Ninety miles from the South Eastern tip of the United States, Liberty has no stead. In order for Liberty to exist and thrive, Tyranny must be identified, recognized, confronted and extinguished.
The decline in the Chinese economy is a natural consequence of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP)’s blind and relentless pursuit of high growth.
Gone are the days of temporary prosperity driven by exports and real estate prices. Now Beijing is trying desperately to sustain the economy by playing a dangerous seesaw game between soaring housing prices and declining consumption.
This is an unfulfilling and ineffective last resort that will fail to stop or hide the increasingly obvious deceleration of the Chinese economy.
From Growth Frenzy to Growth Dilemma
A country’s economic growth relies on three factors, often referred to as the three-horse-carriage. They are exportation, consumption, and investment. Economic growth would slow down significantly when one or two of the horses lose mobility. If all three fail, the economy can’t go far.
The Chinese economy today is just like a carriage without a horse. Due to the recent deterioration of the China-U.S. relationship, China’s exports have suffered significant losses with the August export volume down 4.3 percent compared to last year, the first decline in nearly three years. In the meantime both investment and consumption also deflated. Real estate investment growth has slowed for four consecutive months, and August manufacturing activity declined by 1.6 percent compared to a year ago. Consumer buying power has also been weakening. While Chinese authorities had to admit to the downward trend, they are unwilling to acknowledge that the past frenzy for high growth is the true cause of today’s decline.
Let’s first discuss the absurdity of China’s export gold rush. After China joined the WTO in 2001, it has relied on exports to pump up its economy. Between 2003 and 2007, China’s exports increased by 25 percent each year.
China’s foreign trade dependence (or FTD, ratio of the total amount of foreign trade of a country to its GDP) soared from 38.5 percent in 2001 to 67 percent by 2006, more than four times as high as Japan’s peak FTD towards the end of its asset price bubble era. Drunk withthe its effortless prosperity, China did not realize such export-reliant growth is not only unsustainable, but also very fragile.
Can a country maintain a 25 percent annual export growth rate for decades? Obviously not. For a very small country with low export volume, theoretically it may be possible to maintain a longer term trade surplus. But for a large country like China, with 26 percent of the world’s work force, the global market is too small for it to maintain long term export growth even if all other...
Donald Trump was chosen for such a time as this, when unusual courage and energy are critically necessary to persevere with the priorities to save the nation from self-destruction.
With the constant drumbeat from the mainstream media, Democrats now hope that the whirlwind in Washington of the so-called impeachment investigation will spread so much smoke that people won’t be able to see what’s going on, except to subliminally conclude that with all that smoke around Donald Trump, there must be a fire, and that it’ll die down with his removal from office.
In fact, President Trump has so much smoke around him because history has thrust on him the role of American fire-fighter-in-chief charged with extinguishing corruption in government and in the media, as well as fighting a myriad of other battles—from protecting the nation’s sovereignty and borders and redressing unfair trade deals and cost-sharing of military defense alliances to promoting policies to secure energy independence and drive economic growth, with a particular passion to deliver opportunity for those at the bottom.
Judeo-Christian beliefs and work ethic, family values and the rule of law enshrined in the founding documents of Declaration of Independence and the Constitution
With a second term, Trump is likely to become a historically consequential political realignment leader—what Andrew Jackson was to the Democrats and Abraham Lincoln was to the Republicans. He has already broadened the base of the Republican Party, and with a little more political jujitsu he can easily make more inroads and gain support from minorities and other constituencies who feel they’ve been neglected, or worse—have been used as political pawns by the Democrat Party elites, election cycle after election cycle.
The United States is absolutely unique in human history being founded on two bedrock tenets. First, the American people are endowed with unalienable individual rights that come from God and not the state—life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, along with privacy rights, due process and a presumption of innocence. Secondly, the legitimacy of the American government established by the Constitution comes solely from the will of the people determined by their choice through elections. States and districts choose their senators and representatives by popular vote, but the chief executive—the President—is elected by an Electoral College system, with electors being proportionally equal to each state’s number of U.S. House Representatives plus one for each of its two U.S. Senators. The founders’ wisdom regarding a need for an Electoral College thus established a blueprint for a governing a large and diverse country by balancing the preferences and will of the people living in sparsely populated states with the different priorities of densely populated states and urban areas that typically have a greater concentration of...
