The Olympics and more

The winter Olympics are in action in Beijing as I write. Grannie Annie and I so enjoy watching the pageant of young people out competing their hearts out. Grannie especially loves the ice skating, singles, couples, and ice dancing. It is amazing the facilities that the Chinese have created to host the games. In a word beautiful! We have found it hard to find and tune into the different events because of the way that our news organizations have chosen to broadcast those venues. One channel, NBC, and we haven’t found the schedule so we can watch only what we like.

Unfortunately, politics have entered the games this year. Fear of Covid has kept most spectators away. Then because it is hosted by the Xi Communist China Party our government, Democrat, has chosen to officially boycott, and send no US Government officials there to participate in the usual festivities. Actually, if we had a competent President, he should be there hobnobbing with Xi and Putin. I can see Trump over there pointing out to Putin to stay out of Ukraine and Xi to keep away from Taiwan. I can also imagine Trump asking about the origin of Covid and about the current subjugation of the Chinese Uighurs. Unfortunately, it was probably wise to not send our cognitive challenged President Biden or whoever is pulling his strings so that the American public would learn whoever they are.

The news of today puts out the fiction that Russia is 70% ready to be able to invade Ukraine. Seventy percent ready! Now what kind of a number is that? Maybe it is 69%. Maybe 71% would be better! To me it is just propaganda designed to justify our elite administration’s effort to justify the too late actions we the USA could have taken to deter Putin on his quest to ever increase his power.

Think back a few years when Russia invaded the Crimean Peninsula, and the Obama administration did nothing. Incidentally the Crimean city of Yalta is where at the end of WWII Churchill, Roosevelt and Stalin gathered to carve up the spoils of our victory over Nazi Germany. Stalin dominated and was able to put together the USSR. Your columnist spent my entire career in the struggle we called the Cold War, and we eventually won that one with the USSR’s collapse during the time of President Reagan. The collapse of the USSR was due to typical Communism’s inability to govern, and it made life hell for all people in Eastern Europe. It is understandable how those Eastern European countries, starting with the Ukraine, are willing to go to war to protect themselves against rule by Communistic Dictator Putin. They have ‘been there and done that’ and it is now imperative that the US and NATO keep it from happening.

There is little doubt in this old military mind that after the Olympic Games are over Dictator Xi will make his move against our ally Taiwan. It will happen especially if we do not deter Putin taking over what he desires in Ukraine in his quest to restore the old, failed USSR plus more.

I found it interesting to dredge up a little history to find what repressive regimes have done in a little less than the past 100 years. “Just consider that alone 61,911,000 people were murdered by the Soviet Union, 38,702,000 by the Chinese communists, 10,214,000 by the Chinese Nationalists, 17,000,000 by the German Nazis, and 5,890,000 by the Japanese militarists during World War II” according to google. Obviously, the Chinese communists are still at it in their ethnic cleansing of the Uighurs. If you aren’t Han Chinese, you aren’t of value. Such things should be taught in mandatory history classes in our schools. Instead, some schools are into such corruptions of history as teaching the 1619 Project and Critical Race Theory (CRT). I’m not too proud of the reports I read that our “woke” senior military leadership is also into such exercises.

Now to a little good news. Our local farmers and ranchers should be happy with the beautiful warm weather, for winter, that we are currently experiencing. Baby calves are arriving daily. So much better than having calves born in zero degrees temperatures on a bed of snow.

Happy thoughts of calving time brings me to the recent front page article in the Gazette covering the recent zoning meeting in Benkelman. The proposal is for building a 100,000 head feedlot there in Dundy County. Potentially as many as 85 new jobs for the area. Think of the new market for grain and roughage which are exactly the products grown in this area. It is proposed with a new idea of being completely built on concrete which will help enable harvesting the manure to be spread back on ag land for fertilizer. All liquid, rainwater and urine, high in nitrogen, will be contained and again can be applied to the soil to enhance agricultural crops. It looks like a win win but there are also concerns like road improvement. Yes we had the same concerns when the dairies arrived north of McCook and I was fortunate to deal with them as County Commissioner at that time. The projection that made me smile was that those two dairies would ship three semi-loads of milk a day and for each semi-load of milk produced five semi-loads of feed would have to be shipped in. Local markets. Wonderful.

That is how I saw it. Dick Trail.