The Democrat Party is so unrecognizable today because it’s gone.  The name is still there.  Some of the old faces are there.

But the party of John Kennedy, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, Barbara Jordan and Zell Miller is dead.

Today’s Democrat Party is hollowed out by a chronic addiction to hyper-partisan controversies that only mimic the feeling of being alive.  Controversy gives Dems a constant drip of political dopamine they could never find in solving real problems. And they’re hooked now.

So, we’re witnessing a case of shared psychotic disorder that’s driving the party to self-medicate. Drug of choice? Donald Trump. Democrats are so impaired by their craving to “get Trump” that they imbibe day-in and day-out despite the deadly consequences to their party and to the country.

The Russian Navy – More Rust Than Ready

The Russian navy, the Military-Maritime Fleet (Voyenno-Morskoy Flot—VMF), always a poor relation to the Russian Land Forces given geography and national traditions, has been contracting in size since 1985.

Now, as Izvestia announced last month, it is going to decline still further because of a decision by the Ministry of Defense to scrap two major surface vessels and four submarines rather than modernize these aging Soviet-era naval assets (Izvestia, April 18).

Defenders of this decision say these ships will be replaced by more capable vessels, but even they concede that the new craft are not going to join the fleet anytime soon.

All this has sparked a debate in Moscow about whether the Russian VMF is capable of supporting Moscow in the war that Vladimir Putin keeps saying is coming or even in more limited theaters. The overwhelming answer from independent experts is “No.”

We are witnessing an extraordinary collapse of the rule of law in our immigration system as hundreds of thousands of migrants exploit our generous asylum system by making bogus claims of asylum after entering the United States illegally.

Caravan after caravan of illegal aliens from Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador continually are pushing toward our border.  Mexico is warning that the “mother of all caravans” – over 20,000 people – is gathering in Honduras.  Border apprehensions exceeded 100,000 in March – the highest monthly total in twelve years.

I just visited the border yet again recently.  Unfortunately, the news is not getting better.  Indeed, there is no end in sight for the current crisis.  Worse, official U.S. policy is creating three massive incentives for the caravans to keep coming.

These three incentives are policies of Obama’s that the Trump DHS has kept instead of eliminating.  Why?

Last year, Ryan Fournier expressed the frustration felt by so many regarding the three men above:

Since then, nothing has happened to any of them.  Here’s why.

On Monday (4/22), the Trump Administration announced full sanctions on all countries importing Iranian oil would be in effect next week on May 2.  In announcing the decision, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said:

"The goal remains simple: to deprive the outlaw regime of the funds it had used to destabilize the Middle East for four decades and incentivize Iran to behave like a normal country… We have made our demands very clear to the ayatollah and his cronies:

End your pursuit of nuclear weapons, stop testing and proliferating ballistic missiles, stop sponsoring and committing terrorism, halt the arbitrary detention of US citizens. Our pressure is aimed at ending these and others and it will continue to accelerate until Iran is willing to address them.”

China, India and Turkey can do little to resist Donald Trump’s extra-territorial sanctions against Iran.  Why? Washington has established hegemonic control over global finance and the dollarized payments system.

The cost of defying the White House on a large scale is punitively high. A cell at the US Treasury called the Office of Foreign Assets Control – or simply OFAC to its victims – has perfected the art of economic strangulation through the global banking, insurance and shipping nexus.

Democrats wish for a French Revolution Reign of Terror

A version of Les Misérables, new to U.S. viewers, began airing on PBS last week. While even nominally civilized people of the West were cognizant of the cruelty human beings were capable of for hundreds of years, Victor Hugo's novel of 1862 was an exceptional rendition of man's capacity for barbarity.

While Lincoln and the abolitionists were fighting to end slavery in America after having won independence from England, France was still suffering the disastrous consequences of its own ten-year revolution.

That nation lacked the spirit of humanity that animated our revolution and resulted in the American Constitution.  Their revolution devolved into mass murder.  The Reign of Terror began when the Jacobins seized power in 1793.  Thousands were guillotined, and Christianity was eradicated.

Sound familiar?  Our Left has driven itself into a Jacobin frenzy.  If they could guillotine President Trump and every one of his supporters and get away with it, many leftists would.

On April 9, Israeli voters went to the polls and reelected Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in a landslide to serve a fifth term as prime minister.

American Jewish leaders on both sides of the partisan aisle routinely applaud Israel’s democracy. They argue that it is Israel’s democracy that forms the basis of U.S. support for the Jewish state.

