Donald Trump, George Bush, and Joe Biden were set to face a firing squad in a Central American country.
Donald Trump was the first one placed against the wall and just before the order was given, he yelled out, "Earthquake!"
The firing squad fell into a panic and Donald Trump jumped over the wall and escaped during the confusion.
George Bush was the second one placed against the wall.
The squad was reassembled, and George pondered what he had just witnessed.
Again, before the order was given George yelled out, "Tornado!"
Again, the squad fell apart and George slipped over the wall.
The last person, Joe Biden, was placed against the wall.
He was thinking, I see the pattern here, just scream out something about a disaster and hop over the wall.
He confidently refused the blindfold as the firing squad was reassembled.
As the rifles were raised in his direction, he grinned from ear to ear and yelled, "Fire!"
And this story my friends reflects the true intelligence of the guy now living at 1600 Pennsylvania
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As long as Putin chooses to attack Ukraine in an indiscriminate manner, wantonly kill innocent citizens and threatens the world with the prospect of a nuclear war the west is faced with dire Hobson like choices.
A serious second issue is the continued effort on the part of the mass media to distort truth, protect their anointed with fake reporting and manipulate public opinion.
A third equally grave constant is the attack on our nation's institutions, education system and constitutional based values/dictates because we fall asleep at the switch while those who hate our nation and fear it's support of freedoms are at work infecting our nation with subversive thinking and challenges to our way of life etc.
History is on our side because dictatorships eventually overstep their bounds and, over time, fall on their swords but not before they cause tragedy and suffering.
Freedom and man's desire to live a peaceful life often becomes a two edged sword because, in time, he drops his guard, fails to forget the lessons of preparedness and this encourages the "evil-doers." Democrats are famous for this scenario.
It is a shame but man must always sleep with one eye open.
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From Hoover Daily:
| Economic Weapons Of Mass Destruction |
| by Raghuram Rajan via Project Syndicate Because Russia's war against Ukraine could not go unpunished, the use of painful, sweeping economic sanctions is clearly justified. In the future, though, these powerful new tools will need to be subject to proper controls; otherwise, they could trigger a reversal of globalization – and of the prosperity that it has made possible +++++++++++++++ |
A message from a dear friend and fellow memo reader from his friend in Moscow:
- Wolksvagen, BMW and other Europeans after tough declarations announced that they just stop production because of logistical problems for 3 months while paying full salaries and other financial obligations….
This Offensive Will Not Stop With Ukraine - The American Spectator | USA News and Politics
By Itxu Díaz
I find it quite repugnant to value people’s right to live based on the risks of those who have a moral obligation to defend it.
In 494 B.C., just as Biden was graduating from college, the region of Ionia was threatened by the Persians. They could not stand the fact that Ionia was populated by Greeks, and they hated the fact that they had a different religion and culture. Moreover, Ionia was located in a place they wanted. There is a shuddering parallel between this episode of history and Putin’s obsession with restarting the Soviet Union in 2022.
Faced with the imminent Persian invasion, Ionia asked the other Greek cities for cooperation, hoping that they would help to dissuade the Persian king or at least defend themselves once the war began. The response was as lukewarm as the soul of a Brussels bureaucrat: a good part of the Greek cities did not want to face such a dangerous power as Persia, a large group of intellectuals even publicly admired the despotic Persian form of government, and the rest of the Greek decision-makers chose to remain silent and look the other way. Of course, there were flowery statements from the Greeks in support of Ionia, very heartfelt and poetic, but nothing more. In the end, the Persians savagely annihilated the Ionians and destroyed and set fire to their cities while the Greeks devoted themselves, I suppose, to smashing their own monuments with their heads, thinking of the tourism the ruins would bring during the 20th century.
But, perceiving the weakness and division of Greece, the Persians were not satisfied with Ionia, but soon after, under King Darius’ command, Persia also attacked Greece, starting a bloody and endless succession of wars. Naturally, the Persian pretext was the predictable one: that Athens had supported Ionia in the conflict.
