Good news. And as noted above Dorian is not a "wide" storm . Significant damage extends roughly 40 miles left of the track and 55 right of the track. Since we're 100 miles left of the track, we should be okay. Still need to keep our eye on things
AJ+ Is Al Jazeera | PragerU
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Ross Rants!(See 1 below.)
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Slip it in while no one is looking. (See 2 below.)
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The NYT's op ed writer must have sneaked this in before Ochs saw it. (See 3 below.)
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Hanson explains why so many young embrace Socialism. (See 4 below.)
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Just back from wedding of the son of dear Atlanta friends. Took place at Lake Martin at the Country Club built by the Russell family which owned Russell Manufacturing Company.
The Russell family was an old Alabama Dynasty and their impact on Alexander City was amazing. Lake Martin was created by Al. Power Co., a division of Southern Co., and was built by daming. The homes around the lake are magnificent, the lake is huge and it is one of the great recreation attractions in Alabama. It is some 300 miles from Savannah.
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Stay safe!! Dorian is very gray!
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Dick
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1) Where the trade talks go from here is impossible to forecast. Both sides need a deal, but it appears Trump is willing to play hardball as though he does not care about the election. I think that may have surprised the Chinese, but was classic NY real estate bluff. If the Chinese wait, it will be early 2021 before a new Dem president could try to do anything. They cannot wait that long, and it is a bad bet. If a new president came to office and just cancelled the tariffs, the Chinese will have won, and it will be a disaster for the world, because that will say to Xi, we are not going to do anything, so continue to do all the bad things you have done. The world will be vastly worse off because China will know that there is nobody to stop them. It should be noted that everyone was at the G7, and China was discussed, but nobody else was willing to step up and confront Xi alongside us. So much for all the talk of an allied united front. The EU is letting Trump carry the ball down field with no blockers. Meantime, it is possible that Xi realizes, Trump is not going to back down, and many companies are starting to move out. Whatever happens with a deal, China is losing a substantial amount of production that is never coming back. Everyone knows, China cannot be trusted to do whatever they agree to, so not moving out is too risky. This is the start of a major shift in world trade. Now add on the Hong Kong protests, and the realization by China that it cannot have another Tiananmen, or the chance of a deal with the US becomes minimal. Rock and hard place dilemma.
It continues to appear that the yield curve is inverted due to the rush of capital into US bonds, and not due to recession. The Fed is caught in a bad place. On the one hand, there is enormous market and political pressure to cut, but the economic stats mostly remain good, and normally would say do not cut. Personal Consumption Expenditures were up .7%, which shows consumers are doing well, and have cash to spend. Gas prices are the lowest in three years and going lower. Heating oil prices will be low this winter. Electric utilities are mostly switching to natural gas, which means much lower cost energy. Natural gas prices are down 25% this year. Several new pipelines are now open, or about to, in the south, moving Permian oil and gas to markets here and abroad. These are the pipelines Obama/Biden refused to allow. A lot of these are real things that help working class people, not inefficient and wasteful entitlements from the Dems.. My assumption is a 25BP cut by the Fed to assuage the markets, and to hedge the trade matter a little. This will keep the stock market from tanking, but will do nothing for capital investment. If Brexit goes hard, which is a real possibility, then much more capital flows to the US and yields decline further. Corporations are not going to invest much until China and Brexit are sorted out. Cap ex will remain very constrained until someone can say with clarity, that the trade deal is signed with real enforcement provisions. We are a long way from that. Meantime tariffs will proceed, but not have much impact on consumer prices for several months, but they will continue to have a psychological impact, and cap ex will not recover for many months. The media will make it sound like US consumers are getting crushed, but that is not true. No CEO is going to stick his neck out until this gets resolved. The deeper Germany goes to a recession, and Hong Kong dives deeper into chaos, the more CEO's will be cautious. If the world economy does slow further, as it appears it will, then US yields will decline even more, the Fed will cut again in Oct, and we could be faced with a real risk of US rates going negative in 2020. Not likely, but possible. If that happens, get out of the market. On the other hand, if a China deal is signed, then rates will rise, and your bond holdings will decline in value quickly.
As a related aside, Dudley's comment that he thinks the Fed should not do anything to help Trump get reelected, was astonishing, and really disgraceful. It was a historic point in Fed history, even though he is no longer a member. He was head of the NY Fed. He just fed the conspiracy theory that the Fed is out to get Trump, which is not true. It is hard to imagine what possessed him to say what he did. It was stupid.
