Why the Right to Bear Arms Is an Individual Right, Not for Militias Only
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This essay was attributed to Clint Eastwood. It pretty much sums up my own reasons for how and why I support Trump over the alternative radical choices served up by lunatic Democrats.
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Another Ross Rant! (See 1 below.)
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America is slowly separating into two distinct philosophical and geographical spheres
California and New York, America's bookends, have decided Federal Laws need not be obeyed if they conflict with the thinking of their governors. In New York, energy independence is anathema to Coumo and in California, their governor has decided they will be a sanctuary state where you do not need to assist police, illegals are welcome and the homeless can take over entire cities etc.
Federal Courts in these two states have judges who seem to delight in believing they can rule against Trump at the drop of a hat notwithstanding the fact most of their rulings are subsequently over turned on appeal. At least their decisions gum up The Administration's gears for a while and that plays well with the Hollywood Crowd and assorted "Big Apple"fruitcakes.
Meanwhile, when California forests catch on fire they expect the federal government is obligated to come to their aid and the same in New York, when tragedy strikes.
In California, there are several cities (San Francisco and Los Angeles predominantly) whose tails wag the state whereas in New York the Mayor of The Big Apple seems to be the dog whose tail wags the most.
The current New York Mayor aspires to being president but does not stand much of a chance and California's Governor is laying the foundation for a future try so he is honing his current radical ideas in anticipation.
California is also the home of Hollywood and that industry has been ruled by radical liberals for decades.These same liberals are among America's biggest hypocrites. They believe their ideas are precious and suited for everyone else. They are very "green" and care about the downtrodden.
Californians are "edgy" types and believe anything they say and do goes.
Whereas, New Yorker's tend to believe they too are superior beings and everything they have, believe, say and do qualifies them to be the nation's trend setters. Everything about New York is basically better. Extremes are commonplace.
I readily admit the above comments are broad generalizations but I also believe the essence of what I have written to be factual.
While we are tearing our nation apart, China is expanding its influence throughout the world. They are lending money to nations who are in need of capital to build infrastructure, mainly ports,. This is done so that China's navy will be able to expand and be increasingly prominent. These loans are going to be difficult for many of the debtor nations to repay thus, increasing China's influence and economic control of entire regions. The recent hurricane, Dorian, and destruction in the Bahamas has given China an unanticipated opportunity to expand their presence in our own region and sphere of influence.
Where this all leads and how and when it ends will determine whether America continues to lead the world, as we have for many decades, or whether our success withers away because we lost sight of what made us great and no longer cared about tending to the vine, so to speak. (See 2 below.)
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I recently received my copy of The Naval War College Review. This issue was far more technical than most and beyond my intellectual pay grade but I will call attention to one article which discussed our expanded military numbers in relation to recruitment of necessary staffing numbers among qualified candidates Based on the Millennial Generation current recruiting efforts do not align with the needs. First, 71% of the qualified age group does not qualify because of lack of education, poor health or criminal records.Those Millennial's who do qualify have other issues. They would rather lose a car than a cell phone, they do no interact well and they are less supportive, than their elders, when it comes to national security than a progressive social agenda. Family considerations lead to issues regarding permanent change of station.
The bottom line is a voluntary military, which is expanding its numbers, must adopt to the changing demands of millennial's in order to meet qualified military's personnel demands and that means an overhaul of current recruitment efforts.
Voluntary military service in China is not a personal option and though our armed forces are well trained and motivated filling the ranks is becoming a critical issue.
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If you live in New York and are an Orthodox Jew you are increasingly vulnerable to physical attacks from those in the black community. Liberal Jews tend to ignore and/or speak out about this new trend and would rather focus on other issues but if they do touch on the subject they are more likely to associate Trump with Charlottesville as the cause.
