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January 2021

Look at What He’s Done And You’ll Agree – You’re Going to Miss Trump When He’s Gone By Victoria Taft

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/victoria-taft/2021/01/18/look-at-what-hes-done-and-youll-agree-youre-going-to-miss-trump-when-hes-gone-n1389580

Democrat history-spinners will want to put an asterisk on Donald Trump’s presidency because of the frightening Capitol Building attack, which we learned almost immediately was pre-planned and would have been carried out regardless of what the president said on January 6th.

But if they do, they’ll get history wrong.

If there are any asterisks assigned, the venerated arc of justice will deposit one in the middle of Nancy Pelosi’s forehead. The Speaker, understandably outraged by the attack on the Capitol Building, instead of collecting the facts, rushed to judgment and blamed the president of the United States for fomenting a riot with a speech he was still delivering as the assault on the Capitol began.

Indeed, as I explained on PJ Media, the president said nothing that could be construed as inciting a riot.  And it bears noting that hundreds of thousands of the people at the Save America rally were not incited by the president to riot that day.

But Pelosi – citing the Constitution as her guide – recklessly rushed the House of Representatives into an impeachment that set a poisonous precedent for impeaching future presidents based on their constitutionally protected words rather than actual impeachable activities.

Donald Trump won’t get a gold star for comportment, manners, and speaking off-the-cuff, but the accomplishments of the 45th president are far more than smack-talk and bluster. Indeed, Trump can hold his head up and compare his accomplishments to any president, certainly of recent times.

This is a short list of his accomplishments. Get ready.

About China’s Booming* GDP *Good data mask dangerous imbalances that are growing worse.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/about-chinas-booming-gdp-11611000318?mod=opinion_lead_pos4

The economic data Beijing released Monday seems to suggest that China has met expectations that it would be the only major economy to grow in 2020. China being China, there’s much more—and less—to the story.

The top-line data make China a rare good news story in the pandemic year. Inflation-adjusted GDP growth hit 6.5% in the last three months of the year, making it 2.3% for 2020. This contrasts with the rest of the world, where social distancing and lockdowns have triggered some of the worst contractions on record and raise the specter of long and difficult recoveries.

Some of Beijing’s cheerleaders want you to believe this is mainly because the Chinese government acted so aggressively to suppress the pandemic. That story sits uneasily alongside Beijing’s slow-rolling of early information about Covid-19 when more information sharing might have helped other countries.

Beijing adopted particularly aggressive lockdowns once it did act, sealing off entire cities and even now locking down apartment buildings or neighborhoods at a moment’s notice to suppress outbreaks. To the extent anyone can trust Beijing’s data about virus spread, it appears to have Covid mostly under control.

Navalny’s Arrest and the West More than rhetorical protests will be needed to get Putin’s attention.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/navalnys-arrest-and-the-west-11611000490?mod=opinion_lead_pos3

Russian authorities detained opposition leader Alexei Navalny upon his return to Moscow over the weekend, five months after he survived an assassination attempt in Siberia. His personal courage is as notable as Vladimir Putin’s fear of his appeal.

Mr. Navalny, Mr. Putin’s most effective domestic critic, fell into a coma in August after being poisoned with a chemical nerve-agent of the Novichok group. Last month Mr. Navalny and investigative outlet Bellingcat presented compelling evidence tying the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) to the poisoning.

The dissident spent several months convalescing in Berlin, and he could have remained safe outside Russia. But he returned aware that the country’s penitentiary service recently had accused him of fraud and parole violations. On Monday a court ordered that he be held for 30 days, but given Russia’s lawlessness he could remain behind bars for years.

“I know that the criminal cases against me are fabricated,” he said shortly before being taken into custody. He has since called for mass protests. “I’m not afraid of anything and call on you not to fear anything.”

Mr. Putin and his cronies certainly fear him. Mr. Navalny built a national following by exposing high-level corruption, and this isn’t the first time he’s been arrested on dubious charges. Thousands waited to greet him but his flight was diverted to another airport.

Don’t Call Biden’s Plan ‘Stimulus’ — It’s Just Another Keynesian Fantasy

https://issuesinsights.com/2021/01/19/dont-call-bidens-plan-stimulus-its-just-another-keynesian-fantasy/

Joe Biden’s promised stimulus is meant to boost an economy devastated by the Democrats’ national shutdown by handing out more checks and imposing a $15 national minimum wage. Sorry, it won’t work.

“We must act now, and we must act decisively,” Biden said.

Sounds good, but do we really? What he and Congress have proposed is an incoherent mess that will do the precise opposite of what he says it will. Even worse, it’s premised on the long-discredited idea that the government can stimulate the economy by spending more.

From false premises come bad policies that will hurt many low-income people and possibly end the Trump recovery now under way. And, make no mistake, Biden’s $1.9 trillion stimulus plan unveiled late last week contained a panoply of bad policies.

In a recent piece, the Foundation for Economic Education listed the bill’s main provisions:

An additional $1,400 in “stimulus” checks sent to most Americans, raising the recently passed $600 payouts to $2,000.
Renewal and increase of the expanded unemployment benefits that extend payouts to many new classes of workers through September 2021. Biden’s proposal would add $400 a week in federal payouts on top of existing state-level benefits.
Expansion of the child tax credit and the Earned Income Tax Credit.
An increase in food stamp benefits.
A nationwide $15 minimum wage.
Extension of the federal government’s eviction moratorium.
$350 billion for local, state, and tribal governments.
$160 billion for vaccine distribution and other COVID-19 health measures.
Paid leave for millions of workers, much of which would be funded by taxpayers.

“It is $1.9 trillion, and it’s basically the Bernie Sanders wish list of spending on massive blue state bailouts,” including “$100 billion for schools, even though schools have been shut down for the last year,” said former Trump economic adviser Steve Moore.

Benjamin Gitlow, ex-Communist Eileen F. Toplansky ******

http://www.ruthfullyyours.com/wp-admin/post.php?post=170418&action=edit

As the enemies of America are bent on shredding our Constitutional guarantees, it is important to note the courage of a once devout communist who, at great risk to himself, made a principled stand against Communism.

Benjamin Gitlow was one of the most committed American communists who rose to power.  Yet, as his son recounts in the introduction to his father’s 1948 book titled The Whole of Their Lives, Gitlow “was one of the few leaders in the early years of the American Communist party who recognized the threat to the aspirations of man that communism presents, and who rejected its oppressive discipline.”  This book recounts the experiences of those who had once embraced communism and now had the moral courage to recognize the “betrayal of human values which is inherent in communism.”

In 1929 at the Moscow meeting of the Communist International Gitlow refused to accept the dictates of Stalin and announced he would oppose Stalin’s orders to the American Communist Party.   From then on, Gitlow became an avid anti-communist.

Max Eastman who wrote the Foreword to the book asserts that:

“Our civilization is in peril because so many eager and uncritical minds, beguiled by the communist ideal, instead of being trained in virtue, are trained to renounce all moral standards in the service of their ideal.  Those consecrating themselves to communism must not only cast out truth, mercy, justice, and personal honor, but undergo a sickening discipline in lies, cruelty, crime and self abasement.”

Almost 75 years later and America is faced with the radical Leftwing “critical theory, which is a demonic and toxic ideology that basically destroys everything around itself.”

Consequently, “[w]hat we’re seeing in America right now is the rise of Communism—plain and simple. If you study history, you can see many parallels of communist regimes that have risen up throughout history to what is happening right here in the United States of America, right now today.” Examples abound: