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To mark the third anniversary of America’s Covid lockdown hysteria Rob, James and Peter give their uncredentialed thoughts on Silicon Valley Bank’s collapse and the FDIC doing something very different than what it was created for. They think through free market solutions, the fate of little banks and the buildings and what they meant for small town America.
The guys also chat with Stanford Review editor Walker Stewart to discuss the outrageous disruption of Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals judge Kyle Duncan on the law school campus.
Also, Happy St. Patricks Day!
Song of the week: I’m Shipping Up To Boston by Dropkick Murphys
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“Why should we care if this Hilter guy wants to take over Kretcho—, Kzetcho—, whatever the hell the name is!”
“Encircle Russia”?!? Who’s “encircling” whom? After 700 years of imperial expansion, Russia is 6,000 miles long, extending to the Pacific Ocean in the East and the Arctic Ocean in the North.
After Russia grabbed Crimea (on Obama’s wink-and-nod), it nearly encircled Ukraine, which is why it could attack from the North and East and South, as well as once again making the Black Sea a Russian lake (meaning supplies for Ukraine can’t travel by water any more).
From the collapse of the Soviet Union until last year, our policy toward Russia has been one of appeasement. If the polls showed that Putin was unpopular, then the Democrats were quite happy to call him names, for public consumption, and then quietly give him whatever he wants: de facto recognition of his occupation of parts of Georgia and Moldova; a mild response to his 2014 invasions of Eastern Ukraine and Crimea; authorizing his new pipeline to Western Europe, bypassing Ukraine. Each successful land grab or power play merely increased Putin‘s appetite for more.
But we didn’t outsource a huge part of our economy to Russia. I suppose that Russia just didn’t have the big slave-labor population etc for that, so “appeasement” could only go so far. But still, Russia didn’t seem to benefit as much as China has.
One big difference: China was socialist for a shorter time than Russia so that, when the economy was freed up in the Eighties, there were still a lot of old people around who remembered how to run private businesses.
Also, China was less corrupt than Russia; again, possibly because it was socialist for a shorter time, and socialism leads to corruption.
The “reason” doesn’t particularly matter. The result was that it didn’t make sense to outsource factories etc to Russia.
Associate Dean Steinbach demonstrates once again that “DEI” is Division, Exclusion, and Intolerance.
I saw the pedophile reference again. I’m pretty sure that’s the case.
“Pre-crazed for your convenience.” This is why I love @jameslileks. P.J. O’Rourke has gone to his eternal reward, but we still have James.