CALAMITY JOE AT IT AGAIN-DANGEROUS ESCALATION OF THE UKRAINE WAR

 EVERYTHING JOE TOUCHES TURNS INTO…..

October 30,2022

The Nordstream sabotage: ‘So all of our recent sacrifices paying for higher gas prices to cut the carbon in the atmosphere have gone to waste with one more Joe disaster.’

One can not read the news or turn on  TV without seeing or hearing of another Biden disaster. One wonders how one old man with limited energy, more time vacationing away from the Oval Office than any other recent president, faltering memory, and low mental acuity could accomplish so much bad stuff in such a short time. 

From the intensifying war in Ukraine, to frightening missile launches from North Korea, and the instability in Europe stemming from raging inflation and shortages of essential energy sources, as well as the threat of world famine in parts of Africa, all contribute to the generalized fear of what new “bad stuff” will happen next with Calamity Joe a the helm of state?  

At home, the latest economic figures reassert the hard fact of a falling GDP, surging inflation, stock market plunges, and the threat of a looming recession. Then too the southern border remains an open wound  though which millions of illegals wander, some carrying bags of “rainbow” fentanyl which may wind up in our kid’s Halloween baskets. The Biden team sweeps up milling crowds of illegals at the border into “secret night flights” to disperse these embarrassing multitudes and their appearances of invasion, landing them at night in all points in the nation.  Others are packed into Texas-supplied buses by border governors and sent to progressive urban enclaves in the Northeast where the “sanctuary city”residents complain about being “overwhelmed” and turn them away.  Then too there is the senseless surge of vicious crime and violence on our urban streets adding fear to one’s daily trip to work.  That fear is coupled with the persistent rise in prices of everything one wishes to purchase from food to toiletries, medicines and other essentials adding to the general decline in the quality of life.  Added to these insults is the anger consumers experience who finally realize the terrible bite that inflation takes from their pocket books, forcing them to make anguished decisions on expenditures for gasoline, heating fuel, food. medicine or shoes for young Jerry.  

But Joe is still at it, continuing to generate more suffering here as well as overseas, as he gaffs and stumbles his way though his presidency. (Most recently, he again underscored his failing mental acuity by calling out to a two month long deceased member of Congress, by name— to the surprise and puzzlement of his audience.)

Today (Oct 30, 2022) we learn of “Calamity Joe” Biden’s latest disaster. This “green President”  has added a massive “and unprecedented climate disaster” to his list by being directly responsible for or sanctioning the Nordstream sabotage .   Claimed by the UN to be the worst release of greenhouse gas in world history.  

It is becoming apparent now that Biden’s team  or their close ally Ukraine appears to be the most likely candidates responsible for sabotage of the Nordstream gas lines, the undersea  gas pipeline  which had been supplying Germany with Russian gas for heating and industrial use and which was a threat to US gas sales to the EU.  Many now believe that Biden had either agreed to, or initiated the recent sabotage to both  the NordStream I and II gas lines. Their main evidence has been both foreign and domestic  news  sources which have dug up and recast on TV Joe’s  past verbal threat against the Russian pipelines ( Biden press conference, 2/22: “We will bring it to an end”). Both his Press Secretary ( Karine Jean-Pierre) and Security advisor (Victoria Nuland) made similar direct  threats to “take out” the Russian/German owned NordStream asset.  Others claim that the sabotage was to prevent Germany and other EU nations suffering this winter from cold and shuttered industries from “backsliding” into a return use of Russian gas.  Now Russia can not offer them to turn the gas line on again.  It is “insuranc to keep the support for the US and Ukraine war effort on-going.   

This war act by the US or one of its allies is the dangerous and inevitable ratcheting up of the Ukraine War effort.  Biden has continued his unwise extension and expansion of the Ukraine war by supporting the intransigent Ukraine President  Zelenskyy in the order of $60 billion dollars or more.  Money that many feel could have been better spent on our own citizenry.  And others point out it is a level of support as great as Russia’s own annual military budget.  

