The Coming Disaster

Welcome to the most dangerous two years in American history.

by Dan Gelernter for American Greatness

Nations change course slowly, like giant ocean liners. True disasters take a long time to unfold. If you think things look terrible now, you’re not using your imagination. The Biden Administration has only been in power for a little over a year. They got their crowbar in the door early with COVID, but we’ve barely tasted what the professional political class has in store for us.

Imagine gas at $10 a gallon, or $15. Imagine food staples so scarce you have to buy them with a ration card (displayed in a government-mandated phone app that tracks your family’s consumption). Imagine a new pandemic with a pathogen much deadlier than COVID, that actually kills a substantial number of the people it infects. Imagine an infrastructure attack that erases peoples’ bank accounts. Imagine a real, global war.

I’ve already written in support of Ukraine here, and I have been warning about the danger of a Russia-China alliance for a long time. But something about this Ukraine business rubs me the wrong way: All the people who updated their profile pictures with vaccination status to posture and to shame their friends have now updated their profile pictures again with Ukrainian flags. The mainstream media is in lockstep support. We’re bombarded with ridiculous stories about the “Ghost of Kiev” and Ukrainian farmers dismantling Russian tank columns. Last Friday, former presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush visited a Ukrainian church together to lay flowers.

Something is definitely wrong here.

When we see the real establishment out in such force, it should set alarm bells off in our brains: We may not understand the nature of the lie, yet. But we can be certain they are lying to us.

It used to puzzle me that Bill Clinton and George W. Bush were so close and personable, after all the terrible things they and their supporters had said about each other. But that was back in those innocent days before I realized that the distinction between political parties is superficial compared to the real distinction between power on the one hand and ordinary people on the other. Clinton and Bush have no disagreements severe enough to challenge their joint commitment to being in charge. There may be no honor among thieves—and that’s all politicians are—but they afford each other broad recognition and support, as members of the same class.

We should be cautious here because the long-term goals of establishment politicians line up much better with America’s enemies than they do with the goals of most Americans: Expensive gasoline limits our personal mobility, and can be used to pressure us en masse toward electric cars, which offer less freedom of movement and can be switched off remotely. Expensive food leaves us with less discretionary money to spend, which means a more controlled economy. And a war, among other things, is the greatest opportunity of all for government to expand its power. (If you doubt that, just remember that metered parking in cities was introduced as a temporary revenue-raising measure during World War II.)

Europeans never really wanted to be free: They experimented with democracy briefly and decided it wasn’t for them. The Europeans who wanted freedom had already come here. America is the only place on earth where a significant segment of the population is committed to freedom. (I would have included the rest of the Anglosphere before witnessing their tyrannical behavior during COVID; I would have been wrong.) 

That commitment to freedom doesn’t exist in our government, of course, but it exists in the hearts of the American people. The challenge government faces is to see just how far they can push us while preserving the illusion of freedom. Much of this façade crumbled during COVID, and large chunks of the ugly truth are becoming visible with respect to Ukraine. But instead of slowing down, the establishment is speeding up: Pedal to the metal, aimed at the bullseye of disaster. This is their big chance, and they see this as an all-or-nothing opportunity. 

America is waking up, but slowly. It’s two years until the next presidential election. Welcome to the most dangerous two years in American history.

X22, And we Know, and more-March 23

 

Here's something I never thought I'd say: Bots have negatively affected me in 2 ways today: 1st, a bunch of 'kudos' bots made me think that a few of my NCIS LA stories had been liked by 40 or 50 people, and 2nd: Those annoying upvote bots temporally returned.

Here's tonight's news:

Ukraine Is the Ruling Class’s Latest Propaganda Ploy

by Lee Smith for CompactMag

The war in Ukraine has been dominating headlines for more than a month, but it is still hard for most Americans to grasp what is going on. In part, that’s because most of what is coming out of Kyiv and Moscow is war propaganda. But it’s also because the US ruling class is once more waging information war—against domestic critics and internal enemies.

You can hardly blame the Ukrainians for inventing stories about fighter pilots who single-handedly downed scores of Russian aircraft. The country’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, is trying to keep up morale on the home front while soliciting support from Western leaders to fend off Vladimir Putin’s onslaught. For those in power, lying is part of the logic of war.

What isn’t normal is the all-out effort to promote Ukraine’s cause in America—an effort grafted on to a long series of ongoing propaganda campaigns deployed by US institutions and industries against the same target: the American public. These campaigns have used the same methods, personnel, platforms, and even catchwords to deceive, harass, and punish working- and middle-class Americans to the benefit of the country’s increasingly powerful ruling oligarchy.

To help their chosen candidate, Joe Biden, unseat President Donald Trump, Silicon Valley giants blocked an October 2020 New York Post exposé about influence-peddling by Biden’s son Hunter. Fifty former top US intelligence officials characterized the Post’s reporting as Russian disinformation, a claim echoed unanimously and uncritically by prestige outlets. The New York Times repeatedly called the Hunter Files “unsubstantiated,” while National Public Radio’s managing editor for news, Terence Samuels, huffed that “we don’t want to waste our time on stories that are not really stories.”

