++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++My dear friend, Kim Strassel, has written another expose that revolves around intimidation by radicals who have transformed the Democrat Party. I urge you to read.
I asked Kim to come to Savannah and discuss her new book and she is considering doing so but has a very tight schedule. Time will tell whether she really loves me as she professes.
She has stayed with us on three other occasions. (See 1 below.)
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Ross rants again. (See 2 below.)
And:
Should we heed Michael Crichton? https://www.wsj.com/articles/
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This week Schiff head's hearings go public but he will be highly selective as to who can be a witness. The mass media will report it as bigger than life but it, most likely, will be a continuation of the fraud and ruse he began but whatever is said, by whomever, testifies should be highly suspect.
Barnum and Bailey is no longer but that does not mean Schiff head cannot cause a circus rebirth.
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Dick
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1) Resistance (At All Costs): Kimberley Strassel’s Home Run
A searing profile of Trump haters and the movement that drives them.
“From the FBI’s unprecedented counterintelligence investigation into the Trump campaign, to state defiance of the president’s federal immigration law, to media partisanship, to the drive-by character assassination of Trump Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh, the president’s foes have thrown aside norms, due process, and the rule of law.”
So begins the cover of Kimberley Strassel’s new bestseller, Resistance (At All Costs): How Trump Haters Are Breaking America.
Strassel, a star Wall Street Journal columnist, zeroes in on the decidedly serious problem that all this insane, foaming hatred of a duly elected president has brought to the country.
There is nothing wrong, Strassel correctly notes, with being a Trump critic. Presidents have always had critics, something that comes with the job. But the spread of a virulent Trump hatred is something quite different, and is, Strassel writes, “proving far more corrosive to our institutions and rule of law than anything of which it has accused the president.”
As she notes, the very term “the Resistance” is associated throughout history with movements designed to fight “occupying powers” as, say, the French Resistance came to life to fight the forces of the occupying Nazi Germany. And once one goes down that road, as has the Trump-hating Resistance, the Resisters “view themselves as justified in taking any action necessary to get rid of the occupier.”
Set loose the Department of Justice and the FBI to spy on a presidential campaign? No problem. Ambush a Supreme Court nominee “with uncorroborated sexual assault allegations”? No problem. Use “the impeachment process for political retribution”? No big deal.
This, says Strassel, “has been the behavior of the Resistance leaders, and it has already caused harm to vital institutions.”
Yes indeed. And none more prominent than the self-inflicted massive damage the Justice Department, the FBI, and the “mainstream media” have done to their own credibility. It is in fact alarming, as Strassel notes,
that huge swaths of the country no longer trust the Justice Department or the FBI to administer equal justice. Or that, according to a 2018 Axios poll, 72% of Americans believe that “traditional major news sources report news they know to be fake, false or purposely misleading” — including 92% of Republicans and 79% of independents.
On and on go the Resistance assaults on the very fabric of the American nation, including a demand to abolish the Electoral College, an institution that lies at the very heart of the democracy that demands all American states have an equal voice in their government.
Nowhere has this assault been more evident than in the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Strassel devotes an entire chapter to the FBI as run by the Trump-hating James Comey. The absolutely perfect title of the chapter is “J. Edgar Comey.”
In that chapter, Strassel absolutely fillets Comey and his band of Trump-hating FBI bureaucrats. She begins by reeling off the list of the disgraced:
Director Jim Comey: fired for insubordination. Deputy Director Andy McCabe: terminated for lying to investigators. Senior Counterintelligence Agent Peter Strzok: dismissed for partisan bias. General Counsel James Baker: reassigned and then out on resignation — part of a federal criminal leak investigation. These were just the highlights among a dozen senior FBI leaders who were fired or faded away. They included chief of staff James Rybicki; lawyer Lisa Page; the assistant director of the Counterintelligence Division, Bill Priestap; the head of the National Security Division, Michael Steinbach; the FBI’s top congressional liaison, Greg Brower; and the assistant director for public affairs (and 33-year FBI veteran), Michael Kortan.
