Bad news: Still unemployed. Good news: Applied/submitted for lots of jobs.
Good news: My dog’s operation was a success! Bad news: The lump was cancerous. Good news: The cancer was a Stage 1 soft tissue melanoma, which is the lowest level and has little chance of recurrence.
Also: Today is Friday the 13th. Also, a Hamas leader has declared a “Day of Jihad.
At the time, Maisy, now 22, was in her final year of high school. She and her two older sisters, along with Joe Biden and First Lady Jill, had tried to stage an intervention just weeks earlier at the President’s Delaware home to get Hunter to go back to rehab.
He promised to go, but instead ended up smoking crack in a hotel, he confessed in his 2021 memoir, Beautiful Things.
Emails and messages from his laptop show money he took from Maisy’s educational savings account went in part to paying various suspected prostitutes who visited him at hotels in the following days, his Porsche 911 car loan, sex webcam subscription fees, and other personal expenses.
Hunter’s assistant Katie Dodge plaintively emailed him on December 28 that year that he had University of Pennsylvania tuition bills of $27,945 due (likely for his eldest daughter, Naomi), a $1,700 payment for his Porsche, $4,244.70 for Maisy’s high school Sidwell Friends, her $3,000 paycheck and $1,000 for another employee.
Hunter tersely told Dodge to pay for the Porsche and his health insurance, but that she would only be getting half her paycheck – and that he would ‘deal with tuitions when time comes.’
Following reports of Syria launching missiles at northern Israel, Israel hit the country’s two main international airports, “in the capital of Damascus and Aleppo in the north. It happened while an Iranian plane was inbound.” Also, the number of Americans killed by Hamas is now up to 27.
A day late, a shekel short: “Israel Loosens Strict Gun Control Laws To Arm ‘As Many Citizens As Possible.'” Benjamin Netanyahu and the entire Israeli political establishment deserve a good measure of blame for not doing this much sooner.
Speaking of guns in Gaza evidently Hamas now have a lot of rifles chambered in 5.56 NATO thanks to the Biden Administration’s abrupt withdrawal from Afghanistan.
Steve Scalise drops out of the House Speaker race. Does this mean Jim Jordan is back in the picture? Jordan was briefly the frontrunner before Scalise emerged as the candidate preferred by a majority of Republican House members, and Jordan was also endorsed by Donald Trump. Update: Yep, it’s Jordan.
Even House Democrats are slamming The Squad for their anti-Israel/pro-Hamas bias.
A revolt against government policies that many say usurp parental authority is spreading across the nation—especially in blue states where lawmakers have promoted transgender ideology and “gender-affirming care”—according to parents, attorneys, and teachers.
For more than a year, California parents have shown up in droves at legislative hearings and phoned in by the hundreds to protest policies that encourage schools to keep social gender transitions of children secret. Teachers also have begun to refuse to hide information about a child’s gender identity from parents.
Meanwhile, Democratic members of the California Legislative LGBTQ Caucus have spearheaded legislation supporting so-called gender-affirming care, especially for children, touting it as a “first-in-the-nation” model.
Parental rights groups such as Our Duty have pushed back against the model, while groups such as Planned Parenthood, Equality California, and others support it.
California school districts claim that they’re required by law to keep gender transitions secret from parents unless a child wants to tell his or her parents. But recent court rulings tell a different story.
A federal judge on Sept. 14 blocked California’s Escondido Union School District from punishing two teachers who refused to comply with guidance issued by the California Department of Education that encourages educators to keep gender transitions of students secret from their parents.
The People’s Republic of California is getting ready to declare war on classic cars. “California is looking seriously at instituting, or allowing local governments to institute, zero emission zones in the near future. In preparation for such a move, the California Air Resources Board (or CARB) is reportedly gathering information about classic cars.”
Federal prosecutors announced that an El Paso woman received a prison sentence of more than seven years after admitting to impersonating immigration agents to swindle money from “undocumented noncitizen victims and their family members.”
The Department of Justice (DOJ) stated that 53-year-old Ana Maria Hernandez pleaded guilty in April to 10 counts of wire fraud and one count of impersonation. Prosecutors say she pretended to be an official with Citizenship and Immigration Services and promised victims she could help them acquire American citizenship and collected fees.
Poor construction in illegal alien-populated Colony ridge is affecting Harris County water. “Harris County Commissioner Tom Ramsey (R-Pct. 3) warned his fellow commissioners on Tuesday that improper drainage construction in Colony Ridge was causing erosion and excessive silt to wash downstream into the county’s main source of drinking water.”
Follow-up: Josh Kruger, the recently-murdered gay left wing journalist who taunted conservatives, has been accused of grooming his accused killer from age 15. “The Philadelphia Inquirer reports that the family of Kruger’s alleged killer, 19-year-old Robert Davis, says Kruger began a years-long relationship involving drugs that began when Davis was just 15-years-old. Davis remains at large.”
Every single donation sent by Christianity Today staffers went to Democrats.
Below is the tip jar, if you’re so inclined. Thanks to everyone who donated to the Non-Homeless Blogger Fund. I’m bad at thanking people individually the way I should, but let me know if you want public recognition in this space or not.
