Like many, I’m still processing what happened in the oval office yesterday. I encourage all readers to listen to the entire event. Trump partisans are blaming Zelensky, Trump opponents are blaming Mr. Trump (and/or Mr. Vance). The question I have is simply this: Who invited the media in here? Mr. Trump controlled this completely (there […]

War Years Estimated U.S. Military Deaths American Revolutionary War 1775–1783 ~25,000 War of 1812 1812–1815 ~15,000 American Civil War (Union & Confederate) 1861–1865 ~620,000–750,000 World War I 1917–1918 ~116,516 World War II 1941–1945 ~405,399 Korean War 1950–1953 ~36,516 Vietnam War 1955–1975 ~58,220 Wars in Afghanistan & Iraq 2001–2021 ~6,892 It’s an easy argument. Those that […]

Over the weekend, President Trump announced sweeping, broad-based tariffs across all Canadian and Mexican imports at a 25% tax rate (with Canadian energy products at a 10% rate), with goods manufactured in China also subject to a tariff tax of 10%. He has long promised to start this trade war, and in his first term […]

We always knew that Donald Trump wouldn’t change much, and that was both the encouragement and discouragement of his 2nd go-round. Despite the full-throated demonstrations of terminal Trump Derangement Syndrome, which claimed this would be the last election, that Trump would take away IVF, and on and on, we always knew the best predictor of […]

Easy to understand, but not easy to implement politically given its status as a powerful club in the environmental movement’s arsenal. But that makes it a perfect target for the new Trump administration. With the fires running wild in Southern California, the California populace (and the American people who will get stuck with a large […]

By most accounts, Mr. Hegseth acquitted himself reasonably well yesterday–at least the Democratic pique suggests that he did not give them the ability to turn away his nomination. But should he be SecDef? I agree that the President should be given general leeway to pick his or her own cabinet, but constitutionally the Senate is […]

Well, one extreme case suggests 90%! Reuters reported this week (HT to Almost Daily Grants) that Country Garden, the large Chinese property developer that defaulted on it’s external bondholders has offered up new debt instruments with extended payback, or cash with a 90% haircut! Maybe the property sector is worse than the other capital misallocation […]

First up, as reported by Yahoo yesterday, and covered in the WSJ today is that long term interest rates continue to rise, with the 20 year U.S. Treasury over 5%, and the U.S. ten year going from 3.62% in the trough in September to 4.76% today. In Trumpian lingo, this is a HUUUUGE move up […]

So reports the WSJ this morning. I’m reminded of the aftermath of the Afghanistan withdrawal debacle and the reporting that Mr. Biden ignoring military general’s advice and stubbornly followed his own poor political calculus that he had to have the U.S. out of Afghanistan by his own arbitrary timeline of 9/11/2021. At that time we […]

A few posts back I critiqued Fox News Laura Ingraham’s comment that basically said (my paraphrase) “Europe pursues a Europe-first policy in managing their economy and so we should be be pursuing an America-First policy with our economy” (embracing Trump’s tariffs). My retort was do we really want to be like Europe, when for multiple […]