Julia Cavanaugh

A wonderful lady.

At Instagram.

Inflation, Shortages Push Americans to Switch Brands More Than Ever

I switched to Powerade from Gatorade, which is out of my price range now. 

Not only that, bottles now contain 28 ounces, down from at least 36. This is a longtime trend. When I was a kid my hands were too little to grasp those monster old bars of Safeguard. Now soap comes the size of a couple of Reese's.

And don't get me going about gas prices. I'm curtailing my driving, keeping it as local as possible for now. And I'm not poor, sheesh!

At WSJ, "Brand loyalty is tested as shoppers try new grocery products":

U.S. shoppers are buying what they can find—and afford.

Well-known brand names and flashy ad campaigns are no longer enough to command U.S. consumers’ loyalty in grocery stores, retail executives said. As inflation spreads and stretched supply chains leave gaps on shelves, shoppers are becoming increasingly fickle, with availability and price determining what goes into their shopping carts.

Shoppers’ new willingness to switch brands could shift the balances of power inside grocery stores. Big food companies like Kraft Heinz Co. and Kellogg Co. risk losing market share to competitors and store brands that are more readily able to fill in empty spots in store aisles, industry executives said. Supermarket operators, while grappling with shortages, said the situation is giving them more leverage with major brands and flexibility to test newer, often lower-cost products.

“We are seeing people make more choices on items because they are available,” said Tony Sarsam, chief executive officer of grocery chain SpartanNash Co. In the Grand Rapids, Mich.-based company’s supermarket aisles, Mr. Sarsam said, Tropicana orange juice lost share to Coca-Cola Co.’s Simply Orange in recent months, which has been easier for SpartanNash to stock, while Tyson Foods Inc. similarly lost share in frozen breaded chicken to Conagra Brands Inc.’s Banquet meals.

Mr. Sarsam said he and his team now are examining the variety of groceries the company sells, recently trimming the number of items it offers in cookie, cracker and salty snack sections in response to some brands’ inability to meet demand and slower sales. SpartanNash is sometimes giving more shelf space to local brands, which are better able to keep products in stock.

Tyson said it is working hard to meet high demand for its products. Coca-Cola, Conagra and private-equity firm PAI Partners, which owns Tropicana, declined to comment.

About 70% of U.S. shoppers said they had purchased a new or different brand than they had pre-pandemic, according to a survey conducted from May 2020 to August 2021 by private-label consulting company Daymon Worldwide Inc.

As consumers try less familiar names, brand loyalty for companies with supply challenges is declining, according to market research firm IRI. Brands with low availability, or in-stock rates of between 72% and 85%, have lost 0.7 percentage point of share of wallet on average, the firm said. Share of wallet, which measures brand loyalty, shows whether companies are gaining or losing buyers.

Consumers often stick to brands they know out of convenience and buy more items from names they are familiar with, industry analysts said. But shoppers are inclined to switch brands when belt-tightening if they can find a better deal. During the financial crisis, major brands across the grocery store developed lower-priced versions of their products to try to keep consumers loyal, as Procter & Gamble Co. did with cheaper versions of Tide detergent, Olay skin cream and Pampers diapers, for example.

Today, however, shoppers feel the pressure of higher prices while also facing shelves that are short on products, companies said. Those factors, in tandem, are driving more consumers to switch brands, executives said.

At 84.51 LLC, a data analysis business of supermarket giant Kroger Co., Vice President of Commercial Insights Barbara Connors said that brand switching was driven by extreme shortages and stockpiling, and that shoppers increasingly are switching to lower-cost brands including those on sale.

Production constraints are costing some food giants grocery-store turf. Kraft Heinz said in February it lost share in some supermarket categories as the company struggled to keep up with demand. Kraft Heinz had no additional comment.

Kellogg said in February that some of its cereal brands lost ground in supermarkets and that it expects to gain cereal market share in North America in the second half of the year when it can get more products back on shelves. Kellogg said that it gained market share last year in salty snacks and crackers.

“We will see market share restoration,” Steven Cahillane, chief executive of Kellogg, said on an earnings call last month. “We’re focusing first on our biggest brands.”

Some food companies said they see opportunities as more shoppers switch brands. Geoff Tanner, chief commercial and marketing officer at J.M. Smucker Co., said the maker of Jif peanut butter and Folgers coffee has benefited from being able to more consistently meet demand compared with competitors.

“There’s more to get if you can outperform,” Mr. Tanner said. About two-thirds of Smucker’s product portfolio is increasing its market share today compared with one-third before the pandemic, he said, and the company is boosting advertising...

 

Bruce D. Jones, To Rule the Waves

Bruce D. Jones, To Rule the Waves: How Control of the World's Oceans Shapes the Fate of the Superpowers.

Red Hot Chili Peppers Out with New Album, First with John Frusciante Since 2006 (VIDEO)

At the video, the band's first single from the record, "Black Summer."

Here, "‘Unlimited Love’ by the Red Hot Chili Peppers Is the Group’s Mildest Album Yet":

The 12th studio LP from the band features their classic sound but little that’s new or exciting.

The Red Hot Chili Peppers have often seemed on the verge of implosion, but so far the group has always bounced back. The Los Angeles quartet, whose mix of punk and funk proved hugely influential in the 1990s and beyond, has scaled heights few current rock acts can touch—a performance at the Super Bowl in 2014, 100 million records sold. But every few years the hard-living outfit finds itself on the brink of collapse. After the massive success of the band’s 1991 breakthrough “Blood Sugar Sex Magik,” wunderkind guitarist John Frusciante left the Peppers and struggled mightily with heroin addiction. Lead singer Anthony Kiedis, bassist Flea and drummer Chad Smith have all had their share of substance abuse issues as well.

Mr. Frusciante rejoined and then left once again after 2006’s “Stadium Arcadium” to focus on his solo work, which is strange and sometimes wonderful and has earned him a cult following. The two records without Mr. Frusciante were decidedly uneven—one poor (2011’s “I’m With You”), the other intriguing (2016’s unusually lush “The Getaway,” produced by Danger Mouse and mixed by Radiohead associate Nigel Godrich ). Yet despite all this tumult, somehow the Red Hot Chili Peppers have endured.

