Media Helps Reinvent Kamala Harris in Truth-Optional Campaign

Just when Americans thought they couldn’t be surprised by the press’ bias, Harris’ candidacy has turned them into outright liars, whose in-kind donation is a blanket cover-up for every unpopular policy she’s ever endorsed. And Republicans, who are used to running against the media, have to wonder: Will voters see through the scam?

From defunding the police to banning fracking—even Harris’ assignment as border czar—the Left’s revisionist history has saturated news casts, network interviews, even fact-checkers.

As National Review’s Noah Rothman bleakly put it, “The sense of euphoric inevitability that prevailed when Republicans gathered in Milwaukee for the party’s nominating convention is gone. … The Trump campaign has struggled to break into the Kamala Harris-dominated news cycle in a positive way. Republicans are resigned not just to a race against a tougher opponent but to an array of cultural and journalistic institutions acting with reckless disregard for their reputations to shield Harris from scrutiny. It’s all rather depressing.”

Harris’ dubious record is being scrubbed clean by an army of media water-carriers, who insist that GovTrack’s most liberal senator in 2019 didn’t actually mean those things she said about “Medicare for All,” voting rights for felons, bans on offshore drilling, and gun control.

In one of the more embarrassing displays, CNN’s Daniel Dale even claimed that “Harris was never made [President Joe] Biden’s ‘border czar,’” adding, “In reality, Biden gave Harris a more limited immigration-related assignment.”

“I know it’s a lie. You know it’s a lie. They know it’s a lie,” Becket Adams writes. “That they never bothered to correct this three-year-old ‘misconception’ until she became the presumptive Democratic nominee gives the game away. But the all-too-obvious timing of the thing is not stopping them from trying to revise her record anyway.”

One of Biden’s most feckless Cabinet officials, Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, tried to deny the same reality, insisting, “Let’s be very clear about this because there has been a lot of mischaracterization. She was not in charge of the border.” Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., on MSNBC, was even more disingenuous, telling MSNBC, “She wasn’t the border czar, but, boy oh boy, did she do a great job at the border.”

House Majority Leader Steve Scalise, R-La., could only shake his head. They’re all “trying to rewrite history,” he told Family Research Council President Tony Perkins on Saturday’s “This Week on the Hill.” “And you see all the left[ist] media doing this too. President Biden tapped Kamala Harris to be the border czar. She doesn’t have many jobs as vice president, and that’s one of the few things he gave her. The border is a mess. [She was told to] go figure it out. And she couldn’t do it. She wouldn’t even go down to the border for so long. She ignored this problem.”

The Left is hoping everyone forgets that “she is for open borders,” Scalise insisted. “She’s been very vocal about wanting to legalize people who just roam into the country and giv[e] them free stuff. And by the way, it’s angering most people in America.” The media is “going to try to change history. Sorry,” the House leader said. “They’re not going to be able to get away with it.”

And yet, as Rothman pointed out, “There is no pressure on the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee to sit for interviews, hold press conferences, or even merely speak extemporaneously for more than a few sentences. Even what may be Harris’ foremost vulnerability—her inauthenticity—is presented as an asset.”

His colleague, Rich Lowry, thinks this is the natural outgrowth of the press “elevat[ing] her from also-ran vice president to savior of the republic in the space of about 12 hours a couple of weekends ago.” Now, trusting that the press won’t challenge her on anything she says, Harris has the audacity to claim she’s the tough one on immigration.

At an Atlanta rally, Biden’s vice president actually said, “I will proudly put my record against his any day of the week. Any day of the week, including, for example, on the issue of immigration. … Donald Trump,” she continued, “has been talking a big game about securing our border. But he does not walk the walk.”

As Lowry bemoans, Harris’ “sociopathic dishonesty” on the border “has not been met with a flurry of fact checks, nor have editors been zealously adding the word ‘falsely’ in front of her claims. No, she’s flipping the script, and going on offense, and punching back.” So why not “try to get it to swallow an even more outlandishly implausible notion?” he wondered.

But how long can Harris outrun the facts as troves of videos, sound bites, and speeches burn down the straw woman the press has built?

“As we get closer to November,” Scalise warned, there are three issues that are “crystallizing everywhere you go. And No. 1—far and away—is the border. People want to get this border secured. It’s madness what’s going on at the border, and that comes up no matter what part of the country you’re in.”

And as the stock market freefalls, images like Harris in 2023 saying she’s “very proud of Bidenomics” will be hard even for the magicians of the media to erase. As Scalise says, the second biggest issue on voters’ minds is “inflation, the cost of things.”

And whatever part of the country you go into, they’re complaining about grocery prices. They’re complaining about gas prices and energy prices, [and] just cooling their home in the summer. I mean, these are problems that were created by the Biden-Harris administration. Everybody knows that. … [T]his is where Kamala Harris is going to have a real problem. She was with Joe Biden helping be the architect [of these policies]. Look, she was the deciding vote for the Inflation Reduction Act. She can’t run away from these things—the policies that created the inflation, that when you go to the grocery store, you’re paying 30% more than when Biden took office.

