Category Archives: Symphony

Pacific Daily Times’ Editorials

Symphony

Cadence of Conflict: Asia, December 23, 2019

China's in over its head. They got somewhat of a trade deal, though they never had much to bargain with because their economy is much more dependent on imports than the US economy. So, their trade deal can't have gone as well as they would have liked, so they were always going to be unhappy, no matter what they got. They won't be happy, even though they plan a signing photo op come January.

Beijing-rooted leaders in Hong Kong are genuinely confused about the public outcry. In all likelihood, the Chinese truly don't know how much they afflict and oppress their own people. Because they are out of touch with normal life—because they rely on inhumane means to silence any opposition—they probably believe dissidents are genuine misfits. Beijing remains oblivious to how cruel and rightly despised its rule is. Had Beijing even tried to know what real, ordinary people really, truly think, they might not have been surprised by Hong Kong's harsh rejection. But, Beijing never cared enough to try to ask in the first place. So, Beijing despises Hong Kong, all the while doing so under the delusion that its spite is well-deserved.

The British have politely demanded that Beijing honor the 1984 Sino-British Joint Declaration and hold talks with Hong Kong protestors. From Beijing's perspective, this is as unimaginable as a Chinese demigod being willing to hold a dialog with a cockroach. Make no mistake, Beijing does not feel that Britain is making any kind of request; it is purely interpreted as an insult, like demanding one to kiss one's own rear end. However incapable Beijing is of understanding the polite demand, let alone obeying it, the demand remains legally binding. Britain is building a case for nullification and Beijing believes that every way out is an illusion meant to insult.

Then, there's Huawei. The trade agreement China holds no cards to oppose with won't matter. Huawei needs customers and Europe is skittish, to say the least. Huawei needs money because the Chinese government needs money. Central planning squandered loans on enormous, countless, empty buildings. The concept of "scalability" is foreign to the government that always gets what it wants, until it can't afford to anymore. Even then, the Chinese won't know why they can't afford to anymore because they can't understand "scalability". Huawei's losses will weaken China's position further when it comes time for round 2 of the US-China trade negotiations.

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Encore of Revival: America, December 23, 2019

Trump's popularity is soaring. The impeachment this week helped the popular president even more—well, if an "impeachment" that the House speaker chooses not to transfer to the Senate is an actual impeachment. In the words of Sen. Mitch McConnell, the House doesn't demonstrate much leverage by not, "sending us something we do not want." Not sending the Senate something the Senate does not want has made Trump even more "popularer".

Whether Democratic or Republican, everyone should think the House is an embarrassment to the country. Even Putin thinks the House is laughable. Smart Democratic voters won't want their politicians barking up trees, starting fights that help the other team. But, there is a danger—power corrupts and supermajority corrupts "superly". Democrats are handing the nation a supermajority Republican party by 2022, when the third round of Senate elections for Trump's tenure take place. That is when our freedom will be at more risk than it has ever been; when good people no longer have accountability they are no longer good.

Fortunately, while many Democratic voters don't value the Constitution that started the trend of ending slavery for the first time in human history, at least they know the power of gridlock. Democrats like checks and balances when they don't have power. That might be enough to save freedom.

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Cadence of Conflict: Asia, December 16, 2019

China is desperately grasping for straws. While German parliament is planning to ban Huawei against the will of their head of state, Chancellor Merkel, a Chinese ambassador sends a message that "there will be consequences"—when diplomatic channels go to the head of state, not parliament. The Chinese ambassador is like a dog barking up a tree; German parliament doesn't care what the Chinese ambassador says. But, in China different branches of government don't matter because that's just a "silly Western thing". So, the Chinese don't know how German government works because the Chinese presume that Germans lie as much as the Chinese do.

Moreover, the Chinese Communists have overlooked one blaring flaw—if Huawei isn't controlled by China's government, that would make it the only entity in China not subject to passive-aggressive threats under pain of organ harvesting. Moreover, if Huawei were the independent company China's government claims it is, China's government wouldn't be so defensive of Huawei being banned from Germany.

China has many weaknesses, self-contradicting diplomacy being the least. Its labor force is shrinking. Its economy is much more dependent on exports than America's. Its tech sector is even more dependent on importing American-made components. Tit-for-tat tariffs don't favor China in that regard. The Chinese don't spend as much on their military as America does, regardless of the hype from State-run Chinese news outlets. And, it doesn't own a very big piece of the pie when it comes to US Treasury bonds—the greatest liquidation threat China could make there is to offer a temporary discount price to willing investors. The cost would be China forfeiting any leverage it had by owning such a small part of America's debt, while America's economy might skip two beats at most, then nevermore.