Yet even as the Times acknowledged last week that the Hunter emails uncovered by the Post were indeed authentic, the same tech firms are banning videos and stories that contradict the US political establishment’s official Ukraine narrative for the same reason: American spies claim it’s Russian disinformation.

If you aren’t accused of serving Moscow, you are at least disloyal to the United States. The media say that the Trump supporters who showed up to protest election irregularities at the Capitol building on Jan. 6, 2021, were there to wage an insurrection. This, despite mounting evidence, including the confessions of New York Times reporters, suggesting that law enforcement played a significant role in staging the day’s violence. Yet video of the events selectively edited by local police and the US Department of Justice and then released to the media has already solidified the official narrative: Anyone who didn’t vote for Biden is likely a domestic terrorist.

“For those in power, lying is part of the logic of war.”

Or you are said to be endangering American lives with conspiracy theories. That’s how the ruling class framed opposition journalists and researchers who questioned the origins of Covid-19, as well as doctors who noted the obvious fact that the vaccines didn’t work as promised—otherwise there would have been no need for boosters. The accused were banished from social media, hectored by their professional colleagues and institutions, and received scores of death threats. Americans who failed to comply with government efforts to rig the stock market by mandating Pfizer and Moderna shots were fired from work, expelled from school, and ostracized from their communities.

Fast-forward a few months: If you say out loud that you think there is something strange about a campaign involving Democrats and Republicans, the media, Big Tech, corporate giants, and US intelligence services to promote one side in a foreign war that doesn’t obviously touch on the daily concerns of most Americans, you’re pro-Putin.

That accusation has haunted the American public sphere going on six years. For this is where the long campaign started, with Russiagate, the most destructive information operation ever waged against the nation. And unlike, say, the notorious Protocols of the Elders of Zion, its authors aren’t adversarial spy services, but fellow Americans, our own ruling class. Now the same journalists, foreign-policy experts, and retired US officials who lied in 2016 about Trump’s ties to Russia are front and center shaping public opinion about the war waged by Putin—the world leader our overclass put in the middle of an elite conspiracy theory designed to guarantee Hillary Clinton the presidency.

It would be useful to have insight into Putin’s thinking, especially now with a massive land war in the middle of Europe giving rise to a powerful anti-American bloc led by Russia and China. But don’t count on America’s national-security establishment to provide that insight. For they squandered their credibility with Russiagate. From former officials like ex-Ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul and retired spy chiefs like James Clapper and John Brennan to Biden deputies like National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan and the Pentagon’s top strategist, Colin Kahl, and the entire Democratic Party and its media apparatus, the lies of America’s political class left the republic vulnerable to destructive forces.

Why did they lie? Policymakers, spy chiefs, and military officials rightly deceive foreign powers to protect and advance the US national interest. But these men and women lied to the American people about the president they elected. Then they lied about everything. Public US institutions and private industries have spent the last six years mustering their formidable powers to break the US working and middle classes. Why? Because lying is part of the logic of war, and America’s oligarchy is at war with the American people.

CDC Tells NYT It Hid Covid Data For Political Reasons

 CDC Tells New York Times It Hid Covid Data For Political Reasons

Dr. David Gortler for The Federalist March 22, 2022

According to a recent headline from The New York Times, “the CDC isn’t publishing large portions of the COVID data it collects.” That headline downplays what the article in fact reveals:

Two full years into the pandemic, the agency leading the country’s response to the public health emergency has published only a tiny fraction of the data it has collected, several people familiar with the data said.

The article says when the Centers for Disease Control “published the first significant data on the effectiveness of boosters in adults younger than 65…it left out the numbers for a huge portion of that population: 18- to 49-year-olds, the group least likely to benefit from extra shots.”

“The agency has been reluctant to make those figures public,” according to the Times, “because they might be misinterpreted as the vaccines being ineffective.”

After “several inquiries from The New York Times,” CDC unexpectedly decided to publish its data on the risks of hospitalization and death from both unvaccinated and vaccinated Americans, with or without booster dosing. But it did so in a manner that obscures younger individuals’ overall Covid risks, which is very low, instead attempting to force a comparison between vaccinated and unvaccinated individuals’ hospitalization. The exact data about Covid risks by specific age has not been released in any graphical or easily viewable form anywhere.

This rationale for deliberately hiding government-collected effectiveness data was even confirmed by the CDC’s spokeswoman, Kristen Nordlund. This taxpayer-funded agency didn’t want to give taxpayers the full picture of vaccine effectiveness—for their own good.

It also feels confident enough to publicly admit this, but only after many Americans were fired from their jobs and suffered from serious adverse events and deaths after they were forced to take shots they didn’t want based precisely on false narratives fueled by CDC duplicity.

That rationale from the CDC hardly justifies the fact that the selective omission of public health information is more than clinical malpractice; it is scientific fraud.  

