Wednesday, June 24, 2020

W³P Meme Dump 24 JUN 2020




Can you believe that someone packaged these memes in a saltine cracker box and left them on my doorstep?






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Kaepernick v. Carney ... Dishonor v. Honor

 

 Article by Mark Alexander in "Patriot Post":


"Juneteenth" (19 June) is an observation of the date in 1865 when the last slaves, those in Texas, received word of their freedom. It represents the fulfillment of the principles of Liberty enumerated by our Founders 89 years earlier in the Declaration of Independence: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness."

This year's Juneteenth observation received more attention, given the perennial election-year provocation of racial tensions by Democrat Party protagonists and their Leftmedia publicists. This year's theme is "systemic racism," which they claim is plaguing our system of justice and, by definition, virtually every other aspect of American life.

Right on cue, our local Democrat mayor, Chattanooga's Andy Berke, led a pandering parade of constituents bearing Pan-African "black liberation" flags created by radical separatist Marcus Garvey in 1920. That Afro-centric flag reemerged in 2014 after the high-profile shooting of street thug Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri. (Recall that an investigation by Barack Obama's Justice Department determined that Brown had attacked Officer Darren Wilson and attempted to take his gun, that Brown never put his hands up saying "Don't shoot," and that the officer's actions were justified.)

Our local mayoral exercise in virtue signaling took place on a bridge across the Tennessee River, which is rich in irony because Democrats certainly don't want to bridge the gap between races they have worked for generations to create. These sophomoric flag displays are not to unite Americans but to divide us — such division being the staple of Democrat political strategy. That's why the residents of our nation's inner cities, under generations of oppressive Democrat policies and political regimes, have effectively been institutionally enslaved on urban poverty plantations nationwide.




But what struck me most about the local Juneteenth march under the Pan-African banners is that the liberation of slaves in our nation took place under the American flag, not some fabricated "black liberation" banner. Fact is, European slave traders were dependent on networks of African rulers and black slave traders to capture other Africans and deliver their captives in chains to ports for export.

Furthermore, the African slave trade is still thriving today. While there were an estimated 13 million people enslaved between the 15th and 19th centuries, mostly by the British and French, today the Global Slavery Index estimates that more than 40 million people are subjugated by some form of modern chattel slavery, most often referred to now as "human trafficking."

Of course, the nation taking the most action to end human trafficking worldwide is ... the United States. Beyond African slave trafficking, the tribal genocide in Nigeria and other African nations — the slaughter of tens of thousands of men, women, and children — rarely receives a media mention.

Clearly, celebrating the freedom of slaves under a Pan-African banner is absurd. But when it comes to Democrat efforts to divide Americans into dependent constituencies, virtue signaling trumps substance. As Demo Joe Biden unintentionally declared, "We choose truth over facts." In other words, a manufactured "truth" takes precedence over the facts.

Perhaps there's no better illustration of the revisionist history promoted by Democrats today than the contrast between the lives and actions of two black men: William Harvey Carney and Colin Rand Kaepernick. Their actions regarding our American flag are separated by 150 years and by a revisionist desecration of our legacy of Liberty under that flag.

William Carney was born into slavery in Norfolk, Virginia, in 1840. It is believed he made his way to freedom by way of the Underground Railroad and was able to join his father in Massachusetts. In March of 1863, 23-year-old Carney joined the 54th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry. The 54th was the second, but most famous, infantry regiment composed of black Americans, as authorized by Abraham Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation. 

 Just four months later, Carney would find himself in pitched battle.




On 11 July 1863, in the First Battle of Fort Wagner, the stronghold protecting the strategic southern approach to Charleston Harbor, Union forces were turned back after suffering 339 casualties to the Confederate's 12 casualties. But a week later, the famous Second Battle of Fort Wagner was led by the 54th Massachusetts under the command of Colonel Robert Gould Shaw (as depicted in the Oscar-winning film "Glory").

As the 54th reached a point about 150 yards from the fort walls, Confederates opened fire with musket and cannon, decimating the ranks of the black soldiers. Despite this, the 54th bravely fought on and reached the fort parapet, where Shaw became one of the many casualties. After an extraordinarily brutal battle, the black infantrymen were ultimately forced back after suffering 272 killed, wounded, or missing. But, at the end of the day, after additional Union reinforcements captured the fort, the men of the 54th were hailed for their valor and bravery.

