Where is Russia – the big threat from the East? The US needs to allow the Europeans to fend for themselves and focus on China, the country that has vowed to destroy us.
Bullet Points:
** Whoever put the S in Fastfood was a marketing genius!
** (Right) My youngest daughter and grandson are visiting the Mine. They had been hoping for snow – but would need a new latitude for that this winter. No snow so far.
** On a restroom wall in Bangkok: “God is dead – Nietzsche” — under that, “Nietzsche is dead – God.”
** Pres. Trump held a press conference at his Mar-a-Lago home just one day after Congress and Vice President Kamala Harris certified his electoral college victory, announcing $20 billion in new privately funded data centers nationwide.
** Michael Caine on class distinction in Old Blighty.
** Welderup! Russians are cannibalizing old T-62s to create APCs that are chewed up in the Ukrainian meat grinder. (h/t Claudio) A recent failed Russian assault, apparently in eastern Ukraine, left behind what one Ukrainian blogger described as a “cemetery” of wrecked armored vehicles. Most of the 14 or so wrecks are the usual types, including old T-62 tanks and MT-LB armored tractors.
** Sharing the good news!
** Rumor or Fact? Was Mark Zuckerberg the recipient of the first rat penis transplant?
** Boating with EdB.
** Kayaking with LSP.
Diversity First!
The Politics of Oil
(h/t Claudio) Shandong Port Group, operator of key oil ports used by China’s independent refiners, has prohibited access and services to tankers sanctioned by the U.S. Treasury, a move that could curb Chinese oil imports and raise costs for local refiners, trade sources have told Reuters.
Shandong Port Group has issued a notice, seen by the trade sources, banning ports from allowing tankers on the U.S. Treasury’s designated list to dock, unload, or use ship services. The ports where the ban is in effect include Qingdao, Rizhao, and Yantai on China’s east coast, which are key import sources of crude for the so-called teapots, the independent Chinese refiners.
**
Central European gas flows have fully adapted to the end of Russian gas supply via Ukraine, with Germany and Italy making up the shortfall. According to Austrian Grid Management, the country boosted imports from Germany and Italy when flows from Slovakia were halted after Ukraine declined to renew a 5-year gas transit deal with Russia. Slovakia has drawn on a connection with Hungary as its only source of imports so far in the new year after Gazprom stopped supplying Slovenský plynárenský priemysel (SPP) as the Ukraine transit ended.
Energy experts had earlier warned that Austria, Hungary, and Slovakia will likely be the hardest hit after imports of Russian gas via Ukraine are cut off. Thankfully, they have managed to secure alternative supplies: last year, Azerbaijan’s state oil company, SOCAR, started supplying natural gas to Slovakia’s SPP, the country’s largest state-owned energy operator. This came just a month after SPP signed a short-term pilot contract to buy natural gas from Azerbaijan as it prepared for a possible halt to Russian supplies via Ukraine. SPP has pledged to supply its customers mainly via pipelines from Germany and Hungary, albeit at additional transit costs.
**
The US is a major supplier of natural gas to the European market. It explains why natural gas product prices are so high in the US. The market moves in a free marketplace and sets the prices. It’s about supply and demand with a hefty dose of geopolitics. Will the Trump Presidency negotiate an end to the Ukrainian War? Will Russia dump petroleum on the market or sell it at market rates? There are many questions, and the answers impact the industry.
In the UK
(Thinker) Not too long ago, U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer, a radical Labour leftist, stood by several fellow Labor Party members spewing out statements that President Trump was a “racist” and a “fascist” and “KKK member” who must be “stopped at all costs.” That was before the election.
That wasn’t the half of it, though. Starmer’s Labor Party put its money where Starmer’s mouth was, dispatching 100 Labour Party political operatives like flying monkeys to help Kamala Harris defeat Trump. Trump initiated an FEC lawsuit as a result.
Elon Musk tweeted what I was thinking, too:
Musk was responding to criticism of his statements against British officials who covered up a monstrous rape-and-grooming scandal against thousands of British girls at the hands of Pakistani migrants, which authorities, including apparently Starmer, covered up in the name of not looking ‘racist.’ Thousands were harmed as a result of this unconscionable refusal to protect British women and children, and the public is getting roused.
