Thanks For Those Who Sacrificed For My Freedom and Their's. Just Returned From Beach. A Variety of Postings.

In America, there's a card more valuable than any card from Visa or American Express. This card is so valuable that entire organizations have been built using it, and many individuals have employed it to acquire both wealth and influence. What is it? How can you get one? Find out in this week's video featuring Candace Owens, Communications Director  for Turning Point USA.

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Just returned from 10 days away and this memo is simply posting of some accumulated readings and e mails I have received. A more personal narrative memo will follow but buried with mail etc.

Leave again June 5 for Board meeting of GMOA, this time in Raleigh, N.C. so future memos will continue to be sporadic.

Do have a lot to write about the past several weeks and will when I have time.
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I am able to send my memos because of the sacrifices of those who have protected my liberties and I thank them for their service and sacrifices.
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Two more rantings. (See 1 and 1a below.)
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I have maintained for months, when it is all revealed, Obama will also have been intimately involved. (See 2 below.)
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Let's hear it for California. (See 3 below.)
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Been around for sometime but gets more meaningful with the passage of time. (See 4 below.)

https://amgreatness.com/2018/05/21/how-democracies-end-a-bureaucratic-whimper/#.WwM0kMoBwps.aolmail
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Logic and gun blaming. (See 5 below.)
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One more basis for believing why Obama was a disaster.  (See 6 below.)
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When it comes to The NYT's reporting on Gaza even Tom Friedman is mystified.  (See 7 below.)
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Dick
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1) As interest rates rise, the REIT sector and other defensive sectors slip. REIT’s mainly are valued based on FFO and their dividend payout, and so when Treasuries rise, the price of  REIT shares tend to slip, just like values of bonds. The difference is REITs are owners of operating real estate, so as the economy improves, REIT AFFO should increase in most cases. Now hotel companies are looking a little better with the economy booming, and unemployment so low, but  labor cost issues will continue to be an issue for owners. The big hotel brands will do better since they only collect fees off the top line and other fees, and do not have NOI concerns like owners do.  Apartments and single family REITs continue to enjoy rent increases, however those shares were down considerably recently. Apartments continue to do well as rents in many markets continue upward-New York being an exception as there was mass over building. Industrial is now fully valued so is less attractive. Landlords in NYC are lowering rents and giving all sorts of concessions. Senior living is experiencing the same labor shortage and cost issues as hotels. As Latin immigration is further reduced this will get worse.

Overall, the stock market is up around 1.5% YTD, despite all that is happening, and will move higher as the Chinese work through trade deals with Trump and Mnuchin. That is pretty good news given all the issues around trade, N Korea, Iran, China, Mueller, etc. I remain optimistic for the rest of the year unless the Dems take the House. Then stocks will tank badly.  It is still way too early to know how the vote goes, but I still think Republicans will prevail by one or two seats. The fact that the ten year is up at 3.1 is not so bad as it just confirms the economy is strong, not headed to recession and growth is strong this quarter.

Italy now has a populist, anti EU government. They are proposing a budget increase which they cannot afford, and which violates the EU budget rules.  They also talk about maybe looking at being out of the EU, but that is highly unlikely. More importantly, it is one more major country that is not going to just follow Merkel and Macron. Brexit is still not complete and will go through more ups and downs, but the clock ticks and it will happen. All of this leaves the EU still mired in problems, and disputes. They are now looking at ways to get around US sanctions for companies dealing with Iran, even to the extent of improper ways to go around the banking system to assure Iran it will get paid for oil and products. They are also looking for ways to subsidize EU companies doing business with Iran. They really need to be looking at how to squeeze Iran instead. Violent riots have been taking place in southern Iran for several days, and are just the tip of the underlying discontent of the Iranian people. As their economy recedes again, and as sanctions take hold, unrest is likely to increase. Trump and Pompeo are going to defy the EU and sanction any company dealing with Iran, and that will be a new point of major dispute with the EU and Merkel. Take note that Sadr has come out against Iranian influence in Iraq.  That is a seminal moment.  Israel wiped out the Iranian bases in Syria.  Russia said all foreign troops including Iranian must leave Syria. Iran is being pushed back on all fronts from Syria to Iraq. Sadr has made it clear there will be no control of Iraq by Iran  Iran’s top general is in Baghdad now to try to influence the new regime formation, but he will likely fail and if so, that will reverse much of what Iran has been trying to do.  Mass protests against Iranian influence erupted in Baghdad when the Iranian general arrived to try to sway the election results. Trump and Pompeo will now push hard to really squeeze Iran, and the EU will get stuffed in the process. All of this suggests investing  in the EU is not where you want to be right now. There is too much tough stuff going on, and with Italy going rogue, and Poland and Hungry not in step, and US sanctions on EU companies that try to deal with Iran. It is going to be a rough year or more in the EU. While their economies continue to grow, that is just recovery from real crash crisis, and not boom times. Trump is going to prevail in this battle because the EU needs the US much more than we need them.