Add that to the explosive situation in the Middle East, and frankly, the House’s second-in-command warned, “I don’t remember a time when America’s projected so much weakness to so many of our friends around the world. … You see what Russia did with Ukraine. You see what Iran, through their proxies—Hamas, Hezbollah, Houthis—have done to Israel. And then, of course, you see what China is doing to allies like Taiwan. So all of our enemies are taking advantage of the weakness being projected.”

“So it’s a dangerous place right now, and we’re in a much more dangerous position because of the weakness projected by Harris and Biden. And I think that’s going to be a big factor knowing how strong President Trump was. [There were] no new wars when Donald Trump was president. Our friends knew that we had their back. And we did, by the way, have their back because we weren’t letting the bad guys run roughshod around the world.”

So the Left’s strategy is simple: Change the subject.

They really are going to be focused on how they can divide the American people between now and Nov. 5, because they don’t want the American people talking about the issues people care about. … And the reason that Kamala Harris and Joe Biden don’t want to talk about it is because those problems were created by Kamala Harris and Joe Biden. The inflation, high energy prices, open border, all of those are self-created problems by the Biden-Harris ticket. And again, you go back four years ago, we did not have those problems.

When it comes to Harris’ campaign, “They’re going to want to talk about abortion every day. They’re going to want to talk about mandating [electric vehicles], and Jan. 6. And the American people are saying, ‘Look, I’ve got real problems that you helped create. And I want to talk about those problems.’”

https://www.dailysignal.com/2024/08/06/media-helps-reinvent-kamala-harris-in-truth-optional-campaign/

******************************************************

New British PM presides over the collapse of neo-Marxism

Labour in the United Kingdom are presiding over the potential dissolution of civil peace. Instead of deescalating tensions, Keir Starmer – the most left-wing Prime Minister to reside at 10 Downing St – has chosen to spin facts into fearmongering about the far-right.

Starmer’s poor response to the tension on the streets has revealed a leader who is both startled and stupefied. This makes him dangerous.

Instead of addressing Islamism and the apparent failure of multiculturalism, or even the genuine safety concerns of citizens, Starmer has been smack-talking the British working class.

Instead of acknowledging and acting on widespread concerns about mass immigration and two-tier policing, Starmer wants to usher in the Soviet surveillance state.

This over-reach shows that Labour has no idea how to deal with radical Islam, especially when its members protest on the street expressing an intolerable hatred for Israel.

Labour have been politely feeding the radical crocodile for decades, hoping it would never eat them.

Today, Starmer is shifting blame onto the victims.

When the Left cry ‘far-right extremism’ it’s mostly misdirection. They don’t want the public to see that the root cause of social division is, and has been, leftism.

For years, the Left have told us you’re either an ‘oppressor’ or the ‘oppressed’.

For years the Left – via intersectionality – have divided us.

For years, we’ve been told, you’re either an ally to left-wing ideology, or you’re the enemy.

This is why they’re blaming the largely fictional ‘far-right’ for social division.

The hope is you won’t notice their smiles, lies, and hi-fives.

‘Diversity is our strength’ works great in Retail, but no so much in society.

I have long argued that the ideas of Marx and Mohammad are incompatible with Christian civilisation.

Quality, substance, and truth, still outranks, quantity, appearances, and the half-truths of hagiography.

What we’re seeing unfold across the West is a consequence of the ‘get God out of politics’ brigade badgering on about ‘don’t talk to me about religion and politics!’

I would argue that this violent storm is also part of the dangerously ignorant, post-modern ‘go along to get along’ ethos.

Starmer, and the whole Westminster crowd, have no one to blame other than their own wilful ignorance.

British authorities have had plenty of advanced warning. None so profound, nor as recent, as the debanking of Nigel Farage and Suella Braverman’s brilliant criticisms of multiculturalism.

Socialist Starmer’s gaslighting of reasons, and citizen dissent, will go down as one of the greatest misdirection’s about cause and effect in history; right next to ‘pandemic of the unvaccinated’.

https://www.spectator.com.au/2024/08/starmer-presides-over-the-collapse-of-neo-marxism/

**************************************************

Don’t be fooled by Tim Walz’s blandness

Roger Kimball

OK, it’s August 6, the anniversary of the detonation of Little Boy over the city of Hiroshima in 1945. That marked the end of World War Two. (I know, it took one more bomb and a little more time, but August 6 was the gang plank to the signing of the act of surrender aboard the Missouri.)

Fast forward to August 6, 2024. As of 9:25 ante meridiem there have been no huge detonations. True, the market has yet to open. If we have a repeat of yesterday cautious folk will lock windows on the upper stories in the buildings where the financial experts congregate.

