Court case on decade-old Obozo policy finally nearer to ruling; NBC says Biden regime plans to defy the courts

The piece below applies to current events, but requires 300 words of background.  Stay with it.

Back when Obama was emperor (since Dems gave him the power to unilaterally decree or repeal "laws" without having to leave that to "congress"), he and his Democrat Party wanted a million more Dem votes, to ensure they would win all future presidential elections.

Hmmm...back in 2010 they didn't have Dominion or "all-mail voting" to help 'em steal elections, so Obama's handlers hit on a clever plan:  800,000 children of illegal aliens had been brought into the U.S. by their parents.  Since the kids had no choice in the matter, and some had been in the U.S. since they were very young, the Dems were confident that no Republican politician would oppose a LAW allowing all of them to remain in the U.S. forever.

So the Dems introduced a bill called the "Dream Act."  Illinois Democrat senator Dick Durbin made its passage a top priority for 2007.  And, since the thuggish Durbin realized passage would be tough, in classic Dem tactics he moved to add its provisions as an amendment to a "must-pass" bill--in this case the 2008 Defense Authorization Bill that funds the U.S. armed forces.

Clever, eh?  Or perhaps a better word is "cunning."

Like all Democrat/"Progressive" bills, the name "Dream Act" was carefully crafted to sound absolutely delightful, even though it potentially added 800,000 new Democrat votes.  The actual name was the Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors Act, which shows you how hard they worked to make the acronym "Dream."  "Development," really?  But this warping of reality allowed Dems and the media to call the poor wee ninos "Dreamers," tugging at the public's heartstrings--which was the sole purpose of the cutesy name.

Problem for the Dems was that the public didn't like it, so the Dems couldn't get it to pass.  In fact Durbin got so much pushback that he was forced to "table" (withdraw) his own amendment.

Durbin and the Dems introduced the bill again in 2009 and tried to pass it in 2010, again by adding it to the must-pass Defense Authorization Act.  Again it failed.  They tried again in 2011, with the same result.  So in 2012 emperor Obama simply ordered his lackeys to stop deporting any illegal who met the criteria in the failed Dream Act.

Then on June 15th, 2012, Obama announced a formal version of this policy, called "DACA."   The emperor did this NOT by an Executive Order, which would have made it clear to Americans that he was formally assuming the role of emperor.  Instead the cunning son of a bitch did it by issuing an "Executive Memo."  

See?  Not the same thing at all, citizen.  Totally different. Yep yep yep.

Now, following the classic Democrat deception, DACA was given a name that totally disguised its actual effect.  So instead of calling it "Amnesty for Illegal Alien kids"--which is what it actually was--the emperor called it "Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals."  Arrivals?  Sounds like tourists getting off a plane.  Nothing in that name hints at what it really does.  Which was the point.

And what "action" is being deferred?  Deportation.  But the name doesn't say that, cuz that might cost precious votes!

So...if a Democrat emperor can't get a law passed, just issue an Executive Memo that does whatever you want, confident that the Repubs will be too scared to impeach the emperor (which they definitely were).

But the emperor wasn't done yet, by a long shot:  Now convinced that he could get away with absolutely anything, in November 2014 (two years after DACA effectively changed U.S. law) Obama announced his intention to expand DACA to allow millions more illegal aliens to enter the U.S. permanently.  (Wiki calls them "undocumented immigrants.")  The Dems called the new policy "DAPA," and in classic Dem fashion the name of the ORDER offered no clue at all to the actual effect:

DAPA stood for "Deferred action for parents of Americans."  See, the phrase "deferred action" was so successful in disguising the true purpose of the first illegal act that the emperor's handlers instantly decided to use it again.  But that's small potatoes compared to the outright lie of the phrase "for parents of Americans."  Because the "Americans" the executive order covered were...wait for it...the illegal immigrant kids who were allowed to stay in the U.S. by the emperor's DACA decree.

So, not just a name that disguised the effect, but a flat-out lie.  Par for the emperor and his party.

DAPA would have allowed unlimited chain migration, so 26 states immediately sued to block it.  (Wiki cunningly phrases this as simply "multiple states," make readers think perhaps 3 or 4.  Technically accurate but totally misleading--almost like the authors of the Wiki are writing pro-Democrat "disinformation." Cunning.)

One year later a federal judge ruled the emperor's new DECREE allowing parents of kid illegally in the U.S. to enter and stay was itself illegal, and ordered federal employees not to obey that order.

As you surely guessed, obama ordered his DOJ to appeal.

It took ANOTHER YEAR for this lawsuit to be heard by the supreme court, but on June 23, 2016 a 4-4 vote found for the suing states and against Obama.  

In November of that year, Donald Trump was elected president.  On June 15, 2017, Trump's head of Homeland Security signed a memo rescinding DAPA, ending the matter.  The White House announced it would also end DACA if Congress was unable to pass it into law within six months.  Congress did not do that, and Trump's DHS rescinded that policy too.

Pro-illegal attorneys immediately sued, and a federal judge ruled that without considering whether DACA was legal, Trump could NOT rescind that "Executive Memo."

So let's review: Obama could DECREE a radical new immigration policy--effectively changing U.S. immigration law by decree, since the Dems couldn't pass a law to change it--but a later president was barred by the new ruling from rescinding that same DECREE by issuing his own Executive Order.

Yep, that's what happened.

NOW:  A full ten years after obama effectively defied U.S. law (which he lacked the authority to do but which cowardly Republicans refused to impeach him for), the case to decide whether the emperor's DECREE allowing 800,000 illegals to stay in the U.S. indefinitely was illegal is still making its way through the courts.  But most legal experts agree that it's about to be ruled illegal by the 5th Circuit, probably within a week or two.

SO...NBC claims the biden regime plans to appeal that ruling to the Supreme Court.  But many analysts believe the SC will agree with the 5th circuit that the policy was illegal from the outset.  So NBC claims the biden regime is prepared to "take steps" to allow illegals that Obama allowed to stay in the U.S. to continue to remain in the U.S.

You may well wonder how the regime could do that without defying the Supreme Court.

That's a great point, pilgrim--right up there with "How did the regime have the power to ORDER every American who worked for a big company to take the experimental non-vaccine "vax"?  

Or "How can the regime send $80 BILLION in cash and weapons to Ukraine without a specific law being passed in congress allowing that?"  

Or "How can the regime allow two MILLION illegals to walk into the U.S. in violation of U.S. immigration laws, and yet stay here forever without being deported?"

Or "How can the regime ORDER the halting of construction of a pipeline that had received every environmental permit required, and was already half-built?

Those are REALLY good questions.  And the answer is, because he can't be removed via impeachment--for two reasons.  First, it takes 67 votes in the senate to "convict and remove," and even if Republicans win a majority in the House and could impeach, there aren't nearly enough votes in the senate needed to convict and remove him.  

The second reason is that even if we had those votes, impeaching Porridgebrain means Cackles would assume the presidency...and no sane person wants Cackles as president.

So because biden's party carefully hand-picked a total moron as VP (while visiting South Korea she said have an alliance with North Korea), then until January of 2025 biden's handlers (who really run the regime) can do literally anything they want--no matter how totally unconstitutional or insane--and can't be blocked.

And what should scare every good American is...biden's handlers know it.  

Of course defying the Supreme Court would be a real firestorm for the Dems.  But fortunately for them, it won't happen before the crucial midterm elections.

Source.

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/immigration/biden-white-house-preparing-take-executive-action-protect-daca-dreamer-rcna49864

Throughout history, crazy dictators have always done crazy things

During the Reign of Terror after the French Revolution, the dictators knew the people wouldn't support them unless bread was affordable.  Their solution?  They simply ordered bakers to sell bread below the cost of the wheat to bake the bread.   Then they imprisoned any bakers who refused to make bread at a loss.

In Venezuela in 2003 the socialist dictator DECREED maximum prices that busineeses could sell every product for.  And they prosecuted any businesses that sold anything for more than the decreed maximum price.  

Point is, totalitarian rulers will do stupid, insane things.

Like ORDERING workers to take an experimental shot billed as a "vaccine"?

Kamala: "The U.S. shares...an alliance with the Republic of NORTH Korea." Wait...what?

Democrats: "Our vice-president was hand-picked by the president because of her faaabulous intellect and instant grasp of issues.  So she is NOT dumb!  If she were dumb, he never would have picked her as his VP!  So neener neener neener!"

