Had enough yet

[shortstuff]

As I see things, the Biden-Harris Afghan policy along with its association with the appeasement-prone Obama-Biden administration, are responsible for the current Ukraine crisis, IMHO.

With that said, my thoughts on the Ukraine shortstuff are rather complex, but thumbnail, I believe that the most strategic part of the Ukraine is its Crimean Peninsula and port of Sevastopol, and those already have been lost, and were lost during the Obama-Biden administration.

In that connection, any true strategic value of the Ukraine is already gone, just my opinion of course.

Historically, Ukraine has been part of Russia since the Czarist regimes, so a loss of the Ukraine, in my opinion, would not significantly alter the pre-1991 geopolitical situation.

To be sure, the wheat and corn fields of the Ukraine are important, but its occupation by Russia is of no urgent consequence to the West, especially in light of the former Communist Bloc's entry into NATO, which is a very strong deterrent to further Russian aggression.

In fact, the Western allies are in a much stronger position than they were during the 1940-1991 time period, and therefore, I strongly believe that to sacrifice American lives or extensive American treasure, may only serve to diminish the American readiness so necessary to confront the real, uber-threat, posed by Communist China.

Another endless, perhaps potentially catastrophic nuclear, war just to please the Globalists and their industrial/business interests?

NO!

Thanks Mark, I know this is a very complicated issue, I also know that Biden-Harris literally do not have a clue how to manage foreign affairs-they only contribute to the turmoil. I think Mark, we have grave worries ahead of us. All we can do is pray..

[shortstuff]

It’s a Biden boom and nobody has noticed

“The economy is racing ahead. It's doing incredibly well. We've never had this kind of growth in 60 years," Biden declares “Most people have more money in their pocket this year than a year ago. Inflation is at its peak and will be near normal sometime next year, The economy is stronger than ever. My Build Back Better Bill will only strengthen it more, America is back!”

Biden pressured the media to stop being so negative and to focus on getting his message out. His media lackeys got the memo and are reporting Biden’s policies are working, America is headed in the right direction.

Yet Biden’s poll numbers do not reflect the American voter is buying the messaging – regarding the economy, the handling of the virus, inflation, deficit…

Inflation, now at 6.8%, the highest in 40 years, is no longer considered transitory or predicted to come in below 4% anytime soon. Inflation is hot because we're spending too much money. In fact, it has been calculated that over the past year the federal government has spent $5.4 trillion, plus $1.2 trillion on infrastructure. That's $6.6 trillion.

CBO scoring shows that Biden’s Build Back Better bill will actually cost $4.9 trillion dollars over 10 years, increase deficits by $3 trillion, and increase interest on the debt by $266 billion. That actually brings the topline costs to $5.1 trillion. In other words, the CBO just blew up the Biden budget fiction that it would only cost around $2 trillion and only increase deficits by $365 billion. Or that it is fully paid for.

Poll after poll shows that inflation is public enemy number one. But massive federal spending is a close second. In fact, the two are inseparable and real wages have fallen because of inflation.

Is the public getting sick of left-wing, socialist policies?

This should wake anyone up if they had the gumption to care. Or maybe the intellect to understand what is actually happening in our country under this resident regime...

[mark blazejewski]

i think mark, we have grave worries ahead of us. All we can do is pray..

Yep!!!

[Lee Chowaniec]

Testament to Biden’s feckless immigration policies

We the American citizens suffer the consequences and exorbitant resource costs of do-nothing policies that encourage such irresponsible behavior.

Living in their gated communities, does Biden or any member of Congress really give a **** about immigration, the American poor / middle class best interests, or their own best interests and/or party agendas?

YUMA, Arizona—The mayor of an Arizona border city that has nearly 100,000 residents declared a state of emergency this week due to the soaring numbers of illegal immigrants flooding in from Mexico.

Yuma Mayor Douglas Nicholls said he issued the declaration “due to the unprecedented numbers of migrants entering the city prior to being processed and released by Border Patrol.”

The action enables the city to receive state and federal funding to try to combat the crisis.

Apprehensions of illegal immigrants in Customs and Border Protection’s Yuma Sector have shot up since President Joe Biden took office in January. Border agents in the sector made about 8,800 arrests in fiscal year 2020, which ended in September 2020. They made over 114,000 arrests in fiscal year 2021 and 21,623 arrests in the month of October alone.

