In What World? In What World?

No matter how many times I read some far left pundit in the media who announces as fact something that could best be described as an obvious total fantasy, it still amazes me how often this happens.  This happened again today when Russel Berman writing in The Atlantic described representative John Lewis as "the last unifying force in Congress."  That's just plain idiotic.

For those who don't know, Lewis is a long time Democrat congressman who is prominent in the congressional black caucus.  He just announced that he has been diagnosed with stage four pancreatic cancer.  That's a rather terrible diagnosis, but it doesn't make Lewis a unifying force. 

In fact, two examples that Berman gives of Lewis as a uniter rather than a divider make the truth clear.  Berman points out that in 2001, Lewis boycotted the inauguration of George W. Bush to protest the Supreme Court decision regarding the 2000 election.  Then Berman points out that in 2017, Lewis boycotted the Trump inauguration and that his move really upset President Trump.  Only to a left wing pundit could these moves make someone a unifying force.

Lewis has always been a rather strident force on the left.  To be fair, Lewis has not been an angry person who took politics as personally as say Adam Schiff who seems never to care about truth, honesty or propriety.  But Lewis has hardly been a unifying force.

Here Comes 2020 -- Predictions for the New Year

As we watch 2019 end today, it's time to look forward to 2020.  As a result, here are my fearless predictions for the coming year.

1.  Let's start with the easiest prediction of all.  President Trump will be acquitted by the Senate in an impeachment trial.

2.  The second easiest prediction is that President Trump will be re-elected in November.  He will win the popular vote and will increase his electoral vote margin over 2016.

3.  The identity of the Democrat nominee is much hard to foresee.  My prediction is that no candidate will get enough delegate votes to win on the first ballot.  In the second ballot over 700 super-delegates will be able to vote.  There will still not be a winner, however.  By the third ballot, the delegates will start to panic because the party looks so indecisive and they will coalesce around a new candidate:  Hillary Clinton, who will be the nominee.

4.  In the Senate races in November, the GOP will pick up seats in Alabama and Michigan.  The net change in all Senate races will be a pick up by the GOP of 3.  That will mean a Republican majority of 56-42 with two independents after the election.

5.  In the House races, the Democrats will lose at least 20 seats.  The GOP will regain a narrow majority overall.

6.  The American economy will continue to grow nicely throughout the year.  There will be no recession.

7.  The stock market will have two periods during the year when the averages decline by more than 5%, but we will not see a 10% correction during the year.  By the end of 2020, the S&P average will be more than 10% higher than it currently is.

8.  There will be an outbreak of major hostilities in the Middle East centered on Iran.  This will lead to a temporary closure of the Persian Gulf as a trade route for crude oil.  As a result, world oil production will plunge in the short term and oil prices will rise above 100 dollars per barrel again.

9.  China and the USA will not only sign the phase 1 trade agreement in January, but they will reach agreement on a second phase agreement in September or October. 

10.  The UK will leave the EU under Brexit.  Prime Minister Johnson will reach agreement with the EU on the final terms.  The British will also reach agreement with the USA on a free trade agreement.  The British economy will grow significantly more quickly than that of the EU.

11.  Prince Charles will become the King of the UK.

12.  After the next elections in Israel, the Likud party of Netanyahu and the Blue and White party of Gantz will form a national unity coalition government omitting all of the small parties.

13.  Kim Jung Un (or Little Rocket Man if you prefer) will come to some deal with the USA regarding the North Korean nuclear program.

14.  Fighting in Afghanistan will be pronouced to be over after a peace agreement is signed with the Taliban.  Most US forces will withdraw.

15.  Greta Thunberg, Time Magazines person of the year will fade into obscurity. 

16.  And here's one last personal favorite:  The Super Bowl will be won by the Philadelphia Eagles in a momentous upset.

What Is Happening In Baghdad

The US embassy in Baghdad in Iraq was attacked by a mob today.  They broke down the gates and set the embassy on fire.  The marines guarding the embassy fired tear gas and stun grenades in an attempt to stop the mob.  That's about all we know for certain; it's not even clear if the attack is over as I write this.  Nor do we have word of casualties, if any.

This is big news.  The amazing thing, however, is how varied the reports of events in Baghdad are.  Here's an example:

1.  The Daily Mail reports that the mob consisted of members of an Iranian backed (and controlled) militia.  They were attacking in retaliation for the air strikes the other day by the US on camps controlled by the militia.  The US airstrikes were in retaliation for eleven separate rocket attacks on camps where US forces are located which culminated in an attack about a week ago in which an American contractor was killed.

2.  CBS News is reporting that the mob consisted of Iraqis who were angered by the American violation of Iraqi sovereignty demonstrated by the US air strikes.CBS didn't mention the rocket attacks on the American bases that led to the airstrikes. Nor did CBS mention that the militia is controlled by Iran or even that the mob attacking the embassy was comprised of members of the militia.

It surprises me that the British news outlet gives a rather complete account of the events, while CBS, a major American media news source, slants the story in an anti-American and pro-Iranian way.  You may ask why I write that CBS is pro-Iranian, but the answer requires a bit of explanation.  The militia in question is funded, led and controlled by Iran.  It makes no moves without direction from the mullahs in Tehran.  There can be little doubt that the attack by the militia was directed by the Iranians.  There is also little doubt that today's attack was just an expression by Iraqis of anger at the
violation of their sovereignty.  Remember, there has been fighting in Iraq since 2002.  Much of that fighting was by US forces.  There have been literally thousands of air strikes by American planes in Iraq.  There is no reason why ordinary Iraqis would suddenly be upset by yet another air strike.  Indeed, there really is no reason to believe that ordinary Iraqis would be so upset that they would risk their lives to attack the US embassy.  This was no spontaneous mob that suddenly set upon the embassy.  That sounds strangely like the bogus story that Obama and Clinton put out when the Benghazi consulate was attacked in 2012 -- they claimed the attack was in response to a youtube video that had been viewed only 200 times.

In the next few days, there will likely be some response by the USA to this attack on our embassy.  It is very likely that the response will center on Iran rather than just on the militia it controls in Iraq.  The Iranians need to understand that America will not sit by and let Iran use proxy forces to attack us.  CBS seems to be gearing up to be able to proclaim that no matter what that response is, that it is an over-reaction by President Trump who is trying to change the discussion away from impeachment.  That's sad.  It's truly sad.

The Texas Church Shooting

There hasn't been much coverage of the shooting in a church service in Texas yesterday.  The media must find it too painful to cover something that is a prime argument against most gun control laws.  Here's what happened:

A repeat felon came into a church in a town called White Settlement, Texas.  (what a strange name).  Under Texas law, the guy was barred from owning or possessing a gun, but he had one.  Apparently, he didn't care what the gun legislation said.  After entering the church during the service, the felon opened fire and shot two people.  This being Texas, many in the congregation were armed.  Before the shooter could even get off a third shot, five congregants had drawn weapons and one shot the attacker, killing him instantly.  All of these people legally had guns.

So what we had was an armed public that was able to stop this church killing from turning into a much bigger tragedy.  I do not mean to minimize the horror that this shooter inflicted on the congregation and the town, but it is a good thing that the congregants were able to dispatch him so quickly.

It wasn't all that long ago that Texas passed a law in response to another church shooting.  That law mad it legal for people to carry concealed weapons in church.  At the time, Joe Biden said the Texas law was outrageous and idiotic.  Of course, but for this law, there would be many more dead today.

Business As Usual

Yesterday, I wrote about the scourge of anti-Semitism especially in the New York metro area.  It's worth updating two stories I discussed.

1.  The woman who attacked and beat a young Jewish mother who was walking with her three year old child, was released without bail by a court even though the attacker had admitted carrying out the attack.  That was an outrage.  Yesterday, the attacker was arrested again.  She had once again attack a woman in the same neighborhood and beaten here rather severely.  There's no word in the media if the victim was also Jewish.  Still, within two days of being released without even having to post bail, this attacker was back on the streets carrying out her attacks.

2.  The man who allegedly carried out the knife attack in Monsey at a Hanukkah candle lighting in a synagogue has been identified.  It turns out that he was a suspect in a second knife attack on a Jewish man on his way to morning prayers a month ago.  At the time, this thug was questioned but released since police didn't think they had adequate evidence to arrest him.  We don't know for certain that this guy carried out the first attack, but we do know that police certainly suspected that he did.  And remember, the guy doesn't live or work in this neighborhood.  So here's another person left on the street only to apparently strike again.

In addition, the media is now filled with stories about how the attacker struggles with "mental illness".  We watching them lay the groundwork for this guy to get released as well.  It's back to business as usual.

Twisting The Facts?

There's been a lot of year end columns written discussing how the two halves of the country see "different facts".  People like Chuck Todd of NBC actually said that religious people believe the nonsense they hear from President Trump because they have been raised to believe fairy tales like the stories in the Bible.  Other mainstream media "pundits" are lamenting that Trump supporters just don't see the real facts.  We're back, in essence, to the "irredeemable basket of deplorables" that Hillary Clinton used in 2016 to describe the sub-human cretins who are Trump supporters. 

