WATCH: Large Ballistic Missiles Slam Into US Base in Iraq, Major Escalation Possible

Bonchie reporting for RedState 

Iranian ballistic missiles hit US base in Erbil, Iraq. Screenshot credit: AmichaiStein1/Twitter

Multiple ballistic missiles have slammed into the US base in Erbil, Iraq, and stunning footage has made its way online showing the bombardment. The scale of the attack and the size of munitions used appears to be far beyond past attacks by militia groups.

Current reports are that the guided munitions were Fateh-110 ballistic missiles, and that they came from Iranian territory. Given the size of the explosions, that seems highly probable.

The weapons system in question is very unlikely to have been used by an Iranian-backed militia group, especially with such accuracy. If these weren’t fired from Syria, and again, the reports are they came from Western Iran, we could be talking about a direct Iranian attack on US forces. It’s probably not a coincidence that this is happening a day after the US and EU suspended negotiations working toward a new JCPOA agreement with Iran.

While a lot here is still unknown, there is a video showing missiles being fired from an Iranian base in Tabriz, which is located in the Azerbaijan region of the country, in the time period before the US base was struck.

If these did come from Iran, from an actual Iranian military base, that’s really bad news for US foreign policy and the prospects of peace. We could be seeing the first moments of a major escalation — not just in the Middle East, but eventually in Ukraine as well, given Iran’s relationship with Russia.On the home front, it is unconscionable for the Biden administration to continue its appeasement of Iran in pursuit of a pointless nuclear deal. Will this be a wake-up call? We’ll have to wait and see, but I don’t see how this kind of attack can go unanswered.

UPDATE:

After I got ready to publish this, one of my most trusted war-time accounts started putting out more videos and information. Here are some more details.

RedState will keep you updated as further reports come in.

X22, Christian Patriot News, and more-March 12

 

Enjoy tonight's SC rally! Here's tonight's news:

Why Cutting Russia Off From Global Banking Will Bite The United States

The overuse of financial sanctions risks much of the world

 losing confidence in the dollar as the world’s reserve currency.

by Willis L. Krumholz for The Federalist

America cutting off Russia’s central bank from its U.S. dollar reserves could carry huge consequences that the D.C. establishment hasn’t considered.

Here’s how the Wall Street Journal’s Jon Sindreu framed what happened: “After Moscow attacked Ukraine last week, the U.S. and its allies shut off the Russian central bank’s access to most of its $630 billion of foreign reserves. Weaponizing the monetary system against a Group-of-20 country will have lasting repercussions.”

Reserves are globally accepted foreign currency that a foreign central bank holds to back and protect its own currency — the pound, the yen, and the euro are considered reserve currencies, but the primary reserve currency is the U.S. dollar. The dollar is the world’s reserve currency because a large amount of global commerce is priced in dollars, and the U.S. legal system and open capital markets mean American dollars can buy American assets while the owner is protected by the rule of law.

This status as the world’s reserve currency gives Washington immense power, because at the end of the day all dollar transactions must undergo clearing and settlement (fancy words for transferring ownership then recording who owns dollars) at U.S. banks connected to the institution that controls the U.S. dollar, which is the U.S. Federal Reserve.

That power from the global reserve status of the dollar allows America to sanction foreign countries even when they don’t do any trade with America, in part because foreign institutions — say, in Europe — trading with potentially rogue regimes desperately need access to this U.S. dollar system.

Increasingly, America has upped its use of this sanctions power. The latest examples are with Iran under the Obama and Trump administrations, and Afghanistan under the Biden administration after the American-backed government in Kabul collapsed. Again, use of the dollar abroad can violate sanctions even if no American is involved in the transaction, because clearing and settlement occur on American soil.

Russia Cut Off from the Dollar

After Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the Biden administration cut off the Russian central bank’s ability to use its $630 billion in reserves. Money is only money if you can use it to buy something, and if it keeps its purchasing power. This is why Bitcoin, which trades more like a commodity with higher volatility and is correlated with the Nasdaq and inverse VIX volatility gauge, is not money, while gold is money.

According to the Journal’s Sindreu, the move will prompt Russia to shift its central bank holdings, which back the value of the ruble, toward Chinese assets and gold. Sindreu correctly points out this will lead to more trade regionalization and deglobalization.

It also boosts the Chinese renminbi’s (RMB’s) status as a competing reserve currency. Previously, the knock on the RMB was that China lacks rule of law and one might not actually be able to use the RMB to buy Chinese assets, or one might not be able to eventually get money out of China. Now, for many parts of the world, the dollar increasingly has similar problems.

D.C. Elites Don’t Know What They’re Doing

But the impacts could be even further reaching. Aside from simply making the RMB a slightly stronger competitor against the dollar, in a fight where the dollar still clearly has the upper hand, the move emboldens China and helps its economy.

Sanctioned countries, or countries that might get sanctioned, are now dependent on doing business with China, and the Western elite is likely too dependent on China to fully penalize or sanction China for being the central economic hub for the growing list of countries excluded from the West’s economic system. This gives China a monopsony-like status to buy Russian or Iranian energy at a discount.

Lest you think the countries on the sanctions list are only the ones that keep neocons up at night, Europe ran the risk of being sanctioned because of trade with Iran. The Biden administration has also recently and stupidly threatened India with sanctions, because of its ties to Russia.