Agents are releasing many of the illegal aliens into the United States, Yuma County Sheriff Leon Wilmot told The Epoch Times.

Under the Biden administration, nearly 95,000 illegal immigrants have been released without a court date, and an untold number of others have been released with a court date. Some don’t show up to court and the majority of those that do are denied asylum. Law enforcement is “overwhelmed,” Wilmot said.

DeSantis Proposes $8 Million in Budget to Relocate Illegal Immigrants to Delaware, Martha’s Vineyard

https://investorshub.advfn.com/board...e_id=167091777

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis set $8 million in his 2022–23 budget to transport illegal immigrants out of The Sunshine State.

He proposed the spending in the Freedom First Budget (pdf) to protect against harms resulting from illegal immigration. The spending may include the transportation of unauthorized aliens located within Florida to other states or the District of Columbia.

“In yesterday’s budget, I put in $8 million for us to be able to transport people illegally [in the United States] out of the state of Florida,” he said during a press conference on Friday.

The Republican governor listed Delaware, President Joe Biden’s hometown state, and Martha’s Vineyard, where former President Barack Obama owns a mansion, as potential destinations to relocate the illegal immigrants.

“If you sent [illegal immigrants] to Delaware or Martha’s Vineyard or some of these places, that border would be secure the next day,” he said.

[Lee Chowaniec]

The public isn't buying Biden's messaging

While inflation is still surging Biden is optimistic. President Biden takes the view that the pandemic — and the pandemic-snarled supply chain — are the primary culprits, and inflation will ease in the near future as the US keeps combating the pandemic and implements supply-chain fixes.

Others, though, are concerned the problem is bigger than that. Former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers, for example, has also pointed to government spending as a reason for increased inflation, and believes it’s far from a bump in the road. It appears the public isn’t buying his messaging on inflation as well – nor on crime, his handling on Covid, immigration, and foreign policy.

That 2-5 cent drop in gasoline prices being hawked by Biden and the succoring left media to make the public believe inflation is being controlled isn’t being bought by a perceptive public.

Biden’s job approval sinking on inflation, crime, Covid: Poll

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/polit...?ocid=msedgntp

[Lee Chowaniec]

Dems, GOP must find better representatives

An Everybody’s Column submittal was spot on today – IMHO! The author could have added vice-president Harris and a host of potential candidate names from both political parties.

EVERYBODY’S COLUMN
Dems, GOP must find better representatives


I like most other Americans was deeply saddened by the recent death of the great American senator Bob Dole. He was an American first, something we seem to be sadly lacking in today’s deeply partisan politics on both sides of the aisle.

I will never forget President John F. Kennedy’s 1960 inauguration address when he said to all Americans “Ask not what your country can do for you but what you can do for your country.”

I don’t think Sen. Bernie Sanders or Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez would have applauded that line. Or Ronald Reagan’s famous Berlin speech where he said to the premier of the USSR “Mr. Gorbachev tear down this wall.” These were U.S. presidents who were Americans first.

Unfortunately, former President Donald Trump seemed more concerned with his own personal agenda in saying he was campaigning for the two GOP senate candidates in Georgia after the general election of 2016 was over but spent his time trying to reverse his election loss rather than holding the Senate for the GOP. The GOP wound up losing both elections to the Democrats.

Now Trump seems committed to turning the Georgia governor’s race over to the Democrats because of his grudge against the heavily favored GOP Gov. Brian Kemp. This is not the kind of national GOP leadership we need to take the presidency back or regain our world leadership that the current president seems to be working full time to destroy.

We are a country of 300 plus million people and if Trump or Joe Biden are the best we have to offer we are rapidly abdicating our position as world leader and the world will be the worst off with the results.

All Americans, Democrats, Republicans and independents must reject both of these flawed individuals to lead the world in these trying times. We can and must do better.

Anthony H. Gioia
Buffalo

[mark blazejewski]

Now Trump seems committed to turning the Georgia governor’s race over to the Democrats because of his grudge against the heavily favored GOP Gov. Brian Kemp. This is not the kind of national GOP leadership we need to take the presidency back or regain our world leadership that the current president seems to be working full time to destroy.

We are a country of 300 plus million people and if Trump or Joe Biden are the best we have to offer we are rapidly abdicating our position as world leader and the world will be the worst off with the results.

