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De Omnibus Dubitandum - Lux Veritas

Tuesday, May 21, 2024

It's a Purge, and a Tell!

By Rich Kozlovich

This is a May 20, 2024 FREE article by at Geopolitical Futures (I recommend subscribing) , A Government Shakeup in Moscow saying;

The Russian government announced last week a massive shakeup of its senior staff. Several ministers in civilian sectors such as energy, agriculture, industry and trade, and transportation were relieved of their positions, but the most notable departure was Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu, who was replaced by Andrei Belousov, a former assistant to Vladimir Putin and a former minister of economic development............Putin has made every effort to dismiss the idea that the team that managed the war failed............[yet] one senior Defense Ministry official was arrested and charged with corruption. Whether this is a single event or the beginning of more arrests (or worse) is yet unknown.........  But after two years and limited advances, you don’t need a diversion of weakness. It’s already there.
 
It's being emphasized this isn't a Stalinist style purge, but lets not lose sight of the fact Putin is a vile murderous monster, corrupt to the core, and ex-KGB Colonel who surrounded himself with incompetent sycophants, both in the military and in the domestic arenas.  To understand what's going on we really do need to get that, and this really is a purge. 
 
I've said for some time there's a Claus von Stauffenberg cabal within Putin's military, and truth be told, I think there's Stauffenberg style cabal within their domestic leadership also.   And while this isn't a Stalinist purge, it's a purge nonetheless. 
 
Ukraine is running out of people, their government officials are still corrupt, and clearly corrupt beyond the pale.  Furthermore, they really are now a fascist regime, and from reports they've lost the confidence of Ukrainian poeple, who are avoiding conscription by fleeing the country and saying they're not planning on returning....ever.
 
Putin will not give up, no matter the economic or military costs, because if he stops, he's out.  And just like Stalin, it's not "the plan" that's at fault, it's the failure to implement "the plan" properly, and so those who've failed "the plan" have to suffer the consequences, and it's a purge.
 
As they say in poker, it's also a "tell".  Tells are noticing small behaviors and/or demeanor when the pressure is on, and this is a tell he's losing confidence, and he's scared.  If NATO countries engage in this mess with boots on the ground, it's over for Putin, since the demographics will change dramatically, and that's his only real advantage.   Here's a map provided in George's article.
 
 https://geopoliticalfutures.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/Ukraine_Russia_5-20-24.jpg?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_term=https%3A%2F%2Fgeopoliticalfutures.com%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2024%2F05%2FUkraine_Russia_5-20-24.jpg&utm_content&utm_campaign=PAID%20-%20Everything%20as%20it%27s%20published
 
After two years of failure, with massive losses in equipment and man power, they're launching a new offensive, but he can't fund or train his military properly, his military leadership is incompetent, and he can't even manufacture his military needs, and what he has is substandard.   He's being forced to buy military hardware from N. Korea and Iran, can you imagine that!  Seeing that does not give credence to Russia's industrial abilities, or the competence of those dealing with the nations domestic/economic issues, after all, they're still commie central planners and Putin sycophants.  Will this push also stall and add more failure? 
 
He has on a number of occasions threatened using nukes, but I don't think his military will allow him to do that, and if he tries, I think they're overthrow him.  The Soviets overthrew Khrushchev for a whole lot less, but Khrushchev wasn't feared as the monster  as Stalin was, and Putin isn't Khrushchev, who didn't execute people who tried to overthrown him at one time.  Putin will execute anyone who attempts a coup. 
 
One writer described Washington as high school with paychecks, it's even worse in Putin's regime.  He's surrounded by incompetent sycophants with no solutions in sight!  This really  a purge, and he's scared.

Biden is Detroying the Nation

By Robin Itzler

Editor's Note:  These are commentaries selected from Robin's weekly newsletter Patriot Neighbors. Any cartoons appearing will have been added by me.  If you wish to get the full edition,  E-mail her at PatriotNeighbors@yahoo.com to get on her list, it's free.  RK

Northern Border: Apprehensions are way up

The focus is always on our southern border, which thanks to the Biden administration is a mess. However, our northern border is having issues, too. There aren’t enough Border Patrol Agents and apprehensions have increased. Has America ever had anyone in the White House who has done so much damage to our nation? In “Northern Border Apprehensions Highest in US History First 6 Months of Fiscal ‘24,” Bethany Blankey at The Center Square wrote on May 10:

In the busiest northern border sector of Swanton, Border Patrol agents made history by apprehending the greatest number of illegal border crossers in sector history of 1,109 in March, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection data. While the numbers are significantly lower than those apprehended at the southwest border, they are out of the ordinary for the northern border and its busiest sector. By comparison, agents apprehended 37 illegal border crossers in March 2021. 

 

Those they apprehended in March 2024 came from 40 countries. The top three nationalities of those apprehended were India (408), Bangladesh (323) and Mexico (170), Swanton Sector Chief Patrol Agent Robert Garcia said.

Morale Boosters: Reports from the border, By Thomas Langan, President Morale Boosters

Along with several southern California residents, recently visited the San Diego Border Patrol Sector and Agents assigned there. One of our stops was the ‘SAD’ (San Diego Area Detention Facility). We delivered ‘morale boosting’ items to the Agents inside, and they were more appreciative than usual. 

They’re the most demoralized group of Agents we’ve seen in the six years we’ve served. Roughly 100 Agents and Officers per shift at the SAD are working 24/7 to process illegals and load them onto unmarked busses to be transported across the country. 

All the illegals, from the start of their journey to the SAD, have been TOLD to vote for Joe Biden by cartel members, NGOs, and democrat operatives. I reported that and other info we’ve learned in a recent American Thinker article. Seeing what our Agents are forced to do to keep their jobs and knowing what Democrats are doing is disturbing, but makes us more determined than ever to help boost their morale. 

Follow the link for more information on Morale Boosters!


Delusional Hamas Leadership Has Plans for Postwar Gaza

Israel’s purpose in fighting Hamas and other Palestinian terrorists is clear.

The post-fighting demands of Hamas reveal the terrorist organization’s total misunderstanding of its plight. Numerous media outlets support the notion that a new Palestinian government will include Hamas. If anyone has been listening to Israel’s Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, they would know that Israel has no intention of leaving any remnant of Hamas to govern anything.

Hamas Back in Previously Cleared Areas

Nonetheless, there is a drumbeat for Netanyahu to come up with a postwar plan for governing the Gaza Strip. The Biden administration, never passing up an opportunity to meddle, has been at the forefront of demanding a proposal for governance when the fighting in Gaza comes to an end. With skirmishes having resumed in north Gaza as Hamas terrorists and other Palestinian militia ooze back into previously cleared areas and the IDF attack into Rafah in southern Gaza, a postwar plan seems premature. The Wall Street Journal explained the complexity of Netanyahu’s position:

“[Netanyahu] appeared to be rejecting assertions by top US officials—and by his own defense minister—that Israel can’t win with force alone. A plan for postwar Gaza has been one of the sharpest points of friction between the US and Israel as the war grinds on and roils American politics ahead of the US election… Netanyahu said an attempt a few months ago to set up alternative governance for the distribution of food in Gaza with locals unaffiliated with Hamas failed because the militant group threatened and attacked some of them, deterring others from joining the initiative.”

