P&D and The Week That Was

Truth is the Sublime Convergence of History and Reality

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De Omnibus Dubitandum

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 This link will take you to My Commentaries, and this Link will take you to My Global Warming Commentaries

By Rich Kozlovich 

 

The cartoon is most apt when viewed before reading Daniel Greenfield's, and Francis Menton's articles (starred in red) on how corrupt and greedy the Biden crime family truly is, along with the question everyone, and I mean everyone should be asking, which is this:  If Daniel, and so many others, are capable of ferreting out this information how is it possible that none of the legacy media, Democrat mouth pieces, and the Justice Department couldn't, or perhaps I should say wouldn't? They keep asking where's the evidence, and yet the evidence of the Biden crime family's corruption, and I clearly think treason, is so abundant even a blind squirrel could see it.  Just they claim there's no evidence of voter fraud, there's no evidence of criminal activity by the Biden Crime Family.  

I've been following all of the corruption and criminality of this man and his family, and linking articles in P&D almost from Biden's first day in office.   Now, what you really have to ask is this.  If the bugman can see all this, it must absolutely impossible for all these others to not see it unless they're either part of his corruption or enablers of his corruption. 

As we watch this playing out if you're not concerned American justice is doomed, you're either not paying attention, or you're part of the problem.  The more exposure of Biden's corruption, and in point of fact probably treason, the more Trump indictments.  That's been the pattern.  Indictments by a prosecutor with an absolutely shady past overseen by a Judge that's clearly a biased political hack. 

My friend Paul Driessen regularly sends me articles to publish on P&D, one that is listed below, about what's required to create a "Net Zero" "sustainable", society run on "green energy".   None of which can be accomplished, but all of which can clearly, and justifiably, be called "crimes against humanity" the left has been perpetrating on humanity claiming they're saving humanity and the planet via "sustainable development".   All of which is a lie.  He sent this note with his article saying:

Already lofty global demand for cobalt will reach unimaginable heights if Net Zero-centric states and nations begin mandating electric cars, trucks, buses and tractors; ending coal and gas electricity generation; converting gas furnaces, water heaters and stoves to electricity; and providing battery power for windless, sunless periods.

Africa’s Democratic Republic of Congo holds an estimated 72% of the world’s entire known supply of cobalt. Some 70% of this (half the world’s entire supply) involves child labor, while much of the rest involves near-slave labor, in legal and illegal artisanal mines that have helped create a treeless “hellscape of craters and tunnels patrolled by maniacs with guns,” says Cobalt Red author and Nottingham University associate professor of modern slavery Siddarth Kara.

To call the conditions under which these men, women, boys and girls labor 10-12 hours per day “horrific” would be an understatement. My article makes a feeble attempt to describe these ecological and human rights abuses, citing as much of Professor Kara’s riveting book as this commentary can include. Thank you for posting it, quoting from it, and forwarding to your friends and colleagues. 

I've listed a great piece that appeared at CFACT regarding an update on the Biden administration's new WOTUS efforts, and the Sackett v EPA case.  A case I followed for 12 years, and how the corruption of the Deep State is never very far from the surface, even when they lose.  Remember, leftism is like rust, it never sleeps.  As the author noted in his article:

Now, they may have to settle for a Baby WOTUS, in the hope that they can gradually build on that foundation over the coming decades – or at least until they get a Supreme Court more to their liking. Remember, these people play the long game.

This SCOTUS decision was a direct attack on what's commonly called the Chevron Doctrine, where the court gave unprecedented power to federal agencies that would in effect allow them to make laws the Congress never passed calling them regulations, or rules, warping the initial intent of the laws Congress did pass.  As the author noted, the left plays the long game, and what's needed is the elimination of 80% of the federal government's agencies, starting with the EPA.   

Also, my P&D week is now ending on Thursday, at least until summer's over, so please enjoy.   Starting with this piece from the Buckeye Institute.  

Commentaries

1. Let's All Return to Nature! By Rich Kozlovich
2. Nigel Farage and The Banking World Update By Rich Kozlovich
3. Sarah Silverman is Really Angry!!!! Oh Nooo.... Not That! Oh, Wait....... Who Cares? By Rich Kozlovich
4. Leftists Love Blacklists. Whodathunkit! By Rich Kozlovich
5. Biden officials plot next WOTUS move after Supreme Court ruling By Bonner Cohen, Ph.D.  
6. Cobalt Slavery, Child Labor, Ecological Destruction and Death  By Paul Driessen
7. Democrats Blame Republicans for the Heat By Daniel Greenfield
8. Biden’s Anti-Semitism Czar Condemns Israel, Not Anti-Semites  By Daniel Greenfield
9. * Bidens Wanted Billions, Not Millions, From Burisma  By Daniel Greenfield
10. Election 2024: Kennedy, Harris And More By Robin Itzler
11. Another Harridan Demands Special Treatment By Mychal Massie
12. * The Bidens: "Stone Cold Crooked" (6) -- What Did China Get For Its Money? By Francis Menton
13. * The Bidens: "Stone Cold Crooked" (5) By Francis Menton
14. Government Failure, Captured in One Tweet By Dan Mitchell
15. Grading the DeSantis Economic Plan By Dan Mitchell
16. Government Schools and Competition By Dan Mitchell
17. Abandon Fossil Fuels, Empower China By Don Ritter

Links

1. Black South Africans rediscover the blood lust of an old song
2. Zero Hunger (SDG 2) Means Starvation for All!

   

Constant as the North Star

 

Biden officials plot next WOTUS move after Supreme Court ruling

ByBonner Cohen, Ph. D. August 1st, 2023 232 Comments  @ CFACT

Still smarting over the U.S. Supreme Court’s May 25 ruling in Sackett v. EPA, in which the High Court greatly limited EPA’s regulatory authority over “waters of the United States” (WOTUS), Biden officials are scrambling to salvage as much as they can from a rule that once promised to put the feds in charge of millions of acres of private land.

Working on a tight schedule, and facing formidable legal hurdles to the exercise of raw power, Biden officials plan to have a revised WOTUS rule ready by late September. The White House had rolled out a much more ambitious WOTUS rule earlier in the year, but it ran into the buzzsaw of Sackett v. EPA. Like the Obama administration before it, Biden administration officials were hoping to use a broad definition of WOTUS to give EPA and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers sweeping authority over wetlands and other small bodies of water that connect to “navigable waters of the United States.”

For over a decade and a half, that connection had been what Justice Anthony Kennedy referred to in 2006 as a “significant nexus” to navigable waters. The vague term was a gift to federal regulators who wanted to use it to extend their writ as far as the eye could see. But in its Sackett ruling, the Supreme Court scrapped “significant nexus,” saying instead that wetlands could only be regulated if they have “a continuous surface flow” to navigable waters.

No Public Comment

According to media reports, the new WOTUS rule being crafted by Biden officials will not be subject to public comments. Instead, they will simply strike language from their original proposal—language that is no longer legal under the Sackett restrictions – and hope what is left withstands challenges in court. The regulated community – agriculture, mining, timber, home builders, oil and natural gas developers, and dozens of other industries – has little reason to trust the administration and will be monitoring its every move.

By foregoing public comments, the White House may be trying to play down the significance of what it will be proposing. They have good reason to try to draw as little attention as they can to their next WOTUS steps because their legal position has deteriorated over the past year.

The administrative regulatory state suffered two significant legal defeats in 2022 and 2023. In June 2022, the Supreme Court, in West Virginia v. EPA, ruled that federal agencies must have specific authorization from Congress before they can impose rules whose economic impact will pose a “major question” to U.S. society. In other words, agencies cannot make up rules out of whole cloth. In this year’s Sackett decision, EPA was put on notice that vague language in the Clean Water Act regarding the agency’s jurisdiction over certain bodies of water did not give regulators carte blanche to regulate as they see fit.

