The Left just cannot face reality

SNL  put on a sketch designed to deride the Kavanaugh victory -- and CNN approved.  Below is what CNN said.  They claim  that Trump and the GOP just don't "get" women.  If they had said that they don't "get" feminists that would have been spot on.  But feminists are not all women and most women will have sons and brothers and other male friends and relatives whom they value -- so the feminist attacks on men will overwhelmingly be alarming to normal women.

The megaphone demands from feminists and the Left during the Kavanaugh hearings -- to the effect that due process and the presumption of innocence must be abandoned whenever some disturbed woman accuses a man of an offence -- will rightly be perceived by most women as a dire treat to their loved ones.  Feminists just don't load the simple fact that most women have male relatives that they care about and most women will not therefore wish to expose males to the unjust perils that hate-filled feminists have in mind for them.

The demand that women should always be believed is particularly pernicious.  Particularly in Britain, there are a lot of false rape allegations. The Brits do regularly put some of the women concerned behind bars for a couple of years -- as it is a very distressing and disruptive experience to the innocent men affected.  That is one thing that other jurisdictions could learn from Britain.

And the Democrats have now identified themselves with these crazy anti-men demands.  It must hurt them electorally.  53% of white women voted for Trump in 2016.  It will surely be higher next time.

We all know that Leftists have the attention-span of a goldfish and live in an eternal present so perhaps we can understand that they have forgotten that revealing 53% but even their attention span should have been sufficient to allow them to note the large number of women who knew Kavanaugh through work and universally spoke well of him.  And the large number of conservative women who rallied in support of him should have been visible too. And what about the increasing tendency of young conservative women to reject feminism -- for instance Allie Beth Stuckey in the USA, Lauren Southern in Canada and Daisy Cousens in Australia.  Conservatives get on very well with them!   But, no, they too are no doubt invisible to Leftists. They see only what they want to see. From a psychological viewpoint they would readily be seen as severe neurotics, heavily protected mentally by the full panoply of the Freudian defense mechanisms

And a diagnosis of neuroticism does suit the Left quite well.  Neurotics are more or less continually unhappy and Leftists are too.  They are never satisfied.  No matter what destructive reform they achieve, they still want more.  They will go all the way to bloody revolution if they can. They are chronically discontented people. There is always some apparent "injustice" that fires them up. They are a destructive force that is a danger to us all.

Neurotics are not mad however and the feverish opposition to Kavanaugh was in its own way rational. It seems highly likely that the Left will now no longer be able to get through the court what they could not get in any other way -- such as homosexual marriage and unrestricted abortion. Trump has shut down America's alternative and Left-leaning legislature. The court will now rule according to what the constitution actually says rather than on "emanations and penumbras".


'SNL' gets it right: Trump and GOP are clueless about women

(CNN)"Saturday Night Live's" opening sketch last night reflected a reality of today's Republican leaders: They just don't get women.

We saw this play out when President Donald Trump (the real one, not Alec Baldwin) declared on Air Force One last night that recently confirmed Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh was "squeaky clean" and that, in his view, Kavanaugh's biggest supporters were the women of America.

Trump claimed women "were in many ways stronger than men in his favor." At that point, he should've just added, "And live from New York, it's Saturday Night!"

Trump's remarks would've been a perfect fit for "SNL's" cold open last night, which focused on how the GOP is obliviously out of touch with women, or simply doesn't care about them. The sketch featured impersonations of Republican senators celebrating the confirmation of Kavanaugh by partying in a locker room.

SOURCE

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McConnell Sees Electoral Dividends With Kavanaugh Victory

In the end, Democrats, the Left, and other progressive sects have learned a lesson, even if they don’t realize it, you don’t mess with Cocaine Mitch. It was a brutal fight. Judge Brett Kavanaugh, who President Trump had nominated to fill the vacancy left by Anthony Kennedy, was being eaten alive by the left-wing smear machine. He was facing three allegations of sexual misconduct that lacked in evidence or corroborating witnesses. It looked as if this fight was going to be a smooth win, but these allegations, dropped at the last minute, dragged us into the gutter.

It was a knife fight—and we won. Period. While the Left is happy their base is animated, this unfair, brutal, and totally outrageous character assassination attempt against Judge Kavanaugh infuriated the GOP, especially scores of conservative female voters who saw right through the smear campaign. It was a double-edged sword: the more the Left tried to destroy Kavanaugh, the more jacked up the GOP base became. And it isn’t just Trump supporters, Bushies, Never Trumpers, every wing of the GOP united behind this man. McConnell made a note that this fight has done wonders to get Republicans enthused for the 2018 midterms (via WaPo):

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said he never considered urging the White House to withdraw Brett M. Kavanaugh’s nomination to the Supreme Court and called opposition to the judge a “great political gift” for Republicans ahead of next month’s midterm elections.

In an interview with The Washington Post hours before Kavanaugh’s near-certain confirmation on Saturday afternoon, the Kentucky Republican again underscored his confidence in Kavanaugh’s denials of allegations of sexual misconduct decades ago while decrying the protesters who have challenged senators for days.

“I never thought Judge Kavanaugh would withdraw,” McConnell said during the interview with The Post. “When your integrity is attacked like his was, a withdrawal was certainly no solution to that, so we were in the fight to the finish.”

McConnell, overseeing a razor-thin 51-49 GOP majority, said the GOP is already seeing a boost in polling in Senate races because of the Democratic opposition to Kavanaugh combined with the protests. Republicans are on offense in the fight for control of the Senate, with 10 Democrats seeking reelection in states President Trump won in 2016.

“It’s been a great political gift for us. The tactics have energized our base,” he said, adding: “I want to thank the mob, because they’ve done the one thing we were having trouble doing, which was energizing our base.”

He elaborated further with Roll Call:

“I think there’s no question that the tactics have energized our base like we were unable to do before this,” McConnell said. “Not only the tactics of the Senate Democrats on the Judiciary Committee, but then those who literally have our members under assault I mean — they’ve come to our homes, they’ve you know basically brushed up against members.” ...

“The base is on fire. I was talking to several of my political advisers yesterday about what we’re seeing out in the red states is a dramatically rising interest,” McConnell said.

An NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist poll released Wednesday indicated that the battle over Kavanaugh's nomination had helped close the enthusiasm gap.

Eighty-two percent of Democrats surveyed said the election was "very important" compared to 80 percent of Republicans. In July, the survey showed that 68 percent of Republicans deemed the election very important, compared to 78 percent of Democrats....

Democrats, of course, have the bulk of the incumbents in competitive Senate races on the 2018 map that are closely contested.

Ten Senate Democrats are running in states Trump won in 2016, but operatives on both sides agreed that at least two of them -- Ohio Sen. Sherrod Brown of Ohio and Pennsylvania Sen. Bob Casey -- are further out of reach for Republicans.

Sen. Joe Manchin III was the only Democratic senator in a state Trump won by double digits who decided to support Kavanaugh. The others, including Joe Donnelly of Indiana, Claire McCaskill of Missouri, Jon Tester on Montana and Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota, opposed the judge for various reasons.

The Kentucky Republican name-checked those four Democratic incumbents as having, “voted frankly quite foolishly on this issue given their own electoral prospects.”

Polling showed that Joe Manchin’s re-election would be all but assured if he voted for Kavanaugh. Overall, Red State Democrats were put in a terrible political positionin this nomination fight. They could vote for Kavanaugh, but risk the wrath of the progressive grassroots and loss of access to key Democratic campaign financing. And they could vote against him, but be forced to update their resumes because they would be out of a job come January. Claire McCaskill knows this all too well.

On the Right’s flank, Arizona and Tennessee could be Democratic pick-ups, though I doubt how a rural, GOP state like Tennessee flips, but we’ll see. Missouri and Florida look like likely pick-ups for the GOP. If we hold the line in Tennessee, lose Arizona, and win in Missouri and Florida, we’re left with how the upper chamber started at the last Congress, 51-49. Still, a lot can change. The polling post-Kavanaugh has yet to be released. And in Arizona, Democrat Kyrsten Sinema has been caught telling some tall tales about her upbringing. Stay tuned, but the fact remains that the GOP position is much better than in the House—though with the base energized, perhaps we could hold the line there. It would be a slim majority, but still a win—and one that would trigger another liberal meltdown.

UPDATE: Manchin may have voted with Republicans, but Mitch still plans to make a play to nab his seat:

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said Republicans will still campaign against Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) despite his being the only member of the opposing party who voted to approve now-Justice Brett Kavanaugh's nomination to the Supreme Court.

“Joe Manchin’s still a Democrat, and we’re trying to hold the majority,” the Kentucky Republican said on CBS’ “Face the Nation” when asked if he would tell President Donald Trump not to campaign against the red-state Democrat.

But McConnell said he appreciated Manchin’s vote, which he called “the right thing to do.”

Maybe Manchin should re-register as a Republican if he wins re-election, which he very well could, despite West Virginia being a deep-red state.

SOURCE

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They're Not Done: The Left Is Gunning To Impeach Kavanaugh If Democrats Retake The House

They’re having a meltdown, folks. It’s delicious. The liberal tears are flowing. I’ve been drinking them up since 3:30 PM yesterday, but this fight is not over. It might not be a full-blown blitz. It certainly won’t be as intense as the attempted character assassination attempt against now-Associate Justice Brett Kavanaugh that we saw over the past week in this hellacious nomination fight.

It will be more of a manning the watchtower because left-wingers are pushing to impeach Kavanaugh, which will be magnified if Democrats retakes the House in the upcoming midterm election. At the same time, Donald Trump Jr. had a more aggressive warning, which I agree with as well. This is a war.

Trump supporters - The fight isn’t over. You better believe that Democrats are going to do everything in their power to impeach Kavanuagh from the Supreme Court if they take control of Congress in November.  This is war. Time to fight. Vote on Nov 6 to protect the Supreme Court!

MoveOn also announced it was canceling a six-figure advertising campaign for Bredesen "due to his Kavanaugh position" and foreclosed any possible further efforts to help Manchin. Priorities USA, Democrats' largest super PAC, is not spending money in either race and won't be, said spokesperson Josh Schwerin.

