There are getting to be a number of “trigger” words, which when heard, should make you immediately be on your guard. Normally these trigger words are spoken by an individual or group who present themselves as having a plan which will make your life better. As a rule, they spring up from the Left and their mission may be to save the planet, or save some particular species, or it is to ensure “equity” which will be better for everyone. There is always an entire pantheon of causes that need to be put right. They talk a lot about what a glorious future they offer but somehow never manage to tell you the price in either economic or very personal terms. They remain true to their mission no matter the actual results, assuring themselves and their audience that success is just around the corner.

Such promises are nothing new for if we read our history, great promises of utopia were the rationale of the various five-year plans under Stalin. There were great successes as well as great failures, but the promised utopia never arrived and the millions who paid the ultimate price were swept into the dustbin of history.

More recently we have seen a great march to “net zero,” especially in Europe. Germany has spent untold billions of Euros on their particular march with the end result being that the cost of energy is among the highest in the world, industries are leaving for nations with lower energy costs, unemployment is creeping into industries which were the mainstay of the economy and finally, the air is no cleaner, in fact it is dirtier than before the great march to “net zero”.  It is as if the political leadership of Germany had just arrived from another planet and did not realize the realities of German weather. The fact that most of Germany only gets 150-200 days of sunshine is something that the planners of solar power never realized.

Learn from mistakes? Why do that when the architects of failure can always count on the mild nature of the people they rule? Spain and Portugal are recent examples of failure when both countries suffered electrical failures of a size never before experienced in the history of humanity. The result? The leaders of both nations swore to move even faster toward net zero, putting the health and well-being of the citizens ever more into a danger zone.

The quest for left of center rulers to dominate and control the lives of those they rule is never ending. The attached article focuses on the concept of “15-minute cities”, where your ability to travel freely and participate in an open society will be discouraged. Do the rulers in this situation believe that their citizens will be happier, more prosperous, more creative? That is not what they offer. They claim that such cities will be better able to withstand challenges like they faced during Covid. So, do we completely restructure civilization in the belief that we will face more Covid type challenges in the future? When will the next pandemic show up? In a year, five years, 50 years? We are expected to give up our freedoms for an event that might very well not occur in our lifetime. Given that the “scientific” leaders were so disastrous wrong about the value of masks, distancing, shutting down schools, churches and businesses, not to mention insisting that those with the highest immunity be forced to take a vaccine which could counter-act their natural immunity, why would we accept that “15 minute cities” will be any more successful than more open societies?

It is always nice to look at a project or plan and imagine the wonderful upside of success. But we must be realistic how many of those golden promises have ever been fulfilled. We need to be more willing to ask and demand answers on what are the dangers on the downside. If the downside risk is greater, or more easily achieved than the upside, perhaps we need to tread a bit more cautiously.

The War on City-Dwellers: ‘Climate Change’: Grift of the Century, Part III :: Gatestone Institute

The average citizen expects that after the changing of the guard at the White House, there will eventually be a couple of “insider” books which will air some of the dirty laundry for that administration.  It used to be that those books would wait a discreet length of time, similar to a time of morning before the dead, or in this case, the dethroned would not be spoken of ill. Not any longer; the exit of the Biden administration has produced a fountain of tell all books in a remarkably brief period of time.

Fight was one of the first, and the two authors, both from left of center careers tell much of the story of the palace coup which led to an election unlike any other in U.S. history. They present a well-balanced book which is both kind and cruel to various players. They give credit where credit is due, such as to Kamala Harris for her successful efforts to quickly wrap up the delegate pledges despite the lack of support from former President Obama. While much of the hierarchy of the Democratic party procrastinated, Harris was on the phone, working to secure her position as the candidate of a party shaken by the turn of events. Unfortunately, from there, here next steps were halting and ineffectual. Pelosi held the view that there were “better candidates who didn’t have Harris’s negative, but that anyone would be better for House and Senate races than Biden” according to one Pelosi insider. Obama went as far as to tell Harris that she could not defeat Trump.

The book also details the gradual slippage of support for Biden after his disastrous debate against Trump. Biden was determined to hang on, as he had been pursuing the Presidency for years and was still upset at Obama for supporting Hillary Clinton. Additionally, Biden had been unsuccessful at selling his touted economic gains, he refused to acknowledge the terrible withdrawal from Afghanistan and his open border policy were all unpopular with the majority of Americans. After the failed debate, many Democrats wondered how they could sell another four-year term of a clearly shaky Biden to the public. It was a difficult choice for Obama, Clinton, and Pelosi but in the end, they decided that Biden simply had to go; up to fifty years of friendship was not as important as the maintenance of power.

