Five Quick Things: Polish Jets and Lies - The American Spectator | USA News and Politics
Five Quick Things: Polish Jets and Lies
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The latest in our world-famous drive-by punditry series:

1. What on Earth are these clowns doing?

There is this story of the Biden administration’s half-hearted attempt to build a beefed-up Ukrainian air force on the fly amid a war, and it doesn’t generate much confidence.

To say the least.

The facts as we understand them are as follows: on Sunday, Biden’s Secretary of State Antony “Winkin’ ” Blinken went on TV and said Poland had a “green light” to send some not-insignificant number of MiG-29 Fulcrum fighter jets to Ukraine in order that Kyiv might break down Russian control over their airspace. When Blinken said this, it sounded as though it was the Poles’ idea in order to help their neighbors against a common enemy.

By Monday it had circulated that the U.S. and Poland had reached a deal and dozens of MiG-29s were headed across the border into Ukraine. Whether the Ukrainians have enough pilots and ground crews to service all these fighter jets and keep them flying is a question, but in any event this was the story.

But then things seemed to change. Because on Tuesday the Polish foreign ministry said that the Polish government was pleased to deliver all of those MiG-29s to the U.S. air base at Ramstein, Germany, in return for American delivery of used planes of “corresponding operational capabilities.”

That sounded an awful lot like the Poles attempting to trade up from the Fulcrums to used U.S. F-16 fighters, and you certainly can’t blame them for pushing such a deal. After all, arming the Ukrainians with dozens of fighter planes capable of turning the air war into a stalemate, not to mention making fiery wrecks out of Russian heavy machinery on the battlefield, would be a bit of an escalation on the part of a Russian neighbor. There would be risks — of a kinetic nature — involved in such an escalation.

And after that, Pentagon spokesman John Kirby put this gem of a statement out into the airwaves:

The prospect of fighter jets “at the disposal of the Government of the United States of America” departing from a U.S./NATO base in Germany to fly into airspace that is contested with Russia over Ukraine raises serious concerns for the entire NATO alliance. It is simply not clear to us that there is a substantive rationale for it. We will continue to consult with Poland and our other NATO allies about this issue and the difficult logistical challenges it presents, but we do not believe Poland’s proposal is a tenable one.

Which is probably true. But when State Department spokesman Ned Price then said Ukraine doesn’t need fighter jets but instead surface-to-air missiles (cue the little girl asking, “Why can’t we have both?”), that was the end of the Polish Jets gambit.

So why on Earth would Blinken have said what he said on Sunday?

The Federalist’s John Daniel Davidson came to a quite reasonable conclusion:

In other words, there is no NATO strategy, either to assist Ukraine in a way that would turn the tide of the war or to imagine an end-game that’s something less than a total Russian defeat. Last week, Blinken articulated what can best be described as a maximalist policy for the war: “We have to sustain this until it stops, until the war is over, Russian forces leave, the Ukrainian people regain their independence, their sovereignty, their territorial integrity. We’re committed to doing that.”

So the apparent position of the U.S. government is that it must help Ukraine to bring about a complete humiliating Russian withdrawal, something like the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan in 1989 — or the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan last year, for that matter. If the NATO allies are worried that Russia will widen the war over a couple dozen Polish MiG-29s, what do they think the Kremlin will do to avoid the kind of defeat that Blinken has laid out? Have they thought about the possibility that Russia would use tactical nuclear weapons to avoid that kind of defeat? It sure doesn’t seem like it.

The media narrative of the last week seems to be that somehow Joe Biden has emerged as a strong leader of NATO and has galvanized a coherent and effective response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Obviously that’s a lie, as is every other contemporary media narrative emanating from the boiler rooms in Washington and New York, but it isn’t even a plausible one once the Polish jet story is put under the microscope.

2. You should be honored to pay through the nose for gasoline, dontcha know

Another stupid media narrative that has emerged in response to terrible realities on the ground is that the high gas prices Americans are paying are nothing compared to what’s happening to the Ukrainians, and your suffering over $4 gasoline is essentially a “first world problem.”

I first picked that one up when the local fishwrap here, the Baton Rouge Advocate, belched it forth in an opinion piece none of the editorial staff would put their names on. It appeared as an “Our Views” column, and it pushed the virtue-signal button in saying that most people agree with boycotting Russian oil to be in solidarity with Ukraine.

I laid into the Advocate’s ink-stained wretches with gusto at my site. This narrative must be rejected as loudly as possible, because the Russia–Ukraine war is not the reason gasoline prices have skyrocketed in this country. They were already too high well before Russia invaded, and the 650,000 barrels of Russian oil per day that we’ve now chosen not to buy were a new phenomenon. Before Joe Biden and his Green New Elves bumbled into our lives we were a net exporter of oil, and Russian oil had different destinations than here. To the extent that our gas prices are through the roof in connection with the Ukraine war it’s because Biden put us in that position with his moronic energy policies.

