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Biden’s Debt Transference and Enforcement Arm Work hard. Save your money. Pay your debts. Then get saddled with someone else’s debts because you didn’t have the foresight to be improvident at the opportune moment.  By Roger Kimball

Posted By on August 28th, 2022

https://amgreatness.com/2022/08/27/bidens-debt-transference-and-enforcement-arm/

I have two subjects for you today: debt “forgiveness” and, once again, the raid on Mar-a-Lago by Biden’s secret police.

Let’s do the student debt wheeze first. “Forgiveness” without absolution: I think that just about sums up the Biden Administration’s latest publicity gambit, videlicet, the offer to “forgive” from $10,000 to $20,000 of the debt students have contracted. Note the scare quotes around “forgive.”

It is pointless to go into the details of the program because nobody knows what the details are. Tens of millions of Americans (whoever they are in Biden’s America) are apparently eligible. You are supposed to make less than $125,000 a year to be eligible, but who’s checking? The government agency handling the program, studentaid.gov, has been inundated with inquiries, since the announcement of “free stuff!,” as usual, has acted like a handful of fresh meat tossed into a pool of piranhas. How much will it cost? Who knows?

“The White House doesn’t know exactly how many eligible borrowers will actually end up applying for loan forgiveness,” one news source reported, “or how much it will cost.” According to a study from the Wharton School, however, the total tab might exceed $1 trillion. That is 1,000,000,000,000. It’s important to appreciate the number of zeros involved. 

I am not sure the Biden Administration has admitted yet whether the economy is in recession, but it is. And it is certainly suffering from inflation—or “Bidenflation” as some wags denominate it—the worst, we’re told, in 40 years. Gas prices have moderated a bit from their highs in May and early June, but they are still more than twice what they were when Biden took office, i.e., when Donald Trump was president, and everyone thinks prices will climb again this winter. 

So, prices are rising, your money is worth less, and, oh, by the way, you have less of it. On Friday, the Dow-Jones Industrial Average lost just over 1,000 points, wiping out billions in value. And if the “Prosperity Reduction Act” (the real name of the inflationary “Inflation Reduction Act”) weren’t enough of a blow—raising taxes and weaponizing the tax farmers of the IRS—Biden has delivered another sharp jab to the solar plexus of the American taxpayer with his hare-brained student loan “forgiveness” scheme. 

True, from time immemorial, the promise of debt forgiveness has been a powerful political gesture. But as has often been pointed out since the student loan subsidy was announced, Biden’s program is not really debt forgiveness. Rather, it is debt transference. That is, the debt doesn’t go away. It is just dropped in someone else’s lap. And that someone, Dear Reader, is you. 

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Translating ‘fascism’ from leftist-speak into the real world By D. Parker

Posted By on August 28th, 2022

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2022/08/translating_fascism_from_leftistspeak_into_the_real_world.html

With “President” Biden dropping yet another version of the political “F-bomb,” it’s time to break everything down to basic terminology and clarify the issue for everyone.

Was anyone surprised that the august head of the party of projection said the MAGA movement is “like semi-fascism”?  It was even more amusing when his media flack on CNN’s Don Lemon Tonight was unable to explain just what he meant by that pejorative. That is par for the course when they engage in the practice of accusing others of what they are doing.

Breaking things down into their constituent parts is the only way to figure out what is going on with certain issues. We’ve already proven, along with a number of others, that the anti-liberty left is fascist.  We’ve found that’s becoming easier than Biden falling off his bicycle.  As they become more fascistic by the day, the stark comparisons between regimes of the past and what they are doing now are stacking up like cordwood.

Since this is such a common practice on their part, we’re going to provide an explanation of the two sides based on the fundamental principles that will be Kryptonite to those making the usual nonsensical accusations that depend on complexity that simply doesn’t exist.

The hard truth is there are just two primary political ideologies: individualism and collectivism

FOREIGN POLICY, ISRAEL Comments turned off

Biden couldn’t be bothered to talk to Israel’s prime minister By Eric Utter

Posted By on August 28th, 2022

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2022/08/biden_couldnt_be_bothered_to_talk_to_israels_prime_minister.html

Because he was “on vacation.” And yes, that’s the excuse his people gave

According to reports in Israeli media, Israeli prime minister Yair Lapid’s urgent request to hold an emergency telephone conversation with U.S. President Joe Biden to discuss the looming nuclear deal with Iran was rebuffed — with the excuse that the American president was “on vacation.”

According to Israel’s Channel 13, Lapid sought to speak with Biden in an attempt to prevent a return to the 2015 JCPOA (Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action) nuclear pact, but U.S. officials denied the request, simply informing Lapid that Biden “is on vacation.”  End of story, I guess.  But this makes it difficult for the poor souls who, for whatever reason, need to speak to the current American commander-in-chief, as Biden is almost always “on vacation.”

