▶️ VDH: AMERICA, THE REAL CROUCHING TIGER, HIDDEN DRAGON
⭐️ HelloKitty’sGotAHairTrigger
VDH: AMERICA, THE REAL CROUCHING TIGER, HIDDEN DRAGON
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ne American view of China; now increasingly popular on the Left and the Right alike, especially among the hate-Trump crowd, is the communist colossus will be forever ascendant, with continued astonishing levels of food production, ship construction, and industrial output. In this pessimistic view,China will soon replace America as the world’s predominant power. We are, supposedly, like an exhausted British Empire circa 1945, and China is the new version of the postwar American powerhouse.
Yet even Beijing’s miraculous 30-year leap out of poverty into first-world affluence and Westernized power is hardly the same as parity with the US. In truth, Trump held almost all the cards at the current summit and will do so again when Xi Jinping visits the US this autumn. According to nearly every historical measure of power, the US leads China by sizable margins; in wealth, economic output, fuel, food, and military strength.
China has roughly four times the population of the US, but produces only about 60 percent of our total GDP. A crude way of looking at this asymmetry is that one US citizen accounts for 40 percent more goods and services than his four Chinese counterparts. Americans enjoy a per capita GDP (roughly $95,000) over six times higher than China’s (roughly $15,000).
We are the largest oil and gas producer and exporter in history; China must import 11 to 12 million barrels of oil every day. The US is also the greatest food exporter in history. China, for all its miraculous increases in agricultural productivity, still must import 30–40 percent of its food, a number that keeps rising as China becomes more affluent and more diverse in its food consumption.
The US still spends almost three times as much on defense. Its nuclear forces are roughly six times larger, and its eleven carrier strike groups are nearly four times more numerous than China’s three conventionally powered carriers. The US has more than 100 years of experience in carrier warfare; China has less than 15 years.
American universities’ science, technology, engineering, and mathematics departments dominate global rankings. In terms of market capitalization, eight US companies are in the world’s top ten. American companies, along with NASA, have regained prior American primacy in space exploration. In new frontiers such as robotics, drones, artificial intelligence, nuclear fusion, cryptocurrencies, and bioengineering, a once sluggish US has woken up, rebounded, and is reasserting its preeminence.
True, the US fertility rate is down to 1.7. But China’s is 1.0, and its population is rapidly shrinking and aging.
But most importantly, China is an autocracy. It is superficially efficient, but its technology is ultimately derived from the free and wide-open atmosphere of the West and of the US in particular. There are usually around 300,000 Chinese students here in the US; and they are not art history majors, but sent here to master and appropriate US scientific expertise and then return home to clone it.
China has spent over $4 trillion in the last decade on its Belt and Road, mercantile, and imperialist agendas and on its military-industrial complex. Yet recently, its effort to pull Latin America away from the US has been failing miserably. China lost its client, Nicolás Maduro, in Venezuela, and, with his arrest, Venezuela’s discounted oil imports. Its insidious effort to control the Panama Canal was aborted by Trump.
For now, China has also lost its discounted oil from Iran. If, in the months ahead, the Iranian theocracy falls, China will have no presence in the oil-rich Middle East, even as its appetite for oil grows exponentially. In terms of China’s stranglehold on rare-earth minerals, a once sleepy US is planning its own huge new mines in mad dash fashion everywhere from Greenland to California, Utah, and Wyoming.
The latest Chinese air defenses have failed miserably in Iran in 2025–26. But US naval and air power; both weapons and personnel, performed brilliantly against Iran.
Geostrategically, the US enjoys two vast oceans off its coast and, despite tensions, considers Canada and Mexico allies. Both are dependent on the US economy and ultimately the American military for their defense. And North America may be the most natural-resource-rich continent in the world. China, by contrast, shares a border with nuclear-armed arch-rival India and an always unpredictable nuclear Russia; not to mention volatile, nuclear North Korea. Besides these, China, which suppresses 12 million Uyghur Muslims, has five Muslim neighbors. The US and its European NATO partners often bicker, but again, China’s North Korean “ally” is a nuclear global pariah.
Critics claim the Iran war plays into China’s hands, but they rarely convincingly explain how or why Beijing is stronger than before the war started. Its trading partner and oil supplier, Iran, is in shambles and now fires on Chinese tankers seeking oil in the Gulf. Israel and the US allies in the Gulf are ascendant, and in the years to come, they will remember that China was an enabler of their shared archenemy Iran.
If there is peace soon in Ukraine, Russia will likely seek to triangulate with the US against China and vice versa, as in the old days of Henry Kissinger’s great-game balancing act (“China will be no friendlier to Russia than to the US, and Russia no friendlier to China than to the US”).
China is about as popular in the Pacific as was the hated Japanese Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere of World War II. It takes some effort to alienate formerly anti-American nations like Vietnam and the Philippines and drive them into the US sphere of influence. In truth, China has legitimate worries about its neighborhood, since it is surrounded by its own “ring of fire,” nations which are far more potent and dangerous than the motley crew of Hezbollah, Hamas, and the Houthis that Iran once used to encircle Israel. Australia, Japan, the Philippines, South Korea, Taiwan, and Vietnam are all rearming, seeking closer military relations with the US, and forming a loose alliance against what they see as their common existential enemy China.
As far as leverage goes, tomorrow the US could deny visas and green cards to hundreds of thousands of Chinese students and technicians, effectively aborting China’s fifty-year effort to absorb and replicate US technology.
Tomorrow, Trump could announce that he seeks “parity” and “equity” with China in a spirit of “friendship” as he announces that the number of Chinese nationals in the US from now on will match the number of their US counterparts residing in China. China can buy as much US farmland as Americans can buy Chinese farmland. Chinese can buy property as close to US bases as Americans can purchase land near Chinese bases.
