Democrats Strategy on Impeachment is Doomed And Dangerous

                     https://www.thenation.com/article/impeachment-democrat-pelosi-doomed/

The ongoing disaster in Afghanistan

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/dec/14/afghanistan-papers-political-self-delusion-public-indifference?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

Impeachment a Loosing Strategy for Democrats

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/dec/11/impeachment-is-a-losing-strategy-for-the-left-lets-focus-on-winning-in-2020?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

According to the Washington Post, most of what the US govern has reported about our 18 year war in Afghanistan is misleading, it not outright lies

https://www.washingtonpost.com/classic-apps/confidential-documents-reveal-us-officials-failed-to-tell-the-truth-about-the-war-in-afghanistan/2019/12/08/076c30e8-eaa2-11e9-9306-47cb0324fd44_story.html

Banning fracking the US will not save the world. It will simplify export the problem to other countries

Assume fracking is miraculously banned in the US by Sanders or Warren or some other
Democrat elected President in 2020.

The technology already exists and is well understood in the petroleum industry both in the US and overseas.

That technological knowledge cannot be erased by any President.

Existing petroleum exploration companies and the governments of other countries will respond to the higher prices caused by a ban in the US by ramping up exploration by fracking. Countries environmental protection laws weaker than in the US.

Countries such as Algeria and Indonesia which have large potential reserves. China certainly which already developing its own fracking industry. Argentina which has large resources and is already producing ..

Maybe even Mexico, which has large deposits in northern Mexico which have the same geology as the Eagle Shale deposits in Texas.  Right now fracking is banned in Mexico, but given a significant price rise in natural gas and the sudden end to the supply it now imports from the US..

https://www.eia.gov/analysis/studies/worldshalegas/

Gabbard a Russian Asset? Of course not

https://www.spiked-online.com/2019/11/28/gabbard-derangement-syndrome/

Not Everyone Thinks Chomsky’s Linguistic Theories are Settled Science

https://aeon.co/essays/why-language-is-not-everything-that-noam-chomsky-said-it-is

But linguistics sur like to fight nasty over them

One of the sane columnists for “The Nation” regards impeachment as a disaster for the Democrats

https://www.thenation.com/article/impeachment-sondland-democrats/

From “The Nation”. Why do US still have soldiers in South Korea?

https://www.thenation.com/article/why-are-us-troops-still-in-south-korea-anyway/

US Foreign Policy Establishment Hijacking Impeachment

https://www.thenation.com/article/kent-taylor-impeachment-ukraine/

Prediction of the cellphone from 1953

Trump , ‘The Nation” and The Russian Conspiracy

Even The Nation, the most left wing journal In the US, believes that there may have criminal negligence or outright crimes behind the launching of the investigation into the possibility of collusion between Trump’s 2016 campaign and Russia.

If the left has lost The Nation..  what is do they have remaining?


https://www.thenation.com/article/russiagate-brennan/

An article in The Nation against impeaching Trump..

An article in the far left magazine The Nation argues that the case for impeaching Trump over whatever has happened between Trump and the government of the Ukraine is a house of cards

Ukrainegate Risks Handing Trump Another Gift.

https://www.thenation.com/article/ukrainegate-biden-trump/

What did Trump actually say about Turkey, the Kurds, and the border?

Hunter Biden. Don’t Ask

According to the article at the link the liberal media discourages discussion of anything regarding Hunter Biden, Joe Biden and Ukraine. Well, except that Trump brought up the topic in the phone call.

https://thehill.com/opinion/campaign/465520-he-who-must-not-be-named-how-hunter-biden-became-a-conversation-stopper?amp&__twitter_impression=true

The fact is that no matter the right or wrong of Trump bringing up the Bidens, Hunter Biden’s consulting work for an oil company there does seem corrupt, and a legitimate subject for discussion.

US Military Leadership is Failing

Up to the end of World War 2 an officer in the US military not competent in combat was likely to be removed from command by a superior officer. Usually they would be sent back to the US and given a non combat command, where their talents might be useful.

Since the Vietnam War, high ranking officers found to be incompetent in combat are not relieved. They are allowed to serve out their tour of duty in the field despite the damage they are doing to US interests and their own soldiers.

The following two articles describe this problem and offer explanations why this change has occurred

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2012/11/general-failure/309148/

http://nation.time.com/2012/10/29/generally-mediocre/

Trump’s Decision to Stop Supporting the Kurds in Syria.