Old habits die hard. Having become accustomed to using the federal bureaucracy to impose policies to their liking, the left must now cope with the Supreme Court’s restoration of the separation of powers as anchored in the U.S. Constitution.

Baby WOTUS

The White House is using regulations to eliminate the internal-combustion engine and ban gas stoves and gas-powered water heaters – all of which are being challenged in court. At its core, WOTUS was an attempt to impose federal zoning on private land — a goal so ambitious it will be hard to walk away from. Now, they may have to settle for a Baby WOTUS, in the hope that they can gradually build on that foundation over the coming decades – or at least until they get a Supreme Court more to their liking. Remember, these people play the long game.

Author

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  Bonner Cohen, Ph. D.

  Bonner R. Cohen, Ph. D., is a senior policy analyst with CFACT, where he focuses on natural resources, energy, property rights, and geopolitical developments. Articles by Dr. Cohen have appeared in The Wall Street Journal, Forbes, Investor’s Busines Daily, The New York Post, The Washington Examiner, The Washington Times, The Hill, The Epoch Times, The Philadelphia Inquirer, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, The Miami Herald, and dozens of other newspapers around the country. He has been interviewed on Fox News, Fox Business Network, CNN, NBC News, NPR, BBC, BBC Worldwide Television, N24 (German-language news network), and scores of radio stations in the U.S. and Canada. He has testified before the U.S. Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, the U.S. Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, the U.S. House Judiciary Committee, and the U.S. House Natural Resources Committee. Dr. Cohen has addressed conferences in the United States, United Kingdom, Germany, and Bangladesh. He has a B.A. from the University of Georgia and a Ph. D. – summa cum laude – from the University of Munich.

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Let's All Return to Nature!

By Rich Kozlovich

People keep yammering about the need to “return to nature” in order to restore their humanity and save the planet. Return to organic farming.  Eliminate pesticides.  End the use of chemical fertilizers. Absolutely no genetically modified foods.  No roads, no cars, no running water, no electricity or modern central heating or cooling.  Having grown up on a farm in an area that had a substantial number of wells, springs and cisterns as water sources, and outside toilets for personal use, I am somewhat familiar with the concept. 

I remember well, and with great nostalgia, those starlit nights when I would lay on my back and see the great expanse of the Milky Way.  In the country, away from the lighted up cities,  you really can see just how expansive and magnificent the milky way truly is. You felt as if you were looking past eternity.  You would be surprised at how many shooting stars appear on a clear night.

There is a problem with that though.  Life isn’t lived that way. 

Those grand nights weren’t every night, and during the day those sights can’t be seen at all, and the memory of them doesn’t ease the burdens of everyday living. Just because these moments are prized and cherished by those of us who were able to enjoy them doesn’t alter the fact that the rest of the time was substantially more difficult. In other words; the farm is nice place to get away and visit, but I have no desire to go back.  It's interesting that the people who actually lived what they call a "back to nature" lifestyle didn’t quite see life in the romantic mythology claptrap way the greenies present.

• When one of the greatest advances ever for America ever was Rural Electrification, and very few said: "Oh, no,  forget it, none of that throwing the switch stuff just to get light for me.  I love my kerosene lanterns."
•  When running water was introduced into these areas, very few said: "Forget that, I would rather haul gallons and gallons of water up from the spring."

I had uncles and an aunt that did that. I want to see these "in love with nature" greenies do that on the first wash day.  The lunatic left are on a path to eliminate modern appliances and cheap readily available electricity over the false narrative over global warming.  On August 2, 2023 Jeffrey Folks published this piece, 27 Billion People, and Climate Change Not High, saying: 

My paternal grandparents were tenant farmers caught in the destruction of the Dust Bowl.  They survived, just barely.......... When, in her sixties, my grandmother acquired electricity and running water — and a washing machine — she felt privileged, and she was.  Around 60% of the world's population today goes without indoor plumbing, and 13% lack electricity.  The comforts of modern life depend on fossil fuels, which supply cheap and reliable power for all our needs.  Our goal should be to extend modern conveniences to more people, not to ban appliances and make electricity more expensive........... 

Does it ever occur to anyone to ask: 

• If primitive was so wonderful in the past; why did they ever abandon it? 
• If primitive is so great today; why do they abandon it so readily when the opportunity presents itself?

I've read about celebrities who raved about an outdoor experience as if they have had an epiphany.  But these epiphanies don't seem to last, because they quickly return to their highly electrified homes with running water, indoor toilets, central heat, air conditioning, swimming pools, manicured lawns, etc.   If primitive was so great, why didn’t they stay?  Forever! 

Clearly, there are some who really desire that life, and they might find contentment with this lifestyle, for those who wish to abandon modern life and revert back to nature, they have my blessing, but they need to leave the rest of us alone.  I think I absolutely assure you, this is something most people would really hate, and worse yet; I think few would survive.

This quote appeared in the Blog Café Hayek regarding this whole back to nature lifestyle mythology: 

“Consider, for example, Thomas Babington Macaulay's description of life in the 17th-century Scottish highlands -- before anything beyond rudimentary commerce and industry reach there:”

“His lodging would sometimes have been in a hut of which every nook would have swarmed with vermin. He would have inhaled an atmosphere thick with peat smoke, and foul with a hundred noisome exhalations. At supper grain fit only for horses would have been set before him, accompanied by a cake of blood drawn from living cows. Some of the company with which he would have feasted would have been covered with cutaneous eruptions, and others would have been smeared with tar like sheep. His couch would have been the bare earth, dry or wet as the weather might be; and from that couch he would have risen half poisoned with stench, half blind with the reek of turf, and half mad with the itch.”

I don’t know about you, but this doesn’t sound like a good time to me. The movies don’t really depict the true nature of life in ancient times. It was brutal, ugly, backbreaking, uncomfortable, unhealthy, and most importantly; very short lived.  When you abandon modern culture for the primitive life, that's the real embrace of nature.

We may wish to embrace nature in a care taking way, and I think this is a good overall attitude, but let’s not lose sight of reality. Nature has no loving embrace for us in return. Nature is unthinking, brutal, unkind, uncaring, unhealthy and will make life short lived for those who aren’t prepared to change their environment in order to survive nature's unthinking and uncaring efforts to kill us. 

Nature will shine on us one day and rain on us the next. It doesn’t care, nor is nature able to care. Nature is an environmental machine that operates under a set of laws, and those laws have no human concepts of reality or compassion. Let’s stop being anthropomorphic about nature. Nature has no human qualities, period.

How many of us really want to go back to those eras? If we did, how may would survive the first year? How many really know how to produce the food they would need to survive? If you were able to produce enough food to survive, how do you preserve meats, fruits and vegetables without refrigeration or canning processes? If you did grow enough grain to get through the winter how would you process it and store it?

It was done in the old days. Do you know how? How many really do? To some extant I do, but none of that has any appeal for me at all. I have no desire to embrace primitivism.  Furthermore, I don’t seem to see these environmentalist fools embracing it as a permanent life style either. They pontificate about the glories of primitive living from the comforts and well laid tables of the modern world.

The environment has to be properly cared for, but all things in nature must be used as a means of survival. I am not talking about abusing nature. Having grown up on a small farm I know and understand the concepts of conservation

for future utilization.  It is just like a bank account, if you deplete it there is nothing left.   Make no mistake, there is a difference between conservation and preservation. 

