RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/10/wreaking-fundamental-change-economy-lloyd-billingsley/

“The president wants to make fundamental change in our economy and he feels coming out of the pandemic is exactly the time to do that,” said White House press secretary Jan Psaki in an October 12 briefing. The reference to “fundamental change” recalls a statement from the composite character president David Garrow described in Rising Star: The Making of Barack Obama.

“We are five days away from fundamentally transforming the United States of America,” the composite character said in November of 2008. The United States of America was already a top-heavy welfare state from FDR’s New Deal and LBJ’s Great Society, so the candidate, formerly known as Barry Soetoro, must have had something else in mind. In 2021 it should all be evident.

In 2008, the United States of America was also a democracy, in which the people choose presidents as different as Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan. Under the composite character’s fundamental transformation, the outgoing president picks his successor and deploys the upper reaches of the DOJ, FBI and intelligence community to support the president’s pick and attack her opponent, even after he wins the presidency. This fundamental transformation was on full display from 2016 through 2020, with massive election irregularities.

Long before September 11, 2001, the United States of America recognized the threat from radical Islamic terrorism. The composite character president looked the other way at Islamic terrorism and regarded his domestic political opponents as the true threat.

For example, in 2009 Department of Homeland Security boss Janet Napolitano released Rightwing Extremism: Current Economic and Political Climate Fueling Resurgence in Radicalization and Recruitment. This document warned of “white supremacist” types that reject federal authority. This was code for anyone less than worshipful of the composite character, particularly those who value their constitutional rights.

https://pjmedia.com/columns/victor-davis-hanson/2021/10/21/sheer-chaos-and-anarchy-on-the-border-n1525658

Afghanistan — the most humiliating defeat in recent U.S. military history?

A labor-starved supply chain in shambles and holiday shelves emptying out?

The worst inflation in 30 years that seems soon ready to match Carter-era levels?

Gas hitting $5 a gallon with winter heating fuels soaring?

Free-for-all looting in the major cities without consequences?

Joe Biden’s policies and Biden himself diving in the polls?

Never in recent American history has any administration birthed such disasters in its first nine months.

Yet most Americans are arguing not over the sheer chaos and disasters of the Biden Administration, but rather how could such sheer pre-civilizational calamity occur in modern America?

Were these disasters a result of historic incompetency? Or mean-spirited nihilism? Or a deliberate effort to create the necessary turbulence to birth a new American revolution? Or a bit of all three?

Start instead with the idea that what most Americans see as sheer ruin is not what the left-wing puppeteers, who are pulling the strings of the Biden marionette, see.

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/ari-j-kaufman/2021/10/20/as-florida-covid-cases-plummet-media-falls-silent-n1525537

Florida now has one of the lowest coronavirus case rates in the nation, with around 80 percent of its adult population vaccinated.

Left-leaning media has long had a pathetic, cruel obsession with bashing the Sunshine State, mainly because of its outspoken Republican governor.

The Acela Corridor elites have been proven wrong over and over, and once infections and deaths across Florida began dropping well over a month ago, they finally relented.

Now, on a per capita basis, Florida posted fewer cases than every state but California last week.

But in August, when the Delta variant hit the South, the left effectively cheered deaths and couldn’t stop taking partisan shots.

New York Times columnists like the repugnant Paul Krugman often played pure politics with the pandemic, solely blaming red state leaders.

As Dan McLaughlin tabulated Wednesday, “the last time the columnist tweeted the word ‘Florida’ was August 19. The last time he mentioned ‘DeSantis’ was August 27. The last time Krugman mentioned the Republican ‘death cult’ was September 28. The last time he mentioned COVID was October 1, and the ‘pandemic’ October 7. The last time the Nobel Prize winner used the word ‘Delta’ on Twitter was on September 6, noting that it was “amazing to me how many news reports on the Delta disaster manage to avoid mentioning ‘Republicans.’”

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-2-trillion-is-phony-too-democrats-congress-spending-bill-joe-manchin-nancy-pelosi-11634766679?mod=opinion_lead_pos1

Democrats say they’re working hard to pare back their $3.5 trillion tax and spending bill to $2 trillion to please House and Senate dissenters, but don’t believe it. What they’re really doing is working hard to pack $4 trillion in new programs into a $2 trillion disguise that sounds less radical than it is.

