On Ukraine, NATO, America, Comedians, and Environmentalists

Putin did not invade Ukraine while Trump was president. Putin feared Trump. Neither Putin nor anyone else fears Joe Biden.

by Dennis Prager for American Greatness

A widely offered explanation for the Russian invasion of Ukraine is that Russia—which at this time essentially means President Vladimir Putin—fears the expansion of NATO to its borders, especially Ukraine. The argument is often presented as an analogy: How would the United States react if Mexico had a mutual defense pact with Russia and received weapons from Russia?

A second explanation is that Russia is “paranoid” as a result of its having been devastated by the invasions of Napoleon’s France in the 19th century and Hitler’s Germany in the 20th century. This was the excuse that many professional excuse makers made for the Soviet Union’s shooting down—without any warning—Korean Air Lines flight 007 in 1983, killing all 269 passengers and crew. 

“The Russians are paranoid” became a widespread explanation. Seymour Hersh, the best-known New York Times investigative reporter for decades, wrote a book on the shooting down of KAL 007. As described in a 1986 New York Times book review, “On the Soviet side, writes Mr. Hersh, there was paranoia.”

When I was a graduate student at Columbia University’s Russian Institute, I regularly encountered the “paranoid” explanation for Soviet/Russian policies. It struck me then, and even more so now, as pathologic or false, or both. Russia is by far the largest country on Earth, spanning approximately one-ninth of all the world’s land surface. When that fact is combined with Russia’s vast nuclear weaponry, the “paranoia” explanation for Russian aggression is rendered absurd.

It is even more absurd when one considers the countries Russia allegedly fears will invade them. Which one of their Western-border countries—Latvia, Estonia, Lithuania, Moldova, Belarus, Ukraine—is likely to invade Russia? Wasn’t every one of them invaded by Russia? Shouldn’t every one of them be paranoid? 

We’ll end the “paranoid” discussion with this rule of history: Generally speaking, wars are either between two police states or between a police state and a free state. And the latter are nearly always initiated or provoked by the police state. Russia has nothing to fear from its neighbors. Its neighbors have plenty to fear from Russia. 

America Is Watching, Not Intervening

I know of no American, on the Right or the Left, who has called for sending the U.S. military into Ukraine. But every American should feel awful—morally and as an American—about America sitting by and watching the first major invasion of a peaceful country since Hitler and Stalin. One reason is that since World War II, the weaker nations of the world have all held onto the hope that should they be attacked by a stronger nation, Americans would come to their aid.

America is aiding Ukraine with arms and economic sanctions, but as I watch peaceful Ukraine devoured by aggressive Russia, I can’t help but think that it appears that evil will triumph—and lead to more evil on Earth. I have never agreed with the throwaway line, “America is not the world’s policeman.” Does the world not need a policeman? And if not America, who? China? Russia? The U.N.?

If the strongest boy in high school, one whom the weakest boys and girls looked to for protection, decided one day to watch rather than to protect them as they were beaten by the school bully, even if there was good reason for the lack of intervention, wouldn’t that be a very sad day? And wouldn’t it affect the way the protector saw himself? 

Most Americans see themselves as protectors of the weak against bully nations. This is the first time in our lifetime that America has abandoned that role.

The World’s Most Courageous Political Leader?

By general consensus among the world’s media and world’s nations, Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is the most courageous leader in the world today.

For many people, this is particularly remarkable since Zelenskyy’s professional background is that of a comedian. It strikes most people as amazing that a comedian turns out to be the world’s most inspiring leader.

That, of course, was the reason so many dismissed Donald Trump when he ran for president: “He has no political experience, he’s just a wealthy real estate developer.” However, that real estate developer also turned out to be the most courageous leader in the world. Honest haters of Trump must at least acknowledge his courage—just as supporters must acknowledge his lack of a filter between his brain and his mouth. 

It was Trump who had the courage to demand that our NATO allies live up to their obligations with regard to military spending. Ironically, thanks to Putin, the NATO countries are finally doing so. It was Trump who uncovered a deep state of corruption in nearly every major American governmental institution. It was Trump who took on the mainstream media, regarded by half of America as little better than Pravda, the Soviet newspaper. It was Trump who had the courage to do what president after president and Congress after Congress called for but never acted on: moving the American embassy in Israel to Israel’s capital city, Jerusalem. He did this despite the opposition of almost every world leader and his own State Department. If that’s not courage, what is?

