Is It Possible For The United States To Withdraw From Any Foreign Engagement?

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  • On Sunday the Trump administration announced plans to withdraw most or all U.S. troops from the Northeastern part of Syria. There are currently about a thousand U.S. troops in the area, working with allied Kurdish forces.

  • Within hours, the official talking point — that Trump was abandoning the Kurds to be slaughtered by Turkish forces, and thereby sending a dangerous message to all U.S. allies everywhere — had taken universal hold.

  • But wait a second. It’s a given that every single one of the various U.S. foreign engagements — whether it be Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, Niger, or wherever — comes with allies on the ground in that jurisdiction.

  • What happens when the U.S. leaves? The answer will always be the same: Our former allies on the ground will be seen as having collaborated with the enemy. They will suffer the consequences.

  • So then, is it ever possible for the U.S. to withdraw from any foreign engagement? . . .

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The Bidens: "Stone Cold Crooked" (2)

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[Here’s the] Washington Post defense of Biden’s conduct with respect to Ukraine, that appeared September 27. It’s an unsigned editorial, headline “The Ukraine facts are clear. But does truth still matter?” As to the Bidens and Ukraine, here is the key quote:

“Mr. Trump has thrown up a smokescreen of denials, insults — and blatant lies. Over and over, he and his personal lawyer, Rudolph W. Giuliani, have repeated the easily disproved claim that Mr. Biden sought to have a Ukrainian prosecutor fired to protect his son. Senior Ukrainian officials, including one of Mr. Giuliani’s own sources, have publicly stated that the story is false; multiple media investigations have definitively debunked it.”

Recall that the issue we are examining here is whether Joe Biden had the corrupt motive of benefiting his son Hunter when he used the threat of withholding U.S. loan guarantees to force the firing of Ukrainian prosecutor Viktor Shokin. The Post says that the allegation of Biden’s corruption is “easily disproved” because “senior Ukrainian officials” (unnamed) have “publicly stated that the story is false.”

And what is it that these “senior Ukrainian officials” have stated is false? . . .

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The Bidens: "Stone Cold Crooked"

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  • The phrase “stone cold crooked” was used on October 2 by President Trump to describe Joe Biden and his son Hunter. Watch the YouTube video here.

  • Meanwhile, in the Democratic-side press, almost all have been standing up for Joe Biden in the face of large profit-making ventures of his son and brother in countries where Biden as Vice President led U.S. diplomacy. Specifically as to Ukraine, the New York Times on October 5 called President Trump’s charges as to Biden’s misconduct “unfounded” and “wild.”

  • So which is it: Are Biden and his family “stone cold crooked,” or are such charges “unfounded” and “wild”?

  • This piece will look specifically at the facts regarding then-Vice President Joe Biden and the dealings of Hunter Biden in Ukraine.

  • My conclusion: the claim of “stone cold crooked” has been proved. . . .

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The Latest Icon Of The "Success" Of Socialism: Bolivia

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With the Democratic Party in the U.S. and the Labour Party in the UK having gone over fully into advocacy for good old-fashioned Socialism (with a capital S), we could use a real-life example of a self-proclaimed Socialist country that can claim at least a semblance of success.

Bernie Sanders likes to say that he is advocating for Socialism on the Scandinavian model, but he keeps getting rebuked by actual Scandinavian leaders and economists who deny that their model is actually Socialist at all. For example, there was Danish Prime Minister Lars Løkke Rasmussen, in a 2015 speech at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, “I know that some people in the U.S. associate the Nordic model with some sort of socialism. Therefore I would like to make one thing clear. Denmark is far from a socialist planned economy. Denmark is a market economy.”

Or there was Swedish economist Johan Norberg, quoted in IBD in 2016 as to that country:

"In the 1950s, Sweden was already one of the world's richest countries, and back then, taxes were lower in Sweden than in the United States." It was only after that, says Norberg, "did we start expanding the government dramatically. And do you know what happened then? We started losing," says Norberg. "It all ended in a terrible crisis." [But] Norberg says the country has become "successful again, but only after a new reform period, with more deregulation and free trade than in other countries."

So where is a good Socialist to turn? Clearly, at this point Venezuela is best ignored. (The WSJ has a big front-page story today on the struggles of a young couple trying to flee Venezuela, along with about a full tenth of the population so far.) But fear not. The Nation has the answer. Bolivia! . . .

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Annals Of Creative Destruction

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Annals Of Creative Destruction

At a time when the two sides of the political divide seem to agree on nothing, I can actually name something on which I think they do agree: “The middle class has been devastated.”

Of course, the sides do not agree on the causes of the devastation of the middle class, nor on the fixes. For the Democrat/progressive side (I’ll use quotes from Elizabeth Warren), the causes include that the “system . . . has been rigged by the wealthy and well-connected” and that evil banks have “steer[ed] [you] into overpriced credit products, risky sub-prime mortgages, and misleading insurance plans.” Warren’s proposed fixes consist of an endless collection of centrally-directed “plans”, all to be implemented by a future Warren administration of the federal government, ranging from free health care to free college to wiping out student debt to raising taxes on somebody who is not you to subsidizing “green” manufacturing to providing housing for all to investing in rural America to instituting “accountable capitalism” (whatever that means) and on and on and on.

Over on the Republican side, currently dominated by President Trump, the main cause of middle class devastation is said to be that China and other foreign countries have “stolen our jobs.” And the main fixes put forward are tariffs, trade wars, and the suppression of illegal immigration.

Meanwhile, does the available evidence even support the proposition on which everyone seems to agree, that “the middle class has been devastated”? . . .

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A Tale Of Two Politicians: Dean Skelos And Joe Biden

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Undoubtedly, you know who Joe Biden is. But maybe you have not heard of Dean Skelos, particularly if you are not from New York. Until May 2015, Skelos was the Republican Majority Leader of the New York State Senate. Yes, the Republicans held the majority in that legislative body, by very narrow margins, for many years, despite this being the bluest of blue states. Skelos more than anyone else was responsible for maintaining that majority. (In 2018 the Democrats re-took the majority of that body.)

Skelos and Biden have several things in common, but there are differences. Here’s something they have in common: both of them have relatives (sons or a brother) who seem to have scored surprising business successes in matters very closely related to their politician father’s or brother’s activities. . . .

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