The Russians will never gain the hearts and souls of the IRANIAN people!!!
The idiot simply rambled off a wish list that had no bearing on reality.
Category: Goobermint
Putin Threatens Nuclear Escalation as Biden Goes on Vacation.
Does anyone at the White House realize how bad it looks for Joe Biden to hide at his private home in Delaware while Russia’s invasion of Ukraine continues?
Apparently not, because that’s where he is, and Fox News reports that media communications with Biden have been limited while he’s been there.
Does anyone think that Trump could’ve gotten away with this? Now, granted, Russia wouldn’t have invaded Ukraine had Trump still been in office. Still, it doesn’t take a political expert to understand the optics of Biden hunkering down in Delaware for a long weekend as the Russia/Ukraine conflict appears to be escalating toward a nuclear war.
“He is right now threatening a nuclear escalation,” former DIA intelligence officer Rebekah Koffler told Fox News. “This a veiled threat – or maybe such a veiled threat – he just met with his chief of general staff and minister of defense. He is escalating the conflict into the nuclear domain in order to de-escalate – that is, topple Kyiv’s regime quickly.”
Meanwhile, questions remain about what Putin’s endgame is.
“It is not entirely clear if Mr. Putin has designs beyond the Ukraine,” Pentagon press secretary John Kirby said. “And it’s because that’s not perfectly clear that we continue to look for ways to bolster our NATO capabilities and to reassure our allies. I mean, one of the reasons we’re doing this is because we want to make it clear to him that we will defend every inch of NATO territory.”
I’d like to believe that, but mostly, I’m wondering whether Biden cares more about what his next ice cream cone flavor will be.
The Collapsing Covid Narrative is Being Replaced with Putin and Ukraine
Game-changing news has emerged out of Iceland.
As of this week, Iceland is the first country in the world to completely drop ALL Covid measures. There will be no lockdowns or social restrictions. There will be no mandatory Covid testing and if you happen to catch Covid you do not have to isolate. There will be no vaccine passports and no vaccine mandates. Anyone regardless of their vaccination status can travel to the country with no test required. The unvaccinated will not face any form of discrimination or exclusion from society.
Iceland is returning to going back to life as it was before Covid.
This by itself would be astounding enough given that Iceland is in the midst of a massive Covid surge and posting record cases even as we speak.
If you did not know, the vaccination rate in Iceland is some 80% of the total population which means that around 90% of the adult population is fully vaccinated.
Obviously, the vaccines have done absolutely nothing to stop or even slow down the spread of the SARS-CoV-2 virus. Quite on the contrary, they seem to have led to its increase.
Not only has the government of Iceland decided to drop all Covid restrictions and vaccine requirements, but the Ministry of Health issued remarkable new guidelines on how to deal with the virus. The country’s health authorities have advised the Icelanders that “as many people as possible need to be infected with the virus as the vaccines are not enough.”
Do you hear this?
Iceland’s government now tells its people that it is good to contract Covid. In other words, Iceland’s government has decided to handle Covid through herd immunity derived from natural infection.
This marks the complete negation of the official Covid narrative which was accepted as the conventional wisdom by nearly every government for the last two years.
President Zelensky Appears to Take Direct Shot at Joe Biden
On Thursday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky spoke out from what appeared to be a bunker, taking a direct shot at President Joe Biden for completely failing the Ukrainian people and the world.
Zelensky started off by stating how he is being hunted down by the Russians.
“I know that a lot of misinformation and rumors are being spread now,” Zelensky said. Adding to that, he continued, saying:
“In particular, it is claimed that I have left Kyiv. I remain in the capital; I am staying with my people. My family is not a traitor, but a citizen of Ukraine. According to our information, the enemy marked me as the number one target. My family is the number two goal.
They want to destroy Ukraine politically by destroying the Head of State. We have information that enemy sabotage groups have entered Kyiv. … I am staying in the government quarter together with others.”
And Ukraine has some serious enemies. Chechen “kill squads” are reportedly roaming through Ukraine at the moment, something that can’t help but spook Zelensky.
In fact, “The kill squad was allegedly in a Ukrainian forest, with each soldier reportedly given a special ‘deck of cards’ with Ukrainian officials’ photos and descriptions, a Moscow Telegram channel that has links to the security establishment reported,” The Daily Mail reported.
Adding to that report, it said “State TV in Chechnya reported that Ramzan Kadyrov, the republic’s leader and a close Putin ally, had visited his forces in Ukraine. The Chechens are believed to be from the South battalion of the Federal Guard Service, based in Chechnya.”
