An addendum to “Proof positive the press … (part 3)”

Biden shows his wish to force Diversity, Inclusion, and Equity on America

Biden defends stability of US banking system after Silicon Valley Bank’s stunning collapse

The New York Post at least outlines Biden’s words as he gaslit us all by his claim to secure our nation’s banks without having to perform another taxpayer-funded bailout.

President Biden defended the stability of the US banking system on Monday morning after the stunning collapse of Silicon Valley Bank sparked fears of a major economic crisis.

“Thanks to the quick action of my administration over the last few days, Americans can have confidence that the banking system is safe,” Biden said. “Your deposits will be there when you need them.”

The president sought to reassure worried Americans and small business owners even as regional bank stocks led by First Republic Bank plunged in premarket trading Monday due to fears that SVB’s meltdown would prompt a nationwide flurry of withdrawals.

Biden also blasted executives at SVB and other failing banks, declaring that those whose actions prompted the current crisis “will be fired.”

“If the bank is taken over by FDIC, the people running the bank should not work there anymore,” Biden said.

The feds will get a “full accounting of what happened and why,” Biden added.

“Those responsible can be held accountable. In my administration, no one is above the law,” he said.

While the holdings of impacted depositors will have their money guaranteed, Biden noted that “investors in the banks will not be protected” because they “knowingly took a risk” by pouring cash into SVB.

Biden also took aim at former President Donald Trump, arguing his administration rolled back regulations that could have helped to prevent the current crisis.

He pledged an overhaul that will “make it less likely this kind of bank failure would happen again and to protect American jobs and small businesses.”

(Read more from the New York Post)

When these banking wokesters invest in pie-in-the-sky ESG projects and the money gets spent before the company and then bank fails, the money goes somewhere

So since the money will have been spent by the time that the next bank fails (three since Silicon Valley Bank started the trend), where will Biden pull the money? He claims he will get it from FDIC dues. Who pays those dues? Is it anyone with a bank account or the taxpayer?

I smell gaslighting.

Other Americans face a limit of $250,000 on their deposits. Why did the Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank merit additional monies (possibly into the millions for some, like Roku)? Was it that thousands of green-oriented companies depended on Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank? Was it that Silicon Valley Bank seemed more focused on Diversity, Inclusion, and Equity than profits?

…

It’s not just the food on your plate being threatened

Silicon Valley Bank collapse threatens climate start-ups

The New York Times has been so gracious to point out the green largesse made available through the Silicon Valley Bank. (Bolding is mine for emphasis.)

As the fallout of the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank continued to spread over the weekend, it became clear that some of the worst casualties were companies developing solutions for the climate crisis.

The bank, the largest to fail since 2008, worked with more than 1,550 technology firms that are creating solar, hydrogen and battery storage projects. According to its website, the bank issued them billions in loans.

“Silicon Valley Bank was in many ways a climate bank,” said Kiran Bhatraju, chief executive of Arcadia, the largest community solar manager in the country. “When you have the majority of the market banking through one institution, there’s going to be a lot of collateral damage.”

Community solar projects appear to be especially hard hit. Silicon Valley Bank said that it led or participated in 62 percent of financing deals for community solar projects, which are smaller-scale solar projects that often serve lower-income residential areas.

(Read more at the New York Times)

SVB hired board obsessed with diversity, invested $5BN for “healthier planet,” and held month-long Pride celebration, but had NO chief risk officer for eight months last year

The Daily Mail provides a wide-angle view of the wokeness within Silicon Valley Bank, along with an overview of its recklessness. (Bolding is mine for emphasis.)

Executives at Silicon Valley Bank focused on woke initiatives to increase diversity amongst its ranks and invest in startups promoting a ‘healthier planet,’ but failed to spot its glaring problems with investments as interest rates rose.

The now-failed bank had an A rating for its Environmental, Social and Governance policies according to the MSCI index after creating its own initiatives to ‘advance inclusion and opportunity in the innovation economy’ and investing in clean energy solutions over the past few years.

It even announced that it would invest a whopping $5billion by 2027 to support sustainability efforts, while its European offices held a monthlong Pride celebration and promoted ‘safe spaces.’

But for eight months last year, the bank did not have a chief risk operator, as it invested clients’ money in low-interest government bonds and securities.

Then when the Federal Reserve increased interest rates, the value of SVB’s assets fell while customers tried to withdraw their money.

Now, many are slamming the financial institution for focusing too much on woke policies and not enough on its investments.

Silicon Valley Bank has long touted its diversity, equity and inclusion efforts as it built its banking franchise around startups.

It said in its 2022 ESG Report that the bank strives to ‘create a more just, equitable and sustainable world.’

Among the initiatives included in that report are a ‘commitment to provide at least $5billion by 2027 in loans, investments and other financing to support clients’ sustainability business.

‘SVB’s Sustainable Finance Commitment aims to support companies that are working to decarbonize the energy and infrastructure industries and hasten the transition to a sustainable, low-carbon, net zero emissions economy,’ the report states.

It also notes that the bank implemented ‘a diverse candidate slate for US leadership roles’ and introduced its first six Employee Resource Groups for Asian, black, Hispanic, LGBTQ, veteran, military and female employees.

(Read more at the Daily Mail)

Well, woke Democrats flock together and don’t allow one another to go under, do they, Biden?

It looks like the one reason for saving this bank is the same reason Obama “saved” Solyndra with tons of taxpayer cash.

Green job money laundering that turn into cash donations to Democrats. A good Democrat cannot stop that.

Of course, the previous two articles highlight the previous wokeness of this Democrat bank; however, …

Although the previous two articles accentuate the woke nature of SVB, we cannot forget how this hurts the Democrat cause. It stops Democrat funding. It interrupts monies flowing to climate-related projects, race-related projects, trans-centered initiatives, and more.

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Let’s not forget Signature Bank, friend of crypto and their board member Barney Frank

Yes, don’t forget that Signature Bank closed the Trump account when it was offended by his actions

The New York Post reminds us that Signature Bank has Barney Frank (former Representative in the U.S. House and half of the genesis of the Dodd-Frank Act that over-regulated banking) as a board member.

Barney Frank — the retired congressman who co-authored the Dodd-Frank Act to tighten bank regulations after the 2008 financial crisis — is under fire over his role in the latest US banking disaster.

The 82-year-old Democrat is on the board of directors at Signature Bank — a New York lender that was shut down by state regulators over the weekend, becoming the industry’s third major casualty since Silicon Valley Bank was abruptly shuttered on Friday and the crypto-focused Silvergate Capital shut down a week earlier.

In an interview with Bloomberg late Sunday, Frank partly blamed cryptocurrencies, which hadn’t existed when he and fellow lawmakers in Washington were grappling with the collapse of Lehman Brothers in 2008.

“Digital currency was the new element entered into our system,” Frank told Bloomberg. “A new and destabilizing — potentially destabilizing — element is inatroduced into the financial system. What we get are three failures.”

Frank didn’t address the fact that crypto had become a key growth vehicle for Signature Bank under the direction of himself and others — despite widespread concerns about the risks of the notoriously volatile sector.

(Read more at the New York Post)

If you go beyond reading the words of Mr. Frank and read the context, you’ll see this bank is a grow-rich land for Democrats

It may involve crypto. It may involve high tech or green technology. Any which way, it will involve money to Democrats.

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Signature Bank de-banked Trump after Jan 6—now the regulators have shut them down

The Post Millennial reminds us that it was Signature Bank who closed Trump account after they were offended by the 6 January events.

Regulators shut down New York City based Signature Bank on Sunday, a financial institution which had previously cut ties with President Donald Trump following the riot at the US Capitol on January 6, 2021.

Signature Bank is the second financial institution shuttered by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) this week after Friday’s collapse of Silicon Valley Bank. According to CNBC, “Signature is one of the main banks to the cryptocurrency industry. As of Dec. 31, Signature had $110.4 billion in total assets and $88.6 billion in total deposits, according to a securities filing.”

On January 12, 2021, the bank told The New York Post that it had begun the process of closing Trump’s two personal accounts and “will not do business in the future with any members of Congress who voted to disregard the Electoral College.”

According to the outlet, Signature also posted a “scathing statement” on its website slamming Trump stating, “We have never before commented on any political matter and hope to never do so again.”

The statement continued, “We witnessed the President of the United States encouraging the rioters and refraining from calling in the National Guard to protect the Congress in its performance of duty. At this point in time, to ensure the peaceful transition of power, we believe the appropriate action would be the resignation of the President of the United States, which is in the best interests of our nation and the American people.”

(Read more at the Post Millennial)

So it looks like being woke was more important than a lucrative account

Whether this won brownie points with the Germans cannot be measured through this article; however, it seems the monies associated with the Trump organization was not enough to motivate this bank into sane practices.

…

One for all the Democrats who believe Biden’s fairy tales on SVB and the rest

Biden’s Bank bailout Whoppers

The Wall Street Journal examines the major lie that Biden told about the bailout of Democrat money-laundering banks. (Bolding is mine for emphasis.)

President Biden tried to reassure Americans early Monday morning that the banking system is safe and not to worry about the failures of Silicon Valley (SVB) and Signature banks. Markets didn’t believe him because bank stocks took another plunge, with some down 60% or more.

Perhaps investors don’t believe the Administration’s Sunday interventions solve the problems. The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. says it couldn’t find a private buyer for SVB, though a source tells us Treasury and the Federal Reserve favored one. FDIC Chairman Martin Gruenberg nixed it owing to hostility to bank mergers.

Instead the regulators offered solutions that bail out even uninsured bank depositors and other banks at unknown costs that Mr. Biden isn’t acknowledging. Take Mr. Biden’s pledge that “no losses will be borne by the taxpayers.” He said “the money will come from the fees that banks pay into the Deposit Insurance Fund.”

(continued)

That’s not nearly the full story. The FDIC’s Deposit Insurance Fund normally guarantees up to $250,000 in deposits, which protects small retail customers including mom-and-pop businesses. Banks pay for this guarantee with insurance premiums, but the insurance fund isn’t intended to backstop deposits of bigger customers with more capacity to weather losses if a bank goes under.

Yet after venture capitalists (Democratic donors) and Silicon Valley politicians howled, the FDIC on Sunday announced it would cover uninsured deposits at SVB and Signature Bank under its “systemic risk” exception. Apparently, Silicon Valley investors and startups are too big to lose money when they take risks. They benefited enormously from the Fed’s pandemic liquidity hose, which caused SVB’s deposits to double between 2020 and 2021. SVB paid interest of up to 5.28% on large deposits, which it used to fund loans to startups.

(Read more at the Wall Street Journal)

For the idiot Democrats who don’t live on the coasts, but continue to vote for this idiot

Deposit insurance encourages bank failures like SVB

The Wall Street Journal explains how making a built-in escape hatch makes one less committed to taking the mission to completion. (Bolding is mine for emphasis.)

Silicon Valley Bank’s failure makes many Americans grateful for deposit insurance, which protects accounts holding $250,000 or less. But the SVB episode also illustrates the dangers of deposit insurance. A banking system dominated by government insurance, plus too-big-to-fail protection that effectively insures all deposits at the largest banks, lacks essential market discipline, is systemically unsafe, is more likely to see episodes like SVB’s failure, and is more costly to taxpayers and bank customers.

