We are the drain the swamp people

Maybe Biden should have GW talk to his BFF, Vlad (“the Impaler”*) Putin.

Recall when George W. Bush was so chummy with Putin? At the time, few of us realized what a disaster George was as president. He and the whole ‘Bush clan’ have revealed themselves to be as much a ’tool’ of the Deep State as the ‘conqueror of Corn Pop’!

It turns out that it appears that “President Joey” is a bigger friend of “Pootie-Poot’s” than GW (“Sure, we’ll continue to buy “Pootie-Poot-Poot’s oil. The real threat is “climate change”; America shouldn’t be ‘energy independent’. That’s Sooo ‘Donald Trump’ !!)

dlh

——————

At The Guardian:
Bush’s love of Pootie-Poot Putin

Julian Borger in Washington Sun 19 May 2002

At a historic summit in Moscow this week (May 20 thru 25, 2002), President George Bush will mark what he claims is the final putting to rest of the cold war, by shaking hands with his new best friend, Pootie-Poot.

That, according to today’s issue of Time magazine, is the president’s nickname for the Russian president, Vladimir Putin. At times of tension between the two countries, we are told, Mr Bush is known to tell his staff: “Get me Pootie-Poot on the phone.”

MORE FROM THE UK GUARDIAN’S 2002 PIECE ON GW BUSH’S AFFECTION FOR VLADAMIR PUTIN:

Since his days as head cheerleader at a private academy in Andover, Mr Bush has prided himself on his bonhomie, which relies heavily on the use of nicknames.
He refers to his political adviser, Karl Rove, as “Boy Genius” and, as Texas governor, introduced a forest service official as “Tree Man”.Advertisement

More from the 2002 article in the UK Guardian:

The nicknames have helped build his “regular guy” image, but Pootie-Poot sounds more like a throwback to the preppy vocabulary of his father, who was famous for such phrases as “I’m in deep doo-doo”.
A presidential nickname is considered a badge of honour among members of Congress and journalists. It suggests you have reached the inner circle.
Mr Putin seems to have worked hard to earn his sobriquet, researching the US president’s quirks before their first meeting in Slovenia in June.
The US national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, hailed the relationship between the two men as epoch-making.
“To see the kind of relationship that presidents Bush and Putin have developed and to see Russia firmly anchored in the west,” she said, “that’s really a dream of 300 years, not just of the post-cold war era”.
Time magazine quoted a former Putin aide as saying the Russian leader “devoured an enormous amount of information on Bush and everything related to him”.
It seemed to work. Before the Ljubljana encounter, the Bush administration dismissed Mr Putin as a Soviet throwback, but afterwards Mr Bush claimed: “I looked the man in the eye. I was able to get a sense of his soul.”
Before this week’s summit, Mr Bush is apparently doing a bit more research on the Russian soul.
Ms Rice has reportedly given him a reading list including Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment.
The message underlying the advice is unclear. Perhaps the guilt-ridden axe-murderer of the novel is supposed to be post-Soviet Pootie-Poot in deep doo-doo.
                                 *****************************************

An ‘aside’ ; why we prefer to know Putin as “Vlad the Impaler”:

• Vlad III, commonly known as Vlad the Impaler or Vlad Dracula, was Voivode of Wallachia three times between 1448 and his death in 1476/77. He is often considered one of the most important rulers in Wallachian history and a national hero of Romania. Wikipedia
•
In Russia, popular stories suggested that Vlad was able to strengthen his central government only through applying brutal punishments, and a similar view was adopted by most Romanian historians in the 19th century. Vlad’s patronymic inspired the name of Bram Stoker’s literary vampire, Count Dracula.

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NONE OF IT JUSTIFIES RUSSIAN INVASION, PUTIN’S LIES, OR THE LIKELIHOOD THAT INVASION,DEATH AND DESTRUCTION WERE NOT PREVENTABLE WITH A SERIOUS (AND BELIEVABLE) POSTURE FROM BIDEN AND NATO ~~ REAL REAL POLITICK

Articles at The Federalist:

In Russia Crisis, Ukraine Should Be Prepared To Trade Land For Independence.

The West Could Have Prevented The Russo-Ukrainian War, But Chose Not To

Biden’s Russia Sanctions Atop His Shortsighted Energy Policy Are A Failure Of Leadership.