One among them, young Sgt. William Carney, was awarded the Medal of Honor for his actions. After the 54th's color guard was killed, Carney retrieved the U.S. flag carried by his regiment, and, despite his own severe injuries, pressed forward. He held it high under heavy fire and later that day exclaimed to his unit, "Boys, I only did my duty; the old flag never touched the ground!"

He would later recount that, rising at one point with the flag in hand, he was shot: "The bullet I now carry in my body came whizzing like a mosquito, and I was shot. Not being prostrated by the shot, I continued my course, yet had not gone far before I was struck by a second shot."

Carney was honorably discharged in June 1864 and returned to New Bedford, where he lived until his death in 1908. In honor of the 54th Massachusetts, the Shaw Memorial was erected on Boston Common. On 31 May, 123 years to the day after it was dedicated, Boston BLM (Burn, Loot, and Murder) rioters badly defaced the monument, one of many in their nationwide effort to whitewash our shared history.





And on that disgraceful note, and in stark contrast to the service and sacrifice of William Carney, who honored our flag, let's consider the life and actions of Colin Kaepernick.

Kaepernick was born in 1987 in Wisconsin to a white mother, Heidi Russo, and a black father who abandoned Russo before Kaepernick's birth. Russo put Kaepernick up for adoption with Rick and Teresa Kaepernick, a white couple. He thrived as part of their family, becoming a top student and a multi-sport star in high school. He received a football scholarship from the University of Nevada, and after graduating in 2011 with a 4.0 GPA and a stellar football career, he was drafted by the NFL's San Francisco 49ers. After a couple of good years, in 2014 Kaepernick signed a six-year contract extension worth up to $126 million.

But in 2016, he was benched after a lackluster season and several injuries — the same year he began his protest against the "The Star-Spangled Banner," at first refusing to stand and then "taking a knee" during the anthem. In 2017, he opted out of his contract but was not picked up by any other team, though he still enjoyed lucrative corporate sponsorship contracts, most notably with Nike.

After a life of privilege, stardom, and wealth, Kaepernick tied his failing career to perceived injustice and aligned himself with the Marxist ranks of the so-called Black Lives Matter movement.




Regarding his disrespectful protests, Kaepernick declared his allegiance to correcting the mythical "systemic racism": "I am not going to stand up to show pride in a flag for a country that oppresses black people and people of color. ... There are bodies in the street and people getting paid leave and getting away with murder." Often wearing socks depicting cops as "pigs," he said he would continue his protest until "the American flag represents what it's supposed to represent."

Kaepernick is thus the poster child for protesting our flag, the same flag that Medal of Honor recipient William Carney risked his life to raise and defend, and under which more than a million American warriors have served and died.

Bottom line: While Carney understood that it was under the love of Old Glory that he became a free man, Kaepernick is unable to comprehend that glorious history and legacy because his worldview is riddled with hate — perhaps even a pathological self-hatred associated with abandonment as a child.

https://patriotpost.us/alexander/71657-kaepernick-v-carney-dot-dot-dot-dishonor-v-honor-2020-06-24
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Trump Was Right In 2017 When He Said Statue Destroyers Wouldn’t Stop With Confederate Figures

What media figures assured the public was absurd when President Trump said it in 2017 is now coming to fruition in cities across the country.


President Trump was roundly mocked and derided for worrying in August 2017 that statue destroyers would move on from statues of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee to statues of former presidents and founding fathers George Washington and Thomas Jefferson. Major media accused Trump of making inappropriate and even ridiculous comments.

Fewer than three years later, precisely as President Trump predicted, iconoclastic mobs have moved on from toppling Confederate statues to deface, damage, and destroy statues of and memorials to Admiral David Farragut, abolitionist Matthias Baldwin, American Revolutionary War Gen. Philip Schuyler, a Texas ranger, Commanding Gen. of the Union Army Ulysses S. Grant, Frances Scott Key, Abraham Lincoln, George Washington, and Thomas Jefferson. A statue of former President Theodore Roosevelt is facing imminent removal in New York City.

“So this week it’s Robert E. Lee. I noticed that Stonewall Jackson is coming down. I wonder, is it George Washington next week? And is it Thomas Jefferson the week after? You know, you really do have to ask yourself, where does it stop?” President Trump asked on August 15, 2017.

Removing Confederate memorials doesn’t mean Washington and Jefferson are next, assured Jamelle Bouie of Slate at the time. “Trump’s comparison there is dumb. It doesn’t really even make any sense. And the notion that there’s some slippery slope is dumb,” he said.

