RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.wsj.com/articles/us-inflation-consumer-price-index-december-2021-11641940760?mod=article_inline

U.S. inflation hit its fastest pace in nearly four decades last year as pandemic-related supply and demand imbalances, along with stimulus intended to shore up the economy, pushed prices up at a 7% annual rate.

The Labor Department said Wednesday the consumer-price index—which measures what consumers pay for goods and services—rose 7% in December from the same month a year earlier, up from 6.8% in November. That was the fastest since 1982 and marked the third straight month in which inflation exceeded 6%.

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The so-called core price index, which excludes the often-volatile categories of food and energy, climbed 5.5% in December from a year earlier. That was a bigger increase than November’s 4.9% rise, and the highest rate since 1991.

On a monthly basis, the CPI increased a seasonally adjusted 0.5% in December from the preceding month, decelerating from October and November.

“There is still tremendous momentum when it comes to inflation right now. While inflation is likely to peak in the next few months, the overall pace is going to remain a challenge for consumers, businesses and policy,” said Sarah House, director and senior economist at Wells Fargo.

The last time consumer prices clocked in at such an annual increase was in June 1982, but the circumstances were very different from today. While inflation right now is rising, back then it was falling after peaking at 14.8% in 1980, when Jimmy Carter was still president and the Iranian revolution had pushed up oil prices.

Today, Dr. Anthony Fauci was questioned under oath by U.S. Senator Roger Marshall (R-KS). It was a heated exchange regarding Fauci’s income and financial and conflict disclosures.Dr. Fauci was very thin skinned and acted like he has a lot to hide. For example, Fauci — on a hot mic — called the senator a “moron” and blasphemed “Jesus Christ.”

Consider Fauci’s comments while under oath:

First, Fauci said, “My financial disclosure is public knowledge and has been so for the last 37 years or so the last 35 years.”

Then, Fauci said, “All you have to do is ask for it. You’re so misinformed, all you have to do is ask for it. ”

Speaking for a third time, Fauci said, “What are you talking about? My financial disclosures are public knowledge and have been so. You’re getting amazingly wrong information.”

The trouble with Dr. Fauci is that his financials are NOT available.

We’ve SUED Fauci and his agency for the information.

BREAKING LAST NIGHT — we immediately answered Dr. Fauci’s misstatements on The National Desk aired by Sinclair Broadcast Group (a Fortune 500 company) and owners of 190 ABC, NBC, CBS, FOX stations across America…

https://amgreatness.com/2022/01/11/fbi-refuses-to-explain-fbi-role-in-january-6/

A top official with the Federal Bureau of Investigation repeatedly refused to disclose how many FBI agents and informants were involved in the Capitol protest on January 6, 2021.

Testifying before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Tuesday morning, Jill Sanborn, executive assistant director of the FBI’s national security branch, cited privileged protocols as to why she would not tell Senator Ted Cruz (R-Texas) the number of FBI assets that “actively participated” in the protest. “Sir, I’m sure you can appreciate that I can’t go into sources and methods,” Sanborn, who served as assistant director of the FBI’s counterterrorism division when the protest erupted on January 6 and would have full knowledge of FBI undercover operations, told Cruz.

The Texas senator also demanded to know if FBI agents committed any violent crimes or incited any violent crimes on January 6. Sanborn again declined to answer. Presenting photos of Ray Epps, a man caught on video on both January 5 and 6, imploring people to “go into the Capitol” but has not been charged with any crime, Cruz asked Sanborn whether she knew Epps. “I’m aware of the individual, sir, I don’t have the specific background to him,” Sanborn replied.

“Miss Sanborn, was Ray Epps a fed?” Cruz asked. Again, Sanborn said she could not answer the question. Cruz also asked why, based on reporting by Darren Beattie at Revolver News, Epps’ “magically disappeared” from the FBI’s Most Wanted List related to January 6.

Again, Sanborn had no answer.

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2022/01/mark_meadows_jim_jordan_step_forward_to_fight_pelosis_jan_6_witch_hunt.html

Mark Meadows, former chief of staff to President Trump, filed an amicus curiae brief in the Supreme Court, January 7, in support of the former president’s claim that his official papers should be covered by executive privilege and not released to the Jan. 6 House Select Committee.  The matter is now on appeal before the Supreme Court as a result of the ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit upholding the decision by President Biden that executive privilege is not justified to keep the Trump papers from the Select Committee.  The appellate ruling from Judge Patricia Millett included the curious assertion, at the top, of “multiple” deaths at the Capitol, January 6, 2021, with the added contention that the Trump-supporting “mob” came armed with “weapons.”  The only violent death was that of Trump-supporter Ashli Babbitt, shot and killed by a Capitol cop.  There were no reports of demonstrators carrying arms, to my knowledge.   

A comment in the amicus brief goes  to the heart of this matter.  “For Executive Privilege to fulfill its intended purpose of allowing full and free communication among Presidential advisors, it must be able to survive a party change in the Presidency and a hostile Congress.”   If there were any doubt of the hostility that President Biden (and congressional Democrats) have for  Donald J. Trump, those doubts should have been dispelled by the following excerpts from Mr. Biden’s denunciation of his predecessor, January 6, 2022. 

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2022/01/if-you-hated-2021-youll-2022-even-less-don-feder/

If 2021 was scary, 2022 — the 2nd year of the administration from Planet Stupid — will build on that disaster. You don’t need a crystal ball or the ghost of Nostradamus to see what lies ahead, and it won’t be pretty.

