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OCTOBER 4,  2021

SHORT TAKES ON THE DRIFTING WRECKAGE – OVERNIGHT:

THIS IS NOT GOOD – FROM FOX BUSINESS:   Global crude prices surged to multiyear highs on Monday after OPEC stood firm in keeping production at current levels.   NYMEX crude closed up 2.29% to $77.62 per barrel, the highest level since November 2014.   Brent crude, the global benchmark, jumped 2.50% to $81.26 — the highest since October 2018.  Gas prices continue to climb with the latest average hitting $3.20 per gallon, as tracked by AAA.   In a statement, OPEC and non-OPEC participating countries "reconfirmed the production adjustment plan and the monthly production adjustment mechanism approved at the 19th OPEC and non-OPEC Ministerial Meeting and the decision to adjust upward the monthly overall production by 0.4 mb/d for the month of November 2021, as per the attached schedule."  Edward Moya, senior market analyst for the Americas, warned prices could go even higher.   "OPEC+ is slowly turning into the villain for the global economic recovery.  Higher oil prices are coming and the energy traders could easily see $90 oil on any surprise disruption to output, a colder autumn, or the unleashing of pent-up travel demand if COVID cases continue to fall," he said in a research note.   So Team Biden will go into the 2022 elections with higher gas prices.  Why do I think the American people will send them a message? 

October 4, 2021       Permalink

FAILURE OF THE DEMS – OVERNIGHT:  Watching the Democratic train wreck in Washington, we have a right to wonder how so many things have gone wrong with a once-great political party.  Michael Barone, one of our best political commentators, has some thoughts worth reading.  From the New York Post: 

“First you win the argument, then you win the vote.” That advice from Margaret Thatcher has been ignored by President Joe Biden and Democratic Party leaders to their detriment.

Democrats, aided by former President Donald Trump’s denigration of Georgia’s electoral system, which gifted them the state’s two Senate seats, were gifted by voters with the narrowest of legislative majorities: 51 to 50 in the Senate and 220 to 212 (with three current vacancies) in the House. Biden himself won the crucial three swing states by just 42,918 popular votes.

Incautiously, Democrats plunged into policymaking without making anything like cognizable policy arguments. Trump had reduced illegal immigration by extending walls on the Mexican border and persuading Mexico’s president to hold asylum-seekers in Mexico until their (usually baseless) claims could be ruled on. Both policies were ditched on Day 1 of the Biden administration. The policy argument: “Orange man bad.”

Now, we see the easily predictable results. Border apprehensions are headed toward 2 million this year — the highest since the 1998-2000 boom years. So-called asylum-seekers from Central America have been joined by Middle Easterners, Africans and, most recently, by some 20,000 Haitians, previously settled in Chile and Brazil, huddled under a bridge heading to Del Rio, Texas.

Vice President Kamala Harris’ pathetic plea, “Don’t come,” has been overwhelmed by the evidence that most of those who do come illegally are ushered into the United States and told to meet court dates that everyone knows most won’t.

The likely result is something like 1 million new illegal immigrants in the United States this year. This represents a reversal of the trend. The Pew Research Center says the illegal immigrant population peaked at 12.2 million in 2007, declined as post-recession net immigration from Mexico plunged to zero and leveled off at 10.5 million in 2017.

During that time, immigration has been shifting from Latin America to Asia and from low-skill to relatively high-skill newcomers. What’s the policy argument for that?

The best that Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas could summon up on Fox News was, “We do not agree with the building of the wall,” i.e., “Orange man bad” and “the law provides that individuals can make a claim for humanitarian relief,” i.e., asylum.

But as my Washington Examiner colleague Byron York points out, the same law allows the government to require illegal border-crossers to remain in another country pending resolution of their asylum claims. What’s the policy argument for dispersing them, without being tested for COVID, through all corners of the United States?

COMMENT:  Be sure to study the rest.  It's one of the best examinations of Democratic shallowness and unseriousness that I've read. The Dems have simply failed to make their case.  They treat voters like Christmas ornaments, to be taken out only when needed.  They don't seem much concerned with results.  Getting a program going, whether intelligently or not, seems the priority.  And then they "move on."

In the 1990s, under Newt Gingrich's leadership, Republicans developed their "contract with America."  It was a carefully assembled program of ideas, promises, and goals, written so average voters could understand it.  Americans liked what they saw and read.  Republican fortunes rose.  Now, do it again.