Rep. Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y., who would become chairman of the House Judiciary Committee if Democrats retake the House, and who would probably be the point-person on issues of impeachment, has signaled that he would reopen an investigation into Kavanaugh, who would be a sitting member of the high court by the time the new Congress is sworn in in January....

…40 members of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, which speaks for the left flank of House Democrats, sent a letter to Trump last week suggesting Kavanaugh's impeachment could be the outcome of further investigation....

"This is absolutely a scrimmage for impeachment," said Michael Caputo, a former Trump campaign adviser. "I believe they will try to impeach Brett Kavanaugh, I believe they will try to impeach President Trump."

But many liberals think impeaching Kavanaugh, or even talking about it, is not only bad politics, but dangerous for democracy.

"That is not happening anytime soon," said Jim Manley, a former aide to Harry Reid, the former Democratic Senate leader. "I really wish folks would stop this talk of impeaching Kavanaugh and keep the focus on where it belongs" — the midterm elections. ...

…progressive opinion leaders are urging liberal voters not to invest energy or hope in what Mother Jones magazine calls a "liberal fantasy."

Worse still, warned Jonathan Turley, a prominent liberal legal scholar, impeaching Kavanaugh would set a dangerous precedent that either party could use to alter the balance of power on the court for political reasons.

"This is a terribly reckless idea for the Democrats to pursue," said Turley, a professor at George Washington University's Law School. "If we start to impeach justices based on shifting congressional majorities then we'll reduce ourselves to the level of Robespierre."

Why are some on the Left urging their side to move on from Kavanaugh? It’s because it will never happen. You need a supermajority of Senators to remove a federal judge. Democrats will never get 67 votes—ever. In the meantime, let’s say they do dabble in this nonsense; it will only animate the GOP base heading into a presidential election and give excellent fodder for Trump to bash Democrats. We would win this fight, but I’d rather spend the energy owning liberals on other fronts. Nevertheless, the threat is there. The Left has become unhinged. We must remain vigilant. Most of all, don’t forget to vote this November.

SOURCE

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Leftism is largely inborn.  Is bureaucracy too?

All the twin studies how strong heritability for Left/Right political orientation.  Leftists are born dissatisfied and conservatives are born contented.  And Leftists love bureaucracy.  They can hardly get enough of it.  As V.I. Lenin remarked: "Account must be taken of every single article, every pound of grain, because what socialism implies above all is keeping account of everything".  So is there also an inherited bureaucratic instinct?  Something I encountered recently inclined me towards that belief.

A little background:  I have a pinup on my bedroom wall.  It is a picture of the Queen.  No doubt many would say that I must be a poor thing to have the Queen as my pinup but it is a large and beautifully done portrait so I think it could be called a pinup.



And I am an unapologetic monarchist.  I believe that a constitutional monarchy is the best form of government,  Americans have to wait 4 years before they can get rid of an unpopular  President but, in a monarchy on Westminster lines, parliament can boot out at will any Prime Minister who has lost popularity --which the Australian parliament has done rather a lot of in recent years. So it suits my views that I have a picture of Her Majesty and Prince Philip on my wall.

But I have acquired that picture only recently.  There is an Australian tradition that Federal politicians can give out free pictures of Her Majesty to their constituents.  So I wrote to my local Federal MP, Terri Butler, member for Griffith, and requested one.  She represents the Labor Party so I was slightly surprised that she wrote back to me and agreed.  I had to pick the picture up from her electorate office but that was not far away from me so off I went.

When I arrived and rang the bell a large sandy-hired young man appeared. When I made my request he said; "We haven't received any correspondence about this".  I said, "I wrote to Parliament house".  He said "Did you get a letter from Terri Butler about this?"  I said I had.  "Have you got it with you" -- "No". "Where is it?" -- "At home".  And he went on generally in a rather circular way about having authorization to give me the picture.  I inherit a rather short temper from my father however so I very soon started to shout and bang on the counter.  That dislodged him and he gave me the picture.

As the  pictures are freely given out, there was absolutely no need for any bureaucracy but this employee of the Labor party dreamed some up anyway.  He appears to have a bureaucratic temperament.  I suspect it was inherited -- JR

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For more blog postings from me, see  TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH,  POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated),  a Coral reef compendium and an IQ compendium. (Both updated as news items come in).  GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten. I also put up occasional updates on my Personal blog and each day I gather together my most substantial current writings on THE PSYCHOLOGIST.

Email me  here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or  here (Pictorial) or  here  (Personal)

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The Power of ‘I Stand With Brett’

Amy Swearer encounters the silent majority

Friday morning, as the Senate prepared to vote to advance Judge Brett Kavanaugh’s nomination, I took a field trip with some of our interns. It wasn’t anything intensive—just a lap around the Capitol to observe the anti-Kavanaugh protests.

One of our female interns carried a sign. It was a simple sign with four words: “I stand with Brett.”

I somewhat expected those words to attract attention—they are, after all, words so contrary to the sentiments expressed by the majority of individuals who held signs around the Capitol this week.

What I did not expect was the type of attention it would draw and from what type of people.

You see, we were mostly ignored by the large groups of screaming, borderline-hysterical, anti-Kavanaugh protesters. Occasionally, a lone individual would heap some abuse our way, often in the form of telling us we ought to be ashamed of ourselves. But overall, it appeared they had bigger fights to pick than with four fairly innocuous young adults who kept a respectful distance.

No, the attention we attracted was from people largely overlooked amid the shouting. And they were almost unanimously supportive.

Normal, everyday people—tourists from all areas of the country, couples pushing strollers, families with teenage daughters, middle-aged friends, elderly women out for a walk—all quietly, calmly approaching us for a word of thanks.

We could not go 50 yards without being stopped by someone expressing their gratitude or asking if we had any extra signs. I can’t tell you how many wanted to take pictures with the sign. I gave up counting the thumbs ups and smiles. I can’t tell you the number of ways we were thanked by different individuals.

What I do know is that the amount of encouragement received by people who would otherwise have stayed silent in the shadow of the larger anti-Kavanaugh mobs gave me hope.

More than anything, I was heartened by the women. For too many women, “I stand with Brett” is a phrase we’ve been told we mustn’t utter in public. It’s a conclusion we’ve been told we mustn’t reach. A rationale we’ve been told we mustn’t embrace.

And so many women have stayed silent. We’ve quietly absorbed the abuse aimed at us. Without retort, we have stood by and refrained from engaging in a prolonged ideological battle we fear we’ll fight alone.

But inside, we know. We know that there is not and has never been a shred of corroboration for the claims of sexual misconduct against Kavanaugh. We know that “Believe all women” is an irrational and untenable ideology that undermines every argument that we should be treated equally to men. We know that a good man has been forced to go to war for his honor and his family because he is being slandered on the altar of social justice run amok.

For dozens of women today, these four words printed on poster board were their voice, and they let us know it.

Reason and truth do not always belong to the loudest in the room. Sometimes, they belong to the whisperers the world barely acknowledges, and castigates when it does.

So let me unequivocally state today what so many of us have long known, but have too often refused to say publicly: Women, it’s OK.

It’s OK to not believe other women when the evidence is contrary to their claims.

It’s OK to adhere to basic concepts of rationality and fairness when making a judgment about a man accused of sexual misconduct.

It’s OK to stand with Kavanaugh if your reason so implores you.

These are things we need not only whisper in private. We can say them out loud, and boldly. Behind our whispers is a mighty roar to let others know they are not alone in thinking for themselves.

SOURCE 

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The U.S. Economy Is More Free Than It’s Been in Years

Economic freedom is good—whether in itself or because of the longevity, prosperity, and associated liberty it brings.

In a country that seems determined to reenact the 1850s, or the Weimar years, or maybe Italy's years of lead, good news about politics and the economy can seem exceedingly rare. But brace yourself for a shock, because this country around you that looks poised to tear itself apart has quietly broken a decades-long retreat from economic freedom, becoming a place more supportive of private business and the ability of individuals to make a living.

This good news comes courtesy of the latest report on the "Economic Freedom of the World," published last week by Canada's Fraser Institute and the Cato Institute and using data up through 2016. "The foundations of economic freedom are personal choice, voluntary exchange, and open markets," write authors James Gwartney, Robert Lawson, Joshua Hall, and Ryan Murphy—though there's rather a lot more behind the numbers, as you might expect.

Readers of Reason will take it as a given that freedom—the ability to order your own affairs and make consensual arrangements with willing people—is a good thing in itself. But the report notes that "countries with greater economic freedom have substantially higher per-capita incomes." In fact, those in the least-free quartile of countries have the lowest per-capita income at $5,649, rising to $11,465 in the third quartile, $18,510 in the second quartile, and $40,376 in the quartile containing the most economically free countries.

Life expectancy also rises and "is about 20 years longer in countries with the most economic freedom than in countries with the least."

And freedom appears to be indivisible, with the rights to run your business and use your property closely linked to the rights to criticize leaders and change the government. "Greater economic freedom is associated with more political rights and civil liberties," the report notes.

So economic freedom is good—whether in itself or because of the longevity, prosperity, and associated liberty it brings.

All of this should be important to Americans because the U.S. has been sliding in the rankings for many, many years. The 2012 report mourned that "[f]rom 1980 to 2000, the United States was generally rated the third freest economy in the world, ranking behind only Hong Kong and Singapore," but that it "has experienced a substantial decline in economic freedom during the past decade."

That year, the U.S. came in at number 18. If you're American and concerned about longevity, prosperity, and associated liberty, that wasn't a good sign.

But now, "the United States returned to the top 10 in 2016 after an absence of several years." While not back to its high-water mark, the U.S. is now ranked in sixth place. And if you're wondering, the U.S. ranking didn't improve because everybody else is going down the drain more quickly than us; our score actually rose, meaning the country became more free in economic terms.

If we can avoid tanking the world's economy in a trade war, we have some friends who might want to join the celebration.

"Worldwide, economic freedom has increased during the past three decades," the report points out. "Moreover, the increase in economic freedom of developing economies since 1990 has been more rapid than the increase of high-income industrial countries. The institutions and policies of developing countries today are substantially more consistent with economic freedom than was the case in the 1980s."

