Media Editors: Above the Fold
THE CALM BEFORE THE STORM: “Hurricane Dorian hurtled toward the United States and was on track to become a major hurricane Friday before its expected landfall Monday into Tuesday along Florida’s east coast, forecasters say. The storm was slowly turning west on Friday as it makes it way back toward land and is expected to strengthen in the coming days, the National Hurricane Center said. Dorian is then forecast slam the southeastern United States as a possible Category 4 storm.” (USA Today)
GREAT AGAIN: “President Trump revived the U.S. Space Command in a formal White House ceremony Thursday, putting the commander-in-chief a step closer to launching a military branch focused on the final frontier. … Thursday’s action does not establish a separate ‘Space Force,’ which must be approved by Congress. … Reviving the Space Command was an easier lift for the Pentagon. The command existed decades ago, though it was dissolved into the Strategic Command as part of a military reorganization following the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.” (The Washington Times)
Government & Politics
NOT SO FAST: A few weeks ago, a quintet of Senate Democrats gave the Supreme Court a Second Amendment ultimatum by way of a brief, wherein they bellowed, “Perhaps the Court can heal itself before the public demands it be ‘restructured in order to reduce the influence of politics.’” The GOP is now firing back. “Senate Republicans sent a letter to the Supreme Court on Thursday saying it ‘must not be cowed by the threats’ from Democrats who urged the justices not to take up a gun case next term and warned that the court could be restructured to reduce the influence of politics in its decisions,” NBC News reports. The letter states, “It’s one thing for politicians to peddle these ideas in Tweets or on the stump. But the Democrats’ amicus brief demonstrates that their court-packing plans are more than mere pandering. They are a direct, immediate threat to the independence of the judiciary and the rights of all Americans.”
RACE BAIT: “[Racism is] a white man’s problem,” loose lips liar-Joe Biden declared earlier this week. “White men are responsible for it — not black men.” This is loose lips liar-Biden’s effort to get back in the game — his false war stories notwithstanding — and possibly get Sen. lowlife-Kamala Harris on the phone.
PURGING THE LEAKERS: “President Trump’s personal assistant, Madeleine Westerhout … resigned on Thursday, two people familiar with her exit said. Ms. Westerhout’s abrupt and unexpected departure came after Mr. Trump learned on Thursday that she had indiscreetly shared details about his family and the Oval Office operations she was part of at a recent off-the-record dinner with reporters staying at hotels near Bedminster, N.J., during the president’s working vacation.” (The New York Times)
Science, Health, & Environment
SETTLED SCIENCE? “An ambitious new study — the largest ever to analyze the genetics of same-sex sexual behavior — found that genetics does play a role, responsible for perhaps a third of the influence on whether someone has same-sex sex. The influence comes not from one gene but many, each with a tiny effect — and the rest of the explanation includes social or environmental factors — making it impossible to use genes to predict someone’s sexuality.” (The New York Times)
THE WAR ON DRUGS: “The Department of Justice has broken up a drug ring allegedly responsible for conspiring to distribute 23 million opioid pills. Federal authorities announced on Wednesday that they had arrested 41 individuals after searching 15 pharmacies and six clinics. The case, which brought together multiple federal law enforcement agencies, highlights both how widespread prescription opioid trafficking still is, as well as the efforts of the government to crack down on it.” (The Washington Free Beacon)
AN INCONVENIENT TRUTH: “Climate activists often warn that global warming is stoking forest fires, but it turns out the amount of land burned by wildfires worldwide has plummeted by 25% since 2003, according to NASA. NASA’s Earth Observatory found that the number of total square kilometers burned globally each year has decreased steadily from 2003-19, based on data collected by Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometers (MODIS) on satellites.” (The Washington Times)
Other Notables
DEFIANCE: “A federal appeals court on Thursday upheld a [Cook County, Illinois] ban on assault weapons and limits on magazine capacity,” Newsweek reports. “The three-judge panel rendered a unanimous opinion for the court, including the assent of Trump appointee Judge Amy Joan St. Eve.” The appellate courts clearly have no interest in submitting to the Supreme Court on this issue.
AFGHAN CONTINGENCY: “President Trump said Thursday that the U.S. would leave 8,600 troops stationed in Afghanistan even if it secures a peace agreement with the Taliban. ‘We’re going down to 8,600 [from the current 14,000], and then we’ll make a determination from there as to what happens,’ Trump said on Fox News radio. "Oh yeah, you have to keep a presence. We’re going to keep a presence there. We’re reducing that presence very substantially, and we’re going to always have a presence. We’re going to have high intelligence.‘” (National Review)
Closing Arguments
POLICY: Trump’s fight against progressive agenda at the G-7 will pay off (The Daily Signal)
POLICY: The ugly side of the pursuit for “sustainability” (Issues & Insights)
HUMOR: As summer ends, journalists look forward to new season of hysterical lying (The Daily Wire)
~The Patriot Posthttps://patriotpost.us/articles/65169?mailing_id=4501&utm_medium=email&utm_source=pp.email.4501&utm_campaign=snapshot&utm_content=body
Louis DeBroux: President Donald Trump is playing a dangerous game with the global economy in order to do what should have been done decades ago; reign in the Communist Chinese government’s unfair trade practices.