That’s the message from news reports that the White House on Tuesday offered Congressional Democrats a plan that retains nearly all of the entitlement programs they originally proposed. Instead of reducing this vast expansion of the welfare state, Democrats are merely increasing their use of budget gimmicks to pretend to fit them into a 10-year budget window. It’s still a mammoth fiscal confidence trick.

The leaks are piecemeal and the talks are fluid. But so far it looks like the White House is continuing to accommodate progressive demands and then bludgeon swing-district Members to go along. “Overall, almost every priority is included,” Rep. Ro Khanna (D., Calif.), a progressive leader, was quoted as saying. President Biden and Nancy Pelosi previously said they preferred to fully fund fewer programs. But they retreated, as usual, under progressive pressure.

Democrats appear to have dropped only two programs from their original plan: an entitlement for community college, and a nationwide renewable fuel mandate known as the Clean Electricity Performance Program (CEPP). Community college is one of the least expensive at some $120 billion over 10 years, and many states already subsidize it.

Killing CEPP is significant since it would force all states to meet a renewable fuel standard whether they want it or not. It is expressly designed to eliminate coal and raise the cost of natural-gas electric power. It’s essentially a carbon tax disguised as regulation. Credit West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin for slaying this monstrosity, if it really is dead.

https://issuesinsights.com/2021/10/21/under-biden-weve-gone-from-make-america-great-to-lower-your-expectations/

As the economy falters in the wake of rising inflation, chronic worker shortages, and a deepening supply chain crisis, the rhetoric from the Biden administration and its defenders has shifted from “we’ve got this” to “stop your whining.” Is this what Americans bargained for when they ditched Mr. Mean Tweets for Joe “Nexnelsrent” Biden?

A perfect example of this shift is an op-ed by a contributing columnist to the Washington Post – Micheline Maynard – who says that the real problem we face today isn’t skyrocketing prices, bottlenecks at the ports, and empty shelves. It is us spoiled brats.

“American consumers, their expectations pampered and catered to for decades, are not accustomed to inconvenience,” she writes. “Time for some new, more realistic expectations.”

Maynard’s op-ed, and the Washington Post, took plenty of flak for blaming the victim. But the truth is that it is increasingly the way the White House is talking as well.

At a press briefing on Tuesday, a reporter asked White House spokesperson Jen Psaki why, given that supply chain problems were “clear in March of 2020,” didn’t the administration act sooner. “It was crystal clear that things were not improving on the supply chain,” the New York Times reporter said, trying hard to choke out a tough question. “People couldn’t get dishwashers and furniture and treadmills delivered on time, not to mention all sorts of other things.” 

Psaki interrupted the report to say, with a smirk, “The tragedy of the treadmill that’s delayed.”

https://www.spiked-online.com/2021/10/20/have-we-reached-the-high-water-mark-of-woke/

Over the past decade, the woke agenda has crested like a giant tsunami, covering virtually the entirety of academia, the media, the corporate world and even the military. The Gramscian concept of ‘the long march through the institutions’, embraced by 1960s radicals like Germany’s Rudi Dutschke, has achieved overwhelming success.

Yet there are signs that the woke progressive model may be losing its appeal, even among some liberals. The bulk of public opinion is not in progressives’ favour. In the US, activist progressives, notes a recent study, represent eight per cent of the electorate – barely half the size of moderates and barely a third of the size of conservatives. What they lack in numbers, however, they make up for with single-minded determination; progressive whites, notes the Atlantic, are the most intolerant of all Americans, led by those in the Boston area, while people in smaller towns and cities seem far more open.

The scalps of those targeted by the woke are strewn across the landscape. There’s the cancellations of ideologically unacceptable speakers, the delisting of books and the increasingly selective media coverage, evident particularly in the 2020 election and its aftermath. Yet the very vehemence of progressives, their lack of humour or grace, may prove to be their undoing.