And from Alex Berenson writing at Unreported Truths:

Russia runs into the realest politik of all (Part 1)

The realest politick of all (Part 2) – by Alex Berenson

Some undirected observations and interpretations

We like that there are freedom lovers in Ukraine and admire their courage their desire not to be under the yolk of Russia again.  We admire the Polish people’s response to the Russian invasion. Germany has made itself so recklessly soft, so dissipated of energy — the BTU and the moral kind — as to be pathetic. Two Democrat administrations in the US have failed Ukraine but the implications of failure to uphold treaties perhaps that were not realistic in territorial aspects is not an excuse for not helping Ukraine with negotiation through strength. China is our enemy and not to be trusted. Ukraine has corruptive elements and some history that does not generate sympathy but Russia under Putin in alliance with China comprise freedom’s enemy.

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Will his ‘white rage’ keep him from warning Putin (a ‘Caucasian’)

Can someone in the DOD or DOJ, or maybe Peter Doocy of Fox News, check to determine if U.S. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Mark Milley, has yet called Valery Vasilyevich, Russia’s Chief of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation, to assure him that he has nothing to fear from the United States military.

Has Milley also called General Vasilyevich, as he has Communist China’s top military official, that he will tell him if the United States intends to attack Russia for invading Ukraine?            dlh

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This Wall Street Journal editorial is one of the few times this has appeared in print since the Ukrainian issue arose…as far as I know. (Fox has mentioned it.). dlh.   Bold our emphasis.

How Ukraine Was Betrayed in Budapest
Kyiv gave up its nuclear weapons in return for security assurances. So much for that.

As the people of Ukraine steel themselves for a Russian attack, it’s worth recalling how the U.S. persuaded the country to give up its nuclear weapons. The event was the Budapest Memorandum of 1994, in which the U.S., Great Britain and Russia offered security assurances to the nation that had won independence when the Soviet Union dissolved.

That was the halcyon post-Cold War era when history had supposedly ended. Some 1,800 nuclear weapons were on Ukrainian territory, including short-range tactical weapons and air-launched cruise missiles. The U.S. wanted fewer countries to have fewer nukes, and U.S. credibility was at its peak.

The memo begins with the U.S., U.K. and Russia noting that Ukraine had committed “to eliminate all nuclear weapons from its territory within a specified period of time.” Then the three countries “confirm” a half-dozen commitments to Ukraine.

The most important was to “reaffirm their obligation to refrain from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of Ukraine.” They also pledged to “refrain from economic coercion” against Ukraine and to “seek immediate United Nations Security Council action to provide assistance to Ukraine” in the event of an “act of aggression” against the country. Ukraine had returned all of the nuclear weapons to Russia by 1996.

Vladimir Putin made the Budapest Memorandum a dead letter with his first invasion of Ukraine in 2014. But the betrayal of Budapest isn’t forgotten in Kyiv, as President Volodymyr Zelensky noted bitterly in weekend remarks in Munich.

Budapest shows again the folly of trusting parchment promises in a world where autocrats think might makes right. More damaging is the message that nations give up their nuclear arsenals at their peril. That’s the lesson North Korea has learned, and Iran is following the same playbook as it connives to build the bomb even as it promises not to do so.

The inability of the U.S. to enforce its Budapest commitments will also echo in allied capitals that rely on America’s military assurances. Don’t be surprised if Japan or South Korea seek their own nuclear deterrent. If Americans want to know why they should care about Ukraine, nuclear proliferation is one reason. Betrayal has consequences, as the world seems destined to learn again the hard way.

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Just adding one adjective could have stopped a theme from being regurgitated.  

Trump should have said evil genius regarding Putin.

Frankly it was not all that “genius” given the lightweight Biden

Yes his remarks were not that of a formal speech and on that Biden can make more dunderheaded comments then you can shake a stick at, but handing your haters one liners is not the way to go.  Now the context is fine –Trump was also making the point that Putin would not have tried anything like his Ukraine assault with him as president.  But please Donald exercise some verbal restraint.

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Jus’ thinkin’…

Putin has declared that Ukraine is actually a part of Russia. As such he has now marched Russian troops and rolled his tanks into eastern Ukraine as “peacekeepers!

If this is a “minor incursion”, “President” Biden has indicated he will ‘let it pass’; none of his “tough” sanctions will thus be imposed. If it had been an “invasion”, it was the crossing of Biden’s “RED line”.

You call it!

Is it any wonder that Democrats are now believing that even “Corn Pop” would be a better president?     dlh

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• Radical farm state idea — cropland for food, gasoline for cars

Related reading: https://news.algaeworld.org/2016/08/blunder-biofuel-mandate/

Big Ethanol has wrapped itself in a cloak of environmentalism for decades, winning government mandates for the marketing and use of its product — they are finally being defrocked, certainly their cover is in taters, and objective environmentalists are now joining the fraying.  

