Something I have advocated for decades: https://spectator.org/the-
And:
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
A provocative op ed. (See 1 below.)
And:
WAPO decides Obama needs to be defended and explained after his "calming" speech.
Obama decided to play fireman and put out the flames he helped fan. He was one of the most radical presidents in recent times. We saw more senior military offers resign early, we saw contempt for police grow, we saw utter disregard for The Constitution, we saw criminalization of Federal Agencies, we saw a pattern of behaviour covered up by lies, we saw a deal with Iran that was a big quid pro quo and now we know his Vice President did things he never should have in order to favor his son and we also are waiting to find out how Obama ignored Russian interference in our election after he told Medvedev what he told him regarding how he could be more accommodating with Putin after he was re-elected, yet, it is Trump who is accused of being in bed with/soft on Putin. He has put more sanctions on Russia than any president in history. and recently left a treaty Russia has been breaking.
The most outrageous and dictatorial thing Obama sought to do is to take your choice of health care away. Healthcare represents 16% of GDP and he wanted to allow government to totally control healthcare. This is right out of Alinsky's Play book yet, progressive radicals call Trump a dictator because he wants you to keep the doctor you prefer.
As for our veterans Obama's VA was a disaster. At least Trump tells our vets if you wait for a certain period and get no response go outside the system. Yet, Trump is the vulgar monster .
Once you start a radical movement more radicals, sadly, take over. and that seems to be where we are at this moment as we see the kind of Democrat candidates who now want to be president because Obama paved the way for them to embrace socialism. Obama fertilized PC'ism so now men and women can be anything they want to be and our campuses have been turned into cauldrons where free speech is being crushed by radicals.
Yes, let's impeach Trump and burn the house down in the process and that way our ashes will no longer destroy the climate as China and Russia take over the world.
PERHAP TRUMP IS RIGHT. BY THE 2020 ELECTION THERE WILL NOT BE MUCH LEFT TO LOSE! (See 1a below.)
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Hatred is a powerful force and blinds one's perspective. (See 2 below.)
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Harvard and Yale used to be educational bastions now they have become dormitories for wimps. In fact, the entire IVY League has become a conglomerate of over priced bias parading as any array of
an educational smorgasbord.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Ross Rants. (See 3 below.)
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
DORIS
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
1) End ‘Forever Wars’ and Face China’s Threat America shouldn’t aspire to run the world but to prevent Beijing’s domination.
By Josh Hawley
When the Berlin Wall fell 30 years ago this month, more than a few experts predicted the end of history: Communism was dead and democracy triumphant. Now U.S. power would remake the world, which would come to look a lot like America. George H.W. Bush famously called for a “new world order” of “open borders, open trade and . . . open minds,” a new era of international peace and harmony, all to be achieved by American exertion.
However, history refused to end. Russia and China conspicuously pursued their own agendas and, in other regions and other places, ancient rivalries flared. None of this stopped American policy makers from pursuing their new global order. All these years later, we are living with the results: the longest war in American history, in Afghanistan; trillions of American dollars expended on failed nation-building; exhaustion at home, aimlessness abroad; and a newly dangerous world.
It’s time for a new departure. The effort to remake the world from Washington has run aground. Now a new strategy abroad must protect American interests and meet American needs by prioritizing the people who sustain America: the middle and working class.
Ours is a middle-class republic, the first of its kind, and we need a foreign policy that protects the prosperity and security of our working people. This is America’s enduring national interest: to preserve, protect and defend our unique way of democracy.
To pursue that interest, America must prevent any one nation from dominating or dictating to us in any key region of the globe. To secure the prosperity of our people and sustain the political and economic independence of our middle class, we need to be free to trade and engage with other nations on free and equal terms.
American foreign policy should be built on preserving our independence and preventing domination by others. That doesn’t mean America needs to be the globe’s policeman or create a world of democracies. Neither of these approaches, sometimes advocated by liberals and sometimes by conservatives, is realistic, and neither is necessary.
We need instead to prevent any other nation from becoming a hegemon—and that brings us to China. While American policy makers have embroiled this nation in multiple Mideast wars, China has steadily built its strength, its economy and its military—all at American expense. For years China has been stealing American jobs and intellectual property, abusing the international trade system. Now it is militarizing the South China Sea and preparing to project its power across the Asia-Pacific region.
China’s expansionist moves are a direct threat to American security. Beijing’s aim is nothing short of domination—first of the region, then of the world. The Asia-Pacific is critical to the prosperity of American farmers, manufacturers and consumers. We can’t afford to be shut out in the years to come, nor can we afford to be reduced to begging Beijing for terms.
China has shown its desire for domination in Hong Kong, where it ruthlessly suppresses its own people and seeks to strip them of their liberties, including the protections of the rule of law. It has betrayed its eagerness to impose authoritarian principles on America in its coercion of the National Basketball Association and other U.S. companies doing business in China. Those are previews of coming attractions if America doesn’t change course.
