Tag: news

Authored by W.J.Astore via BracingViews.com,

They’re Everywhere in America

Soon after Joe Biden took office as president in 2021, I remember hearing that his VP, Kamala Harris, was put in charge of immigration, informally known as the “border czar.” Yesterday, the House passed a resolution condemning Harris for her handling of the border crisis. Yet I’ve also been hearing from Democrats and the media that Harris never was the border czar, even as there’s plenty of video evidence of networks like ABC, CBS, and NBC referring to her using that term.

Denying that Harris was the border czar is a fairly small lie immersed in much larger sea of lies, and of course it’s a bipartisan effort. Donald Trump exaggerates and lies just to stay in shape. Democrats love to attack Trump for lying even as they lie themselves. Truly, it’s hard to run a government and a country when lies confuse every issue.

Another lie being told about Kamala Harris is that her candidacy is the result of democracy in action. She’s the people’s choice! Except almost nobody voted for her as a presidential candidate. She’s been elevated and selected by the DNC and the donor class. She is a packaged product of the so-called elites within the party, the very opposite of a candidate chosen by the people. And yet I’m told this packaged product is going to “save democracy” from Trump, who was actually selected as a candidate in a more democratic process.

Of course, there are far bigger and more serious lies than whether Harris was the border czar or whether she’s the people’s choice as the savior of democracy. U.S. troops’ deadliest enemies, I’d argue, are most often the lies told by the U.S. government, abetted and amplified by senior officers in the military. Think here of Iraq and Afghanistan, or go back further to Vietnam.

Daniel Ellsberg, truth-teller about the Vietnam War and so many other things

Knowing (or sensing/feeling) you killed for lies, or knowing your friends died for lies, is surely a contributing cause to a rash of suicides in the U.S. military today. The sacrifices and horrors of war may be eased by a “just” war, like World War II, but they are aggravated by unjust wars.  And they are further aggravated when you try to get help through the VA only to be turned away or stonewalled.

All this is prologue to a note I received from a regular reader of Bracing Views about lies in America. I’ve decided to retain the profanity because it’s more than appropriate:

I don’t know about you, but I find it quite amazing that, despite decades of bold-faced lying about US wars, all of it proven and even reported in the NYT and other mainstream media, the narrative of the each subsequent war is always accepted as true, until it too is exposed as being nothing but lies.

Let’s look at the recent record:

1) Vietnam–exposed as nothing but lies by the Pentagon Papers.

2) Iraq–exposed as lies when the infamous WMD were never found and there was nothing found to back up the claim of links to Al Qaeda.

3) Afghanistan–exposed as pure fiction as revealed by the Washington Post “Afghanistan Papers” which said that “senior U.S. officials failed to tell the truth about the war in Afghanistan throughout the 18-year campaign, making rosy pronouncements they knew to be false and hiding unmistakable evidence the war had become unwinnable.”

Add to the above list the fact that the Mueller report investigating the Russiagate hoax came up with nothing, ZERO.

Currently, there are a couple of new false narratives duly reported by the mainstream media and, for the most part, swallowed by most people. First is the false narrative about the US war in Ukraine, that NATO expansion has nothing to do with it but rather was caused by naked Russian aggression and Putin’s plans to re-create the Soviet Union and take over the rest of Eastern Europe. Second, the false narrative that Israel is just defending itself against Palestinian terrorism rather than committing grotesque war crimes, completely ignoring the fact that the Israelis have been keeping the Palestinians under illegal occupation for over 50 years, since June 1967. 

Lie after lie after lie after lie. And yet none of it matters. It is all sent down the memory hole as if it never happened. And then it is on to the next war, when the official narrative spewed out by the DC blob will once again be swallowed hook, line and sinker. It appears to be never ending. No matter how much lying is exposed, it simply does not matter.

I think it is pretty fucking amazing. What will it take to get people to come out of their coma and realize what the fuck is going on?

And keep in mind…..it has nothing to do with party affiliation. The lying is endemic, it’s in the DNA of the National Security State. Presidents come and go, but the lying for war-making never stops. And no one is ever held accountable either. 

It’s pretty fucking impressive, when you think about it.

Keep this is in mind……one would think that, after this abhorrent track record, the appropriate response would be to assume that the narrative justifying the new war of the moment was not true and nothing but more of the same lying. But that NEVER happens. NEVER.

