RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/05/federal-biden-inquisitors-lloyd-billingsley-0/

Last week, Jill Sanborn, assistant director of the FBI’s Counterterrorism Division, told lawmakers that James Hodgkinson “intended for the shooting to be his final act on Earth,” when he attacked Republican lawmakers on June 14, 2017, nearly killing Rep. Steve Scalise. According to Sanborn, Hodgkinson knew  “he would likely be killed,” a tacit acknowledgement that the FBI had indeed classified the attack as “suicide by cop,” not an act of terrorism.

“I am not aware of the rationale,” Sanborn told lawmakers. “I was not in my seat at the time, so I would have to get back to you on the specifics of what the rationale was.” In the seat of acting FBI director at the time was Andrew McCabe, a Clinton crony and major player in the Russia hoax. McCabe did not testify about the rationale for calling the attack suicide by cop. 

“If it were to happen today, we would open it as a domestic terrorism case,” Sanborn testified. DOJ assistant attorney general Brad Wiegmann told legislators that James Hodgkinson was a domestic terrorist, nearly four years after the FBI failed to do so. All told, it was quite a performance from the FBI-DOJ duo. 

Hodgkinson, a supporter of Bernie Sanders, carried a list of Republican lawmakers and belonged to a Facebook group called “Terminate the Republican Party.” Hodgkinson purchased an SKS rifle, a Russian or Chinese made precursor to the AK-47, and practiced his marksmanship. Hodgkinson also recorded a video of the field where Republican lawmakers played baseball. 

On June 14, 2017, as the Republicans practiced, Hodgkinson opened fire, seriously wounding Rep. Steve Scalise and Zack Barth, an aide to Rep. Roger Williams. The Sanders supporter then engaged the Capitol Police in a gun battle, not what one would expect from someone out to commit suicide by cop. That absurd designation recalls an episode from the composite character president David Garrow described in Rising Star: The Making of Barack Obama.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/whos-afraid-of-tim-scott-11620078729?mod=opinion_featst_pos3

Kamala Harris went first. In the Republican response to Joe Biden’s address to Congress, Sen. Tim Scott avowed that America “is not a racist country.” The next day on ABC’s “Good Morning America,” the vice president was asked if she agreed with him.

“I don’t think America is a racist country,” she said, “but we also do have to speak truth about the history of racism in our country and its existence today.”

The following day, it was President Biden’s turn. In an interview with NBC’s “Today,” he, too, was asked about Mr. Scott’s characterization—and he, too, agreed. “I don’t think America’s racist,” he said, “but I think the overhang from all of the Jim Crow [laws], and before that slavery, have had a cost, and we have to deal with it.”

Though no one was impolite enough to bring it up, Mr. Biden and Ms. Harris would never have said what they did if the black Republican senator from South Carolina hadn’t used his moment to force their hands. Essentially, he dared them to speak aloud the logical conclusion from all their repeated references to systemic racism and the threat of white supremacy. Wisely recognizing that this would be political poison, they flinched.

How different from only two weeks ago, when a Columbus, Ohio, police officer saved the life of a black teenager by shooting another black teen about to stab her. Asked about it, White House press secretary Jen Psaki went right for the progressive go-to: “Black women and girls, like black men and boys, experience higher rates of police violence.”

That’s the trouble with narratives. They are one size fits all, with no room for considering the individual case on its merits and particular circumstances. This is what Mr. Scott was referring to when he suggested race is used as “a political weapon to settle every issue the way one side wants”—by slamming anyone who raises an inconvenient fact as racist or dismissing speech as invalid based solely on the speaker’s racial identity.

https://weingarten.substack.com/p/america-courts-disaster-by-rewarding?token=eyJ

Is a country that rewards failure, corruption, and deceit destined to fail?

This disquieting question comes to mind when one considers how members of the commanding heights of society have increasingly failed—at least on merit—upward.

Some recent news items illustrate this point.

The Biden administration has seen a number of its nominees confirmed, with varying Republican support, in spite of their checkered records.

Samantha Power, the U.N. ambassador during the Obama administration, was found to have made several hundred seemingly unjustifiable unmasking requests—exposing the name of someone incidentally recorded by government surveillance—and apparently lied about one such series of requests, regarding retired Gen. Mike Flynn, in testimony to Congress. Her inglorious record spans from our shores to Israel, Syria, and well beyond the Levant.

Power was rewarded by being confirmed to head the U.S. Agency for International Development and is likely to be seated on the National Security Council.

Lisa Monaco, the former Obama administration homeland security adviser, played a critical role in word and deed in propagating Russiagate/Spygate. She was rewarded by being confirmed as deputy attorney general, where she is expected to take a major role in combating domestic violent extremism. There are indications that this effort could lead to the targeting of like-minded political dissenters to the ones wrongfully ensnared in Russiagate/Spygate.

Setting aside Biden administration nominees, word broke last week that Mary McCord, a former senior Obama Department of Justice official responsible for rubberstamping the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrant applications to spy on Carter Page, helping oversee the Crossfire Hurricane operation, and like Power, targeting Flynn, was named to the eight-member amici curiae of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC). Amicus curiae are responsible for advising the FISC on critical matters, including, ironically, legal arguments advancing the protection of civil liberties.

https://issuesinsights.com/2021/05/05/bidens-massive-hidden-tax-hike-that-well-all-have-to-pay/

You’re about to get hit with a huge tax. No it’s not to pay for the new infrastructure bill or the Green New Deal, which will cost trillions of dollars in new taxes, though they do play a role. Nor does it come from paying for the trillions of COVID-19 “stimulus” packages that Congress has passed, even as the economy roared out of its recession late last year. No, this tax is far more insidious than all that.

It’s inflation. A tax that costs everyone dearly, rich and poor alike.

Americans have gotten used to having little or no inflation. They’ve forgotten how awful it is. Economically speaking, it’s the most devastating of all taxes, because it comes entirely from government. And citizens don’t realize they’re paying it until too late.

If you’re under 45, you might not understand. After all, more than 90% of your life has been spent with declining or even non-existent inflation. When you got a raise, your pay really went up. And when you went to the store to buy things, prices often were below where they were a year earlier.

But guess what? With a tidal wave of tax hikes and new spending from the Biden Democrats, a raft of new “green” federal regulations on the way, key global shortages of foodstuffs, a rising minimum wage, and tight markets for industrial goods such as lumber, steel and even microchips, not to mention a Fed that loves to print money, we may be on the verge of an inflation surge that could take down our financial markets and cut deeply into average Americans’ standard of living.