It is in this context that I read a column about the utter disaster that is the US economy.  According to Jeff Spross in The Week, the 2010's were an economic disaster.  This claim, however, is a good way to understand why the left and right see different "facts".  Here's how Spross discusses the record low unemployment we currently have:


Furthermore, our current good times look a less good under the surface. The government's definition of unemployment can leave out a lot of people. This year, the portion of people who got jobs each month who wouldn't even have been counted among the unemployed the month before reached 75 percent. That's by far the highest it's been in the last three decades. The percentage of working-age Americans who have jobs only returned to its pre-Great Recession peak in the last few months. (It still has a ways to go before it returns to its previous peak, just before the 2001 recession.)

But what does this actually mean?  Is the government cooking the books to get good numbers as Spross seems to say?  Is the Trump administration lying to us?  Here are a few points to remember:

1.  The definition used to define who is unemployed hasn't been changed for decades.  The unemployed under Reagan, Bush I, Clinton, Bush II and Obama were defined the same way. 

2.  Spross is pointing out that people who have given up looking for work are not counted as unemployed.  That's why the government always announces the "labor participation rate."  That's the percentage of people of working age who are employed or seeking employment.  The government also releases a second broader measure of unemployment (called U6) that measures not only people without a job, but also people who are forced to work only part time since they cannot find full time employment and those who are marginally connected to the work force but unemployed.  It is those people who were working part time or who had given up looking for work that make up that 75 percent of new workers to whom Spross refers. 

3.  During the Obama years, U6 declined but rather slowly.  Those who had left the work force basically stayed out of work.  Under Trump, U6 has plummeted.  The U6 number has fallen faster in the last three years under Trump than it has at any time for many decades.

Think about this.  The statistics say that people who had just given up looking for work are finding jobs again in record numbers.  People who were only working part time due to lack of full time work are finding full time jobs in record numbers.  Spross looks at this and says it proves that the 2010's were an economic disaster.  A rational person would look at this and celebrate that Americans who had given up or who had marginal part-time jobs are now able to get full time jobs from which they can support themselves and their families.  Remember, Spross claims to be an expert on this stuff.  So how can he lament the return to the dignity of employment by millions as proof that things are bad?

Ultimately, it is up to the American people to make the decision.  Is it a good thing or a bad thing if literally millions of people are able to join the ranks of those with full time jobs?  That's what has been happening under Trump.  Is it better for individuals and their families to get the security of a steady pay check from a decent job (under Trump) or was it better (under Obama) when these same people could, at best, get a part time job from which they couldn't support their family.

For me, this is a no-brainer of a decision.  Indeed, if there is half of the country that won't recognize the facts regarding the economy, it seems clear that the misled masses are on the Democrat/left wing side.

Normalizing Anti-Semitism

In the last ten days, there have been eight violent attacks on Jews in the New York City metro area.  The latest was yesterday when Jews in the suburb of Monsey were gathered in a synogogue for a Hanukkah candle lighting ceremony and a man entered carrying a machete and started stabbing people at random.  Many people ended up in hospitals, but thankfully there were no fatalities.  This attack came just three weeks after the attack in Jersey City (just across the Hudson from New York City) on a kosher supermarket by gun wielding thugs who specifically were targeting Jews.  I've lived in metro New York for the last 45 years, and nothing like this has happened in the past.

So what's going on?  How can all these attacks be happening?

Let's look at some of the background that may help us understand.

1.  None of these attacks were directed at specific individuals.  They were all directed at Jews as Jews.  The Jersey City murderers didn't know anyone in the kosher supermarket.  They only knew that they were likely to be Jewish.  The woman who started slapping a mother walking with a 3 year old child down the street in Brooklyn and who then started hitting that mother with a handbag while yelling "F__k you Jew!"  Didn't know the victim.  She just knew she was Jewish.  The man wielding the machete last night was unknown to the congregants in the Monsey synagogue.  All the attacker knew was that these were Jews.  That means that this is a spate of hate crimes, in other words attacks aimed at a group of people out of hatred for that group.

2.  None of these attacks came from the groups that local politicians like to blame.  If you listen to pols like New York Mayor DeBlasio or governor Cuomo, the problem of anti-Semitism comes from far right wing white supremacists.  It's neo-Nazis who push anti-Semitism, or so they repeat endlessly.  That's clearly not true here.  None of the attackers in any of these nine attacks were white.  The Jersey City murderers were both blacks who belong to the rabidly anti-Semitic group called the "Black Hebrew Israelites."  The man with the machete last night in Monsey (now in police custody) was black as well.  The only one of the other attackers who has been caught (the woman who assaulted the young mother with the 3 year old) is also black.  And while the other attackers have not been caught, they have all been identified by the victims as black or Hispanic.  To be clear, these are not white supremacists.

3.  These are real attacks, not Jussie Smollett hoaxes.  There have been deaths and severe injuries in these attacks.  These are not fake.

4.  There seems to be no real effort by the City to stop the violence except in the case of murder or attempted murder.  The Jersey City mass murderers did not get away.  The machete wielding man accused of last night's Monsey attack is in police custody.  Only one of the other perpetrators of the remaining 8 attacks has been caught.  And that perp who has many prior arrests and convictions was released by a judge on her own recognizance within a day of being arrested.  That's right, the violent woman who decided that it was a good move to attack a mother and her young child on a city street just because they were Jewish didn't even have to post bail.  She's right back out on the street.  What are the odds that she will show up for her trial when that date arrives?

5.  This is not Just a continuation of life as usual in New York City.  Over the last decades, there have been periodic anti-Semitic acts in the city.  The acts, however, have basically been limited to anti-Semitic graffiti in locations identified with Jews.  Someone overturned headstones at a Jewish cemetery.  Someone spray painted a swastika on a Jewish Community Center..  That was about it with two exceptions:  Al Sharpton incited a mob to attack a Jewish owned business on 125th street that ended with 7 dead around 30 years ago, and there was a riot in Crown Heights also about 30 years ago when the car carrying an orthodox rabbi hit a young black child at a cross walk resulting in the child's death. 

So why now have we seen such a spate of these hate crimes?  What's changed is an ever increasing level of hate being directed against Jews from the left.  On many college campuses, Jews are denounced if they support Israel.  The Israelis (and Jews) are wrongfully denounced as colonialists.  Think of that; Jews living in Israel are the continuation of a people who have lived in that land for at least 3000 years.  That's the antithesis of colonialism, but for the left the facts don't matter.  Jews are also called racists by the left because of Israel.  Just last week Bernie Sanders (who is never constrained by actual facts) said that the government of Israel was racist.  He offered no proof.  Nor could he.  Moslems in Israel actually have more rights than their fellow Moslems in most of the Middle East.  In Syria, for example, the Sunni Moslem majority is controlled by the Shia Moslem minority and the Assad regime.  When the Sunnis rose to demand their rights, Assad and his forces started the civil war that ended with close to 800,000 dead and many millions homeless.  The Sunnis didn't get those rights, however.  We have the Squad going on and on in anti-Semitic rhetoric that gets glorified by the far left in place like Twitter and other social media.  Ilhan Omar made anti-Semitic remarks and the Democrats in the House would not even condemn those remarks.  The Dems were too afraid to alienate Omar's far left supporters, part of the main base of the Democrat party.

It's time for Americans to step up and condemn anti-Semitism.  It's time for local and state governments to take action against those who push anti-Semitic acts.  In one party places like New York, the local mayor can't be afraid of the anti-Semitic far left base of the Democrat party.  People with courage need to confront this mess before it gets further out of hand.

Dishonest and Bizarre Arguments

I just read a column Robert Reich wrote in Newsweek.  Reich's premise is that President Trump has turned his back on working Americans in order to help out big corporations and the super wealthy.  The column was so wrong that it actually made me laugh out loud.  Here's a sample:

Reich says that incomes for middle and lower income Americans have fallen.  That supposedly proves that Trump doesn't care about them.  But here's the problem.  Reich says that those incomes have fallen since 2007, the year prior to the financial crisis.  Think about that.  That's a 12 year period with Trump being president only in the last three years.  And guess what.  During the first 9 years of that period, the incomes of middle and lower income Americans did fall.  Indeed, the Obama presidency and the Democrat control was a terrible time economically for middle and lower income Americans.  Since Trump took office in 2017, however, the incomes of middle and lower income Americans have been rising.  In fact, the percentage gains among this group have been larger than the gains for upper income Americans according to government statistics.  That's right.  These people who Trump supposedly forgot are finally doing better under Trump.  After years of stagnation or decline under Obama and the Democrats, the vast bulk of American workers have seen a major improvement in incomes under Trump and the Republicans.

Given the actual statistics, why would someone like Reich argue that the reverse is true?  The answer is that Reich has a major problem.  He's a member of the far left.  He can't bring himself to admit that the policies he has been pushing worked only for the wealthy and hurt the average worker.  So he just keeps arguing for the same old tired and failed policies and he distorts the facts in order to try to come up with some shred of support for what he is saying.

Reich is like Bernie Sanders without the angry shouting.

