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Friday, November 18, 2022
The 90 Miles Mystery Box: Episode #1906
You have come across a mystery box. But what is inside?
It could be literally anything from the serene to the horrific,
from the beautiful to the repugnant,
from the mysterious to the familiar.
If you decide to open it, you could be disappointed,
you could be inspired, you could be appalled.
This is not for the faint of heart or the easily offended.
You have been warned.
Thursday, November 17, 2022
US Has Sent a Net $309 Billion to Communist China This Year
One point he repeatedly stressed in that speech: He was not going to let the People’s Republic of China take advantage of the United States.
“American leadership must meet this new moment of advancing authoritarianism, including the growing ambitions of China to rival the United States,” Biden said at the beginning of his speech.
“We must start with diplomacy rooted in America’s most cherished democratic values: defending freedom, championing opportunity, upholding universal rights, respecting the rule of law, and treating every person with dignity,” Biden said.
“And we’ll also take on directly the challenges posed by our prosperity, security, and democratic values by our most serious competitor, China,” Biden declared.
“We’ll confront China’s economic abuses; counter its aggressive, coercive action; to push back on China’s attack on human rights, intellectual property, and global governance,” he said.
Then, Biden specifically focused on the well-being of the American working class—including how it related to U.S. relations with China.
“Every action we take in our conduct abroad, we must take with American working families in mind,” said Biden. “Advancing a foreign policy for the middle class demands urgent focus on our domestic … economic renewal.”
“If we invest in ourselves and our people,” Biden said, “if we fight to ensure that American businesses are positioned to compete and win on the global stage, if the rules of international trade aren’t stacked against us, if our workers and intellectual property are protected, then there’s no country on Earth—not China or any other country on Earth—that can match us.”
So, how has Biden done in his strategic aims to “push back on China’s attack on human rights” and keep “American working families in mind” in every action America takes abroad?
The State Department’s 2021 report on human rights in China, as this column has noted before, described the Chinese regime’s systematic attacks on the human rights of the Chinese people.
“Genocide and crimes against humanity occurred during the year against predominantly Muslim Uyghurs and members of other ethnic and religious minority groups in Xinjian,” said the State Department. “These crimes were continuing and included: the arbitrary imprisonment or other severe deprivation of physical liberty of more than one million civilians; forced sterilization, coerced abortions, and more restrictive application of the country’s birth control policies; rape; torture of a large number of those arbitrarily detained; forced labor; and draconian restrictions on freedom of religion or belief, freedom of expression, and freedom of movement.”
“Government officials and the security services often committed human rights abuses with impunity,” the report concluded.
While China continued to inflict these abuses on its own people, it also continued to run up a massive trade deficit with the United States.
In 2021, according to the Census Bureau, the United States exported only $151.442 billion in products to the People’s Republic while it was importing $504.935 billion. As a result, the United States ran a one-year bilateral trade deficit with the People’s Republic of $353.493 billion.
So far in 2022, the Census Bureau has published the international trade numbers for the nine months from January through September.
But things have not gotten better in U.S.-China trade relations. They have gotten worse.
In the first nine months of 2021 (when the U.S. was on its way to that 12-month deficit of $353.493 billion), the U.S. ran a trade deficit of $253.507 billion with China.
In the first nine months of this year, the U.S. has run a $309.230 billion trade deficit with China. That is up $55.723 billion—or about 22%—from the first nine months of last year.
This week, while attending the G-20 summit in Bali, Indonesia, Biden met with Xi Jinping, the general secretary of the Chinese Communist Party.
A report in The New York Times suggested that the Chinese government was happy with the outcome of the Biden-Xi meeting. Its headline said: “After the Biden-Xi meeting, Beijing signals optimism over relations with Washington.”
“An upbeat photo in China’s main newspaper and comments by the foreign minister suggested that Beijing believes...
