RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.wsj.com/articles/washington-admits-fraudulent-accounting-again-53587f09?mod=opinion_lead_pos11

You have to laugh or cry when the Congressional Budget Office issues an occasional reminder that lawmakers use bogus accounting to hide from taxpayers the true cost of federal programs. Give CBO credit for honesty as it points out how required official estimates are at odds with real-world bookkeeping. Last week CBO explained how its new report on federal support for consumer and business lending measures the downside:

The report shows two kinds of estimates: those currently used in the federal budget, which are made by following the procedures specified in the Federal Credit Reform Act of 1990 (FCRA), and those referred to as fair-value estimates, which measure the market value of the government’s obligations…
Using FCRA procedures, CBO estimates that new loans and loan guarantees issued in 2024 would cost the federal government $10.9 billion over their lifetime. But using the fair-value approach, CBO estimates that those loans and guarantees would have a lifetime cost of $76.7 billion.

The fair-value estimate is 10 times what Beltway accounting claims?! This suggests a fraud so large that it might persuade even former Enron adviser Paul Krugman to rescind his 2021 endorsement of “budget chicanery.”

A government that habitually embraces such financial shenanigans over decades could someday run up a debt of $32.7 trillion.

Now that someday has arrived, the question is when the reckoning will occur. Dan Clifton of Strategas writes in a note to clients today that “the next president will face a once in 40-year shift in monetary policy, fiscal policy, and geopolitics that requires serious governing.”

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

In the history books, great social revolutions are often distilled into digestible reasons for their emergence.  Rising unemployment, widespread illness, cultural upheaval, and rapid technological change have all been diagnosed as the proximate causes for various sudden shifts in society.  If you look past those antiseptic historical autopsies, though, and concentrate on the feelings and passions of the people who experienced the revolutions firsthand, you will find another symptom present in every single movement for great change: popular rejection of ruling class lies.

People despise lies, especially lies that have had the effect of making them feel foolish.  People despise lies so much that they will go out of their way to pretend obvious lies are somehow still based in truth.  It is much more comfortable to believe that governing institutions continue to make “honest” mistakes than to accept that those institutions abandoned honesty a long time ago.  It is easier to spin one lie away with yet another soothing lie than to accept the darker, harder, bitter truth.  However, officially sanctioned lies tend to coagulate in the body politic much like spike proteins clotting in the blood until, eventually, the whole system just bursts.

When that happens, people become rightly mad.  They are mad not only because they finally recognize that their government has been engaged in massive deceptions, but also because they are ashamed for having defended obvious lies as truths for far too long.  Rage is the inevitable result — a rejection of the people and institutions responsible for such degrading self-delusions.  And when rage arrives, a peculiar thing tends to happen: fewer and fewer ruling-class heirs remain to defend the status quo.  History records successful revolutions when the previous system’s liars rebrand themselves, recede into the background, or simply disappear.

Whatever else you might think about our current historical moment, one observation is inescapable: rage is in the air.  And how is the ruling class responding?  Instead of turning down the temperature under a boiling pot already spilling over, it is frantically pressing down an iron-laden lid and hoping the pressure won’t build.  The vast majority of Americans believe that their elections are tainted by fraud, but the ruling class chooses to see nothing.  Rising political dissent is met with government-engineered censorship and false imprisonment.  Popular opinions against illegal immigration and unnecessary wars and for energy independence and less government regulation are entirely ignored.  The people’s wants and needs are scorned, while the unaccountable bureaucracy imposes its will upon the unwilling.  Just as every other deposed ruling class has done in the past, our ruling class has chosen to stand on top of the lid barely containing society’s boiling pot of passions, buoyed by the false notion that raw force will make that pot less likely to explode.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/the-fbi-as-grand-inquisitor/

The Domain product leaked from the FBI Richmond field office revealed an ugly, subterranean influence lurking within the analyst population. The presuppositions were faulty. The analysis shoddy. And, the footnoted sources were scurrilous at best. It was a left wing treatise masquerading as an analytical product.

Whoever wrote and approved the now infamous document clearly has an axe to grind with what is described as radical-traditionalist Catholic (RTC) ideology. The footnotes describe RTC adherents as individuals who reject “the Second Vatican Council (Vatican II) as a valid church council; [have] disdain for most of the popes elected since Vatican II…and [exhibit] frequent adherence to anti-Semitic, anti-immigrant, anti-LGBTQ, and white supremacist ideology.”