How is that possible? Is it just a serious form of denial? Is it due to mental illness? Is it just some perverted form of patriotism? In what other realm is it possible to lie non-stop and never be held accountable? Even worse, to continue to have credibility despite a track record of pathological lying? 

A friend of mine pointed out that, in the old USSR, people knew that the official news on their TV every night was nothing but lies. 

So, this begs the question: Which system is more pernicious and has more effectively brainwashed its people? The one where people are controlled but they are aware that they are being fed nothing but lies, or the one that is constantly lied to but the people still believe they are being told the truth?

To those keen insights, I made this reply:

Our [American] system of lying is better! We have state/corporate media too, it’s just more subtle and advertised as “free.” We have our own “Pravda” except it rarely tells the truth, unless that “truth” is in the interests of the powerful.

To which our BV keen reader replied:

Exactly. But to suggest that we have our own version of “Pravda,” only worse because it has the cover of supposedly being “free,” is tantamount to treason, you realize.

This is the reason why Julian Assange/Wikileaks was such a threat…for actually challenging the right of the National Security State to lie non-stop about its war making and never be exposed for its lying or held accountable.

Of course, that is exactly why Assange was locked away in prison for so long and tortured, not because he was spreading lies but because he was revealing truths.

And we can’t have that in America!

After being caught driving 71 in a 35 mph zone, Arizona State Senator Justine Wadsack is claiming she is the victim of “political persecution”. 

As a result, she’s refusing the sign the citation, according to reports from Jalopnik, citing the Tucson Sentinel. 

According to the report, in Arizona, driving 20 mph or more over the speed limit is a Class 3 misdemeanor. The penalties include up to 30 days in jail, up to a year of probation, a $500 fine, and three points on your license.

And in further proof our politicians get too much leeway, the incident occurred in March, but Wadsack wasn’t ticketed due to her legislative immunity. Legislators can be charged after the session ends, which this year was on June 15.

At that point, when the Tucson PD tried to have her sign the citation, and officer said she “immediately became defensive and argued that she was in fact not speeding.”

The officer continued: “I explained that there was probable cause to issue her a citation for criminal speeding and that she could present her arguments to the judge; however, she refused to meet to sign the citation and said she would not accept it.”

She was “also was upset that she was being cited several months after the fact and I explained that was due to the legislative session was ongoing at the time of the traffic stop (thus legislative immunity to be issued a ticket on March 15) however it did not prevent her from receiving a ticket once the legislative session adjourned.” 

Then, she demanded to speak with the manager with the chief of police and claimed “political persecution”. 

City attorney Mike Rankin commented: “Citing someone – Ms. Wadsack or anyone else – for putting other people in danger by driving at speeds more than 20 miles per hour above the posted speed limit within city limits is not ‘persecution.’ It is prosecution.”

When asked why she was driving more than twice the speed limit, Wadsack claimed she was rushing home because her 2015 Tesla Model S had a low battery.

This excuse is illogical, as electric vehicles are less efficient at high speeds. Even if she had a more plausible reason, like needing a restroom, she was still caught driving 36 mph over the limit. This behavior is reckless and dangerous, the report said, especially near the University of Arizona, where pedestrians are common.

Additionally, Wadsack’s claimed residence raises questions. She and her husband own a home outside the district she represents. She listed an apartment in the district when running for office but now allegedly lives in a different apartment.

When stopped, she was about 10 blocks from her house, 17 miles from one apartment, and 19 miles from the other. 

Authored by Eric Lundrum via American Greatness,

The rate of shoplifting saw a noticeable increase in the first half of 2024, even as the rates of other crimes fell to levels not seen since before the pandemic.

According to the Daily Caller, a study by the Council of Criminal Justice (CCJ) determined that shoplifting rose by 24% in 23 different cities across the country, compared to the first half of 2023. That rate is also about 10% higher than the first half of 2019.

Meanwhile, the rates of homicide and robbery fell to lower than the levels seen in 2019.

“Shoplifting is a theft by someone other than an employee of the victim of an item displayed for sale,” the study clarifies.

“After a notable decline in the first few months of the COVID-19 pandemic … shoplifting dropped 15% from 2019 to 2020 and declined another 10% in 2021,” the report reads.

“Shoplifting increased 12% across the sample cities from 2022 to 2023, but by the end of 2023, the shoplifting rate was 10% lower than in 2019.”