Kari Lake Appears to Be Gearing Up For a Legal Fight in Arizona to Contest Chaotic, Glitchy Election
It’s been more than two days since the Associated Press called the governor’s race in Arizona for Democrat Secretary of State Katie Hobbs, but Republican spitfire Kari Lake is showing no sign of conceding the election.
She reacted with defiance, in fact, when the AP called the race for Hobbs, Monday night: “Arizonans know BS when they see it,” she tweeted.
Ballot curing under Arizona law allows voters with inconsistent signatures or no signatures on their early ballot to fix their ballots.
According to the New York Times, Lake is currently working with other Republican state campaigns to prepare a legal fight. Lake didn’t immediately respond to an American Greatness query about her next move, but her campaign appears to be making the case that the chaotic and poorly-run Arizona election disenfranchised Republican voters.
For the past week, Lake’s campaign has been collecting video testimonials that can be used in court.
One poll watcher who was stationed at the Eldorado Community Center in Scottsdale from 6:00 am to 1:00 pm on Nov. 8, explained in a video that things were running smoothly until a county technician showed up at around 11:30 am to check the voting equipment. After that, he said, the tabulators started malfunctioning.
“We started experiencing issues with tabulators not accepting voters’ ballots,” he explained.
These voters were told to reenter their ballots four different ways in the original tabulator, then if all failed, do the same thing in the second tabulator. Then if it failed again, go back to the first tabulator and try again. If all 12 attempts failed, they were given the choice of spoiling their ballot, having another printed, fill out their ballot again, and then try submitting them into the tabulators again.
He noted that the whole process took over 30 minutes, on top of the hour plus they had spent in line. “They’re only other option was to place their ballot in drawer number 3,” he explained.
The poll watcher said that between 11:30 and noon, approximately 10 percent of all of the ballots were failing, and between noon and 12:30, approximately 20 percent of the ballots were failing. By 1:00, he said, “four out of every ballots were failing.”
“I’ll never forget the look on these affected voters’ faces,” he added. “They were in disbelief that our system of voting was failing them en masse on the most important election day of the 2022 cycle. In the 44 years I have been voting—99 percent which was in person—I have never experienced such chaos, confusion, and voter suppression.”
A voter in a “deep red” section of Maricopa County said an election worker at her polling place wouldn’t accept...
Germany Preparing For Emergency Cash Deliveries, Bank Runs And "Aggressive Discontent" Ahead Of Winter Power Cuts
As Reuters reports citing four sources, German authorities have stepped up preparations for emergency cash deliveries in case of a blackout (or rather blackouts) to keep the economy running, as the nation braces for possible power cuts arising from the war in Ukraine. The plans include the Bundesbank hoarding extra billions to cope with a surge in demand, as well as "possible limits on withdrawals", one of the people said. And if you think crypto investors are angry when they can't access their digital tokens in a bankrupt exchange, just wait until you see a German whose cash has just been locked out.
Officials and banks are looking not only at origination (i.e., money-printing) but also at distribution, discussing for example priority fuel access for cash transporters, according to other sources commenting on preparations that accelerated in recent weeks after Russia throttled gas supplies.
The planning discussions involve the central bank, its financial market regulator BaFin, and multiple financial industry associations, said the Reuters sources most of whom spoke on condition of anonymity about plans that are private and in flux.
Although German authorities have publicly played down the likelihood of a blackout and bank runs - for obvious reasons - the discussions show both how seriously they take the threat and how they struggle to prepare for potential crippling power outages caused by soaring energy costs or even sabotage. They also underscore the widening ramifications of the Ukraine war for Germany, which has for decades relied on affordable Russian energy and now faces double-digit inflation and a threat of disruption from fuel and energy shortages.
As everyone familiar with the recent history of the Wimar Republic Germany knows, access to cash is of special concern for Germans, who value the security and anonymity it offers, and who tend to use it more than other Europeans, with some still hoarding Deutschmarks replaced by euros more than two decades ago.
According to a recent Bundesbank study, roughly 60% of everyday German purchases are paid in cash, and Germans, on average, withdrew more than...
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