Has Mack The Knife Returned?
This is a very brief essay.
I just saw an actual Biden ad.
Brief Essay By Dick Berkowitz
It showed an overweight black dude saying "Biden is sharp as a knife."
The first thing that came to mind is "yeah" so he can stab you in the back like he has Israel and America.
Also:
Who is funding all these enemies of America who are being allowed to parade claiming they re protected by the Bill of Right's? This is a bold lie and total misreading of the extent to which their free speech rights extend.? Speech does protect anyone's rights to threaten the security and life of another citizen.
Who is funding all these enemies of America who are being allowed to parade claiming they re protected by the Bill of Right's? This is a bold lie and total misreading of the extent to which their free speech rights extend.? Speech does protect anyone's rights to threaten the security and life of another citizen.
Even Former Justice Hugo lack would/did agree.
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Israel’s Careful Strike Against Iran
Biden gets the restraint he wanted, but Tehran’s menace persists, especially its nuclear program.
By The Editorial Board
President Biden got what he wanted from Israel on Friday—a tempered military response against Iran that did little damage and may not lead to a larger escalation. The mistake would be thinking this is somehow the end of Iran’s long war against Israel and the U.S.
Israel hasn’t publicly acknowledged the attack, but the explosions inside Iran suggest a narrow, almost symbolic strike, perhaps with fighter aircraft. A military base in Isfahan seems to have been the main target. Iran can’t be trusted to admit any damage, but Iran’s muted response to the strike suggests nothing major was hit. The nuclear research facility in Isfahan seems not to have been targeted.
The strike is a message to Iran that Israel has the military capability to hit deep in its homeland, and not merely its proxy forces in Lebanon, Syria and Iraq. Israel also showed it could hit a target near a nuclear facility despite the presence of the Russian S-300 missile defense system. And on Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei’s 85th birthday to boot. Israel’s Arab neighbors have seen another demonstration of its military prowess and will.
But the strike also looks calibrated not to invite the anger of Mr. Biden, who above all else wants to calm down the Middle East as the November election approaches. The U.S. President may not be able to deter America’s adversaries, but he can deter our allies.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken didn’t criticize the Israeli strike, but he did convey the U.S. political mood music at a press conference in Italy on Friday when he said, “All I can say is that for our part and for the entire G-7, our focus has been on de-escalation and avoiding a larger conflict.” De-escalation is this Administration’s top priority.
The question is whether this careful response by Israel will have the proper deterrent effect. Iran’s immediate response was to deny any damage and say it had no plans to escalate. But the rulers in Tehran know they were able to cross a red line by attacking Israel directly a week ago. Israel and its friends had to expend considerable resources to intercept nearly all of the more than 300 missiles and drones in that attack. And Iran is paying no significant price for it.
The new sanctions announced by the U.S. this week are largely meaningless. They target Iranians involved in the country’s missile program who don’t have foreign bank accounts. But the sanctions don’t touch what the regime really cares about, which is its oil exports that provide as much as $36 billion to $40 billion a year in revenue. This fits with the Biden strategy of trying not to provoke Tehran even at the cost of limiting deterrence.
Iran retains the ability to strike Israel, either on its own or via proxies, at the time of its choosing. Most important, it will also continue to make secret progress on its nuclear-weapons program. Iran has already enriched enough uranium, and close enough to weapons-grade, that it could sprint to a bomb once it has the ability to weaponize it into a warhead. Its medium-range missiles could deliver it.
No one should be surprised if Iran announces, sooner rather than later, that it is nuclear capable. Then its threat to the region, and even to the U.S., reaches an entirely new level. Iran may then feel it can unleash its proxies, or its own missiles, against Israel without fear of reprisal.
All of which should motivate Mr. Biden and the G-7 finally to abandon their appeasement strategy toward Tehran. The G-7 foreign ministers released a statement Friday reiterating their “determination that Iran must never develop or acquire a nuclear weapon. We urge Iran to cease and reverse nuclear escalations and to stop the continuing uranium enrichment activities reported by [the International Atomic Energy Agency] that have no credible civil justification and pose significant proliferative risks. Tehran must reverse this trend and engage in serious dialogue . . .”
