Thursday, February 21, 2019

AOC Keeps Digging Her Grave? Democrat's And Their Socialist Gene. Europe Off Limits? New Rant.




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 The Wedding Ceremony

The wedding ceremony came to the point where the minister asked if anyone had anything to say concerning the union of the bride and groom....

The moment of utter silence was broken when a beautiful young woman carrying a baby stood up and began walking slowly towards the minister.

 The congregation was aghast - you could almost hear a pin drop.

The groom's jaw dropped as he stared in disbelief at the approaching young woman and child.

Chaos ensued.

The bride threw the bouquet into the air and burst out crying.

The bride's father turned to the groom, 'Why you son-of-a-bitch!'

Then the groom's mother fainted.

The best men started giving each other looks and wondering how to save the situation.

The minister asked the woman, "Can you tell us, why you came forward?  What do you have to say?"

There was absolute silence in the church.

The woman replied, "We can't hear you in the back."

And that illustrates what happens when people are considered guilty until proven innocent. 
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AOC digs her grave deeper and deeper and this helps Trump. Her basic ignorance is amazing.(See 1 below.)

 And:

We can ignore reality, but we cannot ignore the consequences of ignoring reality.” – Ayn Rand
AOC digs her grave deeper and deeper and this helps Trump. Her basic ignorance is amazing.(See 1 below.)Preview YouTube video Why You Can't Argue with a Leftist
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Heninger believes Democrats possess a socialism gene. (See 2 and 2a  below.)
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Is Europe off limits? Will the virus resurfacing in Europe eventually spread to America?  Where does that leave  Jews who cannot support Israel's right to exist? (See 3, 3a and 3b below.)
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More news about Avi. (See 4 below.)
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New Rant. (See 5 below.)
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Paul Craig Roberts also rants. (See 6 below.)
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Dick
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1)

AOC Defends Roll in Scaring Amazon Away from New York

Alexandria Occasio Cortez bragged about driving Amazon out of New York City, Tuesday, and costing the city thousands of jobs.

 The freshman Democratic New York congresswoman has faced days of criticism from normally friendly media voices and fellow Democrats over her role in Amazon's decision to pull back from building a $2.5 billion campus in the Long Island City neighborhood of Queens.

Amazon had cited the opposition of “a number of state and local politicians” in its decision to abandon the plans. Ocasio-Cortez and others at the local level had pointed to incentives such as a $2.5 billion in tax breaks as a reason for their opposition.

“If we were willing to give away $3 billion for this deal, we could invest those $3 billion in our district ourselves, if we wanted to. We could hire out more teachers. We can fix our subways. We can put a lot of people to work for that money, if we wanted to,” Ocasio-Cortez said last week.


Mayor Bill de Blasio pushed back on that claim on Sunday. Even as he slammed Amazon for its decision, the mayor said critics wrongly suggested that tax breaks represented money that could be spent on other things. He said it wasn’t “money you had over here. And it was going over there.”

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2) The Democrats’ Socialist Gene

Kamala Harris says, “I am not a democratic socialist.” She should take a DNA test.

If in January 2015 you walked up to, say, 50 million American voters and asked them what they thought of when you said, “Bernie Sanders, ” 99.9% of them would have replied, “Nothing.” If in early 2018, you had done the same thing with Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, same answer—nada.

Today, the two socialists are household names. The Democratic Party belongs to them. “Bernie” is running for president again. In the beauty-contest opinion polls he is only a step behind Barack Obama’s vice president. And by the current standards of America’s political culture, AOC is a star.

Science no longer believes that genes are destiny. But in politics, which no one will confuse with science, it was inevitable that the Democrats’ genetic code one day would bring them to this point—unabashedly the party of the far left.

Both Republicans and Democrats have had to contend with challenges for control from the distant right and left. What primarily has kept these impulses at bay is the reality check of needing to assemble an Electoral College victory out of all the states. When the parties’ nominations have gone well right or left—Goldwater in 1964 and McGovern in 1972—they’ve usually lost by huge margins.

The Republicans’ internal debates about the party’s ideas are important, but they have nothing like the street-level yeastiness of the Democrats’ struggles between traditional liberals and the left.

Eugene V. Debs was the first Socialist to run for president, in 1900. Debs, who had been a Democrat, helped found the Industrial Workers of the World. In 1935, playwright Clifford Odets wrote a play called “Waiting for Lefty.” His wait is over.

The Ocasio-Cortez Green New Deal is an explicit homage to FDR’s New Deal, and Nancy Pelosi understood exactly what she was doing when she called it a “green dream or whatever.” She knows it isn’t 1935.

The American left went into decline after World War II, as the U.S. economy rebuilt. One can’t overstate the central role that private-sector labor unions—auto, steel, mines—played in keeping the Democrats centered.

