Friday, February 25, 2022

Things Are Breaking Fast. Can You Believe It All? You Decide.

https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/kremlin-says-russia-will-impose-retaliatory-sanctions-west-2022-02-25/
And:

We are too naïve and believe agreements with Iranian culture is worthy. Israel made that mistake in Oslo.

It is tragic but you cannot make deals with the devil when you are weak. Xi, Putin and the Ayatollah are devils. The West is weak.

U.S.-Iran Nuclear Deal Imminent

  • An agreement between Iran and the US could be finalized in Vienna soon to revive the 2015 Iran Deal.

  • President Biden has made restoring the Iran Deal a top foreign-policy goal.

  • Iran’s “breakout time”—the duration needed to amass enough nuclear fuel for a bomb—could fall to as low as six months, down from about a year in the original deal.

  • As part of the deal, Iran is pushing for the removal of the Foreign Terrorist Organizations listing for Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.

  • +++

  • What Obama tried and  could not accomplish Biden has.

And:

Trump Knew How to Handle Putin. Biden Has No Clue.
It took only one year for our fearless leader to plunge us into chaos on a global scale.
By DOV FISCHER


Sometimes we need time to pass and distance to extend to gain fuller perspective on what we did not see contemporaneously from too close. Indeed, G-d tells Moses that no person can see His face (which I teach as meaning an up-close encounter) and live, but people can see the back of G-d’s head (which I teach as meaning a more distant previous encounter, growing ever more distant). See Exodus 33:18-23.

In their October 22, 2012, debate, Obama mocked GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney for expressing concern about Russia and Vladimir Putin:

Gov. Romney, I’m glad that you recognize that al Qaeda is a threat because a few months ago when you were asked what’s the biggest geopolitical threat facing America, you said Russia. The 1980s are now calling to ask for their foreign policy back because the Cold War’s been over for 20 years.

As was Romney’s wont on all matters non-Trump, he became tongue-tied and impotent the moment he was challenged. Obama won on points. Putin for the knockout.

When Donald Trump sought the presidency, however, Democrats whose liberal turn had consigned the Cold War and the Kennedy Cuban Missile Crisis to derision suddenly decided that Russia and Putin actually could be useful to have as a “world’s worst problem” on some level. At least enough so that, if handled masterfully, Russia and Putin could be converted into electoral allies to help Hillary Clinton at the polls. Suddenly, Democrats said Russia was our most fearsome antagonist, with Trump treasonably in cahoots. We all know the sordid tale: Clinton cash, the Perkins-Coie law firm, Fusion GPS, the Steele Dossier, Strzok and his lover Page, Comey and FBI corruption, leaks to the New York Times via a Columbia law professor, John Brennan, McCabe — the whole fetid, putrid lot of them. All bit players in a Clinton–Media Academy Award entry “The Russia Hoax.” At its core, Trump was in bed with Moscow, from political corruption to other sprinkled rumors, and Putin now supposedly had the goods, compromising him forever.

None of this — no real Putin problems — existed from 2016 to 2020. Trump knew how to handle Putin.

We experienced two years, 448 pages, and $32 million of Mueller. In short order, we found that Mueller found nothing, depleting chunks of his reputation and cognition along the way. There had been no Trump–Russian collusion. The Great Russia Hoax instead had been a Clinton hoax on the American people, perhaps the most egregious political crime in American history. That chapter remains open, exposed now to John Durham and later to historians. Clinton corruption will be remembered alongside Harding, Buchanan, LBJ, and as some prefer regarding Watergate.

Time moved on, as it does for all except Joe Biden. The Soviet Union had fallen in 1991. We had seen and learned more about Boris Yeltsin — alternately standing on a tank … or being too tanked to stand. There had been Gorbachev and “Perestroika” and “Glasnost.” But always there was Vladimir Putin. To his credit, he is the first leader of Russia since Noah and the Ark who does not employ state-sponsored anti-Semitism for political gain. I give him that. And he is the master player. He has outlasted them all — Bushes, Clintons, Obama, Trump, Merkel, all the EU leaders, his opponents back home who seem to sustain unusually severe exotic illnesses that make COVID and its origins seem as unremarkable as an Excedrin headache and who die from outlier causes like umbrella-point pricks and defenestrations (window tumbles). If Rick Blaine and Ilsa Lund would always have Paris, the rest of us will always have Putin.

