Rusty’s Sunday Morning Apocalypse Thread

The anti-Trump “Christian nationalist” appeal that the media doesn’t care about, or is too ignorant to understand.

by Ray McCoy for American Greatness

If you’ve followed the media in recent years, you’ve probably encountered the expression “dog whistle.” It’s usually accompanied by the qualifier racist, homophobic, xenophobic or some other adjective meant to scare suburban MSNBC viewers who are afraid of any primitive country bumpkin two exits away. The suggestion is that conservative voters are so beholden by their prejudices and anger that certain terms will flip a switch in their minds that cause them to go on a rampage, in the manner a dog responds to a whistle. 

But recently one of the media’s own pet “principled” Republicans employed one of the most egregiously inflammatory dog whistles three is. In an interview with Ed Pilkington of the Guardian former Arizona House of Representatives Speaker Rusty Bowers claimed that “the Constitution is hanging by a thread.”

Some readers may be hitting the brakes about now and asking what makes that turn of phrase a “dog whistle.” Bowers, who has attracted national attention as one of the witnesses of the House Select January 6 committee and a Republican critic of Donald Trump, like Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.), has recently taken a shellacking in his primary. But Bowers also happens to be a member of the Church of Latter-day Saints. 

The White Horse Prophecy supposedly spoken by church founder Prophet Joseph Smith in 1843 to two adherents, the English born Edwin Rushton and Theodore Turley is part of LDS theology. Rushton gave over the prophecy in 1900 and it became a controversial topic among LDS adherents, both because of the dubious nature of his witness claim and its contents. 

The prophecy held that the United States Constitution would one day be “hanging by a thread as fine as silk” and that members of the Church of LDS would step in during this time of great turmoil and chaos and bring about the Final Salvation.

In his interview with Pilkington, Bowers makes direct reference to his LDS faith and his family’s four generations living in Arizona. The LDS according to one report had 430,000 adherents in Arizona in 2020. Its voting base was seen as one of the key traditionally Republican constituencies vulnerable to swing for Democrats.

While the Church of LDS has traditionally been very conservative and its stronghold of Utah is one of the most solidly Republican-voting states, politicians affiliated with LDS have frequently feuded with Donald Trump since he announced for the presidency in 2015. Among the church figures with whom he has feuded is the reporter McKay Coppins who in 2014 wrote a disparaging article after accompanying him on the super-early New Hampshire campaign trail. Coppins then predicted that Trump’s run was all boast and bluster, as did many at the time. 

Trump reacted by calling Coppins a “dishonest slob.” Trump then furtherearned the enmity of important Mormon politicians like Senator Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.), Senator Mitt Romney (R-Utah) and former Senator Harry Reid (D-Nev.). In 2016 a so-called conservative “spoiler” ticket was headed by former CIA agent Evan McMullin, himself an LDS adherent. The strategy behind McMullin’s candidacy was to draw away enough votes in Utah and other LDS heavy states to deny Trump the required 270 electoral votes to win, but it ultimately became irrelevant as they split the anti-Trump vote with Hillary Clinton to give Trump a plurality, and he had enough electors without needing Utah’s.

While it isn’t simple to credit LDS aversion to Donald Trump to any onemotivation, his marital infidelity, propensity for vulgarity, and egotistical personality certainly are turn-offs for members of a church that shuns alcohol and stimulants and preaches modest public conduct. Not all LDS Republicans turned on Trump, however; Senator Mike Crapo (R-Idaho) and RNC chair Ronna Romney-McDaniel have remained on his good side, and Romney’s Utah colleague Senator Mike Lee has largely been supportive of the former president.

From the Pews to the Podium

For the Left, the spectre of the Religious Right, a loose group of evangelicals and other Christian groups that have long lobbied against loose morality and abortion access, in recent times has morphed into an even more fearsome bogeyman, “Christian nationalism.” Journalists continually rail against this movement and its supposed standard-bearers such as Representative Marjorie Taylor Green (R-Ga.), state Senator Doug Mastriano (R-Penn.) and Florida Governor Ron DeSantis.

