Two culprits in need of investigation and prosecution

Despite having both an expansive budget and a large legal team, Special Investigator Robert Mueller likely will not find President Trump culpable for any Russian collusion—or at least no court or congressional vote would, even if Mueller recommends an indictment.

That likelihood becomes clearer as the Trump investigators—in Congress, in the Justice Department, and the legions in the media—begin to grow strangely silent about the entire collusion charge, as other scandals mount and crowd out the old empty story.

This news boomerang poses the obvious question—was the zeal of the original accusers of felony behavior with the Russian collusion merely an attempt at deflection? Was it designed to protect themselves from being accused of serious crimes?

The entire fiasco has boomeranged upon the Clintons, James Comey, Obama Admin officials Susan Rice and Samantha Power, Obama himself, and Special Prosecutor Robert Mueller.  Increasingly, it is turning out that they are the ones in need of being investigated.

The new film Only the Brave recounts the story of the Granite Mountain Hotshots, an elite unit of firefighters.  Nineteen of this unit died fighting the Yarnell Hill fire in Arizona in 2013.

The men who sign up to be Hotshots train hard for the job of wildfire suppression.  It is a grueling job, and the training for it is punishing.  It is also a science; these men have to be both tough and smart.  They choose to do it; they want to do it, and they take enormous pride in their work, especially their successes – saving homes or a thousand-year-old tree.  They travel the country if needed.

When not working, the men are everything the American left abhors.  But when there is a wildfire to be fought, they show up ready to risk their lives to save homes and forests.  Their experience and their expertise are unique and probably grossly underappreciated, because most of us have never been aware of such teams of extraordinarily brave and well trained men.

Watching the film, it was hard not to think of Gen. John Kelly's remarks about the ridiculous media storm over President Trump's call to the widow of one of the soldiers killed in Niger.

Western Europe and Washington are reluctant to fess up to this unfortunate fact:

Turkey under Recep Tayyip Erdogan has long ago given up even the pretence of being a democratic polity and is openly pursuing policies detrimental to democracy, the rule of law and Western security considerations.

In short, Turkey has become an Islamist dictatorship every bit as inimical to Western interests as Iran, except for being allowed by the West to maintain the charade that it is still a member of NATO and the western community of nations.

The key to spreading Erdogan’s Islamist message is an organization called Diyanet, the Turkish directorate for religious affairs that is directly subordinated to him.  Few if any western leaders have ever heard of it despite its importance.  Here’s what you need to know.  For the bottom line is that Turkey is now the key actor funding the radicalization of European Muslims.

China’s central bank has warned in the clearest language to date that extreme credit creation and trouble in the shadow banking system could lead to a full-blown financial crisis.

Zhou Xiaochuan, the governor of the People’s Bank (PBOC), spoke of “fierce market reactions” and a possible Minsky Moment, the tipping point when credit cycles break and euphoric booms collapse under their own weight.

It had long been assumed that this particular form of crisis cannot happen a state-run financial system where the banks are under Communist Party control.

Mr. Zhou told China Daily that asset speculation and property bubbles could pose a “systemic financial risk”, made worse by the plethora of wealth management products, trusts, and off-books lending.  He warned:

“If there is too much pro-cyclical stimulus in an economy, fluctuations will be hugely amplified. Too much exuberance when things are going well cause tensions to build up. That could lead to a sharp correction, and eventually lead to a so-called Minsky Moment. That’s what we must really guard against.”