With Communism’s fall, Ukraine became free, as did so many other of the USSR-imprisoned republics: Georgia, Latvia, Estonia, Lithuania, and such. Indeed, in the 10th and 11th centuries, Kyiv was the largest and most powerful state in Europe. In time, others set their sights on Ukraine, but it deserves its place among nations as a free country. In a world where the anti-Semitic want to replace an Israel with a phoney country (“Palestine”) that would be populated by a phoney non-people who were fabricated only in 1964 (“Palestinians”), Ukrainians are a worthy people, have a land, a legitimate country among nations.

During the Trump years, Democrats’ Resistance fixated over Ukraine and never-ending pipe dreams of ousting America’s duly elected chief executive. Hunter Biden, a crook and drug addict, was paid $50,000 monthly to sit on the board of Burisma, a Ukrainian energy company. Though greasy, crude, and oily, he knows nothing of fossil-based crude oil, sweet or otherwise. Though full of natural gas, he knows nothing of fossil-based gas. And he knows nothing of Ukraine. As we learned of Hunter, who since has moved onto painting for dollars and seems destined for more greatness as various grand juries take countless hours of testimony from women with whom he has consorted, he has done well financially as a member of the Biden Crime Family. Strange that the boy he denied fathering — until he conceded — was not named Rico.

In time we learned about a guy named Zelensky. An actor like Ronald Reagan, and a comedian, he played the president of Ukraine on a successful comedic TV series. The show was like a cross between West Wing and Yes, [Prime] Minister — only, presumably, when Ukrainian TV politicians say they know where bodies are buried and skeletons are hidden, they mean it. He ended up getting elected real-life president, a sort-of ultimate Netflix/Bravo reality-TV show. With Pelosi determined to run an Impeachment Telethon every Christmas, Zelensky’s name and country came into our homes, as Adam Schiff read perjury into the Congressional Record and minutes of the House Judiciary Committee’s hearings. Thus Ukraine.

We know three things about Putin and Ukraine, and whether Zelensky is going to end up killed or locked in the Gulag for the rest of his life, and whether more Ukrainians next will die at Putin’s initiative than have been slaughtered since Stalin mass-murdered as many as seven million during the Holodomor with the active and criminal assistance of New York Times Russia bureau chief Walter Duranty:

1. None of the present mess happened when Donald Trump was president.

2. Vladimir Putin played by the rules of international comity throughout the Trump years.

3. Biden came in, demonstrated his and Antony Blinken’s foreign affairs chops in Afghanistan, and the whole house of cards came crashing down.

This was predictable from an incompetent who, in but one year, has presided over a complete breakdown of the social order. America successfully was rehabilitating from four Obama years of rot and decay, and Biden proved transformative, introducing chaos marked by America suffering a severe nationwide collapse in urban law and order, a parallel breakdown at the southern border, historic inflation and economic dysfunction, a racial-based social cacophony that has undone racial harmony that reigned — seemingly permanently — only a few years before, a cultural collapse in public education that sees children brainwashed to worry about personal pronouns and whether they are in correctly gendered bodies while being taught lies in history and corrupted math. Quaere whether Puerto Rico even would accept statehood if proffered by Democrats now.

None of this — no real Putin problems — existed from 2016 to 2020. Trump knew how to handle Putin, as he did the North Korean dough boy, the Arab Muslim countries that joined the Abraham Accords, the American economy and overcoming unemployment among Blacks, Hispanics, and women. Trump got the Mexican border controlled, supported ICE and other law enforcement, promoted historically Black universities and colleges, achieved a more racial issues–free society, advanced energy independence, and promoted religious freedom. For all his occasional bluster and disquieting personal flaws, Trump led outstandingly with excellence. He did not push secret-code buttons starting nuclear war. He did not conduct a single chaotic evacuation overseas nor initiate a single war, even as he killed Qasem Soleimani, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, Hamza bin Laden, and Abu Hasan al-Muhajir like dogs.

Leftist pundits all predicted he would set the Middle East aflame if he recognized Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, moved America’s Israel embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, recognized Israeli sovereignty over Golan, deemed Jewish towns and villages throughout Judea and Samaria legal if Israel’s Supreme Court deemed so. The experts said Trump’s Twitter storms with Kim Jong-un would result in nuclear holocaust starting in Seoul. That his import tariffs would generate an international trade war causing world-wide recession. And, yet, we look back on 2016 through 2020. History judges Trump quite well. As for CNN’s favored presidential successors — Andrew Cuomo, Michael Avenatti — not as well.

