Rich Kozlovich
Let's start today's P&D with The Media Balance Newsletter: 2/28/22.
News and Views
America in Crisis
Biden Consequence
Taxes
America is in a civil war. Not a cocktail party war like Vietnam or Afghanistan, where Americans stand around and talk about it but relatively few are personally affected. No, this is a WWII-level existential threat war where the difference between victory and defeat is literally freedom or tyranny. One need look no farther than what Adolph Trudeau is doing in Canada right now to understand what the future holds.
This war has been simmering for decades and most Americans didn’t even notice. Now it’s obvious. Virtually every element of traditional American culture is being destroyed. The left has decided that the United States is a plague on humanity and must be eliminated.
In this case, the “left” consists of government, media, big tech, big business, and academia, among others.
Here’s a short list of their targets:
By Rich Kozlovich
Even Alaska has been infected with the myth of transgenderism - “Gender identity” is an imaginary construct. Biological sex is biological sex and gender is a term for languages that have different grammar for masculine, feminine, and neuter words. A few people are genetically intersex and a sadly growing number of people are brainwashed. It’s gotten so bad that even Fairbanks, Alaska, has embraced the transgender myth. Parents hosting a party at a public pool discovered a male high school student hanging out with little girls in the women’s locker room—and the pool management refused to remove him. The story is not complicated: Johanna Ray invited children to Hamme Pool during open swim time for a kids’ birthday party. While Ray’s daughter, her friends, and their mothers were undressing, a biologically male teenager walked into the women’s locker room. The swimming pool supervisor refused to act to remove the teenager from the women’s locker room. Instead, the supervisor suggested that the women and girls relocate to a small lobby bathroom that lacked even a shower............
MUST-SEE VIDEO: SNL shows the Democrats are running from COVID - For more than two years, we’ve been told that The Science mandates that we wear masks, keep six feet away from other people, get multiple shots, muzzle our children, and “shut down” our economy, all in the name of “defeating” a virus. These demands remained unchanged even as the actual science showed that the masks were useless, the distancing was meaningless, the shots were dangerous and barely effective, the children were developmentally damaged, and the poor economy was destroying lives. Now, though, thanks to Democrats being destroyed in the polls, they’re racing away from their prior mandates. Nothing demonstrates this more clearly than a Saturday Night Live skit this past weekend............
The 1619 Project’s Nikole Hannah-Jones beclowns herself again - They say that, to a hammer, everything is a nail. By analogy, to a race hustler like Nikole Hannah-Jones, everything is about race. She proved that yet again when she claimed media coverage of events in Ukraine reflects pro-White racial bias. The fact that Russia is a nuclear nation with an unstable leader, which unfortunately makes the fight of preeminent importance to the world, eluded her, as did other important aspects of geography, history, and politics...............
A FEMA document about nuclear explosions reveals the utter fatuousness of our bureaucracy - No matter the purpose for which they’re established, bureaucracies often become ends in themselves, self-perpetuating entities that generate paper to justify their existence. That seems to be the case with FEMA, at least insofar as its rules for nuclear disasters go. Some poor desk drone was given the task of updating FEMA documents to reflect the CDC’s ridiculous COVID requirements. That drone worked hard, with the result being that the FEMA guidelines for a nuclear explosion now include masks and social distancing in bomb shelters..............
Joe Biden says delusional Americans are imagining inflation - Hard-left podcaster Brian Tyler Cohen interviewed Biden. The topics were what would expect—Biden’s race- and sex-based Supreme Court nominee, claims that Trump and other Republicans support Putin, boasts about his strategic genius, etc.—but the real surprise was Biden’s claim that COVID has made Americans so psychologically unstable they can’t understand that the Biden economy is wonderful..............
