Let's Fix This Country
china watch

Focused on Ukraine and Israel, the U.S. Neglects the China Threat

China is undergoing “the largest military buildup in history since World War II… across all domains, maritime, air, land, space, cyberspace.” So warns Adm. John Aquilino, head of the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command. The People’s Liberation Army (PLA), which comprises China’s navy and air forces as well, has expanded more rapidly in the past 30 years than any armed force in history. “When I look at the military China is building, it is not a general-purpose military,” said Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall III. “It is designed around the goal of being able to take Taiwan and keep the U.S. out.”

Chinese leader Xi Jinping has set a deadline of 2027 for the PLA to be ready to invade Taiwan, according to Central Intelligence Agency chief William Burns. The unification of Taiwan with mainland China “must be achieved”, says Xi. In December, the Chinese foreign ministry said, “China will realize reunification, and this is unstoppable.” Matt Pottinger, who speaks Chinese and was deputy national security adviser under Trump, says Xi has shown urgency about “recovering” Taiwan, viewing the absorption of the island nation into mainland China to be his signature legacy.

article illustration
Chinese aircraft carrier and escorts.

Actually, China's and Xi's ambitions extend well beyond Taiwan. The "nine-dash line" on Chinese maps that embraces the South China Sea as Chinese territory is only the first dash line. Successive semi-circular dash lines extending eastward into the Pacific show China's intentions to make the Western Pacific a Chinese lake and carve out a vast economic empire across the global south — all part of the “national rejuvenation” that will return China to its former place as the most powerful country on Earth. We covered this in "What China Wants: Today, the South China Sea. Tomorrow,… Read More »

healthcare

Supreme Court to Decide Whether Abortion Pill Should Be Banned

Used to produce over half of all abortions

In April a year ago, a federal judge in Texas suspended the Food and Drug Administration's approval of mifepristone, the "abortion pill". The FDA had overlooked "legitimate safety concerns", said the judge, notwithstanding that the pill has been used safely by millions of women in all the years since the agency approved the medication 24 years ago.

Immediately following, in a case brought by attorneys general of 18 Democratic states, who argued that the FDA approval was "lawful and valid" and that the drug is "far safer than continuing a pregnancy", a Washington State federal court agreed and enjoined the FDA from reducing the availability of the drug. A stay has kept the drug available since.

In striking down Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court meant to send all matters of abortion to the states for each to decide policy and create laws, but it falls to the highest court to resolve conflicting decisions by federal courts, and so, the nine justices are once again in the thick of the abortion wars. On March 26th they will hear arguments for and against the pill and are expected to render a decision in early summer that is likely to have incendiary reactions.

the suit

The Texas lawsuit against the FDA was brought by Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), a conservative Christian legal advocacy group that works to outlaw abortion, curtail LGBTQ rights, and promote Christian practices in public schools and government. They argue that the FDA rushed the drug’s approval without properly studying its safety, which, even if true, has long since seen safety proven.

Based in Arizona, ADF went judge shopping and found Amarillo, where they were guaranteed to draw Matthew Kacsmaryk because there is only one federal judge in Amarillo and that is he. Formerly with a Christian …

prosecution

In Win for Trump, Supreme Court Sabotages January 6 Trial

It was thought that the Supreme Court would decline to even hear the case, so comprehensive and convincing was the unanimous decision by the three judge panel of the D.C. Court of Appeals. That would have let stand the lower court's finding that Trump cannot claim immunity from prosecution for acts committed while president.

The appeals court ruling was on February 6th. Delaying a decision that could have been announced a couple of days later and that should have returned the case to Judge Tanya Chutkan's D.C. Circuit Court for the article illustration
trial to begin, the Supreme Court ran the clock for three weeks before saying it would, after all, hear the case it had earlier declined. They put the case on the docket for the week of April 22nd, on the final days of the last week the Court will hear arguments this term.

