Week in Review

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Week in Review

11/28/2020

For the week 11/23-11/27

[Posted 10:00 p.m. ET, Friday]

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Edition 1,128

Around noon on Thanksgiving Day, President Trump fired off two tweets:

“Just saw the vote tabulations. There is NO WAY Biden got 80,000,000 votes!!!  This was a 100% RIGGED ELECTION.”

“HAPPY THANKSGIVING!”

President-elect Joe Biden issued a Thanksgiving address of sorts on Wednesday, speaking to a nation that has lost 270,000 lives to the coronavirus, saying Americans were making a “shared sacrifice for the whole country” and a “statement of common purpose” by staying at home with their immediate families.  “I know this isn’t the way many of us hoped we’d spend our holiday.  We know that a small act of staying home is a gift to our fellow Americans,” said Biden.  “I know better days are coming.”

The president-elect added: “I know the country has grown weary of the fight.  But we need to remember we’re at a war with a virus – not with each other,” encouraging Americans to do more to curb the spread, saying it was a “patriotic duty” to wear a mask.”

And: “I believe that this grim season of division and demonization will give way to a year of light and unity.”

President Trump in his Thanksgiving proclamation on Wednesday urged Americans to “gather” for the holiday, against all medical advice. 

“I encourage all Americans to gather, in homes and places of worship, to offer a prayer of thanks to God for our many blessings.”

On Thanksgiving eve, Trump called into a news conference held by his allies in a Gettysburg, Pa., hotel, again falsely claiming Biden stole the election.  In a rant that lasted less than 10 minutes, Trump said some of the following:

“This was an election that we won easily… This election was rigged, and we can’t let that happen.  We can’t let it happen for our country. …This election was lost by the Democrats. They cheated. It was a fraudulent election.”

“We won Pennsylvania by a lot, and we won all of these swing states by a lot.”

“I was called by the biggest political people, ‘Congratulations, sir, on a big win.’ And all of a sudden ballots were dumped all over the place.”

“We have poll watcher affidavits piled up to the ceiling. They’re all over.  They were treated horribly all over this. …The poll watchers weren’t allowed to watch.  They were, in many cases, whisked out of the room, not only in pens that were 20, 30, 40, 60, 100 feet away where you couldn’t even see.”

“We have many, many cases, many, many cases of people walking in.  A woman, an elderly woman, walks in looking forward to voting November 3rd and says, ‘Oh, good, where would I go about voting?’ ‘I’m sorry, you’ve already voted.  Your ballot is in.’  She said, ‘No, I didn’t vote.’  ‘No, your ballot is in.  You’ve already voted.’  In all cases for Biden, by the way…and they gave her a provisional ballot to sign, which goes nowhere.”

“We won this election by a lot. We got 74 million votes.”

“We got many votes more than Ronald Reagan had when he won 49 states.”

As the Washington Post’s Glenn Kessler noted regarding these last two statements, Joe Biden received more than 80 million and Trump lost by a full 4 percent. And as for Ronald Reagan, the U.S. population is 40 percent larger than back in 1984 and voter turnout was higher this year than ’84.

“All you have to do is take a look at the numbers at 10 o’clock in the evening, when everybody thought the election was virtually over.  And very weird things happen.  But they’re not weird to professionals, and they’re not weird to Dominion and other people that operate machines,” Trump continued.

“People that were dead were signing up for ballots….”

Oh brother. The guy has never stopped.  Before the 2016 election, he was telling us the vote was rigged.  Then when he surprised even himself by winning the Electoral College, he said the election was still a fraud because Hillary Clinton received 2.9 million votes more than he did.

For four years he kept bringing up the topic on the campaign trail, and this spring he started in full force with his charge that “the only way I lose in November is if the election is rigged.”

Now he loses by the same ‘landslide’ he won in in 2016, but this time by also 6 million votes, and it is endless.

So Thursday, after weeks of evading questions from reporters, President Trump took some and he came as close to conceding the election as he has thus far, saying if the Electoral College votes for Joe Biden, he will leave the White House.  But at the same time he reiterated his unfounded claims of voter fraud.

The president said it would be hard for him to concede under the current circumstances and declined to say whether he would attend Biden’s inauguration.

“It’s going to be a very hard thing to concede because we know there was massive fraud.”

“This election was a fraud,” while again offering zero concrete evidence.  “I think you’re dealing with a very fraudulent system.  I’m very worried about that,” Trump said. “People are very disappointed that we were robbed.”

Trump said of Biden: “I don’t think it’s right he’s trying to pick a Cabinet.”

And seeming to immediately ignore his statement on the Electoral College, which meets Dec. 14, the president added, “I think there will be a lot of things happening between now and Jan. 20…a lot of things.”

Hopefully, an attack on Iran isn’t what he’s darkly alluding to, as I detail below following today’s developments there.

And then this afternoon, the Trump legal team suffered another stinging defeat as a U.S. federal appeals court rejected a request by the campaign to block Joe Biden from being declared the winner in Pennsylvania.

“Free, fair elections are the lifeblood of our democracy. Charges of unfairness are serious. But calling an election unfair does not make it so,” wrote Stephanos Bibas on behalf of a three-judge panel.  “Charges require specific allegations and then proof.  We have neither here.”

Trump’s team has said it will appeal to the Supreme Court.

And of course this won’t stop the president from his dangerous and unfounded claims.

And so he tweeted after the appeals court ruling:

“Biden can only enter the White House as President if he can prove that his ridiculous ‘80,000,000 votes’ were not fraudulently or illegally obtained.  When you see what happened in Detroit, Atlanta, Philadelphia & Milwaukee, massive voter fraud, he’s got a big unsolvable problem!”

“Biden did poorly in big cities (Politico), except those of Detroit (more votes than people!), Philadelphia, Atlanta and Milwaukee, which he had to win.  Not surprisingly, they are all located in the most important swing states, and are long known for being politically corrupt!”

President Trump will stop at nothing to delegitimize Joe Biden, while totally eroding confidence in our electoral system, thus undermining democracy.  He is hellbent on presenting himself as the ‘rightful’ leader post-Biden’s inauguration.  There’s an event coming up Dec. 12, two days before the Electoral College meets, that has scary implications.  More on that next time.

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Meanwhile, on the sickening Covid front, many Americans ignored CDC guidelines to stay home over the Thanksgiving holidays, hitting the roads and airports, though the latter is being exaggerated.

For example, the last eight days, through yesterday, Thanksgiving, showed the TSA checkpoint levels vs. 2019 were not significantly different than they’ve been the past few months.  As in 35 percent of 2019, Thursday, 41, 37, 41, 45, 45, 40 and 37 (Nov. 19-26).  From Nov. 11-18, the numbers ranged from 32 to 41 percent of 2019’s levels.

The figures are in keeping with polls showing about 60 percent of Americans had said they were foregoing travel over the holiday.  Nonetheless the transmission risk from the week’s behavior is considerable, on top of what we were already facing.

As noted below the death toll is climbing with hospitalizations, the latter hitting one daily record after another, over 90,000 nationwide.

Back in the spring, when the likes of New York, New Jersey, Chicago and Detroit were being hit hard, healthcare workers from around the country that weren’t being impacted locally came to our area to help in a true, best of America spirit.

But now great parts of the country are rapidly becoming overwhelmed and you aren’t seeing volunteers traveling to the most impacted areas like before because those same doctors and nurses are needed at home.  We were told in the spring we needed to flatten the curve to avoid the healthcare system from being overwhelmed, but in another few weeks that is exactly where we’ll be.

Many Republican governors have issued mandatory mask mandates as the fall surge hit, but a notable exception remains South Dakota’s Kristi Noem, even as more than 400 have died in her little state this month.

Noem made it clear she wasn’t stopping or discouraging people from gathering for Thanksgiving.  Instead, she advised people to wash hands, take extra caution for people vulnerable to serious sickness from the virus, and consider keeping gatherings to small numbers, but she has refused to mandate masks or take stronger measures.

South Dakota Sen. Mike Rounds, a former governor, however, has urged people to take more serious precautions, including wearing a mask.  Rounds put his stance on masks bluntly in a recent message: “Leaders wear masks.”

Regarding Thanksgiving, Rounds said: “This message isn’t about Thanksgiving 2020. It’s much bigger than that. This is about how we get through Thanksgiving 2020 so we can all enjoy Thanksgivings together for years to come.”

Meanwhile, North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum, one of those Republicans who has seen the light, issued a mask mandate for his state weeks ago, but in far too many cases here it was too late.

Consider this.  North and South Dakota have a combined population of 1.7 million and, thru Friday, 1,790 deaths to the coronavirus (902 in N.D., 888 in S.D.).

South Korea has a population of 51.3 million and, thru today, 516 deaths.

Japan, population 126.5 million, has 2,051 Covid deaths.

This is beyond pathetic…an amazing failure in our national leadership.

In fact, if you want to be generous, take South Korea’s and Japan’s combined population, about 178 million, and say it is half that of the United States (330 million).  So double the combined deaths in S.K. and Japan to 5,134, and compare that to the U.S., 270,000…and counting.

Since the election, and weeks before it, President Trump has still yet to offer a single word of empathy to the families who’ve lost loved ones.  He’s long checked out, bored with the issue; his legacy, for countless reasons, in tatters.

Covid-19 death tolls, as of tonight….

World…1,448,928
USA…271,026
Brazil…171,998
India…136,238
Mexico…104,873
UK…57,551
Italy…53,677
France…51,914
Iran…47,095
Spain…44,668
Russia…38,558
Argentina…38,216
Colombia…36,214
Peru…35,839
South Africa…21,378

U.S. daily death tolls…Sun. 871; Mon. 972; Tues. 2,187; Wed. 2,304; Thurs. 1,306*; Fri. 1,364

*Many states didn’t report on Thanksgiving, or were still behind on their numbers today because of the holiday.

Covid Bytes

--As part of his presser Thursday, President Trump glancingly acknowledged the pandemic, but to brag.

“The vaccines – and by the way, don’t let Joe Biden take credit for the vaccine… Don’t let him take credit for the vaccines, because the vaccines were me.”

--Britain gave AstraZeneca’s vaccine a vote of confidence on Friday when it asked its regulator to assess it for a rollout after experts raised questions about trial data and the company said it may run another study to gauge the shot’s efficacy.

The UK government has secured 100 million doses of the vaccine, developed by AstraZeneca and Oxford University.