Really?  Kammie just made a "state visit" to Korea.  In the Demilitarized Zone she made a major "state speech" representing the country she represents...which is the United States, which is a country that borders Canada.  And Mexico.  And she has an enduring relationship with the United States, just like the U.S. has a very important relationship, which is an alliance with the Republic of...wait, what?

Wait...SURELY even the moronic, hand-picked Democrat female VP isn't dumb enough to have actually said we share an alliance with NORTH Korea...would she?

See for yourself.

Wonder what her South Korean hosts made of that, eh? 

Now I'll readily admit that Kammie was just reading what the abysmally incompetent people who really run this ghastly embarrassment of a government wrote for her.  But those are the people running the country.

Thanks, Democrats.

https://twitter.com/i/status/1575465283325657095

Wow, isn't this BOOMING economy great? Stock market: "Uh...sure. This is just an 'expected correction' "

At the first of this year the Nasdaq was 15,833   Right now (9/29) it's 10,704, meaning it's lost 32% since the beginning of the year.

Democrat voter: "Well maybe, but everyone knows the NASDAQ is 'tech-heavy,' and that 'tech stocks' have wild up-and-down price swings for no reason at all, so this is just a wild swing, not unexpected."

Ah.  Well then let's look at the Dow Industrials.  On 1/1 the Dow was 36,585.  Right now the Dow is at 29,070.  Of course there are still two hours of trading today, so it could trim the current 600-point loss.  But if it doesn't, the Dow will be down 20% this year.

Or the S&P 500: Started the year at 4,796.  Right now it's at 3,619, so down 24.5% or so.

But the Media and the regime lackeys keep telling us the economy is booming.  That is SUCH a relief, eh?  Cuz for a few days there some of us thought maybe we might have been in a "recession."  Fortunately the regime and every member of the Mainstream Media quickly told us the economy was actually booming.

"Greatest recovery in history," they said.  "Due entirely to our faaaabulous Democrats passing bills spending $2 TRILLION"-- that we didn't have, but that your senile preznit quickly signed into LAWS.

So obviously those laws worked as designed--just like the "vaccines."  "Safe...and effective." 

How the biden regime should have tested the so-called "vaccines"

 

You've seen this backdrop before. Why would his handlers build a fake set?

Porridgebrain has appeared on TV innumerable times in front of the backdrop you see below.  It's complete with "outdoor scenery" behind the fake windows.  Convincing, eh?

If you didn't know this set was fake, it was because the Mainstream Media never told ya.  Apparently they didn't point that out to ya because it was too "on the nose," eh?  Fake backdrop for a fake preznit.

Would it occur to most Americans to wonder why a regime would go to the expense of building a fake backdrop to make it appear that the preznit was in the White House?

Democrat voter: "He's the president so he can do anything he wants!"

Ah, like violating U.S. law by allowing a literally unlimited number of illegals to stay in the U.S.--over 3.8 million since he was installed?  That sort of 'anything he wants'?

Also, your clever reply didn't even get close to answering the question: "Why would the regime go to this trouble when they've got all manner of real backdrops, eh?

Fake backdrops for a fake president

New York to give $200 MILLION to ex-felons to set them up as licensed pot sellers. Seriously.

New York legalized the possession and use of marijuana last year.

Of course the politicians weren't about to let just anybody sell pot.  Heaven forbid!  Instead they decreed that the only people who could legally sell the stuff had to be...wait for it...licensed by the state.

The state pols will even allow New Yorkers to get joints delivered right to their doors.  Hard to believe, unless you're a Democrat, eh?

Now about those licenses:  You'd think...but why even bother going there, eh?  They're pols, they're both stupid and corrupt, and the only thing they're interested in is lining their pockets.

So...the actual LAW says the state will give preference in awarding the coveted licenses to "people with experience” in selling illegal drugs.  

Yes, the state has announced it will award the lucrative licenses to people with marijuana convictions on their records.

Yes, you read that right.  In fact, the state will even give taxpayer dollars..."subsidies"...to members of favored racial groups who wanna get in on the action. Is this a great country or what?

The first legal, state-licensed "dispensaries" (nice innocuous name, eh?) should open before the end of the year. The legal marijuana market in New York has been estimated to be worth about $7 billion per year.

As you already guessed, politicians are salivating over the prospect of taxing this market at 12 percent or so.  And the state is planning a huge array of taxes, including a complex tax based on potency of the pot, and rules preventing legal pot-selling businesses from writing off standard business expenses.

But what legislators ignore is that persons of politically-preferred pigmentation realize that paying all those taxes really cuts into their profits, eh?  And when you add the cost of leasing retail space, paying utilities, social security, medicare, unemployment insurance, accountants...the stuff every honest business has to contend with...most people say "f-it" and go back to selling the stuff on the street.

After all, there's no longer any penalty for that, so why not?

New York is already seeing $2 billion per year in unlicensed marijuana sales, and it's likely this will increase once duh folx who own dem licenses realize what a pain in the ass it is to comply with all of the state's rules and regulations.

Eh, we'll worry 'bout dat later.  Right now the state is overtly recruiting “justice involved individuals” to apply fo' one o' dem faaaabulous licenses!

Now, if you live in flyover country you may not be familiar with the term "justice-involved individual."  Means anyone who's been in jail.  In New York that's a big pool.

Of course duh pols wanna spread duh "equity" aroun', so duh law say you is a justice-involved individual if you had “a parent, guardian, child or spouse" who did time.
 
You may well wonder why duh state be givin' duh license preference to duh ex-cons, eh?  But it make sense, cuz duh pols be thinkin' "equity."  Dat enough, but also duh pols say experience selling pot bees “business experience.”

Some folks not sure bout dat.  Dey say maybe dude who sell duh pot befo' may not keep duh rules, pay dem taxes an' so on.  You get it.

As one attorney put it, "Street dealers have probably never struggled with regulatory compliance or tax accounting, since illegal dealers prefer cash, so no accounting."

As Milton Friedman noted, “the black market was a way of getting around government controls.”  But hey, doze pols beez LOTS smahtah than Milton Friedman, eh?  Dey sure dat duh former street dealers will obey all duh rulz an' pay dey taxes, jus' like dem stupid wi-pipo.

Yeah, you bet, dog.

So duh pols in Albany done created a "Social Equity Cannabis Investment Fund"--I swear I'm not making this up--to give cash to "certain justice-involved license-holders" to cover their cost of setting up shops, hiring staff and accountants, and paying all other overhead costs.  

Again, I swear I'm not making this up.

The state plans to give duh favored licensees $200 million from duh "Social Equity Cannabis Investment Fund.  And like California, New York will hire gummint workers to walk duh peeps applying fo' duh license to make sure dey get duh application and documentation requirements right.

Duh pols say dey haf ta do dis "to make licensure accessible."  An' dey ain't no bettah use of $200 million in taxpayer funds, eh?

Besides, duh pols say dey eventually get dis cash back through all dat tax revenue.  Yep yep yep.

Now I know some o' ya nasty wi-pipo be sayin' dis law dumb--dat payin' ex-cons to hep 'em start stores to sell pot seems crazy.  Y'all jus' raaaacis'!  Next you be sayin' dat releasin' duh folks charged wif murderers wifout bail be puttin' duh innocent ol' ladies at risk or sumpin'.  Dat jus' silly.

An' you ain' got no say in dis anyway.  Duh pols don' give a damn whut you think or want, so if dey wanna spend $200 million to set up ex-cons and dere kids as legal pot sellers, day do, an' you just shut up, eh?  

So...we're about to watch an experiment.  One thing you can count on: You'll never see the *real* numbers on the taxes paid by pot licensees.  And regardless of how little of the estimated tax revenue the state receives, the pols will tout this law as working faabulously well.  And anyone who disagrees will be called a raaaaaaacis'.

Source 

https://jonathanturley.org/2022/09/27/reefer-madness-the-new-york-law-on-legalized-marijuana-is-a-triumph-of-politics-over-logic/

When 38 lying media outlets describe her with exactly the same phrase, it's the Left's talking points

As you watch at this link as dozens of Mainstream (i.e. Leftist) media outlets call the new prime minister of Italy "the most far right politician since Mussolini" you start to wonder if they're all reading from the same script.