Whatever their tensions with industrial capitalism, American union leaders like George Meany, Lane Kirkland and Leonard Woodcock knew their success depended on the private sector’s success. With the private unions’ decline and the rise of public-sector unions, whose lifeblood is tax revenue, a significant brake on the party’s roll toward socialism disappeared.
The Democratic left re-emerged in the 1960s and ’70s, pushing the party outside political and cultural norms with street protests, antiwar marches and “occupations” of universities.
Left-wing academics in those years not only began to develop the theories of gender, sex, race and identity that today animate core liberal beliefs, but they also drove out dissenting professors, mostly conservatives, who might have challenged those ideas.

Without a rigorous opposition, these left-wing theories descended into intellectual gobbledygook like “intersectionality.” It is no accident that the Democratic Party is represented today by the millennial goofiness of Ms. Ocasio-Cortez or the smiling anti-Semite, Rep. Ilhan Omar of Minnesota.

Nor is it an accident that the Democrats are embracing ideas untethered to proofs or logic such as the Green New Deal, free college and pre-1960s income-tax rates.

Mr. Obama is a central figure in this story. He held the door open for the socialists with his endless speeches about “the wealthiest” and “the 1%.” Arguably Mr. Obama was our first Pop Marxist president, obsessed with class issues.

Hillary Clinton’s 2016 defeat was the best thing that has happened to the Democratic left in the entire postwar period. She stood for what remained of the respectable administrative-state intellectuals who had worked for Bill Clinton and Al Gore. Nudge economics and all that. The left was tired of them.

Bernie Sanders, the man who pushed the Democratic Party left, now finds himself up against those who’ve adopted his policies including Kamala Harris, Corey Booker and Elizabeth Warren. Image: Getty

Mr. Sanders was in the right place at the right time. The modern left, the children of the new, no-standards university system, went gaga for Bernie’s comic-book socialism. “Medicare for All!” Bernie shouted across the land. They sent him $25 online donations by the millions. And still do.

The U.S. today has a labor shortage. The workers of the U.S. can’t unite because they’ve got to go to work.

What we have here is artisanal socialism, free-riding luxuriously on capitalism’s manifest success. In New Hampshire Monday, Kamala Harris said, “I am not a democratic socialist.” She should take a political DNA test. I’ll bet she is, or soon will be

 2a) Socialism has already hurt America
by  Star Parker

 Life in our poor communities is in the grip of socialism, not capitalism.

President Donald Trump was principled and politically astute to address, in his State of the Union, the horrors taking place now in Venezuela, and then to declare:
"Tonight we renew our resolve that America will never be a socialist country."

Venezuela is indeed a poster child for what happens when a nation's economic machinery falls under political control.

Over the last five years, per The Wall Street Journal, Venezuela's economy shrank by 35 percent and poverty tripled from 48 to 87 percent.

According to Gallup, 71 percent of Venezuelans say they can't afford food, 47 percent say they can't afford shelter, just 15 percent say they are satisfied with the availability of quality health care, and 35 percent say they are satisfied with their standard of living

Thirty-six percent of Venezuelans, 51 percent of those between 15 and 29, say they would leave the country permanently if they could.

But if it is so clear that socialism is a formula for economic disaster, why does the idea still conjure up support?
In a Gallup poll of last year, 57 percent of Democrats, compared to 16 percent of Republicans, say they have a "positive view of socialism."

Economist and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman says it's semantics.

Krugman mocks Trump, saying that "there is essentially no one in American political life who advocates such things" as government control of industry, as is the case in Venezuela.

When Democrats say "socialism," says Krugman, they really mean "social democracy" — a market economy with a social safety net and use of the tax system as an equalizer.

The issue really isn't how we technically define socialism. The issue is really the extent to which we are free.
What difference is it really if a firm is privately owned, but the government has vast latitude to regulate what it does? Or if a private firm pays me but government taxes away a large chunk of what I earn?

Venezuela is, of course, the extreme case. Total collapse as result of political despots taking over everything.
But socialism is not like good wine, which, in moderation, might not hurt and might even be beneficial.
Every step in which economic freedom is cut back bears costs.

We see what is happening now, as the U.S. economy surges back to life as a result of cutting back regulation and taxes.

But our nation has not totally escaped the Venezuelan phenomenon.

America has entire communities in distress for the same reasons that Venezuela has fallen apart — political control over economic affairs. Life in our poor communities is in the grip of socialism, not capitalism.
Government housing, government health care, government schools, government welfare programs.
There are 31 million people living in areas of high economic distress, now designated as "opportunity zones." The average poverty rate in these zones is 28.7 percent. The average household income is 40 percent below the national average, and 36.5 percent of prime-age adults are not working. Fifty-six percent of these 31 million are non-white minorities.

The president's new opportunity zone initiative, providing tax incentives to direct investment capital into these neighborhoods, aims to change realities with the same passion that the president spoke against socialism for the rest of the country in his State of the Union address.

How do countries wind up going in the wrong direction?

