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Forbes has released this year’s list of the Best Countries for Business. Sadly the U.S.A. has fallen further down the rankings. Forbes writes:
Looking for a land of opportunity? The Old World beckons. Despite a sluggish economy, Europe dominates the top of FORBES’ annual ranking of the finest countries for capitalism—with Scandinavia as a particular stand-out. European countries represent two-thirds of the top 25 with Denmark repeating in the lead position of the Best Countries for Business.
The picture isn’t as bright for the U.S., which slides four spots to No. 22. It continues a six-year descent since 2009 when the U.S. ranked second overall. The U.S. is the financial capital of the world and its largest economy at $17.4 trillion (China is second at $10.4 trillion), but it scores poorly on monetary freedom and bureaucracy/red tape. More than 150 new major regulations have been added since 2009 at a cost of $70 billion, according to the Heritage Foundation.
The drop this year by the U.S. can be blamed on a couple of factors. Its rating fell relative to other countries on the World Bank’s measure of investor protection, which is part of the international financial institution’s annual “Doing Business”study. Blame poor scores on the “extent of shareholder governance.” The U.S. also got dinged on the World Banks’ tax component, as well as technological readiness per the World Economic Forum’s “Global Competiveness Report.”
Read more here.
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The coronation of Hillary Clinton continues, writes the WSJ. Bernie Sanders began the debate with an apology to Hillary. And Martin O’Malley? Really? Mr. O’Malley is actually running? And then there was Hillary.
Mrs. Clinton was typically methodical and uninspiring, sticking close to President Obama’s skirts while trying to create some space where his policies are unpopular.
As Peggy Noonan notes in the WSJ, Republicans were told to make Jeb king. Instead they thundered back with no. No coronation for us.
The political parties swapped their longtime roles, styles and ways of being. The Democrats became the party of primogeniture, the Republicans of rebellion. The Democrats were once alive, chaotic and brawling, the Republicans staid and orderly. Not anymore. It is the Democrats who are accepting a coronation, the Republicans who said no to ancestral claims.
Now that party acts like this tidy, lifeless, fightless thing, a big, gray, dead-hearted, soul-killing blob. “I have the demographics,” it blobbily bellows, “I have the millennials.” Maybe it doesn’t have as much as it thinks. It is no honor to the Democratic Party that it is not fighting things through with a stage full of contenders this epochal year.
Read more here.
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 Pat Buchanan asks this terrifying question, linking the actions of “War Party Republicans, who have learned nothing from the past.”
Included in Pat’s rogues gallery roster of “War Dogs” are:
- Gov. Chris Christie, about whom Rand Paul quipped, “If you’re in favor of World War III, you have your candidate.”
- Carly Fiorina, who claims she would not talk to Putin, preferring instead to conduct military exercises in the Baltic States.
- Jeb Bush, who would impose a no-fly zone
- And Lindsey Graham, who “wants to send tens of thousands of American troops to fight ISIS, and refuses to work with Iran, Russia, or Syria’s Bashar Assad to crush our common enemy ISIS.”
Mr. Buchanan points Americans on a different course, one that would reject knee-jerk hostility to working with Putin. In this “Camp of Realism,” Pat includes Rand Paul, Ted Cruz and Donald Trump.
More from Pat on the 2016 GOP primary here:
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 From the WSJ:
Adam Smith, “The Theory of Moral Sentiments” (1759):
The prudent man always studies seriously and earnestly to understand whatever he professes to understand, and not merely to persuade other people that he understands it; and though his talents may not always be very brilliant, they are always perfectly genuine. He neither endeavours to impose upon you by the cunning devices of an artful impostor, nor by the arrogant airs of an assuming pedant, nor by the confident assertions of a superficial and impudent pretender. He is not ostentatious even of the abilities which he really possesses. His conversation is simple and modest, and he is averse to all the quackish arts by which other people so frequently thrust themselves into public notice and reputation. For reputation in his profession he is naturally disposed to rely a good deal upon the solidity of his knowledge and abilities; and he does not always think of cultivating the favour of those little clubs and cabals, who, in the superior arts and sciences, so often erect themselves into the supreme judges of merit; and who make it their business to celebrate the talents and virtues of one another, and to decry whatever can come into competition with them. If he ever connects himself with any society of this kind, it is merely in self-defence, not with a view to impose upon the public, but to hinder the public from being imposed upon, to his disadvantage, by the clamours, the whispers, or the intrigues, either of that particular society, or of some others of the same kind.