2009 – The Obama-Biden administration takes office
November 1, 2013 – China / BHR:
Hunter Biden, business associate, and Chinese investors agree to create Bohai Harvest RST Equity Investment Fund Management Co., Ltd. (BHR), an investment fund controlled by the Bank of China, to focus on mergers and acquisitions, and investment in and reforms of state-owned enterprise.
December 4, 2013 – China / BHR
Vice President Biden travels with Hunter Biden on Air Force 2 to China and meets CEO of BHR, Jonathan Li. Shortly thereafter, BHR’s business license was approved and Hunter Biden was a board member.
February 5, 2014 – Kazakhstan
Kenes Rakishev, a Kazakhstani businessman, meets with Hunter Biden at a hotel in Washington, D.C.
April 15, 2014 – Ukraine
Burisma, a Ukrainian energy company, appoints Biden business associate to their board of directors.
After initially killing a bill on July 12, 2023 that would have increased the penalties on child sex traffickers, the Democrats who completely control the California Assembly’s Public Safety Committee reversed course one day later and voted to advance the bill.
With a final vote of 6-0, including two abstentions from progressive Democrats, the bill now moves to the Appropriations Committee, after which, if it is approved, can move the bill to be voted upon by the entire State Assembly. If passed, SB 14 will make trafficking of minors a serious felony that would qualify under California’s three strikes law, which keeps dangerous, serial criminals off the streets, and make individuals convicted of the crime ineligible for early release.
I highlight the two abstentions by Democrats. Even after a nationwide uproar over their willingness to block harsh penalties on those who traffic young children for sexual slavery, these two Democrats, including Assembly Majority Leader Isaac Bryan (D-Los Angeles), still could not bring themselves to vote for the bill.
State Senator Charles Schwertner (my state senator) has his DWI charges dismissed. Still, he hardly crowned himself in glory. At least he didn’t yell “Call Greg!” (It did make me wonder what Rosemary Lehmberg is doing today, and if she ever conquered her alcoholism…)
A detailed look at the recording of one of my favorite albums of all time: Peter Gabriel III.
Just what does electronic music pioneer Morton Subotnick’s “Silver Apples of the Moon” sound like? You know that scene in a 70s SciFi dystopia where someone’s face gets ripped off to reveal they’re a robot? It sounds like that.
GWAR plays for NPR. So on one side you have horrible monsters who are unbearable to listen to, and on the other side you have GWAR…
Busy Saturday, so enjoy a couple of Suchomimus videos about a Crimean oil refinery that Ukrainian drones made blow up real good.
Here’s footage of the refinery burning bright in the forests of the night:
“This video is showing a burning oil refinery in Depot at Kozaka Bay near Sevastopol Harbor in Crimea.”
“This took place at 4:30 AM, and it was said to be a UAV. Given the size of a blaze I would say it seems that multiple UAVs were used here.” Maybe. Or maybe it’s just that refined petroleum products are naturally very sploady and Russian safety standards and precautions suck harder than Kamala Harris.
And follow-up footage of the fire mostly controlled, but showing two oil storage tanks totally destroyed and several others damaged:
“This oil storage facility is one which supplied the Black Sea Fleet, so we’re going to have to wait and see if it’s loss will have an impact on operations from there.”
It remains an open question how much Russia has actually used its Black Sea Fleet since the sinking of Moskva over a year ago. Maybe I just haven’t been paying attention, or maybe not much news leaks out, but we don’t hear a lot about the black Sea Fleet playing a significant role in the conflict beyond occasionally participating in the missile wave attacks against Ukrainian civilian infrastructure.
Also, one wonders how much gasoline and diesel is flowing into Crimea without the Kerch Strait Bridge back at full rail capacity. I see only one other oil refinery in all of Crimea, a tiny one near Voinka Boihka that could just be a storage facility. And given the lack of visible cars and trucks in Google map images, it may not even be active.
All the more reason to believe that a counterattack taking Melitopol would make Russian resupply of troops in Crimea exceptionally difficult…
More moving trucks left from California than any other state in 2022 for the third year in a row, while more Americans are flocking to Republican-led states like Texas and Florida, a new study published on Jan. 3 has found.
The study was conducted by the moving truck rental company, U-Haul, and found that Texas, Florida, and the Carolinas were the preferred destinations for one-way moving trucks in 2022, with those states ranking as the top growth states on the annual U-Haul Growth Index.
U-Haul’s Growth Index is compiled according to the net gain of one-way U-Haul trucks arriving in a state or city, versus those departing from that state or city each calendar year across the U.S. and Canada and is a strong indicator of what kind of job states and cities are attracting and maintaining residents, according to the company.
Texas is the top destination for U-Haul trucks for the second consecutive year and the fifth time since 2016, according to the study. That is followed by Florida, which has been a top-three growth state for seven years in a row. South Carolina, North Carolina, Virginia, Tennessee, Arizona, Georgia, Ohio, and Idaho also saw strong growth rates in 2022, the study found.