It took Biden and Pelosi only one year. NATO now has the American president they wanted, who does not demand they pay their fair defense share. CNN, Perkins-Coie, Fusion GPS, Clintons, Cuomos, Obama, Cardi B, Bidens all have what they wanted. Each looks copacetically in the mirror every morning. They have obtained power.

What exactly else did they want?

More:


Biden offers sentimental hogwash against Putin — and doesn’t even suggest we’ll win
By John Podhoretz

The word “inspiring” does not come to mind as a way of describing President Biden’s afternoon speech following the Russian invasion of Ukraine. “Dispiriting” comes closer.

The best Biden could do rhetorically was to declare that “America stands up to bullies” — as though the most dangerous moment in the past 20 years on the planet Earth were some kind of remake of the old movie “My Bodyguard.”

Come on, man. Putin isn’t a bully. He’s either a lunatic pursuing a nation-murdering delusion or a man possessed of a world-historical ambition to make himself an equal in Russian history to the Greats, Peter and Catherine, and Lenin and Stalin. Meanwhile, Biden thinks the country he leads is Adam Baldwin protecting poor Chris Makepeace against goonish Matt Dillon.

Does this seem unfair? The “bullies” line is the only thing anyone is going to remember from Biden’s remarks. The portrait he painted of the era Putin’s aggression is creating featured a curiously passive vision of the United States and its role in the future.

In Biden’s telling, it won’t be the U.S. or NATO that will reverse this world-changing infamy. No, somehow it will happen because of . . . history.

“When the history of this era is written Putin’s choice to make a totally unjustifiable war on Ukraine will have left Russia weaker and the rest of the world stronger,” he said. “Liberty, democracy, human dignity. These are the forces far more powerful than fear and oppression.”

That is ludicrous and sentimental hogwash, as it suggests somehow that the anti-Putin cause will prevail because he’s against good things and will be punished for it.

It is true that liberty cannot be extinguished because it is God-given, but the institutions that make it possible to exercise liberty certainly can. Putin should know — he has already destroyed them in his own country and is now moving to destroy them in another.

Liberty in the abstract is not going to save Ukraine. Neither is democracy, nor human dignity. And Biden’s pride in the unity of NATO in opposition to Putin’s conduct even led him to suggest that the events in Ukraine will be good for the alliance: “The United States and our allies and partners will emerge from this stronger, more united, more determined and more purposeful.”

That will only be true if we win, or if the actions we take cause Putin to lose. But Biden does not speak of winning or losing. He only speaks of unity, as if unity is victory. But the “history” he’s relying on here is contingent, as history always is — its course changes every second as humans react to events.

History will record that things changed for the better, or turned on Putin, solely because actions were taken to make it so. It matters that Biden and his people defaulted to this kind of rhetoric because of what he did not say: He did not say that Putin will be defeated. He did not say the West will win. He said we will stand together and then history will work its wondrous magic.

Olena Kurilo said she's lucky to be alive after an airstrike destroyed her home.Teacher Olena Kurilo said she’s lucky to be alive after an airstrike destroyed her home. Justin Yau/Sipa USA Ukraine - February 24, 2022.Putin attacks Ukraine. Explosion in Kiev Explosions seen in Kyiv on Feb. 24, 2022. ZUMAPRESS.com

Rhetoric matters. The words the president chose are important because they take the place of the words he didn’t choose. The sanctions he and the West are imposing, and the military measures they are taking to shore up NATO, are vitally important.

But making Russia suffer while working to ensure Putin does not attack NATO’s eastern flank are not goals to rally around. They do nothing to inspire. Biden himself inadvertently acknowledged this in the question-and-answer session that followed the speech when he was asked whether the sanctions were tough enough: “Let’s have a conversation in another month or so to see if they’re working.”

This is not what the president of the United States should be saying about the first effort to seize territory in Europe in 80 years.

It’s what your podiatrist says about the goop he gives you to cure your foot fungus.

And:

Perhaps Noonan finally gets it?

Where Putin Goes From Here

The war is uncharted territory. We don’t know how far he plans to go, but he isn’t stopping soon.

