A headline in all the MSM says Russia drones the hell out of Ukraine, hit a kindergarten, killed 7 people, including TWO CHILDREN!!! No word from them about the kids in Gaza that were killed in the last 24 hours by the IDF.
We have early voting to decide if our Texas Constitution should be amended with 17 new magic laws. One limits a judge's ability to set bail for numerous offenses. I emphasize "numerous". It can take years before a case goes to trial. We tax payers will house and feed and provide medical care for them. We tax payers will have to build more jails, since they all stay full as it is. We tax payers will have to support many new deputies to run the jails. The purpose of this is not pubic safety, but "judicial oversight." It's hilarious the government is practically admitting our justice system is a failure.
Another amendment protects legacy wealth at a time when it is already protected. We do not tax inherited wealth at the state level, never have. What do these billionaires who lobbied for this know that we lowly tax payers do not? What scary future do they know about that we plebes don't? Well, billionaires can and do control their wealth from the grave. And always will.
Oops! I am running way late!
Thanks for the OT, my friend!

"早上好" Good morning Q!

I caught this video of Shaun Rein, this am. He covers how the current US leadership mistakes its position in the trade relationship with China. Everyone here probably knows the basics of this story. The tariffs, sanctions, trade war etc. Shaun as a consultant is a kind of an expert of these matters, but I don't think he idolizes China like some of the contrarian analysts do (for lack of a better description). For him it's his business. This makes him interesting I think. He sees the flawed perception of China in the US, but is also critical of China on some matters. The most interesting thing in this video, is that he reveals his prior personal experience of Bessent and what he sees as his shortcomings. Clearly he's not up to the job. He also discovers why temperamental people like Bessent and the president are unsettling to a favorable world trade and investment environment.

While listening to his account concerning Chinese economic development, I couldn't help but think of the Japanese experience after WWII in connection with the consultation of W. Edwards Deming, which I read about him some years back. Deming was an advisor to the WWII War Production Board in the US during the war period. After the war as I understand it, US industry wasn't all that receptive to his management and production theories, but Japan was interested in his methods. As a result Japan became an industrial powerhouse particularly in the car industry and ate Detroit's lunch. Peter Navarro basically never got over this, and we're still living with the impact, as he sees tariffs as the only answer to overseas economic competition. Trump and Bessent, I question how much they really understand, as they have bought into this view.

To me tariffs are just another way to strip capital involuntarily from the lower 90 percent, so the rich can continue to live without paying their fair share, and live off of speculation, stock buybacks, and a quarterly focus on the bottom line, while sacrificing the country.

From the wikipedia entry on Deming

During World War II, Deming was a member of the five-man Emergency Technical Committee. He worked with H.F. Dodge, A.G. Ashcroft, Leslie E. Simon, R.E. Wareham, and John Gaillard in the compilation of the American War Standards (American Standards Association Z1.1–3 published in 1942)[22] and taught SPC techniques to workers engaged in wartime production. Statistical methods were widely applied during World War II, but faded into disuse a few years later in the face of huge overseas demand for American mass-produced products.

I was enjoying reading about Wang Wei, and learned while trying to understand the background to this famous Wang Wei poem on Farewell :

陽關三疊 - 郭淑珍 Guo Shuzhen - Yang Guan Triassic

Below the notes of this youtube video link. The song style itself may not be to taste but the notes in English below the video, explain how the song was developed centuries after Wang Wei's poem, based upon it.

Yang Guan Triassic is one of China's most famous Guqin (string instrument) songs. The song's origins go back to 1491. It is based on a 4 line seven character quatrain "Send Yuan Er Shi Anxi."送元二使安西 (Seeing Yuaner off on a Mission to Anxi) written by Tang Dynasty poet Wang Wei王維(701-761) Wang Wei, from Taiyuan in Shanxi, was a well-known poet, painter, and musician of the Tang Dynasty (618-907). He wrote over 400 poems. The poems of the frontier fortress and the seclusion poems of the mountains are very popular with people all over the world.

Also an English translation of the original Wang Wei poem, credited to John Thompson at http://www.silkqin.com/ and to Jin Qiuyu 金秋雨 :

The morning rain at Weicheng dampens the light dust,
At the inn, the willows look lush and green once again.
I urge you, dear sir, to finish one more cup of wine, for
Going west through Yangguan there will be no old friends.

Recommend reading the entire notes at the youtube post.

The video itself presents calligraphy of the original poem, artwork portraying scenes from the poem and the more contemporary song derived from it. (Also the Mandarin/English lyrics of the song are in the notes). Likenesses of Wang Wei are presented as well. Beautifully and thoughtfully put together.

Weicheng was near Xi'an, the capital of the Tang Empire. Anxi was deep inside Xinjiang, a Tang Dynasty post there at the time. Probably a long hard trip in the 8th Century. I read one explanation that said back then, one wouldn't expect to see a friend again, who leaves on this trip.

This is the well known musical quqin version of the song: Yang Guan Triassic

Below is a link to another blog which put together a translation or the original Wang Wei poem to English with pinyin which is quite helpful:

王維 送元二使安西 translation: Seeing Off Yuan Er on His Mission to Anxi, by Wang Wei'

https://eastasiastudent.net/china/classical/wang-wei-song-yuan-er/

Anyway, it keeps my mind off things...

on edit: forgot to post the wiki link

Wikipedia has an interesting entry of Wang Wei:

Wang Wei

There are a number of Stephen Owen translations of other Wang Wei poems there.

It's not surprising that Wang Wei was a Chan Buddhist.

What appears clear in hindsight is that the public as a whole (and this includes Republicans and independents, too, as pretty much anyone of age can vote in a primary) was made incapable of recognizing the difference between an actual movement (Bernie, albeit with the millstone of an earlier betrayal weighing it down) and a bunch of astroturfed candidates whose collective raison d'etre was to stop the movement and who had no visible substance otherwise.

Think, for instance, of the people who thought Elizabeth Warren was going to be elected President. What were they thinking? The only reason Warren was allowed to go on for as long as she did, was because her followers served as useful idiots for a campaign that was going to die anyway. Or think, for instance, of Pete Buttigieg's husband, a man with far more in the way of actual substance to his personality than Pete himself, and who apparently isn't afraid to let that little factoid slip.

Oh, sure, after Sanders dropped out we could all say "we knew the system was rigged from four years ago, and, sure, it was." But one has to wonder what the Deep State would have done if it had been confronted with primaries in which Bernie Sanders had received 90% of the vote. It would have been hard to conduct election fraud against such a formation.

But of course no such thing happened. Today we wonder what the Deep State will do against the Russians, the Chinese, and the Iranians.