Tag: Ukraine

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insider corruption media and media people national politics & policies

In Evidence

Joe Biden, Hunter Biden, Ukraine, corruption

In yesterday’s Washington Post, fact-​checker Glenn Kessler explained, per the headline: “How Republicans overhype the findings of their Hunter Biden probe.”

He has a point. For example, the official House committee staff carefully stated that they had “identified over $20 million in payments from foreign sources to the Biden family and their business associates.” But Committee Chairman Comer turned that into: “The Biden family received over $20 million from our enemies around the world.”

The whole $20M+ didn’t go to the Biden Crime Family. Kessler’s analysis puts that number at merely $7.5 million. 

I guess this is why gang members sometimes turn on each other.

But Kessler — like so many other mainstream media mouthpieces — gets something very, very wrong.

“No evidence has emerged that any of these funds can be traced to Joe Biden himself,” the fact-​checker asserts before delving into the specifics of his checked facts. Near the close, Kessler reiterates: “No money has been traced to Joe Biden.”

That’s just not true.

In a text that was discovered on the infamous Hunter laptop (now verified even by big media behemoths), Hunter Biden tells his daughter that his father (now President Biden for those following closely at home) makes Hunter kick back roughly 50 percent of his income.

A statement made in confidence to a loved one is commonly referred to as evidence. Strong evidence.

There are additional communications and invoices showing Hunter paid bills for “the Big Guy,” including home repairs and improvements costing thousands of dollars.

No matter how hard “fact checkers” ignore the evidence, it is still there.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Illustration created with PicFinder​.ai and DALL-E2

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national politics & policies too much government

Biden’s Peculiar Odor

Biden, inflation, odor, order

William F. Buckley used to say that there is always a presumptive case for order.

Philosopher Joel Feinberg argued that there’s always a presumptive case for freedom.*

This notion of a strong case for or against something prior to specific data can keep philosophers and economists and folks like you and me awake at night.

Here, I’m just going to bring it down to the politics.

Of inflation.

Why are prices — especially fuel prices — rising so?

The Biden Administration has been trying to argue that it’s caused by the war in Ukraine, and Americans’ need to sacrifice to defend that beleaguered country. 

But, as with his talk of “food shortages,” the war is almost certainly an exacerbating, not the prime, factor. Both fuel price spikes and bare shelves demonstrated an alarming trend before Putin invaded Ukraine. 

The cause seems obvious. Do we really need careful studies to show that both were caused by (a) COVID lockdowns and (b) a blizzard of lockdown bailout checks during Trump’s term in office and eagerly pushed also by the current president?

And Biden’s current kick, of demanding that gas stations (!) freeze or reduce prices to “match the cost of production,” has all the odor of cranky, old-​fashioned soapbox socialism.

There is a presumptive case that inflation is caused by monetary policy, just as shortages are usually caused by regulations. Trump and Biden and Congress all contributed to over-​spending, financialization, and regulatory hits.** But the stink of the growing mess must also affix especially to Biden. After all, one of his campaign promises was to cut production of oil on all government lands and offshore.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 * Joel Feinberg, Social Philosophy (1972), pp. 20 – 22. Where Buckley discussed his presumptive case is your guess or mine. Probably a column back in the 1970s or ’80s.

 ** A few weeks ago an interesting exchange occurred in this website’s comments section, between two friends of this program.

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h/​t crAIyon

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defense & war international affairs

Priced to Purloin

Russian tank, Ukraine, war

We interrupt this regularly scheduled commentary to give you a tip about an opportunity you may want to exploit ASAP, especially if you live in the Ukraine area.

This offer may not last. 

But at least for the moment, the Ukraine government says it will pay cold hard cash for any functioning tanks, combat aircraft, reactive volley fire systems, ships, armored personnel carriers, etc. that you happen to have on hand.

It turns out that getting hold of these things is possible even if you are not a military procurement officer. Who knew?

For example, the Russian government lets their soldiers operate tanks and other equipment when they’re out and about invading neighboring countries. The soldiers are told not to lose the equipment. Even so, we’ve heard tell during the recent unpleasantness of Ukrainian farmers using tractors to haul away misplaced Soviet tanks to add to their personal collection and other such incidents.

The Ukrainian government figures that since tanks, ships, and helicopters are just lying around in backyards and muddy fields anyway, why not give people an extra incentive to deliver these things to the Ukraine military so that they can then be refurbished to smash Soviet invaders?

It’s $100,000 for a tank, $500,000 for a combat helicopter, $1 million for a first-​rank ship, $1 million for combat aircraft. Not exactly the retail prices. But if you’ve got something like this that you lugged from battle, well, why not?