Others complain that the US has all but tipped over the line into an active belligerent by suppling the Ukraine with advanced weapons, the advisors to use them, and pinpoint targeting intelligence from the Pentagon. Much of this “war effort”  was delivered without consent of Congress.  Mr Putin, has responded to the US supported Ukraine offensive with a call up of 300,000 conscripts, as well as a referendum in the eastern industrial area of Ukraine and a plan to annex the eastern 15% of the Ukraine. 

Slicing off the Donbas and other coastal industrial regions of Ukraine will render the remaining Ukraine as a land-bound strictly agricultural state.  The annexed area will become an integral part of Mother Russia.   Putin and his citizens will then be able to claim they are defending “Mother Russia” from the threatening NATO, EU and the “west” with the largest nuclear arsenal in the world.  

The NordStream sabotage seems to be the unwise Biden response to that act of Russia to its recent setbacks in the war effort.  This is what is so dangerous about war—it is unpredictable—and one side’s rash act begets another.   But more so in Ukraine where Putin is playing with dangerous nuclear weapons—and Biden is playing with an 80 years old brain, and a long history of erroneous decisions involving that organ. Then too it has become so abundantly clear that our weak President is surrounded by an incompetent team that seem to be leading the world toward a disastrous nuclear confrontation. 

In regard to the climate threat: Perhaps Joe and his team of novice incompetents did not realize that even gas pipes which were “not pumping” gas held huge volumes of the stuff.  They may not have been aware that the 760 mile (1,216 km) long, @1 meter wide pipe lying 80 meters below the surface was still filled with at least 2 million ( some estimate 150 million cubic meters to 500 million) cubic meters of the greenhouse gas methane. Methane has a much more effective heat absorbing profile than CO2. In fact, methane is 80 x more heat absorbing and may linger in the atmosphere 10 years or more, so its impact can be much greater than the worrisome carbon.  Perhaps they were unaware too, that the amount they or their allies “sabotaged” into the atmosphere may be equivalent in CO2 to about 14 million tons of carbon dioxide.  Or about one third of all the CO2 Denmark dumps into the air in a year. So all of our recent sacrifices paying for higher gas prices to cut the carbon in the atmosphere have gone to waste with this one more “Joe disaster”.   

When the historians (if there are any which survive the Biden presidency) try to document this disastrous period in American history the Biden climate disaster will be one of their major chapters.  

Sadly they will have plenty of dumb acts to document: not the least of which was the chaotic and deadly retreat  from Afghanistan, which telegraphed military weakness in the Oval Office and led to aggressive acts and war in Eastern Europe and the threats of same from North Korea, and to the unstable world of today threatened with nuclear conflict. Domestically, his foolish attempt to satisfy the climate fanatics by precipitously cutting the fossil fuel industry off at the knees, led to a massive world-wide inflationary spiral, economic peril, and today’s threat of world recession. 

 

White-tailed Deer—Observations On Browsing Preferences

On: The late summer early fall browsing preferences of White-tailed Deer (Odocoileus  virginianus) in a vegetatively disturbed suburban area.

Observations in late summer and early fall of  this year 2022 browsing activities of  the White tailed  deer (Odocoileus virginianus) inhabiting a modified, physically and vegetatively altered area on Long Island, NY  indicate that at this season of the year, and in an area of mixed non native and  native plant species. White tailed  deer  appear to favor the leaves and small branches of Fox Grape (Vitus labrusca),  Multiflora Rose ( Rosa multiflora) , Pokeweed, (Phtolacca americana),  Japanese Bittersweet (Celastrus orbiculatus), and less frequently, that of Black Cherry (Prunus serotina) .  In some places I have observed the leaves of poison ivy (Toxicodendron sp) browsed where larger patches of Fox Grape were also being exploited. 