The British drugmaker expects 4 million doses to be available in the country by the end of next month, and Health Secretary Matt Hancock aims for a rollout to begin before Christmas.

AstraZeneca’s candidate is viewed as offering one of the best hopes for many developing countries because of its cheaper price and ability to be transported at normal fridge temperatures.  Officials in the Philippines said they were securing 2.6 million doses of the AstraZeneca shot – the country’s first supply deal for a Covid-19 vaccine – and were negotiating for further doses.

But some scientists, after the initial positive news of Monday, began raising doubts about the robustness of results showing the shot was 90% effective in a sub-group of trial participants who, by error initially, received a half dose followed by a full dose.

AstraZeneca had released trial data on Monday that showed its experimental vaccine prevented on average 70% of Covid-19 cases in late-stage trials in Britain and Brazil. The less effective version involved a pair of full doses.

While the success rate was 90% in the sub-group, some experts said the relatively small number of participants made it harder to be confident in the findings.

The confusion over the trial results doesn’t help in public confidence.  It’s an issue when you have such a race among drugmakers, and, let’s face it, for the Pfizer and Moderna vaccine candidates, the preliminary results are from pretty small sample sizes as well.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has not commented on AstraZeneca’s trial results as yet.  The European Medicines Agency said on Thursday it would “assess data on the efficacy and safety of the vaccine in the coming weeks.”

Moncef Slaoui, chief scientific adviser for the U.S. government’s Operation Warp Speed, has also highlighted gaps in the trial data.  He said no one in the subgroup that got the initial half dose was older than 55 – suggesting the regimen’s efficacy in crucial older age groups is unproven in this interim data.

Now the potential positive in all this is that AstraZeneca’s vaccine may require a lower dosage all around.

--The FDA issued emergency use authorization for Regeneron’s antibody therapy, an experimental treatment given to President Trump. The FDA said the monoclonal antibodies, casirivimab and imdevimab, should be administered together for the treatment of mild to moderate Covid-19 in adults and pediatric patients who are at high risk for progressing to severe Covid-19.

--Owing to the lockdown in the UK, one of the larger pub operators, Mitchells & Butlers and Fuller, Smith & Turner posted millions in financial losses on Thursday and said they had cut around 1,650 jobs as the hospitality industry reels from the re-tightening of Covid restrictions.  The company’s CEO said “We are optimistic about the future in the medium term and beyond, but there is no doubt that this will be a tough winter.”

Another operator, Marston’s, is planning to cut 2,150 jobs.  The current lockdown in England started on Nov. 5 and is set to end on Dec. 2, but tough restrictions are expected to continue in many areas, as the UK goes to a more tiered approach based on regional spread.

--South Korea’s intelligence agency foiled North Korean attempts to hack into South Korean companies developing coronavirus vaccines, the News1 agency reported on Friday, citing a member of the parliamentary intelligence committee.

Last week, Microsoft said hackers working for the Russian and North Korean governments have tried to break into the networks of seven pharmaceutical companies and vaccine researchers in South Korea, Canada, France, India and the U.S.

Reuters then reported North Korea attempted to hack into AstraZeneca.

--An example of the rising hospitalizations across the country for Covid-19 is my state of New Jersey, where they have risen from about 900 patients a month ago to 2,830 on Wednesday. The total is still far below the more than 8,000 in April at the peak of the first wave.  Other states, however, keep hitting new highs.

Trump World

--On Wednesday, President Trump tweeted: “It is my Great Honor to announce that General Michael T. Flynn has been granted a Full Pardon. Congratulations to @GenFlynn and his wonderful family, I know you will now have a truly fantastic Thanksgiving!”

“Have a great life General Flynn!”

“President Trump’s pardoning of Michael Flynn, who twice pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about his dealings with a foreign adversary, is an act of grave corruption and a brazen abuse of power,” said House Speaker Nancy Pelosi in a statement.

Two sides….

Editorial / Wall Street Journal

“President Trump’s decision Wednesday to pardon former national security advisor Michael Flynn is an overdue act of justice that ends four years of political harassment, unjustified prosecution and judicial abuse. If it sounds like we feel strongly about this one, you’re right.

“We’ve never met the former general and decorated veteran. But every American should be worried about his mistreatment by a politicized system of justice that could happen to anyone on the wrong side of vindictive people with power.

“The FBI and Justice pursued him though they knew there was no basis for an investigation. They coerced a plea of lying to the FBI though the interviewing agents thought he was telling the truth.  A later re-examination ordered by Attorney General Bill Barr found that Justice and the FBI had withheld exculpatory evidence.  Former FBI director James Comey crowed about how the bureau took advantage of the unsuspecting Mr. Flynn and a trusting White House to have his agents interview him without courtesies normally extended to criminals.

“Justice finally moved to dismiss the charges this year, but then federal Judge Emmet Sullivan opted for political revenge by refusing to agree to the dismissal. He even tried to investigate the case himself – an extraordinary intrusion by a court into the executive branch’s prosecutorial power.  His obvious goal was to stall long enough for a Biden Administration to take power and reinstate the charges. What a disgraceful performance.

“Mr. Flynn should have been vindicated in court, but Judge Sullivan was never going to give him a fair hearing.  A pardon was the only avenue left to prevent Mr. Flynn from more years of punishment. Congratulations to Mr. Trump for sparing an innocent man who served his country well but was ill-served by too many of his countrymen.”

Editorial / Washington Post

“Day after day, year after year, Americans wondered when Donald Trump would change.  But winning primaries, claiming the GOP nomination, taking the White House and being president did not snap him out of a lifelong habit of indecency.  It was too much to imagine that losing his reelection bid would bring a change of character.  And so it is that President Trump is leaving the White House just as he entered it: a total disgrace.

“In what we can only hope will be his last official degradation of his office, the president pardoned Michael Flynn, his former national security adviser, on Wednesday, the afternoon before Thanksgiving.  Mr. Flynn freely pleaded guilty to lying to FBI investigators, a felony, about whether he discussed anti-Kremlin sanctions with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak.  ‘I recognize that the actions I acknowledged in court today were wrong, and, through my faith in God, I am working to set things right,’ Mr. Flynn said then.  ‘I accept full responsibility for my actions.’  But then he took it all back.

“Mr. Flynn switched lawyers, hiring Sidney Powell – yes, the same Sidney Powell who last week alleged a vast international communist plot to flip the 2020 presidential election to President-elect Joe Biden – and insisted that he was the victim of FBI manipulation.  Of course, no one forced him to lie to counterintelligence investigators.  But Mr. Trump, who had privately pushed then-FBI Director James B. Comey to go easy on his former confidant, waged a public campaign against prosecuting Mr. Flynn, tying it into his efforts to discredit the Russia investigation. Finally, Attorney General William P. Barr bailed out Mr. Flynn, moving to drop the case against the former Trump staffer, despite his previous guilty plea.

“Mr. Flynn’s judge balked, igniting a debate about whether he could stop the Justice Department from showing such obvious favoritism for one of the president’s friends based on legal reasoning the department rejected in other cases.  A former federal judge hired to advise the court found Mr. Barr’s justifications ‘an unconvincing effort to disguise as legitimate a decision to dismiss that is based solely on the fact that Flynn is a political ally of President Trump.’  No matter.  Now the case is closed.  Mr. Trump steamrolled the facts and debate, deploying one of the least reviewable powers of his office – his pardon authority – to officially end the Flynn drama.  He enabled an admitted felon to walk free solely because he was a Trump loyalist.

“As he so often does, Mr. Trump grounded his decision in a half-baked conspiracy theory, insisting Wednesday through his press secretary that Mr. Flynn was ‘the victim of partisan government officials engaged in a coordinated attempt to subvert the election of 2016.’  In fact, Mr. Flynn was caught scheming with the representative of a foreign government that actively tried to subvert the 2016 election.  Then he lied about it to the FBI.

“So it remains in Mr. Trump’s America, at least for a couple more months: Guilty is innocent; lies are truth; traitors are patriots.  The question is not whether Mr. Trump has degraded the presidency. The question is how much long-term damage he has done. Will future presidents now feel free to use the pardon power – or the other vast powers of office – with such nakedly crooked motives?  How many will calculate that they can make corruption appear to be patriotism as long as enough of the country wants to believe the lies they tell?”

--The Supreme Court late Wednesday barred Gov. Andrew Cuomo and New York State from enforcing certain Covid-19 restrictions on places of worship.

The justices split 5-4, with new Justice Amy Coney Barrett making her mark in the majority, ruling New York’s rules limiting religious gatherings in orange and red zones throughout the state were too restrictive.

The Supreme Court had decided similar cases earlier this year out of California and Nevada, voting 5-4 in favor of the religious restrictions, but since then the court’s membership has changed.

In red and orange zones, New York had capped attendance at houses of worship at 10 and 25 people, respectively.

Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote liquor stores and bike shops shouldn’t be allowed to open while churches, synagogues, and mosques are shuttered.

Chief Justice John Roberts, in dissent, wrote that there was ‘simply no need’ for the court’s action.

“None of the houses of worship identified in the applications is now subject to any fixed numerical restrictions,” he said, adding that New York’s 10 and 25 person caps “do seem unduly restrictive.”

Gov. Cuomo said the ruling was “irrelevant” and “moot” – as the restrictions expired.

--On Saturday, a federal judge in Pennsylvania dismissed a lawsuit critical to President Trump’s bid to overturn his loss to Joe Biden.

U.S. District Judge Matthew Brann described the case as “strained legal arguments without merit and speculative accusations.”

Brann, a Republican, said he “has no authority to take away the right to vote of even a single person, let alone millions of citizens.”

“This claim, like Frankenstein’s Monster, has been haphazardly stitched together,” Brann wrote.

Pennsylvania Republican Sen. Pat Toomey issued a statement after Brann’s ruling.

“With today’s decision by Judge Matthew Brann, a longtime conservative Republican whom I know to be a fair and unbiased jurist, to dismiss the Trump campaign’s lawsuit, President Trump has exhausted all plausible legal options to challenge the result of the presidential race in Pennsylvania.

“This ruling follows a series of procedural losses for President Trump’s campaign… These developments, together with the outcome in the rest of the nation, confirm that Joe Biden won the 2020 election and will become the 46th President of the United States.”

And then today we had the crushing federal appeals court ruling.