On “Unlimited Love” (Warner), the group’s 12th studio LP, out Friday, Mr. Frusciante returns to the fold, for the first time in 16 years, as does super-producer Rick Rubin, who was integral to the group’s earlier success but hasn’t worked with them in over a decade. With the personnel behind the band’s biggest hits all back in place, it’s not surprising that the new set feels like a deliberate return to basics. The production is ultra-simple, keeping the focus on the group’s most identifiable qualities—Flea’s percussive bass, Mr. Smith’s rock-solid backbeat and Mr. Frusciante’s minimalist guitar.

And then there’s Mr. Kiedis. Plenty of people have poked fun at the silliness of his lyrics over the years. When he’s not crooning a ballad, his primary strategy is to deliver stream-of-consciousness observations pitched somewhere between a hepcat disc jockey from the 1960s and an old-school rapper. But if he’s heard the complaints, he’s chosen to ignore them, and goofy choices abound. This is apparent from the opening track and first single on “Unlimited Love,” “Black Summer,” which finds the frontman tossing off non sequiturs such as “My Greta weighs a ton” and “platypus are few” in what sounds like an Irish brogue. But the tune’s catchy and memorable chorus—traditionally a band speciality—blots out the song’s shortcomings.

Unfortunately, with a few notable exceptions—the following “Here Ever After,” “These Are the Ways” halfway through the record—killer choruses are in disconcertingly short supply on “Unlimited Love.” The songs are well played and logically arranged but also weirdly inert. As one midtempo groove follows another, we recognize Flea’s popping bass and Mr. Smith’s steady snare, but the song constructions are rote, enlivened only by the occasional guitar excursion from Mr. Frusciante.

On the one hand, the band and Mr. Rubin show remarkable restraint—there’s no attempt to dress up the group’s sound or bring it in line with current trends, and the simple arrangements will be easy to replicate live. But many songs feel half finished. As is typical for Mr. Rubin’s productions, each instrument is loud, heavily compressed and in your face. Which is ironic given that this is easily the Peppers’ mellowest record: The tempos are mostly slow, and there’s very little in the way of power chords. Unless you’re listening closely, the songs on this lengthy album—17 tracks, 73 minutes—bleed together.

The skeletal, funk-inflected R&B of early Prince seems to be a primary influence. This sounds promising on paper, but Mr. Kiedis’s attempts at lyrics about love and companionship fall flat. He has little to say about the finer points of relationships, and on the bland “She’s a Lover”—the most obvious Prince nod here—he falls back on groan-inducing come-ons like “She’s so full of learning curves.”

Here and there, Mr. Kiedis looks back on his life in music. The third track, “Aquatic Mouth Dance,” pays tribute to some of the group’s early influences over a busy bassline while horns add a touch of color; the fifth cut, “Poster Child,” is especially nutty, as he free associates about music history with no particular point in mind (“ Steve Miller and Duran Duran / A joker dancing in the sand / Van Morrison the astral man”). Mr. Kiedis sounds like he’s having fun, but these songs don’t hold up to repeated listening.

The penultimate track, “The Heavy Wing,” is one of very few places on the record where the Peppers really rock out, but the closing “Tangelo,” yet another quiet ballad, brings them back to earth. It’s so spare, the only things that pop out are awkward lines like “the smell of your hello” and “the smile of a knife / Is seldom befriending.”

The band and Mr. Rubin have been at this far too long to make a truly awful album—these are pros who know how to get these songs to the “listenable” stage, at the very least...

Dude's a little critical, eh?

Ima listen to the record and I'll let you know.

Still more.

 

Academy Awards Condemns Will Smith and Begins Formal Review (VIDEO)

This is the obligatory Will Smith Slaps Chris Rock at the Academy Awards Show post. 

I can't add much to all the commentary that's already been delivered, and I'm sure there's more to come. 

I wrote this last night after Will Smith accepted his Best Actor award for "King Richard," in which he invoked God in his apology, but *did not* apologize to Chris Rock at the time: "'I’m being called on in my life to love people and to protect people and to be a river to my people' — Will Smith, accepting his Academy Award after striking fellow brother Chris Rock across the face. God called on him to do that, you know."

Smith's assault on Rock has dominated the 24 hour news-cycles, and my continue to dominate for a few more days. Both astonishing and reprehensible behavior. 

At the New York Times, "Will Smith Apologizes to Chris Rock After Academy Condemns His Slap:"

“I was out of line and I was wrong,” said Smith, who hit Rock at the Oscars after the comedian made a joke about his wife. The film organization opened an inquiry into the incident.

LOS ANGELES — Will Smith apologized to the comedian Chris Rock on Monday evening for slapping him during Sunday night’s Oscars telecast after the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, which administers the awards, denounced his actions and opened an inquiry into the incident.

Mr. Smith, who had pointedly not apologized to Mr. Rock on Sunday night when he accepted the award for best actor, wrote on Instagram Monday evening that “I would like to publicly apologize to you, Chris.”

“I was out of line and I was wrong,” he said in the statement. “I am embarrassed and my actions were not indicative of the man I want to be.”

His apology came as the academy, a major Hollywood union and others criticized his actions, which stunned viewers around the world and overshadowed the Oscars.

“The academy condemns the actions of Mr. Smith at last night’s show,” the film organization said in a statement. “We have officially started a formal review around the incident and will explore further action and consequences in accordance with our bylaws, standards of conduct and California law.”

The academy’s statement came after a meeting Monday. A five-page document on standards of conduct that accompanied it spells out behavior the organization deems unacceptable. It prohibits “physical contact that is uninvited and, in the situation, inappropriate and unwelcome, or coercive sexual attention.” Also not allowed is “intimidation, stalking, abusive or threatening behavior, or bullying.”

Disciplinary action, according to the bylaws, could include “suspension of membership or expulsion from membership.”

The Academy was not known to have expelled a member before 2017, when Harvey Weinstein was removed amid allegations of sexual harassment and rape. Then, in 2018, after adopting a code of conduct for members, the organization expelled Bill Cosby, who had been convicted of sexual assault, and the filmmaker Roman Polanski, who had fled the country years earlier while awaiting sentencing for statutory rape.

The Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists, the union representing thousands of people who work in film, television and radio, called the incident “unacceptable” but said that it “does not comment on any pending member disciplinary process.” “Violence or physical abuse in the workplace is never appropriate and the union condemns any such conduct,” the union said in a statement Monday. “The incident involving Will Smith and Chris Rock at last night’s Academy Awards was unacceptable.”

The incident unfolded Sunday night after Mr. Rock made a joke about the buzzed hair of Mr. Smith’s wife, Jada Pinkett Smith, who has alopecia, a condition that leads to hair loss. Mr. Smith responded by walking onto the stage of the Dolby Theater and slapping Mr. Rock, leaving stunned viewers wondering at first if the blow might have been scripted until Mr. Smith returned to his seat and warned him to stop talking about his wife, using expletives.

Behind the scenes at the Oscars, there were serious discussions about removing Mr. Smith from the theater, according to two industry officials with knowledge of the situation who were granted anonymity to describe internal deliberations. But time was short, because the best actor award, which Mr. Smith was heavily favored to win, was fast approaching, one noted — and stakeholders had varying opinions on how to proceed. There was also concern about further disrupting the live broadcast, the other said.

As the show went on, the actor Denzel Washington spoke with Mr. Smith during a commercial break. Not long after that Mr. Smith won best actor. (Mr. Smith said in his speech that Mr. Washington had told him: “At your highest moment, be careful. That’s when the devil comes for you.”) In his onstage remarks, Mr. Smith apologized to the academy and to his fellow nominees — but not to Mr. Rock — and defiantly sought to draw parallels to the character he played in “King Richard,” the father of Venus and Serena Williams.

“Richard Williams was a fierce defender of his family,” Mr. Smith said. 

He received a standing ovation.

American society is completely (and perhaps irrevocably) degenerate.  

See Allahpundit for lots more, "No, Will Smith isn't going to lose his Oscar."

Victor Davis Hanson, The Dying Citizen

At Amazon, Victor Davis Hanson, The Dying Citizen: How Progressive Elites, Tribalism, and Globalization Are Destroying the Idea of America.

Natural-Gas Industry Gets Boost as Biden Shifts Stance

Baby steps. Baby steps.

At WSJ, "Shares of large U.S. natural-gas companies rose as Biden softened position against fossil fuels":

President Biden’s pledge to boost U.S. liquefied natural-gas exports to Europe marks a further retreat from his hard-line stance against fossil fuels, sending share prices surging for natural-gas companies.

The president, who campaigned on a platform to transition the U.S. to cleaner energy, said Friday the U.S. is working to ship 50 billion cubic meters of LNG to Europe annually through at least 2030 to help the continent wean itself from dependence on Russian supplies.

The announcement came a day after Democrats on the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission backtracked on new environmental policies, suspending implementation of heightened requirements on reviews that industry officials and Republicans said would impede gas-pipeline development.

Shares of large U.S. natural-gas companies rose 9% on average Friday as major stock indexes were mixed. Shares of EQT Corp and Southwestern Energy Co., two large producers, shot up to close about 12% and 16% higher.

Cheniere Energy Inc., LNG 5.46% the top U.S. exporter, was up about 5.5%. Tellurian Inc., which is seeking financing for an LNG project, soared 21%.

The gas industry’s prospects have been a concern among the sector’s executives because of Mr. Biden’s stance against fossil fuels. But the president has softened some of his positions in the wake of rising energy costs, which have been driven in part by the economic rebound from Covid-19, and more recently by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

The White House pivot has also put the U.S. and its vast oil and gas reserves in shale rock back at the center of a global scramble for energy resources as a bulwark against petrostates and authoritarian regimes. The U.S. is the world’s largest oil and gas producer.

Daniel Yergin, the vice chairman of S&P Global and a noted oil-industry historian, called recent developments “a huge turn.”

“There’s a recognition now that shale—and particularly LNG—is a real geopolitical asset,” Mr. Yergin said.

Mr. Biden and his advisers have said they are still committed to ending the world’s reliance on fossil fuels, including gas, and will continue to fund renewable energy as part of their work with European allies. But they also acknowledged the need to deal with the reliance that exists today.

“While gas is still a substantial part of the energy mix, we want to make sure that the Europeans do not have to source that gas from Russia,” national security adviser Jake Sullivan told reporters on Friday.

Toby Rice, chief executive of top U.S. natural-gas producer EQT, said the Biden administration’s shift is an extremely encouraging political signal that natural gas will play a key role in the world’s future energy mix.

Mr. Rice said the U.S. could sharply increase LNG exports over time if companies build thousands of miles of new pipelines and billions worth of new LNG facilities. But unleashing that will require broader support for that infrastructure and speeding up the sluggish permitting process, he said.

“The problem we face is it takes longer to permit something than it takes us to build it,” Mr. Rice said. “The faster we move, the faster we move toward achieving our climate goals and providing energy security for people around the world.” Shippers of LNG have already sent most U.S. cargoes to European destinations this year, as prices have skyrocketed following Russia’s invasion. American exporters are moving cargoes as fast as physically possible and are on pace to send a record 11.4 billion cubic feet a day of LNG overseas this month, with more than 60% bound for Europe, according to market intelligence firm Kpler.

FERC has approved 13 LNG facilities across the U.S. that have remained unbuilt with the combined capacity to export about 25 billion cubic feet each day, according to FERC’s February update. Companies haven’t begun construction on those largely because they haven’t yet gathered enough supply agreements with customers overseas to finance the construction of those facilities.

Part of the arrangement between the U.S. and Europe is to ensure that European countries also come through to show they can take more U.S. gas. They are to build out their infrastructure to accept up to 50 billion cubic meters of additional U.S. supply a year between now and 2030, Mr. Sullivan said.

Before the Russian invasion, Biden administration officials had been hesitant about putting U.S. development money into fossil-fuel projects abroad...

