Tariffs as Symbols, not Cymbals

China has responded to the latest list of tariffs proposed by the USA on Chinese goods with a list of its own.  That announcement has sent the Dow futures down by over 400 points.  We will see later today where the market actually goes, but right now we are getting fear and breathless coverage of that fear as the news of the moment.  The real point here, though, is that the tariff announcements by China and the USA are meant as symbols of what will happen if China does not change its policies regarding theft of intellectual property and China's responsive symbol of the costs the USA will incur if it actually follows through on the actions threatened against China.  This is not (yet) the start of a trade war.  There is just too much to lose on both sides.  There is no need for crashing cymbals and blaring trumpets calling the economies to battle.

If tariffs were to cut US/China trade in half, it would be a serious blow to the US economy.  We could see a reduction of between 0.3 and 0.5% of GDP.  The same cut in trade, however, would reduce China's GDP by between 2 and 3%.  I seriously doubt that president Xi wants to see such an economic contraction forced on China by a trade war.  More likely some sort of accommodation will be reached that will protect American companies from Chinese theft of intellectual property and we will see a return of more normal conditions.

It is possible that Xi will think this a challenge that he cannot fail to win.  That seems unlikely though.  President Xi is now in the strongest position he has ever held in China.  He is president for life if he wants to stay in power.  There is no organized opposition.  An economic downturn would embolden his enemies perhaps to organize.  Surely he will not want that.

Remember that the tariffs are Symbols and not Cymbals. 

This Must Be Killing Them

According to news reports tonight, the special counsel told the White House that President Trump is not a criminal target of his investigation at this time.  The President remains a "subject" of the investigation.  Put this in plain English and what you have is that the special counsel is admitting that there is not sufficient evidence of any criminal wrongdoing by the President for an indictment.  Remember, the investigation into the supposed collusion between the Trump campaign and the Russians is now almost entering its third year.  It's also been more than a year since Trump fired former FBI Director Comey, a move that brought all sorts of silly claims of obstruction of justice.  After all that time, there just isn't evidence of any crime committed by Trump.

The Washington Post and other media ran this story tonight.  I'm surprised that the WaPo personnel were able to actually publish this story without there being mass suicides at the paper's headquarters.  Since the election, we have heard the WaPo, the New York Times, CNN, MSNBC, NBC, ABC, CBS and others putting out a non-stop avalanche of stories of rumors of wrongdoing, tales of impending indictments, countdowns to impeachment, and all manner of threats to the Trump presidency.  Now that all turns out to be nothing but fantasy.  It's been obvious from the beginning, but the media and the Democrats just haven't been able to accept the simple fact that without any evidence of wrongdoing, there is nothing further to do but eventually announce that President Trump did nothing wrong.

In the last years, so much effort has been wasted on the Trump-Russia nonsense that could have been used constructively to help people and to help the country.  This is the biggest black eye ever for the media, in my opinion.  For the Democrats, it really doesn't top the list of misdeeds, but it does make the top ten.  (It's hard to top all those years of the Democrats' fighting to keep segregation and Jim Crow in place and to defeat the Civil Rights laws.)  I hope that at least some of the media and the Democrats can now move on to deal with reality rather than some fantasy world built on hysteria.  It's about time for that to happen.

Useful Idiots -- Redux

This morning, I wrote about the "useful idiots" who publicize lies and propaganda from Hamas with regard to the events at the Gaza border last week.  This afternoon, I came across another of these idiots who clearly thinks that anything the US and its allies do is bad no matter what the actual facts may be.  The writer in question is a fellow named Daniel Larison who writes at a site called "The American Conservative".  That's actually funny since what Larison writes is the stuff that Progressives push in their worldview when they express one.

A few days ago, Larison wrote about the alleged slaughter by Saudi forces of civilians in Yemen.  He was describing an attack by the Saudi air force on a base housing Houthi rebels.  The Houthi are supported by Iran and are the force that began the civil war in Yemen by forcing out the elected government.  Then the Houthis began killing those who opposed them.  The Saudis got involved to prevent an Iranian base of operations on their southern border.  Huge numbers have since died in the fighting.  Larison, of course, ignores all this and just blames the whole thing on alleged Saudi war crimes.  It is as if history prior to last weekend does not exist.  Larison is giving us Iranian propaganda and calling it "conservative" thought.  It isn't; it's just nonsensical drivel.