British playwright George Bernard Shaw captured it when he said, "A government that robs Peter to pay Paul can always depend on the support of Paul."

Political demagogues tap into the frustrations of those who are struggling, or tap into the ambitions of those who long for power, and sell them Hollywood dreams — and lies — of a better life. Once they convince them to turn over power, the nightmare begins.

Life has no shortcuts. Freedom, hard work and personal responsibility are the one and only path to prosperity.
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3)

Is Western Europe no longer safe for Jews?

Virulent anti-Semitism in Britain’s Labour Party and among French “yellow-vests” populists raises uncomfortable questions about how democracies react to hate.
By S. TOBIN

The good news is that on Tuesday, huge crowds of French citizens attended rallies against anti-Semitism throughout France that were supported by all of the country’s major political parties. And French President Emmanuel Macron denounced the desecration of a Jewish cemetery, the latest example of a shocking growth in acts of anti-Semitism.
Across the English Channel, the British government has been similarly outspoken in denouncing anti-Semitism. The protest of eight membersof the House of Commons who left the Labour Party over its failure to address anti-Semitism ingrained in its leadership, as well as the rank and file, was similarly applauded for their courage and willingness to risk the loss of their seats in the next election rather than to remain silent.
Seen from that perspective, it is possible to argue that—the ominous increase in Jew-hatred notwithstanding—Jews living in Western Europe are not alone. Decent people are still willing to speak up against hate.
And while panic is not the appropriate reaction to these events, neither is complacence or even confidence that it will all soon blow over. Anti-Semitism is deeply rooted in the culture of European society. But what is happening now throughout the continent, but most particularly in Britain and France, is that as has happened so many times in the past, Jew-hatred has attached itself to popular political movements and political parties.
With anti-Semitic incitement becoming part of the rhetoric of the “yellow-vests” protest movement against Macron’s government in France, as well as one of the defining characteristics of Britain’s Labour Party, it’s no longer possible to pretend that anti-Semitism isn’t working its way back into the mainstream of Western European political culture.
It’s also instructive to note that as much as the Nazi march in Charlottesville, Va., and the murder of 11 Jewish worshippers in a Pittsburgh synagogue prompted a panic about anti-Semitism in the United States, the situation here is nothing like that in Western Europe. The kind of fear of being recognizably Jewish while walking on a Paris street that haunts French Jews is unknown in the United States. Similarly, Jewish politicians in the United States simply don’t face the kind of malicious abuse for their faith and/or support for Israel that is routine in Britain.
American Jews have good reason to worry about the prominence and acceptance of members of Congress like Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) and Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.), who have tweeted anti-Semitic tropes and are stalwart backers of the anti-Semitic BDS movement. But there is no comparing the Democrats to the British Labour Party, where someone far more brazen than either of them is flaunting hate for Israel and Jews, and tolerance for anti-Semitism and even Palestinian terrorists. Labour head Jeremy Corbyn is the leader of the opposition in parliament, rather than merely a backbencher.
Corbyn stands a fair chance of being the next prime minister of Britain. None of the Democratic candidates for president, including Sen. Bernie Sanders, who has been the most critical of Israel of the two-dozen prospective contenders, can be remotely compared to Corbyn in terms of tolerance for and encouragement of anti-Semitism.
To note that doesn’t mean that Democrats don’t need to worry about the growth of the intersectional left in the ranks—something that has produced constituencies for Omar and Tlaib. That has also caused a genuine division among Democrats about the Jewish nation at a time when Republicans have become lockstep supporters of Israel.
Similarly, those who claim that U.S. President Donald Trump is an anti-Semite are simply confusing their abhorrence for him over his politics and style with Jew-hatred. Trump is flawed and has at times said things that can be construed as encouragement for extremists. But he is no anti-Semite, as well as arguably the best friend Israel has ever had in the White House.
Comparisons and attempts to manipulate statistics to make America seem analogous to Britain and France are simply wrong. As the willingness of Democrats to rebuke Omar and the country’s response to Pittsburgh showed, America is still passing the anti-Semitism test with flying colors.
Unfortunately, the same can’t be said for either Britain or France, even if their governments are saying the right things about anti-Semitism.
Neither British Prime Minister Theresa nor Macron can be faulted for their willingness to address anti-Semitism. In May’s case, she has done it while staring directly at Corbyn as she faced him across the aisle in the House of Commons. And Macron’s willingness to speak out immediately—as he did after the most recent incidents, including the mobbing of Alain Finkielkraut, a leading French intellectual and television personality, by a group of “yellow-vests protesters—is similarly laudable.
But it’s also true that both May and Macron are currently deeply unpopular figures at home. May’s fumbling of the Brexit crisis and Macron’s elitist contempt for ordinary Frenchmen as he pursues climate-change goals have put them both under water in terms of popularity. These issues have also diminished their ability to help shift the culture away from anti-Semitism or to do anything about the routine targeting of Jews in either country.
In both countries, leftist ideologues and Muslim immigrants have created a broad movement of hate for Israel that is the thin veil covering a resurgence of anti-Semitism. Far from operating on the margins, the current state of both the “yellow vests” and Labour indicate that hatred of Jews has gone mainstream in a manner unknown since the Holocaust in Western Europe.
British and French Jews should not allow themselves to be intimidated, and it is heartening to realize that there are still plenty of decent people there who are willing to fight for the souls of their nations. But no one can say with any assurance that Jews have a future in places where anti-Semitism has so strong a hold on popular opinion. This is a sobering thought for those who love both Britain and France. It should also remind Americans to value the exceptional nature of their democracy.


