BloggeRhythms

Today’s items when combined present a frustrating dilemma for those paying attention to happenings in the world around them. Upstanding, decent citizens have been maneuvered into untenable, unaffordable positions, primarily because Americans all across the nation play by the rules.

Newsmax.com reported on Sunday, NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenburg said, "We are concerned about the energy situation in Europe because it demonstrates the vulnerability of being too dependent on one supplier of natural gas and that's the reason why NATO allies agree that we need to work and focus on diversification of supplies,".

At the same time, Foreign Secretary Liz Truss told BBC television. “The Center for American Progress, a U.S. think tank, [says] Britain would face a challenge uprooting wealthy Russians with Kremlin links from London given close ties "between Russian money and the United Kingdom’s ruling conservative party, the press, and its real estate and financial industry."

Asked about this, Truss said: "There's a real threat here to freedom and democracy in Europe. And that is more important than short term economic gains, both for the United Kingdom but also for our European allies."

So, here we have issues between wealthy Russians, British Conservatives as well as other “free, democratic” European nations affecting the cost and availability of fuel here in the United States, because we too now depend on foreign supply. When only one short year ago, it mattered not one iota what happened anywhere but here as we supplied ourselves.

On the same day, Eric Mack wrote @Newsmax.com: Former President Donald Trump returned to Texas on Saturday, vowing the largest Republican-led state in the U.S. "will never, ever turn blue."

"Our country is angry and our country wants to be respected again," Trump told his latest Save America rally in Conroe, Texas. "Hello, Texas, it's great to be back in this great, wonderful, beautiful state with thousands of proud American patriots who believe in family and freedom, God and country.

"And by the way, oil and guns – unlike the Democrats."

Trump’s turnout was “the largest political rally crowd in the history of Texas, throwing out hats reading "Save America" in the same red of the hats that read "Make America Great Again.”

"Our MAGA movement is by far the greatest political movement in the history of our country, and I say it all the time, and they never even – the fake news – they never even questioned it because there's never been anything like it," Trump said.

"And you know what it really stands for? Loving our country, that's all it is.

Coming to today’s point, Trump said: “Our nation belongs to you. This is your home. This is your heritage. And our American liberty is your God-given right."

"Everyone in Washington is obsessing over how to protect Ukraine's border, but the most important border in the world right now for us is not Ukraine's border; it's America's border," Trump said. "And we do nothing about it, but let people come in, and we have no idea who they are.

"The first duty of the American president is to defend the American border. Before our leaders talk about invasions of other countries, they need to stop the invasion of this country.

"It's being invaded. It's being invaded by people that should not be allowed to. You know we had the safest border, the strongest border that we've ever had just one year ago."

Confirming the ridiculousness of the Democrat party’s leftward trend, and the conundrum described above, Fox News reported: “HBO "Real Time" host Bill Maher on Friday railed against the "woke" tsunami currently defining the Democratic Party and challenged Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., to appear on a future show after she dismissed wokeness critics.

Another posting said: “"Real Time" host Bill Maher is taking on Democrats for pushing too many regulations and abandoning traditional values.

In a tweet following his Friday comment, “Maher blasted a “small contingent” of Democrats who’ve “gone mental” and a majority of the party “who refuse to call them out.”

“He kicked off the argument by highlighting Fox News' Dana Perino’s query suggesting Democrats recruit the HBO star to run for president for his refusal to alienate those who support former President Donald Trump.

"Now, some people think this means I've changed,” Maher said. “I assure you, I have not. I am still the same unmarried, childless, pot-smoking libertine I always was.”

"Let's get this straight,” he said. “It's not me who's changed, it's the left who is now made up of a small contingent who've gone mental and a large contingent who refuse to call them out for it, but I will."

"That's why I'm a hero at Fox these days, which shows just how much liberals have their head up their a** because if they really thought about it, they would have made me a hero on their media," Maher argued.

"But that can't happen in this ridiculous new era of mind-numbing partisanship, where if I keep it real about the nonsense in the Democratic Party, it makes me an instant hero to Republicans."

So, coming back to today’s premise, there is currently a self-created combination of dependency on others for oil and natural gas, along with politically motivated open borders, too many regulations and abandonment of traditional values all because of a “small contingent” of Democrats who’ve “gone mental” and a majority of the party “who refuse to call them out.”

Consideration of how this very small political tail is wagging a huge free and law abiding dog brings this writer back once more to Rush’s theoretical premise of December 10, 2020, when he said:  “I actually think that we’re trending toward secession. I see more and more people asking what in the world do we have in common with the people who live in, say, New York? What is there that makes us believe that there is enough of us there to even have a chance at winning New York, especially if you’re talking about votes.

