China

Open Thread

M. Noonan59 Comments

China has a debt problem:

China’s consumer loans are shrinking at an unprecedented pace after a decade of breakneck expansion, a blow to the government’s strategy of relying on spending as a growth engine amid the worst public health crisis
in a generation.

The net balance of consumer loans – made up of short-term and credit card loans from banks and online lenders – plunged by a quarter in the first two months of this year to 7.4 trillion yuan (US$1 trillion), according to data published by the People’s Bank of China. Some microlenders are staring at 20 cents on a dollar in bad loans.

China is fundamentally weak because China’s government does not have the consent of the governed – it is really as simple as that. Governments like that of China can, for a while, make things seem to work – but only seem. China is a honeycomb of bad debts, corrupt deals, crime and poverty masked by showpiece cities. Not only did China’s economy take a massive hit from the virus, it is going to keep on taking hits as foreign nations move their supply chains out of China. People are at last awake to how dangerous it is to have their supplies come out of China because of the sort of government China has. We’ll see how China weathers the storm…but it will be a very difficult time for them.

Related: Bloomberg killed a story about the corruption of China’s ruling class. One of the most astonishing things about Coronavirus is how it revealed the extent of China’s corruption of American institutions. They’re all bought, to one degree or another. Our supposed Expert Elite betters seem to have one thing in common – they’ll sell their country out for a few bucks.

Obama finally got around to endorsing Biden.

Don Surber’s plan to reopen America.

Ace rips into the New York Times over their stealth-editing of a Biden story at the behest of the Biden campaign. The story, of course, was about the sexual assault allegations launched against Biden. The bottom line is the accusation is far more credible than that made against Kavanaugh – but the MSM is determined to cover up for Ol’ Joe…because he’s a Democrat, and there’s an end on it.

Rumor mill has it that AG Barr is still rolling steadily along on the investigations with Brennan said to be a large target. We’ll see.

Open Thread

M. Noonan37 Comments

Either the doomsayer models were wrong – or President Trump has had a great victory over the virus. The MSM will say that NY Governor Cuomo saved the day…as part of the DNC backup plan to dump Biden (which can only happen, I think, after Bernie quits…which is why he may not quit).

We’re all wondering how in heck an agent of the Chinese government – disguised as a reporter – gets admitted to the White House press briefing. Mostly because it is redundant given how slavishly the American MSM parrots Chinese propaganda. Make no mistake about it, with a wave of Xi’s hand a gigantic amount of American media company wealth could disappear. How loyal are the corporate bosses to America vs Their Money? I think you know the answer.

With Corbyn out, it is now thought that Labour will pull back from the evils Corbyn introduced – especially the ever more explicit anti-Semitism. Mark my words: they’ll try to downplay it and the British MSM will cover it up, but the anti-Semitism is a requirement to be a full-on Labourite these days. The calculation was made: there’s a huge future, electorally and financially (especially financially) in playing up to Islamists…and the price demanded is anti-Semitism. Anyone thinking that things will change with Labour – except for the worse – is whistling past the graveyard.

Don Surber points out the MSM’s kamikaze run against hydroxychloroquine. Never has TDS been more stark – simply because Trump suggested it, the MSM went all-in against it. It does look like it works – at least to some extent, and especially for people with severe cases. What I learned the last couple days if that you go on a ventilator, your outlook is pretty bleak…trust me on this, if I catch the bloody thing and I get bad and go on a ventilator, I want them to throw everything they’ve got at it. And I think that is how most people view the matter. I was pondering how Trump might have hit upon this drug – and then it hit me: we’ve got lots of people who study plagues as part of our national defense strategy. I suspect Trump just asked them, in effect, “what do we have on the shelf that might work on this?”. When they came back with the answer, “hydroxychloroquine”, he said “go for it”.

