The idea that carbon dioxide (CO2) drives global warming or “climate change” now enjoys unquestioned authority and near universal approval. As burgeoning public policy, nationally and in some states, it is seeping into what once were private matters of choice (e.g., light bulbs, kitchen cooktops). Many scientists, primarily physicists, consider the belief pure supposition, however, and colossally off track.
John Stuart Mill observed in chapter six of his System of Logic, on ratiocination or logical thinking, that a doctrine may endure because inferences from it lead to ostensibly sound conclusions -- while belief in the doctrine’s truth may exist only by excluding evidence it is false.
Evidence is that CO2 is overall a coolant. First, it radiates incoming solar energy and outgoing terrestrial heat away to space. This is visible as cooling in satellite images not only of Earth but also of Mars and Venus, climate change’s orbiting poster child.
It is an “infrared radiation active” gas, absorbing and emitting radiant energy from the sun -- but not the entire spectrum. Like any molecule, it absorbs only “spectral bands” (beams) of solar energy (sunlight) that “resonate” with its “quantum number,” a measure of the energetic space between its nucleus and electron rings as developed by Max Planck and Albert Einstein in the early 20th Century.
A resonant band of energy from a radiating source causes the molecule’s energy to jump to a higher electron ring then fall back in a tiny fraction of a second. Total energy does not increase in its passage; the molecule is merely a conduit.
Nor is “delay” of the energy’s passage through the molecules likely to raise temperatures. The mean free path of a quantum wave, in the 0.0001 second before it collides with a CO2 molecule on the Earth’s surface, is about 33 meters. So wide a chasm between collisions casts serious doubt on the chances of a “warming CO2 blanket.” The effect from the energy’s fleeting passage through molecules of this trace gas can only be trivial.
Observation in the stratosphere and an Antarctic winter, and recent experiment have shown that CO2 interacts with solar radiation overwhelmingly at 80 Celsius degrees below water’s freezing point, i.e., 193K ( ‑80°C and ‑112°F).
Usually omitted from the discussion, too, is a study in 1971 by two NASA scientists on whether burning fossil fuels for more CO2 could stave off a then perceived ice age threat. They concluded, no. First, warming by CO2, if any, would be offset by the more familiar product of burning fossil-fuel -- smoke and airborne soot -- aerosols.
These tiny particles cool the atmosphere by screening out solar energy (sunlight) and reflecting it back to space, and providing nucleides for water vapor to condense on to make cooling fog and clouds. People contribute about 30% of aerosols to the air annually.
The NASA scientists advised against using fossil fuels to warm the planet in 1971 because they were “atmospheric coolants” with a potential, alarmists claimed, for triggering an ice age. They are still coolants.
Also, while aerosols from combustion cool in direct proportion to their increase, CO2’s warmer (but still tardy) emission bands would quickly “saturate,” damping off any temperature increase. All later studies and the IPCC agree on this, and it means no “runaway warming.”
Recent research shows more critically that, because CO2 concentrations follow temperature change on all time scales their rise or fall is an effect not cause of temperature change.
In the Antarctic’s Vostok Law Dome fossil record CO2 levels follow temperature change by 800 years on average. Recent studies, including one intended to prove the reverse, reveal a current months-long lag. Causes must always precede effects. The only result of a rise or fall in atmospheric CO2 levels would be a tardy and neutral changed presence.
Ironically, fossil fuels are the paramount “green” energy choice. Plants need and absorb CO2, and cannot survive without it. Satellites show plant growth has increased from higher global CO2 levels. A greener Earth is a cooler Earth, and added moisture evaporated from more plants increases water vapor and with it global cloud cover -- two more ways the gas keeps on cooling.
A trace gas, CO2 is about 400 parts per million of today’s atmosphere, that is 0.04%. The IPCC estimates that humans generate about 5% of annual CO2. In money terms, 0.04% of $1,000 is 40ȼ ($0.40) with people’s share 2ȼ ($0.02) -- of what is an innocuous and beneficial coolant.
Today the West is paralyzed by fear of no less than runaway modernity -- of familiar “carbon-based” industrial and domestic activities threatening life on the planet and even the planet itself. The perceived risk, if it exists at all, is unreasonably exaggerated at best and warrants little if any cause for alarm.
While the West obsesses, China, India, and other nations are becoming powers by their intense development of coal-fired energy. In July 2022, China had 1,118 coal power plants and India 285, compared to 225 in the U.S. Both state their intention to build many more of them. No warming calamity has come of this, nor will it come. But it does show how policies deliberately opposed or cool to official “warming” belief confirm that ample use of fossil-fuels can ensure a nation’s security, prosperity and good health. This nation, any nation, deserves that much.
Given the failure of the Republican Party nationally and the domination of our institutions by the left, it falls to these solidly red states to defend the rule of law, our constitutional system and our pre-political, God-given, inalienable rights.
Here is a list of measures that red states should undertake to reclaim lost ground against the relentless power of the left and useless RINOs so that we may preserve our nation, our values and our way of life.
I would propose the following:
1. State legislatures shall call themselves into session at will, particularly when confronted with a tyrannical governor. Many state legislatures are part-time, something conservatives would generally approve of. But in the context of unrelenting COVID fascism and other manifestations of tyranny — including in red states by Republican governors — and encroachments by the federal government, it is paramount that this be amended.
2. The state shall limit executive orders for emergency powers by governors to a single event and for no more than 10 days. Extensions or further orders shall require legislative approval.
3. The state shall declare and uphold the right of its citizens to freely assemble, worship (both in churches and homes), engage in free speech, walk and breathe without encumbrance such as the wearing of masks, and engage in commerce.
4. The state shall limit school closures to 10 days. Further extensions shall require legislative approval.
5. The state shall end all mask and vaccine mandates. It shall declare vaccination passports illegal, including when imposed by the federal government, corporations, local governments and boards, or other entities. When the state ends mask mandates, it shall render it illegal for individual counties, cities and towns to continue such mandates or pass their own.
6. The state shall abolish all universal powers of health departments at the state and county level. It shall be illegal for state and county health departments or directors to issue sweeping mandates, force schools or businesses to close, require the wearing of masks or other physical encumbrances, impose quarantines, or ban gatherings.
Health directors are not mini-dictators. They are paid employees of the county and state, serve at the pleasure of the public and its elected representatives, and are readily terminated at the discretion of the state and county and their elected officers.
7. The state shall scrutinize all federal executive orders, regulations and laws. Any of them deemed unlawful and unconstitutional shall be declared null and void.
8. The state shall declare itself a sanctuary for the Constitution, particularly the First and Second Amendments. The state shall embrace freedom of assembly, worship, speech and the press, freedom to petition the government and freedom from unwarranted search and seizure. The state shall defend the right to bear arms.
9. The state shall refuse all so-called “asylum” or “refugee” cases and all such resettlement efforts, as virtually none of the “refugees” are refugees by any definition but rather economic migrants who entered the nation illegally. Asylum is intended for true victims of persecution, not those laboring under poverty or crime, which affects much of the world. They are not refugees and should not be accorded refugee status or resettled here.
10. The state shall refuse the resettlement of illegal aliens in general and shall not support them in any way — including with health care, other than emergency interventions — whether they declare themselves refugees or not. They will have no access to education, jobs or any public programs.
They will be prosecuted for trespassing, human and drug trafficking, illegal entry, rape, murder and any other crimes they may commit. They will be incentivized to return to their home countries or, when possible and necessary, deported. The state may send them to Democratic states that covet them.
Red states on our southern border shall prevent such individuals from entering or, failing that, deport them back to Mexico. Given the lawless behavior of the federal government in failing to enforce immigration law, defend our sovereignty, secure our border and protect Americans, the individual states shall themselves enforce the law and protect their borders, territory and citizens.
April 29, 2023
While still early, this primary season is already turning out to be unlike any other. It is not uncommon to see both parties experience a competitive primary with numerous candidates, however, that usually only occurs when the sitting president is concluding his second term in office, making him ineligible for another election. Yet Biden already has two declared challengers seeking the Democrat nomination. On the Republican side, President Trump is seeking to become only the second president in U.S. history to win a non-consecutive term. Because of that, there are essentially two candidates in the race that, to some extent, hold an incumbency advantage.
As always, candidates will attempt to separate themselves from the pack by informing the electorate about the greatest threats facing America, while also trying to convince voters that they have better solutions than their opponents. However, the greatest present threat facing America is unlike any other in history: itself.
