Encore of Revival: America, July 23, 2018

The daily morning quest to prove, “Trump really stepped in it this time. Today, it’s all over,” has reached a point of certifiability. Recordings of Trump saying nothing wrong shouldn’t even make news, let alone headlines. And, just the fact that Helsinki happened—not to mention that it won’t be the last Putin-Trump summit—is good news, not bad. But, the anti-Trump press just doesn’t see this.

The larger should-be piece of news with Helsinki would recall Trump’s campaign statement that the US needed to get Edward Snowden back from Russia. But, Snowden didn’t come up, spare a pre-summit article in the Politico. The most likely reason Snowden has fallen down on Trump’s list of priorities is that Snowden blew the whistle on some sloppiness in the NSA. Trump’s original statement against Snowden came about the same time Trump spoke in agreement with then FBI Director James Comey’s desire to have Apple write a backdoor hack for their iPhones, another topic of technology that quietly disappeared. Whatever was going on in the Obama NSA and FBI has probably been fixed and bringing Snowden back into the limelight would show how sloppy inside baseball had gotten. It’s probably best for everyone to just leave it alone.

If the press really wanted to injure Trump, they would have spun Snowden’s situation as some kind of “failure”, but they didn’t. Instead, they are still stuck in their Russianewsgategate conspiracy kookery. By pushing as far as they did this past week, they are truly making themselves irrelevant. This week crossed a new line of crazy for the press.

The most important development this week was not that the queen appointed Charles her successor nor that the new American president met with Russia’s president for the first time nor that Hillary gave a sit-down talk in a moo-moo, but that the press is going insane in public view and doesn’t care. This could shift the balance in the mass media market. Watch for trending changes around the start of August 2018.

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Cadence of Conflict: Asia, July 16, 2018

Global trade has become too congested and inbred. Enemies make vital weapons parts for each other—well, enemies of the US make vital weapons parts for the US, but don’t return the favor. Western companies outsourced to developing markets, then were surprised at workplace hazards, loss in consumer trust, and didn’t seem to anticipate that by sending jobs overseas they were downsizing their own customers.

The borderless fling wasn’t going to last for a myriad of reasons—cultural incohesion being an impossibility for a manufacturing industry in denial, security conflicts of interest being a concern for Western powers. Internationalization is about governments and cultures understanding each other, not forcing cooperation between peoples who haven’t yet learned to gel in the daily routines. Companies like Boeing got themselves too entangled in the scene of borderless manufacturing and are now whining and moaning because the inevitable finally happened. This indicates that their “globalist” action plan wasn’t based in foresight, but delusional hopes.

Globalism is inevitable, but it won’t take the path that the impatient hopefuls dreamed and thereby planned it would. Globalism needs cultural exchange to precede and exceed industrial integration, not vice versa. Boeing through the cart pulled its horse, banked on it, it backfired, and Boeing is now denying blame.

China and Europe, mainly Germany, are headed for the same blend of oil and water. This so-called “trade war” isn’t setting well in China’s market. Chinese people blame their government. That government doesn’t want any misreporting that could even remotely influence the people into thinking that the unrelated trade and stock market could have any kind of direct relationship. The trouble Trump is making for China isn’t demonstrated from rumors of censorship within China or its stock market, but in China’s attempt for yet another foreseeably incohesive relationship with Germany. China is being smart, Germany is not.

China is owed everything by the West, but Germany hasn’t figured this out yet. China doesn’t need to say so because no one tells the obvious. A relationship between China and Germany would rightly favor China, Beijing would have no objection, but Berlin will cry and whine just as much as Boeing, once it all lays flat on the table. And, China will have made the profit.

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Encore of Revival: America, July 16, 2018

Trump is on tour, not without protesters who only know the version of America shown to them through less popular news outlets which, accordingly, need overseas audiences. Usually, good, working people stay home and at work, then vote in elections to change the landscape, while unpopular protesters demonstrate where it only makes non-binding noise. Still, it is good for all Britons to have their opportunity to voice their concerns, even to the leader of another nation.

Protesting and demonstrating are never bad. Once one tries to silence the opposition, such as the SJW movement in America has, tyranny’s way is paved for those same silencers to be silenced on the pendulum’s return.

Trump is neither kowtowing nor blaming in Europe, he is stating conflicts of interest. Take for example Germany’s former president leading a company that will profit from Russia selling gas to Germany, while the US pays the bill to defend Germany from Russia. Something is terribly wrong there. Trump’s repeat word for that seated pre-dinner speech was the word “inappropriate”.

The Helsinki summit between Putin and Trump is overdue. Reagan made peace with his adversaries. Even Gorbachev took a long moment to pause the line while he reflected at the late president’s visitation.

Diplomats behind desks in carpeted offices see negotiations as a way to greedily push for what they want, without concern for the other guy. As a business owner and negotiator, Trump understands that other countries want to help their economies grow and thrive. That will make a world of difference, likely to the world.

At home, the police in America only shoot and kill without a trial when it’s the “bad guys”. But, they seem to be exempt from US military rules of engagement: Do not fire until fired upon. The Chicago police video shows an officer with pistol in hand while revealing a pistol still in the suspect’s belt. This is a difficult situation to judge.