--Rep. Liz Cheney (Wy.), chair of the House Republican Conference, urged President Trump to respect “the sanctity of our electoral process” if he cannot prove his voter fraud claims.

“America is governed by the rule of law,” Cheney said in a statement.  “The President and his lawyers have made claims of criminality and widespread fraud, which they allege could impact election results.  If they have genuine evidence of this, they are obligated to present it immediately in court and to the American people.”

“If the President cannot prove these claims or demonstrate that they would change the election result, he should fulfill his oath to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States by respecting the sanctity of our electoral process,” she added.

The president of course then tweeted:

“Sorry Liz, can’t accept the results of an election with hundreds of thousands of fraudulent votes cast, enough to easily flip the Election.  You’re just unhappy that I’m bringing the troops back home where they belong!”

--Former New Jersey Republican Gov. Chris Christie, a Trump confidant:

“Listen, I’ve been a supporter of the president, I voted for him twice, but elections have consequences and we cannot continue to act as if something happened here that didn’t happen,” Christie explained on ABC’s “This Week.”

“They allege fraud outside of the courtroom but when go inside the courtroom they don’t plead fraud and they don’t argue fraud,” Christie said, adding “you have an obligation to present the evidence, the evidence has not been presented.”

--President Trump finally accepted the start of a formal transition process by the General Services Administration.  On Monday, the GSA chief Emily Murphy wrote in a letter to Joe Biden, “I take this role seriously and, because of recent developments involving legal challenges and certifications of election results, am transmitting this letter today to make those resources and services available to you.”

The move frees up millions of dollars in federal funds, office space and briefings for Biden’s team.

Trump then tweeted he had recommended that Murphy and her team proceed:

“I want to thank Emily Murphy at GSA for her steadfast dedication and loyalty to our Country.  She has been harassed, threatened, and abused – and I do not want to see this happen to her, her family, or employees of GSA. Our case STRONGLY continues, we will keep up the good…

“…fight, and I believe we will prevail!  Nevertheless, in the best interest of our Country, I am recommending that Emily and her team do what needs to be done with regard to initial protocols, and have told my team to do the same.”

Murphy then denied the president was pulling the strings.

“Contrary to media reports and insinuations, my decision was not made out of fear or favoritism.”

Other Trump tweets:

“What does GSA being allowed to preliminarily work with the Dems have to do with continuing to pursue our various cases on what will go down as the most corrupt election in American political history?  We are moving full speed ahead. Will never concede to fake ballots & ‘Dominion.’”

“Remember, the GSA has been terrific, and Emily Murphy has done a great job, but the GSA does not determine who the next President of the United States will be.”

“ ‘In Wisconsin, somebody has to be indefinitely confined in order to vote absentee.  In the past there were 20,000 people. This past election there were 120,000…and Republicans were locked out of the vote counting process.’ @VicToensing @newsmax”

“Are you listening Republicans?”

From Randy Quaid (retweeted by Trump): “Never underestimate The greatest President this country has ever had. Trump is an astonishing man of the people, fighting for all of us, not Big Pharma! #AmericaFirst #KAG #TrumpPence2020 #StopTheSteal2020”

“The ‘losers & suckers’ statement on dead military heroes has been proven to be a total fabrication and lie. IT WAS NEVER MADE! The ‘anonymous’ fabricator, who is a major sleaze, went forward with the lie despite 25 strong witnesses to the contrary. Welcome to the roaring 20’s!”

“Fake News always ‘forgets’ to mention that far fewer people are dying when they get Covid. This is do (sic) to both our advanced therapeutics, and the gained knowledge of our great doctors, nurses and front line workers!”

“The Fake News is not talking about the fact that ‘Covid’ is running wild all over the World, not just in the U.S. I was at the Virtual G-20 meeting early this morning and the biggest subject was Covid. We will be healing fast, especially with our vaccines!”

“Joe Biden was a total disaster in handling the H1N1 Swine Flu, would never have produced a Vaccine in record time (years ahead of schedule), and would do a terrible job of Vaccine delivery – But doesn’t everybody already know that!”

[Ed. again…12,500 died during H1N1 and it did not impact our lives in any way.]

“Why is Joe Biden so quickly forming a Cabinet when my investigators have found hundreds of thousands of fraudulent votes, enough to ‘flip’ at least four States, which in turn is more than enough to win the Election?  Hopefully the Courts and/or Legislatures will have…

“…the COURAGE to do what has to be done to maintain the integrity of our Elections, and the United States of America itself.  THE WORLD IS WATCHING!!!”

“The Media is just as corrupt as the Election itself!”

“ ‘President Trump has done many great things (biggest tax & regulation cuts in history, Space Force, rebuilding our military, fixing the V.A., the Wall), but perhaps the most important of all will be what he is doing now, exposing the massive corruption in our Electoral Process.’ ”

[The above wasn’t attributed to anyone…as in the president wrote this ‘endorsement’ himself.]

The Biden Administration

Tuesday, president-elect Biden introduced picks for his national security and foreign policy team.

“America is back, ready to lead the world, not retreat from it,” Biden said.

Biden said his selection for Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, would rebuild morale and trust in the State Department.  The team embodied his core belief “that America is strongest when it works with its allies,” Biden said.  “It’s a team that reflects the fact that America is back, ready to lead the world, not retreat from it,” he told a news briefing in Wilmington, DE. 

Biden said he had been struck in calls with world leaders “by how much they’re looking forward to the United States reasserting its historic role as a global leader over the Pacific, as well as the Atlantic, all across the world.”

In addition to Blinken, Biden’s team includes Jake Sullivan as national security adviser and Linda Thomas-Greenfield as ambassador to the United Nations.  She will be the first African-American in the role, and with the restoration of the job to cabinet-level status, will have a seat on the National Security Council.

And then you have the first female Treasury secretary, and former chair of the Federal Reserve, Janet Yellen.  [More on her selection below, which will be formalized next week.]

And there’s Alejandro Mayorkas as the first Latino to lead the Department of Homeland Security and Avril Haines as the first woman to be the director of national intelligence.

Biden stated a commitment to diversity in his cabinet and he delivered.  None of those subject to confirmation should face too much resistance.

Then there’s John Kerry, who Biden tapped to lead a new post of international climate envoy.  He has experience, but he instantly becomes the new administration’s punching bag at the likes of Fox News.

Editorial / Wall Street Journal

“Biden’s choices of Antony Blinken to run the State Department and Jake Sullivan as national security adviser will reassure world leaders discomfited by Mr. Trump’s disruption.  Mr. Blinken has worked with Mr. Biden for years, which will give him significant policy influence.  Mr. Sullivan worked with Hillary Clinton at the State Department and would have had a major job had she won the Presidency.

“Both are mainstream liberal internationalists who believe in working on behalf of U.S. interests through multilateral institutions.  They favor U.S. leadership as long as it is channeled through the United Nations, NATO and traditional alliances.  To borrow a phrase from the Obama era, they favor leading from behind.  They’re also enamored with arms control, and Mr. Sullivan criticized Mr. Trump’s withdrawal from the 1987 nuclear arms treaty with Russia despite blatant Kremlin cheating.

“On the other hand, they were on the more hawkish side of some Obama-era debates.  Mr. Sullivan supported antitank missiles for Ukraine, which President Obama opposed and Mr. Trump finally delivered.  Mr. Blinken favored the Iraq war in 2002 and intervention in Libya. Mr. Blinken was known for repeating like a mantra, ‘superpowers don’t bluff,’ regarding Mr. Obama’s red-line fiasco about the use of chemical weapons in Syria.

“If Michele Flournoy is Mr. Biden’s’ choice for defense secretary, as many expect, he will have a team that might stand up better than Mr. Obama did to adversaries.  The caveat is China, where the former Vice President and his advisers haven’t revealed their thinking to any significant degree.  It will be their toughest problem, not least because domestic U.S. politics won’t let them return to Mr. Obama’s policy of wagging a finger but doing nothing to deter Beijing’s rogue behavior….

“The big disappointment is John Kerry as a cabinet-level special envoy for climate.  As a negotiator, Mr. Kerry never drives a hard bargain, as his Iran nuclear deal showed.  His cabinet status suggests that climate will be a special negotiating priority rather than one issue among many in foreign policy.  Why can’t Mr. Blinken handle it?....

“Mr. Biden has pledged to return the U.S. to the Paris climate accord, which would be a boon to China. Under that agreement the People’s Republic doesn’t have to reduce carbon emissions at all until 2030, while the U.S. will have to impose vast new rules to cut emissions.

“Chinese leaders will be only too happy to make future promises on climate in return for American acquiescence today to their security priorities of Taiwan, the South China Sea and Huawei.  Sending Mr. Kerry to negotiate with Chinese President Xi Jinping on climate is a recipe for returning home dressed in a barrel.  An obsession with climate will turn a U.S. security strength into a vulnerability.”

As for Michele Flournoy at Defense, she is eminently qualified but some progressives in the Democratic Party do not want her.  Other progressives in the House, however, are beginning to voice their support.

But Flournoy favored the surge in Afghanistan in 2009 at a time that then-Vice President Biden was opposed and he is said to be favoring former Homeland Security Chief Jeh Johnson.

Lastly, how the Biden team handles the inauguration is totally up in the air at this point.  Obviously with the pandemic, a traditional event with massive crowds on the National Mall doesn’t work, let alone the luncheon with lawmakers and the parade to the White House.

Wall Street and the Economy

As the Dow Jones Industrial Average crossed 30,000 for a first time on Tuesday, President Trump, accompanied by Vice President Mike Pence, rushed out to the White House press room to proclaim victory, which was kind of rich, seeing as Trump has counted all the market’s gains since Election Day 2016 as part of his economic successes, but the Dow closed at 27480 on Nov. 3, Election Day 2020.  Ergo, by the president’s standard, it’s Joe Biden’s market now.

The market did rally Monday and Tuesday largely on the heels of yet another vaccine announcement, AstraZeneca’s, as noted above.  This week marked the third straight Monday where a drugmaker touted a vaccine; Pfizer and Moderna the previous two, and this is good.

As is the economic news.  Tuesday, the S&P CoreLogic Case-Shiller home price index for September (recall, this one lags a bit) showed much better than expected price increases for the 20-city index of 1.3% month over month, and 6.6% year over year.

A reading on new home sales for October was also better than forecast, a 999,000 annualized rate.

