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Thread: Had enough yet

  1. #3661
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    Hunter Biden: Money talks, bull**** walks

    What is the hold up in prosecuting Hunter Biden? It has been months since a leaked allegation includes a prosecution recommendation for federal tax fraud in addition to charges related to alleged false statements relative to Biden’s purchase of a gun.

    It’s complicated we are told. Seriously? Are you buying this BS. Is this today’s new ‘wokism’ normal?

    There exists here a very difficult issue that I have no doubt the DOJ is struggling with — and it has nothing to do with politics. Can an alcoholic drug addict possess the necessary mens rea to intentionally commit tax fraud over the course of several years?

    Can an alcoholic drug addict willfully and intentionally falsify his tax returns? That’s a simply stated question, but the answer is very complex, and I suspect the DOJ is struggling with it because it not only has political ramifications, it has major tax compliance ramifications. How they deal with it will impact not only Hunter Biden but anyone who messes up their taxes who might suffer from the disease of addiction.


    https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/polit...3aa53ba904df6b

    The question — and the likely holdup because there exists no easy answer — is: “Does sufficient evidence of intent exist to overcome any defense put up by Biden that his alcoholism/drug addiction vitiates evidence of intent?”

    It is well documented that Hunter Biden suffers from the disease of alcoholism and drug addiction; in fact, both sides in a projected future criminal trial might stipulate (agree) to those facts given the availability of the evidence. The evidence may well also reflect receipt of income by Hunter Biden that he did not report on his tax returns.

    Reasonable people can differ reasonably on the
    issue If a partner in a high-powered law firm who is alcoholic/addicted can function well enough on the job to complete sophisticated financial deals and earn the firm mega bucks, can that same individual not file accurate timely tax returns? How about engineers? Architects? Are not all of these professionally employed individuals capable of exhibiting a sufficient level of cunning necessary to intentionally falsify their tax returns?[/I]

  2. #3662
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    Hunter Biden: Not a story until the Democrats and liberal media lackeys says so

    Republicans, including Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton, are criticizing the Justice Department for slow-walking its investigation into Hunter Biden, an inquiry that became public weeks after the 2020 election when it was already two years old.

    The Justice Department has been investigating Hunter Biden for four years, and they still don't want to do what, seemingly, the law requires, which is to prosecute him. "They're pretending that Hunter's alcohol and drug problems could be a defense, and they're nervous about it. It's just absurd."

    However, former Biden White House press secretary Jen Psaki said the Hunter Biden story is a big zero since she hasn’t seen it show up on the front pages of many of the nation’s newspapers.

    Psaki said on Meet the Press, “As much as there was so much news happening in Washington this week, it doesn’t always translate -- and often doesn’t translate -- to what voters are talking about in states. And I think that’s what we’re seeing currently.”

    Ah, so if the liberal media choose to ignore the Hunter Biden story, there is no story. The Bidens are given a pass. Let’s just focus on Trump’s transgressions. Now that’s fair, right?

    We live in world now where Hunter’s (Joe Biden’s ‘smartest’ man he knows) alcohol and drug problems become a defense for his criminal activities and lascivious lifestyle. The criminal becomes the victim!

    The Democrats and liberal media are also lambasting the Republicans for trying to make crime a priority in the upcoming election. It is not as bad as the Republicans make it to be. One really has to be a moron to ignore all the images and crime reports presented on other than liberal media. The public is scared by the surge in violent crime – so say 75% of those polled.

  3. #3663
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    The Other Slavery exposes the 1619 Project's fraud

    Maybe, just maybe, all white people are not inbred with racism and practiced slavery.

    https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/th...69a2c334f96a1a

    According to Nikole Hannah-Jones's myth, U.S. history didn’t really begin until August 1619, when about 20 slaves were sold to the governor of the Virginia colony by a British privateer. This “beginning of American slavery” is central to our nation’s history, Hannah-Jones argues, because Black Americans would go on to become “the perfecters of this democracy.”

    The "Native Bound-Unbound: Archive of Indigenous Americans Enslaved" plans to “digitize and piece together stories of the millions of Indigenous people whose lives were shaped by slavery.” Many of those enslaved Indigenous Americans were enslaved by other Indigenous Americans long before Europeans came to the Americas. “Indigenous slavery long predated the arrival of Europeans in the Americas.

    Not only did Native Americans enslave each other long before Europeans arrived, but Native Americans were also active participants in the African slave trade.

    “The Five Civilized Tribes [Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Creek and Seminole] were deeply committed to slavery, established their own racialized black codes, immediately reestablished slavery when they arrived in Indian territory, rebuilt their nations with slave labor, crushed slave rebellions, and enthusiastically sided with the Confederacy in the Civil War,” National Museum of the American Indian Curator Paul Chaat Smith told Smithsonian magazine.