October 4, 2021       Permalink

OCTOBER 3,  2021

SHORT TAKES ON THE DRIFTING WRECKAGE – OVERNIGHT:

A WARNING – FROM COLLEGE FIX:   A professor of pharmaceutical sciences at the University of Pittsburgh who came to America 30 years ago as a refugee from the Soviet Union is sounding the alarm on the growing anti-racism movement in the U.S., saying it’s basically a rehashing of Marxism and socialism.  Professor Michael Vanyukov, a professor of pharmaceutical sciences, psychiatry and human genetics at the University of Pittsburgh, warns that essentially race has taken the place of class warfare in the narrative.  “Like the Soviet communists, who used class-based hate and rhetoric to control the ‘masses’ and build the society of ideological slaves, the ‘Diversity’ departments use race. In a way, that is worse, because one can change one’s class, but race is forever,” Vanyukov told The College Fix in an email.  Vanyukov recently took a stand against the University of Pittsburgh’s Office for Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion’s push for anti-racism on campus and its reliance on Ibram X. Kendi’s work.  “[Kendi’s] demagoguery is no different than what the Soviet propaganda taught about the West and capitalism,” Vanyukov wrote in a letter to the editor in UPitt’s University Times.  He is right, of course, but he will get in trouble.  The American left has become frightening in its willingness to sacrifice freedom for ideology, and in its intolerance of others.  Vanyukov has a target on his back.  I wonder what Pitt will do with him.

October 3, 2021       Permalink

TAIWAN CONTINUED – OVERNIGHT:  I said that we'd follow the Taiwan situation closely.  It is tense, it is dangerous, and a potential disaster for the United States.  From NEWSMAX: 

Taiwan's foreign minister is warning of war with China and is asking Australia for aid with intelligence, Australian Broadcasting reports.

The news comes after the People's Liberation Army (PLA) of China flew dozens of sorties into Taiwan's Air Defense Identification Zone (ADIZ) beginning on Friday.

On ABC's "China Tonight," Taiwan's Foreign Minister Joseph Wu said that if the PLA launches an actual strike, Taiwan is ready to repel it.

"The defense of Taiwan is in our own hands, and we are absolutely committed to that," Wu said.
The statement comes after Taiwan sharply criticized China on Saturday after Beijing marked the founding of the People's Republic of China with the largest ever incursion by the Chinese air force into the island's air defense zone.

Taiwan, a democratically governed island that is claimed by China, has complained for more than a year of repeated missions near it by China's air force, often in the southwestern part of its air defense zone close to the Taiwan-controlled Pratas Islands.

Taiwanese fighters scrambled against 38 Chinese aircraft in two waves on Friday, the Taiwan Defence Ministry said. It said Taiwan sent combat aircraft to warn away the Chinese aircraft, while missile systems were deployed to monitor them.

"China has been wantonly engaged in military aggression, damaging regional peace," Taiwan Premier Su Tseng-chang told reporters on Saturday morning.

The first wave of incursions comprised 18 J-16 and four Su-30 fighter jets plus two nuclear-capable H-6 bombers and an anti-submarine aircraft, while the second had 10 J-16s, 2 H-6s and an early warning aircraft, the ministry said.

The first batch of Chinese aircraft all flew in an area close to the Pratas Islands, with the two bombers flying closest to the atoll, according to a map issued by the ministry.

The second group flew down into the Bashi Channel that separates Taiwan from the Philippines, a key waterway that links the Pacific with the disputed South China Sea.

And then there's this, a reaction from the United States to China's antics.  But does it have teeth?  From The Hill: 

The State Department said on Sunday that the U.S. is "very concerned" about China's "provocative military activity near Taiwan" following Beijing's most recent show of air power near the self-governing island.

"The United States is very concerned by the People’s Republic of China’s provocative military activity near Taiwan, which is destabilizing, risks miscalculations, and undermines regional peace and stability. We urge Beijing to cease its military, diplomatic, and economic pressure and coercion against Taiwan," State Department spokesperson Ned Price said in a statement.

On Friday, China flew 38 military aircraft into Taiwan's Air Defense Identification Zone, believed to be Beijing's largest military provocation seen yet.

On Saturday, it sent 30 warplanes toward Taiwan.

COMMENT:  Does anyone take the United States seriously, after the Afghan debacle?  What would we actually do in the face of Chinese escalation over Taiwan?   Denounce?  Sanction?  Refuse to order takeout?

And will the Democratic Party actually support strong action against a country that is admired, not scorned, by its left wing?

October 3, 2021       Permalink