HBO’s John Oliver vehemently agreed (language warning):



The New York Times ran an article headlined “Historians Question Trump’s Comments on Confederate Monuments,” quoting a historian calling Trump’s query a “red herring.” Another historian said “the answer to Mr. Trump’s hypothetical question about whether getting rid of Lee and Jackson also meant junking Washington and Jefferson was a simple ‘no.'”

NPR’s Steve Inskeep purported to do a “fact” “check” on President Trump’s statement, opining that Trump “used one of his standard rhetorical techniques, ‘whataboutism.'” His “fact” “check” concluded: “To have the president of the United States compare Lee to Washington is simply, factually wrong.”

“Trump equates Confederate generals Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson with George Washington in bizarre press conference,” opined Business Insider’s Sonam Sheth. “Lee and Jackson were the leaders of the US’ secessionist movement that was organized to preserve the institution of slavery. Washington and Jefferson are two of the country’s most notable founders, as well as the first and third presidents,” wrote Sheth, wrongly suggesting that mobs would never come for the latters’ statues.

The Washington Post’s Kristine Phillips wrote a piece smugly headlined, “Historians: No, Mr. President, Washington and Jefferson are not the same as Confederate generals.” Not a single one of the historians Phillips chose to interview in her critique of the president could even imagine a world where mobs might tear down statues of slaveholding Founding Fathers, much less where organized protesters would secure their removal. Jim Grossman, executive director of the American Historical Association, called the suggestion “absurd” and “unacceptable for the president of the United States.”

Douglas Blackmon, a senior fellow at the University of Virginia’s Miller Center, said President Trump either does not understand history or was racist for worrying about the removal of Founding Father statues. “It’s the difference between a monument to the founder of our nation, and a monument to a key figure in an effort to break apart the nation,” Blackmon said. “The most kind explanation of that can only be ignorance, and I don’t say that to insult the president.”

Denver Brunsman, a history professor at George Washington University — which this week removed busts of George Washington, apparently to protect them from mobs decrying the first president as beneath contempt — was quoted saying that Washington and Jefferson should not be in any way equated with those who seceded from the union.

NBC News assured people that Trump was wrong: “Is the president right about the impending threat to the founders? Historians who spoke to NBC News said such fears are slightly misplaced and that Trump is championing a murky interpretation of history.” The article quoted Kevin Levin, a Boston-based historian, saying “The president can raise the slippery slope, but it’s a false slippery slope.”

The article ended, however, with an admission that some groups want statues of any U.S. presidents who were slave owners also removed. One man specifically cited Washington and President Andrew Jackson as candidates for statue removal, just as President Trump accurately predicted.

During President Trump’s press conference in August 2017, a reporter immediately pushed back on his concern that statues of the first president might not be safe:
Q: George Washington and Robert E. Lee are not the same.
THE PRESIDENT: George Washington was a slave owner. Was George Washington a slave owner? So will George Washington now lose his status? Are we going to take down —
Excuse me, are we going to take down statues to George Washington? How about Thomas Jefferson? What do you think of Thomas Jefferson? You like him?
Q I do love Thomas Jefferson.
THE PRESIDENT: Okay, good. Are we going to take down the statue? Because he was a major slave owner. Now, are we going to take down his statue?

What media figures assured the public was absurd is now coming to fruition in cities across the country, including New York City:
Here’s their letter to Mayor de Blasio.

President Trump worried that statue removers wouldn’t stop with Confederate figures. The media roundly mocked and derided him. Yet all their experts, fact checks, and smug assurances were completely wrong and Trump was right. It will be interesting to note whether any of these media outlets acknowledge that they were wrong.


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DOJ Just Disclosed ‘Explosive’ Handwritten Notes From Peter Strzok

A source with direct knowledge of the notes from Strzok told The Federalist that the new disclosures are "explosive."