    Black Americans are not “the perfectors” of our democracy — nor are Native Americans, nor are whites. What makes the U.S. unique is not that slavery was once tolerated in our country — it was in fact tolerated everywhere on Earth for millennia — but that we fought a bloody Civil War to end it. Very few countries can say that.

  4. #3664
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    Ian and its devastation

    Fort Myers Beach devastation video

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=de...ature=youtu.be


    Official tallies of deaths related to the storm suggest that older Americans died in disproportionate numbers: Of the 87 victims (out of 123 overall) for whom an age or approximate age has been released, 61 of them were at least 60 years old. Many victims were found dead at their homes. But Ian not only killed more older people, but it also created uniquely wrenching situations for those who survived.

    Even if they can afford to rebuild, those people may not have the time or energy required for such a difficult task, and the prospect of tighter building codes might make that more expensive than ever. Many, like the Compton’s, live on fixed incomes, lack flood insurance, or purchased their homes before the housing boom of the past decade, when the region was far more affordable. Recapturing their paradise may not be possible – a cruel and abrupt blow.

    "It was only 1,200 square feet, but it was our mansion," said Cindy Duello, 68. Ian left much of Fort Myers Beach a flattened, unrecognizable ruin, and the Duello house saturated with seawater. Days after the storm, the Duellos made their way to the island, saw their destroyed home, and realized that the town could not be rebuilt in time for them to enjoy it again.

    "It won't return in our lifetime," Cindy Duello said, through tears. "I can feel this has already aged me."


    Other

    Hurricane season with Electric Vehicles
    Something to think about ………..

    Imagine Florida with a hurricane coming toward Miami. The governor orders an evacuation. All cars head north. They all need to be charged in Jacksonville. How does that work? Has anyone thought about this? If all cars were electric and were caught up in a three-hour traffic jam with dead batteries, then what.

    Not to mention that there's virtually no heating or air conditioning in an electric vehicle because of high battery consumption. If you get stuck on the road all night, no battery, no heating, no windshield wipers, no radio, no GPS (all these drains the batteries), all you can do is try calling 911 to take women and children to safety.

    But they cannot come to help you because all roads are blocked, and they will probably require all police cars will be electric also. When the roads become unblocked no one can move! Their batteries are dead.

    How do you charge the thousands of cars in the traffic Jam? Same problem during summer vacation departures with miles of traffic jams. Yes, AAA is starting to prepare tow trucks to charge electric vehicles. How many can they charge before returning to home base and recharge the trucks.

    There would be virtually no air conditioning in an electric vehicle.
    It would drain the batteries quickly. Where is this electricity going to come from? Today's grid barely handles users' needs.

    Can't use nuclear, natural gas is quickly running out. Oil fired is out of the question, then where?

    What will be done with billions of dead batteries, can’t bury them in the soil, can’t go to landfills.

    The cart is way ahead of the horse. No thought whatsoever to handle any of the problems that batteries can cause.

    The press doesn't want to talk or report on any of this.

  5. #3665
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    Tulsi Gabbard announces leaving Democratic Party
    Tulsi Gabbard: I cannot be a member of a party that's against freedom


    Former U.S. Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, who ran unsuccessfully for the Democratic nomination for president in 2020, announced today that she is leaving the Democratic Party, which she says is controlled by elitist warmongers.

    “I can no longer remain in today’s Democratic Party that is now under the complete control of an elitist cabal of warmongers driven by cowardly wokeness, who divide us by racializing every issue and stoke anti-white racism, actively work to undermine our God-given freedoms enshrined in our Constitution, are hostile to people of faith and spirituality, demonize the police and protect criminals at the expense of law-abiding Americans, believe in open borders, weaponize the national security state to go after political opponents, and above all, are dragging us ever closer to nuclear war,” she said in a video posted on social media today.”

    Gabbard, 41, served as Hawaii’s 2nd congressional district representative from 2013 to 2021. She also served in the state House of Representatives and the Honolulu City Council and is a U.S. Army Reserve officer.

    The U.S. Army National Guard officer accused the Democratic Party of "racializing" every issue while stoking anti-White racism and derogatory sentiment.
    Gabbard had long been previously attacked by leading Democrats like Hillary Clinton, who accused her of being a Russian apparatchik, and said she decided it was time to break with a group now controlled "by an elitist cabal of warmongers driven by cowardly wokeness."

    This wokeness has helped create a world where Americans are afraid to speak their mind and fear real repercussions for having unpopular beliefs, Gabbard said.

    “The whole environment of fear that those in power, these elitists in power, have fomented to where people are afraid to speak the truth. They're afraid to exercise their right to free speech because, hey, you might lose your job, you might be canceled, you might be trashed. And God forbid, in Washington, you might not be invited to the cool kids' parties."