The footnotes continue, “Radical-traditionalist Catholics compose a small minority of overall Roman Catholic adherents and are separate and distinct from ‘traditional Catholics’ who prefer the Traditional Latin Mass and pre-Vatican II teachings and traditions, but without the more extremist ideological beliefs and violent rhetoric.”

The initial analysis of this document and subsequent reporting has been somewhat inaccurate. It is not accurate to assert that this document is focused on “Traditional Catholics,” but rather focuses on “a small minority” who allegedly espouse radical “extremist ideological beliefs and violent rhetoric.” However, the public’s concern is well founded. This document is a foray into the very sanctum of constitutionally protected religious liberty.

In fact, the often misquoted letter penned by Thomas Jefferson, used by militantly secularist liberals to mischaracterize the “wall of separation between church and state,” addresses this very issue.

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2023/08/biden_takes_in_a_6day_vacay_at_tom_steyers_18_million_lake_tahoe_mansion__with_a_side_trip_to_maui.html

The residents of Maui must be so thrilled to hear that Joe Biden will interrupt his regularly scheduled weeklong vacation to make a one-day side trip to their fire-ravaged island.

No wonder a lot of them are telling the press they’d rather he didn’t.

The New York Post notes that this is one of many such trips he’s made during his presidency:

WASHINGTON — President Biden and his extended family arrived late Friday for a weeklong Lake Tahoe vacation at the $18 million waterfront mansion of billionaire climate investor Tom Steyer.

Biden, 80, and his scandal-plagued son Hunter, 53, showed up separately to the six-bedroom Nevada retreat, which is touted on Redfin as “one of Lake Tahoe’s finest lakefront properties and the pinnacle waterfront estate within the gated Glenbrook community.”

The home features a “spectacular lakeside gazebo [that] rests between the park-like grounds and the calming shores of Glenbrook Bay,” the real estate website says.

The president has enjoyed free vacations at the homes of other prominent Democrats, but the White House said that he will pay for the stay at Steyer’s three-acre property.

“The First Family is renting a private home for their stay in Lake Tahoe,” a statement read. “The home belongs to Tom Steyer and Kat Taylor. The First Family is renting the home for fair market value.”

Fair market value? If that was the case, why did he choose the home of a political crony? Fair market value means he could have chosen anyone. The Post points out that there’s no way of verifying “fair market value” which could be anything, actually, let alone whether he paid it. He has taken many such vacations at the homes of billionaires before, during his presidency, and reportedly never paid a dime, nor did he claim these to-dos as “gifts” on disclosure forms.

Last August, Biden and his family spent seven days at the nine-bedroom Kiawah Island, SC, mansion of donor Maria Allwin, whose family runs a hedge fund, after asking her to use the home, a source told The Post at the time.

“They’re not paying. They’ve never paid,” the source said.

https://amgreatness.com/2023/08/20/unipartys-plan-to-save-our-democracy-unfolds/

The fish are plentiful today. There’s Hunter Biden and his various lies: about the sources of his prodigious income, his payment (that is, non-payment) of taxes, drugs, guns, child support, laptops and prostitutes. There’s Joe Biden and his lies, the sources of his prodigious income, and—the latest—his use of pseudonymous email accounts when writing to Hunter and Hunter’s business partners to discuss the weather—or was it the whether and how to siphon 20 million of the crispest into virtually untraceable bank accounts?

There’s the seemingly endless series of indictments directed at Donald Trump. The latest new there, if I am up to date, is that he told people to watch election returns on One America News Network. Clearly part of a RICO conspiracy. Someone whose math is sharper than mine calculated that President Trump is potentially on the hook for 450 years in the slammer for . . . well, his torts are mostly in the eye of the beholder.

This coming week, Fox News, whose leaders have made no secret of their contempt for Trump, are holding the first Republican debate. Problem: as of this writing, it looks as though Trump will not be participating. How rude! And to Fox News, which hates him, and to the RNC, which doesn’t like him very much. How could he do this?

