Wednesday, February 28, 2018

Obama Meets Resistance Blake At Four. Armstrong's Production Of "Spitfire Grill" Excellent.


                                                                                   Blake turns four!
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Obama meets resistance in his own neighborhood.

Chicago will shell out about $100 milion to create access and other structural changes to accommodate his library. (See 1 below.)
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For those living in Savannah who read these missives, I encourage you to go see the Play/Musical at Armstrong. "Spitfire Grill" which was a movie that won  a Sundance Festival Award many years ago and was a sleeper that became a cult movie.  It so happens the film was produced by Lee David Zlotoff.  I had the pleasure of being on The St John's Board of Visitors and Advisors with Lee who graduated from St Johns.

The student performance was excellent. The lead has a lovely voice and the rest of the actors were fine and the set and musicians  superb.  Armstrong is noted for their theater productions and this one is right up at the top.

Great entertaining evening for $12 pp and you are supporting a worthy cause to boot.
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Leaving for Orlando Friday, returning late Monday.
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Dick
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1)
Meet the Community Organizers Fighting Against … Barack Obama

It’s the ultimate in irony: The world’s most famous ex-community organizer is facing a minor uprising from the community where his presidential center is supposed to be built—the same community, in fact, where he got his start in politics.


The center’s troubles became clear last September, when Jeanette Taylor, the education director of the Kenwood Oakland Community Organization, walked into the Hyatt Regency McCormick Place in Chicago with something on her mind. She was there for a public meeting with officials from the Obama Foundation, the entity that is building the Obama Center—a monument to the career of former President Barack Obama for which construction is scheduled to begin later this year in Woodlawn, a neighborhood on the South Side of Chicago. Taylor so wanted to be first in line for the microphone that nearly a dozen of her fellow community organizers had camped out overnight to save her a spot at the front of the line to get into the event.

As she entered the hotel ballroom, Taylor expected to interrogate a member of the foundation’s staff. Instead, she found herself face to face with Obama himself, appearing by video conference from Washington.

“The library is a great idea, but what about a community benefits agreement?” Taylor asked, referring to a contract between a developer and community organizations that requires investments in, or hiring from, a neighborhood where a project is built. “The first time investment comes to black communities, the first to get kicked out is low-income and working-class people. Why wouldn’t you sign a CBA to protect us?”
Measured as always, Obama began by telling Taylor, “I was a community organizer.” Then he said, “I know the neighborhood. I know that the minute you start saying, ‘Well, we’re thinking about signing something that will determine who’s getting jobs and contracts and this and that’ … next thing I know, I’ve got 20 organizations coming out of the woodwork.”

The answer infuriated Taylor, who pays $1,000 a month for the Woodlawn apartment she shares with her mother and two children, and is worried that the Obama Center’s cachet will drive up neighborhood rents. Months later, she is still furious at the former president.

“He got a lot of nerve saying that,” Taylor told me. “He forgotten who he is. He forgot the community got him where he is.”

Taylor is not alone in her complaint. Since 2016, more than a dozen local groups—neighborhood organizations, labor unions and tenants’ rights activists—have come together to form the Obama Library South Side Community Benefits Coalition, which is pushing the library to account for local needs. At the University of Chicago, where Obama once taught at the law school, more than 100 faculty members signed a letter in January supporting the demands of local organizers. “There are concerns that the Obama Center as currently planned will not provide the promised development or economic benefits to the neighborhoods,” the letter reads. “It looks to many neighbors that the only new jobs created will be as staff to the Obama Center.”Although the Obama Foundation has signed a private agreement with its contractors that guarantees minority hiring, local activists say it doesn’t provide enough public oversight of the project or address the issue of gentrification. It’s an ongoing battle that activists have taken all the way to Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s office, and that may have implications for next year’s aldermanic elections.

Obama now finds himself on the receiving end of the same demands his younger self once made to crusty Chicago politicians he derided as “ward heelers.” But, as the dispute plays out, Obama the former president is far more powerful than the City Hall bureaucrats and state senators he once badgered for resources—maybe too powerful for organizers to rally against.
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Barack Obama moved to Chicago in 1985 to take a job as director of the Developing Communities Project, a community organization founded to help Far South Side neighborhoods that were struggling because of steel mill closures. During his three years with the group—a period recounted in his memoir, Dreams from My Father—Obama lobbied City Hall to build an employment center in a poor black neighborhood, and led a sit-in at the offices of the Chicago Housing Authority to demand asbestos cleanup in two public housing projects. He left organizing for Harvard Law School in 1988 because, as he told an early mentor, he was tired of begging politicians for handouts. He wanted to be on the inside, where he believed the real power to inspire and organize people lay.