    Gabbard said contemporary liberals are not the same as their 20th century brethren, in that they do not believe in "live and let live" but instead want to destroy anyone who disagrees with them through silencing, slander, intimidation or worse.

  6. #3666
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    Why FOX News is kicking ass

    It has become pathetic watching the Democrats and their media lackeys attempting to defend the defenseless. Biden is mentally unfit to serve in any government capacity, much less the leader of this country. He has become an international embarrassment and even much of his own party don’t want to see him run in 2024.

    The country is in turmoil and all he and his supporters are now claiming is that none of it is his fault, it is Trump’s. He is a trainwreck and despite all the chaos he has wrought his minions are there to cover for him.

    Two reports reveal the disconnect and difference in news presentation. The first tells of Biden’s embellishments and ‘folk lore’ unlike outright lying by the Trumpster.

    Biden, Storyteller in Chief, Spins Yarns That Often Unravel

    https://news.yahoo.com/biden-storyte...115457665.html

    The exaggerated biography that Biden tells includes having been a fierce civil rights activist who was repeatedly arrested. He has claimed to have been an award-winning student who earned three degrees. And last week, speaking on the hurricane-devastated island of Puerto Rico, he said he had been “raised in the Puerto Rican community at home, politically.”

    For more than four decades, Biden has embraced storytelling as a way of connecting with his audience, often emphasizing the truth of his account by adding “Not a joke!” in the middle of a story. But Biden’s folksiness can veer into folklore, with dates that don’t quite add up and details that are exaggerated or wrong, the factual edges shaved off to make them more powerful for audiences.

    Biden’s instances of exaggeration and falsehood fall far well short of those of his predecessor, who during four years in office delivered what the Washington Post fact checker called a “tsunami of untruths” and CNN described as a “staggering avalanche of daily wrongness.”


    Biden said he was so proud of his son Hunter, the smartest guy he knows

    https://www.foxnews.com/media/sean-h...t-guy-he-knows

    SEAN HANNITY: We begin with Joe Biden tonight who just sat down for one of the coziest, he could have lit a fire and toasted marshmallows, interview with fake news' CNN's fake Jake TAPPER, who coddled the president with a variety of softball questions. Virtually no follow ups – fine. I expect that. Make no mistake – Fake Jake. He's not a journalist. He's a Democratic activist. He is a talk show host. I'm a talk show host. We're members of the press. I'm honest, he's not.


    Add to Biden’s lies (embellishments) his declaring today that his son Beau was killed in Iraq. His son passed away a few years after Iraq from cancer.

  7. #3667
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    Biden: embellisher, fabricator, liar

    When Biden was inaugurated as President the Washington Post and other liberal media informed us there was no need for fact-checkers any longer. Honest Joe, the unifier would set a new dynamic, a new tone. After less than two years in office Biden is proving to be the 49-year honed liar and flip-flopper some of us have seen him to be, more so as old-timers disease sets in, and incapable of leading this country.

    Biden’s lies and outright fabrications are constantly dismissed, downplayed, and softened by media

    https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/polit...6ae1994ca934ca

    The media has long downplayed and softened President Biden’s decades-long history of falsehoods, as most recently evidenced by a euphemism-filled New York Times report that referred to outright fabrications and lies as "folklore" stories with "factual edges shaved off." The Times finally discovered Biden’s trouble with the truth on Tuesday but was widely mocked for using mealy-mouthed language in the report.

    The Times noted Biden has lied about being "raised in the Puerto Rican community at home," his academic record, his life story, being arrested when protesting civil rights, being arrested in South Africa, pinning a Silver Star on a Navy captain and even the timeline when he rode on Amtrak to visit his sick mother, among other things. He’s told other unbelievable stories that the Times failed to mention, such as the claim he confronted a gang leader named "Corn Pop" in the 1960s.

    But instead of flatly calling Biden a liar, the Times said he "embellished narratives, sometimes only loosely based on the facts, to weave together his political identity. Mr. Biden’s folksiness can veer into folklore, with dates that don’t quite add up and details that are exaggerated or wrong, the factual edges shaved off to make them more powerful for audiences," the Times reported.

    The Times also claimed former President Trump "lied constantly" and "Biden’s fictions are nowhere near that scale" and took the Republicans-pounce approach by declaring, "Biden’s critics have seized on his falsehoods to depict him as either a purposeful liar or a forgetful old man."

    Some of Biden’s dishonest statements are political, such as the time he claimed the economy had "zero percent inflation" during July when it was actually 8.5%. Other times, they’re wildly exaggerated tidbits about his personal life. He often botches key details, misremembers dates, and sometimes seems to just make up or embellish tales about his past.

