Like its beer, Germany is the cause of, and the solution to, all of Europe's problems

The Bundeskanzler, quoted here :

"That is why it is a conscious decision on our part to continue the activities of business enterprises in the area of energy supply with Russia," Scholz added.

During the campaign for president in 2019, Joe Biden was pretty clear about punishing the Saudis over Khashoggi, now he plans a trip to beg them for oil

 

Rush Limbaugh's hero Angelo Codevilla was quite mistaken about Russia's ambitions in Ukraine

In "What is Russia to Us?" here Codevilla vainly imagined Russia to be self-limited by the sobering lessons it has learned from its history: 

Today, [John Quincy Adams] would be confident that Russia realizes it cannot control Ukraine except for its Russian part, or the Baltics, never mind the states of Eastern Europe. ...

Adams would not hide the fact that U.S. policy, implemented by ordinary diplomacy, is to foster the Baltic States’, and especially Ukraine’s, independence. But he would know and sincerely convey to Russia that their independence depends on themselves, and that he regards it as counterproductive to try making them into American pawns or even to give the impression that they may be. He would trust in a Ukraine that had stopped longing for the borders that Stalin had fixed for it in 1927 and Khrushchev augmented in 1954, in a Ukraine retrenching into its Western identity (as, for example, by asserting its Orthodox church’s independence from Russia’s), and that is standing firmly on its own feet. He would trust in Russia’s actual acceptance of its inability ever again to control this Ukraine. This would be Adams’s Ukraine policy.

 

Dock workers in the UK and Netherlands refuse to unload Russian oil, gas, and coal

 Story.

Cyprus has denied five Russian navy ships the right to moor and refuel there, so Cyprus' participation in EU sanctions has real teeth

 https://in-cyprus.philenews.com/cyprus-forbids-mooring-of-five-russian-navy-ships-this-week-due-to-ukraine-war/ :

Even though Russia has signed an agreement with Cyprus to give its navy ships access to the Mediterranean country’s ports Nicosia this week forbade five of them from mooring because of the Ukrainian invasion. ... the agreement on the provision of facilities and a mooring permit is suspended.

 

Cancel culture envy on the anti-war right inspires dreams of making an enemies list of people to rub out "when things calm down, God willing"

We are all the same people.

 

The biggest cuck of the moment is Rod Dreher of The American Conservative, prophet of coming soft totalitarianism to The West

Rod Dreher retweets a whiny guy with kids who thinks boomers are dogshit, a Canadian who is intimidated by a Russian circus act training with a bear, and a Russian propaganda map of Ukraine showing "the advance of our troops".

All in the last 24 hours.

He's in Spain and Hungary enjoying the cafe life for Lent.

 

The weak tea of libertarianism means you don't come right out and say the US has no moral obligation to Ukraine, you just retweet it

 

Like it or not, the US owes Ukraine under the 1994 Budapest Memorandum, unless of course it wants to be a traitor to Ukraine just like Russia

 https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Ukraine._Memorandum_on_Security_Assurances

As usual Americans are mentally ill, wanting mutually exclusive things

74% want a no fly zone!

https://www.reuters.com/world/us/exclusive-americans-broadly-support-ukraine-no-fly-zone-russia-oil-ban-poll-2022-03-04/

But fewer than half want the broader war that implies.

 

Not a serious country.
 

 

Remember when The White House was patting itself on the back for evacuating 120k from Afghanistan in 17 days?

 It's always better to rely on yourself. The government will screw up a 2-car funeral.

Half of the country doesn't seem to get it that a wider war in Europe would oblige us to participate under NATO

 Q:

"If a wider war breaks out in Europe, should the U.S. military be involved?" 

A:

 

 

The accent is on the BS

 

Mayor Beetlejuice says “My d--- is bigger than yours and the Italians, I have the biggest d--- in Chicago”

 Here:

“You make some kind of secret agreement with Italians. ... You are out there stroking your d---- over the Columbus statue, I am trying to keep Chicago police officers from being shot and you are trying to get them shot,” Lightfoot said, according to the complaint. “My d--- is bigger than yours and the Italians, I have the biggest d--- in Chicago.”

Always thought there was something a little odd about Chicago's Mayor Lori Lightfoot. 

