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I appeared on Silvio Canto Jr's talk show from Dallas.  It's here.

AUGUST 21-22,  2023

SO WALK THE 30 MILES TO WORK.  WHAT'S THE BIG DEAL?  Gas prices are on the rise again, and we can only imagine the impact this will have on the election.  Gasoline prices are not an abstraction, a statistic in the newspaper.  People actually feel them every day.  From Gateway Pundit:   

California gas prices soared to the highest point of the year on Tuesday, according to the American Automobile Association (AAA).

The average price per gallon for regular unleaded in California surged to $5.26 on Tuesday.

The national average is $3.85 per gallon, according to AAA.

KTLA reported:

Gasoline prices in California have surged to the highest point of the year and are approaching prices seen last summer, according to the American Automobile Association.

According to AAA, the average price of a gallon of regular unleaded in California was $5.26 on Tuesday, up 10 cents over the past week and 37 cents over the past month. A year ago, drivers were paying $5.34 per gallon.

In Los Angeles County alone, the average price for regular unleaded was $5.36/gallon on Tuesday.

Joe Biden’s first order of business was to kill tens of thousands of jobs.
On his first day in office, Biden signed an executive order canceling the Keystone XL Pipeline.

Gas prices were around $2.34 per gallon when Trump left office in January 2021.
Now the national average is $3.85 per gallon.

COMMENT:  Biden claims that inflation has been tamed.  But the fact is that the American people aren't terribly impressed, if the polls are accurate.  They know they are paying 20% more than they were paying two years ago, just to survive.  They are not loving Bidenomics. 

Gas prices alone have the power to bring down the Biden presidency.  Jimmy Carter, another Democratic incumbent, was badly damaged by the energy price spikes of the 1970s.  Ronald Reagan benefited.

And just watch the reaction when Biden announces that the solution is to go out and buy a sixty-thousand-dollar electric car that has to be charged every night. 

August 22, 2023       Permalink

NEW YORK, NEW YORK, IT'S A DOWN-THE-DRAIN TOWN:  One of the biggest stories of our era is the sharp decline of American cities.  Crime is in control.  Pseudo-educators are dumbing down the schools.  Actual people are leaving some cities by the tens of thousands.  And finances are often in shambles.

San Francisco is a prime example.  You've seen the pictures, you've heard accurate stories about hard-left politicians working to wreck the effectiveness of the police.

New York City has a special problem.  It is heavily dependent on Wall Street for its economic survival, and Wall Street is turning into Wail Street.  Things are not good.  Brother, can you spare a billion?  From the New York Post:

A giant, sucking sound is coming out of Wall Street — and it’s siphoning staggering sums of money out of the Big Apple while handing business to Florida and other states.

Nearly 160 Wall Street firms have moved their headquarters out of New York since the end of 2019, taking nearly $1 trillion — yes, that’s trillion with a “T” — in assets under management with them, according to data from 17,000 companies compiled by Bloomberg.

Looking to dodge rampant crime, stiff taxes and an increasingly exorbitant cost of living, 158 fed-up financial firms representing a whopping $993 billion in assets have packed up and left the Big Apple, taking thousands of high-paid employees with them, the data shows.

Icahn Capital Management — headed by billionaire corporate raider Carl Icahn — is among the most prominent firms to decamp to the Sunshine State. In August 2020, the firm ditched his posh Manhattan digs atop Fifth Avenue’s General Motors Building in favor of a 14-story office complex in a Miami suburb.

Icahn’s firm, which manages $22.2 billion in assets, now conducts business less than a mile away from his mansion in Indian Creek Village.

Meanwhile, hedge-fund tycoon Paul Singer’s Elliott Management — which commandeers a total of $59.2 billion after shaking up investment targets including AT&T, Twitter and the government of Argentina — moved its headquarters from Midtown Manhattan to West Palm Beach, Fla., in October 2020.

One year later, closely watched tech-stock guru Cathie Wood — famous for her bold, windfall bet on Elon Musk’s car maker Tesla –moved her firm ARK Investment Management — and its $24.7 billion worth of assets — to St. Petersburg, Fla.

In all, 56 of the New York firms have decamped to Florida, while most of those remaining also headed to warmer states such as Texas and the Carolinas, according to the report. New York isn’t the only major loser, with California also having lost $1 trillion in financial assets under management to Florida, Texas and other lower-cost states.

Other major losers to Florida include Chicago, which lost billionaire Ken Griffin’s giant hedge fund Citadel to Miami last year.

The mass migration threatens a crippling economic blow: Last year, Wall Street accounted for 16% of all the economic activity in the city and 7.3% of economic activity statewide. The latter figure is the highest in the nation by far, towering above the national average of just 1.7%, according to an October report by New York State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli.

Likewise, the exodus has grave tax implications for the city and state. Last year, financial firms paid $5.4 billion in New York taxes and accounted for nearly a quarter of all personal income tax collections, according to the report.

COMMENT:   Yes, they say, but New York has been in trouble before, and has bounced back.  But it bounced back at a time when it was truly the Big Apple.  There is a different psychology today.  Even the most parochial New Yorkers must admit that there actually are other great places to live in these United States.  Leaving New York, and thousands have already done so, is no longer considered sinful. 

