LET’S PUT A LID ON 2018

29 Dec. 2018

Dear Friends and Patriots,

          2018 is now done, or soon will be. As is my custom I bid it adieu. Maybe I bid it good riddance. Either way, I’m not sad to see it go. It hasn’t been my favorite year by a long shot. 2017 was measurably better, I think. Let me go back and revisit TRUMP’S TRIUMPH and I’ll be certain. Yes, I thought so. It was. In 2018 we had all the problems we had in 2017, but saw few new solutions. Thanks to our indolent Congress not nearly enough good stuff happened. Just to make the point, here are some high and low points of this year.

WAR AND RUMORS OF WAR

          You all understand that reference. President Trump finishes out 2018 with a bold statement that he’s not a war-monger. Recall the fears expressed by the whacko media and far “left” that he is dangerous and shouldn’t be allowed anywhere near the “red button” that could release all our nukes? Yeah, that was always stupid and ignores one fact about President Trump. He’s a pragmatist. He’s showing his pragmatism today in his orders to pull troops out of Syria and Afghanistan. I’m sure he views those expeditions as adventurism and little more. It’s not like we are going to bring peace to the Middle and Near East. It was adventurism that created the mess in Afghanistan, and worse adventurism that created the quagmire in Syria.

          We had more justification for Afghanistan, but we still need to get it through our notoriously thick heads that propping up regimes just because they appear friendly to our interests isn’t the same as promoting freedom and liberty in the world. Afghanistan hasn’t had a government responsible to its people in … living memory. I don’t think anyone can answer with certainty when that might have been. Maybe when Alexander the Great ruled the entire region; perhaps not since. I do know nothing we do there will have any lasting effect, unless of course we do nuke the place, which is 100% unlikely. I’m a patriot on this question. I believe in Afghanistan for Afghanis! We need to pull out completely and leave their government to its sorry fate. If the people there allow the Taliban to take charge again, so be it. It’s not like their current government is doing anything for them, for us, or for the rest of the world. We’ve been supporting glib-tongued parasites who’ve been sucking on our treasury for all they’re worth.   Cut them loose! We’re the ones who will gain freedom from it – freedom from them and their blood-sucking ways. If it causes any instability in the region, that’s their problem. Let them fix it.

          Understand one thing about Afghanistan and the Middle East. The people there view us as colonial invaders and infidels. They don’t perceive that we have any place in their lands, other than as tourists who bring in cash. We need a fuller appreciation of their viewpoint. We need to leave them alone to do what they do best – fight among themselves. Bringing peace to that region is very much like trying to part two fighting tomcats. Whoever tries will come away far more bloody than the cats. Hasn’t anyone but Donald Trump figured that out?

          As to Syria, we should let Syria’s neighbors sort that mess out. We can’t. We only serve to keep the Kurds from getting decimated by their many enemies. I understand the problems of the Kurds, but their problems were created by Sykes-Picot and we can’t undo that 100 year old mistake. Somehow the Kurds need to get it all figured out. We can’t be the bulwark that keeps the entire world off their backs. We already do that for Israel. Just how many times do we want to commit when there’s no intrinsic interest in question?

          The US government is supposed to protect our lands and our people. Last time I looked there were no Afghanis over here creating havoc, and there aren’t any Syrians, either. The havoc created in the past and today is more the result of stupid immigration policies than anything else. Can’t we agree to stop being the world’s policeman and demonstrate we are a nation of peace? We have plenty enough to do just in rebuilding our military to the point we can safely say we can engage any future aggression by China, Russia, or another big military power. We shouldn’t waste our human capital and treasure by involving ourselves in the petty disputes that go on all over the world on a continuing basis.