Several of the most prominent cities to see shoplifting increases include Boston, which saw its 11.9% rate of shoplifting in May of 2020 surge to 42.4% in June of 2024, and Chicago, which previously had a rate of 14.8% in May of 2020 but skyrocketed to 41.4% in June of 2024.

Meanwhile, the first half of 2024 saw approximately 2% fewer homicides and 15% fewer robberies than the first half of 2019.

“The average homicide rate for the entire sample was 2% lower in the first half of 2024 than in the same period in 2019,” the study notes.

“The overall decline was driven by large drops in cities with traditionally high homicide rates, including Baltimore, Philadelphia, and St. Louis. Two-thirds of the sample cities (19 out of 29) actually had homicide rates that were higher in the first half of 2024 than in 2019.”

The spike in crime in the United States, particularly shoplifting, began in 2020 amidst the nationwide COVID lockdowns and simultaneous race riots that destroyed hundreds of businesses, caused billions in damage, and killed over two dozen civilians.

Looting was a frequent occurrence in cities struck by racial violence, which was overwhelmingly carried out by black nationalist groups like Black Lives Matter and the far-left anarcho-communist terrorist organization Antifa. Subsequent progressive efforts to curb the power of the police, including several cities outright defunding their police departments, led to the sustained and even increased rates of shoplifting and other crimes.

The last two weeks have seen US bank total deposits rise by $33BN (on a seasonally-adjusted basis)…

Source: Bloomberg

But.. on a non-seasonally-adjusted basis, total US bank deposits have fallen $40BN…

Source: Bloomberg

Which makes us ask again – what exactly is a ‘seasonally-adjusted bank deposit’?

But we will move on from that farce.

Excluding foreign deposits, the picture gets even more malarkey-ful – a $9BN unadjusted deposit outflow is magically morphed into a $27BN inflow by The Fed’s fuckery.

The unadjusted outflow was all from large banks while the adjusted deposits showed strong inflows into both large and small banks (+$19BN and +$8BN respectively).

 

Source: Bloomberg

That’s $31BN of (unadjusted) deposit outflows magically morphed into $62BN of deposit inflows in the last two weeks…

Doe it even matter anymore?

Authored by James Howard Kunstler via Kunstler.com,

“Being insane is the new normal.”

– Aimee Terese on “X”

However it happened this week, “Joe Biden” passed the blowtorch to a new generation and got himself gone from the political battlefield. Delegates to the coming Democratic National Convention (August 19) were duly notified of the selected replacement, Veep Kamala Harris, and ordered to line up behind her.

Not a peep of disagreement was heard among them. Amazing that no one had a different idea. Thus, is democracy saved.

The curious details around this event remain shrouded in mystery.

Reporters for The New York Times and the WashPo could not be bothered to inquire, and their readers are not inclined to ask how all this came to be. It just is. In a culture with no sense of consequence, things just happen or un-happen. It is your duty to recognize that the wind now blows from another direction and bend with it.

One thing was obvious: the long-running prank of pretending that President “Joe Biden” is sound-of-mind fell apart after his mortifying appearance on the debate stage June 27th. Apparently, every last captain and foot-soldier in the Democratic Party ranks was taken completely by surprise to see their champion flicker out in real time, like a forty-watt bulb that has done years of duty on the front porch and suddenly leaves you in the dark. Three weeks followed with “Joe Biden” boldly campaigning as if nothing had happened. (Perhaps his mind did not register that things had changed.)

And then there was the weird tweet on “X” Sunday afternoon when the whole country was outside waterskiing, grilling weiners, carjacking, and yelling at ballparks, and the deed was done. Someone, possibly even “Joe Biden” himself, wrote a letter pasted into the tweet that declared he was bowing out of the race. The White House staff didn’t even know until it was up-and-posted. Rumor had it that Nancy Pelosi and Barack Obama read the riot act to “JB”, who was refusing to follow the script. There were plenty of carrots-and-sticks to finally lever his obdurate ass into motion: not least must have involved any pending legal outcome of the family’s influence-peddling operations, whispers of new whistleblower accusations about offshore bank accounts, perhaps with sweeteners in the deal as to how much schwag the clan could still hold onto in the end.

Then, the valedictory speech on Wednesday, sort of a proof-of-life exhibition, to verify that Sunday’s janky tweet to the nation was for real. You heard a Homeric recitation of “JB’s” signal achievements in office, every one of them demonstrably false. He did not keep our country out of war, or grow the economy, or keep inflation down, or beat Big Pharma, or build anything, or defend personal freedoms, or “make it clear there is no place, no place in America for political violence or any violence ever.” (In fact, the very next day, Thursday, pro-Hamas mobs attacked US Park police and vandalized federal property at Washington’s Union Station, and on Friday all charges were dropped against them — while scores of J6 Capitol trespassers rotted for years in the DC jail.)