The list of corrupt FBI leaders is as stunning for its length as it is for its depth. The damage they have inflicted on that venerable organization is considerable.
Strassel also delves into the shenanigans behind the Mueller report episode and the Deep State. Of the latter she opens with this serious truth about the performance of various actors in the Trump-hating Resistance that is the Washington bureaucracy:
If hell hath no fury like a woman scorned, Washington has no fury like a civil servant defied. Trump has no need to travel to a Resistance rally to meet his opponents; they work for him.
Bingo. And this will be seen in crystal-clear fashion next week when Congressman Adam Schiff finally gets around to opening his impeachment hearings and using career civil servants who are deeply impressed with the ideas that they, and not the elected president of the United States, run American foreign policy.
Strassel ends with this wisdom:
For every Resistance leader who daily makes an inflated claim about Trump’s destruction of democracy, there is a more quiet, average American who is deeply alarmed by the legitimate and lasting harm this movement is causing.
Exactly right. When I hit the road for speeches I am greeted repeatedly by audiences of Americans absolutely furious at what they are seeing unfold. And make no mistake, they see the attacks on President Trump by the Resistance as thinly disguised attacks on … themselves.
Eventually, the Trump era will pass, as history rolls on. But what is immeasurably important in this era is for the star journalists of the day to write the books that will provide future leaders with an up-close and unerring documentation of the biggest political scandal in American history and the Resistance movement that was its driving force.
Kimberley Strassel’s Resistance (At All Costs): How Trump Haters Are Breaking America is indeed one of those books — a home run and a decidedly instructive one
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2It is pretty clear now that, barring a black swan event, there will be no recession at least for 6-9 months, and maybe much longer. Whatever is happening with not going ahead with the Dec 15 tariffs or not, they will do a deal, and it will get signed fairly soon. At this point it is just a game of mine is bigger than yours. There are no substantive issues that have come to public light. The jobs market is still very good, wages continue to go up, especially for low income workers, rates remain low even with the ten year popping up 15 BP, and a very joyous holiday season is about to begin. If Nancy does not push USMCA very soon, and just focuses on impeachment, then the Dems will regret it. If it does get approved, the economy and markets take another jump. She loses whatever she does. Either Trump looks good for doing the deal, or the Dems look terrible for killing the deal. In fact, what the jump in the ten yr yield tells us is that the bond market thinks the economy will do well for many more months. At 1.95% it is still a very low yield by historic measures.
This leads to new issues. Pension funds, and other funds that by regulation depend on bond yields for a big share of their portfolio, are in deep trouble. The same goes for insurance companies which rely on big bond portfolios to earn a good return on all that premium income they are sitting on. These investors have no hope of making a reasonable return for maybe several more years. Regulations prevent either from investing more than a small amount of assets in investments like real estate or private equity where they might make up the shortfall on bonds. They are also limited in how much they can invest in stocks so they missed the opportunity in 2019 to make up a big part of the massive shortfalls in almost all government run pension funds. It will not change next year even if the stock market has another terrific year. So we as taxpayers are going to be stuck again with footing the bill for teachers outsize pensions and healthcare, as well as for other government workers who have essentially bribed state lawmakers to pass legislation providing pensions that private industry got rid of long ago as uneconomic. In short, we who pay taxes are screwed. Pensions cost so much now in so many jurisdictions that many services get cut back because there is simply money taken from them under state constitutions, that there is a shortfall to pay for what the rest of expect the government to provide.
Iran has now violated the basic nuke agreement in a major way. So what have the Europeans done- wrong their hands and say we need to consider this. What a wonderful message to Iran and Putin. You can violate critical agreements and we will do nothing. No wonder the Europeans hate Trump, he actually takes quick action and makes them look like rag dolls. The more they delay doing anything, the more they encourage Iran to go further, the more they take us closer to a massive attack on Iran to wipe out the nuke facility, which will then also require us to an all- out attack to prevent major retaliation by Iran. It will be all out war and very messy. Just as in 1938, the Europeans just sit around and talk about no meaningful action while the bad guys get ready for all out war. Of all people, they never learned.