China has repeatedly refused to act in good faith, blocking or heavily restricting U.S. access to Chinese domestic markets. Beijing has further discouraged foreign imports through a series of tariffs, subsidies, and other barriers to free trade, like its history of currency manipulation, artificially devaluing the yuan in order to make Chinese goods cheaper in the U.S.
Arguably the most damaging tactic used by the Chinese government is industrial espionage and theft of intellectual property. In addition to corporate espionage, the Chinese government, as a precondition for gaining access to Chinese markets, forces foreign companies to hand over intellectual property (inventions, designs, and other “creations of the mind”), passing it along to Chinese companies, which then produce cheaper knock-offs that directly compete with the foreign company.
The U.S. Trade Representative has estimated that America loses as much as $600 billion per year due to intellectual property theft by China.
Enter President Trump, who made immigration enforcement and renegotiating fairer trade deals the centerpieces of his 2016 presidential campaign.
If the official numbers are to be believed, the Chinese economy ($13.4 trillion GDP) ranks second globally behind the U.S. ($20.5 trillion GDP). However, there are a couple of caveats.
One, the Chinese economy, at a third smaller than the U.S., is spread out over four times the population. That population is aging faster than the American population, which means in the coming years it will be less productive and more expensive to care for.
Second, a recent, in-depth analysis by five economists from the Chinese University of Hong Kong and the University of Chicago found the Chinese have been over-reporting economic growth by an average of 1.7% per year for at least a dozen years, meaning the Chinese economy is roughly 20% smaller than officially reported.
And you can be absolutely certain that President Trump is aware of this and much more in his negotiations with China, which have been chaotic and tumultuous of late.
One day President Trump is praising Chinese President Xi Jinping, the next calling him an “enemy.” Such hyperbolic and inflammatory rhetoric is part of the “whiplash” strategy that Trump says is his M.O., but it sends waves of panic through economic markets. Trump’s recent demand that U.S. companies pull out of China made for even more uncertainty.
Then, of course, we have escalating tariffs.
In early 2018, President Trump levied $9 billion in tariffs on imports such as solar products and large appliances, months later adding $25 billion in new tariffs on steel and aluminum imports. Then, in the last year, Mr. Trump targeted another $200 billion in imports from China for tariffs, with another $300 billion targeted by the end of 2019.
To state the obvious, tariffs are bad. They drag down economic growth by taxing American consumers, who are spending more in the form of higher-priced imports, reducing their purchasing power. The damage is compounded by increasing uncertainty in economic markets, which sidelines capital and reduces investment, and therefore job creation and economic growth. Retaliatory actions taken by China are another painful blow.
The U.S. trade deficit with China was roughly $420 billion in 2018, but trade deficits are not necessarily bad. Most of us have a “trade deficit” with Walmart and Amazon, but because their lower-priced goods allow us greater purchasing power, our lives are considerably better for the arrangement. With China, the issue is not so much the trade deficit as the unfair practices that drive it.
President Trump claims we are winning the trade war, but in a trade war even winning is painful. It is the economic equivalent of chemotherapy — painful and destructive, but the hope is you purge the disease (in this case, China’s unfair trade practices) while harming the patient as little possible.
The president is well aware of this, as evidenced by his recent admission of second thoughts about the trade war, and the acknowledgment it could lead to a short recession. The Congressional Budget Office predicts the average American family will pay an extra $580 for goods next year due to the trade war.
President Trump feels he has a very strong hand, touting a new U.S.-Mexico-Canada trade agreement that is a net benefit for the U.S., and hinting that a new U.S.-Japan trade agreement will be announced soon. Plus the fact that the U.S. is far and away the world’s most powerful economy.
After Chinese Vice Premier Liu He was quoted as saying “an escalation of the trade war is against the interest of China, the U.S. and the entire world,” President Trump said we are “winning” the trade war. He appears confident China will be ready to make a deal soon, saying, “I don’t think they have a choice.” On Monday, he praised President Xi as “a great leader,” adding that “one of the reasons that China is a great country is they understand how life works.”
While even top Democrats agree this trade war with China is necessary to force China to act in good faith, it will be better for all when it is over. Previous tariff skirmishes under Presidents George W. Bush and Barack scumbag/liar-nObama resulted in higher prices for American consumers, lost jobs, and slower economic growth.
And that benefits no one unless the results of the fight recoup the cost. ~The Patriot Post
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