Roundup
(1) Zelensky addresses the US Congress.
(2) There’s a new Omicron variant, but so far it seems to be more or less the same in its effects as the older Omicron variant.
(3) No wonder the Democrat are afraid of DeSantis. Reports are that he’s got +7 majority approval in usually-blue Miami-Dade County.
(4) Further ominous rumbling about the new Iran deal:
In a desperate attempt to save the nuclear deal, President Joe Biden appears to have surrendered to last-minute Russian demands, allowing Moscow to trade with Iran despite sanctions imposed in wake of Ukraine invasion.
“We received written guarantees. They are included in the text of the agreement itself on the resumption of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action on the Iranian nuclear program,” Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov told reporters at a press briefing on Tuesday.
It wouldn’t surprise me, but I hope it’s not true. Actually, nothing this administration does would surprise me – except perhaps if it does something that isn’t destructive.
(5) The planners planned, but the caravan moved on.
“Written guarantees,” absent Senate confirmation of a treaty, aren’t worth the paper they’re on.
This regime seems to have disparate elements in it. Some are crazies demanding a climate “emergency” and stop all oil drilling. Most of those are in Congress but they have allies in the regime. It should be no surprise as Russia has been funding the environmental movement and all the pipeline obstruction for years. The Saudis helped but Russia was the big source. Then we have chickenhawk Democrats who want no fly zones. Mitt Romney is an honorary member of that bunch. The open borders crowd seems determined to defend Ukraine’s border but not ours. The unvetted Afghans are being spread all around the country. I expect the terrorist attacks to start near the election.
I wish Trump would be satisfied with acting as a power broker but I know that’s likely hoping in vain.
DeSantis needs Trump’s approval to run for the 2024 nomination. I think he’d be more effective than a Trump second term, while fully on board with Trump’s gut instincts about America’s former greatness.
I also think DeSantis would make a much more acceptable candidate than will Trump among independents and liberal democrats appalled at the radical left’s takeover of the Democrat Party.
In that vein, Bill Maher is starting to sound like Ronald Reagan when he said,”I didn’t leave the democrat party, the democrat party left me.” When recently interviewed by Ben Shapiro, Maher expressed that exact sentiment. Insisting that he hasn’t changed his political views at all. Maher sits among the legions of the only partially woke.
The question isn’t whether Bidet’s deal with the Mullah’s would prove catastrophic. Rather it’s whether the democrats can get around the 2015 law that makes any such agreement subject to Senate approval. There seems to be strong resistance to it in Congress.
There may be a considerable distance between the publicly announced version of the Davos agenda and an actual privately held one. Read between the lines and Schwab and his foremost tech advisor seem quite enthused about the future possibilities of melding the digital with the biologic… so much so that they declare that it would change who we are and what humanity may become.
God complex with a dash of Borg comes to mind…
Mike K,
Might not terrorist attacks, near the election be counter productive for the democrats? In that they’d be one more branch upon the Democrat’s funeral pyre…
How many people does the democrat party have to leave before they stop getting 50% of the vote?
“How many people does the democrat party have to leave before they stop getting 50% of the vote?”
Maybe a lot, if you know what I mean.
Because there are ways to get 50% of the vote without getting 50% of the vote …
(5) The planners planned…
Anybody remember this song by The Jam?
https://www.flashlyrics.com/lyrics/the-jam/the-planners-dream-goes-wrong-15
I know it’s not The Bee Gees, but what lyrics!
(6) Jessie Smollett to be released from jail while awaiting appeal ruling.
Sounds about right, but crap Kim Potter didn’t get this same celebrity privilege treatment. Worse that Smollett won’t recognize his celebrity privilege.
Zelenskyy is asking for a no-fly zone, but I don’t think he’ll get one.
My guess for a “best case” ending to Russia’s invasion is:
a) Neutrality for Ukraine (no NATO),
b) UN-Russian-NATO peacekeepers & election monitors for referendums on:
Ukraine or not? In the three main areas of,
Crimea, Donetsk, Luhansk
Putin has to “win” something in order to stop before winning.
I’m hoping to put more stuff on my own substack – and maybe Neo might move to substack, too.
https://tomgrey.substack.com/p/ukraine-asks-for-a-nato-enforced?s=w
Tom Grey:
I agree that Zelenskyy isn’t going to get his no-fly zone. But I think he had to ask for it anyway.
I also agree that there needs to be some face-saving out for Putin. But I don’t know what it would be, because his ego and grandiosity and long-term focus on getting Ukraine (not just a neutral Ukraine, but the country of Ukraine itself) have a good chance of getting in the way of him accepting anything that would actually be acceptable to Ukraine. I don’t think the Ukrainians want to give him much of anything either, if it leaves them vulnerable in the future and means they cannot make decisions for themselves like other sovereign nations. Their country has already been partially destroyed, and they are supposed to give Putin what he supposedly wants – portions of their country and a pledge not to join NATO or the EU or whatever they might be thinking about in the future? I just don’t see what concessions they would be willing to make that would satisfy Putin.
I know that they say that you shouldn’t attribute to malice that which can be explained by incompetence. While I would normally attribute the Biden administration’s actions to incompetence, if they were merely incompetent they would periodically do the right thing by mistake. I’m not sure what to make of their track record so far; I suppose it’s possible they are doing the right thing at times when I’m not looking.
