RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-congressional-hypocrisy-caucus-11636755206?mod=opinion_lead_pos11

The effort by congressional Democrats to shield themselves and their wealthy donors from tax hikes while inflicting them on the middle class appears to be more successful than previously reported. Even the left-leaning Tax Policy Center is blowing the whistle on this egregious gap between Democratic rhetoric and legislative reality.

As for rhetoric, this week in Baltimore the President continued making the claim he’s been making since he was a mere presidential candidate about his “Build Back Better” plan:

Nobody is going to — nobody is going to pay more — if you make less than 400 grand, you’re not going to pay anything more in taxes at all. Period. Guaranteed.

Howard Gleckman of the Tax Policy Center shares the outfit’s new estimate of a House draft of the plan:

Taking into account all major tax provisions, roughly 20 percent to 30 percent of middle-income households would pay more in taxes in 2022.

So much for a Biden guarantee. But there appears to be good news in the House draft for wealthy people who live in blue states—an increase to $80,000 from $10,000 in the amount of state and local taxes (SALT) that filers can deduct on their federal tax returns. Democrats are trying to sell this change as a benefit to the middle class, but the Tax Policy Center is among the many who aren’t buying it:

Despite what its promoters say, raising the cap to $80,000 would provide almost no benefit for middle-income households. It would reduce their 2021 taxes by an average of only $20. Even those making between $175,00 and $250,000 would get a tax cut of just over $400 or about 0.2 percent of after-tax income. By contrast, the higher SALT cap would boost after-tax incomes by 1.2 percent for those making between about $370,000 and $870,000 (the 95th to 99th percentile).

https://thefederalist.com/2021/11/10/new-fdrlst-susquehanna-poll-shows-bidens-approval-sliding-to-36-percent-widespread-disapproval-of-critical-race-theory/

President Joe Biden’s approval ratings are nose-diving, according to a new poll from The Federalist and Susquehanna Polling & Research.

The poll, which surveyed 800 likely voters nationwide from Nov. 1 through Nov. 9 of 2021, shows Biden’s overall approval rating slipping to just 36 percent, with disapproval at 52 percent. Biden’s approval rating among registered Democrats is just 70 percent, according to the poll, with one in five registered Democrats saying they did not approve of the job Biden is doing as president. Among voters who are registered as independents, only 29 percent said they approved of Biden’s job as president, while 50 percent said they did not approve of Biden.

The poll from The Federalist and Susquehanna also found widespread dissatisfaction with Biden’s economic and immigration policies thus far. On immigration, only 23 percent of voters surveyed approved of Biden’s efforts to stop illegal immigration across the U.S.-Mexico border, while 51 percent said they disapproved of Biden’s policies on immigration.

Similarly, 34 percent of voters said they approved of how Biden has handled economic policies, while 51 percent said they did not approve of the job he has done on the economy. When asked who they thought was most responsible for skyrocketing gas prices, a plurality of voters — 46 percent — said they blamed Biden and congressional Democrats. Only 7 percent blamed Republicans, while 43 percent blamed other economic factors.

https://spectator.org/what-did-obama-know-and-when-did-he-know-it-2/

In researching my 2020 book, Unmasking Obama, I focused on one question above all others: What did Barack Obama know about the plot to link Donald Trump to Russia and when he did he know it? Unlike the Watergate era, when all the insiders in government and media rushed to discover what Nixon knew, only the outsiders have dared to ask about Obama.

Major credit here goes to Rep. Devin Nunes and his chief investigator Kash Patel, Inspector General Michael Horowitz, former Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe, and most recently Special Counsel John Durham. For all their good efforts, however, this probe remains very much a work in progress.

That caution established, the answer to the question in the headline is becoming increasingly clear. The information contained in Durham’s recent indictment of Russian national Igor Danchenko, when coupled with the CIA notes declassified in October 2020 by Ratcliffe, leads directly to the White House. In the past week, these revelations have gotten a fair share of attention, at least on the right side of the blogosphere. They deserve it.

What has not gotten attention, however, is the specious counter-narrative that Obama and his allies have been quietly constructing for the last five years. Deconstructing this counter-narrative may not put Obama’s Praetorian guard in prison, but it should provide Watergate-level amusement for those of us who believe prison is where Obama’s people belong.