    He has falsely claimed he was "appointed" to the Naval Academy, dishonestly said he was arrested in South Africa, misleadingly bragged he was arrested during the civil rights movement in the United Stated, inaccurately claimed he was once a professional truck driver and oddly claimed he was "sort of raised in the Puerto Rican community at home."

    Biden’s lies are sometimes repeated multiple times, often growing bigger with each exaggerated version of the actual event. He declared this week that "everything was ruined" from the basement to the attic and "we almost lost a couple firefighters" when lightning struck his home 15 years ago. However, the Associated Press at the time reported that "no one was injured" in the "small fire that was contained to the kitchen" and under control within 20 minutes.

    Greg Price, a senior digital strategist for X Strategies, put a spotlight on Biden’s fire falsehood by sharing footage of the apparent exaggeration. He believes "Biden has spent his entire career lying" but regularly gets a pass from the mainstream media.

    Fox News contributor and "Come On, Man" author Joe Concha believes coverage would be "whatever exceeds 24/7 pious outrage" if a Republican said something so demonstrably false as Biden’s claim that "everything was ruined" when his kitchen caught fire.

    "Instead, it’s silence of the lambs," Concha told Fox News Digital. "He constantly lies with impunity and for no apparent reason. He said he finished at the top of his law school class. He finished near the bottom. He had to drop out of the 1988 presidential race due to plagiarism. He keeps saying he was arrested during civil rights protests. He said he was arrested trying to see Nelson Mandela. He insists inflation is at or near zero percent. He says we’re not in a recession. And he says the border is closed," Concha continued. "Yet, fact-checkers either ignore the lies or try to defend them."

    Biden could invent these non-events to make himself look good. In that case, he is a pathological liar. But, even worse, maybe he really believes that these non-events actually took place," he continued. "If so, then he is living a life of total fantasy. Liar or fabulist? The American people need neither in the White House. Joe Biden cannot be replaced as Commander-in-Chief soon enough.

  8. #3668
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    How Social Security benefits will change in 2023

    https://www.newsbreakapp.com/n/0iXMf...SvFwa&hl=en_US

    Social Security and Supplemental Security Income benefits for approximately 70 million Americans will increase 8.7% in 2023 as Americans deal with the highest inflation rates in decades.

    The 8.7% cost-of-living adjustment will begin with benefits payable to more than 65 million Social Security beneficiaries in January 2023. Increased payments to more than 7 million SSI beneficiaries will begin on Dec. 30, 2022.

    The Social Security Administration said average payouts will increase by more than $140 per month in 2023.

    "Medicare premiums are going down and Social Security benefits are going up in 2023, which will give seniors more peace of mind and breathing room,” acting SSA Commissioner Kilolo Kijakazi said in a statement. "This year’s substantial Social Security cost-of-living adjustment is the first time in over a decade that Medicare premiums are not rising and shows that we can provide more support to older Americans who count on the benefits they have earned."

    The SSA had increased the cost-of-living adjustment to 5.9% last year, making 8.7% a significant increase to an already-record high.

    The maximum amount of earnings for the Social Security tax will also be going up -- from $147,000 to $160,200.

    The consumer price index rose 0.4% in September on a seasonally adjusted basis after rising 0.1% in August, the Labor Department said Thursday.

    Consumer prices rose 8.2% over the last 12 months, the department said, a slightly higher than anticipated number as economists had predicted a rise of 8.1%.

  9. #3669
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    We're Heading for a Stagflation Crisis Unlike Anything We've Ever Seen

    An excellent report on the state of the current economy, lasting impact of inflation and policy missteps. Economics 101.

    https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/mark...21bba9a06775ff

    Unless you are middle-aged and gray-haired, you probably hadn’t heard about the term stagflation until very recently. You may have barely heard about inflation. For a long time, until 2021, inflation—the increase in prices year to year—was below the advanced economies’ central banks’ target of 2%. Usually inflation is associated with high economic growth. When aggregate demand for goods, services, and labor is strong, coupled with positive animal spirits, optimism about the future, and possibly loose monetary and fiscal policies, you get stronger than potential economic growth and higher than target inflation. Firms are able to set higher prices because demand outstrips supply, and workers receive higher wages given a low unemployment rate. In recessions, on the other hand, you have low aggregate demand below the potential supply of goods, which leads to a slack in labor and goods markets, with ensuing low inflation or even deflation: prices go down as consumers’ spending declines. Stagflation is a term that refers to high inflation that happens at the same time as stagnation of growth or outright recession.

    First question: Will the rise in inflation in most advanced economies be temporary or more persistent?

    This debate has raged for the past year, but now it is largely settled: “Team Persistent” won, and “Team Transitory”—which included most central banks and fiscal authorities—has now admitted to having been mistaken.