Today, Larison is pushing a different set of false facts.  The Palestinians at the Gaza border fence were peaceful.  (They weren't)  They were unarmed.  (They weren't).  They were massacred by Israeli troops instructed to mow them down.  (Another lie.)  Larison says that if this happened with some other country, US politicians and pundits would be demanding action against the perpetrators.  That's Larison's way of saying that the Jewish lobby in DC control the politicians and news media.  It's BS, but it is also amazing to think that this guy actually believes this stuff.  Is he that biased?

So we have another useful idiot who is pushing the propaganda of the Iranians and the Houthi allies as well as the nonsense pumped out by the terrorists at Hamas (who are also friends of the Iranians.)  It's sad that this stuff makes its way onto the internet.

The Useful Idiots

The recent battle at the Gaza border between "demonstrators" and Israeli troops is being recast into something it wasn't.  This description from the man in charge of dealing with the Arab-Israeli conflict for something called the International Crisis Organization is a good example.

Hamas views the protests as a means to confront Israel’s blockade by peaceful means, without starting a new war. Preparations for the march began months ago. All major Palestinian factions agreed to participate and keep the demonstrations unarmed. Hamas instructed its followers and security forces to ensure that no arms were displayed among the protesters and no weapons were fired at Israeli forces.

So what's wrong with this?  First, there are pictures of men at the demonstration with semi-automatic rifles, so arms were clearly displayed.  Second, there were many points where Israeli troops were attacked by the demonstrators with gunfire, Molotov cocktails and barrages of rocks.  Third, the demonstrators were obviously armed.  Fourth, there were Hamas soldiers mixed into the crowd who tried to use the mass of people as cover to booby trap the border fence for later use against passing Israeli patrols.  In other words, the demonstration was anything but "peaceful".

It would be one thing if Hamas were spouting lies about what happened.  That would be expected.  Instead, we are getting Western media and NGO's who are repeating the lies from Hamas as if they were the truth.  Even politicians like Bernie Sanders are repeating the lies.  For Hamas, this is a bonanza and one well worth the high number of casualties.

Nearly a century ago, Stalin used to speak of the useful idiots who helped the Soviet Union by unknowingly spreading propaganda in the West.  Today, those useful idiots have moved on to helping terror groups like Hamas.  It's truly sad. 

Sexual Harassment Connecticut Style - 2

Representative Esty, Democrat of the fifth district of Connecticut, has announced that she had decided not to run for re-election this year.  As Gomer Pyle used to say years ago, "Surprise, surprise, surprise."

Esty tried to cover up sexual harassment by her chief of staff against many of the women working in her office.  The story of the cover up came out over the weekend.  Fortunately, Esty was unable to stand the scrutiny even though many other Democrats supported her.

The fifth District is one that could switch to the GOP, although that remains unlikely in very blue Connecticut.  Esty's loss will not be felt by many, since she accomplished next to nothing during her time in the House.

The Lies That Liars Tell -- Another Tale of Senator Blumenthal

The senior senator from my state of Connecticut, Democrat Richard Blumenthal, has a problem telling the truth.  We all know about it here in the Nutmeg State.  It hit the public consciousness when Lying Dick (as I call him) spent years falsely claiming to have seen combat in Vietnam.  That lie almost cost him the election which got him to the Senate in the first place.  For a Democrat, that's hard to do in Connecticut.  Lying Dick, however, didn't stop there.  For example, just this morning, he took to Twitter to condemn President Trump for creating a "humanitarian crisis" by issuing an order ending DACA.  DACA is the program allowing illegal aliens who were brought here as children to register and get work permits allowing them to stay.  Congress did not enact it; president Obama just issued an Executive Order putting it in place after first telling the nation more than 20 times that he did not have the power to do just that.  Ten states were about to file a lawsuit to overturn DACA when Trump acted to cancel the program.  The President put a six months period in place prior to cancellation and said that it was so that Congress could act before the program expired.  Congress, not surprisingly, did not act.  In fact, Blumenthal opposed every attempt at compromise that would have solved the looming "humanitarian crisis".  That makes his lies even worse.  Obama created this problem by not enforcing the border laws and by then illegally issuing an edict that the laws wouldn't be enforced for the DACA group.  President Trump provided a way out.  He even said that he would agree to a plan that would provide the DACA group a pathway to citizenship.

The facts never seem to matter to Senator Blumenthal.  Lying Dick always lives up to his name.

April

It's April in Connecticut.  That's why tonight we are expecting snow.  Snow?  That's right, it is supposed to snow tonight.  What a terrible way to start the first full month of Spring.

I suppose I should just be happy that winter is over, but we can't seem to leave it behind.  It must be global warming.