The really delicious thing is that even if Trump doesn’t show up for the debate, he will upstage everyone. The word at the moment is that he’ll do an interview with Tucker Carlson on Twitter at the same time as the debate. My bookies report that viewership of that interview, should it take place, would be far higher than the viewership for watching Chris Christie throw his, er, weight around. Quick: who is Doug Bergum and does anyone care? Yes, the event will be an opportunity for Tim Scott and Vivek Ramaswamy to shine. It will also be a sort of last bite at the apple for Ron DeSantis and his sputtering campaign.

But let’s face it, whether Trump shows up or not, he is the star of the show. If he doesn’t show, his performance will be like that of Tallulah Bankhead who, late in her career, was dissed by some pushy ingenue. “I could upstage you dahling,” Tallulah said, “without even being on stage.” She did, too, by the simple expedient of precariously balancing a champagne glass half-on-half-off a table when she made her exit. The ingenue came on for her big scene, but all eyes were glued to the glass: would it or would it not fall off the table? (No one knew that she had put sticket tape on the bottom of the glass).

I don’t know what is going to happen in this election anymore than you do, Dear Reader. But I have been amused by the absolute certitude of the chattering class, which assures us with hands wringing that 1) Trump is a very bad man 2) That he cannot win the general election but that 3) The clever but insidious Dems will assure that he wins the nomination, thus assuring a Republican defeat come November 2024.

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2023/08/woke_white_air_force_colonel_who_declared_other_white_colonels_racists_gets_promoted_to_brigadier_general.html

The Pentagon has gone to great ends to hide its wokery whenever it gets caught.

They’ve shut down drag shows on U.S. military bases. They’ve kicked openly white-hating wokesters teaching military kids upstairs to other things. They’ve taken down their Pride Month flags and tweets. They’ve changed course on hunting for “extremists” in the ranks when news emerged that they missed actual miscreants under their noses. They’ve investigated dog-sex officer pervert rings that had been going on for a long time in Hawaii. They’ve also denied, in testimony to Congress at appropriations time, that they are wokesters.

But personnel is policy and a look at who they’re promoting tells another story.

Get a load of this charmer, as noted by Kevin Downey at PJMedia:

Enter USAF Col. Benjamin Jonsson. He was nominated by *President Biden to be promoted to brigadier general. Col. Jonsson is white. And “woke.”

Col. Jonsson believes the “problem” with the Air Force is “white colonels” like himself—but not really him, just all the other white colonels.

https://issuesinsights.com/2023/08/18/bidens-drug-pricing-transparency-rule-is-just-back-door-price-controls/

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services just proposed a rule supposedly designed to improve transparency in Medicaid.

That’s hardly the real objective, however. The proposal is a back-door effort to expand price controls in Medicaid and beyond, a surefire way to derail the next generation of medical breakthroughs.

The CMS rule would require certain drug makers to participate in annual “price verification surveys.” The agency claims the surveys will shed light on why certain drugs are priced the way they are. The kicker is that through this “survey” process, drug companies would have to share proprietary and confidential data with the government.

CMS has offered drug makers an escape route, however — much the way blackmailers and extortionists offer their victims a way out. All a company has to do to excuse itself from these annual audits is agree to set its drug prices at whatever level the government deems fair — or, as an alternative, to hand over larger rebates to Medicaid. It’s an offer they can’t refuse.

Those who don’t play ball and cut prices “voluntarily” can look forward to selective release or leaks of confidential material that activists will pounce on to apply outside pressure on prices.  

This is a flagrant abuse of government power. But more worrying still is the harm the rule would do to patients.

https://thehill.com/opinion/finance/4158523-joe-bidens-odd-but-revealing-claim-about-inflation/

President Biden brandished a brand-new claim in his recent talk about the wonders of the Inflation Reduction Act:

“Now, one reason we’ve seen inflation fall by two thirds without losing jobs is corporate profits are coming back down to earth. The excesses are being eliminated by the corporations.”

In other words, “excess” company profits are dropping, and that has brought price increases under control. By Biden’s logic, if Corporate America went bankrupt, the economy would really be humming.  

Hasn’t anyone ever explained to Biden that it is profits that lead to investment, to productivity gains and to higher wages? Apparently not. Biden thinks inflation stems from corporate greed, not too much spending — no wonder the White House got it so wrong.