We were told our hospitals would be overwhelmed and we’d be stacking bodies like cordwood. Well, it hasn’t quite been like that – as is seen by the lack of video on the MSM showing overwhelmed hospitals and stacked up bodies. But, never one to despair, CBS looked around and found a video of a person who says she was a nurse who had to quit because there was no proper equipment at the hospital. The CBS tweet got 23 thousand retweets and 8 million views. You know how this ends, right? Of course you do: its all bullsh**. Turns out she barely works as a nurse and seems to spend a great deal of time doing some sort of modelling on Instagram. She was provided the proper equipment but, on her first day on the job, insisted she be allowed to break protocol…and when told she couldn’t, she walked out…right to her video camera to make something which was almost certain to go viral and provide massive fame to someone who clearly wants to be famous. CBS News did not check out the background of the lady…but did add dramatic music to her tearful video. Yes, the MSM is the Enemy of the People.

Day 15 of Lockdown

M. Noonan72 Comments

Plague. Earthquakes. And, now, a comet. Whomever is opening up the seals of the apocalypse really needs to cut it out.

OTOH, if it isn’t the End, that comet might be quite the light show in the sky – no danger to Earth as its closest approach will be 72 million miles…but if high estimates prove correct, you’re going to see it very bright in the night sky with the naked eye.

The Kennedy Center – basically, a welfare program for the rich – got $25 million from the Stimulus and then canned the workers. Rep Scalise wants to rescind the grant. That’s fine, but we really aren’t getting anywhere unless the directors of the Center are flogged.

More talk of Democrats dumping Joe for Cuomo. Can’t see it as other than a disaster for the Democrats – the only alternative to Joe is Sanders. Cuomo hasn’t even entered the race…the DNC works some crooked deal to put Cuomo on the ticket and the Bernie Bros will revolt. I doubt it would happen, anyway – and not because Biden would be opposed. He likely doesn’t even know where he is most of the time: but his handlers are licking their chops at the amount of patronage they’ll be able to dispense in Biden’s name and they won’t want Cuomo to barge in and mess up the program.

New York City is being hammered while Las Vegas, so far, is getting off lightly…perhaps gambling and whoring isn’t as much an affront to God as being largely in favor of infanticide, as New Yokers – by their votes – seem to be? Just a thought.

The Great Facemask Debate goes on. As for me: from what I’ve learned, most transmission is via being in close contact with the infected for a significant period of time or literally touching the virus (on a person or surface) and then touching your face. This is why hand washing and social distancing are so important: from what I can gather, if you do the washing and distancing, your chances of catching the disease fall remarkably. But, for anyone who does have to go around people…wearing a mask seems to be an effective way of not touching your face, which would help.

China simply rebroadcast MSMers and American Democrats as part of their propaganda effort. Seriously, that’s all they did: the MSM and the Democrat Party are broadcasting Chinese Communist propaganda. I only hope they got paid for it – I don’t want to think some of my fellow Americans are stupid enough to do that for free. We woke up one fine morning to discover that a pandemic exposed how much of America China has purchased.

Related: backlash against China grows. China really screwed the pooch on this one – I’m with those who theorize that China knew what sort of problem they had back in December and made the conscious choice to ensure the whole world got the same problem.

Open Thread

M. Noonan37 Comments

Good article on the Democrat-created collapse of California into Third World status. My only quibble is whether or not the voters of California are really that stupid – I do believe a great deal of the Democrat’s continued power there in spite of obvious failure is due to voter fraud on a grand scale.

Adam Schiff – a completely garbage person – is essentially witness tampering. He has to: if there aren’t lies, then he won’t even have a garbage reason to impeach Trump.