Steel prices have declined materially. Why? a lot of steel capacity was opened in the past year, just as the economy and construction slowed. All those who complained about steel tariffs now have to shut up. The yuan is down 11%. Supply chains are moving out of China. Excess leverage in China at all levels is a real issue now. Liquidity is becoming a real issue for smaller Chinese companies. We should not be surprised if many import prices decline next year even if there is no deal, as production is moved to lower labor cost countries with no tariffs issues, and Chinese manufacturers are forced to eat a portion of the tariffs. Over the next year or two, prices from imports will likely decline as production is shifted to lower cost countries like Vietnam and India. China, by comparison, had become high cost labor. Another reason inflation should remain low. Despite the opportunity to grab Chinese production, India is slowing at 5% growth, down from 8%. The Indian banks are stuffed with bad loans. India is missing the opportunity of a lifetime.
The Dems refuse to vote on USMCA, and say they will not agree to a UK deal for trade unless the Irish portion of Brexit is to their approval. Who the hell are the US Dems to decide what the UK does on Ireland. So they will sacrifice the US trade deal to try to hurt Trump, but instead will hurt workers and interfere in the sovereignty of other nations. This and the refusal to vote on USMCA are big losers for the Dems in 2020.
A lot of talk is about income inequality and wealth inequality. The Dems and media point to the fact that rich people own a lot of stock and real estate, and made wealth that way over the past 9 years. As though that is somehow a terrible thing. People who had saved, and had stock and invested wisely, made a lot of money. They could just as easily have lost a lot if Hilary won. But now they have some degree of wealth, and most use it to invest in new deals that create new jobs, and to give to good charity that help the working class and poor. The Dems never want to discuss the recycling of wealth into taxes, new investments and charity. They make it sound like rich people stole the money somehow and just hide it under the mattress. The Dems want to take this wealth and use it for new government programs. Working class people do not own a lot of stock because they do not earn excess cash to invest, mostly because they got a lousy education from the union teachers in Democratic run cities. Nothing new about that. In fact, today in the US, it is better than ever for working class and middle class people -50% of whom have 401K programs and government workers who have huge pensions that rich people fund since they pay the most taxes. The Dem policy of take from people who earned a lot, and just give it via government spend programs, to people who have not earned a lot, is a terrible, inefficient use of capital. It would make us all poorer. In fact, the possibility that one can become rich by hard work and good investing is what motivates most of us to work hard and take risks. Without that, the US economy would never have been what it is, and the lower class with little education would be unemployed and much worse off. That is what left wing -never really ran a company-politicians do not understand.
While the Dems shed fake tears for immigrant kids being separated from their illegal parents, 765,000 US citizen kids are separated from one of their military parents for as long as 9 months. Sometimes the parent does not return from battle defending the country as opposed to illegally entering. But nobody says a word. 2.7 million kids in the US have a parent in jail. But the Dems scream because 2000 illegal immigrant kids get separated from their fake parents who rented them to cross the border. Do we hear the media cover any of this?
I am still betting on a rising stock market for now. For all the hubbub and noise, the market is not for off its record high.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ 2) Back to School: Islamist Indoctrination for US Kids?
By Clarion Project
Does Access Islam provide Islamist indoctrination in U.S. public school? (Illustrative photo: U.S. Air Force/Linda LaBonte Britt)
The new school year is upon us and Access Islam, a program backed by the Department of Education, is under fire again after being accused of being an Islamist indoctrination program.
This program claims to educate school children about religious diversity, but it is specifically geared toward Islam.
Children in grades 5 through 12 are required to learn about the Five Pillars of Islam then asked to make posters about them, read and interpret Islamic scripture from the Quran and provide examples on how Muslims implement these lessons into their everyday lives.
In Virginia, students in the program were required to copy the shahada, the Muslim declaration of faith, which declares, “There is no god but Allah, and Muhammad is the messenger of Allah.”
In New York, students were shown videos of Islamic terrorists justifying their attacks against Israelis.
In Massachusetts, students were given reading materials funded by Arab states such as Saudi Arabia, which advocates for “Palestine.” While these textbooks were being used in schools, there was a rise in the amount of anti-Semitic acts committed.
It should be noted that the U.S. Department of Education backing Access Islam contradicts the United States’ stance on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
The United States has shown public support for Israel and does not recognize a country called “Palestine.” How can the U.S. publicly support Israel while simultaneously support anti-Israel ideologies being taught in its public schools?
There is a certain point where education transforms into indoctrination, in this case, Islamist indoctrination. Many people have accused Access Islam of crossing this line, based on the fact that no other religion is taught this thoroughly, if at all, in American public schools and with no critical eye.
In fact, no other religious program of this scale has been backed by the U.S. Department of Education.
Moreover, in states where the program is taught, it is not offered as an elective course, but rather a required subject. The program is not even taught in religious studies classes (which most American public schools do not offer).
