We are still a great people. The Cajun Navy and other rescuers during Harvey remind us of that.

But we lack the culture or the politics to reflect that greatness. The noble impulses that lead men to risk their lives in flooding are there. But our society no longer has the vessels to hold and sustain those impulses.

The media doesn't quite know what to make of the rescuers. You can see the itching to return to the stories that it knows and likes. Russia. Trump hit pieces. People punching each other in the street over politics. It swerves at the first sight of a Confederate flag on a rescue boat or Ted Cruz's Sandy vote. It doesn't want to dwell on the best of us. Behavior like that doesn't make sense anymore.

Generations have grown up with leftist protesters as their definition of heroes. Look in a history book and the last 70 years consisted of "heroes" who marched around waving signs until they got everything they wanted. And every day in the news there are more "heroes" marching for illegal aliens, transgender bathrooms, the supremacy of black lives and any other identity politics cause.

But waving a placard to the adulation of the media isn't heroism. Saving lives is.

The nuclear confrontation between the US and North Korea entered a critical phase Sunday (9/03) with North Korea’s conduct of an underground test of a thermonuclear bomb.

With North Korea now a direct threat to US cities, the confrontation isn’t about US superpower status in Asia, and the credibility of US deterrence or the capabilities of US military forces in the Pacific. The confrontation is now about the US’s ability to protect the lives of its citizens.

The distinction tells us a number of important things. All of them are alarming.  Which brings us to China.

China has been the main beneficiary of North Korea’s conventional and nuclear aggression and brinksmanship.  This state of affairs was laid bare in a critical way last month.

The next head of NASA is likely to be an ex-Navy fighter pilot turned Republican congressman who believes strongly in space exploration but is skeptical about man-made climate change.

What’s not to like about about Trump’s nomination of Rep. Jim Bridenstine (R-Oklahoma) for the job of NASA’s administrator?

Everything, if you’re a liberal.

According to New York Daily News columnist Linda Stasi, Trump just blew the perfect chance to change his “presidency from the chaotic mess of threats, bitterness and bilious paranoia to one of rationality and reasonableness.”

It would be nice to dismiss Ms. Stasi as merely the deranged frothings of a rent-an-opinion, left-wing columnist who has bizarrely chosen to borrow her surname from that of the secret police in former Communist East Germany. Unfortunately, she’s by no means the exception.

Most liberals think as she does.  Indeed, so do quite a few establishment conservatives – like Senator Marco Rubio.

The US Treasury and the Federal Reserve are both poised to start draining liquidity from the financial system, threatening a bout of dollar scarcity and a potential shake-up of currency markets over coming months.

The twin-shift in policy is likely to tighten the availability of credit and send a strong impulse through Wall Street and global bourses, though whether it will be powerful enough to dampen frothy asset prices in the current exuberant mood is an open question.

“As we approach the fourth quarter, dollar scarcity could return as a theme. The upcoming tightening of US liquidity is not fully reflected in market pricing,” says Christin Tuxen and Jens Naervig Pedersen from Danske Bank.

What makes the US Treasury actions doubly-potent this time is that the Fed is about to pull the trigger on ‘quantitative tightening’ (QT) at exactly the same time, taking the first steps to wind down its $4.4 trillion balance sheet after almost a decade of ultra-stimulus.

"This will not be a walk in the park," says Danske Bank.

Donald Trump's appetite is whetted. He knows that American companies have stashed trillions of dollars overseas in what amounts to the greatest cash reserve in the world.

Apple has $257bn parked abroad beyond the reach of the Internal Revenue Service. Alphabet (Google) has $126bn, Microsoft $84bn, Cisco $68bn, and Oracle $59bn. The US Bureau of Economic Analysis estimates that total retained earnings outside the country have mushroomed to $4 trillion.

The President is determined to lay his hands on this money, or at least to divert it back into the US economy. The latest briefings from Washington suggests that the White House is preparing 'mandatory' action as part of his tax reform, unlike the previous voluntary attempts to lure back money through tax holidays.

If Mr. Trump succeeds, these repatriated capital flows will have a volcanic impact on the US dollar, Wall Street, and the global financial system, with big winners and big losers.

What on earth has happened to the moral and political sensibilities of Paul Ryan, John McCain, Jeff Flake, Jeb Bush, etc.?  All of those RINOs who are attacking President Trump for pardoning Joe Arpaio are simpering, whining traitors to the party they allegedly represent.

They should declare themselves Democrats and be done with the masquerade.

Perhaps they should remind themselves of all the criminals and thugs that President Obama pardoned, or that President Clinton pardoned.

If there was ever anyone who deserved a pardon, along with Scooter Libby, it is Joe Arapio.   This was a no-brainer!  The man has enforced both federal and state laws for his entire career.

Arpaio was found in contempt of court after a Clinton-appointed judge, Susan Bolton,  ordered him to stop enforcing the law, detaining people he suspected (or knew) to be illegal immigrants.  It was the judge who broke the law, not Sheriff Joe, as so many of our activist judges have over the last decade.   They do not want laws that protect our borders enforced.   Such judges are traitors to the nation as well.

"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion..."

The First Amendment assumes that the proper sphere of government is policies, not values. And so it protects the right of political participation and prohibits a state church that would define values.

The government had the right to decide to go to war with France. It did not have a right to decide what you should believe. Politics extended into the realm of policies, not beliefs.

But as religious belief declined, politics replaced it as the repository of moral and ethical values. This transformation began on the Left. The Left was the least religious in the traditional sense. And the most likely to build up an ideology of secular values with which to displace traditional religious values.

The last century witnessed an extensive effort to scrub religious values out of government. But this effort was matched by an equally comprehensive project to replace them with the Left’s own values. Unlike the wall between church and state, there were few legal safeguards against writing values into legislation if they were irreligious ones. The church was deemed to be the true threat. Not the state.

But the end result looks very much like an establishment of religion. Even in the church sense.