John Kerry’s Ukraine Emissions
He frets that Russian brutality will distract from climate change.
By The Editorial Board


Former U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry warned in an interview this week about “massive emissions consequences” from a Russian war against Ukraine, which he also said would be a distraction from work on climate change. Nevertheless, he added, “I hope President Putin will help us to stay on track with respect to what we need to do for the climate.”

What’s overheated here is Mr. Kerry’s brain. His comments came before Vladimir Putin began Thursday’s massive assault on Ukraine. But the BBC says the interview was taped this week, and the alarms about Mr. Putin’s impending attack have been ringing loudly. Mr. Kerry was running Foggy Bottom in 2014 when Mr. Putin invaded Crimea. How has he failed to internalize that Mr. Putin is a bad actor motivated by power and Russian revanchism?

Mr. Kerry told the BBC that he hopes Mr. Putin realizes Northern Russia is thawing, “and his infrastructure is at risk, and the people of Russia are at risk.” We’ll wait until you stop laughing. Mr. Putin deserves to be made a pariah. Western leaders like Mr. Kerry shouldn’t be wondering whether a polite tea in Moscow might induce him to slightly lower next year’s oil production when he can enrich the Kremlin by selling it for $100 a barrel.

Mr. Kerry’s defenders—assuming they exist—might say he’s merely fulfilling his role as President Biden’s climate envoy. And Mr. Kerry did express to the BBC his concerns about “the people of Ukraine,” as well as the principle of using force to alter boundaries.

But Mr. Kerry’s comments aren’t a gaffe. They reveal the Biden Administration’s obsession with climate, and with punishing fossil-fuel production, which has made the U.S. and Europe vulnerable to Mr. Putin’s energy blackmail. The climate lobby has made Mr. Putin more powerful. Every time Mr. Kerry visits Moscow, the boys in the Kremlin must think it’s Christmas.


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A warning you can believe? You decide:

Breaking: US and NATO May Soon Go to War with Russia?

 
(TheRedAlertNews.com) – Breaking Now: Just moments ago, in a statement that received instant worldwide attention, Jens Stoltenberg, a Norwegian politician who has served as the 13th secretary-general of NATO since 2014, stated that if Russia launches a cyberattack on a member of NATO – the North Atlantic Treaty Organization created in the shadow of World War Two – Russia could “trigger Article 5” of the treaty.

Article 5 of the treaty is considered the cornerstone of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). It states that an attack on one member of NATO is an attack on all its members.

The implication is that should Russia launch a significant cyberattack on the United States or any other member of NATO, all members of NATO will be obligated to join the battle against Russia.

National security experts tell us that battle could consist of cyberwarfare or actual troops.

Additionally, key members of the United States Senate have made similar remarks in the last 24 hours indicating that if Russia launches a cyberattack on Ukraine that bleeds over into bordering NATO countries, NATO would feel obligated to respond.

This is a breaking news report..
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YOU DECIDE!

Trust the science. Respect the science. This is what the experts say. Media mouthpieces have repeated these phrases constantly over the last two years.

Besides the obvious — that "science" by its nature does not trust itself because it is a system of constant questioning, testing, and evaluating what we think we know (including evaluating the methods of evaluation themselves) — these phrases are designed to persuade you to never, ever ask the question "Can we 'trust the science'?"

You can decide for yourself, as I always encourage you to do. But you should know that in an overwhelming number of cases drugs are manufactured, sold and claimed as "cures" while having almost no real-world efficacy whatsoever. They only have relative and statistical efficacy via the careful selection of positive studies — almost none of which can be replicated — and via manipulated NNT (number needed to treat).

The combined pharmaceutical onslaught backed by and protected by the FDA is nothing short of psychological warfare. Americans today would have far less to fear from an invading army. At least you could see the enemy in front of you.

But they do not come to us as the conquering cartel that now has a monopoly on American health. They come to us as scientists, with "proof" that what they are selling is scientifically "proven" to be effective. Doctors have been taught by the medical establishment to rely on these "studies" to support claims of therapy or cure from these drugs.

The catch, unknown to the public, is that the so-called clinical studies take time and millions of dollars, and so it's mostly the pharmaceuticals that fund them and cherry-pick the results to slant them to promote the sale of drugs.