This overuse of this sanctions power, which increased also under Obama and Trump, risks much of the world losing confidence in the dollar as the world’s reserve currency, and attempts to circumvent the current monetary system that gives the D.C. elite so much power. Russia and China are already looking for ways to completely de-dollarize and trade outside of the dollar system.

Impact on Americans

The impact for normal Americans is complicated. The dollar’s reserve status has been a drain on Middle America and a boost to D.C. elites, because it means D.C. politicians can overspend and boost the financialization of the economy even while America’s manufacturing base has atrophied since the 1970s (which happens to be when the current system of the fiat dollar, not backed by gold, was started).

Normally, buying too much from countries like China would require American politicians to spend less, and the American economy to eventually import less and produce more here at home. Because the dollar is the world’s reserve currency, foreign trading partners have sat on the dollars they received instead of demanding the U.S. produce goods in return. This is a bad setup, and clearly not sustainable.

Pursuing monetary reform to rectify these imbalances would be how a forward-thinking and well-informed political class transitioned America smoothly into something better. But that’s not our political class, and most Republicans and Democrats are completely clueless on these issues. Instead, America’s current corrupt political class behaves like the sanctions power and dollar’s reserve status can never run out, treating it carelessly and rashly.

Far from ushering in a smooth transition away from a system that has benefited the coastal elite over Middle America, they are rushing Americans toward less purchasing power and massive shortages and price increases here at home. It’s incredibly dangerous and shortsighted.

Montana Takes Matters Into Own Hands, Restarts Dormant Oil Wells…

 https://thefederalistpapers.org/us/montana-takes-matters-hands-restarts-dormant-oil-wells-amid-bidens-gas-price-explosion

Montana Takes Matters Into Own Hands, Restarts Dormant Oil Wells Amid Biden's Gas Price Explosion

In response to rapidly rising gas prices, the Montana Petroleum Association has announced that wells in the Bakken oil fields are officially going back online.

Inflation, regulations and a lack of additional oil resources — such as those that would have been supplied by the Keystone XL Pipeline, which was canceled by President Joe Biden on his first day in office — have led to rising gas prices in the states, experts say.

Even before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine last month, energy prices were rising. In response to Vladimir Putin’s offensive, much of the Western world has imposed sanctions on Russia, disrupting its exports of oil and further exacerbating the pain at the pump.

Alan Olson, executive director of the Montana Petroleum Association, told The Western Journal that up until this point, federal regulations have prevented many oil companies from producing oil.

Thanks to rising prices, oil producers can now cover that cost, making drilling worth it again.

According to KTVH-TV, the Bakken oil fields “become more stable between costs and profits” when the price of oil reaches roughly $80 per barrel, which are the prices America is beginning to see now.

However, as a company seeks to ramp up production, a lack of personnel and a shortage of supplies have become a major issue.

“When oil prices nose-dived due to the Covid-19 pandemic, Montana Petroleum Association says their member companies were forced to let go of employees. Now that the oil price is rising rapidly, it’s been a challenge to hire new employees due to record low unemployment numbers in the state,” KTVH reported.

In addition, Olson said that as producers began to increase production, federal regulations soon to be implemented by the Biden administration are creating a lot of unpredictability in the industry.

“There’s a lot of uncertainty that the industry is facing with upcoming new federal regulations,” he told The Western Journal. “You know, we had a lot of discussion over the methane fee that was part of the Build Back Better bill.

“I mean, that would have hammered the small producers. Actually, it would have hammered everybody.”

Hamstringing small producers with hefty regulations is a big deal, especially considering states like Montana “no longer have any of the major oil companies producing oil,” Olson explained.

“We’ve got a lot of very small, independent oil producers that, to meet up with some of the proposed new federal regulations, it’s going to leave them with a couple of choices,” he said.

“You either bite the bullet, spend the money, take it off your bottom line — which will cost jobs, which will also cause revenue to state and local government coffers — or you plug your wells and walk away from them.”

Many local and establishment news outlets have sought to fact-check the claim that the Biden administration’s policies — such as the Keystone XL Pipeline cancellation and an executive order that halted new oil and gas leases on public lands — have raised prices.

Newsweek and CNN, for example, have both pointed out that U.S. oil production is up over the past few years.

The word has gone out. If you insist America could lower the price of oil and gas by producing more of it, then you are guilty of “misinformation.” This is @CNN: pic.twitter.com/cHNRoDABtO

— Kyle Becker (@kylenabecker) March 9, 2022

“Republicans argue that President Joe Biden’s temporary freeze on new drilling leases and other initiatives centered on clean energy have hurt the country’s ability to produce its own oil and gas,” a Newsweek report published on Tuesday argued. “But administration officials and experts say that’s not exactly the case.”

Both outlets quoted experts as saying oil production has gone up under Biden, which is technically true. Absent from these outlets’ coverage, however, is the context for why production has ramped up.

As Olson explained, when gas prices increase, so does gross production. The problem, then, is not about how much oil is being produced but rather how much oil is being produced at a low cost.

Biden’s own actions suggest he knows this to be the problem.

In response to rising prices, the president announced his administration would be releasing millions of barrels of oil from the U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve, increasing the U.S. oil supply, The Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday.

