Tag: joe biden

Two of Five State Bureaus Under Biden-Harris Regime Fail to Confirm Adherence to Vetting Requirements — Raising Concerns Over $293 Million Potentially Profiting Taliban

A recent audit report from the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) has exposed the Biden-Harris administration’s alarming failure to comply with counterterrorism vetting requirements for significant funds allocated to Afghanistan.

The audit, covering the period from March 2022 to November 2022, found that two out of five State Department bureaus failed to retain necessary documentation to demonstrate compliance with partner vetting requirements.

This lapse raises serious concerns that extremist groups, including the Taliban, may have profited from $293 million in U.S. taxpayer funds.

The Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor (DRL) and the Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs (INL) were unable to provide sufficient documentation for their programs in Afghanistan.

This failure means that SIGAR could not confirm whether these bureaus complied with State’s partner vetting policies, risking that funds could be misused or fall into the hands of terrorist-affiliated organizations.

This oversight comes at a time when the Taliban is reportedly establishing close ties with newly registered Afghan NGOs, raising fears that these entities could be funneling American aid directly into the hands of extremists.

Since the Taliban’s takeover in August 2021, there have been alarming reports of their efforts to secure U.S. funds intended for humanitarian assistance. SIGAR highlighted that over 1,000 new national NGOs have registered under the Taliban’s Ministry of Economy, many of which are suspected to be fraud and have links to terrorist activities.

The lack of rigorous vetting processes by the Biden administration’s State Department is not only a breach of protocol but also a potential betrayal of American taxpayers who expect their contributions to genuinely assist the Afghan people rather than bolster extremist factions.

The report indicates that while three other State Department bureaus— Political-Military Affairs, Office of Weapons Removal and Abatement (PM/WRA); Population, Refugees, and Migration (PRM); and South and Central Asian Affairs, Office of Press and Public Diplomacy (SCA/PPD)— managed to comply with vetting requirements, DRL and INL’s failures are particularly egregious given the substantial amounts of money involved.

Together, these two bureaus accounted for nearly $294 million in disbursements without adequate oversight or documentation, which might inadvertently benefit terrorist organizations.

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Kamala Harris accidentally calls herself ‘the president’ during late Dem Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee’s eulogy — causing crowd to go wild

Freudian slip?

Vice President Kamala Harris accidentally called herself the “president” Thursday while delivering a eulogy for late Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-Texas), causing the crowd to go wild as she repeatedly corrected herself.

Harris, standing beside Democratic leaders including Bill and Hillary Clinton, was speaking in Houston about the late congresswoman’s long career in public service. She recalled that Jackson Lee introduced legislation to make Juneteenth – the day marking the end of slavery in the US – a federal holiday.

“Which as a US Senator, I was proud to co-sponsor and then as presi–” Harris said about her role in getting the bill through, before correcting herself.

“As vice president it was my honor – with the president! With the president!” she said as the crowd applauded and cheered.

“It was my honor – it was my honor, with our president Joe Biden to stand beside Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee as our president signed her bill into law.”

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Car Repos Rise 23% YoY

The private debt crisis is becoming apparent in America after car repossessions jumped 23% during the first half of 2024. Data shows that 1.6 million Americans will have their car repossessed by the bank before the end of the year, a slight increase from the 1.5 million autos repossessed in 2023 and a drastic upturn from the 1.1 million in 2021.

Obviously, the cost of purchasing a car have drastically risen with inflation, interest hikes, and supply chain shortages. Americans simply cannot afford new autos and car dealerships can do nothing to entice purchases. New car inventory in the US rose 36% this year, close to February 2021 levels before the supply chain crisis put a dent in imports. Yet, the average list price of a new car is $49,096 and far more than the average American can afford. The average new vehicle will sit in a dealer’s lot for 65 days, a 41% annual increase.

Dealerships are hardly asking for a downpayment these days unless someone has horrid credit. Even putting a few grand down will only take off about $20 per monthly payment. The average new car costs about $735 monthly based on data from Experian, and $523 monthly on used models. The average American simply is not educated in finance. Autos are behind mortgages in the largest share of personal household debt and there is a portion of the population who do not understand what they can actually afford.

The average American now borrows around $40,634 for new vehicles and $26,073 for used vehicles. About 9.2% of all consumer debt is through autos alone.

There was that viral story from April of a woman purchasing a Chevy Tahoe for $80,000 – without factoring in the interest on all household vehicles. Her husband purchased 2020 GMC Sierra 1500 AT4 for $78,000 in August 2022 and she simply could not understand why the payments on the truck were more than on the Tahoe. Well, the husband’s 14% rate on the vehicle placed their monthly payment or the truck $1,600. I recalled reading comments suggesting the family simply let the bank repo one of the cars as if that could be a valid option for personal finance.

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Must Be Election Year: Biden’s DHS Freezes Immigrant Parole Program Due to Fraud

It must be election year.

The Biden regime has temporarily frozen the CHNV Parole Program to due concerns of fraud. It’s hard to imagine they would care about a program that has currently flown over 500,000 people into the US when they have let well over 10 to 12 million illegals cross the border in the last few years.

