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Trump success with inflation, economy, getting China, Russia, Iran and N Korea to stand down and be less bellicose, brought semblance of peace to Middle East reduced border invasion and went after cartel's reducing inflow of fentanyl and helped raise income of minorities. etc.
Biden successes turned into mostly failed policies. Spent money and created enormous deficits, withdrawal from Afghanistan failed, inflation rose, border collapsed, fentanyl and various crimes spread, economy became dire, bank collapsed, China began to excel, war broke out in Ukraine, Iran and Saudis rebuilt relationship as our influence waned and crime and destruction spread along with CRT and other stresses increased.
Pompeo is an intelligent, religious and sober man. He is a serious man and would make a sound president. He lacks broad charisma and America is not ready for "seriousness." That is a shame but it also is a fact and he cannot raise the enormous money needed to run a viable campaign.
The American miracle can only be sustained if the ties that bind us remain strong. Nowhere is this more essential than our families and our places of worship.
These are the cradles of the American miracle. They are the places where freedom grows and where freedom takes root.
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Subject: Ross Rant
A very interesting provocative article. He says things seldom if ever stated in media. IMO worth the few minutes to read.
The whole concept of the Fed hitting the 2% inflation mark anytime soon is absurd. It is a fact that the CPI and the PCE use differing metric for their calculation of inflation. Neither is correct. Not only are they weighting housing differently, and medical costs, but then they use seasonal adjustments of differing amounts, and those are rarely accurate. By the time we get the numbers it is unclear how real they are, and if they have been manipulated to make Biden look good as we believe happened last month. It took Volker several years to totally beat inflation back to 2% and so this fixation by Wall St that inflation is plunging and the Fed will cut rates is ridiculous. Wages will continue to rise so long as there is inflation of the basics. Oil is not dropping. Food prices are not dropping much if at all. Rent is down a little in some markets, but not by much yet. So after these items, the rest does not matter to the average family living paycheck to paycheck. So do not get all excited if Jeremy Segal says inflation is dead, or some other talking head says so. Ignore Wall St analysts or fund managers who claim the Fed will drop rates in 2023. The chances of that are very low. So just accept that rates are going up from here, maybe past May and into the summer. Just because some trend has occurred in past periods, does not mean they will repeat now after Covid and the war, and the resetting of global trade. Inflation does not go away with 3.4% unemployment and 62% labor participation. One more data point, M2 has dropped by the most since 1960 It was down 1.7% in February. That squeezes liquidity in the market. Not good for stocks.
The jobs report today is a mixed story. Jobs up 311,000, but wages up only .2%. Unclear what the ed will do next but 6% FF rate is looking more possible. The CPI and PPI next week will likely still be high and the Fed will therefore possibly go 50 this time. Very hard to know what is really going on in the real economy.
If anyone was surprised by what Powell said, then you have not been paying attention. Powell is doing exactly what he said he was going to do, but the Street was refusing to believe-higher for longer. It is now reasonable to think Fed Funds will possibly reach a terminal rate of 5.75%, or possibly even 6%. The Street was off by many magnitudes earlier this year. The ten year is over 4%, and the 2 year is now over 5%. The two year is likely a good buy at these levels as there is a strong likelihood that some black swan will happen, and there will be a bigger buying rush for US Treasuries pushing yields back down and prices up, or there is the 6 month at an even higher yield. The ten year might stop out soon, as there is a chance a huge buyer will show up again and drive the yield back down as happened a few weeks ago. More likely some really bad world event will occur, and the US will be the safe haven. See below
The housing market and commercial real estate have not yet fully felt the impact of the Fed actions. It takes time for their raises to take full effect. Defaults in commercial real estate have just begun. The rescue capital business is just warming up. Office and hotels is where the defaults will mainly occur
Credit default swaps on US Treasuries have risen to almost record levels very recently, nearly 40 BP as of today. They are nowhere near what they hit in 2007-90 BP, but they are very high. That does not mean the US is going to default, but Biden and the Dems are playing a very dangerous game of chicken with the debt limit. There is still little chance of a default, but now it is a game of chicken that McCarthy cannot lose. It is to be noted that the House has passed 24 bills, and 20 had Dem votes. Biden folded on the DC crime bill. 170 Dems voted to approve the DC crime bill which will come back to haunt them when they are positioned by Republicans to have voted to excuse carjacking. Look for more bipartisan votes coming. This is not Nancy’s House anymore. So far McCarthy is doing a lot better than many of us expected.
If you wonder why US companies continue to do business in China in the face of the risks, it is because for some, the flow of profits is a big boost to earnings, and they cannot afford to leave. If things get really messy, then they may have no choice and the Congressional committee on China may force their hand. In the meantime China is completely reorganizing their financial institutions and reducing staffing throughout the government which suggests they cannot afford to carry so many employees.
An added explanation for the labor shortage. There has been a huge growth in part-time work. Things like Uber, or part time nurses or all sorts of other workers. I heard a guy who was clearly perfectly healthy and seemed in his forties, say on TV he was a part time nurse because he could name his hours and then had time to enjoy his personal life. The whole life balance bit has taken over the younger generation who seem to be wiling to just earn enough for their lifestyle and not to want for more. So you get shortages of labor, much less trained staff, less productivity, and a portion of the workforce that is unmotivated and lazy. We then have a whole group of workers, who for the moment, can make their demands and get them met due to shortages. This is not a way to beat inflation. There are no new jobs in tech other than coders. The laid off employees get three months severance so they are mistakenly thinking they can just take their time to find a new job. It will be a lot harder then they think. Because they are getting paid for three months the true unemployment rate is not reflecting what is really happening because these people are not filing for unemployment, ,they are on severance-tens of thousands of them. The VC funds are not funding start-ups now so those will close or sell and thee will be more unemployment and less innovation.
