https://www.youtube.com/watch?
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Rant by Ross. (See 1 below.)
And:
A simple explanation. (See 1a below.)
Finally:
Long but worth it.
https://cms.frontpagemag.com/
Rocketing Israel. (See 2 below.)
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I know I always say no e mails for a while, going out of town but the months of January and February memos will be sporadic because we are doing a lot of family visiting and are actually going to take a short cruise in late January returning in early February.
I want to take this opportunity to wish all our Christian friends the Merriest of Christmases and the Happiest and Healthiest of New Years. Stay well. To our Jewish friends the Happiest of Channukah's and also hope the New Year is one of good health.
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Doris
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1)This week will go down in history as the turning point.
Now almost all the uncertainty is going away, all at once. USMCA is passed in the House so the Dems can say "look we can walk and chew gum at the same time". It was magic. Suddenly as impeachment moved to happen, one hour later Nancy had an epiphany and a way to get USMCA done that she was unable to do over the past 8 months. If Nancy thinks anyone buys her BS that she suddenly was able to get the negotiation done and she made the deal much better, she is delusional. A China deal of some sort has happened, and tariffs will be adjusted back. Ag purchases will jump a lot, and that will seal Trump's win in the Midwest. Based on comments from Michael Pillsbury, who is a leading China expert and confidant of Trump, the deal is more than we all expected. He said it may not sound as good as it really is because Xi does not want it to be known he gave on certain issues and loses face. Johnson is now elected PM with a huge landslide mandate, and a House of Commons ready to complete Brexit. That also means another free trade deal for the US next year. The EU is screwed. The Fed is on hold and generally upbeat on the economy and consumers. Taking China trade off the table as a risk, the Fed is quite optimistic. All the big economic uncertainties are getting out of the way. A China deal will be a step forward, but I don't trust them to ever really adhere to a true enforcement regimen even though there is one in the deal, nor will phase II happen before 2021. Taking all of these things, high consumer confidence, and near historic low unemployment going into the holidays, retail sales will exceed forecasts. Next year should see a pickup in cap ex from corporations as the uncertainty clears, other than the election. Impeachment is not seen as a risk factor by anyone. In fact, it has turned into a real farce. The sooner that is out of the way, the better. All this along with impeachment and Horowitz, all in 4 days. This may be the best week Trump has had as president despite the impeachment vote. The stock market rallies from here. The Dems lose now. There will be no recession in 2020. It has been an unbelievable historic week. Barring some black swan -Trump just won the election by an electoral college landslide. The equity markets should have a very strong rally going into 2020. Bonds will lose value now as the ten year rises to 2%. All those 401K's held by 50% of workers will be worth a lot more just before the election. Wages and home prices will be materially higher. It is hard to beat that in an election.
It is very likely that automation spending will increase in 2020 as the labor shortage continues and wages rise. There are just not the remaining people with ability or interest to work full time, so it is very likely companies will step up investment in technology and robotics. Job growth may slow in 2020, but that is possibly more due to nobody left to hire, and wages getting too high, and humans then are replaced by technology. Maybe they need to start counting human labor plus robots to get the real picture. Be careful not to read too much into the jobs numbers month to month. Labor department seasonal adjustments are not always accurate. The same for weekly applications for unemployment which can vary due to various exogenous factors.
