SHORT TAKES ON THE DRIFTING WRECKAGE – OVERNIGHT:

WHAT IS THIS ABOUT? – FROM FOX:   Vice President Kamala Harris has another big trip ahead – but it won't be a return visit to the U.S.-Mexico border.  Instead, Harris next month will travel across the Pacific, to Vietnam and Singapore, amid U.S. tensions with China.  Her goal is to "strengthen relationships and expand economic support," chief spokeswoman Symone Sanders said in a statement.  Harris will be the first sitting vice president to visit Vietnam.  The trip is also an effort to rally support against China’s growing economic ascendency, according to Reuters.  The trip comes against the domestic backdrop of the continuing crisis at the U.S. southern border. Back in March, President Biden tasked Harris with studying the root causes of the crisis.  Over subsequent weeks, Republicans and even some Democrats urged Harris to visit border towns in the U.S., in order to get a first-hand impression of how the migrant crisis was affecting those communities, but Harris resisted. Then in late June, 94 days after her appointment from Biden, Harris flew to El Paso, Texas, for a brief visit – before flying on to Los Angeles, where she owns a home.   I'm sure the people of Vietnam and Singapore can't wait.  I hope Kami knows where those countries are.

THEY FINALLY WOKE UP – FROM FOX BUSINESS:   The Biden administration announced new sanctions on Friday against Cuba's national revolutionary police and its top two officials as the U.S. looks to increase pressure on the communist government following this month's protests on the island.  The Police Nacional Revolcionaria and the agency's director and deputy director, Oscar Callejas Valcarce and Eddie Sierra Arias, were targeted in the latest sanctions announced by the Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control. The police are part of Cuba's interior ministry, which was already the subject of a blanket designation by the Trump administration back in January.  "We hear the cries of freedom coming from the island. The United States is taking concerted action to bolster the cause of the Cuban people," President Joe Biden said at the start of a White House meeting with Cuban Americans not long after Treasury announced the sanctions.  Too little, too late.  Biden won't do much because the hard left in his party is still loyal to Fidel.  But he has to throw out a token to avoid completely alienating Cuban-Americans.  I doubt if they'll be impressed.

July 30, 2021