Remember that link between economic freedom and per capita income mentioned above? Now take that and apply that to the entire planet. Then wrap your mind around a report recently published by the World Bank finding that "the number of extremely poor people—those who live on $1.90 a day or less—has fallen from 1.9 billion in 1990 to about 736 million in 2015."

It's worth noting that the other major measure of economic freedom, the Heritage Foundation's Index of Economic Freedom, still has the United States at an unimpressive eighteenth place—but that's despite real improvements in the country's performance. Heritage found an all-time high in global economic freedom; the U.S.'s improvements got swamped in that overall rising tide.

"The increase in its overall score would seem to indicate that the decade-long decline in America's economic freedom may have been arrested. There are signs of renewed labor market dynamism and increased growth, and major regulatory and tax reforms are spurring business confidence and investment," the Index's editors wrote.

That's not to say you should stop worrying; we're humans and we're perfectly capable of flushing away the good times. President Trump's protectionist instincts—his view of trade as a zero-sum game in which the U.S. is necessarily pitted against its partners—is brewing up a nasty conflict.

In May, more than 1,100 economists signed a letter deliberately echoing the one sent to Congress in 1930 urging rejection of the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act, which subsequently contributed to the devastation wrought by the Great Depression. "Congress did not take economists' advice in 1930," the modern letter warns, "and Americans across the country paid the price. The undersigned economists and teachers of economics strongly urge you not to repeat that mistake."

Also disturbing, is that "global support for free markets seems to have been falling continuously since the 1990s," as described by Pál Czeglédi and Carlos Newland for the Economic Freedom of the World report. They examine several possible reasons before citing Nobel Prize winning economist James Buchanan to the effect that people seem to favor some sort of "parentalistic" protection. This role has been played in the past by religion, but in increasingly secular societies the state has stepped in with all of its coercive power.

It's an interesting theory that's worth exploring elsewhere. But, for whatever reason, surveys find increasingly wealthy populations voicing decreasing support for the economic freedom that made them prosperous. It's quite possible that anti-market fervor has slowed or even halted progress toward economic freedom in much of the world, Czeglédi and Newland add. They speculate that as governments substitute the preferences of politicians for the outcomes of voluntary exchange with inevitably unpleasant results, sentiment will shift again.

For the moment, though, the United States is an economically freer place in an economically freer world. That means improved prospects for long, free, and prosperous lives for all of us—if we don't mess it up.

SOURCE 

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Trump's 'Compromise' on Border Wall

"When will Republican leadership learn that they are being played like a fiddle by the Democrats on Border Security and Building the Wall?" Trump said.

"Without Borders, we don't have a country," he said. "With Open Borders, which the Democrats want, we have nothing but crime! "Finish the Wall!" he declared.

What inspired this presidential declaration?

A House-Senate conference committee had just finalized another massive spending bill. They called this one a combined "minibus" and "continuing resolution."

Unlike the "omnibus" Trump had signed in March, this minibus-continuing resolution did not fund the entire government in one bill. The "minibus" part of it, however, did "marry" the spending bill for the Department of Defense to the spending bill for the Departments of Labor, Education and Health and Human Services. It would fund those departments through all of fiscal 2019.

The "continuing resolution" part of it would fund only until Dec. 7 — and, according to the House Appropriations Committee, only at "current levels" — any other federal departments that did not have their own appropriations bills signed into law by Sunday, when fiscal 2018 ended.

In other words, those departments would be funded until one month after the upcoming midterm elections.

The Department of Homeland Security — which is responsible for the border wall — was one of these.

During the year, the House Appropriations Committee had approved a Homeland Security bill that provided $5 billion for the wall for fiscal 2019. The Senate committee had approved only $1.6 billion, making no increase from the 2018 level. And the massive minibus-continuing resolution would presumably maintain fiscal 2018's funding level — but only through Dec. 7.

Three days after Trump's tweet, the Senate approved this bill, 93-7. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., joined Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-.Ky., in supporting it.

On Sept. 20, Trump tweeted about the bill again. This time, he put some of his words in capital letters.

"I want to know, where is the money for Border Security and the WALL in this ridiculous Spending Bill," he said, "and where will it come from after the Midterms? Dems are obstructing Law Enforcement and Border Security. REPUBLICANS MUST FINALLY GET TOUGH!"

Six days after this tweet, the Republican leadership brought their minibus-continuing resolution up for a vote in the House. It passed with 185 Democrats voting for it but only 176 Republicans. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., joined House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R.-Calif., in voting for it, while 56 House conservatives voted against it.

Funding for the border wall was not the only significant issue in this bill.

The original Labor-HHS-Education spending bill that the House Appropriations Committee approved in July included language that defunded both Planned Parenthood and research that uses tissue taken from babies killed in induced abortions. But that language was not included in the final minibus-continuing resolution that funded HHS for all of fiscal 2019.

Thus, the bill did not provide the funding Trump was seeking for the border wall, but it did provide the funding Democrats wanted for Planned Parenthood and aborted-baby-parts research.

On Friday, Trump signed into law this bill he had correctly called "ridiculous."

"This spending package reflects the compromise Republican leaders sought with the White House that postpones a fight over Trump's demand for a border wall until after the Nov. 6 midterm elections," the Washington Post reported that day.

SOURCE 

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Federal Government Cut 1,000 Jobs in September; -16,000 Under Trump so far

The number of people employed by the federal government declined by 1,000 in September, according to data released today by the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Since President Donald Trump took office, federal employment has declined by 16,000.

In December 2016, the month before Trump’s inauguration, there were 2,810,000 people employed by the federal government, according to the BLS data. By August 2018, that had declined by 15,000 to 2,795,000. In September, it declined another 1,000 to 2,794,000.

At the same time, overall government employment (including those employed by state and local governments) increased 13,000 in September and has climbed by 100,000 since December 2016.

In December, 2016, there were 22,306,000 people employed in state, local and federal government combined. By August 2018, that had climbed to 22,393,000. In September, it jumped again to 22,406,000.

SOURCE 

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For more blog postings from me, see  TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH,  POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated),  a Coral reef compendium and an IQ compendium. (Both updated as news items come in).  GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten. I also put up occasional updates on my Personal blog and each day I gather together my most substantial current writings on THE PSYCHOLOGIST.

Email me  here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or  here (Pictorial) or  here  (Personal)

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WE WON!

All of us won who spoke and wrote in support of the President's nomination to SCOTUS of Judge Kavanaugh.  But most of all it was another triumph for our hero, Donald J. Trump. He is an incredible winner.  The wall is next!

I am pleased to hear the following emailed comment from Tom Fitton of "Judicial Watch":

"We are grateful that a majority of the Senate rejected the leftist smears, abuse of process, and rejection of constitutional norms. Now there must be accountability for this lawless assault on our constitutional republic. Judicial Watch has launched an investigation into the Senate ethics and legal abuses by anti-Kavanaugh Senators. And we will continue to pursue our Senate ethics complaint against Sen. Booker for his admitted violation of Senate rules, the violation of which requires expulsion from the Senate"

Trump has a week to brag about

This article is from a Leftist source so I have deleted a few dubious claims and snide adjectives

He promised so much success that everyone would be tired of all the winning. But after 20 months that proved more arduous than President Trump once imagined, this may be the best week of his presidency so far.

The all-but-assured confirmation of Judge Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court will cap a week that also saw the president seal an ambitious and elusive new trade agreement with Canada and Mexico, one of his top campaign promises. And the latest jobs report out on Friday put unemployment at its lowest since 1969.

It gives Trump a fresh narrative to take on the campaign trail just a month before critical midterm elections that will determine control of Congress. With the investigation by the special counsel, Robert Mueller, turning quiet during campaign season, Trump has an opportunity to redirect the conversation onto more favorable territory.

Still, in Trump’s presidency, even victories come at a cost.  America has been ripped apart by the battle over Kavanaugh’s nomination, fraught as it was with gender politics that Trump seemed eager to encourage and anger on the left and the right.

His most significant legislative achievement was last year’s tax-cutting package, which was forged in large part by Republican congressional leaders.

The past couple weeks, however, saw Trump seal a revised trade agreement with South Korea and replace the North American Free Trade Agreement with Canada and Mexico, which not long ago seemed as if it might be beyond his reach. But the booming economy has become one of his strongest political assets. And with Kavanaugh nearing confirmation Saturday, he showed he could push through an important nomination that many predicted was likely to fail.

“It’s a wonderful week. We’re thrilled,” Kellyanne Conway, his counselor, said in an interview. “It shows that his perseverance and his tenacity and his adherence to campaign promises and principles are paying dividends.”

Whether the string of success for Trump will translate into support on the campaign trail could be the defining test of the next few weeks.

“Independents especially are tired of the chaos and the uncertainty,” said Patti Solis Doyle, who was Hillary Clinton’s campaign manager in 2008. “Yes, the economy is good; yes, Trump got two conservative judges on the court; and, yes, he is doing what he promised on the campaign trail” in terms of trade, tax cuts, and tougher immigration enforcement. “But at what cost?” she asked. “Tariff wars, separating children from their mothers, huge deficit. I can go on and on.”

SOURCE 

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Higher Educational Attainment Linked to Trump Support and Republican Favorability in Key Demographics

Among first generation Americans and blacks, higher education leads to conservative voting

Market Research Foundation was one of the first research groups to identify the ‘White, No College’ wave which brought out white blue-collar voters in droves and helped propel President Trump into the White House. Since then, data has been fairly consistent in validating this trend. Earlier this year, Pew published a series of reports showing the highest educational attainment-party divide in two decades. According to Pew’s surveys, in 1994, 39% of voters with a four-year college degree identified with or leaned Democrat, and 54% identified or leaned Republican. In 2017, those numbers were exactly reversed.

Market Research Foundation has identified a growing educational attainment trend in the opposite direction within two key demographics: Black voters and first-generation Americans. Our nationwide online survey from July of this year found that Black voters with higher levels of education are more likely to have supported the President, not less. Seventeen percent of Black Trump voters had a Postgraduate Degree, versus 12% of Black Clinton voters. According to the census Bureau’s educational attainment publication, only 22% of Blacks over age 25 had a Bachelor’s Degree and just 8% had an advanced degree in 2015. The more education a Black voter had, the more likely they were to support Trump. Combining the shares of Black Trump voters with a Bachelor’s Degree and a Postgraduate Degree, 49% had completed at minimum a BA. This is in stark contrast to the way white voters voted in 2016. Sixty-seven percent of whites with a high school education or less supported Trump in 2016, while just 28% supported Clinton.

