I could have applied in 1950
Response to my Mark Levine memo from a friend and fellow memo reader who happens to be a liberal who hates Trump..
"Democrats want every American to vote and make it easier to do so. The BIG lie has stop to be used by your republican friends as a wedge issue, which does not exist, and definitely hurts our democracy, whatever is left. Get Trump out of the picture. He does a lot of harm!! Why does your party abandon democracy. The real Joe Biden is at work to make things better. Stop drinking the Trump cool aide. We came close loosing our democracy all together reading the Report on Trump using the Justice Department as his own personal domain. Do not listen to Fox News all the time! j,"
My response to my friend:
"J----- you are so obsessed over your contempt of Trump you fail to recognize/acknowledge the following or purposely ignore these facts:
The progressive radicals, who have taken over The Democrat Party,seek to make Americans more dependent and further wreck our economy with senseless giveaways which are increasing inflation and eroding and impacting those at the lowest socio level. (See attached.)
‘Free’ Money Can Make Life Worse
Social workers, not check writers, address problems like substance abuse and domestic violence.
By Robert Doar
The left continues its push to do away with accountability in safety-net programs. Democrats in Congress recently made an enormous change to public social programs while no one was paying attention and without bipartisan support.
Next month the Internal Revenue Service will start sending checks to qualifying families—$300 a month for every child under 6 and $250 for each older child. These monthly payments will flow regardless of whether the recipient is working, looking for work, or in training or education programs. In addition, recipients will no longer have to enter a welfare office, ask for help, and have government workers encourage them to find a job. Democrats in Washington claim these checks will reduce child poverty, as if the absence of money were the only problem for these families.
My decades of work in New York’s social services agencies make me skeptical. People weather all kinds of challenges and hardships, and nothing is as simple as it seems. Sending money is sometimes helpful, but it rarely addresses the underlying issues.
Current federal welfare policy, shaped by bipartisan welfare reform during the Clinton administration, establishes specific requirements as a condition of benefits—precisely because these expectations help people find work and improve their lives. Many homes plagued by addiction, domestic violence and unemployment need the attention of a social worker. Meddling with that connection, imperfect as it may be, has consequences.
This new, no-strings-attached cash from Washington, for example, will leave unaddressed the serious problems of substance abuse. By sending checks directly, the Biden administration will sever the contact between parents and social workers, which helps uncover signs of addiction.
Not every unmarried, nonworking mother who dropped out of high school has a substance-abuse problem. But many do. New York’s cash aid program offered help to struggling parents when they sought public assistance. A substance-abuse screen—a mandated set of questions—could lead to treatment and counseling. The questionnaire didn’t catch every case, but it helped many.
Sending automatic checks will eliminate other opportunities to help, too. Under current law, when single parents apply for aid they must help locate and engage nonresident parents for child support. This effort not only leads to significant financial support, it sends a strong signal about parental responsibility, especially for fathers.
Not surprisingly, these steps ultimately have positive effects on children. By ensuring that absent parents meet their financial obligations, they cause billions of dollars to flow to single-parent households annually. More important, parents who pay child support become more involved in their children’s lives. That in turn improves the test scores, self-esteem and behavioral development of children in one-parent households. This can’t happen with an IRS computer cutting checks.
The close contact between social workers and beneficiaries can save lives. My social-services colleagues in New York understood that domestic violence was an issue in some households seeking aid. We were pleased to enforce the federal mandate that required us to ask if those seeking aid were contending with abusive partners. In a small but especially vulnerable group of families, we uncovered very serious problems. This won’t be possible in a system with automatic benefits.
Then there are the many health-related implications. The involvement of a social worker, which brings another pair of eyes into the household, can lead to care and important diagnoses, particularly mental-health difficulties.
The fundamental problem with the new program is that it will reduce the community connection of millions of families that are at heightened risk of distress. Many of these families need help that money can’t buy. The mission of welfare programs isn’t merely to raise incomes; it’s to help struggling families thrive.
Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan didn’t like the welfare reforms of the 1990s. He worried that the system, which emphasized personal responsibility and encouraged work, would lead to “children sleeping on grates.” He was wrong. In fact, outcomes improved across nearly every measure of child well-being. Child hunger has dropped, education has improved, and health outcomes have gotten progressively better. Properly measured, child poverty fell almost 8 percentage points in the subsequent decade.
These days, you know who sleeps on grates? Adults who receive monthly checks from the federal government but don’t have to deal with caseworkers. Almost 80% of the homeless, the people setting up tents in cities all across America, receive government benefits, often in the form of monthly cash aid that comes without any regular connection to caseworkers.
The new child payment program is in place for one year, though Democrats want to make the checks permanent. My liberal friends who cheer the checks from Washington are concerned about substance abuse, absent parents, domestic violence and mental health. But their new benefit circumvents some of the most effective ways to address these serious challenges.
Mr. Doar is president of the American Enterprise Institute. He served as New York City’s commissioner of social services, 2007-13.
+++
These same radicals, who hate America, are also hell bent on destroying education and making the next generation hate their country. as well and causing this virus to seep into our military so those who volunteer to protect our nation are made to doubt their patriotism and cause them ultimately to question why would they fight for a nation rooted in hatred.