And it remains a fact that Putin did not invade Ukraine while Trump was president. Putin feared Trump. Neither Putin nor anyone else fears Joe Biden.

It is therefore not at all surprising that a comedian is the world’s most courageous leader. It is surprising that people still think a lifelong political career produces leaders. Biden is a lifelong politician and, as his behavior during COVID-19 showed, may well be the least courageous president in American history. 

Environmentalists Made the Invasion Possible

It is overwhelmingly likely that American and European environmentalists made the Russian invasion of Ukraine possible. Under Trump, America became energy independent and was even able to supply Europe with energy. But the environmental movement, which dominates the Democratic Party and nearly every western European country, has made Russia the major supplier of natural gas to Europe, and especially to the most important country on the European continent, Germany.

The environmentalist movement uses climate change to achieve its primary objectives: undoing the West’s economic foundations, reshaping the Western way of life, dismantling capitalism, and transferring wealth to the Third World. They will pursue these aims at any cost—whether crippling inflation, energy blackouts, even the strengthening of Russia and China. 

If you really believe climate change poses an “existential threat” to human life, there is no price too high to pay in order to eliminate fossil fuel-based energy. That includes empowering and enriching evil men.

X22, Christian Patriot News, and more-March 3rd

 

Evening. Here's tonight's news:

The Biden Inflation Octopus ~ VDH

In the end it doesn’t matter whether Biden was deluded or diabolical. Come November, Americans will rightfully blame him for willfully damaging their lives.

by Victor Davis Hanson for American Greatness

The Democrats will suffer historic losses in the November midterms. 

This disaster for their party will come about not just because of the Afghanistan debacle, an appeased Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, the destruction of the southern border, the supply chain mess, or their support for critical race theory demagoguery.  

The culprit for the political wipeout will be out-of-control inflation—and for several reasons.  

First, the Biden Administration is in such denial of inflation that it sounds to Americans simply callous and indifferent to the misery it has unleashed. 

Biden officials have scoffed at price spikes as “transitory.” Or they have preposterously claimed spiraling costs are a concern only to the elite. They blame the Ukraine crisis. Or they fault the out-of-office bogeyman, Donald Trump.  

The administration assures us that consumer prices are only rising at an annualized rate of 7.5 percent—as if the steepest increase in 40 years actually is not all that bad. 

Yet the middle class knows that inflation is far worse when it comes to the stuff of life: buying a house, car, gas, meat, or lumber. 

Second, inflation is an equal opportunity destroyer of dreams. It undermines rich and poor, Democrats and Republicans, conservatives and liberals. It unites all tribes, all ideologies, all politics against those who are perceived to have birthed the monstrous octopus that squeezes everything and everyone it touches.  

The conservative passbook holder sees his meager life savings eaten away. The liberal teacher’s car payments stretch from six to 10 years.  

The prospective Republican home buyer sees his hard-earned potential down payment eaten away each month. The Democratic carpenter feels his new higher wages buy even less.  

Third, inflation is ubiquitous, inescapable, omnipotent—and humiliating. It destroys personal dignity. And its toxicity is insidious, sort of like seeping, odorless, colorless, but nevertheless lethal carbon monoxide. 

Unlike now-unpopular critical race theory, it cannot be avoided for a day. You cannot tune it out like one does the mess in Afghanistan or the now nonexistent southern border. Inflation attacks everyone in 24/7, 360-degree fashion.  

It belittles you at the gas station. It downsizes you at the food market. It humiliates you in the obscene real estate market. It makes you look stupid when you are paying for a new car. It ridicules you when you buy lumber. Suddenly you apologize that you really cannot afford your child’s braces. 

Fourth, inflation undermines a civil and ordered society. It unleashes a selfish “every man for himself” mentality, the Hobbesian cruelty of a “war of all against all.” 

Inflation is the economic and emotional equivalent of smash-and-grab or carjacking. It is a brazen robber in broad daylight that so infuriates Americans by its boldness. It convinces them their very civilization is dying.  

One day a friendly, hard-to-find plumber announces that he will work for cash only to avoid taxes that all others must pay. You notice at your neighborhood Walgreens suddenly lots of once inexpensive stuff is now pricey—and locked up because of shoplifting fears.  

You sense that price stickers are mysteriously glued on top of older, original, and cheaper price stickers.  

In warranted paranoia, you begin to wonder if you are being price-hiked by the car salesman, the barber, or the mechanic, and conclude that in order to survive, you too should price-hike others. 

