Victor Davis Hanson: The Real Reset

 

Victor Davis Hanson thinks that things will get better. His column at American Greatness, “The Real ‘Reset’ Is Coming” concludes:

In the November 2022 midterms, we are likely to see a historic “No!” to the orthodox left-wing agenda that has resulted in unsustainable inflation, unaffordable energy, war, and humiliation abroad, spiraling crime, racial hostility—and arrogant defiance from those who deliberately enacted these disastrous policies. 

What will replace it is a return to what until recently had worked. 

Closed and secure borders with only legal and measured immigration will return. Americans will demand tough police enforcement and deterrent sentencing, and a return to integration and the primacy of individual character rather than separatist fixations on the “color our skin.”

The public will continue to tune out of the partisan and mediocre “mainstream” media. We will see greater increased production of oil and natural gas to transition us slowly to a wider variety of energy, strong national defense, and deterrent foreign policies.

The prophets of the new world order sowed the wind and they will soon reap the whirlwind of an angry public worn out by elite incompetence, arrogance, and ignorance.

I hope he’s right.  But if election integrity is not restored, all bets are off.  His full column is here.

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Trump Rally in Arizona: update

 

From CTP contributor Pat:

Trump's Arizona speech was magnificent. He addressed so many issues that the MSM is ignoring and the RINOS are avoiding. Let’s just list some of them:

• The coldblooded murder of Ashli Babbitt by a Capitol Police Officer
• The incarceration of January 6th protestors in Gulag conditions without due process
• The role of Government informants/ agents provocateurs on January 6th, including Ray Epps
• Highlighting election fraud in Arizona and elsewhere
• The border crisis
• Rampant inflation and the energy policies that are partially fueling it
• The decision of AT&T [and DirecTV) to drop OAN from its streaming service – he didn’t say to boycott AT&T --  but he did
• The utter humiliation the US suffered with Biden’s botched withdrawal from Afghanistan
• The loss of our hard-earned energy independence
• Medical care dependent on race
• Covid mandates

To which I would add, re: the Afghanistan disaster – deliberately leaving behind billions in state-of-the-art equipment and supplies for our sworn enemies was unprecedented in history. 

Your grocery store: Is it time to panic?

 

Amid the reports of disruptions to the supply chains, mandates for truckers, inflation, and other interference from the government, how do we know when the supply chains into our grocery stores have been disrupted to the point where people will start to panic?  Sundance has been suggesting the tell-tale signs of substantive disruptions to the food supply chains, and how you will recognize it as something other than the usual running-low-on-products over the weekend.  His predictions:

Initial food instability signs in the supply chain.  Things to look for: 

(1) A shortage of processed potatoes (frozen specifically).   1.a And/or a shortage of the ancillary products that are derivatives of, or normally include, potatoes.

(2) A larger than usual footprint of turkey/ham in the supermarket (last lines of protein).

(3) A noticeable increase in the price of citrus products.

(4) A sparse distribution of foodstuffs that rely on flavorings (sports drinks).

(5) The absence of non-seasonal products.

(6) Little to no price difference on the organic comparable (diff supply chain)

(7) Unusual country of origin for fresh product type.

(8) Absence of large container products

(9) Shortage of any ordinary but specific grain derivative item (ex. wheat crackers)

(10) Big brand shortage.

(11) Shortage of wet pet foods

(12) Shortage of complex blended products with multiple ingredients (soups, etc.)

(13) A consistent shortage of milk products and/or ancillaries.

These notes above are all precursors that show significant stress in the supply chain.  Once these issues are consistently visible, we will likely continue toward food instability very quickly, sector by sector, category by category.

. . .

More from Sundance here.  Another "tell":  when restaurants begin to react, such as this report from Domino’s Pizza.

It may not be time to panic, but it is time to make sure your pantry is stocked up.

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Commodities become more valuable than cash

 

Monica Showalter at American Thinker has a piece on the inflation we are all experiencing.  Here’s a key extract:

. . .[T]oday's inflation is far from done, according to the Fed, which expects to initiate three rate hikes in 2022 to fight it.  As the prices soar, it's likely that that 80% might just go higher.