    The second question:

    Whether the increase in inflation was driven more by bad policies (i.e., excessive aggregate demand because of excessively loose monetary, credit, and fiscal policies), or by bad luck (stagflation negative aggregate supply shocks including the initial COVID-19 lockdowns, supply-chain bottlenecks, a reduced U.S. labor supply, the impact of Russia’s war in Ukraine on commodity prices, and China’s zero-COVID policy). While both demand and supply factors were in the mix, it is now widely recognized that supply factors have played an increasingly decisive role. This matters because supply-driven inflation is stagflation and thus increases the risk of a hard landing (increased unemployment and potentially a recession) when monetary policy is tightened.

    That leads directly to the third question:

    Will monetary policy tightening by the U.S. Federal Reserve and other major central banks bring a hard landing (recession) or a soft landing (growth slowdown without a recession)? Until recently, most central banks and most of Wall Street were in “Team Soft Landing.” But the consensus has rapidly shifted, with even Fed Chair Jerome Powell recognizing that a recession is possible and that a soft landing will be “very challenging.”

    Will the coming recession be mild and short-lived, or will it be more severe and characterized by deep financial distress?

    A model used by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York shows a high probability of a hard landing, and the Bank of England has expressed similar views. Several prominent Wall Street institutions have now decided that a recession is their baseline scenario (the most likely outcome if all other variables are held constant). Indeed, in the past 60 years of U.S. history, whenever inflation has been above 5%—it is now above 8%—and the unemployment rate below 5%—it is now 3.7%—any attempt by the Fed to bring inflation down to target has caused a hard landing. So, unfortunately, a hard landing is much more likely than a soft landing in the U.S. and most other advanced economies.

    The Fourth question:

    Are we in a recession already? In both the U.S. and Europe, forward-looking indicators of economic activity and business and consumer confidence are heading sharply south. The U.S. has already had two consecutive quarters of negative economic growth in the first half of this year, but job creation was robust, so we weren’t yet in a formal recession. But now the labor market is softening, and thus a recession is likely by year’s end in the U.S. and other advanced economies.

    Now that a hard landing is becoming a baseline for more analysts, a new fourth question is emerging: Will the coming recession be mild and short-lived, or will it be more severe and characterized by deep financial distress? Most of those who have come late and grudgingly to the hard-landing baseline still contend that any recession will be shallow and brief. They argue that today’s financial imbalances are not as severe as those in the run-up to the 2008 global financial crisis, and that the risk of a recession with a severe debt and financial crisis is therefore low. But this view is dangerously naive.

  10. #3670
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    Zeldin closing in on Hochul

    The New York gubernatorial race between incumbent Democrat Kathy Hochul and GOP challenger Lee Zeldin is now a "toss-up," according to the RealClearPolitics polling average.

    Surprised? In a Blue State where Democrats outnumber Republicans 2-1? Where the last Republican Governor was in 2002? Well just how much crime and socialist crap can one take?

    New York governor race between Gov. Hochul and Rep. Zeldin tightens to 'toss up'

    https://www.foxnews.com/politics/new...ghtens-toss-up

    The shift in polls amounts to a significant comeback for Zeldin, who was down in the polls as much as 24 points in August. Recent polling from Marist University showed that while Hochul has a lead over Zeldin, independent voters support Zeldin 49% to 35%, with rising crime resonating with more and more voters, especially in New York City.

    Zeldin has promised to fire New York City's progressive District Attorney Alvin Bragg immediately upon taking office after the George Soros-backed prosecutor has taken criticism for perceived soft-on-crime policies. *

    Hochul has criticized Zeldin on the campaign trail for his stance on abortion and has also attempted to link him to the personality and policies of former President Donald Trump, who held a fundraiser for the New York Republican in September. **


    Comment

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  11. #3671
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    Lee Zeldin "Crime Emergency"

    Quote Originally Posted by Lee Chowaniec View Post
    Zeldin closing in on Hochul

    The New York gubernatorial race between incumbent Democrat Kathy Hochul and GOP challenger Lee Zeldin is now a "toss-up," according to the RealClearPolitics polling average.

    Surprised? In a Blue State where Democrats outnumber Republicans 2-1? Where the last Republican Governor was in 2002? Well just how much crime and socialist crap can one take?

    New York governor race between Gov. Hochul and Rep. Zeldin tightens to 'toss up'

    https://www.foxnews.com/politics/new...ghtens-toss-up

    The shift in polls amounts to a significant comeback for Zeldin, who was down in the polls as much as 24 points in August. Recent polling from Marist University showed that while Hochul has a lead over Zeldin, independent voters support Zeldin 49% to 35%, with rising crime resonating with more and more voters, especially in New York City.