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Hillary just makes stuff up, says Huge Hewitt on CNN. “Hillary is a liar and she owes Donald Trump an apology. … We just can’t take eight more years of lies.”
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Rand Paul, Ted Cruz and Donald Trump form the “Credible Threesome.” All three make my cut based on their understanding that (1) America’s tax code must be junked, (2) the 2nd Amendment is hallowed ground, (3) radical Islam and Muslim immigration must be forcefully dealt with, and (4) nation building and foreign intervention do not form a sound basis for American foreign policy. Vladimir Putin should be part of the solution in Syria and not looked upon as hostile to a joint anti-ISIS coalition to include Assad, Iran, France, England and Canada, to name key players.
Democrats Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders do not make the cut regarding any of my above criteria and must not be considered viable candidates for president.
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In the conclusion to his powerful analysis, The Costs and Consequences of Gun Control, David Kopel of the Cato Institute writes:
Firearms in the hands of law-abiding citizens enhance public safety. Firearms in the wrong hands endanger everyone. Responsible firearms policies focus on thwarting dangerous people and do not attempt to infringe the constitutional rights of good persons. Background checks on firearms sales can be improved by including more records on persons who have been adjudicated to be so severely mentally ill that they are a genuine threat. Extending federal gun control to private intrastate sales between individuals—and to firearms loans among friends and family—is constitutionally dubious, and imposes severe burdens for no practical benefit. Such a system is futile without registration of all firearms. Gun owners have justifiably resisted gun registration because it has facilitated gun confiscation in the United States and other nations.
It is false to claim that common firearms are “assault weapons” and it is false to claim that common magazines are high capacity. Outlawing standard firearms and their magazines deprives innocent victims of the arms that may be best-suited for their personal defense. Sensational crimes are often used to push poorly conceived laws which criminalize peaceable gun owners. The most effective paths to preventing mass shootings are improving access to mental care and removing impediments to lawful self-defense and defense of others.
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In order to have authentic democracy, NRO’s Kevin D. Williamson writes, we need to insist that our politicians be truthful about the events and personalities of the real world—that they tell the truth about the people who are running for president. From cattle futures to bimbo eruptions to Internet authors inspiring terror attacks in Benghazi, Hillary Clinton is “morally, ethically, and intellectually unfit for the job.” Read more from Mr. Williamson here.
Democracy is not our form of government; it is an aspect of our form of government, and an important one. A republic without representative processes and democratic norms is no republic at all. Those democratic norms do not require that the capital-P People prevail — in fact, the best aspects of our constitutional order, such as the Bill of Rights, ensure that the People do not prevail when the People do not deserve to, e.g. when the People are having a bout of buffoonery. (The Bill of Rights: Top Ten Things You Idiots Don’t Get to Vote on.) But democratic norms do require that the People have a meaningful say in the debate, and there is no meaningful debate without at least a few agreed-upon facts. Debates have to take account of the real world.
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 Pat Buchanan warns America, and specifically Hillary Clinton, “Islam is not simply a religion of 1.6 billion people, it is also a political ideology for ruling nations and, one day, the world. To the True Believer, Islam is ultimately to be imposed on all of mankind, which is to be ruled by the prescriptions of the Quran. And where Muslims achieve a majority, Christianity is, at best, tolerated.”
In Saturday night’s Democrat New Hampshire debate, Hillary Clinton commented on Republicans in general and specifically Donald Trump: “I worry greatly that the rhetoric coming from the Republicans, particularly Donald Trump, is sending a message to Muslims here … and … around the world, that there is a ‘clash of civilizations.’”
Pat points out, “clash of civilizations” was not popularized by Donald Trump, but by Harvard’s famed Samuel Huntington in his The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order.
More on Muslim extremism here.
FLASHBACK Video:
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