United States

The following article by David Haggith was published first on The Great Recession Blog: 

What could be smellier and more tempting bait to get ISIS to launch a chemical-weapon attack than a US guarantee that “any” chemical weapon attack in Syria will be automatically blamed on Assad’s regime and will automatically result in the US attacking Assad and all of ISIS’s other enemies?

Today the White House offered ISIS that ironclad guarantee.

White House issues preemptive warning to Syria on chemical attack

Via The Daily Bell

Finally, Congress is doing something about a serious issue on everyone’s mind; they have introduced a bill to ban dog and cat meat from being sold and eaten in the United States.

But wait, isn’t this cultural insensitivity towards those from countries who regularly eat dogs and cats?

Two weeks after Trump's ominous "China "tried and failed" to contain North Korea tweet, the US president appears to be getting closer to that default condition in US-China relations which many had anticipated from day one: a not particularly cooperative one. Here's Reuters:

The IMF has cut its US GDP forecast to 2.1% in 2017 from 2.3% projected in April and to 2.1% for 2018 from 2.5% previously, it said in a statement following its U.S. Article IV Consultation, and saying it could no longer assume the Trump administration will be able to deliver pledged tax cuts and higher infrastructure spending. Specifically, in giving up on the Trump agenda, the fund said "we have removed the assumed fiscal stimulus from our forecast."

Liberty Blitzkrieg's Mike Krieger notes that part of Trump’s appeal to many of his voters was, at least ostensibly, the idea that he would employ a less hawkish/neocon foreign policy than his opponent Hillary “We Came, We Saw, He Died” Clinton.

While it’s still too early to decisively say that Trump will usher in yet another foreign policy disaster for these United States and the world, it’s certainly not looking good.