a) Can't fix stupid but can vote it out.
b)Get pigs out of the creek
c)Believe in love but also own a gun.
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By Landon Mion
And:
Biden Misses the Moment in His State of the Union Address
He had supportive words for Ukraine against Russia, but he offered no domestic or defense policy reset.
Finally:
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Before we get into the morning's top news stories, it's time for a little trivia.
On this day in history, Dr. Suess was born. In what year was this?
Think you know the answer? Check it out at the link, at the end of the newsletter, and let me know if you got it right!
Here are the 17 most absurd lies that Joe Biden told during his first State of the Union Address last night (edited.)
If you sat down and watched President Biden's State of the Union Address last night, you were likely either rolling your eyes or scratching your head.
Maybe both.
Biden was spewing so many lies it left my head spinning.
Was he talking about the same America that you and I are living in?
At this point, I have to think it's naive to expect anything less from him.
With his approval ratings in the toilet, and the country in turmoil, the only way he could paint a rosy picture of his regime would be to lie about it.
Here are the 17 biggest whoppers from his speech. Oh, and here are the top 10 brain freezes in Biden's SOTU speech
Price of oil continues to climb, surpassing an 8-year high
Pelosi's odd reaction to Joe Biden talking about soldiers breathing in toxic smoke is about to go viral
Finally:
The hypocrisy of Coca-Cola
By Salena Zito
Today the soft drink giant— whose second biggest market is in Russia and where they have several plants—is eerily silent about Russia. 
No tweets. No condemning of the invasion. Not only has their production kept on going— they’ve taken extraordinary measures to make sure it does
You see there were no consequences in condemning Gov. Brian Kemp or if they upset conservatives—they had an objective—appease their woke activist shareholders. Russia? That’s a different story.
Click here for the full story.
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| Media, Take Note: It's Not Israel Vs. Iran, It's Iran Vs. Most of Middle East | |||
| As world powers and Iran appear to be on the verge of reviving the 2015 deal aimed at curbing the Islamic Republic’s nuclear program, major news organizations are depicting developments in Vienna through a narrow lens. The coverage calls into question the Jewish state’s right to defend itself against a genocide-preaching regime while also diminishing the threat of Iran’s campaign of expansionism and terror to Sunni states across the Middle East. | |||
| + Iran’s long game: regional hegemony +++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Worst is yet ahead:
Joe Biden’s first state of the Union address should be his last. His sanctimonies, blame shifting, misstatements, false accusations, and adherence to failed policies only reinforced what an increasing number of people know: this man is a walking disaster—America’s worst modern president. Biden began with a justification of his policies that failed to prevent Russia from invading Ukraine—in fact, which effectively encouraged Russia to invade. Ukraine was supposed to be Biden’s Cuban Missile Crisis. Talk tough and then take credit when the Russians back down. But Biden is no John F. Kennedy. Russian President Vladimir Putin knows a bluffing fool when he sees one. Biden said a “minor incursion” into Ukraine would be acceptable and that Putin “has to do something.” And so he did. Biden also talked up the out-of-control spending that he says saved an American economy that had recovered before he became president. In fact, the “American Rescue Plan” and other attempts by the ruling elite to use the coronavirus crisis to remake America meant wasting a huge amount of money and helping to spark high inflation unseen since the 1970s along with a debt level worse than France’s. Biden promised even more in his speech—to the cheers of his fellow leftwing progressives. “Four-dollar-a-gallon” Biden has a plan to cut gas costs that will actually raise the price of gas—which in turn raises the price of everything. He wants to “cut energy costs for families an average of $500 a year by combatting climate change.” Did you get that? Cut the cost of energy by raising the cost of energy—which is what our ruling elite wants most in sacrifice to their secular religion of climate change alarmism. American oil production is still 1.5 million barrels per day below where it was before coronavirus because Biden and others Democrats are at war with oil and gas. Biden took credit for progress against coronavirus, which killed more Americans on his watch than that of his predecessor, Donald Trump, despite Biden’s promise to “shut down” the virus. The commander in chief of vaccine mandates and forcing kids pointlessly to wear masks bragged that because of new guidelines issued by the CDC just before his speech “...most Americans in most of the country can now be mask free.” It’s amazing how the science changed just in time! Most Americans can be forgiven for thinking the coronavirus crisis ended as the disease ran its course. Biden also previewed his choice for Supreme Court