While this is an inconvenient truth, America was warned about this long before any of us were born when our 16th President, Abraham Lincoln, stated:
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"At what point then is the approach of danger to be expected? I answer, if it ever reach us, it must spring up amongst us. It cannot come from abroad. If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time, or die by suicide."
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If America is to be fundamentally destroyed, it will come from the people within, as opposed to enemies abroad. Furthermore, Lincoln suggests that we must actively work together and remain united and strong as a nation to prevent our demise, or else it will surely happen. This unfortunately sounds like a strikingly realistic possibility at this current time.
So yes, the greatest threat to the United States of America right now truly is those within government implementing the destruction we have witnessed for two-plus years, both at home and abroad.
To understand this, one must compare previous eras in our history to the current one.
From the time Donald Trump announced his candidacy all the way through his first term in the oval office, career politicians and media worked in lockstep, parroting the same talking points. They repeatedly warned that Trump was a threat to American democracy, a maniac who was going to get us into nuclear war, provoke Kim Jong Un, embolden Putin, wreck our economy and become a tyrant. Everybody would agree that if those things were to occur, whoever presided over such destruction would undeniably be the greatest threat to a nation, and that includes foreign threats. Those things did not occur under Trump, but interestingly enough, many of the people warning about the dangers of Trump are now in power, and as a result, their warnings are coming to fruition under their own tenure.
In 2019, Kim Jong Un welcomed a sitting U.S. president onto North Korean soil for the first time in history. Kim agreed to work towards complete denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula. Fast forward to the present day and Kim has begun to increase North Korean nuclear capabilities, just a few short years removed from a promising period of peace. The key change between then and now? American leadership.
Putin has been emboldened, but by whom? Prior to this administration, Americans constantly heard about the Russian president. However, much of that coverage concerned the now-debunked Trump-Russia collusion narrative, as opposed to issues of substance. In fact, as the collusion story dominated the news, the U.S. was hitting Putin hard by upholding previously imposed sanctions and placing additional ones that prevented U.S. banks from making loans or issuing credits to the Russian government after their role in a near-fatal poisoning was revealed. But recently, likely after seeing American weakness on full display abroad, Putin resumed expansion efforts by invading Ukraine after a rare hiatus from 2017-2021. The key change between then and now? American leadership.
Tyranny is a universal threat to any country. Tyrants are cruel and oppressive rulers who use their power to strip individual liberties from citizens and make their lives worse in all areas, including financially. By that definition, America is currently under tyrannical rule. While the previous administration protected religious liberty, free speech on college campuses, granted farmers financial freedom during a trade war, created a middle-class-benefitting economy, and further lightened the burden on the middle class by repealing the unconstitutional individual mandate portion of Obamacare, the current administration is a stark contrast.
America has recently witnessed an assault on freedom of speech, watched the White House send condolences to the trans community after one of its members murdered innocent children at a Christian school, and learned of a proposed tax plan that would hurt the finances of millions of Americans by adding four trillion dollars in new taxes.
But perhaps most indicative of a threat from within, this administration has ushered in a period of unprecedented domestic chaos by attempting to forcefully vaccinate citizens, prioritize DEI over equality and common sense, and crater military enlistment by promoting wokeness. Every administration presides over some level of disagreement on issues amongst the general public, but nothing compares to the confusion they are causing young American children to endure, especially during such a crucial time in life for a child’s development.
All these problems will have a devastating impact on America’s long-term future if not stopped dead in their tracks.
Damage to the state of the country since the current administration took power has occurred at such an alarming rate that even the most pessimistic citizen has a hard time coming to terms with what they are witnessing. This is not to say threats outside of the U.S. are nonexistent by any means. However, when America had strong leadership in power, those threats were only potential, now they are active.
If after being previously restrained, our present threats only acted following changes in our government, the greatest threat truly is those in power that allow these crises to occur. As this election cycle unfolds, it will be important to note which candidates grasp this. And looking to better days, when governmental authority returns to righteous leadership, we will quickly see once again that the active foreign threats currently facing America will return to dormant ones.
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It probably isn’t lost on most readers that conservatives aren’t always the best at articulating grand visions for the future or for the course of the country. Conservatives are very good at diagnosing problems and lobbying for the negation of those problems, but not always good at crafting an alternative solution or visionary agenda to counter these problems, the problems caused by leftists. Woodrow Wilson had his “14 points” and the League of Nations, FDR had the New Deal, LBJ had The Great Society, and the World Economic Forum has the Great Reset.
If America makes it to 2024 (and I say “if” because, at this point, it is not guaranteed that American civilization will survive until the next election, as it may collapse for any number of reasons before that time), it is clear to me that a grand vision that is equal to or exceeds the left wing grand visions mentioned previously is needed, as a conservative alternative vision in 2024 may be America’s last shot at saving itself from plunging into the abyss. That is why I am proposing something like a return to Enumerated Powers America.
What does this mean? what might it look like? It’s simple: America must return to the pre-“progressive” era of the early 20th century. American government must be reduced to the size it was for the first century and a half of its existence, it must be restored to the ideal government that the founders laid out in the Constitution, and must never again be allowed to go outside of the size or scope that the founders envisioned. Government, in essence, must return to only performing the duties that the Constitution explicitly demands and allows them, and absolutely no more. It must be a government that looks like the one described by the Enumerated Powers in Article I, section 8 of the US Constitution.
According to the Constitution, the federal government is only supposed to have 18 inherent powers. These powers are reserved for the federal government because they are things only the federal government can do, with the idea that the individual states can do everything else on their own, without the federal government intruding on their daily business. Clause 1, for instance, states that, “The Congress shall have the power to lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts, and excises, to pay the debts and provide for the common defense and general welfare of the united states, but all duties, imposts, and excises shall be uniform throughout the United States.” Notice that the founders only intended for enough tax revenue to be raised to A.) pay the national debt and B.) provide for the common defense, which means fund the military. Nowhere does this clause mention entitlement programs that will go insolvent in a few years and are increasingly bankrupting the American people, like Social Security, Medicaid, Medicare, SNAP (food stamps) etc, schemes which have become mandatory for some reason.
In clause 11 of this section, the Constitution grants the federal government the power to go to war if, and only if, it formally declares war, with the consent of congress: “to declare war, grant letters of marquee and reprisal, and make rules concerning captures on land and water.” That means that, technically, the Biden Administration’s proxy war with Russia, and the endless supply of military armaments to the Ukrainian military from the United States military could be construed as unconstitutional, because Biden never actually declared war against Russia. Other powers granted to the federal government include things like maintaining an army, a navy, militias, establishing post offices, etc.
What do the Enumerated Powers not permit the federal government’s control over? Well, issues like education, healthcare, energy, the environment, transportation, tax collecting, and so forth clearly do not fall under the constitutional purview of the federal government. So that means that nearly all of the existing administrative state can and should be overhauled, dismantled, and abolished. There are 15 cabinet offices in the Executive Branch of the US government. All but 5 (the departments of State, Treasury, Defense, Homeland Security, and Justice) should be abolished, because these five departments are the only ones that are relevant to the federal government’s Enumerated Powers…and the only ones that do anything remotely close to the duties of the federal government.
All the rest of the administrative state (the departments of education, energy, transportation, agriculture, commerce, labor, health and human services, housing and urban development, veterans affairs, and the interior) and the additional agencies like the Environmental Protection Agency, should be abolished, immediately. That is a monumental task and an uphill battle, but we are discussing a vision that may take a long time to be implemented. On the top of the list, the Education and Environmental Protection agencies must go first. If someone cannot tell that the Education department must be done away with, for instance, which is the reason that things like Critical Race Theory, Comprehensive sexuality education, and social-emotional learning are being taught in public schools, and the reason that public schools are not motivated or incentivized to change anything no matter how much pushback they get from parents, then they are not paying attention. Parents and good teachers should be demanding the abolition of the DOE.
And the reason that all these other departments can be expunged from the government is because the Tenth Amendment of the Bill of Rights clearly states: “the powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people.” The Constitution clearly does not permit the federal government any say over how the individual states determine their policies or govern themselves in relation to education, energy, their environmental landscape, or nearly anything else that the modern government seeks to control. Why are so many so blind to these obvious facts? These ideas are not revolutionary; the only time they were revolutionary was when a small group of American patriots first unveiled them to the world in 1790. Ever since then, they have served as the basis for the freest and most prosperous nation in the world, if not the history of the world.
And what has happened since the turn of the last century? Congress, who the Enumerated Powers primarily applied to, has ceded most of their constitutional authority and power to the administrative state, and have allowed the administrative state to expand unabated and exponentially since then, to the point where a few government agencies staffed by unelected bureaucrats are making the bulk of the laws today that all Americans have to follow. The only way for the country to survive is if Joe Biden’s America returns to Washington, Adams, Jefferson, and Franklin’s America, Enumerated Powers America.