But we do have a little whimper of news, a tiny pssst of a political crepitation. Kamala Harris has just chosen Tim Walz, tapioca progressive and governor of Minnesota as her running mate. Of course, what I mean by Harris has “chosen” is that the Committee that just installed her as the Democratic nominee, and that governs us, has chosen.

Don’t let Walz’s blandness fool you. He is a certifiable (and, yes, I am cognizant of the aura of equivocation surrounding “certifiable”) left-winger. His biggest achievement seems to have been dipping his hands into taxpayers’ pockets to pay for breakfasts for schoolchildren “regardless of income.” His dazzling record otherwise includes dragging his feet on deploying the National Guard after the George Floyd riots alongside progressive priorities such as enshrining the right to gender-transition minors.

Harris chose Walz in order to bolster her standing in the Midwest. Will that work? It depends how long the “don’t-pay-any-attention-to-the-man-behind-the-curtain” show continues. The Dems can claim to have won within the margin of fraud in 2020 only because they were able to keep Biden out of the public eye. Will they be able to do the same with Harris? The jury is still out. They are trying mightily.

https://www.spectator.com.au/2024/08/dont-be-fooled-by-tim-walzs-blandness/

*******************************************

Also see my other blogs. Main ones below:

http://jonjayray.com/covidwatch.html (COVID WATCH)

http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)

http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)

http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)

http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)

http://snorphty.blogspot.com (TONGUE-TIED)

https://immigwatch.blogspot.com (IMMIGRATION WATCH)

http://jonjayray.com/short/short.html (Subject index to my blog posts)

***********************************************

Another deletion

Google have now wiped out my "Australian Politics" blog. It will however continue to be available in my backups. See:

http://jonjayray.com/ozaug24.html

And more generally via:

http://jonjayray.com/

I guess it said too much about Covid. I have asked them to reinstate it and if they do I will not again post content about Covid there

Kamala Harris’s pick of running mate Tim Walz is a political gift to Republicans

In what is expected to be a close presidential election in November, Harris bizarrely passed over the governor of the most critical battleground state, Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania, a popular Jewish centrist Democrat who advocated for school vouchers and abolished university credentials as requirements for most public sector jobs.

Instead, she chose to elevate a man few Americans had even heard of until last week, whose relatively radical political record in office places him firmly on the far left of the Democrat party, handing a gift to Republicans less than three months out from polling day.

Consider Walz’s long list of policy ‘achievements’ and political stances that have already gifted Republicans with the attack slogans ‘Tampon Tim’ and ‘Make America Burn Again’.

As governor, Walz signed laws that required tampons in boys’ bathrooms in Minnesota schools, and supported legislation that would see parents in effect lose custody of their children if they refused to approve gender reassignment surgery. He declared Minnesota a “trans refugee state”.

During the Covid-19 pandemic he oversaw among the most draconian lockdowns and vaccine mandates in the nation, policies which however popular at the time, haven’t aged well. He even set up a hotline for the residents of his state to snitch on anyone who was breaking the rules. Last year he signed state legislation that permitted abortion up until the moment of birth.

He’s on the record supporting the ‘defund the police’ movement which emerged following George Floyd’s death in May 2020 in Minnesota’s biggest city Minneapolis, during which he waited three days before calling in the national guard to stop riots that caused massive damage and destruction.

His wife Gwen Walz even recalled savouring the moments in solidarity with the rioters. “I could smell the burning tires … I kept the windows open as long as I could because I felt like that was such a touchstone of what was happening,” she later told a journalist when looking back on the incident.

At a time when American concerns about illegal immigration are at an all time high, Walz signed laws as governor that provided free health care, drivers licences and university education for undocumented immigrants. He tried to lift income tax as governor and supported policies to phase out fossil fuels.

Democrats were apparently impressed with his political smarts in coming up last week with the term “weird” to describe Republicans, but his past stances suggest the term might easily be applied to him

For Harris to be successful in November Walz will need to play well in the critical midwestern battle ground states near Minnesota, such as Michigan and Wisconsin, which are considered critical to victory.

Republicans have already started to cast Harris as the ‘most radical candidate ever’, and it’s far from clear her choice of Walz helps to dispel that characterisation.

After all, he’s the creature of the sole state that Ronald Reagan couldn’t win in his 1984 landslide.

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/commentary/kamala-harriss-pick-of-running-mate-tim-walz-is-a-political-gift-to-republicans/news-story/9273fa96db29a3ca1bb5977e414f28ce

**************************************************

Josh Shapiro, Another Victim of Unforgiving Identity Politics

Kamala Harris has made her vice-presidential pick, and it is Tim Walz. In doing so, she forewent the popular Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, reportedly her second choice, who is currently presiding over a crucial swing state with two-thirds of independents approving of him.

Any number of reasons could be given to choose Walz, a former teacher and very Midwestern-looking white man, over the young Shapiro, but one clearly stands out: Shapiro’s Judaism and adamant support for Israel.

