The European Greed For COMMUNIST CHINA

NOVEMBER 13, 2022 BY JOHN HINDERAKER IN CHINA, EUROPE

WHOSE SIDE IS EUROPE ON?

The NATO alliance seems stronger in light of events in Ukraine and Russia. But economic competition and security may be something else. The Telegraph headlines: “Europe has picked a side in the new Cold War – China.”

In the new Cold War economy, trade will be restricted, technology fenced off, and intellectual property fiercely protected. Manufacturing capabilities will be built up, and supply chains brought closer to home to ensure resilience whatever happens.

That is going on here in the U.S. I hope it is, anyway.

As relations between the West and China deteriorate sharply, every developed economy will have to pick a side. And it is already becoming clear which one the major powers of Europe – and the European Union itself – have chosen. China.

Over the last few weeks, we have seen example after example of major industrial and commercial ties with China deepening.

Renault is partnering with Geely, presumably with the blessing of President Emmanuel Macron. Chinese investors are buying up a port in Hamburg, a crucial piece of infrastructure. And Chinese companies have announced three major new battery factories in Europe, the key industrial technology of the next decade.

More at the link, including this:

There may be lots of talk about creating a European battery industry, but in reality all the major investments right now are Chinese-owned. ***

[A]lmost no opportunity is ever wasted to inflame a trade war with the US, while [the EU] steadily builds up its trading and investment relationship with China.

Maybe that assessment is too pessimistic. But a global game of musical chairs is underway, and China’s control over the large majority of key strategic materials could give it the upper hand, especially if the U.S. continues its insane policy of squandering its advantage in fossil fuels.

“The long knives are aimed at Trump…”

November 13, 2022

2022 Midterms: No Stink on the Republican Establishment?

By J. Robert Smith at American Thinker:

Attacks on Donald Trump have begun in the aftermath of the midterm elections.  We should have set our watches.  Washington’s Republican establishment is pushing the line that the GOP’s underperformance in the midterms is “100%” Trump’s fault.  Of course, there’s no stink on D.C. Republicans — not Kevin McCarthy, not Mitch McConnell, not Ronna McDaniel, not Tom Emmer (chairman, RNCC), not GOP consultants and pollsters…  Not on any Republican who hangs out at the Capitol Hill Club.   

Conservatives shouldn’t be goaded into a Trump versus DeSantis fight.  Trump and DeSantis shouldn’t permit themselves to be baited, either.  It’s so transparent, it’s laughable.  That’s exactly what the establishment is trying.  Washington Republicans don’t intend to just knock out Trump, but split conservatives.  Is that rank odor wafting through the air from Karl Rove and Jeb! lurking behind the curtains?   

No stink on the insiders.  Nope.  Just Trump.  Washington’s favorite game is in full swing: The Blame Game.  Republicans play it as viciously as Democrats.  It’s one of D.C.’s charms.    

The long knives are aimed at Trump because he remains the Republican establishment’s nemesis.  The aforementioned “players,” among many others, don’t like their apple carts upset.  Why, they get all touchy about that.  Trump the disrupter, Trump the change agent — not good for business.  And make no mistake, in D.C., it’s all about business.  Show me the money, baby! 

Why do you think parades of unrich politicians who go to D.C. leave — if they ever do — worth millions of dollars?  You think Nancy Pelosi is the only member of Congress — Ds and Rs — who’s alleged to profit from insider trading? 

Enriched, these “representatives of the people,” while producing absolutely nothing of real value…  who retire from Congress or lose their seats to then get fat off defense contractor board appointments, consulting gigs with whatever special interest thinks their “ins” can be leveraged, and fat off consulting fees just because someone owed them a favor.  Give me a guy making widgets in Paducah, Kentucky over these scammers any day.      

And who — somehow, mysteriously — get rich off their family’s and friends’ connections. 

Case in point, the august Mitch McConnell, who, in fact, has become the poster boy for everything cynical, smarmy, and loathsome about the Swamp.  At least, on the Republican side of the aisle.  R or D, Mitch isn’t alone.   