1. The administration will continue to blame everyone and everything for the failure of its perverse policies. We were told that COVID is responsible for snatch and grab, something called the “meat conglomerate” made chicken prices take wing, and greedy oil companies are to blame for pain at the pump. Could destroying domestic energy production possibly have anything to do with rising prices? Impossible! To suggest such a thing shows you don’t understand economics, a la AOC.

2. Chaos at the border will be the new normal. In its move to swamp the nation with welfare-state voters, the administration will continue to open the floodgates to drugs, disease, poverty, human trafficking and crime. The Border Patrol has been replaced by a revolving door.

3.  We’ll continue to fight inflation with spending. – We’ll keep spending to fight a virus that’s increasingly irrelevant. We’ll spend to fight a crime wave that anti-police policies set in motion. We’ll spend to hire more police when fewer and fewer want the job. We’ll spend on education for schools that are closed. We’ll throw money at rising prices – which is like dousing wildfires with gasoline.

4. Biden’s mental health will continue to decline. Don’t believe me? Ask President Harris. We’ll get more of those classic Joe moments, when the president stares off blankly into space at the end of a speech. Chef Boyar-dumb will keep serving up word salads. The sad old man will shuffle through a nation in ruins.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2022/01/we-dont-have-gumption-civil-war-bruce-thornton/

This new year we’ve heard a lot of talk from the Left about another civil war just over the horizon. The partisan divide, as the argument from the Guardian goes, has worsened to the point that the “American political system has become so overwhelmed by anger that even the most basic tasks of government are increasingly impossible . . . The crises the United States now faces in its basic governmental functions are so profound that they require starting over.”  The Right knows this, the Guardian warns, but the Left is mired in intramural quarrels. As John Sexton summarizes this argument, “We need to burn down everything (including the Constitution) and start over.”

Much of this melodramatic prophecy bespeaks the progressives’ anxiety over the coming November electoral backlash against their manifest political failures and arrogant assaults on our unalienable rights, from tyrannical covid mitigation policies, to blatantly racist, anti-American school curricula. And for over a century, progressive technocrats have thrived on existential crises real and imagined, the “moral equivalent of war,” as William James put it in 1906, that demands expanded government power and diminished citizen freedom. Prophecies of actual war reflect the progressives’ habit of using hyperbolic rhetoric to gin up the panic and fear that justify increasing the nanny-state’s aggrandizement of more power.

But such prophecies are unlikely to come true, if only because most of the American people don’t have the gumption to kill and die for much of anything. The young who usually do most of the fighting in war particularly are––with the exceptions comprising our armed forces and other young patriots–– unsuited for the suffering and sacrifice that real war exacts.

First, however, we should point out that the laments over our “polarization,” “partisan rancor,” and lack of “bipartisanship” as comprising a novel, dangerous crisis hurtling us to war, bespeak an ignorance of both history and the structure of our political order.

https://issuesinsights.com/2022/01/12/bareshelvesbiden-saved-christmas-but-not-the-new-year/

Just before the holiday, White House spokesperson Jen Psaki took to the press room podium to laughably brag about how “we’ve saved Christmas” because President Joe Biden supposedly fixed the nation’s supply chain crisis. She said that “President Biden recognized this challenge early, acted as an honest broker to bring key stakeholders together, and focused on addressing practical problems across the global supply chain.”

That was good enough for the mainstream media, which had turned a blind eye to the supply chain problems once Biden claimed he had a plan to fix it.

Except, less than three weeks later, #BareShelvesBiden is trending on Twitter, shoppers are sharing pictures of empty store shelves, and the media are being forced – however reluctantly – to report that shortages are actually a worsening problem.

Shortages are everywhere. Whether it’s goods, food, people, COVID tests, you name it. The CEO of the Gristedes supermarket chain is warning of meat and egg shortages. The Daily Beast reports that “shortages of glass and other materials continue, coupled with extensive shipping delays and skyrocketing freight costs.” One site asked readers to send examples of shortages, and cold medicine was in the top five.

A newspaper in Cape Cod finds “empty grocery shelves and downsized restaurant menus rising amid supply chain struggles.”

https://www.wsj.com/articles/james-comey-and-our-poisoned-politics-11641944998?mod=opinion_lead_pos11

This week marks the fifth anniversary of perhaps the greatest media scandal of our age. Outlets like CNN and BuzzFeed flogged a bogus dossier of salacious claims funded by the Hillary Clinton campaign, even while admitting they didn’t know whether the dossier’s allegations against Donald Trump were true or false. It wasn’t necessarily that reporters had mistaken fake news for the real stuff—they simply didn’t care or acknowledge that they had an obligation to vet anti-Trump claims before disseminating them.

The pathetic media excuse for running with the story was that important people in the government were talking about it. And no one wanted to talk about it more than the FBI’s then-director, James Comey. He kept talking about it even after his department had failed to corroborate it, and even though the CIA viewed it as mere “Internet rumor.”

On this day five years ago, Mr. Comey emailed Director of National Intelligence James Clapper. As the dossier story was raging in the press, Mr. Comey mounted an unsuccessful effort to stop Mr. Clapper from publicly acknowledging that U.S. intelligence agencies had not deemed the dossier reliable and were not relying upon its claims, which had been compiled by former British spy Christopher Steele.