What “Joe Biden” actually accomplished in office was the near-total wrecking of the USA. He torpedoed the authority and legitimacy of just about every federal agency, turned the Department of Justice into a Gestapo, seeded the federal court benches with Woke lunatics, allowed an invasion of perhaps 20-million border-jumpers (including many thousands of professional terrorists), coerced injections of an ineffective and injurious vaccine into millions of citizens afraid of losing their livelihoods, promoted gross medical experiments on sexually troubled children, invited drag queens and mentally-ill degenerates to cavort in the White House, spent borrowed money at a rate that propelled the national debt past the event horizon into a black hole, made the seeking of incompetence the number one priority of the Pentagon, provoked a war in Ukraine that now teeters on the hazard of a nuclear exchange, and allowed the CIA to complete its takeover of the US government. “Joe Biden” will go down in history as the worst of all 46 US presidents.

And, of course, in the rush of cascading events the past several weeks came the attempted assassination of the Democratic Party’s nemesis, Mr. Trump, an operation festooned with loose threads, suspicious agency failures, and intimations of Deep State blob engineering. You’ll have to stand by on any of that resolving soon. But many Democrats expressed disappointment that Mr. Trump was not killed, since that would be saving our democracy.

Also not quite resolved is the case of who the Democratic Party truly intends to run for president this year as the days dwindle down to Nov. 5. The current delirium over Kamala Harris is like a relief rally in the financial markets when a crisis has been averted — or, at least, stalled. You have reason to doubt that the Democratic Party’s leadership crisis has actually been averted. Despite sedulous efforts to wipe her record, too many Americans know Kamala Harris as a hee-hawing ninny with a predilection for hapless Marxist fantasies. I’m not persuaded that she is at all comfortable in her sudden role as the party’s avatar. She is rumored to hit the bottle in moments of stress.

The Party of Chaos will supposedly run a “virtual roll call” of delegates August 1st in order to meet the requirements to get on the ballot in several states. But then comes the actual convention with live bodies in murmuration on the floor of the arena, and in the back rooms and hallways, and there are more than three weeks between now and then for Kamala Harris to remind the world what a cackling lightweight she is. A lot can happen between now and then.

*  *  *

Support his blog by visiting Jim’s Patreon Page or Substack

 

Since peaking on July 10th, the market cap of the Magnificent 7 stocks has dropped a mind-numbering $2 trillion…

Source: Bloomberg

As another week goes by (the third in a row) with Small Caps (+3%) dramatically outperforming Nasdaq (-3%). The Dow ended the week green but S&P red (but closed above its 50DMA)…

That has crashed Nasdaq back into ‘normal’ range with the Russell for the last year…

Source: Bloomberg

And the biggest three week underperformance of Nasdaq vs Small Caps since the very peak of the DotCom bubble…

Source: Bloomberg

Treasuries have been broadly bid the last two days, with the long-end lagging (but managing to get back to unchanged on the week today) as the short-end yields tumbled…

Source: Bloomberg

This drove the yield curve (2s30s) to disinvert most sine July 2022…

Source: Bloomberg

Rate-cut expectations rose modestly on the week (focused fully in 2024 as 2025 remained flat)…

Source: Bloomberg

The dollar drifted very modestly higher in a very noisy trading

Source: Bloomberg

Gold ended the week slightly lower, bouncing back today…

Source: Bloomberg

Crypto markets were mixed this week with Bitcoin bouncing back strongly today, back up to $68,000…

Source: Bloomberg

…but ETH seeing ‘sell the news’ relative pressure since the ETFs launched…

Source: Bloomberg

Oil prices ended the week lower, chopping around back in a tight technical range it has found comfortable for months…

Source: Bloomberg

Finally, it’s different this time… it’s bigger….

Source: Bloomberg

…and remember, next week is the busiest of the summer –  massive macro events (JOLTs, BOJ, Euro CPI, US ECI, FOMC, BOE, NFP), coupled with massive earnings announcements (40% of SPX market cap next week).

