https://www.breitbart.com/
And:
https://www.visualcapitalist.
Finally:
https://www.investors.com/poli
The Greatest White Collar Crime in History
Investors Business Daily did an article on this and it confirms the Clinton Foundation has closed its doors.
A Charitable Foundation Folds!
Have you wondered why the Clinton Foundation folded so suddenly after Hillary was no longer in a position of influence? Perhaps this summary will provide some insight?
From their 2014, 990 Tax Form; they list 486 employees (line 5)! It took 486 people who are paid $34.8 million and $91.3 million in fees and expenses, to give away $5.1 MILLION
The real heart of the Clintons can be seen here. Staggering but not surprising. These figures are from an official copy of the Bill, Hillary and Chelsea Clinton Foundation for the tax year 2014. The copy of the tax return is from the National Center for Charitable Statistics web site http://nccs.urban.org/<https:/
You can obtain the latest tax return on any charitable organization there.
The Clinton Foundation: Number of Employees (line 5) 486
Total revenue (line 12): $177,804,612.00
Total grants to charity (line 13) $5,160,385.00 (this is less than 3%)
Total expenses of $91,281,145.00
Expenses include:
Salaries (line 15) $34,838,106.00
Fund raising fees (line 16a) $850,803.00
Other expenses (line 17) $50,431,851.00 HUH??????
Travel: $8,000,000.00
Note: $20 Million in Travel & Meetings to decide who gets the $5.160 Million in Charity ?
Meetings: $12,000,000.00
Net assets/fund balances (line 22) $332,471,349.00... So it required 486 people, who were paid $34.8 million, plus $91.3 million in fees and expenses, to give away $5.1 MILLION!
And they call this a CHARITY?
It is alleged that this is one of the greatest white-collar crimes ever committed. And just think - one of the participants was a former president and one (gasp!) wanted to be elected president of the United States .
If justice was truly served they would both be in prison.
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We have just returned from a relaxing cruise on The Oceania Line's cruise ship named The Riviera. The ship holds around 1100 passengers with a crew around 750. Food, entertainment and staff were excellent. The Eastern Caribbean Island we visited do not hold a candle to the Eastern Caribbean ones but we simply were happy to relax, read and get off to stretch our legs.
While I was on the cruise, I read the autobiography Stephen Schwarzman. Just excellent and I commend it to those who are interested in what this man, with his partner, Pete Peterson, accomplished.
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This memo is a collection of op eds and other articles I received and/or read while away. (See 1, 1a, 1b, 1c, 1d below.)
And:
Two Rants: (2 and 2a below.)
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Now some articles about Israel. (See 3, 3a, 3b and 3c edited - below.)
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I will end with my thoughts about SOTUS. I wanted to compose and type this Tuesday evening but we were embarking early on Wednesday and driving to visit cousins who live in Jupiter. Thus, much of what I am saying has been said by others but I still want to get it off my back. (See 4 below.)
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Dick
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1) The Iowa caucuses disaster was democratic socialism in action
DES MOINES — In retrospect, the disaster that was the 2020 Democratic Iowa caucuses should have been obvious from the beginning. Democrats designed a system so complicated it was bound to fail.
They did so at the behest of Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.). After Sanders lost to Hillary Clinton by about two-tenths of a percentage point in 2016 — in a vote that was plagued by technical problems, reporting errors and charges of impropriety — his campaign asked for the raw vote count behind the delegate totals. The state party couldn’t produce them.
First, at each caucus location, organizers tabulated what was called the “first alignment” — the total votes each candidate received at the start of the night. Then, candidates who failed to meet a 15 percent threshold in the first round of voting were declared “unviable” and their supporters released to vote for their second choice in a second round of voting.
The second round of votes was then collected and tabulated in what is called a “final alignment.” Then, the state party used the “final alignment” votes to calculate the number of “state delegate equivalents,” or SDEs — the state convention delegates awarded to each candidate. These are awarded on a proportional basis, based on the turnout levels in different precincts in the past two general elections. The SDEs, in turn, determine how many of Iowa’s 41 national convention delegates each candidate receives.
Is your head spinning? In a normal election, the first vote would be the end of the process — the candidate who got the most votes would be declared the winner. Indeed, in the Republican Iowa caucuses, it is. But instead of carrying out a relatively simple task — holding a vote, tabulating the results and declaring a winner — Iowa Democrats designed a system so cumbersome and unwieldy that it overwhelmed them.
The system was ridiculous to begin with. Even if it had worked as intended, it could have produced a result that left multiple candidates claiming victory. As we now know, it didn’t even come close to working as intended.
Who would come up with such a complicated and unmanageable plan? Answer: essentially, the same brilliant minds who came up with Medicare-for-all and the “Green New Deal.” What we saw in Iowa on Monday night was democratic socialism in action. A small group of people, brimming with confidence that exceeds their abilities, designed an unworkable system, failed to see its obvious flaws, were shocked by its inevitable failure and then made excuses when it became an unmitigated catastrophe.
If you liked the Iowa caucuses, you’ll love government-run health care. The same party that could not manage calculating the votes of about 200,000 Iowa caucus-goers wants you to trust them with managing one-tenth of the U.S. economy. Democrats want to bring the same efficiency on display in Iowa on Monday night to the nation’s health-care, education, housing, transportation and energy sectors. Thanks, but no thanks.
President Ronald Reagan liked to tell jokes about the legendary inefficiencies of Soviet socialism. One involved the 10-year wait to buy a car in the Soviet Union. After a customer put down money at the car dealership, he was told to come back in 10 years to pick up his car. "Morning or afternoon?" he asked. The dealer replied, “What difference does it make?” “Well,” the man said, “the plumber is coming in the morning.”
It won’t take 10 years to get the results of the 2020 Iowa caucuses. But the Democrats’ failure in Iowa stemmed from the same fundamental flaw that has caused socialism to fail wherever it is tried — the hubris of a tiny cadre whose grand visions and lack of humility far exceed their ability to deliver.
1a) The Iowa Caucus Fiasco
It could help Bernie Sanders and is a blow to political legitimacy.
The Democratic Party's Iowa caucus results were delayed by the failure of an app designed to speed up the process.
There’s no shortage of mordant fun to be had at the expense of the Democratic National Committee and Iowa Democratic Party after the fiasco of the inaugural 2020 presidential contest, which has yet to yield definitive results apparently as a result of coding errors in a tabulation app created by party insiders. The college of cardinals at least lets the world know with white or black smoke how the vote for pope is going.
Here the party that waxes sanctimonious about election security couldn’t secure its own election from itself. Here the party that has spent three years questioning the legitimacy of the 2016 election will see the legitimacy of its own custom-designed process questioned. Here the party that promises technocratic management of American health care, energy and finance proved less able to tally votes even than the ancient Athenians.
Yet the incompetence and hypocrisy will have real consequences. The first and most important could be a boost for Bernie Sanders, who may be able to claim the mantle of both victor and underdog at the same time. By all accounts the Vermont socialist performed well, with he and Pete Buttigieg leading based on partial results that the party finally released late Tuesday afternoon.
Yet many of Mr. Sanders’s supporters will believe the technological snafu denied their candidate a clear-cut victory. They believe the party establishment is trying to block their candidate, who until this campaign wasn’t officially a member of the party that botched the caucuses. Even if results do finally vindicate Mr. Sanders, those who underperformed (most significantly, Joe Biden based on Tuesday’s partial results) are already trying to dismiss their significance.
One irony is that while Mr. Sanders can capitalize on anger at the Democratic establishment, that very anger may have contributed to the mess. Mr. Sanders’s supporters cried foul after Hillary Clinton beat their candidate in 2016 and demanded rules to make the caucuses more “transparent.”
Unlike in previous years, Iowa caucus sites this year had to report two counts—a “first alignment,” which reflects how many people had each candidate as a first choice, and a “second alignment,” reflecting the results after supporters of candidates below the 15% threshold moved to their second choice. This may have made tallying more difficult and would have added complexity and muddied the result even if it weren’t for the technical failure.
This is a reminder that changing electoral systems to satisfy populist demands should be done with care, because the unintended consequences can further undermine their legitimacy. Democrats have been griping about how Iowa is insufficiently diverse to hold the first presidential contest, and this may be the last time the state goes first. But let’s hope whatever comes next is geared toward producing strong candidates and reliable outcomes and not merely satisfying the demands of partisan opportunists.
On that front, we wonder if any of the Democrats who feel as if they wasted months and hundreds of millions of dollars in Iowa are having second thoughts about calls to eliminate the Electoral College. As journalist Dan McLaughlin notes, such state-level failures highlight the perils of a nationwide system for popular vote counting. At least here the failure is contained, and let’s hope it can be rectified without calling the entire presidential nominating contest into question.
The delayed results in Iowa are a reminder of other potential features of the 2020 election that could create controversy and damage its legitimacy. Recall that in California in November 2018, several Republican Congressional candidates were well ahead based on the Election Day tallies, only to see the results reversed in the following days and in some cases more than a week later as absentee ballots trickled in.
We have argued that California’s lax election rules that allow “ballot harvesting” by party activists will also lead to political mischief. But even if they don’t, tallying delays discourage the swift acceptance of outcomes that well-functioning democracies need.
In 2018 the California rules seemed to hurt the GOP, but if the state’s March primary is closely contested, then Democratic candidates could feel the sting. Meantime, if Mr. Biden’s performance was as weak as partial results showed, then perhaps Michael Bloomberg, who sat out Iowa and is spending big elsewhere, becomes the party’s best bulwark against a socialist takeover. That’s unlikely to calm the passions of Mr. Sanders’s supporters or make the 2020 contest any less heated. Buckle up.
1b)
Ted Cruz Rips Impeachment Case to Shreds: Obama Actually Did What Trump Was Impeached For
On Tuesday, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) ripped up the House Democrats’ impeachment case against President Donald Trump, showing how former President Barack Obama’s administration committed both of the acts Democrats impeached Trump for — and did far worse.
