RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.frontpagemag.com/reining-in-government-spending-lets-get-real/

Behind the refusal of the House Republican Party’s so-called freedom caucus to vote for Rep. Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., is the caucus’s skepticism that he will actually “rein in government spending.” I’ve never quite understood why all Republicans do not belong to the Freedom Caucus. If the Republican Party supports low taxes, light regulations and strong national security, why is a Freedom Caucus even necessary?

Here’s the problem. In 1900, government at all three levels — local, state and federal — taxed Americans at about 9% of their earnings. Now, it is over 32%. As former President Ronald Reagan said: “Government’s view of the economy could be summed up in a few short phrases: If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidize it.”

The federal budget devotes about half of its spending to the so-called entitlement programs: Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and Obamacare. Next is income security, which includes general retirement and disability insurance; federal employee retirement, disability and military retirement; unemployment compensation; housing assistance; nutrition assistance; foster care; Supplemental Security Income; and the earned income and child tax credits. They are followed, in decreasing order, by national security and interest on the debt. Combined, these programs consume almost all federal spending — courtesy of dollars collected from taxpayers or through borrowing that ultimately must be paid back by taxpayers or through printing. This leaves a small percentage of the federal budget for so-called discretionary spending.

As to the “entitlement” portion, even Democrats over the years called the spending “unsustainable.”

https://issuesinsights.com/2023/01/17/biden-wants-it-both-ways-on-covid-but-either-way-taxpayers-get-screwed/

Last week, the Biden administration once again extended the COVID public health emergency, the 12th time it’s been extended in the past three years. Just weeks before, however, team Biden told the Supreme Court that there is no COVID emergency, and there hasn’t been one since last April.

Why the two diametrically opposed positions? Simple. Extending the public health emergency declaration lets Joe Biden keep millions of recipients on Medicaid and continue his student loan bailout. Claiming that COVID isn’t an emergency will open the floodgates to illegal immigrants.

Notice the connective tissue? It’s about expanding government dependency – for health care, for college aid, or for illegals getting on welfare. Who loses? You. And anyone else who pays taxes.

On Jan. 11, Biden Health and Human Service Secretary Xavier Becerra announced that “as a result of the continued consequences of the Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic,” he was renewing the public health emergency declaration because “a public health emergency exists and has existed since Jan. 27, 2020, nationwide.”

This isn’t about public health. It’s about government welfare.

As the Mercatus Center’s Liam Sigaud and Markus Bjoerkheim explained recently, one of the many COVID relief bills rushed through Congress “substantially increased the proportion of Medicaid costs that the federal government covers and barred states that receive the funding from checking enrollees’ eligibility or removing the ineligible from Medicaid rolls.”

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/19315/destroying-american-democracy

Just last week it was revealed that the FBI again withheld pertinent information from the American public, for past two months, until after the November 8, 2022 federal election.

The combination of a politically weaponized Intelligence Community, operating hand-in-hand with organizations that are main gateways for information to millions of Americans, is a serious threat to American democracy and the integrity of our elections.

Let us just briefly look at the steep slope of lying, deceit and corruption that has seeped into the leadership of the U.S. Intelligence Community.

Having… false information — some of which the FBI actually altered — in the public domain was evidently intended to damage Trump.

Today we know that the “Russia hoax” was a lie…. the information in the “Steele dossier” was false — and the FBI had known it was from the start.

For almost two years, the authenticity of the material found on Hunter Biden’s laptop was questioned. Today, its authenticity has been verified; the information is real and damning. As summarized by the New York Post: “Yes that letter from the Dirty 51 had all the classic earmarks of a disinformation operation, all right – one designed to ensure Joe Biden won the presidency. And it was essentially a CIA operation, considering 43 of the 51 signatories were former CIA.”

One final example of the Intelligence Community involving itself in domestic politics comes from the recent release of the Twitter files…. Tweet #17 states, “executives were also clearly liaising with federal enforcement and intelligence agencies about moderation of election-related content.” Finally, the FBI paid Twitter $3.5 million reportedly to “handle requests from the bureau.”

The FBI, DHS and the ODNI had literally had set up shop at Twitter.

Can our government, law enforcement, and the Intelligence Community still be trusted?

Have those federal government agencies literally weaponized law enforcement and intelligence against political opponents in the U.S.?

Has more than one solitary person — former FBI attorney Kevin Clinemith, for altering an email — been held accountable for these egregious abuses of power?

Who authorized the cozy relationship between law enforcement, the intelligence community with twitter?

Who in these government agencies reviewed and approved of the output and decisions coming from these joint efforts?

Who has the records, notes and decisions that emanated from these groups?

It is clear that our law enforcement community needs to be investigated, but most importantly we need to investigate how our Intelligence Community has evolved from having literally a non-existent relationship with speech in America to being inside the room determining what speech is allowed.

