China is in trouble. We don’t know why, but we know the indication: Trump will be absent from ASEAN. He was absent from a funeral this week and his support grew. He was absent from a Republican debate, then he won the Republican nomination. By not meeting Xi face to face, Xi won’t be able to read his emotions. No one knows exactly what Trump has planned, only that he’s spending a lot of time on the golf course—a luxury banned by China’s Communist Party—a luxury that just so happens to be Trump’s favorite place to mull things over and get new ideas.
In the rainy season of August, Taiwan enjoyed almost three weeks of cloud cover. Whatever went on in Taiwan, it was difficult to see from above, and China never likes not being able to see from above. There’s nothing like a little conveniently bad weather to irritate the away team. But, that wasn’t the end.
The US is looking at a contingency of Marines to defend its unofficial embassy in Taipei and a former chief suggests simulating attacks on China’s Soviet made, diesel powered aircraft carrier, the Liaoning, if it gets close enough to Taiwan. Such a statement is purely provocative and no chief, former or sitting, would make such provocation without sitting in counsel. This all compares to the Scottish flashing each other before a battle of the kilts. This week, the Taipei Times published numerous insulting and blatantly disrespectful stories from Taiwanese politics, spitting at China. Taiwan wouldn’t do without backing.
It’s all seen in his funeral. John McCain’s death, more and more, seems destined to symbolize the death of the Washington “establishment”. Put less friendlily, the death of McCain was the death of the swamp. More respectfully, and how things out to be, we mourn the loss of a senator while we move on with our convictions.
The Trump electorate, finally gaining the cooperation of the GOP, is proving more and more to be a valid and clear and enduring majority. They wanted Obama’s health care law repealed; only McCain—from their own political party—stopped them. They wanted to be descent and quiet at the funeral of the man who despised them. John McCain found Sarah Palin, then put her on a leash. She respected him and only spoke respectfully of him, then he put a muzzle on her. Now, he’s dead and she continues to respect him in her silence. Meghan McCain had a right to say whatever she wanted and her words agreed with her father’s sentiment; Trumpists didn’t like her words, but she stayed right on topic. Thank you Meghan. Trump would not attend, but his daughter did, a most appropriate discretion. Trump had more respect in his absence than in Obama’s venomous distraction toward the man who would not crash a funeral. Bush and Biden gave good and respectful speeches, celebrating and mourning him.
The Trump electorate lives on and they are growing in number. Now, with Kevin McCarthy calling an inquisition into the Silicon Valley tech giants, who have harassed the controlling votership for two years, Republicans are moving away from the maverick-moderate tactics of McCain—which did work in his day. Insulting and muffling public expression, including the Declaration of Independence, was a foolish error. If their defense is true—that they “didn’t know”—then they should have at least studied the electorate rather than despised it and known their own history well enough not to flag key words from our nation’s heritage. At least, Silicon Valley is guilty of not caring enough about what they should. They are already paying a punishment through the markets. Now, they will answer to Congress.
McCarthy’s move will energize the base—the one thing that the losing moderates of 2014 feared—the one thing that helps Republicans win elections. The Republican base is energized and we are now no longer looking at a possible and unusual midterm victory for Republicans; we are now looking at a likely and unusual midterm victory for Republicans.
What happened to Omarosa is normal, it doesn’t matter, and it’s a darn shame that it’s normal and doesn’t matter. Bureaucratic America permeates every institution, from universities to small Christian congregations to telecommunications companies, even to the White House. They run people around, play dirty tricks, mistreat people of all skin tones, and now it’s coming back to bite them in the hiney.
Omarosa herself is now under the microscope, which lets us see the shameful sham of why her story doesn’t matter. It’s just too normal. Bureaucracy doesn’t attack everyone, but it sure does have its favorites. She seems to be one of them. Chuck Todd kept asking how and why she knew to record her meeting with White House Chief of Staff John Kelly. It’s unbelievable for most people, except for bureaucracy’s favorite people to bash. After a while bureaucracy victims get a nose for smelling the rigmarole around the corner. And, they have a knack for attracting trouble, if for no other reason than that bureaucracy doesn’t like bloodhounds sniffing them down.
Here’s how the archetypal scenario could likely play out—not how it actually did, but how it could have if bureaucracy behaves like bureaucracy…
Trump knows that worms in the White House are always trying to control him by controlling the information that gets to him. So, he asks Omarosa to get certain articles for him, going around his bureaucracy. Smelling trouble, she may have taken steps to protect herself, just as she did in recording the conversation, just as she did with giving her loves ones copies of the reported recording of Trump using the “N” word as a precaution just “in case she’s rubbed out” (Esquire). That kind of preemptive-precautionary habit might have led her to violate some rules in the White House, though she would have been acting in defense, not hostility. John Kelly, like the classic bureaucrat he comes across as in the recording, wouldn’t have been out of character to “trump” up, as it were, his firing case against Omarosa, though he wouldn’t have been entirely unjustified either. She was likely a loose canon, which was why Trump wanted her there in the first place, and John Kelly arrived to tie down loose canons. Trump later told her that he “delegated” because he really did delegate. Trump wouldn’t fire the lady himself since he adores her too much—this happens with many administrators because no one likes to fire friends. And, no one likes it when your good friend, the President, lets his chief fire you because you got too cautious on someone else’s watch. Feelings are hurt, it wasn’t meant to be personal, but it was personal. Now, hell hath no fury like a woman scorned.
…That’s an archetypal speculation of how things may have gone down the hill.
