Biden Scrambles To Buy Votes With New Taxpayer-Funded Student Debt Relief Scheme
After American borrowers adjusted their finances amid the mass-suspension of student loan payments during the pandemic (and the scorching inflation that followed), the Biden administration on Monday announced new student loan plans that would give borrowers up to $20,000 in loan forgiveness for balances that have grown due to unpaid interest since entering repayment, regardless of income.
The plan is aimed at those with “runaway interest.”
Those who qualify for the “SAVE IDR” (income-driven repayment) would have the full balance of their unpaid interest forgiven, which would benefit roughly 25 million Americans.
What’s more, the administration is also looking to provide automatic debt relief for those who qualify under the SAVE plan, Public Service Loan Forgiveness program, and similar forgiveness programs which have hit red tape when it comes to relief.
Lastly, the plan would give relief to those enrolled in low-financial-value education programs deemed insufficient by the Department of Education, as well as those experiencing hardship in paying back loans and who are at risk of default.
I said I wouldn’t back down from using every tool at our disposal to get student loan borrowers the relief they need.
That’s why today we’re announcing new plans that, if implemented, would cancel student debt for millions more. pic.twitter.com/rNiCxzzlU3
“The Biden-Harris Administration plans to release proposed rules on these plans over the coming months. If these plans are finalized as proposed, this fall the Administration would begin canceling up to $20,000 in interest for millions of borrowers and full loan forgiveness for millions more,” the administration said in a Monday statement.
The administration said the White House estimates more than 30 million Americans would have benefited from loan forgiveness from the plans during the past three years.
The administration is also emphasizing how its action will help Black and Latino borrowers and those who went to community college, who are more likely to struggle with student loan debt. –The Hill
“These actions are expected to provide significant relief to Black and Latino borrowers, borrowers who attended community college, and borrowers who are financially vulnerable because they took out debt but never had the chance to complete their degree,” according to the administration.
So the Biden administration is taking taxpayer money to pay the banks their interest?
Members of Congress who cheer for executive branch expropriation of funds should resign. https://t.co/lTqmjnPnRJ
By George Lei, Bloomberg markets live reporter and strategist
US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen implored Beijing’s top leaders during her four-day visit to refrain from boosting the country’s already vast manufacturing capacity and to focus on lifting domestic demand instead.
That push, however, is in stark contrast to the priorities of President Xi Jinping, whose “new productive forces” slogan is now dominating the economic policy discourse. His push suggests the country’s expansion of its production capacity will likely persist and contribute to increasing tensions with the nation’s major trading partners.
While its not entirely clear how Xi’s policy will play out on the ground, equity investors have already picked winners since the phrase was listed as the government’s top task in early March. Market reactions seem to imply that Beijing will double down on state spending to strengthen China’s transition toward high-tech, value-added production and advanced manufacturing. There is also a perception that “Made in China 2025” – a government plan to groom 10 globally competitive industries, and one that drew the ire of former President Trump – is making a comeback.
The push for greater investments in manufacturing will likely reinforce China’s role as the world’s factory and fuel already-tense trade relationships with the US and other major economies, both in the developed and developing worlds. Over the past few months, the European Union, for one, has pushed back hard against a glut of Chinese products flooding the bloc’s market, including EVs, semi-conductors and solar and wind equipment. Frictions have also been on the rise with countries including Chile, Turkey and India in recent years.
Beijing has also attempted to reorient its economy toward one driven by consumption, but it’s had little success. Back in 2020, Xi advocated “dual circulation,” a catchphrase calling for a greater push on reforms to build an economy with stronger local catalysts and a pivot away from export-led growth. That vision never materialized and the term has subsequently fallen into disuse, like other popular slogans during the pandemic era such as curbing “disorderly capital.”
3/4
Increased investment in manufacturing, in other words, is among the few things that will allow China to reach the 5% growth target. Without that, either it needs a major fiscal boost to consumption (something Beijing decries as “welfarism”), or it has to accept lower growth.