Cruz argued that acquitting Trump “comports with both the facts and the law.”
“These impeachment proceedings began in the House of Representatives in a thoroughly partisan affair, driven by House Democrats without allowing the president to participate in cross-examining witnesses and calling defense witnesses,” the senator recalled. “The Senate has done much better. We had an obligation under the constitution to conduct a fair trial and that is what the Senate has done.”
He mentioned that the House heard from 18 different witnesses, that the Senate showed 193 video clips of witness testimony, and that Senators asked 180 separate questions to House managers or the White House defense team. Despite all this, “the House managers failed to prove their case.”
Cruz argued that the Democrats failed to demonstrate how Trump’s actions rise to the level of “high crimes and misdemeanors,” and he claimed that the articles of impeachment “don’t allege any crime whatsoever.”
“What was this all about? If you examine the substance, there were two things that the House Managers alleged the president did wrong. One, they alleged that the president wrongfully delayed aid to Ukraine, and two, they alleged that the president wrongfully asked for an investigation into a political rival,” the senator explained.
“There is a deep irony in the argument of the House managers,” he added. “Both of those objectives are consistent with law, are permissible and legal, and both of those objectives have been done, by any measure substantially worse, by the preceding administration, by the Obama administration.”
Cruz declared his firm support for Ukraine, mentioning his trip to Kyiv’s Maidan Square to support anti-Russian protesters in 2014. He recalled having called on Obama to give aid to Ukraine and going to the House of Representatives to hear a speech from Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko.
“It is true that the Trump administration temporarily delayed aid to Ukraine. That is their right to do so,” the senator argued. He noted that many administrations hold up foreign aid. “Here’s the irony, Madame President, if you support aid to Ukraine as I do, military aid to Ukraine as they stand up to Russia, there is no dispute whatsoever that for the entirety of his presidency, President Obama refused to give lethal military aid, defensive aid, to Ukraine.”
Schiff Squirms as Cruz and Graham Ask if Obama Could Have Investigated Romney Corruption
At the speech in Washington, D.C., Poroshenko called out the Obama administration for sending blankets and MREs. “And President Poroshenko rightly said, ‘You can’t fight a Russian tank with a blanket.'”
“So if the House managers are right that there’s something improper about delaying military aid, the Obama administration did so for the entirety of the administration. And what did President Trump do? He did something Obama never did, he provided lethal defensive military aid, Javelin missiles that can take out Russian tanks,” Cruz added.
He then turned to the second case for impeachment, “directing an investigation into your political rival.”
“The House managers built their case on the proposition that seeking an investigation into Burisma — the corrupt Ukrainian natural gas company — and Joe Biden and Hunter Biden, seeking any investigation into whether there was corruption there, was in the words of the House managers, ‘baseless, a sham, and utterly without merit,'” the senator recalled. “That proposition is objectively absurd.”
Cruz noted that “there was very substantial evidence of corruption,” starting with Burisma itself. “Burisma is a company that was built on corruption. The oligarch who started Burisma, Mr. Zlochevsky, was the sitting energy minister in Ukraine, and he amassed his billions by, as the sitting energy minister, giving gas licenses to his own company that he was heading. That’s where Burisma made their money, it was a company built on corruption from day one.”
The senator briefly laid out the timeline: then-Vice President Joe Biden was named the Obama administration point person on Ukraine in early 2014; Devon Archer, an associate of Biden and his son Hunter, joined the board of Burisma on April 24, 2014; on April 28, Britain’s security fraud bureau froze millions of Zlochevksy’s assets; on May 12, Hunter Biden was named to the board and paid $1 million per year. The House managers could not say what Hunter Biden did for that $1 million per year.
“Joe Biden is seen on video, not just admitting, but bragging that he told the president of Ukraine he would personally block a billion dollars in foreign aid loan guarantees unless Ukraine fired the prosecutor that was investigating Burisma, the company paying his son $1 million a year,” Cruz said. He noted Biden’s quip, “Well, son of a bit–, they fired him!”
“Now that, on its face, raises significant issues of potential corruption. We don’t know for sure if there was in fact corruption, but when President Trump asked that it be investigated,” he had that authority, Cruz argued.
“And, of course, if the House managers are right that it is somehow illegitimate, it is somehow inappropriate, it is, in fact, impeachable, to seek the investigation of your political rival, we know for a fact that the Obama administration not only sought the investigation but aggressively led an investigation marred by abuse of power going after then-candidate Trump, including wiretaps… including fraudulently obtained court warrants from the FISA court,” the senator concluded.
Not only was Trump fully justified in seeking the investigation and holding up the aid, but the Obama administration engaged in far worse abuses on both issues.
1c)
It’s the Democrats Who Are Facing Moment of Truth
By CONRAD BLACK
Tomorrow the Democratic Party is scheduled to be removed from the life support system that has sustained it these past four years: the fraudulently and almost certainly illegally confected condition of Donald Trump being under a legal and ethical cloud.
The wild aspersions about financial chicanery, misogyny, racism, rank ignorance, and incompetence, and the monstrous canard about “treason” with Russia, the Mueller investigation, and the spurious impeachment were all that the Trump-hating press needed to persuade the credulous, within the United States and throughout the world, that this was an aberrant president who was about to be led out of the Oval Office in handcuffs.
President Trump’s flamboyant career as a huckster, Trump University, the junk bond casino bankruptcies, as well as the spectacular divorces and constant tabloid and television presence, opened him up for a good deal of ridicule. Not even the most disciplined and fervent Trump supporter would deny that this president’s resumé contains some elements that he would be better off without in his present position, nor would many claim that all of his public comments have been suffused with the dignity and thoughtfulness that would be ideal in the nation’s chief executive and commander-in-chief.
These facts, though, were part of an innovative, carefully planned, and overwhelmingly successful strategy to achieve celebrity — even among the less exalted socioeconomic regions of the public — and to parlay that celebrity and a perfect sense of timing along with his seizure of social media, to exploit voter discontent, gain control of one of the main political parties, and game the electoral system to victory in a presidential election.
The truth is that even those who supported Trump in 2016, because they were tired of the Bushes and Clintons passing the great offices of the American state back and forth and were dissatisfied with the condition and direction of the country, could not have been serenely confident of what his presidency would be like.
Since Trump ran against the entire political class he was portrayed as a nihilist, a quasi-anarchist, and a barbarian — and this was never going to be the usual good-natured and sportsmanlike handing over between the Bushes and Clintons with an indulgent press honeymoon. Since Mr. Trump had vehemently attacked all of them, he had to overcome the resistance of all of them.
We now know that a partisan-commissioned smear operation was used by the FBI and the intelligence agencies to defame the candidate and improperly conduct surveillance on his campaign and transition team, and that the FBI director and others lied about it repeatedly to President Trump.
We now know there was no justification for setting up the special counsel to inquire into collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia. And we now know that when that collapsed, the Whistleblower Act was abused and impeachment procedures were violated to vote on articles of impeachment for the removal of this president for acts that were not, in fact, constitutionally impeachable, were not illegal, and for the commission of which there was no probative evidence that the president committed them.
For four years, NeverTrump Republicans and the Democrats have fought a rearguard action slowly retreating in the face of, to use a Democratic expression, “an inconvenient truth.”
Because no one had ever been elected president without previously having held some public office or a high military command, and because Trump’s career had been so outrageous in some ways, as well as completely unconventional, there was a vast receptivity to claims that he was temperamentally and morally unfit to be president, that he would be incompetent, and that he had somehow purloined the office in the first place.
Yet as the impeachment controversy demonstrated and as all polls confirm, the Republican Party is now rock-solid behind the president. The Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell, who told Republican congressional candidates four years ago that they would “drop (Trump) like a hot rock,” has smoothly conducted his partisans toward the quick dismissal of this unfounded impeachment effort.
The Democrats, and the sharply dwindling ranks of their anti-Trump Republican allies, have retreated from the charge of electoral fraud, to treason with Russia, to obstruction of justice, to impeachable abuses of power and contempt of Congress. All of it was piffle; there was no truth to any of it. All there ever was is a candidate and now a president who is so bombastic and garish in some of his stylistic and rhetorical quirks, that there was an over-eager readiness to believe that there might be some merit to these accusations.
There wasn’t. For more than three years we have heard that “The walls are closing in” on Mr. Trump, with the “drip, drip, drip” of cumulative damaging revelations. Those predictions apply with perfect accuracy to the Democrats. They have exhausted their ability to maintain some Damoclean legal threat over the president, and now, though they are still addicted to having an opponent bound and encumbered by official harassments and tainting activities, they are going to have to attack his record.
Apart from general economic progress, the country hasn’t really paused to consider how far it has progressed in three years. High unemployment and oil imports have ended; illegal immigration has been reduced by nearly 80%. Approximately half of all Americans are now directly or indirectly investors in the stock market and they have had a capital appreciation of nearly $10 trillion. Poverty and food stamp use are down sharply, the workforce has reversed previous declines, and the lowest 20 percent of income earners have enjoyed greater proportionate income increases than the wealthiest.
President Trump is thus the world’s first head of an important country to begin to address the problem of income disparity. He has renegotiated trade agreements and when these are fully in place next quarter, and Boeing is back to work, economic growth should return to 3 percent.
Moreover, Mr. Trump has faced up to the challenge of China, smashed ISIS, and revived the concept of nuclear non-proliferation where his predecessors were swindled by North Korea and Iran. He has spared the country the Green Terror and kicked the Western Alliance into a revival of collective self-defense so it can no longer be just a gang of slackers hiding behind the Pentagon.
This is Mr. Trump’s record and unsubstantiated truisms about Mr. Trump’s “corruption” won’t sell anymore.
The Democrats have an inadequate group of implausible candidates, appear to be fixing up their convention to sandbag Bernie Sanders again and perhaps to make an energetic effort to sell themselves to Michael Bloomberg. Mr. Bloomberg is a capable man but a New York liberal who is far from a spellbinder, starts with no following outside the wealthy parts of New York City, and he spent $170 a vote in his last election municipal election. That translates to $14 billion in a presidential election.