Then, we have the anti-Trump camp. Many economists who haven't a clue where wealth comes from despise America's president. Everything needs to pay for itself, otherwise it will die in a suicide cult of bankruptcy. Maybe NATO shouldn't be in Germany, maybe it should, but the answer—one way or the other—will only surface if NATO requires Germany to pay for its own national defense. Bowing down to China may have made a few American companies rich—regardless of making a few million Americans poor—but it was never going to last long. Even though China took American money and started bullying their neighbors, those who profited from those greedy companies in particular are angry. But, most Americans aren't fooled anymore.

Trump played his cards well, and he's still got plenty of chips left to ante up for many rounds to come. That isn't good news if you're a member of the Chinese Communist Party, hoping to help the party dominate America.

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Encore of Revival: America, December 16, 2019

Revelations about the Russianewsgategate scandal are beyond damning. Why would Comey and friends consciously fabricate a lie, just to scare the president for not meeting with the Intelligence community every day? Generally, the public thinks that they think that their attempted assault against the president would succeed, so they would never have to answer for what they did. Like a failed revolt against Caesar, now they must pay. They didn't think they would get caught, they outreached, then they got caught. That's what the public is generally led to believe.

However, given the levels of flagrant sloppiness, it is difficult to say that getting caught resulted from a mere miscalculation. More likely, they simply didn't think that far ahead because, if they had, they would have prepared contingencies. They had no contingencies and they left a highway of breadcrumbs.

What explains this?—Psychopath?—Ruling class corruption?—Drowning in their own swamp? A simple miscalculation or a belief that they would get away with it doesn't suffice. Somewhere, the Washington elite have gone off the deep end.

The impeachment campaign against Trump is a self-imploding, self-destructing, backfiring bombshell. The Democrats harm themselves with their impeachment proceedings so fast that news can't even keep up with the damage. Their resolve to bring their own demise goes beyond conspiracy—it's self-absorbed madness. No matter how much they can see how much they make themselves lose, they only turn up the temperature and lose more.

The moral of the story is that we should expect even more blunders as the swamp drains and the monsters who thrived there writhe in their last hours of miserable existence. Of course, that could last a few decades before it's all done with.

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Cadence of Conflict: Asia, December 9, 2019

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U53cR3_vHv0

Money doesn't lie; it's in the airline figures. Cathay is reducing its capacity, largely from loss of demand for flights in and out of China. Hong Kong Airlines is dropping long hauls to and from Australia, the US, and Canada. Clearly, both Chinese nationals and Pacific English speakers have lost confidence in Hong Kong. Hong Kong was special—for tourism, culture, lifestyle, trade, finance, and a slough of other things—all because both Chinese and the English-speaking West had easy and overlapping access. They could meet, they could do business, they could speak their own language, and they could enjoy Chinese culture without the oppression of a Confucian-Communist government. But, neither wants to play ball anymore.

In response to the US ending exports of riot-control weapons and defining autonomy as "being autonomous", China banned the US Navy from making port stops in Hong Kong. The port stops had been an encouragement to international business, reassuring investors that everything was alright between the US and China. But, apparently China doesn't want that illusion of reassurance to continue. And, more importantly, China obviously is less fearful of the US Navy making its R&R port calls in Taiwan instead.

Watch for many things to shift to Taiwan. While the first finance leaders in Hong Kong are exiting to Singapore, watch for a swath to relocate in Taipei once Singapore's galore wears off and finance centers discover the difference in real estate prices and cost of living.

China will still be angry enough to blow a few gaskets when the US Navy does make more port calls in Taiwan, it's just that they are less fearful of it for the time being. China's leaders have been had, largely due to their thirst for respect, which blinds their judgement. But, they are incapable of learning, so they are only going to be had more and more.

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Encore of Revival: America, December 9, 2019

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ULbCj1Hy-LQ

This week, we caught a closer glimpse of what the impeachment hearings in the House are truly about: election 2020. Democrats can't win and they know it. This impeachment is their best chance to lose less of the vote, but it may backfire.

The reason opposition news against Trump doesn't sway his base is because of what it reveals about actual, normal life. Usually, the president and Congress are portrayed as operating "above" everyone else, never having any problems, or at least that they only have problems that us normal people never have. But, every accusation and difference of opinion reported about Trump reveals that every president—not just he—deals with the same, constant, nonsensical heckling from people at the office that all the rest of us deal with.