Of course they are.  It's the Left's script, because the Left HAS to destroy her to maintain its control of the world.

Dems: "Walls do NOT work! Really!" Porridgebrain: "The one tax dollars paid for around MY beach house does, thanks."

 

Hilliary Clinton: "I was so distressed seeing the president up there shaking his fists and yelling about enemies..."

Hilliary Clinton is on tape saying how absolutely scared she was when she saw the president shaking his fists and calling for violence against opponents.  Yeah, we can definitely see that.  Take a look. (Link to vid here; pic below is just a screenshot.):

Admittedly we thought it was odd of Hilliary to be calling her own president out on angrily shaking his fists so often, and calling for violence on Republicans, but then Hilly is getting goofier every day, so maybe it's not unexpected.

It’s got to be hard being one of Hillary’s assistants--constantly scanning the skies, looking out for falling houses.
 

What happens if you run up $30,000 in credit-card debt? Now suppose it's TRILLIONS in debt...

Most intelligent adults know that if you run up the balance on a credit card, you can easily wind up paying a thousand bucks a month in interest.

The lesson?  Smart people don't put things on their credit cards.  If you can't pay cash for it, unless it's a house or car, don't buy it.

Now: You're an intelligent American.  Do you have any any idea what the total debt of the U.S. government is today?

I'll give you some help:  In 2011 it was just under $15 *trillion.*  So that should help you estimate the debt today, eh?  So what's your guess?

[I've put a big space here]

Today U.S. government debt is a fraction of under $31 *trillion.*  In other words, in just 11 years federal debt has more than doubled.

 

So what does that mean to you?  It means that just as with growing credit-card debt, the total interest the government has to pay every year on this massive debt must, unavoidably, go way, way up.

How much more?  Well, this year the interest the government paid on the national debt was about $400 billion.  Eight years from now interest payments are forecast to balloon to over $900 BILLION every year.  And that's if interest rates don't go higher than 2.8%.  But some experts are predicting the 10-year Treasury note to reach 5.5% in three years, which would mean interest will be consuming almost 20% of all federal revenue.  (Note that the figures in the table below were compiled before May 29th.  They're already far surpassed by relentless, insane spending.)

And of course interest rates are up because the Democrat regime printed and spent trillions that we had to borrow--spent it to buy votes during the Democrat-ordered lockdowns that destroyed the economy.

And speaking of interest rates, note the table's figure for the interest rate on the 10-year Treasury note for 2022:  Supposedly 1.4%.  The folks who made the table say the rate is then forecast to start a gentle climb, forecast (by the shills who made the above table) to reach 2.4% three years from now.

The above table was made in early May of this year, or just four months ago.  And would you believe, TODAY the yield on the 10-year Treasury hit 3.9%, meaning all the calculated interest costs in the above table are now WAY low.

Wow.  What happens if the rate reaches the currently-predicted 5.5%, eh?

Buckle up, cupcakes.

Source.   

https://www.thebalancemoney.com/interest-on-the-national-debt-4119024#toc-interest-on-the-debt-by-year

From a commenter on another blog

From a commenter on another blog:

What this country needs is a good hard slap.  Unless we stop all the insane spending, open borders, "free" medical care and "stimulus payments," both inflation and the irreversible degradation of our country will continue to get worse.

I can't get anyone to sign a contract to work on my building. Why would a contractor commit to a big project when prices for all inputs are rising so fast that you can't estimate costs accurately?

When rent, utilities, taxes and car insurance are so high, mom's basement starts looking pretty good.  And when enough young people do that, what happens to the housing market?

I see a lot of younger people who don't want their tax dollars to continue to pay for "free" housing, medical care and cash for two MILLION illegal immigrants per year, but the biden government does it anyway, having rigged the elections so we can't stop 'em.

The Democrat-controlled congress and the vegetable in the White House have run this abused country straight into the ground.  So bring on the pain. Maybe the tyrants ruling our gruberment will finally figure out that their vote-buying is insane.

Nah, what was I thinking?  We passed the last point of peaceful recovery in November of 2020.

Italians elect a conservative female as Prime Minister. U.S. Mainstream Media immediately scream "FASCIST!"

Something very interesting happened last Sunday: Italians elected that nation's first female Prime Minister.  Her name is Giorgia Meloni--and she's a solid conservative. 

Naturally by Monday morning every lying shithead in the U.S. Lying Mainstream Media was shrieking that she was a "fascist."  Literally, they were ALL bleating that.

Of course you don't believe that, so watch the clip at the link above, in which Tucker Carlson shows the Talking Heads screaming that Meloni is a fascist.  It's a hoot!  (You really need to watch the entire clip, but if you're really pressed for time start at 11:15 to watch the meltdown among the Mainstream Media --i.e. the Left.)

It's also worth watching as the tyrannical female head of the EU, Ursula Van der Leyen, threatens Italians before the election to NOT vote for Meloni: "If it [the vote] goes the wrong way--like Hungary and Poland--we have tools."  It was a naked, undisguised threat--and the Italians didn't flinch.

So predictably, the U.S. Left was outraged.  On Leftist/Dem MSNBC a Muslim named Mehdi Hasan--who has his own show, because the Left absolutely LOVES Islam--ran the graphic "Rise of the far right in Europe!" 

In case that wasn't dramatic enough to scare enough Americans away, go to 12:30 to watch as the shithead leftist network CBS ran an old newsreel clip of Mussolini's troops marching through Rome.  Narrative began,

"They said it could never happen again!  One hundred years ago Mussolini marching on Rome, plunging the nation into two decades of dictatorship, an alliance with Hitler and a second world war."

See, the Mainstream Media really wants you to not vote for conservatives, so they equate voting conservative with fascism, and "two decades of dictatorship, an alliance with Hitler and a second world war."

Wow. I'd say "unbelievable" but watch your shithead president's speech from Philly ten days ago--the one with the blood-red lighting and the full-dress Marines at parade-rest as a backdrop, in which he said the nation was threatened by "MAGA Republicans" about 20 times.

Of course the Left's real complaint is that Meloni supports her country, Christianity and the family.  And to leftists (including the U.S. mainstream media) that's the very definition of right-wing extremism.

https://citizenfreepress.com/breaking/tucker-carlson-opening-statement-on-giorgia-meloni/

8 months after biden was installed, the FBI seized contents of 1,400 lock-boxes in LA. Without citing a crime

The Los Angeles Times is a Democrat-fellating paper.  In their view duh biden regime and all its henchmen in duh DOJ and FBI can do no wrong.  So as you would expect, the Times LOVED the FBI raid on Trump's Florida home.

Whatever the issue, the Times has always supported the Democrats and blasted any opposition--which is what makes the story below particularly delicious.  I've edited it extensively, but here's a link to the original if you want to see it for yourself.

It's the longest article I've ever seen in the LA Times--meaning that for the very first time, the editors at the Times MAY have awakened and realized that both the DOJ and FBI are totally lawless.  Out of control.

Nah, just kidding.  They still fellate the lawless Democrat administration.

Headline:  FBI misled judge who signed warrant for Beverly Hills seizure of $86 million in cash

By Michael Finnegan, Sept. 23, 2022

On Sept. 19, 2021--just eight months after biden was installed--the U.S. attorney's office (run by Merrick Garland's corrupt DOJ) got a judge to sign a search warrant giving the FBI permission to temporarily seize and inventory the contents of 1,400 safe-deposit boxes at a private storage vault in Beverly Hills.  The FBI then confiscated all the contents and essentially extorted scores of owners to forfeit the contents.

Wait...did the government claim ALL 1,400 boxes contained illegal drugs or stolen property?  

Nope.  But FBI agents drilled the locks on all 1,400 anyway, seizing everything.

Agents took photos and videos of pay stubs, password lists, credit cards, a prenuptial agreement, immigration and vaccination records, bank statements, heirlooms and a will, court records show.

Now, 18 months later, a lawsuit has forced the unsealing of court documents showing that the FBI and U.S. attorney’s office in Los Angeles got the warrant for that grossly unconstitutional raid by misleading the judge who approved it.

They omitted from their warrant request a central part of the FBI’s plan: Permanent confiscation of everything inside every box containing at least $5,000 in cash or goods, a senior FBI agent recently testified.

