NEITHER CLOWARD NOR PIVEN COULD BE REACHED FOR COMMENT: Dems Tuck Multibillion-Dollar Handout to Illegal Immigrants Into Reconciliation. “Biden’s $3.5 trillion spending bill gives migrants same child benefits as Americans.”
Archive for 2021
October 4, 2021
THOUGHTS ON CHINA FROM JOHN MAULDIN:
The visible impact of all this will be mostly within China, but its macro effects will be global. Such wealth destruction should be intensely deflationary. That may be part of the goal, in fact. Chinese consumers are feeling significant inflation in food, housing, and other living costs. Demographic factors, particularly population aging, will increase this pressure. Decades of the one-child policy reduced working-age labor supply, which raises wages and other prices.
But it won’t stop there. For years, China’s voracious appetite for energy and materials underpinned prices worldwide. At the same time, its low manufacturing prices basically exported deflation. Hence we saw little or no inflation in most finished goods but a lot of inflation in commodity-intensive services like food, energy, and housing.
In short, China is losing its role as the world’s lead manufacturing exporter. Government policies aren’t helping, but George Friedman notes this is actually a cyclical process. He wrote a thoughtful piece (which I shared with Over My Shoulder members here) about the apparent 40–50 year pattern in which a nation takes on this role then loses it. The US did so in the 1890s, then it was Japan, and China since the 1980s. . . . The end of this period is traumatic. The US marked it with the Great Depression, and Japan with its 1990s downturn, but both countries adapted and recovered. (You might even say they “muddled through.”) George expects the same for China.
Well, some of the muddling was pretty ugly.
VIRGINIA: Hampton Roads Black Caucus endorses Glenn Youngkin for governor. “This is the first time the caucus has endorsed a Republican for governor since they were founded in 2012.”
HEDGE FUNDS WITH COLLEGES ATTACHED: Elite University Endowment Returns Soar Over 50%.
Tax the rich!
NOBODY LISTENS TO THE CDC ANYMORE AND THE CDC HAS ONLY THE CDC TO BLAME: The CDC Wants to Ruin Your Holidays (Again).
NO. NEXT QUESTION? Can the future of comedy be found in socialism?
TO ASK THE QUESTION IS TO ANSWER IT: Byron York: No ‘maverick’ treatment for Sinema for standing up to party. When another Arizona senator bucked his party, he was praised by the media. So why is Sinema a “traitor?”
MICROBIOME NEWS: As birds migrate, the microbes in their gut evolve.
GIRLS WILL BE BOYS AND BOYS WILL BE GIRLS. IT’S A MIXED UP, MUDDLED UP, SHOOK UP WORLD, EXCEPT FOR LOLA: Can’t make it up: Transgender weightlifter Laurel Hubbard named “sportswoman of the year.”
JOE BIDEN’S RETURN TO DIGNITY: Sen. Kyrsten Sinema Hounded by Lefties in Public Bathroom Stall, At Her Home.
THIS HAS BEEN THE INSTA-WIFE’S THEORY FOR YEARS: Diet beverages may thwart efforts to lose weight, study suggests.
K-12 IMPLOSION UPDATE: School boards see protests as ‘domestic terrorism.’ “Angry protesters at school board meetings may be guilty of ‘domestic terrorism’ or ‘hate crimes,’ the National School Board Association (NSBA) believes.”
If you don’t want to be labeled a terrorist, maybe you shouldn’t send your kids to public schools.
WELCOME BACK, CARTER: The ‘Renewable’ Fallacy and Why I Blame Jimmy Carter.
Ask almost anyone what we should do to make our economy greener and they’ll tell you we need more “renewable energy.” Renewable energy—that’s the goal behind myriad state and federal policies; it is the justification for massive subsidies to certain types of energy production and the rationale for penalizing others. It’s the reason some states (and even some countries) have spent billions on new energy infrastructure, burdened their consumers with sky-high energy costs, and yet made only modest progress bringing down carbon dioxide emissions.
