On Thursday, Donald Trump will walk into the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, shake Xi Jinping's hand, and declare it a great meeting. There will be announcements. There will be numbers — billions of dollars in Chinese purchase commitments, a new bilateral mechanism with an important-sounding name, possibly a joint statement on Iran. Trump will post on Truth Social. Markets will rally briefly. Pundits will argue about who won. None of that will tell you what actually happened. What is actually happening in Beijing this week is something more consequential and more uncomfortable than the summit theatre will reveal: two leaders of two deeply mutually dependent superpowers, both of whom need this meeting to succeed for entirely different reasons, sitting across a table in a world that has already moved past the assumptions that defined their last nine months of negotiations. The Iran war changed the equations. The rare earth gambit changed the power balance. Taiwan is sitting in...
The internet was abuzz about Randy Jackson's twitter account in which he asked his followers for help. Help in casting his ballot "Who should win album of the year?? Gaga, Beyonce, Taylor swift, black eye peas or Dave matthews band!! help me!! c'mon," Jackson tweeted Monday afternoon. For Song of the Year, he later added, "okay its between use somebody and pokerface..... which one!! c'mon!!!" and then wrapped with, "alright guys... thanks for your help... gotta get back to work ... ya all are amazing!!! HOLLA, ONE!" Well Randy has now said he had no idea those tweets were being posted in his account. And has deleted them as soon as he came to know of their existence. They were posted by an assistant and not by him. The Grammy ballots are printed with a rule that reads: "Do not allow your choices to be suggested or directed by other than your own conscience." An original post by Sociolatte