Right thinking Americans have suspected for about two years now that the CDC, and especially Anthony Fauci, have not been honest with the American people about Covid. Americans don’t have to be experts in vaccine epidemiology to understand the dynamics of what is happening vaccine effectiveness and safety, they just have to use their own eyes.

Every time these federal employees uttered the phrase “follow the science,” they actually meant, “Do what we say and don’t question it, or we’ll punish you.” True scientists don’t release partial data or hide their data. Yet after severe damage is done to government credibility and the country’s social fabric, now even The New York Times can’t deny that the CDC hid the truth about booster efficacy from Americans because it would contradict this administration’s political goals.

It is not the duty of America’s putatively “non-partisan” CDC or the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to mindlessly echo support for White House talking points or to protect failed, poorly thought-through policies. Many Americans trust these agencies to objectively give Americans a full scientific disclosure and state the unvarnished facts on vaccine effectiveness and safety. Anything less is clinically, scientifically, and ethically contemptible.

The official narrative was put forward most clearly by President Biden when he said, “If you’re out there unvaccinated, you don’t have to die . . . get the vaccine.” This was followed by mass vaccine mandates, mask mandates, continued lockdowns, and rushed vaccination projects for children as young as five years old and even younger. It all flew in the face of the science that showed young healthy people, and especially children, were incredibly unlikely to die from Covid, but no matter.

But then the truth came out. Boosters have proven so ineffective they’re rarely mentioned anymore, even by the most zealous of the liberal faithful. The vaccine’s ability to limit Covid mutation transmission quickly plummeted to the point of being laughable.

Hiding the fact that boosting already double-vaccinated healthy young people is practically worthless is scandalous enough on its own. But it becomes doubly egregious considering the safety risks of getting the shot again and again.

When dead bodies of otherwise healthy young people weren’t piling up in the streets during the Omicron surge this winter, you would have expected the CDC to take an undeserved victory lap by claiming their relentless promotion of vaccine boosters had come to the rescue. But a funny thing happened on the road to self-congratulation.

In spite of the safety issues and the lack of efficacy in Omicron, Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla has begun pushing a fourth dose of its vaccine, yet still hasn’t presented any clinical data to support that claim, and doesn’t have a single thing to say about safety or natural immunity.

Americans have also never heard the White House objectively discuss vaccine safety. All we’ve all heard is Biden and Fauci repeat the empty platitude that the vaccine is “safe and effective.” But exactly how safe we are never told, because we still do not know the data they are relying on to make those statements.

CDC scientists and clinicians are violating their own taxpayer-funded agency’s ethical, scientific and public health codes and policies to protect the American public. What should the consequences be?

I’m not complaining about the lack of transparency of top-secret military information that would endanger our national security; I’m talking about public health information regarding drug safety and vaccine efficacy. This selective omission of public health data is fraud, and top agency officials should be made an example of for their unethical behavior.

An even more gruesome thought is: If these officials were despicable enough to omit these data, what else do Americans still not know about “for their own good”?

The day of reckoning for endangering American lives needs to come, and the sooner the better. 

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Ex-US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright dies

 

Madeleine Albright, a Czech immigrant who went on to become the first female secretary of state in US history, has died aged 84.

A long-time foreign policy veteran, Albright became America's top diplomat in 1997 during the Clinton administration, becoming the highest-ranking woman in US government.

Often hailed as "a champion of democracy", Albright was instrumental in efforts to end ethnic cleansing in Kosovo.

Her death from cancer was announced on Twitter.  

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-60855139       

Kevin McCarthy Drops the Hammer on Adam Schiff

Bonchie reporting for RedState 

For my money, there is no more detestable member of the House of Representatives than Rep. Adam Schiff. The Californian has spent the last half-decade spreading lies and soaking up fawning media coverage in his pursuit of his political enemies. And while ruthlessness in politics is hardly a unique concept, Schiff’s willingness to use the official workings of Congress to spread false narratives has been disturbing at best.

With Republicans an almost lock to retake the House in November, that’s left questions about what happens to Schiff once his party loses the reins of power. It’s been a given that figures like Rep. Ilhan Omar will lose their committee assignments, but would the GOP have the guts to go after someone who isn’t anti-Semitic but has grossly abused their power?

Current House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy has given us an answer: Schiff will be booted from his prestigious role on the House Intelligence Committee.

McCarthy obviously wants to be Speaker of the House, and moves like this may secure the support necessary to put him in that role. It’s good to see him not playing coy but instead just coming right out and saying that Schiff will be demoted and, to be sure, never has a man deserved that treatment more than Schiff.

His list of lies is long. More recently, Schiff was caught deliberately doctoring January 6th text messages to make them seem to be saying something they weren’t. And who can forget his performance for the cameras in which he lied about the call transcript between Donald Trump and Volodymyr Zelensky? Then there was his “mischaracterizing” of text messages involving Lev Parnas back during Trump’s first impeachment.