I think I’ve posted a variation on this story just about every year I’ve published this blog…
From July 2021 to July 2022, 300,000 more people moved out of the state than moved in. New York had the largest population loss—in both percentage and absolute terms—experienced by any state during that period.
Sadly, this was both predictable and preventable.
In March 2021, a study of New York found that its already staggeringly high tax burden had worsened due to an increase in the top marginal tax rate to almost 15% for those in New York City. The study projected that the flood of people leaving would only accelerate—and it did.
Even before that study, the Empire State lost so many people that it cost New York a seat in Congress after the 2020 census. This exodus is a direct response to New York’s obscenely high taxes.
Just how bad is it? Compared with other states, New Yorkers:
Pay the highest total tax burden and highest share of personal income (14%) in taxes.
Endure the second-worst overall business-tax climate.
Face the highest individual income-tax rate and income-tax collections per capita.
Pay the second-highest state and local corporate income tax collections per capita.
Have the fourth-highest property taxes and local sales-tax rate (on average).
Pay the highest cigarette taxes and ninth-highest gasoline taxes.
Remember how I’ve noted that semiconductor memory manufacturers make money hand-over-fist in boom times and barely break even during busts? “Samsung Profits Plunge 69% As Global Chip Demand In ‘Full-Fledged Ice Age.'”
Turnabout is fair play: “U. Houston Prof Tells Students to Report Teachers Berating ‘White People or Christians to DEI Office.'”
Denver Mayor Michael Hancock takes pride in virtue signaling his city as a refuge for illegal aliens. Guess what?
The Biden Administration, in its never-ending quest to punish the oil and gas industry for supplying cheap, reliable energy, tried to block the export of liquefied natural gas to Asia. Then Ted Cruz stepped in.
The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) announced the approval of permits to export liquefied natural gas to Asia after Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) held four agency nominees hostage.
Two Sempra Energy facilities on the West Coast will now be able to ship Texas-produced liquefied natural gas (LNG) to Asia, increasing the supply that competes with Russia to fuel the rest of the continent. They will also allow the transport of LNG supplies by pipeline to Mexico.
The approvals come after the Biden administration’s reticence and Cruz’s corresponding holds placed on four nominees to positions in the DOE. Those nominees are David Crane, to work under DOE Secretary Jennifer Granholm; Jeffrey Matthew Marootian and Gene Rodrigues, both nominated to serve as assistant secretaries; and Evelyn Wang, up for director of the Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy.
A Senate procedural tool, the hold is “an informal practice by which a senator informs Senate leadership that he or she does not wish a particular measure or nomination to reach the floor for consideration.”
Cruz used a similar maneuver back in May to force permit approvals, including one for a Port Arthur facility.
“This decision is a long overdue win for Texas and America,” Cruz spokesman Dave Vasquez said in a statement provided to The Texan.
“These permits will enable West Coast liquefied natural gas export facilities to send U.S. natural gas from Texas and other Western states by pipeline to Mexico, and from there export the LNG to Asia. As a result, American allies and partners in Asia will have access to newer and cleaner alternatives to the coercive energy blackmail pushed by Russia and China.”
The permits will enable the cheaper sale of Texas LNG supply to Asia; it also enables shippers to avoid the congested Panama Canal, thus expediting the supply. In total, the two permits will allow the exchange of 2.33 trillion cubic feet per year of LNG.
In 2021, Texas producers generated 10.3 trillion cubic feet of natural gas.
It’s good to have a senator on your side that knows how to play the game…
Thanks to the SuperGenius policies of the Biden Administration (plus a touch of bad weather), all three of the primary methods by which goods are transported around the nation are under near-term threat:
A union representing about 12,000 rail workers on Monday voted down a tentative contract that was brokered by the White House last month ahead of a possible rail strike.
This vote will force the two sides back to the negotiating table and creates the possibility of a nationwide strike. The potential work stoppage could paralyze the nation’s supply chain and transportation rail service later this fall as the U.S. enters peak holiday season.
Four unions have ratified contracts based on the agreement brokered by the White House, while seven have votes pending on the deal. The eleven unions represent about 115,000 rail workers.
The two largest rail unions — the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers Trainmen, or BLET, and the SMART Transportation Division, or SMART-TD, which make up roughly half of all rail workers — are set to finish voting in the middle of next month.
The Brotherhood of Maintenance of Way Employes Division of the Teamsters, or BMWED, rejected the tentative contract due to frustration with compensation and working conditions, particularly a lack of paid sick days, BMWED President Tony Cardell said in a statement on Monday.
Long-Haul Trucking. Well, if you can’t ship via rail, at least you can ship in an 18-wheeler, right? The problem is that the overwhelming majority of 18-wheelers use diesel, and diesel is in short supply.
The crisis gripping the US diesel market is getting out of hand, as demand is surging while supplies remain at the lowest seasonal level for this time of year ever, according to government data released Wednesday.
According to the EIA, the US now has just 25 days of diesel supply, the lowest since 2008; and while inventories are record low, the four-week rolling average of distillates supplied – a proxy for demand – rose to its highest seasonal level since 2007.
