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Sex with a Cowboy
Prior to her trip to Calgary Alberta , Carol (a blonde chick from England ), confided to her co-workers and friends she had three goals for her trip to Cowboy country ;
1. She wanted to taste some real western Bar-B-Que.2.. She wanted to take in a bona fide rodeo...
And...
3. She wanted to have sex with a local cowboy.
Upon returning, the girls were curious as to how she fared.
'Let me tell you, they have Alberta beef to die for, and when they bar-b-q it, the taste is unbelievable!'
'And I went to a real rodeo. Talk about athletes...Those guys wrestle full grown bulls! They ride horses at afull gallop, then jump off the horses and grab the bull by the horns and throw them to the ground! It is just incredible!'
Then came the big question,'Well tell us, did you have sex with a real cowboy?'
'Are you kidding? When I saw the size of the condoms they carry in their back pockets I changed my mind!'Brought to you by:
THE BEST CHEWING TOBACCO
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I have been in Orlando for about 5 days celebrating our 50th Anniversary. Our youngest daughter and her husband, Abby and Brian, gave us an unforgettable party at which 25 family members out of 29 attended. Daniel and Tammy, Debra and Martin and Amy and Steve also hosted additional events etc.
We proved that a diverse and large family can get together and get along.
The various cousins all had a ball as well.
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I am posting items that arrived while I was away mostly without comment.
I also wrote something while away and will post that in a separate memo.
Have a lot to catch up on. Stay well. Me
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A lot of folks can't understand how we came to have an oil shortage here in our country.
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Well, there's a very simple answer.
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Nobody bothered to check the oil.
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We just didn't know we were getting low.
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The reason for that is purely geographical.
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Our OIL is located in:
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ALASKA
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California
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Coastal Florida
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Coastal Louisiana
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Coastal Alabama
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Coastal Mississippi
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Coastal Texas
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North Dakota
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Wyoming
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Colorado
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Kansas
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Oklahoma
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Pennsylvania
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And Texas
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Our dipstick is located in the White House!
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PATHETIC:
Frank Luntz survey:
55% of Americans say they’d stay and fight if the U.S. were invaded like Ukraine.
Republicans
• 68% would stay and fight
• 25% would flee the country
Independents
• 57% would stay
• 36% would flee
Democrats
• 40% would stay
• 52% would flee
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I warned Biden would get us into serious trouble because he was a patsy controlled by the radical element that has taken over the Democrat Party and that his 48 year career evidenced no substance.
My warning was met with derision and attacks on Trump.
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The Crude Hypocrisy And Rot Of Green Politics
— Written by the I&I Editorial Board
That gasoline prices are becoming unaffordable to many Americans is becoming old news. What got us here, though, is a story unheard by much of the public. It starts and ends with green politics.
As gasoline reaches prices that made it a luxury good during President Joe Biden’s year in office, the White House is considering asking the Saudis to produce more oil. At the same time, the administration apparently wants more oil from Venezuela, which is languishing under a dictatorship that’s squarely aligned with Russian President Vladimir Putin, and Iran, a member in good standing with the axis of evil.
“Joe Biden is frantically searching the globe to see if anyone but Texas might have some spare oil,” says a tweet from Bryan Dean Wright, a former CIA officer and Oregon Democrat, that sums up well the comical blundering as well as the corrupt decision-making of the current White House.
Under Donald Trump’s presidency, the U.S. became “a net total energy exporter in 2019 for the first time since 1952,” a position maintained in 2020, says the U.S. Energy Information Administration. It was a historic moment.
In 2020, the U.S. also “exported more petroleum than it imported – marking the first time that has happened,” says the Daily Energy Insider. But in 2022, the U.S. petroleum trade is expected “to shift toward net imports.”
It’s easy to blame Biden because he is at fault. This president has shut down the Keystone XL pipeline, which would have carried 830,000 barrels of crude each day from Alberta to the American heartland; proposed to permanently ban offshore oil drilling off Florida’s coastline; and suspended or delayed new federal oil and gas leasing. The policies have contributed to higher prices over the last year because oil companies, as any industry would, price in expected future tight supplies to avoid shortages.