Finally, the Ukraine and Iran wars have taught the world that cheap drones can sometimes nullify missile defenses and are nearly as effective as $100 million combat aircraft and $4 million missiles. The US is now rapidly incorporating the data from these two wars and will soon deploy a vast fleet of its own air, surface, and submarine drones.
The idea of a third of a million Chinese troops steaming across the 110-mile Taiwan Strait to land on the beaches of Taiwan, while fighting, in transit, and on arrival, thousands of drones, is not an appealing invasion scenario.
True, America can be sluggish, insular, complacent, and naïve. But historically, its innately resilient free people, singular constitutional government, robust federalism, and free-market economy eventually wake up to the next rising threat; if often just in the nick of time. In the 1930s, a disarmed America, mired in depression, was told that fascist Italy, Nazi Germany, and militarist Japan were the paradigms of the future, armed to the teeth, fielding millions of goose-stepping, scary soldiers, and engaging in massive rearmament.
When war broke out in 1939, the US Army ranked 19th in size worldwide. Was it hopeless? No. By war’s end in August 1945, Nazism, fascism, and Japanese militarism were in ruins, and the US fleet and economy were larger than those of all the war’s belligerents combined.
A communist Russia on the move, we were told, starting in the late 1940s, would destroy the US. And indeed, the Red Army loomed huge, and thousands of Russian nuclear missiles were eventually pointed at the US.
The Soviet Union, we were further warned, was taking over the globe, as an unstoppable communism seemed to spread unchecked through Latin America, Africa, and Asia to our doorstep in Cuba. But after the crackup of the Soviet Empire, Russia’s GDP today is pathetically one-thirteenth the size of the US economy, and it has become a shrinking, aging, and unhealthy society.
Next, Japan, Inc. was also supposed to bury us in the 1980s, as confident, rich Japanese investors bought up the iconic Pebble Beach Golf Course, Rockefeller Center, and Columbia Pictures. We were told Honda and Toyota were light-years ahead of the soon-to-go-bankrupt Ford and GM. Today, Japan remains mired in deflation, and US corporations dwarf their Japanese counterparts.
Then, at the beginning of the millennium, it was the European Union’s turn to be the next supposed wave of the future, with America once more relegated to the past. When the US in 2008 was mired in the Iraq War, short of oil, and faced with soaring gas prices, the dollar fell, and the euro rose to $1.60. Soon, President Barack Obama would lecture Americans that we were no more an exceptional nation than Greece or the United Kingdom. “Lead from behind” became his new declinist mantra, and “apology tours” the way of the future.
Yet now the energy-short Europeans import American natural gas, and in early 2025, the euro fell to about $1 before rising later in the year. Moreover, the Iran war revealed the European Union as militarily weak and energy-short, with vast numbers of unassimilated and often hostile illegal aliens, suicidal green policies, and a shrinking and aging population; and as reliant upon the US economy and military for its continued prosperity and security.
The latest supposed Chinese existential threat is not to be assessed by how fast and impressively the nation rose from its own prior weakness, poverty, and irrelevance. What matters instead is to what degree its innate system ensures that such ascendance will be permanently continued and whether its political system, food and fuel capacity, military, and scientific community are on par with those of America’s.
America has repeatedly been declared a dying empire, yet every rival—from Nazi Germany to the Soviet Union to China—has ultimately fallen short of US power and resilience. And so far, in these regards, China, like all the other rivals of the last hundred years, has not come close. ✪
▶️ JB SHURK: IS PRISON THE BEST PLACE FOR CERTAIN DEMOCRATS?
⭐️ HelloKitty’sGotAHairTrigger
JB SHURK: IS PRISON THE BEST PLACE FOR CERTAIN DEMOCRATS?
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eports last week confirm former special counsel Jack Smith “secretly arranged” to preserve evidence in his criminal cases against President Trump in order to maintain the threat of future prosecution once the president leaves office. This is not a big surprise. Democrats have thrown every civic norm out the window in their ruthless efforts to target Trump’s businesses and send him to prison for life.
In his quest to imprison an American president, Jack Smith accused Trump of engaging in a conspiracy to “overthrow” the 2020 election, as well as retaining possession of classified documents after leaving the White House. Both allegations are ridiculous, and Smith’s own words make him sound like a lawfare hitman and anti-MAGA zealot. He told members of Congress in January, “Our investigation revealed that Donald Trump is the person who caused Jan. 6, it was foreseeable to him, and that he sought to exploit the violence.” Smith stated emphatically that Trump committed “serious crimes.”
Serious crimes? You mean like using the FBI to spy on all the Republican presidential primary candidates in 2015 and 2016? Oh right, that was President Obama. Or fabricating intelligence in order to justify a counterintelligence operation against candidate Trump? Oh, that was Obama’s corrupt CIA director, John Brennan. Or paying British Intelligence operatives to manufacture a fake “Russia collusion” dossier implicating Trump? Oh, that was Hillary Clinton. Or using the FBI and CIA to frame President Trump as a Russian spy? Oh, that was Obama and Clinton, too. Or sabotaging President Trump’s administration by using a Democrat spy on the National Intelligence Council to construct a false story about an innocuous phone call in order to trigger a bogus impeachment? Oh, that was Intelligence Community Democrats attempting to hide Joe Biden’s corruption in Ukraine by, again, framing President Trump for a quid-pro-quo “crime” he never committed. Or submitting fraudulent documents to the FISA Court in order to maintain spying operations against President Trump? Oh, that was corrupt James Comey, corrupt Robert Mueller, corrupt Andrew Weissmann, corrupt Norm Eisen, corrupt Mary McCord, and their Democrat accomplices in the FBI and DOJ who covered up Obama’s illegal spying operations while framing President Trump as a criminal, spy, and traitor.