Bought and paid for, and sheepish politicians have sustained Big Ethanol using the same cloak.  Too many Republican voters in farm states operate on a presumption that ethanol is a political or economic necessity. Farm state media pretty much either can’t see beyond its advertisers, or as hidebound liberal as they are, are still devoted to the propaganda they bought into and in general can’t let go of the falsities or environmental boondoggles they helped foster.

Green studies warning about corn for ethanol were published six years ago. (or longer) 

And so we ask

Will there be objective coverage of this article from the Proceedings of  the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS)?   (excerpts)

Environmental outcomes of the US Renewable Fuel Standard.

Significance

Biofuels are included in many proposed strategies to reduce anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions and limit the magnitude of global warming. The US Renewable Fuel Standard is the world’s largest existing biofuel program, yet despite its prominence, there has been limited empirical assessment of the program’s environmental outcomes. Even without considering likely international land use effects, we find that the production of corn-based ethanol in the United States has failed to meet the policy’s own greenhouse gas emissions targets and negatively affected water quality, the area of land used for conservation, and other ecosystem processes. Our findings suggest that profound advances in technology and policy are still needed to achieve the intended environmental benefits of biofuel production and use.

Abstract

The Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS) specifies the use of biofuels in the United States and thereby guides nearly half of all global biofuel production, yet outcomes of this keystone climate and environmental regulation remain unclear. Here we combine econometric analyses, land use observations, and biophysical models to estimate the realized effects of the RFS in aggregate and down to the scale of individual agricultural fields across the United States. We find that the RFS increased corn prices by 30% and the prices of other crops by 20%, which, in turn, expanded US corn cultivation by 2.8 Mha (8.7%) and total cropland by 2.1 Mha (2.4%) in the years following policy enactment (2008 to 2016). These changes increased annual nationwide fertilizer use by 3 to 8%, increased water quality degradants by 3 to 5%, and caused enough domestic land use change emissions such that the carbon intensity of corn ethanol produced under the RFS is no less than gasoline and likely at least 24% higher. These tradeoffs must be weighed alongside the benefits of biofuels as decision-makers consider the future of renewable energy policies and the potential for fuels like corn ethanol to meet climate mitigation goals.

(first paragraph)

Bioenergy is an essential component of most proposed pathways to reduce anthropogenic greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and limit global warming to 1.5 or 2 °C by middle to late century (1⇓⇓⇓⇓–6). Liquid biofuels may contribute to bioenergy’s share of climate mitigation by displacing petroleum-based fuels with those generated from modern-day plants (7, 8). The GHG benefits of such substitution, however, are dependent on several factors including whether biofuel production invokes additional plant growth (9⇓⇓–12), the extent to which combusted plants (typically crops) are replaced in the food system (13⇓–15), and the degree to which biofuel production directly and indirectly alters patterns of land use and management (2, 16⇓⇓⇓–20). Because land use changes (LUCs) and other consequences induced by biofuels have the potential to cause significant novel GHG emissions and modify other ecosystem services and disservices (21⇓⇓⇓⇓–26), accurately estimating and accounting these outcomes is critical for the formation of effective climate and environmental policy (27⇓–29).

To be sure the article is no condemnation of the concept of liquid biofuels, more the sequelae of the policy drivers decided by politicians.  Politicians   (and much of the so-called green movement) have failed to foresee consequences, or disregard them in doctrinaire manner  or  they foster the law of concentrated gain (for biofuel interests and political coffers) and defuse pain (taxpayers).

Big Ethanol will probably just tut tut about the article disregarding the prestigious source and say more incentives (tax money) and regulations they write will solve any problems BUT FOR GOD SAKES THE SKY WILL FALL IF 40+% OF THE CORN CROP IS NOT CREATED FOR AND INEFFICIENTLY STUFFED IN GAS TANKS.  They will never honestly pursue an end to the mandates or the use of grade A farmland to create ethanol.  But honest environmentalists are beginning to recognize that Big Ethanol does not really care as much as they do about the environment (never did) it was always mostly opportunism.

But individual farmers ought to care about food prices (they see them and pay them as well and realize that the prices are not necessarily reflective of their income, more their costs, and that those are artificially high. We want them to prosper for their investments and toils but isn’t there a better use for their land than ethanol?

As human beings proud that what they produce is feeding the nation they at least ought not to favor ethanol production over other uses for their cropland.  Ethanol producers can pound sand if farmers have full production alternatives to them. Accordingly what if a better regime of agriculture policy (hopefully more market based as that is the great adaptor to needs) is developed — something else to help insure their wholeness at least as well, and for better purpose than ethanol for cars?

