This is a very clever spoof: Gilbert and Sullivan and Trump https://youtu.be/k-LTRwZb35A
And:
This is an important speech by our Sec. of State for several reasons:
First, it re-emphasized America's adherence to those who seek freedom, Trump cares about civil rights as a component part of our foreign policy and our open and un-apologetic support of those who seek freedom. Amb. Haley has a strong partner in Pompeo.
Second, it reveals we know a great deal about what is going on in Iran and that sends a positive message of hope to Iranians unlike Obama's feckless act of failing to support them when they took to the streets.
Right click then click on the link to hear Sec. Pompeo: https://youtu.be/4MmuUpAngD
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Meanwhile, I am working hard at losing weight. So far down 20 pounds and looking at dropping another 10 at least. I decided it would be unfair to my pall bearers to keep on gaining weight - might ruin their tennis arm.
I Don't Look Good Anymore
And:
We always can use a good laugh: The Dentist
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Kim told me she was on her way to interview Devin Nunes and this is her report. (See 1 below.)
And:
Kim comes us with a sequel to her book on Democrat intimidation tactics. The perfection of "identity politics" is one of the most corrosive and most dangerous facts of political life in America today.
If you have nothing on the candidate, smear and intimidate their backers That is "Rascal McCaskill's" strategy. (See 1a and 1b below.)
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Europeans deny Trump's assessment of the trade negotiations . I suspect Trump is overstating his "trade victory" but Europeans are probably also over-denying the fact that they too gave in the trade negotiations in order to bring future impositions of tariffs to a halt.
Meanwhile, China, which has the greatest need to end the trade confrontation because it has the most to lose, is losing.
The trade confrontations Trump began require American toughness to endure the temporary pain for the potential long term benefits but if the American victims cannot endure the pain then Trump will lose and they will as well. The $12 billion allocated to agriculture is Trump's attempt to shore farmers up through this challenging transition period. Can/will Congress allow it to work as they face a mid-year election cycle is the next question? China's leadership is wily and knows how to exploit Trump's vulnerabilities. Will American Yankee toughness prevail. I have serious questions because Americans today are not the Americans of yesteryear.(See 2 below.)
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I have been a southerner all my life and there was a long period when white politicians, running for governor's in Alabama and Georgia, were all we had to choose from and they were not only racially biased but also corrupt and incompetent. Lester Maddox, in Georgia, actually was a competent governor but never could shake his "pick ax" image.
Then, in Georgia, we began to break out of the mold and had governors like Carl Sanders , Zell Miller who understood the need to have better education etc..
Now we have our first black woman running for governor and from everything I read , hear and am told she is another Cynthia McKinney type who happened to gradate from Yale.
Democrats see in Adam's candidacy the opportunity to break the Republican hold on the South and are prepared to pour millions into her campaign. Her Republican opposition is being portrayed as taking us back to the "Pick Ax Days" in order to take the focus away from Adam's own extremist radicalism.
I am posting a NYT's article about the governor's race in Georgia. The writers attribute the racial divide to Trump when , in fact, today's racial cleavage was begun by Obama whose deep seated antipathy towards whites oozed out of his pores time and again. I take you back to the arrest of the Black Harvard Professor, to his apology for America in Egypt because of our "colonialist" history. Then we have the attacks on the police and his various knee jerk responses and thus the stage he set for where we now are - a wider racial divide than when he took office.
Georgia, because of Atlanta, has come out of the shadows of its former self and blossomed. Black and white have enjoyed the progress under our governors as our state has boomed in virtually all social/economic categories. Do not forget this all has happened under a string of white governors when you go to vote.
(Again I encourage you to read this article by an elegant black female professor I posted in my previous memo entitled: "Enough with the Victimhood: Millionaire Athletes and Their Lost Cause; finally someone pointing out the true culprits behind this nonsense! by Sylvia Thompson." (See 3 below.)
The bottom line of all of this is until black candidates prove to be better than white candidates we are left with little choice by way of improving the current scene. Birmingham, Detroit, even New York and a host of other cities and states have experienced what it is to be led by corrupt and incompetent black politicians and the results were tragic for all.
I vote for the person not the color and I long for the opportunity to vote for a qualified person but far too many of our elections leave me with the best of the worst and so it goes. (See 3a below.)
And then:
A tongue in cheek article giving us the historical 'factual"basis for the distinctions between liberals and conservatives. (See 3a below.)
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John Fund's associate has written an interesting op ed that seems to be overlooked regarding major State Department Security Breaches. https://www.dailysignal.com/
ecurity-breach-that-everyone-
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Dick
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1) Devin Nunes, Washington’s Public Enemy No. 1
It’s 105 degrees as I stand with Rep. Devin Nunes on his family’s dairy farm. Mr. Nunes has been feeling even more heat in Washington, where as chairman of the House Select Committee on Intelligence he has labored to unearth the truth about the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s activities during and after the 2016 presidential campaign. Thanks in large part to his work, we now know that the FBI used informants against Donald Trump’s campaign, that it obtained surveillance warrants based on opposition research conducted for Hillary Clinton’s campaign, and that after the election Obama administration officials “unmasked” and monitored the incoming team.
Dick
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1) Devin Nunes, Washington’s Public Enemy No. 1
What did the FBI do in the 2016 campaign? The head of the House inquiry on what he has found—and questions still unanswered.
By Kim Strassel
Mr. Nunes’s efforts have provoked extraordinary partisan and institutional fury in Washington—across the aisle, in the FBI and other law-enforcement and intelligence agencies, in the media. “On any given day there are dozens of attacks, each one wilder in its claims,” he says. Why does he keep at it? “First of all, because it’s my job. This is a basic congressional investigation, and we follow the facts,” he says. The “bigger picture,” he adds, is that in “a lot of the bad and problematic countries” that Intelligence Committee members investigate, “this is what they do there. There is a political party that controls the intelligence agencies, controls the media, all to ensure that party stays in power. If we get to that here, we no longer have a functioning republic. We can’t let that happen.”
