Category Archives: Politics

August 2, 2022 · 1:05 pm

Running on empty

I woke up this morning (8/3/2022) and decided to edit out all the preparedness portion of this post and stick to the politics.

This will be a politics blog post about gas prices. First, I apologize for making inexcusable factual errors about the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 and Build Back Better Act. Somehow, I forgot key details that Build Back Better got stalled in the Senate and that the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 didn’t pass last week – Senator Manchin, who tanked the Build Back Better legislation, last week decided to support the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022. I apologize for getting my facts wrong and I will try to provide more links to the sources I use. The reality though is the Build Back Better Act was really the Great Reset in America push and the Inflation Reduction Act is a scaled back version of the Build Back Better Act.

Gas prices at the pump have been steadily dropping in America. Here’s a President Biden tweet from this morning and my quote retweet:

The link I added was to the WH fact sheet, released July 26, 2022. It’s become common practice for this administration to stealth edit documents, so anything they release to the public could get the “recession” treatment of being “redefined” or stealth edited without warning.

Here’s the second paragraph:

“The Administration is also announcing steps to repurchase oil for the SPR in future years, likely after FY2023, to help stabilize the market and encourage near-term supply. These actions will enable the Administration to continue the work of shoring up supply and bringing prices down.”

The third paragraph:

“Since the President authorized the historic release of one million barrels per day from the SPR earlier this spring, the Department of Energy has already sold more than 125 million barrels into the market, including nearly 70 million barrels that have already been delivered to purchasers and additional barrels planned to be delivered to customers in the weeks and months to come.”

The administration is releasing one million barrels per day, but the repurchase will “likely” be after 2023. This seems like a very poorly thought out and short-sighted plan.

So, the question to ask is why wouldn’t the Biden administration make resupplying the Strategic Petroleum Reserve quickly a top priority?

The White House explanation in that fact sheet explains a change of locking in a fixed price at the time of the contract of that oil as opposed to the current policy of the price paid being determined at the time of delivery being worked out.

The Biden administration is recklessly depleting the SPR at an unprecedented rate and level of over a million barrels a day and one can only wonder when they intend to stop.

While depleting the SPR with no resupply plan in place, the current WH plan is to stop the releases in October, according to this Blomberg piece, “The US Is Depleting Its Strategic Petroleum Reserve Faster Than It Looks,” from June 17, 2022 :

“If Washington sticks to its current pace, the reserve will shrink to a 40-year low of 358 million barrels by the end of October, when the releases are due to stop. A year ago, the SPR, located in four caverns in Texas and Louisiana, contained 621 million barrels. As the oil market looks today, it’s difficult to see how Washington can halt sales in October. Removing that additional supply would mean commercial inventories quickly deplete, putting upward pressure on oil prices.”

In the Bloomberg article, there’s an explanation of the two types of crude oil, medium-sour and light-sweet, and how most of the oil released so far has been medium-sour, which is what US refiners prefer, so it’s not just a matter of straight numbers of barrels in the SPR, it’s how many barrels of medium-sour crude are left, that will make it difficult for the Biden WH to continue to release oil from the SPR after October. That’s why President Biden made that trip to Saudi Arabia in July to try to work out an oil deal.

In a July 16, 2022, Reuters piece, Biden ends trip with U.S.-Saudi relations on the mend but few other wins, all the way down at paragraph 10, after going through all the media hype about the Biden fist bump with MBS, the crown prince of Saudi Arabia, who is alleged to have ordered the murder of Washington Post journalist, Jamal Khashoggi:

“Biden came to Saudi Arabia hoping to convince the OPEC heavyweight to boost oil production, but the kingdom held firm on its strategy that it must operate within the framework of the OPEC+ alliance, which includes Russia, and not act unilaterally.”

The oil was the main reason for the trip, but Reuters gets to that at paragraph 10.

The news media in America, across the spectrum, like to divert attention to drama, and often the details are skipped in videos and TV news, but buried way down in print news articles. The news media know most people don’t read through news articles and as more and more print newspapers die and fewer and fewer people bother to read online news article, who knows, we may end up with news told in short videos or just some quick photos, with no deeper context.

Before I end this post, since this post is about Biden oil policy, it’s important to ask more questions about things you hear politicians say and new policies and legislation they propose. The Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 is a top-tier piece of legislation Democrats and the Biden administration want to ram through quickly, before the November elections. The soaring price of oil was high on the minds of most Americans, who have been feeling the pinch at the gas pump. The problem is this act has nothing to do with reducing inflation. It’s about speeding up the green-energy transition, even though the infrastructure isn’t in place to support a green-energy transition.

An August 1, 2022 Forbes article, Will The $670 Billion Inflation Reduction Act Cut Soaring Costs?:

“According to the Penn Wharton Budget Model (PWBM) there’s low confidence that the legislation will have any impact on inflation. PWBM is a nonpartisan, research-based organization at the University of Pennsylvania that creates economic analysis of public policy’s fiscal impact.”

The Inflation Reduction Act has $80 billion in spending for the IRS. At paragraph 8, in this Marketwatch article selling the Dem plan, The Inflation Reduction Act would send $80 billion to the IRS, but some tax experts wonder if it’s enough to help the backlogged agency, I found this line:

“More than half of the $80 billion will fund more audits and staff for tax code enforcement aimed at the well-off at a time when audit rates have been dropping over the years thanks to shrinking staff.”

In this July 28, 2022 Bloomberg piece, Biden Poised to Get Win on IRS Funding in Reconciliation Package, here’s this:

“The bill also includes hiring flexibility for the IRS, a nod to the agency’s recruiting challenges. It would allow the IRS to using an expedited hiring process, as well as higher rates of pay for a limited number of employees. The administration estimated last year that an $80 billion IRS funding increase could allow the agency to hire about 87,000 additional employees over a decade, doubling the size of its workforce.”