Listening to Jack Smith call President Trump a “serious” criminal sounds ridiculous when serious criminals Obama, Clinton, Brennan, Comey, and legions of their Democrat colleagues, subordinates, and co-conspirators in the DOJ, FBI, CIA, D.C. courts, and FISA Court (see Judge James Boasberg’s impeachable offenses) have never been properly investigated or punished for undermining President Trump’s election, sabotaging his administration, and framing him for treason. The most powerful Democrats in the country organized a coup d’état in broad daylight and dragged the country through a barbed-wire field of partisan propaganda for the last ten years, and Jack Smith wants Americans to be upset that President Trump retained documents that he was entitled to possess? It’s just such lunacy. The constant gaslighting from D.C. operatives is equally infuriating and exhausting.
Glossing over the Democrats’ monstrous Russia Collusion Hoax, their relentless efforts to subvert the Trump-led government, and their continuing obsession with tossing the president in prison for imaginary crimes is bad enough, but Jack Smith does what all Democrats do: He pretends the January 6, 2021, protest for election integrity was an attempt by Trump and his supporters to overthrow the government. This lie is so brazen that it’s astonishing how Democrats can keep telling it with straight faces.
The people who showed up at the Capitol that day had one objective: to express their strong belief that mail-in-ballot fraud, violations of multiple states’ electoral statutes, and numerous voting discrepancies had tainted the 2020 election. Several senators intended to make these very arguments before the certification of the election’s results. The people who gathered outside the Capitol were exercising their First Amendment right to assemble peaceably. They were unarmed. Most had no criminal records. A large number had served their country in various capacities. Most who entered the Capitol walked around as tourists, took pictures, interacted in a friendly manner with Capitol Police, and posed no threat to anyone.
Only after law enforcement officers chose to fire flash-bang grenades on the assembled crowd did a section of the protest turn into something which could be described as a riot. Trump supporters — not police officers — died on January 6. Ordinary Americans exercising their constitutional rights were thrown into a state of fear of being hurt or killed.
Nevertheless, Smith continues to propagate the lie that the three-hour event at the Capitol was somehow the greatest threat to the country since 9/11, Pearl Harbor, and the Civil War (real comparisons that Democrat propagandists continue to make). Smith and his fellow Democrats desperately wish for Americans to believe that a hot-chocolate-drinking gathering of grandparents, revelers, and veterans was somehow going to topple the government of the United States. If a crowd of retirees is capable of overrunning Washington, what’s the point of a trillion-dollar military budget?
Smith’s perpetuation of the Democrats’ J6 propaganda is bad enough, but the fact that he treats that day as equivalent to the Civil War is all the more preposterous given that Barack Obama, Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, and their fellow Democrats openly encouraged Black Lives Matter domestic terrorists to burn down neighborhoods, loot businesses, and murder civilians throughout the summer of 2020. If President Trump “caused Jan. 6” and the events of that day were “foreseeable” to him, then the violence and mayhem of 2020’s so-called “summer of love” were certainly foreseeable to Democrats. The BLM riots of 2020 were the most costly in American history, and Vice President Harris encouraged Democrats to donate money to a bail fund that put arsonists, rapists, and murderers back on the street.
Were the Democrat-organized riots of 2020 “foreseeable?” Of course. Did prominent Democrats “exploit the violence,” as Smith accuses Trump of doing with January 6? They absolutely did. Biden and Harris ran for the White House on the message that the violence would end once they were elected. Will preening, self-righteous Jack Smith investigate, harass, arrest, or prosecute any of these Democrats? Of course not. Will Democrat rioters be tossed into pre-trial solitary confinement and refused bail by partisan prosecutors and judges? Definitely not. To this day, Democrats celebrate BLM and Antifa domestic terrorists as champions for civil rights. When Democrats burn cities to the ground, the arsonists get statues. When MAGA Americans protest for free and fair voting, they are condemned for crimes they never committed.
Unfortunately, this is how leftists all over the world now operate. Brazil’s communist President Lula has imprisoned his predecessor, President Bolsonaro, for supposedly trying to overthrow the government. French President Macron has permitted his political opposition, Marine Le Pen, to be prosecuted and convicted for similarly bogus “embezzlement” crimes. Germany has flirted with designating the popular anti-immigration party, Alternative for Germany, a “terrorist” organization and banning its candidates from running for office. When the “wrong” candidate won Romania’s presidential election eighteen months ago, the country’s Constitutional Court annulled the outcome by blaming “Russian interference.”
If President Trump hadn’t possessed the financial resources and sheer grit to face down the onslaught of malicious and meritless prosecutions against him, he would likely be in a courtroom or a prison today. If he hadn’t been re-elected a third time, January 6 defendants would still be awaiting trial or serving time in prison for an imaginary “insurrection.”
Forget about Jack Smith. He’s no lawman, and he has no principles. He’s nothing but a corrupt propagandist, partisan hack, and lawfare assassin.
Nothing will change until prominent Democrats are prosecuted and convicted for their crimes. Until then, it’s open season on all of us.✪
▶️ GAS PRICES NEED TO DROP THIS SUMMER
GAS PRICES NEED TO DROP THIS SUMMER
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or the Iran War to be a political plus for Republicans in the midterms, it needs to end soon enough so gas prices start dropping this summer. President Trump knows this. After 11 years in national politics, if you aren’t convinced Trump is a master politician, nothing will convince you.
