For the past several months now, the US media is obsessed with dire predictions of a calamitous trade war between China and the US, following numerous statements by President Trump that the Chinese trade surplus is intolerable.

Indeed, at $506 billion of Chinese exports against only $130 billion of US ones, it does look very unfair. However, things look a bit different if looked at from a different angle.

For the problem with China is, thus, not its surplus per se, but rather the economic system that produces it and here it is the Communist system and not free trade that are clearly to blame.

Trade is just a way of increasing the power of the Chinese Communist Party. Everything that contributes to its aggrandizing is fair and widely practiced – technology theft, discrimination against foreign companies, preferential loans/subsidies to state-owned enterprises, currency manipulation etc.

It is a fool’s paradise though with China’s economy beset with problems that defy easy solutions.

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Well before Sigmund Freud formalized the idea of “projectionism”—the defense of one’s own shortcomings and sins by attributing them to others—it was a common theme in classical literature and the New Testament: the ridiculing of the mole on someone else’s nose to hide one’s own boil.

The term projection more or less sums up much of the woke identity politics movement, in which obsessions with racial privilege and tribal exceptionalism are justified by accusing others of just such bias.

For example, the new racism is epidemic among those in the so-called squad, the self-referenced nickname for four media-obsessed, first-term congressional representatives, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.), and Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.), who without their daily charges of bias largely would be unknown back-benchers laboring away in obscurity.

They have all taken Joseph Goebbels’ advice.

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As Brit Hume pointed out recently, “People discerning a racist motive for Trump’s attack on Elijah Cummings are missing a key point: Trump attacks those who criticize him and his administration, black or white.”

Hume follows up with an amusing and color-coordinated list of people Trump has put in their place (Bernie Sanders: crazy, Elizabeth Warren: total fraud, Justin Amash: loser, Joe Biden: low IQ, Harry Reid: insane, etc., etc.).

Beyond the elements of political calculation and polemical style, however, Donald Trump’s recent tweet fests suggest that he may be on the threshold of shifting the Overton Window on race.

Public discourse in America has long been held hostage to a species of racist moral blackmail that has made it almost impossible to tell the truth about many central social realities.  The President is trying to liberate us from it.

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Ronald Reagan famously said, "I didn't leave the Democrat Party. The Democrat Party left me."

Now it's left the rest of us.

If every candidate on stage raising their hands for free healthcare for illegal aliens during the first MSNBC debate wasn't enough to brand the party and its faithful as a collection of virtue-signaling lemmings, the subsequent CNN debates should have finished the job.

Or should I say debates or game shows? They were basically contests for who could go the furthest left.

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Night Two of the second round of Democratic presidential primary debates was expected to be a fireworks display between former Vice President Joe Biden (D-Del.) and Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.), and CNN did its best to light the fuses early on. Sadly -- for the viewers who didn't want to be bored, anyway -- all of those fuses were duds.

The following is my assessment of the painful display, using some of my live tweets from the evening rather than having to type more. Thank you in advance for indulging me, dear readers.

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Among his talents, Donald Trump has a special gift for driving his detractors so crazy that they do really stupid stuff. The decision by Democrats to force Robert Mueller to testify before Congress yesterday (7/24) is Exhibit A.

Bumblin’ Bob was a train wreck of epic proportions. The fallout is immediate, starting with this: impeachment is no longer an option.

It had a slim chance before Wednesday’s painful slog and no chance after it.

Mueller was that bad, seemingly hard of hearing, often confused and contradicted himself several times.

Although Mueller’s general demeanor was disturbing – he was a stammering, stuttering mess – it was also instructive. He did not project the mental and physical vigor of someone capable of leading the complex two-year probe into Russian meddling, possible Trump collusion and obstruction of justice.

More likely, the 74-year old former FBI director was something of a figure-head for an investigation that was carried out by the team of zealots he ­assembled.

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I'm tired of hearing conservative friends apologize for President Trump's "go back to where you came from" tweets about the likes of Ilhan Omar.

The president has the moral high ground, and the weasel war dance of the mainstream media shouldn't distract us from this fact.

Even his worst enemies (e.g. ex-conservative David Frum) concede that Trump's attacks on the anti-American extremists in the Democrat Party are smart politics.

But this isn't about trolling the Democrats. It's about principle.

President Trump has a gift for asking the obvious questions that the elites avoid, for example: What idiot let Omar into the United States in the first place? Come to think of it, why should we admit immigrants who hate us and hate everything we stand for?

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When Tom and I started our careers, it was considered an honor to be a member of professional societies that helped practitioners keep up with the latest developments in their fields through relevant meetings and publications. I had the privilege of leading one of these societies long ago.

But things are different now. Whether it be chemistry, physics, geology or engineering, many of the world’s primary professional societies have changed from being paragons of technical virtue to opportunistic groups focused on maximizing their members' financial gains in support of the climate scare, the world’s greatest science fraud.

In particular, they continue to promote the groundless hypothesis that carbon dioxide emitted as a result of mankind’s use of fossil fuels is leading to environmental catastrophe.  Why?

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Today (7/24),  Boris Johnson became Britain’s prime minister.  But who is he, what’s he like and what can we expect?

By weird coincidence, he happens to be the second prime minister with whom I was friends at Oxford University. And the first reassuring news I can bring is that he is going to be a considerable improvement on his predecessor-but-one, David Cameron.

Cameron was a managerial, Nanny-knows-best prime minister, whose main aim was to stay in power for as long as possible by not rocking the boat.

Boris, by contrast, is a mischief-maker and a fun-lover. Whatever else goes wrong during his time in office, of one thing we can be sure: it will be royally entertaining – like the Restoration of the libertinous, libidinous court of Charles II (r. 1660-1665) after years of dreary puritanism.

I like Boris. He’s funny, witty, scatty, shambolic with a very sharp brain whose cogitations you can almost see as he talks to you.  I think he’s going to get along very well with President Trump.

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[Note by JW:  This “must-read” by Rothschild & Della Rocca offers strong evidence of the geopolitical genius of President Trump.]

Perched precariously atop electric motorbikes, swarms of e-commerce couriers zip through China’s cities. For upwards of 10 hours each day, they race to deliver packages and hot meals.

In high-rise office buildings, tech-company programmers are toiling just as hard. Coding frantically to meet a deadline, they hunch over keyboards well into the night.

Although they pull long hours, these workers are the lucky ones. At least they have jobs. Amid a protracted slump in China’s once white-hot tech sector, tech firms are resorting to layoffs and hiring freezes.

Many thousands of young college graduates and blue-collar workers, who used to count on tech-sector employment, are now scrambling to find work.

Just two years ago, the rise of China’s tech sector (often termed its “new economy”) looked unstoppable. Between 2014 and 2017, Chinese telecommunications giant Huawei doubled its revenue, and a whopping 34 Chinese tech startups topped $1 billion valuations. By one forecast, the new economy was on track to create over 1 million jobs annually.

But today, the once-prolific sector has reversed course: startups and tech giants alike have been reeling the past year.

What is going wrong?

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