Another two months will have passed. And it means we will not hear from the Court whether Trump is or is not immune until the end of the Court's term, the final week of June. And, we will bet, it will even be the last decision announced.

This for a case whose trial date had been set for March 4th and which the Court has pushed so far down the calendar that the trial now will almost certainly not go forward before the election. At least four justices — the number of votes needed to decide to hear a case — have decided to put their thumbs on the scale to make sure of that. America has a justice system that permits a stream of appeals and motions meant only to delay, which the Trump legal team has exploited masterfully. The Court has awarded delay tactics with a victory and…

immigration

Trump Says Border Is “Single Greatest Threat”, so Keep It Open

Highly conservative Senator James Lankford of Oklahoma stepped forward on "Fox News Sunday" to list the features of the bill a bipartisan group of senators has been working on for months with Lankford as lead negotiator:

"This bill focuses on getting us to zero illegal crossings today. There's no amnesty. It increases the number of border patrol agents. It increases asylum officers. Increased detention beds so we can quickly detain and then deport individuals. It ends catch and release. It focuses on additional deportation flights out. It changes our asylum process so people get a fast asylum screening at a higher standard and then get returned back to their own country."

Also conservative commentator Charlie Sykes, editor-in-chief at online publication The Bulwark, calls Lankford's provisions "a conservative Republican's dream."

And yet, House Speaker Mike Johnson, showing himself ever more to be Trump's bootlick, issued a statement criticizing Biden's support of the bill, saying the President already has the power to act. This is the same political class that, to deflect the Democrats' sounding alarm at Trump's dictatorial tendencies, asserts it is Biden who is the autocrat for conducting government by executive order, now urging Biden to do just what they fault, to autocratically issue a border edict in obeisance to Trump who has commanded Republicans in Congress to do nothing.

Over the weekend, Trump told an audience:

"In the House, as you know, the Speaker...who, by the way, I think he's going to prove to be a very good Speaker...he just said it's dead on arrival. We want either a strong bill or no bill and whatever happens happens, but this is the single greatest threat to our country right now".

The single greatest threat, but do nothing. Keep the border open…

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china watch

China Increasingly Aggressive Toward Its Neighbors — and the U.S.

China has shown escalating belligerence in its surroundings seas, confident that it has no rivals in strength among what it calls the "small countries" such as Indonesia, Vietnam, the Philippines. It has built up reefs and outcroppings in the South China Sea into military bases from which it can force those nations off the fishing grounds that they rely on to feed their populations.

These invasions are in violation of the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea to which 168 countries are signatories that prescribes for each coastal nation an "economic zone" extending 200 nautical miles from its shores for its exclusive use. But China sweeps aside Western-inspired precepts of national sovereignty that conflict with its intended global dominance where it will set the rules. And so, on a boat sailing out of the Philippines at night near Mischief Reef, militarized by China in an area of the South China Sea that an international tribunal has said belongs to the Philippines, a New York Times reporter said that cell phones on board pinged with the message "Welcome to China", notwithstanding that they were 900 miles from the nearest China landfall. They were not in fact welcome and were assaulted with sound that shook their bodies, blinding searchlights, and threats of ramming.

years of harassment…

2020 election

Remember “2000 Mules”? Total Fraud, Its Organizers Admit

It was little noticed but should not be overlooked: Last month, the Texas-based conservative group True the Vote admitted to a Georgia judge that it had no evidence whatsoever to back up its claim that the 2020 election had been stolen from Donald Trump.

True the Vote had filed complaints about the integrity of the 2020 election with Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, saying it had “a detailed account of coordinated efforts to collect and deposit ballots in drop boxes across metro Atlanta". But when a Superior Court judge there ordered last year that True the Vote turn over the evidence to investigators, they refused.