In the 2000s, much was made of Cuban Americans and how crucial they were to what at the time was the crucial swing state of Florida.

American Cuban policy was disproportionately distorted through the lens of the small minority of emigres who came to disproportionately populate Florida and the city of Miami—and who split very evenly between Democrats and Republicans. They were the “swing minority” of the time.

Judging by the Democrat senator’s action, she and her campaign see a new minority in the new swing states—the Rust Belt of Michigan, Wisconsin, and Minnesota that have a large contingent of Arab Americans.

The states themselves, although cycling back and forth between Democrats and Republicans, also have constituencies that elected “Squad” members like Reps. Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich., and Ilhan Omar, D-Minn.

Notably, both these congresswomen have been vocal in their disdain for Israel, with Omar saying, “Israel has hypnotized the world, may Allah awaken the people and help them see the evil doings of Israel,” and Tlaib calling Israel’s actions in Gaza “genocide.”

Tlaib’s district has 74,449 people who speak Arabic, nearly 10% of the entire district. Omar’s district has some 32,000 people who speak Somali or other languages from that region of Africa.

Many of these voters are livid about America’s participation in Israel’s war against Gaza, with 64% of Muslim voters saying their sympathy “lies entirely or mostly” with the Palestinians (less than 2% support the Israelis).

Shapiro, unfortunately, expressed support for bills that would penalize college students for speaking out or protesting against Israel, even boycotting Israeli-made products, as the boycott, divestment, and sanction movement prescribes.

He said of the protesters: “We have to query whether or not we would tolerate this if this were people dressed up in KKK outfits or KKK regalia.”

Comparing anti-Israel protesters to the KKK is not the best way to curry favor with the Arab American constituency. In truth, however, Shapiro may simply find himself on the wrong end of the contemporary understanding of identity politics that has entrenched itself in progressive Democrat politics.

Growing up in the ’70s and ’80s an age when antisemitism was a crucial issue and Holocaust survivors were assimilating into American culture, Shapiro dealt with a cultural context in which more Americans supported Zionism, or the right of Jews to live in their ancestral homeland, with criticism over Israel’s policies being less prominent.

One 2021 survey found that 38% of Jewish Americans under the age of 40 believe Israel is an “apartheid state,” while only 13% over 65 do.

He perhaps thought the Democratic establishment would have his back as he decried the antisemitism of the campus protesters. In a move of profound confidence (and maybe even arrogance), he revised his employee code of conduct to bar state employees from demonstrating “scandalous and disgraceful” behavior, right after he sent a May 8 email to colleagues calling for “moral clarity” against “antisemitism” and “hate speech.”

Unfortunately, to a particularly mobilized group of progressive anti-Israel voters, accusations of antisemitism are seen as an impediment to their rights to freely demonstrate against what they see as Israeli-committed genocide and American support thereof.

Witold Walczak, the legal director of the ACLU of Pennsylvania, criticized Shapiro for likening protesters to true antisemites: “If an employee off the job posts, ‘From the river to the sea,’ is that something the governor would consider disgraceful and scandalous?” he said.

Shapiro is also harmed by the fact that he himself is Jewish. Although politics is separate from one’s religious beliefs, Walz, who is Lutheran, is less likely to face immediate scrutiny over his reported support for Israel, saying that support for Israel is “not a Democratic or Republican issue,” according to the Minnesota Post.

Certain segments of the Democratic Party are even engaging in speculation of the notion of having too many Jews so close to the president. NBC News reported on the condition of anonymity a Jewish official expressing what he believes are real voter concerns over this issue.

“The two closest people to the president being Jewish—what long-term impact does that have on us?” the official said, referring also to Harris’s husband, Jewish-American lawyer Doug Emhoff.

This is a wild speculation, but it has basis in history: Winston Churchill once warned his prime minister, David Lloyd George, who was serving as minister of munitions, not to appoint an overbalance of Jews to the Cabinet. In a letter to Lloyd George, he wrote, “There is a point about Jews which occurs to me—you must not have too many of them.”

If Harris skipped over Shapiro, a longtime friend and correspondent in the National Democratic Attorneys General Association, because he is Jewish and a supporter of Israel, she would be acknowledging a reality in the Democratic Party: Critical votes in swing states would be lost if she appointed someone perceived to be on the side of Israel.

The anti-Israel protests have made their political mark and have ushered in a new identity politics movement that will reset our country’s social politics for the next generation and beyond.

https://www.dailysignal.com/2024/08/06/josh-shapiro-another-victim-of-unforgiving-identity-politics/

*******************************************

Also see my other blogs. Main ones below:

http://jonjayray.com/covidwatch.html (COVID WATCH)

http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)

http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)

http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)

http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)

http://snorphty.blogspot.com (TONGUE-TIED)

https://immigwatch.blogspot.com (IMMIGRATION WATCH)

http://jonjayray.com/short/short.html (Subject index to my blog posts)

***********************************************

Brits are finally losing their legendary patience

What Matt Goodwin says below is spot-on but what he leaves unsaid is WHY many Third-world migrants are so toxic to Britain.