October personal income was not good, -0.7%, but consumption (consumer spending) rose a solid 0.5%.  [The Fed’s preferred inflation barometer, the core personal consumption expenditures index, was a tame 1.4% year over year.]

A reading on durable goods (big-ticket items) for October was also strong, 1.3%, ditto ex-transportation, while a second reading on third-quarter GDP was unchanged at 33.1%.

The news was so good, the Atlanta Fed’s GDPNow barometer for the fourth quarter shot up to 11.0%, far greater than the Street consensus, but this is data through October, before many of November’s new Covid restrictions.

And we can’t ignore that the weekly jobless claims figure has suddenly risen the last two weeks, this time to 778,000, when ongoing declines since the depths of March were expected.  It’s about the disconnect in the economy…the haves and have nots, as discussed above.  A service sector that continues to get obliterated, ditto travel and leisure, while those who can work from home are doing well, and some key manufacturers are seeing turnarounds in their business.

But now it’s about the Christmas holiday season and the National Retail Federation is pegging sales growth at 3.6% to 5.2%.  It should indeed be a strong season as those who are employed aren’t traveling much, or eating out like they used to, so this leaves cash for other expenditures.

Editorial / Wall Street Journal

“The American economy is a wonderful engine of prosperity left to its own devices, and on Tuesday it proved this again with another surge in equity prices that pushed the Dow Jones Industrial Average above 30,000 for the first time. Stock prices rise and fall, but this symbolic  milestone of optimism for the future shows the economy’s resilience despite the Covid-19 plague.

“We’ve lost track of the many doom and gloom predictions, especially since politicians shut down the economy in March. Remember the disaster that was supposed to follow the end of enhanced federal jobless benefits on July 31?  Didn’t happen.  Third quarter growth was 33.1%.

“Then recall the catastrophe if Congress didn’t pass another $3 trillion spending bill?  Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi issued almost daily press releases, echoed by the sages at Bloomberg.  Didn’t happen. Then last week we were told that if the Treasury ended the Federal Reserve’s special pandemic facilities, the markets would reel. Some reeling.

“Instead the economy keeps growing, and the jobless rate keeps falling, despite the surge in new Covid infections.  The Atlanta Fed is estimating growth in the fourth quarter, which is halfway over, at 5.6%. [Ed. this was before the figure was updated to 11.0%.] That could certainly change if more governors follow California’s Gavin Newsom in punishing his state’s citizens with lockdowns.  That’s one reason California’s jobless rate was fifth highest among the 50 states in October at 9.3%.  New York was third highest at 9.6%.

“Meantime, overall U.S. growth continues to surprise for the better.  The housing market is booming, and consumer and small-business confidence are strong. The unemployment rate is down to 6.9%, and continuing jobless claims fell another 429,999 in last week’s report.  Americans have enormous savings they can deploy, which explains why consumers keep spending despite the pandemic. Auto sales have been strong, no doubt in part because people are flying less and aren’t taking the usual vacations.

“Investors are looking at the medical miracles of Covid vaccines that portent the end of the pandemic in 2021. The fading chance of post-election trauma helps, but the bigger boost to the market has come from the prospect of a Republican Senate acting as a check on Joe Biden’s destructive tax increases.  He can still do damage with regulation, but that takes more time and is subject to legal challenge.  The two Georgia runoffs on Jan. 5 producing a Democratic Senate are, apart from shutdowns, the biggest market risk ahead.

“By the way, on Election Day in 2016 the Dow closed at 18,332.”

The Journal editorial board has been totally insensitive to the human toll caused by the pandemic, as well as consequences such as bread lines.

Europe and Asia

We had flash November PMI readings in the eurozone, courtesy of IHS Markit.

The EA19 flash comp was 45.1 vs. 50.0 in October, a 6-month low (50 the dividing line between growth and contraction).  Manufacturing was 53.6 vs. 54.8 in October.  Services came in at 41.3 vs. 46.9 the prior month, a 6-month low.

We also get flash readings for Germany and France.

Germany: 57.9 manufacturing vs. 58.2 in October.  Services 46.2 vs. 49.5.

France: 49.1 manufacturing (51.3 October). Services down to 38.0 vs. 46.5.

It’s all about the renewed coronavirus restrictions slamming the service sector all over again.

The UK reported a flash manufacturing reading of 55.2 for November vs. 53.7; services 45.8 vs. 51.4.

Chris Williamson / IHS Markit

“The eurozone economy has plunged back into a severe decline in November amid renewed efforts to quash the rising tide of Covid-19 infections. The data add to the likelihood that the euro area will see GDP contract again in the fourth quarter.

“The service sector has once again been the hardest hit, especially consumer-facing and hospitality businesses, though weakened demand has also taken a toll on manufacturing.

“The factory sector nevertheless remains something of a bright spot, with factories in Germany continuing to show especially encouraging resilience, led by a further surge in demand.

“Firms across both manufacturing and services have also become more optimistic about the year ahead, largely reflecting growing hopes that the recent encouraging news on vaccines will allow life to return to normal in the new year.

“Importantly, however, the further downturn of the economy signaled for the fourth quarter represents a major set-back to the region’s health and extends the recovery period.  After a 7.4% contraction of GDP in 2020, we are expecting only a 3.7% expansion in 2021.”

Brexit: Bank of England governor Andrew Bailey told parliament that failure to reach a free trade agreement with the European Union would cause more long-term damage than the coronavirus to the British economy.    Bailey said that although the pandemic would deliver a dramatic short-term shock to the economy, a no-deal post-Brexit scenario would lead to more lasting damage.

“It takes a much longer period of time for what I call the real side of the economy to adjust to the change in openness and adjust the profile of trade,” Bailey told MPs on Monday.

Thursday, Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s finance minister said Britain and the EU can clinch a trade deal and the shape of one is clear but London will not sign up to an accord at any cost.

Both sides are calling on the other to move their positions to clear the way for an accord that would avoid a tumultuous finale to the five-year Brexit crisis.

Officials in Britain and Brussels say the talks are still snagged on two main issues, fair competition guarantees and fisheries*, and to a lesser extent ‘governance,’ but neither side seems willing to budge from their positions.

*Currently, the fishing fleets of every country involved under the Common Fisheries Policy have full access to each other’s waters, apart from the first 12 nautical miles out from the coast.  But they can’t catch whatever they like. EU ministers gather for extensive talks every December to hash out the volume of fish that can be caught from each species.  National quotas are then divided up using historical data going back to the 1970s.  London wants to increase the British quota share significantly.  But British fishermen often sell off their catch to boats based elsewhere in the EU.  Overall, more than 60% of the tonnage landed from British waters is caught by foreign boats.

EU chief negotiator Michel Barnier is traveling to London today, Friday, in a last-ditch attempt to clinch a deal, though few are optimistic.  He will propose that 15% to 18% of the fish quota European fleets catch in British waters be restored to the U.K.

What seems clear today is that small businesses in the UK who export to the EU are simply not prepared, including filing for a registration number that they need to get goods from the UK into France, for example.  A dry run of sorts this weekend that looked into potential delays for trucking on Jan. 1 was a disaster, with five-hour plus lines.

And the European Commission has warned that British financial firms must set up shop in the European Union or expect disruption on January 1st, as it is unlikely to grant the required equivalency permit to ease access to the bloc’s customers by the end of the year.

Equivalency decisions are a declaration that supervision and regulations in the UK are effectively as good as those of the EU, allowing financial firms to offer their services to the bloc’s 450 million citizens without dealing with each separate national regulatory authority.

This is a big issue, though the decisions to be made are separate to the negotiations between the EU and London on their future trade relations.

Meanwhile, U.S. president-elect Joe Biden said on Tuesday that he does not want to see a guarded border between the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland after Brexit.  Biden said he had discussed the issue with Taoiseach Michael Martin, Boris Johnson and French president Emmanuel Macron.

Turning to Asia…we will have a slew of important economic data on China and Japan next week, but for now, we had flash November PMI readings on the latter, with manufacturing at 48.3 vs. 48.7 in October, while Japan’s service sector reading was 46.7 vs. October’s 47.7.

But we will get final data next time, ditto for China.

In the Japanese Cabinet Office’s monthly report on the economy, released Wednesday, it said it saw improvement in production, but lowered its assessment for capital expenditure.  Essentially the Cabinet Office hasn’t changed its language to describe the overall state of the economy for five straight months.

With coronavirus cases spiking in Europe and the U.S., Japan faces the possibility of another drop in growth after a rebound in the third quarter.

Street Bytes

--Stocks finished up this holiday-shortened week, the Dow Jones and S&P 500 hitting new records on Tuesday as the Dow surged through the 30,000 mark, though it then fell back to close the week at 29910.  The S&P hit another high on Friday, however, as did Nasdaq.

Overall, the Dow finished up 2.2%, the S&P 2.3% and Nasdaq 3%.  Progress on vaccines and the (relative) certainty of a Biden transition helped pull stocks higher.

Even with historically low interest rates, stocks are ridiculously overvalued, but history shows this condition can last awhile.

--U.S. Treasury Yields

6-mo. 0.08%  2-yr. 0.15%  10-yr. 0.84%  30-yr. 1.57%

Treasuries were little changed on the week. Talk in the bond pits was largely about the following:

Editorial / Wall Street Journal

“Once upon a time Democrats chose Wall Street or business veterans for the Treasury, with a goal of reassuring the private capital markets.  Jack Kennedy chose Wall Streeter Douglas Dillon while Jimmy Carter picked Michael Blumenthal of Bendix.  These days Democratic Presidents lean toward Washington experience, which helps explain Joe Biden’s leaked choice on Monday of Janet Yellen to be his Treasury secretary.

“Ms. Yellen is an economist by training but she’s a political economist by experience.  Most recently she was Chair of the Federal Reserve during President Obama’s second term.  But she has also done stints as president of the San Francisco Fed and the White House Council of Economic Advisers. That’s a gold-plated political resume, and she has a reputation for always knowing her brief.

“She trained under economist James Tobin at Yale and throughout her long career she has followed the Tobin precepts of easy money, with generous social spending financed by tax increases. She believes in the Keynesian precept that federal spending spurs economic growth – the kind of spending matters less than the amount – and in recent months has called for much more in federal Covid-19 relief.  This no doubt appeals to Mr. Biden, who is fond of the Obama spending spree of 2009-2010, and it will certainly make Ms. Yellen a popular choice among Democrats on Capitol Hill….