February 21, 2023
During its North American aerial odyssey, The Big Chinese Balloon passed within intel-gathering distance of ICBM silo fields, strategic bomber bases, key global logistics hubs (Charleston for example) and major Army and USAF headquarters.
The balloon wasn't just blowing in the wind. Its calculated military itinerary tells reasonable Americans and Canadians -- reasonable being a qualifier that excludes media influencers and politicians bribed or blackmailed by communist China -- that the balloon was spying on critical North American defense installations.
Which means it had a War Mission. Note I did not write "pre-War"; I wrote "War."
I'll explain why in a moment, but first due praise for The Wall Street Journal's February 20 article titled: "China's Newest Weapon to Nab Western Technology -- Its Courts."
According to the report, U.S. and EU officials "accuse China of using its courts and patent panels to undermine foreign intellectual-property rights and help Chinese businesses. They say China is focusing such efforts on industries it deems important, including technology, pharmaceuticals and rare-earth minerals."
Beijing has weaponized its legal system to steal technology.
Beijing's lawfare is calculated and synchronized. According to the Journal the EU is suing China for attempting to bar European companies from protecting their patents in courts outside China. One company official lamented: "It is puzzling that so many cases went wrong at the same time."
Actually -- it isn't puzzling at all.
At the bottom line, communist China is fighting a war to dominate the world. In pursuit of that goal the Chinese state has weaponized every technology, media and means of personal and organizational interaction,
Informed minds assure us the study titled "Unrestricted Warfare" and published by the People's Liberation Army in February 1999 isn't a war plan. I'll agree it isn't a step-by-step plan, but it is a thoughtful and deadly intellectual guidebook China's communist leaders are using to defeat the U.S. and establish a Chinese-mandated international order.
The authors are Qiao Liang and Wang Xiangsui. When they wrote "Unrestricted Warfare," both men were People's Liberation Army Air Force colonels. Qiao later made major general.
Chapter 2 discusses full-spectrum warfare. Its title in English: "The War God's Face Has Become Indistinct."
Translation: In China's long war with the U.S., weather balloons and lawyer jargon are weapons that can degrade American capabilities.
The chapter lists several types of warfare that China can use to attack and harm the U.S. without risking a military counterattack.
Start with Drug Warfare. The authors add this comment on pushing drugs: "obtaining sudden and huge illicit profits by spreading disaster in other countries." In 1999 it was one of Qiao's and Wang's speculative options. In 2023 fentanyl is savaging American society. Beijing's delivery system for this weapon in Drug Warfare? Mexican cartels.
Here are some other Qiao and Wang options with their comments in parentheses.
--Psychological warfare ("spreading rumors to intimidate the enemy and break down his will").
--Smuggling warfare ("throwing markets into confusion and attacking economic order").
--Media warfare ("manipulating what people see and hear in order to lead public opinion along").
--International law warfare ("seizing the earliest opportunity to set up regulations"). The use of courts to steal technology is another wrinkle.
--Resources warfare ("plundering stores of resources"). China's attempt to gain control of Congo's cobalt reserves involved crooked contracts and bribery. That is white collar plundering.
--Economic aid warfare ("bestowing favor in the open and contriving to control matters in secret"). Controlling matters in secret hints at bribery, blackmail and intimidation. The concept goes hand in glove with resources warfare.
--Cultural warfare ("leading cultural trends along in order to assimilate those with different views"). Beijing has spent billions influencing Hollywood and social media. American teenagers love the China-sourced TikTok app. But TikTok and similar apps are potentially routes for spying and disseminating psychologically and socially destructive propaganda.
TikTok is being banned by some states. We can fight back.
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January 31, 2023
In the words of Karl Marx, the theorist of communism, history reveals itself “the first as tragedy, then as farce”. Another 19th century philosopher Hegel said that “The only thing that we learn from history is that we learn nothing from history”. It seems that today we are witnessing another confirmation of these profound thoughts.
What is happening in Ukraine is not an isolated event that arose either by misunderstanding or as a result of one man's ill will. It would be wrong to assume that Russia's attack on Ukraine was due to an unfortunate miscalculation by the Russian president. On the contrary, all current events are a logical step in the centuries-long history of the Russian state, which has always been aimed at imperial expansion and the conquest of foreign lands.
The conquest of Siberia, Central Asia, countless wars with Turkey, with Sweden, with Lithuania, with Austria, with Persia, with Napoleonic France, with Finland, with Afghanistan — it’s only a small list of the Russian wars of aggression. Russia has never been interested in developing its own country and improving the lives of its people, but only in expanding its territory at the expense of its neighbors. Putin's power is not a legacy of past traditions, but an inseparable continuation of centuries of the Russian expansion, one inseparable chain of colonialism from the time of Ivan the Terrible, to Alexander the First, to Stalin, to Brezhnev and now Putin.
The vast majority of Russians (about 70%) support the war in Ukraine and are not concerned about any moral constraints in this regard. According to the old wisdom that “every nation deserves the government it has,” it is not Putin who usurped power in the country and sends the Russian men to war, but he is exactly what meets the traditions and aspirations of the Russian people, exactly the government that the population of this miserable country wants and deserves.
What if we try to break Hegel's cynical observation about history and assess the war in Ukraine through the prism of relatively recent events? Recall 1938, when Hitler first annexed Austria to Germany and then invaded the Sudetenland of Czechoslovakia on October 1 of that year under the pretext of “protecting the German population from oppression.” Not only did Austria not resist, it gladly joined Germany. Czechoslovakia at the time was the 7th world economy with advanced industry and agriculture — a tidbit for Hitler. But it, did not resist and did not go to war with Germany over its territory. Moreover, neighboring Poland too under the pretext of protection of the Polish population decided to snatch a piece of Czechoslovak territory and occupied Zaolzie.
How did other countries react? The United Kingdom and France tried to avoid confrontation with Germany at all costs and decided to appease Hitler, hoping that the territories he took would curb his appetite and he would go no further. The government of Neville Chamberlain tried to persuade Czechoslovak President Beneš not to resist and to give Germany everything it wanted. Beneš resisted at first and even declared a mobilization. However, on September 28 in Munich, U.K., France and Italy surrendered Czechoslovakia without her consent and signed an agreement with Germany. Chamberlain returned to London extremely pleased and proudly waved a piece of paper with Hitler's signature, “I have brought you peace!”
What happened next? Less than a year later, Hitler invaded Poland and it was the beginning of World War II in Europe. However, it wasn’t just European countries that hid their heads in the sand like ostriches and hoped that the weather would carry them through, an isolationist mood was also strong in the USA. America was busy with getting out of the Great Depression and did not want to get involved in the overseas wars, believing that “it’s none of our business”. Yet, it had become impossible to isolate from the rest of the world and Pearl Harbor woke America from her sweet slumber.
And what would have happened if France and U.K. had resisted and supported Czechoslovakia, if not with troops, but at least politically and economically, and Czechoslovakia itself had resisted with arms? Historians are nearly unanimous in this regard — there would have been no World War, there would have been no loss of tens of millions of lives and the world today would be a very different world. Appeasement of an aggressor is a sure path to doom.
Now let's go back to our days and compare them with those of 85 years ago. As a KGB agent, Putin studied the history of World War II and learned well the lesson of the past: the West has no will to resist and will go to any lengths to avoid confrontation with an aggressor. This is exactly what has unfolded in the last 20 years as Putin has waged small wars of invasion: with Chechnya (1999-2009), with Georgia (200, with Ukraine (2014), and in Syria (2015).
The countries of the free world reacted anemically to Russian aggression, limiting themselves to diplomatic protests and imposing symbolic sanctions on Russia. Like Hitler in 1938, Putin realized that he had a free hand and could continue his expansion in Ukraine. Ukraine is an obvious tidbit for the aggressor: it has well-developed agriculture, heavy industry and rich deposits of minerals, especially a lot of lithium, a valuable metal for modern industry. But then the unexpected happened.
Ukraine offered fierce resistance and the Russian blitzkrieg failed. The U.S., U.K., France, and other countries initially behaved just as they had 85 years earlier — they were willing to accept the de facto defeat of Ukraine and the expansion of the modern Russian empire. However, the grandiose failures of the Russian army and the unexpected successes of the Ukrainian army forced Western governments to reconsider their positions. Ukraine received economic and military aid, first in small bits, then in more powerful streams, and Russia was subjected to sanctions unprecedented in history. And not only Western powers, but even China also refused to support Russian aggression.