 

U.S. Makes Contingency Plans in Case Russia Uses Its Most Powerful Weapons

At the New York Times, "BRUSSELS — The White House has quietly assembled a team of national security officials to sketch out scenarios of how the United States and its allies should respond if President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia — frustrated by his lack of progress in Ukraine or determined to warn Western nations against intervening in the war — unleashes his stockpiles of chemical, biological or nuclear weapons":

The Tiger Team, as the group is known, is also examining responses if Mr. Putin reaches into NATO territory to attack convoys bringing weapons and aid to Ukraine, according to several officials involved in the process. Meeting three times a week, in classified sessions, the team is also looking at responses if Russia seeks to extend the war to neighboring nations, including Moldova and Georgia, and how to prepare European countries for the refugees flowing in on a scale not seen in decades.

Those contingencies are expected to be central to an extraordinary session here in Brussels on Thursday, when President Biden meets leaders of the 29 other NATO nations, who will be meeting for the first time — behind closed doors, their cellphones and aides banished — since Mr. Putin invaded Ukraine.

Just a month ago, such scenarios seemed more theoretical. But today, from the White House to NATO’s headquarters in Brussels, a recognition has set in that Russia may turn to the most powerful weapons in its arsenal to bail itself out of a military stalemate.

NATO’s secretary general, Jens Stoltenberg, underscored the urgency of the preparation effort on Wednesday, telling reporters for the first time that even if the Russians employ weapons of mass destruction only inside Ukraine, they may have “dire consequences” for people in NATO nations. He appeared to be discussing the fear that chemical or radioactive clouds could drift over the border. One issue under examination is whether such collateral damage would be considered an “attack” on NATO under its charter, which might require a joint military response.

The current team was established in a memo signed by Jake Sullivan, Mr. Biden’s national security adviser, on Feb. 28, four days after the invasion began, according to the officials involved in the process, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive planning. A previous iteration had worked for months, behind the scenes, to prepare the U.S. government for the likelihood of a Russian invasion of Ukraine.

That team played a central role in devising the playbooks of deep sanctions, troop buildups in NATO nations and arming the Ukrainian military, which have exploited Russian weaknesses and put its government and economy under tremendous pressure.

Mr. Stoltenberg, sounding far more hawkish than in the past, said he expected “allies will agree to provide additional support, including cybersecurity assistance and equipment to help Ukraine protect against chemical, biological, radiologic and nuclear threats.”

As Mr. Biden flew to Europe on Wednesday, both he and Mr. Stoltenberg warned of growing evidence that Russia was in fact preparing to use chemical weapons in Ukraine.

These are questions that Europe has not confronted since the depths of the Cold War, when NATO had far fewer members, and Western Europe worried about a Soviet attack headed into Germany. But few of the leaders set to meet in Brussels on Thursday ever had to deal with those scenarios — and many have never had to think about nuclear deterrence or the effects of the detonation of battlefield nuclear weapons, designed to be less powerful than those that destroyed Hiroshima. The fear is that Russia is more likely to use those weapons, precisely because they erode the distinction between conventional and nuclear arms.

Senator Jack Reed, a Rhode Island Democrat who heads the Armed Services Committee, said on Wednesday that if Mr. Putin used a weapon of mass destruction — chemical, biological or nuclear — “there would be consequences” even if the weapon’s use was confined to Ukraine. Mr. Reed said radiation from a nuclear weapon, for instance, could waft into a neighboring NATO country and be considered an attack on a NATO member.

“It’s going to be a very difficult call, but it’s a call that not just the president but the entire NATO Council will have to make,” Mr. Reed told reporters, referring to the governing body of the Western alliance...

Still more.

 

Catherine Belton, Putin's People

Catherine Belton, Putin's People: How the KGB Took Back Russia and Then Took On the West.

In Europe, President Biden Sticks With Longstanding Policy on Use of U.S. Nuclear Weapons (VIDEO)

This is very reminiscent of the Cold War. The unipolar moment post-1991 will be remembered as the Thirty-Years Crisis. 

The U.S. policy of "no first use" has been standard doctrine for decades. This seems different, though. I don't recall presidents talking about the potential deployment of strategic forces offensively in "extreme circumstances." Does this mean the U.S. will modify --- even abandon --- no first use? Some serious shit, damn.

At WSJ, "The president stepped back from a campaign promise that the sole purpose of nuclear weapons should be to deter nuclear attacks":

President Biden, stepping back from a campaign vow, has embraced a longstanding U.S. approach of using the threat of a potential nuclear response to deter conventional and other nonnuclear dangers in addition to nuclear ones, U.S. officials said Thursday.

During the 2020 campaign Mr. Biden promised to work toward a policy in which the sole purpose of the U.S. nuclear arsenal would be to deter or respond to an enemy nuclear attack.

Mr. Biden’s new decision, made earlier this week under pressure from allies, holds that the “fundamental role” of the U.S. nuclear arsenal will be to deter nuclear attacks. That carefully worded formulation, however, leaves open the possibility that nuclear weapons could also be used in “extreme circumstances” to deter enemy conventional, biological, chemical and possibly cyberattacks, said the officials.

The decision comes as Mr. Biden is meeting with allies in Europe in an effort to maintain a unified Western stance against Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine and allied concerns that the Kremlin might resort to nuclear or chemical weapons.

A spokeswoman for the president’s National Security Council declined to comment.

Mr. Biden’s nuclear policy follows an extensive Nuclear Posture Review, in which administration officials examined U.S. nuclear strategy and programs.

U.S. officials said the administration’s review is also expected to lead to cuts in two nuclear systems that were embraced by the Trump administration. If Congress agrees, this would mean canceling the program to develop a nuclear sea-launched cruise missile and retiring the B83 thermonuclear bomb.

The review, however, supports the extensive modernization of the U.S. nuclear triad of land-based missiles, submarine-based missiles and bombers, which is projected to cost over $1 trillion.

During the Cold War, the U.S. reserved the right to use nuclear weapons in response to a conventional attack to offset the Soviet bloc’s numerical advantage in conventional forces. After giving up its chemical and biological weapons in accordance with arms-control treaties, the U.S. later said it was reserving the right to use nuclear weapons to deter attacks with poison gas and germ weapons in some circumstances.