Meanwhile, the latest savior for impeachment – Lt. Colonel Vindman – is going to prove as a much a dud as the previous saviors. The real problem here, of course, is that Trump hasn’t done anything wrong. Had he explicitly told the Ukrainians that they’d get nothing unless they specifically investigated Hunter Biden, that still wouldn’t be a violation of law. In fact, it would be Trump merely going his job as the sole man with Constitutional authority to enforce federal law. To put it in really clear terms: once Trump became aware of what the Bidens were up to, it would have been an impeachable offense had he not done all he could to have the matter investigated as he is commanded by the Constitution to see to it that the laws are faithfully enforced. Anyways, back to Vindman: my bet is that he’s the guy who told the “whistleblower”…and if so, he broke the law…and so running to Congress may be a mere means to protect himself against prosecution by Barr.

Taylor Swift, who has been going increasingly SJW, is going to perform like a trained dog for the Chinese Communists. This does lend credence to a theory I’ve heard that it is the Chi-Coms who are pushing the SJW crap as a means to weaken the United States. Say bad things about America, get a Chinese contract.

Related: China’s economic problems could make for more aggression. Could be: a little known aspect of the timing of the start of WWII was that Hitler was informed in early 1939 that Germany was close to bankruptcy and it was either stop the military build up and have a recession, or conquer resources. The original German plan to attack was moved up from 1942 to 1939.

Open Thread

M. Noonan40 Comments

Been working on the sequel to Mirrors, to be called Secrets. As you’ve all read Mirrors by now (right?) you know that our great heroes, Bryce and Fred, are up to any challenge…but I’ve got Fred in quite the pickle in Secrets and I’m puzzled about how I get him out of it. I’m sure I’ll figure it out. I hope – really, honestly – to have Secrets out early in 2020.

Hillary accused Tulsi Gabbard and Jill Stein (the lady who helped Hillary create the Trump-Russia Narrative, as you might recall) of being Russian agents. And everyone called her insane, right? Nope. I mean, lots of people did – but on the Democrat/Never Trump side its all been silence or, “hey, they are kinda Russian Agent-y”. These people are completely out of control.

As for why Hillary is suddenly worried about our Precious Bodily Fluids, the fact that her illegal server was, well, illegal and a huge security risk might play a role here.

Rasmussen finds that 49% of the American people haven’t been paying attention while 51% believe that the efforts to get Trump are a scam.

Trump’s lawyers go after CNN. Will anything come of it? Unlikely – but it is enormously funny.

Some US Senators – including Marco Rubio – have issued as statement to Activision Blizzard over it’s corporate kowtowing to China. It is an important issue and I’m glad it is being brought up (and under anyone but Trump, it never would have come up). China, of course, threatens dire punishment to any corporation which crosses China. Our job is to punish corporations even more if they kowtow. Enough of this – if you want to be corporate slaves to China, move your operations there.

There’s this group of ladies who dress up like 1940’s pinup girls and they go visit wounded veterans – except the VA says they don’t want them there because, I guess, there’s an a**hole out there who is offended (I can’t imagine any real veteran – even gay or female – being offended by this). We really need to bring a stop to this nonsense.

Open Thread

M. Noonan95 Comments

Polls are meh, but there is a poll which says that Trump’s approval among Hispanics is at 37% and African-Americans at 26%. If so, the Democrats are doomed. But, once again, it is a poll. On the other hand, I’ve seen various news stories indicating that Team Trump is rolling out a very sophisticated voter outreach program…not just designed to do the usual stuff, but do things like bring people into voting who haven’t voted before or not very often. If they can really pull off something like that, then the 2020 results might be the shocker of all shocks…and other than a few bits and pieces fed to MSMers (some of which will be deliberate misdirection), most people won’t see it until it happens.

Beto decided to hand the GOP a gift in the form of admitting that liberals like him are after gun confiscation. Beto knows he won’t be the nominee – and he also knows that he has no real future in Texas politics. So, he’s just setting fire to things because it will generate attention and money and allow him to live well. But the bottom line is that a Democrat President for candidate has called for confiscation…and you can rely on it that none of the others will really dissent from that view. They can’t: they’ve told their mostly-mindless base that guns are bad and for a Progressive, all bad things must be utterly destroyed. Just that one assertion might get Trump two or three million more votes in 2020.