But have no doubt in your mind at all, nature does not think and does not care. Nature has no feelings, no concerns and no desires.   Nature is here for our use and our benefit, not the other way around. We are not imposing on nature. Nature belongs to us, but it's a war, not a love affair.

Clear analytical thought becomes very difficult when living in an imaginary world of serendipity.  In the Persian fairy tale, The Three Princes of Serendip, wonderful, valuable and agreeable things not sought for suddenly would appear. To embrace nature for its beauty and grandeur is fortifying to the spirit, but to embrace nature in order to humanize it as if nature was warm, wonderful and serendipitous; is to place it above mankind.

That's eco-religion.  That's eco-terrorism!  It isn’t very bright either!

Government Failure, Captured in One Tweet

July 28, 2023 by Dan Mitchell @ International Liberty

After eight years of being head of the International Monetary Fund, where she seemingly specialized in pushing for bailouts, bigger government, and higher taxes (conveniently, her lavish salary was tax exempt), Christine Lagarde was rewarded for her mistakes by being appointed president of the European Central Bank in 2019.

Amazingly, she may be an even bigger failure as a central banker. Within just a couple of years, inflation became a major problem in the eurozone (the various nations that use the euro currency).

Yet, as noted by this tweet, Ms. Lagarde apparently is mystified by what has happened while she’s been in charge.

For what it is worth, I think this tweet is much too kind.

It implies Lagarde deserves blame merely for being caught by surprise, for “missing” the signs that inflation was about to become a big problem.

Sort of like we might be upset with a park ranger who fell asleep in his tower and didn’t see the fire starting in the forest.

But Largarde is more akin to an arsonist. Check out this chart, which shows the European Central Bank’s balance sheet, which is a good measure for how much money is being created.

Lagarde was appointed in 2019, which is when the ECB pivoted to an easy-money policy.

Heck, she doubled the size of the ECB’s balance sheet. So she was an arsonist who first doused the forest with gasoline.

Milton Friedman must be spinning in his grave.

P.S. I was worried about the ECB’s easy-money approach about 10 years ago, but that episode was trivial compared to what’s happened during Lagarde’s reign.

P.P.S. But at least Ms. Lagarde can feel confident that the IMF is carrying on her legacy.

Nigel Farage and The Banking World Update

By Rich Kozlovich

On July 19th, Kurt Zindulka published this article, Nigel Farage Debanked over Ties to Donald Trump and for Expressing Conservative Views, Bank Docs Show, saying:

Nigel ‘Mr Brexit’ Farage had his bank account shut down as a result of his ties to former President Donald Trump, tennis star Novak Djokovic, seemingly spurious accusations of ties to Russia, and his positions on Brexit, vaccines, LGBT issues, and others which were deemed by Coutts bank to “not align with our values”.  Contrary to reports in the BBC and the Financial Times, in which an unnamed Coutts bank source claimed that Nigel Farage had fallen below a financial threshold to maintain his account, a subject access request filed by the Brexit leader shows that the main motivation was actually political in nature.

On July 23, 2023 Kurt Zindulka published this piece, Nigel Farage Ups the Ante: Bank Faces £17.5 Million Fine as ‘Mr Brexit’ Files Complaint over Passing Info to BBC saying:

Brexit leader Nigel Farage has filed an official complaint against the NatWest, accusing the bank of passing his information to the BBC, which initially claimed that he lost his account with Coutts for financial reasons before backtracking to acknowledge that the decision was made in part due to political reasons.........

I followed up with this piece, Leftists Love Blacklists. Whodathunkit!, saying:

Farage is now intending to make this a massive public, political, and moral issue to challenge Big Corporate tyranny and corruption............. it's clear this was a planned, organized and implemented conspiracy among Britain's banking industry to censor and punish political speech, association, and views they disprove of.   A conspiracy in which there clearly must have been a lot of communication between the officers of these banks.  In America that would make it a criminal conspiracy, and a RICO violation.

Yesterday, August 1, 2024, Kurt Zindulka followed up with this piece,  Bank Bends the Knee to Farage: Cancels Closure of Account in Desperate Bid to End Growing Scandal saying:

In an apparent attempt to quell the political firestorm sweeping through the banking sector over its politically-inspired decision to debank Nigel Farage, Coutts Bank now says it will cancel its closure of the Brexit leader’s accounts..............Mr Farage said that while he appreciated the overture from Coutts, he has no intention of giving up the campaign he has begun against the banking industry, having launched a website to organise those who have also been unjustly debanked to campaign for change in Britain.  Most of these people aren’t in my position, they haven’t got the platform, they haven’t got the opportunity to fight back........So if I can speak up for all of those people, we can deal with this nonsense. If we can get ultimately to the position where having a bank account becomes a right in our country, because you can’t function otherwise in the 21st century without it, that would be a real victory.  And that’s where I want to get to. Let’s get politics out of banking, let’s get prejudice out of banking.”

Now that Farage has taken this public, and it's created quite a stir, most importantly, he's not taking this, "Oh, we're so sorry, we'll fix this and it won't happen again" clabber.  He want a face to face sit down with the top executives of these banks and an outright exposition of the facts saying:

“I want you to accept that you’ve taken up an inordinate amount of my time. You’ve cost me a great deal of money in legal fees already, which I’ve used all the way through to make sure that I was dotting the i’s and crossing the t’s,.......But more important than all of that, I want to know how many other people had accounts closed at NatWest and Coutts because of their opinions. And what can we do to make sure that nothing like this ever happens to anybody else in your banking group again?”

The article goes on to point out that are "some 90,000 people in the country are believed to have been designated as “politically exposed persons” by the banks".  

I hope to keep following this as this is the tip of the iceberg regarding an effort to force humanity into obedience to a ruling elite through economic restrictions.  Including cashless societies.

Black South Africans rediscover the blood lust of an old song

 August 1, 2023 By Andrea Widburg

“Kill the Boer, Kill the Farmer” is not a new song. It’s been kicking around South Africa for more than a decade. What is new, though, is the frenzy with which tens of thousands are seen singing it. When you combine this with a rapidly collapsing infrastructure and an uptick in violent attacks on white farmers, it’s not hard to predict that South Africa will soon explode in a genocidal fury before lapsing into complete dysfunction.

When the old apartheid government in South Africa ended in the early 1990s, all decent people saw that as a good thing. Apartheid discriminated against blacks while a much smaller number of whites (descendants of Dutch and English settlers) experienced freedom and prosperity. What was amazing was that, when apartheid ended, the country managed to avoid slipping into a blood bath, something that can be attributed to Nelson Mandela’s leadership. The guy may have been an old communist but, to his credit, he didn’t want a civil war...........To Read More

Zero Hunger (SDG 2) Means Starvation for All!

Sustainable Development Goals: Fight against the government’s idea that THEY define YOUR hunger! Their mandated ‘outcomes’ for your family are NOT their jurisdiction! 

By Guest Column -- Lynne M Taylor——Bio and Archives July 28, 2023

If you’re familiar with Tom DeWeese’s extensive work on Agenda 21 (now Agenda 2030), you certainly are aware of the United Nations’ SDGs (Sustainable Development Goals). The “Goals” are a railroading system being used to force all nations into compliance. The United States is NO exception.

What better way to do that, than by controlling our food supplies? This includes the water and land which grow our crops and feed our livestock. It also will overtake EVERYTHING in agriculture, food sales, food deliveries, and quite possibly even your own backyard gardens.

SDG 2 is known as ‘Zero Hunger’. Its wording is to suggest that everyone will be fed by the government, as well as by the United Nations out of caring for us. However, a closer look into SDG 2 needs to be taken. The ‘zero hunger’ is NOT about caring for us, it’s about controlling us............To Read More...