The government’s justification for drilling all 1,400 boxes and seizing the contents of any box containing at least $5,000 in cash and goods was merely the claim that hundreds of unknown box holders were storing assets that might possibly have been tied to unknown crimes, court records show.

To help you understand this: Imagine you're worried that the government might seize everyone's bank accounts for some reason.  (Sound crazy?  Yeah, so did the "you must take the jab or be fired" ORDER.  And yet the regime did it anyway, remember?)  So you decide to keep, say, $10,000 in cash in your home.  There is NO difference between the FBI raid on the lock boxes and the FBI breaking down your door and seizing your cash because "Who needs $10,000 in CASH, people?  This person was clearly a criminal!!!"

It took scores of agents five days to fill their evidence bags with the bounty: More than $86 million in cash and a bonanza of gold, silver, rare coins, gem-studded jewelry and enough Rolex and Cartier watches to stock a boutique.

Over half the box renters weren't involved in a crime, and they sued.  And in a move that should trouble every American, the U.S. attorney’s office (did we mention it's an agency of the corrupt Merrick Garland's corrupt DOJ?) tried to block public disclosure of court papers that laid bare the government’s deception.  Fortunately for the honest holders, a judge properly rejected the DOJ's request to keep those court records sealed.

The drilling of all 1,400 boxes, and the seizure of their contents by the FBI if agents decreed that the contents were worth more than $5,000, have triggered a class-action lawsuit by box holders who say the raid violated their rights.

Wait...a Democrat-run DOJ violating the rights of California Democrats?  No one thought that was possible!  The biden DOJ would never violate the rights of Cali Democrats, eh?

The unsealed documents also show that federal agents defied restrictions that the judge set in the warrant, by searching through box holders’ belongings for evidence of crimes.

[If you still don't understand why this is an outrage, consider that there is only a hair's-breadth difference between this and the FBI breaking down your door to search your home for an unregistered gun, or cash above some arbitrary decreed amount, and with NO other reason to suspect you've committed a crime.  And as you might expect, the FBI usually does that to people the Democrats don't like.]

The government didn't know who owned the boxes, or what was in them, and had no evidence that a crime had been committed. That’s why the warrant application did not even attempt to argue there was probable cause to drill and rummage through the contents of all 1,400 boxes.  And yet the Constitution says you must have "probable cause" that a crime has been committed to get a search warrant.

In 2019 the FBI believed U.S. Private Vaults was a magnet for criminals hiding illicit proceeds in their boxes.  After two years of investigating, the head of the FBI’s Los Angeles office "believed" that was true, and began crafting a plan to seize everything..

The people who rented the safe-deposit boxes say the seizing of *their* boxes was illegal-- that the warrant the FBI secured from a judge explicitly barred the government from seizing the contents of their boxes.  But the FBI insists it has the right to keep millions in cash, gold, jewels from Beverly Hills raid.

The FBI and U.S. attorney’s office deny that they misled the judge or ignored his conditions, claiming they had no obligation to tell him their plan was to simply confiscate everything, on the assumption that every customer was hiding crime-tainted assets.

An FBI spokeslackey said the warrants were lawfully executed “based on allegations of widespread criminal wrongdoing. At no time was a magistrate misled as to the probable cause used to obtain the warrants.”

The business itself was charged with conspiracy to sell drugs and launder money.  The FBI said U.S. Private Vaults pled guilty to conspiracy to launder drug money, and that investigation is continuing.

The private vault storage company began attracting police attention way back in 2015.  Local detectives and federal agents say they spotted suspected drug dealers walking in and out.

Customers could rent boxes without identifying themselves. Testimony in the lawsuit claims the sheriff’s department suspected one customer was a criminal but was “having all kinds of problems getting into the box that they had a warrant for because of the nature of the business.”

By 2019, federal and local law enforcement had managed to search more than a dozen boxes and seized about $5 million from five drug dealers, a bookie and a debit card thief.

The FBI opened an investigation of the business itself. Through surveillance, informants and undercover work, they speculated that U.S. Private Vaults and a precious-metals store next door were helping drug dealers launder cash by converting it into gold and silver the dealers then stashed in their boxes.  Prosecutors eventually submitted an affidavit to the judge supporting a request for six search warrants.

Five of those warrants were for straightforward searches of the store and the homes of its owners and managers to gather evidence for prosecution of the company.

But the sixth was highly unusual: It sought to seize the store’s "business equipment."  The government wanted to take not just computers and video cameras but also the “nests of safety deposit boxes and keys.”

Logically, if the FBI was allowed to seize the racks of boxes ("nests" of boxes) it would also be seizing the contents, and any honest judge reviewing the warrant request would recognize that as a huge violation of the rights of what turned out to be about 700 customers who had locked away some of their most valuable belongings.

Attorneys in the class-action suit liken the raid to police barging into a building with 700 apartments and taking every tenant’s possessions when the only have evidence of wrongdoing by the building's owners.

Not surprisingly, a spokesman for the U.S. attorney’s office declined to say if the government had evidence of criminal activity by any specific box holders prior to the seizure--let alone by ALL 1,400 box renters.

The 4th Amendment protects people against “unreasonable searches and seizures.” If the government wants to search your property it must apply for a warrant, showing in a sworn statement that it has *specific* probable cause to believe that a crime has been committed, and describing what it claims are the things it has reason to believe will be found by the search.

The key word there is "specific:"  A warrant saying "We demand to seize anything we find"--as the FBI did when it raided Trump's home in Florida--would be unconstitutional.  Yet in both cases the FBI seized everything it found, in violation of the Constitution.

The affidavit the U.S. attorney's office presented to the judge to get the search warrant implied criminal wrongdoing by box holders by saying it would be “irrational” for anyone NOT trying to hide criminal proceeds to use this private vault when a bank would be safer.

“Only those who wish to hide their wealth from the DEA, IRS, or creditors would” rent a box anonymously at U.S. Private Vaults, said the affidavit.

One could as well argue that having locks on your door at your home means you're hiding something.

The affidavit in support of the warrant request was written by a female agent, Lynn Zellhart.  She wrote that FBI agents had seen cars pull up to the store with license plates from Nevada, Ohio and Illinois,  and that “Based on my training and experience in money laundering investigations, Chicago, Illinois is a hub of both drug trafficking and money laundering.  I believe these patrons were using their USPV box to store drug proceeds.”

So, out-of-state plates and "I believe" were the only factors she cited to support her claim of illegal activity.

Other customers were showing up in rental cars--and that too, she claimed, was a sign of drug dealers evading law enforcement.  One owner of the storage business told a government witness that the store’s best customers were “bookies, prostitutes and weed guys.”  That was in the affidavit.

Of all the box holders, Zellhart mentioned only nine, identifying some by their initials or not at all. She said they were “linked” or “associated” with law enforcement investigations, but failed to provide a single claim of specific criminal misconduct.

As part of the box-holders' lawsuit the judge required Zellhart to be deposed, and in that deposition she was asked, “Was it your opinion that most of the people who rented safe-deposit boxes were criminals in some way?”

She replied, “I was expecting a lot of criminals.  I don’t know about most.”

The attorney reminded her of the language in her affidavit.

“I don’t sort of know how to answer your question as to whether it was all of them or was most of them,” she responded. “I don’t — I don’t have a percentage.”

On the affidavit’s 84th page, the government assured the judge who granted the search warrant that the FBI would respect customers’ rights.  Zellhart testified that that particular section was written by Andrew Brown, an assistant U.S. attorney, and the driving force of the investigation.

What Brown wrote contradicts the FBI’s plan to seize the contents of all the boxes.  He underlined the government’s lack of evidence to justify any criminal search of the customers’ property.

“The warrants authorize the seizure of the nests of the boxes themselves, not their contents,” his section of the affidavit said. “By seizing the nests of safety deposit boxes themselves, the government will necessarily end up with custody of what is inside those boxes initially.”

The affidavit told the judge that agents would “follow their written inventory policies” and “attempt to notify the lawful owners of the property stored in the boxes how to claim their property.”

"Attempt."  Hmmm....

Under FBI policy, the affidavit read, inspection of each box would “extend no further than necessary to determine ownership.” But in fact the FBI's inspection of the boxes went substantially further — just as the government planned, according to FBI records filed in court.

By the time the judge received the warrant request, the FBI had been preparing an enormous forfeiture operation for at least six months, according to Jessie Murray, the chief of the FBI’s asset forfeiture unit in Los Angeles.

