Picking up Grandson, Last Memo For A Few Days. I Just Had A Mental Breakthrough, Atoned and Feel So Much Better!

Another Rant. (See 1 below.)
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It is China all over again. (See 2 below.)
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Expect mayhem. (See 3 and 3a below.)
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4 Reasons why Kodish voting for Bibi. (See 4 below.)
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A few nights ago a prominent Mexican was interviewed and he said America should tear down barriers to entry and allow anyone who wants to enter our nation. His logic was no one can break laws and therefore, be illegal  if there are none.

The more I thought about the logic of this progressive liberal the more I thought he had a good idea but he stopped short of the ultimate conclusion.

If there are no laws to enforce we could eliminate all police forces and courts, remove all traffic lights and road signs and save tons of money and have adequate funds to raise minimum wages,  increase welfare and make SS and Medicare financially sound.

But then I said to myself why stop there. If we eliminated our military we could really turn this country into a financially strong one because we could pay off our debts, and have enough left over to clean the air, water and repay blacks for America's sins..  We could even have enough funds to build huge fans to blow pollution from other nations back on them.

I know I have been guilty of knee jerk reactions to clairvoyant reasoning by liberals and for this, like Biden, I atone for my sins.  From this point forward, I will pay more respect to whatever AOC suggests and think more seriously about which Democrat candidate best serves the nation's interest in 2020.

What a truly great nation America would be if we all lived together in peace and harmony and allowed everyone to do whatever they wanted, have what ever they wanted and said whatever they wanted. To insure this we would also need to take away all guns and allow everyone to grow their drug of choice.

No wonder Republicans and conservatives are unworthy of being elected with their stupid ideas about independence, personal responsibility and patriotism. Constitutional government is so outdated.  I truly believe progressiveness has been on to something all along and I was too dumb to realize. I feel so much better already and what a model of peace and tranquility  America really would be for the world..

The only problem is that all us old white guys might have to learn a multitude of languages in order to understand our neighbors but then that is a small price to pay for true freedom and socialism.. 

What do you think?
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Dick
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1)30 year mortgage rates are now down to around 4.0% and in some cases lower. That is very good news for housing markets, and therefore the economy. Home buying should pick up now at these levels, and with prices rising much more slowly. As the EU and UK slow possibly into recession, and as the rest of the world continues to limp along with negative interest rates, the flow of capital into US treasuries should continue, and it is possible mortgage rates could decline below 4.0%. The Fed beige book about to come out shows the US economy is currently very slow.  One of my key economist sources told me this week that things are slowing more than he thought. Chances are increasing that the Fed will actually drop rates before year end. The Fed is not raising rates this year, and maybe not next year. The 3 month and ten year are about the same rate now so inversion is not a real issue, and is not a recession indicator at this time. If housing now picks up, and if there is a real deal with China in April, as looks possible, then the US economy should grow faster, and the stock market will go up further. I am betting my money on that happening. If China does a deal, its economy will improve and that is good for the world economy. Hard to know because the EU may fall into recession, and what happens on Brexit is still unknown, but looking much more like hard break. A good indicator of the possibility of a China deal is the rapid rise in Chinese stocks. If things were going badly this would not be happening. There is still no deal, but chances are looking better. If you listened to all the talking heads that Trump should have done these negotiations in close conjunction with the EU, and others, just look at what happened with the Iran deal, Paris deal, and now the EU met with Xi last week, and before the group meeting, Italy did a major deal with China because it needed money. The group meeting was inconclusive because several EU nations were afraid to piss off Xi. Can you imagine how the negotiations would have gone if Trump had to always convene with the EU bureaucrats during the negotiations. There would never be a deal. That is why he is doing it with the US alone. The rest of the world can fend for itself.

Trump is nominating Steve Moore for the Fed. It is controversial. He is a political economist, as opposed to the intellectual and academics usually on the board. He has very different views, and would clearly be a major different view at board meetings. He has some issues, and it is unclear if he will get confirmed. It might be good to have a contrarian  on the board, but it is not clear he is the best one to be the one.

Oil prices are back up near $60, but not likely stay up there. US frackers, and majors make a lot of money at that price so supply will increase from the US. Plus speculators in the futures market are getting ahead of themselves. It is probably unlikely oil will go much higher and maybe will decline a little from here.