The Department of Justice (DOJ) filed in federal court on Tuesday afternoon yet another batch of exculpatory evidence pertaining to the criminal trial against former White House National Security Adviser Michael Flynn. According to a letter to the federal court overseeing Flynn’s trial sent on behalf of acting U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia Michael Sherwin, the new disclosures include handwritten notes from fired former Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) official Peter Strzok. The notes are believed to have been written in early January of 2017 at the same time that the FBI suddenly re-opened its criminal investigation of Flynn despite the fact that the FBI had filed to find any “derogatory” information against Flynn during the course of its multi-month investigation of him during and after the 2016 presidential campaign.
“As we have previously disclosed, beginning in January 2020, the United States Attorney for the Eastern District of Missouri has been conducting a review of the Michael T. Flynn investigation,” the DOJ letter states. “The enclosed document was obtained and analyzed by USA EDMO during the course of its review.”
“This page of notes was taken by former Deputy Assistant Director Peter Strzok,” the letter continues. “While the page itself is undated, we believe that the notes were taken in early January 2017, possibly between January 3 and January 5.”
Because the exculpatory evidence was filed pursuant to a previous protective order from the judge in the case, the handwritten notes themselves have not yet been made publicly available. It is not known when, or if, the judge in the case will ever allow the newly revealed evidence exonerating Flynn to be publicly disclosed.
“What DOJ disclosed today is as explosive as anything that’s come out in Flynn’s case,” a source with direct knowledge of the content of Strzok’s handwritten notes told The Federalist on Tuesday. Earlier this year, DOJ disclosed handwritten documents from Bill Priestap, who previously served as the FBI’s top counterintelligence official, fretting that the FBI investigation against Flynn was designed to “to get him to lie so we can prosecute him or get him fired.” Following those and other disclosures exonerating Flynn, DOJ moved to dismiss the charges against him. The judge in the case has thus far refused, and instead appointed a shadow private prosecutor to argue that Flynn should be imprisoned.
A motion to force the judge to dismiss the charges against Flynn is currently pending in a federal appeals court.

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BREAKING: The Case Against General Michael Flynn Has Officially Been Dismissed





BREAKING: The Case Against
General Michael Flynn Has
Officially Been Dismissed


Source: (AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta)


By Katie Palvlich • June 24, 2020


The criminal case against former White House National Security Advisor and General Michael Flynn has been dismissed after an order from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia.








In May, nearly two months ago, the Department of Justice announced it would no longer pursue the case against Flynn after new information revealed an FBI set up against him. DOJ also argued the FBI didn't have a case and essentially made one up after coming up empty despite weeks of surveillance during the 2016 presidential transition period. Judge Emmitt Sullivan, who resided over the Flynn case, rejected DOJ's motion to dismiss and referred the decision the the appeals court.

“Through the course of my review of General Flynn’s case, I concluded the proper and just course was to dismiss the case. I briefed Attorney General Barr on my findings, advised him on these conclusions, and he agreed," U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Missouri Jeffrey Jensen stated at the time.

From the motion to dismiss:

After a considered review of all the facts and circumstances of this case, including newly discovered and disclosed information appended to the defendant’s supplemental pleadings, ECF Nos. 181, 188-190,1 the Government has concluded that the interview of Mr. Flynn was untethered to, and unjustified by, the FBI’s counterintelligence investigation into Mr. Flynn—a no longer justifiably predicated investigation that the FBI had, in the Bureau’s own words, prepared to close because it had yielded an “absence of any derogatory information.” Ex. 1 at 4, FBI FD-1057 “Closing Communication” Jan. 4, 2017 (emphases added). The Government is not persuaded that the January 24, 2017 interview was conducted with a legitimate investigative basis and therefore does not believe Mr. Flynn’s statements were material even if untrue. Moreover, we not believe that the Government can prove either the relevant false statements or their materiality beyond a reasonable doubt.



In December 2016 FBI agents moved to close an investigation on Flynn after finding no evidence of wrongdoing, but former FBI Intelligence Agent Peter Strzok demanded it be kept open. At the time, Strzok cited senior officials as the reason why.

On January 5, 2017, President Obama held a meeting in the Oval Office and asked whether Flynn should be "treated differently."

Weeks later, FBI agents showed up at the White House to interview Flynn and handwritten notes state, "What's our goal? Truth/Admission or to get him to lie, so we can prosecute him or get him fired?"


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The Fight against Statues Is a Fight against Civilization

A defaced statue of President Andrew Jackson across from the White House in Washington, D.C., June 23, 2020 (Kevin Lamarque/Reuters)
 
  Article by Conrad Black in "National Review":

 Left-wing extremists have hijacked the Floyd protests to wage war against American achievement.
 
