LONG LIVE THE V-8!

 

In the market for an electric vehicle... read the last paragraph!

No, Governor Irksom, it's not really a long-term solution.

LONG LIVE THE V-8!

 

Charging Insanity

In order to match the 2,000 cars that a typical filling station can service in a busy 12 hours, an EV charging station would require 600, 50-watt chargers at an estimated cost of $24 million and a supply of 30 megawatts of power from the grid. That is enough to power 20,000 homes. No one likely thinks about the fact that it can take 30 minutes to 8 hours to recharge a vehicle between empty or just topping off. What are the drivers doing during that time?

ICSC-Canada board member

New Zealand-based consulting engineer Bryan Leyland describes why installing electric car charging stations in a city is impractical:

“If you’ve got cars coming into a petrol station, they would stay for an average of five minutes. If you’ve got cars coming into an electric charging station, they would be at least 30 minutes, possibly an hour, but let’s say its 30 minutes. So that’s six times the surface area to park the cars while they’re being charged. So, multiply every petrol station in a city by six. Where are you going to find the place to put them?”

Used Car Market

The average used EV will need a new battery before an owner can sell it, pricing them well above used internal combustion cars. The average age of an American car on the road is 12 years. A 12-year-old EV will be on its third battery. A Tesla battery typically costs $10,000 so there will not be many 12-year-old EVs on the road. Good luck trying to sell your used green fairy tale electric car!

 

Putin, NATO, and Ukraine

Putin, NATO, and Ukraine

Col Mike Walker, USMC (ret)

There has been all manner of debate over Putin’s claim that he is justified in invading Ukraine because NATO “betrayed” Russia when it began to expand east in 1990.

 

Here are some facts to consider.

 

(1) There never were limits on NATO membership adopted by the Alliance other than to limit membership to regions in the North Atlantic which always meant the continents of Europe and North America and parts in between.

 

That has not been violated.

 

(2) We also need perspective so let us recall Putin’s History of Perfidy

 

Most remember the 2014 Russian seizure of Crimea and eastern Ukraine. Here is why it is important and it goes back to the Budapest Memorandum of 1994:

 

When the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics dissolved and the republics went their separate ways in the early 1990s, Ukraine posed a special problem because it had become the world’s third largest nuclear power virtually overnight.

 

At that time, Kyiv agreed to turn its nuclear arsenal over to Russia – depriving itself of an ironclad deterrent from future attack – in return for a security guarantee vouchsafed by the United States, United Kingdom, and Russia.

 

Here are the three relevant paragraphs agreed to by the United States, United Kingdom, and Russia: 

 

To provide a security assurance to Ukraine (1) with respect the sovereignty and existing borders of Ukraine; (2) to refrain from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity of Ukraine; and (3) to refrain from economic coercion to subordinate Ukraine. 

 

Thus Putin’s treachery: He savaged the agreement by violating all three of those provisions in 2014 and again by invading other parts of Ukraine in 2022. Putin should have realized that his gross violations of an international agreement had to end in unpredictable consequences for his regime.

 

 But that was just one act in a long line of Russian aggression under Putin.

 

As soon as he took power, Putin went to war with Chechnya during 1999-2000. Putin then invaded Georgia in 2008 and please note: Because of that border conflict between Russia and Georgia, NATO has never approved Georgia’s NATO's membership.

 

Putin did not let up. In 2019 – as he did with the 1994 Budapest Memorandum – Putin violated and then unilaterally tore up the 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty. 

 

In May 2021, Putin also tested Biden by falsely claiming that during the Trump Administration, the United States had violated the 2011 New Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty (New START) and Washington continued to be out of compliance. Biden did not fall for the lie.

 

Then in October 2021, 8 Russian officers at NATO Headquarters in Brussels were expelled for spying. Putin retaliated by closing the Russian Army liaison office and terminating the NATO liaison office in Moscow ending diplomatic ties between the two.