At this critical juncture, we must abandon the attempt to remake the world and focus on the threat from Beijing. China is not yet so strong that its bid for dominance can’t be resisted. But time is not on our side. Our aim must be to prevent a conflict while securing American prosperity and safety.
We can begin by bringing to a close the “forever wars” in other theaters and redirecting our military’s attention to the Asia-Pacific. There we must forge new alliances and strengthen partnerships to counter China’s threat. We must be prepared to use all the tools at our disposal, including trade and other economic levers, to protect U.S. interests.
In Europe, we must expect our allies to do more for their own defense and to counter a resurgent Russia. And everywhere, in every region, we must ask whether our actions are contributing to the great task of this era, resisting hegemony in the Asia-Pacific.
For most of our history, America didn’t aspire to run the world. We aimed to prevent domination by others, to safeguard our independence, and to make order safe for our democratic way of life. These are ambitious aims, and they must again be ours today. The security of our people, and the fate of our republican experiment, depend on it.
Mr. Hawley, a Republican, is a U.S. senator from Missouri.
1a) Barack Obama, Conservative: The Left and Right Still Misunderstand His Politics
By David Swerdlik
The Democrats who want to be president can’t quite figure out how to talk about the most popular figure in their party. Former president Barack Obama casts a long shadow over the 2020 primary campaign: Preserving Obama’s legacy is the heart of former vice president Joe Biden’s pitch to voters — which has allowed his rivals to mark him as complacent. More left-leaning candidates, such as Sen. Elizabeth Warren (Mass.), say the next president needs to do more to push for health-care reforms and combat income inequality — but lately, she’s struggling to sell her proposals. Onetime Obama Cabinet secretary Julián Castro has ripped his former boss’s record on immigration and deportation. Meanwhile, South Bend, Ind., Mayor Pete Buttigieg raced to have a reporter correct a story that misquoted him citing “failures of the Obama era.” Sen. Kamala Harris (Calif.) said in Wednesday’s debate that it’s crucial to “rebuild the Obama coalition” because “that’s the last time we won.” Picking and choosing which parts of Obama’s tenure to embrace, and how firmly to embrace them, has become a delicate game in the primary season.
And now Obama himself is working to cool down what he sees as an overheated political climate. In October, at a panel discussion for his foundation, he warned against the pitfalls of “woke” cancel culture, telling a gathering of young activists that “if all you’re doing is casting stones, you’re probably not going to get that far.” This month, at a gathering of influential Democrats, he cautioned the 2020 contenders against pushing too far, too fast on policy: “This is still a country that is less revolutionary than it is interested in improvement.”
That remark helps explain why so many of the candidates’ proposals seem so far to the left of Obama. The former president was skeptical of sweeping change, bullish on markets, sanguine about the use of military force, high on individual responsibility and faithful to a set of old-school personal values. Compare that with proposals from his would-be successors: Medicare-for-all, the Green New Deal, free college, a wealth tax, universal basic income.
Given the political climate, it’s no surprise to see the party’s base clamoring for something dramatic. But the contrast between Obama’s steady approach and the seeming radicalism of his Democratic heirs can’t just be chalked up to changing times. It’s because the former president, going back at least to his 2004 Senate race, hasn’t really occupied the left side of the ideological spectrum. He wasn’t a Republican, obviously: He never professed a desire to starve the federal government, and he opposed the Iraq War, which the GOP overwhelmingly supported. But to the dismay of many on the left, and to the continuing disbelief of many on the right, Obama never dramatically departed from the approach of presidents who came before him.
There’s a simple reason: Barack Obama is a conservative.
Obama’s perspectives don’t line up with every position now seen as right-of-center: He joined the Paris climate accords, he signed the Dodd-Frank financial regulations, and he’s pro-choice. He flip-flopped to supporting same-sex marriage, highlighting the significance of marriage.
But his constant search for consensus, for ways to bring Blue America and Red America together, sometimes led him to policies that used Republican means to achieve more liberal ends. The underlying concept for his signature legislation, the Affordable Care Act, with its individual mandate, was devised by the right-wing Heritage Foundation and first implemented at the state level by Mitt Romney, then the Republican governor of Massachusetts. Obama wanted to protect Americans from the effects of a prolonged recession, so he agreed, in one of his defining votes as a senator, to a bailout of banks — and as president, he prioritized recovery over punishing bankers for their role in the financial crisis. In his first inaugural address, he affirmed the power of the free market “to generate wealth and expand freedom.”
Until the Sandy Hook tragedy in 2012, Obama studiously avoided any push for gun control. Indeed, in his first term, he signed laws that loosened restrictions on bringing firearms to national parks and on Amtrak. Though cast as a “dithering” peacenik who led “from behind,” he stuck with his thesis that the imperative “to end the war in Iraq is to be able to get more troops into Afghanistan,” and he prosecuted a drone war in Somalia, Pakistan, Afghanistan and Yemen.