Clearly, Israeli officials have no confidence in any Palestinian-led governance in Gaza. Add to the friction between the US and Israel the equities the Hamas terrorists believe they have in a postwar Gazan government, and the situation seen through a wider lens is a Gordian knot of epic proportions. The terrorist organization’s leadership continues to make public statements, assuming it will have a place in some future Palestinian government in Gaza. “Hamas political chief Ismail Haniyeh said Tuesday [May 14] that his group is open to the formation of a national unity government to run the Gaza Strip and the West Bank,” according to the Turkish news outlet Anadolu Agency.

The hubris of the Hamas leadership in thinking that there would be some form of participation in a postwar Gaza for the terrorist organization is startling. “Hamas probably sees an opportunity to exploit this war and Hamas’ relative popularity in the West Bank to expand its political control in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip,” the Institute for the Study of War reported in its Iran Update on May 17. Additionally, the proposal of a unity government is appealing – until one tries to figure out how it would work. The Fatah Party, the Palestinian Authority, and dozens of opposing factions, including the terrorist militia and Palestinian Islamic Jihad, all have separate agendas for a Palestinian future. These factions have never had a shared vision for a Palestinian state. The only view held in common among them is hatred for Israel and a desire to see the Jewish nation destroyed.

Biden Administration Continues Pushing Shortsighted Proposals

It makes the Hamas proposal ludicrous. But such absurd notions of a unity governing body for Palestinians is what the Biden administration buys into when it pushes the “two-state” solution. One state would be Israel, but what is the other state? Overlay this conundrum on Gaza, and what does a plan look like? The myopic view of the Biden administration is that an international peacekeeping force to manage Gaza when the fighting stops is the correct answer. 

“Biden administration officials are in preliminary ‘conversations’ about options for stabilizing postwar Gaza, including a proposal for the Pentagon to help fund either a multinational force or a Palestinian peacekeeping team,” Politico reported. 

Now, there’s a crackerjack idea. Put the Palestinians in charge of peacekeeping when Hamas is a Palestinian terror group. Does anyone think, besides the brain trust in the Pentagon, that putting Hamas supporters and sympathizers in place to keep the peace in Gaza is a good idea?

The views expressed are those of the author and not of any other affiliate.

Read More From Dave Patterson

Net Zero

By 2024 Rob Pue @ Wisconsin Christian News

That’s the plan put forth by Globalist tyrants pushing the false narrative of a “Climate Change Crisis.” “Net Zero” is supposed to mean that by the year 2030, just six years from now, human beings will be putting “zero” so-called “greenhouse gases” into the atmosphere. Because according to the Globalist narrative, if we don’t drastically act now, human beings will destroy the world with CO2.

In 2015, the Paris Agreement was adopted at the UN Climate Change Conference. It took effect on November 4, 2016. Donald Trump took us out of the Paris Agreement when he took office; Biden signed us up again on his first day. This “Agreement” is a legally binding international treaty on climate change.

So, assuming it would be possible for all the nations of the earth to get to “Net Zero’ in the next six years, what will the result be? US energy secretary Jennifer Granholm recently testified before the Senate Energy Committee and dodged repeated questions on this, but basically stated “not much.” Reputable scientists agree. First, it will be impossible to reach what they call “Net Zero,” and even if we did, it would have virtually NO EFFECT on the earth’s climate. Even the UN’s Climate cabal has admitted the BEST we can hope for is less than a 1 degree rise in overall global temperatures.

But how is this “Climate Change Crisis” — and the Globalists’ “Net Zero” plan affecting us? Well, going back to the years when Obama was officially “in office,” he instigated sweeping new EPA restrictions, affecting existing power plants and halting the expansion of new ones. He stated, at that time, that anyone interested in launching new coal plants would be free to do so, but he also vowed to make sure his new regulations would ensure that if they tried, they’d go bankrupt. It was at this same time that he admitted the new regulations would cause the price of energy in this country to “skyrocket.”

Now, in his “third term,” with Biden acting as his proxy, energy independence for America is completely a thing of the past. Pipelines have been shut down, new power plants have not been built, even as the Regime is pushing to make everything “electric,” so as to reduce our “carbon footprint.” So while we’ll need an enormous amount of additional electric power, they’re making it impossible for us to produce it. This is by design.

But let’s look for a minute at the idea of “climate change.” It should be noted that the Earth has indeed warmed...but it has also cooled over the past 100 years. We see periods of above normal temperatures as well as periods of below normal temperatures. Above normal snowfall and below normal snowfall. These are cycles we go through, and honest scientists will tell you that there’s nothing to suggest that we’re facing catastrophic climate change anytime in the foreseeable future. What’s more, greenhouse gas emissions in the United States have actually fallen more than 25% over the past decade. Do you remember, a few years ago, when a team of “Climate Change Scientists” traveled to Antarctica to “prove” their claims of “global warming?”  Their ship was trapped in the ice there for weeks. God definitely has a great sense of humor.

According to cfact.org, “the idea that there is a ‘scientific consensus’ does not hold up. Scientists who are skeptical about ‘dangerous manmade climate change’ have been speaking out for years. Even those who had been ‘alarmist’ about climate change for years are now admitting they do not know what the climate is doing.”

Cfact goes on to say, “The claim that ‘97% of scientists agree’ is based on 77 anonymous scientists who responded to an online survey. The survey started by seeking opinions from 10,257 scientists. However, the survey authors selectively whittled down the responses to just 77 scientists. So the 97% ‘consensus’ claim is not based on thousands of scientists or even hundreds, but 75 out of only 77 scientists. Thus, the often repeated ‘97% consensus’ is based on only 75 anonymous scientists. Yet, on this basis, some say we should tax and eliminate hydrocarbon use, severely restricting US job creation and economic growth.”

So, we’re now seeing the push to eliminate altogether the most abundant sources of energy we have: oil, natural gas and coal. We’re sinking untold trillions of dollars into things like solar and wind power, which have proven to be unreliable, extremely costly and inefficient. Not only is the Regime trying it’s best to phase out all internal combustion vehicles in favor of electric vehicles, now they’re banning gas stoves and furnaces. In May, New York became the first state to ban gas-powered stoves, furnaces and propane heating in all new residential buildings across the state. The law requires all-electric heating and cooking in new buildings within two years.

Last year, California ruled that by 2035, all new passenger cars and light trucks sold in the state must be electric.

The Globalists want everything electric, under the guise of mitigating “Climate Change.” But am I the only one that sees the absurdity of this? Apparently not. Even the most vigorous “virtue signalers” who support whatever the “latest thing” from the Regime may be, are coming to realize the utter stupidity of “The Plan.” This is, perhaps, best illustrated by the electric vehicles they’ve been so desperately pushing.

