Week in Review

---

Week in Review

12/07/2019

For the week 12/2-12/6

[Posted 9:30 PM ET, Friday]

Note: StocksandNews has significant ongoing costs and your support is greatly appreciated.  Please click on the gofundme link, or send a check to PO Box 990, New Providence, NJ 07974.

Edition 1,077

About a year ago when Nebraska Republican Sen. Ben Sasse, a favorite of mine, was on a book tour, he made a statement that has stuck with me since.  “Politics isn’t supposed to be so important.”  We’re supposed to care about family, your social organizations, your church, sports, just about anything but politics.  But today, instead, politics is all consuming.  At least to some of us.

But there is also a large share of the American public that is totally clueless.  I was struck this week by a Financial Times survey, which asked folks if the stock market was up, down, or flat this year, and 60% said it was down or flat.  That’s kind of staggering.

I have one for you.  Well maybe not you, but I wonder what the answer would be if you asked the question, “What was the unemployment rate when Barack Obama left office?”

I’m guessing the average American, say 60% of us, would say 7 or 8 percent, or higher.  It was 4.7%.  [It’s 3.5% today.]

Perceptions are shaped in so many ways.  My job is to keep trying to just relay the facts about the politics, including globally, that consumes so many of us these days.  And give you straight facts on the financial markets.

This has the potential to be a crazy few weeks before the end of the year, what with impeachment, the UK election, another tariff deadline, and North Korea’s Kim with a deadline of his own.  Try to enjoy the season.  I will.  Sports helps.  Unless you are a Knicks, Jets or Giants fan...but I digress.

---

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi asked the Judiciary Committee to draft formal articles of impeachment against President Trump, with the committee possibly recommending them by next Thursday.  Such a move is necessary before they are sent to the full House for a vote, which is expected before Christmas.

“Our democracy is what is at stake, the president leaves us no choice but to act,” she said on Thursday.

“The facts are uncontested.  The president abused his power for his own political benefit at the expense of our national security, by withholding military aid and a crucial Oval Office meeting in exchange for an announcement for an investigation into his political rival.”

Pelosi added: “Sadly, but with confidence and humility, with allegiance to our founders and a heart full of love for America, today I am asking our chairmen to proceed with articles of impeachment.”

In a later news conference, Ms. Pelosi upbraided a reporter who asked whether she hated the president.

“I don’t hate anybody,” she said, invoking her Catholic faith.  “I still pray for the president all the time.  So don’t mess with me when it comes to words like that!”

President Trump has refused to cooperate with the inquiry and ordered current and former administration officials not to testify or provide documents demanded by the Democratic-led House committees.

This afternoon, the White House announced it would refuse to take part in hearings in the House next week.  In a letter to Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler, White House counsel Pat Cipollone called the Democrats’ impeachment inquiry “completely baseless” and said that Speaker Pelosi had ordered Democrats to proceed with articles of impeachment “before your committee has heard a single shred of evidence,” adding, “We don’t see any reason to participate because the process is unfair.”

Assuming the House passed the formal charges against Trump, the Republican-led Senate would hold a trial on whether to remove him from office in January, which would upset the likes of Democratic presidential candidates Sens. Warren, Sanders, Klobuchar and Booker, who would have to spend valuable time in Washington attending the trial rather than campaigning in Iowa and New Hampshire.

Marc A. Thiessen / Washington Post

“With her announcement that Democrats will move forward and vote on articles of impeachment, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi may have signed a political death warrant for dozens of moderate Democrats elected in Trump districts.

“Pelosi is speaker today because in 2018 Democrats were able to convince voters in 31 House districts Donald Trump carried two years before to defect and vote for them.  Democrats need these voters to stay in their column in 2020 if they are to hold onto the House and win back the White House.

“But in key swing states, large majorities of these 2018 defectors now say they plan to back Trump again in 2020.  The New York Times reported that ‘nearly two-thirds of voters in six battleground states who voted for President Trump in 2016 – but for Democratic congressional candidates in 2018 – say they intend to back the president against each of his top rivals.’  The Times also reported that in 2018, voters in these states cast their ballots ‘for Democratic congressional candidates by an average of six points, all but identical to their actual winning margins.’  That means these freshman Democrats already face an uphill battle to hold onto their seats.

“Now, Pelosi is adding to their woes by forcing them to vote to recommend the removal of a president that voters in their districts say they plan to reelect.  Already, she forced them to vote to authorize an impeachment inquiry, and all but two did so.  But there is a world of difference between backing an impeachment inquiry and voting to impeach.  Before the hearings began, swing-state voters said they supported the impeachment inquiry by a margin of 50 to 45 percent, but opposed impeaching and removing Trump by 53 to 43 percent.  After weeks of wall-to-wall hearings, polls show that Democrats failed to move the needle in favor of impeachment and removal.  Indeed, in Wisconsin, opposition to removal has nearly doubled.  In other words, Democrats have failed to make their case.

“By moving forward with impeachment anyway, Pelosi is putting her most vulnerable members in a terrible position.”

I totally agree with Mr. Thiessen.  I went on record last week as favoring censure.  Democrats are also rushing the process, when if they were going to go this far, they should have waited another month to see what happens in all the pending court cases where the Dems are trying to compel certain witnesses to testify and cough up documents.

And then you have this....

Editorial / Wall Street Journal

“Democrats are trying to convince Americans that President Trump should be ousted for trying to ‘dig up dirt’ on a rival.  They'd have more credibility if they didn’t abuse their surveillance powers for drive-by smears of Republicans and a free press.

“Adam Schiff’s 300-page House Intelligence impeachment report doesn’t include much new about Mr. Trump’s Ukrainian interventions.  But it does disclose details of telephone calls between ranking Intelligence Republican Devin Nunes, Trump attorneys Rudy Giuliani and Jay Sekulow, reporter John Solomon, former Giuliani associate Lev Parnas, the White House, and others.  The details are ‘metadata’ about the numbers and length of the calls, not the content.

“The impeachment press is playing this as if the calls are a new part of the scandal, but the real outrage here is Mr. Schiff’s snooping on political opponents.  The Democrat’s motive appears to be an attempt to portray Mr. Nunes, a presidential defender and Mr. Schiff’s leading antagonist in Congress, as part of a conspiracy to commit impeachable offenses....

“This is unprecedented and looks like an abuse of government surveillance authority for partisan gain.  Democrats were caught using the Steele dossier to coax the FBI into snooping on the 2016 Trump campaign.  Now we have elected members of Congress using secret subpoenas to obtain, and then release to the public, the call records of political opponents....

“Mr. Schiff’s extraordinary and secret plunge into metadata, followed by its gratuitous public disclosure, is one more example of the partisan score-settling that motivates this impeachment exercise.  In the cause of impeaching Donald Trump, anything goes.”

[I have more on Devin Nunes below.]

Yes, this whole thing is a mess.

But on Monday we get Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz’s report, so we’re told.  According to the Washington Post, Attorney General William Barr has told associates he disagrees with the inspector general on one of the key findings, that the FBI had enough information in July 2016 to justify launching an investigation into members of the Trump campaign. 

Time to set your washers to the spin cycle, or just hop on your Peloton and spin yourself silly.

Trump World

--As Thomas Grove of the Wall Street Journal reported, Ukrainian President Volodmyr Zelensky is withholding his support for a proposed parliamentary investigation into a gas company entangled in the U.S. impeachment inquiry, Burisma Holdings, the company that in 2014 put then-Vice President Joe Biden’s son Hunter on its board. 

A dozen members of Ukraine’s parliament this fall decided to seek an investigation into Burisma, including some from Zelensky’s party, saying it would prove Kiev’s willingness to fight corruption, addressing a longstanding U.S. complaint.

But a month later, the lawmakers’ request has gone unanswered.  For the Ukrainian president, Burisma and the allegations around it have become so wound up in U.S. politics that it has decided to hold off taking any actions for now, fearing proceeding would damage Ukraine’s bipartisan support in Congress.

Separately, in an interview with TIME magazine and several European news outlets, Zelensky once again tried to distance himself from the impeachment inquiry.

“Look, I never talked to the president from the position of a quid pro quo. That’s not my thing,” he said.

Still, Zelensky conveyed his annoyance that aid would be withheld.  “I don’t want us to look like beggars.  But you have to understand.  We’re at war.  If you’re our strategic partner, then you can’t go blocking anything for us.  I think that’s just about fairness.  It’s not about a quid pro quo.  It just goes without saying,” Zelensky continued.

Speaking to reporters at the White House, Trump then doubled down on his assertion that Zelensky’s remarks had exonerated him, declaring that the interview should mean that it’s “case over” for impeachment as he claimed Zelensky said Trump “did absolutely nothing wrong.”

--President Trump called Justin Trudeau “two-faced” after a video surfaced showing the Canadian prime minister mocking Trump for taking time to speak to reporters at the NATO meetings.

Trudeau, speaking to French President Macron and British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, said Trump “was late because he takes a 40-minute press conference off the top” apparently referring to the president’s 52-minute news conference with NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg.

Trudeau also said: “You just watched his team’s jaws drop to the floor.”

“He’s two-faced,” Trump then said on Wednesday during a meeting with German Chancellor Angela Merkel.

“I find him to be a very nice guy. But the truth is I called him out because he’s not paying their 2 percent and I guess he’s not happy about that,” Trump continued.  “He should be paying their 2 percent.  It’s Canada and they have money and they should be paying 2 percent.”

“Look I’m representing the U.S. and he should be paying more than he’s paying and he understands that.  So I can imagine he’s not happy, but that’s the way it is,” Trump said.

Yes, this was all a nothing-burger, but I included it because it obviously bothered the president to no end, leading to his early exit from the summit.

Earlier, though, at a news conference after meeting with NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, President Trump said NATO “serves a great purpose,” but was then asked what he thought about French President Emmanuel Macron’s statement that NATO was “brain dead.”