Even before that, during the Mueller investigation, Schiff was notorious for continually leaking testimony out of context in order to give the public a false impression that he had evidence he didn’t actually possess. While appearing on networks like CNN and MSNBC, the Californian congressman often asserted that he had conclusive evidence of Russian collusion as well. Obviously, given Robert Mueller found nothing of the sort, that also turned out to be a lie.

With all that said, I’d suggest that McCarthy isn’t going far enough. Yes, it’s nice to know that Schiff won’t be on the Intel Committee any longer, one of the most powerful bodies in Congress, but he deserves far more punishment than that. Schiff’s behavior has been so egregious that he should be completely stripped of all his committee assignments. He has shown no grace to his opponents and none should be offered to him. This is politics, not the church.

If McCarthy isn’t willing to do that, I’m not so sure he’s the right man to lead a new Republican majority come 2023. This is the time to go scorched earth, not be timid nor to take half measures. Let Schiff have it.

The Biden Administration Does Not Have a Strategy

The Biden Administration Does Not Have a Strategy

M. Roberts for American Thinker 

Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman is not picking up Joe Biden’s phone calls.  How did we get to such an embarrassing moment in history?  The United States has been the security guarantor for the Middle Eastern country since the end of World War II, in exchange for the Saudi’s continual provision of cheap oil and a pledge that the country would use the U.S. dollar to conduct all oil-related transactions with other nations.  The Saudi kingdom’s flagrant violations of human rights against its own citizens were highlighted by later U.S. administrations time and again, but those demarches never seriously put the dominance of the dollar in jeopardy.  Apart from the British pound, which was suffering a great deal following the end of the war, global markets had no viable alternative currency to trust.  With the rise of China following the post-Cold War era, the U.S. finally had an economic competitor that posed a real threat.  However, our leaders have been slow to shift back into the realm of thinking geopolitically.

The United States must always stand for supporting democracy, liberty, and the inalienability of universal human rights.  Our Constitution enshrines these ideals in the fabric of our daily lives, and yes, we often take these truths for granted.  The values of fairness, equality, and freedom of expression remain the most coveted concepts in modern society.  In fact, these values should remain as America’s beacon in guiding foreign and domestic policy.  However, U.S. policymakers should also remain cognizant of the complexities in policy formation and have a clear-eyed understanding of how geopolitical dynamics affect American interests.  If leaders stray too far to either end of the calculus, American interests will inevitably be put at risk and U.S. citizens will suffer the brunt of the repercussions.  Sadly, this is already happening.

In 2020, approximately 70% of the nations covered in the Democracy Index had recorded a decline in democratic governance and that trend only continued through 2021.  Unfortunately, this is the world in which we must operate.  Our leaders need to approach policymaking with a realistic and comprehensive strategy, one that encompasses a dual values-based and geopolitical approach.  This is not a new concept by any means.  The U.S. has largely employed this policy framework following the end ofWW II, and thankfully some remnants of this strategy are still utilized today.  Take for example the Russia-Ukraine war.  The administration is engaging in a values-based approach by providing a democracy with at least some of the material it needs to sustain its independence.  On the geopolitical front, it is not intervening with the use of direct force, as this would cause unimaginable security consequences for all of the West.  Despite this somewhat positive example, the Biden administration has largely ignored the geopolitical part of the equation in ensuring that America’s interests are protected.

The current U.S. administration’s blunders are only mounting and already include the following: a complete lack of strategy for energy security, the chaotic exit from Afghanistan, a softening on Chinese aggressiveness by abandoning the Department of Justice’s “China Initiative,” and rising inflation that is swiftly decreasing the living standards of average Americans.  The administration seeks to blame the problem on Russia or various supply chains issues while refusing to admit that its own reckless government printing and directionless infusion of capital into the economy, combined with its nonsensical policy of cutting domestic oil production, are to blame.  These issues are the result of an administration that has either a lack of understanding or worse, great contempt, for realist geopolitical strategy.  The Saudi example shows weakness in current American strategic thinking and a deficiency of reason within the sectors of policy formation.  In fact, this weakness emboldens autocratic regimes’ messaging that the West weaponizes human rights issues to achieve its interests and as a result, often fails in its goals.  This madness needs to be put to an end.

The U.S. has the ability to immediately cut inflationary prices within the gas and oil sectors by engaging in short-term deals with our Canadian and Latin American partners, including Mexico, which has the fourth-largest oil reserves in the Western hemisphere.  Domestic production has also been adversely influenced by the environmental lobby, which in turn has been the target of foreign messaging operations aimed at destroying U.S. energy production.  Media reports have recently outlined Russian campaigns to fund the green environmental lobby in an effort to increase our dependence on foreign oil.  This is an example of the U.S. administration, once again, being blinded by its own misguided desire to solely focus on the values-based side of the policy equation. 

It is high time we make the necessary short-term energy deals with our hemispheric neighbors while starting to “turn on” the pipes domestically.  One can hope that the current administration will learn its lesson and begin to account for the very real consequences that citizens will suffer as a result of ignoring realist geopolitical principles.  However, given its track record of supporting an idealistic policy that bears no concrete benefit for the public, this remains doubtful.   We elect our leaders with the hope that they truly understand and are willing to protect our interests domestically and overseas.  We deserve leaders that are willing to think practically and set out strategies that bolster, not hinder, the United States’ economic, energy, and security sectors. 