Among Republicans, wokeness drives them further away from the mainstream media, as many of them now regard certain outlets as little more than vehicles for proselytising progressivism. But it’s not just the nutjobs of the far right. A recent Rasmussen survey found that 58 per cent of likely voters ‘at least somewhat agree that the media are the enemy of the people, including 34 per cent who strongly agree’.

‘Cancel culture’ is no more popular than the rest of the woke agenda. More millennials oppose than support cancel culture, notes a recent Morning Consult poll. The older generations are much more firmly against it. But most heartening is that those in the younger generation, the so-called Zs, are the most hostile to cancel culture, with 55 per cent disapproving of it and only eight per cent supporting it.

https://justthenews.com/accountability/russia-and-ukraine-scandals/soros-tied-group-met-fbi-during-russia-collusion-probe
” Integrity Project founder Dan Jones testifies about extensive contacts with Clinton campaign-tied figures, including Michael Sussmann and Glenn Simpson.”
A group funded by George Soros and other donors to continue investigating the Russia collusion allegations after the 2016 election met with the FBI, offering its assistance to agents and alerting them it was working with one of their terminated confidential sources in the case, Christopher Steele, according to court testimony made public Friday.

Former FBI analyst Daniel Jones’ testimony, released in a D.C. Superior Court civil case, recounts in painstaking detail how he formed the group The Democracy Integrity Project in early 2017, raised money for it and continued a private investigation into alleged Russian and other interference in the 2016 election.

Jones acknowledged in his testimony that he worked post-election with some of the key figures tied to Hillary Clinton’s campaign and its now discredited Russia collusion allegations, including recently indicted former campaign lawyer Michael Sussmann and investigative researcher Glenn Simpson.

But in one of his biggest revelations, Sussmann testified he hired the author of the now-infamous and discredited Steele dossier to assist his work and felt obligated to alert the FBI when he met with Russia collusion investigators in March 2017. “I proactively reached out to the FBI,” Jones testified.

“The purpose of that meeting was to alert the FBI, a place that I had worked with and who I had maintained contacts with who are still there, that the Democracy Integrity Project as an organization existed and that we were collecting information on foreign government interference in elections and that we had the information on foreign government interference in elections, as well as the fact that I had engaged the services of Christopher Steele for the Democracy Integrity Project and alerting them to that, given the public nature of what had transpired from the Bureau on this.”

By the time of Jones’ meeting with the FBI in March 2017, the bureau had terminated the former British MI6 agent Steele as a confidential informant in the Russia case for leaking to the news media. Counterintelligence agents had also debunked some of the Steele dossier’s allegations as Russian disinformation, inaccurate or unprovable and learned his research had been paid for by the Clinton campaign through its law firm Perkins Coie, where Sussmann worked.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/adamandrzejewski/2021/10/20/dr-anthony-faucis-little-known-biodefense-work–its-how-he-became-the-highest-paid-federal-employee/?sh=175bb6d86081

In a January article published at Forbes, our auditors at OpenTheBooks.com found that Dr. Anthony Fauci was the highest paid federal employee, earning $417,608 (2019).

Dr. Fauci is still the top-paid federal employee earning $434,312 in 2020. Fauci is the Director of the National Institutes of Health’s (NIH) National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) and current Chief Medical Advisor to the President.

Fauci out-earned the U.S. president ($400,000); four-star generals in the military ($282,000); and roughly 4.3 million other federal employees.  

Now, new documents released via our Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests from the NIH tell us a lot more. Dr. Fauci received a big pay hike for his biodefense research activities. In other words, Fauci was paid to prevent future pandemics.

The documents released to our non-profit organization OpenTheBooks.com reveal that Dr. Fauci was approved for a “permanent pay adjustment” in excess of his regular salary in December 2004, during the George W. Bush Administration.

From 2004 through 2007, Fauci received a 68-percent pay increase from $200,000- to $335,000-a year. This award was permanent and carried forward through 2020.

Fauci’s permanent pay raise was to “appropriately compensate him for the level of responsibility… especially as it relates to his work on biodefense research activities.”

