Please note that you can leave a comment on any of our posts at our Facebook page.  Subscribers can also comment at length at our Angel's Corner Forum.

SUBSCRIPTION DRIVE – FOUR MORE DAYS

(Report:  We appreciate the support we've received so far, but we are still way short of where we need to be.  If you like Urgent Agenda, and think it will be of good use to you in this critical election year, please help us maintain our operations.  Please subscribe or donate.  You'll feel you're a better person.)

This is our first subscription drive of 2022.  It is crucial .  Our work depends on our subscribers and donators.  Without them, we're gone.

America is in the midst of a critical election year, possibly the most critical in the nation's recent history.  Urgent Agenda will be there seven days a week, not only keeping you up to date, but selecting the articles and quotes that get to the heart of what you want to read, and must read. 

As subscribers, you'll also receive our Forum, a weekly emailed page containing posts from you, our readers.  It is great fun seeing your name in print, and having other readers answer you. 

To subscribe, just go to the right-hand column of this page, under SUBSCRIPTIONS, directly opposite these words.   There are several ways to subscribe.  I personally recommend SENDINC, a reader favorite – safe, quick and efficient.  But the others, like PayPal, are also fine.  If you prefer to subscribe or donate by regular mail, just send me a note at service@urgentagenda.com, and I'll supply you with instructions.

We hope you join us.

MAY 18, 2022

SHORT TAKES ON THE DRIFTING WRECKAGE – OVERNIGHT:

THE TRUMP EFFECT – FROM GATEWAY PUNDIT:   Here are the results to date and from last night:  Overall Record on President Trump’s endorsements – 81 Wins, 3 Losses*, 1 to be determined (Oz of Pennsylvania).  Okay, hats off to the former president.  His endorsements seem to make a difference, or is it that he understands what people want?

MIDEAST INTRIGUE – FROM THE JERUSALEM POST:  Israeli Defense Minister Benny Gantz met with US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan in the White House on Wednesday to discuss the threat posed by Iran’s nuclear project and the progress made by the Islamic Republic. The meeting came less than a day after the Saudi Deputy Defense Minister Prince Khalid Bin Salman met with Sullivan. On Wednesday, Bin Salman met with US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, who Gantz is scheduled to meet on Thursday.   The timing of both meetings lent to speculation that Israel was coordinating next moves on Iran with the US and Saudi Arabia.  I certainly hope so.  Iran is a major and growing threat...even when it is off the front pages.  It is also an ally of Russia.  It also has powerful, if self-deluded, friends in Washington and Europe.  I hope there are people in key places who understand the importance of Iran not being permitted to be a nuclear power.

May 18, 2022       Permalink

PRIMARY AFTERMATH – OVERNIGHT:  The race for the GOP Senate nomination in Pennsylvania is still too close to call.  It may take a week or more to determine who won, and a recount is still a major possibility.   From AP:

HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) — Heart surgeon-turned-TV celebrity Dr. Mehmet Oz and former hedge fund CEO David McCormick went into Wednesday essentially tied in Pennsylvania’s hotly contested Republican nomination for an open U.S. Senate seat, expected to be among the nation’s most competitive races in the fall.

The contest was within a couple thousand votes overnight, out of more than 1.2 million cast. Trailing in a distant third place in the seven-person GOP primary field was conservative activist Kathy Barnette.

The Associated Press has not called the race. Some counties had yet to tabulate all of their mail-in ballots and the counting of provisional, overseas and military absentee ballots could last all week.

There is no runoff law in Pennsylvania. But the race was close enough to trigger Pennsylvania’s automatic recount law, with the separation between Oz and McCormick inside the 0.5% margin that prompts an order by the state’s top election official.

Oz and McCormick emerged at their election night watch parties after midnight to say they would have to wait for vote-counting to resume Wednesday to determine a winner, with each saying he was confident of victory. There are no plans for either candidate to make a public appearance, though former President Donald Trump has encouraged Oz to preemptively declare victory. Oz has not made any suggestion that he will do so.

The state’s lieutenant governor, John Fetterman, won the Democratic nomination hours after undergoing surgery to implant a pacemaker with a defibrillator to help him recover from a stroke he suffered on Friday.

Democrats view the race to replace retiring two-term Republican Sen. Pat Toomey as perhaps their best opportunity to pick up a seat in the closely divided 100-seat Senate.
Republican turnout exceeded 37%, the highest midterm primary turnout in at least two decades, juiced by more than $70 million in spending on the GOP primary alone.

COMMENT:  That turnout figure is important.  As we noted yesterday, turnout in primaries is a pretty good indicator of voter enthusiasm.  The Dems are counting on the upcoming Supreme Court decision in Roe v. Wade to drive turnout on their side, but it may be a false hope.  The protests against the Court are pretty much exhausted, voters know what's coming, and the left will probably go too far in their reaction and drive away more voters than they attract.

May 18, 2022     Permalink

MAY 16-17, 2022

OVERNIGHT:  Not surprisingly, yesterday's primaries produced very little actual news, but the needs of the 24-hour news cycle require that TV journalists make every little ripple sound like World Wars 3 through 8.