Obama’s approach to politics was marked by a circumspection that went even deeper than policies. To be conservative, as philosopher Michael Oakeshott, a movement hero, once put it, “is to prefer the familiar to the unknown, to prefer the tried to the untried, fact to mystery, the actual to the possible, the limited to the unbounded, the near to the distant, the sufficient to the superabundant, the convenient to the perfect, present laughter to utopian bliss.” The former president channeled the sentiment faithfully when he said recently that “the average American doesn’t think that we have to completely tear down the system and remake it.”
He believes, fundamentally, that the American model works — even if it hasn’t been allowed to work for everyone. In some cases, the government should help expand the American Dream to individuals and communities to whom access has been denied. In others, Americans can achieve the dream if only they have the will to surmount obstacles on their own. His second inaugural address was a thoroughly conservative document, underscoring equality of opportunity as opposed to equality of outcome. Republican former House speaker Newt Gingrich praised it at the time, saying, “Ninety-five percent of the speech I thought was classically American, emphasizing hard work, emphasizing self-reliance, emphasizing doing things together.”
In his first year in office, Obama gave a back-to-school address that Republicans panned in advance as big-brotherism, even though its central idea turned out to be: “At the end of the day, the circumstances of your life — what you look like, where you come from, how much money you have, what you’ve got going on at home — none of that is an excuse for neglecting your homework or having a bad attitude in school.”
He once argued that in certain circumstances, government programs created welfare dependency, saying that “as somebody who worked in low-income neighborhoods, I’ve seen it, where people weren’t encouraged to work, weren’t encouraged to upgrade their skills, were just getting a check, and over time, their motivation started to diminish.”
In remarks commemorating the 50th anniversary of the March on Washington, Obama went out of his way to lecture that, after the civil rights era, “what had once been a call for equality of opportunity, the chance for all Americans to work hard and get ahead, was too often framed as a mere desire for government support, as if we had no agency in our own liberation, as if poverty was an excuse for not raising your child, and the bigotry of others was reason to give up on yourself.” You’d never hear that sentiment expressed by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), for whom structural inequality explains nearly every American ill.
Obama cast himself as a role model for young black men and repeatedly stressed that not all inequities in American society are attributable to discrimination, racial or otherwise. This posture helped earn him currency with the black electorate (in particular, older black voters), which votes overwhelmingly for Democrats but skews moderate to conservative on several issues.
He embraced respectability politics as a way to signal how conventional it was to have a first family of color: the many Norman Rockwell-worthy photo-ops, such as the 2009 portrait by Annie Leibovitz, a study in wholesome family living; their annual vacations on Martha’s Vineyard, summer haven of the black elite; dialing back his storied “cool,” as when he displayed his stiff dance moves during an appearance on “Ellen,” laying claim to the mantle of the everyman dad. Asked what he thought about Kanye West interrupting Taylor Swift’s 2009 MTV Video Music Awards acceptance speech to shower praise on Beyoncé, Obama offered no mitigating analysis, saying simply, “He’s a jackass.”
Obama called out racism in the criminal justice system. He met with Black Lives Matter activists, and his Justice Department used consent decrees to rein in police departments. For this, right-wing media often portrayed him as a cop-hater; former Milwaukee County sheriff David Clarke, a Fox News fixture, called him “the most anti-cop president I have ever seen.” But the president routinely extolled law enforcement, including at the 2015 convention of the International Association of Chiefs of Police, when he said: “I reject any narrative that seeks to divide police and communities that they serve. I reject a story line that says when it comes to public safety, there’s an ‘us’ and a ‘them.’ ” After George Zimmerman’s acquittal, Obama — who said that “Trayvon Martin could have been me 35 years ago” — defended the system, saying “we are a nation of laws, and a jury has spoken.”
For most of his presidency, Obama governed with a Republican Congress dedicated to preventing his reelection and thwarting his agenda. Most efforts entailed compromise. Still, he made bargains that the rhetoric of current Democratic candidates would seem to foreclose. In 2010, Obama and Republicans traded a two-year extension of former president George W. Bush’s tax cuts, along with a payroll tax holiday and an extension of unemployment benefits, that paved the way for the repeal of “don’t ask, don’t tell.” He later agreed to the Budget Control Act of 2011, known as “sequestration,” which brought down year-to-year deficits by slashing federal spending in exchange for GOP votes to raise the debt ceiling.
Obama was a believer in big government, but his views showed many similarities to those of Republican presidents like Theodore Roosevelt, who fought corporate monopolies and later led the Progressive Party; Dwight D. Eisenhower, who signed the Civil Rights Act of 1957 and the Federal Aid Highway Act, creating the interstate highway system; and establishment archetype George H.W. Bush, a veteran of Congress, the United Nations and the CIA who broke his “no new taxes” pledge, rescued savings and loans, and declared an import ban on semiautomatic rifles.