By Rich Kozlovich
Ukraine's heroes aren't impressed with doddering Joe Biden - As Ukraine shows the world what heroes look like, and every civilized nation in the world gathers to offer some kind of support -- from prayers, to lit buildings, to demonstrations, to Internet, to arms -- Joe Biden isn't looking too good in this matter.That's the word of Ukrainian officials who repeatedly signal that Biden doesn't know what he's doing, is slow on the uptake, and not to be trusted. What a sorry picture from the same country that once seated the great Ronald Reagan and the great Donald Trump in the Oval Office. Ordinarily, people under attack praise America's president to the high heavens...........
Ukrainians in their courage startle and inspire world -- and NPR beclowns itself - Ukraine is fighting back. And that must startle invading Vladimir Putin, who seems to have expected another Afghanistan-style takeover, the way the Taliban did it -- the Taliban marching in, the the local president loading up his money and flying off without a fight, and the boldest locals cramming onto U.S. waiting jets. Few fought back in that one and the disaster speaks for itself. We don't see that in Ukraine. The U.S. offered Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskyy a flight out and he refused it. "I need ammunition, not a ride," he told the U.S...........
Ukraine: The left spews an amazing banquet of stupidities - As had been said in the aftermath of 9/11: ' The world has changed.' And much of the left's response? To just keep on living in the pre-02-22-22 world where they'd felt so comfortable in their cocoons. For a lot of them, Russia's 17th century–style conquest of the modern sovereign state of Ukraine goes way beyond their processing capacities. We see statements and stunts like the following from the left as news comes out about Russia's bloody and violent takeover attack........
Saturday Night Live and Virtue Signaling Someone Else's War - When America was attacked on September 11th, Saturday Night Live responded by having Rudy Giuliani come out, give a little talk and then on with the show. And that was an act of war against our own country which killed thousands of our own people. Since then Saturday Night Live has moved on from comedy to virtue signaling, ......... 3 comments
Are We Underestimating or Overestimating the Russian Military? - Trained military observers watching the Russian invasion of Ukraine unfold are finding themselves baffled by by both the scale of the operation and its seeming lack of coordination and effectiveness. Russia is a world power and its military is that of a world power. In the air and on the ground, not taking into account guerilla warfare, the Russians should be performing much better than they are. Particularly when it comes to the air war, there shouldn’t have even been one, the Russians should have been able to achieve total air superiority right from the start. The fact that the Russian forces still don’t have total air superiority is baffling trained military experts...............2 comments
Is Putin Suffering From the Same Problem as Biden? - One way to view the war in the Ukraine is through the lens of time. Vladimir Putin may no longer be president after 2024. While Putin has previously played all sorts of convoluted shenanigans that allowed him to run things in whichever office he held, this time around it may be for real. Or as real as anything in Putin’s Russia gets. There have been persistent rumors of an underlying medical condition, most recently Parkinson’s, and while Putin is relatively young compared to our leaders, there has been a sense that he is losing focus and control............3 comments
Biden Doesn't Want a Black Justice, But an Anti-Constitutional One - From Jonathan Turley..............Liberals want a justice who is willing to expand the meaning of the Constitution without constitutional amendments. President Biden stressed that his nominee must follow a "living constitution" approach, including a broad view of “unenumerated rights.” When asked if she supported such an approach, Childs answered "no." Jackson, in contrast, has been far more obscure and conflicted in her response...............3 comments
Ukraine Isn't WW2 or WW3 - It's WW1 - Does the United States want the job of keeping neighbor from invading neighbor around the world? The great East-West divide in Europe isn't what it used to be. During the Cold War the independent Western republics faced off against Eastern Communist dictatorships in thrall to Moscow. Now the Western side of the divide are part of a regional union whose mission is to diminish nationalism and national independence, while on the Eastern side all the nationalism that had been suppressed by Communism reigns unchecked.............15 comments
My Take - I think this last piece reflects my views very well. Bretton Woods is over, and we don't owe these people anything nor do we need them, and make no mistake about this, they would never come to the aid of America if things were reversed. Get over it!