Mr. Nunes, 44, was elected to Congress in 2002 from Central California. He joined the Intelligence Committee in 2011 and delved into the statutes, standards and norms that underpin U.S. spying. That taught him to look for “red flags,” information or events that don’t feel right and indicate a deeper problem. He noticed some soon after the 2016 election.
ILLUSTRATION: KEN FALLIN
The first: Immediately after joining the Trump transition team, Mr. Nunes faced an onslaught of left-wing claims that he might be in cahoots with Vladimir Putin. It started on social media, though within months outlets such as MSNBC were openly asking if he was a “Russian agent.” “I’ve been a Russia hawk going way back,” he says. “I was the one who only six months earlier had called the Obama administration’s failure to understand Putin’s plans and intentions the largest intelligence failure since 9/11. So these attacks, surreal—big red flag.”
Mr. Nunes would later come to believe the accusations marked the beginning of a deliberate campaign by Obama officials and the intelligence community to discredit him and sideline him from any oversight effort. “This was November. We, Republicans, still didn’t know about the FBI’s Trump investigation. But they did,” he says. “There was concern I’d figure it out, so they had to get rid of me.”
A second red flag: the sudden rush by a small group of Obama officials to produce a new intelligence assessment two weeks before President Trump’s inauguration, claiming the Russians had acted in 2016 specifically to elect Mr. Trump. “Nobody disagrees the Russians were trying to muddy up Hillary Clinton. Because everyone on the planet believed—including the Russians—she was going to win,” Mr. Nunes says. So it “made no sense” that the Obama administration was “working so hard to make the flip argument—to say ‘Oh, no, no: This was all about electing Trump.’ ” The effort began to make more sense once that rushed intelligence assessment grew into a central premise behind the theory that Mr. Trump’s campaign had colluded with the Russians.
January 2017 also brought then-FBI Director James Comey’s acknowledgment to Congress—the public found out later—that the bureau had been conducting a counterintelligence investigation into the Trump campaign since the previous summer, and that Mr. Comey had actively concealed the probe from Congress. Months earlier, when Mr. Nunes had seen media stories alluding to a Trump investigation, he’d dismissed them. “We’re supposed to get briefed,” he says. “Plus, I was thinking: ‘Comey, FBI, they’re good people and would never do this in an election. Nah.’ ”
When the facts came out, Mr. Nunes was stunned by the form the investigation took. For years he had been central in updating the laws governing surveillance, metadata collection and so forth. “I would never have conceived of FBI using our counterintelligence capabilities to target a political campaign. If it had crossed any of our minds, I can guarantee we’d have specifically written, ‘Don’t do that,’ ” when crafting legislation, he says. “Counterintelligence is looking at people trying to steal our nation’s secrets or working with terrorists. This if anything would be a criminal matter.”
Then there was the Christopher Steele dossier, prepared for Mrs. Clinton’s campaign by the opposition-research firm Fusion GPS. Top congressional Republicans got a January 2017 briefing about the document, which Mr. Comey later described as “salacious and unverified.” Mr. Nunes remembers Mr. Comey making one other claim. “He said Republicans paid for it. Not true.” Mr. Nunes recalls. “If they had informed us Hillary Clinton and Democrats paid for that dossier, I can guarantee you that Mitch McConnell and Paul Ryan would have laughed and walked out of that meeting.” The Washington Free Beacon, a conservative website funded by hedge-fund manager Paul Singer, had earlier hired Fusion GPS to do research on Mr. Trump, but the Beacon’s editors have said that assignment did not overlap with the dossier.
All these red flags were more than enough to justify a congressional investigation, yet Mr. Nunes says his sleuthing triggered a new effort to prevent one. He had been troubled in January 2017 when newspapers published leaked conversations between Mike Flynn, Mr. Trump’s first national security adviser, and the Russian ambassador. The leak, Mr. Nunes says, involved “very technical collection, nearly the exact readouts.” It violated strict statutory rules against “unmasking”—revealing the identities of Americans who are picked up talking to foreigners who are under U.S. intelligence surveillance.
Around the time of the Flynn leak, Mr. Nunes received tips that far more unmasking had taken place. His sources gave him specific document numbers to prove it. Viewing them required Mr. Nunes to travel in March to a secure reading room on White House grounds, a visit his critics would then spin into a false claim that he was secretly working with Mr. Trump’s inner circle. They also asserted that his unmasking revelations amounted to an unlawful disclosure of classified information.
That prompted a House Ethics Committee investigation. In April 2017, Mr. Nunes stepped aside temporarily from the Russia-collusion piece of his inquiry, conveniently for those who wished to forestall its progress. Not until December did the Ethics Committee clear Mr. Nunes. “We found out later,” he says, “that four of the five Democrats on that committee had called for me to be removed before this even got rolling.”
Meantime, the Intelligence Committee continued the Russia-collusion probe without Mr. Nunes. In October 2017 news finally became public that the Steele dossier had been paid for by the Clinton campaign. This raised the question of how much the FBI had relied on opposition research for its warrant applications, under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, to spy on onetime Trump campaign aide Carter Page. Throughout the fall, the Justice Department refused to comply with Intel Committee subpoenas for key dossier and FISA documents.