But returning to his speech, it was after he said where he was staying that Zelensky then appeared to take a direct shot at President Biden.
“This morning we are defending our state alone. Like yesterday, the world’s most powerful forces are watching from afar,” he said. “Did yesterday’s sanctions convince Russia? We hear in our sky and see on our earth that this was not enough.”
“We are left alone in defense of our state. Who is ready to fight with us?” Zelensky continued. Then, adding yet more emphasis to his points by calling out NATO, he said:
“Honestly – I do not see such. Who is ready to guarantee Ukraine’s accession to NATO? Honestly, everyone is afraid. … I tell all the partners of our state: now is an important moment – the fate of our country is being decided. I ask them: are you with us?
They answer that they are with us. But they are not ready to take us to the Alliance. Today, I asked the twenty-seven leaders of Europe whether Ukraine will be in NATO. I asked directly. Everyone is afraid. They do not answer.”
“And we are not afraid of anything. We are not afraid to defend our state,” he continued. “We are not afraid of Russia. We are not afraid to talk to Russia. We are not afraid to say everything about security guarantees for our state. We are not afraid to talk about neutral status. We are not in NATO now. But the main thing – what security guarantees will we have? And what specific countries will give them?”
Here’s one point that gets little notice about Ukraine.
And why weak leaders and leadership always causes problems.
When the Soviet Union collapsed in ’91, Ukraine became a sovereign country again, and in return for handing over their nuclear weapons, accepted security deals from Russia and the United States.
At the end of the Cold War, Ukraine had the third biggest nuclear arsenal on Earth with over 5,000 nuclear warheads.
The 1994 agreement, known as the Budapest Memorandum had the U.S., U.K. and Russia guarantee Ukraine’s security for the nation signing on to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons and giving up their nukes.
However, when Russia ‘annexed’ Crimea in 2014, anyone with 2 working brains cells knew that Putin’s word meant nothing.
Ukraine demanded the former Soviet Union and America respect its sovereignty and existing borders, but 28 later? With a senile puppet sitting in the oval office, and his lackies more concerned with gender equity and covid mandate BS, than energy independence, we get crap like this again.
Constitutional Carry in doubt after Indiana committee guts legislation
The good news for Indiana gun owners is that Constitutional Carry legislation passed out of a key Senate committee on Wednesday. The bad news is that it’s no longer a Constitutional Carry bill.
HB 1077 had already passed out of the House with an overwhelming majority, but its future is very much in doubt in the state Senate after an eight-hour hearing of the Judiciary Committe left the bill stripped of its original intent.
As amended, House Bill 1077 would keep the permit requirement in place to carry a handgun in Indiana. However, it would enable qualified candidates who have applied for a permit to carry a handgun without a license until they receive their permit. The idea is that this would end complaints about delays in the permitting process.
The amendment to gut the bill just narrowly passed by a 6-5 vote, splitting the Republicans on the committee. Every Democrat voted to gut the bill. Shortly after, the committee unanimously voted to advance the bill to the floor. Some were unhappy with the bill, but voted to keep it moving.
Now, this doesn’t mean that Constitutional Carry is officially dead in the Indiana legislature. It’s possible that the bill will be amended once again to restore the permitless carry provisions once the legislation comes up for debate on the Senate floor, though many law enforcement agencies and gun control groups are going to continue their efforts to kill the bill, even if many of their arguments don’t make much (gun)sense.
Critics say there should be a vetting process.
“We will have people walking on our street never vetted by law enforcement, never receiving a background check with loaded firearms around our children,” Jennifer Haan with Moms Demand Action in Indiana said last month.
There are already people doing that right now in Indiana, and if they’re not legally allowed to own a gun they’re not legally allowed to carry it. That wouldn’t change under the Constitutional Carry language in HB 1077. The only difference would be that those who can legally possess a gun in their home could also lawfully carry it in public without the need for a government-issued permission slip.
Gun control activists weren’t the only ones making some odd arguments in opposition to the bill.
Officers also said individuals would have to background check themselves if the permit requirement was nixed, and might not know they aren’t qualified to carry a handgun. Detective Matt Foote from the Fort Wayne Police Department, said 14% of those who applied for permits in his community in 2021 were denied.
That’s actually already an issue. If you don’t know that you’re a prohibited person and you fail a NICS check, you could be charged with a crime for attempting to purchase a firearm (though under federal law prosecutors must prove that you knowingly tried to purchase a gun you weren’t allowed to possess). The responsibility of ensuring that you can lawfully carry already lies with the gun owner, and that wouldn’t change if HB 1077 became law.
