RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.wsj.com/articles/3-5-trillion-is-a-phony-number-democrats-spending-bill-entitlements-joe-biden-11632425260?mod=opinion_lead_pos1

Democrats are grasping for ways to finance their cradle-to-grave welfare state, with the left demanding what they claim is $3.5 trillion over 10 years. The truth is that even that gargantuan number hides the real cost of their plans.

The bills moving through committees are full of delayed starts, phony phase-outs, and cost shifting to states designed to fit $3.5 trillion into a 10-year budget window that can pass with a mere 51 Senate votes. Even if the bill shrinks to $2 trillion or less, the real costs will be far greater. Behold one of the greatest fiscal cons in history.

• Start with the child allowance, which is among the bill’s most expensive provisions. Extending the $3,000 to $3,600 per-child payments for a decade would cost roughly $1.1 trillion. That’s as much as all of the income tax increases on individuals passed by the House Ways and Means Committee.

Democrats have hidden the real cost by extending the allowance only through 2025. Even if Republicans gain control of Congress and the White House in 2024, Democrats and their media allies will bludgeon them to extend the payments, which will cost another $110 billion each year. The GOP will be accused of raising taxes on middle-class families.

• Democrats are using a different time shift to disguise the cost of their Medicare expansion. New vision and hearing benefits would kick in over the next two years and cost about $20 billion a year. But Democrats are delaying the phase-in of the much more expensive dental benefit to 2028. This “saves” $420 billion over 10 years, but the costs explode after that.

https://nypost.com/2021/09/23/hunter-biden-emails-boast-ties-to-white-house-and-china/

Hunter Biden’s business contacts touted his access to his father, “State, Treasury,” his relationship with then-Secretary of State John Kerry’s stepson, as well as his ties to the “highest level” in China, as they weighed whether to work with him on a potential Libya deal in 2015, newly uncovered emails show. 

The two emails — published by Insider on Thursday — date back to 2015, when Joe Biden was vice president, and reference getting Hunter’s help on a deal regarding billions in Libyan assets frozen by the Obama administration.

The emails are unrelated to Hunter’s infamous laptop.

In the first email, dated Jan. 28, 2015, Democratic donor Sam Jauhari repeatedly referred to Hunter as “#2 son” — an apparent reference to Joe Biden’s VP role at the time — and noted that Hunter had requested a $2 million retainer.  The business contact listed a string of positives to working with Hunter, including his business relationship with Kerry’s stepson Chris Heinz and Hunter’s apparent self-proclaimed high-level access in China.

According to new emails, Hunter Biden’s business contacts touted the political access Biden had to the president and several other offices within the White House.Teresa Kroeger/Getty Images for World Food Program USA

“Per phone conversation I met with #2 son. He wants $2 per year retainer +++ success fees. He wants to hire his own people – it can be close circle of people for confidentiality. His dad is deciding to run or not,” the email said.

Biden’s access to Chris Heinz, stepson of ex-secretary of state John Kerry, was a major plus to his business partners.

https://www.realclearinvestigations.com/articles/2021/09/23/biden_security_adviser_sullivan_tied_to_16_

White House National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan figures prominently in a grand jury investigation run by Special Counsel John Durham into an alleged 2016 Hillary Clinton campaign scheme to use both the FBI and CIA to tar Donald Trump as a colluder with Russia, according to people familiar with the criminal probe, which they say has broadened into a conspiracy case.

Sullivan is facing scrutiny, sources say, over potentially false statements he made about his involvement in the effort, which continued after the election and into 2017. As a senior foreign policy adviser to Clinton, Sullivan spearheaded what was known inside her campaign as a “confidential project” to link Trump to the Kremlin through dubious email-server records provided to the agencies, said the sources, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

Last week, Michael A. Sussmann, a partner in Perkins Coie, a law firm representing the Hillary Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee, was indicted by a federal grand jury on charges of making false statements to the FBI about his clients and their motives behind planting the rumor, at the highest levels of the FBI, of a secret Trump-Russia server. After a months-long investigation, the FBI found no merit to the rumor.

The grand jury indicated in its lengthy indictment that several people were involved in the alleged conspiracy to mislead the FBI and trigger an investigation of the Republican presidential candidate — including Sullivan, who was described by his campaign position but not identified by name.

The Clinton campaign project, these sources say, also involved compiling a “digital dossier” on several Trump campaign officials – including Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, Paul Manafort, George Papadopoulos, and Carter Page. This effort exploited highly sensitive, nonpublic Internet data related to their personal email communications and web-browsing, known as Internet Protocol, or IP, addresses.

