RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://spectatorworld.com/topic/joe-biden-failure-g20-cop26-rome-glasgow/

How’s the ice cream in Rome? Joe Biden is about to find out. Word is he is excited about the gelato, which is A-OK, since it may distract him from the fact that he has nothing to report when he gets there.

The president — I mean, Joe Biden — was supposed to reestablish “normality” to an office so badly bruised by the mad tweeter — no, make that “ex-tweeter” — who came before.

“Normality” was one big selling point. The other was Biden’s vaunted foreign policy experience. Reality check one: was Joe Biden’s performance at that town hall with Anderson Cooper last week an exhibition of “normality”? Or was it yet another disagreeable instance of elder abuse, parading a man suffering from senile dementia before the cameras? Is there anything normal about that angry and intemperate old man.

And here’s reality check number two: the world historical disaster that was our collapse in Afghanistan, the likes of which we haven’t seen since at least the fall of Saigon and maybe not since William Elphinstone fled Kabul in 1842 with a crew of 16,000, precisely one of whom made it out alive. Joe Biden called the evacuation and collapse of Afghanistan an “extraordinary success.”  I’m told that the Chinese are having “Extraordinary Success” printed on t-shirts, to go along with ones bearing the legend “Let’s Go Brandon.”

High on the agenda in Rome is a “global minimum tax,” a truly grotesque idea that only someone who had given up on the nation state, as many of the participants in Rome will have already done, could entertain seriously. Joe had to leave the Swamp before Congress voted on his profligate infrastructure spending bill, mostly because it is not sufficiently profligate to suit the really crazed lefties who never learned how to count. A “global minimum tax” is just a gigantic wealth redistribution scheme, but why should rich countries subsidize poor ones? They shouldn’t, and besides declaring a supranational tax is one thing; enforcing it is something else.

Biden’s lack of a vote is also going to be a problem after he leaves Rome and travels to Glasgow to talk about “climate change.” He was supposed to have lots of money for that, too. Glasgow is a good place to hold a conference on climate change, because the weather there is always changing, though of course partisans of the green agenda don’t mean “weather” when they utter the word “climate.”

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17895/treasury-secretary-janet-yellen

Can U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen sing? And if she can carry a tune, does she know the words to “Brother can you spare a dime?”

At the height of the Great Depression that song, written by Yip Harburg, became a grim national anthem as unemployment soared, the economy cratered and the American dream was crushed for middle class citizens and those aspiring to be so. The lyrics reflected the desperation of panhandlers living in Central Park who had lost everything, including hope. It may well turn out to be the song sung during the next three years as we fall into the dangerous financial abyss of a self-described “progressive” agenda that would place a staggering multi-trillion dollar debt on the nation.

Yellen’s pursuit of new revenue to fund Biden’s mega deficit literally knows no boundaries. Before the Senate Banking, Housing, and Urban Development Committee, Yellen was forced to defend the Administration’s unconscionable proposal that would require banks to disclose every financial transaction over $600 to the Internal Revenue Service.

An outraged U.S. Senator Cynthia Lummis asked, “Do you distrust the American people so much that you need to know when they bought a couch? Or a cow?”

Yellen’s various proposals are a chilling overreach that reveals the corrosive intrusion of a sneering anti-capitalist agenda. Yellen’s next steps could easily be the creation of a Profit Posse that would track down any transaction by anyone that could conceivably be taxed, confiscated or penalized. The ghosts of commissars interred in the former Soviet Union would smile in approval.

The Treasury Secretary’s words reveal much about the Administration’s growth-killing ideology — which has abandoned much of Europe to economic stagnation — and its pursuit of a multi-trillion social welfare budget, when she says, “We’ve grown used to America as the world’s pre-eminent economic power…. We aren’t destined to stay that way, but with these investments, I believe we will.”

Yellen clearly echoes the counter-factual insistence that massive deficits are America’s future, while ignoring the historic destruction wrought on other nations whose sovereignty disintegrated under massive debt. She conveniently disregards the billions of dollars in “pork” and institutional corruption that Biden’s multi-trillion dollar “Build Back Better” program would hide as it installs one “temporary,” set-to-balloon government program after another. A more honest name would be “Bust, Bury and Bye.”

