THERE’S NO THERE, THERE:
And comparisons to Bill Clinton don’t fly. There was a clear crime pointed to; some people (basically, the Senate) didn’t think it rose to the level of impeachable, but everyone knew what it was about. This is all smoke and mirrors and hearsay and presumptions. More on Will Hurd here.
WINNING: China Is Out of Economic Ammo Against the U.S. “It has maxed out tariffs and other trade barriers, and selling Treasuries is ineffective.”
It isn’t all fun and games:
The agricultural industry has been hit especially hard. Farm bankruptcies are up 24% this year, and a report by the American Farm Bureau Federation finds that almost 40% of farmers’ income this year will come either from insurance payouts or government bailouts.
Nobody ever said trade wars are fun and easy — er, Trump did, which wasn’t his smartest statement ever — but the short-term pain for farmers ought to yield longterm benefits to our economy generally. And also improve our global position relative to China’s.
More:
The other big weapon in the Chinese arsenal is investment. The Chinese government is traditionally a major buyer of U.S. government debt, and it holds the second-biggest stash of Treasuries (after Japan). Over the years, many have fretted that a spat between the U.S. and China would lead the latter to sell off that mountain of debt, creating a world of hurt for the U.S. financial system and economy.
But this danger is vastly exaggerated for two reasons. First, as recent experience demonstrates, the U.S. simply doesn’t need Chinese government cash. In 2015 and 2016 China experienced one of the biggest capital flights in history, with about $1 trillion pouring out of the country. This resulted in a huge drawdown of China’s foreign-exchange reserves, most of which are U.S. bonds.
If the U.S. were heavily dependent on Chinese government financing, interest rates on U.S. debt — and by extension, throughout the U.S. economy — should have risen. Instead, they fell.
Washington’s addiction to debt is a problem, but for now anyway, there are plenty of lenders outside of Beijing. And economically decoupling from China should be — and seems to be — reassuring investors and lenders that Washington is getting at least one thing right.
On reflection, Washington hates this decoupling, as it reduces opportunities for corruption and graft. This is all Trump’s work, and so far it’s working pretty well.
WELL, IT’S DEFINED THAT WAY BY OPPORTUNISTS AND USEFUL IDIOTS: Victor Davis Hanson: In these upside-down times, patriotism is being redefined as removing a president before a constitutionally mandated election.
Trump’s policies have been more anti-Russian and pro-Ukrainian than those of the Obama administration. Trump armed the Ukrainians; Obama did not. Trump imposed new sanctions against Russia, used force against Russian mercenaries in Syria, beefed up NATO defenses, pulled the U.S. out of an asymmetrical missile treaty with Russia, and pumped more oil and gas to lower world prices — much to the chagrin of oil-exporting Russia.
In contrast, Obama was the architect of “reset” with Russia that reached its nadir in a hot mic exchange in which Obama offered a quid pro quo, vowing more flexibility on issues such as U.S.-sponsored missile defense in Eastern Europe in exchange for Russia giving Obama “space” to concentrate on his reelection.
Trump’s critics have also radically changed their spin on “coups.” To them, “coup” is no longer a dirty word trafficked in by right-wing conspiracists. Instead, it has been normalized as a possibly legitimate means of aborting the Trump presidency.
I eagerly await their response to talk of a “coup” against the next Democrat in the White House. But they don’t care about the damage they do. It’s rule or ruin. Because they’re horrible people, who in a healthy republic would be ostracized and marginalized and mocked by everyone.
FLASHBACK: Mayor Bloomberg’s Disastrous Failure on Hurricane Sandy.
Weather blogger Brendan Loy, who sounded the alarm regarding the devastation that accompanied Hurricane Katrina in 2005 days ahead of government and most media, faults New York’s Mayor Bloomberg for waiting too long to order evacuations and for underplaying the extent of the danger. He wrote the following: “Waiting until almost noon on the day before the storm, mere hours before the subways closed, to order an evacuation of the most vulnerable low-lying areas in New York City (‘Zone A’), was a huge mistake, not just in retrospect, but at the time, as I wrote then.” By contrast, “Gov. Christie was pretty emphatic in taking Sandy seriously and urging others to do so. He criticized the mayor of Atlantic City for being less so.”
Not exactly presidential material, Mike.
CAN CHICAGO COUNTERSUE FOR MALICIOUS STUPIDITY? Jussie Smollett Sues City of Chicago for “Malicious Prosecution”.
VICTOR DAVIS HANSON: ‘Coup’ Concerns Suddenly Don’t Seem So Far-Fetched.
For most of the last three years, Donald Trump’s critics have scoffed at supposed “conspiracy theories” that claimed a “deep state” of bureaucrats were aborting the Trump presidency. We have been told the word “coup” is hyperbole that reveals the paranoid minds of Trump supporters.
Yet oddly, many people brag that they are proud members of a deep state and occasionally boast about the idea of a coup.
Recently, former acting CIA chief John McLaughlin proclaimed in a public forum, “Thank God for the deep state.” Former CIA director John Brennan agreed and praised the “deep state people” for their opposition to Trump.
Far from denying the danger of an unelected careerist bureaucracy that seeks to overturn presidential policies, New York Times columnists have praised its efforts to nullify the Trump agenda.
Nearly all coups maintain at least a pretense of legality, and claim misconduct by the leader being removed.
Plus:
Taylor and Kent cited their anguish with Trump’s foreign policy toward Ukraine — namely that it did not go through official channels and was too unsympathetic to Ukraine and too friendly to Russia. If so, one might have thought the anguished bureaucrats would have similarly gone public during the Obama administration.