In short, record low supply (courtesy of stifling regulations that have led to a historic shortage of refining capacity) meet record high demand. What comes next is, well, ugly (while weekly demand dipped slightly in the latest week, it’s still at highest point in two years amid higher trucking, farming and heating use).
The shortage of the fuel used for heating and trucking and – generally speaking – to keep commerce and freight running, has become a key worry for the Biden administration heading into winter, perhaps even bigger than the price of gas heading into the midterms (well, not really). As Bloomberg’s Javier Blas writes, “such low levels are alarming because diesel is the workhorse of the global economy. It powers trucks and vans, excavators, freight trains and ships. A shortage would mean higher costs for everything from trucking to farming to construction.”
National Economic Council Director Brian Deese told Bloomberg TV Wednesday that that diesel inventories are “unacceptably low” and “all options are on the table” to build supplies and reduce retail prices.
But while the White House claims to be so very concerned about the coming diesel crisis, it is doing absolutely nothing besides draining the SPR which has zero impact on diesel production.
The historic diesel crunch comes just weeks ahead of the midterm elections and will almost certainly drive up prices for consumers who already view inflation and the economy as a top voting issue. Retail prices have been steadily climbing for more than two weeks. At $5.324 a gallon, they’re 50% higher than this time last year, according to AAA data.
For those who might naively suggest “Well, oil refineries should just produce more diesel and less gasoline,” it doesn’t work that way. Though they sit side-by-side in gas pumps, the two fuels come from different points in the fractional distillation column, with Naphtha and Kerosene between them. You can’t just turn a knob to make more of one and less of the other.
Drought closed a portion of the Mississippi River earlier this week, as the major waterway has been an absolute nightmare for tugboat captains to navigate.
A stretch of the Mississippi River just northeast of Memphis, near Hickman, Kentucky, was closed on Monday because water levels reached record low levels. This caused a logjam of vessels and barges. And it’s the third time a portion of the river has been shuttered in weeks.
We’ve reported dangerously low water levels have left farmers with a barge shortage as freight rates hyperinflate. Some farmers have piled up beans and other crops as logistical pipelines to transport farm goods from the Heartland by barge to export terminals in the US Gulf Coast are paralyzed due to extraordinary conditions on the Mississippi.
Ag blog Delta Farm Press’ senior staff writer Ginger Rowsey spoke with barge captain Eric Badeaux who said it usually takes him 1-2 days to move barges from Morris, Illinois, down the Illinois River to the Mississippi River and on to New Orleans. He’s got over four decades of navigating cargo on the waterways and said because of drought and obstacles, it now takes 8-10 days for the same distance.
“We had been on the boat two weeks and had not even made it to Memphis yet,” Badeaux said. At one point, Badeaux and his crew only traveled 60 miles in four days. They typically average 200 miles per day when heading south.
“In one day, we burned 2,367 gallons of diesel fuel, just sitting here fighting the current,” Badeaux said. “That comes out to about $10,000 in fuel for one day, and we barely moved. Multiply the fuel costs for all of the boats just sitting here, plus all the other costs involved in boat maintenance and you can see why transportation costs are through the roof. It’s disastrous.”
On a recent trip, Rowsey said that Badeaux pulled 20 barges of corn, soybeans, and coiled steel down the river, along with ten empty barges. He said the rapidly dropping water levels make the waterway risky to haul more barges. An average tow usually consists of 30-40 full barges.
There’s no guarantee that all three segments of transportation will hit crisis status at all, much less at the same time. A good bout of rain across the Midwest could ease Mississippi drought conditions. A last minute labor agreement could be reached, avoiding any strikes. And low diesel supplies don’t mean no diesel supplies.
But if all three do hit crisis proportions in late November or early December, it’s quite likely that the holidays will be far from happy…
I hope all BattleSwarm readers are safe from the Joe Biden Armageddon thus far. Today’s LinkSwarm features Democrats disdaining the rules followed by the little people, the UN is delusional enough to think they can run the world and defy the laws of economics, and petting dogs is good for you.
UNCTAD, the UN agency dealing with global trade, demanding *all* central banks stop rate hikes and instead switch to price controls. They argue, “policymakers appear to be hoping that a short sharp monetary shock – along the lines, if not of the same magnitude, as that pursued… under Paul Volker – will be sufficient to anchor inflationary expectations without triggering recession. Sifting through the economic entrails of a bygone era is unlikely, however, to provide the forward guidance needed for a softer landing given the deep structural and behavioural changes that have taken place in many economies, particularly those related to financialization, market concentration and labour’s bargaining power.”
I am not playing tennis with them either, but note the radicalism. Indeed, their latest report also argues, “supply-chain disruptions and labour shortages require appropriate industrial policies to increase the supply of key items in the medium term; this must be accompanied by sustained global policy coordination and (liquidity) support to help countries fund and manage these changes.” So, industrial policy. And Fed swap-lines. Expect both ahead.
They also ask why we haven’t regulated shadow-banking, and why we allow speculators in global commodity markets who have nothing to do with underlying trade. On the latter they note, “Market surveillance authorities could be mandated to intervene directly in exchange trading on an occasional basis by buying or selling derivatives contracts with a view to averting price collapses or deflating price bubbles.” I expect nothing but that ahead – and geopolitically driven to boot.