The use of the language from the White Horse Prophecy confirmsthat religious demagoguery is now wielded by Democrats and anti-Trump Republicans for political purposes. When Trump relocated the U.S. Embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem in 2018, critics panned the move as a giveaway to wealthy Jewish and evangelical Christian donors, the latter of whom they accused of attempting to usher in the Rapture. Because of Trump’s playboy reputation and lack of any religious piety in his track record, they usually attributed these actions as him being suckered by more devout acolytes like Mike Pence and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. He was also widely mocked in September 2021 for appearing at an event for a group affiliated with the Reunification Church (the “Moonies,”) originally a Korean Christian sect with a history just as controversial as the LDS.

The modern Church of Latter-day Saints eschews the White Horse Prophecy, seeing it as a discredited tall tale as well as a bugaboo that encourages suspicion and scorn by outsiders. That doesn’t mean it hasn’t been used for political purposes among LDS political activists. In 2019 during the first impeachment trial of Donald Trump several major daily newspapers published an op-ed by Mormon memoirist Judith Freeman in praise of Mitt Romney’s would-be savior (“white horse”) role in being the person to break the Republican wall of resistance against a conviction vote, and asserted that in her own family the White Horse Prophecy had been repeated including the phrase stating “the Constitution would be left hanging by a thread.” 

Republican LDS politicians in the past also used it in order to convey their own righteous indignation (or more than that), and have been called out by Democrats and the media for religious demagoguery, while in the context of fighting Trump, however, they are praised for  inspiring Mormon courage.

Ahead of the 2000 election Mormon Senator Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) invoked the same language: “They tolerate everything that’s bad, and they’re intolerant of everything that’s good. Religious freedom is going to go down the drain, too. I’ve never seen it worse than this, where the Constitution literally is hanging by a thread.” Critics pointed at this statement as a dangerous indication that he saw himself filling the role of a Mormon savior.

The Blaze founder and LDS convert Glenn Beck has used the phrase many times throughout his career, leading Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank to write a book in 2010 exploring it as a dangerous extremist phenomenon.

The late Sen. Bob Bennett (R-Utah) was reported by the LDS-oriented Deseret News of Utah to have invoked the White Horse Prophecy to friends and family and then point at Democrat colleague and personal friend Harry Reid, claiming that he would be the person to save the Constitution.

During the first Trump impeachment the Salt Lake Tribune published a guest column titled “Imagine you’re Mitt Romney” which gushed about how special the senator must feel that he could be in the vanguard of 20 GOP senators voting to removing Trump from office. The author was a direct descendant of two former church presidents of the LDS.

If the expression didn’t have such deep resonance, LDS politicians would not keep using it. The question is whether church faithful actually take it seriously or find it to be just a lot of hot air.

The Prayer Book and the Ballot Box

Religion is habitually exploited by both parties, often with the goal of inserting it into the political process as they see fit. The Republican cases are too numerous to cover in one article, but that’s to be expected given they are still regarded as the vehicle for the “Religious Right.” 

What is often ignored are the transparently disingenuous claims of  Democrats to support separation of church and state. Theys only do that when it is convenient. Jimmy Carter was a progressive Democrat for his time and a devout Christian whose sister Ruth Carter Stapleton was an evangelist and believer in faith healing. In 2018 he wrote in his book Faith: A Journey for All: “I believe now, more than then [during his presidency], that Christians are called to plunge into the life of the world and to inject the moral and ethical values of our faith into the processes of governing.”

Senator Raphael Warnock is a reverend at Atlanta’s Ebenezer Baptist Church. He garnered much criticism for his 2021 tweet: “The meaning of Easter is more transcendent than the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Whether you are Christian or not, through a commitment to helping others we are able to save ourselves.” This statement was blasted for contradicting a number of beliefs contained in the Bible, such as that there is salvation only through Christ or the idea expressed in 1 Corinthians that if there were to not be a resurrection then all Christian preaching would be useless. And then there was the bizarre appearance by New York Democratic Governor Kathy Hochul at a Brooklyn church in 2021 where she told the parishioners that vaccines are “from G-d” and alleged that the unvaccinated are ignoring Him.

Rusty Bowers’ statement “the Constitution is hanging by a thread” is by no means an original thought, and its timing is ironic given that he was unceremoniously retired against his will in a party internal primary. What comes after the events of the White Horse Prophecy? It’s hard to say whether instant salvation is achieved or the world goes through a violent cataclysm. But with frequent talk of a national divorce or even new civil war in the media and among partisan activists, Bowers’ use of the terminology shows how callous the Left, the media, and the NeverTrumpers are when their own standard-bearers use inciting language that they would never accept from the other side. 