Historically, unprotected well-informed depositors, especially other banks, gauged and responded to each bank’s risk, creating an incentive for banks to manage risk responsibly. Uninformed depositors—like those now at risk at SVB — were free riders on informed discipline. Now, informed depositors can easily get around the $250,000 limit on insurance, which eliminates their incentive to monitor banks. The recent disappearance of the interbank loan market means that banks don’t monitor each other to gauge creditworthiness as short-term borrowers of reserves either. That leaves only bank regulators to mind the store, and they often lack incentives and knowledge to measure and punish risk on a speedy basis. That’s how predictable messes like SVB happen.

(continued)

Deposit insurance was absent from nearly all other countries’ banking systems before 1980, and from the U.S. (with some temporary exceptions) until 1933. It was adopted for political reasons, and it hasn’t been a stabilizing influence. Virtually every academic study of deposit insurance shows that it promotes, rather than reduces, banking system fragility, with major costs borne by the insurers — which means ultimately by insured depositors and potentially taxpayers. The popularity of deposit insurance reflects public ignorance about its costs and about how a disciplined, uninsured banking system could operate as an alternative.

(continued)

This episode points to a continuing failure of regulatory discipline, which lacks the incentives and smarts of the market, to substitute for market discipline. It also points to the need for business managers to learn more about banking, and for the Fed to learn that its own monetary-policy mismanagement for many years has lots of consequences for reducing financial stability. Those consequences include the insidious elimination of interbank discipline by ending the last vestige of informed discipline on imprudent risk management by banks.

Again, for Democrats not on the coasts who don’t benefit from Biden’s largesse

Regional banks are seeing flight of deposits to too-big-to-fail megabanks

Market Watch points out how local banks are now seeing depositors leave for larger banks that might be classified as “too big to fail.”

The unexpected demise of Signature Bank over the weekend, along with the failure of Silicon Valley Bank on Friday, ignited a shoot-first-ask-questions-later reaction among regional-bank investors as customers moved deposits to the largest U.S. banks for perceived safekeeping, observers said Monday.

Stocks of regional banks such as First Republic Bank (FRC), Western Alliance Bancorp (WAL), PacWest Bancorp (PACW) and Zions Bancorp (ZION) dropped Monday even after U.S. bank regulators set up a new emergency-loan program as a backstop for deposits.

(Read more at Market Watch)

Finally, to name Democrat beneficiary names

Here’s who benefited from their executive, PAC donations

Fox Business lays out a little of those who benefitted from the SVB largesse.

Silicon Valley Bank, the nation’s 16th-largest bank, failed Friday after depositors hurried to withdraw money amid anxiety over the bank’s health. It was the second-biggest bank failure in United States history after the collapse of Washington Mutual in 2008.

The bank’s California executives and political action committee have propped up a handful of politicians in recent elections, which has primarily benefited Democrat lawmakers.

Greg Becker, the bank’s president and chief executive officer, cut two maximum checks totaling $5,800 to the campaigns of New York Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and Virginia Sen. Mark Warner during the 2022 midterm election cycle. The two Democrat senators are the only politicians Becker financially backed directly during the most recent cycle.

Becker also gave $2,500 to the New Democrat Coalition Action Fund in May last year. The New Democrat Coalition Action Fund sent $1 million in contributions to numerous Democrat politicians during the 2022 elections.

Becker’s most recent donations came on the heels of $5,600 he donated between President Biden’s 2020 campaign and victory fund.

Jeffrey Leerink, the chief executive officer of SVB Securities, donated $1,250 to Massachusetts Democrat Rep. Jake Auchincloss during the 2022 and 2020 elections.

Meanwhile, Silicon Valley Bank’s chief credit officer, Marc Cadieux, poured $250 into Biden’s campaign during the 2020 elections.

The bank’s political action committee has received around $40,000 from its employees over the past two election cycles. In turn, it contributed thousands to Warner, New York Democrat Rep. Gregory Meeks and North Carolina Republican Rep. Patrick McHenry during the 2022 elections.

(Read more Democrats, Democrats, and more Democrats at Fox Business)

What did you expect when the bank was all Diversity, Inclusion, and Equity?

Did you expect a better job than Mayor Pete has provided to the Department of Transportation?

Still, let me try to get this straight. Biden says that he will use the bank assets to pay off the multi-billion dollar debt

Biden says that the tax payers will not be on the hook for this bailout. I am sure that includes tax payers not having to pay seven times the rate current during Trump years for eggs, milk, meat, and other necessities. Surely Dementia Joe would not just print millions of dollars and hand it over to his Democrat friends, causing even greater inflation.

Still, let’s go through the numbers:

Joe’s claims	Reality	Monies available
Assets would be sold	SVB was encouraged to buy T-bills at $1K (which mature in 5 years) and forced to sell at $750 immediately	This does not present a newly available cash stream.
	SVB was invested in 10-year mortgage-backed securities that had to be sold at a loss (no sources divulged how much of a loss)	This does not present a newly available cash stream.
	SVB was invested in green projects. We know how well Solyndra did.	This does not present a newly available cash stream.

So please tell me how America does not eat this loss.

…

One final point: Beside selling stock in the bank just before the collapse — this is what the bank management did

Silicon Valley Bank gave company-wide bonuses hours before it collapsed

Fox Buisness reported in a 12 March 2023 article that SVB issued company-wide bonuses before the collapse.

Silicon Valley Bank employees received their annual bonuses on Friday just hours before the government took control of the company, according to reports.

SVB traditionally processes annual bonuses on the second Friday of March, unnamed sources associated with the bank told CNBC. The bonuses were reportedly for work completed in 2022.

SVB did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Fox News Digital.

The Santa Clara, California-based band collapsed last week and is now under the control of federal regulators. SVB had been the 16th-largest bank in the U.S. prior to the bank run that led to its downfall.

(Read more at Fox Buisness)

As mentioned at Bunkerville, this came after the bank leadership rewarded itself

Bunkerville pointed out in a 15 March post that the SVB leadership rewarded itself before the collapse by selling large chunks of bank stock.

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Proof positive the press has their heads pushed so far up Joe Biden’s backside as to give him an upper endoscopy (part 3)

When your outgo exceeds your income, your upkeep will be your downfall

Who killed the Silicon Valley Bank?

The Wall Street Journal gives us an idea of what the screwballs at Silicon Valley Bank did to drain the bank. (Bolding is mine for emphasis.)

That giant slurping sound on Friday was Silicon Valley Bank imploding. America’s 16th-largest bank had some $175 billion in deposits and disappeared by breakfast. It wouldn’t have happened if not for management mistakes. This was a 21st-century bank run—customers tried to withdraw about $42 billion, a quarter of all deposits. But what triggered the collapse?

Let’s go back. In January 2020, SVB had $55 billion in customer deposits on its balance sheet. By the end of 2022, that number exploded to $186 billion. Yes, SVB was a victim of its own success. These deposits were often from initial public offerings and SPAC deals—SVB banked almost half of all IPO proceeds in the last two years. Most startups had relationships with the bank.

That’s a lot of money to put to work. Some was lent out, but with soaring stock prices and near-zero interest rates, no one needed to take on excessive debt. There was no way SVB was going to initiate $131 billion in new loans. So the bank put some of this new capital into higher-yielding long-term government bonds and $80 billion into 10-year mortgage-backed securities paying 1.5% instead of short-term Treasurys paying 0.25%.

 This was mistake No. 1. SVB reached for yield, just as Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers did in the 2000s. With few loans, these investments were the bank’s profit center. SVB got caught with its pants down as interest rates went up.

Everyone, except SVB management it seems, knew interest rates were heading up. Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell has been shouting this from the mountain tops. Yet SVB froze and kept business as usual, borrowing short-term from depositors and lending long-term, without any interest-rate hedging.

The bear market started in January 2022, 14 months ago. Surely it shouldn’t have taken more than a year for management at SVB to figure out that credit would tighten and the IPO market would dry up. Or that companies would need to spend money on salaries and cloud services. Nope, and that was mistake No. 2. SVB misread its customers’ cash needs. Risk management seemed to be an afterthought. The bank didn’t even have a chief risk officer for eight months last year. CEO Greg Becker sat on the risk committee.

As customers asked for their money, SVB had to sell $21 billion in underwater longer-term assets, with an average interest rate around 1.8%. The bank lost $1.8 billion on the sale and tried to raise more than $2 billion to fill the hole.

The loss flagged that something was wrong. Venture capitalists, including Peter Thiel, suggested that companies in their portfolios should withdraw their money and put it somewhere safer. On Thursday the dam broke and there was no way to cover billions in withdrawal requests.

Mistake No. 3 was not quickly selling equity to cover losses. The first rule of survival is to keep selling equity until investors or depositors no longer fear bankruptcy. Private-equity firm General Atlantic apparently made an offer to buy $500 million of the bank’s common stock. Friday morning, I’d have offered $3 billion for half the company. Where was Warren Buffett? Or JPMorgan?

(Read more at the Wall Street Journal)

This is where maturity-mismatch comes into play. If the bank buys long-term securities and a customer comes to the bank needing the money, they have a liquidity crisis.

Rules of Democrat debate: fast forward to censoring everyone on this subject also

Remember the rules of Democrat debate:

1. If you have a strong topic, beat the topic
2. If you don’t have a strong topic, beat the table
3. If you still don’t gather an audience, take away the table

Rep. Massie: DHS efforts are already underway to add censorship of "financial misinformation" to CISA's portfolio o… twitter.com/i/web/status/1…

—
Mike Benz (@MikeBenzCyber) March 13, 2023

If you did not look at the tweet’s attached graphics, it would behoove you to take a glimpse. First, the report to the CISA director defines misinformation/disinformation concerning finances (shown in top illustration) (sentence continues below top illustration)

(sentence continued) in much the same way CISA defined misinformation/disinformation when suppressing it on social media.. (Note the scribblings of Representative Thomas Massie, who surely must have known about the censorship and likely been subject to it as it spread across social media and is now widely contested in the lying press.)

If you refer back to the Wall Street Journal’s “mistake no. 2,” you will note the inclusion of inflation in the equation

Since inflation can be created by governments that throw too much money into the market through reckless spending (such as multi-trillion dollar deficit spending), maybe Dementia Joe and the Cash-Burning Democrats might take note and not continue by creating conditions that create more of these failed banks.

…

White House launches full court press against House Freedom Caucus’ debt ceiling demands

Is Biden trying to create more inflation and crash more banks?

The Washington Times details the Biden regime opposition to a measure that would at least level off the current forty-year-high of inflation.

The White House stepped up its offensive against the House Freedom Caucus over the weekend after the bloc of conservatives laid out a series of demands for securing their vote to raise the nation’s debt ceiling.

In a press release formatted as a memo addressed to television show producers on Saturday, White House Communications Director Ben LaBolt accused the Republican lawmakers of threatening to cut funding for law enforcement, border security, education and manufacturing while introducing “tax breaks for the super-wealthy and wasteful spending for special interests.” 

“MAGA House Republicans are proposing, if spread evenly across affected discretionary programs, at least a 20% across the board cut,” the press release read. “That means a 20% cut to law enforcement, border security, education, and manufacturing.

“These cuts will weaken our competition with China, raise costs for working families, and threaten our national security,” the release read.

The Freedom Caucus lawmakers laid out their series of demands on Friday, setting the bar in the Republican Party ahead of House Speaker Kevin McCarthy‘s return to negotiations with the White House.