The noble fool who won’t play the inflation roulette game is reduced to the clueless standing naif victim of musical chairs—with nowhere to sit once the music ceases. 

Fifth, Americans know that our current inflation is self-induced, not a product of a war abroad, an earthquake, or the exhaustion of gas and oil deposits. 

Biden ignored the natural inflationary buying spree of consumers who were released from being locked down for nearly two years unable to spend. 

Instead, he encouraged gorging that huge demand by printing trillions of dollars of funny money for all sorts of new redistributionist entitlements, green projects, and pet congressional programs. 

The Biden Administration eroded the work ethic. It kept labor non-participation rates high by subsidizing with federal checks those staying at home. 

It nihilistically slashed gas and oil production by canceling federal leases, oilfields, and pipelines while pressuring banks not to lend for fracking. 

In just a year, Biden reduced America from the greatest producer of gas and oil in the history of civilization to an energy panhandler begging the Saudis and Russians to pump more of the oil that America needs but will not tap for itself. 

Americans know the inflation octopus was willfully birthed. They are confused only whether Team Biden unleashed it out of incompetence—or a neosocialist idea of eroding the value of money for those who had it while gifting cash to those who didn’t. 

Or was Biden deluded by crackpot “modern monetary theory,” the fool’s gold that claims printing money ensures prosperity? 

In the end, it doesn’t matter whether Biden was deluded or diabolical. Come November, Americans will rightfully blame him for willfully damaging their lives. 

Casey DeSantis, wife of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, is cancer free

 

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. – Gov. Ron DeSantis announced in a video shared Thursday that his wife, Casey DeSantis, is cancer free.

The governor shared in October 2021 his wife, 41, was diagnosed with breast cancer. She finished her final chemotherapy treatment in January.  

“After going through both treatment and surgery for breast cancer, she is now considered cancer free,” Ron DeSantis said in the video. “... She still has more to do, but I’m confident she’s going to make a full recovery. Thank you for all your thoughts and prayers.”

During her fight with cancer, the governor called his wife a “very, very strong woman.”

“She fights. She’s tough,” DeSantis said. “I mean she’s basically resigned that, you know, better that she has to go through it than others who may not be able to handle it as well. And that’s just, that’s why I love her. She’s an exceptional person.”

Casey DeSantis released a statement of her cancer-free update.

“There are no words to express how truly blessed, grateful and humbled I am to hear the words cancer free,” she said in a release. “To those who are in the fight, know there is hope. Have faith and stay strong.”  

https://www.clickorlando.com/news/local/2022/03/03/casey-desantis-wife-of-florida-gov-ron-desantis-is-cancer-free/   

Standing Up to Putin Means Ditching Net-Zero

Geopolitical realism requires energy realism.

by Rupert Darwall for American Greatness

Vladimir Putin’s inflammatory speech, in which he set out his aim to reconstitute the Russian empire and blamed Lenin for its demise, and his decision to back this up with a full-scale invasion of Ukraine, signals the return of geopolitics. Until now, Western leaders have been saying that the biggest threat to the world is climate change. Now comes Putin armed with nuclear weapons, tanks, and thousands of troops declaring his intent to overthrow Europe’s post-Cold War order.

The dilemma for the West: you can’t win a geopolitical conflict lasting years or decades with an economy powered intermittently by wind turbines and solar panels.

From the start of the Biden presidency, tensions existed within the administration between geopolitical realists, notably Secretary of State Antony Blinken, and climate hawks led by the president’s climate envoy John Kerry, who saw friendly relations with China as an essential ingredient for any global deal on the environment. Although Blinken’s position that Chinese expansionism is the biggest threat to the interests of the United States now has the upper hand, the administration’s anti-fossil-fuel policies will progressively degrade America’s capacity to prevail against its geopolitical adversaries.

Expanded pipeline infrastructure is critical to American energy security. One of the Biden administration’s first actions was canceling the license for the Keystone XL pipeline. Thanks to inadequate infrastructure connecting New England to the rest of the country and the century-old Jones Act—requiring that all goods moving by water between American ports travel on ships built, owned, and manned by Americans—the winter of 2018 saw Russian liquefied natural gas being brought ashore in Boston Harbor.