There has to be a full revelation of what the Dems tried to do to overthrow Trump, and the role the media played in this. Also why did Loretta Lynch tell the FBI not to pursue charges against Hilary. Why did Hilary’s staff get immunity. How can Comey still claim he did not know who paid for the dossier. Who initiated the false FISA warrant, and who wrote it and approved it. How could Brennan and Clapper go public claiming Trump was guilty of treason. Will Clapper be indicted for lying to Congress. When did Mueller know there was no collusion. Why did he not state clearly there was no obstruction, which was his responsibility to do. How is Schiff allowed to be chairman, and not brought up on ethics charges for lying and leaking. How did the press go along with all the lies. Why did CNN and the other media fall in love with Avenatti who is clearly scum. Who is going to reimburse all the innocent people who spent their life savings on lawyers in this hoax. Lindsay Graham and Barr have a major responsibility to uncover what really happened, and to charge people with crimes. We need to whole story and accountability so this never can happen again.

The other terrible issue is the Dem refusal to acknowledge there is a massive crisis on the border. Trump was right and there is a national emergency. We need a barrier now. This will be a major election issue. There really is a massive problem and the flow of illegals is becoming a clear and present danger.

Freedom of speech on campus will be back as a major issue in coming months. As the government starts to withhold dollars and schools are pressured, there will likely be lawsuits in the ninth circuit. It is essential there has to be a massive shift on campus to allow others than the far left to prevail and there has to be real freedom to speak your mind. There are a lot of kids on campus who are not left wing, but they are silenced by speech codes and intimidation from professors and other students. That has to stop. Stop donating unless your school adopts the Chicago principles which require true free speech. Financial pressure is what will work.

Student loans are a major issue because schools are not in any way liable. If Trump does make schools partially liable on the loans they will become much more reasonable as schools stop raising tuition and book costs. Now the schools know the student can borrow to pay whatever cost and so the costs rise way out of proportion to inflation. The kid  has his life screwed by the huge loan but the school does not care. They just keep creating more stupid deans of race relations, sex attacks, diversity, and counselors to help the snowflakes cope with stress. and whatever. Go check Purdue, they had no tuition increase in 7 years. It can be done.  With graduation rates at the average college at 40% after 4 years, and only 60% after 6 years, it is a disgrace and scam. It has to be stopped.

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2)

Is It Too Late to Counter China’s Rise?

Beijing bought much of Europe in the time it took the U.S. to see its global trade blitz.

By William A. Galston

Americans see the U.S. in decline and China on the rise, according to a recent Pew Research survey. Sixty percent believe that the U.S. will become less important in the world over the next three decades, and 53% expect that China will claim its spot as the world’s main superpower. It’s tempting to write off predictions of China’s rise as displaced pessimism about America, but there are real signs of the trend.

Last month, in a move that seemed to catch the Trump administration flatfooted, Italy broke ranks with other leading European nations to join China’s Belt and Road infrastructure project, crown jewel of China’s drive for global economic dominance. Italy’s ports, especially Genoa and Trieste, are expected to be major beneficiaries. As Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte said bluntly, economic clout was bound to translate into political influence.

Italy is not alone. In 2016 China’s Cosco, the world’s second-largest shipping company, acquired a 67% stake in Greece’s Piraeus port authority. The Chinese expect that Piraeus will become a major port of entry into the European market, and they are investing to ensure access for their goods. This January Cosco finalized its acquisition of the terminal in Zeebrugge, Belgium’s second-largest port.

Though Italy made headlines by embracing China formally, other European countries are opening to Beijing too. In a Paris meeting following Chinese President Xi Jinping’s triumphal visit to Italy, both German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Emmanuel Macron voiced support for increased European participation in Belt and Road and pressed for stronger trade relations with China. Mr. Macron intimated that changes in U.S. policy were bringing Europe and China closer together.

Two decades ago, the U.S. was on top of the world—the unchallenged superpower, the “indispensable nation.” Today scholars are drawing analogies to Britain at the beginning of the 20th century, its global pre-eminence was being eroded by a surge of American economic power. However you look at it, the past 20 years have been a geopolitical catastrophe for the U.S.

In retrospect, we can see that the 9/11 attacks lured America down a self-defeating path. Determined to prevent a repeat, we entered an endless, no-win war in Afghanistan from which we are still trying to disentangle ourselves. Though the war in Iraq ended quickly in what was portrayed as a victory, we inherited a divided and broken country that fell apart as soon as we left, and have spent additional billions of dollars to put back together—not to mention the Americans who gave their lives to reclaim the territory Islamic State seized afterward.