3a) If you can’t defend Israel’s right to exist, don’t call yourself Jewish
Having been very active in political activism during my college years, I know firsthand very well what it means to deeply commit to a cause to the point where it becomes an integral part of who you are. It becomes your identity, forms the lens through which you perceive and understand the world and creates the community of like-minded people you feel most comfortable being around. This community supports you, validates you and reminds you that you’re not crazy for having the beliefs that you do. To enter into conflict with this community about almost anything can feel isolating, disorienting and lonely.

This is the unique and serious challenge and tragedy of the rise of intersectionality that we are seeing today as issues that traditionally belonged to separate social or political movements are conjoined to the point where they are presented to seem inseparable. Activists are expected to toe the party line on a menu of issues and those who do not run the risk of having their commitment to other causes questioned and deemed not wholehearted or authentic.
Nowhere do we see this phenomenon happening more than with the splicing of all kinds of issues and causes into the anti-Israel movement.

This was made evident in 2017 at the Dyke March in Chicago where three Jewish women waving rainbow flags embroidered with a Jewish star were told to leave the march because the flags were “triggering to people” and “made them feel unsafe.” When one of the women was asked if she is a Zionist, which let’s remember is the belief in the right of the Jewish people to a sovereign nation of their own primarily so they no longer have to rely on others to protect their basic human right to live, she responded, “Yes.” She was then told that the march was anti-Zionist and pro-Palestinian.

Imagine. At a pride march, where inclusivity is the main driving force, where people are demanding to be accepted for who they are and what they believe, Jews who support the State of Israel are not included. They are not welcome. They are asked to leave.

At that same march, one of the chants shouted by the participants was: “From Palestine to Mexico, border walls have got to go!”

Huh?? What do Palestine and Mexico and border walls have to do with a Pride March? Twenty years ago, when I was an activist in college, that would have been a very legitimate question. Today, it seems, it’s absurd to even ask. Of course they’re all connected. Everything’s connected, didn’t you know?!?

And then just a few of weeks ago, during the opening of an LGBTQ conference called Creating Change, activists rose uninvited to the stage and for 13 minutes led a protest for Palestinian liberation and against Zionism, screaming well-known chants such as “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free!” Event organizers were silent, allowing the protest to continue uninterrupted until the activists walked off the stage. (Again, what does Palestine and its potential future borders have anything to do with the LGBTQ cause??)

But the silence of the organizers doesn’t deeply bother me. I, like many others, have unfortunately become accustomed to the rants and raves of the anti-Zionists and the love and support that many in the greater activist community give them.

What does bother me is the silence of members of an organization that were present during this impromptu show of anti-Israel shouts and chants. This organization is called Keshet. As in the Hebrew word for “rainbow”. As in LGBTQ Jews who have formed a Jewish organization based on Jewish values so that they can teach others how Jewish values could and should guide their attitudes and actions towards members of the LGBTQ community. Including extending to them the Jewish values of respect, love and inclusivity.

But in a statement in reaction to claims that the protestors’ actions were anti-Semitic, Keshet had this to say:

“While we believe that criticism of Israel is at times anti-Semitic, we do not believe that it is necessarily anti-Semitic. In the case of this year’s Creating Change conference, we view blanket accusations of anti-Semitism as inflammatory and divisive.”

Inflammatory and divisive??

Calling out activists who scream “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free!”, a code word for the delegitimization of the very existence of the State of Israel, as anti-Semitic is divisive??

Criticizing them for publicly expressing their ardent disapproval of the mere existence of the Jewish state and their desire to dismantle it is inflammatory??

What is going on here?? What am I missing??

Keshet, where are the Jewish values of respect, love and inclusivity that you base your work on when it comes to the Jewish state?

How can you remain completely silent when the right to exist of your people’s one country is being completely trampled upon?

Say you don’t agree with the building of Israeli settlements. Sababa.

Say you wish the current Israeli government wasn’t so right wing. Fine. Say you don’t like Netanyahu. Ein ba’aya (No problem). I could deal with and respect all of that 100%.
But to remain silent in the presence of members of your movement openly declaring their desire to see Israel removed from the world map…that is crossing a line.
A major line.

And crossing that line takes you away from the Jewish people.

