++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
The future is here:
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
+++
Russian President Vladimir Putin Isn’t Likely to Launch Costly War on Ukraine, Argues Hoover Research Fellow Paul Gregory
Featuring Paul Gregory via Questions and Answers
Paul Gregory analyzes whether Russia intends to launch a full-scale invasion of Ukraine. He concludes that such a move would be inconsistent with the cost-benefit model Russian president Vladimir Putin uses to weigh his country’s involvement in conflicts in Georgia (2008), the Crimean Peninsula and East Ukraine (2014), and Syria (beginning in 2015). According to Gregory, Putin will only engage in small, low-cost wars that are likely to yield a limited number of Russian casualties.
+++++++
Let's hear it for the blacks:
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
What does it take? It is one thing to have a corrupted FBI it is even worse to have a blind one.
Gaslighting Anti-Semitism in America
By Caroline Glick
Malik Faisal Akram, the British national who seized four hostages at gunpoint at Congregation Beth Israel in Colleyville, Texas during Sabbath services, was straightforward about who he was and what he wanted.
Upon entering the synagogue wielding a gun and claiming he had a bomb in his backpack, Akram began ranting against the Jews and Jewish power and demanded the release of an al-Qaeda terrorist serving an 86-year prison term at a federal prison 20 miles from Beth Israel.
To achieve his goal, he took the rabbi and three congregants hostage. He had the rabbi call another rabbi in New York. The rabbi in New York works at Central Synagogue.
You don’t need to be a professional anti-Semitism researcher to understand that a man railing against Jewish power, who demands the intercession of a rabbi at a place called “Central Synagogue” in New York City on behalf of an al-Qaeda terrorist, hates, fears and is obsessed with Jews. You don’t need any special training to understand that Akram believed a Jewish cabal controls the world—and that this belief caused him to storm a synagogue by the prison where his celebrity terrorist is incarcerated, during Sabbath services, in order to take Jews hostage.
In other words, anyone with eyes could see that Akram’s motive in attacking the synagogue and taking Jewish hostages was anti-Semitic. It was obvious that he acted in a premeditated way. He selected his target and worked out his game plan ahead of time.
And yet, the FBI managed to miss it all. At a press briefing, after the hostages had managed to escape and FBI officers killed Akram, FBI Special Agent in Charge Matt DeSarno dismissed anti-Semitism as Akram’s motive.
Akram, DeSarno said, was “singularly focused on one issue” that was not “specifically related to the Jewish community.”
“We are continuing to work to find a motive,” DeSarno added.
President Joe Biden, for his part, rightly referred to the attack as a terror attack. But Biden insisted, as well, that it was too early to know “why he was using anti-Semitic and anti-Israeli comments.”
The sense that the FBI and Biden were gaslighting grew as more information came out about the identity of the terrorist Akram flew to America from Britain, bought a gun and seized Jewish hostages at a Texas synagogue in the hopes of freeing Aafia Siddiqui.
Aafia Siddiqui, otherwise known as “Lady al-Qaeda,” was sentenced to 86 years in prison in 2010 for attempting to murder U.S. servicemen in Afghanistan. While in Afghan custody, Siddiqui seized the rifle of a U.S. officer who was sent to the jail with a team of other officers to interrogate Siddiqui. She managed to get off two shots before other U.S. personnel returned fire and neutralized her.
Afghan police arrested Siddiqui outside the compound of an Afghan provincial governor after they found plans to make radioactive “dirty” bombs, as well as a list of U.S. landmarks in her handbag.
During her 2010 trial in New York, Siddiqui demanded that no Jews be permitted to serve on her jury and that prospective jurors undergo DNA testing to ensure they had no Jewish ancestry.
After Siddiqui was convicted, she blamed the all-powerful Jewish cabal—in her mind, headquartered in the Jewish state of Israel—for her conviction. In her words, “This is a verdict coming from Israel, not America. That’s where the anger belongs.”