There… needs to be a significant investigation by an outside, non-government group to understand how far this massive government overreach into free speech and election manipulation went. Clearly the government has been influencing what we get to see and hear. It needs to stop — now — before our democracy is destroyed.

Over the last few years, there has been much written about the destruction of American democracy. Frequently the threat has been of alleged interference in U.S. elections by Russia, China or other state actors. Government agencies, the name of election integrity, were assigned to identify and disrupt these foreign intrusions. As more and more information is revealed about these agencies, it seems that America’s Intelligence Community participated in these activities domestically, and in a way that poses a grave threat to both election integrity and American democracy.

https://amgreatness.com/2023/01/14/little-joes-corvette/

What if it had been a VW Bug? Or a Kia? I mean, what if Joe Biden’s garage, in addition to housing classified documents, was sporting something other and less sexy than his snazzy 1967 Corvette? What then? 

Joe himself seems to have set great store by his classic car. It’s the thing he mentions most frequently and most passionately when asked about the cardboard boxes stacked behind it, some of which contained secret U.S. government provender dating from his time as Barack Obama’s vice president. “It’s not like the documents were just strewn about,” Joe protested (I paraphrase to save the White House occupant embarrassment). “My Corvette is in there. The garage door has a lock on it.”

Well, OK, then. 

Nothing to see here, what? Time to move on? (I thought about using a period there, but I think we can all agree that a question mark with a twist of valley-girl upspeak pleading is more appropriate.)

It’s been amusing to absorb the commentary on this latest Top-Secret-Special-Compartmentalized-Nuclear-Coded-Eyes-Only fiasco. “Some of our country’s most sensitive 411,” blah, blah, blah. It was CBS News that first broke the story of Joe and his adventures with classified docs that he shouldn’t have had in his possession. Just last week the world discovered that the Washington office of the “Penn Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement” [!], a Chinese-funded “dark-money nightmare,” had a cache of secret stuff. Then we learned about the garage sale, no Corvettes included, wheeze. And then, just a few days ago, the world woke up to, wouldn’t you know it, yet more classified docs stashed away somewhere among Joe’s collection of aviators in his Delaware home. As I write, Biden’s lawyers (nota bene, not the FBI) have found five more pages of classified material in the library at Biden’s home. Who knows where else he has the forbidden docs stashed?

When the SWAT teams of the FBI swooped down on Mar-a-Lago in August, packing plenty of heat, regulation shades, and those nifty jackets with “FBI” in super big letters just to let everyone know how important they are, they did find some secret stuff in folders marked “Classified.” They also found more that 1,600 newspaper clippings filed away there, not to mention various passports belonging to the Trump family (a flight risk, Virginia?) and who-knows-what in Melania’s lingerie drawer. 

Opinions vary about the seriousness of Trump’s tort. I have to say that I thought the whole thing was faintly absurd, not to say malodorously politicized. Experts disagree about this, but I am with those who point out that, as president, Trump could declassify anything he wanted to. He says he did. Others disagree. 

https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/3812679-white-house-under-pressure-to-explain-why-it-didnt-reveal-documents-discovery-earlier/

The White House is under mounting pressure to explain why the discovery of classified Biden documents was not immediately revealed to the public, with critics openly questioning if there was an intentional effort to keep the first find quiet in the lead up to the midterm elections.

The first batch of documents were first discovered on Nov. 2, which was just six days away from the election. But the White House did not disclose the findings until after they were reported by CBS News earlier this week. 

“That’s your version of the case,” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said when asked on Friday if not revealing the discovery when it happened was to protect the president from political damage.

“I’ve been very clear here and I’ve answered that question multiple times, in different versions, in the last couple of days. Look, I want to very clear: There’s a process here, we are going to respect that process,” she added, responding “no” when asked if staff were involved in crafting a strategy as to when the disclosure should be made.

A second batch of classified documents was found in a storage space in the garage of Biden’s Wilmington, Del., residence on Dec. 20, and another one-page document was discovered among stored materials in an adjacent room this week. The search of Biden’s residence was completed on Wednesday.

Attorney General Merrick Garland appointed Robert Hur as special counsel to investigate the discovery of classified documents on Thursday, following the announcement of additional documents found at Biden’s Wilmington residence. He also said he was notified in real time when the White House found the documents.

“The timing of the revelation of the document discovery is indeed curious,” said former Rep. Chris Carney (D-Pa.), a longtime Biden ally and former intelligence officer. “President Biden must be accountable and accept responsibility for this awkward episode. The most important thing here is not preventing political embarrassment, it’s protecting our nation’s security.”

https://thespectator.com/topic/double-standard-for-the-biden-documents-trump-hillary/

President Biden said Tuesday he was “surprised” to learn that in November his lawyers had found classified documents in his former office at a Washington think tank. No doubt he was equally shocked when more classified docs turned up in his Delaware home.