Tasked with delivering 5% growth yet unable to either engineer a major housing stimulus or lend a strong helping hand to consumers, policymakers can only resort to increased manufacturing investments, Michael Pettis, professor of finance at Peking University and senior associate at Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, wrote in a tweet on Friday.
With Xi’s motto “housing is for living in, not for speculation” surfacing from time to time in policy discourse and calls for direct cash transfer to consumers falling on deaf ears, re-balancing toward a consumer-driven economy looks like a tall order.
As production exceeds consumption, Pettis says “trade conflict is only likely to get worse.” That probably won’t change no matter who wins the White House in November.
DOJ Stonewalls Over Audio Of Biden Interview With Special Counsel Hur
The Department of Justice (DOJ) has reused to provide audio tapes of President Biden’s interview with special counsel Robert Hur, defying a subpoena by the House GOP.
In an April 8 letter to the House Oversight Committee and House Judiciary Committee, Assistant AG Carlos Felipe Uriarte complained that despite cooperating with other aspects of the Feb. 27 subpoena, “the committees have responded with escalation and threats of criminal contempt.”
“We urge the committees to avoid conflict rather than seek it,” he added – while working for the same DOJ that has specifically sought conflict by launching investigations and lawsuits against former President Trump.
“It is not too late for the committees to choose a different path, to take an offramp towards the ’spirit of dynamic compromise’ that the Constitution requires of us both,” the letter continues.
The Feb. 27 subpoena requested copies of notes, audio files, video and transcripts related to Hur’s probe, and had a deadline of March 7, according to the Epoch Times, which has obtained a copy.
“Americans expect equal justice under the law and DOJ is allowing the Bidens to operate above it,” House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer (R-KY) said in a statement. “Special Counsel Hur’s report outlined that classified documents Joe Biden stashed for years relate to countries where his family cashed in on the Biden brand.”
In response to a request for audio of what author Mark Zwonitzer recorded while interviewing Biden, whose two memoirs he wrote, Uriarte said there is no need for the department to hand it over because the committees also have transcripts of the interviews.
“To go further by producing the audio files would compound the likelihood that future prosecutors will be unable to secure this level of cooperation,” Uriarte wrote.
“They might have a harder time obtaining consent to an interview at all. It is clearly not in the public interest to render such cooperation with prosecutors and investigators less likely in the future.”
Uriarte then reiterated that the DOJ has provided ample evidence to the committees.
“The department is willing to hear more from the committees, but at this time your further requests appear attenuated from the committees’ stated purposes—with today’s production, you now have the information you requested. Given the extraordinary executive branch confidentiality interests implicated here, a specific and adequate showing of need for any additional information, tethered to the authority under which the committees purport to act, is critical,” he wrote.
Uriarte then hilariously asked the committees not to make DOJ materials public, writing “To ensure an adequate opportunity to review these materials for suitability for public release, we respectfully request that the committees not disseminate or otherwise disclose the documents or information therein without prior consultation with the department.”
Mr. Hur announced on Feb. 8 that President Biden would not be charged.
“Our investigation uncovered evidence that President Biden willfully retained and disclosed classified materials after his vice presidency when he was a private citizen,” Mr. Hur wrote in a 388-page report to Attorney General Merrick Garland.
The materials, the report stated, included “marked classified documents about military and foreign policy in Afghanistan, and notebooks containing Mr. Biden’s handwritten entries about issues of national security and foreign policy implicating sensitive intelligence sources and methods.” The FBI collected these items during a search of President Biden’s residence in Wilmington, Delaware, last year.
The FBI last year also searched the president’s home in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, where they also found classified materials.
Nonetheless, Mr. Hur said that “the evidence does not establish Mr. Biden’s guilt beyond a reasonable doubt” and that “prosecution of Mr. Biden is also unwarranted based on our considerationof the aggravating and mitigating factors set forth in the Department of Justice’s Principles of Federal Prosecution.”
The classified documents are from President Biden’s more than four-decade political career, including the Senate, the vice presidency, and now the presidency.
Mr. Hur interviewed President Biden over the span of two days last year.