Akram wasn’t the first Islamic terrorist to seek Siddiqui’s release. The Islamic State twice offered to swap U.S. hostages for Siddiqui. The Taliban and al-Qaeda also offered to swap U.S. and other Western hostages for “Lady al-Qaeda,” who earned advanced degrees from MIT and Brandeis.
Terrorists and terror groups aren’t the only actors working for Siddiqui’s release. Ostensibly moderate American Muslim groups also lobby on Siddiqui’s behalf. The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) has held repeated rallies for Siddiqui’s release. Well-known Muslim-American activist and notorious anti-Semite Linda Sarsour spoke at an online CAIR rally for Siddqui’s release in November. Other major Islamic goups have actively lobbied and protested on Siddiqui’s behalf. The Muslim American Society, American Muslims for Palestine and the Islamic Circle of North America, among others, have all participated in efforts to secure her release. The Aafia Foundation was formed to lobby on her behalf. Mosques from Boston to Los Angeles have held events calling for Siddiqui’s release, as well.
The involvement of these U.S. Muslim groups in an effort to secure Siddiqui’s release points to an explanation for DeSarno’s denial of Akram’s anti-Semitic motive for storming a synagogue during Sabbath services and taking four Jews hostage. While CAIR was listed by the FBI as a Hamas front group in the U.S. and was an unindicted co-conspirator in the 2008 Holy Land Foundation terror financing trial, the FBI has a sordid history of working with the Islamist terrorist-supporting outfit.
Not only does CAIR agitate on behalf of terrorists such as Siddiqui. Many of CAIR’s leaders have open records of anti-Semitic pronouncements similar to Akram’s and Siddiqui’s. For instance, less than two months ago Zahra Billoo, who heads CAIR’s San Francisco branch, delivered a viciously anti-Jewish speech at an event for American Muslims for Palestine. Billoo blasted all “Zionists,” which she defines as anyone who supports the mere existence of the Jewish state of Israel. She called on American Muslims to reject overtures and shun what she described as even “polite Zionists.”
“We need to pay attention to the Anti-Defamation League. We need to pay attention to the Jewish Federations…the Zionist synagogues…Hillel chapters on our campuses. …Those who support the two-state solution, are our enemies,” Billoo seethed.
Obviously, the FBI would have a hard time acknowledging that Akram was an Islamic terrorist motivated by anti-Semitism when the FBI itself works with groups that are viciously anti-Semitic and support Islamic terrorists.
The FBI was harshly criticized in the wake of DeSarno’s infuriating statement. And in the face of widespread criticism, it reversed course on Sunday and acknowledged that Akram was indeed a terrorist who was motivated by anti-Semitism.
Unfortunately, unless the FBI decides to end its cooperation with American Muslim groups that share Akram and Siddiqui’s anti-Jewish Islamist worldview, it is hard to believe that the FBI’s changed position is sincere—or that it will be backed by credible, sustained efforts to protect American Jews and Jewish institutions from the threat of Islamist anti-Semitic attacks.
And if that is the situation with the FBI, the situation with the Democratic Party and the Biden administration, specifically, is far worse. CAIR’s status as an unindicted co-conspirator in the largest terror financing trial in U.S. history caused the FBI to temper its work with the group. But the Democrats feel no such compunction. More than 100 Democratic lawmakers from both houses of Congress have formally voiced their support for CAIR.
Vice President Kamala Harris had close relations with CAIR both during her tenure as California attorney general and during her U.S. Senate stint. Senior Biden administration officials also enjoy close ties with CAIR.
CAIR worked on a bill with Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) that was recently approved by the House of Representatives in a straight party-line vote. Omar’s bill would require the president to appoint a special envoy for Islamophobia. Critics of the bill, such as Dr. M. Zuhdi Jasser, warn that if the “Combatting International Islamophobia Act” is passed into law, the U.S. will effectively bar criticism of Islam and also find itself supporting militant jihadists who define any criticism of Islam as blasphemy.