Old Joe Strikes Again

One of the two articles of impeachment passed by the angry partisan Democrats is for Trump’s failure to comply with subpoenas from Congress. That’s total nonsense since Congress didn’t bother to attempt to enforce the subpoenas. Still it is what the Democrats are pushing. So given that, would it surprise you to hear that Old Joe Biden said today that if he’s subpoenaed to testify in the impeachment trial he will ignore the subpoena. In other words Biden is doing what the Dems say is an impeachable offense. That means either Biden understands ignoring a subpoena is not an impeachable offense or he’s a total moron (or both). I vote for both. 

Media BS From the Mainstream Media and More

Yesterday and this morning, there were a spate of articles about how President Trump had "outed" the whistleblower.  The articles were not just in the usual places.  Even the Drudge Report site used the line of "outing" Eric Ciaramella, the whistleblower.  The problem, of course, is that Trump just attached an article to a tweet; that article contained references to Ciaramella as the whistleblower.  Further, anyone who has paid any attention to the news during the last three months knows that Ciaramella is the whistleblower.  His name has been all over the place.  What that means is that Trump didn't "out" the whistleblower.  That's like saying that if Trump said that the Cubs are from Chicago and the Yankees from New York, he outed the home cities of these two baseball teams.  You can't "out" something that most people know already.  That's true even if the media tries to keep up a charade that something is a secret.

Wait.  If I said that Nancy Pelosi uses Botox, would that be news to anyone?  The woman's face is premanently frozen in place.  How about if I said that Joe Biden is not only old but that he acts older than his years?  Would that be news to anyone?  Notice that these are two subjects that the mainstream media steers clear of.  Everyone knows about it, but the left wing media just doesn't mention it.  So when I mentioned these subjects, did I out Pelosi and Biden?  Surely the answer is no.

Fake outrage over fake news is just so ......................FAKE.

Nine Days and Counting

Today is nine days and counting since the House Democrats rushed through their partisan articles of impeachment.  They didn't bother to hear witnesses with evidence (if there were any) of any alleged wrongdoing by the President.  Democrats like Jerry Nadler told us that this was a national security emergency and they had to move at light speed to get rid of Trump.  They stopped Trump from having the ability to present an actual defense -- they didn't even tell him the charges.  That would have taken too long, or so they said.  They had to get all this done by Christmas.  Everything had to be done in a hurry, and the constitutional niceties couldn't be followed, or so they said.

Well, after more than a week, the House Democrats still haven't bothered to send the articles of impeachment to the Senate.  NINE DAYS!!!  Obviously, there is no rush.  Obviously, there was no need for a rush.  The supposed reason for the delay is that the Dems want to have a say in the procedures followed in the Senate for an impeachment trial.  But here's the thing:  the Constitution says that the House has NO say in the trial rules.  That is totally up to the Senate.

What that means is that after telling us for weeks and months about how this was such an emergency that they couldn't follow the constitutional requirements, House Democrats have now revealed that to be nothing but a lie.  They are improperly and unconstitutionally trying to leverage the articles of impeachment into giving them some say in the Senate trial.  They are delaying things themselves.

These are not good people.

Thanks

As 2019 draws to a close, my blog is closing in on half a million visitors.  It has been quite a year.  I just wanted to take a moment to thank my readers.  Hopefully, we can all move forward into a great 2020.

What Has Changed?

Since we are about to enter the election year of 2020, it's worth taking a moment to consider what has changed since January of 2017 when President Trump took office.  Here's a list of some of the more important items:

A.  The Economy
     1.  General growth of GDP -- during 2016 (Obama's last year) the economy grew at less than 2%.  When Trump got into office, the growth rate jumped so that the average is up near 3%.  That may not sound like such a big difference, but the extra 1% per year for the last three years means that America produced more than a trillion dollars of additional products during that time.  That's a lot of jobs for American workers.
     2.  Employment -- Under Trump, the economy has created over 3 million new jobs.   Also the unemployment rate hit a 50 year low.  Even better, the underemployment rate is also way down.  That's the percentage of people working only part time because they couldn't find full time work combined with the number of people who have given up looking for a job.  This number has fallen by nearly half since Trump took office.  It's also worth noting that unemployment among African Americans, Hispanics, Asian Americans and women reached all time lows under Trump.
     3.  Inflation -- One would normally fear that a more rapidly growing economy with low unemployment would lead to a rise in inflation.  Price rises, however, are not occurring any more today than they were under Obama.  In both times, inflation has been kept below the 2% rate which is the target of the Federal Reserve.
     4.  Business creation -- in the Trump years, the number of new businesses formed has jumped dramatically.  Indeed, the number of new businesses started by minorities has doubled from the rate seen under Obama.  These new businesses create a great many new jobs.  They are also the surest way for the owner to move higher up the income ladder.

B.  Energy/Environment
     1.  American domestic energy production has soared under Trump.  For the first time in more than 50 years, the USA is a net exporter of energy.  America is also the world's largest producer of energy.  The days of American dependence on OPEC or other foreign sources of energy have ended.
     2.  The USA is the only large economy that has met the goal of reducing the carbon emissions that are blamed by many as the reason for global warming.  That's right, although Trump withdrew the USA from the Paris climate accords, America is the only large country that actually met the targets set by those accords.  Instead of talking and posturing, America has been doing and accomplishing.

C.  Immigration
     1.  After a long battle, the USA has finally seen a major reduction in illegal immigration under Trump.  This was achieved mainly by convincing the Mexicans and Central Americans to stop illegals from traversing those countries on the way to the USA.  It also was achieved by changing the loophole of claims of asylum used by illegals to gain entry and then to hide in the USA.  The result of lower illegal immigration has been better job opportunities for entry level low-skilled employees and a reduction of the major burdens imposed on states and localities by indigent illegals.

D.  Poverty
     1.  Because of all the new jobs and the reduction in illegal aliens, the poverty has declined in a major way.  For example, the number of people using food stamps has dropped by about 10% even though the qualifications needed to get food stamps have remained unchanged.  People have increased their earnings to a point where they no longer need the assistance.  It's worth noting that under Obama, the number of people on food stamps just about doubled.
   
E.  Terrorism
     1.  The ISIS caliphate is no more.  It was created under Obama because he ignored ISIS; he called them just the "jayvee" terrorists.  Then they took hold of half of Syria and about a third of Iraq.  ISIS killed hundreds of thousands of people.  At that point, the USA under Obama got involved in the fight against ISIS, but Obama had such stringent rules of engagement on our forces that they made little headway against the terrorists.  Trump put operative command of the field forces back into the hands of the field commanders.  As a result, ISIS was erased from both Syria and Iraq in relatively quick fashion.  There are still those in these two countries who support the goals of ISIS, but that terrorist organization has been destroyed as a going concern.

F.  Iran
     1.  Under Obama, the USA signed the JCPOA with Iran.  That agreement guaranteed Iran that it would get nuclear weapons after ten years.  It also provided Iran with hundreds of billions of dollars that the Iranians used to support terrorism in the Middle East and around the world.  President Trump withdrew the USA from the JCPOA and put the sanctions back in place.  As a result, the Iranian economy is squeezed and the mullahs no longer have the funds that they need to promote terrorism.  In the last few months, there have been uprisings inside Iran against the mullahs.  At the orders of the Ayatollah, Iranian forces have attacked the protesters and killed literally more than 1000 of them.  This may result in quelling the uprisings for now or it may cause many more people to rise up and overthrow the Ayatollah and the Islamic Republic.  Either way, however, things do not look good for the Iranian regime at the moment.

G.  NATO
     1.  The main defensive alliance of the USA is NATO.  Under the NATO treaty, each member state promises to spend at least 2% of its GDP on defense.  Under Obama, the USA ignored the fact that very few of the NATO members met that obligation.  President Trump started pushing NATO members to meet their obligations once he took office.  As a result, the number of NATO members who now meet that obligation has more than doubled.  Total annual defense spending by the NATO members other than the USA has increased by well over $100 billion.  This is a major boost to the common defense.

H.  China
     1.  Under Obama, the Chinese stole American intellectual property through spying, hacking and special requirements placed on US companies that wished to do business in China.  The Chinese also manipulated their currency in order to be able to export huge amounts to America while reducing imports from America to China.  Obama did nothing to combat this.  Once in office, Trump took on the Chinese directly.  He imposed tariffs on Chinese products so that the Chinese government understood that the days when they could steal US ideas and secrets at will were over.  This confrontation with China has not ended, but the Chinese have definitely blinked.  The USA and China are about to sign a partial deal (phase one) that will result in major exports by US firms to China as well as a reduction in Chinese activities through which they stole our intellectual property.

I.  Presidential Style
     1.  Under Obama we had a president who was very smoothe.  He always said something good even if he didn't actually do much of anything.  Trump is the opposite.  He frequently says things that some people don't like.  In particular, the mainstream media is always looking for statements by Trump to criticize.  Trump, however, (as is evident from the list above) does a great deal to benefit America.  Especially if one uses the standard of what is considered "presidential" by the media pundits, Obama was better at meeting that style requirement than Trump is.  The question, of course, though is whether it is more important to look presidential while doing precious little to benefit the USA (like Obama) or to take action after action that benefits the American people while acting in a much less elevated style (like Trump.)