Mr. Bloomberg could afford it, but Mr. Trump and the Republican Party are rich, too, and no one can simply buy an American general election. For good measure, whatever tatters are left of the ethical gap with Mr. Trump will almost certainly be blown away by the conclusions of U.S. Attorney John Durham when he has finished looking at the official harassment of the Trump campaign in 2016.
The Democrats’ astonishment is understandable. So, up to a point, was their belief in Mr. Trump’s indifferent ethics, but these became a crutch that they have leaned on more heavily as Mr. Trump has racked up successes in almost every policy field. Now the crutch has been kicked out as they face the disclosure of their own skullduggery, and face up to the profound mediocrity of their candidate pool.
The Democrats’ walls are not closing in — they are crumbling, and they are about to be overrun by the fierce army of the president’s scores of millions of supporters, those whom the Democrats reviled as focused on “guns and religion,” the “deplorables” who, we learned from House impeachment managers last week, must not be allowed to reelect the country’s leader. That is not how the American system works, and the Democrats will soon finally feel the pain the country sought to inflict on them in 2016.
1d)The Blind Generation
This article was written by Alyssa Ahlgren. A college student who's in grad school for her MBA.
My Generation Is Blind to the Prosperity Around Us
I'm sitting in a small coffee shop near Lake Nokomis (Mpls) trying to think of what to write about. I scroll through my newsfeed on my phone looking at the latest headlines of Democratic candidates calling for policies to "fix" the so-called injustices of capitalism. I put my phone down and continue to look around. I see people talking freely, working on their MacBook's, ordering food they get in an instant, seeing cars go by outside, and it dawned on me. We live in the most privileged time in the most prosperous nation and we've become completely blind to it. Vehicles, food, technology, freedom to associate with whom we choose. These things are so ingrained in our American way of life we don't give them a second thought. We are so well off here in the United States that our poverty line begins 31 times above the global average. Thirty. One. Times. Virtually no one in the United States is considered poor by global standards. Yet, in a time where we can order a product off Amazon with one click and have it at our doorstep the next day, we are unappreciative, unsatisfied, and ungrateful.
Our non-appreciation is evident as the popularity of socialist policies among my generation continues to grow. Democratic Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez recently said to Newsweek talking about the millennial generation, "An entire generation, which is now becoming one of the largest electorates in America, came of age and never saw American prosperity."
Never saw American prosperity !!!! Let that sink in. When I first read that statement, I thought to myself, which was quite literally the most entitled and factually illiterate thing I've ever heard in my 26 years on this earth. Many young people agree with her, which is entirely misguided. My generation is being indoctrinated by a mainstream narrative to actually believe we have never seen prosperity. I know this first hand, I went to college, let's just say I didn't have the popular opinion, but I digress.
Why then, with all of the overwhelming evidence around us, evidence that I can even see sitting at a coffee shop, do we not view this as prosperity ?? We have people who are dying to get into our country. People around the world destitute and truly impoverished. Yet, we have a young generation convinced they've never seen prosperity, and as a result, elect politicians dead set on taking steps towards abolishing capitalism.
Why ?? The answer is this; My generation has only seen prosperity. We have no contrast. We didn't live in the great depression, or live through two world wars, the Korean War, The Vietnam War or see the rise and fall of socialism and communism. We don't know what it's like to live without the internet, without cars, without smartphones. We don't have a lack of prosperity problem.
We have an entitlement problem, an ungratefulness problem, and it's spreading like a plague.
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2)Subject: Jan. 29
50% of all junk bonds maturing in 5 years are B rated- low rated. Energy issuers are 8%, and likely mostly frackers who are not making cash flow. In total, $1.2 Trillion of junk debt matures between 2020-2024. That is a lot of low rated bonds to be rolled over in a short period, and will depend on how the economy is performing to see if we have a problem or not. All of this does not include the massive amount of less than junk sovereign debt, like Argentina which is once again creating a bad scenario for the sovereign debt market. This time, however, the central banks and financial markets are prepared and are already working to deal with it. Plus it is not that big a number in the world of today as it was last time. The concern remains as I have mentioned other times. There are trillions of dollar denominated foreign debt which is going to struggle and in some cases default. The better the US economy does, the higher the dollar goes, the less able these borrowers are able to pay. Now add on the countries that took on Belt and Road Chinese debt that will never get paid, a slowing Chinese economy on which emerging markets depend, and a weak economy in the EU, and you have the potential for a debt crisis in the making somewhere down the road. No way to know when, or how bad, but problems are coming one of these years. Excess corporate debt with covenant lite is also getting out of control, adding to the risk. If the US goes into recession one year, it means the whole world does as well, and that is when it hits the fan. It will just cascade. Just be aware of this. It Is not happening soon, and maybe not for a few years, but it is a building risk. Clearly Congress is not acting to deal with US deficits, and it will only be if Republicans can take back the House and clear control of the Senate that there is any hope of anything changing. Military spend cannot be reduced for several more years due to all of the threats from China, and the near destruction of the military by Obama, so that just leaves entitlements and the myriad of useless social programs, like 81 worker training programs that accomplish nothing useful. We will have to await November to see where we go from here.
S&P compared to 1999-2000. NAS 100 today 28x trailing vs 40 in 2000. In 99 there were 550 IPO's with moist rising 70% first day. Today the tech companies are APPL, GOOG, MSFT, FB, not the start-ups with no business plan. We Works was the bad example, but since that crashed before going public it stopped the insanity before it went too far. There are few big money losers with dumb business plans going public now. S&P trailing is 22x vs 30 in 1999. Appl is just at 24PE. The tech big names today are trillion dollar companies and not Pets.com. They are real and very wealthy, and cash rich businesses. Totally different fact set today. We are not having another Dotcom crash. Instead the big tech companies are leading a record rise in equities with very solid balance sheets and very real billions in earnings. In Feb 2000 the NAS hit 5218 as a high and did not recoup- to that level until 2015. It took 15 years for the market to get over the trauma of Dotcom. On an inflation adjusted basis it took until 2017. If you bought the Dow in March 2009 and just stayed invested, you would have had a return of approximately 14.6% per annum. My point being, steady as she goes with quality equities works if your timing is roughly right.
If you are invested in short term bonds, the Fed is considering short term yield caps. This is a version of QE where the Fed buys as much of a short term maturity to cap the yield on that maturity. It then tends to hold down yields on longer dated maturities. They have not done this yet, but could do it. It is done in Japan to keep yields at zero. Just keep this in mind as a risk of fixed income that your wealth manager claims is risk free.
It seems pretty clear now that GDP for 2020, especially after Q2, will exceed most forecasts. 3% growth is very possible for 2H. The momentum is building now that the trade deals are done and the stock market continues to set records, while inflation remains around 1.6%, and unemployment remains mid 3%. Consumer confidence just shot up. Housing and tech are going to drive the US economy this year, and it will surprise on the upside. With rates still at near record low levels, I just do not see anything to stop the accelerated growth. I am staying all equity. There is decent upside this year.
Corona virus will not materially impact the US as CDC and all local hospitals are now on high alerts. Travel from Wuhan, and other places in China, is now shut down, and anyone from China will be checked at arrival. It seems the outbreak is now contained enough to avoid a major problem in the US and most of the world. The virus will be a major issue for China this year, but the rest of the world, other than emerging markets dependent on China to sell commodities, will not be badly impacted since everyone is on high alert. One reader recently in China reports the streets are empty now. Just one more crisis and economic impediment for China, making their position much weaker. I have been in one of those markets that sell all sorts of dead and live animals. Once you have entered one, you never forget the smell and the sights. It always amazed me after seeing one, that there is not rampant disease at all times. Even in street markets in big cities, the live things, fishes, and things that squiggle, are in pans set on the road, and housewives buy from these pans. Chinese must have lots of disease resistance built up over generations.
Once impeachment is done, and then is followed by the Durham indictments of high level Dems, and then by the real story on the Biden family corruption, the Republicans are in for a big win. Did you know that Joe's brother, with no housing experience, suddenly became Exec VP of a housing company, and then, miraculously, that company got a government contract to build 100,000 houses in Iraq. Was it odd that Obama made Joe in charge of Ukraine, and ten days later Hunter gets this $1 million a year job shortly after he was thrown out of the military for substance abuse. Then that was followed by the famous quid pro quo -fire the prosecutor, or you don't get the $1 billion. Then suddenly the criminal head of Barisma gets his $27 million of impounded cash released by a British court because there is suddenly no more case to pursue because the prosecutor was fired. How are your dot connecting skills now. Lindsay Graham is now not letting go of this. Long ago I said the Dems are going to be very sorry they started this, and payback time is this summer. Now the Trump defense has made Schiff the target and they did so very well. That will continue now. Trump will be acquitted this week, or early next week. Schiff should be charged with lying, and perpetrating a very dangerous fraud on the American public..
Just consider, Trump just announced what could become the outlines of a Mideast peace plan that gets done-maybe. He did the deal with China and USMCA in the past week. He eliminated Soleimani and Baghdadi. The economy is running almost as good as it can be given the rest of the world economy, and the Dems claim he is an urgent threat to the nation. Susan Collins and Murkowski need to get some sense, and Mitt Romney needs to get over his personal vendetta against Trump for not getting Sec of State. He is willing to sacrifice the country and party for his vendetta. What is it they do not understand. This whole thing is designed to keep Trump from wiping out the Dems in November and these 3 or 4 Republicans are not smart enough to understand they are just playing into Schiff and Schumer's game. It just boggles my mind they are wanting to have more witnesses and continue this nonsense. You could not make this up for a movie script.