The movement to tear down statues or even just to deface them was misconceived in its earliest stages and has now, like most aspects of the self-flagellating fever over “systemic racism,” evolved from just concerns about offending African-American sensibilities into an assault on the entire body of achievement of Western civilization. This movement really began with the debate over whether to remove the statue of General Robert E. Lee from a main square of Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017. Serious civic discussion on a legitimate question quickly deteriorated into mob violence between Klansmen and neo-Nazis on one side and Antifa and the belligerent faction of the now lionized Black Lives Matter (BLM) on the other.

The legitimate protest over a white police officer’s killing of African-American Minneapolis resident George Floyd on May 25 quickly descended into widespread rioting, arson, and pillage, and demands for the removal of statues of eminent Caucasians from Christopher Columbus to Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, and Winston Churchill. Some statues probably should be removed, but what we have now has degenerated with the astonishing speed that reasonable advocacy groups were transformed by domestic terrorists. The underlying argument is that society is “systemically racist,” and therefore that its leaders are also racist, are venerated for false reasons, and the entire notion of Western civilization represented politically by traditionally revered figures is an affront to and “disrespectful” of blacks. BLM is admirably inclusive in matters of gender, sexuality, age, and religion, but it excludes non-blacks — those of Asian extraction, from Israel and Arabia to India and China and Japan, are in the same purgatory as whites, except that they have not supposedly been as oppressive of blacks. There is no movement to tear down statues of Gandhi or Mao Tse-tung, or vocal resentment of Arab slave-trafficking in blacks, which continues still. In an astonishing public-relations triumph, BLM suddenly ceased to be remembered for its identification with the murder of white policemen (including eight in Dallas and Baton Rouge in July 2016). It has seized the mantle of African-American self-respect and pursuit of justice.

A statue of Washington or Jefferson is seen as a provocative gesture, as both were slaveholders. It is more of a stretch to attack Lincoln, since he declared in his second inaugural that the Union would eliminate slavery no matter how many Union soldiers died achieving that goal. He famously declared: “If God wills that every drop of blood drawn by the lash shall be repaid by a drop of blood drawn by the sword, then as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said that the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.” Lincoln abominated slavery all of his conscient life and eventually came to agree with the concept of the equality of intelligence and ability of all races, partly because of his conversations with the great African-American leader Frederick Douglass. Even the emancipator of the African-Americans cannot escape the wrath of the hate-fueled leaders of Antifa and the militant elements of BLM, who wish to burn down America and society generally. Perhaps the most extreme formulation of this view is from Louis Farrakhan, leader of the Nation of Islam, (as if Islam has been well-disposed to blacks), who proclaims that Jews are “termites” and Hitler was “a very great man” (referring to his moral qualities as much as his talents).

This is the difficulty with the entire effort to reason with extremists: They don’t really want to reach an agreement. They skulked forward hiding behind the skirts of respectable reform organizations who wish equality and brotherhood in America. They seize on horrible incidents and even minor controversies about a statue and magnify them into assaults on public order and private property, dragging behind them the useful liberal idiots who would have us believe that Antifa is a legitimate reform organization. This resembles the trajectory of the anti-Trump Resistance itself. It started with those who claimed Trump was a Russian agent, a misogynist, a crook, and a racist. He is none of these, though he has his faults. Yet instead of treating him as a political opponent and seeking to defeat him electorally, they have assaulted him relentlessly with completely unfounded allegations of treason, high constitutional crimes, of bringing down upon the country a pandemic, and of dodging his inescapable moral duty to fight the pandemic by shutting down the economy and inciting an economic depression so dire that he has no chance of reelection. It was in this context that his comments that the initial disputants in Charlottesville were good people arguing both sides of an authentic debate were widely represented in the Democratic media as apologia for the Klan and the Nazis. In such a venomous atmosphere of implacable animosity to America and to civilization, conciliation and compromise will give way to the assertion of constitutional legitimacy and the ability of all citizens to exercise their constitutional liberties. That time has come.

On the statue question itself, many statues or memorials to Confederate soldiers or politicians could probably be replaced by statues of more deserving people, including in Statuary Hall in the United States Capitol. (Removing them to museums, as some suggest, would create airplane hangars full of derelict statues of forgotten people.) General Lee himself opposed the secession of Virginia, but as was not uncommon in the South, placed the desires of his state above those of the Union, even when he had been offered the command of the Union armies by Lincoln. (Had he accepted, the war would’ve ended in 1862 with much more generous terms for the South than it ultimately received, and 500,000 fewer dead Americans.)