Furthermore, unlike Baker's professor, the CRT'er's want us to distrust capitalism which has brought more benefits to more people than any economic system devised by man. (See attached.)
Critical Race Theory Is the Opposite of Education
It’s more of a religion. Its practitioners reject the idea
of evaluating the merits of competing ideas.
By Gerard Baker
I learned economics from a Marxist.
It was the height of the Cold War, a critical moment when
the survival of the West seemed in doubt, an age when many people, even those
under no illusions about the unfolding terror of Soviet communism, wondered
whether capitalism’s days might be numbered.
My tutor at a famous university in the English heartlands
was one of the nation’s most prominent socialist intellectuals. His works anatomized—and
anathematized—the capitalist system from the traditional Marxian perspective.
His wider writings championed a structuralist view of society and its
institutions. He not only inveighed against the supposed moral inferiority of
capitalism. He was convinced about the inevitability of its collapse under the
weight of its own contradictions..
But Andrew Glyn was first and foremost a teacher, an
intellectually insatiable pedagogue with a desire to foster among his students
a hunger for a broad understanding of the discipline. His reading list each
week included the canon of classical economic thought ( Adam Smith, David Hume,
David Ricardo ), John Maynard Keynes and his followers, and a thorough
grounding in the modern neoclassical and monetarist works (F.A. Hayek and the
Chicago school, Milton Friedman especially)
No thinker—no ideology—was off-limits. It was the early days
of the Reagan-Thatcher counterrevolution. Neither seemed guaranteed of success
at the time, and we were encouraged—in fact required—both to learn what they
were doing and to understand dispassionately its intellectual origins.
Glyn was also—unexpectedly for those of us who thought
communists were louche types with disdain for the protocols of petit bourgeois
society—a rigid disciplinarian. Woe betide you if you hadn’t done the reading
each week. Obliging attempts to blame our sloth on the inherent class
injustices of a medieval university system or the ennui induced by late-stage
capitalism would be greeted with a thin smile and a final warning.
He believed—passionately—that his own critique of the
Western system was right. But he had no intention of forcing his students onto
a narrow intellectual path that would preclude the possibility of our embracing
alternatives.
This is the essence of a liberal education: the nurturing
and development of independent minds by erudite teachers of various ideological
persuasions through exposure to the widest range of intellectual inquiry. It is
what made England, and then America, the greatest force for civilizational
progress the world has known.
And it is in peril.
The crisis engulfing our institutions represents the
struggle for ascendancy of an ideology that is literally the antithesis of the
educational values that have driven the West’s unrivaled economic, social and
technological progress for the past few centuries.
Critical race theory—and its various postmodern cousins—is
not some interesting interpretation of social and political history that we are
free to examine, embrace or discard. Its proponents do not seek to frame a
critique of modern America to be tested alongside alternatives.
They insist that a traditionally liberal approach to
evaluating the merits of competing ideas is itself an outgrowth of an
illegitimate system of oppression. Rejection of their critique is the product
of false consciousness, since critical thought is itself invalid, the product
of white male hegemony.
This isn’t really education at all, not in the sense in
which the term has been understood in the post-Enlightenment era. It is closer
to pre-Enlightenment religious instruction: the imparting of doctrinal truth
with the practical aim of saving souls and reordering the world. Hence its
migration from college campuses to K-12 schools, where its practitioners expect
to find supple and more-suggestible minds. They have taken to heart the old Jesuit
maxim about the first seven years of life.
There are encouraging signs that this recent migration
itself may be sowing the seeds of its own destruction. Parents across the
country and the political spectrum are vocally resisting. In local elections
voters have seized the opportunity to oust the ideologues pushing this
un-American extremism on their children.
Growing numbers of professionals, however eager to display
their progressive credentials, know that they owe much of their success to a
steeping in the canon of Western thought and are growing uncomfortable with the
idea that their children might now be taught that Ibram X. Kendi has more to
offer than John Locke or Jane Austen.
Most telling, the attempts by the ideology’s defenders to
redefine critical race theory suggest they know how indefensible it is. Efforts
by multiple states to restrain its spread have been falsely characterized by
journalists and progressives as attempts to stop children from learning about
slavery and segregation. When you have to disguise your own ideology to purge
it of its noxious core, you know you’re losing.
I learned economics from a Marxist. But the most important
thing he taught me was that open inquiry was the antidote to ruinous extremism.
It’s a lesson we may finally be relearning.
+++
As if this is not bad enough there are other aspects of the radicalization of the Democrat Party that are both ominous and despicable and which you choose to conveniently ignore because of your vituperative attitude toward Trump, who incidentally, will probably go down as one of our best presidents in many ways based on accomplishments against the greatest of odds and efforts to besmirch him and his lovely wife and extraordinarily talented family.
You forget Biden committed to heal our nation from the lies and efforts of the Democrats to demonize Trump. Yet, to date, all Biden has done is increase anti-Semitism and further divided the nation with insane policies which have encouraged a surge in illegals accompanied by the inhumane treatment of young children, permitted more drug flow into our nation while increasing the coffers of drug dealers to the tune of billions as well as enriching human traffickers. He has also threatened the existential existence of our closest ally by seeking to increase the prospects of Iran going nuclear.
