Virgil: Bond Villain Jeff Bezos Shaken, Not Stirred
Jeff Bezos looks a lot like Ernst Blofeld, the fictional villain in several of the early James Bond movies.Is the resemblance just a coincidence? You decide.
MixedTimes - Virgil
Virgil: If You Ruled North Korea, You Wouldn't Give Up Your Nukes Either
If we look at the countries that once possessed nukes, but no longer have them, we see a bitter lesson that you can bet Kim Jong Un has absorbed.
Virgil: President Trump’s Foreign Policy Triumph Annoys the Media
Three related American foreign-policy goals—security for Israel, peace in the Middle East, and a new Middle Eastern alliance against Iran—have just scored major breakthroughs. And if you haven’t heard about these successes, maybe that’s because the Main Stream Media are so busy attacking President Trump that they’ve lost interest in foreign reporting.
Virgil: The Washington Post, and Axios, Follow in the Footsteps of Breitbart News
The headline in Axios on August 8 demanded attention: “Sputnik moment for U.S. military.” For his part, Virgil paid particularly close attention, since he published a piece with virtually the same headline, for Breitbart News, back on September 16, 2017: “The Threat from China — America’s New ‘Sputnik Moment.
Virgil: The President’s Controversial Policy Toward Russia: The Good Guys Can Win if the Bad Guys Are Divided -- Part Two
In Part One of this series, we saw how, back in 1941, President Franklin D. Roosevelt chose to look past the serious flaws in the Russian regime of Josef Stalin in order to isolate, and confront, the mortal threat from the German regime of Adolf Hitler.
Virgil: Trump Administration Puts America First and the United Nations a Distant Second
Every now and then, the leaders of the U.S. diplomatic apparatus actually do something that is in the interest of the U.S.The recent withdrawal of the U.S.
Don’t Look Now, But Trump Is #Winning on North Korea
In the wake of his Singapore summit, President Trump is #Gaining in public opinion. For instance, a June 14 poll from Monmouth University offers Trump plenty of good news.
Virgil: Don’t Look Now, But Trump Is #Winning on North Korea
In the wake of his Singapore summit, President Trump is #Gaining in public opinion. For instance, a June 14 poll from Monmouth University offers Trump plenty of good news.
Virgil: A Lesson from Brazil on What Could Happen if We Lose the Trade War with China
The only thing that’s sure about the shifting U.S.-China trade relationship is that it is shifting rapidly. However, underneath the shifts, there’s an unshifting reality: the economic and strategic threat from China.
Virgil: Hail, Zuckerberg! Facebook Wins the Battle of Capitol Hill, But What Will He Conquer Next?
A month after Mark Zuckerberg’s April 10 and 11 testimony on Capitol Hill, the chattering class seems to agree that he and Facebook dodged the political equivalent of the grim reaper.
Virgil: The New Frankensteins
As he scans the news about tech abuses—from violating privacy, to manipulating the news, to mowing down pedestrians with driverless cars—Virgil is reminded that this year marks the 200th anniversary of the publication of Mary Shelley’s 1818 novel, Frankenstein.
Virgil: Conservatives Should Understand: ‘Corporate Social Responsibility’ Is Just Another Name for Political Power—So Where’s Ours?
For all of us on the right, it should have been a lightbulb moment on Friday, when David Hogg, the 17-year-old student-turned-gun-control-activist, said to CNN’s Alisyn Camerota, “I think it’s great that corporate America is standing with me and the rest of my friends.
Virgil: What Would Teddy Roosevelt Do: An Anti-Trust Reckoning for the Tech Lords?
Theodore Roosevelt, our 26th president, left the White House in 1909, and yet his spirit — larger than life and larger, even, than death — is still with us.
Virgil: The Left’s ‘Strange New Respect’ for the FBI
Not so long ago, most liberals were not fans of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and yet now, they are quite—quite!—concerned about its wellbeing and good name.
Virgil: Mark Cuban Provides Roadmap for Trustbusting the Tech Lords of Silicon Valley
Mark Cuban is another brash billionaire with a popular reality-TV show, an active Twitter feed (7.6 million followers), a habit of giving punchy quotes to journalists, and, yes, national political ambitions.
