The news in Asia is Trump. Having put their chips with Clinton, some governments in Asia are scrambling to guess what Trump’s next move will be. Japan didn’t interfere. So, things are “business as usual” in Tokyo. While Asian politicians scramble to clean up their attempt to chose America’s next president, they still might not learn from Japan’s example: It is generally best if one country does not interfere with the elections of another country.
That election-country boundary is somewhat askew where Beijing and Hong Kong are concerned. Beijing is not supposed to interfere at all, as per the condition of the H-Kexit from Britain in 1997. Beijing did, however slightly and defensibly and yet predictably objectionable, and now Beijing must intervene.
Pro-Independence lawmakers inserted a byword for China in their oaths, which legally alters the oath. In doing so, they relegated their oaths’ legitimacy to the determination of higher courts in Beijing. If they couldn’t figure out how not to invite intervention, how could they keep domestic peace as lawmakers? If they didn’t know the legal meaning of words, how could they craft laws with proper wording in Hong Kong? Though unanswered at this time, these are questions their actions begged, making their argument for the second H-Kexit less credible, but, nonetheless more infamous and more famous, depending on who is asked. Infamy and fame gain equal press. “Press” is the battle HK Independence advocates win every time, which is why some in Hong Kong argue that “press” is all they want. But, there is always more going on.
In answering the metaphoric question of whether to be the dead lion or the victorious fox, the Hong Kong Umbrella students chose to be dead foxes. Some call them “martyrs”. Others call them “dinner”. The weakness and failings of disrespect aren’t limited to Hong Kong. The rest of the world is demonstrating the same toward Donald J. Trump, who did get elected after all. Now, Asia must figure out how to deal with the decision in the US while Trump figures out how to deal with the indecision of Asia. Unlike fame and infamy, decision and indecision fair differently.
The hashtag #Calexit would be #Texit if the election had gone the other way. California and Texas already did secede once. Of course Washington would do something to stop it, we wouldn’t be dealing with Obama anymore. Secession is now on the table for real, thank you Californians. It’s only a matter of time. These are bad days for globalism.
Reince Priebus and Stephen Bannon will be great in the White House. Trump is the man who led and starred one of NBC’s most profitable shows, The Apprentice. He knows who to hire. This man, accused of being a woman-hating, homophobic racist has already hired KellyAnne Connway, Peter Thiel, and Dr. Ben Carson. The Anti-Trumpist retort is that they are examples of Trump operating in “rare form”.
Are the protesters in as much danger of Trump as they protest to being? Will Trump retaliate against NBC and other venomous enemies with an onslaught of IRS audits and the like? Historically, no because Trump is not a Democrat.
“Experts” in other countries, disparaged Democrat voters, members from the four corners of Congress, and media talking heads from the four corners of the moon—even Fox News Sunday and debate host extraordinaire Christopher Wallace—did not predict the 2016 US election outcome; Pacific Daily Times Editor in Chief and writer-narrator of this editorial, Jesse Steele, did in early February. The most widely-known prediction of Trump’s victory before Jesse Steele’s was from Richard Nixon’s wife, though Mrs. Nixon didn’t make a map.
A few polls got it right. Khali at Trafalgar polling found a way to get the truth from “shy” Trumpist Conservatives who think they can’t tell the truth to pollsters: “Who is your neighbor voting for?” It’s interesting how we tend to think that our neighbors think how we think.
In their ever-shifting opinions and speculations about Trump, so-called “experts” of 20/20 hindsight who park their pedestals among aftermath should cite their more accurate election maps published before February. As usual, if you read it here, you read it here first, at Pacific Daily Times.
The divide in America is between the archetypal city mice and country mice. The country mice need land to make things in factories and grow food on farms; the city mice manage the market’s business on less and more costly land, all the while consuming the fat of the land they rarely visit. Like a saddle and a horse, a saddle helps, but bareback is an option while a saddle ridden on the fence goes nowhere.
The two are naturally polarized and out of touch with each other; they have formed political right and left extremes. The country mice want production and renaissance while the city mice want fashion and manners. Being a “moderate” in the city-country conflict surmounts to mixing coffee with orange juice at breakfast—both are great, but they need different cups.
