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Another Rant:
It has been a great year to be all equities if you hung in and were patient through the March downturn. Given all of the massive black swans this past year, it seems amazing to see this high return. Various professors, experts, fund managers and others have weighed in on the belief that the market is overvalued, that tech stocks are materially overvalued, and this cannot continue. In my view it all depends on Jan 5. Many investors believe the Republicans will win Jan 5, and there will be gridlock, and so the terrible policies of the Dems will never happen. I hope that is true, but it is too close to call now. How Georgians can vote for these two Dems is impossible for me to understand. If the Dems get control of the Senate, then the party will be over unless Manchin becomes a Republican, which is not going to happen. While there is no question the economy will be in far better shape by June, it will not achieve anywhere near what it could do if the Dems are in complete control. Taxes and new regulation will stifle what could be a real boom which is what the market is currently projecting and betting on. Combine that with the belief of many top money mangers that the market is overvalued, and you have a recipe for a downturn if the Dems win Jan 5.
If you own revenue bond munis, be careful to research the basis for the revenue that may not be there to continue to pay currently. With shut downs some of those bonds might be at risk.
Brexit will change how the UK functions, and it should be a very good thing for them over time, and for trade with the US. It will take time to get it all sorted out.
Bitcoin has had a huge run up but don’t get carried away. It is not going to become a currency. Real currencies need backing of a nation, or gold, or some other currency underpinning it. Bitcoin has nothing back it and it is very volatile. While it is now on a run up, it has had huge runs downward, and very well might again. No currency can be acceptable for payment worldwide if it is not stable as to value. Individual countries like Iran are a perfect example. Nobody wants to accept their currency in international payments and even in internal transactions, they prefer to try to deal in dollars. There is a reason the dollar is the universal reserve currency. It is stable and is in huge supply making it fully liquid. The Swiss Frac is very stable for 00 years, but there is not much if it, so it is not useful for trade. Treat Bitcoin for what it is, a highly speculative and high risk investment. Someday there is likely to be a crypto currency, but don’t expect it to be soon and it will not be Bitcoin.
Biden and Harris spent October claiming there was no plan to deal with Covid, and any vaccine would never be ready by December, and could not be trusted since Trump was in charge. Now Biden is trying to make it sound like the vaccine is wonderful and Trump is not getting it done to have enough people vaccinated in “less than several years”. It is all so he can take credit when he takes office for what by then will be a miracle medical event and tens of millions of people already vaccinated. Biden has had nothing to do with the success of the vaccine program, and has no way to make it better, and is going to screw it up if he messes with it. Reality is there will be 20 million doses in the hands of medical facilities by Jan 7, and it is up to governors and health departments locally to get shots into people. 14 million doses were distributed by Dec 30. The press is already knocking Trump for “failing to get enough vaccine distributed” and administered, as though Trump is supposed to give the shots. Truth is the distribution is going very well given the massive complexity and the speed it is happening. For anyone to think such a complex undertaking that has never been done before in history, is going to be perfect, is stupid or political. You can count on the press saying Biden was responsible for solving the Covid problem come April or May, when he had zero to do with any of it.
There are a lot of middle and upper class blacks in Atlanta, and they should understand that the Dems have been a disaster for blacks by creating a dependent culture of entitlements, welfare, and union run bad schools that has left blacks in worse position than if they had been left to get ahead by self-responsibility. A black businesswoman in Atlanta summed it up as to the current view, “I may be better off economically with Republicans, but Democrats care more about blacks”. That sums up the misunderstanding of what has really happened, and it corresponds to why Jews tend to vote Democratic. They think the Dems care more for them, which is not true at all. If we look back in history, it was Republicans who freed the slaves, and voted for emancipation, not Dems who dominated the South for decades. It was FDR and his Democratic administration who did nothing at all to help the Jews in WWII. The big cities are all run by Dems, with black or left wing mayors, police chiefs, city councils and left wing laws and rules, but blacks are getting killed in huge numbers in cities and the schools are terrible. If the Dems win on Jan 5, it will be that they have mislead blacks to believe they are the ones to bring a better life despite reality.