Trump said Macron had been “very disrespectful” to other alliance members.

“It is a very tough statement to make when you have such difficulty in France when you look at what is going on.  They have had a very rough year.  You just can’t go around making statements like that about NATO.  It is very disrespectful.”

Trump also reiterated his longstanding complaint that many other NATO countries were still not contributing enough financially.

Stoltenberg praised Mr. Trump’s “leadership on defense spending,” saying it was having a real impact.

Editorial / The Economist

“So much talk of ‘crisis’ has surrounded NATO’s 70th-birthday year that it has been easy to forget there are reasons to celebrate.  Not only has the alliance proved remarkably durable by historical standards, but since 2014 it has responded aptly to Russia’s aggression in Ukraine, refocusing on its core mission of collective defense.  It has deployed multinational battlegroups into the three Baltic states and Poland and committed to improved readiness.  Goaded by criticism from President Donald Trump, its members have raised their spending on defense....

“This new money helps explain one welcome development at the meeting of NATO leaders in Britain this week.  Mr. Trump, previously the disrupter-in-chief, who used to call the organization ‘obsolete’ and caused consternation at a summit in Brussels in 2018 by threatening to withdraw if Europeans failed to take on a fairer share of the burden, has – however briefly – become a defender.”

[More on NATO below.]

--Trump tweets:

“The Do Nothing, Radical Left Democrats have just announced that they are going to seek to impeach me over NOTHING.  They already gave up on the ridiculous Mueller ‘stuff,’ so now they hang their hats on two totally appropriate (perfect) phone calls with the Ukrainian President....

“....This will mean that the beyond important and seldom used act of impeachment will be used routinely to attack future Presidents.  That is not what our Founders had in mind.  The good thing is that the Republicans have NEVER been more united.  We will win!”

“Tremendous things achieved for U.S. on my NATO trip.  Proudly for our Country, no President has ever achieved so much in so little time.  Without a U.S. increase, other countries have already increased by $130 Billion – with $400 billion soon.  Such a thing has never been done before!”

“The Do Nothing Democrats had a historically bad day yesterday in the House.  They have no impeachment case and are demeaning our Country.  But nothing matters to them, they have gone crazy.  Therefore I say, if you are going to impeach me, do it now, fast, so we can have a fair....

“....trial in the Senate, and so that our Country can get back to business.  We will have Schiff, the Bidens, Pelosi and many more testify, and will reveal, for the first time, how corrupt our system really is.  I was elected to ‘Clean the Swamp,’ and that’s what I am doing!”

Wall Street and the China Trade War

Stocks surged today on the heels of a surprisingly strong employment report for November, 266,000, the unemployment rate back to a 50-year low of 3.5%.  September and October were also revised upward to 193,000 and 156,000, respectively, so the three-month average is now  205,000.  U6, the underemployment rate, ticked down to 6.9%.

Average hourly earnings rose 0.2%, or 3.1% year-over-year, which is an improvement, though not to beat a dead horse but in an expansion of this kind, you still want to see the historic average of 3.5%+, which we haven’t as yet attained.

This last point is a reason why the Federal Reserve is considering introducing a rule that would let inflation run above its 2 percent target, which would represent a significant shift in interest rate policy.

The Fed’s year-long review of its monetary policy tools is due to conclude nest year and the central bank is reportedly considering a promise that when it misses its inflation target, it will then temporarily raise that target, to make up for lost inflation, a so-called “make-up strategy.”

The Fed has been frustrated by the failure of prices to hit their target even amidst the strong economy and labor market.

Recently, Eric Rosengren, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, said in an interview with the Financial Times, that the new policy would require “making it clear that it’s acceptable that to average 2 percent, you can’t have only observations that are below 2 percent.”

In other data releases this week, the November ISM reading on manufacturing was weaker than expected, 48.1 (50 being the dividing line between growth and contraction), vs. 48.3 in October, with a new orders component at its lowest level since 2012.  The November non-manufacturing (services) reading was 53.9 vs. 54.7 in October, also less than forecast.

A reading on October construction spending was far worse than expected, -0.8%, while factory orders for the month were in line, 0.3%.

So the data wasn’t great, except for the critical jobs report, and that trumped all.

The Atlanta Fed’s GDPNow barometer for the fourth quarter is now all the way up to 2.0%, from 0.4% on Nov. 19.

As for the Thanksgiving weekend shopping figures, Black Friday set a record at $7.4 billion in online sales, the second-biggest day since 2018 Cyber Monday’s $7.9 billion, according to Adobe Analytics, with 6% more shoppers visiting stores this year, per the International Council of Shopping Centers.  The National Retail Federation said that for the five days of the holiday, a record 190 million shopped, with 2/3s visiting stores, while 3/4s shopped online.  I have further data points below, since a lot of it is about Amazon.

Turning to trade....

Early in the week, the stock market stumbled badly on President Trump’s statement in London that he may prefer to delay a trade deal with China until after the 2020 presidential election.

But on Friday, China said it would waive import tariffs for some soybean and pork shipments from the U.S., as an act of goodwill, but the waivers are based on individual applications from firms for the two products, and not a blanket waiver.

China imposed tariffs on both U.S. soybeans and pork in July 2018 as a countermeasure to tariffs first levied by Washington over allegations that China steals and forces the transfer of American intellectual property to Chinese firms.

The waiver comes as the two sides are still trying to conclude a “phase one” or interim deal, preferably by year end, as President Trump holds a Dec. 15 deadline for further tariff increases over China’s heads.

China, though, maintains it wants relief from existing tariffs, a roll back, while the U.S. wants guarantees on the size of U.S. farm purchases.  Earlier in the week, China’s commerce ministry said, “The Chinese side believes that if the two sides reach a phase one deal, tariffs should be lowered accordingly.”

But neither step addresses the intellectual property issues, which are destined for phase two or three, and likely not concluded until after the 2020 election, if at all.

One item that is benefiting from increased Chinese demand is pork, whose exports to China and Hong Kong are already up substantially in volume terms due to the outbreak of African swine fever in China that has devastated its massive hog herd, cutting supplies.

China wasn’t the only trade topic this week.  The Trump administration is proposing tariffs on up to $2.4 billion worth of French imports – including Roquefort cheese, handbags, lipstick and sparkling wine – in retaliation for France’s tax on American tech giants like Google, Amazon and Facebook.

The Office of the U.S. Trade Representative charged Monday that France’s new digital services tax discriminates against U.S. companies. The trade office will accept public comments on the tariffs, which could hit 100%, through Jan. 6 and hold a hearing Jan. 7.

The French tax is designed to prevent tech companies from dodging taxes by putting headquarters in low-tax European Union countries.  It imposes a 3% levy on French revenues of digital companies with yearly global sales worth more than $830 million and French revenue exceeding $27 million. 

There is bipartisan support in Congress to target France.

And then there is the following....

Editorial / Wall Street Journal

“Just when you think President Trump has reached a moment of trade equilibrium, there he goes again.  Mount Tariff erupted once more Monday morning in tweets announcing tariffs on Brazilian and Argentine steel that dampened hope for election-year economic calm.

“ ‘Brazil and Argentina have been presiding over a massive devaluation of their currencies, which is not good for our farmers,’ the President tweeted.  ‘Therefore, effective immediately, I will restore the Tariffs on all Steel & Aluminum that is shipped into the U.S. from those countries.’  Where to begin?

“It’s hard to know exactly what motivated Mr. Trump’s tweets, and he didn’t say when the Section 232 tariffs would be restored.  But he seems to think he can use tariffs as a two-fer to help struggling U.S. steel makers while punishing Argentina and Brazil for displacing U.S. farm exports to China.  He’s wrong on every count.

“The Argentine peso has plunged 37% this year amid hyperinflation and fears that the Peronists who won the recent election will devalue and walk away from their debt as they have so often.  But since the October election, Argentina’s central bank has tightened capital controls and set a price floor under the peso.

“The Brazilian real has slid somewhat this year amid broader tumult in emerging markets.  But its central bank has intervened to shore up the exchange rate.  President Jair Bolsonaro is trying to revive the economy with trade agreements, deregulation, and pension and tax reform.  Mr. Trump’s new tariffs will undermine political support for those reforms....

“Argentina makes up less than 1% of U.S. steel imports – hardly an economic threat to U.S. steel makers.  Imports from Brazil have increased by nearly 50% this year, making up for lower imports from Turkey, Canada and other countries that were hit with the Section 232 tariffs.  A weaker real isn’t the culprit.

“In any case, the benefit of steel tariffs for U.S. metal manufacturers has largely been offset by the collapse of demand caused in large part by economic uncertainty that his protectionist policies have unleashed.  Steel prices have plunged by nearly half since June 2018 amid a global manufacturing recession, ebbing trade flows and less capital investment.

“U.S. Steel earlier this year laid off workers at plants in Gary, Indiana, and near Detroit due to weaker demand.  Primary metal manufacturing jobs have fallen by 7,900 since January and are now 1,500 fewer than when the 232 tariffs were first imposed.  Employment in aluminum production is the lowest since 2011.  During the first nine months of this year, manufacturing employment fell by 5,600 in Michigan, 1,400 in Ohio, 8,400 in Pennsylvania and 7,200 in Wisconsin.  The Institute for Supply Management reported Monday that its U.S. manufacturing index contracted again in November.

“As he negotiates with China, the President should be building trade alliances with the rest of the world and reducing protectionist fears.  Instead he uses tariffs as a coercive tool at any time for any reason even against friends who have acted in good faith. 

“As usual Mr. Trump also sent out contradictory tweets taking credit for a strong U.S. economy while deploring a strong dollar.  But the strong U.S. economy attracts capital from around the world, which lifts the dollar.  The Fed has already cut interest rates three times this year.  No amount of monetary easing is ever enough for Mr. Trump, and no amount of tariffs will satisfy U.S. steel makers.”

