November 30, 2021

A Turd by Any Other Name

Timothy Birdnow

What's in a word?

Experts Caution 'Looting' in Describing Rash of Bay Area Smash and Grabs

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The Solution to the Energy Crisis

Timothy Birdnow

I was in a bit of a row with some liberal folks who were arguing for using electric cars. When it was pointed out to them that the electricity had to be generated they replied "but look at all the electricity you are saving not pumping gasoline!"

That got me to thinking about how easily the energy crisis could be solved.

Why are we running generators on natural gas or coal or even wind or solar? The solution is so obvious, it's staring us in the face.

We could run the generators on electricity!

Just get electric motors and plug them in and they can run the generators and we'd have all the power we needed!

My comment seemed lost on my friends there.I guess so visionary concepts are beyond the mundane minds of the masses!

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Arguing with Polite Idiots: Inflation Edition

Timothy Birdnow

In a Facebook discussion with a polite liberal (there actually is one left) I debate the causes of inflation.

Mike Reynolds disagrees the money supply causes inflation.

Mike says:

At the moment inflation is a fantastic sign that the economy is heating up. Do you really think there is ANY danger now of the economy perpetually overheating like it did in the 70's? Deflation and stagnation are far worse than inflation, they mean the economic engine is failing. When inflation returns that is the sign that the engine has turned back on, so this is good news.

Mike replies:

The Weimar Republic had an inflation rate in the quadrillions due to onerous war reparations that the Allies forced Germany to pay. In more natural circumstances, if inflation is an actual problem then it IS a matter of overheating the economy. The economy is definitely not overheating. The problem with the economy had little to do with supply and demand, the problem was underemployment
. Now that vaccinations have allowed much of the economy to open back up naturally inflation is going to increase. It always does when the economy gets a jumpstart.

I retort: more...

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Resistance to Chinese Finanacial Meddling

Timothy Birdnow

Africa is growing increasingly distrustful of China's "kind" assistance.


https://www.premiumtimesng.com/news/top-news/498057-assets-tied-loans-china-counters-distorted-reports.html

Critics - including watchers in Nigeria, Africa's largest economy that is also relying on "generous" Chinese loans to fund critical infrastructural ambitions - say Beijing is herding poor African nations towards a death trap and endangering their sovereignty.

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False Equivalency

James Doogue

I wish people would stop making analogies between Covid-19 vaccine passports and other requirements to work including, but not limited to:

- Police clearances
- Working With Children Certificate
- Drivers Licence
- Influenza shot
- Measles Vaccine

I even watched an embarrassing, screeching rant by Senator Jacqui Lambie making these types of ridiculously false analogies.But that was about right for her IQ, and the IQ of those she appeals to.

Proof that you haven't got a criminal record, or you have the ability to do something like drive a car, are not analogous to having submitted to a vaccine.

The Covid-19 vaccine is not similar to vaccines for polio, smallpox, MMR or even seasonal influenza.

Those diseases have been studied for decades, (some for centuries). The vaccines were developed over decades before testing. Then tested for years before approval. Then used for decades before mandated.

No amount of moronic screaming makes Jacqui Lambie correct, nor anyone else who makes those false analogies.

Tim adds:

Amen. These are not the same things at all. This is more akin to telling everyone they have to fly on a plane with a student pilot.

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The True Story of the Pandemic

Chester McAteer

Did you read this? I have not, but will try to soon
https://­brownstone.org/­articles/­a-president-betrayed-­by-bureaucrats-scott­-atlass-masterpiece-­on-the-covid-disaste­r/
Trump was adrift on the Covid issue thanks to horrible advice from Fauci and Birx until he brought in new advisers.

Oh, and Jarred Kushner was behind Birx despite her bad advice. Goes to show Ivanka and Jarred are part of the Ruling Class mentality.

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November 29, 2021

Germany Closing New Coal Plants

Timothy Birdnow

From Wattsupwiththat:

In just over a month, Germany will close 3 of its newest and best nuclear power plants and more than 4050 MW of electricity will disappear from northern Europe’s power grid. 4050 MW is equivalent to the average electricity consumption of all of Denmark....

https://wattsupwiththat.com/2021/11/28/slow-disaster-playing-out-as-germany-moves-to-shut-down-8-5-gw-of-baseload-nuclear-capacity/

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Biden Moving Us to War with Russia

Timothy Birdnow

Ever since the Democrats and media began accusing Donald Trump of being a "Russian asset" we've been poking the bear.