Authored by Zachary Stieber via The Epoch Times,

The U.S. Navy has agreed to correct the records of SEALs and sailors who declined to receive COVID-19 vaccines due to their religious beliefs, under a settlement approved by a federal court on July 24.

“Defendants agree to re-review the personnel records of all class members to ensure that the U.S. Navy has permanently removed records indicating administrative separation processing or proceedings, formal counseling, and non-judicial punishment actions taken against the class members solely on the basis of non-compliance with the COVID-19 vaccine mandate and adverse information related to non-compliance with the COVID-19 vaccine mandate,” the settlement agreement states.

The review must be finished within nine months, according to the agreement.

The Navy has also agreed to review the records of class members discharged over refusal to receive a COVID-19 shot. Officials “will remove any indication from that service member’s records that he or she was discharged for misconduct” and make sure the discharged members are listed as eligible for enlistment.

The expungement of records must be completed within one year according to the agreement.

All Navy members who filed a religious request for an exemption from the Navy’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate and were actively serving as of March 28, 2022, are covered by the settlement. That includes people who rescinded their accommodation requests in order to leave the military.

Some 4,339 individuals are affected by the settlement, according to court documents.

“This has been a long and difficult journey, but the Navy SEALs never gave up,” Danielle Runyan, senior counsel at the First Liberty Institute, said in a statement.

“We are thrilled that those members of the Navy who were guided by their conscience and steadfast in their faith will not be penalized in their Navy careers.”

The Navy declined to comment on the settlement.

The lawsuit, filed in 2021 by the institute on behalf of Navy personnel, prompted the court system in 2022 to block the COVID-19 vaccine mandate for members seeking religious accommodation. In 2023, the Department of Defense rescinded the mandate for all military branches, including the Navy, per a bill approved by Congress and signed by President Joe Biden.

The settlement features the Navy committing to posting a statement on its website saying in part that the branch “supports diverse expressive activities, to include religious expression, and recognizes that through inclusion we are a better military and stronger nation for it.” The statement will say accommodating religious beliefs is “a pillar of the Navy’s commitment to treating all sailors with dignity and respect.”

The Navy has also agreed to list information advising members of their rights to request religious accommodations, create a training presentation for Navy supervisors and commanders, and pay $1.5 million in attorneys’ fees.

Individuals who believe they are part of the class to which the agreement applies can visit First Liberty Institute’s website for the settlement.

More than 16,000 military members filed religious accommodation requests as of January 2023. Many of the requests were denied. If members received a denial but still refused to receive a COVID-19 vaccine, they were often booted from the force. Branches discharged 7,705 members for not complying with the COVID-19 vaccine mandate. The Navy discharged 1,566 members.

When the Navy discharged members, it gave them reentry codes that made them ineligible for reenlistment.

The Army and Air Force violated their own rules in handling exemption requests in a timely manner, the Pentagon’s inspector general said earlier this year, while the Marines and Navy generally met their timeline requirements.

The Navy, though, was among the branches that the watchdog found used incorrect codes for members who were granted exemptions. Officials attributed the incorrect codes to clerical errors.

Authored by Richard Truesdell and Keith Lehmann via American Greatness,

Is Kamala Harris the quintessential DEI hire?

It’s a legitimate question, given that Joe Biden made it clear during his 2020 election-year campaign that he would only consider a black woman for his VP slot. As president, he also claimed that the choice of Supreme Court Justice replacement for Stephen Breyer would be limited to a black woman.

Not even the most qualified black woman, just someone possessing dark skin and lady parts.

Biden could have simply told the country that he was going to choose the most qualified person for either position.

Instead, he said that his choice was going to be based primarily on skin color and gender.

What has this wrought? Let us tell you, it has positioned the capabilities of otherwise well-qualified people into the corner of racial and sex bias, regardless of intentions. Of course, maybe that was the intention all along.

You cannot convince anyone with even moderate powers of observation that this is not happening. Joe Biden and now Kamala Harris, along with their Democrat power operators, place intrinsic qualities such as skin color, gender, and sexual preference over meritocracy in assigning important roles in government cabinet positions, committee assignments, and security operations.

We have seen the result, and it isn’t pretty.

A former and potential future president was less than an inch away from having his brains blown out of his skull on live television. In a testimony before the House of Representatives on Monday, the head of the Secret Service, Kimberly Cheatle, with the expressed responsibility of protecting presidential contenders from harm during a campaign, claims that she tried her best but admitted the task was just too much. That implies just about everything toxic about DEI. She has subsequently resigned, much to the relief of everyone.