The Rail Path is an east-west walking/jogging/ bicycle path developed  along the  course of the former Long Island Railroad tracks in northern Brookhaven Township, Suffolk County. NY.   The region is suburban. The path courses below high tension power lines supported by metal pylons. The asphalt paved byway winds it way through suburban developments and borders remnant patches of undeveloped woodlands in a generally residential community.  The approximately one mile section of the  path where  these observations were made  is regularly tree-pruned to control vegetation and the path borders are mowed regularly . The area has been heavily disturbed and is presently vegetated with a mix of native, non-native and invasive species dominated by : Russian Olive (Elaeagnus angustifolia), Japanese Knotweed (Reynoutria sachalinensis), Greenbriar (Smilax rotundifolia) and domestic escapes such as Flowering Pear, Flowering Crabapple, and invasives such as Mile a Minute vine (Polygonum perfoliatum) and many others.  These introduced plants are interspersed with common local native trees such as species of  oak, hickory, beech, pitch pine, catalpa, and others.  Most of the Rail Path species are non-native or invasive. 

Deer are often observed along the path.  Other wildlife such as red fox (Vulpes vulpes), gray squirrel (Sciurus carolinensis ), raccoon (Procyon lotor ), wild turkey ( Meleagris gallopavo), woodchuck (Marmota monax), cottontail rabbit ( Sylvilagus floridanus), etc. are also observed regularly. 

Observations of deer browsing  preferences  were made by recording plant species which were clearly browsed along a one-mile section of the pathway.  Overhanging branches of vines, brush, forbes, and trees  within the level above ground at which deer browse (@ 1.5-2 meters)  with obvious and recent evidences of browsing were identified and recorded.  Evidences included leaves being stripped away, twigs and terminal branches chewed off, incisor teeth marks on small branches and leaves, partially torn leaves, as well as foliage  partially or fully removed. 

Most frequent browsed plants in early fall along the Rail Path one mile section were : Fox Grape,  Multiflora Rose, Pokeweed, Japanese Bittersweet and less frequently browsed were the leaves and branches of Black Cherry.

Evidence of Poison Ivy browsing was infrequent and often only where Fox Grape or Multiflora rose were being exploited, perhaps the latter species was eaten unintentionally. 

Poke weed specimens which, at this season, were easily identified by their bright red stems and dark red fruit clusters were often observed to be heavily browsed. Some had the red skim on thicker main stems  gnawed away to remove the bright red skin and expose the light green woody tissues of the stem.   Of 36 clumps of this species observed along the one mile observation route, 19 had obvious signs  of deer browsing.   

Japanese Bittersweet was browsed regularly its leaves stripped off sections of vine which hung into the deer browse level. It is noteworthy that another local species (S floridanus) exploits this plant species in the winter season.  The bark and cambium layer of the woody stems of this species were often observed to be gnawed away and presumably consumed as a regular winter food source for cotton-tail rabbits.  

ABBOTT AND DESANTIS TURN THE TABLES ON BIDEN

 Governors Abbott (Texas) and DeSantis (Florida) turned the tables on President Biden and his secret plan to turn red states blue by dumping illegal immigrants in the border states and elsewhere to bolster the weak Democrat coalition.  

President Biden, the Democrat-propaganda press and the “deep state” have ignored stories that should have been reported, misinformed the American public and kept secret a sinister plan to keep the weak progressive Democrats in power in DC by flooding normally red states with illegal immigrants.  (They imagined—perhaps wrongly—the immigrants  will vote Democrat).  This secret immigration “open border” plan to pump up Democrat votes is a sad commentary on political shenanigans and underscores the depths of malfeasance and illegality the Left will go to keep  power.  

The Biden/Obama/Hillary neo-Democrats have departed from the political middle ground of the past and have positioned themselves in the radical leftist fringe.  They do not wield wide spread popular national support.  They depend on first, dividing the nation into economic, social, sexual and racial groups  and in each election cycle attempt to cobble together a fragile coalition of these fringe minorities.  When fully motivated  and combined with the more easily manipulated urbanite vote,  in some rare circumstances they manage a fragile power grab.  In the 2020 election they won a slim majority in a few states —and no mandate—during a chaotic  pandemic and with many voting irregularities.   They  are no longer the party that my Dad  voted for religiously, and more recently other Americans viewed as the “loyal opposition”, but instead a  threat to our identity, our economy and national security. 

To further this sinister, anti-democratic goal—they used the always porous southern border as a source for political change that would favor them.  The elites in DC perceive the border states as “lacking in diversity” and “too traditional”.   They were places where people worked on the land, or in in small businesses, went to church or temple, and where they honored the family, their children, and often sent their young off into a military career.  These folks did not vote Democrat.  The Biden team had a plan to change that.

