Janet Yellen Denies We’re in a Recession. How Soon Before She Has to Walk Back Her Remarks Again?

 

Thursday’s GDP numbers indicated a decline of 0.9 percent, pointing to a recession, considering the economy also declined by 1.6 percent last quarter. President Joe Biden and many others in his administration have denied we’re even in a recession and have instead pointed to a different, more vague definition based on data from the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER). Chief among the recession-deniers includes Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, who gave remarks on Thursday. 

TUNE IN: @SecYellen hosts a press conference to discuss America’s recovery over the last 18 months from the depths of the pandemic, and the resilience of America’s workers, businesses, and economy in the face of international headwinds. https://t.co/EjN1BxTnzr— Treasury Department (@USTreasury) July 28, 2022

Instead of a recession, Yellen claimed during her remarks that the economy is “transitioning.” 

“This report indicates an economy that is transitioning to more steady, sustainable growth,” she said. “That’s to be expected given how rapidly the economy grew when it was recovering from the pandemic and all of those job losses.” 

Yellen also used problematic language when talking about inflation last year, when she claimed inflation would be “temporary” and was “transitory.” 

During a House Appropriations subcommittee hearing in May of last year, Yellen said, “My judgment right now is that the recent inflation that we have seen will be temporary. It’s not something that’s endemic.” 

In June of last year, Yellen was quoted singing a much different tune on inflation. From The Washington Post at the time: 

Yellen, Fed Chair Jerome H. Powell and other top policymakers insist the price pops are temporary and that the current uptick doesn’t reflect a dangerously persistent new trend.

…

“We have in recent months seen some inflation, and we — at least on a year-over-year basis — will continue, I believe through the rest of the year, to see higher inflation rates, maybe around 3 percent,” Yellen said following a meeting of Group of Seven finance ministers in London. “But I personally believe that this represents transitory factors.”

Ultimately, Yellen was forced to walk back her remarks and admit she was wrong. Last December, she acknowledged, “I’m ready to retire the word transitory,” and said, “I can agree that that hasn’t been an apt description of what we’re dealing with.” 

She made an even more embarrassing admission earlier this year. “I was wrong then about the path that inflation would take. As I mentioned, there have been unanticipated and large shocks to the economy… that I, at the time, didn’t fully understand,” she claimed, despite being the Treasury Secretary and having previously served on the Federal Reserve, including as its chair. 

Other economists, though, including Larry Summers, who served as Treasury Secretary under President Bill Clinton, warned that the American Rescue Plan Act would lead to inflation, which it did. 

When promoting the NBER definition of a recession, as she did earlier in the week, including while on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” Yellen engaged in quite the tone-deaf claims about the American people. 

“Most economists and most Americans have a similar definition of recession — substantial job losses and mass layoffs, businesses shutting down, private sector activity slowing considerably, family budgets [that] are under immense strain, a broad-based weakening of our economy,” she claimed. “That is not what we’re seeing right now. When you look at the economy, job creation is continuing, household finances remain strong. Consumers are spending and businesses are growing.” 

Despite what Yellen may claim in her remarks, the polls are not on her side. 

A USA Today/Suffolk University poll released on Thursday, shortly before the GDP report came in, shows that 50 percent of Americans say we’re in a recession already, while just 9 percent say we’re in a recovery. 

An IBD/TIPP poll from earlier this month found that 58 percent of respondents think we’re in a recession. 

Multiple polls reflect that Americans think we’re already in a recession, actually, and that they even did last month. 

This includes a poll from The Economist/YouGov, which found that 56 percent of respondents thought we were already in a recession. A survey from MagnifyMoney conducted around the same time found that 70 percent of respondents thought the United States was headed toward a recession, with 59 percent predicting it would come within the next six months. 

The American people continue to give President Biden low marks on the economy. According to RealClearPolitics (RCP), 32 percent approve of his handling of this top issue, while 63.7 percent disapprove. 

One particularly memorably bad poll from earlier this month included a CNBC poll, which showed just 1 percent of respondents believe the economy is “excellent,” while 10 percent believe it’s “good.”

Gaetz Calls Hunter Biden the ‘Central Point for the Biden Crime Family’

 

Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) called Hunter Biden the “central point for the Biden crime family” and claimed that Americans are “witnessing a crime spree in progress.”

Gaetz made the comments in an interview with EpochTV.

“We are now, as a result of the laptop, able to piece together travel records, text messages, emails, payments from foreign entities directly to Hunter Biden’s discussions, meetings, and associations with his father, who was in a position of great prominence as the vice president of the United States at the time,” Gaetz said on EpochTV’s Crossroads.

Gaetz believes the infamous laptop that Hunter left at a Delaware computer repair shop in 2019, which contained pornographic images and details about his business dealings, is probably not nearly as bad as whatever devices he’s using now.

“If this is what’s on Hunter Biden’s laptop of yesteryear, imagine what’s on the laptop he’s using right now because they haven’t stopped,” Gaetz insisted. In March, he entered the contents of Hunter Biden’s laptop and the receipt from the computer repair shop into the congressional record.