 

Once again, WaPo story critical of Trump's border wall never mentions Republicans forced Trump to accept Bush-era bollard fencing instead of his promised "impenetrable barrier"

The whole point of forcing Trump to accept bollard fencing was to make him a failure on his signature issue. Everyone already knew it was inadequate from the time of Bush, who agreed to it BECAUSE he knew it wouldn't work. Bush WANTED a porous border. Bollard fencing to Bush was like running on a pro-life plank and never having to do anything about it once in office. Good politics, that's all. Good optics.

Trump was set up to fail, and like a fool, he accepted it. That's the real story.

It was Republican payback for all the mean things Trump said about Republicans in 2015-2016. "We'll fix you, buster. Here's your stupid wall."

These facts are why WaPo has to write an article about the failure of bollard fencing periodically, in order to keep the lie alive that a border wall doesn't work. Their agenda is the same as the Republican Democrat agenda of a porous border, to keep the cheap labor flowing in, and the drugs. It's also Drudge's agenda.

Those two things are the most important to a sick, dying society, otherwise we'd have fixed this long ago.

And obviously, Trump is part of the problem, not the solution.

Now the stink on the border wall is so bad no one will come near it for a generation.

Mission accomplished.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/trump-s-border-wall-has-been-breached-more-than-3000-times-by-smugglers-cbp-records-show/ar-AAUwpuh

 

 

 

 

 

 

I stand vindicated by Real Clear Investigations story about the high percentage of breakthrough deaths in Massachusetts, highest of eight states studied

State Data Shows It's a Pandemic of the Vaccinated Too

 

Clayton Fox, RCI

 

... thousands of Americans are dying from the illness even after having been vaccinated. Striking evidence comes from California, Georgia, and Illinois, where a third of people dying with COVID had been vaccinated – even some who had received a third booster shot. ...

The proportion of fully vaccinated and/or boosted deaths against the number of total deaths is substantial, and appears to have been gradually increasing in recent months at least in several states. 

 

Of the eight states publishing detailed, so-called "breakthrough" death data on the vaccinated to the present, RealClearInvestigations found that Massachusetts – with a substantial 75% fully vaccinated rate – suffered the highest percentage of vaccinated deaths: 55% from January 1 to February 12, 2022.

Follow my label "Massachusetts" for my reporting.

This disgusting piece of trash wanted to sentence a Jan 6 demonstrator to 5 years in the slammer for a 20-minute stroll in the Capitol

The guy killed himself.

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/man-who-pleaded-guilty-to-entering-capitol-on-jan-6-dies-by-suicide

Graves put away Jesse Jackson Jr for 2+ years and his wife for 1 year for crimes he called "staggering".

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-07-26/ex-fraud-prosecutor-nominated-to-be-the-u-s-attorney-in-d-c

 

February 2022 was the fourth worst month of the plague in the US

 

Drudge is promoting Putin analysis by two women who spew psychobabble and illogic

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Fiona Hill at Politico https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2022/02/28/world-war-iii-already-there-00012340

and Amy Knight at The Daily Beast https://news.yahoo.com/russian-people-may-starting-think-092222195.html .

Fiona Hill can't make up her mind: "Putin is increasingly operating emotionally" but "there's been a logical, methodical plan that goes back a very long way".  Then she takes it all back at the end and says Putin didn't "initially set off to do all of this" despite the plan that goes back a very long way but his "feelings of loss, they've all been there" since the dissolution of the USSR, so he is operating emotionally. 

Got it? 

Amy Knight is similarly confused: "Hitler and Stalin were crazy by any psychiatric standard" but "Khrushchev—though volatile and impulsive—was apparently a rational actor, not consumed by the historical grudges and the need to show off his masculine credentials that seem to obsess Putin." Except dictators are all alike: "First of all, like any dictator, Putin does not feel confident of his hold on power".

Meanwhile the Russian people are just mind-numbed robots according to Amy, but they are our only hope: "Russians are conditioned to say they approve of their leader when there is no alternative" you see, but "hopefully, Russians themselves will take action and stop their leader".

And to underscore Amy's illogic, even though she references Putin's insane nuclear threat involving "consequences we have never seen in our entire history" which were made as the invasion began, somehow it was the subsequent "Ukrainian resistance stronger than expected" and crippling "Western sanctions" which are "probably why Putin resorted to the insanity of his nuclear threat".

"She's just pulling it out of her ass". -- Sigmund Freud

The lynch pin in all of this is hydrocarbon supply, and as long as hydrocarbons are anathema to elites of the West, prices will continue to stay high

 West Texas Intermediate Crude is at nosebleed level once again, no doubt about it.