Is this the right way to treat arguably your closest ally and the only representative democracy in the Middle East?  This administration has a history of feting our enemies and non-citizens while screwing over our allies and natural citizens.  Weird…and one would think counterintuitive to anyone hoping to remain in office.

I wonder how the White House phone message tree is set up now, what messages and prompts various incoming calls receive.  Perhaps:

*”Press 1 if you’d like to speak to ‘The Big Guy.'”  BEEP.  “Sorry, the president is on vacation.  Good-bye.

*”Press 2 if your nation is about to be attacked by Russia or Iran.”  BEEP.  “We’re sorry, but President Biden is away from his desk right now.  He may be back in a week or two.  Please press the pound sign to leave a message.”

*”Press 3 if you are inquiring about Hunter.”  BEEP.  “He’s the smartest guy we know, so go take a long walk off a short pier, loser.”

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There are dark days ahead for the Jewish diaspora America’s Jewish leadership is far too complacent about left-wing anti-Semitism. Joel Kotkin

Posted By on August 28th, 2022

https://www.spiked-online.com/2022/08/26/there-are-dark-days-ahead-for-the-jewish-diaspora/

Jews around the world, particularly outside the fortress of Israel, are threatened in a way not seen since the 1940s. A fundamentally unstable world, with rising class and racial animus, creates a perilous environment for history’s favourite target, as seen previously in such periods as the fall of Rome, the Crusades, the Black Death and the Great Depression of the 1930s.

Faced with rising anti-Semitism, Jews lack a leadership that is focused squarely on this challenge. Instead, the bulk of the community leadership concentrates largely on attacks from the right – on the shadowy white nationalists who, however small their numbers, most closely resemble the worst anti-Semites of the past, and who sometimes even use Nazi symbolism for inspiration.

Yet as noxious as the far right is, it is a fairly marginal force in places like the US. There are far-right brutes with guns, so the right can be lethal when stirred. But compared with the anti-Semitism of the ‘progressive’ left, the far right’s anti-Semitic agenda has little influence on Congress, academia or the mainstream media. Indeed, in the media, anti-Jewish hate crimes are consistently underreported, even though crimes against Jews are the highest per capita among any minority group. To the legacy media, these anti-Semitic crimes – unless they are committed by white nationalists – are simply less important than those against Muslims, Hispanics and African Americans.

To be sure, Jews still have reasons to fear the far right, which has long been infected by anti-Semitism. This threat has been exacerbated by the polarisation of US politics, which has pushed many more people to the extremes than usual, and by the popularity of conspiracy theories among ultra-conservatives. The serially disgraced Trump’s growing reliance on truly reactionary political movements has enhanced the far right’s position far beyond its actual numbers.

Indeed, some Republican Party spokespeople adopt tones that should make many Jews uncomfortable. Rightist media star and Trump ally Candace Owens, for example, once stated that Hitler would have been ‘fine’ if confined to Germany. Trump-backed gubernatorial candidates, likely losers in both Illinois and Pennsylvania, have also made statements that would make most Jews cringe. The fact that neo-Nazis have turned up outside right-wing meetings, like the Turning Point USA conference this summer in Florida, is a source of total embarrassment for the right – even though Turning Point denounced the Nazis and wanted nothing to do with them.

In at least one case, during last year’s gubernatorial race in Virginia, Democrats sent fake white supremacists to Republican campaign rallies in order to embarrass the GOP. But some Trumpians don’t need to be fooled in order to embrace extremist memes. Pennsylvania gubernatorial candidate Don Mastriano, for example, has embraced far-right activists who claim he will lead Pennsylvania into ‘the glory of God’. Trump may have Jewish grandchildren and only a short, opportunistic affinity to the cultural right, but last week Trump loyalists hurled hateful and anti-Semitic rhetoric at the judge who approved the search warrant for the raid on Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home.

The bigger challenge, albeit still less lethal, comes from the left. Throughout the world, this is where the demonisation of Israel and its anti-Semitic implications have found their strongest support. We have seen hints of anti-Semitism in the UK Labour Party, in La France Insoumise, led by Jean-Luc Mélenchon, as well as in the ‘Squad’ of far-left US congresspeople. These leftists often adopt conspiracy theories about Jewish money and influence, embracing what German social democrat August Bebel famously described as the ‘socialism of fools’.

MEDIA Comments turned off

The New York Times is eating itself Why is the world’s most liberal newsroom being accused of racism? Jenny Holland

Posted By on August 28th, 2022

https://www.spiked-online.com/2022/08/27/the-new-york-times-is-eating-itself/

Gather round, children, it is time for another instalment in our fun-filled series of Watch the Woke Newsroom Eat Itself Alive.