 

(3) As for the “betrayal” claim of NATO expansion only being limited to Germany in 1990, how could anything else have occurred?

 

At that time the Soviet Union still existed as did the Warsaw Pact and their Communist regimes (and the 500,000+ Red Army soldiers occupying those countries). 

 

The only territory that had left the Soviet bloc in 1990 was East Germany and it therefore was the sole topic of discussion.

 

And when the 1990 talks ended in September there was a written agreement signed by Moscow (the 2+4 Treaty).

 

The 2+4 Treaty did allow German forces to enter East Germany with the same freedom that they deployed forces in West Germany and the treaty stated that Germany had an absolute right to stay in NATO – clearly meaning the NATO boundary would shift east. That was 32 years ago. Moscow knew the truth then and they know it now.

 

Finally, I have participated in more negotiation than I wish to remember -- both in the United States and overseas. Everything and anything are discussed but very little makes it into the written agreement.

 

Conflating a negotiation discussion or interaction as binding mutual agreement is deliberately misleading and false. Talk is cheap, written international agreements are binding.

 

(4) Post-Cold War NATO expansion began in 1995 and adhered to the same process followed by every NATO member since its founding in 1949: 

 

A nation has to initiate the request to join and then NATO sets out a Membership Action Plan (MAP) that the applicant must meet before NATO will consider approving membership.

 

This is critical because of the 1975 Helsinki Final Act of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) which was signed by the Soviet Union and members of the Warsaw Pact at that time.

 

In it, all parties (to include Russia and the Eastern European countries) agreed that individual nations could freely choose what alliances to join or not to join.

 

That justified and authorized NATO to accept new members in Europe. 

 

Further, the Helsinki Final Act had ten (10) Guiding Principles agreed to and honored for decades. 

 

Since Putin came to power, however, Russia at one time or another has violated all ten (10) principles. Once again we see Putin’s reckless aggressiveness.

 

Putin violates agreements at will and his word cannot be trusted.

 

(5) Just to drive an earlier point home: NATO is not a dictatorship and everyone knows that -- especially Moscow which has spent decades trying to drive wedges between NATO members.

 

Further, individual heads of state talk out of turn all the time but that does not make it binding on NATO. Moscow’s claim to the contrary is nothing more than political grandstanding to excite its supporters.

 

Whatever a US president or UK prime minister or a German chancellor or any other leader of a NATO country or one of their subordinates does or says does not bind NATO. To imply otherwise is dishonest.

 

Put clearly: Any agreement between NATO and Russia has to be made between Russia and NATO. No such agreement over NATO expansion was ever penned.

 

The only agreement was the 1997 NATO-Russia Founding Act (NRFA). Russia did attempt to negotiate a "veto" power for Moscow over former Soviet satellite membership but the effort failed and Russia signed the pact without such power. 

 

NATO would continue to accept applications for membership from eligible nations.  

 

(6) NATO does not admit countries that have unresolved border conflicts (recall the Georgia request to join NATO cited above). 

 

That is why Ukraine never formally applied for membership. Ever since the Russian 2014 invasion, Ukraine has an unresolved border problem and Kyiv (and Putin) knows it will not be admitted into NATO.

 

Putin's claim that Ukraine was on the brink of joining NATO is a red herring – pure disinformation propaganda.

 

As his is modus operandi, Putin lies because it is to his advantage: He could both use stories of "imminent NATO membership" to justify his bloody and brutal invasion of Ukraine and execute it without fear of NATO intervention.

The Sussmann data was "user created"

 

CIA Bombshell: The Sussmann data was "user created"

Techno Fog, Reactionary

Also: Confirmation of a frame-job against President-Elect Trump

My late Friday night involved hitting refresh on PACER every so often, incurring the $0.10 charge for each search result as I waited on Special Counsel John Durham’s latest filing in the Michael Sussmann case. (Exciting, I know.)