One other item.  According to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, the 2017 Trump tax cuts reduced the U.S. tax burden to one of the lowest among major world economies, with the U.S. now having lower taxes than all but three countries in the OECD.

U.S. taxes at all levels of government fell to 24.3% of gross domestic product in 2018, down from 26.8% a year earlier and 25.9% in 2016.

Measured as a share of the U.S. economy, taxes are now 10 percentage points below the 2018 OECD average of 34.3%.  Among the 34 countries with preliminary 2018 data, the U.S. tax burden is lower than anywhere except Chile, Ireland and Mexico.

Rep. Kevin Brady (R., Tex.), one of the chief authors of tax reform legislation, said: “The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act brought the U.S. tax code from one of the least competitive to one of the most competitive in the world.  We have to continue this work to improve our tax code to remain the world’s most competitive economy.”

But with lower taxes the United States has seen larger budget deficits, owing to greatly increased spending.

Europe and Asia

Eurostat released its estimate for third-quarter GDP in the euro area (EA19), 0.2% over the previous quarter, 1.2% from a year earlier (compared with 2.1% in the U.S.).

Year-over-year: Germany 0.5%, France 1.4%, Spain 2.0%, Italy 0.3%, Netherlands 1.7%, and the UK 1.0%.

Eurostat also released October retail trade, down by 0.6% in the euro area over September, and up 1.4% vs. October 2018.

It was PMI week across the eurozone and elsewhere, courtesy of IHS Markit, with the EA19 composite index at 50.6 for November, unchanged from October.  The manufacturing number came in at 46.9 vs. 45.9 the prior month, while the services reading for the euro area was 51.9 last month vs. 52.2 in October.

Germany 44.1 manufacturing, 51.7 services
France 51.7 mfg., 52.2 services
Spain 47.5 mfg., 53.2 services
Italy 47.6 mfg. (14th straight below 50), 50.4 services
Ireland 49.7 mfg., 53.7 services
Greece 54.1 mfg.
Netherlands 49.6 mfg. (first below 50 since June 2013)

UK 48.9 mfg. (below 50 seven consecutive months), 50.9 services

Chris Williamson / IHS Markit

“The final eurozone PMI for November came in slightly ahead of the earlier flash estimates but still indicates a near-stagnant economy.  The survey data are indicating GDP growth of just 0.1% in the fourth quarter, with manufacturing continuing to act as a major drag.  Worryingly, the service sector is also on course for its weakest quarterly expansion for five years, hinting strongly that the slowdown continues to spread.

“New orders have not shown any growth since August, underscoring the recent weakness of demand, with sharply declining orders for manufactured goods accompanied by substantially weaker gains of new business into the service sector.  Expectations are also among the lowest since the tail end of the sovereign debt crisis in 2013, as firms worry about trade wars, Brexit and slowing economic growth both at home and globally.

“The near-stalling of the economy has been accompanied by some of the weakest price pressures we’ve seen in recent years, which threatens to keep inflation well below the ECB’s target in coming months and adds to the likelihood of further policy stimulus early next year.”

Speaking of price pressures, Eurostat released industrial producer price data for October, up 0.1% in the EA19 compared with September, but down 1.9% vs. a year ago.

--Germany’s key industrial sector is in the midst of its steepest downturn in a decade, with industrial output dropping 5.3 percent in October from the same month in 2018, according to the Federal Statistics Office.  This suggests a further negative weight on overall eurozone growth in the fourth quarter.  Factory orders also declined sharply in October, with most manufacturers expecting a further shrinkage in November.

So despite the talk of optimism in some circles, Germany’s industrial recession is getting worse.  The German car industry, which directly employs 830,000 people and supports a further 2 million jobs in the wider economy, faces particular challenges.

The new leaders of Germany’s Social Democratic party this week called for a “massive investment program” and a higher minimum wage ahead of talks with Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Christian Democrats over the policies of their grand coalition government.

--One final tidbit on the EU.  In 2018, 1.1 billion passengers traveled by air, up by 6% compared with 2017, as released by the EU, another record.  The largest number of air passengers was recorded in the UK (272 million passengers), followed by Germany (222 million), Spain (221m), and France (162m).

The busiest airport was London Heathrow, followed by Paris/Charles de Gaulle and Amsterdam/Schiphol. 

Brexit / UK Election: This coming Thursday is the big day.  The election. The polls have tightened ever so slightly, but all show Boris Johnson’s Conservatives with a sizable lead of about 6 to 10 points over Labour, with a BMG survey for the Independent having it at 39-33.   An ICM survey for Reuters has it 42-35, and a YouGov poll for the Sunday Times pegs it at 43-34.  The Liberal Democrats poll at around 13%.

But remember, this is a first-past-the-post process.  YouGov will have its final prediction on actual seats gained and lost on Tuesday.

Editorial / The Economist

“British voters keep being called to the polls – and each time the options before them are worse.  Labour and the Conservatives, once parties of the center-left and -right, have steadily grown further apart in the three elections of the past four years.  Next week voters face their starkest choice yet, between Boris Johnson, whose Tories promise a hard Brexit, and Jeremy Corbyn, whose Labour Party plans to ‘rewrite the rules of the economy’ along radical socialist lines.  Mr. Johnson runs the most unpopular new government on record; Mr. Corbyn is the most unpopular leader of the opposition.  On Friday the 13th, unlucky Britons will wake to find one of these horrors in charge.

“At the last election, two years and a political era ago, we regretted the drift to the extremes.  Today’s manifestos go a lot further.  In 2017 Labour was on the left of the European mainstream. Today it would seize 10% of large firms’ equity, to be held in funds paying out mostly to the exchequer rather than to the workers who are meant to be the beneficiaries.  It would phase in a four-day week, supposedly with no loss of pay.  The list of industries to be nationalized seems only to grow.  Drug patents could be forcibly licensed.  The bill for a rapid increase in spending would fall on the rich and companies, whose tax burden would go from the lowest in the G7 to the highest.  It is an attempt to deal with 21st-century problems using policies that failed in the 20th.

“Nor has Mr. Corbyn done anything to dampen concerns about his broader worldview.  A critic of Western foreign policy and sympathizer with dictators in Iran and Venezuela who oppose it, he blamed NATO for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2014.  Last year he suggested samples of a nerve agent used to poison a Russian former spy in Salisbury should be sent to Moscow, so Vladimir Putin could see if it was his.  Nor has Mr. Corbyn dealt with the anti-Semitism that has taken root in Labour on his watch.  Some Remainers might swallow this as the price of a second Brexit referendum, which Mr. Corbyn has at last promised.  We have long argued for such a vote.  Yet Mr. Corbyn’s ruinous plans at home and bankrupt views abroad mean that this newspaper cannot support Labour.

“The Conservatives, too, have grown scarier since 2017.  Mr. Johnson has ditched the Brexit deal negotiated by Theresa May and struck a worse one, in effect lopping off Northern Ireland so that Britain can leave the European Union’s customs union.  The public are so sick of the whole fiasco that his promise to ‘get Brexit done’ wins votes.  But he would do no such thing.  After Britain had left the EU early next year, the hard work of negotiating a trade agreement would begin.  Mr. Johnson says he would do this by the end of 2020 or leave without one.  No-deal is thus still on the table – and a real prospect, since getting a deal in less than a year looks hard.  The best estimates suggest that leaving without a deal would make average incomes 8% lower than they would otherwise have been after ten years.

“Brexit is not the only problem with Mr. Johnson’s new-look Tories.  He has purged moderates and accelerated the shift from an economically and socially liberal party into an economically interventionist and culturally conservative one.  Angling for working-class, Leave-voting seats in the north, he has proposed extra state aid, buy-British government procurement and a sketchy tax-and-spending plan that does not add up.  Also, he has absorbed the fatal lesson of the Brexit campaign; that there is no penalty for lying or breaking the rules.  He promised not to suspend Parliament, then did; he promised not to extend the Brexit talks, then did.  This chicanery corrodes trust in democracy.  Like Mr. Corbyn he has normalized prejudice, by displaying his own and failing to investigate it in his party (both men are thought racist by 30% of voters).  For all these reasons this newspaper cannot support the Conservatives.

“That leaves a low bar for the Liberal Democrats, and they clear it....

“Yet they will not win. So why back them?  The practical reason is to restrain whoever ends up in Downing Street.  Voters worry that backing the Lib Dems plays into Mr. Corbyn’s hands, but our modelling suggests that votes and seats would come fairly evenly from both parties....

“The principled reason is that the Lib Dems are closest to the liberalism on which this newspaper was founded.  A strong Lib Dem showing would signal to voters who favor open markets and a liberal society that the center is alive...If Britain withdraws from the EU in January, the Lib Dem MPs will be among the best advocates of a deep trade deal and the strongest opponents of no-deal.  There is no good outcome to this nightmare of an election.  But for the center to hold is the best hope for Britain.”

Tonight, Boris Johnson and Jeremy Corbyn went head to head in the last televised debate.  Johnson ridiculed Corbyn’s support for a new referendum in which Corbyn has said he would remain neutral, while the Labour leader said the prime minister’s pledge to “get Brexit done” actually meant seven years of trade talks.

Johnson countered, “We have ample time to get on and build a new free trade partnership, not just with the EU but with countries around the world.”

No you don’t.

Corbyn revealed a leaked government document which he said showed the divorce deal would lead to customs declarations and security checks between Britain and Northern Ireland, a direct contradiction to Johnson’s statements that it would not create any barriers between the British province and the mainland.

The Economist is right.  These two are both awful.

We also just learned tonight that a senior British diplomat in Washington has resigned, saying she did not want to “peddle half-truths" over Brexit for a government she did not trust.

CNN reported Alexandra Hall Hall (sic) said her position had become “unbearable personally, and untenable professionally.”