The following link is the best analysis of oil investing I have seen. It confirms my ongoing commentary that oil is a terrific investment long term, and in the short run the dividends and buybacks will be excellent. Those academics and other pundits have no idea what they are talking about when they predict oil will fall to $60 or less. The CEO of Pioneer forecasts $90 WTI this year. There is no unused refining capacity and none being built, and pipelines are being prevented, so there is no reason to pump a lot more oil. Prices have to go up as the world economy improves in 2024-25.
Many reports talk about the “strong” retail sales. I don’t believe that line. There is real question about last month’s report as being accurate, and it is not fully inflation adjusted.
With 65% living paycheck to paycheck, and credit card debt soaring to cover basic needs, how are retail sales strong. Something does not connect for me.
As expected, mortgage rates are again over 7%, and the impact is material. Even here in Longboat where sales are almost all cash, there is no activity on houses although condos are selling at near ask. A few people go look, but sales have almost stopped, and this is a high end luxury all cash market.
In case you wonder if you pay your fair share of tax the top 1% pays 42% of all taxes, and the top 10% pays 85%. The bottom 50% pay aero. If the tax increases the Dems propose and NY proposes then the rate in NY all in is 59.4% and in CA it is 59.6%. NY wants to increase state tax on cap gains to 29% on top of the federal 23.85. And they wonder why the wealthy are leaving. Expect Biden and Warren to be on TV claiming all of us are not paying our fair share.
It remains very unclear how the war unfolds from here. Ukraine is running out of capable men, and Russia is suffering massive casualties unlike anything since Stalingrad. Biden has still slow walked key weapons like F-16s and Abrams tanks. The next few weeks are critical to determine the outcome as the Russians still plan to launch a massive attack in this period. The Ukrainians also plan to launch a major offensive. It is unclear if the Ukrainians will be able to stop them. It remains possible Ukraine can lose, or that Russia continues to lose thousands per week as they do in Bakhmut to the point they cannot sustain their mass attack. We just have to wait to see what happens. The head of the Chechens has been poisoned, but is alive. The head of the Wagner Group had better be careful what he eats, and should stay away from high windows. He is a threat to Putin, and to the army generals. Not a good way to stay alive.
The energy used to power the AI computers has grown 300,000 fold in 6 years ,you read it right. It is not bitcoin mining it is super computer power. And it has just begun so ho ware they going to power all those EVs in 2030 with no oil.
Private sector scientists have now concluded the Covid virus was from the lab and it was created by a program Fauci initiated and supported with US money There is a law in the US preventing gain of function research so Fauci need a place to do it. Wuhan became the place. The virus got loose and that is how it all began. I have listened to a world famous epidemiologist describe how it al evolved and it made total sense. Rand Paul as it right and is going after Fauci now who should be in jail. Watch this unfold.
Black activists and the white far left have reached new heights of lunacy lately. The biggest one is reparations, but there are now all sorts of claims that blacks need a special mental health break for trauma created when a black is killed by a cop, even if by a black cop. Everything is racist. Universities claim everything is racist, and you can’t say something that someone will not like. We have reached a point that now all sorts of institutions and companies are ignoring merit and just advancing people based on skin color, like the nominee for the FAA who knows nothing about aircraft operations. If we do not turn this around we are headed for mediocracy, and even worse customer service, poor quality legal representation and medical care, and more crime.
Two illegals just killed a bald eagle that they intended to eat. Not only did this infuriate me, but it points up the difference in the cultural values of the illegals. They come from a different world, and many do not have the same cultural and other values as we do. It causes these sorts of repulsive events to occur. Their views about women are far different. On top of all the other issues of illegal immigration, we are allowing in millions of people with cultural values that do not adhere to American values. And now that the left believes in identity politics and people should do their own cultural thing and not adhere to our values, we are going to see an even worse deterioration of what is acceptable behavior. Now that the cartels control large areas of Mexico and they make a fortune from illegals, it just will get worse. Mexico should have hundreds of US factories, but not many want to be subjected to the corruption and crime in Mexico. After the killing and kidnapping of Americans in Mexico and the border crisis with Fentanyl, don’t be shocked if the US special forces and Marines suddenly invade Mexico and wipe out the cartels. Mexico is a failed narco- state and we cannot allow them to be sending murderous drugs to the US they way they are. China might be behind this as they provide all the pre-cursors.
Here is the giant black swan of all time. This will make Ukraine a side-show if it happens. Israel is going to attack, Iran and it will be an all-out attack to completely cripple the Iran government and military. Netanyahu has said they cannot wait much longer to stop the nuclear threat. Israel considers Iran to be the second holocaust, so for them it is now or never. This is 1938 replayed for them. They are not going to let that happen. An American how is very smart and connected said this week, the Israeli people have green lighted the attack and do not give a damn what the US says or thinks. The above is my personal view, and not based on anything I know or have heard. If I am right, you best be largely in cash or Treasuries, and oil before that happens. We are on the potential cusp of very dangerous and earth-shaking events. The only questions are, do the Israelis use nukes to be certain they wipe out all Iranian nuke capacity, or do they rely on the bunker busters that the US has supplied which probably can do the job, or do they use special forces to attack the nuke locations and destroy them at the same time the air force takes out the missile batteries and naval facilities while the army handles attacks form Lebanon and Gaza. If you think this is not going to happen, you are living in lala land. It is now. The Israelis have stated that very publicly in the past several weeks, and they just met with Lloyd Austin to let him know. Austin told Israel it needs to be a diplomatic solution. Usual left wing idiocy.
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Opponents of judicial reform are supporting an Iranian model for Israel
By Douglas Altabef
The Israeli Supreme Court wields influence and enjoys a lack of accountability remarkably similar to that of Iran’s Supreme Leader.
The controversy over Israel’s attempt at judicial reform has produced some strange bedfellows.
Proponents of reform include, of course, the Likud party, led by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Likud has been in power on and off for much of the past two decades. Yet it has never sought to tackle the issue of judicial overreach before. Many believe Netanyahu has been dragged to the party by his religious coalition partners.