Sadder than the betrayal Biden felt as he was abandoned by his long-term friends and allies was the complete misreading of pre-election polls and its impact on Harris. Up until election night, Harris was sure she was going to be victorious and like Hillary Clinton before her, but for different reasons, her loss hit her like a hammer. Despite spending over one point five billion dollars, she had failed at the basic level of being able to communicate with the average American. Missed opportunities were often due to her inability to balance her loyalty to Biden and her need to show she was her own person. She also simply did not have the skills necessary to play in the real world of politics where she had to stand on her own before the masses.

This is one of numerous books which have and will continue to flood the market, and each one will add to the mosaic that is the story of this past election. As the Democrats had to discard friendships and loyalty, so to will each of the stories told by insiders mean that they will have crossed the Rubicon against their party. Loyalty, or at least discretion, seem to have disappeared in the scramble for a publisher and royalties. The election is not a story that has many winners.

This is the story of how American business, which is the American people came together to produce the best equipped military in the history of the world.  The book has two key players; not FDR, not Eisenhower, not even Marshall, but two Americans, one a first generation American, the second, an immigrant who helped to focus and force American industry at a time of national peril. 

The first was Henry Kaiser, first generation American who through his drive and skills was the driving force behind such pre-war projects as Boulder and Grand Coulee dams, as well as thousands of miles of paved roads as the country was getting behind the wheel of their new cars.  His vision of what he could do enabled him to move into ship building, but his skill was not just in being able to successfully move from industry to industry (during the war he would build ships, airplanes, etc.) but in finding ways to mass produce them in record time.  An example is his work building the Liberty Ships which helped to defeat Germany in the Battle of the Atlantic.  When given a contract to build ships, he also had to build his own shipyards, as well as recruit workers and provide housing for them.  The workers came from every facet of American life; they were teachers, hairdressers, farmers, students, housewives, etc. and they all had to be taught how to handle tools, cut sheet metal, maintain equipment, order parts, inventory those parts, supervise production lines, etc.  All from scratch.  And he did it so successfully that a ship which use to take 200+ days to produce were coming down the waterways at one every 15-20 days.

The other main character in this excellent book is William Knudsen, a Danish immigrant (he landed in the U.S. before his teens) who not only revolutionized the production facilities of Henry Ford, but also was the driving force behind General Motors which he managed to be built to a point where it surpassed the production of his old boss, Henry Ford.  Knudsen was the type of production man who could look at a production problem and, in his mind, reconfigure the entire process to speed up production and better quality.  In recognition of his skills, he was the only civilian in the history of the U.S. to be made a Lieutenant General in the military.

But this is also the story of the average Americans who not only worked at the huge war plants but created tens of thousands of businesses to support the war effort.  An excellent example is Ma and Pa Harrington in Rockford Illinois.  Their specialty was making machine tools for turning artillery shells and tank turrets.  When they realized that a new lathe would cost four thousand dollars, they made their own out of a junked lather, an old washing machine motor, and oil pump from a 1926 Chevrolet and an old washtub that caught the oil that leaked from the bottom of the home-made tool, all in their living room!  This is an example of American ingenuity which was not found anywhere else in the world and which contributed so much to the war effort.

In the days before the internet, social media, faxes, computers, even a reliable nationwide telephone system, we would able to design, order, produce, ship, inventory and assemble the 55,000 parts for a bomber, all in record numbers.  That ability won the war as surely as the men on the front line, and despite the best efforts of the New Dealers in Washington who wanted to direct all production centrally, as occurred in Nazi Germany. 

This is an inspiration book, of interest to anyone interested in production, or wishing to read a book about what the country was capable of during those dark hours.  Is the country, are our people still able to pull together in such a desperate time?  That is for you to determine.

Last week I posted (But Will Europe Listen) about the threat to Europe, not from the U.S., but from the leaders of Europe who have allowed their nations to sink into an unrealistic sea of complacency. For decades, living under the U.S. umbrella of protection, the leaders of the E.U. have acted like teenagers, believing that tomorrow will never come regarding their own defense and their survival.

Tomorrow has arrived with the second Trump administration and the demise of the enfeebled Biden presidency. Suddenly the leaders of the Western European democracies face a dark and threatening future with troubling questions. Will Trump leave NATO? If he decides to stay, how much will the U.S. contribute to the defense of Europe given the other challenges to the U.S.? Given the hideous bureaucracy of the EU, how can the nations of NATO co-ordinate their growth of military spending so that waste and inefficiency are minimized? How are the massive amounts of money needed to rebuild NATOs military going to found? If the money is raised, does Europe have enough energy at reasonable costs to manufacture what it needs? Given the level of technology in Europe vs. the U.S., does Europe have the ability to produce the technology for current and future weapons systems. The list can go on and on.
The attached article outlines key problems and provides practical solutions to a few of these questions.