(Read more at the Washington Times)

As much as Biden claims he will save Social Security and Medicare, he seems set on screwing things up

When even liberal outlets like CNN counter the Biden line, you know that Biden has gotten himself deep into a senseless lie. In this case, if he continues to do nothing, even CNN acknowledges that Social Security and Medicare will be out of money by 2035.

In fact, a recent report found that COVID graft during the Biden regime cut the life of Social Security and Medicare down to 2033.

…

The “not a bailout” bailout for the “not a recession” recession

Bloomberg goes to bat for its fellow Democrat and claims this bailout is not a bailout

BNN Bloomberg goes to bat for Hochul and Biden as they individually claim the economy is not teetering on the brink of what it is.

New York Governor Kathy Hochul said the takeover of Signature Bank by federal regulators on Sunday “was not a bailout” that puts state taxpayers at risk.

“This is simply using fees that are assessed on all banks,” Hochul said at a briefing Monday with Adrienne Harris, superintendent of the state Department of Financial Services. “This is an unusual circumstance, but the main message I want to deliver to New Yorkers is that their money is secure.”

Federal regulators swept the lender into receivership just days after the demise of fellow crypto-friendly bank Silvergate Capital Corp. and SVB Financial Group’s Silicon Valley Bank. The announcement coincided with a slate of measures out of Washington, including the Federal Reserve’s creation of a new lending program for banks, aimed at ensuring they can meet any customer requests to withdraw money.

New York officials said on Sunday that they were closing Signature Bank and turning it over to federal regulators amid a broader effort to prevent the crisis from spreading further.

(Read more at BNN Bloomberg)

How many will believe the Democrat gaslighting?

Biden and Hochul claim that this is “not a bailout;” however, the funds needed would outweigh the resources set aside for FDIC-member banks. Whether we pay for it though higher inflation or through government funds, I am sure Biden is lying.

Still, if you believe Biden’s bailout gaslighting, you probably cannot see through Biden’s border gaslighting:

…

The biased press reaches a new low

Liberals blame Trump for Silicon Valley Bank collapse citing 2018 bipartisan bill

Fox News reports on the measures some “news readers” will take to blame the Silicone Valley Bank failure on President Trump.

Shortly after the second-largest bank collapse in United States history, many liberals took to social media to place the blame on former President Donald Trump.

“By the way, Trump deregulated banks like Silicon Valley Bank, which failed Friday,” Robert Reich, who served as labor secretary under former President Bill Clinton, posted on Twitter Friday after news that Silicon Valley Bank had been shut down by FDIC regulators in an effort to protect customers as the bank faced a liquidity crunch after losing $2 billion.

Reich was joined by other liberals on Twitter attempting to place the blame on Trump for signing a bipartisan bill in 2018 that rolled back elements of Dodd-Frank.

“It seems likely that this could have been avoided if it weren’t for the roll-backs by the Trump administration,” journalist Ed Krassenstein tweeted.

In 2018 President Trump signed a bill that rolled back Dodd-Frank regulations on banks like Silicon Valley Bank.… twitter.com/i/web/status/1…

—
Ed Krassenstein (@EdKrassen) March 11, 2023

“Quick reminder: 50 Republican senators and 17 Democratic senators voted to ignore warnings and weaken risk regulations for Silicon Valley Bank,” journalist David Sirota tweeted. “Donald Trump signed the bill into law. And now the bank is the 2nd biggest bank collapse in American history.”

Quick reminder: 50 Republican senators and 17 Democratic senators voted to ignore warnings and weaken risk regulat… twitter.com/i/web/status/1…

—
David Sirota (@davidsirota) March 11, 2023

(continued)

EJ Antoni, research fellow in regional economics with The Heritage Foundation’s Center for Data Analysis, told FOX Business on Saturday that the collapse had “nothing to do with Trump or Dodd-Frank” and more to do with an “unusual confluence of events.”

Antoni explained that the bank “dealt almost exclusively with tech firms which usually rely on continuously rolling over large debts” which means that the firms are “not paying off their debt but simply taking out new debt to pay off the old.”

“Second, SVB put a disproportionate amount of its cash into long-term bonds. Ordinarily, that’s not a bad strategy, but it’s unwise when interest rates are zero because those rates must rise eventually,” Antoni said. “When rates rise, bond prices fall. This is because an investor with the choice to buy an existing bond at a low rate or a new bond at a high rate will choose the new bond since it’s a better return on investment. If you want to sell the old bond with its lower interest rate, you must be willing to sell it at a discount; otherwise, no one will buy it.”

Antoni explained that SVB’s undiversified clientele meant “too many depositors needed cash all at once” forcing the liquidation of bonds that had lost value and a “death spiral” quickly ensued.

(Read more at Fox News)

Here is an example of a news reader who learned President Trump’s bill was not at fault

If you don’t believe that our press would stretch to blame President Trump like this, look at the following:

In wake of the Silicon Valley Bank collapse, @MarthaRaddatz asks Democratic Sen. Mark Warner if he regrets voting f… twitter.com/i/web/status/1…

—
This Week (@ThisWeekABC) March 12, 2023

…

 

Proof positive the press has their heads pushed so far up Joe Biden’s backside as to give him an upper endoscopy (part 2)

On COVID, what happened to the debate on the right and the pressure on the left?

At the Right’s Wall Street Journal: Intelligence on sick staff at Wuhan lab fuels debate on Covid-19 origin

The Wall Street Journal points out a debate on the right during 2021 where some were duped by the Biden line and others saw the logic of a Wuhan virus having come from a Wuhan lab.

Three researchers from China’s Wuhan Institute of Virology became sick enough in November 2019 that they sought hospital care, according to a previously undisclosed U.S. intelligence report that could add weight to growing calls for a fuller probe of whether the Covid-19 virus may have escaped from the laboratory.

The details of the reporting go beyond a State Department fact sheet, issued during the final days of the Trump administration, which said that several researchers at the lab, a center for the study of coronaviruses and other pathogens, became sick in autumn 2019 “with symptoms consistent with both Covid-19 and common seasonal illness.”

The disclosure of the number of researchers, the timing of their illnesses and their hospital visits come on the eve of a meeting of the World Health Organization’s decision-making body, which is expected to discuss the next phase of an investigation into Covid-19’s origins.

Current and former officials familiar with the intelligence about the lab researchers expressed differing views about the strength of the supporting evidence for the assessment. One person said that it was provided by an international partner and was potentially significant but still in need of further investigation and additional corroboration.

Another person described the intelligence as stronger. “The information that we had coming from the various sources was of exquisite quality. It was very precise. What it didn’t tell you was exactly why they got sick,” he said, referring to the researchers.

November 2019 is roughly when many epidemiologists and virologists believe SARS-CoV-2, the virus behind the pandemic, first began circulating around the central Chinese city of Wuhan, where Beijing says that the first confirmed case was a man who fell ill on Dec. 8, 2019.

The Wuhan Institute hasn’t shared raw data, safety logs and lab records on its extensive work with coronaviruses in bats, which many consider the most likely source of the virus.

(Read more woo-hoo from China and their friends as repeated by the Wall Street Journal)

Ok. There are a hew more steps in the logic chain than stating the Wuhan virus came from a Wuhan lab

To condense the creation of the COVID virus through the help of Dr. Redfield’s testimony before the House COVID-19 panel (and the summarizing skills of the Daily Signal), here are six take-aways concerning COVID’S origin:

The House on Wednesday held its first hearing investigating the origins of COVID-19 after two federal agencies suggested the pandemic likely began when a new coronavirus escaped China’s Wuhan Institute of Virology. 

(continued)

Here are six highlights from testimony before the House Oversight and Accountability Committee’s subcommittee on the pandemic. 

1. What’s Ahead?

   Rep. Brad Wenstrup, R-Ohio, chairman of the select subcommittee, provided a glimpse of what his panel will delve into during future hearings.

   (continued)

   “Unfortunately the question of the origins [of COVID-19] has been politicized,” Wenstrup said. “That’s no secret. It has driven most people to their corners, rather than driving apolitical scientific debate or discussion.”

2. ‘No Doubt’ US Tax Dollars Funded Gain-of-Function Research

   The key witness was Dr. Robert Redfield, who was director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in the Trump administration when the pandemic emerged. 

   (continued)

   The term “gain of function” describes a risky process of making a disease more dangerous or contagious for the purpose of studying a response.

   “Do you think that Dr. Fauci intentionally lied under oath to Sen. Paul when he vehemently denied NIH’s funding of gain-of-function research?” Malliotakis asked Redfield. 

   Redfield responded: “I think there is no doubt NIH was funding gain-of-function research.”

   The former CDC director didn’t address whether Fauci was truthful under oath. 

   Malliotakis then asked: “Is it likely American tax dollars funded the gain-of-function research that created this virus?”

   Redfield responded yes, but that the NIH wasn’t the only factor. 

   “I think it did, not only from the NIH but the State Department, from USAID, and from DOD,” Redfield said, referring to the U.S. Agency for International Development and the Department of Defense. 

   (continued)

   The subcommittee chairman then asked: “Has gain-of-function research stopped a pandemic, in your opinion?”

   Redfield: “No, on the contrary, I think it probably caused the greatest pandemic our world has seen.”

   (continued)

3. ‘Three Things Happened in That Lab’

   Wuhan Institute of Virology officials deleted chronological logs of past research data, put the lab under military control, and redid the ventilation system in fall 2019, months before the rest of the world became aware of a new coronavirus and COVID-19, Redfield noted. 

   Rep. Debbie Lesko, R-Ariz., asked Redfield: “Do you believe that we can have certainty that the virus did not come from the Wuhan lab, and that U.S. funding was not used for COVID-19-related research? 

   Redfield responded that the public can read recently unclassified information that shows those in charge of the Wuhan lab engaged in unusual conduct. 

   “The declassified information now shows in September 2019, three things happened in that lab,” Redfield said. 

   “One is they deleted the sequences,” he said, referring to sequencing, a laboratory technique used to determine the exact order of nucleotide bases, which compose individual genomes. 

   “That’s highly irregular. Researchers don’t usually like to do that.”

   “The second thing they did is they changed command and control of the lab from civilian control to military control. Highly unusual,” Redfield said. 

   “The third thing they did, I think is really telling, is they let a contractor redo the ventilation system in that laboratory,” Redfield added. “So, I think clearly, there is strong evidence that a significant event happened in that laboratory in September. It has now been declassified. You can read it.”

4. ‘Donald Trump’s Culpability’^**

   Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., ranking member of the full House Oversight Committee, argued that regardless of the origins of the pandemic, it happened on former President Donald Trump’s watch. (Read below at ^**A double asterisk to the baseless accusations by the Democrats on this committee)

   (continued)

5. ‘Bunch of Yokels Are Eating Bats’

   (continued with numerous biased Democrat memes on the Chinese equivalent of Walmart shoppers)

6. ‘Antithetical to Science’

   Fauci, who became the face of the nation’s fight against COVID-19, has said that “attacks on me quite frankly are attacks on science.” 

   However, Redfield said actions taken by Fauci and other officials to shut down discussion of the pandemic was “antithetical to science.”

