China Syndrome: Hong Kong International Airport cancelled all departing flights today as thousands of anti-government protesters occupied the terminal and disrupted operations. Travelers have been told not to even go to the airport, which is one of the world’s busiest airline hubs.

  Arriving flights are still being allowed to land.

  Anti-government protests that have been continuing for weeks were further stirred yesterday when the police fired tear gas and non-lethal ammunition at close range. The police cleared out occupied rail stations with force.

  So far by Chinese standards the government response has been mild, but the rhetoric is becoming more threatening. Yang Guang, a spokesman for the Hong Kong and Macau Affairs Office, said at a press briefing, “Hong Kong’s radical demonstrators have repeatedly used extremely dangerous tools to attack police officers, which already constitutes a serious violent crime, and also shows the first signs of terrorism emerging.” 

  There’s the emerging excuse for a serious crackdown.

Arms and the Man:Guns just might overtake healthcare as the issue for the 2020 Presidential election. In an opinion piece published in The NY Times, Democratic candidate Joe Biden promises that as President he’ll get a ban on assault weapons and high capacity magazines and pair it with a gun buyback program. “We have to get these weapons of war off our streets,” Biden wrote.

  The former Vice President was one of the engineers of the 1994 assault weapons ban that Republicans later allowed to expire.

  Sen. Elizabeth Warren, the candidate who always has a plan, said she has a plan that could reduce firearm deaths by 80 percent. She says she would expand background checks and age restrictions while investigating the NRA for alleged “corrupt business practices.”

  Texan Beto O’Rourke favors a national gun licensing law.

  Following the recent mass murders in Dayton and El Paso, and the many that came before them, Biden wrote, “If we cannot rise to meet this moment, it won’t just be a political failure. It will be a moral one. It will mean that we accept the next inevitable tragedy. That we are desensitized to children running from schools and bodies littering parking lots, that our outpouring of thoughts and prayers will grow increasingly hollow.”

The Man and His Madam:The Jeffrey Epstein sex trafficking case doesn’t die with him so long as the woman described as his girlfriend and procurer is still around. Ghislaine Maxwell, according to her accusers, was Epstein’s girlfriend, soul mate, and the person who helped him hook up with three teenage girls a day.

  Girls and young women identified as victims have told investigators that  Maxwell was the coordinator of Epstein’s sex-trafficking operation.

  Maxwell, a jet-setter born in Paris, is bound to be the next target in the Epstein case — if they can find her. She’s disappeared. Maxwell sold her Manhattan townhouse in 2016 and appears to have slipped out of the country. She’s not expected to return of her own free will. 

Casualties of War:President Trump’s trade war with China increasingly threatens to trip the US economy into recession, according to a report released by the investment firm Goldman Sachs.

  In a message to clients, Goldman said a trade deal between the US and China is no longer expected before the 2020 presidential election, putting a drag on the economy. Goldman’s chief US economist Jan Hatziussaid in the note, “Overall, we have increased our estimate of the growth impact of the trade war.” 

  What that means is that he expects companies to dial back on investment, hiring, and production.In other words, a recession.

The News Roundup:An early morning fire in an Erie, Pennsylvania daycare center yesterday killed five children, four of them siblings. There was one smoke alarm in the attic of the house and it might not have been working.  — Serena Williams said severe back spasms forced her to withdraw in the first set of the Rogers Cup final after falling behind by 3-1 to the Canadian teenager Bianca Andreescu, who instantly became the first Canadian in 50 years to win the event. — The Washington Postreports that no one in the Metropolitan Correctional Center in New York had checked on accused sex-trafficker Jeffrey Epstein for several hours before he was found dead, despite a previous suicide attempt.

Flying Pretzel: US gymnast Simone Biles, one of the best ever, last night in Kansas City, Missouri landed an historic triple-double flip to win the US Gymnastics Championships. The move is a double somersault combined with a triple twist. Don’t try this at home.

By the Numbers:The Washington Post’s “Fact Checker” column reports that as of August 5^th,  his 928th day in office,  President Trump has made 12,019 false or misleading claims. The paper reports that about 20 percent of Trump’s lies are about immigration and his southern border wall. Trump has been claiming his wall is being built even though most of the work being done is repair and strengthening of existing barriers. 

  Among Trump’s most repeated lies are that the economy is the best in history — it’s not — and that he passed the biggest tax cut in history — he didn’t.

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