Pharmaceutical drugs of all kinds are the only ingestible substances legally allowed to be called cures. Yet we are subjected to products that are tested via trials over a short period of time, with very few participants, have lots of adverse reactions, and a resulting drug that gets shoved through the FDA right into us.

"But they're peer-reviewed!" the public cries from the hills regarding these studies. Surely other scientists would call out their fellow researchers if they were false prophets of health?

Sadly, the peer review system is collapsing — if it was ever built on anything but a foundation of sand.

The Mess That Is Peer Review

Science Is Suffering Because Of Peer Review's Problems

Peer review: a flawed process at the heart of science and journals

Let's Stop Pretending Peer Review Works

Impartial Judgment by the "Gatekeepers" of Science: Fallibility and Accountability in the Peer Review Process

Peer Review: the Publication Game and "the Natural Selection of Bad Science"

This Study Just Revealed Why The Peer-Review Process Is in So Much Trouble

Can Editors Save Peer Review From Peer Reviewers?

What is the future of peer review? Why is there fraud in science? Is plagiarism out of control? Why do scientists do bad things? Is it all a case of: "All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing?"

The Science Delusion (an independent Ted Talk video)

If there are results from a study, and those results are not good, why, Big Pharma simply doesn't allow you to know. Either they hide the results or design the reporting so that the results hide the truth.

Antidepressants are touted as safe and effective by the pharmaceuticals and their enthralled doctors. Yet the "science" that got these drugs approved left out the fact that they are addictive, and have a long list of side effects like suicide, sexual dysfunction and risk for stroke. Plus they are usually no more effective than a placebo.

It is modern alchemy extracting unbelievable riches with psychological warfare. This betrayal is protected by those millions making their living in the modern "sickness" system.

The consensus among scientists is simply a rigged game. University professors, researchers, and doctors who become TV talking heads all follow the lead of the "experts" who are their higher up. The biomedical establishment is rotting from the inside, and the scientists who vocally support it are contributors.

What not to do next

What can you and I do about such occult deception and organized crime under legal mantra? Sometimes, it's what we should know not to do.

We should not throw away thousands of years of human healing and medicinal knowledge in favor of synthetic creations. Naturally occurring nutrients are effective with regard to obtaining optimal health without worrying about side effects.

We should not take a possibly cancer-causing blood pressure drug when concentrated beet juice can lower blood pressure by 10 mm/hg.

We should not take dangerous ace inhibitors and beta-blockers when CoQ10 is proven to reverse heart failure.

We should not take an osteoporosis drug that has the same poisonous ingredient as laundry detergent when you can simply get enough vitamin D and vitamin K

There are hundreds of other examples, but the foundation for optimal health is always the same: eating nutritious and nutrient-dense whole foods. A very simple rule that has a thousands-of-year track record of keeping those who adhere to it alive and well.

In today's world, it is a bit more difficult to get many of the nutrients you need, in which case you supplement with omega-3, CoQ10, and magnesium. Also, we have an environment that is not as pure as it once was, in which case your liver needs help in detoxifying your body.

I submit to you that this is not complicated. Good health requires no drugs. No one ever died from a deficiency of statin drugs. No one gets cancer because of a deficiency of aspirin.

Yours for the truth,

Bob Livingston
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Racism of Virginia Democrats is on Full Display Over Hysterical Reaction to Winsome Earle-Sears Day

By Rebecca Downs

+++

How America has empowered evil in Russia and Iran

The paradox of peace is that its maintenance depends on the credible threat of war

Melanie Phillips 

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EDITOR'S PICKS

CDC Under Fire for Withholding Some of COVID-19 Data It Collects

     Read more »

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The Ukraine War Is Biden’s Time for Choosing

The State of the Union gives him a chance at a new start.

By Kimberley A. Strassel 


President Biden will step into the House next Tuesday to deliver his first State of the Union address. That’s when America will find out how he has chosen to address the defining moment of his presidency.

There will be time aplenty to plumb the West’s misjudgment and mishandling of Vladimir Putin up to now. But the failure can bluntly be summed up as a lack of seriousness. Mr. Putin spent years offering bloody proof of his intent to expand “Mother Russia”—in the Crimea, the Donbas, Abkhazia, South Ossetia. The U.S. and Western Europe tsk-tsked, then returned to slashing military budgets, debating new welfare handouts and handing their energy security over to Russia for the cause of “decarbonization.” Mr. Putin amassed an army on Ukraine’s border while the U.S. debated mask mandates and personal pronouns.


