Michael Savage gets Trump's Taiwan overture totally wrong, Marc Thiessen gets it right

Savage calls it a blunder, in keeping with his generally negative assessments about Trump's post-election behavior.

Thiessen calls it deliberate, and brilliant, here, which is what it is.

Hello Beijing: You illegally created new territory in the South China Sea . . .

. . . now the new sheriff Donald Trump treats Taiwan like a country fully independent of China.

Here's an easy solution: You withdraw from those illegal islands you've created, and maybe the new sheriff stops offending your sensibilities over Taiwan.

Your move. 

Obama can negotiate with Iranian terrorists and visit the communist police state of Cuba . . .

. . . but Trump can't talk to the president of independence-minded Taiwan or invite the pusher-killing president of the Philippines to visit the White House.

Got it.

Since the 1990s 144,000 manufacturing and related jobs lost in Wisconsin due to free-trade agreements

Reported here:

Wisconsin has lost more than more than 68,000 manufacturing jobs since the mid-1990s and the first of several controversial trade pacts with Mexico, China and others took hold.

Additionally, the U.S. Department of Labor has certified about 76,000 Wisconsin workers in various fields as having lost their jobs due to either imports or the work they do being shipped overseas. ... 

Caterpillar has laid off about 600 of its 800-plus workers over the past two years because of a business slowdown. ...

Wisconsin’s heavy manufacturing sector, once one of the country’s strongest, has been taking a lot of punches in recent years. General Motors, General Electric, Chrysler, Joy Global Surface Mining and Manitowoc Cranes have all cut jobs or closed operations in recent years for a variety of reasons.

Hometown companies such as Kohler, the plumbing supply manufacturer; and Trek Bicycles have offshored jobs to India, China and Taiwan.

Meanwhile, Madison, the state capital, will lose 1,000 jobs over the next two years as the 100-year-old iconic Oscar Mayer meat processing plant shuts down. And just east on I-94 in Jefferson, Tyson Foods will cease operations at its pepperoni processing plant, cutting 400 jobs.

A clear majority of Americans has a stupid view about Vladimir Putin

Seen here:

It helps [Republicans] that the 62-year-old former KGB officer is deeply unpopular in the United States. A survey by the non-partisan Pew Research Center in February said Putin was viewed unfavorably by 70 percent of Americans.

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Russia is nominally a Christian country, like the United States. It is ethnically northern European, like the United States whose single largest hyphenated population remains German. Both countries share an interest in countering an increasingly aggressive Communist China as well as radical Islam, especially in Syria, Iraq, Iran and Afghanistan. Both powers share an interest in a free, demilitarized and prosperous Europe with which both can trade to everyone's benefit.

It should be a no-brainer for the West to embrace Russia. Once China moves on Taiwan and the South China Sea that may become easier, if then is not too late.

German Bunds make history, yields fall below 1%, poor GDP blamed on MILD winter!

Germany now joins Japan and Switzerland in the below 1% yield club. The rush into the safety of government bonds driving down yields is a sign everywhere of lousy productivity.

Meanwhile yields below 2% exist in Taiwan, Hong Kong, Sweden, The Netherlands, Ireland, France, Finland, Denmark, The Czech Republic, Belgium, and Austria. Finland is the lowest of these presently at 1.14%.

CNBC reports here:

"Following disappointing growth data for the euro zone, 10-year yields finally broke through the 1 percent handle on Thursday—a first—dipping to an intraday low of 0.998 percent.  Yields then fell below 1 percent again on Friday, on reports that Ukrainian troops had attacked armed Russian military, which had crossed into the country near the border of Izvaryne. U.S. yields also declined, hitting a low of 2.333 percent, while the euro and European stocks turned negative."

German GDP fell in the second quarter from the first, at -0.6% annualized, which was, believe it or not, blamed on a mild winter there after poor GDP Stateside was blamed on an unusually harsh one.

The Wall Street Journal reported with a straight face here:

"Germany's economy, long Europe's growth engine, shrank for the first time in more than a year, a development economists largely attributed to a mild winter that boosted activity in the first quarter at the expense of the second. The bigger concerns, they say, are France and Italy, where respectable rates of growth aren't even in sight."

Oh well, at least they wrote "shrank".

The Time to Get Serious About Coastal Defense is Long Past

In the summer of 2009, after Russian nuclear submarines were detected only 200 miles off our East coast, one commentator on the subsequent news story which bragged about our ability to detect  two  boats thought saying nothing about it would have been smarter in the absence of an official recommendation that the US actually beef up its coastal defenses with conventional defensive submarines. The reason? They're might have been three Russian subs.

The US military's response to the California mystery missile incident 35 miles off the coast of Los Angeles on Monday hardly inspired more confidence. We should have said nothing at all. Instead we said we didn't know what it was. Piling on to the airplane contrail theory a day later only made that worse, giving the impression the military was grasping at straws.