And we Know, Red Pill News, and more- August 27

 

Nice, quiet weekend in preparation for what could be an intense week for me. 🤞 Here's tonight's news:

Lessons From Biden’s Reckless Student Loan ‘Forgiveness’ Plan

The Biden Administration, in other words, decided to reward friends and punish enemies within the (arguable) confines of the rule of law.

posted by Josh Hammer at American Greatness

Joe Biden’s new plan to “cancel” up to $10,000 in student loan debt for those making less than $125,000 annually is at once a dereliction of constitutional duty, a crass political gambit in the lead-up to a contested midterm election, and a morally perverse value judgment that lavishes the regime’s insular, well-heeled voting base at the expense of the median middle-class American. It is, to borrow a term in vogue in Democratic Party circles these days, a truly “deplorable” act.

Interestingly, however, it is also an act that comes with some key lessons for Republicans. If there is to be any silver lining from this grotesque and imperious act, Republicans must learn those lessons—and act upon them.

The first lesson to learn is that the Democratic Party, once the presumptive partisan home of the working-class and the downtrodden, has never been more confident about who now comprises its core voting base: affluent, predominantly white, and predominantly urban or suburban college-educated elites. There is simply no other way to explain this particular policy. The wealthiest quintiles of the American income bracket bear the majority of outstanding student loan debt. Student loans, by their very nature, are only relevant for those privileged enough to attend the four-year elite Rumspringa that is the modern American university.

The majority of Americans who do not attend a traditional four-year degree-granting university, by contrast, tend to prioritize apprenticeships, technical training and other tangible steps in career advancement that are sufficiently removed from the substantive claptrap that now pedagogically dominates, and the intellectual Robespierres who now numerically dominate, our decadent institutions of higher education. These are disproportionately the sort of practical, family-centric, salt-of-the-earth Americans who may be behind on their mortgage, auto loan, or small business loan, but are not profligate enough to sign up for hundreds of thousands of dollars in federally subsidized student loans, only to then major in “subjects” like gender studies.

To speak of “canceling” debt is economically, moreover, nonsensical; that cost will merely be transferred to the less profligate, and to those who made more economically sensible decisions. Those who went to a less prestigious university because they got a larger scholarship there will also bear this cost; they did the reasonable thing but will now be penalized for their prudence and thrift. As for the middle-class plumbers and electricians who forewent family vacations to more easily pay back their small business loans—well, they’re now on the hook to help bail out Yale Law and Harvard Law grads.

The Democratic Party, in “reverse Robin Hood” fashion, has fallen from the onetime pro-labor union, pro-welfare party of FDR and LBJ to the party of rich white kids and the miscreant denizens of America’s higher education cartel. Even worse, that cartel will now be perversely incentivized, as a result of this egregious moral hazard, to continue to spike already exorbitant tuition costs.

Democrats, going back at least as far as the Obama presidency and continuing through this week’s presidential edict, have made a deliberate choice to cater to the needs of wealthy, college-educated societal elites. Democrats have made their political bed; they must now lie in it.

The onus now falls squarely upon Republicans to do the same, albeit in reverse. That is, Republicans must emphatically embrace their own core voting base: blue-collar, middle-class, and working-class Americans without college degrees. Far too often, Republican leaders have attempted to run away from their base. Indeed, the worst-kept secret in American politics, exposed for all the world to see during the contentious 2016 GOP presidential primaries, is that the Republican establishment actually despises its own voter base.

But if the Democrats are this committed to mollycoddling the privileged and the well-off, then Republicans have a golden political opportunity to make a sustained play for “normal” America. That political realignment has already commenced; Republicans must now simply embrace it and act accordingly in their crafting of conservative-populist policies. If that requires a more assertive wielding of political power in the service of good political order, so be it.

The second, and closely related, lesson for Republicans is—as if we needed another reminder—that “value neutrality” in all things governance is a lie. It will never be achieved, even if it were worth pursuing as an end unto itself in the first place. (It isn’t.) In effectuating this student loan “cancellation” boondoggle, the Biden Administration has made a very deliberate value judgment to prioritize its core voter base (white college graduates) and a core constituency (higher education bureaucrats) at the expense of those voters and constituencies that Democrats hate (the “deplorables” to which Hillary Clinton infamously once referred).