The Horowitz report was far worse than anything I imagined. It was horrible. Horowitz is very careful choosing his words. He said he did not have written or spoken evidence of bias, but when pressed he said it was possible he just did not have hard evidence to prove it, but he did not rule it out. In fact he was clear in saying he did not get satisfactory answers from any people in the FBI or DOJ as to how this happened. Translation, I cannot prove with direct evidence that there was intentional bias, but nobody gave me good answers on that subject, so draw your own conclusion from that. That is very different than the press spin that it did not happen, and that all of what Trump said was BS. What are they going to say now about the rest of the report? Feinstein should be ashamed of herself essentially suggesting there was no proof of bias, and we should all just move on. Kamala made an idiot of herself asking Horowitz to investigate Barr. The Dems should have been outraged at what the FBI did, regardless of their views of Trump. Either the people at FBI were incredibly stupid and incompetent, or this was all a set up to get Trump. It is binary. There is no third option. It is impossible to believe three FBI handpicked teams of 6 people could all be so grossly stupid and incompetent, and that Comey and McCabe did not know all about what was happening. There has now been a report that in Horowitz it says Obama was kept apprised. This was an investigation of the president, not some bank fraud scheme. Recall the Lisa Page text "POTUS wants to know what we are doing". Or words to that effect. The fact that the FBI treated their initial meeting with Trump and Flynn as a way to launch a secret investigation of those two, instead of a briefing, is stunning. Durham and Barr have far more investigative powers. When they publicly contradicted Horowitz on the predicate issue, there should be a lot of soiled pants from the Obama administration. Durham likely will not finish and indict before May or June, just as the election is raging. If you think Horowitz is awful, wait for Durham. It is going to blow up the Dems and Obama and Biden. It is also going to destroy the mass media who are going to be left speechless and proven to have been heavily biased. The media tried to spin Horowitz as proving there was no conspiracy, but they never reported the reality, and meat of his report. Note that at the Horowitz hearing the Dems were blatantly attacking Barr because they know what is coming, and they are petrified, as well they should be. I have said for a long time, this is worse than Watergate, and after Horowitz, I am understating it. Putin must be celebrating. He could not have dreamed of such events.
Nadler actually said, "we have to impeach now because we cannot leave it to an election to resolve these issues". What an extraordinary statement. We cannot leave it to the voters to decide who should be president. That statement should scare the crap out of everyone, after what we heard from Horowitz. You need to pay attention. This is one of the most extraordinary moments in American history. They will be discussing this moment 200 years from now. The other person who is a huge loser from Horowitz is Schiff. In 2018, he released a report on FISA in response to Nunes report to try to contradict Nunes- the real hero in this whole saga. The press crapped all over Nunes at the time. Horowitz report proved Schiff lied about everything in his FISA report, and the press was also 100% wrong, and Nunes was 100% accurate. In 2018, Schiff actually said in his official report, "FBI and DOJ officials did not abuse the FISA process, omit information, or subvert this vital process". This on top of all the lies Schiff pushed during the Russia collusion probe, until Mueller blew that to shreds. And all through it the press quoted Schiff and said Nunes was wrong. Just like they said Horowitz proved Trump was wrong about bias until he testified in person and Lindsay Graham read all those texts. If the Republicans win the House, Schiff should be censured and brought up on ethics charges and kicked out of Congress. Talk about abuse of power, Schiff is the poster boy. And he is who Nancy put in charge of the impeachment process! Professor Turley had it right when he said the Dems need to be careful because they were the ones abusing power. The whole impeachment process is now in its death throes, and blowing up on Nancy
The Dems and press are in agony that there are no "people of color" left in the Dem race with the silent implication it has something to do with racism. It has to do with none of them attracted enough votes in polls. It is called culling the field on merit. What a strange concept in this race/victimization era. Are we now supposed to have candidates based on race? Since when was that a requirement. There have been no constraints on Booker or Harris. They seem to all forget Deval Patrick is now declared and Booker is still running for VP. Remember when the Dems screamed about the Koch Bros and wealthy Republicans and big money being corrupting. Is that like Bloomberg, Steyer, and Soros? Bloomberg and Steyer are each in for over $100 million. Bloomberg may be in for over $1 billion. Corporations give paltry sums by comparison, even with Citizens Untied. The teachers union donates far more to the Dems and corrupts the system, which is why we have a failing school system. I guess it is different currency when the Dems do it.
I am raging and ranting not from a political position, but because all of the terrible things that have been going on to unseat a duly elected president, and the coordinated press biased attacks, severely endangers the nation and democracy. They go directly against what the founding fathers tried to avoid. The Durham report will go down in history as one of the defining moments of this country. It will be a defining moment and an inflection point. Expect the Dems and press to aggressively attack Barr and Durham for the next months until the report is out and indictments start.