Elaine Chao’s — Mitch’s wife — family has made a fortune in shipping, primarily off the People’s Republic of China.  McConnell and Chao, per Peter Schweizer, have both played key roles in furthering the Foremost Group’s interests.  That’s James Chao’s — Elaine’s dad’s — company.  Since 2004, the McConnells’ fortune has ballooned to as much as $36.5 million.  How do two D.C. lifers get that rich?    

But no stink on Mitch and Elaine for — as Schweizer terms it — “corruption by proxy.” 

And no stink on Mitch for publicly remarking during the midterms that “candidate quality” among Republican Senate hopefuls was lacking, which meant don’t expect the GOP to win the Senate.  But Mitch wasn’t done.  Caring more about retaining his Senate leadership position (even if that meant minority status), McConnell’s PAC pulled badly needed money from Blake Masters’ race in Arizona and Don Bolduc’s New Hampshire contest. 

Worse — if there is a worse — well, yes, there is — Mitch has poured money into propping up Lisa Murkowski’s campaign in Alaska.  Murkowski, who just radiates political whore.  But, hey, that’s the ilk Mitch runs with. 

No stink on Mitch, but, per Daily Wire, “GOP’s Midterm Losses were 100% Trump’s Fault.” 

The dunce who penned the Daily Wire piece actually claims that had Trump not pushed Mehmet Oz, Dave McCormick would have been Pennsylvania’s GOP Senate nominee… “And McCormick most likely would’ve crushed the bumbling John Fetterman.”

That Dave McCormick, who made “$22 million last year [2021] as CEO of the world’s largest hedge fund,” Bridgewater Associates?  Bridgewater Associates that made truckloads of yen off the PRC, a communist regime that oppresses Uyghurs, Tibetans, and Hongkongers?  Dave McCormick’s Bridgewater Associates, which knows it’s more lucrative to help create jobs in China than the U.S.A.?    

Does the Daily Wire dunce not appreciate that Democrats would have fricasseed McCormick for all of the above plus more?  That Pennsylvania’s “No Questions” mail-in balloting would have done in Abraham “Mr. Freed the Slaves” Lincoln?                  

Details, details.  Just get Trump. 

Trump, who did more for the nation in 48 months as president than D.C. lifers have done in their careers.  Trump, who kept the nation at peace, who had the economy humming, who stood up to Xi and Putin and Kim and the mullahs.  Trump, who, against Democrat and Republican opposition, effectively closed the U.S.-Mexican border… who fought the drug scourge and child trafficking coming from Mexico. 

Donald Trump who, this election season, made dozens of endorsements and took to the hustings to support Republican candidates via rallies in key states, while most establishment Republicans hung out in their nicely appointed D.C. offices, sitting on their fat rears, spinning whatever intrigues they believed advanced their petty interests.

In 24 months of the Biden administration and Democrat control of Congress, along with the passivity of Kevin McCarthy and conniving compliance of Mitch McConnell, what has happened to the nation?  It’s become an awful mess.  It’s tumbled into deep troubles — thanks to utter incompetence, ideological blinkeredness, and greed — that appear only to have begun.  A potential Perfect Storm of crises, domestic and foreign, is brewing. 

And yet no stink on the elites, whose conceit is their most outsized feature.  Elites, who aren’t just Democrats but quisling establishment Republicans and pay-for-hire “conservatives,” whose devotion to liberty and nation are distant seconds to devotion to themselves. 

All of them are miserably failing the country — the honest, decent, hardworking Joes and Janes who comprise the real backbone of America.  They’re being failed — we’re all being failed — by crimped minds whose reflex is to shift blame from themselves to Trump.  Good Lord, deliver us from these fools. 

Lastly and not least, Newt Gingrich has weighed in.  I’ve long respected and appreciated Newt, starting when he was a firebrand backbencher in the U.S. House in the late 70s and early 80s.  His contributions have been historic.  But he, too, has decided to pin the blame on Trump for the GOP’s underperformance — or was it more on the order of inflated expectations now being spun as underperformance? 