The Biden Administration, in other words, decided to reward friends and punish enemies within the (arguable) confines of the rule of law. Would that Republicans might do the same, the next time they wield power. As the often-astute Pedro L. Gonzalez put it on Twitter: “Republican politicians are outraged that Democrats used power to reward the people who vote for them while also punishing the GOP’s Middle American base by forcing them to foot the bill. Republican *voters* should be outraged the GOP won’t play the same ruthless game.”

Precisely right.

Biden’s new student loan policy is a travesty of justice. With any luck, if the right plaintiff can find Article III “standing,” the policy will be sued into oblivion as a blatant violation of the Constitution’s separation of powers framework. But perhaps, as a silver lining, Republicans might, might, finally learn a necessary lesson or two about the art of politics in this ailing, bitterly divided republic.

In Bills To Bar Communist China From Buying US Land, We Need Big Strides Not Baby Steps

As tensions rise between the U.S. and the Chinese Communist Party, Congress must act to prevent China’s further acquisition of American land.

Aiden Buzzetti reporting for The Federalist

Since 2010, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and its affiliates have been aggressively buying American farmland. Over the last decade, Chinese ownership grew from just short of 14,000 acres in the United States to just over 350,000 acres. 

Foreign ownership of American land has increased rapidly, as well, with foreign entities obtaining 2 million acres over the last 10 years. Most of the land is owned by countries the United States considers friendly, but the number of Chinese entities buying American land is reason enough for concern.

Thanks to America’s abundance of agricultural land, the U.S. has the ability to feed its entire population and still export food to the rest of the world. This is something that China lacks, and China’s rapidly increasing standard of living means a rapidly growing demand for food variety and quantity. Because of this, people and companies affiliated with the Chinese government were quick to purchase American farmland. 

The Chinese-owned farmland is often situated near military bases; in some cases, the Chinese are even buying real estate near the U.S. Capitol.

These acquisitions present such severe national security concerns that U.S. Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, introduced legislation last year to ban members of the Chinese Communist Party from owning any real estate in the country. Sens. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., and Tommy Tuberville, R-Ala., introduced a similarly focused bill in their chamber: Securing America’s Land from Foreign Interference Act. 

Though the bill is relatively short, the senators’ version is significantly different than Roy’s legislation but addresses the same concerns.

In contrast to Roy’s bill, the Senate version expands the land-owning ban on members of the Chinese Communist Party to prevent any foreign persons who are “acting for or on behalf of the Chinese Communist Party.” This is a key and necessary distinction. 

Instead of a simple blanket ban, the newer legislation also expands the penalties for violating the reporting requirements of foreign land ownership to the USDA — setting a minimum 10 percent fine on the land’s market value while keeping the original 25 percent cap.

But does this bill go far enough?

The Securing America’s Land from Foreign Interference Act has the right perspective on the federal level, and it also matches the concerns of several different states that ban foreign ownership of land, including Iowa, Mississippi, Minnesota, Hawaii, North Dakota, and Oklahoma, as well as eight others that have varying degrees of restrictions. 

However, there are little to no controls on potential “United States persons” — broadly defined as both citizens and permanent residents — that may be acting on behalf of the CCP or foreign corporations and individuals, as well as American-incorporated entities that may be acting on behalf of the CCP, foreign corporations, or foreign individuals. 

What’s to stop these bad actors’ loyalty from being bought and sold by foreign corporations that are affiliates of Chinese companies or passing money and land ownership to CCP affiliates? 

Indeed, Cotton’s bill may just increase the lengths to which CCP-aligned corporations and individuals go to hide their money and ownership through shell corporations by emboldening them to take advantage of a loophole that won’t hold Americans accountable for working on behalf of a geopolitical rival.

The bill announced by Cotton and Tuberville is a step in the right direction, but if this truly is a risk to our food security and critical infrastructure, we must put more scrutiny on American citizens who aid and abet these nefarious enterprises. 

The Securing America’s Land from Foreign Interference Act is good, but it would be even better if the citizenship-sized loophole were formally addressed. However, neither Cotton nor Tuberville’s office responded to a request for comment on this conundrum. 

That said, there is precedent for action against hostile nations and their ownership of land in the United States. In the 117th Congress’s first session, the House passed H.R.4502, which included provisions that directed the secretary of agriculture to “take such actions as may be necessary to prohibit the purchase of agricultural land in the United States by companies owned, in full or in part, by China, Russia, Iran, or North Korea.”