This week a new report by the New York Times Guild – the New York Times chapter of the national journalists’ union, NewsGuild – contained a great bombshell: ‘The New York Times’s performance-review system has for years given significantly lower ratings to employees of colour, an analysis by Times journalists in the NewsGuild shows.’ And in 2020, not a single black employee was given the ‘highest rating’ in employee evaluations, while ‘white employees accounted for more than 90 per cent of the roughly 50 people who received the top score’.

This has been widely interpreted as as a sign of ‘racial bias’ and even ‘racial discrimination’ at the Times.

I haven’t set foot in the Times newsroom for a long time, and obviously I have no knowledge of the individuals whose evaluations are being questioned by the union. So I am neither defending the report nor denying its veracity.

I can confirm, however, that when I worked there – back in the olden days, before woke millennials made skin colour a major topic of conversation among the journalistic elite – I did not meet a single racist. The vast majority of the people I worked with were the most open, liberal, high-minded, Upper West Side-dwelling, well-meaning people I have ever had the pleasure of knowing. There were a few grumpy old-timers tucked away in their messy cubicles. But even within the ultra-focused, deadline-driven environment, the vibe on the whole was more 1970s Sesame Street than 1950s Alabama.

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Lockdown and the price of suppressing dissent In times of crisis, we need more debate – not less. Fraser Myers

Posted By on August 28th, 2022

https://www.spiked-online.com/2022/08/26/lockdown-and-the-price-of-suppressing-dissent/

‘You must stay at home.’ That simple instruction from prime minister Boris Johnson, issued before the first Covid lockdown in March 2020, changed the fate of the nation forever.

You might have imagined that in a democratic country such as Britain, a decision of this magnitude would not simply have been imposed by executive fiat. That the shutting down of schools, the economy and society might have been something worth debating and discussing. But for much of the pandemic, lockdown was never subjected to proper scrutiny, even though its harms were obvious from the start.

Indeed, the harms of lockdown are becoming clearer by the day. The near-collapse of the NHS, the crisis in education and runaway inflation can all be traced back, at least in part, to March 2020. And while the Russian invasion of Ukraine has since sparked a global energy crisis, lockdown is part of what left us so vulnerable to its effects.

After all, the lockdown was the biggest shock to the UK economy in the history of industrial capitalism. And in the words of one High Court judge, it was ‘possibly the most restrictive regime on the public life of persons and businesses ever’. Many of its awful impacts were predictable and predicted.

MEDICINE AND HEALTH Comments turned off

Good riddance to Fauci and his calamitous, costly career By John Tierney

Posted By on August 28th, 2022

https://nypost.com/2022/08/23/good-riddance-to-fauci-and-his-calamitous-costly-career/

Whatever comes next in the pandemic, we all have cause to rejoice at the best news since the arrival of the COVID vaccine: Anthony Fauci, the president’s chief medical adviser, has announced his retirement. His long and singularly disastrous career ends in December.

Never in the history of the public-health profession has anyone been so richly rewarded for doing so much harm to the public’s health. Whether or not he actually helped start the COVID pandemic — by funding dangerous research in the Chinese lab that may have created the coronavirus — he promoted a series of policies in America and the rest of the world that did even more damage than the virus.

Except possibly for the Great Depression, the lockdowns were the costliest public-policy mistake ever made during peacetime in America.

Fauci got away with it by invoking the authority of science while violating its fundamental principles. Before COVID arrived, the world’s leading epidemiologists had warned that lockdowns would be futile and cause catastrophic collateral damage, but Fauci simply ignored that advice.

As evidence mounted of the policies’ failure, he persisted by deploying the skills honed during five decades in Washington: bureaucratic infighting, media manipulation and fearmongering.

ISRAEL Comments turned off

How “human rights” believers fund evil Britain’s faith in Mahmoud Abbas’s regime has been a stunning misjudgement Melanie Phillips

Posted By on August 28th, 2022

https://melaniephillips.substack.com/p/how-human-rights-believers-fund-evil?utm_source=email

This week’s Jewish Chronicle features a major story by David Rose, which reveals that Britain has been investing millions of pounds in training the Palestinian Authority in human rights even while the PA has been perpetrating torture and beating a prominent Palestinian democracy and human rights campaigner to death.

David’s story can be read here, here and here.

The opinion piece that I wrote for the JC to accompany the story follows below.

***

For many in the west, it has long been an article of faith that peace will only come to the Middle East when the Palestinians gain a state of their own.

Along with the EU and America, successive British governments have promoted a “two-state solution” to the conflict between Israel and the Palestinian Arabs.