They come to Britain hoping to acquire a British standard of living and find that to be beyond their grasp. They just do not have the mental, educational and cultural wherewithall to prosper in Britain and that makes them angry.

They feel angry and ignored and blame Britain for that. Letting them into Britain just makes their difference obvious to them and that hurts. So they strike out at the society that denies them what they had expected and can obviously now never achieve

“The party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command”,

So wrote George Orwell in his classic book 1984.

This is the quote that came to mind as I watched Prime Minister Keir Starmer and his Labour government struggle to respond to protests that erupted after three girls were brutally murdered by the son of Rwandan migrants.

But why this quote?

Because that's exactly what Keir Starmer and much of the elite class are now asking us to do —reject the evidence of our eyes and ears.

When Keir Starmer first responded to the protests, he could have made it crystal clear that while there is absolutely no place for violence, his government does understand why so many people are so utterly frustrated and fed-up with the state of Britain.

He could have made the point that while everybody in Britain opposes violence it is clear that many people also hold legitimate concerns about the failure of successive governments to control the borders, lower migration, and maintain law and order.

Had he spoken to protestors, it would have become immediately obvious to Starmer and his team that this was not just about mindless violence or even the tragic events in Southport; it is chiefly about people’s concerns over legal and illegal immigration.

And after clips of marauding Muslim gangs attacking white people went viral, both Keir Starmer and Home Secretary Yvette Cooper could also have made it clear that the rule of law will be applied equally, to all groups, irrespective of race and religion.

But they chose not to do that.

Which is why so many people are now even more disillusioned with what they feel is not just a Labour government but an elite class that is deeply biased and out-of-touch with the rest of the country; a class that is more interested in criticising and attacking the British majority than addressing the reasons they feel so utterly disillusioned.

Unlike Keir Starmer, Yvette Cooper, and much of the ruling class, most normal people in this country know full well that these protests do not begin and end with “far-right thuggery”. Only an elite class that has become dangerously disconnected from the rest of the country would see the protests through this incredibly narrow and warped lens.

These narratives are a coping mechanism for an elite that is visibly struggling to make sense of what is unfolding around it, explanations that help it make sense of these troubling and shocking events but which make little sense to everybody else.

Because for much of the rest of the country, for millions of ordinary British people out there, these events are obviously rooted in the disastrous policies the elite class on both the Left and Right has imposed on Britain for much of the last thirty years.

They are rooted in the deliberate decision to pursue mass immigration, to weaken our borders, to usher in unprecedented cultural changes, to fail to integrate newcomers, and then refuse to tolerate any criticism of these policies.

But they are rooted, too, in a palpable sense of unfairness, hypocrisy, and bias when it comes to this elite class —a class that routinely appears more interested in catering to minorities over the majority, attacking rather than listening to the British majority, and violating the British sense of fair play which is absolutely central to our culture.

Many people today, for example, will have listened to Keir Starmer say “people have a right to feel safe in their country” while asking themselves why his Labour government consistently refuse to prioritise the safety of the British people by controlling who is coming in and out of Britain, deporting foreign criminals, and ensuring criminals remain in prison, not letting thousands onto the streets. Had the elite class stopped the boats and controlled the borders people would not be rioting.

Many people, too, will be wondering why the likes of Keir Starmer, Yvette Cooper, Sadiq Khan, and others routinely talk about “hate” and “thuggery” among the British majority while doing all they can to distract us from asking for the real reasons why our children have been blown up at pop concerts, murdered at dance classes, and subjected to industrial-scale, anti-White rape across dozens of English towns.

Many will also be wondering why the elite class has continued to reshape Britain and its institutions –schools, universities, civil service, museums, galleries, and more—around a corrosive identity politics only to now wonder why the British are organising themselves along similar lines. As even Tommy Robinson has asked, if the lesson of the last few years is that competing identity groups can only gain attention, status, resources, and a voice from the elite class by taking to the streets, as BLM and pro-Hamas supporters did, then why would the white working-class not do the same?

And many people will be wondering if Britain really is the successful multicultural society that the Labour Party and liberals tell us it is then why are we are now watching gangs of Muslims roaming the streets chanting “Allahu Akbar!” rather than waving the Union Jack. Is this what successful multiculturalism looks like?

The elite class does not want us to ask these questions because it cannot answer these questions. To spark this kind of national debate about the policies that have been imposed on the country in recent decades risks threatening the power of this class.

Which is why the elite class is now working overtime to channel us into a much more managed and tightly controlled discussion about things the elite class can control.

They want us to talk about regulating social media. They want us to talk about shutting down alternative views, like those on GB News.