However, it seems that not everyone has learned the lessons of the past. While in England Churchill's legacy is strong and thus the United Kingdom is now doing everything possible to help Ukraine, in France, in Germany and especially in the United States the voices of opposition are increasingly heard: “this is not our business,” “we need negotiations with Russia to end the war as soon as possible,” “give Putin what he wants, and the war is over”. Even Trump recently stated that he would end this war in a couple of days. How would he end it? Very simply: He would end aid to Ukraine and force onto it peace on Putin's terms, hoping, like Chamberlain, that after that there would be peace for a long time to come.
Never before in history has coercing peace led to peace. It's about time we realized that! If we let Putin get even a small fraction of what he wants, it will just take a little time and he or his successor will move again with war, and not only to seize more territory in Ukraine, but also in Poland, Germany, and then all over Europe. To concede to Putin now is not to prevent the war from spreading to other countries. It is a guaranteed step toward the next wars of conquest. This has always been the case; it is in a Russian tradition. Russia is incapable in sustaining a stable productive life; it can exist only in a state of permanent war. As the wise Churchill once said: “The baby must be strangled in its cradle.”
Ukraine, for all its problems and shortcomings, today is an outpost of the free world. Its victory will be a victory over aggressive Russia, which is cancer on the body of humanity. This tumor cannot be persuaded, it must be starved economically or destroyed physically. Defeating Russia, no matter how much it costs, is the only way to prevent a hot WW3, and without military and economic aid from the West and especially from the United States, this is impossible. We have to understand that by helping Ukraine, we are helping ourselves and our children.
In recent history we have already seen tragedies more than once, should we repeat past mistakes and turn history into a farce? Only I am afraid that it will not be funny at all.
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January 16, 2023
It is a shame that, in the country that invented capitalism, we can’t explain it. Perhaps that is a reason we are losing it to socialism. Ask any conservative, or even an economist, and they are likely to describe it as “free markets.” Barter societies in the Middle East are free markets and they are mired in poverty.
Capitalism is not simply free markets. It is a designed, self-accelerating economic system that reduces prices and poverty. It was gradually designed, in the United States, from 1793 to 1914. Before we can understand capitalism’s benefits, we must define wealth and poverty in comprehensible economic terms.
The wealth of a nation is its amount of usable goods, just as poverty is a lack of usable goods. Poverty in a society is created by a lack of clothes, food, vehicles, housing, etc. If the supply of these usable goods is low, naturally, there is not enough to go around. This creates the divergence of wealthy and poor. It gets worse; those who can afford the limited supply of usable goods bid up the price, creating even more poor. A large supply of usable goods brings prices down so that more people can afford them. As the supply of usable goods rises, poverty declines.
The United States grew to be wealthy because we created far more usable goods than other nations. But how did that happen?
All usable goods are created by manufacturing. It is not the amount of money that manufacturing employees earn that is of value; it is the millions of shirts, hammers, and cars they produce that create wealth in a society.
In 1793, rural people were paupers, living off the land, building log cabins, growing their own food, and wearing buckskins for clothes.
Eli Whitney’s cotton gin accelerated the production of textiles and brought the cost of clothing down so even the poor could afford it. However, it was Whitney’s other invention that ignited the growth of capitalism. It was his creation of a new technical expertise, mechanical engineering, which led to the next generation’s proliferation of other manufacturing machines.
Cyrus McCormick invented the reaper in 1840, but there was an array of business problems that beset him. He was selling a complicated machine to farmers who did not understand it and were not capable of its repair. Broken parts might cost the farmer his crop during harvest. Sales and service were paramount and McCormick could not traverse the territory fast enough.
McCormick solved these problems by designing a unique system, a network of distributors with whom McCormick shared considerable profit. The distributors took over all sales and service. They stocked parts locally and performed repairs. McCormick wisely turned farmers away from direct factory sales by telling them they had to buy from their respective distributor.
McCormick Reapers throughout farm country helped bring food prices down to supply the poorest of households. It was not the reaper that added structure to capitalism, it was his concept to share his profits with others to increase sales -- the distribution system.
Rural couples were using mail-order catalogues to buy household items direct from factories. Mistakes in ordering and returns were enormous problems, and single orders added to the cost of usable goods because they limited mass production.
Manufacturers of household goods solved these problems by carrying McCormick’s distribution concept one step further. Distribution centers were given a wholesale price so they became profitable businesses, but the manufacturers added an additional discount and layer of profit to include retailers. This created a unique three-tier distribution system (factory, distributor, and retailer). It worked well for household goods.
Distributors were told to send buyers back to the retailers. Because the distributor provided a nearby stock and a retail discount, retail stores became efficient and profitable businesses.
Sales grew exponentially and prices declined. The retail industry expanded to its full capacity because factories were willing to share their profits with retailers, and to protect those profits. Contrary to popular opinion it was the sharing of profits, not greed, that helped create America’s great wealth.
Factory owners had wisely added another innovation of factory recommended retail prices. The wisdom of this was to provide a structure of profits for all who sold their product. It might seem that this would add to the price, but it did the opposite. The resulting high volume of sales resulted in an overwhelming larger drop in product cost. As manufacturing costs fell, the recommend retail pricing was reduced to protect product sales from competition.
Prior to this, women made their own soap, household goods, clothes, and tended crops. Men planted crops, hand-forged steel tools, and built what they needed. Rather than make their own goods, people began to buy them at a local general store. Rural couples were unshackled from the centuries-old life of paupers.
Rural couples wanted more. Factories could not meet the demand. Enter Andrew Carnegie. He recognized the demand for steel from retail-good factories and built his Pittsburgh steel mill in 1873. At Carnegie Steel, he set up a double shift to produce steel 24/7 and provided incentives to the shift that produced the most. He began by walking the floor and paid his workers well. Production far exceeded other producers.
Over the next twenty-five years, Carnegie Steel alone grew to exceed the total production of any country in Europe. His high production facility brought the price of steel down to about a fourth of its previous price.
Factory owners took advantage of the unrestricted supply of steel to supply our nation with everyday usable goods for millions of households. Poverty was declining rapidly. The assembly of complex products however, took time and quality control was always a problem.
In 1909, Henry Ford added the innovation of an assembly line to increase production of his Model T cars. The lines used conveyors to bring chassis and parts to the workers. The assembly line brought order to installation of parts. Each worker became expert at the installation of his part. This improved quality considerably. The Model T was long considered the most reliable car built.
More important, production increased from 12½ man-hours per car in 1912 to 1½ man-hours in 1914. With fixed costs and increased production along with volume discounts of his variable costs, the cost per car plunged. The more he made, the lower the price. The price of Henry Ford’s Model T declined from $850 to $260, putting the price well within reach of the average family.
Because sales volume was so high, Henry Ford was able to reduce prices and increase wages. He raised wages to $5 per day, which was more than twice the national average. His distributors were able to do the same. Workers migrated from all over the country to work for Henry Ford.
Henry Ford, one man, employed 100,000 workers. Untold wealth and jobs were created in related industries.
Elsewhere, people born poor would likely end up poor, as would their children. Foreigners named the United States “the land of opportunity.” Our standard of living had risen faster than any nation. Poverty declined to approximate present-day level. Americans had become the wealthiest people on Earth.
Our unique form of capitalism was not simply free markets. It is a designed structure of shared profits which create a self-accelerating economic system that reduces prices, thus reducing poverty.
>>>
I am not an editor or journalist. I’m not an influencer. I don’t sit in a boardroom or govern my companies’ policies; I abide by them. Not exactly a position of fortitude, but like many of you I don’t have the luxury of not having a job. I have a mortgage to pay and a son to put through college.
For most of my life I’ve been apolitical. I’ve only voted in a handful of elections and my votes have never been one party-centric. Perhaps I just never had the inclination to support a political entity that would invariably let me down. Perhaps I just thought that silence would serve me better than plainspoken conversation.
But inaction has consequences too. In recent years, I’ve seen many of my colleagues and friends readily embrace the illusion of safety over personal self-determination. As these same friends and colleagues are equally eager to embrace a mantle of inclusion based on the exclusion of intellectual diversity, I’m reminded of Benjamin Franklin’s warning that adversaries of liberty would need to begin by “subduing the freeness of speech.”