In deciding not to charge the president, Mr. Hur said that a jury likely wouldn’t convict him, in part due to his cognitive issues.
“We have also considered that, at trial, Mr. Biden would likely present himself to a jury, as he did during our interview of him, as a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory,” Mr. Hur wrote.
“Based on our direct interactions with and observations of him, he is someone for whom many jurors will want to identify reasonable doubt. It would be difficult to convince a jury that they should convict him—by then a former president well into his eighties—of a serious felony that requires a mental state of willfulness.”
The Afghanistan documents, which had the highest level of classification in the United States, were from 2009. These papers were in a Virginia home that President Biden rented in 2019, where he met with Mr. Zwonitzer for his two books before the classified documents were sent to Delaware.
“Nevertheless, we do not believe this evidence is sufficient, as jurors would likely find reasonable doubt for one or more of several reasons,” Mr. Hur wrote.
“Both when he served as vice president and when the Afghanistan documents were found in Mr. Biden’s Delaware garage in 2022, his possession of them in his Delaware home was not a basis for prosecution because as vice president and president, he had authority to keep classified documents in his home,” he continued.
“The best case for charges would rely on Mr. Biden’s possession of the Afghanistan documents in his Virginia home in February 2017, when he was a private citizen and when he told his ghostwriter he had just found classified material.”
The result of a six-month special grand jury investigation into the murder of 8-year-old Tommy Valva by his father has revealed another disturbing instance of abuse of power by child protection agencies and the family court system.
The New York boy died in 2019 from hypothermia after his father, an NYPD cop, inflicted a series of cruel punishments on him. He made the child strip naked, lay on a cold cement garage floor, and hosed him down with cold water. Michael Valva was convicted of his son’s murder in 2022.
The grand jury report, released on April 3, is wrought with similar findings in the recent review of the murder of 5-year-old Harmony Montgomery. Details of the girl’s murder and the state of New Hampshire’s inability to account for her whereabouts for two years gripped the nation.
It was a tragedy set in motion when Massachusetts Family Court Judge Mark Newman awarded custody of the little girl to her father Adam Montgomery. Mr. Montgomery was convicted in February of murdering his daughter.
Judge Newman granted custody to Mr. Montgomery instead of the girl’s mother despite his lengthy violent criminal history and transient status.
Before Tommy Valva’s murder, Suffolk County Family Court Judge Jeff Zimmerman also awarded full custody of the little boy along with his two brothers to his father Michael Valva over the boy’s mother Justyna Zubko-Valva.
In both Harmony and Tommy’s cases, court records, which were widely publicized in both murder trials, show that neither of their mothers had any history of abuse or violence.
In both of the children’s cases, child protection service workers went along with the court’s custody awards despite knowing that there were serious child abuse allegations and child welfare concerns pending against both men.
In her office’s findings from an investigation into Harmony’s murder, Maria Mossaides, director of the Massachusetts Office of the Child Advocate, slammed the state child protection agency for what she called system-wide failures and also for “recklessly” favoring parental rights over Harmony’s safety.
Throughout its 75-page investigative report, the New York grand jury charges New York’s child protection services system with the same kind of failures.
It faulted CPS employees for deeming child abuse allegations by another parent as unfounded with little evidence. It also cited the system as flawed for not having any independent checks and balances with the agency over such decisions.
According to the grand jury, the agency even refused to return its records for the investigation.
“The failure of CPS to do so can only be interpreted as a transparent attempt to shield their own inaction from public scrutiny. Thus, the laws and rules must be changed to prevent such future injustices,” the investigative jury charged.
In its report, it also focuses on another familiar issue raised in other states regarding the operations of child protection agencies and the family court system: the immunity that child protection workers and judges enjoy from dereliction of duty.
“Even though immunity does not preclude a finding of criminal liability for CPS caseworkers who have engaged in willful misconduct or gross negligence, such caseworkers are still effectively impervious to any such liability in cases where reports are deemed unfounded,” the panel wrote.
The panel discovered that caseworkers, due to not being required to substantiate their findings to the court or even a supervisor, created a shield against accusations of “willful misconduct or gross negligence.”