Lots of economists and others are trying to understand why there is nil inflation. I am convinced now, that the US and the world are in a new place where inflation in the US, and generally globally, will not run away, at least for several years. There are many countries where the economy is grossly mismanaged where inflation is out of control, but I am not considering them. First, as I have noted before, is the online shopping impact which economists believe may reduce inflation by as much as .5%. There is no way to measure this accurately, but it is very clear that Amazon and Wal Mart have materially impacted prices through easy price transparency and comparison. Now almost everyone selling anything has a website, and price comparison is simple for everyone. That has a major impact on inflation. Logistics has vastly improved over the past two or three years, and has become far more efficient and low cost for retailers as well as importers of industrial products. Free shipping is now built into retail costs, and is cutting costs of delivering the product to the consumer by reducing the need for large retail stores.
For the US, the investment is in technology to vastly improve productivity and quality. There is a worry that cap ex is dragging, but I am now believing that heavy equipment investment is a much smaller part of American production today, and value creation is not big pieces of machinery, but is instead AI, 5G, medical advances, and similar things that do not appear as capex, but instead as R&D, or just as compensation to coders, researchers, and AI geniuses. Just take Google or Apple. They are investing mainly in brains, not big machines, other than super computers, but their output for the benefit of society is vast. Their contribution to GDP is huge with all the ancillary businesses that are created around them, and their ability to create wealth through stock market value is unprecedented. We don't need many more big steel mills. We need lots of small start-ups of smart people sitting in an office or lab, creating new solutions to big problems. Venture investments in these start up shops is not considered cap ex, but it is what I defined as the new cap ex. Buying brains, and ideas, not equipment. It is the software systems and AI that companies are buying to improve their own operations which is not counted as cap ex. It is blockchain and 5G communications systems installed by Verizon or others and leased. It is not clear to me we are measuring cap ex correctly as a result of this. It is the basis of why I have said we are in a new industrial revolution that is as profound as the one in the 1800's. These new systems keep inflation controlled because they produce great value for the dollar spent on wages, that keeps costs lower and wages under control despite record low unemployment. And we are just at the early days of this revolution. In addition, manufacturers have finally instituted in house uptraining and apprenticeships, upgrading the work force, which will allow wages to be increased without inflation because now the same workers are vastly more productive and value creating for each hour of effort. So you can pay more while still creating more profit. This theory will only improve as AI becomes much more infused in all industries. AI is not going to kill jobs. It is going to grow the economy in a much more efficient, non-inflationary way, and more jobs will be service oriented, or brains oriented. That is why companies are retraining employees in house now. They need them.
If you want to know how dumb most people are, 44% think the economy is just fair to poor now. If record unemployment , record stock market, near record low interest rates, high savings and low debt to income, and home prices at a record high, is not a good economy, then they are just stupid. In 2010 unemployment was 10% by comparison.
The Republican defense is just right. Short, factual, simply destroyed the Dem charges, and clearly attacked Schiff for being the liar and opportunist he is with his own words. They started and ended Saturday with videos of blatant lies by Schiff. Perfectly done. They clearly defined the process as illegal. Pelosi cannot just decide on her own to order the Judicial Committee to proceed to write articles of impeachment after one day of hearings, nor at any time. That is illegal, but shows the arrogance and intent of the Dems. It is clear Hunter was paid a $3 mill bribe and daddy acted in return to see that Barisma was not pursued and the oligarch got his $23 million back from the Brits. The cover up is by the Dems to try to protect Joe. If any Republican Senator does not get what is really going on, they should go home. Even though they are not very bright, a dummy should be able to understand what the Dems are doing, and how terribly dangerous to the nation this is. The abuse of power is Pelosi and Schiff trying to find some way to overthrow the duly elected government. That has been what the Dems have been trying to do since the election. Where they could not get legislation passed that they wanted they went to CA courts and churned out decisions that district courts claimed were national. A position Justice Thomas has attacked, and hopefully the Supreme Court will get a case to put an end to that abuse of judicial power. The illegal immigration is another part of the Dem plan to pack elections by granting the right to vote, and issuing drivers licenses and other docs so illegals can just sign up to vote -that is why they don't want voter ID. This is a very scary all-out effort on various fronts by the Dems to get power, and change America to their image. The Republicans are doing a great job replacing judges to help solve the problem in the meantime. What we are witnessing over the past three years is the worst nightmare of the Founders, of a political party trying to usurp power by abusing the system. It is why originally the Founders had reservations about organized political parties. They did not trust the idea. Those Founders were very smart guys. As has been pointed out-Obama gave them blankets and Trump gave javelins, and the Dem's claim it is Trump who is risking national security by not helping the Ukrainians-and they say it over and over -they define lying hypocrite. Joe Biden cannot be happy with Hunter now.
Major Supreme Court decision. They backed Trump on the issue of illegals can be denied entry if they are to become a "public charge", welfare recipient. What is really the issue here is, Gorsuch excoriated district judges who issue "national judgments and injunctions". He, and Thomas in concurrence, took the first major shot at stopping judge shopping by leftists and then getting national injunctions. That will change the entire situation we have had for three years where left wing district judges assume the role of Congress and the president. This is extremely important.
Maybe you saw the video of the father who confronted Warren and asked if she is paying off $50,000 of student loans for anyone who borrowed the money, why isn't he getting his $50,000 back that he worked to save. She blew him off, but that one video is the end of her campaign. He asked the perfect right question. Why do the people who worked and sacrificed, and did it responsibly get screwed, and the ones who borrowed money they could not pay back get rewarded? The surrogates for Bernie are the squad and Michael Moore -and he may win Iowa???? The Dems are really off in never, never land. Kind of ironic here is a Jew with a blatant anti-Semite being his surrogate!! The Des Moines Register endorsed Warren, Bernie is surging in the polls, an avowed socialist with a recent heart attack who has never had a job, and who accomplished nothing in all his years in the Senate. Am I living on an alternate planet.
Someone very involved in quantum computing said his hope is that his quantum computer can figure out women since nothing else has worked so far.
2a) Subject: Feb. 2
If you ever needed a definition of black swans -it is called Corona Virus. Out of the blue, totally unexpected but major disruption. Clearly China has major problems with this. Nobody can go in or out and that will last maybe two more months. No way to know. No American or European in his right mind is going to China for any reason for a long time. The damage to business and trade in China will be extensive. Factories in many areas are shut down for at least another week or more. Nobody has any idea yet how long, or how bad this will be. So what does all that mean to the US and the stock market. We saw on Friday what fear and ignorance can do with a black swan. It is clear that the US will not be materially at risk and the CDC and all US health agencies are all over this. Nobody wants to be responsible for any outbreak in the US. So the panic in the market will pass, China will be very badly impacted and emerging markets will get crushed as China materially slows buying commodities until this passes and business gets back up and running. There are a lot of US companies that do not do business in China nor in nearby countries. They will be fine. Treat the collapse in stock prices as a major buy opportunity. The next phase II deal with China should be easier as they are now in no position to play tough guy. The Chinese now need the US trade more than ever. One man's problem is another man's opportunity. Those companies on the fence as to moving out of China just had their decision made for them. That will weaken China further.
Brexit has happened. The UK is free to do deals and deregulate. The main deal they will do is a major trade deal with the US which will benefit both nations. They will also do deals with India, Canada, and eventually with the EU. Some senior execs from the UK I have spoken to believe the UK is now in a great position to get rid of the shackles of the EU regulations and taxes, and to see much greater prosperity. The one year transition will make it relatively easy for the UK to complete the change with minimal disruption. The EU is in no position to take a major fight with Boris. GDP in the EU is barely above recession levels. The EU is also now needing to decide to take on Trump and get crushed with tariffs on farm products, or to lower or drop tariffs on US farm products and autos and allow them in. France will have a major problem on this one, and likely major protests by farmers. Germans will have a major problem with auto tariffs which they now impose on us, but will have to drop. Huge issue for Germany. In many ways Trump is correct that the EU will be much harder than China to get to a deal. You can expect several ups and downs along the way and some volatility in the stock market as we saw with the China negotiations. In the end the EU has to give in. They simply cannot afford a trade war with us after Brexit. With USMCA now the law, markets will relax quite a bit once Corona fears subside. .
Brexit represents much more than just the UK exiting the EU. It represents a major break from the decades of political mantra that Europe would be politically stronger and economically stronger if it acted as one. Result was the Brussels bureaucracy took increasing control and power unto itself, and all 27 countries must agree to anything important, resulting in inaction on critical issues. The EU is now on the cusp of recession. Its banks are seeking mergers because they are so weak, and American banks now dominate. Muslim immigration has upended the demographics of Netherlands, Germany, France and Belgium. Brexit represents a new political reality of the people once again having a say, and not the technocrats. The crushing defeat of Labor in the recent election clearly showed that centralized government control of our lives is not what people anywhere want. Pay attention Democrats! It is the exact same political shift that Trump represented, and it is the exact same shift that is driving the protests in Hong Kong, Latin America and Iraq, Lebanon and Iran. The world is entering a new political phase where the decades old centralized government run by power hungry, corrupt, liberal technocrats and elitists is being upended, and once again the people are demanding that government respond to their needs and demands, and not that of the elites and liberal press. We are living now through a major change in world relationships and politics which have been in place since WWII. Trump has set off a revolution away from the multilateral agreements, and bureaucracies, and has made it a policy to do what is best for America. That is a total revolution in American politics that has been the policy for 70 years, and set off a major philosophical shift in the world. Just as the American revolution set off the violent changes in Europe in the late 1700's starting with the French revolution, and the overthrow of the monarchical structure, Trump has set off a revolution in world politics to nations like the UK once again moving to self-interest combined with international cooperation and trade, and deregulation. It is why the establishment hates him. It is what is really driving the impeachment circus. He is blowing away their power base and control mechanisms. He is proving that the decades of past policies have not led to a better position for the world, or for the US. That is why the establishment and press label him as dangerous. He is dangerous to their power and corruption. Watch world events over the next five years, and you will witness a major shift away from existing corrupt governments and slow economic growth. It will be messy as the establishments fight to hold on to power. The problem is that when the new leaders get control, eventually they become like the guys they drove out. It has been the case throughout history. Power corrupts. China is what world events are now all about, and only a very strong US is able to stop them. The left wing weak Obama Democratic policies were leading to disaster if they had continued.