The trade negotiations are very complex and each government has to look like it stood up to Trump. The Chinese are making some real concessions, and Xi and Trump have agreed it is no good for either to have a trade war. Over time they will resolve many things, and there will be progress in reducing the trade deficit, but the Chinese were never going to agree to set $200 billion as a set target. The main thing is them opening markets and industries and stopping the theft of intellectual property. In short, they need to stop cheating on WTO rules and start to accept world norms. It will take time to get there, but a lot of progress has started to be made and will continue. There will be no trade war. The negotiations will go on for weeks or months, but in the end, they will get resolved. You can hate Trump a lot, but he has led the world to admit there needed to be an adjustment in China trade actions, and that Germany is more interested in its exports than dealing with Iran and Russia. If Merkel and Macron got on the same aggressive page as Trump on Iran, over time, the whole world would be far better off. Germany and the EU continue to far underfund defense, and still expect the US taxpayer to in effect pay for all their entitlement programs by letting us pay to defend them while they use their money for even more entitlements for refugees who are going to have a very negative long term impact on Germany and the EU. .

NAFTA may be different. The lead negotiator for the US has been too tough and uncompromising. It is unknown if this is him, or if he is acting on specific orders from Trump. A lot has been agreed to, but a lot of material issues are not resolved with Mexico. If the US does not back off in the next week or two it might be too late. The Mexicans will have a new government in July and then there is no way to do a deal. That is likely to be a far left regime that will set back Mexico by decades by undoing many of the market opening and private market initiatives undertaken by the existing government.  Very bad for Mexico and makes a deal on NAFTA impossible maybe. Unclear where all this goes now. The US trade negotiator -Lightheizer, -has to make concessions now. The next two weeks are critical.

Did you ever note how much time you waste trying to get all your devices working properly, and how much time it takes talking to barely helpful tech support people. The other issue these days is, appliances are made to not last and to be replaced, not repaired. My 4 year old LG dishwasher had a bad error code. The repair guy said the chip to replace would cost $500 with labor and parts, and he then told me the manufacturers are making less reliable equipment with all the electronics, and that they are putting the repair people out of business because, as in my case, it was better to just buy a new machine than to spend $500 to replace a part. My dishwasher in Manhattan cost $900 to repair. See what happens when you have a real issue with the car. It takes software engineers to fix it.  A couple of years ago BMW replaced my then brand new car because nobody could figure out how to reprogram the computer. This is the world we now live in. The machines are too complex and too costly to repair. I just want my old clothes and dishwasher back. They lasted 20 years with no problems. Any grease monkey could fix your car. I don’t need sensors, wireless controls, or any of the other useless crap technology. Just wash the dishes and the clothes, and have the car take me from here to there. It used to be simple and far less expensive. 

 1a)

The US dollar is heading higher, and that is because the US economy is outperforming most others and the Fed is raising rates. As the dollar rises, emerging market countries are struggling because they raised a lot of capital using dollar denominated bonds. Now they are struggling to pay them off due to the higher dollar. The yield on the US ten year is far above the yield on Euro based bonds and Yen based.  As a result more capital is flowing to the US now. That is good for the US bond market and stock market, and real estate. The EU still has not ended QE, and so the US dollar should continue to rise for awhile. At the same time, the Turkish Lira is crashing due to the policies of Erdogan. Turkey is in serious trouble economically. Iranian currency is also now continuing to crash, and that will accelerate as Trump puts crushing sanctions in place.

If you live in CA, NY, CT or any other blue state with very high taxes, IRS just said it is about to kill any workaround for SALT. The charitable deduct does not work.