    Zeldin has promised to fire New York City's progressive District Attorney Alvin Bragg immediately upon taking office after the George Soros-backed prosecutor has taken criticism for perceived soft-on-crime policies. *

    Hochul has criticized Zeldin on the campaign trail for his stance on abortion and has also attempted to link him to the personality and policies of former President Donald Trump, who held a fundraiser for the New York Republican in September. **


    Comment

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  12. #3672
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    Toda’s narcist

    Thought provoking! And spot on thinks this old guy!

    To understand the woke, you have to understand The Culture of Narcissism

    https://www.msn.com/en-us/entertainm...e295e447625fa4

    The nature of the Left in 2022 is rooted more in psychology than political science. Specifically, liberalism is suffering from narcissism.

    To understand how, it’s essential to grasp the true meaning of narcissism. In its clinical definition, narcissism is not self-love — it’s the opposite. The narcissist isn’t full of ego. Rather, he has no real sense of self. Where the self would be is emptiness, which results in a mad effort to fill the psyche with meaning. Lacking a stable and confident sense of identity, the narcissist hunts for meaning in therapy, self-help, sex, or radical politics. None of these can give meaning to empty lives.

    Having surrendered most of his technical skills to the corporation, [the contemporary American] can no longer provide for his material needs. As the family loses not only its productive functions but many of its reproductive functions as well, men and women no longer manage even to raise their children without the help of certified experts. The atrophy of older traditions of self-help has eroded everyday competence, in one area after another, and has made the individual dependent on the state, the corporation, and other bureaucracies.

    When one observes the behavior of the new modern woke, Lasch’s words are stunningly prescient. The college kids literally screaming like toddlers when faced with a speaker they don’t like, the transgender people asserting that their truth is all that matters, the you-go-girl amateur psychologists helping mentally wobbly people to demand respect even if they haven’t earned it. This is the world The Culture of Narcissism predicted. These aren’t the old communists with their "dialectical materialism" and pseudoscience about the tectonic plates of evolutionary social change. These are babies with no secure sense of self throwing tantrums. A comment on a YouTube video I recently came across is very telling. The clip shows some colorful teenage dancers in a 1980s club from 40 years ago. Being in college at the time, I was actually scanning YouTube looking for my old self. Yet what caught my eye was a comment below the video, a remark left by what I assume was a younger viewer: "They all look so confident."

    The woke are not egotistical, assertive activists. They are those without a self, without history, and without confidence. More than 40 years after the publication of The Culture of Narcissism, Lasch’s screaming tyke is running the culture.

  13. #3673
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    EV’S & Electrification: A dose of reality

    Depending how and when you count, Japan's Toyota is the world's largest automaker. According to Wheels, Toyota and Volkswagen vie for the title of the world's largest, with each taking the crown from the other as the market moves. That's including Volkswagen's inherent advantage of sporting 12 brands versus Toyota's four. Audi, Lamborghini, Porsche, Bugatti, and Bentley are included in the Volkswagen brand family.

    GM, America's largest automaker, is about half Toyota's size thanks to its 2009 bankruptcy and restructuring. Toyota is a major car manufacturer in the United States; in 2016 it made about 81% of the cars it sold in the U.S. right here in its half a dozen American plants. If you're driving a Tundra, RAV4, Camry, or Corolla it was probably American made. Toyota was among the first to introduce gas-electric hybrid cars into the market, with the Prius twenty years ago. It hasn't been afraid to change the car game.

    All of this is to point out that Toyota understands both the car market and the infrastructure that supports it perhaps better than any other manufacturer on the planet. It hasn't grown its footprint through acquisitions, as Volkswagen has, and it hasn't undergone bankruptcy and bailout as GM has. Toyota has grown by building reliable cars for decades.

    When Toyota offers an opinion on the car market, it's worth listening to. This week, Toyota reiterated an opinion it has offered before. That opinion is straightforward: The world is not yet ready to support a fully electric auto fleet.

    Toyota's head of energy and environmental research Robert Wimmer testified before the Senate this week and said: "If we are to make dramatic progress in electrification, it will require overcoming tremendous challenges, including refueling infrastructure, battery availability, consumer acceptance, and affordability.”

    Wimmer's remarks come on the heels of GM's announcement that it will phase out all gas internal combustion engines (ICE) by 2035. Other manufacturers, including Mini, have followed suit with similar announcements.

    Tellingly, both Toyota and Honda have so far declined to make any such promises. Honda is the world's largest engine manufacturer when you take its boat, motorcycle, lawnmower, and other engines it makes outside the auto market into account. Honda competes in those markets with Briggs & Stratton and the increased electrification of lawnmowers, weed trimmers, and the like.

    Wimmer noted that while manufacturers have announced ambitious goals, just 2% of the world's cars are electric at this point. For price, range, infrastructure, affordability, and other reasons, buyers continue to choose ICE over electric, and that's even when electric engines are often subsidized with tax breaks to bring price tags down.