I think it is the right decision.  Unless you either

1 Have a close relative in the military
2 Have yourself served in the military
3 Are willing at least do a desk job at a military base to free up a soldier to deploy overseas, or
4 Support restarting the draft,

I do not think you have the right to question that decision.

A little research on the internet shows that as long ago as 2016 , then VP Joe Biden - and President Obama - did not want a self governing Kurdish state in northern Syria. Which is why he had come forward to condemn Trump’s decision.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/biden-visits-turkey-on-mission-to-repair-strained-relations/2016/08/24/bc684904-6a04-11e6-99bf-f0cf3a6449a6_story.html

Some more research shows that, past ant-war statements  by most other leading Democrats contenders for the 2020 nomination, have also made difficult for them to condemn Trump’s decision.

For example

https://www.cnn.com/2019/01/02/politics/elizabeth-warren-troops-syria/index.html

and

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/elizabeth-warren-syria-afghanistan-trump_n_5c2e4acee4b05c88b7072fea

and

https://www.ontheissues.org/2016/Bernie_Sanders_War_+_Peace.htm

Well, I did find one Democrat candidate who has been willing to condemn the withdrawal , Senator Amy Klobuchar

http://www.kmaland.com/news/klobuchar-blasts-trump-on-syrian-troop-pullout/article_bd12f992-e9e7-11e9-bd76-cb58132e89cd.html

For a non hysterical articls on the decision to pull leave, I recommend the following

 , https://www.ft.com/content/be8e5ff4-e939-11e9-a240-3b065ef5fc55

https://nationalinterest.org/blog/paul-pillar/donald-trumps-syria-withdrawal-are-we-asking-right-questions-86906

Because I like it, there is this partisan article supporting Trump by an argument that reaches back to the Vietnam War.

https://www.nysun.com/foreign/liberals-tears-for-the-kurds-ring-hollow-after/90861/

I do not agree with everything in the article  For example,  we did not win the war only to be sold out by politicians. We jus lost the damn war .  Still,

Bill is back

Trump and the Ukraine

President Trump was fully justified to ask the current government of Ukraine to help his aids to find evidence of the deep state conspiracy against his presidency.

In 2016, under a previous government, the Ukraine provided the DNC with information to damage Trump’s presidential campaign.

Whatever Russia’s goals were in 2016, in that year Ukraine was interfering in the US election to hurt Trump and help Clinton

https://www.thenation.com/article/ukraine-elections-2016/

https://www.politico.com/story/2017/01/ukraine-sabotage-trump-backfire-233446

https://www.kyivpost.com/ukraine-politics/publication-of-manafort-payments-violated-law-interfered-in-us-election-kyiv-court-rules.html

https://www.ft.com/content/c98078d0-6ae7-11e6-a0b1-d87a9fea034f

https://thehill.com/opinion/white-house/441892-ukrainian-embassy-confirms-dnc-contractor-solicited-trump-dirt-in-2016

Heck, when even the far left The Nation admits there is smoke...

.

Elizabeth Warren by Default ?

Bernie Sanders has health problems.

Joe Biden is likely to suffer much collateral damage from the impeachment of Trump.

That leaves who for the Democrats? Elizabeth Warren?

Impeach Trump, Er just because

We do not like him.!!

The rush to impeach Trump over his conservation with the leader of the Ukraine is beyond silly. Trump did not commit a crime, much less a “high crime or misdemeanor”

Even the far left, Trump hating The Guardian is willing to publish editorials showing how trivial this incident is.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/sep/26/impeachment-america-political-crisis-donald-trump-centrists?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

I am already seeing posts on the internet complaining that Trump responding to demands to see the evidence, threatened national security by releasing the the notes on the call between Trump and Zelenskyy, because in the future no one will trust that a phone conversation with any US President will be kept secret.

https://www.vox.com/world/2019/9/24/20882188/trump-ukraine-call-transcript-foreign-policy

https://www.cnn.com/videos/politics/2019/09/25/trump-ukraine-transcript-national-security-risk-vinograd-ath-vpx.cnn

https://www.wsj.com/articles/decision-to-release-trump-transcript-raises-concerns-over-future-calls-11569370570

Damned for doing what they were wanted.  Yesterday.

Greta Thunberg forgets!

A few days ago I posted about a global reforestation plan I first encountered in an article co-signed by Greta Thunberg.  The article arrested online in the far left newspaper The Guardians.

The reforestation plan promised to suck enough CO2 out of the air to stop global warming.