The administration also “has held talks, or said it plans to do so, with major oil producers such as Venezuela, Iran and Saudi Arabia about potentially boosting production.”

If supply is not an issue, why would the Biden administration’s solution involve increasing oil production?

This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.

Democrats Shrug and March Full Steam Ahead Toward an Electoral Iceberg

Bonchie reporting for RedState 

The Wall Street Journal has released its latest polling results, and nothing in them shows a Democrat comeback in the making (contrary to a recent claim by CNN). Joe Biden’s approval stands at a paltry 42 percent, and unlike past polls, the excuse that the SOTU hasn’t been completely factored in no longer applies. This is Biden’s “bounce,” and it’s anemic if it even exists at all.

Unfortunately for Democrats, Biden’s approval may be the highlight, though. Republicans lead on the generic ballot by five percent, a massive gap historically speaking, and one that continues to point at a red wave come November.

Further, the GOP holds a lead of nine points with Hispanic voters. That’s essentially unheard of, but tracks with numerous other data points showing Hispanic support moving towards Republicans over the last year. None of the other numbers in the poll are good either. Biden is upside down on how he’s handled the Ukraine situation, and a full 50 percent of respondents said inflation was their top issue of concern.

So what are Democrats doing to counter their slide into oblivion? The short answer is absolutely nothing. Instead, they are hammering down toward an electoral iceberg.

Every part of that plan is moronic. Americans are not buying the idea that inflation was caused by Putin. The inflation number prior to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine stood at 7.5 percent in January of 2022. On Thursday, the latest report showed an eye-watering rate of 7.9 percent. Everyone that’s been buying groceries, energy, used cars, etc. has experienced the Biden inflation boom for the better part of a year. None of them are going to accept that an invasion that didn’t occur until February of 2022 is actually at fault.

As to the notion of promoting what Biden is doing to address inflation, the problem there is that he’s not actually doing anything to address inflation. Instead, he just keeps mumbling “Build Back Better” over and over, citing his massive spending bill that would only drive inflation higher. When it comes to gas prices, the president refuses to lift a finger to help Americans struggling with the costs at the pump. On the supply chain, the administration is actually pushing more stringent regulations instead of trying to relieve bottlenecks.

Lastly, the idea that Democrats can make November’s election a referendum on Republicans is laughable. It’s the kind of thing you’d expect someone to come up with after they just drank a Redbull and did a line of coke. First mid-terms are already historically disastrous for the party in power. Couple that with the fact that the world is in total collapse under the current Democrat leadership, and you can reasonably speculate that saying “but Republicans” is not going to work this time around.

Of course, there are some things Democrats could do to help their fortunes. They could immediately lift all holds on oil and gas leases and green-light Keystone XL. They could tell Russia and Iran to take a hike and repair the relationship with our Arab allies, which could lower gas prices and help with the situation in Ukraine. They could stop spending like drunken sailors and allow inflation to calm down. Heck, they could even stop hyperventilating over the fact that Florida has banned grooming of small children in school.

They aren’t going to do any of that, though. Call it delusion or fear of their base, but they are going to keep driving toward the cliff. You love to see it.

Russia Says It Could Target Western Arms Supplies To Ukraine

 

A senior Russian official warned on March 12 that Moscow could target Western shipments of military equipment to Ukraine.

Speaking on state television, Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said that Moscow has warned the United States that it would see the deliveries of Western weapons to Ukraine as targets.

Ryabkov said Russia “warned the U.S. that pumping weapons from a number of countries it orchestrates isn’t just a dangerous move, it’s an action that makes those convoys legitimate targets.”

He also denounced the U.S. sanctions against Moscow over the country’s unprovoked invasion of Ukraine as an “unprecedented attempt to deal a serious blow to various sectors of the Russian economy.”

Moscow has been hit by a barrage of international sanctions over its war on Ukraine.

Ryabkov said that Russia has no intention to expel Western media and businesses amid the soaring tensions with the West, adding that ”we aren’t going to escalate the situation.”

https://www.rferl.org/a/russia-western-military-aid-ukraine-target/31749659.html    

Canadian military aid is unloaded at Lviv's airport on February 19.   

Joe Biden Angrily Slams Americans for Blaming Him for Inflation in Lie-Filled Remarks

Bonchie reporting for RedState 

Joe Biden may not have the physical stamina to travel overseas and fulfill his duties regarding foreign policy, but he did manage to give public remarks on Friday. In them, the president slammed Americans for blaming him for the current inflation boom, proclaiming he’s “sick of it” and that “it’s just not true” that his policies have exacerbated the problem.

Perhaps getting angry and yelling at people who vote isn’t the best political strategy?

In fact, it is completely true that government spending has largely led to the inflationary pressures nailing American families right now. There’s a reason U.S. inflation has been 2-3 percent higher than European inflation over the last year, depending on which month you compare. Joe Biden and his party pushed through a COVID “relief” bill along partisan lines that extended unemployment, sent out checks, and injected way too much funny money into an already overheated economy.

That’s how you get record inflation. The 7.9 percent number we saw in February was not simply a product of organic demand due to the coronavirus waning. Sure, there was always going to be some inflation, but it was never going to be this high without government intervention. For Biden to now pretend everyone but him is to blame is cowardly and dishonest. This is not “Putin’s price hike.” It’s “Joe Biden’s price hike.”

