Just one more thing that should concern you if you care about America's survival:
‘This was one of the most frightening experiences I’ve had throughout my academic career.’
Joshua Rabotnik writing at PJMedia.com
In January of 2017, when the political controversy over Donald Trump’s perplexing win over Hillary Clinton in the 2016 national election was at its peak, my professor began his political psychology course by asking the lecture hall [a series of questions]: . . . “Next, how many of you feel that liberals are safe walking across campus expressing their political views?” Every hand once again went into the air. “And how many of you feel that conservatives are safe to walk around campus expressing their political views?” The room filled with laughter as nobody raised their hand.
While most thought little of the exercise, this was one of the most frightening experiences I’ve had throughout my academic career. Here was an entire lecture hall of young adults laughing at the recognition of political suppression at a university founded on the principles of free thought and discourse.
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From every angle, I believe Trump's desire to live up to a campaign commitment to bring troops home quickly is understandable but not wise.
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From every angle, I believe Trump's desire to live up to a campaign commitment to bring troops home quickly is understandable but not wise.
First time for everything and this is the first time I am in sharp disagreement with his policy. You do not desert the Kurds in favor of Turkey and advantage Russia and Iran.
Worst of all declaring victory over ISIS is dumb and will bite him at a later date. No one believes it and saying it does not make it so. (See 1 and 1a below.)
Worst of all declaring victory over ISIS is dumb and will bite him at a later date. No one believes it and saying it does not make it so. (See 1 and 1a below.)
Another Rant with focus on Fed. (See 2 below.)
I mostly agree with what the author has written.
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One of my ongoing concerns, besides The Fed failing a soft landing, is the fact that America is no longer the dominant military power. As this article points out, we are on an descendant path, militarily, while our adversaries are on an accelerating rise.
Congress , particularly Obama, and his head in the sand Democrats, set us on a path that has led to our current predicament. Our increasing deficit will cause us to restrain the funding necessary to right the ship while our adversaries are increasingly aggressive in variety of ways tie.stealing technology, challenging us where we cannot adequately respond. This weakened posture has begun to cause heart burn among our allies who have depended upon us and, by doing so, also allowed them to under spend and now they too are weaker and more ill prepared.
The picture is not an encouraging one. A party that tolerates penetration of our borders is not likely to be one to spend on military preparedness. (See 3 below.)
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Trump had an opportunity to fund the wall but DACA amnesty stood in the way of many of his supporters so the bird in the hand flew away to another bush.
The lesson to be learned is do not over-reach and half a loaf better than none. (See 4 and 4a below.)
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Socialism the cure for everything including athlete's feet. (See 5 below.)
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Dick
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1)
Syrian Kurds allied with US shocked, scared by news of troop withdrawal
Wednesday's surprise announcement that the U.S. will quickly withdraw all its troops from Syria is the stuff of nightmares for many of the Kurds living under the protection of U.S forces and the American-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF).
“Everyone is upset, sad and afraid,” one SDF member from the Kurdish-dominant Syrian city of Kobane told Fox News. “It’s a historic mistake. We wanted to be part of America. We are surrounded by enemies, and ISIS isn’t even finished yet.”
Most who spoke to Fox News were scared to use their names or publish their faces, in case the Assad-controlled Syrian regime retakes the area and retaliates against those who have spoken out. But most of all, the millions in the region left in limbo are concerned about strikes from the Turkish side of the border.
“Everyone is confused and scared. This will mean that Turkey will likely attack us. We are in shock because we thought the U.S. would help us achieve peace after ISIS. We didn’t think that they would help us defeat the terrorists and then leave us alone to face the horror of Turkish forces and its extreme factions,” lamented Mazloum Kurdy, a 33-year-old father and teacher from Kobane. “Now people are thinking to displace themselves from their homes here again, but nobody knows where a safe place to go is.”
In his words, it is an ultimate betrayal by the United States.