There are so many problems with electric cars, I can’t begin to list them all. But proponents claim they’re absolutely squeaky clean. No carbon emissions or nasty greenhouse gases with these. Super healthy for our environment and saving the planet, which is facing imminent disaster from us “rednecks” who still drive gas-powered cars.

Well, according to the International Energy Agency, an electric vehicle requires six times the mineral inputs of a comparable internal combustion engine. In addition, EV batteries are extremely big and heavy and are made with exotic, expensive, toxic and very flammable materials.

The primary metals in EV batteries include Nickel, Lithium, Cobalt, Copper and Rare Earth metals. The mining of these materials, their use in manufacturing and their ultimate disposal all present significant environmental challenges. Nearly 100% of traditional lead-acid batteries are recycled. But only 5% of the EV batteries are.

Moreover, the surface area disturbed by oil drilling is relatively small since the oil is extracted from under the ground. In contrast, the materials used to make EV batteries are obtained through open-pit horizontal mining, which is extremely damaging to wide areas of the environment. This means massive deforestation, a dramatic loss of animal habitats; not to mention that the metals to make these EV batteries are available only from a handful of third-world countries, where child and slave labor is commonplace.

And EV vehicles are loaded with problems. First, they have very short ranges when driving. Some claim you can drive 400 miles on a single charge, but the reality is, even the best of the best have a hard time making 150-200 miles. Once depleted, you can’t simply “fill up” again in five minutes. You have to charge your car anywhere from an hour to eight hours, or more, in order to drive another 150-200 miles. You may have seen the absurdity of the EV concept illustrated in online videos, where people travel with gas-powered Honda generators, so they can re-charge their EVs just enough to make it to the next town where hopefully they can find a place to plug in.

These new electric vehicles are also riddled with technical problems. In one case, a car was stuck on the side of the highway, completely out of power. When the owner got out to speak with a state trooper who stopped to assist, he made the mistake of closing his door. Once closed, and with the car battery dead, he had no way to get back inside. Thus, no way to put the car in neutral so it could be towed. And once towed, no way to open the charging port, because that, too, required electricity. Volkswagen recently announced a major recall on one of their EVs because the electronic door latches can malfunction and the car doors will just open on their own while driving down the highway.

Another common issue with EVs is spontaneous combustion. The batteries overheat or explode, causing massive fires. And because of the materials used in these batteries, these cars can literally burn for days, taking more than 50,000 gallons of water to try to put the fires out.

Meanwhile, our federal government is funneling trillions into EV manufacturing. EV dealerships are giving huge rebates, but a typical new Tesla will still cost you way more than a real car. Recently, I looked at used Teslas online, and vehicles just one year old with very few miles on them are going for 50% - 70% less than what they were purchased for just one year ago. Maybe the green “virtue signalers” learned a lesson.

Cities across the nation are definitely learning a hard lesson. According to an article on msn.com, “Between the federal government, states and municipalities, untold billions in taxpayer dollars have been spent adding electric buses to transit fleets across the US in an effort to reduce carbon emissions...however, cities from coast to coast are grappling with broken-down e-buses that cannot be fixed, are too expensive to fix or they’ve scrapped their electric fleets altogether.”

In cities like Asheville, North Carolina, Denver, Colorado Springs, Philadelphia, Austin, Texas, Phoenix, and all throughout California, electric bus fleets are either mostly not running, or not running at all. Many of these bus manufacturers have since gone bankrupt, so when these buses break down (which is common) the cities can no longer obtain parts to repair them. Billions of dollars have been spent to go “Net Zero” — and now these buses are simply taking up space in parking lot graveyards.

Insurance companies also charge significantly more to insure electric vehicles. My insurance man told me this is the case throughout the insurance industry, because once people discover they hate these cars, they can’t get rid of them without losing substantial amounts of money... so, many people deliberately wreck them to at least — hopefully — get their loans paid off.

And what, ultimately, is to become of a dead EV? Salvage yards don’t want them because they’re made of highly toxic materials, the batteries cannot be recycled because they’re dangerous and toxic. So far, no one has answered the question on this.

But one more point that must be made here: say you have an electric vehicle and you’re happy with it. You’re so pleased to be helping to “save the planet.” You only drive it to work and home again, plug it in at night and all is fine. You do understand that the electricity you charge your car with has to come from somewhere, right? That would be your local power station, which runs on natural gas, oil, coal or nuclear power. So after all this, you’re still using those “horrible” carbon-based commodities. And as the tyrannical push continues for everything to be electric, we’ve simultaneously limited our energy resources — on purpose — making electricity and energy in general much more expensive than it has to be.

Many are getting filthy rich off this “Climate Change” scam, but consumers are being taken to the cleaners. Stop believing the lies. Also, bear in mind that we need CO2 — it’s what plants, crops and trees breathe, and it’s what human beings and animals exhale. It’s how God designed His creation to operate. You should know that WE (humans) are the “carbon” the Globalists want to eliminate.

What does God say about all this? He made it clear in Genesis chapter 8. After the flood, the LORD said, “As long as the earth endures, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night will never cease.”

That pretty much clears it up. Seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night... we will have cycles in our climate, and these cycles are natural, normal and God-ordained. And we will have these cycles for “as long as the earth endures.”

As for “Net Zero,” that’s the whole extent of what we, as human beings will get out of this demonic plan of the Globalists for the depopulation and tyrannical control of mankind. Through taxation, regulations, restrictions and shady backroom deals involving dirty money, they will net trillions.... while we net ZERO.

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Biden’s Impeachable ‘Foreign Oil’ Policy

By  @ Sultan Knish Blog

 

Five years after Trump was impeached over accusations that he pressured Ukraine for political reasons, Biden is pressuring Ukraine for political reasons with no impeachment in sight.

Recent reports in the UK’s Telegraph and Financial Times suggest that Biden is demanding that Ukraine stop attacking Russia’s energy infrastructure because he’s afraid of the impact of high energy prices on the presidential election.

“Mr Biden reportedly raised concerns with Kyiv that the bid to damage Russia’s oil production capacity could have repercussions for his re-election campaign,” The Telegraph reported.

“Nothing terrifies a sitting American president more than a surge in pump prices during an election year,” The Financial Times quoted a former White House energy adviser as saying.

Similar reports have started to appear in other European media outlets including Politico.

Whatever one thinks of the Russia-Ukraine War, Joe Biden’s re-election prospects are an illegitimate and impeachable reason to be conducting a war or any foreign policy.

And this is not a unique event.

Many suspect that Biden’s turn against Israel was driven by a threat to his election prospects from Hamas supporting voters in Dearborn, Michigan, as well as radical leftists in his party.

And this is part of a pattern that has weakened America.

Biden emptied the Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR) ahead of the midterms to buy support for his party in the middle of the Russia-Ukraine war and ahead of what would become the Hamas war. Those actions left America vulnerable and potentially changed the course of both wars.