This isn’t a minority of my peers, mind you, that take no issue with federal mandates and the idea of government led disinformation boards. It's disheartening to see how quickly we’ve lost our grasp on the historical truths that distinguish free societies. But what did we expect? Most of us never provided our children with a historical context to understand or even consider these truths. Instead, we’ve relinquished our role to Yahoo and Google, Facebook, Tik Tok, and Instagram. We’ve given academia the green light to raise our children and we’ve taught our children not to question authority. We’ve been lazy and now we’re disappointed about the way the cake turned out.
So, what can we do now? Namely, what can someone like you or I do? What can someone with no audience and no political capital really accomplish when nearly every medium of political discourse and method of communication is driven by a coastal elitist narrative? In truth, maybe not much. But, not much, isn’t nothing either. And, maybe if there are enough of us commoners doing something more than nothing, we’ll actually accomplish something quite substantive.
Let’s focus our attention on few resolutions that promote vibrant communities and limited government. These aren’t schematic changes. They are resolutions that “Main Street” Americans can implement without any real time commitment, monetary cost, or risk of reprisal.
1. Vote with your Wallet
You may vote at the ballot box once or twice a year, but you vote every day with your wallet. As Americans we are constant consumers. We spend a lot and we spend often. And, every day we funnel our hard-earned salaries to corporations like: Paypal, Apple, Ben and Jerry’s, Starbucks, Target, and Nike. It’s a sad irony, but we’re financing the who’s who of Woke Inc.
In 2023 let’s commit to changing our spending habits. The good news is most of us spend the majority of our money within the same circles of retailers and restaurants. Switching over a handful of products is easier than you think and you can feel good about money you were already spending anyway.
2. Vote with your ‘Clicks’ (aka: Never Google Anything Again)
There are some fantastic search engines out there not named “Google” or “Yahoo.” Download one of them and set it as your default browser. The only thing you’ll miss are the trackers, advertisers, Big Brother Google, and the liberal content you’re force-fed daily.
3. Teach you Kids the Bill of Rights
If you haven’t noticed, kids tend to be idealists. What’s more ideal than ensuring the rights and liberties of individual citizens from an expansive government? Post a copy on your kids’ wall. Understanding it will provide your children with a lifelong lens to see the abuses of power in plain sight.
4. Vote Twice!!
Ever found it frustrating that our elected representatives are being put in office by a constituency of uninformed and unmotivated voters? Here’s a silver lining. No, you can’t literally vote twice, but you can make your ballot count more.
Judges don’t have a capital “D” or “R” near their names. Do your homework (most of your fellow voters won’t) and vote down ballot. Since you just taught your kids the Bill of Rights, now’s your opportunity to support judges who will actually uphold it.
5. Know your Charities
You don’t have to support BLM, Planned Parenthood, or the Southern Poverty Law Center to have your well-intentioned dollars funding left of field ideologies.
6. Widen Your Circle of Influence
Here are a few ideas: write an article, volunteer, run for your local school board, join a PAC, teach a class online. These might take more of a coordinated effort but there’s no shortage of options.
7. Consider the Switch (from Network TV to Podcasts)
It’ll save you time and money, give you the flexibility to listen on your watch, and empower you to choose the content of your programs.
8. Raise Skeptics not Conformists
Children have a natural inclination to question everything; let them. They’re going to have to unpack a lot of BS in their lives from all sorts of avenues and authority figures. Let’s not raise sheep just because they’re more agreeable.
9. Buy and Hold
I’m not suggesting that you should revamp your brokerage account. But why not make money supporting the companies you love? Consider that values of the company as one of the criteria in your selection.
10. Aspiration Trumps Contention
Anger and fear are short-term wins. Represent the party of aspiration. It should come natural to us. You can start with life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
Bonus: Pay it Forward
The best part about these resolutions is that they have a multiplier effect. Pay them forward. Let’s make 2023 the year we reject the fear tactics and divisiveness spurred by elitest ideologues. Let’s not have our values cooked up in the boardrooms of some multinational conglomerates. They’ve led us astray; caused us to turn our backs to the city on a hill. Let the common sense and common decency of everyday Americans pave the way back.
This first suggestion might not seem like a piece of financial advice, but it is. In an inflationary marketplace where prices are rising and you suspect supply chain issues are coming down the line, stockpiling staple foods and goods is a wise decision that will provide you with financial relief in the coming months.
When you don’t have to worry about overpaying for things like rice, pasta, sugar, flour, soap, toothpaste, and other necessities, you can reallocate that money to other areas. It creates margin in your budget to be successful. It allows you to focus on other things and conserve your financial resources.
2.) Diversify Your Assets
You never want to be too heavily invested in one asset or investment type when a recession or collapse is coming. It can easily cause you to lose everything. You’re much better off being diversified across multiple asset classes. While it’s likely that all of these assets will temporarily go down in value, it gives you more flexibility and increases your chances of an eventual recovery.
3.) Build Up an Emergency Fund
Focus your energy on building up an emergency fund. If you don’t already have a minimum of six months’ worth of cash in a savings account, you don’t have enough. You need enough cash to allow you to survive for at least six months, even if you don’t earn another dime during that period. Do whatever it takes between now and the coming financial crisis to do this.
As a reference, a family with basic living expenses (meaning food, shelter, medical care, etc.) of $5,000 per month will need a minimum of $30,000 in an emergency fund. Don’t underestimate this!
4.) Pull Out Cash
While it’s never happened in the United States, all you have to do is look at the financial collapse in Greece from a few years ago to understand how quickly things can go sideways. Believe it or not, there could come a point in time where banks could limit how much money you’re able to pull out on a daily/weekly basis. The easiest way to avoid a scenario like this is by pulling out cash ASAP.
You’ll have to decide how much physical cash you want to keep on hand, but a one-month supply of cash is a good starting point. Using the example above, a family with $5,000 of monthly expenses should have at least $5,000 in cash sitting in a home safe. If you have a particularly safe location and aren’t worried about the possibility of fire or burglary, two to three months of physical cash is a good idea.
5.) Make Tradeworthy Investments
Now’s a good time to make what we call “tradeworthy” investments. That means instead of putting a bunch of money into the stock market, buy things that you can barter with during a depression. Good options include alcohol and liquor, tobacco, and ammunition.
6.) Find Additional Streams of Income
In a depression, you can go from a successful career and stable position with your employer one day to no job and no career prospects almost overnight. The best way to insulate yourself from this threat is by proactively adding additional streams of income.
The more jobs and hustles you have, the less likely you’ll lose 100 percent of your income. You might lose a good chunk of it if your primary employer fires you, but you still have a few different methods for generating income. This will serve you well when stuff starts hitting the fan in an economic collapse.
Adding it All Up
If an economic crash, recession, collapse, or depression is going to happen, there isn’t much you can do about it. It’s going to happen. You can, however, control how prepared you are. By making smart choices today, you can lessen the impact it has on your family tomorrow. Handle what you can handle and forget about the rest.
>>>
(These are excerpts from the article. Complete article is at the link. Zim.)
A fellow offering a prediction about an election in these chaotic times surely owes his readers a track record of previous successes. Unfortunately, I have only one earlier success, and it was long ago — but it was a trifecta. Very early on, I told everyone who claimed some interest in politics that the Democrats would nominate Jimmy Carter, that Carter would choose Mondale as his running mate, and that the Carter/Mondale ticket would win. By early on, I mean that for quite some time, people responded by asking, "Who's Jimmy Carter?"
I have the same feeling of certainty this time around, and perhaps that means something this time, too. We'll see.
If my prediction proves out, there is an upside. Dick Morris is predicting that Hillary will run again. I am sure he is right about how much she wants to move back into the White House, but I am predicting there will not be an opening for her to make a run for it. Now for the downside. There won't be an opening for Hillary for the simple reason that Kamala Harris will be running as the incumbent.
Biden will have shuffled offstage for the last time well before the next election, and Harris will have ascended to the Oval Office.
Gavin Newsom is already running for the top spot. He won't be the nominee, either, but getting started early will put him in position for the No. 2 spot.
But wait, you say. Even if you are right about Harris, the Democrats will never choose Newsom to run with Harris. They are both San Francisco hard leftists. The Democrats will try to balance the ticket with a more moderate candidate from a different part of the country in order to win the election.
A balanced ticket was once standard operating procedure, but we live in a new era, and new rules apply for now. The Democrat powers-that-be have proved to their satisfaction they can steal the next election and get away with it. Consequently, there is no longer a need for a balanced ticket.
Biden has proved that Democrats no longer even need to campaign or even to offer some claim to having done some good in office to be "elected." The Harris/Newsom ticket has all that is required. They make a photogenic pair, perfect for waving to the crowds in a fabulously expensive tsunami of polished political ads. And with a woman at the top of the ticket, the corporate media will go wild. There will be no reporting about any shenanigans necessary to bring about the outcome they desire.
