The corrupt bargain in the Inflation Increase Act, aside from stealing from working families to subsidize green special interests, now risks a trade war with the European Union.
USA
Midterm Forecast: ‘Too Close to Call’
Don’t expect early declarations of GOP victory on election night.
Does anyone else still remember November 2010? It was the Tea Party year. Conservatives had spent months organizing and rallying all over the country in opposition to President Barack Obama’s agenda, and, as the crucial midterm election approached, I’d been out on the campaign trail for months. For the final swing before Election Day, I set off toward Southwestern Virginia, where a young buddy of mine, Vince Kreul, was working on the congressional campaign of Morgan Griffith, the Republican challenger who was taking on 14-term incumbent Democrat Rep. Rick Boucher.
The FBI will not be forgiven after Tuesday
It is said that towards the end his life as he sank into dementia, Maurice Ravel was tormented by the theme from Bolero playing over and over in his head. I would not be surprised to hear that Christopher Wray, head of America’s Staatspolizei (also known as the FBI) is suffering from a similar torment as the theme from the movie Jaws plays over and over in his noggin.
Democrats’ Long Goodbye to the Working Class
The party’s biggest challenge heading into the midterm elections is the erosion of its traditional base of support.
As we move into the endgame of the 2022 election, the Democrats face a familiar problem. America’s historical party of the working class keeps losing working-class support. And not just among white voters. Not only has the emerging Democratic majority I once predicted failed to materialize, but many of the nonwhite voters who were supposed to deliver it are instead voting for Republicans.
h/t DM
Midterms 2022: Joe Biden is a busted flush – the Democrats are sleepwalking to disaster
JOE Biden has been an abysmal American president. And later this week he’ll get what he deserves when the Democrats lose the House of Representatives and the Senate with Biden becoming a lame duck in the process.
It’s a major headache for the Democrats but they went all in two years ago with Biden in a bid to defeat former President Donald J Trump, and they will now pay the price for that decision at the ballot box.
h/t Mauser
Rob Reiner: GOP Willing to ‘Literally Kill‘ to Get Power — This Could Be Our Last Election
Actor and Director Rob Reiner said Friday on MSNBC’s “The ReidOut” that Republicans are willing to “literally kill” to get power.
Anchor Joy Reid said, “I think about the things the Republicans are willing to say things you would think would make them impossible for them to win. Mike Lee going in bragging to a bunch of donors he wanted to pull up security root and branch and get rid of it. He got some applause for it. You have a guy in North Carolina who wants to have rape panels where women have to go before they can get an abortion. You think about this stuff, you think they should not be close. What do you make of the fact that despite saying some of the most outrageous things?”
Should America be more like Ukraine?
There’s nothing wrong with liberal nationalism
For those of us in the West, the Ukrainian response to the Soviet invasion has been somewhat embarrassing. We are used to living in peace and prosperity and are not in the habit of fighting for our way of life or making sacrifices for the common good. I don’t think I’m alone in asking myself whether, under similar circumstances, we would be as courageous and unselfish as the Ukrainians have proved themselves to be. The question brings a blush to the cheeks.
Soldier of Allah Anniversary
Lingering lessons from terrorist Nidal Hasan’s mass murder at Fort Hood.
The U.S. Army plans to rename Fort Hood, Texas, a 214,968-acre base “ideal for multifaceted training and testing of military units and troops.” The name change does not alter reality of a terrorist attack that marks an anniversary three days before the midterm election.
At Fort Hood on November 5, 2009, U.S. Army psychiatrist Nidal Hasan murdered 13 unarmed American soldiers and support personnel and wounded more than 40 others. The massacre marked a failure of political and military leadership, but there was more to it.
The Third Opium War
In the mid-1800s, Great Britain engaged in two wars against China’s Qing dynasty. The conflicts began when the emperor attempted to crack down on the illegal opium trade that was causing widespread addiction with devastating economic and social upheaval in China.
By 1820, Britain’s East India Company was importing huge amounts of opium from India into China. In 1839, agents of the emperor confiscated and destroyed 1,400 tons of opium warehoused in Canton by British merchants. In response, British warships sailed up the Pearl River and attacked and occupied Canton, overwhelming the inferior Qing forces. This became known as the First Opium War. As a result, China was forced to cede Hong Kong to the British and expand their access from one to four ports. A Second Opium War in 1856 saw British warships capture Peking and burn the emperor’s summer palace, gaining access to many more mainland Chinese ports and the legalization of opium in a forced settlement. These became known as the Unequal Treaties. Merchants in other European nations, as well as the U.S., soon joined in the opium trade.
Jack Mintz: Trudeau follows Biden down the path to economic ruin
In next week’s midterm elections in the United States, President Joe Biden’s Democrats will be judged by the electorate. In the past year, Biden has pushed up deficits and taxes to fund a hefty dose of climate, social and industrial subsidies, growth-inhibiting regulations, infrastructure spending and student-loan forgiveness. With runaway inflation and rising interest rates and energy costs, Americans will decide if they like this policy mix or not.
The Left Were the Mad Scientists—We Were Their Lab Rats
As the midterms approach, one way of looking at America’s current disaster is that we, the American people, were lab rats. And since 2021, the Left were the mad scientists, eager to try out their crackpot leftist experiments on us.
The result is that the housing market is tottering on the verge of collapse.
As interest rates soar, our $31 trillion national debt crowds out everything else in the budget.
Can the US live in Xi Jinping’s world?
Ten days ago Xi Jinping walked out in front of the world’s media – depleted somewhat by his government’s growing intolerance of foreign reporters – as the most powerful Chinese leader in decades.
A tradition that limited his recent predecessors to two terms had been broken. And third term in hand, he had cemented his power over China, perhaps indefinitely.
But even as Mr Xi’s grip tightens at home, on the international stage the situation has rarely looked more unsettled.
The more the Communist Party leader has reinforced China’s authoritarian model, the more he has challenged a defining assumption of our age of globalisation – as China got richer, it would become freer.
The ‘Islamophobia’ Industry Goes Bankrupt
Turns out, Muslims—not evangelicals, Jews, or rednecks—are the most ‘Islamophobic’ demographic in America.
For long, the powers that be have insisted that Islamophobia—defined as “unfounded fear of and hostility towards Islam”—is the root of all problems between Muslims and non-Muslims in the West. Speaking last May, Joe Biden lamented that “so many Muslims [are] being targeted with violence. No one, no one should [be] discriminated against or be oppressed for their religious beliefs…. Muslims make our nation stronger every single day, even as they still face real challenges and threats in our society, including targeted violence and Islamophobia that exists.”
What is so wrong with wanting to make America great again?
From Silent Majority to Deplorables to Semi-Fascists: Elites’ Demonization of Republicans
Republicans in America are witnessing their own stunning anthropological metamorphosis.
It is like being conscious on an operating table while watching your body turn into a ghoulish creature. The celebrated Roman poet, Ovid, who lived during the time of Caesar Augustus, could never have imagined this transformation when he created Metamorphoses, a narrative poem about the evolution of history.
For Daughter of American Militant, Scars of ISIS’s Reign Run Deep
ALEXANDRIA, Va. — Leyla Ekren, a quiet but scrappy girl from rural Kansas, lost her childhood in Syria, where her mother dragged her after war broke out more than a decade ago.
Even as she fell ill with typhoid fever, her mother, a hardened militant who would ascend the ranks of the Islamic State, demanded that she undertake military training. As delirium and pain ravaged her mind and body, Leyla, then 10, found her effervescence evaporating. She just wanted to die.