The Guardian has maybe 100,000 readers. Yesterday Thunberg gave a speech in front of the UN that had an audience of 10s of millions of people.  Her speech was all about casting blame.  It contained nothing about the “solution” in the article she signed.

Why? I nan think of a few answers, non complimentary.  The simplest is that she just a puppet in the hands of others with an agenda that does not include saving the world from climate change.

Greta Thunberg and Climate Change.

i recently came across an article in The Guardian that argued for a relatively cheap solution to climate change. The article was co authored by Ms Thunberg

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/sep/19/greta-thunberg-we-are-ignoring-natural-climate-solutions?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

Based largely on a recent article in the journal Science, the solution is reforestation of the earth on a massive scale: 2.2 billion acres and 1 trillion trees.

This solution has been discussed on several other web sites

https://www.commondreams.org/news/2019/07/05/global-effort-plant-trillion-trees-overwhelmingly-among-most-effective-and-cheapest

https://www.vox.com/2019/7/4/20681331/climate-change-solutions-trees-deforestation-reforestation

According to calculations, which, of course, are uncertain, given time to mature, such a reforestation would suck enough CO2 out of the atmosphere to save the world.

Unlike various useless proposals by President Obama, this would truly be a “shovel ready” project.

“Relatively cheap” means hundreds of billions of dollars to solve the problem instead the more than 10+ trillion dollars required in various versions of the Green New Deal.

Implementation problems include getting other countries to buy in.  Not only major polluters like China and India, and Germany, but many less developed countries where reforestation might have the most immediate value, like Brazil and the Congo. Unfortunately those poorer countries might not be happy to have the US or even the UN show up and invite/demand they start reforestation, even if someone else pays for it.  There would be the need to buy farmland and ranches recently hacked out of forests to be reforested.  Of course there would be a fight in the US Congress over which states will get the most advantage.

Carried to an honest to extreme to implement this pan, the lawns in front of 10s of millions of homes in the US should be torn up an replaced by trees.

Unfortunately, this cheap solution is almost certainly dead on arrival, because the powerful advocates of a Green New Deal are not looking for a inexpensive solution, they are looking for a solution that will allow them to radically remake the US economy, and “damn the costs”. Destroying the fossil fuels industries in the process.

Anyway, I am happy to see a cheaper, practical solution put forward.

I do note one obvious problem not addressed by Thunberg or in any of the discussions of this plan: buying farms and ranches for conversation to forests means higher food prices everywhere in the world. Those living in poor countries already on the edge malnutrition at current food prices, would be hurt.  They might even face starvation.

Any major government intervention into to the economy, always had external costs, sometimes “collateral damage “. Preventing the rise in food prices from leading to starvation must be part a viable reforestation plan.

 I would support a reforestation plan to fight climate change if I thought true costs were accounted for,  It could save the planet, and done carefully, it would do no harm.

Kavanaugh and the latest “scandall”

Once again the New York Times other liberal media have published an unverifiable sexual harassment accusation against Kavanaugh. An harassment that supposedly happened 35 years ago.

The “story “ is already unraveling,

But why did it get thrown out now?

I believe the left is preparing for the retirement of Justice Ruth Ginsberg and this a fresh warning to anyone conservatives who is willing to accept a nomination to the Supreme Court that Democrats the Senate will again do anything to to destroy his reputation .  Any hint of scandal will be used to slander that candidate.. Any quote or past joke that can twisted to sound racist or sexist, no matter how far back and independent of whether it can be verified.

Joe Biden and the “Word Gap’

The one highlight of last night of the Democratic Party’s Presidential Debate was the moment when Joe Biden addressed the “Word Gap” problem.

https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2019/9/12/20863709/democratic-debate-abc-biden-record-player

The “Word Gap” problem is that as the result of the way kids are raised by parents in different social and economic environments.  Well off and well educated parents are likely to read books to their children frequently and talk to them and to other adults in the house using a large vocabulary. The children of less well off parents are read to less and hear a less rich vocabulary. The result is that when children enter school those with well off parents have a much larger vocabulary, possibly millions of words larger. The “Word Gap.”

https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2014/10/american-kids-are-starving-for-words/381552/

https://www.naeyc.org/resources/pubs/tyc/feb2014/the-word-gap

Not only did Vox, and some other sources deny the existence of the “Word Gap”, but they made fun of a solution Biden presented.  That solution was to have the radio and possibly the record player on in the evening to expose kids to a wider vocabulary. This is probably the only way children of less well off parents will hear new words. Not as good as being read to, but at least inexpensive and practical.