In the summer of 2020, she testified, Matthew Moon, then one of the highest-ranking FBI agents in Los Angeles, asked her if her team “was capable of handling a possible large-scale seizure” of safe-deposit boxes at U.S. Private Vaults.

Murray told him yes. She recalled joining a conference call in late 2020 and another in early 2021 to plan forfeitures of the box contents with the U.S. attorney’s office, other federal and local agencies, and “maybe even our legal forfeiture unit at [FBI] headquarters in D.C.”

In the most damning admission, the woman who drafted most of the affidavit, and a colleague, confirmed in a memo to fellow agents that the FBI planned to seize the contents of all the boxes.  That memo contained detailed instructions for carrying out the raid.

The memo was approved by Moon and two other senior FBI managers.

Murray testified that once she reviewed the final draft of the affidavit, it was clear to her that the FBI planned to seize and confiscate the contents of every box that met the $5,000 minimum set by the Justice Department’s Asset Forfeiture Policy Manual.

Murray offered no explanation for why the FBI believed it had legal grounds to take away the assets of hundreds of unknown box holders based merely on *possible* ties to unknown crimes.

To confiscate an asset under U.S. forfeiture laws, the government must first have evidence that it was derived from criminal conduct or used to facilitate it.  [Yet dozens of innocent Americans have had thousands of dollars of cash seized by the government and never returned, with no evidence of a crime ever being presented.]

In a court filing in the class-action case, Brown and other prosecutors claimed the FBI had no obligation at all to tell the judge from whom the FBI sought the warrant that the FBI planned to seize all the contents of all boxes containing the threshold amount of cash "or valuables."

The government's reasoning was ludicrous:  FBI agents, it claimed only “owe a duty of candor to courts about known facts that have already occurred.”  Translation: We are totally free to lie about what we *plan* to do.

The judge who issued the warrant explicitly limited the scope of the raid, saying the warrant did not authorize a criminal search or seizure of the contents of the safety deposit boxes.

The judge gave the FBI permission to inventory the contents of each box to protect against theft accusations. He ordered agents to identify the owners and notify them that they could claim their property.

But by then, Zellhart and her colleague had already told agents in their memo to take notes on anything that suggests any of the cash “may be criminal proceeds,” such as whether it was bundled in rubber bands or smelled like marijuana.

The FBI also had dogs sniff all the cash for any odor of marijuana or other drugs—notoriously unreliable evidence in a state where marijuana is legal — to convince judges to approve confiscation of box holders’ money.

In the raid’s aftermath, the criminal case against U.S. Private Vaults sputtered to an end with nobody sent to prison.

The company went out of business. It was sentenced to pay a $1.1-million fine for laundering drug money, but prosecutors conceded it lacked the means to pay it.

Under a plea deal, the U.S. attorney’s office agreed not to prosecute the company’s owners, despite a Justice Department policy under Atty. Gen. Merrick Garland to hold individuals accountable for corporate wrongdoing — and despite Zellhart telling the judge it was “owned and managed by criminals.”

The FBI and U.S. attorney’s offices both refused repeated requests by the Times for a full accounting of what was seized. They have refused to say how much the government seized, how much it's kept and how much it has returned.

Records from dozens of lawsuits stemming from the raid make clear, though, that it produced a windfall of tens of millions of dollars for the Justice Department. Local police departments that assisted in the raid have sought shares of the money, according to Murray.

Some of the government’s gains came from customers who abandoned their boxes. “There’s a good number of people who just said, ‘I don’t want it,’ ” Zellhart testified. “I think there was 20 or 30 of those.”

When the FBI vacated U.S. Private Vaults, it posted a notice in the store window inviting customers to claim their property. The FBI went on to investigate anyone who stepped forward, checking their bank records, state tax returns, DMV files and criminal histories, agents testified.

Zellhart testified that the FBI was just making sure it was returning things to rightful owners.

Many box holders have agreed to give up a portion of their cash and property after deciding it was not worth spending tens of thousands of dollars in legal fees — or more — to recover the rest.

Some of those, and many others, have faced baseless FBI accusations of criminal wrongdoing. In May 2021, the FBI claimed the contents of 369 boxes — including the $86 million in cash — were linked to crime and filed papers for confiscation through forfeiture.

In some of those cases, prosecutors cited no evidence that the money was tied to any specific crime, merely claiming that a dog smelled drug residue on the cash, or that it was bagged or wrapped in a way that aroused suspicion of drug trafficking.

In a few other cases, prosecutors and the FBI accused box holders by name of committing multiple felonies but offered no evidence to back up those accusations, and ultimately gave back everything.

One of those customers was a glassware maker who kept more than $340,000 in cash and gold in his box.

In a court declaration, he said he rented the box in 2020 because it was a “disturbing and scary” time of social upheaval, and he distrusted banks.

“Protests and riots were the normal news, banks had been boarding up their windows, and emergency alerts were prompting people to stay indoors after curfew,” he wrote.

Prosecutors falsely accused the man of fraud, racketeering, conspiracy, drug trafficking and money laundering. FBI agent Madison MacDonald — who co-authored the raid plan — filed a sworn statement saying the allegations were true.

The complaint included no evidence the glassware maker had committed any of those crimes, but alleged he had “an extensive history of narcotic trafficking arrests and convictions.”

The man’s lawyer blasted prosecutors for exaggerating expunged misdemeanors, saying they intentionally omitted that the man had been arrested 16 years ago and was never convicted of a felony.

Spokespersons for both the FBI and U.S. attorney’s office declined to comment on the case.

Prosecutors demanded that the glassmaker provide a sworn statement on when, why and from whom he received every dollar of the $340,000; the names of everyone who’d given him gifts since 2017; five years of tax returns for him and his wife, a doctor; and all of their bank and investment account numbers.

“Before proceeding too far down the road on this case, do you have a settlement offer to resolve this matter?” Assistant U.S. Atty. Victor Rodgers asked the man's attorney in an email just six days later after making the clearly unreasonable demands. “The government is prepared to be reasonable in connection with a resolution, and I think that an early settlement of this case would probably be beneficial to both parties.”

The man refused the government's offer that he pay to settle.  Instead his attorney asked U.S. District Judge Mark C. Scarsi to “put a stop to the government’s abuse and overreach” by dismissing the complaint.

On March 9, nearly a year after the FBI seized the man’s cash and gold, Scarsi ordered the government to give it back.
===

Now, I think it's likely that the vault was run by crooks for the benefit of other crooks.  But the egregious lies by the FBLie and DOJ again show--as if more showing is needed--that those agencies have abandoned all pretense of acting lawfully--much like the entire Democrat regime. 

The Times was ecstatic about the FBI's unconstitutional raid on Trump's home. But when the lawless FBI seized valuables from innocent friends of theirs, not so much.  It's the definition of "double standard"--which is one of the defining characteristics of Democrats today.

A sharp analyst explains how rising interest rates are likely to clobber stock prices of large companies

"It's not possible to predict the future!"  Wait...is it?

I don't pretend to have any mystical perception, but a huge swath of future events are easily predictable to anyone who knows what numbers mean and can do simple math.

One such analyst is Karl Denninger, who seems to be very good with numbers.  He's been watching interest rates, including on bonds, and let's just say...well let's let him say it:

No, the stock market is nowhere near a "buying point" or bottom.  In fact its probably still substantially overpriced, even with the drop so far this year.  Here's why.

Interest rates.

For young Americans: Big companies raise money by either selling stock or issuing bonds.  Large companies often have $100 BILLION in bond debt--on which they pay interest every year.

Corporations almost never pay off bond debt, but instead "roll it over" by issuing new bonds to fund the cost of retiring bonds as they reach their "maturity date."  Since about 1980, interest rates have slowly fallen, so the cost of borrowing money has fallen.  So for the past 40 years, when a bond "matures," the interest the company must pay on the new one has been less each time.

That's great.  But what if interest rates start rising--as they're doing now?  

People say the Fed "can't" raise interest rates.  Except it did.  As a result, the rate on the 10-year Treasury is likely headed to about 5%, meaning a top-rated corporate bond should carry an interest rate between 5.5 and 6%.

This means that the next time the top-rated companies in the U.S. roll over their bond debt, which they all will within the next couple to ten years, every big bond-issuing company will be paying that 6%, where before the rollover they were paying 2 or 3%!  The only other option is for the company to pay the face value in cash.