Trump kept things chaotic on purpose so that an old boys’ club couldn’t keep him a prisoner of fame. This was the story on the street when Reince Priebus left. The Left praised John Kelly as the one possible man who might be able to control Trump. When he was first hired, Kelly was hailed by the Left as the savior. Now, when he does what the Left praised him for, it’s all Trump’s fault.
The words Kelly spoke were shamefully typical and ordinary in bureaucratic America, but they don’t make him especially evil. Many, many pastors have been “fretired” through the same conversation in the back office. Coming from the White House raises the stakes, but other than that, the conversation seemed all too typical.
As for the “N” word, one statement doesn’t define a person. It can be sad. But, everyone has said foolish things that they didn’t mean, whether in stupidity or anger. No president will ever be an exception. In the minds of Trumpists, who only grow their numbers, discovering proof that a human is human is no longer a fireable offense.
Omarosa was a way for Trump to get around his own gatekeeper. If Trump doesn’t hire Omarosa back, Kelly could end up “resigning” in the coming months.
The wisest action would be for Trump to have a one-on-one with Omarosa, apologize on a personal level for his own bureaucracy—which every institution in America has, shamefully—, hire her back so that only he has the power to fire her, also keep Kelly on to keep doing his job, and encourage her that she won’t need to guard herself with more recordings and possible “ethics” violations anymore.
And, if he did use the “N” word, he should also say to the country, “Yeah, I did. I was an idiot, really sorry to everyone. Don’t follow my bad example. Let’s all be better and move one.”
It’s fair to guess by now, as a kid, Trump might have learned to tell “white lies” to cover up things that might be personally embarrassing. Such is a high-energy culture in many parts and classes of the world. Energetic people from all walks of life might not even remember what they had for breakfast and instinctively say, “I did not pick my nose,” when caught picking their noses on camera. And, so what!?
That’s the relevant question: So what? So what if Donnie was caught picking his nose? So what if he lies in denying it? Good people don’t care about picking noses or lying about picking noses; those who do care are petty. Stupid accusations get stupid defenses. This is how the public will respond to the purported “admission” that some meeting with Russians was about Hillary. It wasn’t about illegally rigging vote count, which is more than can be said for some precincts, which Mueller is not investigating.
The latest news feeds from every morning always have the Leftist media hopeful that “this will be the news break that brings down Trump”—and it never does. The AP story this time even has a picture of Trump waving at a Morristown, NJ airport as if it’s “goodbye”. It’s not goodbye at all.
The media and Left think that Americans listen to news to be told what to think. So, when Conservatives listen and read about opinions to inspire their own ideas, the Leftist media presumes that they are minions being told what to think and do. But, the majority of Americans are not minions being told what to think. And, the Christians didn’t become Christians by letting the Leftist media try to tell them what to think nor will Christians take orders from the Leftist media on where lies fit within Christian morals—morals which the Leftist media hates anyway. And, they certainly won’t decide to unelect Trump just because he might be a “white liar” who covers up embarrassing blunders that they don’t care about anyway.
Left-leaning voters already have their minds made up. So, the bombardment of the Leftist media tolling Trump has no hope of removing Trump from office, but only to throw the ordinary American who votes Democratic into a frenzy. The best thing is to just ignore the gossip and stop caring about what everyone says about what Donnie says he did or didn’t do.
But danit, everyone should learn from the Christians: Truth sets us free. Hit back with the bold truth and watch the truth do the rest for you.
Days after Trump meets with Putin and doesn’t mention Snowden, the NSA finds “many issues of non-compliance” in handling data, which was part of Snowden’s initial concern. It seems that a way may already be finding its way for Snowden to return to the US in relative peace.
Just after the worldwide worry machine was all in a tizzy about trade wars with the EU, the US and EU have almost all their issues resolved and are working to make things much better than they were before.
The “bug” in Putin’s soccer ball is part of an app device from Adidas, not a surveillance device from Russia’s FSB.
The “made in China” Trump products either 1. go back to the pre-presidential campaign Trump business in which Trump learned about China up close and personal as a trader himself or 2. are unaffiliated knock-off products made in China to resemble actual Trump campaign products, but Bernie Sanders doesn’t know the difference between the real and the knock-off.
Now, the Leftist press is going after SCOTUS nominee Kavanaugh’s wife. There is a gross hypocrisy here since the Leftist press didn’t go digging through the correspondence of Clinton’s mistresses. When Congress did hold an inquiry about Bill’s love life through Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr, the Leftist press jumped to write it off as “personal”. It doesn’t seem personal anymore, or is it getting too personal?
The reason for going after Kavanaugh’s wife is lack of evidence against Kavanaugh. This goes beyond “grasping at straws”. The implosion of the press reached a new public demonstration of insanity this week, so the weeks to come are only likely to get more entertaining.
Central planning has only so much room for slight of hand tricks to keep up its sleeve. When the going gets tough, everyone goes home. For China, that means devaluing its currency, a complaint Trump has long lobbed against the trade giant.
Maintaining good relations with Apple and almost achieving the manufacturing capability long held by Samsung is quite the accomplishment for the Chinese. Good job. Everyone owes them a hand. China’s BOE company hopes to be able to start manufacturing the flexible, “organic” LED displays by 2020.
Devaluing currency as a response to trade tariffs from the US, however, is likely to make those tariffs higher, considering that devaluation of its own currency was one reason Trump argued for tariffs before his election. This, and turning to Africa, means that the international bite is felt. Silicon Valley also has its eyes on Africa, meaning that Apple and China may meet again in Africa, as well as Google. But, doing more of the same things that initiated tariffs is likely to cause more tariffs than tariff problems it alleviates.
China has a hard set of choices ahead and as those choices narrow, the tiger will feel more and more like its been backed against a corner. This path doesn’t endure entirely peacefully.