Our nationwide July survey of 1,751 first generation Americans from across Europe, Africa, Asia, the Middle East, Canada, and South America, found that the less education an individual had achieved, the more likely they were to have supported Clinton – by 45.5%. In addition, higher educational attainment was correlated with higher Trump approval and higher approval of the Republican Party. The table below outlines the correlation between educational attainment and sentiment.

Education and views in first generation Americans

Overall, 35% of first-generation Americans voted for Trump in 2016, while 56% voted for Clinton.

While Clinton’s total share of college educated immigrants was higher than Trump’s, her share of the lowest educated vote was higher. Clinton got 69.2% of the vote among those with a high school education or less, and that dropped to 48.6% for those with some college, and 56.1% for those with a Bachelor’s Degree.
In contrast, only 23.7% of those with a high school education or less supported Trump, and his share of support rose to 42.3% among those with some college and 33.9% among those with a Bachelor’s Degree. To compare, Trump got 67% of whites with a high school education or less

Trump’s approval rating was higher among those with some college or a Bachelor’s Degree than among those with a high school education or less. 35% of respondents with some college or a Bachelor’s Degree approved of Trump, compared to 27.5% of those with a high school education or less.

Positive views of the Republican Party were also higher among first generation immigrants with higher levels of educational attainment. 31% percent of respondents with some college and 30% of voters with Bachelor’s Degree approved of the Republican Party, compared to 26.1% of those with a high school education or less.
Conversely, negative views of the Democrat Party were higher among first generation immigrants with higher levels of educational attainment. 37.8% of voters with some college and 34.2% of voters with a Bachelor’s Degree disapproved of the Democrat Party, compared to just 18.6% of those with a high school education or less.

SOURCE 

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Lowest Unemployment Rate Since '69; Lowest Number of Unemployed Since 2000

"Just out: 3.7% Unemployment is the lowest number since 1969!" President Trump tweeted on Friday.

Not since the end of 1969 has the nation's unemployment rate been this low. The Bureau of  Labor Statistics reported on Friday that the unemployment rate dropped two-tenths of a point to 3.7 percent in September.

Last month, the number of employed Americans (155,962,000) remained near the record high of 155,965,000 set in July; and in September, the number of unemployed persons decreased by 270,000 to 5,964,000, a level not seen since 2000.

The unemployment rate for Hispanics, 4.5 percent, tied the record low set in July. For African-Americans, the unemployment rate in September was 6.0 percent, just a tenth of a point above the record low set in May.

And 70,656,000 women age 20+ were counted as employed in September, a record number for this group.

“Since the election, we have created over 4 million new jobs,” President Donald Trump told a rally in Minnesota Thursday night. “We've added nearly half a million new manufacturing jobs...and we have companies pouring into our country.”

On Friday morning, the Labor Department said another 134,000 jobs were created in September, a bit disappointing, since economists had projected a gain of 185,000 jobs.

But BLS also reported that total nonfarm payroll employment for July was revised up from +147,000 to +165,000, and the change for August was revised up from +201,000 to +270,000. With these revisions, employment gains in July and August combined were 87,000 more than previously reported. (Monthly revisions result from additional reports received from businesses and government agencies since the last published estimates and from the recalculation of seasonal factors.)

After revisions, job gains have averaged 190,000 per month over the last 3 months.

In September, the nation’s civilian noninstitutionalized population, consisting of all people age 16 or older who were not in the military or an institution, reached 258,290,000. Of those, 161,926,000 participated in the labor force by either holding a job or actively seeking one.

The 161,926,000 who participated in the labor force equaled 62.7 percent of the 258,290,000 civilian noninstitutionalized population, the same as August.

The higher the participation rate, the better, but economists expect this percentage to remain stagnant and decline in the years ahead as more baby boomers retire.

Another troubling number: BLS said a record 96,364,000 Americans were not in the labor force last month, meaning they did not have a job and were not looking for one, for whatever reason.

SOURCE 

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Hispanic Unemployment Rate Hits Lowest Level on Record in September

The national seasonally-adjusted unemployment rate for Hispanics and Latinos in the U.S. labor force fell to the lowest level on record in September of 2018, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) data released Friday show.

In September, the unemployment rate for Hispanics and Latinos, aged 16 and up, was 4.5%, tying July 2018 for the lowest level since the BLS began tracking Hispanic-Latino employment data in 1973.

Hispanic-Latino employment statistics for September 2018:

Unemployment rate: 4.5%, down from 4.7% in August
Number Employed: 27,059,000 up from 26,927,000 in August
Number Unemployed: 1,287,000, down from 1,315,000 in August
Labor Force Participation: 66.0%, up from 65.9% in August
Civilian Noninstitutionalized Population (16+ years old): 28,346,000, up from 28,242,000 in August
Number Participating in Labor Force: 28,346,000, up from 28,242,000 in August

Source: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics

SOURCE 

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Manufacturing Jobs +18,000 in September

Manufacturing jobs increased by 18,000 in the United States in September, according to data released today by the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

In August, according to the new BLS numbers, there were 12,729,000 manufacturing jobs in the United States. In September, there were 12,747,000.

“Employment in manufacturing continued to trend up in September (+18,000), reflecting a gain in durable goods industries,” the BLS said in it monthly jobs report. “Over the year, manufacturing has added 278,000 jobs, with about four-fifths of the gain in the durable goods component.”

Manufacturing employment in the United States peaked in June 1979, when it hit 19,553,000. Even with the recent gains in manufacturing employment in the United States, there are still 6,806,000 fewer manufacturing jobs in this country than there were at the 1979 peak.

SOURCE 

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Sons of America, beware

By Cheryl K. Chumley

I have two sons. One is in his 20s, well on his way into adulthood. The other is 16 and, given the way the Brett Kavanaugh nomination process is headed, walking a tight rope between college preparation and jail.

As President Donald Trump noted in recent comments about the runaway train called Supreme Court Nomination, it’s “a very scary time for young men in America.”

Yes, it is. This is no joke. The sons of America are facing some dire straits.

The left, with one fell Supreme Court nomination swoop, has managed to upturn the entire notion of due process and collapse the cherished American principle of innocent until proven guilty.

Democrats shrug off such assertions and warnings by saying, in essence, oh, this isn’t a court of law — due process doesn’t apply. But that’s a skirt of accountability. That’s an argument of deceit. The left knows very well what it’s doing.

Senate Democrats know very well that Christine Blasey Ford’s high-school-era accusations against Kavanaugh are being kept alive solely on the willingness of the thug elements of the left to play their thug roles — on the willingness of these anarchy-minded to, say, corral Sen. Jeff Flake with a crying-on-cue show of female hysteria on a congressional elevator; or to stage noisy and disruptive sit-ins at the offices of Sen. Joe Manchin; or to shamelessly pitch and parade around the media ridiculous notions of Kavanaugh & Friend drug-fueled gang rapes.

Senate Democrats know they don’t have the evidence to prove these flimsy and fantastical allegations against Kavanaugh, so they instead resort to theatrics and distractions to convict — to convict in the court of public opinion, that is.

But slander is serious business. Tearing apart a man’s reputation for political sport is a grave enterprise.

So is the Democrats’ utter disregard for the long-term.

If Ford’s unfounded accusations are allowed to stand as truth, America’s standard of proof for guilt will be forever damaged. Courts won’t even matter, because mob rule will become the decider.

Ford, after making her allegations — or better yet, before or during — ought to have provided some corroborating evidence, some documentation from police, some irrefutable notes or papers from therapists, teachers, trusted adults who were in the know of what she alleged and who could provide the much-needed backing to cast genuine dark shadows on Kavanaugh’s character. But she didn’t. All Ford did was throw out her accusation with full expectation she’d be believed.

All the supporting evidence the Democrats have since tried to sell has crumbled in the light of day.

So what we’re left with is Ford’s accusation — filled with memory gaps — and the Democrats’ insistence that her simple I Am Woman allegation is enough to boot Kavanaugh from the nomination process.

Well, mark these words: If Democrats win on this, if they’re able to stop Kavanaugh’s nomination on such whimsical wordage, then each and every future Republican-nominated judicial pick will be treated to the same circus show. But not just judges. It won’t be long before Democrats, drunk with the power of the allegation, segue their Kavanaugh win to any and all male Republicans seeking public office — House, Senate, state and local legislative seats. All GOP candidates will soon enough be dealt the same Kavanaugh cards.

The effect to conservative male voices will prove chilling.

What Republican in his right mind would want to subject himself to the type of scrutiny Kavanaugh is enduring — just to hold a school board seat, for crying out loud?

But more than that, the effect to males in general will be downright silencing. Think about it: If the men of America know they’re one single female accusation away from losing everything, they’re much more apt to go along to get along — to keep from making waves, rocking boats, stirring pots, however they can. Guilt? Innocence? Truth? Doesn’t matter.

The left has an agenda here. And it should scare every male in America. This isn’t just about a political stifling; it’s a gender bash.

And mothers of America, of all political walks, Democrat, Republican, independent, what have you, take note: Today’s Kavanaugh is tomorrow’s John Smith.

Your son — yes, yours — is one Ford-like accusation away from complete character destruction.

SOURCE 

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For more blog postings from me, see  TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH,  POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated),  a Coral reef compendium and an IQ compendium. (Both updated as news items come in).  GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten. I also put up occasional updates on my Personal blog and each day I gather together my most substantial current writings on THE PSYCHOLOGIST.

Email me  here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or  here (Pictorial) or  here  (Personal)

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Infrastructure as a legacy

Leftists are notoriously interested only in the distribution of goods and services. They virtually ignore the process of producing goods and services.  They seem to think that goods and services drop down upon us like manna from heaven.  It is precisely that insouciance that makes socialist countries poor.  They just don't know how to arrange wealth creation efficiently so hamper it rather than fostering it.