To see what this will do, take a firm that's regarded as very well-managed -- Berkshire.  They have $119 billion in bond debt.  Let's assume all those bonds currently have a 2% "coupon" [interest rate], meaning the company is paying $2.38 billion per year in interest on those bonds.  

So what happens if the cost of carrying that debt doubles--much less triples?

Their net income is $11.7 billion, so if interest expense doubles that cuts their net income by 20%.  If interest goes to 6% net income drops by a massive 40%.

The current price of the company's stock is sustained by its impressive net income.  What do you think will happen to the stock price if that net income drops 40%?

Yeah, that's what I thought.

Given the quality of Berkshire's management, what you're going to find in most other firms is likely to be much worse.  Buckle up.

Source.

Just keep telling yourself:  "It is NOT possible to predict the future!  No one can predict the result of stupid government policies."  

Ah, you mean like printing trillions of dollars of currency and not expecting staggering inflation?  And then using your stolen control to pass a LAW cunningly mis-named the "Inflation Reduction Act" that doesn't contain a single inflation-reducing policy.  Yeah, who could possibly predict the result, eh?

I feel sorry for all the millions of Americans who have worked hard and obeyed all the rules for their entire lives, only to watch helplessly as it's all taken away by a corrupt government, installed by stupid voters and some paid helpers.

From: White House Chief of Staff . Subject: Talking points for Monday

From: Office of the Chief of Staff for the President
To: Our Media Friends
Subject: Talking Points for Monday, September 26th, 2022

1. Ukraine war: Your stories should emphasize that because of the president's strong leadership, Ukraine is winning.  We will be less than pleased with any stories claiming that any of the money the U.S. has sent is being wasted, or that not all the weapons we've sent have reached Ukrainian forces.  It's war, and these things happen, eh?

2. Climate change: If you're looking for great stories, this is it.  It remains the biggest threat to the world.  Your stories should emphasize the importance of ending all use of dirty, polluting, planet-killing, child-killing "fossil fuels" and replacing them with clean, non-polluting electricity.  A great lede is something along the lines of "You don't want to sentence your precious children to death by asphyxiation, do you?"  Stories like that are a sure Pulitzer.

3. Supply chain crisis is solved.  Forward-thinking mothers are already planning for the Winter Soltice holidays, so they'll be relieved to learn that toys will be in ample supply this year thanks to the heroic efforts of the president's strong, muscular choice for Transportation Secretary, Pete Buttigeig.  And if you'd like to give your stories that extra Pulitzer aura by showing adorable pics of the twin girls he and his husband adopted, just ask my staff.

4. Covid19:  Thanks to the hard work by the president's hand-picked head of the CDC and Dr. Fauci, Covid has been virtually eradicated in the U.S.  But we also know the virus mutates, so to keep your precious children totally safe against the new BA.5 variant, you and your kids should get the latest booster shot.  Which is *totally* safe and effective, just like they've always been after the president's hand-picked head of the health division of HHS, Admiral Rachel Levine, ordered the flawed vaccine produced by Trump to be reworked to make it safe.  All your stories should be sure to mention that.

5. The southern border:  As Secretary Mayorkas and your presidnt's hand-picked vice-president have said, it's totally under control.  The president's hand-picked team is totally complying with all U.S. laws, and we will not be amused if any of your stories question this.  You should emphasize that everyone who enters the U.S. is a "refugee," miserably hungry, wearing patched clothes and so poor that their cell phones only have 16 GB of memory.  So naturally we're doing everything we can to welcome those poor "refugees."
     Also, if your news organization wants to run photos of the refugees, don't take your own, but contact us for photos.  Far too many media organizations use their own photographers, so they wind up with photos that show almost all men between the ages of 18 and 35 in the frame.  You need to avoid that, because that makes voters wonder why so many refugees are men of military age.
    A great storyline is to emphasize the plight of poor transgender refugee children who couldn't get "gender-affirming care" in their home countries due to oppressive right-wing policies.  It's a sure Pulitzer.

6.  Energy: Thanks to the strong leadership of your president and very capable VP and his amazing, hand-picked Energy Secretary, Jennifer Granholm, energy prices are falling.  This is great news for all Americans, as it totally offsets inflationary trends in things most Americans don't use, like lumber and Kobe beef.  Also, some of you from the west coast may have heard rumors that gas prices jumped by a dollar a gallon in two days, or something equally absurd.  These are simply right-wing scare stories, and if you print them, be sure to mention that:  That these are just rumors pushed by Trump insurrectionists.

7. Voting:  It's important that your readers and viewers know  that everyone needs to vote in November.  Normally in midterm elections barely 50% of eligible voters vote, but this year we expect to see almost 98% of eligible Democrat voters will vote.  Some may think that's not possible, but it's because Democrat voters are smart, and realize what a threat our political enemies pose to our precious democracy.  They know right-wing extremists managed to get Trump's Supreme Court to eliminate a Constitutional right to abortion, so that means it's only a matter of time before the same court outlaws birth control, interracial dating, rap music and recreational marijuana.

8. Student loan forgiveness: This is one of the president's proudest achievements, forgiving $10,000 of student-loan debt for each college student who had a loan, and $20,000 for victims of systemic racism.  My staff has a list of students in each state who have agreed to be interviewed for your hometown stories, and they're all absolutely thrilled with this program.
   When covering this wonderful executive order you should avoid interviewing students who re-paid their loans, and parents who put their kids through college without taking out a loan, because that will just stir up resentment and give our political enemies something to complain about.  And as you know, people don't like to read bad news, right?

9. The stock market: Your stories should focus on the fact that "the market ended last week on a strong up-note."  That's right.  While the market may have lost ground for most of last week, in the final hour of trading Friday afternoon it gained a fabulous 325 points.  Make sure you include that.  This is really, really good, and if the Dow keeps soaring at that rate it will recover the drop of last week in a mere four hours on Monday.

10.  The election: Your stories should focus on the fact that despite the worst efforts of our political enemies to tear down all the fabulous achievements of our party and your beloved president, Americans know we're on the right path.  As a result, the "generic ballot question" shows the battle for control of congress at a tie.  Be sure to get that into your stories.  
   We're starting to see more schools teaching students about the systemic racism of this nation, and the fact that children need to be taught about gender before they're 8 years old so they can receive "gender-affirming care" before it's too late.  Your stories should avoid using the term "sex-change operations," and instead should always use the term "gender-affirming care."
   We're also making progress in Minnesota, Washington state and Oregon in teaching that the U.S. is built on stolen land.  This is all part of our plan to "unify America," since the president campaigned on being a uniter instead of a divider like his predecessor.

11. "Bail reform laws:"  You've all done a great job on this topic, as our internal polling shows most Americans believe "bail reform" means NOT letting people charged with serious crimes walk out of jail without posting meaningful bail, instead of what it actually is.  Keep pushing this, because it's a winning issue for us.  I probably don't need to tell you NOT to print stories about people charged with serious crimes who are released without posting bail and immediately kill someone else, like those poor, poor mentally ill people in Memphis and Baltimore and Philly and Chicago who killed those careless women who were out after 9pm without a male family member, since that just gives our political enemies things to complain about.  We call that "misinformation," and we're working to make it illegal.

12. Crime:  Despite the stories from Fox News, crime is actually down.  At least that's what the official statistics show.  We've instructed the FBI to invent new category names for crimes so that crimes that were formerly under a single category are now split between two or three headings, making it almost impossible to compare the current year with prior years.  So you can cite just one of these categories to support a story saying crime is down.  Not one reader out of ten thousand will discover the truth. And we'll be very happy with stories saying crime is down.

13. The Inflation Reduction Act:  As most of you already know, not one American in ten thousand knows a single word of what's in this fabulous new law, so you can say anything about it and they won't have any idea if it's true.  So you need to say "It's working just as planned."  Your readers and viewers won't know what was planned but they'll guess "inflation reduction," and they'll be immensely reassured to know that whatever was planned is working beautifully.
  In normal times we might be concerned that the Republicans would hammer the fact that not a single provision of this new law reduces inflation by even a dime, but today we've distracted the Republicans with so many other issues that not one of 'em will pick up on this.  So you can say "It's working" with the total assurance that no one will argue the point.
 