You heard it here first.
But wait. Do they get away with it?
That, dear friends, depends upon what we do in the meantime. In the words of my friend Tony Petroski, "true the vote and transform the nation."
>>>
I find this depressing . . . with a certain amount of believability.
Zim.
August 5, 2022
Leftist liars recently have been trying to cover for the Biden regime's abject failures by redefining the word "recession," going so far as to flag as false those who reject Biden's recession wordplay.
Aside from the obvious answer of protecting the dear leader, what is their justification for doing this?
For the sake of argument, let's say they might have had some theoretical point in playing games with the facts about COVID. We cannot fathom what that was, but that was their "emergency justification" at the moment. But what is their rationale for doing this now? No one is going to make an incorrect medical decision based on this definition, so why are they doing this?
We know exactly why. In fact, this is why we have labelled them the anti-liberty left: because their ideology cannot stand the people exercising their basic freedoms under the Bill of Rights.
The problem for the enemies of liberty on the left is that while they think they can run around and offer an alternate version of reality — that changes every five minutes — there is a whole slew of documentation that is piling up showing they are nothing but abject liars.
You almost get the impression that they think George Orwell's socialist-fascist Utopia in 1984 has become real, and we'll believe nonsense phrases such as "War Is Peace," "Freedom Is Slavery," and "Ignorance Is Strength."
You know you're ahead of the game in understanding those people when you have a complete copy of George Orwell's novel 1984 in a text file for quick reference (available here) — along with several hardcopy versions for safekeeping.
Having read it the first time around because that year was coming up and then recently, it has some stunning revelations, many of which are doubleplusungood.
However, there are things that George Orwell got wrong. One of these is the infamous "memory hole":
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> When one knew that any document was due for destruction,
> or even when one saw a scrap of waste paper lying about,
> it was an automatic action to lift the flap of the nearest
> memory hole and drop it in, whereupon it would be whirled
> away on a current of warm air to the enormous furnaces
> which were hidden somewhere in the recesses of the building.
>>>
The big problem for the left is that the situation we have today is quite the opposite, and we need to take advantage of that. Think of this as a short tutorial on just how to do it.
Two of our favorite tools aside from TOR (The Onion Router) and Proton Mail to try and stay two steps ahead of "Big Brandon" (you can't be too careful these days) are the Wayback Machine of the Internet Archive and archive.today webpage capture sites.
Does everyone realize that all of the shenanigans taking place on sites such as Wikipedia are almost being documented in real time on these sites? They specifically say they save images of these pages at certain times, not when they are being changed. However, there are enough snapshots of these sites to show these changes, and it's hilarious to behold.
It's even more enjoyable that we can all participate, in a couple of ways, in the fun of flummoxing the fascist far left's attempts at rewriting the dictionary in real time. For those of you that are old hands at trying to cover your internet tracks, please excuse a little divergence into a couple of tutorial points:
1. Fake them out.
First of all, you're going to want to set up a good semi-anonymous email and VPN setup. These won't be perfect, but nothing in this life ever is.
You'll want to find a site that randomly generates fake ID data, the idea to get user names and passwords, and other information for this purpose, such as the Fake Name Generator.
2. Encrypted email, Virtual Private Networks, and TOR.
We've already mentioned some good examples of these. The idea is to prevent or at least slow down the ability of "Big Brandon" to see what we're doing. Remember the old saying of strength in numbers: the more pro-freedom patriots use these services, the less the authoritarians will be able to keep control of the situation.
3. Now it's time to have some fun.
Let's face it: the anti-liberty left's socialist national agenda is based on a number of false premises and lies. Remember, it's rooted in authoritarian socialism with forced wealth redistribution and a centrally controlled economy, no matter how they try to dress it up with flowery labels. They can never be honest, always having to lie to hide the facts. Lies always lead to contradictions because the story keeps changing. Anti-liberty leftists are at war with logical reality, so they also have to change dictionary definitions. George Orwell predicted "Newspeak" in 1984; he just underestimated when this would happen.
The great thing about all of this is that everyone can play along and do their part showing how they are abject liars. In our present example, it's just a matter of searching for the Wikipedia entry for "recession" in the Wayback Machine search box. Copy and paste the URL — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recession — or you can just go to this web page.
Alternatively, you can also use the Wayback Machine and search for the same entry, and you'll see all the times that page has been archived. Try it yourself. It's hilarious to see how many "snapshots" of that page have been taken over time, and you can have the system save it another time if you want. The same holds true for the archive.today webpage capture.
The fun thing is that we can also use the same tools to document other definitions that they might be thinking of changing and trip them up because they won't be able to "memory hole" the old definitions. So start anticipating their next move, and document the definitions ahead of them. Then, when they try that, you'll be able to cite your documentation showing that they are lying.
We'll leave it to someone else to document what just happened with the definition for "recession," but all you'll have to do is grab those snapshots and start comparing to show how the liberty-denier leftists have been lying over time.
July 28, 2022:
Since the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February the Ukrainians have had special teams investigating sites where Russian guided missiles landed, seeking fragments of the guidance system to determine which components were imported from the West. Russia has found they could not mass-produce many Western electronic items and that it was cheaper and easier to import them from the West (which includes South Korea, Japan and sometimes even Taiwan). The 2022 economic sanctions imposed on Russia halted export of electronic components used in missiles and guided rockets.
It was noted that many Russian manufacturers did not stockpile these components but used the more efficient and less expensive “just in time” system that had needed components delivered days before they would be needed for production items. The Russian economy could not afford to maintain stockpiles of these expensive components, something that became evident after 2014, when the first and milder round of economic sanctions were imposed on Russia. After 2014 Russia had to halt production of some systems because they could no longer get key components from foreign suppliers. The 2022 sanctions took note of this and immediately halted shipment of a wide range of electronic components to Russia. As expected, a lot of Russian manufacturing operations soon halted. Russia sought to smuggle in key components via China but that did not solve the problem. This use of China as a middleman for high-tech smuggling was a known problem and China was warned that they would be added to the sanctions list if they assisted the Russians. Evidence of such smuggling could be detected via examination of the missile fragments.
Russia was more successful smuggling its oil but found it could earn more money via smuggled oil than it could spend to buy smuggled electronic components. Oil is a bulk item that is much easier to smuggle than electronic components that have identifying notations, often serial numbers, on them. Smuggling such items is much riskier and rather rare, especially on short notice. Russian ally Iran has lots of experience with this problem and over the decades developed many techniques to get around it. As the Iranian techniques became known they were added to the watch list. This makes it more difficult and expensive to smuggle such components.
Russia believed the Ukraine invasion would succeed quickly and be over within weeks. That was a major miscalculation because months of sustained combat have depleted Russian stockpiles of guided missiles and rockets as well as unguided artillery shells. That may seem odd but post-Soviet Russia could not afford to maintain manufacturing facilities capable of producing large quantities of ordinary artillery shells and unguided rockets. That was not going to be a problem if the Ukraine invasion was over quickly. It wasn’t and now the Russians have less artillery ammo to fire at the Ukrainians. This got worse when Ukraine finally began receiving American GMLRS (guided rockets) in late June. The Russians lost lots of shells when these GMLRS rockets hit Russian ammo storage sites within range. Forced to establish new ammo storage sites farther away from the front line, the Russian also discovered that they did not have enough additional trucks to transport the shells to artillery units near the fighting.
This disruption of Russian ammo supplies was immediately noticeable on the front lines where there was much less artillery fire from the Russians and fewer attacks by Russian ground troops. Those attacks were dependent on heavy artillery support to disrupt Ukrainian defenses. Russian troops either refused to attack without artillery support or did so with so much hesitation that little was achieved. The Ukrainians could attack more frequently and with more success because of the reduced Russian ammo situation. The Ukrainians are to receive longer range guided rockets that will force Russia to store ammo even further away from the front line. In some cases, this means all ammo will have to be trucked from Russia to artillery units. Meanwhile Ukrainian troops receive more trucks, weapons and ammunition from NATO nations that can outproduce the Russians.
Ukrainian military intelligence and planners realized these Russian vulnerabilities long before the Russians did. After the 2014 Russian seizure of Crimea and parts of eastern Ukraine (Donbas) the Ukrainians had to operate more effectively to defeat a larger scale Russian attack. Ukrainian intel and staff officers did the math while their Russian counterparts did not. There were some Russian production and manufacturing specialists who noted the danger but their warnings were ignored by senior Russian leaders who were more inclined to gamble than plan.