All Americans, Democrats, Republicans and independents must reject both of these flawed individuals to lead the world in these trying times. We can and must do better.

Very well said.

One only needs to look to today's headlines for an example of just how insidiously inept, or dangerously gullible, Trump was.

Two of his nominees for the SCOTUS, Kavanagh and Barrett, pissed on the First Amendment today.

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof...

This is how Justices Kavanagh and Barrett did that:

U.S. Supreme Court Rejects Religious Challenge to New York Vaccine Mandate

"Acting in two cases, the justices denied emergency requests for an injunction requiring the state to allow religious exemptions while litigation over the mandate's legality continues in lower courts. Conservative Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito and Neil Gorsuch said they would have granted the injunction."

Reference: https://www.usnews.com/news/top-news...j-YUT20advYQ9U

As I previously suggested, Justice Barrett is no conservative when it comes to the power of the state when it applies to the issue of vaccine mandates.

IMHO, you can throw the D/R House and Senate leadership into the toxic SCOTUS-Trump-Biden-Harris mix as well.

[mark blazejewski]

This is what I observed about Barrett on September 27, 2020:

Barrett: Watch What You Are Buying Into!

She is better than a Leftist on the SCOTUS, but as the saying goes, all that glitters is not gold.

Indeed.

Trying to ferret-out this information was akin to distinguishing real gold from fools gold at a distance, looking into brilliant sunshine.

Face Book censored the link to "Big Government News," but I have pasted the story on this post.

She may be in the traditions of Gorsuch and Kavanagh, but she certainly is no Thomas or Alito; God forbid that she is a twin to Roberts. That, would make her the Deep States' fair-haired girl.

I am not opposing her at this point, but I will be cautious and will follow the hearings, through transcript, very intently.

(BTW, Lagoa was my first choice.)

(Reference, Click On Image To Enlarge)

2021-12-13 (4).jpg

From Big Government News...

"Conservatives are clamoring online, hoping that President Trump nominates Judge Amy Coney Barrett to be the next Supreme Court Justice of the United States. As conservatives rush to nominate a Supreme Court Justice before the 2020 election, they may get the opposite of what they really want. Republicans are on the verge of electing one of the most egregious authoritarians, a woman who has a track record of defending the power of the state over the freedom of the individual.


In order to get approval from conservatives, a Supreme Court candidate merely has to espouse disdain for one case, Roe vs Wade. This was the infamous ruling that led to modern day infanticide – unchecked, taxpayer funded abortions that conscript medical professionals to terminate human life from the womb.

While this case is important, what about all the other court opinions that have led to human abuses? In 2020, Judge Barret sided on behalf of J.B. Pritzker, Governor of Illinois — giving him supreme authority to lock down the state for as long as he pleases. Judge Barrett gave in to the authoritarian left by hiding behind a 1905 ruling in Jacobsen v. Massachusetts. This ruling gave local Massachusetts authorities free reign to vaccinate and re-vaccinate every adult in their jurisdiction and fine those who did not comply.

Jacobsen v. Massachusetts (1905): “The board of health of a city or town if, in its opinion, it is necessary for the public health or safety shall require and enforce the vaccination and re-vaccination of all the inhabitants thereof and shall provide them with the means of free vaccination. Whoever, being over twenty-one years of age and not under guardianship, refuses or neglects to comply with such requirement shall forfeit five dollars.”

Barrett is prone to side with the state in all matters of public health hysteria, disregarding individual liberty, medical privacy, informed consent and human rights. She concurred with the majority in Illinois Republican Party et al. v. J.B. Pritzker, Governor of Illinois and agreed to hold down the people of Illinois through indefinite, illegal lockdowns and economic restrictions. If nominated, Barret would continue to allow Democrats to rip up the Constitution under the guise of safety and protecting the “greater good.” If nominated, Barrett would ultimately rule in favor of compulsory vaccination, giving government the power to force experimental covid-19 injections, faulty flu vaccines, and all other pharmaceutical products that are promoted as one-size-fits-all “public health” solutions.

Furthermore, it seems that Barrett would restrict religious liberty. In Illinois Republican Party et al. v. J.B. Pritzker, Governor of Illinois, she concurred that the governor “was not compelled to make a special dispensation for religious activities.” She agreed that the First Amendment Free Speech Clause did not prevent him from controlling religious exercise. “As in the cases reconciling the Free Exercise and Establishment Clauses, all that the Governor did was to limit to a certain degree the burden on religious exercise that [the governor’s executive order] imposed.”