So for once in the debate, instead of throwing out the usual sound bites, A candidate addresses a problem and suggested a practical solution not costing the American people trillions of dollars!

Last night Biden sounded like an intelligent man who has given serious though to a known problem that few seem to know about and fewer have thought how to help solve it.

I’m impressed.

BREXIT. and Parliament...

Oliver Cromwell - Dissolutions of the Long Parliament 1653

“It is high time for me to put an end to your sitting in this place, which you have dishonored by your contempt for all virtue , and defiled by your practice of every vice, yet are a factious crew, and enemies of all good government; ye are a pack of mercenary wretches, and would like Esau sell your country for a mess of pottage, and like Judas, betray your God for a few pieces of money.

“Is there a single virtue now remaining amongst you? Is there one vice you do not possess? Ye have no more religion than my horse; gold is your God: which of you has not bartered your conscience for bribes? Is there a man amongst you that has the least care for the commonwealth?

“Ye sordid prostitutes have you not defiled this sacred place, and turn’d the Lord’s temple into a den of the thieves, by your immoral principles and wicked practices? Ye are grown intolerably odious to the whole nation; you were deputed here by the people to get grievances redress’d, are yourselves gone! So! Take away that shinning bauble there, and lock up the doors.

“In the name of God, go!”

Have Not Seen Bill For Several Days

       Possibly because something else has been on the back porch playing with one of the slinkies

Resistance to ICE

                      I came across another Antifa poster on resistance to ICE
                       that was more honest about its willingness to resort to violence

Resistance in West Austin ?

This sign was posted on a city owned electric utility box outside 

the  neighborhood coffee house.

Hard to believe the uniformly white residents of the neighborhood 

are going to unite to fight off ICE or the police.

In fact, a long standing complaint has been the lack of a police presence and 

the slow response time when they are called.

Still, this is Austin...

Bill and the slinky

Don’t worry, he will be back

He’s on the porch right thinking...

Bill is keeping a low profile recently.

Just teasing Fluffy 

Trump and Greenland

Does Trump really think he US can buy Greenland.

But for a couple of days the press has focused on that idea, and forget to call Trump a racist.

Even the Washington Post

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-postpones-denmark-trip-after-prime-minister-declines-to-sell-him-greenland/2019/08/20/ef900924-c3a8-11e9-9986-1fb3e4397be4_story.html


Maybe there is method in his madness?

Can’t catch Bill

Arab Prosperity, is that Possible?

There is a known path to economic prosperity that is widespread across many nations. It is closed to most if not all Arab countries.

The path to prosperity worked for Japan when that country industrialized. It is working for many Asian nations today. Starting over 200 years ago it worked during the Industrial Revolution in Britain and the United States. It is a path closed to Islamic countries that insist on segregating men and women (and keeping women at home). This suggests that the promised move toward democracy in Arab countries will not solve the problem of general poverty, and will lead only to continued misery and resentment. (Except for those corrupt Arabs with their hands on oil money.) The resentment will be directed against the West, which gets blamed for everything wrong in the Arab world. 

Historically, the path to prosperity starts with cheap stuff made to simple specifications using female labor recruited from the countryside. Reaching back in time, when water and steam powered textile looms were introduced, first in Britain and later in the United States, it was women from the countryside who did the
hard work at the looms. In Massachusetts during the 19^th century, recruiting women to work in the textile factories were easy and inexpensive. They lived in company sponsored boarding houses, 4 in each room, 2 in each bed. Textile factories in Britain had similar dormitory-like housing near the factories. Often, in both Britain and the United States, the women employed were less than 18 years old.

More recently, the cheap stuff, at least at low Asian wages, is things like toys, textiles, athletic shoes, and inexpensive clothing. The female labor is drawn from the countryside, and managed – and arguably exploited – by men with training in Western ways of doing business. In many cases, like their Massachusetts and British predecessors, the companies provide cheap, dormitory-like housing near the factory their women employees. John Gunther's 1939 book “Inside Asia” describes exactly this path, which led Japan to produce cheaper clothing than could be produced in India, which had much cheaper labor. Japan then sold its clothing in India, after paying shipping costs and tariffs. According to Gunther, at that same time Japan sold high quality pens in New York City.

China started on the same path during the 1980’s. It was easy to find references to the massive factories in China during that period that employed thousands of women and housed them in factory dormitories. This practice continues today.  It is not fair by current Western standards, but it still part of the path to prosperity.

