• Neocon Jive By Richard C. Young
• Sig Sauer Academy: Rely on Your Training By E.J. Smith
• Preventing America from Becoming the Next Greece? By Debbie Young
• Inflammation, Cancer and Heart Disease. By Richard C. Young
• Recreate a Neutral, Non-Interventionist Power By Richard C. Young
• Vicious, Brutal, Abhorrent Existence By Debbie Young
• Greetings from Boston By Richard C. Young
• Marco Rubio Wrong for America By Richard C. Young
• Americans are Fleeing these Cities By E.J. Smith

Writing in the Washington Post, the erudite Charles Krauthammer fires a broadside at the Iran nuclear deal.

On many matters of concern for our country, Charles delivers worthy analysis and commentary. In the case of foreign policy, however, Mr. K. is in the firm clutches of the basically left-wing-thinking neocon camp. You know, the guys who think the Iraq, Afghan and Libyan adventures were a good thing for America while the country as a whole agrees that each was a debacle on the same order as the Vietnam War.

Let’s look at the deal from Iran’s point of view. Iran is a small minority in a Muslim world dominated by Sunnis. Iran and the Shia make up but ten percent of the Muslim world. Iran’s bitter religious enemy—the Sunnis (90% of Muslims)—include nuclear armed and belligerent Pakistan, supported by the folk who flew into the Twin Towers, our friends the Saudis. And then there are the Israelis, who, while not undeservedly concerned, present an ongoing nuclear risk for Iran.

You wouldn’t know it from listening to neocon yak, but Iran will not have a nuclear weapon anytime soon, if ever, and the recent nuclear accord will not improve Iran’s position on the nuclear front. If it appears certain that Iran is on a nuclear weapons fast track, Iran will be attacked with ferocity. There will be no shortage of international takers waiting to jump at the chance.

The central issue for America is the urgent need to (1) get 100% out of the Middle East, (2) divorce the U.S. from criminal Sunni dictatorships, including the Saudis; (3) seal our borders; and (4) cancel green cards for students and others from radical Islamist countries. America will be more safe, more prosperous, and more free (See my series on Chris Preble, author of The Power Problem, Parts I, II and III) once we adopt a foreign policy overview based on minding our own business, knocking off the failed nation building strategies promoted by the neocons, and quitting our effort to promote democracy in regions of the world that have never embraced democracy and never indicated any interest in so doing. And by the way, the word democracy does not appear in the Constitution. America is a constitutional republic not a democracy. In America, we pledge to “the republic for which it stands,” not to the democracy.

The saying goes that you don’t rise to the occasion, you fall to the level of your training. I train at the fantastic Sig Sauer Academy in Epping, New Hampshire. I’m looking forward to a three day precision rifle course there in September. Challenge yourself with some new training as often as you can. It keeps your mind sharp and is loads of fun.

Could America become the next Greece (or Detroit or Puerto Rico)? The answer is “an unequivocal no,” writes economist Stephen Moore. The private sector of the U.S. economy is structurally very healthy. Business and family balance sheets have shown stunning improvement following the debt binge from 2000 to 2008.

The story is simple: Over the past seven years American companies have become hyper- and even ruthlessly efficient, which has meant shedding unproductive operations and reducing employment, cutting debt burdens, and focusing on profitability. It’s the reason the stock market has soared since 2008. Companies are now sitting on $1 trillion to $2 trillion of reserve cash, according to The Wall Street Journal, and balance sheets are generally pristine. Households have cut their debt, too.

But there is bad news. As Mr. Moore highlights, one sector of the U.S. economy has been largely immune from deleveraging—the government.

We have here a tale of two economies. At a time when private-sector debt burdens have flattened out and even fallen, the government debt has soared frighteningly from $8 trillion to $16 trillion. If there is a fundamental structural weakness in the economy holding back growth, this is it.

As the private sector has become lean and cost-conscious, government has become flabbier and more dependent than ever on debt. The numbers are even worse for government when including trillions of dollars of unfunded liabilities in pension and health care obligations.

Mr. Moore is an advocate of government austerity and private-sector expansion. In order to obtain higher growth rates of 4 percent or more, the U.S. government needs to tighten its belt and borrow much less. Read Moore here.