Obama did advance priorities that progressives cheered: He tripled the number of women on the Supreme Court. He announced rules imposing limits on oil and gas emissions and an aggressive plan limiting coal-fired power plant emissions. He supported anti-discrimination protections for LGBT employees and introduced rules that protected some young undocumented immigrants from deportation. (He achieved many of these policies through executive fiat, meaning they could be — or have already been — easily reversed.) But none of these changes revolutionized governance or structurally reordered American life. None of them were meant to.
The difficulty Democratic candidates have in grappling with Obama reflects the dissonance he’s generated for a decade: The center-left adores him, but to the far left, he’s a sellout. He’s being rethought on the center-right, but he remains the bete noire of the far right, which morphed from the (putatively) government-hating tea party wing to a strongman-loving core.
It’s largely due to an enduring misunderstanding of what Obama represented. Notwithstanding the “Change we can believe in” slogan that propelled his rise, his aim was never to turn things upside down. Favoring “the familiar to the unknown,” as Oakeshott wrote, was Obama’s disposition and also his political project: expanding traditional priorities — the familiar American Dream, not a reconceived one — to Americans for whom they had been denied. That meant building, gradually and at times almost reverently, on his predecessors’ foundation.
That has forced Democrats to sort out who they are — and how to fuse Obama’s appeal with an agenda that reaches further than he ever tried, or intended, to go.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
2) VICTOR DAVIS HANSON: THE HATRED THAT FUELS IMPEACHMENT
Posted By Ruth King
We are in new territory now. Hating a president is equivalent to finding him guilty of supposed high crimes. Impeachment is a casual affair. Hearsay is as valid as direct testimony.
Neither the NeverTrump Right nor the Progressive Left has yet offered a coherent defense of their de facto, three-year-long singular effort to delegitimize and ultimately remove Trump from office before the 2020 election.
We are now in the midst of a systematic effort to impeach a president on the basis of a thought crime. Trump’s purported quid pro quo sin was issuing a temporary hold on military assistance to Ukraine that supposedly transcended legitimate worries about rampant corruption—to include specifically investigating the suspicious behavior of a corrupt Ukrainian oil company and the compromised relationship of former Vice President Joe Biden and his son around it.
The anti-Trump writ is that it is impeachable even to delay to the Ukrainians lethal military assistance while citing the need to investigate the corruption of Ukrainians, including the career of Hunter Biden, whose father, the former vice president and “point man” on Ukraine, is now running for president.
Supposedly irrelevant to this inquiry is the prior policy of denying military aid to Ukraine, intervening in Ukrainian politics to fire a prosecutor by threatening a cutoff of even nonmilitary aid, and ignoring that the vice president’s son served as a lucrative functionary with a corrupt Ukrainian company while his father was adjudicating U.S. aid to Ukraine.
So why this disconnect? The reason is not “Ukraine,” merely the latest iteration in a long series of efforts, but rather existential hatred.
“Conservative” NeverTrump Disdain
The NeverTrumpers’ position, although rarely articulated, seems fairly clear.
Whereas Trump has promoted most of the agenda they had touted over a lifetime (economic growth, near-full employment, conservative justices, tax reduction and reform, deregulation, pro-oil and natural gas production, secure borders, pro-Israel foreign policy, opposition to accords like the Paris Climate Accord and Iran Deal, increased defense spending, etc.), they nonetheless seek to abort his presidency on other grounds.
Apparently, Trump’s perceived checkered personal history, supposed outrageous behavior, and occasional unorthodox take on issues such as Chinese policy and tariffs all justify his removal from office. Thus, his personal flaws and apostasy from free-market orthodoxy are so egregious that they nullify any good that has come about from Trump’s successful implementation of many conservative policies for which such critics otherwise had fought long and hard in the past.
NeverTrumpers also believe that Trump’s very appearance, his outrageous orange tan, dyed comb over, odd ties, Queens accent, reality TV background, and vernacular and occasionally vulgar speech certainly are disqualifying traits. He does not present the sober, judicious, and restrained image that past Republican banner-carriers such as George H.W. Bush or Mitt Romney conveyed.
Whereas most past Republican grandees married into or inherited substantial money, none showed the visible scars and scabs of a lifetime’s frantic effort to expand their legacies by rough-and-tumble, wheeler-dealer, boom-or-bust frenzied business.
Progressive Loathing
The furor of the Left that fuels serial efforts to end the Trump presidency before the 2020 election is at times similar to NeverTrumpism—at least it is in that they argue Trump’s comportment and behavior should earn repulsion and justify his removal.