It is probably no surprise to Obama that activists in the neighborhood he chose for his presidential library are now clamoring for a place at the table: Woodlawn is one of the birthplaces of community organizing. Saul Alinsky, whose book Rules for Radicals informed Obama’s own organizing, helped found The Woodlawn Organization to battle the expansion of the University of Chicago (which today is proposing to build a 15-story hotel for Obama Center visitors). The campaign for a community benefits agreement is part of a tradition that both predates Obama’s arrival in Chicago and made his career there possible in the first place.

The Obama Center isn’t scheduled to open until 2021, but it’s already being touted as a residential amenity by realtors. Perhaps as a result, the real estate website Redfin named Woodlawn the third-hottest neighborhood of 2017, reporting a 23.3 percent increase in home values in the first six months of that year. Woodlawn is a poor, African-American neighborhood adjacent to middle-class Hyde Park, home to the University of Chicago. Woodlawn residents worry that their neighborhood is an ideal target for gentrification, and that the center will raise rents. Jeanette Taylor originally moved to Woodlawn because she was priced out of Bronzeville, a historically black neighborhood closer to downtown that Chicago Agent magazine calls “the next most-desired neighborhood for developers and homebuyers.” Taylor says she doesn’t want to move again, and she is surely not the only one—just 24 percent of Woodlawn residents own their homes.

The contract that community organizers are demanding—the “community benefits agreement”—would require the city to freeze property taxes within a 2-mile radius of the Obama Center and guarantee “a significant guaranteed set-aside of new housing for low-income housing in the area surrounding” the center. It would also require the foundation to establish a trust fund for nearby public schools and small businesses, and mandate that 80 percent of library construction jobs go to South Side residents.
“The community benefits agreement isn’t to stick it to the former president,” says Jawanza Malone, executive director of the Kenwood Oakland Community Organization. “CBAs have been crafted across the country for all types of developments, in places where developers have gone into a community and used public assets.”

Developers frequently sign CBAs to build neighborhood goodwill that in turn helps them win permits from local governments, says Virginia Parks, a CBA expert who teaches urban planning at the University of California-Irvine and formerly taught at the University of Chicago. Some well-known examples include the Staples Center in Los Angeles, which devoted $1 million to parks and agreed to pay a living wage for 70 percent of its jobs; and Columbia University, which built a $30 million public school and $20 million in affordable housing in exchange for expanding into West Harlem.
“[CBAs] evolved initially because communities couldn’t get traction within the public arena,” Parks said. “The organizing effort put pressure on the city. Elected officials would say, ‘If I’m going to approve this, I’m going to need you to work out some agreement with these people, who are my voters.’”

The Obama Foundation has tried to ease neighborhood anxieties by pointing out the steps it has taken to address hiring concerns. The foundation signed a contract with its construction team, the Lakeside Alliance, a consortium of five mostly minority-owned businesses selected specifically for its diversity. The contract has not been made public, but the foundation says it requires that half the $300 million in subcontracts be extended to businesses owned by minorities, women, veterans, people with disabilities and LGBTQ individuals. According to the foundation, the contract also calls for a “significant percentage of the total project work hours” to go to “minorities and residents from the project’s neighboring communities,” and imposes financial penalties for failing to meet these benchmarks. The foundation is seeking a diversity consultant to ensure those goals are met.

Foundation officials say the CBA agreement sought by local organizers simply does not make sense in these circumstances. The center—which will include a 235-foot tower, a Chicago Public Library branch and a campus on 19.3 acres of parkland—is, in itself, “a community benefit: a museum to upgrade a public park,” David Simas, the foundation’s CEO and Obama’s former political director in the White House, said in an interview. “This is not a private project. The model doesn’t fit.” Negotiating with community organizations, foundation officials argue, will just slow down construction of a project that stands to benefit the South Side economically.