Biden’s anti-business mindset reminds us of the Obama years, during which the country experienced the slowest-ever recovery from a recession. Liberals like Paul Krugman continue to argue that former President Obama’s failure to boost U.S. growth stemmed from an undersized stimulus program. No, the problem was that Obama stomped on the green shoots of economic revival with a tsunami of regulatory changes that confounded employers and decision-makers, stymied investment and prolonged the downturn.

We are seeing much the same today. Biden keeps talking about building the economy from the middle out; I doubt even he knows what he is talking about. In reality, he is building the economy from the top down, with the government at the tip of the pyramid, issuing ever-more rules and making significant decisions about the allocation of capital and direction of industry.

https://americanmind.org/salvo/smiling-faces-lie/

Merrick Garland’s placidity disguises evil within.

In 1971, The Temptations reminded us that smiling faces tell lies (Undisputed Truth’s version came out later that year, and the O’Jays’ “Back Stabbers” the following year). “Smiling Faces” attributes the lies and “evil that lurks within” to jealousy, misery and envy. That just might be Attorney General Merrick Garland’s motivation for appointing David Weiss to be the so-called special counsel. For an erstwhile appeals court judge, not becoming a Supreme Court justice must really sting.

Weiss’ appointment is a scam and a fraud on the American people. He is the opposite of what a special prosecutor is supposed to be.

When the independent counsel statute expired in 1999, the Justice Department adopted regulations governing the appointment of a watered-down successor referred to as a special counsel. The current regulations call for the attorney general to appoint a special counsel when he or she determines that a criminal investigation is warranted and that investigation or prosecution by a U.S. attorney’s office would present a conflict of interest. Here, that should have led to the appointment of a special counsel two years ago.

Section 600.3 of the special counsel regulations provides,

An individual named as Special Counsel shall be a lawyer with a reputation for integrity and impartial decision making, and with appropriate experience to ensure both that the investigation will be conducted ably, expeditiously and thoroughly, and that investigative and prosecutorial decisions will be supported by an informed understanding of the criminal law and Department of Justice policies. The Special Counsel shall be selected from outside the United States Government.

Weiss has few of these qualifications. He is a Justice Department apparatchik. He appears to lack integrity, impartial decision making, and an ability (perhaps, more fairly, an intention) to conduct the investigation ably, expeditiously, or thoroughly.

Weiss has been investigating for five years, long enough to run out the statute of limitations on many of Hunter Biden’s most serious crimes. It does not require much effort to identify that it is unlawful to deduct payments to pimps, escorts, and paramours as a business expense. While it requires greater effort to review statements from 20 bank accounts, it doesn’t take a year to determine that upwards of $20 million ran through accounts owned by Hunter, or for which Hunter had an obligation to report his share of income, which he failed to do.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/gen-milley-admits-wokeness-is-undermining-military-recruitment/

The Washington Post chatted with the outgoing chief of woke armed forces to hear his latest excuses.

Gen. Milley showed off his usual excuses, admitting and denying, spinning and blaming everyone else.

“There’s clearly a recruiting challenge ongoing and you saw numbers. And the Army is particularly challenged to meet its numbers.

So why is that? I think there’s a lot of reasons. There’s never a single causal factor. So anyone who out there is saying that this is the reason, I would challenge them on that…

I think another contributing factor is clearly this perception of quote, “wokeness,” and I personally think that it’s overstated. There are things that are done in the military that certainly, you know, raise that as an issue, but the actual facts suggests that it’s much less significant than perhaps the perception is.”

When Milley is admitting that perception of wokeness is the issue, he’s admitting it’s a problem while claiming it’s only a perception issue. Like most officials who have to argue that the issue is perception, not reality, it’s spin to cope with a real problem caused by those same officials.

“I’ll use drag queen shows as an example. That’s been out there. I don’t agree with drag queen shows being on military bases. I don’t think that’s appropriate. And neither does Secretary Austin. So Secretary Austin put a stop to it. How many times it happened? It happened a few. That’s true. Probably shouldn’t happen. But it did. But to say that that is, you know, somehow the entire military went woke because a handful of drag queen shows that shouldn’t happen to begin with, I think is an overstatement.

The drag shows are the least of it. As is the whole Pride Month mess. It’s top military officials like Milley’s replacement, Gen. Brown, giving talks about how racist America is. It’s the push for racial and gender quotas. It’s the injection of radical political indoctrination amid the so-called ‘stand down’ on racism.

Milley knows all this and just keeps spinning.