Democrats want to impeach Trump – because they’ve been told that Orange Man Bad and, once again, all bad things must be destroyed. However, the Democrat leaders know that doing such a thing absent a half dozen GOP Senators willing to vote with them is political suicide…and that wouldn’t happen unless Trump’s approval among GOP voters drops below, say, 75% (latest poll shows him at about 94% approval among GOP voters). So, they are trying to have it both ways – telling their base that they are super serial gonna get that guy Trump, but behind the scenes not actually doing anything. Well, Trump’s DOJ is calling them out on it – essentially telling them to sh** or get off the pot; which boxes the Democrats in nicely. They’ll eventually either have to drop it or drive forward…either way it would be a political disaster for them.

Abortion “doctor” kept body parts of his victims…you know, like serial killers do. This is not at all surprising – no decent doctor would perform an elective abortion. Only the dregs of the medical field would go into that as a primary means of making money…and the dregs tend to be low caliber people. Like this house of horrors abortionist.

China has some food problems:

…lifting the tariffs, China has just admitted it cannot produce enough protein for national consumption, both as a staple or as a preferred meat. Imagine a US shortage of wheat and chicken, with no real access to corn or beef, and a couple dozen urban areas of 20 millions or more with just a third arable land as now. That’s China.

So, what’s the problem with China’s agricultural industry? Basically, they simply do not have enough land to grow the volume of soy they need; and, their pork production is highly diffused and is ravaged by a massive and seemingly uncontrollable swine flu epidemic. In fact, it is estimated that up to 60% of China’s pigs are infected with the flu.

To compound a bad situation to worse, Chinese officials are both incapable of enforcing a quarantine and too corrupt to stop the spread of the flu.

China is a giant on spindly legs. We have far more leverage over them than we suspect – and we’ve never used it, until just recently. We’ll see how Trump does.

Open Thread

M. Noonan38 Comments

The Democrats really do seem to want to go all-in on leftist insanity – what was just a couple years ago the fringe is now the center for the Democrats. One excellent example is the way Democrats are treating the 2018 Georgia governors race:

While Beto is not the only Democratic candidate for president who has kissed the Abrams ring by indulging in the fantasy that she would be governor had Brian Kemp not allegedly committed election fraud, he has perhaps embraced the myth more than the rest.

All of us are old enough to remember when Democrats said questioning the election results was a horrible thing – but what really makes this sick and twisted is that the Democrats routinely engage in voter fraud. Now they are claiming to be victims of it, without the slightest bit of evidence…and only to pander to a far left base. My theory going into 2020 is that there is a line – which none of us can see – which if crossed will result in a Trump landslide. There is a point so far left that the Democrats will alienate 60% of the electorate. They may have already crossed it – once again, the line can’t be seen because you can never fully appreciate how things work out in the public mind over the course of time. But if the Democrats keep pushing this way, they will cross it.

Vegans got their butts kicked when they stormed a Spanish rabbit farm. Yeah, I laughed.

Brit MP’s checked with their masters in Brussels about delaying Brexit – because that is what this is all about: the British Ruling Class wants to turn all power over to the EU while retaining all the perks of power in the UK for themselves. It is really nothing more than that – just a Ruling Class wanting to abdicate and stay in office.

China is working against Trump’s re-election – which is a big no-brainer. China wants and needs an American President who will kowtow to China’s wishes. Every US President from Nixon to Obama did…which was amazingly stupid. Only a madman would want to help build up the power of a nation which has 314 million men fit for military duty. A couple centuries ago Napoleon was asked what to do about China and his words were, “let China sleep”. He knew what you could do with manpower…all it takes is intelligent leadership and they’d be off to the races. China now has intelligent leadership. Our job is to contain China, not help her out. But China is still 20-30 years away from having the technical ability to successfully fight us – they could definitely stop a US invasion of China, but they can’t project their power far outside China. Yet. Our job is to make sure “yet” never arrives.