(Why do we civil, HONEST, GODFEARING, America-loving citizens LOVE OUR DONALD SO MUCH?)
BECAUSE HE IS AN AMERICAN AND ALWAYS HAS BEEN….AND NOT A FASCISM-LOVING MENTALLY DISEASED, GREEDY LIAR LIKE DEMS NANCY PELOSI, CHARLIE SHUMER, AND HUNDREDS OF THEIR STENCH IN POLITICS SINCE THE ARRIVAL OF RED-DRIVEN BARRACK HUSSEIN OBAMA THE SECOND…….SLEEZY FASCISTS ALL WHO FOUND TRUTH INTERFERING WITH THEIR GREED, THEIR GREED FOR POWER AND HATE FOR TRUTH AND ANYTHING TRADITIONALLY JUDEO-CHRISTIAN.
BUT SOMETHING HAS HAPPENED IN OUR AMERICAN “STATE OF DENMARK!?”
TODAY, OUT OF THEIR CRIMINAL FASCIST BLUE, CNN AND MSNBC APPEARED TO BECOME CIVIL. THEY EVEN PLAY WITH TRUTH!….TAKE A LOOK!…WHERE ARE THE SOVIET-LOVING FASCISTS MAKING NOISES AND SELLING LIES FOR NEARLY A GENERATION AT THESE LEFTY DEM STATIONS!
……and then there was lonely FOREIGNER’S Fox with news “FAIR AND BALANCED”…..WHETHER TRUTH OR NOT IN THE BLANCED, they tried!
FASCIST LEFTY FEMS “OWN” OUR LIBRARIES FROM THE ATLANTIC INTO THE PACIFIC! THEIR NOISES AND BRAINLESSNESSES ARE TOTALLY ALLERGIC TO TRUTH…..(“Truth is so male from our suffering female past”, the lefty quarters of all sexes complain.
What IS the male role for the human animal? It’s been this way for millions of years….
(1: To Protect The Female and Save the Species!……sorry, lefty fems! AS AN ANIMAL BY INSTINCT TO PROTECT HIS FEMALE’S OFFSPRING….IN ORDER FOR THE SURVIVAL OF THE SPECIES. NOTHING SINCE HAS CHANGED MUCH! (……until in America about 40 years ago when the lefties began their hunts TO RULE THE NATION.)
And, what is the female role for the human animal? It’s been that, this way for millions of years….
(2: TO MOTHER TO SAVE THE SPECIES!!!!!
According to today’s television news, the DEM FASCISTS OF THE NANCY ILK AND HER CHARLES SCHUMER PALS ARE NOW YESTERDAY FOR THEIR STENCH!
!t’s a new day America? OUR TODAY’S USUAL GOP IS TOO NERVOUS AND SOME TOO BOUGHT BY BIG BUSINESS WITH MITCH MCCONNELL LEADING THE SHOW.
(AND OUR DONALD IS STILL THE AMERICA FIRST THESE DAYS!)
Three recent left-wing tracts demonstrate how the Woke Occupation Army, and its pagan gods, are at war with traditional America and how they are determined to pin the blame on us.
“The United States is coming to an end. The question is how.”
Those are the opening lines of The Next Civil War: Dispatches from the American Future, by Canadian journalist Stephen Marche. It is one of several new books examining the possibility of our current political differences escalating into open conflict.
Marche’s book purports to be a fair-minded analysis of our partisan divide, but isn’t. His effort is interesting mainly as a sociological exhibit of the incurious leftist mind. The author launches his investigation by claiming that he has no stake in American politics, considering himself neither a Democrat nor a Republican. Yet on virtually the same page where he makes this statement he writes ominously about “the rise of the hard-right anti-government patriot militias” without so much as hinting at the existence of any leftist extremists. In fact, Marche claims “Left-wing radicalism matters mostly because it creates the conditions for right-wing radicalization.” (Keep that bizarre claim in mind; it turns up elsewhere.)
Almost unbelievably, in a book devoted to the growing political divisions in the United States, the deadly and ideologically charged riots of 2020 are not even mentioned. In his single reference to the black-clad anarcho-Marxists who sacked the downtowns of major cities, Marche states, “Antifa does exist, but it lacks any power or the means to establish power. Left-wing defiance of federal authority, when it comes, tends to be legalistic and political.”