Opposition to the reforms is more amorphous and diverse, as well as less well-defined. There are those who are ideologically opposed to restricting the power of the Supreme Court because they see it as a needed check on the inevitable tyranny of the majority that the current government represents. They also may be acting out of an anti-populist fear of the ruling coalition.
The majority of protesters probably see the proposed reforms as a nefarious scheme on the part of the prime minister. Their opposition is more political than ideological. Witness, for example, figures like Gideon Sa’ar, Avigdor Lieberman and even Yair Lapid, who have previously expressed support for judicial reform. But they are prepared to fight tooth and nail against any reforms that might somehow benefit Netanyahu.
Apropos of this, consider the protests. They have been deeply personal, concentrating on demonizing the prime minister rather than addressing the reforms themselves. How does blocking Ben-Gurion Airport or shutting down the Ayalon Freeway help advance the idea of protecting democracy by leaving the Supreme Court untouched and unimpeded? It doesn’t.
However, it does contribute to the sense that the government is vulnerable and teetering, and with a few more pushes, pulls and pressure, could be brought down. These are the imported tactics of the anti-Trump “resistance” and Antifa.
The irony is that, in taking this stance, opponents of the reform, knowingly or otherwise, have chosen to support and seek to replicate the Iranian model for national governance.
In Iran, which of course depicts itself as a democracy, there are elections and there is a government that, on paper, sounds remarkably similar to other democracies. The president is directly elected and there is a bicameral legislature and independent judiciary.
None of this matters all that much, however, because Iran’s Supreme Leader holds ultimate and absolute power.
With its arrogation of power to itself and willingness to exercise unlimited discretion based on the reasonableness doctrine, which allows it to challenge any and all laws, the Israeli Supreme Court wields influence and enjoys a lack of accountability remarkably similar to that of Iran’s Supreme Leader.
The only real practical difference is that the Supreme Leader can count on the support of the Republican Guards, a highly religious and powerful private army. There is muscle behind the “what I say goes” posture of the Supreme Leader.
By contrast, the Israeli Supreme Court has no army in its back pocket. What it does have is the allegiance to democratic processes that characterizes a well-developed liberal democracy such as Israel. In other words, the Supreme Court can count on Israeli citizens’ fealty to democracy to buttress the Court’s oligarchical rule.
This, of course, is a perversion of democracy. The Court is counting on Israeli citizens, most especially Israel’s version of the “deplorables” in America—the silent majority that picked a right-wing coalition to run the government—to be quiet, acquiescent and cooperative in retaining a body that knows better than them how to structure and run the country.
For the protesters, there is a strong sense that the Court might be the antidote to Netanyahu and could so constrain the government as to render it a political eunuch. The Court is therefore part of the “anybody but Bibi” resistance and must be protected at all costs.
This has little if anything to do with checks and balances and the proper role of the Court in a fair and functioning democracy.
What it has to do with is power. The same political mindset that seeks to pack the U.S. Supreme Court and eviscerate conservative justices is motivating Israeli protesters to blockade the airport and chant weekly outside the prime minister’s residence.
The anti-Netanyahu crowd is willing to tolerate, indeed seeks to enshrine, a system of government remarkably similar to the Iranian theocracy in order to maintain left-wing control of Israel, and above all to destroy once and for all the political vampire that is Netanyahu.
For the protesters, a secular theocracy is preferable to a functioning democracy that happens to be headed by someone they despise.
Douglas Altabef is the chairman of the board of Im Tirtzu, Israel’s largest grassroots Zionist organization, and a director of B’yadenu and the Israel Independence Fund.
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About That ‘Record’ Defense Budget
Biden’s 3.2% increase is a cut in real terms despite rising threats.
By The Editorial Board
The White House is touting President Biden’s U.S. military budget for fiscal 2024 as a record, and Mr. Biden is betting busy Americans won’t look past the headlines. The truth is that he’s asking for a real defense cut, even as the U.S. is waking up late to a world of new threats.
The Pentagon’s budget request may seem large at $842 billion. But the figure is only a 3.2% increase over last year, and with inflation at 6% it means a decline in buying power. Compare the 3.2% growth with the double-digit increases for domestic accounts: 19% for the Environmental Protection Agency; 13.6% for both the Education and Energy Departments; 11.5% for Health and Human Services.
For all the talk about a bloated Pentagon, defense in 2022 was only about 13% of the federal budget. It’s about 3% of GDP, down from 5% to 6% during the Cold War, even though America’s challenges today are arguably more numerous and acute.
China is building a world-class military to drive America out of the Pacific. Russia is committed to grinding down Ukraine and then moving its military to the Polish border; Iran may soon have a nuclear bomb; North Korea is lobbing missiles toward Japan. Hypersonics and missiles threaten the U.S. homeland.
The Pentagon isn’t releasing the finer points of the budget until Monday, but a hefty portion of any increase will be absorbed by a 5.2% pay increase for troops and civilians, needed in part to offset Mr. Biden’s inflationary policies. The White House includes bromides about America’s “long-term commitment to the Indo-Pacific” and highlights $9.1 billion for the Pacific Deterrence Initiative.
But Pacific deterrence depends on a U.S. Navy large enough to discourage bad behavior, and the goal of a 355-ship service remains a fantasy. The document promises “executable and responsible” investments in the fleet, which is a euphemism for cutting ships without adequate replacements.
The budget commits to “ongoing nuclear modernization,” but recapitalizing all three parts of the triad is a generational challenge that is straining budgets. The document nods at expanding “the production capacity of the industrial base to ensure the Army can meet strategic demands for critical munitions,” and Congress last year authorized multiyear contracts that should help. But the U.S. still isn’t procuring its best precision weapons in sufficient quantities to last more than a few weeks in a fight for Taiwan.
Mr. Biden’s largest failure is promising his budget will keep “America safe,” instead of leveling with the public about the threats and what will be required to meet them. The reality is that U.S. military power is “slowly sinking,” as a Navy admiral put it last year, and Congress will have to start plugging the hole.