This boils down to: “Hey, we need to institute economic policies proven to fail, because otherwise lots of rich people will lose money!” Wage and price controls were tried in the 1970s and they failed miserably. The longer governments try to defy the market, the more terrible the snapback when those efforts fail.
On Tuesday, the New York Times framed a story circulating on the right over a software company’s connection with the Chinese Communist Party as a “right-wing conspiracy theory.”
“At an invitation-only conference in August at a secret location southeast of Phoenix, a group of election deniers unspooled a new conspiracy theory about the 2020 presidential outcome,” was the Times’ original lede (via the Daily Caller).
In it, the Times wrote that “right-wing” election deniers in Arizona had fabricated a conspiracy theory that election software company Konnech had secret ties to the CCP, and was passing them information on around two million US poll workers.
“In the two years since former President Donald J. Trump lost his re-election bid, conspiracy theorists have subjected election officials and private companies that play a major role in elections to a barrage of outlandish voter fraud claims,” reads the article. “But the attacks on Konnech demonstrate how far-right election deniers are also giving more attention to new and more secondary companies and groups. Their claims often find a receptive online audience, which then uses the assertions to raise doubts about the integrity of American elections.”
The next morning, Konnech executive Eugene Yu was arrested for the alleged theft of poll workers’ personal information.
New Orleans Mayor LaToya Cantrell is facing the threat of a recall election and it’s not just the city’s rising crime that has petition signers enraged.
The two people behind the petition are both Democrats demanding the Democrat mayor leave office for her “failure to put New Orleans first and execute the responsibilities of the position,” according to Fox News.
In 2021, more than 150 officers left the New Orleans Police Department, despite a surge in murders and carjackings. Carjackings so far this year stand at 217, an increase of over 200 percent since 2019, according to the Metropolitan Crime Commission weekly bulletin.
But it’s the mayor’s exorbitant travel spending that has people up in arms.
She traveled to sister cities Ascona, Switzerland, and Juan Antibes-les-Pins on the French Riviera this summer, costing the City of New Orleans close to $45,000, including first-class international airfare with lie-flat seating.
The city’s travel policy requires employees to pay the difference in cost for work-related airfare upgrades, stating “employees are required to purchase the lowest airfare available … employees who choose an upgrade from coach, economy, or business class flights are solely responsible for the difference in cost,” Fox News reported.
But Cantrell hasn’t paid the near $30,000 bill from her first-class international flight upgrades over the summer.
She has claimed the visits are an investment in the city and necessary for her safety.
“My travel accommodations are a matter of safety, not of luxury,” The Times-Picayune/The New Orleans Advocate reported. “As all women know, our health and safety are often disregarded and we are left to navigate alone. As the mother of a young child whom I live for, I am going to protect myself by any reasonable means in order to ensure I am there to see her grow into the strong woman I am raising her to be. Anyone who wants to question how I protect myself just doesn’t understand the world Black women walk in.”
Yes, I’m sure the men and women who walk the streets of New Orleans at night have never know unthinkable fear of having to fly coach to Switzerland.
“Federal Law Does Not Exempt LGBT Employees From Bathroom, Dress Code, Policies, Judge Rules…A U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) policy document from June 2021 overreached in its interpretation of the Supreme Court’s ruling forbidding employment discrimination based on sexual preference and gender identity, Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas found. Texas sued over the guidance.”
Well, fellas, if you don’t want OPEC+ to be in a position where it can influence U.S. gasoline prices a month before the election, you need policies that minimize the U.S. market’s dependence upon the global oil market. This means maximizing U.S. oil production and expanding U.S. refinery capacity.
It would be a mild exaggeration to declare that the Biden administration hascompletely stopped issuing leases for oil and gas drilling on federal lands and in federal waters, but only a mild one. As the Wall Street Journal reported last month, “President Biden’s Interior Department leased 126,228 acres for drilling through Aug. 20, his first 19 months in office, the analysis found. No other president since Richard Nixon in 1969-70 leased out fewer than 4.4 million acres at this stage in his first term.” It’s not a complete halt, but it’s very close to one. This means that the U.S. is almost entirely dependent upon oil production from private lands.
The good news is that there’s still a lot of oil beneath private lands. As of July, the U.S. was producing 11.8 million barrels per day, an increase from the 11.1 million barrels per day produced in January 2021, the month President Biden took office. But before the pandemic hit in early 2020, the U.S. was producing 12.8 million barrels per day, and it even hit 13 million barrels per day in November 2019. We have the proven ability to produce about 1.2 million more barrels per day than we are, if we want to do so and our public policies encourage it. But right now, they do not.
The Biden administration keeps insisting that it’s doing everything it can to bring gas prices down, including releasing oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve — which is now at its lowest level in 40 years. But what’s in the SPR is oil, not gasoline, and oil must still be refined. You can’t just pump the stuff out of the ground and put it in your car.
U.S. refineries are running at full capacity, or just short of full capacity. This is why oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve releases got sent to Europe and Asia, because they had the room and equipment to turn it into actual usable fuel. The U.S. currently has no more spare ability to turn the oil from the reserve into stuff that will actually make your car move; yelling at the oil companies isn’t going to change what is fundamentally an engineering problem.