The Next Civil War is shallow and tendentious, and Marche tells at least one flat-out lie, alleging that the January 6 “rioters beat a policeman to death on the steps of the Capitol.” Amazingly, however, Barbara Walter’s How Civil Wars Start: And How to Stop Them is even worse, flaunting its ideological blinders right out of the gate.
Walter opens her book, released in January of this year, by solemnly recounting the 2020 “plot” to kidnap Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer. As with Marche, there’s no excuse for not knowing the facts. Last July, Buzzfeed published a major story revealing how the FBI all but orchestrated this ridiculous escapade. Subsequent revelations by other journalists and media outlets (including Julie Kelly right here at American Greatness) have uncovered even more sordid details about the FBI’s questionable conduct. But Walter—a professor at the School of Global Policy and Strategy at the University of California, San Diego—studiously avoids noticing any of these inconvenient revelations, and clings dogmatically to the feds’ official narrative, which nicely confirms her narrative about the “white nationalist” threats that leave her “alarmed but not altogether surprised.”
Both of these books are simply regime-compliant propaganda, designed to indict the Right preemptively and hold it responsible for any open conflict that might unfold in the coming months or years. Like Marche, Walter mentions Antifa only once, and only to make the same repugnant argument: “anti-fascist” thugs bashing skulls are problematic only because “the specter of left-wing radicals flexing their muscle will be what right-wing extremists invoke—to stoke fear and, ultimately, justify their own violence.”
Since two examples show only a coincidence but three makes a pattern, let me mention one more title in this feculent genre. It Could Happen Here: Why America is Tipping from Hate to the Unthinkable—And How We Can Stop It is essentially a megaphone for Anti-Defamation League alarmism by that organization’s CEO, Jonathan Greenblatt. Predictably, this book like the others mentions Antifa precisely once.
I couldn’t bear reading every page of this wearisome book, but given the ADL’s main concern I did check the index for any discussion of Islamic hatred of Jews. Will anyone be shocked to learn this is a phenomenon more or less invisible to Greenblatt? Under the index heading for “Muslims,” along with entries for “hate crimes against,” “hatred toward,” “interfaith actions,” “mosque shootings,” and “Trump ban on,” I did manage to find a reference to “antisemitic rhetoric.” This directed me to three pages of feel-good fuzziness about Imam Abdullah Antepli, a “recovering antisemite.” For the ADL, there is no active Muslim (or African-American) antisemitism worth mentioning. If there ever were antisemites in the leftist rainbow, Greenblatt implies, they are all now happily in recovery.
All this would be comical if it were not so infuriating; and there’s no point in wasting any more time on these wretchedly dishonest books. (Please don’t buy them!) The most relevant thing to note, from the perspective of political analysis, is that the woke oligarchy evidently decided that 2022 is the year they would explicitly address the possibility of civil conflict.
On that note, it is important to emphasize here that contrary to these defamatory books, almost all Americans on the Right are repulsed by the idea of a civil war, and mostly just want to be left alone by the overbearing thought police. If open civil conflict does come, it seems indisputable that it will be entirely the fault of the leftist oligarchy currently in control of the federal government and most of our major institutions. I cast this blame unequivocally for a simple reason: Preventing civil war is always the responsibility of the invading and conquering nation.
To explain what I mean by that, we need to take a step back.
The ancient Romans—who knew something about conquest—were ruthless in demanding tribute from the tribes and peoples they subjugated. But Rome held its empire as long as it did because it knew when to restrain the heavy hand of cruelty. Imperial Roman policy, maintained over several centuries, usually avoided religious persecution. Generally, occupied nations were required to show total political obedience yet were allowed to keep their ancestral pagan gods. The Romans pursued war but knew the value of peace and thus did not try to conquer human nature. They acknowledged that most people would tolerate the loss of their political freedom as long as they were not robbed of what they held most sacred.
America’s new ruling class is not as humble or gentle as those who dominated the Roman empire.