So, let’s add this together and keep in mind that the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 is really about speeding up the green energy transformation (the Great Reset in America project), then add together over half of the money slotted for the IRS will fund more audits and that the IRS will be able to double its workforce over a decade, hiring about 87,000 new employees.

Despite the smokescreen of IRS woe-is-me stories, I think carbon footprint laws, where individuals and businesses are taxed on their consumption of energy, are headed our way and this large increase in funding, doubling the number of IRS personnel, funding more audits and staff for tax code enforcement, are for the green transition. They’re investing all of this effort to fund green-energy, while kicking the can down the road on replenishing the Strategic Petroleum Reserve…

Priorities?

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Filed under Emergency Preparedness, General Interest, Politics

July 31, 2022 · 6:15 pm

The Green Timeline

It’s easy for people on the right in America to rant about the UN (I spent many years doing just that) or now the World Economic Forum (WEF) or turn Klaus Schwab, the founder of the WEF, into some fictional type super-villain, but here’s the hard truth – none of these big green deal plans would ever have gotten off the ground without buy-in and putting a whole lot of political power behind them.

It’s not some cabal of elites who made this possible in America – it’s elected leaders. With the Dutch farmers situation, in my earlier post I shared a quote from an article about the Dutch prime minister, Mark Rutte, being a green energy zealot. That’s true, but the new Dutch laws came about because of a 2019 court ruling, by the Court of Justice of the European Union, enforcing the Natura 2000 network. The EU established that network of endangered plant and animal habitats – not Klaus Schwab.

In Europe, most European leaders and the EU are firmly behind the UN 2030 Agenda and the Great Reset plans. The prime minister of the Netherlands isn’t just some lone green zealot. The entire EU is pushing this green-energy transformation too. The same holds true for Australia, New Zealand, Canada and yes, even America.

193 UN General Assembly members signed onto this in 2015. President Obama was (and is) firmly committed to this green transformation, as is the Democratic Party. Of course, there’s an outsized role for the WEF crowd and global corporations and banks… and big tech companies, who are vitally important in controlling the flow of information, but never lose sight that democratically-elected leaders in the free world are putting the power of their positions behind this green-energy transformation and without their support, none of this would be happening.

I wasn’t clear on some of the details of the UN 2030 Agenda and the Great Reset chronology when a lot of people on social media and TV pundits started talking about the “Great Reset.” So I’ve been doing a good bit of reading and googling, because I like a clear timeline of events. That helps me understand more of the moving parts, players, and events that happened, that led to where we’re at now.

The countries who aren’t going to abide by the UN 2030 Agenda are China, Russia and most of America’s adversaries – they are going big on fossil-fuel production. Russia is in the final stages of completing a big pipeline to China. Here’s a bit from a recent CNBC article, “This map shows the massive gas pipeline that Russia and China are building”:

“BEIJING — China and Russia are in the final stages of building the first pipeline that can send gas from Siberia to Shanghai.”

““Power of Siberia” — as the portion located in Russia is called — began delivering natural gas to northern China in December 2019, according to Chinese state media.”

“In China, the pipeline runs down the eastern side of the country, past the capital city of Beijing and down to Shanghai. The middle phase started operations in December 2020, and the final southern section is set to begin gas deliveries in 2025, state media said.”

“State-owned energy companies, Russia’s Gazprom and China National Petroleum Corp., have been building the pipeline for about eight years.”

So, while the leaders in the West rush to tear their countries apart chasing the fumes of big green dreams, the geopolitical realists, like Russia and China, will likely seek to take advantage, I’d expect.

I decided to write blog posts as I gather and sort out more information and share my understanding and views, as I learn more. I finished the Great Reset book and will probably write more about that, but I’m also doing some reading and thinking about other blog posts that are American history themed. I am not going to write a whole lot of “prepping ” posts, because there are dozens of people online, who have outstanding websites and YouTube channels with information on every imaginable aspect of emergency preparedness.

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Filed under General Interest, Politics, The Great Reset

July 31, 2022 · 7:31 am

A link to an article on the Dutch Farmer Protests

This is going to be a short politics post. I read this piece, Pay Attention To The Dutch Farmer Protests Because America Is Next, by John Daniel Davidson, at The Federalist. I recommend it. Davidson lays out some important points about the green energy transformation that’s being accelerated. He links all the pieces together, especially the UN 2030 Agenda, the EU being completely onboard with this green transformation and the Dutch prime minister, Mark Rutte, being a green zealot:

“Indeed, Rutte — a walking embodiment of the Davos Man if there ever was one — is a big proponent of the United Nations’ “Agenda 2030” and its Sustainable Development Goals, which aim to squeeze farmers and ranchers around the world in order to reduce “emissions.” The policies that flow from these goals, such as drastically reducing the use of fertilizer, contributed to the recent economic collapse of Sri Lanka, which triggered mass protests that toppled Sri Lanka’s government and ousted its president earlier this month.” 

“Last year, Rutte spoke to the World Economic Forum about “transforming food systems and land use” at Davos Agenda Week, announcing that the Netherlands would host something called the “Global Coordinating Secretariat of the World Economic Food Innovation Hubs,” whose job would be to “connect all other food innovation hubs.””

“In Davos-speak, that means agricultural production and the supply of food will be centrally controlled by intra-governmental bodies and “stakeholders” consisting mainly of the world’s largest food corporations and international NGOs. Private farms and independent farmers will be a thing of the past, supplanted by global bodies making decisions about how much and what kinds of food are produced. The private sector and the independent farmers will have no place in the future that the UN and the WEF are planning.”