Never fear, though, Biden brought clips from the New York Times to make his argument.

I don’t know about you, but I’m convinced. If economists like Paul Krugman, a man who has been wrong about nearly every economic issue of the last three decades, says Biden is in the clear, then that’s that.

Seriously, though, doesn’t it feel like the White House’s messaging is starting to crack? They’ve clearly got no real answer to the inflation problem, and instead of at least feigning a solution, they are just doubling down on shouting about Russia and hoping no one notices how much gas was before Ukraine was invaded. At some point, a politician who never takes responsibility for anything just comes across as pathetic, and to be sure, there have been Republicans who have fallen into that trap.

Contrary to conventional wisdom, never admitting blame is not always a winning political strategy, especially when things are objectively bad. Many voters appreciate a leader who says “that didn’t work, we are going to try something else.” But Biden is so stubborn and egomaniacal that he will never do that. He’d rather run the entire country off a cliff than stray from his far-left ideology, and that’s assuming he’s even in control of his own administration.

Case in point? In the same remarks, he decided to also lie about oil production in the United States.

The idea that oil companies just don’t want to pump more and sell more is asinine. Rather, the reason oil companies aren’t rushing to up production is almost solely due to government regulation and interference. It’s not enough to just have the rights to a federal lease (and the profitability of leases vary wildly). The investments needed to put the infrastructure in place to produce more range into the tens of billions. Why would an oil company take that kind of enormous financial risk in the current environment? What happens a year from now when Biden decides, on a whim, to shut down more leases? Or close down more pipelines? Are you starting to see the problem?

That brings me back to my point about Biden being so married to his ideology. Real leadership in this situation would be admitting he was wrong about oil and gas production, and then doing everything possible to incentivize it. That includes long-term guarantees to spurn investment, and fast-tracking the permit processes.

Biden isn’t a real leader, though, so we get what we get, which are skyrocketing gas prices and budget-crushing inflation on goods and services. One can only hope American voters hold him and his party accountable in November.

Trump Is Right: Dictators Are Smart

Trump Is Right: Dictators Are Smart

Jeffrey Lord - The American Spectator

Well, this is an eye-roller.

Former President Donald Trump has been taking flack for calling Russia’s Vladimir Putin “smart,” “savvy,” and a “genius.”

The howls from his critics were instant.

No less than usual friend House GOP Leader Kevin McCarthy said this:

I do not think anything savvy or genius about Putin. I think Putin is evil. I think he’s a dictator. I think he’s murdering people right now.

Over there at the Wall Street Journal columnist and former Bill Clinton aide William Galston wrote that Trump’s remarks were

representative of Mr. Trump’s distinctive contribution to contemporary populism: the worship of cleverness without decency and of strength without moral restraint. Judgements of good and evil are replaced by strong vs. weak, and smart vs. dumb. As students of Europe’s past know, Mr. Trump’s sentiments have a dark history. The question is whether they have a future in the conservative movement and in the Republican Party.

Former New Jersey Republican Gov. Chris Christie piled on, as did Utah’s Republican Sen. Mitt Romney.

Trump swung back, quite accurately saying this:

The RINOs, Warmongers, and Fake News continue to blatantly lie and misrepresent my remarks on Putin because they know this terrible war being waged against Ukraine would have never happened under my watch. They did absolutely nothing as Putin declared much of Ukraine an “independent territory.” There should be no war waging now in Ukraine, and it is terrible for humanity that Biden, NATO, and the West have failed so terribly in allowing it to start. Instead of showing strength and toughness, they declared the Global Warming Hoax as the #1 threat to global security, killed American Energy Independence, and then made Europe, the U.S., and the rest of the World dependent on Russian oil. They laid down the welcome mat and gave Russia the opening, now Putin may be getting everything he wanted, with Ukraine and the rest of the World suffering the consequences. It’s terrible, but this is what you get with Biden, the Democrats, and RINO warmongers!

Exactly. And let’s be crystal clear: Trump has called the Russian invasion a “holocaust.” Said the former president to Fox’s Maria Bartiromo:

“I look at what’s happening in our country it’s like it’s run by fools,” Trump said. 

“We’re fighting Russia. We’re watching a holocaust. We’re watching something that I’ve never seen before.

“They’re blowing up buildings, with children, with women, with professionals, with people, just people, they’re blowing up indiscriminately. They’re just shooting massive missiles and rockets into these buildings and everybody is dying.” 

That hardly classifies as “pro-Putin.” It is, in fact, the exact opposite.

But let’s stick with the idiocy that Trump’s calling a dictator “smart” or “savvy” or a “genius” is somehow an endorsement. In fact, this is an absolute recognition of hard reality — not to mention history — and it should be obvious.

Hello? Fact: No one gets to be an absolute dictator of a country without being some combination of all of those. And, more to the point, this has been repeatedly recognized through the ages, long before Donald Trump arrived on the scene.

Here, for instance, is the renowned economist and senior fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution Thomas Sowell saying this long ago:

Make no mistake about it, Adolf Hitler was brilliant. His underlying beliefs may have been half-baked and his hatreds overwhelming, but he was a genius when it came to carrying out his plans politically, based on those beliefs and hatreds….