The Onslaught in Ottumwa

There are 25,000 people who live in the town of Ottumwa in Iowa.  Ottumwa is about an hour's drive from Des Moines, the state capital and the largest city in that state.  In other words, there are plenty of people within easy driving distance of Ottumwa.  That's why it was such a shock that Old Joe Biden just drew a crowd of 98 people to his rally two days ago in Ottumwa.  That's right.  Old Joe couldn't even get 100 people to his event.  This guy is supposed to be the national front runner for the Democrat nomination, but not even 100 people came out for his rally.

The Iowa caucus is just over a month from now.  Even though the rally was the week before Christmas, if there were even marginal excitement generated by Biden, he should have drawn many thousands of people to his rally.  Certainly 500 should have been there even if Old Joe is as boring as he seems to me.  But Biden couldn't even get to 100.

There's only one conclusion that can be drawn from this tiny turnout.  At least in Iowa, no one is interested in Old Joe Biden and what he has to say.  It's just not worth the time to go to a rally to see Old Joe in person.  That bodes very poorly for Biden and his chances moving forward.

Like Father Like Son???

Hunter Biden seems unable to understand the meaning of honesty and truth.  Just look at these facts:

1.  In 2018 Biden was sued for child support by Lunden Roberts, a former stripper, who says Biden fathered her child.  Biden responded with a denial that he even knew Roberts and also a denial that he had ever had sex with her.

2.  Roberts responded with the results of a DNA test that showed that Biden was the father of the child.  In other words, Biden's denials were blatant lies.

3.  Biden changed his response.  He now told the court that he no longer disputed paternity, but he said that he was unemployed since early this year and had many debts that made paying child support impossible.

4.  That's strange since Biden earned 1.1 million dollars per year from his position as a director of Burisma (the Ukrainian natural gas company) for three years starting in 2015.  One does wonder what happened to those millions.  Biden also had made a deal to manage investments for the Chinese state wealth fund, a deal that should have resulted in fees of something like $15 million per year for Biden's firm.  There's more, but clearly it is hard to believe that Biden was destitute.

5.  Now we learn that Biden owns a house in the Hollywood Hills in California which is valued at about $2.5 million.  That doesn't sound like someone who is destitute and unable to support his own child.  In other words, Hunter was lying again to the court.

There's an old expression, "like father, like son."  One wonders if it applies to the Bidens.  If so, we should avoid Old Joe Biden like the plague in voting for president.  If Hunter and Joe are even remotely similar, no one should want any part of Joe.  

Why Don't They Realize

There's a movie out now called Bombshell which is about alleged harassment of women at Fox News.  It's the latest in the Hollywood moves to make super-liberal movies.  Fifteen years ago, Hollywood started making movies that were anti-military during the Iraq War.  American military people were portrayed as torturers or war criminals or just dumb and despicable sadists.  There were three or four big budget films of that sort.  Each of them flopped badly.  It wasn't that they just broke even or made small profits.  No, those films were total bombs that each lost millions for the studio that produced them.  Then we had films that portrayed Americans as racist or white supremacist caricatures.  These movies did even worse than the anti-military ones.  Despite the movies' putting forth the accepted view of the far left, no one went to see them.  Now we get Bombshell.  It too is bombing.

Notice that Bombshell is about Fox News and Roger Ailes.  It doesn't mention Matt Lauer and his alleged escapades at NBC News.  It doesn't mention other troubles at ABC or CBS.  It's silence about Weinstein and his alleged outrages at his companies.  Nope, here the target is Fox News because the liberals love to hate FNC.  And yet, still no one is going to see the movie.  After ten days in release and only three days in wide release, the movie averaged less than 1000 dollars per screen yesterday.  That's not just bad, it's appallingly bad.

I wonder why Hollywood doesn't realize that far left attacks on institutions like the military or the American people or even Fox News are of no interest to the movie audience.  Nobody cares what the left wing crazies think.

With Latest "Explosive" Email, Democrats Tripping Over Their Own Lies

The big headline on CBS News this morning is that there is an "explosive" new email found which contains a direction from a national security staffer to the Pentagon to hold up aid to Ukraine.  It was sent shortly after the President spoke to president Zelesky of Ukraine in the phone call that is at the heart of the impeachment circus.  Chuck Schumer called it explosive and CBS says it may show a quid pro quo.  But if you think about it, what this email actually does is show that essentially everything that the Democrats have said in the past was a lie.  Let's review it:

1.  The whistle blower who started all this said that Trump had told Zelensky repeatedly in the phone call that aid was held up and wouldn't be released unless Ukraine dug up dirt on Joe Biden.  The whistle blower, however, didn't actually hear the phone call or even see the transcript.  When the transcript was released a few days after the substance of the whistle blower's complaint was leaked to the press, the White House released the transcript and the whistle blower was shown to be wrong. 

2.  The immediate response from the Democrats and many in the media was to go to the "mob boss" position.  Trump was acting like a mob boss, they said, and he was making clear to Zelensky that he had better investigate Biden or that aid which had been held up would never be released.  Of course, there's nothing in the transcript to indicate this so called mob boss routine by the President, but the Dems said it anyway.  Now, however, the new email documents that when Trump and Zelensky spoke, there was no aid hold up yet.  That means that there was no way for Trump to intimate to Zelensky that he had better act to get that aid released without saying that, and the transcript shows Trump said no such thing.

3.  Zelensky has said repeatedly since this who story first broke that he was not pressured or blackmailed by Trump in the phone call.  He also says that he did not know for many weeks after the call that aid was delayed.  The Democrats and their friends in the media said that Zelensky had no choice but to say this cause he needs the USA's aid.  In other words, the Dems and the media say the president of Ukraine has been lying.  But now, the new email shows that Zelensky has been truthful.  He certainly couldn't have felt pressured by the aid delay during the Trump call since that delay hadn't happened yet.  It also makes perfect sense that the Ukrainians didn't know about the hold up until weeks later.  So the email shows that the supposed target of the threats (non-existent as they were) from Trump is telling the truth when he said that he was not pressured or blackmailed or pushed in any way to do an investigation of Biden in exchange for aid.

In the crazy world of the Democrats, everything is "proof" that Trump needs to be impeached.  Hey, yesterday, the Eagles beat the Cowboys to move into first place in the NFL National Conference Eastern Division -- that surely is proof to support impeachment (at least in the twisted minds of the Democras.)

Strange Moments For Democrats

In just the last week two strange moments have occurred for Democrats that puzzle me greatly.  They were like attempts at suicide by the party through its leaders.

The first was an answer by Joe Biden at the debate a few days ago.  Say what you will about Biden, but he is still the front runner for the nomination according to the polls.  He was asked a question about the adverse economic impact on economic growth that moves to combat climate change would have.  Here's how the exchange went:

"As president, would you be willing to sacrifice some of that growth, even knowing potentially that it could displace thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands, of blue-collar workers, in the interest of transitioning to that greener economy?"

"The answer is YES"

Biden said that he would sacrifice the jobs of hundreds of thousands of blue collar workers to push for a "greener" economy.  Now imagine you are someone who works in gas drilling in Pennsylvania or oil drilling in Texas.  You make well over $100,000 per year and this guy says he would sacrifice your job in the name of a greener economy.  Who are you going to vote for?  Who is your spouse going to vote for?  Who are your relatives and your neighbors going to vote for?  Biden just made certain that millions of blue collar workers are going to vote for Trump.  Biden put their jobs at risk, and most people will vote to secure their jobs.

This was a very strange move by Biden.  Instead of the usual confused answer from Biden, he was totally clear.  Surely, the voters who are environmental zealots were going to vote for the Democrats anyway.  They could have tolerated the usual doubletalk from Biden.  Instead, Biden spoke directly and provided the weapons that will result in losing millions of blue collar votes in November.

The second strange event comes from the Democrat Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi.  After the House Democrats voted to impeach President Trump over bipartisan opposition, Pelosi decided not to send the articles of impeachment to the Senate.  In the debate on impeachment, the Democrats had said that action had to be taken in the interest of national security.  Trump was a danger to the country and the Constitution or so they told us.  When the GOP called the Democrats' move to impeach the President a political game, the Democrats denied it and screamed that this was something that was urgently needed.  And the next day after the impeachment vote, the House Democrat leader says she's going to hold up this urgent measure.  Huh?  That's Pelosi admitting that this was all just a political move by the Democrats.

Think about it.  If this were actually an urgent move to prevent some misdeed by President Trump, the Democrats would be in a rush for the Senate to act.  Obviously the Democrats don't see it that way.

The Democrats have staked their entire 2020 campaign on this impeachment.  There are millions of voters who support that move.  There are millions of voters who oppose it.  But what about those in the middle, the people who never focused on the impeachment debate, the undecided, the people whose votes will actually decide the winner in 2020?  When these people finally look at the impeachment issue, they will see that Pelosi's actions put the lie to the Democrats' statements on the reasons for impeachment.  Just think how many votes that move will lose them.

Those were two really bizarre moves by the Democrats.

I Got It Right

Yesterday, I wrote about the tiny audience for the latest Democrat debate.  That was just a prediction.  Now we have ratings, and it turns out I was correct.  This was the lowest rated debate of all of them so far.  It also had an audience that was less than one-third the size of the first debate.  The debate was shown on PBS stations and also on CNN.  That means that a big chunk of those watching the debate saw it at an airport where CNN pays to have its signal playing.  It also means that a big chunk of the viewers got to see the debate but no hear what the candidates were saying.