Sarah Silverman is Really Angry!!!! Oh Nooo.... Not That! Oh, Wait....... Who Cares?

By Rich Kozlovich

On July 29 Breitbart News offered this commentary saying:

Actress and comedian Sarah Silverman has taken to Instagram to criticize artists who are working under independent film waivers during the Writers Guild of America and Screen Actors Guild strikes, which have shut down most U.S. film and TV productions..........She added that she doesn’t know whether she is more angry at the actors for taking the jobs in low-budget films and TV shows — which will eventually end up on the platforms they are striking against — or at the union for granting the waivers.......

Okay, first of all, while I've seen an account of how she shares her tooth brush with her boyfriend, which I only noticed because that made bit of a splash with headlines.  Headlines!  Imagine that!  Otherwise, I really have no idea who she is or what she does, and I'm willing to bet that may be the true of the vast majority of people in America.

But that aside, the economic issues are all different for the movie and television industries than it was in the past, all of which is covered here and here, with Andrea Widburg saying:

You’ve probably wondered why modern Hollywood churns out mindless pap that’s intermixed with graphic sex and violence and an in-your-face embrace of ideologies that are intended to offend ordinary Americans and indoctrinate their children. It’s this dreadful product that explains why so few Americans care about the writers’ and actors’ strike, for they understand that it doesn’t affect Hollywood’s toxic product. However, John Nolte, in a fascinating article, explains that the strike matters because it risks exposing Hollywood’s deepest, darkest secret, which is that it’s dying.  Yes, you read that correctly: Hollywood is dying.

They're wanting a cut of the huge profits that no longer exist. Profits that are going to continue to shrink.   As I've noted, one thing that comes out clear as a bell over this.  It appears America could care less.  

These striking actors are the same brood who proclaimed they would leave America if Bush, and then if Trump was elected, and we've been waiting with bated breath for them to leave, and they just won't go.  To show just how clueless these nitwits are they actually thought such a threat meant something to Americans.    It appears America could care less if this strike could destroy Hollywood as we know it, and may be happy if it does.  

Will America's lack of concern shake them up? Or even better yet, will it rattle them when they realize a substantial number of Americans would like to see Hollywood go down the drain?  Nah, egos that large crowds out sufficient room in their brains for any real intellectual depth.   

They've been promoting and spouting every woke insanity there is, treating their audiences with contempt and disdain, and then are outraged when the public shuns their offerings.  Well, things are going to change from now on, whether for the better of for the worse remains to be seen.  Remember, leftism is like rust, it never sleeps. 

But in the meanwhile, more and more strikers will cross the picket line, and these companies are going to go overseas. They're going to hire foreign actors, foreign writers, directors, etc, and they're going to expand the use of AI! 

 Writers, Actors Rage at Netflix for Advertising $900k Artificial Intelligence Job, Paul Bois 28 Jul 2023 - Actors and writers have been raging at several major studios for seeking to hire artificial intelligence specialists in high-paying positions, which could potentially lead to the loss of jobs.  Since the Writers Guild of America (WGA) enacted its strike in May and the Screen Actors Guild (SAG-AFTRA) enacted its strike in July, the debate has centered on the future of AI in the entertainment industry. While writers fear that AI could potentially be employed to write or rewrite scripts, actors also fear that the technology could severely diminish their use on camera; the studios, however, seem to have chosen to embrace the technology and are now actively seeking to employ technicians to help implement it.

Based on the pictures I've seen for the next season of the Witcher, with the face of Henry Cavill and the physical body of Liam Hemsworth as Geralt of Rivia, this is going to happen, the owners will not back down.  These Hollywood strikers are in trouble, including these overpaid pampered and catered to stars. 

This is going to grow beyond anything their union can do to stop it.   From that point on all these mini talented "celebrities" with all their views on politics, geopolitics and social issues, will be parking cars, pumping gas, and waiting tables....again!  And major celebrities like Jane Fonda, Robert De Niro and a host of others will be ignored, and rightly so.

That's the way life goes.  The only thing in the world that's consistent is change.  Technology can, and will, replace an enormous number of jobs.  But people will have to change because everything changes, and the Hollywood misfits are long overdue for a dose of reality, and if that reality destroys Hollywood, the only people who will cry a river of tears are the woke misfits who destroyed it.  

Grading the DeSantis Economic Plan

August 1, 2023 by Dan Mitchell @ International Liberty

During the 2016 presidential cycle, I graded the tax reform plans of various presidential candidates based on factors such as marginal tax rates, double taxation, and fairness.

For the 2024 cycle, candidates have been disappointingly reluctant to make specific proposals about tax policy. Heck, most of them have very little to say about economic policy in general.

So I was excited when I read that Florida’s governor, Ron DeSantis, was unveiling an economic plan. The good news is that he seems to favor a smaller burden of government. The bad news is that he is not very specific.

His theme is to have a Declaration of Economic Independence.

There’s a lot to like on the above list, but also some items that may cause heartburn.

But my main reaction is that we don’t see details. Even if you go to the DeSantis website, there are very few specific policy proposals (though the ones I did find – such as support for full expensing and opposition to a central bank digital currency – are admirable).

The Wall Street Journal editorialized about the DeSantis plan and found many positive features.

Mr. DeSantis’s economic plan calls for “ambitious tax and regulatory reform,” including making permanent “full immediate expensing” for businesses. Ditto for today’s tax rates on personal income. …he says he’d simplify the tax code further, while purging “K Street carveouts and loopholes.” This is the right instinct, though we await specifics. …It says Mr. DeSantis’s appointee to lead the Federal Reserve would “focus on maintaining a stable dollar instead of the political pressures of the day.” Stable money is essential to rising incomes, and GOP candidates should make it the basis for any economic program. …The plan says he’d “support school choice nationwide…” As for college, he wants to stop government subsidies for “useless degrees” by making “universities, not taxpayers, responsible for the loans their students accrue.”

But the editors also worried that the Florida governor is using populist rhetoric…and perhaps even supporting populist policies.

Sometimes Mr. DeSantis sounds like an optimistic believer in economic freedom, arguing that the way to produce broad prosperity is to get government out of the way. With the next breath, he’s a Trumpian who wants industrial policy, speaks ominously of “large corporations,” and pits the middle class against “elites.” The Governor is trying to advance conservative policy while simultaneously appealing to Mr. Trump’s base. …He needs a vision for American renewal that transcends Mr. Biden’s plans to use big government for income redistribution and Mr. Trump’s desire to use it for political “retribution.”

Probably the most disappointing feature of the DeSantis plan is that absence of any plan to restrain the burden of government spending.

My former colleague Brian Riedl is similarly frustrated (though he focuses more on red ink while I care about excessive spending).

For what it is worth, DeSantis got very high scores for fiscal policy from both the Club for Growth and the National Taxpayers Union while serving as a Congressman last decade.

So I suspect he knows what should be done (including genuine entitlement reform), but is afraid Trump will attack him from the left.

Which is strange since he has a great opportunity to attack Trump from the right by pointing out his bad track record on spending (and bad future agenda on taxes).

 

Democrats Blame Republicans for the Heat

By Daniel Greenfield August 01, 2023 @ Sultan Knish Blog

 “Hot enough for you? Thank a MAGA Republican. Or better yet, vote them out of office,” Hillary Clinton tweeted.

The compulsive liar and failed presidential candidate who dodged multiple investigations into everything from trading cattle futures to mishandling classified information does know a few things about beating the heat. That’s why the Clintons used to “borrow” vacation homes from understanding campaign donors like a real estate developer whom Clinton named an ambassador to Switzerland and then had him buried in Arlington National Cemetery before he had to be dug up again and reburied when it turned out that instead of being on a ship that had been hit by a German torpedo, the war hero was actually going to college classes in Chicago.

