Wednesday, November 29, 2017

Smack on Auto Advice. N Korea Which Way Do We Go? Trump's Version of Truman's Give "Em Hell. Rants and Palestinian Self-Misery.




I thought John was smack on about  his auto advice.
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Is all of America within N Korea's range or is Kim bluffing?   Can any president run the risk?  Will Kim now stop launching missiles and hope we forget about his enhanced capabilities as other presidents have done before?

As I have written previously, war is closer than ever before unless The State Department can convince Trump more negotiations and diplomacy are in order in the confused hope N Korea will come to the table and negotiate away their nuclear ability.

Even were Kim and Iran to give their word it would not be worth the paper on which it was written because, like trained Russians, lying is simply  the way one acts. Russians do not give lying a second thought.  It is part of the culture and strategy. They feel no guilt nor shame .(See 1 and 1a below.)

Meanwhile, I listened to Trump today while he was visiting the state of Missouri. He was in his 100% campaign Trump mode and though he was covering the waterfront and touching all the bases he makes it hard to focus on the meaty part of his message because he is so full of himself, repetitive and really engages in expressing himself in a manner that is mostly self-defeating.

I am more than willing to give him room and license to be who he is because I know he is who he is.  That said, he makes it hard for me to be proud.  I believe his heart is in the right place, I do not think he is insane but I do believe he often tries to be funny, and sometimes really is, but most of the time his comments fall flat.

Nevertheless, when I remind myself of what he has accomplished, his appointments of those who are carrying out the dismantling of the most egregious aspects of Obama's 8 years of strangulation and how he works like a dog, I cannot help but admire him and am still glad I voted for him.

As he often reminds us, he did inherit a mess and the problems he faces are daunting and I am not sure easily solvable. I give him credit for making Congress and his party toe the line. His willingness to leave The White House and go to their home and to call out the Democrats for what they are, a pathetic crowd of "pissy fanny" adult hypocrites, is commendable and refreshing.

Give "em Hell Harry was suitable for Truman and is equally applicable to Trump.
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Ross rants. (See 2 below.)
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If women keep coming forth with accusations of sexual humiliation against "iconic"  members of Congress and elitists in the mass media it is possible they might be able to eliminate more fake news and our federal deficits because many Democrat spender will be gone along with reporters and TV personalities .

If that is the case, I appeal to all women who have been abused to quickly speak out because you could actually beat Trump in draining the swamp.

Meanwhile, without making light of the serious matter of abusing women, the sooner we get  this behind us the better off we will be in  several ways.

a) We have other serious issues which demand our entire attention

b) The way these allegations are being resolved can ultimately lead to abuse on the part of aggrieved women who might have a desire to be vindictive for reasons that are not, in fact, truthful and/or related to sexual misconduct etc.

c) At some point, men who are guilty of sexual harassment that might have occurred during a different era and decades ago,  though unacceptable under any circumstance, should be allowed to apologize and express their sincere contriteness and  move on with their life.

Even an earthquake, hurricane, tornado ends.
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Palestinians are so consumed by hatred and bad leadership that they seem to prefer self-destruction/misery to betterment.  Not a good legacy for their children.

It takes guts to overthrow bad leadership but if Birmingham, Alabama could do it so can Palestinians.  (See 3 below.)
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Dick
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1)North Korea Says Nuke Push Complete as Entire U.S. in Range
By Kanga Kong

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un claimed a missile launch on Wednesday showed he can strike the entire U.S. with a nuclear weapon, signaling a new phase in his standoff with President Donald Trump.
North Korea “successfully” launched a new type of intercontinental ballistic missile with improved technology that can deliver a nuclear warhead anywhere in the U.S., the state-run Korean Central News Agency said. Kim watched the test and “declared with pride that now we have finally realized the great historic cause of completing the state nuclear force,” KCNA said.
Kim’s claims on his nuclear capabilities, yet to be verified independently, suggest he is seeking to push the U.S. into talks from a position of strength. Trump has threatened to use military force to stop North Korea’s nuclear program, which Kim says he needs to deter an American invasion, and the U.S has long said the regime must dismantle its weapons in order for negotiations to occur.
Trump struck a more measured tone after the launch compared with previous threats to unleash “fire and fury,” telling reporters “we will take care of that situation.” The United Nations Security Council, which has imposed sanctions on North Korea this year, plans to meet later Wednesday in New York.
“North Korea is saying the U.S. should acknowledge it as a nuclear state and shift its policy to dialogue,” said Koh Yu-hwan, who teaches North Korean studies at Dongguk University in Seoul. “Pyongyang’s following the Chinese model: obtain nuclear weapons and suggest co-existence to the U.S.”
No major power has said it will recognize North Korea as a nuclear state. China and Russia, two countries that Trump has singled out for supporting North Korea, have said they prefer dialogue to rein Kim in.
China opposed Wednesday’s test and will continue to strictly uphold UN sanctions, Foreign Ministry spokesman Geng Shuang said at a regular briefing. He reiterated support for a proposal made with Russia, under which North Korea refrains from missile and nuclear tests, while the U.S. and South Korea halt large-scale military exercises.
Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe told parliament Wednesday it would be a mistaketo recognize North Korea as a nuclear power.
Experts differ on when North Korea will pose a credible threat to the U.S., with estimates ranging from months to years. While the regime has made steady progress, the U.S. and South Korea assess that its ballistic missiles still can’t survive the stress involved with re-entering the atmosphere or target specific locations. Defense Minister Itsunori Onodera said Wednesday that Japan was analyzing whether North Korea had that capability.
Japan said the ICBM flew for 53 minutes on a lofted trajectory and may have reached an altitude of more than 4,000 kilometers (2,500 miles) before landing about 250 kilometers off its northwest coast. U.S. Defense Secretary James Mattis said it flew higher than prior North Korean launches.
KCNA said the missile it fired showed accuracy in its target, speed correction mid-flight and the operation of a high-thrust engine.
“The test-fire also re-confirmed the control and stabilization technology, phase-separation and start-up technology and the safety of warhead in the atmospheric reentry environment that had already been confirmed,” it said.
South Korea’s military staged its own missile exercise within minutes of the launch, which Mattis said “made certain that North Korea understands they could be taken under fire by our ally.” Trump spoke by phone separately with Abe and South Korean President Moon Jae-in.
Moon called for dialogue, warning that matters could become “uncontrollable” if North Korea obtains a fully functional ICBM. “We should prevent a situation where North Korea threatens us with its nuclear arsenal based on misjudgment, or the U.S. considers a preemptive strike,” he said.
North Korea has threatened in recent months to take even more provocative actions, such as testing a hydrogen bomb over the Pacific Ocean or firing missiles over Japan near the U.S. territory of Guam. Launches of missiles from submarines or an ICBM on a flatter trajectory would show technical improvements.
Experts said the altitude and distance of Wednesday’s missile would give it more than enough range to reach any part of the continental U.S. if flown on a standard trajectory.
Kim said the launch was conducted at a high launch angle to avoid risk to the security of other nations. He claimed the missile could carry a “super-large heavy warhead which is capable of striking the whole mainland of the U.S.” — something experts questioned.
“We do not know how heavy a payload this missile carried, but given the increase in range it seems likely that it carried a very light mock warhead,” David Wright, the co-director of the Union of Concerned Scientists Global Security Program, wrote on his blog. “If true, that means it would be incapable of carrying a nuclear warhead to this long distance, since such a warhead would be much heavier.”
The Trump administration has recently sent mixed signals to North Korea. On a trip to Asia this month, Trump called on North Korea to “come to the table” to make a deal to end its nuclear program, while Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said he could envision talks with Kim’s regime as a precursor to formal negotiations.
Then on Nov. 20, Trump labeled North Korea a state sponsor of terrorism. North Korea called that a reminder it should keep hold of its “precious nuclear sword.”
Tillerson said after Wednesday’s missile launch that “diplomatic options remain viable and open, for now.”
— With assistance by Takashi Hirokawa, and Peter Martin

1a) The Editorial Board

Kim Jong Un tested a new intercontinental ballistic missile in the early hours of Wednesday, and the data suggest it could hit all of the continental United States. If North Korea is allowed to perfect its warhead technology, it will be able to hold the U.S. hostage to nuclear ransom. The Trump Administration is right that the U.S. can’t live with this threat, so what more should it do to prevent it?