The CHNV Parole Program, permits up to 30,000 people to be flown into the US each month from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela if they meet certain qualifications. It originally started in 2022 with Venezuela, then included Haiti, Cuba and Nicaragua by early 2023.

Fox News Reported:

EXCLUSIVE: The Biden administration has put a controversial program that allows tens of thousands of migrants from four nations to fly or travel directly into the U.S. on hold, after a report circulated internally showing significant amounts of fraud in the program.

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) confirmed to Fox News Digital that “out of an abundance of caution,” it has temporarily paused the issuing of advance travel authorizations for the program — which allows up to 30,000 nationals from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela (CHNV) to travel into the U.S. each month and enter legally under the administration’s use of parole if they meet certain conditions.

A congressional source had told Fox News Digital the pause came in mid-July after an internal report unearthed large amounts of fraud in applications for those sponsoring the applicants. DHS said the pause was occurring as it reviewed sponsor applications. The focus is on issues with supporter filings, and not with the filings from the beneficiaries of the program themselves.

“A congressional source tells Fox News Digital that Customs and Border Protection (CBP) stopped issuing travel authorizations to Venezuelans on July 6 and authorizations for the three remaining nationalities on July 18,” Fox News reported.

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The Murder of Ismail Haniyeh

Some reflections, written urgently in response to the urgency of the moment, on the assassination early Tuesday of Ismail Haniyeh. The 62–year-old chairman of Hamas’ Politburo, murdered during an official visit to Iran, was the organization’s chief negotiator in talks intended to produce a ceasefire in Gaza and the release of Israeli hostages held by Hamas and Palestinian prisoners held in Israel’s jails. 

These talks may now be definitively dead. This is news but not news: It has been apparent for some time that the Netanyahu regime — and the U.S., by obvious extension — has never been serious about an accord to bring the Israel Occupation Force’s genocide in Gaza to an end. This is now beyond all question, the Biden regime’s mealy-mouthed drivel to the contrary notwithstanding. 

Important as this conclusion is, one must view Haniyeh’s murder in its larger context. From this perspective we can come to some useful understandings. A few scales may now fall from the eyes of the determinedly illusioned.    

Terrorist Israel has not acknowledged responsibility for this vastly consequential act, but it has often remained silent in its long history of assassinations of this kind, notably when these operations breach another nation’s sovereignty. This is not important. Anyone who thinks the Israelis did not kill Haniyeh at this, a moment of heightened political and diplomatic significance, is either compulsively naïve or compulsively blind to the bottomlessly pernicious character of the Zionist regime. 

Haniyeh had traveled to Tehran to attend the inauguration of Masoud Pezeshkian, a reformist recently elected Iran’s president, and was bivouacked at a residence for army veterans in North Tehran, the fashionable quarter of the capital. IRNA, the Islamic Republic’s state-run news agency, reported that a precision-guided missile killed Haniyeh and his bodyguard at the residence at 2 a.m. Tuesday. 

In a story published later in the day, Military Watch, the independent online magazine, said if the attack was confirmed to be an air strike, it was likely an F–35 fighter jet, an aircraft capable of evading Iran’s air-defense systems, that carried it out. The F–35 is a stealth fighter the U.S. has so far sold to 16 countries, including Israel, which, in 2018, became the first country to deploy the jet in combat. 

The Israelis may have relied on U.S. intelligence and targeting assistance to execute an operation of this extraordinary exactitude, although this is not now confirmed. It nonetheless requires equal naïvete to assume the Biden regime, from the White House to the intelligence agencies and the Pentagon, had no foreknowledge of the Israelis’ assassination plot. 

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Biden-Harris Task Force Urges Online Age Verification Digital ID Tool Development

The online digital ID age verification creep in the US continues from a number of directions, through “recommendations” and “studies” – essentially, the government is nudging the industry to move in the direction of implementing digital ID age verification tools.

At this point, it is happening via various initiatives and legislation, still, without being formally mandated.

One instance is a recommendation coming from the Biden-Harris Administration’s Kids Online Health and Safety Task Force, which is telling online service providers they should “develop and inform parents about age verification tools built into the app or available at the device level.”

The task force is led by the Department of Health and Human Services, HHS (its Substance Abuse and Mental Health Service Administration, SAMHSA,) in what is referred to in official statements as “close partnership” with the Department of Commerce.

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Biden Regime Officially Recognizes Gonzalez Victor as the Legitimate Winner of the Recently Concluded Venezuela Election Due to Election Fraud

Secretary of State Antony Blinken announced Thursday that the Biden regime officially recognizes Edmundo González Urrutia as the legitimate winner of Venezuela’s July 28 presidential election.

This statement comes after widespread allegations of electoral fraud and manipulation by the Maduro regime.

In a statement, Blinken commended the Venezuelan people for their resilience and participation in an election marred by significant challenges.

“At least 12 million Venezuelans peacefully went to the polls and exercised one of the most powerful rights given to people in any democracy: the right to vote,” he said.

However, he condemned the National Electoral Council (CNE), which is widely viewed as a tool of Nicolás Maduro’s government, for its handling of the election results.