As for the controversy of the electoral college, it resurfaces in every presidential election as if it has just surfaced for the first time: It’s a newbie voter’s topic. The basic purpose is, in the event of a very close margin of city mice v country mice, the country mice will win because the country can’t function without the rural backbone. This is why a State gets just two extra votes just for being a State, and all that comes with it. This is why Alaska contributed 3 Republican votes, not just 1, and Hawaii and New Hampshire contributed each 4 Democrat votes, not just 2. That said, there have been no certified reports on how much of Clinton’s 260k vote lead came from illegal voting. We do know that Democrats openly object to measures that prevent illegal voting while moderate Republicans claim to oppose illegal voting, with little or no action to back up that claim. The policies, both actual and claimed, of both Democrats and Republicans brought the vote to what it was.
Pro-Lifers should be glad abortion will likely end. That was the biggest and most lasting direct result of this election, which many people have not realized, yet if ever. Perhaps Religious Right Conservative Christian Anti-Trumpist lamenters could learn a thing or two about gratitude from Liberal Democratic Anti-Trumpist protesters. Trump has managed to inspire shared hashtags for these Conservatives and Liberals. They might actually talk to each other now. That could be a longer-lasting, less direct result of this election. The way has been paved for The People’s Party.
The massive protests against Trump are the result of the country’s public education policies since the 1990’s. Students are given a trophy for showing up and recognition of winners and losers in sports is outright persecuted. Nannying and sissifying young people left the generation of first-time voters ill-prepared to deal with loss. While neither Conservative nor Liberal youth have had much experience training them to deal with the emotions of “losing” something, Conservative parents were more likely to prepare them at home for the things that school neglected. If nothing else, Conservative first-time voters had their first eight years of voting to learn to deal with loss; the Democrats did not.
There would have been protests of some kind either way. These protests are more of a “nasty” nature, involving destruction of private property with little legislative result. Had the election gone the other way, riots would have been replaced with larger, more peaceful, and yet more effective protests. Secession petitions would have been legitimate enough to provoke Congress, involve the Supreme Court, and surely military action, citing Clinton corruption and excess executive orders that Trump promised to undo. This election was somewhat of a “deal”: Get back inside the Constitutional boundaries or rip it up; the electors chose to get back inside the lines, for now. California and Texas will secede eventually, but that will require the “don’t get mad, get busy” action of sobriety and will happen only after elections and wars yet to come.
Contrary to some opinions floating around the “media-osphere”, there actually is a Constitutional basis for secession, though not stated directly. The Federal government is obligated to repel invasion, according to original Article IV. If the US is ever invaded, State secession will be as Constitutional as it is inevitable. The topic California brought up implies a warning to US enemies: Invading the United States at home would not be an act of war against one country, but against fifty. While secession is coming, let’s not get too far ahead of ourselves. The president elect still has not taken office, the electoral college has not voted, and the results of many States have not yet been certified by their election authorities. While some things are foreseeable from the vantage point of history, history informs foresight while the two remain separate.
The earthquakes had the final and poetic word after “US election week”: Both sides of the Pacific were shocked and shaken, and, more poetically, the shock in Christchurch started a tsunami.
China had been doing so well. Hong Kong had one of the best democratic systems of representation in the world—allowing a plurality of representatives to be elected in each legislative district. Since the Crown left Hong Kong, the number of newspapers went from three to countless. Hong Kong became a world city, dearly loved from the four corners of the world.
Then, it all changed.
The decline began with a natural sentiment against status quo. That wasn’t enough by itself. China, having possessed Hong Kong for just over 15 years, declared that politicians would be vetted for being pro-China in advance. That was the first clue.
Foreseeable anger was ignited by likely influence from media mogul Jimmy Lia—who to this day captured some of the best photojournalism of protests he likely created. The “Umbrella Movement” started as a face, but was given a name when police used pepper spray, provoking the crowds to respond with umbrellas. The Western media’s influence can’t be ruled out, but neither can many factors.
Latest episodes of the ongoing Hong Kong drama included the recent elections. A few students from the Umbrella Movement protests were running. A number of pro-Independance candidates were not allowed to run after Hong Kong mandated a pro-China affidavit signed in advance—and the election office could decide if the signers were “sincere”. Two Umbrella students seemed to get past the process and were elected, but not allowed to take their oaths. This week, after turmoil, disruption, and well-covered attention from international press, the State-run People’s Daily declares that they should never take their oaths. Beijing will decide next week. Beijing also removed Hong Kong’s minister of finance, Lou Jiwei, 66.
The argument against pro-Independence legislators is rooted in the Basic Law, a kind of Constitution for Hong Kong. The Basic Law states that Hong Kong is part of China. All laws are open to request for review. China and India both did with Britain. But, in this situation, there is no distinction explained as to the right or wrong way Hong Kongers may ask to seceded. It’s all either forced or just not allowed.