Conventional wisdom says that Pyongyang already faces extreme economic and diplomatic pressure. But in reality the United Nations and U.S. only began to impose broad sanctions last year, and even U.S. allies such as Singapore and Thailand have been slow to enforce them. China and Russia continue to support the Kim regime—China through oil exports and other commerce, and Russia through payments for North Korean slave labor.

Shutting down those lifelines should be a top priority. After the North’s intermediate-range missile launch in September, the U.S. circulated a draft resolution at the United Nations Security Council to do just that. But Russia and China resisted and the U.S. caved; Resolution 2375 only capped oil exports and labor contracts. The Trump Administration portrayed the unanimous vote at the U.N. as a victory, but the resolution kept open many of Pyongyang’s cash lifelines.

The U.S. even rewarded Beijing for the vote by pausing the process of sanctioning Chinese companies that violate sanctions. That pause ended last week when the Treasury Department put four companies based in the Chinese city of Dandong on its financial blacklist. Treasury is playing catch-up with a June report on sanctions-busting firms by the private research group C4ADS. The U.S. government continues to hold back on other “secondary sanctions,” especially against Chinese banks, for fear of losing Beijing’s cooperation.

But China’s internal enforcement of sanctions is patchy. Chinese banks froze the accounts of some North Korean customers while continuing to finance Chinese companies that are breaking sanctions rules. Imports of coal from North Korea have continued in violation of a U.N. resolution in August that banned all trade in North Korean coal. The Trump Administration can make an example of these firms and expose Beijing’s failure to honor its sanctions promises.

The U.S. response to Wednesday’s missile tests should also include security measures. The redeployment of tactical nuclear weapons to South Korea is needed to deter a nuclear attack from the North. Showing Pyongyang that American forces would retaliate overwhelmingly to an attack on a U.S. ally, even at the risk of an ICBM attack on the U.S. mainland, would help prevent Kim miscalculating.
The deployment of more Thaad missile-defense radars and launchers to South Korea would send a strong signal to China that its support for Pyongyang has consequences. At the end of last month Beijing bullied South Korean President Moon Jae-in into freezing deployment of the Terminal High-Altitude Air Defense system. But the U.S. should insist it needs new Thaad units to defend its own forces and deter attacks from the North.

The U.S. and South Korea can also expand their programs to encourage North Koreans to defect. The Kim regime’s former Deputy Ambassador to the U.K. Thae Yong-ho has good ideas on how to do this. Mr. Thae, who fled to freedom in the South last year, testified to Congress last month on human-rights messages that will resonate in the North.

The soldier who defected across the Demilitarized Zone on Nov. 13 seems to have been inspired by watching and listening to South Korean media. If China accepted refugees across its North Korean border and sent them to the South, word would spread in the North and internal instability might grow. Regime change assisted by China is the best way to end the North Korean threat short of war.

The Trump Administration has done more than its predecessors to thwart North Korea’s nuclear progress, but it is still far from using maximum pressure. It may not work in the end, but the alternatives are terrible: acquiescence or war. Wednesday’s ICBM test shows Kim is getting close to his goal of threatening American cities, so why is the U.S. not using all the tools it has to stop him?+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
2)  RANTS:
Finance
The Fed is largely driven to raise rates based on inflation. While there is a rate rise happening in December, it is getting more and more questionable what happens in 2018. Inflation for all of 2017 might be as low as 1.5%. The yield curve is flat and getting flatter. This normally means a slowing economy, but this time it means continued low inflation is expected. Per my last Rant comments, inflation is in a new position due to online markets, and that is a major change as to how prices are communicated to consumers. This is all new so we will have to wait longer to see how this plays out, but my projection is Amazon, Wal Mart and Alibaba will continue to make inroads and will drive all prices to remain lower than they ever would have been before Amazon. That is not able to change now with Wal Mart and others moving to major online presence.  Just look at yourself and your family. Don’t you shop online, or at least peruse prices and products before you shop for a major item. The only way retailers and manufacturers or importers can sustain margins is to lower costs. So lower pricing gets transmitted offshore by importers here being forced to pay lower prices for imported products.  All of this translates to lower wages worldwide. It will drive much more AI being used in manufacturing and delivery of products and services faster than we might have seen if not for Amazon and Wal Mart and Alibaba. We are in a major shift on how economies function, and how wages and productivity get affected. There is the equivalent of the industrial revolution underway and the outcome is not clear. For all the fear of AI replacing labor, we now have full employment and millions of unfilled jobs. This major change in inflation expectations will likely mean lower than forecast interest rates for the next two years. Everything we used to know about monetary policy, and what to expect from QE flooding the capital markets with cash, and causing inflation, may be permanently upended. We will have to see how all of this plays out.

San Francisco is up to its usual wacky political responses in answer to this.  They raised the minimum wage to $15 so there is starting to be a rise in closures of shops where the minimum wage is paid, and consumer spend by low income workers has not happened as the left wingers projected. Jobs at the bottom end are shrinking. Same in Seattle.  So managers are turning to automation. So what is San Francisco proposing to do.  There is pending legislation to fine any company that uses AI or automation to reduce labor costs. Between raising taxes and this, I do not understand why anyone would expand or open a new business in CA. They really have lost their minds there. Add on the non deductibility of state and local taxes and living in CA or operating a business there becomes highly questionable. It is likely why so much tech has moved to Denver, Raleigh, Pittsburgh and Austin along with some other low tax, Republican states. If San Fran really does pass this insane law, there will be more companies leaving and in the end there will be more unemployment at the lower end. It is hard to wrap your brain around fining operators of business for lowering costs and gaining productivity, especially in a city that claims to be the heartland of high tech.  

Washington
Conyers held a meeting in his office in his underwear. It is unimaginable that any executive in private industry doing that and not being fired on the spot. But he is still there. Franken seems to admit to be a serial groper. So the so called ethics committee will “investigate” even though we all saw the photo. A Congressman in his late sixties send nude pics.  Gellibrand says Bill should have resigned, and so she is attacked by the Clinton team, and the left, who have overlooked his raping Juanita Broderick, and having oral sex sitting at his desk in the Oval office, for which there was no question it happened. Roy Moore is the wrong guy to be a senator, and probably did what is claimed, but then Bill Clinton cannot be excused for what he did which was much worse, as Hilary has tried to do.  It was Hilary who attacked and intimidated all of the victims of Bill’s abuse, and the press and the Democrats went along with that for all these years. They are all hypocrites.  Congress has a secret fund to pay off people who claim to have been mistreated by Congressmen, but nobody in Congress seems to know anything about this, even those in office for decades. And they wonder why we all think Congress is a swamp filled with corrupt, disreputable bozos?

Anyone who worked with Charlie Rose and did not know he is an alcoholic, and always had at least one or two 25 year old bimbos around, was not paying attention. Even I knew from someone who only worked with him periodically, who saw this regularly. So when his co- hosts on CBS claimed they had no idea, that is pure BS. Everyone who had any regular contact with him knew about Charlie, just like everyone knew all about Weinstein, but nobody talked. Now of course it is open season on all sorts of men. When I was young in Wall St it was common to have strippers on the trading floor at least weekly.  Solomon Bros was infamous for this. The women who worked there just accepted it as boys will be boys. Lots of other similar things went on in offices at that time. My first wife at the time even sent as stripper to my office for my birthday, and all the staff was there. None of that is to suggest all this was OK, but we need to get a grip, and realize times are very different, and the whole culture has changed. For those who are too young, or never worked on Wall St, the Wolf of Wall St movie was an exaggeration, but not a fantasy. Those things, and more, really went on back then with traders, along with coke, strip clubs with the clients and other things. It was the norm. I tell this just so everyone has some perspective, and knows how much things have changed. Back then, when I was young in the business, in Wall St,  if someone said you have to take a class in prevention of sexual or racial abuse, everyone would have burst out laughing. Back then, trading floors were the crazy places.