Yet the tone of the mainstream media seems to be that boys will be boys. Since Biden is being so cooperative with authorities after being caught red-handed, maybe this has nothing in common with Donald Trump’s cache of classified documents at Mar-a-Lago. Or Hillary’s cache on her private e-mail server. Could there be a double-standard?

Biden had some/several/a bunch of classified documents while Trump had hundreds so that’s different. Yes, on Sesame Street four is bigger than three, but with classified documents it is not a meaningful difference. The law is clear: each document is a violation, and there are no discounts for having under a certain number. One classified document is enough to seek an indictment. But let’s not forget about Hillary Clinton, who was allowed not only to carry over 33,000 subpoenaed documents in the form of emails out of secure spaces on her server, but to delete them. Imagine if Biden reported that he and his team had simply deleted whatever they had found, never mind whether Trump had had a bonfire.

Biden’s documents were safe inside a locked closet. Classification law is extremely clear as to how documents must be stored, specifying, for example, how many minutes a safe is expected to withstand an attempt to cut it open. In the case of the Secure Compartmentalized Information (SCI) level of docs that Biden, Trump, and Hillary held, details are written into law and regulation as to what type of room, with what type of door, they are to be stored in. “Closet” does not fit the definition, whether it is at Biden’s place, Mar-a-Lago or Hillary’s home.

Nobody saw the documents. Maybe it wasn’t to standard, but they were kept under lock and key. No blood, no foul. Really? The reason all those laws and regulations regarding classified material exist is to safeguard them absolutely, so arguing whether the cleaning crew would have had access to them does not cover it. Marines guard these documents 24/7 in the equivalent of a bank vault deep inside the White House. With Hillary, an unclassified, insecure, out-of-the-box email server connected to the internet meant any hacker with moderate skills, including those assigned to attack her official trips to China and Russia, presumably had full access.

Biden’s documents were just old briefing notes, nothing so important. If the documents were labeled Top Secret or SCI when they were created, then that was their classification, no matter what we think of the contents today. The law is clear that arguing the level of classification after getting caught is not a viable defense strategy, and retroactive declassification is not an option. “The documents were not important even though they were classified” is not any better.

https://amgreatness.com/2023/01/13/is-the-deep-state-coming-after-joe-biden/

The second half of Joe Biden’s presidential term has officially gotten off to an ignominious start.

Earlier in the week, CBS News first broke the story that Biden had been storing classified documents, taken from his previous stint as vice president to Barack Obama, at the Chinese-funded Penn Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement “think tank.” Those classified documents were first identified by Biden’s personal attorneys, CBS reported, on Nov. 2—a full six days before the midterm elections. Richard Sauber, Biden’s special counsel, claimed that the White House counsel’s office quickly notified the National Archives, which seized the documents posthaste.

That alone would be bad enough for a president who utterly excoriated former President Donald Trump in the aftermath of last August’s unprecedented predawn FBI raid at Mar-a-Lago, Trump’s palatial Palm Beach estate, due to Trump’s own classified document retention scandal. Biden openly wondered to CBS’ “60 Minutes” news program weeks after the FBI raid “how anyone could be that irresponsible.”

The galling hypocrisy from the Penn Biden Center incident would have been bad enough. But then, Joe Biden’s week got even worse.

Adding insult to injury, on Thursday two separate tranches of additional classified documents from the Obama-Biden Administration were found in Biden’s Wilmington, Delaware, personal home. All but one of the documents was found in a storage space in Biden’s garage. That garage was “locked,” the president quickly pointed out in a flippant attempt at deescalation, and also housed his prized Corvette. One other classified document was found strewn about elsewhere in the house, outside the garage.

Attorney General Merrick Garland responded to the news with the appointment of a special counsel to investigate Biden’s misdeeds. Garland, of course, had done the same for Trump almost two months prior, on Nov. 18. At least from Garland’s perspective, it seems both men are “irresponsible” enough and present sufficiently politically delicate positions so as to require a special counsel.

But obvious similarities—hence, Biden’s egregious hypocrisy stemming from his earlier attempt to seize a moral high ground—in these situations aside, there are some crucial differences. Those differences do not reflect well on the current White House occupant.

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/victoria-taft/2023/01/13/meet-lyin-clyde-shavers-the-democrat-george-santos-n1660846

Americans are shocked, shocked that there are liars in politics. The most gobsmacked of all are politicians – especially Democrats – who can’t believe that the likes of that evil Republican, George Santos, a gay-ish, Jew-ish, Catholic, non-college graduate was elected to a Long Island, N.Y., congressional seat after lying about his resume. Strangely, Democrats have been nothing but ebullient about the successful campaign of a newly elected Washington State legislator known locally as Lyin’ Clyde Shavers.

