…and wonder just how stable the Chinese economy and Chinese government are these days. The Chinese government, like all authoritarian regimes, requires a narrative of universal competence and wisdom in its leaders, which means the regime can never openly admit a mistake. Everything is always going according to the five-year plan, the state is always right, the leaders are always all-knowing and all-seeing, and any corruption, failures or incompetence that gets exposed is always isolated incidents involving rogue low-level employees.
And lately those narratives are crashing into higher and higher piles of counterevidence.
Whatever is happening in China, it seems to be pointing to new levels of economic, social, and political turbulence. Maybe the Chinese economy is a “too big to fail” colossus, with too much built-up momentum to be derailed for long. Or maybe the whole thing is a house of cards; reliable and verifiable economic data have always been hard to find in China.
A few days ago, former Pentagon strategist Elbridge Colby shared an unnerving thread laying out why he is “more and more alarmed about a PRC invasion of Taiwan.” You should read the whole thing, but the short version is that Colby sees the motive, means, and opportunity aligning for China. But the window of opportunity may be closing in the long term, as U.S. defense upgrades come on line and an anti-China defensive alliance takes hold in the Pacific.
It is possible that economic and domestic instability make Xi Jinping less likely to pull the trigger on an invasion of Taiwan; Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is demonstrating that the conquest of a long-coveted neighbor can be more difficult — a lot bloodier and messier and more geopolitically isolating — than expected. If your country is facing a tall stack of worsening problems, a major war against a foe determined to resist is likely to just make everything worse.
But then again, a lot of autocrats can’t distinguish between their personal desires and the national interest. There’s always the chance that Xi Jinping looks at that tall stack of worsening problems and decides an unprovoked, world-altering war of aggression is just the right tool to jump-start Chinese nationalism and make everything all better.
Here’s the juice: To borrow a phrase from our Clueless Leader…
Consider a few facts: (1) Autocrats have historically created internal enemies or external military adventures to distract from adverse domestic economic issues; (2) The conquest of Taiwan may represent just the distraction Xi Jinping believes he needs to maintain the Communists’ grip on power; and, (3) Taiwan represents over 90% of the world’s most advanced semiconductor manufacturing capacity.
Now, some may say we’ve just donned our tinfoil hat, but here’s a scenario which should worry you:
1. China, emboldened by the weakness of Biden and his Woke Military, invades Taiwan. The U.S. is in no position to aid the beleaguered island, and the ChiComs take control of the world’s semiconductor production.
2. China, or more likely China’s NoKo puppet so as to provide Xi plausible denial, detonates an nuclear device or two high over the United States, creating an EMP event which fries unprotected solid-state electronics (i.e., anything depending upon transistors and semi-conductors) across the fruited plains, plunging America practically into the Stone Age.
3. Biden is unable or unwilling to retaliate, the U.S. is shut off from the primary source of critical components to repair its damaged electronics, and the country is close to, if not already in, a state of anarchy.
3. Add to the mix either Iran taking advantage of the situation to lob a nuke into Tel Aviv or Israel launching a preemptive strike to prevent same, and you’ve got a world engulfed in chaos, with the People’s Republic of China the preeminent power on the planet.
The problem is compounded by an observation from the Morning Jolt you’ll read below:
“We’re not respected. No one fears crossing Joe Biden.It’s a dangerous world, and a lot of other countries think that we’re led by a geriatric pushover.“
It’s a dangerous world indeed, made all the more so by Progressives’ purposeful enfeeblement of America and her Military, and their intentional invigoration of Iran and the PRC.
We’re taking off the tinfoil…at least for the moment.
Now, here’s The Gouge!