          Focus on our current activities in Africa. Ask yourself why we’re there at all. What interest of ours are we protecting? Why do we have so many operations ongoing? Whose sides are we on? How do we know any side we take on that continent won’t turn out to be tomorrow’s adversary? We’re not involved in the single largest train wreck in the world today – the gradual disintegration of South Africa. If we have any interest at all in Africa I might contend it would be to foster a better solution there. But, instead we play around in the jungles of Chad, The Congo, and Uganda, while South Africa burns. Yes, we do have a lot of questions about our priorities. I’m thinking a short period of withdrawal and isolationism might just be a good thing. One thing’s for certain – we won’t go broke if we stop singing to the tune the United Nations plays. Give that some thought, please.

          One last thought … our military industrial complex.   Do you think all those corporations want the US at peace with the world?

WERE DID ISIS GO?

          Remember that Islamic State bunch of yahoo terrorists? Yeah, them wuz some bad dudes, wazn’t they? They gave everyone over in the Middle East fits. Of course the back story on that may just turn out that the Obama administration, via Sec. of State Hillary Clinton was material in funding and arming them to do what they did. How do you think they figured out where all the cash was stashed in Iraq? You think they called up the banks and just asked, “Hey, I need to make a large withdrawal. Do you have maybe a billion in Dollars available, on say, next Thursday?” No, you darned well know that’s not how it happened. And, just how did they manage to scare the Iraqis off so they could steal all that hardware and rolling stock we left behind when Obama ordered the pullout? And, why did we leave all that stuff behind, anyway? What was up with that? And, what about all those small arms and shoulder-fired missiles that had piled up in Libya that all of a sudden found their way to Benghazi and onto ships bound for Turkey and Sidon? Don’t try to tell me the US didn’t invent ISIS. If you think our government didn’t then you have little understanding of how involved we’ve been with jihadis for the past 40 years.

          But, all that may be ending now. President Trump lowered the boom on ISIS and said, “That’s quite enough!” So now ISIS controls only about 1% of the territory it had seized at its zenith. Now it’s only a small bunch, less than 4,000 in all. President Trump says they’re defeated and erased. Maybe they are, and maybe they aren’t, but if those countries over in the Middle East still can’t cope with them, our message should be, “Sorry guys! We aren’t going to fight all your battles for you. Some day you have to grow the heck up and clean up your own back yards.”

          President Trump understands that war is bad for our country. Too bad some of those in Congress haven’t figured that out.

RELIGIOUS DEMOGRAPHICS

          For some time now there have been concerns regarding the shifting demographics of Europe, with knowledge that the dominant religious group on the continent may someday be Muslim. There’s another way of considering that fact that bears thought. We tend to make our consideration of this concern as if all the Muslims in Europe are Arab migrants, but that is far from true. We need a more careful consideration if we’re to comprehend the truth. That truth is the Muslims of Europe are of all ethnic groups present. A significant percentage of them are native white Europeans, either converts or natives of Balkan lands. Then, there are Turks, black Africans from many tribes, Afghans, Persians, and various ethnic groups from South Asia, and yes, Arabs.

          When you study the numbers it appears there’s little about the Muslims of Europe that should cause concern. The numbers you see reported indicate no country on the continent has a population as high as 10% and by 2050 the projected high will be no more than 15%. That doesn’t seem so bad, does it? It would appear the concern over the Islamification of Europe is wildly overblown.

          Of course, the majority of studies you find on Muslim population growth were done prior to the more recent incursion of so-called Middle East refugees. The truth may be in numbers, but the numbers reported are all over the place. The most reliable Muslim population number I could find for 2015 was just over 25 million. The current estimate for 2018 is 52 million. Do those numbers tell you much? If 25 million comprised approximately 8% of all Europeans in 2015, then, assuming the population of Europe is relatively stable, the percentage of Muslims there today has to be somewhere very near the old projected high for 2050. In other words, Muslims have equaled their 2050 growth projections 30 years ahead of time.

          Some have expressed concerns regarding the world’s overall religious demographics. While it’s true Christianity has lost almost 1% of the world’s slice of the religion pie, it’s still the dominant religion on the planet by about 7%. Concerns that Christianity is a dying religion and will soon be supplanted by Islam are just not substantiated by any numbers.

