RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://spectator.us/topic/inflated-presidency-about-burst-inflation/

Is President Joe Biden living up to expectations? It’s hard to say, since the expectations generated on his campaign trail were so murky. Biden made plenty of promises on the stump but only one thing was ever clear: he wasn’t Donald Trump. Beyond that, no one was really certain what iteration of Biden would enter the Oval Office on Inauguration Day. A pragmatic moderate or a progressive ideologue? A return-to-normal steady hand or a malarkey-scourging bomb thrower? The law-and-order author of the PATRIOT Act or the ‘Black Lives Matter’ anti-racist he suddenly morphed into last summer?

Biden was so defined by who he wasn’t that no one ever quite worked out who he was. Now we have our answer. Whatever moderation was once attributed to him has been quickly abandoned. The Keystone XL Pipeline has been canceled, the radical Equality Act has been endorsed, the Paris Climate Agreement has been rejoined. Most glaringly of all, one of the largest spending bills in American history has been signed into law, with promises of much, much more to com e. Most recently, Biden has been haggling with the GOP Congress over his proposed infrastructure package. He wants $2.3 trillion while the Republicans have said they could go as high as $800 billion and even raise the gas tax in order to pay for it.

It’s a stunning dynamic, both because the GOP once filleted Barack Obama for trying to pass a stimulus package of about that same size (though in 2008 dollars) and because of the even higher total that the president is demanding.

So who is Joe Biden? Right now, he’s the most fiscally irresponsible president in American history. Many on the left trace an unbroken thread from FDR to LBJ to Barack Obama, all progressive Democrats who took an activist approach to government and spent big money trying to solve big problems. Biden clearly views himself in this tradition rather than in the more conservative and restrained one of Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton.

Yet there’s more going on here than mere self-indulgent FDR LARPing. Biden is a product of a post-2008 Washington that increasingly feels no constraints on its ability to spend. With interest rates and inflation having remained low for over a decade, there haven’t been any serious consequences for eye-watering deficits and national debt. In retrospect, this has proven one of the most consequential political developments of the 21st century. It’s effectively dried up both the right’s fiscally conservative streak and the left’s erstwhile desire for ‘good government’. It’s thrashed the Tea Party, cemented a humongous federal bureaucracy, and led to the largest national debt since World War Two.

http://www.renewamerica.com/columns/goodman/210518

As of November 3, 2020, America has been hijacked and placed on life support. America’s founders—descendants of patriots who fled religious persecution and European monarchies—sought to set up a nation where all men were free. They set forth to create a government of the people and for the people with the consent of the governed. They declared that our rights did not come from man, but were God-given; thus no man can take away what was not theirs to give. The Constitution, the Declaration of Independence, and our Bill of Rights were the greatest legacy they left behind for future generations. This legacy guaranteed and solidified our right to live a life of liberty.

For the last few decades, we have watched the Totalitarian Left (Socialists and Communists) chip away at our framework. There were years during the Reagan and Trump presidency when we held them at bay, but here we are nearly 250 years after our founding and America is fighting for its very survival. While America continues to exist as an entity, much of the Republic has been erased.

Today, Americans are governed by an old senile con man who twice previously ran for the Presidency and lost, but we are to believe he garnished the largest amount of votes in American history without campaigning and while suffering from dementia. The vast majority of Americans do not believe Joe Biden is running the country. He is incapable! Thus, for the first time in American history, we have an outside force governing Americans without the consent of the governed.

Likewise, our three branches of government have been compromised. Congress has the sole power to legislate, but the Biden administration has decided to bypass Congress and are determined to use pen and paper to execute over 100 Executive Orders in just over 100 days. Legislating from the Oval Office on matters that require the consent of the governed has been upended and what we have is executive tyranny. Our third branch of government, the Supreme Court, has the ability and duty to safeguard our checks and balances between the two branches, but they have abdicated their responsibility and are missing in action.