According to Fox News, that includes Starmer himself:
U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer on Monday hit back against attacks over his handling of the child grooming gang scandal that has repeatedly rocked the nation, and has seen more scrutiny in the last week fueled by SpaceX CEO Elon Musk.
“Those that are spreading lies and misinformation as far and wide as possible, they’re not interested in victims, they’re interested in themselves,” Starmer said in response to questions from reporters about Musk’s comments, although he did not mention Musk directly.
Kiss and Capture
It sounds like a Hallmark Christmas film, but it’s not.
Pluto has five moons, but Charon stands out from the rest. Charon is half the size of Pluto, “making it the largest known moon relative to its parent planet in our solar system,” NASA notes. So, how did Pluto get its chunky companion? A new study suggests an unusual mechanism called “kiss and capture.”
The “kiss and capture” concept for Charon’s formation detours from previous ideas about how the moon came to be. “By considering something planetary scientists had overlooked over decades—the structural strength of cold, icy worlds—researchers have discovered an entirely new type of cosmic collision,” the University of Arizona said in a statement on Jan. 6. NASA postdoctoral fellow Adeene Denton led the new study, published in the “Nature Geoscience” journal on Monday. (more at the article)
Trudue’s Faliures Brought Woe to Canada
(link) What is Trudeau’s legacy after nine years as prime minister? Ruinous economic policy, worse government services, and widespread social disorder — all of which are worth unpacking in detail.
Begin with the economy. Since Trudeau took office in the third quarter of 2024 (the latest available data), cumulative real GDP per capita growth in nine years has been 1.7 percent in Canada versus 18.6 percent in the United States. When data for the fourth quarter of 2024 are published, the gap will almost certainly widen: Canada’s real GDP per capita fell for six consecutive quarters as of the third quarter of 2024 and is expected to have fallen again in the year’s final quarter. This means that Canadians, on average, would have 17 percent higher incomes today if Canada’s real GDP per capita growth had tracked with the United States under Trudeau. (more)
Global Warming and LA’s Fires
(link) Chaparral fires have been around for at least 20 million years,” says a leading US government scientist.
“What’s changed is we have people on the landscape.” Two people are dead, and 80,000 have been forced to evacuate neighborhoods in Los Angeles thanks to fires raging out of control. According to the media and some scientists, climate change is causing the fires. “Researchers believe that a warming world is increasing the conditions conducive to wildland fire, including low relative humidity,” reported the BBC.
But one of the country’s top fire experts disagrees. “I don’t think these fires are the result of climate change,” Jon Keeley, a US Geological Survey scientist, told Public. “You certainly could get these events without climate change.” Keeley has researched the topic for 40 years. In 2017, Keeley and a team of scientists modeled thirty-seven regions across the United States. They found that “humans may not only influence fire regimes, but their presence can override, or swamp out, the effects of climate.”
Keeley’s team found that the only statistically significant factors for the frequency and severity of annual fires were population and proximity to development. “We’ve looked at the history of climate and fire throughout the whole state,” said Keeley, “and through much of the state, particularly the western half of the state, we don’t see any relationship between past climates and the amount of area burned in any given year.”
What about scientists who claim that the dry conditions are unusual? “If you look at the past 100 years of climates in Southern California,” said Keeley, “you will find there have been Januaries that have been very dry. And there’s been very dry autumns. There have been Santa Ana winds in January. So, these conditions contribute to a fire being particularly destructive at this time of the year. But it’s not the result of climate change.”
Parting Shot
End
Fighting wildfires is very dangerous. I’ve had a fire go over the water tanker I was on. Got burnt where my face shield and overalls had a gap by sheer radiated heat. Another crew of four all died in similar circumstances the next week as best as they could figure out.
Nearly every “climate change” bushfire in Australia last year turned out to be arson by activists with a few by lightning.
When I worked for a rural local Council 30 years ago we would try to explain to the city people buying small acreage that planting trees right next to your house was a bad idea. Most didn’t listen. Now they run advertising each year about preparing – cleaning gutters, back burning, go bags etc and there is always a few who doesn’t listen.