   (continued)

(Read the whole thing, including the Democrat excuses, at the Daily Signal)

^**A double asterisk to the baseless accusations by the Democrats on this committee

First, regarding trying to link Trump to the major effects of COVID, let us remember that:

• Trump allowed states and cities to set their own COVID policies, therefore,
  • Governor Wolf of Pennsylvania was allowed to put COVID patients in nursing homes, costing 11,000 people their lives
  • Governor Cuomo of New York also allowed COVID patients into nursing homes, costing 9,000 people their lives
  • New Jersey Governor Murphy ordered COVID patients into nursing homes, costing 8,000 their lives
  • Michigan’s Governor Whitmer put COVID patients in nursing homes, resulting in 6,000 deaths
• Trump invoked the Defense Production Act to get ventilators into Pennsylvania and New York
• Trump had the Navy bring New York a floating hospital for the COVID crisis
• Trump and the Democrat-controlled Congress passed the CARES Act (which I disagreed with and felt to be inflationary) in response to the 14% unemployment brought on by the first wave of COVID

However, it was Biden who:

• Mandated the shut-down of the “non-essential businesses” (as if this geezer with an orbit of inexperienced socialists would know an essential business if their lives depended on it)
• Mandated wearing of masks (something proven in many studies to be ineffective) in public
• Used his war-time powers to mandate the manufacture of masks, swabs, and other equipment
• Ramped up free COVID testing (which always seemed to be for the previous variant and which had an inflationary effect similar to giving out free money)
• Pushed through the American Rescue Plan (largely a money hand-out — spell that: inflationary)
• Required all military personnel to get vaccinated (though most fell within the age range that easily developed natural immunity and a number had developed natural immunity through recovery from the virus)
• Announced his attempt to use OSHA to require businesses with more than 100 employees to get those employees vaccinated
  • By announcing this, he bullied a number of large companies into forcing the jab
• Essentially confiscated personal property by announcing his Eviction Moratorium

The New York Times formerly shamed us with: The Lab-Leak Theory

The New York Times tried to school all of us Walmart shoppers on 27 May 2021 in how it was non-scientific and racist to believe anything but the bat soup theory of COVID origin.

Suddenly, talk of the Wuhan lab-leak theory seems to be everywhere.

President Biden yesterday called on U.S. intelligence officials to “redouble their efforts” to determine the origin of Covid-19 and figure out whether the virus that causes it accidentally leaked from a Chinese laboratory. Major publications and social media have recently been filled with discussion of the subject.

Today, we offer an explainer.

What are the basics?

The origin of the virus remains unclear. Many scientists have long believed that the most likely explanation is that it jumped from an animal to a person, possibly at a food market in Wuhan, China, in late 2019. Animal-to human transmission — known as zoonotic spillover — is a common origin story for viruses, including Ebola and some bird flus.

But some scientists have pointed to another possibility: that it escaped from the Wuhan Institute of Virology. As in other laboratories, researchers there sometimes modify viruses, to understand and treat them.

“It is most likely that this is a virus that arose naturally, but we cannot exclude the possibility of some kind of a lab accident,” Dr. Francis Collins, the director of the National Institutes of Health, told senators yesterday.

Why now?

The subject is getting more attention because some scientists who were once skeptical of the laboratory theory have expressed new openness to it.

Two weeks ago, 18 scientists wrote a letter to the journal Science calling for a new investigation and describing both the animal-to-human theory and the lab-leak theory as “viable.” And three scientists who last year dismissed the lab-leak explanation as a conspiracy theory have told The Wall Street Journal that they now consider it plausible.

Among the reasons: Chinese officials have refused to allow an independent investigation into the lab and have failed to explain some inconsistencies in the animal-to-human hypothesis. Most of the first confirmed cases had no evident link to the food market.

What changed?

In some ways, not much has not changed. From the beginning, the virus’s origin has been unclear. All along, some scientists, politicians and journalists have argued that the lab-leak theory deserves consideration.

Almost 15 months ago, two Chinese researchers wrote a paper concluding that the virus “probably originated from a laboratory in Wuhan.” Alina Chan, a molecular biologist affiliated with Harvard and M.I.T., made similar arguments. David Ignatius and Josh Rogin, both Washington Post columnists, wrote about the possibility more than a year ago. Joe Biden, then a presidential candidate, didn’t mention the lab-leak theory in early 2020 but he did argue that the U.S. should “not be taking China’s word” for how the outbreak started.

But these voices were in the minority. The World Health Organization initially dismissed the lab-leak theory as implausible.

(Read more “take the word of Chinese Socialists” at the New York Times)

@apoorva_nyc Why is it racist to know where COVID-19 originated and what the Wuhan Institute of Virology is? https://t.co/iVH52cLZZN

—
jimtreacher.substack.com (@jtLOL) May 26, 2021

By the way, Apoorva was/is the COVID reporter for the New York Times.

…

 

 

Proof positive the press has their heads pushed so far up Joe Biden’s backside as to give him an upper endoscopy

The press refuses to report on nine boxes of material moved to Boston from the Penn-Biden Center

Biden’s document story keeps changing, this time by nine boxes

Just the-News addresses the nine boxes of unknown Biden documents that have been moved from the Penn-Biden Center.

President Joe Biden strongly condemned former President Donald Trump’s handling of classified materials following the FBI’s Aug. 8, 2022 raid on Mar-a-Lago, yet an ever-growing number of document discoveries appears to undercut his criticisms.

The National Archives and Records Administration in a March 7 letter to GOP Sens. Chuck Grassley of Iowa, and Ron Johnson of Wisconsin confirmed that it had recovered a further nine boxes of materials from the Boston office of Biden’s attorney, Patrick Moore.

Moreover, despite claiming possession of them in November and storing the materials in the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library in Boston, “NARA has not reviewed the contents of the boxes found at Mr. Moore’s Boston office,” acting Archivist Debra Steidel Wall told the lawmakers.

This trove of materials was previously housed at the Penn Biden Center in Washington, the site at which a lawyer cleaning out Biden’s former office discovered classified materials that reportedly included intelligence on the U.K., Iran, and Ukraine. Biden said in January that he was “surprised” to learn of the discovery.

Reports of the discovery first emerged in January of this year and prompted Biden staff to comb facilities and offices he occupied for additional sensitive materials. That search turned up more materials, including multiple batches of documents marked classified at his Delaware home. Biden indicated he had been aware of at least one such batch, defending his storage of documents inside his locked garage alongside his Corvette.

Attorney General Merrick Garland, facing intense GOP criticism, eventually appointed special counsel Robert Hur to handle the Department of Justice’s Biden-related dealings.

(Read more at Just the-News)

Not one question by the press or one news segment on ABC news

While my wife had the broadcast from the ABC World News Tonight blaring in the living room and neither of us were giving it full attention, at least I gave it enough attention to not that there was never a mention of the nine boxes. Likewise, there was no mention of the moral conflict created by Biden’s having contributed to the bail funds of so many Antifa outlaws while he holds numerous 6 January protesters on charges like parading and obstructing an official proceeding.

…

 

The press goes into overtime regarding its denial of actual events on 6 January 2021

Footage shows Capitol cop Brian Sicknick uninjured on 6 January

The Federalist points out how Officer Sicknick has been shown walking around the Capitol buildings long after Democrats in the press and office allege him to have been beaten to death during the 6 January riot.

New footage from the U.S. Capitol building on Jan. 6, 2021 shows Capitol Police officer Brian Sicknick walking around the complex after Democrats and the media claimed he was brutally murdered. The clips aired on Monday’s edition of “Tucker Carlson Tonight” and were reportedly viewed previously by “investigators working for the Democratic Party,” according to Carlson.

Sicknick’s Jan. 7 death was immediately exploited by the left. The New York Times reported directly that Sicknick died—according to the paper’s headline—“From Injuries in Pro-Trump Rampage.” One month later, the Times quietly corrected its reporting.

CNN later linked Sicknick’s death to a chemical irritant such as pepper spray or bear spray used by rioters. His family told ProPublica on Jan. 8 that Sicknick “texted them Wednesday night to say that while he had been pepper-sprayed, he was in good spirits.” Two men were charged in March of 2021 for spraying the officer.

A report from the D.C. medical examiner’s office published a month later concluded Sicknick died of natural causes.

The surveillance tapes aired by Carlson on Monday night show Sicknick walking around after altercations with the alleged murderers. Carlson’s program published the footage upon review of more than 40,000 hours of tape handed over to his team by Republican House Speaker Kevin McCarthy several weeks ago.

“To this day, media accounts describe Sicknick as someone who was ‘slain’ on Jan. 6,” Carlson said. “The video we reviewed proves that was a lie… By all appearances, Brian Sicknick is healthy and vigorous. He’s wearing a helmet, so it’s hard to imagine he was killed by a head injury.”

(Read more at The Federalist)

Like a dog trained to bark on cue, Karine Jean-Pierre doubled down on her claim that the 6 January 2021 riot “cost police officers their lives”

The four officers who committed suicide cannot be proven to be the victims of this riot any more than they can be proven to have been killed because they would “spill the beans” on the game of Pelosi and Biden.

Biden’s lackeys in the DOJ have denied justice to 6 January defendants

The Daily Mail details how the attorney of the QAnon Shaman was denied exculpatory evidence vailable to the January 6 Commission.

The lawyer who represented the ‘QAnon Shaman’ in his trial for storming the Capitol on January 6 has called for his client to be released after Tucker Carlson aired previously unseen footage from the riot.

Carlson on Monday night used his Fox News show to broadcast clips showing the so-called Shaman, Jacob Chansley, inside Congress.

Chansley appears to be escorted through the building by Capitol Police officers, while other officers allow the chest-baring, horn-wearing Trump supporter to pass. Carlson used the footage to argue that the rioters were ‘sightseers’, and ‘mostly peaceful’.

Chansley pleaded guilty in September 2021 to civil disorder and violent entry to the Capitol, among other charges. He was sentenced two months later to three and a half years in prison, with the new footage leading to claims he was unfairly portrayed as a violent intruder. 

On Wednesday night, Chansley’s former lawyer said he had not been shown the footage broadcast by Carlson, which the conservative news anchor said was ‘clearly exculpatory’.

(Read more at the Daily Mail)

Will this exonerate Chansley? Whether it does or doesn’t is for lawyers and higher court judges to mete out

Whether or not being lead into the chambers of Congress by Capitol Police would exonerate Jacob Chansley from a charge of obstructing a congressional proceeding falls into a range above my pay grade. Still, isn’t the defense supposed to get all the evidence in the case against the defendant?

Therefore, this will all be decided in a court one step up from the D.C. courts where this skewed view of justice has been sent out. I hope this results in a resignation of a judge or two.

…

The press ignores hearings on Biden’s Afghan failure

Congress investigates deadly withdrawal and current threats from Afghanistan

The Washington Examiner details the House Foreign Affairs Committee’s review of the evacuation of Afghanistan during August 2021.

Emotional testimony from Sgt. Vargas-Andrews on suicide bombing outside of Kabal airport: "I opened my eyes to mari… twitter.com/i/web/status/1…

—
CSPAN (@cspan) March 08, 2023

Congress revisited the chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan and the current threat level from the country where the United States was at war for 20 years in a pair of hearings Wednesday.

The House Foreign Affairs Committee heard from six witnesses in a hearing that focused on evacuation efforts during the final two weeks of the U.S. military presence in Afghanistan in August 2021.

Two witnesses had been at Hamid Karzai International Airport, where the evacuations were taking place, when a suicide bomber killed 13 U.S. service members and roughly 170 Afghan civilians. Three others were among the hundreds of veterans who participated in ad hoc groups helping to get Afghan allies out of the country. The sixth witness was the executive director of an immigrant nonprofit group that has helped Afghans resettle in the U.S.