“People are crying; they can taste the displacement that will come. They know it will be a cold winter and their first after ISIS,” Kurdy continued. “And for all the people who worked for the US, they have no place to go because they are wanted from four sides. From Turkish because they worked with the SDF, from the regime because they will be conscripted and forced into the Army, from the Free Syrian Army and maybe even from the Kurdistan government in Iraq because they worked with the SDF. We just don’t know.”
Earlier this year, Turkish-backed forces took control of the Kurdish-dominant town of Afrin, prompting a quagmire for the United States as many were forced to abandon their posts fighting ISIS and fight for Afrin – a fight that was ultimately lost. In recent days, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has threatened to imminently launch a similar offensive against the Kurdish troops trained and equipped by the U.S to battle ISIS.
Turkey's issue is that elements of the SDF are members of the People's Protection Units (YPG), a military force generally considered an offshoot of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), which has waged an on-and-off separatist war against Turkey since the 1980s. The PKK is a designated terrorist organization both in Turkey and the United States, and the YPG's involvement in the region has been a hot point of contention between the Turkish government and the U.S.
Just hours after White House announced it will pull all U.S. troops out of Syria, the State Department announced plans to sell $3.5 billion worth of Patriot surface-to-air missiles to Turkey.
Nonetheless, Dana W. White, Chief Defense Department spokesperson, stated Wednesday they have “started the process of returning U.S. troops home from Syria” as they “transition to the next phase of the campaign.” White declined to provide further details “for force protection and operational security reasons.”
Sources told Fox News the abrupt decision – which appeared to have been leaked before all arrangements were put in place and part of a non-disclosed timeline that had been put in place without the knowledge of many – came as a sudden surprise, and that many involved in Syria were simply “not happy” about the withdrawal.
“And by withdrawal, it is complete, down to zero,” one Pentagon insider said, noting that it will likely take a little over a month to complete.
Kurdish leaders were said only to be informed of the president’s decision Wednesday. And over the course of several meetings over the past few days, Defense Secretary Jim Mattis tried – apparently unsuccessfully – to dissuade Trump from the decision.
Abandoning the Kurdish allies, some officials fear, will not hinder future efforts to enlist local ground troops globally but will only further embolden enemy forces.
And while President Trump tweeted that ISIS is “defeated,” others on the ground disagree, underscoring the brutal terror group stubbornly remains holed up in pockets near the Iraq border, and under daily assault by the SDF.
Aykan Erdemir, a former member of the Turkish parliament and a senior member at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, said the announcement couldn’t have come at a better time for Turkish President Erdogan.
“The U.S withdrawal from Syria would be a great gift for the Turkish president in the run-up to the country's upcoming municipal elections scheduled for March 2019. The Turkish leader will present this as a win against the U.S. and exploit it to boost his image at home,” Erdemir said. “The Syria pullout would also open the way for Ankara's cross-border operations against Syrian Kurdish rebels, offering Erdogan another rally-round-the-flag opportunity during the campaign period. Today's news will, therefore, be celebrated not only in Tehran and Moscow, but also in Ankara.”
Joost Hiltermann, International Crisis Group's Middle East Program Director, concurred problems could loom.
"The decision, if carried out precipitously, would leave the U.S.-allied Syrian Democratic Forces twitching in the wind. Both Turkey and Syria want to eliminate the YPG as a military actor,” he said. “The Trump administration should use the leverage of its intended withdrawal to negotiate a deal that would restore Syrian sovereignty over its border but grant a degree of autonomy to the Kurds and also prevent the return of ISIS".
Others argue Trump is only doing what he intended to do all along.
“While we must always worry about the long-term ramifications of removing U.S. forces—they can act as a stabilizing force in the region—by and large, at only 2,000 or so troops, they are not a game changer in Syria,” asserted Harry Kazianis, an expert at the Center for the National Interest’s Director of Defense Studies. “This should not impact the Kurds in any dramatic way as long as Washington is able to coordinate its actions in a way the does not destabilize or let anyone think they can fill a vacuum left by Washington—such as Turkey or say Russia.”
