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MAY 17,  2021

SHORT TAKES ON THE DRIFTING WRECKAGE – OVERNIGHT:

A SAD SIGN OF THE TIMES – FROM HOLLYWOOD REPORTER:  NBC is loading up its fall 2021 schedule with so much drama, it’s not funny.  Literally: For the first time in at least 50 years, the network will start a season with no half-hour comedies on its schedule. NBC is instead saving returning shows Kenan, Mr. Mayor and Young Rock and first-year series American Auto and Grand Crew for early 2022.  The final season of Brooklyn Nine-Nine, however, will debut on NBC in August following the close of the Summer Olympics. The 10-episode run will conclude before the official start of the 2021-22 season in late September.  Susan Rovner, chairman entertainment content for NBCUniversal Television and Streaming, told reporters Friday that the lack of comedies in the fall lineup doesn’t reflect a lack of commitment to the genre. “In recent years our comedies haven’t performed as well in the fall, so we’re doubling down in midseason with two big nights of comedy,” she said.  Or maybe the industry has just gotten too serious and too political.  It should lighten up.  America could use some good laughs, aside from the ones we get from Washington.

SOMETHING TO CHEER – FROM FOX:   A new right-leaning group plans to fight against cancel culture by giving the "woke left" a "dose of their own medicine," its founder told Fox News.  The group, called Unsilenced Majority, was founded by Mike Davis, a former staffer for the Senate Judiciary Committee under Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa.  Davis also runs a different group called the Article III Project, which "punches back on radical assaults on judicial independence" and began with the mission of supporting Trump-appointed judges. Davis told Fox News that Unsilenced Majority will use a similar approach in fighting against cancel culture.  "These corporations go woke because they have pressure from shareholders, they have pressure from the liberal media, they have pressure internally from within," Davis said. "What we want to do at Unsilenced Majority is to provide a counterbalance. And so these corporations understand that if they go woke there's gonna be consequences from everyday Americans."  We need more efforts like this, and we need them everywhere, especially among parents of school-age children.  The radical left only represents a small percentage of the country, and it can be beaten.  We are the unsilenced majority.

May 17, 2021       Permalink

AH, VINDICATION – OVERNIGHT:  Texas was right.  The president was wrong.  Don't mess with Texas.  From Fox:  

Texas reported zero deaths from COVID-19 on Sunday, just two months after Gov. Greg Abbott drew heat from the White House for rolling back business restrictions and lifting the state's mask mandate.

It marked the first time the Lone Star State reported no coronavirus deaths in about 14 months, according to state health data. Abbott said the case numbers reported on Sunday – 388 – were the lowest in more than 13 months, while the number of hospitalizations was the lowest in 11 months.

President Biden skewered Texas, as well as Mississippi, at the beginning of March for relaxing lockdown measures, accusing state officials of "Neanderthal thinking." At the time, Abbott had announced that businesses would be allowed to operate at full capacity – even though some health experts cautioned at the time that dropping preventative measures could lead to a spike in cases.

"I think it's a big mistake," Biden told reporters, following the announcement from Texas. "Look, I hope everybody's realized by now, these masks make a difference. We are on the cusp of being able to fundamentally change the nature of this disease because of the way in which we're able to get vaccines in people's arms."

Since then, however, caseloads nationwide have dropped as more Americans are vaccinated.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention also updated its guidance last Thursday, saying that it's safe for fully vaccinated Americans to forgo social distancing and go most places – indoor or outdoor – without a mask, bringing to end more than a year of mandatory face coverings in most parts of the country. But some states, including Hawaii and Massachusetts, have insisted they will keep their mask mandates in place.

COMMENT:  The red states seem to be doing pretty well in bringing their people back from the pandemic.  The blue states, like my train wreck of a state, New York, are not doing as well.  Burdened by socialist thinking, and looking for more statues to tear down and more police forces to defund, they just don't seem very eager to put Covid 19 behind them.

Within months we should be getting alerts for the booster shots that will be necessary, especially for those who've been vaccinated early.  There could of course be local outbreaks of Covid 19, bringing back the dream of eternal masking for the woke left.