They want us to spend our time demonising counter-cultural writers who have been validated by current events as ‘far right enablers’, ‘apologists’ and ‘grifters’, whose voice should no longer be permitted in a tightly controlled public square.

They want us, in short, to talk about anything and everything except how the policies of the elite class have pushed us to this point —to breaking point.

This is why the narratives promoted by the elite class leave us feeling confused, alienated, and disoriented, unsure if what we think is reality really is reality. And this is why so many people in Britain are quietly asking themselves some questions that reflect this creeping sense of confusion, bewilderment, and unfairness.

Is the elite class calling for clampdowns the same class that cheered on protests by the revolutionary Black Lives Matter, which hates the West and praises Hamas?

Is the elite class that was so quick to talk about the legitimate grievances behind BLM rioting across the West the same class that now refuses to acknowledge this “far-right thuggery” is rooted in wider grievances among the British population?

Is Keir Starmer, the man denouncing these protests as “far-right thuggery”, the same Keir Starmer who rushed to Take the Knee days after Black Lives Matter protestors broke the law, injured nearly 30 police officers and defaced national monuments?

And is he the same Keir Starmer who openly praised Extinction Rebellion and leads a government whose MPs have openly socialised and engaged with Islamist extremists?

Is the elite class that is rushing to denounce the protests the same class that remained largely silent as antisemites and Islamists marched up and down the country celebrating the murder and rape of Jews, or simply denying these things took place?

Are many of the towns that are experiencing the most serious violence today, like Rotherham, the same ones where at least 1,400 young white girls were raped by Muslim gangs, a scandal Labour elites said it was “racist” to talk about?

Are the people causally implying that much of the country is “far right” the same ones who tied themselves in knots over whether they should call Hamas “terrorists”?

Are the police chiefs who deny there is two-tier policing the same ones who watched their officers Take the Knee and join Muslim show trials after an autistic boy was threatened for lightly scuffing a copy of the Koran?

The elite class does not want us to ask these questions because to do so would threaten the dominance of a class that is no longer confident and secure in its position. This is why it is now trying to justify even harsher restrictions on free speech, free expression, free assembly, and dissent.

This is why terms like “far right” and “Islamophobia” will now be expanded to silence and stigmatise not only those idiotic thugs who are destroying their own communities but millions of ordinary people who both object to those thugs and the disastrous policies the elite class has imposed on them from above.

This is why we will be told that in order to defend democracy we must not change the direction of travel but rather give up even more of our freedoms and rights, shut down alternative media, deplatform dissenters, and hand even more power to the elite class.

This is why Keir Starmer’s first instinct was not to acknowledge the wider public mood, speak across party lines and set out a plan of action but instead announce tighter restrictions and enhanced state surveillance to manage “the far right”.

So too was it revealing that a senior government advisor, Lord Woodcock, openly called for Covid-style lockdowns to shut down the protests and squash dissent.

And so too was it revealing that even one candidate for the leadership of the Conservative Party suggested the state ban the English Defence League –a street movement that has not operated in any serious way for more than a decade.

In this way, the elite class calls to defend liberalism while simultaneously ushering in a dark new authoritarianism that is not liberal at all. Stifling and suffocating debate, shutting down dissent, and screaming at writers who challenge this groupthink are not the signs of an elite class that is confident and comfortable in its own position; they are the signs of an elite class that can sense it is starting to lose control.

And now many people out there can see it for themselves. So, this is not simply about “far-right thuggery”; this is about the unravelling and disastrous effects of an elite project that’s hollowed out, divided, and weakened Britain over many years.

A project that has subjected the British people and their children to increasing crime, chaos, communalism, the balkanisation of their communities, and increasingly chilling atrocities while simultaneously expecting the British people not to react at all.

What Keir Starmer needs to do —right now— is stop talking only about “far right thuggery” and start talking about violent offenders from all communities.

Starmer and Yvette Cooper need to stop talking only about defending mosques and start talking about defending all of our communities.

They need to stop obsessing about notions of “misinformation” and social media and start recognising that people's concerns about illegal and legal immigration are legitimate and need addressing.

They need to stop pretending two-tier policing has not happened, acknowledge mistakes were made and recommit all public institutions to political neutrality.

And they need to start showing they are dealing with the underlying issues by, firstly, doing whatever necessary to regain control of our borders and slow the pace of immigration and segregation in this country. And they need to start doing all these things now.

Because while the elite class might tell people in Orwellian fashion to ignore the evidence of their eyes and ears, what the events of the last few days reveal is that a rapidly growing number of people in this country are now refusing to play along.

The curtain in this country is being pulled back to reveal not just the mindless thugs who have become useful idiots for the elite class but, more importantly, for a much larger number of people, what the policies of this elite class have done to Britain.