If there is any doubt that the United States is currently occupied by a foreign power, fanatically devoted to an alien faith, consider this widely circulated photo.
Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
This is an act of religious worship. Taken on June 8, 2020, the photograph shows the Democratic leadership of Congress kneeling in silent remembrance of the martyred George Floyd. Two dozen wealthy and aged plutocrats remained in this pose—with their creaky knees on a cold marble floor—for 8 minutes and 46 seconds, symbolically reenacting Floyd’s Passion. This painful act of contrition reveals unmistakably the remorseless piety that rules the souls of our political and intellectual elites. The god of the Holy Empire of Antiracism is a pitiless and jealous god—far more vengeful, in fact, than the God of the Bible.
The intensity of our rulers’ woke piety is odd for many reasons, including that God (according to them) is supposed to be dead—a claim tediously repeated for more than a century by the leading intellectuals of the Left. Religion was held to be a lingering superstition that only deplorables cling to, along with their guns. Clearly that is no longer the case. There may once have been a time when people on the Left considered themselves, and perhaps even were, liberal believers in secular reason, freedom of speech, and the universal brotherhood of mankind. Those convictions—if they ever truly existed in fact and not merely in speech—are now gone.
The religion of the Woke Occupation preaches a strange catechism. If George Floyd is the faith’s greatest martyr, its prophet was, until recently, Anthony Fauci. In November 2021, speaking on CBS’s “Face the Nation,” Fauci said of his critics, “they’re really criticizing science, because I represent science.” As the embodiment of science, of course, Fauci sanctified himself as a kind of public health oracle, whose authority exceeds any elected official in the federal government—including White House occupant Joe Biden.
Millions of woke faithful obeyed Fauci’s commandments with worshipful devotion. (Recently, the prophet seems to have made a pilgrimage into the wilderness in order to be out of sight for the midterm elections.) Unlike Moses, Fauci could claim no miracles to endow his authority with divine sanction. On the contrary, his pronouncements revealed all-too-human ignorance and inconsistency, not to mention audacious dishonesty. Nevertheless, while racism constitutes the original sin of the woke religion, science represents its Holy Writ and promise of salvation. These elements—we must immediately note—fit together uneasily; so much so that most interpretations of the Left’s new religious impulse tend to focus on one aspect or the other, but rarely account for both.
If the theology of the woke occupation has two distinct strands, it seems to comprise three political components: 1) a faction focused on racial grievances highlighted by BLM and critical race theory, largely sustained and legitimized by the universities; 2) a militant anarcho-Marxist wing led by Antifa which receives rhetorical and organizational support from socialist members of Congress, radical mayors and district attorneys, and obscure financial backers; and 3) an elite, cosmopolitan oligarchy that exerts powerful influence on our public discourse, imposes woke ideology on ever larger segments of the private sector, and swells the budgets of the militants with extravagant financial contributions.
Clearly, the racial element of woke religiosity tracks with the BLM/critical race theory political component, while faith in science overlaps with the technocratic authority of the global oligarchy. Yet these factions represent very different, and in some ways conflicting, interests and policy agendas. And there is still the anarcho-Marxist element to account for. How all these pieces fit together and who controls whom (or even if anyone is clearly in charge) are difficult questions, to say the least. I plan to dig into this question a bit deeper in a future essay.
What is clear is that the Woke Occupation Army, and its pagan gods, are at war with traditional America. And like religious fanatics throughout history, they regard all “heretics” as their implacable enemies.
The amount of hand-wringing that’s been going on in the press over Tulsi Gabbard lately has been either highly entertaining or seriously alarming, depending on your personal perspective. What everyone claims to be so upset about is the fact that Gabbard expressed alarm over revelations that biological research laboratories in Ukraine (“biolabs”) which have received funding from the United States Government contain dangerous pathogens and they might either be compromised in the fighting or even be taken over by the Russian invaders. Those statements were almost immediately declared to be “Russian disinformation” in the press and among her fellow Democrats. Her statements were somehow warped into claims that she said the United States was “running” some sort of biological weapons laboratories (“bioweapons labs”) in Ukraine. The White House and their defenders in the MSM have worked overtime to state that we are operating no such bioweapons labs in Ukraine, despite nobody – including Tulsi Gabbard – ever claiming that we did.