Both anti-Trump schools believe that Trump is such a brazen affront to the office of the presidency that rare methods are justified to remove him, including but not limited to past efforts to warp the Electoral College, to invoke the emoluments clause, the Logan Act and the 25th Amendment, to empower the Mueller investigation, and ultimately the effort to impeach Trump on grounds of “quid pro quo,” “bribery,” or “obstruction” in reference to Ukraine.
But the Left’s antipathy is also different.
In addition to these aesthetic reasons, it seeks Trump’s removal because of, not in spite of, his administration’s record and policies. That is, according to a variety of barometers, the Left considers Trump to be the most conservative, and thus the most threatening, president since Ronald Reagan. He has not just sought to undo Barack Obama’s political legacy, in many cases he has been successful—on illegal immigration, energy policy, abortion, taxes, foreign policy, and a host of cultural and social issues.
Trump also adds insult to injury in that he also has used many of Obama’s own methods to enact what self-styled progressives regard as regressive policies, especially free and unfettered use of executive orders and a similar masterful use of the bully pulpit.
If ex-reality TV star Trump lacks the teleprompted cadences of Obama, his sharp repartee and rally rhetoric are as or often more effective. Obama sometimes baited enemies like Fox News host Sean Hannity and had the government surveille Associated Press reporters; Trump matches such combativeness instead with ad hominem references to his media critics.
The Left also differs again from the NeverTrump Right on the perceived dangers posed by Trump’s unorthodox behavior. The Left fears and hates Trump’s character and persona for a variety of reasons, including the fact that his earthiness earns a large audience of middle Americans—many of them formerly blue-collar Democratic voters in critical swing districts and states.
Unlike a Romney or McCain, Trump’s earthy populism and not quite orthodox Republicanism are aimed at working people in general, and increasingly to minorities in particular. In other words, Trump is the first Republican in recent years who seeks not just to win an election from a Democratic rival, but to weaken the political foundations of the current Democratic hold on power in general.
Progressives also grasp that Trump has also ended the Republican Marquess of Queensbury rules of restraint that had helped Democrats in the past, especially in the 2008 and 2016 elections.
The combative Trump instead adopted prior “war room” protocols of liberal scrappers like Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, and seems to prefer winning ugly than losing nobly. NeverTrumpers share this repugnance at Trump’s politicking, but not because it might erode Democratic support. They are angrier because it is a style that neither conveys proper coastal conservatism nor reflects good breeding, education, and ZIP-code manners—and it appeals to deplorable voters, whom John McCain once called the “crazies,” and whom the establishment Republicans do not really want in their static party.
The Left also feels that Trump’s combativeness is holistic. His push-backs are not just issue-orientated. Instead, he seeks to oppose the entire progressive project in a way not seen before, ranging from weighing in on almost anything from Colin Kaepernick to railing against “fake news” and replying to celebrity tweets.
Trump is a sleepless anti-progressive in all cultural, economic, social, and political spheres. He earns an ethereal hatred from progressives for not just being against, but also eager to oppose fanatically, almost every conceivable aspect of their world view.
There are inconsistencies and incoherencies in all these anti-Trump views.
First, there is a high bar—indeed no contemporary precedent—for attempting to remove a modern president in his first term with a presidential election less than a year away, without bipartisan and popular majority support, and without a special prosecutor’s findings of illegal or even unethical behavior.
Such an unusual gambit requires some standard of prior presidential behavior that is constant across time and space—immune from the interplay of changing politics and technologies, such as the use of the Internet and social media, or the different codes, behaviors, and protocols of the current national media.
So far, we have heard none.
By that I mean, did Trump’s pre-presidential escapades with Stormy Daniels reach the levels of John F. Kennedy’s or Bill Clinton’s presidential frolicking with young female staffers, aides, or political associates in the White House itself?
Do his business deals while in office reach the level of egregiousness of Lyndon Johnson’s profiteering? Was Trump carrying on an affair with the help of his daughter as intermediary in the fashion of Franklin Roosevelt? Is his use of profanity or crudity as bothersome as Harry Truman’s?
If the Internet, social media, and a 90 percent hostile press existed in those eras, would the above had faced scrutiny analogous to that now shown Trump?
Or compare Trump’s current three years with the tenure of his immediate predecessor, Barack Obama.
Was Trump caught in public on a hot mic finalizing a quid pro quo arrangement akin to the one Barack Obama summarized with outgoing President Dimitri Medvedev that soon led to Vladimir Putin giving the American president needed helpful “space” during his reelection bid in order to win U.S. abandonment of Eastern European missile defense? Was that a “bribe” in which Obama diminished U.S. security interests in robust missile defense to the benefit of his own reelection campaign? Did Trump forbid all lethal military aid to Ukraine in order not to aggravate Putin—as Obama did?