“Joe Biden and Hunter Biden have not lived one day under Republican oversight. If we get control of the House of Representatives, this must be a central focus of ours, where we got to get the truth out before the people.”

Gaetz also noted that Joe Biden has already been proven to have lied about his knowledge of Hunter’s business dealings with China, Russia, and Ukraine while he was vice president.

“I think what’s really instructive here is that Joe Biden originally took the position that he and Hunter never discussed Hunter’s business. And now we know that was a lie,” Gaetz explained. “That was a lie based on the voicemails that we’ve recovered from Joe Biden talking about Hunter’s business deals with him. We know that as a result of photographs, where Joe Biden is with people who Hunter Biden is soliciting for money.”

Gaetz reiterated Republicans’ plans to investigate Hunter if they win control of the House of Representatives in the midterm elections.

“Joe Biden and Hunter Biden have never been held to account. They’re both involved in this. And it’s one of the reasons I think people are going to put Republicans in charge of the House of Representatives because they want to check on the Biden family corruption,” Gaetz said.

Big-City Democrats Beg Biden for Help Amid Mass Releases of Illegal Aliens

 

Very quietly and below the radar, the Biden administration is once again playing “catch and release” with illegal aliens on the southern border. But this time, the massive numbers of illegals are not just staying in Texas or Arizona. They’re making their way north to Washington, D.C., and New York City.

And that is causing all kinds of headaches for Democratic mayors.

It’s getting so bad that Mayor Eric Adams of New York City and Mayor Muriel Bowser of Washington have gone public, begging the Biden administration for help.

Washington Examiner:

“We do need help from the federal government, through FEMA, to assist us. This city was already dealing with a shelter population, and we’re going to need help to deal with this unprecedented surge,” Adams said on Thursday.

In recent weeks, Adams said he was aware of 2,800 people who had arrived in the city after being released at the southern border. Their arrival was affecting homeless shelters where facilities were short on space due to the influx.

It’s not like these mayors weren’t warned of what was coming. They kept their mouths shut to help with Biden’s efforts to keep the problem under wraps. And the American media is incurious about this humanitarian disaster brewing at the border.

In Texas, Gov. Greg Abbott refused to accept the status quo and began busing illegal aliens released at the border to Washington, D.C. It turned out to be a very expensive political gesture, costing Texas $6.8 million to bus around 6,000 illegals to Washington.

The “catch-and-release” game Biden is playing at the border is not only overwhelming his allies in New York and Washington, but it’s also affecting communities large and small.

Now, big-city mayors far away from the border are getting a glimpse of the daily struggles felt in communities along the border.

The mayor of the small Texas town at the center of the migration crisis says he has not heard from the Biden administration once since he took office last year.

Mayor Rolando Salinas Jr. of Eagle Pass, Texas, called the White House’s handling of the border a “complete failure.”

“As a lifelong Democrat, I have to say it’s so disappointing to not get support from this administration,” Salinas said.

Regardless of whether or not Biden lifts Title 42, the public health order that is supposed to keep illegal aliens out of the country, the administration has carved out so many exemptions that the situation has become a crisis

21st-Century Western Elites View Christianity Just as They Did in the Second-Century Roman Empire

 

This will perhaps come as a shock to them, but the doggedly secularist elites of 21st century America and Europe view Christianity, especially in its Evangelical and traditional Catholic assemblies, in much the same way as the Roman elites of the second-century empire viewed a movement that was then but a minor irritant.

Or to put it another way, George Soros and your buddies with the Davos Great Reset crowd, meet Emperor Marcus Aurelius and the Pax Romana.

For one thing, both eras feature widely diverse religious groups professing multiple understandings of and approaches to living a good life. As George Barna puts it in his latest American Worldview Inventory:

“Almost nine out of 10 U.S. adults (88 percent) have an impure, unrecognizable worldview that is nothing more than a customized personal blend of disparate ideas adopted from multiple philosophies of life. This worldview is called Syncretism.

“People who are driven by this unique, highly individualized mishmash of ideas simply combine them into what is usually an inconsistent, sometimes internally contradictory, hot mess of a worldview. Syncretism reflects the superficial thinking and feelings-based decision-making that prevails in our cut-and-paste society.”

The America that not so long ago was predominantly made up of people who considered themselves to be Christians, mostly of a Protestant persuasion but a great many Catholics as well, has degenerated into a “hot mess” that includes New Age spiritualism, Mormonism, Hinduism, Islamists, Buddhists, “Nones” and Atheists.

Compare that with the religious demographics of the second-century Roman Empire. In his The Patient Ferment of the Early Church, Alan Kreider tells us that “the Roman religious world was extremely tolerant, and many Roman citizens cobbled together religious lives as they participated in a wide range of religious observances.”

And remember, the Roman Empire of the second century stretched from Spain and Eastward across the entire Mediterranean Sea, covering most of Western and parts of Eastern Europe, as well as the entire expanse of North Africa from Morocco to Egypt, and thence throughout the Holy Land and into and somewhat beyond Mesopotamia.

