INCOMPETENCE HAS ITS UPSIDE

To the average left-wing, summer-of-love, we’re good, they’re bad leftist, the world is a conundrum; They blame right-wingers for the problems they themselves create. They accuse Donald Trump and his supporters of racism, yet bear within their party anti-Semitic racists freely supporting a second holocaust against Jews. Many other examples could be given, but that is not their real problem; it is that they are not able to set priorities in the instance where the priorities do not contradict themselves. Environmental dogma reaches a point of absurdity when bird-killing windmills are prioritized over the creatures themselves. Emotion driven people change their fad at their convenience because it would be boring otherwise. Every problem is bound up in their morality-determined world. Each issue has a moral imperative attached to the extent that they stumble as they fall over their own feet and fail their cause.

Sometimes the average right-winger just has to take his good news the way he can get it. According to the Washington Examiner,[1] “Biden has expressed ‘immense frustration’ that his administration has few completed infrastructure projects to boast about on the reelection trail while 70% of voters give him poor marks on his handling of the economy.” The reason is classic Democrat circular firing squad style. According to the Examiner:

“States are . . . largely allowed to spend the money as they see fit. But this usual system was not good enough for Biden, who didn’t trust Republican governors to spend the money in ways that promoted a carbon-free transportation system. Instead, his infrastructure bill channeled money through grant programs run by federal agencies, . . . This was a device to allow Democrats in Washington to send money directly to Democratic cities and counties while cutting off Republican governors.

But these were all new grant programs without any functioning rules guiding how local governments could apply and how the federal government would decide which local governments got what. The creation of those regulations took at least a year and even then, local governments still had to apply under new rules and the agencies had to reward the money. All that took time as well.”[2]

So, after three years of the Biden administration, electric car owners have few charging stations to use on their long-distance road trips. And if the trip is in winter, each trip is likely to take even longer as the batteries performance declines (possibly as much as 41%) in cold weather, which in turn requires more stops and additional time on the road.

California is helping the Biden administration with its holy war against fossil fuels. In a Bloomberg story article recently, Chevron announced it was taking a $3.5-$4-billion-dollar write-down of its assets as a result of policies in California and environmental liabilities incurred from operations in the Gulf of Mexico. The article goes on to say:

“The charges “primarily” stem from California regulations that “have resulted in lower anticipated future investment levels,” the company said in a filing Tuesday [January 2, 2024]. Chevron’s production in the state has dropped 15% since the Covid-19 pandemic and now accounts for just 3 percent of its worldwide output.[3]

Using environmental laws to penalize fossil fuel companies is the trick of choice for the leftists running America’s governments. Like the EV chargers that aren’t built, California deprived Californians of the jobs and money Chevron would produce, but staggering environmental costs (and rising interest rates) undermine entire projects.

Extreme environmental laws, along with high taxes, also inhibits home building and businesses from being started or expanded. Restrictive environmental laws prevent even the governments that want to produce allegedly green products from doing so.

Chevron responded to the California challenges, saying:

“The comments come as California lawmakers consider limiting the profits in-state refiners can reap. The most-populous US state already has the nation’s toughest fuel standards as well as a carbon cap-and-trade program that critics say forces consumers to pay more at the pump.”[4]

The goal here is to drive up the cost of fossil fuels, stigmatize the fossil fuel industry, and reduce the value of their corporate stock. Consequently, California experiences energy blackouts and requests its citizens to charge their cars at night when the load is lighter.

Equally pernicious, are the attempts to coat environmentally friendly statutes with woke “. . . secure environmental justice for historically marginalized communities”[5]

While elements of aid to impoverished communities of color may be justified, the vaguely stated goals of the environmental justice {EJ] plan under Executive Order 14008 gave voice to hateful rhetoric by leftists like Richard Moore, co-chairman of the White House Environment Justice Advisory Council (WHEJAC), who used the opportunity to attach allegations of “climate injustice, environmental racism, and environmental genocide”[6] aganst American minorities. This hateful rhetoric suggests an administration fulminating irrational personal issues instead of reasoned strategy to solve problems.