Let’s explore DEI, which is diversity, equity, and inclusion.

Diversity, when implemented by force, is the purposeful dilution of staffing that makes a company or government consider immutable qualities that have nothing to do with capability. At woke companies and government agencies, this so-called diversity has nothing to do with the job at hand. Diversity is heralded as a “strength.” Well, our military has failed miserably for over thirty years using this attribute, losing Afghanistan, losing in Ukraine, and for the last three years, losing on our southern border. We are witnessing a clear and rapid deterioration of our infrastructure, from our airline transportation to our local policing, all due to racial and gender quotas.

Next is equity. This is a term previously understood as ownership, as in “home equity.” An asset you actually own, such as a bond or stock certificate. This term has been essentially co-opted to now mean “equal outcome.” This is an obtuse implication that equates “fairness” with “justice.” It is another divisive tool in the radical arsenal that is intended to confuse, obfuscate, and hide the real objective here, which is to install fringe ideas and intentions that are alien to a majority of the population.

Then we have inclusion. But what is so-called inclusion? It means nothing more than the exclusion of straight, white, Judeo-Christian males. They are today’s most abused, discriminated against, slandered, vilified, and demonized demographic. Brought upon by fad beliefs, promoted by Democrats and almost the entire mainstream media, any failure in society is put upon the feet of men who happen to be white and hold traditional Judeo-Christian values. This is a toxic brew of envy and hatred toward fellow Americans that has taken hold in deeply progressive circles on the left, mostly among affluent single white women but has been touted by the legacy media as yet another club to wield against traditional meritocracy.

A DEI hire will always be stained with the notion that they “Didn’t Earn It” among fellow workers, regardless of their true capabilities. This was hammered home last year when recently appointed Harvard President Claudine Gay was called to testify on anti-Semitism on college and university campuses.

In a performance that previewed Cheatle’s testimony 10 months later, Gay issued a weak apology, which was roundly criticized in most quarters. Yet it was not enough to stop calls for her to step down. Even though 700 of Harvard’s 2,452 faculty members signed a letter opposing calls for Gay to be removed as university president, she resigned.

And soon after she stepped down, it was revealed that she plagiarized her academic work, causing a review by the Harvard Corporation. Even after her resignation, Harvard said the review found “a few instances of inadequate citation” and “duplicative language without appropriate attribution” in her work, but “no violation of Harvard’s standards for research misconduct.”

If a Harvard student turned in a master’s thesis or doctoral dissertation using the criteria used to whitewash Gay’s scholarship, he or she would likely fail.

This is the true cost of DEI.

Kamala Harris represents DEI at its worst.

We have gotten to the point where merit has been sacrificed on the altar of DEI. It places race and sex in place of merit and it costs America every day. We have to look no further than the current Democrat front-runner for the presidency, Kamala Harris, whose early career advancements were facilitated through sordid affairs and race-based, gender-based favoritism.

We are already seeing on outlets like MSNBC and CNN that whenever Harris’ relationship with powerful California Democrat Willie Brown at the start of her political career is brought up, or that she was having an affair with a married man almost 30 years her senior, you’ll be branded as racist for doing so. (Remember, these are the same outlets that have had no issue with using these similar smears when describing Donald Trump’s sex life, especially during his recent hush money charade trial in New York.) And we would be remiss not to mention her relationship with TV talk show host Montel Williams back in 2001. There’s a term for this; it’s called slut-shaming. Indulge in it at your peril of being branded a sexist. On Wednesday, Saagar Engetti discussed the topic of slut-shaming on his Breaking Points podcast and walked on eggshells as he did. (While you’re watching, watch Krystal Ball gaslighting her Democrat audience and followers. It’s hysterical.)

To get an idea of how Harris’ past relationships have been scrubbed, just take a look at her Wikipedia page. There, under personal life prior to her 2014 marriage to First Gentleman Doug Emhoff, you will find just this: “In the 1990s, Harris dated Speaker of the California Assembly Willie Brown. In 2001, Harris had a brief dating relationship with talk show host Montel Williams.“ That’s it. So if you need any proof of the inherent leftist bias of Wikipedia and its profiles, look no further.

Then there’s the rampant and rank hypocrisy of her stand on drug use as California’s Attorney General. She had no problem imposing lengthy jail terms on pot users, including many young black men, as she tried to show her “tough on crime” stance. Later, we find her laughing and boasting about her own use of “recreational drugs” on this cringey exchange on the Charlamagne tha God podcast. The Trump campaign should run this clip in heavy rotation in the fall.