The decision to empty the Strategic Petroleum Reserve was not done for national reasons, but personal political ones, and while politicians routinely bribe voters with public money, this particular bribe could end up losing several wars while sending America into an energy crisis.

Biden’s obsession with the impact of oil prices on his time in office led him to provide sanctions relief to Iran even while suppressing domestic energy production. By propping up energy production in enemy nations like Iran and Russia, Biden was able to give his leftist environmentalist base what it wanted, crushing domestic energy production, while ensuring what he thought would be a cheap supply abroad that he could always rely on for elections.

But the Saudis responded to Biden’s sellout on Iran by goosing energy prices, and Russia and Iran took the influx of cash and used it to launch their own wars with disastrous results.

Biden’s support for Ukraine was premised on protecting the flow of Russian oil and gas. Russians and Ukrainians could die in large numbers on both sides, but energy prices couldn’t spiral too far out of control because that might actually affect Biden’s reelection campaign. But as Ukraine struggled on the battlefield, Russia’s energy infrastructure became an easy and obvious target, and Biden’s obvious political agenda became more easily apparent.

Now the European press is talking about it even if it’s still too explosive for the American media.

Democrats widely support both the Ukraine war and ending oil production which when taken together lead to high energy prices. Unable to find a way to combine low domestic production, low energy prices and the Russia-Ukraine war, Biden turned to an easier target: Israel.

Unlike Ukraine, Israel is less popular with Biden’s base. And the Biden administration may be hoping that forcing an end to Israel’s campaign against Hamas will also convince Iran to step down its regional attacks, including by the Houthis in Yemen, and simplify the process of talking the Iranians and even the Saudis into a nuclear deal that will lower energy prices.

Biden has already been negotiating to trade the Saudis nuclear capability for cheap oil.

The Wall Street Journal reported last year that “Saudi Arabia has told the White House it would be willing to boost oil production early next year if crude prices are high”.

This was not just a Saudi proposal, but an explicit request from the Biden administration.

“Two top White House officials, Brett McGurk and Amos Hochstein, flew late last month to Saudi Arabia, where they emphasized that soaring petroleum prices would make it harder to win support in Washington, the officials said,” the Journal reported.

Biden had previously demanded that the Saudis postpone a production cut ahead of the midterms. The Wall Street Journal had reported that, “the one-month delay requested by Washington would have meant a production cut made in the days before the election, too late to have much effect on consumers’ wallets ahead of the vote.”

And Biden had even tried to bribe the Saudis with a fortune in taxpayer money, promising to “buy oil on the market to replenish Washington’s strategic stockpiles if the price of Brent, the main international benchmark, fell to $75 a barrel”.

“There’s going to be some consequences for what they’ve done,” Biden had threatened Saudi Arabia on CNN for failing to go along with his demand for election day oil price rigging.

Biden’s foreign policy of bribing enemies is unnecessary because he has a simple and straightforward way to lower oil prices: restart domestic production.

Instead, Biden broke the law and illegally tried to block domestic energy production. When that failed, his administration deliberately sabotaged oil and gas lease auctions. After putting a former eco-terrorist in charge of the Bureau of Land Management, he tried to restrict offshore drilling to only three sites and his administration was then sued by the energy industry for using “every tool at its disposal” to stop drilling.

How do we square Biden’s militant campaign against domestic drilling with his obsession with low energy prices abroad? There’s no environmental argument for such an incoherent policy.

Biden isn’t acting out of any consistent set of political principles, but personal election needs.

“I can guarantee you if I am president, there will be no offshore drilling,” Biden promised during his presidential campaign. His leftist backers demand an end to domestic energy production.

And yet he also knows that if energy prices are high, American voters will turn on him.

Biden sold out the American energy industry to win over environmentalists and then sold out our national security to get cheap oil. Rather than just a single ‘quid-pro-quo’, Biden’s foreign policy has been one long string of ‘quid-pro-quos’ that have led to international wars and terrorism.

Once Biden had given away our best leverage in the energy market, domestic production, Iran, Russia, the Saudis and other players used that to their advantage to create the crisis we’re in.

This mess is not simply the result of “misguided idealism”, “incompetence” “naivete” or any of the other excuses used to downwardly define this foreign policy deviancy, but the personal political calculations of a corrupt and greedy president who wanted to lie to everyone.

Biden thought that he could trick, appease and use everyone all at the same time. That he could have his energy cake and eat it too. Instead, Americans are stuck with high energy prices, low reserves and two wars that are not likely to end any time soon. All of this happened because the man who wanted to be president lacked the courage to tell his party that they couldn’t have it all.

The Biden presidential campaign was a contradictory mess. It promised Democrats that they could have a version of Obama who would appeal to older white moderate Democrats. It claimed that two incompatible versions of the party could be fused together uniting traditional Democrats and leftist socialists in one man who would combine the best of FDR and JFK.

Biden’s hypocritical corrupt energy policy shows how he tried to make that work and the price that America and the world are paying for it.



Daniel Greenfield is a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center. This article previously appeared at the Center's Front Page MagazineClick here to subscribe to my articles. And click here to support my work with a donation.
Thank you for reading. 

Debunking Bad Class Warfare and Debunking Nonsensical Class Warfare

May 18, 2024 by Dan Mitchell @ International Liberty

Like Thomas Piketty, Gabriel Zucman is a French economist who promotes economically destructive class-warfare tax policy.

He’s also infamous for dodgy data manipulation, as Phil Magness explains in this Reason discussion.

The interview lasts for 64 minutes, and I recommend the entire discussion. 

Yes, that’s a lot of time, but Phil has encyclopedic knowledge and is very good about avoiding jargon. so you don’t need to be an economist to understand what he is saying.

The bottom line is that Zucman and his class-warfare compatriots are pushing bad policy using bad data.

But there are people who are even more dishonest.

Including the President of the United States. Biden actually claims that upper-income taxpayers only pay an effective tax rate of about 8 percent. I debunked that nonsensical assertion two years ago.

And I recycled that column in a tweet this morning.

You may be wondering how Biden justifies using a number that not even Zucman has been willing to use.

Well, it’s because his aides decided to concoct a tax rate that arbitrarily included changes in net wealth as part of income. A make-believe number sort of based on how much government would grab with a wealth tax.

Which tell you everything you need to know about the quality and honesty of Biden’s classwarfare tax agenda.

Some Observations about Beliefs - Part 1

This is not about religious beliefs, but rather our beliefs about everything...

Everyone has a series of Beliefs in their head. Further, we each have a dozen or so KEY Beliefs, that effectively run our life. Most of these are not religious in nature. (In Part 2 I’ll share with you what mail list of Beliefs are. Part 3 will be more about Beliefs, including how to get others to change their Beliefs.)

Beliefs are:

  • “rules” (assumed truths) we use to respond to people and events, how we make decisions, etc. (i.e., how we understand and manage the world),
  • the basis for our “self-talk”, (which most of us take for granted), and
  • the foundation of our “values”.