Sent from my iPad

The Hunter Biden Emails Warrant A Special Counsel To Probe ‘The Big Guy,’ Joe Biden

The appointment of a special counsel to investigate its explosive revelations documented by The New York Post is long overdue.

Tristan Justice reporting for The Federalist

The New York Times conceded the authenticity of the Hunter Biden laptop 18 months after early right-leaning reporting on the computer was roundly smeared by Democrats and a complicit media establishment as Russian disinformation. The necessary appointment of a special counsel to investigate its explosive revelations documented by the New York Post is even tardier.

For decades, Hunter Biden leveraged the family name to broker international business deals. In October 2020, the Post published emails from the abandoned hard drive of the Delaware laptop not only discrediting then-candidate Joe Biden’s repeated claims he never spoke business with his son, “or with anyone else,” but also that the former vice president stood to make a handsome profit from his son’s corrupt deals.

“You’re a damn liar, man,” candidate Biden said before going on to fat shame an Iowa voter at a town hall for confronting Biden over his son’s lucrative overseas ventures. At the time of the exchange, questions were circulating based on evidence to emerge from Trump’s first impeachment saga about Hunter Biden’s role on the board of the Ukrainian energy company, Burisma. Hunter was raking in upwards of $50,000 a month in excess compensation despite no prior experience in the industry. He landed the gig while his father served as the White House point man on Ukraine.

“We all know Trump has been messing around in Ukraine,” the Iowa voter said to Joe Biden. “But, you on the other hand, sent your son over there. He not only worked for a gas company, but he had no experience in … You’re selling access to the presidency just like [Trump] is.”

Their concerns were well-founded at the time, and even more warranted 10 months later.

Less than three weeks from Election Day 2020, The New York Post published a series of emails contradicting candidate Biden’s claims of ignorance of his son’s business operations and showed the family engaged in conflicts of interest while serving in the upper echelons of U.S. government.

Not only did Hunter Biden introduce his vice president father to a senior Ukrainian business partner in 2015, but emails in 2017 revealed stemming from business across the globe thousands of dollars were supposedly set aside for “the big guy.” An unnamed source who was on the email discussing “remuneration packages” told Fox News the day after it was published the ambiguous reference was directly to Joe Biden. Tony Bobulinski, a former business partner of the Biden’s, went on record a week later to confirm the identity of “the big guy” as the former vice president slated to receive 10 percent of a cash and equity deal.

“Hunter Biden called his dad ‘the Big Guy’ or ‘my Chairman,’ and frequently referenced asking him for his sign-off or advice on various potential deals that we were discussing,” Bobulinski wrote in a statement sent to The Federalist and other outlets.

On Fox News with Tucker Carlson, Bobulinski continued to blow the whistle on Joe Biden’s entanglement in his son’s overseas business ventures, asserting the Democrat candidate who would go on to be president was “compromised” by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).

The implications are enormous. Many big questions remain unanswered about President Biden’s personal involvement with his son’s extensive and potentially criminal business ventures.

After President Donald Trump was falsely accused based on fabricated intelligence of seeking to undermine American interests as a Russian asset, Democrats landed their own special counsel with unlimited resources that operated for years. The Russiagate saga, amplified by a deep state operation within the FBI, in turn undermined Trump’s first years in the White House and ended with nothing to show.

In Biden’s case, however, credible testimony exists from on-the-record sources and a “Laptop From Hell,” as described in the title of Post Columnist Miranda Devine book on the subject, to launch a special counsel probe beyond the current DOJ investigation into Hunter Biden’s taxes. As Devine outlined Sunday, the White House is ignoring poignant questions such as whether Hunter Biden actually divested from Chinese state-owned enterprises.

“[Psaki] told us last year that Hunter was in the process of divesting his 10% share of the Chinese investment firm BHR Partners, which is co-owned by the Bank of China and has $2.4 billion of funds under management. Last November, Hunter’s lawyer told the Times he no longer owns a share of BHR,” Devine wrote.

But, according to online records of the Chinese business registry Baidu, as of Wednesday, Hunter’s company Skaneateles LLC continues to hold a 10% stake in BHR. Hunter is still named on corporate records as sole governor of Skaneateles, although the company is listed as ‘revoked’ on the website of the Washington, DC, Department of Consumer and Regulatory Affairs. That is because a $300 ‘reinstatement fee’ has not been paid, the Washington Examiner reported this month.

With even the New York Times, the bulwark paper of corrupt media, conceding the authenticity of material blowing back the curtain of the Biden family business ventures, it’s past time Attorney General Merrick Garland recognizes the need for an independent investigation.

Republicans have called for one in the past, repeatedly. If Garland refuses to agree, congressional Republicans ought to demand his explanation, and ramp up the pressure if elected to the majority in November.

