RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://issuesinsights.com/2023/08/10/welcome-to-bidens-grand-illusion-of-prosperity/

‘You know, if you let me write $200 billion worth of hot checks every year, I could give you an illusion of prosperity, too.”

That was then-Democratic Sen. Lloyd Bentsen back in 1988 arguing that the Reagan boom was a myth because it was bought and paid for with deficit spending, then running about $200 billion a year. 

What would Bentsen say today about an economy that – instead of blasting ahead at more than 4% a year at it was in 1988 – is barely eking out gains and appears headed to a downturn … despite the fact that President Joe Biden is writing $200 billion in hot checks every two months. 

We know what Biden and his legions of sycophants in the “independent” media would say. The economy is doing great thanks to “Bidenomics.”

“The economy is growing and we’re lowering costs for families. That’s Bidenomics at work,” Biden said after the latest GDP numbers came out, which showed the economy growing 2.4% in the second quarter of this year. “This progress wasn’t inevitable or accidental — it is Bidenomics in action, growing the economy from the middle out and bottom up, not the top down.”

One week later, Fitch downgraded the U.S. credit rating from AAA to AA+.

The lower rating, Fitch said, “reflects the expected fiscal deterioration over the next three years, a high and growing general government debt burden, and the erosion of governance relative to ‘AA’ and ‘AAA’-rated peers.”

Fiscal deterioration over the next three years and a high and growing debt burden? Is this “Bidenomics in action”?

Look at the numbers and you see why Fitch is worried.

https://pjmedia.com/columns/stephen-kruiser/2023/08/08/dems-science-denier-accusation-is-old-wrong-and-pathetic-n1717244

The Democrats have long fancied themselves to be the party of science. They also fancy themselves the party of youth and diversity but are currently championing an 80-year-old white guy for a second term as president of the United States.

What Democrats are known for, to those of us who don’t lap up their propaganda, is a chronic lack of self-awareness, about both themselves as people and their ideology. Pretty much everything that they believe to be true about Republicans and Democrats bears no resemblance to reality. They repeat the lies about themselves until those lies not only become true for them, but also become part of the Democratic origin story.

One of the most enduring myths that Democrats believe — especially here in the 21st century — is that they’re all elite intellectuals, while all Republicans and conservatives are knuckle-dragging rubes. Even when Republicans like Ted Cruz, Tom Cotton, or Ron DeSantis present the kind of higher education bona fides that usually send them into a mindless orgiastic frenzy around one another, they find reasons to be dismissive. Mustn’t allow for the possibility of intellectuals from outside the unquestioning hive mind, after all.

Of all the lies that the Democrats tell themselves, the “party of science” nonsense ranks second only to “the government always knows best.”

We’ll get to how wrong they were about all things COVID in a moment. Even before that, Democrats had essentially abandoned biology which, I just checked, is still a science. According to them, human embryos aren’t really human, there are 42,000,000 genders, and now men can get pregnant. That’s not merely denying science, that’s rejecting it altogether.

https://thefederalist.com/2023/08/08/bidenomics-has-been-a-disaster/

The president helped create inflation, high energy prices, and stifling interest rates. Jobs? Not so much.

After 40 years of “trickle-down economics,” Joe Biden says, “Bidenomics is just another way of saying restoring the American Dream.”

It’s not often that a politician openly pledges to bring the country back to a time of crippling inflation, high energy prices, and stifling interest rates. But this president is doing his best to keep that promise.

Unsurprisingly, “Bidenomics” is failing to gain traction among voters. This has caused consternation in the media. One thing to remember, though, is that “Bidenomics” isn’t really a thing.  Unlike, say, “Reaganomics,” which helped bring about the largest expansion of the middle class in world history, the president does not subscribe to any coherent or tangible set of economic theories or principles. The White House defines its economic policy as being “rooted in the recognition that the best way to grow the economy is from the middle out and the bottom up,” which is just platitudinous gibberish.

“Bidenomics” encompass anything and everything that’s convenient for Democrats. And in this moment, it’s convenient for them to take credit for merely letting people go back to work. Biden, who once claimed that the Democrats $3.5 trillion “Build Back Better” plan cost “zero dollars,” isn’t exactly a math whiz. But when he says stuff like “13.4 million jobs have been added to our economy” under his watch, more than “any other president in a full 4-year term,” anyone with even a passing familiarity with the events of the years preceding 2023 knows it’s a lie of omission.