We accept that agriculture is a special case in that human needs including national security cannot be left to farmers sinking or swimming — to broad natural events or world markets. The efficiency and abundance we have grown use to requires substantial timely investment by farmers which has to be covered in prices.  World markets have too many variables impacting national security to be relied on for food security at affordable prices.

While world markets are a not to be abandoned price leveler we do not advocate total reliance on other countries for cheaper essential food stuffs risking our farmers solvency, over specialization or driving the consolidation of farms into mega-operations in order to achieve competitive super efficiency of a sort that reduces the number of farms and farmers.   We respect that other countries will (ought) to feel the same way.  National defense requires a vibrant home grown approach to agriculture and one not in the hands of mega-corporations, our government or other governments.

So we appreciate farmers and want them independent as possible.  We do not want them dependent on big government or huge corporate interests in bed with big government. But something has to move corn growers to get off the ethanol is our savior fixation.  Feeding more people at lower prices while maintaining farmer profitability ought to be the policy goal, not inefficiently powering cars through a largely artificial (in size) industry.

We do not have the definitive answers for farmers but surely the artificial, inefficient, environmentally questionable (at least) use of 40+% of the corn crop, enhanced in size to accommodate a mandate not a market, using such hugely productive Iowa land is not one of them.

The main goal of agriculture policy should be – secure, affordable food in abundant variety that does not impinge on the independence of farmers or producers (or any other industry) nor that makes food supplies vulnerable to mega entities — not the creation of artificial non-food markets that compete with food.

Energy costs is perhaps the main driver right now to all that affects food prices —fertilizer costs, planting and  harvesting, finish production, transportation, everything. That is the first place to make changes. Other ideas in line with these goals are welcome and we would be happy to post essays or recommendations to that effect

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DLH sends this link to a Brietbart article

‘Red-Handed’: 20 Republicans Who Sold Out to China

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• They are not girls, they need treatment, and they should not be allowed on girl’s teams

Iowa State Representative Sharon Steckman (D – Cerro Gordo) made a statement to the Iowa Standard yesterday referring to a bill (HF 2309) introduced in order to protect public school girl’s sports for what it was intended to be, for biological female students. You can read her comments here.

Rep. Steckman makes the statement referring to HF 2309 that it “discriminates against and prevents transgender girls from participating in girls’ sports in middle and high school.”  Of course she tries to paint the issue as discrimination involving students of the same sex. One type of girl or another. But the generic students she refers to are not of the same sex. There are biologic female students with certain definitive genetic attributes and male students who have certain definitive genetic attributes including attributes that give them advantages over females in sports who think they want to be girls but are psychologically screwed up. Bifurcating and restricting competition based on sex has never been treated as unreasonable discrimination indeed it is appropriate for a host of practical, cultural and fairness reasons all of which serve to protect actual girls and girl sports. 

By legislator Sharon Steckman’s standards if the male students she refers to are “girls” then allowing them to compete for records or to augment female student team sports discriminates against  females students who cannot afford the cost or have the warped desire to endure the physical and mental health risk of augmentation to compete with those so called girls who come with musculature and lung capacity and bone density not natural to their sex.  And if one student gets to use drugs or hormonal “therapies” to satisfy a desire to compete in girls athletics (which do not eliminate basic sex linked advantages), why cannot a girl use drugs or hormonal  therapies to enhance their attributes in order to compete in girls athletics and even the playing field with the biological male they will compete against?  

Sharon Steckman says she “did not come to the Statehouse to pass discriminatory laws against Iowa children.” Then is she there to sustain them? Has she introduced a bill to ban discrimination based on age within school athletics, or is a presumption about physicality linked to age appropriate?  Most reasonable people would think such is appropriate.  That is why a presumption regarding sex linked characteristics indeed DNA is appropriate. The bigger question is why does Sharon Steckman want to discriminate against indeed punish unmodified girls in the realm of scholarships and other awards associated with school athletics?   

Related reading: Transgender swimmer destroys competition at Ivy League Championships, winning 500 free by more than 7 seconds

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• Are you listening whoever is pulling Bidens strings, and all you Trudeaupnics?
• I’d like to nail this one to their doors . . ., ‘cept I am not permitted in gated communities.