And he still isn’t backing off from those. Which led Tim Stewart, president of the U.S. Oil and Gas Association, to offer the quote of the year in response to Biden’s self-congratulatory statement keeping domestic oil shut down while denying he was doing so.

Cut the crap and approve our permits,” said Stewart.

3. On Florida’s anti-grooming bill and the unhinged response to it

The national Democrat reaction to Florida’s anti-grooming bill has been utterly insane. Have you noticed?

This bill is about kindergartners through third graders. Five-year-olds through 8-year-olds. There isn’t a single 5-year-old who knows that he or she is gay or trans, and a good case can be made that the ones who even know what any of that is have been abused by someone.

And yet Florida’s Gov. Ron DeSantis got called on the carpet by the CEO of Disney over the bill. That didn’t go very well, by the way — DeSantis said he was for it, and when the whining didn’t stop his press secretary, Christina Pushaw, dropped this bombshell of a statement:

Gov. DeSantis on Disney: “How do they possibly explain lining their pockets with their relationship from the Communist Party of China? Because that’s what they do, and they make a fortune, and they don’t say a word about the really brutal practices at the hands of the CCP.”

“Companies that have made a fortune catering to families should understand that parents don’t want this injected into their kid’s kindergarten classroom. Our policies will be based on the best interest of Florida citizens, not the musing of woke corporations.”

But this “controversy” proves one thing. It’s now identifiable beyond a doubt which party is actively promoting the sexualization of young children, an activity which is barely one degree removed from pedophilia.

No, it is not a good idea to be teaching gay and trans activism to 5-year-olds. It isn’t a good idea to be teaching straight sex to 5-year-olds, much less “exotic” sexual and lifestyle practices.

There is absolutely nothing radical or improper in this bill. The only reason it seems novel is that until the Left in this country drove our culture straight into the toilet it was inconceivable that such a bill would even be needed. Now that the need is obvious, they want to act like it’s somehow bigotry to put a stop to the grooming of young children into nonconformist sexual lifestyles.

The only reason anybody would oppose such action is they’re actively interested in promoting homosexuality and transgenderism to kids who can only be harmed by such activity.

They’re monsters. And open about it.

4. There she goes again

Just call her The Cackler. And pray that she’s never actually in charge of the country.

5. The recession — and the political reorganization — is coming. Maybe it’s already here.

You’ve likely already heard that the Atlanta Fed is predicting zero percent economic growth for the first quarter. And we now know that February inflation sat at 7.9 percent, which means it’s continuing to grow despite the bogus assurances of the political class — an unserious clown cavalcade who just shoveled another $1.5 trillion out the door of the U.S. Treasury.

We know that every recession in modern memory has been brought on by a run-up in fuel prices, and we have that now.

The long and short of it is that we’re about to hit the economic floor face-plant style. It looks like it’s going to be ugly. Commodities are going to get scarce because of those fuel prices and the problems in the supply chain, people will lose their jobs, the Biden administration’s idiots will inevitably attempt to institute rationing in order to keep prices down, and that’ll mean gas lines and even worse shortages.

But this coming recession isn’t just economic. It’s bigger than that.

We’re coming to a point I wrote about in my book The Revivalist Manifesto, which will be out in a couple of months. Namely, that the end of the current era of political consensus, an era which began with Franklin D. Roosevelt’s victory in the 1932 presidential election and the inception of the New Deal and the modern welfare and regulatory state, has come.

The economic downturn that has arrived coincides with a cultural downturn. And a spiritual downturn. And certainly a political downturn not just for Biden and the Democrats but the current order in general.

Something new is coming. That something will either look like what AOC and the Squad are pushing, or it’s going to be what I call a revivalist movement on the right. Perhaps led by Donald Trump for a time, but bigger and deeper than just Trump.

So it’s not correct to say we should embrace the recession. The recession is a disaster coming as it does on top of the damage the stupid COVID response did in 2020 and 2021. But given the Biden policies it was inevitable. Rather than embracing it, revivalists should see it as the opportunity it is.

Because the Hard Left certainly does. They’re already blathering about the Great Reset and how its time has come.

Somebody is going to win the recession. It needs to be us, or we’ll never emerge from the malaise.

Scott McKay
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Scott McKay is a contributing editor at The American Spectator  and publisher of the Hayride, which offers news and commentary on Louisiana and national politics, and RVIVR.com, a national political news aggregation and opinion site. Scott is also the author of The Revivalist Manifesto: How Patriots Can Win The Next American Era, and, more recently, Racism, Revenge and Ruin: It's All Obama, available November 21. He’s also a writer of fiction — check out his four Tales of Ardenia novels Animus, Perdition, Retribution and Quandary at Amazon.
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