Pennsylvania District Judge William S. Stickman refuses to hide behind the fragile precedent that continues to mock the original intent of the Bill of Rights and the U.S. Constitution. Judge Stickman stood against the human rights abuses that followed the 1905 Jacobsen v. Massachusetts compulsory vaccination ruling. He ruled against Pennsylvania’s illegal lock down in 2020 and wrote, “Jacobson was decided over a century ago. Since that time, there has been substantial development of federal constitutional law in the area of civil liberties… That century of development has seen the creation of tiered levels of scrutiny for constitutional claims. They did not exist when Jacobson was decided. […]”

Just because Barrett worked as clerk for former Justice Antonin Scalia, does not automatically make her an honorable originalist who can interpret the law by following the Constitution. Her track record, especially during 2020, proves the opposite to be true."
(Although you can not access the foregoing article from the highly censored, authoritarian, Left-Of-Lenin Face Book, but you can independently access the story from Big Government News.)

[Lee Chowaniec]

America needs a ‘stand down’

While president Biden’s approval numbers are plummeting he brazenly scoffs that he doesn’t care about the poll numbers. How can he dismiss that the country is polarized, stressed, financially hurting, and not accepting his policies and/or messaging and are losing faith in his ability to lead and unite this country as he promised during the presidential campaign?

The following Hill ‘opinion’ piece focuses on the need for all the Washington political tools to recognize they are the biggest threat this country faces.

Mr. President, America needs a ‘stand down’
John J. Grossenbacher retired U.S. Navy vice admiral and commander of the U.S. Naval Submarine Force

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/polit...?ocid=msedgntp

Today, there is ample evidence that things are going badly wrong in our own country. We see hate and mistrust on bold display in Congress. Elections, public health and public education officials are under assault because of bitter polarization. Unsubstantiated claims of fraud in the 2020 election, government mandates in response to the pandemic, the history of racism, and rights of transgender Americans fuel assaults.

Highly publicized murder trials involving vigilante-like actions have revealed that many of us approve of such behavior. A Supreme Court considering overturning Roe v. Wade, extraordinary gerrymandering, and serious politicization of voting rights and elections administration reinforce the view that political power is an end justified by any means. In such an environment, the gun culture in America easily could be a deadly accelerant of violent civil unrest.
We have become our own worst enemy. Americans threaten our nation's peace and prosperity more

We have become our own worst enemy. Americans threaten our nation's peace and prosperity more than China, Russia, terrorism and dangerous relics such as North Korea. Our internal instability has many sources. We know what has weakened our trust in one another and our essential institutions.

American values encourage excessive consumption and wasteful materialism. Our political system is grossly dysfunctional and corrupted by money. Our version of capitalism is out of balance, with too many monopolies and concentrated wealth and economic power that are undemocratically large. Public education is poor and its private sector alternatives do not provide anywhere near sufficient opportunity for far too many. Our mindless adoption of technologies fails to consider their destructive impacts on society until considerable harm has been done, if we consider those impacts at all.

Things will not get better if more of us just support the Democratic Party and its programs in the 2022 elections. That's because elections are not about hope and the future anymore. We've even moved beyond elections being cynical exercises in scaring people, blaming others and offering "feel-good" solutions to get them to vote against others. Elections now are a major battlefield in our culture war, an accelerating, all-out fight. We need President Biden to ask for a "ceasefire" by calling for this stand down.

Many Americans have answered calls to war against other nations - and once before in our history, to war against one another. Have we ever been asked to rally as a people to the causes of peace, justice, tolerance and mutual respect in our country? Beyond the short-lived exhortations for unity in the afterglow of an election victory, or some brief moment after a tragedy, have we ever been called to those causes in a way that we marked on our calendars and in our memories?

The time is now. This stand down must be such a call, and enough of us must answer because our enemy is winning.

[Lee Chowaniec]

COVID stress & anxiety, you’re not alone

Whether unvaccinated or fully vaccinated everyone is experiencing levels of stress / anxiety; frustration at being admonished for doing what they believe is in their best interests.

Our country is being torn apart by the virus and its politization. We are not alone. The world has had enough.

“Even in China, with no reported Covid deaths since January.” How is that possible?