Democrats could stop lying all the time or they could promise to save us from the weather.

Blaming your political opponents for the weather is not a new idea. Hillary’s predecessors during the Salem Witch Trials accused a woman of having caused “such a violent storm that we lost our main mast and rigging”. Any day now, Hillary will also accuse conservatives of curdling the milk, flying through the air and bewitching Americans into finding her unlikable.

Democrats are blaming Republicans for the heat while promising to fix it with lots of cash.

The “Extreme Heat Emergency Act” would treat heat as a natural disaster. Next up, cold will be a natural disaster. And then once temperature has been redefined as a natural disaster, much of the country will be a permanent natural disaster site and eligible for non-stop disaster relief.

Also coming is the “Stay Cool Act” because while Congress can’t fulfill any of its actual responsibilities, it can only do the things no one can do like changing the weather.

Extreme heat is hot in Washington D.C. right now. That’s a city where all the politicians used to flee over the summer long before anyone had coined the ‘global warming’ hoax. Even many of the Constitutional Convention delegates absconded from Philly once the summer heat kicked in.

Summer has always been hot. Before air conditioning those who could fled cities for the country and those who couldn’t, slept on fire escapes or in bathtubs. The only thing that made D.C. livable (assuming that it is livable) was the invention of air conditioning. But Dems would like to take away our conditioning while promising to save us from “extreme heat”.

Joe Biden, fresh off from announcing that he had “ended cancer as we know it”, promised to spend $150 million to protect Americans from “extreme heat”. That’s enough to buy 1 million air conditioners which could significantly cut down heat-related deaths. But the Biden administration isn’t doing that, instead it’s trying to ban air conditioners.

“For years, heat has been the — I have to admit I didn’t know it either. I thought it — I knew it was tough, but the number one weather-related killer is heat. The number one weather-related killer is heat. Six hundred people die annually from its effects,” Biden mumbled.

600 deaths isn’t bad. 15,000 people died in a heatwave in France. Only 5% of French households have air conditioners because they’re “bad for the planet.”

Thousands of people dying however is good for the planet.

That’s why Biden is cracking down on air conditioners, along with cars, gas stoves, and freedom of speech. The push for more “energy efficient” air conditioners will make them less affordable and hit poor people hardest. Those are also the people likeliest to die when it gets hot.

“Air-conditioning can and should be deployed as a tool for survival in extreme circumstances to the populations who need it. But the current reality is that most AC is still used by those who are least vulnerable in times that are far from extreme,” a Time article complained. “In 2016, 328 million Americans—that’s less than 5% of the world’s population—guzzled more energy for cooling than the 4.4 billion people living in all of Africa, Latin America, the Middle East, and Asia.”

So Biden won’t be handing out a million air conditioners. Instead he claims that “the Department of Housing and Urban Development is providing billions to communities to make buildings more efficient and to make more heat — make them more heat-resistant, opening cooling centers in — for residential areas and in the cities that the communities can go to to be safe.”

Cooling centers are common in French urban areas and thousands of people still die. Opening the equivalent of homeless shelters for air conditioning while pricing air conditioners out of the reach of working class people is no solution to anything except killing off the poor.

One study showed that air conditioning cut premature deaths on hot days by 80%.

Deaths directly caused by heat were twice as high in 1980 as they are today. That’s the year over 1,000 people died. So much for the increasing doom trend of global warming.

But according to Biden and Hillary Clinton, Republicans are causing the heat.

“MAGA extremists in Congress are trying to undo all this progress,” Biden ranted. “Not a single one of them — not a single Republican voted — voted for the Inflation Reduction Act, which had all this money for climate, which provides funding to con- — to combat climate change.”

The Inflation Increase Act did spend billions on the IRS and climate chargers for Tesla. Maybe Biden can explain how more IRS agents and electric car chargers for the rich will cool us off.

“As Americans Face Extreme Heat, MAGA Republicans Still Ignore Climate Change,” the DNC complains. The climate isn’t changing, it’s cycling. That’s what climates do. The political climate in D.C. cycles between corruption and outrage, and between claiming that we’re all about to freeze or fry and that only politicians who can’t stop stealing will save us from the weather.

“I don’t think anybody can deny the impact of climate change anymore,” Biden insisted.

Biden, as the owner of a beach house, obviously believes in climate change. That’s why he bought the Rehoboth Beach located in a flood zone in 2017 for nearly $3 million.

Either Biden is a bad investor or a bad liar.

Politicians like Biden and Obama who believe in global warming have a lot of beachfront property. And they can’t seem to stop buying the homes that they claim are doomed. They vow that they can save us from the weather, but what we really need saving from is them.

If you’re in a hot room where the temperature is stifling, the air tastes like molasses and you’re coated in so much sweat that the furniture is mildewed, don’t buy a politician, buy an air conditioner.  

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 donation. Thank you for reading.

Another Harridan Demands Special Treatment

July 31, 2023 By Mychal Massie @ Daily Rant

There are none more stenotopic when it comes to the pursuit of rejecting modernity from cradle to grave, than hate-filled Negro women who behaviorally redefine harridan.  That’s not ipse dixit.  It’s a fact verifiable on every quantifiable level.

In fact, so much so, that I’m beginning to wonder if there’s a pill that the pimps and harlots responsible for the prostitution of skin pigmentation and the discord sown by same, take each morning that enables them to slither through life spawning and sowing lies and the rejection of modernity for self promotion.

In fact, so much so, that I’m beginning to wonder if there’s a pill that the pimps and harlots responsible for the prostitution of skin pigmentation and the discord sown by same, take each morning that enables them to slither through life spawning and sowing lies and the rejection of modernity for self promotion.

 

 

The latest elapid to enter the metaphorical societal garden is called a NBC reporter going by the  name of Char Adams.

I thought Jam-mu (sic) Greene, Stacy Abrams, Joy(less) Reid, Maxine ‘drip-drip’ Waters who is as mad as a hatter, the Obama woman et al, were among the most spiritually and emotionally diminished of their species, but apparently Adams has decided to make the contest for same a horse race.

Everyone of the women I reference above have tried to elevate themselves to the top of the pile of stuff Mrs. Truman spent 25 years trying to get President Truman to call fertilizer.

Adams has made a herculean leap in the ascension of the referenced pile.  She has done it by inventing a complaint that truly forces all others into the bottom division.  This lacquered face woman has lodged complaint against society arguing that: “black people need ‘safe spaces to go camping and just experience the outdoors’ due to past racial discrimination.  According to blabber.buzz the sentiment was echoed by CNN, which has highlighted the “adventure gap” or “nature gap” in outdoor recreation, attributing it to a lack of diversity in what is often seen as a “White-dominated space.”

To address this gap, Adams proposes the creation of outdoor “safe spaces.” One individual interviewed in the article, Newton, explains the historical barriers faced by black people in accessing national and state parks, stating, “There is trauma related to being outdoors… It’s our natural birthright to be there, and there’s a lot of healing that we as a Black community must do in order to reconnect and deepen our relationship with the outdoors.”

This is beyond ridiculous! It is beyond reaching for something to complain about that doesn’t exist.  What would it take for bi-pedal life form to have a more corrosive mentality?  When did she and her kind truthfully become so enamored with hiking, camping and pitching tents?  What are the numbers of melanin dominant people who frequent the camping stores and hunting stores.  