It didn’t have to happen this way. The resources are still available.
“We have the energy, we have the resources here. And we have the technology. We’re a million barrels short a day right now that we could just ramp up like that. We can do certain things,” West Virginia Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin, a member of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, said Sunday on “Meet The Press.”
But green politics won’t allow the U.S. to take advantage of its bounty of crude and natural gas. Oddly, though, the environmentalists who hold energy policy hostage when Democrats are in power have no problem with this country importing oil from nations where the drilling and transportation processes are dirtier than they are in the U.S., and the regimes are not democratically elected.
This is the California model. Officials and activists’ rush to create an all-renewables electricity grid has forced the state to import energy from producers in Arizona, Baja California, Colorado, Mexico, Nevada, New Mexico, Texas, and Utah that rely on natural gas, nuclear energy, and coal, three sources that California wants to eliminate from its portfolio. But this is acceptable, because it’s happening somewhere else, outside the view sheds of the wealthy enclaves on the coast.
It’s the same with the mining of the natural resources that are needed to build batteries for electric cars, cell phones, and other modern conveniences. The political left is happy to use these items as long as the extraction for material used in their manufacture is done away from their myopic gazes in countries where environmental protections hardly exist.
Yes, this not-in-my-back yard attitude is hypocritical, but worse than that, it produces poor public policy. We hope some day a majority of voters consistently figures this out in election after election.
We Could Use Your Help
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We’re doing this on a voluntary basis because we believe in a free press, and because we aren't afraid to tell the truth, even if it means being targeted by the left. Revenue from ads on the site help, but your support will truly make a difference in keeping our mission going. If you like what you see, feel free to visit our Donations Page by clicking here. And be sure to tell your friends!
And: I might add that Biden is a liar when he tries to tell you there are 9,000 government drlling permits going unfullfilled. It takes a year or so to get the approvals, to equip etc.
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A Biden Gas Station
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Sent to me by very dear friends and fellow memo readers:
Biden's Iran Deal a Disaster
From
Trying to herd everyone (23 our of 25) is not easy but this is all but two of the 50th anniversary attendees:
Ron and Cheryl,
A lot of good stuff here, but if you read nothing else, you must read the lead article on Iran.
$100 billion to Iran while our people are suffering from out-of-control inflation and energy shortage.
Not to mention the existential danger to Israel of terrorism and nuclear annihilation.
This is beyond outrageous.
Biden's Iran Deal a Disaster
US to Gift Iran $100 Billion
Nuclear enforcement non-existent (left click on this.)
AND:
‘Biden not in control of Iran talks,’ says former top US State Department official
Gabriel Noronha, who was tasked with Iran policy at the U.S. State Department under former President Donald Trump, warns the deal currently being considered will see world powers roll back far more sanctions in return for far less from Iran.
By Damian Pachter Israel Hayom)
Gabriel Noronha, who worked on Iran policy at the U.S. State Department under former President Donald Trump, was fired for speaking out against the then-president following the Jan. 6 riots on Capitol Hill. Now, with a Democratic administration in the White House, he’s warning against the Iran nuclear deal taking shape in Vienna.
Noronha, who worked under then-U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, described the deal as a grand “gesture” towards the Iranian regime.
According to Noronha, the new agreement includes sanctions relief that would see restrictions rolled back on a number of former senior Iranian officials who were allegedly involved in terrorist activity in the past.
One such official is Mohsen Rezaee, the former head of Iran’s Expediency Discernment Council and commander-in-chief of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps. The International Criminal Police Organization, commonly known as Interpol, published a red order for Rezaee in connection with the 1994 bombing of a Jewish community center in Buenos Aires that killed 85 people and wounded hundreds.
Another official set to see sanctions relief thanks to the accord is Hossein Deghan, who served as IRGC commander of Tehran during the 1983 attack in Beirut that killed 241 U.S. troops.