After all, Vice President Joe Biden took over the Obama administration’s Ukrainian policy at a time when his son Hunter was knee-deep in Ukrainian affairs. As a consultant for a Ukrainian natural gas company, Hunter Biden made a reported $80,000 a month without expertise in either the energy business in particular or Ukraine in general.
Also, Trump’s policies have been more anti-Russian and pro-Ukrainian than those of the Obama administration. Trump armed the Ukrainians; Obama did not. Trump imposed new sanctions against Russia, used force against Russian mercenaries in Syria, beefed up NATO defenses, pulled the U.S. out an asymmetrical missile treaty with Russia, and pumped more oil and gas to lower world prices — much to the chagrin of oil-exporting Russia.
In contrast, Obama was the architect of “reset” with Russia that reached its nadir in a hot mic exchange in which Obama offered a quid pro quo, vowing more flexibility on issues such as U.S.-sponsored missile defense in Eastern Europe in exchange for Russia giving Obama “space” to concentrate on his re-election.
That’s different because shut up. Finally: “Trump’s critics have also radically changed their spin on ‘coups.’ To them, ‘coup’ is no longer a dirty word trafficked in by right-wing conspiracists. Instead, it has been normalized as a possibly legitimate means of aborting the Trump presidency.”
For people who claim that Trump is trampling norms and the Constitution, they’re doing an awful not of trampling of norms and the Constitution. But, then, they’re hypocrites who’ll do anything — and wreck anything — in the pursuit of power.
YES. WE SEE THEM. THEY’RE ABOUT AS SUBTLE AS THE BEAGLE BROTHERS TRYING FOR UNCLE SCROOGE’S MONEY BIN: Attempted Theft In Progress.
OH, DEAR LORD: Fiona Hill Lectures The GOP About Ukrainian Fiction.
THEY SURE DID: “They got caught”.
THEY NEITHER WORK NOR WANT OTHERS TO WORK: Anti-Contractor Bill Shows California’s Aristocracy at Work.
THE DEEP STATE PROTECTS ITS OWN: Unheard at the Impeachment Hearings.
SEAL THE BORDER. LET MEXICO SORT ITSELF OUT: The Most Important News Story Right Now Isn’t Impeachment, It’s The Crisis In Mexico.
CHILDREN CRUSADES NEVER END WELL: Global Warming’s Apocalyptic Path .
AND AGAIN BEHOLD HOW SHOCKED MY FACE IS: Impeachment poll flips as Independent support for the inquiry takes a nosedive.
THIS IS MY SHOCKED FACE! Netanyahu’s Indictment Is a Fraud.
ART FOR ART’S SAKE (WHAT A CONCEPT!): Finding Hope at the Concert Hall. Heather Mac Donald on an increasing rare experience: a beautiful performance of classical music without a note of identity politics. Meanwhile, as she writes, the left continues its long march through institutions.
A few markers of our present moment: every arts institution in the United States is under pressure to discard meritocratic standards in collections, programming, and personnel, in favor of race and gender preferences. When the Museum of Modern Art opened its renovated headquarters in New York City this October, a Wall Street Journal art critic noted that the new MoMA had been able to “correct, and even make reparations for, its heretofore almost exclusive parade of white male superstars.” Gender and race bean-counting is now the key to evaluating a collection’s worth. “Previously, only about 1/20th of the art in the museum’s permanent collection was by women,” wrote the Journal’s Peter Plagens. “That fraction now exceeds a quarter and is moving toward a third.”
. . . Writing in the New York Times, Darren Walker urged museums to “resist reinforcing biases, hierarchies and inequalities”; instead, they should “redefine excellence and relevance.” That redefinition entails hiring curators and other staff based on race. The goal is “installations and institutions” that represent “people whom the system excludes and exploits.” The museum establishment hardly needed Walker’s prodding; it has already enthusiastically embraced “diversity” as its artistic lodestar. In 2020, the Baltimore Museum of Art, for example, will acquire works only by females and will stage only “female-centric” exhibits.
. . . Narcissistic opera directors have been inflicting their political ideology on defenseless operas for several decades now, but the revisionism is only going to get worse, especially with the rise of #MeToo. From here on, it will be almost impossible to mount Don Giovanni, Rusalka, Turandot, Madama Butterfly, Carmen, and much of the rest of the opera repertoire without similar directorial “help” to purge these works of their toxic masculinity, cultural appropriation, and incorrect attitudes toward the “Other.”
The good news for now: Attendance is not compulsory at MoMA, the Baltimore Museum of Art, or any opera that has been “helped.”
NEWS YOU CAN USE: Here’s who’s likely to lead Iran if the ayatollah is deposed.
AT AMAZON, Bestsellers in History.
DEVMENTUM! Deval Patrick Cancels Campaign Event At Atlanta College After Only 2 People Show Up. “Patrick was scheduled to speak at Morehouse College in Atlanta, a historically black men’s college located not far from the site of Wednesday night’s Democratic presidential debate. The event was organized by students from the New Deal Democrats.”
DEMOCRATS: TRUMP IS HITLER.
Also Democrats: Let’s give Trump “terrifying authoritarian surveillance powers” because reasons.
GRANTED: 107-year-old woman’s only birthday wish was to hold a baby. Movingly, a (female) Facebook friend comments: “I can see this. I never wanted children. Then I agreed to have one. Then I wanted more and now I have three. When I am 100, I won’t want to hold a book I’ve written, however useful it might be, but I could see holding a baby.”
INFRASTRUCTURE IS TOO WEAK: California suffered widespread cellphone outages during fires. A big earthquake would be much worse.
I’ve been writing about hardening infrastructure for years, but to no great avail. Related item here. Also here.
Plus, some Katrina lessons.
InstaPundit is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to Amazon.com.