In fact, the implementation of the executive order gets in the way of itself by mandating raising union wages and satisfying community activists “that most effectively reduce emissions.”[7] Other requirements undermine noble goals. For example, replacing lead water pipes in old homes requires more time and resources to get the job done, and less time with stake-holder consultations. Other obstructions include requirements under the National Environmental Policy Act’s debilitating review process. Permitting requirements represent an additional hurdle and, “These policies would also raise new hurdles to private industry, restricting job opportunities particularly in poor communities.”[8]

Mixing social justice goals with environmental improvements will end up diverting funds to left-wing activist groups while risking failure to legitimate and needed infrastructure improvements. Once again, the Biden administration undermines its own causes with its emotional tantrums concerning social goals versus tangible improvements in the lives of people. For communities of color, they will receive just enough benefits to retain the appearance of progress, but not enough to move the needle into new territory. Minority communities deserve government that solves the problems of poverty, poor educational attainment, and personal insecurity within their communities. So far, over fifty years of affirmative action has not done the job. Government in the end will not succeed in its desire for an equal outcome for all of Americas citizens until government gets out of the way of those in minority communities who can lead their people out of their insulated world.

Note the following:

Orsted, a commercial windmill company has cancelled its contract with the State of Maryland to install wind-power windmills in the Atlantic Ocean on the grounds that it is no longer commercially viable as a result of market conditions, including inflation, high interest rates and supply chain constraints.

Note also:

Orsted announced that it had cancelled its Ocean Wind 1 and Ocean Wind 2 twin projects. This project was on behalf of New Jersey. Earlier an energy firm, Equinor and British Petroleum discontinued its contract with New York State for the Empire Wind 2 project.

The empire of contradictions, hypocrisy, and bureaucracy march on as the Biden Administration’s clumsy government can’t get out of its own way. If a Trump Administration is formed in 2025, it is unlikely that much of the Biden Administration will exist for long. Americans will be able to return to peace and prosperity.

[1] Washington Examiner, 1/2/2024, pg. 1

[2] Ibid

[3] Bloomberg, Energywire, https://subscriber.politicopro.com/article/eenews/2024/01/03/chevron-sees-up-to-4b-hit-from-calif-policies-former-gulf-assets-00133498

chevron-slashes-california-spending-on-adversarial-fossil-fuel-policies

[5] National Review, December 2023, Not Green, Not Just, James B. Meigs, pg. 19

[6] Ibid, pg. 20

[7] Ibid

[8] Ibid

November 6, 2021November 11, 2021

JOE BIDEN AND INFLATION-MIDTERM REPORT

Many people have seen the purported President of the United States, Joe Biden, stumbling up the stairway to Air Force one, flopping over his own feet like a beached fish. The buffoonish clown representing the United States could not have more aptly demonstrated by any other metaphor the failure of his administration. Biden has also appeared at a microphone, leaning over it as if it was a private message, and in hushed tones, saying, “Pay them more.” He wanted employers to increase the pay of American workers. Not a bad idea, yet exhorting employers to simply pay more as if they were the Federal Government printing up whatever dollars they need, told a deeper story of ignorance and stupidity that, like the bumbling stairway Biden, symbolized the degradation of the office he represents.

The old adage, “Be careful what you wish for, you may get it,” comes into play today as inflation, defined as too much money chasing too few goods has risen to concerning levels. To be clear, economists do not say higher pay is bad for people or the economy if productivity increases proportionately to the rise in pay. Furthermore, a small amount of inflation occurs in a healthy, growing economy. While it is unlikely that anyone paid serious attention to Biden’s remark to raise pay, wages have taken off as the result of a worker shortage (sometimes referred to as a “workers strike”). The problem is that inflation has gone up faster than wages. Jay Powell, the Federal Reserve chairman believes the inflation the U.S. is experiencing is “transitory.” But the English word, which he uses frequently, is so complicated in economic terms he cannot tell us how long transitory is. Better not to predict than predict incorrectly, says the acolyte of American economics.

