Politics

Authored by James Rickards via The Daily Reckoning,

Three-player games are easy to model - it’s always two against one. The art of geopolitics and examining hegemony powers in such situations is to be part of a duo that pressures the remaining player, or, at a minimum, keep the other two players separated.

This is basic balance-of-power politics as practiced since the rise of Napoleon (1799), with antecedents in the Treaty of Westphalia (1648), and Machiavelli’s The Prince (1532).

Admiral Scott Swift, Commander of the US Navy’s Pacific Fleet, said he would obey a hypothetical order to launch a nuclear strike against China if the president chose to give it. As AP reports, the remarks follow the director of the CIA’s recent assessment that Beijing poses a major threat to the US in the long run.

In a rare interview this week, CIA Director Mike Pompeo asserted that China is more of a long-term threat to US national security than any other world power, including Russia.

Two days after the House passed bipartisan legislation in a 419-3 vote codifying and imposing further sanctions against Russia, Iran and North Korea and preventing the president from acting unilaterally to remove certain sanctions on Russia, moments ago the Senate also overwhelmingly approved the measure in a 98-2 vote.  Only Senators Rand Paul and Bernie Sanders voting no. The bill will now head to the White House where it will be either signed into law by the president or vetoed, setting up a potential showdown with the White House over Russia.

Turns out, Robert “Kid Rock” Ritchie’s “campaign announcement” earlier this month was a “marketing stunt” meant to capitalize on Ritchie's name being floated as a possible contender to face off against Democratic incumbent Debbie Stabenow in the 2018 midterms.

But after a poll from Delphi Analytica showed Michigan voters preferred Ritchie to Stabenow by four percentage points, the entertainer and longtime conservative says he’s seriously considering a run, according to Fox News.

Authored by Scott Rasmussen via Ballotpedia.org,

If the individual mandate were to be repealed and Americans were no longer required to purchase the Obamacare-mandated levels of health insurance coverage, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) believes that 15 million Americans would no longer purchase such coverage.

Some, including Jonathan Gruber, believe that the CBO is overestimating the impact of repealing the mandate. Gruber was one of the architects of the healthcare law.