Marine Sgt. Tyler Vargas-Andrews emotionally recounted the Aug. 26, 2021, bombing, in which he lost an arm and a leg. Although he had identified a suspect he still believes to be the bomber beforehand, he was not given the green light by his superiors to take out the threat.

“Throughout the entirety of the day on August 26, 2021, we disseminated the suicide bomber information to ground forces at Abbey Gate. … Over the communication network, we passed that there was a potential threat and an attack imminent. This was as serious as it could get,” he explained. “Eventually, the individual disappeared. To this day, we believe he was a suicide bomber. We made everyone on the ground aware. Operations had briefly halted but then started again. Plain and simple, we were ignored. Our expertise was disregarded. No one was held accountable for our safety.”

He called the withdrawal a “catastrophe, in my opinion” and said “it was an inexcusable lack of accountability and negligence,” while Aiden Gunderson, a former Army combat medic who was deployed twice to Afghanistan and assisted with the evacuation, told the committee the withdrawal was “an organization failure at multiple levels.”

Both relived the painful and tragic memories of the bombing, also describing the desperation and fear of the thousands of Afghans that swarmed the airport gates every day for those two weeks despite tremendous heat and overcrowding, hoping and praying to be selected by U.S. forces to get on a plane out of Afghanistan.

Francis Hoang, Lt. Col. Scott Mann, and Peter Lucier worked with separate groups that worked tirelessly to navigate Afghan allies through Kabul and into the confines of the airport. Each spoke about the deep emotional strife they felt, which they said was a feeling shared by countless veterans, as the U.S. military left on Aug. 30, 2021, with an untold number of Afghan allies at risk under the Taliban regime left behind. They frequently referenced the thoughts and feelings of veterans at large who were left mentally wounded by how the end of the war played out.

Mann referenced a friend who ended his life a few months ago, saying the friend’s wife “confirmed to me that the Afghan abandonment reactivated all of the demons that he had managed to put behind him from our time in Afghanistan together.”

Members of both parties thanked the witnesses for their tireless work. There was a nearly complete partisan divide about blaming the Biden administration for what happened. House Republicans have been eager to hold hearings on the withdrawal since regaining the majority this year. Democrats frequently pointed to the longevity of the war and argued that previous administrations set up untenable conditions.

The special inspector general for Afghan reconstruction, which has provided oversight to the U.S. mission in Afghanistan for more than a decade, substantially blamed the Trump administration’s deal with the Taliban for a negotiated withdrawal in February 2020.

On the other side of the Capitol, Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines, CIA Director William Burns, Defense Intelligence Agency Director Scott Berrier, National Security Agency Director Paul Nakasone, and FBI Director Christopher Wray testified on their current threat assessments globally to the Senate Intelligence Committee.

Berrier acknowledged that his agency’s “reach and grasp into that nation since the fall of the government has eroded over time, but we still have some access, and I would say, based on what we know right now from the threat of al Qaeda, they’re trying to survive basically without a real plan to at least, or intent to, attack the West anytime soon,” though he warned, “ISIS-K poses a bit of a larger threat, but they are under attack from the Taliban regime right now, and it’s a matter of time before they may have the ability and intent to actually attack the West at this point.”

(Read more at the Washington Examiner)

What? Current threats? Just like the border, Biden assures us this all is secure.

During what should have been the slowest month of illegal entry for the year (January 2023), America experienced the apprehension of over 128,000 known illegal aliens coming over our Southern border. That does not count the thousands who have discovered how porous our Northern border is and have started taking rides into Canada in order to then come South.

Additionally, Biden, you can’t have it two ways. You can’t say that four police who committed suicide after 6 January 2021 were “killed by the riot” and not take credit for the deaths of service men who, like the friend of Lt. Col. Scott Mann, took their lives due to the results of the Afghan withdrawal.

…

 

The Left provides good news with a whine

Is this a bad thing?

The New York Times whines, “Congressional gridlock brought on by far-right Republicans now seems more likely to lead to government shutdowns.”

The New York Times whines and tries to spin a government that spends less as a bad or even an evil thing.

More brinkmanship

The House speaker elections last week turned a typically routine government procedure into a dramatic affair. They also exposed a major vulnerability in Congress: A small segment of lawmakers can stop the process of basic governance to obtain what it wants, with potentially big ramifications for the country.

In the speaker fight, the immediate consequences were relatively small. A Republican speaker, Kevin McCarthy, is leading a majority-Republican House.

More critical is how Republicans got there. McCarthy made concessions that will weaken his power, make it easier for lawmakers to oust him and give the right-wing rank-and-file greater input in legislation and in lawmakers’ assignments to committees, where Congress does much of its work.

The graver consequences will unfold months from now if the ultraconservatives who prolonged the speaker selection again withhold their votes until they have their way on looming spending bills. Congress must pass such legislation to keep the government open and avoid economic calamity. If deadlines for these bills come and go without a resolution, the government could be forced to shut down or, worse, default on its debt obligations, likely triggering a financial crisis. (More on that later.)

The right flank has already connected its opposition to McCarthy to such spending bills. In speeches during the four-day speaker battle, far-right Republicans cited a $1.7 trillion spending bill Congress passed last month to argue that establishment figures, including McCarthy, have failed to reduce government spending. Among the concessions that ultraconservatives drew from McCarthy was a promise that any increase on the country’s debt limit, a congressionally set cap on the federal debt, will be paired with spending cuts.

Some hard-liners have been clear that they would take drastic action again to have their way on spending. “Is he willing to shut the government down rather than raise the debt ceiling? That’s a nonnegotiable item,” said Representative Ralph Norman, a Republican critic of McCarthy who ultimately voted for him.

Deliberate gridlock

The ultraconservatives have said that one of their main goals is to shrink the size of government. “If you don’t stop spending money that we don’t have to fund the bureaucracy that is undermining the American people, we cannot win,” said Representative Chip Roy, a Republican who voted against McCarthy in 11 ballots.

One way to achieve this goal is by pushing Congress toward inaction. Consider some of the assurances the holdout Republicans received from McCarthy: more time to read and debate legislation, as well as to propose unlimited changes to it.

In theory, these changes might sound like common sense, since legislators should, ideally, be taking time to understand and finalize bills. But in practice, these kinds of allowances have slowed Congress’s work, if not halted it altogether, by giving lawmakers more chances to stand in the way of any kind of legislation.

This roadblock is especially likely in a closely divided Congress. Since House Republicans have a slim majority of 222 votes out of 435, they must rely on their right-wing faction to reach a majority in any vote (absent unlikely support from Democrats). Last week, that faction showed it will wield its leverage.

“It’s all about the ability — empowering us to stop the machine in this town from doing what it does,” Roy said.

Coming deadlines

If the ultraconservatives use these tactics in future legislative debates, Congress could miss deadlines to keep the government open and avoid a financial crisis.

Among the looming fights is one over the debt limit. If the government ever reaches this limit, it can no longer borrow money to pay off its debts, potentially forcing a default. That could cause serious damage to the global financial system, which relies on U.S. Treasuries as a safe investment.

The government is expected to hit the current debt limit in late summer. Republicans have already suggested that they will try to use negotiations over raising it to draw spending concessions from Senate Democrats and the Biden administration, a tactic that conservatives used during Barack Obama’s presidency. But Democrats have said that they will not negotiate over the debt limit this time.

If both sides stick to their word, the government could be on track for the most treacherous debt-limit debate since 2011, my colleague Jim Tankersley reported. That year, Obama and a new Republican House majority nearly defaulted on the nation’s debt before reaching a deal.

(Read more Gerber-grade pabulum at the New York Times)

If this were a balanced review from a nonpartisan publication, this might be welcome

If the people at this paper were in any way balanced in their views, this news would be more acceptable. However, because they report for Democrats and only for the benefit of liberal policies (which continually ebb and flow), we can easily ignore this pabulum.

To prove my point, search the electronic pages of this paper for “ultra-liberals” or any term that discredits the theory of global warming (also known now as climate change). If you can find such within the past 10 years, I would be surprised.

On the other hand, I do believe that our economy might benefit from a reduction of deficit government spending and a suspension of a number of government programs. However, the problem with reducing that spending and suspending those programs with the current uneducated Democrat population and Democrat press remains at this: these events are like night breezes to the sleeping. They go unnoticed.

…

Not a whine, but a largely-ignored battle call

GOP rebels need to take the win

The Wall Street Journal produced a mirror-image article that noted the positives that may come from the stand-off between the two factions within the GOP.

And it makes it much harder for the House to tax and spend. It imposes a “cut go” rule — requiring any mandatory spending increases be offset with equal or greater mandatory spending cuts. A three-fifths supermajority vote will be required for tax increases. It revives what’s known as the “Holman rule,” allowing appropriations bills effectively to defund the salaries of specific executive-branch officials or specific programs. It also requires each committee to submit an oversight plan that lays out what action it intends to take on unauthorized or duplicative programs.

These changes will produce the first functioning House in years, even as they take the hand of spenders. Take the win!

(Read more at the Wall Street Journal)

Who can disagree with any of this?

Who can disagree with actions that may result in a lowering of the times the Federal Reserve has to raise rates?

…

 

The press and other Democrats ask how McCarthy will avoid extremist control after they bowed to BLM for years

Even the conservative Washington Examiner asks how McCarthy will control a “divided and angry GOP”

The Washington Examiner poses the question of how McCarthy will control what it seems to suggest to be a radically conservative faction in the House.

Newly elected House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) would like to defy recent history. He’s joining a troubled fraternity whose tenures ended badly, as opposed to riding off into a triumphant semi-retirement like former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA).

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-GA) helped lead Republicans to their first majority in the chamber in 40 years, the first member of his party to wield the gavel since Rep. Joseph W. Martin Jr (R-MA). He was out within five years, with the GOP’s right flank already nipping at his heels.

Former House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) was actually booted from the original Gingrich leadership team, passed over after two terms as the House Republican Conference’s chairman in favor of then-Rep. J.C. Watts (R-OK). He clawed his way all the back up to the top spot, winning the speakership in 2011. Within four years, he was hounded out of office by disaffected conservatives.

Newly elected House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) would like to defy recent history. He’s joining a troubled fraternity whose tenures ended badly, as opposed to riding off into a triumphant semi-retirement like former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA).

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-GA) helped lead Republicans to their first majority in the chamber in 40 years, the first member of his party to wield the gavel since Rep. Joseph W. Martin Jr (R-MA). He was out within five years, with the GOP’s right flank already nipping at his heels.

Former House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) was actually booted from the original Gingrich leadership team, passed over after two terms as the House Republican Conference’s chairman in favor of then-Rep. J.C. Watts (R-OK). He clawed his way all the back up to the top spot, winning the speakership in 2011. Within four years, he was hounded out of office by disaffected conservatives.

(Read more at the Washington Examiner)

Where were these questions when Nancy Pelosi took a knee to Black Lives Matter for the past few years?

Where were the intrepid reporters when it came to the George Floyd riots?

What probes went on when the purported middle-of-the-road Democrats took a knee to the socialists?

On the other hand, since the journalists at the Washington Examiner decided to deride conservatives, maybe they should also explain why conservative is bad. That might be an informational ride for us all (especially since the Washington Examiner formerly had some conservative bona fides).