Constitutional Carry still has a chance in Indiana this year, but if it’s going to get across the finish line gun owners and Second Amendment activists need to contact their senators and urge them to restore HB 1077 to its original intent when it reaches the Senate floor.
More than 20 states have already adopted Constitutional Carry, and none of them have seen any cause to repeal the law and return to requiring a license to carry (though every Constitutional Carry state with the exception of Vermont still maintains a “shall issue” licensing system for gun owners who want to be able to legally carry in states with reciprocity agreements). Indianans are no less responsible than the residents of Arizona, Texas, Oklahoma, Utah, West Virginia, and the other states that have permitless carry laws already in place. The big question now is whether Indiana lawmakers are as supportive of the 2A rights of residents as their counterparts in nearly half of the states across the nation.
Gaslighting: CBS News Wants You to Think Ukraine-Russia Caused Our Economic Problems.
CBS News thinks we’re stupid enough to believe inflation, supply-chain issues, and high gas prices started right now because of Ukraine and Russia.
Propaganda at its finest. CBS News thinks we’re stupid enough to believe inflation, supply-chain issues, and high gas prices started right now because of Ukraine and Russia.
They think we forgot all three started in 2021.
The U.S. economy has been hit with increased gas prices, inflation, and supply-chain issues due to the Ukraine crisis. https://t.co/d9dwXWpcvf
— CBS News (@CBSNews) February 23, 2022
It’s no wonder the Biden administration has pushed for war. It’s no wonder Biden all of a sudden started caring about Ukraine. Wag the dog, you guys.
They know a war would make it worse so why not? It’ll deflect the blame from them to Putin. Or so they think.
The word is that the Canadian Senate let him know they weren’t going to pass his power grab, so he does the politically expedient thing of reversing course so he won’t look like the loser he is
‘Trudeau backs down’: Canadian PM revokes emergency powers
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced on Wednesday that Canada will end the rarely used measures used nine days ago to deal with weeks-long protests that shut some border crossings and paralyzed Ottawa since late January.
“The situation is no longer an emergency. Therefore, the federal government will be ending the use of the Emergencies Act,” he told a news conference.
“We are confident that existing laws and bylaws are now sufficient to keep people safe,” he said.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said Canada’s governor-general will formally revoke the emergency measures in the coming hours.
Following Trudeau’s announcement last week, the Emergencies Act was approved by the House of Commons on Monday, but not without opposition.
Invoking the powers was seen by the main opposition Conservative Party and some provincial leaders as overreaching.
The government said that the use of these powers would have a time limit. According to Trudeau, the powers were needed because the blockades threatened the economy and the public and because they helped coordinate the police forces.
“Trudeau backs down,” Pierre Poilievre, a Conservative lawmaker who is running for leadership of the party, said on Twitter. “Thank you to all who fought this abuse of power.”
Grabbing Guns Won’t Reduce Urban Violence
Firearm seizures are ineffective, and gun possession arrests are frequently unjust
If you want to reduce gun violence, New York City Mayor Eric Adams thinks, you need to go after guns. His plan relies heavily on disrupting gun trafficking, seizing guns, and arresting people for illegal gun possession.
This strategy is unlikely to work. Worse, the focus on gun possession arrests, if it fails to distinguish between people who pose a real threat to public safety and people who carry guns for self-protection, will compound the injustice of systematically denying city dwellers their Second Amendment rights.
“It is estimated that as many as 2 million illegal guns were in circulation in New York City in 1993,” the Justice Department reports. Last year, the New York City Police Department seized about 6,000 guns; even at that unusually high rate, three decades of seizures would not have made much of a difference.
Given that reality, attempts to disrupt the supply of guns are not a very promising approach either. For crime guns in New York, the average time between initial sale and confiscation is nearly 12 years.
Philadelphia, like New York, has recently seen sharp increases in homicides. But law enforcement officials in that city are rightly skeptical that gun seizures or supply-side measures are an effective way to tackle the problem.
Between 1999 and 2020, according to a January report from a committee that includes local police officials and Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner, nearly 13 million guns were legally sold in Pennsylvania, an average of more than 1,600 a day. Meanwhile, Pennsylvania law enforcement agencies seized an average of 22 guns per day.
“With so many guns available,” Krasner says in the report, “a law enforcement strategy prioritizing seizing guns locally does little to reduce the supply of guns.” And if that strategy “entails increasing numbers of car and pedestrian stops,” he warns, it “has the potential to be counterproductive by alienating the very communities that it is designed to help.”