Anxiety, depression grip many who fear pandemic will not end
By Roger Cohen
NEW YORK TIMES

PARIS – A recent cartoon in the French daily Le Monde featured a bedraggled man arriving at a doctor’s office for a Covid- 19 vaccine. “I am here for the fifth shot because of the third wave,” he says. “Or vice versa.”

His bewilderment as France suffers its fifth wave of the pandemic, with cases of the delta variant rising sharply along with omicron anxiety, captured a mood of exhaustion and simmering anger across the world two years after the deadly virus began to spread in China.

Uncertainty bedevils plans. Panic spreads in an instant even if, as with the omicron variant, the extent of the threat is not yet known. Vaccines look like deliverance until they seem a little less than that. National responses diverge with no discernible logic. Anxiety and depression spread. So do loneliness and screen fatigue. The feeling grows that the Covid era will go on for years, like plagues of old.

Even in China, with no reported Covid deaths since January, some confess weariness with the measures that have kept them safe when so many others perished. “I’m so tired of all these routines,” Chen Jun, 29, a tech company worker in the southern Chinese city of Shenzhen, said the other day. He was from A1 forced to take three COVID-19 tests in June following an outbreak in the city, and then had to quarantine for 14 days. Thumbtacks he used to pin on a world map to trace his travels have stopped multiplying. “I’m starting to think we’ll never see an end to the pandemic.”

This sense of endlessness, accompanied by growing psychological distress leading to depression, was a recurrent theme in two dozen interviews conducted in Asia, Europe, Africa and the Americas. After two years of zigzagging policy and roller-coaster emotions, terrible loss and tantalizing false dawns, closing borders and intermittently shuttered schools, people’s resilience has dwindled.

That is sure to pose new challenges for leaders trying to protect their people and their economies. Will the weary obey new restrictions, or risk seeing family and friends after months of forced separation? The question of just how draconian leaders can be when people’s mental health has become so fragile appears to be a core quandary as the pandemic enters its third year.

“I know it will only get worse, it won’t stop, the pandemic will only turn more life-consuming,” said Natalia Shishkova, a teacher in Moscow. “It is all chaos, like a fantasy film. You watch all these apocalypse films and realize their writers were real prophets.”

Real progress in fighting the virus has been made. A year ago, vaccine rollouts were in their infancy. Today, about 47% of the world’s population is inoculated. If case numbers remain high, death rates have plunged. Yet life seems out of control.

The pandemic not only makes this months’ vacation or holiday celebrations seem uncertain, but also sometimes overwhelms understanding. How to assess the avalanche of statistics, opinions, warnings, closures, re-openings?

What to make of the big business COVID-19 has become, with its vested interests? What to do about the glaring inequality in vaccine distribution? How to avert one’s gaze from the discarded masks that still dot streets, the pandemic’s perennial detritus?

Once linear, life now seems circular. Schools open. They close again. Travel becomes easier, only for new obstacles to arise. Sickness from COVID- 19 subsides, to be replaced by long COVID and now indications that even those who have recovered from the virus might get reinfected with omicron. At the Paris laboratory of Maria Melchior, a French public health researcher who specializes in mental illness, in-person meetings had just been reinstated when, this week, she was told they would cease, with a return to Zoom gatherings.

“We no longer know when we will get back to normal,” Melchior said. And what is normal now? She paused. “Well, at least a life without masks.”

In Kenya, with infections declining in October, President Uhuru Kenyatta lifted a long-standing curfew. Bars filled. Musicians lined up concert dates, as they have in many parts of the world, where theaters and opera houses have reopened. Spirits rose.

Then, the omicron variant hit. Even before any cases were reported there, Kenya’s leaders announced plans to bar unvaccinated people from offices and warned of new holiday- season restrictions.

Corrie Mwende, a communications specialist in Nairobi, said she had felt like “freedom was coming back” after a long period when “you could say it was like the end of the world.” Today she is unsure her hope will be fulfilled.

Such hesitation is pervasive. The pandemic began with evasiveness from the great powers of the 21st century, first President Xi Jinping’s China and then President Donald Trump’s America. Trust was dented, time lost. Ever since, a cohesive global response has appeared elusive.

China has pursued a zero COVID policy, virtually shutting its borders and deploying mass-testing, snap lockdowns and high-tech contact tracing. At the other extreme, Russia, despite a high rate of deaths, has done little to restrict movement.