According to Noronha, the coming Iran nuclear deal will be “far weaker and far more dangerous than the original accord” signed under former U.S. President Barack Obama in 2015, as world powers have agreed to rescind far more sanctions while “asking far less” of Tehran in return.
Noronha’s criticism is aimed in particular at senior Biden administration officials and U.S. Special Envoy to Iran Malley, who is conducting the nuclear talks in Vienna.
A number of senior delegation officials have already quit the team in protest against the White House’s approach to the talks. One of the officials to walk out was U.S. Deputy Special Envoy to Iran Richard Nephew.
Describing the resignations as “shocking,” Noronha said another two delegation members had dropped out of the talks in late 2021 out of concern over Malley’s approach. Noting it was “unprecedented” for delegation members to quit in protest against their leadership, Noronha said a lot of people at the State Department believe Malley is a weak negotiator who is damaging U.S. national security.
Asked why Biden was insisting on signing a deal, Noronha said, “I don’t think Biden” is in control of the talks. “He’s focused on China, on Russia and on domestic” issues. “I don’t think he’s giving it a lot of attention.”
According to Noronha, Biden has delegated authority to U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Malley. “I don’t think he’s making the decisions,” said Noronha. “I think Malley is making them.”
This article first appeared in Israel Hayom.
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Who checks the fact checkers?
Fact-Checker Admits They Were Wrong After Giving ‘Mostly False’ Assessment - What Good Are Fact-Checks?
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From WSJ:
Putin’s War Will Get Uglier
He won’t give up power without giving repression every chance to succeed.
Walter Russell Mead
Vladimir Putin is beginning to understand the immense difficulty of the war he cavalierly launched in Ukraine. He knows now that his corrupt and time-serving generals lied to him about the effectiveness of the military machine they had built. He knows that the flattering “experts” who reinforced his prejudices about the weakness of Ukrainian national identity were talking through their hats. He knows that even German fecklessness has limits and that Americans still know how to fight cold wars. He has no illusions now about the power of Western economic sanctions, and he knows that families all over Russia will soon be mourning their sons as the death toll mounts in Ukraine.
He is no doubt dismayed by the cascade of bad news but appears determined to fight on. This should not surprise us. Mr. Putin also knows that his future in power, his freedom and quite possibly his life depend on the outcome of this war.
And there is something else he knows, or thinks he knows, that many in the West discount. Westerners and especially Americans believe that freedom always wins in the end. That implies Mr. Putin will fail in Ukraine and Putinism will ultimately fail in Russia because that is the way history works.
From where Mr. Putin sits in the Kremlin, however, history seems to teach a different lesson. The empire of the czars was not built on freedom, nor did freedom result when it fell. The Soviet Union that rose from the ruins of Romanov power was not based on the idea of human freedom. Stalin wasn’t deposed by Russians hungry for freedom; he died in bed. The feeble liberals who tried to introduce Western-style democracy into post-Soviet Russia were soon sidelined in the power struggles of the Yeltsin era. Mr. Putin simply does not think that “freedom always wins” and his likely reaction to the failure of his initial strategy for the absorption of Ukraine into his domain will be to double down on repression.
We should not underestimate the power of his belief in the efficacy of the iron fist. He has seen it work in Tibet, Xinjiang and, most recently, Hong Kong. Mr. Putin knows how ugly and effective the process of restoring Bashar al-Assad’s rule across most of Syria has been. He notes that Nicolás Maduro still rules Venezuela, that the Castroite state retains its hold on Cuba, and that North Korea has defied decades of American sanctions. He recalls last year’s democratic rising in Belarus, and he remembers how easy it was for Alexander Lukashenko to crush it. Mr. Putin is unlikely to give up his ambitions in Ukraine, much less his power in Moscow, without giving repression every chance to succeed.
We should not delude ourselves about how far Mr. Putin could go. Since the outbreak of the war, he has been cracking down in Russia—closing the last remnants of a free press, arresting critics and tightening the laws against protest and dissent. But the Soviet era saw much more totalitarian controls and much greater terror than anything that exists in Russia today.