Crushing Iran’s nuclear weapons ambitions wins thumbs up. In and of itself, though, it won’t win many votes for congressional GOP candidates. Reality is reality. The Iranian threat is too many steps removed from voters’ daily lives. Paychecks and family budgets dominate. The projected median household income in 2026 is approximately $89,000. That’s not a fortune today. And it’s not parroting a Democrat talking point to express concern about costs. The President has acknowledged concerns. He’s assured voters that higher energy prices are temporary.
Trump swears that gas prices will “drop like a rock” when the war ends and the Strait of Hormuz opens fully. The catch is, when? Perhaps it’s an oversell for Trump to claim that prices will plummet, but they need only start declining to boost voter confidence.
▶️ 24 Minutes 20 Seconds
During the Beijing summit, the President sat down for an interview with Fox News Bret Baier. Baier pressed Trump on gas prices and costs generally. The president emphasized the economy’s good performance. He highlighted the stock market’s surge and benefits to retirement accounts. All true, but a lot of working people have modest retirement investments. Filling gas tanks and getting out of grocery stores without running up credit cards are weekly challenges.
Those concerns matter because working-class and middle-income voters are the Republican Party base now. Trump has been remaking the GOP for a decade. The likes of John Thune, Lisa Murkowski, and Bill Cassidy are repelled by what’s happening to their party. They miss all the country clubbers.
Recent Republican primary results in Indiana (six state senators who opposed redistricting lost their seats), Kentucky (Thomas Massie was ousted), and Louisiana (Cassidy was humiliated) demonstrates that the GOP marches to the beat of Trump’s drum. Texas awaits. John Cornyn is a likely loser to Ken Paxton, Trump’s pick.
Fact is, the very voters who are helping Trump reshape the GOP represent a broader voter segment who need energy costs to drop. Primary voters alone can’t swing general elections in competitive districts, which The Cook Political Report estimates as 35 CDs in lean/toss-up categories. The GOP has more toss-ups than do Democrats.
The President and White House advisors are keenly aware of the dilemma, and appreciate that a pivot by the summer is optimal. But the president needs to finish the war on satisfactory terms, meaning the Iranians stop nuclear weapons development and leave the Strait of Hormuz free to transit. Opening the Strait fully is key to cutting energy costs.
Democrats can’t afford to be smug. Public perception of the party is low. Theirs is a party of strange ideas, led in blue states and cities by incompetents and left-wingers whose connections to ordinary life are tenuous. Case in point, the mayor of Seattle Katie Wilson, who said, “Like bye,” when Starbucks announced it’s moving to Nashville. Wilson’s flippancy — or idiocy — guarantees more Seattle businesses will flee. Just one other example, because Democrat Party screwballs are too numerous to cite.
James Talarico is the Texas Democrats’ nominee for the U.S. Senate. He’s a state rep and Presbyterian seminarian who proclaimed that “God is nonbinary” on the Texas House floor. He must have thought that this was his Martin Luther moment. Talarico’s proclamation conveniently dovetails with claims by woke apostles who believe God was created to conform to their daffy worldview. Most Texans don’t buy his tripe.
There’s also the endlessly unfolding massive fraud in Minnesota, Tim Walz’s turf. Taxpayer dollars were funneled to Somalis for their votes; and perhaps, to gain kickbacks. Gavin Newsom’s California appears plagued by worse corruption.
If Democrats and their corporate media cheerleaders believe that a blue wave is in the offing, it’s another example of how out of touch they are. Remember the 2022 midterms, when conservatives anticipated a red wave? Joe Biden’s presidency was sticking it to working folk, yet Republicans netted just nine House seats. The partisan divide is such that large gains by either party are unlikely.
Here’s the Republicans’ problem: Democrats don’t need a blue wave to capture the House. They only need to swing three seats to win control. Yes, redistricting has changed the equation some. More on that in a moment. Republicans’ thin margin, however, makes holding the House problematic even with falling gas prices. The outcomes of a handful of seats might hinge on local factors and personalities more so than national issues. In any event, Republicans need to buck history. A president’s party typically suffers some losses.
To buck history, Trump and Speaker Mike Johnson are, in part, counting on wins in new Republican districts to offset any losses in competitive seats.
Republican gains over Democrats in the redistricting war loom large. Red state legislators drawing new lines have boosted GOP chances. According to CNN’s redistricting tracker, so far, Republicans hold a 15-6 edge in the fight. That’s a nine-seat swing. Democrat failures to convert seats in Maryland, New York, and Virginia — an epic botch — were gifts.
Yet despite more favorable districts, turnout is critical. It always is, but especially in nonpresidential election years. Turning out your base voters and a slice of independents are keys to the GOP hanging onto the House. The Senate appears in better shape. The fear isn’t Trump voters switching allegiance. It’s that discouraged MAGA backers stay home.
This autumn will be a battle of the bases, and it can’t be overemphasized: Republican candidates need ground games second to none.
Take away energy costs, and Democrats really have nothing going for them. “Affordability” loses steam as a rallying cry if energy prices decline.
Democrats are against border security, soft on crime, shrug at government corruption, and want us to believe that gender can be changed like clothes. They’re for unlimited abortion. They’ve never met a Somali or illegal who doesn’t deserve government largess. Once, they claimed that Iran with nuclear weapons was unacceptable. Today, they decry the “inhumanity” of waging war on a regime that promotes “Death to America” as a cornerstone policy.
Trump, never shy of a fight, will take to the hustings this fall. The President and his team understand that the base will be more motivated to turn out for him than your garden-variety Republican congressional candidate. It’ll be the second-to-last time that Trump on the stump matters to GOP fortunes. The last time will be 2028.
