Purposely Imputing Negatives To Trump. Market Commentary.

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The Real Reason Stacey Abrams Won't Concede

Stacey Abrams has refused to concede the Governor’s race. Each time counties certify their results, Abrams seeks out a federal judge to help her move the goal posts. There are around 8,000 provisional ballots to be counted and Abrams would need over 18,000 votes to get into a runoff.

Abrams is now asking a federal judge to order counties to count previously rejected provisional ballots that were rejected for one of three reasons. First, some voters turned out not to be registered to vote. Second, some voters turned out not to be registered to vote in particular counties. Third, some voters showed up without photo identification and then failed to provide their identification within a seventy-two hour window after the election.

There is well-settled legal precedent that the first two groups do not have to be counted and a federal judge cannot now revise the rules of the election, though she might try. The third ground is also dubious considering the voters had three days to provide their identification. But Abrams wants all those votes...

Read More: 

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There truly are those who hate Trump.  Many reside in the mass media. They distort what he says and, therefore, truly are, not only  his enemy, but also the enemy of the people.

I am not talking about bias.  Everyone has their biases but distortion, purposeful and knowingly supplanting facts with fake news, propaganda is another matter and yes, it is dangerous.

When Trump speaks of "nationalism" and those in the mass media equate this with Nazism, that is not bias.  That is distortion of the worst kind and it is done to drive home the fact they want to make you believe Trump is a racist.  That is dangerous and it is un-American.

Trump may not be eloquent, he may be blunt, he certainly is crude, childish and amateurish but he is also straightforward. He does not mince words.

For Macron to spout what he did recently was an effort by a French leader, whose popularity is sinking, to put down our president and it was a slimy and duplicitous act . It was beneath a so-called ally.

I expect, nee, I want my president to put America first when he thinks about our nation. I would expect for him to seek to make America great after negotiating with others.  I would hope he would assert the values that make America unique.  This does not imply exclusivity.  It simply places emphasis on who we are as a nation and it verbally aligns with what our nation has done for the world and the many contributions and sacrifices we have made.

Trump came to Europe to celebrate the end of a war that, had we not participated,  might have ended otherwise and to pay respect  both to our own who died in defense of world peace but those of our allies.

It that brand of nationalism is evil, I say bring it on and show me more. (See 1, 1a , 1b and 1c below.)
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Market commentary:

Inflation is rising, the world economy is slowing  and the issue with China goes beyond mere trade disparities and theft of intellectual properties.  We are in a power struggle with China as we were with Russia many decades ago and this will continue to hang like a cloud over future events.

Meanwhile, I believe The Fed would be wise to take their foot off the interest rate pedal..

I believe the positive effect of the tax cut is mostly over.  Earnings will continue to grow but the rate of expansion will be at least half what it has been and those who run hedge funds have turned negative so I believe the market has increasing head winds that will act as an impediment to upside prospects.

We could be on the cusp of the beginning of a downward tilting market but it is probably too early to conclude we are entering a bear market. (See 2 below.)
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Dick

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1)

The Enemy of the People

By Sally Zelikovsky

I  have yet to hear anyone explain what Donald Trump means by the “fake news” being the “enemy of the people.” 

I have this dream that Trump will punch back at the media by explaining -- maybe in a fireside chat or directly from the Oval Office -- that freedom of the press is fundamental to American culture and spirit.  It has allowed this country to overcome political and cultural blemishes and rise above and beyond the Founder’s expectations. With the rest of the Bill of Rights, Freedom of the press has played a significant role in this nation’s maturation into the beacon of hope, liberty, and commercial success it has become.

The press is an unofficial check on all three political branches of government at the local, state, and federal levels.  At its core, it is freedom from Congress making laws abridging freedom of the press.  However, it is not unfettered; it has limits just like our freedoms of speech, religion, and assembly. 