Perhaps it has escaped Adams’ neo-Leninist polluted mind that not everyone is interested in hunting, hiking and camping.  What gives her the right to dictate who can go in the woods?  Talk about irony: her kind go to Africa and never go into the jungle.  They lounge around hotel pools and shopping districts.  And, not suddenly, we’re supposed to believe they’re interested in establishing a segregated Walden Pond?  How about they do what normal people do and build a place in their backyard?

One would think that considering all of the neighborhoods the people she is referencing have burned down, the only thing missing for a true camping experience was the hotdogs and burgers.

To address this wholly bogus gap, Adams proposes: the creation of outdoor “safe spaces.” One individual interviewed in the article, Newton, explains the historical barriers faced by black people in accessing national and state parks, stating, “There is trauma related to being outdoors… It’s our natural birthright to be there, and there’s a lot of healing that we as a Black community must do in order to reconnect and deepen our relationship with the outdoors.”

The need to go to this extreme to claim harm is indicative of a truly damaged mind.  It’s also imperative proof that the lies of racism and social inequality don’t exist in America.  If they existed there would be no plausible reason to invent something so poorly reasoned.

It might be a hard pill for Adams to swallow, but it’s everyone’s “natural birthright” to enjoy the great outdoors.  My wife and I spent weeks in the Blackfeet Nation, in Yellowstone National Park and touring the Grand Tetons.

Our son and his wife have hiked and camped some of the most wondrous mountain ranges and national parks, etc. in the world. No evil melaninless people jumped out to disrupt them in the outdoor habitat.

Adams and her kind are the progeny of the marriage of agitprop and socialist alchemy in higher education.  Her kind goes into the educational community and falls prey to the lies and Marxian propaganda.  As William F. Buckley noted: 

“We see how a number of energetic social innovators, plugging their grand designs, succeeded over the years in capturing the liberal intellectual imagination.  And since ideas rule the world, the ideologues, having won over the intellectual class, simply walked in and started to run things.”

Suffice it to say, that no group of people have been more disaffected than the contentious, mean-spirited women coming out of colleges and universities today, who base even their oxygen intake on being a crayon color.

These people are a shameful display of wasted opportunity.  They should be concerned about teaching women to be more than sperm repositories for men who have no intention of making a life with them.  They should view themselves as more than cash machines for Planned Parenthood.  Adams’ efforts would be best spent advocating for two-parent homes juxtaposed to boorish commonality and the rejection of modernity.

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About the Author

Mychal Massie

Mychal S. Massie is an ordained minister who spent 13 years in full-time Christian Ministry. Today he serves as founder and Chairman of the Racial Policy Center (RPC), a think tank he officially founded in September 2015. RPC advocates for a colorblind society. He was founder and president of the non-profit “In His Name Ministries.” He is the former National Chairman of a conservative Capitol Hill think tank; and a former member of the think tank National Center for Public Policy Research. Read entire bio here

The Bidens: "Stone Cold Crooked" (6) -- What Did China Get For Its Money?

July 30, 2023 Francis Menton @ Manhattan Contrarian

On July 27 (last Thursday), Representative James Comer of Kentucky appeared on Senator Ted Cruz’s podcast. Comer is the Chair of the House Oversight Committee, and the guy who has subpoenaed, and little-by-little is getting, the bank records of transfers from foreign governments to Biden family companies. Late that evening, Twitchy posted about an 8 minute clip from the podcast of Comer discussing some of the things his subpoenas had uncovered. Comer particulrly discusses one large payment from a Chinese government-connected entity, much of which went to various Bidens.

Separately on the same day, July 27, Representative Jim Jordan of Ohio released on Twitter (or is it now “X”?) a thread that he called “The Facebook Files, Part I.” Jordan, in addition to being the Chair of the House Judiciary Committee, also serves as Chair of is Select Subcommittee on Weaponization of the Government. In that capacity, Jordan had received a trove of internal Facebook communications documenting pressure from the White House to suppress various true information, notably information relating to the origin of the Covid virus in the Chinese Wuhan laboratory. The Wall Street Journal on July 28 had further reporting on the Facebook emails newly released by Jordan’s Subcommittee.

In other words, we’re starting to learn what China got in return for its investment in the Bidens.

I can’t find a transcript of the Comer appearance on Cruz’s podcast, but you can watch it at the Twitchy link, and in addition, the Twitchy piece contains a summary of what Comer said, posted on Twitter by a user going by the handle @KanekoaTheGreat.

Much of Comer’s discussion deals with the remarkable fact that some six major U.S. banks have filed no fewer than 170 Suspicious Activity Reports with respect to transactions conducted by Biden family members. (Comer specifically mentions JPM Chase, Wells Fargo, and Bank of America as among the banks that filed the SARs.). Comer (who says he is a former bank director) then says that filing of even two SAR reports as to an individual could make it difficult for that individual to open a bank account. (I’m not sure that that is true. However, I have several ex-colleagues who went on to become bank regulatory lawyers, and all of them have told me that the filing of a SAR against someone is by no means a routine step. So I have no doubt that 170 is truly extraordinary.)

And then we get to the heart of Comer’s presentation:

Rep. Comer highlighted one specific SAR linked to a $3 million wire from China to Biden's business partner, Rob Walker. This money was received in an inactive account that had maintained a $50,000 balance for ten years before the significant wire transaction from China. Within just 24 hours of receiving the wire, Walker initiated incremental payments to several Biden shell companies, eventually disbursing funds to four different Biden family members.

I guess you might understand why the sudden receipt of $3 million from China into an account that had otherwise been largely dormant might have caught the bank’s attention.

And now over to the almost simultaneous revelations from Rep. Jordan’s Weaponization Subcommittee.

Jordan’s revelations include texts of internal Facebook emails that document pressure from the administration, and specifically from the White House itself, to remove certain posts. One April 2021 email authored by Nick Clegg (Facebook’s President of Global Affairs) describes the technique used by one White House staffer by the name of Andy Slavitt (a Senior Advisor to President Biden) to induce Facebook to delete posts:

[Slavitt] was outraged — not too strong a word to describe his reaction — that we did not remove this post.

The particular post referred to there apparently remained up; but there were plenty of other posts that were removed in response to such White House pressure. From the WSJ:

Facebook removed content related to Covid-19 in response to pressure from the Biden administration, including posts claiming the virus was man-made, according to internal company communications viewed by The Wall Street Journal. The emails show Facebook executives discussing how they managed users’ posts about the origins of a pandemic that the administration was seeking to control.

The WSJ notes that the White House’s excuse for its conduct in seeking to have Facebook posts suppressed and/or deleted was that “its discussions were aimed at promoting the adoption of vaccines and other public-health goals.”

Well, maybe you could make that argument about seeking to have information suppressed regarding, for example, effectiveness or side effects of the vaccines. That conduct would still be unconstitutional and reprehensible in my view, but at least the argument makes sense. But how about suppression of the lab leak theory of Covid origin? Nothing about whether the lab leak theory is right or wrong goes to the question of whether taking the vaccine, or following other public health recommendations (like masks or lockdowns) is a good idea.

No, the suppression of the lab leak theory of Covid origins is purely a question of not making the Chinese rulers look bad. So why would the U.S. government get involved in any way in trying to make the Chinese rulers look good, right after they had unleashed Covid upon the world? One theory is that the President was paid off. The evidence for that theory is rather strong. Is there another theory?

