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MARCH 19, 2022

SHORT TAKES ON THE DRIFTING WRECKAGE – OVERNIGHT:

TAKE THAT, VLADIMIR PUTIN! – FROM POLITICO:   The Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts last week quietly renamed its “Russian Lounge” — a room featuring the country’s art and culture paid for by one of its richest men, Vladimir Potanin — amid a backlash against Russia since the invasion of Ukraine.  In 2011, Potanin donated $5 million to the Kennedy Center. He paid to remodel the existing “Golden Circles Lounge” to create a meeting room reflecting the aesthetic of his native country. It included two new pieces of art commissioned by famed Russian artist Valery Koshlyakov.  The space reopened this week under the name “Opera House Circles Lounge.” “Circles” refers to a high-level group of donors to the Kennedy Center. The lounge will be used as an event space, meeting room, and private lounge for those donors.  Kennedy Center spokesperson Eileen Andrews said that there was a term limit on the branding of the lounge, but separately referenced the war in Ukraine as a factor in the renaming.  “The naming period for the Lounge has now ended,” Andrews said in a statement. “Due to the tragedy in Ukraine, the Kennedy Center and the [Potanin] Foundation have mutually agreed to no longer use the name Russian Lounge.”  Potanin, who has been closely tied to Russian President Vladimir Putin, stepped down from the board of trustees of the Guggenheim Museum, the New York Times reported on March 2. Well, that's that. The final blow against the Kremlin. When you've lost the lounge at the Kennedy Center, you've lost the world. It's the same as not being invited to a Georgetown party. Ah, victory!

March 19, 2022     Permalink

REPUBLICANS ALIVE, DEMS NOT SO MUCH – OVERNIGHT: Have you noticed that it is Congressional Republicans who are leading the American response to Ukraine?  The Biden administration seems to want a vacation from the whole thing.   From the Washington Times:

Senate Republicans are proposing U.S. sanctions against China should it provide a financial safe haven to Russian firms.

Officials in Washington have grown concerned that Beijing will entertain Moscow’s requests for economic and military support for Russia’s war on Ukraine, prompting a two-hour call between President Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping on Friday in which Mr. Biden warned of “consequences if China provided material support for Russia as it prosecutes its brutal war in Ukraine.”

A key area of concern, according to Sens. Marco Rubio and Rick Scott of Florida and Todd Young of Indiana, is the potential for Chinese financial institutions to provide payment processing alternatives for Russian firms that have been barred through sanctions from the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunications (SWIFT) — the financial messaging system considered to be the global standard.

Legislation introduced by the lawmakers this week would impose sanctions on Chinese banks that process transactions with Russian firms through Beijing’s alternative payment system known as the Cross-border Interbank Payment System (CIPS) or through the Russian System for Transfer of Financial Messaging (SPFS).

“We cannot allow China to become a safe haven for Russian firms seeking to avoid international sanctions,” Mr. Rubio said. “My bill would make it nearly impossible for Chinese banks to access the U.S. financial system if they choose to transact with Russian banks using Chinese or Russian financial messaging systems. It is a powerful and desperately needed disincentive to keep the Chinese Communist Party from deepening its ties with the Kremlin and undermining international efforts to punish Vladimir Putin.”

The bill would specifically freeze any U.S.-based accounts connected to any Chinese financial institutions that facilitate any transactions for Russian firms using CIPS or SPFS.
Following Friday’s call between Mr. Biden and Mr. Xi, White House officials declined to spell out specific penalties the administration was prepared to levy against China should it provide aid to Russia. Officials also did not say if China had decided whether to offer any assistance to Russia.

In its readout of the call, the Chinese government said Mr. Xi stressed the role the U.S. and China must play together in ensuring world peace and said Beijing was pushing for an end to the fighting in Ukraine.

“The Ukraine crisis is not something we want to see,” Mr. Xi told Mr. Biden, according to the official Xinhua news agency.

Nonetheless, China has used the period of destabilization to reassert its influence on the global stage.

“It’s in their best interest that this fight draws on, and creates divisions within the West,” said Heritage Foundation Senior Fellow Brent Sadler.

“It’s also financially not in China‘s best interest to help the United States right now, because they want to create another alternative to SWIFT financing, and they want to create a yuan-based economy,” he added. “The best time is right now, so it doesn’t make any sense for the Chinese to be helpful.”

The shakeup posed by China extends beyond payment processing and reverberates beyond Russia.

On Tuesday, The Wall Street Journal reported that Saudi Arabia was in talks with Beijing to begin pricing some of its oil in yuan, a move that would result in a clear blow to the dollar’s dominance in the global energy markets and a boost to Chinese currency’s standing.

The announcement comes the week after the Wall Street Journal reported that Saudi officials declined to take a call from Mr. Biden as the White House worked to contain the surge in oil prices after Russia invaded Ukraine.

“They want to dethrone the dollar,” said Arthur Dong, a strategy and economics professor at Georgetown University’s McDonough School of Business. “They’ve been trying to do this for you know, going on decades now, but they’ve had no success in doing so. Now that we have indications that one of the world’s largest oil producers, Saudi Arabia, wants to diversify its basket of currencies by accepting the yuan for the payment of their oil, in terms of the potential economic threat to the United States, this is quite serious.”

Mr. Dong described the current state of global affairs as a “game of three-dimensional chess,” which could upend the U.S.’s global standing.

COMMENT: The administration's response to the entire Ukraine crisis is sluggish at best.  No one is accusing Joe Biden of being a world leader.  And Kamala Harris appears to be taking batting practice.  If Ukraine loses, and gets absorbed by Russia, the United States will look like the proverbial paper tiger...especially after the Afghanistan fiasco and what appears to be a coming cave-in by Washington on the new Iran nuclear deal.  