The motion exceeded expectations, discussing CIA conclusions that Sussmann was providing implausible data to federal authorities, providing CIA notes regarding their meeting with Sussmann, and confirmation that they essentially spied on President-Elect Trump.

The motion can be found here. It was filed as part of the government’s efforts to convince the court that the evidence it seeks to admit in Sussmann’s trial is relevant and admissible. Let’s go through the most important parts. 

The CIA Notes Part 1: January 31, 2017.

Durham provided to the Court two sets of notes related to Sussmann’s representations to the CIA. The first was from Sussmann’s January 31, 2017 contacts with a CIA employee where Sussmann discussed wanting to provide to the CIA data on “the presence and activity of a unique Russian made phone around President Trump.” It was said that this secret activity started in April 2016 and continued after Trump’s “move to the White House.”

Sussmann alleged the Russian phone (YotaPhone) was always close to Trump (“only around the President’s Movements”), surfacing at his Trump Tower Network in April 2016 and being used through Wi-Fi at Trump’s Grand Central West apartment. The phone even “appeared with Trump in Michigan” when he was interviewing a Cabinet Secretary.

At a minimum, this confirms what we reported nearly two months ago: that the Trump transition data was passed to the CIA. Yet it’s also more than that. The CIA was provided with data all the way back from April 2016.

The Reactionary is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Why does April 2016 matter? Because Russia was alleged to have hacked “the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee and DNC networks in April 2016.” Recall that “Crowdstrike was contacted on April 30, 2016 to respond to a suspected breach” of the DNC.

The CIA Notes Part 2: Sussmann’s February 9, 2017 meeting with the CIA

That January 31, 2017 conference was used to schedule the February 9, 2017 meeting with the CIA. At that meeting, Sussmann repeated his allegations that a “Russian-made Yota-phone” had been seen at Trump properties and had traveled with Trump to Michigan. He further alleged that “In December 2016, the Yota-phone was seen connecting to WIFI from the Executive Office of the President (the White House).”  

A brief but necessary aside: The Washington Post alleged us to have fanned “the flames” on the Sussmann/Joffe spying operation, taking us to task for stating (correctly): “They spied on Trump.” I hope the Washington Post is reading this, because the CIA notes confirm what we reported and what we told them via e-mail. Techno 1, WaPo 0.

Back to the Durham Filing – and the CIA’s analysis of the Sussmann/Joffe data.

The CIA reviewed the Trump/YotaPhone data (and the Alfa Bank data) in early 2017. The fact that the CIA accepted this data on President Trump is its own scandal. In any event, the CIA’s findings are significant, as they concluded that the data was not “technically plausible” and was “user created and not machine/tool generated.”

(I’ve been asked about the last part of that paragraph, which says the “Special Counsel’s Office has not reached a definitive conclusion in this regard.” The term “definitive conclusion” stands out, making me suspect he has “initial” conclusions on the data. Durham’s filings in this case suggest he agrees with the CIA.)

Anyway, what a finding by the CIA. Of course, this only leads to more questions:

1. Which “user” created the data? 
2. Does it go back to the Joffe conspiracy? 
3. And who else is part of that conspiracy? 

For that last question, consider this revelation from a previous Durham filing:

As to those questions of a conspiracy, Durham’s granting of immunity provides some insight. As we suspected back on April 5, “Researcher-2” (identified as David Dagon) has been given immunity. The reason? So that Durham can “uncover otherwise-unavailable facts” relating to the Alfa Bank project.

Dagon being granted immunity is certainly important, as Durham states that Rodney Joffe – who led the Alfa Bank hoax effort – remains a “subject” of the investigation. While Sussmann and others argue that it’s impossible to prosecute Joffe because of the 5-year statute of limitations, Durham disagrees, stating: “defense counsel is not – and could not be – aware of all the evidence that the Government has collected and continues to collect, or the possible violations of law it is investigating.”

