Of course China wanted to “re-negotiate”. Chinese culture, whether in government or business, seeks to sign a contract first, then negotiate the terms after. In America it’s called “reneging”. In China is called “that strange, silly, sign a contract game the Americans require that makes no sense”. Trump has known that since he had his ties made in China, maybe earlier.
Now, the American provocation machine is in full-swing. An executive order banning Huawei and a DOJ prosecution of Chinese hackers—all while planning another meeting in Japan next month—this isn’t failed diplomacy. In the past month, China lobbed one too many objections to US action, thus providing the telemetry the US needed for the final calibrations on the Chinese irritation machine. That machine is up and running and won’t stop. It will keep producing irritation at the speed of a 5G network.
As said last week, the problem of the F-35 was already known because the US was no longer interested in searching. This week, we found out the specifics: a fuel tube. Now, we just need to wait for distribution and replacement to get set up.
Trump knew the Chinese all along, all too well. The “trade war” never risked creating a real war; the “trade war” was a ploy the whole time—part of an elaborate scheme to provoke the Chinese into striking too soon. He says talks are going well with China—he can’t not say that. China is indeed willing to have another talk. Trump announced tariff hikes and they still showed up. That’s not exactly bad on the part of the Chinese.
Trade might never go well, but the talks certainly are for now. When has talk in politics ever looked bad?
But, don’t make the mistake of thinking for even one second that negotiations aren’t going exactly as Washington planned, whether with China or North Korea. The US provoked Japan through trade wars and embargoes leading up to WWII. This isn’t just a strategy, it’s a proven playbook tactic, and China’s irritability is performing right on cue.
As Symphony said previously, the war will start when the US is ready to field-test the F-35 in an actual combat situation that we really need to win. The F-35 was made for this and, like nuclear technology at the end of WWII, if the US doesn’t use its fifth-generation fighter jets before Russia and China perfect theirs, it will have failed its initial purpose. Japan is ready to buy the worlds largest non-US fifth-generation F-35 fleet. They want the Marines’ vertical take-off model for their helicopter carriers. Perhaps those carriers also had a purpose all along.
Talk isn’t deteriorating, not with China anyway, but trade suddenly is. That’s because the F-35 is ready to make its entrance onto the world’s stage. Taiwan’s election could prove to be a convenient lynch pin.
Businessmen are the presidential trend. Foxconn Chair and Founder Terry Gou is running under the KMT, a political party whose platform is “Chinese-Taiwan re-unification”, yet he demands that China recognize Taiwan’s history of de facto existence; China never will. Moving some production from among Foxconn’s twelve factories in China back to Taiwan in Kaohsiung shows that his loyalties don’t reside in Beijing nor in Nanjing as KMT old-hats still pine for. He’s also beefing up supply in Houston, Indianapolis, and Mexico, atop his newest plant in Wisconsin. That will make the US less dependent on China and better ready for war. As an accomplished businessman, Terry will tear up the inexperienced populist Mayor Han of Kaohsiung in the primaries. After all, he brought jobs back to Kaohsiung.
Even if Gou loses primary or presidency, his campaign rhetoric, though less unacceptable to China than others, could force all other viable candidates to sympathize with Taiwan independence, if that proves to be the only electable platform. That’s more than likely. Equally likely, China will see no way to “talk” its way toward absorbing Taiwan. Talk would thus breakdown and “the military option” would be the trigger in the gas tank known as the South Sea. Then, F-35 moves to centerstage.
Trump says China has one month. If we make it that long, then China would be stupider than we thought because the F-35s would have more time to fuel up.
Thinking about the Russianewsgategate scandal like an addictive drug explains everything. It provides a kind of fix to both sides of divided America. Mueller’s report is the latest dose.
To the Right, it proves how fraudulent and one-sided the attacks on Trump were because there has been more justification for the near identical investigations into the Clintons since the 1990s. That energizes the Right to talk, persuade friends, and vote for Trump. And, the fact that Mueller failed to provide an indictment will draw some voters from the Left to the Right. To the persistent Left, the report contains enough “hopes of Easter eggs” that they can wake up yet another day thinking “this will be the day” when someone finds the “silver bullet” to get Trump impeached. And, of course, every Leftist reporter thinks, “I’ll be the one to find and break the story.”
The whole Mueller investigation, even the report, indicates that there never was any intention to act against Trump—not from Mueller, anyway. Rather, the purpose from the beginning was to toss doggy treats to both packs of the feuding dog pound. Even some fringe politicians will clean up the scraps by running this election. Failing in one election after another can be a well-paying job, if one loses with valor. When the voters get depressed, they always have a dose of Mueller to give them enough of a high to keep them amused and tranquilized while not a single thing changes in Washington.
Tiger Woods made a dramatic comeback that will give inspiration and hope to many people around the world. Life isn’t perfect nor are the people who live it. But, that doesn’t mean we should give up. Happy Easter!