The Rosetta Stone of the counter-narrative may well be a comprehensive article in the Washington Post from June 2017. Perhaps more than any other bit of Trump era “journalism,” this article — complete with photos and flow charts — revealed the major media’s eagerness to enable the ongoing Democrat-Deep State disinformation campaign. A July 2017 update — “The Post’s new findings in Russia’s bold campaign to influence the U.S. election” — contained even more bogus charts and timelines.

http://www.swtotd.blogspot.com

Yogi Berra is alleged to have said: “Forecasting is very difficult, especially when it involves the future.” Republicans were quick to conclude that Glenn Youngkin’s victory in Virginia last week promises wins for Republicans in next year’s midterms. I hope they are right, but there is a lot of time between now and then. Such predictions can lull candidates into complacency.

However, the election may have put a stop – perhaps temporarily – to the leftward shift of the Democratic Party. Sanity was the winner in Virginia and a handful of other states, with derangement the loser. Even deep-blue New Jersey appeared to have second thoughts about their fall into leftist lunacy, though the heavily taxed state chose to stay with its spendthrift governor. In its aftermath, Congress passed a $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill, with the help of thirteen Republicans (from swing districts) and with six Congressional Democrats (including all four members of “The Squad”) voting no. Nevertheless, following Virginia’s election, progressives showed their colors: Michael Eric Dyson, a guest on MSNBC’s “Reidout,” called Virginia’s newly elected Lieutenant Governor Winsome Sears, a “black voice for white supremacy.” Jemele Hill, a former host on ESPN, tweeted that Ms. Sears is a white supremacist.  New York’s Chuck Schumer and California’s Nancy Pelosi, ignoring Tuesday’s elections, assured Progressives they will pass the far-more-expensive “human infrastructure” legislation (Build Back Better) by Thanksgiving – a single bill whose all-in costs equals what total annual federal spending had been in 2014.

One lesson for Republicans is that the personal presence of Donald Trump may prove a hindrance, at least in blue and purple states. Mr. Trump alleged that without his endorsement Mr. Youngkin would have lost by fifteen points. My guess is that the reverse is true – if he had personally campaigned for him, Mr. Youngkin, would have lost by ten points. As President, Mr. Trump was victim of what probably was the largest political scandal in our nation’s history – the Clinton campaign-inspired Russian collusion story. As well, he was confronted with one of the worst pandemics to hit this nation. Yet he reduced regulatory red tape, increased economic activity at home, raised wages for black and minority workers, brought energy independence to the country, slowed illegal immigration, and, with the Abraham Accords, brought glimmers of peace to Israel and her Arab neighbors. But his narcissistic personality and polarizing ways accentuated the divide of an already ruptured nation. His policies were correct, His character was not.

https://greenwald.substack.com/p/democrats-are-profoundly-committed?token=e

The 2020 protest movement that erupted after the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis and the shooting of Jacob Blake in Kenosha became one of the most sustained and consequential in modern U.S. history. Though there seems to be a somewhat bizarre effort underway by its advocates to insist that this movement accomplished nothing — why are some claiming that radical cultural and political changes are happening? — it is demonstrably true that, as intended, the movement transformed discourse and policy around multiple issues from race, to policing, to gender identity, to the teaching of history, and fostered an ongoing effort for still-greater changes.

The issues raised by that movement were varied and often shifting: though it was catalyzed by the claim that the U.S. is swamped with racist police brutality as illustrated by the Floyd and Blake cases, it quickly metastasized into other areas far removed from those two cases. White Antifa members clashed with Black protesters over the attempt to steer or broaden the movement away from a narrow focus on racist police brutality into one devoted to generalized insurrectionary anarchy. One of the largest and most densely packed gatherings was a spontaneous march, at the height of the COVID pandemic, in Brooklyn, where ten thousand people paid homage to the importance of “black trans lives,” a cause whose relationship to the Floyd and Blake cases was tenuous at best. Institutional changes regarding gender identity were quickly adopted by the corporations and security state institutions that lent their support, however cynically, to this growing movement.