The US signed onto the UN 2030 Agenda in 2015, under President Obama. Democrats are 100% committed to the 2030 Agenda. In 2020, Klaus Schwab, founder of the World Economic Forum, a non-government and lobbying organization, wrote a book about how to harness the economic, political, and social disorder caused by the pandemic and organize a “great reset.” That reset plan is supposed to manage the creation of a more sustainable, equitable world and accelerate the green-energy transformation. The green-energy transformation is the #1 objective.

In America, Democrats rebranded the American green-energy transformation as “Build Back Better. Last week the US Senate passed the “Inflation Reduction Act of 2022” that isn’t about fighting inflation at all. (Correction below) It’s the “Build Back Better” funding bill.

A lot of people on the right believe the government is trying to destroy the food supply and I don’t think that’s the main objective, but a totally foreseeable outcome. I think the main objective is to destroy small farmers and then push massive amounts of federal money to “green-energy compliant” big agriculture. If you thought the federal pandemic disorganization and chaos was a mess, just wait until Democrat elites are trying to micromanage farming in America… We will all starve.

Definitely, keep stocking up basics – this is going to be a total mess.

Correction: 8/1/2022: The US Senate has not passed the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 yet. Last week Senator Manchin, a Dem critical vote and hold-out on the bill, agreed to support it.

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Filed under General Interest, Politics, The Great Reset

July 26, 2022 · 1:57 pm

More Dem word games in the news

This is a politics blog post. I started trying to give readers a heads up in the beginning of my blog posts, so they can decide whether it’s a topic they want to read about or skip it. Even more than politics, this post is going to be about the destructive, partisan spin information war raging across American news and mass media. Sorry, I got very long-winded in this post, but here goes:

Yesterday, some Biden administration flaks began prepping the spin battlefield (the news venues in America and especially politics Twitter, which is the main spin war battlefield). They began redefining the word “recession” in preparation for the release of the second-quarter GDP data expected on Thursday. This ridiculous redefining, like this “recession” change, goes on constantly and the liberal media often will go along with and even push the left’s redefining efforts, but it’s more insidious than that. Merriam-Webster online in recent years has become a player in the left’s redefining efforts too. This leftist redefining words effort has happened with Wikipedia entries, where I watched a bio being altered in real-time, to fit left-wing political aims. I suspect Google plays along too with altering algorithms to filter search engine results. Twitter and facebook have resorted to just banning certain words and content, while liberal-run fact-checker sites carry water for the Dem spin version of events and terms.

These days people frequently make mention of George Orwell’s dystopian novel, 1984, about life in a totalitarian superstate, Oceania. Yes, many of the word game tactics employed in the American spin information war eerily seem like Newspeak, a fictional language, in that Orwell novel. It’s important to look beyond the spin word games and not lose sight of what the main objectives are in the spin information war – destroy the American capitalist system and destroy our constitutional republic – “fundamentally transform America.” Here’s the truth, the things the far-left wants to “fundamentally” transform are essential beliefs, values, and components of our constitutional republic and economic system. Yes, the word games being pushed by political hacks and liberal media do have the 1984, Ministry of Truth vibe. And it’s beyond disturbing. I reread Orwell’s novel, 1984, last year and disliked it as much as I did when I read it as a teenager. I abhor totalitarianism.

Here’s the link to a blog post I wrote in 2016 about the spin word games: The Pieces of the Media Messaging Puzzle.

This spin war is not just benign political messaging or partisan PR efforts, as we’ve been lulled into believing for decades. It’s an actual information war aimed at trying to control mass media in America and use that media dominance to manipulate and control American public opinion. When all of the liberal media venues – news, daytime talk shows and even the scripts in TV shows begin pushing a particular current left-wing hot topic in their culture war, that’s how the political left in America try to drown out opposition and more importantly manipulate Americans into believing the views flooding media are the “mainstream” views.

Anyone who disagrees is a fringe hater, bigot, racist or… deplorable person, who should not be allowed into polite society. Add in that public polling has gained an outsized influence in the spin info war and is used as a tool to con Americans into accepting manufactured polling data, that results from massive efforts to flood mass media with the new accepted views, often replete with new terms and words, that almost overnight replace old words and terms. The most obvious current effort has been with the alphabet gender politics and normalization of transgenderism. All sorts of new made-up gender designations began permeating media many years ago. Back in 2014, facebook added over 50 new gender designations pushing this far-left political agenda to normalize gender fluidity. These same tactics were used to normalize gay marriage and once that succeeded, the bar moved further left.

The ultimate goals with the left’s culture war have remained consistent since at least the 1960s – to destroy the America free market system and destroy our constitutional republic, which is euphemistically termed “destroying the patriarchy.”

With the hysteria on the American right about the “Great Reset,” well, obviously a lot of people on the right have latched onto this latest “big idea” among the world’s elites, who fly to Davos via private jets every year, but the reality of what’s been happening for decades among the far-left is explained in a quote by 1960s Marxist activist, Rudi Dutschke, here’s Wikipedia:

“Herbert Marcuse corresponded with Dutschke in 1971 to agree with this strategy, “Let me tell you this: that I regard your notion of the ‘long march through the institutions’ as the only effective way…”[4] In his 1972 book, Counterrevolution and Revolt, Marcuse wrote:[5]“

“To extend the base of the student movement, Rudi Dutschke has proposed the strategy of the long march through the institutions: working against the established institutions while working within them, but not simply by ‘boring from within’, rather by ‘doing the job’, learning (how to program and read computers, how to teach at all levels of education, how to use the mass media, how to organize production, how to recognize and eschew planned obsolescence, how to design, et cetera), and at the same time preserving one’s own consciousness in working with others.
The long march includes the concerted effort to build up counterinstitutions. They have long been an aim of the movement, but the lack of funds was greatly responsible for their weakness and their inferior quality. They must be made competitive. This is especially important for the development of radical, “free” media. The fact that the radical Left has no equal access to the great chains of information and indoctrination is largely responsible for its isolation.”

