90 Miles From Tyranny

Wednesday, July 14, 2021

GET READY: ECONOMISTS ARE PREDICTING MAJOR INFLATION NOT SEEN IN DECADES IN MAJOR HIT ON U.S. ECONOMY

You weren’t one of those Americans who believed the Biden regime when they told us some weeks ago that “inflation is transitory,” were you?

Good, because the regime lied to us.

New figures (not including ‘volatile’ food and gasoline because those would make inflation numbers even worse) show that price hikes are real, and they’re spectacular.'Americans should brace themselves for several years of higher inflation than they've seen in decades, according to economists who expect the robust post-pandemic economic recovery to fuel brisk price increases for a while,' The Wall Street Journal reported.

'The respondents on average now expect a widely followed measure of inflation, which excludes volatile food and energy components, to be up 3.2% in the fourth quarter of 2021 from a year before. They forecast the annual rise to recede to slightly less than 2.3% a year in 2022 and 2023. That would mean an average annual increase of 2.58% from 2021 through 2023, putting inflation at levels last seen in 1993.'

Here’s what a gaggle of economists said:

— Joel Naroff, chief economist at Naroff Economics LLC: 'We're in a transitional phase right now. We are transitioning to a higher period of inflation and interest rates than we've had over the last 20 years.'

— Diane Swonk, chief economist at Grant Thornton: 'Inflation is expected to surge longer and longer—longer than the Fed previously thought. The Fed is now likely to raise rates in the first half of 2023, although some Fed presidents will be nipping at the bit to move sooner.'

— Kevin Swift, chief economist at the American Chemistry Council: 'The danger is that monetary authorities are behind the curve. I'm not saying hyperinflation is around the corner, just that a lot of things have come together in the last year, and the overall trend of costs across the board is growing faster than in the last five or 10 years.'

— Swift noted the havoc that inflation is having on the construction industry, saying: 'It's disruptive—you can't be sure of what your costs are, whether you can get supplies or what the costs will be six months from now. I'd hate to be in the construction business trying to bid on a job when you don't know what the cost of steel will be 18 months from now.'

CNN confessed that 'Americans have witnessed some wild price hikes over the past few months. Shortages and supply chain issues across the world have sent the cost to make and move goods soaring and...

Navy Brass Focused More on Wokeness than Warfighting

The Navy’s top brass is more focused on wokeness and diversity training than on winning wars — leaving sailors feeling unprepared to face a 21st century conflict with China, according to a damning report commissioned by Republican lawmakers.

The report, commissioned by Republicans on the Senate and House Armed Services Committees, showed that since the end of the Cold War, the Navy has been drifting more towards a culture of careerism, political correctness, and risk aversion than actually training its sailors on how to fight and win.

The report, written by Marine Lt. Gen. (Ret.) Robert E. Schmidle and Navy Rear Adm. (Ret.) Mark Montgomery, found after 77 in-depth interviews with sailors of different ranks and jobs that their frustration with non-essential training was “overwhelming.”

The report said:

While programs to encourage diversity, human sex trafficking prevention, suicide prevention, sexual assault prevention, and others are appropriate, they come with a cost. The non-combat curricula consume Navy resources, clog inboxes, create administrative quagmires, and monopolize precious training time.

By weighing down sailors with non-combat related training and administrative burdens, both Congress and Navy leaders risk sending them into battle less prepared and less focused than their opponents.

One active duty lieutenant said in the report, “Sometimes I think we care more about whether we have enough diversity officers than if we’ll survive a fight with the Chinese navy.”

She added: “It’s criminal. They think my only value is as a black woman. But you cut our ship open with a missile and we’ll all bleed the same color.”

A recently retired senior enlisted leader also referenced the top brass’s focus on diversity training over basic operational skills.

“I guarantee you every unit in the Navy is up to speed on their diversity training. I’m sorry that I can’t say the same of their ship handling training,” he said.

Others attested to a Navy more focused on compliance training than warfighting.

“The Navy treats warfighting readiness as a compliance issue,” one career commander said. “You might even use the term compliance-centered warfare as opposed to adversary-centered warfare or...

New Analysis Shows 60 Percent Error Reporting Rate During Fulton County Hand-Count Audit in Georgia

A new analysis from VoterGA has demonstrated a shocking 60 percent error rate during the hand-count audit in Fulton County, Ga.

VoterGA analyzed mail-in ballot images that were released to the public after a court ordered them to be made public on Apr. 13. They found that 923 of the 1539 mail-in ballot batch files contained incorrect data.

VoterGA stated in a press release about their findings: “These inaccuracies are due to discrepancies in votes for Donald Trump, Joe Biden and total votes cast compared to their reported audit totals for respective batches. Thus, the error reporting rate in Fulton’s hand count audit is a whopping 60%.”

“One type of error discovered involved duplicate results reporting for batches of ballots. The team found at least 36 batches of mail-in ballots with 4,255 total extra votes were redundantly added into Fulton Co. audit results for the November election. These illicit votes include 3,390 extra votes for Joe Biden, 865 extra votes for Donald Trump and 43 extra votes for Jo Jorgenson,” they added.

Additionally, VoterGA has reported finding seven different falsified audit tally sheets which contained fake vote totals for their particular batches. They are also saying that Fulton County omitted 100,000 tally sheets, including over 50,000 from mail-in ballots, for the hand count audit conducted by Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger. These new findings have been added to...

Stinken Blinken

Iranian intel agents sought to kidnap American journalist

The State Department informed Congress late Tuesday that it would waive sanctions on Iran's illicit oil trade so that the country can access frozen funds from South Korea and Japan, the same day the Department of Justice announced charges on an Iranian spy network that sought to kidnap an American.

The waiver, signed by Secretary of State Antony Blinken, allows the "transfer of Iranian funds in restricted accounts to exporters in Japan and the Republic of Korea," according to a notification sent to Congress by the State Department. The waiver allows Iranian money that had been frozen as a result of American sanctions to be freed up without violating the law. "Allowing these funds to be used to repay exporters in these jurisdictions will make those entities whole with respect to the goods and services they exported to Iran, address a recurring irritant in important bilateral relationships, and decrease Iran’s foreign reserves," the waiver states.

The waiver was announced on the same day the Justice Department announced new charges against a network of Iranian intelligence agents who sought to kidnap an American journalist and bring her to Iran. The charges include kidnapping conspiracy, sanctions violations conspiracy, bank and wire fraud conspiracy, and money laundering conspiracy charges.

The sanctions relief also comes as the United States and Iran get closer to finalizing a revamped nuclear deal that will even further unwind sanctions on Tehran. Congressional Republicans are likely to oppose the move, which lessens economic pressure on Iran at a time when it is still funding regional terror groups and building out its nuclear weapons program. Sanctions of Iran's oil trade were a hallmark policy of the Trump administration, which sought to cut Iran's exports down to zero and deny the regime a key source of income.

Richard Goldberg, the former director for countering Iranian weapons of mass destruction on Trump's White House National Security Council, said the waiver will relieve pressure on Iran's floundering economy and give it access to much-needed cash.

"There’s a reason we talk about accessible foreign exchange reserves versus inaccessible foreign exchange reserves. If you free up money that’s trapped in foreign accounts for Iran to pay off debts, you are bailing out the regime and rescuing the mullahs from a balance of payments crisis," said Goldberg, a senior adviser at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. "This is a bailout, plain and simple. And to announce it right as DOJ tells us Iran tried to kidnap an American journalist out of New York City—that’s a...