It's important to keep in mind that we are just over a month from the Iowa caucus and the start of the actual selection of the Democrat nominee.  If no one is paying attention to these boring candidates, that says a lot about their likelihood of success.

Look, as I write this, the election is all about Trump.  I don't know the exact statistics, but it seems that for every minute there is coverage of some Democrat candidate on TV, there are at least 20 minutes talking about the president.  Even the left-leaning media can't be bothered to cover these Democrat candidates.

Who knows; maybe that will change, although I doubt it.  None of these Democrats is suddenly going to get interesting.

What Was Missing From the Debate

Last night at least twelve people who don't work in the media or politics watched the Democrat presidential debate.  Okay, the number was probably higher, but not by all that much.  And there is a good reason for the smallish audiences.  The issues about which most people care are missing from the debate stage.

Think about it.  What were the most talked about items from last night's debate?  We had Warren going after Buttigieg's fund raising from the wealthy and his rejoinder about the hypocrisy of Wrren's words.  We also had Klobuchar going after Buttigieg for being inexperienced and his response.  Then we had Bernie denouncing the prime minister of Israel as a racist.  (There had to be an obligatory denunciation of someone as racist; last night Netanyahu got the prize instead of the usual Republicans.)  Now ask yourself -- how many people actually care about fund raising methods or prior employment of the candidates?  And, are there still people who hear the Democrats denounce someone as "racist" and actually care about that charge?  After eight years under Obama, we had reached the point where Democrats had blamed everything on racism.  And when I say everything, I mean everything -- even global warming.

Now consider what was actually said about the economy.  You can do that in under a second.  Warren was asked to respond to experts who say her plan to "tax everything more and more" would cause a depression or at least a serious economic slowdown.  Warren's response was nothing more than "they're wrong".  It was about as insightful as Warren ever got in speaking about the economy.  In short, Warren just ducked this important question.

The Democrats also told America how only the wealthy were doing okay in this economy.  That, at least, addressed an important issue, but it was a blatant lie.  Even worse for the Dems, nearly everyone knows this was a blatant lie.  Minority unemployment is at the lowest level ever.  Gains in wages and incomes are highest among blue collar workers and the lower half of the income spectrum.  Millions who were unemployed or underemployed under Obama now have jobs, incomes and a better life.  Everyone knows that.

Then there's healthcare.  This was discussed but again in only dishonest ways.  Bernie was asked what he would do if his Medicare for All plan couldn't pass Congress.  He rattled off some phony statistics and then said that the plan would pass.  In other words, he refused to address the question.

What's the point of listening to a debate that either avoids the important issues or just lies about them?

Market Meaning

On the night of the 2016 election the market went down by like 800 points due to massive selling as Trump won. The media kept reporting this all night. By the next day the market went way up. The net result was a massive rise. The media was silent for the most part.

Now Trump has been impeached and the markets have yawned. It’s like nothing happened. If market reaction means anything then the USA doesn’t care about the latest Dem games. 

Big News

I was taking time off as the holidays approached but I had to come back to post about one of the most idiotic events of the century. A naked political move by House Democrats voted for impeachment despite bipartisan opposition. The Dems kept stating that the facts showed abuse of power even though there are literally no items of evidence to support that conclusion.   It’s impeachment based on nothing

Let’s hope the senate makes short work of this in January

What Universe Does Biden Live In

At a rally earlier today, Joe Biden said that he was the best choice for president because he, unlike the other candidates, has actually brought Congress together and gotten things done.  He gave the example of when he got Republican votes to get Obamacare passed.  Biden said only he could do that sort of thing again.

It's important to remember that not even a single Republican voted for Obamacare.  NOT ONE.

I'm not sure if Biden was knowingly lying or if his mind is so far gone that he couldn't remember reality.  Either way, this is not a guy we need or want in the White House.

In reality, it's embarrassing just how nonsensical this sort of bogus claim is.  

Another Funny Take

Dan Balz writes in the WaPo about the resilience of Joe Biden.  He has survived in the Democrat race despite oodles of criticism launched towards him.

There's only one possible response to this argument:  hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

At this point, Biden is seen by many as a befuddled old man who can't remember what state he is in.  Biden is also a guy who used American power to enrich his son in Ukraine, China and elsewhere.  Biden is also the guy who is "off" -- a guy who likes to smell women's hair, bite their fingers, and hold them in inappropriate ways.  Biden is also a guy with no stamina, a guy who can't stand up to the requirements of the campaign.  And lastly, Biden is the guy who despite all his years with Obama has been unable to secure the endorsement of that former president.

Biden is still in the race because all the other serious candidates have been collapsing.  Warren came forward with a series of plans that would destroy the US economy and healthcare system.  When challenged on these plans, Warren pretty much said "nevermind" and announced that she really meant that they would only be used long into the future.  Her support fell by 50% in just weeks.  Bernie Sanders had a heart attack which made clear how old and fragile Bernie really is.  He lost support and then slowly got some back.  Still, there are millions of people who won't vote for Bernie because they don't think he can last until election day.  Pete Buttigieg started slowly and then shot up when all the others fell apart.  Even so, as more attention has been paid to Mayor Pete, his numbers have tanked in the polls.  Other candidates just did so poorly that they dropped out.  Think of Kamala Harris who hit 15% after the first debate when she went after Biden but who then dropped like a stone as people got to know her better.  She's gone.

Right now, Biden's campaign is still alive.  That's not resilience, though.  Biden still have no answer to why he stepped in to protect his son Hunter in Ukraine.  This has been topic number one for two months and Biden has NO ANSWER!  Look, Biden could actually become the nominee given the competition.  He will never win the election, however.  It may be possible for Democrats to pick him given the choices, but the American voters will never pick him over Trump.  Remember, Biden kills the only election issue that the Dems have.  Without a doubt, the Democrats will run and election campaign based upon the fact that Donald Trump was impeached for what he supposedly did in Ukraine.  There's a big problem there, though.  There's a big dispute if Trump actually did anything wrong in Ukraine.  Biden, however, is on video tape proudly telling people how he did exactly what Trump is falsely accused of doing.  There goes that issue!

A Bizarre Response

Earlier this week, President Trump issued an Executive Order that made clear that anti-Semitism would be considered as part of the covered items of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.  The order didn't provide a detailed explanation but it made clear that institutions that engage in anti-Semitism or allow it would no longer be eligible for federal grants.  What this means is that among other things, universities that decide to adopt support for the anti-Israel BDS movement would no longer get federal grants.  Similarly, universities that allow speakers to be shut down by anti-Israel/anti-Semitic groups would also lose funding.

This was a big step for the federal government in fighting anti-Semitism.  It happened to coincide with the terrible attack in Jersey City on a Kosher supermarket by the rabidly anti-Semitic Black Hebrew Israelites (which left 6 people dead).

What was most bizarre was the response from the left.  The NY Times opined that the order was actually anti-Semitic because it defined Jews as a nation.  That would, according to the Times, play into the hands of those right wingers who call Jews un-American.  On Twitter, the commentary was much more extreme.  Trump had designated Jews as a separate nation so that they could be sent to concentration camps, or at least, that was a common them among the Twitterati.  The ACLU announced itself alarmed that protection of Jews under the Civil Rights laws was made explicit by the executive order.  The ACLU worried about the free speech rights of those who wanted to criticize Jews.  Even some of the most left wing Jewish institutions got into the act of being "alarmed" by Trump's actions.

Of course, all of this was based upon just another left-wing lie.  The civil rights laws expressly ban discrimination based upon "national origin."  That doesn't make the people protected a separate nation.  For example, discrimination against Irish-Americans (which was prevalent in the 19th century) is banned by the law.  No one says that as a result people of Irish descent are no longer American.  National origin is a reference to where the person's ancestors came from.

And nothing in the executive order designates Jews as a separate nation.  Those words don't appear in the order, and indeed, nothing like that is mentioned in the order.  But the truth never stops these people on the left from complaining.  Trump issued an executive order, so it must be opposed.

In the UK two days ago, the Labour Party was smashed in the election.  The big issue there was Brexit.  A secondary issue, however, was the rank anti-Semitism of the Labour Party and its leader Jeremy Corbyn.  No one can say how many seats the Labourites lost due to their anti-Semitism.  We do know that it was quite a few, however.  The ordinary British people weren't prepared to accept a ruling party that was so clearly bigoted as Labour.

Americans hold many of the same views at the Brits.  Those who oppose Trump had better realize that the average American is not going to support them and oppose Trump on an issue where Trump is fighting against bigotry and hatred while the left/Dems are actually supporting that hatred and bigotry.  That's true even if Trump is directly involved.

The response of the left/Dem/media cabal was bizarre and self-defeating.

A Suggestion For The Senate

It seems to be a foregone conclusion that the House will vote for impeachment next week.  President Trump is accused of abuse of power and obstruction of Congress.  Neither of these are crimes of any sort.  They don't meet the constitutional requirement for impeachment, but the Democrats don't care.  Instead, they've decided on a purely political impeachment.

