Putin’s War – No One Else’s: Russia WAS not under any threat. Russia IS not under any threat. Every action taken by Ukraine, NATO, Finland, and Sweden are defensive because of Putin’s reckless policies.
Russia, with or without Putin, can end this war immediately by withdrawing its troops from neighboring counties.
No body is interested in attacking, occupying, or fighting with Russia. The Russian people can take care of themselves, and the world will be better off in peace.
It’s easy, just go back to doing what you were doing before and respect your neighbor’s right to self-determination.
NO one is threatening Russia…no one.
Biden’s & The Democrats Inflation: “And it is what you get when you combine the wrong monetary policy with the wrong fiscal policy, the wrong trade policy, the wrong regulatory policy, and the wrong energy policy.
And that’s how you make inflation worse.”
Left Doubles Down: The far-left wing continues to control today’s Democrat party. The double down on more spending (inflation), open borders, boys in girl sports, self-gender identification, Critical Race Theory, and WOKE culture in general.
Tolerance is out the door. Mainstream America either accepts their radical ideas or risk getting cancelled.
The ONLY option is to vote them out. Send them a strong message. From the school board seats to Congress, Americans must let their voices be heard.
Read more below and follow me on Twitter – @sanuzis
–Saul Anuzis
60 Plus Weekly Video Rewind
Ted Budd wins big in North Carolina, terrible poll numbers continue to plague Joe Biden, and Republican voter turn out this year is sky high! Plus, Justice Clarence Thomas gets the last word…
Links to the articles discussed in the video:
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75% Of Americans Think The Country Under Biden Is Headed In The Wrong Direction
A large majority of Americans think the country is headed in the wrong direction, and much of their blame for the nation’s woes rests on President Joe Biden and the worsening economic crisis.
A new poll from NBC News found that 75 percent of U.S. adults think the nation is on the wrong track. That’s the highest number of unsatisfied Americans since the nation’s last notable recession in 2008. It’s also up nearly 20 percentage points since this time last year and up two percentage points from January 2021 when Biden was inaugurated.
Most of these Americans’ concerns can be traced to federal spending and lockdown-induced economic problems such as inflation, which is taking a far greater toll on Americans than what’s reflected in the 8 percent figure, and record-high gas prices, which recently reached a $4.48 per gallon national average.
Since Biden assumed office, the financial toll these crises have taken on pocketbooks has only worsened and made it difficult for hardworking Americans to keep up.
In the NBC poll, 65 percent of U.S. adults claimed their current paychecks are falling behind their rapidly rising costs of living. Only 6 percent said their family’s income is “going up faster than the cost of living.”
Inflation proves Biden has done everything wrong all at once
Throwing money at things is how you make inflation worse.
Washington had already thrown a lot of money at the economy during the COVID-19 emergency, and, predictably, the emergency spending outlasted the emergency. By the time Biden was elected in 2020, Washington had thrown $2.6 trillion in budgetary resources at COVID and had authorized as much as $4 trillion in subsidized federal lending. That was new money amounting to about a third of GDP sloshing around the economy. Biden’s first priority was pushing out another $1 trillion in a phony infrastructure bill (that has little to do with actual infrastructure) and a $1.9 trillion stimulus bill, even though the Consumer Price Index was already rising steeply, according to the Federal Reserve.
Stimulating an already overstimulated economy is how you make inflation worse.
Our inflation problem is only partly an issue of dovish monetary policy and reckless spending. There are problems in the real-world physical economy, too, those “supply-chain issues” we hear about. The Biden administration has done extraordinarily dumb things to make these worse, too, keeping in place the worst of the Trump administration’s anti-trade policies. That “Made in the USA” talk sounds good on the stump, but the truth is we need a lot that we don’t make at home and aren’t going to — including much of the steel and other vital inputs for the high-value manufacturing we actually do here.
The incredible fact is the Biden administration still had punitive tariffs on Ukrainian steel while it was seeking financial aid for the Ukrainians — it wasn’t until the Chamber of Commerce and conservative critics started making a stink that the administration changed its stance.
What if Democrats had made the economy even worse?
WHAT IF DEMOCRATS HAD MADE THE ECONOMY EVEN WORSE? President Joe Biden likes to blame inflation on the COVID pandemic and the war in Ukraine — or, as he says, “Putin’s price hike.” But the fact is, Biden’s own actions, and those of his party, have also contributed significantly to the rise in the cost of living that is making it harder and harder for many people to make ends meet. And that rise, in turn, is feeding a terrible pessimism among the public about the state of the country.
Even some liberal commentators are admitting that Biden and Capitol Democrats fed inflation by passing enormous spending bills, measures that provided far more stimulus to the economy than it needed. That was certainly true of the giant $1.9 trillion “COVID relief” bill called the American Rescue Plan, signed into law by Biden on March 11, 2021. The left-leaning website Vox recently published a story with the headline, “Biden’s American Rescue Plan worsened inflation. The question is how much.”