Literally hundreds of tribes and dozens of nations, as well as countless local and national deities, languages, and traditions, were encompassed within the boundaries of the empire. Rome was tolerant of all of these so long as the Emperor was honored as divine and his governing authority respected.

But what of those Christians who refused to bow down to Marcus Aurelius and acknowledge him as one of the many gods? That inevitably led to frustration, then punishment, and finally persecution that saw Christians thrown to the lions simply because they admitted to being followers of Jesus Christ.

“But wait a minute,” you might be thinking, “nobody in the West today is murdering Christians by putting them in arenas to be torn apart and eaten by wild animals, so where’s the parallel here, Tapscott?” You’re right, of course; Christians aren’t being thus treated, at least not today, but that just indicates we haven’t quite reached the persecution stage.

But it takes little observational effort to see there are widespread and systematic efforts to punish Christians who refuse to bow to the secular agenda of the Great Reset elites in the United States and Europe.

Yes, the Supreme Court recently in a unanimous decision instructed Boston authorities that they cannot bar the display of a Christian flag on the public square simply because it represents a particular faith. But that case took years to make its way through the judicial system and cost thousands of dollars and hours to make a point that not so long ago nobody in America would question.

And consider the censorship that is endemic on social media of Christians who express agreement with the Biblical view that marriage is solely between a man and a woman. Of all the secular orthodoxies, the gay agenda is all but sacrosanct, and to dissent from it is to subject oneself to a variety of punishments.

Finally, are you aware that thousands of members of the U.S. military — men and women who have sworn to give their lives to protect your freedom and mine — are being tossed out of the service because they claimed a religious exemption from the COVID-19 vaccine? The majority of these men and women are Evangelical Christians.

In Rome, tolerance meant as long as you bowed down to the Roman god, you could worship any other deity you chose. In America and Europe today, according to the International Institute for Religious Freedom, the fear of punishment for publicly expressing views consistent with traditional Christianity is so pervasive that there is a “widespread chilling effect” on such speech.

One of the places where I have found that chilling effect most pervasive is on Capitol Hill among the 20,000 or so congressional aides who work for members of Congress and for congressional committees.

These mostly young men and women (average age of 27) are highly educated, work long hours usually for low pay, and often go on to become leaders in their own right at the local, state, and national level.

They are also among the most influential groups in the nation’s capital because they do most of the daily grind work of Congress, and they often have a tremendous influence on how their bosses vote in the Senate and House of Representatives.

Yet, for Christians on congressional staffs, Capitol Hill is among the most hostile environments imaginable. Even so, the 52-Week Ministry Foundation’s HillFaith, which the Lord called me to start in 2018, is there, working away quietly and with great determination to equip Christian staffers to share the Gospel of Jesus Christ with their colleagues.

For example, on Mondays at noon right behind the Supreme Court building, a HillFaith group that meets under the banner of “For Hill Aides Only” gathers for apologetical Bible study and fellowship. The group began with only a couple of folks but now numbers as many as a dozen and is steadily growing.

HillFaith is also planning a digital and print advertising campaign in publications read by Hill aides that will put a dozen key questions about the life, death, and, especially, the resurrection of Jesus before them that many of them have never even heard, much less considered. Go here if you’d like to know more about HillFaith or help support it. And your prayers are earnestly sought as well.

Kamala Harris Goes Full Groomer, Wants LGBT Teachers to ‘Love Openly’ in Their Classrooms

 

It’s probably time for Kamala Harris to purge her communications staff again.

When you’re a parent, you send your kids to school thinking they’ll be taught the basics: reading, writing, math, history, and science, but if you’re Kamala Harris, you apparently want teachers to be talking about sexuality.

Below is a clip of Kamala Harris pushing the usual left-wing talking points about Florida’s Parental Rights in Education law — which she erroneously refers to as the “don’t say gay” bill.

If still calling it the “don’t say gay” bill was the worst thing she did, I’d probably have just ignored her completely, but what she said afterward was mind-blowing.

“We’re gonna stand up against a law that says ‘don’t say gay’ basically restricting kindergarten through third-grade teachers in Florida to be able to love openly and teach what they believe is important for people to understand.”

KAMALA HARRIS: "We're gonna stand up against a law that says 'don't say gay' basically restricting K-3 teachers in Florida to be able to love openly and teach what they believe is important for people to understand."

1) The Florida law literally says none of that.

2) Huh? pic.twitter.com/1MSAlqlFxa

— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) July 24, 2022

Oh, so Kamala Harris wants LGBTQ teachers to “love openly” to their kindergarten through third-grade classes. Excuse me? I wouldn’t even want heterosexual teachers to do that. Why the hell does she?

She also wants these teachers to essentially boast about their sexuality and “what they believe” is important for kids to understand? Like graphic gay sex or the falsehood that men can become women or vice-versa?

Groomers in education have advocates in the White House — and that is truly terrifying.