2 - CFL QUIET: Watch for next week's Out Of The Tunnel column in which we'll rate the Top 25 Remaining Free Agents in the CFL. Will Weston Dressler and Rob Bagg be on the list? Who will be #1? Check back here Monday to find out. There are rumblings the Riders should - or could - re-sign Weston Dressler at age 33 but a nagging feeling in my gut tells me the new O'Day/Dickenson regime would prefer to look forward and not back. Can you blame them? This season still feels like a rebuild to me. Chris Jones got a pass from the fans in Year 1 and so should these guys.
3 - COMBINING: The CFL's Regional Combines are being staged this week and that's where you'll find the Roughriders braintrust. There is little fanfare. The events are a necessary evil - I guess - but they still seem so academic. For instance, have you ever heard TSN's Glen Suitor or Duane Forde say on a CFL broadcast, "Oh, and he put up __ bench press reps and his shuttle cone time was ___ at the combine!" Not that I can recall. The term Underwear Olympics really does fit.
4 - STEAK, BOOZE AND DULL DREAD: The NFL has made their combine a Made-For-TV event much like TSN did with the World Juniors but it would be nearly impossible for the CFL to do the same. There just doesn't seem to be the interest. Is the CFL combine a booze and tail fest like the NFL's as was reported by ESPN? I don't know. I've never seen that at the Canadian events, but I also don't run into those circles anymore.
6 - S.J. PLAYOFFS: The SJHL created a helluva brand with their "Survivor Series" which dates back 20 years. Everybody knows it's a Best-of-3 series to advance to the Final 8. This year, Flin Flon swept Weyburn in one and Yorkton downed Notre Dame in the other. The Quarterfinals are now set and they are: Humboldt vs Estevan, Nipawin vs Yorkton, Melfort vs Kindersley and Battlefords vs Flin Flon. Get out to a nearby rink and check it out! I think we're going to be headed to Humboldt next week to check out some live action.
7 - BACK IN THE BOOTH: Yikes. When I climbed the ladder into the broadcast booth at Duncan McNeill Arena in Wilcox to call Game 2 of the Hounds-Terriers on HockeyTV, it had been 28 years since I'd been on the mic for an SJHL game. The last was 1991 on CJVR as I pinch-hit for the Mustangs-Hounds. In truth, the last time I called a game there was 2001 for a preseason game between the Pats and Wheat Kings. Brandon had a bruising rookie named Dustin Byfuglien whose helmet sat up on the crown of his head because it wasn't big enough. I pronounced his name "Bye-FOOL-Yen", which apparently is the correct way to say it.
8 - THE ROLLER COASTER: It's difficult to find the best word to describe tonight's Pats-Broncos WHL encounter in the Brandt Centre. Ironic? Too bad? These two iconic clubs will miss the playoffs after this weekend but their playoff series and Memorial Cup clashes the past few years have been absolute wars. They made memories that will last forever! Adam Brooks, Connor Hobbs, Tyler Brown, Glenn Gawdin, Tyler Steenbergen, Stuart Skinner, etc. Such is life in junior hockey. Don't cry because it's over. Smile because it happened.
9 - GOIN' TO WINNIPEG: Would you pay $50 to hear Paul LaPolice speak on Leadership and Teamwork? The Bombers Offensive Coordinator will be one of the keynote speakers at our Champion Your Own Success conference at the Clarion Hotel & Suites this Saturday in Winnipeg. We'll also cover Mental Strength, Mental Health & Substance Abuse Prevention and Nutrition. The whole event is specifically designed for young athletes and their families and it's only $50 per head. DM me for details!
10 - RANDOM THOUGHTS: Why the love for the S.J.? Because 2 years ago they came to me and said "Will you help us?" It's been a fantastic partnership and I'm thrilled to say I'll be calling selected playoff games on TV later this spring. But that's for them to announce where and when. ... Loving the time change! This Is Us is now on an hour earlier. ... The newspaper business is dying but the news business is not. That's why this blog is cleaning up. (For instance, you're here.). ... March Madness: The time when Canadian white men pretend they've been following NCAA basketball all year long. ... A lot of my days are filled with watching A Football Life marathons on NFL Network. If someone ever produced a CFL version, they'd have a grand slam on their hands. Kevin Glenn truly is the CFL's Dan Marino. ... That's all for now. See you at the rink!