“I have been increasingly dismayed by the way in which our political leaders have tried to deliver Brexit, with reluctance to address honestly, even with our own citizens, the challenges and trade-offs which Brexit involves.”

France: The streets of French cities were filled with anti-government demonstrators on Thursday as President Emmanuel Macron again faced what has become an emblem of his presidency: social unrest.  This time it was a massive general strike, impacting the entire transportation sector, over his plans to overhaul the pension system.  Much of the country came to a halt.  There were estimates of half a million taking part nationwide in the protests.  Trains, subways, buses, some schools...all canceled.

Prime Minister Edouard Philippe said on Friday he was sticking with plans to reform the system but insisted change would be gradual and “not brutal.”  “I believe in social dialogue...I will never be in a logic of confrontation,” Philippe said after unions had called for another day of strikes and demonstrations against the government’s reform plans on Tuesday, Dec. 10.

As I’ve noted previously, Macron is attempting to merge 42 different pension schemes into one state-managed system – which scares people, but it’s a broken system where in some sectors, like transport, you can retire in your early 50s.

Other changes Macron has made, such as making it easier for employers to hire and fire workers, have helped nudge down unemployment, despite meeting fierce resistance.  But the French see any perceived benefits as being outweighed by their feelings of insecurity.

Turning to Asia...China’s PMI data was better than expected.  The private Caixin manufacturing number for November came in at 51.8 vs. 51.7 in October, with non-manufacturing (services) at 53.5 vs. 51.1.  Solid.  Previously, the official government PMI on manufacturing was 50.2 vs. 49.3, and a strong 54.4 on services vs. 52.8, as released by the National Bureau of Statistics.

The Caixin manufacturing figure was the highest since December 2016.

In Japan, the manufacturing PMI for November was 48.9 vs. 48.4 in October, with non-manufacturing at 50.3.

Separately, the Japanese government announced it will spend nearly $120 billion to stimulate its slowing economy and to help some of the areas worst affected by Typhoon Hagibis.  Prime Minister Shinzo Abe told a meeting of his governing Liberal Democratic Party that the measures were meant to “overcome downside risks” and help the country “maintain or enhance economic viability” after the 2020 Olympics, which Tokyo will host next summer.

While $120 billion seems like a large sum, it actually isn’t and few expect it to be a big boost to the economy.  But it’s probably needed, especially in the areas impacted by Hagibis, the worst typhoon to hit Japan in 50 years.

Elsewhere, South Korea’s manufacturing PMI was 49.4 in November, while Taiwan’s was unchanged at 49.8.

South Korea also reported miserable exports for November, down a whopping 14.3%, the 12th consecutive down month and far worse than expected, with exports to China falling 12.2% year-over-year.  Overseas sales of semiconductors, key for South Korea, plunged 30.8%, though this is a volatile number.

Finally, India’s GDP for the third quarter was just 4.5%, the sixth consecutive quarter of easing growth, 4.5%, a six-year low.  Back in Q1 2018, GDP was running at an 8.1% annualized pace, though many have questioned India’s calculations.

Street Bytes

--Despite today’s surge, stocks finished mixed on the week owing to weakness Monday and Tuesday on trade fears.  Overall, the Dow fell 0.1% to 28015, ditto Nasdaq, also down just 0.1%, while the S&P 500 rose 0.2% to within eight points of its all-time high.

--U.S. Treasury Yields

6-mo. 1.54%  2-yr. 1.61%  10-yr. 1.84%  30-yr. 2.28%

Bonds fell, yields rose, on the long end of the curve with the solid employment report today.

--OPEC and its allies, including Russia, agreed to deeper than anticipated production cuts today as producer nations seek to prop up crude prices in the coming months.  Oil then rallied smartly on the news, with West Texas Intermediate at its highest weekly close since mid-July, $59.12.

Production cuts will number around 1.7 million barrels per day, an increase of 500,000 b/d from a prior deal for 1.2m b/d in curbs that expire in March 2020.  Saudi Arabia is expected to take on the bulk of the cuts from the 500,000.

But Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman, the new energy minister of Saudi Arabia, said total cuts will be even higher at around 2.1m b/d once an extra voluntary cut of 400,000 b/d from the kingdom is accounted for.

The market is facing still robust U.S. shale supply as well as additional barrels from other non-OPEC countries that could create a supply glut in early 2020, undermining the cuts.

There is going to be an extraordinary meeting of ministers in March, with the next formal gathering to take place in June.

--Amazon.com said that Cyber Monday was “once again the single-biggest shopping day” in its history based on the number of items ordered worldwide.

Clients bought more toys this Black Friday and Cyber Monday combined than ever before, according to a statement.  LEGO Star Wars Darth Vader’s Castle was among the best-sellers with “tens of millions” of the toys sold.

Cyber Monday also was the single-biggest shopping day for Amazon Fashion worldwide, the company said.

The best-selling products in Amazon’s Stores on Cyber Monday in the U.S. included Echo Dot and Fire TV Stick with Alexa Voice Remote.

Amazon doesn’t release exact figures but did say customers ordered “hundreds of millions” of products between Thanksgiving and Monday.

According to Adobe Analytics, which tracks transactions at 80 of the top 100 U.S. online stores, shoppers spent an estimated $9.4 billion on purchases on their phones and computers Monday, up about 19% from last year’s Cyber Monday.  The busiest time, by the way, is the hour before midnight, as people race to take advantage of discounts before they disappear.

According to Salesforce, retailers offered 30% off on Monday, the steepest discounts of the year.

--Google CEO Sundar Pichai is taking over at the top of the search giant’s parent company, Alphabet Inc., as co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin step away from their roles as CEO and president, respectively.

Page and Brin, who founded Google in 1998, will continue to serve as Alphabet “board members, shareholders and co-founders,” they wrote in a company blog post Tuesday.  They continue to control the majority of voting shares in Alphabet.

Pichai’s ascendancy was hardly a surprise, as he has been the public face of the company for years.

“We’ve never been ones to hold on to management roles when we think there’s a better way to run the company,” the co-founders, both 46, said in a statement.

Alphabet was created in 2015 as part of a corporate restructuring of Google, which Page and Brin famously founded in a California garage in 1998.

The parent company was intended to make the tech giant’s activities “cleaner and more accountable” as it expanded from internet search into other areas such as self-driving cars.

The 47-year-old Pichai was born in India, where he studied engineering.  He went on to study in the U.S. at Stanford University and the University of Pennsylvania before joining Google in 2004.

--Last weekend, Fiat Chrysler Automobiles NV and the United Auto Workers announced a tentative agreement for a four-year labor contract, which is now being voted on in the next few days, a boost for the automaker as it works through a merger with France’s Group PSA, the maker of Peugeot and Citroen, who last month announced a $50 billion combination to create the world’s fourth-largest automaker.

The UAW said the contract with FCA included a commitment to invest $9 billion, creating 7,900 new jobs over the course of the deal.  Workers will receive a $9,000 ratification bonus, improved health care and either annual wage hikes or lump-sum bonus payments each year; terms that are similar to those reached in new contracts with GM and Ford.

--General Motors Co. and South Korea’s LG Chem said on Thursday they will invest $2.3 billion to build an electric vehicle battery cell joint venture plant in Ohio, creating one of the world’s largest battery facilities.  The plant, to be built near GM’s closed assembly plant in Lordstown in northeast Ohio, will employ more than 1,100 people, the companies said.  Construction is to begin in mid-2020.

GM CEO Mary Barra said the 50-50 joint venture is aimed at “dramatically enhancing electric vehicle affordability and profitability.”  Barra said the plant will accelerate the automaker’s initiative to introduce 20 new electric vehicles globally by 2023.

“General Motors believes in the science of global warming and believes in an all-electric future,” Barra said.

--American tech companies are getting the go-ahead to resume business with Chinese smartphone giant Huawei Technologies Co., but it may be too late:  Huawei has begun making smartphones without U.S. chips.

Huawei’s latest phone – the Mate 30 that was designed to compete with Apple’s iPhone 11 – contained no U.S. parts, according to UBS and a Japanese tech lab, Fomalhaut Techno Solutions, which took the device apart to inspect its insides.

It was in May that the Trump administration banned U.S. shipments to Huawei as trade tensions with Beijing escalated, impacting the likes of Qualcomm Inc. and Intel Corp., as they were prohibited from exporting chips to the company, though some shipments have since resumed.

Last month the Commerce Department said U.S.-based chip makers were being granted licenses to resume some deliveries.

But Huawei, as long expected, is shedding its dependence on parts from U.S. suppliers.   This doesn’t mean Huawei is producing everything in-house, but chip makers from outside the US. have become suppliers, such as NXP Semiconductors NV, a Dutch chip maker.

A Huawei spokesman said it is the company’s “clear preference to continue to integrate and buy components from U.S. supply partners.  If that proves impossible because of the decisions of the U.S. government, we will have no choice but to find alternative supply from non-U.S. sources.”

Huawei has also launched a legal challenge to a decision by U.S. regulators to classify it as a national security threat.  This comes after the Federal Communications Commission put curbs on rural mobile providers using an $8.5 billion government fund to buy Huawei equipment.

The firm said evidence that it was a threat to security “does not exist.”

--The Department of Homeland Security is considering requiring that all travelers – including American citizens – be photographed as they enter or leave the country as part of an identification system using facial-recognition technology.  DHS said it would publish a proposed rule next July.  It did not issue any further details now.

Needless to say there will be fierce opposition to the plan, including the possibility of data breaches.

Facial recognition is being tested by several airlines at a number of U.S. airports, and American citizens can opt out of being photographed, though few are.

Federal law requires Homeland Security to put into place a system to use biometrics to confirm the identity of international travelers.  Government officials have expressed their desire to expand the use of biometrics, which they say could help identify potential terrorists and prevent fraudulent use of travel documents, it’s just you are going to have the “privacy risks.”  See the following related stories in the Foreign Affairs section from Russia and China.