An economic impact study commissioned by the Obama Foundation forecasts that the center will create 5,000 construction jobs and 2,500 permanent jobs on the campus and in the surrounding area after it opens in 2022. The study estimates the center will create $2 billion in economic activity for the South Side over the next decade. Parks, the CBA expert at UC-Irvine, predicts that most new jobs will be positions at the center itself, and that the “multiplier effect”—in which new employees demand more goods and services, which in turn leads to more new jobs—won’t be significant. The best thing the center can do for the neighborhood, she believes, is to pay its employees well. “There’s no reason security guards and cafeteria workers can’t be paid a living wage,” she said.

Michael Strautmanis, the Obama Foundation’s vice president of civic engagement, estimates he has held between 300 and 400 meetings with community members—often including the groups campaigning for a CBA. Strautmanis, who has known Obama since they both worked at Chicago’s Sidley Austin law firm and was also a White House aide, shares his boss’ view that a CBA is not “the right tool. He doesn’t want to spend his time negotiating with whatever community organization comes out of the woodwork to claim they represent the community,” Strautmanis says.

That answer has not satisfied some organizers, who say the Lakeside Alliance contract lacks sufficient independent monitoring and noncompliance penalties. Now, the fight is entering local politics. At January’s City Council meeting, Alderman Leslie Hairston, whose ward encompasses Woodlawn, held a news conference with other African-American aldermen to praise the Lakeside Alliance contract, but she was shouted down by protesters chanting “CBA! CBA!” Ordinarily, Hairston’s opposition would close the matter. Chicago’s tradition of “aldermanic privilege” gives aldermen final say over projects in their ward. But neighbors angry at Hairston’s opposition are discussing running a pro-CBA candidate in next February’s election.

Hairston, for her part, believes the Lakeside Alliance adequately addresses activists’ concerns about minority hiring, and that the CBA wish list is asking too much of the Obama Foundation: “They’re building a center. They can’t solve all the problems of the city of Chicago. You really have to be focused on what a not-for-profit can and cannot do,” she says. Paula Robinson of the Bronzeville Regional Collective—the first group to call for a CBA—is another activist who has praised the alliance as “wonderful,” while at the same time crediting the coalition with pressuring the Obama Foundation to guarantee minority hiring. “We moved the needle with the Lakeside Alliance,” Robinson says.

The coalition plans to continue its campaign for a CBA, but its members face a tougher opponent than any Barack Obama faced during his time as a community organizer: Barack Obama himself. The president, local activists acknowledge, is not a deep-pocketed out-of-town developer who can be shaken down for playgrounds and affordable housing. He is the most beloved politician in Chicago. He used to be Mayor Emanuel’s boss, when the latter was White House chief of staff. Obama doesn’t need to sign a deal with community organizers in order to win the goodwill of the city government—the city gave him 20 acres of parkland to build his center. And community organizers won’t easily persuade local politicians to throw their weight against the wishes of both Obama and Emanuel, who has called the center a “once-in-a-lifetime opportunity” for the city.

Activists are lobbying aldermen for an ordinance that would mandate a CBA, says Jawanza Malone, who believes the real opposition to the proposal is coming from Emanuel, who, like most Chicago mayors, dominates the City Council. “Part of the calculus is trying to convince a reticent mayor,” Malone says, and Obama’s project “certainly doesn’t make it easier.” Last year, activists showed up at the mayor’s office unannounced to demand a CBA. Eventually, they were granted a meeting with a deputy mayor who, Malone says, told them “they would need to look more at CBAs that have been signed in other cities before they could make a decision.” That was the last they’ve heard from the mayor’s office. (Emanuel’s office did not respond to a request for comment.)

Back when Obama was a community organizer, a project was known as a “piece.” His successful campaign to pressure the Chicago Housing Authority into removing asbestos from Altgeld Gardens and the Ida B. Wells Homes was “the asbestos piece.” (Obama even chartered a school bus to Housing Authority headquarters, where Altgeld residents sat in the hallway outside the director’s office, insisting he visit the projects. He did.) Coalition organizers believe their campaign is exactly the kind of piece Obama himself would have worked on when he was in their position, 30 years ago. But that was then: before Harvard, before politics, before the presidency. For them, Obama has gone from sticking it to the man to … being the man.
“Of course, he would have,” says Jeanette Taylor. “But now he’s part of the establishment.”

Edward McClelland is author of Young Mr. Obama: Chicago and the Making of a Black President and How to Speak Midwestern.
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Bureaucrat Evasions. Can Congress Learn From Israel's Knesset? Sessions, Trump And Contentiousness. PBS And Conservative Dialogue.