…

Seriously, they quote Schiff on his misgivings on GOP concessions

The Washington Examiner also sat and listened to serial liar Adam Schiff and his inane opinion on how concessions were offered to certain groups other than his favored groups.

Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) slammed the new House speaker on Saturday for conceding “all the power of his office to the crazies” in a bid to win the speakership.

“He had to give away the house to do it, and that was a sacrifice he was willing to make — for the title,” Schiff wrote in a tweet.

Looks like Kevin McCarthy conceded all the power of his office to the crazies to finally get their votes. He had… twitter.com/i/web/status/1…

—
Adam Schiff (@RepAdamSchiff) January 07, 2023

(Read more at the Washington Examiner)

Either the Washington Examiner has lapsed into occational satire or they have hired liberals who cannot research Schiff-for-brains

I certainly hope that they have converted to a satire site with this article.

…

 

Where is the outrage, Democrats

The last time I checked with Andy Kahan’s site prior to the election, there were 172 people murdered in Harris County by felons released on bail by Democrat judges

A few months before the midterms, I blogged on the 172 Harris County victims of felons released on bail by Democrat judges.

Unsurprisingly, a number of others (including people who formed Political Action Committees (PACs)) and even a few main stream media sources (who published back-page, bottom-of-the-fold articles) came to notice.

The Houston Comical Chronicle even noticed the bullseye painted on the backs of Democrat catch-and-release judges

The Houston Comical Chronicle even pulled their heads out of their liberal holes to observe how victim families (including a number of historially-faithful Democrats) had banded together to stand against the catch-and-release Democrat judges.

Family members of slain residents gathered with three Republican Harris County constables outside of Commissioners Court Tuesday to drum up support for conservative judicial candidates and blast Democratic judges who they said are “soft on crime.” 

The speakers, affiliated with the Stop Houston Murders PAC, blamed Democratic judges for rising homicide rates in Harris County at the beginning of the pandemic — a trend which played out similarly across the country. Homicide rates have fallen by 13 percent this year compared to the same point in 2021, according to data from the Harris County Office of County Administration.

“Last year, my brother was killed by criminals who were released from the revolving courthouse doors that Harris County Democratic judges have created,” said Aimee Castillo, speaking about her brother, Joshua Sandoval, who was killed during an attempted robbery in 2021, allegedly by a man released after posting a $5,000 bond on an evading arrest charge.

“Yesterday, the polls opened for early voting. The current soft-on-crime judges do not see a problem with the current catch-and-release system. Do not let your vote go to waste,” Castillo said. 

State District Judge Jason Luong, who set Sandoval’s bail in the evading arrest case, lost his Democratic primary runoff in March. 

The Stop Houston Murders PAC has raised nearly $2 million to support Republican judicial candidates, including substantial contributions from Richard Weekley, a major donor to Alexandra del Moral Mealer’s campaign for county judge.

(Read more — including liberal excuses — at the Houston Comical Chronicle)

It was within the comments a Bunkerville where I got prompted to this post

Due to a comment by Peter3NJ at Bunkerville, the point of “Where is the outrage” came to center stage.

Hence, I started looking to the articles that had only occupied the periphery of my blogging mind.

Therefore, the next few articles came to mind regarding the death, resurrection, and murder of decency in Harris County’s courts.

Murder suspect becomes wanted fugitive after million-dollar bond is substantially lowered and he gets freed

Houston Fox affiliate KRIV reports on the murder suspect released after his bond got substantially reduced — only to become a fugitive from the law.

The District Attorney’s Office asked the court to deny Michael Richardson bond stating he’s a danger to the future safety of the community. 

Still Richardson got bond, but then failed to show back up to court.

Since 1999, Richardson has been in and out of county jails and prisons.

“He has at least seven felony convictions,” said Andy Kahan with Crime Stoppers. “He just finished serving a 2-year stint for felon in possession of a weapon in TDCJ.”

Richardson was out of jail on bond for a new charge of felon in possession of a weapon when police say he shot and killed 53-year-old Gregory Wiltz on January 26, 2021.

It happened on Delaware at Fidelity on the east end. Richardson allegedly shot Wiltz to death while he sat in his vehicle.

Wiltz was popular store owner.

“Who evidently everybody knew, he was called a beloved figure in the neighborhood,” Kahan said.

(Read more at KRIV)

The good news is that this felon subsequently got picked up by ICE

In an update of this same story, KRIV told us that Richardson got picked up and detained by ICE (even though he is not an illegal alien).

After our story aired, we discovered Michael Richardson is being held at an ICE facility in Conroe.
It’s not clear yet why federal authorities are detaining him.

Odd how doing what turns out to be right is done by hook-or-crook during the Biden regime.

Speaking of odd things: why release the suspected murderer of a rap artist when so much points away from it?

Since Democrats seem so intent on worshipping celebrity, why do we find Democrat judges considering the release of felons (even those accused of murder)?

Why? Because Democrats have not suffered enough to stop their idiocy and start voting other-than-Democrat.

…

Bond set at $2 million for man suspected of killing rap artist “Takeoff”

Aptly-named Democrat site Revolt opens up on the bond set for the man caught on camera holding a rifle in one hand and a wine bottle in another while shooting unarmed rapper “Takeoff.”

The man suspected of killing Takeoff last month in Houston made his first appearance in court on Friday (Dec. 2).

Patrick Xavier Clark, 33, was arrested by Houston police Thursday (Dec. 1) evening and has since been charged with murder. His arrest marks the second authorities have made in the case. Cameron Joshua, 22, was previously arrested on two counts of felony possession of a firearm. Joshua was supposedly at the gathering but is believed to have no connection to the actual shooting of Takeoff.

According to KTRK-TV, who obtained court documents, the evidence that led to Clark’s arrest includes video footage, license plate information from the car in which he left the scene, and fingerprints collected from a wine bottle he was seen holding.

It was also noted that the suspected gunman’s bond was set at $2 million and that he may have planned to skip town. Additionally, documents showed he purchased two plane tickets to Mexico and applied for an expedited passport. During his arrest, he was in possession of the passport and a large amount of cash. “So, we believe that he had plans or has plans to flee the jurisdiction if released on bond,” the judge said. Clark is currently being held in the Harris County Jail and is expected to return to court on Monday (Dec. 5).

(Read more at Revolt)

Surprise, bond was reduced by half for this guy

Houston NBC affiliate KPRC reports that bond was reduced by half for the suspected murder of “Takeoff.”

Bond has been lowered for Patrick Xavier Clark, the 33-year-old man charged in the murder of Migos rapper Takeoff, Judge Josh Hill ordered Wednesday.

Clark is accused in the Nov. 1 fatal shooting of the Atlanta rapper, whose real name was Kirsnick Kari Ball, and was arrested a month later.

Clark’s initial bond was set at $2,000,000 but his legal team argued that amount was excessive. They filed a motion Tuesday asking for the bond to be reduced to $100,000. That request was declined; however, the new bond has been reduced to $1,000,000. One of the conditions of the order requires Clark to wear a GPS monitor that can be monitored in real time by the court and law enforcement.

The motion, which was filed by “attorneys on record” Letitia D. Quinones and Carl A. Moore, lays out a number of issues they would like to be taken into consideration.

Clark was identified by authorities as the triggerman who fired the fatal shots outside a downtown Houston bowling alley that claimed the life of Takeoff, who was an innocent bystander. The victim was part of the Grammy-winning group, which also includes family members Quavo and Offset. According to celebritynetworth.com, the megastar’s net worth was an estimated $26 million at the time of his death at the age of 28.

Money is one of the key issues noted in the reduction request.

According to the motion filed by Clark’s attorneys, Census data shows the accused killer’s family lives in a county where the median income is $65,000, therefore they can’t afford to pay bonding agencies the required $200,000 down payment.

The motion outlines, according to data, “it would take four years of income for the average person to raise the 10% cash deposit required to post bond as it is presently set.”

The motion states, due to this reason, the “applicant requests that bond be set at the reasonable amount of $100,000, which is comparable to other defendants similarly situated in Harris County.”

When Clark was taken into custody on Dec. 2, authorities found a passport, a Mexican itinerary and large amount of cash, which led them to believe he was possibly planning to flee the country. His attorneys said that was not the case.

(Read more at KPRC)

Maybe this will be the case that breaks a number of Democrat backs.

But then, maybe not.

…

 

A comparison of the Right and Left

Right

1. After a month of recounts, Lauren Boebert officially wins her reelection bid

The Daily Wire laid out Representative Boebert’s dekayed win against her Democrat foe.

Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-CO) won her bid for reelection after a tight race decided by roughly 550 votes, a recount confirmed on Monday.

The final results in Colorado’s Congressional District 3 showed the incumbent received 50.06% of the votes, while her Democratic rival, Adam Frisch, received 49.89%. Tallies showed Boebert with 163,839 votes following a net loss of three, and Frisch with 163,293 votes after a net gain of one.

The initial results had been within Colorado’s margin for a mandatory recount, which is at or less than 0.5% difference between the top two candidates. But Frisch, a former Aspen City Council member, already conceded defeat last month, and Boebert declared victory.

“We have won this race,” Boebert said at the time. “With this victory and with Republicans in control of the House of Representatives we can focus on the issues that actually matter most, including getting inflation under control, increasing our domestic energy supply, securing our southern border and being a strong check on the White House.”

We won! I am so thankful for all of your support and I am so proud to be your Representative! https://t.co/4gnmflotiU

—
Lauren Boebert (@laurenboebert) November 18, 2022

(Read more at the Daily Wire)

So the people on the Right count their wins

Part of our current problem has been that the districts have been so tightly gerrymandered and the Democrats have learned to use ballot harvesting where it is legal (as it is in Georgia and California).

…

2. A conservative publisher interviews Maxine Waters concerning the questioning of a Democrat mega-donor

The Washington Examiner reports on the aeemingly arranged arrest of Bankman-Fried by interviewing the soon-to-be out-of-power Democrats on the House Financial Services Committee.

Former FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried will not testify in front of a House committee on Tuesday after he was arrested in the Bahamas on Monday, according to the chairwoman of the House Financial Services Committee.

Chairwoman Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA) confirmed the news in a statement Monday night, claiming she was surprised to hear of his arrest but that the committee would continue to try and get answers on the collapse of the FTX cryptoexchange through FTX’s current CEO John Ray III during the hearing.

“I am surprised to hear that Sam Bankman-Fried was arrested in the Bahamas at the direction of the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York. It’s about time the process to bring Mr. Bankman-Fried to justice has begun,” Waters said in a statement. “Although Mr. Bankman-Fried must be held accountable, the American public deserves to hear directly from Mr. Bankman-Fried about the actions that have harmed over one million people, and wiped out the hard-earned life savings of so many. The public has been waiting eagerly to get these answers under oath before Congress, and the timing of this arrest denies the public this opportunity.”

Waters added that Bankman-Fried’s lawyers confirmed that the crypto mogul was planning to testify on Tuesday, before his arrest. Testimony from Bankman-Fried was also being sought by the Senate Banking Committee. However, the former CEO refused to testify in front of the Senate committee, senators said Monday.

Bankman-Fried’s arrest was first reported by the attorney general of the Bahamas and confirmed by the U.S. attorney from the southern district of New York based on a sealed indictment.