A Huawei spokesman said it is the company’s “clear preference to continue to integrate and buy components from U.S. supply partners.  If that proves impossible because of the decisions of the U.S. government, we will have no choice but to find alternative supply from non-U.S. sources.”

--Uber Technologies Inc. found more than 3,000 allegations of sexual assaults involving drivers or passengers on its platform in the U.S. last year, part of an extensive and long-awaited review in response to public safety concerns.

The ride-hailing company released the 84-page safety report, seeking to quantify the misconduct and deaths that occur on its system and to argue that its service is safer than alternatives.

U.S. customers took about 1.3 billion trips last year, Uber said.  About 50 people died in Uber collisions in each of the last two years, a rate about half the national average for automotive fatalities, according to the company.  Nine people were killed in physical assaults last year, Uber said.

Uber drivers reported nearly as many claims of sexual assaults as passengers, who made up 56% of claims.

Lyft, the second-biggest ride-hailing provider in the U.S., has yet to produce its safety report.

Regulators in London cited uncertainty about Uber’s ability to ensure the well-being of its passengers as a reason they revoked the company’s license to operate there last week.  Uber can, however, continue to operate while it appeals the decision.

--United Airlines Holding Inc. announced its CEO, Oscar Munoz, is stepping down after four-and-a-half years at the helm, with Scott Kirby, who joined United from American Airlines three years ago, assuming the position in May.

United has been improving its operations over the last few years, with Kirby overseeing the aggressive growth that moved United over American to become the second-largest U.S. carrier by traffic.

The stock has done well, beating analysts’ expectations in 11 of the past 12 quarters.  During Munoz’s tenure, United’s share have risen 53%, vs. a 24% rise in the NYSE airline stock index.

--Tiffany & Co. blamed weak demand in the U.S. and Hong Kong as it reported earnings for the quarter ended Oct. 31 fell 17 percent to $78 million.

The 182-year-old jeweler is being acquired for $16.2 billion by luxury conglomerate LVMH.

Tiffany said net sales in the Asia-Pacific region were flat in the third quarter, which reflects double-digit growth in mainland China and disruptions in Hong Kong.  Sales in the Americas were down 4 percent.

The sale to LVMH is expected to close in the middle of next year.

--Campbell Soup Co. said it has lost space for some of its soups on store shelves after years of sales declines.

“We had a great deal of work to do to stabilize this business,” CEO Mark Clouse told analysts on a call Wednesday after the company reported earnings.  “This will take some time, but we are gaining momentum.”

Campbell’s receives more attention than it probably deserves because, one, its earnings come out during a slow period for corporate news otherwise, and, second, I’ve always found it a pretty fascinating story, a product we all grew up, and continue to use amid the many changes in the industry.  Plus it’s still Camden, N.J. based.

Anyway, Campbell’s revenue slipped 1% to $2.18 billion, slightly below expectations, with profit declining to $166 million from $194 million a year earlier, though earnings per share topped expectations.

The stock has soared this year despite the lackluster results because of confidence in new CEO Clouse, but as he put it the company has a long way to go and will be paring back from its lineup of more than 300 soups.  300?!  Good lord.  I’m guessing I see about 25 on my store shelves.

Clouse did say retail sales of Campbell’s ready-to-eat soups have risen sharply.  But the company is now just projecting flat overall growth for the current fiscal year.

--Fast-food giant Subway is planning to slash prices early next year – an aggressive move under new CEO John Chidsey, who came over from Burger King on Nov. 18. 

Among the deals slated for January is one cutting the price of a six-inch “Oven Roasted Chicken” sandwich to $2.99 from $4.25.  A similarly priced, six-inch “Veggie Delite” sandwich with cheese will likewise get marked down to $2.99.  Other popular sandwiches will get the discount. 

But you can imagine franchisees are largely furious, most already struggling.

“Stop the discounting and quit giving away the little profits we have,” Deidre Sharp of Belding, Michigan, wrote on the North American Association of Subway Franchisees Open Forum, according to a screenshot reviewed by the New York Post.

This is going to be interesting.  I must say I’ll be there frequently taking advantage of the deal for as long as it’s offered.  Our own Dr. Bortrum actually prefers Subway to Jersey Mike’s.  I like both.

--Walt Disney Co.’s “Frozen 2” won the Thanksgiving holiday weekend box office, as the latest hit grossed $123.7 million in the U.S. and Canada during the five-day weekend, which topped the previous Thanksgiving-weekend record of $110 million earned in 2013 by Lions Gate Entertainment Corp.’s “The Hunger Games: Catching Fire.”

After two weekends in theaters “Frozen 2” has already made $287.6 million in the domestic market, plus another $451 million overseas, bringing its world-wide total to $738.6 million.  This will no doubt become Disney’s sixth movie to gross more than $1 billion globally this year.

But for the industry as a whole, total ticket sales were $264 million, 16% less than Thanksgiving 2018, per Comscore, though bad weather across the country didn’t help.

And then you have the impact of the Martin Scorsese gangster epic “The Irishman,” which arrived on Netflix the Wednesday before Thanksgiving.  The film has largely bypassed theaters because Netflix and multiplex chains were unable to agree on how long the film would exclusively play on big screens.

So Netflix put together a limited art-house run for the film, while the company has provided no viewership data, though clearly from everything you hear, a lot of people were taking the 3 ½-hour flick in, many an hour or so at a time.  Eventually we’ll get some idea just how well it did for the company.

Overall, this year’s total box-office receipts in the U.S. and Canada are behind last year by 5.6%. 

Lions Gate’s “Knives Out” took second place behind “Frozen 2.”  The whodunit with an all-star cast has received good reviews and grossed $41.7 million during the holiday weekend.

Disney’s “Ford v. Ferrari” was third, followed by Sony Corp.’s “A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood,” which stars Tom Hanks as the beloved children’s television host Fred Rogers.  After two weeks, the two have grossed $81 million and $34.3 million, respectively.

Foreign Affairs

Iran / Iraq: Iranian security forces may have killed more than 1,000 people, the top U.S. diplomat for Iran said on Thursday, since protests over gasoline price hikes began in mid-November, a crackdown President Trump described as “horrible.”

Speaking at a press briefing at the State Department, Brian Hook, U.S. Special Representative for Iran, said “many thousands of Iranians” were also wounded.  “As the truth is trickling out of Iran, it appears the regime could have murdered over a thousand Iranian citizens since the protests began.”

Tehran has given no official death toll but Amnesty International said on Monday it had documented the deaths of at least 208 protesters, making the disturbances the bloodiest since the 1979 Islamic Revolution.

Tehran’s clerical rulers have blamed ‘thugs’ linked to its opponents in exile and the country’s main foreign foes – the United States, Israel and Saudi Arabia – for the unrest.

Hook also said a U.S. navy warship seized advanced missile parts believed to be linked to Iran from a boat it stopped in the Arabian Sea on Nov. 25, the vessel apparently headed to Yemen.

“The weapon components comprise the most sophisticated weapons seized by the U.S. Navy to date during the Yemen conflict,” Hook said.

Iran has parliamentary elections coming up on Feb. 21, and a spokesman for the Guardian Council said authorities may be more open than in the past in approving candidates.

“We don’t consider ourselves immune from criticism.  We may also accept that mistakes have been made in the past,” the spokesman said, a potentially significant remark.  The Guardian Council is under the control of ultra-conservatives and bears responsibility for organizing and monitoring elections, including vetting candidates.

As for the Iranian economy, which is in freefall, the International Monetary Fund expects the country’s GDP to shrink by a whopping 9.5 percent this year.

Separately, the Wall Street Journal first reported that the administration is considering a significant expansion of the U.S. military footprint in the Middle East, perhaps adding as many as 14,000 additional troops, U.S. officials said.

The Pentagon denied the report, but then its very representatives told Congress that, yes, there are increases coming.

The Journal reports:

“There is growing fear among U.S. military and other administration officials that an attack on U.S. interests and forces could leave the U.S. with few options in the region, officials said.  By sending additional military resources to the region, the administration would be presenting a more credible deterrent to Tehran, which has been blamed for a series of attacks, including one in September against oil facilities in Saudi Arabia.  Iran has denied involvement.

“The new U.S. deployment also would be designed as a deterrent against possible Iranian retaliation for mounting sanctions under the administration’s economic-pressure campaign.  Some officials, worry, however, that adding more military resources to the mix could provoke another attack or put the region on track for a dangerous and unpredictable conflict.”

The additional forces would join the roughly 14,000 U.S. service members sent to the region since May.

Overall, there are between 60,000 and 80,000 U.S. troops deployed to the Middle East and Afghanistan.  The disparity in the numbers often has to do with the number of ships in the region at a given time.

Thomas L. Friedman / New York Times

“Having covered the Middle East my entire adult life, I’m seeing some trends emerging there that I’ve never seen before.

“One is from the streets of Beirut to the streets of Baghdad to streets all across Iran, Middle Easterners are demanding to be treated as citizens with rights, and not just members of a sect or tribe with passions to be manipulated.  And they’re clamoring for noncorrupt institutions – a deep state – and the rule of law, not just the arbitrary rule of militias, thugs or autocrats.

“And right when Middle Easterners are demanding to be treated as citizens – not Sunnis or Shiites – Americans are devolving into Sunnis and Shiites or, as we call them, Democrats and Republicans, with the same tribal mentality: rule or die....

“The other trend I’m seeing is the striking contrast between what Middle East politics has long been about in Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Libya, and Yemen and what average people in these countries are now seeking.

“For years, Sunni and Shiite party bosses and militia leaders at the top have manipulated sectarian and tribal identities below to cement themselves in power and make themselves the brokers for who get jobs and contracts.  But there’s been a stunning shift in the whole flow of politics in some of these countries.  It’s gone from Sunnis versus Shiites across the board to Sunnis and Shiites at the bottom locking arms together against all their leaders at the top....