The next stop on the impeachment schedule will be in the Senate.  And I have a suggestion to the Senate as to how best to handle this nonsense.  I would take break the matter into two pieces:

1.  The Senate should first just dismiss the claim of obstruction of Congress.  There is no such thing.  President after president has refused to allow one or another of his aides to testify in Congress.  That has never been considered anything more than something that then needs to be decided by the courts.  Indeed, yesterday the Supreme Court took up the issue of whether or not the tax returns of President Trump must be produced for Congress in response to a subpoena.  That case will be argued in a few months with a decision coming before July.  That means that the Supreme Court accepted (with no dissent) that a subpoena by Congress to the White House should be decided by the courts.  Another way to put that is that the Supreme Court accepted that obstruction of Congress does not exist.  The senators should not waste their time hearing evidence on this charge; they should dismiss it.

2.  The senators should, however, go ahead with a trial on the issue of abuse of power.  Let's have the House produce witnesses who will tell the senators just how Trump abused his power.  But the Senate should insist that the evidence produced must conform to the Federal Rules.  That would mean no speculation, no presumption, no hearsay, or the like.  The House Democrats would have to produce a witness who would say that he or she saw or heard President Trump pressure the Ukrainian president to carry out an investigation of Joe Biden.  They would have to produce a witness who saw or heard President Trump order that aid to Ukraine be held up until that investigation was announced.  Let the House Democrats produce such a witness.  Up until now, there has been no such witness.  There is no evidence that President Trump did anything wrong.

Assuming that the Dems don't come up with a new surprise witness (maybe like dr. Christine Ford), then the impeachment hearing could end.

The End Of Bloomberg's Campaign

Mike Bloomberg yesterday ended any chance of success in his quest for the presidency.  He did so by announcing that if elected he would immediately shut down all 251 coal fired electric power plants across the country and would take steps that would stop construction of about 150 natural gas fired power plants currently being built.  He would also put in place subsidies for renewable energy sources.  Here's what that move would accomplish:

1.  By shutting the coal fired plants, the USA would lose about 30% of its capacity to generate electric power.  That would mean that millions of people would experience brown outs or complete losses of power for many years to come.  Think of Florida, Arizona or Texas without air conditioning.  Think of industrial sites shut due to lack of power.  Think of commuter trains and subways shut down because of lack of power.  In other words, think of the inability of the US economy to function and the mass discomfort of the American people.

2.  Natural gas plants have been replacing coal plants at a rapid clip across America for the last decade.  As a result, carbon emissions have plummeted since the gas facilities cut those emissions by more than 60% on average.  Natural gas production has grown massively during that time to meet the needs of gas consumers.  By stopping the construction of gas plants and ending the use of coal plants, Bloomberg would literally put millions of people out of work in the gas and coal industries and support companies.  States like Texas, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, North Dakota, Ohio, Louisiana and Wyoming would be devastated.  Other places would be hard hit as well, but not to the same scale.  It's highly unlikely that the people being put out of work would ever support Bloomberg or the Democrats if he is the nominee.

3.  Because of the technological breakthrough in natural gas production (fracking), America has become the world's largest producer of natural gas and oil.  We are also now a major exporter of those products.  Bloomberg's move would crush the price of fossil fuels to the point where production would no longer be profitable.  All the people working in the export of those products would lose their jobs, so would all the people who work in drilling or in related industries.

There's a shorter description of what Bloomberg would achieve:  Depression and huge job losses.

What sane American would vote for that?

No Matter What -- Criticize

It never fails.  Trump does something, anything, and the Democrats criticize it.  If they can't criticize it, then they claim that actually they did it, not him.

Here are two recent examples:

1.  The President announced that the USA and China have reached agreement on the first phase of a new trade agreement.  The details haven't been fully announced, however.  The agreement is being written now so that at some point in the next month it can be signed.

What's the reaction from the Democrats?  Do they cheer this big step forward?  Nope.  Remember, the Democrats have been excoriating Trump for even confronting China on trade.  They wanted to continue the Obama policy of just looking the other way as China stole intellectual property, kept American companies from the Chinese markets and subsidized Chinese firms so that they could steal sales from US firms.  Trump said no and he stood firm against Beijing.  In order to move forward, however, the two sides have split the trade deal into pieces.  The first piece is the one that has just been reached.  Chuck Schumer, however, ran to the media to denounce President Trump for "caving in" to the Chinese.  We know that China has agreed to massive purchases of US grains, food, energy and manufactured good.  Schumer thinks this is caving in.  We also know that some structural changes have been agreed that will protect American firms from having their ideas stolen and will also open the Chinese market to more competition from Americans.  Schumer thinks this is "caving in".  Finally we also know that what the US gave in return was agreement not to institute additional tariffs on Chinese goods this weekend and to a phased withdrawal of part of the current tariffs on Chinese goods.  China is also going to end some of the tariffs on American goods.

The reality is that we don't seem to be giving up much of anything to China.  We are simply stopping to apply pressure.  China is making concessions.  Someone should clue in Schumer what "caving in" means.

2.  The USMCA is the agreement between the USA, Canada, and Mexico to replace the flawed NAFTA pact.  Trump has pushed for this deal since the campaign in 2016.  The Democrats opposed it.  They said NAFTA was fine even though it was causing US manufacturers and farmers to bleed profits and sales and jobs.  Trump got the new pact negotiated a year ago and he sent to it Congress for approval.  Pelosi and the Democrats refused to even consider it.  That's right, even though USMCA will mean at least half a million new jobs in the USA and faster economic growth for all, the Dems wouldn't consider it.  When forced to explain why the Dems wouldn't act, Pelosi said she wanted better language regarding enforcement of labor rules.  For month after month, Pelosi and the Dems would say what that meant.  They wouldn't say what language they wanted changed.  They simply repeated the same vague statements so that they could deny the President a "win" with the new agreement (that the Dems said he would never get.)

With the impeachment embarrassment coming to a close for the Dems in total failure, Pelosi suddenly decided that she had to move forward with USMCA so that the Dems couldn't be blamed for killing that deal.  She told the trade negotiator what she wanted regarding labor rules and within less than two weeks, the White House got Canada and Mexico to agree to those minor changes. 

So what did Pelosi and the Dems do then?  They actually claimed that they had achieved the USMCA rather than Trump who got the whole agreement done. 

It's sad to watch the Dems spread lies about everything.

Up is Down and Left Is Right

In Politico Magazine today there is an article proclaiming that the massive decline in Elizabeth Warren's poll numbers is very good for her chances of becoming president.  No, really, it says that.  Warren has shed something like half of all her supporters of two months ago, but Politico says that is a good thing.  What's next?  If Warren gets to zero support will she be proclaimed President by acclamation?

I really can't stand the political morons who think that no matter what happens it is good for their candidate.  Sometimes reality has to intrude on fantasy.

Not Quickly Enough

With the blowout victory for the Tories in yesterday's UK elections, that disgusting bigot Jeremy Corbyn has announced that he will be leaving as leader of the Labour Party.  As usual, however, Corbyn doesn't have it in him to do the right thing.  He's resigning, but only after a proper "period of reflection" by the party.  In other words, Corbyn is planning to stay on as leader for the foreseeable future and only leave once he has been able to handpick his successor. 

I doubt that Corbyn is going to be able to follow that plan.  The pressure on him to go NOW will be intense.  Remember, under Corbyn's leadership Labour has fewer seats than it has held since the days when Margaret Thatcher was PM.  Further, some districts that Labour has held since World War I were won by the Tories.  There's even one district that the Tories took which they had never previously held.  Much of the northern industrial and most of the rural Labour seats fell to the Tories.  The consensus in the UK is that two things spelled disaster for Labour:  Brexit and Corbyn.  Those two are related.  Corbyn led his party into a position of advocating for a second referendum on Brexit.  This was intensely unpopular with the prevailing view being that after the first referendum voted clearly for Britain to depart the EU, it was anti-democratic to try for a do over.  Then there was Corbyn's close relationships with terrorists and his blatant anti-Semitism which turned off many British voters.

It would be pleasing to see the Labour party rise up and throw out Corbyn.  I don't know if there is a mechanism under which that can be done.  Still, getting Corbyn and his bigotry out of office would be a good start for Labour's returning to reality.

The Message Of the Polls

There are a great many polls published in the media that deal with the 2020 presidential election.  Most don't mean anything.  There's a new batch out, though, that carry a rather clear message.  Emerson released polls that asked Iowa voters who they support in head to head matchups for 2020.  Emerson has done this periodically so we can look back and see the trend over time.  It is very revealing.

President Trump is ahead of Biden, Warren, Sanders and Buttigieg by single digits.  Depending on the candidate, Trump gets somewhere between 49 and 51 percent.  This is almost exactly where he was six months ago when the polling began.  What has changed, however, is that Biden, Sanders and Warren are each down by about 6-7% in their scores over that time.  (Buttigieg wasn't even polled six months ago.)