Some friends always act like they have a better idea when they actually haven't a clue. Doing the only thing that can save a company or school always makes people mad—especially if those are the very people who drove problems to the brink of crisis. As movers and shakers shake and move to save the world from idiots who shouldn't have been put in charge, those idiots refuse to give us a moment's peace, even when they are close friends and family.

So, you see, Trump deals with the same kind of nonsense that every competent person deals with. We just didn't know until his adversaries told us so—as if we hadn't already seen it before.

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Encore of Revival: America, December 2, 2019

"Order in the ranks" of military discipline includes that the president is the commander in chief who always gets his way—in the military. Generals and secretaries in the US Armed Forces have zero preference in any disagreement of decision with the president. As commander in chief, the president can overturn any court-martial conviction and fire or dismiss anyone for any reason. This is intended by the Constitution so that the Armed Forces serve the will of the people. The military does not give orders to the democratically elected president. Anyone in the Armed Forces attempting to circumvent a decision of the president should be discharged and possibly prosecuted for mutiny—based on Article 94 (§ 894)(a)(1) of the 2004 Uniform Code of Military Justice definition of Mutiny or Sedition. It is inappropriate for anyone to claim fowl play in the the Navy secretary's firing.

Kevin Clinesmith from the FBI has been dubbed the title "frontline lawyer". He reportedly doctored evidence in the FISA spy application as part of the Russianewsgategate scandal. If he was not acting under the explicit direction of his "behind the frontlines" superiors, then the Obama administration's FBI, including James Comey, had even bigger problems. "Frontline lawyers" at the FBI are supposed to follow instructions of the director, otherwise the director is AWOL.

As impeachment moves forward, Democrats seal their fate. They've already gone too far. Whether the House votes to impeach, Democrats lose popularity. Either they let down their base or they anger everyone Right of staunch Democratic voters with unnecessary drama. Two unanswered questions remain: Will they choose to lose votes by impeaching or lose votes by not impeaching? And, more mysteriously, are they secretly trying to help President Trump or are have they been operating on kook-directed autopilot so long that they are no longer capable of knowing where they are headed?

The biggest danger Donald Trump always posed was that he would do too well and thus give Republicans a supermajority they couldn't have earned on their own. No one seems to be helping that effort as much as House Democrats. Fortunately for the country, the ever-less-so silent majority doesn't make political decisions on autopilot. And, that majority is growing larger.

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Cadence of Conflict: Asia, December 2, 2019

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HJDDexe-URI

Opinions on Asia aren't just flying, but swarming the Pacific. Hong Kongers vote against China in an unmistakable slap to Beijing's face, then Beijing blames the US—because Beijing still thinks that voters only vote how the government tells them to. And, everything is all America's fault anyway, right?

It took a day of silence for Beijing's media machine to figure out how to spin the election. Beijing accused Hong Kong's dissent on violence. But, that doesn't hold since last week's election went uninterrupted. Yet, Beijing sticks to the same script.

A commentator predicts that Hong Kongers don't want independence—even though they already declared independence on October 4. Perhaps Doris Lam's article on Channel News Asia was an attempt to tell Hong Kongers what they should want. Or, it could have been an attempt to tell Beijing to think that Hong Kongers don't want what they want. Either way, it is a delusional olive branch in the form of a typical long-worded think piece. There is a growing trend of commentators who make their articles longer when they know that few readers will accept their opinions.

After Trump signs two laws about Hong Kong—one to define an autonomous region as autonomous, the other to stop exporting police tools for riot-control—Beijing calls it "interference". Then, Trump drops tariffs on China because good ole Benjamin is hard to argue with. Yet, Beijing wants more. Now, as in Chinese business negotiation, China wants to change the deal after everything has been agreed to. They want even lower tariffs in Phase One.

Great Britain wants UN access to Xinjiang.  China wants the world to believe Xinjiang is happy, an Islamic utopia; new documents prove otherwise. China also faces a food shortage, but a good marketing effort is underway for investment in Chinese farming. Stopping any possible abuse of Uyghurs in Xinjiang is interference in Beijing's opinion, but accepting foreign money to build better farms isn't. Perhaps Beijing will call it interference if the rest of the world does not invest in Chinese farms.