And now that the curtain has been pulled back, and the light has poured in, it cannot simply be closed —no matter what the elite class might tell us.

https://www.mattgoodwin.org/p/no-this-is-not-just-far-right-thuggery

*******************************************

Also see my other blogs. Main ones below:

http://jonjayray.com/covidwatch.html (COVID WATCH)

http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)

http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)

http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)

http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)

http://snorphty.blogspot.com (TONGUE-TIED)

https://immigwatch.blogspot.com (IMMIGRATION WATCH)

http://jonjayray.com/short/short.html (Subject index to my blog posts)

***********************************************

Big medical day today

So no new blog posts. Should be back tomorrow

Harris Gets Caught In A Shameless Lie Right Out Of The Gate

When CNN calls out a Democrat for lying, it’s worth sitting up and taking notice. That’s just what happened last week, after Kamala Harris’ first campaign rally.

“Donald Trump wants to take our country backward,” she said in Milwaukee. “He and his extreme Project 2025 agenda. Like, we know we got to take this seriously. And can you believe they put that thing in writing? Read it. It’s 900 pages.

“When you read it,” she goes on, “you will see Donald Trump intends to cut Social Security and Medicare. They intend to end the Affordable Care Act and take us back, then, to a time when insurance companies had the power to deny people with preexisting conditions.”

CNN, to its credit, read the 900-page document, or at least skimmed it, and in an article headlined “Fact check: Harris falsely claims Project 2025 blueprint calls for cutting Social Security,” it reports that:

The Project 2025 document does not show that Trump intends to cut Social Security; the document barely discusses Social Security at all and does not propose cuts to the program. In addition, contrary to Harris’ suggestion, Project 2025 does not call to ‘end’ the Affordable Care Act or eliminate its protections for people with pre-existing conditions. The document does criticize the Affordable Care Act, especially the law’s expansion of Medicaid, but makes clear it is advocating changes to the law rather than terminating the law entirely. (emphasis added)

In other words, Harris is just making sh*t up.

But that’s not all she’s lying about. The claim that Project 2025 is a “Trump agenda” is also a lie.

Project 2025 is a project led by the Heritage Foundation, which brought together more than 100 conservative organizations to detail a policy agenda that it published in a book early last year called “Mandate for Leadership.” This a guide that Heritage has been publishing every four years since 1980. The purpose is to provide the next administration with an encyclopedia of policy prescriptions endorsed by conservatives. Up until this year, nobody outside policy circles noticed.

Trump himself has repeatedly made it clear that his campaign wasn’t involved in Project 2025 and has lately started calling some of its ideas “extremist.” Which is an unfortunate sop on his part to the left’s coordinated campaign to demonize the policy document.

The Project 2025 lies had gotten so bad that Heritage had to put up an entire page debunking them, and internet memes started popping up making fun of the horror stories being spread, such as the one below.

Last week, the Harris team admitted that it’s been lying about Project 2025.

A campaign official told CNN that Harris “made a deliberate decision to brand all of Trump’s policies” as “Project 2025,” since they believe “it has stuck with voters.”

In other words, lying is fine, so long as it’s for the “greater good” of defeating Trump.

It’s still lying. After Project 2025’s director stepped down, with the Trump campaign cheering that on, the Harris campaign said “Project 2025 is on the ballot because Donald Trump is on the ballot. This is his agenda, written by his allies, for Donald Trump to inflict on our country.” And then it repeated the lie about how it includes “cuts to Social Security and Medicare, repeal of the Affordable Care Act, dirtier air and water, and empowering Trump to destroy American democracy.”

Expect much, much, much more of the same from Harris over the next three months. Just don’t expect the rest of the corporate media to do what CNN did and call her out on any of it.

To view online: https://issuesinsights.com/2024/08/01/harris-gets-caught-in-a-big-fat-lie-right-out-of-the-gate/

*************************************************

Monthly mortgage payments have more than doubled since Jan. 2021 as Harris bragged we are ‘putting a lot of money in the streets of America’

By Robert Romano

“We gave them a great country with essentially no inflation. And after two years, they drove this country and they drove inflation through the roof. Two years, cost of living went up in some cases by over 50 percent. They say 22 percent. They like to say 22 but it could be much higher and it is much higher depending on what they include. They don't include things like interest rates...”

That was former President Donald Trump speaking at the Bitcoin Conference on July 27, stating that once interest rates and other increases are included, the cost of living has skyrocketed for American households.

Trump is right. There is no question.

In fact, monthly mortgage payments with higher interest rates and greater home values have more than doubled since Jan. 2021, according to an analysis of Federal Reserve and Freddie Mac data. Let’s break it down.

According to the Freddie Mac home price index, home values in the U.S. have increased by 35 percent since Jan. 2021. Meaning a house that cost $250,000 then would go for $337,000 today.

Additionally, 30-year mortgage interest rates have increased from about 2.65 percent on Jan. 7, 2021 to a current 6.78 percent, according to Federal Reserve data.

