Last week, as the nation celebrated the appointment of the first black woman onto our Supreme Court, many of our elected officials couldn’t manage to generate enough manners to honor the occasion or at least keep their mouths shut. No, she does not represent the same twisted moral values they do but that’s not a reason for them to act like farm animals.
There is a cabal of GOP politicians led by freaks like Ted Cruz, Lindsay Graham, Kevin McCarthy, Jim Jordan, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Matt Gatez and Josh Hawley who seem to have lost, if they ever possessed it, all sense of the magnitude of the job they have been elected to do and have degenerated into the kind of fool that dresses up in ludicrous raiment and parades the aisles of K-Mart.
It is vitally important that all these fools be targeted and that they be eliminated from our governing bodies at the next election.
****
So the Republican Party has announced that they will not participate in any debates for future Presidential elections. Quelle surprise! What could they debate about? They have no platform. They had none in 2020 and they will have none in 2024 because the only things the GOP stands for are making rich people richer and closing the borders to all immigration, thereby returning this nation to its GOP desired “whiteness.”
There is no doubt that the announcement is a setup for the presidential run of Donald Trump in 2024. Trump is a debator without skills, as he proved in 2020. His only real talent is being able to lie with a straight face. Unfortunately for any point he is trying to make he cannot lie with any level of candor.
The re-emergence of Trump leaves Ron DeSantis and Greg Abbott somewhat at loose ends. Both have obviously considered themselves as presidential candidates for a party rife with stupidity and outright craziness. Now they will have to line up behind the ultimate progenitor of anything normal people would oppose.
*****
People keep expecting the sanctions against Russia to work, but how can Europe really be expected to wean itself off Russian gas and oil? They get about a quarter of their gas from Russia and half their oil.
Russian revenues from oil in 2021 were $178.98 billion and from gas, $61.8 billion.
Even if Europe doesn’t take the Russian oil, China will grab up the overflow and the nations that are able to make up the European shortfall, like Saudi Arabia, Venezuela and a few others, if they can get it delivered, are playing cute.
The Saudis are the biggest problem because they have the most oil, the best delivery channels and are the closest geographically but they refuse to commit. The Saudis could solve a couple of the world’s problems very easily. They can help with inflation by dropping their prices. They would still be making plenty of profit, just not what they are making now. They currently have plenty of reserves that would allow them to fulfill the needs of Germany, Italy and Belgium. That would make up for anything they lose by reducing their prices but they are still holding off. It’s way past time for Joe Biden to explain to them that such behavior will create the end of the arms shipments that the US has been sending them for years.
Sanctions only work when all the guys on the same side play the same game.
*****
In discussing what has happened with the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Bill Browder, once the largest foreign investor in Russia, sees the whole thing as a ploy by Putin to get the Russian people behind him and against the foreigners. Browder sees Putin as a career criminal who has stolen all the money he can from the people of Russia. That money is now frozen in foreign banks where Putin can’t get at it, nor can it help his people. When the people don’t see roads, hospitals, schools or medical care, but instead have yachts and mansions shoved under their noses, they finally catch on as they did before Putin started actions of distraction in Crimea, the Donbas area of Ukraine, Belarus, Abkhazia, Luhansk, Trans Austria, and now potentially Kyrgyzstan.
Although not reasonable or logically arrived at, Putin’s reasons for starting this war are pretty clear. The same problems that tore apart the Soviet Union are at work doing their internal damage in Russia. Any thought of a middle class is gone. There are peasants and there are billionaires and there is nothing in between. Lenin’s dream of a ruling proletariat is long gone but Russia’s history of revolution is a living, breathing threat to Putin and his buddies. The solution, as it always is in dictatorships, is to create an enemy and attack them. That’s where Ukraine comes in.
*****
The NYC legal system has been knocked on the balls of its ass. There are so many rent caused eviction cases pending that it could take decades to clear them.
The mindless progressives under Bill DeBlasio almost destroyed the housing situation in the city, a system already devastated by years of political infighting leading to the Rent Stabilization laws that prey on landlords and tenants alike. What is wrong with the system? Just about everything, but mostly the fact that it is overseen by hack politicians whose only goal is to garner enough votes to stay in their cushy jobs.
I watched one of these hacks, a member of the City Council, the other night as he whined about a potential rent increase of 9% that has been invoked by the current Rent Control Board. Yes, it’s a horrible number but then you learn that for three of the last four years the rent increase allowed was zero in a city where the cost of running a building just keeps going up. Even if they did pass the 9%, and they won’t, it would represent the entire rent increase for 4 of the last 5 years and would translate to about .0225% in a city where the cost of running a building rises at least 4% a year.
Full disclosure, I own a small building with tenants in Manhattan in which I have lived for fifty-two years. Because I have a number of rent-stabilized tenants, I have only made a small profit for a couple of those years. For the majority of those years the building’s losses have been covered by my other income. Why do I keep it? It’s my home. I love it. I raised my family here just like my tenants did theirs.
I have supported and absolutely agree with the need for affordable housing but any fool can see that this city and most others across the country have shown no ability to provide it. I also strongly feel that there is no logical or constitutional reason why it should be as it is now, provided by a small percentage of the population that is engaged in the real estate business. It’s a citywide program with population wide benefits, so why isn’t it provided by the entire tax base?
If you’ve ever been to a meeting at which they debate the rent increases you would understand why I sound so negative. These are near riots where paid demonstrators destroy the debate process entirely. If you don’t believe me drop by one of these clown shows yourself.