It wasn’t always like this. For example, Russia invented the use of unguided rockets in the MLRS (Multiple Launch Rocket Systems) in the 1930s, but they were late to adopt the use of guided rockets in MLRS systems. The United States finally adopted MLRS in 1983, using an unguided 227mm rocket. That changed twenty years later when the U.S. added GPS navigation to the unguided MLRS rocket to produce GMLRS (Guided MLRS) rockets.
Russia saw some innovations in the original American MLRS and incorporated these into their BM-30 MLRS system that entered service in 1989 using 300mm unguided rockets. It took the Russians a decade to duplicate the American GMLRS and the Russian version was seen operating in Syria by 2016. Russia had problems producing their GMLRS and associated (in the MLRS vehicle) electronics. By 2017 a reliable GMLRS system (Tornado-S) was in mass production and many of the “guided missiles'' used by Russian forces in Ukraine have been Tornado-S. Russia was unable to find a solution to its dependence on key foreign components to turn unguided rockets into much more effective GMLRS missiles.
Ukrainian military planners now predict that Russian forces will be weakened sufficiently by the end of August that Ukrainian forces will be able to go on the offensive on a wide scale. Russia never expected that and all they can respond with is threats of using nuclear weapons. That is a very unpopular option inside Russia, where most Russians have done the nuclear math and it is very unfavorable for Russia.
July 22, 2022
America was founded on the principles of capitalism. But there are those who think communism is the solution for every problem, from bad weather to old Joe's dementia. In their book, In Their Own Words, Terry Turchie and Donagh Bracken document that organizations such as the Weather Underground, the Black Panther Party, Occupy Wall Street, Black Lives Matter, and The Democratic Socialists of American have been agitating for communism for decades. We've even got one senator who spent his honeymoon in the Soviet Union and a whole squad of congresswomen who openly support it now. They don't use the word "communism" very often, but their manifestos and stated goals are 100 percent aligned with that ideology. Instead, they use seductive terms like "social justice," "guaranteed income," and "equality."
Capitalism vests ownership of property (along with the means of production) with the private sector. Members of the community are allowed to operate for their own individual interests — and those individuals get to keep the profits from their work. Hence, hard work is rewarded. With hard work and initiative, anyone can succeed. So people tend to work hard. Domestic product (the total production of the community) is maximized.
But the rewards are unevenly distributed. The portion of the domestic product that each person receives is a function of his contribution, not his membership in the community. The end result is that members of a capitalist community earn unequal portions of a very large pie.
Communism vests ownership of property (and the means of production) with the commune — otherwise known as the state. Members of the commune are expected to work for the benefit of the commune — not themselves. Each is to contribute according to his ability and receive according to his needs. It sounds like perfect harmony — until observed in practice.
When all share equally in the rewards, hard work is irrelevant to the portion of the commune's production that each person receives. Everyone's portion of the domestic product is a result of his membership in the commune, not his contribution to it. Since hard work is not rewarded, people tend to not work hard. Total domestic product rarely exceeds sustainment levels. But equality of outcomes is maximized. Commune members earn equal portions of a small pie.
Conceptually, capitalism and communism are inherently incompatible economic systems — they function at opposite ends of the public/private ownership axis. Attempts to blend them are destined for failure.
Capitalism maximizes productivity but sacrifices equal results. It provides equal opportunity, not equal outcome. The reward achieved by each individual is dependent on his own initiative. To realize capitalism's full potential, community members must have freedom to exercise that initiative. Therefore, personal liberty is a requirement for capitalism.
Communism maximizes equal results (equal distribution of the domestic product) but sacrifices the productivity inherent in capitalism. It also requires that community members surrender their freedom. They are not free to exercise individual initiative. They are expected to serve the needs of the commune — whatever those may be. They are expected to be a contributing member of the hive.
Unfortunately, leftists have created an attractive narrative about communism. If one ignores its downside, communism sounds idyllic to a naïve mind — everyone sharing equally in the bounty of the commune. No class envy, no brutal competition, no "dog eat dog" business jungle — just equality. Never mind that one has to give up personal choice and freedom to live in such a community.
The leftists paint capitalism's unequal distribution of rewards as inherently evil. They prey on class envy, demanding that the "rich pay their fair share." Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez even declared that capitalism is "not a redeemable system." Of course, she ignores all metrics except equality.
The left then seduces everyone by offering an impossible compromise — which leftists assure us will provide the advantages of both capitalism and communism. They call it socialism. They assure us that socialism will provide the productivity of capitalism and the equal distribution of communism. We'll just allow capitalism to produce the wealth but force producers to redistribute wealth by regulatory or tax-and-spend schemes. They use terms like "ensuring a livable wage"; "protecting our most vulnerable"; "correcting social injustices"; or, as Barack Obama simply said, "spreading the wealth around." It is all a lie. Socialism is a deal with the Devil. Its promises are seductive, but it delivers only misery.
Striking a compromise between two incompatible systems does not achieve the best of both systems; it achieves the worst of both systems. Socialism promises the productivity of capitalism with the equality of communism. But it actually delivers the inequality of capitalism and the low productivity of socialism — just the opposite of its intended goals.
Socialism relies on redistribution (via regulation or taxation) to promote equality. But that redistribution is actually a disincentive to production. Redistributed money is money that could have been spent on more production, which is instead redirected to non-production. In capitalism, you spend money to make money. In socialism, you spend money not to make money — by redirecting it to non-producers. Therefore, the community doesn't produce as much product — or make as much money to redistribute.
As socialism redistributes wealth, less of the wealth is available to reward producers and expand production. Production stagnates, and domestic product declines. Declining domestic product results in less wealth for redistribution. Those who own property begin consolidating their holdings to maintain their own standard of living. As the pie gets smaller, they exert their influence to keep more of it. That causes the standard of living of those receiving the redistribution to decline.
Pressure for increased redistribution builds, with the community demanding more taxation and social spending. The government raises taxes and the regulatory burden on producers, but that only further chokes production. With each cycle of the death spiral, the rich get richer, the poor get poorer, and inequality proliferates.
The cycle continues until there is inadequate production to meet the redistribution demands. As Margaret Thatcher famously said, "the problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people's money." That's when the community has arrived at Venezuela. The rich are obscenely rich, and the poor are breaking into the zoo to eat the displays. The Venezuelan example is not atypical relative to other socialist attempts.
When a socialist community can no longer function, it has reached a fork in the road where there are only two choices:
1.) Recommit to capitalism and return to rewarding producers for their efforts.
2.) Commit to communism, seizing the means of production and vesting ownership of all property in the commune.
Socialism is merely a flowery invitation to move gradually toward communism, giving up our liberty in exchange for a life of subsistence. There are those who say it will never happen in America. Yet Obamacare was the first step toward seizing the means of production of health care. Senator Pocahontas Warren has proposed nationalizing every business with revenue over $1B. President Gremlin is reportedly considering seizing the energy sector's means of production — to save the planet. President Obama even proposed nationalizing pension programs, seizing our retirement savings and replacing them with a government stipend — taking the wealth we have earned and replacing it with the wealth we need. It can happen here if we aren't vigilant.
Socialist experiments can end in one of three ways.
1.) Poverty and starvation
2.) Enslavement to the state
3.) Return to personal freedom and the inequality that results
Jim Jones once told his followers that "God is socialism, and socialism is God." He said it just as Satan would have when offering a deal too good to be true. Jones offered his followers a socialist paradise but delivered a communist hell, in which he took everything they owned, enslaved them to the commune, and led 918 of them to slaughter. That's how his attempt at socialism ended.
July 21, 2022
On July 14, Minneapolis police shot and killed twenty-year-old Tekle Sundberg after a six-hour standoff that included multiple shots by the "victim" being fired into the apartment of a young woman and her two small children. This was because Tekle Sundberg was trying to kill her. Yet according to attorney Ben Crump, Tekle was a "smart, loving, and artistic" young man "experiencing a mental health crisis." The photo accompanying Crump's call to action showed Tekle wearing white, the color of innocence, while smiling for the camera. However, a second photo in the Twitter feed displayed another side of Tekle's character as he held two pistols and a bag of contraband while playfully posing for the camera.
Crump demanded ANSWERS (his capitalization, not mine) from the Minneapolis police about how they conducted themselves during the standoff. He also posted videos of the grieving adoptive parents blaming the police for killing their son "unnecessarily" and called for people to protest at the scene of the crime, which they did. Tekle's white parents claimed that the police promised they wouldn't shoot him (a curious claim to make in an active shooter situation, to be sure) and predictably suggested that their son would still be alive if he were white. However, the police reported that whenever they tried to have the father speak to Tekle, the young man turned his music up full blast and screamed at them.
