With the shriek of elderly beldames leaping on the piano stool after spying a mouse in their ­petticoats, the Western liberal ­intelligentsia has finally ­spotted the likely result of this November’s U.S. presidential elections.

In the editorial conferences of fine old U.S. and UK publications, the leader writers are having hysterics. In the cocktail parties of Davos, I am told, the global wokerati have been trembling so violently that you could hear the ice tinkling in their negronis.

Instead of hyperventilating and clutching our pearls, we need to look dispassionately at what happened in his last ­presidency as a guide to the future. My thoughts, of course, go first to Ukraine.

It is the paramount struggle of our time, and we are still not doing enough to help that heroic nation. In the past two years Ukrainians have been laying down their lives, and bearing unimaginable hardship, in the cause of freedom — not just their own freedom, but the principles of freedom and democracy around the world.

Here’s why I believe Trump will help the Ukrainians win.

[TTP has been predicting developments like this since the onset of Putin’s invasion of Ukraine almost two years ago.  I have known Paul Goble since the 80s when we worked together on implementing the Reagan Doctrine. He is one of the world’s preeminent experts on the inner workings of Russia.  See his Tatarstan Capitalizes On China’s Expanding Role In Middle Volga, TTP, Sept 27, 2023. --JW]

What’s happening now:

Mass protests in Bashkortostan featured calls for the independence of the Middle Volga republic and have shattered the image that Russia is united behind Putin.

These events have convinced Bashkirs and other non-Russians that their time is coming, and Kyiv believes that the non-Russian peoples will act soon enough to affect the course of Moscow’s war against Ukraine.

The demonstrations have sparked fears in the Kremlin and prompted some Russian nationalists to arm themselves to put down any non-Russian actions.

Here are the details.

[Skye’s Links 12/21/23 gave you a heads up here: This could lead to the most important Supreme Court win in the past century – no kidding.  The case is Loper Bright v Raimondo. SCOTUS arguments start Jan 17 for why at least 5 Justices should overthrow a 1984 Court monstrosity called “Chevron Deference” allowing administrative agencies like ATF to act as lawmakers. They create “rules” and “regulations” based on existing law, then use Chevron to affirm their rule change as “reasonable.”  This is a Very Big Deal!]

On Wednesday (1/17), The Supreme Court’s conservatives appeared inclined to cut back the regulatory power of federal agencies, with several justices during a pair of arguments seeming ready to overrule a legal doctrine that has bolstered agencies’ authority for decades.

Over more than three hours of argument, the justices put the Biden administration’s top Supreme Court lawyer on defense as she sought to preserve Chevron deference, which instructs courts to defer to agencies’ interpretation of federal law if it could have multiple meanings.

Four state and federal prosecutors claim they all came to the same disinterested conclusions that Donald Trump should be indicted for various crimes and put on trial during the campaign season of 2024.

Yet now they are in a doom loop of discovering that the more they seek to rush to judgment before the election and gag Trump from speaking publicly about these star-chamber proceedings, the more he rises in the polls.

In truth, each succeeding cycle of corrupt leftwing lawfare that ends in failure—the Russian collusion hoax, the weaponized impeachments, the pathetic attempt to erase Trump from state ballots, and the unfolding Fani Willis moral debacle—does not return things to zero.

Rather, they serve as force multipliers for each other. Each overreach geometrically increases the dangers to democracy, ever more turns the public off, and ironically cascades sympathy and poll numbers for the very target of their paranoias.

One wonders what it's like to be Jack Smith, Alvin Bragg, Leticia James, or Fani Willis waking up to watch CNN this morning.

Here's CNN: “Former President Donald Trump’s huge win in the Iowa caucuses on Monday enshrines one of the most astonishing comebacks in American political history.”

Astonishing to them, of course.  It sounds like the voters have some unfinished business they'd like to take care of. More to the point, it's a vote of no confidence in our justice system. Everyone can see that the charges against Trump are about politics, not justice.

What we saw in Iowa yesterday (1/15) was the repudiation of what the justice system has become -- politicized, unfair, unjust, and filthy-dirty. That has propelled Trump to his powerful win, because voters can see some unfinished business they need to take care of -- immediately -- in their votes for Trump.

[The most arguably pertinent question to ask of any developing country is: Does this country have time to get rich before it gets old? In China’s case that question has now been answered.  The answer is No.]

China’s total population declined for a second consecutive year in 2023 due to a record-low birth rate and an uptick in Covid-19 deaths. The decline will inevitably deter the economy’s growth potential and continue to strain a nation where the elderly overwhelmingly outnumber the young.

The National Bureau of Statistics, a Chinese government agency, reported that the total number of people in China decreased by 2.08 million in 2023. Overall, the population declined by 0.15 percent, from 1.411 billion to 1.409 billion in 2023. China’s population aged 60 and over reached 296.97 million in 2023, accounting for about 21.1 percent of its total population.

As new births fell 5.7 percent to 9.02 million, the 2023 Chinese birth rate also hit a new record. With only 6.39 births per 1,000 people, the 2023 birth rate was even lower than 2022’s record of 6.77 births per 1,000 people.