The guy who wrote The Art of the Deal is maneuvering to get a deal done with the Iranians by the summer. If he succeeds, and gas prices start to slide, Republican prospects to defy history brighten. Holding the House is tough, but never count out Donald Trump. Never. ✪
▶️ OBAMACARE ENROLLMENT TO DROP BY ALMOST FIVE MILLION
OBAMACARE ENROLLMENT TO DROP BY ALMOST FIVE MILLION
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nrollment in the Affordable Care Act marketplace is projected to fall by nearly 5 million people this year as rising premiums and higher deductibles force many Americans to reconsider whether they can still afford health insurance coverage, according to a new analysis from healthcare nonprofit KFF.
The report estimates ACA enrollment could decline from 22.3 million participants in 2025 to roughly 17.5 million this year, representing an annual drop of more than 20 percent.
At the same time, Americans who remain enrolled are paying substantially more out of their pockets. According to the analysis, average deductibles have climbed by more than $1,000, while monthly premium payments have increased by an average of $65. “No matter how you slice it, people are paying more,” said Cynthia Cox, who co-authored the report.
The sharp enrollment decline comes after the expiration of enhanced COVID-era subsidies that had artificially lowered costs for many Obamacare enrollees over the past several years. Without those subsidies, many middle-income Americans are now struggling to keep up with rising monthly payments.
KFF found that middle-income Americans were among the most likely to drop their coverage. Many earn too much to qualify for the remaining low-income subsidies but not enough to comfortably absorb the higher costs now hitting the marketplace.
The ACA marketplace, once promoted as a cornerstone of Democrat healthcare policy, has become increasingly important for gig workers, farmers, ranchers, hairstylists, and self-employed Americans who do not receive employer-sponsored coverage.
According to the report, many consumers were automatically renewed into plans from the previous year, only to discover costs had risen dramatically after the subsidies expired. In many cases, Americans initially kept their coverage before dropping it later in the year once the monthly bills became unaffordable.
“People are trying to hang on to their health insurance coverage any way they can, even if that means they have a deductible of $7,000,” Cox said.
The report found that enrollment declines occurred across most states, although states operating their own healthcare exchanges generally retained more participants than states relying on the Federal marketplace.
The Trump Administration has argued that some of the enrollment decline stems from efforts to remove fraud and improper enrollments from the ACA system. Federal officials have not yet released final 2026 enrollment figures.
KFF had previously projected that premiums could more than double after the COVID-era subsidies ended. The new analysis found that premiums instead rose by an average of 58 percent, partly because many Americans switched into cheaper plans with significantly higher deductibles and reduced coverage.
The rising costs and shrinking enrollment are expected to become a major issue heading into the midterm elections as voters increasingly focus on inflation, affordability, and broader economic pressures.
Cox suggested insurers may now be adjusting to the post-subsidy market environment, potentially reducing the likelihood of another major premium spike next year. “I’m hopeful this could be a one-time market correction,” she said.✪
▶️ TRUMP CALLS TO MAKE DAYLIGHT SAVINGS TIME PERMANENT
TRUMP CALLS TO MAKE DAYLIGHT SAVINGS TIME PERMANENT
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resident Donald Trump called to make daylight saving time permanent in the United States as the Energy and Commerce Committee voted on the Sunshine Protection Act. The President issued his call from his Truth Social account on Thursday:
“Big Vote today (48-1!) in the Energy and Commerce Committee on a Bill including The Sunshine Protection Act, which will be making Daylight Saving Time permanent! This is so important in that Hundreds of Millions of Dollars are spent every year by people, Cities, and States, being forced to change their Clocks.”
He continued:
“Many of these Clocks are located in Towers, and the cost of renting, or using, Heavy Equipment to do this twice a year is prohibitive! The House will be attaching The Sunshine Protection Act to ‘The Highway Bill.’”
The President further pledged he will be working “very hard to see The Sunshine Protection Act signed into Law,” adding people can stop worrying about the clock twice a year. He concluded:
“It will also be a very nice WIN for the Republican Party. Take it! We are going with the far more popular alternative, Saving Daylight, which gives you a longer, brighter Day. And who can be against that? This is an easy one!”
The President has been calling for an end to the seasonal clock-switching since the beginning of his presidency; and though the issue has gained momentum and support in the past, change never seems to materialize.
The most important analysis regarding the effectiveness of DST regarding energy use is a 2008 National Bureau of Economic Research study which found ‘contrary to the policy’s intent, DST actually increases residential electricity demand by about 1 percent. Although DST reduced demand for lighting, demand for heating and cooling dramatically increased.
Many health and safety experts also have a negative opinion of Daylight Savings Time. According to the ‘Fatal Accident Reporting System,’ there is a 17 percent increase in traffic fatalities on the Monday after the shift and fatal motor vehicle accidents remained elevated for the first six days after the clocks spring ahead. It added. “A recent medical study indicates DST time change may also increase the risk of stroke due to sleep disturbances.” ✪
▶️ MERZ CALLS FOR ‘ASSOCIATE’ EU MEMBERSHIP FOR UKRAINE
MERZ CALLS FOR ‘ASSOCIATE’ EU MEMBERSHIP FOR UKRAINE
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erman Chancellor Friedrich Merz proposed granting Ukraine an unprecedented “Associate Member” position within the European Union; which would bring Kyiv closer to the 27-country bloc as it continues its years-long pursuit towards attaining full membership status.
Merz reportedly shared his proposal through a letter addressed to European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and European Council President Antonio Costa. In Merz’s missive, seen by several international outlets on Thursday, the German Chancellor argued his proposed “associate member” for Ukraine would not confer the country with voting rights within the European Council, Parliament, and Commission, but it would grant it access to E.U.-funded programs on a “step-by-step” basis without being a full member of the bloc.