World History
I recently read a piece in Foreign Affairs magazine by a woman who served in a top advisory capacity to general Odierno from 2007-2010 in Iraq, and prior she served as a top coordinator for the US  in Kirkuk. Now she is a senior fellow at Yale in the Jackson Institute for Global Affairs. Not a right wing group. This is her report in summary. How did ISIS happen. First the US dismissed most civil servants and the entire army was fired and rebuilt. A huge mistake. The surge in 2007 worked very well, and the US got the Sunnis to work with us and defeat the terrorists in Iraq.  In essence we won the war, and were on the way to resolving the worst of the sectarian violence.  The surge that the left severely criticized was, in fact, a massive success.  Sadr fled to Iran and Iranian influence was becoming more limited. The Sunnis were back feeling they were respected, and a participant in the Iraqi power structure.  The US under Bush was intending to leave 10-20,000 US troops in country to assure peace prevailed, to assure the army was non sectarian, and the Sunnis remained on equal footing, and to rebuild. In 2010 there was an election which was won by Ayad Allawi by a small margin, but he won. Obama and Hilary insisted that Malaki be declared the winner, and they forced Iraq to accept him as prime minister, despite the Iraqi constitution and Iraqi parliament.   He was Iran’s man. Obama claimed Malaki was an Iraqi nationalist and a friend of the US. Either he was stupid, or he did it intentionally to curry favor with Iran, knowing he wanted to do the nuke deal. Iran then forced Sadr to align with Malaki, and ensure Malaki was retained as prime minister. Part of the deal with Sadr was that Malakai committed to remove all US troops, so the excuse that Obama could not get a status of forces agreement and had to pull out US troops  is because he and Hilary created a situation with Malaki in charge where no agreement was possible, and where Shiite Iran was in control. Whether Obama did this in an attempt to side with Iran to pave the way for the nuke deal may never be known. However, it was not what Odierno, or the Pentagon, or the CIA thought should happen, nor what most Iraqi politicians wanted. The world has paid a terrible price for what Obama did in Iraq, and the problem is ongoing now. His decision to put Malaki in place and pulling out US troops, was one of those historic moments that will be seen as one of the world changing  terrible mistakes of history.

Malaki then labeled all Sunni politicians as terrorists, and fired them, and he stripped Sunnis from command positions in the army, then ordered the army to crush the Sunni awakening. He created the conditions to allow the rise of ISIS as a Sunni reaction. ISIS became the defender of Sunnis, and this is how it all came to be.  So when Trump said Obama was the founder of ISIS, he obviously used bad wording, but it was the move by Obama and Hilary to force Malaki in as prime minister, and allowed Iran to get effective control of Iraq, that led to ISIS and the situation we find today with Iran having so much influence in Iraq. It is why the Shiite militia are still so powerful and directed  by Iran, and why the Iraqi army collapsed in the face of ISIS.  The qualified Sunni officers had been driven out of the army.  So when you Democrats start to blame Bush, go read what really happened under Obama and Hilary as related by non partisan professionals who were the people who were really on the ground there in 2010, and in charge of US military affairs in Iraq. The decision by Obama to completely withdraw and disengage from Iraq, and the region, is what led to US forces having to go back into Iraq and to the deaths of thousands at the hands of terrorists trained and led by ISIS and Iran. Malaki is still a person with a following in Iraq, and who is closely aligned with Iran. The Trump administration needs to follow through now and leave large numbers of US troops in Iraq and Syria to keep control of events. Trump needs to undo all of the damage Obama did with his disastrous policies. The left never understood what was really happening, and the politics of withdrawal were exactly the opposite of what was required. The world will continue to pay a terrible price for these policies and decisions.

If you think this is some right wing version of events., I suggest you go read what the non partisan, military and civilian professionals who were on the ground then, and directly involved, say what really happened as I have related. Foreign Affairs is hardly a right wing magazine. It is quite liberal. Obama created the opportunity for Iran to get control in Iraq and Syria, and to now threaten Israel and Saudi Arabia. It was Obama who allowed Putin to move into control in Syria. Obama’s weak policies, and his failure on the red line, let Putin move into Syria and set the stage for events now unfolding. We are just starting to see the ramifications of those policies, and it is getting very dangerous. If Hilary had been elected, things would have been getting much worse as she was going to continue the same policies she helped craft and implement under Obama.  You can criticize Bush for invading Iraq, but just as happened in WWI, it was the disastrous and stupid policies in the aftermath that created the historic disasters that followed.

I am off to Europe for two weeks then driving to my home in FL. So there may be no, or just one Rant for a long period. That is why this is so long. Some of you may find a respite from the Rant to be a good thing, but I will return.

Joel Ross
Citadel Realty Advisors
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3)  Gaza’s Latest Lesson in Self-Inflicted Misery
Rent seekers gonna seek rent.

Observing developments since Hamas and Fatah signed their latest reconciliation deal in October is an object lesson in just how much of the Palestinians’ misery is self-inflicted–or to be more precise, inflicted by their two rival governments.

The first thing that happened after implementation of the deal in early November was that prices of merchandise imported to Gaza plummeted by up to 25 percent. Having your money go 25 percent further is an obvious boon to anyone, but especially for impoverished Gazans. Prices fell because, for the first time in a decade, Gazans weren’t paying taxes to two different governments–the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank and Hamas in Gaza–but only to one. As part of the reconciliation deal, Hamas handed control of Gaza’s borders to the PA and dismantled the tax collection checkpoints it had set up at the border crossings.
This long-overdue relief didn’t last long. Earlier this month, I pointed out that, since Hamas would remain the dominant military power in Gaza even after the deal was implemented, it wasn’t clear how anyone could stop it from extorting taxes again once it had gotten what it wanted from the deal. I overestimated Hamas’s patience. Though the PA has yet to fulfill most of its promises to Hamas, the latter has already resumed collecting taxes.
True, the checkpoints are gone, but Hamas found another method to seek the rents on which it survives. It simply summoned several hundred businessmen to appear in its offices and demanded payment of tax on everything they have imported to Gaza since the reconciliation was signed. After all, Hamas needs that money; it has rockets and tunnels to build. So who cares that Gazans will once again be paying inflated prices they can ill afford?

The reconciliation was also supposed to bring another benefit: the reopening of the Rafah border crossing between Gaza and Egypt, which has been closed almost continuously for the last four years. Since Israel allows only limited traffic from Gaza through its territory, Rafah’s closure has meant that leaving Gaza is virtually impossible for most Palestinians.

Israel and Egypt have restricted traffic from Gaza for the same reason: Hamas’s incessant efforts to undermine both countries’ security. In Egypt’s case, Hamas has co-operated enthusiastically with Islamic State’s affiliate in Sinai, providing money, weapons, training, medical care and refuge in Gaza for terrorists fleeing Egyptian security forces. An open border would simply have made it easier for Hamas to supply all these services, as Israel can attest. Israel allows thousands of Palestinians to enter its territory from Gaza every month for business, medical care or transit to another country, and Hamas has exploited that traffic to smuggle everything from cash to explosives.

Once Hamas handed control of Rafah over to the PA in early November, as mandated by the reconciliation deal, Rafah was supposed to reopen. And in fact, it did open for three days two weeks ago, and was supposed to open for another three days this past weekend. But after Islamic State’s horrific attack on a Sinai mosque last Friday, Egypt abruptly announced that Rafah would once again be shut for “security reasons.” As the daily Israel Hayom explained, citing a senior PA official, “Egypt’s security forces suspect that some of the terrorists involved in the attack, as well as other wanted individuals, fled Sinai and entered Gaza via underground smuggling tunnels belonging to Hamas, with the knowledge of senior Hamas officials.” Given Hamas’s track record, that would hardly be surprising.

Incidentally, this track record conclusively disproves the widespread fallacy that Hamas is primarily concerned with the Palestinian cause rather than the cause of global jihad. An organization concerned with Palestinian well-being would strive to preserve good relations with Egypt in order to ensure that Gaza’s main gateway to the outside world remained open. Only an organization that prioritized global jihad way above Palestinian well being would offer extensive aid to Islamic State, even at the price of having Rafah almost permanently closed.