But simply mangling Gabbard’s statements and lying about what she said wasn’t enough for some of her critics. The Daily Beast decided to do some deep digging, fervently hoping to come up with some sort of evidence that Gabbard is an undercover Putin puppet on the payroll of the Kremlin. What they came up with was a pair of campaign contributions to Gabbard’s ill-fated presidential primary run from a woman accused of being a Russian agent totaling roughly $59. This was then blown up as some sort of evidence of Russian collusion. This prompted Gabbard to return to the Tucker Carlson show to set the record straight, causing the people at the Daily Beast to basically lose their minds.
“You saw headlines a couple of days ago: ‘Tulsi Gabbard Paid Off By Russian Agents,’” the former Democratic candidate said. “What the media is lying about is the fact that an American citizen gave my campaign a $59 contribution coming from a woman I’ve never met, someone I don’t know, I don’t know anything about, but somehow they feel justified in saying, ‘Tulsi Gabbard is being paid off.’”
Gabbard, who has parroted the Russian government’s stance on its invasion of Ukraine so well that she has been cited approvingly by Russian state television, then accused the press of somehow threatening the U.S. government.
“The danger in the media lying so blatantly to the American people—these so-called journalists who have a responsibility to the public—it poses a very direct threat to our democratic republic because they continue to get away with it,” Gabbard asserted, sounding more and more like Carlson. “They continue to parrot and propagate these lies and they need to be held accountable. They need to be exposed.”
The truly amazing thing about this latest Daily Beast article is that they essentially did nothing but cover the allegations that Gabbard made against them. While the tone was mocking, what TDB failed to do was refute a single one of Gabbard’s charges. And that’s understandable since they really can’t refute things that turned out to be absolutely true.
It’s an established fact that Elena Branson made two small-dollar donations to Gabbard’s primary campaign. Why she did it is not known but perhaps someone can ask her if the law ever catches up with her. But the point is, does anyone seriously believe that Russia thought they could buy off a potential presidential candidate (if an extremely long-shot prospect) for fifty-nine bucks? And that’s all the Daily Beast managed to come up with.
Just for the record, neither Gabbord nor Tucker Carlson pulled the information under discussion out of thin air. Undersecretary of State Victoria Nuland said under oath that the biolabs in question are indeed in operation in Ukraine and our government is worried that they might be compromised leading to the potential release of deadly pathogens. On top of that, Robert Pope of the Pentagon’s Defense Threat Reduction Agency’s Cooperative Threat Reduction Program confirmed not only the existence of the labs but of Soviet-era bioweapons that were being studied and disposed of.
In other words, everything that Tulsi Gabbard actually said was true. But the Biden administration and its staunch defenders in the MSM have fallen back on the old trick of answering questions that nobody asked, such as the issue of the supposed bioweapons labs that Gabbard never once mentioned.
In case you haven’t seen it, here’s the brief appearance that Gabbard had on Carlson’s show to discuss accusations from everyone ranging from Mitt Romney to the Morning Joe Crew about how Gabbard is a treasonous liar promoting Russian disinformation or whatever. It’s all a bit much to swallow.
Just when everything seemed to be getting back to the new normal, abnormality struck again. The war in Ukraine is raging and changing the face of the globalized world.
The situation is confusing as people struggle to find reasons behind the invasion. Conspiracy theories abound on both sides. Like the scenes of battle in Ukraine, chaos reigns in the minds of so many. There seems to be no rhyme or reason in the attacks.
However, four points can help people better understand what is happening. There is some method to the madness.
Russia Was Already Part of the World Order
The first point is that the sanctions prove that Russia was well integrated into the globalized world. Vast sectors of the Russian economy were interwoven into the worldwide networks and commodity markets. It was not easy to disengage.
This conclusion runs contrary to those who say that Russia is a power opposing the current world order. This is not true.
Western money and investment helped rebuild the country in the decades after the Cold War. Most major oil companies, for example, were involved in extracting oil from Russia. Multinational firms were everywhere. Western banks and accounting firms helped integrate Russia into the financial system. Even the McDonald’s franchise operated at hundreds of Russian locations. The sanctions proved the extent of Russian participation in the world economy.