“In this regard, employees of CPS have the unilateral ability to thwart criminal investigations prior to the matter of immunity even becoming relevant, by determining that a case is unfounded, or by deciding not to migrate prior unfounded reports and related materials in a new indicated investigation,” the panel found.
At a press conference during the murder trial, Ms. Zubko-Valva talked about her many pleas for help to child protection workers and other state officials that went ignored.
“I kept thinking about all the institutions who failed to help him, who completely did absolutely nothing … now everybody’s trying to do the right thing … but where were you when I begged you for help when you could have saved my child’s life,” said Ms. Zubka-Valva who said she also filed a complaint with the FBI after Judge Hope Schwartz Zimmerman gave custody to Mr. Valva.
The judge awarded custody to the father after a divorce attorney complained to the court Ms. Zubko-Valva was “interfering with her access to the children,” according to a pending wrongful death lawsuit Ms. Zubko-Valva filed against the county CPS.
Details of CPS’ alleged complicity in the court’s custody ruling are scattered throughout the lawsuit. These include accounts of the agency’s quick dismissal of a flash drive. The lawsuit stated the mother provided this drive to the agency, and it contained 320 documents and other evidence supporting the claim that Tommy and his brothers were enduring severe abuse by their father and stepmother, Angela Pollina, who was convicted last March of the second-degree murder of her stepson.
According to the lawsuit, the evidence included several letters from Tommy’s pediatrician and therapists corroborating the abuse. It was already revealed in the lawsuit and during Mr. Valva and Ms. Pollina’s trial that the agency ignored visible signs Tommy and his brothers were being starved.
Two years ago, the Institute for Justice (IJ) launched “Project Immunity and Accountability,” a national campaign to end immunity for government officials.
“If we the people must follow the law, our government must follow the Constitution,” the group states as the headline to its campaign’s mission.
CPS agencies have long been accused of using immunity to justify their troubling decisions rather than reform them.
In a 2007 case, a child advocate brought a federal suit against the Standing Rock Child Protection Services and Bureau of Indian Affairs in North Dakota after the agencies claimed immunity for knowingly placing a juvenile sex offender into a foster home with three young children.
“Such immunity, it maintains, is based on the agency’s policy decision to protect the privacy interests of its former ward,” the lawsuit charged. “By this argument, CPS creates a smokescreen within which to hide from liability, despite its flagrant abuse of a system that it is duty-bound to protect.”
As part of its campaign, IJ is asking state legislators to adopt amendments to their state constitution to abolish government immunity, but so far no lawmakers have taken up the cause.
In New Hampshire, where Harmony Montgomery was murdered in 2019, Republican lawmakers like Rep. Leah Cushman have been pushing for reform of the child protection agency and family courts.
The state did not accept any blame for the girl’s murder even though evidence was introduced during her father’s trial that the agency failed to conduct mandatory checks on her and appeared to be unaware that she had been missing for two years.
Recently, Ms. Cushman successfully convinced House leaders to form a special committee to investigate the New Hampshire Division of Children, Youth, and Family (DCYF).
As reported previously by The Epoch Times, the committee had only started when she was removed as chairman of the committee by the House Speaker when she initiated a voluntary oath for both victims and officials as part of the special committee’s investigation.
She has since told The Epoch Times she believes the “real fix” is to take child protection service agencies out of the “investigation business,” abolish family courts, and return allegations of child abuse to the criminal courts where there is real due process.
“Keeping these cases civil is being soft on crime and letting people shown to be abusive to never face justice in a real court of law,” she said.
The NH DCYF, Massachusetts Department of Children Services, and Suffolk County Child Protective Services did not respond to requests for comment from The Epoch Times.
For the second time in a week, trading in an ETF that owns gold companies was halted in China overnight.
The ETF’s price had gained over 40% in the past four sessions before falling 10% after trading resumed Monday.
“The lack of alternatives, and the fact that it’s become a lot more difficult than it was a few years ago to get your money out of China and invest elsewhere – I think that’s definitely helping gold,” said Nikos Kavalis, managing director at consultancy Metals Focus Ltd.