Durham will also be granting immunity at trial “for an individual who was employed at” Fusion GPS. I initially suspected this was Christopher Steele but was steered in the right direction after some smart folks noted the person was “employed” at Fusion GPS (as opposed to Steele, who was “retained” by Fusion GPS). This person might be Laura Seago.

This former Fusion GPS employee will likely testify to “limited information pertaining to” Christopher Steele. As Durham puts it: this will include whether Sussmann was acting on behalf of the Clinton Campaign when he relayed the Alfa Bank allegations.

Finally, I leave you with some questions to consider. Start asking why Sussmann and Joffe were so desperate to provide the FBI and CIA with dirt purportedly linking Trump and Russia. Sussmann himself provided false statements to federal officials, and it’s becoming more and more likely that someone potentially fabricated this evidence. Sussmann and Joffe risked charges - and thus jeopardized their lucrative careers - to tie Trump to Russia.

Considering the personal costs to both men, are we to believe that this was only about politics?

Or maybe this all leads back to the DNC hack…

The Reactionary is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Hillary Clinton’s treachery

America is still paying the price for Hillary Clinton’s treachery

Michael Goodwin, New York Post

However this era of angry polarization, crime and violence ends, it will be left to historians to decipher how America got so far off track. Instead of building on our unprecedented prosperity and role as the world’s ultimate superpower, we declared war — cultural, political and social — on each other. Even our nation’s Founders are not spared. 

The reasons will be better understood in hindsight, but it’s hard to believe the 2016 presidential campaign won’t be seen as an inflection point. Our move toward disunion didn’t begin then, but it certainly gained steam and vitriol during and after the election of Donald Trump. 

Two recent developments illustrate how that campaign remains a radioactive hot spot. With both developments centering on Hillary Clinton, they underscore her role and the depths of her venality. 

Just when you think you’ve seen the worst of her, proof emerges that she was even more duplicitous than we knew. 

The first evidence came in a little-noticed decision from the Federal Election Commission. It ruled on a complaint from the Coolidge Reagan Foundation that Clinton and the Democratic National Committee violated federal law by hiding how they funded the odious Christopher Steele dossier, perhaps the most destructive disinformation document in United States history. 

The FEC agreed with the complaint and ruled that Clinton and the DNC, which she effectively controlled, hid their payments to Steele as merely “legal fees,” without mentioning him or his work. In fact, the money was funneled through a law firm, Perkins Coie, which then hired the smear merchants at FusionGPS, who hired Steele, a former British spook. 

The layers and false claim about legal fees were intended to put distance between Clinton and Steele because knowledge of the truth would have destroyed her campaign. Although her lawyers and the DNC argued they did nothing wrong, they agreed not to contest the findings and quietly paid fines totaling $113,000. 

Press looks the other way 

If this effective admission on funding the dirtiest dirty trick in presidential politics is news to you, don’t blame yourself. Much of the media ignored or downplayed the finding and Clinton’s fine, saying the issue was just one of “misreporting” or “mislabeling” the Steele payments. 

That’s because the truth would make them look guilty, too. To report on the election commission’s significance would force the Dems’ propaganda arm to acknowledge its own culpability. 

By treating the Steele dossier as if it were holy writ, or at least credible, the media furthered Clinton’s campaign to paint Trump as a Russian stooge. 

Of course, the FBI was also complicit, using the dossier as a crutch to justify its unjustifiable spying on a presidential campaign. A remaining question is, under Jim Comey’s leadership, was the FBI the dumbest ever or the most venal? 

Probably both but whatever the answer, J. Edgar Hoover finally can rest in peace. 

The second recent development involves a new court filing by special counsel John Durham in the case of Michael Sussmann, a Clinton lawyer and campaign operative who is charged with lying to the FBI in 2016. His alleged role expands the deception annals by showing Clinton’s team wasn’t relying only on Steele’s farrago of lies, lies and more lies. 