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1)For the past ten months we have been deluged by opinions about inverted yield curves. Some recent research was done that shows that as rates dropped, there was a rush to refi, and that means prepay mortgages. That means institutions holding mortgage backed bonds were left with unbalanced portfolios, and had to buy other new hedges, or new bonds of longer duration in order to better match the duration of their liabilities to pay pensions or annuities. That was triggered in most cases by algorithms that manage the portfolio balance. That triggers buying large quantities of longer dated bonds including ten and thirty year maturities as the cash from prepayments rolls in. One expert postulated that rates would be as much as 25BP higher if it were not for the rush of institutional investment to reinvest proceeds from prepaid bonds as rates declined, thereby triggering more ten and thirty year bond buying. Bottom line, don't take the inversion as a clear sign of pending recession. It might be partially due to technical factors driven by algorithms.
In another study covering whether it is best to float or fix, they concluded several things. Ignore economists' predictions of rates. They are mostly wrong. In fact, most bond traders, and other pundits, are wrong if they try to predict rates over the next 5 years. Old time bond traders from Solomon Bros days mostly said trying to predict where rates will be over several years is usually a losing exercise. We have seen this to be true over the recent periods. So as a general rule, when rates are very low, as now, fix, and when rates are high and rising stay floating, and over time the net cost of interest will be lower than if you fix at high points and pay the premium that long term fixed carries over floating. If you fix when rates go high thinking you will protect from even higher rates, you will likely make the wrong decision. There has been extensive long term research to show this. It pays, if you float, to examine if a good hedging strategy is needed, and at what strike price. I am not an interest rate expert, nor very knowledgeable about hedging, so go to a good firm that does those things for specific advice. Just keep in mind that when a bank sells you a cap or hedge, they are trying to make a profit on that trade, so it is best to go to an independent firm that does interest rate management, and let then help you decide, and then let them buy the hedge for you. It will normally be less costly and will be documented better for you.
What to make of Brexit now is another impossible exercise. Johnson has lost control of events. Johnson was right to threaten the EU with a hard Brexit, but Parliament, like Congress had no understanding of how to negotiate these things. Parliament made a mess of this, again. I thought nobody was more stupid than the US congress, but now I think Parliament has surpassed us. The deal May struck was terrible, and what Johnson was attempting to do was materially improve it to make it the Brexit that people voted for. By trying to force another 3 month delay, Parliament told the EU, just stand firm, and it is OK to screw us. Similar to what the Dems are trying to with Iran negotiations, USMCA, and the border. It is now unclear if Brexit ever happens, given that the deal on the table was rejected three times, but now the EU has no reason to agree to any changes. It is clear now that the UK is a mess, and it is not going to get better for quite a while. In the US, since there is no longer any bipartisanship, Trump has to go it alone. If he let the Dems have their way we would be back to the terrible Iran deal Obama made, and the bad NAFTA deal, and the Iranians, Putin and Chinese would run all over us, as they did with Obama. The world would be much worse off. Just look at Micron trying to help Iran cheat and get $15 billion cash so they agree to comply with what they already agreed to do, and nothing more. How stupid is that. Macron acts just as Obama did, so the Iranians can continue to pay Hezbollah and Hamas, and support attacks on Israel, and the Saudis. Macron is who the liberals want as part of the US negotiating team with XI, along with others from the EU. It demonstrates how weak the EU really is. I am sure Putin is noting all this. They have the same issues in Britain as we do- a legislative branch that has no clue about how to negotiate, and is trying to undercut the chief executive to the detriment of the country.
The teachers union has now convinced virtually every Democrat governor and Mayor to stop charter schools. None are being opened at this moment. The waiting line of minority kids to get in is very long and growing. No matter what teaching methods are introduced, including all kids having computers and online work, reading and math scores in minority schools have not improved, or have declined. More computers and more money has done nothing for the kids. They are still failing, and their futures are being sacrificed to the teachers unions and pensions. Disruptive kids are not punished now in urban schools because that is deemed to be racist and unfair. So all the kids suffer badly because learning is disrupted. Political correctness is destroying thousands of minority kids hope for a better future. Charters do not tolerate that crap. The well run charters way out perform public schools. Until minority parents take an active interest, and demand a change of polices, and a change to non-union schools, and until the community culture of assumed failure is ended and replaced with the hard work drive for success of the Asian culture, we are going to have failing schools and a lack of opportunity for thousands of black kids. It is not discrimination that has the Asian kids outperforming even white kids in school, and black kids being materially behind as measured by the standard tests. There is no evidence that diversity in university makes education and future success any better for anyone, and there is plenty of evidence it makes it worse for black kids who are accepted to schools where they are not qualified just to fill the black quota.