Much of the hysteria on the American right is akin to the same hysteria back in the 1990s about the UN/one-world government fears and the Clinton push for socialized health care & more federal controls to blunt state powers. Of course, during the Clinton years, there was a rise in right-wing extremism, a rise in federal overreach, a rise in corruption in the Clinton WH, and some military adventures that turned into debacles (Somalia, where a UN-led humanitarian mission creeped into hunting down Somali warlords, and Haiti.) Unfortunately, on the right in America, most people only pay attention to the latest hot buzzwords right-wing pundits start blabbing about, when in reality this is all an ongoing “struggle” by the left. The American right always seems late to the game and wakes up to the left’s actions in the bottom of the ninth.

The World Economic Forum and Davos crowd get mentioned in right-wing media a lot lately, but here’s the thing, their policy ideas take root and grow faster than kudzu vine in the American South at the United Nations. The UN is where countries get pressured to sign onto the Davos crowd brainstorms and the Great Reset is just another gambit to advance the UN’s, Agenda 2030: Transforming our world: the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development., which was signed in 2015.

The Great Reset is a plan to use the economic upheaval and repurpose the social mitigation policies deployed in dealing with the pandemic, to propel the climate change agenda, which is in the UN’s 2030 Agenda. Heck, every major company in America has been yammering about “sustainability” for years now, so if all of a sudden you heard about the “Great Reset” recently and got worked up, the reality is the global climate change movement morphed out of the environmental movement, which began in the 1960s. The Great Reset is just the latest big push in the climate change movement and here’s where people really need to pay attention – the climate change agenda is only one tentacle of that much larger leftist culture war (the woke agenda) – that was far-left in the 1960s, but has now taken over the Democratic Party completely, drives mass media content and exerts enormous pressure and influence in corporate America. Moderate Democrats went the way of the dinosaurs. Most disturbingly, the woke agenda flourished on American college campuses, worked its way into American K-12 schools and is now being flooded into the US military via gender politics and a witch hunt looking to label white males as “white nationalists” and “extremists.” Also, the US military has bought into the far-left climate change agenda too. Here’s Secretary of Defense, Lloyd Austin, III, from 2021:

“Today, no nation can find lasting security without addressing the climate crisis. We face all kinds of threats in our line of work, but few of them truly deserve to be called existential. The climate crisis does,” he said, adding that “climate change is making the world more unsafe and we need to act.”

All of these far left-wing political agendas continued through the years and gradually moved to occupy more space in mainstream left-wing politics – the far-left gradually took over the Democratic Party, as college activists grew-up and moved into positions of power, from politics, to tenured professors, to sitting on corporate boards.

Here’s an important point to remember, on the American political right, for decades most of the GOP establishment seemed oblivious to the left’s spin information war and kept trying to make concessions to the left’s culture war movement. They invariably caved and/or apologized for being “insensitive” and often agreed to work harder to be “more inclusive.” Even worse, they automatically adopted whatever new words or terms the liberal media pushed and ceded the left the upper-hand in defining all the terms. The Republican party leadership became further and further alienated from their base, where right-wing American punditry seeded discontent daily and grassroots movements took hold. The Tea Party movement was one of those reactionary movements on the right, where more traditionalist, conservative Americans felt their beliefs and values were under attack (because they were.)

Along came Donald J. Trump, who capitalized on that festering right-wing alienation and feeling unrepresented in Washington. Trump, love him or hate him, learned to use the left’s same corrupt spin information war tactics and he left Democrats and the liberal media panic-stricken. No matter how intensively they flooded liberal media with scorched earth smear campaigns against Trump, he hit back with as low and offensive smear campaigns against Dems and liberal media. It’s a been a race to the bottom.

My personal view all along has been that ending this spin information war is paramount to the survival of our constitutional republic and there will be no winners in the American spin information war – except for the enemies of America, domestic and foreign, who want America destroyed. The spin war can only divide Americans and that path leads only to widespread civil strife and the destruction of our constitutional republic.

For me it’s not about R vs. D or Trump vs. Biden, it’s about finding ways to pull Americans together. The cult of personality politics, trying to get behind one person who’ll save our country, won’t save America. Only when enough Americans decide to work together, start rebuilding community, demand one set of rules again, demand accountability and an end to the wholesale public corruption in Washington, will our politics begin to change. Somehow, I just don’t see politicians, political pundits or mass media in America ever working to that end, because their success depends on fueling controversy and divides for clicks and/or political advantage.

It’s taken America decades to arrive at this point, where political corruption has infested all of our major institutions. The effort to clean house, clean up the mess, and rebuild our institutions can’t be done with catchy political slogans or sound bites – we’re all going to have to roll up our sleeves and get busy. The first thing I think will help is when more and more people quit participating in the orchestrated partisan spin war’s Outrage Theater, that both parties, the media and the pundit class stage every day.

We all probably need to start thinking more about our own true north and working to improve ourselves and bolstering our family, friends and community more than about getting outraged about the latest media-fueled partisan political hot take. Ranting about “The Great Reset” isn’t going to change a thing, but doing things that improve your own life, help your own family, your friends and community will. Only strong resilient American families and communities can withstand the political and cultural turmoil, as this culture war/political war rages on. Being outraged clouds judgment and leaves people immobilized by fear and panic. We should all strive to maintain a bit of calm and conviction in our lives, no matter what spin hysteria media is blabbing about.

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Filed under Culture Wars, General Interest, Information War, Politics

July 22, 2022 · 1:29 pm

Beware of narrative brainworms

This blog post is going to be about some Ukraine-related happenings.