And they seem to think the same about infrastructure such as roads, hospitals and schools  They give no thought to how those things come to be so and are very poor at providing them.  People who need the latest medical procedures don't go to Russia.  They go to the USA.

I think however that it is highly relevant to think about the origins of our infrastructure.  It didn't get there by accident and its distribution is not random.  Some countries have better infrastructure than others. So who provided that infrastructure and who owns it?

A very large part of our infrastructure was put there by our ancestors.  They built the roads and buildings which we use today.  And the ownership varies.  Some is in private hands and some in government hands. But in an important sense it is a legacy to all of us today bequeathed to us by our ancestors.  Some of it is best in private and and some is regarded as best in government hands but we all benefit from it enormously.  Our entire modern life depends heavily on what we have collectively inherited from the past.  We didn't build the road we drive on or the hospitals and schools that we use.  We come into the world with most of what we use already laid out for us by our ancestors

Not all that we use will be inherited of course. But it will be the development of an inheritance. It might be a new road we drive on and a new school we attend.  But the building of that road and that school will have depended on all sorts of things from the past -- tools, techniques, machinery and the product of blast furnaces -- that have steadily evolved first in the hands of our ancestors and then in our hands.

So it seems to me that the physical facilities of our country that we use are just as much a legacy as is money left to us in a relative's will.  They were not produced by accident but were the product of work and ingenuity -- and we ourselves continue to build on those foundations.  We too enable the provision of infrastructure -- mainly through our taxes in the modern world but sometimes directly

I for instance have had a considerable presence in the real estate industry. I often took on semi-derelict buildings and organized their renovation.  Since I live in a capitalist country I did it entirely for my own private profit and did indeed earn significant income from my activities.  I have long ago sold the properties concerned and have money in the bank instead.  But the important point is that the properties I took on are now upgraded and will  be in that upgraded state when I die. I took existing things from the past and built on them to make them into better things.  That will be a legacy I leave when I die.  I will have left the infrastructure better than I found it and others will benefit from that.

I am aware that what I have just been saying sounds very much  like Obama's famous claim, "You didn't build that", so I think I had better do a little bit of differentiation.  He was of course right in pointing out that all we do depends in many ways on the work, past and present, that others do or have done. But what significance he saw in that is a bit mysterious. The most I can make of it was that he thought businesses should be thankful to the government and be humbled by its wise provisions.  By contrast, I would argue that the government is just another tool we have set up for achieving desired results. And I would argue that it is largely our ancestors we should thank for the infrastructure we daily rely on.

But what about immigrants?  Do they have any right to what is in fact our legacy?  They have not inherited anything  from our country or brought much, if anything, to it.  I think it is clear that they do to an extent steal our legacy.

That is particularly clear in the case of Australia.  Recent governments have allowed a large "refugee" influx and that does harm us.  Our roads are now more congested, our public hospitals can barely cope and our schools are overcrowded and short of good teachers.  Such is the demand for teachers created by the active wombs of refugees that teacher standards have had to be lowered to near oblivion. Students with almost any High School pass are being accepted into teachers' colleges.  And on top of that we have to feed the "refugees".  Only a minority find employment and become self supporting.

But for various reasons good and bad our governments keep letting the refugees in and in so doing dilute that assets we all have to work with. With not a care in the world our governments have given away a significant part of our inheritance.  I think it should stop.  I don't think our government should give away what is the right of those of us who were born here.

So what do I propose?  A just policy would be to allow into our country only those who have paid for the privilege.  Citizenship could be bought.  And the proceeds would go to the construction of new infrastructure that would cope with the expanded population.

That's not going to happen, of course, but greater selectivity of some sort would certainly be fairer than the present system.  The less our inherited assets are handed to others the better.  I personally would be selective by allowing in only outsiders who are similar to the majority population  -- essentially other people of European origin.  They at least had ancestors who worked hard and effectively to improve their given environment so could help continue our ongoing work of improving our facilities, infrastructure and environment -- JR

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Amazon's Real Motivation for Raising Wages



A month ago, the socialist senator supreme, Bernie Sanders, introduced the Stop BEZOS (Stop Bad Employers by Zeroing Out Subsidies) Act, which would tax large corporations at a rate equal to the amount of federal benefits their employees receive from the government. Never mind Sanders's own personal wealth or Amazon owner Jeff Bezos's status as one of the socialist archenemies of Liberty — the bill was an effort to mobilize Bernie's voters this fall.

So it's no surprise on a couple of counts to see Amazon raise its internal minimum wage to $15 an hour. Good for Amazon ... except there's a catch.

Bezos, the world's richest man, gets a little breathing room with his fellow socialists for appearing virtuous, tamping down criticism of working conditions and unionization efforts at Amazon-owned Whole Foods, while also squeezing his competitors as the labor market tightens. A booming Amazon, now with more than $1 trillion in market cap, can — and probably should — afford to pay its workers more, but its local, "mom and pop" competitors don't have the profit margins to do likewise.

If this was just good old-fashioned market competition, it would be one thing. But Bezos didn't stop with his own action. No, like any "good" Big Business mogul, he's also getting in bed with Big Government, simultaneously announcing that Amazon will lobby to raise the federal minimum wage from $7.25 to $15 an hour. All the while, Bezos's Washington Post can make the media case for a higher minimum wage.

Amazon did essentially the same thing by leading the way advocating for an Internet sales tax. Its massive infrastructure could handle the added burden, so why not foist it onto smaller competitors to damage their bottom line?

As for the minimum wage itself, we've always argued that the true minimum is $0 an hour — employers will hire fewer workers if those workers are more expensive to employ. Washington, DC, of all places, has at least partly conceded this reality. The Democrat-run city council of DC, where Hillary Clinton beat Donald Trump by 86 points, took the first step in repealing Initiative 77, which gradually raises the minimum wage in the district even for restaurant servers and bartenders to $15 an hour plus tips. Restaurant workers actually opposed the wage hike. Sometimes a modicum of economic sanity can prevail even in leftist bastions.

SOURCE

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Trump trade deals with Canada, Mexico, South Korea and Japan keep "America first" promise, isolate China

Everyone knew the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) was a bad deal. President Obama knew. Hillary Clinton knew. President Trump knew. But only President Trump was willing to use our leverage to push our neighbors to the negotiating table and work out a strong, better deal for the U.S. While previous presidents pandered to other nations in the name of globalization, Trump is pursuing bilateral trade relations which are more likely to put American first and get our workers back on the job.

NAFTA resulted in significant job loss as manufacturing sectors moved to Mexico, wages in the U.S. stagnated while working conditions in Mexico deteriorated as well.

While many American political leaders seemed to agree the deal was bad, former President Barack Obama never followed through on his campaign promise to renegotiate the deal — a promise he made repeatedly in Aug. 2007, Nov. 2007, Dec. 2007, Jan. 2008, and Feb. 2008. Similarly, in July 2016 Hillary Clinton denounced the deal saying it “had not lived up to its promises” and promised to rework it.

Instead, Obama pursued the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) — a deal that included Canada, Mexico, Singapore, Brunei, New Zealand, Chile, Australia, Peru, Vietnam, Malaysia and Japan — and which would have continued displacing U.S. workers and allowing other countries to lead the rules of trade. Obama’s globalist approach worked so hard to bring 11 other nations to the table, it left the U.S. behind. In Jan. 2017, President Trump withdrew from the TPP and plotted a different course.

By renegotiating NAFTA, President Trump has set a new course of smaller, individual trade agreements that work in the U.S. and our partner’s interest. This is already evidenced by the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA). For what the agreement lacks in a catchy acronym it seems to make up for in substance.

The deal will require 75 percent of duty-free car content be produced in the region with 40 percent being produced by $16-an-hour labor, this will bring manufacturing back to the US while helping Mexican workers who currently make cars for less than $4-an-hour.  U.S. farmers are also expected to see a boost in production as harmful limitations on dairy imports by Canada have been dropped in the new deal.

Following President Trump’s meeting at the United Nations last month, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe agreed to begin formal trade negotiations with the Trump Administration. This move has been praised by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association.

Japan was originally part of the TPP, but since Trump removed the U.S. from that deal, Japan can now work with the U.S. directly to form a deal that actually benefits both countries, particularly in the auto industry. According to the White House, the agreement will “For the United States, market access outcomes in the motor vehicle sector will be designed to increase production and jobs in the United States in the motor vehicle industries…”

David Gossack, vice president for Asia at the Chamber of Commerce explained, “As the world’s third largest economy, Japan is one of the most important export markets for American goods and services. These new discussions should help put U.S. businesses on a level playing with our foreign competitors and address longstanding issues between our two nations.”

These bilateral agreements allow each country to get more of what they want than large, multinational agreements.

Last month President Trump signed another trade agreement with South Korea. President Trump explained during the Sept. 24 press conference, “The new U.S.-Korea agreement includes significant improvements to reduce our trade deficit and to expand opportunities to export American products to South Korea… These outcomes give the finest American-made automobiles, innovative medicines, and agricultural crops much better access to Korean markets.”

As part of this agreement, South Korea will also double the number of US cars sold within the country annually.

President Trump also recently announced India is wishing to engage in trade negotiations as well, in order to produce a bilateral agreement with the U.S. Trump has described this as a part of an increasingly broad plan to foster individual relationships with countries. Trump is also moving forward with bilateral trade talks with Brazil.

These agreements play a strategic role in combatting the attempts by China to dominate global trade.

In recent years, China has led the One Belt One Road initiative to connect 70 countries across Asia, Europe, and Africa via trade and infrastructure development. What has been deemed the “new silk road” threatens U.S. global economic dominance, but these bilateral trade agreements provide countries with a more profitable and stable path forward with the U.S. rather than China.

Combined with President Trump trade pressure, the new trade deals put China in a bind. He has placed an additional $200 billion in tariffs on Chinese goods. China retaliated with $60 billion, but the U.S. only exports $135 billion to China, meaning China is almost already out of ammunition.

In an attempt to cheapen exports as a means of offsetting the tariffs, China has decreased the value of the yuan 8.8 percent since the beginning of the year, from $0.159 per $1 U.S. dollar to $0.145.