And Democrats absolutely refuse to let anyone build new oil refineries.
Multiple sources have confirmed that Nord 2 was full of natural gas; that it was full for at least months; and that said natural gas had never moved.
It. Just. Sat. There. For — allegedly — months.
During normal operations of a pipeline, you run a pig through fairly regularly. A “pig” is a bit of equipment pushed by the gas flow, and as it moves along it shoves water and hydrate slurry down to where it can be removed; and it scrapes compounds off the inside walls (hydrogen sulphide, I’m looking at you) that might be are probably eating your pipe.
Note the part above where the pigs are pushed by the gas. The gas in Nordstream 2 never moved. That means no pig ever went down the line to shove water out, move hydrate slurry, or stop H2S from corroding the steel of the pipeline.
As I said in the previous post — and I will continue to say — none of this rules out intentional Acts of War. There are idiots enough in that region that sabotage can’t be discounted.
“A lot of folks are running the White House. Joe Biden just isn’t one of them.” “Biden is surrounded with longtime D.C. power players, such as Ron Klain, Susan Rice, Anita Dunn, John Podesta, Gene Sperling – a veritable “who’s who” of Beltway knife fights and insider skullduggery. Throughout their long careers, they’ve never sought credit or voter approval. Just power.”
“NYC Mayor Declares State of Emergency over Influx of Illegal Immigrants. [New York City mayor Eric Adams] said at least 17,000 asylum seekers have arrived in the city by bus from other parts of the country since April.” Oh, a million illegal aliens come over the border into Texas and it’s no big deal, but 17,000 show up in your “sanctuary city” and suddenly it’s a problem!
“NYU Fires Chemistry Professor After Students Launch Petition Claiming His Course is Too Hard.” The lesson here seems to be that businesses shouldn’t hire NYU grads…
British blogger eats on £1 for a single day and has a very tough time of of it, even with foraging and scavenged condiments. Despite the dollar-pound exchange rate being so favorable, I don’t think I could do that on $1 a day shopping at HEB, and even if you made it $1.25, it would have to be three meals of ramen. Also, I don’t think I can even buy a single carrot at HEB (if I had wanted to), spaghetti is considerably more than 23¢ for 500 grams. $5 for $5, that I could do, and $30 for 30 days would be grim but very doable (price, pasta, and beans).
Peter Zeihan (him again) spoke at Iowa’s Swine Day on the topic of Agriculture at the End of the World:
At lot of this is Zeihan’s polished Greatest Hits presentation (Deglobalization, the need to stop Russia in Ukriane to prevent a future conflict with NATO that would go nuclear, China’s demographic crash, the cult of personality/isolation of Xi Jinping, China’s absurd never-ending Flu Manchu lockdowns, etc.), but here are some highlights of specific agriculture topics:
Russia isn’t just destroying population centers in Ukraine, it’s deliberately targeting Ukraine’s agricultural infrastructure, including grain silos.
Odessa is not a normal city. It is at the mouth of the Nipur river, which is kind of their equivalent of the Mississippi, and it is also their manufacturing center. It’s a cultural hub. It’s a financial center. It is New York and Houston and St. Louis and Chicago and New Orleans all in one. And if the Russians succeed in capturing it, that is the end of Ukraine as a modern economic entity. Right now Odessa is under blockade. They can’t export anything. This has been the source of 95 of their exports to this point.
China’s pork industry got hit hard by swine flu three years ago, and they’re probably getting hit by it now.
They’re trying to regrow the swine industry with subsidies, but that’s just resulted in “Two million people who have no idea what they’re doing” buying the wrong kinds of feed.”
“If they don’t have pork, all they’ve got left is rice. Rice is the most phosphate input intensive crop.”
“The Chinese have traditionally been the world’s largest producer and exporter of phosphate, ’cause it’s a food security issue. Well they’ve stopped all exports until further notice. So we’ve lost potash because of the Ukraine War. We’ve lost phosphate because of Chinese mismanagement.”
Skipping over the oil stuff, but Texas is sitting pretty because it’s easier and quicker to bring shale oil production online.
Did I already mention that Zeihan says Russia is probably going to lose Siberian well use because if they can’t ship it off, it freezes in the permafrost?
“We’re not looking at a recession, we’re looking at an energy-induced depression that’s already affecting multiple continents. But not here…The baseline here are pretty good.”
The effect of reduced fertilizer supply to the rest of the world? “This is famine. We will have it again in the fourth quarter of this year…a half a billion to a billion people will suffer malnutrition.”
If you stop growing wheat on marginal land due to fertilizer shortage, you start growing it on your better land, and your export output collapses.
“The volume of internationally traded agricultural commodities is in the early stages of collapse.”
The Brazilian Serato is heavily dependent on external inputs from abroad. We, on the other hand, get the overwhelming majority of our fertilizer inputs nationally and from Canada.