THE ECONOMY AND THE MARKETS

          Our economy continues to move along smartly. It does so despite all the factors now working against it. There are many opposed to the President’s trade initiatives. There are many opposed to his “America First” agenda. The FED is upping interest rates to “cool down” our economy, even though it’s not nearly hot. The stock markets are in some semblance of a melt down, though there’s actually very little about the economy that seems to merit the depth of the current market plunge. It’s all a bit curious, isn’t it?

          The basic numbers for our economy are good. You know them all, so there’s no point in doing that Sean Hannity roll-call thing. America is in the best overall economic condition of the past 50 years. You have to wonder why there are signs of trouble. Why are the capital markets doing so poorly when all the indicators would make you believe it should otherwise?

          If you’re like me you believe in a couple of fundamental economic principles. One is … there is a national economy. The national economy is made up of things like entrepreneurs, small businesses and corporations, jobs, commodities, goods and services. The other fundamental is … there are capital markets. The national economy is related to the capital markets, but the markets are not our economy, nor are they always a direct reflection of our economy. People tend to forget that. The media helps us forget. They dwell on the Dow and NASDAQ as if they are our economy. Meanwhile our real economy does get mentioned, but in ways that seem to make it a lesser consideration of our national financial health. Why is that?

          One thing we should always remember is our capital markets are subject to manipulation. The markets can be driven down by several means, but today it’s mostly by the set-points of automated trading programs that do the bulk of the activity we see reflected in the daily numbers. Relatively few stocks are bought, sold, and traded by the floor traders we all see on TV. The vast majority are done by computers that make such decisions in nanoseconds. We have seen instances where those trading computers were hacked and market swings were forced. It’s not smart to consider anything about the stock market as indicative of any nation’s economic health, least of all ours. Even on the best days, when markets are honest and in synch with the economy, the average market share price is a lagging indicator. It can’t possibly lead!

          All I’m trying to say is I believe the current dip in the markets is being engineered for a purpose. I believe it’s a gambit to force people to focus on the markets instead of the economy.   Someone, or some group of someones out there wants to diminish our trust in President Trump’s economic agenda. They want us to panic. They are willing to force short-term financial losses in their efforts to get their political way. I’m not talking about an international banking conspiracy here. I’m talking about some fantastically wealthy, progressive-aligned individuals who have teamed up to move the markets down. Casual investors will lose. Institutional investors will lose. Those wealthy individuals won’t lose. They’ve engineered this downturn, but beforehand they positioned themselves to short the loss. In other words, they’re making money on the down market. Those people never lose. You might ask about the role of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). Are they going to just allow this kind of game to play out with no consequences? Ask yourself – just who is the SEC anyway?

          My thought is to just wait. Sooner or later the markets will come back up. They always do. There’s far more money to be made in bull markets than in bear. Even the fantastically wealthy want more. They always do.

          Meanwhile there’s still money to be made. Find some savings plan that has a decent yield. With the FED raising interest rates it could be that much of the money moving out of the market is going into safer bets. If you can lock in a 3% return on any safe form of savings, perhaps you should think about it.

DEMOCRATS IN CONGRESS

          It appears we’re in for a rather rocky ride for the coming two years. I stand by my contention that Congress won’t make an impeachment move. I may be wrong, but I don’t think they’ll want to risk a public perception boomerang that such a move could create. Instead I think they’ll indulge in a lot of time-wasting hearings motivated by their eternally hurt feelings instead of any evidence of actual wrongdoings.   They’ll posture and preen and whine endlessly, but all will be for one purpose alone – to allow them to continue in their indolent ways. I predict the next Congress will set a record that may be a new standard; a new low. I predict our next Congress gets absolutely nothing of substance done. If they pass any laws at all they’ll be cosmetic; just some window dressing of popular issues that don’t actually mean a hill of beans. They won’t deal with taxes, except to propose raises. They won’t deal with immigration at all, unless something forces them to. They won’t deal with Social Security or Medicare. They won’t even deal with the obvious and continuing problems of Obamacare unless they’re forced to by some unforeseen circumstance. No, with the House under the control of Democrats, expect all to come to a grinding halt. Keep in mind those Democrats are aided in their indolence by an equally indolent corps of establishment Republicans, who have almost exactly the same interests. They’re also aided by all the Democrats in the Senate, plus the occasional Republican.

