THE COMING GREEN ELECTRICITY NIGHTMARE
Hundreds of billions in new subsidies will bring expensive, unreliable, eco-destructive power
Senator Joe Manchin (D-WV) wanted regulatory reform, in part to reverse some of the Biden Administration reversals of Trump era reforms intended to expedite permits for fossil fuel projects.
Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) needed Manchin’s vote in the 50-50 Senate to enact his latest spending extravaganza, the Inflation Reduction Act, which was primarily a massive climate and “green” energy subsidy arrangement. It gives Schumer allies some $370 billion in wind, solar, battery and other funding, tax credits and subsidies. In exchange, Schumer would offer a path for Manchin’s reform bill.
THE CHINESE COMMUNIST PARTY’S DO-OR-DIE MOMENT
Xi Jinping, the general secretary of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) since 2012, is widely expected to sail into a third five-year term at this month’s 20th Party Congress starting October 16. This will make him the longest-serving party chief since founding leader Mao Tse-tung.
It will also represent a risky departure from a system of collective leadership and orderly succession that had given the Chinese regime an important advantage over its less stable authoritarian peers.
Paradoxically, the party’s renewed commitment to its “core leader” is coming at a time when the Chinese government faces a daunting array of foreign and domestic challenges, most of which have been prodigiously exacerbated by Xi’s own policy choices.
In effect, the CCP appears to be succumbing to the authoritarian curse of one-man rule, binding itself to the flawed judgment of a single personality and potentially dragging the entire country down with it.
THE THINNEST VENEER OF CIVILIZATION REMAINS
The great achievement of Western civilization—consensual government, individual freedom, rationalism in partnership with religious belief, free market economics, and constant self-critique and audit—was to liberate people from daily worry over state violence, random crime, famine, and an often-unforgiving nature.
But so often the resulting leisure and affluence instead deluded arrogant Western societies into thinking that modern man no longer needed to worry about the fruits of civilization he took to be his elemental birthright.
As a result, the once prosperous Greek city-states, Roman Empire, Renaissance republics, and European democracies of the 1930s imploded—as civilization went headlong in reverse.
We in the modern Western world are now facing just such a crisis.
RUSSIA’S MILITARY MUTINY AND THE FALL OF TSAR PUTIN
Indeed, it was on the basis of a tendentious tract about the historic 'unity' of Russians and Ukrainians that President Putin justified his invasion of an independent neighboring state.
But another word, also with great resonance in Russian history, now hangs over the Kremlin's flailing military campaign. And that word is: Mutiny. Myatezh – мятеж – in Russian.
Remarkably, it was raised on Moscow's main TV channel last week by the woman described as Putin's propagandist-in-chief, Margarita Simonyan, during the nightly discussion program on the state of the 'special military operation.'
The striking-looking Simonyan is the head of RT, the Kremlin's English-language broadcasting network, but here she was speaking to a Russian audience.
THE MOST ANCIENT SYMBOL OF REVERENCE FOR EXISTENCE
Yesterday, I found this religious decoration on the outer wall of an old mosque in the three-thousand year-old Silk Road oasis city of Bukhara. I’ve seen it in many places throughout the world, such as ancient ruins of India and Rome. Yet this is far older – it was carved onto mammoth ivory by Ice Age hunters in Ukraine 12,000 years ago.
From time immemorial has it represented eternity, prosperity, the centeredness of all that is. Why? Look up into the sky on a clear dark night. All people have studied the heavens for eons. You could always know where you were by finding North, for the two front stars of what we call the Big Dipper point to it – always.
The Greeks called it Mega Arktikos, the Great Bear – why we call Far North the Arctic today. The ancients saw the Bear every year rotating around Celestial North – now occupied by Polaris, the North Star – through all four seasons, while all the stars in the sky circled around it every night. What do you see in this depiction of that seasonal rotation?