www.americanthinker.com/articles/2021/05/an_election_heist_too_big_to_fail.html

Inveterate liar Liz Cheney is running from one news camera to the next like a chicken with its head cut off.  Is she screaming about the Biden regime personally funding Hamas, Hezb’allah, and Iranian terrorists in their war to exterminate Israel?  Nope.  Is she furious that the White House has intentionally instigated a crisis of epic proportions at the southern border by dismantling President Trump’s effective deterrents and actively aiding and abetting the business operations of drug-traffickers and slavers throughout the United States?  Of course not: Ignoring the will of the American people and insisting that they remain victims while criminal enterprises destroy their communities are bipartisan objectives of the One Party State.  Is she enraged that “green” fascists have joined forces with Federal Reserve currency-manipulating oligarchs to spike gas prices and send inflation spiraling to the moon?  Both parties abandoned Main Street businesses decades ago (and despise President Trump’s “America First” policies), so as long as Wall Street can still make a buck and her lobbyists are sitting pretty, why should she care?  

So what has Cheney frothing at the mouth these days (besides her long-overdue boot from the ranks of Republican “leadership”)?  President Trump, obviously, and his dogged refusal to allow the greatest election theft in American history to go unanswered.  

Liz Cheney was removed from her leadership position by the Republican Party on Wednesday mainly because she has spent too much time attacking former President Trump for questioning the results of the 2020 election, and not enough time trying to stop Joe Biden’s agenda. She has said, “there is clearly an attempt to unravel the democracy,…by focusing on challenging the legitimacy of the election.” And that we have “particular obligation to make sure people know the election wasn’t stolen, that we shouldn’t perpetuate ‘the big lie,’.”

Donald Trump is not lying when he questions the results of the election. He is making an unsubstantiated claim. And that is an important distinction. Most proven claims of wrongdoing start out as an unsubstantiated claim that with a thorough investigation, and fact finding, is then proven either true or false. Liz Cheney does not know the election was honest with any more certainty than Trump knows it was stolen. Her claims of election integrity are as evidence-free as Trump’s claims of election fraud. And therein lies the problem. Neither side knows the truth.

26 million more votes were cast in 2020 than in any previous Presidential election, so it’s fair to ask whether all 26 million of those new votes were cast legally and legitimately. Election integrity is paramount to a functioning country, and simply stating the election was fair, like Liz Cheney, does not make it fair. That is something dictators do; they make blanket claims of integrity without any evidence to back them up. So, questions about the integrity of an election should not be ignored, or shot down as threats to democracy, they should be fully investigated. Yet we have never had a complete forensic investigation or audit of the 2020 election. So, Liz Cheney’s claim that the election was fair is as unproven as Trump’s claim that it was stolen. 

Not only were 26 million more votes cast, but we also had unprecedented, unconstitutional, and rushed-thru changes to our election laws in many states, primarily the battleground states, so it only makes sense to conduct a thorough investigation of our elections to determine if these changes hold up to the highest standards of integrity.

www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2021/05/ny-times-slow-joe-getting-slower.php?

The New York Times has a remarkable story out this weekend that offers its typical “behind the scenes” construction of how the White House operates—in this case, under President Biden. While the story tries to soften the blows with lots of fluff and filler, it paints a devastating picture of Biden for the careful reader. It explains he has a quick temper, takes a long time to make decisions, and needs to be heavily propped up by staff to function. It reminds us that Biden is indeed a creature of the Senate, where he mostly attended hearings, made speeches, fiddled with legislation, and seldom made any decisions that suggested executive skill (Quick—can anyone name a major piece of Biden legislation? The crime bill of 1994? Likely written mostly by the Clinton Justice Department. The bankruptcy reform bill of 2007? Likely written largely by Delaware-based banks. You get the picture.)

Here’s one early paragraph:

On policy issues, Mr. Biden, 78, takes days or weeks to make up his mind as he examines and second-guesses himself and others. It is a method of governing that can feel at odds with the urgency of a country still reeling from a pandemic and an economy struggling to recover.

One passage details weeks and weeks of meetings, briefings, and deliberations about how to confront Putin, culminating with this astonishing paragraph:

In the end, Mr. Biden called Mr. Putin directly and then delivered a public statement on Russia sanctions that lasted only five minutes and 49 seconds. For as much as Mr. Biden projects an aura of ease — with his frequent backslapping, references to Irish poetry and liberal use of the phrase “c’mon, man” — his aides say it takes a lot of behind-the-scenes work to prepare him to project an assured demeanor.

www.americanthinker.com/articles/2021/05/the_beasts_smell_blood.html?