Unfortunately, Russia fully absorbed decadent globalized culture in movies, concerts and bad fashions. All these things harmed the nation (and the West). The sanctions in this area also proved that, before the war, Russia was a fully integrated part of the world order.
Russia Pursues an Instant Disengagement from this World Order
The second point is that Russia is pursuing a rapid disengagement from its important yet second-tier place in the current world order. President Putin used the one thing that could cause Western disinvestment quickly: an unjust war that would galvanize worldwide public opinion by its brutality.
He knew that the West is terrified by the prospect of war and will use every economic sanction in the book to avoid conflict. Thus, as the war gets ever more intense, the economic sanctions levied against Russia become greater. The Russian president facilitated instant disengagement and let the West do it.
In just weeks, he has managed to destroy the work of decades. The disengagement has the advantage that the Western firms are leaving Russia of their own accord with the approval and pressure of governments. They leave behind assets sold at fire-sale prices or abandoned. Everything will be in Russian hands or face nationalization.
A Desired and Forced Geopolitical Realignment
Thirdly, Russia made no secret of its alignment with China in the period leading up to the war. At the Winter Olympics, President Putin and Chinese leader Xi Jinping signed a joint statement signaling their desire to construct a new “multipolar” world order. They agreed to cooperate “without limits” to achieve this goal of ushering in “international relations of a new type.” The Russian President has long idealized a Eurasian union that would form a single trading and cultural bloc independent of the West.
The war in Ukraine is putting this non-secret plan into effect. It forces Russia to unite with China, which is the only power big enough to resist the pressure of Western sanctions against Russia. The burning of the economic bridges with the West makes China the only nation that can absorb the massive amounts of raw materials and grains that Russia produces. The two countries combined can scramble the post-Cold war economic and political order and create new tensions and shortages. Some speculate that the forced marriage between China and Russia will lead to a parallel financial system with the yuan as the reserve currency.
The desired realignment will pit the decadent West against the post-communist East. Two distinct political blocs are forming, which will present the world with two false alternatives: crumbling liberal democracy or autocratic national socialism.
The Target Is the Vulnerable West
Finally, this move comes at a time of extreme vulnerability in the West. The two-year pandemic has already unraveled many complex relationships and supply chain links that held the world together. Brutal restrictions and mandates have polarized populations and hinder governments’ abilities to unite efforts and confront problems. Irresponsible government decisions and labor and supply problems are fueling high levels of inflation.
The war will wreak havoc upon the West by scrambling further the already stressed production systems. The millions of refugees flooding into Europe add to the burdens already carried by the host countries, taking up resources that could be used to strengthen defense abilities in the West.
In this scenario, the East holds advantages. East and West are so integrated that it will not be easy for the West to wean itself from Eastern (especially Chinese) products quickly. The natural gas pipelines are like nooses around the necks of Western countries overdependent on Russian fuel. Chinese goods so dominate the market that there are few alternatives. The Ukraine war and the economic sanctions also put the West in a precarious position.
The East’s autocratic (read totalitarian) regimes suffer much less from these problems than the fragmented Western societies. The East has much to gain and the West much to lose by this splitting up.
There is a method to this madness. One final result of the Ukraine war will be this permanent division between East and West. It will signal the failure of the post-Cold War experiment that was supposed to signal the end of history. A major geopolitical realignment will take place that could have dramatic consequences and lead to world war.
If you travel, you know that one of the things that countries and states zealously check for is smuggling prohibited foods. That sounds neurotic and protectionist, but it’s an important part of securing a country’s food supply. If pests, parasites, or diseases migrate into a nation’s food supply, it can destroy entire farming sectors and even lead to famine. That’s why it matters that China has been caught smuggling hundreds of thousands of pounds of potentially contaminated meats into America. (Hat tip: FrontPage Mag.)