By Don Fisher, Jr. December 21, 2021 @ American Thinker
(Editor's Note: I'm publishing this in full without permission, and will cut it down to a link if either American Thinker or the Author object. However, I think this article needs to be published in full to get the full impact of what Biden has wrought, especially now asking this question. Can anyone name one area in which Biden and his band of nitwits have not failed.....miserably? RK)
Less than one year since he assumed office, Joe Biden has managed to turn his presidency into a deeply unpopular monarchy. No longer is he the genial but generally harmless buffoon who entertained most of us while he was in Congress with his mispronunciations, misquotes, and embellished tales of dubious authenticity. As a result of the 2020 presidential election that was, at best, questionable, Biden was elevated well past his ability, and he proceeded to wreck virtually everything he touched as leader of the free world.
On his first day in office, via executive order, Biden closed the Keystone pipeline for no other reason than a spiteful rebuke of President Trump's energy independence program. It was a hare-brained sop to his fellow environmentalist lunatics who believed that this gesture would somehow "heal the planet" and reduce the phantom scourge of climate change. How that was supposed to make a difference is anybody's guess. It did, however, immediately succeed in reducing the supply of petroleum to our nation and raising the price of consumer gasoline and oil, as well as transporting goods. Great start there, Joe!
In August, Biden began a bizarre, ill advised, and poorly executed withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan, which stranded many U.S. civilians and military personnel there and left a reported $85 billion in taxpayer funded, top-of-the-line, and completely operational military equipment for our Taliban enemies to plunder, which they did. Biden decided that it was a great idea to evacuate troops first and let the rest of the area and our abandoned facilities fall into chaos afterward. Images of people running to catch airplanes out of the war-torn cesspool flooded the airwaves, which served to underscore the incredibly bone-headed decision to remove the troops who enforced the rules and prevented the area from descending into chaos for many years. With one stupid decision, Biden handed Afghanistan back to the savage and repressive regime that held it before. This will be Joe's legacy.
During 2021, Biden's ongoing battle with the American public over COVID-19 revealed the utter contempt he had for anyone who didn't accede to his demands. His laughably useless mask mandate gave way to his demand that everyone in our nation get an increasingly large cocktail of experimental medicines, with his non–medically supported goal of getting rid of all of the COVID variants due to his mistaken belief that only unvaccinated people could carry and spread the COVID virus. Once again, Joe was wrong, but he wouldn't stop to admit it. Rather than consult actual medical experts, and not fame-hungry media personalities who sought more time on TV, Biden gave orders for COVID vaccinations and demanded that the populace obey without question. Like a child who didn't get his way, Biden became increasingly frustrated when anyone dared oppose him, regardless of medical or scientific evidence that countered his opinions. He surrounded himself with sycophants who swore fealty to him and twisted logic into pretzels to make sense of Biden's decrees. Former CNN talking head and current press secretary Jen "circle-back" Psaki proved to be especially adept at this.
The summer of 2021 brought hundreds of thousands of illegal migrants into this country via an unenforced border that many described as "porous." Despite draconian COVID restrictions and required testing for many Americans who live here, Biden turned a blind eye to health concerns and guarding our border. Instead, he allowed what can only be described as a foreign invasion from virtually anyone, regardless of COVID or vaccination status, who wanted to enter our country along our alleged southern border. The border wall that President Trump worked to build and fought Congress to fund was disregarded by Biden, and ramshackle, filthy tent cities were set up inside our country by the hordes of illegal migrant families who walked into our country to gain de facto citizenship, courtesy of the Biden administration. For their trouble, illegal aliens were rewarded with free (American taxpayer-funded) health care, welfare, transportation, career and education assistance, and even $1,400 stimulus checks.