Fatherles. (See 1 below.)
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How bureaucrats evade.

Lynch was Obama's AG and served in his administration which he said would be the most open.  If you review Obama's pronouncements, everything he did was the opposite of what he said other than he would transform America.(See 2 below.)
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If this is factuat is not healthy:
https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2018/feb/26/lawsuit-100000-noncitizens-registered-vote-pa/
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Can Congress learn anything from Israel's Knesset? (See 3 below.)
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The Justice Department, theoretically, is independent . I assume Trump believes , therefore, he cannot dictate to AG Sesssions and uses his tweets to express his frustration.when Sessions makes a decision Trump does not favor.

That said, Trump would be wise to avoid castigating Sessions in a public manner.  It is unhealthy and unproductive.  In fact, it is immature.

The president has every right to express his views as long as he is not asking the AG to do something outside the law.  The president has every right to discuss his view points as it relates to policy.  The latter  should be done in private.

Meanwhile:

I caught snatches of Trump's meeting today with members from both sides of the political spectrum regarding doing something to strengthen our gun laws and close loopholes that might exist without attacking the sanctity of the 2d Amendment.  

Obviously, if the failure is bureaucratic in nature all the laws in the world mean nothing.

Trump made it clear he wants a comprehensive bill, if such can be accomplished, told them he would sign any bill that was sensible and urged they get busy because he did not understand why Congress had failed to do something for decades.
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If PBS is beginning a program to bring balance to its  liberal bias and to allow reasoned discussion they will be doing themselves and the nation a service. (See 4 below.)
Dick
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1)Of the 27 Deadliest Mass Shooters, 26 of Them Had One Thing in Common

Suzanne Venker’s recent opinion piece on FoxNews is very, very important, because she points out that almost all of the most recent deadly mass shooters have one thing in common: fatherlessness.
She begins by pointing out a tweet after the terrible shooting in Florida last week. Actor and comedian Michael Ian Black began a series of tweets in this way, “Deeper even than the gun problem is this: boys are broken.”
Venker goes on to describe how his “tweet storm” strayed from the truth:
Unfortunately, Black quickly veered off course. “Men don’t have the language to understand masculinity as anything other than some version of a caveman because no language exists…The language of masculinity is hopelessly entwined with sexuality, and the language of sexuality in hopelessly entwined with power, agency, and self-worth…To step outside those norms is to take a risk most of us are afraid to take. As a result, a lot of guys spend their lives terrified…We’re terrified of being viewed as something other than men. We know ourselves to be men, but don’t know how to be our whole selves. A lot of us (me included) either shut off or experience deep shame or rage. Or all three. Again: men are terrified.”
Mr. Black is not the first to attack masculinity and suggest it’s at the root of all evil. Indeed, the phrase ‘toxic masculinity’ has become boilerplate language in America.
It’s not a hard sell, either. After all, it is boys and men who are typically to blame for violent acts of aggression. Ergo, testosterone—the defining hormone of masculinity—must be to blame. But testosterone has been around forever. School shootings have not.
Mr. Black is correct that boys are broken. But they’re not broken as a result of being cavemen who haven’t “evolved” the way women have. They’re broken for another reason.
They are fatherless.
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2)  DOJ Says Atty. Gen. Used Alias to Conduct Official Business to Protect Security, Privacy
From The Judicial Watch Blog
By Michael Levin

Illustrating how government hides information from the American public, former Attorney General Loretta Lynch used a fake name to conduct official Department of Justice (DOJ) business in agency emails obtained by Judicial Watch. As the nation’s chief law enforcement officer Lynch, Barack Obama’s second attorney general, skirted public-records laws by using the alias Elizabeth Carlisle in emails she sent from her official DOJ account. In the records provided to Judicial Watch, the DOJ explains it as necessary to “protect her security and privacy and enable her to conduct Department business efficiently via email.”

This begs the question of how many other government officials use fake names and whether those aliases are searched when agencies process Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests. Besides Lynch, we have only discovered the use of such aliases among government operatives to conduct official business at the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Obama’s EPA administrator, Lisa Jackson, famously used the alias Richard Windsor in a government email account to conduct official business and communicate with staff. Jackson even took required EPA computer training under the fake identity with the handle Windsor.Richard@epa.gov. She eventually resigned over the scandal, which brought to light the agency’s violations of federal open-records laws.