“These movements are authentic and inspiring, but their chances of taking power remain remote, largely because their biggest opponent – the Islamic republic of Iran – is ready to arrest and kill as many democracy demonstrators as needed to retain its grip on Iraq, Syria and Lebanon, not to mention at home.  Iran’s clerical regime has emerged as arguably the biggest enemy of pluralistic democracy in the region today.  There are plenty of Arab dictators keeping their own people down, but Iran is doing it at home and in three other countries at once.

“Iran has used its Shiite Hezbollah militia in Lebanon and Syria and its Popular Mobilization Forces militia in Iraq to try to snuff out all their bottom-up secular democratic movements – while also crushing the biggest secular-democracy uprising in Iran itself in 40 years.

“The Iranian ayatollahs even had to largely shut down their own internet to prevent the domestic rebellion from spreading.  Ever since the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2002, Iran has never wanted to see a stable, multisectarian, secular democracy emerge in Baghdad, because then Iranian Shiites would be asking why Iraqi Shiites get to live freely and they don’t....

“There is no good time for a country like Iran to be suppressing popular movements for pluralistic democracy, but this is a uniquely bad time.  We are in an age of acceleration.  Technology, globalization and climate change are all accelerating at the same time.  The Middle East has got to get its act together if it has any hope of thriving in the 21st century....

“If these countries are not able to find a way to break the hold of sectarian misgovernance and find their way to political pluralism, religious pluralism, gender pluralism and education pluralism, their people stand no chance in the 21st century, especially once Mother Nature starts to really hammer them.  The entire region could become one giant human development disaster area, with everyone trying to get to Europe.

“America, for its part, has to keep looking for ways to collaborate with them on that pluralism project, to the extent that they want our help, with creative diplomacy, and not just wash our hands of the region.

“But the bad guys at the top won’t go easily, quietly or bloodlessly.  And since no outside power will be riding to the rescue, it will take sustained, organized, bottom-up mass movements – in Lebanon, Iraq and Iran in particular – to enable the future to bury the past and topple all those at the top who want to use the past to bury the future.

“I am so rooting for their success.”

Iraq: The protests continue against the government, even as the Iraqi parliament accepted Prime Minister Adel Abdul-Mahdi's resignation after weeks of demonstrations that turned deadly.

Iraq’s top Shiite cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, said that a new prime minister must be chosen without foreign interference, in an apparent nod to Iranian influence as gunmen killed at least eight people near a Baghdad protest site today.

A new head of government is to be chosen within 15 days.  Abdul-Mahdi remains in office until then.  Qassem Soleimani, the powerful commander of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards’ elite Quds Force, was reported to be in Baghdad this week.

Syria: We have heard so many different stories, but according to Defense Secretary Mark Esper, the United States has completed its military pullback in northeastern Syria, settling into a posture of about 600 troops in the rest of the country after repositioning and reducing forces.

Esper’s comments in an interview with Reuters could signal the end of a period of uncertainty surrounding the U.S. presence in Syria after President Trump first ordered a withdrawal in October.

Esper stressed he retained the ability to move in and out smaller numbers of forces as needed into Syria.

In London this week, President Trump said he wanted remaining U.S. forces to ensure Syria’s oil reserves don’t fall back into the militant group’s hands.

Meanwhile, the Syrian government launched air strikes on the rebel-held area of Idlib on Monday, killing at least 11 and wounding dozens after hitting two outdoor markets, Syrian civil defense forces said. Syria’s northwestern corner, including the Idlib region, is the last major chunk of territory still in rebel hands after more than eight years of war.

Turkey: NATO is worried that fellow member Turkey has increasingly acted unilaterally, launching its incursion in Syria against U.S.-backed forces and buying advanced Russian S-400 air defenses.

Washington says the S-400 system is incompatible with NATO air defenses, poses a threat to Lockheed Martin Corp.’s F-35 stealth fighter jets and announced in July it was removing Turkey from the F-35 program.  It has also warned of possible U.S. sanctions.

But after Presidents Trump and Erdogan met in London, Ankara has not budged on the S-400 issue, Defense Secretary Esper saying, “There’s no movement at this point.”

But Erdogan did back off a threat to block defense plans for the Baltic states and Poland unless allies declared Kurdish fighters in Syria terrorists.

China / Hong Kong: The U.S. House of Representatives overwhelmingly approved a bill that would require the Trump administration to toughen its response to China’s crackdown on its Muslim minority, drawing swift condemnation from Beijing.

The Uighur Act of 2019 is a stronger version of a bill that angered Beijing when it passed the Senate in September.  It calls on President Trump to impose sanctions for the first time on a member of China’s powerful politburo, this as Trump works on a trade deal.

Last week, Trump signed into law legislation supporting anti-government protesters in Hong Kong, despite China’s objections.

The Uighur bill, which passed 407-1, requires the U.S. president to condemn abuses against Muslims and calls for the closure of mass detention camps in the northwestern region of Xinjiang.  It also calls for sanctions against senior Chinese officials who it says are responsible and specifically names Xinjiang Communist Party Secretary Chen Quanguo, who, as a member of the politburo, is in the upper echelons of China’s leadership.

The revised bill still has to be approved by the Senate before being sent to Trump.  China’s Foreign Ministry called the bill a malicious attack against China and a serious interference in the country’s internal affairs.

The statement said: “We urge the U.S. to immediately correct its mistake, to stop the above bill on Xinjiang from becoming law, to stop using Xinjiang as a way to interfere in China’s domestic affairs.”

China continually denies any mistreatment of Uighurs and says the detention camps are providing vocational training.  It also warned against retaliating against Chen.  Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has called China’s treatment of Uighurs “the stain of the century.”

Monday, Beijing responded to the Hong Kong legislation by denying U.S. military ships and aircraft access to Hong Kong, and announced sanctions against several U.S. non-government organizations.

This is another important weekend in Hong Kong, as more mass demonstrations are slated, with police warning they will be forced to respond to any violence.

The protests have had a major negative impact on Hong Kong’s economy, with the city recording its biggest retail slump on record in October, as revealed Monday, down 24.3 percent, year on year.  For the first 10 months of 2019, the decline was 9 percent vs. the same period a year ago.  Tourism has been severely disrupted.

Lastly, Chinese citizens registering for new mobile-phone services will now have to scan their faces to verify their identities, a move that will further increase the government’s scrutiny of its people.  In the past, Chinese citizens applying for a new mobile phone number had to personally present an identity card.

Concerns have grown as facial recognition becomes more and more prevalent in China.

North Korea: The foreign ministry said if Mr. Trump was confrontational, it “must really be diagnosed as the relapse of the dotage of a dotard,” a phrase it first used with Trump in 2017, meaning old and weak, mental faculties impaired by old age, or something like that.

If you said the same of me, I’d agree.  I’m old and weak, mental faculties impaired by age.

Anyway, it’s the first time in over a year that Pyongyang has been openly critical of Trump directly, as Kim Jong-Un mulls his “Christmas gift” decision.  Once again this week he was riding on his white horse up sacred Mount Paektu, accompanied by the missus.  Kim has made previous visits there before making major decisions.

Talks with Trump have gone nowhere.  Strict economic sanctions remain in place and it appears Washington is not going to budge despite Pyongyang’s insistence that they come up with another deal to resolve the nuclear issue by the end of the year.

There seems little doubt these next few weeks could be critical for U.S.-North Korean diplomacy.

Ankit Panda, a North Korea expert at the Federation of American Scientists, told the BBC, “I think we’re seeing the start of what could be a return to a very familiar crisis in 2020. We’re beginning to see the scenario that many of us had warned of from the get-go of diplomacy: a capricious and irritable Trump coming to terms with the reality of his reality-TV diplomacy with North Korea.”

Relations between North and South Korea are also at a standstill.  Just 15 months ago, the leaders of the two held hands on Mount Paektu, optimistic there would be some kind of an agreement to finally end the Korean War.  There is no hope of that now.  Pyongyang is refusing to hold talks with Seoul.

And this week, North Korea branded Japan’s PM Shinzo Abe an “imbecile” and “political dwarf,” and accused him of mislabeling its latest weapons test.

Abe condemned the North for “repeated launches of ballistic missiles” after two projectiles were fired on Thanksgiving (Nov. 28).

But the North insisted it was testing a “super-large multiple-rocket launcher.”

On Saturday, state media said Japan “may see what a real ballistic missile is in the not distant future. Abe is none other than a perfect imbecile and a political dwarf.”

Now that wasn’t necessary, boys.

Russia / NATO, part II:

Kevin Baron / Defense One

“Donald Trump just ghosted NATO.  The U.S. president was supposed to emerge from the summit outside London on Wednesday for the customary full-scale press conference to answer the international media’s burning questions – about France, Turkey, Syria, spending, European unity – but instead, he just...left.

“If ever you needed an example of why America’s leadership role in global security is in question, here you have it.  The U.S. commander in chief, in the UK, abdicated a final chance to own this week.  And it’s a shame, because he was on a roll.  If everyone was talking about French President Emmanuel Macron’s ‘brain dead’ comment to shock NATO’s system before this event, nobody is talking about it after.  Trump was the centerpiece of every public moment of this two-day NATO meeting, in bilateral photo ops with Macron, Canada’s Justin Trudeau, Germany’s Angela Merkel, and more.  He made Macron look like France was throwing a temper tantrum.  At last year’s summit in Brussels, he was the wide-eyed rookie giving everyone heart palpitations for speaking so un-diplomatically about the alliance to allies’ faces.  This year, he commanded every moment – that is, until video leaked of Trudeau and others laughing Tuesday evening about (gasp!) why Trump runs late to things.

“Don’t waste time on Trudeau’s playground chatter.  It doesn’t matter....