Finally, there’s the minor detail of Gaza’s electricity crisis–a topic I’ve covered extensively in the past. Gaza has been down to four to six hours of power per day for months now, ever since the PA stopped paying for Gaza’s electricity last spring on the not unreasonable grounds that since Hamas was ruling the territory de facto, it should also cover the territory’s expenses. The reconciliation deal requires the PA to resume paying for Gaza’s power. But the PA and Hamas are embroiled in a dispute over which of two steps called for by the deal comes first: the PA’s resumption of the payments, or Hamas’s handover of control of civilian affairs in Gaza. Meanwhile, Gaza remains without power.

Granted, one benefit of the reconciliation does seem to have survived the first month: Gazans with permits to enter Israel are thrilled that, since Hamas dismantled its checkpoint at the border, they’re no longer subjected to lengthy Hamas interrogations every time they leave and every time they return. But we’ll see how long that lasts. After all, Hamas knows who the permit holders are, so there’s nothing to stop it from simply summoning them to its offices for interrogation, just as it summoned the businessmen to pay taxes.

Meanwhile, much of the world will doubtless continue to blame Israel for Gaza’s woes. That will make many self-described humanitarians feel good about themselves, but it will do absolutely nothing to ease Gaza’s misery.
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Why Understanding What Is Going On At CFPB Is Critical.Time For Diplomacy Has Passed But What Does This Hawk Know? Democrats Enjoy What They Do.


It should be evident, I enjoy expressing myself and  giving my opinions about matters that are of interest to me and should be to most others who profess to be good and informed citizens . 

In Wednesday's local paper the following was printed on the editorial page and written by a man whom I do not know.   He wrote:  "While I enjoy the columns from Tom Barton and Dr. Mark Murphy and others, after reading the letters to the editor from Dick Berkowitz, I respectfully suggest including him as a regular columnist.  I think he is highly talented and intelligent.  His subtleties are amusing and highly provocative.  His style is professional.  Dick Ellis, Savannah"

I would like to thank Mr. Ellis for his unsolicited endorsement but do not have his address.If any of my memo readers can send me same I would be forever grateful.

Though I will not comment on Mr. Ellis' "keen/insightful observations"  I admit to being flattered and appreciative.
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Glick on our State Department. (See 1 below.)
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More commentary regarding the CFPB.  Understanding the power play involved about forming  this agency is very instructive on a multitude of fronts.

First of all, it demonstrates how Obama and Warren have disdain for our Constitution under the guise of helping the "little man.".

Second, it demonstrates how Democrats believe more government control of our economy is healthy.

Third, it demonstrates how Obama arranged to control successor administrations by reason of the legislation he initiated.  It is as if he seeks to rule from the grave, which no doubt he does.  After all, he said he wanted to transform America and now that his initiatives are being dismantled he is seeking to influence and manipulate from the sidelines. In fact, he is setting out on a far ranging  "diplomatic"trip . Unlike both Bushes, Obama has taken a  page from Carter who, after leaving the office in disgrace, became a meddlesome former president.

Fourth, what is happening with CFPB is instructive because Trump will have to decide about future Obama roadblocks that will be more difficult to handle and the article in 3 below is connected.

Fifth, and perhaps most important of all, this agency proved it was incapable of carrying out it's mission because it failed to detect the Wells Fargo over reach  (See 2 and 2a below.)
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This is a very incisive article about Trump's the effect on foreign affairs and trade relations because of his nationalistic attitude and personality.

I support much of what Trump's policies seek to accomplish. However,  I also understand who is behind the implementation is critical.  FDR, in poor health,  got sold a bill of goods at Yalta because he underestimated Stalin, G.W looked into Putin's eyes and thought he had taken the measure of his soul, and so it goes.

There is nothing inherently wrong with nationalism. That said, nationalism can be carried beyond its usefulness because we live in a world of many nations and must recognize our policies must be an integral part of those of others. Neither does that mean we must roll over nor allow ourselves to be  bested.  We have every right to lead from strength because of who we are and that gives us some leverage.  When we fail to use this leverage we cannot blame others for taking advantage of us.  

As in the article by Robert Zoellick, I too I am concerned that Trump's ego allows him to be played and,  when he realizes this, he might overreact.

Right now N Korea's Kim is thumbing his nose at Trump as that nation's leaders have since Bush 41 and those who succeeded him until Trump. Trump has placed a lot of reliance on his friend - China's leader Xi.  Trump does have some leverage because of China's concerns but what happens when Trump learns China is not going to do our bidding and, as has happened, N Korea and Iran are getting chummier because of Obama's naivety.  Trump's declarations will prove dangerous if found to be empty and if he means what he implies then an attack on N Korea and eventually on Iran is inevitable. Are American's/the world prepared for this? What happens if Trump does not act? Bullies understand power and action. They have no intention of being deterred by empty threats, meaningless words and feckless diplomacy. 

The time for diplomacy, in my opinion, has passed and the time for action is here but then, I am a "hawk" from the sidelines so what do I know. (See 3 below.)

And

The other side. 

Hanson does not tackle Trump and his foreign policy initiatives  but gives a clear explanation why Trump rises above the negative chatter. In essence, Hanson suggests Trump's policies  overcome/outmatch his quirkiness.

Tobin's CNN riposte hits a responsive chord as well. CNN Is the outgrowth of  the brilliance of "The Mouth From The South,",Ted Turner's Channel 17. Turner was a genius when he was involved in television and made the Atlanta Braves a national favorite. Ted Turner is also an impetuous  liberal and his imprimatur, obviously,  continues to this day. As the former husband of "Jane F" who could conclude otherwise. (See 3a  and 3b below.)
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I have given a lot of thought to this sexual harassment issue and why Democrats seem to be so prevalent and engaged in this malevolent activity.

Perhaps it is because they enjoy screwing their fellow citizens.

Now that elites, Democrats, politicians of all parties and Hollywooders have to be more restrained and discrete protstituion may make a come back.. (See 4 below.)
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Dick
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1) State Department making a laughingstock of the US and President Trump

Caroline B. Glick

By Caroline B. Glick





Over the weekend, The New York Times published its latest broadside against US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson for what the newspaper referred to as his “culling” of senior State Department officials and his failure to date to either nominate or appoint senior personnel to open positions.



But if the State Department’s extraordinary about face on the PLO’s mission in Washington is an indication of what passes for US diplomacy these days, then perhaps Tillerson should just shut down operations at Foggy Bottom. The US would be better off without representation by its diplomats.

Last week, in accordance with US law, Tillerson notified the PLO’s Washington envoy Husam Zomlot that the PLO’s mission in Washington has to close within 90 days because it has breached the legal terms governing its operations.

Specifically, Tillerson explained, PLO chief and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas breached US law when he called for the International Criminal Court to indict and prosecute Israeli nationals during his speech before the UN General Assembly in September.

Tillerson explained that under US law, the only way to keep the PLO mission in Washington open is if US President Donald Trump certifies in the next 90 days that its representatives are engaged in “direct and meaningful negotiations” with Israel.

The PLO didn’t respond to Tillerson with quiet diplomacy. It didn’t make an attempt to appease Congress or the State Department by for instance agreeing to end its campaign to get Israelis charged with war crimes at the ICC. It didn’t put an abrupt end to its financial support for terrorism and terrorists. It didn’t stop inciting Palestinians to hate Israel and seek its destruction. It didn’t disavow its efforts to form a unity government with Hamas and its terrorist regime in Gaza.

It didn’t join Saudi Arabia and Egypt in their efforts to fight Iranian power and influence in the region. It didn’t end its efforts to have Israeli companies blacklisted by the UN Human Rights Committee or scale back its leadership of the international boycott movement against Israel.

The PLO certainly didn’t begin “direct and meaningful negotiations” with Israel.

Instead of doing any of these things, in response to Tillerson’s notification, the PLO lashed out as the US. Abbas and his advisers launched an all-out assault against President Donald Trump and his team of Middle East envoys led by his son-in-law and senior adviser Jared Kushner and his senior negotiator Jason Greenblatt.

PLO-controlled media outlets published a flood of stories which trafficked in antisemitic conspiracy theories against Trump and his Jewish American advisors. The PLO media renewed its allegations that Kushner, Greenblatt and US Ambassador David Friedman are more loyal to Israel than to the US.