North Atlantic Treaty Organization allies have been particularly nervous about shifting to a “sole purpose” doctrine, fearing it could weaken deterrence against a conventional Russian attack on the alliance.

Congressional Republicans had criticized Mr. Biden for considering a “sole purpose” doctrine.

In January, Sen. James Inhofe of Oklahoma and Rep. Mike Rogers of Alabama, the ranking Republican members on the Senate and House Armed Services Committees, urged Mr. Biden to stay with the U.S. nuclear doctrine that they said had deterred major wars and the use of nuclear weapons for more than 70 years.

In contrast, a number of Democratic arms-control supporters had urged Mr. Biden to minimize the role of nuclear weapons in the Pentagon’s strategy and stipulate that the U.S. would never make the first use of nuclear weapons in a conflict.

“Allies were concerned that moving too far away from current posture would leave them vulnerable—in theory or in practice—to Russian threats,” said Jon Wolfsthal, who served as the senior arms control and nonproliferation official on President Obama’s National Security Council.

Mr. Wolfsthal, who served as an adviser to Mr. Biden when he was vice president, said it would be disappointing but not surprising if the president shelved his “sole purpose” initiative.

Some Biden administration officials say, however, that his decision doesn’t diminish his long-term goal to reduce the U.S. dependence on nuclear weapons and reflects the need to consolidate allied support in the face of Russian threats and a rising China.

Mr. Biden, these officials also note, has supported other arms-control moves, including prolonging the New START treaty limiting U.S. and Russian long-range arms, which he extended for five years.

During the 2020 campaign, Mr. Biden wrote in Foreign Affairs magazine that he believed “the sole purpose of the U.S. nuclear arsenal should be deterring—and, if necessary, retaliating against—a nuclear attack.”

Mr. Biden added that as president he would move “to put that belief into practice, in consultation with the U.S. military and U.S. allies.’’ Mr. Biden had also staked out a similar position before leaving his post of vice president in 2017.

“Given our nonnuclear capabilities and the nature of today’s threats, it’s hard to envision a plausible scenario in which the first use of nuclear weapons by the United States would be necessary,” Mr. Biden said at the time.

The reason for his “sole purpose” proposal was to narrow the circumstances in which the U.S. would consider using nuclear weapons by excluding the possibility that they could be employed in response to a conventional attack or other nonnuclear threats...

'Vacation'

I'm counting down the days to Easter Vacation, when, counting the weekends, I'll have 10 days off from classes. I'll do some grading, but otherwise I plan to get out and get some sun and exercise. 

Check out this oldie, from the Go-Gos: 

Ukraine Strikes Russian Navy in Occupied Port City (VIDEO)

Huge moral booster. Watch at the Telegraph U.K., "'We f------ hit them!' Moment Ukraine strikes Russian warship in Odesa," and the Guardian U.K., "Russian ship destroyed in port of Berdiansk, says Ukrainian navy."

The story's at the Wall Street Journal, "Ukraine Strikes Russian Navy as War Enters Second Month: NATO agreed to help Ukraine protect itself against potential biochemical warfare during an emergency meeting in Brussels":

Ukraine said it struck the Russian-occupied port facilities in the Azov Sea city of Berdyansk on Thursday, setting off a large fire and hitting a Russian warship as the North Atlantic Treaty Organization pledged additional help for Kyiv.

Seized by Russia in the first week of the war that began a month ago, Berdyansk has become a major logistics hub for Russian forces. Footage from the area showed smoke billowing from the berthing area and secondary explosions from detonating ammunition.

The attack in Berdyansk—which is 50 miles west of the besieged port of Mariupol and nearly 100 miles from the main front line in southern Ukraine—is a sign Kyiv has retained significant military capabilities as it pursues a large-scale conventional war against Russian forces.

President Biden met with NATO leaders in Brussels on Thursday to agree on new measures to help Ukraine battle Russia’s invasion and address growing concerns Moscow might use chemical, biological or other unconventional weapons in its monthlong war.

“Allies agreed to supply equipment to help Ukraine protect against chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear threats,” NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said after the summit. That includes equipment to detect such weapons, protect against them, medical support and decontamination equipment, he said.

NATO, he said, also has activated chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear defense forces. “We are taking measures both to support Ukraine but also to defend ourselves,” he said.

Russian officials didn’t immediately confirm the attack in Berdyansk. Kyiv initially said the strike destroyed the Russian navy landing ship, Orsk. Later Ukrainian news reports from Berdyansk named the targeted ship as Saratov, the same class of large landing ship as Orsk. The Ukrainian military followed up with a statement that it had hit Russian landing ships in Berdyansk, and that one of them was engulfed in fire. It didn’t provide the name.

Footage from Berdyansk also showed two smaller Russian ships fleeing the port after the explosions, one of them on fire.

Berdyansk, where pro-Ukrainian protests erupt regularly, is one of a handful of Ukrainian cities captured by Moscow in the month since Russian President Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine on Feb. 24.

Ukrainian officials haven’t disclosed how Ukraine carried out the attack. Ukraine’s new Neptune antiship missiles have a range of about 200 miles and haven’t been used in the conflict so far. Ukraine also has ballistic missiles with a known range of some 75 miles, though there may be modifications with a longer range.

Andrii Ryzhenko, a former Ukrainian Navy captain now with the Center for Defense Strategies, a Kyiv think tank with close ties to the military, said he believed Ukraine used one or more Tochka-U ballistic missiles to dent Russia’s supply chain along the Azov Sea coast.

“For the Russians, this is the easiest way to bring and feed their contingent,” Mr. Ryzhenko said. “These ships, they can carry a significant amount of cargo. Our specialists say that at least for a few weeks, Berdyansk is closed for them for resupply because of damage to the port.”

Mariupol, another Azov Sea port city, has been surrounded by Russian forces and pummeled with artillery and airstrikes for weeks. Thousands of civilians there have been killed, and most of the city has been destroyed, according to local officials. While Russian troops have entered the eastern side of Mariupol in recent days, Ukrainian forces continue to keep most of the city from falling into Russian hands.