Taiwan's election is fast approaching. Though Tsai Ing-Wen, the pro-democracy incumbent president, leads in the polls, many Taiwanese are scared that there are too many voters in the old, beaten-down generation for her to win a second time. Older Taiwanese, like many Chinese, have been so dominated by East Asia's shame culture that they truly believe that "bigness" always wins and therefore they must vote for politicians who will surrender to China. Younger Taiwanese have seen this older generation get its way so many times, even polls can't keep them from being scared. But, as John Maynard Keynes said, "Men will not always die quietly." Few things drive voters to the polls like fear of dying at the hands of politicians who want to surrender. Tsai Ing-Wen is set to win by an even greater margin than she did in her first term—and everyone has something to say about it.

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Cadence of Conflict: Asia, November 25, 2019

Hong Kong's election results from yesterday have confirmed the general public's view: Hong Kongers reject China's actions. Not that it will make a difference—elected officials don't hold a majority in Hong Kong's legislative process. But, pro-Beijing officials were voted-out, replaced with pro-democracy candidates who campaigned on "5-demands". There had been speculation as to how much Hong Kongers supported the "5-demand" protests; this morning there is no doubt. Taiwan, the US, and the UK generally oppose the manner of Chinese expansion; this morning we know Hong Kong does too.

It was always easy to see why.

When the US Senate unanimously passed its own version of a bill that would annually evaluate whether Hong Kong was autonomous enough for it to be treated autonomously, China went berserk and accused the US of interfering. When Hong Kong's High Court overturned Hong Kong's recent ban on masks, Beijing rebuked the court, thereby proving that Beijing believes Hong Kong is not a separate jurisdiction from the rest of China. Apparently, Beijing thinks Hong Kong should have its government utterly determined by Beijing, but should be treated as if the opposite were true. In America we call this "wanting to have your cake and eat it too"; in China it's called "Communism".

US Congress has sweeping bipartisan agreement to determine what the US does in its foreign relations. The US decides whether to sell riot gear to another country. China calls this "interference"; in America that's called "blame-shifting". Albeit, China has been illegally interfering in Hong Kong, Taiwan, and even working to undermine Australia's government, according to a Chinese Communist spy who recently defected Down Under. $200M USD to thwart Taiwan's election—and China thinks the US is meddling by not selling rubber bullets to Hong Kong police. It's no wonder yesterday's election turned out as it did.

Several students holed up in Polytechnic University in Hung Hom tried to walk out, but police chased them back in with tear gas—purportedly because they wanted the students to leave. That was a few days before the US Senate passed its bill about Hong Kong's autonomy being defined by autonomy. While the intentions of the police seem to be contradictory, there is a greater danger Hong Kong's government is blind to.

While under siege and later trying to escape, the students and countless new protestors who joined the cause because of the police response, have learned new skills. They are gaining practice at launching Molotov cocktails, shooting police officers with old fashion archery, rappelling in free air, organizing supply and movement lines, along with other aspects of urban guerilla resistance that neither Hong Kong's police nor China's PLA are trained for. Carrie Lam has turned these now three plus million protestors into one of the most formidable military forces in Asia, if not the most per capita.

A civilian military is necessary for any nation's independence. Before these protests, Hong Kong never met that unwritten-yet-real requirement. Since Carrie Lam made the decisions that she did, now Hong Kong has a different truth. As relevant and telling as yesterday's election was, the more important election is coming in March, when Hong Kong's October 4 Declaration of Independence scheduled its provisional election. With a now-experienced civilian militia, Hong Kong has all the pieces it needs for a successful revolution. That should not be ignored, but it is.

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Encore of Revival: America, November 25, 2019

Calling on a foreign government to investigate its own dubious dealings with dubious Americans isn't criminal. Not all political rivalries are trivial. The Bidens should be the political enemy of anyone honest. Trump should be praised for his call to the Ukraine, not impeached. But, it looks like impeachment is where the Democratic train is headed and there is no getting off.

Formally impeaching the president will irritate the American public into voting even more Republican in the next election than already was going to happen. And, it will give subpoena power to Republicans in the Senate. Somehow, Democrats in Washington think that is a victory. But, then Democrats and their most loyal voters have always evaluated by methods rather than results. We shouldn't expect that to change. No matter how much the results hurt, Leftist thinking is generally numb to results.

While the impeachment saga trudges on toward a Republican supermajority, the DOJ continues to pursue criminal charges against the Russianewsgategate coup attempt of 2016. Eventually, that could implicate Schiff.

The world faces a transformative crisis. From defecting Chinese Communists to Hong Kong's autonomy to Taiwan's independence to US impeachment, all the way to Brexit—nations are soul-searching and wrestling with their demons. This is not any result of political "strategery"; it is the result of a praying Church. That worldwide, unofficial Church will only continue to grow and pray more transformation into being.