One manifesto stands above all others and forever — the Ten Commandments (OK it is not really a manifesto because it was not written by man but for man )– But this one is so timely, so culturally important, so in your face to the destroyers of freedom that it may rate as the top culturally affirming statements of this decade. Well done Mr. Jenkins

Set forth here to add some emphasis here and there.  Available in pristine condition at Townhall, always a great source of information and commentary for conservatives

Dear Global “Elites”: A Manifesto

https://townhall.com/columnists/robjenkins/2022/02/02/dear-global-elites-a-manifesto-n2602702

Rob Jenkins

Recently, one of your number, an economics professor at Oxford, had this to say: “At Davos a few years ago, the Edelman survey showed us the good news is that the elites across the world trust each other more and more. So we can come together and design and do beautiful things together. The bad news is that, in every single country they were polling, the majority of people trusted their elite less. So we can lead, but if people aren’t following, we’re not going to get to where we want to go.”

Where to begin unpacking this stunning example of tone-deaf arrogance, which I imagine is fairly representative of the way most “elites” feel these days?

Let’s start with this: No. We are not following. You’re right about that. And we have no intention of following you, for a number of reasons.

First, anyone who describes themselves as an “elite” betrays a breathtaking egotism. They are openly acknowledging that they think themselves better than the rest of us—smarter, more knowledgeable, morally superior, better equipped to lead. So we should all just shut up and do as we’re told.

No. We’re not going to do as we’re told. Not by you. We don’t accept that you know more than we do about anything important, and certainly not on the topic of how to run our lives. If we ever had any doubts about that—if we ever wondered if, after all, maybe your way was best—the last two years have proven unequivocally otherwise.

Calling your pandemic response “botched” would be the greatest understatement in history. Everything you told us to do—lockdown, mask up, offer ourselves as human guinea pigs—not only didn’t stop the virus but made things exponentially worse. A health crisis morphed quickly into an economic, social, and political one, as well.

And it wasn’t covid that did that. It was you, our self-styled “global elites.”

Indeed, we are beginning to suspect—and many of us suspected all along—that the severity of the disease was oversold from the beginning. Sure, it was bad, worse than the seasonal flu, but not that much worse. It was nowhere near the mass extinction event you made it out to be. It affected almost exclusively the elderly, the infirm, and the morbidly obese. Schools, churches, and businesses could have stayed open all along and it would have made little or no difference in the course of the pandemic, as places like Sweden and Florida have shown.

Yet you insisted on keeping us locked in our homes. On keeping our kids out of school. On covering our faces and shuttering our churches and bankrupting our businesses. All while holding out hope of a magical “vaccine.” And when your jabs turned out not to work so well—when it was obvious they didn’t stop infection or slow spread—instead of acknowledging you were wrong, you simply doubled down on your failed pre-jab strategies.

Perhaps, in the beginning, it was just ignorance. You didn’t know what was going on any more than the rest of us did. Maybe you were just doing your best to “save mankind.”

Somehow, I doubt it. Evidence that this entire crisis might well be attributable to your own malfeasance argues against that interpretation. So does the fact that you steadfastly refuse to admit your now obvious mistakes and instead persist in your folly. At the very least, it is clear that you have exploited this situation for all it’s worth, in an attempt to remake the world in your elitist, globalist image—to initiate, as you call it, “The Great Reset.”

Unfortunately for you, the professor was right: We will not follow. We reject your Great Reset. We reject your vision of the world. We reject globalism. We have nothing against other countries, but we prefer our own, warts and all, and we have no intention of surrendering our national sovereignty to any form of world government.

We reject your multiculturalism. Again, we have nothing against other cultures, many of which offer much to admire and emulate. But we have our own culture, thank you, and it suits us just fine.

We reject your vision of a controlled economy and central planning. We prefer free markets, messy as they are, as the engine for producing the greatest possible individual liberty, prosperity, and human flourishing.

We reject your nouveau fascism, in which world governments collude with global corporations, especially Big Tech, to surveille, harass, and ultimately control the rest of us. We don’t care if it’s “for our own good” (although we suspect it isn’t). We’d much rather have self-governance, the freedom to decide for ourselves what is best for us and our families.

In short, we reject you, the self-styled elites, the smug sanctimonious Davos crowd. We don’t think you’re in any way smarter or better than us. Indeed, you have proved to our satisfaction that you are not. We do not trust you. We do not want you leading us and have no intention of following. We suspect, based on hard experience, that the “beautiful things” you intend to “design and do” are not beautiful at all but rather loathsome and hideous—for us, at least. They may be beautiful for you as they increase your power, wealth, and influence. But we care about the magnificent edifice you are constructing for yourselves only to the extent that we wish to tear it down.

If the past two years have taught us anything, it is that you “elites” are awful people. Your ideas are awful. Your vision for the future is awful. The society you wish to create, with yourselves in charge, would be unspeakably awful. We reject it, and we reject you. So go away and leave us alone—or else suffer the consequences.

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