Before Thursday’s strike, Ukraine managed to inflict severe damage on the Russian navy personnel in the Azov area. Moscow has acknowledged that Ukrainian troops killed the deputy commander of Russia’s Black Sea Fleet, Navy Capt. Andrey Paliy, and the commander of the fleet’s 810th Marine Infantry Brigade, Col. Aleksey Sharov, both of whom were recently operating in the Mariupol area.

The combat performance of the Ukrainian army and the failure of Russian forces to make significant advances have caught U.S. and allied officials by surprise. Weapons supplied to Ukraine before the invasion were tailored to fuel an insurgency campaign, with U.S. officials expecting Russia to seize the capital Kyiv in as little as three days.

However, Ukraine has managed to push Russia’s much bigger and better equipped military to a standstill, at least for now. Western nations are rushing to get more military supplies across Ukraine’s western borders as Kyiv says it risks running short of ammunition.

In Thursday’s address to the NATO summit, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky asked the alliance to do more to help Ukraine defend itself. “Ukraine needs military assistance—without limitations. Just as Russia is using all of its arsenal against us without limitations,” he said...

 

Tucker Carlson: What is a Woman? (VIDEO)

This was the $64,000 question yesterday during Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson tesitimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee. I covered this a bit yesterday, here: "Tennessee Senator Marsha Blackburn's Tenacious Interrogation of Supreme Court Nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson (VIDEO)."

Background at the New York Times, "Ketanji Brown Jackson Asked to Define 'Woman' at Hearing."

And here's Tucker:

USS Harry S. Truman Flexes Muscle in the Mediterranean

At Poliitco Europe, "‘The only thing Putin understands is strength’: US aircraft carrier flexes muscle in the Med":

 

https://www.politico.eu/article/the-only-thing-putin-understands-is-strength-us-aircraft-carrier-flexes-muscle-in-the-med/With Russian ships and submarines patrolling the Mediterranean, the USS Truman teams up with French and Italian carriers.

NORTHERN IONIAN SEA — The flight deck of the aircraft carrier USS Harry S. Truman was covered with jet engine gas vapor as F-18 Super Hornets rocketed into the sky one after the other. Watching takeoffs and landings at close quarters “is one of the most dangerous things you will ever do,” claimed my minder, an officer with 28 years of experience in the Navy.

In the sound and fury of the flight deck, this didn’t feel like hyperbole: The experience was jarring. Despite ear-defenders, the growl of the throttle from an aircraft that travels at 1.8 times the speed of sound makes your chest cage rattle and your heart race. More than once we were yelled at with drill-sergeant intensity to “GET BEHIND THE LINE!” as aircraft constantly taxied, took off and landed around us. Welcome to the danger zone.

While the high tempo was business as usual for the crew of the USS Truman, the backdrop, both geographically and politically, was not: Accustomed to the Pacific Ocean and the seas of the Middle East, the USS Truman’s strike group is now in the northern Ionian Sea, its fighter jets and radar planes patrolling NATO’s eastern borders and looking east, to a Ukraine now under invasion from Russian armed forces.

Since the invasion almost a month ago, these jets have flown more than 75 patrol missions across NATO’s eastern flank up to the Ukraine border, from the Truman. The so-called Enhanced Air Policing mission is part of NATO’s Assurance Measures introduced in 2014, after Russia’s illegal annexation of the Crimean peninsula, and is aimed at defending NATO airspace, preventing incursions by Russians.

The 20-story nuclear-powered Truman is the flagship of a strike group, a mobile fighting force of up to 10 destroyers and submarines, eight aircraft squadrons and a missile cruiser that can move anywhere in the world’s seas, launching missile or air strikes or merely providing visible proof of American resolve.

As a mobile U.S. airbase, the Truman will be on the front line if NATO decides to enforce a no-fly zone, or should the worst happen and NATO forces be drawn into a direct conflict. “The role of Truman, with other allies, is to deter Russians from further aggression and to be on constant standby for orders that might be given from our president or from other leaders around the world for the protection of Ukraine and the people of Ukraine,” Secretary of the U.S. Navy Carlos Del Toro told POLITICO during a visit to the carrier...

Keep reading.

 

History Is Speeding Up: Vindication for Neoconservatism

An amazing essay from John Podhoretz, at Commentary, "Neoconservatism: A Vindication":

In 2022, the idea that Vladimir Putin’s Russia would actually roll the tanks and march the soldiers across the border into Ukraine seemed so irrational and peculiar to the Western consciousness that most of us—and in that “us” I would even include the heroic Volodymyr Zelensky—were living in a kind of weird haze of disbelief and denial that it could even happen.

Then it did.

And the surprise Jimmy Carter had felt in 1979 was as nothing compared to the shock wave across Europe in 2022. It took the United States three years to double its defense budget after the Soviet invasion. It took Germany three days. German Chancellor Olaf Scholz announced his country would increase its defense spending from 47 billion euros to 100 billion euros 72 hours after the Russians crossed the Ukrainian border.

History. Speeding up. And rhyming.

Will this be a hinge moment in history as well? If so, the rhymes of history may be heard in the surprising present urgency of neoconservatism.

Throughout the 1970s, the band of writers and thinkers who came to be known as “neoconservatives” had taken defiantly unfashionable positions when it came to matters of defense and foreign policy. The neoconservatives opposed negotiations and treaties with the Soviet Union, which they considered a great evil. They reviled the United Nations for its “Zionism is racism” resolution at a time when the UN was almost sacrosanct (millions of little boys and girls across America, including me, had proudly toted orange tzedakah boxes on Halloween to raise money for UNICEF). And they feared that the United States had, in the wake of Vietnam, undergone what a 1975 symposium in this magazine called “A Failure of Nerve” that would have global consequences.

The general opinion among the American cognoscenti was that the neoconservatives were hysterics and vulgarians incapable of seeing shades of gray. A more mature sense of the world’s complexity was supposedly represented first by the hard-won realism of the establishmentarians who had embraced the policy of détente with the Soviet Union—and second, by hipper foreign-policy thinkers whose worldview was encapsulated by Carter’s May 1977 declaration that America had gotten over its “inordinate fear of Communism.”