Article 7 in the Chinese National Intelligence law states: “Any organization or citizen shall support, assist, and cooperate with state intelligence work in accordance with the law, and maintain the secrecy of all knowledge of state intelligence work.” When Chinese investors make deals in America or lease commercial real estate to FedEx, GE, T-Mobile, and more, they tacitly mobilize intelligence agents who are committed to the CCP’s empowerment and America’s demise. 

The Espionage Act of 1917 allows the federal government to seize the property of Americans who conspire to aid foreign governments or hide and conceal persons that want to aid foreign governments in obtaining information regarding defense documents, installations, and items used for national security purposes. This ought to be utilized. 

Cotton ought to introduce a stronger, more inspired version of his proposed legislation that draws from the directives in H.R.4502 or even directs federal law enforcement agencies to investigate companies and individuals and seize their property, American or not American, for violating the Espionage Act and aiding foreign governments. 

Perhaps the Espionage Act needs an amendment to apply higher standards not only to individuals but to corporations as well. Congress has the charge of regulating commerce and providing for our common defense. They should do both at once.

Congressional Democrats Change Direction and Blame President Trump for Moving Too Fast on COVID. What's up With That?

streiff reporting for RedState  

In early 2020, President Trump ordered the federal bureaucracy to pursue Operation Warp Speed as the nation struggled against a new, man-made virus and a vicious and mindless bureaucracy intent on grabbing power. This project required federal agencies to use all available means to expeditiously produce a vaccine for the Wuhan virus, commonly called COVID. Operation Warp Speed was announced on May 15, 2020. By December 14, the first patients not involved in clinical trials began receiving the COVID vaccine.

Whether or not this was a good thing is open to argument. What isn’t open to debate is that Democrats like Joe Biden praised President Trump for his actions. And public health weenies have credited the early introduction of the COVID vaccine with decreasing the lethality of that virus and eliminating its ability to spread. They began calling COVID a “pandemic of the unvaccinated.” I’m not going to examine the factual basis of those claims because their truth or falsity is immaterial to the volume used to thunder those declarations at us.

So it was sort of strange to see Politico feature a story today titled Trump White House exerted pressure on FDA for Covid-19 emergency use authorizations, House report finds.

The Trump administration pressured the Food and Drug Administration, including former FDA Commissioner Stephen Hahn, to authorize unproven treatments for Covid-19 and the first Covid-19 vaccines on an accelerated timeline, according to a report released Wednesday by Democrats on the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Crisis.

This flies in the face of the standard Democrat narrative that holds President Trump was that he was too slow to react to the danger. While the hydroxychloroquine and Ivermectin controversies have a starring role in this latest attempt at character assassination, there is a total failure to address the bullsh** treatments foisted upon unwitting patients by the medical community or the deliberate sabotaging of effective community-based monoclonal antibody programs (FDA Pulls Emergency Use Authorization for Drugs Used in Florida’s COVID Clinics Because No One Can Tell Them No) by the Biden White House.

So what, we may ask, is behind this?

First and foremost, this needs to be viewed as just another attempt to damage President Trump should he run for reelection in 2024. The January 6 Committee and the politically driven, if not outright illegal, investigation of “secret documents” by the Garland Justice Department are two other such efforts. I’m sure more will appear before the 2024 primary season starts in earnest.

Secondly, I suspect that more is known about the link between unexplained incidents of myocarditis and sudden death and the COVID vaccine and the longer-term effects of mRNA vaccines than has been made public. Finally, this report, such as it is, lays the blame on President Trump for pushing for a vaccine for political reasons rather than examining the effect of the coercive policies that forced people to use a vaccine now claimed by Congressional Democrats to have been rushed through the clinical trials process.

If I am right, the next months will see an avalanche of adverse incidents and side effects revealed, and the blame will be laid at the door of President Trump, and the Democrat megadonors in the pharmaceutical industry will be unscathed.

Mike Rowe Lets Loose on Joe Biden for His Student Loan Bailout

Nick Arama reporting for RedState 

If there is anyone who is known for highlighting the importance of the working class, it would be “Dirty Jobs” Mike Rowe.

For years he has highlighted the problem of not enough people going into skilled trades, that the sole focus on an expensive college degree as the next step is adversely impacting our country. He’s indicated in the past that he’s not a fan of student loan forgiveness because of the fundamental unfairness of it all. Plus, it doesn’t solve the problem of high tuition, indeed, it makes it worse.

So if there was anyone who was going to have a notable reaction to Joe Biden’s student loan bailout, it would be Rowe.

Rowe did not disappoint, letting loose on Joe Biden in a Facebook post, calling the bailout the “biggest pre-Labor Day slap in the face to working people I’ve ever seen.”

I work hard on this page, (not as hard as I could, perhaps, but pretty hard), to avoid the politics of the moment, and comment only on topics that impact the foundation I’m proud to run – a foundation that awards work-ethic scholarships to individuals who choose to forego an expensive, four-year education in favor of a skilled trade. When I do weigh in, I try to acknowledge both sides of the argument, and make my points with as much respect as I can muster. Today, however, I can see only one side. Today, I can find nothing to respect in the President’s decision to transfer billions of dollars in outstanding student loans onto the backs of those people my foundation tries to assist – the same people I’ve spent the last twenty years profiling on Dirty Jobs.

With that in mind, I’m not going to write the piece I just sat down to write. Instead, I’m going to share the attached article from Charlie Cooke, who writes better than I do, and shares my disdain for what just happened. If you share our disdain, then please, share this post as well. This decision is without question, the biggest pre-Labor Day slap in the face to working people I’ve ever seen.

Cooke’s post notes how this is something all of us — including the air conditioning technicians who saved to open their own business — are going to have to pay for.

And, well . . . what absolute chumps the president has just made of them for that!

Squirm if you like, but that’s the truth of the matter: As of today, the six air-conditioning technicians in my house are on the hook for college loans that were signed for, spent, and enjoyed by other people. Confirming the measure today, President Biden announced that any American who has both college debt they vowed to repay and an individual yearly income under $125,000 (or a family yearly income under $250,000) will be given up to $20,000 by the Treasury — which means by you, and by me, and by everyone else who pays taxes in America.

Imagine what a family making $50,000 thinks about having to pay for bailing out a two-lawyer couple that makes up to $250,000.

So why is Biden doing this?

The answer, I’m afraid to say, is disgustingly classist: Because Joe Biden and his party believe that college students are better than everyone else. Because Joe Biden and his party believe that college students are of a finer cut. Because Joe Biden and his party prefer college students to you, and they think that those students ought to be rewarded for that by being handed enormous gobs of your money.

Electricians, store managers, deli workers, landscapers, waitresses, mechanics, entrepreneurs? Screw ’em. Sure, college graduates make more money than non-graduates, and their unemployment rate is lower, too. But non-graduates don’t have access to the president, so they don’t matter. They’re tradesmen, the riff-raff, the great unwashed. They’re background noise, dirty-handed types, second-classers. They don’t deserve $10,000 in debt reduction. What would they even do with it? Go hunting? Give it to their church? Their role is to subsidize the superior people, and the superior people go to college.

It’s a crass effort to buy the votes of the “privileged, accredited, self-dealing clerisy that his ever-dwindling political party now calls its base.” It’s using our taxpayer dollars to do it as well, which adds insult to injury — not only don’t we benefit, we actually have to pay for it and it will make inflation far worse, an additional cost on us all. But Biden doesn’t care about that because it’s all about the Democrats doing all they could to hold onto power.

But Biden will find out that this gambit doesn’t work, because not only is it infuriating everyone for all the reasons I’ve said, it’s infuriating some of those in the base as well who don’t think it goes far enough. Even some of Democrats are not on board with this, throwing a mutiny against Biden on this.

If Biden were trying to destroy the country, is there anything he would have done differently than he has done? I don’t think so.

Biden Makes Eyebrow-Raising Comment About 'Stealing' Elections

Bonchie reporting for RedState 

Joe Biden is on a roll. It’s just not the kind of roll anyone should want him to be on. After returning from his multi-week vacation in the middle of multiple crises, the president held a rally in Rockville, MD because no one else outside of a hundred-mile radius of the beltway can stand him.

Despite not filling the school gym he was speaking in, Biden launched into a multi-pronged attack against his political enemies. He labeled Republicans as “semi-fascist” just a day after he declared himself king to force middle-class Americans to pay for the student loans of a small, mostly well-off minority of the country.

As RedState reported, his comments were couched in total incoherence, but it was one understandable part of his diatribe that had eyebrows raising. According to Biden, if Democrats retain Congress, they will pass legislation to ensure “no one has the opportunity to steal an election again.”

