Showing posts with label DC lobbyists. Show all posts
Showing posts with label DC lobbyists. Show all posts

Saturday, January 21, 2023

Soul Searching

 

Rich Old Fraud Meets Wealthy Young Buffoon


"Recently, several pundits on the political Right have jumped in with the Democrats on the anti-Russia bandwagon." That was over a year ago, surely more pertinent now than ever.

Via Nightwind:


Recently, several pundits on the political Right have jumped in with the Democrats on the anti-Russia bandwagon. I've often said that the Left has no monopoly on NPCs and it's really beginning to show. There seems to be a major strain of thought---brought on the Neocons of the Bush Era---that American strength is measured by its ability to push around other sovereign countries up to and including obliterating them with military force. It shouldn't be surprising that Senate Republicans---the same people criticizing Hunter Biden---are heavily represented on the Ukrainian Government's foreign lobbying payroll.

"Firms working for Ukrainian interests have inundated Congressional offices, think-tanks, and journalists with more than 10,000 messages and meetings in 2021, according to an analysis of Foreign Agents Registration Act, or FARA, filings for a forthcoming report from the Quincy Institute,” the think tank’s Ben Freeman writes today. “To put this extraordinary campaign into perspective, the Saudi lobby — known for being one of the largest foreign lobbies in D.C. — reported 2,834 contacts, barely a quarter of what Ukraine’s agents have done...

“Congress has been the primary target of Ukraine’s agents, with over 300 House and Senate staff and members of Congress on the receiving end of more than 8,000 emails, phone calls, and meetings with Ukraine’s lobbyists. Agents representing the Ukrainian Federation of Employers of the Oil and Gas Industry, or UFEOGI, the largest association of energy companies in Ukraine, have flooded Capitol Hill with headlines like ‘Ukrainians call on U.S. Senate to sanction Putin’s pipeline weapon,’ and others claiming ‘Moscow regards concessions as a sign of weakness.’ "The lobbyists seem to have found a friendly ear in Senate Republicans, in particular Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX),” the former boss of Yorktown Solutions’ Daniel Vajdich, who represents the UFEOGI. Outreach was also “focused intently on senators who co-sponsored 2020 legislation to block completion of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, including Cruz; John Barrasso (R-Wyo.); Tom Cotton, (R-Ark.); and Ron Johnson, (R-Wis.)."

...How has conducting US Foreign Policy with a sledgehammer done us any good at all? 

The short answer is that it hasn't. In fact, it seems to have turned into the Neocon version of Virtue-Signalling. 


You can read the whole thing here and I call X-Ring, but see what you think. It's not like there's some kind of "rule."

In the meanwhile, an aggressively young soldier's walked through the door, full of high spirits. Kyrie Eleison and more on that later.

Cheers,

LSP