If the trade war with China is off the table now, and earnings continue to rise, the US stock market will continue to rise. Ignore the Trump rhetoric about he is not happy with the China trade discussions etc.  He is just posturing which is his style. As I have said on the past, watch what the cabinet and senior staff do not what Trump says. Maybe Kim will not go ahead with the summit, but if not the Chinese will be very unhappy. My bet is there is a meeting, and it will be inconclusive at first. Kim thinks he can play Trump like his father and grandfather did in the past, but that will not work now, and his game playing will end. Trump really will get up from the table and leave Kim surprised. The market will react badly if the talks falter, but maybe the falter will not be too bad for the market as it will not be a surprise. The EU is about to learn that they cannot get away with trying to game the system and deal with Iran while the US sanctions Iran. At the same time, Trump is playing hardball with the EU on trade, and so they will find they are in real trouble if they think they can play the US. It is likely the EU still does not believe Trump will shut them down, but he will. Pompeo warned them. For the EU, it is a whole new game with Obama gone. There is a massive culture difference between Trump and the EU. Merkel and Macron think they can just continue to suck the US tit and get us to pay for their defense, and to go along with their socialist economic ideas, and left wing foreign policy. They hate Trump because he has defied the way things have been done for decades, and the EU now finds their game is over. They can no longer just let the US carry the burden and they go out and build exports and keep the people happy with all sorts of entitlements. The US foreign policy establishment also thinks Trump is doing it wrong, but reality is, Iran has to be crushed, and then there is a chance for real peace. Continuing to trade with them to buy 7 more years of no nukes, while they run over the Mideast and plan to destroy Israel, is stupid, and very shortsighted.

Most all economists think threatening tariffs is an awful thing. I can tell you having extensive discussion with one very top and outspoken economist, that they just do not get it. They think the tariff threat is really about tariffs, and they do not understand it is just about setting the negotiating table, Trump had to do something to get everyone to the table, and to get serious with a tight timetable. Instead of the usual, talks, delay, more talks and more delay and nothing happens, he has forced everyone to get real in a tight timetable. Economists and most policy wonks do not understand what is happening, or how negotiations get to the end point.  They pontificate and never actually do anything. It is why Buffet just said he never pays any attention to what economists say.  None has ever gotten rich off their projections. In fact Galbreath almost went broke playing the market. Economists sort through data and theorize. Tough negotiators who really do deals, threaten, lie, overstate, demand unreasonable things, but in the end find ways to get a deal done. It is an entirely different culture and mindset that economists cannot understand, because it is very messy, sometimes nasty, and not data driven.

Thanks to Dodd Frank, the lending market has moved away from banks to private equity funds and private lenders. These sources are unregulated to a great degree and can do very good deals but retain very good underwriting. Banks simply cannot compete and it shows in the material decline in commercial; and real estate loans by banks. Unless Dodd Frank is materially deregulated, this trend will continue. We got a very good A&D and construction loan from a private equity fund for our Bayonne project that no regulated bank can do. This trend away from regulated commercial banks will continue now.  The newly passed deregulation of small and midsized banks is a greats step in the right direction to allow banks to again be banks to small and mid-sized businesses.

As I have been predicting, the Dems will be sorry they ever started the Trump collusion story and Mueller.  The conspiracy by the Dems to get Trump, and the collusion by Hilary, Obama, the Dems and the FBI is coming apart. Someone is going to talk, and it will be Watergate II. Informant, spy, fake dossier, FISA warrant, unmasking, set up Flynn, etc. Congress has a right as our proxy to see the information, and we have a right to know what really was going on. There is so much smoke, there has to be fire. Rosenstein, in my view, is the chief cover upper. He controls all the docs and who sees what. He was in the middle of a lot of  what was happening. Where the hell is Sessions in all this. We cannot have a DOJ and FBI that are not subject to oversight by Congress. Otherwise we have legal system corruption and illegal acts like they have in third world countries. The constitution set up a system of checks and balances and the chairs of the congressional committees are cleared to see whatever they need to see. The cover up needs to end now. We need to know what is true or not.

Starbucks is already finding out that not restricting use of the store and bathroom leads to drugs and homeless in urban locations. They had to already alter the policy after one day based on feedback from managers and customers. That is Seattle mind set. Punish the good guys and corporations, and pander to the far left. Cater to the homeless and not paying customers. They are a profit making business with shareholders, not a welfare operation. Now Seattle is about to pay a big price when Amazon and others take jobs elsewhere. Seattle now even has a law that says a landlord cannot look at criminal records and must rent to the first person that seems to qualify even if they seem a bad risk, or have a bad criminal history. In short, the owner has lost control of his property. Result, landlords are selling out and there likely will be little, if any, affordable housing built.  But hey, we are fair to all- so long as you are not a capitalist or corporation or property owner.