Would Mr. Putin rebuild the Gulag Archipelago and re-create the terror through which Stalin ruled Ukraine? If the alternative is to flee Moscow in disgrace and pass the remaining years of his life as a state pensioner in China, he will almost certainly move in that direction. Mr. Putin cemented his hold on power by deploying ruthless violence against civilians in Grozny to crush the Chechen drive for independence. Why would he yield power without using every available method to hold on?
The question is whether he can succeed. On the one hand, Mr. Putin’s state and the Russian bureaucracy today lack the ideological commitment and the experience of civil war that made Stalin’s Communist Party such an effective instrument of mass repression and terror. Today’s security agency, the FSB, is less powerful than the KGB, much less is it a match for the NKVD of Stalin’s time. There is also a question of how far into the darkness Mr. Putin’s allies are ready to travel with him.
Yet the technologies deployed across China under Xi Jinping make repression and social control much easier than ever. It is in any case easier to build an effective police state than to build a modern army, and the men who enabled Mr. Putin’s march into Ukraine may well continue to support him as he marches deeper into the Russian past.
Mr. Putin’s political career demonstrates three unwavering commitments: to his personal power, to the expansion of Russia, and to the superiority of authoritarian society over the liberal West. Unfortunately for the Russian and Ukrainian peoples, these principles will likely shape his decisions in the days and weeks to come.
AND:
Biden’s Bizarre Oil Diplomacy
He courts Venezuela and the Saudis, but not U.S. or Canadian producers.
The Editorial Board
President Biden is scrambling to contain soaring oil prices, which closed at more than $123 a barrel on Monday. It speaks volumes about this Administration that it’s seeking help from Vladimir Putin’s client in Venezuela and our estranged Saudi allies rather than U.S. shale producers or our Canadian friends.
Press Secretary Jen Psaki on Monday acknowledged reports that the Administration had sent emissaries to Caracas to discuss “energy security.” The Administration may ease sanctions on Venezuelan oil to replace lost Russian supply, which buyers are shunning due to sanctions risk.
The Trump Administration in early 2019 sanctioned Venezuela’s state oil company PDVSA to squeeze Nicolas Maduro’s brutal regime, which has impoverished the country, persecuted political opponents and sent millions of refugees across the region.
But Venezuela continues to pump about 800,000 barrels a day with help from Russia and Iran. The Venezuelan has returned the favor by supporting Mr. Putin’s war on Ukraine and denouncing the West’s “economic war” against the Russian people.
Easing Venezuelan sanctions would be a strategic blunder that provides a financial lifeline to Mr. Maduro while doing little to ease the oil price spike. Venezuelan oil companies say they can increase production by several hundred thousand barrels a day in eight months. The war in Ukraine may be over by then.
Axios also reports that the President is considering a personal visit to Saudi Arabia to patch up relations with the Crown Prince whom Mr. Biden made a show of disdaining when he took office. At the same time the Administration has been seeking a rapprochement with Iran, which has backed Houthis in Yemen waging war against the Kingdom and United Arab Emirates.
The Saudis and UAE are the only OPEC members that appear to have spare capacity, but they’ve rebuffed Mr. Biden’s pleas to increase supply. One reason is they don’t want to alienate Mr. Putin, who has become a power broker in the Middle East. Mr. Biden should never have alienated the Saudis, but we’d be much better off if he simply encouraged U.S. energy production.
Shale producers can increase production twice as fast as Venezuelan oil companies, and the profits would go to U.S. workers and shareholders rather than another dictatorship.
Finally:
Biden Shatters Israel’s Delusions
By Caroline Glick
For decades, senior Israeli defense officials beat a path to the Pentagon, the State Department, the CIA and the National Security Council with briefcases full of documents providing conclusive proof that Iran’s nuclear program is a military program and that its purpose is to transform the Islamic Republic of Iran into a nuclear-armed state. The officers arrived in Washington convinced that the smoking gun they were providing the Americans would compel Washington to abandon its long-held delusion that there is a “grand bargain” to be had with the fanatical Islamist theocracy whose leaders believe that Iran’s rise will herald an era of unmitigated Shiite global domination.