Just how disgusting can Tekle's parents get? Zero sympathy was expressed for their son's intended victim or her children. Their son was actively trying to murder his neighbor when the police finally shot and killed him, more than six hours after the standoff began, and still they blame the police. If Tekle had been white, the only difference in the outcome is that the cops most likely wouldn't have waited six hours before they finally shot and killed him. The man was spraying live rounds into another apartment, trying to kill its inhabitants, which, in my opinion, forfeits his right to continue breathing.
Say the name "George Floyd," and people bow their heads in reverence for the petty criminal, who died while in police custody from an officer "kneeling on his neck" until he suffocated — which didn't happen, but don't tell that to Officer Derek Chauvin, because he's in prison for allegedly killing Floyd. Now say the name "Tony Timpa." Who? Minneapolis police officers went to prison for detaining Floyd with a controversial hold for nine minutes. Dallas police officers held Tony Timpa with the very same hold for almost fourteen minutes, and, like Floyd, Timpa died. Why have there been no media reports of Timpa's death like the reports on George Floyd? Well, Tony Timpa was a white man.
If Timpa's story failed to move you, what about Edward Bronstein? Two months before George Floyd died, the very same thing happened to Bronstein — cops kneeled on him, and he died. What happened to the officers in the Timpa and Bronstein cases? Nothing.
Obviously, police brutality isn't the real issue for Black Lives Matter. Nor does the innocence or guilt of the candidate for martyrdom matter. Skin color is all that matters to Black Lives Matter. It doesn't hurt if you have a criminal record, too.
Seventy-five percent of the people killed by the police each year are white, Asian, or Hispanic. Twenty-five percent of the suspects killed by police are black. If anything, police have become more reluctant to engage with and subdue a violent black offender out of fear that Black Lives Matter and Ben Crump will marshal the forces of evil against them, and that reluctance puts even more lives at risk.
Not only does BLM always side against the police, but the group frequently sides against the black victims of black criminal thugs. Apparently, only black criminals aren't supposed to get shot, no matter what they've done. In stark contrast, innocent black women and children are fair game. If you are a young black criminal, you're untouchable as far as Black Lives Matter is concerned. Black Lives Matter doesn't care about people. It cares only about power. The people behind Black Lives Matter don't care about black lives in general; they care about only the lives of dangerous black criminals and buying expensive real estate in rich white neighborhoods.
George Floyd? He's been elevated to the ranks of a minor deity, although a lightning strike seems to have offered God's final word on the matter. And contrary to what Ben Crump might have you believe, Tekle Sundberg was no angel. He was a thug and a criminal, and he's far from the only example of Black Lives Matter choosing to champion the wrong black lives. Jacob Blake admits that he had a knife when police shot him. Black Lives Matter led a major protest to honor the man that police had been trying to arrest for sexual assault, criminal trespass, and disorderly conduct. The protests in Kenosha led to Kyle Rittenhouse being forced to kill several people in self-defense as the situation grew completely out of control.
Michael Brown robbed a convenience store and broke the orbital bone in the face of police officer Darren Wilson, but BLM lied and claimed that Brown had his hands up. And Ferguson, Missouri was burned to the ground because of another pernicious lie. Rayshard Brooks passed out in the drive-through lane of a Wendy's and eventually managed to get shot and killed while resisting arrest for DUI. For some unknown reason, video of the police having a normal conversation with Brooks aired on television, but video of Brooks resisting arrest and firing a Taser at the cops did not. Naturally, protesters burned the restaurant to the ground.
Much more importantly, little eight-year-old Secoriea Turner was shot and killed when a protester fired a bullet into her mother's car. Two of the protesters were arrested for her murder. Two years after Brooks's death, "mourners" planned a vigil to remember him. Nobody has a vigil planned for Secoriea Turner.
Black Lives Matter protesters immediately dropped to a knee when reports aired that an armed carjacker had been killed by the police. The protesters promised to loot and riot in response, but after they learned that the carjacker was white, the protest suddenly ended, quickly and quietly. They didn't care that the perpetrator had allegedly been waving a gun and shooting at police, but they did care about his skin color, because only the lives of black criminals matter to Black Lives Matter. If you're an innocent bystander, a woman, or a child — even if you're black — well, you're just collateral damage.
The young woman Sundberg had been trying to kill bravely came out of her apartment to confront the angry crowd that came to march in front of her building and shouted at them, "He tried to kill me in front of my kids! There are bullet holes in my kitchen!"
One of the protestors chillingly replied, "Not in you, though!"
What type of a human being would say such a thing to the victim of a violent crime?
July 19, 2022
Communist China's targeted aggression, propaganda belligerence and below the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) economic corruption projects are finally producing diplomatic, political and military blowback.
Xi Jinping's tyrannical clique ought to take a strategic pause -- meaning the self-proclaimed strategic geniuses should reconsider their self-defeating and ultimately self-destructive hostile behavior.
My bet: Xi and the gang won't do it because they think they're smarter than everyone else. Bet No. 2: Since they're arrogant and isolated, they'll only get woke when war in Asia wreaks global economic devastation and leaves mainland China in chaos.
As for economic corruption: The BRI is China's attempt to control world economic development. Sounds fabuloso to New York media but it's corrupt and phony -- an economic attack on fragile states. Ask the Democratic Republic of Congo. Beijing's Congo operations are scams designed to corner the world cobalt market. Congo is fighting back, albeit with limited legal means.
China's Congo aggressions are obscure, its Asian depredations aren't.
Beijing's regional aggression in Asia and global lies have seeded significant setbacks, diplomatic and military.
In 1996 Beijing ratified the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS). The treaty codified the geophysical conditions establishing sovereign control of territorial waters and rights in maritime Exclusive Economic Zones (EEZ).
UNCLOS was designed to prevent and peacefully resolve disputes involving billions of dollars of maritime resources.
But tyrants don't respect treaties. Vladimir Putin ignoring the 1994 Budapest Accord (assuring Ukrainian territorial integrity) is a recent example.
More communist disappearing ink: In 2002, Beijing signed a declaration with the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) in which the parties agreed to exercise self-restraint in the South China Sea and refrain from occupying uninhabited features.
2012: Beijing claimed 85% of the South China Sea's 3.5 million square kilometers. In 2012 Scarborough Shoal was a South China Sea reef, a "sea feature" well inside long-recognized Filipino territory about 155 miles from the large inhabited Filipino island of Palawan. China? 750 miles away.
But Chinese construction barges anchored around the shoal, poured concrete and created an island. According to Beijing: instant Chinese sovereign territory.
Reality: imperialism with invading construction barges.
In 2013 Manila filed a complaint with the Hague's Permanent Court of Arbitration. On July 12, 2016, they ruled that China had systematically violated essential provisions of the UNCLOS treaty at the expense of the Philippines. China's violations included stealing resources from Manila's maritime Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) and illegally encroaching on Filipino territory in the South China Sea (SCS).
In blunt language, the Court concluded China's communist government had robbed the Philippines and launched a slow, calculated and highly illegal invasion of the SCS.
On July 12, 2022 -- that's this year -- U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken urged China to comply with a decision based on the UNCLOS treaty. Blinken was visiting the Philippines, but the date of the U.S. "urge" was no accident.
The Court's 2016 ruling exposes the Chinese Communist Party's (CCP) multidimensional imperialist expansion strategy and aggression as it occurred from the late 1990s through 2016.
The ruling documented the CCP's utter disregard for international treaties and civilized diplomacy when they challenge CCP policy actions. China signed and then broke the UNCLOS treaty. China signed and then broke the Sino-British Treaty of 1984, which guaranteed Hong Kong's democratic autonomy through 2049.
Evidence: Communist China cheats Congo and violates major treaties. Conclusion: it is a lawless and untrustworthy enemy.
Now for the blowback.
In 2007, The Quad (Quadrilateral Security Dialogue) held its first informal meeting. The Quad's membership roll sends a diplomatic message: Japan, Australia, America and India. Japan pointed out all four nations regarded China as a disruptive actor in the Indo-Pacific; they had common interests.
July 2022: deeds on the sea carry more weight than Blinken's words.
The RIMPAC -- Rim of The Pacific -- a military exercise sponsored by the U.S. Navy -- is a physical real-world expression of commitment against aggression in the Pacific littoral.
Twenty-six nations are participating in the exercise.
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, with Ukraine (2014), and in Syria (2015).