Take note. Johnson and Trump are the opposite of the far left trend in both countries. The bartender from the Bronx and her anti-Semitic buddies will prove to be the trigger for the shift back to the middle. Pocahontas and Bernie made people wake up to what was being pushed as an ideology. They drove Nancy and the Dems too far left, and now the reaction is starting. There are far right candidates winning seats in other countries. I believe we are at the start of the swing back toward the center, and that the pushback against the radical left ideology on campus has just begun, and will accelerate as the next two years move ahead. People are realizing what their kids are being taught and they are reacting. People are tired of being called racist and other names, and free speech constraints on campus have reached an extreme point, and will be pushed back. Everyone needs to push back and speak up, and stop donating to their alumni.
The Hallmark TV channel is a leading indicator of what I predict will be this turning point in the country, and the impeachment hearings and Horowitz will be the inflection point. Wherever I go, everyone is disgusted with the vitriol and the unwillingness of people on both ends to even listen to the other side. The most watched channel now is Hallmark, and it has old time family oriented programs, and products. The silent generation is out there voting with their remotes and pocketbook. Most rational people are ready to stop this unpleasant and ignorant behavior. It started on campus with left wing professors who were products of the 60's and seventies anti-war, anti-establishment ideology. Now it is their kids who are professors and high school teachers, and they took their parents left wing positions and moved much further left. In the past few years, campuses across the country have fed a very dangerous ideology that not all speech is free if someone deems it to be "hurtful" and making them feel "unsafe", whatever that means. I never have understood what it is to feel unsafe on campus other than when I was at Penn and the surrounding neighborhood was not safe to walk around at night after a student was killed, and a guy tried to steal a car right in front of my apartment. Today, everyone other than white males are "victims" and apparently snowflakes who melt at the first indication of any comment that does not adhere to their ingrained ideology. It is a flashing sign of real trouble on campus that Bernie has 50% of the under 25 vote. It shows that colleges are teaching that capitalism is bad, and socialism is what we need, with high taxes and free everything. Pretty scary that the kids actually have no understanding of the history of socialism failures, and the successes of capitalism. They also have no understanding of the history of blacks in America, and the strides that have been made since the sixties. They seem to forget Obama was elected president, many major cities and police departments are run by blacks, and there are now many highly successful black executives and entrepreneurs. If they only had some classes teaching where we were, to where are, it might give some perspective, instead of the Obama Holder rhetoric of racism everywhere. The capper is Hilary is polling well among Dems. She is running without running.
When my generation were kids in school we had to learn about the constitution, the founding fathers were considered heroes, and we had American pride and culture drilled into us. We learned history and civics, and we had the culture of America drilled into our empty brains. We saluted the flag every morning, and had patriotism as our standard. We were taught that capitalism was the best economic system on the planet because we were taught the history of dictatorships,, Communism, Socialism, Fascism, and we grew up during the cold war. Kids today are not taught any of that, and instead have mandatory classes in all sorts of social justice propaganda where anything non-white male is good, and white males are the by definition, bad guys. Instead of being taught that millions of white males fought wars to protect the freedoms the kiddies now have, and many more built the country by starting companies, inventing wonderful things that the kiddies today take for granted, and building an economy and society that allows them, and now blacks, to fully enjoy opportunity that is not available anywhere else. They never ask, why is that over 1 million people move here every year to become a resident and citizen. Large numbers of people are not moving to any other places unless pushed out by war or corruption. Here, they come for the opportunity we offer. Why did a million illegals try to cross our border this year if America is such a terrible place. Now even in elementary school, they are taught we are all racist and everyone other than white men are oppressed. Just consider what a complete difference between what we were taught, and what kids today are now taught from a young age, and you will understand what has happened to America. We need to quickly change what is going on at universities so the next generation of grads will go out in the world as teachers, politicians, and business leaders, and get back to old time American values.
https://www.city-journal.org/s
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1a)That’s it? After three years in which Democrats accused President Trump of a host of criminal acts — from bribery and extortion to campaign finance violations, obstruction of justice, conspiracy and even treason — they have finally introduced articles of impeachment that allege none of those things.