“Ms. Yellen worked with current Fed Chairman Jerome Powell during the Obama years, and they are likely to form a mind meld on fiscal and monetary policy.  This will be good for Ms. Yellen’s policy influence, but the same can’t be said for Fed independence….

“With her ties to the Fed governors, and especially the Fed staff, Ms. Yellen is likely to have even more influence than most recent Treasury chiefs. This will be a good line of inquiry at her Treasury confirmation hearing.”

--Crude oil has been rallying, with West Texas Intermediate trading above $46, its highest level since March, before slipping a bit to $45.52.  Oil inventories unexpectedly fell this week, per the Energy Information Agency, when a gain had been expected, but supplies are still running about 6% above the five-year average for this time of year.

Oil has benefited this month in part from the number of vaccine candidates deemed to be effective against Covid-19, so that is spurring demand hopes, but the market is still awash in crude.  OPEC+ will probably delay output increases when it meets next week, according to oil analysts, opting to defer to March from January, or possibly longer.  OPEC’s president is warning of the need to be cautious as there’s a risk of a new surplus.

And, longer term, Exxon Mobil Corp. lowered its outlook on oil prices for much of the next decade, according to internal documents obtained by the Wall Street Journal.

As part of its internal financial-planning process, Exxon cut its expectations for future oil prices for each of the next seven years by 11% to 17%.

In 2019, Exxon forecast that Brent oil prices, the global benchmark (currently $48), would average around $62 a barrel for the next five years before increasing to $72 a barrel in 2026 and 2027.

This summer, Exxon lowered that forecast to between $50 and $55 a barrel for the next five years, before topping out at $60.

Exxon has posted three straight quarterly losses this year for the first time on record.

Separately, China has accelerated imports of crude oil and liquefied natural gas from the United States since July, but total energy product purchases through October remain far short of targets for 2020 set out in the Phase 1 trade deal with Washington.

Over the first 10 months of 2020, China’s purchases of U.S. crude, LNG, propane and other energy products totaled $6.61 billion, about 26% of the $25.3 billion target, according to Chinese customs data.

While the target is unlikely to be met by year-end, Chinese trade officials reaffirmed their commitment to the deal in August, and China’s imports of U.S. energy products have increased sharply the second half of the year.

The $6.61 billion accrued through October marks a five-fold jump from the $1.29 billion amassed by end of June.

--Delta Air Lines pilots voted in favor of a tentative agreement containing a no furlough provision through Jan. 1, 2022, in exchange for cost-cutting measures.

Delta would cut pilots’ guaranteed hours by up to 5%, while pilots on the furlough list (more than 1,700) will receive partial pay of 30 hours per month, according to CNBC.

--Europe is set to lift its flight ban on the Boeing 737 MAX in January after U.S. regulators last week ended a 20-month grounding.  The head of the European Union Aviation Safety Agency said in remarks last weekend that the MAX was safe to fly after changes to the design that crashed twice in five months in 2018 and 2019, killing 346 people.  EASA represents the 27 European Union countries plus four other nations including Norway, which has 92 of the aircraft on order.

EASA won’t represent the United Kingdom come January as part of Brexit.

--Tesla shares fell briefly on Wednesday after the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration forced it to recall over 9,000 Model X cars from the 2016 model year and 400 Model Y cars from the 2020 model year.  NHTSA said the cars were recalled for roof trim that may separate and bolts that may not have been properly tightened.

But after the recall announcement, Tesla shares took off anew and finished the week at $585.

As Barron’s Al Root pointed out, it took Tesla 3,495 days to go from initial public offering to $100 billion in market cap.  Then it took 160 more days to go from $100 billion to $200 billion in value.  That mark was hit in June.  $300 billion was hit 20 days later in July.  It’s now at $555bn!

By contrast, Ford’s market cap is $36bn, GM’s $64bn.  Now discuss amongst yourselves.

--Deere & Co. on Wednesday issued better-than-expected net income guidance for fiscal 2021 as the heavy equipment maker said it expects the farm economy to improve and its construction and forestry markets to stabilize.

The Moline, Illinois-based company said it expects between $3.6 billion and $4 billion in net income in the new fiscal year, above the latest Street consensus.

“Higher crop prices and improved fundamentals are leading to renewed optimism in the agricultural sector and improving demand for farm equipment,” said CEO John May.  “At the same time, we are looking forward to realizing the benefits of our smart industrial operating strategy, which is designed to accelerate the delivery of solutions that will drive improved profitability and sustainability in our customers’ operations.”

For the fiscal fourth quarter ended Nov. 1, net sales slipped to $8.66 billion from $8.7 billion in the prior-year period.  Per-share earnings were $2.39, up from $2.27 last year.

Industry sales of agricultural equipment in the U.S. and Canada – Deere’s biggest combined market – are forecast to grow by 5% to 10% next year.  Tightening grain supplies and strong demand from China have increased prices for soybeans and corn in the United States by a third since early August.  Wheat prices are up by 22% on the back of an increase in baking.

Meanwhile, federal payments to farmers are projected to hit a record $51.2 billion this year, contributing to the fastest growth in U.S. farm income in at least nine years.

--Laptop sales, driven by people working and learning from home during the pandemic helped HP Inc. and Dell Technologies soften the impact from lower office-equipment spending.

HP on Tuesday reported an 18% increase in revenue from notebooks for the quarter ended Oct. 31 on record volume.  Sales of desktops and workstations fell.  Overall, revenue slipped 1% to $15.26 billion, beating expectations.

Both HP and Dell expect higher laptop demand to carry over into 2021.

HP’s printing business continued to struggle in the most recent quarter, with revenue down 3% from a year earlier but up 23% from the preceding quarter.  The printing business, while smaller by revenue, is more lucrative for HP.

The company shipped a record 19 million PCs in the quarter, as well as seeing an improvement in commercial print.

HP’s quarterly profit jumped to $668 million, better than expected.

Dell reported an 8% increase in revenue to a record $12.3 billion for its business that includes consumer computer sales.  Consumer revenue rose 14%, while commercial-client sales increased 5%.

Global shipments in the traditional PC market, which includes desktops, notebooks, and workstations, jumped 14.6% year-over-year to 81.3 million units in the third quarter of 2020, according to data from IDC.

Overall, Dell’s revenue for the quarter ended Oct. 30 rose 3% to $23.48 billion, while quarterly profits surged to $832 million, ahead of expectations.

Dell’s data center business remained under pressure, with revenue from the unit falling about 4%.  Sales at VMWare Inc. rose 8% to $2.89 billion.  Dell plans to spin off its 81% stake in the software unit to help reduce debt.

--Shares in Best Buy fell as the company held off on guidance for the holiday quarter.

“It is very difficult for us to predict how sustainable (trends) will be due to the significant uncertainty related to the various impacts of the pandemic,” CFO Matt Bilunas said.

The company warned that the boom in work-from-home purchases was likely to lose steam as rising Covid infections in the U.S. threaten to eat into pre-Christmas consumer confidence.    The electronic retailer said it does not expect quarterly revenue growth of more than 20% to continue into the holiday season.

However, the company beat both Q3 earnings and comparable sales estimates, boosted by demand for laptops and other computer accessories amid the work at home trend.

Best Buy’s comp sales rose 23% in the third quarter ended Oct. 31, beating expectations of a 14.7% increase. Total revenue rose to $11.85 billion from $9.76 billion a year earlier.  Net earnings rose to $391 million, or $1.48 per share from $293 million, or $1.10 per share.

--Adobe Analytics reported that Thanksgiving online sales were up 21.5% over 2019, though we really don’t know how significant this is, knowing foot traffic on Black Friday and throughout the holidays is likely to be down a huge amount over last year.

--Dick’s Sporting Goods reported higher fiscal third-quarter results on Tuesday driven by a surge in comparable-store and digital sales.

For the quarter ended Oct. 31, net sales rose to $2.41 billion from $1.96 billion in the same period last year.  Comp-store sales rose 23%, above the Street’s forecast for a 14% gain.  Digital sales soared 95% and were 21% of total net sales, Dick’s said, up from 13% from the year before.

Departing CEO Edward Stack said, “The strength of our diverse category portfolio once again helped us capitalize on the favorable shifts in consumer demand, as the positive trends across golf, outdoor activities, home fitness and active lifestyle continued throughout Q3.”

Stack is stepping down early next year, replaced by President Lauren Hobart.  Stack has run Dick’s since 1984 and will become executive chairman.

--Nordstrom Inc. said on Tuesday a 37% surge in online sales helped the upscale department store top analysts’ earnings expectations and boost confidence about its holiday performance despite a more competitive, promotional playing field.  Shares rallied on the news.

Net earnings more than halved to $53 million, or 34 cents per share, while analysts on average were expecting a loss of 6 cents per share, according to IBES data from Refinitiv.

On a call with analysts, however, company executives said they expect a percentage decline in fourth-quarter net sales in the low 20s range, worse than currently forecast.  And the company expects shipping charges and premium holiday pay to hurt earnings.

Digital now accounts for 54% of total sales.  Shoppers staying at home were purchasing activewear, home décor and beauty products as opposed to upscale apparel and formal work attire.

--Shares in Gap Inc. fell sharply as the company fell short of profit estimates; the pivot to online sales fueling a surge in marketing and shipping costs.  The company also forecast fourth-quarter sales to be flat or slightly higher than last year and warned of pressure on margins from the elevated shipping costs.

Online sales surged 61% in the third quarter, helping Gap report a surprise in comparable sales, up 5%.  But that came at a cost, with operating expenses up 8%.

Store sales declined 20% in the third quarter.  The San Francisco-based retailer reported net income of $95 million, down from a profit of $140 million a year earlier.

--Dollar Tree Inc. beat analysts’ estimates for quarterly sales on Tuesday, as the discount store operator benefited from higher demand for affordable groceries and other essentials during the pandemic.  Sales at dollar stores have remained strong even after the initial panic-buying at the start of lockdowns, with high U.S. unemployment and falling household income boosting demand for cheaper products.

Net income rose to $330 million, up from $255.8 million.  Net sales rose to $6.18 billion, from $5.75 billion a year earlier; both metrics beating the Street and the shares rose sharply in response.

DLTR did refrain from providing updated guidance at this time because of “the continued volatility and uncertainty” related to Covid-19 as well as a lack of visibility into government stimulus initiatives.

The company said it now expects 480 new store openings and 750 Family Dollar store renovations will be completed in fiscal 2020.