As in New York, the Philadelphia report notes, “most guns used and/or recovered are those purchased a long time ago, indicating that attempts to limit the future supply of guns now will not impact the current gun violence crisis.” The report’s analysis of 100 shootings confirms other research finding that criminals typically obtain guns through illegal transfers or theft, sources that would not be affected by new restrictions on sales, such as expanded background checks.
Data from Baltimore, another city where homicides have risen in recent years, likewise cast doubt on the effectiveness of Adams’ strategy. Based on 31 years of homicide and gun-seizure data, a Battleground Baltimore report published last week concludes that “seizing ‘illegal’ guns does not reduce violent crime, although gun seizures and gun possession arrests remain metrics frequently cited by police.”
Arresting people for illegal gun possession is not just ineffective; it is frequently unjust. Krasner says gun possession arrests “must be targeted to distinguish between drivers of gun violence who possess firearms illegally and otherwise law-abiding people who are not involved in gun violence.”
When “people do not feel protected by the police,” Krasner notes, they may “view the risk of being caught by police with an illegal gun as outweighed by the risk of being caught on the street without one.” Before he was elected, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg expressed a similar concern.
“We need to recognize that not every person charged with possessing an illegal gun in New York City is a driver of violence,” Bragg said on his campaign website. “My dad had an illegal gun not because he liked guns or because he was ‘dangerous’; he had a gun because of crime in the neighborhood.”
Bragg has since retreated from that stance, echoing Adams’ determination to vigorously prosecute people who carry guns without the government’s permission. But law enforcement agencies cannot redeem their failure to protect public safety by locking up people who respond to that failure by exercising the constitutional right to armed self-defense.
Yes, I also think such could happen (anything’s possible), but 1, We’re not Canada and 2, I think that if SloJoe, or anyone else for that matter, tried to enact the sort of ’emergency measures’ martial law as Trudeau did in Canada, for anything short of global thermonuclear war, what would result is exactly what TPTB are scared to death of.
BARR: A Canadian-Style ‘Emergency’ Could Easily Happen Here
On Feb. 14, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau gave Canadians a Valentine’s Day present, invoking the draconian “Emergencies Act” and suspending a wide range of civil liberties otherwise enjoyed by his countrymen.
Lest Americans conclude that our constitutional republic is safe from such facially dictatorial actions, they should know that under existing federal laws and the laws of every state, the president or a governor could take similar “emergency” action at any time they decide an “emergency” presents itself. COVID has demonstrated this is spades.
Regardless of whether a real emergency exists prior to a president or governor invoking such powers, and regardless of whether such declaration is for a statutorily limited time, consequential damage to the fabric of a free society results. At a minimum, declaring an “emergency” and suspending individual liberties serves as a “warning” to citizens that they had best be careful what they say and do in the future.
Trudeau’s actions in declaring a “national emergency” because of an irksome, but peaceful, trucker’s strike should cause Americans to pay far closer attention to “emergency powers” laws here at home. Doing so might force some of our countrymen to question the abject fear that has undergirded much of public policy in the United States since the terror attacks of 9/11 — made far worse by the manner in which governments at all levels have responded to the COVID pandemic in the past biennium.
From a practical standpoint, as we see in Canada, it matters little whether the declaration of the “emergency” fits clearly within the four corners of the emergency law that is invoked. What matters is the presence of circumstances in which an elected leader is able to stoke the flames of fear and anger in a sufficiently large segment of the electorate, so that the invocation of the law seems to constitute a reasonable response.
Once an “emergency” law is on the books of the sovereign entity, whether of a state or the federal government, all it takes is a “stroke of the pen, law of the land” (to quote former Bill Clinton adviser Paul Begala) to unleash the awesome powers at that sovereign’s disposal. Just watch the videos emerging from Ottawa to see how quickly the nightmare unfolds once the document is signed.
The actual form of the government declaring the emergency is of little consequence. Abuse of emergency powers can happen in a representative democracy such as ours just as easily as in a Canadian parliamentary system. Moreover, Republicans often are just as likely to play the “emergency powers” card as are their Democrat counterparts. It was, after all, Republican President Donald Trump who, in March 2020, invoked the powers of at least three federal “national emergency” laws to meet a perceived COVID emergency threat.
Granted, many emergency declarations by state and federal officials are focused toward and limited to natural disasters, such as hurricanes or floods, and used primarily to free up government assistance. However, the actual powers nestled within those laws are frighteningly expansive. For example, a U.S. president arguably could, among other actions upon declaring a “national emergency “ (not expressly defined in federal laws), seize control of the internet pursuant to a 1930s era communications law or freeze individuals’ financial accounts in reliance on 1970s era laws.