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Denouncing Israel’s judicial reforms won’t have the effect President Herzog desires
The Israeli president’s attempt to broker a compromise by appeasing the “resistance” is a waste of time. The protest movement aims for a complete halt to the legislative process and fall of the Jewish state’s democratically elected government.
By Ruthie Blum
(JNS) Israeli President Isaac Herzog’s latest plea for judicial-reform compromise was more than merely impassioned. Indeed, his speech to the nation on Thursday evening was downright angry, and with good reason.
As he pointed out in his concise address—delivered with a cracking voice and grim facial expression—he spent the previous 10 weeks “working around the clock, meeting with everybody, including with those who don’t agree with [him], even those who refuse to admit it.” He also mentioned the “harsh and hurtful” criticism he’s received for his efforts, though he claimed to take it “with love.”
That’s a bit hard to believe, given the wrath he incurred from anti-government protesters last month, when he dared to express sympathy for “both sides” of the debate. As a former head of the Labor Party, he wasn’t accustomed to the level of vitriol typically reserved for the right in general and Prime Minister Benjamin “Bibi” Netanyahu in particular.
But all he had to do to spark hate-filled demonstrations outside his residence—rife with threats against him and his wife—was acknowledge the concerns of each camp. The one that favors judicial reforms, he said on Feb. 12, “feels that an imbalance has developed between the branches [of government] and that lines have been crossed for years,” while the opposition considers the bills put forth by Justice Minister Yariv Levin to be “a real threat to Israeli democracy.”
To ignore either, he stressed—before presenting a five-point alternative plan as a “basis for immediate and decisive negotiations”—would be a “grave mistake.”
He must not have anticipated that even a nod to the legitimacy of the democratically elected ruling coalition would be seen by the left and fellow travelers as a mortal sin. Nor, apparently, had he imagined that willingness to discuss his proposal would come solely from pro-reform corners, despite its containing elements unacceptable to them.
He was foolish not to have realized that the Yair Lapid-led opposition, and the movement running the “resistance,” wouldn’t be satisfied with anything short of a complete halt to the legislative process and ultimate fall of the right-wing government. He seems to have wised up a bit since then, or at least changed his tactics.
This explains his frustration. It also sheds light on the shift in tone and substance of his recent words.
Whereas he initially tried to stave off “civil war” by honoring his role as an impartial figurehead and brokering a proverbial peace accord, on Thursday he denounced Levin’s plan by echoing the false narrative of its detractors.
“The legislation in its current iteration has to disappear and fast,” he declared. “It’s erroneous; it’s predatory. It shakes our democratic foundations. It must be replaced by a different, agreed-upon blueprint. And immediately.”
Israel’s democracy, he continued, “is a supreme value. A strong and independent judicial system is a supreme value, [as is] the preservation of human rights, for both men and women, with an emphasis on minorities.”
Because of his earlier insistence that he’d succeeded in reducing most points of contention between the sides—and perhaps to soften the outrageous implication that Levin and his backers don’t possess such values—he tipped his hat to the Israelis who favor the reforms. You know, a majority of the electorate.
“The special, rich Israeli mosaic is a supreme value and, yes, the diversity of the judiciary, for it to [serve] all citizens of the country, is a supreme value,” he said. “And a healthy, stable and clear relationship between the branches of government is a supreme value, as well.”
His pretense of evenhandedness didn’t end there. First, he admonished the “leaders of the country—the coalition and the government at its head—[that] we are at a point of no return. It’s a moment to be or not to be; to opt for consensus and [take advantage of a] constructive constitutional moment that will [enhance] us for generations to come, or slide into a constitutional, security, social and economic abyss.’”
Only afterward did he include the anti-government bloc in his reprimand. And this was without once referring to its campaign to vilify more than half of the populace and disrupt the functioning of the state whose democracy it professes to be safeguarding.
“You—both the coalition and the opposition—have to reach a decision,” he announced, posing the question: “Are Israel and its citizens above all, or will egos and narrow political interests kick us off the edge of the cliff?”
Before storming off the podium, he concluded: “You’re asking me to help you? I’m willing to help you. But the responsibility is on you, all factions. The choice is either disaster or a solution. If you continue as you have been until now, the chaos is on your hands. History will judge all of you. Take responsibility right now.”
It’s hard to fault Herzog for trying to appease the naysayers, whose viciousness takes nerves of steel to withstand. And he’s not only human, but hails from the left.
There are two problems with his entreaty, however.
The first is that the government is open to reviewing and contemplating all counter-proposals, such as that developed by former Justice Minister Daniel Friedmann and legal scholar Yuval Elbashan. Levin happily met on Wednesday with Elbashan, high-tech businessman Giora Yaron and former National Security Adviser Giora Eiland, who drafted the compromise. It’s Lapid and National Unity Party chief Benny Gantz who’ve rejected all overtures to parley.
The second hitch in Herzog’s appeal is that it won’t win him any popularity contests with the radicals running the show—you know, the “anybody but Bibi” activists purposely fomenting the “chaos” that he disparaged. It’s time for him to internalize the fact that they’d prefer to drag the country down the tubes than come to the table.
Ruthie Blum is a Tel Aviv-based columnist and commentator. She writes and lectures on Israeli politics and culture, as well as on U.S.-Israel relations. The winner of the Louis Rappaport award for excellence in commentary, she is the author of the book To Hell in a Handbasket: Carter, Obama, and the “Arab Spring.”
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Israel bombs Iranian weapons depot – report
(AP)Israeli missiles targeted a western Syrian city on Sunday wounding three Syrian soldiers, Syrian state media reported.
The official news agency SANA, citing a military source, said the missiles were fired at Masyaf in Hama province at dawn. Syria’s air defenses shot several of them down.
There was no immediate comment from Israel, which has staged hundreds of strikes on targets in Syria over the years.
However, it rarely acknowledges or discusses such operations. It says it targets bases of Iran-allied militias, notably Lebanon’s Hezbollah terrorist group.
Hezbollah has terrorists deployed in Syria and fighting on the side of Syrian President Bashar Assad’s government forces.