With the last of Symphony’s saboteur suspects being expelled from the Trump administration, establishment Republicans have their undies in a bunch. Their objections indicate two main motives. Toward the surface, they still think Trump’s decisions are based on calculation of “election strategery” rather than made by an administrator who wants certain things done a certain way. But, on a deeper level, they don’t want their stable, “established” world being unraveled by anyone, outsider or not. But then, there is a third, less apparent layer, more sinister—a question of whether they knew about the saboteurs and wanted them to stay there. Publicized opposition to the president of their own party certainly proves the kind of character that would undermine their own party’s president by any means.
Now that Russianewsgategate nonsense is being seen for the yesterday’s yesterday’s tabloid newspaper it always was, the media machine is gearing up to save face: Goldman Sachs thinks Trump might be re-electable. The Left doesn’t get it. The most important two things to understand about Donald Trump is that from the time he announced his candidacy, 1. he was always going to be elected and 2. he was always going to be re-elected. Those two things aren’t obvious to people who don’t understand Donald Trump.
Democratically-controlled “sanctuary cities” have been working, as they purport, to be a safe haven for immigrants. The kinds of immigrants they seek to protect, as they purport, will be helpful to their communities and to the nation. Now, they have a splendid and long-hoped-for hope of seeing their hard efforts pay off. They will be the beneficiaries of thousands of exactly the kinds of, as they purport, good people they have been standing up to defend. Yet, they found a way to be angry.
If the Trump administration were to send immigrants to the very cities hoping to be sanctuaries for them, wouldn’t that be a good thing? One would think so, unless sanctuary city laws were known to be designed to create problems. By objecting to getting what they wanted, Democrats imply that they know something that they purport everyone else doesn’t. Is there something wrong about sanctuary city laws that their Democratic leaders aren’t telling us?
The rest of America—the “fly-over” counties, the rural areas that the Democratic cosmopolitans turn their noses up at, the Conservatives who grow everyone’s food and cling to their “guns and religion”—they were suspicious about sanctuary city laws. They thought it might be a bad idea. If the Conservatives were right, then sending the invited immigrants to the party that invited them could create a breakdown of law, paving the way for the Federal Government to declare martial law and deal with sanctuary city policy makers that way.
Just imagine: Trump-controlled Democratic cities—and it all would have been made possible by Democrats. But, that’s assuming that the Conservatives were right. We’ll see.
The message from the EU is clear: “Join us so if you leave we can make you suffer for it.” Now, Italy cozies up to China?
Boeing tried to mount too big an engine on too small a plane because the engine used less fuel. This changed the plane’s aerodynamic personality; software was their solution. But, with software come bugs. So, Boeing had a warning light option if the software got too buggy. Ethiopian and Lion Air chose not to spend the $80k extra for the warning light. That cost Boeing about $40B in stock value. Now, we see that the FAA had turned a half-blind eye.
But, many other warnings have been ignored. America is polarizing. The only things deeper than the deep pockets of the US Treasury are the Left’s demands for spending. Senate Democrats silently watched the “Green New Deal” go down in flames. Cities may follow. When the going gets tough, the Right gets working while the Left gets burning hot mad.
Immigration is broken, not just in America, but everywhere. We need a proper on-ramp for good foreigners to enter any country. But, vitriol doesn’t make reforms. There is a difference between vitriol and a “tantrump”. Trump has achieved far more in two years than Obama did in eight. Still the Left stays vitriolic. That’s their only strategy, it seems.
The Left doesn’t want the Right to survive. The Right wants everyone to have the room to work and thrive. Neither will back down.
It’s not enough that contraceptives be covered in the government-mandated plan; the nuns must conform. It’s not enough you be sensitive to the effect of your words and language; you must be punished for saying or thinking the wrong thing. It’s not enough that gay marriage is legal; you must be forced to bake the cake. It won’t do that attention be paid to scientific arguments on the environment; America must upend itself with green new deals or be judged not to care about children.
Yes, America is polarizing more than ever before. Who wins? We’ll see.
The twelve Senators who voted to continue the mess at the border included the soon-to-be notorious “three amigos”—Paul, Romney, and Rubio. The other Senator from Utah, Mike Lee, also voted with Mitt. Of the other eight, two are up for re-election in 2020—Lamar Alexander of Tennessee and Susan Collins of Maine. It will be interesting to see if they get re-elected.
Opposition to Trump only makes him stronger—and the office of the president along with him. Once again, it seems Democrats and “never-Trump” Republicans, like the three amigos, are part of some conspiracy too obvious to recognize. Even the Mueller fiasco helps Trump amass his army of voters.
Congressional Democrats want to make the Mueller situation partially public by making Mueller’s report public—while keeping silent the dark beginnings of the “Russianewsgategate” scandal that started it all. Mueller’s so-called “investigation” is more akin to something between a chicken randomly running circles with its head cut off and a headless horseman—maybe more of a headless horseman riding a headless chicken. The so-called “investigation’s” new nickname could be “the headless chickenman.”
Senator Lindsey “Grahamnesty” sure is coming out of his shell! He was formerly known as the senator who got along. But, ever since the Kavanaugh witch trial in the Senate, something in Senator Graham seems to have snapped—and it isn’t unsnapping. He was most outspoken in blocking the biased release of Mueller’s “headless chickenman” report.
Now, the State of Washington thinks that a State can over-ride the Constitutional requirements for Federal elections. Here we go…