All this was a massive diversion from the most important long-term challenge the U.S. faced—the rise of China. The lack of focus led Washington to make two crucial mistakes. Leaders of both parties dramatically underestimated the impact on the U.S. economy of China’s accession to the World Trade Organization in 2001. Over the next decade, a surge of Chinese imports wiped out millions of manufacturing jobs. Small U.S. manufacturers located outside large cities were hit particularly hard, contributing to the divide between metropolitan and nonmetropolitan areas that increasingly shapes American politics along with our economy.

The second mistake was even more fateful. U.S. leaders assumed that China’s entrance into the global economic system signaled its willingness to play by the rules of market economies, and to amend any trade practices that violated international norms. In this hopeful view, China would get richer, its middle class would expand, and popular demand for social and political liberties would intensify. While China might never democratize fully, it would become a less autocratic society that posed no systemic threat to liberal democracy.

Mr. Xi’s emergence as China’s pre-eminent leader has dispelled these illusions. He believes that the state must play the leading role in economic development—and that economic power should be translated into political and military power. He appears determined to dislodge the U.S. from its long-held perch in East Asian defense and trade.

Mr. Xi is convinced that the “China Model”—economic growth without political liberty—represents a superior alternative to liberal democracy, with applications far beyond China’s borders. He understands that China’s ability to mobilize vast amounts of capital for public purposes is a valuable tool for building global political influence. And now his country owns a tenth of Europe’s port capacity.

The U.S. has wasted 20 years. Finally we see the problem. Is it too late to solve it?

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3)

With Mueller hopes gone, so goes progressive unity

By Victor Davis Hanson

The Democratic Party has lots of radical new ideas, and lots of radical presidential candidates and politicos.

But the common hatred of President Donald Trump has united otherwise quite disparate Democratic leaders such as House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.); former Vice President Joe Biden; Sens. Kamala Harris (D-Calif), Cory Booker (D-N.J.) and Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.); and Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) and Ilhan Omar(D-Minn.).

These diverse progressive politicians all shared faith in special counsel Robert Mueller and his "dream team." They believed over the last two years that the Mueller investigation was slowly grinding down Trump. T-shirts were sold with the slogan "God Protect Robert Mueller."

The unifying progressive creed assumed that the Mueller's team would eventually find Trump unequivocally guilty of "collusion" with Russia. That buzzword was the non-criminal euphemism for felonious conspiracy to rig an election.

The hunt for collusion would end with the holy grail of Trump's impeachment and removal from office. In 2020 there would be an almost automatic progressive takeover of government.

Periodic leaks from Mueller's team during the investigation's 22 months prompted giddy media anticipation that "the walls were closing in on" Trump. It always seemed that the "noose was tightening" around him, and that yet another "bombshell" was about to go off.

This anti-Trump echo chamber lessened the need for progressives to offer a comprehensive, coherent and winning alternate agenda. Damning the sure-to-be-impeached Trump was unity enough. All progressives at least agreed on that.

But as Mueller was supposedly about to indict Trump, a divisive, hard-left agenda was almost imperceptibly floated to the public: the Green New Deal, reparations for slavery, abortion redefined as permissible infanticide, open borders, packing the Supreme Court with liberal justices, the abolition of the Electoral College and ICE, free college tuition, the elimination of student debt, Medicare for all, a wealth tax, a 70 percent top marginal income tax rate, a 16-year-old voting age, voting rights for ex-felons, and on and on.

It seemed as if today's radical proposal would become yesterday's sellout within 24 hours, as progressives awaited tomorrow's even more revolutionary idea.

While progressives were celebrating the seemingly inevitable Mueller indictment of Trump, they were also increasingly at odds over many of these divisive and mostly unpopular new issues and over the self-created paradoxes of identity politics.

When he was not declaring Trump guilty of treason, Robert Francis "Beto" O'Rourke, a lifelong beneficiary of wealth and influence, did his best to blast his own past white privilege.

Socialist presidential candidate Bernie Sanders, when he was not predicating Trump's impeachment, talked in the abstract, as if an old white guy like himself in the concrete had no business running for president.

Current front-runner Joe Biden, when he was not gloating over Trump's supposed guilt, tried hard to trash his own white male culture as the root of many of America's problems.

How odd that three of the anti-white-male party's leading presidential contenders were none other than the white male trio of Biden, Bernie and Beto.

Now, Mueller has gone, his report having found no evidence of an election conspiracy. There is no longer a rallying cry of Trump-Russia collusion.