All of the Israeli officers made their best cases to their American counterparts. Most believed the Americans were open to the information they provided, and left Washington convinced that the Americans finally recognized the danger and would act to block Iran from achieving its nefarious goal. On at least one occasion, their efforts were rewarded.
In 2018, after Israel’s Mossad spy agency spirited Iran’s nuclear archive out of a warehouse in Tehran and brought it to Israel, Israel’s spy chiefs flew to Washington to share the findings with the Trump administration. The documents provided incontrovertible proof of Israel’s long-standing contentions that Iran’s nuclear program was initiated, maintained and expanded throughout the years for the primary purpose of developing nuclear weapons. Then-President Donald Trump responded to Israel’s revelations by withdrawing the U.S from the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA)—the nuclear deal the Obama administration had concluded with Iran.
The 2015 nuclear deal placed certain restrictions on Iran’s nuclear activities for a limited period. But the JCPOA allowed Iran to continue with its nuclear research and development, and placed no restrictions on Iran’s missile development and proliferation. In other words, Barack Obama‘s deal limited what Iran could do with the nuclear capabilities it had acquired by 2015, but it enabled Iran to massively expand its nuclear capabilities for the future.
During the early years of the JCPOA, Iran developed second-generation centrifuges capable of enriching uranium 10 times faster than it was able to enrich in 2015—and to much higher levels of purity. Iran began deploying the new advanced centrifuges as soon as they were ready, even before Trump abandoned the JCPOA and reinstated the nuclear sanctions the Obama administration had suspended in 2015.
After abandoning the JCPOA, Trump and then-Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced their “maximum pressure” campaign of harsh sanctions on the Iranian regime. The campaign intended to block the regime from waging war against its neighbors, either directly or through its proxies, and to deter it from attacking U.S. forces and assets in the region.
The maximum pressure strategy was working effectively when Trump left office. Had it been retained by the Biden administration, Iran’s regime would likely have collapsed by this year, rendering its nuclear weapons program dead in the water. But rather than continue a policy that was working, President Joe Biden reinstated Barack Obama’s policy of facilitating Iran’s nuclear program and its regional aggression by agitating for a restoration of American and Iranian compliance with the 2015 deal.
Biden appointed Robert Malley, a former Obama administration nuclear negotiator who had developed strong ties with the Iranian regime during his tenure at the helm of the International Crisis Group, to serve as his envoy to renewed nuclear negotiations with Iran. Both before the talks were initiated in Vienna, and since the talks commenced, in the interests of convincing Iran to agree to a deal, Biden ended enforcement of the most significant sanctions Trump had placed on Iran’s nuclear operations. He delisted Iran’s Yemeni proxy, the Houthis, from the State Department’s formal list of foreign terrorist organizations. And Biden convinced U.S. allies to unfreeze Iranian funds held in their banks due to Iran’s sponsorship of terrorism, in the hopes of proving his benign intentions to the ayatollahs.
This brings us back to the Israeli military officers who have come and gone through the corridors of power in Washington for the past two decades, bearing proof of Iran’s malign intentions and actions. During Obama’s presidency, then-Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was often the lone voice in Israeli leadership circles warning that the Obama administration had no intention of blocking Iran from becoming a nuclear-armed power. For eight years, Netanyahu fought with the Israeli defense establishment, whose leaders continued to believe that Americans from both sides of the partisan aisle could be trusted when they said they would not permit Iran to become a nuclear power.
Last June, Netanyahu was ousted from power by a narrow coalition of small parties hailing from the establishment right to the far left to the Muslim Brotherhood. Current Prime Minister Naftali Bennett, Foreign Minister Yair Lapid and Defense Minister Benny Gantz came into office promising not to publicly criticize Biden’s nuclear diplomacy with Iran, and even voicing support for a renewed agreement with the mullahs. The Israeli security establishment, which long opposed Netanyahu’s doctrine of muscular public diplomacy and independent action to block Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons, felt vindicated.