Currently, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is mulling a climate disclosure rule. The intent is to strengthen the hand of Wall Street and woke institutional investors to impose, in effect, an embargo on investment in domestic oil and gas production. The logic appears to be that domestically produced oil and gas incurs climate risk, whereas imported energy from beyond Wall Street’s writ does not. And just last month, the Pentagon released a net-zero plan for the army, which would see it relying on an all-electric, non-tactical vehicle fleet by 2035.

It could be even worse. If John Kerry and the climate hawks had their way, the United States would be like Europe. The European Union is a paper empire. Its power is bureaucratic, deriving from rules and regulations. It is institutionally incapable of thinking and acting geopolitically because the EU is meant to be the exemplar of a post-geopolitical world, in which national sovereignty is dissolved in a supra-national, rules-based order. Net-zero and the UN climate process represent EU-style supranationalism at a global level. “Climate neutrality is our European destiny,” European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen said two years ago when she announced the European Climate Law setting a legally binding target of net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050.

The push for wind and solar power, which started in Germany with the Renewable Energy Act of 2000, means greater reliance on supplies of Russian natural gas to keep the lights on. Europe’s dependence on Russian gas is stark. At an EU meeting last week to discuss possible sanctions against Moscow, Italy’s prime minister, Mario Draghi, pleaded that any measures “should be concentrated on narrow sectors without including energy.”

This applies to Britain, too. When it comes to climate and energy, Britain (despite Brexit) remains functionally part of the EU, regardless of cost and the geostrategic consequences. In late 2019, Boris Johnson banned commercial fracking. Earlier this month, the British government ordered that concrete be poured into the country’s two exploratory shale wells and for them to be abandoned. The move was blasted by Cuadrilla Resources CEO Francis Egan, who pointed out that the Bowland shale formation could supply 50 years of current U.K. gas demand. “The value of just 10% of the in-place British resource would be approximately £3.3 trillion ($4.5 tn),” Egan wrote.

The Soviet Union began supplying gas to western Europe in the 1960s. West German chancellor Willy Brandt quickly saw a political opportunity to do business with Moscow based on his belief that Moscow held the key to German reunification. (For the same reason, the East German communist regime strongly opposed the burgeoning Soviet-West German gas trade.) Not once during the Cold War did Moscow renege on a gas contract. In this respect, Putin, who has a deep understanding of the gas industry, is different from his Soviet predecessors. As a result of the breakup of the Soviet Union, Russia ended up with the gas and Ukraine the pipeline and transit fees – a source of intense frustration to Putin.

In 2009, the Russian gas company Gazprom temporarily cut off exports to Europe. The Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline, like Nord Stream 1, takes the most direct route from Siberia to Europe, bypassing Ukraine. Credit the Biden administration for helping German chancellor Olaf Scholz over the line in suspending Nord Stream 2—but if Moscow controls Ukraine, Putin will have solved his Ukrainian transit problem by extinguishing Ukrainian independence. On the other hand, Germany’s and the EU’s net-zero policies will deepen their dependence on Putin’s goodwill as they increase their exposure to unreliable wind and solar, phase out coal, and—in the case of Germany and Belgium—prematurely close their nuclear power stations. Strategically, that’s a win for Putin.

Geopolitical realism requires energy realism. It also demands realism about the prospects for net-zero. Last week, Alok Sharma, the British president of the U.N. COP 26 climate conference, maintained that net-zero “remains alive,” but admitted, “the pulse is weak.” Achieving this barely-alive objective requires global emissions to be cut in half by the end of this decade. That’s not going to happen. The basic math of the West versus the Rest’s greenhouse gas emissions means that what the West does has a diminishing effect on the trajectory of global emissions.

In an age when Russia invades a sovereign state on a baseless pretext and denies its right to exist, it’s high time Western leaders got real. The West either understands what is at stake and plays by the rules of geopolitics or the West loses. The speed with which the West adjusts to this new reality will determine how much ground Russia and China can take.

Joe Biden’s State Of The Union Previewed Dems’ Fake Attempt To Walk Back Their Culture War

Until Democrats are willing to drop 

truly radical policies like the Equality Act, 

it’s all smoke and mirrors meant to distract voters.

Emily Jashinsky reporting for The Federalist

Joe Biden’s ”State of the Union” address clearly marked an attempt by his White House to make their culture war seem like an afterthought. It’s not, of course, as evidenced by the president’s description of abortion as “health care” and his demand that Congress pass the radical Equality Act. But the bulk of Biden’s speech focused on “meat and potatoes,” as Chris Hayes repeatedly claimed during MSNBC’s coverage.

