Et Tu US News & World

I always was under the impression that  US News & World was, at the least, a non-partisan or right-leaning news source-,apparently not. They ranked the top ten worst US presidents and scored Trump at #2 behind James Buchanan. Carter didn’t even make the list. They also fail to explain what parameters put them on the list. Could it be the likability factor as opposed to actual accomplishment? Terrible journalism and frankly nothing more than opinion posing as news. Their glowing photos of Obama “behind the scenes” and the distinctly leftist political cartoons should have tipped me off. Contrast the unflattering photos of “Trump and his supporters” with the highly staged and dignified pictures of Obama comforting children, engaged with world leaders, or shot against backgrounds of Stonehenge or glorious sunsets as he boards Air Force One. Propaganda at its most partisan and heavy-handed best. Absolutely disgraceful from a supposed news organization. 

Irrational

Gas prices are at record highs, inflation is the highest it’s been in 50 years, mortgage rates are climbing, the housing market is unaffordable, our cities are plagued with crime, our southern border is being overrun, supply chain issues can’t keep our shelves stocked, Ukraine is being bombed into the Stone Age, and this president of ours is making “Ghost Guns” a priority. Guns that are used in one-third of one percent of gun crimes. Beyond Absurd! 

AOC Has Gotten Into My Head

I have criticized Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio Cortez in the past but I remain amazed that she is still a darling of the progressive left. The woman has accomplished nothing beyond furthering a radical self-serving leftist agenda and is positively vacuous. Conservative commentators feel obliged to torment me with her incessant ramblings delivered in that whiny voice with the wild hand gestures that have become endemic in female progressive politicians. Witness Nancy Pelosi who appears to be swatting flies, Kamala Harris looks to be shaking an imaginary box, and AOC is apparently trying to rehabilitate a wrist injury. Her response to all the attention she received while appearing in Florida maskless is classic millennial narcissism: “Republicans are mad they can’t date me”, she responded, accusing them of “projecting their sexual frustrations” and calling them “creepy weirdos.” Very mature and statesmanlike. Sorry Sandy, but you’re being criticized for being an immature hypocrite. A perusal of her social media presence is all that’s required as evidence. She actually posted a video detailing her expertise in applying make-up. Really, look it up. But not before taking an anti-emetic. Once again a demonstration of a phenomenal level of self-absorption and a total lack of self awareness. Shouldn’t congress be held to some standard of decorum?  Clearly this isn’t it. She is obviously and conspicuously marketing herself, cultivating a media persona that is a completely bogus fabrication. She is decidedly not the downtrodden Puerto Rican immigrant from the ‘hood, working the bar to put food on the table for her family. That is total nonsense. She is now offering merchandise to purchase on her website, seeking to create a brand and feather her nest. Such capitalist behavior from one who preaches against capitalism is, to coin a phrase from her own party’s poster child for hypocrisy: deplorable. And all the while promoting the Biden administration plans to forgive her student loan debt. Her posted video of her arrival in DC is enough to render one absolutely vomituitous. The queen of the Green New Deal, the czar of climate change sits on the floor of her tony Navy Yard apartment in one of the wealthiest zip codes in America sipping wine and assembling her IKEA furniture. Wow. There’s even a Whole Foods in the complex. You know, the grocery chain owned by Amazon, whose proposed warehouse she shot down in her district back home in New York. But as an expert on climate she appears oblivious as to her own carbon footprint. Although IKEA’s marketing has emphasized sustainability, they still source over 22% of their materials  from China and the majority of their furniture is made from wood. Although they claim they only source wood from sustainable forests, it isn’t clear exactly what that means. You may be planting a few trees but I am yet to witness a carbon neutral timber operation. Further logic would dictate that the carbon storing capacity of old growth will not be matched by the sapling that replaces it for decades. I’m not sure how they’re harvesting operation works but my chain saw does not run on wind or solar and delivering timber from forest to saw mill is going to need some heavy equipment that will likely require some fossil fuels. So much for the sustainable forest fairies, because this looks more like marketing than actual application. Especially in China. And exactly how does all this pressboard and laminated modular rubbish get from Sweden to AOCs apartment?  Oh my, isn’t shipping a rather inconvenient truth. And about that wine she’s drinking. Grape production and harvesting creates a rather substantial environmental footprint, sweetie. A great deal of land is required for cultivation and if she’s drinking California wine, water is a precious resource required in abundance for irrigation and the process of turning grapes to wine. Cultivating that land requires tractors and that requires diesel fuel. And those neatly trimmed rows are maintained with mechanical implements and a host of fungi and insects are kept at bay by a spray schedule, all run by that fossil fuel consuming tractor. And let’s not even get into the environmental impact of pesticides let alone the fact that maintaining soil nutrients requires fertilizer. That too is a product of fossil fuels. She might want to stick to bottled water but no, plastic bottles require petroleum and then they end up in the landfill. Your carpeting is likely nylon or polypropylene and that comes from……petroleum products. Oops. And about all the make-up and hair products required to maintain the image that your Republican colleagues are so attracted to:  cosmetics rely heavily on petroleum products as well. So it would appear that the only bonafide climate credentials AOC possesses is owning a Tesla. You know, a battery with wheels that required the strip mining of rare earth metals to produce. Mining operations that are dominated by China. And that Tesla likely sits at the airport in reserved congressional parking while she takes the shuttle back and forth to New York. You know the kind of aircraft that flies on gumdrops and rainbows. Certainly not aviation fuel. So the next time you hear the representative drone on about her climate credentials, think hard about the hypocrisy and realize what her ultimate goal is. The same goal of the majority of politicians:  to further themselves