In the space of three years, anti-Semitic terrorists have attacked Jews in synagogues four times. Two were conducted by white supremacists, and one was conducted by a black nationalist. Akram is an Islamist Jew-hater. The white supremacists who attacked synagogues in Pittsburgh and Poway, California were rightly treated as terrorists, and condemned from coast to coast. Their actions received massive coverage across the media. The black nationalist who attacked Jews in Monsey, New York was found unfit to stand for trial on federal hate crime charges due to mental illness. Black nationalists who murdered two Jews and a non-Jewish cashier at a kosher supermarket in Jersey City around the same time were supported by some in the local black community, including a member of the local school board. And Akram’s attack on Beth Israel, of course, was mischaracterized by both the FBI and the president of the United States.
All of this points to a devastating reality. Jews in the United States are being targeted by three distinct types of anti-Semites. But they are only being protected against one.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Gonna take a lot to wake up a world that is sleeping.
China’s Economic Coercion of Australia a ‘Wake-Up Call’ to World: UK Minister
By Alexander Zhang
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Skyrocketing energy costs are crippling American farmers: how it is impacting all of us
By Salena Zito
HARRISBURG — When a snowstorm was threatening to hit Pennsylvania last weekend, Berks County dairy farmer Lolly Lesher said she didn’tu have the luxury of staying home from the office when storms paralyze the roads.
“I still have to get up well before dawn, no matter what Mother Nature decides she is going to do that day. We really do strive every single day to take excellent care of our cattle; my cows get fed before my kids do, and they eat a balanced, better diet than my children ever did,” said Ms. Lesher, who — with her daughter, Olivia — was showcasing one of her dairy cows at the Pennsylvania Farm Show.
The matriarch of this seven-generation dairy-farming family said weather is one of the three variables farmers traditionally have no control over, and that keeps their lives and livelihood in a constant state of uncertainty. “The other two are the politics of trade and the fluctuating tastes of the American consumer — a great example of that would be recent dietary fads like almond and oat milk,” said Ms. Lesher of the plant-based drinks that now stand carton to carton with milk in the dairy aisle. Ms. Lesher says that now a fourth variable has emerged, and it is gutting the farming industry.
“Energy costs,” she said, shaking her head. “They are wreaking havoc on our inputs both in terms of access as well as costs.”
Ms. Lesher explains that it all begins with the equipment she needs to operate her 250-plus acre farm: “My tractor has 385 horsepower to plow the field, to plant the grain, to harvest the grain, so we spend thousands and thousands of dollars on fuel just for that tractor.”
It isn’t just the cost of products that come from energy — it’s also availability. “We are having a very hard time even buying fertilizer,” Ms. Lesher said.
The farm uses the manure it generates as fertilizer, of course, “but we also buy urea, which is a petroleum-based fertilizer,” Ms. Lesher said, “and it’s tripled in price. Am I going to get triple for the product when I sell it? No. Our profit margins are really slimming down because of the huge impact of increases in petroleum.”
Everything on a farm has a petroleum connection: It’s not just the fertilizers, but getting the cows’ feed to the farm and getting their milk to market.
The Leshers sell bottled milk in their own farmers market, which is known for rich homemade ice cream and doughy baked goods, as well as at several southeastern Pennsylvania grocery stores, restaurants and bakeries. “When we bottled milk, those plastic bottles are based on petroleum,” said Ms. Lesher. “I’ve had seven price increases in the past three months alone on the bottles that I put my milk in; it is getting very difficult.”
There are over 2 million farms across the United States, and 99% of them are family owned; the average farm is about 435 acres, with 914 million acres of land dedicated to farming in a country of 2.43 billion acres.
In short, if you drive anywhere across this country, you will see innumerable American farms. And each one of those feeds, on average, 166 people in the U.S. and around the world, according to the American Farm Bureau. The industry employs over 24 million Americans.
Farming has always been the backbone of Pennsylvania’s economy. There are over 53,000 farms on 7.3 million acres in the commonwealth, accounting for $83.8 billion in direct economic output.
If a farmer’s pocketbook is hurting, all of us are hurting.
And farmers are hurting now.