Starting from a position of Germany’s military weakness in the early 1930s, Hitler not only built up Germany’s war-making potential, he did so in ways that minimized the danger that his potential victims would match his military build-up with their own. He said whatever soothing words they wanted to hear that would spare them the cost of military deterrence and the pain of contemplating another war.

Over in the Atlantic, staff writer Anne Applebaum, formerly a longtime columnist for the Washington Post, said this of Putin’s predecessor as a Russian dictator, Joseph Stalin. Wrote Applebaum of this murderous tyrant:

“Russian archives reveal that he was no madman, but a very smart and implacably rational ideologue.” She described Stalin “as a rational and extremely intelligent man.”

So too was China’s Mao Zedong both smart and a tyrannical dictator. In their massive biography The Unknown Story of Mao, Jung Chang and Jon Halliday describe a man of relentless smarts who rose from a peasant family and “who for decades held absolute power over the lives of one-quarter of the world’s population, [and] was responsible for well over 70 million deaths in peacetime, more than any other twentieth-century leader.”

Well, of course. You can’t do all that and be stupid.

It was and is simply impossible for ruthless, evil, murderous tyrants to rise from nowhere and become absolute dictators of their nation without being, to borrow from Trump, “smart,” “savvy,” and “genius.”

And let’s get something else out there: the disgraceful pretense that all these Trump critics want plain talk about the Russians.

Really?

As someone who worked for President Ronald Reagan, I well recall the reaction when the then-President said exactly the kinds of things about the Russians of his day that the Trump critics claim they want to hear now from Trump.

Reagan biographer Steven F. Hayward writes of Reagan saying this at his very first presidential press conference when asked by ABC’s Sam Donaldson if he, Reagan, believed “the Kremlin is bent on world domination that might lead to a continuation of the Cold War, or do you think that under the circumstances détente is possible?”

Reagan replied this way, bold print for emphasis supplied:

Well, so far detente’s been a one-way street that the Soviet Union has used to pursue its own aims. I don’t have to think of an answer as to what I think their intentions are; they have repeated it. I know of no leader of the Soviet Union since the revolution, and including the present leadership, that has not more than once repeated in the various Communist congresses they hold their determination that their goal must be the promotion of world revolution and a one-world Socialist or Communist state, whichever word you want to use.

Now, as long as they do that and as long as they, at the same time, have openly and publicly declared that the only morality they recognize is what will further their cause, meaning they reserve unto themselves the right to commit any crime, to lie, to cheat, in order to attain that, and that is moral, not immoral, and we operate on a different set of standards, I think when you do business with them, even at a detente, you keep that in mind.

Hayward writes this of the instant reaction from the White House press corps:

Reagan’s answer stunned the room. 

That was it. Next question.

There was an audible gasp among the press corps in the briefing room. Some of Reagan’s own aides, cowering in the corners of the room, blanched. This was not the way world leaders talked about other nations.

Two years later, in March 1983, Reagan addressed the National Association of Evangelicals in Orlando, Florida, and said the following of the Russians, borrowing from the popular Star Wars movies of the day:

I urge you to beware the temptation of pride – the temptation of blithely … uh … declaring yourselves above it all and label both sides equally at fault, to ignore the facts of history and the aggressive impulses of an evil empire, to simply call the arms race a giant misunderstanding and thereby remove yourself from the struggle between right and wrong and good and evil.

Yet again, Reagan’s critics went ballistic, with Hayward writing that “the speech provoked outrage and contempt among liberals.” Hayward continues,

Historian Henry Steele Commager said, “It was the worst presidential speech in American history, and I’ve see them all.” The New Republic huffed that “the speech left friends and foes around the world with the impression that the President of the United States was contemplating holy war.” New York Times columnist Anthony Lewis complained that the speech was “outrageous” and “primitive.” “What is the world to think,” Lewis wrote, “when the greatest of powers is led by a man who applies to the most difficult human problem a simplistic theology?” 

See how the game is played?

When Reagan bluntly called out the Russians of the day for lying and being an “evil empire,” his critics went berserk. Yet now, when Trump recognizes that Putin is “smart” and “savvy,” he is dumped on for not doing exactly what they said Reagan was wrong to do. (READ MORE from Jeffrey Lord: Never Trumpers: The Real Putin Republicans)

All of which is to say, Trump’s critics — as with Reagan’s critics of the day — have little to no understanding of history and human nature. Which makes them, when in the Biden White House, dangerous.

Very dangerous.

Restaurants Now Requiring Proof Of Ukraine Support

Babylon Bee🐝

U.S.—As the war between Russia and Ukraine rages on, restaurants across the country are now requiring proof of Ukraine support in order to eat in their restaurants. Patrons are being asked to produce a photo ID and open up their social media profiles to prove they have been adequately supporting Ukraine by posting flags and sharing the latest wartime propaganda. 

"We need to support Ukraine as it is the latest thing we are supposed to support," said the manager of one NYC cafe. "If you aren't adequately supporting the thing that everyone says we are supposed to be supporting at this time, you don't deserve to eat in my store!"

When asked about whether he would still require vaccine cards due to the pandemic, he stared blankly and said: "The what? I'm not sure what you're talking about." 

Patrons who don't have adequate evidence of Ukraine support will then have to show adequate evidence of Russia hatred before entering. 

 

Everyone in this administration seeks revenge against the American people because of warped perceptions of discrimination due to sex or race or whatever.