They formulated a secret open border policy, and  instituted immigration polices  euphemistically referred to as  more “humane”.  They ended construction of  “the wall”, closed down the  “remain in Mexico” policies of the previous administration, and made it fully apparent to all those economic migrants of South America and elsewhere across the globe that the US  “border was open”.

The result was a virtual invasion of millions of illegal  immigrants—almost exclusively economic migrants.  (International law requires a nation to treat political refugees or those fleeing from persecution as legitimate…but that status does not hold for those who flee from their native country and pass through one or more other nations where they could have sought refugee status and succor,  only to continue on to the US border.  Mexicans seeking refugee status must be accepted for evaluation …but not the others. But the Biden administration made no attempt to return these immigrants to their native country. )

The flood of illegals at the southern border at first, elicited a ¨hide ‘‘em and ignore them” response from the Biden Administration. But when the unruly crowds became too much of an embarrassment, they simply began secret “dead of night flights” which packed immigrants into transport planes and dumped them off at northern city airports with directions to disperse and disappear.  The complicit and compliant establishment press, ignoring their responsibility to honestly inform the people, simply ignored these stories. 

But beginning several months back, Governor Abbott and later Governor DeSantis had come to realize the depth of the secret plan to change the character of the population of their states.  They both began a routine policy of “reverse Biden busing”, by transporting  illegal immigrants who appear at their borders north to so called “sanctuary cities” such as Chicago, Washington,DC, New York City and elsewhere.  

Abbott and DeSantis exposed Biden’s secret attempts to illegally manipulate the electoral map.   Reverse busing also undermined Biden’s scheme.   These new immigrants  may eventually become voters legally, or in some heavy Democrat inner city districts, they often seem to do so  illegally, but even if they do vote Democrat, with reverse busing, they will do so in heavy Democrat voting districts in the end frustrating the Biden plan.  

Abbott and DeSantis have attempted to nullify the advantage the Biden team was hoping for.  Sadly the GOP effort amounts to only a few thousand illegals vs the millions Biden has spread into the nations heartlands. 

Kudos to Abbott and DeSantis! 

INFLATION ERA: OR SAVING ENERGY IN THE KITCHEN

 

THE INSIDIOUS MIXER FAUCET 

In these days of rampant, 40 year-high inflation in the USA, now at 8.3% year over year, we are all looking to save expensive energy wherever we can.  The experts are all encouraging us to cut our use of now expensive fuel oil, natural gas or electricity.  Even our US local news programs are eager to provide us with “tips to conserve energy” at the end of each morning show.  

But circumstances are even worse in the UK where that nation imports most of its energy and with the US and EU shunning Russian oil and gas, prices for fuel oil (electricity and natural gas) are expected to jump 80% this winter.  As a result, energy saving ideas are even more rampant on the World Wide Web in the UK.   Some that appear there are untrue or old myths such as: washing dishes in the dishwasher is the most efficient way, or that oven-cooked foods use the least amount of energy—(no, microwave cooking does), while other ideas,  like filling the kettle with only the amount of cups you plan to use, fix all leaky faucets, increase insulation, and turn  off appliances like TVs that have a “stand by” mode, all do save energy. 

 But no one has mentioned the most universal, insidious, and energy-wasting device we all have in our kitchens and bathrooms—the modern and homemaker-desired “mixer faucet”.  This ubiquitous and common faucet has a single control handle for both hot and cold water.   Push the handle to the right, and up— and it delivers cold water,  push it left and up,  and the spigot pours out hot water.  It is admittedly very convenient, but it was designed for a different age—when energy was cheap.  Today, it is a fuel and energy waster and should be replaced. (But not this winter-it will not save you to make that investment)    This very common plumbing device was invented in the days of cheap energy.  Coming from a family of plumbers, I remember seeing one of my uncles installing a hot water supply line into the base of a toilet-water closet.  

“Why hot water ?” I asked.

“Well hot water will prevent the water tank generating condensation (and the drip of that water to the floor) that occurs in the summer on those hot and humid days”, he explained.   