The most interesting race of the evening – for the GOP nomination for US senator in Pennsylvania, is still too close to call.  More counting starts in the morning.  Dr. Mehmet Oz, endorsed by former President Trump, holds a razor-thin lead over hedge-fund manager Dave McCormick.  The winner will, in the general election, face Bernie Sanders thinkalike, Lieutenant Governor John Fetterman.  This race is critical.  The ultimate winner will replace retiring Republican Senator Pat Toomey.  It's a Republican seat, and judged by observers as the one the Dems have the greatest chance of flipping.  That would be a disaster for our side.  We can't afford any losses of Senate seats.  One vote may decide who controls the new Senate, which means Supreme Court confirmation votes.

Commentators are showing an intense interest in how many candidates endorsed by Donald Trump won.  With many races still out, we can't give specific numbers, and, frankly, I think the whole matter is exaggerated, and probably doesn't gauge Trump's ultimate influence in the GOP.  A primary election generally draws far smaller numbers of voters than a general election, and is often decided by local issues.  I'm not focusing on the Trump factor.

What I am focusing on is turnout, specifically the contrast between Democratic and Republican turnout.  That is often a pretty good indicator of turnout in November.  It's the "enthusiasm gap" factor.  Up to now, turnout in primary elections in 2022, overall, has favored Republicans, sometimes by heavy margins.   The figures for yesterday are not yet in.  I'll give them to you as they appear.

Another thing I'm looking for is the outcome of yesterday's school board elections in the states that held them.  There was a time when no one cared about school board elections.  They were barely covered in the media.  No one knew who was actually on the school boards.  The schools seemed to take care of themselves, magically.  Today, that's changed.  The parents' revolt that we're seeing all over the country, and that influenced last year's Virginia governorship election, often has its first combat in confronting out-of-touch school boards.  

There were many school board elections yesterday, but we have few meaningful results.  Oh yes, we have many names of winners and losers.  But, to show you how amateurish the news coverage is, we have little information about the point of view of the winners, and those they replaced.  That's the key, of course.  Are we going to see the shift to the right that we saw in Virginia?  That shift, if it repeats in school boards around the country, can have a dramatic influence on the future of American education.

We'll just have to wait.  I'll get you the key information pronto.

May 16-17, 2022       Permalink 

10:22 P.M. ET:  WE ARE ABSORBING THE PRIMARY RETURNS TONIGHT AND WILL HAVE COMMENTS LATER.

BLOWIN' IN THE WIND – OVERNIGHT:  One of the things we like to do at Urgent Agenda is to try to spot trends that are just beginning, the ideas and people who will take us into the future.  It's almost impossible to get it right all the time, of course, but we sometimes see something that reflects the mood of the country, and its direction.

If there's anything that defines America right now it's the wish for a fresh start, a belief that we need more than another election.  We need a national makeover, a reason to believe in ourselves again.

We've gone through this before.  It happened during the Depression.  It happened in the 1970s, after Vietnam.  We came out stronger each time, the first time by fighting and winning World War II, which established us as the world's superpower; the second time by electing Ronald Reagan as president.  He reminded us of who we were, and he led us to victory in the Cold War. 

As MacArthur said, there's no substitute for victory.  It's not like the Olympics.  In building a nation, there's no silver medal for greatness. 

Now, today, we notice something.  Consider Elon Musk, the guy who's buying Twitter.  I know very little about him, so I come in without prejudice.  It looked at first like a business deal, a big one, but just a business deal.  Now Musk is speaking like a president.  He can't run for the presidency because he's not native-born, he was born in South Africa, but he clearly wants to lead, to say, in effect, "We're in a mess.  It can't go on.  This is what we must do."  And I'm seeing more of this attitude every day.  Maybe we've just reached the point where Americans are saying, "enough."  Maybe the Elon Musks of the world can help.  There is something very refreshing about this.  From Fox Business: 

Tesla CEO Elon Musk, whose purchase of Twitter remains ongoing, slammed President Biden in a podcast interview Monday and warned that if the government continues printing money, inflation will get worse and the U.S. might follow the path of Venezuela.

"This administration doesn't seem to get a lot done," Musk said. "The Trump administration, leaving Trump aside, there were a lot of people in the administration who were effective at getting things done."

He also claimed that the Democratic Party is "overly controlled by the unions and by the trial lawyers, particularly the class action lawyers." He argued that when Democrats go against "the interests of the people," it tends to come from the unions and the trial lawyers, while when Republicans do that, "it's because of corporate evil and religious zealotry." 

"In the case of Biden, he is simply too much captured by the unions, which was not the case with Obama," Musk said. The Tesla CEO defended Obama as "quite reasonable," but insisted that Biden prioritizes the unions ahead of the public.

The Tesla CEO also weighed in on Amazon founder Jeff Bezos's claim that the White House has resorted to "misdirection" in order to "muddy the topic" of inflation.

"I mean, the obvious reason for inflation is that the government printed a zillion amount of more money than it had, obviously," Musk said, echoing Republican critics who claim that Biden's American Rescue Plan COVID-19 relief stimulus bill contributed to the near-40-year-high inflation the U.S. experienced in April. 

COMMENT:  Read the rest.  Whether you like Musk or not, at least he's thinking beyond the prepared statements and the PR hype.  He's treating a serious time seriously, and that is unique in 2022, when fluff is considered philosophy. 

May 16-17, 2022       Permalink