Israel also targets arms shipments believed to be bound for pro-Iranian militias.
Israel previously attacked Masyaf in May and August 2022 killing five people and wounding two.
According to the Britain-based opposition war monitor Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR), the attacks targeted weapons depots belonging to Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard and Iran-backed militias.
SOHR said Sunday morning that today’s airstrike targeted an Iranian-affiliated weapons depot used to arm local forces loyal to Tehran.
The facility was destroyed, SOHR reported.
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The March Madness of the President
Joe Biden’s political utility and near senility serve as exemptions for his often sexist, racist, and creepy riffs.
By Victor Davis Hanson
Another couple of weeks, another bout of madness from Joe Biden and his team. Of recent Biden delusions, consider:
Biden went off in one of his impromptu Corn Pop, or “beat-up-Trump-behind-the-bleachers” fables. These often slurred and nearly unintelligible tales characteristically virtue signal Biden’s own victimhood and “courage.”
They are interspersed with his bizarre propensity for eerie female contact. So we see or hear of his long record of blowing into the ears and hair, or squeezing the necks of young girls. He hugs, for far too long, mature women. He can call out among a crowd an anonymous attractive teen stranger. Or, recently he relates an incoherent but quasi-sexual vignette.
So Joe recalled his patient days in his usual off-topic “no lie/not kidding/no joke” manner (i.e., tip offs that he’s lying). He told us that a noble nurse once would “come in and do things that I don’t think you learn in medical school—in nursing school.” The president got a nervous laugh from the apparent quasi-pornographic reference (but then again Joe is excused because he is a “feminist”), before he detailed her technique:
She’d whisper in my ear. I didn’t—couldn’t understand her, but she’d whisper, and she’d lean down. She’d actually breathe on me to make sure that I was—there was a connection, a human connection.
A woman leaning over to blow into a prone man’s ear certainly constitutes a “human connection.” Yet all of Joe’s fables have different Homeric-style retellings. Two years ago he claimed that the same nurse in question actually blew into his nostrils. What a strange air-pressure technique that must have entailed for a person recovering from brain surgery. But perhaps it was consistent with biblical references to God blowing the spirit of life into the nose of man.
About a week later, referencing that hospital stay, Biden added that doctors “had to take the top of my head off a couple times, see if I had a brain”—a reference that did not reassure the nation he is not enfeebled.
No one in the media had much of a reaction because Joe Biden’s political utility and near senility serve as exemptions for his often sexist, racist, and creepy riffs.
Instead, the media wrote off the nurse breathing into good ol’ Joe’s orifices as belonging to the same weird genre that a while back gave us inner-city kids stroking the golden hairs on Joe’s tan legs, or the shower revelations of Ashley Biden’s diary, or his “you ain’t’ black,” “put y’all back in chains,” and “junkie” sorts of racial condescension (e.g., “Why the hell would I take a test? C’mon, man. That’s like saying you, before you got on this program, you take a test where you’re taking cocaine or not. What do you think? Huh? Are you a junkie?”).
Joe also blustered to a crowd during Black History Month, “I may be a white boy, but I’m not stupid.”
The crowd laughed at the idea that the jester Biden believes white people are usually stupid, but that he, Joe, the exception to his race, is not stupid, despite being white. At least Biden finally referenced himself as “boy.” Usually he has used that racial putdown for prominent blacks like Maryland Governor Wes Moore or a senior White House advisor Cedric Richmond.
The February-March madness of Joe was not through. Sometimes, his venom renders him disgustedly comic, as when he took the occasion of mass American deaths from fentanyl on his watch, to chuckle that the carnage was at least worse under Trump (an abject lie):
‘I should digress, probably. I’ve read, she [Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene], she was very specific recently, saying that a mom, a poor mother who lost two kids to fentanyl, that, that I killed her sons. Well, the interesting thing is that fentanyl they took came during the last administration.’ Followed by the Biden laugh.
Apparently, 100,000 dead at least deserves from Joe a “Trump did it” chuckle.
Joe, for the third time in two years, tripped and nearly fell ascending the ramp of Air Force One. At some point even his supporters will concede that when octogenarians repeatedly stumble and fall, if not put under careful watch or provided a walker, it is only a matter of time until they break a hip and become bedridden.
In another replay, once again Biden finished his remarks, turned around to exit—and had no idea where he was going to go or whose invisible hand he was supposed to shake.
Amid all this, Biden more or less stuck to his now tired rhetorical themes.
One is the serial denunciation of the MAGA Republicans. Usually, he trashes them as semi-fascists or un-American, often in the context of his “unity speeches.” After calling for reconciliation, bipartisanship, and unity, Joe then usually tightens his face, grimaces, and starts yelling about the MAGA dregs and chumps.
If Biden is really angry, he adds the intensive adjective “Ultra” for the MAGAites. He gets particularly incensed when referencing the one percent who “don’t pay their fair share” (the one percent pays over 40 percent of all income tax revenues). Biden is oblivious that the entire Biden clan is under popular suspicion of not reporting all of the millions of dollars in quid pro quos leveraging they raked in from foreign governments without registering as their agents.
Note that his entire team, when stung by charges of incompetency or illegality, usually follows Joe’s tactic of “Trump did it.” So when Pete Buttigieg was criticized for ignoring the East Palestine rail wreck and reminded of his past serial transportation failures, junkets, and incoherent systemic racism charges, he retreated to blaming Trump for the derailment.
Buttigieg falsely claimed that Trump’s past lifting of particular electric railcar brake regulations caused the wheel bearing failure in East Palestine, a lie that even members of his department could not stomach.
Two, Joe creates elaborate fables. In the past two weeks, he returned to his civil rights lie that he was a campus activist agitating for racial justice. At least he did not add his usual fillips of being arrested or standing up to apartheid police in South Africa.