By the end of the year, Mr. Nunes was facing off with the Justice Department, which was given a Jan. 3, 2018, deadline to comply with Congress’s demands for information. The New York Times quoted unnamed government officials who claimed the Russia investigation had hinged not on the dossier but on a conversation with another low-level Trump aide, George Papadopoulos. The next day, the Washington Post ran a story asserting—falsely, Mr. Nunes insists—that even his Republican colleagues had lost confidence in him. “So, a leak about how the dossier doesn’t matter after all, and another saying I’m out there alone,” he says. “And right then DOJ and FBI suddenly demand a private meeting with the speaker, where they try to convince him to make me stand down. All this is not a coincidence.”
But Mr. Ryan backed Mr. Nunes, and the Justice Department produced the documents. The result was the Nunes memo, released to the public in February, which reported that the Steele dossier had in fact “formed an essential part of the Carter Page FISA application”—and that the FBI had failed to inform the FISA court of the document’s partisan provenance. “We kept the memo to four pages,” Mr. Nunes says. “We wanted it clean. And we thought: That’s it, it’s over. The American public now knows that they were using dirt to investigate a political campaign, a U.S. citizen, and everyone will acknowledge the scandal.” That isn’t what happened. Instead, “Democrats put out their own memo, the media attacked us more, and the FBI and DOJ continue to obfuscate.”
It got worse. This spring Mr. Nunes obtained information showing the FBI had used informants to gather intelligence on the Trump camp. The Justice Department is still playing hide-and-seek with documents. “We still don’t know how many informants were run before July 31, 2016”—the official open of the counterintelligence investigation—“and how much they were paid. That’s the big outstanding question,” he says. Mr. Nunes adds that the department and the FBI haven’t done anything about the unmaskings or taken action against the Flynn leakers—because, in his view, “they are too busy working with Democrats to cover all this up.”
He and his committee colleagues in June sent a letter asking Mr. Trump to declassify at least 20 pages of the FISA application. Mr. Nunes says they are critical: “If people think using the Clinton dirt to get a FISA is bad, what else that’s in that application is even worse.”
Mr. Nunes has harsh words for his adversaries. How, he asks, can his committee’s Democrats, who spent years “worrying about privacy and civil liberties,” be so blasé about unmaskings, surveillance of U.S. citizens, and intelligence leaks? On the FBI: “I’m not the one that used an unverified dossier to get a FISA warrant,” Mr. Nunes says. “I’m not the one who obstructed a congressional investigation. I’m not the one who lied and said Republicans paid for the dossier. I’m just one of a few people in a position to get to the bottom of it.” And on the press: “Today’s media is corrupt. It’s chosen a side. But it’s also making itself irrelevant. The sooner Republicans understand that, the better.”
His big worry is that Republicans are running out of time before the midterm elections, yet there are dozens of witnesses still to interview. “But this was always the DOJ/FBI plan,” he says. “They are slow-rolling, because they are wishing and betting the Republicans lose the House.”
Still, he believes the probe has yielded enough information to chart a path for reform: “We need more restrictions on what you can use FISAs for, and more restrictions on unmaskings. And we need real penalties for those who violate the rules.” He says his investigation has also illuminated “the flaws in the powers of oversight, which Congress need to reinstate for itself.”
Mostly, Mr. Nunes feels it has been important to tell the story. “There are going to be two histories written here. The fiction version will come from an entire party, and former and even current intelligence heads, and the media, who will continue trying to cover up what they did,” he says. “It’s our job, unfortunately, to write the nonfiction.”
1a) McCaskill’s Intimidation Game
The Missouri senator runs attack ads not on her opponent but one of his supporters.
If you’ve tuned in to this year’s midterms, chances are you know about that hot Senate race in Missouri: McCaskill vs. Humphreys. Oh, wait.
Democrat Claire McCaskill is indeed facing a tough re-election, trying for a third term. She’s had a particularly rough week, after the Kansas City Star reported that businesses tied to her husband had been awarded $131 million in federal contracts since she took office in 2007. Her putative opponent is the constitutional conservative Josh Hawley, the current attorney general and the strong favorite to win the GOP primary on Aug. 7.
Team McCaskill is already employing the Democratic Party’s go-to tactic this midterm: character assassination. There’s not much else. The economy is humming, the party’s centrist and liberal wings are fighting, and the drumbeat of impending Trump doom isn’t finding much accompaniment. So in Missouri as elsewhere, candidates are reverting to personal attacks. But the McCaskill forces are piling on a guy who isn’t even running.
Indeed, they are attacking a private citizen and donor, David Humphreys. Back in March, Chuck Schumer’s Senate Majority PAC began plowing millions into attacks on the businessman, who donated to Mr. Hawley’s campaign for attorney general. The pattern is the same: An ad makes a malicious accusation against Mr. Humphreys, then sidles over to tar Mr. Hawley with guilt by association. Just how invested are they in this strategy? Since airing their first spot, 70% of Democratic ads—amounting to $4.7 million—have been focused on Mr. Humphreys.
Ms. McCaskill’s pickle is that the GOP has upped its recruitment game. Her only prior re-election bid in 2012 had her face off against Todd Akin, who self-immolated after his blundering comments on abortion and rape. Mr. Hawley—a savvier, younger man and squeaky clean—hasn’t provided a similar opening. A native Missourian and onetime U.S. Supreme Court law clerk, he arrived on the political scene only in 2016, becoming the Show Me State’s first Republican attorney general in 24 years.
The McCaskill campaign spent early 2018 trying to rap him on his investigation into scandal-plagued GOP Gov. Eric Greitens, but that went poof when Mr. Greitens resigned in May. Ms. McCaskill has been reduced to swiping at Mr. Hawley’s “fancy law school” (Yale). A poll in early July showed Mr. Hawley up by two points, and the senator now has the headache of whether to support Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh.
But whereas Mr. Hawley has a scant record to attack, Mr. Humphreys is a long and active participant in Missouri civic life. He’s been a major backer of judicial reform, so the trial bar loathes him. He pushed hard for the state’s recently enacted right-to-work law, so unions loathe him. He sits on the boards of the free-market Cato and Acton institutes, so liberals in general loathe him. Using him to get to Mr. Hawley isn’t only strategy—it’s catharsis.
The specific attacks here are as thin as they are familiar. In addition to a donation to Mr. Hawley, Mr. Humphreys in 2016 gave money to state Sen. Ron Richard. Mr. Richard, like almost every Republican, supports tort reform, and one of his bills would crack down on frivolous lawsuits against businesses—a major racket in Missouri. Critics claimed, baselessly, that Mr. Humphrey’s donation was a reward for a bill that might benefit his company, Tamko Building Products. They then slammed Mr. Hawley for not investigating what they called a “pay to play” scheme by his own “donor,” even though Mr. Hawley’s office doesn’t have criminal jurisdiction over such a case.
A liberal organization, Campaign for Accountability, sought to keep the affair in the news by filing an official complaint with a federal prosecutor in Missouri. It may now wish it hadn’t. Mr. Humphreys’s attorney recently got a letter from U.S. Attorney Timothy Garrison, stating that his office had followed protocol and referred the issue to the FBI, which determined that “there was no basis for further inquiry.” Given the use of “allegations against Mr. Humphreys for public implication he has violated federal law,” Mr. Garrison continued, “this letter is to inform you that Mr. Humphreys was not, and is not now, considered a target by this United States Attorney’s Office.”
That won’t stop the attacks because they serve a greater purpose. Beyond the smears against Messrs. Hawley and Humphreys, such ads are a warning to other donors. Don’t get involved, or your reputations and businesses will be next. Intimidation and threats, leveled against private citizens, are now standard liberal practice. If they can’t win the argument, they can take out the opponent. And it explains the new liberal push at the state level (including in Missouri) for more donation and nonprofit “disclosure.” It isn’t about transparency in the public interest; it’s about identifying new political targets.
Ms. McCaskill should explain why she’s unwilling to debate the issues—or, for that matter, her actual opponent.
1b) Geneva Conventions for the Culture War
Americans need to fight over social issues, but we should find a way to do so with respect and civility.
By Orrin G. Hatch
An angry mob recently cornered Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen in a Washington restaurant, jeering and chanting until she left. That same week, a Virginia restaurant refused service to White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders. Days later, a group of angry men came within inches of Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao’s face, screaming and posturing in an attempt to physically intimidate her.
America’s culture war has reached a tipping point. While our politics have always been divisive, an underlying commitment to civility has usually held citizens on both sides together. As the partisan divide deepens, it becomes clear that we need to take meaningful steps toward de-escalation. Something must change before anger succumbs to violence.
To be clear, I am not calling for an end to the culture war. Indeed, it can and must be fought. Intense disputes over social issues are a feature, not a flaw, of a functioning democracy.
I am, however, calling for a dramatic reassessment of tactics. We need a détente in partisan hostilities, an easing of tensions that can be realized when both sides adopt certain rules of engagement—norms to rein in the worst excesses of the culture wars.
Foremost among these norms should be a commitment to preventing communal spaces from becoming politicized. Even in our most divided times, there have been places we could go to escape the partisan clamor—places where we could leave politics at the door and come together as one, including restaurants, theaters, sports arenas and houses of worship.
Insulating such spaces from politicization is a matter of urgent necessity. A concerted effort is under way to transform these neutral zones into partisan battlegrounds. Consider the calls from progressive groups to boycott Chick-fil-A or even ban it from certain cities; the controversy surrounding the National Football League’s national anthem policy; or the wholly unoriginal acceptance speech-cum-political jeremiad of every Hollywood awards show.
The assault on communal spaces is a subset of the politicization of everything—the culture war equivalent of a scorched-earth policy. It is an attempt to burn away the last vestiges of civility and common cause along the march to political domination. Everything—from chicken sandwiches to prom dresses and even cartoon frogs—can be weaponized for political purposes. In this world, there is no neutral territory: Every place is a battlefield, everything is a weapon, and everyone is a soldier in the great culture war.
Activists on both sides of the political spectrum can turn back the tide of war by adopting certain conventions for cultural combat.
As an analogy, consider the norms regulating armed conflict. The Geneva Conventions have been enormously effective in restraining the terrors of modern warfare. Among other things, these treaties ban the use of certain weapons and accord special protections to civilians, prisoners of war and the infirm. They stipulate which actions are and are not appropriate in wartime, instituting an infrastructure of norms that has saved millions of lives.
In similar fashion, our society could benefit from adopting certain conventions to limit the scope and severity of the culture wars—a general set of guidelines clarifying acceptable tactics in political warfare. By necessity, such norms would in substantial part be socially, not legally, enforced. Their purpose would be to limit the damage the culture wars do to our civic health.
First, we must agree on the need to shield communal spaces from politicization—just as schools, hospitals and places of worship are protected from military strikes in times of armed conflict.
Second, we must work together to resist the politicization of everything. Just as the rules of war prohibit military attacks that inflict undue burdens on civilian life, we should condemn culture-war tactics that cause unnecessary damage to civil society. Denouncing those who politicize things that should not be politicized—even when we agree with their political cause—is the only way to ensure proportionality in the culture wars.
Third, we must discourage harassment of public figures and incursions into their private lives. Just as combatants and POWs are accorded certain rights in wartime, government officials and others who participate in politics deserve privacy and respect, no matter how intense the culture wars become. I applaud Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer for upholding this principle last month, when he roundly condemned harassment of Trump administration personnel. Reinforcing this norm, as Mr. Schumer did, is essential to creating a safe environment that continues to attract good people to public service.
Fourth, liberals and conservatives alike should commit themselves to rhetorical disarmament. During the Cold War, the U.S. and Soviet Union signed treaties to reduce the proliferation of nuclear weapons. In a culture war, in which words are weapons, both sides need to ease their inflammatory language.
Leaders from both parties play a critical role in setting appropriate boundaries for political speech. The effect of incendiary statements is especially harmful when they come from political leaders—be they members of Congress or the president himself.
That’s why, even as a strong supporter of President Trump, I have repeatedly encouraged him to use Twitter as a tool for good rather than as a cudgel for division. I have likewise discouraged him from calling the press “the enemy of the people.” Even with its flaws, the media is indispensable to our democracy. Insofar as reporters are committed to objective journalism and not political advocacy, they should be treated as noncombatants in the culture wars.
To restore decency and balance to public dialogue, both left and right should embrace a laying down of rhetorical arms. Tough political speech has its place, but mainly on the campaign trail.
All Americans, regardless of partisan affiliation, have a stake in containing the fallout from the culture wars. By working together to instill these norms, we can revive civic life and set our nation on a path to health and healing.
Mr. Hatch, a Utah Republican, is president pro tempore of the U.S. Senate.
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2) China Is Losing the Trade War With Trump
It’s like a drinking contest: You harm yourself and hope your opponent isn’t able to withstand as much.
One thing came through loud and clear in President Trump’s press conference Wednesday with European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker. When they announced an alliance against third parties’ “unfair trading practices,” they didn’t even have to mention China by name for listeners to know who their target was. Cooperation between the U.S. and EU will squeeze China’s protectionist model, and even before this agreement, there’s been evidence that China is already running up the white flag.
Yes, China is acting tough in one sense, quickly imposing tariffs in retaliation for those enacted by the Trump administration. But while U.S. stocks approach all-time highs and the dollar grows stronger, Chinese stocks are in a bear market, down 25% since January. The yuan had its worst single month ever in June, and is well on its way to a repeat this month. Chinese corporate bonds have defaulted at a record rate in the past six months, yet this week China unveiled a new stimulus program designed to encourage even more corporate borrowing.
That’s probably why Yi Gang, a governor of the People’s Bank of China, took the extraordinary step of channeling Herbert Hoover, saying in a statement this month that “the fundamentals of China’s economy are sound.” And it’s why Sun Guofeng, head of the PBOC’s financial research institute, said, China “will not make the yuan’s exchange rate a tool to cope with trade conflicts.”
Weakening one’s currency is a standard weapon in trade wars, and one that China has often been accused of using—including in a tweet by Mr. Trump last week. Devaluation would be even more dangerous in this case because of China’s power to dump the $1.4 trillion in U.S. Treasury securities it holds. But by denying its intention to plunge the yuan, China has disarmed itself voluntarily. This was no act of noble pacifism; it had to be done. Devaluing the currency would risk scaring investors away, an existential threat to an emerging economy. For China, whose state-capitalism model has so far never produced a recession, such capital flight might expose previously hidden economic weaknesses.
PHOTO: ISTOCK/GETTY IMAGES
These weaknesses accumulate without the market discipline that occasional recessions impose. The fragility of China’s economy can be seen in its growth rate, which is slowing despite rising financial leverage, and in its overinvestment in commodities and real estate. The escalating trade war with the U.S. could tip China into the unknown territory of recession—and then capital flight could push it into a financial crash and depression. That would create mass joblessness in an economy that has never recorded unemployment higher than 4.3%. With that scenario in mind, the Chinese government must be wondering whether it has enough riot police.
The risk of capital flight is real. The last time China let the yuan weaken—a slide that began in early 2014 and was punctuated in mid-2015 by the abandonment of the dollar peg in favor of a basket of currencies—the Chinese ended up losing almost $1 trillion in foreign reserves, which they have yet to recover. Now the sharp weakening of the yuan shows some degree of capital flight again is under way.
No wonder that, despite tough talk from some quarters, the PBOC disarmed itself voluntarily to avoid further capital flight. The bank also is already offering to reimburse local firms for tariffs on imported U.S. goods. What’s more, China has put out a yard sign for international investors by announcing unilateral easing of foreign-ownership restrictions in some industries.
China is beginning to realize that trade war isn’t really war. It’s more like a drinking contest at a fraternity: the game is less inflicting harm on your opponent than inflicting it on yourself, turn by turn. In trade wars, nations impose burdensome import tariffs on themselves in the hope that they’ll be able to stomach the pain longer than their competitor.
Why play such a game? Because a carefully chosen act of self-harm can be an investment toward a worthy goal. For example, President Reagan’s arms race against the Soviet Union in the 1980s was in some sense a costly self-imposed tax. But it turned out the U.S. could bear the burden better than the Soviets could—Uncle Sam eventually out-drank the Russian bear and won the Cold War.
The U.S. will win the trade war with China in the same way. The PBOC’s statements show that the Chinese understand they are too vulnerable to take very many more drinks. The only question is what they will be willing to offer Mr. Trump to get him to take yes for an answer. No wonder Beijing has ordered its state-influenced media to stop demonizing Mr. Trump—officials are desperate to minimize the pain when President Xi Jinping has to cut the inevitable deal.
The drinking-contest metaphor takes us only so far. The wonderful thing about reciprocal trade is that it is a positive-sum game in which all contestants are made better off. If the conflict forces China to accept more foreign investors and goods, comply with World Trade Organization rules, and respect foreign intellectual property, it may feel it has lost but will in fact be better off. With this openness, both economic and political, China could spur a decadeslong second wave of growth that would bring hundreds of millions still living in rural poverty into glittering new cities.
It took Nixon to go to China and show it the way to the 20th century. Now, through the unlikely method of trade war, Donald Trump is ushering China into the 21st century.
Mr. Luskin is chief investment officer at Trend Macrolytics LLC.
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3) Children raised in fatherless homes are more likely than children raised in two parent homes to engage in criminal behavior and thus, have contact with police. Ergo when they father a child with a woman to whom they are not married - or at least living with -they are contributing to the problem against which these football players are taking a knee.
If you look at many of these players' records on out-of-wedlock children, you find that they are contributing significantly to the problem against which they are protesting.
For example, Antonio Cromartie has 12 children by 9 different women. Apparently the NFL had to shell out $500,000 before he could even play football for them.. Travis Henry has 11 children by 10 women, Willis McGahee has 9 children by 8 women, Derrick Thomas has 7 children by 5 different women, Bennie Blades has 6 c hildren by 6 women, Ray Lewis has 6 children by 4 women and Marshall Faulk has 6 children by 3 women.
They forgot to include Adrian Peterson. 11 kids from 7 different women?
Before these guys take a knee they should take a good look in the mirror. It appears that their problem is not their knee.
3) Children raised in fatherless homes are more likely than children raised in two parent homes to engage in criminal behavior and thus, have contact with police. Ergo when they father a child with a woman to whom they are not married - or at least living with -they are contributing to the problem against which these football players are taking a knee.
If you look at many of these players' records on out-of-wedlock children, you find that they are contributing significantly to the problem against which they are protesting.
For example, Antonio Cromartie has 12 children by 9 different women. Apparently the NFL had to shell out $500,000 before he could even play football for them.. Travis Henry has 11 children by 10 women, Willis McGahee has 9 children by 8 women, Derrick Thomas has 7 children by 5 different women, Bennie Blades has 6 c hildren by 6 women, Ray Lewis has 6 children by 4 women and Marshall Faulk has 6 children by 3 women.
They forgot to include Adrian Peterson. 11 kids from 7 different women?
Before these guys take a knee they should take a good look in the mirror. It appears that their problem is not their knee.
3a) In Georgia Governor’s Race, a Defining Moment for a Southern State
ATLANTA — The Republican won the nomination Tuesday after branding himself a politically incorrect conservative who would “round up criminal illegals” and haul them to the border in his very own pickup. The Democrat all but opened her campaign by demanding that the iconic carvings of Jefferson Davis, Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson be sandblasted off Stone Mountain.
Almost overnight, Georgia’s captivating governor’s race between Brian Kemp and Stacey Abrams has taken on the dimensions of a defining moment, one that will, regardless of outcome, determine what the state represents and how it is perceived. That voters chose these two candidates reflects how Americans are embracing politicians on the basis of culture and identity, and how Georgia’s politics are catching up with its rapid demographic change: The nonwhite population has grown to 40 percent from 29 percent since 1990.
But Georgia’s political middle, long the dominant force behind the state’s thriving commerce and pragmatic leadership, suddenly finds itself all but abandoned.
More starkly than in most midterm campaigns, the contest between Mr. Kemp, the two-term Republican secretary of state, and Ms. Abrams, a former Democratic leader in the State Legislature, has come to mirror the disorienting polarization of the Trump era and expose the consequences of a primary system that increasingly rewards those who appeal to the fringes.
In Georgia, perhaps the Deep South’s most essential economy, the 2018 campaign is a point of demarcation. In the five decades since the death of legal segregation, the image-conscious state has been led by a succession of white male centrist governors — first moderate Democrats, then, for the last 16 years, right-leaning Republicans. They have more often than not been steady and bland, focused on improving education, corporate recruitment and job growth. The unemployment rate has declined by more than 6 percentage points since the current governor, Nathan Deal, took office in 2011.
But to date, neither Ms. Abrams nor Mr. Kemp has rushed to occupy that political space. With both candidates bolstered by huge wins in their primaries, there is no clear indication that either plans to abandon their base-driven strategies for a wholesale pivot toward the center. The race has come to be seen, in the words of Mr. Kemp at a Republican unity rally near Atlanta on Thursday night, as a battle for “literally the soul of our state.”
Ms. Abrams, 44, a brainy Yale Law graduate from Atlanta, has leveraged the prospect of becoming the country’s first female African-American governor to nationalize her campaign and its fund-raising. By contrast, Mr. Kemp, 54, is a drawling agri-businessman from Athens who has revived a populist style that has lain dormant in Georgia since the late 1960s. Both campaigns say they are committed to maximizing turnout by their most rabid supporters rather than moderating in order to broaden their appeal to centrists and independents.
Each side frames the election of the other in doomsday terms. Mr. Kemp, the Democrats fear, will take Georgia the way of North Carolina and Indiana, which were tarnished by recent legislative battles over issues like gay rights and the use of public restrooms by transgender people. Republicans warn that Ms. Abrams, who hopes to expand Medicaid health coverage for the poor and disabled, will raise taxes they have cut, reverse the state’s job growth, deplete its rainy-day surplus and threaten its superior bond ratings.
“This is a conversation about what direction we move Georgia in,” Ms. Abrams said at a campaign stop in Atlanta on Friday.
In an interview a day earlier, David Ralston, a Republican who is the Georgia House speaker, said, “Georgians are going to have the clearest choice that they’ve probably ever had in a general election for the office of governor.”
To those in between, the chasm between Mr. Kemp, who has adopted President Trump’s language on guns and immigration, and Ms. Abrams, who supports an assault rifle ban and says her “soul rests with those seeking asylum,” feels as vast as Tallulah Gorge.
“It would be nice if we had a more moderate option,” said Kathrine DeLash, who works at a pet store in suburban Cobb County and doesn’t identify with either political party. “You don’t get that with the candidates we have right now. The people who shout the most to their own people get the most attention, and it doesn’t matter what they’re saying as long as they shout the loudest.”
Lynn Westmoreland, a former Republican congressman from western Georgia, said he could not remember another Georgia campaign where candidates did not reflexively move to the center after securing their nominations. “I think the Republicans are losing the middle, I think the Democrats are losing the middle, and the middle is kind of shrugging like, ‘O.K., what am I supposed to be doing?’” he said.
Former Gov. Roy E. Barnes, the last Democrat to hold the office, mourned what he depicted as the disenfranchisement of the state’s political center.
“In Georgia, we always enjoyed a broad middle and we had a broad consensus,” said Mr. Barnes, who served one term but lost his re-election in 2002 and a comeback bid eight years later. “We were all very much in favor of public education. We kept really controversial issues down by an unwritten agreement. But the middle has gone, and it has gone to the extremes unfortunately. It is a microcosm of what is happening in the country.”
Mr. Barnes asserted that neither he nor his two Democratic predecessors, Zell Miller and Joe Frank Harris, could have won their party’s nomination today. Nor, he speculated, could the state’s center-right senior United States senator, Johnny Isakson, win in a Republican primary if he were running without the benefit of incumbency.
“I would never write myself off,” said Mr. Isakson, who is serving his third term, “but he’s got a point. It is a totally different situation.”
The narrow appeals by both candidates have been made possible, to some extent, by the strength of Georgia’s economy. With fewer financial concerns, voters have been freer to side with candidates on the basis of cultural affinity. Mr. Kemp stepped into the spotlight as the homebred embodiment of blunt-talking Trumpism, while Ms. Abrams lent forlorn Georgia Democrats star power and the draw of history.
Ms. Abrams streaked into the general election after taking 76 percent of the vote in a two-person primary in May. The results seemed to validate her strategy of registering thousands of young and minority voters and exciting them with an unapologetic appeal to the left. Turnout in the Democratic primary was two-thirds higher than in 2014, nearly equaling that in the Republican primary for the first time in a dozen years.
The state’s demographics are shifting rapidly in Ms. Abrams’ favor. Over the last 20 years, when the state’s population ballooned nearly 30 percent to 10.4 million, the share of registered voters who are not white increased to 46 percent from 27 percent, state election data shows. Two of the suburban Atlanta counties that fueled the Republican rise — Cobb and Gwinnett — are now so populated by immigrants and African-Americans that they voted for Hillary Clinton over Mr. Trump.
As in the last several campaign cycles, the question for Ms. Abrams will be whether the electorate has changed enough that a well-funded ground operation can transform a trend into victory.
After finishing second in a crowded Republican primary in May, Mr. Kemp stunned his party’s establishment with the magnitude of his victory in Tuesday’s runoff. He took 69 percent against his better-funded rival, Lt. Gov. Casey Cagle, winning 157 of 159 counties, and finished 12 points ahead in Mr. Cagle’s home county. Mr. Cagle had been the choice of many elected officials and donors, and had won a late endorsement from Governor Deal.
Mr. Kemp tied himself inseparably to Mr. Trump. And with shotguns, chain saws and a Ford F-350 as props, his ruthlessly effective ads transformed a man largely unknown into a swaggering defender of restricted borders and the Second Amendment.
It is an image, once cemented, that may be tough to soften for female suburban swing voters, a potential opportunity for Ms. Abrams. She said on Friday that she would not be “engaging in divisive culture arguments about who’s angrier or who’s meaner.”
Mr. Kemp was already ascendant thanks to unforced errors by Mr. Cagle. But internal polling from Mr. Cagle’s campaign showed that the bottom fell out for the lieutenant governor when Mr. Trump tweeted a surprise endorsement of Mr. Kemp less than a week before the election. The White House dispatched Vice President Mike Pence to Macon for a closing weekend rally.
At Thursday’s Republican unity event, where Mr. Cagle and Mr. Deal endorsed Mr. Kemp, there were no boasts of political incorrectness, almost no mentions of Mr. Trump and more focus on continuing the legacy of job growth than deporting undocumented immigrants. “This isn’t about me and my big truck,” Mr. Kemp even said.
Instead, Mr. Kemp and his surrogates turned their attention to labeling Ms. Abrams, who has had two unobstructed months to establish herself. Ms. Abrams, Mr. Kemp said, was “backed by billionaires and socialists who want to make Georgia into California.”
But Mr. Kemp’s strategists said that the more muted tone did not signify a lasting change, and that they planned to hew closely to stimulating the base that gave Mr. Trump a 51 percent to 46 percent victory in Georgia in 2016. Speaking after the rally, for instance, Mr. Kemp reiterated his support for state legislation that would replicate a federal law providing legal protection to individuals and businesses who tailor business practices to their religious beliefs. Opponents of the laws, which exist in several neighboring states, argue that they allow discrimination against serving or employing homosexuals and transgender people.
That pledge, and the countrified image Mr. Kemp created for himself in his ads, has prompted nervousness among some business leaders, particularly in Atlanta. The city’s cottage industry is corporate recruitment, often of global firms with diverse work forces, and it remains among the 20 locations in the running for Amazon’s coveted second headquarters. The film industry is now a major presence, thanks to generous tax incentives, and the Super Bowl comes to Atlanta in February.
Concerned about condemnation and boycotts, business leaders convinced Mr. Deal to veto so-called “religious freedom” legislation in 2016, but some wonder whether they would have the same success with Mr. Kemp. A.J. Robinson, president of Central Atlanta Progress, a downtown business group, said industries that normally support Republicans were waiting to learn more.
“The main thing is, let’s not do anything to mess up our historic business environment, particularly discriminatory practices of any kind,” Mr. Robinson said. “People have seen what it’s done in other states.”