Students encounter Access Islam lesson in their mandatory classes, such as history and geography.
There have been multiple cases of parents requesting that their child receive an alternative assignment, but their requests have been refused. Children are told they will receive a failing grade if they do not complete the Access Islam assignments.
There has been a nationwide outrage against this program in recent years and with a new school year about to start, it is important to get all the facts out.
Access Islam is more of an Islamist indoctrination program than an educational program. It lacks the objectivity required to legally implement a program of this manner in our public schools.
Watch videos from the Access Islam curriculum (more videos from the program can be found by clicking here):
For President Xi Jinping of China, Deng Xiaoping’s advice on how China should rise — “keeping a low profile” — was yesterday’s story. Discretion is not his thing.
Since Xi became president in 2013, he has made China’s ambitions abundantly clear, upping the ante on the strategic, military, technological and economic fronts. The United States is now in a direct ideological war with China over the shape of the world in the 21st century.
The trade war between the United States and China, and the brave protesters in Hong Kong fighting for the preservation of the rule of law against the threat of absorption into lawless Chinese authoritarianism, are facets of this overarching confrontation. If you focus on the signal and not the wildly gyrating noise, President Trump has gotten China policy about right. Even a stopped clock is right twice a day. It was time to draw a line in the sand against Xi and his overreach.
A victim of Mao’s ruthlessness during the Cultural Revolution, Xi absorbed the lesson that ruthlessness is the sine qua non of authoritarian one-party rule. He has abolished the very term limits designed by Deng to prevent the emergence of another Mao-like figure, installing himself as quasi-emperor for life.
Xi’s domestic crackdown has been accompanied by an aggressive international agenda. The Belt and Road Initiative to lock Eurasia into dependence on China, the construction of military outposts on islets in the South China Sea, the announcement in 2017 that the Chinese model was now ready for export to nations that “want to speed up their development while preserving their independence,” the “Made in China 2025” technological thrust through acquisition, theft and growing domestic know-how — all of these were gauntlets thrown down to the West.
Trump was right to recognize the threat and respond, however erratically. Xi is not the god of some new rules-based order, as he was anointed at Davos in 2017. He is a threat to liberty, as helmeted Hong Kongers facing down tear gas and growing repression have recognized.
Xi believes in the sacredness of the Chinese Communist Party, not the sacredness of the individual. He also believes, on the evidence, that Chinese money can buy 21st-century international acquiescence to a new order.
American engagement with China over decades has worked up to a point. It involved a useful symbiosis. China developedo at a pace; hundreds of millions of people overcame poverty and joined the middle class. Americans got cheap goods made in China. Global stability was enhanced as China joined the world without major disruption. Given the violent history of rising powers, these are significant accomplishments.
There was a flaw, however. The bet that this engagement, by producing a Chinese middle class, would in turn spur greater liberties as more affluent people sought more freedom has proved wrong — at least for now. Xi’s message is clear: We’ll take your engagement, eat it, double down on repression and one day run the world.
Another flaw, one that helped Trump ride an America-first wave to the White House, was that China gobbled up American heartland manufacturing jobs. Steve Bannon’s comment to me is provocative hyperbole — “Every capitalist would choose slave labor if he could, and in China capitalists got a totalitarian mercantilist manufacturing base based on slave labor” — but not without a kernel of truth. Globalization and the free movement of capital were not fine and dandy for everyone, as the great nationalist and nativist lurch of recent years demonstrates.
Trump flails, but he’s right that China can’t join all the right international clubs and go on playing by its own rules. It can’t make some trade “deal” and then not be held fully accountable, relying on the infinite global capacity to turn a blind eye to its predations.
Ordering American companies out of China one day — a trademark Trump grotesquerie — and praising Xi the next is no way to negotiate, but China has had a pass for too long. The president’s statement linking a trade deal and the Hong Kong demonstrations — “It would be very hard to deal if they do violence. I mean, if it’s another Tiananmen Square, it’s — I think it’s a very hard thing to do if there’s violence” — was perhaps his finest hour. I just hope he meant it, despite the contempt he has otherwise shown for human rights.
A lot is at stake in Hong Kong, the world’s third-largest capital market. It’s a pivotal moment of the American-Chinese ideological war. A second Tiananmen could turn Xi’s overreach into cataclysm. He’s more vulnerable than he looks — as Trump intuits. Right now, of the Democratic presidential candidates, only Elizabeth Warren appears to get the China threat, one reason she’s surging. China will be big in 2020.
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4)
Victor Davis Hanson: Why are so many young people calling themselves socialists?
Rather, the fresh celebrity “Squad” of newly elected identity-politics congresswomen – Ilhan Omar, D-Minn.; Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y.; Ayanna Pressley, D-Mass.; and Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich.; – often either claim to be socialists or embrace socialist ideas.