The situation in the Mideast is equally shifting in historic ways with the proposed peace plan. The Iran threat to the rest of the Mideast has managed to get the Arabs to cooperate with Israel, and to now support the peace plan as a basis for renewed negotiation. That is a huge change not seen in decades. The Arabs control the funding for Palestine. They can apply real pressure. It is likely that there will be renewed violence in Gaza and the West Bank over the threat to the power base of the Iran backed militias, but in the end, everything is now changed. Arabs showed up at the White House announcement, and the Saudis have come out in favor of using the plan to begin negotiations. We are at the start of a total change in the Mideast. Now Iran is in serious trouble, and they know they cannot take on the US militarily or they will pay a huge price. Notice how all of the Dem claims that Trump set off a possible war has proven to be the exact opposite. Iran fired its 15 missiles, and now they have shut down. There are also almost no more rockets from militias inside Iraq. Iraqis are protesting to get rid of Iranian influence. It will get ugly with much more violence, but in the end the mullahs will be gone and the Arabs and Israel will be cooperating and signing non-aggression pacts and trade deals. It will take time and be messy, but it will happen now. The new US policy has turned the whole Mideast upside down.
In summary, we are now in the early stages of a massive historical shift in power, trade, multilateral agreements that do not work, and centralized, heavily regulated policies by governments around the world. Boris and Trump will lead this revolution, and the US has become the premier nation again. That will result in a growing and stronger US economy and stock market long term. All levels of the US population are benefiting. Capital will continue to flow into the US as the safe haven along with London. Brexit will prove a boom for the UK once the initial disruptions are resolved. Notice that nothing happened this week with Brexit going into effect. It is a relatively smooth transition. The EU is toast. In November voters will realize that Republicans, led by Trump, have brought them new personal prosperity they do not want to give up to the DC establishment controlling their lives. Bernie and the far left are not the threat the press makes them out to be. The silent majority is very alive and well in the US and not just in the Midwest. The crushing defeat of Labor in the UK is an important lesson.
The 3 month and 10 year inverted with the ten year at 1.505%, and right away recession talk revived. Ignore this nonsense. The ten year has plunged due to a huge flight of capital into US bonds due to Corona. The inversion has nothing at all to do with the economy or recession.
The duration of bonds has moved to longer duration of investment grade corporates as they seek to lock in ultra-low rates for 20-30 years with no, or limited call provisions. On the other hand, junk has a much shorter duration now as these issues often have call provisions, and so these are being exercised to again take advantage of lower rates. So when you buy a junk bond, you can get called well before what you thought was maturity. "Duration" is a measure of sensitivity of a bond's price to changes in rates. Higher duration, the higher the risk of price decline when rates rise. Also duration is the measure of a bond price measured by the time it takes to recover the price through the present value of all future cash flows. The discount rate used is the yield on the bond, so if the bond price and or yield change, so does the duration. The higher the duration, the greater the risk to the bond value. So a long maturity bond has greater risk. This all matters as the maturity goes out further, the bond is subject to more potential times the yield will change as markets move, and as rates change over time, so the risk of loss of value of the bond is potentially greater if yields move up from the low level they are at now. Clearly if you just own a bond to maturity you will collect the stated interest rate and get paid face value at maturity. But if you go to sell the bond before maturity it my have a lower value if yields generally rise. Bonds are not risk free unless they are Treasuries held to maturity. In the nineties some partners and I, and the kid who created it, had a company that had a proprietary program to determine duration of a whole institutional portfolio. We sold it to Ernst & Young and EF Hutton.
The Dems are a much bigger threat to the republic than Putin. All he does is propaganda on Facebook and similar things. The Dems trashed the constitution, and proper due process, and let Schiff run wild with Nadler, who is just a dumb sleezy Brooklyn hack. The Founders were very clear they did not want impeachment to become a political weapon of whatever party held the House. But that is exactly what the Dems did. As Al Green said, we can't defeat him, so we need to impeach him. That is a gross violation of what the constitution and the republic are all about. The constitution requires the House to investigate and then to present their findings to the Senate. It is not the job of the Senate to call witnesses when the House had already had 18, one of which, the IG, they refuse to release. For the Dems to claim there is no acquittal because there was not a proper trial with witnesses, is to malignly misrepresent what the constitution and the Founders set out to create for impeachment. What was all the info and depositions they presented for 22 hours in their "overwhelming evidence" case,-- just wallpaper. They are a disgrace, and they trash the constitution and due process by their refusal to accept Trump being not guilty. I have developed an auto reject on my remote. Whenever Schumer or Schiff come on it shuts down the TV. They make me ill to listen to their garbage talk about acquittal does not count. These people are very dangerous. They will do anything to regain power, no matter how they abuse the system. This is all about power. It is why they are all for illegal aliens coming in so they can then have them vote in local elections to gain control of legislatures. NYC is close to doing that.
I have on numerous occasions said that I basically buy and hold long term in the stock market, but on occasion I will take advantage of an opportunity to trade out and into a better choice. When the market tanked 450 points I sold WMT where I had a nice profit and the stock had barely moved that day, and I bought MSFT with the proceeds because it had dropped over $3.00. I had already had a good sized position in MSFT from three years ago. Since the recent buy, MSFT is up substantially, and going much higher in my view, and will generate much better returns than WMT. The current downturn is that sort of great buy opportunity if you have idle cash. Likewise, I bought GE at under $9.00 believing that it has some great assets and just needed the right management to set it back on a long term positive trend. That gives you some idea of how I invest.
Oil is now near a low. Good is that this is an even further boost to the spendable income of low income workers. Bad news is frackers are losing more money at that level. Good news is Iran is making even less on the tiny amount of oil it smuggles out. OPEC is holding an emergency meeting to discuss the 21% drop in prices. Russia is in trouble as oil is their primary source of income. The virus is a major hit to the oil countries, but will likely be a net good for the US since we are going to get the benefit to consumers. Oil prices are likely to remain low for months until China gets fully back online. Companies supplying oil field equipment will get hurt this year.
If you are worried about Corona where nobody has died and only 7 cases have appeared in the US, you should instead worry that 195 people die every day from drug overdose in the US. That is a real epidemic that is impacting the economy by killing a lot of people, but also impacting the labor market by taking tens of thousands of otherwise able people out of the labor pool due to addiction.
There is no more privacy if you are on Facebook or Instagram. I am on neither. There are surveillance cameras everywhere including Ring and other entry cameras. Google knows everything you buy and where you go at all times if you leave location turned on. Google maps has everything you have done for many months. Really scary what they know. Now we know medical records are being collected. If you think you have any secrets left- you are wrong. You have none anymore. If you use one of the DNA services you really have no secrets. That data is being used and sold. Facebook has 2.5 Billion users per day. You cannot run nor hide any longer. One day we are going to be sorry this data is out there. One day it will get used by someone for nefarious reasons beyond just ID theft. I don't know what the answer is since young people seem not to care. They never read 1984 nor do they have any clue what China is doing with all the data they collect to have total control of the entire population.
I am not able to properly explain quantum computing because I really have no background from which to really understand it, but to put it in perspective, a quantum computer solved a problem in 3 minutes and 20 seconds that a new super computer would take 10,000 years to solve. Just for perspective. Clearly teaming quantum with AI we will be able to find all sorts of solutions that are not now possible. The amount of data crunched by a quantum computer allows researchers to achieve solutions to otherwise insoluble problems. China is far ahead of the US in this and is spending huge amounts to try to get even further ahead. It not only solves problems, but can be used for warfare in ways now unimaginable except to those in the quantum and defense field. Pay attention to what happens in quantum computing over the next few years.
When I went to university I had no money, so I worked to eat. One thing I did was bus tables at the faculty club so I got to eat at least one good meal a day, plus some cash. Bon Jovi just announced a program at Rutgers to provide free food to poor students. What happened to working for it. No, not these days. Heaven forbid that the snowflakes actually had to earn their way through school and had to work to eat like many of us. And you wonder why these kiddies are so helpless, and love Bernie who is promising to give them free everything. Universities are raising a generation of helpless, uneducated snowflakes.
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3) The Blind Generation
This article was written by Alyssa Ahlgren. A college student who's in grad school for her MBA.
My Generation Is Blind to the Prosperity Around Us
I'm sitting in a small coffee shop near Lake Nokomis (Mpls) trying to think of what to write about. I scroll through my newsfeed on my phone looking at the latest headlines of Democratic candidates calling for policies to "fix" the so-called injustices of capitalism. I put my phone down and continue to look around. I see people talking freely, working on their MacBook's, ordering food they get in an instant, seeing cars go by outside, and it dawned on me. We live in the most privileged time in the most prosperous nation and we've become completely blind to it. Vehicles, food, technology, freedom to associate with whom we choose. These things are so ingrained in our American way of life we don't give them a second thought. We are so well off here in the United States that our poverty line begins 31 times above the global average. Thirty. One. Times. Virtually no one in the United States is considered poor by global standards. Yet, in a time where we can order a product off Amazon with one click and have it at our doorstep the next day, we are unappreciative, unsatisfied, and ungrateful.
Our non-appreciation is evident as the popularity of socialist policies among my generation continues to grow. Democratic Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez recently said to Newsweek talking about the millennial generation, "An entire generation, which is now becoming one of the largest electorates in America, came of age and never saw American prosperity."
Never saw American prosperity !!!! Let that sink in. When I first read that statement, I thought to myself, which was quite literally the most entitled and factually illiterate thing I've ever heard in my 26 years on this earth. Many young people agree with her, which is entirely misguided. My generation is being indoctrinated by a mainstream narrative to actually believe we have never seen prosperity. I know this first hand, I went to college, let's just say I didn't have the popular opinion, but I digress.
Why then, with all of the overwhelming evidence around us, evidence that I can even see sitting at a coffee shop, do we not view this as prosperity ?? We have people who are dying to get into our country. People around the world destitute and truly impoverished. Yet, we have a young generation convinced they've never seen prosperity, and as a result, elect politicians dead set on taking steps towards abolishing capitalism.