There were 7 young black men murdered this past weekend in Chicago. 30 more were shot, in just one weekend, in just this one city. That is the same number who died in the random shooting in Odessa. There were lots more black on black murders last week in Baltimore, St Louis, Newark, LA, and other urban cities run by Democrats. Over the past 5 years there were 65 US soldiers who died in Afghanistan in combat. They kill that many young blacks in Chicago in less than two months. Do you hear a word from any Democrat about this carnage. All you hear is attacks on Republicans and Trump over gun laws. Shooters in Chicago do not buy guns legally. They buy them on the street where they are readily available. Yet Chicago has some of the toughest gun laws in America. So now the mayor blames the Republicans for the gun violence claiming it is because gun sales are legal in Indiana. Classic. She takes no responsibility at all, and does nothing, but blame the GOP. The real problem is the city agreed to an ACLU agreement which keeps the cops from doing their job. Now judges let them out with no bail or minor bail, so the violence continues. A step NYC has just taken to have no arrests for many misdemeanors and no bail. Congrats to the ACLU for materially increasing the number of murders and shootings in Chicago. In the past two weeks the arrest rate in NYC dropped 13% since the Pantilo decision by the commissioner. The Dems just do not get it. Giuliani showed how it is done, but the left thinks letting cops stop and frisk and take guns off the street, and be aggressive, is racist, so instead black kids die or get shot, and black neighborhoods become worse than actual war zones. And you wonder why these kids act out in school? It is just like the school problem. Do not touch the black kids, and do not really punish them, so instead they all fail or die. That is current left wing policy at work.
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2) Children of the Greatest Generation
If you were born in the 1930s to the mid 1940s, you exist as a very special age group. You are the smallest group of children born since the early 1900s.
You are the last generation, climbing out of the depression, who can remember the winds of war and the impact of a world at war, which rattled the structure of our daily lives for years.
You are the last to remember ration books for everything from gas to sugar to shoes to stoves.
You saved tin foil and poured fat into tin cans.
You saw cars up on blocks because tires weren't available.
You can remember milk being delivered to your house early in the morning and placed in the “milk box” on the porch.
You are the last to see the gold stars in the front windows of our grieving neighbors whose sons died in the War.
You saw the 'boys' home from the war, build their little houses.
You are the last generation who spent childhood without television; instead, we imagined what we heard on the radio.
As you all like to brag, with no TV, you spent your childhood "playing outside.” The lack of television in your early years meant, for most of you, that you had little real understanding of what the world was like.
On Saturday afternoons, the movies gave you newsreels sandwiched in between westerns and cartoons that were at least a week old.
There was no little league. There was no city playground for kids. Soccer was unheard of.
Telephones were one to a house, often shared (party lines) and hung on the wall in the kitchen (no cares about privacy).
Computers were called calculators; they were hand cranked; typewriters were driven by pounding fingers, throwing the carriage, and changing the ribbon. The 'INTERNET’ and ‘GOOGLE’ were words that did not exist.
Newspapers and magazines were written for adults and the news was broadcast on our radio in the evening by Paul Harvey, Walter Winchell and Gabriel Heater.
As you grew up, the country was exploding with growth. The G.I. Bill gave returning veterans the means to get an education and spurred colleges to grow.
VA loans fanned a housing boom. Pent up demand coupled with new installment payment plans opened many factories for work.
New highways would bring jobs and mobility. New cars averaged $2,000 full price.
The veterans joined civic clubs and became active in politics.
The radio network expanded from three stations to thousands .
We weren't neglected, but we weren't today's all-consuming family focus.
They were glad you played by yourselves until the street lights came on or Mom called you for supper. They were busy discovering the post war world. Although depression poverty was deeply remembered.
Polio was still a crippler.