How Agriculture Bureaucrats Are Manipulating Food Prices - and Our Diets

How Agriculture Bureaucrats Are Manipulating Food Prices—and Our Diets

Sammy Cartagena - Mises.org

With inflation at a forty-year high, it is the topic on everyone’s mind. US core inflation has reached 7.5 percent year over year, and the prices of certain goods, such as used cars and steak, are up as much as 50 percent over the past year. This is a major threat to the current administration, with a recent poll showing that 70 percent of Americans disapprove of Joe Biden’s handling of inflation. Inflation is incredibly unpopular with voters, and there is a strong political incentive to ease the public’s perception of rising prices, either through policies or through modifying the inflation statistics themselves.

One method government has historically used for easing the perception of inflation is to push for the consumption of low-cost goods through government recommendations and subsidies. This strategy has been used especially frequently in the agriculture industry, since food comprises a major variable expense in people’s everyday budgets. In the 1970s, during a period of high inflation, Secretary of Agriculture Earl Butz pushed for policies that would encourage the mass production of low-cost monocrops such as corn and soy. He famously told farmers to “get big or get out” and urged farmers to plant commodity crops “from fencerow to fencerow.”

Getting consumers to substitute lower-cost goods in their consumption can have a masking effect on Consumer Price Index (CPI) inflation, since a change to the consumption of lower-cost goods offsets the general rise in price level. As Saifedean Ammous writes in The Fiat Standard: “By subsidizing the production of the cheapest foods and recommending them to Americans as the optimal components of their diet, the extent of price increases and currency debasement is less obvious” (114).

This scenario is exactly what has played out in the US since the 1970s, with the US government’s health guidelines showing a “continuous decline in the recommendation of meat and an increase in the recommendations of grains, legumes, industrial oils, and various other nutritionally poor foods that benefit from industrial economies of scale,” as Ammous notes (114). In fact, the original version of the food pyramidwas developed amid high food prices in Sweden in 1972, with an express goal of promoting cheap and basic foods that would provide adequate nutrition. This shift in dietary recommendations during the seventies coincided with the rapid rise in US obesity rates, a trend which continues to this day.

In addition to government dietary recommendations, farm subsidies have also played a significant role in the manipulation of agricultural production and consumer diets. The majority of farm subsidies are given to large-scale farms, especially to those producing corn, wheat, and soybeans. Between 1995 and 2020, total US farm subsidies for these three crops alone exceeded $200 billion. Farms producing these monocrops are subsidized, leading to these crops' relative overproduction. The prices of these already cheap foods are thus artificially lowered at the expense of everything else, which in turn causes an increase in their consumption, lowering recorded inflation.

This phenomenon helps to explain at least in part the motivation for federal organizations to push for a low-meat or entirely meat-free diet. Meat has always been a more expensive food source per calorie, and for the past several decades it has been increasing in price at a faster rate than most other foods; this is likely because meat, especially when pasture raised, is harder to mass produce, so its production benefits less from industrialization.

The above illustration shows the percent change in prices of certain foods from January 2000 to today. Although the average inflation of core food prices over this period was 2.56 percent annually, the category of meat, poultry, and fish increased at the higher rate of 3.20 percent, and specific foods such as sirloins, ribeye, and other cuts of beef increased at an even higher rate of 4 percent or more per year over this period. As one would expect, the categories of baked goods, fruits, and vegetables increased in price at a slower pace, due in part to the fact that their inputs include crops such as wheat, soy, and corn—the very crops that the US tends to subsidize and recommend.

It is also important to note that the subsidization of crops such as corn has led to a decrease in the prices of grain-fed meat and poultry relative to their pasture-raised counterparts, further skewing the American diet toward a foundation of industrial monocrops of dubious nutritional value. Those who choose to consume organic or pasture-raised meats face even higher price inflation that is not recorded in CPI numbers.

The fact that meat and poultry have tended to have a higher rate of inflation means that all else equal, the less meat Americans consume, the lower the price inflation of food will register. This is what has happened over the past couple of decades, with a continuous decline in the weighting of the meat, poultry, fish, and eggs category in the “food at home” CPI basket. This category represented 31 percent of the basket in 1989, 27 percent in 2000, and only 22 percent in 2020.

The reason for the decrease in meat and poultry consumption is likely a combination of meat becoming less affordable for low-income consumers and plant-based diets being increasingly recommended by federal institutions. Either way, the effect is a decrease in official recorded inflation. That goods that have become too expensive for consumers are phased out of the CPI basket is one of the numerous issues with the metric.

The increasing recommendation of plant-based diets has led to some ridiculous moments, such as a tweet from the St. Louis Fed suggesting that people could substitute their Thanksgiving turkey with soybeans.

The Federal Reserve’s loose monetary policy, combined with government policy such as agriculture subsidies, has caused a great deal of harm when it comes to consumer choice in food. In response to rising food costs, government has prioritized making certain foods affordable at the expense of everything else. Government may be able to bring CPI inflation under control, but this comes with the caveat of a government-prescribed diet, which has historically had disastrous results for this country’s health. Many Americans are being priced out of eating the traditional pasture-raised-animal diet that many would argue is optimal for our health.