“It is obvious that we will not be able to complete the accession process shortly, given the countless hurdles as well as the political complexities of ratification processes,” Merz reportedly wrote in the letter, per Deutsche Welle.
“What I envisage is a political solution that brings Ukraine substantially closer to the European Union and its core institutions immediately,” he continued.
Most significantly, Euronews pointed out, said prospective status would grant Ukraine coverage under the bloc’s mutual defense clause in the event of a Russian attack as stipulated by Article 42.7 of the E.U. Treaty. The article states that members states must come to the aid of another E.U. member if it falls victim of an armed aggression on its territory.
“We would already now offer to Ukraine a substantial equivalent to membership that exceeds by far what we could deliver in the medium-term through our accession methodology, notably given the ratification process,” Merz argued in the letter. “We would continue with the regular accession procedure to ensure that we also achieve formal accession as quickly as possible.”
Merz reportedly acknowledged that a prospective “associate membership” for Ukraine would raise questions on its technical, legal, and political implications but argued that these issues could be resolved if EU leaders take a “constructive approach” to the concept. He further argued that such status would translate into a “strong political signal” for Ukraine and its people over its ongoing war with Russia and “facilitate” peace talks between both nations.
“This is essential not only for Ukraine’s but for the entire continent’s security,” the German Chancellor reportedly claimed in the missive.
Ukraine has sought to join the European Union for years. President Volodymyr Zelensky repeatedly called for Ukrainian E.U. membership over the past years amid Russia’s ongoing invasion of its territory; including calls for special “expedited” adhesion procedures for the country to join the E.U. without having to go through the regular, lengthily process to form part of the bloc.
As reported in December, Ukraine has received numerous criticisms over its lack to address corruption, treatment of linguistic minorities, and other issues, all of which have left the country facing a long way towards attaining the coveted EU membership status under regular circumstances.
In April, Zelensky claimed the E.U. needs to increase its ranks and include as many new member nations as possible to “fight Russia.” The Ukrainian President also suggested that the United Kingdom should rejoin the E.U.
The UK is the only country to have ever left the European Union, and it did so under a wide array of reasons, including, but not limited to, concerns over a prospective “European Army” eroding British sovereignty and the E.U.’s open borders policies. ✪
▶️ TRUMP KNOWS CHINA’S GREAT DEPRESSION IS COMING
TRUMP KNOWS CHINA’S GREAT DEPRESSION IS COMING
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rump understands finance and economics. Trump knows China is doubling down on their path to economic doom. I’ve come to believe he is humoring the Chinese to get good trade deals for America; knowing China is actually struggling to stave off their coming financial crash.
We have read about China building and sustaining its rapidly growing economy with huge spending on government financed projects. These projects are often large infrastructure and urban housing projects.
All governments do this. China’s mistake is continuing to do it on a gigantic scale by printing money it doesn’t have. This creates a growing public debt which becomes progressively more dangerous. This is perhaps an inevitable mistake made by leaders of socialist economies. Russia is doing the same thing to continue financing its failing Ukraine gambit.
Socialists avoid the natural controls of capitalist economies which allow businesses to fail, rather than continue to hedge their failure to make a profit. This leads to ever more government debt to avoid economic collapse; and makes the problem ever larger. The inevitable collapse even worse.
This article from the Financial Times describes it well.:
✪ How China Enables American Domination
Normally after an empire gains economic might, its currency takes an increasing share of reserves held by central banks. With a 17 per cent share of global GDP, but only 2 per cent of central bank reserves, China is trailing 30 to 40 years behind previous superpowers at a similar stage of their ascents.
[—]
Britain at its peak accounted for 40 per cent of trade, but 60 per cent of trade payments were in sterling. China by contrast has a leading 15 per cent share of global trade, but only 2 per cent of trade bills are invoiced in Renminbi.
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The Dollar’s omnipresence lets America run the show in more than one way. High demand for dollars lowers US borrowing costs and allows it to run persistently large twin deficits.
[—-]
China’s money supply has multiplied sixfold since 1980 to 230 per cent of GDP, among the highest in the world. This liquidity sloshes around inside the walled economy, much of it in the domestic debt market, battered lately by a property bust. Beijing is wary of easing controls, lest it unleash capital flight.
China does have the world’s second largest economy. It does have a large external trade volume. It does have decently impressive technological capabilities.
However, it is built upon huge government financed internal debt from funding socialist public works projects. Its soft currency is shunned by the world’s financial markets; and used mostly whenever China can pressure other nations into accepting their crappy currency.
Trump doesn’t need to do anything to pressure China. He can easily smile, nod, and flatter them enough to get deals good for America. He knows China’s economy is due to collapse. And, he knows it will take decades for them to recover. He knows the present communist government may also well collapse. He knows the USA will ultimately win this economic struggle.
At worst, China’s leaders may attempt to invade & capture Taiwan in the desperation of their failure. Yet, given what’s going to happen to China, negotiations about Taiwan are now useless.
Remember the old adage, “The Emperor has no clothes?”
In China’s case, the Emperor has no currency. ✪
▶️ EXIT TAXES WON’T SAVE FAILING STATES
EXIT TAXES WON’T SAVE FAILING STATES
lll
hen a state starts floating an exit tax, it’s telling you something more important than any campaign slogan: the people running the place know their model is not working.
They may not say it that way. They will call it fairness, responsibility, or making the wealthy “pay their fair share.” But their meaning is the same.
If families, entrepreneurs, and investors are leaving, the state can either ask itself why its policies are pushing them out; or it can try to tax them for escaping. An exit tax chooses punishment over reform.