First up, the Morning Jolt suggests Biden’s humiliation by the Saudis means we’ve just witnessed…
“We all knew that President Biden’s trip to Saudi Arabia was going to be, at best, a deeply frustrating and humiliating exercise in kissing the ring — or in Biden’s case, bumping the fist.Biden left Riyadh with no deal on oil production beyond some vague pledges,sending the world’s oil prices rising again.Members of the Washington Post editorial board were always going to hate this trip, but when it was over, their anger over their slain colleague, Jamal Khashoggi, enabled them to declare that the emperor had no clothes,and that Biden had been taken to the cleaners:
For the most part, though, Mr. Biden gave more than he got. He made no wider critique of Saudi Arabia’s repressive policies in public; there were no releases of political prisoners or clemency for other regime opponents — including dual U.S. citizens — who have been denied freedom to travel. Instead, Mr. Biden touted an already existing truce in Yemen and modest steps toward better relations with Israel…
And when it was all over, MBS had made no public commitment to pump more oil. The Saudis are being counted on to influence an OPEC cartel meeting next month to get a few hundred thousand more barrels onto the market, likely with only modest impact on U.S. gas prices.
This was a low moment for Mr. Biden, and one that he won’t soon live down.
Adding to the humiliation, the Saudis publicly contended that behind closed doors, Biden had not confronted Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman over the murder of Khashoggi. We’ll just have to take Biden’s word that he was an in-your-face tough guy when no one was watching.
While Biden was returning from his overseas trip, First Lady Jill Biden was speaking to Democratic donors, shifting to full excuse-making mode:
“[The President] had so many hopes and plans for things he wanted to do, but every time you turned around, he had to address the problems of the moment,” Biden told a crowd at a private Democratic National Committee fundraiser, according to CNN.
“He’s just had so many things thrown his way,” she said. “Who would have ever thought about what happened [with the Supreme Court overturning] Roe v. Wade? Well, maybe we saw it coming, but still we didn’t believe it. The gun violence in this country is absolutely appalling. We didn’t see the war in Ukraine coming.”
Pause briefly and contemplate what Jill Biden — excuse me, Dr. Jill Biden — contends was unforeseeable:
A concerted, longtime effort by conservative legal scholars and Republican lawmakers to overturn Roe v. Wade.
A continued pattern of angry, disturbed young men obtaining firearms and committing mass shootings.
Vladimir Putin’s aggression in Eastern Europe.
Not only were all of those factors in American or global life foreseeable, all of them were problems that candidate Biden pledged he could resolve:
On October 5, 2019, Biden pledged that, “Roe v. Wade is the law of the land, and we must fight any and all attempts to overturn it. As president, I will codify Roe into law and ensure this choice remains between a woman and her doctor.”
As a candidate, Biden pledged to enact a national gun-buyback program, an assault-weapons ban, universal background checks, a push for the development of “smart guns,” and red-flag laws. His campaign platform declared that, “It’s within our grasp to end our gun violence epidemic and respect the Second Amendment, which is limited.” Much of that agenda remains unfulfilled.
Also in October 2019, Biden pledged, “Putin knows, if I am President of the United States, his days of tyranny and trying to intimidate the United States and those in Eastern Europe are over.”
You can be a steadfast, right-of-center critic of Joe Biden and simultaneously cringe at the sight of the president of the United States getting sand kicked in his face by a murderous Saudi prince, and the president’s wife insisting that long-simmering national and international problems sprung up out of nowhere. It’s embarrassing for us as Americans to watch our president going hat in hand to a regime he previously pledged to make a “pariah,” see him give MBS a giant geopolitical public-relations win in exchange for vague promises, and then watch the Saudis call our president a liar after the visit ends. We’re not respected.No one fears crossing Joe Biden. It’s a dangerous world, and a lot of other countries think that we’re led by a geriatric pushover.
Besides the problems of the president’s age and longstanding flaws, the solutions to most of these problems don’t align well with the progressive agenda…”
Hells bells: The Progressive agenda is what’s CREATED all these problems, along with many, many more! A belated hat tip to the lovely Shannon for the rock/paper/scissors photoshop, to which we added the verbiage.