The indictment is expected to be unsealed Tuesday morning, and the crypto mogul is expected to be charged with “wire fraud, wire fraud conspiracy, securities fraud, securities fraud conspiracy and money laundering,” according to the New York Times.

(Read more at the Washington Examiner)

Why would the Washington Examiner interview Republicans who go along to get along?

Why would the realists at this conservative publisher go to the conservative side when effective liberals like Mitch McConnell arrange for a filibuster-proof majority for the Respect for Marriage (the bill that kills our individual free speech rights to not bow to gay marriage)?

Likewise, why would conservatives trust in House Republicans who joined the lame-duck Democrat majority to stab conservatives in the back?

…

3. Musk reveals pedophilic statement in Roth thesis: Yoel Roth suggested giving under-18-year-olds access to gay hook-up app Grindr

The Daily Mail relates Musk’s quotes of Yoel Roth’s thesis in a way that seems to make Roth the victim.

Twitter’s former censor has been forced to flee the $1.1m Bay Area mansion he shares with his boyfriend after Elon Musk shared part of his thesis which suggested letting children access gay hook-up app Grindr.

Yoel Roth, 34, and his partner Nicholas Madsen, 44, moved out of their two-bed, two-bath property in El Cerrito over fears for their safety, after receiving a torrent of threats, the Washington Post reported. 

Musk tweeted: ‘Looks like Yoel is in favor of letting children being able to access adult internet services in his PhD thesis.’

He also shared a screenshot of part of the document.

Roth’s thesis, written in 2016 while he was at the University of Pennsylvania, included the claim that many under-18s access gay hook-up app Grindr, despite being too young to do so.

(Read more at the Daily Mail)

However, those who conspire with the FBI and conspire to corrupt our children are not the victims

Nobody forced Yoel to make the statement he did in his thesis.

By contrast, while the FBI may have pressured the social media giants to help Biden and hurt Trump, the social media giants were like all of us who find ourselves in a moral dilemma. We never have to do evil.

Most importantly, pointing out that evil has occurred does not always in itself constitute evil. In fact, in my opinion, Musk currently fits the bill of a hero.

…

Left

1. Never focusing on themselves, the Biden regime calls out Marjorie Taylor Greene comments on 6 January 2021 riot

The Washington Examiner points out how the Biden regime just cannot allow another narrative than their own on the 6 January 2021 riot.

The White House called out firebrand Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) on Monday, saying her comments about an armed Jan. 6 riot that would have succeeded were antithetical to American values.

Greene made the comments, which she insists were sarcastic, at Sunday night’s New York Young Republican Club Gala, saying, “If Steve Bannon and I had organized that, we would have won. Not to mention, it would’ve been armed.”

White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre decried those comments during Monday afternoon’s press briefing.

“This is what is coming from a member of Congress,” said Jean-Pierre, who briefly called her “Majority” Taylor Greene. “What’s more, she said it to a group that lashed out against condemning Holocaust denial. They were giving her an award.”

The congresswoman was decrying those who accused her of giving “insurrection tours” and helping plan Jan. 6 even though she “couldn’t even find the bathroom in the Capitol” due to being a new member of the House in early 2021. She then said that if she organized it, things would have been different.

“See, that’s the whole joke, isn’t it?” Greene said. “They say that whole thing was planned, and I’m like, are you kidding me? A bunch of conservatives, Second Amendment supporters, went in the Capitol without guns, and they think we organized that? I don’t think so.”

Greene said in her own Monday statement that Democrats were “trying to weaponize a sarcastic joke.”

The White House did not take it that way.

(Read more at the Washington Examiner)

As I recently mentioned, Biden has no room to complain about anything gun-related

With Biden’s release of the “Merchant of Death” into the mix of the Ukrainian war, Joe Biden has no reason to complain about any action or comment regarding guns.

…

2. Were Democrats focusing on potential embarresment to them when they allowed Democrat mega-donor Bankman-Fried to be arrested hours before facing questions from Congress?

Brietbart reports on the arrest of Sam Bankman-Fried and his unwillingness to testify while under arrest.

Democrat Mega-donor and FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried was arrested in the Bahamas on Monday, just hours before he was scheduled to testify in front of the House Financial Services Committee on Tuesday.

Bankman-Fried was arrested after U.S. authorities filed criminal charges against him, U.S. Attorneys confirmed.

“Earlier this evening, Bahamian authorities arrested Samuel Bankman-Fried at the request of the U.S. Government, based on a sealed indictment filed by the SDNY,” United States Attorney Damian Williams said. “We expect to move to unseal the indictment in the morning and will have more to say at that time.”

USA Damian Williams: Earlier this evening, Bahamian authorities arrested Samuel Bankman-Fried at the request of the… twitter.com/i/web/status/1…

—
US Attorney SDNY (@SDNYnews) December 12, 2022

(Read more at Brietbart)

Could it be that Democrats arranged for the arrest of Bankman-Fried?

Anyone who has watched the empty prosecution of Trump and his affiliates will know that the Southern District of New York remains as a hotbed of Democrat activists in lawyer suits.

…

3. Biden invites drag queen who performs for children to attend “Respect for Marriage Act” signing

Breitbart exposes the fact that the drag queen that Biden invited to the signing of the Respect for Marriage bill performed for children.

President Joe Biden invited a drag queen who performs for children to the White House on Tuesday to witness the signing of the “Respect for Marriage Act,” which enshrines same-sex marriage into law.

Drag queen activist Marti Cummings celebrated the invite on Twitter, and though he keeps his account private, the Libs of TikTok account shared Cummings’ status.

“To be a non binary drag artist invited to the White House is something I never imagined would happen. Thank you President & Dr. Biden for inviting me to this historic bill signing. Grateful doesn’t begin to express the emotions I feel,” Cummings tweeted while sharing a screenshot of the White House invite.

Biden invited a drag queen to the White House today for the signing of the Respect for Marriage Act. This drag quee… twitter.com/i/web/status/1…

—
Libs of TikTok (@libsoftiktok) December 12, 2022

(Read more at Breitbart)

This is more proof that the Biden regime does not want to convince, but to program

Since Biden has decided from the beginning to:

• Deny the opposition a platform for debate (through FBI collusion with the social media companies)
• Endoctrinate the uninformed (through Drag Queen story hours and the like)
• Playing with and stretching the rules (as shown by the need for the repeated recounts)

…

 

Two points of Chinese collusion on behalf of Democrats

An endowment headed by current CIA Director William Burns introduced congressional staffers to Chinese spies

The Daily Caller reports how the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace introduced congressional staffers to a number of Chinese spy front groups.

The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace introduced congressional staffers to at least 10 individuals who worked for Chinese intelligence front groups during a 2019 trip to China while current CIA Director William Burns served as the nonprofit’s president, a Daily Caller News Foundation investigation found.

During the week-long, all-expenses-paid trip to Beijing, a bipartisan group of congressional staffers from the offices of various representatives — including Connecticut Democratic Rep. Jim Himes and former North Carolina Republican Rep. Mark Meadows — met with Chinese government officials, journalists, academics and policy experts, according to the trip’s itinerary. Yet, at least 10 of the Chinese individuals worked for front groups controlled by Chinese spy agencies, such as the Ministry of State Security (MSS), the International Liaison Department (ILD) and the intel arm of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA), the DCNF determined.

The congressional staffers participated in a number of discussions with undisclosed Chinese intelligence front group members, such as a Nov. 6 “pre-dinner dialogue” concerning “Chinese perspectives on U.S.-China policy challenges,” which included Ding Yifan, a member of the MSS-controlled Institute of World Development Studies.

PLA’s Second Intelligence Department carries out military intelligence operations, while the ILD focuses on political intelligence and the MSS serves as China’s equivalent of the CIA, according to the Defense Intelligence Agency.

The DCNF was able to identify some of the individuals who participated in Carnegie’s 2019 trip as being tied to Chinese intelligence agency front groups by cross-referencing the itinerary with the research of several prominent Chinese intelligence specialists, including former CIA analyst Peter Mattis and Alex Joske, a former analyst at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute.

(Read more at the Daily Caller)

Developing ties between Democrat staffers and communist spies seems like a significant matter

Even after the Mueller Report established that no link existed or had existed between Russia and Trump, we still had to listen to years of the liberal press repeating “Russian collusion” ad nauseum. So how do we not have the main stream media calling this out at every opportunity?

…

Forbes proves that Chinese operatives ran a massive TikTok campaign to help Democrats in the midterm elections

The Daily Caller calls on the research of Forbes who found a massive campaign by China to help Democrats and hurt Republicans.

TikTok accounts operating as voices of Chinese state media promoted messages that appeared to denigrate Republican candidates and favor Democratic ones ahead of the 2022 midterm elections, according to a Forbes investigation.

While the Chinese-owned social media app has verbally affirmed the need to crack down on election disinformation and foreign interference, several news-oriented accounts failed to disclose their affiliation with Chinese Communist Party (CCP) state-owned media on the platform, Forbes found. The accounts racked up tens of millions views on posts that covered divisive topics, such as abortion and race, as well as critical clips that mostly targeted Republican candidates ahead of the 2022 midterms.

“This opens a new dimension for conversation about TikTok,” Conor Healy, director of government research at surveillance research group IPVM, told the Daily Caller News Foundation.

The accounts are managed by MediaLinks TV, which registered as a foreign agent for China with the Treasury Department in 2019 and distributes the U.S. branch of China Central Television (CCTV), CGTN, according to the company’s LinkedIn page. MediaLinks also operates the CCTV and CGTN apps, according to Apple.

The largest accounts are @Panadorama, @The…Optimist and @NewsTokss, the latter of which expressly covers U.S. national news, according to Forbes.

NewsTokss in particular ran content that overall shone Republican politicians in an unfavorable light and praised Democrats, Forbes found.

A video from July was introduced with the caption “Cruz, Abbott Don’t Care About Us,” referring to Republican Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas and the state’s governor, Greg Abbott, according to Forbes. Another from October criticized Republican Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida for having “Done Absolutely Nothing.”

Some content swayed against Democrats; one NewsTokss video in October asked viewers whether President Joe Biden’s promise to enshrine abortion rights served as a “political manipulation tactic,” Forbes found.

None of the videos clearly disclosed their ties to CGTN or the Chinese government, but the accounts’ profile bios did spell out, “Material distributed by MediaLinks TV LLC on behalf of CCTV. More info at DOJ, D.C.,” Forbes reported.

(Read more at the Daily Caller)

So, we don’t have to worry about just Biden’s 2020 surges at 4 a.m. in multiple cities or his FBi/CIA/social media collusion. We have Democrats and the Chinese Communist Party in 2022.

Actually, I guess this proves that Democrats will use just about any way to hold power. Accept advertisements from foreign spy agencies. Push ballot harvesting in areas where it is not legal. Perfect ballot harvesting where they have made it legal.

Since Eric Swalwell likely slept with Chinese spy Fang Fang (and he still remains in the House — and even stayed in Democrat leadership during Pelosi’s reign), should we be surprised?

…

 

More news repressed by the liberal media

News that shows the Biden regime cannot quit from fail mode

The Biden regime launches an “Environmental Justice” office

The Washington Free Beacon reveals the Biden regime’s launch of its “Environmental Justice” office.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency on Saturday launched a new office that will be focused on the needs of minority communities overburdened by pollution and oversee the delivery of $3 billion in environmental justice grants created by the recent passage of new climate legislation.