At least half of ours here in The Colonies are man caused including demented Lefty arson generated. Whenever I check InciWeb and they delay stating the cause I know it’s people vs nature as the USFS tries to make it look lime more natural caused fires are the norm. Also, we usually hear of fires Monday mid morning…right after the weekend hoards run to the hills in their fully outfitted campers for some peace and quiet…someone wanted S’mores over a fire.
Dry lightning can be problematic if associated with high winds, but that wasn’t the case in California.
I was just reading where people have been seen setting more fires in the burning areas. What’s wrong with these loons?
If I remember correctly, LL you signed up to be on a local fire board a few or 10 years ago. You were put off by the oversized egos of the many participants. At least I think I remember that correctly. The fire line is never a place for diversity over ability. It’s time to deep six this dei crap and get back to a reality based system. One of the oracle of Omaha’s trains caught fire in my fire district today. By the time we located them the fire had gone out on its own. They were going to let the drive motor cool, change crews, fire up the 4 other engines and see if it would freewheel. I told them to just make it through my area and we would be ok with it!
It wasn’t just egos. There was a corruption problem that I helped uncover, and while I don’t want to get into that here, I separated from the district when they embraced corruption. Small fire district politics in Arizona is very dirty.
Jon Keeley is on the money. And the lack of controlled burning was definitely a contributor!
Part of the problem is that Two-Tier Kier’s complicit.
Hats off to Elon. Let’s see a vote of no confidence and an election. Labour would get slaughtered.
Hopefully Elon’s bringing this to light openly will awaken the sleeping Briton. One hopes. One hopes the rot isn’t too deep and the body’s all but dead.
my 2 cents fwiw
where has musck rhat been all these years relative to the eps steyn/gazelle/dipply pee lists and victims?
no offense to those in the “u”k, but fusa has it’s own very similar, equally long running situation.
i’m pretty sure the steyn didn’t hang himself after all
Juan
Some diversity!
Three white lesbians named Kristin.
Dana Loesch was all over this today…really funny…had me laughing so hard in the Shop had to stop doing stuff, “Why are all these white lesbian DEI hires named Kristin, is that a thing?” 😂
PaulM, if you ever decide to transition, don’t select Kristin as your new woke name…. (hahaha) It’s been taken over and over and over again.
I’m going with “Paulina”, sounds Russian butch.
:)
I think the persyn on the right in that LAFD leadership photo is not the Training Commander. It looks like the Equity and Human Resources director, Kristine Larson. A pity. It would have been fun to snark about a fat Training Commander. But a tubby and melaninated Equity/HR person is literally cliche.
https://lafd.org/equity-and-human-resources-bureau
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> Where is Russia – the big threat from the East?
Russia is the second-most hated nation in the eyes of the caste that wildly disproportionately runs US foreign policy. (Sort of like how a bunch of Chinese seems to wildly disproportionately run Thai foreign policy.) So it doesn’t matter how powerful or dangerous Russia actually is. Russia is always an existential threat that Must Be Crushed.
Russia seems to be doing a great job of shooting itself in both feet. I don’t think we could have engineered a tipping point in Russia like, well, Russia has.
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I seriously think the ChiComs are moving north before moving east on Taiwan. Taiwan will put up a fight. Does Russia have anything left to put up a fight with?
for over a decade, with/without poo tenz agreement, before pooh man came along, pooh people have been moving intp kamchatka and eastern siberia as a stealth method to “claim” the territory. to then connect with the pooh man arctic caravan.
living in dongbei a few years, it was “understood” to be the plan. i knew several who joined for the opportunities ( their own business, basically without govt. oversight, land, far less dense population density, cleaner environment, and what they saw as a better future for their children) afforded by moving there. siberia isn’t vastly different weather-wise than manchuria/dongbei.
my 2 cents. again.
Juan
Pres. Putin has requested a meeting with Pres. Trump ASAP after January 20. I’m sure these discussions are high on the list of things he’d like to discuss. Of course, there is also an ASAP meeting with Xi…
it is a new world acoming.
wonder what it will be.
🤔
Juan
Russia can’t even more their shit into the Eastern Maritime Theater, effectively.
The Maritimes are worth a hell of a lot more to the PRC than Taiwan.
*
– Kle.
