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When candidate Donald Trump campaigned on calling China to account for its trade piracy, observers thought he was either crazy or dangerous. Conventional Washington wisdom had assumed that an ascendant Beijing was almost preordained to world hegemony. Trump's tariffs and polarization of China were considered about the worst thing an American president could do. The accepted bipartisan strategy was to accommodate, not oppose, China's growing power. The hope was that its newfound wealth and global influence would liberalize the ruling communist government. Four years later, only a naif believes that. Instead, there is an emerging consensus that China's cutthroat...

**SNIP** During the first quarter of the 49ers game against the Chiefs, video of a fan taking a nap in the stands at Hard Rock Stadium quickly went viral on social media. That's a pretty expensive nap. Earlier this week, the average price for a Super Bowl ticket on StubHub was $6,414 while the cheapest ticket was being sold for $4,975. UPDATE: The man has been identified as Declan Kelly, who is a consulting CEO with ties to Hillary and Bill Clinton. Twitter had a lot to say about Kelly - including his likeness to Andrew Bernard from NBC's TV...

On Monday, 2020 presidential hopeful Michael Bloomberg shared a campaign ad on Twitter featuring some alleged incidents that occurred during Donald Trump’s presidency. But according to media reports, one of the images did not relate to Trump at all. A photo of detained migrants, that was used in an ad for Michael Bloomberg which slammed President Donald Trump’s policies was actually taken in 2014, during Barack Obama's time in office, the Daily Caller reported citing a review from the Daily Caller News Foundation (DCNF). (Please see article at the link)

Rush skewered the Democrats' saints and they HATED him for it! This is one of the best.

Roy Rogers performs our tune today: That Miss From Mississippi (1947). THE WESTERNER https://thewesterner.blogspot.com/

As MSNBC’s Katy Tur wandered through a gym in Des Moines during her network’s coverage of the Iowa caucuses Monday, she found a voter wearing a Bernie Sanders button sitting with supporters of Amy Klobuchar. “I’m a little split,” the woman conceded. Call her the poster girl for media coverage of Iowa, a carnival of democracy that was fun and bewildering to watch until it all went sour. Reporters swarmed to sites where voters, for the first time in the 2020 campaign cycle, were making their voices heard. Yet their findings were only anecdotal. Candidates gave speeches to their supporters...

Hong Kong(CNN)The spread of the Wuhan coronavirus shows no signs of slowing, as China reported another major spike in both confirmed cases and deaths in the region at the heart of the epidemic. The total number of confirmed cases in China stands at 20,438 as of Tuesday morning, including a 1-month-old baby in southwestern Guizhou province, an increase of 3,235 on the previous day -- an over 18% jump. The death toll is now at 425 in China, an increase of around 65 from Sunday. (Please see full article at the link)

A viral claim by a conservative activist group that voter registration numbers in Iowa are suspiciously large ahead of the first U.S. presidential nominating contest on Monday is false, a senior state government official said, and called on the group to end its “misinformation campaign.” Iowa’s Secretary of State Paul Pate, a Republican, said the claim by Washington D.C.-based group Judicial Watch that total registration numbers for caucuses in eight Iowa counties were larger than the eligible voter population had been disproven by official data. “It’s unfortunate this organization continues to put out inaccurate data regarding voter registration, and it’s...

Tech firm started by Clinton campaign veterans is linked to Iowa caucus reporting debacle __________ An app created by a tech firm run by veterans of Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign is taking heat for the unprecedented delay in reporting Democratic caucus results from Iowa. The firm behind the app reportedly is Shadow, an affiliate of ACRONYM, a Democratic nonprofit founded in 2017 “to educate, inspire, register, and mobilize voters,” according to its website. Shadow started out as Groundbase, a tech developer co-founded by Gerard Niemira and Krista Davis, who worked for the tech team on Clinton’s campaign for the...

An Irishman's first drink with his son While reading an article last night about fathers and sons, memories came flooding back to the time I took me son out for his first pint. Off we went to our local pub only two blocks from the cottage. I got him a Guinness. He didn't like it, so I drank it. Then I got him a Kilkenny's, he didn't like that either, so I drank it. Finally, I thought he might like some Harp Lager? He didn't. I drank it. I thought maybe he'd like whisky better than beer so we tried...

(Reuters) - Singapore has reported six more cases of a newly identified coronavirus, including four local transmissions, taking its tally of infections to 24, the health ministry of the southeast Asian city-state said on Tuesday. "Though four of these cases constitute a local transmission cluster, there is as yet no evidence of widespread sustained community transmission in Singapore," the ministry said in a statement. The four cases were linked to a health products shop that primarily serves Chinese tourists, it added. The other two infections were in Singapore residents evacuated on Thursday from the central Chinese city of Wuhan, where...