However, critics say that Fauci was funding research that was actually creating pandemic pathogens in labs that, if leaked or if fell into the wrong hands, might create the very human pandemic they were trying to prevent.

https://amgreatness.com/2021/10/18/christopher-steele-product-of-corrupt-fbi/

Just as the special counsel’s investigation into the origins of Crossfire Hurricane—the FBI counterintelligence probe launched in the summer of 2016 to sabotage Donald Trump’s presidential campaign—is showing signs of life, one of the central figures in the hoax is attempting to burnish his sullied image.

ABC News anchor George Stephanopoulos has produced a documentary featuring Christopher Steele, the man responsible for the so-called dossier bearing his name. “Out of the Shadows: The Man Behind the Steele Dossier,” streamed on Hulu Monday night; promotional clips hinted that, far from a hard-hitting interview exposing Steele for the charlatan he is, Stephanopoulos gave Steele a chance to spin his story ahead of possible new indictments related to John Durham’s inquiry into the Trump-Russia election collusion hoax. 

Rather than depict Steele accurately, Stephanopoulos and ABC News social media interns repeatedly describe Steele as an “ex-British spy” or “former intelligence officer” even though Steele left MI6, the UKs version of the CIA, in 2009 to start a consulting business. (That same year, Steele presented a report on Russia to President Obama.) Steele’s now-discredited dossier, which Stephanopoulos tries to portray as “raw intelligence,” was the basis not just for the entire Russian collusion hoax but also served as key evidence to support four illicit FISA applications to obtain warrants to spy on Donald Trump and his associates.

Stephanopoulos’ goal, of course, is to convince uninformed viewers—in other words, most of Stephanopoulos’ audience on any given day—that Steele was working in an official national security capacity instead of as a Democratic political operative paid by the Hillary Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee to dig up dirt on Donald Trump during the 2016 presidential race.

But Steele, many folks forget, also had another funder in 2016: the Federal Bureau of Investigation. An often overlooked fact about Steele is that at the same time he was being paid by the Clinton campaign and DNC, he also was being paid by the FBI as a “confidential human source,” otherwise known as an “informant.”

Without James Comey’s FBI, there would be no Steele dossier and no Russian collusion hoax. And Christopher Steele is the most glaring example of the slimy relationship between the FBI, partisan operatives, and the American news media.

Steele began working with the FBI shortly after forming his consulting business, Orbis Business Intelligence, in 2010. In addition to his work on the FIFA corruption investigation, Steele routinely passed along information to the FBI on Russian oligarchs. According to a lengthy report issued in December 2019 by Michael Horowitz, inspector general of the Justice Department, the FBI completed necessary paperwork in 2013 to authorize Steele as a confidential human source.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2021/10/christopher-steele-the-russia-collusion-hoaxer-regrets-nothing/

The former British spy who helped create the fake Trump/Russia-collusion narrative stands by his work.

I f Donald Trump . . . scratch that . . . if any Republican operative had produced a fictitious oppo file on the life of Joe Biden that: (a) crammed in every rumor and conspiracy theory he could find, leaving just enough truth to make it plausible; (b) went to gullible or willing political and journalistic allies in an effort to mislead the public and undermine trust in the presidential election; (c) was used to plunge the nation into years of hysterical paranoia regarding Russian interference; and (d) was then sent to law-enforcement agencies as a way to help launch a cascade of useless investigations, from special-counsel probes to congressional inquiries, all of which ended up producing exactly zero indictments related to “collusion” . . . that person would be treated like Lin Wood or Alex Jones — or worse.

But some ratf***ers are more successful than others. And one of the architects of the swindle, retired British spy Christopher Steele, is now “stepping out of the shadows.” He’s the subject of a Hulu documentary and an interview with former Clinton operative George Stephanopoulos (now with ABC News), in which he discusses the infamous “Steele dossier.” But this designation gives what is ultimately a fabricated oppo-research file, paid for by the Clinton campaign and the DNC, an unearned le Carré flourish.

The former spy says he stands by “the work we did, the sources that we had, and the professionalism which we applied to it.” Most consequentially, the dossier created the “collusion” claim, contending that Trump, who did himself no favors constantly praising Putin, and his campaign had “accepted a regular flow of intelligence from the Kremlin, including on his Democratic and other political rivals.”