In other words, an investigation that for two years had reconciled the irreconcilable serves no longer as a source of Democratic unity.

We are going to see hard-left Democrats and socialists force their mostly unpopular agenda on politicians and candidates from their own party. And they are now putting their identity-politics money where their mouth is by openly discouraging candidates on the basis of their race and gender.

With the end of the Mueller investigation, thousands of government documents, mostly unredacted, will be released. The result may be that the hunters of Trump soon become hunted by federal prosecutors. Sworn statements of Obama administration officials in the Justice Department, CIA, FBI and other bureaucracies will contradict newly released documents.

To escape punishment, all of these players in the Russian collusion delusion may now begin to turn on one another after being so united in going after Donald Trump.

The media sensationalism and optics will play out in reverse as the "noose tightens" and "the walls close in" on people such as former CIA Director John Brennan, former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, former FBI Director James Comey and former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe.

There will also be more infighting over the collective embarrassment of the Russian collusion hoax.

A few shamed progressive politicians and reporters will grow quiet and acknowledge their overreach. But many will double down and weirdly insist that there really was Russian collusion and that the Steele dossier was true. Most will remain unashamed and simply move on to the next supposed Trump scandal.

Progressives in unison boarded the Mueller express to nowhere. As they now jump off the train wreck, the fighting won't be pretty.

3a)

Liberals Are Eating Their Own

Joe Biden got trapped in the spider web of identity politics. He won’t be the last.

By Daniel Henninger

“For me,” former ESPN vice president Roxanne Jones wrote on CNN’s website this week, “Biden, as chair of that all-white-male Senate committee—intentionally, or not—helped to uphold the misogynistic culture that would ultimately allow Donald Trump to win the presidency. Then there’s Biden’s mass incarceration problem.”

In simpler political times, the litmus test for being an acceptable Democrat was support for Roe v. Wade. The one certain thing we have learned about the politics of the modern Democratic Party is that if you are accused of having done, said or written anything that violates an array of recently identified progressive values, you are disqualified from public life. You will be denounced and shunned.

Last week, to atone for chairing the Clarence Thomas hearings nearly three decades ago, Mr. Biden prostrated himself before his progressive accusers and said “the white man’s culture” has “got to change.”

A week later, Mr. Biden became trapped in the spider web of gender politics. Days have been spent debating whether his public squeezing habits should disqualify him from the presidency. To confess his sins, he posted a video on Twitter .

A few months ago, liberals were about to decapitate their government leadership in Virginia for racial and sexual violations. As described by the enforcers at the New York Times, “Democrats moved swiftly to send a zero-tolerance message.”

House Democrats couldn’t agree on a resolution condemning anti-Semitism until it also addressed “Islamophobia, racism and other forms of bigotry.” Check, check, check.

Students at George Washington University this week voted on a proposition that the school’s nickname, the Colonials, “has too deep a connection to colonization and glorifies the act of systemic oppression.” Some 54% of the student body agreed. The GW mascot is, at least for now, still George Washington.

People wonder how it got this crazy. Somewhere along the line, what began as decent ideas, such as respect for differences, degraded into political weaponry and cultural paranoia—seeing offense where none existed.

Liberal and progressive professors have been driven from classrooms and made to apologize for imagined offenses against the new orthodoxies, such as reading from the works of James Baldwin and thereby saying the N-word out loud in class. Forbidden.

Disputes over Halloween costumes, which began on campuses, have migrated to households, where mothers struggle with whether their child’s costume will be criticized for cultural appropriation.

Today in politics, universities, the media and corporations, people are routinely told to conform or get out for violating ideas that lack logic, reason or proportion.

How did this happen? It has become increasingly clear that one of the primary reasons for this descent into irrationality and chaos was the virtual elimination of conservative professors from higher education. It may be true that most academics are by instinct liberal, but conservatives were their speed bump. With them gone, it has been a race to the intellectual bottom.

Free speech is important to productive inquiry. As important is the related tradition of intellectual challenge. Any serious academic exposes his ideas to colleagues who know—or knew—it is their responsibility to weed out weakness and illogic. Excepting the ignored mad geniuses, the system has worked for centuries. Discovering and testing ideas is why smart people used to go into academia.

Liberal professors could have protected this tradition of intellectual rigor, but they didn’t. They let it erode. Ideas that would have stayed in the faculty lounge as thoughts swiftly rose to orthodoxy.