In light of this consistent position, American Jewish leaders across the partisan divide could have been expected to celebrate the elections and the vibrancy of Israeli democracy and the independent mindedness of Israeli voters.

But this did not happen. While conservative Jewish American groups congratulated Israelis for their open democracy, liberal American Jewish groups responded to the Israeli election results by throwing a collective fit.  Such is the tragedy of liberal American Jewry.

The Gaza Strip

Hamas has left Gaza in shambles. Life there is difficult, sad and abnormal.

Only buildings with generators actually maintain steady power. The lack of power affects everything from preserving fresh food to treating sewage.

If a person in Gaza falls ill, he is likely to find trained medical professionals unable to help because of the lack of equipment and medicines. The people there — even the talented and educated — can’t find jobs. The store shelves are empty.

The shoreline, which in many other places in the Mediterranean would be filled with beach resorts, is covered in the raw sewage and debris from successive wars. The cost of conflict is seen in all aspects of life in Gaza.

America and the world wants to help – but the terrorists of Hamas won’t allow it.

What’s in the special counsel’s findings is almost as revealing as what’s left out.

By the fall of 2017, it was clear that special counsel Robert Mueller, as a former director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, was too conflicted to take a detached look at a Russia-collusion story that had become more about FBI malfeasance than about Donald Trump.

The evidence of that bias now stares at us through 448 pages of his report.

President Trump has every right to feel liberated. What the report shows is that he endured a special-counsel probe that was relentlessly, at times farcically, obsessed with taking him out.

The Trollmaster encourages the Dem Circular Firing Squad

No wonder Obama talks of a circular firing squad, because Democrats are drawing a bead on other Democrats with malice. aforethought, and mayhem in their hearts.

Being intersectional (enjoy all the Urban Dictionary definitions) means never having to say you're sorry, and it also means demanding that everyone else say they're sorry.

Feminists like Pelosi are Islamophobes, gays like Buttigieg are racists, blacks are homophobic, and white men like Biden and Sanders are misogynist and classist, as the case may be.

No goofier notion ever invaded American political thinking than the idea of a coalition based on entitled victimhood and invented identity.  Do Democrats want a Trump Landslide in 2020?

Donald Trump says “trade wars are good and easy to win” if your foes depend on your market and you can break them under pressure.

You see, he knows that China’s majestic and elegantly-stable GDP figures are best seen as an instrument of political combat.  Which is why he proclaimed victory when the Shanghai equity index went into a swoon over the winter. This is classic Trumpian gamesmanship.

It is in China’s urgent interest to puncture such claims as trade talks come to a head. Xi Jinping had to beat expectations with a crowd-pleaser in the first quarter. The number was duly produced: 6.4%. Let us all sing the March of the Volunteers.

“Could it really be true?” asked Beijing-based Caixin magazine. This was a brave question in Uncle Xi’s evermore totalitarian regime.

Of course it is not true.

Sudan’s now former dictator

Today (4/17), the Islamist dictator of Sudan for 30 years, Omar al-Bashir, was incarcerated in Kober Prison in Khartoum, the maximum security prison that held so many of the political prisoners Bashir put there.   He was overthrown by his own military last Thursday (4/11).

Putin has now lost his key to his goal of an African Empire for Russia.

On orders from Russian President Vladimir Putin, his agent Yevgeny Prigozhin—popularly known as “the cook” because of his ownership of a catering company—has inserted “political technologists” in at least 20 African countries.

The Kremlin has for years viewed Sudan as an important base for this operation on the African continent. But the recent coup in this country shows how fragile and changeable is the foundation on which that Russian effort is based.

The Mayor of South Bend

Pete Buttigieg is the latest star to emerge from Democrats’ 2020 pack, which is no surprise since he exhibits all the tropes we have come to associate with this party in the era of its Trump derangement.

On the evidence just of his attacks on Vice President Mike Pence, Buttigieg is a shameless liar, a calculating character assassin and an anti-religious/anti-free speech bigot, motivated by a virulent hatred of his political opponents, especially those who have been good to him like Pence.

Buttigieg’s chosen target is one of the most decent human beings in politics, who was supportive of Buttegieg both before he revealed he was gay and after.

Using a gracious and decent opponent as a prop in a hate campaign against Christians for political gain, tells you how low Democrats have sunk this electoral season.

The media’s bias has never been subtle, but its disinterest in a presidential candidate’s track record has never been this blatant.