I understand why these proposals resonate with some people. If you are watching wealthy residents relocate while governments still face bills for schools, roads, pensions, and other commitments, it is easy to feel like the people with the most mobility are ducking the tab.
That frustration is real and it deserves a serious answer. However, an exit tax is not that serious answer. It is a confession lawmakers would rather cling to a failing fiscal model than fix the spending, regulation, and tax policies which make people want to leave in the first place.
That’s why the current trend is so revealing. In California, proposals have centered on taxing billionaire net worth, including wealth that often exists on paper rather than in cash. In New York, the push has extended to a new surcharge on high-value second homes in New York City.
In Washington State, lawmakers have already enacted a “millionaires’ tax.” These policies differ in form, but not in spirit. They all send the same message: if government has made your state too expensive, too hostile, or too unpredictable, it may still try to claim part of your future anyway.
However, the economics are worse than the politics. Supporters talk as if wealth is just a pile of cash sitting idle in a vault, just waiting to be skimmed. It is not. Wealth is usually tied up in businesses, shares, property, and future earnings.
Taxing net worth or unrealized gains means taxing value which often has not been sold, realized, or converted into cash. That can force asset sales, dilute business ownership, weaken investment, and change behavior long before the tax collector ever gets a check.
A Hoover Institution analysis of California’s proposal found that once likely migration responses are considered, the measure could leave the state with a negative net present value of about $25 billion. That is the real lesson: politicians score the tax statically, but the economy does not sit still.
And that’s before you even get to the broader evidence. The OECD has noted recurring net wealth taxes have become much less common across advanced economies because they tend to raise less revenue than promised while creating large compliance costs, avoidance incentives, and economic distortions. Several countries have alreay tried them & most backed away.
A recent NBER study on Scandinavian wealth taxation found higher top wealth tax rates reduced the number of wealthy taxpayers and many of those taxpayers were business owners whose departure reduced overall investment, employment, and value-added.
That’s the part so often ignored in political talking points; the Multiplier Effect When a state drives out a founder, investor, or employer, it is not just losing one tax return. It is losing future jobs, future capital formation, and future opportunity for everybody else too.
Defenders of exit taxes still cling to one argument which sounds morally satisfying: these departing taxpayers benefited from state infrastructure, legal protections, and markets while they lived there, so the state deserves one final cut
However, that argument can quietly rewrite the relationship between citizens and government. It turns moving into a taxable offense. It says the state retains a lingering claim on your success because you once lived under its jurisdiction. That’s a dangerous principle in a Federal economic system built on mobility and competition.
Even in the international arena, exit taxes remain controversial, complex, and tied to specific movements of assets or functions across borders. Importing that logic into state tax policy is not modernization, it’s escalation.
The problem is not just exit taxes are really bad economics. It’s that they usually do not stay narrow. Politicians sell them as a tool aimed only at billionaires or luxury homeowners; policy aimed at an applause line. But when the revenue falls short, the scope expands.
One-time wealth taxes become annual property surcharges. “Billionaire” thresholds are expanded to target millionaires and eventually the middle class. “Temporary” taxes eventually become part of the permanent fiscal architecture. New York’s pied-à-terre proposal is a good example of how quickly the logic expands once the principle is accepted and adopted.
Frédéric Bastiat warned us to look not just at what is seen, but at what is unseen. We can see tax revenues. That’s a small, visible victory compared to the investments which never happen, the entrepreneurs who build elsewhere, and jobs which never arrive — the unseen costs compound.
Exit taxes are built on ignoring all of that. Claiming an exit tax frames mobility as theft, when it is often a rational response to bad governance. Exit taxes do not restore prosperity. Instead, they steal a future opportunity to prosper by doubling down on the very policies which originally made growth more difficult.
If lawmakers want to deter departures, the answer is not a fiscal trap door. It’s to enact better policies: lower taxes, decrease regulation, spend with restraint, and make a serious effort to turn their states into places where productive people want to move and stay.
Authentic economic renewal is always more challenging than yet more taxation, but it’s also the only approach which works long term. Regardless of what politicians think or claim, exit taxes do not save failing states.
They only confirm why people wanted to leave. ✪
▶️ SPENCER PRATT & THE DEMOCRAT DESTRUCTION OF LOS ANGELES
SPENCER PRATT & THE DEMOCRAT DESTRUCTION OF LOS ANGELES
sss
urt Schlichter: I hate to be the guy who throws on the spandex and a mask to play Captain Bringdown, but Spencer Pratt is not going to be elected mayor. That’s not dooming. That’s objectively assessing the situation. Spencer Pratt is a political superstar; there’s no doubt about that. He’s injected something that’s totally missing from the LA mayoral race, which is common sense. His innovative AI-aided ads and his ability to inflict something the Democrat overlords don’t ever get; public pushbac, is highly entertaining. But Los Angeles is not coming out of its death spiral anytime soon. I wish it weren’t true. But it is true.
And the spiral keeps spiraling. I just came back from my Houston house to spend some time here, and what struck me was the malaise. It’s dingy. It’s old. It’s dirty. This isn’t the California of my youth with swinging palm trees, sunshine, and endless opportunity. The sun still comes out, but there’s a vibe here I’ve never felt before in my 50+ years in Cali. It’s depressing. I grew up in a northern California San Francisco suburb (the same one and at the same time as Greg Gutfeld, though we didn’t know each other), and that had its unique problems, but it was still a cool place to be. Then I went to college in San Diego in the 80s, and that was really cool. But after going off to the Army and the Gulf War, I knew I wanted to come back to Los Angeles because I knew Los Angeles was the place I could do whatever I wanted to do. And I did. I became a bunch of things: a senior Army officer, a partner in a law firm trying and winning multimillion-dollar cases, a best-selling author, a columnist, and even a stand-up comic. That was the California dream. If you wanted to do it and were willing to work for it, you could do it. This is where the great Andrew Breitbart chose to make his splash at the end of LA’s prime. Then, Los Angeles was a place of opportunity.