At the state level, Second Amendment supporters will recall law enforcement officers in New Orleans seizing, at times forcibly, over 1,000 lawfully owned private firearms in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Even though subsequent legal action undertaken by the NRA and other gun-rights groups successfully challenged the seizures, many firearms never were returned to their owners.
Even today, with medical and scientific evidence clearly demonstrating that lingering COVID hazards are not dire and are manageable, many government agencies, including public schools in jurisdictions across the country, are refusing to hand back all the “emergency” powers they grabbed in early 2020.
Founding Father James Madison had it right when he wrote in Federalist 57 that placing the powers of all three branches of government in the hands of one entity (whether a prime minister, a governor or a president) is “the very definition of tyranny.”
Today, 234 years later, tyranny is still tyranny, even if it is only “temporary.”
Bob Barr represented Georgia’s Seventh District in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1995 to 2003. He served as the United States Attorney in Atlanta from 1986 to 1990 and was an official with the CIA in the 1970s. He now practices law in Atlanta, Georgia and serves as head of Liberty Guard.
When Boring People Turn Dangerous: Canada’s Insane Power Grab
On Christmas Eve, 2018, New York Times writer Andrew Ross Sorkin published, “How Banks Unwittingly Finance Mass Shootings.” Chronicling the credit card history of the man who killed 49 people at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Florida Sorkin noted Omar Mateen had not merely spent $26,532 on weapons and ammo in the eight months before the 2016 attack, but had wondered if his doing so had raised red flags:
Two days before Omar Mateen killed 49 people and wounded 53 more at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, he went on Google and typed “Credit card unusual spending…” His web browsing history chronicled his anxiety: “Credit card reports all three bureaus,” “FBI,” and “Why banks stop your purchases.”
He needn’t have worried. None of the banks, credit-card network operators or payment processors alerted law enforcement officials about the purchases he thought were so suspicious.
Sorkin’s piece ended up being an argument in favor of credit-card companies, payment processors, banks, and others working together to bring about a Minority Report-style panacea in which society’s dangerous folk could be cyber-identified and stopped before they commit horrific acts. At one point he quoted George Brauchler, the District Attorney who prosecuted the Century 16 movie shooter in Aurora Colorado, James Holmes:
“Do I wish someone from law enforcement had been able to go to his door and knock on his door and figure out a way to talk their way into it or to freak him out?” he said of Mr. Holmes. “Yeah, absolutely.”
I’ve never owned a gun and have been sympathetic to gun control ideas for as long as I can remember. Sorkin, however, was not talking about gun control. He was theorizing a quasi-privatized vision of social control that would bypass laws by merging surveillance capitalism and law enforcement.
In a rhetorical trick that’s since become common, he described how the failure of companies like Visa to block Mateen’s purchases made them “enablers of carnage.” Clearly, someone made the mistake of letting Sorkin see Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man, and Cliff Robertson now whispers from the beyond to him too. If those with power to act don’t stop wrongdoing, aren’t they just shirking their great responsibility?
By the way, this same Sorkin once suggested he wouldn’t stop at arresting Edward Snowden, but go after the reporter who broke his story, too. “I would arrest him and now I’d almost arrest Glenn Greenwald, the journalist… he wants to help him get to Ecuador,” he said, on CNBC’s Squawk Box. It’s amazing how selective one can be in one’s authoritarian leanings. After Goldman, Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein appeared to commit perjury in 2011 when he told the Senate, “We didn’t bet against our clients,” Sorkin rushed an apologia into print saying “Mr. Blankfein wasn’t lying,” failing to remind audiences that his Dealbook blog at the Times was sponsored by… Goldman, Sachs.
Sorkin’s Visa piece is suddenly relevant again, after fellow former finance reporter Chrystia Freeland — someone I’ve known since we were both expat journalists in Russia in the nineties — announced last week that her native Canada would be making Sorkin’s vision a reality. Freeland arouses strong feelings among old Russia hands. Before the Yeltsin era collapsed, she had consistent, remarkable access to gangster-oligarchs like Boris Berezovsky, who appeared in her Financial Times articles described as aw-shucks humans just doing their best to make sure “big capital” maintained its “necessary role” in Russia’s political life. “Berezovsky was one of several financiers who came together in a last-ditch attempt to keep the Communists out of the Kremlin” was typical Freeland fare in, say, 1998.
Seattle PD having trouble hiring new officers
Politicians often can’t really afford to be far-sighted. Their constituents want immediate results, not the promise of better days down the road.