Using an amortization calculator, that shows if you purchased a home for $250,000 before former President Donald Trump left office, with the low interest rate of 2.65 percent, the monthly payment with principal and interest would be $1007.

Now, say you had to refinance for whatever reason, or get a new mortgage for a home priced at $250,000, at 6.78 percent, the monthly payment rises to $1,626. That’s a 61.4 percent increase.

But home values did not remain the same. With inflation drive up average home values by 35 percent, the home that cost $250,000 in 2021 now costs $337,000. That’s great if you’re selling your home, not so great if you’re buying one.

Then, with the higher interest rate of 6.78 percent, the monthly payment on the $337,000 mortgage rises to $2,192. That is an 117 percent increase in monthly mortgage payments — for the same house!

One impact of these catastrophic cost of living increases is it is killing home sales. In Jan. 2021, existing home sales were at a seasonally adjusted, annualized rate of 6.69 million units sold. Whereas, by June 2024, it is all the way down to an annualized 3.89 million units sold, as 41.8 percent decrease.

As a result, the Fed has had to keep its own interest rate high at 5.25 percent to 5.5 percent in its July 31 meeting as it acknowledged that inflation “remains somewhat elevated.” No kidding.

And so, the cost of shelter in the Consumer Price Index measured by the Bureau of Labor Statistics is up just 21.6 percent since Jan. 2021. It’d be even higher, but Americans cannot afford to move with the crushing inflation.

That is the price of inflation, and the cost of the nearly $7 trillion printed, borrowed and spent into existence in both 2020 and 2021.

Apparently, the $2.2 trillion spent on the overwhelmingly bipartisan CARES Act in 2020 that Republicans and Democrats supported was not enough for the then-incoming President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris. Not even as 16 million out of the 25 million jobs temporarily lost during Covid were already recovered by Jan. 2021.

By the time Trump left office, the M2 money supply had already increased by $4.1 trillion, almost 27 percent, from $15.29 trillion in Jan. 2020 to $19.4 trillion in Jan. 2021.

The context was the national and global economy were locked down, schools closed, millions out of work and prices were collapsing. For example, oil briefly went below zero dollars a barrel as Americans stopped driving to work.

No, Biden and Harris wanted an economic stimulus of their own to take “credit” for, and so another $1.9 trillion for the very partisan American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 that only Democrats supported was spent by Congress and signed into law by Biden.

Throwing more fuel onto the fire, Biden then proposed and the Democratic-led Congress passed the so-called Inflation Reduction Act with $891 billion of green energy subsidies and other spending included. Biden signed it and Harris supported it.

By April 2022, the M2 money supply had increased another $2.6 trillion to $22 trillion, a further 13.6 percent.

Making matters worse, the Federal Reserve waited until consumer inflation was already at 7.5 percent in Jan. 2022 and Russia invaded Ukraine in Feb. 2022 exacerbating the global supply chain crisis before it began hiking interest rates in March 2022 to curtail the consequences, intended and unintended, of all the spending. By June 2022, consumer inflation peaked at 9.1 percent.

Note that within a month of the Fed beginning the interest rate hike cycle, the M2 money supply peaked. But the Fed could have acted much sooner. By June 2021, consumer inflation had already crossed to 5.4 percent after Congress acted again. If Congress had not created the additional stimulus in 2021 and the Fed had just begun raising interest rates in the first half of 2021, about half or more of the pain being felt now could have already been alleviated, and President Biden would likely be cruising to reelection.

In other words, there definitely was going to be inflation even if Biden-Harris had done nothing on the fiscal side, which was precisely the thing to do. Congress and the Fed had already primed the pump sufficiently at that stage. But they kept going, along with the Fed, which by that point should have already begun hiking interest rates but didn’t, and so both unnecessarily extended the stimulus all the way through 2021 and into 2022.

And Harris took credit for it. On April 29 at the Economic Opportunity Tour in Atlanta, Ga. Harris stated, unironically, “we are in the process of putting a lot of money in the streets of America…” Yup. We know.

While the American people have been paying the price for all the inflation the entire time, it could be Harris who finally pays the price in November, as voters angry with the status quo say it’s time for a change when they head to the polls. Stay tuned.

Robert Romano is the Vice President of Public Policy at Americans for Limited Government Foundation.

https://dailytorch.com/2024/08/monthly-mortgage-payments-have-more-than-doubled-since-jan-2021-as-harris-bragged-we-are-putting-a-lot-of-money-in-the-streets-of-america/

*******************************************

Also see my other blogs. Main ones below:

http://jonjayray.com/covidwatch.html (COVID WATCH)

http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)

http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)

http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)

http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)

http://snorphty.blogspot.com (TONGUE-TIED)

https://immigwatch.blogspot.com (IMMIGRATION WATCH)

http://jonjayray.com/short/short.html (Subject index to my blog posts)

***********************************************