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2)Adriana Cohen has a column on the subject that is going viral.

She writes at the Boston Herald:

Democrats’ Russia truth coming out

A Democratic Watergate is unfolding before our eyes.

It’s no wonder Obama’s former CIA chief John Brennan is tweeting like a madman, attacking President Trump, House Speaker Paul Ryan and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell.

Brennan’s running scared because it’s starting to look like he may have been a co-conspirator in the biggest political scandal since, well, Watergate.

Yesterday, Trump met with FBI Director Christopher Wray, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein and Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats to inquire if Brennan’s CIA and the FBI spied on his 2016 presidential campaign, as reported by The New York Times and other media last week.

If it’s confirmed that the Obama administration used U.S. intelligence agencies and the Justice Department to go after political opponents — to keep Democrats in power through a presidential election cycle — Attorney General Jeff Sessions should immediately un-recuse himself from the Russia “collusion” witch hunt, shut it down and open a criminal investigation into all parties involved.

And to think that Democrats and their puppets in media have been calling Trump the greatest threat to democracy all this time when their party may have been using authoritarian tactics against the leader of the opposition party and his associates.

This could get really ugly, folks.

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3)Subject: FW: Fwd: California Legislative Results for the year

  

And these people were voted into office - I think they are sitting on their brains - 

I AM NOT PROUD OF ANY OF THE LEFT COAST LIBS WHO RUN THIS STATE!!!!   

Subject: Some California Legislative Results for the year

The California Legislative Year Closed.   All the Representatives went home exhausted and the damage was done. So what did they accomplish during this high pressure year in Sacramento?

This is an update today on the progressive Democrats’ continued destruction of California. The ones who would not endorse Dianne Feinstein, because she is not sufficiently Socialist extreme.

By the way, we are already deemed the worst state for businesses.  Here are some of the highlights of this session:

* Passed Cap-n-Trade Tax which will increase gas $0.63 to $0.93 cents a gallon change and the taxes that go with it.  So do the math projection.....   (0.12 + 0.63 = 075/gallon + current $3.10/gallon = $3.85/gallon)

* Proposed increase on a new tax every residence will pay for tap water!

* A $3.46B parks bond to pay for parks in "disadvantaged communities".  The debt service alone will be over $200 million a year.  The good news is some money goes to help fix the Salton Sea which should have always been a State responsibility!

* Law to release any lifer (murder, rape , child molestation, etc.) who is 60 years old and has already spent 25 years in prison!  Charles Manson would have qualified if he just waited a few months before dying; and the Melendez brothers that murdered their parents could be released in about 12 years?  Victims?... What victims?

* A new $ 50 charge on all residents living in a mobile home parks to address “living condition enforcement” in those parks?  What the hell does that mean?  As if having to live in a mobile home park isn’t bad enough?   Regressive tax on the poor?

* We picked an official dinosaur for the State of California.  Really???

* Requires Tesla to either unionize with the United Auto Workers Union, or forfeit State incentives to buy their electric cars!  Maybe political blackmail doesn’t count as breaking any law.  Unions are loving it.  “Watch out solar companies.. They may be coming after you next!!!”

* Reduce from a felony to a misdemeanor the purposeful intent to transmit the AIDS virus to a unknowing partner

* Give preferential treatment to prisoners convicted of serious crimes that are less than 25 years old because their brains are not mature enough to understand right from wrong.  Whaaat?

* A bill to require our true sex be omitted from drivers licenses?  Whaaat?

* Free legal services for illegal immigrants...   Of course!

* Establish safe "injection zones" run by government to oversee people injecting heroin!

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4) TOP 10 REASONS TO VOTE DEMOCRAT

#10. I vote Democrat because I love the fact that I can now marry whatever I want. I've decided to marry my German Shepherd.

#9. I vote Democrat because I believe oil companies' profits of 4% on a gallon of gas are obscene, but the government taxing the same gallon at 15% isn't.

#8. I vote Democrat because I believe the government will do a better job of spending the money I earn than I would.

#7. I vote Democrat because Freedom of Speech is fine as long as nobody is offended by it.

#6. I vote Democrat because I'm way too irresponsible to own a gun, and I know that my local police are all I need to protect me from murderers and thieves. I am also thankful that we have a 911 service that gets police to your home in order to identify your body after a home invasion.