Trump was smart enough to know he had to speak softly but carry a big stick, and he worked with Putin without just cravenly kowtowing to him.

But that's changed in the last 11 months as Joe Biden has implemented policies in line with the get-tough-on-Russia rhetoric spewed by the Democrats as part of their war on Trump.

According to The Sun

THE world is "one mistake" from all-out nuclear war thanks to Vladimir Putin's "dangerous games" in Eastern Europe, warns an ex-Navychief.

Moscow is amassing 100,000 troops on its Ukrainian border and is also supporting Belarus dictator Alexander Lukashenko as he "weaponises" migrants against the EU.

And after accusing the US of conducting nuclear bomber drills 20km from its border, the Kremlin said its nuke forces were "on alert" and it had stepped up its military partnership with China.

Admiral Lord Westtold The Sun Online the situation "is extremely dangerous and risky" with Putin playing "games in the area of grey warfare -thingsshort of war."

I don't doubt that. Biden is just the sort of dimwit to bumble into world war, much like Kaiser Wilhelm. He thinks only through the lens of what is politically expedient and sees no limitations on our power where it suits him.

We are moving inexorably towards Armageddon thanks in no small part of the usurper Joe Biden.

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Arctic Ice Poised for Record High

Selwyn Duke

https://www.selwynduke.com/2021/11/global-warmist-buzzkill-arctic-ice-is-poised-to-be-its-thickest-in-a-generation.html


The "Arctic is screaming,” a U.S. government warming-alarmist scientist famously stated in 2010. It turns out this may be true, but what it’s saying is, "I’m freezing!”

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Russian Gazprom Makes Record Profits

Timothy Birdnow

The liberals told us for four years Trump colluded with the Russians. They are on record. They continue to make this claim despite Mr. Trump being exonerated.

Which is what makes this interesting.

Russia’s Gazprom Reports Record Profits as Gas Prices Soar

Russian gas giant Gazprom on Monday said its net income rose to a record 582 billion rubles ($7.8 billion) in the third quarter on the back of soaring gas prices in Europe.

Europe receives a third of its gas supplies from Russia and has seen energy prices surge to record highs as economies have come back online after the end of pandemic lockdowns.

In a statement, Gazprom Deputy Chief Executive Famil Sadygov linked the company's record quarterly profits to Europe's gas crisis and said he was expecting even better results in the fourth quarter.

"Clearly, the price of our supplies to Europe will be significantly higher in the fourth quarter, which will have a positive effect on results for the entire year," the statement said.

So, under President Trump, Russia - his supposed benefactors - were making a lot LESS money from oil and gas than now. It would seem Mr. Biden is the guy helping the Russkies.

And he is. His policies have systematically reduced oil and gas production, forcing prices up. At the same time he approved the Nordstream 2 pipeline from Russia to Europe so as to make Russian fuel economical. Trump would not allow that.

And this while he was killing the Canadian Keystone XL pipeline to our refineries. And squeezing banks to stop lending to oil and gas companies. And angering the Saudis. And trying to ban drilling on public lands.

Who worked the will of Putin and the Russians? It sure wasn't Mr. Trump.

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Biden Admin Wants to Raise Fees for Oil and Gas Drilling

Timothy Birdnow

Shows he has no interest at all in actually lowering prices, but rather is simply doing theater to make it appear he's taking action.

Biden Interior Department calls to raise prices for oil and gas companies to drill on public lands

The Department of the Interior released areport Friday that proposed "modernizing" the federal oil and gas program, in part by charging fossil fuel companies more money to drill on public lands and waters.

The department’s reviewfound that the fiscal components of the current onshore federal oil and gas program are "particularly outdated, withroyalty rates that have not been raised for 100 years," referring to the12.5% rate the federal government charges fossil fuel companies for oil and gas extracted from public lands and public offshore waters.