 

Article by Patricia McCarthy in The American Thinker

Biden’s America: The inmates are running the asylum

How does one sanely describe what has happened to the United States since Joe Biden was inaugurated?  The nation has been effectively ruined by the policies of Biden’s band of incompetents; every cabinet member is a disaster, promoted for their previous record of failure.  Not one of them is qualified for the jobs they’ve been given.  They were each chosen for precisely the wrong reason – their race, gender or leftist/green activism.

Consider Jennifer Granholm as Energy Secretary.  She is inexplicably ignorant about energy, where it comes from or what it costs.  Buttigieg as Transportation Secretary, the failed mayor of South Bend, has not a clue about transportation beyond telling all Americans to buy electric cars.  Chances are he has no idea about the costs and downsides of EVs.  Considering the problem of disposal of the batteries when they die, electric vehicles do far more damage to the environment than fossil fuels.  Biden’s ridiculous promise to end American dependence on fossil fuel is a stupid pipe dream that will never come true.  Fossil fuel is the engine of democracy, of civilization.  To suggest we can live without it is pure sophistry.

Consider cabinet members Jake Sullivan, Ned Pryce, Janet Yellen, and Anthony Blinken.  Each of them has a record of incompetence and failure, even criminality.  Sullivan was party to the fabrication of the Russia hoax. Yellen, formerly of the Fed, now claims the American people are economically in “good shape.”  Biden and Pelosi both hilariously claim that government spending is not causing the worst inflation in forty years.  Pelosi even said it is “reducing our debt.”  

These are very stupid people.  They lie like they breathe.  Jen Psaki who always speaks before she thinks is a veritable machine of lies.  She hears a question, then someone pulls the string in her back and she begins spewing a word salad of non-answers.  She always begins with “What I would say is….”  She IS saying it for heaven’s sake.

As evident to all by now, Biden is suffering from advancing dementia, so he is clearly not making any of the policy decisions that now bedevil America.  Cutting off our vast supplies of oil is sheer moonbattery, as if Air Force One will soon be able to take off on solar or wind power.  And yet Biden promises “net zero” is near.  Not even close.  Fossil fuel is the gift that keeps on giving and will for eternity.

Those who continue to hawk the hoax of climate change as a means to subdue the world’s population are mind-numbed cultists whose dreams of a fossil fuel-free world will never be realized, certainly not in their lifetimes.  And yet, we are currently benighted by these authoritarian dreamers who think they can and should be able to control how the rest of us live our lives.  

They seem to most of us to be certifiably insane, clueless about the spirit of the American people and their love of freedom.  Seduced by the likes of Klaus Schwab and his WEF globalist vision of a utopian/dystopian future under the auspices of self-appointed elites like himself, we should all awaken to the threat these people present to us with their “great reset” nonsense.  Have no doubt, the covid pandemic was phase one of their grand plan.  But millions of Americans are not complying, and they are angry about that.

The swamp that is DC in known for promoting the incompetent.  How else to explain Joe Biden’s rise to President?  He was always a failed senator, a grifter who used his position to cheat and enrich himself.  The same goes for the Clintons, the Obamas, and a host of other swamp dwellers.  They were all sold to us as the “smartest people in the room” but they are actually the most venal people in any room.  

So enamored of their own superiority, they think nothing of fabricating a tall tale about the outsider presidential candidate to take him out.  When he won despite the cheating that they thought ensured them that a Clinton victory was in the bag, they doubled down on their criminality; they invented the Russia hoax that enveloped and hampered the Trump presidency.  

That despicable stunt has possibly led us to the Russia/Ukraine war now dominating the world.  Russia never wanted Trump to win the 2016 election for now obvious reasons; he was a strong, American First leader.  The wanted Hillary like they wanted Biden, thoroughly corruptible pols who would do their bidding.  

We can only guess who is making American policy since Biden was installed in the Oval Office.  Biden is a done deal, an empty suit, a front for whoever behind the scenes is pulling his strings, writing the speeches on his teleprompter that he can barely read.  Obama?  Eric Holder?  Susan Rice?  Valerie Jarrett?  Who knows?  

What we do know is that they are intent on the destruction of America as founded.  Biden and his radical greens mean to destroy America by destroying the engine of civilization, fossil fuel.  Their arrogance is so front and center that the mind numbed Buttigieg thinks that everyone can afford an electric vehicle to avoid high gas prices!  He does not drive one; neither do Biden or Harris but they are all quick to malign all who do not fall for the false notion that EVs are the answer to “climate change” which was always a hoax from the outset.   One has to wonder if Buttigieg knows from where the power comes from for all those chargers he wants spread across America.  

Ukraine has long been the playground of the corrupt Democrats and their kids.  Operatives in Ukraine worked with Democrats to defeat Trump in 2016.  The bulk of campaign money funneled to Hillary’s campaign came from Ukraine.  Adam Schiff has financial ties to Ukraine. The Biden family has been fabulously enriched by dallying in business there.   See Peter Schweizer’s book Red Handed.  