The costs of this frivolousness are now being borne by a sovereign Ukraine under attack, and by a world at dangerous new threat from authoritarianism. The two opposing Biden paths are clear. He can reorient his presidency around this menace, using his State of the Union to prepare the American people for a new geopolitical reality, and follow in Truman’s footsteps to establish a new global architecture to confront a new Cold War. Or he can tsk, ladle out a few more sanctions, and return to Build Back Better and the Green New Deal. Watch to see how those State of the Union minutes are divided.


Mr. Biden—and the world—has everything to gain from the first path. The West has the ability to impose crushing costs on Russia that could lead to Mr. Putin’s ouster. But European nations remain divided—and focused on their Prada pocketbooks. On Thursday Mr. Biden announced more U.S. sanctions on Russian banks but was forced to admit that certain European nations (Germany and Italy) remain opposed to the obvious step of kicking Russia out of the Swift banking system. Europeans also remain pathetically unwilling to provide for their own security, or to untether themselves from Russian gas.


This is a moment for U.S. leadership, not diplomatic round robins. Nothing stops Mr. Biden from unilaterally blocking Russia from Swift, a move that could shame Europeans into action. A Biden commitment to rebuild U.S. defense budgets and bolster the North Atlantic Treaty Organization would allow the administration to pressure European nations for the same. So would a U.S. plan to double down on domestic energy production, coupled with a promise to increase energy exports to European countries that follow suit and cut ties with Russia.

 

This is also the president’s chance to reset his domestic standing. Key Senate Democrats (New Jersey’s Bob Menendez, Virginia’s Mark Warner ) have already signaled they have his back on tougher Russia measures. And Russia has inspired most Republicans to re-embrace their national-security bona fides. Some 80% of GOP senators co-sponsored ranking Foreign Relations Committee member Jim Risch’s Russian sanctions package, and even Missouri populist Sen. Josh Hawley this week mustered some anti-Putin outrage. This provides Mr. Biden a huge opening to build bipartisan alliances on national security (in the process neutralizing criticism), and to make good in part on his campaign promise of unity. So would a domestic energy plan, which would get GOP support and play well with a U.S. public fearful of rising fuel prices.

 

If the policy and political benefits of this all seem obvious, don’t underestimate the ability of Mr. Biden’s progressive wing to lead him down the wrong path. Progressive groups are already arguing (surreally) that Mr. Biden’s response to Russia should be to double down on their unpopular agenda. According to the Center for American Progress, the U.S. should “press Europe to engage in a wartime-like mobilization to decarbonize.” Progressive groups are wailing about “military escalation,” while Congressional Progressive Caucus Chairman Pramila Jayapal bemoans the “hundreds of millions of dollars” flowing to “lethal weapons” rather than her ambition of free child care.


Mr. Biden will be reluctant to alienate this crazy minority, but the policy and political ramifications of taking their dictation at this moment would be catastrophic. Any hint of Biden weakness will lead to more aggression and crises abroad. At home, it will increasingly put him at cross-purposes with his party’s more serious foreign-policy voices. His embrace of a progressive agenda would feed inflation, especially energy prices, and further erode public confidence in Democrats’ ability to handle national security. Republicans—while currently more than willing to work with Mr. Biden on Russia—are also more than primed to make national security a defining midterm issue if he blinks.

Mr. Biden’s first Thursday response to the Ukrainian invasion offered a mixed bag—tough talk on Russia, but also progressive talking points (such as pre-emptively demagoguing oil and gas producers for any price hikes). Yet he can’t have it both ways, and by Tuesday he’ll have had plenty of time for the choosing. Will it be an emboldened, reset Biden presidency? Or more progressive puerility, as per usual?

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The Clinton scandals past and present, date back decades and cover so much ground, we couldn’t possibly list them all here.

Included in the basket of deplorable behavior: fraudulent land deals, suspicious ‘departures,’Oval Office debauchery, coverups, corruption/extortion involving the ‘charitable’ foundation, classified email on her personal server, Benghazi, the phony Steele Dossier, and this latest accusation of extreme criminality — Hillary’s people spying on a sitting president!

Jesse Kelly and panel investigate and ask whether this pair of high-ranking grifters will ever face justice. 