Why ?? The answer is this; My generation has only seen prosperity. We have no contrast. We didn't live in the great depression, or live through two world wars, the Korean War, The Vietnam War or see the rise and fall of socialism and communism. We don't know what it's like to live without the internet, without cars, without smartphones. We don't have a lack of prosperity problem.
We have an entitlement problem, an ungratefulness problem, and it's spreading like a plague.
3a) The Palestinians' bluff has been called
US President Donald Trump is telling them to suck it up or lose because the Israelis are going to get what they need to survive.
US President Donald Trump's Middle East "deal of the century" offers the Palestinians a state. They have rejected it and threatened instead to ramp up violence against Israel.
No one can be surprised. They have rejected every offer of a state previously made to them in 1937, 1947, 2000, 2008 and 2014.
So is this latest deal anything more than Groundhog Day for the Middle East all over again? Yes, because this isn't a deal. It's an ultimatum.
Israel intends to enact its part in the plan unilaterally by declaring sovereignty over the Israeli settlement blocs and the Jordan Valley. The big change is that despite the subsequently crossed wires over timing, the United States will accept this.
That's because this isn't a "peace process" in which both sides must progress in tandem with each other – a process that gave the Palestinians an effective veto even while they continued to wage their war of extermination against Israel.
For the first time, here's an American plan that puts the security of Israel first and foremost. It's, therefore, the first time that the United States has unequivocally supported Israel's future existence.
For if a country cannot defend itself against enemies sworn to liquidate it, that country can't survive. Yet until now, even US administrations supposedly sympathetic to Israel imposed upon its requirements that undermined its security and defense against attack.
Other supposed allies, such as Britain or the European Union, have also paid mere lip service to Israel while denying the validity of its claim to the disputed territories in Judea and Samaria. Yet its claim to these territories is legal many times over, both under international laws of self-defense and through the international community's decision in the 1920s to designate the whole of Palestine as the homeland of the Jews alone.
By denying Israel's right to all the land, Britain and the rest of the West have effectively undermined the Jews' entitlement to any of it.
The Trump plan has now swept aside that appeasement of evil, started by the British in the 1930s, and which has been pursued by the American and Western foreign-policy establishment ever since.
Yet this proposal is far from being one-sided. On the contrary, it generously provides the Palestinians with a route to a state of their own consisting of most of the disputed territories (with sovereignty less limited than the conditions imposed by the allies on Germany after World War II). It is a highly detailed map for a two-state solution.
This has produced cries of dismay from Israelis for whom a Palestine state is anathema, and who view this as yet another reward being dangled for continued Palestinian terrorism and war. But this reward is entirely conditional upon the Palestinians giving up the very thing which forms their identity and without which they are nothing: their aim to liquidate the State of Israel.
Trump is telling the Palestinians to suck this up – or lose, because the Israelis are going to get what they need to survive regardless. Jared Kushner, one of the architects of this plan, says it's the Palestinians' last opportunity for a state.
But this assumes they want a state – which, of course, they don't. That demand has always been a ruse to destroy Israel.
That's why the Palestinians have always refused previous offers of a state and turned to violence instead; whereupon Israel has been pressured to offer them still more concessions. And that's why the "peace process" has been in fact an engine of perpetual conflict.
Now the Palestinians' bluff has been called. Once again they are responding with threats of more violence, because there are no circumstances in which they will ever accept the right of the Jews to their own ancestral homeland.
Increasingly shunned by the Arab world, their one hope of keeping alive this war of extermination lies in the support they continue to receive from the liberal West: Britain, the EU and increasing numbers of US Democrats.
They robotically pump out the lies that the Palestinians tell. The lie that they, and not the Jews, are the indigenous people of the land. The lie that Israel illegally occupies that land. The lie that the Israelis oppress and persecute the Palestinians, whose only crime is to want their own state and whose claim to the land must, therefore, be given at least the same status as that of Israel.
The morally bankrupt equivalence between victim and aggressor has kept this war going. It has now been repudiated by the Trump peace plan.
But the war of extermination against Israel will stop only if the rest of the West now ends its tacit support for it.
It will end only if the West stops funding it and instead makes all aid to the Palestinians conditional on ending their institutionalized incitement to violence against Jews, the salaries they pay the families of those who murder Israelis and their glorification of terrorism.
It will end only if the "human rights" community that wages "lawfare" against Israel is now exposed as the sham that it is for hijacking the language, eviscerating the concepts of law and justice and grotesquely turning "human rights" into murderous wrongs.
Perhaps the Trump plan's most important achievement is to put on record the truth about the Jews' unique rights to the land of Israel. As it states, the areas that Israel is being asked to yield to the Palestinians nevertheless constitute "territory to which Israel has asserted valid legal and historical claims, and which are part of the ancestral homeland of the Jewish people."
As for the loud protests that Israel is being allowed to "annex the West Bank," professor of international law Eugene Kontorovich has tweeted that the United States is not proposing to recognize Israeli annexation of the territory: "It is recognizing that Israel has always had a legitimate claim on this land." In other words, the application of Israeli sovereignty is to be based on its pre-existing rights to the land.
The most intractable element of these pre-existing Jewish rights is Jerusalem, which Israel will never allow to be divided again but to which the Palestinians lay claim as their state's intended capital. The plan audaciously resolves this apparently insoluble conundrum by stating that the Palestine capital should be located "in all areas east and north of the existing security barrier," including Kafr Aqab, the eastern part of Shuafat and Abu Dis, and which could be named Al Quds.
In other words, the Trump team has simply redefined Jerusalem to exclude those Arab areas of the city beyond the security barrier. This would enable the Palestinians to tell themselves their capital is Jerusalem, while Israel will have ceased to regard that area as Jerusalem at all.
Of course, the Palestinians would never agree to this. "Al Quds" to them centers on their illegitimate appropriation of Temple Mount – the most sacred site in Judaism.
But the plan states the all-important historical truth denied by the Palestinians because it vitiates their entire claim to the land – that Jerusalem was the political center of the Jewish people under King David, and has remained their spiritual center and the focus of their religious beliefs for nearly 3,000 years.
The Trump plan won't bring peace; however, it restores the truth and justice that are essential prerequisites of peace. Crushing the lethal and poisonous fantasies about Israel and the Jewish people, as well as taking a hard-headed approach to Palestinian intentions, it replaces illusions by reality.
That's no small achievement. Now it's up to the rest of the world.
3b) Time for the architects of Middle East failure to be quiet
Longtime State Department peace processors who helped wreck the region under Clinton or Obama and now are first to criticize the Trump plan lack credibility.
Disdain for President Donald Trump and the people who work in his administration runs deep in the media, as well as the foreign-policy establishment. At the core of this attitude is the current administration’s rejection of the conventional wisdom about diplomacy and the Middle East that governed American policy for decades.
Trump’s critics frame the debate about the administration as one that pits experts against amateurs. In this telling, Trump and his aides are a pack of bumbling ignoramuses. They are depicted as foolishly ignoring the advice of people who are more experienced and much smarter than they are, and thereby making already bad situations, such as the ongoing confrontation with Iran and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, worse.
It’s true that Trump had no foreign-policy experience before becoming president. The team that he appointed to deal with the Israeli-Palestinian struggle was similarly lacking in diplomatic credentials. In particular, the trio of presidential adviser/son-in-law Jared Kushner, Middle East special envoy Jason Greenblatt and America’s ambassador to Israel David Friedman were essentially Trump’s real estate industry cronies rather than the sort of veteran policy wonks who would have been expected to fill such important slots in a more “normal” administration.
That’s why the critiques of Trump’s actions—his withdrawal from the 2015 Iran nuclear deal and reimposition of sanctions on the regime, recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and the Jewish state’s right to the Golan, as well as his attempts to force the Palestinian Authority to cease funding terrorism—didn’t just elicit strong critiques from the ranks of those who had served in past administrations. The tone of the analyses that poured forth from liberal think tanks where alumni from the Clinton and Obama administrations, as well as some from the two Bush presidencies, now serve has been not so much harshly disapproving as dripping with contempt.
The same attitude is present in the commentary from establishment types about the Middle East peace plan that was rolled out this week in a White House ceremony. In an odd echo of the rage at Trump being heard from the leadership of the Palestinians, foreign-policy veterans have, for the most part, responded to the plan with a mixture of incredulousness, anger, predictions of doom and, most of all, with sneering condescension.
The best example of such a response can be found in an article published by Politico under the joint byline of Aaron David Miller and Robert Malley under the title of “The Real Goal of Trump’s Middle East Plan: It’s not peace. It’s power.” Miller and Malley dismiss the Trump plan as one whose goal is merely to dominate other nations. They predict that it will kill any hope of peace or of the satisfaction of legitimate Palestinian aspirations. But they also lament that if the Palestinians don’t respond forcefully enough—presumably by launching a new wave of terrorism—that failure to punish Trump and Israel will only lead to more outrages in the future.
Aside from seeming to be rooting for another bloody intifada, a dispassionate examination of their record undermines trust in their expertise.
Miller, who is currently a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for Peace, served as Middle East peace processor in the U.S. State Department from 1978 to 2003, and took part in several attempts to end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict with special responsibility for American efforts to implement the Oslo Accords.
Malley is another government veteran who helped organize the Camp David Summit, where President Bill Clinton and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak attempted to get PLO chairman Yasser Arafat (whom he subsequently falsely exonerated as being responsible for the summit’s failure) to agree to peace and a Palestinian state. He later served as point man in President Barack Obama’s efforts to broker Middle East peace. His long service led to him being named the head of the International Crisis Group, an influential and wealthy transnational liberal consulting firm.
But only their record of failure in achieving peace and curbing terrorism matches Miller’s and Malley’s undoubted knowledge of Middle Eastern diplomacy. For decades, the pair advised presidents of both parties that the only way to solve the region’s problems of the region was to pressure Israel to make concessions in order to appease the Palestinians. They consistently failed to understand that the Palestinians were uninterested in a peaceful solution where the two states would live alongside each other. And their failures, particularly the Camp David fiasco, led to directly to a terrorist war of attrition that brought misery and death to both Israelis and Palestinians. Rather than learning from their mistakes, they have continued to double down on advice that has been thoroughly discredited by the last few decades of history.