“A lot of bloggers have written extensively about how distant and separated and how much more separated our culture is becoming politically and that it can’t go on this way. There cannot be a peaceful coexistence of two completely different theories of life, theories of government, theories of how we manage our affairs. We can’t be in this dire a conflict without something giving somewhere along the way.

“I know that there’s a sizable and growing sentiment for people who believe that that is where we’re headed whether we want to or not. Whether we want to go there or not. I, myself, haven’t made up my mind. I still haven’t given up the idea that we are the majority and that all we have to do is find a way to unite and win.”

This writer’s conclusion at the time seems quite appropriate again: “Thus, it seems predictions are occurring more frequently regarding rising probability of a cultural rift in the nation which should be paid close attention by leftist leadership. Whereas if they take a step back and face reality, even they can grasp the fact that without the intellectual, financial, and commercial support of Republicans, they have no means of real-life survival as individuals."

That’s it for today folks.

Adios

 

BloggeRhythms

The frequent interest shown here regarding “Climate change” has nothing whatsoever to do with fluctuating weather or long-term trends, but instead how the subject has been adopted by the extreme left as a political tool. Particularly in the cases of Bill Clinton’s wife along with Barack Obama and their ties to Saul Alinsky and his “Rules for Radicals.”

Four of Alinsky’s “Rules.”

"Whenever possible go outside the expertise of the enemy."

“Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it. "

"Keep the pressure on."

Most important: "The threat is usually more terrifying than the thing itself. "

As found in Wikipedia: “In his 1996 biography of her, The Seduction of Hillary Rodham, David Brock dubbed Hillary Clinton "Alinsky's daughter." Barbara Olson began each chapter of her 1999 book on Clinton, Hell to Pay, with a quote from Alinsky, and argued that his strategic theories directly influenced her behavior during her husband's presidency Belief in an untoward connection to Alinsky was supercharged when Clinton asked Wellesley College to seal her thesis for the duration of her husband's presidency.

“As his candidacy gained strength, and once he had defeated Clinton for the Democratic Party nomination, attention shifted to Obama's ties to Alinsky. Monica Crowley, Bill O'Reilly, and Rush Limbaugh repeatedly drew a connection, with the latter asking, "Has [Obama] ever had an original idea — by that, I mean something not found in The Communist Manifesto? Has he? Has he simply had an idea not found in Saul Alinsky's Rules for Radicals?" Glenn Beck produced a four-part radio series to expose Alinsky's "vision for a Godless, centrally controlled utopia." In Barack Obama's Rules for Revolution: The Alinsky Model (2009) David Horowitz argued "the roots" of his administration's "effort to subject America to a wholesale transformation" were to be found in the teachings of "the guru of Sixties radicals"—an Alinsky admonition to be "flexible and opportunistic and say anything to get power."

“When Hillary Clinton ran again for the presidency in 2016, the specter of Alinsky was resurrected. In his speech before the GOP Convention, Ben Carson extemporaneously added a riff on Saul Alinsky drawn from his keynote speech at the Faith and Freedom Coalition Gala. He fixed on Alinsky's "over-the-shoulder acknowledgment", at the outset of Rules for Radicals, of Lucifer as "the first radical known to man"—someone who "rebelled against the establishment ... so effectively that he at least won his own kingdom".

The employment of what was then called “Global Warming” was a hot button [no pun intended] for Rush who had a very firm handle on how this fictional fear was manipulated by the left for political purposes. In fact, what went unmentioned by leftists and the mainstream media was how, when temperatures never rose as drastically as predicted, the name was subtly changed to “Climate Change” whereupon a whole new of set of Alinsky type threats had to be invented that remained ”outside the expertise of the enemy.“   

Back on February 17, 2019 Rush maintained: ‘’Climate change is nothing but a bunch of computer models that attempt to tell us what's going to happen in 50 years or 30. Notice the predictions are never for next year or the next 10 years. They're always for way, way, way, way out there, when none of us are going to be around or alive to know whether or not they were true."

The backlash was immediate from a host of climate “experts” who disparaged what Rush had to say as unfounded “utter nonsense” from a conservative radio host.

Fact-checking errors in Rush’s statement came from PolitiFact, a publication of the Poynter Institute, who declared “The first problem with Limbaugh’s claim is this: Climate change is already happening. Its impact is seen around the world.

“Here’s the topline: The broad scientific consensus is that human factors are the main contributor to global warming, with carbon dioxide emissions primarily driving up the earth’s temperature, which are now at record levels.

"Utter nonsense," is how climate scientist Kevin Trenberth characterized Limbaugh’s claim.

"We can simply look at the actual climate record," said Trenberth, a senior scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research. "The Earth is now hotter than it has ever been on record."