Over the past several months, as nuclear talks have dragged on in Vienna, Israel’s dovish new leaders kept to their word. Opposition to rumors of U.S. concessions was voiced politely, and generally in private. Senior military and intelligence officers continued to travel to Washington with their briefcases, brimming with documents and believing it was in their power to shift the U.S. position at the negotiating table in Vienna. Netanyahu’s frequent warnings that now is no time for silence were dismissed as the ravings of a bitter, spurned leader.
But then, last Wednesday, Gabriel Noronha, a former Iran specialist at the State Department, published details of the concessions Malley has already agreed to on his Twitter feed. Noronha wrote that he received the details of the U.S. concessions from his former colleagues at the State Department and National Security Council, as well as from the European Union delegations to the talks. Noronha wrote that his associates, all “career” officers rather than political appointees, “are so concerned with the concessions being made by Rob Malley in Vienna that they’ve allowed me to publish some details of the coming deal in the hopes that Congress will act to stop the capitulation.”
Malley’s capitulation includes delisting Iran’s Revolutionary Guards Corps from the State Department’s list of Foreign Terror Organizations and ending U.S. sanctions on Iran’s senior terror masters—including the terror chiefs responsible for the massacre of 241 U.S. Marines at the Marine barracks in Beirut in 1983 and the 1994 bombing of the Jewish community center in Buenos Aires in 1994, where 85 people were killed.
Malley has agreed to end sanctions on 112 entities and people tied to Iranian dictator Ali Khamenei, through which Khamenei has accrued massive wealth and organized Iran’s global terror and weapons procurement networks. Malley is willing to end sanctions on Iranian entities and individuals involved in the torture and murder of Iranian civilians.
All told, Noronha’s colleagues said Malley has agreed to sanctions relief that will provide Iran with an immediate cash infusion of $90 billion, as well as an additional $50-55 billion annually in oil and gas profits.
On the nuclear front, beyond a few formalities, Biden’s deal will enable Iran to move full-speed ahead with its development of advanced centrifuges and continue its race to the nuclear finish line. All limitations—which are largely unenforceable—will be removed in two and a half years. And Iran’s nuclear program, which constitutes a material breach of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty of which Iran is a signatory, will be legitimated by the UN and the U.S. government.
All of these concessions guarantee two consequences. First, Iran will go to war. As U.S. Army Col. (res.) Joel Rayburn, who served as Trump’s envoy to Syria and in a range of senior positions related to the Middle East in Central Command, the National Security Council and the State Department explained in a recent interview with Newsweek, with the JCPOA’s implementation in 2015, Iran received billions of dollars in sanctions relief. It used the funds to expand its wars against Israel, against U.S. forces deployed in the Middle East and against Iran’s Sunni Arab neighbors the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Saudi Arabia. Iran fought its various foes both directly and through its proxies in Iraq, Yemen, Syria, Lebanon and the Palestinian territories.
The $90 billion that Malley and his colleagues in the Biden administration are poised to now give Iran guarantee that Iran will massively escalate its aggression against these actors.
The second consequence of the new nuclear deal is that Iran will become a nuclear-armed state unless Israel attacks and destroys a sufficient number of Iran’s nuclear installations to significantly scale back Iran’s nuclear capabilities.
And so we return to Israel’s security brass. The most powerful shock wave Noronha’s revelations produced is the one going through Israel’s military high command. Israel’s military leaders can no longer deny the truth that they have gone to near-superhuman heights to wish away for 20 years. Netanyahu, it turns out, was right all along.
The contest between Iran and Israel pits a country of 90 million against a country of nine million; a theocratic regional hegemon with manifold foreign legions against a liberal democracy with no aspirations for territorial conquest. And under the Biden administration, the U.S. is standing with the Iranians.
Originally published in Newsweek.com.
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