[Guardian] John Bolton, White House national security adviser and notorious Iraq-era hawk, is a man on a mission. Given broad latitude over policy by Donald Trump, he is widely held to be driving the US confrontation with Iran. And in his passionate bid to tame Tehran, Bolton cares little who gets hurt ‐ even if collateral damage includes a close ally such as Britain. Al-Grauniad weeps for Iran
So when Bolton heard British Royal Marines had seized an Iranian oil tanker off Gibraltar on America’s Independence Day, his joy was unconfined. "Excellent news: UK has detained the supertanker Grace I laden with Iranian oil bound for Syria in violation of EU sanctions," he exulted on Twitter.
Bolton’s delighted reaction suggested the seizure was a surprise. But accumulating evidence suggests the opposite is true, and that Bolton’s national security team was directly involved in manufacturing the Gibraltar incident. The suspicion is that Conservative politicians, distracted by picking a new prime minister, jockeying for power, and preoccupied with Brexit, stumbled into an American trap.
In short, it seems, Britain was set up. Perfidious Albion was "set up." Yes, somehow we knew it was a Trump-Bolton conspiracy.
The consequences of the Gibraltar affair are only now becoming clear. The seizure of Grace I led directly to Friday’s capture by Iran’s Revolutionary Guards of a British tanker, the Stena Impero, in the Strait of Hormuz. Although it has not made an explicit link, Iran had previously vowed to retaliate for Britain’s Gibraltar "piracy". Now it has its revenge.
As a result, Britain has been plunged into the middle of an international crisis it is ill-prepared to deal with. The timing could hardly be worse. An untested prime minister, presumably Boris Johnson, will enter Downing Street this week. Britain is on the brink of a disorderly exit from the EU, alienating its closest European partners. And its relationship with Trump’s America is uniquely strained.
NASHVILLE, Tenn. (Reuters) - In the depths of the financial crisis, when the world was shunning debt and battening down for the worst, city officials here zagged in what seemed a preposterous direction and spent $600 million on a new convention center.
A decade later thousands of new hotel rooms soar over the site, including a 33-story Marriott that is just a tiny part of the investment and jobs boom that has made Nashville an envy of other cities trying to find their footing, an image cemented when Amazon announced it would put a 5,000-job logistics center here.
"Look at the skyline, see the activity - whether it is a Monday night or a Saturday night - the city is thriving," said Tom Turner, president and head cheerleader of the Nashville Downtown Partnership.
It is in many ways a positive story of how new winners can emerge even after a devastating recession. But it also represents a major fault line in the recovery that followed: Winning places like Nashville have won big, often for reasons that can’t obviously or quickly be replicated, while much of the rest of the country has struggled to stay even or slipped behind.
It is a schism that helped elevate Donald Trump to the presidency with his massive support in less populated and slower-growing areas. The divide is also preoccupying U.S. central bankers and economists worried about what happens if large portions of the country never bounce back.
"The superstar cities have pulled so far away," said MIT economist Simon Johnson. He recently called for a $100 billion annual federal investment in basic research centered in cities like Rochester, New York, that have the base of universities and college graduates to compete as innovation hubs.
"There is no entity other than the federal government that has the capacity to move the needle on this."
#1
Scare quote olympics: "Investing" "government revenue" to create an "urban miracle" from the "magic dirt." Dear sweet Lord in Heaven, save the poor taxpayer!
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
07/21/2019 6:04 Comments ||
Top||
#2
UH! OH! There's a problem with cities not drawing enough businesses.
I have an idea! Let's spend more taxpayer's money on a government project!
Waitaminit! Let's give a boondoggle amount of money to Universities that no longer love our country.
#3
If major cities, Detroit, Chicago, Philly, LA, San Fran, St Louis were to clean up their crime and vagrant issues then maybe businesses would consider holding events and investing there. But as is stands just who would hold a convention in that city? Who would build a factory there? Who would even build a new grocery store there? No one in their right mind would. When the city decides to cut the welfare out, people will go back to work, and things will change. See ya in 20 years.
Posted by: 49 Pan ||
07/21/2019 12:02 Comments ||
Top||
#4
Maybe if these "weaker" (read, corrupt, incompetent) cities want to get some businesses to move in, maybe they should focus less on government and graft and more on running efficiently and lowering the crime rates and cost of doing business in their borders. Making fewer completely asinine and moronic public statements probably wouldn't hurt either.
#8
I'm sure it helps if people don't have to step over bums sleeping on the sidewalks between that nice new Marriott and the new convention center like they would in LA or San Francisco.