In Biden’s world, he brags he has reduced inflation. Yet when he entered office in January 2021, the annualized inflation rate was 1.7 percent. Two years later in January 2023 inflation went up to 6.4 percent, after hitting a high in June 2022 of 9.1 percent—6.4 percentage points higher than when he took office. In mid-March we will learn of the February 2023 annualized rate, but it is expected to climb back to more than 8 percent.
If anyone compares the current price of eggs, or rent, or diesel fuel, or a natural gas heating bill or building materials to their respective costs when Biden entered office, then he would know Biden’s inflation is cumulative and has nearly destroyed the affordability of shelter, food, and fuel—the stuff of life.
He mentioned lowering heating and cooling costs of American homes through his climate change advocacy. In truth, on average electric rates shot up over 10 percent last year. Natural gas and fuel went even higher to over 25 percent in a single year.
Biden talks about his low unemployment rate of 3.4 percent. But it is almost identical to what the Trump Administration achieved—without Biden’s high interest rates and acute inflation—in the months before the massive COVID lockdowns.
Moreover, current low employment is largely a reflection of reduced labor participation—due to early retirements, exits during the pandemic, fear of COVID, long COVID, the zoom culture, and most importantly the Biden continuance of massive COVID-era subsidies that discourage employment. The labor participation rate has hit near historic lows under Biden, lower than the pre-COVID rate under Trump.
It was not until last month that the Biden economy finally achieved the level of total employed Americans who had been working in January 2020 on the eve of the Covid lockdowns.
As far as interest rates for 30-year fixed mortgages, they were 2.9 percent when Biden took office. Now they are currently over 7 percent.
In sum, Biden repeats the same patterns of deception: crash the economy as evidenced by many of its major indicators, then when a data point reveals a slight and likely temporary monthly recovery, he brags he “reduced” inflation, interest, or unemployment.
We also heard during the same week from Biden Attorney General Merrick Garland who was shredded during his testimony to the Senate. He argued that the vastly disproportionate FBI response to violence against abortion centers versus attacks on pro-life groups was only due to the differences between light and dark—literally: abortion centers are attacked during daytime; in contrast, pro-life shelters are attacked during night.
Apparently his Justice Department and the FBI shut down at sunset and reawaken at dawn—as if either most violent crime does not occur at night or there is nothing to be done about it when it does.
Garland further embarrassed himself when he could not explain the disproportionate use of force in arresting or detaining conservative suspects versus the virtual exemptions given prominent left-wing suspects.
Most embarrassingly, when asked why he did not charge mobs that swarmed the homes of conservative Supreme Court justices to influence their decisions—a federal felony—he lamely claimed there were federals protecting the residences.
In Garland’s world, some criminals committing felonies are completely exempt if law enforcement prevents further violent manifestations of their criminal behavior. So illegally swarm a Supreme Court justice’s residence to influence a court decision, but then stop short of escalating further by the sight of law enforcement—and, presto, you never committed a crime in the first place.
Garland finished off his recent nonsense by repeating the lie that five police officers were killed due to the January 6 protests. In fact, none were. Officer Brian Sicknick died of natural causes after the protests were over. The other four committed suicide weeks or even months later and no one has connected their self-induced deaths with any act of the protestors.
About the same time, a beleaguered Pete Buttigieg went off on riffs about Tucker Carlson, who, he implied, lacked the grassroots, working-man fides of Buttigieg.
He claimed that for all the criticism he has endured, he believes that he will be remembered for posterity for his fight against “climate change”—although he did not point to any concrete result in reducing carbon emissions due to his singular policies.
In fact, Buttigieg will be known but for other characteristics: He repeatedly emphasizes his identity politics gay stature both to note his supposedly pathbreaking courage and to claim victimhood when attacked. He sees transportation through the lens of race and so chases the unicorn of white privilege, whether concerning past freeway routes or the makeup of current construction crews (falsely charging that white men are overrepresented on them). Under his tenure as Transportation Secretary, the country experienced dangerous supply interruptions, ossified ports, and harbor-bound trains robbed in Wild West fashion.
Buttigieg’s diversity mandates either did nothing to ameliorate, or actually led to, a series of near-miss airline crashes, the complete shutdown of the airline industry due to computer glitches and weather, the implosion for a week of Southwest Airlines, the East Palestine derailment disaster, and labor interruptions. In all these cases he either was on leave or a junket, wrote them off as Trump’s fault, or contextualized them as no big deal.
Delusional Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Majorkas has declared the border closed and the nation secure, even as 100,000 Americans per year have died from overdoses of fentanyl shipped with impunity across the open border by Mexican cartels. When upwards of 7 million aliens flow across the border illegally since Biden took office, it is written off as Trump’s fault.
Finally, last week there were several interviews with FBI Director Christopher Wray. He could not explain why his agency goes full military mode to arrest a father and husband for protesting at an abortion clinic while having no clue who has been attacking pro-life shelters.
In Wray’s mind, the performance art sweep into Mar-a-Lago, which he claims was not a “raid,” was no different from having Biden’s lawyers quietly conduct their own “investigations” of Biden’s improper removal of classified documents (improper with an asterisk, since no vice president has the president’s legal authority to declassify whatever he wishes).
Wray could not explain why the FBI sat on the Biden trove until the midterm election was over and then only acted to further search Biden residences when its own asymmetrical protocols came under fire.
Add up the last few weeks, and we learned that Christopher Wray’s FBI is doing splendidly in its even enforcement of the law. Merrick Garland’s Justice Department is absolutely disinterested and treats all sides equally. Alejandro Mayorkas has closed the border and we are now “secure.” Pete Buttigieg is building a legacy for the ages as a climate change crusader.
And an eloquent and dynamic Joe Biden has compiled an impressive legislative record on his way to a great presidency—with the energy, we are told by Dr. Jill Biden, that is more impressive than any 30-year-old’s.