Here come those Santa Anna winds again (for real this time)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O5e_1_ySlaY
Diesel in this country once was cheap until ultra low sulfur was shoved down our throats. Interesting, isn’t it, the same formulation used in Europe was dictated. Oil tankers once arriving with crude and leaving empty suddenly had a back haul of USA refined ultra low sulfur diesel headed to Europe. Coincidence?
Perhaps the LA fires are the result of long march terrorism. We know many of California politicians, including the LA Mayor, were radicalized in their twenties. Over the years they have worked to create conditions that would, over time, lead to these fires, among other things, to weaken and demoralize the general population.
At least Florida, after the 1998 Firestorms, told the lefties here to sod off and go away. We enacted major fire reforms, new building codes, requiring proper forest management and all that jazz.
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And people make fun of us in Florida. At least we learned. We have the strongest building codes against wind events, against fire events and even against tidal surges. We’re better at sink hole management and remediation than other places (but there’s still lots of room for improvement. A lot of that could be solved by nuclear power powered desalination plants and lessening the pumping of ground water, but I don’t see that happening soon.)
They need to scrap the Coastal Commission as now constituted and come up with a plan to build desalination units along the coast powered by SNRs. Use the water to fill reservoirs when needed, the rest can go to agriculture. Dependence on Mexican agriculture is problematic and with water, California will be a major producer (again). Agreed, Lord High Executioner – change the building codes, the wildland management policy and enact sanity to replace woke. Fire the LGBTQI2+ hires and replace them with competent people.
California could also become a net exporter of… fresh water. To other states, to Mexico.
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If Israel can do it, so can we, dammit.
My impression/belief is, California already has sufficient fresh water generated by snow melt, if they used their existing dam systems to capture it instead of allowing it to drain into the sea.
In other DEI news, Barack’s husband, Big Mike, snubbed that Carter funeral. We know that the male pattern baldness has forced him to turn to wigs. Maybe it’s just too obvious now?
I heard a rumor Big Mike and Joy Reid were opening a chain of wig shops in D.C. and California?
Big Mike could go on the road as the poster child for a genetic solution to male pattern baldness. Maybe Big Pharma could hire him as a spokesman.
Yeah just what we need. Another Wegovy theme song. Hmm, could that be what DJT4547 was whispering to Barack Hussein Obama at the Carter funeral that had him laughing like a little school girl.
“kiss and capture”: Sounds like a dating game reality show, like The Bachelorette only no choice for the target male.
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Decided to torture myself, Tarlov was on The Five, getting paid to say stupid things with conviction. Said the $17.6 M budget reduction was due to an every few year purchase if “materials” therefore was not needed this year”. Galactically stupid does begin to describe.
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“Man plans or states, God laughs.” Just rewatched “God’s Not Dead”, same arguments were made, including Hawkins’ concept that “because gravity exists the universe needed to exist”…hence no intelligent design that “it leapt into existence”…which is circular logic. At one point the student states back to the professor, “How can you hate someone that you believe doesn’t exist.” Checkmate.
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The DEI Kristin Brigade- Pro-Tip: RUUNN!!
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Tell me why we need people on the taxpayer dole to study forests and climate again. Maybe it’s just me but when have they ever been correct?
“What’s changed is we have people on the landscape.”
That video of a bulldozer moving cars out of the way was on Palisades Drive, the ONLY road in or out of a 2000 home development built up a narrow canyon in the 70’s. The origin point of the fire was either in someone’s backyard in that development, or along a hiking trail above it. Human-caused fire.
They usually are. Either directly caused by leftist firestarters or urban outdoorsmen (homeless..)
X2
Not a few of the Australian wildfires were caused by muslims. But we’re not allowed to talk about that.
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Which makes me wonder how many wildfires in the US were/are/will be caused by muslims doing the jihad thingy. But we’re also not allowed to talk about that.
With the UHC CEO, the wild fires and whatever the next government response is, plus my own recent insurance interactions, I can say Prudential was great, the others not so much. I am beginning to think we may be seeing the end of insurance as it has been. Contract law has been a great thing, but that is breaking down. I was in China two years before Teinamin Square. There was no contract law. Commerce was run within the family business. Self insurance may be the only choice. It is sort of like that little war zone line in your policy. Tom
Very sad to see so much of SoCal going up in flames, BUT you reap what you sow, and in this case, decades of neglect to the forests is coming back to bite them in the rear…..