In early April, soon after Trump remarked that U.S. troops would be pulling out “very soon,” concerns were already bubbling over in the Syrian streets.
“The most important thing is we know we won’t be bombed when the U.S. is here,” Khalid, a 31-year-old mobile phone seller and a graduate of Homs University. “If they leave, we worry Russians will be the first to come and bomb us. Right now we are calm and comfortable.”
Mahmoud, a 60-year-old purveyor of sweets, also expressed gratitude over being spared the aerial bombardment that has ravaged much of Syria. “Of all the players in Syria, America is better than the others,” he said. “Seven years of this war and no one else has come to take care of us.”
But for now, their future is anybody’s guess. “People consider the USU cheated because we thought they wanted to bring stability to Syria,” Kurdy added. “But right now, people are praying and hoping the decision might change.”
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2)The Fed did as expected with the raise, and is still likely to skip the March increase, but Powell left us very unclear. He seems unclear. The raise seemed OK since it was fully expected by the market, until the press conference when things seemed to get more unclear and uncertain. It seems more likely the Fed might raise too much in 2019, and that triggered the giant reversal of the market. What really then seemed to upset the market more was his statement that he saw no problem continuing to unwind $50 billion a month of QE. Many in the market believe this unwind is also tightening of markets at a time when more liquidity would be very desirable. A lot of people thought they might cut back on the unwind.
Retail sales are going very well for Christmas, up 4.9% in November, unemployment is still declining to well below full employment levels, wages are still rising even though moderately, inflation remains below forecast, and oil prices remain lower than anyone expected, which is like a good a wage boost effect for lower income workers. Gas is below $2.00 in many places, and heating oil is also much lower. GDP this quarter is still on track to hit or exceed 3%. There seems to be a hysteria among some in Wall St that there will be a recession in 2019, but many of the more solid economists say no recession in 2019, and maybe none in 2020. Top economists rate chance of a 2019 recession at 20%- maybe 25% at most, and they are forecasting continued growth in GDP in 2019, although at a slower pace than 2018. That seems to also be the Fed’s position. I continue to believe the economy is basically strong, and while growth will slow in 2019 below 3%, it will still be a good year. On the concerning side, one report today did supposedly show that profits at smaller companies are not keeping up with the top 20% of large companies which account for the S&P earnings looking so good. There is a much broader measure of pre-tax profits by the government that covers many more companies than the S&P 500, and this is the measure which is seeming to show that the profits gains are not as widespread as we would like to think. That would not be good as it means these businesses will be spending less on cap ex and new tech which are needed to improve productivity. If true, it seems inconsistent with the GDP and other numbers of economic growth with little inflation. The combination of possibly rising short term rates, slower housing development of single family homes (apartments continue to add materially to new housing development), increasing risk of leveraged loans going into default, and over leverage by many corporations, is potentially dangerous. On the flip side, and very important, the ten year is now well below what anyone had predicted, and it is the ten year that is the index for many loans, especially in real estate. Bottom line is, the forecast remains very unclear, but still quite positive for 2019. I believe once retail sales and profit margins are announced in January, the market will find that to be good news and will revive. If the Fed had not raised this time stocks would have crashed because the recession believers would have been convinced a recession was about to start, so they really had no choice. This appears to be a market correction and an over reaction by Wall St traders and also programs.
Powell did say tariffs are not making a major impact, and that seems to be supported by other data. If Trump does pull off a real deal with China, then the stock market will rebound well, assuming the economy really stays on a good growth track, and assuming the Fed pauses in March. Where the stock market goes from here in the short run is unclear. If you are a long term investor like me, stocks are still the best place to be. You just have to ride it out. The chance of a deal with China is better now since it is highly likely Chinese economic growth will decline further since there was a very large increase in orders from the US to get ahead of tariffs, so production was stepped up in China through end of November. Now all that ordering ahead by the US customers will come back to bite producers in China as the order book has been fulfilled well into next year’s needs, and the Chinese economy will slow further.