Police want to keep people safe. Carrying a gun without proper training is dangerous, but the government doesn’t offer the Constitutionally required militia training for all citizens. The Second Amendment gives that man a right to carry that gun just as he did, regardless of Chicago’s unconstitutional laws. But, too many Blacks in America vote against the Constitution. Police should be softer in their approach, while their concerns about safety and desire to apprehend “bad guys” are still understandable.

It looks like SCOTUS’s nominee Brett Kavanaugh will be approved by the Senate just as likely as any other. If by slim chance he isn’t approved, the next nominee won’t be any easier to pass through the Senate. Whatever seat is up in the next round of a SCOTUS appointee will likely be more Conservative than Kavanaugh. But, the courts can sort out all of our problems. America really needs the same kind of sit-down that Putin is getting with Trump in Helsinki.

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Cadence of Conflict: Asia, July 2, 2018

NBC reported news of recent months to counter news of recent weeks. It wouldn’t be the first time NBC had a precarious definition of “news”. Intelligence reports about very specific details of possible uranium production were broken as “news” by NBC. Bloomberg and others reported that NBC reported it. Taipei Times reported that Bloomberg reported that NBC reported it. NBC breaking this “older” news made more news than the outdated “news” itself. The whole claim smells smelly. It’s likely a ruse, but we’ll need about two weeks to know with confidence.

Hong Kongers like to protest so often that they are expected to protest annually. This year, protesters claimed a 50k head turnout; Hong Kong police estimated less than 10k, which would be a record low. Surely neither crowd estimate had any bias or motive to distort the numbers.

Remember, Hong Kong students like to protest more than is deserved. China could do better with counter-PR, but not much can be done when dealing with spoiled students. Don’t be roused into hating China by the dwindling spoiled Hong Kongers. Protests are profitable in Hong Kong because they help sell newspapers in a market saturated with so many newspapers that they throw them at pedestrians on the sidewalks. Hong Kong’s biggest problem is complacent Christians.

A more genuine problem of concern is the attention Chinese manufacturers are drawing from Western press coverage of Taiwan court rulings. Taiwan makes about 60% of the world’s computer components. China wants in on the game and people are being prosecuted in Taiwan for stealing company secrets that would go to China. The biggest element of a case is in place: motive.

Most of the so-called “news” about trade wars are the most obvious. Companies are having problems with trade during a trade war. Really? This is considered news these days. Either that, or it is an obvious attempt to skirt the deeper issues behind the China-US trade war for global economy hopefuls hoping to sway public sentiment by reporting what was all foreseeable.

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Encore of Revival: America, July 2, 2018

America is in great peril. A party is looking at winning the midterm right after winning the presidency. This is not normal and it doesn’t matter how “wonderful” the party may seem at the time. Single-party rule is the death of the nation.

Mass shootings, Leftist protests, anger, rage, blame—the Left turns up the volume and the Republican party grows bigger.

The Republican Party is not what anyone thinks it is because the Republican Party isn’t really a thing. This is the party that despised its own president, who is giving them this unusual midterm victory—but then suddenly gets behind him. This is not a party with normal values of conscience, but a party that gauges popular opinion and always arrives at the right conclusion too late—because that party actually has a moral compass quite different from the rest of the country.

Whatever that hidden moral compass is will only be seen after the party gains its supermajority and Trump leaves. From the moment he announced, Trump’s biggest danger was always that he would succeed too well.

Give it ten years to ripen, but we live in the most dangerous time of the nation’s history. Of course, there’s always a chance to wake up and get it done right. But, the nation first needs to see the danger where it lies: in the hidden values of the always “failing” GOP, then to recognize that hope has already been kindled.

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Cadence of Conflict: Asia, June 18, 2018

Trump has stopped military exercises near North Korea, but he has not initiated any plans to withdraw troops. His reason for stopping the exercises is that they are provocative and expensive. He has a point: If the heads of state are talking then we are less in need of fighting practice in a scenario where heads of state are not talking.

The military exercises with South Korea are expensive and provocative, as Trump explains. Frankly, they should stop. With healthy conversations and progress toward peace already behind us, there won’t be a need for those drills any longer. Rehearsal for conflict that might never exist can often provoke the very conflicts we otherwise would not need to prepare for. As for the “expense” defense, few accountants will argue in favor of nickeling and diming away money as fiscally responsible and no one believes that taxpayers’ pockets are infinitely deep except pundits with portfolios in public funding.

The Western news is that Trump is wrong, specifically with regard to China that China wins. According to this week’s Western news narrative, China wins because of troop withdrawals that haven’t happened, because a friend of China will de-nuke, and because over 30k US troops will be free to go home—or go to Taiwan, Mischief Reef, Vietnam, the Philippines, Japan, or any number of other Pacific island-nations China doesn’t get along with.

Economically, China “wins” because manufacturing is leaving China—which must therefore mean that China’s innovation and science is the new source of manufacturing elsewhere. Perhaps that includes innovation and science like the Chinese government now trying to track every car with a chip as of 2019. The “Mad Scientist” theorem of the experimental police state research moving from North Korea to China continues to play out.

Just remember with everything: There’s more going on than anyone can see. Deals between governments are never fully explained to the public. They shouldn’t be. But, as peace develops in one part of the western Pacific, hostilities move around and every pundit seizes opportunity to say, “I was right.” No conflict is without news profiteering.

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