Posted by: Abu Uluque ||
07/21/2019 15:34 Comments ||
Top||
#9
Is this right?
Columbus is thriving. Nashville is thriving. So are Charlotte, Dalllas-Fort Worth, Atlanta. Pittsburgh and Cleveland have come back from the edge.
This story seems like junk news from a slow news day.
#10
The west is littered with dozens of ghost towns. When their reasons to exist were exhausted, they went the way of thousands of cities since ancient times. Reward success not failure.
[Canada Free Press] Our nation is in a conflict unlike any other in our history. There are powerful Marxist forces from within and without teamed up to take us down under the age-old guise of making our lives better. They will say, promise, and do anything to win. After almost one-hundred years, they have too much invested to do otherwise.
For those that see the final confrontation coming, no persuasion is necessary. For those who either don’t see it, aren’t looking, don’t understand, or choose to live in ignorance, no amount of persuasion will suffice. But, I will try anyway.
Communists have chosen to employ to achieve their goals...illegal immigration, Destruction of our culture, institutions, and morality, Resurrecting long past racism
Now, for the last several years we finally clearly see the goals and methods these Communists have chosen to employ to achieve those goals...illegal immigration, the destruction of our culture, institutions, and morality, resurrecting long past racism, a fiscally over-burdened government, and a collection of citizenry addicted to freebies. Anyone who has read the 45 Goals of the Communist Takeover of America as presented to Congress in 1963 will see that they are following the plan closely and largely succeeding.
With these Socialists/Communists finding a home in the Democrat Party and their faithful voters dwindling, importing millions of new Democrat voters becomes paramount. These immigrants, unaccustomed to our meritocracy culture and values, are being promised everything former Democrats were pledged. When the Right objects, they accuse them of the mortal sin of racism.
Democrats have, in the not too distant past, railed against illegal immigration. These same politicians have now turned 180 degrees, aided by lock step voters, and youth freshly indoctrinated by academic institutions in brown-shirt activism. None choose to see the coming consequences of their actions. All they see is a weapon, a mechanism by which to achieve power and hold on to it indefinitely.
In many ways, we are in a time more dangerous than both world wars. Yes, I said that. If we had lost WW2, we would have gone home, licked our wounds and prepared for defense. Both Germany and Japan had no means or material to conduct an invasion of our country, especially with millions of Americans armed to the teeth.
[STEYNONLINE] Fifty years ago today man landed on the moon, in the persons of Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin and courtesy of a lunar module from Apollo 11. The most I've ever written about the "space race" was in my book After America, and the passage attracts criticism both from the Nasa types and those who think the whole man-on-the-moon thing was a crashing bore. Nevertheless, the modern world was built by the men who ventured beyond the edge of the map, and in that sense the stasis of the last half-century is both unusual and a little disturbing. To mark the anniversary, The New York Times wondered when a woman might reach the moon - which sounds a humorless rewrite of the old feminist gag that "if they can put a man on the moon, why can't they put them all there?" So here's a few of my thoughts on the subject over the years:
The Wright brothers' first flight was in 1903. Fifty-nine years later, John Glenn became the first American to orbit the earth, and seven years after that Buzz Aldrin became the first man to fly to the moon and play "Fly Me To The Moon" on the moon - thanks to the portable cassette recorder he took with him. In a certain sense, the moon landing was the culmination of the tremendous inventive energy of the nineteenth century (if I had to pick a so-called "greatest generation" it would be somewhere in the latter half thereof). Half a century from the Wright Brothers to The Right Stuff - from nosediving into the neighbor's cornfield to walking the surface of the moon - followed by half a century devoid of giant leaps and even small steps.
Posted by: Fred ||
07/21/2019 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[11134 views]
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#1
For once I have to dissagree with Steyn. The last 40 years an amazing thing was developed that brought 6 billion people together. The world wide web.
[Babylon Bee] U.S.‐As society becomes increasingly dominated by nerds, hipsters, and computer programmers, people have fixated on what they think is our biggest problem: masculinity.
"It’s just toxic and causes nothing but problems," said Elisha Mcewen, a vegan activist and no threat whatsoever to spiders or tight jar lids. "I was sharing my feelings on masculinity with other men in my drum circle, and we all agreed that if we ever encountered masculinity, we would run far away."