He has also followed in the path of Obama in escalating our deficit with abandon and I could go on in support of Levin's enumeration of dangerous and purposeful choices Biden and his kind have made to destroy this nation by increasing the division between the races all the while endangering their tranquility by defunding police, looking the other way at the encouragement of rioters and criminal law breaking encouraged by liberal mayors and radical district attorneys.
Stick to tennis, your political views are anathema."
+++
Fellow American,
There is a growing movement to teach young Americans that our nation's history is oppressive and shameful-that the essential fact of American history is not freedom but slavery.
To counter this false and destructive narrative, Hillsdale College has produced a new free online course, "Civil Rights in American History," which is now available in a special DVD box set.
This course covers the Founders' understanding of equality, natural rights, and civil rights; the quest for justice in America through the Civil War, during Reconstruction, and in the 20th century; and the danger posed to freedom and civil rights today by identity politics.
You can help promote "Civil Rights in American History" and receive a DVD box set of this timely and important new course by giving a tax-deductible gift of $100 or more today.
We produce free online courses, as we do all of our work, while refusing to accept government funding-even indirectly in the form of federal or state student grants or loans. We rely entirely on the support of private citizens who agree with our mission on behalf of liberty.
Please help promote Hillsdale's free online courses and other educational outreach efforts in this critical time for America by giving your best gift today. I've included a secure link for you to make your tax-deductible donation below:
https://secured.hillsdale.edu/hillsdale/support-civil-rights-in-american-history-dvd
There are only a limited number of "Civil Rights in American History" DVD box sets available, so reserve your copy before they are gone.
Thank you for partnering with Hillsdale in its educational mission on behalf of liberty.
Warm regards,
Larry P. Arnn
President, Hillsdale College
Pursuing Truth and Defending Liberty Since 1844
And:
https://spectatorworld.com/topic/identity-crisis-politics-race-wreck-america-charles-murray/:
And
IDF Chief Warns US: Iran Deal 'Dangerous'; Hamas Turns Down 'All Offers' For Long-term Ceasefire By Honest Reporting
The IDF’s Chief of Staff, Lt.-Gen. Aviv Kochavi, met with US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley, at the Pentagon on Monday.
Iran deal 'dangerous' »
and:
Dear Reader,
There's a great quote from Peter Lynch, the famous fund manager, who said:
"The day after the market crashed on the 19th of October 1987, people began to worry that the market was going to crash."
Meaning, people rarely take action until after an event has happened.
That's not the smartest way to do things, but it's generally how we function as a society.
But the truth is, prevention is easier than repair.
I've been pounding the table on inflation since July of last year.
I put out a call... “It's time to start building a hedge, but more important, it's time to take advantage of the massive profit opportunity inflation presents.”
A lot of you listened, and that is exactly what we've been doing together—making a lot of money on the inflation trade.
But some readers weren’t sure about higher inflation being on the way—no matter how much proof I handed them.
After all, at the end of last year we were sitting at an inflation rate of 1.4%. Who (aside from myself) could have envisioned inflation sitting at 5% in a matter of months?
Taking time to make an informed decision is usually fine. I often roll ideas around for months before I commit. So I’m not going to fault anyone for choosing the “wait and see” approach.
But now it’s time to take action.
Today we have 5% inflation, which is a 13-year high not seen since 2008.
That's concerning in itself. But more so because... it's not going to stop at 5%.
I expect to see 6% this fall and a full 10% next year.
Others have projected higher numbers... Wharton professor Jeremy Siegel recently said “we could easily have 20% inflation” in the next two to three years.
Regardless of the exact number, you can expect one thing:
Inflation will be destructive and the majority of Americans are NOT ready to deal with it.
In the near term, they will be spending more than expected on everyday goods. In the long term, they could lose up to ¾ of their retirement account’s value as the dollar's purchasing power drops.
Let’s say our “new normal” for the next decade is an average of 10% inflation year over year (not the 2% the Fed wants to average)...
If you planned to retire in 10 years with $1 million, you’d be in for a shock.
With an inflation rate of 10%, you would need $2,593,742—more than double what you planned to set aside—to maintain your lifestyle in retirement.
This is why I don’t mess with inflation, and why “THE PLAN” is to both protect myself and, put simply, make a lot of money.
I can help you do the same.
I've laid out my strategy in The Inflation King's Playbook. It’s a 5-minute read that could change your life.
The strategy I’m offering doesn't have to encompass your entire portfolio—I would never suggest that—but it could play a huge part in not only saving it from the ravages of inflation, but in driving a hefty portion of your profits.
Jared Dillian
Editor, The 10th Man
Mauldin Economics
And
https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2021/06/21/charles-hurt-proof-hunter-bidens-scandals-far-far-far-worse-than-any-of-trumps/
And:
President Joe Biden’s son Hunter is at it again, this time selling his “artwork” for large sums of money. One of his paintings sold for half a million dollars. But what is the real motive behind his new career path?... Read More
And:
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Portland rioters apparently free to whoop it up even more:
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Monday evening I participated in a Z00M panel discussing T.K Thorne's book to be released June 29. In her book:"Behind The Magic Curtain" she focused on three men who helped rid the city of Bull Connor and fought to have the city government changed as well as support the Civil Riight's Movement in that beleaguered city. My father was one of the three discussed in the book and the person who put the program on wanted me to participate. Well over 220 listened on ZOOM and some 60 more listened on Facebook.