PolitiFact  went on: “The last four years were the hottest on record, according to an analysis by the World Meteorological Organization of five leading international datasets. In 2018, the oceans as a whole — which contain most of the earth’s energy — were the hottest on record, according to an international panel of scientists who track the data.

“What’s more, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the world’s leading authority on climate change has concluded with high confidence that "impacts on natural and human systems from global warming have already been observed."

“The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is an intergovernmental body of the United Nations responsible for advancing knowledge on human-induced climate change.

“The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is the leading international body for assessment of climate change. It is a key source of scientific information and technical guidance to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), the Kyoto Protocol and Paris Agreement.”

Following up on Rush’s assertions of climate change illegitimacy and his disparagement by a host of experts, PolitiFact in particular, this morning PolitiFact was researched to find on Wikipedia: “Since 2019, The Washington Post has been partnering with the Poynter Institute to increase diversity in media, with the goal to expand Poynter's annual Leadership Academy for Diversity in Digital Media training journalists to become founders, top-level executives and innovators. Other sponsors are CNN, the Scripps Howard Foundations, Craig Newmark Philanthropies, the Ethics and Excellence in Journalism Foundation and TEGNA Foundation.

“Since 2015, the Poynter Medal for Lifetime Achievement in Journalism has been awarded by the Poynter Institute. Winners include:

• 2015: Bob Schieffer, former CBS News anchor and host of Face the Nation
• 2016: Tom Brokaw, former anchor of NBC Nightly News
• 2017: Judy Woodruff, anchor and managing editor of PBS NewsHour
• 2018: Lester Holt, anchor of NBC Nightly News and Dateline NBC
• 2019: Katie Couric, broadcast journalist, author and media entrepreneur
• 2020: Chris Wallace, anchor of Fox News Sunday

So, we find that the fact-checkers disparaging Rush at PolitiFact are part of the leftist media themselves, with annual awards being given to a “Who’s who” of top rung socialist “Climate Change”  promoters.  

And then it’s found that as far as the Paris Agreement is concerned: “Compared with the total investment required over the next fifteen years to meet the goals set by the Paris Agreement, this report estimates that the climate finance gap is USD 2.5 – 4.8 trillion.”

Research about the Paris Agreement itself reveals that huge polluters “China and India demanded rich countries provide financial support for them to increase their climate plans at a UN summit in New York.

As the largest developing country, China “also enjoys the right to receive funds”, it in a statement published by the ministry of ecology and environment. “In light of tough economic and geopolitical prospects, China is pondering its options on climate,” Li Shuo, senior energy and climate policy officer at Greenpeace China told Climate Home News, adding that Beijing’s position paper left “plenty of wiggle room for a decision to double down on climate targets in 2020”.

In India’s case: “[The] ministry of finance said its plan was set on a “best effort” basis and that “finance holds a key for all its actions”. “India can only aspire to implement the already promised climate actions”, the statement said. It added that India “may only be in a position to elaborate or clarify its post 2020 climate” plan at the summit.

“Instead, India said will be “better placed” to “suitably recalibrate [its climate plan] through re-examination and improvement,” in 2023, when the next global stocktake to ramp up ambition is due to take place.”

Some information regarding Russia was gathered for comparison purposes, to find : “Despite making noises about having accepted the reality of anthropogenic climate change, Russia's 2035 energy strategy foresees an increase in coal production primarily for Asian markets, as well as an expansion in the production of natural gas — which is being widely touted as a controversial transition fuel. At present: “Some 179 TWh of Russia's energy production came from renewable energy sources, out of a total economically feasible potential of 1823 TWh. 16% of Russia's electricity was generated from hydropower, and less than 1% was generated from all other renewable energy sources combined.”

So, we find that not only was Rush almost certainly right in his refusal to accept results of long range computer modeling guesses as the basis for “Climate Change,” leftist leadership in the U.S. fosters channeling billions of taxpayer dollars into what is most likely an Alinsky type manufactured threat in the first place. And if it wasn’t so costly to every tax-paying citizen, the stupid gullibility of left wing voters would be tragically laughable.

That’s it for today folks.

Adios

BloggeRhythms

As good an explanation as one is likely to find regarding the nation’s currently unmanageable economic morass can be found in two well-researched, well-documented and well-written articles found on-line today.

The first is by Larry Bell, an endowed professor of space architecture at the University of Houston where he founded the Sasakawa International Center for Space Architecture (SICSA) and the graduate program in space architecture.

Bell begins: “President Joe Biden is correct in assessing climate change as the greatest global threat ... but for the wrong reason.

“It's only because our most dangerous adversaries are weaponizing his administration's energy policies driven by climate obsession to advance their territorial aggressions.