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Lying Liars | PragerU
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This from a very dear friend and fellow memo reader:
From a Colonel who used to work with me. His wife was my Admin Assistant
In the 2015 novel, Breaking Faith, by Graham E. Fuller, American author, political analyst, and former CIA station chief in Kabul, Soviet KGB officer known as “Fyodor" is cooperating with the CIA and explaining to his American case officer, Alex, his view of their two systems, in which he makes some interesting but generalized observations having at least some validity, if not entirely true for everyone:
“ . . . at least we have the wisdom not to believe our own propaganda — all those lies we tell the world about the glories of our communist system. We know better. We know it’s bullshit. But you in America, you actually do believe in the glories of capitalism, even when your working class does not have free medical care, you chase forever after more and more material goods like a dog after its tail, you are eternally unhappy because your television screens tell you what you do not yet have, what you must buy. And why you must be armed to the teeth, and why big business buys your elections. For you, life is consumption. Society is big business. American spiritual life is empty and depressed. No, Alex, I want an end to the Soviet system and its ideology but, thank you, we will not replace it with your capitalist ideology either.”
The KGB (Committee for State Security) was founded on this day, March 13th, in 1954, a direct successor of previous agencies such as Cheka, GPU, OGPU, NKGB, NKVD, and MGB. Following the 1991 dissolution of the Soviet Union, the KGB was eventually split into the FSB (Federal Security Service) and the SVR (Foreign Intelligence Service) of the Russian Federation. Some would argue that “Fyodor” got his wish, his system ended and was replaced by something else. The question is whether that something else is fundamentally different or just a change of labels. In many ways, Russia is timeless.
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Give a liberal an inch and they eventusally want the whole enchalada:
. Liberals are political nymphomaniacs. They are never sated.
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You see, here's the new problem
If the democratically elected government of Israel capitulates on judicial reform now, other than agreeing to cosmetic compromises, know that the putsch will not stop with judicial reform. Op-ed.
1. A judiciary must be fair and balanced. The current Israeli Supreme Court is corrupt and imbalanced, and has been since Aharon Barak took off his mask and made it into a tyranny of the Left thirty years ago. Therefore, because politics is cyclical, one approach to getting a more balanced court is the American way: to allow elected governments to select the judges. That way, when Democrats and the Left are elected, their president and senate select and confirm their judges, and then the Republicans and the Right get their chance to balance it all when they win. It keeps bouncing back and forth in cycles.
If the Israeli Left now wants judicial democracy like America, that would see Israel’s judges named by the elected prime minister and approved by the elected Knesset. That is exactly the American system. Begin names judges approved by Likud. Then Rabin gets his day. Then Shamir. Then Peres. Then Bibi. Then Barak. Etc.
Leftist Israelis do not realize (nor presently care) that the American system has many flaws. To put it mildly, they are no Sanhedrin. American Leftist courts make up their own laws out of thin air, like Roe v. Wade which falsely “discovered” abortion as a Constitutional right even though everyone, including the justices who fabricated it, knew it did not actually exist in the Constitution. Eventually, the Right’s political cycle came, and a more conservative Court ultimately threw out Roe v. Wade. See how it all balanced? It took only 49 years to overturn. Nice and smooth, except for predictable death threats by the Left against the conservative justices. The only fall-out is that 63 million lives were aborted, 63 million souls snuffed out during the interim. That’s all. Truth, Justice, and the American Way.
So the American system is not so great either. The U.S. Supreme Court approved slavery (Dred Scott), separate facilities for Blacks to keep them away from racist Whites (Plessy v. Ferguson), denial of basic rights to Chinese immigrants who could not even become American citizens until 1953, mass incarcerations of innocent Japanese Americans (Korematsu), and other such. All those eventually were overturned, but only after decades of great damage inflicted on millions of victims through several generations.
If the goal is to have a fair and balanced court, then, I cannot see per se why it is any less reasonable, instead of the American system, to have Israel’s judges named by a panel comprised evenly of majority and opposition Knesset legislators. That system likwise will be pocked by significant flaws and corruptions, but all the ideas do. The key is to keep (i) judges out of corrupting the selection and approval process, (ii) attorneys out of the process, and (iii) appointed non-elected government bureaucrats out of the process.
But such a proposed compromise still is flawed. Outright Sabbath-observing Orthodox Jews with politically conservative orientations comprise half the coalition government and probably 30 percent or more of the population, based on elections. Will a system comprised evenly of the majority coalition and the opposition end up naming, say, 5 religiously Orthodox and politically conservative judges, or so, among the 15 to be black-robed? I doubt it. In today’s constellation, Likud is the strong party in the majority, and I don’t see them putting forth more than one or two token “politely nuanced” Orthodox Jews as judges. Sephardim will continue to be under-represented. So that compromise is not so great. Also, what if the majority reflects 55% of voter support, and the opposition 35% and the Arabs who want to throw the Jews out of Israel 10 percent? So how does a compromise that seats equal numbers of the 55 percent majority and the 35 percent opposition on the judicial selection committee come out as a fair deal?
And there is another subtle problem with such a compromise. In America, for example, the elected majority in power and the opposition line up predictably: one side is left/ liberal/ progressive. The other side is right/ conservative. So a system that would assign equal weight to both sides has some rationale.
But in Israel the coalitions and oppositions themselves are unpredictable. It is not as simple as left versus right. It could end up, for example, that both the majority and the opposition are anti-religious. The Oslo government crafted its majority by bribing a few crooks elected on Raful Eitan’s right-wing list. The most recent government had Bennett and Shaked, who were supposedly right wing (“Yamina”), Sa’ar and Elkin and those characters who were supposedly 100 percent Likud just-not-Bibi, Meretz and Labor who represented the interests of Karl Marx, Lapid who represented the interests of Lapid, Gantz who just wants to be prime minister with whoever will let him have it, Liberman who represents the interests of Russian and Ukrainian non-Jews seeking Israeli hand-outs en route to settling in Europe, and Arabs who align with the Muslim Brotherhood whose theme basically is “itbakh al Yahud” (“Slaughter the Jews”). Yet other governing coalitions have formed around other issues. So it is hard to see how such a compromise would make sense in the long run.
