May 13, 2025

ANDREW MICHTA: “A few observations from this European trip. BLUF: Our European allies—at least some of the largest ones—do not fully appreciate that we are in an economic war with China. As I wrote here, how Europe rolls on China will define transatlantic relations.”

More:

When I hear that some key allies will not decouple from the PRC, but may actually strengthen those economic relations, I’ve got to ask: What do you want your future to be? Are you ready to decouple from the US and throw your lot with the Chinese Communist Party as your future?

Do you see yourself as a link in the land-baset supply chain network run from Beijing called Belt and Road? Do you believe that your future no longer lies in then Atlantic? If so, please say so loud and clear because right now we are debating what our force posture should be.

For over 20 yrs I’ve argued that US corporate elites’ greed was making China what it is today-an existential threat to our survival as a democracy and a people. Finally, Americans have awakened to the threat, but will Brussels or Berlin now walk this path to self-destruction?

As I visit Europe this time I’ve to say to say this to our friends here: It’s time to choose sides. It’s a zero-sum game: When it comes to your economic policy, you are either with the United States or with communist China. I say this as a lifelong transatlanticist – it’s real.

I understand that the tone coming from Washington is not what you’ve been accustomed to. And sometimes over the top and hurtful. But this is real: you must tell us if your elites can see beyond the rhetoric and still believe in the national security relationship with the US.

The Trump administration has shocked our allies with its rhetoric, and I would be the last to choose the harshness of the tone. But the message above the imperative of European rearmament in NATO is spot on— US administrations, Democrat and Republican called for it in the past.

Just months ago I never thought I would write such a post. But this trip made me realize how disconnected some among Europe’s elites have become from the foundational principles of the shared Western cultural DNA. So I ask: Do you still remain committed to this alliance?

When “a lifelong transatlanticist” has that kind of warning for Europe, there’s something deeply wrong with Europe.

Posted at 12:43 pm by Stephen Green 6

HOW IT STARTED: How Joe Biden Is Positioning Himself as a Modern FDR.

—Time Magazine, October 28th, 2020.

How it’s going: Biden aides discussed wheelchair use if he were re-elected, new book says.

The discussions reflected the extent of the president’s declining health — particularly the significant degeneration of his spine — and his aides’ alarm over it as Biden sought a second term at age 81.

The conversations also reveal the White House’s determination to conceal the reality of Biden’s condition, at the risk of his own health, while he faced a tough re-election bid against Donald Trump.

  • The book is based on interviews with more than 200 people, mostly Democratic insiders, with knowledge of the events that unfolded during the final two years of Biden’s presidency. Almost all of the interviews took place after the 2024 election.

Driving the news: “Biden’s physical deterioration — most apparent in his halting walk — had become so severe that there were internal discussions about putting the president in a wheelchair, but they couldn’t do so until after the election,” the authors write.

  • Biden aides believed it was politically untenable to have Biden use a wheelchair during his re-election campaign.

  • “Given Biden’s age, [his physician Kevin O’Connor] also privately said that if he had another bad fall, a wheelchair might be necessary for what could be a difficult recovery,” the authors report.

—Alex Thompson, Axios, today.

Now it can be told.

UPDATE: America’s Newspaper of Record once again doing straight-up reportage:

No, they really are:

MORE:

Posted at 12:35 pm by Ed Driscoll 111

WAS IT GOOD FOR YOU? Is the AI boom already over?

Investment bubbles do sometimes involve assets which have little intrinsic value, yet it is remarkable how often they begin as an entirely rational reaction to some new invention or development – an invention which outlasts the collapse of the speculative bubble, as if nothing had happened.

You only have to look at a share chart and you would assume that railways went out of fashion in the 1840s, when a mad speculative umbrella collapsed. See share charts from the early 2000s and you would likewise assume that people took one look at the internet and then swiftly went off it.

Yet the opposite is true. Railways did not just survive railway-mania, but their development accelerated through the 1850s and 1860s to the point that they came to dominate land transport in almost every industrialized country. Their supremacy was only challenged by the development of the internal combustion engine at the very end of the 19th century. Internet usage mushroomed throughout the dotcom collapse. Even tulips survived the mania of 1630s Amsterdam, becoming a popular feature in gardens the world over. This is what makes investment bubbles difficult to spot. Those who get drawn into them are often both very right and very wrong at the same time. They are right that the subject of their affections is, indeed, the future, yet in their enthusiasm they over-estimate the speed at which it will transform the world.

It’s possible to use the Apple iPhone 16 debacle as one sign of AI’s “tulip mania” phase abating. But just as the railroad is still one of the dominant forms of distributing freight across continents, AI is poised to radically reshape our lives. And like trains and the birth of the Internet in 1969 and the World Wide Web in 1989, it could very well be something that becomes taken for granted, rather than something that dominates headlines, as AI did when OpenAI first rolled out ChatGPT in late November of 2022.

Posted at 12:00 pm by Ed Driscoll 66

THIS IS EXACTLY RIGHT: Extend Trump’s tax cuts, pay for it by repealing Biden’s climate handouts.

The U.S. is on the brink of a tax nightmare, with Democrats pushing the largest tax increase in history.

President Trump’s signature legislation from his first term, the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, is set to expire at the end of the year, and Democrats are united in their efforts to end this successful policy and implement an automatic $4.5 trillion tax increase.