As a fellow activist, I can understand the fear of being isolated by your activist community, by those who you march with, meet with and dream with to bring about the world you want to see. It would not be easy nor comfortable to enter into conflict with those very same people.

But then again, being an activist, by definition, is not about doing what’s easy or comfortable.  In fact, being an activist is all about challenging one’s self, as well as others, to stand up for what’s right and call out evil when you see it and when you hear it. As is being a Jew.
But in the moment when it was happening right in front of you, you didn’t.

And afterwards, when you were asked about it, after you had time to reflect and maybe react differently, you still refused so see it, to call it out, to call it what it was. 

 Keshet:

You had a chance to do something that, while not easy, as it would have potentially isolated you from those you stand with and exposed you in front of them as different and possibly as “other”, would have made you Jewish activists in the truest sense of both of those words.
Because there is no greater fight and no greater cause than to stand up for your people. To say to the anti-Israel activists found within your movement that your people, the Jewish people, have the right, like any other people, to self-determination in the form of their own country in their homeland. To explain to them that the same values of love and equality and inclusivity that the LGBTQ movement seeks for themselves should be extended to the world’s one Jewish state as well. To tell them that the establishment of a Palestinian state doesn’t have to, and should never, mean the erasing of the State of Israel.

But you didn’t.

And that’s a choice you made. A choice you have every right to make.
But, Keshet, just understand the consequences of such a decision:
You have crossed a line that, in doing so, distances you so far from the klal, from the kehilla, from the community that is the Jewish people, as to remove yourselves from the Jewish people and from the values and tradition that you call upon to frame and support your own work.

3b) NYU to Host Sarsour Despite Her Anti-Semitic Controversies

by IPT News

Linda Sarsour, dogged by accusations of anti-Semitism, will speak next month at a New York University program on immigration.
The announcement for the March 25 event, sponsored by NYU's Asian/Pacific/American Institute, makes no reference to Sarsour's divisive views. It ignored the fact that the national Women's March, which Sarsour helps lead, lost a number of significant sponsors including the Democratic National Committee (DNC), the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), Emily's List and the National Organization for Women (NOW), due to concerns about anti-Semitism and other issues from Sarsour and her colleagues.


Instead, it describes her as a "racial justice and civil rights activist" who is "[b]est known for her intersectional coalition work and efforts to build bridges across racial, ethnic, and faith communities."

The missing caveat: She'll build bridges as long as you share her hatred for Israel. In 2015, Sarsour pointedly rejected any solidarity gestures from people who want to stand by Muslims but also support Israel or oppose the campaign to boycott the Jewish state economically, academically and politically.

It built on her 2012 claim that "Nothing is creepier than Zionism," a tweet that remains on her feed today. And, as the Investigative Project on Terrorism reported last fall, Sarsour finds a way to blame Jews for police shootings of unarmed black people. She points to a program run by the Anti-Defamation League that takes police officials for a week of seminars in Israel, "so they can be trained by the Israeli police and military, and then they come back here and do what? Stop and frisk, killing unarmed black people across the country."

They are similar to a viewpoint she offered in 2015 during a speech at the 20th anniversary of avowed anti-Semite and Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan's "Million Man March."

"The same people who justify the massacres of Palestinian people and call it collateral damage are the same people who justify the murder of black young men and women," she said.

It's not as if NYU's Asian/Pacific/American Institute had no warning. Sarsour's 2017 participation on an anti-Semitism panel at the nearby New School drew widespread criticism.

NYU placed ninth among the nation's worst campuses for Jews in a 2016 Algemeiner assessment because "NYU's was one of the first graduate student governments to pass a BDS resolution, and Jewish students have been subject to antisemitic attacks, such as being served mock eviction notices." School officials pushed back, but in December, it temporarily shut down the Bronfman Center for Jewish Student Life after finding "several public online postings by an NYU student which were antisemitic in nature and potentially threatening."

Sarsour has not tried to explain or walk back her anti-Semitic comments. But she still is considered a worthy choice for an academic program at one of the country's most prestigious institutions. That's probably not going to help with those rankings.
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4)
Dear Colleagues and Friends,
I am honored to share that Israel21C, a premier English-language online news magazine covering news and information about 21st century Israel, has voted Thou Shat Innovate: Israeli Ingenuity Repairs the World as one of its must-read books about Israel. 
“Thou Shalt Innovate not only discusses state-of-the-art Israeli medicine, agriculture, water and defense technologies and the developers behind them, but also take a look at why Israeli culture is so compatible with the spirit of innovation, and how the contributions in each field can continue to change the world for the better in the future.”  
I wrote the book to explore how Israel is playing a disproportionate role in helping solve some of the world’s biggest challenges. I hope you find that it captures the many  wondrous Israeli innovations that are collectively changing the lives of billions of people around the world.

I would be delighted if you considered purchasing the book on Amazon and leaving a review. My appreciation for your continued willingness to spread the word about the book through your social media platforms.