The pro-Western government installed by the Obama administration in 2014 has been betrayed by those American deep staters who have for years been provoking Putin with the possibility that Ukraine might be admitted to NATO.  Did Biden’s handlers think that by aggravating Putin into invading Ukraine, he would be overthrown?  That is not likely.  Biden’s sanctions are making Putin more popular amongst his own people and hurting Americans!  

ery calculation made by this administration has been disastrous from the day Biden was inaugurated:  Effectively putting a stop to American oil production, the untimely withdrawal from Afghanistan which signaled Biden’s fecklessness to the world, printing money to the point the dollar is becoming worthless, and possibly kick-starting WWIII.  Can the country survive this President?  It does not look good. 

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2022/03/bidens_america_the_inmates_are_running_the_asylum.html 

 

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No, Inflation Is Not “transitory”, and It Is Worse than the Government Admits

No, Inflation Is Not "Transitory," and It Is Worse than the Government Admits

André Marques - Mises.org

The inflation rates reported by governments are generally, at the very least, a little lower than they actually are. And the US government is not an exception. It makes the CPI (Consumer Price Index) artificially lower (by making changes in the methodology) and benefits from it in several ways (increasing its revenues while the voters don’t realize they are being lied to and losing their purchasing power).

How the Government Lies about Inflation

The official CPI in the US was 7.5 percent in January 2022 (to know more about this huge increase, click here). However, if measured by 1980s methodology (as is done by Shadow Government Statistics), the CPI was above 15 percent in January 2022. This huge difference can be explained by the several changes made in the methodology of calculating the CPI since the 1990’s:

Home Prices and Rents

Current CPI methodology does not actually include home prices. And about 1/4 of its calculation is represented by “owner's equivalent rent”. This indicator is based on the following question that the Consumer Expenditure Survey asks of consumers who own their primary residence: “If someone were to rent your home today, how much do you think it would rent for monthly, unfurnished and without utilities?” So, it is just a guess. As of December 2021, house prices have increased by 20 percent YTD. Over the same period, rents have increased by 17 percent. ‘Owner's equivalent rent’ increased by 3.5 percent. If we use the 20 percent increase of house prices instead of the 3.5 percent ‘owner's equivalent rent’, the 6.8 percent CPI recorded in November 2021 would be 11 percent.

The annual increase in rents (July 2021) as in realtor.com was 25 percent. This figure is closer to a proper representation of the increase in rents, as the prices listed on realtor.com are the ones that people actually pay.

Chained CPI (Substitution)

Chained CPI is a measurement that accounts for changes in consumer preference and product substitutions due to changes in relative prices of goods made by consumers. This is the substitution effect: if the price of something goes up, consumers will naturally buy less of it and replace it with something else. For example: If the price of steak increases too much, consumers substitute it for chicken. So, the government argues that if consumers are not buying the most expensive things there is no reason for them to be included in the CPI, and therefore the cost of living didn’t go up. As Peter Schiff says, by this logic, if chicken becomes so expensive that people can't afford it and start eating dog food, then just put dog food in the CPI instead of chicken and there will be no inflation.

Hedonics

Hedonics refers to a method of adjusting prices whenever the characteristics of the products included in the CPI change due to innovation or the introduction of completely new products. For example, if prices go up by 10 percent, but (according to the government) the product is 20 percent better than what the consumer used to buy, then the price didn’t go up by 10 percent, but rather went down by 10 percent because the consumer is taking 20 percent more (or the product is 20 percent better) and is only paying 10 percent more.

Peter Schiff argues that this reasoning makes no sense because, in many cases, just because a product is better it doesn’t necessarily mean that it delivers a better experience to the consumer (who pays for these improvements regardless of whether she/he uses them or not). Peter Schiff gave the example of electronics (like computers or laptops), which get better and better over the years, but not everyone uses all the improvements (like an SSD with more storage, but the user doesn't even use 1/4 of this storage). Of course, one can argue that there are SSDs of 256GB, 512GB, 1TB, 2TB, etc., and the consumer can choose one that best suits her/his needs. However, there are several other factors to be considered when buying a computer or laptop, such as the CPU, GPU, RAM, etc. And it may be hard to find one that is exactly as the consumer would like, unless she/he buys the components separately and build her/his PC. Schiff also argues that when products improve and prices rise, it is not because they have gotten better, but because inflation pushes prices up. In an economy with no government interventions (inflation, taxes, public spending, and regulations) prices would tend to fall and, at the same time, the quality of products would increase, since there would be much more investment in productivity.

Furthermore, Schiff argues that, in many cases, the quality of products and services declines and there is no corresponding adjustment in the CPI. He mentions the example of airfares (which used to include the cost of luggage, meals, pillows, blankets, etc., and now must be paid separately). According to the government, the airfares are not rising much because they are not adjusted to the great degradation of the quality of the service. Schiff also mention examples of companies that, even keeping their prices unchanged, start to substitute more expensive and better materials for cheaper and inferior quality ones. This is an example of shrinkflation, when the price is unchanged, but the quantity or the quality of the product is lower.

Changes in the CPI Methodology (January 2022)

Since even with all these tricks the CPI is at 7 percent in December 2021, the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) decided it was time to invent new tricks to further hide inflation. So, in January 2022, the BLS changed the weighting of the CPI components (mainly food, vehicles and shelter and energy)

Back in December 2021, “food” represented 13.99 percent of the CPI. In January, the BLS changed it to 13.37 percent. Since food prices are getting a lot higher, the BLS lowered the weighting of the food component so it does not impact the CPI to the same degree as it used to.