May 17, 2021       Permalink

MAY 16,  2021

SHORT TAKES ON THE DRIFTING WRECKAGE – OVERNIGHT: 

ANOTHER WARNING – FROM BUSINESS INSIDER:  Wharton professor Jeremy Siegel said inflation could spike to 20% in the next two or three years due to "unprecedented" fiscal and monetary stimulus and an explosion of the US money supply.  "I'm predicting here that over the next two, three years, we could easily have 20% inflation with this increase in the money supply," Siegel said in a recent interview with CNBC.  Siegel went on to criticize Fed chair Jerome Powell for not acting to quell inflation in the near term.  The Wharton professor called Powell the "most dovish chairman" that he's ever seen and said that the Fed chair's stance could "be a problem down the road."  In the meantime, Siegel said he is bullish on stocks because fiscal and monetary support is going to keep flowing in.  The problem is that there's no one listening in the Biden administration.  It's an ideological administration, and only the ideology counts. 

MORONIC – FROM DAILY MAIL:    San Diego officials have been slammed for spending public money on 'divisive and misleading' billboards telling black mothers that racism could hurt their babies - before they're even born.  The billboards argue that racial discrimination is behind higher rates of miscarriages and maternal deaths among black women.  They include claims that 'Our black babies are nearly 60% more likely to be premature due to discrimination' and 'Racism hurts your baby long before they're born'.  Carl DeMaio, a former San Diego city councilmember and chairman of Reform California, a conservative political action committee, said the claims were not supported by data and could discourage women from seeking medical care.  'The big lie is that somehow America is filled with racism - when in fact, America has made so much progress on that issue,' he told Fox News. 'It's truly something to celebrate.'  He said the billboards send a 'dangerous and divisive message,' and should be taken down by the county's health department.

May 16, 2021       Permalink

A WARNING FROM HANSON – OVERNIGHT:  After weeks of turmoil in Washington, and in the nation's foreign policy, Victor Davis Hanson gives a fine summary of the dangers that this country now faces.  From Fox: 

Human nature stays the same across time and space. That is why there used to be predictable political, economic and social behavior that all countries understood.

The supply of money governs inflation. Print it without either greater productivity or more goods and services, and the currency cheapens. Yet America apparently rejects that primordial truism.

The United States is more than $28 trillion in debt – about 130% of the country’s annual gross domestic product. The government will run up a $2.3 trillion budget deficit for 2021 after a record $3.1 trillion deficit the year before.

The Biden administration still wants to borrow more – another $2 trillion in new social programs and "infrastructure."

In the crazy last 100 days, the price of everything from lumber, food and gas to cars and houses has soared. Yet many interest rates are still stuck at or below 3%.

Jobs are plentiful; workers are not. Is it a surprise when government handouts discourage the unemployed from taking a pay cut to go back to work?

After being freed from 13 months of quarantine, Americans are splurging. But this huge pent-up demand is causing shortages. Producers fear the Biden administration’s loose talk of higher taxes, greater regulation and cutbacks in energy development.

Are the old principles really obsolete? Should we be printing money while expanding government debt? Is it wise to keep interest rates close to zero and to discourage employment, production and thrift? This dangerous behavior used to ensure inflation, followed by ruinous stagflation.

After George Floyd was killed while in police custody in Minneapolis, some U.S. cities slashed police spending. Police response times have slowed in many places, perhaps because officers are worried about being fired for using force.

The result? In major cities such as New York and Los Angeles, homicide and violent crime rates have increased by double digits.

State and local governments believed they were exempt from primeval laws of deterrence that warned when criminals assumed they would not be caught and punished, then they committed more crimes.
The same dangers of ignoring unchanging human nature apply to foreign policy.

Aggressive opponents such as Iran, North Korea, China and Russia expect that the Biden administration will ignore their brinkmanship. They assume the administration will cut American defenses. And Biden sounds to them more critical of Trump foreign policy than of America’s enemies. Why not take previously unwarranted risks?

So, Russian troops predictably mass on the Ukrainian border. China steps up its harassment of Taiwan. North Korea launches more missiles, Iran hazes U.S. ships in the Persian Gulf. And now, rockets from Gaza pour into Israel.

COMMENT:  Well said.  Painful to read, but well said.  Please read the whole thing.  We are in trouble.  We are forgetting the things that made us a great nation.  We are forgetting the bitter foreign-policy lessons of the 1930s. 

It is correct that basic human nature doesn't change.  Only the circumstances change.

Hanson ends his piece with this:  "When an arrogant present dismisses the wisdom of the past, then an all too predictable future becomes terrifying."

May 16, 2021       Permalink