Brexit

LONDON — To the recorded peals of Big Ben and the gentle fluttering of Union Jacks, Britain bade farewell to the European Union at 11 p.m. on Friday, severing ties to the world’s largest trading bloc after nearly half a century and embarking on an uncertain future as a midsize economy off the coast of Europe.

For Britain, having transitioned in the postwar era from a globe-girdling empire to a reluctant member of the European project, it was yet another epoch-making departure.

It is a departure that will upend settled relations in virtually all areas of society, the economy and security matters, while confronting Britain with new questions of national identity. Three and a half years after the former prime minister, Theresa May, proclaimed that “Brexit means the British government will finally have to decide precisely what that means.

Britain must still negotiate its future trade relations with the European Union, a thorny process that could take through the end of the year, or longer.

On Friday, the departure elicited both hope and trepidation from Britons. Many simply were relieved that the bitter and divisive debate over Brexit is over.

“This is the moment when the dawn breaks, and the curtain goes up on a new act in our great national drama,” said Prime Minister Boris Johnson, in an address to the nation on Friday night that he also posted on his Twitter account. Brexit, he said, was a chance to “spread hope and opportunity to every part of the U.K.”

Mr. Johnson, whose vow to “Get Brexit Done” won him a commanding majority in elections last month, vowed to knit together a country that had been split geographically and generationally by the Brexit debate. Even the future of the United Kingdom now seemed uncertain, with Scotland threatening to renew its drive for independence and Northern Ireland musing about unification with Ireland.

Trump's chances for re-election

Amid the avalanche of news about President Trump’s impeachment in recent days, I called Allan Lichtman, the American University political historian who has correctly predicted virtually every U.S. presidential election since 1984. I wanted to hear his forecasts about the impeachment, and about the November elections.

In 2017, Lichtman accurately predicted that Trump would be impeached. Before the 2016 elections, he correctly forecast Trump’s victory, when the polls were saying that Hillary Clinton would win.

Lichtman told me that he has not yet made his final prediction for the 2020 elections, but he offered some valuable clues. He said Trump will be acquitted by the Republican majority in the Senate — no surprise here — but added that the impeachment may cost him dearly in the November elections.

“The impeachment trial matters a great deal,” he said. “The American people are going to make up their own minds about whether there has been a real fair trial, and whether or not Trump has abused his power,” and their conclusions may not help Trump in November, he added.

Playing the devil’s advocate, I asked Lichtman about the opposite scenario: that Trump will be acquitted thanks to the Republican Senate majority, as expected, and that he will then go on the offensive and say, “You see, I told you, this entire trial was a witch hunt.”

Lichtman responded that most Americans are not likely to buy that argument. Already before the impeachment trial, 51 percent of Americans said they wanted Trump to be tried and removed from office, according to a CNN poll. Things are likely to only get worse for Trump as the trial goes on, he said.

Surprisingly, the strength of the U.S. economy will not be enough for Trump to be re-elected, Lichtman said. The professor bases his predictions on a 13-keys forecasting model he developed, in which a sitting president wins if he has fewer than six negative keys going against him.

“Right now, Trump is down in about four or five keys,” such the landslide Democratic victory in the 2018 mid-terms, he said. “Therefore, it would take one more key to count him out.”

The economy is only one of many predictors, he said. If it had been the most important one, Hillary Clinton would have won in 2016, because she had a very strong economy in her favor, he said.

What the Democrats need to win in November is a charismatic candidate, Lichtman said.

“The obsession with the ideology of the Democratic candidate is totally misleading. There is no relationship between ideology or issues in the outcome of elections,” he said. He cited the cases of proven, experienced candidates like Mike Dukakis in 1988, Al Gore in 2000, John Kerry in 2004, and Hillary Clinton in 2016, all of whom lost their elections.

“The only thing that matters, according to my keys, is if you get an inspirational Democrat, a charismatic figure like John F. Kennedy, or Barack Obama,” Lichtman said.

Right now, Lichtman doesn’t see any charismatic candidate among the current Democratic hopefuls. But one could emerge during the upcoming debates, or you could have a surprise candidacy down the road, “like Michelle Obama,” he added.

I agree with most of Lichtman’s views, especially with his tacit hint that the former first lady would be a formidable Democratic candidate if she joined the race. (Please, Michelle, jump in!)

But I’m not convinced that Trump’s impeachment trial will be a big factor in November. On the contrary, I’m afraid that — even if most Americans realize that Trump prevented key witnesses from testifying, most likely because he has something to hide — all of this may be long forgotten before the election.

Trump is a master of mass distraction and will surely come up with a side scandal, or a war, or something else to drive attention away from his record of blatant lies, abuses of power, cruelty against immigrant children, failure to show his tax returns, climate-change denials, opposition to gun-safety laws, and many other sins.

Yes, impeachment is important, but if the Democrats focus on it too much in the coming months, they will be outsmarted.

Space Force logo

President Trump unveiled the new U.S. Space Force logo on Friday, and the Internet didn’t take kindly to it.