Americans for Limited Government (ALG) vice president of public policy Robert Romano explained, “Coupled with China announcing a general reduction on certain tariffs, China’s responses so far have been largely defensive and pretty weak. Devaluation and tariffing a limited number of U.S. imports, they’re running out of bullets. President Trump has exposed a major weakness of China’s export-dependent economic model that could compel Beijing to cave and ultimately come to the negotiating table. While Trump’s critics were moaning about a trade war, the President has been carefully ratcheting up pressure to achieve trade concessions, and it is working. The trade deals with Japan, South Korea and now Mexico and Canada signal that they see which way the wind is blowing.”

White House economic advisor Lawrence Kudlow predicts the G20 summit in Buenos Aires will be a good opportunity for China to come to the negotiating table. Kudlow explains, “The great hope here is that China will come to the table and start playing by the rules.” He noted talks thus far have been “unsatisfactory from our point of view.”

President Obama was willing to allow the U.S. to do worse in order to let other countries succeed, Trump proved that bilateral trade agreements can allow everyone to win, even China, that is, if it wants to do a deal.

As for the USMCA and South Korean trade deals, those still need to be passed through Congress, and this will require strict scrutiny to ensure the deal is the best it can be. Americans for Limited Government President Rick Manning explained, “President Trump continues to keep his promises and on first blush, the USMCA looks like a better deal. However, the devil is always in the details, which deserve full scrutiny during the Congressional approval process.”

During the TPP debate, Congress went against the wishes of groups like Americans for Limited Government, which opposed “fast track” legislation in 2015 alongside Trump prior to his campaign announcement, legislation that allowed trade deals to pass both chambers of Congress with a simple majority vote, unlike the two-thirds Senate threshold required for treaties.

Congress went along with it, and now the trade authority extends to President Trump, and he’s taking advantage of it. Now that it has been done, a simple majority can pass USMCA once its details can be verified as favorable.

Officially certifying the USMCA will significantly reduce the damage caused to the American people during the reign of NAFTA and better unite North America. Following this model, President Trump can bring the entire international community together via individual, mutually beneficial trade agreements. The logic is simple: when every country commits to improving themselves, the world improves. This strategy has already proved more impressive than the failed promises of the Obama administration.

SOURCE

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THIS POOR KID JUST LOST HIS CHANCE OF EVER BECOMING A JUDGE



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For more blog postings from me, see  TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH,  POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated),  a Coral reef compendium and an IQ compendium. (Both updated as news items come in).  GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten. I also put up occasional updates on my Personal blog and each day I gather together my most substantial current writings on THE PSYCHOLOGIST.

Email me  here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or  here (Pictorial) or  here  (Personal)

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Leftist Contempt for Middle-Class Values

Dennis Prager
   
When I was in graduate school, I learned a lot about the left. One lesson was that while most liberals and conservatives abide by society’s rules of order and decency, most leftists do not feel bound to live by these same rules.

I watched the way leftist Vietnam War protesters treated fellow students and professors. I watched left-wing students make “non-negotiable demands” of college administrations. I saw the Black Panthers engage in violence — including torture and murder — and be financially rewarded by leftists.

Today, we watch leftist mobs scream profanities at professors and deans, and shut down conservative and pro-Israel speakers at colleges. We routinely witness left-wing protesters block highways and bridges; scream in front of the homes of conservative business and political leaders; and surround conservatives’ tables at restaurants while shouting and chanting at them.

Conservatives don’t do these things. They don’t close highways, yell obscenities at left-wing politicians, work to ban left-wing speakers at colleges, smash the windows of businesses, etc.

Why do leftists feel entitled do all these things? Because they have thoroughly rejected middle-class, bourgeois and Judeo-Christian religious values. Leftists are the only source of their values. Leftists not only believe they know what is right — conservatives, too, believe they are right — but they also believe they are morally superior to all others. Leftists are Ubermenschen — people on such a high moral plane that they do not consider themselves bound by the normal conventions of civics and decency. Leftists don’t need such guidelines; only the non-left — the “deplorables” — need them.

In August 2017, University of Pennsylvania law professor Amy Wax wrote a column for the Philadelphia Inquirer in defense of middle-class values. She and her co-author cited a list of behavioral norms that, as Wax, put it, “was almost universally endorsed between the end of World War II and the mid-1960s.”

They were: “Get married before you have children and strive to stay married for their sake. Get the education you need for gainful employment, work hard, and avoid idleness. Go the extra mile for your employer or client. Be a patriot, ready to serve the country. Be neighborly, civic-minded, and charitable. Avoid coarse language in public. Be respectful of authority. Eschew substance abuse and crime.”

She later wrote in the Wall Street Journal, “The fact that the ‘bourgeois culture’ these norms embodied has broken down since the 1960s largely explains today’s social pathologies — and re-embracing that culture would go a long way toward addressing those pathologies.”

For her left-wing colleagues at Penn Law School, this list was beyond the pale. About half of her fellow professors of law — 33 of them — condemned her in an open letter. And Wax wrote in the Journal, “My law school dean recently asked me to take a leave of absence next year and to cease teaching a mandatory first-year course.”

The Pennsylvania chapter of the left-wing National Lawyers Guild condemned her for espousing bourgeois values and questioned “whether it is appropriate for her to continue to teach a required first-year course.”

As regards traditional Jewish and Christian codes of conduct, just read the left’s contempt for Vice President Mike Pence’s religiosity. They fear him more than President Trump solely for that reason. One would think that leftists, as sensitive as they are to sexual harassment of women, would admire Pence’s career-long policy of never dining alone with a woman other than his wife. On the contrary, they mock him for it.

With such high self-esteem and no middle-class, bourgeois or Judeo-Christian values to guide them, many leftists are particularly vicious people.

The opening skit of “Saturday Night Live” this past weekend — Matt Damon’s mockery of Judge Brett Kavanaugh — provided a timely example. It is unimaginable that a prominent conservative group or individual would feature a skit mocking Kavanaugh’s accuser Dr. Christine Blasey Ford. Indeed, Kavanaugh noted his 10-year-old daughter’s prayer for his accuser, and a political cartoonist promptly drew a cartoon with her praying that God forgive her “angry, lying, alcoholic father for sexually assaulting Dr. Ford.”

Is there an equally prominent conservative public figure on the right who has ever said “F— Obama!” on national television just as Robert De Niro shouted, “F— Trump!” at the recent Tony Awards?

Now, why would De Niro feel he could shout an obscenity at the president of the United States with millions of young people watching him? Because he is not constrained by middle-class or Judeo-Christian moral values. In Nietzsche’s famous words, De Niro, like other leftists, is “beyond good and evil,” as Americans understood those terms until the 1960s.

In 2016, at a Comedy Central roast of actor Rob Lowe, the butt of the jokes was Ann Coulter, not Lowe. They mostly mocked her looks, and if there is something crueler than publicly mocking a woman’s looks, it’s hard to identify. For example, “Saturday Night Live” cast member Pete Davidson said, “Ann Coulter, if you’re here, who’s scaring the crows away from our crops?”

There surely are mean conservatives — witness some of the vile comments by anonymous conservative commenters on the internet. And it is a moral scandal that Ford has received death threats. The difference in left-wing meanness is the meanness of known — not anonymous — people on the left. They don’t hide behind anonymity because they do not feel bound by traditional notions of civility, for which they have contempt.

Now you can understand why the left hates Mike Pence, a man who has, by all accounts, led a thoroughly honorable life. He — and other evangelical Christians and Orthodox Jews — tries to live by a code that is higher than him.

That ethic is what Ubermenschen seek to destroy. They are succeeding.

SOURCE

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Trade ministers from the US, Canada and Mexico reach last-minute agreement to revamp the NAFTA deal after a YEAR of negotiations and a war of words between Trump and Trudeau

This seems to be the only account so far of what is actually in the deal

The US, Canada and Mexico have agreed to an updated version of the North America Free Trade Agreement following a year of agonizing negotiations.

The Trump administration announced the new pact - which is being called the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement - mere hours before the self-imposed September 30 deadline.

The agreement has been hailed as a major victory for Trump, who is now one giant step closer to delivering on his key campaign promise to overhaul NAFTA, which he called 'the worst deal maybe ever signed'.

A senior administration official told Politico late Sunday: 'It’s a great win for the president and a validation for his strategy in the area of international trade.'

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau also expressed satisfaction with the agreement as he left an emergency Cabinet meeting in Ottawa. 'It’s a good day for Canada,' Trudeau told reporters.

Trudeau called an emergency meeting with his ministers at 10pm Sunday in Ottawa as senior government officials reported the US and Canada were on the brink of striking a deal.

Negotiators for both countries worked tirelessly over the weekend to meet the Trump administration's deadline.

According to a joint statement from US Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer and Canadian Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland, the deal 'will strengthen the middle class, and create good, well-paying jobs and new opportunities for the nearly half billion people who call North America home'.

The statement continued: 'We look forward to further deepening our close economic ties when this new agreement enters into force.'

Sources briefed on the details of the reconstructed deal - which officials from all three countries began negotiating more than a year ago - have said it allows the US greater access to Canada's dairy market and also addressed concerns about auto tariffs.

Under the pact, Trump will maintain the ability to impose threatened 25 percent global tariffs on autos while largely exempting passenger vehicles, pickup trucks and auto parts from Canada and Mexico, according to a side-letter to the agreement revealed to Reuters on Monday.

Should Trump impose 'Section 232' autos tariffs on national security grounds, Mexico and Canada would each get a tariff-free passenger vehicle quota of 2.6 million passenger vehicles exported to the United States annually.

Pickup trucks built in both countries will be exempted entirely, the side-letter said.

Mexico will get an auto parts quota of $108billion annually, while Canada will get a parts quota of $32.4billion annually in the event of US autos tariffs.

The quotas are significantly above existing production volumes in each country, allowing for some export growth.

Congress will now be given 60 days to review the new deal and suggest changes before Trump can sign it.

Officials are said to be bracing for what may be a battle to get the agreement through the legislative body.

The Trump administration hopes to have the leaders of all three countries sign the agreement by the end of November, before Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto passes the baton to his successor.