“There is no Brazilian agricultural sector without Russian involvement. And Russian involvement is going away. It’s the world’s largest source of soy exports. And without global soy exports, there is not a global pork industry. Except here. And if we’re being nice, Canada too.”
Argentina will probably do fine as well.
“Your mid case scenario should be inflation of nine to 15% for at least the next five years.”
“You are looking at the fastest expansion in farm incomes, per person, and per acre that we have ever seen in this country’s history, and it will last for at least the remainder of this decade.”
I think Zeihan has a tendency to overstate the case sometimes, but he’s more right than wrong…
With Russia shutting down the NordStream gas pipeline for maintenance, Peter Zeihan wonders if the end of Germany’s vaunted economic engine is nigh.
Some takeaways:
NordStream has made Germany “horrendously” dependent on Russia for energy.
Russia is blackmailing Germany to stop supporting Ukraine.
“Four things that the Germans rely upon to be the economic powerhouse that they are:”
That cheap natural gas.
Their economic model it is based on access to large volumes of cheap Russian energy, both in terms of for electricity, and as industrial inputs to power the entire German manufacturing model. So that all by itself could kill the German system almost overnight. Well, not overnight, but within a year.
“The Germans rely on a large, robust, highly skilled workforce, but Germany has one of the fastest aging societies in the world…Germany will hit mass retirement this decade, and so the model was always in danger on demographic grounds.”
Third: “Access to central European labor all the way from Poland to Romania and even further east…but that’s going away too. Because just as the Germans are rapidly aging, the central Europeans are aging even more rapidly…the birth rate in all of these countries is actually lower than it is in Germany, so it’s every bit as terminal.”
Fourth, you need the global economic trading system that is now breaking down and America is backing away from.
His conclusion:
All of this put together suggests that the manufacturing model that has sustained Germany, that has provided the tax base, that has provided economic growth, that has made the population relatively happy with their situation, it’s gone. And it’s going to vanish within the next year. And a Europe that does not have a German motor at its heart is a Europe that all of a sudden needs to find a very very different way to function.
As with a lot of Zeihan’s observations, he has a lot of fundamentals right but his conclusions seem overstated. Germany has the resources to abandon their green delusions and restart coal and nuclear plants, assuming they have the political will. And the degree to which globalization is breaking down is the significant subtraction of China and Russia from it. There’s still a lot of U.S./EU trade to be had, even if it does get a bit more expensive. And Germany, so high up on the value-added foodchain, is well-position to survive.
The labor shortage is a trickier problem to solve, and probably was one of the main reasons Angela Merkel was so intent on raking in Islamic “refugees.” But maybe real refugees from the Russo-Ukrainian War might provide an opportunity. It would be pretty ironic if Ukrainians were to find their lebensraum in the bosom of Germany…
This is a catch-all post of various instances of Democrats acting badly I meant to include in the last few LinkSwarms and just didn’t manage to squeeze in.
On Wednesday, Reuters revealed that more than 5 million barrels of oil from the nation’s Strategic Petroleum Reserves were sent overseas as part of President Joe Biden’s latest release initiated in March.
Some of that oil went to India, some to the Netherlands, and some was sent to China where the president’s son has engaged in years of potentially criminal business activity embroiling the Biden White House in scandal since the 2020 campaign.
On Thursday, the Washington Free Beacon published new details about the Chinese oil shipments from the U.S. emergency reserves that Biden promised were tapped to “ease the pain that families are feeling” in the United States from high energy prices.
“The Biden administration sold roughly one million barrels from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve to a Chinese state-controlled gas giant that continues to purchase Russian oil, a move the Energy Department said would ‘support American consumers’ and combat ‘Putin’s price hike,’” the Beacon’s Collin Anderson reported. “Biden’s Energy Department in April announced the sale of 950,000 Strategic Petroleum Reserve barrels to Unipec, the trading arm of the China Petrochemical Corporation. That company, which is commonly known as Sinopec, is wholly owned by the Chinese government.”
Sinopec is also tied to Hunter Biden, whose private equity firm, BHR Partners, bought a $1.7 billion stake in the company seven years ago.
Hunter Biden’s lawyer told the New York Times in November that the president’s son, “no longer holds any interest, directly or indirectly, in either BHR or Skaneateles.”
According to the Washington Examiner, however, Hunter Biden remained listed as a part-owner of the firm as late as March.
“Business records from China’s National Credit Information Publicity System accessed Tuesday continue to identify Skaneateles as a 10% owner in BHR, and Washington, D.C., business records continue to list Biden as the only beneficial owner of Skaneateles,” the paper reported. “The White House has routinely deflected questions about Biden’s business dealings to his attorneys, who have remained largely mum.”
“It’s possible that China’s business registry hasn’t yet been updated to reflect a potential transfer or sale of Skaneateles’s 10% stake in BHR to another party,” the Examiner added.
Meanwhile, Biden’s Energy Department has refused compliance with requests under the Freedom of Information Act probing the administration’s improper use of the nation’s strategic oil reserves maintained for emergencies. Last week, the Functional Government Initiative, a nonprofit government watchdog, filed a lawsuit to compel records concerning administration officials’ decision to tap the oil reserves in the absence of a sudden disruption in supply such as a hurricane or cyberattack.