It’s true, Biden dedicated much of his address to Ukraine, infrastructure, the economy, health care, and Covid-19. He earned a robust round of applause with a line that said, “We should all agree the answer is not to defund the police. It is to fund the police.” He touched on guns, immigration, and the environment, but they were hardly his focus. Notably, Joy Reid lamented the absence of Jan. 6 from Biden’s address, arguing it was characteristically devoid of “red meat.”

Reid was right to find that balance remarkable. Rather than signaling a shift away from Democrats’ scorched-earth culture war, Biden’s speech signaled a shift away from the party’s strategy of obsessing over identity politics. This comes with an enormous caveat: Democrats cannot and will not meaningfully make any such pivot beyond rhetoric.

Until they’re willing to drop truly radical policies like the Equality Act, it’s all smoke and mirrors meant to distract voters from what they’re actually doing to the culture. Democrats cannot simply pretend the summer of 2020 and the lockdowns never happened, no matter how much the media might help them try, because the party has now spent years committing to inflated definitions of bigotry that would condemn any moderation from their positions.

Sure, voters have short memories and the media is complicit. But these definitions are now baked into our institutions. They are ingrained in the minds of a generation. They’re clung to by journalists and activists that Democrats need to please.

Samuel Goldman of George Washington University disrupted the annual flood of breathless SOTU tweets with a great reminder on Tuesday night. “Guys, this speech is not for you,” he wrote. “It’s for D-leaners who disapprove of the administration and these are the lines that worked for them in focus groups. Don’t overthink it.”

That’s exactly right and it’s also why Biden’s “meat and potatoes” tone felt different. From recalls and losses like Terry McAuliffe’s to Biden’s dismal ratings to Covid missteps and brutal new polls, establishment Democrats (and even their allies in the corporate press) are worried enough about their power to start making small sacrifices in the culture war, even if they’re superficial.

And they have to be superficial, because establishment Democrats have spent years emboldening the cultural left, so much that small departures from dogma are now treated as bigotry by a vocal minority of their base. While those voices may be a minority of the base, many of them are very powerful, and they can weaponize all of Democrats’ prior cultural leftism against them to level accusations of racism and sexism and all the other -isms over rhetoric alone. See this tweet Rep. Cori Bush, D-Mo., blasted out to her 900,000 followers after the speech.

Biden’s heavy focus on “meat and potatoes” signaled a cynical but long overdue attempt by the Democratic establishment to convince voters they’re not frenzied culture warriors. Unfortunately for Biden and his party, they are indeed frenzied culture warriors and they’re going to have a difficult time proving otherwise without alienating the radicals they’ve tried so hard to appease. It’s at least good news that voters are rejecting cultural leftism so clearly, even Beltway liberals are noticing.

Whoopi Goldberg Enters Orbit Over Lauren Boebert Heckling Joe Biden

Bonchie reporting for RedState 

It’s not exactly news that Whoopi Goldberg is a lunatic. After all, this is the same person that was suspended from her television show for two weeks after she suggested (multiple times) that the Holocaust wasn’t predicated on race. I guess she thought Adolf Hitler just didn’t like the little hats the Jewish men wore or something? But, if you thought that episode might produce some levity in the Hollywood star, think again.

Oh, who am I kidding? No one thought that, so when Goldberg entered orbit over Lauren Boebert heckling Joe Biden at the State of the Union, it was completely expected. Here she is ranting and raving, calling the congresswoman “li’l girl” for daring to express dissent toward the president.

Imagine having to work with these people every day? I’m starting to understand why Meghan McCain jumped ship. The women left on “The View” are legitimately unstable people, and that’s vividly expressed in their rhetoric. The constant raw anger and vitriol can’t be good for Goldberg’s blood pressure, considering she’s not exactly a picture of health as it is.

Still, I think her deranged rant is instructive. Leftwingers like Goldberg view Americans as two classes of people: The elites and everyone else.

If you happen to hold a view they find unacceptable, you are cast into the outer darkness, deemed unworthy of speaking against their chosen elected officials. That’s just a profoundly anti-American sentiment, and it’s one that ignores that respect is a two-way street. Was Boebert’s outburst disrespectful, as Goldberg asserts? Sure, I’d say that’s a fair criticism, but what has Biden done to earn respect?

Let’s recall that he’s trashed Republicans as racist supporters of Jim Crow because they dared to support voter ID. When you demonize people in such a disgusting way, you are not then owed respect in return. I don’t care what office you hold.

