Trump backs No Deal Brexit ahead of state visit to Britain, says Farage should mastermind exit negotiations with Brussels and vows to secure a UK-US trade deal after Britain leaves EU

People seem to forget that Trump is half British, so that surely gives him a good warrant to make comments about British politics.  It also tells us that his offer of a trade-deal with a post-exit Britain is a real one that he would get right behind -- to Britain's benefit.  There are many ways in which trade with America would suit Britain better than trade with the EU

Donald Trump has sensationally urged the British government to involve Nigel Farage in Brexit negotiations with the EU.

The President hailed the Brexit Party leader as a 'very smart person' who could have bolstered Theresa May's botched deal that she failed to push through Parliament.

On the eve of his state visit to the UK, his criticism of the Prime Minister's decision to omit Mr Farage from talks with Brussels will likely put noses out of joint in Downing Street.

'I like Nigel a lot. He has a lot to offer. He is a very smart person. They won't bring him in,' he told the Sunday Times.  'Think how well they would do if they did. They just haven't figured that out yet.' 

Mr Farage struck up a friendship with Mr Trump in 2016 when he endorsed his Presidential campaign and spoke at one of his Mississippi rallies. 

And Mr Trump - a former businessman who prides himself on his ability to strike deals - said that if he were tasked with leading negotiations he would 'walk away' if he could not broker the agreement he wanted.

He also suggested that if Mrs May had brought Mr Farage to the table earlier she may have been able to take a withdrawal agreement back to the Commons which MPs could swallow.

His branding of Mr Farage's exclusion as a 'mistake' by the Prime Minister comes a day after revelations he waded into the Tory leadership contest by seemingly backing Boris Johnson.

And tonight, it emerged ministers and courtiers fear President Trump could embarrass the Queen by publicly backing Brexit in front of her at a Buckingham Palace banquet tomorrow.

Officials involved in the planning of the controversial State visit are braced for Mr Trump to use his banquet address to heap praise on the UK's decision to quit the EU, despite the Royal Family's scrupulous attempts to remain above the political fray.

Palace sources last night insisted the Queen would be 'more than capable' of dealing with such controversy and Foreign Office insiders said they had not broached the subject with Washington.

A Whitehall source said: 'We've learnt that asking them to steer the President off a subject tends to have the opposite effect.'

And a Palace insider added: 'We are not in the business of telling a foreign leader what they can and cannot say for political reasons.'

However, such an intervention by Mr Trump would cause fury, given the lengths to which the Palace has gone to distance the Queen from the divisive debate about Britain's relationship with the EU.

When one newspaper accused the Queen of supporting Brexit in 2016, the Palace made a furious and unprecedented complaint to the Press regulator.

Comments about Brexit would mark a second breach of protocol by the President following his unusual endorsement of Boris Johnson to be the next Prime Minister – before Theresa May has officially resigned.

And after his diplomatic gaffe of backing the current Tory leadership frontrunner, Mr Trump is poised to anger Downing Street further by meeting Brexit Party boss Nigel Farage.

Mr Trump last week described him as a 'friend' and it is thought the pair could be guests at a dinner hosted by the President on Tuesday evening at the official London residence of the US Ambassador. Spokesmen for both men said last night they had yet to receive such an invitation.

In a separate development, Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt was forced to deny that he had pleaded with Mr Trump to endorse his bid for No 10, after the President said in an interview that some of Mr Johnson's leadership rivals had sought his blessing.

A Foreign Office source said that while it was true that Mr Hunt was in regular contact with Mr Trump's son-in-law and adviser Jared Kushner, it was 'categorically untrue' that he had sought an endorsement.

Jeremy Corbyn condemned Mr Trump's intervention in the leadership contest. 'President Trump's attempt to decide who will be Britain's next Prime Minister is an entirely unacceptable interference in our country's democracy,' said the Labour leader, who has snubbed an invite to tomorrow's State banquet.

Mr Trump responded to the Labour leader's decision by saying Mr Corbyn was 'making a mistake' in not attending because as a potential future Prime Minister 'he would want to get along with the United States'.

Commons Speaker John Bercow is also boycotting the banquet.

The Government last night pleaded with the public to welcome Mr Trump to London, arguing that 'the special relationship is generational, not one person'.

Home Office Minister Ben Wallace said: 'The relationships are daily and long-developed relationships. You don't unpick that. The special relationship is not Presidents and Prime Ministers.'

The US president also praised hard Brexiteer Boris Johnson, and it looks as if he will meet with the Foreign Secretary during his visit

Last night, President Trump's intervention sparked calls for the Queen to scrap tomorrow's banquet, to punish him.

Liberal Democrat MP Sir Ed Davey, a former Cabinet Minister now bidding to replace Sir Vince Cable as his party's leader, said: 'The Queen would be perfectly entitled to cancel Trump's dinner, given he's insulted the Duchess of Sussex and interfered in the selection of our next Prime Minister at a time of national crisis. 'We don't need friends like that.'

Sir Ed was referring to interview comments Mr Trump made describing the American-born Duchess of Sussex as 'nasty' over comments she made in 2016 threatening to move to Canada if he became President.