You came of age in the 50s and 60s. The Korean War was a dark passage in the early 50s and by mid-decade school children were ducking under desks for air-raid training. Russia built the “Iron Curtain” and China became Red China. Eisenhower sent the first 'Army Advisers' to Vietnam. Castro took over in Cuba and Khrushchev came to power in Russia.
You are the last generation to experience an interlude when there were no threats to our homeland.
The war was over and the cold war, Muslim terrorism, “global warming” and perpetual economic insecurity had yet to haunt life with unease.
Only your generation can remember both a time of a great war, and a time when your world was secure. You lived through both. You grew up at a time when the world was getting better, not worse.
You are "The Last Ones." More than 99% of you are retired and we feel privileged to have "lived in the best of times"!
HOW BLESSED WE WERE AND NEVER REALIZED HOW LITTLE WE HAD. BUT IT WAS GOOD TRAINING FOR THE FUTURE WHICH OUR CHILDREN NEVER GOT.
2) Children of the Greatest Generation
If you were born in the 1930s to the mid 1940s, you exist as a very special age group. You are the smallest group of children born since the early 1900s.
You are the last generation, climbing out of the depression, who can remember the winds of war and the impact of a world at war, which rattled the structure of our daily lives for years.
You are the last to remember ration books for everything from gas to sugar to shoes to stoves.
You saved tin foil and poured fat into tin cans.
You saw cars up on blocks because tires weren't available.
You can remember milk being delivered to your house early in the morning and placed in the “milk box” on the porch.
You are the last to see the gold stars in the front windows of our grieving neighbors whose sons died in the War.
You saw the 'boys' home from the war, build their little houses.
You are the last generation who spent childhood without television; instead, we imagined what we heard on the radio.
As you all like to brag, with no TV, you spent your childhood "playing outside.” The lack of television in your early years meant, for most of you, that you had little real understanding of what the world was like.
On Saturday afternoons, the movies gave you newsreels sandwiched in between westerns and cartoons that were at least a week old.
There was no little league. There was no city playground for kids. Soccer was unheard of.
Telephones were one to a house, often shared (party lines) and hung on the wall in the kitchen (no cares about privacy).
Computers were called calculators; they were hand cranked; typewriters were driven by pounding fingers, throwing the carriage, and changing the ribbon. The 'INTERNET’ and ‘GOOGLE’ were words that did not exist.
Newspapers and magazines were written for adults and the news was broadcast on our radio in the evening by Paul Harvey, Walter Winchell and Gabriel Heater.
As you grew up, the country was exploding with growth. The G.I. Bill gave returning veterans the means to get an education and spurred colleges to grow.
VA loans fanned a housing boom. Pent up demand coupled with new installment payment plans opened many factories for work.
New highways would bring jobs and mobility. New cars averaged $2,000 full price.
The veterans joined civic clubs and became active in politics.
The radio network expanded from three stations to thousands .
We weren't neglected, but we weren't today's all-consuming family focus.
They were glad you played by yourselves until the street lights came on or Mom called you for supper. They were busy discovering the post war world. Although depression poverty was deeply remembered.
Polio was still a crippler.
You came of age in the 50s and 60s. The Korean War was a dark passage in the early 50s and by mid-decade school children were ducking under desks for air-raid training. Russia built the “Iron Curtain” and China became Red China. Eisenhower sent the first 'Army Advisers' to Vietnam. Castro took over in Cuba and Khrushchev came to power in Russia.
You are the last generation to experience an interlude when there were no threats to our homeland.
The war was over and the cold war, Muslim terrorism, “global warming” and perpetual economic insecurity had yet to haunt life with unease.
Only your generation can remember both a time of a great war, and a time when your world was secure. You lived through both. You grew up at a time when the world was getting better, not worse.
You are "The Last Ones." More than 99% of you are retired and we feel privileged to have "lived in the best of times"!
HOW BLESSED WE WERE AND NEVER REALIZED HOW LITTLE WE HAD. BUT IT WAS GOOD TRAINING FOR THE FUTURE WHICH OUR CHILDREN NEVER GOT.
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