So while we don’t know whether Trump and Kushner will leave the Middle East better off than they found it, we already know that Miller and Malley—and those who heeded their bad counsel—left it far worse. Along with the rest of the foreign-policy establishment, they have been the architects of failure after failure, and instead of suffering opprobrium for their mistakes, they have been rewarded with praise from the media and profitable sinecures from which they can pontificate about their successors.
In a world in which people have been judged by their records instead of their resumes, Miller and Malley—and everyone like them—would be ignored or mocked rather than treated as experts who have the right to lecture the president and his supporters.
Whatever you may think of Trump, his rejection of the advice of such people demonstrates good judgment and not disdain for wisdom. By eschewing the false remedies the so-called foreign-policy wise men have been selling the country all these years, Trump has rooted his strategies in reality, not fantasy. It may not work, but Miller and Malley are in no position to criticize him. Instead of spouting off about Trump’s alleged foolishness and folly, they should do us all a favor and simply shut up.
3c) Michael Ordman's: Indispensable - Israel's Good News Newsletter
Israel is essential for maintaining the safety and smooth-running of governments, world economies, global health systems, multinationals and more. This week's newsletter includes recent news of Israeli innovations to combat the coronavirus, support the UK's health service and trade, help solve Australia's environmental disaster, protect Presidential planes, defeat global drought and pollution, protect the elderly and vulnerable and much more.
Best regards
Michael
Michael
In the 2nd Feb 20 edition of Israel’s good news, the highlights include:
- Vital Israeli developments to prevent the spread of deadly viruses.
- An Israeli innovation could reverse chronic kidney disease.
- Israelis are developing solutions to combat Australia’s environmental disaster.
- Must-see Tel Aviv exhibition of 45 top Israeli innovations.
- Two Israeli examples of the amazing possibilities with Virtual Reality.
- The UK leaves the EU and strengthens links with Israel.
- Two more gold medals for Israeli judokas.
- Holocaust survivor proudly watches IDF pilot grandson fly over her Israeli home.
ISRAEL’S MEDICAL ACHIEVEMENTS
Prioritizing flu vaccinations. Israeli health company Maccabi has partnered with Israel’s Medial EarlySign (see here). Maccabi will integrate EarlySign’s flu algorithm, which flags people at high risk of developing flu-related complications, to target them with its vaccination campaign.
https://www.calcalistech.com/
New masks to help prevent spread of coronavirus. (TY UWI) Israel startups Sonovia (see here) and Argaman (see here) are racing to produce production versions of their bio-inhibitive and anti-viral textiles and masks. They could be vital prevention tools in epidemics like the deadly Wuhan coronavirus.
https://www.israel21c.org/new-
https://www.youtube.com/watch?
Another good trial of colon capsule scan. (TY Atid-EDI) Israel’s Check-Cap has announced positive results from its latest US pilot study of its C-Scan colon capsule system. The dual-center study achieved both primary (safety) and secondary (patient satisfaction and performance) endpoints. C-Scan is already CE approved.
http://ir.check-cap.com/2019-
Success at Phase 3 for acne cream. (TY Atid-EDI) Following on from good Phase 2 trials (see here) Israel’s Sol-Gel reported excellent results from pivotal Phase 3 clinical trials of its Twyneo treatment of patients with acne vulgaris. The trial significantly reduced moderate-to-severe acne in 858 patients aged nine and older.
http://ir.sol-gel.com/news-
Treating genetic diseases. Israeli-founded Emendo Biotherapeutics, based in New York, utilizes protein engineering for precision gene editing, to treat certain genetic disorders and diseases. It has seven treatments in early stages of development. Emendo has just raised $61 million of funding.
https://www.calcalistech.com/
Optical discovery from shrimps. (TY WIN) Scientists at Israel’s Ben Gurion University and Weizmann Institute have discovered how shrimp can see in the murky depths of the sea. The biocrystal coating of their retina light detectors may inspire the development of new optical coatings and specialized paints.
http://www.xinhuanet.com/
More about low-cost X-rays. As reported previously (see here), Israel’s Nanox has developed technology to lower the cost of X-ray imaging and make it more accessible to the developing world. Nanox has just received $26 million funding for its Nanox.Arc digital X-ray device and accompanying Nanox.Cloud software.
https://www.jpost.com/HEALTH-
A future end to dialysis. (TY UWI) Researchers at Israel’s Sheba Medical Center found that damaged kidneys can be rejuvenated by extracting healthy kidney stem cells from diseased cells, multiplying the healthy cells in a laboratory and reintroducing them into the kidney. Israel’s KidneyCure (see here) has begun human trials.
https://jewishnews.
http://www.israelnationalnews.
https://www.cell.com/cell-
ISRAEL IS INCLUSIVE AND GLOBAL
US professors visit Israeli universities. The Jewish National Fund (JNF) has brought 28 professors from universities and colleges across the US to Israel. The JNF Faculty Fellowship Program links US scholars with their respective Israeli faculty to promote joint research, establish exchange programs and to see the country.
https://www.jns.org/us-
Israeli system protects French President’s plane. (TY WIN) French President Emmanuel Macron’s attended the commemoration of the 75th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz Birkenau. As his plane arrived at Tel Aviv’s Ben Gurion Airport, Elbit’s J-Music defense system was visible on the underside of his Airbus A330.
http://www.israelnationalnews.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?
Prince Charles says Israel maintains UK’s Health Service. When in Israel, UK Royal Prince Charles said, “it seems to me like Israeli genius is maintaining the entire structure of the NHS along with a great deal of other technology”. He received presentations of Israeli innovations WaterGen, HomeBiogas and Sniff Phone.
https://www.jpost.com/Israel-
Hackathon for Australian bushfire solutions. Israeli tech entrepreneurs, programmers, zoologists, water and environmental experts are taking part in a 15-hour hackathon (product design workshop event) in Tel Aviv to devise ways to help Australia tackle the consequences of the environmental calamity from its bushfires.
https://www.timesofisrael.com/
MDA offers help for Turkish earthquake victims. Eli Bin, Director-General of Israel’s Magen David Adom (MDA), has offered assistance to the Turkish Red Crescent following the 6.9 magnitude earthquake that hit Alazig province in Turkey. The powerful quake has resulted in over 1,000 casualties.
http://www.israelnationalnews.
SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY
Showcasing Israeli innovation. 75,000 visitors have already visited the Peres Center for Peace and Innovation in Tel Aviv since it opened in Feb. Each year it selects 45 of Israel’s most exciting startups to exhibit.
https://www.timesofisrael.com/
Innovative water companies. Two exciting Israeli water management startups at the Peres Innovation Center include Bermad and Kando – neither previously featured in this newsletter. Bermad’s control systems are installed in 86 countries. Kando’s wastewater sensors pinpoint the sources of pollution (great video).
https://www.bermad.com/ https://www.youtube.com/
https://www.kando.eco/ https://www.youtube.com/watch?
Water water everywhere. This newsletter reported previously (Nov 2014) about Israel’s Waterways and its projects to bring water solutions to Africa. Another Israeli company, Water Ways Technologies, delivers irrigation solutions globally, and CEO Ohad Haber gave a presentation recently to investors in Winnipeg.
https://www.water-ways-
http://www.
Detecting faulty bridges and tunnels. (TY Herb) Collapsed bridges have killed people in Florida, China, Chile, Italy, Myanmar and Taiwan. An estimated 47,000 of US bridges are deficient. Israeli startup Dynamic Infrastructure provides a real-time 3D “medical report” on the health of bridges, tunnels and elevated highways.
https://www.israel21c.org/
http://diglobal.tech/ https://www.youtube.com/watch?
Tracking water pollution in real time. Researchers at Israel’s Ben-Gurion University, have developed an optical nitrate sensor, based on absorption spectroscopy. It gives farmers real-time, continuous measurement of soil nitrate levels thereby optimizing crop fertilization and reducing the risk of groundwater poisoning.
https://www.jpost.com/Jpost-
Hundreds of new wind turbines for the Golan. (TY Atid-EDI) Israel’s Defense Ministry and Infrastructure Ministry are to provide NIS 250 million funding to help build wind farms in the Golan Heights. It includes technology to avoid disrupting IDF and IAF activity and will help achieve Israel’s 2030 renewables target.
https://en.globes.co.il/en/
Vegan 3D-printed cellulose burgers. Israeli hamburger restaurant group Burgus Burger Bar (BBB) has partnered with Israeli 3D cellulose hamburger printing startup SavorEat (formerly Chef-It see here). Once SavorEat’s vegan burgers are ready to market, BBB will exclusively pilot the burger – planned for mid-2021.
https://www.calcalistech.com/
Be where you want to be. Israel’s Spectalix has developed technology that can transfer moving images of people or objects from a mobile phone-recorded video onto a new video background. E.g. you play the piano in your own home and appear as if performing at Carnegie Hall. It has many commercial applications.
https://www.calcalistech.com/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?
Powering Vimeo. Vimeo has debuted a new platform designed to help creatives produce shareable, short-form videos in minutes. Vimeo Create is powered by AI technology from Israeli-founded Magisto (see here) which it acquired in Apr 2019 for around $200 million.
https://venturebeat.com/2020/
Comprehensive home monitoring. (TY Atid-EDI) Israel’s Vayyar (see here) has developed some amazing technology. Vayyar’s Home system checks the vulnerable for risk of falling (any incidents alerted), alerts for intruders, analyzes sleep quality, turns on lights, air-con etc. All just with sensors (no cameras or wearables).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?