Mayor Buttigieg’s candidacy is being covered as if he weren’t the mayor of an actual city with actual problems. Instead his prospects have been covered purely in terms of his identity, a gay millennial, his past career before taking office, and his current witticisms and applause lines.

At no point in time does the media stop to tell the viewers and readers it is regaling with stories of Mayor Buttigieg’s charm that he runs “one of the most dangerous cities in the United States,” according to USA Today.

South Bend is a crime-infested bloody mess, for which its mayor for the last eight years bears responsibility.   And he has the gall to run for president?

Indeed. Here's what Trump’s foes have to be scared about.

No doubt a lot of former Obama administration and Hillary Clinton campaign officials, opposition guns for hire, and media members are stunned and scared that the Justice Department finally has a leader willing to address the FBI’s behavior in 2016

They all worked very hard to make sure such an accounting never happened. Only in that context can we understand the frantic new Democrat-media campaign to tar the attorney general.

Thousands of young Jewish boys celebrate Jerusalem Day

Like lots of millennials who have catapulted to fame, May Golan got her start on the internet, blogging about life in her South Tel Aviv neighborhood. From there she gained a platform as a social activist, with 25,000 followers on Facebook and 16,300 on Twitter.

On Tuesday (4/09), hours before she won a seat in Israel’s Knesset, she reached out to voters in one last Facebook video, wearing a T-shirt with the words “Netanyahu. Right-wing. Strong. Successful.” emblazoned in blue and white block letters.  She is 32.

In other words, Golan is staunchly right wing. She’s also a lot like many Israeli Jews of her generation.

While American millennials have a reputation for liberal politics, young Israeli Jews have gone the opposite direction over time. For at least the past 10 years, these voters have identified as right wing at much higher levels than their parents.

Bibi!

[Note by JW – Damon Linker is on the Left, but has the integrity to report real news even if it disappoints him]

Don't be fooled by misleading stories about Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's disappointing showing in Tuesday's (4/09) election in Israel.

Even if the centrist Blue and White alliance of former military chief Benny Gantz had eked out a very narrow victory over Netanyahu's right-wing Likud Party, the story of this election is not at all about the retreat of the right. (Gantz conceded yesterday 4/10.)

On the contrary, the most far-reaching consequence of the 2019 Israeli election may well be that it verified, beyond any reasonable doubt, that there is functionally no Left left in Israel. It has become a country with a center, a right, and a far right, but no electorally viable Left to speak of.

An astonishing example.  The Labor Party – viewed as the equivalent of the US Democrat Party – performed so badly it may be on te verge of extinction.

Attorney General William Barr

Though they were excruciatingly obnoxious to William Barr at Tuesday's (4/09) House Appropriations subcommittee hearing, Democrats would be well-advised to lay off the attorney general, maybe even treat him with kid gloves, because he holds a good deal of the future of their party in his hands.

In fact, he is positioned to make that party bleed as perhaps no one in history. And it only makes it worse that he is clearly such a straight shooter.

The big story from Barr's testimony then before the subcommittee was not that the AG plans to release a redacted version of the Mueller report within a week or even that those redactions will be color-coded four ways and annotated to explain the reasons for the edits.

Here's the real big story, and it’s really big.

Owens has at least a hundred IQ points on the supremely ignorant Ocasio-Cortez.  Owens's grace and class are the antithesis of Ocasio-Cortez's empty-headed, ditzy meanderings.

Owens's videos are all worth watching, and her performance yesterday (4/09) in front of the House Oversight Committee was spectacular as you can see above.  She put the Democrats on that committee to shame, especially Jerrold Nadler and Ted Lieu.

Both of them tried their best to humiliate her, to use her as a prop in their latest narrative that Trump is responsible for a make-believe rise of white nationalism and white supremacy.  Yet it was she who humiliated them.

She indeed spoke truth to the Democrats in front of her, when she told them in her opening statement:

"The hearing today is not about white nationalism or hate-crimes, it’s about fear-mongering, power and control."

[Note by JW – Professor Hanson provides a masterful compendium of all twelve of the ways the pathologically fascist Democrats and media tried and failed to destroy the Trump Presidency, and then asks the crucial question at the end.]

Right after the 2016 election, Green Party candidate Jill Stein—cheered on by Hillary Clinton dead-enders—sued in three states to recount votes and thereby overturn Donald Trump’s victory in the Electoral College.

Before the quixotic effort imploded, Stein was praised as an iconic progressive social justice warrior who might stop the hated Trump from even entering the White House.

When that did not work….