To say there’s been a great deal of propaganda involved with reporting on what’s happening with the actual war in Ukraine would be an understatement. The Russians and Ukrainians have waged massive propaganda campaigns, that make it hard to even really understand what’s happening in this conflict. I’ve relied a good bit on the UK Defense Ministry assessments, but even there I’m wary. After the Afghanistan withdrawal debacle and the bold-faced lies coming from the US Pentagon, it pains me to say I don’t trust the Biden-run Pentagon to be truthful. Along with the reporting on the conflict, there’s been a massive propaganda effort to paint Zelensky as the most noble, heroic leader ever, but here’s a reality check. Zelensky deserves credit for mobilizing and uniting his country to fend off a full-scale invasion by Russia, but he’s also engaged in a massive propaganda effort, creating a staged production that he’s used to influence the world.

In this process, propaganda has masked a whole lot of truths about Ukraine, how the Russian-Ukraine situation has evolved, the US and European roles in setting the stage for this confrontation and the reality that Ukraine has been a massively corrupt country for many years and a lot of money laundering went on there… heck, just look at Hunter Biden and his Burisma deal. Since Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, Russia naturally fed stories in western media hyping the Ukraine corruption and no less than Poltifact, that “fact-checker” site run by liberals, who carry water for Democrats decreed: No, Ukraine isn’t the money laundering or child sex trafficking capital of the world. Case closed… well, not really.

Fast forward to July 20, 2022 and this story at liberal NPR caught my attention: Corruption concerns involving Ukraine are revived as the war with Russia drags on.

So, in April if you mentioned Ukraine’s history of corruption, you were subject to being labeled as carrying water for Putin or being a Russian bot, but now in July, NPR is running a story on Ukraine corruption. Here are the first two paragraphs from that NPR article:

“WASHINGTON (AP) — Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s dismissal of senior officials is casting an inconvenient light on an issue that the Biden administration has largely ignored since the outbreak of war with Russia: Ukraine’s history of rampant corruption and shaky governance.”

“As it presses ahead with providing tens of billions of dollars in military, economic and direct financial support aid to Ukraine and encourages its allies to do the same, the Biden administration is now once again grappling with longstanding worries about Ukraine’s suitability as a recipient of massive infusions of American aid.”

This sort of dramatic narrative shift bugs me, because, pardon the bad puns, but the liberal mass media narratives become brainworms, that once the media yammer on about 24/7, quickly destroy all functioning brain cells and people just jump on-board the next narrative train and all memory of the previous narrative is wiped clean from their memory.

Here’s my hunch about what’s happening. The Russians slowed down gas flowing to Germany through the Nord Stream 1 pipeline (some turbines needed repair). The Germans were in a panic, worrying that Russia would shut down the flow of gas permanently, so the Germans pressured the Canadians, who had the turbines in Canada where Siemens Canada was repairing them. Some Canadian lawmakers are upset that Canada returned the turbines to Russia. Here’s a paragraph from Harretz (an Israeli news organization) article, Russia Resumes Gas Supply at Nord Stream 1, but a Full Cut-off Hangs Over Europe’s Head, dated July 21, 2022:

“German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock said in an interview with RND that “The Canadians said, ‘We have a lot of questions,’ so we said, ‘We understand that, but if we do not get the gas turbine, we will not get more gas, and then we will not be able to give Ukraine any support at all, because we will be busy dealing with a popular uprising.'” However, she later clarified that her statement was “perhaps too exaggerated”, but is a possible scenario.”

I think the Germans and French want Ukraine to make a deal of some sort with Russia, as this conflict looks like it’s going to become a long, border war and Ukraine is bleeding NATO countries, the EU and the US dry, with needing a constant, massive flow of military and humanitarian aid. Many European countries also have taken in large numbers of Ukrainian refugees and added to the last round of Europeans being invaded by a largely NGO-orchestrated (imo) refugee crisis from the Syrian conflict, well, let’s just say countries can only absorb so many refugees and when push comes to shove most people become more ethnocentric and take an attitude of “we need to take care of our own people first.” Add in that several European countries rely heavily on Russian gas and oil and they have no feasible plan to deal with what to do if Russia turns off the spigots.

So what to make of all this, well, I think with NPR now speaking what was deemed “Russian disinformation” only a few months ago, that the Biden administration, Germans and French want an off-ramp out of the Ukraine-Russia conflict. The UK is an unknown at the moment with their prime minister choice undecided: How Liz Truss, Russia’s Nemesis, Could Change Ukraine War if She Becomes PM. In America, we’ll likely know which way the Biden administration is headed when the liberal media/pundit crowd and blue checkmark Dem crowd on Twitter remove the Ukrainian flags next to their names and replace them with some new climate change flag or symbol. If they bug out on Ukraine virtue-signaling, that will be akin to the Vatican smoke signals... heralding a new narrative has been selected.

Yes, I believe the Ukraine conflict is about to be relegated to old news and go the way of the Afghanistan withdrawal debacle, never to be a lead news story by liberal media again, unless something unforeseen happens and things escalate. I believe climate hysteria will be igniting the news… and lots of stories pushing eating bugs. Here’s a BBC piece from July 20, 2022: For most people in Europe and the US, the idea of eating crickets and grasshoppers can seem revolting, but they are a popular snack in parts of Africa and Asia. Not only are they packed with nutrients but they are less harmful to the climate too.

Now, you now why I posted the YouTube video at the beginning…

Have a nice day.