Beijing miscalculated. Free people, such as in Hong Kong and much of the West, must be governed and laws must be controlled. Things work reverse of that way in China. Perhaps China’s control of Hong Kong would have gone better had there been a powerful British advisory envoy to help China understand the newly acquired anomaly called Hong Kong SAR. But, the Chinese don’t like to take advice and the British don’t like to give it.
Hong Kong could have been happy without changes. But no one liked status quo, not the people, not even Beijing, and arguably not the Crown. The question remains unanswered: Was it Beijing’s goal to incite Hong Kongers to rise up by vetting people before rather than reviewing laws after? Or, was it the Crown’s goal to allow China to irritate the dragon by not training Beijing how to ride it yet handing over the reigns? Was it all a plot from the Western press who just want to sell newspapers? Or, is it all some alien plot managed from a secret extraterrestrial base on the moon? All possibilities remain equally on the table since we don’t really know what’s actually going on.
It is unlikely that China wanted Hong Kong to break down. It was one of the best things China had going. Hong Kong won’t be the same. Change is coming before China promised and before Britain required, one way or another.
Hong Kong didn’t see the only shuffle in the Western Pacific. Taiwan was booted from Interpol. The guesses as to that hidden hand and its motive are much less vague than guesses about Hong Kong’s.
This was the week of chest-thumping before the election. Mass media make their last-minute poll corrections to make it look “close” so that no matter who wins the media can maintain polling credibility. The FBI has gone Agnostic on Hillary. Comey’s metaphoric beat-up, dead horse resurrected himself to shoot himself in the foot; Comey’s career that he had finished is now finished, finished.
A single mother of six could end up in prison for selling food. How dare she! She put the public at risk, and insulted all the companies that pay big, big money to sell food to three people. It would have been safer to sell State secrets without a license. Hillary’s use of her maid to print classified documents doesn’t speak to her disdain for rules of the “top secret” road as much as it speaks to her attitude of superiority. A maid is “too much beneath” her to matter—you don’t try to keep classified information from your dog. More over, protection of the public good isn’t important either—who cares if the Russians discover secrets of sheep and cattle while the dog was fetching documents for the farm.
As for State secrets and ironies, if the US government really was planning a classified cyberattack against Russia they wouldn’t tell NBC News. Notwithstanding that leaking a story is usually best done with a network that is viewed by the public more than foreign governments, leaking “classified stories of a deterrent in the making” is just another strategy of deterrence. Perhaps such “classified leak story” games confused Hillary. Never believe the TV when it says what one government might be planning against another—especially if they say “might“. That’s just governments using non-diplomatic channels of undiplomatic diplomacy. In the East, they call it “State media control”; in America, Congress publicly called it “Operation Blue Book”. For the record, the story didn’t only air on NBC, it was also picked up by Breitbart, which is banned at Pacific Daily Times for having websites that take too long to load. The Blaze is also banned for this reason.
Note that when NBC and Breitbart break the same story, something is amiss. The actual secret that got out with the “Russia, we’re having our media tell you you’d better not interfere with our election” story is that the US government is very set on making sure that the election happens. We already knew that. Not citing their reason for the extra caution indicates that the problem probably came from within; but, that is historically anecdotal. We don’t know the deep reason the government has been making grunts about ensuring that the election happens two months out. That is the actual secret, proving that classified measures are still functioning. The election will happen. So, most people won’t even notice the efforts to make it happen. They are too busy being obsessed with which candidate they hate.
No one notices the real danger: Paul Ryan, who has managed to go from a failed-attempted second-in-line to a successful third-in-line, all while convincing the public that he opposes the very candidate who will grant his closet Liberal party a super-majority. No one notices, though. The voters are too busy being obsessed with which candidate they hate.
Everything we see in the media looks to be orchestrated. Comey demonstrates the powerful non-decision making of Allen Greenspan. Maybe he wants to be the Chairman of the Fed. WikiLeaks didn’t throw an October Surprise, they threw an October Schedule. The government does interviews in media to help the election succeed? The media finally now reports on Clinton problems that have been known for decades? People need a break from all these scheduled surprises. At this point, it’s best to stop talking about the election, go vote, and then get back to work.