Virgil: Google Tracks You, Uber Hacks You
At some point, the American people are going to conclude, for the sake of their privacy and security, that we can’t let this much power be concentrated into the hands of a few arrogant, irresponsible, and, frankly, neglectful, individuals and their companies.
Virgil: Eight Takeaways on the GOP’s Tax Bill Obamacare Repeal Effort
Yes, the Obamacare issue is ba-a-ack. Congressional Republicans could, in fact, be voting on the fate of the program — formally known as the Affordable Care Act — within days.
Virgil — We Were Warned: Science Fiction Predicted Silicon Valley’s Threat to Personal Liberty
Over the last century or two, plenty of seers and scribblers told us that technological advances were a two-edged sword. For all the gains in our standard of living that inventions would bring, so, too, would come dangers—and maybe even more downsides than upsides.
Virgil — Populist Revolt Continues: Right and Left Join to Fight AT&T-Time Warner Deal
Why have activists on the right and left joined together to oppose the AT&T-Time Warner merger? After all, there have been plenty of big mergers in the last few decades, most of which have attracted little controversy.
Virgil: The Jones Act Is Vital to Our Economic and National Security
This is a rich country: In times of disaster, we can afford to take care of our own, while not sacrificing the working wages of our own—or the safety of all of us.
Virgil: America First or America Last? Trump Abandons Campaign Promise to Sacrifice More Americans to the Afghanistan Meat Grinder
President Trump has flip-flopped on the war in Afghanistan, in defiance of his campaign promises and also of public opinion. Why the flip-flop? Did the Establishment make him do it? The Deep State? Or both? Meanwhile, we must ask: Does public opinion matter anymore? The answer is yes, but the people will have to work a lot harder to make sure that their voice is heard.
Virgil: The Threat from China — America’s New ‘Sputnik Moment’
Is this our “Sputnik Moment”? That is, the moment when Americans wake up and realize that they face a grave threat from a foreign power? Sixty years after Sputnik, we see that China, with quadruple our population, is on the move.
Virgil: The Big Question for Open Borders Bernie Sanders’ ‘Medicare for All’ Plan Is What if ‘All’ Includes the Whole World?
According to a 2012 estimate by Gallup, 13 percent of the world’s adult population—640 million people—would move to the U.S. if they could. And of course, under the doctrine of chain-migration, that number of immigrants could easily quadruple in a few years’ time.
Virgil – Trump Is Right: America Needs Pro-Growth Tax Reform, as Well as Fairness
Kicking off his tax-reform campaign on Wednesday with a forceful speech in Springfield, Missouri, President Trump got right to the point. Tax reform, including tax reductions, should focus on Main Street, not Wall Street.
Virgil: Protecting American Sovereignty Against Big Tech’s Globalist Corporate Power
As we drill down on the dangers of corporate monopoly, we can observe that the worst offenders are Google, Amazon, Facebook, and Apple. We might even turn those four companies into an acronym, GAFA.
Virgil — Teddy Roosevelt’s Hammer: How the ‘Great Trust Buster’ Built the American Dream
In his famous “New Nationalism” speech in 1910, the “Great Trust Buster” Teddy Roosevelt described “the struggle of freemen to gain and hold the right of self-government as against the special interests, who twist the methods of free government into machinery for defeating the popular will.
Virgil: Five Points About the Politics of Police Work in America Today
Let’s consider five key realities about the politics of police work confronting America’s law enforcement officers in 2017.
Virgil — The Emerging Trump Doctrine: The Defense of the West and Judeo-Christian Civilization
Watching Donald Trump speak in Warsaw today, in the shadow of that city’s memorial to the gallantly doomed Polish resistance heroes of World War Two, Virgil thought of another Western leader of indomitable resolve: Winston Churchill.
Virgil — Macomb County, Michigan: From Reagan Democrats to Trump Nation to… Where?
Macomb County, Michigan, was home to the famous "Reagan Democrats" who overwhelmingly gave their votes to Trump in 2016. A new report offers insights into the motivations of these working class swing voters that the Trump White House should heed.
The AT&T-Time Warner Deal: Perspective from the Great Trustbuster
Two big corporations, AT&T (worth $221 billion at last count) and Time Warner (worth $66 billon), want to combine to become even bigger, and yet in response, the two major American political parties are not to be found in their usual ideological positions.