#5. I vote Democrat because I'm not concerned about millions of babies being aborted so long as we keep all death row inmates alive and comfy.

#4. I vote Democrat because I think illegal aliens have a right to free health care, education, and Social Security benefits, and we should take away Social Security from those who paid into it.

#3. I vote Democrat because I believe that businesses should not be allowed to make profits for themselves. They need to break even and give the rest away to the government for redistribution as the Democrat Party sees fit.

#2. I vote Democrat because I believe liberal judges need to rewrite the Constitution every few days to suit fringe kooks who would never get their agendas past the voters.

#1 reason I vote Democrat is because I think it's better to pay $billions$ for oil to people who hate us, but not drill our own because it might upset some endangered beetle, gopher, or fish here in America. We don't care about the beetles, gophers, or fish in those other countries.

"The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits"… Albert Einstein

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5)

Why do these horrendous school shootings continue?  

Because ...

• We have been poisoned by years of violence in the media and computer games
• We are prohibited from dealing with the mentally ill, until a crime is committed
• We openly promote sex, abortion and self gratification without restriction
• We make the criminals victims, and the victims, criminals
• We have killed God and religion; we now worship the insanity of PC-ism

Blame for all of these, and the resulting societal decline, falls squarely on the shoulders of liberals!!  And now they will divert attention from root cause problem solving by trying to blame the guns!

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6)

An end to Iran defeatism

Pompeo’s speech reminded us of the goals for U.S. foreign policy that Obama abandoned and why they are not impossible to achieve.

JONATHAN S. TOBIN

(May 23, 2018 / JNS) Everyone was eager to hear from the new U.S. secretary of state, but they didn’t care much for what he said. Many international observers hoped that Mike Pompeo’s speech would sound a cautionary note that would indicate that the Trump administration was proceeding slowly after the president withdrew the United States from the Iran nuclear deal.

Instead, they heard a ringing declaration of an American intent not only to force Iran to give up its nuclear quest in a way that the pact negotiated by the Obama administration failed to do. He also made it clear in a 12-point manifesto that the United States was determined to put a stop to Iran’s non-nuclear threats in terms of missile production, as well its support for terrorism and regional adventurism, further demanding a complete Iranian withdrawal from Syria.

The reactions to Pompeo’s speech from most U.S. allies, in addition to critics of U.S President Donald Trump, were swift and nearly unanimous. As far as they were concerned, Pompeo’s goals were unrealistic, and the strategy he put forward to achieve them—crippling economic sanctions—was inadequate for the task. Rather than rally the world to America’s cause, they believed that he had only deepened the isolation into which the administration is dragging the country, essentially forfeiting its role as the leader of the West.

But far from being extreme, Pompeo’s demands that Iran give up its nukes and stop behaving like a rogue nation are reminiscent of the same stands President Barack Obama held prior to starting talks with Tehran in 2013. There’s very little difference between what Pompeo and his boss in the White House are saying now about Iran and what Obama was telling the country in 2012, when he promised that any negotiations with Iran would have only one objective: an end to its entire nuclear program and not merely a temporary pause in its effort to build a weapon. It was also his State Department that designated Tehran as the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism. In other words, virtually everything that Pompeo set forth as a U.S. demand was once Obama-administration policy as well.

As for the futility of sanctions, Obama and former Secretary of State John Kerry often boasted that the squeeze that the West put on Iran’s shaky economy was the reason it came to the negotiating table in the first place. The only real difference between Pompeo in 2018 and Kerry in 2013 is that when presented with an obdurate Iranian negotiating partner that said “no” to every demand that it cease its dangerous behavior, the Americans folded. Over the course of the talks, Kerry gave in on virtually every point—not only giving Iran a path to a bomb, but also the financial clout to step up its support for Hezbollah and to build bases in Syria, from which it now threatens Israel.

But the point about this narrative is not just that, as Trump correctly points out, Kerry was a lousy negotiator. It’s that none of Iran’s gains in the last five years had to happen. The Iranians saw that although they desperately needed sanctions relief to prop up their failing economy in the face of domestic unrest, Obama and Kerry seemed to want a deal more than they did. Indeed, America backed off from efforts to stop the unfolding humanitarian disaster in Syria largely in order to avoid offending the Iranians.

Rather than press their advantage, Obama and Kerry gave up and let the Iranians have their way because the president’s true goal was to achieve a rapprochement with the regime and not a fundamental change in its nature.

All Pompeo is trying to do is to return to that crucial moment in 2013, when it seemed possible to force the Iranians to change, as well as to give up their nuclear quest.