If you think fertilizer costs for farmers exploded in 2021, this year is going to be even worse, according to a new study by Texas A&M University’s Agricultural and Food Policy Center — as much as 80% worse for this year’s planting season. This is on top of a 300% increase over the year before, according to data compiled by the American Farm Bureau.
Ms. Lesher’s concerns were repeated in interviews with dozens of farmers of all stripes at the massive farm show complex, the largest indoor agriculture show in the nation. Energy costs were everyone’s top concern.
Generational farmer and chair of the farm show, Michael Firestine, of Womelsdorf, Pa., gasped when discussing the impact energy costs have had on his 150-acre farm — and across the industry. He listed triple-digit percent increases that he and other farmers have had to absorb just in purchasing: “My input costs have skyrocketed, but the sale of my grains has not changed. So, I’m going to take a hit, a big hit,” he said.
“Now, I only farm 150 acres — you add up those kind of costs for a farmer who is farming five sections of land — a section being 640 acres — and there is going to be a lot of red ink,” said Mr. Firestine, who used to chair the Agricultural and Rural Bankers Committee in Washington, D.C.
Like Ms. Lesher and other farmers interviewed at the farm show, Mr. Firestine places the skyrocketing energy costs at the feet of ideological decisions made by people not just geographically distanced from farming communities, but culturally distanced as well.
Efforts to stop fossil fuel pipeline construction and to close existing supply lines wreak havoc on supply prices, he said.
Mr. Firestine expects it to get worse if Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer is successful in shutting down the Enbridge Line 5 pipeline — a major oil pipeline the carries petroleum from Canada to refineries in Ohio and beyond. “Oh, my word,” he said.
“What we have in America is the most abundant, safest food supply in the world; why would we want to fool around with that?” Mr. Firestine asked.
For many farmers here, the historic inflation we are experiencing — prices in the U.S. are rising at their fastest rate in almost 40 years — began when the Biden administration used some of his first executive orders to cancel the Keystone XL pipeline and pause fossil fuel permits on public lands.
The bottom line from the farm show this year, though, is that while inflation pinches everyone, it doesn’t do so equally. That 6.5% more that you are paying for your groceries — a giant leap over the 1.5% average over the last 10 years — doesn’t even begin to cover the losses these farmers have absorbed in getting that food to your store.
The farmers are still working hard to make sure we are growing the wheat, corn and soybeans and milking the cows for you to get your food — but the red ink is pooling up.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
It took WAPO more than a dozen years to learn what I knew. in a week. Why are they so late? Because like all liberal media folks they are a day late and many dollars short. their biases blind them to reality.
THE WASHINGTON POST HITS OBAMA! : The quintessential "Empty Suit".
As weak as he was, they had to find someone weaker to serve as VP - his own court jester. Now buffooning our country (and this world) into pitiful times, he has adopted the same model with his own cackling court jester as VP.
Finally, the Washington Post speaks out on Obama! This is very brutal, timely though. As I'm sure you know, the Washington Post newspaper has a reputation for being extremely liberal. So, the fact that its editor saw fit to print the following article about Obama in its newspaper makes this a truly amazing event and a news story in and of itself. At last, the truth about our President and his obvious socialist agenda are starting to trickle through the protective wall built around him by our liberal media.
By Matt Patterson (columnist - Washington Post, New York Post, San Francisco Examiner)
Years from now, historians may regard the 2008 election of Barack Obama as an inscrutable and disturbing phenomenon, the result of a baffling breed of mass hysteria akin perhaps to the witch craze of the Middle Ages. How, they will wonder, did a man so devoid of professional accomplishment beguile so many into thinking he could manage the world's largest economy, direct the world's most powerful military, execute the world's most consequential job? Imagine a future historian examining Obama's pre-presidential life: ushered into and through the Ivy League despite unremarkable grades and test scores along the way; a cushy non-job as a "community organizer"; a brief career as a state legislator devoid of legislative achievement (and in fact nearly devoid of his attention, so often did he vote "present"); and finally an unaccomplished single term in the United States Senate, the entirety of which was devoted to his presidential ambitions.