You can imagine the smiles with which those “must reverse” and “engage in serious dialogue” commands were received in Tehran. The G-7 leaders have shown they can deter Israel. Will they finally do something serious to deter Iran and stop its nuclear program?
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Biden Helps Iran, Hits Alaska
His administration gives Tehran a free hand to export oil while shutting down domestic development.
By Dan Sullivan
We are living in one of the most dangerous times since World War II, as Beijing, Moscow and Tehran attempt to undermine the free world. Yet rather than maximize our nation’s strengths and weaken our adversaries, the Biden administration is doing the opposite.
Consider its policy on Iran. Under sanctions pressure from the Trump administration, Iranian oil exports in 2020 were at about 200,000 barrels a day, leaving Tehran with about $4 billion in foreign reserves, a small pool relative to the country’s size. In an effort to appease the mullahs, however, the Biden administration hasn’t enforced comprehensive sanctions since 2021. As a result, Iranian oil exports today are at nearly 1.6 million barrels a day and its regime has been enriched by more than $70 billion. Iran uses this windfall in part to fund its terrorist proxies, including the Houthis, Hamas and Hezbollah. Iranian oil development also allows the regime to deepen its ties with China, which buys about 80% of Iran’s oil exports.
Meantime the Biden administration is doing the reverse at home—weakening America’s domestic energy production by restricting development on two important sites, the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska and Alaska’s Ambler Mining District.
The White House announced Friday that it will take more than 13 million acres of the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska off the table for development. President Warren Harding in 1923 set aside this petroleum reserve—an area roughly the size of Indiana—for oil production to boost U.S. national security. Considered one of the world’s most prolific energy basins, the site contains an estimated 17 billion barrels of oil and 50 trillion cubic feet of natural gas. It’s also close to existing oil pipeline infrastructure and produces energy with some of the highest environmental standards in the world.
The administration is also blocking a previously permitted road-building project in the Ambler Mining District, a move that will effectively put the region off-limits to mining. The site is one of the most extensive sources of undeveloped zinc, copper, lead, gold and silver in the world. America needs such minerals for our renewable energy sector and our national security.
These measures are suicidal—and lawless. In 1980 Congress directed the interior secretary to “conduct an expeditious program of competitive leasing” in the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska. The Biden administration is dramatically reinterpreting this law so it can treat those 13 million acres it is locking up as de facto federal wilderness.
The decision, ironically, ignores the desires of many in the Alaska Native community. Elected indigenous leaders from the North Slope of Alaska eight times have requested a meeting with Interior Secretary Deb Haaland to express their opposition to the administration’s new rule. Each time, they’ve been denied. It seems that the Biden administration listens to people of color and indigenous communities only if they align with the administration’s extreme antidevelopment policies.
As for the Ambler Mining District, federal law guarantees a right of way across federal land to provide access to the mining district. The administration is ignoring this law by shutting down the access road project.
The Biden administration is effectively imposing sanctions on Alaskans, stripping away my constituents’ jobs and hurting my state’s economy. But the damage to U.S. national security will be even greater, as the White House announces to our adversaries: We won’t use our resources, but we’ll let you develop yours. No wonder authoritarians are on the march.
I’ll never forget a meeting I had in 2016 with the late Sen. John McCain and Vladimir Kara-Murza, a brave Russian dissident whom Vladimir Putin has poisoned twice and who now resides in prison facing a potential 25-year sentence. When I asked Mr. Kara-Murza what the U.S. could do to undermine Mr. Putin and other authoritarians, his answer was striking: “It’s easy, senator. The No. 1 thing you can do is produce more American energy.”
The president is evidently content to shut down our energy sector to appease left-wing environmentalists—while ceding the market to our foes. He proceeds at the nation’s peril.
Mr. Sullivan, a Republican, is a U.S. senator from Alaska.
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“Old” but Mighty: Here’s Why You Don’t Want to Overlook Oil
Tech is where you must be to make the big money, right? Here’s how our macro expert, Eric Fry, puts it: The oil and gas sector has been enjoying a subdued “stealth rally” during the last few years. Better still, Eric believes this outperformance is far from over. As he details below, oil and gas stocks continue to offer some outstanding investment opportunities. |
++++ America Is a Different Country Now ++++ |
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