The 10-minute telephone conversation between Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen and U.S. president-elect Donald J. Trump on December 2  was the first such conversation between a sitting president in Taiwan and a U.S. president or president-elect since Washington broke official diplomatic relations with Taipei in 1979.

The reactions ranged worldwide, from consternation at Trump’s breaking with longstanding policy to hopes for deeper relations between the United States and the democratic island nation.

Most analysis of the call overlooks a crucial component: Tsai’s own calculations and the domestic reaction on Taiwan.  That’s what we’ll discuss here.

As is often the case, little effort was made to analyze why Taiwan’s first female president, in office since May 20 and brought to power in January via democratic election, was willing to place a call that, if Trump picked up at the other end of the line, was certain to spark some controversy.

Even less was said about reactions in Taiwan, particularly its 23 million citizens, who far too often in the rare instances of international attention are denied a voice of their own – as if all of them were little more than insentient subjects to the implacable waves of history or the dictates of decision makers in Washington and Beijing.

What can Republicans learn from Trump’s victory? The biggest lesson is that the old way of politics is dead. McCain and Romney showed that twice. Now Trump has shown how Republicans can actually win.  Here are five ways.

1. Find Your Natural Base

The GOP is ashamed of its base. It doesn’t like being associated with the very voters who made 2016 happen. Its autopsy last time around searched for ways to leave the white working class behind.

There’s a party that did that. Their symbol is a jackass. They just lost big because they ran out of working class white voters.

The Democrats have tried to manufacture their base using immigration, victimhood politics and identity politics. The GOP has wasted far too much time trying to compete on the same playing field while neglecting its base.

Trump won by doing what the GOP could have done all along if its leadership hadn’t been too ashamed to talk to people it considered low class because they shop at WalMart.

In the US and around the world, people are anxiously awaiting US President-elect Donald Trump’s announcement of his choice to serve as secretary of state. There is no doubt that Trump’s choice for the position will tell us a great deal about the direction his foreign policy is likely to take.

But the fact is that we already have sufficient information to understand what his greatest focus will be.

Trump’s announcement last week that he has selected Marine General James Mattis to serve as his defense secretary is a key piece of the puzzle.

Mattis has a sterling reputation as a brilliant strategist and a sober-minded leader.  Yet, in 2013, Obama summarily removed Mattis from his command as head of the US Military’s Central Command  -- because of his opposition to Obama’s strategy of embracing Iran.

That opposition is part of why he’ll be Trump’s SecDef.  Trump is interested in ending the war that the forces of radical Islam started with the US not on September 11, 2001, but on November 4, 1979, with the seizure of the US embassy in Tehran.

Italy's Matteo Renzi thought the "silent majority" would save him, if only he could chivvy enough of them to polls. The prime minister misjudged disastrously.

The voters certainly turned out. They smashed through the 60% threshold that Mr. Renzi thought would secure him victory in the constitutional referendum, but only to register their silent anger  - with him, with his government, with Brussels, and with an Italo-European establishment that has run the Italian economy into the ground.

"I didn't realize they hated me so much," he confessed before his resignation, the wunderkind of European politics no more. 

The referendum was no ordinary vote and it may prove much harder this time to shrug off the volcanic effects. "The whole world was against us. They threw every piece of [expletive] at us. Our achievement is a miracle," said Beppe Grillo, the flamboyant comedian behind the triumphant Five Star Movement.

A narrow 'No' had been discounted. Almost nobody expected a landslide rejection by 59% to 41%, with reaching 71% in Sicily in what amounts to a primordial scream by the pauperized Mezzogiorno.

Donald Trump pulled off one of the greatest political feats in modern history by defeating Hillary Clinton and the vaunted Clinton machine.

The election was a complete repudiation of Barack Obama: his fantasy world of political correctness, the politicization of the Justice Department and the I.R.S., an out-of-control E.P.A., his neutering of the military, his nonsupport of the police and his fixation on things like transgender bathrooms.

Since he became president, his party has lost 63 House seats, 10 Senate seats and 14 governorships.

The country had signaled strongly in the last two midterms that they were not happy. The Dems’ answer was to give them more of the same from a person they did not like or trust.

Preaching — and pandering — with a message of inclusion, the Democrats have instead become a party where incivility and bad manners are taken for granted, rudeness is routine, religion is mocked and there is absolutely no respect for a differing opinion.

This did not go down well in the Midwest, where Trump flipped three blue states and 44 electoral votes.

Here is a short primer for the young protesters.

If your preferred candidate loses, there is no need for mass hysteria, canceled midterms, safe spaces, crying rooms or group primal screams.  You might understand this better if you had not received participation trophies, undeserved grades to protect your feelings or even if you had a proper understanding of civics.

The Democrats are now crying that Hillary had more popular votes. That can be her participation trophy.

The home page of Hillary Clinton’s campaign website (still up: https://www.hillaryclinton.com) has links to “African Americans for Hillary, Latinos for Hillary, Asian Americans and Pacific islanders for Hillary, Women for Hillary, Millennials for Hillary,” but none to “Men for Hillary,” let alone “White Americans for Hillary.”

Given the history of such stereotyping, it is baffling that politicians on the left cannot see where this leads. The prime exponents of identity politics in the past were the advocates of apartheid, of anti-semitism, and of treating women as the legal chattels of men. “We are sleepwalking our way to segregation,” Trevor Phillips says.

Identity politics is thus very old-fashioned. Christina Hoff Sommers, author of Who Stole Feminism, says equality feminism — fair treatment, respect and dignity — is being eclipsed in universities by a Victorian “fainting couch feminism,” which views women as “fragile flowers who require safe spaces, trigger warnings and special protection from micro-invalidations.”

Sure enough, when she said this at Oberlin College, Ohio, 35 students and a “therapy dog” sought refuge in a safe room.

Global land temperatures have plummeted by one degree Celsius since the middle of this year – the biggest and steepest fall on record.

But the news has been greeted with an eerie silence by the world’s alarmist community. When temperatures shoot up it’s catastrophic climate change which requires dramatic headlines across the mainstream media and demands for urgent action.

But that when they fall even more precipitously it’s just a case of “nothing to see here”.

The cause of the fall is a La Niña event following in the wake of an unusual strong El Niño.

As David Rose reports:

Big El Niños always have an immense impact on world weather, triggering higher than normal temperatures over huge swathes of the world. The 2015-16 El Niño was probably the strongest since accurate measurements began, with the water up to 3C warmer than usual.

 

It has now been replaced by a La Niña event – when the water in the same Pacific region turns colder than normal.

 

This also has worldwide impacts, driving temperatures down rather than up.