Besides, can we talk about the hypocrisy here for a moment? These are the same women, including Goldberg, who thought it was great that Nancy Pelosi tore up Donald Trump’s SOTU speech for the cameras back in 2020. Where were “The View” hosts’ concerns for decorum and respect for the office then? They didn’t have any because Donald Trump wasn’t part of the approved class. But yell at Joe Biden for ignoring the deaths of American service members he got killed in Afghanistan? Well, then it’s time to talk about respect and decorum again. It’s all extremely convenient, and extremely partisan.

Goldberg asks of Boebert, “Who the hell do you think you are?” The answer is that Boebert is an American with the right to free speech. That right extends to heckling the president, regardless of whether one believes it was appropriate or not. It’s one thing to say Boebert shouldn’t have done it. It’s another to suggest she doesn’t have the status to question the president. That’s not how any of this works. Biden serves at the pleasure of the nation’s citizenry, for better or worse. He is not a king, and Goldberg is the last person who should be criticizing others about being disrespectful.

Kamala Sweeps the Leg out From Under One of Biden's Biggest Lies

Nick Arama reporting for RedState 

Joe Biden’s State of the Union on Tuesday night was not only a confused and chaotic rehash of his Build Back Better agenda, which is long dead, but it was also full of lies. He spoke a lot about Ukraine, but had no further positive action to offer. He even confused the Ukrainians with the Iranians, and you could see Kamala Harris correcting it behind him. The speech was a “total disappointment,” Ukrainian Member of Parliament Oleksandra Ustinova said.

But while Biden spoke a lot about Ukraine and said a whole lot of nothing, he failed to address the things that he was supposed to address in the speech — the state of the nation — and the things that were uppermost in the minds of Americans like the crushing inflation and the rising gas prices. He couldn’t list achievements because virtually everything is a failure. He spoke about inflation, but showed he had no understanding of it, and his only answer for gas prices was not increasing U.S. production or cutting Russian oil — but pilfering from the Strategic Reserve.

Kamala Harris was delegated to a couple of the shows Wednesday to say what an inspiring message he’d delivered, but even she had trouble making the case. Maybe because even she doesn’t believe it.

She was on “CBS Mornings” with Gayle King. “The new CBS poll found 70 percent of Americans disapprove of the Administration’s handling of inflation. What do you say to those people who say that gas prices are just too high, I can’t get peanut butter, everything costs more? What are you going to do?” King demanded to know.

Harris had no answers, and essentially said that the reason we have inflation is that things cost more. What brilliant economic understanding there!

“Listen, people are struggling, especially working people in terms of the price of gas and food,” Harris agreed. “And the reasons include what we need to do to address what happened through the pandemic, in terms of supply chain issues, which was a reduction of the availability of goods, and so the prices went up. We also need to deal with one of the biggest issues – which is the cost of living. It’s too expensive for working families.”

Harris also admitted that people are struggling and that’s it’s too expensive to live, even as Joe Biden is trying to convince everyone what a wonderful economy he’s brought us, and it’s just that Americans don’t understand that yet. So, she’s cutting the legs out from under that Biden lie and acknowledging it’s as bad as the American people know that it is.

But, Harris threw out another word salad when she was asked about what the Biden team was going to do about the energy question domestically, and if they were going to cut off oil and gas regarding Russia.

Harris responds: “As it relates to what we need to do domestically, as well as what we need to do in terms of this issue generally, we have, as the president said, reevaluated what we’re doing in terms of the strategic oil reserve here in the United States, to make sure it will not have an impact or that we can mitigate the impact on the American consumer.”

This is just so much horse hockey and not a solution at all. Biden released 30 million barrels of oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. But, we use about 18 million a day. So, what does that take care of? About a day and a half of need? If the war hits the fan and prices go crazy, what are they going to do? That may already be coming, as it’s already hitting the highest price since 2011 and may go up to five dollars a gallon.

Patrick De Haan, head of petroleum analysis at GasBuddy, said on Monday that the average gas price in some U.S. cities will reach $5 a gallon “in the next couple of weeks.”

Because the Biden team has dealt away our independence, they’ve left us up a creek without a paddle — and they have no answers.

INTERNATIONAL CAT FEDERATION BANS RUSSIAN CATS FROM COMPETITION

 

Has The Great Global Food War Just Begun?

posted by Sundance at Conservative Treehouse

Hindsight is not only 20/20, in this case it’s a little alarming. 