While Lebron James and the NBA may be willing to crouch down and lick the hand of Communist China, filmmaker Quentin Tarantino says to count him out.
Chinese censors have reportedly taken issue with Tarantino’s new flick, “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood,” which was released stateside in July.
The film was pulled from the schedule in China days before its release and Tarantino has not intentions of recutting it to appease communist regulators, according to The Hollywood Reporter.
The film, a Sony Pictures Entertainment production starring Brad Pitt and Leonardo DiCaprio, has been put on hold indefinitely by the Chinese, the entertainment news site reported.
And while no reason was reportedly given to Sony for the decision, the speculation is that Tarantino’s portrayal of the late martial arts hero Bruce Lee, who was of Chinese descent, is driving the decision.
Lee’s daughter has expressed harsh criticism about how her father is depicted in the film and she may have appealed to the Chinese government.
As THR previously reported, sources close to Beijing-based Bona Film Group, which is one of the investors in the film, and China’s Film Bureau, say Bruce Lee’s daughter, Shannon Lee, made a direct appeal to China’s National Film Administration, asking that it demand changes to her father’s portrayal. Friends and family of the Hollywood action star have criticized Tarantino for his portrayal of Lee, saying it doesn’t resemble the real-life man and is instead a caricature.
The daughter, Shannon Lee, told The Wrap it was “disheartening” to see Tarantino depict her father as “an arrogant a**hole who was full of hot air.”
The scene in question involves Pitt’s character, stuntman Cliff Booth, trading insults with the Bruce Lee character, played...
CIA analysts involved in the intelligence assessment of Russia's activities during the 2016 US election have begun to hire attorneys, as Attorney General William Barr expands his investigation into the origins of the Russia probe, led by US Attorney John Durham.
The prosecutor conducting the review, Connecticut U.S. Attorney John Durham, has expressed his intent to interview a number of current and former intelligence officials involved in examining Russia’s effort to interfere in the 2016 presidential election, including former CIA Director John Brennan and former director of national intelligence James Clapper, Brennan told NBC News. -NBC
NBC learned of the 'lawyering up' from three former CIA officials "familiar with the matter," while two more anonymous leakers claim there's tension between the Justice Department and the CIA over what classified documents Durham has access to.
With Barr’s approval, Durham has expanded his staff and the timeframe under scrutiny, according to a law enforcement official directly familiar with the matter. And he is now looking into conduct past Donald Trump’s inauguration in January 2017, a Trump administration official said.
One Western intelligence official familiar with Durham's investigation leaked that Durham has been asking foreign officials questions related to former Trump campaign aide George Papadopoulos, who was fed the rumor that Russia had 'dirt' on Hillary Clinton by a Maltese professor, Joseph Mifsud. While US media has sought to portray Mifsud as a Russian asset, the self-described member of the Clinton foundation has far stronger ties to the West.
A Western intelligence official familiar with what Durham has been asking of foreign officials says his inquiries track closely with the questions raised about the Russia investigation in right-wing media—a line of inquiry based on accusations made by George Papadopoulos. https://twitter.com/kendilaniannbc/status/1185546374370201601 …
According to congressional testimony given by Papadopoulos last October as well as statements he's made over Twitter, the whole thing was an FBI setup - as a 'woman in London, who was the FBI's legal attache in the UK' and "had a personal relationship to Bob Mueller after 9/11" was the one who recommended that he meet with Mifsud in Rome.
To be clear: a woman in London, who was the FBI’s legal attaché in the U.K., and had a personal relationship to Bob Mueller after 9/11, encouraged me to meet Joseph Mifsud in Rome in March 2016 and introduced Bruce Ohr to the top U.K. prosecutor 4 days before the Trump tower mtg.
As the theory goes; Mifsud, a US intelligence asset, feeds Papadopoulos the rumor that Russia has Hillary Clinton's emails shortly after he announces he's going to join the Trump campaign. Papadopoulos repeats the email rumor to Australian diplomat Alexander Downer, who alerts Australia's intelligence community, which notifies the FBI, which then launches operation "Crossfire Hurricane" during which the FBI sent multiple spies (including a 'honeypot') to infiltrate the Trump campaign. Notably, former FBI employee Peter Strzok flew to London to meet with Downer the day after Crossfire Hurricane was launched - while Strzok's boss, Bill Priestap was in London the day before the...