Central to this thinking is a key distinction. Hamas is considered beyond the pale as Islamist extremists who throw gay Palestinians off rooftops to their death and make no bones about their aim to destroy Israel. But the Palestinian Authority headed by Mahmoud Abbas is deemed “moderate” and entitled to run a future state of Palestine that would be part of the community of nations.

The JC has now exposed this faith in the PA as an excruciating misjudgment.

For while Britain has been investing millions in it in the arrogant belief that it can teach it western values, Palestinian officers have been murdering and torturing dissenters who campaign for their human rights.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

DR. FAUCI’S RETIREMENT ANNOUNCEMENT Adam Andrzejewski

Posted By on August 28th, 2022

http://OpenTheBooks.com

DR. FAUCI’S RETIREMENT ANNOUNCEMENT: Since January 2021, our auditors broke international news with our investigations of the Fauci Family compensation, benefits, royalty payments and other financial perks. In December 2021, we first estimated Fauci’s pension and updated our projection this week. Fauci will retire on at least $374,000 a year.

This week, our oversight was cited at The Federalist, Sinclair Broadcast Group (200 ABC, NBC, CBS, and Fox affiliates across America), in an interview on Wake Up America morning program at NewsMaxTV, The Washington Times, Reason, The Daily Signal, the Daily Caller, and even our findings were mentioned at Slate.

Then, on Real World at Fox News, Neil Cavuto interviewed Tony Fauci and asked him about that taxpayer-guaranteed golden parachute. The doctor feigned ignorance, but we know the truth! And so does The Daily Caller. It’s backed by hard numbers and the government’s own formula to calculate retirement packages…

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Student Debt Forgiveness Is Biden’s Bluto Moment His plan will feed inflation and hurt him politically. By Kimberley Strassel

Posted By on August 28th, 2022

https://www.wsj.com/articles/student-debt-forgiveness-is-bidens-bluto-moment-inflation-college-loans-university-education-payments-bills-savings-11661464019?mod=djemalertNEWS

If political moves received letter grades, Joe Biden’s student loan “forgiveness” mark might rank down there with the Deltas of “Animal House.” Think of it as the president’s Bluto moment.

In case the White House missed it, Democrats had recently been getting it together. After an 18-month food fight over the Biden agenda, the party finally united to pass the Inflation Reduction Act. It suckered spend-happy Republicans into passing a semiconductor bill that vulnerable Democrats could brag about back home. The left has successfully fanned fears on abortion, putting GOP candidates on the back foot. And Donald Trump is in the headlines—right where they want him.

Then along comes Blutarsky, and seven years of college down the drain. It would be hard to fashion a program that carries more political risk for less political reward. In the name of paying off that powerful voting bloc known as “overeducated and underemployed deadbeats,” Mr. Biden is dumping on his own inflation message, dividing his party, and insulting any American who has ever worked, saved or paid a bill.

Inflation remains voters’ biggest worry, and they understand Washington’s role in feeding it. Only recently they watched General Motors and Ford hike the prices of electric vehicles by $6,000 to $8,500—roughly pacing the $7,500 tax credit the Biden “inflation reduction” law bestows. Cause, effect. Millions of American parents read Mr. Biden’s Wednesday loan announcement as news that they will be paying $10,000 more for tuition next year (and the year after that, and after that) as colleges reap the loan windfall.

It won’t stop with college inflation, even Democratic economists warn. Every $20,000 of loan forgiveness is $20,000 the favored college forgiven can blow on urban loft refits or Hawaiian vacations. “Pouring roughly half [a] trillion dollars of gasoline on the inflationary fire that is already burning is reckless,” Jason Furman, the Obama administration’s top economist, tweeted. Americans already doubted Mr. Biden’s new climate and health law would do much to lower prices, but they’ll draw a direct line from the loan bailout to further price hikes. A CNBC poll says nearly 60% of Americans fear this handout will make inflation worse.

The plan rips a new fissure in the Democratic Party, as nonsuicidal members run for cover. Maine Rep. Jared Golden called loan forgiveness “out of touch.” New Hampshire Rep. Chris Pappas said this is “no way to make policy.” Nevada Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto and Colorado Sen. Michael Bennet noted that the plan doesn’t address the underlying problem of rising tuition. Ohio Rep. Tim Ryan, running for the Senate, said the forgiveness “sends the wrong message to the millions of Ohioans without a degree working just as hard to make ends meet.”

What unites these Democrats? Each is in a competitive race, and they clearly already see the potential to alienate large cross-sections of the American electorate. Sure, loan forgiveness may benefit up to 40 million people, and energize Gen Zers and some millennials to vote for the Democrats they were going to support anyway. What about the other 220 million voting-age Americans who are being asked to float the upper crust’s seminars on gender identity and social justice?