President Trump and his family will be wined and dined by the Queen and other Royals tomorrow night, along with 170 guests picked for their cultural, diplomatic or economic links to the US, in the opulent Buckingham Palace Ballroom

President Trump will be accompanied by First Lady Melania and four of his five children – Donald Jnr, Eric, Ivanka and Tiffany.

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Electoral College Opponents Attempt to Have It Both Ways

Electoral College foes have been trying to get their way in Nevada for a decade. Have they finally succeeded?

Nevada’s state Senate approved National Popular Vote legislation on Tuesday. The measure is now awaiting approval from Gov. Steve Sisolak, a Democrat.

The governor’s signature will add Nevada to a growing movement to ditch the Electoral College. Worse, Maine and Oregon could be close behind: National Popular Vote’s plan has already been approved by both states’ senates.

After years of stagnating, National Popular Vote has obtained support from four states in just one short year—or five states, if you count Nevada.

If Hillary Clinton had won the Electoral College in 2016, would this be happening? So far, National Popular Vote has been approved by blue states—and only blue states. Many Democratic state senators seem driven by Clinton’s loss: Democrats couldn’t win the Electoral College. Now the system must go.

Straightforward change has proven difficult, so they resort to dishonest tricks: In Minnesota, National Popular Vote’s compact was hidden in an elections omnibus bill. That didn’t work, so it was hidden, again, in an appropriations bill.

In many states, committee hearings are scheduled at the last minute, making it difficult for Electoral College defenders to testify. In Maine, National Popular Vote supporters resurrected a bill, despite the “ought not to pass” vote it earned in a legislative committee. Other state legislators and journalists have been invited to junkets in Hawaii, Aruba, or Key West, Florida.

Somehow, Electoral College defenders are never invited to these “educational” sessions. In fact, the fight over America’s presidential election process is beginning to more closely resemble kindergartners bickering on a playground—and the process has about as much integrity.

“That’s not faaaaiiir! I don’t like those rules. I’m better than you. I’m taking my ball and going home.”

Even the structure of the National Popular Vote legislation is dishonest.

The Constitution provides that America’s state-by-state presidential election system cannot be changed without the consent of three-quarters of the states (38).

Nevertheless, National Popular Vote seeks an end run around this process. It wants states to sign a simple interstate compact instead.

By the terms of that agreement, states agree to give their presidential electors to the winner of the national popular vote, regardless of the outcome within a state’s borders. The compact goes into effect when states holding 270 electors (enough to win the presidency) have signed on.

To date, 14 states plus the District of Columbia have agreed to the compact’s terms. Taken together, these states hold 189 electors. Nevada adds six more, bringing the total to 195—just 75 electors short of 270. If Maine (four electors) and Oregon (seven electors) join the cause in the next few weeks, National Popular Vote will be only 64 electors short of its goal.

National Popular Vote’s compact would radically change the presidential election system, even as it pretends to leave America’s current state-based Electoral College untouched.

National Popular Vote must be laughing all the way to the bank. It relies on the state-based aspects of the system when convenient, but then switches to reliance on a national tally when that’s convenient.

Consider what is happening on another front: California legislators are working to prevent President Donald Trump from appearing on their state ballot in 2020.

Assuming Trump is the Republican nominee, how could he possibly win the national popular vote when he will be unable to win even a single vote from the largest state in the Union? With the National Popular Vote Compact in effect, the election will be over before it begins.

California is entitled to omit candidates from its own ballot in America’s state-by-state election process. Indeed, many presidential candidates have been omitted from state ballots in the past, including Abraham Lincoln, Harry S. Truman, and Grover Cleveland. But it’s dishonest, at best, to seize the rights of state sovereignty for one purpose but then to pretend that a national tally can work for another.

Don’t worry. Red states such as Texas are likely to omit the Democratic candidate from their own ballots in self-defense.

And so the race to the bottom begins.

Everything I need to know, I learned in kindergarten. One important rule? You don’t change the rules of the game just because you lost. Instead, you work on your weaknesses, improving so you can win next time.

SOURCE 

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The Left's battle against 'inequality'

The fallback race card.

In his book "Discrimination and Disparities," economist Thomas Sowell notes that a disproportionate percentage of first-born siblings become National Merit scholars compared to siblings born later, presumably because the first-born starts life with no sibling competition for parental attention. This, says Sowell, illustrates the absurdities of expecting equal results when equal results do not even occur within the same family among siblings raised under the same roof with the same parents.

When I was growing up in South Central Los Angeles, one of my closest friends was "Paul." We met in the second grade and attended the same elementary school, middle school and high school. Not only did we take many of the same courses with the same teachers, our houses were identical.

When I first invited Paul to my home, about a half-mile from his, he was astonished. "Whoever built your house," he said, "built mine, too." He was right. When I visited his house, I found that the only difference was that my house had one tiny additional window that his did not. Same schools. Same teacher. Same neighborhood. Same house design.