This Wednesday, Zelensky, who at times reminds me of the Hero played by Dustin Hoffman, addressed the Capitol trying to stir consciences and then some. He elicited a loud and emotional ovation and, I suspect, little else. The fear of nuclear conflict is rather like the fear the Greeks had of unleashing a war against the mighty Persians. In fact, they preferred to surrender Ionia rather than get into trouble. But the truth is that they had — I am bored of this quote — the dishonor, and then the war as well. I have a question for those who today play the nuclear anti-war card: what makes you think that looking the other way while Putin massacres Ukrainians will spare the West from nuclear war?
No, I am not looking forward to a nuclear holocaust. I have no desire to have to put on hazmat suits every time I go shopping with my family; after two years of pandemic, I feel an irrepressible need to be able to scratch the tip of my nose without anything getting in my way. But I note on both sides of the political spectrum an obsessive denial of the evidence. Even a good deal of conservatives are adamant that, however unjust the deaths of Ukrainians may be (if you didn’t cry with the video Zelensky screened on Capitol Hill you probably have no soul), the risk of a full-scale nuclear conflict is too high. I find it quite repugnant to value people’s right to live based on the risks of those who have a moral obligation to defend it. Again, take a look at Ionia and Athens. The Greeks didn’t want to take the risk. They sold Ionia out for ten more minutes of fake peace. (READ MORE: How Future Historians Will View Ukraine)
The West must stand with Zelensky on the battlefield. There are many ways to do so while minimizing the risk of nuclear war. It is time for intelligence, leadership, and talent. There are a million things we can still do to help the Ukrainians, and perhaps the first of them is not to livestream every damn secret operation we are going to conduct, including the delivery of weapons or aircraft. The delivery of the Polish planes to Ukraine was thwarted by the indiscretion of Josep Borrell, head of European Union Foreign Affairs, a guy who being Spanish, like me, doesn’t protect him from being an idiot. The operation was supposed to be secret, but he was overcome by the desire to appear at a press conference to tell the story and score a point or two. He screwed up the operation. In the same way that Biden’s verbal incontinence in anticipation of the White House’s plans for inaction encouraged Putin to throw himself headfirst into this war.
There is, definitely, a lot we should learn from all this. And also from Ionia. This offensive will not stop with Ukraine.
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Biden is disingenuous.
Biden Resuming Role of Dishonest Broker in Middle East
American supporters of Israel are apt to become a political liability for Biden when he makes his concessions to Iran as part of a deal to renew the 2015 nuclear accord.
The press is awash with negative comments about Israel’s policy on Ukraine. A rift is brewing between Washington and Jerusalem over the upcoming Iran nuclear deal. America’s ambassador in Jerusalem sharply attacks Israel’s policies. Is President Biden resuming a familiar role — that of a dishonest broker for Mideast peace?
It’s starting to look that way. This all stems from the prospect that American supporters of Israel are apt to become a political liability for Mr. Biden when he makes his concessions to Iran as part of a deal to renew the 2015 nuclear accord. The administration is beginning to distance itself from the Israeli government.
Since the Vienna talks to renew the 2015 Iran deal resumed in the fall, Tehran has insisted that its terrorist arm, the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, be removed from the State Department’s list of terrorist organizations. As diplomats close in on an agreement, America is reportedly prepared to make that concession.
“Iran poses a threat to our allies, to our partners, in some cases to the United States,” the State Department spokesman, Ned Price, acknowledged Wednesday. Yet “the most urgent challenge we would face is a nuclear-armed Iran,” which, he suggests, is the reason diplomats prompted the deal in the first place.
Iranian missiles last week targeted an area near the American consulate at Erbil, in Iraqi Kurdistan. Rather than walk away from the Vienna talks, Washington officials leaked secondhand rumors that the Iranians hit an Israeli Mossad target. What in the world justifies that kind of blame-shifting?
The Times later retracted its ill-sourced story on the subject, which by then had made the rounds across the Mideast and beyond. Mr. Price declined to respond directly Wednesday to a report on Axios and an Israeli website, Walla, that the Biden administration is considering accepting a “public commitment from Iran to de-escalation” in return for removing the IRGC from the terror list.