Russian mercenaries in Libya

On Sunday (4/07), the New York Times reported: “US Military Pulls Out of Libyan Capital As Rival Militias Battle.”

Here’s the background, and what the Times doesn’t understand: that this is an ambush of Putin’s Russia on NATO and the US.

The meeting of 29 foreign ministers from member countries of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), in Washington, DC, last week (April 3–4), marking the 70th anniversary of the North Atlantic Alliance, was not a joyful occasion for Russia.

During the celebration, Russia was duly identified as the main disruptor of regional security. The allies asserted unity in deterring Moscow’s provocative behavior and confirmed their resolve to increase defense expenditures accordingly.

Moscow’s urge to spoil the “hostile” celebrations of NATO’s lasting success was irresistible, but the readiness to directly challenge the security of the Alliance’s frontline states or even partners was clearly absent.  So Putin found a near-perfect place for an ambush in Libya.

There was a superb column at The Federalist recently (3/13) by George S. Bardmesser: "Every Time Democrats Talk, I Want to Vote for Trump Twice."

It is as hilarious as it is frightening.  It is also a courageous confession, especially for a lawyer who lives in D.C.  Let's hope he has personal security.

I am betting there are millions of us, many more millions than voted for Trump in 2016, who agree with the man.  He was a reluctant Trump-voter but is now completely on board the Trump train.  Why?

Because the current crop of Democrat candidates are moonbats all.  Each of them is a thorough socialist nutjob.  Each of them is trying to out-fanaticalize the others.   Each of them is absolutely clueless about the American people outside the far-left bubbles all of them inhabit.

Every one of them.

“After a 200-year hiatus—since the Qing dynasty began to weaken, in the early nineteenth century—China is returning to the world stage as a great power,” wrote Robert Kaplan in the Atlantic. “That may be usual for China, but it is unusual for the West.”

Kaplan, in his piece titled “China: A World Power Again,” maintained that the period of Chinese weakness was an aberration, merely an interlude between natural eras of tianchao—Celestial Kingdom—grandeur.

There are many contemporary reasons—contracting economy, collapsing demography, crumbling politics—why Kaplan is wrong and why Beijing’s challenge to America and the international system will almost surely fall short.

But history also suggests China’s path to glory is impassable. As an initial matter, the popular conception of China rests on a gross misreading of the past. The country, in short, has never been dominant on “the world stage,” as Kaplan and others put it. And it won’t be anytime soon.

The Eye of Sauron

As quite a few TTPers know, Cryptohippie has moved to routers for our services. What they may not know is why, and that’s simply because the surveillance arms race requires it.

Things have gotten much worse and we can’t provide serious protection without this upgrade. I’d like you to understand why.

Sauron Is On Steroids

I suspect that almost all of us are familiar with the Eye of Sauron from the Lord of The Rings Trilogy. In one place Tolkien called it, “the Eye piercing all shadows.” It makes a wonderful metaphor for mass surveillance systems, which now see through almost any shadow to surveil the billions of us at once.

The truth about mass surveillance is that it’s far worse than people understand.

The irony of the entire Russian collusion hoax is that accusers who cried the loudest about leaking, collusion, lying, and obstruction are themselves soon very likely to be accused of just those crimes.

Now that Robert Mueller’s 674-day, $30 million investigation is over and has failed to find the original goal of its mandate—evidence of a criminal conspiracy between the Trump presidential campaign and the Russian government to sway the 2016 election.

And now that thousands of once-sealed government documents will likely be released in unredacted form, those who eagerly assumed the role of the hunters may become the hunted, due to their own zealous violation of the nation’s trust and its laws.

Let’s take Lying Under Oath, Foreign Collusion, Leaking, Obstruction of Justice, Conflict of Interest, and see how James Comey, Andrew McCabe, James Clapper, John Brennan, Samantha Power, Susan Rice, Loretta Lynch, Rod Rosenstein and others including Robert Mueller participated.

Pardon me if I don’t join in the chorus of praise for Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigatory efforts.

Certainly it comes as a relief that he correctly found no evidence of collusion between the Russian government and Donald Trump’s presidential campaign and quite properly did not charge the president for obstruction of justice.

But just because Mueller and his team of Hillary Clinton sycophants reached the right conclusions does not mean that they conducted a righteous investigation.

In that regard, given that the Special Counsel’s Office did not charge the persons who fabricated and used the Russia collusion fable to undermine Trump’s campaign and presidency, it would appear that, far from being impartial seekers of truth following the trail of evidence regardless of the political consequences, they were a get-Trump lynch party that simply ran out of rope.