The difference is that while Obama was able to get grudging support for sanctions from America’s allies and trading partners, the rest of the world seems determined to protect their right to trade with Iran and keep the deal in place, even if that also means that a deadly threat to the West—and to Israel and the Sunni Arab states that are even more frightened by Iran—will also be preserved.

That makes Pompeo’s task more difficult than the one presented to Kerry before he shirked the struggle in the course of a shift to appeasement of Tehran. But it is by no means impossible.

As much as the Europeans keep telling the administration that they won’t go along with tougher new sanctions, the notion that they will choose to continue to do business with Iran—even if it means being cut off from conducting transactions with U.S. financial institutions—is ludicrous. They won’t like it, but if Pompeo means what he says about strict enforcement of sanctions, then Europe, Russia and China will have to go along with them in one way or another. That won’t make Trump or Pompeo very popular in Paris or Berlin, but the end result will be Iran’s isolation, not that of the United States.

Pompeo spoke the truth when he implied that Iran was bluffing about its ability to defy sanctions, especially in the face of a restive population that is tiring of its theocratic tyrants. Instead of acting as if Iran is the strong power and the United States is too weak to defend its interests, Pompeo reminded Tehran that the reverse is true.

While the path that lies in front of the administration is fraught with difficulties, Pompeo’s rejection of Obama’s defeatism about America’s place in the world, coupled with his realism about the need to bring a fundamentally weak Iranian regime to heel, is a necessary prelude to any effort to roll back the gains Iran has made since 2013. Doing so is not an abdication of U.S. leadership of the West, but a reassertion of principles that Obama abandoned to the detriment of American security and that of our allies.

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7)  

Not Even Tom Friedman Believes New York Times Gaza News Coverage

How was the New York Times’ coverage of the Gaza suicide-riots? So off-target that not even the Times’ own Pulitzer Prize-winning op-ed columnist, Thomas Friedman, believed it.

The Times news columns had been insisting that the suicide-riots (to use a term I picked up from a Weekly Standard editorial) were drawing international sympathy and attention to the Palestinian cause. Perhaps this was wishful thinking, or a self-fulfilling prophecy, but, in any event, that was the Times’ story, and it was sticking to it, at least until Friedman came along.

A “news analysis” in the April 8 Times by Jerusalem bureau chief David Halbfinger reported, “Palestinians seem energized and enthusiastic about sustaining a generally nonviolent form of protest — even if it is Israel’s harsh response to it and the mounting Palestinian death toll that has put their conflict with Israel back on the international agenda…The Israelis, for a variety of reasons, have long been worried about such a shift. And they now find the world paying attention as they use disproportionate force to prevent what they believe could be a catastrophic breach in the Gaza fence.”

An April 21 Times news article by Isabel Kershner and Iyad Abuheweila claimed “Israel has drawn international censure for using live fire against the mostly unarmed protesters who did not appear to present any immediately life-threatening danger to the soldiers.”

 

An April 23 Times news article by Iyad Abuheweila and Isabel Kershner reported that the death of a Palestinian boy “has intensified international attention and censure over Israel’s handling of the protests that began on March 30.”

And a May 14 Times news article claimed “Israel has stirred widespread international anger over the use of lethal force against mostly unarmed Palestinian protesters.”

Now comes Friedman, in a May 23 New York Times op-ed:

history is full of such injustices and of refugees who have reconciled with them and moved on — not passed on their refugee status to their kids and their kids’ kids. It’s why so few Arabs, so few Europeans, so few anybody, rose to Hamas’s defense. People are fed up with it.

So the Times news columns imagine “widespread international anger,” “international censure,” “intensified international attention and censure,” and “the world paying attention.” Friedman, on the other hand, writes that “so few Arabs, so few Europeans, so few anybody, rose to Hamas’s defense. People are fed up with it.” These two depictions of reality, if not flat-out contradictory, are at least in tension with each other. My own sense is that on this particular point — measuring the scope, severity, and gravity of overall world reaction to the Gaza riots — Friedman has a more accurate perception of it and is closer to the truth of the matter than the Times news columns are.

More of Ira Stoll’s media critique, a regular Algemeiner feature, can be found here.

The opinions presented by Algemeiner bloggers are solely theirs and do not represent those of The Algemeiner, its publishers or editors. If you would like to share your views with a blog post on The Algemeiner, please be in touch through our Contact page.

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