With warmest regards,
Avi
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5)
Be prepared for Q4 GDP to be disappointing. The White House  predicts around 3%.  Some economists think closer to 2%. We will have to wait to see. The government retail sales number for December is not correct by a lot. Visa and Master, card numbers and Walmart show sales were materially higher than reported. Ignore the Labor Dept number. Real sales were higher, but the last week of December was lower than many had forecast.  January was also slow due to the bitter cold weather. There does seem to be an increase in February for retail that is expected to continue into spring. Overall, the economy remains on track for another good year, even though slower than 2018 due to there not being the impact of the tax cuts we saw for 2018. Earnings will still be good- maybe around 7% growth, but the big international companies that depend on the EU and China for 35%-40% of total sales will definitely show weaker results. You have to be discerning in your selections of stocks based on this. If there really is a China deal, and if it has good enforcement provisions, then the market will go over 26,000 and maybe get to a new all time high, but that is a giant maybe. Clearly the Fed has backed off, and will also likely end reduction of its balance sheet by year end. This is all good for markets, and for real estate. The ten year could stay below 3.0% all year which is far different than what we all thought not so long ago. If that happens, then housing should pick up as mortgage rates will likely stay around 4.5%. Another good thing for the economy and the markets.

As a result of continued low rates, real estate should continue to be a good investment for quite a while. It will not see the big increases in values we saw a few years ago, but it should continue to produce good solid returns with not a lot of real risk for now. Lenders are still generally careful, and construction is not out of control, although some non-bank lenders are being too generous with leverage that will one day come back to be a problem. Not another crisis, but there are some over levered properties which will have major problems when the economy does slow. The lack of inventory in housing has a good side in that there will not be a flood of inventory when there is a recession. That will help minimize the problems for banks and the economy. With consumer balance sheets generally in good shape, and banks not over lending to real estate, the next downturn should not be very bad whenever it comes. The real problem remains government debt out of control at all levels and government employee pensions which have no possible way of being met.

Did you ever ask- how is it “fair” that your plumber, landscaper or carpenter takes cash and does not pay taxes on that money, but you paid taxes to get the cash you paid him. There is a big, but unmeasured underground economy that does not get counted, and it would be helpful if there was any accurate way to count all the people working underground and making a decent living doing so. Economists and data people tell me there are no even close to accurate measures of the gig or underground economy. Depends on how you define working off the books, or outside a regular job. BLS says it is 10.1% of people, but the Fed says it is 31% who earn some cash working on something outside of normal employment hours, either thru online selling, or services like design or internet consulting and web design. I don’t know if either includes drug dealers and other cash criminals. It is clear that the official unemployment number and family income numbers do not include a lot of income that is not declared or taxed. Amazon, and selling online, has made it easy for many to earn a little extra, or a lot,  in their spare time. The difference being how you define working independently for extra cash. Bottom line is poverty is very likely well below the official count, and far below the political spouted numbers.

When it comes to illegal aliens, there are lots of numbers thrown around, so I do not know what is accurate, but it seems fair to say that just in CA, there is a lot of expenditure on entitlements supporting illegals, policing, dual language and special ed in schools, and the cost of extra prison space since around 30% of federal prisoners are illegals, all of which would be better spent on charter schools for the American kids, a better infrastructure system, and affordable housing for low income Americans. Kids would get a much better education if schools did not have to have bilingual everything, and special tutoring classes for non-English speakers. Prisons would have 30% fewer inmates. Police could spend more time protecting Americans. Wages at the low end would be higher. I am all for immigration, but legal immigration based on merit. How the left can say we do not need a barrier and good immigration laws, is mind boggling given that every border patrolman and sheriff on the border says it is critical to have barriers.

Months ago I said there was an attempted coup that intended to get rid of Trump, and when it comes out it will  be far worse than Watergate. It seems we are finally about to learn what terrible things were really going on at FBI and DOJ.  It should scare the hell out of everyone, on all sides, but the Dems will try to bury it, and instead chase ghosts with new false claims about Trump and Russia. I watched the McCabe interview. It was like watching John Dean, except it is not clear if he is lying or exaggerating. It is far from clear who is lying-McCabe, Baker or Rosenstein. What is clear is that McCabe was convinced Trump was in the pocket of Putin. It was a gross over reaction to bits of information. What is also clear is, there was zero real evidence, and now Mueller will say there is none. If Rosenstein was really going to wear a wire, and was part of a plot to stage what amounted to a coup, he needs to be prosecuted.  If McCabe was so biased that he misread a few incidents to come to his conclusion, maybe he also needs to be prosecuted. We need to know the truth. This is just getting started. Lindsay Graham will be star of this saga, and it will make the investigations by the Dems look like the waste of time they really are as they are also trying to stage what amounts to a coup through impeachment, or by burying Trump in so much legal crap that in 2020 they claim he is a criminal regardless of any evidence. 