Moving on to her term as vice president, there are her failures as the Border Czar. Facilitated by the mainstream media, she’s walking that back, saying that she was only fostering diplomatic relationships with Central American countries like Guatemala to get at the root causes of the immigration crisis. How stupid do they think we are? That none of us have access to the internet and that we don’t know how to use Google? That Biden didn’t appoint her in 2021 as the Border Czar?

On Wednesday, as the President of the Senate and the presumptive Democrat nominee for president, she should have been seated behind Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu during his recent address to Congress. Instead, due to a “scheduling conflict,” she spoke at a five-day conference at a previously scheduled event in Indiana, at the historically Black Zeta Phi Beta Sorority Grand Boule conference in Indianapolis. This was a clear slap at Netanyahu and Israel, the only true democracy in the Middle East.

But Harris wasn’t the only cowardly Democrat to boycott Netanyahu’s speech. Others included Senate president pro tempore, Washington Senator Patty Murray, who was called to replace Harris. She declined. Other Democrats declined before retiring. Maryland Senator Ben Cardin, an Orthodox Jew who is retiring, stepped up. The whole process reeks of barely concealed anti-Semitism. (It should be noted that almost half of Democrat senators did not attend the speech—another slap at our most important Middle Eastern ally.)

Harris is a great example of how Democrats now choose their candidates and, more importantly, their leaders. Because DEI is so ingrained in Democrat ideology and policy, their entire world is influenced by a person’s immutable characteristics that cannot be changed, which is now the mantra of Democrats. Harris’s failure as Biden’s Border Czar is now being magically erased, Soviet-style, by Democrats and its handmaidens in the mainstream media. It is a case of media gaslighting that will be studied by media and political analysts in the years to come.

By the way, have you noticed how hysterical the Democrats and media get when anyone refers to Harris as a DEI hire? How they claim it’s racist and sexist to make such a statement? Why is this the case?

It’s because it’s true. It is racist and sexist. No, not pointing it out, but the simple fact that Harris was chosen only on the basis of her skin color and being a woman. Anyone can see this, but we’re expected to normalize this racism and sexism because it’s “the good kind.” Another case of media gaslighting.

Racist and sexist gaslighting is what we can expect from Democrats and the media in the next 100 days leading up to November 5. Everything previously thrown at Trump has failed. They will stop at nothing to prop up this DEI hire to drag her into the White House next January, just like they did with Biden in 2020. The whole world is watching with stunning disbelief at how far this incumbent Democrat administration and their enablers in the legacy media will go to foist their loser ideas on the public.

It is up to American patriots to make sure they fail miserably.

Authored by Tom Ozimek via The Epoch Times,

A proposal for a worldwide tax on the assets of the ultra-wealthy that’s being pushed by some countries within the G20 does not have the support of the Biden administration, according to Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen.

Ms. Yellen told reporters at a July 25 press conference during the G20 finance ministers meeting in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, that the United States thinks that a global agreement on taxing ultra-high-net-worth individuals is neither practical nor a particularly good idea.

“Tax policy is very difficult to coordinate globally,” Ms. Yellen said.

“We don’t see a need or really think it’s desirable to try to negotiate a global agreement on that.”

The new global tax on billionaires was proposed by the European Union Tax Observatory last year, and last month, the Brazilian G20 presidency asked its researchers to lay out their proposal in more detail.

French economist Gabriel Zucman, an architect of the proposal, has posited that individuals with more than $1 billion in net worth should be required to pay a minimum annual tax amounting to 2 percent of their wealth, according to a baseline version of what he calls an “ultra-high-net-worth tax.”

The reason the minimum is expressed as a fraction of wealth rather than income is that wealth is far more difficult to manipulate, according to the proposal.

Mr. Zucman estimates in his report to the G20 that the minimum tax on billionaires equal to 2 percent of their wealth would raise between $200 billion and $250 billion per year from about 3,000 individuals. If the tax is extended to individuals worth more than $100 million, that would generate an additional $100 billion to $140 billion a year.

Participating countries would coordinate their efforts at a global level to collect the tax through various domestic instruments, including by a tax on the broad notion of income, as well as a wealth tax.

