The Biden administration continues its downward momentum. Mirroring its failure to maintain the previous policies on our Southern Border, it reversed strong support for Israel and its Arab neighbors. Iran was boxed in by sanctions and widening Arab-Israeli cooperation. The Abraham Accords promised peace among the historic enemies. Since taking control, Biden seeks to revive the Obama-Iran nuclear accord with its potential economic relief for Iran. He pointedly put off calling the Israeli Prime Minister. He restored financial aid to the Palestinians. These actions encouraged Iran and its allies at the expense of Israel and the Arabs, resulting in rockets and bombs falling on the Israel-Gaza border. Just as a crisis replaced calm on our Southern Border, we added a Middle East conflict. The Biden administration’s motto must be “so much tranquility to upset, so little time.” 

We are living in a sea of help-wanted signs. Over 8 million unfilled jobs nationwide, but no one is showing up. If you can make as much or more with Biden’s enhanced unemployment payments, why work? Many Red states are cutting off the benefits, so we’ll see if more people show up for jobs in those states. These are Red states with schools open, so parents don’t have to stay home with the kids. A rise in employment in these states will prove what a poor policy the payments are.

However, the administration has doubled down with cash child benefits sent out monthly starting in July. Instead of waiting for the tax rebate., it’ll send regular cash payments. With more cash, there will be even less need to find a job. Fewer workers mean shortages and higher prices.

Monday brought copies of The Week Magazine and the Wall Street Journal. Two things taken together brought concern for our future. William A. Falk, in the Week Editor’s letter, took issue with Justice Louis Brandeis writing the best remedy against “falsehoods and fallacies” wasn’t “enforced Silence” of censorship, but more speech. Falk claims “more speech “-isn’t necessarily triumphing over ‘falsehoods and fallacies.” That’s why Mark Zuckerburg now faces fraught decisions about policing his massive privately-owned platform.” When a news magazine editor finds arguments for censorship, we are going down a dark road. 

As it turns out, Zuckerberg’s Facebook is already is in the censorship business. In my last post, I recommended Physicist Steven Koonin’s book “Unsettled” to better understand Climate Change controversies. After all, the present administration wants to spend untold trillions in this area. Maybe before we upend our society, we should be aware of all sides. Imagine my dismay to find Koonin writing in the Wall Street Journal about Facebook’s fact-checking, not his book but the Wall Street Journal review of the book.

Koonin explains, “This paper published Mark Mills’s review of “Unsettled,” my book on climate science, on April 25. Eight days later, 11 self-appointed “fact-checkers” weighed in with a 4,500-word critique on the website ClimateFeedback.org. Facebook is waving that fact check as a giant red flag whenever the review appears in anyone’s feed.

By branding Mr. Mills’s review with “very low scientific credibility,” the company directs its billions of users to a website that claims to discredit the review and, by direct implication, my book. This action adds to the growing suppression of open discussion of climate complexities.”  

Is this the Facebook policing Falk sees as triumphing over “falsehoods and fallacies”? If Facebook can hobble a person of Koonin’s stature, how can we have the desperately needed intelligent discussion of significant issues? If you think this kind of censorship by bogus “fact checking” isn’t widespread, read John Tierney’s on the subject in the City Journal.

Indeed the problems we’ve experienced with Covid should be instructive. Fauci and Company (CDC, FDA, and NIH) illustrate how “Falsehoods and Fallacies” one day become policy the next and visa-versa. Ultimately, somebody is going to be correct, and we want to be on that side. Weighing all the information is the best way to get there. Blocking what doesn’t fit your narrative or dogma will only lead us to failure. 

Just when you think the Biden administration couldn’t get more inept, it appears they will O.K. completion of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline between Russia and Germany. The Trump administration blocked the project as hurting our Eastern European allies while enhancing Russia’s leverage over Europe. As I pointed out earlier, it’s incomprehensible the administration would cancel the Keystone Pipeline alienating our closest ally, Canada, while blessing this gift to Russia. In the light of Russian hackers shutting down our Colonial pipeline, causing massive supply dislocation, this action makes no sense.

Democrats endlessly attacked Trump without any evidence as a tool of Russia Trump’s shipping Ukraine lethal weapons to stop Russia-backed forces when Obama refused to tell a different story. His opposition to the Nord Stream 2 pipeline was hardly favorable to Putin. We have a right to know what is going on with Biden and Russia.

Another thing this action points out that while the administration is preventing or threatening to close pipelines here delivering fossil fuels, Russia is sending increasing amounts of these fuels via tubes. The Nord Stream 2 pipeline and the massive Siberia to China pipeline project show no interest in Russia or China to lessen the use of fossil fuels. They are moving in the opposite direction. 

Their real-life actions call into question Biden’s green plans. The U.S. produces only 15% of the world’s carbon emissions. As Steven Koonin points out in “Unsettled,” nothing we spend or how we disrupt our lives will make one wit of difference unless Russia, China, and others join. Germany talks a good Green game, but they didn’t fight for Nord Stream 2 unless they intended to use a lot of natural gas now and into the future. Only the U.S. has reduced carbon emissions, and this is due to our natural gas. In light of these facts, an honest discussion of “Climate Change” is mandatory before we irrevocably upend our economy.

Things have gone downhill so fast with this administration, much of it without logic or reason; I fear it’s gathering momentum. We need some sharp questioning by our news media, but I won’t hold my breath.  

I’ll end with some good news. Even with the Biden administration along with Fauci and Friends slowing our vaccination rate (see below) with the J & J pause and utterly incoherent policy, we are still on pace for Herd Immunity Thank Operation Warp Speed for getting us here before the Administration screwed everything up: