I'm not sure where this is going

Ultimately, I think that's the point.  Is president Trump just saber rattling? Is he serious about joining Israel in the fight with Iran? If we don't know, neither does Iran's 'supreme leader'. That's the point.

China struggles for friends

An economic alliance against the United States, fronted by the most predatory economy in the world? What could go wrong?

The Panama Canal issue is really about China

It's about countering the communist Chinese.

Escalation in the Middle East

U.S. and Iran leaning into the regional conflict between Israel and Hamas:

Where there is smoke, there's fire

The United States can be infuriating. Here's how you fix voting, and how most civilized countries do it, or should do it if they don't:

1. Photo ID and recent proof of address for voters
2. Ballot/poll watchers from all parties present at every polling location
3. Hand counted ballots in every polling precinct
4. No calling of results in a riding until all poll watchers from parties have signed off 
5. Recourse for recounts under certain conditions

Why is that so hard in the United States?  Additionally, specific to the United States, why not make election day a national holiday? No mail-in ballots except for overseas military.  If you are a civilian out of the country, tough luck.  I know that's disenfranchising, but it's a relatively small number of people and if it were that important to you, you'd plan for it. Sorry, not sorry. Also, why do some Democrat states take a week for votes to get counted?  And in those cases there is always a Democrat surge from behind.  It's bull and everyone knows it.  In your quest for power you are destroying the democratic process and the concept of democracy itself.

The above 5 requirements are not disenfranchising, they make sure every vote is counted, once, and ghost votes are not counted. That empowers real voters.  Corruption in the voting process is the real disenfranchisement of voters. Instead, we get crap like this:

Hopefully it's not too late for America, but it is getting grim.

Peter Zeihan all in on China collapse

One one hand Ray Dalio claims China is the ascendant power.  On the other hand Peter Zeihan continues to argue, China's collapse is already under way.  I tend to side with Zeihan on the issue, however that does not mean Ray Dalio is wrong about the state of the United States.  One 'empire' can collapse without another filling the vacuum right away.

Here's what Peter Zeihan is saying about China today:

Massive ‘rare earth’ deposit found in North Dakota

 Regardless of your view on electric vehicles this is great news geopolitically for the United States:

The opportunity of a century lies before you!

Jack Chapple has an interesting take on demographics in the 21st century, arguing that only one country will be able to emerge from a global downturn in population [SPOILER ALERT: If you want to skip over the details behind his predicted winner, it's Egypt].  Here's his argument, before I move on the my own premise which is markedly different.

A lot of what he points out is simply factual.Developed countries have a serious demographic challenge that no one has really every overcome to this point.  Global population is expected to start to decline at some point in this century (or perhaps the next).  As Chapple points out, this creates economic challenges on a global scale.  Not to mention, it may create demographic challenges that are even more catastrophic than economic ones.  

Peter Zeihan sees the same demographic trends, which seems undeniable.  He sees different winners emerging than does Chapple:

Regardless of who might win globally, and I do think that the United States will be fine, there is the opportunity of a century for conservatives in the United States, and really the entirety of Western civilization that may pass us by if we do not seize it right now and begin building ahead for it.

I'm speaking of what I have argued in favor of doing before, what Jeff Deist has also argued before.  De-urbanization. I'll argue for it again now with an additional flavor added because it serves two purposes with one effort. 

Technology has finally enabled de-urbanization.  You do not need to live close to a major city to be able to commute to your job (in large part, manufacturing and some other industries remain aside).  That means you can live in a small town, or some other remote rural location and work from home. This obviates the need for office space, for commuter trains, for massively expanded super highways in urbanized locations, for subways, for as many bank machines, and coffee shops etc.  Most of those things do not go away, they morph and disperse into a more diffused set of locations.   Small towns grow, big megalopolis sized cities shrink.  Why?  Housing costs, crime stats, quality of life differences, among other reasons.

This requires a lot of transition.  Much as the United States and much of the Western world are transitioning production away from China (finally), with the adjunct pains of transition, transition to a more rural or at least less urban nation will be painful in the short term.  New fiber optic cabling spanning tens of thousands of miles must be laid. That's a primary requirement.  But so too will be water, sewage handling, fuel pipelines, medical facilities, police services, and everything necessary to support smaller local communities that are spread further apart.  These things do not happen overnight and they certainly do not happen without a concerted political effort to make the option to de-urbanize possible.  That's what needs to be happening right now.

There are certainly benefits for conservatives if this geographic shift occurs.  Urban centers tend to be far more liberal and rural areas and smaller towns tend to be far more conservative.  This is an environment that offers home field advantage as it were, in terms of political momentum.  Smaller communities tend to be more religious, more friendly, and cleaner.  They also may help level the playing field between mega-corporations and mom and pop shops. It could help regrow the entrepreneurial spirit that made America a great economic power . 

Here's the added benefit that not only benefits conservative demographics, it argues against the inevitability of population decline and global economic stagnation: rural populations have higher birth rates than urban populations.  It's easier to raise children in an environment that is safer, that has more room for them to play, that does not require tens of thousands of extra dollars spent on car payments and mortgages and commutes and enhanced security etc. With less distraction there's more opportunity to procreate. There's more time to spend with family.  That benefits conservatives.  It benefits America, and it benefits America's contribution to global population.  It's a win win win.

Lastly, here's a bonus thought on this; it would be easier to co-opt the environmental movement to get the political effort started because you can argue it will result in a significantly lower carbon footprint without the need for such a massive volume of commuters. As conservatives, we just need to get out in front of this because this opportunity of a century will not remain available forever.  States should probably start this effort on a localized basis.  If you live in Kansas for example, this is something that can be started in a more localized effort, which makes it easier and the chances that you can succeed that much higher.

The third foreign indicator of Republican midterm win already happened.

Remember when I mentioned how England and Italy both have moved towards populism?  It's part of a backlash against woke progressive social justice elitist crappy governance.  It's about time, in every single case.  Speaking of which, I forgot to mention that it also happened in Sweden back in September:

Sweden’s Sept. 11 elections shocked intellectuals throughout the West. The Sweden Democrats – a nationalist-populist party founded in 1988 with neo-Nazi allegiances but which turned away from fascism in the early 2000s and now explicitly rejects it – gave the country’s right a governing majority by earning the second-largest number of votes. The intellectuals’ shock, however, shows that they have not been paying attention. Had they been examining voters’ discontents in Europe, the United Kingdom, and the United States, and giving thought to the destabilizing consequences for liberal democracy in the West posed by elite imperiousness, overreach, and underperformance, they would have seen the right-wing reaction brewing.

The same thing is likely to happen in the United States. In 2016 the U.K. votes to exit the Eurpoean Union.  The Brexit vote would foreshadow the election of president Trump later that year. This year's midterms have seen three precursors to a Republican victory in the House and Senate.  Let's hope the tea leaves portend the same for America this time around.

China steps closer to the abyss

I keep harping on China. America has A LOT of problems right now, make no mistake. But China is in even worse shape, they just hide it better because they can (and that's not a good thing for China, or anyone else).  You don't see much about China's struggles in the news for a few reasons, chief among them China is not the U.S., U.K. or a part of Western Europe.  That doesn't mean what happens in China will remain contained in China.

We have woven a world of entangled interdependence. While in some economic ways that's arguably a good thing, it also creates dependencies and the likelihood of a cascading ripple effect everywhere else. Too much of our manufacturing has been outsourced to cheaper labor that also happens to entail lower quality goods. President Trump raised the alarm about China and tried to start the process of onshoring production (and jobs).  The elites would have none of it and it never got far enough, so the dependencies remain largely. If China collapses (which I am not saying is likely, just feasible), America and the rest of the West, are in deep trouble thanks to our neglect on dealing with the dependency (much like with Middle Eastern oil).  

You think supply chain issues are a problem now? You think they are the major cause of inflation?  They aren't by the way, money printing is the issue).  Just wait until Chinese manufacturing plummets and the prices are not the issue but the empty shelves at WalMart.  

All of this and no mention yet of how the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) will not go quietly.  Just like the elites in the West, they will do whatever it takes including selling out their own people to hold onto power and wealth. We'll call it an atrocity when that happens, and it will be.  But it's no different than what is being done here in the West with one major exception; we are being deceived into believing it isn't happening to us.  Because it is being done without tanks and instead our wealth is eroding towards the already uber-rich without us knowing anything other than it keeps getting harder to stay afloat.  

Why Democracy is bad

Far too many Americans believe that they live in a democracy and not a republic. While that alone is a problem, an educational problem, it's not the most egregious problem.  The real problem is that far too many people believe democracy is the ultimate, most egalitarian  form of governance.  It's not.  

When I was in university, in Canada, I took a course on American political science. The professor was an American.  He described himself as a "yellow dog Democrat".  He said he would vote for a yellow dog for any office before he would vote for a Republican.  The point is that he was a liberal.  Very liberal in fact. He made a point back then of making sure that we understood that the United States was and is, a representative republican, and that it was so for a good reason.  He was 100% right, and what he said is still 100% right.

This was his logic (though not solely his, it was the idea of the Founding Fathers): When you have a representative republic, especially one with a separation of powers, three branches of government, it is very difficult to have a majority tyranny.  America was designed to prevent majority tyranny. That's because majority tyranny is the same thing as mob rule.  When the mob can decide that you do not deserve equal rights, or any rights or that someone else deserves more rights than you, that is majority tyranny.  My very liberal professor was right.  Luckily I was able to agree with him enough on the fundamental principles that I did not need to betray my conservative beliefs to do well in his course.

The American government is set up to be a brake on majority tyranny so that minority rights are protected.  Along with that, it is imperative to define minority rights.  Minority rights does not mean women, African Americans, or people of different religions or differing sexual orientations, although it can mean any of them.  What minority rights refers to is anyone who is experiencing an infringement on their rights, their Constitutional rights, by any other majority.  That means anyone can be in a minority, either demographically or ideologically. Anyone deserves equal protection under the law.

The one thing that used to enjoin all Americans was the idea that while you would not necessarily agree with someone else's opinion, you would still be willing to die for their right to express it.  That is no longer the case with political correctness culture, with shoot-first-don't-answer-questions-later social justice mentality.  That is because too many people mistakenly believe that democracy is the ideal and taken further, that means mob rule is fine.

Nothing could be further from the truth.  Mobs behave quite often in very evil ways. A representative republic prevents that, for the most part by requiring representatives be elected at regular intervals, so that they are less likely to be responsive to immediate gut-reaction demands by the public.  It is further enhanced by the fact that senators serve a longer term than those in congress, and the president serves a different length of time as well.  It is served by institutional hurdles as the executive, legislative and judicial branches are separated into different areas of responsibility.  This means that change comes slowly, not haphazardly in a rapid fashion.  In a true democracy where everyone voted on every issue, the law could change back and forth daily. It could be chaos.  Slow change is more likely to be thoughtful change.  It's not going to be perfect, but it's more likely to get things right in the long run, than wild swings in every direction that a pure democracy could see.

Some interesting parallels between Canada and the U.S. here

 That guy in the U.S. get berated in New Jersey:

Meanwhile on the campaign trail in Canada, Justin Trudeau actually gets rocks thrown at him.  While I do not condone violence, it's a bit ironic to see the guy who legalized marijuana in Canada nationally getting stoned:

 

George Friedman on geopolitics of the world right now

George Friedman, founder of Stratfor, provides his take on geopolitics and pandemics and the United States' and China's place in the world in the 21st century.  I don't believe he has everything right here, but there are a lot of good points he makes.

What happens when globalists and greedy idiots unite?

In 1997 Hong Kong was returned from British control to China, granting the communist nation a powerful trading opportunity.  The in 2001 China was granted normalized trading relations with the United States (in fact, grotesquely granted Most Favored Nation status) and also entered the World Trade Organization. What happens when Communist China petitions a greedy western cabal of globalists looking for cheap labor and a massive potential market for their products?  Massive problems.

In the spring of 2000, China was trying to become a member of the World Trade Organization (WTO). The U.S. House of Representatives had just approved normalizing trade relations with China. The vote was effectively a U.S. endorsement of China’s accession, and President Bill Clinton, a major proponent of China’s bid, voiced his economic and strategic hopes for the U.S.-China relationship....

China did not conform to democracy in the way the United States had hoped. In fact, its vast economic gains have only legitimized the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), which President Xi Jinping believes is central to maintaining economic stability and enabling China to dominate technology-driven industries.

China’s tight government controls extend to the internet, which was supposed to be a gateway to reform and innovation. China regulates internet use, limiting access to commerce and social media. China has blocked political organizing by threatening—and sometimes jailing—those who post critical comments online. The Chinese government also uses the internet to identify and track dissidents.

China's internal issues are not the worst of the outcome though.  China has become an expansionist nation, economically digging its tentacles into every nation it can.  And every other economy has suffered economically, as this graphic shows:

There are countless examples of why the admission of China into the WTO and America's good graces for trade were really really bad.  I encourage you to read the examples below.

How Clinton and American Financiers Armed China

Clinton to blame for current fight with China, not Trump

Bill Clinton Shoehorns China Into the WTO

The WTO and the China Challenge

Countries have become dependent on Chinese production for most everything.  Even leftist publications like The Atlantic can recognize that.  During the Obama administration in the U.S., China's economic and military muscle flex truly catapulted  into high gear.  It's been left unchecked for far too long until president Trump finally decided to do something about it, and other countries have started to follow suit.  While it has been left far too long to allow this predatory and evil regime to run amok, hopefully it is not to late to put the communist genie back in the bottle.

Climate activists are pawns - an economics lesson

The world is going to end, soon, unless we stop greenhouse gas emissions entirely, and soon. This is what climate activists are demanding. But those emissions primarily come from manufacturing and energy production.  Climate emissions have skyrocketed in China and India while having declined in the United States*.  That's not uncorrelated to offshoring of manufacturing jobs to Asia. They are pawns.

The establishment wealthy want to offshore jobs to countries where they can pay 70 cents a day instead of $100 a day.  They are the same ones arguing for free trade and against tariffs on China because they say it is bad for consumers.  True, prices would be higher but it does not matter to a consumer if  they don't have a job.  It's as hard to afford $10 for pants as $50 for pants when you are broke.

It's also true that free trade is a good thing for all parties.  Except what is being passed of as free trade really isn't free trade.  Market restrictions in China means that they have free access to our markets but we have highly restricted access to their markets. Further the companies have an easy way to move production and therefore jobs) to cheap labor countries, but you as a producer of labor do not have the same freedom of movement if you are willing to work for less.   Even smaller businesses do not have the same mobility of labor options.  A small dairy farmer or manufacturer can't just move production to China.  Free trade would be truly borderless for all (which is not entirely without it's pitfalls).

So these wealthy business owners have distinct advantages over their competitors and consumers.  They have created the situation where they continue to gain wealth at the expense of jobs and smaller, weaker competitors.  Why would they want that to change?  That's why so many wealthy support climate change activism.

If you are a climate activist, unless you are a billionaire producing items to sell in China and selling them in the Western world, you are a pawn and working against your own self interest.  It behooves you to investigate how global warming climate change activism began.  You'll find it's rooted in socialism (and it's attempt to destroy capitalism through whatever means possible) and married tightly to mega-corporations leveraging the marriage of free trade and climate activism to take advantage of a gullible public to enrich themselves.

*Energy production has already been changed from coal to natural gas and nuclear power in the United States in significant proportions.  This is a large part of why emissions have declined (the other being jobs disappearing).

More thoughts on China

Harvard's Graham Allison & Kyle Bass recently talked about China and how it compares to and contrasts with the United States.

C'est What?

In Paris, a mere three weeks after a terror attack in that city, president Obama says mass shootings just don't happen outside of the United States.  That level of out-of-touchness should immediately call into question every other statement this president has made. Ever.

That's not to say he's been wrong on everything, I'll let you come to that conclusion on your own.  But the mainstream media should simply be agog with incredulity at his lack of nuance, his lack of awareness and his simple inaccuracy on this and be saying to themselves "Hey, wait a minute..."

Alas, not going to happen.

War of the Internets - China vs. U.S.

Cyber-spying has real world implications.

The United States government, perhaps has finally bought a vowel and is starting to take seriously the threat of cyber attacks from foreign nationals - specifically Chinese nationals.  The U.S. government has charged several Chinese military officials, in absentia, with cyber theft related charges.

Yesterday’s indictment of five Chinese officials signals the administration is banking that enough time has passed that it can redirect the worldwide debate over government surveillance toward China’s drive to steal commercial secrets of private companies to boost its own economy.

“We’ve told the Chinese we know they spy on us for military purposes and we spy on them for military purposes, which is what big powers do,” said James Lewis, a fellow in cybersecurity at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. “What’s weird is when you spy purely for commercial purposes, and that has to stop.”

This from the same not-ready-for-prime-time administration that was about to give up control of the Internet. Why the about face, and why so quickly after supposedly re-thinking the notion of sharing control of the internet?  And why the specific anger about industrial espionage? Shouldn't the fact that China basically stole the F35 fighter jet blueprints and suddenly has their own version in testing be equally damning.

And when I say damning, I mean both of the Chinese and of American counter-espionage capabilities.  Let's face it, the U.S. is getting its behind handed to it by the Chinese in the realm of espionage and whether it's the Obama arrogance that is causing a disbelief of the facts on the ground or just the lack of capabilities of the various espionage agencies in the U.S. that prevents things from getting better, the problem is still that things are just not getting better.

These charges are window dressing designed to make the president look tough on Chinese espionage, just in time for the midterm elections oddly enough.  Just this weekend I was chirping about how the U.S. needed some muscle in its electronic surveillance despite the privacy issues that surround the spying (granted, with no easy answers available to fix things), and today these stories break.  While the focus has been on terrorism, China and Russia have not gone away, they are both resurgent (or trying to be in Russia's case).  But charging a few low ranking military personnel is no solution.  All it is going to do is to anger China, while accomplishing nothing.

China of course, has reacted:

China’s decision to suspend its involvement in a cybersecurity working group with the U.S. after being accused of commercial spying threatens to undo efforts aimed at finding common ground to tackle hacking.

China halted the dialogue and threatened further retaliation after the U.S. indicted five Chinese military officials yesterday for allegedly stealing trade secrets. China’s Foreign Ministry called the U.S. move a “serious violation of the basic norms of international relations,” while China’s State Internet Information Office likened the U.S. actions to “a thief yelling ‘Catch the thief.’”

I expect that the president might use this as a springboard for some proposed legislation (sans details of course), to protect the U.S. from Chinese aggression.  If we do see it, rest not assured because it is merely a ploy to get votes.

EXIT question:  With Bill Clinton having been such a cozy president for the Chinese to work with, there's one more reason not to have Hillary win the White House in 2016.  Will anyone in the media make the connection?

Non-interventionism vs. Cowboy diplomacy

Self interest.

Foreign relations can be a contentious issue on the right side of political thought. In a recent post on Left Coast Rebel, there was an interesting exchange of views on U.S. involvement in foreign affairs, brought on obviously because of the situation in Crimea. The two positions stem from two different world views; one of interventionism, the other often unfairly referred to as cowboy diplomacy.

In actuality three different conservative positions have been identified on foreign relations.

Rathbun (2008) compares three separate themes in conservative policies since the 1980s: conservatism, neoconservatism, and isolationism. These approaches are similar in that they all invoked the mantle of "realism" and pursued foreign policy goals designed to promote national interests. Conservatives, however, were the only group that was "realist" in the academic sense in that they defined the national interest narrowly, strove for balances of power internationally, viewed international relations as amoral, and especially valued sovereignty. By contrast, neoconservatives based their foreign policy on nationalism, and isolationists sought to minimize any involvement in foreign affairs and raise new barriers to immigration.[26] Former Republican Congressman Ron Paul favored a return to the non-interventionist policies of Thomas Jefferson and frequently opposed military intervention in countries like Iran and Iraq.

Each position has strengths and weaknesses, but which one is the right foreign policy strategy for the United States?

Canada to claim North Pole. Obama to acquiesce?

This one is tricky. Canada, Russia and the United States have all, at various times laid claim to sections of the Arctic. It's never come to military action, nor will it. However, given apparent Canada's intention to move forward with an effort to look for legal recognition you can expect both Russia and the United States to respond in some fashion.

TORONTO (AP) — Canada plans to make a claim to the North Pole in an effort to assert its sovereignty in the resource-rich Arctic, the country's foreign affairs minister said Monday.

John Baird said the government has asked scientists to work on a future submission to the United Nations claiming that the outer limits of the country's continental shelf include the pole, which so far has been claimed by no one.

Canada last week applied to extend its seabed claims in the Atlantic Ocean, including some preliminary Arctic claims, but it wants more time to prepare a claim that would include the pole.

Asserting Canada's rights in the Arctic has been a popular domestic issue for Prime Minister Stephen Harper, though at least one expert on the issue described the planned claim as a long shot.

"We are determined to ensure that all Canadians benefit from the tremendous resources that are to be found in Canada's far north," Baird said.

Countries including the U.S. and Russia are increasingly looking to the Arctic as a source of natural resources and shipping lanes. The U.S. Geological Survey says the region contains 30 percent of the world's undiscovered natural gas and 15 percent of oil. If Canada's claim is accepted by the U.N. commission, it would dramatically grow its share.