The agriculture industry is largely running as a planned economy, with government having huge influence over what foods people consume. When the power to make decisions is delegated to bureaucrats rather than to those who will be impacted, mismanagement is a given. No one is better equipped to decide their own diet and lifestyle than themselves, yet bureaucratic management has permeated even this level of our lives. Whether agriculture and diets are being manipulated to hide inflation, benefit lobbying groups, or with sincerely good intentions, it is high time that Americans demanded control of their own health choices again.

 

As much as 25% of the population participated in some way in our Revolution

Article by Oliver North and David Goetsch in Townhall

Is the Spirit of 1776 Dead in America?

What would you do if you were a Ukrainian right now: stay and fight or flee the country? This question was the basis of a recent Quinnipiac poll, and the results were shocking. Over 50% of Democrats admitted they would run rather than fight. Republicans fared better: Only 25% of them would put their tails between their legs and bug out. This poll confirms conclusively what leftist ideologues have wrought with decades of indoctrination masquerading as education in public schools and colleges.

The left has taught young Americans the United States is an evil nation established to perpetuate slavery -- a country characterized by white supremacy and oppression of minorities and dedicated to making the rich richer at the expense of the poor. Small wonder, then, that students who absorbed 12 or more years of this hate-America tripe would be reluctant to defend it during an invasion. Is the spirit of 1776 dead in America? Is the United States no longer the "land of the free and the home of the brave"?

By July 4, 1776, when Congress finally approved a Declaration of Independence, the American colonies had been fighting an undeclared war against King George's invading redcoats for more than a year. Thomas Paine best described the challenges ahead: "These are the times that try men's souls: The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands by it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman."

Unfortunately, it appears a majority of Democrats and some Republicans qualify as summer soldiers and sunshine patriots. They want the freedom, rights and other benefits that come with being an American but aren't willing to fight for them. They want to reap the benefits of living in a free country without sacrificing to defend them. This isn't just hypocrisy; it is cowardice.

People worldwide have come to admire and respect Ukrainians and the intrepid President Volodymyr Zelenskyy for standing up to the unhinged megalomanic from Russia, Vladimir Putin. When offered transportation out of Ukraine, Zelenskyy made clear he needed ammunition, not a ride.

As the spirit of 1776 dies in America, we see it resurrected in Ukraine, where ordinary citizens, rallied by their own George Washington -- Zelenskyy -- are fighting against overwhelming odds for independence. Like the American colonists in 1776, the Ukrainians are facing an existential struggle against a mentally imbalanced tyrant determined to crush them and their beleaguered nation.

Just as Washington and his battered patriot army needed help from the French to eventually defeat King George's army and navy, Zelenskyy and his Ukrainian patriots need the help of the United States and its dithering Democrats. Further, that help will have to be more than a pathetic collection of too-little-too-late sanctions from cowards who would rather turn and run than defend freedom. The most important step the U.S. can take in this regard is restoring American energy dominance. To do less is to finance by proxy Russia's murderous assault on the freedom-loving people of Ukraine.

The American colonies had Washington, and Ukraine has Zelenskyy, both of them lionhearted leaders. Unfortunately, the United States now has Joe Biden -- a timorous, befuddled mouse among men -- and turn-tail Democrats who value the latest "climate cause celebre" more than the freedoms too many of us take for granted. At a time when the world needs Americans to once again exemplify the spirit of 1776, Biden and his Democrats have shown only weakness and timidity. China is watching and taking note.

Thank God we still have valiant patriots in our armed forces ready, willing and able to fight.

 

https://townhall.com/columnists/olivernorthanddavidgoetsch/2022/03/22/is-the-spirit-of-1776-dead-in-america-n2604833 

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Article by E. Jeffrey Ludwig in The American Thinker

Obama's Third Term and the Destruction of the American Polity

The paradigm of seeking a balance between the federal government and states began to cave during the Obama years.  Now, under Biden, the abandonment of the federalism paradigm is picking up steam, and we see an attempt to sabotage federalism in favor of a vast federal bureaucracy and regulations and laws produced and upheld by a cadre of antisocial, power-mad elitists.

The replacement is seen in a growing identity with authoritarian regimes and practices such as being soft on Iran and Russia.  Liberty always means support for the individual and locality against the encroachments or belligerence of tyranny.  There is contempt for the states, especially those at our southern border, as we see the federal government breaking its own laws and distributing illegal migrants throughout the country.  We see it In its attacks on the nuclear family and our military by its extreme support of non-heterosexual agendas.  The obsessive climate change agenda enhances globalist encroachments over U.S. sovereignty, and thus reduces the foundational federalism with concomitant liberties of our own sovereign system.

The key principle of our Constitution is the federalist system itself, with shared power between the states and the federal government.  Here, the United States is unique among nations in that the state governments created the federal government.