State Representative Brenda Lopez, a Democrat from Gwinnett County, said voters needed to consider the long-term consequences of the campaign and November’s vote.
“It’s not just about one election cycle of the next governor,” she said. “It’s about what the image of Georgia is going to continue to be nationally and internationally.”
3a)The two most important events in all of history were the invention of beer and the invention of the wheel.
Beer required grain and that was the beginning of agriculture.
Neither the glass bottle nor aluminum can were invented yet, so while our early humans were sitting around waiting for them to be invented, they just stayed close to the brewery. That's how villages were formed.
The wheel was invented to get man to the beer and vice versa. These two were the foundation of modern civilization and together were the catalyst for the splitting of humanity into two distinct subgroups:
1. Liberals.
2. Conservatives.
Some men spent their days tracking and killing animals to BBQ at night while they were drinking beer. This was the beginning of what is known as the Conservative movement.
Other men who were less skilled at hunting (called'vegetarians'which was an early human word meaning 'bad hunter') learned to live off the Conservatives by showing up for the nightly BBQ's and doing the sewing, fetching, and hairdressing. This was the beginning of the liberal movement.
Some of these liberal men “evolved” into women. Others became known as girlie-men. Some noteworthy liberal achievements include the domestication of cats, the invention of group therapy, group hugs, and the concept of democratic voting to decide how to divide the meat and beer that Conservatives provided.
Over the years Conservatives came to be symbolized by the largest, most powerful land animal on earth, the elephant. Liberals are symbolized by the jackass for obvious reasons.
Modern Liberals like special flavored beer (with lime added), but most prefer white wine spritzers or imported bottled water. They eat raw fish but like their beef well done. Sushi, tofu, and French food are standard liberal fare. Another interesting evolutionary side note: many liberal women have higher testosterone levels than their men.
Most college professors, social workers, personal injury attorneys, journalists, film makers in Hollywood, group therapists and community organizers are liberals. Liberals meddled in our national pastime and invented the designated hitter rule because it wasn't fair to make the pitcher also bat.
Conservatives drink real beer. They eat red meat and still provide for their women. Conservatives are members of the military, big game hunters, rodeo cowboys, lumberjacks, construction workers, firemen, medical doctors, police officers, engineers, corporate executives, athletes, airline pilots, and generally anyone who works productively. Conservatives who own companies hire other Conservatives who want to work for a living.
Liberals produce little or nothing. They like to govern the producers and decide what to do with the production. Liberals believe Europeans are more enlightened than Americans. That is why most of the liberals remained in Europe when Conservatives were coming to America. They crept in after the Wild West was tamed and created a business of trying to get more for nothing.
Here ends today's lesson in world history. It should be noted that a liberal may have a momentary urge to angrily respond to this post.
A Conservative will simply laugh and be so convinced of the absolute truth of this history that it will be shared immediately to other true believers and to just piss-off more liberals.
And there you have it. Let your next action reveal your true self, I'm going to grab a few beers and grill some steaks!
3a)The two most important events in all of history were the invention of beer and the invention of the wheel.
Beer required grain and that was the beginning of agriculture.
Neither the glass bottle nor aluminum can were invented yet, so while our early humans were sitting around waiting for them to be invented, they just stayed close to the brewery. That's how villages were formed.
The wheel was invented to get man to the beer and vice versa. These two were the foundation of modern civilization and together were the catalyst for the splitting of humanity into two distinct subgroups:
1. Liberals.
2. Conservatives.
Some men spent their days tracking and killing animals to BBQ at night while they were drinking beer. This was the beginning of what is known as the Conservative movement.
Other men who were less skilled at hunting (called'vegetarians'which was an early human word meaning 'bad hunter') learned to live off the Conservatives by showing up for the nightly BBQ's and doing the sewing, fetching, and hairdressing. This was the beginning of the liberal movement.
Some of these liberal men “evolved” into women. Others became known as girlie-men. Some noteworthy liberal achievements include the domestication of cats, the invention of group therapy, group hugs, and the concept of democratic voting to decide how to divide the meat and beer that Conservatives provided.
Over the years Conservatives came to be symbolized by the largest, most powerful land animal on earth, the elephant. Liberals are symbolized by the jackass for obvious reasons.
Modern Liberals like special flavored beer (with lime added), but most prefer white wine spritzers or imported bottled water. They eat raw fish but like their beef well done. Sushi, tofu, and French food are standard liberal fare. Another interesting evolutionary side note: many liberal women have higher testosterone levels than their men.
Most college professors, social workers, personal injury attorneys, journalists, film makers in Hollywood, group therapists and community organizers are liberals. Liberals meddled in our national pastime and invented the designated hitter rule because it wasn't fair to make the pitcher also bat.
Conservatives drink real beer. They eat red meat and still provide for their women. Conservatives are members of the military, big game hunters, rodeo cowboys, lumberjacks, construction workers, firemen, medical doctors, police officers, engineers, corporate executives, athletes, airline pilots, and generally anyone who works productively. Conservatives who own companies hire other Conservatives who want to work for a living.
Liberals produce little or nothing. They like to govern the producers and decide what to do with the production. Liberals believe Europeans are more enlightened than Americans. That is why most of the liberals remained in Europe when Conservatives were coming to America. They crept in after the Wild West was tamed and created a business of trying to get more for nothing.
Here ends today's lesson in world history. It should be noted that a liberal may have a momentary urge to angrily respond to this post.
A Conservative will simply laugh and be so convinced of the absolute truth of this history that it will be shared immediately to other true believers and to just piss-off more liberals.
And there you have it. Let your next action reveal your true self, I'm going to grab a few beers and grill some steaks!
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