Unfortunately, from the commander in chief on down our government and military give the impression of being run by un-serious people. From the delay measured in days in responding to the Christmas Day underwear bomber to telegraphing our disengagement schedules in Iraq and Afghanistan, it's as if matters of war and peace are at best distractions from the really important matters like Obamacare, repealing DADT and defending the Ground Zero Mosque.

We could learn something about coastal defense from the Chinese, who understand the realities of American forward air, surface and submarine operations off their waters all too well. They have embarked on an ambitious naval modernization to counter our activities, which includes a commitment to robust coastal defense and power projection with submarines of varying designs. One such submarine, a Song, punked the USS Kitty Hawk in October 2006 over there, and it may be that Monday's incident over here was the work of a lately launched submarine of more recent design:

As other nations continue to develop naval capabilities we need to recognize that the operation of submarines off the US coast is going to become more common, not less. Indeed, what is the first thing China will do when tensions at sea rise over Taiwan or some other matter? Most likely, the deployment of submarines off the coast of Guam, Sasebo, Pearl Harbor, and if the PLA Navy has any strategic thinking at all, San Diego. ...

But this is what the US Navy needs to think about... the submarines off Guam, Sasebo, and Pearl Harbor can be Yuan class, because Yuans appear to have much better endurance for submerged operations than Song class submarines do, but for west coast operations it will be nuclear submarines.

Whether or not a missile was fired off the California coast this week to send such a message to America, we'd better get busy and start preparing for defensive submarine operations ourselves. Because sooner or later, Chinese boomers will come calling on the west coast just like the Russians do on the east.

 But we'll have to get serious first.

Was Monday's California Missile Launch a Chinese Cruise Missile?

Did history just rhyme on Monday with an incident which embarrassed the US Navy back in October 2006? Has the People's Liberation Army been (California) dreamin' about this since 1996?

Consider this from James Kraska, a former adviser to the Joint Chiefs of Staff:

In 1999, the PLA Navy introduced the sophisticated Song-class diesel electric submarine. Reportedly quieter than the fast attack US Los Angeles-class boats, the Song was equipped with wake-homing torpedoes and anti-ship cruise missiles. In one incident in October 2006, one of the ultra-quiet Song submarines surfaced inside the protective screen of the aircraft carrier USS Kitty Hawk. Admiral Gary Roughead, who was commander of the US Pacific Fleet and who would later go on to serve as Chief of Naval Operations, was visiting China at the time of the incident. In 1996, at the end of the Third Taiwan Strait Crisis, PLA General Xiong Guangkai warned a visiting US envoy, ‘‘. . . you care more about Los Angeles than you do about Taipei.’’ ...


[T]he US Pacific Fleet was in panic after the Kitty Hawk embarrassment over its vulnerability to Chinese diesel-electric boats.


In the decades after the end of the Cold War, China closed the gap in naval capability, even surpassing the United States in some areas in terms of both quantity and quality of platforms. For example, China concentrated on advancing its large diesel-electric submarine force. Sweden became the first nation to develop a diesel-electric submarine with air-independent propulsion (AIP), which extended underwater endurance from a few days to one month. The first in class of these vessels, the HMS Gotland, was leased by the US Navy for two years in order to practice anti-submarine warfare. The Gotland proved extremely quiet and effective, and AIP submarines are able to sprint under water—greatly increasing their attack radius. China integrated AIP technology into the Type 041 Yuan-class boats, which followed the Song. Having launched several of these smaller, stealthy boats each year since 2004, a decade later, the US Seventh Fleet could never be certain whether China was shadowing US vessels.


Monday's incident could have been a shot across our bow, meant to embarrass the president in his own backyard while he's visiting in theirs.

John Smith Looks for a Job

John Smith started the day early, having set his alarm clock (made in Japan) for 6:00 AM. While his coffeepot (made in China) was perking, he shaved with his electric razor (made in Hong Kong). He put on a dress shirt (made in Sri Lanka), designer jeans (made in Singapore), and tennis shoes (made in Korea). After cooking his breakfast in his new electric skillet (made in India), he sat down with his calculator (made in Mexico) to see how much he could spend today.

After setting his watch (made in Taiwan) to the radio (made in India), he got in his car (made in Germany), filled it with gas (from Saudi Arabia), and continued his search for a good paying American job.

At the end of yet another discouraging and fruitless day checking his computer (made in Malaysia), John decided to relax for a while. He put on his sandals (made in Brazil), poured himself a glass of wine (made in France), and turned on his TV (made in Indonesia), and then wondered why he can't find a good paying job in America.

And now he's hoping he can get help from a president (made in Kenya).

(author unknown)