We are living in interesting times, and it remains to be seen if Europe, so long living in a dream world can summon the leadership and be able to face its greatest challenges in over eighty years.

Joint EU debt for European defence investment is a questionable idea – Brussels Report

Europe is going through a challenging time. For decades it has lived in a never-never land of social welfare programs designed to provide its’ citizens with ever immagionable comfort: free schools for as long as you wish to remain an adolexcent, free health care, job protection, and so much more. Of course, those “perks” of life are not really free, they are paid for by high taxes. But it was a compact between the government and the people. This promise could be fulfilled as long as the United States provided for the protection of Europe thus freeing billions of Euros annually and the demographic balance could be maintained.

Unfortunately, that compact was broken; the governments upset the balance by allowing seemingly unlimited migration of people who do not have a tradition of Western liberal democracy values, who want the “goodies” of the west without having to produce anything has disrupted the compact. Somehow the leaders of the EU managed to convince themselves that individuals from societies morally grounded in the fourteen century would provide the technocrats, doctors, engineers, and other skilled professions needed to maintain their standard of living.

Additionally, the umbrella of U.S. protection begain to be pulled back. With a new major economic and military threat growing in Asia, the U.S. began to question, why should the U.S. spend its precious wealth protecting someone else who had no desire to protect themselves?

Finally, while the leaders of the E.U. claim that President Trump is a threat to democracy, it is the Europeans themselves who are passing laws aimed at limiting speech and even thought.
The quiet secret that no one has mentioned for decades suddenly has come into the light; most of Western Europe has been suffering from societal atrophy. Europe has lost their economic edge; they have contributed little to recent technologies, their militaries were often decades behind the times, their industry is moribund, their tax system and bureaucracy stifle those who are innovative and reduce their capital for new ventures.

The attached lightly edited speech by Vice President J.D. Vance points out a number of threats to the E.U., all of them internal and all of them created by the governments of the E.U. The E.U. cannot regain its’ strength by fining American tech companies because Europe does not have the ability to compete, nor can the E.U. claim to stand for the dignity of man when they warn people not to pray in their own homes if they are within a “buffer zone” around an abortion clinic. If a politician can use the law against a citizen because the politicians “dignity” or “feelings” have been hurt, then it is time for those politicians to realize they are there to serve and not to act as if they wear the purple. Crimes by those immigrants who cannot and will not assimilate have been covered up for years and arresting those who expose them only go to undercut the trust between the governed and the governments.

It was said that no one had ever spoken to European leaders like Vice President Vance and that is too bad. Continuing to follow a failed path is the mark of stupidity and we all want to believe that there are still rational, strong leaders in Europe who can reverse the course of failure.

Europe Must Listen to Its People – The American Mind

The politicians and bureaucrats of the EU are incredibly nervous about President Trump. They fear that the party is over and the days of using the U.S. as a financial milk cow via lawsuits, unfair tariffs, billions of dollars of fines and a refusal to adequately support their own militaries during the march of dictators and religious fanatics.

Western Europe in particular is nervous as France, Germany, Belgium and although not in the EU, the U.K. are led by weak political leaders who often are at the mercy of their own shaky coalition governments. Behind the scenes, the faceless bureaucrats who are the real power continue to insist on the failing policies which they promised would deliver a better life but have failed by every standard.

The attached article shows that the real problem with Europe is in fact the EU. The EU bureaucracy is Europe’s “deep state.” Unelected the committees and departments follow their own ideology and pay no price for their remarkable number of failures. From an idea to provide easier trade, the EU has grown into an uncontrollable behemoth which seeks power over those who it believes should serve it.

Perhaps Trump will provide the cover for European politicians to begin to gain a degree of control over their nation’s future as his desire to “balance the books” between Europe and the U.S. is enunciated.

What Is Really Destroying Europe? The EU. :: Gatestone Institute

Western Europe seems to be on a death ride of their own making, especially Germany and France, followed by Belgium and other Western European members of the EU, along with the U.K. An unbending belief in “green” energy which has driven employers from Europe and has led to high energy costs plus the first German lay-offs in their bread-and-butter auto industry, while unmanaged immigration has led to thousands of no-go zones, increased violent crime and the burning of hundreds of churches as well as absolutely horrid stories of sexual grooming gangs. Meanwhile the electorate is moving to the hard right. Europe’s political center has all but disappeared with no willingness on the part of the traditional political leaders to learn that repeating failing policies is not the way to address their problems.