Yet officials can be far too short-sighted for their own good. Seattle, for example, was another of a handful of cities that cut funding to their police department not all that long ago.
Violent crime reached a 14-year high in Seattle last year as the city’s police department deals with a staffing shortage that is straining its ability to protect the community.
Seattle Mayor Bruce Harrell said during his state of the city address this week that there is funding to hire 125 new officers this year and put more resources on the street.
“The depleted staffing we see today does not allow us to react to emergencies and crime with the response times our residents deserve,” Harrell said Tuesday.
“It does not allow us to staff the specialty teams we need for issues like domestic violence or DUI or financial crimes targeting the elderly,” he said. “It does not allow us to conduct the thorough investigations we expect to make sustainable change.”
Twenty officers left the force in January, 171 officers exited last year, and 186 officers separated from the force in 2020 amid the push to defund the police, according to KOMO. Only 137 officers have been hired in that time span.
In other words, Seattle treated officers like crap, demonized them, and then are absolutely and completely shocked that they can’t hire officers.
Yep. The whole thing is an absolute mystery. Not a soul could have seen this one coming, now could they?
I mean, other than every person with a functional brain, that is.
Look, cops are people. Not only does that mean some will be good and some will be bad, it also means they want to be appreciated for what they do and know they’re supported by their leadership.
Additionally, when you’ve demonized them in the press, you can’t really expect applicants to flock to fill the void. It’s just not going to work that way.
“You know, the media and the city have been treating police like crap. I just can’t wait to get me some of that!” said no one ever.
This is of Seattle’s own making, much like what’s going on in San Francisco right now. You can’t demonize the police then be surprised when things don’t go well in the aftermath.
I get that they shouldn’t be lionized and shielded from liability for their mistakes, but there’s a middle ground that most people can understand and respect between those two extremes. Most people want that middle ground, even.
Unfortunately, public officials are too short-sighted to see that appeasing a mob one day might come back to bite them in the backside in the not-so-distant future.
So, here we are. Seattle can’t get enough police officers and seems genuinely confused as to why. Frankly, were it not for good people who are going to get hurt, I’d just sit here and laugh at them.
How Joe Biden Created The Ukraine Crisis.
The liberal media won’t admit it, but the reason Russian forces are entering Ukraine can be explained in two words—Joe Biden. In fact, thanks to Biden, the U.S. is paying for the Russian invasion. His energy policy of reducing American production, stopping the almost completed keystone pipelines, no drilling on federal lands, new regulation regarding oil and gas drilling, and much more spiked the price of energy. For example, in 2020 the price of natural gas was $4.36/1,000 cubic feet, 2021 prices averaged $9/1,000 cubic feet.
Before Biden became President, the U.S. was energy independent and an exporter of energy. The lower American production and removing Trump’s restrictions on the Nordstream natural gas pipeline from Russia to Germany. His policies made other countries more reliant on Russian gas. Giving Putin leverage on other countries such as Germany and doubling the price. All that extra money went straight into Russia’s pockets. Those new profits helped Russia raise the funds to continue Putin’s dream of the greater Russia of the USSR.
On top of the higher prices and the increased dependence on Russian energy, the mishandling of the Afghan withdrawal and removing some of the Iran sanctions showed Biden to be a weak President. Putin is no idiot. All of Biden’s flawed policies and feeble foreign policy made the Russian president understand that if he was ever going to get Ukraine back in Russia’s clutches, this was it.
Canada’s Hoax of a Democracy & Tyrant Trudeau : #TruckersForFreedom protesters treated like animals.
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An Ottawa gelato shop owner who was revealed to have donated to the Freedom Convoy claims she has since been doxxed and had her information posted online
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Tammy Giuliani, who owns the Stella Luna Café, received constant abusive phone calls calling her a Nazi, and a sign saying ‘Tammy supports terrorists’
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Giuliani spoke of the backlash she’s faced since news came to light of her donation to the group of Canadian truckers protesting against COVID mandates
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‘You know, we have been called terrorists. For the first 60 to 36 hours, we were inundated with hatred, with threats of violence,’ she said
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Giuliani is among roughly 92,000 supporters of the Freedom Convoy that had their information hacked after donating to the cause through GiveSendGo
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The crowdfunding website, which describes itself as the ‘number one Christian crowdfunding site,’ had raised more than $9 million of the $16 million goal
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The website Distributed Denial of Secrets said it was given donor information that included including names, email addresses, ZIP codes and IP addresses.
CDC quietly lowers the bar for early childhood speech development.