Overall I would say the program was interesting and TK did a fabulous job in researching and writing this behind the scene factual expose'..
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
What happened in AZ and I hope in Ga., even though after the fact, is justified in view of the peculiarities and importance:
AZ Finishes Hand-Counting Ballots – Here’s When to Expect Their Full Report
BY Matthieu Lumière
Things are heating up in Maricopa County, Arizona, as auditors continue the hand recount of ballots that were cast last November for the president and U.S. Senate election.
According to Ken Bennet, a Republican and former secretary of state who has been overseeing the hand recount of 2.1 million ballots, all that is left to count are a small number of boxes full of Braille, large-type, overseas military and duplicated ballots.
Those in support of this audit should thank the GOP-led Arizona Senate. They pressed forward with this undertaking despite the Republicans in Maricopa County insisting the election was secure and an audit wasn’t needed.
Bennett didn’t give a count for the remaining ballots, but they are a tiny fraction of the hundreds of boxes of ballots that were toted to the state fairgrounds in April. Counting was expected to only take a few weeks but ended up taking nearly two months.
Counters had to vacate the Veterans Memorial Coliseum in mid-April to make way for for high school graduations. When they restarted after a week on May 28, more tables and counters were added to try to speed up the process.
Bennett said the formal hand recount ordered by Senate President Karen Fann will be completed by the end of the month. Now that the main counting is complete, workers have been reassigned to help photograph each ballot as part of a second stage of the review designed to ensure that no phony ballots have been slipped in.
“It’s all aspects related to the authenticity of the ballots,” Bennett said, including folds in ballots, alignment marks, ensuring the ballot was marked by a hand-held pen or marker and not done by a printer.
Separately, the contractors are perusing the computer programs used to count the ballots and examining the vote count machines.
NewsMax
As of today, we still don’t know any specific results of this audit. A report will be released at some point once the recount is over. Based on Bennett’s comments, the audit report could be released before Independence Day.
The Left is freaking out at this point – claiming the audit results will not change the outcome of the election.
Trump supporters, meanwhile, are anticipating a domino effect starting in Arizona that will spread to audits in other states like Georgia, Nevada, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania.
If all those states show fraudulent outcomes, what will happen after that?
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Going around and a great story:
SIX BOYS, 13 HANDS!
Each year I am hired to go to Washington, DC, with the eighth grade class from Clinton, WI, where I grew up, to videotape their trip. I greatly enjoy visiting our nation's capital, and each year I take some special memories back with me. This fall's trip was especially memorable.
On the last night of our trip, we stopped at the Iwo Jima memorial. This memorial is the largest bronze statue in the world and depicts one of the most famous photographs in history -- that of the six brave soldiers raising the American Flag at the top of a rocky hill on the island of Iwo
Jima, Japan, during WW II
Over one hundred students and chaperones piled off the buses and headed towards the memorial. I noticed a solitary figure at the base of the statue, and as I got closer he asked, 'Where are you guys from?'
I told him that we were from Wisconsin. 'Hey, I'm a cheese head, too! Come gather around, Cheese heads, and I will tell you a story.'
(It was James Bradley) who just happened to be in Washington, DC, to speak at the memorial the following day. He was there that night to say good night to his dad, who had passed away. He was just about to leave when he saw the buses pull up. I videotaped him as he spoke to us, and received his permission to share what he said from my videotape. It is one thing to tour the incredible monuments filled with history in Washington, DC, but it is quite another to get the kind of insight we received that night.)
When all had gathered around, he reverently began to speak. (Here are his words that night.)
'My name is James Bradley and I'm from Antigo, Wisconsin. My dad is on that statue, and I wrote a book called 'Flags of Our Fathers'. It is the story of the six boys you see behind me.
Six boys raised the flag. The first guy putting the pole in the ground is Harlon Block. Harlon was an all-state football player. He enlisted in the Marine Corps with all the senior members of his football team. They were off to play another type of game. A game called 'War.' But it didn't turn out to be a game. Harlon, at the age of 21, died with his intestines in his hands.
I don't say that to gross you out, I say that because there are people who stand in front of this statue and talk about the glory of war. You guys need to know that most of the boys in Iwo Jima were 17, 18, and 19 years old - and it was so hard that the ones who did make it home never even would talk to their families about it.’(He pointed to the statue) 'You see this next guy? That's Rene Gagnon from New Hampshire. If you took Rene's helmet off at the moment this photo was taken and looked in the webbing of that helmet, you would find a photograph...a photograph of his girlfriend Rene put that in there for protection because he was scared. He was 18 years old. It was just boys who won the battle of Iwo Jima. Boys. Not old men.
The next guy here, the third guy in this tableau, was Sergeant Mike Strank. (from Johnstown, PA). Mike is my hero. He was the hero of all these guys. They called him the 'old man' because he was so old. He was already 24. When Mike would motivate his boys in training camp, he didn't say, 'Let's go kill some Japanese' or 'Let's die for our country' He knew he was talking to little boys. Instead he would say, 'You do what I say, and I'll get you home to your mothers.’