That’s certainly a “mask-off” moment from a guy who is clearly out of control and throwing all caution to the wind. But the question is exactly what he means.

Is he speaking of the 2016 election, asserting that Donald Trump stole that election and was an illegitimate president? That can’t be because I’ve been assured that such election denialism is literally a threat to democracy itself. For anyone to suggest that an election is anything but the “most secure” in history is to essentially foment insurrection. Heck, it’s enough to get you banned from Jake Tapper’s low-rated CNN show, so you know it’s serious.

Or is he talking about the 2020 election in some Freudian slip, admitting that the powers that be conspired to deny reelection to Donald Trump? I mean, we know that happened given the admission from Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg on Thursday that the FBI came to them to push for the suppression of the Hunter Biden laptop story, knowing it was real, only to spin it as Russian disinformation. That’s no longer a “conspiracy theory.”

Somehow, I doubt he meant that, though. I’m pretty sure he’s just doing exactly what he and his party insist is incredibly dangerous, which is to say your political opponents are “stealing” elections. Biden is nothing if he isn’t a hypocrite, and he’s reached a point where he just doesn’t care how tyrannical and obscene his statements and policies get.

After all, there are no consequences. Heck, his approval rating has actually ticked up recently so he’s probably more emboldened than ever. And you can expect the insanity to continue unless Republicans actually show up in November and deliver him a resounding defeat.

Jerome Powell Says Fed Effort to Make U.S. Economy Smaller Will Create “Some Pain” for Americans During Biden Transition to Clean Energy

Sundance reporting for Conservative Treehouse 

When Chairman Powell says things are really, really going to suck as monetary policy tries to support Biden’s goals to reduce energy supplies, will people believe him?

The agenda of the federal reserve was clearly outlined yesterday in the remarks from Chairman Powell in Jackson Hole, Wyoming.  The Fed chair is trying to manage the economic policy transition by reducing economic activity to match intentionally diminished energy supplies.  Lowering economic activity drops demand for energy. Unfortunately, as admitted by Powell, this means a period of “some pain” for Americans as the central banks join together in an effort to lower consumption.  WATCH:

What does “some pain” mean?  It means lower incomes, higher prices, lowered standards of living and more scarce resources.   During this transition to owning nothing and being happy about it, the pain is your wealth being stripped as the economy is intentionally diminished.

We will not be able to afford much; we won’t be able to afford the foods we want; we will not be able to purchase anything except the essentials, and those essentials will cost much more; we won’t be able to vacation, travel, or enjoy recreational activities; we won’t be able to afford any indulgences; but at the end of the process, we will learn to live more meager existences based on lowered expectations needed for sustaining the planet.   Pay no attention to the elites who don’t have those concerns, comrade.

[Transcript] – POWELL: “At past Jackson Hole conferences, I have discussed broad topics such as the ever-changing structure of the economy and the challenges of conducting monetary policy under high uncertainty. Today, my remarks will be shorter, my focus narrower, and my message more direct.”

“The Federal Open Market Committee’s (FOMC) overarching focus right now is to bring inflation back down to our 2 percent goal. Price stability is the responsibility of the Federal Reserve and serves as the bedrock of our economy. Without price stability, the economy does not work for anyone. In particular, without price stability, we will not achieve a sustained period of strong labor market conditions that benefit all. The burdens of high inflation fall heaviest on those who are least able to bear them.

Restoring price stability will take some time and requires using our tools forcefully to bring demand and supply into better balance. Reducing inflation is likely to require a sustained period of below-trend growth. Moreover, there will very likely be some softening of labor market conditions. While higher interest rates, slower growth, and softer labor market conditions will bring down inflation, they will also bring some pain to households and businesses. These are the unfortunate costs of reducing inflation. But a failure to restore price stability would mean far greater pain.

The U.S. economy is clearly slowing from the historically high growth rates of 2021, which reflected the reopening of the economy following the pandemic recession. While the latest economic data have been mixed, in my view our economy continues to show strong underlying momentum. The labor market is particularly strong, but it is clearly out of balance, with demand for workers substantially exceeding the supply of available workers. Inflation is running well above 2 percent, and high inflation has continued to spread through the economy. While the lower inflation readings for July are welcome, a single month’s improvement falls far short of what the Committee will need to see before we are confident that inflation is moving down.