We need to STOP Biden & Democrat’s reckless policies.
By a wide margin, Americans view inflation as the top problem facing the country today
The public views inflation as the top problem facing the United States – and no other concern comes close.
Seven-in-ten Americans view inflation as a very big problem for the country, followed by the affordability of health care (55%) and violent crime (54%).
About half say gun violence and the federal budget deficit are very big problems (51% each), according to a Pew Research Center survey conducted April 25-May 1 among 5,074 U.S. adults. More than two years into the coronavirus pandemic, just 19% of Americans rate the coronavirus outbreak as a very big problem for the country, the lowest share out of 12 issues included in the survey. In June 2020, in the early stages of the outbreak, 58% rated it as a very big problem, placing it among the top concerns at the time.
Unleash American energy production at home
One of the Biden administration’s first actions in office was to halt the Keystone XL Pipeline—shuttering domestic energy production, forcing thousands of American energy workers out of their jobs, and signaling a drastic shift in energy policy to the American people.
Fast forward a year later and global tumult generated by Russia’s war in Ukraine sent shockwaves across the globe, with notable effects here in the United States. Gas prices—already on the rise due to rising and unsustainable government spending—soared even higher, reaching almost $4.50/gallon in my North Central Florida district. The Biden administration’s dependence on Russia for oil exacerbated the problem the president started. Many Americans are now asking a question with what should be a seemingly simple answer: why don’t we produce more energy at home?
The facts are impossible to ignore: the Biden administration has delayed or blocked the issuance of permits necessary for American energy development, revoked and denied mining permits, and added layers of unnecessary bureaucracy and red tape to permitting decisions. It’s clear this administration plans to fight oil and gas development in the U.S. at every turn. With no new offshore leases issued since President Biden Leaseholders have nominated additional parcels for sale needed to develop currently held leases, but until federal lands are open for business, it’s impossible to generate confidence and investment in American energy production without certainty in what the future holds.
The utter necessity of a Russian defeat
From a Western Clausewitzian standpoint, there is no longer any political justification for Russia’s aggression against Ukraine other than to allow Russian President Vladimir Putin to save face. But from Putin and his supporters’ perspective on Clausewitz ,that is more than a sufficient justification for continuing this war.
Putin has long since morphed into a contemporary version of a Shakespearean villain who is in blood so steeped that to go back would be as tiresome as to go o’er. Indeed, Putin and his toadies are busily making reckless nuclear threats in the belief that such threats will frighten the West into stopping the war with Russian troops on Ukrainian soil. In other words, they are exploiting Nixon’s madman theory to terrify Westerners with nuclear threats.
Unfortunately, too many Western experts are arguing that we have to save Russia or Putin’s face lest the humiliation of defeat drive him to escalate. Alternatively, they argue that we must negotiate the future of European security with Russia.
To put it starkly, they are all too willing to sacrifice Ukrainian territory and sovereignty to relieve their anxiety about escalation. Moreover, they also seem to harbor the strange idea that Western and U.S. deterrents are inherently ineffectual and immoral, if not absent, even though they have no proof of these defects in that deterrent. In fact, Putin has no “off-ramp” save victory, which is increasingly unlikely unless fearful Western leaders coerce Ukraine into surrender. That outcome not only undermines Ukraine’s confidence in the West; it also validates Putin’s strategy that the West lacks the nerve to defend its interests and values in the face of his nuclear threats.
Neither would such a program bring about peace — quite the contrary. Putin or his successors could spin that outcome as a victory and use it to provide a basis for renewed campaigns against Ukraine and Europe. After all, he has sought for over 20 years to subvert and now destroy any idea of Ukrainian statehood. Espousing the approach of preventing a decisive Ukrainian victory also makes it impossible to hold any Russians accountable for the economic devastation wreaked on Ukraine or the genocidal crimes committed across Ukraine.at Moscow’s orders.
In applying to NATO, Finland and Sweden give the lie to Putin’s claims
The alliance’s expansion is not to blame for his war in Ukraine.
he decision of Finland and Sweden to apply for membership of nato is a damning rebuke to the strategic foresight of Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin. Two countries proud of their long history of military non-alignment have come to judge that the risk of antagonising their neighbour is outweighed by the extra security they will gain from joining an alliance dedicated to resisting Russian aggression. It is the direct result of the invasion of Ukraine, which Mr Putin ordered ostensibly to forestall nato’s expansion.
It is also a rebuke to those who argue that nato shares in the blame for the war. Mr Putin is not alone in arguing that the alliance’s expansion into central and eastern Europe after the cold war somehow made Russia’s position intolerable. Plenty of Western scholars concur. However, the choice of Finland and Sweden suggests that they have the argument upside down. Countries seek to join nato because they are threatened by Russia, not to antagonise it.