Further to my view that Biden and his foreign policy team are naïve about the real world today. They want to join with the EU and Asian countries to confront China, but the EU, driven by Germany, just signed a new trade and investment agreement with China before Biden takes office. Just as the Germans say Russia was bad to invade Ukraine and to have tried to kill that Russian politician, Merkel still pushes to build Nordstream, and do other deals with Russia. Biden will go back to a weak foreign policy where not much gets accomplished, but everyone spends lots of time talking and making themselves feel like they are doing good, while China rushes ahead and consolidates its position. . In the meantime China rushes forward with trade deals, and subsidies to buy off the EU and southeast Asia. The threat to Taiwan then ramps up as China will possibly threaten to cut off trade with any Asian country that sides with Taiwan. Biden will do nothing meaningful to stop the threat to Taiwan because he will depend on those same regional nations to join with the US, and they will not do it other than mouthing nice things to Joe. In the meantime Biden will not step up weapons to Taiwan as Trump has done, which they need to deter China. Taiwan will become a real crisis in the next two years, and very possibly in 2021.
Biden has stated he is going to go back to the Obama Biden policy of going after police and finding ways to again demand agreements which ends up constraining actions by police that results in higher murders and crime. Just look at Chicago, Baltimore and other large cities that signed theses consent decrees.
Take note that Biden holds no real press conferences. Everything is on Zoom with the function that would allow reporters to ask questions being shut off. You hear no news about Hunter or anything because Biden’s handlers do not let him have to answer questions and look bumbling. Let’s see how long the press tolerates this total lack of transparency. So far they have not publicly said anything. Can you imagine of Trump did this.
Further on Dalton. The headmaster sent out an email saying the demands from the 100 faculty and black students was not really demands, but was a set of discussion points. Blatant BS. He was reacting in defense to huge blowback from parents and donors, so he tried to make believe it was not really what it really was- demands and a manifesto. 100 faculty did not spend a lot of time with black students drawing up this list of radical demands just to have a discussion. This was straight out of university behaviors that they learned in school. Draw up demands and present them as do it or else, and the administration folds. So now those same students are teachers and they do what they were doing in college, and it worked there. We saw the same at Google with workers of the same age. If you think the demands were just discussion issues, you probably also think Biden has no cognitive issues. This is very dangerous for the country if these sorts of far left wing ideas ever get instituted in schools. They resegregate schools by setting black kids apart with separate rules, and then if the black kids find they cannot do the work at the level required at Dalton, the faculty demands the level of courses be lowered to accommodate the inability of the black kids to do the work. That is actually one of the points. They called it leveling-I call it making excuses for poor work study habits. The entirety of academia is in a lowest common denominator mode instead of pushing school boards at the lower grades to push back on the unions and demand that students rise to do higher quality work. They have convinced black kids and their parents that blacks are victims of racism, and that is why they do not do better in school, instead of instilling a work ethic and a self- responsibility ethic like the Asian kids have whose parents are just as poor as the black kids. This ideology is a disaster for the black kids and for the country.
On that same subject, the San Fran school system has decided that George Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt and Diane Feinstein are not names that should be respected, or which should continue to appear on schools as they are somehow racists, or whatever. Insanity reigns in places like San Fran. If we do not honor those who created and made America the nation it is, then what are kids today supposed to ever learn from history and American culture.
In MA they eliminated the classics from reading in schools as they are deemed racist or “hateful” and kids should not ever read anything that is not written in current sanitized and Americanized politically acceptable English, and which has no text that the teachers deem offensive. So now we have dumbed down literature to bland nothingness. Another huge setback for this generation. And you wonder why young people today have zero sense of history, literature or culture. We are raising a generation of sanitized kids who are taught that America is a racist oppressive place, run by greedy white male oppressors. And now we have Biden and Harris to further fuel this radicalized version of America. If they eliminate all classics and they sanitize everything, how are kids supposed to ever understand the history of America and how will they ever understand the civil war, and how far we have come with civil rights for all. Rewriting history is what they do in Russia and China, and North Korea, and now in the US education system. This is extremely dangerous for our civil society in the future and it is how things like Dalton and elimination of classics happens. This just leads to what we already see everywhere making people afraid to say what they know or believe unless it conforms to the dictated terms of speech. There is no longer free speech in many places. The Rant will never comply. If someone does not like what I say, they can go stuff it. The mob threatened to kill me years ago over a business deal, and I ignored that, so what is anyone going to do now that will bother me.