A recent Harris poll showed that about half of so-called millennials would like to live in a socialist country.
Five years ago, septuagenarian Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., was considered an irrelevant lone socialist in the U.S. Senate – Vermont’s trademark contribution to cranky quirkiness.
But in 2016 Sanders’ improbable Democratic primary run almost knocked off front-runner Hillary Clinton, even as socialist governments were either imploding or stagnating the world over.
After Clinton’s loss to Donald Trump in the 2016 general election, Sanders is back, running as a socialist warhorse, promising endless amounts of free stuff, with those promises suddenly being taken seriously.
Sanders, like the members of the “Squad,” has limited political power. But the celebrity and social media influence of these new and retread socialists has been on the upswing – especially in the current 21st century climate of radical transformations in economic and political life.
Note the shock over Clinton’s 2016 defeat, the furor directed at a take-no-prisoners Trump, and sudden progressive criticism of the Obama presidency as too temporizing, weak and ineffectual. And there are still other undercurrents that explain why currently socialism polls so well among young Americans.
Lots of young people claim to be socialists but are instead simply angry because they cannot afford a home, a new car or nice things in their “woke” urban neighborhoods.
College-educated Americans collectively owe an estimated $1.5 trillion in unpaid student loans. Many of these debtors despair of ever paying the huge sums back.
Canceling debt is an ancient socialist rallying cry. Starting over with a clean slate appeals to those “oppressed” with college loans.
A force multiplier of debt is the realization that many students borrowed to focus on mostly irrelevant college majors. Such degrees usually offer few opportunities to find jobs high-paying enough to pay back staggering obligations.
Asymmetrical globalization over the last 30 years has created levels of wealth among the elite never envisioned in the history of civilization. In addition to these disparities, “free” but unfair trade – especially with China and to a lesser extent with the European Union, Japan and South Korea – hollowed out the interior of the United States, impoverishing and diluting the once-solid middle class.
Warped free trade and Chinese buccaneerism, not free-market capitalism per se, impoverished millions of Americans.
Lots of young people claim to be socialists but are instead simply angry because they cannot afford a home, a new car or nice things in their “woke” urban neighborhoods.
Usually, Americans become more traditional, self-reliant and suspicious of big government as they age. Reasons for such conservatism have often included early marriage, child-raising, homeownership and residence in a suburb, small town or rural area.
Today’s youth are generally marrying later. Most have few if any children. Twenty- and 30-somethings are not buying homes as quickly or easily as in the past.
They are concentrating in the urban centers of big- and medium-sized coastal blue cities, such as Boston, New York, Portland, San Francisco, and Seattle – but often at dead-end jobs that pay them just enough to get by and enjoy the appetites and perks of cool life in the big city.
These are the ingredients for a culture that emphasizes the self, blames others for a sense of personal failure, and wants instant social justice.
Finally, schools and colleges have replaced the empirical study of economics, history and politics with race, class and gender indoctrination.
Few young activists of the old Occupy Wall Street bunch, and few of the current violent Antifa street fighters, know the 20th century history of “socialists” who were actually hardcore communists.
Cambodian dictator Pol Pot, Soviet Union strongman Josef Stalin and Chinese revolutionary leader Mao Zedong each killed millions of their own people.
Today’s students romanticize Che Guevara and Fidel Castro because they are clueless about their bloody careers. The Castro government for over a half-century was responsible for the murders of thousands of Cubans and Latin Americans in efforts to solidify Cuban “socialism” throughout Latin America.
When our schools and colleges do not teach unbiased economics and history, then millions of youth have no idea why the United States, Great Britain, Germany and Japan became wealthy and stable by embracing free-market capitalism and constitutional government.
Few learn why naturally rich nations such as Argentina, Brazil, Mexico and Venezuela – or entire regions such as Central America, Eastern Europe or Southeast Asia – have traditionally lagged far behind due to years of destructive central planning, socialist economics and coerced communist government.
The handmaiden of failed socialist regimes has always been ignorance of the past and present. And that is never truer than among today’s American college-degreed (but otherwise economically and historically illiterate) youth.
Victor Davis Hanson is a senior fellow in military history at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University and a professor emeritus of classics at California State University, Fresno. He is the author of more than two dozen books, ranging in topics from ancient Greece to modern America, most recently "The Case for Trump" (Basic Books, 2019) He lives in Selma, California.
Good news. And as noted above Dorian is not a "wide" storm . Significant damage extends roughly 40 miles left of the track and 55 right of the track. Since we're 100 miles left of the track, we should be okay. Still need to keep our eye on things
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