Fed chairman Jerome Powell says consumer spending is strong, as a sort of point of optimism, but that's weird stuff coming from him.  If he's read anything about past inflationary surges, or maybe looked at the history of Argentina, he knows that consumer spending gets very strong in response to the value of the dollar falling (an inflation byproduct) as well as in response to anticipated price hikes.  Commodities become more valuable than cash, and everyone wants to get his own before the prices go up.  Of course people are buying; that's Your Inflation at Work.

Full article is here.  Stock up!

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Biden: I Did That!

 Another fun meme from Patriot Post: 

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Better than the Bat SIgnal

. . .  election fraud, inflation, mask and vaccine mandates, interference with the free market, and now the fall of Afghanistan to the Taliban, all that and more explains why this image has been making the rounds:

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The Tyrants Among Us

The Editorial Board at Issues and Insights gives us fair warning on returning to normalcy:

 Of course they’re not going to let a crisis go to waste.

   . . . 

There’s a natural progression from the pandemic lockdowns to restrictions on freedom in the name of saving the sky from global warming. But the tyrants among us won’t stop there. We find it useful here to quote the Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s international affairs analyst, who realized more than six months ago that “the virus of tyranny has already found itself in the bloodstream of liberal democracies.”

For instance:

• President Joe Biden and his party hope to saddle Americans, through undisciplined spending, with debt and a de facto tax (inflation) that can be repaid only by mortgaging the future and bondage to the federal monster.
• There is a core on the left, not even the hard left, that is resisting a return to normal. It wants liberty-shackling rules in place in perpetuity.
• Our freedom to speak will continue to be abridged.
• Our ability to make independent and individual health care decisions will be curtailed further.
• Second Amendment rights will be in danger of being rolled back because of “public health” needs.
• Expect to be forced out of our fossil-fuel-burning automobiles and herded into mass transit.
• Protests and rallies will be put down as insurrections – unless they are in service of the “right” groups, such as Black Lives Matter and Antifa.

Once lost, freedom is difficult to regain. “Be warned,” says author Michael Walsh. “If you think the petty tyrants currently making your lives miserable are going to willingly relinquish their illicit powers, think again. They’ve got a taste for it now.”

So intoxicated from their deep swig of power are they that they no longer see boundaries, just opportunities to subjugate. Fight back, or lose in a few years what has made America unique and great for more than two centuries

The entire editorial is here.

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Falling Down and Falling Apart

 

On his blogsite, Robert Stacy McCain quoted part of Tucker Carlson’s Tuesday monologue yesterday.  Our household deleted Fox from our Favorites list some months ago, but Mr. Carlson made some good points.

The lessons of [the 1993 film] Falling Down were on my mind as I watched Tucker Carlson’s opening monologue for his Tuesday program:

There are a lot of unprecedented things happening, but not all of them are shocking. For example, it probably shouldn’t surprise you that, once they got their hands on real power, the same lunatics who don’t believe in human biology immediately made a serious mess of our economy. It took them less than six months to do it.

First, they acted like the U.S. dollar had no value. They spent money like they’d just printed it for the occasion, which, needless to say, they had. Predictably, we wound up with frightening levels of inflation, which for the record they still deny exists. But inflation does exist, as you well know if you live here.

Corn prices, to name just one example of a staple commodity that’s now out of control, have risen by 50 percent just since January. But that wasn’t bad enough. The lunatics decided to make it worse. They paid millions of Americans more than they make at work, to stay home and do nothing. To justify doing this, they used the word “COVID” quite a bit, but it had nothing to do with the pandemic. They just wanted to break the system. And so they did. And the rest of us immediately wound up with a bewildering combination of rising unemployment in the middle of a severe labor shortage.

So, at the very same time, we found ourselves with too many workers, and also too few workers. That doesn’t even make sense, but thanks to their policies, that’s now exactly what we have. And then, finally, in case 2021 didn’t remind you enough of a grimmer version of the 1970s, we now have serious gas shortages, in a country that just recently was energy independent. All along the east coast of the country today, people couldn’t fill up their cars. The footage looks like Venezuela.

And so forth. The real point — why it reminded me of Falling Down — is that ordinary citizens are powerless to fix this manmade disaster. The people in charge don’t give a damn about ordinary citizens, because if they did, they wouldn’t have done what they’ve done. We find ourselves in a broken system, where the incentives have gone haywire, and the world has stopped making sense. 

See – it’s not just you.  (Mr. McCain's full blog post is here.) 

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