He left no academic legacy in academia, authored no signature legislation as a legislator. And then there is the matter of his troubling associations: the white-hating, America-loathing preacher who for decades served as Obama's "spiritual mentor"; a real-life, actual terrorist who served as Obama's colleague and political sponsor. It is easy to imagine a future historian looking at it all and asking: how on Earth was such a man elected president?
Not content to wait for history, the incomparable Norman Podhoretz addressed the question recently in the Wall Street Journal: To be sure, no white candidate who had close associations with an outspoken hater of America like Jeremiah Wright and an unrepentant terrorist like Bill Ayers, would have lasted a single day. But because Mr. Obama was black, and therefore entitled in the eyes of liberal Dom to have hung out with protesters against various American injustices, even if they were a bit extreme, he was given a pass. Let that sink in: Obama was given a pass - held to a lower standard - because of the color of his skin.
Podhoretz continues: And in any case, what did such ancient history matter when he was also so articulate and elegant and (as he himself had said) "non-threatening," all of which gave him a fighting chance to become the first black president and thereby to lay the curse of racism to rest?
Podhoretz puts his finger, I think, on the animating pulse of the Obama phenomenon - affirmative action. Not in the legal sense, of course. But certainly, in the motivating sentiment behind all affirmative action laws and regulations, which are designed primarily to make white people, and especially white liberals, feel good about themselves. Unfortunately, minorities often suffer so that whites can pat themselves on the back. Liberals routinely admit minorities to schools for which they are not qualified yet take no responsibility for the inevitable poor performance and high drop- out rates which follow. Liberals don't care if these minority students fail; liberals aren't around to witness the emotional devastation and deflated self-esteem resulting from the racist policy that is affirmative action. Yes, racist. Holding someone to a separate standard merely because of the color of his skin - that's affirmative action in a nutshell, and if that isn't racism, then nothing is.
And that is what America did to Obama. True, Obama himself was never troubled by his lack of achievements, but why would he be? As many have noted, Obama was told he was good enough for Columbia despite undistinguished grades at Occidental; he was told he was good enough for the US Senate despite a mediocre record in Illinois; he was told he was good enough to be president despite no record at all in the Senate. All his life, every step of the way, Obama was told he was good enough for the next step, in spite of ample evidence to the contrary.
What could this breed if not the sort of empty narcissism on display every time Obama speaks? In 2008, many who agreed that he lacked executive qualifications nonetheless raved about Obama's oratory skills, intellect, and cool character. Those people - conservatives included - ought now to be deeply embarrassed. The man thinks and speaks in the hoariest of clichés, and that's when he has his Teleprompters in front of him; when the prompter is absent, he can barely think or speak at all. Not one original idea has ever issued from his mouth - it's all warmed-over Marxism of the kind that has failed repeatedly for 100 years.
And what about his character?
Obama is constantly blaming anything and everything else for his troubles. Bush did it; it was bad luck; I inherited this mess. It is embarrassing to see a president so willing to advertise his own powerlessness, so comfortable with his own incompetence. But really, what were we to expect? The man has never been responsible for anything, so how do we expect him to act responsibly?
In short: our past president is a small and small-minded man, with neither the temperament nor the intellect to handle his job. When you understand that, and only when you understand that, will the current erosion of liberty and prosperity make sense. It could not have gone otherwise with such a man in the Oval Office.
And now Obama is back, with his hand up Biden's (you know what) moving his demented mouth........ the USA is in real trouble......
And:
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/
Arizona Democrats Censure Sinema After Filibuster Vote
Kyrsten Sinema, a first-term Arizona senator, was rebuked by fellow Democrats in her state after her vote on the filibuster helped sink the party’s voting-rights legislation.
Finally:
Biden's Colossal Failure on Iran: Redesignate the Houthis a Foreign Terrorist Organization
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
How ‘Progressive’ Prosecutors Are Betraying the Constitution By Andrew C. McCarthy
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
y SalenaZito
No comments:
Post a Comment