I first fully understood the problem of a contaminated food supply in the early 1980s when I learned that England’s cattle had been contaminated with Bovine spongiform encephalopathy (AKA mad cow disease). News of it broke not long after I returned to America following a college year in England. Having eaten beef in England (although not much because I couldn’t afford it), I neurotically worried for some years after that I might find myself afflicted with the disease. As it turned out, I avoided that scourge, but over the next few years, the British slaughtered over four million cattle, and numerous countries banned British beef. It was a tragedy and an economic disaster for farmers.
Thus, there is nothing foolish about countries rigorously policing any contaminants that might get into the food supply. But little things like rules don’t stop the Chinese. After all, they’ve already flooded America with fentanyl and COVID, so why shouldn’t we also be a target of potentially dangerous meats?
More than 262,000 pounds of prohibited meat products have been seized from the Los Angeles/Long Beach seaport so far this year.
262,237 pounds of pork, chicken, beef and duck have been seized so far by agriculture specialists with U.S. Customs and Border Protection, the agency reported Monday.
It marks a 33% increase over the same period last year.
CBP has seen a “staggering” increase in the amount of prohibited meat coming from China which has been intercepted at the L.A. seaport.
In 2021, the CBP seized 786,000 pounds of prohibited animal products, an 80% increase from 2020.
Nor are the risks from these smuggled Chinese products hypothetical. In fact, not only is China the incubator of COVID, along with every annual flu, but it also has a whole host of icky meat diseases:
According to the USDA, animals in China can be affected by diseases such as African Swine Fever, Foot and Mouth Disease and Swine Vesicular Disease.
There is a fear that countries whose animals are infected with ASF can spread the virus to cattle in the U.S., potentially crippling the domestic pork industry, CBP said.
There is an irony associated with this risk. Smithfield Foods, founded in Virginia in 1936, is the world’s largest pig processing plant in the world. Wikipedia offers a rundown on its statistics, and they are amazing. Here are just a few (hyperlinks and end notes omitted):
Founded in 1936 as the Smithfield Packing Company by Joseph W. Luter and his son, the company is the largest pig and pork producer in the world. In addition to owning over 500 farms in the US, Smithfield contracts with another 2,000 independent farms around the country to grow Smithfield’s pigs. Outside the US, the company has facilities in Mexico, Poland, Romania, Germany, and the United Kingdom. Globally the company employed 50,200 in 2016 and reported an annual revenue of $14 billion. Its 973,000-square-foot meat-processing plant in Tar Heel, North Carolina, was said in 2000 to be the world’s largest, processing 32,000 pigs a day.
Wow! And I know people who believe that a good Smithfield ham is a little slice of heaven.
But here’s the kicker: since 2013, Smithfield ceased being an all-American company and became an all-Chinese company when the Shuanghui Group, China’s largest meat processor, purchased it (with the Obama government’s approval). That should worry us, just as China’s other purchases of America’s food suppliers should worry us.
Ironically enough, however, because China owns America’s largest pig processing facilities, it is China that will be most affected should the meat China smuggles onto American soil have “African Swine Fever, Foot and Mouth Disease and Swine Vesicular Disease.” For once, China will be completely hoist with its own petard. Before I start gloating, though, so will the rest of us, as our food supply will suddenly and disastrously contract.
China is an impressive nation, with natural and man-made beauties, and a resilient, hardworking population. It’s also a major troublemaker that has cleverly spent years buying off those in America — politicians, entertainment and news outlets, and celebrities — who should be protecting us but, instead, are happily allowing China to destroy our manufacturing sector; unleash dangerous pandemics; and, now, seriously threaten our food supply. We need a new class of movers and shakers before we are moved and shaken into oblivion.
It is hard to know what information to trust about the situation in the Ukrainian war. A few days ago the Financial Times, which isn’t perfect (what media outlet is these days?) but fairly sober about its news reporting standards, ran a long story outlining what it saw as the significant failures of the Russian invasion:
In the first phase of its offensive, the Kremlin’s military story is one of failure.
Western defence officials have estimated Russian casualties at between 2,000 and 6,000. Based on ratios in similar conflicts, that implies three to four times as many captured and wounded. At its midpoint, such an estimate is more, in three weeks, than the losses of US and UK servicemen combined during 20 years in Afghanistan.