Long before Trump, the American people have been manipulated by “fake news” -- intentionally misleading reportage -- and have complained about press bias.  When news output was dominated by three networks and a handful of newspapers, people had little choice.  But as more Americans resented being force-fed “fake news,” they turned away from it.  Eventually, talk radio and the internet filled the gap, sprouting nontraditional news delivery systems and giving voice to journalists who refused to toe the Democratic party line.  But for these developments, America would still be a one-horse media town with the news colored by the Democratic-Media Complex. 

Members of the Democratic-Media Complex relentlessly malign Republicans and conservatives as haters, bigots, idiots, uneducated dolts, cowboys, bible clingers, racists, homophobes, xenophobes, misogynists, white supremacists, and Nazis.   Compared to the enlightened, evolved class of ivory tower, self-righteous, paternalistic, feel-gooders, conservatives must be silenced.

Half of this country knows this is wrong, but won’t stand up against this blatant misuse of the press because they benefit from it. The other half is disgusted. 

At a recent White House press conference, CNN’s Jim Acosta challenged the President’s characterization of the caravan as an invasion.  When President Trump attempted to engage the next reporter, Acosta bombastically continued to speak at and over the President and refused to hand over the mic to a young female aide, whose arm he aggressively pushed away.  Not only was this inappropriate conduct unbefitting a journalist towards a White House aide and a president, but theWashington Post skewed its reporting as “Trump Insults Reporters, Claims Acosta Video Wasn’t Altered.”

The article doesn’t address Acosta’s aggressive posturing and hubris or his repeated interruptions and confrontational attitude towards the President -- all of which, together with Acosta’s physical response to the aide, prompted Trump’s “insults” (or candor).

Then the leftwing press accused the video of being doctored.  According to Buzz Feed:

“There's no evidence that the video was deliberately sped up… T h[e] video analysis… demonstrates what the GIF conversion process does to video. While it's not technically "sped up" by intent, it effectively is in practice.”

This is the kind of fake news that permeates the media and impacts hundreds of millions of people daily.

Again, press freedom is not unfettered but curtailed by honesty regarding the reported facts.  Opinion must be identified as such.  Today, opinion masks as real news.  The press has a duty to truthfully report the facts.  Failure to do so is a breach of the press’s duty to the people.  When the press advocates for a political party, candidates or elected officials, or promotes the agenda of a particular political party, it becomes an arm of the government or that political party.  It then loses any objectivity and no longer complies with its constitutional duty to the American people, effectively becoming the enemy of the people.

With over 85% of journalists supporting and identifying as Democrats, there is very little one can do to combat the cancer of fake and biased news.  The only treatment is sunlight.  In the past, presidents would take the high road and ignore the sins of the press, believing that Americans would see through the charade, reject traditional news outlets and this decrease in consumption would stop the bias.  While millions did reject the media, the press pushed on with its agenda.  They attacked President George W. Bush as a liar and warmonger; they defamed the Tea Party as radicals and Nazis; they assaulted every Republican candidate from Sarah Palin to Mitt Romney as racists, misogynists, and xenophobes. 

With the election of Trump, this bias has reached hysterical heights.  The press no longer feigns objectivity, but has openly declared war on the Trump administration, contorting the news to suit a narrative.  They feel justified unabashedly lying and misrepresenting facts because they believe Trump is a loathsome person whose policies are bad for America.  They blindly insist they know what’s best.

Trump was elected to fight back against these kinds of abuses and sometimes, it isn’t pretty. In order to protect the freedoms enumerated in our Constitution and restore a robust but truthful freedom of the press, we have to expose and combat the fake news.  The press naturally doesn’t like that because it requires them to put their sports announcer hats on when they really want to be players.  And the Democrats don’t like it because they lose their monopoly and stranglehold on the truth.  If you think making sausage in Congress is messy, exposing the Democrat-Media Complex will continue to unearth the filthiest slop imaginable.

President Trump provides much needed sunlight.  This is the right place to take a stand -- it is why he was elected, and it involves his duty to protect the Constitution and to work on behalf of the American people.  Like it or not, as long as the press assaults the truth, it is the enemy of the people.  They are free to challenge the president and criticize his administration, but not to pick and choose which facts to omit in order to promote a particular political agenda or party. 