Biden, indeed, has been the cause of the increasing and persistent inflation the U.S. economy has experienced due to policy decisions that he, or whomever makes decisions from the White House, made. Stimulus payments have flooded the economy with more money than it can handle. Paying unprecedented unemployment compensation and adding an additional $300 per month on top of these payments added additional money and kept people out of the workforce. Why work when you don’t have to? Meanwhile, Biden continues to encourage the Federal Reserve to pump more money into the economy by buying $120 billion in mortgage-backed securities and treasury bills and bonds. It is all tantamount to giving massive intravenous transfusions of sugar into the arteries of a diabetic. The economy has become soaked with cash chasing a limited amount of goods and services.

At Joe Biden’s request, Congress recently passed a so-called infrastructure package in the amount of $1.2 trillion. This will add some to the inflation equation. The package term is over ten years, and won’t be a huge inflation pump to the economy because it’s stretched out provisions are over a term of ten years. There is a threat that Biden’s infrastructure package estimated at $4 trillion by credible sources will contribute additionally to inflationary pressures. Biden says the cost will be zero dollars. Even his propaganda arm, the Washington Post, gave him two Pinocchios (their sarcastic award for lies) for his claim. The value of these spending packages is questionable, but not the whole problem. Putting aside the underfunded Defense budget, Social Security and Medicare are under pressure. Politicians love to spend, especially if the consequences are spread over many years. Some will no longer be in office when the impact of these additional commitments hits the public. Be aware that you have been warned. If the infrastructure bill passes later this month, it is estimated that seven million jobs will be lost due to rising interest rates and other causes. The net result is likely to be stagflation.

One of the great drivers of inflation is the deliberate and successful effort by Biden to jack up the price of oil by denying permits to drill on public land. He has ignored the safe transfer of oil by cancelling the Keystone XL Pipeline whose purpose was the efficient transit of oil by pipeline. By cancelling the Pipeline and denying drilling permits elsewhere, Biden deliberately sabotaged the energy plan of Donald Trump that gave the U.S. energy independence. (Simultaneously he approved a pipeline from Russia to Germany. The latter pipeline now gives Russia valuable currency reserves, creates a European dependency on Russia, and undermines the possibility of U.S. gas sales to Germany.)

At a time when the world has a shortage of energy, the absence of U.S. oil to our own refineries puts pressure on prices in this country. The purpose of this is clear. It is to make windmills and solar cells more competitive with natural gas and oil, and also create an artificial demand for electric vehicles over internal combustion engine alternatives. A policy like this has not been specifically announced by Biden. The reason is simple: rising gas prices hurt the lowest income earners. The man from the party of compassion knows that he is creating pain. This leads him to lie about the cost of his plan—the Green New Deal.

This brings us to the other side of the equation, the supply of goods. For reasons that are not entirely clear, dock workers have not been able to download the vast amount of goods (currently estimated at a whopping one million containers) from the ships now backing up at west coast ports, namely Long Beach and other Los Angeles area port harbors. Additionally, truckers are in short supply and must run their loads through crowded Los Angeles freeways at a crawl. This process has been described as a system of systems. The idea that Biden will be cancelling Christmas, now fast approaching, due to the slow distribution of goods, has finally motivated Biden to do something that didn’t involve climate change. What is particularly disturbing is that Biden now claims he has been working on a solution with stakeholders. It has taken since June to arrive at an agreement to work 24/7 instead of the workers usual work hours. Whether this will solve the problem won’t be known until later. Currently, only one of the six ports in question is already working around the clock. There is no evidence the problem will be solved by Christmas 2021. Good Job Joe. One other factor is the spread of Covid to manufacturers around the globe who have been unable to work. But with over 100 ships backed up at west coast ports, this does not have a major effect on the system. Other than working with dock workers, the Biden administration has failed to stop the growing inflation hurting Americans who want to buy with the money Biden has forced into the economy. The government reported November 2021 and uptick in producer prices of .9%. Accelerating inflation is worsening as America struggles with the policies of ineptitude by those in power.