Then came 1979. The year began with the Iranian revolution engendering an oil crisis. By the end of the year, Iran’s fundamentalists had taken 52 American diplomats hostage as crowds chanted “Death to America” in the greatest public humiliation the United States had ever experienced as a nation. A thousand miles from the U.S. border, Nicaragua fell to a puppet guerrilla army of the Cubans and the Soviets while a similar puppet force was threatening to do the same in El Salvador—thus potentially creating a Soviet-friendly anti-U.S. bloc on the American subcontinent.

Suddenly the vulgarity of the neoconservatives didn’t seem quite so vulgar. But they remained prophets without much honor in the quarters in which they had traveled for most of their adult lives. Both the old and new establishments were largely impervious to the way history was vindicating their warnings and fears.

Thus began the integration of the neoconservatives into the conservative movement and the Republican Party by Ronald Reagan, who became the dominating figure in both in the 1980s. What they brought to Reaganism was one simple policy approach: deterrence.

This magazine was the epicenter of foreign-policy neoconservatism. Irving Kristol’s magazine, the Public Interest, was dedicated to domestic-policy neoconservatism. COMMENTARY hammered home the flawed ideas of the prevailing consensus on world order. The Public Interest did the same on matters ranging from housing policy to urban policy to energy policy to criminal justice. What they had in common was this: Neoconservatives believed that the purpose of government was both to defend and protect our liberties from threats at home and abroad. How could this best be effected? Deterrence.

If the greatest threat to our liberty abroad from the end of World War II until the end of the Cold War was the Soviet Union, the best and only effective way to face it down was to work to deter its ambitions and its influence. You could not do so by entering into agreements with it. You needed to match its aggressions with countermeasures that would make those aggressions costly.

If they invade Afghanistan, you arm the Afghan rebels. If they seek beachheads in the Americas, you arm the Nicaraguan rebels even as you support the El Salvadorean government against their Communist rebels. Install medium-range nuclear missiles in Europe to counteract the huge Soviet military presence in the East. The ultimate move in this regard was the Strategic Defense Initiative, which sought to use American ingenuity and scientific knowhow as a countermeasure against the Soviet nuclear arsenal.

These policies were wildly controversial, even though their aims were actually rather modest: Pin the bad actors down and raise the cost of their bad conduct to unacceptable levels. But for those who believed the best way to deal with the Soviet Union was to imagine that it was not an enemy or even an adversary but simply a nation with a different approach to things with which we could still do business, the neoconservative notion of matching Soviet moves pawn by pawn seemed openly belligerent and crazy.

Domestically, deterrence was achieved by countering the worst human impulses through the proper use of defensive protocols that would prevent the bad behavior from taking place. Contain the impulses and you could let everybody go on with their lives. In practical terms, that meant eyes on the street and cops on the beat.

There had been a policy revolution in the 1960s known as “911 policing” that essentially changed the nature of policing—cops were to respond to crimes after they happened, to wait for the call after the violence had been done. It was the domestic neoconservatives who laid the groundwork over more than 20 years for the crime drop that changed America for the better beginning in the early 1990s. Every one of the ideas they presented—broken-windows theory, COMPSTAT-driven deployment of police forces—was designed to enhance deterrence. So too with the way America dealt with wrongdoers: It criticized the movement toward more lenient sentencing because it limited the deterrent effect of punishment, even going so far as to say it would be dangerous to eliminate the death penalty because without the ultimate sanction all other forms of punitive incarceration would gradually be compromised.

Deterrence in domestic matters went beyond crime. The general proposition that good policy largely involved containing dangerous human impulses meant also grappling with the unintended consequences of well-intentioned social policy gone awry—as when cradle-to-grave welfare made it a benefit to be a single parent. The problems brought about by welfare policy also led to revolutionary changes no one really believed would ever take place, such as the welfare reform Bill Clinton signed into law in 1996—just as no one really believed the Soviet Union would collapse or that crime would drop by 80 percent.

It turned out that deterrence was not only simple but very powerful. And very practical...

Still more.

 

Nathaniel Popper, Digital Gold

At Amazon, Nathaniel Popper, Digital Gold: Bitcoin and the Inside Story of the Misfits and Millionaires Trying to Reinvent Money.

GRAPHIC WARNING: Four Israelis Murdered in Terrorist Knife Attack in Beersheba, Southern Israel

I've never seen a knife attack this grisly. Frankly, I've rarely ever seen anything this grisly. It's personal when murdering by knife attack. 

God have mercy. How unbelievably horrific. 

Don't watch if you have a weak stomach, really. 

Brooke Goldstein has video on Twitter, "GRAPHIC: This is pure Jew-hatred. This is a sickness. 4 Israelis were killed today in a stabbing attack in Beersheba."

And at the Times of Israel, "4 killed, 2 wounded in stabbing attack at Beersheba mall; terrorist shot dead: Arab Israeli from southern Bedouin town stabs woman at gas station, rams cyclist, then attacks others at shopping center; attacker was formerly imprisoned for Islamic State ties," and "Funerals held for Beersheba terror victims as bereaved families mourn ‘heavy loss’: Addressing Doris Yahbas, husband says terrorist ‘cut you away from us’; Laura Yitzhak’s partner asks: ‘What will I do now?’; attending ministers heckled in 2 incidents."

ADDED: "Two mothers of 3, a Chabad rabbi, a brother of 4: The terror victims named: Doris Yahbas, 49, Laura Yitzhak, 43, and Menahem Yehezkel, 67, were stabbed to death; Moshe Kravitzky, 48, died when terrorist rammed his bicycle."

What is Bitcoin?

I have no personal interest in digital money, though I'm not saying it's not a thing. It's a real big thing. But I've yet to see any conclusive evidence that bitcoin isn't one big speculative bubble where hedge-fund junkies and big-money dark-web urchins spend their time buying digital art masterpieces with blockchain non-fungible tokens. Cryptos gonna crypto, I guess. *Shrug.*

The most basic problem: Can cryptocurrencies serve the real, historical, and fundamental functions of money? Can digital money serve as a medium of exchange, a unit of account, and a store of value? I don't know. It remains to be seen. 