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Cadence of Conflict: Asia, November 18, 2019

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lgBxpk0zjRA

America and China are getting fed up with China and America being fed up with each other. Americans tried patience and negotiations; that didn't work. China hid its agenda for global domination, denouncing so-called "interference" except when China did the interfering. Now, China's true colors are showing and it looks like a lot of debt. Municipalities and local governments are buried in debt, which is eating at China's central economy like Asian ants on a morning worm.

Amid riots and threats, encroachments by police on university campuses and by China upon Hong Kong rule, the primary issue in Hong Kong is the upcoming revolution election in March. On October 4, Hong Kongers declared the current government already nullified and that interim government elections would take place in March. That election is not the primary concern for most reports coming out of Hong Kong, if it gets mentioned at all. But, that election should be the primary concern of China, the United States, and the current—and denounced—Hong Kong government. Perhaps those upcoming elections have not been taken seriously, and, if so, that would be perhaps the most serious miscalculation.

But, rather than carefully calculating the right way forward, China is more concerned with optics—not with causing good optics, but with countering bad optics with more mere optics.

The same Plague from the Black Death has re-emerged in China's Inner Mongolia province. Historically, whether in 541, 1347, or 1894, the Plague always had its origins in the Far East. Rather than promptly confronting the source, the Chinese are basically doing what the San Francisco government did in the early 1900s: covering it up.

Even Chinese soldiers play the optics game. Chinese Communist PLA soldiers are not allowed to leave their garrisons in Hong Kong without a formal request from Hong Kong's government. But, they did anyway—to clear streets blocked by protestors. They didn't clash with protestors, they simply picked up stuff in the street, mostly bricks. They weren't armed nor did they wear fatigues; they wore running shorts and OD-green T-shirts, the same that they exercise in on a daily basis. But, they weren't invited by the Hong Kong government. As a result, their presence was technically illegal, though seemingly helpful in the minds of some residents who want to drive down the street.

Interestingly, the unarmed, seemingly-harmless soldiers were accompanied by cameras; it was a publicity stunt. Voices in the British Commonwealth are especially concerned because this beautiful, warm, kindhearted photo-op sets a precedent of PLA soldiers breaching Hong Kong illegally. Chinese thinking puts logic before law, which feels like justice at first, but then operates with no standard of conduct, deciding right and wrong from one moment to the next. In other words, Beijing thinks that China's soldiers must not enter Hong Kong uninvited—unless they want to.

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Encore of Revival: America, November 18, 2019

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5HS6OIm1tUY

The trade war with China has hurt American farmers—just as a year of bad weather also hurt American farmers. Notwithstanding questions of why Americans chose to become dependent on Communists as their customer, the larger culprit should be large corporations competing against small farmers, seeking a de facto monopoly. Bigness is set against the small guy in America. Trump's trade war sees the biggest competitor of any American business as the Chinese Communist government itself—since the Chinese government financially supports companies competing against non-government companies in America.

This is a recipe for war. Rather than hating Trump, farmers will blame the Chinese and support the coming war that the fake trade war was meant to lead up to all along. Secretary of State Pompeo certainly is ready.

Few things re-elect presidents like a widely-supported war. Washington Democrats are not playing to win the next election; they are playing for employment. They know that they can't win the presidency or the Senate in 2020 and will most likely lose the House. Everything they have done in 2019, and are continuing to do through this next election, is designed to keep their voters preoccupied and distracted from the approaching failure.

If the Democratic electorate stays singularly focused on victories that will never happen, then enough of them will go to the polls to keep the majority of current Democrats in Washington employed, but Democrats will no longer be the majority in Washington. The entire assault against Trump is a shear distraction, designed by Democratic politicians to dupe their own base into marching toward utter failure so they can keep some of their seats on Capitol Hill.

The most recent episode of Russianewsgategate is a glaring example. Marie Yovanovitch, an Obama-appointed ambassador, was working as if still for Obama even though Trump was president. The Ukraine president didn't like it. She was rightfully fired. Disgruntled, now it's her moment of payback—as a witness in matters she had nothing to do with. The House hearings on Trump are a mere show trial. Don't expect the electorate to respond any differently—those who enjoy the show will keep their plans to vote against Trump and those who don't like the show will vote for him.