--Walt Disney Co. has more bad news for its employees during the holiday season, as the company now plans to lay off a total of 32,000 by March, 4,000 more than the previously reported 28,000 job cuts announced in September.  Most of the losses will come in Disney’s theme-park ranks, where thousands have already been furloughed or laid off.

Disney’s theme parks are now either operating at reduced capacity or closed altogether, with one location – Disneyland in Anaheim, Calif. – not expected to reopen until at least next year.

So company executives have been forced to reorganize and shift the focus toward its year-old streaming service, Disney+.  The company’s share price has held up thanks to the service’s success in finding early subscribers.

Disney has been shipping some of its theatrical releases like “Hamilton” and “Mulan” to the streaming service.

In a regulatory filing Wednesday, Disney warned it could take even more steps to reduce costs.

--IBM said it was cutting 10,000 jobs in Europe, mostly in the UK and Germany, as it spins off its legacy IT services unit, which handles infrastructure maintenance, by the end of next year.  The unit will be most affected by the job cuts.

IBM plans to sharpen focus on new hybrid-cloud computing and artificial intelligence business.

--French tax authorities have begun demanding millions of euros from U.S. technology groups as they push ahead with a new digital services tax that has enraged Washington.

Facebook and Amazon are among the companies to have received communication from French authorities in recent days demanding payment of the tax for 2020, according to French officials and company executives.

Washington said the collection of the tax is an example of an unfair trade practice because it largely affects U.S. companies.  The move threatens to reignite the transatlantic trade tensions and trigger new tariffs on Europe weeks ahead of the inauguration of Joe Biden.

The French move is not good for Ireland, where many of the companies have their European or international headquarters.  France and other big countries argue the companies should pay some tax in their big markets rather than funneling it all back to lower tax locations such as Ireland.

The U.S. trade representative’s office is now expected to levy tariffs of 25 percent on $1.3 billion worth of French handbags and makeup, having first threatened a 100 percent tariff on champagne and cheeses.

No solution on the trade issue, including the digital tax, is expected until the middle of next year, the U.S. having suspended its talks with the OECD, the Paris-based organization of rich countries.  France wants a separate European Union proposal.

--India’s economy contracted 7.5% in the third quarter, which was actually a big improvement after the record 23.9% year-on-year contraction of the previous quarter.  The Indian government saw better signs in September and is somewhat encouraged over Q4.

--Australia said it was “extremely disappointed” in China’s decision to impose preliminary tariffs on Australian wine, further escalating diplomatic tensions between the two countries.

Today, Australia’s Agriculture Minister said in a statement: “The Australian Government categorically rejects any allegation that our wine producers are dumping product into China.”

--Growing numbers of Peloton customers are putting the brakes on their orders as the company struggles to make timely deliveries.

Though it has seen ridership double since the pandemic began in March, the demand has also created a logjam for its imports, as first reported by the Wall Street Journal.

Peloton warned of “supply constraints for the foreseeable future.”

One customer in New Hampshire, for example, told the Journal that she ordered a $4,565 Peloton treadmill at the beginning of August, but demanded a refund after waiting seven weeks for the equipment to arrive.

--ViacomCBS has agreed to sell its Simon & Schuster publishing business to Penguin Random House unit for $2.18 billion in cash.

ViacomCBS said the move follows a strategic review of its non-core assets started earlier this year. The proceeds will be invested in strategic growth priorities such as streaming, fund a dividend and pay off debt, the company added.

Penguin Random House is a unit of German media conglomerate Bertelsmann SE.

Simon & Schuster has more than 30 publishing units.

Earlier this month, ViacomCBS said publishing revenue jumped 29% year-on-year to $279 million in the third quarter as print and digital books sales were bolstered by titles including “Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World’s Most Dangerous Man” by Mary Trump.

--Warner Music Group Corp.’s revenue in the latest quarter was basically flat year over year, rising by 0.2% to $1.13 billion.  Digital revenue made up a significantly larger share of that sum, growing 15% to $778 million, from $674 million in the year-ago quarter.

In its full fiscal year, which ended on Sept. 30, digital revenue grew 11%, making up 65% of the company’s total revenue, compared with 58% in the previous 12-month period.

The rising importance of digital channels could persist beyond the pandemic if listeners’ social-distancing habits prove hard to break, CEO Stephen Cooper told analysts on a call Monday.

“We think there’s a very reasonable probability that these last seven, eight, nine months and the continuing Covid assault [have]…changed a number of people’s habits,” Cooper said.  “My own personal view is that there’s going to be some change of thinking about packing yourself into stadiums or arenas.”

The New York City-based company owns labels including Atlantic Records, Elektra Records and Warner.

Foreign Affairs

Iran…and Middle East Policy: Before I get to today’s major development, what follows will offer even better context.  All the opinion pieces were written prior to the big assassination

There have been a ton of conflicting stories out there concerning the U.S. and Iran the final weeks of the Trump administration. 

As Yonah Jeremy Bob points out in the Jerusalem Post:

“There will be no attack by the U.S. on Iran in President Donald Trump’s remaining seven weeks in office.

“But apparently there are many who would like to convince Iran and its proxies that the threat is real.

“Their agendas may be varied.

“Some in the Trump administration may want to make sure the Islamic Republic does not embarrass him on his way out.

“This concern makes sense since Tehran has moved forward following the U.S. presidential election with multiple steps at a new underground advanced centrifuge facility at Natanz.

“At the same time, groups in Gaza have fired multiple rounds of rockets on the Israeli south.

“All of this could suggest an attempt by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei to spike the football and try to show he won the nuclear standoff as Trump exits the stage….

“For all his zigzagging on some policy issues, Trump has actually been remarkably consistent on avoiding any major military conflict and trying to reduce U.S. military commitments overseas.

“His approach has been to threaten and scare, but not actually use military force.

“The January assassination of Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps Quds Force chief Qasem Soleimani was an exception, but this was after Iran killed U.S. forces and helped stage a violent protest on the U.S. Embassy in Iraq.

“Even in that case, Trump tried to cover up that dozens of U.S. soldiers were injured in Iran’s counterattack on U.S. bases in Iraq because he wanted to declare victory and move on.

“Other than that instance, Trump has consistently avoided using force, including in 2019 when a multi-million dollar U.S. drone was shot down by Iran and when Tehran laid waste to major Saudi oil fields.

“If anything, the firing of (former Defense Secretary Mark) Esper to take dramatic action was likely about Trump’s major drawdown of troops in Afghanistan and Iraq.

“In other words, he wanted to radically reduce U.S. military commitments overseas, not leave office with a new major regional war on his hands.

“After all of that, the bluffs may be beneficial.

“If Iran and Gaza stand down now and come into negotiations with the Biden administration a bit more admonished, that would mostly be a plus.

“It would not be the first time the psychological threat of war was used to make war less likely.”

Jackson Diehl / Washington Post

“President Trump’s most positive foreign policy legacy will lie in the greater Middle East: the normalization agreements between Israel and three Arab states; the overrunning of the Islamic State’s territory in Syria and Iraq; and the peace accord between the United States and the Afghan Taliban. After all, what else is there?  His ‘maximum pressure’ campaigns to disarm North Korea and democratize Venezuela failed, as did the attempt to use tariffs to force China to abandon mercantilism. Relations with close U.S. allies in Europe are in ruins.

“Yet even in the Middle East, there’s a bigger and more negative story.  The real bottom line off Trump’s policies there was revealed not at the hyped-up White House ceremony in September featuring Israeli, Bahraini and United Arab Emirates leaders, but at an Oval Office meeting 10 days ago, at which the president asked advisers about bombing Iran. His grasp at that straw – which the national security team quickly rejected – showed how the overarching strategy that Trump has pursued for the past four years had led to a disastrous dead end.

“In its essence, Trump’s Mideast gambit was to tightly align the United States with Israel, Saudi Arabia and other Arab Sunni states, then join with them in a relentless campaign against Shiite Iran.  Trump was intent on repudiating the nuclear accord with the Islamic Republic, because it was Barack Obama’s signal foreign policy achievement; he was seduced in his first trip abroad by sword-dancing Saudi leaders, who he wrongly supposed would purchase hundreds of billions in U.S. arms; and he was anxious to please U.S. evangelical Christians, for whom Israel is a sacred cause.

“The policy has failed in every respect.  Despite heavy sanctions and the assassination of its top general, the Iranian regime has neither collapsed nor reduced its aggression across the Middle East. Its militias were still firing rockets at the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad last week.  Following Trump’s abrogation of the nuclear accord, Tehran stepped up its production on enriched uranium and now has 12 times more than it did when Trump took office – enough for a couple of warheads. That advance prompted Trump’s feckless and futile inquiry about bombing – which, his advisers said to him, could trigger a regional war during his last days in office.

“Trump’s tight alignment with the Saudis led him to excuse their mounting foreign aggression and domestic repression, from the criminal bombing of schools and markets in Yemen to the murder and dismemberment of exiled journalist Jamal Khashoggi.  His unquestioning support for right-wing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu caused him to endorse a grotesquely one-sided ‘peace plan’ for Israel and the Palestinians that served only to sever relations between them.

“Perhaps most significantly, Trump accomplished the opposite of what he said he wanted when he ran for president: to extricate the United States from the Middle East and its ‘endless wars.’  Obama had the same goal, and the accord with Iran was integral to it: The idea was to forestall the largest potential threat to the United States and to Israel – an Iranian nuclear arsenal – then promote an equilibrium in the region between Iranian-led Shiites and Saudi-led Sunnis.

“Trump restored the threat of an Iranian nuke, encouraged the sectarian war Sunni and Shiite extremists wanted, and then fully aligned the United States with the Sunni side, making disengagement from the region impossible.  He ended up sending thousands more U.S. forces to the Middle East to defend oil fields and tankers from Iranian attacks, and despite an 11th-hour drawdown, he has had to leave American forces in Iraq and Syria.

“The accords between Israel and Arab states were the silver lining of this disaster: The U.S.-backed anti-Iran alliance brought the Jewish and Arab states together. But if Trump had kept the United States on the sidelines, the rapprochement would likely have happened anyway. After all, Arab states have drawn closer to Israel, the local superpower, precisely to hedge against a U.S. withdrawal from the region.”

David Ignatius / Washington Post

“As the sun sets on Donald Trump’s presidency, one piece of potentially dangerous unfinished business is Iran’s nuclear program.  Here’s an area where cool heads must prevail over the next two months to avoid an 11th-hour catastrophe.