The 27-nation European Union is split over whether to make vaccines obligatory, and policies vary widely: soccer stadiums are empty again in Germany, where infection rates have surged, but full in France, where they have, too, but a presidential election looms in four months.

Britain, under Prime Minister Boris Johnson, has veered between herd immunity temptations and the kind of periodic restrictions now in force again to combat the omicron variant.

In Brazil, whose president, Jair Bolsonaro, has persistently minimized the pandemic’s threat, the death toll has plunged to fewer than 300 a day from 3,000 in April. Samba concerts are back in the streets. Fireworks, after some back-and-forth, will light the sky over Copacabana beach to mark the New Year – unless some new disaster strikes.

Maybe that will be omicron; maybe not. Some other variants have come and gone without driving the pandemic to terrifying new heights.

For now, every plan is a provisional plan. Conspiracy theories abound, in part because the pandemic has enriched the wealthy as markets have soared and punished those without investments.

Yakov Kochetkov, head of the Center for Cognitive Therapy in Moscow, said, “In Russia there has been a strong increase in mistrust of vaccines, even the term ‘pandemic’ itself. This greatly affects the psyche.”

Just this month, a 45-year-old man reported to view the pandemic as a conspiracy opened fire at a Russian government office and killed two people after being told to put on a mask.

Anna Shepel, a Russian therapist, has observed her patients’ “obsessive thoughts, obsessive actions, fear of getting infected, fear of touching anything in public places.”

Nevertheless, in a country with a deep vein of fatalism and stoicism, President Vladimir Putin has faced little criticism for his relatively lax response to the coronavirus.
In Italy, hit to devastating effect early in the pandemic, access to everything from movie theaters to offices has been strictly curtailed for anyone who does not have the “green pass” of the vaccinated. The government is promising a “semi-normal” Christmas without the need to resort to lockdowns. Still, the mood of the country is somber.

Massimiliano Valerii, the director general of CENSIS, a Rome-based research group, observed that the pandemic had exacerbated anxieties about the future. “The social ladder has been blocked, the mechanism for being able to improve one’s position in life,” he said.

David Lazzari, the president of Italy’s psychologists’ guild, said recent studies in Italy showed the incidence of anxiety and depression had doubled since the pandemic began. For those under 18, levels had reached 25%. “One in four,” he noted. “That’s very high.”

Among adolescents and young adults – stuck on their screens, often unable to date over the past two years, inundated with online friends but short of actual contact – anorexia and bulimia have spread, said Melchior, the French public health researcher who focuses on mental illness.

In France, she added, depression and anxiety are at about twice normal levels, in line with the Italian findings and a recent report by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.

The surgeon general in the United States warned recently that young people are facing “devastating” mental health effects as a result of the pandemic and other challenges experienced by their generation.

Chanel Contos, 23, an Australian student in London who is uncertain whether she will be able to fly home this month, expressed acute frustration at having been told that “once we had adequate vaccines in the country you’re in, things would be OK.”

She asked a question frequently heard among her generation: “How much of our lives can we give up for this?”

Governments are acutely aware of this frustration. Nicolas Franck, a French psychiatrist, said, “We fell short initially, now we are in the phase of excess precaution.”

“People are so exhausted their greatest fear is not so much a new variant, but a new curfew,” he added.

[mark blazejewski]

Why is it that if one points this crap out, its is labeled a "Conspiracy Theorist?:"

Blumenthal Speaks at Communist Party Awards Ceremony
Event organizers used the ceremony to invite people to join the Communist Party

Reference: https://freebeacon.com/democrats/blu...ards-ceremony/

[Lee Chowaniec]

Fed raises inflation projections for fourth time this year

Keep a copy of this somewhere and pull it out next year to see whether for once we are being told the truth by an administration that has been consistently weak on inflation, crime, Covid, and immigration – and blaming just about everything and anyone but themselves for failed policies.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/mark...?ocid=msedgntp

Federal Reserve officials projected Wednesday that inflation will run at 5.3% this year, a significant increase from their last such projection. Inflation projections are a moving target for the Fed, which predicted in March that prices would rise just 2.4% in 2021. Each time the central bank has updated its forecasts this year, that number has crept higher.