Said the former speaker, per Just the News, November 10:

“I was pretty shaken because that was not the election I expected,” he admitted. “And I don’t have as much confidence in my own judgment as I would have had yesterday morning.”     

Well, Mr. Speaker, perhaps you shouldn’t.  Perhaps most of us misread developments.  Maybe we need the humility to admit we were wrong.  But lackluster Kevin McCarthy, whom you mentored, and along with House Republicans, concocted the tepid “Commitment to America,” receives not a single word of criticism from you?  And what about your role in counseling McCarthy and having direct input into the “Commitment?”  Perhaps introspection and further reflection would help you arrive at a deeper, wiser understanding of your responsibility?    

I’m decades past an infatuation with any politician.  Donald Trump is no more perfect than the rest of us.  He has his good and bad attributes.  But we should all be damned if we allow feckless, self-absorbed, and incompetent Republican D.C. lifers to get away with evading their ample share of responsibility for the midterm outcomes.  Yep, stink is on them, thick and pungent. 

Conservatives, don’t take the bait.  The lifers want us to form a circular firing squad.  If we let them blame Trump “100%,” shame on us.  

J. Robert Smith can be found regularly at Gab @JRobertSmith.  He also blogs at Flyover. 

“Hand tally anyone?”

November 13, 2022

Arizona on my Mind

By Clarice Feldman at American Thinker:

Election Day is increasingly looking like election month, and frankly, unless state residents under our federal system get control of this, I see no end to it. In the worst cases, ballots are emailed to everyone who has ever been registered to vote whether or not they’ve died or moved away, faulty ballot printing results in valid ballots being tossed, equipment failures misregister votes, ballot drop boxes are left unmonitored, and so on — all of which contribute to an atmosphere in which corruption flourishes. The more this happens, the more voters believe they cannot vote themselves out of policies and politicians with which they disagree. That is not an insignificant problem.

Arizona once again leads in sloppy election handling. One can blame incompetence, but as these sloppy procedures seem to always favor the Left, there’s reason for suspicion.

President Trump has called for the Arizona election to be rerun. 

So in Maricopa County they’re at it again. Voting machines in large numbers didn’t work, but only in Republican districts. People were forced to wait for hours, then got exhausted or had other things to do and left the voting lines by the thousands. Even Kari Lake was taken to a Liberal Democrat district in order to vote. Others weren’t so lucky. This is a scam and voter fraud, no different than stuffing the ballot boxes. They stole the Election from Blake Masters. Do Election over again!

Flopping Aces calls Arizona the “most corrupt state in the nation.” Certainly, the state faces some stiff competition in that regard, though its election handling places it in the top rung.

Following a 2020 audit, Arizona bought 400 new voting machines, ordered by the Secretary of State Katie Hobbs.  Maricopa County tests all of its voting machines prior to each election.

MARICOPA COUNTY, Ariz. – Maricopa County is testing out its voting machines — the process is done before and after every election. Why? It’s to make sure there are no issues with the counting of votes.

The process of checking the machines is called the “logic and accuracy test.” The process, while underway, is open to the public. This way, Maricopa County Elections Department can make sure it’s programmed the equipment accurately, and they are going to count all the ballots for the general election as they are designed.

Yet right on cue come election day, the machines fail to work properly.

Maricopa County, Arizona, Supervisor Bill Gates apologized after roughly 20% of their polling sites had problems with tabulation machines reading ballots just hours after Election Day polls opened.

The Arizona county had explained that some machines had problems with their printers and were not producing dark enough ink on ballots.

During a Wednesday news conference, Gates said that of the approximately 250,000 in-person votes that were cast on Election Day, “the lion’s share” have been counted and reported, but 7% — or about 17,000 ballots — were placed in a drop box and had still not been counted due to the printing errors.

The County then began a hand count

Maricopa County election officials in Arizona’s most populous region have begun a hand count audit, officials announced late Wednesday.