Stop Making a Big Deal of NATO’s Next Members
Moscow wants to pretend that admitting Sweden and Finland would represent a far larger military change than it actually is.
Sweden and Finland’s prospective NATO accession is politically big news – but militarily less so. After years of cohabitation with the alliance, these two Nordic countries are, one might say, finally putting a ring on the relationship. Labeling it a monumental change aids Moscow’s narrative that it’s under threat from the alliance.
Back in 2016, the Finnish government report concluded that “Finland, like Sweden, stands as close to the Atlantic treaty association as is possible for a country that is not a member and is thus reaching a plateau. On a military and diplomatic level, this convergence has in turn led to a considerable degree of interoperability between Finland and NATO. The practical problems that would still need to be solved if Finland becomes a member of NATO are rather limited.”
Seven years later, there’s practically nothing left to integrate short of becoming a full-fledged members. “Finland has been integrating with NATO for basically 30 years,” Finland’s ambassador, Mikko Hautala, told Fox News this week.
Both countries have for years been adjusting their military equipment to that of NATO—perhaps never so dramatically as in February, when Finland chose to upgrade its fighter-jet fleet by ordering 64 Lockheed Martin F-35s. The acquisition puts Finland in the company of not just the US military but of other friends as well, Britain, Italy, Norway, the Netherlands, Denmark, Belgium and Poland among them.
Rise in police deaths reinforce need to support police officersLast year, 73 law enforcement officers were feloniously killed on the job
I have read with alarm the reports of high national rates of police officers murdered or ambushed by violent criminals. When communities are soft on crime and focused on defunding the police, we are all less safe. I stand with law enforcement and will continue supporting their service.
The statistics are dreadful:
According to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), last year, “73 law enforcement officers were feloniously killed on the job—the highest single-year number since 9/11.”
A record number of those officers killed, nearly half, were ambushed while sitting in their vehicles, attacked while on patrol or lured out into the open and killed, the FBI also reports.
Further, FBI Director Christopher Wray has said, “Violence against law enforcement in this country is one of the biggest phenomena that I think doesn’t get enough attention. Last year, officers were being killed at a rate of almost one every five days.”…
… Law enforcement keeps our communities safe. They and their families bear the danger and difficulty of this responsibility. And, the risks they face are heightened by the rise in violent crime in many parts of our country connected to liberal efforts to defund the police and other challenges, such as the deadly impacts of fentanyl and counterfeit pills, cartel drug trafficking, domestic violence and much more.
It is clear Americans benefit from well-funded and supported law enforcement personnel. I proudly continue to back legislation recognizing the vigilance and compassion of those who serve in law enforcement and strongly support law enforcement officers across Idaho and the U.S. We all need to do our part to recognize the important role police officers have in making our communities safe and show support for police and law enforcement personnel. They need our support perhaps now more than ever.
POLL: Majority Of Americans Want Corporations To Stop Meddling In Politics
Almost 90% of Americans have said they are likely to stop using a company’s product or service if it openly advocates for a political agenda they disagree with, according to a poll conducted by The Trafalgar Group and Convention of States Action.
The findings were not unique to any individual political group, as independents (82.6%), Democrats (84.5%) and Republicans (93.4%) all stated they were likely to stop using a product or service of any company that openly advocates for political agendas they disagree with, according to The Trafalgar Group and Convention of States Action. The respondents of the poll were also fairly split, with 39.3% claiming to be Democratic, 35.6% being Republican, and the remainder having non-partisan or other political affiliations.
The poll was conducted April 24-27, 2022 with 1,080 respondents who said they were likely general election voters, according to the Trafalgar Group. The margin of error was 2.99%.
Trump hovers, but the number of his likely rivals keeps growing
The 2024 election will mark my ninth presidential contest as a Republican commentator. The party to which I’ve belonged has changed a lot since the first time I voted (a bit earlier, in 1974), but, like California after one of its many earthquakes, it settles. The party’s upheavals abate, and folks just deal with the walls and roads that have cracked or crumbled.
About 24 years ago, I described a three-part GOP: the party of faith, the party of wealth and the party of patriotism, driven by strong support for free enterprise, religious liberty and a pro-life agenda, and national security.
That’s still the case, of course, but two huge changes have rocked the party since: First is the emergence of the national security challenge posed by a hard-line Chinese Communist Party, led by the dictator President Xi Jinping.
Every Republican who wants to win in 2024 will have to air a “dragon in the air” counterpart to Hal Riney’s pivotal 1984 “bear in the woods” Reagan-Bush ad about the Soviet Union. China is the new U.S.S.R. Highlighting that reality and the national security spending it requires will bottom every GOP candidacy.