Members of the Fed's Federal Open Markets Committee said in projections released Wednesday that inflation will drop back down to 2.6% next year, 2.3% in 2023, 2.1% in 2024, and settle at about 2% in the long run. The central bank also projected that it would end up hiking interest rates three times next year.

Inflation has exceeded the bounds of most economists’ predictions. Fed Chairman Jerome Powell recently told Congress that he thinks it is the appropriate time to stop referring to the higher prices as merely “transitory."

A recent poll found that U.S. consumers are worried about inflation and are feeling its sting. A Wall Street Journal poll released this month found that 28% of voters believe higher prices are causing “major” financial strain and another 28% believe it is causing minor strain. An additional 32% said that while inflation isn’t a problem for them right now, it will become one if prices keep rising.

Economists are divided about what is largely driving the higher costs, although it’s likely a combination of the Fed keeping interest rates near zero, trillions in federal stimulus spending, pent-up demand, and issues with supply stemming from labor shortages and supply chain disruptions.

Other

A new Politico-Morning Consult poll found 60 percent of Democrats want Biden to run for reelection, while 69 percent of Republicans want Trump to take another shot at the presidency.

Biden has said he will run for a second term despite concerns about his age. If both candidates run in 2024, Biden will be 81 years old, and Trump will be 78 years old.

UGH! This is the best our country has to offer.

[mark blazejewski]

A curious story from CNN...

11 Democrats who could replace Joe Biden in 2024

Reference: https://www.cnn.com/2021/12/13/polit...den/index.html

I would not be surprised if the Biden and Harris polling, Biden's physical decline, and Harris' inept stupidity begin to dominate the news broadcasts.

We will know the Left is serious about a change at the top, when the Hunter Biden laptop story begins to appear on the front page of the New York Times and the Washington Post, just sayin'.

[Lee Chowaniec]

Salvation Army ditched by donors and volunteers after disastrous release of anti-racism guide

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/sa...?ocid=msedgntp

Salvation Army chapters across the country are reporting massive shortages in volunteer hours and toy donations just weeks after the charity distributed (and then pulled) a controversial guide calling on white people to confront their "racist attitudes."

A recent Rasmussen poll suggests that the blowback to the group's anti-racism guide damaged its credibility among the public and potential donors. The poll found that the percentage of respondents who had an unfavorable view of the group increased from 11% to 41% after respondents were informed of the guide and told the charity was "training members in the belief that America is a structurally racist society." And the percentage of respondents who reported having a favorable opinion of the Salvation Army dropped from 81% to 41% after learning of the guide.

Some 20,000 volunteer hours have gone unfilled for the Salvation Army's Red Kettle campaign this year, which historically represents about 33% of the charity's total yearly donations. The charity has also reported substantial shortages of toy and gift donations in some parts of the country, such as New Jersey, where donations are down 30% across the state.

Sad! My favorite organization damaged by absurd anti-racist claptrap politization!

[Lee Chowaniec]

Coal for Christmas

“Our country could not be better served than with [Biden's]… experienced and capable hands,” Pelosi declared Tuesday. “He's just perfect, the timing couldn't be better," Pelosi said.

Pelosi declares she cannot understand where all this crime is coming from. The Mayor of San Francisco who defunded the police by $20 million says she is tired of the BS and wants to end the crime surge. After 10 months in office Biden finally addresses the crime wave and declares public safety is governments #1 job and is exhorting Mayors to do something. DUH!

It seems like the public gets it despite the positive news being spewed by the Biden administration and its media lackeys. Seventy percent of the voters do not want to see Biden run in 2024 – 50% of his own party.

What other unpleasant news was out there today?

• Biden declares inflation has peaked and is now blaming the meat industry’s greed for its rise as well – not his policies

• Biden predicts a winter of deaths

• The Biden Administration has no idea how many Americans or Afghanis are trapped in Afghanistan

• While Biden continues to negotiate with Iran, Iran launches a failed drone attack against a military base in Syria

• While Russia is mounting troops on the Ukraine border and China is threatening Taiwan, Biden says not to worry, he has the situation in hand

• According to the Congressional Budget Office scoring of the Build Back Better bill could be as high as $5.1 trillion and add $3 trillion to the deficit. Biden calls the CBO’s scoring fake news

• Stimulus spending could cost the average household $3,500

• Seventy percent of American voters are unhappy with Biden’s handling of the border crisis

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year? I think not!