          Stand by for a Do-Nothing year. In some ways it might be best, but there are things that need doing. They’ll just have to wait again. The old can-kicking habit of Congress just got a new lease on life.

THE MUELLER INVESTIGATION

          Even though Mr. Mueller and his merry band of assassins didn’t find anything they were looking for in 2017, they continued to search and not find anything in 2018 either. Oh, they are responsible for ruining a few lives, but their main objective – driving President Trump either crazy or to resignation – has not been achieved. Do they have any other objectives? Yes, they do. They want to continue on as a protected species, drawing large salaries and booking all their expenses to the taxpayers of America. That, and protecting the huge swamp in D.C. from exposure. Yes, they are part of the rear-guard who’s desperately trying to silence all opposition so the swamp may survive any and all attempts by President Trump to hold them to account.

          We all wonder what the future will bring for the Mueller cabal. I fully expect them to linger on, indicting a few other people in 2019 for one process crime or another, but not materially doing much more. That’s not why they were put in place. They were put where they are to do exactly what they’re doing, protecting the swamp and the most recent past administration. Any indictments they produce and any people who subsequently go to trial are only justification for their continuation. They are like a cancer that’s resistant to any treatment. With Democrats controlling the House for the next two years, they might become metastatic and create even more chaos. One thing is certain, though, they’ll never find what they say they’re looking for. It’s not the point.

Q-ANON

          Maybe we should just put all those Q-Anon posts in the back of our minds. Today I believe there was a psy-op in play, but I’ve concluded everyone who paid attention to the entire Q-Anon phenomenon was being victimized. It was amusing for a while, but it’s time to move on to more serious things.

THE WALL REPORT

          There is no way of summarizing the year without a discussion of The Wall. The Wall is where the current media focus is, and where Congress is trying not to go. It’s where President Trump has drawn his domestic “Red Line.” He understands Congress isn’t likely to work on any meaningful immigration reform for at least the next two years, so he’ll try to push piecemeal legislation and issue Executive Orders to help correct obvious defects. All the while he’ll be engaged in that genteel warfare that passes for politics in Washington, battling Democrats and progressives in the federal judiciary. It’s hard to say what The Wall funding will end up being, but it is key to forward progress on this issue, which was candidate Donald Trump’s initial commitment.

          If you review the history of immigration and border issues you’ll discover an amazing history involving most of the major players today. You’ll discover all those players used to appear to be on the side of the people, but have changed. The people of the country haven’t changed; they’ve always wanted stronger border enforcement. The people have always wanted an immigration system that works. Democrats in Congress used to understand that, but apparently because President Trump has claimed the entire issue as his own, they abandoned all sense in their zeal to wage their cool war against his administration.

          Today you’ll hear Democrats say “Walls don’t work!” Nonsense! They do, and there are dozens of examples all over the world of effective border walls. You’ll also hear them state that we should develop a high-tech wall, which they say is cheaper and more effective. They won’t tell you that was tried in the ‘90s and was a miserable and costly failure. Democrats will also not tell you the current wall system proposed by the administration includes all forms of border surveillance, not just physical walls. The Democrats only want to demagogue the issue, not to inform or educate citizens on the realities.