Republicans were elected up and down the ballot in 2024 with a mandate to end the lunacy of Bidenomics and make America competitive again. This means enacting bold tax reforms that go beyond simply extending the Trump tax cuts and — most importantly — preventing any tax hikes. Trump recently reminded Republicans that they cannot repeat the same mistakes that sank previous administrations. A tax increase of any kind would ruin any chance of success in 2026 for the Republicans as would failure to go beyond the tax cuts.

The tax cuts expire on Dec. 31. If Congress does nothing, an automatic $4.5 trillion Democratic tax hike will land squarely on working families, many of whom are already struggling under lingering Biden-era inflation. Less than a year from now, the average taxpayer could see a 22 percent tax hike. For a working family of four, that’s a $1,700 tax increase.

This is pretty simple stuff but it sure could use more of a populist push from Trump, plus whatever it is Speaker Mike Johnson is supposed to be doing.

Posted at 11:41 am by Stephen Green 61

MUCH MORE LIKE THIS, PLEASE: Two Texas Election Integrity Bills Pass. “Texas hasn’t suffered from the massive 3 AM ballot drops that plagued large Democratic-run cities in 2020, but there have been election irregularities, most notably in Democrat-controlled Harris County. To help remedy the situation, the Texas legislature has passed two separate bills giving the Texas Attorney General power to reign in election shenanigans.”

Posted at 10:39 am by Stephen Green 74

CIVIL RIGHTS UPDATE: Sometimes We Have to Take the Good When the Perfect Isn’t an Option.

Over the weekend, our friends at Ammoland published a story about what’s happening with the Hearing Protection Act in the House Ways and Means Committee. As John Crump writes . . .

The Hearing Protection Act (HPA) might be in trouble in the House Ways and Means Committee, and anti-gun lobbyists are NOT the ones holding it up.

David Kustoff (R-TN) has been actively pushing to lower the tax stamp to $5 from $200, which would be a welcome change, but the better alternative is to remove suppressors completely from the National Firearms Act of 1934 (NFA). That would eliminate the tax stamp fee and remove all other NFA requirements.

Yes, delisting cans would certainly be better. If that’s doable.

Heavy lobbying is being done by the former head of the National Rifle Association’s Institute for Legislative Action (NRA-ILA), Chris Cox, a paid lobbyist. Cox is working to lower the tax stamp fee to $5 and keep suppressors on the NFA!

The current NRA-ILA has pushed for the removal of suppressors from the NFA, and Cox’s actions are contrary to that stance. Mr. Cox no longer has any connections to the NRA. Mr. Cox has also lobbied for a gun company that produces suppressors, which has strongly advocated removing silencers from the NFA, and could make millions of dollars if the hearing protection item is delisted from the NFA.

Yes, this sucks. There’s no reason why metal tubes that save shooters’ hearing should be regulated like machineguns (not that machineguns should be regulated more than semi-autos either). But while I’ve had no contact with anyone involved in the HPA process at all, none of this sounds nefarious.

Politics has accurately been called the art of the possible.

Indeed. Although I’d possibly feel better about politics if the GOP Congress would at least put on a show of fighting for the Constitution and fiscal sanity.

Posted at 9:37 am by Stephen Green 82

KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEFING: When Media Hacks Stumble Upon the Truth, They Bury It. “These aren’t just cases of burying the lede for effect. They know that no one reads the whole article anymore, so they’re using headlines to create and perpetuate false narratives, and then sneaking in a kernel of truth to provide themselves a little cover. It’s akin to a trial attorney saying something inflammatory even though he knows the judge will order the jury to ignore it. The damage can’t be undone.”

Posted at 9:06 am by Stephen Green 45

ANALYSIS: TRUE. Journalism Needs a Pugnacious Asshole Like Norman Mailer.

Mailer drew a correlation between physical toughness and great journalism. In his new book Eminent Jews: Bernstein, Brooks, Friedan, Mailer, David Denby traces Mailer’s transformation from a needy Jewish kid in Brooklyn to a street-tough writer who thrived on combat and iconoclasm. Mailer was transformed during his service in World War II. As Denby puts it, “This American-style prophet brawled and head-butted at parties; at one time or another, he was decked, hammered, billy clubbed, his eye gouged, his ear bitten. He believed that physical courage was necessary equipment for a great writer (Hemingway was the model) and that Jewish men in particular had to overcome all sorts of weakness.”

For Mailer, “everything he could put his body and spirit through was a test. He was sure he needed to escape the traps not only of his soft middle-class Jewish background but also the traps of postwar America—the desire for ‘security,’ the endless consumerism, and what he took to be the country’s humiliating spiritual mediocrity. He had made himself into a novelist in the Pacific, and now he brought the war home. For the author of The Naked and the Dead, the truce never arrived.” Mailer “was fascinated by boxers, murderers, and spies.”

The physical pain Mailer went through gave him a mesmerizing voice on the page. It’s why he could write about politics, boxing, war, women and sports and be perceptive about all of them. Who’s replaced him? Peter Baker? Ezra Klein? Matthew Continetti? It’s not a problem of left and right. They’re all boring.

This is Mark Judge so read the whole thing.

Posted at 7:33 am by Stephen Green 81