Thanks for your continued support, and we'll see you here to celebrate after we pull off the amazing feat of maintaining control of both chambers in the midterms.

Mainstream Media: "It's outrageous for a president to support a war halfway around the world! Unless..."

Your doddering, senile preznit is finally starting to become an embarrassment even to the other sewer-dwelling denizens of DC.

Consider Ukraine: Offering to let Ukraine join NATO was as much of a threat to Russia as nuclear-tipped Russian missiles in Cuba to the U.S. (For young Americans, google "Cuban missile crisis.")  Democrat icon JFK didn't allow that, so it would be hypocritical to blame the Russians for not allowing the same threat to them.  

biden's handlers could have removed the provocation by quietly telling the Russians the U.S. wouldn't support NATO membership for Ukraine.  But they didn't, despite Putin clearly stating this was the problem. (Whether this was just an excuse will never be known.)  In other words, biden's handlers could have eliminated the alleged reason for the Russian invasion, but chose not to.  

No experienced adult could be surprised when Putin reacted in much the same way as JFK--which is to say, as intelligent people expected.

Until Ukraine, Democrats/liberals would have claimed to be appalled--outraged!--that the U.S. would pour 80 billion dollars into supporting a war against Russia halfway around the world.  According to Dems that's something only a right-wing extremist president would do!

The NY Times and WaPo would have expected this from the neocons, but never from a Democrat!  Those of you who were adults during VietNam may recall that the Post and the Times absolutely blasted Nixon for U.S. involvement in that country, conveniently forgetting that JFK and Lyndon Johnson started our involvement there.  But liberals and American communists knew they could score big wins by blasting Nixon and ignoring JFK and LBJ.  

The NYT and WaPo surely realize that while one obviously sympathizes with the invaded Ukrainians, from a strategic standpoint it makes no sense at all.  Which prompts one to ask, why did biden's handlers do it, and why do they continue to support the war?

Much as I'd like to invoke some elaborate conspiracy, I think the explanation is far simpler: I think biden's handlers started to believe their own propaganda that Putin helped Trump steal the 2016 election from their queen, Hilliary, so they were eager to bring about the defeat of Putin in his invasion.  And there's no question that Americans saw the footage of the devastated Ukrainian cities and wanted to help.

But...it's now being reported that six weeks after the invasion, negotiators for the two sides quietly began meeting to see if a peace deal could be crafted.  And they reportedly reached a tentative deal, only to have the biden regime object.  It's said that biden's handlers wanted to “weaken” Russia--perhaps as punishment for supposedly colluding with their arch-nemesis Trump.

If both sides had reached a tentative accord, every good American would think the biden regime would support it, to end the killing and destruction of Ukrainian cities.  Reporters and editors at the NYT and WaPo would expect a "warmongering right-wing extremist" like OrangeMan to block a peace deal, but not their Dear Leader biden.  It's totally inconceivable.

Yet biden just addressed the UN General Assembly vowing to continue to support Ukraine.

Not a word about any possible peace talks.  And of course you trust that if a tentative agreement had been reached between the two sides, the WaPo and NYT would surely have told you, right?  Cuz they want peace, right?  And they keep telling you the Democrats are the peace party while the Rethuglicans are the warmongers, right?

And yet here we are, with the economies of the EU nations being devastated by the loss of Russian gas and oil, due to the trade embargo pushed by...biden's handlers.  A handful of experts at Yale claim Russia may be looking at a drop of 20% in GDP as a result of sanctions...and while biden's handlers may think that's great, that also translates into a huge loss for nations that exported to Russia.

Consider the U.S. stock market response of just the past week:  The huge drop was a very clear way of investors weighing in with their vote on the future--a future engineered by biden's handlers.  It's a strong no-confidence vote in the Democrat party’s policies.

Top that off with the utter, total corruption of every government agency, the endless torrent of lies from high places, the Gestapo-like thuggery of the DOJ and FBI, and the astounding new twists in government-promoted sexual mutilation of American children under the guise of the Orwellian label "gender affirmation surgery."

It's unbelievable.  And yet again...here we are.

We are now 21 months down the ghastly path most of us knew the Dems would be taking our abused nation.  If you Democrats truly believe the 2020 election was honest, then this is what you voted for.

Hope you're all happy about what you did.

Any buyer’s remorse yet?  Nah, didn't think so. 

With inflation in Venezuela at 1,743 percent per year, socialist government just chopped SIX ZEROES off the currency

I started writing this blog because I wanted to predict the future--not with some mystical prescience, but by simply analyzing information that was in the public domain (so available to everyone), and seeing how government policies would be affected.  If it seemed obvious that those policies would cause disaster, I'd say so.

I wrote the piece below almost a year ago, and just stumbled on it while looking for something else.  I think it was right on the nose.  Take a look:

===

The "news service" Reuters isn't a fan of capitalism or free markets, so their coverage is harsh on free-market nations, and gushing for socialist ones.  For the past decade or so they've treated the ghastly socialist regime ruling Venezuela very gently, with few critical articles.  

But even Reuters occasionally lets the truth slip out a bit, as in this story from a year ago:

CARACAS, Oct 1 [2021] (Reuters) - On Friday Venezuela launched its second monetary overhaul in three years, by cutting six zeros from the bolivar currency in response to hyperinflation, simplifying accounting but doing little to ease the South American nation's ]economic crisis.

U.S. low-info Democrat voter: "Wait...what?  Hyperinflation?  Whut dat?"  

Ah, glad you asked.  Read on.

The move is designed to make accounting more straightforward at businesses and banks, where systems can no longer handle the huge figures.

"Designed to make accounting more straightforward," eh?  Really?  Bullshit.  It's designed to make the ghastly socialist government not look so astonishingly stupid--because before the "chop six zeroes off the currency" a cup of regular coffee cost 100,000 "bolivars."  Fifteen years ago a bolivar was worth about 20 cents.  Before the government cut off six zeroes it was worth much less than one-one-thousandth of a penny.

Low-info Dem voter: "Geez, BOR-ing!  Why would I care about simplifying accounting at businesses and banks?"

Good point!  Cuz that wasn't the reason.  Instead the real reason is that the incompetent socialist government was trying to cure "hyperinflation," which has utterly destroyed the economy of a country that just 20 years ago had the jhighest per-capita income in all of Latin America.  Reuters wrote the part about "simplifying accounting" to throw readers off the REAL story.

Venezuela's inflation rate this year is 1,743%, according to the Venezuelan Finance Observatory. A minimum wage salary is barely $2.50 per month.

Low-info Dem voter: "I'm not really a numbers person.  What does that mean to the average elite voter/ consumer like me?"  

What it means is this:  Suppose that after ten years of hard work you've managed to save $10,000, and have it in the bank on January 1st.  Because hyperinflation vastly raises the price of everything every day, an inflation rate of 1,743 percent per year means that after one year the entire $10,000 of your hard-earned savings, from your decade of hard work, would only be able to buy what would have cost TEN CENTS at the beginning of the year.

Low-info Dem voter: "Wait, dat not possible!  Dat just a right-wing scare-story!  Yew cahn't fool me!  I went to Hahvahd!"

Ah, I see you know as much about history as you do about math.  Do you by any chance work for the biden administration?

Hyperinflation makes everything so vastly more expensive so fast--in extreme cases over 100,000 times more expensive than at the beginning of the year!--that cash registers and banks weren't programmed to handle numbers that big.  So the socialist gruberment said Hey, starting next week you bring us one Million bolivars and we'll give you a brand-new, just printed, One bolivar banknote.  Is that a great deal or what?

And astonishingly, this isn't the first time the socialist gruberment has done this: Just three years earlier the socialist government did the same thing to supposedly "solve" the hyperinflation caused by socialist policies--except then they only cut FIVE zeros from the currency.  Meaning you exchanged 100,000 "old" bolivars for one New bolivar.  Such a deal!  And it worked SO well!

And even THAT wasn't the first time:  ten years before that the faaabulous socialist president Hugo Chavez chopped three zeros off the currency.  He promised that brilliant move would cut inflation back to single-digits.  And every "news" outlet in Venezuela positively gushed at the brilliance of this move.

So did that work, eh?  Well, ten years later the government was forced to cut FIVE zeroes off the currency, so what do you think?