Abbas’s media outlets also escalated their criticism of Saudi Arabia, Egypt and the UAE for their focus on combating Iranian aggression. These regimes are selling the Palestinians down the river, the PLO outlets have proclaimed, as Abbas’s flacks have insisted that the PLO will not accept any regional peace.

Relations between Arab states and Israel, the PLO insists, cannot be fostered so long as Israel fails to capitulate to all of the PLO’s demands.

In commentary published at the Gatestone Institute website, Palestinian commentator Bassam Tawil alleges that the Palestinian rejection of the requirements of US law and its assaults against the Trump administration and Sunni Arab states may serve as a pretext for another Palestinian terror campaign against Israel, which will be justified as a response to an American-Israeli-Saudi-Egyptian plot against the Palestinians.

Given that the US is a superpower and the largest state financier of the PA, not to mention the foundation of the PLO’s claim to legitimacy on the world stage, the US might have been expected to respond harshly to the PLO’s threats and slanders. But then, that isn’t the State Department’s way of doing things with the PLO.

Rather than shrugging their shoulders and acknowledging that Abbas and his comrades have absolutely no intention whatsoever of abiding by the terms of their mission’s operations in Washington and shutting it down, the State Department began to stutter.

Obviously we wish to continue our good relations and our position as mediator between the Israelis and the PLO.

Obviously we wouldn’t wish the PLO any harm and really, really don’t want to close down its mission in Washington.

It’s just that we have this stupid law and we have to follow it, State Department officials insisted.

And then, less than a week after Tillerson sent his letter to Zomlot, the State Department beat a hasty retreat from its earlier decision to actually abide by US law when it comes to the PLO.

Saturday, The Hill online newspaper reported that the State Department had changed its mind. It is no longer interested in following the law. Instead, it has rewritten the law. Now, it’s fine for the PLO to operate in Washington while trampling US law. It just needs to pretend it isn’t doing what it is doing.

According to the State Department spokesman who revealed State’s about face to the media, the PLO mission can continue to operate, but its operations must be “related to achieving a lasting, comprehensive peace between the Israelis and Palestinians.”

And if they aren’t, well, under this new interpretation of the law, the State Department can pretend it hasn’t noticed.

Two questions arise from the State Departments reversal. First, how does this decision advance the cause of peace between Israel and the Palestinians? And second, how does this decision impact the Trump administration’s bid to realign the balance of forces in the Middle East away from Iran and toward the US’s Arab allies, led by Saudi Arabia? The answer to the first question is straightforward. By empowering the PLO to continue to breach US law – with the full expectation of continuing to receive US assistance to the tune of more than $500 million a year – the US has made itself a laughingstock. Neither Hamas nor the PLO will take the US seriously. Any pressure the US attempts to apply toward the PLO to moderate its stand toward Israel will be ignored by Abbas and his cronies in the PLO and Hamas alike.

The Palestinians have taken the Trump administration’s measure. By beating a hasty retreat from its initial decision to stand with the law against the PLO, the State Department has told the PLO that the Trump administration is a paper tiger, at best.

They can get away with publicly trashing Trump. They can get away with antisemitic attacks against Friedman, Greenblatt and Kushner. Abbas and his deputies can get away with their war to delegitimize Israel in the West and harm its economy through their boycott campaign.

And the PLO can finance terrorism, sign a unity deal with Hamas and side with Hezbollah in Lebanon against Saudi Arabia.

The Trump administration will do nothing against them. Instead, in the face of this contemptuous slap in the face to the US, Vice President Mike Pence will travel to Ramallah next month and have his picture taken with Abbas the “moderate” leader and peace partner.

This then brings us to the second question of how surrendering to PLO threats will influence the US’s regional position. As Tawil reported, Al Quds, a Palestinian paper that reflects the views of Abbas and his associates, blasted the Arab League for focusing on Iran at its most recent foreign ministers’ meeting in Cairo.

“The meeting ignored the Palestinian cause,” the paper complained.

“We are facing new Arab alliances against Iran, all under American pressure.

This will have a negative impact on our cause,” it warned.

For more than a generation, the State Department, and through it US Middle East policy as a whole, have been captivated by the myth that nothing can happen in the Middle East without Israel first capitulating to PLO demands.

Today, 17 years after the PLO rejected statehood and peace at Camp David and in so doing, made clear that no Israeli capitulation short of national suicide will satisfy it, and with the Sunni Arab world now eagerly working with Israel to defeat Iran and its proxies, it is clear that it is time for the US to cut the cord on the PLO.

By reversing course on closing the PLO mission, and groveling to the threatening PLO, the State Department made a laughingstock of the US and President Trump. The decision to reverse course should itself be reversed, in accordance with US law and in the interest in restoring what it is still possible to restore of US credibility in the Middle East.

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2) Seven Days in November

After 241 years, the United States experiences its first coup attempt.


By Holman W. Jenkins, Jr.


It would be hard to exaggerate the absurdity of events now overtaking the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau—and, if they weren’t so laughable, their dangerousness.
Let’s revisit the history of this peculiar new agency. It was created largely at the behest of Harvard Law professor and future senator Elizabeth Warren as part of the sprawling Dodd-Frank legislation.

The agency was set up to be funded directly by a levy on the Federal Reserve, operator of the nation’s monetary printing press, independent of the federal budget process or congressional appropriations.
In a Putinesque move, Ms. Warren removed herself from consideration as the agency’s head and encouraged President Obama to appoint one of her protégés, Richard Cordray.
Flash forward to a new and hostile administration of the opposite party. Mr. Cordray, with one year left on his statutory term, announces his resignation. He also, citing a passage in the agency’s founding statute, asserts his right to name his own successor, which he does in the person of Leandra English, another Warren loyalist.In a Putinesque move, Ms. Warren removed herself from consideration as the agency’s head and encouraged President Obama to appoint one of her protégés, Richard Cordray.


Ms. English immediately launches a lawsuit to nullify President Trump’s presumed power, under a separate law, the Vacancies Act, to name an acting director to replace Mr. Cordray. Now if Ms. English can prevail in court and Senate Democrats can block a new appointee after Mr. Cordray’s term expires next year, presumably Ms. English can remain acting director as long as she wants, with power to name her own successor.
Voilà, an agency of the federal government becomes the dynastic possession of Ms. Warren and her designated cronies. Vladimir would be impressed.
All this might seem harmless given the agency’s limited powers, restricted mostly to policing the disclosures of financial institutions in their dealings with consumers. But is it?
Recall that one of the new agency’s first priorities under Mr. Cordray was to go after auto dealers, though Dodd-Frank explicitly excluded them from the agency’s oversight.
Recall that he sought not to regulate their disclosures but to ban a practice that he and other activists decided they didn’t like, namely dealer-negotiated interest rates on car loans, though the agency had no authority to do so.
It is not possible to overstate the cynicism and opportunism of what followed. Because he can’t regulate auto dealers, he targeted banks that finance auto dealers. Because auto dealers are forbidden from collecting racial data on borrowers, the upstream lenders can’t know the race of borrowers. Yet Mr. Cordray charged them with disparate impact based on so-called Bayesian Improved Surname Geocoding, which assigns borrowers to a racial category based on their names and zip codes, though the method is not designed for such purposes and known greatly to overestimate the number of African-Americans in the U.S. car-buying population.
Even this does not do justice to the disingenuousness of the agency’s method. Any person identified as having a black-sounding name who paid a higher rate than the average of people with white-sounding names was deemed to have been a victim of discrimination, never mind that many people with white-sounding names also paid a higher rate.
The agency also got its desired results by deliberately overlooking the fact that dealers have different business models, with those who specialize in low-end cars tending to make most or all their profit from the dealer interest-rate markup.
By such means the agency fabricated—there is no other word—evidence of racial disparity in auto lending to shake money out of lenders, without effective court appeal, because the agency was able to hold necessary approvals the banks sought from other federal agencies hostage until the banks settled. That’s not all: Part of the proceeds were then distributed to activist groups that supported the CFPB’s creation and mission.
It’s no accident that in a previous column about all this, we called on the government to apply the RICO Act against itself. So before you completely dismiss an opportunity for fanciful paranoia, consider that a slow-motion coup attempt is under way in Washington. Think about the nature of the people who gave rise to the CFPB in the first place. Think about a leadership that, months after the agency was founded, concocted the auto-lender shakedown.
Remember how even small agencies under long-lived leadership can grow to be immune from political accountability, becoming arbitrary powers unto themselves. Think of the FBI under J. Edgar Hoover.
Happily, the courts are overwhelmingly likely to protect us from the power grab of the Warren junta, as the U.S. District Court in D.C. started to do Tuesday. Even the CFPB’s own top lawyer rejected Mr. Cordray’s claim of authority to determine his successor. The courts are certain to find that, no matter what the CFPB statute says, a president retains his authority under the Vacancies Act to name an acting director. Democracy will be saved.