Maybe the American system is better. Or maybe not. It’s a puzzlement. But one thing is clear: it is corrupt (i) to have judges naming the other judges and (ii) to have attorneys, who are the people who practice before the judges, naming judges, and (iii) to have appointed non-elected bureaucrats in the process.
2. The “Override” issue needs to be figured out. Sometimes a Knesset majority can pass really bad stuff. Oslo. Etc. If the Court is leftist, then of course there can be no justice, and so there almost never is in Israel. So corrupt Left courts will rule that Oslo is OK, and the uprooting of Gush Katif is OK, and preemptively arresting and imprisoning kids lawfully protesting that catastrophe is OK, and Arabs who build illegally in the Negev and Galilee and Area C can keep doing it, and a house that terrorists use for shooting at Jews needs to be kept standing, and a kid can be sentenced to life imprisonment after being tortured for weeks by a Shin Bet that uses Spanish Inquisition and Stalinist techniques, and houses that belong to Jews who rented them to Arab tenants cannot be recovered despite documented ownership, and an unelected prime minister can hand over Israel’s territorial waters and natural gas resources to Hezbollah a few days before that three-time loser (or more) gets booted out of office.
So there needs to be a way to override a corrupt court. On the other hand, there does need to be some kind of check on a corrupt Knesset. I have recommended that a small “Blue Ribbon Committee” of leading American legal scholars whose world views mirror the viewpoint of the current democratically elected Knesset be named to advise and counsel. I offered Orthodox Jewish names like former American Attorney-General Michael Mukasey and American Constitutional scholar Nathan Lewin — both of whom have published strong opinions that Israel’s judicial system needs significant reform along the lines of what the current Israeli government is proposing — and I would add non-Jewish names like William Barr, Prof. Jonathan Turley, Prof. John Yoo, and some others.
On one hand, it is repugnant to me that an independent Israel would even contemplate entertaining advice from non-Israelis. Absolutely repugnant. However, American leftist money, primarily leftist American Jewish and NJPJ (non-Jewish pseudo-Jews) money, is financing the anti-government actions, and Lapid and his despicable associates have made the strategic decision to export to America their attempt at a putsch in the streets against the democratically elected Israeli government. So they have the New York Times and Washington Post fighting Israel, and they have recruited the reform Jews and reform pseudo-Jews who are not even Jews, and the “conservative Jews” to attack Israel from America.
At the end of the day, of course, these American Jews and NJPJ’s who were born to non-Jewish mothers and never converted properly, and the Thomas Friedmans and all the others do not matter. It is perfectly fine for Israel’s government to push forward and implement judicial reform while ignoring all the noise from America as static. But, for those who would like to play the game to gain added legitimacy for what is legitimate anyway, there is that option of bringing in that “Blue Ribbon Committee” for advice and counsel. Then, when people scream that judicial reform is the “death of democracy,” the response is that the judicial reform has the seal of approval from a committee of truly respected American legal scholars.
3. But here’s the new problem — and it is big: Although there can be areas of compromise, there now has unfolded something far more serious than the question of judicial reform. If the democratically elected government of Israel capitulates on judicial reform now, other than agreeing to cosmetic compromises and maybe fine-tuning the “Override” proposals, but not much else that must not be compromised, know that the putsch will not stop with judicial reform. Lapid and Gantz will bring 100,000 Leftists into Tel Aviv every Saturday night to oppose efforts to clean up the corrupted Law of Return. Then they will bring 100,000 to stop Jews from building in Judea and Samaria. They will bring 100,000 out to the streets for marriages in Utah and for public transportation on Shabbat and for desecration at the Western Wall. George Soros and the big donors to “reform Judaism” and the other Leftist Jewish and Pseudo-Jewish groups have endless money to throw around. It really will be the death of democracy.
So that now is the bigger problem. It no longer is only about judicial reform but about whether a head of government can fly to Italy, to Germany, or to some other Axis Power from WWII without his car being blocked en route to the airport. It is about whether the IDF can be manipulated into a Bolshevik force to take the government by coup d’etat if some generals and reservists do not like the elected coalition and demand marriages in Utah. So they now have forced the Government and its supporters to resist and be very wary of making any compromises because, if the Government blinks first here, the deluge will follow. It must stop here, or it never will end.
But what of all those soldiers and air force pilots who say they won’t serve if there is judicial reform? Let it be clear. When Saddam Hussein’s successor is raining bombs on their favorite cafes on Dizengoff and when Hezbollah is firing missiles at their grandparents’ homes and mothers’ homes and wives’ homes and children’s homes, they all will be in their tanks and fighter bombers like everyone else.
And what of the elite wealthy Israelis who threatened to take their money out of the country? The two major banks that just failed have taken the air out of those tires. Netanyahu has offered to help them meet financial obligations.
And what of all the Israelis threatening to leave Israel for good if judicial reform is passed? When Donald Trump was elected president, there was a long list of famous American leftist celebrities who swore publicly that they would move to Canada the day he took office. They still are in the United States. Americans still cannot get rid of them.
And:
Islamic Jihad: Israeli Arabs should launch an intifada
Islamic Jihad spokesman: The Palestinian goal is to create a reality in which the residents of the Gaza envelope will not be able to live.
Gaza terrorists
Abu Hamza, a spokesman for the military wing of the Islamic Jihad terrorist group, on Monday called on the Israeli Arabs to start an intifada (uprising).
In comments he delivered after a military exercise held by the terrorist organization in the northern Gaza Strip, Abu Hamza said that "the Islamic Jihad will cause the stupid enemy to wear down by launching rockets in its direction, since the organization has many other means of warfare that will hurt the enemy."
"We call on all the fighters of our people and the free people in Judea and Samaria and in Israel to mobilize for this war, so that there will be an overall intifada that will create the basis for the end of our enemy and its expulsion from all of Palestine," said the spokesman.
He threatened, "We will turn the so-called Gaza envelope, including cities and the occupied colonies, into a place that cannot be lived in and we will launch rockets to ever farther ranges."
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