The left—being the left—saw an opening and transformed vague ideas into instruments of power. Notions such as “systemic” and “unwelcoming” mean whatever they need to mean. They have turned ideas into useful idiots.

An exhibition of this decline is on view right now at Villanova University. Last weekend, these pages published an article by Profs. Colleen Sheehan and James Wilson, criticizing the university for adding “diversity and inclusion” issues to its teacher-evaluation questionnaire. The form asks, for instance, whether a teacher has created an “atmosphere free of bias based on individual differences or social identities.” Ms. Sheehan and Mr. Wilson called such phrases an “ominous catchall.”

It was a serious, respectful statement of disagreement. Within days, a faculty petition of pushback appeared with nearly 100 colleagues’ signatures. It states: “We believe that ensuring that students have an educational environment free of racism, sexism, anti-LGBTQ sentiments, ableism, Islamophobia, anti-Semitism, and other forms of discrimination is essential to providing students with a liberal arts education.”

Villanova should have thanked Profs. Sheehan and Wilson. Instead, on instinct, it has ring-fenced their opinions.

Maybe Joe Biden will survive his trial by progressive ordeal. But there will be more Bidens. Liberals drove conservative ideas out of academia, politics, the culture and the media. What’s left of liberalism is now consuming its own.

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4) Four Reasons Why I’m Voting Netanyahu and Likud

KENNY KODISH

1. He’s Doing and Has Done an Excellent Job

Yes, excellent. If this were an employee performance review and not an election, Prime Minister Netanyahu (call me old fashioned but I don’t believe I’ve earned the right to call him Bibi) would be getting a glowing review. Security, economy, foreign relations and more. Are things perfect? No. Are they ideal? Of course not. But, leading Israel to a place where it’s now recognized as one of the eight most powerful countries on EARTH is at least deserving of keeping his job. With all the noise surrounding this election, I hope his words are heard loud and clear when he says his relationships with foreign leaders, Presidents Trump and Putin especially included, are a national asset. We’d be foolish not to let them continue.

2. Change for the Sake of Change is Ludicrous

I have heard calls for “term limits” for as long as I can remember – and the idea seems ridiculous. Firstly, that’s the point of regular elections isn’t it? – to decide which leaders we want to stay and which we  want to go. Secondly, wouldn’t term limits discourage highly qualified people from making public service a career? Completely dedicate yourself for a certain number of years and then be removed/replaced for no good reason – especially once one has learned the system, is maximizing effectiveness and “getting things done”.

3. He Has Earned and Deserves Our Support

To call our prime minister “embattled” is a gross understatement. His detractors have been formidable and relentless. Jewish leadership has been a thankless endeavor from the time of Moses and until now. Ask anyone who’s been a synagogue president, head of a Jewish organization (lay or professional), even a teen president of their youth group. There is a concept in Judaism called “hakarat hatov” – acknowledging the good / showing appreciation. Unfortunately the history of the Jewish people – also from the time of Moses – reflects that if criticizing, second-guessing and armchair quarterbacking were Olympic Events, the Jewish people would dominate – gold, silver and bronze. No other nations need even show up. How many people have stopped for a moment and thought what Benjamin Netanyahu has done with his life – only dedicated it wholeheartedly to the growth, protection, success, and future viability of this fledgling state – this first experiment in Jewish self-rule in 2000 years. And at the same time suffering derision and personal insults to his family. Not that he’s ever asked, but how about a THANK YOU somewhere along the way.

4. Likud is the Party that Represents Survival and Stability

Political parties have come and gone, but Likud is the one that has persevered when others have disappeared. Even its longtime arch rival, the Labor Party – the party of Rabin and Peres – is in shambles.

The prime minister has a solid list behind him – several capable, talented, committed, passionate and in many cases, proven individuals:  Yuli Edelstein, newcomer and immediate past mayor of Jerusalem Nir Barkat, Gila Gamliel, Tzipi Hovotely, Yariv Levin, Zeev Elkin to name a few. The more votes for Likud will result in the less wheeling and dealing Prime Minister Netanyahu will have to do with the smaller parties in order to form and maintain a government. Further, the wheeling and dealing usually means the Knesset members from his own party get lesser responsibilities because he will have to give the most important ministries to the smaller parties to get them on board. It’s a flaw of our system. A record number forty – seven parties are registered for this election. Absurd. I’ll stick with what works.

There are more reasons, but these are more than enough. At this time in our history and in light of the current realities, internally and globally, the choice is clear.

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