Warning! You can observe a lot by watching - Yogi Berra
Some observations from keeping a watch on things.
Let’s start with something Wahoo and Hokie fans agree on - it’s good when Miami loses. Here’s the amazing catch by Dontayvion Wicks in UVA’s 30-28 win last night. Sometimes being good and lucky are the keys to winning.
As Branch Rickey said:
Luck is the residue of design.
Speaking of close finishes, two polls out on the Virginia gubernatorial race.
Fox News 48-44 Terry McAuliffe over Glenn Youngkin
Roanoke College 48-41 McAuliffe over Youngkin (Poll based on a 2017 electorate. Reminder, it’s 2021.)
McAuliffe consistently around 48. He got 47.7 in his 2013 victory.
Neither poll included third party candidate Princess Blanding so they won’t be linked here. It’s not they are useless, it’s that voting has already started and Blanding STILL doesn’t get the coverage she has earned by actually making it on the ballot.
It’s hard to make the debate stage when the criteria is having good enough polling numbers. BUT if you can’t even make it to the polling?
Blanding’s not wrong; however, she is a little late to the game to take on the two party system in order to have any impact on this election.
It’s a topic worth discussing, innit?
Terry McAuliffe’s viral moment about parental involvement in education from Tuesday’s debate now has over 1.6 Million views while Glenn Youngkin’s ad about it has close to 250,000 Twitter views.
To date there has been an article about it in the Washington Times, Yahoo, National Review, and this Op-Ed from the Wall Street Journal.
Virginia’s race for Governor in November could be a bellwether for the national midterm elections next year, and one emerging fault line is over school choice and whether parents have a say in the public-school curriculum.
Nothing yet from Virginia’s newspapers on the viral debate event - in Virginia. Nada. Niente. Rien.
It’s okay - I missed a few layups back in the day. I just didn’t get paid to miss them.
Two articles that show the Far Left and Far Right are pretty much the same.
One from Quillette in August of 2020 The Woke Left v. the Alt-Right: A New Study Shows They’re More Alike Than Either Side Realizes
This is perhaps the first time that the personality congruence between these two emerging groups—nominally progressive Politically Correct Authoritarians, and alt-right White Identitarians—has been studied systematically. And the results reinforce the social sense that many of us get from our most ideologically intolerant co-workers and social-media contacts: Notwithstanding their diametrically opposed political postures, both hard Left and hard Right seem disproportionately populated by individuals who are impelled to control others’ behavior, and draw attention to themselves.
And from Emory University Study: Left-wing authoritarians share key psychological traits with far right
It's a mistake to think of authoritarianism as a right-wing concept, as some researchers have in the past," he says. "We found that ideology becomes secondary. Psychologically speaking, you're an authoritarian first, and an ideologue only as it serves the power structure that you support."
MUST READ - Matt Taibbi’s latest column explores the impact on the media - The News is America's New Religion, and We're in a Religious War includes these truth bombs:
News in America used to be fun to talk about, fun to joke about, interesting to think about. Now it’s an interminable bummer, because the press business has taken on characteristics of that other institution where talking, joking, and thinking aren’t allowed: church. We have two denominations, both as fact-averse as real churches, as is shown in polls about, say, pandemic attitudes, where Americans across the board consistently show they know less than they think.
and
Every time I turn on the TV now, I want to jump off a cliff. I went into journalism precisely because at the time, it was one of the only professions to encourage actively godless people to apply, with standup comedy and state executioner being some of the only other choices. Now, after three decades, it turns into this? To paraphrase Mike Myers, I didn’t spend six years in Evil Medical School just to join a church. This really is mass madness, and it might be time to turn it off for real.
Amen.
Politically for the business community this manifests itself when leading business organizations feel they have to endorse anti-business candidates for office. It’s Stockholm Syndrome with very real and dire consequences. Relationships are important, but…
But hey…the stock market is up…well, down a good bit since the August 16 Dow Jones high of 35,600+ to now 33,900+. You do realize that’s because all that money being printed has to end up somewhere. You get that, right?
Speaking of getting a pass from the media. Even AFTER Generals Milley and Mackenzie all but called the CINC a liar during their congressional testimony, Joe Biden keeps getting a hall pass from the mainstream media. But…
Joe Biden’s troubles regarding Afghanistan have had a spill over effect into COVID per Ipsos survey reported in Axios:
Continuing the transition to foreign affairs:
Another good article from Geopolitical Futures - How the Global Economy Works, Or Seems To - Freidman traces economic history and concludes that eventually China will be replaced by another low cost producer. The question remains which country or region will that be? India? Sub Saharan Africa? South America?
What stopped the American economy’s massive rise to power in the first two decades of the 20th Century?
What stopped us was World War I. It wrecked Europe, Washington’s most important buyer, and slowly at first in the 1920s then with increasing speed, it broke the economic system the United States had created. The result was the Great Depression and the first American industrial purge. Obviously, it did not mean the end of the United States or even its economic preeminence, but it introduced a painful pause and social upheaval. It was not Smoot-Hawley tariffs or monetary policy that created the Depression but the destruction of America’s customers.
Why did I post something on German inflation? Because Germans are deathly afraid of inflation. #History #EnergyCosts #RussiaGazprom
Article on Europe’s Natural Gas Outlook - it’s quick but instructive.
This month, energy prices in Europe have soared due largely to record-high prices for natural gas. Though gas prices have been steadily rising since spring, significant increases across Europe began only in mid-August, after Russia’s Gazprom sharply cut supplies to the EU via the Yamal-Europe pipeline. Last week, the company also declined to book additional capacity in pipelines that run through Ukraine in auctions for October
This article lays out some good information on China, Taiwan, and the U.S. One can see the difficult situation General Milley was in early this year - there is a LOT of tension in the South China Sea these days. Remember, we are a VERY large customer of China’s and so is Europe.
Speaking of China and geopolitics - here’s where their oil companies rank in CO2.
paraphrasing Ferris Bueller:
Now - go have a good weekend!
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Cheers.