Happy New Year. Don’t expect 2021 to be a relief from 2020. Iran is already planning a major attack on the Baghdad embassy which US intel has detected and taken steps with the Iraq military to deter and disrupt it. They will try something before Trump leaves office according to the latest reports. He will massively retaliate if they do launch the planned attack. Many of you think Durham will not be a major revelation and indictments. I have no information, but I believe he will rip the cover off the Clintons and the attempted coup to remove Trump. It will make Watergate look like kindergarten. Just be patient. Barr made him special counsel because it will be a major attack on the Dems, and he wanted to make sure it all is revealed.
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There are certain distortions and subtle efforts being employed by the media because they have been intimidated, align themselves with radicalism in order to keep the social pot boiling, identity politics alive and thus, entertain and produce revenue. Being supportive of the "oppressed" also allows the media to believe they are on the correct side of the moral ledger.
What blows a hole in their hypocritical efforts is the fact that to perpetuate them they must resort to distortions and biased reporting.
I often refer to New York's very academic Senator, Moynihan, who warned members of his own party and other progressives their thinking and legislation would destroy the black family and so it did.
Under what degree of logic and rational thinking can progressives and radical liberals justify "defunding police?"
Save me from the "do-gooders."
There is no question, black Americans have been enslaved, segregated against, economically deprived and undereducated. What also is a fact, black Americans have benefitted from extraordinary efforts to right these historical wrongs. However, many of these efforts have done more harm and several have actually embraced reverse discrimination. Think "The War on Poverty" and "affirmative action."
Distortions and extremes, in an attempt to right other extremes and wrongs, troubles me. They have the potential of creating a boomerang effect and eventually resentment.
I have come to resent the media's contrived efforts in commercials to depict mixed marriages even though I believe this will ultimately be a factor in helping us get over prejudice. I am tired of coddling black Americans for wrongs I had nothing to do with and the idea of reparations disgusts me. I am also weary of tolerating anti-social behaviour like rioting, burning people's businesses, whether they be that of black or white proprietors.
Prior to BLM and other such American Marxist organizations coming into being and power, I always thought Jesse Jackson and Al Shartpton had perfected their "shake down" pursuits but, by comparison, they are pikers. To watch Corporate America fall to their knees, grovel and act timorous towards outlandish demands is despicable. I would understand a quid pro quo trade off where such companies offered to expend corporate treasure on educating and upgrading the workforce in order to be more competitive but engaging in retraining their white workforce in sensitivity is equivalent to feeding bullies and suggests further acts of cowardliness.
The spill-over effect on American society can only be one of resentment and eventual increase in driving wedges through attempt at racial respect and understanding.
I am also repulsed by America's double standard judicial system. All innocents should not fear the law and all guilty should be meted equal punishment and this goes for elites as well as the poorest in our society regardless of skin color.
Every citizen should be held to the same expectations and expect the same application of the law. I know this will never happen because humans are flawed and wealth , lamentably, often dictates.
Most importantly of all, low expectations are wrong, deceitful and mean spirited. They bring harm and degrade the human spirit and when liberals believe this is the way to treat or react to black Americans, because of their own guilt, I am repulsed.
Finally, I find Biden's attempt to make his cabinet inclusive so it reflects our quilt like society laughable.
He spits in the face of MLK who urged it was critical to place the content of one's character first.
Trump believed, as our president, it was incumbent for him to make America first, not second, not third, but first. Would we ever elect a president who told us they would place others ahead of the nation they governed. Well we did because of white guilt. His name was Obama and where did that get us? Worse relations for those capable of being intellectually honest.