 

"States with leading oil and gas productionapply royalty rates on state lands that are significantly higher than those assessed on Federallands," the report states. "The Texas royalty rate, for example, can be double the federal rate.

"Likewise, bondinglevels have not been raised for 50 years," it continued. "Federal minimum bids and rents have been the same forover 30 years. These antiquated approaches hurt not only the federal taxpayer but also state budgets because states receive a significant share of Federal oil and gas revenues."

The department said that in addition to raising royalty and bonding rates, the federal government should prioritize leasing in areas with known resource potential and avoid leasing that "conflicts with recreation, wildlife habitat, conservation, and historical and cultural resources."

Which pretty much means all Federal land; they will find a way to interpret any property the oil companies want to explore as fitting into one of those categories. It's a sneaky way to backdoor Mr. Biden's policy of banning drilling, which he implemented when he first took office but had to rescind because of a court order.

These people are relentless.

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Flipping Magnetic Field

Timothy Birdnow

Interesting.

Ancient kauri trees capture last collapse of Earth's magnetic field
science.org

Radiocarbon levels in this and several other pieces of wood chart a surge in radiation from space, as Earth's protective magnetic field weakened and its poles flipped, a team of scientists reports today in Science. By modeling the effect of this radiation on the atmosphere, the team suggests Earth's climate briefly shifted, perhaps contributing to the disappearance of large mammals in Australia and Neanderthals in Europe. "We're only scratching the surface of what geomagnetic change has done," says Alan Cooper, an ancient DNA researcher at the South Australian Museum and one of the lead authors of the study.

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White Privileged St. Nicholas

Warner Todd Huston

Seth Rogen and Sarah Silverman Push Woke HBO Christmas Show that Slams Santa for Being White

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Gold Standard

Chester McAteer

Even one of the most ardent and radical Fabian Socialist understood Gold Money. People are gradually rediscovering what the great monetary thinkers have always known: that the best money is stable money because without a stable money we are at the mercy of The Manipulators!

In his "The Intelligent Woman’s Guide to Socialism and Capitalism", George Bernard Shaw declared:

"You have to choose between trusting to the natural stability of gold and the natural stability of the honesty and intelligence of the members of the Government. And, with due respect for these gentlemen, I advise you, as long as the Capitalist system lasts, to vote for gold.”

John Maynard Keynes described in 1923:

"Markets cannot work properly if the money, which they assume as a stable measuring-rod, is undependable. Unemployment, the precarious life of the worker, the disappointment of expectation, the sudden loss of savings, the excessive windfalls to individuals, the speculator, the profiteer–all proceed, in large measure, from the instability of the standard of value.”

In The Scandal of Money (2016), George Gilder rightly declared:

"Casting a shroud of uncertainty over all valuation, monetary manipulations shorten the time horizons of the economy. In information theory, the dominant science of our age, when a medium sends a message of its own–static on the line–it’s called noise. Noise in the channel reduces the channel’s capacity to transmit accurate information.”

President James Madison summed up succinctly:

"The only adequate guarantee for the uniform and stable value of a paper currency is its convertibility into specie [gold]–the least fluctuating and the only universal currency.”

One of the most incredible things that the Classical Gold Standard created was one of the most extraordinarily stable bond yields during most the nineteenth century; that feat has never been replicated under fiat currencies. No monetary or ancillary system, dependent upon a Fiat Regime, will be capable of reproducing the results realized under the Classical Gold Standard.

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November 28, 2021

‘More money than God:’ Chinese titan lavished Hunter Biden with 3-carat gem, offer of $30 million

Dana Mathewson, with hat tip to Erv Prusik


The New York Post's wonderful investigative reporter Miranda Devine sends up this gem:

The Biden family offered their services to a huge, Chinese-government-linked energy consortium to expand its business around the world. How do we know? Because of hundreds of emails documenting the deal found on Hunter Biden’s laptop, left in a Delaware repair shop in April 2019. In her new book, "Laptop from Hell,” New York Post columnist Miranda Devine tells the tale:

James Gilliar, a wiry, 56-year-old British ex-SAS officer, got to know Ye Jianming, the 40-year-old chairman of CEFC, when they were both working in the Czech Republic.