The government of these United States prior to our Constitution was under the Articles of Confederation.  Under that system, the federal government was purposely weak. Power resided overwhelmingly in each of the separate states.  But without a uniform trade policy, a uniform national tax policy, and a standing army, the sense of unity among the states was diluted.  Even though we had won the War for Independence under a less than unified system, it was clear that in order to survive in the world, we needed to have more unity. 

Thus, the U.S. Constitution with its separation of powers into three branches of government; its Bill of Rights; its affirmation against the presence of titles of nobility; its assertion of the importance of habeas corpus (recently diluted or ignored in our treatment of Jan. 6 defendants who as of this writing are still being oppressed); Article 1, Sec. 8, which states 18 categories of laws Congress may pass; Article 1, Sec. 9, which states eight topics of laws Congress may not pass; and Article 1, Sec. 10, which states that three areas of legislation states may not engage in at all establishes a beautiful balance between decentralized and centralized governance.  Because of the comprehensiveness of these articles particularly, some did not consider the Bill of Rights necessary, since the duties and no-nos of legislation were already contained in the document.  But because their ancestors in England already had enunciated many rights of Englishmen in 1689, it was considered wise to emphasize that hundred-year-old heritage.

Although the scope of federal legislation was enlarged by the so-called progressive presidents early in the 20th century, and later by the New Deal, there was still a great deal of ambivalence in our society — even among many New Deal Democrats — that perhaps the federal government was getting too much power.  That sense of balance between the separate states and the federal government still resonated with both parties, albeit less so with the Democrats, who had too many aggressive leftists even in the 1940s — men like the Democrat secretary of commerce Henry Wallace, who eventually ran against Harry Truman for president in 1948 as the Progressive candidate.

However, in the Obama years, we saw a shift in the pro-Constitution paradigm that was shared by both the Republicans and Democrats, despite the Democrat excesses over a few decades in expanding the scope of federal authority.  That shift can be clearly seen by the sign-off of the Obama administration in 2015 in support of U.N. Agenda 2030.  This commitment by our government (which, by the way, was not rescinded by President Trump) places our government's activities on the world stage within a globalist paradigm built around the idea of "sustainability."

This agenda is not mainly an agenda of countries, nor of states or provinces or other localities within countries.  Rather, it is an approach to solving global issues by "stakeholders."  Stakeholders include governments, but they also include "civil society, the private sector, and others [non-specified]."  This worldwide behemoth will thus transcend classic distinctions and nation-state ideals where governments (in our case federalism and concomitant liberties) define society.  Rather, governments, including the USA, are part of a more complex venture.  This more complex venture, we are told in the United Nations' sustainability document, "will require resource mobilization and financing strategies."  These strategies "will require quality, accessible, and timely data collection and regional follow-up and review."

What lies behind these vapid, vague words is never specified.  Will all citizens of all countries be required to fill out forms regularly as part of this "data collection" as we now do with our income tax?  Will the U.S. budget process already mired in thousands of pages and a regular cause of consternation among the legislators and the citizens now have to include increasingly large allocations for "resource mobilization and financing strategies"?  The opaque wording should be a cause of concern to every adult citizen of the USA.

We should also note that Agenda 2030 shifts from an emphasis upon rights, which appears in almost every sentence in the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which was passed by all countries with only eight abstentions and no negative votes, in 1948.  Thus, the U.N. at that time used rhetoric that was in no way a threat to our system of government or our sovereignty.  Like us, the whole world said rights were of uppermost importance.  Rights, liberty, separation of powers, and federalism were mutually enforcing ideas and institutional realities.  Now, 74 years later, the goals of Agenda 2030 do not seem to reflect the historical and institutional values of our country.  The word "rights" appears only once in Agenda 2030 in Section 19.

How will this new vision be implemented?  The U.N. tells us that "resources need to be mobilized from domestic and international sources, as well as from the public and private sectors."  If ever there was a sentence that called for specifics, this is it.  You see, dear reader, you and I compose the private sector, even if we are employed by a governmental entity.  We tend to think our money belongs to us, but this mealy-mouthed language leaves that as an open question in the new sustainable world order.

The electric company in NYC sends out notices with bills advising people to wash their clothes in cold water.  This is an energy-saving measure and is consistent with sustainability.  Although this advice is local, it is also at the same time global.  It bypasses local and state legislation and clearly points to a time when it will not be a suggestion, but will be required.  This writer heard Obama state in an interview that he believed in remote controls over home thermostats but that there were some practical issues of conversion to that that still had to be overcome. This means the complete destruction of consumer choice, and by invading the home, he clearly was going beyond the constitutional restraints on the power and authority of the federal government in our Constitution.  Today's suggestion undoubtedly is tomorrow's controlling command.

Sustainability was a key Obama commitment during his term of office, and it is a key commitment today.  The paradigm of federalism on which our system was founded continues to be undermined by our present administration, which has intensified the radical path of sustainability Obama propelled us on.

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2022/03/obamas_third_term_and_the_destruction_of_the_american_polity.html 

 

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