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Filed under Foreign Policy, General Interest, Politics, Ukraine

July 12, 2022 · 1:38 pm

Lots of worries ahead

A frequent commenter on my blog, JK, asked me a question about US military readiness this morning and I’m going to post my response as a blog post. I will be writing more blog posts to expand on several issues in my response. Suffice it to say, way back in February 2022, when Russia invaded Ukraine, many people, including the world-famous Russian chess champion, Gary Kasparov, warned of Putin cutting off gas and oil to Europe and the prospect of a very cold, dark winter across the European continent this year. I am not ahead of the curve here warning about any of the things in my response, but too many leaders in Washington (on both sides of the aisle) got caught up in the “Zelensky Show” propaganda war and allowing that spin drama to cloud their judgment. This is especially true for the Dem retired general crowd who fill mainstream media with their military expertise, in my opinion. Here’s the comment (and there will be more blog posts upcoming):

JK, I was all for aiding Ukraine, because the big picture of Russia steamrolling across Ukraine unimpeded had my Cold War warrior feathers way beyond being ruffled – I was fighting mad and still am on that big picture strategic necessity for the West to remain steadfast against Russian and Chinese aggression. Period…. and then we come to the BUT.

But Western leaders and the Biden WH are craven, wimpy, globalists who have always believed they can cut deals with the Russians and Chinese. With Biden, there’s the nightmares of the Afghanistan withdrawal debacle fresh in my mind, which assures me the Biden Team is more like the WeHateAmericaTeam – total sell-outs to America’s adversaries and corrupt nitwits.

But… they still push their crazy leftist pipedreams like their climate change/green agenda, along with all their other pet causes, all while ignoring the cold hard truths about the real world, where the rubber meets the road and military might, national defense and protecting and defending national interests outweighs hand-wringing about cow flatulence. Their leftist agenda has taken priority over actually stopping Russia. Instead, it seems they believed they could “win” by spending more time “fighting” the Ukraine propaganda war, thinking a Hollywood production of the “War in Ukraine” starring Zelensky, with cameo appearances by Western leaders in Kiev was a substitute for the real nuts and bolts strategic planning that real war requires. Most of the rest of the world will cut deals for Russia and China goods if Russia and China can deliver what their own countries need. This is how the real world works.

Unfortunately, many Dem retired generals and some new military “expert” faces started getting heavily invested in the Zelensky Show too. Russia made disastrous mistakes, but they’ve regrouped and too many of the Dem Twitter military experts, who should know better, seem to have gotten high on CNN and MSNBC spin fumes and it’s clouding their judgment. Ditto this for too many leaders in Washington, on both sides of the aisle. I always place American national interests above other countries and I refuse to wrap myself in other countries flag, just like I chafed at the US military ever allowing UN blue hat adventures to supersede over direct US control of US forces. Our top priority should always be US national defense.

That said, I don’t know what the real state of US military combat readiness is, what level our military stockpiles are at, the morale of the troops and the competency of leadership from the top down. All I can say is I’ve seen a lot of warning signs for several years now. Accidents being a huge one. Add in the Biden administration recklessly depleting the Strategic Petroleum Reserve and no one’s asking what are the plans to replenish that reserve stockpile.

Also, add in I have no idea what level our nation’s emergency food and other emergency stockpiles are at, from federal programs to many states have programs. There seems to be no reality-based comprehensive national security assessments – it’s all partisan talking points.

I suspect during the Obama years and now in the Biden administration, federal assets were and are quietly used for humanitarian pet projects, sent to private entities, many of which are religious-based (thanks, GWB), who run these programs to house, feed, transport, illegal immigrants around the country, while making big bucks from the US govt. And who knows where else federal US assets have been sent. No one’s addressed the stockpile issues on vital assets we need for domestic emergencies and national defense.

I’m fleshing out a blog post on what in the Hades, big picture catastrophes, I think, are brewing that no one seems to be talking about. The state of the US military is a huge one, but there are plenty of others.

My main worry is the stage may be setting for massive populist flashpoints in many Western countries, if people can’t heat their homes this winter or afford food or there are strikes, civil unrest and other major disruptions to the food supply. Then there’s the reality that many Dem fools (and probably some Republican governors too) may try to reimpose Covid restrictions this fall, which will add to the chaos. Ditto this for Canada, Australia and in Europe.

I’ll stop here, JK. Should have gone with the short answer – it’s a cluster… you-know-what brewing.

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July 9, 2022 · 10:43 am

I was wrong about Sri Lanka

This blog post is about politics, foreign affairs, and some of my thoughts on the global progressive movement.

Today there are reports that Sri Lankan protestors have stormed the presidential palace, so I think this March 5, 2022 article, In Sri Lanka, Organic Farming Went Catastrophically Wrong, from Foreign Policy is very informative on how the global green agenda led to this chaos, just like it led to the chaos unfolding in Europe with the Dutch farmers protesting their government trying to impose new green laws that fall in line with the global green initiatives.

From the Foreign Policy piece on Sri Lanka, the first two paragraphs lay out what happened:

“Faced with a deepening economic and humanitarian crisis, Sri Lanka called off an ill-conceived national experiment in organic agriculture this winter. Sri Lankan President Gotabaya Rajapaksa promised in his 2019 election campaign to transition the country’s farmers to organic agriculture over a period of 10 years. Last April, Rajapaksa’s government made good on that promise, imposing a nationwide ban on the importation and use of synthetic fertilizers and pesticides and ordering the country’s 2 million farmers to go organic.”

“The result was brutal and swift. Against claims that organic methods can produce comparable yields to conventional farming, domestic rice production fell 20 percent in just the first six months. Sri Lanka, long self-sufficient in rice production, has been forced to import $450 million worth of rice even as domestic prices for this staple of the national diet surged by around 50 percent. The ban also devastated the nation’s tea crop, its primary export and source of foreign exchange.”

I want to post this, because I did not know about this green push in Sri Lanka and I was completely wrong about saying what happened in Sri Lanka isn’t an indicator of what might happen here, while the Dutch farmer protests are a good indicator. It looks like the menace of the global green movement is at the heart of the problems in Sri Lanka, the Netherlands and the tentacles of the global green movement, with the Biden administration working to supercharge their green policy push in America has already caused gas prices in America to sky-rocket and helped fueled inflation in the retail sector.