The article linked below gives us an overview of failed European leadership. Years ago, Europeans viewed U.S. organizations like the Tea Party and Donald Trump as movements which could ever happen in Europe. Today we see movements springing up on the conservative side of the political spectrum. They are seriously challenging the confused and clueless traditional parties who have held power for decades when times were good; today’s challenges seem to have sapped the center and left of realistic solutions to problems their policies have created.

Is there a movement or leadership with the will and courage to face so many challenges? Or will their societies continue to decay until life becomes intolerable for most Europeans and they turn to a leader on a white horse? We have seen it done before in Europe.

Brussels: Is the Capital of Europe Crumbling Before Our Eyes? :: Gatestone Institute

From the earliest moments that any Communist seized any degree of power, be it during the Russian Revolution or in China, Albania, Korea, etc., they have exhibited the will, desire, and ability to use the most barbaric tortures on real or suspected enemies. Reading of their tortures one can often look at the tortures and punishments of medieval times in Europe, the Middle East or Asia as the work of amateurs,
How many MILLIONS suffered traumatic mental injuries, maiming and death at the hands of those who supported a regime based on Marxist “science”? How few of those who inflicted those terrible tortures were ever brought to justice? When the Nazi empire was brought down, there was at least an effort to bring to justice the architects and supporters of the regimes. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said when Communist regimes fall. That is a great mistake, for the extensive list of their crimes is not brought into the light of day, to educate the next generations who may be swept away by the lofty ideals of those criminals.

President Reagan once said, “Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction.” Millions of individuals have placed great hopes on the new Trump administration as they believed that in four short years, our fundamental freedoms were in danger of disappearing. Those who welcome the second term of President Trump believe he will restore the DOJ, FBI and other federal law agencies to political neutrality while returning the military to its primary functions and purge itself of DEI which has weakened its ability to meet the anticipated challenges from China and others. The list goes on and on, the economy, the budget, EV mandates, the Ukraine war, the Middle East, Russia, and so on. They believe that his second term will be even more successful than his first. That is a tall order.
When he began his first term, he faced challenges that seemed large at that time; President Obama left a feeble economy, unchallenged advances in the Crimea and the Middle-East, a fast growing and aggressive China as well as various domestic issues stemming from a ballooning federal bureaucracy that was drowning small business in an ocean of new regulations. The challenges this time are much greater as he faces:
• An inflation rate that is being fed by:
• A federal national debt that grows by nearly one-trillion dollars every one-hundred days
• New federal rules and regulations which cost the American citizens about $15,000 and have a total cost of about $1.37 trillion over the past four years.
• Repairing our standing in the Middle East after the Biden administration managed to all but kill the Abraham Accords while trying to second guess our best ally in the region,
• Continue to force the European nations to increase their defense spending in the face of little or no growth in their economies.
• Proving realistic military spending after four years of budgets which did not keep up with inflation let alone provide for adequate growth.
• A national deficit and budgets which drive inflation restrict borrowing for new growth.
• The list goes on and on.
Will he and his team be able to successfully attack that list of problems and others which cover every aspect of our daily lives? Let us hope so, for we need a renaissance to free us from the trials and tribulations of the past four years and the “hope and change” of the Obama administration. The next few years shall be trying, but we all need to recognize that fundamental changes, within the limits of the Constitution, need to be made. There can be no more of the Executive ignoring the Supreme Court, no more of a back-room cabal of unknown players making national decisions and no more of a federal bureaucracy that sees the American people as an ATM machine to foot the bill for their ever expanding quest for more power of our everyday lives.
Let us, as we always should, wish our new President strength and wisdom and may an honest and fearless team surround him.

No matter how large the failure of official Communist policy, there was no turning back. In the United States, when a policy fails, we simply throw more money at it as that is obviously why the failure. In the Soviet system, increased demands came to be the obvious answer to a failed policy.

Years ago, I learned that the Soviet Union built more tons of machines in a certain category than any other nation in the world. They built so many of them that they had warehouses of those machines, all locked up and rusting as they could not sell them. Why? Well, the order had come done to build so many tons of those machines so the plant executives, all good Communists, simply made their machines heavier; so heavy that in fact a standard factory floor would crack and collapse under their weight. No one wanted those heavy machines. But it gets better as after the good Communist managers had delivered their required tonnage of machines, they built a few more useless, heavy machines and for their efforts they all received medals for a job well done. The same games were played in agriculture (dampen the wheat so it is heavier, and you exceeded your quota) and other industries as the glories of centralized planning spread throughout the entire Communist system.