In Lynch’s case, Judicial Watch requested the records as part of an investigation into the Obama administration’s involvement in a United Nation’s international law enforcement coalition called Strong Cities Network (SCN). The purported mission of the global coalition was to build social cohesion and community resilience to counter violent extremism. The DOJ masterminded the agreement and Americans found out about the U.S.’s participation when Lynch announced it during a U.N. speech on September 29, 2015. Lynch referred to SCN as a “truly groundbreaking endeavor” and assured the notoriously corrupt world body that the Obama administration was deeply committed to the new initiative. “The government of the United States is fully invested in this collaborative approach and we have seen the value of empowering local communities by promoting initiatives they design and lead themselves,” Lynch said.

Following the Attorney General’s fiery U.N. delivery, a New York newspaper reported that the city was joining a new global, terror-busting network to combat homegrown extremism. Civil rights groups quickly denounced the U.S. participation, expressing concerns about law enforcement abuses against Muslims. In a letter to New York Mayor Bill de Blasio 22 civil rights groups warned that other programs created to counter violent extremism stigmatized “Muslim communities as suspicious and in need of special monitoring.” The anti-terror initiatives have also made “the relationship between Muslims and schools and social service providers into security-based engagements,” the letter states. SCN assures however, that “violent extremism and prevention efforts should not be associated with any particular religion, nationality or ethnic group.” In a statement the DOJ also guaranteed that the SCN will safeguard the rights of local citizens and communities. The State Department also put its weight behind SCN.

In its mission to educate the public about the operations and activities of government, Judicial Watch filed a FOIA request with the DOJ on October 15, 2015 for documents related to SCN. Specifically, Judicial Watch asked for legal opinions and analysis prepared by the DOJ relating to the U.S. involvement in the program, documents that form the foundation for the decision for the country to participate in SCN, all international agreements and related records involving the commitment of U.S. resources or personnel to SCN and records of communication between officials in the Office of the Attorney General relating to the initiative. The DOJ claimed to have no records related to the SCN and billed Judicial Watch a startling $50,000  to conduct the search that didn’t produce a single file.