Obama called it "leading from behind."  Honest people call it defeat. American "friends" around the globe will have the right to ask, "Who's next?"  

After the debacle in Vietnam in the early 1970s, a notion began to circulate in diplomatic circles that the worst thing you could be in the world is an ally of the United States. After fighting alongside the Vietnamese for a decade, the new leftist Democratic majority in Congress cut off all aid to those comrades, in what President Ford called at the time an act of dishonor.  But it satisfied the cravings of the new radicals that were transforming the party of Roosevelt, Truman, and Kennedy into the party of George McGovern. That crowd is back.

And so leadership has fallen to an out-of-power Republican Party. If it functions as it should, it will be the majority party come November.

March 19, 2022      Permalink

MARCH 18, 2022

SHORT TAKES ON THE DRIFTING WRECKAGE – OVERNIGHT:

THEY KEEP LEAVING – OVERNIGHT: It's so hard to get good help these days. Why, just ask Kamala Harris.  A lovely boss, I'm sure, but those ungrateful Washington types just keep leaving her.  How could they be so disloyal? From CNN:   Sabrina Singh, Vice President Kamala Harris' deputy press secretary, is leaving her office, according to a White House official. Singh becomes the latest high-profile departure from the vice president's office, which suffered a turbulent first year due to missteps and messaging failures. She will join the Department of Defense.
Ernesto Apreza, a senior adviser in the White House Office of Public Engagement, will become deputy press secretary and is expected to focus on engaging local and state press, as well as specific key coalition groups. Apreza previously served on the Biden-Harris campaign, as well as on the then-mayor of Seattle's staff. Last year, communications director Ashley Etienne and press secretary Symone Sanders announced they would be vacating their positions. Those departures were followed by the exits of two additional staffers in the new year. Etienne was replaced by Jamal Simmons earlier this year; Sanders' role remains vacant.  It's well known in Washington that Harris runs a terrible office. Not a recommendation for the presidency. Or for any other executive position. Maybe they can find something for her in the State Department gift shop.

March 18, 2022     Permalink

LITTLE BY LITTLE, THE TRUTH COMES OUT – OVERNIGHT: It's just so embarrassing, the way the truth catches up with some government folks. What's a body to do? Deny it, of course.  Who cares about years of disinformation and deception? From the New York Post:

They are the supposed nonpartisan group of top spies looking out for the best interest of the nation.

But the 51 former “intelligence” officials who cast doubt on The Post’s Hunter Biden laptop stories in a public letter really were just desperate to get Joe Biden elected president. And more than a year later, even after their Deep State sabotage has been shown again and again to be a lie, they refuse to own up to how they undermined an election.

The officials, including CNN pundit and professional fabricator James Clapper — a man who was nearly charged for perjury for lying to Congress — signed a letter saying that the laptop “has the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation.”

What proof did they have? By their own admission, none. “We do not know if the emails . . . are genuine or not,” the letter said. They’re just “suspicious.” Why? Because they hurt Biden’s campaign, that’s evidence enough.

Keep in mind this was written Oct. 19, 2020, five days after The Post published its first story. Neither Joe Biden nor Hunter Biden had denied the story, they simply deflected questions. Didn’t these security experts think that if this was disinformation, the Biden campaign would have yelled to the heavens that the story was false?

Meanwhile, though the letter was advertised as being signed by people who worked “for presidents of both political parties,” a majority of the officials were Democrats.

Politico picked up the letter and ran the false headline “Hunter Biden story is Russian disinfo, dozens of former intel officials say.” That headline is still online today, even though the letter clearly says they don’t know if it’s Russian disinformation.

That headline was tweeted out by legions of Democrats, including current White House spokeswoman Jen Psaki, as proof that it was all a con. That tweet also is still up despite being proven false.

Thus pure speculation by a group of biased officials became gospel among the media. This was “fake news,” and could be safely ignored.

Keep in mind that Twitter already had banned The New York Post a few days before. The rationale was that this was “hacked materials,” even though it wasn’t — and Twitter had no evidence to think it was. A Facebook official, meanwhile, said it wasn’t going to allow the sharing of The Post’s story until it was “fact checked” by a third party — a check that never happened.

Thus, Big Tech, former government officials, and the media conspired together to bury a story.

No, not just bury — create a false narrative that flipped the script to make Joe Biden the victim of a conspiracy.

In short, they peddled online disinformation to sway an election.

No one actually proved The Post’s reporting was wrong. Media outlets showed up at the doorstep of the computer repairman who had gotten the laptop, and he confirmed it. People who exchanged e-mails with Hunter Biden attested to their accuracy in the days and weeks that followed.

Only after the election was safely over did Hunter tacitly admit the laptop was his. Last year, a Politico reporter confirmed that the laptop’s materials were real. And now, the coup de grace: The Times said it has “authenticated” material from the laptop.

There have been no consequences. Twitter and Facebook still censor information based on political bias, and Congress takes no action. Many of the letter signers continue to be used as “experts” by the media. Clapper, for instance, spent years on CNN calling Donald Trump a “Russian asset,” a lie invented and fed by political operatives of Hillary Clinton. He’s still there. Guess accuracy is not a condition of employment.

COMMENT: Bottom line, legitimate information about the Bidens' dealings, which came out before the 2020 presidential election, was disparaged and ridiculed by the establishment press, which protected Joe Biden so he could go on to defeat Donald Trump. This is press corruption, and corruption by government officials who aided in deflecting the truth. And Donald Trump lost. And maybe his claims of a dishonest election weren't as wacky as the establishment said they were.

March 18, 2022     Permalink