China and Russia are aggressively raising their stakes against Taiwan and Ukraine.  Why?  Just take a sober view of Biden’s America, at war with itself.  China and Russia came to a pragmatic conclusion: America in 2021 has neither the desire nor the courage nor the political will to protect itself and its allies.

It was under Biden that the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline work continued.  It was under Biden that the preparations for the seizure of Taiwan by China entered the final phase.  Under Biden, China’s seizure of the South China Sea, suspended by Trump, is close to completion.  Under Biden, both Russia and China decided on something that was simply unthinkable under Trump — they forced preparations for open aggression against neighbors.

Trump, at the end of a dinner with the Chinese leader, three months into his presidency, fired 60 Tomahawk missiles at Syria.  Everything was organized so no one doubted that the missiles were intended for China and Russia’s leaders, although they were fired into Syria.  A year later, in February 2018, a platoon of American Rangers defeated a battalion tactical group of Russian mercenaries in Syria.  Of the 500 people, few survived, and all 27 tanks and armored vehicles were destroyed in a four-hour battle.

Both China and Russia immediately realized that, with Trump, the guy who brought down a billion dollars’ worth of missiles while sweets were being served, it was necessary to remain within the bounds of decency.  Under Biden, no one is going to remain within these bounds.  On the contrary, Beijing and Moscow are well aware that Biden is a temporary, accidental person in the White House, and it is necessary to strike while the iron is hot.  Under Biden, Beijing’s and Moscow’s expansionist plans are destined to come true.

Russia and China are united against a common enemy.  China’s #1 territorial objective is the capture of Taiwan.  Russia’s territorial task #1 is the seizure of Ukraine.  Trump was an insurmountable obstacle to their aggressive plans for four years.  Putin has taught the world that he is amassing troops on the border with Ukraine every spring.  But with each escalation, nothing happens.  More precisely, nothing happened during the Trump era, but with Biden, it can explode.

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2021/may/13/wheres-durham-investigation-russia-collusion-probe/?

Former President Trump gushed “I am so proud” when then-Attorney General William P. Barr tapped John Durham to look for widespread wrongdoing by FBI officials in the early stages of its Russia-collusion probe.

That was in May 2019.

Two years later, Mr. Trump and other conservatives mock the investigation that has practically disappeared without an utterance from Mr. Durham or any sign that he has uncovered anything.

“Where’s Durham?” Mr. Trump said in March. “Is he a living, breathing human being? Will there ever be a Durham report?”

Mr. Trump’s about-face is emblematic of the extent to which conservatives have soured on the Durham investigation. Those who once breathlessly predicted the probe would uncover a deep state conspiracy against Mr. Trump have now reduced it to a punchline.

When a poll last month revealed that 67% of Americans are unaware of the Durham probe, some internet jokesters wondered if Mr. Durham himself was among those oblivious to its existence.

As the investigation sputters toward its second anniversary on Thursday with few signs of life, conservatives are questioning what Mr. Durham has been up to for the past 24 months and if the public ever finds out, will anyone care?

“To say there has been a federal investigation into these FBI abuses and there has been one plea deal is to condemn it,” said Tom Fitton, president of the conservative activist group Judicial Watch. “You are describing failure.”

Once hopeful conservatives believed Mr. Durham would ride into town and aggressively expose malfeasance by Obama-era FBI and Justice Department officials. They expected his probe would shed light on whether FBI officials knowingly misled a court when it obtained permission to wiretap former Trump adviser, Carter Page.

Now they are puzzled as to why he has yet to interview FBI officials who held senior roles in 2016. Former FBI Director James B. Comey, Deputy Director Andrew McCabe and anti-Trump investigator Peter Strzok haven’t spoken with Mr. Durham, according to people familiar with the probe.

Mr. Durham did interview former CIA Director John O. Brennan in 2020 but told him that he was not the target of any criminal inquiry. The reason for the Brennan interview remains opaque.

Robert Ray, who succeeded Kenneth Starr as independent counsel during investigations into then-President Clinton, said these types of investigations have a shelf life. The longer an investigation runs, the more obstacles emerge because witnesses’ memories fade and cooperation becomes more difficult to obtain.