“Tying the delisting of the IRGC to Iran promising to de-escalate in the region makes us look naive,” a former Mideast adviser to presidents of both parties, Dennis Ross, tweeted. “For the IRGC, which admitted this week to firing rockets into Erbil, to promise to de-escalate regionally is about as credible as Putin saying Russia would not invade Ukraine.”
Jerusalem officials briefed on the matter are “concerned,” according to Walla. What is said to bother them is that America isn’t even insisting that such a promise would specifically demand no IRGC targeting of Americans and allies, including Israel. It’s a sign, officials fear, that the Biden administration just isn’t serious about Israel.
The administration initially hailed Jerusalem’s coalition government that replaced Prime Minister Netanyahu, a man despised by the American left. Now officials and their press allies criticize Jerusalem’s policies, including on Ukraine.
Prime Minister Bennett has condemned Russia. A large Israeli medical team was sent to the Ukraine-Polish border, and Israelis have built the largest field hospital near the border. Israel gives temporary visas to thousands of Ukrainian refugees and tens of thousand Jewish Ukraianians are eligible for citizenship. It stands to become one of the largest recipients of refugees among countries with no Ukrainian border.
Yet the Washington press continually highlights reports of troubles for some Ukrainians arriving at Ben Gurion Airport, and emphasizes criticism from Kiev about Israel’s refusal to send certain lethal arms — even though similar criticism is also directed at America and Europe.
Reporters also rely on administration leaks criticizing a supposed Israeli “neutrality” on the Ukrainian war, while, according to the London Financial Times, Mr. Bennett is the “primary international mediator on the talks” between Presidents Putin and Zelensky.
The American ambassador in Jerusalem, Thomas Nides, acknowledged this week that Mr. Bennett’s mediation is fully coordinated with Washington, but most of his talk with the left-leaning Peace Now group consisted of a sharp attack on Israel’s “infuriating” policies on the Palestinians.
“We can’t do stupid things that impede us for a two-state solution,” Mr. Nides said, according to the Jerusalem Post. “We can’t have the Israelis doing settlement growth in east Jerusalem or the West Bank.”
In the same meeting Mr. Nides said a Palestinian Authority policy of paying families of terrorists for killing Israelis has “caused an enormous amount of problems.” Rather than criticizing the policy, he simply said it gives “haters” an excuse not to support Ramallah.
As Mr. Nides acknowledged, peace negotiations between Jerusalem and Ramallah are dormant and no resumption is envisioned. Yet as negotiations over an Iran deal heat up, his condemnation of “settlements” can become politically useful.
That is because a wide array of Republicans and Democrats, including members of the progressive wing of the party, vocally oppose ending any sanctions on the Iranian regime, as any new deal would entail. “If we lift the sanctions, how are those dollars likely to be spent?” Representative Ritchie Torres, Democrat of New York, asked the Jerusalem Post. “I have no reason to think those dollars will be spent on an Iranian Build Back Better Act.”
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Biden has an opportunity to redeem himself because of Putin's over-reach but that would demand strategic thinking and he has never shown he is capable of being on the right side of most challenges. Apparently Biden would rather go down in flames with Kerry's "Green" nonsense.
Biden Is in Climate Denial
Even the European left understands what the Ukraine invasion means for fossil fuels.
By Kimberley A. Strassel
Republicans know it. The European left knows it. Joe Manchin knows it. Even some of the Beltway press knows it. Now let’s see how long it takes Joe Biden to recognize that the Ukraine war has reset energy politics and that his climate agenda risks dooming his party this fall.
How Ukraine Is Changing the Politics of Energy and Climate Change
He certainly hasn’t sussed it out yet. The Joe Biden who showed up Monday at his first in-person fundraiser as president sounded like a man in a time warp. “Let me begin by saying: [Climate change] is the existential threat to humanity,” he opened, proceeding to recite an environmental agenda identical to the one he campaigned on. Ukraine got one mention, and only then as further reason why Americans (among other things) need to “weatherize homes and businesses.”