This is a fight for the essence, the soul of this country by restoring one of our fundamental freedoms to its purest form -- the truth.  And none of us should rest until the American people can have faith that when the press speaks, it speaks as a legitimate fourth check on the three branches of government and not as an arm of the Democratic Party or its elected officials.   

1a)  Poland Celebrated Nationalism as Macron Derided it

By Marek Jan Chodakiewicz

The Europeans are not all alike. The impression we get is that they are self-indulgent, self-loathing freeloaders who won’t pay for their own defense while wanting to impose their religion of global warming on the rest of the world. As Trump’s last visit to France affirmed, the ones on the western coast of Europe, the ones we rescued a couple of times, are ungrateful wretches.

But while we wait for European self-loathing to burn itself out, we should not neglect our true best-friends-forever on the continent, the Poles, who experienced history intensely in the 20th century and do not want a repeat of that in the current one.

We know from the French President’s recent utterances that nationalism is the worst thing ever, a notion echoed by the Canadian Prime Minister and the German Chancellor, another leader doing her best to subvert the national culture of her country. These people do not like the example of Poland, which has justified pride in its history which goes back more than a millennium. The Polish cavalry saved Europe in the siege of Vienna in 1683 and the European elite are afraid that the example of Polish nationalism might do so again.

So how is Polish nationalism going? The best barometer of that is celebration of Poland’s National Independence Day. To the reverberating chants of “God, Honor, Fatherland,” about 250,000 people marched in Warsaw on November 11, 2018, to commemorate Poland’s restoration of sovereignty in 1918.

There were similar parades throughout the nation, albeit on a smaller scale. In a variety of ways, millions of Poles, at home and abroad, were involved in the celebration.

The New York Times and most other Western media outlets naturally saw fascism, or, at the least, the government enabling the fascists.  Those celebrating Poles are not “fascist” any more than their American counterparts who attend 4th of July celebrations across the USA. In Poland they also are just regular folks happy with their nation’s independence. Every year, the Polish participants merely avail themselves of the organizational structure of the March of Independence, created over a decade ago at the initiative of grass roots radical nationalist organizers. Why? It is because no one else cared to organize genuine commemorative activities.

First, a bit of history. In the interwar period, November 11 served as an official state holiday which was harmonized with Europe’s Armistice Day and America’s Veterans Day. However, November 11th celebrations were banned by the Communists after 1944.  The anti-Communist opposition was able to challenge the red regime only over three decades after the ban. It organized the first open commemoration in 1978. A few hundred intrepid souls attended.

After the transformation of 1989, the November 11th commemorations returned to the official calendar. But the post-Communists and their liberal allies observed the holiday rather perfunctorily and half-heartedly. When the Soviet Union imploded, the post-Communists turned nihilist but as Poland’s rulers they learned how to pretend to be pro-Poland in their politics. Former Prime Minister Donald Tusk is on the record as describing Polish national consciousness as “an abnormality”, a pathological affliction that needed to be contained if not eliminated altogether. Tusk went on to become the president of the European Council in Brussels.

The liberal hypocrisy was too much for many Poles.  A vacuum presented an opportunity for the most dynamic patriots to assert themselves. It was chiefly the Christian nationalist radicals among them who decided to organize an alternative to the official observances. These mostly very young people established an ad hoc structure called “The March of Independence”.

The body has endured now for over a decade. It is a voluntary committee that coordinates the event once a year. It does not control the participants in the march; it merely provides for the program and the logistics, including medical help and security. Each participant is responsible for the rest, including banners, slogans, chants, transportation, and so forth.

Until this year all sorts of people showed up at the event. Families with strollers, beauty queens, and WWII veterans marched along with soccer hooligans, girl scouts, and Napoleonic Duchy of Warsaw reenactors from a military cadet school.  Violence from fringe elements from the far right and the far left magically stopped when the Law and Justice Party swept into power in an electoral landslide of 2015. The police mellowed out, and a few dozen of scattered far left protesters failed either to block the march effectively or dampen the spirit of the revelers.