I would say it’s quite revealing how quickly Democrats resorted to racist slurs against Justice Clarence Thomas following the overturning of Roe vs. Wade, but not really. They’ve long shown they are racist against any minority that refuses to toe the leftist line.
Twitter has been a cesspool of liberals calling Justice Thomas endless racist slurs … and of course, Twitter does nothing. Samuel Jackson called him ‘Uncle Clarence,’ and several people reported him and said they were told by Twitter it was not against the rules to call him that slur.
Why has Clarence Thomas become the target of so much flak following the Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v Wade? It’s because he’s black. It’s because, as someone with black skin, he is not meant to hold conservative views on issues like abortion. In the eyes of the furious woke agitators who are haranguing Thomas even more than they are the other Roe-sceptical justices, he has not only made a bad legal decision – he has also betrayed his race. His sin is twofold: he has undermined the right to abortion and he has failed in his racial duty to nod unquestioningly along to every ‘progressive’ idea. He’s a racial transgressor, a bad black man, and therefore he must be reprimanded even more severely than the white folk on the Supreme Court. Ladies and gentlemen, behold the scourge of woke racism.
We have just witnessed one of the clearest examples yet of identity politics crossing the line into flagrant, undeniable racism. No sooner had it been announced that the Supreme Court was ditching Roe v Wade than so-called progressives were gunning for Thomas. They’ve never liked Thomas, who has been serving on the Supreme Court since 1991. Sure, he might be just the second African American to sit on the court, but for the identitarian elites he’s the wrong kind of African American, so his historic achievement doesn’t count. He’s Catholic – ‘decidedly and unapologetically Catholic’, as he says – and he’s not down with abortion or same-sex marriage. ‘Wait, I thought all blacks were BLM-supporting, pro-trans, sassy progressives like the ones I know from Twitter?’, you can almost hear the upper-middle-class left say. Thomas doesn’t compute for them. To paraphrase Biden, ‘He ain’t black!’.
And so it was inevitable he would get it in the neck following the fall of Roe. Vile racial hatred has been hurled his way since the ruling. Angry woke Twitter has even used the N-word. Thomas is ‘just another dumb field nigger’, said one tweeter. Another called him a ‘nigger slave’ to his white ‘nutcase’ wife. He’s a ‘coon-ass motherfucker’, apparently. And of course he’s an Uncle Tom. Or ‘Uncle Clarence’, as Samuel L Jackson called him. As a result, ‘Uncle Clarence’ trended online for hours. Welcome to the twisted moral universe of Silicon Valley, where you can be banned for life for saying ‘he’ about someone with a penis but you can happily surf a wave of retweets for using racial slurs about high-ranking black men.
For some reason that I really can’t fathom, the progressive left is escalating its hounding of conservative Supreme Court Justices. If they’re trying to turn off normal Americans, they’re doing a great job. If they’re trying to intimidate or coerce SCOTUS, they are failing miserably. But radicals gotta radical.
Justice Brett Kavanaugh already was the target of an attempted assassination. But the hounding and targeting of him continue.
Politico reports that Justice Kavanaugh was escorted by his security team out the back door of a DC restaurant because leftists were “protesting” outside.
On Wednesday night, D.C. protesters targeting the conservative Supreme Court justices who signed onto the Dobbs decision overturning the constitutional right to abortion got a tip that Justice BRETT KAVANAUGH was dining at Morton’s downtown D.C. location. Protesters soon showed up out front, called the manager to tell him to kick Kavanaugh out and later tweeted that the justice was forced to exit through the rear of the restaurant.
In a rare move, Supreme Court Marshal Gail Curley has sent letters to Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan, Montgomery County Executive Marc Elrich, and Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin demanding that authorities put an end to picketing and “threatening activity” outside the homes of SCOTUS justices.
The letter seeks to use state laws to achieve what the Justice Department has clearly rejected under federal law. If the letter prompts arrests, we could see a major free speech challenge in the courts. The timing of the letter, however, is particularly interesting and may reflect a recognition of the limits of the federal law.
Snip.
Under a federal law, 18 U.S.C. 1507, any individual who “pickets or parades” with the “intent of interfering with, obstructing, or impeding the administration of justice, or with the intent of influencing any judge, juror, witness, or court officer” near a U.S. court or “near a building or residence occupied or used by such judge, juror, witness, or court officer” will be fined or “imprisoned not more than one year, or both.”
The Hunter Biden shenanigans, though illegal, immoral and infuriating, is just more of the foreign graft rakeoff that Joe Biden and other high ranking Democrats have been pulling off for years. But the radical unhinged attacks on the Supreme Court after Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization overturned the Democratic Party’s most Holy of Holies shows that the new pitch of derangement Democrats showed after Donald Trump’s unexpected election was not a temporary aberration.
These days, the Democratic Party seems less a political party than a criminal graft conspiracy married to a crazed social justice cult enraged by any setbacks to its grandiose plans or any questioning of their delusional status as anointed saviors of designated victims.
As reality crashes through their swaddling cocooned delusions and limitless self-regard, expect the derangement to get worse.
