Happy Friday!

Are you gearing up for the eclipse? We’ve got something curious on that in a bit. But first …

World War III?

“Ukraine will become a member of NATO,” U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken told reporters in Brussels yesterday. “Our purpose at the summit is to help build a bridge to that membership.”

That means that, under NATO’s Article 5, if Ukraine is attacked by Russia, it will be as if the United States is attacked by Russia. Given that Ukraine is currently in the middle of a war with Russia, which has long considered Ukraine’s possible entry into NATO an unacceptable line in the sand, how can this be seen as anything other than a dangerous provocation? How does the U.S. not end up in direct conflict with Russia if Ukraine joins NATO?

As if trillions of buzzing cicadas hatching at the end of the month and an eclipse passing over seven U.S. towns called Nineveh coming Monday weren’t enough, now we have a world war to worry about?

WAR: Secretary of State Blinken says that Ukraine WILL be joining NATO.pic.twitter.com/6W3P0J5AwW

— @amuse (@amuse) April 4, 2024

In fact, Russia says Blinken’s comments prove NATO is already at war with Russia.

“Relations have now slipped to the level of direct confrontation,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said in Moscow. NATO was “already involved in the conflict surrounding Ukraine (and) continues to move towards our borders and expand its military infrastructure towards our borders.”

Putin warned in February he would launch nuclear strikes if NATO puts troops in Ukraine, and declared before the war that Ukraine joining NATO increased the likelihood of nuclear attacks.

If we’re looking at some sort of conflict, at least our fuel supplies are in good shape. Then again …

Gas, Gas, Gas

The Biden administration drained the Strategic Petroleum Reserves by about 43% in order to artificially deflate gasoline prices before the 2022 midterms. Currently, SPR is barely above half capacity. The White House was planning to refill the reserves, but has now canceled those plans because oil prices are too high.

Consumers know this, despite all the mush about how Bidenomics has made things better. Gasoline prices nationwide again are averaging more than $3.50 a gallon.

So look where we are. Gas prices are sky-high and our petroleum reserves are low at a time of increased tension.

Then there are electric vehicles. The White House keeps pushing mandates, but the market and auto industry keep pushing back. Ford announced Thursday it is delaying production of electric SUVs and pick-up trucks to concentrate on new hybrid vehicles. Both a three-row SUV and a next-generation pick-up were slated to go into production in 2025. The SUV has been pushed to 2027 while the pick-up, code named “T3,” will now get rolling in 2026 (assuming a new administration doesn’t roll back EV mandates).

DOJ Wants Four to Ten Months of Prison Time for Woman Who Discovered Ashley Biden’s Diary

The U.S. Department of Justice wants hard time for the woman who found Ashley Biden’s diary in 2020.

Joe Biden’s daughter Ashley kept a diary while she was in rehab for both sex and drug addiction. After leaving rehab she stayed at a place in Delray Beach, Florida, but left the diary there when she moved on. (Odd how Ashley left behind an incriminating diary just like similarly addicted brother Hunter left behind an incriminating laptop, and both in the year or so before the election.)

A woman named Aimee Harris found the diary at the Delray Beach home, and rather than do the honorable thing and return it, she peddled it around.

Biden claimed the diary was stolen. (Conveniently waiting until after the 2020 election to say so, though the contents were published in the weeks before the election.) Although theft is a local matter, Joe Biden’s DOJ turned his daughter’s case into a federal crime, conducting raids and ultimately getting Harris to plead guilty to interstate transport of stolen material.

The Biden administration is now asking the judge to sentence Harris to four to ten months in prison.

The million-dollar question: Why isn’t this huge news? If the diary is legitimately Ashley’s to the point that her father’s DOJ wants to lock up the person who grabbed it, then the content is legit. And if the content is legit, then don’t we have to deal with what it says about Joe Biden? Ashley cites the “probably not appropriate” showers she was forced to take with her father as a little girl as the likely cause of her addictions.

Is this something we want to be talking about? No. But we must, because it involves a sitting U.S. president with a long-demonstrated habit of inappropriate behavior around children. A man who is bent on pushing radical gender ideology, including the sexual mutilation of children, on our kids. A man who calls keeping pornographic and grooming materials away from kids in schools “book banning.” A man whose only other living child also displays the effects of childhood trauma through sex and drug addiction.

And not for nothing, this is a man who has no qualms about using the powers of his office to prosecute his opponents. In an election year, this matters.

But will it? The same media that ignored the story in 2020 will most likely do so again. But perhaps the new media, and the new recognition of this administration’s disregard for our children’s well-being, will warrant a closer look from voters.

We’ve gone to some dark places this morning. So we might as well finish up with a story that literally will involve dark places — specifically, the blocking out of the sun.

NY Prisoners Sue to See the Eclipse for Religious Reasons

A Baptist, a Muslim, and a Seventh-Day Adventist walk into a court …

Finally, to end the week, here’s one that’s worth a chuckle. Six inmates at Woodburne Correctional Facility in upstate New York have sued the prison, demanding they be allowed to see Monday’s total eclipse. The ecumenical men in orange claim they have “sincerely held religious belief that April’s solar event is a religious event that they must witness and reflect on [to] observe their faiths.” However, the New York Post reports, state correction officials are planning a lockdown during the event, which the plaintiffs claim violates their constitutionally protected religious rights.

According to press reports, “The suit notes that an eclipse-like phenomenon is described in the Bible during Jesus’s crucifixion and that Islamic books of worship depict a similar event during the death of the Prophet Muhammad’s son.”

Along the Path of Totality

Keep your eyes peeled on The Stream today because we have two eclipse doozies for you.

Stream Editor in Chief Karla Dial’s “The Incredible Opportunity of April 8” will detail a 40-day window of opportunity to shift our nation’s course through intercession.

Stream Editor at Large Jay Richards will elucidate about “How Total Eclipse Points to Purpose in the Universe.”

In the meantime, you’ve got another edition of Al’s Afternoon Tea, plus “Bobby Kennedy and James Brown Were Calming Voices After the Assassination of MLK. Do We Have Such Voices Today?”

 

Al Perrotta is managing editor of The Stream, coauthor with John Zmirak of The Politically Incorrect Guide to Immigration and coauthor of the counterterrorism memoir Hostile Intent: Protecting Yourself Against Terrorism.