Perhaps doubtful that Steele, even with his FBI friends and media contacts, could make up for her unpopularity, Clinton financed a bookend to his dossier with another fabrication. 

This second scam had Sussmann, a tech executive and the same smear merchants try to sell the FBI on a concocted story about a Trump computer secretly communicating with a Russian bank. 

Durham calls the effort a “joint venture” of the conspirators, a phrase that gives a sense of the plot and the players. There wasn’t a scintilla of truth to back up the computer nonsense, and even though the FBI saw through the tissue-thin claim, many in the media naturally fell for it. 

They managed to find in this particular lie a confirming detail of the larger lie Steele was spinning — that Trump was a toady of Vladimir Putin and was colluding with him to steal the election. 

Crime against democracy 

The case is a criminal one because Durham accuses Sussmann of lying by saying he was not representing any clients as he tried to spin a top agency official on the computer connection. In fact, Sussmann was representing the Clinton campaign, which he billed for the meeting, and the tech executive, identified as Rodney Joffe. 

Although Sussmann pleaded not guilty, Durham released a text message in which Sussmann explicitly tells the FBI he is not representing any clients. 

His trial, scheduled for next month, has the potential to be a breakthrough in Durham’s long-running effort to reveal voluminous wrongdoing by Clinton and the federal government against the Trump campaign. 

Based on his court filings, the prosecutor appears to be planning to link Sussmann’s efforts to the dossier, in part because of the role his firm, Perkins Coie, played in both scams. Also, Durham said Sussmann met with Steele and FusionGPS in Perkins Coie offices and raised the possibility that Steele could testify. 

Even before a verdict, the case moves the responsibility closer to where it ultimately belongs–in Clinton’s lap. Whether Durham will ever be able to show her fingerprints on any criminal conduct is the great unknown, but in one sense, it’s also beside the point. 

We already know with 100 percent certainty that she is guilty of igniting the false accusations of Russian collusion that continue to shape our culture and politics. Although Trump was hardly a model president, the widespread claim by her party and the media that he was an illegitimate president wasn’t just dirty politics. It was a nuclear attack on the spirit that has always held our nation together, however tenuously. 

Clinton lost the election and Robert Mueller’s special counsel probe came up empty, yet the collusion narrative lives on among major elements of the political left. To judge from the tumultuous years since, many of those who subscribe to her lie are using it as a license to try to destroy America. 

Tragically, they are having a good deal of success.

Do the crime, do lots of time 

Reader Steve Lounsberry, fearing that violence in New York is too entrenched to be reversed with halfway measures, offers what he admits is a “draconian” solution. He writes: “If you possess an illegal gun —

5 years in prison. Use an illegal gun in commission a crime — 10 years. Shoot someone in commission of a crime — 20 years. Kill someone in commission of a crime — life without parole.” 

He says “sentences should be mandatory with no plea bargaining” and adds: “I bet victims and family members would like the idea.”

Sickeningly familiar to the bad Cuo days

Amid a COVID outbreak, The Wall Street Journal reports from Hong Kong that “At least 20 patients died in recent weeks at the Donghai Elderly Care Hospital, according to members of several families.” 

Anybody see Andrew Cuomo lately?  

Biden Runs Out of Gas

Biden Runs Out of Gas

Mathew Continetti, National Review

The president has an unerring instinct to make problems worse.

This is a wartime bridge to increase oil supply into production,” President Biden said during his announcement Thursday that he would release more barrels of oil from the nation’s Strategic Petroleum Reserve than at any point in American history. His decision was also a concession. None of the policies Biden has enacted throughout his short presidency have alleviated the problems they were meant to solve. Quite the opposite: In practically every case, Biden has made things worse.

Energy? Killing the Keystone pipeline was one of the first things Biden did when he took office. In February, Biden delayed approval of new oil and gas leases. He continues to blame the increase in gas prices on Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, even though prices began to rise early in Biden’s term. Biden scapegoats oil companies for sitting on profits, while he could be doing everything in his power to ramp up domestic production of available fuel sources — including nuclear.