Think about that.  Iowa has seen more candidate visits and TV ads by Democrats than any other state over the last six months.  Since the Iowa caucus is the first in the nation, all of the Democrat candidates have been scurrying around that state visiting cities, small towns and even individual farms.  The people of Iowa have had a really good chance to meet and to learn about these candidates.  And what has happened?  Over the last six months, more than one in ten of the people who used to support one of these Democrats against Trump have changed their minds and moved to undecided.  That happened despite the impeachment clown show put on by Nancy Pelosi, Adam Schiff and the Democrats in DC.  It happened despite the endless bashing that Trump gets from the mainstream media.  And it happened in a state where, more than anywhere else, the true nature of the Democrat candidates and their plans for the country have been explained to the public.

The results show that at this point, voters are rejecting the Democrats.  Trump hasn't picked these voters up yet, but there's a long way to go until election day.

The Black Hebrew Israelites

Police have identified the terrorists who attacked a kosher supermarket in Jersey City, NJ yesterday as members of the Black Hebrew Israelites.  This is a group that is extremely anti-Jewish, anti police, and extreme.  It's also the same group that started the whole mess in DC with the kids from Covington, KY that the media tried to turn into some sort of BS white supremacist event.

It's important that we all realize just how dangerous this group is.  Police say that the kosher supermarket was intentionally targeted and that only the fast action of police kept the death toll to "only" 6.  We all owe great thanks to the Jersey City police.

But I have one more question:  New Jersey has very strict gun laws, but the terrorists had all manner of guns, rifles, and explosives.  None of the gun control proposals being pushed at the moment would have prevented this tragedy.  So why do we need to pay so much attention to this issue?

The IG Testimony

The Inspector General Michael Horowitz is testifying to a Senate committee today.  I've heard three different media reports, and in each one, the only thing mentioned is that Horowitz's report declared that he did not find political bias in the work of the FBI in seeking to get FISA warrants and investigating if there was any relationship between the Trump campaign and Russia.

This slant from the media is totally misleading.  As I wrote the other day, the IG didn't conclude that there was no political bias.  He only concluded that none of the people involved admitted that there was bias and there were no documents in which bias was admitted.  It doesn't matter, though, since the mainstream media is content to twist what the IG said in order to protect the Democrats.

Consider this, however.  The IG found 17 instances of failures by the FBI and DOJ to follow the mandated procedures with regard to the seeking of a FISA warrant.  That's pretty slipshod work.  But here's the point:  all 17 of the "errors" went one way only.  All 17 of the "errors" pushed the FISA court towards granting the FISA warrant or the renewal of that warrant.  These "errors" included items like an FBI lawyer modifying emails/text messages so that they would support the renewal request for the warrant.  That's presenting fraudulent documents to the court, and it is a felony.  It's rather hard to call that an error.  There's no lawyer of any sort who thinks that creating phony documents and presenting them to a court is permissible.  The lawyer in question knew what he was doing was both illegal and wrong.  This same lawyer was vocal in his support for the anti-Trump resistance.  That's about as strong an indication of political bias as one can imagine.

Many of the other "errors" are of a similar nature.  They individually indicate political bias, but taken together they conclusively indicate political bias in the FBI and DOJ.  

Realizing the Consequences

One of the more bizarre positions taken by the Democrat presidential candidates is the promise to ban fracking if elected.  Elizabeth Warren says she would do it on "day one".  Other candidates agree, and all of the main Dem candidates support an end to fracking.  Supposedly, this ban of fracking would help stop climate change.

Almost everything about the Democrats and their promised ban on fracking is wrong.  The only thing they have done correctly regarding fracking is to learn to spell that word properly.  Here are a few points:

1.  Fracking has allowed the conversion of coal power plants to natural gas power plants.  As a result, emissions in the USA have declined more than in any other large industrial country in this century.  The USA is alone among the major industrial nations to have met the targets set by the Paris Climate agreements, even though we are no longer part of that accord.  Ending fracking would require a return to coal and a major increase in emissions.

2.  Ending fracking would cause economic chaos across the nation.  In a new study that looked only at the state of New Mexico, it was determined that a ban on fracking would result in the loss of 142,000 jobs in that state over five years, a decline in median household income by more than $10,000, and lost government revenue of over $16 billion.  In other words, New Mexico would suffer a depression and the state would be broke.  In other states where fracking is more prevalent (like PA or ND) the impact would be much greater.  On top of this, ending fracking would change the USA from and energy exporters back into a major energy importer with product coming in at much higher prices.  How would gasoline at $9 per gallon affect your budget?  How would bills for heating your home with gas of $1000 per month affect you?

None of the Democrats have offered any answer as to how to deal with such a catastrophe.  The media doesn't ask them.  They just say "climate change" and then offer these idiotic proposals.

Americans need to understand the consequences of adopting the hare-brained schemes being pushed by the Democrat candidates.

Why The President Isn't Taking Part in the Impeachment Hearings

In the last week, the Democrats and the media keep repeating that President Trump refused to take part in the impeachment hearings in the House Judiciary Committee.  It's important that you understand the reality here and not the talking points pushed by the media and the Dems.

1.  To the extent that there were any fact witnesses presented to Congressional committees, they testified in front of the House Intelligence Committee chaired by Adam Schiff.  Under the rules that the Schiff committee put in place, the President had no right to have a representative question the witnesses.  In fact, Republicans on the committee were not allowed to call any witnesses.  In other words, the only "evidence" presented to the Intelligence committee was the story presented by the Democrats.  The was no defense allowed, not for the President or for the Republicans.

2.  In the Judiciary Committee, the only witnesses have been professors who claim to be experts.  They are only commenting on the evidence presented to Schiff's committee.  If the President had a representative at the Judiciary committee, that representative would not be presenting a defense, but rather only disputing the "expert" opinions of a few law professors.  Jerry Nadler, the chair of the committee, made clear that the President would not have any ability in that committee to present fact witnesses for his defense.

This is a total travesty of justice.  Think of it this way.  Suppose you were arrested and charged with robbing your neighbor's house.  The prosecutors put on witnesses who testified that they think it was you because someone else told them that it was you.  That's a rough equivalence of what the Dems presented in the Intelligence committee.  Suppose, though, that you had witnesses who could prove that first, the neighbor wasn't robbed, and second, at the time of the supposed robbery you were three hundred miles away speaking at a conference in front of 60 people.  But suppose further that the judge decided that you couldn't present your witnesses who would prove your innocence.  All you could do would be to question witnesses who were giving opinions as to whether or not the claims made by the neighbor constituted robbery.  That's roughly the procedure that the Democrats adopted.

The Dems have asked the President to participate in a kangaroo court in which he would be blocked from defending himself.  That's why he is not participating.  Why should he give this farce any legitimacy by participating in it.

It's hard to believe that elected representatives of the American people would act in this way.  The Democrats have disgraced themselves forever.

Obstruction of Congress??

Word is that one of the two articles of impeachment that the Dems plan to offer to the House this morning is for "obstruction of Congress."

This is perhaps the biggest admission so far that there is absolutely no evidence of wrongdoing by Trump.  The Democrats have nothing.

Think about it.  In your time in school, you surely learned how the Constitution set up "separation of powers" and employed "checks and balances" to prevent any branch of the government from taking control over the other two.  There are three equal branches of the US government:  legislative (Congress), Executive (the President) and Judicial (the courts.)  There is always a tension between these three branches.

What this means is that for our entire history, Congress has made demands on the executive branch and the president of the day then decided whether or not to comply.  He had no obligation to do so.  If Congress wanted to have a witness come and testify to a committee, it had to go to court to get an order from a federal judge compelling such testimony.  For our entire history, if a president didn't want to send a witness or documents in response to a Congressional request, he just refused unless and until the courts ruled that he had to do so.  There are, by the way, many instances in which the courts have ruled in favor of the president.  Congress doesn't have the right or the power to simply required employees of the executive branch to testify or to produce documents or even to supply information if the president opposes the move.

This non-compliance, however, is exactly what the Congress now says is the basis for impeachment.  President Trump has done exactly what every president has done in the past.  Now, the Dems want to change that from normal Presidential behavior into a basis for removal from office.

The Democrats are embarrassing themselves.  Most of them understand this, but in their hatred of Trump, they can't seem to control themselves so as to do what is right.  They would destroy our Constitution in order to regain power.

Simply put, these people are dangerous.  They need to be voted out of office at the next opportunity if we are to preserve our Republic.

The IG Report

The media is burying the report by IG Horowitz on the propriety of the FBI investigation into possible collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia.  The report is many hundreds of pages long and contains a great many details.  Here, however, are some of the more important findings from that report:

1.  The FBI began its investigation after receiving a report from a friendly foreign intelligence service that George Papadopoulos (a Trump campaign advisor) mentioned that the Russians might have access to information that could hurt Hillary Clinton and help Donald Trump in the 2016 election. 

This is nothing new.  It is something that has been oft reported.  The foreign intelligence agency is Australia's and its report is based upon something that Papadopoulos said to the Australian High Commissioner (like an ambassador) who just happened to meet him in a bar in London.  The IG did not look into whether or not this statement by Papadopoulos was the result of it being planted with him by an FBI or CIA asset in London.  Nor did the IG check on how it came to be that the High Commissioner "bumped into" this young fellow in a bar in London and happened to then discuss what the Russians did or did not know.  Instead, the IG accepted at face value the claim that the investigation arose because of this report from the Australians.