    The scale of the switch hasn't even been introduced into the conversation in any systematic way yet. According to FinancesOnline, there are 289.5 million cars just on U.S. roads as of 2021. About 98 percent of them are gas-powered. Toyota's RAV4 took the top spot for purchases in the U.S. market in 2019, with Honda's CR-V in second. GM's top seller, the Chevy Equinox, comes in at #4 behind the Nissan Rogue. This is in the U.S. market, mind. GM only has one entry in the top 15 in the U.S. Toyota and Honda dominate, with a handful each in the top 15.

    Toyota warns that the grid and infrastructure simply aren't there to support the electrification of the private car fleet. A 2017 U.S. government study found that we would need about 8,500 strategically placed charge stations to support a fleet of just 7 million electric cars. That's about six times the current number of electric cars but no one is talking about supporting just 7 million cars. We should be talking about powering about 300 million within the next 20 years if all manufacturers follow GM and stop making ICE cars.

    Simply put, we are going to need a bigger energy boat to deal with connecting all those cars to the power grids, a WHOLE LOT bigger.

    But instead of building a bigger boat, we may be shrinking the boat we have now. The power outages in California and Texas — the largest U.S. states by population and by car ownership — exposed issues with powering needs even at current usage levels. Increasing usage of wind and solar, neither of which can be throttled to meet demand, and both of which prove unreliable in crisis, has driven some coal and natural gas generators offline Wind simply runs counter to needs — it generates too much power when we tend not to need it, and generates too little when we need more. The storage capacity to account for this doesn't exist yet.

    We will need much more generation capacity to power about 300 million cars if we're all going to be forced to drive electric cars. Whether we're charging them at home or charging them on the road, we will be charging them frequently. Every gas station you see on the roadside today will have to be wired to charge electric cars, and charge speeds will have to be greatly increased. Current technology enables charges in "as little as 30 minutes," according to Kelly Blue Book. That best-case-scenario fast charging cannot be done on home power. It uses direct current and specialized systems. Charging at home on alternating current can take a few hours to overnight to fill the battery and will increase the home power bill.

    That power, like all electricity in the United States, comes from generators using natural gas, petroleum, coal, nuclear, wind, solar, or hydroelectric power according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. I left out biomass because, despite Austin, Texas' experiment with purchasing a biomass plant to help power the city, biomass is proving to be irrelevant in the grand energy scheme thus far. Austin didn't even turn on its biomass plant during the recent freeze.

    Half an hour is an unacceptably long time to spend at an electron pump. It's about 5 to 10 times longer than a current trip to the gas pump tends to take when pumps can push 4 to 5 gallons into your tank per minute. That's for consumer cars, not big rigs that have much larger tanks. Imagine the lines that would form at the pump, every day, all the time, if a single charge time isn't reduced by 70 to 80 percent. We can expect improvements, but those won't come without cost. Nothing does. There is no free lunch. Electrifying the auto fleet will require a massive overhaul of the power grid and an enormous increase in power generation. Elon Musk recently said we might need double the amount of power we're currently generating if we go electric. He's not saying this from a position of opposing electric cars. His Tesla dominates that market, and he wants to sell even more of them.

    Toyota has publicly warned about this twice, while its smaller rival GM is pushing to go electric. GM may be virtue signaling to win favor with those in power in California and Washington and in the media. Toyota's addressing reality and its record is evidence that it deserves to be heard.

    Toyota isn't saying any of this can't be done, by the way. It's just saying that so far, the conversation isn't anywhere near serious enough to get things done.

    A lie is just a lie, that is, until it’s repeated 1000 times. Then it becomes the truth. Joseph Goebbels

  14. #3674
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    An Uptick in Elder Poverty: A Blip, or Sign of Things to Come?
    The New York Times Company

    At the advent of Medicare and Medicaid in the 1960s, more than a third of older Americans lived in poverty. By 2020, the figure had fallen to 9.5%. But last year, even as the poverty rate sank for everyone else, it rose among seniors, to 10.7%.

    The uptick offers new evidence that elderly people haven’t fared as well as younger generations in recent years, and some experts worry that it may signal a broader setback in the financial security of people past their prime working years.

    For many older Americans, an inflation adjustment to Social Security payments — an 8.7% increase for 2023 was announced on Thursday — will help next year. But people hitting retirement today often depend on Social Security as their only source of income, which wasn’t the program’s original intention.

    Older workers’ wages have grown more slowly compared with other groups over the past few years, and many didn’t have 401(k) accounts, or didn’t contribute enough to them, as companies closed their defined-benefit pension plans over the last couple of decades.

    Even though the share of elderly people officially below the poverty line is low by historical standards in the United States, it remains among the highest in the developed world, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.