The last guy on this side of the statue is Ira Hayes, a Pima Indian from Arizona. Ira Hayes was one of them who lived to walk off Iwo Jima. He went into the White House with my dad. President Truman told him, 'You're a hero' He told reporters, 'How can I feel like a hero when 250 of my buddies hit the island with me and only 27 of us walked off alive?’
So you take your class at school, 250 of you spending a year together having fun, doing classmates walk off alive. That was Ira Hayes. He had images of horror in his mind. Ira Hayes carried the pain home with him and eventually died dead drunk, face down, drowned in a very shallow puddle, at the age of 32 (ten years after this picture was taken).
The next guy, going around the statue, is Franklin Sousley from Hilltop, Kentucky. A fun-lovin' hillbilly boy. His best friend, who is now 70, told me, 'Yeah, you know, we took two cows up on the porch of the Hilltop General Store. Then we strung wire across the stairs so the cows couldn't get down. Then we fed them Epsom salts. Those cows crapped all night.' Yes, he was a fun-lovin' hillbilly boy. Franklin died on Iwo Jima at the age of 19. When the telegram came to tell his mother that he was dead, it went to the Hilltop General Store. A barefoot boy ran that telegram up to his mother's farm The neighbors could hear her scream all night and into the morning. Those neighbors lived a quarter of a mile away.
The next guy, as we continue to go around the statue, is my dad, John Bradley, from Antigo, Wisconsin, where I was raised. My dad lived until 1994, but he would never give interviews. When Walter Cronkite's producers or the New York Times would call, we were trained as little kids to say 'No, I'm sorry, sir, my dad's not here. He is in Canada fishing.’ ‘No, there is no phone there, sir.’ ‘No, we don't know when he is coming back.' My dad never fished or even went to Canada. Usually, he was sitting there right at the table eating his Campbell's soup. But we had to tell the press that he was out fishing. He didn't want to talk to the press.
You see, like Ira Hayes, my dad didn't see himself as a hero. Everyone thinks these guys are heroes, 'cause they are in a photo and on a monument. My dad knew better. He was a medic. John Bradley from Wisconsin was a combat caregiver. On Iwo Jima he probably held over 200 boys as they died. And when boys died on Iwo Jima, they writhed and screamed, without any medication or help with the pain. When I was a little boy, my third grade teacher told me that my dad was a hero When I went home and told my dad that, he looked at me and said, 'I want you always to remember that the heroes of Iwo Jima are the guys who did not come back. Did NOT come back.’
So that's the story about six nice young boys. Three died on Iwo Jima, and three came back as national heroes. Overall, 7,000 boys died on Iwo Jima in the worst battle in the history of the Marine Corps. My voice is giving out, so I will end here. Thank you for your time.'
Suddenly, the monument wasn't just a big old piece of metal with a flag sticking out of the top. It came to life before our eyes with the heartfelt words of a son who did indeed have a father who was a hero. Maybe not a hero for the reasons most people would believe, but a hero nonetheless.
One thing I learned while on tour with my 8th grade students in DC that is not mentioned here is, that if you look at the statue very closely and count the number of 'hands' raising the flag, there are 13. When the man who made the statue was asked why there were 13, he simply said the 13th hand was the hand of God.
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Biden and Iran:
‘Phase Two’ Iran Talks Go Kaput
The Biden team continues to misjudge Tehran at every turn.
By The Editorial Board
So much for “phase two” of the Iran nuclear talks. Iran’s president-elect Ebrahim Raisi won’t take office until August, but on Monday he announced his government won’t negotiate over ballistic missiles or its support for proxies destabilizing the Middle East.
The Biden Administration has promoted the phase two idea as something that would follow its desired return to the 2015 nuclear accord. “Longer and stronger” was Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s phrase. The 2015 deal ignored Iran’s ballistic missiles, which the country continues to develop. And the deal said nothing about Iran’s malign support for militias in Lebanon, Iraq, Yemen and Hamas in Gaza.
Counting on a follow-on deal was always dubious. Iran wants back into the 2015 deal so the U.S. will lift President Trump’s sanctions and it can gain access to tens of billions of dollars in trade revenue and investment. Once the sanctions leverage is gone, why would Iran make any other concessions?
On Monday Mr. Raisi made that position official. He said sanctions relief is “central to our foreign policy” and called on the U.S. “to lift all oppressive sanctions against Iran.” He also ruled out meeting with President Biden and said Iran’s ballistic-missile program and regional imperialism are “non-negotiable.”
In other words, Mr. Raisi expects the U.S. to return to the Obama deal that would help finance its conventional weapons arsenal and promotion of regional terrorism. All the U.S. gets is a delay in Iran’s ability to develop a nuclear bomb, though it is probably also continuing to research a bomb in secret.
President Biden ought to use the election of Mr. Raisi, an acolyte of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, as an opening to maintain sanctions until Iran agrees to a deal that truly restricts its weapons program and terrorist support. Instead he seems bent on repeating the 2015 blunder.
Iran Sends a Message to Biden
The new president shows who really runs the Islamic Republic.
By The Editorial Board
The Islamic Republic of Iran isn’t a real democracy. But the result of Friday’s presidential election still reveals important truths about the government that the U.S. and Europe are trying to appease on nuclear weapons.