This exclusive content would be BANNED on YouTube or anywhere else
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We no longer can, in my humble opinion:

This Is a Moment for America to Believe in Itself Again
By Bret Stephens



Central to much of the skepticism regarding America’s involvement in the crisis in Ukraine is the question, “Who are we?”

Who are we, with our long history of invasions and interventions, to lecture Vladimir Putin about respecting national sovereignty and international law? Who are we, with our domestic record of slavery and discrimination, our foreign record of supporting friendly dictators, and the ongoing injustices of American life, to hold ourselves up as paragons of freedom and human rights? Who are we, after 198 years of the Monroe Doctrine, to try to stop Russia from delineating its own sphere of influence? Who are we, with our habitual ignorance, to meddle in faraway disputes about which we know so little?

Such questions are often put by people on the left, but there’s a powerful strain of the same thinking on the right. When Bill O’Reilly asked Donald Trump in 2017 how he could “respect” Putin when the Russian president is “a killer,” the president replied: “We’ve got a lot of killers. What, you think our country’s so innocent?”

Trump aside, there’s something intrinsically virtuous about this kind of thinking: Who is it who tells us to first cast out the beam in our own eye before we cast out the mote in the eye of another? Countries, like people, are better off when they proceed with more self-awareness, less moral arrogance, greater intellectual humility and an innate respect for the reality of unintended consequences.

But neither people nor countries are well served by the defects of those virtues: self-awareness that becomes a recipe for personal or policy paralysis, intellectual humility that leads to moral confusion, a fear of unknown risks that becomes an asset to an enemy. These are some of the deeper risks we now face in the contest with the Kremlin.

Why has Putin chosen this moment to make his move on Ukraine? As many have pointed out, Russia is an objectively weak state — “Upper Volta with nuclear weapons,” as someone once quipped — with a nominal G.D.P. smaller than that of South Korea. Outside of energy, minerals and second-rate military equipment, it produces almost nothing that outsiders want: no Russian iPhone, Lexus or “Fauda.” Putin’s problem with Ukraine, starting with the Maidan uprising of 2014, is that Ukrainians want nothing to do with him. If he were a Disney character, he’d be Rapunzel’s mother.

But Putin has advantages his opponents don’t, which go beyond the correlation of military forces in the Donbas.

One advantage is the correlation of appetites: Putin wants Ukraine under his thumb much more than the West wants to keep Ukraine in its orbit, and he’s willing to pay a higher price to get it. Another advantage is the correlation of attention spans: Putin has methodically set his sights on returning Ukraine to his fold since at least 2004. For the West, Ukraine is another complex crisis of which it will eventually tire. A third advantage is the correlation of wills: Putin wants to change the geopolitical order of Europe and is prepared to take large risks to do it. The Biden administration wants to preserve a shaky and increasingly lifeless status quo. Fortune tends to favor the bold.

But Putin’s greatest advantage is self-belief. Serious historians may scoff at his elaborate historical theories about Ukraine’s nonexistence as a true state. But he believes it, or at least he makes a convincing show of it. What, really, does the West believe about Ukraine, other than that it would be a shame, and scary, if Putin were to swallow large chunks of it? Certainly nothing worth fighting for.

Most of us understand that history has a way of turning into myth, but the reverse can also be true: Myths have a way of making history. Fortune also tends to favor fervent believers.

The United States used to have self-belief. Our civilization, multiple generations of Americans believed, represented human progress. Our political ideals — about the rule of law, human rights, individual liberties, democratic governance — were ideals for all people, including those beyond our borders. Our literature spoke to the universal human experience; our music to the universal soul. When we fought wars, it was for grand moral purposes, not avaricious aims. Even our worst blunders, as in Vietnam, stemmed from defensible principles. Our sins were real and numerous, but they were correctable flaws, not systemic features.

It goes without saying that this self-belief — like all belief — was a mixture of truth and conceit, idealism and hubris, vision and blindness. It led us to make all sorts of errors, the acute awareness of which has become the dominant strain of our intellectual life. But it also led us to our great triumphs: Yorktown and Appomattox; the 13th and 19th Amendments; the Berlin Airlift and the fall of the Berlin Wall; the Marshall Plan and PEPFAR.

These victories were not the result of asking, “Who are we?” They came about by asking, “Who but us?” In the crisis of Ukraine, which is really a crisis of the West, we might start asking the second question a little more often than the first.
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