Or maybe it was worse than that.

The total exoneration of President Trump and his campaign has given his voters a few days of smiles and happy headlines, but not deep satisfaction.

The claim that Donald Trump, his family, and his staff were traitors and Russian agents remains a sickening reminder of the corruption of our FBI, Department of Justice, and Barack Obama’s administration.

The debasement of our once free press into a state propaganda ministry is an ongoing assault on our country.

None of these problems are resolved with the end of Robert Mueller’s witch hunt.

The Russia collusion hoax has left the credibility of our justice system in tatters. We did, in fact, have Russian collusion to affect the outcome of 2016 the election—and it was entirely the handiwork of Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama.

Justice requires not only that the innocent are exonerated, but that the guilty are punished.  Will that happen?

Miriam Monsonego

Seven years ago – March 19, 2012 – Mohammed Merah pointed a gun at the head of 7-year-old Miriam Monsonego.

Before Miriam, Mohammed had murdered a Rabbi and his two little boys, six and three years old. The other children ran. He cornered Miriam, grabbed the little girl by her hair, and pulled the trigger.

Today, Mohammed Merah, Miriam’s killer, remains a hero to many Moslems in France.  When the New York Times ventured into a Moslem neighborhood in Toulouse, it had no trouble finding locals who praised the Moslem terrorist as a “hero” and a “martyr of Islam”.

Islamic family values are what motivated Merah’s horrific anti-Semitism – the family values Ilhan Omar was raised in during her childhood in Somalia.

Democrats in Congress like Adam Schiff, Eric Swalwell, Richard Blumenthal, Nancy Pelosi, Jerold Nadler, Maxine Waters, and so many others all claimed without a scintilla of proof that Trump “colluded” with Russia. For two years, they pronounced him guilty in the court of public opinion.

Will they ever apologize?  Of course not. They will conjure some vacuous excuse and move on to the next accusation. They’re already doing it.

Many journalists were equally reckless and malevolent. Will network brass take action to punish those who so egregiously exaggerated or, in some cases, even lied to Americans? Not a chance.

AG Lynch, Obama, Comey, ValJar

Wow.

Here is the link to the Mueller Report as provided by Attorney General William Barr. It says, among other things, this:

“The report explains that the Special Counsel and his staff thoroughly investigated allegations that members of the presidential campaign of Donald J. Trump, and others associated with it, conspired the Russian government in its efforts to interfere in the 2016 presidential election, or sought to obstruct the related federal investigations.

 

In the report, the Special Counsel noted that, in completing his investigation, he employed 19 lawyers who were assisted by a team of approximately 40 FBI agents, intelligence analysts, forensic accountants, and other professional staff.

 

The Special Counsel issued more than 2,800 subpoenas, executed nearly 500 search warrants, obtained more than 230 orders for communications records, issued almost 50 orders authorizing use of pen registers, made 13 requests to foreign governments for evidence, and interviewed approximately 500 witnesses.”

“The Special Counsel’s investigation did not find that the Trump campaign or anyone associated with it conspired or coordinated with Russia in its efforts to influence the 2016 U. S. presidential election. As the report states: ‘[T]he investigation did not establish that members of the Trump Campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities’.”

What is not said here? There is no word about the role of then-President Obama and/or anyone in the Obama administration when it comes to the question of directing this entire effort to sabotage first the Trump campaign and then, when that failed, the Trump presidency itself.

Today, March 21, 2019

A recent article in a Beltway publication warned about a potential recession and considered how it might affect President Trump’s chances at re-election. The story began—no joke: “The luxury real estate market in Manhattan is sagging.”

It goes on to argue that softening in the real-estate market in high-tax Northeastern states is caused by the 2017 tax-reform law. Thus the claim is that because taxpayers can deduct only $10,000 in state and local taxes from their federal returns, America is heading for a recession.

Nonsense.

The tax-reform law stops high-tax states from burdening the rest of us with their irresponsible decisions. America is a marketplace where states are competing with each other, and New York is losing. Their loss is Florida’s gain—and Texas’ and South Carolina’s and Ohio’s and Indiana’s.

I would like to tell New Yorkers on behalf of the rest of America that our hearts go out to you for your sagging luxury real-estate market. But you did this to yourself, and you can fix it yourself. If you cut taxes and make state and local government efficient, maybe you can compete with Florida again.

Democrat “progressives” wonder how in the world could anyone still support President Donald Trump. So here are ten reasons why  much of the electorate probably does -- and will.