Canada, the United States' No 2 trading partner, had been left out when the US and Mexico reached an agreement last month to revamp NAFTA.

The Trump administration was due to make a preliminary draft of that agreement public on Monday.

Trump had said he wanted to go ahead with a revamped NAFTA with or without Canada, but it was unclear whether he had authority from Congress to pursue an agreement with only Mexico.

Several lawmakers went on the record to say they wouldn't go along with a deal that left out Canada.

Earlier, White House trade adviser Peter Navarro said on Fox News Channel's 'Sunday Morning Futures' that by Monday morning 'you will have some news one way or another that will... be big and perhaps market-moving.'

Among other things, the negotiators battled over Canada's high dairy tariffs. Canada also wanted to keep a NAFTA dispute-resolution process that the US wanted to jettison.

As US-Canada talks bogged down earlier this month, most trade analysts expected the September 30 deadline to come and go without Canada being reinstated.

They suspected that Canada, which had said it wasn't bound by US deadlines, was delaying the talks until after provincial elections Monday in Quebec, where support for Canadian dairy tariffs runs high.

SOURCE

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Where is Atticus Finch today?

In "To Kill a Mockingbird"

The 1960 novel by Harper Lee was published to instant acclaim, has sold more than 30 million copies, and is ubiquitous in high-school curricula. The 1962 movie version, starring Gregory Peck, is a classic in itself and won three Academy Awards. A play based on the novel is about to open on Broadway.

This is quite the résumé for a book that, prior to the publication of a sequel in 2015 that was really the first draft of To Kill a Mockingbird, was Harper Lee’s only work. But nothing is forever, even for a book commonly called “timeless.” Lee’s novel is deeply out of sympathy with a moment when on college campuses, and in the culture more broadly, due process isn’t what it used to be, when it is often thought to be a hateful act to insist that allegations of sexual misconduct be proven.

A refresher on the story: It is told from the perspective of a young girl, Scout, who is the daughter of a small-town lawyer named Atticus Finch (played by Peck in the movie). The setting is Depression-era Alabama. Finch is unpopular in town because he has decided to take on the defense of a black man named Tom Robinson who is accused of rape by a young white woman.

And this is where the story, in contemporary terms, goes off the rails. Atticus Finch didn’t #BelieveAllWomen. He didn’t take an accusation at face value. He defended an alleged rapist, vigorously and unremittingly, making use of every opportunity provided to him by the norms of the Anglo-American system of justice. He did it despite considerable social pressure to simply believe the accuser.

In a gripping courtroom scene, Finch cross-examines Mayella Ewell, the 19-year-old daughter of an abusive drunk from a dirt-poor family who is Robinson’s accuser. With all the vehemence and emotion she can muster, Ewell insists that Robinson attacked her after she got him to break up a piece of old furniture at her house.

Without mercy, Finch takes apart her account. In contemporary internet argot, he “destroys” her. He brushes right by her tears. He doesn’t care about her feelings, only the facts. He exposes contradictions in her story and shreds her credibility, especially with the dramatic revelation that Robinson doesn’t have use of his left arm when he stands up at the defense table (he is alleged to have hit her with his left hand).

It is revealed that Ewell is lying. She had made an advance on Robinson and gotten caught by her vicious, racist father. The charge of rape against Robinson was a cover story, although the bigoted jury convicts him anyway.

To Kill a Mockingbird stands firmly for the proposition that an accusation can be false, that unpopular defendants presumed guilty must and should be defended, and that it is admirable and brave to withstand the crowd — at times in the story, literally the lynch mob — when it wants to cast aside the normal protections of justice.

Exactly what has made Atticus Finch such an honored figure in our culture would make him a very inconvenient man at many college campuses today, where charges of sexual misconduct are adjudicated without the accused being allowed to confront the accuser or make use of other key features of our system of justice. Finch is a rebuke to the shift from a presumption of innocence toward a presumption of guilt that now attends accusations of sexual harassment and assault. He didn’t believe that someone’s being accused of something is enough to establish his wrongdoing, or accept that a category of people were, by definition, to be under a pall of suspicion.

SOURCE

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Fox News Contributor Fired After Calling Kavanaugh Accusers “Lying Skanks”



It seems that even Fox cannot handle too much truth

Kevin Jackson has been terminated as a Fox News contributor following a series of tweets in which he referred to Supreme Court justice nominee Brett Kavanaugh’s accusers as “lying skanks” as the Kavanaugh hearing played out Thursday.

“Kevin Jackson has been terminated as a contributor. His comments on today’s hearings were reprehensible and do not reflect the values of FOX News,” said a Fox News spokesperson.

Jackson has been a contributor on Fox for several years, as well as a radio host on KJRadio and the author of the best-selling book “Race Pimping: The Multi-Trillion Dollar Business of Liberalism.”

“Feminists are their own worst enemies, and enemy of women,” Jackson wrote on Twitter Thursday morning. “TO HELL with the notion that women must be believed no matter what. Lying skanks is what these 2 women are, and we ALL know more,” he wrote.

SOURCE

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For more blog postings from me, see  TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH,  POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated),  a Coral reef compendium and an IQ compendium. (Both updated as news items come in).  GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten. I also put up occasional updates on my Personal blog and each day I gather together my most substantial current writings on THE PSYCHOLOGIST.

Email me  here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or  here (Pictorial) or  here  (Personal)

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The Barbarism of the Democrat Party
   
On Thursday, in Judge Brett Kavanaugh’s testimony, the American people saw a man fighting for his reputation, his integrity, and his family. His moving words felt less like a testimony and more like the last cries of an innocent animal before it is slaughtered.

This is what the confirmation process has become for the Democrats: a slaughtering of innocent people who obstruct the political goals of their party. Through intimidation, psychological warfare, character assassination, and public shaming, they behead their opponents and hang their remains on pikes at the city walls — as a barbaric example to all who seek public office.

For Democrats, politics does not create better lives for the American people but instead serves as a power war justified in employing any tactic, at any time, anywhere. In their wake, Democrats leave the bodies of defamed leaders, politicians, and their traumatized families. This they cloak as “civic duty.”

In the Kavanaugh confirmation process, Democrats have completed perhaps their most shameful and disgraceful public operation. Yet they claim they do so for “women” and in support of #MeToo. In reality, they exploit women for political purposes, wrenching every last ounce of nonexistent evidence from their victims. Their anti-male, sexist rhetoric alienates half of the country, who had no choice in being born male. They claim that “all women” deserve to be heard. They do. But men are human beings too. Men also deserve the presumption of innocence. Men also deserve to be treated with respect and decency. Men also deserve a fair trial.

In their pursuit to “support women,” Democrats attempt to destroy the fathers, husbands, brothers, and sons of so many women across this country. For political purposes, they elevate women as a super class, a protected class, a class of legal immunity. However, they only allow “useful” women to qualify for such status. The women assaulted by former president Bill Clinton (Juanita Broaddrick, Paula Jones, Kathleen Willey, and Leslie Millwee) have been ignored and cast aside because they served no political purpose. This clearly debunks the Democrat claim that in “listening to women,” they are righting the wrongs of misogyny for all of history.

Our country’s leadership does listen to women. The Senate treated Dr. Christine Ford with respect and honor. However, making an innocent man the scapegoat for 6,000 years of recorded history is wrong. Oppression and violence certainly have happened in human history. It was wrong then. It is wrong now. But replacing oppression of the past with discrimination against men in the present does not ameliorate the problem.

Democrat Senators Dianne Feinstein (CA), Patrick Leahy (VT), and Dick Durbin (IL) are wrong. American women don’t want to reconcile historical misogyny by destroying the life of an innocent man. American women want to see a Senate that has enough decency to support an innocent man and, in so doing, restore due process, the presumption of innocence, and the rule of law in this country.

And lest you think that discrediting, intimidating, and smearing is something new, view Justice Clarence Thomas’ response to the false Anita Hill allegations that took place during his Senate confirmation in 1991.

SOURCE 

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Countering the EU, UN, and Iran

Trump's clear-minded focus on the threat posed by Iran's nuclear program has been remarkable. 

President Donald Trump turned in a mixed performance at last week’s UN General Assembly meeting in New York. Occasionally lapsing into language more appropriate for a campaign rally, his speech to the General Assembly was a missed opportunity to make the United States’s case against the globalists who dream of the UN becoming a true world government. In his opening speech at the Security Council meeting on Wednesday, he declared, “Kim Jong-un, a man I have gotten to know and like, wants peace and prosperity for North Korea.” That’s a dismaying gaffe when referring to North Korea’s brutal dictator — a bloody despot ruling a rogue nation. It’s true he has a purpose with such flattery, but all things considered, it was a less-than-stellar performance from the leader of the free world.

But when it came to the president’s remarks on Iran and the challenge that nation’s nuclear program poses to the world, Trump delivered a message worthy of Ronald Reagan. Pulling no punches and sparing no feelings among friend and foe alike, the president made clear his determination to keep the pressure on Iran and his willingness to punish anyone trying to side with Tehran:

In the years since the [nuclear] deal was signed, Iran’s aggression only increased. The regime used new funds from the deal to support terrorism, build nuclear-capable missiles, and foment chaos. Following America’s withdrawal, the United States began re-imposing nuclear-related sanctions on Iran. All U.S. nuclear-related sanctions will be in full force by early November. They will be in full force. After that, the United States will pursue additional sanctions, tougher than ever before, to counter the entire range of Iran’s malign conduct. Any individual or entity who fails to comply with these sanctions will face severe consequences.

The president’s blunt threat to anyone attempting to circumvent U.S. sanctions and do business with Iran should give pause to the European nations that have been making noise about doing just that. The European Union’s Federica Mogherini announced last week that the EU would attempt to form a special non-cash trade mechanism between Iran and EU nations specifically in order to avoid banking-related sanctions. Nothing could make clearer the craven mindset of the EU than a willingness to side with Iran in this way. The Europeans are more reliant than ever on foreign oil and natural gas as they pursue a utopian vision of domestic green-energy production. They have become more and more pacifist since the Soviet Union went bust, while cynically relying on the United States to be the world’s policeman. And they continue to delude themselves about the Iranian regime, thinking they can convert Iran into a responsible nation using only carrots and no stick.