CEFC was a Chinese conglomerate, one of the largest energy companies in the world.

Ye’s task at was to spend $1.5 billion as quickly as possible to ensure the Czech Republic would become China’s "Gateway to the European Union,” a priority of President Xi.

To that end, Ye bought everything from a football team and a brewery to an airline, before being named "special economic advisor” to Czech President Milos Zeman.

Now he was looking for an influential partner to help with acquisitions in other locations around the world that had strategic significance for the Chinese state.

Gilliar had an idea who could help: The Biden family.

Gilliar connected with Hunter Biden through trusted Biden family friend Rob Walker, a former Clinton administration official whose wife, Betsy Massey Walker, had been Jill Biden’s assistant when she was Second Lady.

A-a-a-nd I'm going to let you read the rest of the article here: https://nypost.com/2021/11/28/chinese-titan-lavished-hunter-biden-with-3-carat-gem-offer-of-30-million/?utm_campaign=iphone_nyp&utm_source=mail_app It's worth your time, and I have to say I'm glad to see a major newspaper reporting this.

Gee, do you suppose they thought they were actually buying influence? Duh! If I were trying to compromise a U.S. official, I'd try to find somebody more, er, plugged-in than Hunter. But I guess he's had a lot of experience passing money to The Big Guy.

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Foreclosure

From Christopher Lee:

China adding to its empire slowly and steadily.

Uganda is surrendering her only airport to China over loans.

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Antifa and a Whiff of the Grape

This from Willis Eschenbach:

The truth about riots is that both 1/6 and the Rittenhouse affair were primarily failures of policing.

In both cases, the police did not respond swiftly or strongly enough, and the situations got out of hand.

With sufficient exercise of armed force, the state maintains order and prevents the possibility of harm to unarmed protesters, businesses, or American democracy.

There is one remedy to all of this nonsense. As soon as the rioting starts, move in with sufficient but not excessive force, arrest people, jail them, charge them and make them pay for their violence. You know, just like we did for centuries before the Democrats went crazy and approved of and encouraged violence by preventing the cops and courts from doing their job.

Tim adds:

The dirty little secret that most of us don't like to consider is that the root of all civilization is violence. We like to think our civilization is a voluntary union of free individuals, but the reality is law is only as good as enforcement, and your rights don't mean squat if you can't enforce them. That enforcement is done through violence or the threat of violence.

The Left understands this, which is why they advance their agenda by violence or the threat of violence, and take steps when they are in power to minimize the society at large from imposing order and decency through the same mechanism.

That is why anarchy and totalitarianism go hand in hand, and often anarchists are not just violent but advocate marxism; both seek to use violence as a weapon to promote the same totalitarian vision. One seeks to destroy the old to impose the new, the other to impose the new by suppressing the old, but in either case they are birds of a feather.

The Bible says the King has "the power of the sword" to "punish evildoers". In the right hands, and with basic wisdom, that violence guarantees people's freedoms and rights. In the wrong hands it is a meat grinder.

Increasingly we are seeing it in the wrong hands.

Willis is absolutely correct; the laws need to be enforced strictly but fairly. As The Godfather puts it, we need "reliable people, people who won't get carried away" doing the policing. And we need to back them when they have to use force, provided it is justified.

Without this society will collapse. This is the cornerstone of civilization. Barbarians are those outside of civilized norms. They took down the Bronze Age civilizations. They took down the Greeks and the Romans. Now they are about to take us down.

Everybody has the capacity for violence and lawlessness. A civil society channels that into productive avenues and suppresses those who refuse to control their urges. Now we are putting those who refuse to control their urges in the driver's seat of civilization. It's as if we were putting small children in charge, or the insane.

Essentially the Left is Veruca Salt from Willie Wonka; spoiled brats throwing temper tantrums. Salt needed a switch to her backside to learn to control herself. These BLM and Antifa types require it as well.

And when it gets too far out of hand, one must look to the advice of Napoleon "give them a whiff of the grape". Nothing stops rioting like a forceful response. Had King Louis ordered his guards to fire on the crowd storming the Bastille his line would probably still be on the throne. Ditto Czar Nicholas. I would add the riots on college campuses ended when national guardsmen shot rioters at Kent State. There was much acrimony, but the rioting stopped.