Russia’s losses in materiel are also significant. The Oryx blog has recorded 1,034 Russian vehicles, artillery pieces and aircraft destroyed, damaged, abandoned or captured. These include 173 tanks, 261 armoured and infantry fighting vehicles, and 28 surface-to-air missile systems.
Justin Bronk, research fellow at the UK’s Royal United Services Institute, who co-wrote a book on Russia’s military modernisation under Putin, said the losses “are massively more than in any other recent conflict” including Georgia, Chechnya or Afghanistan in the 1980s.
One of the odd details that jumped out at me was this:
When, several days in, Russian commanders realised they needed to pivot to using more serious firepower, they did so chaotically: huge columns of tanks and artillery moved forward, but the Ukrainians blew up bridges, causing advances to stall. Russian planners appear to have failed to anticipate this basic response, another western military official said, pointing out that engineering units and bridge builders were not even near the front of the advance in some columns.
Back when I studied strategic matters with Harold Rood in graduate school, we looked closely at the Soviet and Warsaw Pact military order of battle, which included a lot of bridge-building equipment—necessary for any serious ground offensive against NATO countries that would surely blow all the major bridges. Is it really possible that the Russian military neglected this?
Second, it appears the reactive armor the Russians have on their tanks designed to foil even a direct hit from anti-tanks rockets—something NATO forces feared when the Soviets rolled it out in the 1980s—appear not to be effective against the Javelin anti-tank rockets we have supplied Ukraine. Maybe that was a conscious design feature of Javelins. I have no idea; I’ve not kept up with weaponry as much as I once did (which wasn’t all that much).
Under President Trump, We Really Had a Wonderful Life
Who wouldn’t prefer a reality that kept Vladimir Putin, Xi Jinping, North Korea, and Iran in check, and brought stability to the Middle East through the Abraham Accords?
In the film, “It’s a Wonderful Life,” George Bailey is able to see what the world would have been like had he never been born. Everything changes. George wasn’t there to save his younger brother from drowning. And, that in turn, meant that his brother wasn’t there to save the lives of hundreds of men on board a U.S. military troop ship. Everything has a domino effect.
Unfortunately, we get to have a similar experience. We see how one terrible leader imposing his disastrous policies on the American people has negatively impacted every American. We also witness how Joe Biden’s immature foreign policy has produced unrest and war.
And, although we are assured by the Left that the 2020 presidential election was pristine—the best ever—we wonder wistfully what the world would look like had President Trump remained in the Oval Office instead of the blindingly incompetent and malevolent Joe Biden.
Like most Americans filling up their cars at the gas station, my jaw dropped when I filled up the other day at the inflated price of more than $4 per gallon. Before Biden took office and stopped exploration, development, and extraction of oil and gas; before he killed the Keystone XL pipeline project; before he begged oil producing nations that hate us to produce more for us, the average price of gas was around $2.30 per gallon.
The “mean tweeting” Trump kept gas affordable. Trump left office with America energy independent, even exporting petroleum products.
Even though demand under Trump and Biden is similar, Biden’s policies have produced a scarcity of gas. The result is higher prices domestically.
And, since every consumer good is trucked throughout the country, higher gas prices have helped cause the upward pressure on prices of our consumer goods. And that includes food!
The fact that Biden’s advisors at first ignored inflation, then said it was temporary, and finally concluded that it was a good thing, indicates a fundamental lack of knowledge of what inflation is and how to bring it back under control.
At the State of the Union, Biden indicated that businesses can simply wave a magic wand: He wants a crackdown on “greedy” businesses that charge too much.
Huh?
How about slowing down the devaluation of American dollars that he wants to spend by the trillions?
If you want to bring down consumer costs that are rising through inflation or economic scarcity, unleash the American energy sector and stop throwing trillions of dollars into thin air.
It is hard to wake up from the dream, as George Bailey found out. We keep finding additional ways that President Trump would make America better.
The border under Biden is in a crisis. Ten thousand illegal aliens cross our southern border everyday. Terrorists and violent criminals have been released into the country. Even when unaccompanied children were apprehended, Biden lost track of 20,000 of them.