Home and condo prices are weakening in many urban markets like NYC due to over building, and SALT. The Hamptons are also seeing a slowdown, so it is not that people do not have the money. It is more a tax issue, and a sense of caution right now. The stock market declines will just accelerate this for a while. A slowdown and decline in home prices will be good for potentially reinvigorating the market as mortgage rates decline with the ten year declining. Housing may show some comeback in 2019 as rates stay low, home prices stabilize or decline in major markets, and pent up demand kicks in.
Trump’s decision to pull out of Syria may be as terrible a decision as Obama pulling out of Iraq and letting ISIS form. It is hard to understand what Trump is thinking since apparently neither the Pentagon nor the State dept agree, nor do his national security team. In fact nobody thinks it makes any sense. It may become another historically bad decision, just like Obama. Maybe he will reverse it since there is nobody who agrees with him other than Iran, Russia and Turkey.
If the universities taught history, then the young professors, and the students might understand who McCarthy was, and how Stalin, Hitler and many other murdering dictators stifled speech just as they now do on US campuses. They might even understand the surveillance system the Chinese now have where everything is monitored. The problem has become a crisis on US campuses, with schools working under the theory that speech that is not in line with one’s thoughts is stressful, and stress creates health problems, therefore unacceptable ideas and speech is violence. You likely read that and thought that is total absurdity. You are correct, but that is the underlying basis now on many campuses for denying speakers from coming to campus, and keeping students from speaking up. In freshman orientation, the kids are told they are to adhere to the speech code, and not to say anything to any other student that will be considered “harmful” or unacceptable. The punishment could even be suspension. So what do you think happens on campus. Everyone shuts up. There is only PC acceptable discussion, and professors adhere to this. Any professor who violates this speech code is subject to being fired-the Amy Wax case and the Yale Halloween case. If you find this totally against all you have been taught about America and free speech all your life, you are correct. It is very dangerous and it is now being carried over to corporate settings, thus everyone now has to worry what they say. We must reverse this trend and bring back free speech. It is why I am involved in a small group of top people who are trying to do something about this. It goes to the very basis of America, and the extent it is an ideology on campuses with the next generation is very scary.
Have a wonderful holiday season. 2019 is going to be filled with a lot of political disgusting actions in DC, and the press will continue to be very biased. Adam Schiff and Nadler will make numerous claims against Trump and stupid statements like Schiff now makes that Trump is a criminal who will go to jail for alleged campaign finance violations. At some point Mueller will issue a report, but first he will try to find anyone else to charge hoping they will flip on Trump. It is going to get really ugly in DC, and we will all pay the price of nothing useful, like border security, getting accomplished.
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3)
The U.S. Military’s Crisis of Imagination America’s longstanding position of dominance has tended to make strategists and citizens complacent.
At the heart of national-security strategy is imagination. The strategist’s job is to dream up what enemies someday might do to harm us. But there’s a lot of history supporting the adage that generals forever prepare to fight the last war. After World War I, France fortified itself against a German invasion of the kind it had spent four years stalemating in the trenches. After Sept. 11, 2001, the new Transportation Security Administration focused on airport procedures to prevent a repeat of that attack.
The problem of dangers’ being unimaginable was front and center for the bipartisan National Defense Strategy Commission. Congress created the commission of national-security experts in December 2016. Its report, released last month, conjured up realistic near-term scenarios to show how the U.S., as a result of military deficiencies, might acquiesce to enemy aggression or accept defeat in battle.