The trick is to not let it reach that point.

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Happy Hannukah!

To all our Jewish friends, wishing you all  a very happy and blessed Hannukah!

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Holodomor: A Forgotten Genocide

Judson Phillips

Today is Holodomor remembrance day.

The Holodomor is the planned starvation of the Ukrainian people in the 1930s by the Soviets in order to force them to submit to Stalinism. It was the genocide famously denied by Walter Duranty of the New York Times.

Virtually no Americans know about this. Millions died yet this horror has been swept down the memory hole. My Russian professor in college was a survivor of the Holomodor. She told stories of her mother sneaking out at night, just to find a little dropped grain, so she could feed her daughter. She snuck out at night because the penalty for scavenging for food was death.

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Broken China

Lance Sjogren

Remember in the 1980s when Japan was looking like it was going to dominate the global economy? And then it had a crash. Same thing's happening with China, according to Kathie Wood. I believe she is right.

I remember when the Japanese stock market was like PE ratios of 100 and I just couldn't understand how stock prices could be so high. It seemed like Japan was such an economic wizard that it defied any traditional analysis. Well, turns out that was completely wrong.

In the case of China, the bubble is real estate. Apartments in major cities sell at 50 times average annual income. Remember how they always used to say you can afford a home about 2 times your annual income. Well in China they cost 50 times. Where'd the money come from to get them that high? Everyone in a family gathers up their savings and pools it all to buy an apartment as an investment. Because it's the only investment they trust. They have put all their savings in real estate. A lot of the apartments are empty. An estimated 65 million. There are "ghost cities" with high rise housing for tens of thousands of people that are completely empty. A lot of the apartments are shoddily built, sitting idle, and deteriorating. Many were bought before they were even built. With the real estate companies going bankrupt, those might never get completed.

We have had some nasty financial bubbles in our country: The tech wreck of 2000. The real estate wreck of 2008. We may have another bubble right now. I don't believe any of ours have been of the magnitude of the Japanese bubble or the Chinese bubble, however. We've never had our stock market as high as the Japanese had, and we've never had our real estate market anywhere close as high as the Chinese market is today. Even in the 2008 bubble.

Because China's economy is so large today and involves so much international trade, How their economy does will spill over somewhat to the rest of the world. Plus, there's somewhat of a bubble in other parts of the world, for example the US. However, I think our recession will be far less severe than what China is headed for.

Hang onto your hat it is going to be a wild ride.

Tim adds:

I've been saying China is a paper tiger for years. I stick by that.

Their economy has only been successful because we voluntarily handicapped our own and they could provide things we chose to stop making or doing for less. It was artificial and inevitably someone was going to knock the stool out from under them. Once that happened the whole house of cards would fall.

It is worrisome though, because China sees this as their time and they will be horribly unpleaasant in their death throes - and with their nukes and biologicial weapons...

I don't think they are going down for the same reason that the Japanese economy tanked. Japan tanked because they adopted American-style Keynsian economic policies. They did so when they were far too dependent on exports. If you want to see why the globalist notion of "free trade" which is not really free trade but rather sucker trade fails one need but look at the demise of Japan as an economic power. Japan depended entirely on what foreigners would give them. When push came to shove they found out others could do the same.

China has the same problem to a degree, but less so than Japan. However, China is still a communist country. They are engaging in the same strategy employed by Lenin in the Soviet Union, a New Economic Program that allows some companies not officially owned by the government - just by members of the government. It is fascism, but it is in the service of marxism. Lenin did the same thing after nationalizing industry failed.

This means Chinese companies have all the faults of the standard communist model. They have, until now, been able to do things cheaper (thanks to low wages and compulsory employment and bad working conditions) but as soon as that shifts Humpty Dumpty will crack and all the king's horses and all the king's men won't be able to put China back together again.

Serious competition will ruin them. That was why Trump presented such a threat; he wanted to compete. Of course now with China Joe in office they have a breather, but only for a while. Their economy is fundamentally flawed.

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