“Moscow is playing upon Biden's release of sanctions against its Nord Stream 2 natural gas pipeline to forestall NATO resistance to its threatened Ukraine offensive; Beijing is using greenhouse emission compliance promises as Communist Party favors amidst Taiwan provocations; and Tehran mullahs are bargaining oil export sanction relief against a White House desperation for a renewed "nuclear deal."

Bell then puts the combined strategy’s into a perfectly logical explanation for how and why the inflationary spiral began, writing: “All three adversaries [Russia, China, Iran] are collaborating to exploit U.S. abandonment of fossil energy independence and global market leverage which commenced on Biden's first day in office cancellation of America's Keystone XL pipeline and drilling permits on public lands and waters.”

As posted here from the start, the Keystone cancellation was most likely the primary cause of inflation in the U.S. and the stimulus for all that followed like links in a chain. Higher fuel costs lead to higher costs of transportation, leading to higher prices that  increase demand for higher wages that lead to higher production costs and further upward pressure on prices creating a conceptual spiral.

How the spiral works specifically in the U.S. comes from Phil Flynn, a senior energy analyst at The PRICE Futures Group and a Fox Business Network contributor. “He is one of the world's leading market analysts, providing individual investors, professional traders and institutions with up-to-the-minute investment and risk management insight into global petroleum, gasoline and energy markets.”

Flynn writes: “Joe Biden was inaugurated on Jan. 20, 2021, and within hours the new president could not wait to sign a slew of executive orders. Yet the one that has set the tone for his presidency and perhaps laid the groundwork for his plunging popularity and surging inflation was canceling the permit for the Keystone XL Pipeline. 

“The Biden administration thought the cancellation was a way to get back at the previous administration that approved it after the Obama administration killed it and was a signal about its commitment to the environment. Yet it was read by the industry and those that invest in the sector as a knock on America’s oil and gas industry. It also created a domino effect across the fossil fuel space that helped a massive surge in the price of oil and gasoline we are seeing today. 

“The energy industry saw this as a political attack on fossil fuels, and it feared that this arbitrary and political decision was only the beginning because studies found the pipeline would not add to greenhouse gas emissions. In fact, it can be argued that the cancellation may actually add to emissions. The oil that would have been moved through the pipeline from Canada will now be transported instead by rail and truck and other means that are not as safe as pipeline transportation.”

Furthermore, and a little-known consideration unmentioned in the mainstream media: “Biden wants to take away a tax credit that would allow oil companies to reduce their tax liability by 15% of the qualified costs associated with enhanced oil recovery projects. That is killing the technology that allowed the U.S. fracking revolution and allowed the U.S. to lessen its dependence on foreign oil. The Biden administration also wants to take away the industry's ability to deduct 10% of gross income instead of the cost of resources depleted in a given year which would further restrict U.S. oil output and innovation.  The Biden administration has also pressured banks and endowment funds to stop investing in fossil fuels.”

“The policies have helped restrict U.S. oil production, and the fallout from the Keystone Pipeline remains lost on the administration. The current cost of oil takes partly into account the availability of supply that is expected to come on in the future. The markets had already priced in more supply in regard to the Keystone XL, but now that supply will be harder to get and will be more expensive. The current price of oil also takes into account current investments in oil and gas exploration and drilling. Under Biden, new oil discoveries have fallen to a 75-year low. Research firm Rystad Energy said that the oil and gas industry had only discovered 4.7 billion barrels of oil equivalent by the end of 2021, the lowest amount in 75 years. 

“The crude oil once used has to be replaced. Just like when you drive for a while, you will eventually have to refuel your gas tank. If supply is expected to be more abundant in the future, then current prices should remain somewhat subdued. If there is an expectation that replacement cost in the future is higher, then current prices must be higher to make affordable supplies for people in the future. Not only did the cancellation of the Keystone Pipeline set the stage for higher energy prices. It also helped raise fears of inflation that are plaguing the U.S. and global economy.”

What’s most amazing about the detailed analyses above is that they illustrate as a practical reality the nation’s horrendous economic conditions are fundamentally simple. The nation’s oil production was intentionally shut off, spurring the inflation to follow. Which means that if the administration truly wished to resolve the strangling effects of that inflation, all it has to do is permit that production again.

That’s it for today folks.

Adios  

Here’s a link to the Bell article: https://www.newsmax.com/larrybell/biden-energy-russia-china/2022/01/26/id/1054081/

Ps: For our “climate-change” friends: “Chris Oberholtz writes @foxweather.com, “The mild air across the eastern half of the country on Friday will be short-lived as another blast of arctic air will drop out of Canada behind the nor’easter. Freezing temperatures will be felt as far south as Orlando Sunday morning. The coldest air in more than a decade is forecast across south Florida where temperatures will dip into the 30s.”