Today we would not waste hot water to flush down the toilet…or do we? The mixer faucet is almost as bad an energy waster.

When I was a youngster all bathrooms and kitchens had two taps,  one for hot water,  on the left, and the one on the right provided cold water. There was no mixing of hot and cold.  (Except for my grandpa’s country house where a cast iron hand, lift-pump at the sink drew up chilly water from the  concrete rainwater cistern under the house.  In grandma’s kitchen, if one wanted hot water, one had to get it from a kettle placed on the stove and then heated there.) 

The problem with the mixer faucet is that it too often provides tepid water all the time.  My personal observations suggest that no one keeps the handle all the way to the right—on cold. Mixer faucets are almost always mixing in hot water with the cold to provide the user with tepid water, even when that is not needed.  Go to any sink now, and check on this. The handle is always in the center, or too far to the right, supplying the user tepid or hot water—not cold. 

The result of all this is that the hot water heater, which is  most often a water supply tank ( in the basement or utility closet) served by electricity, LP gas, natural gas, or heating oil runs incessantly. Each and every time someone draws water with a mixer faucet  icy cold water enters the water tank, causing its temperature to drop.  The tank is designed to keep the hot water supply at just above 140 F.  Every time the temperature falls bellow that level, an internal thermostat turns the heater element on and costly electric current, oil, or gas are used to heat the chilled water back up to the “set” temperature.  (More modern, “under sink heaters” with “on demand” hot water work very much the same way...although they waste less energy since they do not store hot water). 

When mixer faucets are used regularly during the day or evening,  there is a resulting constant flow of energy use (fuel oil, electricity, natural gas or LP) to the heater element as it continues to attempt to maintain its set temperature.  Most of this energy is wasted energy...since often, the user does not bother to turn the faucet to cold. They draw tepid water when cold water would do very nicely.  Too often the mixer lever remains at the half-way mark which causes hot water to mix with cold. 

Using some “back of the envelope” calculations: a typical USA household faucet is claimed to  draw between 18-27 gallons a day. In the USA there are an estimated 124 million US households. Assuming each one will have at the very least two mixer faucets (one in the kitchen and one in bathroom) that is, at a minimum, there may be at least about 248 million faucets in USA homes.  Assume they are all mixer faucets set at the mix “half and half” mark.   One can calculate the per day use of those faucets at: (18 gallons per day of which half of those gallons are hot water) = thus we would expect 9 gallons of wasted hot water per day from each faucet or 9 x @248 million faucets = @ 2,232,000,000) or perhaps at a minimum, about 2.2 billion ) or 2.2xe9 gallons of water are heated each day unnecessarily.   

 It takes about one (1) BTU (British Thermal Unit) to raise one pound of water one degree F.    One gallon of water weighs about 8.33 pounds, thus to raise the temperature of one gallon of water one degree F requires about 8.33 BTU.  Assuming that domestic hot water is raised from ambient ground water temperature of about 50F to 140F in the water heater. Thus (140F-50F = 90F) or the water must be raised by about 90 degrees F.  Furthermore one gallon of water heated to 90 degrees would require 8.33 BTU X 90 F degrees = 747.7 BTU. (Or nearly  750 BTU is required per gallon heated to 140 F)     Thus for each gallon heated to 140F in the heater one must expend about 750 BTUs.  Thus 750 BTU/gal X 2.2 billion gal heated unnecessarily = 1,650,000,000,000 BTUs or 1.65 X e12 BTUs wasted every day. And this waste is only the result of the innocuous looking mixer faucet.  

Not to bore you but, how many barrels of oil might that represent?  Each 42 gallon bbl of crude can generate @ 6 million BTU.  If USA mixer faucets waste 1.65Xe12 BTU /and each bbl represents 6Xe6 BTU = that is equal to about 2.7Xe8 bbls (about 270,000 barrels) of oil.  That is a per day figure. So we are not talking chicken feed here. Today the going cost of each bbl is about $100 dollars.  

Think of that poor UK householder who is warned by experts to heat water in her kettle only to the amount of cups of water she actually needs, while here in the USA, our mixer faucets are wasting billions of gallons of heated water. 