Declaring a national emergency by Trump was stupid, and will fail politically but he may win legally on the basis of standing-the states have none. By taking the legally available funds from other sources, which he can easily do, and which will get the total to $4.5 billion and possibly $5.5 billion, he undercuts his whole argument, along with him saying I did not have to do this.  Another foot in mouth statement just like when he said he fired Comey partially over the Russia probe. He should have just taken the legally available funds, built the wall, and said, I told you I will build it, and I am. Then he could have offered a deal on DACCA that said if you served in combat you can apply for citizenship in one year, if you served two years in the military you can apply in 3 years, and if you have a full time job and pay taxes you can apply in 5 years, in exchange I want another $10 billion for the wall. That would have dumped it right on the Dems to kill a DACCA deal. The far right would have screamed, but it would have been a political winner. He needs to fire Steven Miller who is his immigration advisor who gives him terrible political advice.

If you want to better understand letters of intent in real estate deals, as a comparison to the claims that Trump had a letter of intent for a hotel in Moscow, and so he had made a deal, just look at Amazon. They had a memorandum of understanding with the state and city-similar to a letter of intent, but it was not yet a binding contract, so they walked away when the situation became unfavorable. They never had a deal. Final terms were not set and no contract existed.  Same as Trump and Moscow. And now the kid from the Bronx said they should use the cash for teachers and other things, never having the minimal intelligence to understand there is no cash, ever, and no credits until Amazon owes it first to the government in the form of taxes. It was tax credits and other forms of tax savings to AMZN, and only after they created the jobs over several years. And she claims to have a major in economics. And this is the person the Dem candidates are following for policy ideas like the Green New Deal.  Only 14% of eligible voters, voted for DeBozo. Only 21% went to the polls, so it was not a real election. That is how NY got an idiot mayor. Republicans did not bother to vote since they knew there was no chance a Republican would win. Bloomberg was a Republicrat.

DeBozo now repeated that AMZN proved that money is in the wrong hands, and it should not be in the hands of people like Bezos or Amazon. Every time he says something else about the deal, he just looks increasingly stupid and out of touch with reality. AMZN put the deal out for bid and NYC and state bid $3 billion tax breaks.  They were free to bid zero tax breaks, but Cuomo and DeBozo apparently thought the deal was a good one. It was. We don’t know what else AMZN promised, but they said today they were still going to set up a training program they had promised and some other things. DeBozo has not mentioned that.  It is normal for developers and corporations to commit to build some infrastructure, or pay fees that go to pay for affordable housing,. Or other things. Tax breaks to get development is normal in the form of various programs like TIF. In almost every case the developer or company has to perform, or pay impact fees first. Some projects would not pencil and not get built were it not for the tax credits.

There are now extensive data bases on almost any topic you name. How many fires occur in homes and caused by what, how many traffic accidents and caused by what, how many people shop in an area, how much traffic on a road intersection and at what time.  You name it, there is a data base. Now AI is starting to analyze all the data to be mined for trends, and causes of events, and so it can forecast all sorts of future events and causes which may allow prevention, and some potential disasters with some degree of confidence. No human could ever have processed the volume of data. Result is there will be many things in the near future where AI is able to detect trends, and forecast needs, and this will allow companies and governments to do a much better job of improving production, governments to deliver services better, and legislators to form legislation to meet needs, not perceptions, and insurers to underwrite with much more precision. This is a massive change coming, and it is for the good. It is similar to the algo run investing that trades stocks, only with better data points. I cannot over emphasize the changes which we will see over the next 5-10 years as AI is able to assist decision makers and analysts of all types in better decision making.

Whatever you hear, reality is, sales of electric cars will not surpass fossil car sales for possibly 10 years, maybe less if technology improvement is faster than now on batteries. Batteries do not work well in cold weather. They lose 40% of power. There is minimal infrastructure for charging. Most people are in no rush to buy a new car. The average life is around 10 years now, and new cars are good and safer, and use a lot less gas, so transition will be a slow process. Subsidies that make electric cars affordable now, may go away. It will happen in Europe sooner than here, but gas costs far more there than what it costs in the US, so it is an easy economic decision. Plus governments like Netherlands are going to mandate it. (They ride a lot of bikes, instead of driving cars in Holland, so it is not analogous). With fracking in the US, we are now the world’s largest producer, so gas prices here will stay relatively low. That makes a huge difference.

The EU is becoming more risky. Interest rates in the bigger economies are negative. The EU is headed to major disruption, and soon.
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6)Self-Hating Whites

By: Paul Craig Roberts

White people are on the point of extinction. If you say anything about it, you are labeled a “white supremist.” Black lives matter, but not white lives.

We this, for example, in South Africa where white farmers are being massacred under the slogan “land or death” by blacks whose forebears arrived in South Africa after the forebears of the white farmers. The line is that the whites stole the blacks’ land and that Africa is black and, thereby, reserved for blacks. Whites are unwanted illegal immigrants.