The second change, of course, is the rise of Donald Trump. His populist appeal and personal following have remade a significant portion of the GOP — and brought untold numbers of people into the party, made the party more populist and vastly reorganized its thinking about trade and foreign policy.
If I were to describe the shape of the coming GOP field, the triptych might best be described now as, borrowing from President Biden, “ultra MAGA,” MAGA light and everybody else.
Pence returns from the GOP dead
Nearly a year after he was booed and jeered as a “traitor” at a Florida event, the former veep’s tightly scripted comeback is showing returns.
Mike Pence’s plan is working.
After years of loyal service and genuflecting as Donald Trump’s former No. 2, Pence is capitalizing on carefully choreographed split screens with his former boss on everything from endorsements and appearances to policy and photo-ops.
Nearly a year after he was booed and jeered as a “traitor” at the Faith and Freedom Coalition conference in Orlando for his refusal to overturn the election results, Pence’s tightly scripted comeback ahead of a potential 2024 presidential bid is showing returns.
Since POLITICO reported on the Supreme Court’s draft opinion overturning Roe v. Wade, Pence has moved to channel a newly simpatico GOP base. He is finding purposeful ways to contrast with Trump on issues ranging from highlighting his own decadeslong record of anti-abortion advocacy to calling for a muscular response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Next week, he’ll cross Trump by holding a rally with Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp on the eve of his GOP primary, a direct challenge to Trump’s endorsement of Kemp challenger David Perdue.
The state of relationships, marriages, and living alone in the US
More Americans are living alone, getting married later in life.
Are more Americans in love than in the past? The Census Bureau doesn’t track that, but it does keep tabs on American relationships.
These days, Americans are now less likely to be married and more likely to live alone. When people do marry, they’re doing it later in life than in the past.
While a higher percentage of Americans are divorced, a lower percentage are widows.
And more than half a million same-sex couples are now married, which wasn’t an option for people in the 1950s.
The far left overplaying their hand…again. Barbarism in the Senate
On Wednesday, a majority of the U.S. Senate — all 50 GOP senators plus West Virginia Democrat Joe Manchin — shot down a barbaric abortion bill that would enshrine in federal law a virtually unlimited right to abortion through all nine months of pregnancy in all 50 states. The deceptively named Women’s Health Protection Act (WHPA) would also wipe away nearly all state laws discouraging and regulating abortion — including many laws that have been permitted under Roe v. Wade.
Democratic leaders openly admit they held their second failed vote on the same radical abortion bill in the span of ten weeks because they want to campaign this fall on support for Roe. But they desperately want to avoid any discussion of what their bill actually does.
When Democrats in Washington speak of “codifying Roe,” what they mean in plain English is protecting a right to kill a baby through all nine months for virtually any reason. The WHPA creates an absolute right to abortion through the first five to six months of pregnancy, and it mandates legal abortion after viability until birth whenever a lone health-care provider — a term not limited to doctors — determines that the continuation of the pregnancy “would pose a risk” to the patient’s life or “health.” The WHPA’s chief sponsor in the Senate has acknowledged the legislation “doesn’t distinguish” between physical and mental health, and the text of the bill instructs the courts to “liberally construe” the provisions of the act. Courts would therefore look to the definition of “health” found in Roe’s companion case, Doe v. Bolton: “physical, emotional, psychological, familial, and the woman’s age. . . . All these factors may relate to health.”
Post-Dobbs Democrats are desperate to discuss anything but abortion
Talking before boarding Air Force One the morning after the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization draft decision leaked, President Joe Biden said the opinion “goes far beyond the concern of whether or not there is the right to choose.” He called it “a radical decision” that could influence “all the decisions you make in your private life, who you marry, whether or not you decide to conceive a child.”
Vice President Kamala Harris claimed further that “the rights of all Americans are at risk. If the right to privacy is weakened, every person could face a future in which the government can potentially interfere in the personal decisions you make about your life.”
Never keen to be outdone, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) claimed the Supreme Court “isn’t just coming for abortion — they’re coming for the right to privacy Roe v. Wade rests on, which includes gay marriage and civil rights.”
It’s significant that all of these responses reveal top Democrats trying to change the subject from abortion to almost anything else — to marriage, privacy, civil rights, etc. That’s because voters don’t agree with Democrats’ views on abortion. Party leaders try to turn discussion of Roe to any subject other than the one it is actually about.
The Democrats simply will not be honest on this, which is why they pretend that the legislation they have been pushing, the Women’s Health Protection Act, simply codifies Roe.
It doesn’t. It goes much further. Roe did not legalize all abortions. It invented a trimester framework for analyzing the constitutionality of state abortion laws. States could not restrict abortion in any way for the first 12 weeks of pregnancy, but they could restrict it from the 13th through the 28th week to protect the mother’s health, and they could restrict it in any way they wanted from the 29th week onward.