Trump has many personality and behavioral faults but he understood one thing - construct an economy that created work and therefore, jobs because that was the best equalizer. When people are earning a living, have upward mobility, are able to better their lives and that of their families they have hope and that turns them away from self-destructive activities. Liberals do not understand this because it eliminates the good feelings associated with pity all the while fervently believing they are doing God's work.
If we simply learned to treat others as we would like to be treated we would see no color.
The more categories and distinctions progressives make in defining males and females the more they create that with which to find fault. Diversity has a place but it can also breed trouble. More moderation is a far more worthy goal. Politically speaking we have allowed the extremes to dictate. If we do not pull back from the precipice we have created with overreaction, radicalism and self-destructive behaviour our society will continue to disintegrate.
And:
China does the same thing but uses our own media to spread their propaganda. In essence, our media is a conduit through which China's poison penetrates America's blood stream.
China: Paying US Media to Publish Propaganda
'Borrowing a Boat to Go Out on the Ocean'
- The Chinese government-controlled English language newspaper, China Daily, in 2020 paid a variety of US media outlets nearly $2 million for publishing propaganda from the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), according to a disclosure that China Daily filed in late November with the US Justice Department under the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA), according to Daily Caller.In June, China Daily filed a disclosure with the Justice Department showing that, since November 2016, it had paid $19 million to U.S. media outlets, including $12 million to newspapers such as the Washington Post and New York Times.
- China Daily's ads -- in a strategy known as "borrowing a boat to go out on the ocean" -- come in the form of advertising supplements, inserts called China Watch... camouflaged to look like the other news content of the media outlets in which they appear.
- The practice does not seem to have caused any sort of actual uproar in those media circles that engage in it... This reticence is odd... but because so many journalists and editors consider themselves as standing up against racism, ethnic and religious discrimination, and human rights abuses. Taking money from the Chinese Communist regime in exchange for spreading its propaganda would seem to indicate that this stance is simply empty posturing.
China Daily has reportedly been registered as a foreign agent under FARA since 1983, which means it is required to report its activities and financial transactions to the Justice Department.
In June, China Daily filed a disclosure with the Justice Department showing that, since November 2016, it had paid $19 million to U.S. media outlets, including $12 million to newspapers such as the Washington Post and New York Times. Other newspapers included the Los Angeles Times, the Chicago Tribune, Boston Globe, Seattle Times, Houston Chronicle and Foreign Policy.
China Daily's ads come in the form of advertising supplements, inserts called "China Watch," in a strategy known as "borrowing a boat to go out on the ocean." According to Sarah Cook, Senior Research Analyst for East Asia, Freedom House, in 2017 testimony before the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission:
"This phrase refers to disseminating Chinese state-media content via the pages, frequencies, or screen-time of privately owned media outlets that have developed their own local audiences... In recent years, its robust expansion to English-language media has garnered much attention and public debate. One of the most prominent examples has been the emergence of China Watch — a paid insert sponsored by the state-run China Daily — that has appeared both in print and online in prominent U.S. papers like the New York Times, Washington Post, and Wall Street Journal."
This form of advertising is sometimes also known as advertorials, or native advertising: the stories are camouflaged to look like the other news content of the media outlets in which they appear.
The Wall Street Journal's "China Watch" website, for example, has published a number of articles promoting China's handling of the pandemic, including articles with titles such as, "Apple CEO: China Getting Outbreak Under Control", "US Sister Cities Get Help From Chinese Friends in Virus Fight", "WHO Chief Highlights China-Africa Cooperation on COVID-19 Fight", and a number of articles criticizing the US for its questioning of China's handling of the pandemic, such as "Washington's Wuhan Travel Claim Rebutted" and "Trump's China Remark Rebuked".
China is not the only foreign government paying to advertise its national propaganda in the US. In 2007, Rossiyskaya Gazeta, a Russian government newspaper, began to publish its advertorials, "Russia Beyond the Headlines," in The Washington Post, although the ads reportedly disappeared from the newspaper in 2015. In the past, Rossiyskaya Gazeta reportedly also published Russia Beyond the Headlines supplements in The New York Times and the Wall Street Journal.