Here’s one of the report’s scenarios: “Responding to false reports of atrocities against Russian populations in Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia, Russia invades those countries under guise of a ‘peacekeeping’ mission. . . . Russia declares that strikes against Russian forces in those states will be treated as attacks on Russia itself—implying a potential nuclear response. Meanwhile, to keep America off balance . . . Russian submarines attack trans-Atlantic fiber optic cables. Russian hackers shut down power grids and compromise the security of U.S. banks. The Russian military uses advanced anti-satellite capabilities to damage or destroy U.S. military and commercial satellites. Major [American] cities are paralyzed; use of the internet and smart phones is disrupted. Financial markets plummet. . . . The banking system is thrown into chaos. Even as the U.S. military confronts the immense operational challenge of liberating the Baltic states, American society is suffering the devastating impact of modern conflict.”
Unless one is blessed with stupid enemies—and you can’t count on that—the proper assumption is that they are innovating. For World War II, the Nazis invented blitzkrieg, which worked stunningly at the outset and made France’s static fortifications ineffective. Before 1973, intelligence leaders in Jerusalem didn’t imagine that Egypt, without being able to destroy Israel’s army, would launch a surprise attack to seize the Suez Canal. It’s hard to dream up the unprecedented, and even harder to persuade large bureaucracies to heed unfamiliar dangers.
The imagination problem favors aggressive states because they apply themselves to the task of strategizing creatively to win their aims. Status-quo powers, like the U.S. now, commonly prioritize nonmilitary spending and believe the world is more stable than it is. They must anticipate the full range of enemy actions even as their officials don’t devote real energy or resources to the task of countering possible threats. In neither Congress nor the White House has there been a vivid enough appreciation of how America’s various enemies can take advantage of its vulnerabilities.
Americans seem generally complacent about the dominance of their armed forces. There is little understanding of the risk that the U.S. could lose a war against China in the South China Sea or that Russian President Vladimir Putin might deter the U.S. from resisting his aggression against our allies in Europe. American military failure could change the world in ways that, for many Americans, are unimaginable.
The National Defense Strategy Commission concluded that the U.S. is now in a “crisis of national security.” Due to “political dysfunction” and bad budget decisions by both political parties, “America has significantly weakened its own defense.” As a result, “the security and wellbeing of the U.S. are at greater risk than at any time in decades.” U.S. defenses are weakening due to insufficient funding as the power of America’s enemies is growing. These developments are “undermining deterrence of U.S. adversaries and the confidence of American allies, thus increasing the likelihood of military conflict.”
Given America’s decades of military predominance since World War II, imagination is required to comprehend that it could lose that position. The result could be not just a faraway military defeat but also economic and political decline. A U.S. military rout at the hands of a rising China, for example, could end U.S. alliances in Asia (and perhaps Europe too), with demoralizing and destructive effects at home. No one should assume that our constitutional system would survive a world where hostile powers dominate the world stage.
That is awful to say. It’s hard to imagine. But it’s crucial to imagine if Americans are going to support the appropriations and reforms needed from Congress and the president to remedy our defense deficiencies. These include, according to the commission, a larger conventional force, better ways to tap innovative technologies, making defense purchases less cumbersome and less risk-averse and modernizing the severely aging U.S. nuclear capability. The commission also stresses shortcomings in U.S. efforts to bolster anti-cyberwarfare capabilities, missile defense and space assets.
The commission’s report is sober but alarming. The president is reportedly coming around to the view that the country needs a larger defense appropriation. Will members of Congress have the imagination to be properly alarmed and the good sense to approve the funds?
Mr. Feith served as undersecretary of defense for policy, 2001-05. Mr. Cropsey served as deputy undersecretary of the Navy, 1984-89. Both are now senior fellows at the Hudson Institute.
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4) It Was Always About the Wall
By Victor Davis Hanson
There was likely never going to be "comprehensive immigration reform" or any deal amnestying the DACA recipients in exchange for building the wall. Democrats in the present political landscape will not consent to a wall. For them, a successful border wall is now considered bad politics in almost every manner imaginable.
Yet 12 years ago, Congress, with broad bipartisan support, passed the Security Fence of Act of 2006. The bill was signed into law by then-President George W. Bush to overwhelming public applause. The stopgap legislation led to some 650 miles of a mostly inexpensive steel fence while still leaving about two-thirds of the 1,950-mile border un-fenced.