Has Trump conducted government surveillance on suspected leakers, such as Associated Press journalist critics or a Fox reporter? Had he, would he be impeached? Has he weaponized the IRS to use its vast power to deny nonprofit status to perceived hostile left-wing groups in the climate of an upcoming campaign? Are the current directors, respectively, of the Trump Administration’s Office of National Intelligence, CIA, and FBI now peddling an opposition research dossier on Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), paid for with Trump campaign money and compiled by a hired British foreign national, who in turn drew on bought Russian rumors and gossip?
I could go on. But the point is that no one yet has convincingly argued that Trump’s behavior in office does not meet the standard of successful presidents such John F. Kennedy or Bill Clinton (neither of whom was removed from office). Do we wish to criminalize politicking as a substitute for elections?
The Foundations of Trump Hatred
In sum, what explains the decision to end the Trump presidency in a way we have not removed prior presidents?
First, the media is now not just 90 percent anti-Trump in its coverage, but has but merged with the Democratic Party in its activism. Most egregiously it reports anti-Trump rumor and gossip as fact, explaining why so many reporters have been forced to apologize, been fired, been reassigned, or disgraced for peddling false stories.
Second, NeverTrumpers are orphaned from 90 percent of the Republican Party who voted and will vote again for Trump. They know they are often played as useful idiots by progressives who otherwise want nothing to do with them, and will not wish to have anything to do with them, even as apostates, in the post-Trump era.
They have crossed the proverbial Rubicon and must know that they have no constituency left and cannot go back. They are tottering on their coastal perches, alienated from all their accustomed conservative loci of influence, power, and prestige. So they go even further for broke: either Trump is disgraced and removed from office and they are redeemed in “I told you so” fashion, or they will continue to become marginalized, as embittered and lonely scolds in the twilight of their careers.
Third, the Left was intoxicated on Obama’s two terms of progressive transformation. Progressives really believed “demography is destiny.” Obama supposedly had created a new 51 percent constituency of lockstep gays, blacks, Latinos, Asian, women, youth, and immigrants who together outnumbered the embittered and vanishing clingers, deplorables, irredeemables, and dregs. Voting entirely on the basis of shared race or gender or orientation was considered the new pillar of identity politics.
Then Trump won. And he won after every liberal outlet in the nation (and a few conservative ones, too) had mocked his candidacy and assured their constituencies he had less than a 10 percent chance of winning the election.
Worse, Trump did not prove to be a Manhattan liberal wolf in election-era conservative sheep’s clothing, as the Never Trumpers warned he would. Instead Trump governed as a hardcore conservative. He singlehandedly halted the envisioned 16-year Obama-Clinton regnum, a likely 7-2 left-wing Supreme Court, and hoped-for permanent legislative supermajorities—and the dream that the United States would soon become one larger version of California.
Fourth and finally, there is currently a full-fledged progressive assault on the Constitution. It supersedes even efforts to curtail the Second Amendment and stifle protected free speech by slandering it as “hate speech” and thus not protected by the First Amendment.
Almost all the Democratic candidates have called for jettisoning the Electoral College. Many states have sought to force their legislatures to have electors vote in accordance with the national popular vote. The 25th Amendment is now viewed as an excuse to demonize, emasculate, and maybe remove a president without an election.
Many of the Democratic candidates have endorsed the once infamous “court-packing” schemes of FDR to stack the Supreme Court with liberal justices in a way impossible under the current century-and-a-half protocols of judicial appointments.
A Brave New World
In this wider context, impeachment is rebooted as no longer a rare gambit, but a sort of parliamentary vote of no confidence, analogous to a European government. When Democrats lose elections, they can now immediately talk of impeachment first, and find the supposed crimes later. Democrats are not fearful of institutionalizing impeachment without cause. Indeed, they welcome its normalization in times of Republican presidencies.
The common denominator in all this frenzy hatred?
None of the haters cares that unemployment is at near record lows, the stock market at record highs, economic growth steady, inflation and interest rates low, minority employment at all-time levels—or that there is a looming shared need to address entitlements and deficit sooner than later.
None care that for three years, there has been a nonstop effort from within and outside government to end the Trump presidency, or at least to sabotage it along the lines outlined by the anonymous New York Times op-ed writer, the whistleblower lawyer Mark Zaid, or departing Department of Defense official Evelyn Farkas, or as bragged about by #TheResistance.”
We are in new territory now. Hating a president is equivalent to finding him guilty of supposed high crimes. Impeachment is a casual affair. Hearsay is as valid as direct testimony.