America did not intend to elect a part-time president working at donkey speed during a pandemic. Something like, warp speed, might have worked better. Mmmmmm, where have we heard those words before.

July 5, 2020July 5, 2020

A HIJACK IN PLAIN SIGHT

A recent poll indicated that 80% of Americans believe America is out of control. Here’s why:

The year began with a partisan impeachment of the president and quickly morphed into a pandemic.

The pandemic caused great pain to Americans who lost their jobs in droves, seemingly overnight. And then the horrific killing of George Floyd resulted in protests that turned into a riot.

Congress is split between the hate of Democrats in the House of Representatives and the weakness of Republicans in the Senate. Little gets done.

Local politics are strained. Trashed American cities, almost exclusively run by Democrats are, like the US House of Representatives, equally crazed. Local officials let their preferred political allies violate the law and punish their political foes.

The nationwide legitimate emotional outrage at the torture killing of George Floyd was hijacked by radical leftists. In one case, the city of Seattle, permitted the creation of a no police zone known as CHAZ (Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone), which morphed into the more manly CHOP (Capitol Hill Organized Protest). Mayor Jenny Durkan promised a “summer of love” in CHAZ/CHOP. The radicals in charge of Seattle having created their own seven block enclave, which they occupied for several weeks managed two murders, an attempted murder, reported extortion, rape, and robbery. The Seattle police department was replaced by AR-15 and baseball bat toting thugs, who foreshadow the police of the future. Expect the worst as the logic of the moment advocates defunding the official police. Who most wants to defend the police? It is, of course, the criminals.

These same Democrats who have told us to keep social distancing overlook the excessive crowding and spread of disease as they feel chaos aids their socialist agenda

and effort to prevent a second term for Trump. New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio won’t allow Coronavirus contact tracers to ask whether a disease carrier was involved in a protest. These same Democrats who opposed large gatherings overlook the illegal nature of the protests, and riots since their one-party status allows them to get away with just about anything.

Oh, yeah, the stock market has plunged and looks worse all the time.

In Portland, Oregon, the result of left-wing exercise of their 1^st Amendment rights equated with a hammer fest on local windows, looting and riot. At least no one was killed.

Americans cannot even pray for

If I can’t have it, you can’t have it either.

peace in their churches, synagogues or mosques. So, it is a wonder that 20% of the population remains more optimistic than the rest. And, yes, that is the report for only the first half of 2020.

The last four years have seen Obama holdovers in America’s intelligence agencies, Department of Justice and FBI spy on the presidential campaign of Donald Trump, launch an investigation based on an unsubstantiated, and ultimately proven false report requested by and paid for by the opposite party’s candidate, Hillary Clinton.

The country also witnessed by the magic of video replay the Democrat’s current presumed presidential candidate, Vice President Joe Biden, order Ukraine’s government to stop investigating a local company, Burisma, fire the prosecutor who was doing the investigation, which they did, or lose the billion dollars the Obama administration promised otherwise.

When President Trump reported these facts to the government of Ukraine, which was required by treaty, the Democrats launched an investigation against the president on the grounds that ??? that he exposed a Democrat attempt to cover up his own misuse of American aid, contrary to American law. Oh, yeah, the Democrats undertook an investigation in which secret testimony, much of it exculpatory to the president, was withheld and prevented Republicans from calling their own witnesses or revealing the favorable testimony to the president and the public. On this basis, the impeachment of the president was launched. The House of Representatives impeached the president based on a strictly party line vote. The Senate failed to convict on a party line vote.

Not quite sure how Jesus and Trump got into this.

So, hear it is. With the November election on everyone’s mind, the American people will decide whether they will punish the victim and reward the perpetrator of unjust attacks supported by media elites, or defend the country against such abuses of power. You will get what you ask for.

May 30, 2020July 5, 2020

NOT FAKE NEWS

Conservatism Bittersweet always endeavors to bring the latest insider news from the farthest reaches of politics. Consequently, we have received an insider transcript from a non-Russian source which we wish to share with our readers.