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Cadence of Conflict: Asia, November 11, 2019

Hong Kong has presented the world with the ethical question of confronting bullies. Say there is a bully at school who quietly eats whosever lunch he wants, stealing anyone's homework he wants, until one day someone says something and the bully gets violent. In theory, most people agree that the bully started it. But in practice, when it comes time to stand up to the bullies of life, even the biggest Braveheart fans place the blame for the fight on the one who had the conscience to stand up to the bully. So, are Hong Kong protestors to blame for not going along to get along while China quietly violates its treaty with the UK, denies human rights, and refuses to regulate police conduct?

China says restoring social order in Hong Kong is the "most pressing issue", but obviously not as important as destroying anything that stands in the way of Chinese Communist hegemony.

In a double-standard, Taiwan is having to adjust its laws to deal with Chinese interference. The CCP is paying news outlets to spread its propaganda in Taiwan. It got caught having a fake news site and is now resorting to outsourcing. The Taiwanese don't think that publishing what China tells someone to publish is "free speech".

Xi Jinping's decision to keep Carrie Lam as CEO of Hong Kong only makes sense, notwithstanding it proves interference by pure definition. The Chinese Communist Party would never dispose of such an efficient creator of chaos. Chaos is always the first phase of the CCP taking over a resistant people; the second phase is to send in the military and—well, do what China's military does so well. While the Western press explains keeping Carrie as a way to avoid opening a can of worms, the Chinese have much more sinister intentions as history proves.

More crud hit the fan this week, over and over, again and again, evermore. A college student not connected with a nearby protest tried to escape a parking lot just after police fired tear gas, then fell to his death. As expected, police denied any wrongdoing.

A woman rumored to be only 16 years old passed a police station Tsuen Wan where she claims to have been ordered inside, then gang raped by four masked men. Meeting some of the criteria of a rape victim, she found she was pregnant a few weeks after the incident, the young woman was reportedly suffering from depression, and had an abortion last Thursday. The investigation is ongoing, but, in the current atmosphere, police have done little elsewhere to stop such stories from being believable.

Over the weekend, police arrested six lawmakers who effectively filibustered Carrie Lam's annual report back in May. Six reporters wore Chinese letters on hardhats at a police press conference, spelling a Cantonese request to investigate police. This was in response to two reporters having been arrested. The police department sent formal objection letters to the six reporters' press agencies. Lawmakers and journalists should be immune to such arrests in order to prevent political interference. But, Hong Kong police no longer wear ID tags on their uniforms, and China says the unrest in Hong Kong started because police don't have enough power.

Western foreigners visiting Hong Kong have started to join protests. It's arguably bad form, though it indicates that the world feels a sense of solidarity in standing up to China's bullying anywhere and everywhere it happens. China sees it as proof of interference while the West sees it as successful marketing from the Hong Kong protesters. The problem with China's "interference proof" argument is that foreign attendees after the fact do not prove any causality before the fact. But, when being a mouthpiece rather than a think tank has been the habit for so long, Chinese wouldn't understand the difference.

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Encore of Revival: America, November 11, 2019

Scandal after scandal, controversy after controversy—America is divided over ideas. For many, their solution is to talk, argue, theorize, analyze, and strategize. While their constant clucking reaches ears outside the hen house, other people in Washington are actually doing something.

The DOJ is pursuing a genuine criminal investigation of the FBI's role with what has become the Russianewsgategate scandal. It started with an accusation about Russia based on the news rather than evidence, then they tried to make it into a scandal, then the fake scandal became a scandal. Now, Comey and Brennan could be looking at jail time, even treason, in an attempted coup.

Typically, Washington Congressional hearings carry clout and intimidation. The political puppets line up around the room on an elevated bench and look down on the witness giving testimony. Behind the witness is a packed crowd with standing room only. That's how confirmation hearings and impeachment hearings and other televised hearings go. That was ENRON, General Motors, Condi Rice, Olly North, Brett Kavanaugh, Clarence Thomas, even John Kerry's testimony about Vietnam before he was a Senator. It's scary, even spooky, but that's about it.

Lights, camera, action! Congressional hearings are a show designed to stir the pot of voters. As Americans grow bored with the news, Congressional theater is losing whatever power it might have wielded. So, while the actors, performers, and thespians give their show on Capitol Hill, the DOJ is actually doing something substantive. Attorney General William Barr isn't putting on any kind of show trial. This is serious. And, it's moving forward at the speed of law. And, perhaps for the first time, the usual performers will need to lawyer-up.

It doesn't matter so much what people say; it matters what people do. America is divided over ideas. The biggest source of division is whether to perform or whether to actually do something real. Another performance will probably be their defense.

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