The notion that presidents “create” jobs is itself a fantasy. In this case, though, Biden supported efforts to shutter private businesses during the pandemic, basically closing down the entire economy, not only while running for president but after winning office. When Florida, and other states, attempted to ease some restrictions, President Biden told them to “get out of the way” so that people could “do the right thing.” The pressure exerted on states to “do the right thing” was immense.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/a-never-trump-prosecutor-threatens-free-speech/

The indictment of Donald Trump for speaking out against the results of the 2020 election, and in the words of the indictment, fomenting “a conspiracy to defraud the United States,” has been challenged by legal commentators from both political parties. These jurists consider the prosecutor’s “novel legal theories” dubious or even preposterous, not to mention unconstitutional. If successful, this politicization of the legal system that attacks one candidate for the presidency and benefits the other, carries with it a huge moral hazard.

Democrat legal scholar Jonathan Turley has identified this risk: “The hatred for Trump is so all-encompassing that legal experts on the political left have ignored the chilling implications of this indictment. This complaint is based largely on statements that are protected under the First Amendment. It would eviscerate free speech and could allow the government to arrest those who are accused of spreading disinformation in elections.”

This corruption of First Amendment law––one already judged unconstitutional in several Supreme Court decisions–– will further empower significantly the already growing threats to free speech. “Woke” Dems for decades have been weakening this foundation of every free government and society. But if Trump’s political enemies can treat the ex-president this way with impunity, then we all will be further down the road to tyranny.

Part of sketchy federal prosecutor Jack Smith’s shambolic reasoning is the charge that Trump “lied” about the integrity of the 2020 election. That Trump is a serial liar is a NeverTrump cliché, reflecting his enemies’ inability or indifference to distinguish rhetorical hyperbole, a feature of political speech since ancient Athens, from a willful lie. As Salena Zito memorably said, when Trump uses such exaggerations, “the press takes him literally, but not seriously; his supporters take him seriously, but not literally.”

Moreover, how does Smith determine that Trump knew he was lying?  As Kimberley Strassel writes, “But how do you prove legally that Trump truly didn’t believe his false claims? And even if you can prove that Trump lied, how do you legally distinguish his falsehoods from the lies other political leaders have told over the years?”

As Strassel explains Smith’s argument, though Trump has a First Amendment right to lie, “Yet if that politician is advised by others that his comments are untruthful and nonetheless uses them to justify acts that undermine government ‘function,’ he is guilty of a conspiracy to defraud the country. Dishonest politicians who act on dubious legal claims? There aren’t enough prisons to hold them all.”

https://www.frontpagemag.com/a-florida-trial-and-a-d-c-grand-jury-for-trump/

The elites may have to hold one of their show trials in Florida, but the grand jury had to be in D.C.

Judge Aileen Cannon on Monday asked the Justice Department to explain its use of an out-of-state grand jury in the Mar-a-Lago case.

While the Mar-a-Lago case is being handled out of her Fort Pierce, Fla., courtroom, much of the grand jury work ahead of the indictment was conducted through a Washington, D.C., grand jury.

A D.C. grand jury is an obvious rubber stamp for political prosecutors. A D.C. grand jury would indict a ham sandwich, as long as it was a Republican. That’s why the real show is in Washington D.C.

Going down to Florida is a bit inconvenient because it’s one of those provinces of the empire.

For many months, Justice Department prosecutors had questioned witnesses in the Florida case before a federal grand jury in Washington.

A Florida case and a D.C. grand jury. Why not just try all political cases in D.C.?

The easiest way to understand all this is to think of what’s located in Washington D.C. as the occupying force. Much like the British during the American Revolution, it’s the epicenter of the imperial regime that is out of touch with most of the country, but rules over it anyway. Colonials from the hinterlands sometimes visit and are impressed by the big grand buildings. When they come to work there as members of Congress, they’re either taught their manners by their betters until they join the elites or they wash out.

D.C. is the imperial city and they don’t like to venture too far from their base of power.

For many months, Justice Department prosecutors had questioned witnesses in the Florida case before a federal grand jury in Washington. The secret proceedings yielded much of the evidence at the crux of the case. But in May, the grand jury activity appeared to continue at a federal courthouse in Miami. Ultimately, prosecutors filed charges in a West Palm Beach courthouse — a courthouse in the same district as Miami and the area where Mar-a-Lago is located.