Eatlocalgrown.com informs readers: “It’s important to realize that chronic inflammation is the source of many if not most diseases, including cancer, obesity, and heart disease, which essentially makes it the leading cause of death in the U.S.”

Eatlocalgrown.com provides a list of Top Seven Anti-Inflammatory Foods with supporting details. My own independent research draws a similar conclusion, and Debbie and I include all seven anti-inflammation fighters in our regular weekly diet.

When considering blueberries, remember it is wild blueberries that you want. Debbie and I rely on frozen, organic wild Blueberries from Woodstock. We also take a daily wild blueberry extract supplement sold by Vitacost. On the Shiitake mushroom front, we include these sautéed or roasted health boosters as frequently as possible. And we take a whole mushroom supplement from Newchapter.

This is the exact course former CIA bin Laden unit chief Michael Scheuer suggests here. Scheuer writes about the “U.S. governing elite’s mindless, war-causing interventionism.”

Scheuer envisions “a neutral, non-interventionist power that is more secure, united, and prosperous at home, less hated abroad, not militarily overextended, not burdened by useless, fundamentally anti-U.S. dependents like NATO, Israel, and Saudi Arabia, and led—pray God—by a president who intends to win wars America must fight.”

“This is a group that throws people off buildings, that burns them alive… This isn’t a pioneering movement, it is a vicious, brutal and fundamentally abhorrent existence,” said Prime Minister David Cameron.

In a speech given in Birmingham, England, Britain’s PM emphasized the need to “de-glamorise” extremist ideology and conspiracy theories used by groups such as IS.

First, any strategy to defeat extremism must confront, head on, the extreme ideology that underpins it. We must take its component parts to pieces—the cultish worldview, the conspiracy theories, and yes, the so-called glamorous parts of it as well.

In doing so, let’s not forget our strongest weapon: our own liberal values. We should expose their extremism for what it is—a belief system that glorifies violence and subjugates its people—not least Muslim people.

We should contrast their bigotry, aggression and theocracy with our values. We have, in our country, a very clear creed and we need to promote it much more confidently.

Read more about David Cameron’s five-year plan to defeat home-grown extremism here.

Debbie and I are on the road heading to Portland, Maine and Woodstock and Dorset, Vermont. Yesterday after cherrystones and oysters at Barbara Lynch’s B&G Oyster in the South End, we came upon this bank window sign. Great rate indeed!

Thanks to the Fed’s misguided policy of money printing, the money-changers on Wall Street are borrowing at virtually nothing to speculate. Meanwhile, Ma and Pa in retirement are earning crumbs on money saved over a lifetime of hard work. Some retirement income. And the American voter sees nothing wrong with this picture?

Hillary Clinton would be a whole lot worse president than Marco Rubio, but Rubio sets a low bar and would be a dreadful choice.

My Cato Institute-centric friend John Basil Utley is the publisher of the American Conservative, published in Washington six times a year. The word conservative has unfortunately been co-opted by the neocon war dogs like McCain, Graham, Rubio, and the Christian right. Readers of the American Conservative are more interested in the real meaning of the word conservative, which is centered on a desire to adopt an originalist intent reading of the constitution, a return to a states rights centered approach to government and an end to neocon championed military intervention and nation building.

In the July/August issue of TAC, Miami Herald columnist A.J. Delgado deals with the foul ball that is Marco Rubio. Here is what A.J. tells readers:

Rubio’s amnesty push alone should have been the nail in the coffin of any presidential ambition: it’s a position advanced mostly by crony businessmen seeking cheaper, wider labor pools.

While most presidential contenders sensibly admit that the Iraq invasion was a mistake in hindsight, Rubio steadfastly insists it was not. This, despite over 4,400 dead Americans, half a million dead Iraqis, a staggering $2 trillion price tag—10 percent of our national debt—and the creation of a power vacuum that has enabled the rise of ISIS. Rubio would even commit our troops yet again.

Much like Sen. John McCain, Rubio appears to be a man who never met an intervention he did not like.

Whether because of a lack of jobs, or a high cost of living, Americans are fleeing these twenty cities (identified by Bloomberg) for greener pastures in other parts of the country. Interestingly, as middle-income Americans are forced out of some cities by high housing costs, they are being replaced by immigrants who don’t mind living cheek-by-jowl in packed houses. The trend increases population in the cities, but not of natural born Americans.