We are now living is a brave new American world never envisioned by the Founders.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
3)It continues to appear that the China deal will happen, and probably by Christmas. Xi knows Trump needs it to be able to tout in his campaign. Trump continues his standard NY approach- It is OK if there is no deal and I can walk away from the table and just raise tariffs. Translation -they are both still playing, I don't need to do a deal, games to see who blinks first. Reality is they both need the deal, but for now they are seeing how far they can push each other. The problem is this will not really deal firmly with IP, but will have some sort of clause that mentions it, but likely will say they intend stop..., or something similar. Then we will go a long time before Xi agrees to real IP protections and enforcement. Probably will not be until after the election. He likely hopes Trump is not reelected and Biden or one of the other weak Dems will become president, and he can roll over whoever it is, like the whole world did to Obama. The Chinese likely do not know what to make of the whole impeachment circus. And after saying USMCA was "imminent" last week, Pelosi now says there are still a list of issues. The only issue is, she knows it will pass with a big vote, and she does not want Trump to have it, but failure to pass it soon will cost the Dems the whole Midwest, and much of the union vote. Trump and Republicans are now pushing the lost opportunity for jobs and farm income due to the delay in USMCA. It likely will cost the do nothing Dems the House.
The Fed is buying $60 billion of treasuries monthly which is putting a lot of new liquidity back into the capital markets.
According to many internet feeds, the whistleblower is Eric Cianamella. Look up his name and resume, and his
Happy Thanksgiving
The Fed is buying $60 billion of treasuries monthly which is putting a lot of new liquidity back into the capital markets.
This has more impact than another 25 BP drop in the Fed rate. It provides banks with a lot of lendable funds. The
Fed balance sheet has grown at a 31% annualized rate over the past 3 months. Other central banks are doing
similar monetary growth strategies. Money market funds are up 22% from a year ago, providing a lot of dry powder.
The NY Fed has also set up a large REPO facility so liquidity is now not an issue, and it has added much needed
stimulus. There is really not much more the Fed can, or should do for now. The Atlanta Fed and some others are
forecasting a very slow Q4. Very likely they will be wrong again. The purchasing managers index increased last
month to a 4 month high. The service sector index did the same. Housing is improving now with permits at the
highest since before the crash in August 2007. Earnings beat nicely despite all the forecasts of disappointing
results. Wal Mart, Target, TJ Max and Amazon show consumers are buying, and online is growing rapidly. Bonuses
should be good this year. Year end raises should also be good for good performers. Q4 is much more likely to
surprise on the upside than downside. American's net worth is up 10.4% this year. All boats are being lifted by the
strong economy despite what the Dems claim. This is the first time in possibly 20 years that all income brackets
incomes and net worth are rising on an inflation adjusted basis. This is especially true for the lowest 20% of the
population.
The risk now is in fixed income. Bonds had a very good year due to the substantial decreases in rates by the Fed and
The risk now is in fixed income. Bonds had a very good year due to the substantial decreases in rates by the Fed and
the slowing economy over the summer and fall, but that seems to be over, and losses in fixed income are much more
likely next year as the economy continues to grow, and the ten year possibly rises to over 2%. If there is a China deal
and USMCA, rate rises, and bond losses are more likely. There is no recession on the near term horizon.
Impeachment is just DC noise now as the polls turned against it, and the holidays are here. Going short, as Dialo has
bet $1 billion on, seems to be a losing strategy as the Fed continues to pump the economy, and to push up risk assets
with low rates and the new QE bond buys. Powell is actually doing what Trump wants, but in a more subtle way. Just
as a reminder of rate history, the ten year averaged 4.17% from 2001-2010. From 1990-2007 it averaged 5.8%. It is
now running around 1.75%. That is a lot of monetary stimulus and support for risk assets and housing. There is a lot
of both monetary and fiscal stimulus now going into 2020. Despite all the attacks from Trump, the Fed is doing a lot to
pump the economy now.
There is now around $5 Trillion of idle cash sitting on the side. That is a lot of buying power for any dip in the market.
There is now around $5 Trillion of idle cash sitting on the side. That is a lot of buying power for any dip in the market.
Hard to say when this cash might get invested, but it is a nice cushion underpinning the market, and a lot of liquidity.
There seems to be an acceptance that a China deal and USMCA will happen, but now everyone realizes it will
happen when it happens. If both blow up, then that is a bad thing for the markets, but it is highly unlikely to happen.
The US will remain the place to invest for quite a while yet. This high level of liquidity, and very strong banks is the
direct opposite of 2008. While there is a lot of debt in the corporate and government sectors, it is not likely to create a
problem into 2020.
As a result of all the above, the stock market is very likely to rise at least 5%, and maybe more than 10% in 2020.
As a result of all the above, the stock market is very likely to rise at least 5%, and maybe more than 10% in 2020.
Think 401K values. Jobs will remain strong. Wages will rise more than 6% for low income workers. Inflation will remain
low, so purchasing power will remain good. Housing will be strong. Trade deal big win for farmers. Voters will feel
good. Result, Trump wins.