2a)

A Drama Queen Loses Her Head

The woman who put the acting in acting director is deposed.

By  The Editorial Board
More hilarity ensued in the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s game of thrones Tuesday when the acting acting director Leandra English got her head handed to her by a federal judge.
After doing photo-ops with Sen. Elizabeth Warren, Ms. English continued pretending to be the CFPB acting director. But by the day’s close, the drama queen was formally deposed. Federal judge Timothy Kelly denied Ms. English’s petition for a temporary restraining order to block Office of Management and Budget director Mick Mulvaney from serving as the real acting director. President Trump appointed Mr. Mulvaney on Friday under the Federal Vacancies Reform Act after Richard Cordray resigned and anointed Ms. English.
The Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel affirmed the President’s authority to appoint Mr. Mulvaney. And even CFPB general counsel Mary McLeod affirmed this legal interpretation in a memo to staff on Saturday.
The opinion “confirms my oral advice to the Senior Leadership Team,” she wrote, which suggests that both Mr. Cordray and Ms. English were aware that their political stunt was illegal but went ahead anyway. So the supposedly noble Mr. Cordray was setting up his young protégé to be embarrassed.
Ms. English called up former CFPB senior attorney Deepak Gupta, who filed the lawsuit for her as an individual. To obtain a temporary restraining order, she’d have to show she would suffer immediate irreparable harm from being usurped—beyond the humiliation she’s inflicted on herself. She couldn’t and now must decide whether to continue as deputy under the real acting director or quit in embarrassment.
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3)

The Peril of Trump’s Populist Foreign Policy

His style of deal-making prizes uncertainty and brinkmanship, without a plan for what comes next.

One of America’s senior statesmen predicted earlier this year that Donald Trump’s hunger for success would push the president toward a more traditional foreign policy. I countered that it depends on how Mr. Trump defines success. We now have an answer: Mr. Trump’s foreign policy reflects his instinct for political realignment at home, based on celebrity populism.
Populist movements feed off grievances and impatience with traditional politics. Frustrations—whether generated by economic distress, social displacement, or cultural challenges—fuel skepticism about institutions and elites. Challengers (who want to become the new elite) attack traditional leaders as out of touch, incompetent and corrupt.
Mr. Trump rallies his supporters by proclaiming the three presumptions of populism. First, it professes to reflect the will of a scorned people. Hillary Clinton called them “deplorables.” The will of the people is intolerant of the give-and-take of pluralism and disdains the identity politics of the Democratic Party.
Second, populism finds and blames enemies, domestic or foreign, who thwart the people’s will. Mr. Trump has mastered insulting such scapegoats.
Third, populism needs “the leader,” who can identify with and embody the will of the people. Like other populist leaders, Mr. Trump attacks the allegedly illegitimate institutions that come between him and the people. His solutions, like those of other populists, are simple. He contends that the establishment uses complexity to obfuscate and cover up misdeeds and mistakes. He claims he will use his deal-making know-how to get results without asking the public to bear costs.
Mr. Trump’s foreign policies serve his political purposes, not the nation’s interests. He says the U.S. needs to build a wall to keep Mexicans at bay—and Mexico will pay for it. He asserted he would block Muslims from coming to America to harm us. His protectionist trade policies are supposed to stop foreigners from creating deficits, stealing jobs, and enriching the corporate elite. Mr. Trump also asserts that U.S. allies have been sponging off America. The U.S. military is supposed to hammer enemies and not bother with the cleanup—even if the result, for example in Syria, is an empowered axis of Iran, Shiite militias, Hezbollah and Bashar Assad’s regime.
The president’s emphasis on discontinuity—breaking things—demonstrates action while disparaging his predecessors. He pulled out of the Trans-Pacific Partnership, but the other 11 countries are proceeding without the U.S. He wants to destroy the North American Free Trade Agreement and strangle the U.S.-Korea Free Trade Agreement; he also is threatening the World Trade Organization’s rules and system for settling disputes. His style of deal-making prizes uncertainty and brinkmanship, which risks escalation, without a plan for what comes next.
Mr. Trump’s foreign policy represents a break from postwar presidents of both parties, reaching back to Harry S. Truman. Other presidents led an alliance system that recognizes U.S. security is connected to mutual interests in Europe, the Asia-Pacific region and the Middle East. Past presidents believed that the U.S. economy would prosper in a world of expanding capitalism, governed by adaptive rules and practices that matched America’s competitive and dynamic markets. Over time, U.S. foreign policy strove to expand human rights, liberty and democracy. Mr. Trump dismisses this U.S.-led international system as outdated, too costly and too restrictive of his case-by-case deal-making.
The 70-year-old U.S. foreign policy architecture has been grounded in institutions. But Mr. Trump disdains America’s intelligence agencies and is dismantling the State Department. His foils at home are the courts, the press, a clumsy Congress beholden to antiquated procedures, and even his own Justice Department.
Mr. Trump’s recent trip to Asia reveals that foreigners have taken his measure. They play to his narcissism. He in turn basks in their attention, diminishes his own country by blaming past presidents, and preens with promises of great but unspecified things to come. Other countries are preparing for a world in which they can expect U.S. demands but can no longer rely on American leadership.
The president’s need to project an image of personal power—for his domestic audience and his ego—makes him more comfortable with authoritarian leaders. Presidents Xi Jinping, Vladimir Putin and Rodrigo Duterte have noticed, as has part of the Saudi royal family. Democratic leaders, accountable to public opinion, face a more complex choice: They can keep their distance and risk Mr. Trump’s ire or try to manipulate him through frequent attention, royal treatment, golf and courtship of the family.
Yet Mr. Trump’s ride on the populist wave—and the foreign policy that matches his politics—faces a big obstacle: Most Americans do not agree with his approach. Significant majorities prefer the fundamentals of the foreign policies Mr. Trump is deconstructing, according to a 2017 survey of American adults from the Chicago Council on Global Affairs. Sixty percent say alliances with Europe and East Asia either are mutually beneficial or mostly benefit the U.S. Record numbers say international trade is good for consumers (78%), the economy (72%) and job creation (57%). Some 65% support providing illegal immigrants a path to citizenship, and only 37% characterize immigration as a critical threat. All these numbers have shifted against Mr. Trump’s positions since the election.
Elected Republicans face a moment of decision. Voters with a very favorable view of Mr. Trump are moving toward protectionism and against alliances and immigration. Mr. Trump’s Republican Party pits nationalism against America’s internationalism, whereas for 70 years GOP leaders saw them as two sides of a coin.
Democratic leaders face a challenge as well. Their voters, especially younger ones, increasingly support trade, according to Chicago Council data. Democrats will need to decide whether to compete with Mr. Trump’s isolationist economic nationalism or offer a new vision of American leadership.
Mr. Trump’s foreign policy represents a change of type, not simply degree. Previous populist impulses in the U.S. ran their course, creating opportunities for adaptation, not simply disruption. Patriotic Republican and Democratic leaders must challenge Mr. Trump’s foreign-policy destruction. Political defeat is not the same as ideological defeat. The debate over ideas is just beginning.
Mr. Zoellick is a former World Bank president, U.S. trade representative and deputy secretary of state.

3a) Trump’s Fate 
Plenty of people in ‘flyover’ country like not only Trump’s message — and actions — but also Trump, the loudmouth messenger.
By Victor Davis Hanson 
The political verdict seems out on Trump’s current political future.

His supporters have won four special congressional elections. Yet, more recently, Republicans lost more local and state offices. Pundits argue about the degree to which these surrogate campaigns are referenda on Trump’s future.