Predictably, in 2016 and 2017, without the government opprobrium and police brutality, the numbers of participants dwindled. No more repression meant no need to give witness anymore. Polish patriots tend to be contrarians. Calls went out to discontinue the grass roots initiative altogether and to merge the “March of Independence” with the official patriotic procession.

The youthful Christian nationalist organizers would have none of this. They thrive on spontaneity and bottom up enthusiasm. Any official involvement would taint that, they argue. Thus, the nationalist radicals vow to march on. They continue to sneer at their leftist and liberal detractors as unpatriotic, even traitors.

But they routinely fail to get themselves elected. As a matter of fact, unlike their predecessors, the modern day nationalist radicals are perfectly helpless and inept in democratic politics. They lack a representation in the national parliament. And they hardly register at the local level in town councils and provincial assemblies. Their command of Polish nationalist symbols and skill in pursuing extracurricular activities, including sports and self-improvement activities attracts kids on the fringe.   

Thus, to a great extent, they are not a serious political movement; instead, they are enthusiastic reenactors. They can be compared to US Civil War buffs who observe the anniversary of the carnage by dressing in their Union or Confederate uniforms and reenacting marches or battles. In fact, the historical reenactors are a powerful contingent in Poland’s March of Independence. Naturally, the Christian radical nationalists of today like to take credit for the success of the mass commemorations of sovereignty. They brag that all that takes place under their auspices. To a certain extent it is true. But let us stress: They neither control the march nor the participants.

The event attracts mostly regular patriots who will continue to attend as long as they understand the march to be a grass-roots phenomenon. Any attempt at formalizing it will destroy the bottom up civic spirit and will turn the festivities into a soulless exercise of meaningless repetition. America’s spirit of July 4th can remain joyous while it reflects the authenticity of the zeal of the participating citizens. The same applies to Poland’s spirit of November 11. Let us remember about this when the Poles march next year.

As to history repeating itself, French perfidy endures. In 1683 Louis XIV moved some of his troops up to the border of the Hapsburg Empire to threaten it and thus reduce the number of Hapsburg troops that could be sent to the relief of Vienna. A French-Ottoman alliance from the 1530s, essentially against the other Christian countries in Europe, endured up to Napoleon’s invasion of Egypt in 1798.

Marek Jan Chodakiewicz is Professor of History, The Kościuszko Chair in Polish Studies, at the Institute of World Politics in Washington, DC


1b) Macron’s Faux Pas on

Nationalism

By Walter Russel Mead

Western Europe mistakes its lessons from World War I for universal truths.

Can the trans-Atlantic relationship be saved? That’s the question the world faces 100 years after the end of World War I.

The signs from the centennial commemorations in Paris were not good. French President Emmanuel Macron publicly condemned nationalism as “the opposite of patriotism” as self-proclaimed nationalist Donald Trump looked on stonily. The relationship between the U.S. and its three principal European allies—Germany, Britain and France—is arguably cooler than at any time since the Truman administration.

Paradoxically, the chill has occurred just as the security, economic and even ideological interests of the leading Western states have grown increasingly aligned. Russia and China both seek a weaker European Union, a divided Western alliance, and a decline in American power. China’s aggressively mercantilist economic plans target the capital-goods and automotive industries at the core of the German economy. In a world with better leadership, the major European states and the U.S. would deepen their partnership to prepare for a challenging new era in world politics. In our world, however, bitterness and resentment fester on both sides of the ocean, and the alliance weakens as the need for it grows.

The oracles of conventional wisdom naturally blame Mr. Trump—and they’re not all wrong. His negotiating style with Germany and France has been abrasive. From Iran to trade to the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty to the environment, he assaults what most Europeans see as their interests even as his “America First” rhetoric grates on their sensibilities.

But if Mr. Trump is wrong about many things, on one big issue he is right. However tangled its history, nationalism is an important force in global affairs that world leaders should respect. Mr. Macron’s disdainful remarks made for good headlines, but his inability to appreciate the role of nationalism in world politics exemplifies the failure of imagination at the root of many of Europe’s troubles.

