Chinese rhetoric spiked over recent weeks. They made threats. Trump made threats. They made more threats. Trump and Xi are BFF, just like Xi and Putin, but Xi and Putin are BFF-er. Now, we move toward quiet action. If China stops exporting “rare earth metals” to the US, the US would simply get them from somewhere else. “Rare” means many countries can get them, but few actually do because China does it so much.
The US is selling several tanks and tank-buster rockets to Taiwan. Beijing isn’t happy—about the $2 Billion in weapons sales to Taiwan, but also because of the people who publicly express memory of what happened 30 years ago at Tienanmen Square.
Around the time Taiwan’s primaries finish, the US launches its first Ford-class carrier in October, larger than a Nimitz. It still has a year of training and won’t be commissioned until 2022.
The confirmation of Brett Kavanaugh opens a new problem for Conservatives: supermajority. Any unchecked party is dangerous. Breyer and Ginsberg are aging. If one of them resigns or passes within the foreseeable election future, the Supreme Court would be packed with Conservative, Republican judges. Justice Kennedy had been a swing vote, a kind of wild card on the court. That time is gone. We live in a new era of a truly Republican court.
The path leading the country to this Republican control, however, was too bumpy to make Republican voters lazy. Had Democrats played friendly and kind, the coming wrath of the Republican voter wouldn’t have become so big as we will see in November. With polls being reported as hopeful for Democrats, we could see even more Republicans provoked to vote in 2018 than in 2016. It almost seems as if Democrats and the media are in some kind of secret cooperation to push Republican voters.
With the economy clipping along and so many kept promises from Trump, who has a 50% job approval rating, Republican progress looks likely. There are many states reportedly in play, but that amounts to 44 Senate seats secure for Democrats and 48 secure for Republicans. The reported tossup is a steeper climb for Democrats than Republicans and, with the Kavanaugh turbulence, Republican voters won’t be staying home.
In the minds of Democrat voters, a strong Republican court makes them paranoid that Republican police could come to their homes any minute now and burn them alive for flying rainbow flags. This kind of hysteria has been cultivated by Democratic propaganda, though never stated directly, being intended to get Democratic votes, though its effects will be dangerous when those votes aren’t enough to win elections.
Republican strategy went correctly. By confirming Kavanaugh, Republicans acted like Republicans, which always brings out the Republican vote. Loss has always brought out Democratic demonstration. While we may be looking at an unusual mid-term victory for the president’s party next month, we could also be looking at riots soon after. And, in America just as we see in the swelling #WalkAway movement, the aftermath of riots leads to one thing: repentance.
It’s hitting the fan. China is homing-up and the US is “posseing” up. CFIUS is expanding its scope and China just required Apple to send its iCloud encryption keys to servers on the mainland. Both moves are more about caution than provocation. The US is stepping up patrols to enforce the trade block on North Korea. China just started the process of amending its Constitution to remove terms limits on its President.
The change to China’s Constitution is often mis-portrayed. It affects both the President and Vice President. It does not install a President for life, but simply allows it. More importantly, the Constitution is being updated to include the “Xi Thought”, mainly that all ethic groups of China are equal and that helping the entire world is part of China’s responsibility.
Many in the West will jump to presume Xi is making a grab for power. While it does increase his power, the more accurate interpretation is that Xi’s plans go for the long term, specifically after Trump’s term. Without this change, Xi would leave office by 2023. China is thinking in terms of long-term, global strategy. That’s hardly a “grab”, but more of a “waltz”.
This is a significant change. Both the US and China clearly mean business. With a shift toward the long-term, and with China publishing its view that the whole world is part of its responsibility, we are in a different political atmosphere than in years past.
Eagles are attacking drones in Australia. Maybe they don’t like “terrible horrible no good very bad drones” in Australia. So far, North American eagles don’t seem interested… so far.
Several ratings are up: presidential polls, the Dow Jones, Hannity at 9 P.M., and an opposition senator in Alabama. NFL ratings, however, seem to be in severe decline. According to recent stats, the league’s popularity fell by about half in the general public, but by more than half among Trump supporters.
The “kneeling players” don’t seem to understand what they have gotten themselves into. They are not “bad” people. NFL dissidents do not generally begrudge the kneeling players as much as they begrudge the league. The nation is lucky that the US does not have a current formal declaration of war, lest protesting the US on foreign soil, namely Britain, be a “treasonous” offense. The players probably do not know that they are protesting the entire nation by not standing during a national anthem, nor about the legal meaning of protesting a nation’s flag while in another nation.
Walter Williams says that the problem goes back to education. While he focuses on Blacks having been, more or less, “nannied” too much, education around the country has declined. Racism should be discussed. Most Whites agree. Whether this person or that person said, “Hands up, don’t shoot,” is a technical question of fact, not any view of the importance of the ongoing problem of racism. But, the American public has not been educated to know the difference. For more and more Americans, to deny “hands up don’t shoot” in a specific situation means to deny that there is any issue of racism at all. Nothing could be farther from the truth. But, many people just don’t know the difference. That is a failure in public education.
