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

SEPTEMBER 6, 2022

SHORT TAKES ON THE DRIFTING WRECKAGE:

A DISGRACE:  What has happened to the American soldier?  From Daily Mail:  Recruitment numbers for the Army are at historic lows as Americans are either too fat or criminal to join to defend the country, an Army general warned.  Lt. Gen Xavier Brunson, the commander of Joint Base Lewis-McChord in Washington state, theorized as to why recruitment is so low following a July statement from the Army that it wouldn't meet its 485,000 recruitment goal for 2022, falling short by a staggering 20,000 recruits.  Officers across the country are failing to meet recruitment numbers as fewer youth are qualified to serve, which some blame on the COVID-19 pandemic.  'Some of the challenges we have are obesity, we have pre-existing medical conditions, we have behavioral health problems, we have criminality, people with felonies, and we have drug use,' Brunson told Spokesman Review.  'This is not an Army problem, this is an American Problem.'  To increase recruitment numbers, the Army plans to 'lower the gates' and find new ways to appeal to youth, according to the New York Times.  'Only 23% of the people that are of age to serve are actually qualified,' Brunson said.  'This is now a condition. So nationally what we have to look at is what's going on with our youth.'  I see no sense of urgency about this in the press, in the universities, or in the White House.

September 6, 2022       Permalink

COLORADO SURPRISE?  With all the election predictions pouring forth from the usual neurotic pundits, we return to the calm, thorough journalistic voice of Salena Zito, who actually talks to real people.  She may be on to a Colorado surprise.  From American Greatness: 

EAGLE, Colorado — There is something going on here in Colorado politics that is not much different than what happened in Virginia exactly one year ago: a shift away from the status quo and the odds-on favorite Democrat toward his Republican challenger. 

Sen. Michael Bennet, D-Colo., is seeking a second full term against Republican challenger Joe O’Dea. And the question, in a state where people tend to dislike both parties but increasingly favor Democrats, is whether O’Dea is independent enough to earn their vote.

Democrats viewed O’Dea as enough of a threat that they dropped $10 million into the Republican primary to manipulate voters into backing his “stop-the-steal” primary rival. Their advertising to Republican voters aimed to paint O’Dea as a centrist, which complicates their task now. Meanwhile, President Joe Biden is rather unpopular in this state. 

For his own part, O’Dea is a really good candidate whose worldview very much reflects that of the voters here: fierce, independent thinking and owing nothing to anyone. 

Like Virginia, Colorado is a blue state that occasionally flirts with Republican candidates. And as in Virginia, the voters here are unhappy that the Democrat running to represent them has lost his independence. They are now listening to the candidate who speaks to them and not just a party line — and polling reflects that. A survey conducted for the Republican Attorney General’s Association shows Bennet up over O’Dea by just one point, 48% to 47% — that in a state Biden won handily less than two years ago.

O’Dea has spent his campaign time listening to voters here. They discuss the impact inflation has had on their personal and professional lives. Business owners in places such as Snowmass and Aspen are struggling to find workers and stay open. 

O’Dea says it is the same thing he hears over and over again as he travels across the state. “I’ve been to 60 out of 64, the counties, between the primary and then here at the general election, and the No. 1 issue I’m hearing is economy,” he said. “It’s inflation. It’s how expensive things are and how they can’t afford things that used to be staples in their lives. The price of gas, while it has come down, it is still over $1.25 a gallon more than it was a year ago. People are really, really feeling financially insecure, and they are having to make tough choices between kids being able to go on vacation, kids being able to play sports.” 

“And in lower-income areas,” he adds, “it’s a choice between filling up the car and heating the house. It’s groceries at an all-time high, really, really strapping people that just, like I said, they’re just not feeling financially secure at all.” 

The No. 2 issue, he says, is crime. “They don’t feel secure,” he said, “especially in some of the Denver areas and some of the more inner-city areas — people are really worried about crime here in Colorado.”...

...O’Dea is not your father’s Republican candidate, but he is also not former President Donald Trump’s Republican candidate. He is his own man and someone whose personal story wraps around his approach to the issues. He has been very vocal in hoping that the former president does not run again. Although that storyline fascinates Washington reporters, it is the other things he stands for that fascinate voters.

COMMENT:  I trust Salena Zito's judgment.  We have an unexpected shot in Colorado.  A Republican pick-up.  We'll watch closely.  Dreams do come true.

September 6, 2022      Permalink

SEPTEMBER 4-5,  2022

HAIL THE NEW P.M.:  Britain now has a new prime minister, succeeding Boris Johnson.  She is pro-American conservative Liz Truss,  the current foreign minister, and I am eager to see her do her Margaret Thatcher stuff.  From Reuters: 

Liz Truss will become Britain’s next prime minister after winning a leadership race for the governing Conservative party on Monday, vowing to press ahead with promises of tax cuts and to deal with a growing energy crisis.

After weeks of an often bad-tempered and divisive leadership contest, Truss, currently the foreign minister, defeated former finance minister Rishi Sunak in a vote of Conservative Party members, winning by 81,326 votes to 60,399.