    Nearly one in four people 65 or older make less than 150% of the federal poverty line, or $19,494 on average for those living alone. Another measure, developed by the Gerontology Institute at the University of Massachusetts Boston and called the Elder Index, finds that it takes $22,476 for a single older person in good health with no mortgage to cover basic needs, with the cost escalating for renters and those with health problems.

    In 2022, the Labor Department reported that while 72% of civilian workers had access to an employer-sponsored retirement plan, only about 56% took part in one. That, in part, is why the lowest one-fifth of the income distribution in households headed by seniors gets 80% of its income from Social Security.

    Comment

    The 2022 official poverty threshold for a person 65 or older living alone is $1,13,590. For a household of two, $18,310.

    The average monthly Social Security payment is $1,625 - $19,500. $1,965/12 = $141 per month increase. Yeah, that should cover the inflationary increases we are experiencing in rent, food, gas, and energy, right?

  15. #3675
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    Illegal immigration under the Biden administration

    The southern border is secure say Biden and his cohorts. The liberal media stay silent on the numbers and even Trump gets blamed for Biden’s border policy blunders.

    Democrats are sleeping through the crisis they created at the border. Will they ever wake up? Oh wait, they are the party of the ‘woke.’

    Democrats just shrug about Biden's border crisis, but the numbers don't lie

    https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/demo...mbers-dont-lie

    Democrats are napping peacefully through the U.S.-Mexico "border" crisis that they engineered. Perhaps these data will snap them from their slumber:

    •Border Patrol agents apprehended 951,568 illegal aliens during President Donald J. Trump’s final 19 months in office (July 1, 2019, through January 31, 2021 — including Biden’s first 11 days). In Biden’s first full 19 months as president (February 1, 2021, through August 31, 2022), Border Patrol encountered a staggering 3,588,877 illegals — up a sickening 377%.

    •In Fiscal Year 2020, the last fully under Trump’s control, 69,000 illegal aliens were detected on the "border," but got away into America’s interior. FY 2021 (four months of Trump, eight of Biden) witnessed 389,155 got-aways — up 464%. In FY 2022 (all Biden’s watch), got-aways hit 599,000 — up 54% versus FY 2021 and 768% compared to FY 2020.

    •"At least 266,000 unaccompanied migrant children/minors have been encountered at the southern border since President Biden took office, per CBP data," Fox News Channel’s priceless southern-frontier correspondent Bill Melugin explained via Twitter on September 26. "That’s enough to fill up approximately three Rose Bowls."

    •Fourteen House Republicans wrote Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas on September 23 to complain that "between October 2021 and July 2022, more than 130,000 Venezuelan nationals were encountered after entering the United States illegally." The Marxist Nicholas Maduro regime, they added, "is deliberately releasing violent prisoners early, including inmates convicted of ‘murder, rape, and extortion,’ and pushing them to join caravans heading to the United States."

    "Our adversaries despise what America stands for and take pride in emptying their prisons filled with the most violent and sick individuals to walk the earth and send them to our southern border, where they know they’ll have no trouble getting in," said Congressman Troy Nehls, R-Texas, who arranged this letter. "Our overworked border patrol agents can only do so much when President Biden gives everyone a no strings attached invitation into this country."

    •Twelve U.S. senators contacted the U.S. Marshals Service about crooks cascading across the "border." According to their August 30 letter, "So far in FY22, CBP has apprehended over 9,000 criminal aliens, including 53 for homicide or manslaughter, 283 for sex crimes, and almost 900 for assault, battery, and domestic violence."

    •During Trump’s FYs 2017 through 2020, 11 terrorists on the watch list were captured at the border -- two, six, zero, and three, in those respective years. Under Biden, Border Patrol apprehended 15 in FY 2021 and a terrifying 78 in FY 2022, through August 31; September’s figures will follow. How many terrorists got away? Who knows?

    •According to data from the United Nations’ Missing Migrants Project (MMP), during Trump’s final 20 months in office, 712 illegal aliens died on or near the U.S.-Mexico border. For Biden’s first 20 months, that number is 862 — up 21%.

    These fatalities range from drownings in the Rio Grande to the barbaric demise of 53 illegals whose four smugglers let them roast to death inside an abandoned truck. Officials discovered this carnage on June 27 in San Antonio, Texas. That day’s high: 97º Fahrenheit.

    •Fentanyl killed some 71,000 Americans in 2021, up 23% versus 2020. For those aged 18 to 45, fentanyl leads COVID-19, car wrecks, suicides, and every other cause of death. Under Trump, Border Patrol’s fentanyl seizures for FY 2019 and ’20 (through August 31) totaled 7,595 pounds. Under Biden’s equivalent dates in FY ’21 and ’22: 24,062 pounds — up 217%.



    Its not Biden’s fault. Nothing ever is!

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