Not only have they dropped the charge of bribery, the words that gripped Washington — “quid pro quo” — don’t even appear in the document.
This is a major retreat by Democrats, who have effectively admitted the president did not commit any statutory crimes.
Indeed, if these articles are approved, this will be the first presidential impeachment in history in which no statutory crimes are even alleged. In that alone, Trump can claim vindication.
Instead, Democrats settled on two noncriminal allegations: obstruction of Congress and abuse of power.
Both charges are farcical.
Take obstruction. Democrats claim Trump engaged in “unprecedented” defiance of congressional subpoenas and “sought to arrogate to himself” the right to withhold documents and witnesses “as well as the unilateral prerogative to deny any and all information to the House of Representatives.” Please. If anyone is “arrogating” “unilateral” power to themselves, it is House Democrats.
Democrats seem not to understand that the legislative and the executive are equal branches of government. They do not get the last word when a president invokes executive privilege. When a dispute arises between the two branches, the president has a right to appeal to the third equal branch of government — the judiciary. Trump did that, as is his constitutional right. If he appealed to the courts and lost but still refused to cooperate, then Congress would have every right to charge him with obstruction of Congress.
But Democrats refused to wait for judicial review. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif, actually said, “We cannot be at the mercy of the courts.” Excuse me? And Democrats are accusing Trump of being “a threat to the Constitution”? Democrats are doing exactly what they accuse Trump of doing. As Professor Jonathan Turley told Democrats on the Judiciary Committee “We have three branches, not two. ... If you impeach a president, if you make a high crime and misdemeanor out of going to the courts, it is an abuse of power.
It’s your abuse of power.”
Democrats are also completely wrong when they declare Trump’s invocation of executive privilege “unprecedented.” In 2011, the House Committee on Oversight and Reform subpoenaed then-Attorney General Eric Holder to provide documents and witnesses related to the botched gun-running operation “Fast and Furious.”
Holder refused to fully comply. When the committee threatened to hold him in contempt, President Barack Obama stepped in and invoked executive privilege.
The administration argued that “compelled disclosure would be inconsistent with the separation of powers established in the Constitution.”
Guess what? The same Democrats now seeking to impeach Trump for obstruction of Congress backed Obama’s obstruction of Congress.
Marc A. Thiessen is a member of The Washington Post Writers Group.
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2) 2,600 Rockets Have Been Fired at Israel Since March, 2018. This Is How Israel Stops Them.
By Seth Frantzman
In 1991, during the Gulf War, more than forty Scud missiles were fired at Israel. At the time, the entire country was included in one early warning zone, so millions of people were warned of the incoming rockets, even though most of them lived in areas that were not threatened.
Today there are more than 1,700 distinct zones in Israel that enables the country to warn only the communities under direct threat. It is the latest development in Israel’s early warning technology and worked effectively during the latest round of fighting with Gaza.
In Operation Black Belt, Israel struck a senior Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) commander on November 12, leading to two days of rocket fire by the PIJ against Israel. More than 400 rockets were fired, reaching as far north as the outskirts of Tel Aviv, around 80 km away.
These are just some of the 2,600 rockets that have been fired from Gaza since March 2018.
Although dozens of Israelis were lightly injured in the recent round of violence, the system of sirens across the country helped guide people to shelters while enabling Israel’s air defense to intercept the projectiles. The sirens and alerts are often called “red alerts” and are linked to the IDF’s Home Front Command, which has become increasingly data and tech savvy.
This is based on a complex calculus.