Y'er welcome,
RP
@rodpedersen
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- Ships gather off the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, California as a sailboat makes it way past them in this aerial photo taken February 6, 2015. The loading and unloading of cargo freighters has been suspended at all 29 U.S. West Coast ports this weekend because of chronic slowdowns on the docks that shippers and terminal operators have blamed on the dockworkers' union, the companies said Friday. Picture taken February 6, 2015 REUTERS/Bob Riha Jr To wage the hot peace of the twenty-first century against a newly expansionist Communist China, the United States must develop another tariff-free menu of options. James Roberts April 19, 2018 TweetShareShare Printer-friendly version The wise American policy architects of the Cold War who successfully walled-in the expansionist Communist Soviet Union behind its Iron Curtain didn’t need any tariffs in their tool kit. The only thing the USSR exported in any quantity was tyranny. Like their other products, it was an inferior good—dangerous and destabilizing. To maintain and promote a stable and prosperous postwar world, America contained and pushed back against Moscow by leading the West in building and maintaining a robust international institutional infrastructure for policy coordination and dispute resolution. To wage the hot peace of the twenty-first century against a newly expansionist Communist China, however, the United States must develop another tariff-free menu of options for an increasingly interconnected world that is extremely allergic to trade wars. The mid-twentieth century containment strategy should be the Trump administration’s model. Communism in practice has always failed. To stay in power amid the inevitable economic ruination it produces, the Soviet Union’s fascistic leaders grabbed land from neighboring territories and projected power at key geostrategic points around the globe. The goal was to ensure cheap imports of food and commodities from vanquished neighbors and to stoke Russian nationalism at home and fear among their foreign enemies. Chinese products are far superior to Soviet ones, but only because a generation of pragmatic leaders in Beijing were willing to honor the principles of Marxist-Leninism in the breach—averting their eyes from the animal spirits of the efficient private actors who drove the economy and tolerating enormous corruption to allow them to use state assets to turn a profit. Beijing has also had to prop up heavily indebted and inefficient—but job-creating—state-owned enterprises. The social costs of the Chinese regime’s hypocrisy are growing, as resentment of massive corruption and waste builds and undermines its legitimacy. Let’s not kid ourselves, then. Behind the placid and confident façade of wannabe Chinese president-for-life Xi Jinping lurks a Communist Party of China that is increasingly anxious, bedeviled by the same worries that confronted first Stalin and now Putin. The self-contradictory hybrid of mutually exclusive governing philosophies—capitalism in practice but communism in theory—is simply not tenable in the long term. But Xi and his large cohort of party faithful want to cling to their power and ill-gotten gains, so they have doubled down on communism, re-branding it as “Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era.” The social contract that Emperor Xi struck this year with his subjects is pretty simple: in exchange for their consent to his unlimited hold on authoritarian power, they get “China 2025,” which is a blueprint for China to become a global leader in the cutting-edge technologies that will define future American economic and military power (e.g. aircraft fabrication, robotics, semiconductors, electric vehicles, biotechnology, artificial intelligence and quantum computing). The promise of China 2025 slakes the Chinese people’s historic appetite for international prestige. But to make good on that promise, Beijing must continue doing what it has done for years: engage in cyber-theft of intellectual property and unfair trade and investment practices that force U.S. companies to transfer their proprietary technology. President Trump has diagnosed this threat correctly. But he must recalibrate his policy response so that it inflicts punishment on China’s leadership and without penalizing American workers, farmers, and consumers. Instead of implementing his initial response—a slew of counterproductive and economically destructive tariffs—the president should consider pursuing a tariff-free containment strategy. For example, the White House could wage an aggressive campaign at the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, the global regional development banks (e.g. the Asian and Inter-American Development Banks), and other international financial institutions to penalize unfair Chinese practices. This could begin with President Trump directing U.S. Executive Director-designate Mark Rosen to commission IMF-led audits of the one-sided, nontransparent loans China has made to strategically located developing countries as part of its “Belt & Road Initiative.” Critics of BRI argue persuasively that these loans are structured to set those countries up to fail, which will allow the Chinese to declare them in default and move in to take ownership of vital assets such as ports, railroads, and airports. The United States should then use its power to impose loan conditionality on any unrepentant BRI beneficiary countries that refuse to renegotiate their BRI loans if IMF audits expose their flaws. America should also work with democratic, like-minded, and free-market member countries of the World Trade Organization that benefit from robust rule of law to use their own court systems to impose and enforce their own, tougher and quicker sanctions on China when the WTO finds China guilty of engaging in unfair and illegal trade practices. These steps would be in addition to some excellent actions already taken by the White House and Congress, including more aggressive challenges of Chinese intellectual property practices under the WTO’s Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights and through the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS). Despite’s Xi’s outward bravado, China has serious problems. It would be quite vulnerable to these pressure tactics. And while this tariff-free menu might cause indigestion in Beijing, it would improve the health of the U.S. economy and avoid the risks it currently faces from a trade war. James M. Roberts is research fellow for economic freedom and growth in The Heritage Foundation’s Center for International Trade and Economics.
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