The weighting of “new vehicles” and “used cars and trucks” was 3.88 percent and 3.42 percent, respectively, in December 2021. In January 2022, it was 4.1 percent and 4.14 percent, respectively. Prices of new and used vehicles are skyrocketing due to chip shortages. But this shortage is expected to end. When this happens, prices of new and used vehicles shall go down. And, if these components have a higher weighting in the CPI, they will make it so that the final number is lower.

“Shelter” is the CPI component that possesses the higher weighting (32.95 percent as of January 2022). And it is broken down to “rent of primary residence” and “owner’s equivalent rent of residences” (which I already mentioned in this article). “Owner’s equivalent rent” represented 23.51 percent of the CPI in December 2021 and 24.25 percent in January 2022. “Owner’s Equivalent Rent” annual percentage change was at 3.8 percent in December 2021 and 4.08 percent in January 2022. This is much lower than the 10.1 percent increase in rents in December 2021 compared to December 2020, as in realtor.com. The BLS increased the weighting of “owner’s equivalent rent”, so that the CPI comes even lower than it would if they used rents that people are actually paying.

Given that energy prices are also increasing, the BLS also lowered its weighting. “Energy” represented 7.5 percent of the CPI in December 2021; in January 2022, 7.3 percent.

How the Government Benefits from an Artificially Lower Inflation Rate

Irwin Schiff, Peter Schiff's father, used to say that expecting the government to give honest information about inflation is the same as expecting the mafia to give honest information about crime. Obviously, the mobsters have a vested interest in underestimating the crime numbers (since they are the ones who are committing them). If there aren't a lot of crimes, you don't need as much police officers (and the mafia doesn't need to spend that much money bribing them).

The government has the same incentive to report an artificially lower inflation rate. Let's look at some of the reasons:

Voters Don't Like High Inflation

This is the most obvious reason. Governments say that inflation is good for consumers. However, anyone with a common sense quickly realizes that any rate of inflation is bad for consumers because their standard of living decreases (since they can’t buy the same amount of goods and services as before). So, voters don't like inflation and tend to blame the incumbent (although, in many cases, not only the incumbent is to blame, but also those who were elected before). If the government cooks an artificially lower inflation rate, voters have one less reason to blame the incumbent.

Inflation Reveals the Cost of Government Programs

People love government programs (like the stimulus checks handed out to people during the pandemic). However, these programs would be much less popular if people knew their cost. Most government spending is not financed by taxes (which is most directly felt by voters), but rather by debt and/or inflation (increase of the money supply). And voters do not understand how they end up paying (they even pay more than they would if the programs were financed only by taxes, as indebtedness brings interest payments and inflation brings price increases).

Through inflation, the government hides the cost of its popular programs and gets more votes. Inflation is nothing more than a stealth tax.

With an Artificially Lower Inflation Rate, Real GDP Gets Artificially Higher

The GDP (Gross Domestic Product) statistic is often used by governments to say that their economic policies are being effective [note: a higher GDP does not necessarily mean an improvement of the economic activity; a better indicator would be "Gross Private Product" (GPP) or "Private Product Remaining" (PPR)]. Real GDP, which factors in the CPI, is higher if the CPI is rigged. So, the government can pretend the economy is growing.

Social Security

Peter Schiff provided the example of the US social security, since its payments are indexed to inflation. Each year, payments are adjusted upwards based on the annual CPI. Since US social security (as well as the social security of most countries) is broke, the government has no money to make up for it and politicians have no incentive to cut social security payments or cut other expenses to make up for social security. Then, one way of reducing the social security payments is to make the CPI artificially lower so that the annual adjustments are lower.

More Revenue for the Government

Government revenues are higher due to an artificially lower CPI. Schiff argues that many taxes are indexed to the CPI. Therefore, people must pay more taxes due to a lower CPI, since tax brackets are not properly adjusted. To illustrate it, imagine that you make $1000 a month and pay a 15 percent income tax. Also, imagine that incomes up to $900 are tax exempt. If the CPI (not rigged) is 10 percent (meaning that, in real terms, you made $900), then you should be exempt. However, if the government uses a methodology that lowers the CPI and it was 5 percent, then your income in real terms (according to the government) is 950, and therefore you must continue to pay a 15 percent income tax.

The Government Pays Less Interest on Its Debt

With an artificially lower CPI, the government pays less interest on its debt. Governments often issue bonds of which the principal or the interest is indexed to the CPI. In the US, for example, there is the TIPS (Treasury Inflation-Protected Security), which is the debt security that pays the principal adjusted by the CPI. Since the CPI is designed to show a lower inflation rate, the adjustment to the principal turns out to be smaller (see more details on why TIPS is not a good hedge against inflation here).

The government also pays lower interest rates on bonds that are not indexed to the CPI. An artificially lower CPI makes investors believe that future price increases are going to be lower. Thus, the interest on bonds (including those of longer maturities) becomes lower.

Conclusion

Governments have several incentives to skew economic indicators in their favor. They are not entities that have to satisfactorily serve those who finance them. After all, taxpayers are forced to fund the government, whether they are satisfied with the service or not. The government doesn’t have incentives to be efficient, and voters are often dissatisfied and angry. To calm them down a bit, governments cook economic indicators with special spices.