Ebrahim Raisi, the country’s chief justice, won the presidency with about 62% of the vote, according to preliminary results published Saturday. Sometimes discussed as a potential successor to Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei —who wields the real power in Iran, particularly over foreign affairs—Mr. Raisi had the race wrapped up before the polls opened.
The Guardian Council, Iran’s election watchdog, has long barred candidates not to the Supreme Leader’s liking. But past races have been competitive and even unpredictable, giving Iranians a small voice in deciding their future. Approved candidates are always loyal to the Islamic Republic and its revolutionary ideology. But some, like lame-duck President Hassan Rouhani, spoke the language of moderation and reform even as they followed the Khamenei line.
Iranians understand they live in a dictatorship but have often voted in high numbers to choose their least bad option. Initial results suggest this year’s race had turnout around 50%—down from more than 70% four years ago and the lowest of any vote since 1979. Millions decided to boycott this year’s election as the country’s already small spectrum of permissible views grew even smaller.
Last month the Guardian Council culled dozens of candidates, including many ostensible centrists or reformers. Of the seven candidates approved to run, three dropped out shortly before the contest—paving the way for Mr. Raisi, who is typically described as a hard-liner or ultraconservative cleric.
In 1988 Mr. Raisi facilitated the extrajudicial execution of thousands of dissidents. He later called the killings “one of the proud achievements of the system.” In 2009, during the Green Revolution after a stolen election, he served as deputy chief justice when peaceful protestors were prosecuted and sometimes given death sentences.
In 2019 the Trump Administration imposed sanctions on Mr. Raisi over the myriad human-rights violations committed during his rise through the Iranian legal system. Will the Biden Administration, which has been negotiating a return to the 2015 nuclear deal with Iran, lift sanctions on the president-elect?
Defenders of the nuclear accord argue that by leaving the deal Donald Trump weakened reformers and empowered men like Mr. Raisi. But conservative clerics have had ultimate power in Iran since the 1979 revolution. Mr. Khamenei supported the accord because it is favorable to the regime. It offers tens of billions of dollars in financial aid and trade revenue while merely delaying the day it can build a bomb.
“We will be committed to the JCPOA as an agreement that was approved by the Supreme Leader,” Mr. Raisi said this month, referring to the nuclear deal’s official name.
The folly of the Obama and now Biden administrations is believing that the leaders in Tehran want Iran to be a normal country. They don’t. They run a government that wants to spread its religious revolution to the rest of the world by whatever means possible. Mr. Raisi’s ascension shouts that reality from the minaret, not that the Biden Administration wants to hear it.
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Finally another Rant:
The stock market continues to struggle for direction, but I continue to believe in the same core stocks as I have for years, which is big tech, and top quality companies like HD and MA. There had been a major rotation out of tech, and into reopening stocks, and the Reddit darlings, but big tech and things like DHR and TMO continue to be solid. I continue to be an investor for the long term, and not for the moment, and I continue to believe the future is in tech innovation which is now sweeping offices and factories. As there will continue to be labor shortages, the move to tech solutions will increase. Even when the $300 ends in September, and more people go back to work, there are far more job openings than people with any skills to fill the jobs. As wage costs continue to rise due to the shortages of people with skill, and all the welfare state subsidies that will continue to keep people from working, companies will have to turn to more tech to take over not just routine tasks, but more complex tasks on the factory floor. AI is changing what computers can do, and digital voice can replace operators and tech support in simple cases. Now that everyone has a computer or phone, doing things online is common, thereby cutting out a whole range of humans who once took orders. Entire receivables and payables departments have been eliminated. In short, I believe we are in the early stages of tech solutions to many tasks, and big tech companies in various fields will continue to produce big earnings growth for several more years. All the concern that computers will cause unemployment are misplaced in my view. The pandemic caused many to retire earlier than they intended, and there are simply not enough educated workers to take the place of these experienced people. We see that now with 9.3 million open jobs, there are simply not the people to fill them, and with the birth rate reduced for many years, and immigration of real workers limited, (as opposed to the illegals with no education crossing now), the US is simply short of labor, and will continue to be. Demographics matter. With the education system now focused on race and gender, instead of educating the kids, it will be even worse. All this time spent on critical race theory instead of on math and science, has real consequences to the economy that few teachers nor the administration are thinking about. The US has a long term problem brewing unless we get schools back to being schools instead of ideological brain washing sites.
The average net worth of Americans rose 3.8% in just the last 5 months, to double where it was in 2009, and it continues to increase. That is likely due mainly to house prices, close to 1.0%, and the stock market-approximately 3.2% contributing to this NW increase, but the effect is that now there is a much greater willingness, and ability, to spend as the wealth effect, combined with high savings and low credit card debt, leave consumers in the best shape in many decades. That is part of why I continue to think the stock market will go up more. The market knows rates will rise in 22, so now that is baked into stock prices. Inflation is usually a good thing for stocks in the short run as it means producers and lenders can charge more. I just do not see anything in the next couple of months, other than a black swan, or Congress actually passing a major tax increase and the $6 trillion spending, as inhibiting stocks from rising. I have no idea why the ten year is around 1.4%.