In those days there were not, as now, nearly 50 million foreign-born immigrants living in the United States, perhaps nearly 15 million of them illegally.
Sheer numbers have radically changed electoral politics. Take California. One out of every four residents in California is foreign-born. Not since 2006 has any California Republican been elected to statewide office.
The solidly blue states of the American Southwest, including Colorado, Nevada and New Mexico, voted red as recently as 2004 for George W. Bush. Progressives understandably conclude that de facto open borders are good long-term politics.
Once upon a time, Democrats such as Hillary and Bill Clinton and Barack Obama talked tough about illegal immigration. They even ruled out amnesty while talking up a new border wall.
In those days, progressives saw illegal immigration as illiberal -- or at least not as a winning proposition among union households and the working poor.
Democratic constituencies opposed importing inexpensive foreign labor for corporate bosses. Welfare rights groups believed that massive illegal immigration would swamp social services and curtail government help to American poor of the barrios and the inner city.
So, what happened? Again, numbers.
Hundreds of thousands of undocumented immigrants have flocked into the United States over the last decade. In addition, the Obama administration discouraged the melting-pot assimilationist model of integrating only legal immigrants.
Salad-bowl multiculturalism, growing tribalism and large numbers of unassimilated immigrants added up to politically advantageous demography for Democrats in the long run.
In contrast, a wall would likely reduce illegal immigration dramatically and with it future Democratic constituents. Legal, meritocratic, measured and diverse immigration in its place would likely end up being politically neutral. And without fresh waves of undocumented immigrants from south of the border, identity politics would wane.
A wall also would radically change the optics of illegal immigration. Currently, in unsecured border areas, armed border patrol guards sometimes stand behind barbed wire. Without a wall, they are forced to rely on dogs and tear gas when rushed by would-be border crossers. They are easy targets for stone-throwers on the Mexican side of the border.
A high wall would end that. Border guards would be mostly invisible from the Mexican side of the wall. Barbed wire, dogs and tear gas astride the border -- the ingredients for media sensationalism -- would be unnecessary. Instead, footage of would-be border crossers trying to climb 30-foot walls would emphasize the degree to which some are callously breaking the law.
Such imagery would remind the world that undocumented immigrants are not always noble victims but often selfish young adult males who have little regard for the millions of aspiring immigrants who wait patiently in line and follow the rules to enter the United State lawfully.
More importantly, thousands of undocumented immigrants cross miles of dangerous, unguarded borderlands each year to walk for days in the desert. Often, they fall prey to dangers ranging from cartel gangs to dehydration.
Usually, the United States is somehow blamed for their plight, even though a few years ago the Mexican government issued a comic book with instructions on how citizens could most effectively break U.S. law and cross the border.
The wall would make illegal crossings almost impossible, saving lives.
Latin American governments and Democratic operatives assume that lax border enforcement facilitates the outflow of billions of dollars in remittances sent south of the border and helps flip red states blue.
All prior efforts to ensure border security -- sanctions against employers, threats to cut off foreign aid to Mexico and Central America, and talk of tamper-proof identity cards -- have failed.
Instead, amnesties, expanded entitlements and hundreds of sanctuary jurisdictions offer incentives for waves of undocumented immigrants.
The reason a secure borer wall has not been -- and may not be -- built is not apprehension that it would not work, but rather real fear that it would work only too well.
4a
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The Democrats have dropped all liberal or progressive pretenses. They run on pro-Marxist ideology, denouncing capitalism and promising miraculous fulfillment of egalitarian dreams. And, for the most part, score significant victories. Even in the states which the Republicans won, they won with razor-thin margins. In Texas, Florida, Arizona, Mississippi, and Nevada, and even California’s Orange County, which have been the bastions of capitalism and free enterprise, the socialists have taken over or came too close for comfort.