The University of Maryland Medical System is seeking to recover hundreds of thousands of dollars paid to disgraced former Baltimore Mayor Catherine Pugh for her “Healthy Holly” books, top officials of the hospital network testified Thursday in Annapolis. “We have recovered $100,000 of the $500,000,” James C. “Chip” DiPaula Jr., the new chairman of the system’s board, told the House of Delegates’ Health and Government Operations Committee. “We are working with the U.S. prosecutors to recover the balance.” Pugh, who resigned as mayor last spring as the book scandal unfolded, has since pleaded guilty to conspiracy and tax evasion charges...

Schiff: If Trump Isn’t Removed He ‘Could Offer Alaska to the Russians in Exchange for Support in the Next Election’ ______________ SCHIFF: "But this has become the President's defense. And yet, this defense proved indefensible. If abuse of power is not impeachable, even though it is clear the Founders considered it the highest of all high crimes and misdemeanors, but if it were not impeachable, then a whole range of utterly unacceptable conduct and the president would now be beyond reach. Trump could offer Alaska to the Russians in exchange for support in the next election or decide to move...

HONG KONG/BEIJING (Reuters) - Hong Kong reported its first death from the newly identified coronavirus on Tuesday, the second outside mainland China from an outbreak that has killed more than 420 people, spread around the world and raised fears for global economic growth. China's markets steadied after anxiety erased some $400 billion in market value from Shanghai's benchmark index the previous day, and global markets also staged a comeback after a sell-off last week, but the bad news kept coming. Macau, the world's biggest gambling hub, said it had asked all casino operators to suspend operations for two weeks to...

DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — Democratic party officials in Iowa worked furiously Tuesday to deliver the delayed results of their first-in-the-nation caucus, as frustrated presidential candidates claimed momentum and plowed ahead in their quest for the White House. Technology problems and reporting “inconsistencies” kept Iowa Democratic Party officials from releasing results from Monday's caucus, the much-hyped kickoff to the 2020 primary. It was an embarrassing twist after months of promoting the contest as a chance for Democrats to find some clarity in a jumbled field with no clear front-runner. Instead, caucus day ended with no winner, no official results and...

DES MOINES — There can be no doubting it now, not after so many years spent in the crosshairs, not after active presidential candidates began challenging its privileged position atop the nominating calendar, and certainly not after Monday night’s debacle that left seven candidates and millions of viewers waiting for results that never came: Iowa’s reign is over. Oh, sure, the state and its fabled caucuses may live on in some ceremonial capacity, perhaps clinging to a sort of emeritus role in the earlier stages of the presidential nominating season. Presidential candidates will still pay occasional homage to the state,...

DES MOINES, Iowa — A technical meltdown in Iowa Monday night set off bedlam in the critical first contest for the Democratic presidential nomination, triggering competing claims of victory and stoking doubts about the legitimacy of the eventual outcome. No results had been reported by midnight Eastern, and two campaigns told POLITICO that after a conference call with the Iowa Democratic Party, they didn’t expect any returns until Tuesday morning at the earliest.Candidates stepped into the void. Pete Buttigieg went first by claiming victory — misleadingly, in the view of Sanders, whose campaign responded by releasing unofficial figures showing his...

NEW YORK — Deborah A. Batts, the nation’s first openly gay federal judge, has died. She was 72. Batts was found dead on Monday, three months before she was set to preside over a trial of California lawyer Michael Avenatti on charges that he cheated porn star Stormy Daniels, a former client, of proceeds of a book deal. No cause of death was immediately released. In June 1994, Batts was sworn in after a smooth confirmation process following her appointment to the bench by President Bill Clinton. During her confirmation proceedings, it was never mentioned that she was a lesbian....

(CNN)The Democratic 2020 crusade to oust President Donald Trump could not have got off to a more disastrous and embarrassing start. The party couldn't even deliver a first-in-the-nation election night winner after a vote-reporting debacle in Iowa — where candidates spent months and millions of dollars vying for a glittering opening prize in their nominating duel. "Iowa, you have shocked the nation," said former South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg. It was a bold attempt to declare victory in the absence of a result, but the 38-year-old inadvertently cast an ironic judgment on a political train wreck. The big Hawkeye...

A tip from an anonymous caller led police in Laredo, Texas, to a surprising discovery: 36 migrants trapped in a hidden compartment inside a dump truck that appeared to be hauling gravel. Officers had dispatched a wrecker to tow away the disabled dump truck on the morning of January 30, police said. Later that morning, they received a call reporting that people were concealed in a compartment inside the vehicle. Investigators and rescuers responded to the impound lot and heard banging from inside the truck, Laredo Police spokesman Officer Emanuel Diaz said. The people inside appeared to be trapped, he...