There is only a weak argument for removing the statues of great generals such as Lee and Stonewall Jackson. There is no argument whatever for removing from the front of the Museum of Natural History in New York the splendid statue of Theodore Roosevelt, which is being done preemptively, according to the director, because statues now attract controversy. (That one is accompanied by a Native American and an African American beside a mounted TR — he was a supporter of both communities). They should retain TR’s statue and get rid of the director. She represents precisely the sort of cowardice that feeds and is exploited by the extremism that quickly gets to the head of these apparently well intended movements. There is no earthly excuse for taking down the statue of General (and President) U. S. Grant in San Francisco, or for defacing the statue of Winston Churchill in Parliament Square in London. Compare Confederate leader Jefferson Davis’s views of black people to those of Farrakhan’s hero and Churchill’s arch-foe, Hitler, on the same subject. The first person who advocates the removal of General Sherman’s statue in New York’s Grand Army Plaza by St. Gaudens, should be pitilessly mocked and chastised.

The Democratic Party has left the back door open to these anti-democratic extremists and has been infiltrated. It has morally atrophied and is ambiguous between mob rule and sensible law enforcement. The Democrats have a phantom presidential candidate who is clearly unequal to the office which he seeks and have left their campaign to the biased and unprofessional national political media, since the candidate can’t make the race. The Democrats are trying to avoid the issues, profit from the coronavirus, and hope for a referendum on Trump stacked by the Trump-hating media. Jefferson, Madison, FDR, Truman, and LBJ were Democratic presidents who importantly strengthened the foundations of American liberty. Those who would remove a statue of Robert E. Lee because he led the Army of Virginia, no more realize that they are facilitating the work of those who would tear down statues of Lincoln and Churchill than those who peacefully protested the criminal death of George Floyd realized their efforts would be hijacked by those who burned and pillaged the businesses of thousands of decent Americans.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/06/the-fight-against-statues-is-a-fight-against-civilization/#slide-1
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New Home Sales Skyrocket 16.6% Blowing Past Expectations


Jumpin’ ju-ju bones… New home sales jumped a whopping 16.6% in May, blowing past the estimates of a 2.9% rise.  The May increase in sales is nearly 13 percent higher than the same month one year ago.

Home sales are a key indicator of economic health because purchases of homes requires (1) income, a stable job; and (2) an optimistic financial outlook from the buyer.


Sales of new single-family homes jumped 16.6% in May from April, to a seasonally adjusted annualized pace of 676,000, the Census Bureau reported Tuesday. The median economist estimate was for 640,000, according to Bloomberg data.

In addition to a larger-than-expected monthly surge, May sales were nearly 13% higher than a year ago. As the US economy reopens, people are flocking back to the housing market in droves — the rosy sales are a rebound from three months of declines ending in April. (LINK)

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NEC Chairman Larry Kudlow Discusses U.S-China Trade and Status of Economic Recovery


In the economic balancing act toward China Larry Kudlow represents the good cop, Peter Navarro represents the bad cop and President Trump navigates the market responses.  Neither person is factually in conflict with the other; the nuance is in the expression and each person has a role to play.  Sometimes teeth, sometimes not. It depends on need.

Last night trade advisor Peter Navarro noted the U.S. position with China and trade is still in a state of serious conflict.  This is accurate, and a more confrontational posture has been expressed by President Trump.  Today Larry Kudlow moderates the Navarro position to lessen the Wall St. concern over a looming decoupling.  It’s all a dance.

The need for nuance becomes clear as we watch Stuart Varney pushing the Wall Street concern angle on behalf of U.S. multinationals. The administration does not want to spook the stock market while they deal with a China confrontation. WATCH:


Kudlow represents the panda mask. Navarro represents the eagles claw. President Trump advances or retracts each position as he controls the market response.  The objective is a slow, steady, smiling decoupling that doesn’t unnerve anyone… but the direction is always toward the decoupling.
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President Trump is delivering the proverbial economic death by a thousand paper cuts.
Because China sees their strategic panda mask approach being used against their own interests; and because Beijing now sees their economy contracting due to the long-term strategy being deployed by President Trump; China is getting a little more desperate:
BEIJING/HONG KONG (Reuters) – The Chinese government’s top diplomat Wang Yi on Tuesday proposed a “fast track” arrangement for the movement of people and goods with India and Russia.
Ministers from China, Russia and India should together discuss trade, energy, transport, education and health, Wang said in a statement on the foreign ministry’s website. (link)

President Trump smiling while slowly and methodically cutting down the economy of China and simultaneously holding them to account for prior purchase agreements.  This relentless approach has to be making Beijing quite angry.