A new poll shows that 45% of millennials-recent college grad, believe socialism is better than capitalism. Where did they get this ideology-on campus. This is why Warren is up in the polls and Bernie comes out with his insane ideas. That people still say they would vote for Warren even after she admitted her health plan alone will cost 2 million jobs and $52 billion in new spending, should tell you what has been happening on campus. And that $52 billion does not include free tuition, welfare for illegals, wiping out student debt and many other huge spend programs. All to be paid for by decimating the military again, and taxing away wealth that might have gone to good charities and start-up ventures. There are no history, nor any required introductory econ courses anymore. These are replaced with courses on "diversity, gender, ethnicity" etc. They are taught, everyone other than straight white men, are oppressed and need to be compensated with a place in a top college, a good paying job, and freedom from tuition or any debt, regardless of their ability. You just have to be non-white or female and if you are a black female with a Latino mother and a poor single mother home, then you deserve it all regardless of your academic or any other skill set. And now U of CA system is planning to do away with all SAT and ACT testing because it was getting in the way of even more minorities getting accepted into the top schools. That is essentially what they said. So now admissions will be subjective. Here we go to the lowest common denominator, and sorry white heterosexual male, but you move over for these other kids who can't do the work. Then they wonder why the US is falling behind China which has very tough testing to get not their top universities. Oh and by the way, it will be tuition free if Liz or Bernie get elected. The entire culture of America that if you study hard, and work hard and sometimes make sacrifices, you can get ahead regardless of your education level is now being wiped away. Now it is all identity politics to get ahead. Hard work and study no longer seem to matter on campus. Anyone who dares to try come on campus to question the new norm, is shut down, drowned out by protestors, or just not invited. Freedom of expression is no longer on many campuses and the whole concept of a university being a place of open inquiry has disappeared as the vice deans and other bureaucrats take over running the campus instead of the faculty. This is a very dangerous trend and you see it in the 2020 Dem candidates.
I have no doubt Trump sent Giuliani to Ukraine to see what he could find on 2016 and the Bidens. Rudy is a very loose cannon, and this is what happens when loose cannons go off. I also have no doubt Hunter was paid a massive bribe to use his influence on his father and the state dept to get them to stop the pursuit of Barisma. There are now emails from him to State showing that. There is the quid pro quo Joe bragged about. To think that everyone at state and working for Joe knew and worried about Hunter in that board role, and Joe knew nothing, is absurd. Hopefully the Senate will use these emails to investigate the Bidens. Maybe this week we will finally see the Horowitz report. It has now become anti-climactic, and too close to Thanksgiving to get the attention it deserves. Why it has been delayed is a mystery unless Durham is using it to go after indictments before it is released. Trump is not being forced to resign. He will be reelected. Bloomberg has no chance as a 77 year old white male billionaire from NY. He has no ground team in place, and no presence nor real recognition outside the coasts. He almost assures a Warren nomination, which assures a Trump win. Then there is always another Hilary run or Michelle, so we can go back the Obama era disasters. Trump is a lot of very bad things, and a massive ego maniac, but he has gotten a lot of very good things done, for the average American and for the country, and if a China deal, and USMCA get done, he will assure a strong economy and stock market into next year. To those of us in the Manhattan real estate world, his behavior is not unusual. You never met my ex-partner who was just like him when she was worldwide head of real estate at Citibank and took on Donald in very ugly confrontations. She could insult people just as well as he could, and could get people to hate her in a similar way. She is my ex-partner, but I got to see this personality first hand so I am not shocked by any of it. There are quite a few other NY developers with similar personality styles, so to me, he is just being who he learned to be in NY. Obnoxious, but someone who makes things happen.
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