Helping to make driving safer. (TY Atid-EDI) Israel’s Jungo won “Connected Car Innovation of the Year” in the 2020 IoT Breakthrough awards for its CoDriver in-cabin driver monitoring solution that helps make vehicles safer. US giant Qualcomm is to install CoDriver on its Snapdragon automotive cockpit platforms.
https://www.prnewswire.com/
ECONOMY & BUSINESS
UK & Israel’s new strategic partnership. BICOM’s new report Britain and Israel: The new strategic partnership shows that British trade with Israel is booming and bilateral relations are expanding in defense, science, tech, business and cybersecurity. It highlights a new strategic partnership between the two countries.
http://www.bicom.org.uk/news/
http://www.bicom.org.uk/wp-
Chinese incubator for Israeli autonomous car startups. A new accelerator has been launched to promote Israeli autotech startups in China. It will include 10 participants, focused on autonomous vehicles, driver experience, and 3-D printing. The accelerator aims to shorten the companies’ time to market in the country.
https://www.calcalistech.com/
From Silicon Wadi to Silicon Valley. Israeli NGO ICON (Israel Collaboration Network – see here) has setup Silicon Valley 101 (SV101) an immersion program for Israeli entrepreneurs examining potential expansion to Silicon Valley. SV101’s latest group of 10 new startups is now being selected.
https://www.calcalistech.com/
Microsoft to launch Israeli data center. Microsoft Corp. has announced plans to set up a data center in Israel - the first such data center to be established here by one of the five big tech giants. The Microsoft data center will provide cloud services for Israeli customers. Oracle also said it would be setting up a data center in Israel.
https://en.globes.co.il/en/
Crowdfunding in Abu Dhabi and Jerusalem. Jon Medved of Israel’s OurCrowd was one of the first Israeli Venture Capitalists to speak openly in an investor conference in the Gulf (see here),. Here is a video interview of him at the event. Plus, details of OurCrowd’s Global Investor Summit in Jerusalem on 13th Feb 2020.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?
https://summit.ourcrowd.com/
Many more fans. Israeli-founded, London-based Minute Media (previously named 90min) has just acquired FanSided Ltd., a network of fandom-focused sports, entertainment, and lifestyle sites. It is Minute Media’s fourth takeover in two years. A third of Minute Media’s 230 employees work at its Tel Aviv R&D center.
https://www.calcalistech.com/
Bundesliga buys into Israeli tech company. DFL Deutsche Fußball Liga GmbH, responsible for the German national soccer league (Bundesliga), has bought shares in Israel’s MOVEZ AI. MOVEZ’s soon to launch app uses computer vision and AI to evaluate a player’s skills in ball sports, including basketball and soccer.
https://www.calcalistech.com/
https://www.dfl.de/en/news/
Israeli payments for Canada. Israel’s Tipalti (Hebrew for “I handled it”) has offices in Israel, California and now Vancouver, Canada. Tipalti’s cloud-based payables automation service processes over $8 billion in transactions annually (see here). Its clients include Amazon, Vimeo, Foursquare, and Twitter.
https://www.calcalistech.com/
https://tipalti.com/vancouver-
CULTURE, ENTERTAINMENT & SPORT`
New nature reserves in Judea & Samaria. Israel has approved seven new nature reserves in Judea & Samaria - the first since the 1990s. In addition, 12 existing reserves will be expanded. The new sites are at the Ariel Cave, Wadi Og, Wadi Malha, the Southern Jordan River, Bitronot Creek, Nahal Tirza, and Rotem-Maskiot.
https://www.timesofisrael.com/
Taste of the Valleys. (TY Janglo) At the 16th annual Taste of the Valleys (Te’amim Ba’amakim) Festival, (Feb 2 – 22)) families can enjoy breathtaking landscapes, hiking trails, quality restaurants and great concerts. It
connects local restaurants, wineries and farms and brings guests to KKL-JNF nature trails and Kishon River.
https://www.jpost.com/israeli%
Top Israel restaurants. (TY Jacques) The latest release of La Liste - “the world’s best restaurant selection” - includes 13 Israel venues. The top Israeli restaurant is Meir Adoni’s Lumina, who “blends casual fine dining with a kosher Mediterranean spin”. His Blue Sky restaurant at Tel Aviv’s Carlton Hotel also made the list.
http://israelbetweenthelines.
Ex-world boxing champion Rabbi teaches self-defense. Israel’s Yuri Forman held the World Boxing Association’s super welterweight title from 2009 to 2010. In 2014 he ordained as an orthodox Rabbi. He is currently giving self-defense classes in Brooklyn for members of vulnerable Jewish communities.
https://www.algemeiner.com/
Israeli cycling team uses Israeli hi-tech. Israel Cycling Academy (now re-named Israel Start-Up Nation) will use computer vision and AI technologies from Israel’s Physimax to create personalized training programs for the 2020 Tour de France. The cyclists will also wear the vital signs monitoring device from Israel’s Biobeat.
https://www.calcalistech.com/
http://nocamels.com/2020/01/
Israeli judokas win gold at Tel Aviv grand prix. (TY UWI) Israeli judokas Ori Sasson and Peter Paltchik took home two gold medals at the Tel Aviv Grand Prix, winning the over-100kg and under-100kg categories, respectively. They spoke afterwards about how their success inspires Israeli children.
https://www.israel21c.org/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?
THE JEWISH STATE
Reaching out to discharged lone soldiers. Israeli charity Boomerang supports 500 of the 3,000 lone soldiers discharged from the IDF each year with job searching, training, health issues, equipment etc. It recently launched its “Misheli” project to support 1,000 more ex-soldiers and to set up a Call Center helpline service.
https://www.boomerangfight.
https://www.jgive.com/new/en/
Holocaust survivor sees grandson fly as IDF pilot. 89-year-old Lila not only survived the Holocaust, she made it to Israel, where she raised a family and is now the proud grandmother of an Israeli Air Force pilot. In this touching video she watches as her grandson flies over her Israeli home.
https://unitedwithisrael.org/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?
Startup repays grant to help a new startup. Since its 2016 launch, Israel’s Elementor website builder for WordPress has had over 3 million installs in 180 countries. Orthodox Jewish co-founder Yoni Luksenberg has now returned the 20,000-shekel grant he received from incubator KamaTech so it can benefit new startups.
https://worldisraelnews.com/
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4) Tuesday, I submit, we saw another side of Trump and in many ways the true Trump. The Trump who cares deeply about America and it's extraordinary people and their accomplishments. The man who see no rational reason why we should want our nation to be second best.
He had every opportunity to begin by turning to Petulant Pelosi and saying 'I see you are sitting and yet, after all you and your party have chosen to do, I am still standing.' However, he chose not to be combative.
Trump had every right to articulate his administration's accomplishments and to emphasize he had kept his many campaign promises. Yes, he resorted to some superlative adjectives in describing the economic results in ways I might have toned down but they are factually correct notwithstanding the mass media never highlights them and the attractive Democrat Governor of Michigan's post SOTUS response was obviously written long before Trump's address and was frequently misleading.
My wife correctly admonishes me in being too broad/general in my comments because I have often said, and I repeat, liberals and progressives are an unhappy, if not a downright mad and miserable, lot. They find very little that is acceptable and are always offering impassioned but impractical solutions - mostly of a bureaucratic nature. What comes to mind is the joke about the four Jewish women who go to a restaurant, take their seat and when the waiter comes over the first thing he asks "is anything right?"
They seem to relish victim hood. They are born whiners. They cannot accept their 2016 defeat and truly hate Trump because he not only beat their anointed queen bee but has proven to be an unorthodox president who has achieved many of his pursuits. If Trump is guilty of anything it is his ability to make Democrat progressive radicals fools of themselves who support illegal immigration, sanctuary cities, have contempt for our constitution, capitalism and can't even bring themselves to conduct an election in the small state of Iowa.
Last night we were given a perfect example of what I have just written in the way Petulant Pelosi acted and the many female Democrats who came dressed in white, coming across as if they were the wives of sheeted KKK members. They could not bring themselves to applaud our many heroes, they sat on their hands when a young black girl heard a scholarship had been made available, a true genius afflicted with lung cancer who has spent his entire broadcast career enlightening America on his views while upholding his constitutional right to free speech and the countless others who personified the best our nation has to offer as pointed out by Trump in his speech.
Trump has many flaws, he is human, a brawler who has endured everything from having his administration spied upon by members of various American intelligent agencies, crudely cursed by members of Congress, accused of being in bed with Putin and then exonerated by a former Chief of The FBI who, when asked to explain his investigation, appeared to be in his dotage. When this did not satisfy the Trump Haters they sought to impeach him and were warned my Miss Petulant it would not be wise but their hatred forced her to go where she feared.
In the end, Trump came out ahead, his poll numbers have improved and Democrats reminded those whose votes they need what hateful fools they actually are and seem incapable of learning from their object stupidity.
I learned since Trump's impeachment was not of a criminal nature the Trump Haters are not barred by a charge of double jeopardy should they wish to continue their impeachment effort.
So what have Democrats accomplished in Trump's three years? Let me tick off a few conclusions I have reached:
a) Spent/wasted a lot of money in pursuit of their hatred.
b) Proved Americans reject piling on and understand when an accused has been denied the sacred right of justice because they were deprived the rules of law.
c) The impeachment effort was politically motivated and those pressing forward knew the votes were not there but the real goal was to soften Trump up for the 2020 election and it backfired/boomeranged.
d) Radical Democrats had a chance to demonstrate their legislative acumen and tossed it away. They cannot claim any accomplishments that pertain to resolving the illegal immigration dilemma, the decline in our educational competitiveness and the list is endless.
e) Trump proved he possesses an indefatigable spirit, has leveled the trade playing field, offered the Palestinians a dose of cold reality rather than the thread worn repetitive failed options posed by a host of predecessors, forced the hand of NATO Allies to cough up and by comparison it is increasingly evident Obama will prove to have been a disastrous president who blew an opportunity to wear the mantle of greatness.
f) Meanwhile, we have forgotten about the revelations of the Justice Department's special investigator named Durham that have yet to come.
https://www.nysun.com/editorials/speaker-pelosis-extraordinary-bitterness/90995/
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