“Both the United States and Iran have been messaging their resolve in recent days, in signals that have mostly gone unnoticed.  Last Saturday, the Air Force flew a B-52 bomber task force from its base in Minot, N.D., to the Middle East, ‘to deter aggression and reassure U.S. partners and allies,’ a Centcom news release announced.

“And this week, three officials said, the Navy is likely to begin moving an aircraft carrier task force toward the Persian Gulf, as a hedge against unanticipated events.

“The show of force comes as the Trump administration is drawing down U.S. troops in three Centcom battle zones: Afghanistan, Iraq and Somalia. The Pentagon’s message to Iran seems to be a cautionary warning against exploiting the situation, rather than a direct threat. But the confrontation over Iran’s nuclear program looms in the background.

“Iran, too, has been signaling its firmness – along with its willingness to revive diplomacy with the new administration of President-elect Joe Biden.  Tehran’s potential threat was underscored this month by the United Nations’ International Atomic Energy Agency, which reported that Iran’s stockpile of low-enriched uranium is now 12 times the level permitted under the 2015 nuclear agreement, which Trump abandoned in 2018.  The IAEA said Iran is also adding more advanced centrifuges to speed enrichment.

“Iran has been hoping to wait out Trump’s presidency, and that theme was reinforced last week by Foreign Minister Mohammed Javad Zarif. He said Iran would revert to the 2015 limits if the new administration returned to the deal, too.  ‘This needs no negotiations and needs no conditions,’ he said.

“Anti-Iran hawks in the United States and Israel see the window closing on the possibility of a preemptive U.S.-Israeli strike against the Iranian nuclear program.  Likely supporters of such an attack include Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and some hard-line officials around Trump….

“ ‘There must be no return to the previous nuclear agreement.  We must stick to an uncompromising policy to ensure that Iran does not develop nuclear weapons,’ Netanyahu told an Israeli audience this week….

“Several insiders stress that Trump doesn’t want a new conflict in the Middle East that would undermine what he sees as his legacy of stopping ‘endless’ wars there.  But squeezing Iran’s nuclear program has also been one of his signature issues, and he’d probably like to tighten the pressure further before leaving office.

“Elliott Abrams, Trump’s special envoy for Iran, stressed nonmilitary options in comments this week: ‘All through December and January, there will be sanctions that deal with arms, that deal with weapons of mass destruction, that deal with human rights…So this will continue on for another couple of months, right until the end.’

“The confrontation with Iran is the unpredictable X-factor in national security.  Until Inauguration Day, the danger of a U.S. or Iranian strike remains on the table – a small but still real possibility.  Starting a war without provocation is never wise, but especially not for a divided country on the verge of political transition.”

So today, Iran’s top nuclear scientist, Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, long suspected by the West of masterminding a secret nuclear bomb program, was killed in an ambush near Tehran.  The move is highly likely to provoke confrontation between Iran and its foes in the last weeks of the Trump administration.

Iran’s foreign minister Javad Zarif said Israel was likely to have been involved in the assassination, although he offered no evidence.

“This cowardice – with serious indications of Israeli role – shows desperate warmongering of perpetrators.  Iran calls on int’l community – and especially EU – to end their shameful double standards & condemn this act of state terror.”

A military adviser to Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei accused Israel of killing Fakhrizadeh to try to provoke a war.

“In the last days of the political life of their…ally (President Trump), the Zionists seek to intensify pressure on Iran and create a full-blown war,” commander Hossein Dehghan tweeted.

Dehghan added, “We will strike as thunder at the killers of this oppressed martyr and will make them regret their action.”

Iranian Defense Minister Brigadier General Amir Hatami tweeted the assassination displayed “the depth of enemies’ hatred” towards the Islamic Republic.

Israel was not commenting in the hours after.

One related sidebar…last Sunday there was a report Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu met with Saudi Arabia’s crown prince, Netanyahu accompanied by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, together with Israel’s spy chief, Yossi Cohen.

But then the Saudis denied the meeting took place. Saudi Arabia’s king has been at odds with his son, Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS), over embracing the Jewish state.

The meeting did take place, but the denials were for Saudi public consumption.

And tonight, the Wall Street Journal is saying Netanyahu and MBS met and did not reach a normalization deal between the two longtime rivals, nor is one imminent.  This was to be a capstone to the Trump administration’s efforts to reorder the politics of the region.

Prince Mohammed pulled back, according to Saudi advisors and U.S. officials, because of the U.S. election result.  MBS will be eager to build ties with the incoming administration and use normalization with Israel to cement relations.

Turkey: President Tayyip Erdogan said on Sunday that his country, an official candidate for European Union membership, sees itself as an inseparable part of Europe but will not give in to attacks and double standards.

“We see ourselves as an inseparable part of Europe… However this does not mean that we will bow down to overt attacks to our country and nation, veiled injustices and double standards,” Erdogan said in a speech to the members of its AK Party.

Turkey’s drilling activities in a disputed part of the eastern Mediterranean have raised tensions with the EU as Turkey is locked in a dispute with Greece and Cyprus over hydrocarbon resources.

EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell said this month that Turkey’s rhetoric on Cyprus was aggravating tensions with the EU and Ankara had to understand that its behavior was “widening its separation” from the bloc.

Ethiopia: The UN is concerned over growing reports of ethnic clashes exploding as a result of the civil war that has erupted over the northern region of Tigray, with federal forces saying they had surrounded the regional capital, Mekelle, while vowing to crush the rebellious government.  They warned civilians they had 72 hours to leave or receive “no mercy.”

Non-Tigrayans are being targeted in Tigray, with reports 600 were massacred in one town. Tigrayans are being singled out elsewhere.  Tigrayan soldiers in the national army have been disarmed.

For their part, the rebels claimed they had “completely destroyed” the army’s 21st mechanized division.

Reports on all sides have been tough to verify since phone and internet connections to the Tigray region were shut down by the central government and access to the area is strictly controlled. 

Over 40,000 have fled into neighboring Sudan, creating another crisis.

China: Beijing launched an ambitious mission Tuesday to bring back rocks and debris from the moon’s surface for the first time in more than 40 years – an undertaking that could boost human understanding of the moon and of the solar system more generally.

Chang’e 5, named for the Chinese moon goddess, is the country’s boldest lunar mission yet.  If successful, it would be a major advance for China’s space program, and some experts say it could pave the way for bringing samples back from Mars or even a crewed lunar mission.

Meanwhile, a two-star Navy admiral overseeing U.S. military intelligence in the Asia-Pacific region made an unannounced visit to Taiwan, which ticked off China.

Taiwan’s foreign ministry confirmed on Sunday that a U.S. official had arrived in Taiwan but declined to provide details, saying the trip had not been made public.

Previously, China reacted with fury when U.S. Health Secretary Alex Azar came to Taipei in August, followed by U.S. Undersecretary of State Keith Krach in September, sending fighter jets near the island each time.

And in Hong Kong, Joshua Wong, the pro-democracy campaigner, pleaded guilty along with two other activists on Monday to unauthorized assembly charges over a 2019 protest, capping a month of arrests of activists, journalist and politicians in the city.

Wong and the others were immediately jailed and will be sentenced next week.

The three faced charges over a demonstration in June 2019, when thousands of people surrounded Police Headquarters and called for an investigation of use of force by officers.

They did not say why they had pleaded guilty rather than fight the charges.

Wong has previously served three separate stints behind bars over two protest-related cases.  Monday he said he was prepared to return to jail.

“Perhaps the authorities wish me to stay in prison one term after another,” he said before his court hearing.  “But I am persuaded that neither prison bars, nor election ban, nor any other arbitrary powers would stop us from activism.”

Russia: Vladimir Putin has yet to acknowledge president-elect Joe Biden’s win.

Russian officials have been sending tart messages about the legitimacy of the U.S. election in recent days, citing what they called a “standoff,” after the chaotic period where Trump has refused to concede.

Putin’s spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, insisted Thursday in his daily phone call with journalists that Putin’s refusal to call Biden was not a sign the Kremlin did not recognize Biden’s victory.

“This is absolutely the incorrect interpretation,” said Peskov.  “The Russian president will congratulate the U.S. president-elect in due course, after the election results are summed up.  The election results have not been summed up yet.”

Putin has called the delay “absolutely normal.”  No it isn’t.

Chinese President Xi Jinping called Biden to congratulate him on Wednesday, after the Ministry of Foreign Affairs recognized the result on Nov. 13.

Argentina: The football-crazed nation is mourning the passing of superstar, and national hero, Diego Armando Maradona.  He was a boy from the poor outskirts of Buenos Aires who led his country to soccer glory.  His behavior wasn’t always good, including his support of leftist leaders such as Fidel Castro and Hugo Chavez (as well as his successor, Nicolas Maduro), let alone his personal issues with drugs and alcohol, but Argentinians, and Latin America in general, saw him as a Man of the People.  [More on him in my next Bar Chat column.]

Random Musings

--Presidential approval ratings….

Gallup: Prior to the election, President Trump had a 46% approval rating in this key poll, 52% disapproved.  95% of Republicans approved, 41% of independents.

But a new survey (Nov. 5-19) reveals just 43% approve of the president’s job performance, 55% disapprove; 90% of Republicans approve, 39% of independents.

Rasmussen: 49% approve, 49% disapprove (Nov. 25).

--Fox News settled a lawsuit with the parents of Seth Rich in a case that threatened to expose a wealth of new details about one of the cable network’s more embarrassing stories.  Star anchor Sean Hannity and other high-profile Fox News figures were due to be deposed about their promotion of a bogus conspiracy theory about the death of the former Democratic National Committee staffer when the two sides settled.

The settlement was disclosed Tuesday, but with no details on the terms.  But Yahoo News’ Michael Isikoff reports the Rich family is receiving “a lucrative seven figure payment… consistent with the size of payouts Fox News and related corporate entities have made in other cases that have brought them negative publicity.

The settlement also spares Hannity and other Fox News figures the ordeal of being grilled under oath about claims in a series of broadcasts in May 2017 that blamed the leak of DNC emails to WikiLeaks on Rich.  At the time, Hannity called a Fox News story attributing the DNC leak to Rich an “explosive” development that “might expose the single biggest fraud, lies, perpetrated on the American people by the media and the Democrats in our history.”