          Today the Democrats are in league with the very people they used to publically revile – big business interests that capitalize on loose border enforcement. They’re in league with the National Chamber of Commerce, an organization that is truly in the wrong on this policy. They’re in league with the whole illegal drug industry, from the cartels to the street dope pushers. They’ll say they aren’t, but today the vast majority of illegal street drugs moves across our southern borders. The major source of fentanyl, an incredibly powerful synthetic heroin, is China. But fentanyl moves from China to Mexico, where it’s smuggled into our country along with cocaine from Central American, Mexican marijuana, methamphetamines, and dozens of other street drugs. Democrats are also in league with child sex traffickers and white slavers. Those age old criminal trades had all but died out in our nation until the Mexican cartels revived them in their cross-border expansion efforts.

          Does America need a southern border wall system? Will such a system provide additional protections to American citizens? Yes, and Yes! Will a border wall curtail the waves of illegal immigrants? Yes! Will such a system actually diminish the kinds and levels of crimes currently experienced because The Wall doesn’t exist? That answer, unfortunately, is largely no.   What it will do is force the cartels to develop new ways to penetrate our nation. It may cause the price of street drugs to rise. It will make the cities, towns, ranches, farms, and parklands along the border much safer once again, but The Wall is only one piece of a huge system that we employ to keep criminals out of our country.  

          Our nation is rich. The nations that seek to foist criminality upon us are largely poor. We have something they want – money. They’ll always come at us for our money. The Wall will help, especially in controlling illegal immigration. But, the ultimate answer to the cross-border crime problems The Wall is intended to solve lie within our own communities. We have to win those battles at home.

BABY, IT’S COLD OUTSIDE

          The social warfare in our land is getting way past stupid. When a 75 year old song is banned because the #MeToo bunch decides they don’t like it we are really catering to the fringes of the fringe. You heard that White Christmas was the subject of objections, too, didn’t you? Yes, White Christmas is evidently a racist dog whistle.   I’m somewhat reminded of when Paul Anka recorded Having My Baby. Do you all remember how that song set off the feminazis, back in 1995?

          That such stupidity makes the national news is something we should all care about, far more than the subjects themselves. When the “Breaking News!” is about some whacked out bunch of malcontents who want attention and get it by complaining about song lyrics, you know we have problems, but the songs aren’t where the problems lie.   We all understand that First Amendment thing, don’t we? Banning songs is not only stupid, it’s clearly un-American. Why would we ban an old song over its obvious innuendo and seemingly not care for a second about others that romanticize killing police, rape, prostitution, drug use, beating women, rioting, drive-by shootings, gang warfare, and the many other themes that have been the staple of the “thug” component of rap music? Clearly the rap genre has much more to answer for than Baby It’s Cold Outside and White Christmas.

          If there’s any perversity to the whole issue of the songs, it’s in the fact anyone pays a moment’s attention to these non-issues. It’s in the fact the mainstream media will hawk the stories and hype them as if they mean anything at all.

          I’ve wasted enough ink on this subject.

HOW’S OUR PRESIDENT DOING?

          President Trump is doing just fine, thank you. Not in all things, and not at all times, but overall he’s still the dynamo he started out to be, and he’s still disrupting Washington like no other President before.

          This winter we saw something truly extraordinary, the bipartisan passage of what is being popularly called the FIRST STEP Act. Its actual title is long and nonsensical; typical of laws Congress passes these days. Oh, heck, I may as well type it out just so you know and can see what I mean; it’s the Formerly Incarcerated Reenter Society Transformed Safely Transitioning Every Person Act. So, you now should comprehend that FIRST STEP is an acronym for the incredibly dumb, long form title. Congress needs to hire a few comedy writers to help it with such things, don’t you think?

