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.

Brett Kavanaugh was sworn in as the newest justice on the U.S. Supreme Court on Saturday (10/06), and began hearing oral arguments on yesterday (10/09), after the Court came back from its Columbus Day holiday.

Much has been said about the unfair and downright nasty tactics used by some Democrat Senators and their allies during Justice Kavanaugh’s confirmation battle.

But the reason they resorted to these tactics is because the federal courts have become so important in their quest to change America into their version of a Progressive Utopia.  For many decades, liberals have been using the federal courts to implement the changes they have been unable to achieve through Congress and state legislatures.

When they cannot convince voters and legislators, they have resorted to federal judges to ignore the law and ignore the Constitution and implement their social policies by judicial fiat.  With Justice Kavanaugh bringing a 5-4 conservative majority to SCOTUS, these days promise to be over for liberals and the left.

Inevitably as China becomes more powerful and influential in international relations, Beijing will fundamentally change the international system created by the United States and the Cold War.

The key question for international politics is what kind of world does China seek to create by 2049 — the centenary of the People’s Republic of China (PRC). Will China sustain the present liberal system or forge another anchored on its ambitions, culture, and desires? Millennia of Chinese history strongly suggests the latter.

In this essay, we illuminate China’s model of global governance and touch upon its derivative economic and political features. Conceiving of what type of world China will create is significant for three reasons.

First, it is critical for the United States to understand so that the full scope of China’s strategic ambitions and direction may be understood.

Second, U.S. decision-makers should expect that the world China would like to create by 2049 will be fundamentally different. The economic order will be a curious mix of hyper-capitalism and neomercantilism. The political order will be authoritarian.

Third, understanding China’s ambition and grand strategic objectives allows the United States to develop policies and undertake measures to thwart them.

The population of the Russian Federation is falling by 700 people a day, or more than a quarter of a million a year (Narzur.ru, September 23).

The decline stems from a combination of rising death rates, changes in the age structure of the population (resulting in fewer women in the prime child-bearing cohort but more elderly), dramatically falling immigration rates, and ever greater shortages of medicines and even medical facilities.

And of course, alcoholism off the world scale.  At the very least, international health officials say, alcohol in its various forms remains “the main cause of death” in Russia today. (Thinktanks.by, October 3).

Ever more Russian analysts are describing the current demographic situation as a disaster for the future, one that may make it increasingly difficult for that country to field a sizeable military or generate economic growth.  Here are the stats showing how Russia is literally dying.