To mine the data, the Clinton campaign enlisted a team of Beltway computer contractors as well as university researchers with security clearance who often collaborate with the FBI and the intelligence community. They worked from a five-page campaign document called the “Trump Associates List.”

The tech group also pulled logs purportedly from servers for a Russian bank and Trump Tower, and the campaign provided the data to the FBI on two thumb drives, along with three “white papers” that claimed the data indicated the Trump campaign was secretly communicating with Moscow through a server in Trump Tower and the Alfa Bank in Russia. Based on the material, the FBI opened at least one investigation, adding to several others it had already initiated targeting the Trump campaign in the summer of 2016.

https://www.nysun.com/national/democrats-are-back-on-the-heels-as-bidens-polling/91669/

With President Biden’s polls once again plunging and wide gaps in the Democratic Party over spending and taxing along with some serious grassroots opposition from groups like the save America coalition, I really do believe the Democrats are on the run. They’re back on their heels. They can’t get their story straight.

Again this evening I express my support for Senator Joe Manchin’s “strategic pause” to carry over big budget deals until the spring of 2022. Our motives might be a bit different, but our goals right now are similar. If the Democratic budget resolution doesn’t get through reconciliation until then — which admittingly is an improbable longshot — then the whole thing will die.

I do believe public Democratic weakness after the Biden meetings and the nonsensical press conference with Senator Schumer and Speaker Pelosi have a lot to do with the huge stock market rally today.

While insiders tell me that President Biden told democratic leaders to come up with their own topline on spending and, I presume taxes, at this point that project looks impossible with Mr. Manchin at between $1 trillion and $1.5 trillion, the Bernie Sanders budget scored at $3.5 trillion, and the actual gimmick-free budget scored at about $5.5 trillion.

That’s some spread.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/dr-scott-atlas-on-vaccine-mandates-for-children-natural-immunity-and-floridas-covid-19-surge_4013490.html

“To me, it’s unconscionable that a society uses its children as shields for adults. Children do not have a significant risk from this illness… Are we [as] a society, a civilization … going to inject our children with an experimental drug that they don’t have a significant benefit from, to shield ourselves?”
—Dr. Scott Atlas

In this episode, we sit down with public health policy expert Dr. Scott Atlas to discuss the ethics of vaccinating children, especially given that data has shown children do not significantly spread the virus compared to adults.

We also discuss the underlying reasons behind the recent COVID-19 surge in Florida as well as the efficacy of natural immunity.

Dr. Atlas is the author of “A Plague Upon Our House: My Fight at the Trump White House to Stop COVID from Destroying America,” which is set to be released on Nov. 23.

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https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2021/09/biden_exposes_his_dementia_to_the_world.

The week of the autumnal equinox in New York City is Gridlock Week because of all the nonstop, non-moving traffic jams caused by the opening of the United Nations General Assembly.  American presidents have long given speeches there during opening week, and this year was no exception, when President Biden dropped in to show the entire world what we have long known inside the United States — that he is suffering from dementia and diminishing mental capacity. 

New York’s clogged traffic woes reflect the mental state of New York’s and America’s president.

Biden cannot function without either a teleprompter or pre-printed cheat sheets, which tell him how to meet and greet his peers. 

As Andrea Widburg noted, Biden cannot even so much as say “hello” to Boris Johnson without reading it first from his cheat sheet.

This was likewise evident the day before when Biden met with the U.N. secretary-general.  Biden had a televised meet ‘n’ greet session with the secretary-general during which he only spoke for about two minutes on general themes, and couldn’t get through it without his cheat sheets.  Naturally, the secretary-general, being of sound mind and reasonably lucid, needed no such notes at all to make his own reply.

Biden made an incredible claim about climate change.

0:41 — … And dealing with the gravest threat to humanity we’ve ever seen which is the whole climate crisis we’re gonna we’re un we’re undergoing that can only be met with global solutions …

The remark is so stupid that it is actually obscene.

https://amgreatness.com/2021/09/22/civilization-requires-deterrence/

Deterrence is the ancient ability to scare somebody off from hurting you, your friends, or your interests—without a major war. 

Desire peace? Then be prepared for war. Or so the Romans believed.

It’s an easily understood concept in the abstract. But deterrence still remains a mystical quality in the concrete since it is only acquired with difficulty and yet easily forfeited. 

The tired democracies of the 1930s learned that lesson when they kept acquiescing to Hitler’s serial aggressions. 

Hitler’s Germany foolishly later attacked a far stronger Soviet Union in 1941, given Moscow’s lost deterrence after its lackluster performances in Poland and Finland, its pact with the Nazis, and its recent purges of its own officer corps. 

Deterrence is omnipresent and also applies well beyond matters of war and peace. The current crime wave of murder and violent assault in our major cities is the wage of loud efforts to defund the police and contextualize crimes as somehow society’s rather than the criminal’s fault. 

