We are a few days away from our exciting adventure to the Orient.  One stop will be Taiwan.  However, Japan-China relations just deteriorated. Japan's first female Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi met with Chinese President Xi Jinping on 31October2025.  All went well. But on November 7, Takaichi veered from Japan's policy of " strategic ambiguity " about Taiwan, suggesting that an attack on Taiwan could amount to a "survival-threatening situation" that would permit Japan to exercise collective self-defense. This drew the ire of China, which has maintained that Taiwan is part of China, and that they will someday, by force, if necessary, regain total control,  as was done with Hong Kong.  We also will visit that city, twice on this trip. Takaichi refused to retract her remarks. Usually, most of what happens is just tense talk, but this time, China urged their citizens to hold off on any trip to Japan this year. If the Chinese take this seriously, Japan will be si...

But first, the House passed President Donald Trump's Big, Beautiful Bill by one vote.  The Senate will debate and adjust the details, and weeks from now, something to lower taxes for the rich and lower lifestyles for the poor will ultimately pass.  Republicans do run the White House, Congress, country and maybe world.   Democrats are powerless to do much, and worse, there is nothing they can do to prevent Donald Trump from becoming a dictator, the story of this posting today. The World Health Organization ( WHO ) this week adopted a  Pandemic Agreement  to make the world more equitable and safer from future pandemics. It took three years to get to this stage. Member nations will share information about the coming pandemic, and will provide 20% of vaccines to WHO.  The logic is that the entire world will need to prevent the advance of virus. It is no great surprise that the USA is not participating.  We are great, getting greater, and don't need to...

Status of the two prominent wars: Peace on the Gaza Strip.  How will it be possible for any kind of treaty, for the goal of Israel and the U.S. is to eliminate the Hamas from this site, with they being the other participant in the negotiations?  At least President Trump's off the wall solution for the USA to gain control is one possible solution for a longer peace.  What he did was set the terms so ridiculously against the Hamas, that some other Middle East country might be able present a more logical pathway to a longer peace. On the Ukraine War, with President Trump so anti-Ukraine (he said Ukraine started the war and Zelensky is a dictator, while blackmailing the country to give us their rare minerals or else), no doubt Russia will get what it will want for peace.  Meaning holding on to winning territory and preventing Ukraine from joining NATO.  Trump is also upset at many NATO nations not allocating sufficient funds to the Organization, and in this he is ri...

On Thursday, a friend mentioned that the following list should have indicated cases, not deaths.  Thus, again: From  WHO , most covid (not deaths) cases: #1      USA  103,436,829 #2      China  99,238,850 #3      India  44,997,710 #4      France  38,997,490 #5      Germany  38,437,756 #6      Brazil  37,717,062 #7      S. Korea  34,571,873 #8      Japan  33,803,572 #9      Italy  25,977,012 #10    UK  24,704,113 Then I took a closer look at the data, and said to myself, there is no way that the USA had more covid cases than China.  For example, at the end of December 2022  CNN  reported 250 million in infections, just that month , which would be double the total of the U.S. for the entirety of the pandemic.  More so,  The Guardian  reported in January of t...