“Demand is pretty decent, considering where the price is.”
As Bloomberg’s Eric Balchunas highlighted: “Investors [in China] are so desperate to buy things that are not linked to their own economy/stock mkt, which has been in the gutter.”
For context, that surge in the ETF correlated with a spot gold price near $2700…
Source: Bloomberg
As Bloomberg reports, the enthusiasm about products tied to gold, which has staged a record-setting rally in recent weeks, shows a desire to park money in a sector seen relatively immune to a struggling economy.
“Gold is trading at an all time high and gold ETF demand has surged in the past week with almost $600 million of net inflows into gold ETFs globally,” said Rebecca Sin, a Bloomberg Intelligence analyst.
“Demand in Mainland China could continue as investors look to diversify their holdings with commodities and foreign ETFs.”
The ETF fervor is a fresh example of yield-hungry Chinese investors flocking to pockets of market strength as deepening property woes, volatile stocks and falling deposit rates reduce their options.
For those wondering why buying bitcoin ETFs is not allowed there, Bloomberg’s Eric Balchunas notes that “if it were, they’d be going gaga for them given how much FOMO they have been showing for gold and US stocks (btc easily outperforming both).”
Russia is seeking to import gasoline from Kazakhstan in case shortages occur on the Russian market because of the diminished refining capacity due to maintenance and damages from Ukrainian drone attacks, Reuters reported on Monday, citing industry sources.
Russia has asked Kazakhstan to prepare to potentially deliver 100,000 tons of gasoline, the sources told Reuters.
Russia is also ready to import gasoline from Belarus if the current domestic supply is insufficient to meet demand.
Russia is estimated to have slashed in half its gasoline exports via railway after imposing a six-month ban on exports from March 1 to ensure sufficient domestic supply in peak demand season, while several refineries are undergoing regular maintenance and urgent repairs after Ukrainian drone strikes.
Russia suspended gasoline exports from March 1 until August 31, 2024, to ensure supply for the domestic market in peak demand season, in a second such export ban in just a few months. In the autumn of 2023, Russia banned exports of diesel and gasoline in an effort to stabilize domestic fuel prices in the face of soaring prices and shortages as crude oil rallied and the Russian ruble weakened.
Russia has seen its refining capacity diminished in recent weeks, due to seasonal maintenance, but most of all due to drone attacks from Ukraine, which have damaged several refineries that have shut down for repairs.
According to Reuters estimates, the amount of Russian oil refining capacity that has been taken offline due to Ukrainian drone strikes is 14% of Russia’s total refining capacity. Calculations show that 900,000 barrels per day of refining capacity have been taken offline by drone strikes, Reuters reported last month.
Most recently, strong spring floods have shut down one refinery in Russia as they compromised a dam in the area forcing the evacuation of thousands of people.
Iranian diplomatic sources say the US is trying to convince Iran not to retaliate against Israel for its bombing of the Iranian embassy in Syria earlier this month, Al-Jarida newspaper reported on Monday.
The Israeli strike targeted a building attached to the Iranian embassy in Damascus. It led to the killing of the commander of the Quds Force of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), Brigadier General Mohammad Reza Zahedi, his deputy, and five other IRGC officers. A source in the Iranian foreign ministry told the prominent Kuwaiti daily newspaper Al-Jarida that Washington offered Tehran direct negotiations with Tel Aviv to de-escalate the conflict.
According to the source, Washington will guarantee to persuade Tel Aviv to stop its military operations in Syria and Lebanon on the condition that Iran commit not to retaliate against Israel for the Damascus attack.
At the same time, a diplomatic source in Beirut told Al-Jarida that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu rejected an American proposal to pledge to stop attacks in Syria.
The source added that Iranian leader Ali Khamenei is reviewing the US offer but is not expected to accept it if it does not include guarantees for a comprehensive ceasefire in Gaza and to stop all Israeli and US attacks on Iranian targets or those belonging to Iran’s allies in the Axis of Resistance.