The icing on the leftist cake of idiotic accomplishments was Biden's appointment of pretend woman Richard "Rachel" Levine to the position of assistant secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). Biden's HHS secretary lackey, Xavier Becerra, crowed about the historic nature of having a deluded and mentally ill (and yes, gender dysphoria is a mental illness) man who wears a dress as "the first openly transgender four-star officer." Anyone who didn't participate in Biden's version of make-believe and instead pointed out Mr. Levine's actual sex was labeled a bigot by the lapdog news media and scolded by fellow leftists. Science!
Throughout his only career in his life, in which he lived on the taxpayer's dime, Biden's main skill seemed to be his ability to win re-election to the Senate by projecting the home-spun image of "Joe from Scranton," which bamboozled voters into believing he was a regular guy who was on their side in D.C. Below the surface, the reality was quite different, as even his former running mate, Barack Obama, reportedly said, "Don't underestimate Joe's ability to f--- things up." After witnessing the events of Biden's first year in office, I believe that every sober-minded American would agree with Mr. Obama's warning.
Political observers knew of Biden's authoritarian leanings before he took office, but they were on full display for everyone once he was sworn into office as president. With such a disastrous beginning that illustrates Mr. Biden's leadership capabilities, it's already apparent that his presidency will be remembered as an embarrassing footnote in our nation's history. Hopefully, the elections of 2022 and 2024 will restore some measure of sanity and order to our nation's government.
For a long time I have thought that the public in Western countries would wake up to the absurdity of fossil fuel suppression when the price of energy to the consumer rose high enough. And to a substantial degree that has begun to happen.
But the cost of fossil fuel suppression is not merely a modest degradation in our comfortable lifestyles and impoverishment of the poor. As the situation in Ukraine is now demonstrating, fossil fuel suppression in the U.S., Europe and other Western countries also entails significant empowerment of our most significant geopolitical adversaries, and poses major risks to world security, and even to our national security.
The coming of the Biden administration a year ago brought a full-on government war on the fossil fuel industries: cancellation of pipelines; ending of leasing of mineral rights on government lands and offshore; an order that all government agencies work by regulation to eliminate fossil fuels from electricity generation by 2035; threats by bank regulators against banks that lend to the fossil fuel industries; initiatives by the SEC to make it more difficult and costly for industries to use fossil fuels; dozens of initiatives in places like the Department of Energy and Interior Department to block projects using fossil fuels or make them more difficult or costly; and much, much more.
As should have surprised no one, prices of fossil fuels responded by rising dramatically. Prices of crude oil have gone from a range of about $40-60 per barrel during the Trump years to close to $100 per barrel today. U.S. natural gas prices that averaged about $3/MMBtu during the Trump years are now about $4.50 (having spiked over $6 in late 2021). In Europe, where almost all fracking has been suppressed by governments out of supposed concern for the environment, the most recent price for natural gas imports is close to $30/MMBtu
Certainly, a direct impact of these rising prices has been increased costs to the consumer: increased electricity bills, increased home heating bills, increased costs for gasoline for automobiles. For example the average price of regular gasoline at the pump in the U.S. has gone from about $2.25 in January 2021 to about $3.60 today.
But equally important is the degree to which these dramatic rises in energy prices benefit all the worst actors on the world state, starting with Russia. Russia is largely dependent on energy production and exports to the West for its government budget. A year ago, with energy prices in the toilet, Vladimir Putin was basically broke. Today, with energy prices having almost doubled, he is relatively flush. And suddenly we have an invasion of Ukraine, basically financed by Western countries that have suppressed their own production of oil and gas and thus must buy the stuff from Russia.
So why, you might ask, don’t the Western countries just cut off imports from Russia and leave Putin high and dry? The simple answer is that the Western countries have invested hundreds of billions of dollars in wind and solar energy that don’t work and don’t provide the energy needed; so if these countries want to keep their electrical grid running, they need to buy natural gas, which principally comes from Russia.