Now is a good time to implement such a tax, according to the French economist, because bank secrecy laws have been curtailed over the past 15 years through increased global information exchange. A key obstacle to successful implementation is gaps in information exchange, which Mr. Zucman says could be overcome by enhanced surveillance to identify the beneficial owners of assets.

The global ultra-high-net-worth tax proposal is a way to make progressive taxation more effective, according to Mr. Zucman, who argues that contemporary tax systems fail to effectively tax the wealthiest individuals and so undermine tax progressivity and all its purported benefits.

“A progressive tax system strengthens social cohesion and trust in governments to work for the common good,” Mr. Zucman writes in the executive summary of his G20 report.

“It is critical to fund the public goods and services—such as education, health care, public infrastructure—that are engines of economic growth, as well as the investments needed to address the climate crisis.”

Ms. Yellen, in her remarks in Rio de Janeiro, threw cold water on the global ultra-high-net-worth tax, but not on progressive taxation.

“We think that all countries should make sure that their taxation systems are fair and progressive,” Ms. Yellen said.

The Treasury Secretary added that the Biden administration is “strongly supportive of progressive taxation, and making sure that very wealthy high income individuals pay their fair share.”

She highlighted policies proposed by President Joe Biden, such as a billionaires’ tax, which she described as “a very worthwhile initiative.”

President Biden has put forward a proposal for a billionaire’s tax that would set a minimum 25 percent tax for the nation’s billionaires, generating an estimated $500 billion in revenue over a decade.

Critics of a billionaire’s tax have argued it would face significant legal hurdles, including constitutional challenges on grounds of it potentially being recognized as a type of direct tax that is not permitted under the U.S. Constitution.

Whatever happened to the ‘Bidenomics’ propaganda pushed by the White House and amplified by leftist corporate media outlets? Well, that narrative quickly imploded, just like the narrative that President Biden is the ‘sharpest person in the room.’ 

A majority of Americans are livid with Bidenomics. They have been financially crushed by elevated inflation and high interest rates as the national debt uncontrollably soars by $1 trillion every 100 days. The economic pain is very real and has sent households into a downward spiral. Now, credit card debt delinquencies are soaring, reaching the highest level since 2012. 

The Democratic Party’s propaganda machine in corporate media has spent this entire week attempting to convince the American people that Vice President Kamala Harris should be the next president of the US. From ‘saving to democracy’ to ‘young blood’ – the radical left has tried to spin all sorts of narratives this week, even rewriting the history of Harris’ past to skewing polls (see: here & here & here).

The problem with Democrats propping up the former ‘Border Czar’ is that it won’t affect the dire situation for tens of millions of voters who find themselves in financial turmoil because of failed Bidenomics. Many folks are suffering and have trouble paying shelter costs, and don’t get the American people started about food inflation at the supermarket – it’s a sour topic. 

The damage to the working poor and middle class has already been realized. By the way, the pain is creeping towards high-income classes… 

On Thursday, Goldman analyst Natasha de la Grense told clients, “Not a great start to earnings season in Consumer, with very few positive surprises so far. Both high-end consumption and the low-income consumer are weak.” 

With that in mind, cracks in the consumer sector are widening significantly. New data from the Philadelphia Federal Reserve reveals that the share of past-due credit card balances in the first quarter reached the highest level since records began in 2012. 

Here’s more from the report: 

All measures of balance-based credit card delinquency rates posted their highest levels in the nearly 12-year history of the series in the first quarter. Meanwhile, the total number of credit card accounts 30, 60, and 90 days past due declined for the first time in a year, following typical seasonal trends.

Figure 1 plots the share of credit card balances and accounts 60 or more days delinquent, highlighting the divergence in trends across the two measures of card delinquencies this quarter. Although the share of accounts falling behind on payments was smaller, account holders who are behind have larger balances left unpaid. Utilization and average account balances declined this quarter across all percentile cuts, in a typical seasonal reduction following holiday spending.

Furthermore, the report noted total number of credit cards fell in the quarter, consistent with seasonal trends. However, total revolving balances reached a record $628.6 billion. Revolved balances account for about 71% of total outstanding balances, the highest level since 2021. 

The report also noted that “account holders who are behind have larger balances left unpaid.”

Even with inflation cooling and rate traders pricing in the first 25bps interest rate cut in September, the lag effect will be months before consumers see any direct relief. 

Greg McBride, chief financial analyst at Bankrate, told NBC News, “Interest rates are not going to fall fast enough to bail you out of a bad situation.”