RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.wsj.com/articles/threats-rise-u-s-defense-falls-11623798082?mod=opinion_lead_pos1

President Biden is telling the world in Europe this week that “America is back” as the leader of global democracies. Sounds good. But China, Iran and Vladimir Putin would be more impressed if Mr. Biden wasn’t cutting America’s defense even as he rightly stresses the challenge from the world’s authoritarians.

Unremarked in the White House spending deluge is that its trillions for “infrastructure” include little new for defense. Mr. Biden’s $715 billion Pentagon budget for fiscal 2022 is a 1.6% increase over last year. Adjusted for inflation, this is a cut. The bipartisan National Defense Strategy Commission and other experts say the Pentagon needs steady 3% to 5% real increases annually to address threats from “near peers” such as China and Russia.

President Trump increased defense spending modestly, but that fillip has passed and spending is still at its modern norm of about 3% of GDP. America is rapidly piling up debt past 100% of GDP while shrinking its defenses.

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The brightest budget spots are places where the Administration declined to make matters worse: The Administration didn’t slash the Army; active-duty end strength holds at about 485,000. But the service requested about $3.5 billion less than last year’s enacted budget, in part due to a drawdown in Afghanistan.

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2021/06/15/ilhan_omar_and_contempt_f

“We have seen unthinkable atrocities committed by the U.S., Hamas, Israel, Afghanistan, and the Taliban,” Rep. Ilhan Omar of Minnesota tweeted last week to her 1.2 million followers. They responded with warm support. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was cooler. Although the speaker lives in San Francisco’s progressive echo chamber, she heads a national party and understands that most voters do not think our country is similar to the Taliban or Hamas. They have noticed a few small differences. Nor do they see a moral equivalence between Israel, which tries to avoid civilian casualties, and terrorist organizations, which use human shields and bomb pizza parlors. They wonder if a representative who thinks America is so evil should sit on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, as Omar does.

Pelosi pressed Rep. Omar for a “clarification” and received a half-hearted one. That was good enough for the speaker, who stressed that she was not rebuking Omar, whom she called a “valued member of our caucus.”

Pelosi walked gingerly because she has only a tiny House majority and relies on several hard-left members and dozens of very progressive ones. She doesn’t want to lose them, but she doesn’t want to endanger her more centrist members, either. Omar’s tweet put her between the dog and the hydrant. Jewish members issued an outraged statement denouncing the tweet, while Omar’s left-wing colleagues, including Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, criticized Pelosi’s tepid request for clarification.

Another member of the Squad, Rashida Tlaib, chose to portray Pelosi’s request as an attack on all Muslims — on all women of color in Congress: “Freedom of speech doesn’t exist for Muslim women in Congress. The benefit of the doubt doesn’t exist for Muslim women in Congress. House Democratic leadership should be ashamed of its relentless, exclusive tone policing of Congresswomen of color.” Tlaib’s claim that she and Omar are being silenced was sent to 1.4 million Twitter followers.  Apparently, Tlaib has been fully inoculated against irony. Pelosi responded by saying that she had never meant anything as a rebuke. Not in the slightest.

The problem here goes well beyond Ilhan Omar, a Somali refugee who was welcomed to American and now sits in Congress, seething with contempt for her adopted country, its tolerant values, and those of its allies. The Democrats are stuck with a whole Squad of like-minded representatives and thousands, perhaps millions, of young supporters eager to promote these socialist attacks on America. That’s not just a problem for the Democrats. That’s a problem for the country.

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/tyler-o-neil/2021/06/15/chilling-bidens-domestic-terror-agenda-confirms-conservatives-worst-fears-n1454729

The Biden administration is using the awesome might of the U.S. government to demonize conservative critics as abettors of extremist ideology, if not enemies of the state.

On Tuesday, President Joe Biden released a blueprint for his New War on Terror. In the “National Strategy for Countering Domestic Terrorism,” the Biden White House pledges that the administration will combat domestic terrorism “while vigilantly safeguarding peaceful expression of a wide range of views and freedom of political association.” Yet the administration’s biases give conservatives good reason to doubt this pledge.

The White House claims that the “two most lethal elements” of domestic terrorism are “racially or ethnically motivated violent extremists who advocate for the superiority of the white race” and “anti-government or anti-authority violent extremists, such as militia violent extremists.”

The document lays out four elements of a strategy to fight domestic terrorism: sharing domestic terrorism analyses at all levels of government and occasionally with the private sector; preventing domestic terrorism recruitment and mobilization to violence; disrupting and deterring domestic terrorism activity; and confronting “long-term contributors to domestic terrorism.”

Each element should raise alarms for conservatives and Republicans, given the Biden administration’s hyperbolic rhetoric on racism and the Capitol riot. Biden has condemned commonsense election reform as “Jim Crow on steroids” and said the Capitol riot was worse than the Lincoln assassination, the John F. Kennedy assassination, and multiple violent attacks on the U.S. Capitol.

https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2021/jun/14/exposing-bidens-exploitive-record-on-race/

For decades, President Joe Biden exploited race to advance his political career. 

Mr. Biden’s long history in public life provides ample evidence in both words and deeds of the now president playing both sides of the race card for political gain.

So in Mr. Biden’s own words, “Look at my record, man.”

Here we go.

Early in his political career, Mr. Biden befriended Democratic segregationists to capitalize on their power to advance in the Senate chamber and his political goals. For example, Mississippi Sen. James Eastland, who offered his assistance to help Mr. Biden with his re-election in 1978, said Blacks were “an inferior race.” 

Mr. Eastland also called the Brown vs. Board of Education decision a “monstrous crime,” and together, Mr. Eastland and Mr. Biden worked on an anti-busing bill to prevent desegregation in schools. 

Mr. Eastland mentored Mr. Biden during his early Senate career and Mr. Biden maintained a fondness for him. 

When commenting about his past relationships with segregationists, Mr. Biden often recalled favorable memories of his emotional connection to racist Democrats. 

While running for president for the third time, Mr. Biden said before his donors referring to Mr. Eastland, “He never called me ‘boy,’ he always called me ‘son.’”

Mr. Biden siding with segregationists in his early career is such an obvious political liability that then-Senator Kamala Harris drove an 18 wheeler truck through it during a Democratic debate. 

There is also Mr. Biden’s relationship with the late former Senate Majority Leader Robert Byrd of West Virginia. Mr. Byrd was a former recruiter for the Ku Klux Klan and even with this backdrop, Mr. Byrd was elevated to the highest role in the Senate.

Mr. Byrd, by the way, filibustered the 1964 Civil Rights Act for over 14 hours. Let that sink in for a moment.

But none of this mattered to Mr. Biden. During the eulogy at Mr. Byrd’s funeral in 2010, then-Vice President Biden said, “He was a friend, he was a mentor and he was a guide.”