Help the energy crisis by keeping that mixer faucet always on the right until hot water is actually needed

JOE BIDEN IS THE RADICAL WE MUST FEAR!

 Joe Biden has taken  to desperate acts…calling 75 million Americans who voted Republican in the last election “semi-facists” and MAGA “extremists”.  But like the topsy-turvy Orwellian world that Joe is trying to create out of once great, America—it is  President Biden who is the real extremist. 

Let’s count the ways!

 Who was elected during a pandemic under strained, irregular and unusual circumstances with a slim 11,000 vote plurality in several swing states. This President had no mandate from the voters for radical change….and who then governed as if he won a landslide victory? 

Who made the fiscally radical decision to cut the robust and profitable fossil fuel industry off at the knees, threaten them with extinction and with that act, initiate a spike in gasoline prices which led to an unprecedented 9% surge in inflation— unseen in 40 years?

Who made the ill-advised, hasty and radical decision to chaotically withdraw our military from Afghanistan, leaving behind massive US military infrastructure, large amounts of American weapons, ammo and materiel and thousands of staff, loyal Afghans and US dependents to the rag tag Taliban militia. 

Then who in his first two years in office Biden radically added fuel to the inflationary conflagration he started by spending trillions dollars we do not have.  Our national receipts from taxes is only about $4 trillion annually.  Radical spendthrift Biden spent all of that as well as an additional $2 trillion that he put on the cuff—for our children to pay for in years to come.  Joe Biden spent money like a sailor on shoreleave.  Biden has taken our national debt to over  $30 trillion dollars, the highest in US history. 

This radical President inherited a peaceful world which he and his polices inflamed into war, and nuclear threat. He plunged the world into a new Cold War with Russia, a proxy war in Eastern Europe where the real threat of either a nuclear accident which could potentially affect the globe, as well as the real threat of a nuclear exchange with Russia.   Biden ignored the impending threats of invasion of Ukraine from Russia. He  ignored his often touted experience and “world-leadership” as he sat by and permitted the disastrous outbreak of hostilities in Ukraine that Biden could have help modulate or end.  Instead his policies inflamed the situation. He “fiddled as Ukraine burned” and permitted the cancer of war to grow in Eastern Europe.  His radical and unwise “economic response” to the Russian invasion was to sanction that nation’s oil and gas exports—which only increased the shortages of fossil fuels and exasperated the inflationary spiral. His intention to hurt Russia only dragged the USA and Europe suffering from Biden caused fuel shortages and inflation into deeper economic peril. 

The impact of his sanctions plan against Russia hurt not only the USA but brought down the economies of Germany, France and the rest  of Europe. The radical incompetent Biden team engineered world recession (with the UK now expecting 22% inflation)  and will be remembered as one of the most economically damaging policies ever instituted in all of US history.   

While these radical policies were being implemented in DC   this most far left and radical of all US Presidents was studiously ignoring the massive humanitarian and security problem going on on our southern border where thousands of illegal economic migrants from South America and elsewhere in the world streamed across our southern border on a daily basis. The first act our 46th President upon entering the White House was to exclaim that there was a new ¨humane” immigration policy on the southern border.  This radical policy —a siren call to immigrants, drug dealers and human traffickers—simply informed the world that the Biden border was open.  His radical pronouncement increased the surge of illegals to unprecedented levels.  Millions crossed over the border..causing an embarrassing pile up of illegal humanity along our southern border states.  To hide this embarrassment from the nation Biden instituted a secret “dead of night air lift” which relieved the imagery of chaos at the border  by flying plane loads of illegals into sanctuary cities in the north.  

His plans for social engineering and social justice led to a “race to the bottom”, in our high schools colleges and universities…where “social justice polices” and equity of outcome polices have eliminated competitive tests and helped to dumb down, and weaken America’s former intellectual and educational dominance.

Biden and his radical team of social engineers are not able to define what a “woman’ is.

As a consequence of his defund the police policies—recently and insincerely back peddled—he has been the cause of unprecedented rise in racial tensions and a massive and frightening increase in crime…

Biden radical polices are turning America into a third world country, before our very eyes.

He is the radical we should be fearful of.