Lt. Col. Idan Ochman, head of Israel’s systems development for J6—or Command, Control, Communications, Computers and Intelligence—deals with the latest technologies Israel is pioneering. He says that since the 1990s, Israel has continued to make its alarms more precise so only those who might be under rocket fire directly are sent to shelters. The latest version has been online for several months.
“We operated it earlier this year, but this was the first operational use. My branch is responsible for the technological aspects of the solution and we developed complex algorithm command and control system that gets the threats and decides which areas need to be alarmed.”
Israel uses loudspeakers throughout the country to sound sirens, but it has also sought to disseminate information through new social media platforms as well as radio, TV and the Internet. Most recently, the Israeli authorities began sending alarms via the Telegram app. Israel excels at hi-tech gadgets and tech “startups,” so it’s natural that the military would gravitate towards these platforms.
One of the issues people faced in past conflicts is hearing the sirens when one is in a car or in a rural area. This has resulted in some casualties. During the recent round of conflict, I was driving toward Gaza from Jerusalem when a piece of a rocket fell near Gan Yavne. It wasn’t clear if drivers could hear a siren where it fell.
The IDF says that making the system more selective will save lives. “Our priority is always to seek to improvement whether it is to get to as many people and platforms that can supply alarms,” says Ochman.
The widespread use of smart phones should facilitate this approach even more. That means apps from the Home Front command can be useful to the public. Mapping apps and GPS now enable phones to know where users are, a process that has helped route traffic, for instance. But with Israel facing these unique threats, phones can help warn people. Apple’s website notes that “by default, government alerts are turned on for your device.” In the United States, this can mean things like weather emergency or AMBER alerts.
A second IDF officer involved with Israel’s early warning system confirms the advances Israel has made in making the alert system more selective and precise. This is important for communities close to the Gaza Strip whose alarms frequently go off when rockets are fired. When you divide a country into 350 polygons and then increase the number to 1,700, as Israel has done, it means that almost every small community can have its own alert, and cities can be subdivided. For instance, the IDF notes that the city of Rishon LeZion has been divided into several sectors. The alert that sounded in the city during the recent rocket fire affected only one fifth of its 250,000 residents, as opposed to all of them. Similarly, Tel Aviv now has four zones with around 500,000 people in each. Kibbutz Alumim in past conflicts has been alerted up to sixty times, but this round of violence sent the residents to shelters only twenty times. The IDF ascribes this to the new precision of the system. “It was a big improvement and we are thinking what we need to do to make the life much safer, and better,” says the second IDF office, who is identified as “Captain Y,” due to security reasons.
The overall system Israel uses to conduct air defense using its Iron Dome interceptors, radar and sires is complex and has been through major Gaza conflicts since 2012. Iron Dome’s interception rate is usually given as almost ninety percent. However, the sirens are activated irrespective of the interceptions. That means the system detects launches from Gaza, calculates their trajectory and alerts areas that are potentially in the path of the rocket. Not every rocket is intercepted, with some falling in open areas. The challenge Israel faces in a future war is that it may face an adversary such as Hezbollah that has an estimated arsenal of up to 150,000 rockets. Reports indicate that Hezbollah could fire between 1,200 and 1,500 rockets a day in a future conflict. In 2006, the same group fired around 4,000 rockets over thirty-four days, reaching a rate of fire of around a hundred per day. There was no Iron Dome system at the time.
Having more precise warning systems will enable Israel to alert the most correct areas during a future conflict. This system has been tested numerous times over past years and it has improved. Using the latest technology to reach civilians, on the roads or in the fields, will save lives. It is now a question of what technologies Israel’s adversaries will bring to the field and the IDF’s ability to anticipate the next threats.
Seth J. Frantzman is a Jerusalem-based journalist who holds a Ph.D. from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He is the executive director of the Middle East Center for Reporting and Analysis and a writing fellow at Middle East Forum. He is the author of After ISIS: America, Iran and the Struggle for the Middle East (forthcoming by Gefen Publishing). Follow him on Twitter at @sfrantzman.
Image: Reuters.
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