The source revealed that the Iranians had also previously received a verbal Israeli proposal via a Gulf state. In the proposal, Tel Aviv claimed it was ready to stop operations against Iranian targets in Syria and Lebanon in exchange for Tehran abandoning retaliation for the killing of Zahedi, whose killing was considered the most significant blow to Iran since the assassination of Qassem Soleimani.
According to the source, the Iranian Foreign Ministry responded to the Israeli message by saying that the proposal must also include a ceasefire in Gaza.
However, some IRGC leaders were unhappy with the foreign ministry’s response, viewing the Israeli proposal as a trap. The IRGC leaders argued that any negotiations with Israel must take place only after Iran has retaliated.
The source stated that IRGC commanders believe that Israel’s targeting of the Iranian consulate is an opportunity that should not be missed to strike a strong blow at Israel, especially since the consular building in Damascus is considered sovereign Iranian territory and was targeted in a clear violation of international law.
The source said that the IRGC leadership believes Washington will not enter a war with Iran even if it retaliates against Israel. They also consider that an adequately harsh strike against Israel will compel it to accept a ceasefire in Gaza and abandon any plans to invade Lebanon or escalate its bombing in Syria.
Biden May Not Appear On Ohio Ballot Due To Democratic Convention Timing
President Biden is in danger of not appearing on Ohio’s general election ballot, thanks to the fact that the Democrats’ nominating convention is scheduled to take place after the state’s candidate certification deadline.
The chief legal counsel for Ohio secretary of state Frank La Rose broke that news to Ohio Democratic Party Chairwoman Liz Walters via a letter, the Washington Post reports. He noted that Ohio law sets the presidential candidate certification deadline at 90 days before the election — which this year means Aug. 7. Trouble is, the Democratic national convention in Chicago doesn’t start until Aug. 19.
The letter offered two varyingly implausible avenues by which Dems could fix the snag:
Reschedule the national convention so Biden can be nominated before Aug. 7
Persuade the Republican-controlled Ohio legislature to enact an exceptionto the law out of the kindness of their hearts, and coax Republican Gov. Mike DeWine to sign it
In 2020, both party conventions were similarly scheduled after the Ohio deadline. Legislators did pass a one-time exception then, but they were incentivized to do so because the GOP also needed relief. This time, it’s only the Democrats swinging in the breeze.
Right on cue, a University of Cincinnati political science professor told the Post that if Biden doesn’t appear on the ballot, it would sap confidence in American governance. “If this were to actually occur and President Biden were held off the ballot, it would be devastating to the general sort of faith in democracy,” said David Niven.
Given their attempts to block Trump from ballots on flimsy 14th Amendment “insurrectionist” claims, Democrats are in no position to ask for mercy. Republicans aren’t the only ones who’d like to tell the Democrats “tough luck.” After all, while constantly crowing about saving Our Democracy®, the Dems are engaging in aggressive lawfare to make sure Americans don’t have the option to vote for independent and third-party candidates.
Donald Trump won Ohio in 2016 and 2020 — beating both Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden by 8 percentage points — and he’s up by 10 in the RealClearPolitics Ohio polling average. Given that, Biden’s absence from the ballot may be something of a moot point in the race for Ohio’s 17 electoral votes, but could sap already-sagging leftist enthusiasm about the election, which could impact down-ballot Democrats.
One of those trying to ride Sleepy Joe’s musty, mothball-scented coattails is incumbent Democratic Senator Sherrod Brown, who’s in a competitive race with Republican challenger Bernie Moreno. In a poll taken before Moreno won the primary, Brown led the Trump-endorsed Moreno by 4 points.
Whistling past the Ohio election graveyard, a Biden-Harris 2024 spokesman told the Post, “We’re monitoring the situation in Ohio and we’re confident that Joe Biden will be on the ballot in all 50 states.”
Here’s Why “America Is Broken” And People Are Worried
The NY Times on Monday published an opinion piece by UPenn senior lecturer and Open Society Project senior fellow (!) Damon Linker titled “Why Is Biden Struggling? Because America Is Broken.“
And while it’s more or less a recap of what ZeroHedge readers have known for years, the essay provides a sobering dose of reality for the “You should really watch Rachel Maddow” types.