Hurry. You must act now.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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international affairs media and media people

Gain of Dysfunction

Under-Secretary of State Victoria Nuland

Early in Putin’s war, rumors and assertions and “memes” about Russian forces attacking U.S. bioweapons labs in Ukraine quickly spread online.

The corporate press’s “official” “fact” “checkers” mocked the idea, of course. 

But then something … inconvenient … happened. Senator Marco Rubio asked Under-​Secretary of State Victoria Nuland point blank: “Does Ukraine have chemical and biological weapons?”

Her response was not, as Glenn Greenwald notes, what he was expecting. “Ukraine has biological research facilities,” she answered,* “which, we are now in fact quite concerned that Russian troops, Russian forces, may be seeking to gain control of, so we are working with the Ukrainians on how they can prevent any of those research materials from falling into the hands of Russian forces should they approach.”

It turns out that the United States has long been working with Ukraine “to consolidate and secure pathogens and toxins of security concern and to continue to ensure Ukraine can detect and report outbreaks caused by dangerous pathogens before they pose security or stability threats.” And the relationship between defensive biological research and offensive is quite close, Greenwald suggests: “research that is classified as ‘defensive’ can easily be converted, deliberately or otherwise, into extremely destructive biological weapons.”

If this is at all puzzling, note those fact-​checkers, again. These “defensive” warriors in the memetic arena are supposed to serve as antibodies to “misinformation” in the realm of spreadable ideas. By reflexively debunking any new attack on accepted government-​approved opinion, they serve as spreaders of their own misinformation.

As in the war of ideas, so in the war of biological contagions.

The next question is: Does it make sense to place our labs on the border of our enemy?

But then, I thought it was a bad idea to subsidize biological research laboratories in Wuhan, China.

Our leaders think they know better.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

* Greenwald leaves in Nuland’s uh-stutters and the like. I’ve cut them.

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free trade & free markets too much government

Production, It’s a Gas

Elon Musk

Is this a news story?

“Electric-​car baron Elon Musk calls for increasing U.S. oil and gas [production] to combat Russia.”

It’s news because of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine (and because gas has gotten awfully expensive) and because Musk is a major industrial figure. But a businessman calling for deregulation of an industry — is that also headline-​worthy stuff?

Unfortunately, yes, given how businessmen so often want liberty for themselves along with ever-​expanding restrictions for competitors (or the same restrictions for everyone as long as competitors end up getting hurt more).

I want a world in which we can make no sense of the word “but” in this opening paragraph:

“Tesla may be the world’s leading seller of plug-​in electric vehicles, but CEO Elon Musk wants the U.S. oil-​and-​gas industry to ramp up production.” 

“But”?

Musk’s statement-​by-​tweet doesn’t help: “Hate to say it, but we need to increase oil & gas output immediately. Extraordinary times demand extraordinary measures.”

These words are not super-​clear about what Elon Musk believes the government’s attitude should be toward markets during non-extraordinary times. War or no war, government policies safeguarding markets should not be resorted to only as emergency measures. No matter how much some may welcome sustained efforts to hobble an industry.

It’s rare that our businessmen clearly enunciate the principles of free enterprise that they are thought themselves to practice. We’re lucky if we get a tendency in that direction. 

I guess that’s better, at least, than a fervent statism that seeks to wipe out all economic freedom all the time.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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international affairs Internet controversy social media

Starlink to Ukraine

Elon Musk, Starlink, Ukraine

Twitter’s policy of spasmodically censoring tweets and banning accounts, often without pausing to ponder what they are doing, has had at least one baleful effect in Ukraine. 

Last Wednesday, Twitter said it had “erred when it deleted about a dozen accounts that were posting information about Russian troop movements.” Obviously, the Russian invaders already know about their own troop movements. Losing this info could only hurt the people in Ukraine trying to defend themselves or run for their lives.

Innocent error? Anyway, Twitter said, in effect, “Our bad” and that it was now “proactively reinstating” affected accounts.

On the plus side, though, Ukraine official Mykhailo Federov was able to use Twitter to ask Elon Musk for help when the Russian assault knocked out the Internet in parts of the country.

“@elonmusk, while you try to colonize Mars,” Federov tweeted, “Russia try to occupy Ukraine! While your rockets successfully land from space — Russian rockets attack Ukrainian civil people! We ask you to provide Ukraine with Starlink stations. . . .”

That’s one way to get around the secretary barrier. And it worked.

“Starlink service is now active in Ukraine. More terminals en route,” was Musk’s tweet-​response last Saturday.

Starlink satellites provides Internet access from space. No cables or optic fiber needed. Nothing for saboteurs to snip.

Good thinking, Mr. Federov. Thank you for the unreliably available platform, Twitter. Thank you, Elon Musk, for answering Ukraine’s cry for help and doing so as swiftly as possible.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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