Since we’re on the subject of Progressives whose agendas have created monumental problems, likely to avoid being fired…or, more likely, indicted…FOX informs us…
We predict when Republicans take control of Congress in November, the evil Dr. Faux Chi’s “stepping down” will become full-blown retirement, most certainly prior to noon on January 3rd, 2023. As Jim Freeman notes:
“If Dr. Fauci lives to be 105 he will likely never be able to undo the damage that Covid policies inflicted on America’s children. He promoted shutdown policies that isolated them from friends, opportunities and care, saddled them with trillions of dollars in federal debt and—due to degraded education—reduced their future earnings. He never could have sold lockdowns in 2020 if he had said then what’s he’s saying today about the long-term presence of Covid.
Even in the spring of 2020 there was ample reason to question the wisdom of lockdowns, and many of us did. There was ample evidence that kids faced little risk from Covid and that schools would not be the superspreaders of media lore. There was also ample reason to focus on protecting the vulnerable rather than turning society upside down. Dr. Fauci’s endorsement of school closures while freely acknowledging he did not have a thorough understanding of the harms should be a lesson in schools of public health on the need to avoid panicked responses to future viruses.
This column will go out on a limb and predict that if Republicans take one or both houses of Congress this fall—gaining oversight authority and subpoena power—Dr. Fauci will be leaving long before Jan. 20, 2025.“
Both Faux Chi and and his cohort in crime Deb Birx displayed an abysmal appreciation of the economic impact of the policies they promoted, as Jeff Tucker notes in an item at The Epoch Times:
“…This mentality sees the economy as a giant casino that its managers can open or close at will with no great consequence. The revenue you lose today you can make up tomorrow. In this simplified perspective, it’s too easy to forget about supply chains, small businesses, the service industry, food and energy, and even health care delivery.
The vast and global matrix of exchange that makes up the global market is caricatured as nothing but an engineering project that can be put on hold.
It might seem like a moral position, but only if you separate economics from human life. This is wrong. Economics is a human concern that is bound up with the whole experience of life on earth. It can’t be shelved. For that matter, the delivery of health care itself cannot be separated from economics, as events would soon reveal.
Governors from all over the country complied with Centers for Disease Control and Prevention directives and ordered hospitals to end elective surgeries with a priority for COVID patients. The problem presented itself immediately: hospitals all over the country emptied. The staff made dancing TikTok videos to pass the time, but eventually more than 300 hospitals furloughed nurses. It was an enormous error, one that surely cost many lives.
In those early days, however, the economics team at the White House took a back seat. They were forced to. Every time they spoke up about collateral damage and with doubts that lockdowns would achieve anything to mitigate against the virus, they were dismissed and caricatured. Meanwhile, economists outside the White House were largely silent. A survey in the spring of 2020 among top economists reported overwhelming approval of the lockdowns and silence otherwise.
I recall this all too well, as I expected my heroes in the economics profession to rise up in vocal opposition to the utter wreckage of market freedom and property rights. To my shock, most of them stayed silent, or worse: Some even joined in the lockdown mania. Then, I knew it: These people had outstanding training in some areas, but few had ever studied the history of infectious disease or knew the first thing about virus trajectories, much less had a working knowledge of cell biology. They were as ignorant on these topics as they were of astronomy.
As a result, they came to believe that virology and epidemiology were outside their wheelhouse. They specialize in other things, not disease mitigation. So most of them acquiesced and let public-health professionals have their way. It’s all about staying in one’s lane, just as modern academia trains people to do and just as Big Media and Big Tech shames people if they don’t.
This highly sectorized thinking caused grave damage throughout the pandemic. Economists had mischaracterized public health, and public health had other-ized economics as a tomorrow concern. As a result, disaster ensued, and many months went by during which time life as we knew it came to be unraveled by force.
Please notice something important here.
The two people who ultimately exercised profound influence in reopening and essentially saving the world were Drs. Scott Atlas and Jay Bhattacharya. Atlas had medical and scientific training, and had written several books on public policy that explored the intersection of both disciplines. Bhattacharya had earned a doctorate in economics and also a medical degree. These two thinkers were and are unique in understanding that the separation between “money and lives” is really artificial. Both disciplines deal with human life, choice, constraints, and tradeoffs.