Hypocrisy

The hypocrisy of the left is wearing me down to the level that as soon as they start using Democrat talking points and catchphrases like “climate denier” or “existential crisis,” I start to glaze over, knowing resistance is futile. A recent discussion with an East Coast professional colleague strayed into the realm of fossil fuel: “You know,” he started, “oil is a global commodity, and if we increase our domestic production, OPEC will respond by adjusting their production down, resulting in no net change and prices will remain high.”  Really?  How exactly do you think the foreign oil gets here?  Why do you think there has been such an emphasis on pipelines?  Do you think the transport of the commodity may factor into the price to the consumer?  Why is buying local a less expensive option for goods and services?  Granted, the issue is more complex than that, but basic principles of economics still apply. Oil-producing countries may even choose to increase production and flood the market, lowering the price and squeezing the profit margins on more labor-intensive extraction methods like tar sand and fracking operations. But predatory pricing hits the predator in the pocketbook as well, and money-starved economies that rely on fossil fuel production like Iran, Venezuela and now Russia, may not have the stomach for it over the long term. Meanwhile, my liberal friend continues driving his internal combustion European sports car and his wife an SUV while living in their exorbitant suburban McMansion where an enormous flat screen TV feeds them CNN talking points from the AOC school of economics. To resist is futile. 

Why Not

In watching China buy up thousands of acres of American farmland, why hasn't it occurred to our progressive left Congress “Greenies” so concerned about the vanishing Amazon rainforest, to take a page out of China’s playbook, and just buy the Amazon rainforest from the Brazilians. Indeed, if we can afford another multi-trillion dollar Biden social plan, we can afford to buy it too!. 

Sweeping and Unprecedented Indeed

Vladimir Putin rattles his nuclear sabre and Joe Biden responds by telling him what we are not going to do.  Good strategy, Joe.  A somewhat nuanced nuclear threat by Putin and Mr. Biden reacts by stopping a scheduled nuclear missile test for fear of it being misconstrued as a provocation. Ironically, North Korea decided it was high time for them to unveil a longer range, more powerful missile and promptly launched a test of their own.  Zelensky has repeatedly asked for NATO to enforce a no-fly zone to prevent Ukrainian cities from continually being pounded from the air, but Biden deferred again citing the risk of direct engagement and the possibility that a US aircraft would shoot down a Russian aircraft and initiate World War III.  The Ukrainian President then requested that we supply him with aircraft for his beleaguered air force.  Poland engaged in what was perhaps a self-serving diplomatic two-step by offering up their older MIGs, an aircraft that the Ukrainians would be familiar with, by way of passing them along to the US in Germany who would then transfer them to the Ukrainians. This time the request went all the way to the Oval office where Biden promptly shot it down citing, once again, the risk of provocation,followed by a long diatribe about the aircraft being older, requiring too much servicing, and would likely be ineffective as opposed to sending more shoulder fired anti-aircraft missiles like the Stinger.  As Mitt Romney eloquently put it “if they want MIGs, give them the MIGs”.   So we send more dangerous high-tech missiles, but balk at a few jets? 