The NFL players should be educated about the meaning of their actions. They are genuinely asking for something good. Doing it in the wrong way was not their intent, but it was the wrong way. The responsibility belongs to the NFL. But, the league has allowed itself to get too involved in politics and not done enough to prevent controversy driven by confusion, the kneeling players being only the latest in a long slew of grievances with their viewer base.
There is opportunity for deep change in America, especially with the NFL. The league could get back to football and stop playing “politics”. The players could be given a microphone and offered an alternate way to express their legitimate concerns. The country could clarify the truth about progress and “adaptive infections” where racism is concerned. Maybe the crisis in the NFL will initiate much needed conversation in America about many things, including thankfulness for a nation where those discussions can be held honestly. Whether the league chooses to save itself, however, is another question altogether.
After the rains, flowers in the Southwest are in full bloom. One highlight is purple, the color for The People’s Party. As for the east coast, things are frozen, both in weather and in politics. Lowering taxes could take time. Getting health care laws to lower health care prices and unshackle employers could take more time. The leading political party’s interests are divided and their opposition has no tactic beneath them. Democrats are filibustering every political appointee as Obama appointees persist; Trump fired 46 Obama-appointed prosecutors. Of course, opposition filibusters and firing federal prosecutors for any new, incoming president are both standard practice. Conservatives expected as much and don’t demonstrate any shock, yet Liberals usually think their loss deserves exception. Everything suggests that Republicans will gain ground in the Senate come 2018, thanks to the Democrats refusal on cloture. Therein lies the real danger: supermajority.
A group of professors had a wild idea: What if Trump had been a woman and Hillary had been a man? Surely that would have flipped election results. Actually, after a carefully-rehearsed reenactment of the presidential debates by one skilled actor and one skilled actress, Liberal supporters were in for another surprise. Hillary supporters adored Trump’s words when they came from a woman and hated Hillary’s words when they came from a man. After learning the truth, they didn’t change their political preferences, of course.
People rarely change their opinions, given new information, no matter what political party they are from. While Conservatives will tout the results of this little theatrical-political experiment, they reacted with much of the same blindness over news about Bush family dealings. Note, the term “Trump dissident” is important in describing this presidential term. Most of the people who voted for Hillary didn’t like her, supported Bernie Sanders, and liked Trump least of all, to say the least.
Hillary’s team met with the Russians before the election, according to the Kremlin. That will make the upcoming hearings even more interesting. The game of chairs keeps revolving. No political victory is final. No enemy is ultimate. And no pettiness evades anyone.
The Obama administration finally creates a “cease fire”, and within weeks the other side has a strong case made for new war crimes. Omitting other examples of oxymoronic results, it is every bit as true that Obama is the number one reason Trump will win 2016 as W Bush was the number one reason Obama won 2008. As with Clinton v HW, and W v Clinton, winning presidents have pit their campaigns against the lame duck for the last 28 years.
As for the irony of Tulsa v Charlotte—why one city prayed while the other was invaded by outside rioters—there is too much going on behind the scenes for any easy explanation. To claim Soros’s funding of outsiders’ protesting is a drastic understatement. Newspapers profit more from hate than peace. Justice and press-release protocol is always too sluggish. Too many cops would rather study donut menus than smart practice—but, not the good ones, of course! White guys say, “Just follow police directions,” to people whose skin they’ve never tried on. Black guys say, “I can’t follow police directions perfectly enough when we’re both scared out of our boots!” Perps feign injury by definition; no one knows who to blame.
Obama has had 8 years of speeches to resolve conflict into peace, but instead—intentionally or incompetently, but no less narcissistically—he kept talking while he kept losing, and thus rolled out another red carpet for the pending Trump victory. It’s almost enough to make one believe in trans-presidential conspiracy. Between HW, Bill, W, Barry, and Trump—there we have a all star lineup. But, who knows and who cares!?
Most of the real news gets unreported anyway. This week’s Syrian atrocity happened to make headlines. But, Russia could not be nominated as a war criminal if ISIS—the dominant sprawling force in Syria—didn’t exist in the first place. The players going home before the clock ran out, leaving behind tanks and trucks and whatever weapons still in the bubble-wrap for “whomever” to come along and prize… Who made that call? And, who started in the first place? ISIS was Obama’s score with the Bush family assist, and the man who objected from the beginning, now sporting two assists from the Clinton family, is about to defeat them both and become the next decision-maker. Putin has been on the court longer than any of them. No wonder cigarettes and painkillers are in a dead heat.
If we find favor upstairs, our Texan will get to play longer than even Putin. Cruz finally came around. Trump may give him SCOTUS, not for making an endorsement late or early, but for Cruz being so evidently conscientious. America’s memory of conscience is long overdue.
