Do not assume that Italy’s insurgent coalition will capitulate to EU demands if risk spreads on Italian debt blow through the fatal line of 400 basis points.

The European Commission’s strategy of ‘controlled escalation’ relies on tacit collusion with bond vigilantes and hedge funds to ratchet up the pressure. The method is to squeeze the capital buffers of Italian banks and ultimately to set off a deposit run, hoping that such financial vandalism does not set off contagion to Portugal, Spain, and Greece.

This is a dangerous game to play unless you can be sure that the Lega-Five Star alliance will back down rather than resort to radical measures in self-defence. The obvious risk is that Italy’s budget fight with Brussels will cause a pan-European financial crisis before either side blinks.

“Brussels can keep sending its silly letters until Christmas. Our budget is not going to change. The gentlemen speculators will just have to get used to it, because we will not retreat,” says Lega strongman, Matteo Salvini, relishing a political knife-fight with the EU all the way to the European elections next May.

It’s a fight we should want Salvini to win.

The World Economic Forum’s (WEF) 2018 World Competitiveness Report ranks the United States No. 1 in global competitiveness, up from No. 3 in the past few years and its first top ranking in a decade. A high ranking matters.

As the WEF reports: “Global competitiveness is determined by the set of institutions, policies and factors that determine the level of productivity of a country … And productivity leads to growth ... and improved well-being. The U.S.’s top ranking therefore suggests a lot of growth and prosperity to come."

According to the Davos elite (who are no fans of Donald Trump), the U.S. is indeed “great again,” to borrow a Trumpian slogan. It is the country, according to the WEF, that should best prosper in Davos’ “fourth industrial revolution.”

As the world’s most innovative economy, America is well positioned to take advantage of the new competitive environment. This should be welcome news for the Trump administration and a Republican Party fighting to retain control of Congress.  Let’s look at the details.

What has transformed the Democrat party into an anguished progressive movement that incorporates the tactics of the street, embraces maenadism, reverts to Sixties carnival barking, and is radicalized by a new young socialist movement?

Even party chairman Tom Perez concedes that there are “no moderate Democrats left,” and lately the rantings of Cory Booker, Hillary Clinton, Eric Holder, and Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez confirm that diagnosis.

How did it get this way?  Let’s start with Obama, who started who started being worshipped as the Democrat Savior and has now become the Fallen God.  It goes downhill from there.

Why can’t women stop buying the Marxist narrative?

If you’ve read this and you’re going “uh, what?” because you’re a woman and not Marxist, don’t worry. What I’m doing is echoing a WaPo editorial by Victoria Bissell Brown (a retired Grinnell College history professor) last Friday (10/12) who starts her insanely stupid article by asking:

Why can’t men organize to change themselves?

Why, Vicky, (yeah, I’m fairly sure you don’t want me to call you Vicky, but since you’re functioning at about a six-year-old level, that’s the best you deserve) that’s an amazing question, that probably made the Post editors drool at your amazingness.

It’s almost as good as “why can’t you take a valium like a normal human being, and stop being crazy?” which is what your editorial made me ask.

Her article starts with a confession of spousal abuse:

Christopher Columbus was an immigrant, but it hasn’t done him much good in the eyes of the Left. The Left in this case prefers someone like Elizabeth Warren, who can claim to be as much as 1/1024th “Native American.” Big whoop.

Columbus was a Catholic and a representative of Western Civilization, so the Left—all those white liberals—would rather that Warren’s distant ancestors had chopped off Columbus’s head and torn out his heart, because liberalism, as James Burnham reminded us long ago, is the ideology of Western suicide.

Beyond the ritualistic incantations of “racism” and “genocide,” the Left sees American expansion—geopolitical and cultural—as bad, (and points to Andrew Jackson and George Armstrong Custer as among its chief villains) and American retreat as good.

But neither Andrew Jackson nor Custer is the villain the Left makes both men out to be. They were American heroes.

China has been brandishing its might and the world is taking notice. Not with military exercises, cyber attacks, or by harassing vessels in international waters.

China has been doing these things, of course, but its latest show of force comes straight from its heart: displays of ultra-nationalism by its diplomats indulging in chauvinistic and all-too-official bullying tirades..

As China’s economy and military might have grown, Chinese leaders have begun to expect obeisance from other powers, both great and especially small.

In 2010, then-Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi hinted at this in Hanoi when he harangued the assembled representatives of ASEAN with his admonition that “China is a big country and other countries are small countries, and that’s just a fact.”  Since then the bullying and arrogance has gotten so much worse.

Never have I felt more ashamed of my sex than in the last two weeks watching hysterical harridans trashing tradition, decorum, and common decency.

The Kavanaugh confirmation circus has brought out the worst of womankind -- woman who forced themselves, writhing with hatred and ignorance, into our living rooms and smart devices uninvited and without consent.

I've never felt so assaulted in my life than after watching the fiendish, frenzied temper tantrums of a thousand deranged females during what is supposed to be tedious, uneventful Senate procedure to seat a Supreme Court justice.

These screeching gorgons have bigger problems than Kavanaugh on the Supreme Court. Their performance during this uproarious time has called into serious question their fitness to even participate in any serious matter of state.

It embarrasses me deeply that these shrieking shrews identify as "women" and are allowed to speak for all of us without question. The only women in America whose existence is continually and relentlessly denied are conservative women.

When the Christine Ford saga finally ended with the confirmation of Judge Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court, a lot of truth had distilled out, along with the evaporation of prior pretensions and misconceptions.  Here are the Kavanaugh Casualties.

The Left

The hearing confirmed that the traditional JFK/Hubert Humphrey Democrat party, as once envisioned by a Bill Clinton, Gary Hart, or Jim Webb, is long kaput.

In its place is being birthed a hard-left progressive movement that absorbs the ideologies and methodologies of its base and that now incorporates all sorts, from Ocasio-Cortez’s socialist hipsters to Black Lives Matters, Antifa, and Occupy Wall Street protestors.

Any means is deemed permissible to enact visions of social justice, given legislative and executive power is lost for now — and as if proverbially ordinary Americans who watched the televised circus might applaud the performers.

The applause is the sound of one hand clapping.