Our Beliefs are learned from our personal experiences, our thoughts, parents, friends, society, media, religion, etc.  Many of our Beliefs can be summarized into metaphors, proverbs, idioms, or axioms (e.g., “haste makes waste”). These exist not only because that have some truth to them, but also because they are memorable.

Beliefs can be very beneficial as they:

  1. ) help us to conceptualize what we’ve learned in prior experiences,
  2. ) save us the time and effort so we don’t have to “start from zero” in every situation, and
  3. ) help us solve the challenges of life by giving us a basis for acting consistently.

Our Beliefs lead to our actions happening — and determine our happiness. Here’s the general sequence, starting with the fact that each of us has a unique set of Beliefs…

The problems with Beliefs are:

  1. ) as generalities, they are rarely always correct, even though we assume they are,
  2. ) since they are in our subconscious, we are often not aware of what they are,
  3. ) most of us do not routinely examine our Beliefs for accuracy,
  4. ) sometimes an otherwise correct Belief may be used where it is not appropriate,
  5. ) when we are faced with evidence that contradicts one of our Beliefs, we tend to dismiss it as an exception, and
  6. ) when we really want to change a Belief, it takes concerted effort to do it.

A key takeaway: Our Beliefs Control Our Happiness…


Here are other materials by this scientist that you might find interesting:

Check out the Archives of this Critical Thinking substack.

WiseEnergy.orgdiscusses the Science (or lack thereof) behind our energy options.

C19Science.infocovers the lack of genuine Science behind our COVID-19 policies.

Election-Integrity.infomultiple major reports on the election integrity issue.

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Monday, May 20, 2024

Holocaust Remembrance and Biden's Empty Words

By Robin Itzler

Editor's Note:  This is one of the commentaries selected from Robin's weekly newsletter Patriot Neighbors. Any cartoons appearing will have been added by me.  If you wish to get the full edition,  E-mail her at PatriotNeighbors@yahoo.com to get on her list, it's free.  RK

 

Joe Biden had the right background and props for the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum's Annual Days of Remembrance ceremony, at the U.S. Capitol building when he stood in front of a bipartisan audience. He didn’t go off the teleprompter and commit his usual gaffe, so we never heard about cannibals eating Nazis. Biden yakked about the rise in antisemitism, which he and the Marxist leaning Democrat party owns. Robin Itzler posted this on her Facebook and Truth Social accounts: 

“Since actions speak louder than words, as a Jewish woman I am insulted that Joe Biden spoke at the Holocaust Memorial Museum annual remembrance ceremony. Biden has done everything to deny Israel's right to protect herself from an enemy seeking to annihilate her. He chastises Israel, delays arms shipments, does not denounce the pro Hamas wing in his Democrat party, and has created the environment for the rise in antisemitism as seen on many college campuses. Plus, Joe Biden and his Democrat administration has made Iran rich, enabling the tyrannical nation to fund and support terrorist groups like Hamas. Biden speaking at a Holocaust memorial service ... Would that be any different than Josef Mengele speaking at an Auschwitz memorial service?” 

No matter what the Biden administration says, it's what they do that counts.  Secretary of State Blinkin wants Israel out of Gaza and is accusing them of "violation of international humanitarian Law, That's anti-Israel animus, and that's what's clear.  Otherwise, there's no clarity on anything in the Biden administration except the destruction of America and Israel.  

Here's what the sane see clearly, and is what the Biden's administration is oblivious to:

What Is The Most Pernicious Example Of "Misinformation" Currently Circulating?

@ Manhattan Contrarian

“Misinformation” — It has been one of the most-used buzzwords of the past few years. The “misinformation” label has been applied by advocates on both sides of the political divide in the attempt to discredit their opponents. Numerous assertions that have dominated the news cycle for months or even years have ultimately proven to be completely false, that is, “misinformation.” Examples of such assertions that have been established as “misinformation” include the assertion that Trump colluded with Russia to steal the 2016 election; the assertion that the Hunter Biden laptop was a Russian plant; and the assertion that the Covid virus originated in a wet market in Wuhan.

After the thorough discrediting of so many false narratives during these years, there remain plenty of narratives still out there that richly deserve the “misinformation” label. But of those, which is the very worst, the very most pernicious? Here is my candidate: the assertion that the cheapest way to generate electricity today is with wind and solar generators.

I recognize that there are many candidates for the title of the worst of all misinformation, and we are dealing here with a very crowded field. Numerous other endlessly-repeated false assertions contend for the title, many of them having very large real-world consequences. For example, other serious contenders for the title of “most pernicious misinformation” could include the assertion that emissions of CO2 and other greenhouse gases constitute a danger to human health and welfare; or the assertion that Israel is conducting a “genocide” against Palestinians. Undoubtedly, you have other candidates to add to the list.

So why do I say that the assertion of wind and solar being the cheapest ways to generate electricity is the very most pernicious of misinformation currently out there? Here are my three reasons: 

  1. ) the assertion is repeated endlessly and ubiquitously, 
  2. ) it is the basis for the misallocation of trillions of dollars of resources and for great impoverishment of billions of people around the world, and 
  3. ) it is false to the point of being preposterous, an insult to everyone’s intelligence, yet rarely challenged.

How ubiquitous is the assertion that wind and solar are the cheapest ways to generate electricity? Try Googling the question “What is the cheapest way to produce electricity?” You will get multiple pages of results advocating for wind and solar electricity, with almost no mention of the problems or costs of intermittency. A few examples of what turns up:

  • The top result from Galooli.com, March 13, 2022, “Which Renewable Energy is Cheapest? A Guide to Cost and Efficiency”: “According to the IEA’s World Energy Outlook and other research projects, solar and wind energy have continued to occupy the top spots in terms of the cheapest renewable energy sources. Both energy sources cost significantly less than fossil fuel alternatives and continue to become more affordable every year.”
  • Next up, decarbonization.com, August 2, 2023, “Ranked: The Cheapest Sources of Electricity in the U.S.”: “According to Lazard’s 2023 analysis of unsubsidized LCOE in the U.S., both onshore wind and utility-scale solar photovoltaic (PV) technologies are more cost-effective than combined cycle natural gas power plants. In the case of onshore wind, this has been true since 2015.”
  • Next, carbonbrief.com, October 13, 2020, “Solar is now ‘cheapest electricity in history’, confirms IEA.”: “The world’s best solar power schemes now offer the “cheapest…electricity in history” with the technology cheaper than coal and gas in most major countries. That is according to the International Energy Agency. . . .”

Keep going for dozens of these for page after page. Try to find in any of them a serious discussion of the costs of backup, storage, or transmission upgrades to try to make an electrical grid work with these intermittent generators. You won’t. And don’t think that the high-brow mainstream sources can be trusted for anything better. Here is the New York Times from August 17, 2023:  

“The cost of generating electricity from the sun and wind is falling fast and in many areas is now cheaper than gas, oil or coal.”

In the face of hundreds of different journalism outlets endlessly repeating in unison the mantra of cheap “renewable” electricity, it becomes difficult to blame the voters or the politicians for just nodding along with the crowd. Why do any mentally taxing independent thinking when everybody seems to be saying the same thing?