justice—chosen for what she is instead of who she is—by calling for a ban on any guns that he defines to be “assault weapons.” Don’t worry, it’s perfectly constitutional, says he. How long until the computer or phone on which you are reading this gets defined by his woke buddies in Congress as an “assault weapon” if you write something negative about vaccine mandates or critical race theory. The real takeaway from the speech is that for Biden, the worst is yet to come. Nothing he said indicated the slightest change from the disastrous woke activism and incompetence that have brought us to this point. How is that possible that matters can get worse after the debacles of 2021, including humiliation in Afghanistan, crushing the middle class with inflation, and cheering on the woke mob that wants to make America a tyranny ordered on race and politics? Let us count the ways. Biden basked in the resistance that Ukrainians have commendably shown in the first week of war against Russia, and claimed credit for the supposed unity of Europe, NATO, and the American people. But it is likely downhill from here with the Russian military shepherding much larger forces and encircling Kiev. Biden is bragging about magnificent processes and diplomatic gestures that will nonetheless lead to a conquered Ukraine, in part or in whole. Biden still hasn’t explained what vital U.S. interests are at stake in Ukraine or the risks of pushing China and Russia closer together. When the war ends, look for Biden to talk up the importance of NATO without ever crediting his predecessor with demanding NATO pay its fair share. This will be music to the ears of freeloading Europeans who screw us on trade and demand we underwrite their security, as well as a Chinese government that until recently was afraid we might actually move some additional military capabilities to the Pacific. Iran will also join Afghanistan and Ukraine as foreign policy disasters under Biden. He is relying on Russian diplomats in Vienna to put the final touches on a nuclear deal with Iran that will actually sanctify the mullahs’ nuclear weapons program rather than ban it. Inflation will only get worse, but it will be displaced from headlines by the reemergence of another word from the past: stagflation. All Biden had to do was keep out of the way while the roaring Trump economy came back to full throttle after the coronavirus disruptions of 2020. Instead, Biden and the progressive Left in Congress have put the government in charge of the economy and killed off tens of thousands of small businesses. He’s at war with American energy companies. The Left’s woke crusade has elevated mediocrities to the top of our corporations. Suddenly what was a roaring economy is teetering close to zero growth. The Atlanta Federal Reserve Bank’s “GDPNow” model indicates that growth for the first quarter of this year will be 0% on the nose. That is down from a consensus estimate of nearly 4% around Christmas. Low growth and high inflation means that Four-dollar-a-gallon Joe will preside over stagflation and sink lower still in approval polls. Speaking of polls, the RealClearPolitics average of generic polls gives Republicans a 4-point advantage over Democrats going into congressional elections this fall. A tie usually foretells steep Republican gains. A recent poll by leftwing ABC News and the Washington Post shows a whopping 7-point lead for the GOP. You will never see Nancy Pelosi sitting in the Speaker’s chair during a state of the Union address again. Joe Biden’s legislative agenda is already dead, but he is likely to face a hostile Congress next year that might even take a look at voter fraud and the Biden family’s lucrative business dealings in China and Ukraine. In every manner that the public judges a president—on the economy, keeping America safe, and serving as a symbol of respect—Joe Biden is about to fail even harder. The history books will show that it was actually Barack Obama who hit the nail on the head in summing up Biden when he said, “Don’t underestimate Joe’s ability to f--- things up.” Simon and Whiton Check out our latest podcast episode of Simon & Whiton in which we talk about how to benefit from turbulence in energy and financial markets. We discuss how Moscow will likely circumvent sanctions and cooperate with China to try to undermine America’s financial power. We also discussed the joke of a delegation that Biden sent to Taiwan to reassure them Beijing won’t invade. YouTube (video), Apple (audio), and Spotify (audio or video) links below. ++++++++++++++++++++++++ On Acquiring Wisdom; The Failed Iran Deal -- Again by Jonathan Rosenblum There are, of course, many very smart young people. But wisdom is not a quality that we associate with the young, simply because of their limited experience. One of the first and most important lessons I learned as a young litigator was how much more valuable was experience over book learning.e hallmarks of wisdom is the ability to learn from experience, both one's own and that of others. As a rule, wisdom grows with age, as experience accumulates. The elderly, the Gemara says, are entitled to respect by virtue of their store of different experiences — experiences that let them extrapolate to new situations, as well as learn from past mistakes. Not by accident does the