The Chinese saying: “if you plant your trees in another man’s orchard don’t be surprised when you pay for your own apples”, is very appropriate for these times.  However, China has always been the one charging…. they did not expect to be the one paying.

Sad panda.



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Trump Supporters Heckle Mask-Shaming MSNBC Reporter, One Blasts ‘That COVID-1984 BS’



I don’t know what happened to the news.

It used to exist — I remember, because I hated it. It was boring.

But I sure do miss it now. Frequently, if you’re not hearing outright opinion, you’re being served a narrative strong enough to chop a giant redwood.

Case in point: Ahead of Trump’s Phoenix rally, reporter Vaughn Hillyard was on the scene for MSNBC Live.

Here’s what he had to say:
“We’re Democrats. We’re Democrats. We’re Democrats. We’re Democrats.”
Sorry, that’s just what I heard. This was some of his actual words:
“[W]hat we’re talking about — a slow-down in testing. The President of the United States is already coming to a place where folks that are asymptomatic may not get a test. … [I] was just…attempting to get a test myself. The wait was five and a half hours on Saturday afternoon. It is 104 degrees. You have folks waiting outside with masks on, a good number of them clearly not in the best of conditions. And so the President of the United States suggested not slowing down. At a time in which the state acknowledges that we are not on a downward trajectory. And when you hold events like this, the unfortunate reality…my folks live just three miles down the road from here. A family friend’s restaurant…they’ve already shut down out of concern about folks coming to the restaurant. This is the issue here…in the heart of Phoenix, you have the President coming in here, at a time where there’s not testing capacity and folks, frankly, are not adhering to a policy in which the state and the city of Phoenix put a mask requirement in just this weekend.”



Somewhat strangely, no similar kind of coverage was given to thousands upon thousands in the streets not long ago — many who were peacefully protesting, it should be made clear, a horrific killing of an American citizen by four law enforcement officers.

But in terms of public health, do germs have a soft spot for justice?

As Vaughn spoke into his lapel, some at the Trump rally called baloney:
“But it’s okay to riot?
“It’s okay to protest?”
“Rioting and protesting’s okay! Rioting and protesting’s okay!”

The news man was directed by his in-studio colleague to ask the folks “precisely why they’re not wearing a mask.”

A lady in a MAGA hat explained:
“It’s not about the mask. It’s about the hypocrisy that it is okay for tens of thousands of people to go and riot, to go and protest, but you cannot have a group of a thousand? Or, I don’t know how many people are here. This is not okay?”

The reporter wasn’t interested in that:
“Are you concerned about your guys’ own health?”

A man replied, “Why don’t you cover the protestors and ask why they aren’t wearing a mask?”

Back to Vaughn:
“[T]he protestors at those events are wearing masks.”
It devolved a smidge:
“I’m asking you a question.”
“I’m asking you a question.”

The guy repeated, “Why aren’t they wearing a mask? Why isn’t the liberal news media focusing on them not wearing a mask? I’m asking you a question. You didn’t answer my question. Answer my question…”

Ms. MAGA said she wasn’t worried about the coronavirus.

Vaughn attempted to take the conversation elsewhere:
“Did you hear about the ionization system that the church implemented in here?”

Hilariously, a voice off-camera asked,
“Are you talking about for that COVID-1984 bullshit?”

In studio, host Craig Melvin asked political commentator and former Republican David Jolly how we got “to a point where wearing a mask has become an open act of defiance.”

David:
“Craig, it’s like having a conversation with my 15-month-old — the logic that’s being used for not wearing a mask.”
To hear Jolly tell it, the President’s kind of a menace:
“Donald Trump could have everybody in that crowd wearing a mask if he spoke to responsible public health policy and the notion that wearing a mask will help prevent the spread of this pandemic.”
I could explain a lot of things here, but you already know ’em all.
You surely recall some recent media flip-flops:


Sometimes I think that, if consistency was candy, some in the media wouldn’t need dental insurance.

Back to MSNBC, here’s more of the network’s profile of Trump, his rallies, and his supporters. Listen and learn about those Republican nuts:


Man…it’s gonna be a really interesting election. 

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