We may be in for a short correction right now, but it is unlikely to be major, maybe 5%, but earnings will start to be released in a month, and they will be much better than expected in almost every case, maybe by a lot. It seems logical that the better than expected earnings will offset the correction we may be experiencing now. I am staying in for now, and being patient. GDP is growing at 7%-10% this quarter, and rates are not being raised until 2022, and so it is illogical to assume a material stock market decline in the short run. Values will come more back into line as these earnings are released, and as companies start to give more optimistic forecasts for the rest of the year. 26 states have now ended the $300, so we should start to see the labor market get a little better in July and maybe a lot better in August. Every time I go out to eat I ask how the labor situation is, and what I hear 100% of the time is the extra $300 plus all the other goodies has created a problem nobody has ever seen before. In the Hamptons one tennis club that has a restaurant has the tennis pros waiting table at dinner, and everyone says the shortage of waiters and kitchen staff everywhere in the Hamptons is so bad that eating out has become an unpleasant experience. In Longboat they have to pay a young hostess $18 an hour plus benies. When the $300 was cancelled here in FL, the labor shortage eased up. What a surprise. Yet the Dems and Moody’s Analytics try to claim the extra pay and goodies has nil effect. They are either trying to justify left wing politics, or lying. Here in Longboat in mid-June-off season, the restaurants are running 2x normal volume now that there are no masks or anything.
Commodity prices may have backed off in the past week or two, but in several cases they are still high, like lumber which is still 3 x its norm of 2019. The LA port is clearing, but the virus in southern China is causing 15 day delays in ship loading. The savings garnered during the past year has yet to be spent in a meaningful way, and it will not all go to restaurants and travel. I still believe inflation is not backing off. It may ease a little by fall or winter, but it is still an issue, and rates will rise in 2022. Look for the August Fed meeting to indicate rate rises will be coming in 22, and taper will happen sooner than many expected. So they are left in the impossible position that they can’t let rates rise much, or that makes the Dem spending plans impossible to pay for. Between the Dems in Congress tax and spend, and Powell policy of make believe there is no inflation, we are in for some uncertain times over the next few months in the stock market. I continue to believe we are going to see a general uptrend as earnings continue to come in well above consensus for the rest of the year. What remains weird is the ten year yield has declined despite the obvious direction of inflation and rates. With the dollar now beginning to rise, it is illogical to me. Buyers of bonds now will be in for an unpleasant surprise as the year progresses and rates rise again. Mark Zandi of Moody’s predicts a stock market decline of 10% -20% and higher inflation this year. I think the decline will be more like 5%, but maybe he is right.
It remains a mind bending thing to watch the left Dems introduce the $6 trillion spending program they are talking about. It defies all sense of even basic economic theory, and intelligence. If they were to do that, and pass it into law, the deficit would be nearly impossible to service, and the Fed would be forced to raise rates as inflation would soon be much higher. The economy would be a mess, especially since they would also be passing high taxes and a cap gains tax increase that would devastate the stock market. It is as though none of them ever took an econ course-which maybe they have not. The $6 trillion may be the most irresponsible act any Congress has proposed in decades. It is the epidemy of radical left wing ideology taking over from rational economic thought. Where is Janet Yellen-has she lost all her education and experience. Why is Powell saying the economy is still not where the Fed wants it to go. What do they expect, more than 7-10% GDP growth? Joe Manchin and Mitch McConnell are all that stand between a good economy and social, fiscal and economic disaster. When you combine the crisis at the border, the economic thinking of the Dems, crime out of control, and incredibly terrible foreign policy, and a president with clearly diminished capacity, we are, in for a bad period.
The administration will probably sign a deal with Iran in July, and that will be a disastrous event. Iran will once again get bailed out of its severe economic problems, and will be free to fund its proxies and build a bomb in a few years. They are setting the stage for a major potential war in 5-6 years when Israel will be forced to destroy the Iranian nuke capacity in order to save itself. This will be a defining moment of stupidity by Biden and Blinken. Just as Obama saved Iran from economic crisis, Biden is doing the same. Welcome to the third term of Obama, and more weak and disastrous foreign policy, along with under-funding of the military. This is really bad for the whole world.
About 61% of all people over 18 had at least one shot, another approximately 15% have immunity from getting the virus, and that may be low, and another 10%-15% are young kids who are barely at risk. So 86% to maybe 90% of all people already have some level of immunity. If they do get to 70% of the total population had one shot sometime in July, then we will be almost everyone will be immune to some degree. By companies requiring employees have their shot before returning to the office or factory, that will hopefully pull in many of those refusing. They are now back to running over 1 million per day. The degree of damage the shutdown did will never be known as it caused more drug use and drug deaths, more serious mental health issues, more heart problems and more diabetes to go untreated, and more cancer deaths over time than we will ever know. Had the press not attacked Warp Speed, and had they and Harris and Biden gotten right on board selling shots day one, we might be all the way there by now. The devastation of an entire generation of kids due to the teachers union and Biden siding with the union is now too late to fix. All in all, the virus, as bad as it has been, is not so bad as the collateral damage done by Fauci and others who were just anti-Trump instead of pro science objectivity.