Reading about these factory and living arrangements led me to pull out my copy of “Inside Asia”, in which the descriptions of textile factories of Japan in the 1930s were difficult to distinguish from those in China in the 1980s. In China such factories with their dormitories and their reliance on cheap female labor from the countryside still exist. (The one difference, at least based on “Inside Asia”, is that the Japanese treated their female employees better.)

Whatever one thinks about this use of female labor, it seems to be a recurring pattern at the beginning of industrialization, and one that lasts for a few decades at most. Today it is easy to find articles online and in newspapers about how China is pricing itself out of cheap toys, textiles and athletic shoes, with these jobs going to countries like Vietnam and Cambodia. Meanwhile, back China some former textile and shoe makers now produce $1500 leather jackets and computer chips.

In Britain and the United States, women are now software engineers, lawyers, company owners, or managers of divisions of companies. Women in Japan and some in China are moving in that same direction. I do not argue that women do not suffer from discrimination in Britain and the United States, or Japan and China, just that the pattern of economic advancement started in remarkably similar ways. Also, I do not argue that the cost of social unrest as Western textile workers fought for unionization and living wages were not large. 

Women textile workers were striking as early as 1834 in Lowell, Massachusetts. A review of the history of the International Ladies Garment Workers’ Union in the United States shows how hard the struggle was. The ILGWU carried out major strikes over working conditions and wages in New York in 1909. Women strikers died during these confrontations. One could hope that the struggle would be less confrontational today. A slim hope I admit. Still, women textile workers were striking over wages in Cambodia in late 2010 without violence.  This is good sign, at least for Cambodia. 

Now consider education among Arab women compared to their competitors. In New England women had a higher literacy rate by 1830 than women in most Arab countries have today. In Japan, even before 1900, women were educated to a degree not seen in Arab countries today. Because of this education, they could learn to do the textile work quickly.

Even if allowed an education, would Arab countries permit women to work in factories? Would they be allowed to work outside the house without the direct supervision of their own families, meaning the men in their own family? Would young women in the countryside be allowed to move to cities where the work is? And even if they were allowed to work and move, would they eventually be allowed to organize for better working conditions?

Of course such employment, movement and organization of women would not be allowed in any Arab country. What is seen in the most liberal Arab countries is the provision of advanced education of young men, who then have no way to turn this education into productive endeavors. Instead, the men hope for jobs with the government. Oman and Tunisia, often seen as relatively liberal, are two Arab countries that have invested in educational opportunities for men, and yet show few signs of anything the West would call modernization. Denying women any roll in a modern economy is certainly part of the problem.

The Islamic repression of women will not allow the known path to general prosperity in Arab countries. And the rest of the world should expect nothing approaching wealth to be created for those without direct access to oil money in any Arab country. So, the “Arab problem” will be with us for our entire lifetimes. If Arab Muslim culture does not change – and how can it? - this problem may exist as long as the Arab states exist.

Oops

Not sure, but think that wasn’t Bill. He isn’t that clumsy!

Trump, China and Honk Kong

People are rioting in Hong Kong. Sometimes fighting against the local police.


Politicians, both Republicans and Democrats, and people who, with or without credential write columns on US foreign are calling for the US to stand up to China in support the “democratic resistance” in Hong Kong.

https://www.ft.com/content/d94c4bd2-becb-11e9-b350-db00d509634e

https://www.thenation.com/article/democrats-hong-kong-autonomy/

Some of these politicians are candidates for the Democrats presidential candidate in 2020.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/2020-daily-trail-markers-democrats-take-aim-at-trump-over-hong-kong/

President Trump is being urged by these people to do something...... But Trump is doing nothing more than expressing hope that “thing could be worked out”.

Heck, even some members of Trump’s administration are demanding some type of forceful response

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/trumps-hong-kong-caution-isolates-him-from-congress-allies-and-advisers/ar-AAFRwt0#page=2

Talk is cheap. It seems in this case Trump understands the reality.  There is nothing the US to influence how Chins decides to react to these riots, short of going to war against China.

Maybe only people who have relatives or close friends in the US military who are deployed somewhere in the western  Pacific should be allowed to argue that the US should “do something” about whatever is going on in Hong Kong...  ?

Score 1 for Bill, O for Fluffy

Bill comes down from safety in the tree, back to food, while our dog is searching for him in the back yard.

Bill bounces

I just moved a screen outsider so he will an easier path next time 

Bill perseverance