Though the DOJ recently furnished the documents with Lynch’s fake name, the records were part of Judicial Watch’s original 2015 FOIA request. The records also show that then Assistant Attorney General John Carlin touted SCN at an event sponsored by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), an extremist leftist group that helped a gunman commit an act of terrorism against a conservative organization. A year later Carlin would launch the Michael Flynn counterintelligence investigation and seek the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrant now in question.
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3)What has ten parties, four religions, two languages, and 120 opinions, and yet still passed close to 600 new laws in its most recent term?
The Israeli Knesset, which could teach the U.S. Congress a thing or two about overcoming differences and Getting Things Done. The Knesset is the only parliamentary democracy in the Middle East, and its members include ultra-orthodox Jews, secular Jews, Arabs, Christians, and Druze.
In a country strewn with tribalism, in which the religious and secular live in an increasingly uneasy coexistence — not to mention the split between Jews and Arabs — somehow the Knesset remains a radically more effective legislative body than our Congress.
Of course, when you compare anything to Congress, you're setting a very low bar. So how exactly does a deliberative body that has actually broken out into fistfights on the floor of its chamber get such consistently high marks for actually getting meaningful legislation passed on a regular basis?
“You have to remember that we are a young country,” says Yotam Yakir, Knesset spokesperson and the head of Media and Public Relations.
“We are not quite 70 years old, so we are still young as a society. And we also have a certain improvisational spirit here.”
So how exactly does the Knesset avoid the stalemate and divisiveness of our Congress? First, the Knesset is a truly representative body in which its members are elected without any gerrymandering. It's said that American legislators pick their voters, instead of the voters picking their legislators.
By contrast, in Israel, you don't vote for an individual person; you vote for a party. And it doesn't matter where you live — from Eilat in the South to the Golan in the North, every voter gets the same choice of parties.
So there is a certain amount of fairness baked into the system that the American approach to choosing representatives lacks. Next is a level of openness unmatched not only in the Middle East but, for that matter, in the United States. In committee rooms, ordinary citizens can take seats directly behind Members of Knesset, or MKs, as bills are debated, and can even enter the conversation if they have something useful to add.
All debates are broadcast live over Israeli television and are available on the Knesset's own app, so you've got true government in the sunshine, no “if you want to see what's in the bill, you have to pass it.”
The next thing that sets the Knesset apart is its level of collegiality among members whose views are, to put it mildly, in extreme opposition to one another. 
In the two Knesset dining rooms — one meat, and one dairy, in keeping with the rules of Kashrut — you'll see ultra-orthodox male MKs breaking bread with their female Arab counterparts. You'll see conservatives and liberals having coffee together.
In the U.S. Congress, this is how things used to be, when representatives from different affiliations and from different regions would share an apartment in DC to save money.
Today, there is virtually no crossing of party lines in Congress when it comes to friendship and fraternization, making it extremely difficult to get things done.
In the Knesset, by contrast, collegiality is the order of the day. Israeli politicians know that progress comes from finding common ground, not drawing lines. Another key reason for the Knesset's success at lawmaking comes from the never-ending existential threat supplied by Israel's neighbors.
While the Jewish state has made peace agreements with Egypt and Jordan, they still face the threat of terrorism and war with Hezbollah, Hamas, Syria, Lebanon, and most dangerously, Iran. The constant cycle of peace and war has certainly taken its psychological toll on Israel, but in the nation's parliament, the unspoken bond of the need to pull together for survival often transcends short-term political debate.
Another reason for the success of the Knesset versus the U.S. Congress: its smaller size.
The Knesset, founded in 1949, a year after the state of Israel was born, has 120 members, a number derived from ancient Israel's Third Century C.E. governing body, “The Men of the Great Assembly.” – When you have just 120 members representing a nation of 9 million, it's impossible for the members not to know each other well and find human connections that can overcome political differences. There has been talk of expanding the number of Knesset members to, say, 140 or 150, simply to relieve the strain on them.
Each MK is expected to belong to four or five different committees and somehow make enough time to give vast amounts of proposed legislation their due.
Finally, there is a level of accountability in the Knesset that the American system of government is not likely to impose on itself. At various entrances to the Knesset, MKs and visitors alike can see an attendance board, on which head shots of all 120 MKs appear. MKs in the building have their head shots displayed in color. If they miss more than a certain number of days a week, their pay is docked.
Since they are not allowed any outside forms of employment, this hits them right in the pocketbook. It's not likely that Congress will impose such limitations on themselves anytime soon.
Of course, if any congresspeople reading these ideas don't cotton to them, they can always take the advice of comedian Jackie Mason: “You know why American has a deficit?” he asks audiences. “It's because all the Senators are on salary. “Put them on commission. The deficit will disappear.”
Michael Levin, a 12-time bestselling author, runs BusinessGhost.com, a provider of ghostwriting and publishing services.
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4) PBS launching new conservative political talk show
The new show, “In Principle,” will air Friday nights starting April 13. PBS will decide after an eight-week run whether to continue.

The hosts plan to interview two guests each show, hoping for an in-depth discussion on issues and their formative political experiences. No guests have been announced yet, but Gerson said he’d like to discuss issues like race, gun control and whether conservatism is the right message for the working class.

“I find when I go around the country that there is actually a hunger for serious, civil dialogue as an alternative to the bitterness of our civic discourse,” Gerson said.
Most Read Stories Unlimited Digital Access: $1 for 4 weeks  Gerson is known to the PBS audience as a frequent guest on “NewsHour.” Holmes worked on MSNBC and on Glenn Beck’s media company, The Blaze.

Although the show is beginning at a time of Republican dominance in both the White House and Congress, Gerson has often found himself at odds with President Donald Trump. He said Holmes more often takes the president’s side, or acts as the “anti-anti-Trump.”

“I think the Trump era has been a very difficult time for traditional conservative discourse,” he said. “I think a lot of institutions and places have been co-opted in this era. I view conservatism not only as a belief but a state of mind, a respect for tradition but also a respect for facts.”

At the same time, Trump began to have political success because neither party was addressing the economic concerns of working class Americans, he said.
The show will originate from PBS’ WETA-TV studio outside of Washington. The chief programming executive at WETA, Dalton Delan, will be executive producer.