The story became part of Robert Mueller’s investigation, finding that it was Russian military intelligence agents who had hacked the DNC and passed the party’s emails to WikiLeaks through an online persona called Guccifer 2.0.

--Thomas L. Friedman / New York Times

“With so many families gathering, in person or virtually, for this most unusual Thanksgiving after this most unusual election, if you’re looking for a special way to say grace this year, I recommend the West Point Cadet Prayer.  It calls upon each of these future military leaders to always choose ‘the harder right instead of the easier wrong’ and to know ‘no fear when truth and right are in jeopardy.’

“Because we should be truly thankful this Thanksgiving that – after Donald Trump spent the last three weeks refusing to acknowledge that he’d lost re-election and enlisted much of his party in a naked power play to ignore the vote counts and reinstall him in office – we had a critical mass of civil servants, elected officials and judges who did their jobs, always opting for the ‘harder right’ that justice demanded, not the ‘easier wrong’ that Trump and his allies were pressing for.

“It was their collective integrity, their willingness to stand with ‘Team America,’ not either party, that protected our democracy when it was facing one of its greatest threats – from within.  History will remember them fondly.

“Who am I talking about?  I am talking about F.B.I. Director Christopher Wray, a Trump appointee, who in September openly contradicted the president and declared that historically we have not seen ‘any kind of coordinated national voter fraud effort in a major election’ involving mail-in voting.

“I am talking about Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger – a conservative Republican – who oversaw the Georgia count and recount and insisted that Joe Biden had won fair and square and that his state’s two G.O.P. senators, David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler, did not garner enough votes to avoid election runoffs.  Perdue and Loeffler dishonorably opted for the easier wrong and brazenly demanded Raffensperger resign for not declaring them winners.

“I am talking about Chris Krebs, the director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, who not only refused to back up Trump’s claims of election fraud, but whose agency issued a statement calling the 2020 election ‘the most secure in American history,’ adding in bold type, ‘There is no evidence that any voting system deleted or lost votes, changed votes or was in any way compromised.’

“Krebs did the hard right thing, and Trump fired him by tweet for it.  Mitch McConnell, doing the easy wrong thing, did not utter a peep of protest….

“I am talking about Mitt Romney, the first (and still virtually only) Republican senator to truly call out Trump’s postelection actions for what they really were: ‘overt pressure on state and local officials to subvert the will of the people and overturn the election.’….

“And I am talking about all the other election verification commissioners who did the hard right things in tossing out Trump’s fraudulent claims of fraud.

“Asking for recounts in close elections was perfectly legitimate.  But when that failed to produce any significant change in the results, Trump took us to a new dark depth. He pushed utterly bogus claims of voting irregularities and then tried to get Republican state legislatures to simply ignore the popular vote totals and appoint their own pro-Trump electors before the Electoral College meets on Dec. 14.

“That shifted this postelection struggle from Trump versus Biden – and who had the most votes – to Trump versus the Constitution – and who had the raw power and will to defend it or ignore it.

“To all of those people who chose to do the hard right thing and defend the Constitution and the rule of law over their party’s interest or personal gain, may you have a blessed Thanksgiving.

“You stand in stark contrast to Bill Barr, Mike Pompeo (who apparently never attended chapel at West Point), Mike Pence, Rudy Giuliani, Lindsey Graham, Mitch McConnell, Kevin McCarthy, Nikki Haley, Kayleigh McEnany and all the other G.O.P. senators and House members, who put their party and self-interest before their country and opted for the easy wrongs.  History will remember them, too.

“Though Trump is now grudgingly letting the presidential transition proceed, we must never, ever, forget the damage he and his allies inflicted on American democracy by attacking its very core – our ability to hold free and fair elections and transfer power peacefully.  Tens of millions of Americans now believe something that is untrue – that our system is rigged. Who knows what that will mean in the long run?

“The depths to which Trump and his legal team sank was manifested last Thursday when Giuliani and Sidney Powell held a news conference alleging, among other things, that software used to disadvantage Trump voters was created at the direction of the late Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez. It was insane.

“As Jonah Goldberg, a conservative critic of Trumpism, wrote in thedispatch.com: ‘The G.O.P.’s social media account spewed sound bites from Powell and Giuliani out into the country like a fire hose attached to a sewage tank.’  Fox carried the whole news conference live – uninterrupted – for virtually its entire 90 minutes.

“Shame on all these people.”

[Krebs is on “60 Minutes” this Sunday.]

--David Brooks / New York Times

“In a recent Monmouth University survey, 77 percent of Trump backers said Joe Biden had won the presidential election because of fraud. Many of these same people think climate change is not real.  Many of these same people believe they don’t need to listen to scientific experts on how to prevent the spread of the coronavirus.

“We live in a country in epistemological crisis, in which much of the Republican Party has become detached from reality.  Moreover, this is not just an American problem.  All around the world, rising right-wing populist parties are floating on oceans of misinformation and falsehood.  What is going on?

“Many people point to the internet – the way it funnels people into information silos, the way it abets the spread of misinformation.  I mostly reject this view. Why would the internet have corrupted Republicans so much more than Democrats, the global right more than the global left….

“Over the past decades the information age has created a lot more people who make their living working with ideas, who are professional members of this epistemic process. The information economy has increasingly rewarded them with money and status. It has increasingly concentrated them in ever more prosperous metro areas.

“While these cities have been prospering, places where fewer people have college degrees have been spiraling down: flatter incomes, decimated families, dissolved communities.  In 1972, people without college degrees were nearly as happy as those with college degrees.  Now those without a degree are far more unhappy about their lives.

“People need a secure order to feel safe.  Deprived of that, people legitimately feel cynicism and distrust, alienation and anomie. This precarity has created, in nation after nation, intense populist backlashes against the highly educated folks who have migrated to the cities and accrued significant economic, cultural and political power… It is a bitter cultural and political cold war.

“In the fervor of this enmity, millions of people have come to detest those who populate the epistemic regime, who are so distant, who appear to have it so easy, who have such different values, who can be so condescending.  Millions not only distrust everything the ‘fake news’ people say, but also the so-called rules they use to say them.

“People in this precarious state are going to demand stories that will both explain their distrust back to them and also enclose them within a safe community of believers.  The evangelists of distrust, from Donald Trump to Alex Jones to the followers of QAnon, rose up to give them those stories and provide that community. Paradoxically, conspiracy theorists hae become the most effective bonding mechanisms of the 21st century.

“For those awash in anxiety and alienation, who feel that everything is spinning out of control, conspiracy theories are extremely effective emotional tools.  For those in low status groups, they provide a sense of superiority: I possess important information most people do not have.  For those who feel powerless, they provide agency: I have the power to reject ‘experts’ and expose hidden cabals. As Cass Sunstein of Harvard Law School points out, they provide liberation: If I imagine my foes are completely malevolent, then I can use any tactic I want.

“Under Trump, the Republican identity is defined not by a set of policy beliefs but by a paranoid mind-set.  He and his media allies simply ignore the rules of the epistemic regime and have set up a rival trolling regime. The internet is an ideal medium for untested information to get around traditional gatekeepers, but it is an accelerant of the paranoia, not its source. Distrust and precarity, caused by economic, cultural and spiritual threat, are the source.

“What to do? You can’t argue people out of paranoia. If you try to point out factual errors, you only entrench false belief. The only solution to reduce the distrust and anxiety that is the seedbed of this thinking.  That can only be done by contact, reducing the social chasm between the members of the epistemic regime and those who feel so alienated from it.  And second, it can be done by policy, by making life more secure for those without a college degree.

“Rebuilding trust is, obviously, the work of a generation.”

--Jim Mattis, Kori Schake, Jim Ellis, and Joe Felter / Foreign Affairs

“The United States today is undermining the foundations of an international order manifestly advantageous to U.S. interests, reflecting a basic ignorance of the extent to which both robust alliances and international institutions provide vital strategic depth.  In practice, ‘America first’ has meant ‘America alone.’ That has damaged the country’s ability to address problems before they reach U.S. territory and has thus compounded the danger emergent threats pose.

“Advocates of the current administration’s approach seem to believe that other countries will have no choice but to accede to the United States’ wishes and cooperate on its terms.  This is delusion.  Sovereign countries always have choices: to compromise with aggressors, take actions opposed to U.S. interests, opt out of the assistance when the United States needs it, or cooperate with one another on activities from which the United States is excluded. Assuming otherwise has the result of emboldening adversaries and encouraging tests of the strength of U.S. commitments.

“Not even the United States is strong enough to protect itself on its own. Fundamentally, it needs help to preserve its way of life.  Cooperating with like-minded nations to sustain an international order of mutual security and prosperity is a cost-effective way of securing that help.  But doing so means resisting the temptation to maximize U.S. gains at the expense of countries that share its objectives and instead utilizing the powers of influence and inspiration to enlarge the group of countries that work with the United States to a common purpose….

“In January, when President Joe Biden and his national security team begin to reevaluate U.S. foreign policy, we hope they will quickly revise the national security strategy to eliminate ‘America first’ from its contents, restoring in its place the commitment to cooperative security that has served the United States so well for decades. The best strategy for ensuring safety and prosperity is to buttress American military strength with enhanced civilian tools and a restored network of solid alliances – both necessary to achieving defense in depth. The pandemic should serve as a reminder of what grief ensues when we wait for problems to come to us.”

--Finally, just a note of thanks to Macy’s and New York City for putting on their parade.  I probably watched more of it than I have since I was a kid, while working on this column.  Parts of it were touching and poignant.  God, it’s been a shitty year.  I know I’ll be putting up my Christmas tree a little earlier than usual. 

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

We pray for our healthcare workers.

God bless America.

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Gold $1790…down from $1951 in three weeks
Oil $45.52

Returns for the week 11/23-11/27

Dow Jones  +2.2%  [29910]
S&P 500  +2.3%  [3638]*
S&P MidCap  +2.7%
Russell 2000  +3.9%
Nasdaq  +3.0%  [12205]*

*New record highs…Dow Jones had hit one of its own on Tuesday, 30045.

Returns for the period 1/1/20-11/27/20

Dow Jones  +4.8%
S&P 500  +12.6%
S&P MidCap  +6.9%
Russell 2000  +11.2%
Nasdaq  +36.0%

Bulls 59.6
Bears 18.2…no update, last week’s #s

Hang in there.  Mask up…wash your hands.

Brian Trumbore

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