Is this why the Russian soldiers seemed scarce and Putin is currently rushing Syrians, Belarussians, Chechens and outright mercenaries to the Uranian war front?
https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2022/03/is_putin_more_afraid_of_russian_mothers_than_of_nato.html
I take it the “age-restricted” on the video is for the images Zelenskyy showed about the effects of war in Ukraine.
This paper should be on your RADAR if you are concerned about the COVID response and what that means for future public health policy making – https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(21)02796-3/fulltext
John Campbell has provided a recap – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NFu8UjySH28
This study constitutes a credible ‘excess mortality’ estimate of 18MM from Jan 2020 – Dec 2021 internationally assessing only 6MM as attributable to COVID deaths. In other words, twice as many ( 12MM) people had died from what most likely were repercussions of the COVID response.
* Excess mortality is the number of deaths above that expected for a population based on prior years and factoring mortality trends observed for that population.
Well well; a nation that has been threatening Russia for centuries is gearing up for war with Russia, motivated by Mother Russia’s DEFENSIVE / Peace Keeping military operations in Ukraine.
See here:
https://www.newsinenglish.no/2022/03/14/bomb-shelters-get-overdue-attention/
As if NATO wasn’t enough of a threat to Russia, now they have to deal with this.
Poor Mr. Putin.
zenman: “I take it the “age-restricted” on the video is for the images Zelenskyy showed about the effects of war in Ukraine.”
I was wondering about that too. However, I suspect it is pro-Putin folks flagging videos they don’t like as I have noticed a lot of other videos that are about Zelenskyy giving speeches to Western Parliaments/Congress having the same age-restricted warning. While other videos that show more graphic images are not age-restricted.
Interestingly, and rather typical of YouTube, I have noticed a lot, and I do mean A LOT, of videos from the “Russian Ministry of Defense” show up in my recommendations list. Not understanding any of the Russian language they are in, it seems to me that they are nothing more than Pro-Russian military forces propaganda. One seems to be Russian troops handing out food and other supplies to civilians (are they really civilians in Ukraine?). None of these propaganda videos seem to be flagged.
We can wait a few days to see if YouTube cleans this up by unflagging Zelenskyy videos. I won’t hold my breathe on YouTube removing the pro-Russian propaganda videos.
The same thing happened a few years back when BLM was claiming that Dixie was a racist anthem. A lot of videos featuring the song Dixie were flag as “inappropriate” but were unflag after about a week or so.
It seems to me that taking or not taking steps to stop Putin/Russia’s current invasion of the Ukraine is one of those “pay me now or pay me later” situations and, in this case, that the future payment may, indeed, be a lot higher than any possible payment today.
Thus, for instance, what will be the payment if Putin is successful in his invasion, subjugation, and absorption of the Ukraine back into something akin to the glorious old U.S.S.R. and, then, he sets his sights on the Baltic nations, and if not stopped in the Baltics, he starts to hungrily eye and advance on Poland or Hungary?
With each of these escalations, I’d imagine the cost to stop Russian aggression would grow increasingly greater than the costs today to put a stop to such aggression in the Ukraine.
Our leaders seem to have completely forgotten the lessons of WWII.
As I’ve remarked here before, we do seem to be reliving–and making the same mistakes–of the later part of the 1930s, and how Hitler’s aggression was not stopped in it’s early stages, until it eventually had to be stopped at a much greater cost.
This pre-WWII pattern of fear, hesitancy, and lack of bold action resulting in a world-wide war that eventually involved combat on virtually every continent and in every ocean, saw fighting by more than an estimated 60 million combatants, and, as a direct result, caused the deaths, world-wide, of somewhere around an estimated 50 million people, not to mention rearranging the map and the world order.
John Tyler, I’m thinking that Norway is in minimal danger for a long time to come. Doing house cleaning on shelters is fine.
If they are actually worried about hostilities I’d be more impressed with a plan to arm the populace.
JimNorCal;
Don’t know how worried Norway is, but apparently worried enough to do this:
https://www.thelocal.no/20220312/nato-launches-defence-exercise-in-norway/
Yes, it was planned prior to the Ukraine invasion, but why bother at all with this unless Norway had some concerns.
DeSantis is strong, assertive, & doesn’t back down from a fight when he knows he’s right. That personality trait is very attractive to Miami’s Cuban & Latin America community. They loved that about Prez Trump, & DeSantis is out of the same mold. (I live in Ft. Lauderdale & work in Miami)
Snow on Pine:
I agree, for the most part. That’s why I think the Sudetenland is a good although imperfect analogy. One of the differences is that I don’t think Putin’s predations extend past Eastern Europe – perhaps because he knows that Western Europe really would defend itself with vigor.
(3) On DeSantis and Disney:
Right, so the House that Mickey Built is now in favor of teaching 5-8 year-olds about gay sex, via drag queen story hour no doubt. The titans of the same industry that won’t let 17 year-olds into movies rated R is now in favor of having an anatomically correct Sneezy and Grumpy show those young’ns what life’s all about? Tell me again what does that “P” stand for in movies rated PG? Maybe it should be replaced with a “T” for teacher or “G” for government?
Cue John Hartford: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dry-ldF3lvU.
In Disney is “G” for groomer?