“It’s a shame Trump skipped the final press conference.  No other world leader at these gatherings is as anticipated for that moment as the American president.  It’s where he shapes the public spin on what just happened.  It’s his final report of what he wants, what the U.S. wants, what NATO members believe, and where things stand with U.S.-Franco-German relations. It’s a moment to lead.  It’s a moment to signal your priorities to your nations and your adversaries.  Instead, the NATO 70th anniversary meeting ends with a confused whimper.

“The final word, as it happened, belonged to NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg.  At his own press conference, Stoltenberg reported that NATO leaders made new agreements on new threat issues, such as China and 5G, terrorism operations, a plan for heightened readiness levels, and declaring space to be its own ‘domain’ in military parlance on par with air, land, sea, and cyber.  He also announced the leaders agreed to start ‘a reflection process under my leadership to further strengthen the political dimension of NATO,’ which needs more explaining.  And he added, pro forma for these meetings, that ‘All leaders were very clear.  We stand together all for one, and one for all.  Our commitment to Article 5, the collective defense clause of our Alliance, is ironclad.’

“Of course, Trump already had much to say even before he canceled his final presser.  His trip to London included another talk with Turkey’s President Recep Erdogan, and Trump emerged praising the bilateral relationship and continuing to claim that his October decision to pull U.S. troops from northern Syria was good for everyone.  He also falsely claimed that the ceasefire in Syria was happening.

“ ‘It was a very good meeting, I think.  We discussed Syria.  We discussed the Kurds.  We discussed numerous things, and we’re getting along very well.  The border and the safe zone is working out very well.  And I gave a lot of credit to Turkey for that.  The cease-fire is holding very much so and I think people are surprised.

“ ‘Maybe someday they’ll give me credit,’ he continued, ‘but probably not.  They’ve been trying to work this out for 100 years.  That border is a mess for a long time.  We pulled our soldiers out and took over the oil.  We have soldiers where the oil is.  And that’s the way I like it.  And they can police their own border.  And that’s what they’re doing.  They can use other countries if they want, if they want to spend the time and energy.  But this has been a border under siege for many, many decades, and it was time for us to leave, and we left, and it’s been holding very nicely.  So we’re very happy.’....

“On a new nuclear missile pact with Russia, Trump said, ‘We’re talking to Russia about many things, including a cessation on nuclear and nuclear creation.  It’s, in my opinion, the biggest problem the world has today.’

“Really?

“If Russia’s ‘nuclear reaction’ is the biggest problem the world has today, in the president’s mind, that’s news to, well, everyone.  The only reason we know about it is because of a passing comment between NATO meetings.  On Tuesday, Trump was coy about a pact, saying, ‘We may do it with Russia first and then go to China, or we may do it all together, or it may not happen.  I mean, to be honest with you, maybe it won’t happen.’

“We have questions, Mr. President.  You were on a roll in London. Stick around next time.”

On a totally different issue, Russia can designate independent journalists and bloggers as “foreign agents” after amending a controversial law.

The “foreign agent” label already applies to certain media organizations and NGOs, which engage in politics and receive funding from abroad.

The amended law has been condemned by the EU, Amnesty International and others.

“Foreign agent” was a Soviet-era term of abuse for political dissidents.  Vladimir Putin signed the law on Monday.

The anti-corruption organization of anti-Putin campaigner Alexei Navalny has also been declared a “foreign agent.”

And on another issue, the FBI is looking into whether Russia is using the popular smartphone gadget, FaceApp, to attack American elections, calling it “a potential counterintelligence threat.”

In a Nov. 25 letter to Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, an assistant FBI director said the Russian-owned app – which allows people to make themselves look younger or older in photos – poses a potential threat because of the sweeping ways in which the Kremlin can access cellphone data.

Schumer had asked the bureau to investigate whether FaceApp could “pose national security and privacy risks for millions of U.S. citizens.”

Schumer urged people to scrub FaceApp from their cellphones and also said platforms like Apple’s App Store should stop offering it.

FaceApp is headquartered in St. Petersburgh.  It has denied selling its data to third parties.  But the FBI believes Russian intelligence could tap into FaceApp data without the company even knowing.

The FBI has not made clear how Russians may have used FaceApp data as part of a potential interference campaign.  However, FBI Director Christopher Wray has repeatedly made clear to Congress that President Vladimir Putin’s regime is gearing up to meddle again in the 2020 election.

Lastly, an 1,800-mile pipeline is set to begin delivering Russian natural gas to China.  The $55 billion project is a feat of energy infrastructure – as well as a physical bond strengthening cooperation between the two world powers.

After years of rivalry and mutual suspicion, Moscow and Beijing are expanding an economic and strategic partnership influencing global politics, trade and energy markets.  This while Beijing is fighting a trade war with Washington, and Russia’s relations with the West grow colder.

Russia has the world’s largest proven gas reserves, but it needs cash as its economy buckles under Western sanctions. China needs fuel and wants to wean itself off coal.

Random Musings

--Presidential tracking polls....

Gallup: 43% approve of President Trump’s job performance, 54% disapprove; 90% of Republicans approve, 38% of independents (still for Nov. 1-14, update coming).
Rasmussen: 51% approve, 48% disapprove (Dec. 6).

--Kamala Harris dropped out of the race for the Democratic nomination for president, saying in a tweet, “I will keep fighting every day for what this campaign has been about. Justice for the People.  All the people.”

In an email message to her supporters, Harris said her campaign lacked the financial wherewithal to continue.

“I’m not a billionaire.  I can’t fund my own campaign.  And as the campaign has gone on, it’s become harder and harder to raise the money we need to compete,” she wrote.  “In good faith, I can’t tell you, my supporters and volunteers, that I have a path forward if I don’t believe I do.”

But Harris, aside from having trouble with messaging, had a campaign that allegedly lacked discipline.

The disarray inside Harris’ campaign was laid bare in a resignation letter from Kelly Mehlenbacher, the outgoing state operations director, who complained that staffers were being treated appallingly and top officials provided little direction on policy and lacked a viable plan to win the election.

Mehlenbacher, who landed with Michael Bloomberg’s campaign, said the final straw came when dozens of aides at Harris’ Baltimore headquarters were laid off.

“It is unacceptable that we would lay off anyone that we hired only weeks earlier.  It is unacceptable that with less than 90 days until Iowa we still do not have a real plan to win,” she wrote.

Harris started out strong, with a big crowd at her January campaign kickoff in Oakland, and she gathered momentum with June’s first Democratic debate when she pressed Joe Biden about busing, but then she found herself under attack in subsequent debates and struggled to defend her stances while serving as a prosecutor, among other things.

Editorial / Wall Street Journal

“Ms. Harris waffled uneasily between pitching revolutionary change and continuity with the Obama years.  In January, she followed the progressive pack and said she’d abolish private health insurance, then changed her position several times.  She vaulted ahead of competitors in June after an emotional attack on Joe Biden for his opposition to forced racial busing in the 1970s, then seemed to say she didn’t support it either.  Both episodes made her appear opportunistic....

“Perhaps her disappointing campaign will persuade the Senator to spend more time cultivating an authentic vision for governance.”

--Karl Rove / Wall Street Journal

“There’s growing concern among Democrats that their July 2020 convention in Milwaukee could open without a candidate who receives a majority of the vote on the first ballot.  The last time that happened to the Democrats was 1952.

“There are now four candidates – Joe Biden, Pete Buttigieg, Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren – who have enough support and money to be competitive through March.  A fifth candidate, Mike Bloomberg, has enough cash to burn a wet mule and a strategy that says he doesn’t care how he does until the 27 primary contests and two caucuses in March.  Many mules will perish at his hands.

“That’s the field, but consider the rules.  Democrats allocate delegates proportionally, meaning if you get 15% of the vote or more in a state or district, you’re in the money – you split the delegates with every other candidate who reaches that threshold.  In addition, Democrats are front-loading the contest: More than 69% of delegates will be elected in February and March, when more candidates will likely still be viable and split the vote.  That’s 13% more than the number of delegates selected in the first two months of the Democrats’ 2016 nomination battle.

“Consider how this affects the outcomes in February’s contests in Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada and South Carolina.

“In Iowa, all four major candidates are polling above 15% and would share in that state’s 41 pledged delegates.  If candidates receive the same percentage they’re polling at today, then Mr. Buttigieg (would receive 13, Sanders 10, Warren and Biden nine each).

“In New Hampshire, Biden and Warren are polling right below the 15% threshold, leaving that state’s 24 delegates to Buttigieg (13) and Sanders (11).”

Rove breaks it down further and so, “Going into the Super Tuesday contests on March 3, Biden would have 61 delegates, Warren 37, Sanders 31 and Buttigieg 26....

“Unless someone gets huge momentum with big early wins, the race could remain fractured through March, making it mathematically impossible for any candidate to waltz into Milwaukee with a first-ballot majority.

“In that case, the 765 superdelegates (the Democratic National Committee prefers to call them ‘automatic delegate votes’) could decide the nomination.  A new rule prohibits them from voting on the first ballot but allows them in on the second.  Imagine the anger on some parts of the convention floor if the superdelegates – party insiders and elites – go for someone other than the first-ballot leader.”

Well Rove talks about the last brokered-convention in 1952, and the influence of President Harry Truman, who helped sort things out and smooth the way for Adlai Stevenson, with the party leaving “largely unified and mostly happy.”

“It is hard to see any of the Democratic ex-presidents playing Truman’s calming role in 2020.  Instead, Democrats could be in for a rocky convention, featuring back-room deals and horse trades that anger and fracture the party.”

But I can’t believe Mr. Rove doesn’t draw the conclusion I have, when I started reading his piece.  This is what Michael Bloomberg is looking for.  Not that he’d be a layup in such a situation, but in my mind he would be if Biden stumbles, which is why Bloomberg is in the race in the first place...waiting for Joe to fall so he can pick up his supporters.