          The FIRST STEP act is promoted as prison reform, but it’s not. Its goal is mainly to reduce the rate of recidivism. That’s worthy in itself, assuming it works, but it does very little that affects the overall criminal justice system. It doesn’t revise sentencing guidelines and does almost nothing that will change the lives and prospects of 90% of those who are now warehoused in our many “big houses” all over the country. And, keep in mind it only applies to federal prisoners, not to those held in jails and prisons by local and state authorities. Paragraph 3632(d)(4)(D) of the law has a rather extensive list of criminal activity that will exclude people from consideration for participation in FIRST STEP.  Maybe that’s why it’s just a FIRST STEP. Perhaps there will be a SECOND STEP aimed at changing things in the justice or prison systems that will improve things. I don’t think I’m going to look forward to that acronym, though. If you have ideas for some words that will string together to spell out SECOND STEP, maybe you can submit them to your Congress person. They obviously don’t have to make any sense, so don’t get overly concerned on that point.

          FIRST STEP is not big legislation. Not by any stretch. But it did get wide bipartisan support and passed through both houses of Congress like lightning. It was shepherded from its inception by Jared Kushner, President Trump’s son-in-law and a key White House advisor. If you read the law, as I have, you’ll understand a few things about it, why Congress passed it, and Kushner himself. This new law is decidedly liberal. There’s not a conservative thing about it. It’s a “feel good” law that will spend tax money on programs intended to mainstream non-violent federal offenders, people like Kushner’s father. Yes, there is that tie-in. I don’t have any particular gripes about the program, other than it’s not where I believe the major focus should be. Its target population is small and its goals appear worthy enough. It may reduce recidivism to some small degree. If you read the list of crimes that exclude prisoners from consideration I think you’ll find the vast majority of recidivists are found there and not among those who will be going through programs funded under FIRST STEP.

          The main point we should take away from FIRST STEP is that it was a piece of legislation promoted by President Trump and it had great support. It’s now the law of the land and he gets credit for a legislative win. I like that, even if my thoughts about the law itself aren’t all that positive.

          President Trump is listening to both his critics and supporters. That’s a healthy sign in any President. He appeared to be waffling on his throw-down to Congress over “The Wall” funding. When the howling started in the heartland he heard it and realized backing down was not what his base wants. He decided the Christmas government shutdown of 2018 was preferable to conceding to the former border hawk Democrats in Congress. Good move! He listened a while back when there was criticism that he hadn’t gone into a war zone to visit troops. He went. The press reacted as if it was a spur of the moment move, prompted by their carping. It wasn’t. You don’t move the President and First Lady into an active war zone on the spur of the moment. It takes months of planning, millions of dollars, and involves hundreds of security people to do that with any degree of safety. Once the press stops preening and remembers those facts they’ll change their carping and complain about the expense of going to Iraq just to eat some leftover turkey and dressing with some soldiers.  Well, they may do that after they get over the First Lady’s choice of boots for the visit. They do have to cover the important things first.

          The “latest” on the President’s troop visits is a bogus contention that his autographing of some MAGA hats violates          the UCMJ prohibition against partisan political activities by uniformed troops. Balderdash! The ethics provisions of the UCMJ were modeled on the Hatch Act, which applies to all government civil servants. When the Commander in Chief visits “his” troops and some request he autograph some personal artifacts, what ethical violation could there possibly be? The President isn’t campaigning. MAGA hats are keepsakes. End of story. Anyone who tells you different is a willfully ignorant anti-Trump hack.

          The bottom line on President Trump today is that he hasn’t slowed down, lost his vision, or lost his resolve. It’s sort of amazing, considering the few real friends he has in Congress and the media. He doesn’t seem phased by his adversaries. Instead he appears to be continually delighted in driving them a bit nuts by the off the cuff commentary in his Twitter feed. Though some days his Twitter antics are a bit trying, you have to admit President Trump is doing two things that are truly delightful. He’s keeping his campaign promises, and he’s … winning!

LOOKING TOWARD 2019

          We’re entering 2019. Will President Trump prevail over Congress? Will he get his wall? Will he fulfill even more of his campaign promises? Will we see any meaningful progress toward immigration reform? Will he find a way to force Congress to deal with the budget deficits and mounting debt? Will we continue to see Trump’s push to Make America Great Again?

          Stay tuned! I’m watching, and I’ll report what I see to you.

In Liberty,
Steve