“We need a place where we can have thoughtful, reasonable, in-depth conversations about politics, policy, culture — you name it — where we’re really talking to each other instead of shouting at each other,” Holmes said. She said she wanted viewers to feel like they spent their time wisely and learned something in the process.
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Lynn Says. Delta - Flaming Liberal Airline. Rice Not Even Thrown At Weddings. Prefer Bolton The Realist. Iran Expands Military Presence. Interview.


Anxious to be a white minority? Already are: https://youtu.be/aPm0NKcBZcY
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https://www.facebook.com/tmw798589/videos/2183218068574343/

When life is running ahead of our ability to catch it maybe we need to slow down.  Lynn always says I focus on the destination and lose sight of the journey.
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The NYSE firm I was a general partner in, Courts and Company, was headquartered in Atlanta, was the largest Southern based firm at the time  and was the investment banker  of Delta.  Richard W Courts was my senior founding partner and would turn over in his grave if he saw Delta today. Perhaps C.E Wolman, the airline's founder, would as well. (See 1 below.)
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Playing footsie with Russia and Assad in Syria is a fool's game.

As for Rice, it is so out of date  they do not throw it at weddings any more.

I prefer Bolton's realism. (See 2 below.)
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Value investing has been out of style for quite sometime.  I believe it is ready to make a comeback of sorts because momentum investing has driven stocks to valuation levels that are fairly rich.  Time will tell if I am right.

As long as the world economies continue upward, and linked,  a modest rise in interests rates will eventually be seen as confirmation of a strong economy which can sustain for a while longer as well.
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Iran expanding its military presence in Syria. (See 3 below.)
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Comment from a close friend and fellow memo reader regarding my previous comment about  William Buckley: "Hi Dick: In 1965, my wife (then girlfriend) and I went to a debate at Tufts University between BU Professor Howard Zinn and William F. Buckley.  Initially, the crowd of students and faculty were enthusiastically behind Zinn.  After about 10 minutes into the debate, Buckley, in his inimitable intellectual style began to destroy Zinn. Point by point by point, this hero of the left Zinn began to wither.  Buckley left the 
auditorium to a standing ovation.

Many years later, I had the pleasure of a long conversation with Mr. Buckley. It was 1980, and we
both involved in presidential campaigns. When I reminded him of the Zinn encounter, he smiled broadly
asking, “were you there?”  I said yes…it was a most delightful evening at Tufts. He continued to smile.

L----"
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This is an interview with Dr. Jordan Peterson a Canadian Psychology Professor.  It is very eye opening.  http://video.foxnews.com/v/5741003775001/?#sp=show-clips

If Congress fails to move forward in a rational manner regarding some reasonable response to the Florida assassinations it's relevance will sink even lower, if that is possible,  and that is dangerous for all.
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Dick
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1) Delta Has 40 Million Reasons to Walk Back Its NRA Rejection

 By Erick Erickson

Delta has chosen to side with social justice warriors against its shareholders and its own financial well being.










Delta has spent a great deal of time siding with left wing social justice warriors in Georgia. It has opposed a state RFRA. It has opposed protections for faith based adoption agencies. It has opposed gun rights legislation. Time and time again, Delta has sided with social just warriors. It is now siding with them against the NRA, which is putting Delta on the wrong side of the one group it owes a legal obligation to, i.e. its shareholders.
Delta is a publicly traded company and its decision to publicly repudiate business with a popular, legal organization of considerable size has cost it a $40 million tax exemption it would otherwise have no later than today. For all of Delta's high minded rhetoric and claims about avoiding "controversial" groups, the NRA has a membership in excess of 5 million people whose sole crime is defending the second amendment to the constitution of the United States. Its members can and will choose to fly with other airlines when given the opportunity. Its supporters in the Georgia legislature are costing Delta tens of millions of dollars.

I suspect if Delta walks back its position, it will get its $40 million. Yes, it will have to suffer through more bad press and attacks from the left for caving to something it should have never caved to. It will probably need to fire several vice presidents in the process. But I suspect Delta will recognize the bad press in another few news cycles will be worth it for the $40 million in tax exemptions it is going to get. That money is real money Delta is currently paying when it buys fuel for its planes.
If Delta does not walk this back, it is going to be interesting to see how shareholders react knowing their company's management was more worried about offending social justice warriors than the financial well being of the company.
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2) A Genuine Axis of Evil

Deterrence won’t stop North Korea from selling its nuclear arms.