I miss the days when an active President Trump could bring the border under operational control, Mexico agreed to the “Remain in Mexico” policy, and we had a president who encouraged our Border Patrol and ICE agents to enforce the law, while taking on the Washington swamp.
When I talk to law enforcement, politicians, and residents along the border, they all wish they could wake up from the nightmare of the Biden Administration to find the safety and rule of law they had under President Trump.
Parents around the country have awakened to the danger of the “wokeness” of their children’s schools. Parents want the best education possible for their children, not the worst indoctrination. They love their children and want to know what their children are being taught.
Under this administration, the Left criticizes and tries to prevent parental involvement in their children’s education. The Left hides what they are doing, and when parents show up at the school board meetings, they are arrested, threatened, and the police apparatus of the federal government spies on them.
Biden’s attorney general has created a task force and a ranking system for parents, even referring to them as would-be domestic terrorists.
As we try to wake from the Biden nightmare we remember the position of the Trump Administration, that parents should have school freedom, participation, and transparency of curriculum.
In the movie, George Bailey implores his guardian angel to bring him back to life and George’s wish is granted.
Who wouldn’t take some tweets in exchange for energy independence, reduced inflation, an economy that produced more participation—pre-COVID—than any in history, support for police, control of our borders, and support for parents’ supervision of their children’s education?
Who wouldn’t prefer a reality that kept Vladimir Putin, Xi Jinping, North Korea, and Iran in check, and brought stability to the Middle East through the Abraham Accords?
As the angel Clarence told George Bailey, “You see, George, you really had a wonderful life.”
The leftists don’t believe it because they like division and despair, but under President Trump, we really had a wonderful life.
It is hard to know what information to trust about the situation in the Ukrainian war. A few days ago the Financial Times, which isn’t perfect (what media outlet is these days?) but fairly sober about its news reporting standards, ran a long story outlining what it saw as the significant failures of the Russian invasion:
In the first phase of its offensive, the Kremlin’s military story is one of failure.
Western defence officials have estimated Russian casualties at between 2,000 and 6,000. Based on ratios in similar conflicts, that implies three to four times as many captured and wounded. At its midpoint, such an estimate is more, in three weeks, than the losses of US and UK servicemen combined during 20 years in Afghanistan.
Russia’s losses in materiel are also significant. The Oryx blog has recorded 1,034 Russian vehicles, artillery pieces and aircraft destroyed, damaged, abandoned or captured. These include 173 tanks, 261 armoured and infantry fighting vehicles, and 28 surface-to-air missile systems.
Justin Bronk, research fellow at the UK’s Royal United Services Institute, who co-wrote a book on Russia’s military modernisation under Putin, said the losses “are massively more than in any other recent conflict” including Georgia, Chechnya or Afghanistan in the 1980s.
One of the odd details that jumped out at me was this:
When, several days in, Russian commanders realised they needed to pivot to using more serious firepower, they did so chaotically: huge columns of tanks and artillery moved forward, but the Ukrainians blew up bridges, causing advances to stall. Russian planners appear to have failed to anticipate this basic response, another western military official said, pointing out that engineering units and bridge builders were not even near the front of the advance in some columns.
Back when I studied strategic matters with Harold Rood in graduate school was looking closely at the Soviet and Warsaw Pact military order of battle, which included a lot of bridge-building equipment—necessary for any serious ground offensive against NATO countries that would surely blow all the major bridges. Is it really possible that the Russian military neglected this?
Second, it appears the reactive armor the Russians have on their tanks designed to foil even a direct hit from anti-tanks rockets—something NATO forces feared when the Soviets rolled it out in the 1980s—appear not to be effective against the Javelin anti-tank rockets we have supplied Ukraine. Maybe that was a conscious design feature of Javelins. I have no idea; I’ve not kept up with weaponry as much as I once did (which wasn’t all that much).
and Chinese leader Xi Jinping signed a joint statement signaling their desire to construct a new “multipolar” world order. They agreed to cooperate “without limits” to achieve this goal of ushering in “international relations of a new type.” The Russian President has long idealized a Eurasian union that would form a single trading and cultural bloc independent of the West.
MN Prager Discussion Group 
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