2.  When the investigation began, there was insufficient information to seek a FISA warrant according to the FBI.  That changed when the first reports came in from Christopher Steele; this was the infamous Trump dossier.  The IG found, however, that Steele's FBI contact, however, recognized immediately that these reports were politically motivated.  Nevertheless, the Trump Dossier was used as the basis for the FISA warrant.  The investigative team, however, didn't tell the leadership of DOJ of the political genesis of the Trump Dossier (or that it was paid for by Hillary Clinton's campaign and the DNC.)

3.  When multiple sources showed that the veracity of the Steele information (the Trump dossier) was extremely suspect, the FBI didn't investigate further or notify the officials higher up in the DOJ about this development.  Instead, they continued to use the Trump Dossier in further applications to the FISA court.

4.  The IG concludes that the unverified, politically-motivated Trump Dossier was the basis for the FISA warrants, and the true nature of the dossier was not reported to high officials of the DOJ, but the IG found no political motivation for seeking the FISA warrant.  In other words, the IG blames this on extreme incompetence by the FBI team rather than on political motivation.  The IG does not explain why these very experienced FBI agents suddenly made these "mistakes" over and over again.

5.  The IG found that a large number of FBI requirements for compiling a FISA warrant application were violated.  One especially egregious violation was the FBI requirement that only scrupulously accurate information was to be used, while the FBI relied entirely on the Trump Dossier which it recognized was politically motivated and unverified.  In fact, the IG identifies 17 separate items in the application which are "clearly" erroneous.


Let's stop here.  What all this shows is that the IG still didn't tell us if the whole investigation was a set up.  In other words, did the CIA or the FBI have an asset put words into Papadopoulos' mouth and then set up the "chance" meeting with the ambassador from Australia?  It further shows that news reports that the FBI based the FISA application on something other than the Trump Dossier were wrong.  The news reports that the FBI had no idea that there were problems with the Trump Dossier when they submitted it to the FISA court as the basis for the warrant were also wrong.  The IG protects Sally Yates and Rod Rosenstein who signed these applications by saying that the FBI agents never informed them of the deficiencies with the Trump Dossier, but this does not exonerate the FBI.  The IG offers no explanation as to why experienced FBI agents suddenly ignored all the rules for getting a FISA warrant, but the IG says it wasn't politically motivated.  It's important to note, however, that the IG explains that something isn't politically motivated if there is some basis for it other than politics.

One last item needs to be mentioned.  The US Attorney who is investigating this mess has issued a statement saying that he does not agree with the report in certain respects.  He is not so fast to give a pass to those who signed the request to the FISA court for a warrant.

Isn't It Time

With the possible exception of Chris Hayes on MSNBC, there is no one who actually opposes the USMCA trade treaty.  Everyone agrees that replacing NAFTA with USMCA will improve economic conditions for US citizens and businesses and will help Canada and Mexico economically as well.  It's the proverbial win-win situation.  There are a few who want to add a provision or two to the treaty -- mostly labor unions.  Even the unions don't oppose the treaty however.

The USMCA treaty has been waiting a vote in the House for about six months now.  Nancy Pelosi and the Democrats won't bring it up for a vote, though, because doing so would give President Trump a "victory".  For the Democrats, denying Trump a success is more important than helping the American people.  Pelosi promised that there would be a vote in 2019, but that is rapidly becoming a broken promise.  Instead, everything is impeachment, impeachment and more impeachment.

If there were ever a need for a good reason NOT to support the Democrats, this is it.  It is a dereliction of duty for these politicians to put their party ahead of the welfare of the American people.

Will Left Wing Bigotry Stir Britain?

The big issue in the UK elections (voting is on Thursday) is Brexit.  The second issue in that election is Brexit.  In fact, it's an election about Brexit.  Still, there are at least two other issues that seem to be getting some attention.  The first is the sorry state of Britain's national health service, the government-run plan that provides medical care to nearly all Brits.  It's the UK's version of Medicare for All, and it is not doing well.  After many decades in place, the national health service rations care by making people wait for that care.  Need a hip replacement?  No problem if you wait six months or more.  Need cancer care?  Again, no problem if you wait until the cancer has spread and your chances for survival are much lower.  In any event, the healthcare issue is one that has helped the Labour Party close the gap a bit, while Labour is still far behind the Conservatives. 

The second issue that has been getting attention is the bigotry of the Labour Party.  This is mainly antisemitism.  Labour's leader Jeremy Corbyn is well known for his hatred for Israel, his disdain for Jews and his support in the past of Islamic terror organizations.  About 20 members of Parliament left the Labour Party in protest against the institutional antisemitism in Labour and with Corbyn in particular.  For his part, Corbyn has claimed that antisemitism is not tolerated in Labour and violators are quickly expelled from the party. 

Now, however, the Times of London has obtained the files of the Labour Party committee that deals with complaints of antisemitism and the reality is quite different from the one Corbyn describes.  There are hundreds of complaints with most of them being something like a year and a half old.  Labour has taken little action to deal with these complaints.  Even when the party has acted, it has generally just issued warnings to the perpetrators.  One Labour member who called for the murder of all Jews was told not to say that again.  In other words, Corbyn's response to the issue of Labour antisemitism has been revealed as a lie.

With the election just five days away, there is speculation that this story will be the final nail in the coffin for Labour and a guarantor of a Tory victory.  Let's hope so.  Institutional bigotry should be unacceptable not just in the USA but also in the UK and other Western democracies.

Trying To Lose

Mayor Pete Buttigieg seems to be working towards guaranteeing he will lose should he get the nomination. Pete told an audience in SC yesterday that anyone who voted for Trump at least “looked the other way” on racism. So Pete tod sixty plus million people that they either are racists or don’t care about racism. My guess is that this is not the sort of pitch to win over even one of those voters. 

Let's Focus On Issues

It's a strange thing to think that the issues really don't matter in the Democrat race for the presidential nomination.  Other than in fantasy, there really aren't many differences among the ever changing pack of candidates.

Each candidate thinks that President Trump is terrible and should be impeached.  That is true no matter what the evidence shows and no matter what the basis for impeachment actually is.  The candidates know that the hard left base wants Trump impeached no matter what, so they are all for impeachment.  Think about it.  Name a Democrat candidate who is counseling caution when it comes to impeachment or -- even more incredible -- who is opposing impeachment.  There are no such candidates.

Each candidate thinks that global warming is an existential crisis for our country and the world.  All of them want to raise taxes to fund some ill-defined scheme to combat carbon emissions.  Some candidates go into more detail about the fantasy of lowering carbon emissions.  Some go into great detail about how President Trump has put the USA on the wrong course (even though carbon emissions have declined more in the USA during Trump's presidency than in any other country in the world.)  But is there a candidate who says we don't know if there really is man made global warming?  Nope.  Is there a candidate who doesn't want to reduce carbon emissions?  Nope.  Is there a candidate who hasn't come out in support of raising taxes so as to fight climate change?  Again, nope. 

Each candidate wants more government involvement in healthcare.  This is one of the few places where there is some difference among the candidates.  Some -- like Warren and Sanders -- want total government control of healthcare.  They also want enormous tax increases for all Americans to cover the cost of such care.  Others -- like Biden -- want ever larger involvement by government in healthcare but they want a slower move to total government control.  The tax increases that these candidates want are huge, but they are smaller than the depression causing tax increases being pushed by Warren and Sanders.

None of the candidates want to control our borders to keep illegal aliens from streaming across the border.  Each of the candidates wants to give free healthcare, education and living expenses to all the illegals who get across the border.  No differences here at all.

All of the candidates are in favor of abortion whenever and wherever desired.  Some are inching toward abortion at birth, but they haven't stated this yet.

All the candidates want increased gun control by outlawing some types of weapons, registering all others, and/or confiscating weapons that are left.

As for the economy, the Democrats treat us to constant statements about how the economy is not working for most people.  We have record job creation, record low unemployment, growing wages, record business creation by minorities, and better economic results for the poor and the middle class than for the wealthy, but the Democrats want to end this by huge tax increases and major new regulations that will stop job growth, cause a recession, prevent a recovery, and move economic benefits back to the wealthy. 

So how is a Democrat to decide which candidate to support?  There are no real policy differences so they have to choose based upon personality and character.  Do they want the corrupt former Vice President who used the resources of the USA to bail out his son's Ukrainian employer?  You know, the guy who can't string three sentences together so that they make sense; the one who seems stuck in the 1950s; the one who makes creepy advances on young women.  Or do the voters want the angry old guy who never smiles; the one who screams and yells no matter what he talks about; the guy whose wife allegedly looted a college that employed her as president?  Maybe the voters will like the phony who claimed to be an indian to get a high paying job; the one who can't even tell the truth about where he kids went to school; the one who pretends to be an average American.  The voters might like the guy who is the only gay in the race (as far as we know).  he's the guy who looks twelve years old, who doesn't seem to like people of color, and who just can't seem to connect with people.  And let's not forget the ancient multi-billionaire who has no good reason for being president aside from the fact that he can self-fund his campaign.

It's a tough choice.  Right now, my guess is that Hillary gets back into the race if for no other reason than to make all the other candidates look good.