“The hand count audit has begun,” the county’s election department said on Twitter. “Republican, Democratic, and Libertarian party chairs drew the races and ballots that hand count audit boards will review Saturday.

The Secretary of State Katie Hobbs was in charge of this election, and as a candidate for election to governor she should have recused herself.

To put this mashup in perspective, Ryan Petty tweets:

Ryan Petty

@rpetty

In the time it has taken California, Arizona and Nevada to count 70-80% of the votes from this election, Florida counted 100% of millions of votes, had a hurricane and already rebuilt a hurricane damaged highway.

Let that sink in.

The most informative description of the failures of the Arizona election failures is found at Powerline Blog where Scott Johnson quotes a lengthy letter from John A. Clifford, an attorney who lives in the now notorious Maricopa County. 

Among the problems he notes are these:

The ballots are intended to have registration marks on them to allow the scanner to tell which form is being scanned, and tallied accordingly. I don’t know if you run a printer at your home, but I can tell you I have lots of hiccups and frustration from my little print shop on my desk. Did the polling place use the right paper, the right ink, or give the voter a pen that bleeds through and can be seen from on the other side? What level of QC is going on there? Some voters reported that the felt tip pen they were given bled through. What else could go wrong? I used a ballpoint pen myself.

Anyway, trouble ensued again this year. I think we made the system too complicated to run smoothly. Of course, we made things worse by reducing the number of polling places after a year when we had small turnout and a bunch of bureaucrats saw a chance to save money. Add a layer of CoVid-excused changes and we are certainly now off to the turtle races this year. I suspect the IT guys told them, sure this should work. We got this. What is your experience with a technology fix to make your life easier?

When some ballots refused to go through the scanners, some voters were told just to go to a different polling place and try again. Once they got to the new place they were told that since they had checked in and received a ballot at the prior location they would not be given another ballot. Makes sense, but not if your first ballot was trashed. Which brings me to “drawer 3.”

Apparently, some of the unscannable ballots were placed into a “secure lock box” where the authorities essentially said we intend to scan these somewhere else at a time to be determined. Since the ballot would not scan where it was filled in, who believes it will scan downtown? Hand tally anyone?

No one can say what the outcome of the race for Arizona governor will be, but if it turns out to be Kari Lake, who in my opinion deserves it, you can expect a great deal of change in Arizona’s ballot handling and vote counting. If not, expect the same mess in 2024.

THE MAGNIFICENT MESSIAH!

A Note From KRISTI ANN:

As Thy Days So Shall Thy Strength Be Amen!!

posted in Charles Spurgeon, Christianity, Jesus-Yeshua KING of kings, Jesus-Yeshua LORD of lords by Kristi Ann

( Psalms 119:115-116 KJV ) “I will Meditate in thy precepts, and have respect unto thy Ways. I will delight myself in thy statutes: I will not forget thy WORD!!

( Revelation 19:16 KJV ) “And HE hath on HIS Vesture and on HIS thigh a Name Written, KING OF kings, AND LORD OF lords.”!! Jesus-Yeshua Christ-Messiah is KING of kings and LORD of lords, HE is the ALPHA and OMEGA Hallelujah and Maranatha!!

( 1 Timothy 6:16-16 KJV ) “Which in HIS times HE shall shew, who is the Blessed and only Potentate, the KING of kings, and LORD of lords; Who only hath Immortality, Dwelling in the LIGHT which no man can approach unto; whom no man hath seen, nor can see: to whom be honour and power everlasting. Amen.”!!

( Revelation 17:14 KJV ) “These shall make war with the LAMB, and the LAMB shall Overcome them: for HE is LORD of lords, and KING of kings: and they that are with HIM are called, and Chosen, and Faithful.”!!

I am a Devout Conservative Christian  Republican Patriot in our Judeo-Christian Nation United States of America  USA and I STAND with the HOLY LAND of Israel-Yisrael  Israel!! “Pray Without Ceasing” ( I Thessalonians 5:17 KJV ) For USA and Israel-Yisrael and our Christian EarthForevermore!! Hallelujah and Amen!!