Trump still polls between 39 percent and 42 percent approval, occasionally higher in supposed outlier surveys. Yet most concede that such polls did not in the past, and do not in the present, fully account for the “Trump Embarrassment Factor.” That is the strange phenomenon of a sizable minority of Trump voters — including Democrats and independents — proving reluctant to express support even to anonymous pollsters. Ask independent or moderate Republican voters whether they really voted for Trump: If they hesitate for more than three seconds before they answer, they probably did.

Registering dissatisfaction with Trump, the person, is also not the same as stating a preference for Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, or Kamala Harris in a two-way presidential poll. Trump may be off the ballot in 2018, but in 2020 he will be opposed one-on-one by a real, progressive candidate.

Trump’s fate in the 2018 midterms — aside from the fact that first-term presidents always seem to lose congressional seats after about two years of exposure — and his reelection in 2020 supposedly hinge on whether Trump’s popular message trumps the unpopular messenger (more on that below).

If the economy grows at over 3 percent or even more from the last quarter of 2017 to November 2018, if unemployment dips below 4 percent, if the stock market holds at its record levels, if business, consumer, and corporate confidence keeps soaring, if illegal immigration continues to plummet, if construction and manufacturing stay on the upswing, if Trump’s national-security team brings a new deterrence to foreign policy without a war with North Korea or Iran, and if energy production reaches ever-record levels, then voters will put up with a lot of Trump’s downsides.

And that “lot” supposedly can include mercurial firings, continuous tweeting that results about every three weeks in a detour spat with some obnoxious nonentity, some ungracious comment about a rival, or an indiscretion that is perceived to be another embarrassing straw on Trump’s sagging camel’s back.
Or Trump’s message may overshadow the hemorrhaging from Robert Mueller’s leaky “collusion” charges. (The Javert investigation unfortunately will end only when the police are policed and Congress learns exactly what Mueller was or was not doing during his tenure in the Obama administration when the Clintons, with assumed exemption, finessed special-favor deals with foreign interests, including and especially Russian uranium concerns, and exactly what the complex relationships were between the self-righteous James Comey, the FBI and intelligence communities, the FISA courts, the unmasking and leaking of classified intercepts of private-citizen communications, and the Steele smear dossier.)
Besides tensions between the Trump record and the Trump persona, what other factors will play out in the next two critical elections to decide Trump’s fate?

A lot depends on whether the Democratic party continues down its suicidal path of income redistribution and identity politics (embracing illegal immigration, sanctuary cities, Black Lives Matter, the Colin Kaepernick take-a-knee movement, the Antifa alliance, the new iconoclasm, and other polarizing issues that turn off two out of three Americans). Assassination chic — hanging, dismembering, blowing up, decapitating, or stabbing Trump — got old quickly. In their Pavlovian hatred of Trump, mainstream reporters have exposed their bias and nearly emasculated themselves as progressive political allies of the Democrats.

Trump conceivably could be the first president to be elected twice without winning the popular vote. For now, he has overturned the conventional wisdom about the new demography. His die-hard opponents live in states that he probably would never have won anyway; his fervent supporters live in swing states where their votes count more.

So far, Trump’s base seems as firm as his opponents’ base. Before 2016, the conventional wisdom was that Republican presidential candidates (who had not won 51 percent of the popular vote since 1988) were increasingly doomed, given that they supposedly had lost for good old battleground states such as Colorado, Michigan, Nevada, New Mexico, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, while they were fading in purple Florida, Ohio, and North Carolina.

The conservative message purportedly did not resonate with the new demography-is-destiny voters and supposedly turned off the old working classes as being nothing more than a rich man’s agenda. But while Democrats boasted about turning even more red states blue, Trump, termite-like, stealthily ate away the very foundations of the Democratic party. Its preachy environmentalism, ever-larger government, “I got mine” elitist snobbery, static economic growth, and polarizing identity politics fueled by supposed “white privilege” (shrilly blasted by those who enjoyed it, against those who did not) turned off the irredeemable and deplorable clingers.

The spate of current sexual-harassment scandals should have weakened Trump, given the crude Access Hollywood sloppy talk and the 2016 campaign accusations. But, more likely, the wedge issue has been somewhat nullified by the exposure of a virtual army of sexual predators among Hollywood’s progressives, Washington’s mainstream liberal reporters, and prominent politicians. And the tsunami of scandals has perhaps also weakened the entire narrative of progressives as feminist defenders in the so-called Republican war on women.

The Republican Never Trump movement is divided, because it is all but impossible to offer a coherent alternative to Trump’s conservative agenda, which is 90 percent doctrinaire. Never Trump predictions — Trump would govern as a squishy liberal, or appoint David Souter–like justices, or tank the economy, or discredit conservative ideology — have so far not panned out, at least if one follows what Trump has done rather than what he has said. In ironic fashion, Trump has learned politics more rapidly than his politically seasoned critics have learned to critique Trump. At year’s end, comparing careers, Trump could reasonably claim that he is better off than his worst critics.

Lastly, there are always the unplanned and unknown events that warp elections— an optional war that turns ugly, a 2008-like financial meltdown, some sort of scandal or indictment, or abject failure to pass either Obamacare repeal or tax reform.

But for now, the odds are more likely that in 2018 the economy will continue on a historic upswing rather than fall into a recession. Before Trump, we were told that unemployment could not in peacetime dip below 4 percent, that 3 percent annual GDP growth was a relic of a bygone age, and that the Dow Jones Industrial Average could not much exceed 20,000. That may all be discredited wisdom in 2018, and Trump may well finally get credit for the near-historic upsurge.

One final note: Mystery still surrounds the outlier Trump. Most concur that the upside of his message counters the downside of his personality. Supporters supposedly agree that his petty repartee and insistence on hammering back at even the most pathetic journalist or inane jock are both time wasted and proof of unfortunate narcissism and self-absorption. “If only Trump would not tweet” or “Can’t he just shut up for a while?” is the conventional wisdom among his reluctant supporters.

But is the above orthodox diagnosis quite right?

Voters may say that they find Trump puerile and repellent while in private enjoying that he is as petty as they are and hits back at those who long ago needed a smack. That disconnect could explain why polls are now less relevant and why those who voted for Trump can fudge and mislead about their politics more than Trump himself does. Trump’s take-no-prisoners style may serve some people’s vicarious need to push back against the progressive trajectory of the country, in a way that voting for a Cruz or a Rubio in the primary did not.

We pundits talk about being “presidential” and “elevating the office” over the lowest common denominator of the mob. Perhaps. But what if after $20 trillion in debt, unwon wars in the Middle East, the 2008 meltdown, nuclear missiles 20 minutes from Portland and San Diego, and a country without borders and torn apart by race, the proverbial people do not want an aspirational president who leads only to more such lofty aspirations? What if they instead prefer someone who is in some sense unpresidential or at least anti-presidential, if being status quo “presidential” got us where we are?
Perhaps half the country wondered whether Bill Clinton’s alleged assaults or George H. W. Bush’s sneaky photo-gropes were part of being presidential and post-presidential? Or they asked whether Washington was any less immoral because it frequents the Four Seasons rather than the Motel Six? Stylistically or politically, what exactly would acting un-presidential these days consist of — politicizing the IRS, allowing the VA to decay, surveiling, unmasking, and leaking communications of U.S. citizens, or inviting into the White House misogynistic and profane rappers whose lyrics are about hating the police?

If that analysis is even partly true, it may be that it was not just Trump’s conservative populist message but also Trump himself, the unique populist loudmouth messenger, who won the Electoral College. Trump prevailed not only because he appealed to the concerns of flyover country, but also because he voiced these concerns in a way that no other Republican would have.

In other words, the very manner in which Trump agonizes our elite is also precisely what may still energize half the country — the half that lives supposedly nowhere but in electoral terms is very much somewhere.

— NRO contributor Victor Davis Hanson is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and the author of The Second World Wars: How the First Global Conflict Was Fought and Won, released in October from Basic Books.



The network responded to President Trump’s gibe by portraying it as the home of hero journalists, but that doesn’t answer questions about its biased reporting and panels.

