 19 GOP state attorneys general are demanding answers from the FBI and Justice Department and threatening legal action after a leaked internal FBI memo revealed that the agency had efforts underway to identify and treat Catholics as “potential terrorists.”