The City Council is to the left of Lenin.  The state legislature is to the left of the City Council.  Republican headquarters may not actually have a phone.

I'll keep you posted.  And don't give up on New York.  There are great artists in the city, and great sports teams, and actual live theater, where living humans say words on stage, right in front of you.  What is needed are an economy that reaches more people, and a huge improvement in the national morale.   

August 22,  2023     Permalink

AUGUST 19-20,  2023

AND NOW THE FIRST DEBATE:  PLEASE BE KIND AND DON'T YAWN.  THE FIRST REPUBLICAN PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE DEBATE TAKES PLACE WENDESDAY.  BUT DONALD TRUMP WON'T ATTEND.  FROM FOX: 

In a Republican presidential primary race dominated by former President Donald Trump, you can’t underestimate the importance of Wednesday’s kickoff GOP nomination debate, a Fox News-hosted primetime showdown in Milwaukee.

"It means a lot for me and every other candidate. It’s going to be the biggest audience any of us have spoken before in a long time," former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, making his second run for the White House, told Fox News Digital earlier this month. "It’s important for people to get to know you, to know who you are, what you want to do for the party and for the country."

Christie is one of eight candidates who have reached the polling and donor thresholds mandated by the Republican National Committee to qualify for the initial debate. 

The others are former President Donald Trump, former Vice President Mike Pence, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina, former Ambassador and former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum and biotech entrepreneur and bestselling author Vivek Ramaswamy.

With one more day to go to qualify, roughly a half dozen other Republican White House hopefuls are still aiming to make the stage.

COMMENT:  Trump has announced that he won't attend the debate.  He's also said that he won't sign the Republican "loyalty oath," pledging to support the eventual party nominee for president, and also pledging not to participate in any debate not approved by the Republican National Committee.

But of course Trump will be there this Wednesday night, if not in person, then in clout.  He remains the frontrunner in every poll, the champion of the largest bloc of Republicans that can be identified.  If the nominating convention were held today, he'd walk off with the crown.

However, the convention isn't being held today.  It won't be held for another year, and there's plenty of time for almost anything to happen, including the actual courtroom trials of Donald Trump.  What we're seeing now is the preview of coming attractions.  The movie comes later.

August 20, 2023       Permalink

IT IS AUGUST, THE SLOWEST MONTH OF THE YEAR.  THE PSYCHIATRISTS TAKE AUGUST OFF, SO THEIR PATIENTS IN WASHINGTON AND HOLLYWOOD HAVE NO ONE TO HELP THEM THROUGH THE MONTH.  IT'S SO UNFAIR. 

BUT AUGUST STILL PRODUCES SOME NEWS, LIKE THIS EXCITING NOTIFICATION OF EMPLOYMENT, AS ONLY THE ROTTING ACADEMIC ESTABLISHMENT CAN PUT IT.  FROM COLLEGE FIX: 

A State Department official who is “on leave” from his job as a diplomat to Iran will stay busy this fall with two new jobs at Yale University and Princeton University.

“Robert Malley, currently on leave from his role as a special envoy for Iran in the State Department, comes to SPIA as a John L. Weinberg/Goldman Sachs & Co. Visiting Professor and Visiting Lecturer,” Princeton announced. “He will teach a graduate course this fall on foreign policy decision-making, and one to two undergraduate courses in the spring focused on some combination of diplomacy, negotiation, and foreign policy.”

Not mentioned in the news release is why Malley (pictured) is currently free to teach – he’s under federal investigation for his “handling of classified material,” according to CBS News. He lost his security clearance in relation to the investigation, freeing him up to teach at Princeton and Yale.

Malley joins seven other “senior fellows” at Yale where he will “spend a year or semester at Yale teaching courses and mentoring students.”

“Malley is on leave from the U.S. State Department where he had been serving as Special Envoy for Iran since January 28, 2021,” the Connecticut Ivy League college stated.

The appointments drew criticism from Congressman Jim Banks of Indiana.

“Apparently, the reward for selling out our nation to Iran and losing your security clearance is a cushy gig in the Ivy League,” Banks, a member of the House Armed Services Committee, told The Washington Free Beacon.

Senator Ted Cruz, a Princeton alumnus, called the decision “pitiful.”

“Pitiful. Look who my alma mater just made a prof. Rob Malley was such a pro-Iran radical that he was FIRED from Biden admin & had his security clearance stripped for ‘mishandling classified docs’ (the details are still hidden),” Cruz tweeted.

Elite universities remain a safe harbor for Democratic politicians who get forced out of their jobs. The University of California Berkeley recently hired failed San Francisco prosecutor Chesa Boudin to run a new legal clinic after he was recalled by voters for his soft-on-crime policies.

The University of Chicago also hired Tim Ryan and Beto O’Rourke, who collectively had lost five elections in the past three years, as visiting fellows for the recent spring semester. Chicago’s former mayor, Lori Lightfoot, will join Harvard this fall after she lost after just one term.

COMMENT:  Let us note that these institutions receive millions in federal aid, taxpayer money, to help them elevate American society.  Observe how the funds are spent.

It is widely reported that there is a growing revulsion toward institutions of "higher" education, with many wondering if they're even worth the price.  I wonder why.  Don't you?

August 20,  2023     Permalink