 

And what exactly is Mr. Biden doing anyway, besides telling Putin what we are not going to do?  Whoa, punishing sanctions, of course.  I can imagine the fear this struck in Mr. Putin.  He may have to cut back on the caviar. According to Chris Murphy, yet another lightweight politician from Connecticut who described Biden’s diplomacy as “stunning”, the administration has imposed “a sanctions package that is sweeping, that is unprecedented, that is breaking the back of the Russian economy”.  Wow, Chris, were you wearing hip boots when you spewed that?  As Kim Strassel revealed in the Wall Street Journal, Mr. Biden has been a dismal failure on the sanction front as well. He failed to impose any deterrence as the Russians amassed troops at the Ukrainian border, and he continues to lead from behind, pandering to the Europeans and giving Putin a pass on energy exports. Only when Congress starting pushing a bill through the House did Biden respond with an oil embargo of sorts so he wouldn’t miss the opportunity to appear that it was his idea. And of course he followed up on that by begging the despots from Saudi Arabia, Iran and Venezuela to pick up the slack for us rather than ramp up US oil production.  Why would you enrich other decidedly unfriendly regimes so they can wantonly pollute when the US has the cleanest energy extraction technology on the planet?  Last I checked, Joe, we are all living in the same biosphere, so precisely who extracts the oil really doesn’t matter, it’s who does it with the least damage to the environment.  And that would be us.  It’s a lot like the days when we had smoking sections on airplanes. Didn’t work so well when you were the first seat in the non-smoking section did it?  And even the whole emphasis on going after the oligarchs.  I think Biden just likes to say oligarch.  Maybe because there are no sibilants in it.  He has trouble with those. Again Ms. Strassel reports that of the 35 oligarchs named by Alexei Navalny, the EU has sanctioned 12 of them, the UK 9, andBiden has sanctioned, uh….none.  Murphy was right, that is “stunning.”  But even more “sweeping and unprecedented” is Biden’s solution to appease the Europeans, to take command of the situation and take the proverbial Russian bull by the horns: we send Kamala Harris to fix it. You have to be kidding. If the Europeans thought for an instant that we weren’t taking this seriously, we could do no better to demonstrate that than send Vice-President Giggles.  What an embarrassment. Even after her developmentally delayed explanation of the crisis (recall “Ukraine is a country in Europe…”) the administration is currently trying to dig her out of her comment that “the United States stand firmly with the Ukrainian people in defense of the NATO alliance”, somehow failing to realize that Ukraine is actually not a NATO country. This gaffe was prefaced with “So I will say what I know we all say, and I will say over and over again.” That’s a lot of saying from the VP, and that’s something she really should avoid: talking.  

 

As I have said before, as the world plays checkers, Russia and China have been playing chess.  Becoming dominant in the energy sector, expanding their global reach, making their economies sanction proof, expanding their military might and forging new relationships.  They have been opportunistic.  Meanwhile the West has been intent on shooting themselves in the foot, dismantling our energy independence, slashing our military budgets, infatuated with race relations and gender definitions, our countries are consumed by Covid restrictions, equity and green initiatives while our cities burn.  But all this theater aside, who is perhaps learning most from this debacle, who has been watching?  That would be Iran and North Korea.  What we now know is that all it takes is a little nuclear tough talk and Biden reveals the US to be a paper tiger.  Suffer through sanctions and inspections, my friends, because once you get the bomb, you’re on easy street.  And what’s the downside? China will continue to prop up your economy for the benefit of you being a huge thorn in the Great Satan’s side, distracting the US from other priorities while our economy suffers, our military is spread thin, our energy sector crumbles and we become more reliant on foreign oil and foreign mineral mining to satisfy our climate change agenda at home. And of course Taiwan is next on the docket as China seeks to expand its influence in the Pacific Rim.  And once the US loses credibility on the world stage, well underway after the Afghanistan fiasco, and becomes dependent on the importation of energy, the last straw will be to lose the dollar as the world’s reserve currency.  And then, it’s all over.  Checkmate.

Irritating

It is incredibly annoying to hear all these liberal urban dwellers lecture the rest of us on weaning ourselves off oil dependence by simply driving an EV. Aside from the financial burden of shelling out upwards of $50K for the privilege, it seemingly never occurred to these smug elitists that a vast number of we Americans don’t live in urban areas with short commutes to work, leisure activities, and supplies. EVs have neither the range nor the cargo capacity to satisfy the needs of our millions of suburban and rural residents; fossil-fueled cars, vans, and trucks are infinitely better choices for providing economic travel and utility. And what of infrastructure if EVs were economically available to The masses: how will the grid support their fueling; where will you find a convenient and economical charging station in our more suburban and rural outreaches. Further, they seem to forget how we heat our homes and where things like plastic and asphalt come from, blind to our critical dependence on oil at this juncture in history. Short-sighted, these “greenies.”