His administration is similarly proceeding as if Vladimir Putin weren’t exploiting his energy dominance to kill Ukrainians. The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission recently announced a new pipeline review policy that will stop most projects. The White House continues its near-moratorium on new leases to drill on federal land and its block of Alaskan drilling. The president announced he’ll attempt to impose his Green New Deal via executive order. The House Progressive Caucus this week offered ideas, calling on him to “declare a national climate emergency,” and use it to ban “fossil fuel leases,” and force companies to build renewables under the Defense Production Act.
Across the pond, things look exactly opposite. The Europeans have embraced the climate religion with a fervor to rival Bernie Sanders. Yet Mr. Putin’s shocking violence in Ukraine—his willingness to wield energy as a weapon—sobered the Continent overnight. No one is giving up on renewables, but nobody is any longer pretending they are the basis of energy reliability or security. Fossil fuels will remain for decades a currency of global power, and Russia’s invasion highlights the stupidity of being broke.
Germany’s government is stockpiling coal and expediting terminals for liquefied natural gas. Europe is working to get more gas through pipelines from Norway and Azerbaijan. Poland plans new nuclear plants. The U.K. may restart onshore fracking and ramp up North Sea drilling. Norway plans to expand Arctic exploration.
Sen. Manchin gets the shift, and this week he deep-sixed Mr. Biden’s nominee to the Federal Reserve, the anti-fossil-fuel Sarah Bloom Raskin, saying that at this “historic moment” the U.S. needs policy leaders focused on the most pressing issues—“specifically rising inflation and energy costs.” Republicans are flooding the zone with ideas to accelerate fossil-fuel production, and even the pro-Biden media is beginning to fret about the president’s failure to see what’s happening.
While European leaders and Republicans are moving to address substantive geopolitical shifts, they also understand the politics. Gasoline and heating prices have been fleecing consumer wallets since Mr. Biden took office. He can try to lay off the more recent rise on “Putin’s price hike,” but polls consistently show voters blame high energy prices and inflation on the administration.
The inconvenient truth is that Mr. Biden’s climate agenda—no matter how much the liberal press wants to differ—has never been popular. It’s a concoction of the party’s progressive left and radical activist groups. A recent survey from Democratic pollster Impact Research of likely voters in North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Arizona (three states with Senate races this year) found that 78% had a favorable view of natural gas, and only 22% want an energy policy that looks like the Green New Deal.
And voters aren’t buying Mr. Biden’s argument that the response to Russia should be to double down on his climate visions. In a HarrisX poll this week, nearly 70% of voters said “yes” to the question of whether, in light of Russia’s attack, the administration should “ease its focus on climate change and allow more oil and natural gas exploration.” They want energy and economic security, not electric-car charging stations.
The other risk to Democrats sticking their heads in the non-tar sands is that they make the situation worse substantively as well as politically. Desperate to remain on climate autopilot, Mr. Biden and other Democrats are now trying to blame higher prices on Big Oil and Big Gas and debating a windfall profits tax—a move that would depress production and further raise prices. Democratic governors are clamoring for a federal gasoline-tax holiday, but it’s a gimmick that would only temporarily mask true prices, and may not count for much in any event.
Which gets to the heart of the problem. Democrats want to make the problem go away without addressing its roots. Russia’s invasion has forced energy security to the center of the political debate, where it is likely to stay through the midterms. Voters will cast ballots for candidates who prove they understand the problem and have a plan for fixing it. Democrats who continue to wallow in platitudes about an “existential” climate crisis may find themselves out of jobs.
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Putin’s Failure Is Biden’s Opportunity
Forget about ‘off-ramps’ for Russian aggression against Ukraine. As Clausewitz observed, a key to success is to pursue a retreating enemy.
By Walter Russell Mead
Joe Biden, as I wrote earlier this week, has a genuine crisis on his hands. But thanks to Vladimir Putin’s historic blunder in Ukraine, Mr. Biden has something else: a once-in-a-decade opportunity to score a historic victory that reshapes the global playing field to America’s advantage. To capitalize on Mr. Putin’s blunder is the most important job Team Biden has.