The fallout from Putin’s war was bound to make energy scarce and thus more valuable. Biden could have lessened the pain on the American consumer by pursuing an all-of-the-above energy dominance policy from the start, and by reducing the size of the American Rescue Plan so that it didn’t contribute to inflation. He chose to ignore the warnings of economists such as former Treasury secretary Lawrence Summers and followed his advisers who incorrectly predicted that inflation would be temporary. By turning to the Strategic Reserve, Biden is promoting a temporary fix while the long-term solutions are plain to see. He’s relied on similar gimmicks before. They haven’t worked.

Consider Biden’s immigration policy. He spent his early days as president tearing up President Trump’s agreements with Mexico and several Central American countries that forced asylum-seekers to stay in third-party nations while U.S. judges decided on their claims. The rush for the border was swift and ongoing. This week, Biden is expected to reverse a rule Trump enforced during the coronavirus pandemic that allowed border agents to repatriate illegal immigrants swiftly because of the public-health emergency. Homeland Security officials tell the New York Times that because of Biden’s decision they are planning on unauthorized crossings to double from an already high level. Republicans must be giddy with anticipation at the coming headlines.

Immigration and the border were the first places where you saw erosion in Biden’s job approval numbers last spring. Now he’s about to do something that will undermine border security and his political standing, and for no discernible reason. The pandemic is not over. Border crossings aren’t falling. We know that Biden’s decision will attract additional illegal immigrants. Nothing about this policy makes sense.

Biden doesn’t make sense. His Europe trip was a substantive success but a stylistic failure. The Western alliance is holding. But the president gaffed his way across Eastern Europe — saying the West would respond “in kind” to a Russian chemical attack, denying the deterrent value of sanctions when his subordinates have said precisely the opposite, telling U.S. troops that they would see the horrors of war in Ukraine firsthand, then raising the possibility that America’s strategic goal is regime change in Russia. Then, when Fox’s Peter Doocy soberly asked him about these inadvisable statements, Biden denied that he had said anything problematic.

I happen to believe that the world would be a safer place if Vladimir Putin were out of power — that indeed one possible consequence of a Russian defeat in Ukraine is Putin’s demise. I also believe that presidents shouldn’t sound like me. They need to watch their public statements because, as we were reminded throughout the Trump administration, words matter. Biden’s sentiment in Warsaw was correct. His sense of timing was wrong. After all, you never get in trouble for what you don’t say. Biden’s problem is that he rarely lets his actions speak louder than his words. And the words are garbled.

People notice. They don’t like what they hear, they can’t stand what they see. The public verdict on Biden is grim. He has not benefited from a rally-around-the-flag effect. His approval rating continues to fall. He’s at 41 percent approval in the FiveThirtyEight average of polls. He fell under 40 percent approval in this week’s Marist poll. Republicans continue to lead the congressional generic ballot. Democrats recognize that the electoral battlefield has widened. Biden is running out of time to improve his standing. And he hasn’t demonstrated an ability to bounce back as president.

Biden entered office at a time of national emergency. He benefited from the public’s desire to see Donald Trump off the airwaves for the first time in years. He oversaw the successful implementation of the vaccination program Trump had started. The resilience of the American economy helped him too.

Then the situation went sidewise. Biden’s problems started on the southern border, ramped up with the Delta variant of coronavirus, accelerated with inflation, spread with the debacle in Afghanistan, and haven’t abated since. His rallying of the West in support of Ukraine is laudable, but he still hasn’t done enough to help the Ukrainians, and he keeps stumbling on his own message. His commitments to the left wing of his party keep him from embracing the center. And damaging leaks about the federal investigation into his son’s finances only will mount if Republicans take Congress in November.

Biden’s reliance on the Strategic Petroleum Reserve is telling. This is a presidency that is running out of gas.

This column originally ran at the Washington Free Beacon.