China and Hong Kong are coming to some sort of decision.

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The Hong Kong demonstrations are still going on.

Now, The CCP has been sending troops into the city, saying it is just a troop “rotation” but no photos of troops leaving have been seen.

Michael Yon, who covered Iraq and Afghanistan, is onscene.

He is also watching both Koreas. He considers neither trustworthy.

The proximate cause of the Korea-Japan “dispute” is Korean cultural weakness that magnifies, amplifies, fertilizes any paper cut into gangrene. The USA and Japan must be prepared to amputate South Korea. The day is coming.

Korea has an unstable mind and culture. Korean Lives Matter: they create drama from thin air. Drama Queen, meet Drama Korea.

Korea (North and South) is the proximate cause of the disputes between Koreans, Americans, Japanese. The proximate cause is a volatile and primitive Korean culture.

The ultimate cause of the disputes is China. Core China culture runs Korea as a barnyard animal.

As for Hong Kong, Strategic Elegance: “Home Depot says suppliers are moving manufacturing out of China to avoid tariffs”

Some of the jobs probably moving to countries like Taiwan and Vietnam.

Think about this for a moment:

1) China loses jobs, and thus economic clout and expansion money. Some Chinese workers likely become unemployed…while China is having some food supply problems (true extent unknown to me).

2) Chinese jobs move to other countries that we can get along great with, such as Taiwan. Taiwan grows economy, becomes tighter with USA, and buys US goods (including weapons) as economy increases. US weapons can be used to blunt China’s false claims in Taiwan.

3) Taiwan and others buying more US goods (including weapons) increases American jobs and economy, which helps fund “the wall.”

Win win win for the good guys and gals. Lose lose lose for CCP.

Hold strong Hong Kong! Hong Kong does not have to beat CCP — only outlive.

We are entering very dangerous times and the media sees only the politics of 2020.

Watch that Steve Bannon video at SDA. He thinks that if the CCP goes into Hong Kong to do another Tiananmen Square, the CCP will collapse.

Of Roaches, Bedbugs and Old Media

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So it is generally considered not nice to take satisfaction in someone elses’ misery, but when it comes to certain Proggie Established Media outlets, I will cheerfully make an exception. As if it isn’t enough that Washington Post news offices appear to be afflicted with a plague of cockroaches, now it appears that the NY Times self-revealed last week as a purveyor of vicious propaganda on a level unequaled since the glory days of Der Stürmer has a bed-bug problem. Pity the poor working-class exterminators who must venture into the offices; as a commenter noted here at Powerline how on earth will they tell the difference between the vermin and the regular staff, as well as the Dem Party politicians that the Establishment Media fawns upon with such tiresome regularity?

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Tearing off the Fig Leaf

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In 2019, New York finally did it. They gave up pretending that they can ever run the state under the state constitution and the normal rules of American governance. After pretending since WW II that the state’s housing situation was in a temporary state of emergency started by that war and periodically renewing the state of emergency this year, the rent control and stabilization kept the emergency but got rid of the time limit. The state of emergency is now permanent.

On pages three and four of the bill, six separate edits make it clear that New York has adopted a permanent state of emergency. There’s no more renewals, no more expirations, no more re-examination, no return to normalcy.

Most importantly, there is no state Constitutional amendment. The guarantee for just compensation for a taking of property remains. The prohibition of using the government to provide private benefit remains. In a time-limited emergency, such guarantees can be temporarily suspended, but not permanently. The state of New York has been claiming Hitler as their justification for suspending the New York Constitution for decades. No longer.

Now New York claims the right to suspend their Constitution permanently and to widen the suspension from a few limited districts to the entire state. This is a horrifically bad idea. It’s also probably unconstitutional. But will anyone notice?

The Ideological Turing Test

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The Turing test is a means of assessing whether an automated system is truly intelligent by testing its ability to simulate an actual human being in conversation…the test to be conducted via terminals, over a communications link. Here’s an excerpt from Alan Turing’s own example of a hypothetical conversation:

Interrogator: In the first line of your sonnet which reads “Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day,” would not “a spring day” do as well or better?

Witness: It wouldn’t scan.

Interrogator: How about “a winter’s day,” That would scan all right.

Witness: Yes, but nobody wants to be compared to a winter’s day.

Interrogator: Would you say Mr. Pickwick reminded you of Christmas?

Witness: In a way.

Interrogator: Yet Christmas is a winter’s day, and I do not think Mr. Pickwick would mind the comparison.

Witness: I don’t think you’re serious. By a winter’s day one means a typical winter’s day, rather than a special one like Christmas.

At a considerably lower literary level, quite a few automated telephony systems today make an attempt to convince their targets that they are dealing with an actual human being, at least for a few seconds.

The ideological Turing test…the term was invented by Bryan Caplan, following some comments by Paul Krugman…refers to an individual’s ability to accurately state opposing political and ideological views.  Caplan quotes John Stuart Mill: “He who knows only his own side of the case knows little of that.”

My observation is that neither side in America’s current political divisions is over-endowed with people capable of passing the ITT.  Paul Krugman asserted, unsurprisingly, that liberals do it better:

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Summer Rerun: Jeff Sypeck’s Gargoyle Poems

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…which were inspired by the gargoyles of the Washington National Cathedral, were published in book form in 2012.  I was reminded of these poems by the dreadfully destructive fire at Notre Dame.

The book includes 53 poems accompanied by black-and-white photos of the gargoyles and grotesques. These poems are really good…one of my favorites is  A Mother Consoles her Daughter.

You can get the book via the usual on-line sources, the National Cathedral Store, or directly from Jeff’s blog, at this page.