But that LA is gone, replaced by Palm Tree ‘n Fire Detroit. And it’s reasonable for you to ask why I’m not gone, at least not yet. Here’s what you need to know about California, and Los Angeles as well. It’s a feudal system. People asked me why I live here. I live here because it’s really good to live here, except for the taxes and the irritation I experience knowing they’ve managed to take the Golden State and turn it into the Gelded State. See, it’s semi-tolerable because I’m not a serf. I was a lawyer. I’m a nobleman. I don’t live in the City of Los Angeles. That’s not for people like me. The people like me—affluent professionals—live in the surrounding cities. I live in the Beach Cities south of LAX. It’s very nice here; good restaurants and very few bums. There are a few who wander in, but the cops are all over them. We don’t defund the police. We fund the police. All those ladies with the “Hate has no home here” signs? They see somebody who doesn’t fit in, and they’re on the phone to the local 5-0 before you can say “No Kings.” Oh, and when there are No Kings rallies, and there occasionally are, it looks like Sunny Acres has been issuing its residents day passes.
Of course, if you go five miles to the east across the 405, you get into where the poor people are. It’s Serfin’ USA. It’s a dystopian scene full of misery and decline. The high schools in my area send kids off to the Ivy Leagues and the UC system, provided they’re not white. The high schools in the hood might have five or 10 students who are grade-level proficient in reading and math. That’s not a percentage. That’s absolute numbers. But you know, their mom and dad voted for it or didn’t vote at all. Maybe the local Democrats just filled out their ballots for them—LA is as fully corrupt as Capone Era Chicago was. But it doesn’t matter. Not my problem.
Nope, Los Angeles is not my problem, and I’m not going to give it another moment of thought. If it wants to drown in a cesspool of hobo dung, it can dive in. Spencer Pratt is absolutely right about everything he says, from the fires to the junkies to the gross incompetence. Moreover, everybody knows it’s true. But nobody cares. You need to understand something. This isn’t about competence. When Karen Bass, a black communist mental defective, looks baffled at Spencer Pratt explaining how she’s helped run Los Angeles into the ground, that look of confusion is not because she’s stupid. She is, but it’s because he’s speaking a different language.
She’s a literal communist. She’s gone to Cuba and taken notes. Her purpose isn’t to create prosperity and security for the people of Los Angeles. Her purpose, like that of all communists, is to secure power. The same is true of her bizarre, real competitor, some South Asian communist named Nithya Raman. As is endemic to the Third World, they fetishize power; these Marxists want control. That’s it. It’s not about filling in potholes. It’s not about safe streets. It’s not even about keeping half the city from going up in flames. It’s about control. There is no bottom to Los Angeles. It’s not going to get so bad that people are going to generate some sort of backlash, no matter how clever Spencer Pratt’s ads are, and they are clever. Those ads are only scoring with those of us on the outside. They give us false hope that something can be done. But nothing can be done. The decline is not the point. It’s literally irrelevant to them. Take Detroit, once also a rich and powerful city. Do you think that at some point, the leftists who control it looked at it and said, “Wow, we have become Detroit. Yikes! Should we try something else?” No. The dysfunction is the function; the squalor doesn’t matter to them. Not at all.
And it doesn’t matter to the vast majority of the inhabitants of LA. Almost all of those people who got burned out along the Pacific Coast Highway and in the Pacific Palisades are leftists who voted these people into office. And here’s the thing. They’re going to vote for them again. Raman ran an ad calling Spencer Pratt a “fascist.” It’s hysterically funny to the rest of us, equating the idea that safe streets and your house not burning down is pretty much the same thing as being Mussolini. But you know what? Those people whose houses burned down are going to listen to her, and they’re not going to vote for Spencer Pratt. They’re going to vote for her.
You can’t help somebody who won’t help themselves. And let’s not fool ourselves into thinking we can.
What’s it going to take to fix Los Angeles, California, and the rest of the blue hellholes? Gosh, you don’t want to ask that. Because you’re not going to like the answer. They will never fix themselves. Never. All the normal people are gone. You’ve got a few rich leftists and a bunch of welfare cheats, and that’s it. It’s going to take something from the outside to fix them. It would have to be imposed upon them and not gently. It would take an American Franco, but then you would need to have an American Spanish Civil War to get there, and I’m not up for that—nor should you be. There are plenty of things I’m willing to fight and even die for, like my own personal freedom. After all, at my age, I’m too old to live on my knees, and I prefer to expire on a pile of expended brass. But I’m not willing to risk death to save people intent on destroying themselves.
Sorry to be depressing, but I’ve got to be honest. I’m not going to tell you the sun’s out like on an old-school California summer day. It isn’t. But that doesn’t mean Spencer Pratt isn’t performing an important service. The guy is a patriot. The guy isn’t giving up. He’s staying in the fight. And even if he doesn’t win this battle, and he’s not going to win this battle, he’s doing something for the rest of us. He’s shining the spotlight on the complete failure the Democrat Party has embraced as it has invited the socialists and communists into the highest echelons of its ranks. Los Angeles won’t save itself, but the cautionary example that Los Angeles provides may help other places save themselves.
Thank you, Spencer, for sounding the alarm, and good luck to you even though you don’t have a chance in Hell. ✪
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