To give you a sense of how insane the housing market is here on Longboat, there is a house 4 doors down from me that is mostly at ground level, therefore subject to possible flooding in a major hurricane, and it is not attractive. My house is up 10 feet from grade. When I bought my house 6 years ago, I completely replaced everything in the house other than walls. Even new floors, roof, windows, bathrooms, etc. The house down the street, which is about the same size, and not as completely redone, nor as nice, and at grade, is asking 2x what I have invested. He will not get that, nor near that, but a major broker is representing it, so maybe it will get much closer than I expect. If it sells anywhere near the ask, then the world has really gone crazy, and my house is worth far more than I could ever dream..
So you know how stupid the woke stuff has gotten, the radicals claim an all Latino actor, Latino film about Latinos, produced by a Latino, now supposedly does not have enough dark skinned Latinos, so it is demanded to be cancelled, and some nutty celeb thinks we should change the American flag. They really are all nuts
It is now very clear China released the Covid virus to the world when they could have stopped it. It came from the lab, and was partly financed by Fauci. It is unclear if the research was intended to be a bio weapon, or just basic research that got out of control, but the end result was the same. China has committed mass genocide on the world, and all the G7 did was go back to the WHO to ask them to ask again to try to get China to be transparent -what stupidity. WHO and China telling the truth???The Group of 7 and the EU will make polite requests for information, and then do nothing meaningful. And now Jake Sullivan says Biden will not really push hard against China on this . Recently China has released Covid on the world, taken over Hong Kong completely, attacked India, and expanded their efforts in the South China Sea, and they are just starting. The only difference between Xi and Hitler and Stalin is the number dead are less so far. There is a lot more to the cover up of the Covid saga than has come out so far. What are Fauci and Pelosi covering up. Maybe it was just to get Trump stopped, maybe it was to protect Fauci who funded it. A lot of unanswered questions.
The policy of the administration of give the Iranians some relief from sanctions, and Putin a go ahead on Nordstream and renewal of the Start Treaty, and a US suspension of weapons delivery to Ukraine BEFORE the negotiations even really started, is less than amateur hour. Putin must think, these guys are really like children. Letting Nordstream go ahead is a strategic error of generational proportions for which we and NATO will pay a high price for years. Holding back the weapons package just because Putin pulled back 20,000 troops he was never going to use anyway, was really showing weakness and naiveite. Withdrawing anti-air defenses from the mid-east just tells Iran you are more free to have proxies attack. Telling Putin just stay away from these 16 areas, and you are free to go at everything else, is bizarre. Have these people in the administration ever negotiated anything . Just the same as Obama’s inaction told the world when he did not enforce the red line in Syria- come ahead, I am weak, so has Joe done the same. The world is in for a bad 4 years. Trump had it right-we cannot depend on the EU, and especially Germany, to be tough on China. Getting alliances to act in unison sounds nice, but it is naïve to think the EU is going to act in a strong unified way against China. That was why Trump acted alone.
As I have gotten further into the “Unsettled” book, Koonin points out that the methodology used to claim temperatures are rising rapidly, is statistically invalid. It is a complicated use of ratios instead of actual occurrences, but when Koonin pointed this out to the Academy of Sciences, they agreed. They said in regard to the government report, “It is difficult to understand how a statement that includes increases in extreme warmth can be associated with a high confidence or extremely likely statement, given that most of the graphics in this chapter show a decrease in extreme warmth in the historical record.” Koonin adds when commenting on another official climate report -he “has very high confidence in identifying and correcting a prominent misrepresentation of climate science in an official government report.” The press constantly reports the incorrect data to justify what Biden says -that climate change is the greatest threat to America. The AP even authored a widely reproduced, but misrepresentative article that was based on intentionally leaving out several years of data which would have shown the reporter’s conclusion to be wrong. It is all based on bad and manipulated data. Not that the temperature is not rising, it is since 1950, but it is not the imminent crisis Biden, the press and corporations are rushing to claim that make it seem like a crisis. One easy example of data manipulation- before the seventies there was not the nationwide network of weather radars we now have, so small tornados in remote areas were never detected. Now they all are, so the climate crisis screamers claim there are more tornados when in fact there are not. We simply now detect them all. The same sort of distortion of facts goes for floods. The real issue is simply that now there is far more infrastructure and buildings near the coasts, so the damage seems much worse. The TV cameras and video from phones is now immediately available to go online, or on TV, amplifying the misleading data with graphic videos. So the result is now we will have all sorts of regs and laws, and spending on the Green New Deal, based on demonstrably erroneous data, instead of actual data. Similar to the Covid coverup of the lab being the source. “The annual number of high temperature records being set shows no significant trend over the past century, nor over the past forty years, but the number of record cold nights has declined since 1895.” So they misleadingly conclude that the earth is warming because the ratio is shifting. Bottom line to all this- as usual, the press is misinforming either through stupidity or intentionally , the politicians are creating a cause to enact new regs and laws, and spend money, and corporations are rushing to be “woke”. While there actually is some warming trend partly due to a lot more humans burning fossil fuel, the world is not ending, and Biden is the guy who screams fire in a crowded theater when it is only someone lit a cigarette. Data is being manipulated by the press and by the left. Once again, don’t believe what the media says, nor the statistics they misquote. It is like racism today-if you question the narrative, you are labeled an idiot or worse. Go read the book. Don’t take my word for it.
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