The problem is that the idea that wind and solar make the cheapest electricity is plain wrong. At least, it is plain wrong if the electricity you are talking about is the reliable sort that works whenever you want to turn on the switch. The idea that wind and solar are cheapest fails to take account of any of the ancillary costs necessary to make a fully-functioning grid: the entire system of backup facilities to provide the power when the wind is not blowing and the sun not shining; the transmission facilities to take the power from wherever is windy or sunny to anywhere else it may be needed on a moment’s notice; the batteries or other storage facilities to save up energy in anticipation of inevitable wind and solar droughts; and so forth. In short, the idea that wind and solar generation of electricity are the “cheapest” is classic misinformation, the endless repetition of an assertion that is clearly false and known to be false.

Meanwhile, among the people incapable of seeing through the fog of misinformation on this subject are our current President, and the Governors of New York and California. In the case of the states, they throw tens of billions of dollars of handouts and subsidies to develop wind and solar facilities (hundreds of billions of dollars in the case of the feds), never having the presence of mind to realize that none of that would be necessary of this method of generation were actually cheaper as claimed.

Between the vast mis-allocation of resources and the sheer preposterousness of the proposition in question, I think that this assertion of wind and solar electricity generation being “cheapest” definitely has the claim for the number one spot.

Biden Risks American Lives to Protect Hamas

By Daniel Greenfield @ Sultan Knish Blog

The United States of America has been conducting backchannel talks with Hamas to ask the Islamic terrorist organization not to attack American soldiers helping deliver aid to Gaza. We "passed that message back through the appropriate channels to Hamas," the White House spokesman admitted. Rather than warning Hamas not to attack or it will suffer the consequences, Biden is pleading with it from a position of weakness.

Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin recently admitted at a congressional hearing that American soldiers operating Biden’s disastrous “aid pier” for Gaza could come under attack from Islamic terrorists.

Biden has not sent a single soldier to recover American hostages being held by Hamas, but there are now soldiers in the line of fire in order to send aid to Gaza.

In the event American forces on the pier come under attack, they would be allowed to fight back, Austin promised. But based on the rules of engagement in Iraq and Afghanistan, all the terrorists have to do is attack from a mosque or from behind civilians, and American soldiers would be banned from fighting back.

And those are the ways that Hamas tends to attack.

Late last month, Islamic terrorists did fire mortar shells at the pier, forcing a UN team to flee for cover and damaging some of our equipment. After the attack it was announced that the Israeli military would be tasked with providing security for the pier since Biden’s efforts to recruit Muslim allies to protect it had failed.

After the mortar attack, the terror pier was moved to the Israeli port of Ashdod, allegedly because of the bad weather, but also because of the terrorist attacks. It’s still sitting in Ashdod, despite having been completed because it’s too fragile to move in stormy weather. What’s going to happen if there’s bad weather once the pier is in place? If this one breaks, we’ll probably have to build another one.

But after having wasted hundreds of millions of dollars on the terror pier, Biden is waiting on the Israelis to secure it. Even with the Israelis physically attaching the pier, so that Biden can claim that there are American “no boots on the ground”, American personnel will still be within firing range of Islamic terrorists in Gaza.

This would not be a threat if Biden would stop interfering with Israel’s war on the terrorists. But the pier is part of the Biden administration’s campaign to undermine Israel’s war effort. And that’s putting American lives at risk.

Beyond the terror pier, there are now reports that after Israel finally took control of the border crossing between Egypt and Gaza (despite years of lies about an ‘open-air concentration camp’, Egypt, an Arab Muslim country, has its own border crossing with the Islamic terror state), Biden wants America to step in.

Unwilling to have Israel control the Rafah crossing into Egypt, where the majority of Hamas’ terror forces are based, negotiations are reportedly underway to bring in a “private American security company” that “has operated in several African and Middle Eastern countries, guarding strategic sites like oil fields, airports, army bases and sensitive border crossings” which “employs veterans of elite U.S. Army units.” This is likely to be Blackwater (which has been renamed several times) or some company like it with similar capabilities.

The ex-military personnel won’t count as “boots on the ground” but having private security contractors performing military tasks and then getting killed is no better than American military forces dying in combat with terrorists. The use of contractors during the War on Terror helped hide casualty rates, but didn’t lessen the fact that Americans were still being killed. As we saw in Benghazi.

Above all else, there is no reason for American forces, no matter how they’re classified to be tasked with securing the so-called aid crossings, whether it’s Biden’s terror pier or the Rafah crossing, when the Israelis should be in charge.

And the Israelis want to be in charge.

The only reason Americans are being put in harm’s way is because Biden doesn’t want the Israelis in control. And after trying to solicit anyone else to step in, Americans are being put at risk to protect Islamic terrorists from Israel.

Opponents of the Jewish State have often accused Israel of putting Americans at risk, but it’s those opponents, especially in the Biden administration, whose obsession with protecting Muslim terrorists from Israel is really endangering us.

What is America’s national interest in protecting Iran’s terror proxies in Gaza?

Set aside any sentimental attachments to the Jewish State or any religious and cultural sympathies, and there’s still no conceivable reason to prop up another of the terrorist ‘dragon’s teeth’ that Iran has sown in Yemen, Lebanon and Israel.

The lineage of the ‘Palestinian’ cause can be traced back to the Soviet Union’s Marxist terrorist operations, Nazi Germany’s influence operation with the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and, more recently, the Islamic revolution in Iran. What all of those have in common was that they were efforts to subvert the Western presence in the Middle East by recruiting and funding Muslim terror groups.

America had tried to stay out of it until Jimmy Carter decided to make common cause with Islamic terrorists. This disastrous policy led to the Islamic takeover of Iran and then Afghanistan, and to the deaths of thousands of Americans. Carter also embraced the ‘Palestinian’ cause and Clinton committed us to spending endless billions trying to create an Islamic terror state in Israel.

Until Trump, no president had the courage to try and disentangle us from the ‘Palestinians’. And until Biden, no president was this close to committing American troops to protecting a population that universally wants to kill us.

Israel wants to end the terror threat from Gaza and the West Bank. Biden should let it. Life was a whole lot better for everyone before Clinton’s experiment in ‘nation building’ led to endless waves of terror in pursuit of a ‘Palestinian’ state.

If Biden really cared about the lives of Arab Muslims living in Gaza, he would let Israel quickly finish the job of putting down the terrorists. Like the rules of engagement imposed on American soldiers in Afghanistan and Iraq, the only thing that the restrictions imposed on the Israeli military have done is get good men killed while dragging out a war that could have been ended long ago.

Too many American civilians were already killed in Islamic terror attacks in Israel. If Israel is willing to drain the terror swamps in the West Bank and Gaza, let it.

No American should die to protect Hamas or its supporters in Gaza.

The idea that we were going to neutralize ‘trouble spots’ through nation building has been tested and failed badly. While Biden washed his hands of Afghanistan, he still insists on keeping the mirage of a ‘Palestinian’ state going even though it predated our involvement in Afghanistan by a decade and failed even worse.