The design for the newly minted sixth branch of the military looked an awful lot like the Starfleet Command insignia from the Star Trek series and movies, depicting a delta and a globe encircled by a rocket and set against a backdrop of stars. Minutes after Trump tweeted out the image, a chorus of observers rushed in to ridicule the similarities.

It was an “obvious Star Trek knockoff,” one user wrote. “Boldly going where we’ve gone before,” quipped another. Even actor George Takei, who played Hikaru Sulu in the original series, joked that the franchise was “expecting some royalties from this.”

But the new logo is really just a riff on the original U.S. Air Force Space Command emblem, which dates back decades. And among the people to point that out was Michael Okuda, a longtime Star Trek graphic designer who in the 1990s created the Starfleet Command logo for Paramount, which itself was derived from older designs.

“The arrowhead in the U.S. Space Force logo appears to be borrowed from the U.S. Air Force Space Command emblem, which has been in use since the 1980s,” Okuda, who has also designed emblems for NASA, wrote on Facebook.

“Arrowheads and swooshes and orbits and stars and planets have been used in space emblems long before either of these emblems,” he wrote. “For whatever it’s worth — and I do not own the intellectual property rights in most of my Star Trek work — I’m not offended by the similarities, nor would I accuse the Space Force of plagiarism. I’m just amused. It ain’t that serious.”

gun crime in Japan

Japan has one of the lowest rates of gun crime in the world. In 2014 there were just six gun deaths, compared to 33,599 in the US. What is the secret?

If you want to buy a gun in Japan you need patience and determination. You have to attend an all-day class, take a written exam and pass a shooting-range test with a mark of at least 95 percent.

There are also mental health and drugs tests. Your criminal record is checked and police look for links to extremist groups. Then they check your relatives too - and even your work colleagues. And as well as having the power to deny gun licences, police also have sweeping powers to search and seize weapons.

That's not all. Handguns are banned outright. Only shotguns and air rifles are allowed.

The law restricts the number of gun shops. In most of Japan's 40 or so prefectures there can be no more than three, and you can only buy fresh cartridges by returning the spent cartridges you bought on your last visit.

Police must be notified where the gun and the ammunition are stored - and they must be stored separately under lock and key. Police will also inspect guns once a year. And after three years your licence runs out, at which point you have to attend the course and pass the tests again.

This helps explain why mass shootings in Japan are extremely rare. When mass killings occur, the killer most often wields a knife.

Japanese police officers rarely use guns and put much greater emphasis on martial arts - all are expected to become a black belt in judo. They spend more time practising kendo (fighting with bamboo swords) than learning how to use firearms.

"The response to violence is never violence, it's always to de-escalate it. Only six shots were fired by Japanese police nationwide [in 2015]," says journalist Anthony Berteaux. "What most Japanese police will do is get huge futons and essentially roll up a person who is being violent or drunk into a little burrito and carry them back to the station to calm them down."

U.S. vs. Iran

1/13/20 - Trump retweets photoshop of Pelosi and Schumer
1/9/20 - House votes to stop Trump from further military action
1/8/20 - Iran fires missles at two bases in Iraq
1/6/20 - Trump contradicts Pompeo on targeting cultural sites (which is a war crime)
1/3/20 - U.S. kills Iran’s most powerful general in Baghdad airstrike

Augie for City Council

Comedian Augie Tulba is expected to formally announce at a press conference today his candidacy for the Honolulu City Council District 9 seat, which runs from Mililani to Ewa Beach.

This would be the 51-year-old Tulba’s first attempt at elected office, but he has previously worked in the administrations of former Hawaii County Mayor Billy Kenoi and former Lt. Gov. Shan Tsutsui.

Tulba, a comedian for 28 years, grew up in Kamehameha IV housing in Kalihi Valley. He and his family have lived in Ewa Beach for two decades.

Austrian conservative leader strikes a deal with leftist party

In a surprise move, the conservative People's Party leader announced a deal with the leftist Green Party to form a coalition government more than three months after both factions won big in September's snap parliamentary elections. Kurz, 33, will be among the world's youngest leaders as he resumes the Austrian chancellorship for a second term.

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Sebastian Kurz, leader of the Austrian People's Party, will resume the chancellorship after ironing out a deal on New Year's Day with Werner Kogler of the Greens, bringing the party into national government for the first time.

Speaking at an event outlining the details of the agreement Thursday, Kurz said it was "the best of both worlds" and allowed both parties to keep their campaign pledges, Reuters reported.

For the conservatives, those pledges included a continuation of their hard-line immigration stance and fight against "political Islam," along with lower taxes, while the Greens had promised to usher in environmental measures and greater government transparency.

The deal must still be approved by the Greens' decision-making body, the Federal Council, on Saturday, according to Reuters. And while it is expected to pass, the immigration and security measures proposed by Kurz's conservatives are likely to be an uncomfortable compromise for the Greens. They are the junior partner in the pact.