If the roles were reversed and it was whites massacring blacks, the white media in the Western world would be shrill in its condemnation of the whites. As it is blacks massacring whites, there is not a peep. The only way you can learn about it is to read English language Russian Internet sites.

Only Russia has offered South African whites refuge. The US, Europe, and Canada are overflowing with non-white immigrants but have no room for white ones.

Whites are on the road to extinction not because of massacres by blacks, but because of their own tax, social, and immigration policies. In the US and throughout Europe high taxation has brought an end to single-earner families, such as the one that I, and my generation, grew up in. Wives have been forced out of the motherhood role into the earner mode. Consequently, the white birthrate has dropped. This process of destruction has been helped along the way by feminism and abortion on demand.

It is very difficult for a white person from one Western country to immigrate to another. An American who wishes to become, for example, a French citizen has to have a large income and a large French bank account and wait a long time. But a non-white can walk right in and take up residence without being evicted and expect to be supported by the French state. Except for Hungary, the same is true throughout the Western world.

How did something this topsy-turvey come about?

Identity Politics plays a major role. Identity Politics, now institutionalized in Western universities and school systems as black studies and women studies, teaches whites to be guilty for victimizing nonwhites and teaches nonwhites to hate whites for victimizing them. Instead of the former worker-capitalist class conflict, the conflict today is in racial and gender terms.

In Western countries where the white birthrate is collapsing and borders are open to nonwhite immigration, it is only a question of time before whites become a minority in their own country. As the nonwhite immigrants are not being assimilated, Western civilization itself is on the road to extinction.

Indeed, historical monuments are already being taken down because nonwhites find them “offensive.” For example, in the American South, monuments to Confederate soldiers are being taken down. That this is happening in Southern cities that still have Southern populations shows how entrenched an ideology Identity Politics has become.

We see the same power of Identity Politics in Europe. Hungary has rejected the European Union’s demand to open its borders to hordes of nonwhites from Africa and the Middle East. Against the claim that declining white European populations mean that the countries will not be able to sustain their social security systems without immigrants to support the tax base, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban offered to exempt mothers of four children from taxation. Orban’s preference for Hungarians over nonwhite immigrants provoked a Swedish government minister, Annika Strandhall, to equate Orban’s call for more Hungarian children to the white supremacy of 1930s Germany. It was “offensive” the Swedish minister declared and “reeked of the 1930s.”

Moreover, the minister declared, it was an attack on feminism which had freed women from bearing children and given them independence. The minister did not note that it was the independence to go extinct.    

Throughout Europe, especially in Germany and Scandinavia, there is pressure on the police and media not to report rapes of white women and other crimes committed by nonwhite immigrants. We shouldn’t be surprised if Sweden passes a law making it a “hate crime” for a white woman to report her rape by a nonwhite.

The very identity and ethnic awareness of whites are under assault. The Swedish national TV broadcaster, SVT, has produced a propaganda film under the guise of being a documentary. The film claims that Sweden was originally a country populated by blacks. In other words, the new influx is just returning Sweden to normality.

Except for Hungary, there is no European government in power that represents white citizens. Merkel, for example, represents immigrants, Europe, and Washington, but not Germans. Europeans do not even have enough of a survival consciousness to vote for nationalist parties that represent them.

Marine Le Pen, who leads France’s nationalist party, stands for France, and for this she is reviled. The French government wants to send her to prison for posting images from newspapers of people who were beheaded by Muslims. In other words, to present a fact that is unfavorable to a “victim group” is a hate crime.

Instead of electing Le Pen, the suicidal French elected Macron who hates France. French nationalism, declares Macron, “is the betrayal of patriotism.” Macron continues: “Patriotism is the exact opposite of nationalism.” By putting “outselves first . . . we erase our nation’s moral values.” With his perversion of the meaning of patriotism, Macron subjects French men and women to the subjugation of both immigrants and the European Union. Although Merkel might be too careful to express it so clearly, her views are the same as Macron’s. Thus it is that the leaders of Europe’s most important countries have abandoned their people.

(For Macron’s view of France as a borderless and universalist country read “Fatherland Nation” by Scott Trask in the February 2019 issue of Chronicles.)

Western civilization is so far gone that Stephen Bannon, exiled from Washington and Breitbart News, has joined with others to form a new academy in Italy to train a school of “gladiators” capable of defending Western civilization from its internal enemies.

Throughout the West there are so many poisonous voices raised against the West that it will take hundreds of thousands of gladiators to stand against them.

It might be too late. Many decades ago Jean Raspail in his novel, The Camp of the Saints, described a French government and media that welcomed the Third World immgrants who overran France and extinguished the French nation. Today Macron speaks exactly like the political characters in the novel.

The situation is so far gone in France that it is not an exaggeration to say that the French people should be put on the list of endangered species.
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