By The Editorial Board

Former Obama National Security Adviser Susan Rice and others who say the U.S. can live with a nuclear-armed North Korea cite deterrence and the North’s certain destruction if it attacks Americans. This is a convenient faith, but alas it ignores the threat of proliferation to other regimes or actors that might also use weapons of mass destruction against Americans.
This proliferation threat was in sharp relief Tuesday with leaks from a confidential United Nations report alleging that Pyongyang is circumventing trade and financial sanctions and plying its military wares and knowhow to dozens of nasty foreign customers, including Bashar Assad’s Syria.
The Journal’s Ian Talley reports that the North has shipped 50 tons of supplies to Syria, including “high-heat, acid-resistant tiles, stainless-steel pipes and valves,” likely for use in a chemical weapons plant. The report, written by the Panel of Experts that oversees North Korea’s compliance with U.N. resolutions, reveals more than 40 shipments between 2012 and 2017. It also claims Pyongyang sent weapons experts to Syria multiple times as recently as the past two years.
This would solve the mystery of how Assad obtained the sarin gas he used against his people in 2013 and again in 2017. The U.S. believes he is still using chlorine gas against civilians. In 2007 North Korea worked with Syria to build a nuclear-weapons facility at Al Kibar—until Israel destroyed it in a military raid, against the advice of George W. Bush and Condoleezza Rice.
The chemical-weapons news also underscores the porousness of U.N. sanctions as the North sells whatever it can for cash to keep its dictatorship afloat. If sanctions are going to stop North Korea, the U.S. and its allies will have to start boarding ships and commandeering aircraft believed to be carrying WMD material. North Korea will sell anything to any bad actor for a price.
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3REPORT: IMAGES REVEAL NEW

 IRANIAN MILITARY BASE 

OUTSIDE DAMASCUS

New satellite images purport to show base built to house missiles "capable of striking Israel."

BY 
 
New satellite images of an area near the Syrian capital of Damascus show a new permanent military base which may house missiles capable of striking Israel, Fox News reported Wednesday.

The images of the base, some 12 kilometers northwest of Damascus, were taken by ImageSat International (ISI) and shared with Fox. They show two recently constructed hangars which are similar in appearance to Iranian bases in Syria. 
According to Fox, the new base is operated by Iran’s Quds Force, a branch of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) responsible for operations in foreign countries, deployed to Syria to help embattled Syrian President Bashar Assad and is being used to store short and medium-range missiles.

In November, the BBC news agency reported that Iran established another military base at a Syrian army site south of Damascus. It was destroyed in December by an alleged Israeli air-to-surface missile strike, according to foreign media reports.

According to the report, which was based on a western intelligence source, the Iranian base was some 50 kilometers north of Israel’s Golan Heights and had several buildings which likely would have housed soldiers and military vehicles.Israeli officials have repeatedly voiced concerns over the growing Iranian presence on its borders and the smuggling of sophisticated weaponry to Hezbollah from Tehran to Lebanon via Syria, stressing that both are red-lines for the Jewish State.

Last week, a New York Times investigative report revealed the scope and depth of Iranian entrenchment in Syria, with a high concentration of outposts along the border with Israel, including administrative bases, logistical bases, control centers for UAVs (drones), training centers and more. 

Former Israeli defense minister Amir Peretz said on Twitter Wednesday that the report of a new base demands determined diplomatic action by the Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. 

"The message must be made clear that Iranian military entrenchment constitutes a red line that must not be crossed. If need be, all options will be examined to prevent the entrenchment on the northern border," he wrote.

In early February, an Israeli F-16i fighter jet was downed by Syrian anti-aircraft missiles after it carried out retaliatory airstrikes following the infiltration of an advanced drone into Israel.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu then warned at the Munich Security Conference that Israel could strike the Islamic Republic directly and cautioned Tehran not to “test Israel’s resolve.”

“Israel will not allow Iran’s regime to put a noose of terror around our neck. We will act without hesitation to defend ourselves. And we will act if necessary not just against Iran’s proxies that are attacking us, but against Iran itself.”

On Tuesday, Gen. Joseph L. Votel, head of US Central Command, said that Iran was “increasing the number and quality” of its ballistic missiles deployed to the war-torn country as well as “enhancing” its funding to its proxy troops in the Middle East.

But despite that increased threat posed by Iran, Votel stated that “countering Iran is not one of the coalition’s missions in Syria.”
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