Last year, we were discussing the massive increases in food and farming costs associated with increased fertilizer prices.  By the time we got to late January, the World Bank (WB), United Nations (UN) and the Davos / World Economic Forum (WEF) group were discussing it.  At first the perspective was the potential for lower crop yields creating increased global famine.

However, if we apply a little hindsight from the geopolitical world surrounding the current issues in Europe, specifically Ukraine, and then consider the background of what the Biden team were doing, while Russia, Belarus and China were stockpiling, things look a little more concerning than just lower crop yields as an outcome of higher natural gas prices – vis-a-vis nitrogen fertilizer.

As noted by Forbes last month, “Russia and China have imposed export restrictions on fertilizer. Both are, or were, big exporters of plant food. The decline in exports makes getting the vital nutrients harder across the globe. China and Russia account for 29% of world exports for nitrogen-based plant food. The two countries also have significant, albeit, smaller shares of the phosphate and potash markets, respectively, the report states.”

Now, keep in mind how Belarus helped Russia with the current military operation.

In August of 2021 the United States, Canada and the EU hit Belarus with punitive sanctions on the one-year anniversary of what they called a fraudulent election.  As noted by Politico at the time, “The sanctions partially ban imports of potash fertilizer, petrol and petrol-based products from Belarus.”  […] Targeting Belarus’ potash sector was a strategic move insofar as the country is the second largest exporter of the fertilizer behind Canada, covering 21 percent of the world’s potash exports in 2019.

In September of 2021, at the same time as China was investing heavily in the purchase of U.S. farmland, Beijing simultaneously announced a ban of export for phosphates until June of 2022.  With China banning export of the source material, the global fertilizer market now needed to look elsewhere for future purchases.

We now know that Russia and China were talking geopolitical strategy with each other long before the  Russian army crossed the border into Ukraine.  However, in the weeks before they launched their military operation, in late January, Russia also triggered a full ban on the export of ammonium nitrate.

Against the backdrop of Ukraine’s importance as a “breadbasket” for the EU, similar in strategic importance as California is for the U.S., these background moves by Russia and China now appear coordinated.   China moved first to block the key ingredient for fertilizer, then Russia moved to do the same about four weeks before they launched militarily.

Both the Chinese and Russian moves could be viewed as proactive food security positions against any reactive sanction activity that would target food production.   Individually each of these moves may seem small, but take them collectively, and there’s an alarming big picture.

If you remove the raw material fertilizer products from China, Belarus, Russia and now Ukraine from the global marketplace, that’s over two-thirds of the total global supply gone.   As bumbling Joe would say, “That’s a big effen’ deal,” big enough to create havoc when it comes to the 2022 farm growing season in just about every country.

Assuming strategic government intervention, the U.S. and Canada can withstand it (albeit with massive price increases for farmers) but many other countries around the world will be in big trouble with a much lower harvest yield.  One nation that would be particularly vulnerable is Brazil – the world’s second largest exporter of soybeans (U.S. #1, Brazil #2).

Did China, Russia and their strategic partners plan this out?

Apply hindsight and the answer seems obvious, yes.

Overlay what we have previously discussed about the geopolitical dynamic of the BRICS group (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa).

BRICS is a key strategic geopolitical trade partnership that was created during Obama, was weakened during Trump, and now with Obama back at the helm of globalist advancement – likely way more important.  The core of BRICS’ purpose is a countermeasure against the coordination of globalist multinational corporations.  BRICS is somewhat an anti-WEF assembly.

Do you remember everyone getting mad at India for not supporting the U.N Security Council resolution against the Russian invasion of Ukraine?  Well, again, apply hindsight.  Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa (BRICS) have a strategic geopolitical relationship framed around trade.

Given the scale of their population, food security is a BIG issue for India.  If we are about to enter a food war, specifically where food now becomes a national security issue, there’s no way India would want to be on the short end of that conflict.

Things are sketchy as heck right now, because this food war picture is pretty clear.

However, if the BRICS group join in a digital trade currency together, which would effectively negate any sanctions the rest of the world might attempt, we can katy-bar the door, because actual rockets and missiles come next.  The U.S./EU/UN message will shift from Putin killing Ukrainians, to Putin/Xi starving the world.

Xi Jinping (China), Vladimir Putin (Russia), Jair Bolsonaro (Brazil), Narendra Modi (India) and Cyril Ramaphosa (South Africa)