“The CNE’s rapid declaration of Nicolás Maduro as the winner came with no supporting evidence,” Blinken said.

He highlighted that despite calls from both Venezuelans and the international community, the CNE has failed to publish crucial data, including disaggregated vote tallies and official precinct-level results.

Blinken condemned Maduro’s threats against opposition leaders, including Edmundo González and María Corina Machado. He called for their protection and the immediate release of all individuals arrested for peacefully participating in the electoral process.

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The Biden Administration’s Prisoner Swap With Russia Was Ridiculously Lopsided

The Biden administration’s prisoner swap with Russia is being touted by the corporate press as “historic,” and in a way it is. Nothing like this, on this scale, has happened since the Cold War. But the swap is as lopsided as it is historic.

All Americans should welcome the release of our three unjustly imprisoned compatriots: Evan Gershkovich, a reporter for the Wall Street Journal, Paul Whelan, a former U.S. Marine, and Russian-American journalist Alsu Kurmasheva. They were among the 16 western prisoners released by Moscow in exchange for eight Russian nationals released by the U.S. and allies.

But this wasn’t a Cold War-era prisoner swap of the kind immortalized in the Oscar-winning 2015 film “Bridge of Spies.” It was a dangerously uneven exchange that saw the release of a Russian assassin along with Russian spies and hackers, all of whom have committed serious crimes in western countries. Essentially, Moscow arrested a bunch of innocent western journalists and political dissidents, and then used them as bargaining chips to secure the release of its own killers, criminals, and spies.

Among the Russians released from western prisons, for example, was Vadim Krasikov, a Russian assassin who in 2019 killed a Chechen separatist commander in broad daylight in a park in central Berlin. Krasikov, who shot his victim twice with a Glock 26 and then threw it in a river, was sentenced to life in prison in 2021. At the time, German officials said he was a member of the F.S.B., Russia’s domestic spy agency.

Also released was suspected F.S.B. agent Vadim Konoshchenok, arrested in 2022 on espionage charges in Estonia and extradited to the U.S. He was accused of conspiring to obtain military-grade technologies from U.S. companies and pass them to Moscow.

The prisoner swap recalls the 2014 Bowe Bergdahl affair under the Obama administration. Bergdahl was a U.S. Army soldier who, disillusioned with the war in Afghanistan, abandoned his post in 2009 and was subsequently captured by the Taliban and held as a hostage. In 2014, the Taliban agreed to free him in exchange for five top Taliban officials being held in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, including army chief of staff and deputy minister of intelligence. One of them, Abdul Haq Wasiq, is currently the head of intelligence for the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, the internationally unrecognized name of the Taliban regime.

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When Presidents Kill

Sometime before he withdrew from the presidential race, President Joe Biden secretly reaffirmed his own self-willed and self-created authority to kill persons in other countries, so long as the CIA and its military counterparts have “near certainty” that the target of the homicide is a member of a terrorist organization. That standard was concocted by the George W. Bush administration in 2002.

There is no “near certainty” standard in the law, as the phrase is oxymoronic and defies a rational definition – like “nearly pregnant.”

Just as one is either pregnant or not, one is either certain or not. There is no “near” there.

Yet, the creation of this standard underscores the lamentable absence of the rule of law in government today. The Biden administration and its three immediate predecessors have all deployed drones to kill persons who were not engaged in acts of violence at the time of their killing, irrespective of the near certainty of their membership in any organizations.

“Terrorist” cannot be a standard for extrajudicial murder because it is subjective. To King George III, George Washington and Thomas Jefferson were terrorists. To the poor folks in Libya and Syria, to the popularly elected governments toppled by CIA-inspired violence in Iran in 1953 and in Ukraine in 2014, to the innocents tortured by the CIA at black sites around the world, the CIA is a terrorist organization.

The presidential use of drones to kill persons overseas began in 2002 with Bush-ordered targeted killings. It continued under President Barack Obama – who even killed Americans overseas. The rules for killing were made up by each president. They were relaxed under President Donald Trump, who gave CIA senior personnel and military commanders the authority to kill without his express approval for each killing. Trump’s folks infamously murdered an Iranian general and his companions on their way to lunch with Iraqi generals to negotiate peace between the two countries.

The Biden administration quietly took back the Trump grants of authority so that today only the president can authorize targeted killing. Yet, there is no moral, constitutional or legal authority for these killings. But presidents of both political parties do it anyway.

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US National Debt Hits $35 Trillion Milestone

In a historic fiscal milestone for the federal government, the national debt rose to $35 trillion for the first time, according to the latest Treasury Department Debt to the Penny data.

Current debt levels are equal to $105,000 per person and $266,000 per U.S. household.

Washington accumulated another $1 trillion in debt in less than seven months. Over the past 12 months, the national debt has spiked by nearly $2.35 trillion, an average of about $6.4 billion per day.

House Budget Committee Chair Jodey Arrington (R-Texas) is calling the announcement “another dubious milestone in the fiscal decline of the most powerful and prosperous nation in its history.”

Since January 2021, the national debt has increased by about $7.3 trillion.

The immense growth of red ink flooding the nation’s capital has captured the attention of public policymakers.

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