Bloomberg could announce a running mate such as Amy Klobuchar and...well, just musing.

Of course, a brokered convention would also fit nicely into Hillary’s plans as well.

--California and its trove of delegates is a major target of Bloomberg, and a survey this week from the UC Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies found that Elizabeth Warren and Joe Biden lost ground among the state’s likely Democratic primary voters over the last two months., to the benefit of Bernie Sanders and Pete Buttigieg.

Sanders leads at 24% and Warren is next at 22%, a statistical tie for first.  Warren was at 29% in September.

Biden is at 14%, down six points from September, while Buttigieg garnered 12%, up six.

But Bloomberg appears unlikely to break into the mix for the March 3 primary, as about 40% of likely Democratic primary voters viewed him negatively, and just 15% had a positive impression.  That’s a big hole to dig out of.

--I said a few weeks ago that Joe Biden was doing an awful job handling the controversy over his son, Hunter, and his Ukraine business connections, and I’m just amazed he doesn’t get it, the latest example being Biden’s unnecessarily combative stance when an 83-year-old questioned Biden’s actions and Hunter’s with Burisma.  It was yet the latest example of a man whose time has passed.

Merle Gorman, the 83-year-old prospective Iowa voter, said after about his confrontation with the former vice president, “I love the country, I want good people in there and not the kind of crap we got now.”

Today, Biden was joined on the campaign trail by John Kerry.

--As first reported by Bloomberg News, Sen. Elizabeth Warren is drafting a bill that would call on regulators to retroactively review about two decades of “mega mergers” and ban such deals going forward.

Warren’s staff recently circulated a proposal for sweeping anti-monopoly legislation, which is about delivering on one of the senator’s campaign promises to check the power of Big Tech and other industries.

This would have zero chance of passing.

--Rep. Devin Nunes filed a defamation lawsuit against CNN in federal court in which he is seeking $435,350,000 in damages.

The California Republican alleges that CNN – which the lawsuit describes as “the mother of fake news” - published a “demonstrably false hit piece” on him when it reported on Nov. 22 that a lawyer for Lev Parnas, an indicted associate of President Trump’s lawyer Rudy Giuliani, said his client was willing to testify that Nunes met last year with a former Ukrainian prosecutor in Vienna in an effort to get dirt on Joe Biden.

Nunes in the suit said he never traveled to Austria in 2018 and that he never met with or spoke to Viktor Shokin, the former prosecutor.  Nunes, according to the suit, was in Libya and Malta during the time he was said to be in Vienna.

Shokin also denied meeting with Nunes after the CNN report.

The lawsuit also disputes CNN’s reporting that Nunes spoke with Parnas around the time of his alleged trip to Vienna, but phone records released Tuesday in the draft impeachment report showed Nunes and Parnas exchanged several calls on April 12.

Some of you might have wondered why I didn’t bring up the CNN report on Nunes last time.  As I’ve been doing since day one of this site, I’m careful what I put in here, such as not parroting a single conspiracy theory handed to me over the transom during the 2016 campaign.

If there is more to the Nunes story that emerges later, I’ll comment on it. 

--Georgia Republican Gov. Brian Kemp tabbed business executive Kelly Loeffler to fill the seat being vacated by retiring Republican Sen. Johnny Isakson, defying allies of President Trump who had publicly lobbied for Rep. Doug Collins to be selected.

Loeffler now needs to run in a November 2020 special election to finish out the final two years in Isakson’s term – particularly if Collins wages a campaign for that seat next year.

Collins has not ruled out a bid, though he is being egged on to do so by the Fox News commentariat. 

Georgia’s other senator, Republican David Perdue, is himself up for reelection next fall.

Well Loeffler declared her willingness to seed her campaign with $20 million of her own money, which could serve as a bulwark to fend off Rep. Collins.

Democrats will have a field day as Sen. Perdue is himself a wealthy former Fortune 500 executive.  Could be quite a state to watch next fall.

--California Republican Rep. Duncan Hunter said he will step down from his office shortly after the holidays after pleading guilty to a federal charge of conspiring to misuse campaign funds.  A true dirtball, his wife not being much better.

--According to the inaugural Public Agenda/USA TODAY/Ipsos poll, by overwhelming margins, those surveyed said national leaders, social media and the news media have exacerbated and exaggerated divisions in the country.

More than nine of 10 said it’s important for the United States to try to reduce that divisiveness.

The online poll of 1,548 adults, taken Oct. 14-21, found that the suspicion of each side about the other was deep.

Both Republicans and Democrats estimated that just over half of those in the other party were “so extreme you can’t imagine finding common ground with them.”

Four in 10 Republicans and nearly half of Democrats said they would be “tempted” to vote for the opposing party’s nominee if he or she had the best shot at unifying the country.  Nine in 10 said it’s important to them that the candidate they vote for “actively works toward unifying the country and making it less decisive.”

But this last point is probably meaningless, since a majority of voters in each party was unwilling to rule out voting for their party’s nominee even if he or she were running a divisive campaign.

Lastly, as of now, only 6% of those surveyed said the current presidential campaign was “bringing out the best in Americans;” 43% said it was bringing out the worst.  Half said it was doing both.

--An Economist/YouGov survey of 1,500 adults asked Democrats, Republicans and independents to compare President Trump to seven other GOP presidents, including Lincoln, Richard Nixon and both Bushes.

Every one of them – even Nixon – beat Trump among all voters. 

But Republicans named Trump their favorite by a wide margin in every matchup – with only one exception.  Ronald Reagan remains Republicans’ most beloved president, beating Trump by 59% to 41%.

Trump beat Lincoln 53% to 47%.  Oh brother.

--UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has said the world’s efforts to stop climate change had been “utterly inadequate” so far and there was a danger global warming could pass the “point of no return.”

Speaking before the start of the two-week long UN Climate Change Conference in Madrid, Guterres said the impact of rising temperatures – including more extreme weather – was already being felt around the world, with dramatic consequences.

He noted the world had the scientific knowledge and the technical means to limit global warming, but “what is lacking is political will.”

“The point of no return is no longer over the horizon,” Guterres told reporters.  “It is in sight and hurtling toward us.”

Well, you can agree or disagree with this.  What is not in disagreement is that we are seeing far more ‘extreme’ weather events, and thousands of species are in danger, or already basically extinct.  These are just facts.

But I’m the guy who going back to before 2007, first labeled for you that the debate was about “global pollution.”  It’s all in my archives.  Global pollution, though, has to do with global warming.  Back then, and now, I just thought global pollution was far more identifiable.  An easier ‘sell,’ so to speak.

The bottom line has always been, if it looks like s---, it is s---.  It doesn’t matter whether it’s in the water or air, it’s all the same.  Harmful!

So we also have the story of the sperm whale which died after stranding on the Isle of Harris (part of the Scottish Hebrides).  The poor guy had a 100kg (220 pound) “litter ball” in its stomach.

As reported by the BBC, and many others, “fishing nets, rope, packing straps, bags and plastic cups were among the items discovered in a compacted mass.”

“Members of the Scottish Marine Animal Stranding Scheme, an organization that investigates the deaths of whales and dolphins, dissected the whale to try to determine its cause of death.

“A post on the group’s Facebook page stated: ‘The animal wasn’t in particularly poor condition, and whilst it is certainly plausible that this amount of debris was a factor in its live stranding, we actually couldn’t find evidence that this had impacted or obstructed the intestines.

“ ‘This amount of plastic in the stomach is nonetheless horrific, must have compromised digestion, and serves to demonstrate yet again the hazards that marine litter and lost or discarded fishing gear can cause to marine life.’

--The Thanksgiving-week “bomb cyclone” storm that drenched California not only set a record for the lowest pressure recorded in the state, but also generated a 75-foot wave off Cape Mendocino, according to measurements taken by a buoy operated by the Scripps Institution of Oceanography Coastal Data Information Program.  Good thing this was far enough offshore, I think you’d agree.  Oregon is on constant guard for something like this, though normally tsunami-generated.

--Finally, I don’t like to comment on events like the shootings at Naval Air Station Pensacola today until the facts are in, but we do know a member of the Saudi Air Force visiting the United States for military training, through a longstanding U.S. program, is the suspect in a shooting that killed four people (including him, taken down by sheriff’s deputies) and injured eight.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said, “There is obviously going to be a lot of questions about this individual being a foreign national, being a part of the Saudi Air Force and then to be here training on our soil...The government of Saudi Arabia needs to make things better for these victims.  They are going to owe a debt here, given that this was one of their individuals.”

President Trump said Saudi King Salman had called him to offer condolences and sympathy to the victims.

“The King said that the Saudi people are greatly angered by the barbaric actions of the shooter, and that this person in no way shape or form represents the feelings of the Saudi people who love the American people,” Trump tweeted.

I think a lot of us tonight have an initial reaction that this story has legs.  There is also a sense of urgency in the FBI, both here and overseas, to get a handle on the motive quickly.

---

Pray for the men and women of our armed forces...and all the fallen.

We remember Pearl Harbor, Dec. 7, 1941.

God bless America.

---

Gold $1464
Oil $59.12

Returns for the week 12/2-12/6

Dow Jones  -0.1%  [28015]
S&P 500  +0.2%  [3145]
S&P MidCap  +0.6%
Russell 2000  +0.6%
Nasdaq  -0.1%  [8656]

Returns for the period 1/1/19-12/6/19

Dow Jones  +20.1%
S&P 500  +25.5%
S&P MidCap  +21.6%
Russell 2000  +21.2%
Nasdaq  +30.5%

Bulls 54.8
Bears 17.3 [The Bull/Bear folks are caught up.  The prior two readings were 58.1/17.1 and 57.2/17.1, respectively, for those of you playing along at home.]

Have a great week.

Dr. Bortrum posted a new column!

Brian Trumbore

 

---