It’s time to end the worst and longest nation building experiment to date.

The obsession with creating a ‘Palestinian state’ has cost billions of dollars and the lives of American civilians. Now Biden is risking the death of American soldiers, in or out of uniform, to keep the nation building dream alive.

Biden withdrew from Afghanistan, but now he wants to get us into Gaza.


Daniel Greenfield is a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center. This article previously appeared at the Center's Front Page Magazine
Click here to subscribe to my articles. And click here to support my work with a donationThank you for reading.

China at the Border – A National Security Threat, Congress Says

America is in serious jeopardy from the surge in illegal Chinese immigrants. 

By May 19, 2024 @ Liberty Nation News, Tags: Articles, Illegal Immigration, Opinion

China at the Border – A National Security Threat, Congress Says

Continuing its probing of the threat China poses to America, the House Homeland Security Subcommittee on Oversight held a hearing on May 16 regarding the flood of illegal Chinese aliens coming into the US across the southern border. Subcommittee chairman Dan Bishop (R-NC) and ranking member Glenn Ivey (D-MD) sought to identify the reasons for magnitude of the unprecedented streaming of Chinese nationals that was 8,000% higher in March 2024 than in the same month in 2021.

Illegals From China Invading US

Regardless of the distance and logistics hurdles Chinese illegal interlopers face, more than 24,000 People’s Republic of China (PRC) nationals were caught by the US border patrol in 2024. To shed more light on the problem of the flood of the PRC illegals crossing the border, the subcommittee heard testimony from Mr. Simon Hankinson, senior research fellow in the Border Security and Immigration Center at The Heritage Foundation; Todd Bensman national security fellow, Center for Immigration Studies; Craig Singleton, senior fellow at The Foundation for the Defense of Democracies; and Meredith Oyen, PhD, associate professor, Department of History, University of Maryland, Baltimore County.

The bedrock message from the witnesses was that the US is under invasion by illegal Chinese coming across the southern border unfettered by the Biden administration policies. Representative Mike Ezell (R-MS) made the point as a backdrop to the rest of the hearing:

“Under the president’s (Biden) watch there have been over eight million illegal aliens released into this country. What is not clearly revealed in the group of eight million illegals is an alarming statistic. The fastest growing group crossing the border illegally is not from Mexico or South America, they’re from China. Since President Biden’s taken office CBP (Customs and Border Patrol) encounters with Chinese nationals has risen over 4200%.”

Answering Congressman Ezell’s question regarding whether this surge of Chinese nationals illegally crossing the US border because of President Biden’s open border policy represented a threat, Mr. Hankinson responded, “Statistically, its undeniable. If you have 50,000 additional people and you have no confirmation of their background, their criminal records, their present or past affiliation with their government… It’s almost certain a proportion…are coming here with the intent at some point to do some harm.”

The first committee member from the left, Representative Delia Ramirez (D-IL), began her questioning on the crucial topic of the Chinese Communist Party’s illegal entry into the US with an ad hominem attack on Tod Bensman accusing him of being a member of a hate group because he used the concept of an “invasion” of illegal aliens in social media postings. She challenged the committee for inviting Mr. Bensman to testify. In a snide and condescending remark, she explained she would direct her questions to a “real expert,” Dr. Oyen, the only witness whose background is in history and not the current border crisis – the hearing topic.

On June 6, 1944, the largest armada of armed forces up to that time, 160,000, crossed the English Channel on D-Day, and by August 1944, there were 2 million Allied soldiers in France. That was, by all accounts, an invasion. The Normandy invasion pales in comparison to the over 9.2 million illegal aliens from 160 different countries that have flooded into the US since Biden took office. In March 2024, there were 189,372 illegals caught at the southern border; more than crossed the Normandy beach on D-Day. All things considered, “invasion” seems an accurate and appropriate word to describe the flood of illegals the Biden administration has allowed to invade our sovereign borders.

Gotaways Reach a Staggering Number

However, Chairman Bishop highlighted the more alarming statistic in his opening statement. “Finally, a document [is] emerging verifying that the number of gotaways in total is quite large…I think it was about a million, seven if I remember correctly,” during the Biden administration. “Among there are presumably some number of Chinese nationals,” Bishop concluded. Actually, “The number of known gotaways at the Southern Border, alone, has skyrocketed.

In short, what the committee heard was that Chinese nationals are streaming illegally into the US. The CBP is hamstrung by the Biden administration’s border policies to appropriately vet PRC illegals. The Department of Homeland Security, rather than making more stringent the interrogation process for PRC illegals, the questions posed have been reduced from 40 to five. Basically, who are you, where are you from, and are you a member of a foreign government agency? With no database to validate what the illegal is telling the CBP, it’s just the word of someone who has already broken US laws by being there. As Mr. Bensman explained, the illegal could say he was Mickey Mouse, and he’d be let in the US.

The Biden administration has opened America to the potential for espionage, terrorist attacks, and all manner of criminal enterprises. We’ve seen illegal Chinese nationals attempt to penetrate US military facilities unlawfully. Americans are becoming very aware of and stopping CCP efforts to buy land close to our military installations. The House of Representatives committees on oversight and the Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party are working diligently to understand the threats posed by China and the unhindered flood of illegal Chinese nationals crossing our borders. The Biden administration could help by adopting policies that stop the invasion. Chairman Bishop adjourned the meeting early when Democratic members turned the discourse into an attack on Mr. Bensman.

The views expressed are those of the author and not of any other affiliate.

 
Read More From Dave Patterson

AML = High Costs and Trivial (if any) Benefits

 May 19, 2024 by Dan Mitchell @ International Liberty

I’ve repeatedly complained about the absurdity of anti-money laundering laws and regulations.

Today, let’s cross the Atlantic Ocean to examine some new evidence about why anti-money laundering laws and regulations are misguided.

Looking at the United Kingdom, this chart shows that AML policies impose nearly £35 billion of costs on the economy, which is twice as much as the total budget for policing in the country!

I created the chart, but the numbers come from a new study published by the London-based Institute of Economic Affairs.

The author, Jamie Whyte, compares costs and benefits. The results are not pretty.


…debanking is a problem in the UK. In 2021/22, UK banks closed 343,000 accounts, up from 45,000 in 2017 when the Money Laundering, Terrorist Financing and Transfer of Funds (Information on the Payer) Regulations 2017 (MLR 2017) was passed into law. …Customers whose accounts are not closed also pay a material price, because complying with the government’s anti-money laundering (AML) regulations costs UK banks £34 billion a year, which is double the £17 billion spent on policing all other crimes in the UK… This cost must ultimately be passed on to customers through higher account fees, higher rates of interest on loans, and/or lower interest rates on deposits. …Given the lack of evidence that banks’ post-2017 AML obligations have done anything to reduce crime compared with pre-2017 trends, you might hope that the UK government, and all others, would simply eliminate them. …there is no evidence that the well-known and large costs of AML regulations are offset by their benefits.