Consider Germany. Germany adopted its “Energiewende” back in 2010, and fancies itself leading the world to the great clean renewable energy future. Germany’s peak electricity usage is about 90 GW. To supply that, it has built some 65 GW of wind power capacity, and almost 60 GW of solar power capacity. So that’s a total of about 125 GW of generation capacity right there, against peak usage of about 90 GW. Sounds like they have plenty of power from the wind and sun alone to take care of all their needs.
But of course wind and solar don’t work that way. Here in the winter, we have the times of cloudy days, calm winds, and long nights. Here is a chart from Agora Energiewende of Germany’s electricity generation and consumption for the past few days:
It looks like just after the sun set today the wind and sun together were generating less than 5 GW out of that supposed “capacity” of 125 GW. Usage was about 50 GW at the time. Oh, and Germany is also phasing out its nuclear reactors. So aside from those tiny amounts of hydro and “biomass” at the bottom of the chart, that leaves coal, oil and natural gas; or alternatively, a blackout. From Time, today:
Th[e] glaring omission in Biden’s sanctions package could be the consequence of a promise to the countries of Europe, cowering in fear as their dependency on Russian gas renders them impotent to fight back against Russia’s invasion. This is not unreasonable. Germany especially will suffer if Russian gas imports are blocked; Europe imports 40% of its natural gas from Russia, but for Germany it is up to 50%, on top of 45% dependency on Russian coal and 34% on Russian oil. Meanwhile, Germany is continuing to phase out nuclear, making it more reliant on Russian energy imports.
And of course the U.S. can’t supply these European energy needs because the Biden Administration is intentionally suppressing natural gas production here.
Is it time for a little energy realism from the Biden people? Here are the remarks from Climate Envoy John Kerry a couple of days ago as Russia’s Ukraine invasion got underway:
“But it could have a profound negative impact on the climate obviously. You have a war and obviously you’re going to have massive emissions consequences to the war. But equally importantly, you're going to lose people's focus, you're going to lose certainly big country attention because they will be diverted and I think it could have a damaging impact. . . .”
It’s almost impossible to fathom how idiotic and clueless this guy is. And I don’t necessarily mean just to pick on Kerry. It’s all of them, not the least Biden himself.
But I would certainly hope that the American public is starting to figure this out.
During an ABC interview today, White House Spokesperson Jennifer Psaki gave away the game for the Biden Administration’s intent on exploiting the Russia-Ukraine crisis.
Keep in mind, as the Biden team were getting pummeled for negative economic outcomes, massive inflation, skyrocketing energy costs and gas prices set to double, the White House worked to create an urgent defense by manufacturing the crisis.
While Joe Biden ate his pudding, the people behind the scenes told Zelenskyy and Putin that Ukraine was about to enter NATO {December 2021}. The White House then seeded details through China knowing the intel would get back to Putin. Russia took the bait and intervened.
The collective left (far more western leader beneficiaries on a global scale) now have a quick and strategic pivot point to go from COVID-19 as the excuse for all the economic ills, to Russia. The Russia-Ukraine crisis transfers the cost of the Build Back Better climate change agenda from COVID-19 to Russia/Ukraine. We can now watch COVID just disappear.
The BBB agenda, domestically known as the Green New Deal,
intentionally makes energy costs skyrocket. By creating the Ukraine
crisis, gas prices specifically are no longer blamed on COVID-19 (the
original fraudulent justification). Gas prices are now rising because
of Russia and the villainous Vladimir Putin. Climate change policy
outcomes are made palatable by blaming Putin......To Read More...
The day we have all been waiting for has finally arrived. The famed
United States Army will allow men to wear lipstick and nail polish. But only if they also wear a dress. Or have a butcher saw off their pertinents. Or a quack prescribe them a set of powerful delusion-confirming pills. Small prices to pay, you might say, in order to match shade of lip to
weapon of the day. Or to find a paint that won’t chip during Grenade
Throwing Hour. Not much a price, either, since Uncle Sam will pay the bill for these services. And pay gladly.............To Read More....
