John Drake

What goes largely unnoticed about Taiwan is the role of the KMT. The KMT wants a Hong Kong-style agreement with the PRC. And the KMT are just a whisker away from gaining power. This would mean a peaceful absorption of Taiwan into the PRC. For that reason, I now do not want to see American weapons sold to Taiwan. There is a good chance they would end up as part of the PRC's arsenal.

Was hoping this was a snappy headline for banning sugarcane burning. No such luck.

Just saw grapes on offer at Gourmet Market the other day. Glad I passed them by. Almost bought some.

Yes, because I have pointed out in many of my posts that white women, fitting this woman's profile, form the core of Harris's supporters. They have made politics into their religion, and are prepared to go to any extreme to get what they demand. Black women, otoh, are pretty much playing out to form, voting in their usual racially acceptable categories and responding to fellow black church ladies. The black women are mentally safer than the white women.

I wish the days of Prayuth would return. Prayuth was better.

Going to raise the retirement visa to match?

It seems a rather ugly incident occurred at Harris's rally. A black woman had to intervene and pull a white woman away from screaming at an infant.

Harris will win. Because of abortion. White women, mainly, suburbanites, Xers and Boomers, dead end career millennials, and frustrated zoomers. All women who have substituted politics for religion. Trump's male voters, I would bet, will fizzle, because they would rather drink beer at a bar and worry over fantasy football instead of go vote. Trump of course did this to himself with two of his three supreme court nominees, Coney Barrett and Kavanaugh. These two are Catholic first justices. So they reversed Roe v. Wade, while at the same time not being bothered by DEI or open borders, which they actually tend to have sympathy for. So Trump set up his own failure by stupidly following the advice of the Catholic dominated Federalist Society. What a fool. https://www.ncronline.org/news/leonard-leo-has-reshaped-supreme-court-he-reshaping-catholic-university-too

I could go for a climate accord. I don't believe anybody wants to wallow around in polluted air, dirty beaches, poison water, or contaminated soil, all under a blistering 2 degrees extra heat. But the accord needs to have punishment provisions for those who don't meet the goals. Everyone who doesn't meet the goals. That means something like import bans and trade penalties for those who refuse, especially countries such as China and India. Those countries can't be allowed to pollute freely while everyone else's efforts go for nothing because of them. Trade isolation for the violators of climate goals is the only fair way to do this.

I do believe she will win. I've said so since she replaced Biden. Women are going to vote massively in her favor because of the abortion issue. It may have seemed to have disappeared from the campaign, but I would bet that young women and suburban boomer and Xer women will vote 70 percent or more her way. In the end, Trump's male voters will not bother to show up. They'll probably go to a sports bar to talk about the NFL or the NBA instead.

"Fascism" in these discussions is being used as an adolescent smear word. You're right. The simians attempting a type of political discourse with it can't quite bring themselves to come out and hurl the "Nazi" epithet, because that would mean to be dismissed as an unserious person, a hyperbole filled hysteric. So they use Hitler and Fascism. Of course Europe and America were not only tightly allied to "Fascist" governments throughout the Cold War but, as you say, contain elements of Fascism within their very own core ideology.

Another totalitarian crackdown in the PRC. Xi trying to eliminate all dangerous Western influence. Here is how the crackdown on Halloween is going.

Which fascism? This term is being thrown around by an ahistorical, illiterate mob right now. People such as Kelly are more likely to fit the definition than the people he thinks are fascist. Look into it. Why not start with a well grounded text that acknowledges the differences among fascists themselves? Begin with Ernst Nolte's work, which was translated into English with the title, The Three Faces of Fascism. Nolte writes three different portraits of fascism, taking as his subjects Action francaise, Mussolini's Italian Fascism, and Hitler's National Socialism. Out of a common cultural origin, they developed differently yet in a complementary form. It's a shame Nolte didn't include Franco's Falangists. Because there the differences show up more clearly. For example, Franco's thing was Freemasons. He went after Freemasons. Meanwhile, in Italy, the Grand Council of Fascists had over 50 percent of its members as Freemasons. Mussolini, at one point, was an honorary Freemason. The Council, btw, first positioned itself against Hitler when he came to power, and among the reasons was the Grand Council was in those days philo-Semitic and opposed Hitler's anti-Semitism. Here is a short article on one of the fascist quadrumvirs, Italo Balbo: https://chicago.suntimes.com/2018/6/26/18455986/italo-balbo-a-complex-and-controversial-figure-from-italy-to-grant-park

Good point. You're seeing further down the road than I did.

Okay. I guess I don't get out much these days to realize that sort of thing.

So do taxis pay the 50 baht fee, and is it passed on to the taxi customer?

FYI, the daughter of the owner who has been much involved in the paper's news stories, editorial decisions, and opinion pieces, is a pro-BLM, pro-Hamas, left wing activiist. https://www.thedailybeast.com/los-angeles-times-owner-patrick-soon-shiongs-daughter-nika-is-tinkering-with-the-paper-staffers-welcome-it/ Now a few years after that article here is the daughter, Nika Soon, herself explaining why the Times did not endorse Harris. It's because Harris is not Left Wing enough and is part of a "genocide" administration murdering Palestinians. Far from being in Trump's camp, the Soon family is actively pro-Hamas. See her tweet on the endorsement decision yourself.

Why not ask Harris (or Trump) those same questions and see how coherently they answer them. Q: "What is critical race theory." KH: "Well, I'm glad you asked that question. It's important, because we are all Americans and we're struggling to fight against what we struggle for. That's why it's important to acknowledge that when we fight, we struggle, and eventually we overcome that struggle in order to fight again. I know that well, because I was born into a middle class family."

BRICS, a club for tyrants and authoritarians.

It doesn't matter if Harris or Trump wins. The rest of us lose.

Open up a "refugee" camp right next to the UN building in NYC.

Boss Off?

The price for being married to Big Joke. They're going to take them all out entirely, root and stem. The question is who is behind this?

I thought this woman was extremely wealthy and connected in her own rights. This doesn't make sense.

Here is an example of how McConnell and his wife and her family became "successful."