Paul was a gifted athlete. Name the sport, he excelled. He was a starting pitcher for the baseball team, the starting shooting guard for the basketball team and the starting quarterback for the football team. He picked up a tennis racquet, hit balls against a backboard for a few weeks and then made the tennis team.

His parents were divorced, making Paul was one of the few kids in the neighborhood at that time to come from what my parents called a "broken home." Paul saw his dad infrequently. He rarely spoke about him. When he did, it was not positive.

Paul had a problem with anger. For the smallest offense, he could tell someone off, friend or foe, sometimes even his basketball coach. One time, after Paul came late to practice again, his basketball coach threatened to bench him the following game. Paul barked back, "Either I play or we lose." He played. They won.

When the coaches from major colleges came to see Paul play basketball, his best sport, they were impressed. But then they asked the high school coach about Paul's character, whether he was "coachable." Paul's coach, concerned about maintaining his reputation with college coaches, told the truth. Paul, he said, was a "coach killer." Bye-bye, Notre Dame. Bye-bye, Duke. Bye-bye, UCLA.

Paul ended up going to a small local college, not known for basketball. Did he double down, get better in hopes of transferring to a powerhouse basketball school? Hardly. Paul sulked, blamed racism and spent his first year of college playing basketball halfheartedly — that is, when he wasn't smoking dope and opining on "the oppression of the black man in America."

I went off to college in the East. When I returned during the summer, I visited Paul, who by then had changed his name to "Jamal" to distance himself from the "slave" religion of Christianity. When I informed him that Arab slavers took more blacks out of Africa and transported them to the Middle East and to South America than Europeans slavers took out of Africa and transported to North America, he told me to stop reading "the white man's history." He insisted "racism" had wrecked his basketball career, a career he argued that, but for the racism he encountered, was destined for the NBA. "Paul," I said, "you and I lived in the same neighborhood, in houses designed by the same builder, went to the same schools, took the same classes, had the same teachers. Why didn't 'racism' stop me?"

When I was in law school in Michigan, I visited my aunt who lived in a suburb of Detroit. During one visit, a friend of hers stopped by. He was a black man, about 40 years old. He sat near my aunt and me as we discussed my law school classes. Suddenly, the man began to cry. I could not imagine what I'd said that could've caused such a reaction. "Sorry," I said, "did I say something to offend you?" He gathered himself. "No," he said. "I wanted to go to law school and become a lawyer. But I got sidetracked with 'jackassery,' hung around with a bunch of knuckleheads and just wasted my time."

It doesn't have to be like this. My father always told my brothers and me the following: "Hard work wins." "You get out of life what you put into it." "You cannot control the outcome, but you are 100% in control of the effort." And "before you complain about what somebody did to you, go to the nearest mirror and say to yourself, 'What could I have done to change the outcome?'"

And finally, my dad said: "No matter how good you are, bad things will happen. How you respond to those bad things will tell your mother and me whether or not we raised a man."

SOURCE 

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China not as great a threat on rare earths as they’d like you to think

“Don’t say we didn’t warn you!”  That was a People’s Daily commentary threatening that China will cut the U.S. off from rare earth minerals used to make high tech components for computers, smart phones and military weapons systems.

The People’s Daily is an official newspaper for Central Committee of the Communist Party of China and the largest newspaper group in the nation, and the threat comes as U.S. and Chinese trade officials attempt to find a way forward from their current impasse in negotiations.

The commentary was headlined “United States, don’t underestimate China’s ability to strike back” and spoke of America’s “uncomfortable” reliance on rare earth minerals from China.

That part is at least true. We do rely on rare earths from China (and elsewhere). The U.S. consumed about 9,500 metric tons of rare earths in 2018, according to the U.S. Geological Survey, and we are 100 percent reliant on imports of rare earth metals.

Most of it, 80 percent, does come from China.

But left out of the analysis is that China has been losing global market share since its high-water mark of 95 percent of global production in 2010, down to 80 percent global market share now, mostly thanks to Australia ramping up production, which is now the number two producer in the world at 20,000 metric tons in 2018. Australia also has all of the elements we would be looking for, according to Geoscience Australia.

According to the U.S. Geological Survey, “The estimated value of rare-earth compounds and metals imported by the United States in 2018 was $160 million, an increase from $137 million in 2017.”

These numbers do not account for rare earths used in manufacturing in China and then exported. But what’s China going to do, stop making computers and exporting them?

With all of that context, it does not seem like China blocking exports of rare earths may be much of a threat. Certainly not worthy of the hysteria we’re seeing.

What the U.S. has lacked is a domestic source. But that is changing. We have about 1.4 million metric tons of reserves in the U.S., and after years of not mining rare earths, in 2018 the U.S. ramped up production to 15,000 tons of compounds according to the U.S. Geological Survey. Barrett reports the Mountain Pass site has reopened in California’s San Bernardino County, and is currently exporting to China for processing but, as Barrett happily notes, MP Minerals, the company that owns it, “says it will re-open the mothballed processing facilities at Mountain Pass next year so that the mine can extract rare earth metals at home.”

SOURCE 

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