Election 2024: Kennedy, Harris And More

By Robin Itzler  

Editor's Note:  Robin is heavily involved in California Republican politics, as a real conservative, so he life is interesting, and she publishes a free weekly e-mail news letter, Patriot Neighbors. If you would like to receive her weekly offerings just ask:  robinitzler@aol.com RK

Many DEMOCRATS do not want Joe Biden to run again; however, they are in a no-win situation. They can’t toss Kamala Harris aside because the doofus vice president checks two boxes: woman of color. We will know that “they” are thinking of doing “something” to derail Harris’ chances if the leftist media starts referring to her as “Jamaican-Indian” instead of a “woman of color.”

More than Harris’ ineptitude is the fact that once Joey isn’t the incumbent there will be debates. The DNC is very scared of Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. In “Establishment Democrats Can’t Ditch BidenBecause of Likable Old-Schoolers Like RFK Jr.” Robert J. Delahunty writes:

Kennedy is a Democrat, but an old-school Democrat — the kind of politician Joe Biden used to hold himself out to be but isn’t anymore. RFK Jr. talks about issues that really matter to middle- and working-class Americans, most of whom are being left in the dust under Biden’s economy.  These are people who worry about how to afford basic housing, pay their car loans, meet next month’s credit card bills, or, increasingly, even find food. 

The THIRD-PARTY situation (No Labels and Green Party) scares the DNC since more votes would likely come from Democrats rather than Republicans. According to Jim Kessler, vice president for policy at Third Way, a centrist-left policy and advocacy organization:

“For a Democrat to win a national election, they need to win three out of five self-identified moderate voters. If you have a third-party candidate that is running from the center, it’s siphoning off those that consider themselves ideologically centrist, and Democrats are overly reliant on that block of voters.”

On the REPUBLICAN side, we know Marxist Democrats used the COVID “scamdemic” as a basis for 2020 election interference. Now, they are using the judiciary. No matter who you support in the Republican primary, ELECTION INTERFERENCE attacks on President Donald Trump is an attack on all Americans who believe in fair elections.

Various Conservative and Republican groups are asking Patriots to contact House Speaker Representative Kevin McCarthy and urge him to use the power of the House purse to STOP ELECTION INTERFERENCE. All Congressional business should cease until Trump election interference is stopped. Trial date(s) should be changed to after the November 2024 presidential election. To contact Rep. McCarthy:

Phone: 202- 225-2915 - Write: 2468 Rayburn House Office Building, Washington DC 20515

Abandon Fossil Fuels, Empower China

Don Ritter Jul 30, 2023 

Autocratic Producers (primarily Saudi Arabia, the Emirates, Russia, Iran, Qatar, Venezuela and China) and certain democratic (or semi-democratic) Consumers (fossil fuel-dependent nations, mostly in the Global South), are uniting over oil, gas, coal, petrochemicals, natural gas-derived fertilizers and wind-solar-battery raw materials that are essential for building and maintaining modern industrial nations. 

The implications are enormous, for global commerce, and especially for America. 

China straddles both worlds. It’s the world’s largest coal producer and consumer – and the second-largest fossil fuels consumer after the USA. Although the United States remains the planet’s largest oil and gas producer, government policies are restricting investment in future domestic production, forcing U.S. companies to scour the world to increase production. 

The autocratic Producers clearly benefit from America’s declining production, because major Consumers (India, Brazil, Indonesia, South Africa and others) that buy oil, gas and petrochemicals must feed their people, fuel their vehicles, and sustain or grow their economies at reasonable cost. 

Giant energy Producer Russia continues to sustain its economy and finance its war in Ukraine, as it waits for Western electorates to lose patience and reduce military aid. Moscow counts on continued fossil fuel sales to Consumer countries, particularly China. 

China is importing record amounts of oil and gas from Russia, making it the largest financier of Russia’s Ukraine war. China’s dual-use technologies also enter indirectly into the Russian war machine. Courtesy of Saudi Arabia’s Aramco, China is building new refineries and becoming a major petrochemicals producer – even as Biden energy policies curtail U.S. refinery and petrochemical investments. 

Petrochemicals fuel or provide building blocks for just about everything. They therefore add tremendous value to the crude oil China imports from Russia. 

Meanwhile, America and the West pursue sweeping policies on “manmade climate change.” That means they deride and downgrade the value of fossil fuels that are the lifeblood of all industrialized nations: Producers, Consumers and those fortunate or wise enough to play both roles. 

Western government attitudes toward fossil fuels are derived from fears of a “growing climate crisis.” Those attitudes are creating a deep and abiding conflict of interest between the West and both the Producer and Consumer nations that view fossil-fuel-dependent economic growth as paramount. 

Therein lies the conundrum. 

If the United States and West will no longer be major Producers, where do Consumers turn for the energy and products they require? Unfortunately, they must turn to Producers – which happen to be autocratic states, which respond to those needs by increasing their oil and gas production, to meet global demand, while simultaneously bolstering their economies and strengthening their autocratic power. 

Producers friendly to the West (Saudi Arabia, the Emirates and Qatar, e.g.) are not the problem right now. But others are. 

In a nutshell, the West’s fossil fuel cutbacks are being replaced on the global economic, strategic and geo-political stage by an expanding alliance of autocratic Producers that are serving Consumers not just as energy and raw materials suppliers, but as political partners. 

Moreover, if those Producers continue replacing America’s and the West’s declining oil, gas and coal supplies, the climate-focused nations will decline as economic and military powers; their influence over climate issues will diminish; and the overall human contribution to climate change will actually grow, as Consumers pursue their own bests interests, which are inextricably linked to fossil fuel use, now and decades from now. 

China is already the world’s largest emitter of greenhouse gases. It has no intention of abandoning its economic, military or strategic ambitions – all of which rely on fossil fuels. But it has now effectively, though not officially, abandoned the Paris Climate Accords. That alone likely makes America’s and the West’s fossil fuel sacrifices on the climate altar both “painful and pointless.” 

Ironically¸ the U.S. is now importing environmentally dirty crude oil from autocratic, adversarial Producer Venezuela – rather than expanding its own domestic production. Meanwhile, natural gas exports from Russia to Europe will soon be replaced by Exxon and Chevron production in Algeria. 

Even more ironic (or insane), China dominates the world’s wind, solar and battery technologies, their raw material supply chains and their manufacturing. U.S. politicians may be ramping up talk about reducing dependence on China for critical items related to American economic and national security, they are demanding and pursuing policies that make the USA and West ever more dependent on so-called “clean renewable” energy from wind, solar, battery and fossil powerhouse China. 

We are witnessing a geopolitical shift of historic proportions. Fossil fuel-friendly China and other autocratic Producers will be the biggest winners; fossil fuel-repressing democratic America and the West the biggest losers. 

Indeed, democratic Consumers are already and increasingly beholden to the autocratic Producers. That’s evident from the role that energy supply and demand has likely played in persuading some 80 nations to remain neutral on the Ukraine war. 

Russia and OPEC members know the largest and ever-expanding market for their oil, gas and raw material products is world-leading manufacturer China. That global power, in turn, can more and more manufacture whatever the Producer nations need. China gets fuels and raw materials to feed its vast energy-hungry, export-oriented industries and immense agricultural economy. Other Consumer nations likewise purchase or trade for fossil fuel products. 

The symbiosis between Producers and Consumers is clear. 

Meanwhile, no matter how hard they try to deny these realities, or “transition to renewable energy,” The USA and West will remain dependent on fossil fuels from Producers for decades to come. The U.S. Energy Information Agency predicts that even in 2050 America will still be 65% dependent on fossil fuels for its overall energy needs, versus 79% today. Is a 14% reduction worth all the sacrifices? 

The still-growing Chinese manufacturing and military powerhouse will be enriched by the inevitable shift away from Western manufacturers, who will see their costs and prices increase without reliable, reasonably priced fossil-fuel energy and derivative products. 