The instinctive antinationalism of leaders like Mr. Macron is rooted in the belief that Western Europe is the real Europe and that its history is a universal history with lessons equally compelling for the rest of the world. These egotistical beliefs are so deeply held among elites in Western Europe that they are often unconscious.

In fact, the lessons of World War I were not the same everywhere. In Eastern and Central Europe, the war demonstrated the value, not the dangers, of nationalism. It broke the transnational bureaucratic empires that denied Poles, Lithuanians, Czechs and many others their freedom.

After World War II, the subjugation of these peoples in another multiethnic, bureaucratic imperial system, the Soviet bloc, confirmed their belief that the cause of nationalism was the cause of freedom. The Eastern and Central European countries that joined the EU did so because they believed membership in a prosperous Western club would, along with the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, preserve their national independence. They were escaping the ideological transnationalism of the Warsaw Pact, not signing up for another round of rule by “postnational” bureaucrats.

In the U.S., World War I never had the social and cultural impact that it did in Germany and France. Both the Civil War (in which as many as 750,000 Americans were killed) and World War II (418,500) loom much larger in American historical memory than World War I (116,500). The lesson of the 20th century for many Americans was that nationalism is a good thing. Nationalism unified the ethnically and religiously diverse American people at home and enabled the U.S. to triumph in two world wars and the Cold War.

Postnationalism is a Western fantasy, not a global trend, and no lasting peace can be built on such a shaky foundation. China, Russia, India, Pakistan, Vietnam, Brazil, Turkey—these countries and many others are as nationalistic as France was in 1910, and their nationalism is shaping a new reality in world affairs that puts both European and American security increasingly at risk.

Mr. Trump instinctively understands this, and he knows Western countries need the strong whiskey of nationalism—not just the weak tea of bureaucratic cosmopolitanism—to thrive in a dangerous world. That insight is not enough to anchor the West or ground U.S. strategy, but without it there is no foundation for security or peace.

If the American and European establishments had understood the importance of nationalism to the coherence of their own societies as well as the architecture of world order, Mr. Trump might still be producing television shows, and nobody would have heard of the Alternative for Deutschland. The longer mainstream leaders remain blind to nationalism’s importance, the more chaotic the world is likely to become.

1c)

Maybe we could use a civic Hippocratic oath

By Victor Davis Hanson

A mob of protesters associated with the radical left-wing group Antifa swarmed the private residence of Fox News host Tucker Carlson on the night of Nov. 7. They yelled, "Tucker Carlson, we will fight! We know where you sleep at night!" The mob's apparent aim was to catch Carlson's family inside and so terrify them that he might temper his conservative views. Only Carlson's wife was home at the time. She locked herself in a pantry and called police.

During the Supreme Court nomination hearings for Brett Kavanaugh, demonstrators disrupted the proceedings and stalked senators. Later, a mob broke through police barricades to pound on the doors of the Supreme Court while Kavanaugh was preparing to be sworn in. Their agenda apparently was to create such confusion and disorder that the nomination might be postponed.

Hollywood celebrities habitually boast of wanting to shoot, blow up or decapitate President Donald Trump. Apparently their furor is meant to lower the bar of violence so that Trump fears for his personal safety and therefore might silence or change his views.

Few of these protesters fear any legal consequences when they violate the law. Nor do those who disrupt public officials at restaurants, stalk them on their way to work or post their private information on the internet.

Yet most Americans are tired of hearing the lame excuses that the protesters' supposedly noble ends justify their unethical or illegal means to achieve them.

On the other hand, the public does not wish to curb free speech or our First Amendment rights of expression. Journalists certainly have the right to unprofessionally lecture and sermonize instead of just posing questions to public officials. But they still set a poor example of journalistic behavior and disinterested reporting while confirming the public's low esteem for their entire profession.

Most people do not believe that the overseers of Facebook, Google and Twitter possess either the wisdom or the ethics to censor the sort of social media that most people find objectionable. Yet the pubic tires of the anonymous hitmen on social media who post vicious lies to ruin the reputations of their perceived enemies.