"China needs to strengthen media coverage...and use innovative outreach methods...to tell a good Chinese story and promote China's views internationally", Xi Jinping said at the National Meeting on Propaganda and Thought Work in August 2013. Since then, he has regularly repeated this message. "To present good images," Xi told an August 2018 National Meeting on Ideology and Propaganda, "we should improve our international communication capability, tell China's stories well, disseminate China's voice, show an authentic and comprehensive China to the world, and raise the country's soft power and the influence of Chinese culture".
As pointed out by James Fallows in The Atlantic back in 2010, when The Washington Post was already publishing China Watch, it is one thing when such a supplement is clearly labeled as a paid advertisement, but quite different when such ads are published online and made to look similar to the outlet's other news articles, that only "the tiny words 'A Paid Supplement to the Washington Post' in the upper right hand corner distinguish them from the rest of the content".
"Those who engage in this form of propaganda hope to exploit the higher credibility of the hosting media site to enhance the persuasiveness of their message", wrote researchers Yaoyao Dai and Luwei Luqiu, who did an online survey on the effect of China Daily's ads on American and British readers of The Washington Post and The Daily Telegraph. Their findings showed that readers actually struggled "to distinguish political advertisements from standard news stories regardless of their level of education and media literacy".
China does not lack for English language media giants of its own to disseminate the Chinese Communist Party narrative about China across the world. According to Professor Anne-Marie Brady, a fellow at the Wilson Center:
"In early 2009, Beijing announced that it would invest ¥45 billion (roughly US$7.25 billion) into its main media outlets in order to strengthen its international news coverage and global presence. As part of this campaign, known as 'big propaganda' (da waixuan), Xinhua News Service increased its number of overseas bureaus from 100 to 186. That same year, the Global Times (a popular tabloid with an international focus owned by People's Daily) launched an English-language edition. CCTV International also began broadcasting in Arabic and Russian, and in 2010 rebranded itself as CCTV News. China's massive investment in these media attracted considerable international interest and debate".
In a December 2018 report, "Assessment on US Defense Implications of China's Expanding Global Access," the Pentagon assessed China's media expansion:
"Xinhua News Agency, China's official state-run news agency, launched 40 new foreign bureaus and doubled the number of overseas correspondents between 2009 and 2011. Xinhua counted 162 total foreign bureaus in 2017 and aims to have 200 by 2020. China's expanding official media presence reflects a concerted effort on the part of its leadership to shape opinions about the country and promote China's view on key topics. President Xi Jinping urged China Global Television Network, Xinhua's international media service, to 'tell the China story well' and "spread China's voice... a 2015 Reuters report revealed that China Radio International (CRI), a Chinese state-owned entity, was using subsidiaries to mask its control over 33 radio stations in 14 countries, including the United States. These radio stations broadcast pro-China content but have not registered as agents of a foreign government under the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA)".
The reason China did not rely solely on its own state media, according to Brady, was because the strategy of using state media was "widely regarded by Chinese mass-communication experts as a failure. If foreign audiences know that a piece of information comes from an official Chinese media source, they are likely to interpret it as 'propaganda' rather than 'news.'"
With "social justice" having become something of a mantra across the Western mainstream media landscape, the promotion of Chinese regime propaganda to unsuspecting Americans constitutes an oddly incongruent and unethical business practice that the media industry does not appear to have reflected upon publicly, if at all. While several newspapers no longer engage in the practice – The Wall Street Journal, Washington Times and New York Times among them – the practice does not seem to have caused any sort of actual uproar in those media circles that engage in it, such as the Los Angeles Times, Foreign Policy, the UK-based Financial Times, Chicago Tribune and Seattle Times. This reticence is odd, not so much because those newspapers want and need revenues, which is understandable, but because so many journalists and editors consider themselves as standing up against racism, ethnic and religious discrimination, and human rights abuses. Taking money from the Chinese Communist regime in exchange for spreading its propaganda would seem to indicate that this stance is simply empty posturing.
Judith Bergman, a columnist, lawyer and political analyst
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