Seven months away from a rematch election pitting President Biden against former President Donald Trump, the incumbent is struggling. Mr. Biden suffers from persistently low approval ratings, he barely manages to tie Mr. Trump in national head-to-head polls and he lags behind the former president in most of the swing states where the election will be decided (despite some recent modestly encouraging movement in his direction).
The question is why. -NY Times
Biden’s defenders, and the administration itself, has chalked the president’s unpopularity up to “a failure of communication,” however Linker instead suggests “It’s usually wiser to listen to what voters are saying” (beyond the obvious concerns about the president’s age).
‘Too Numerous to List’
Citing a January 2021 essay in Tablet titled “Everything Is Broken,” and a follow-up essay by the same author, Alana Newhsouse, who wrote that “whole parts of American society were breaking down before our eyes,” Linker encapsulates why Americans are so pissed (h/t Dean Baker):
The examples are almost too numerous to list: a disastrous war in Iraq; a ruinous financial crisis followed by a decade of anemic growth when most of the new wealth went to those who were already well off; a shambolic response to the deadliest pandemic in a century; a humiliating withdrawal from Afghanistan; rising prices and interest rates; skyrocketing levels of public and private debt; surging rates of homelessness and the spread of tent encampments in American cities; undocumented migrants streaming over the southern border; spiking rates of gun violence, mental illness, depression, addiction, suicide, chronic illness and obesity, coupled with a decline in life expectancy.
That’s an awful lot of failure over the past 20-odd years. Yet for the most part, the people who run our institutions have done very little to acknowledge or take responsibility for any of it, let alone undertake reforms that aim to fix what’s broken. -NYT
Linker then writes that the above is why “angry anti-establishment populism has become so prominent in our politics over the past decade,” which both Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders have capitalized on.
And Biden, a career politician, has been part of the problem (and therefore implicated in these abject societal failures), and is “badly out of step with the national mood, speaking a language very far removed from the talk of a broken country that suffuses Mr. Trump’s meandering and often unhinged remarks on the subject.” (gotta get that shot in!)
That leaves Mr. Biden as the lone institutionalist defender of the status quo surrounded by a small army of brokenists looking for support from an electorate primed to respond to their more downcast message.
Linker suggests that in order to recover, Biden ‘stop being so upbeat’ – about the economy in particular, and stop making the election about how awful Trump is. Biden “should admit Washington has gotten a lot of things wrong over the past two decades and sound unhappy about and humbled by it.”
Further, Biden “could make the argument that all governments make mistakes because they are run by fallible human beings — but also point out that elected representatives in a democracy should be up front about error and resolve to learn from mistakes so that they avoid them in the future.”
“Just acknowledging how much in America is broken could generate a lot of good will from otherwise skeptical and dismissive voters,” Linker suggests.
“Whoever doesn’t miss the Soviet Union doesn’t have a heart. Whoever wants it back doesn’t have a brain.”
– VV Putin
Have you checked if your hair is on fire today? Here comes an eclipse of the sun. Our moon will cast a totality of its shadow in a path about 100 miles wide arcing from Del Rio Texas to Bangor Maine, with lesser effects outward on each side of the path so that night will seem to fall at mid-day over most of America east of the Big Muddy. This event typically freaks out primitive peoples, and brings out the latent archaic terror even in supposedly civilized minds, reminding us in a powerfully spooky way that the cosmos runs things, not us puny humans.
You might ask: Are we hostages to cycles, Astronomical, Kondratieff, the Maunder Minimum, Fourth Turning, the Great Wave. . .? Considering the feckless doings of our own society, we seem to be yielding to some final act of cosmic punishment.
What is not falling apart? Our livelihoods? Our politics? Our money system? Our morals? Our common sense, our families, our relations with other societies, our infrastructure, our culture, our business models, our education, our medicine?
Alas, our government still lurches along, gone mad-dog on its citizens as it desperately sucks all power and resources unto its inner engine like a red giant star preparing for death.