The trick, then, is to distinguish between illegal behavior (which should be prosecuted) and improper behavior (which should be shamed).

Lawbreakers can be arrested and prosecuted to deter illegality. But are there any consequences when journalists and TV hosts compare the president to a mass-murdering Hitler, resort to scatology on the air or traffic in fake news? Their apparent objective is to gin up popular furor and boost their own visibility as well -- sacrificing their traditional role of informing the public and allowing people to interpret the news and draw their own political conclusions.

Certainly Donald Trump can hit back at his 24/7 critics without calling his nemesis, porn star Stormy Daniels, "horseface."

So how does a society create a civic culture in which we do not embrace words and deeds that are incendiary or cruel or both, and thereby erode the traditions and manners that prior generations have bequeathed?

Why not try a voluntary code of civic conduct -- something akin to the medical profession's ancient Greek Hippocratic oath -- that celebrities, politicians, journalists and other public figures might seek to honor?

Our civic version of the Hippocratic oath might include these simple pledges:

I will neither lecture nor harangue when asking questions.

I will not deprive others of their right to free expression.

I will not shout down or silence public speakers.

I will not resort to profanity or scatology in the public square.

I will neither call for nor joke about killing or physically harming public officials.

I will not denigrate the race or sex of anyone or characterize individuals on the basis of their appearance.

I will not compare my political opponents to Adolf Hitler or Nazis.

I promise not to disclose the address of contact information of political opponents.

I will not protest at the private residences of political opponents.

I will not stalk political opponents.

I will not resort to physical force to intimidate my opponents.

I will not denigrate or harass the family members of my opponent.

I will not report or state something that cannot be substantiated.

I will not claim to have consulted "anonymous" or "unnamed" sources when I have talked to no one.

I will not leak or disseminate the private records of those I oppose.

Many of our best-known journalists, politicians and celebrities do not follow those simple rules. If they did, the now-discredited mainstream media, the Washington swamp and the Hollywood elite might regain a little of the credibility and self-respect they have lost.

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2) 

Stocks Close Lower, But Some Traders

 See A Silver Lining

Stocks closed lower again yesterday, as stocks couldn't hold onto early gains.

But I was actually happy about yesterday's pullback. And I'll bet plenty of other traders were as well.

As I had mentioned earlier in the week, there was a gap left on the S&P chart from 10/30 at 2,685.43. We finally closed that gap today with the S&P getting as low as 2,685.75. Well, I guess technically we still had another -0.32 points to go. And the gap on the Dow at 24,906.68 is still open as well. But they are both less than -0.70% away from officially being closed.

That's good news because technical traders look at those common gaps as areas that need to be filled. And those gaps typically act as magnets, preventing the market from getting too far ahead of itself before it has to backtrack and fill those in. Because of this, plenty of technicians are reluctant to build new positions until those gaps are gotten.

I'll give a pass to the S&P given the fraction of a point that was left. But with the Dow's gap still open, I would not be surprised to see a little more weakness in the near offing. But once those gaps are filled in, I would expect lots of new buying to come in shortly thereafter, if not immediately.

So yesterday's pullback was great news. And if we see a tad more tomorrow, even better. Because to me, that means we should soon be headed back up.

These inside 'secrets' of chartists and technicians can give savvy traders a great edge in the market.

And it's always important to have an edge.

Another edge is looking at insider trading (the legal kind).

Insiders at publicly traded companies are required by law to disclose their purchases. And do so within 48 hours of their trade. Looking out for large trades and cluster trades (multiple insiders at a company are buying – my favorite type of insider trading), can give an investor a profitable heads up. Because following what people in the know are doing (those people who should know the most about the company's prospects), can often translate to great foreshadowing of what's to come.

To learn more about this type of insider trading and how you can benefit from it, please check out our latest commentary...

The #1 Insider Signal Every Trader Should Know

Best,

Kevin Matras

Executive Vice President, Zacks Investment Research

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