China's new leaders are close to abandoning the country's one-child policy, belatedly moving to avert an ageing crunch as the work force goes into sharp decline.

Jun Ma from Deutsche Bank said the new policies should shore up the pension system and inject stimulus as China's growth sputters. "As tens of millions of sibling-less people in China are now entering their child-bearing age, we expect this policy shift would induce a baby boom," he said.

The one-child policy dates back to 1971 in its original form and has led to 336 million abortions and 222 million sterilizations, often badly executed in poor regions. Recent abuses have caused uproar, with photos circulating on the Chinese internet of a young mother lying beside a fully formed baby after she had been seized by police for failing to pay the "social compensation fee" for an illegal child. She was forced to undergo an abortion just before her natural birth.

Premier Li Keqiang clearly views the policy an anachronism at a time when China is running out of workers, and faces a demographic time-bomb. There are currently five workers for every pensioner. This ratio will fall to two by 2035.  So any baby boom over the next few years may come too late.

[The Council for National Policy is America's premier group of conservative leaders. At its meeting this weekend, I have been asked to address CNP members, explaining in five minutes why Liberal Democrats seem incapable of even wanting to defend our country.  This is what I will say.]

A good place to start understanding why Democrats cannot defend America is the Amazon jungle.  There is a tribe in the Amazon called the Yanomamo.  When a Yanomamo woman gives birth, she tearfully proclaims her child to be ugly.

In a loud mortified lament that the entire tribe can hear, she asks why the gods have cursed her with such a pathetically repulsive infant. She does this in order to ward off the envious black magic of the Evil Eye, the Mal Ojo, that would be directed at her by her fellow tribespeople if they thought she was happy and her baby was beautiful.

So she is afraid to be happy, because of the fear of being envied by her fellow villagers.

From now on, whenever you think of a Liberal Democrat, I want you to think of that Yanomamo woman in the Amazon.  For it is that primitive jungle fear of being envied that makes a Liberal.

I've never understood why people listen to smart-aleck jerks on trash radio like Don Imus and Howard Stern who get paid a lot of money to say nothing of substance but say it in a pseudo-clever, hyper-cynical, juvenilely outrageous way.

But I sure am enjoying watching him squirm.  This is great karma.  His public persona, with the phony cowboy hat, the gravel voice, the wrinkled glower, was of a super tough guy, as tough as say, the British Royal Marines.  Turns out he's as much of a surrender pussy as they are.

Imus should exchange his cowboy hat for a dhimmi head scarf like that worn by Pelosi Galore or Limey sailorwoman Faye Turney to best signify his submission to the gods of political correctness.

Now, if that's all this teapot tempest is, yet another example of bottomless PC hypocrisy and Al Sharpton's unceasing effort to prey on white guilt, it'll soon be replaced by the next media frenzy. 

The real question is whether the Imus scandal will wreck the presidential candidacy of Barack Hussein Obama, Jr.

During the Bastille Day celebrations this month, French President François Hollande declared - to the incredulity of pretty much everyone in France - that "the recovery is here". There are no particular economic indicators that would suggest this.

Consumer spending and manufacturing remain at historic lows; growth in the third quarter is expected to be zero; the OECD has predicted that unemployment will actually be worse next year; and only this week a senior member of the FPD, Germany's junior coalition partner, pronounced that he was "very worried" about France, arguing that Hollande's decision to raise taxes was "fundamentally wrong."

As an Austrian-American born and raised in Paris, and still living there, I have always been intrigued by the French faith in the French way. No other country - save for the United States - is as persuaded that it embodies a universal model for human societies.

But a system whose economic performance is mediocre in times of prosperity and plain lousy in times of crisis can hardly purport to be a "model." And sadly, the same advantages that make the French believe in their system are also what make the country so unprepared for reform.

The French, in short, are living in la-la land and their current system is doomed.

Whoa... what a firestorm.  At the insistence of many TTPers, last week's How the Clintons Will Destroy John McCain was made a free access article and promptly went viral over the Internet, becoming explosively controversial.

As you can see from the comments on the Member User Forum (201, a TTP record), the response from TTPers was overwhelmingly positive.  I also received a number of responses from personal friends.  Most were very supportive, a few were vehemently upset, with most of the latter assuring me that I remained their friend nonetheless.  I cannot adequately express how much this meant to me.

Then there were those among the latter whose friendship I have lost.  I am most regretful of losing that of Jim Warner's.  Jim had been a dear friend of many years.  I know of no finer man than Jim Warner, a man of unquestionable character and integrity.

As a captured POW held by the Communist Vietnamese for over five years, and a cell mate in the Hanoi Hilton of John McCain's for over a year, Jim felt it necessary to write a rebuttal to my article - without mentioning either my name or the article - in FrontPage Magazine.com.

It is easy to understand Jim's desire to defend his cellmate with whom he suffered indescribable horrors at the hand of the communists.  Thus the excruciating irony of Jim's article - for John McCain possesses a fraction of the integrity and decency of character of Jim Warner.  I would trust my life to Jim Warner without a moment's hesitation.  I would not trust my life to John McCain for a moment.