Yes, you read correctly. There is no evidence that AML laws and regulations have had any positive effect.

The War on Drugs has been the main excuse for AML policies. Here’s some of what is in the study.

Between 1990 (when the FATF AML regulations began to come into force) and 2021, the number of illegal drug users around the world increased by 60% and the number of deaths attributed to drug use more than doubled. According to a 2023 report by the UK’s National Crime Agency: ‘From January 2022 to December 2022, cocaine prices have dropped by about 30% and heroin prices have fallen by about 33%.

Looks like one half of the Baptists and Bootleggers coalition is doing well.

Here are some of Whyte’s concluding thoughts.

The AML obligations imposed on banks have massive costs and no apparent benefit in reducing crime. The rational response is to abolish them or, at least, to scale them back… This is probably expecting too much of contemporary politicians, who find it difficult to stop regulating and who find it difficult to admit to profound policy errors.

Sadly, American politicians are just as feckless as British politicians. So the bad policies in the United States also seem invulnerable to common-sense changes.

To make a bad situation even worse, policy is like to become more nonsensical thanks to the War on Cash.

P.S. Since the statute of limitations presumably has passed, I can admit that I engaged in money laundering while in London about 10 years ago.

P.P.S. You may not think AML policy lends itself to humor, but here’s an amusing anecdote involving a former President. There’s also a very clever Instagram video from Australia.

Saturday, May 18, 2024

Preconceptual Reality, Culture is King, and the 2024 Election

By Rich Kozlovich 

In 2015 I published an article dealing with polls, reality, and Johnathan Gruber.   Do you remember Gruber?  He's the Obamacare advisor and MIT professor who got everyone outraged for saying Obamacare was deliberately created to be too complicated in order for it to pass because they knew the American voting public was so stupid to understand it.   

Well, the question we need asking is why was everyone so upset?  Since Gruber was attacked as ‘arrogant’ by various writers, we need to clearly define in our minds if he was being arrogant or was he merely making an observation of reality no one liked?   Given what's going on with the 2024 election, I think we need to go back in time and explore this.

While Obama was President 54% of voters wanted no new taxes and more budget cuts.  Obama wanted to spend an additional 4 trillion dollars and raise taxes.  Only 16% favored more spending, and 21% favored no cuts in spending.  

Polls also showed most didn't believe Obamacare would do anything to fix the nation's health care system, and they were right. Rasmussen gave him a 51% approval rating.  Does that make sense to anyone?

I don’t really know if Rasmussen can be trusted any more than other pollsters, but I put pollsters as a whole in the same category as snake oil salesmen. They ask questions in ways that will generate affirmation versus reality. Having said that, I used to follow the Rasmussen polls and I kept seeing a majority who claim they dislike Obama's policies and yet think he's just doing a Jim Dandy job. 

Is that rational?  Is that a case of cognitive dissonance or was Gruber right, people are just stupid?

I think it’s a combination of an American educational system that's turned into an expensive failure, cognitive dissonance is rampant, the pollsters are corrupt, people are largely misinformed and uninformed by choice, a corrupt media wants to keep them that way, and Gruber was right. 

That year  Newsweek gave a test to 1000 people and found that 29% of Americans didn’t know who the Vice President was, 27% didn’t know the President of the U.S. was in charge of the executive branch and 70% didn’t know the supreme law of the land was the U.S. Constitution. 

One commenter made the observation that perhaps they thought it was the Prime Directive from the United Federation of Planets. I would be willing to bet if that question was part of the test a fair number would have agreed, and believed it! Is that an indication the American educational system has failed to teach history and civics?

Sixty five percent didn’t know the Constitution was written by the Founding Fathers at the Constitutional Convention, only 12% could name one of the writers, 43% didn’t know the first Ten Amendments to the Constitution is called the Bill of Rights and 63% didn’t know there were nine justices on the U.S. Supreme Court. Now, perhaps I'm just being picky again, but is this another indictment of American education?

Now for those who are snickering– how many amendments are there to the U.S. Constitution? Answer without looking it up!

Eighty percent didn’t know who the President of the U.S. was during WWI and 40% didn’t know the U.S. was fighting Germany, Italy and Japan during WWII, with a full 73% being unaware the “cold war” was over the spread of communism. Now does all of this give anyone the impression that someone in American education is clearly dropping the ball? Is it any wonder why so many believe "going green" is good, in spite of the fact the green movement has been responsible for more death and suffering than the socialist monsters of the 20th century who killed over 100 million innocent people.

And 51% believed Obama, who increased the national debt from a little over ten trillion dollars to a little over eighteen trillion dollars in six years without having much of an impact of the "Great Recession", was just doing a really fine job.

Some polls claimed Biden and Trump were tied.  Some only have Trump about five points ahead, and for a while some polls claimed Biden was in the lead.  Is that believable?  The public is really upset at the Democrats, and Biden specifically, for out of control immigration, inflation, drugs, cost of housing, energy, etc., and there's not one area in which the public thinks Biden is doing a good job, and we're to believe he has a 44% approval rating?

On May 14, 2024 Andrea Widburg published this article, People are waking up to the rot within academia and in America as a whole, noting only crises can bring people out of their cultural stupor.  She notes those who start their day searching news sites to see what's going on know the rot impacting the nation, but that's not the typical person.  They don't read, they don't listen, and they don't think.  Right along with Preconceptual Science, and Preconceptual Economics, this an affliction of Preconceptual Reality, where people reach conclusions without looking to see what the facts really are, then ignoring anything that disputes those conclusions, and often times shouting invectives at anyone who challenges those conclusions, totally arrogant in their ignorance. 

These nitwit protestors, they are stunningly ignorant, bereft of any stable moral foundation and working really, really hard to commit national suicide. Those who read history books, and follow the news, and write about all of that fear a national economic and social collapse at the hands of:

........."complete nincompoops, shysters, and grifters, people with no verifiable quality of statecraft, petit tyrants who lack the skills or intellectual insight to govern except by diktat.'...." Everything despicable about Joe Biden and his corrupt family and party has been revealed. Still, it has either been propagandized to death or denied by the Democrats and their propaganda henchmen, the legacy media."

Whether the issues involve domestic or foreign policy the public is clueless, and has aways been clueless, so they're easily fooled by the media and lying politicians, and they want to just marinate in their cultural comfort zone.  Well, culture is king, and Gruber was right.  Even with all the outrageous behavior, much of it criminal, Biden still has, according to polls, an over 40% approval rating.

Conclusion?  Either the polls are lying or Gruber was right and the public really is stupid, or as I suspect, both!  There are no boundaries on the left, no moral foundation that acts as a stop for vile behavior.  So, if for some reason the public's stupidity can't be relied on to re-elect Biden, and restore the Congress to outright Democrat control in order to give them the power they so cravenly desire, they will do anything and everything, no matter how vile, how illegal or how corrupt it may be in order to gain total control the lives of all the stupid peasants, who will have nothing and be grateful....or else!