“I will deliver a bold plan to cut taxes and grow our economy,” Truss said after the result was announced. “I will deliver on the energy crisis, dealing with people’s energy bills, but also dealing with the long-term issues we have on energy supply.”

Truss takes over as the country faces a cost of living crisis, industrial unrest, a recession and war in Europe, where Britain has been a leading backer of Ukraine. She appeared to rule out another national election for the next two years, saying she would win a great victory for her party in 2024.

She succeeds Boris Johnson, who was forced to announce his resignation in July after months of scandal saw support for his administration drain away.

He will travel to Scotland to meet Queen Elizabeth on Tuesday to officially tender his resignation. Truss will follow him and be asked to form a government by the monarch.

Long the front-runner to replace him, Truss will become the Conservatives’ fourth prime minister since a 2015 election. Over that period the country has been buffeted from crisis to crisis, and now faces what is forecast to be a long recession triggered by sky-rocketing inflation which hit 10.1% in July.

Foreign minister under Johnson, Truss, 47, has promised to act quickly to tackle the cost of living crisis, saying that within a week she will come up with a plan to tackle rising energy bills and securing future fuel supplies.

She signaled during her leadership campaign she would challenge convention by scrapping tax increases and cutting other levies in a move some economists say would fuel inflation.

That, plus a pledge to review the remit of the Bank of England while protecting its independence, has prompted some investors to dump the pound and government bonds.

Kwasi Kwarteng, widely tipped to be her finance minister, sought to calm markets on Monday, by saying in an article in the Financial Times newspaper that under Truss there would need to be “some fiscal loosening” but that her administration would act in “a fiscally responsible way”.

Asked if he would be finance minister following Truss‘s victory, Kwarteng told Reuters he didn’t know.

Truss faces a long, costly and difficult to-do list, which opposition lawmakers say is the result of 12 years of poor Conservative government. Several have called for an early election – something Truss has said she will not allow.

Veteran Conservative lawmaker David Davis described the challenges she would take on as prime minister as “probably the second most difficult brief of post-war prime ministers” after Conservative Margaret Thatcher in 1979.

COMMENT:  My main concern is her foreign policy, and I think we can be confident that she'll maintain a strong bond with the United States. However, there is instability in the British government, with many observers giving Truss only a small chance of surviving politically in the next two years.  The dread fear is that the far-left Labour Party might win an election, placing the British-American alliance in serious peril.

On the other hand, with the United States giving the appearance of weakness, wokeness and foolishness, it is possible that Truss, no pushover, could emerge as the de facto leader of the free world.  Margaret Thatcher never reached that status because Ronald Reagan was such a strong president.  But Thatcher was a firm ally who gave additional strength to the Reagan Revolution.  Right now, there's room at the top of the free world. 

September 5, 2022       Permalink

THOSE WHO TELL IT STRAIGHT:  Niall Ferguson is a conservative historian who is always worth reading or listening to.  He brings an unhappy message, but we'd better take it seriously.  From CNBC: 

Historian Niall Ferguson warned Friday that the world is sleepwalking into an era of political and economic upheaval akin to the 1970s — only worse.

Speaking to CNBC at the Ambrosetti Forum in Italy, Ferguson said the catalyst events had already occurred to spark a repeat of the 70s, a period characterized by financial shocks, political clashes and civil unrest. Yet this time, the severity of those shocks was likely to be greater and more sustained.

“The ingredients of the 1970s are already in place,” Ferguson, Milbank Family Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, told CNBC’s Steve Sedgwick.

“The monetary and fiscal policy mistakes of last year, which set this inflation off, are very alike to the 60s,” he said, likening recent price hikes to the 1970′s doggedly high inflation.
“And, as in 1973, you get a war,” he continued, referring to the 1973 Arab-Israeli War — also known as the Yom Kippur War — between Israel and a coalition of Arab states led by Egypt and Syria.

As with Russia’s current war in Ukraine, the 1973 Arab-Israeli War led to international involvement from then-superpowers the Soviet Union and the U.S., sparking a wider energy crisis. Only that time, the conflict lasted just 20 days. Russia’s unprovoked invasion of Ukraine has now entered into its sixth month, suggesting that any repercussions for energy markets could be far worse.

“This war is lasting much longer than the 1973 war, so the energy shock it is causing is actually going to be more sustained,” said Ferguson.

Politicians and central bankers have been vying to mitigate the worst effects of the fallout, by raising interest rates to combat inflation and reducing reliance on Russian energy imports.

But Ferguson, who has authored 16 books, including his most recent “Doom: The Politics of Catastrophe,” said there was no evidence to suggest that current crises could be avoided.
“Why shouldn’t it be as bad as the 1970s?” he said. “I’m going to go out on a limb: Let’s consider the possibility that the 2020s could actually be worse than the1970s.”

COMMENT:  We wait for President Biden to officially name Ferguson as an enemy of the state.  A MAGA type.  Semi-fascist. 

But he's a smart historian and he could be right.  Things have become very unstable in many parts of the world.  A strong United States is called for, and it isn't what we have.  How would you like the world's most important nation to be run by Kamala Harris? 

Dig those trenches.

September 4, 2022       Permalink