HALF-FULL REPORT 10/27/23
MAGA is in the House
How the Sausage was Made
Kevin McCarthy worked in the shadows to snag and muck up the election of a new speaker for three weeks before the MAGA Republicans had enough. Tom Emmer, the favorite of the old guard, was a non-starter, and he knew it. When Emmer withdrew from the nomination, New York freshman Mike Molinaro proposed to waive the rules requiring unanimous consent.
Tired, exasperated, and eager to get on with funding military action in the Middle East, the rest of the Republicans agreed and held a vote on the second runner-up, Mike Johnson from Shreveport, Louisiana. The sole dissenting voice against the procedural change was Kevin McCarthy.
McCarthy objected, and it became clear that McCarthy had laid traps for all the expected candidates but had not foreseen Mike Johnson. In a panic, Steve Patrick McHenry opened the House floor out of recess and immediately adjourned until October 25. The delay was intended to open a window for a write-in process to reelect McCarthy. These types of shenanigans are why McCarthy was fired.
Representatives were promised anything they wanted: fame, glory, pet projects, whatever, in exchange for a McCarthy vote. McCarthy was to return to the speakership in triumph, and Jim Jordan was to be given a more significant (phony) role in running the chamber. Jordan did not buy it and said no way.
McCarthy was so sure of his bribes and arm twists that he called for a secret ballot. Expecting 100 votes, he received 33 on the first try, then 43 on the second. Mike Johnson won a majority each time.
Johnson called for a roll call vote to identify which representative supported McCarthy, and none were willing to put their vote on the record. The McCarthy scheme to retake the speakership, which paralyzed the House for three weeks, fell apart. McCarthy looked like a failure, and his colleagues collectively woke up to the betrayal and backstabbing that had wiped out the previous candidates.
The hand of God works in mysterious ways, and now the United States of America has a Constitutional scholar, MAGA, culturally conservative, Christian Speaker. Who would have predicted that MAGA would take the House? But here we are.
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Newt’s Take on the House
By Newt Gingrich
10/26/2023
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Israel and Gaza
Another war in the Middle East? Who would have thought this possible? After 3,000 years of regional warfare, are these modern times different?
Two weeks before Hamas savagely attacked Israel, Prime Minister Netanyahu presented a map at the United Nations General Assembly that outlined the core of the Israel-Saudi peace accord and trade deal. The plan called for a new overland rail corridor and pipelines between Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and the Israeli coast. From there, the pipeline would continue to Europe beneath the Mediterranean Sea while intermodal cargo would be transferred from the trains to containerships.
On the other side of this new transportation corridor was to be India. India was to replace China as the factory to the world.
Large natural gas fields have been discovered off Egypt, Lebanon, Israel, and Gaza coasts. This gas was to be piped to Italy along with the Saudi gas. China, Iran, and Turkey were not to be part of the new syndicate. Interestingly, China, Iran, and Turkey are the most prominent supporters of Hamas.
Hezbollah has not yet declared war on Israel and might not without serious are-twisting by Iran. Hezbollah stood to make billions from the gas pipeline. Now, with the Israel-Saudi deal dead in the water, Hezbollah does not get anything.
Yesterday, Israel announced that many, without enumerating many, of the Hamas invaders were Iranian special forces or other non-Arabs. Israel’s surprise by the complexity of the attack is understandable if it was developed, practiced, and financed within Iran or China,
China’s One Belt, One Road project calls for cargo to be moved overland through Pakistan to Iran, north through Turkey, and then to Europe. This route is essential to China because they expect to be in a naval battle with the USA within a few years. Everyone in the former East Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere remembers what American submarines did to Japanese shipping during WWII. The overland route was intended to shield Chinese trade from the American fleet.
Now, today, with the war between Gaza and Israel, no insurers are willing to underwrite the development of a major shipping port on the Israeli coast. The attack by Hamas torpedoed the India-Saudi-Israel-Italy transportation route for now.
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You Shall Know Them by Their Narrative
University students, the Squad in Congress, many journalists, and most university faculty are taking the side of Hamas. Palestinian flags are replacing the gay pride flags in urban areas while street protests are occurring daily.
China appears to dominate the news delivered through social media and web browsers, while the American Deep State/Israel still dominates legacy media. TikTok looks to be the center of Chinese influence operations.
Russia is stirring up the Balkans with the narrative that NATO bombed Yugoslavia for trying to push back Moslem terrorists. Yet, Israel is receiving hundreds of billions of dollars for attempting the same. Thousands of pro-Palestinian protestors are on the streets while Israel continues to bumble its online messaging. The street protestors do not read newspapers or watch cable news. They get their information from TikTok through short and entertaining video clips.
Maybe Trump’s focus on TikTok was spot on.
Western digital propaganda focuses on censorship and Stasi-like threats made to dissidents. Chinese digital propaganda is entertaining and addictive, always fresh, and focused like a laser on China’s national interests.