EPA Administrator Michael Regan announced the creation of the Office of Environmental Justice and External Civil Rights, which will be staffed by 200 EPA employees and led by a not-yet-announced Senate-confirmed assistant administrator.

He launched the new office at an event in Warren County, North Carolina, which was the site of protests 40 years ago that is regarded as the birthplace of the environmental justice movement.

“With the launch of a new national program office, we are embedding environmental justice and civil rights into the DNA of EPA and ensuring that people who’ve struggled to have their concerns addressed see action to solve the problems they’ve been facing for generations,” Regan said in a statement.

It was the latest move by the Biden administration to prioritize environmental justice in its policymaking. The Justice Department in May announced the launch of a new office to help low-income areas and communities of color battle the disproportionate impact of air and water pollution.

President Joe Biden has often cited protecting poor and minority communities from industrial pollution as a top priority and has pledged that 40% of federal clean energy investments will be channeled to the cause.

(Read more at the Washington Free Beacon)

If Joe cannot get his eyes onto the real target (the economy), he always has the press to cover for him

It seems that, if bumbling Joe cannot do anything to improve the economy (or at least take steps toward doing that), he only has the main stream press to cover for him. Hopefully the alternative press will be able to pull back the curtain (as it has with these articles and the ones that find their ways into conservative blogs like Bunkerville, Not of this World, and others).

…

News that obviously untrustworthy due to the history of lies within Facebook

Meta says it disables the Russian and Chinese propaganda permeating Facebook

The Los Angeles Times blindly parrots the claims by Meta (formerly Facebook) as it claims to clean up its act prior to the 2022 mid-term elections.

A sprawling disinformation network originating in Russia sought to use hundreds of fake social media accounts and dozens of sham news websites to spread the Kremlin’s talking points about the invasion of Ukraine, Facebook parent company Meta said Tuesday.

The company, which also owns Instagram, said it identified and disabled the operation before it was able to gain a large audience. Nonetheless, Facebook said it was the largest and most complex Russian propaganda effort that it has found since the invasion began in February.

The operation involved more than 60 websites created to mimic legitimate news sites including the Guardian newspaper in Britain and Germany’s Der Spiegel. Instead of the actual news reported by those outlets, the fake sites contained links to Russian propaganda and disinformation about Ukraine. More than 1,600 fake Facebook accounts were used to spread the propaganda to audiences in Germany, Italy, France, Britain and Ukraine.

The findings highlighted both the promise of social media companies to police their sites and the peril that disinformation continues to pose.

“Video: False Staging in Bucha Revealed!” claimed one of the fake news stories, which blamed Ukraine for the slaughter of hundreds of Ukrainians in a town occupied by the Russians.

The fake social media accounts were then used to spread links to the fake news stories and other pro-Russian posts and videos on Facebook and Instagram, as well as platforms including Telegram and Twitter. The network was active throughout the summer.

“On a few occasions, the operation’s content was amplified by the official Facebook pages of Russian embassies in Europe and Asia,” said David Agranovich, Meta’s director of threat disruption. “I think this is probably the largest and most complex Russian-origin operation that we’ve disrupted since the beginning of the war in Ukraine earlier this year.”

The network’s activities were first noticed by investigative reporters in Germany. When Meta began its investigation, it found that many of the fake accounts had already been removed by Facebook’s automated systems. Thousands of people were following the network’s Facebook pages when they were deactivated earlier this year.

(continued)

Researchers at Meta Platforms, which is based in Menlo Park, also exposed a much smaller network that originated in China and attempted to spread divisive political content in the U.S.

(Read more at the Los Angeles Times)

Of course, this may be a shell game

As many times as Facebook has lied, worked against us, and worked for the communists, this deserves a second and third consideration before giving them slack.

…

News that reveals the deception inherent to Facebook

Facebook spied on private messages of Americans who questioned the 2020 election

The New York Post tells how Facebook dug into private messages that centered on rejection of the 2020 election.

Facebook has been spying on the private messages and data of American users and reporting them to the FBI if they express anti-government or anti-authority sentiments — or question the 2020 election — according to sources within the Department of Justice.

Under the FBI collaboration operation, somebody at Facebook red-flagged these supposedly subversive private messages over the past 19 months and transmitted them in redacted form to the domestic terrorism operational unit at FBI headquarters in Washington, DC, without a subpoena.

“It was done outside the legal process and without probable cause,” alleged one of the sources, who spoke on condition of ­anonymity.

“Facebook provides the FBI with private conversations which are protected by the First Amendment without any subpoena.”

These private messages then have been farmed out as “leads” to FBI field offices around the country, which subsequently requested subpoenas from the partner US Attorney’s Office in their district to officially obtain the private conversations that Facebook already had shown them.

But when the targeted Facebook users were investigated by agents in a local FBI field office, sometimes using covert surveillance techniques, nothing criminal or violent turned up.

(Read more at the New York Post)

Facebook, like the FBI, does not deserve too many more chances

I believe in second chances. However, I also believe in discernment and wisdom.

When it comes to organizations, there is a time for disbandment.

…

News that would show how easily the Biden actions would be to overturn

New lawsuit challenges the legality of Biden’s student loan forgiveness plan

Reason.com reports on a lawsuit filed against the Biden student loan forgiveness plan.

President Joe Biden’s plan to forgive hundreds of billions of dollars in student loan debt violates both federal law and the Constitution, according to a just-filed lawsuit from the Pacific Legal Foundation (PLF), a libertarian law firm.

“This isn’t how laws are supposed to be made,” Caleb Kruckenberg, an attorney for PLF, tells Reason. “Only Congress has the power to pass laws and spend money under the Constitution. The administration’s actions here are flagrantly illegal.”

This is the first serious challenge to Biden’s student loan forgiveness plan, which he announced last month. The lawsuit’s plaintiff is Frank Garrison, who’s also an attorney at PLF. Garrison borrowed federal student loans to pay for law school, but according to him, Biden’s debt forgiveness plan will actually subject him to a financial penalty in the form of a state tax. This gives him standing to sue the U.S. Education Department, his lawsuit argues.

“Despite the staggering scope of this regulatory action, it was taken with breathtaking informality and opacity,” the lawsuit claims. “In the rush, the administration has created new problems for borrowers in at least six states that tax loan cancellation as income.”

(Read more at Reason.com)

With this lawsuit being filed on 27 September 2022, I hope it will work in time

Considering the magnitude of the Biden dictum, I hope that the Supreme Court puts this on a fast track.

…

News that shows the naked partisanship within Biden

Biden calls Florida mayors but not DeSantis as Hurricane Ian nears

The New York Post points out how Biden called Democrat mayors in Florida but refused to call (my original wording due to the original story early in the evening of 27 September) held off a call to Governor DeSantis as Hurricane Ian approaches.

President Biden called three Florida mayors Tuesday as Hurricane Ian nears Florida’s western coast — hours before reaching out to Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis, with whom he has clashed on issues such as COVID-19 policies and migration.

As the devastating Category 3 storm approached, Biden first spoke with Tampa Mayor Jane Castor, St. Petersburg Mayor Ken Welch and Clearwater Mayor Frank Hibbard. Castor and Welch are Democrats, while Hibbard is a Republican.

The president waited until Tuesday night to phone DeSantis.

The two discussed “the steps the Federal government is taking to help Florida prepare for Hurricane Ian,” said White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre. “The President and the Governor committed to continued close coordination.”

DeSantis is a potential 2024 Republican presidential candidate and has frequently criticized Biden’s performance.

White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said at her regular press briefing that Biden “held separate calls” with the mayors and “discussed planning and preparation for Hurricane Ian.”

Biden “underscored his commitment to the people of Florida and made clear that impacted communities will have the full support of the federal government to augment state and local emergency response efforts,” Jean-Pierre added.

Deanne Criswell, administrator of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, joined Biden for his calls with the mayors and Criswell said Biden delegated to her the responsibility of liaising with DeSantis on Friday.

“The president directed me to contact the governor early on before we even did the declaration. I did that,” she said. “My regional administrator is with the governor right now making sure that we’re understanding what the needs are and our focus is on the current life safety needs.”

(Read more at the New York Post)

Can you imagine the backlash had George W. Bush refused to call a Democrat governor?

If Reagan had refused to deal with a Democrat governor during his last year of his presidency, would we still be hearing about it in the press?

…

News that shows the dictatorial tendencies of Joe Biden when he uses executive orders more than Trump

Biden-era Democrats learn to love emergency powers after hating them under Trump

The Washington Examiner lays out a case for the over-use of executive orders by Joe Biden.

A sizable group of Democratic politicians have pressured President Joe Biden to declare national emergencies on the climate and abortion rights in recent weeks, but nearly 80 of those lawmakers attacked his predecessor’s use of emergency powers.

Former President Donald Trump declared a national emergency at the southern border in February 2019 as a means of bypassing Congress and securing funding for the completion of his campaign-promised border wall. The move was heartily opposed by Democrats at the time as an abuse of executive power.

“The President’s unlawful declaration over a crisis that does not exist does great violence to our Constitution and makes America less safe, stealing from urgently needed defense funds for the security of our military and our nation,” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and then-Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) said in a joint statement at the time. “This is plainly a power grab by a disappointed President, who has gone outside the bounds of the law to try to get what he failed to achieve in the constitutional legislative process.”

Even Trump’s final White House chief of staff, Mark Meadows , then a North Carolina Republican congressman and the chairman of the House Freedom Caucus , suggested Trump’s border emergency was a “slippery slope” and predicted “the potential for national emergencies being used for every single thing that we face in the future where we can’t reach an agreement.”

The House passed a bill in late February 2019 seeking to block Trump’s declaration, as outlined in the National Emergencies Act of 1976, but the measure eventually died in the Senate. Biden ended the border emergency in February 2021, shortly after entering office. A year and a half later, he is facing pressure from Democrats to invoke similar emergency powers on abortion and climate.

Eighty-three members of the Congressional Progressive Caucus sent a letter to the president and Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra on July 12, urging him to declare an emergency in response to “the Supreme Court’s radical and dangerous decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization.“

Sixty-eight of the letter’s signatories voted to overturn Trump’s border emergency back in 2019, and only two of the lawmakers who did not vote yes were sitting members of Congress at the time. Reps. Peter DeFazio (D-OR) and Steve Cohen (D-TN) both abstained from voting.

The White House is weighing declaring a public health emergency to shield doctors, pharmacies, and other healthcare providers who offer access to abortion pills in states with stringent abortion bans, but officials are reportedly concerned about the prospects that Republicans would attempt to file lawsuits over any such declared emergencies. Biden himself said he was open to reevaluating the idea during a meeting with state governors who took action to protect abortion access following the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization ruling.

Similarly, Sens. Cory Booker (D-NJ), Martin Heinrich (D-NM), Jeff Merkley (D-OR), Ed Markey (D-MA), Alex Padilla (D-CA), Bernie Sanders (I-VT), Brian Schatz (D-HI), Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), and Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) all called on Biden to declare climate change a national emergency this past week.

(Read the whole article at the Washington Examiner)

Odd how things change

Trump used the executive order to advance the wall and secure the border. Although the press loves to overlook the murders perpetrated by illegals and the damage done by border crossers (like the 2,200 deaths, 118,000 rapes, and 138,000 assaults recorded).

Now Biden wants to allow abortion (a.k.a. baby murder) up until birth in all 50 states under his (devoutly Catholic) watch.

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