Masculinity is said to have in the past been the cause of such things as violence, war, bullying, defeating the Nazis, carving society out of untamed wilderness, and landing men on the moon, but now masculinity is being driven out of society to make sure nothing like those things ever happens again. However, there are reports that masculinity still lurks out there, which is a source of anxiety to modern men and causes them to have upset tummies.
"I am just so worried that somewhere out there someone is still knowingly producing testosterone," said Wyatt Lockhart, a Twitch streamer who had never thrown a punch outside of a video game. "I constantly have to find a safe place to calm down just thinking about it."
Duke Miller, a Marine sergeant and one of the few remaining examples of traditional masculinity, was asked about his feelings on the negative view of masculinity, but he seemed confused by the word "feelings" and then punched out an elk just because.
#1
One of the great themes of literature is how "being a man" is basically a case of being stoic and putting your own needs last. Such a threatening posture...
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
07/21/2019 6:06 Comments ||
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#2
No matter how hard they try to change men, men will be men. The only power these people have is the media and nobody listens to them anymore these days.
[Townhall] Thomas Jefferson's birthday in mid-April is currently recognized as a city holiday in Charlottesville, VA. But if it was up to Mayor Nikuyah Walker, she'd change it to "Liberation and Freedom Day." The alternative holiday, which she proposed at a city council meeting last month, would instead celebrate the emancipation of slaves in Charlottesville and Albemarle County. Walker is one of several people advocating for the change because it's well known that Jefferson, the third president of the United States and drafter of the Declaration of Independence, was also a slave owner.
Some citizens are up in arms over her suggestion, accusing her of trying to sanitize history. But she has no clue why because, as she explained in a recent message, Jefferson is still celebrating his birthday "in hell." She shared that comment on her official Facebook page.
Walker got virtual high fives from some of her followers, but it looks like quite a few of her constituents were appalled by the message. Some users called her "judgmental and disturbing," while another told Walker, "your hate is unflattering and unbecoming."
"If you think Jefferson and Charlottesville are so damnable, how come you still live there and are mayor?," another commenter, Joleen Hart, wrote. "Thank God for Thomas Jefferson. He helped make our country free."
Walker isn't the only one seeking to erase Jefferson. For instance, the Democratic Party of Virginia wants to rename the annual Jefferson-Jackson dinner in Richmond, recognizing Jefferson and Andrew Jackson, to the "Blue Commonwealth Gala."
#1
The top goal in advertising (and what's a "campaign manager" but an advertising hack?) is to sell deep fried sh*t on a stick. That's what Tlaib, Omar, AOC this creature and many more are. If voters woke up and paid any attention at all people like this would never get elected.
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
07/21/2019 6:20 Comments ||
Top||
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
[Guardian] John Bolton, White House national security adviser and notorious Iraq-era hawk, is a man on a mission. Given broad latitude over policy by Donald Trump, he is widely held to be driving the US confrontation with Iran. And in his passionate bid to tame Tehran, Bolton cares little who gets hurt ‐ even if collateral damage includes a close ally such as Britain.
[Canada Free Press] Our nation is in a conflict unlike any other in our history. There are powerful Marxist forces from within and without teamed up to take us down under the age-old guise of making our lives better. They will say, promise, and do anything to win. After almost one-hundred years, they have too much invested to do otherwise.
[STEYNONLINE] Fifty years ago today man landed on the moon, in the persons of Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin and courtesy of a lunar module from Apollo 11. The most I've ever written about the "space race" was in my book After America, and the passage attracts criticism both from the Nasa types and those who think the whole man-on-the-moon thing was a crashing bore. Nevertheless, the modern world was built by the men who ventured beyond the edge of the map, and in that sense the stasis of the last half-century is both unusual and a little disturbing. To mark the anniversary, The New York Times wondered when a woman might reach the moon - which sounds a humorless rewrite of the old feminist gag that "if they can put a man on the moon, why can't they put them all there?" So here's a few of my thoughts on the subject over the years:
[Babylon Bee] U.S.‐As society becomes increasingly dominated by nerds, hipsters, and computer programmers, people have fixated on what they think is our biggest problem: masculinity.
[Townhall] Thomas Jefferson's birthday in mid-April is currently recognized as a city holiday in Charlottesville, VA. But if it was up to Mayor Nikuyah Walker, she'd change it to "Liberation and Freedom Day." The alternative holiday, which she proposed at a city council meeting last month, would instead celebrate the emancipation of slaves in Charlottesville and Albemarle County. Walker is one of several people advocating for the change because it's well known that Jefferson, the third president of the United States and drafter of the Declaration of Independence, was also a slave owner.