There is a derivatives market known as the Eurodollar futures derivative. It is actually based on predictions for Libor
There is a derivatives market known as the Eurodollar futures derivative. It is actually based on predictions for Libor
and the Fed interest rate moves, and is used for hedging and for hedge funds to make bets on rate trends. It trades
$3 Trillion a day. Now that Libor will be phased out in 2021, the whole Eurodollar futures trade will have to shift to
Sobor or whatever replaces Libor. That could create some very short term disruption in the hedging market, but it is
being planned for with lots of time to get it right so should not be a real problem.
A former business associate of mine, an American investment banker, is a full time resident of Hong Kong. His report.
A former business associate of mine, an American investment banker, is a full time resident of Hong Kong. His report.
It is highly unusual for people in HK to stage big protests, and never violent, so now this is a very big deal. The
peaceful protests have been taken over by student mobs who have brought the violence. That type of violent action
does not reflect way most people in HK would act. The rioters are attacking businesses perceived to be pro-China,
and public infrastructure like train stations. Result is, HK business is getting killed, but everyday life goes on as usual
otherwise, as it is possible for locals to avoid the protests since the protestors announce each day where they will be.
adults in HK do not approve of the violence. The press is having a field day, and only shows the violence, but most of
day to day HK functions normally. Local administration and Xi have handled it very badly due to indecisiveness, so it
goes on with no end in sight. Cops are exhausted by daily violent confrontations, and having fire bombs thrown at
them, so at times they react with violence, which then just inflames the situation. The pro-democracy voters won a
clear major majority in the weekend election. Beijing supported candidates lost big. Unclear where all this goes from
here, but there is no going back now. This was the inflection point.
Clearly the Schiff Show had no impact on the market as everyone knows it was all just a reality show for the Dems
Clearly the Schiff Show had no impact on the market as everyone knows it was all just a reality show for the Dems
that has fallen flat with most voters. Most people no longer care. It is now holiday season and parties, no one has
time for a bunch of Dem politicians making rash statements for TV. Nobody outside DC and CA cares anymore.
Republicans are all geared up to destroy Biden if this goes ahead, and maybe the Dems are figuring that out as the
polls now show a majority of voters are not in favor of impeachment. Horowitz will be out in two weeks and that will
suck the oxygen out of the room, and may give Republicans some attack points to go after the Dems. Then comes
Durham early next year with indictments. And now Biden says he might select Stacy Abrams, the failed GA
gubernatorial candidate, as VP. Do I hear the Democratic Palin. Can you imagine trying to sell Abrams as one heart
beat from being president with a 78 year old starting his term. Yikes.
Here is proof that the ideology from campus has now taken over even highly intelligent adults in business. A major
Here is proof that the ideology from campus has now taken over even highly intelligent adults in business. A major
investment bank in NY had diversity and inclusion month this month. Complete with training video for senior staff. This
next will get you. Everyone was then tasked to "evaluate every firm meeting to see if it was appropriately diverse",
whatever that means. It is a good assumption that senior bankers this year are mainly white males who have been in
the business for several years. So I asked a person there, what was supposed to happen if there were only white
guys in the meeting- was it supposed to adjourn until they could round up a couple of women and black guys to sit in
the room and look diverse. Do Asians, Eskimos, Turks, or Jews count as diverse? What has happened??? This is
campus insanity come to banking. I am sure there will now be a few more women and minorities hired to fill out
conference rooms. Maybe they are just hired to go from meeting to meeting to meet the diversity quota. Maybe they
can use holograms in the meantime to make it appear good. More of my warnings that the campus left wing ideology
has now infected major companies, and we all need to worry about the end of merit based hiring, and the rush to
lowest common denominator staffing. It is the extension of diversity in college admissions. Discrimination is OK so
long as white males are the ones discriminated against. If we do not all do whatever we can to stop this idiocy, we
will all be in trouble.
According to many internet feeds, the whistleblower is Eric Cianamella. Look up his name and resume, and his
political views under Obama. Sure sounds like he is the guy.
If you own a luxury car -BMW, Mercedes, Lexus, etc, and you have not had a minor repair to a bumper or the like,
If you own a luxury car -BMW, Mercedes, Lexus, etc, and you have not had a minor repair to a bumper or the like,
you are in for a shock. I have a very minor dent in the rear plastic fender and a cracked taillight cover on my BMW.
You could hardly even see it. I figured it would cost under $800 to pop out the dent and replace the taillight cover,
and do some very minor touch up. It is $4000. A single little plastic taillight cover on a BMW is $400-just for the part!
Plastic fenders and bumpers are now filled with sensors, cameras, and such. They can no longer just pop out a
minor dent in fender nor use filler. That might cause problems with sensors inside, and then if there is an accident,
everyone can be sued for messing with the fender and causing the sensor to not work. Like everything else on
these cars today, they are filled with electronics, and nothing is simple or cheap. And my problem was really very
minor. Now you know why your auto insurance is so costly.
Happy Thanksgiving
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
No comments:
Post a Comment