This revealing portrait of a conversation between two Democrat operatives is particularly relevant to today’s national debate over who should be President of the United States. We have hidden the actual names in order to protect our sources. We shall call them JP and TP. The actual conversation took place within the last two weeks of this posting. Please note, that verification of the conversation as provided to us (and you), is pursuant to the highest standards as set by the New York Times and Washington Post. You can trust us.

JP: Have you seen the latest Joe Biden gaffe?

TP: Now what? Joe said he protested in the South while campaigning in the 60’s and got arrested in South Africa while working with Mandela. We haven’t been able to sell that. Another gaffe and, well, we are cooked.

JP: It’s worse this time.

TP: Couldn’t be. What?

JP: He told a black man that he wasn’t black unless he voted for Joe.

TP: Isn’t that true?

JP: Yeah, but it is a statement that can easily be misinterpreted.

TP: Are you sure he was a black man.

JP: Granted, the DNA test hasn’t come in yet—we got a swab from a Pepsi can after our operatives followed him into a 7-ll maintained by an Indian.

TP: You mean, Native American.

JP: No, I mean an East Indian.

TP: Oh.

JP: So, we are pretty sure he was actually an African American.

TP: How could that be?

JP: He was very dark and had kinky hair.

TP: No, I mean, he might have been a disguised operative from the Trump camp.

JP: Not likely. The only people good enough with make-up to make him look like a black guy are on our side—you know, Hollywood make-up artists.

TP: You mean, the ones who try to make Robert De Niro look young.

JP: Yeah, they’d have to be even better than that.

TP: Okay, until we get DNA proof, we have to assume this guy was African American, but what was he doing talking to Joe?

JP: It was from the controlled basement setting.

TP: I think they need us. This is awful.

JP: True, but you know we have to stay hidden a little longer until the resurrection happens.

TP: Yeah, next year when Joe wins.

JP: Not so fast.

TP: What do you mean, not so fast?

JP: Well, there is a problem. It looks like the one sure bet—the African American vote didn’t like the comment.

TP: Just because he said you aren’t black if you’re a Trump supporter?

JP: They misinterpreted the comment.

TP: I don’t get it. How did they do that?

JP: They didn’t like the idea of a white guy telling a black guy that he wasn’t black, even though he was right. He should have said, you have been brainwashed by Trump lies.

TP: Ok, I guess that’s better. If this happens again . . .

JP: Won’t happen again. We’ve installed an earpiece into Joe’s right cochlea. Hillary is going to be whispering in his ear the correct answers by remote control.

TP: Can we trust her?

JP: Stupid question. She told me personally, she was only trying to help Joe win.

TP: So, after this all broke loose, what did Joe’s handler’s say?

JP: They said it was a joke.

TP: I see—to give the impression that Joe has a sense of humor.

JP: Exactly.

TP: Ah, brilliant.

JP: Well, not exactly. The brothers and sisters are still a little miffed.

TP: Can we get Kamala and Stacey to smooth things out.

JP: Yup, they are reliable. They will plead forgiveness.

TP: Isn’t that religious?

JP: Yeah, but it’s only temporary.

TP: But what if it happens again?

JP: I just told you . . .

TP: I know—Hillary. Then I have to ask, what else could go wrong?

JP: Hmmmm. Hillary might faint in the middle of an answer.

TP: Maybe CNN or Google can edit his answers.

JP: Of course, they’ll edit his answers O-U-T.

TP: We need something to stimulate her during her help sessions.

JP: True. How about some Vodka.

TP: Good answer.

JP: Anything else?

TP: Isn’t Joe looking for a black woman for Vice President?

JP: Yeah, probably need that more than ever now.

TP: Well, yes. I was at the drug store last week and I’m worried.

JP: Yeah, so?

TP: I saw Hillary at the counter with a bottle. At the time, I didn’t think about it, but now . . . .

JP: Okay, Spill it. What was she buying?

TP: Tanning lotion.