But the Europeans must know that running afoul of U.S. sanctions will be financially ruinous at a time when many EU nations already face difficult economic conditions. The United Kingdom is bumbling its way toward a hard Brexit. Italy faces a full-fledged debt crisis. Germany, supposedly the economic powerhouse of Europe, recently saw its economic outlook lowered to a meager 1.7% annual growth. The recent tsunami of Middle East and North African migration continues to stress EU nations’ social systems. And the EU as a whole is expected to remain below 2% growth for the foreseeable future. Not exactly a good time for the EU to take on the additional burden of U.S. sanctions.

As for Iran, it is more vulnerable to sanctions than at any time since the 1990s. Its economy, which consists of little more than oil and pistachios, has been cratering, leading to protests throughout the nation in which ordinary Iranians have made clear they have no affinity for spending Iranian money on propping up Syria’s Bashar al-Assad. The Saudis, who view Iran as a mortal enemy, have signaled their willingness to increase oil production to offset lost Iranian oil exports when sanctions kick in. The United States itself has leaped nearly to the top of the list of major oil exporters, exceeding three million barrels a day, second only to Saudi Arabia and Iraq. And as we have mentioned before, the Islamic Revolution in Iran has grown old and tired over the last 25 years — to the point that the mullahs must coerce rather than convince the Iranian people of their “right” to rule.

President Trump has had his ups and downs since taking office, but his clear-minded focus on Iran and the threat posed by its nuclear program has been remarkable. The presence of John Bolton on the president’s national-security team should help maintain that clear-mindedness going forward, and we wholeheartedly support the president’s challenge to our notional European allies that they cannot support a pariah nation without consequences.

SOURCE 

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How Trump Rescued Our Economy From Obama’s ‘New Normal’

It’s hard to believe that just two short years ago, our economy was limping along with no sign of a massive boom around the corner.

Beyond any shadow of a doubt, the pivotal factor in the last two years has been President Donald Trump.

Consider this. From 2009 to 2014, real median income fell overall. It did jump a few times between 2012 and 2014, but the overall trend was one of malaise. The reason? President Barack Obama’s regulations and taxes sat like a wet blanket over our economy.

Many of his policies aimed at curing perceived social injustices rather than promoting economic growth. He reasoned that it was an injustice that every American did not have health insurance, and that CEOs made hundreds of times more income than the average worker. It was also an injustice that banks and big business took advantage of consumers.

Obama convinced Congress to pass Obamacare in 2010, which resulted in health insurance being extended to an additional 6 percent of the population. But Obamacare came with new taxes—21 to be exact—and these helped suppress middle-class income, slowing economic growth.

Obamacare also forced employers to provide health insurance to all full-time workers or pay a fine, which could be as high as $3,000 per employee. This added to the cost of labor, which again had the effect of slowing growth. Since Obama defined a full-time employee as anyone working at least 30 hours per week, employers hired more part-time workers. This drove down household income and slowed economic growth.

Obama also made the 2001 Bush tax cuts permanent for all Americans, except for the highest income earners. For them, taxes increased by 10 percent. This reduced the amount of investment capital flowing into our economy, which slowed economic growth and tended to reduce household income.

Obama also said that the financial crisis was a result of predatory lending by banks. This occurred when households freely applied for mortgages that they simply could not afford. Because Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were buying these predatory mortgages from banks, the banks made those loans.

Obama convinced Congress to pass the Dodd-Frank bill, which stopped banks from predatory lending. The problem was that Dodd-Frank reduced all lending, which slowed economic growth and resulted in countless small community banks having to close their doors.

And yet again, this had the effect of reducing household income.

It’s no wonder that Obama was the only president in history to never see economic growth above 3 percent. The economy averaged just over 2 percent for his entire two terms. He referred to 2 percent growth as the “new normal.”

Trump flatly rejected this “new normal.” After entering office in January 2017, he spent much of February and March reversing many of Obama’s counterproductive regulations. By April 2017, the economy was back growing at a healthy 3 percent, which has since been maintained or increased.

By the end of 2017, Trump had convinced Congress to cut income taxes for all Americans, including those who supply capital: high income-earners and corporations. Since April of this year, the economy has been booming at a rate of more than 4 percent.

That growth has driven down underemployment, increased the proportion of Americans in the labor force, increased the number of part-time employees finding full-time work, boosted wages, and reduced the unemployment rate overall.

This all will lead to ever higher incomes for families. The real median income is set to hit a record level by the end of 2018.

Some have said that most of the growth will affect the highest income-earners. Whatever benefit they are getting (and they are certainly getting a lot), the facts are plain and simple: Over 700 companies have boosted wages, given bonuses and other benefits to their employees because of tax reform.

As President John F. Kennedy said, “A rising tide will lift all boats.” It’s happening. Why would we try anything else?

SOURCE 

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China slashes steel, textile tariffs as Trump ratchets up pressure

A President who is willing to use American power can jolt a lot of things loose

China's finance ministry announced Sunday that it will reduce import tariffs on a variety of products, including textiles and steel.

The tariff rate for textiles and metals including steel will fall to 8.4 percent from 11.5 percent, effective Nov. 1, Reuters reports. “Reducing tariffs is conducive to promoting the balanced development of foreign trade and promoting a higher level of opening up to the outside world,” the finance ministry said.

The ministry also announced that tariffs on wood and paper, minerals, and gemstones will fall to 5.4 percent from 6.6 percent, with average tariffs across 1,500 products reaching 7.8 percent, down from 10.5 percent.

The reductions come as President Trump deploys increasingly aggressive tariffs against Chinese goods, and just six days after Trump implemented a 10 percent tariff on $200 billion of Chinese goods, following a similar action against $50 billion of goods in August.

The new tariff against Chinese imports was expected to rise from 10 percent to 25 percent at the end of the year.

In March, Trump began a global campaign to reform U.S. trade relations, introducing a 25 percent tariff on steel and 10 percent on aluminum, only briefly exempting Mexico, Canada, and the European Union.

Trump argues that the U.S. has too great of a trade imbalance with China and other countries, and that unfair policies have hurt the U.S. economy. Critics say American consumers will end up paying more when the cost of tariffs is passed on to them.

It's not the first time China has reduced trade barriers amid Trump's criticism. In July, China lowered tariffs on consumer goods including clothing and home appliances.

The latest Chinese government announcement comes as U.S. trade negotiators face a midnight deadline for an agreement with Canada to replace the North American Free Trade Agreement. The U.S. and Mexico announced a deal on principles for a new pact in August, starting a one-month clock before the text is due to Congress.

SOURCE 

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As Obamacare Premiums Continue to Rise, Time to Look at Real Health Care Solutions

Obamacare has wreaked havoc on America’s individual and small group health insurance markets.

For the last four years, while lavish taxpayer subsidies insulated low-income people from soaring premiums and deductibles, millions of middle-class Americans in the individual Affordable Care Act coverage markets felt both blasts. At the same time, they lost their old plans and found fewer options available. They also found that, despite repeated assurances, they could not “keep their doctors.”

How bad is it?

From 2013 to 2017, premiums more than doubled. This year, average premiums for standard Obamacare plans shot up by a third. Deductibles now average $8,292 for “standard plan” family coverage, and $11,555 for the lowest cost “bronze” plans. For millions, it’s like paying a second mortgage.

Consumer choice is another casualty. In more than half of all U.S. counties, only one plan is available, and 73 percent of all Obamacare plans have narrow provider networks, reducing patient access to doctors and medical specialists.

With coverage so unattractive and unaffordable, fewer people are buying. Only 10.6 million Americans enrolled in the individual exchanges this year, well short of the 24 million projected when Congress enacted Obamacare.

Why isn’t it working? Because Obamacare runs on centralized regulatory control. Washington controls insurance benefits and coverage levels and enforces national rating rules—always driving costs skyward.

For example, Obamacare’s “age rating” rules require younger people to pay artificially high premiums. As Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar explained, under Obamacare younger Americans must be charged at least one third of what older Americans pay.

This kind of price control chokes off private markets. Young people by definition are getting less than they pay for, so they opt out of the system. As a result, it turns out to be not a good deal for older Americans either. They’re the only ones left paying into the system, so their premiums rise.

Congress must get back to work, repeal the dysfunctional status quo, and make a serious start on comprehensive health care reform.

The “Health Care Choices Proposal,” developed by a broad range of conservative think tanks, would replace Obamacare’s spending schemes with state block grants to help the poor and the sick to get health coverage. It would restore regulatory responsibility to the states, and it would allow people enrolled in public programs such as Medicaid to redirect public dollars to private health plans of their choice—if they wished to do so.

It’s an approach that would empower consumers, revitalize state insurance markets, intensify competition among plans, and lower costs.

Can the states do the job? Yes, to judge from recent experience.

States that have received waivers from Obamacare rules are already diverting a portion of the law’s subsidies to create separate risk or health reinsurance pools for older and sicker persons.

According to early estimates, Alaska’s approved waiver would cut individual market premiums by 19.8 percent, while increasing enrollment by 7.1 percent. Minnesota, securing a similar waiver, is expected to reduce premiums by 19.7 percent, while increasing enrollment by 13.3 percent. Maine, Maryland, Wisconsin, and New Jersey recently got similar waivers.

The people of the states, through their elected representatives, should have the chance to improve their health insurance markets. The Health Care Choices Proposal would maximize their freedom to protect Americans with pre-existing medical conditions, lower insurance costs, and increase choices for millions of individuals and families. This would be a blessing, particularly for middle-class Americans who face being priced out of the health insurance market.

Washington’s central planning has resulted in exploding insurance costs, reduced choices, and collapsing competition in the state individual markets. Liberals’ ideological obsession with centralized power is rooted in the false faith that Washington’s experts know what is best for the rest of America. The evidence is indisputable: They don’t.

SOURCE 

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For more blog postings from me, see  TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH,  POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated),  a Coral reef compendium and an IQ compendium. (Both updated as news items come in).  GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten. I also put up occasional updates on my Personal blog and each day I gather together my most substantial current writings on THE PSYCHOLOGIST.

Email me  here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or  here (Pictorial) or  here  (Personal)

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