This requires a psychological shift. Earlier in the crisis we heard of American and European diplomats offering Mr. Putin “off-ramps.” Some still seek compromise solutions that would allow Mr. Putin to save face. The time for such thinking may come again, but for now the objective should be clear. Mr. Putin must pay—and be seen to pay—such a heavy price for his miscalculation that leaders around the world will think twice before taking on the U.S. and its global alliance system.
Carl von Clausewitz noted long ago that a key to success is to pursue a retreating enemy. When an enemy is in retreat, it is possible to inflict the greatest damage on his forces, disorganized and disheartened.
Mr. Putin’s armies may not yet be retreating in Ukraine, but the failure of his initial campaign—and the atrocious methods to which he must now resort to salvage his military position—have put him on the political and psychological defensive. The U.S. must do everything possible to exploit this unexpected opportunity for a decisive victory against a dangerous opponent.
The past two weeks have changed the world. Mr. Putin’s Russia turns out to be weaker, and Ukraine stronger, than many Westerners thought. And there is more. As Zbigniew Brzezinski put it, “It cannot be stressed enough that without Ukraine, Russia ceases to be an empire but with Ukraine suborned and then subordinated, Russia automatically becomes an empire.” Given what we know about who Mr. Putin is and what he does, preventing him from building an empire on the doorstep of the European Union and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization must now be considered a major Western interest.
Making Mr. Putin pay for his war of aggression is not a distraction from America’s focus on the Indo-Pacific. Xi Jinping has also miscalculated by putting his full prestige behind the Russian alliance just as Mr. Putin stepped into the abyss. Thanks to that misstep, any setbacks Mr. Putin encounters in Ukraine are setbacks for Mr. Xi as well. They reduce his prestige in China and abroad by showing, first, that he is capable of major miscalculations in world politics and, second, that he is unable to prevent the U.S. and its allies from humiliating Beijing’s most important ally.
Nothing matters more right now to the peace of the world and the security of the U.S. than crippling Mr. Putin’s drive to rebuild an aggressive and despotic empire by waging a criminal war. The Biden administration, often after prodding from a hawkish Congress, has taken important steps in this direction, but three more things remain to be done.
First, we must support Ukraine’s ability to fight. The extraordinary early performance of the Ukrainian army, combined with the comprehensive failure of Russian military preparation, turned Mr. Putin’s gambit into a disaster. Keeping the Ukrainian military in the field is now a major strategic interest of the U.S. This is, or soon will be, not only about weapons and intelligence. Ukraine’s economy was never strong; it now faces collapse. In every domain, the burden of proof must shift from those who wish to send aid to those who wish to deny it.
Second, the sanctions on Russia, especially the energy sanctions, need to become more effective. The League of Nations failed its first test when oil was excluded from the sanctions imposed on Italy following its 1935 invasion of Ethiopia. Europe remains addicted to Russian energy, which means NATO is funding Mr. Putin’s war. If NATO is serious, this must stop.
Finally, the administration must, for now, make opposition to Mr. Putin the core of its global foreign policy. Russia’s presence in places like Syria, Libya and, increasingly, sub-Saharan Africa will be harder to sustain as economic and military pressure on Moscow grows. Team Biden must look creatively and act boldly to hit Russian interests all over the world. Other goals must, when necessary, be set aside. Greening the world’s energy supply is, for now, less important than weaning Europe from Russian hydrocarbons. Denying Russia revenue from nuclear trade with Iran is, for now, more important than a deal on Tehran’s nuclear program.
This won’t be easy. Despite his misstep in Ukraine, Mr. Putin remains a resourceful practitioner of ruthless realpolitik, and he still has some cards to play. Team Biden is for the most part a collection of foxes, who pursue many goals and have a hard time focusing on one objective. To take full advantage of the opportunity Mr. Putin has offered, Mr. Biden must get in touch with his inner hedgehog and focus his foreign policy on one thing and one thing only: making Mr. Putin pay.
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Xi's embrace of a war criminal also comes at an unpropitious time.
Furthermore, it seems Germany's new Chancellor has redirected that nation's dependence on Merkel's stupidity of making that country dependent on Russian energy.