This is a story that first surfaced earlier in the week but hasn’t gained a lot of traction yet. (This is perhaps understandable given the situation in Ukraine, but also likely by intention.) For the first time in decades, the CDC has changed many of the recognized milestones for childhood development in terms of speech and cognitive functions.
These markers are considered important in terms of recognizing when children aren’t progressing quickly enough, suggesting the potential need to determine if some sort of impairment is being observed and if the child may require greater medical attention. The curious thing about the changes instituted by the CDC is that in a majority of the cases, they have lowered the standards rather than raising them. I first noticed this news on Twitter, as so often happens these days.
You can read the new guidelines here. One of the big changes that many critics are focusing on is the former guideline saying that children should normally know approximately fifty words by 24 months or two years of age. That benchmark has now been stealthily raised to 30 months. That’s not insignificant at all. It’s a 25% increase from the previous standard.
The Postmillennial examines the context in which these changes are taking place. It’s hard to ignore the growing body of reports showing that childhood development has been suffering as a result of various COVID protocols, raging from “virtual learning” environments to forcing children to wear face masks.
These proggies voted their proggie goobermint in.
They sowed the wind, and we know what you reap from that…
The Whirlwind!
San Francisco residents report police doing nothing
During the push to “defund the police,” San Francisco was knee-deep in things. In fact, while few places actually reduced police funding, they did.
Eventually, due to soaring crime, the city reversed that. They really didn’t have a choice at that point.
However, it doesn’t seem to be helping. Why? Because the police don’t seem interested in actually arresting anyone.
After weeks battling the bewildering bureaucracy of San Francisco’s criminal justice system, Danielle Kuzinich finally has some answers in the strange case of the thrashed parklet and the do-nothing cops.
Just before dawn on Dec. 31, firefighters witnessed a man wrecking the charming parklet outside the San Francisco Wine Society in the Financial District and notified police. Security camera footage from a nearby hotel shows police arriving, chatting with a firefighter, talking to a man sitting next to piles of parklet debris and leaving. It then shows the man continuing to trash the area.
Now, a man police believe is the culprit is in jail — busted only because he allegedly went on to commit more vandalism days after the Wine Society mess. But the episode spotlighted an issue bigger than one arrest: a pattern of some officers on the San Francisco force seemingly uninterested in dealing with crime.
Numerous readers shared stories of police indifference after reading last week’s column about Kuzinich’s frustrating experience — and how it adds to their feeling that San Francisco city government, and its criminal justice system in particular, is broken.
They had questions. Is property crime in some ways allowed in our city? Are police on an unofficial strike or work stoppage?
In a visit to The Chronicle newsroom Tuesday, Police Chief Bill Scott promised that’s not the case.
“I can confidently say that’s not happening,” he said. “I get a report every morning of last night’s activities, and there’s a lot of great work being done.”
Not officially, in any case.
However, if this is a recurring problem, there’s probably a reason for it. Scott knows this, too.
He acknowledged, though, that the department has “serious morale issues” because of understaffing, intense scrutiny amid the police reform movement and tussles with District Attorney Chesa Boudin. Still, he said, that’s no excuse for not addressing crime.
“Despite the reason that an officer may be in that mental state where they might think it’s not a big deal for them to bother with it, it is a big deal,” Scott said. “And when they don’t do their job, I have to hold them accountable.”
The problem, though, is that they were thrown under the bus for something that didn’t even happen in their city.
Following the death of George Floyd during an arrest, departments all over the nation felt the heat. A few, like San Francisco, saw their funding cut by politicians who were essentially blaming them for something that happened in Minneapolis.
As a result, one shouldn’t be surprised when the police are less inclined to engage with someone committing a crime.
After all, any criminal offense can result in someone dying under certain circumstances. Is it any wonder that these guys would opt not to do much?
I’m not excusing it, mind you, just understanding it. They’re paid to do a job and they’re supposed to do it. Failure to do that should result in some degree of punishment. That’s simply not a matter up for debate in my book.
But the leadership in San Francisco needs to accept their own role in this. They need to understand that while the officers on the street need to step up, they’re not doing so as a result of their own actions.
Police officers aren’t mindless myrmidons who simply do as they’re told without thought or feeling. They’re people who are trying to do the best they can in most cases, and they don’t appreciate being vilified by their own leadership.
When you’ve lost even the leftists of the NY Times…………..