Five years ago in mid-March 2014, Russian “little green men” soldiers in unmarked army uniforms and masks took full control of Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula.

On March 18 of that year, President Vladimir Putin made a jubilant address to the Russian Federation Council (upper chamber of parliament) on the “reunification” with Crimea, asserting, “In people’s hearts and minds, Crimea has always been an inseparable part of Russia” (Kremlin.ru, 3/18/2014).

The forceful dismemberment of Ukraine and the illegal annexation of Crimea produced an explosion of jingoist triumphalism in Russia, which effectively made most of its citizens accomplices in that blatant violation of international law and 21st-century norms of European inter-state behavior.

Since then, the “patriotic mobilization” has mostly dissipated and Russian trust in Putin’s leadership has hit a low of 32 percent, according to the official pollster VTsIOM (Wciom.ru, 3/03/2019).  More and more it’s looking like Putin’s seizure of Crimea has cost Russia its future.

When classical musicians audition for a symphony orchestra, they play behind a screen.  They are completely anonymous to the committee on the other side of it, who knows them only by a number.  They are prohibited from speaking to the committee.

Prior to the audition, the musician is given a list of classical repertoire pieces from which he or she will be asked to play a number of excerpts, anywhere from one to three minutes of each selection.  The selections of music will vary depending on the player's instrument.

This process is one of the fairest on the planet.  Not the age, sex, or race of the player is known to the committee who will be deciding which musicians will be chosen.  Candidates are selected on expertise, musical merit alone.

Obviously, the system of college admissions is the farthest from this level of fairness as it can possibly be, but what if it were reformed to be as fair?

Sunset on the Cliffs of Moher, County Clare, Ireland

Sunday (3/17) was St. Patrick's Day here in Ireland, and around the world as well.  In places like New York and Boston, it's a day to celebrate Irish heritage and to get disgracefully drunk, but not in Ireland, where it's also a national holiday.

Ireland is changing in other ways as well. Gay marriage (we have a gay Taoiseach, or prime minister) is in, and so is abortion.  Having joined the EU against its will, Ireland has now come to embrace the enervated "modernity" of France and Germany.

It's like watching a child parading around in its grandfather's tie-dyed bell bottoms and thinking he's now a sophisticated grownup. Ireland needs St. Patrick again.

Here’s the problem. Whether we eventually build a wall is irrelevant to the calculations of the current crop of migrants, because they know, right now and for the foreseeable future, illegal immigration simply is not punished in the United States. On the contrary, it is rewarded.

You see, the Trump Administration has already tried to implement policies that automatically deny Central Americans and sundry border-hoppers eligibility to apply for asylum. In effect, the Supreme Court has already ruled—thanks to Chief Justice Roberts, who sided with the court’s four liberals—that illegal crossers are entitled to an asylum hearing.

A more recent case may even give rejected asylum seekers the right to appeal. Given the massive backlog, this guarantees asylum seekers, even the most dishonest and dangerous among them, the right to impose themselves on the American people for years to come.

Let’s face it. Given the sheer irrationality of the current system and the out-of-touch judges who preside over it, we must consider practicable alternatives.  Here’s a solution that could really work.

Victims of Boeing crash in Ethiopia collected in body bags

I didn’t say that Boeing is arrogant. I said they have their noses in the air.  Jokes aside, l’Affaire Boeing is a watershed.

President Trump is under pressure to circle the wagons around one of America’s flagship industrial companies, among other reasons because China will exploit the crisis to promote its new entry into the civil aircraft market.

He made a good start yesterday (3/13) by grounding the Boeing 737 Max aircraft in US airspace, after the horrific Ethiopian Airlines crash Sunday (3/10) that killed 157.

To follow up, he should ignore the legions of industry lobbyists and their Hallelujah chorus at the Pentagon, and take the opportunity to clean out the swamp in America’s military industry.  Here’s what’s going on.

China is rapidly expanding its presence and control in Russia’s Trans-Baikal region. This drive is, in part, being driven by Beijing’s economic interests in Siberia and the Russian Far East as a whole.

In the past, Moscow routinely played up popular fears of Chinese expansion as a way to unite the country; but the center’s ability to do so is declining rapidly as ever more Russians now blame the Russian business community and its allies in the government for China’s advance.

Indeed, talk about China is reinforcing divisions among Russians, intensifying their anger at the domestic business and political elites who appear to be profiting at their expense. That may explain why people across the Trans-Baikal have been voting for Communist candidates or at least for those politicians who promise to oppose both Beijing and Moscow.