Meanwhile, it doesn't hurt to bone up on the trend. I mean, if you want to be hip with all the cool crypto cat blockchain bros.

At the New York Times, "The Latecomer’s Guide to Crypto":

Until fairly recently, if you lived anywhere other than San Francisco, it was possible to go days or even weeks without hearing about cryptocurrency.

Now, suddenly, it’s inescapable. Look one way, and there are Matt Damon and Larry David doing ads for crypto start-ups. Swivel your head — oh, hey, it’s the mayors of Miami and New York City, arguing over who loves Bitcoin more. Two N.B.A. arenas are now named after crypto companies, and it seems as if every corporate marketing team in America has jumped on the NFT — or nonfungible token — bandwagon. (Can I interest you in one of Pepsi’s new “Mic Drop” genesis NFTs? Or maybe something from Applebee’s “Metaverse Meals” NFT collection, inspired by the restaurant chain’s “iconic” menu items?)

Crypto! For years, it seemed like the kind of fleeting tech trend most people could safely ignore, like hoverboards or Google Glass. But its power, both economic and cultural, has become too big to overlook. Twenty percent of American adults, and 36 percent of millennials, own cryptocurrency, according to a recent Morning Consult survey. Coinbase, the crypto trading app, has landed on top of the App Store’s top charts at least twice in the past year. Today, the crypto market is valued at around $1.75 trillion — roughly the size of Google. And in Silicon Valley, engineers and executives are bolting from cushy jobs in droves to join the crypto gold rush.

As it’s gone mainstream, crypto has inspired an unusually polarized discourse. Its biggest fans think it’s saving the world, while its biggest skeptics are convinced it’s all a scam — an environment-killing speculative bubble orchestrated by grifters and sold to greedy dupes, which will probably crash the economy when it bursts.

I’ve been writing about crypto for nearly a decade, a period in which my own views have whipsawed between extreme skepticism and cautious optimism. These days, I usually describe myself as a crypto moderate, although I admit that may be a cop-out.

I agree with the skeptics that much of the crypto market consists of overvalued, overhyped and possibly fraudulent assets, and I am unmoved by the most utopian sentiments shared by pro-crypto zealots (such as the claim by Jack Dorsey, the former Twitter chief, that Bitcoin will usher in world peace).

But as I’ve experimented more with crypto — including accidentally selling an NFT for more than $500,000 in a charity auction last year — I’ve come to accept that it isn’t all a cynical money-grab, and that there are things of actual substance being built. I’ve also learned, in my career as a tech journalist, that when so much money, energy and talent flows toward a new thing, it’s generally a good idea to pay attention, regardless of your views on the thing itself.

My strongest-held belief about crypto, though, is that it is terribly explained.

Recently, I spent several months reading everything I could about crypto. But I found that most beginner’s guides took the form of boring podcasts, thinly researched YouTube videos and blog posts written by hopelessly biased investors. Many anti-crypto takes, on the other hand, were undercut by inaccuracies and outdated arguments, such as the assertion that crypto is good for criminals, notwithstanding the growing evidence that crypto’s traceable ledgers make it a poor fit for illicit activity.

What I couldn’t find was a sober, dispassionate explanation of what crypto actually is — how it works, who it’s for, what’s at stake, where the battle lines are drawn — along with answers to some of the most common questions it raises.

This guide — a mega-F.A.Q., really — is an attempt to fix that. In it, I’ll explain the basic concepts as clearly as I can, doing my best to answer the questions a curious but open-minded skeptic might pose.

Crypto boosters will likely quibble with my explanations, while dug-in opponents may find them too generous. That’s OK. My goal is not to convince you that crypto is good or bad, that it should be outlawed or celebrated, or that investing in it will make you rich or bankrupt you. It is simply to demystify things a bit. And if you want to go deeper, each section has a list of reading suggestions at the end...

Still more.

 

Biden's State Department Not Rising to the Call of the Hour

At Issues & Insights, "The State Department Should Rise to the Call of the Hour":

The U.S. Department of State's official mission is to lead America's foreign policy through diplomacy, advocacy, and assistance by advancing the American people's interests, safety, and economic prosperity.

For a situation that is bringing us closer to World War III and the worst inflation in 40 years, partly triggered by global events, the State Department is failing to lead in its core mission. Secretary Antony Blinken sounds like a cross between a media analyst and a military general rather than the lead diplomat of the free world.

During his March 17th remarks to the press, Blinken chided Russia as he has been doing for weeks. Switching hats, he then announced a laundry list of weapons to assist Ukraine. He sounded more like Lloyd Austen, the Secretary of Defense: "We're also helping Ukraine acquire longer-range anti-aircraft systems and munitions at President Zelenskyy's request." There was no mention of the State Department leading diplomatically, other than a vague promise: "We'll support Ukraine's diplomatic efforts however we can."

Leaving rookie Ukraine, whose leader has been in political office for fewer than three years, to negotiate peace with wily Russia will not cut it. For weeks, the parties have been talking while Russia mercilessly attacks Ukrainian civilian targets. Each hour's delay brings about additional carnage.

Blinken has been relentlessly pursuing a strategy to strangle Putin, isolate Russia, and inflict so much pain that Putin would initiate serious diplomatic overtures. "I have not seen any meaningful efforts by Russia to bring this war to a conclusion through diplomacy," Blinken said to news media this week.

But this "lead-from-behind" approach, relying on Russia to bell the diplomatic cat, makes no sense. History has repeatedly shown us that pariahs do not initiate peace talks. Even the appearance of conceding defeat would spell the death knell for them back home.

If anything, Putin's speech in Moscow shows that he feels vindicated by his actions in Ukraine. Putin has upped the ante by firing hypersonic missiles, which can travel at ten times the speed of sound. Russia is a powerful country spanning nine time zones and boasting a larger nuclear arsenal than any other country. It is more likely that Putin will dig in rather than bail out; take risks than ask for help.

This is where American diplomacy can make a difference...

Keep reading.

 

Tim Alberta, American Carnage

At Amazon, Tim Alberta, American Carnage: On the Front Lines of the Republican Civil War and the Rise of President Trump.