The global green movement is a huge part of the global elite progressive movement, but there are other tentacles from the pandemic “trust the science” rules, to the alphabet gender activism, the effort to control information on social media, and in America, there’s a massive progressive push to federalize policing, which President Obama made a top-tier policy goal.

What happened in 2020 with the “Defund the Police” effort was a part of that progressive effort to federalize policing. Every time the left in America demands federal control over issues that constitutionally are state powers, it’s a safe bet it’s another power grab, to hamstring federalism, which is a safeguard against a Big Brother, total federal control over Americans’ lives. That “Defund the Police” effort used a massive spin effort to incite public outrage with the George Floyd case as a cover to destroy local control of policing in America and push for federalizing control of policing.

Along with those big fronts of the progressive movement there’s also a massive, ongoing effort to demonize all traditional civic and religious values.

It’s total insanity fueled by epic hubris. These global elitists who fly into Davos, fund and run these big, progressive foundations and think tanks, I think, believe they’re the smartest, most enlightened people in the world. Almost every “trust the science” Covid mitigation effort now has failed to work as promised by the “experts”- especially the remote learning, when schools closed their doors.

For many years, I’ve believed that protecting and bolstering federalism in America will be our best storm surge barrier against these massive waves of global progressive policies crashing against our constitutional republic framework. And that’s why working to build even small pockets of community, especially local community, matter so much. As these insane global progressive policies create more and more chaos, the wealthy globalist elites sound confident that their big ideas will prevail. There’s often a dismissive tone about ensuing chaos their policies cause, like the collapse of some governments, wars, anarchy, and famine. It often sounds to me like many of these progressives believe these problems will be transitory and just growing pains that are worth the cost.

They believe their massive, complex global systems, will prevail and then people all over the world will submit to their new ideas and new ways of living in this new imposed “equitable and sustainable” paradise. At the heart of this is a belief in global governance managed by a bunch of elites.

The inherit vulnerability with large and overtaxed, complex logistical systems applies to progressive globalist movements just as it does to militaries. In military systems, if you overtax your supply system, small guerilla groups will be able to function, while the military reliant on a failing complex supply chain will lose its effectiveness.

In a totally lawful and peaceful effort, I believe working to build local communities and then networking with like-minded people around the country can allow ordinary Americans to share, barter and sell food and other items that become hard to find as the big supply system we’re used to hiccups and sputters. Building local community also provides a social support network, along with people to turn to in emergencies. A national hotline number to call is useless if you’re facing a personal or local emergency situation. You want people who are nearby, know the area, and can pool local resources quickly.

Simple systems always have a resiliency that complex systems lack, is my belief.

Yes, I’ve been reading more Klaus Schwab crapola… oh my word, it’s a dreary slog.

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July 8, 2022 · 10:23 am

Entering the leftist ideological realm

Last night I started a new book and it pained me to spend money on this – COVID-19: The Great Reset by Klaus Schwab. I also bought the follow-up – The Great Narrative (The Great Reset Part Two). I ordered kindle versions, because they were cheaper and I don’t care about having hard copies of these in my book collection. I bought them because I have heard Schwab’s name tossed around right-wing media and social media with ominous warnings about “The Great Reset,” but I want to try to understand the ideas and ways they intend to structure this remaking of the post-Covid world. Hearing alarming phrases tossed about doesn’t really provide any understanding of what ideas underpin this Great Reset plan or their umbrella of policy proposals to reorder the global system, so I want to get a better understanding myself.

What prompted me to read Schwab’s books is with the populist backlash by the farmers in the Netherlands and seeing how quickly that populist anger is spreading to Germany, Poland and even Italy now, well, it’s bound to come here to America too – probably sooner rather than later. In fact, it was set to explode earlier this year following Canada’s efforts to crackdown on the trucker’s protests and both Trudeau and Biden enacting Covid policies targeting truckers who cross the US-Canada border. What interrupted the US trucker protests was Russia invaded Ukraine and then all eyes pivoted to that hotspot. Despite that short reprieve, I expect protests like what happened in Canada earlier this year and what’s happening in Europe now to hit US shores soon too.

After reading only a small portion of Schwab’s book, it’s obvious to me he takes a systems analysis approach and I like studying systems too. Before Schwab coined this “The Great Reset,” globalists have been tossing these sorts of ideas among the elites, like the Davos crowd and in ivy-league academic circles for decades. Giving old globalist ideas a fresh look with bright new terminology and catchy phrases doesn’t ever really change the globalist structure underneath, so I’m expecting a lot of the same old globalist ideas gussied up in shiny new terminology. I presume the second part is the narrative that’s being proposed to sell “the great reset” ideas and policies.

On my blog I’ve written about the spin information war for years and it seems obvious that the spin information war is going to remain, not only the American partisan political battlefield, but the main battlefield for the larger global ideological war. I expect many efforts to silence voices opposed to the globalist agenda (the green agenda is a huge front of the globalist agenda), to target and try to silence right-wing and more populist voices in America. I expect populist sentiments will intensify as ordinary people feel their livelihoods threatened and the pain of economic turmoil spiraling out of control threatens more people’s daily lives.

The liberal (mainstream) media has been avoiding giving a lot of attention to the Dutch farmers protesting, while they’re trying to fuel anger about Roe being overturned and hyping the J-6 committee hearings. No one in the liberal media is asking why on earth the Dutch government decided to limit farm production, ostensibly to meet environmental goals, with the war in Ukraine impacting the global food supply and the UN warning of catastrophic food shortages this fall. Why would the Dutch government try to limit food production with a massive global food shortage projected in just a couple months?