Both are gifts which Biden will also probably be incapable of pocketing.
Like the joke above, Biden is standing beneath the hoop all alone and will probably wind up saying "fire," even worse he might throw the ball to Kamala.
China’s Great-Power Play
Xi Jinping is standing by Russia on Ukraine, and the costs of doing so will mount.
By The Editorial Board
Beijing for many years played down whatever ambitions China harbors to become a great power, and the past three weeks have shown why. President Xi Jinping, in one of his boldest strategic moves, cast his lot with Russian President Vladimir Putin before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Mr. Xi now finds himself embroiled in a global uproar that will be neither easy nor cheap for China. It deserves the global scorn it is receiving.
Messrs. Xi and Putin in early February declared their friendship has “no limits,” and Mr. Xi is honoring that pledge. While Beijing makes half-hearted bows toward neutrality in the war, Mr. Xi has exerted no pressure on Mr. Putin to stop it. China’s propaganda on Ukraine has a decided pro-Russia, anti-American tone. Beijing is resisting sanctions on Russia (as much as its banks can without jeopardizing their access to dollars). It may yet supply arms to Russia to support the war.
Mr. Xi must view the West’s closure to Russia as a boon for China, which stands ready to buy as much energy and other resources as Mr. Putin is willing to sell. It’s a bonus that China might be able to pay for them with Chinese yuan, which Beijing has long wanted to make a global trade currency.
Above all, this conflict gives Beijing a new opportunity to put itself forward as the leader of a global faction hostile to democracy, economic freedom and U.S. leadership. China’s economic heft now gives it the means to try this gambit, and Mr. Xi’s desire to block any breeze of freedom within his own country is motive enough.
Beijing may also calculate it can “win” in Ukraine no matter what happens. If Mr. Putin conquers the country, Mr. Xi will have picked the winning horse. If the invasion fails, the West and America’s Asian allies may still be demoralized by a partition of Ukraine—and Russia will be a reliable supplier of natural resources to China for as long as Western sanctions persist.
Yet the nature of Great Power politics is that none of this will be cost-free for Beijing. By picking a side China by definition antagonizes those on the other side—including its own neighbors and economic partners.
Within days of Mr. Putin’s invasion, Japan renewed a debate about nuclear sharing with the U.S., South Korea elected a more pro-American president, and several traditionally neutral Asian countries joined Western sanctions on Russia in a signal to Beijing. Germany, long among China’s closest friends in Europe, is reconsidering its economic relationship. Mr. Xi’s alliance with Mr. Putin will also harden attitudes toward China in the United States.
China’s new friends could also prove to be a headache. The U.S. discovered after World War II that the price of global leadership is substantial economic support for followers. If Beijing’s plan is to adopt Russia as some sort of client state, is it really ready to take responsibility for an impoverished and badly governed economy of Russia’s scale?
Nor will Mr. Xi’s great-power play be an obvious boost to the domestic political stability he craves. Every other great power has discovered that such a prominent global role comes with incessant internal debates about how to wield such power. Such a debate may be simmering under the surface now.
The pot boiled up briefly last week in an unusual public essay in which prominent think-tank scholar Hu Wei warned that Mr. Xi’s Russia policy may backfire by encouraging other countries to ally against China. Beijing now appears to have censored that essay, but the questions it raised are sure to linger in a year when Mr. Xi is set on securing another five-year term as the country’s leader.
President Biden and Mr. Xi are scheduled to speak by phone on Friday, and U.S. national security adviser Jake Sullivan met with Chinese officials in Rome this week with Ukraine on the agenda. Little has leaked about what happened in that confab, other than that Mr. Sullivan issued a warning not to assist Russia.
That’s the right message, but China has already assisted Russia—and betrayed Western Europe. Its acquiescence in Mr. Putin’s invasion has shown that it puts the desires of a marauding dictator above its trading and diplomatic relations with the West. China has picked the wrong horse, and it has shown again, as in Hong Kong, that it can’t be trusted.
The West should respond accordingly as it seeks to defend Taiwan and the free world’s interests from the Communist Party.
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