If Yellen had the political courage of Senators Joseph Manchin or Kyrsten Sinema, she would publicly confront the Biden Administration and refuse to be a co-conspirator in destroying our nation’s future. Instead, Yellen would denounce the pork barrel spending in Biden’s proposal, and stand fast against raising the debt limit while seeking business incentives such as low-interest government loans to advance business expansion in America. She would also increase charitable donations to 501(c)3 not-for-profit organizations to enable donors to have a bonus 150% tax credit.

https://amgreatness.com/2021/10/28/the-freak-out-over-tuckers-january-6-documentary-begins/

Tucker Carlson on Wednesday night played a brief trailer for his three-part documentary looking at the events of January 6. “Patriot Purge” will premiere on Fox Nation, the network’s streaming service, on November 1.

Clips hint that the film compares the prosecution of Capitol protesters and anyone associated with the events of January 6 to the initial war on terror, a wholly legitimate comparison that my reporting confirms. For example, as I explained in April, Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines issued a report earlier this year warning “domestic violent extremists” pose a heightened threat to the nation. Not one for subtlety, Haines included a sketch of the U.S. Capitol in the document; House Republicans at the time blasted Haines for working outside her legal authority—the intelligence community is supposed to hunt foreign terrorists, not MAGA-supporting meemaws—to target American citizens.

Unfortunately, most Americans are unaware that the Biden regime, with a big assist from the news media, is indeed conducting a domestic war on terror aimed at the political Right. 

Democrats do not want the public to hear the details of Ashli Babbitt’s shooting death at the hands of Capitol Police, or the likely role of the FBI in what happened that day, or how armed federal agents have raided Trump supporters’ homes at dawn, in front of their terrified children and horrified neighbors, and dragged out in handcuffs to face various trespassing misdemeanors.

Democrats do not want the public to know about an inhumane jail in the nation’s capital used exclusively to punish Trump supporters, who have been denied any chance at bail by ruthless government prosecutors and hostile Beltway judges. Abusive conduct by Capitol and D.C. Metro Police officers, which included attacking the crowd with flashbangs, rubber bullets, and copious amounts of mace and other chemicals, must be kept under wraps. So, too, must at least 14,000 hours of surveillance footage captured by security cameras on January 6.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/10/hating-jews-becoming-leftist-purity-test-daniel-greenfield/

When Sunrise Movement DC issued its ultimatum that either the Jews had to be kicked out or it would boycott a D.C. statehood rally, it was a familiar purity test. And, like most purity tests, was about testing a willingness to hate people and endorse a new extremist position on demand.

Purity tests that have no constructive purpose except to undermine and oust a leadership that is insufficiently radical have become commonplace in the Reign of Terror era of American politics.

When Democrats adopt socialism, endorse the elimination of the police, tear down the statues of Washington, Jefferson, and Lincoln, champion critical race theory, and insist that there’s no such thing as men and women, it’s as the result of an escalating series of purity tests.

Hating Jews is just the latest progressive purity test.

Sunrise DC declared that it would not participate in events with what it falsely claimed were Zionist groups, but were actually, mostly fellow leftists who hate Israel as much as they do.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/a-jerry-rigged-budget-framework-joe-biden-white-house-reconciliation-bill-democrats-11635457542?mod=opinion_lead_pos1

Nothing like an artificial political deadline to concentrate the warring liberal minds. Before departing Thursday for next week’s climate gabfest, President Biden declared he has sealed an agreement with Democrats in Congress on a “framework” for a spending bill that he declares will make a “fundamental change in America.”

He’s right about that last bit, but the blueprint the White House released is more frame than work. The jerry-rigged plan is an enormous expansion of government with quarter-baked entitlement programs that will retard work and $1.85 trillion in tax increases that will distort and limit investment. The $1.75 trillion cost that Democrats have assigned their bill is an illusion. They use phony accounting to finance a few years of new spending with 10 years of tax increases.

For example, the plan extends the $3,600 child tax credit for one year at a cost of $110 billion. But Democrats will inevitably extend the credit next year. If Republicans oppose this or try to scale the credit back, they will be attacked for raising taxes on middle-class families. The true 10-year cost is about $1.1 trillion.

The agreement drops the House’s proposed Medicare vision and dental expansion. But it preserves a new hearing benefit, which the White House claims will cost a mere $34 billion and start in 2024. The annual cost of the hearing benefit once fully phased-in is some $16 billion. Congress will invariably make it permanent. True cost: $160 billion.