This is similar to President Biden releasing oil from the US Strategic Petroleum Reserve, supposedly to lower soaring US gas prices, but then selling millions of barrels of that oil overseas, even to China. Biden has jeopardized American national security by putting our reserves at such a low level and limiting fossil fuel production at the same time.

Nothing makes sense.

Nothing has made sense with how Biden and European leaders have handled the war in Ukraine either. While railing about Russian aggression and Putin’s villainy, European leaders and Biden imposed all sorts of sanction against Russia, but they were still buying massive amounts of natural gas and oil from Russia. At this point the entire Ukraine war effort seems more like a theatrical production by the West and not a serious effort to stop Putin. I suspect Biden and most European leaders would happily bargain away sections of Ukraine, cut a deal with Putin and keep buying Russian gas and oil, all while blathering on about how serious the Russian threat is. The hypocrisy and dishonesty of the Biden administration is breathtaking.

If I learn anything interesting reading these Schwab books, I’ll share it in a blog post. Wish me luck as I plod into the leftist ideological realm… a place I always find oppressive, dystopian and filled with ideas on how to crush individual liberty.

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July 5, 2022 · 3:44 pm

This is absolutely outrageous

President Biden had been releasing oil from the US Strategic Petroleum Reserve and guess what:

Reuters is reporting: Oil from U.S. reserves head overseas as gasoline prices stay high

Here’s the first paragraph:

“HOUSTON, July 5 (Reuters) – More than 5 million barrels of oil that were part of a historic U.S. emergency oil reserves release aimed at lowering domestic fuel prices were exported to Europe and Asia last month, according to data and sources, even as U.S. gasoline and diesel prices touched record highs.”

Just let that sink in. Oil from the US Strategic Petroleum Reserve is being shipped overseas, while American are struggling with soaring prices at the pump.

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July 1, 2022 · 8:57 am

Yikes: “the future of the Liberal World Order”…

Short politics post here:

Tens of thousands of farmers are protesting in the Netherlands about new legislation passed:

“THE HAGUE, Netherlands (AP) — Farmers protested around the Netherlands as lawmakers voted Tuesday on proposals to slash emissions of damaging pollutants, a plan that will likely force farmers to cut their livestock herds or stop work altogether.” https://www.usnews.com/news/business/articles/2022-06-28/explainer-why-are-dutch-farmers-protesting-over-emissions

This has echoes of the truckers’ protests in Canada last year when prime minister, Justin Trudeau, pushed another global liberal cause – more Covid rules that targeted the livelihood of workers in a vital industry. Trudeau was hellbent on enforcing more and more CVOID restrictions, but now climate change and green policies moved back to center stage for power grabs by the “Liberal World Order.”

Within the climate change activist sphere, the green energy proponents faced a set-back in the US, with yesterday’s Supreme Court ruling limiting the EPA:

” WASHINGTON (AP) — In a blow to the fight against climate change, the Supreme Court on Thursday limited how the nation’s main anti-air pollution law can be used to reduce carbon dioxide emissions from power plants.”

“By a 6-3 vote, with conservatives in the majority, the court said that the Clean Air Act does not give the Environmental Protection Agency broad authority to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from power plants that contribute to global warming.” https://apnews.com/article/supreme-court-epa-ruling-2e893673819a1b6c6aa272a5e814f0b0

Of course, if Democrats lose control of the House, Senate or both in the elections this fall, that might lead to America dodging a bullet from having the US Congress passing legislation similar to what’s passed in the Netherlands. However, the Biden administration assuredly will continue their war against American fossil fuel and pushing the green agenda. Here’s a video from yesterday with a top Biden official’s response to a question about families who can’t afford high gas prices:

https://twitter.com/Breaking911/status/1542684948519419908

The Biden administration policies continue to push the global green energy agenda, regardless how much it hurts American families and workers. Although it’s easy to think the green activism has almost a religious fervor to it, I still believe this is all about power and big money. Many very powerful and wealthy people are propelling the green agenda, because they’ll reap billions upon billions of dollars from green energy technologies and policies.

Everything connected with Covid mitigation and the vaccines led to quick power grabs and certain companies and wealthy people making vast amounts of money, at the expense of smaller businesses, who faced shutdowns and all sorts of restrictions. The people pushing these latest green measures will likely use similar tactics with forcing their polices on certain groups of people and certain businesses in various western countries. During Covid, many big corporations working in conjunction with Democrat politicians imposed rules and restrictions on their employees and with their business practices, to advance the Democrats’ policy agenda without Democrats having to pass new legislation or impose new rules. More of this social engineering/stealth imposition of liberal policies by corporations seems likely.

More fun times ahead.

Update: 7/1/2022, 7:51 pm – The “liberal world order” is a phrase that’s been used to describe western democracy, I know. I saw a conservative pundit comment that he didn’t understand the uproar over the Biden official using that phrase. My opinion is there’s a sleight of hand going on with the Biden administration messaging effort. First, a few months ago, Psaki dismissively suggested Americans just need to buy electric cars when gas prices started climbing rapidly, then the Biden WH floated “Putin’s inflation” and trying to scapegoating oil companies as being unpatriotic for high gas prices. All the while the US and a whole lot of western Europe was still buying Russian oil and natural gas. Here’s a NYT report from June 13th – Russia’s Oil Revenue Soars Despite Sanctions, Study Finds. The legislation in the Netherlands is about the green agenda, not Russia or the war in Ukraine. Likewise, the Biden policies regarding American fossil fuel production are about the green agenda. Biden officials have been traveling to countries, like Venezuela and Saudi Arabia, whose values run counter to the “future of the Liberal World Order,” trying to buy oil from them and the US is still buying Russian oil. I believe the “liberal world order” the Biden administration is concerned with is the global green energy policies and ideas coming out of the EU and Brussels, not liberal western democracy.

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