During the eight years of Barack Obama’s presidency, Fox News was a constant and public focus of his disdain. Yet the negative attention didn’t daunt the network, which largely took the abuse as validation not only of many of their viewers’ desire to hold the administration accountable but also of journalists’ traditional mission to keep the party in power honest. But now that another news channel is in the crosshairs of Obama’s successor, the response is very different.
After months of attacks from Trump on what he terms CNN’s “fake news,” the president finally seemed to hit a nerve when one of his tweets over the holiday weekend targeted CNN International: “.@FoxNews is MUCH more important in the United States than CNN, but outside of the U.S., CNN International is still a major source of (Fake) news, and they represent our Nation to the WORLD very poorly. The outside world does not see the truth from them!”
Rather than take it in stride, CNN responded with an orgy of self-congratulation. In a video lead news anchor Wolf Blitzer first presented on his midday show, the network proclaimed itself as the home of journalist heroes braving bullets, natural disasters, and angry mobs to bring the news to the public.
CNN International correspondents like Ben Wedeman and Clarissa Ward testified to the risks they run pursuing stories. War correspondent Christiane Amanpour not only boasted of the bullets she had dodged but mentioned a colleague who took a bullet in the face covering the conflict in Bosnia.

This Is All Beside the Point, CNN

While CNN’s efforts to highlight its achievements were as truthful as Trump’s gibe was hyperbolic, their riposte also didn’t speak to the reason so many on the Right have no problem with the president’s attack. The network generally remains a good source of up-to-date information on natural disasters, terrorist incidents, and wars, which accounts for the uptick in their ratings during such crises.
But as anyone who watches CNN daily knows, its political reporting regarding the Trump administration, panels of talking heads, and some of its prime-time hosts betray an obvious leftward tilt that is hard for even the network’s most dedicated fans to deny. In the age of Trump, CNN is a channel with an agenda to oppose if not actually “resist” the administration. That’s why liberals like CNN and Trump feel entitled to attack it, knowing full well that many who back him agree with the general meaning of his barbs, if not every detail.
To acknowledge CNN’s bias is not the same thing as condoning the labeling of everything they do as “fake news.” Just as liberals won’t acknowledge the solid news reporting done by Fox News correspondents and hosts like Brett Baier, who are primarily interested in the news and not purveyors of opinion, it would be wrong for conservatives to deny that a lot of what CNN produces is valuable.

Sure, There Are Fair Points to Critique

The timing of Trump’s latest brickbat aimed at the network was also bad since it coincided with the Russian government’s latest effort to crack down on foreign media that report about the Putin regime’s human rights violations. CNN’s attempt to claim Trump endangered its reporters was as hyperbolic as anything the president says since neither Vladimir Putin nor any other foreign dictator needs any encouragement from Trump to launch physical attacks or deny freedom to the press. Mere criticism of the media, even of the harshest variety, is not comparable to what happens in Russia, but it is nonetheless bad optics for Trump to invite the comparison.
The constant refrain of “fake news” has contributed to a political culture in which liberals and conservatives tend to view everything they read, hear, and see as a form of political propaganda. In our bifurcated media culture, that means many in the audience judge the validity of news solely by whether it confirms their pre-existing biases.
We saw the toxic nature of such constant accusations when James O’Keefe and his Project Veritas provocateurs tried to execute a sting against the Washington Post. While O’Keefe’s efforts to expose the depraved cynicism of Planned Parenthood executives were successful, what is being reported as his attempt to plant a false story about Roy Moore committing a sexual offense — presumably to then debunk it and demonstrate the Post’s eagerness to defame a conservative — backfired. Rather than feed the conservative narrative of media bias that has allowed the Republican senatorial candidate’s defenders to dismiss the accusations against him, O’Keefe wound up highlighting the reliability of the Post’s investigation.
But even if we concede that, like the Post’s scrupulousness in seeking to verify its stories on Moore, CNN and its international reporters generate a lot of accurate news stories, that doesn’t get the network off the hook for much of its programming bias against Trump.

CNN Is Essentially an Anti-Trump Pile-On

Since the inauguration, CNN has largely given up any pretense of objectivity about the Trump presidency. Its panels of commentators heard throughout a typical day rarely contain even a token Trump supporter to balance liberal critics and conservatives who also despise the president. Most news stories about Trump come in as an outrage a day featuring whatever outrageous tweet or utterance (on Monday it was his ill-timed reference to Sen. Elizabeth Warren as “Pocahantas” during a ceremony honoring Native American World War Two vets).
But early on the network’s reporters and on-air personalities decided that they were not prepared to treat anything the president did or said as defensible or even a matter of opinion. Most CNN discussions of Trump consist of reporters, guest commentators, and hosts agreeing with each other about the awful nature of whatever he has done or said. They frame most stories about Trump and his administration as an outrage about which decent people cannot agree to disagree.
Were this limited to the network’s opinionated hosts, especially those in prime time like Anderson Cooper and Don Lemon, who compete with the even more liberal personalities on MSNBC as well as the conservative talkers on Fox, it might be considered defensible in this hyper-partisan age. But the same spirit extends into the work of its on-air reporters, who might otherwise be expected to give us, as the graphic behind Blitzer on Monday proclaimed, “facts first.”

Example Numero Uno: Jim Acosta

A prime example is CNN White House Correspondent Jim Acosta. He routinely frames his reports as accusations against Trump, generously sprinkling his negative opinions about administration policies in with the “facts” he reports.

One especially egregious incident took place last summer when, during a White House presser where Senior Advisor Stephen Miller discussed immigration policy. Acosta didn’t question Miller about Trump’s stands. He debated him, citing the poem on the Statue of Liberty as proof of the wrongful nature of Trump’s policy. Speaking like one of Stalin’s prosecutors during the great purge trials rather than a reporter seeking to elicit information, his question was an accusation that he dared Miller to deny.
At a news organization where the church-state divide between news and opinion was given even a modicum of respect, Acosta might have faced discipline for that particular exhibition of blatant bias and been reassigned. But he remains in his post, more or less constantly adding to his litany of opinionated reports that are, in effect, jeremiads against all things Trump rather than facts.
Under these circumstances, it is hardly surprising that many conservatives are wary of anything CNN reports even if it is, like the accusations against Moore, highly credible
Serious news consumers read or watch everything with a critical mind, always seeking to discount for possible biases. That means accepting that any network may sometimes produce solid stories. But so long as CNN continues to tilt its news as well as its opinion segments against Trump, their complaints about their virtue will continue to ring hollow.
Jonathan S. Tobin is opinion editor of JNS.org and a contributor to National Review Online. Follow him on Twitter at: @jonathans_Tobin.
Jonathan S. Tobin is an award-winning columnist, blogger and editor.
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4)Two more Democrats are being drawn into the recent avalanche of tawdry scandals: Rep. Al Green (D-Tex.) and Rep. Raul Grijalva (D-Ariz.)

Grijalva reportedly approved a disgruntled senior staffer's $48,395 "severance package" after she accused the Arizona Democrat of frequently showing up to work drunk and creating a hostile work environment.

The accuser has not been named but worked for Grijalva for just three months before getting the hefty payout, which is being described by the media as "hush money" to get her to drop her embarrassing complaint. Hardworking taxpayers like you and I made this settlement possible.

In a statement, Grijalva admitted to the payoff but categorically denied that any sexual harassment occurred. He did not comment on whether or not he arrived at the office drunk.

Green, meanwhile, has been accused of sexual misconduct by a former staffer, Lucinda Daniels, nearly ten years ago. According to The Hill, Daniels accused Green of sexual assault back in 2008 but later withdrew her complaint after the indignant congressman sued her.

Green admitted that he and Daniels had an affair in 2007, but insisted that there was no criminal activity. Both Daniels and Green released an unprompted joint statement, saying they "regret [their] former claims" and have since "maintained [a] respectful relationship" as "friends."

Green also added that, unlike in Grijalva's case, no money changed hands.

The spotlight has been on members of Congress to defend their behavior in recent weeks. Both Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.) and Rep. John Conyers (D-Mich.) are facing accusations of sexual harassment by multiple women.

Speaking specifically about Conyers, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) refused to say whether or not she believed his accusers and claimed Conyers "has done a great deal to protect women" over his congressional career.

But as criticism has mounted, Pelosi seems to have rethought her answers.
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