China’s 1.5 billion people – repressed, surveilled, cajoled and punished for social infractions – are nonetheless disciplined, educated, and increasingly productive and wealthy. With the growing prowess and sophistication of its military, autocratic China is the biggest beneficiary of all from the Western strategy of abandoning fossil fuels. 

If the USA and West continue along their anti-fossil-fuel path, it is quite possible that autocratic Producers will soon dominate the world – while China becomes their biggest Consumer and the world’s preeminent player, surpassing even the United States. Is this the path we really want to follow? 

Don Ritter holds a Science Doctorate from MIT and served fourteen years on the House of Representatives Energy and Commerce and Science and Technology Committees. After leaving Congress, he created and led the National Environmental Policy Institute. 

He was a National Academy of Sciences Fellow in the USSR, speaks fluent Russian, and was Ranking Member on the Congressional Helsinki Commission and founding Co-Chair of the Baltic States-Ukraine Caucus. He is a Trustee of the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation and Museum and co-chairs its Capital Campaign. 

 

Biden’s Anti-Semitism Czar Condemns Israel, Not Anti-Semites

By Daniel Greenfield August 01, 2023 @ Sultan Knish Blog

In the early days of June, Deborah Lipstadt, Biden’s antisemitism czar, flew to the United Arab Emirates and condemned Israel’s government while claiming that she worries that the Netanyahu government’s defense of Jews against Islamic terrorism might worsen antisemitism.

This was exactly the kind of excuse for antisemitism that the new White House strategy on antisemitism that she was touting was supposed to stop. Instead, the antisemitism czar promoting the antisemitism strategy was falling into the same kind of behavior.

Since the release of the Biden administration’s National Strategy to Counter Antisemitism, Lipstadt appears to have condemned three foreign governments: Israel, Hungary and Russia.

Lipstadt blasted Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, accusing him of “rhetoric that clearly evokes Nazi racial ideology”, for criticizing Muslim migration into Europe.

Was Lipstadt functioning as the envoy to combat antisemitism or Islamophobia?

She also condemned Russian ruler Vladimir Putin for suggesting that Ukraine’s Zelensky “is not Jewish, that he is a disgrace to the Jewish people.”

Lipstadt condemned three countries. One of them was Israel. During this same period, the Palestinian Authority, which is funding the terrorists who have already killed 24 people in Israel this year, continues to praise the killers, describing them as “heroic martyrs”.

“Why shouldn’t we burn the ground under the Jews’ feet?” a member of the Palestine Islamic Scholars Association had asked. “Our young men in Palestine and abroad crave to drink your blood. By Allah, we are thirsty for your blood.”

Lipstadt apparently didn’t think this sufficiently evoked Nazi ideology to bother condemning it.

The pattern here is fairly obvious to spot. The antisemitism envoy’s condemnations have less to do with Jews than with defending some sort of leftist cause.

Lipstadt also complained that Elon Musk’s attacks on George Soros were antisemitic.

It’s not that Lipstadt is always wrong, it’s that her condemnations tend to be selective politically motivated attacks pre-approved by leftists and in defense of leftist personalities or agendas.

Lipstadt is not really there to fight antisemitism, but to enlist the fight against antisemitism in the larger leftist rolodex of causes and then maybe occasionally she will be allowed to condemn an episode of leftist antisemitism, like that of Roger Waters, without drawing too much of a backlash.

What has Lipstadt accomplished in the fight against antisemitism?

The ADL announced that the Associated Press had agreed to change the spelling of ‘anti-semitism’ to ‘antisemitism’ thus solving the problem once and for all.

“When you fight prejudice & hatred, you don’t win many battles. But we won this one. Bravo AP,” Lipstadt tweeted.

Lipstadt is really here to sell the Jewish community on the idea that the Biden administration is dedicated to fighting antisemitism. She has been hard at work conducting briefings for assorted establishment Jewish groups like the JCRC of Boston and the National Council of Jewish Women, which had previously announced that it would keep working with the Women’s March despite its antisemitism.

But the administration has more than one mouth on antisemitism. And it talks out of both of them.

While Lipstadt was selling Jews on the administration’s antisemitism strategy, Douglas Emhoff,

Kamala’s husband joined an army of academics, think tankers, activists, politicians, writers and billionaires flying into Colorado.

This year the Aspen Festival wanted to talk about antisemitism and Emhoff, the ‘Second Gentleman’, appeared on a panel titled, ‘The Resurgence of the “Oldest Hatred”: The Effort to Combat Anti-Semitism’ moderated by antisemitism expert Katie Couric.

Emhoff had previously dismissed any discussion about antisemitism and Israel, claiming, “I’m just focused on antisemitism” and that students want to “feel a part of a broader coalition in dealing with hate”. Israel, implicitly, would just get in the way of uniting Jews and leftists against antisemitism.

Lipstadt wasn’t at Aspen, instead, the other White House representative was Homeland Security Advisor Elizabeth Sherwood-Randall, an Obama administration vet.

Also present was Erik Ward of Race Forward. Ward, a black activist who had worked for the Southern Poverty Law Center, had defended Black Lives Matter against accusations of antisemitism and his previous discussions of antisemitism had liberally quoted leftist anti-Israel activists and utilized the Nexus definition of antisemitism concocted by anti-Israel activists which had received equal billing in the White House’s antisemitism strategy.

Neither Emhoff nor Sherwood-Randall mentioned Israel. And no one at the White House was willing to even go on the record on where it sees the line between antisemitism and anti-zionism: the key break between the traditional International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of antisemitism and the Nexus one.

An anonymous White House official refused to go on the record and referred a Jewish Insider reporter to the ‘text’ of the strategy.

“It addresses this exactly the way that we want to do so,” the anonymous official claimed. “We are sticking with the approach that we’ve had on this matter, and we’re moving forward with all the agency actions to try to make a real difference in people’s lives.”

The circular statements and the refusal to go in-depth are not the marks of a policy the administration wants to promote, but one that it is seeking to hide. The strategy was the result of an uncomfortable compromise between advocates for the Jewish community and the Left.

It was this compromise that led to only indirect mentions of an Islamic attack on a synagogue in Texas or other forms of antisemitism beyond white supremacy. It was also this compromise that led the antisemitism strategy to give the Nexus definition of antisemitism second billing after the IHRA one. And while compromise is part of politics, Lipstadt, the antisemitism czar, and other apologists have repeatedly misled the Jewish community about what’s actually in it.

“The strategy says the United States government embraces the IHRA definition,” Lipstadt claimed. But the strategy also says that it “welcomes and appreciates the Nexus Document” by anti-Israel activists. And, louder than words, has been the silence of Emhoff and White House officials on the question of antisemitism and Israel.

While the Biden administration uses Lipstadt to sell the Jewish community on the antisemitism strategy, it sends off Emhoff to talk to liberal elites about antisemitism without mentioning Israel.

Can you have an antisemitism strategy that is half not antisemitic and half that is?

The inclusion of CAIR, an Islamist antisemitic group and of the Nexus definition embrace the antisemitic side of the antisemitism strategy, but the real kicker has been the lack of substance on the side that is supposed to actually be fighting antisemitism.

The anti-Israel Left succeeded in getting a seat at the table when defining antisemitism, while the Jewish community has been sold more self-serving delusions from a communal establishment that specializes in pretending to be insiders while accomplishing nothing.

Lipstadt has been content to act as an administration attack dog rather than to follow antisemitism wherever it leads. Worse still, she has misled Jews into thinking that the Biden administration is ready to do the same thing and to fight antisemitism from Islamists and leftists.

It’s not.

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 donation. Thank you for reading.