They were also fearless in weaving the two concerns together. Economics isn’t an engineering project. It deals with the pith of life itself. The same is true of public health: poverty and desperation lead to death just as sure as a fatal virus. It isn’t possible to reflect on one without including concerns of the other…”
As detailed in the May 20th, 2020 edition of The Gouge, there’s a reason when the lockdown strategy, based on a 14-year-old girl’s high school science project, was first conceived by government doctors, none of whom had any expertise in virology or epidemiology, it was never reviewed by any economist of note.
We’d wish Faux Chi a long, happy and well-deserved retirement, but can’t, ’cause what he really deserves is a jail cell, along with…
…a lot of other people. So we’ll just be honest and bid good riddance to bad rubbish.
Then there’s this octet of selections specifically intended for inquiring Conservative minds:
(1). Speaking of those drunk on power they never should have been granted in the first place, San Diego Unified School District Board President Sharon Whitehurst-Payne just can’t let go of her COVID control, declaring students unwilling to wear a mask are unwelcome in the classroom. So much for following the science, let alone possessing even a scintilla of common sense.
BTW, we don’t wish to minimize the loss and pain suffered by the victims and families involved in this shooting; Rather we want to highlight two aspects of this horrible event: (i) Armed citizens are the swiftest, surest means to combat criminals, as absent this young man’s intervention, the death toll would certainly have been much higher; and (ii) Criminals, by definition, neither obey the law nor adhere to mall policies.
(6). In a related item, J.K. Rowling is howling mad…and rightfully so…over her government allowing mentally-ill males to administer care to underaged handicapped girls:
I cannot overstate my contempt for those supporting policies that endanger extremely vulnerable girls. This is a travesty. Have we learned nothing from successive abuse scandals? Do we value the disabled so little? 1/5https://t.co/ewIG8S4lcG
Yes, we meant what we wrote: “mentally-ill”. Here’s a second shot of the juice: If they’re pedophiles, they’re both mentally deranged and morally depraved; If they honestly believe themselves to be female, they’re clearly in need of intensive, extensive psychological treatment.
Progressives seem either incapable of catching onto, or unwilling to admit, in many cases male transgenders are scamming sexual predators, as detailed in the last item of the Monday edition of The Gouge.
Which brings us, appropriately enough, to The Lighter Side:
Then there’s these from the lovely Shannon…
…Balls Cotton…
…and Ed Hickey:
Finally, we’ll call it a wrap with yet another outrageous claim of It HAS to be Racism, as a Black mother could find no other reason than racial bigotry to explain why a…
This is absolutely HEARTBREAKING! 💔 These two young Queens did NOT deserve to be blatantly singled out and ignored by this #SesameStreet character! @SesamePlace MUST address their staff’s disgusting behavior! 🎥: IG/__jodiii__ pic.twitter.com/07shnhEGvM
Ben Crump: The contemporary equivalent of the boy who cried wolf! Seriously…there’s NO OTHER POSSIBLE EXPLANATION THAN RACISM for Rosita failing to high-five or hug the little girls?!? And there were NO OTHER children in the entire parade the character failed to contact?!?
The Ben Crumps of the world, along with individuals like the little girls’ mother, will always be part of the problem, never the solution.
Magoo
Video of the Day
In another must-view video, Ami Horowitz explores one more example of the utter ignorance Liberals, in this case the LGBTQRSTUVWXYZ community, display of the reality behind the sides they support. (For another example, check out this link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rrBxZGWCdgs&t=164s)
Tales of The Darkside
We’ve two takes from this snippet of Katy Tur discussing a book she wrote: First, yes, Katy, people DON’T trust you, cuz you’re a Progressive propagandist, a mouthpiece for the Dimocratic Party. Second, what a whiner, acting like she’s subject to PTSD while receiving millions of dollars just for reading a teleprompter.
On the Lighter Side
If you’ve recently found yourself in the meat section of your local grocery store wondering, “Where’s the beef?”, John Stossel explains it’s once again the work of counterproductive government bureaucrats. Hey, they’re just here to help…themselves to your tax dollars!
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