Gemara associate the term for an older person, zakein, with the acquisition of chochmah. As a general rule, it seems to me that most people become nicer as they grow older (though I can think of plenty of exceptions): more considerate of others, less assured of their own virtue. And much of that growth comes from attending carefully to the lessons that life throws one's way. In recent months, I noticed that one of the most dependable members of my early morning minyan was absent several times for a prolonged period of time. The first time it happened, I assumed that he and his wife were traveling or were closeted at home with Covid. But after the second or third prolonged absence, I asked him where he had been. He told me that he had been attending nearly every minyan in a shivah house. That same explanation applied to each of his other recent absences. He added that when his parents had passed away, organizing minyanim during shivah had been very difficult, and he had resolved to help ensure that others sitting shivah did not face the same problem. That sensitivity to others born of one's own unpleasant experiences in a similar situation is one hallmark of wisdom. Life itself supplies us with many invaluable mussar lessons if we just pay attention. I recently sent an email to a friend with whom I have not been in touch for some time, seeking in the subject line the contact information of a third party. His brief reply read: "Good to hear from you. I miss you!" Only then did he provide the requested email. I can't be sure if my friend consciously meant to give me mussar, but regardless, I took his response as such: One doesn't write to a friend, particularly after a long interlude, in a perfunctory fashion, without acknowledging in some form the relationship between you. It took my friend only eight words and one exclamation point to get the message across, whether advertently or inadvertently. One way for younger people to acquire wisdom beyond their years is to immerse themselves in the accumulated wisdom of the past. That, however, requires two things: the belief that there is such a thing as the accumulated wisdom of mankind, and a willingness to read. Three nights ago, my wife and I had dinner with Pamela and Len Cohen. I have previously written about Pamela's book Hidden Heroes, which chronicles Pamela's 25 years of activism and leadership in the Soviet Jewry movement. (The hidden heroes of the book's title, however, are the Jewish refuseniks, whose example was crucial to the Cohens' own journey to full Jewish observance and learning.) I commented to Pamela that she must be ecstatic about the rave reviews of the book upon which she labored for so many years. But she responded that great reviews were not her goal. Rather, one of her main goals had been to inspire and fortify today's Jewish university students, who often prefer to hide or ignore their Jewish identity, which is too frequently a barrier to social acceptance on campus. The example of what the refuseniks had to endure in pursuit of their awakening Jewish identity, she had hoped, would cause Jews on campus to reevaluate their heritage and recognize that it holds treasures worth fighting for. Yet so far that is one group to whom she has not succeeded in breaking through, and it weighs heavily upon her. I can only pray that many of the younger generation of American Jews somehow imbibe Pamela's message by other means, before there is nothing left of their Jewish identity — or their children's — to resuscitate. If you know any college students, consider sending them a copy of Hidden Heroes. The Failed Iran Deal — Again Some people, however, never learn from past mistakes, no matter how old they are. President Biden fits that category. Watching the current nuclear negotiations with Iran in Vienna is like watching a rerun of a nightmare. When the US first entered into negotiations with Iran, it possessed overwhelming advantages in both military and economic power. Yet at every step of those negotiations, the US acted as a supplicant, and as if its motto were: "Any deal is better than no deal." From the start, the Iranians understood that the US's greatest bargaining chip — the threat of destroying Iran's nuclear program militarily — was viewed by the Obama administration as worse than a nuclear Iran. When President Obama was still declaring that "a bad deal is worse than no deal," he and Secretary of State John Kerry enunciated a set of minimal conditions for a nuclear deal. One, anytime, anywhere inspections of Iranian nuclear facilities. Two, full disclosure by Iran of its previous weaponization efforts. Three, sanction relief only after International Atomic Energy Agency certification of Iran's full compliance with all its commitments. Four, a decades-long agreement. Five, a requirement that Iran dismantle its nuclear infrastructure. Two months before the 2015 signing of the JCPOA, a bipartisan group of experts, policy makers, and diplomats — including President Obama's former CIA director David Petraeus; Gary Samore, Obama's chief advisor on nuclear policy; and Dennis Ross, who oversaw Iran policy in Obama's first term — put forth a statement of minimum requirements for an agreement, which tracked the list above. None of those goals were achieved. Instead, inspections were reduced