Yes, a Swastika -- Sanskrit for “the goodness of existence.” The most heinous perversion of symbolic art in world history was to take the symbol for the goodness of existence used by people for a dozen millennia – and still revered by Buddhists, Hindus, Moslems and many others to this day – and twist it into a symbol of horrific evil. It’s an informative lesson of history. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #225 photo ©Jack Wheeler)
THE REGISTAN
The public square of The Registan, the center of the ancient Silk Road city oasis of Samarkand, is arguably the most magnificent sight in all Central Asia. The Ulugh Beg Madrasa (college or school) on the left was built in 1420 by The Sultan Astronomer, the Sher-Dor Madrasa (1636) on the right you learned about in The Tigers of Samarkand, and most recently, last Friday’s Glimpse was about the Golden Madrasa (1660) in the center.
Here are all three in the splendor of entire Registan illuminated at night. It took my breath away yet again to be here once more – and will do the same for you once you stand here to make this sight a part of your life. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #224 photo ©Jack Wheeler)
KEEPING YOUR SANITY WITH A SIMPLE TOOL FOR MANAGING EMOTIONS
Getting overwhelmed or misled by our emotions is one of the primary sources of financial trouble, whether spending, earning, saving, or investing. Emotions are not simple, but sometimes there are simple actions we can take to manage complex things. Today’s column will show you a simple way to avoid getting overwhelmed by your emotions.
- When people were treated for phobias, practicing this simple skill lowered their fear by over 18%, and their psychological reactivity by over 27%. They also were less constricted generally, shifting from feeling a sense of threat to a sense of opportunity.
- When feeling stress, using this technique led to people having 40% fewer alcoholic drinks when they went to a bar or party than those who did not use this technique.
- When feeling angry with someone, those using this technique were 40% less verbally and physically aggressive than those who did not.
- Rejection brings with it actual pain. When feeling rejected those using this technique showed less activity in the parts of the brain connected to physical and emotional pain.
HALF-FULL REPORT 09/30/22
Florida Gets Blasted, and it's Go Time!
We are going to sort the leaders from the phonies down in Florida.
000000000Hurricane Ian walloped South Central Florida at just two mph below Cat 5 winds. The devastation is massive and widespread. Even before the storm, the Whitehouse tried to make access to FEMA political. That's it. America is done with these leftist rats.
Governor DeSantis is up to bat and demonstrating to the world why we are a Republic and where the real power lies when things get bad. All hands need to be on deck in support of DeSantis and the people of Florida. FJB for playing these games! Not now, pal, not now.
Russia is discovering the same lessons, both within Russia and in Ukraine, as over 200,000 have already fled Russia to avoid Putin's mobilization.
Russian soldiers are surrendering by the squad in Donbas as Ukraine has mastered the combination of maneuver warfare and the lethality of the HIMAS missile system. Russians don't seem to have must trust in their leaders.
How does a country escape $11 Billion worth of undersea pipeline construction loans? They blow the darn thing up and blame it on others. Sorry, Vlad, you tried this trick before. Nobody trusts you.
Mama Mia! We have a new Prime Minister in Italy, and the globalists hate her. The smart money is on Giorgia Meloni. She is smart as a whip, hard-working, qualified, and driven by her devotion to the Italian people. The only thing better might be Giorgia in the Whitehouse; the world desperately needs leaders with fire in the belly. Things are happening.
All this and more is in this week's HFR; come on in!
MAKE THIS MAP GREAT AGAIN
FLASHBACK FRIDAY: THE GOLDEN MADRASA
The Golden Madrasa or College of Tilla-Kori was built by Samarkand ruler Yalangtush Bakhadur in the 1650s to house and teach the best and brightest students of his realm. It stands at the center of the wondrous Registan public square complex of the Silk Road oasis city of Samarkand, known to the ancient Greeks as Marakanda.
It was centuries old when Alexander conquered it in 329 BC. For a thousand years as Central Asia’s great entrepot on the Silk Road between China and the Mediterranean, it was a cosmopolitan center for Hinduism, Buddhism, Judaism, Zoroastrianism, and Nestorian Christianity. Incorporated into the Islamic world in the 700s, sacked by Genghiz Khan in 1220, rebuilt by the time Marco Polo in 1272 described it as “a large and splendid city,” Tamerlane made it his capital in 1370.
I was first in Samarkand to stand astonished at the Registan in 1963. Seeing it now, far more impressively preserved than in the Soviet days, made me gasp – especially how Tilla-Kori is once again lavishly decorated with gold. You’ll gasp too should you ever be fortunate enough to come here. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #223 photo ©Jack Wheeler)