Wait, I forgot:  You're not really a numbers person, so we should stop asking you hard questions and let you get back to making economic policy for the biden regime.

So what caused the socialist gruberment to chop a total of 14 zeroes off the currency (6+5+3)?  Here's how the communists at Reuters explain it:

The once-prosperous OPEC nation is suffering a years-long economic crisis that has led millions of Venezuelans to emigrate.  Maduro's socialist government blames U.S. sanctions for the country's woes, while critics assign responsibility to interventionist macroeconomic policies.

Note well the FIRST reason the liberal "news" outlet cites for the "years-long economic crisis:"  "U.S. sanctions."  Really?  So is there a U.S. "embargo" on selling things to Venezuela, as Democrat propagandists claim is the cause of Cuba's woes?  If there had ever been such a policy, do ya think the biden regime would have let such a U.S. policy continue? 

The U.S. has never imposed trade sanctions on Venezuela.  Never.  The socialist regime bleats that lie because it keeps Venezuelans from blaming their socialist government for the shortages and hyperinflation.  "Blame anything other than our own policies, so the people won't revolt."

But with the second "explanation" Reuters reveals a kind of truth.  The problem is that the "reporter" uses the phrase "interventionist macroeconomic policies," precisely because it's totally vague.  It lets them avoid naming the real cause of the hyperinflation and poverty that have made oil-rich Venezuela so miserable for the last 20 years:  Socialism, and a command economy--meaning the dictator says "You will do X" and you do it, or they throw you in jail.  

"Wait, is that like our brilliant preznit ordering Americans 'Take the vax or be fired!' "?

Pretty close. Going to jail is worse, but either way your family starves and likely loses their home.

The government of Venezuela quickly assured citizens that this "correction" would force inflation back to single digits in a matter of weeks.

Yep yep yep.  Just like when they did it three years earlier, or another seven years before that, eh?  Oh wait...it didn't work those times either.

Now for young Americans let me explain the REAL cause of hyperinflation:  To get elected, the socialist government promised to "subsidize" the price of gasoline, cooking oil, corn meal and other basic needs.  That meant the government was spending vast amounts of money--money it didn't have--to pay the difference between what those goods really cost, and what the socialists had promised their supporters the price of those goods would be.

For example, in the U.S  gas now costs around $4 per gallon.  But thanks to the supposed miracle of socialism, Venezuelans only pay roughly a dime per gallon!  This proves socialism is a far better system, comrade!

"Wow, that's fantastic!  We Democrats always knew the oil companies were conspiring to make us pay more for gas!  Yay socialism!"

Except it's not a miracle at all.  Instead the socialist government is spending billions--that it doesn't have--to pay the difference between the REAL cost of a gallon of gas and the dime Venezuelans pay.  And because the government is spending far, far more than it takes in in taxes, they simply print whatever amount they need in banknotes--which is the direct cause of...wait for it...hyperinflation.  

So the alleged "socialist miracle" isn't.  Instead the low price of basic goods it due to the gruberment printing what economists call "fiat currency," which is the term for paper money that has no connection to the real world.

Now:  Hyperinflation--caused by a government printing unlimited amounts of paper money--totally destroys the value of savings.  And when the value of savings is destroyed, people don't save anything. Which means there's no source of capital to fuel investments.

Low-info Dem voter say "RIGHT ON, comrade!  Da People have suffered for too long while duh capitalists have gotten rich from our labor!  Destroy capital and the workers will take their rightful place at the top of the social order!"

Oh, absolutely, comrade.  And if you run out of, say, toilet paper (which Venezuela did for two years not long ago) your brilliant socialist rulers will order plants to be built to provide it!  That way things will not only be more efficient, they'll be more FAIR!

Say, how's that working out for duh People of Venezuela, comrade?

[crickets]

Ah, suddenly silent?  Hmmm.... So let's tell readers:  In Venezuela hospitals (at least for "non-elites") don't have basic disinfectants, let alone antibiotics.  They don't even have sheets and pillowcases--you have to bring your own.  Old antibiotics are available, but only on the black market, and cost a month's salary.

In the middle of one of the biggest coffee-growing nations on Earth, a couple of years ago Venezuela was forced to import...coffee!

Gettin' the picture yet, comrade?  Government printing money to stay in power wipes out the value of savings, without which there's no source of investment capital, which sends the economy into the toilet.

Finally this:  A federal reserve branch recently issued a report saying U.S inflation was at a 30-year high.  

Low-info Dem voter: "I'm not really a numbers person.  Usually when economic things are "high" that's good, right?  So is this number good or bad?"

[sighs]  Never mind.  Go in ignorant peace, citizen.  You'll keep voting Democrat, and gushing over stories in the Atlantic or NY Times calling biden "the Great Uniter," as they did for Obozo.  You won't notice prices rising, and the Media will do everything they can to get you to believe any inflation is NOT due to Dems voting to spend $5 TRILLION on two bills--one allegedly paying for "real" infrastructure (roads, bridges etc) while the Dems have cunningly disguised a second bill--three times larger than the "real" infrastructure bill--as "social infrastructure," which they won't allow to be filibustered, and which they've said must be passed before the "real" infrastructure bill.

Venezuela here we come.  With the full support of Democrats.

Source.

https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/venezuela-subtract-six-zeros-currency-second-overhaul-three-years-2021-10-01/

Worthless uniparty "congress" to spend $62 million on...tearing down ~1,100 statues?? What??

You know, the regime is so flush with extra money that we should spend $62 million on some reeeally good program, eh?

And by great luck, "your" congress has created a "Naming Commission" that's about to do that.

Of course you think a "naming commission" couldn't do too much damage since it would be concerned with...wait for it..."naming," eh?

Hahahahahaha!  Silly American!  By design, no law or agency or policy of a Dem regime EVER does what the name says.  It's like the government in Orwell's "1984:"
  "War is peace.  Freedom is slavery.  Ignorance is strength."

(In the regime's update it's "DIEversity is our strength.")  

SO...the "Naming Commission" has *decreed*--with support from both sides of the shitty Uniparty--that the regime will spend $62 MILLION of your tax dollars to demolish 1,100 statues your wokie rulers don't like.

Among those is a statue in Arlington, Virginia, memorializing the Confederacy.  The so-called "Naming Commission" claims the memorial--crafted by Moses Ezekiel, an artist once likened to Michelangelo--is “problematic from top to bottom.”

For those unfamiliar with bafflegab, "problematic" is bureaubabble for "We gon' tear it down but we don't wanna tell you why cuz it would make us look too much like tyrants."

But surprisingly, they told us anyway, claiming the problem is that the memorial implies that the Confederacy was a “noble cause." But at the time, even the Washington Post described the monument as representing “peace.”

If your IQ is over room temperature you might well wonder how the hell that changed.

Indeed, the artist himself said he intended it as a monument to peace.  He said the men who actually fought for the South weren't fighting to uphold slavery but for a constitutional right.

In his memoirs Ezekiel wrote: “None of us fought for slavery and in fact opposed it.  It was an evil that we inherited and wanted to get rid of. Our struggle…was simply a constitutional one.”

Even Obama continued the healing tradition of sending a wreath to the Confederate Memorial.

But now a group of wokie congresswhores wants to tear down that memorial to healing and peace--cuz biden sed he wuz gonna "unify duh country."  Yeah.  So makes perfect sense, eh?

https://thenationalpulse.com/2022/09/21/congress-to-spend-62m-demolishing-monuments-including-world-renowned-jewish-american-artists-gravesite-at-anti-slavery-confederate-monument/

Dem shills: "Economy perks up in September." Reality: "Really? NASDAQ is down 10% in one MONTH"

The biden regime: "Duh economy is BOOMING, citizen!  And anyone who says it's NOT is a 'domestic violent extremist'!"

Reality: "Well I see your definition of "booming" is a bit different than the way the rest of us define it."

In a single MONTH the DJIA has lost 8%.  The NASDAQ has lost just over ten percent--in a single MONTH.

So what does the Democrat/Wall Street shill site "Marketwatch.com" say about this?

Economy perks up in September

Seriously, they really published that, at the same time as the two screenshots above.

If civil war broke out in the U.S., Marketwatch would run a headline "Economy looking up thanks to Democrat policies."

https://www.marketwatch.com/story/economy-perks-up-in-september-but-still-sluggish-s-p-finds-11663941533?mod=mw_latestnews