This all seems so odd and inverted. Hollywood and Western legacy media operate extensive production departments and studios with legions of writers and public relations experts. China dominates by offering instant fame to anybody with an iPhone that produces content consistent with the narrative. Western censorship appears to be a panic-induced move to protect the legacy media industry from the new propaganda model.
Even with Hollywood moving recently towards more masculine and martial themes in support of military recruiting and profits, they lack the agility of the new media. The West’s propaganda machine is broken, and attempts to turn Disney or beer advertising campaigns into analogs of digital media are destroying brands.
The West must determine how to decentralize media content production while controlling the narrative. The world is fracturing along narrative lines, not class or racial lines.
Canadian communication theorist Marshall McLuhan famously said 1964 that the medium is the message. He meant that the communication medium, not the actual information, is most important to understand. Russia and China understand this. Entrenched media in the West have yet to receive the memo. Solving this dilemma will turn somebody into a billionaire.
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Azerbaijan Licks Her Chops
Phase Two of the Armenian-Azerbaijan War is on the horizon. Azerbaijan conquered the Nagorno-Karabakh region in September; now, they want a land bridge across Armenia. Christian Armenians remember the Armenian Genocide by the Turks during WWI and fear the consequences of a new land bridge to Turkey. Russian troops were used to maintain regional stability, but with most of the Russian military in Ukraine, Armenia has a problem.
Armenia is making overtures to Iran, complicating matters for the Chinese One Belt, One Road initiative. Should Turkey and Iran go to war over Armenia, it is unlikely that anyone will cooperate long enough to build China’s rail system.
A regional war threatens the Baku oil fields and might ignite problems in Chechnya. If the region explodes, and should Israel start dropping tactical nukes on Iran, Turkey will have an opportunity to take the Baku oil fields. Winston Churchill warned the world about the instability within the Balkans.
Russia has not launched a cruise missile from a heavy bomber since mid-September. They might have run out or are holding reserves for strategic weapons. Their hypersonic missiles work best when targets are on flat ground. This means that Russia is likely short on precision strike capability. Phase two of the Armenia-Azerbaijan war is likely to be another drone war with Turkey and Iran sporting advanced drones.
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Assimilation
The plan to flood Western nations with hostile, envious, military-aged males from Chaosistan is turning into a big problem. The industrial armies of willing, cheerful new workers are turning out to be unmanageable, violent, and very rapey. Naziism, the real deal, not the made-for-TV version, is on the rise amongst the new Jihadists.
Back in the day, I received my undergrad degree in Michigan while Governor George Romney’s plan to import Moslem students, financed by Saudi Arabia, was in full swing. The idea was to reduce the state education cost by educating thousands of full-freight foreign nationals, and the Kingdom was happy to subsidize the plan. Saudi Arabia needed a modern professional workforce.
The Moslem Student Association exceeded 5,000 members, while blonde-haired coeds feared going out at night. The Islamic boys left the brunettes alone.
Someone at the left-wing University of Michigan thought settling these students permanently in Dearborn, Michigan, was a good idea. Henry Ford had published the anti-Semitic Dearborn Independent newspaper from there, and boy and howdy, this would show old Henry a thing or two.
Sixty years have passed, and the Dearborn academic migrants have not assimilated. They elected radicals to Congress and were instrumental in Michigan’s recent election integrity problems.
Already in 2023, more migrants, many from Africa and the Middle East, have walked across the southern border than the number of children born in the USA. Suppose anything positive comes out of the present world situation. In that case, it might be recognition that Stalin-worshiping politicians and academics are creating the same Balkanization of the West as Stalin did in the actual Balkans.
It looks like Jihad is coming to America again.
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Big Labor
Speaking of Henry Ford, the UAW strikes against the Big Three are growing. Ford’s Kentucky Truck Factory (KTF) walked out this week. Canadian labor closed the Saint Lawrence Seaway, and many auto suppliers are in trouble. The unions are betting on Biden giving them a massive subsidy and assuming union pension and healthcare plan debt (not the assets-just the liabilities) to buy the union vote.
This isn’t going to work. Electric cars can be assembled from relatively few pieces forged from aluminum. Auto industry executives are old hands at managing labor disputes. The idled GM factory became a giant parking lot for unsold cars before the strikes. The unions timed things to make the previous model year vehicles obsolete, but the consumer is mainly happy to get a new car even if it is last year’s model.
Even though skilled labor is in short supply, the current trend is workforce deskilling in white and blue-collar jobs. The Democrat’s assertion that hundreds of millions of migrants will become new-left blue-collar workers is a fantasy. The USA is reindustrializing quickly, but the new factories and offices don’t require yesterday’s workforce.
People are becoming commodities as computers and algorithms increasingly contain the procedures and diagnostic tools to do the job. Homeowners can now even buy robots to cut their lawns. The axis is not pivoting toward labor as much as the pundits claim.
Mike Ryan is a chemical engineering consultant to the Iron and Steel, Heavy Chemicals, Mining, and Fiber industries.