That’s because we’ve been asking the wrong question. The key issue with energy technology is not whether it is renewable—that is, can it be endlessly replenished from natural sources such as sun, wind, and water—but rather whether the technology is clean and whether that clean tech can be deployed at a reasonable price. If we are serious about making our economy cleaner, we should be choosing technologies that deliver the biggest environmental benefit at the lowest possible cost. Too often, in pursuit of the renewable rainbow, we’ve done just the opposite. We burden our energy economy with high prices and complex regulations, all for fairly meager improvements in our environmental footprint.
To understand how we got on the wrong track, we need to go back to those gloomy days of the 1970s. Inflation was raging and optimism tanking. The Population Bomb was a bestseller, while environmentalists stressed “limits to growth.” Many experts believed that the U.S. had already hit “Peak Oil”—that our energy supply had nowhere to go but down. Then came the 1973 OPEC oil embargo, and with it the “Energy Crisis.” Americans faced gas lines, rationing, and fears that they wouldn’t be able to heat their homes. It seemed our very way of life was at the mercy of a handful of Arab petro-states.
In fact, the OPEC embargo played only a small role in the crisis.
Read the whole thing.
WHEN YOU’RE MORE INTERESTED IN PRESS RELEASES THAN SELLING PRODUCT: Playboy releases October cover featuring a man.
MORE LIKE THIS, PLEASE: ‘It Doesn’t Cost Zero’: Chris Wallace Pushes Back Against Democrats’ Myths.
“ARE YOU KIDDING? THE FDA IS VINDICTIVE?” What Dr. Makary Said About the FDA That Left Fox News Host Stunned:
Merck & Co’s stock price rose sharply on Friday after the drug company announced positive clinical trial results from its experimental anti-viral Covid-19 pill. Data showed the pill halved the chances of dying or being hospitalized for at-risk populations—a breakthrough advancement in the fight against the global pandemic.
Discussing the development on Fox News Monday morning, Dr. Marty Makary, a professor of surgery and health policy at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, called it the “most profound scientific achievement since the vaccines.”
* * * * * * * *
Fox News’ Brian Kilmeade wondered why, then, Merck isn’t going “to bat for their own drug.”
“Well, they’ve got to be very careful with the FDA,” Makary responded. “If you do something out of line with what they want you could offend them and the FDA is vindictive and they will hold up authorizations and approvals.”
The Fox News host couldn’t believe what he just heard.
“Are you kidding? The FDA is vindictive?” he asked.
“First of all this is the most political FDA in U.S. history,” Makary claimed. “Second of all, the FDA has a long history of pulling products from companies that are unrelated to mistakes in other medication and device applications so companies have to be very careful, and that’s why you generally don’t see pharma complaining about the bureaucracy and red tape at the FDA—”
“They’re afraid,” Kilmeade interjected.
“Yeah, they’re afraid of the backlash,” Makary confirmed.
“Yeah, that’s healthy,” the host responded sarcastically.
Related: Public Health Officials Blew Up Their Credibility, and We’re Paying the Price.
STACEY LENNOX: Dr. Fauci Fear Mongers While Biden Resorts to Begging. “Maybe the administration needs to come clean and develop a plan for living with COVID, communicate it clearly, and admit it will be a seasonal visitor along with a host of other seasonal illnesses we live with every year.”
#1 NEW RELEASE IN ECONOMIC POLICY: Pandemia: How Coronavirus Hysteria Took Over Our Government, Rights, and Lives.
THE CORBYNIZATION OF THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY CONTINUES APACE: Kamala Harris panders to antisemitism.
K-12 IMPLOSION UPDATE: Concerned Parents, or Domestic Terrorists?
On September 29, the President and the Interim CEO of the National School Boards Association sent a letter to Joe Biden requesting federal help in dealing with “domestic terrorism and hate crimes.” What is the source of such terrorism and hate crimes? Unhappy parents who have been attending school board meetings.
Read the whole thing.
Related: “Advice For Parents” Protesting School Indoctrination On Dealing With The Media.