“Today,” US Senator Bernie Sanders (D-Masquerading-as-I — VT) said in a December 13 statement, “I withdrew from consideration by the U.S. Senate my War Powers Resolution after the Biden administration agreed to continue working with my office on ending the war in Yemen. Let me be clear. If we do not reach agreement, I will, along with my colleagues, bring this resolution back for a vote in the near future and do everything possible to end this horrific conflict.”

Promises, promises.

Every time Congress rattles its war powers saber against continuing US support for Saudi Arabia’s war on Yemen, presidents simultaneously threaten to veto such resolutions, and pretend they’re just about ready to end that support, if only Congress will back off. And it does.

Meanwhile, the war rolls merrily along, with the United Nations estimating more than 377,000 dead as of the end of last year, including the starvation deaths of 85,000 children between 2015 and 2018 alone.

Why? Because despite Joe Biden’s campaign pledge to treat Saudi Arabia’s regime as a “pariah” over everything from its involvement with the 9/11 hijackers to the murder of  exiled journalist Jamal Khashoggi, he remains as convinced as his predecessors that the US desperately needs the support and approval of Saudi terror kingpin … er, “Crown Prince” … Mohammed bin Salman.

Instead of the “pariah” treatment, MbS gets visits, fist bumps, and pleas to increase oil production so American consumers don’t have to pick up the tab for — and Biden doesn’t get the blame for — the price effects of US sanctions on Russian oil.

And US sanctions on Iranian oil.

And US sanctions on Venezuelan oil.

Do you detect a theme?  American politicians’ moonshine about “energy independence” is a perpetual riff on St. Augustine’s prayer: “Give me chastity and continence, but not yet.”

It’s not just about oil, though.

The Saudi regime is also one of the planet’s top military spenders, with much of its $50-75 billion “defense” budget buying US-made arms.

And since the US toppled Saddam Hussein’s Sunni-heavy regime in 2003 and installed a more Shia-friendly (read: Iran-friendly) government, Saudi Arabia has been the US’s proxy/counterweight  of choice in its 40-year war on Iran specifically and Shia power (in, for example, Syria and Lebanon) generally.

Decades of misguided US mideast policy have given MbS  a continuing grip on Washington’s dangly parts, with several ways to squeeze tightly should Joe Biden displease him in any way.

The problem with this particular intimate massage is that there’s really no prospect of a happy ending. Unwinding decades of would-be hegemony is GOING to hurt. But it has to happen sooner or later. Ending the slaughter in Yemen and telling MbS to go pound sand (he’s got a lot of that) would be a great start.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

PUBLICATION/CITATION HISTORY

“Incredibly dangerous.” “Disgusting.” “Divorced from reality.” White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre finally put the Biden administration on record condemning nearly three years of  disastrously misguided  “public health” responses to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Oh, wait, no. Jean-Pierre (and her bosses) aren’t upset about more than one million American dead, ineffectual vaccines, a ravaged economy, the “public health” establishment’s complete abandonment of long-established principles and findings of science, and so forth.

The burrs under their fur are what they deem “personal attacks” on the premier public face of all those failures, Dr. Anthony Fauci, by new Chief Twit Elon Musk.

“My pronouns are Prosecute/Fauci,” Musk tweeted on December 11. And, later, “[Fauci] lied to Congress and funded gain-of-function research that killed millions of people.”

Whether the research Fauci lied to Congress about actually resulted in the pandemic is certainly open to question (Occam’s Razor says the best bet is that COVID-19, like most viruses affecting humans, naturally made the jump from other animals). But he did lie about it. And that’s not all he’s lied about.

Anthony Fauci lies. He lies a lot. He lies constantly. He lies flagrantly. He lies like a rug, then often brags that he lied, then whines that noticing he’s lying is tantamount to attacking “science.”

He lied (after initially telling the truth) about the efficacy of masks in preventing the spread of viral infection (science doesn’t support the claim), then claimed the truth was a lie he’d told to avoid a public run on masks.

He lied about the efficacy of the COVID-19 vaccines in preventing both infection and transmission.

He gave one number for vaccination rates required to establish “herd immunity,” then jacked up that number and claimed he’d been lying before to encourage vaccine uptake.

He colluded with other “public health” officials to encourage “devastating takedowns” of real scientists whose real science disagreed with the politically motivated  pseudo-science he pushed from his perch atop the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, then lied and tried to shift the blame.

And, yes, he lied about the NIH/NIAID role in funding gain-of-function research in Wuhan.

The rate at which Anthony Fauci’s pants burst into flame probably keeps several clothing manufacturers solvent.  When humans return to the moon, they’ll be met by the tip of Fauci’s nose.

Anthony Fauci’s lies increased the damage done by, and the number of lives lost to, COVID-19.

Not being a lawyer, I don’t claim to know whether any of his lies constitute crimes which might be successfully prosecuted. But of one thing there can be no reasonable doubt whatsoever: His extensive, undeniable, and seemingly compulsive habit of lying is unworthy of defense from the White House, or from anywhere else.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

PUBLICATION/CITATION HISTORY

Avid supporters of coal, oil, and gas (and opponents of wind and solar energy, but I repeat myself) seem convinced that they’ve got the ultimate gotcha arguments in “intermittency” and “energy density.” They’re right, but not in quite the way they seem to think.

What does “intermittency” mean? It’s pretty simple: The sun doesn’t shine all the time, so solar panels can’t produce energy 24/7. Wind is even more “intermittent,” or at least less predictable. A windmill or wind turbine may or may not generate energy at any particular time, depending on whether there’s a decent breeze.

“Energy density” gets more complicated, but the simplified version looks something like this: A given volume or area of space and fuel dedicated to one kind of energy production is more efficient than another. An acre dedicated to a nuclear reactor or a fossil fuel power plant (and the nuclear material or, say, coal) produces a LOT more energy than an acre covered with solar panels or wind turbines. In fact, it’s questionable whether there are enough acres on Earth to meet humanity’s energy needs with “renewables,” at least if those acres have to be dedicated entirely to energy generation.

The opponents of “renewables” would seem to enjoy an advantage on these arguments. But not so fast.

With respect to density, it’s true that land dedicated to nuclear reactors and e.g. coal-fired power plants has to be dedicated pretty much entirely to those facilities and activities. On the other hand, a rooftop solar panel or wind turbine on a home takes up little or no net additional space at all. You’re not using the roof for other activities, and it would still be there if you didn’t need electricity. Batteries and such take up SOME space, but not much, and may be installed inside a home’s walls. You’re basically getting multiple uses from the same space.

As for intermittency, I just mentioned batteries. You can generate more energy than you’re using when the sun is out or the wind is blowing, and use the stored excess energy when it isn’t.

And it’s not like fossil fuels, especially delivered through an increasingly unreliable “grid” system, aren’t also intermittent. Even setting aside military attacks on production and distribution infrastructure like we’re seeing in Ukraine, and the growing phenomenon of localized sabotage here in the United States, we experience energy interruptions all the time.

Transformers blow. Drunk drivers, hurricanes, or ice storms take lines down or flood/freeze pumps. Trains full of coal derail. Pipelines leak.

When those problems occur, “intermittency” goes to “non-existence,” and “density” falls to zero, until they’re fixed, for every customer downstream of the problems.

If a squirrel chews through the wires connecting your solar panels to your internal home “grid,” your neighbor’s refrigerator doesn’t miss a beat.

I’m writing this column after sunset, on a computer operating from stored energy generated by a non-grid-connected solar panel. No intermittency, sufficient density for my purposes, and independence from sprawling and vulnerable systems.

Your move, fossils.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

PUBLICATION/CITATION HISTORY