to "managed access" that allowed Iran time to hide evidence from pesky inspectors before admitting them; all demands for information about previous weaponization efforts (which were subsequently revealed by Israel's capture of Iran's nuclear archives) were dropped; sanctions against Iran for its support of international terrorism and human rights abuses were quietly abandoned; all the centrifuges in Iran's Fordow underground facility remained in place, despite President Obama's observation that a peaceful program had no reason to burrow far underground; and nothing was done when Iran converted only a fraction of its enriched uranium to oxide, as required by a previous Provisional Agreement. Subsequently, the United States granted Iran numerous exemptions from the JCPOA's requirements, which were hidden from the public and legislators. Walter Russell Mead aptly summed up: "The administration did not want the American people to know how many concessions it made to get the deal." Meanwhile, every demand on Supreme Leader Khamenei's list of requirements was met, among them the full removal of all arms embargos on Iran; the dropping of all economic, financial, and banking sanctions; and the removal of all Security Council resolutions relating to Iran's nuclear program. Further, the agreement contained sunset clauses that effectively legitimized a full Iranian nuclear program by 2025. Today, the Biden administration, employing much of the previous Obama team and operating on the same premises, is poised to enter into an even more ineffectual agreement. Despite President Biden's boast that he would obtain a "longer-term, stronger deal," three senior members of chief US negotiator Robert Malley's team have already resigned over the extent of US concessions. According to former Israeli national security advisor Jacob Nagel, Iran will retain all the major advances in its nuclear program in recent years, and gain hundreds of billions of dollars to rehabilitate its economy and fund terrorists throughout the region. And just as the original JCPOA was concluded while Iran's Supreme Leader continued to assure the Iranian people of the regime's eternal enmity toward the United States, this one will be signed, even as Iran intensifies attacks on US forces in Iraq and Gulf allies.
Ask to be punched in the mouth, you can count on being taken up on the offer. And: Israel, don't get snookered. Stand your ground. Friends can be more dangerous than enemies. The lessons for Israel from Russia’s war on UkraineSelf-reliance is the key to security. Israelis must understand that they should avoid being put in a position where, like the Ukrainians, they must rely on fickle international sympathy. (March 1, 2022 / JNS) Sometimes realpolitik must bow to international sentiment. The State of Israel’s instinctual response to the war launched against Ukraine by Russia’s authoritarian leader, Vladimir Putin, was to stay out of it. But faced with an overwhelming surge of sympathy for Ukraine and hostility to Russia sparked by Putin’s brutal war of aggression, Foreign Minister Yair Lapid said that, “Israel will be on the right side of history” and would vote in favor of a United Nations General Assembly resolution condemning Moscow. This came after the Israelis angered their American allies. U.N. Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield protested Israeli offers of mediation and signals that it preferred to sit on the fence got bad reviews at the U.N. Rather than suffer further such criticism, Lapid said that his nation would uphold its own “values” by voting against the Russians. Judging by the reaction in Israel, this seems to have been a popular decision. Most Israelis, like people elsewhere, are horrified by the videos of the fighting in Ukraine. Ukrainian resistance against a foreign invader has generated support around the world and even forced the hand of the U.S. and other Western nations to adopt additional and more severe sanctions against Russia than the ones that President Joe Biden had initially been prepared to impose. The courageous conduct of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, who has personally led the defense of his country rather than fleeing for his life as most people expected he would do, has also turned the former comedian into an unlikely 21st-century Jewish hero. But while the popular sentiment in favor of Zelensky and the Ukrainians is sweeping every other consideration aside in international forums, those tasked with the defense of the Jewish state understand that the conclusions to be drawn from the war go beyond those that highlight a willingness to identify with the struggle of a people to resist foreign rule. While defying the U.S. at the U.N. in order to stay on speaking terms with Putin would seem to be a both foolish and amoral stance, former Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu wasn’t the only one who seemed to think that Lapid’s decision wasn’t the right one. The Likud Party leader urged the Israeli government to clam up about the war in Ukraine and focus, instead, on the threat from Iran. The argument in favor of Israel’s staying out of the fray on this issue rests on the fact that, in the last decade, Russia became a Middle East power as well as a European one. After former President Barack Obama backed down on his 2013 “red line” threat to punish Syrian dictator Bashar Assad for his use of chemical weapons against his own people, the U.S. gave the Russians explicit permission to deal with the problem. That was the green light Putin had been waiting for to expand his influence in the former Soviet client state. With American acquiescence, Russia became, along with Iran, a full-fledged combatant in the Syrian Civil War then being waged to overthrow the Assad regime. With the sort of brutal use of military might now being employed in Ukraine, the Russians enabled their ally, Assad, to prevail in a war that cost the lives of hundreds of thousands and rendered another five million homeless. The Russians remain the dominant force in Syria, making Putin a powerful neighbor, rather than just an international symbol of tyranny and aggression. One of Netanyahu’s foreign-policy achievements rested on his ability to maintain good relations with Moscow; preserving that relationship is vital for the country’s security. Indeed, it is only via the good graces of the Russians that the Israel Defense Forces is able to have the freedom to strike at Iranian forces and those of its Hezbollah terrorist auxiliaries in Syria, rather than let them form another front against the Jewish state. The world is cheering on Zelensky in his underdog fight against Putin, and most Jews are rooting for him to somehow avoid the fate that usually befalls those who are forced into fights with ruthless and militarily powerful neighbors. It would be nice to think that it’s possible for a lightly armed nation to successfully defend its independence against predators like Putin with guts and belated international support. But it’s hard to imagine a scenario in which the conflict in Ukraine will produce a result that allows Israel to completely spurn the Russian leader. And that’s not even taking into account the fact that, unlike the tsars and Soviet leaders after whom Putin models himself, he’s not an open anti-Semite who oppresses the Jews of his country. There are other lessons to be drawn from these events, as well. However the war in Ukraine turns out, it is a warning to small countries to reject the notion that their safety can depend on international guarantees. The 1994 agreement in which Ukraine surrendered the nuclear weapons it inherited after the collapse of the Soviet Union involved both Russia and the U.S. guaranteeing its independence. It’s not just that a former KGB thug like Putin couldn’t be trusted to abide by that pact. It’s that the U.S. in its current condition of weakness and irresolution that was demonstrated by Biden’s feckless and disgraceful retreat from Afghanistan can’t be relied upon to stand by its allies. Just as important, the Biden administration is currently embarking on a policy of appeasement of Iran. With a new and even weaker nuclear deal expected to be announced at some point in the coming weeks, Israel is faced with a situation in which its sole superpower ally is prepared to enrich and empower a regime that poses an existential threat to the existence of the Jewish state. This puts Greenfield-Thomas’s complaints about Israeli freelancing at the U.N. in a very different light. Biden’s expectation that Israel should back America’s Ukraine stand, despite the potential consequences to its own strategic defense, while at the same time pursuing a policy that undermines Israeli security is as outrageous as it is hypocritical. That Israel’s government is maintaining relative silence about the consequences of renewed Western appeasement of Iran is setting up a situation in which American critics of this dangerous policy are being undermined. The notion that Israelis should trust Washington to defend their interests at a time when the administration clearly has no interest whatsoever in doing so is absurd. So, too, is the idea that Israel’s efforts against Iran should be constrained by American demands to stand down once the new accord with Tehran is agreed upon. Israelis know all too well how fickle international opinion can be when it comes to a country’s right to defend itself. Everyone likes underdogs—something that generated support for the Jewish state’s efforts to defend its existence in the past, when many military analysts thought it could not survive Arab efforts to wipe it out in its early years. Israelis have learned that they must forget about being popular, so long as they are strong enough to resist both conventional and terrorist campaigns aimed at its destruction. Rather than forestalling an Iranian nuke, Biden’s foolish policies will guarantee Tehran’s becoming a nuclear power. No doubt the world would sympathize with Israelis should they fall victim to Iranian designs to eliminate the Jewish state. This, however, is the kind of popularity that the Holocaust should have taught Jews to avoid at all costs. We may cheer Zelensky’s courage in the face of fearsome odds. But this is the kind of predicament in which rational states should never allow themselves to placed. Jonathan S. Tobin is editor-in-chief of JNS (Jewish News Syndicate). +++++++++++++++++++++++ Psaki rumored to be moving on to make bigger bucks at CNN or MSNBC. A little luck this will happen. +++++++++++++ |
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