Podcast 371

The Islamic State. Now What? Just recently the perfumed princes in Washington were thrilled about a Delta Force Operation that killed one of the Islamic State’s top leaders and included the arrest of his wife. It was the kind of adventure story the American Media loves, and they gleefully turned the raid into a cartoon complete with reports of casualty free hand-to-hand combat and lurid reports of the freeing of a slave held by the couple. It was a good story and served as a narrative the White House used to prove the President’s strategy was indeed ‘degrading’ the ISIS military capabilities. I decided to wait to talk about this story, because I knew another shoe would drop. Sure enough, within a few days we were greeted with grim reports of the rout of the Iraqi Army defending Ramadi, in the Anbar province, less than 70 miles from Baghdad. Even worse, as the Iraqis ran, they left lots of shiny new military equipment from the United States, which will now be employed against Iraqis and ultimately Americans. Within a few days it has become clear President Obama’s strategy isn’t working. Now what? The problem is, this country’s media, its politicians, and its leaders have no idea what to do about this problem. We need to have a conversation that starts with what the Foreign Policy of the United States is, and what it should be, rather than fifty reporters chasing a 68 year old woman around Iowa, while she has breakfast with ten or eleven people at a time, or demanding a former governor and head of a super pac tell the country what he would have done in 2003. Don’t hold your breath. Given the fast food nature of America’s media and political environment, I am surprised anyone even knows where Anbar province is, unless they had the honor of serving there. Yet the question remains. Do you want to invade Iraq again to stop ISIS? Should we stop ISIS, since they’re fighting Iran? What are we doing, when our allies don’t understand or trust our President, and 38 people are running for President? Are we in favor of early interventions in problem areas? Does it work? A new world is being birthed, and whole sections of the planet are slipping back in time, rather than progressing. When economies in the West, and in Asia start growing in earnest again we’re going to move very quickly forward. Some places are going to be left behind. When that happens, we’re going to see some bad things happening. Are we prepared? Are you prepared? Do you know what to advocate? Do you have an opinion about what’s best for the United States? Is there a politician that can articulate and execute that idea, after 2017. Because chances are, the next black swan event that changes the world will either be economic, or foreign related, or both. As ISIS beheads, burns, cages, kills children and adds to the chaos that is the Middle East these days, the US political clown show, including the one in the White House, doesn’t give me much faith. What about you? Sponsored by X Government Cars. (Photo from the New York Post) 

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Podcast 369

Night Train. An Amtrak train going over 100 miles an hour derails and the reason for the crash? Infrastructure. Really? It will be weeks before the real cause of the crash, which killed at least 7 people is known. Yet the ghouls in Congress are already making the most out of a crisis and tragedy by demanding, you guessed it, more spending for ‘infrastructure’. Is that what we really need? Speaking of train wrecks, Jeb Bush, a sort of candidate for the republican presidential nomination, answered a question last week he shouldn’t have, and now he is ‘evolving’ his comments. Bush said he would have supported the Iraq invasion in 2003, if he had been in Congress. No wait, now he says he wouldn’t have, if he knew then what he knows now. Well of course Governor! Bush should have instructed his interviewer to ask someone who actually voted for the resolution, or ordered the invasion. In the process Jeb Bush – the so called ‘smart Bush’ – missed the point; Republicans do not have a foreign policy. Democrats do not have a foreign policy. The President does not have a foreign policy. We’re in a new era with new rules. For one thing, with the US as the world’s largest oil producer, and largest swing producer state, it changes the picture considerably. Second, unfortunately we now know that invading countries, fixing them, and then leaving precipitously is probably not a workable policy. Other than that, no candidate whether democrat or republican has been able to articulate a foreign policy position that makes any sense. A protest in Minneapolis this week resulted in the police using pepper spray, and apparently inadvertently pepper spraying a ten year old. Now the mom wants answers. We want answers to, like why on earth would you take a ten year old kid to a potentially violent protest? Apparently no one has any common sense anymore. The Pope continues to wave the red flag, and when he’s not doing that, he’s genuflecting to communists, or pushing his version of global warming. Joining the world’s biggest useful idiot (the Pope) is the world’s second most celebrated useful idiot Francois Hollande, President of France, giving Raul Castro a rock star welcome to the fourth republic. A former bodyguard to Fidel Castro is telling his story, after years of torture and incarceration at the hands of the communist dictator. While the Cuban people starved, Fidel Castro enjoyed luxury in several estates, drank wine, cavorted with mistresses, and offered rich American movie stars (did I mention useful idiots) holidays at his Bay of Pigs ‘ranche’. We are now being warned of the impending disasters which will be brought by El Nino. Do you know what the effects of an El Nino event are? Do you know how accurate the predictions are? Find out in this podcast. Sponsored by X Government Cars.

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Podcast 360

Updates! The Correspondent’s dinner is a colossal waste of time, and discussions now center on how to fix it. How do you fix it when the news reporters who should be in Baltimore covering riots are ‘the story’ at a glitzy, hollywood style celebrity roast, including the President. How is the public to expect objectivity in its nightly news given that kind of display. NBC Nightly News, as predicted, has reportedly asked Brian Williams to find the door as more evidence of his ’embellishments’ emerge. Williams has done irreparable harm to NBC News. The Comcast-Time Warner deal is kaput. It can only be hoped complaints about customer service at both companies contributed to it. It’s starting to become apparent that the balance of power, when it comes to energy, is shifting in favor of the United States. Fracking made it possible, and today’s technology made fracking so efficient oil companies can scale them up or down at much cheaper costs, and exploration is cheaper as well. With the US the second or first largest oil producer, and controlling as much as ten percent of the world’s oil production, substantive changes in middle east policy are now possible. The new reality also extends to how we deal with countries like Venezuela and Russia, not just the Middle East. Minnesota Congressman Keith Ellison wants to end so called subsidies to the ‘evil’ oil companies. What are subsidies, what tax breaks and loopholes specifically apply here and who really benefits? Meanwhile real subsidies for wind power, ethanol, electric cars, light rail and rail roads that deliver the oil – rather than the Keystone Pipeline – continue. Who benefits? The top selling car at GM is not a gas-electric, or even the fully electric Volt. It’s the Suburban, Yukon and Escalade as people trade in their electric cars for SUV’s, now that gas is cheaper. The war on the car, the individual and independent-government-free living continues. Latest in the struggle is the Southwest Light Rail project now expected to cost Minnesota Taxpayers 2 billion dollars, which shocked and appalled Governor Dayton. The solution? Kill the project. The aging hippie governor and his 60 year old pals at the Hennepin County Council, City Councils and a duchy known as ‘The Met Council’ have a vision. That vision is our return to the early 20th century city utopia, where cars were scarce and trains carried people from residential areas of big cities downtown. Forget that those cities, at that time, were hardly utopias. The last, best hope of these statists is the Millennial generation, which they expect will move into downtown, thus populating the expensive (1500 to 3000 a month) high rise apartments, and drinking in the bohemian bars and coffee shops, and in general contributing to something called ‘the creative class’. Truth is, Millennials are moving to the suburbs and the exurbs because housing is cheaper, and there are yards for their new families. Babies and toddlers don’t prefer sitting in outdoor coffee cafes, riding around on bikes and getting tattoos. Is the statist dream of returning to the early 20th century city doomed? Sponsored by X Government Cars. 

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