Trudeau loses the New York Times. Now that's really something: New York Times editorial board backs Freedom Convoy's right to protest https://t.co/wdUVKMDbok via @MailOnline #cdnpoli
— Lorrie Goldstein (@sunlorrie) February 20, 2022
Saturday marks the 80th anniversary of President Franklin D. Roosevelt signing an executive order that began the removal of 120,000 Japanese-Americans who were imprisoned in internment camps. DNC Chairman Jaime Harrison and DNC AAPI Caucus Chair Bel Leong-Hong issued a joint statement commemorating that day. The joint statement also closed by claiming it’s Democrats who are righting for the safety of Americans, while at the same time calling out anti-Asian hate crimes.
Such a mention may be bold, or even stupid. In many Democratic-run cities, crime has exploded. Meanwhile, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki, as Katie reported, has dismissed a “soft on crime policies” approach as an “alternate universe.” Worse, Democratic DA’s are no help.
“Unfortunately, Japanese Americans and the AAPI community continue to face violence and discrimination because of their identities,” the joint statement acknowledged. “The rise in anti-Asian hate crimes must stop, and perpetrators must be prosecuted. Democrats have fought and will continue to fight to secure the rights, safety, and prosperity of all Americans, including those facing injustice and discrimination, in order to ensure a better and brighter future for our nation,” it closed with.
The version of the statement shared on Twitter did not mention such a modern-day application, curiously enough.
If Democrats truly feel that “perpetrators must be prosecuted,” then they can start in their own cities, with their own DAs.
A recent and tragic case in point is with Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg, who only just recently has been reversing course on his super soft on crime approach over backlash, as Landon has covered. According to the New York Post, which I’ve mentioned in my own articles, there have been whispers of a recall effort against Bragg, who only just took office at the beginning of this year.
Among many changes, Bragg initially made, as Spencer highlighted, was the lack of prison time except for crimes of homicide and some other of the most violent offenses. Bragg also had the audacity to claim “I don’t understand the pushback” when people expressed concerns.
These changes from Bragg’s office haven’t been enough, though.
BLUF:
Fascism is an overused and elastic term that in our politics mostly is used against Republicans for anything liberals don’t like. Donald Trump calling people names on Twitter is not fascism. Justin Trudeau commanding private businesses unilaterally and without legal consequence to freeze the assets of his political opposition and their supporters is fascism…….
It’s already happening here, though not with the brazenness of Trudeau. The Biden administration gives cover to and encourages every one of the actions listed in the preceding paragraph by declaring political opposition domestic terrorists (even parents at school boards), and by broadly blurring the distinction between political dissent and terrorism. Social media platforms openly are solicited by the Biden administration to crack down on dissent.
The situation here is not yet as dire as in Canada. And I still believe our courts and collective national will would not allow what is happening in Canada to happen here. But I also never thought the government would be empowered as it was, with scant judicial interference, in locking down the country for Covid, or that private citizens would become the government’s enforcers.
When Fascism Comes To America, It Will Look Like Justin Trudeau’s Canada.
If Justin Trudeau had merely removed trucks from blocking a bridge in protest of vaccine mandates, it would be no big deal. Protesters for various causes routinely get removed from blocking traffic.
But that’s not all Justin Trudeau did. He suspended civil liberties in Canada, targeting peaceful protesters and anyone who supports them. Not because those supporters committed a crime, but because they supported the political opposition to Trudeau’s government.
Trudeau ordered all financial institutions to freeze the assets of his political opposition without court order and with full immunity from liability, and no financial asset was spared.
“The names of both individuals and entities as well as crypto wallets have been shared by the RCMP with financial institutions and accounts have been frozen and more accounts will be frozen.”
Trudeau has weaponized and commanded the private sector to do the government’s bidding in crushing political dissent. The Toronto Sun reported (emphasis in original):
Observation O’ The Day
“Anything that threatens to remove power from a leftist is terrorism in their minds. Because they’re a crazed cult who believe it’s foreordained that they win. In their indoctrinated minds, there can be no dissent from this. Why, Marx foretold it.” –Sarah Hoyt
Worth watching this entire diatribe from start to finish. In his public statements today, Trudeau’s Public Safety Minister, Marco Mendicino, definitively says the people charged by federal RCMP officials are tied to far-right extremist groups who are funded by international terrorist organizations with an intent to overthrow the government.
According to the statements, the Canadian government is under attack from thousands of highly organized terrorists within the country. Their goal is to overthrow the government and install an entirely new form of national assembly. This is what he is claiming.
Specifically, Mendicino claims the protestors, charged with firearms offenses in Coutts, are the first wave of a well known domestic terrorist group directly connected to the trucker protest group in Ottawa. However, when challenged to give the name of the terrorist organization he is speaking about, Mendocino completely walks back the claim to an unrecognizable point.