We are moving our policy stance purposefully to a level that will be sufficiently restrictive to return inflation to 2 percent. At our most recent meeting in July, the FOMC raised the target range for the federal funds rate to 2.25 to 2.5 percent, which is in the Summary of Economic Projection’s (SEP) range of estimates of where the federal funds rate is projected to settle in the longer run. In current circumstances, with inflation running far above 2 percent and the labor market extremely tight, estimates of longer-run neutral are not a place to stop or pause.

July’s increase in the target range was the second 75 basis point increase in as many meetings, and I said then that another unusually large increase could be appropriate at our next meeting. We are now about halfway through the intermeeting period. Our decision at the September meeting will depend on the totality of the incoming data and the evolving outlook. At some point, as the stance of monetary policy tightens further, it likely will become appropriate to slow the pace of increases.

Restoring price stability will likely require maintaining a restrictive policy stance for some time. The historical record cautions strongly against prematurely loosening policy. Committee participants’ most recent individual projections from the June SEP showed the median federal funds rate running slightly below 4 percent through the end of 2023. Participants will update their projections at the September meeting.

Our monetary policy deliberations and decisions build on what we have learned about inflation dynamics both from the high and volatile inflation of the 1970s and 1980s, and from the low and stable inflation of the past quarter-century. In particular, we are drawing on three important lessons.

The first lesson is that central banks can and should take responsibility for delivering low and stable inflation. It may seem strange now that central bankers and others once needed convincing on these two fronts, but as former Chairman Ben Bernanke has shown, both propositions were widely questioned during the Great Inflation period.1 Today, we regard these questions as settled. Our responsibility to deliver price stability is unconditional. It is true that the current high inflation is a global phenomenon, and that many economies around the world face inflation as high or higher than seen here in the United States. It is also true, in my view, that the current high inflation in the United States is the product of strong demand and constrained supply, and that the Fed’s tools work principally on aggregate demand. None of this diminishes the Federal Reserve’s responsibility to carry out our assigned task of achieving price stability. There is clearly a job to do in moderating demand to better align with supply. We are committed to doing that job.

The second lesson is that the public’s expectations about future inflation can play an important role in setting the path of inflation over time. Today, by many measures, longer-term inflation expectations appear to remain well anchored. That is broadly true of surveys of households, businesses, and forecasters, and of market-based measures as well. But that is not grounds for complacency, with inflation having run well above our goal for some time.

If the public expects that inflation will remain low and stable over time, then, absent major shocks, it likely will. Unfortunately, the same is true of expectations of high and volatile inflation. During the 1970s, as inflation climbed, the anticipation of high inflation became entrenched in the economic decisionmaking of households and businesses. The more inflation rose, the more people came to expect it to remain high, and they built that belief into wage and pricing decisions. As former Chairman Paul Volcker put it at the height of the Great Inflation in 1979, “Inflation feeds in part on itself, so part of the job of returning to a more stable and more productive economy must be to break the grip of inflationary expectations.”2

One useful insight into how actual inflation may affect expectations about its future path is based in the concept of “rational inattention.”3 When inflation is persistently high, households and businesses must pay close attention and incorporate inflation into their economic decisions. When inflation is low and stable, they are freer to focus their attention elsewhere. Former Chairman Alan Greenspan put it this way: “For all practical purposes, price stability means that expected changes in the average price level are small enough and gradual enough that they do not materially enter business and household financial decisions.”4

Of course, inflation has just about everyone’s attention right now, which highlights a particular risk today: The longer the current bout of high inflation continues, the greater the chance that expectations of higher inflation will become entrenched.

That brings me to the third lesson, which is that we must keep at it until the job is done. History shows that the employment costs of bringing down inflation are likely to increase with delay, as high inflation becomes more entrenched in wage and price setting. The successful Volcker disinflation in the early 1980s followed multiple failed attempts to lower inflation over the previous 15 years. A lengthy period of very restrictive monetary policy was ultimately needed to stem the high inflation and start the process of getting inflation down to the low and stable levels that were the norm until the spring of last year. Our aim is to avoid that outcome by acting with resolve now.

These lessons are guiding us as we use our tools to bring inflation down. We are taking forceful and rapid steps to moderate demand so that it comes into better alignment with supply, and to keep inflation expectations anchored. We will keep at it until we are confident the job is done.” [Transcript End]