Today is also the end of Ramadan, the Islamic holy month of fasting, prayer, atonement, and reflection.
What follows this pause in the troubled Middle East, a.k.a. Armageddonville? I daresay most adult citizens of sore-beset America actually don’t care. . . can’t care, because they have trouble enough of their own keeping a roof overhead, a car on the road, and food on the table.
The Woke-Marxist college kids are wailing over the actions of Israel in Gaza — as they will for anyone within their dumb-ass equation of victims-and-oppressors, especially involving brown and white people. It is a brutal operation in Gaza, for sure, but so was the Hamas act-of-war on October 7 that many want to forget about now. They still hold and torture hostages, you know.
I doubt that Israel wants to exterminate the Gazans, but at this point they would probably like to export them to other nations that share their Arab culture. Those other Arab nations are not eager to take in the Gazans. The fractious minority in the USA who militate against Israel because, you know, the Jews, never ask if the Palestinians have some other plan, some other position other than From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free! — meaning Death to Israel. Can you name any alternate proposal they have proffered? No, because there is none.
Not only have they no intention of getting along somehow with Israel, but they give every sign that they prefer to continue making war on her one way or another: rocket attacks, café bombings, rape and murder ops. Because they’re oppressed. They might have turned their 40 kilometers of Mediterranean beach-front into a world-beating resort, but instead they spent billions in international aid building a tunnel network and purchasing arms to wage war against Israel. And with October 7, they got war.
So, the rest of the world is very concerned now that this will lead to World War Three, world wars being the grand prize at the end of many historical cycles.
Of course, the Iranians have been chanting Death to Israel in so many words for decades, so no one can mistake Iran’s intentions. And Iran has funded and deployed Hezbollah military bases on Israel’s northern frontier with Lebanon. They are said to have thousands of high-tech rockets capable of decimating Tel Aviv. Everybody knows that launching such an operation could result, ten minutes later, in Tehran becoming an ashtray.
And what if Mr. Netanyahu launches a peremptory attack against southern Lebanon to destroy those bases? Does Iran ride to the rescue? And does Russia ride to Iran’s rescue? And does China rush in to secure the sea lanes in the Persian Gulf and the oil refineries of Iran that Israel doesn’t manage to blow up? And what does the USA do? Or Europe (watching much of its oil supply go off-line)? Looks World War Three-ish, a little bit.
There is also, lest we forget, the mess in Ukraine, another world war flashpoint.
There, the stark reality is that Russia is in control of the tactical situation on the ground. The WEF syndicate’s project — fronted by NATO — to weaken Russia and eventually loot its resources is a flop. The indignities heaped on Russia in sanctions and foolish objurgations will not be forgotten. There will be a Great Reset for Europe, but not the one it ordered. Not the nirvana of transhumanism and social control; rather a cold plunge into neo-medieval poverty, the breakup of large states, and a shocking simplification of daily life.
Everything that the USA and NATO are doing these days is pretense: pretending that they have the military mojo to directly enter the Ukraine War; pretending to continue pouring money into the hopeless and unnecessary conflict; pretending that the ill-conceived project even matters. The hidden truth now is that the USA war blob needs to cut its losses in Ukraine and wants to bug out. The trouble is: how to do that in a way that does not amount to another gross American strategic humiliation? That’s Russia’s problem, too: how to adroitly work the conclusion of this fiasco in a way that doesn’t humiliate the USA to the degree that we resort to some new act of geopolitical insanity in compensation. Do you remember the half century when Ukraine was indisputably within Russia’s sphere-of-influence and was not a problem for the world? I assure you this was so, and will have to be again. It will be all right.
So, if you are among those who believe that the cosmos seeks to convey an occult message in this eclipse that will supernaturally darken half our country today, maybe it’s this one: just stop it, America!
Stop meddling in every flashpoint across the planet. Look to yourself and your own monstrous problems: your jive-tragic government, your fake economy, your breached borders, your sick-and-depressed population, your racketeering corporations, your broken banks, your buggered election methods, your faithless news media, your political mental illness.