Who are they and why does that matter? Because it was True the Vote that filmed voters allegedly illegally stuffing drop boxes in Georgia which was made into the film "2000 Mules" by Dinesh d'Souza, himself a convicted felon for breaking campaign contribution laws. After over 60 failures to prove fraud in court cases immediately after the 2020 election, after every story of fraudulent ballots had been explained away and proven benign, right-wing election deniers thought "2000 Mules", which even ran in theaters of red states, proved something nefarious was going on. It was proof enough for Donald Trump who, in an interview, said, "They have people stuffing the ballot boxes on tapes!"

Ironically, that the videos and the film could not by their nature serve up conclusive proof of fraud made them more powerful because they instead fed conspiracy fantasies.…

the election

Increasing Incidents Expose Trump’s Cognitive Decline

That 81-year-old Joe Biden shows intermittent signs of cognitive decline is not in dispute. There's no denying that he has worrying lapses. Leftwing media has touched on such incidents gingerly; rightwing cable channel hosts engage in the topic virtually every night.

For them it takes the form of gleeful mockery. Sean Hannity of Fox News tells us "about your president who doesn't know today is Thursday" and "it's not even clear that Biden knows he's alive." Laura Ingraham on that same channel ridicules Biden's occasional malaprops. Both often fabricate. "Today he looked totally, completely, utterly confused, confounded, unsure of his surroundings", says Hannity, the worst of the two, while the video on the split screen shows nothing of the sort.

But now, it has become increasingly apparent that 77-year-old Donald Trump is showing signs of wear. Incidents of confusion and rambling dissociation are occurring at increasing frequency. His confusing Nikki Haley for Nancy Pelosi got wide attention. He has several times spoken of Barack Obama in place of Biden and…

taxes

IRS Struggles to Keep House Republicans from Stealing Funding

October’s $106 billion supplemental funding request may be dead in the water in the House, but should $60 billion in assistance for Ukraine go forward, there is a threat which does not get the attention needed to spur outcry.

In a continuation of their decades-long practice of beggaring the Internal Revenue Service, House Republicans passed a bill last fall with $14.3 billion aid to Israel that they would pay for out of the $80 billion allotted to the IRS in 2022’s Inflation Reduction Act. On its own, without Ukraine aid, it went nowhere, but it’s clear that Republicans view the $80 billion as a slush fund to be dipped into for their own purposes. “I love cutting the IRS. I’m here for that,” said Sen. Josh Hawley (R., Mo.). “And if we can cut the IRS and fund Israel doing it, then I think that’s great.”

Last summer, to get Republicans in the House to raise the debt ceiling, President Biden had to agree with House Speaker McCarthy to cut $21.4 billion from the IRS funding: $1.4 billion in the debt ceiling bill itself, and $20 billion repurposed for 2024 and 2025. The Congressional Budget Office estimated that the $20 billion, applied to going after tax cheats, would bring in $44 billion. Thus, by taking the money from the IRS in a move to spare their wealthy donors from having to pay that amount of concealed tax obligations, Republicans will add a net of $24 billion to the national debt. Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson can’t seem to fathom the concept:

“Only in Washington when you cut spending do they call it an increase in the deficit. We don’t put much credence in what the CBO says.”

It's also doubtful that the rube…

the election

Trump Disqualification: Supreme Court Finds Constitution Inconvenient

There has never been any doubt about how the Supreme Court would rule in the Colorado case in which its highest court took Donald Trump off the ballot for engaging in insurrection January 6, 2021. We took up the Colorado decision and the controversy that swirled around it in December and said

"It is foregone that the Supreme Court would not dare disqualify Trump, not after infamously deciding who should be president in 2000's Bush v. Gore."

It may be your preference –simply to let the people vote – but first it should not pass unnoticed how political the Court was in order to wriggle free of the unequivocal language of the Fourteenth amendment.

Let's go through a few of the exchanges in which it seemed that each justice had been assigned a role to find loopholes for why the amendment does not apply to Donald Trump.

offices and officers

Remarkably, the highest court in the land tried to make the case that Section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment does not apply to the former president because "president" is not specified in…

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