February 27, 2022 by Dan Mitchell @ International Liberty
At the state level, we have another victory for good tax policy.
I wrote last month that Iowa might replace its discriminatory tax regime with a simple and fair flat tax.
And I pointed out that this reform would help the state jump several spots in my ranking of state tax systems.
Well, the proposed reform has been approved by the state legislature and Iowa will now have a much better (i.e., less destructive) tax system.
Here are some details of the new law, as reported by Stephen Gruber-Miller and Ian Richardson for the Des Moines Register.
Iowa will move to a 3.9% flat income tax rate under a compromise between legislative Republicans and Gov. Kim Reynolds… …It would also exempt retirement income such as 401(k)s, pensions and IRAs from state taxes… Along the way, the bill would eliminate Iowa’s progressive income tax system, where wealthier Iowans pay higher rates than lower-income Iowans. Iowa would join 10 other states with some form of flat income tax. …The new proposal would build upon a series of tax cuts that were previously set to start for Iowans in 2023, meaning multiple new tax laws would take effect during the same year. Iowa is already set to reduce the number of tax brackets from nine to four starting in 2023. …It will drop the corporate tax rate to a 5.5% flat rate over time.
I could end today’s column at this point.
After all, what happened in Iowa is a triumph for tax reform and another case study on the benefits of tax competition (just like we’ve seen in states such as Kentucky and North Carolina).
But I want to take this opportunity to address another big-picture issue.
Earlier this month, James Lynch wrote a column for the Des Moines Register on the potential impact of tax reform in the state.
He contrasted the views of both proponents and opponents.
Flattening state income tax rates and exempting retirement income would either lead to growth in businesses and jobs and increase Iowans wealth, or simply make wealthy Iowans wealthier, according to speakers at a public hearing…speakers at the Monday evening public hearing were divided between those who said a flatter tax rate would make Iowa a more attractive place for businesses to locate and expand — as well as a more attractive place for employees to live and work — and those who said the plan largely benefits the wealthy while doing little to help lower-income workers.
At the risk of sounding mushy, both supporters and critics are right.
Iowa’s tax reform will encourage more growth. And it’s also true that the rich will benefit.
But opponents are guilty of a sin of omission. That’s because tax reform will benefit lower-income and middle-class taxpayers as well.
And I think “sin of omission” is the right term. That’s because a big moral shortcoming among our friends on the left is that they are sometimes tempted to go along with policies that will hurt the less fortunate so long as they impose even greater damage on upper-income taxpayers.
P.S. Adopting a flat tax is progress, but the ultimate goal should be abolishing the state income tax.
Welcome! We cover COVID to Climate, as well as Energy to Elections. This issue we are adding special coverage of Ukraine (as there is a direct connection to unscientific climate and energy policies). Here is the link for this issue, so please share it on social media. Particularly note the asterisked items below.
— This Newsletter's Articles, by Topic
Ukraine:
Ukraine and Energy Policies:
Ukraine — What You Can Do:
COVID-19 — Repeated Important Information:
COVID-19 — Therapies:
COVID-19 — Injections:
COVID-19 — Injection Mandates:
COVID-19 — Masks:
COVID-19 — Children:
COVID-19 — Models and Data:
COVID-19 — Canada:
COVID-19 — Misc:
Greed Energy Economics:
Wind Energy:
Solar Energy:
Nuclear Energy:
Fossil Fuel Energy:
Misc Energy:
Manmade Global Warming — Some Deceptions:
Manmade Global Warming — Misc:
US Election:
US Election — State Issues:
US Politics and Durham:
US Politics and Socialism:
Other US Politics and Related:
Religion Related:
Education Related:
Science and Misc Matters:
Please use social media, etc. to pass on this Newsletter to other open-minded citizens…
John Droz Jr., Physicist & Citizen’s Rights Advocate
Revision 2/27/22
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