Chinese President Xi has been hailed with a personality cult akin to support for Chairman Mao, at least in some circles. As if the Xi personality cult wasn’t enough, China also saw a bloodless victory in the Philippines. In an effort to seek their own so-called “independence”, Philippinos’ new choice of a president has thrown-off many ties with the US in exchange for more dependency on China. China still patrols disputed Philippine islands, but fishing boats don’t get harassed any more. It probably makes sense in the Philippines every bit as much as it made sense to France and Italy 80 years ago.
The Pacific resembles pre-WWII Europe with more and more likenesses every week. NPR reported that Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte will stop swearing as much. That headline probably made sense to NPR, given the situation. As for swearing and the Pacific, Hong Kong, with no military, is putting up the greatest fight against China. Lawmakers “swore” during their swearing-in, contrary to some stipulations that no Hong Kong lawmaker can object to Chinese rule.
The Philippino “switch” was always going to happen. Their desire for “independence from other countries” will eventually drive them to fly China’s flag above their own, just how China’s desire for respect provoked Beijing to provoke the West, just how “America and her interests” drove the US to fly its flag at military posts in countries across the globe thereby frustrating Beijing and Milan.
With Taiwanese public continuing strong objection to Chinese patrol expansionism (75:18%), with Hong Kong (under China) wanting out from China, with the Philippines shifting sides, and with Cambodia cozying up to Beijing, we could see more jersey swapping in the coming months. Japan and South Korea are standing against North Korea on nukes—by cooperating with the US. That coalition could very easily extend to Taiwan, as far as N Korea nukes are concerned. The islanders of Taiwan oppose nuclear “anything”, just like post-Fukushima Japan.
Taiwan also has a close cooperation with the US military, the kind of cooperation the Philippines just renounced. The Pentagon has yet to give an elaborate position on the Philippines’ wave-making. In war, if the Philippines violates any alliance agreements, the Pentagon could declare the Philippines as “rogue” and get the excuse they need to use force. Who knows what would happen then.
China’s “no-objection” policy for HK lawmakers has given Great Britain whatever excuse the Crown needs to anchor the Royal Navy in Hong Kong, much like Queen Victoria did against China via Taiwan. When Southeast Asian Islands start spitting at each other, Hong Kong could could get snatched-up in a Pacific-West coalition. Having no military could be the only reason Hong Kong can court sympathy from the West. Guarded by mountains between the New Territories and Shenzen, Hong Kong would be strategic. The West would then see Hong Kong as the “trump card” while China would come back with the Philippines as the “wild joker”.
The Philippines and Hong Kong don’t seem to have figured out that every island is just another pawn. The Pacific Daily Times Symphony Editorials take no sides, except the side of foresight: It was all predictable.
The man who failed to get second-in-command, specifically because compromise-to-fail-to-win politics don’t work, has his own career in jeopardy for employing the same politics of compromise—or does he?
While reports come in about voter fraud in Texas, and Snopes.com thinks it is likely “user error”, vote fraud in the General Election is unlikely. Obama is probably sending election observers to ensure a proper election for fear of voter fraud either way tarnishing his precious “legacy”, as if his impossible promises hadn’t already tarnished it before he took office. The real place to suspect voter fraud is for the third-in-line: Ryan, who has every reason to lose for retaining the same old Romney-RINO values.
Trump will win, of course, as Pacific Daily Times Symphony Editorials have been predicting since before Ryan became Speaker. The real outcome to distrust is a Ryan victory. That would seem potatoes too small to do anything about, which is all the more reason it should at least be checked out. Now, that’s all speculative; nothing can be confirmed either way, which is a shame. If Ryan wins, it would bring peace of mind to know that he won fair and square. But, the country will have all eyes on the General.
Megyn Kelly proved Howard Beal right: News business is show business. She continued her own script of Trump’s supposed “war on women”. Newt called her out on adding inflammatory language to describe mere allegations. CNN couldn’t give Fox News enough free advertising via airtime, and the Wall Street Journal was sure to report her salary discussions just up the road. Fox has a new fox and the competition just can’t forget about it.
This October 31, we celebrate two holidays: the mixing of pagan and Christian religions when Rome created the hybrid “All Saints Day” to occupy pagan Celtic-Gaelic festivals in the 9th century, and Luther’s posting of 95 theses to purify that pagan mixing seven centuries later. The Reformations led to a divided, yet revived Europe, paving the way for the Puritans and later the Pilgrims. Like old dogs, those sly foxes keep continuing to continue that mixing of unmixables, which they know only fails. But, once again we meet such a time in history when the people no longer buy the lie. America is achieving her own un-mixing of the Compromise-Conservative hybrid in both politics and the Church.