‘Lyin’ Clyde’s story is one for the books. Clyde wants to be your president someday and he’s willing to go the Joe Biden route to do it. If Joe Biden can be president after co-opting the life story of a UK politician; lying about law school and how many degrees he has; lying about being right about any foreign policy opinion he’s ever had (see Afghanistan); lying about being Jewish, Puerto Rican, Italian, a truck driver, sexually assaulting a staffer, jobs numbers, infrastructure, his role as The Big Guy, Chinese and Ukraine payoffs, and his dad, Corn Pop, all while swearing he’s telling the truth “on his word as a Biden,” then so can Lyin’ Clyde.

Clyde has a magnificent start.

The newly elected state legislator who just took his seat this week was outed as a liar by his own father, who, during the campaign, wrote an extraordinary letter to The Lynwood Times, a local newspaper.

His Dad says Lyin’ Clyde lied about his family background, claimed to be a submariner with the U.S. Navy when he never served on a sub; parachuted into the district, and moved into a bed and breakfast to qualify as a “resident”; claimed to be a working attorney when he hasn’t passed the Washington State bar; made up inspirational quotes his father never said; and claimed to be homeless at a point in his life.

In his letter, Brett Shavers laid bare what he called his son’s lies about his U.S. Navy service while running for office in a district that contains the Whidbey Island Naval Air Station.

https://www.realclearbooks.com/articles/2023/01/11/the_new_jew_874920.html

It was early December when The Chosen Comedy Festival came to Miami. It had been a tough few weeks for Jews.

Kanye was on his “I love Hitler” tour and it seemed like too many people wanted to hear what he had to say. The New York Times was running regular pieces about problems they saw in the Haredi communities of Brooklyn, and absolutely nowhere else, and even the secular Jews who nodded approvingly at the first write-up were starting to notice the obsession.

A rabbi friend once told me that Jews are the only people that when someone says “I hate you” say “let’s hear him out.” But at the end of 2022, Jews were finally unwilling to hear anyone out. The hatred at us had gotten old. We were collectively tired of being the target and we were craving being together in an actually safe space.

It had been 4 years since the Tree of Life shooting, 3 years since the Monsey stabbing. We weren’t over those attacks, at least in part because less deadlier attacks on Jews in places like Brooklyn were happening regularly both before and after those killings. We weren’t raw anymore. We were something else. Inside the community, something was shifting.

The easy explanation is political. Jews are moving rightward. Slowly. An Associated Press survey found that President Donald Trump’s share of the Jewish vote went from 24% in 2016 to 30% in 2020. Exit polls had 33% of Jews voting Republican in the midterm elections and exit polls require someone to tell the truth to a pollster, something a lifelong Democrat switching sides for the first time might not be ready to do. Some people credit the Jewish vote with swinging several close House seats in New York and ultimately netting Republicans the House of Representatives.

https://victorhanson.com/the-january-6th-insurrection/

Here is what we do not understand about the January 6th Committee—if it truly was intended to appear as a disinterested investigatory body.

1. Why for the first time in memory did Speaker Pelosi forbid the House Minority Leader’s pro forma nominees to a special House committee? Fairly or not, the result was that the only two Republicans who did serve shared two embarrassing requisites: they would likely be out office, and not by their own volition, in January 2023; and two, they despised Donald Trump and voted for the second Trump impeachment.

So, what were the Democrats afraid of to make them break all precedents with past hearings? Pelosi, in other words, ensured that there would be no cross-examinations of any witnesses, no disagreements about witness lists, no contrasting interviews to the media about the work of the committee, and no diversity in staff interrogatories.

2. Why did not the Committee investigate whether the FBI had numerous agents and informants present on January 6th? Michael Rosenberg, the New York Times assigned reporter to the demonstration, claimed they were ubiquitous. Were they?

3. Why did not the Committee review the circumstances in detail of the deaths of Officer Brian Sicknick and the fatal shooting of Ashli Babbitt. These were the two most high-profile and controversial deaths on January 6th, and Babbitt’s perhaps was the only violent death at the direct hand of a known other?

4. Why did not the Committee investigate and release all the communications between the House leadership and the Capitol police to learn why the Capitol was virtually open and unsecured on a day that everyone knew would be the scene of mass protests there?

5. Why did not the Committee investigate all incendiary speech by major elected officials at iconic Washington buildings, deemed inflammatory and allegedly resulting in violence at a subsequent time? For example, in 2020 then Senator Minority Leader Chuck Schumer screamed to a large demonstration massed at the doors of the Supreme Court:

I want to tell you Gorsuch, I want to tell you Kavanaugh—you have released the whirlwind, and you will pay the price. You won’t know what hit you if you go forward with these awful decisions.”