As a result, lawbreakers now believe there is a good chance that robbing people or hurting or killing them might result in monetary gain or at least bloody satisfaction. They no longer fear a likely sentence of 30 years in prison. So, they see little risk in hurting people. And innocents suffer.

With a border wall, an end to catch and release, and tough jawboning of the Mexican and Central American governments, a new American deterrent stance in 2019-20 discouraged once unstoppable waves of illegal immigrants. 

Northern bound migrants knew that even if they reached and crossed the border, there was a good chance all such effort would be for naught, given quick apprehension and deportation. 

So, in their rational calculations, illegal aliens waited at home for less deterrent times. And they found them when Joe Biden stopped construction on the wall, renewed catch and release, and eased pressures on Mexico to interrupt caravans headed northward. 

Abroad, Donald Trump restored the strategic deterrence lost by his predecessor.

Barack Obama had dismissed the murderous ISIS as “JVs”—and they thrived. He shrugged when China stole territory in the South China sea to build military bases. He dismantled missile defense in Europe to coax Vladimir Putin to behave during his own 2012 reelection campaign. 

Obama loudly announced redlines in Syria while never intending to enforce them. He gave the Taliban back their incarcerated terrorist leaders in exchange for the return of the American deserter Bowe Bergdahl. And he sent the Iranians nocturnal cash to coax them to conclude an appeasing Iran Deal. Aggression followed as U.S. deterrence eroded.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/09/10-bidens-afghanistan-aid-will-go-taliban-daniel-greenfield/

Deborah Lyons, the head of the UN mission in Afghanistan, met with Sirajuddin Haqqani, a wanted terrorist with the Haqqani Network, a Taliban component with close ties to Al Qaeda.

Lyons had served as Canada’s ambassador in Kabul when the Taliban carried out a suicide bombing against a Canadian embassy convoy. Lyons put up a monument to the security contractors who were wounded and killed, but they sued after being abandoned afterwards.

Sirajuddin Haqqani is a wanted terrorist with a $10 million FBI reward on his head.

“It is impossible to provide humanitarian assistance inside Afghanistan without engaging with the de facto authorities,”  U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres warned.

The de facto authorities being the Islamic terrorists of the Taliban and Al Qaeda.

The official word is that the Taliban won’t stop the UN humanitarian operations. Whether or not the Taliban will refrain from taxing the UN’s proposed $1.2 billion aid boom is another question.

Without waiting for that question to be settled, Biden has not only kicked in $64 million, but the Treasury Department issued a license for Afghanistan aid which states that it, “will continue to support the continuity of the U.S. government’s important humanitarian-related work in the region”, while claiming that “we have not reduced sanctions pressure on Taliban leaders or the significant restrictions on their access to the international financial system.”

The Taliban and most “humanitarian” groups in Afghanistan are using the Islamic Hawala system which enables international finance and massive terrorist fundraising at the same time.

And “humanitarian aid” is one of the best ways to fund Islamic terrorists. The Taliban impose an Islamic tithe which American taxpayers will end up paying once the millions in aid arrive.

https://asiatimes.com/author/spengler/

 On September 20, I was sitting across a table from the foreign editor of a European news publication. Demons must have lurked and listened to our conversation. “Is there any American thinker who you find fresh and challenging?” the journalist asked me.

“You mean apart from Angelo Codevilla?,” I returned. A traditional Jew from the Old Country would have said “Angelo Codevilla, kein hora,” or “keine ayin hara,” a mix of Yiddish and Hebrew that means “no Evil Eye.” It is an imprecation against Fate’s envy of the truly gifted.

The next day Angelo was dead at age 78, reportedly run down by a drunk driver.

There were two former senior intelligence officials who knew enough where enough bodies were buried in the Global War on Terror to scare the American Intelligence establishment. Lieutenant General Michael Flynn was one, and the spooks got to him within days of his appointment as Donald Trump’s National Security Adviser.

Angelo Codevilla was the other. Flynn is a working-class kid who worked his way up the chain of command from reserve officer training at Providence College, while Angelo was an Italian-born connoisseur of Western culture, multi-lingual and the master of many disciplines, fiercely independent and contemptuous of attempts to co-opt him.

Codevilla was an expert on Afghanistan starting in 1979, as chief of staff for the Senate Intelligence Committee, before the CIA could find the benighted country on a map. He knew that the Global War on Terror was a scam, a goof, a lavishly-funded reality show – and he told the world what he knew.

Here is what he wrote on August 24 in his last posting at The American Mind, the opinion site of the Claremont Institute where Angelo was a senior fellow: