Week in Review

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Week in Review

12/12/2020

For the week 12/7-12/11

[Posted 10:00 PM ET, Friday]

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Edition 1,130

Early last March, I had blood work for my annual physical, the physical then a week later, but in between the state shut down over the coronavirus and Dr. Craig and I just had a phone call to discuss the lab work, all was good, and there was no real reason to see him when things began to open up again.

But I thought I’d schedule an appointment by year end, curious to see how my insurance plan would handle things before I reupped with them for 2021, and after Dr. Craig (first name) examined me, as he always does, he asked me my opinion on things.

The doctor has known me for years, the Trumbore men all go to him, he reads my work, we always talk about Donald Trump, and so Monday he goes, “You’re a lifelong Republican. What are you gonna do?”

“I want William McRaven to be at the front of a new Republican Party,” I said, just as I told you all weeks ago.

I get a kick out of those who forget who I am, the guy that’s been writing this column for 21 years, the guy who covered every day of both the George W. Bush and Barack Obama administrations and when they were over, labeled them “two of the five worst presidents in American history.”

I’m the guy who called Obama’s failure to work with Turkish President Erdogan on a no-fly zone in Syria, 2012, the single biggest foreign policy mistake of the century and I stand by that.

I was a fan of Richard Nixon and believe his “In the Arena” is the single best book about politics ever written.

I went to fundraisers in Alpine, New Jersey for Pat Buchanan.

I’ve read Barry Goldwater’s “The Conscience of a Conservative” multiple times.

Where I have changed a lot over the years is that I have become a moderate on social issues, and I’m a big believer in climate change.

So I’ve gotten a kick out of those who don’t understand why I didn’t just fall in line when Donald Trump won in 2016.  You kidding me? 

A man who has spouted nothing but lies for four years?  A man who has been hellbent on overturning a free and fair election?  A man who has done nothing but parrot the Kremlin line, a man trying to undermine democracy even as all 50 states certified their election results?

I told you weeks and months before the election exactly what was going to happen, with the necessity of a flood of mail-in balloting due to a pandemic, and how all the poll data told you how it would break down Election Night and in the days after.

Late this afternoon, President Trump tweeted:

“If the Supreme Court shows great Wisdom and Courage, the American People will win perhaps the most important case in history, and our Electoral Process will be respected again!”

Remind me how disenfranchising the voters in Georgia, Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin strengthens the electoral process.

I watched last Saturday night as President Trump appeared at his first postelection rally in Valdosta, Georgia, complete with debunked conspiracy theories and audacious falsehoods, Trump claiming victory at an event that was supposed to be about the Georgia Senate run-offs Jan. 5, with Republican Senators David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler on hand, and instead it was of course all about him.

At one point the president said: “If I lost, I’d be a very gracious loser…but you can’t ever accept when they steal and rob.”

And: “When (Biden) made a Thanksgiving Day speech on the internet, they say he had less than a thousand people. …how do you have 80 million votes if you have less than a thousand people?”  Millions of people watched Biden’s Thanksgiving remarks.

“We’re winning the election.”  “We won Georgia, just so you understand.” “We will be going to the Supreme Court.”  “Democrats can only win if they cheat.”  “We have so much evidence we don’t know what to do with it.”

Chris Krebs, the former cybersecurity director who said the election was the most secure in American history, tweeted: “I’d much rather be watching football right now.  Yet everyone should watch the rally to see an active, coordinated #disinfo campaign to undermine confidence in our elections. This is not stumping for candidates.  This is corrosive to democracy.”

Tuesday, in remarks at a White House event, President Trump railed about America being a “Third World country…the election was rigged…I think the case has been made.”

I was reminded of Goldwater’s famous lines from 1964, in accepting the Republican nomination for president at the convention:

“I would remind you that extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice. And let me remind you also that moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue.”

But Goldwater continued in his convention speech: 

“The beauty of the very system we Republicans are pledged to restore and revitalize, the beauty of this Federal system of ours is in its reconciliation of diversity with unity.  We must not see malice in honest differences of opinion, and no matter how great, so long as they are not inconsistent with the pledges we have given to each other in and through our Constitution.  Our Republican cause is not to level out the world or make its people conform in computer regimented sameness.  Our Republican cause is to free our people and light the way for liberty throughout the world.

“Ours is a very human cause for very humane goals.

“This Party, its good people, and its unquestionable devotion to freedom, will not fulfill the purposes of this campaign which we launch here now until our cause has won the day, inspired the world, and shown the way to a tomorrow worthy of all our yesteryears.”

Republicans, and good Democrats, like John F. Kennedy, inspired the world, spoke of human rights, supported Soviet dissidents, went to the Berlin Wall, as both JFK and Ronald Reagan did, and made it clear whose side the United States was on.

We were indeed, to so much of the world, that shining city on a hill…a beacon of hope for mankind….the Statue of Liberty in New York Harbor.

Instead, these last few weeks, Donald Trump has been leading our nation into a ditch…pitting neighbor vs. neighbor, amidst a freakin’ pandemic, for crying out loud, telling us on the campaign trail that we “were rounding the corner.”

The president also said that on November 4th, the news media would be ignoring Covid.

So to channel Goldwater, let me remind you that on Nov. 3rd, the United States had suffered 238,000 deaths from the coronavirus, and tonight we sit at over 302,000. [worldometers.info]

And let me remind you that Trump’s atrocious lack of leadership, and his failure to get the American people, especially his followers, to just wear a mask when indoors with others, would have saved countless lives and kept far more small businesses afloat than has proved to be the case today.

Instead….

Ronald Brownstein / The Atlantic

“Republicans’ tolerance, if not active support, for President Donald Trump’s ongoing bid to overturn the 2020 election has crystallized a stark question: Does the GOP still qualify as a small-d democratic party – or is it morphing into something very different?

“Even with the Supreme Court still deciding whether to consider a last-ditch legal effort to invalidate the results from the key swing states, there appears little chance that Trump will succeed in subverting Joe Biden’s victory.  But Trump’s failure on that front has obscured his success at enlisting a growing swath of his party to join his cause – a dynamic that is already promoting new Republican efforts to make it more difficult to vote and raising concerns about the party’s commitment to the basic tenets of Western democratic rules and conventions, including the peaceful transfer of power.

“ ‘Where their hearts are is hard to know, but their behavior is not small-d democratic,’ Susan Stokes, a political-science professor and the director of the Chicago Center on Democracy at the University of Chicago, told me.

“Stokes, like other experts, says the Republican Party is on a continuum toward the kind of ‘democratic erosion’ visible in other countries, including Turkey under Recep Erdogan, Hungary under Viktor Orban, or, in the most extreme example, Russia under Vladimir Putin.  In those nations, a party that wins office through a democratic election then seeks to use state power to tilt or completely undermine future elections.

“ ‘With one of our political parties trying to overturn the results of a free and fair election, we are way farther down that road now than we were before the election, or a year ago,’ she told me.  Republicans ‘have been going down that road all through Trump’s term, but this is the parting gift, which is more extreme than what has happened before.’”

But a funny thing has happened on the way to ruin and the rise of Il Duce II.  America’s institutions of democracy have fought back, beginning with the election machinery in all 50 states, all of which certified their votes ahead of Monday’s Electoral College get together.

And then the Supreme Court tonight rejected an absurd Texas lawsuit, backed by President Trump, 18 other states, and 126 GOP members of Congress, which has ended the president’s desperate attempt to get legal issues rejected by state and federal judges before the nation’s highest court and the three justices he has appointed.

Trump had called the lawsuit filed by Texas against Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin “the big one” that would end with the Supreme Court undoing Biden’s substantial Electoral College majority and allowing Trump to serve another four years in the White House.

But in a brief order, the court said Texas does not have the legal right to sue those states because it “has not demonstrated a judicially cognizable interest in the manner in which another State conducts its elections.”

Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas, who have said previously the court does not have the authority to turn away lawsuits between states, said they would have heard Texas’ complaint.  But they would not have done as Texas wanted pending resolution of the lawsuit, and set aside those four states’ 62 electoral votes for Biden.

Yes, the institutions of democracy held firm.  Thus far…but it is not yet Jan. 20, and confidence in our government, and our elections, has been severely eroded.  Donald Trump will continue to do all he can to further divide us and destroy the nation.

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At least in terms of Congress and inaction, the Senate did unanimously approve a one-week extension of federal funding to avoid a government shutdown and to provide more time for separate negotiations on Covid-19 relief and an overarching spending bill, the goal with the latter to work something out that would go through next September, while the nation is waiting for word from Democratic and Republican congressional leaders on whether they can strike a deal next week on a stimulus package…the two sides battling over state and local aid, as well as a GOP-backed liability shield insulating firms from coronavirus-related lawsuits, an issue that has permeated relief talks for eight months.

Covid

Dr. Michael Osterholm, a member of the Biden Covid-19 advisory board who has been dead-on since Day One in the spring on what would transpire in America, said, “No Christmas parties.  There is not a safe Christmas party in this country right now.”  Ah, but inside the White House, with its spectacular display, it has been one party after another.  As the late Howard Cosell might have opined, ‘A veritable plethora of infections…droplets populating the air like snowflakes as a storm transitions from moderate to heavy…Covid deniers, lining up to get sick…and then spreading the disease back home and in their communities with a nonchalance that belies credulity…’

But then Thursday, a government advisory panel voted 17-4, with one abstention, to endorse Pfizer’s coronavirus vaccine, clearing the way for final Food and Drug Administration*, which just came as I’m about to post, and CDC approval this weekend.  The states will begin vaccinating health care workers and nursing home residents probably Monday, but we still have a long way to go.

--Karl Rove / Wall Street Journal

“Credit for the unprecedented speed in developing these vaccines goes to scientists and researchers who worked endless hours and showed incredible skill.  Credit also goes to President Trump’s Operation Warp Speed, which gave critical resources and expeditious approvals to pharmaceutical companies.

“The president and his advisers understood that to get vaccines as quickly as possible, they had to fund multiple companies, prepaying for massive numbers of doses even before they were tested and approved.  Starting March 30, the Department of Health and Human Services began doling out $11 billion to eight companies.

“What Washington got for our money was low prices for hundreds of millions of doses. The companies got funds essential to ramping up manufacturing of their vaccines or antibody treatments. Throwing money at different solutions without knowing which would work was a gamble, but a smart one that has paid off. Inevitably, some of the money was spent on vaccines that didn’t pan out, but it was worth it. The daily cost of not having a vaccine was greater.

“This is also a reminder that presidents leave their successors tools to confront big challenges.  In the aftermath of 9/11, President George W. Bush became concerned the nation was unprepared for a biological attack.  In response, he signed three bills, one in June 2002, a second in July 2004 and a third in December 2006, that gave Washington increased flexibility and authority to deal with pandemics, man-made or natural.

“The Bush administration also dealt with a previously unknown virus from China called SARS, and health professional were concerned about H5N1, the avian flu. While difficult to transmit from human to human, H5N1 had an alarming fatality rate of above 50%.  Mr. Bush was particularly concerned that the method available for manufacturing vaccines to deal with such a crisis was too slow and cumbersome. Vaccines were cultured in eggs for six months, one dose per egg, with an unacceptable failure rate. So in November 2005 Mr. Bush asked Congress for $2.8 billion for research to speed up vaccine development and strengthen early detection of viral outbreaks world-wide….

“Some promising avenues of research didn’t work out.  Others, including improvements in egg-based vaccine production, proved only to be stop-gaps, rendered obsolete by cell- and rDNA-based advances. The last was perfected during President Obama’s administration and is at the heart of the Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech vaccines.

“Funding from HHS, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the National Institutes of Health and even the Pentagon made these breakthroughs possible in academic labs, startups and established drug companies. So here we find ourselves with several vaccines.

“Mr. Trump mishandled Covid-19, but what he got very right was the importance of unparalleled speed in vaccine development. By building on his predecessors’ actions, Mr. Trump will make it possible for Joe Biden to preside over this global pandemic’s end.  When that comes, there will be time to rejoice.  But until then, with many more bleak moments coming, wear masks and maintain social distance.”

Covid-19 death tolls, as of tonight….

World…1,600,389
USA…302,750
Brazil…180,453
India…142,662
Mexico…113,019
UK…63,506
Italy…63,387
France…57,567
Iran…51,727
Spain…47,624
Russia…45,893
Argentina…40,606
Colombia…38,669
Peru…36,544
South Africa…22,952
Poland…22,174
Germany…21,820

Source: worldometers.info

Nations as disperse as Germany, Turkey, Canada and Indonesia have been spiking.  Regarding the last one, Indonesia has a horrible healthcare system.  I’ve been shocked they’ve been holding up as well as they have, but there are major cracks in the dyke.

U.S. daily death tolls…Sun. 1,076; Mon. 1,508; Tues. 2,913; Wed. 3,243; Thurs. 2,974; Fri. 3,019.

Covid Bytes

--According to a Quinnipiac University national poll, 61 percent say they are willing to get vaccinated if a Covid-19 vaccine is approved.  33 percent say they don’t think they would be willing to.

65 percent say they are either very or somewhat confident in the federal government’s ability to oversee the safety of the Covid vaccines, while 33 percent say they are not so confident or not confident at all.

Nearly three-quarters, 74 percent, say they either have been infected themselves or personally know someone who’s been infected by the coronavirus, up 45 points from April when the question was first asked.

48 percent say they think the federal government’s travel guidelines addressing the pandemic are about right, 31 percent say they don’t go far enough, and 14 percent say they go too far.

When asked how often they wear a mask in public where six feet of social distancing can’t always be maintained, 74 percent say all the time, 13 percent say most of the time, 5 percent say sometimes, 3 percent say hardly ever, and another 3 percent say never.

However, when asked about people in their community wearing masks, the numbers are very different.  Only 21 percent say people in their community wear a mask all the time when they are in public when six feet of social distancing can’t always be maintained, 52 percent say most of the time, 19 percent say sometimes, 7 percent say hardly ever, and 1 percent say never.

A survey from the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research shows only half of Americans are ready to roll up their sleeves when their turn comes to get a vaccine.  A quarter of U.S. adults aren’t sure if they want to get vaccinated, while another quarter say they won’t.

--Moncef Slaoui, the chief adviser for U.S. efforts on coronavirus vaccines, said on Wednesday that Americans with known severe allergic reactions may not be candidates for Pfizer’s vaccine, after the United Kingdom said two people with severe allergies experienced serious reactions to the Pfizer vaccine on the first day of widespread vaccinations in the country.

--Johnson & Johnson said on Wednesday it has cut enrollment for its pivotal Covid-19 vaccine trial to 40,000 volunteers from its original plan for 60,000, as higher rates of Covid-19 infections amid a worsening pandemic should generate the data it needs with fewer study subjects.  The move could speed up the time frame for U.S. regulatory clearance, because they will need two months of follow-up safety data from 10,000 fewer people in order to meet U.S. Food and Drug Administration guidelines.

J&J said it continues to expect an interim data readout in late January and could apply for U.S. emergency use authorization in February.

--AstraZeneca and Oxford University have more work to do to confirm whether their Covid-19 vaccine can be 90% effective peer-reviewed data published in The Lancet showed on Tuesday, potentially slowing its eventual rollout in the fight against the pandemic.  Detailed results from the AstraZeneca/Oxford trials have been eagerly awaited after some scientists criticized a lack of information in their initial announcement last month.

However, the Lancet study gave few extra clues about why efficacy was 62% for trial participants given two full doses, but 90% for a smaller sub-group given a half, then a full dose.

--South Korea reported 688 and then 950 new coronavirus cases on Thursday and Friday as it “battles a third wave of infection that is threatening to overwhelm its medical system.”  To put this in perspective, the population of South Korea is about 51 million vs. the United States’ 331 million.  And the U.S. has been running around 200,000 cases a day.  8 died in South Korea today…the United States is averaging over 2,900 per the last four days of this week.

--South Africa on Sunday urged school students who attended a series of end-of-year “Rage” parties to enter 10 days of quarantine after identifying four such parties as Covid-19 “superspreader events.”  The country is experiencing a resurgence of new cases, though the crackdowns are more of a regional nature rather than national.

--The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has heard all the arguments about personal freedom, and the agency apparently doesn’t want to hear them any more.

“JUST WEAR THE MASK,” the CDC tweeted in all caps late Saturday.  “Cover your mouth AND nose.  Stay 6 feet from others.  Wash your hands.  Stay home if you can.”

Trump World

--The Supreme Court on Tuesday denied a last-minute attempt by President Trump’s allies to overturn the election results in Pennsylvania, a blow to the president’s continuing efforts to reverse his loss to Joe Biden.

The court’s brief order denying a requested injunction provided no reasoning, nor did it note any dissenting votes.  It was the first request to delay or overturn the results of last month’s election to reach the court, and it appears that Justice Amy Coney Barrett took part in the case.

Tuesday afternoon, just before the court’s order was released, Trump appealed for help in his boast that he had won reelection.

“Now, let’s see whether or not somebody has the courage, whether it’s a legislator or legislatures, or whether it’s a justice of the Supreme Court, or a number of justices on the Supreme Court – let’s see if they have the courage to do what everybody in this country knows is right,” Trump said.

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton then filed his complaint that asked the court to overturn Biden’s wins in the swing states of Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin and Georgia.

And tonight we learned Paxton et al can go pound sand. 

--The Senate on Friday threw its weight behind the annual National Defense Authorization Act, or NDAA, a $740 billion bill setting policy for the Defense Department, passing the bill with a margin large enough to overcome President Trump’s promised veto.  The Republican-controlled Senate backed the bill by 84 to 13, more than the two-thirds majority needed to override a veto.  The Democratic-led House backed the NDAA by 335 to 78 earlier in the week.

But the White House is saying Trump may still veto it because of a provision to remove the names of Confederate generals from military bases.  He also objects because it does not repeal Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which protects tech companies like Google, Twitter and Facebook from liability for what appears on their platforms, although that is not related to the military.

--Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp issued a stern reminder to Georgia’s state legislators about the limits of their powers Monday, specifically in regards to a push by six members of the Georgia General Assembly to convene a special session to select a separate slate of presidential electors.

Speaking to lawmakers at a legislative session primer held every two years, Kemp reiterated a statement issued late Sunday regarding election challenges.

“You all will be taking an oath to uphold the laws and constitution of our state, and now more than ever, it is important to remember that thousands of brave men and women have paid the ultimate sacrifice for those laws, that constitution and all that they protect,” Kemp said.

“I’m confident that each of you will live up to the words and greater calling regardless of political consequences. That’s what I’ve been doing.”

--I’ve written of the potential dangers in a MAGA March slated for Washington, D.C., tomorrow and a clash with counterprotesters.  The two sides will be there, though at least initially in different parts of the city. We’ll see what happens come nightfall and what the president’s reaction to any violence would be.

Hopefully I (and the Washington Post’s David Ignatius) are making a mountain out of a molehill. 

--Axios reports that President Trump is considering a made-for-TV grand finale: a White House departure on Marine One and final Air Force One flight to Florida for a political rally opposite Joe Biden’s inauguration, creating a split-screen effect.  And perhaps Trump immediately announces he is running for re-election in 2024.

--Trump tweets:

“Now it turns out that the Democrats want (to) Pack the Court with 26 Justices. This would be terrible, and must be stopped. Even Justice RBG was strongly opposed!”

“Now that the Biden Administration will be a scandal plagued mess for years to come, it is much easier for the Supreme Court of the United States to follow the Constitution and do what everybody knows has to be done.  They must show great Courage & Wisdom.  Save the USA!!!”

“If the two senators from Georgia should lose, which would be a horrible thing for our Country, I am the only thing that stands between ‘Packing the Court’ (last number heard, 25), and preserving it.  I will not, under any circumstances, Pack the Court!”

[Ed. you won’t be president, sir, and I guess someone told you ‘26’ doesn’t make sense.]

“Now it turns out that my phone call to the President of Ukraine, which many, including me, have called ‘perfect,’ was even better than that. I predicted Biden corruption, said to call the A.G., who perhaps knew of the corruption during the impeachment hoax?”

“I just want to stop the world from killing itself!”

“The Swine Flu (H1N1), and the attempt for a vaccine by the Obama Administration, with Joe Biden in charge, was a complete and total disaster.  Now they want to come in and take over one of the ‘greatest and fastest medical miracles in modern day history.’ I don’t think so!”

“While my pushing the money drenched but heavily bureaucratic @US_FDA saved five years in the approval of NUMEROUS great new vaccines, it is still a big, old, slow turtle. Get the dam (sic) vaccines out NOW, Dr. Hahn @SteveFDA.  Stop playing games and start saving lives!!!”

[Ed. White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows today told Stephen Hahn to submit his resignation if the agency does not clear the Pfizer vaccine by day’s end, according to reports.]

“No war with North Korea, tamed fighting in Idlib Province and many other places.  NO WARS STARTED BY U.S., Troop removals all over, and so much more. Thank you Larry! [Ed. Larry Elder]”

“If somebody cheated in the Election, which the Democrats did, why wouldn’t the Election be immediately overturned? How can a Country be run like this?”

“No candidate has ever won both Florida and Ohio and lost. I won them both, by a lot! #SupremeCourt”

[Ed. Richard Nixon did in 1960.]

“We will soon be learning about the word ‘courage,’ and saving our Country. I received hundreds of thousands of legal votes more, in all of the Swing States, then did my opponent. ALL Data taken after the vote says that it was impossible for me to lose, unless FIXED!”

“STOCK MARKETS AT NEW ALL TIME HIGHS!!!”

[Ed. ah, again, Mr. President…by your own metrics, this is Biden’s market now.]

“RIGGED ELECTION!”

“There is massive evidence of widespread fraud in the four states (plus) mentioned in the Texas suit.  Just look at all of the tapes and affidavits!”

“We will be INTERVENING in the Texas (plus many other states) case.  This is the big one.  Our Country needs a victory!”

“ ‘People are upset, and they have a right to be.  Georgia not only supported Trump in 2016, but now.  This is the only State in the Deep South that went for Biden?  Have they lost their minds?  This is going to escalate dramatically. This is a very dangerous moment in our history….

“ ….The fact that our Country is being stolen. A coup is taking place in front of our eyes, and the public can’t take this anymore.’  A Trump fan at Georgia Rally on @OANN Bad!”

“ ‘Donald Trump won by a landslide, and they stole it from him!’ @seanhannity”

“RINOS #BrianKempGa, @GeoffDuncanGA, & Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, will be solely responsible for the potential loss of our two GREAT Senators from Georgia, @sendavidperdue & @#Kloeffler.  Won’t call a Special Session or check for Signature Verification!  People are ANGRY!”

“@RudyGiuliani, by far the greatest mayor in the history of NYC, and who has been working tirelessly exposing the most corrupt election (by far!) in the history of the USA, has tested positive for the China virus.  Get better soon, Rudy, we will carry on!!!”

The Biden Administration

--David Ignatius / Washington Post

“Former four stars who have served with retired Army Gen. Lloyd J. Austin III often use similar words to describe him: ‘quiet,’ ‘low-key,’ ‘introverted.’  Those qualities have worked for Austin as a senior military commander. They may not serve him well if he becomes secretary of defense.

“The news that President-elect Joe Biden plans to name Austin as his Pentagon chief surprised even some of his biggest supporters within the military. They describe Austin as a strong battlefield commander, but as someone who has endeavored to stay out of the spotlight. Such reticence won’t be an option for a defense secretary.

“Austin would be a trailblazer as the nation’s first Black defense secretary, and his reserved military bearing would be reassuring to many, at home and abroad.  Still, running the Pentagon is one of the world’s hardest management jobs; it requires communications skills hard to learn on the fly.

“The appointment fits the collegiality typical of the Biden governing style.  Austin is a team player, without the flair or elbows-out assertiveness of some past Pentagon chiefs.  He worked well with Biden’s inner circle when they served together under President Barack Obama….

“But Austin will face two potential hurdles, in addition to the challenge of working with the media. First, many members of Congress want to restore strong civilian control at a Pentagon rocked by the Trump presidency.  As a former commander, Austin would need a special waiver to serve, and though Congress will probably grant it, some will be uneasy.  Second, he lacks experience in the Pentagon’s paramount challenge of reinventing weapons and strategy to counter a rising, high-tech China….

“After graduating from West Point in 1975, Austin began a steady rise as an infantry officer – ‘not a visionary,’ says a former colleague, but a solid, steady officer.  He displayed his tactical skill and bravery in the 2003 invasion of Iraq as an assistant commander in the 3rd Infantry Division in its race to Baghdad.  He was aggressive and ‘imperturbable’ under fire, a colleague recalls.

“Austin rose to become the three-star deputy commander in Baghdad under Gen. David Petraeus during the later years of the troop surge, 2008 and 2009.  He impressed colleagues by quickly moving to Basra and creating a tactical command post to direct operations alongside Iraqi troops fighting Iranian-backed militias.  ‘It was typical Lloyd – very calm, ‘here’s what I want to do,’ and then doing it,’ recalls a fellow commander.

“He wasn’t a celebrity commander, like Petraeus or (Mike) Mullen, with a big public persona. But on the flip side, he wasn’t aggressive in pushing a strategic vision to counter new threats.

“Austin headed the U.S. Central Command during the Islamic State’s explosive rise, but he didn’t press to intervene early against the terrorist group, former colleagues say.  At Centcom, he had succeeded Gen. Jim Mattis, seen by the Obama team as an overly aggressive commander.  Austin, by contrast, worked closely with the Obama White House, sometimes to the chagrin of his Pentagon superiors….

“Here’s what this choice suggests about Biden and the military: Biden was a skeptic of the United States’ deepening involvement in the Middle East during the Obama years.  This reticence may explain the Austin nomination. Sometimes it takes a retired general to say no to other generals, and that may be just what Biden wants.”

Gen. Austin has an outstanding background, a terrific role model, and he would command the respect of the troops, but I do not think this is an appropriate pick.  I wanted Michele Flournoy.

--Meanwhile, President-elect Biden nominated California Attorney General Xavier Becerra as secretary of health and human services, the 62-year-old also a former congressman who will play a critical role in battling the pandemic.  The pick came as Biden faced more lobbying to add diversity to his Cabinet.  In Congress, Becerra played a key role in passing the Affordable Care Act and in his current role as California AG, has been leading a coalition of 20 states defending the program better known as Obamacare, including before the Supreme Court last month.

[A new Gallup poll shows 55% of Americans support the ACA, after averaging 51% from 2017 through 2019.  The percentage never reached 50% when Obama was in office.]

Dr. Anthony Fauci is staying on as Biden’s chief medical adviser, while Vivek Murthy will reprise his role as surgeon general, a position he held in the Obama administration.

And a bunch of other familiar faces from the Obama administration are being brought into the cabinet, including Tom Vilsack at Agriculture, Dennis McDonough at the Veterans Administration, and Susan Rice as head of the Domestic Policy Council.  Rice’s position is strategic in that it doesn’t require Senate approval.

--Joe Biden’s son, Hunter, revealed Wednesday that he’s facing a federal investigation in Delaware over matters relating to his “tax affairs.”

Hunter Biden, long a target of personal attacks from associates of President Trump, said in a statement issued by his father’s transition team that he learned of the existence of the probe on Tuesday. The investigation is being led by the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Delaware, Hunter added.

“They are investigating my tax affairs,” he said. “I take this matter very seriously, but I am confident that a professional and objective review of these matters will demonstrate that I handled my affairs legally and appropriately, including with the benefit of professional tax advisors.”

The U.S. Attorney’s Office in Delaware did not immediately comment, but the Justice Department’s investigation scrutinizing Hunter Biden’s taxes has been examining some of his Chinese business dealings, among other financial transactions, a person familiar with the matter told the Associated Press on Wednesday.

The revelation puts a renewed spotlight on the questions about his financial dealings that dogged his father’s campaign; Hunter the focus of Republican complaints for his business dealings with Ukraine and China.  But Hunter hasn’t been charged, and two Republican-led congressional committees in September found no wrongdoing by Joe Biden.

President Trump and his supporters accused the former vice president of benefitting from his son’s business, though Joe Biden has denied any illegal or unethical dealings with Hunter.

President-elect Biden’s attorney general pick could have oversight of the investigation into the new president’s son if it is still ongoing when Biden is sworn in on Jan. 20.

A story on Oct. 14 in the New York Post accused Biden’s son of corruption based on his work as an adviser to the Ukrainian energy company Burisma.

But the story – based on material from a laptop recovered from a Delaware repair shop that allegedly revealed a trove of evidence against Hunter – has come under fire for relying on questionable sources and documents.

The House impeached Trump and the Senate acquitted him of charges of abuse of power and obstruction of Congress after an investigation based in part of a 2019 call Trump made to the president of Ukraine, urging him to investigate the Bidens.

Others familiar with the investigation told the AP the tax investigation has nothing to do with the laptop.

Wall Street and the Economy

It was a very light week for economic data, with November inflation figures once again tame.  Producer prices rose 0.1%, ditto ex-food and energy, with the headline number 0.8% year-over-year, 1.4% yoy on core.  Consumer prices for November rose 0.2%, ditto ex-food and energy; 1.2% and 1.6%, respectively, vs. a year ago.

The Atlanta Fed’s GDPNow barometer for the fourth quarter is at 11.2%.

But the weekly jobless claims figure surged unexpectedly by 137,000 to 853,000 in the seven days through Dec. 5, well ahead of the 725,000 level expected.  Claims the previous week were revised up slightly to 716,000 from the initially reported 712,000 level.

And the TSA checkpoint travel numbers are outright miserable.  The last eight days have seen 32, 28, 26, 32, 37, 36, 33 and 33 percent of the corresponding figure from 2019.  So much for the little bump over Thanksgiving.

Separately, the Treasury Department reported on the government’s deficit for the first two months of the fiscal year, 25.1% higher than the same period a year ago as spending to deal with the pandemic soared while tax revenues fell.

The deficit totaled $429.3 billion, up from $343.3 billion in last year’s October-November period.

Outlays jumped 8.9% to $886.6 billion, while tax revenues fell 2.9% to $457.3bn.

Spending for the first two months of the budget year, which begins Oct. 1, also set a record, while the deficit over the same period was as well.

The government’s deficit for the budget year that ended Sept. 30 was a record-shattering $3.1 trillion, fueled by the trillion-dollar-plus spending measures Congress passed in the spring to combat the economic downturn triggered by the pandemic.

The relief package being debated in Congress would add to this year’s red ink.  Without taking into account further relief measures, the Congressional Budget Office has forecast that this year’s deficit will total $1.8 trillion and will remain above $1 trillion each year through 2030.

Before last year’s $3.1 trillion deficit, the record was a $1.4 trillion shortfall in 2009, when the government was fighting to lift the country out of a deep recession caused by the 2008 financial crisis.

Europe and Asia

There was zero economic news for the eurozone of note with all eyes focused on Brexit and the trade negotiations.

Separately, European Central Bank President Christine Lagarde brokered a difficult compromise to secure backing for a new pandemic-fighting package of measures, but the battle to convince sceptics among her colleagues and investors has only just begun.

The ECB unveiled plans to buy an additional half trillion euros worth of bonds and give banks even larger subsidies for keeping credit flowing, in a bid to support the eurozone economy through the expected end of the coronavirus outbreak.

The package brings the ECB closer than ever to outright targeting of specific levels in bond yields and spreads, without saying as much openly.

But within the ECB’s Governing Council there were major disagreements on the size of the bond purchases and the terms of the subsidized loans to banks.  Some governors wanted smaller debt purchase as bond yields are already at record lows, spreads are tight and government paper is hard to find in some smaller countries.

With talk of further bond buying, though, regardless of the size, euro bond yields plunged anew, with the yield on the German 10-year now at -0.64%, France’s 10-year -0.39%, Italy 0.56%, Spain 0.00%, Portugal -0.04%...just unreal.

The ECB also said it expects GDP to expand by 3.9% next year, slower than its September forecast of 5%. But in 2022, growth is seen at 4.2%, above a previous projection of 3.2%.

On to the main topic….

Brexit:  Just three weeks to go and Britain is likely to leave the European Union without a trade deal, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson and European Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen said today, Friday.  Britain quit the EU in January but has remained an informal member during a year-long transition period which ends Dec. 31.

Both sides say they want to agree to arrangements to cover nearly $1 trillion in annual trade, but talks are at an impasses.

EC chief von der Leyen told EU leaders that a no-deal was more likely than a deal, an official said. 

“It’s looking very, very likely we’ll have to go for a solution that I think will be wonderful for the UK, we’ll be able to do exactly what we want from January 1, it will obviously be different from what we set out to achieve,” Johnson told reporters.  “If there’s a big offer, a big change in what they’re saying then I must say that I’m yet to see it.”

Johnson and von der Leyen have given negotiators until Sunday evening to break the impasse at talks that are deadlocked over fishing rights and EU demands for Britain to face consequences if in the future it diverges from the bloc’s rules.

In the case of a “no deal” on trade, Britain would lose zero-tariff and zero-quota access to the European single market of 450 million consumers overnight.

As European leaders warn of the failure of talks, investors have started to price in the risk of a chaotic finale to the five-year Brexit saga.

An EU official quoted von der Leyen as saying, “The probability of a no deal is higher than of a deal.”

Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte said there were still fundamental issues unresolved in trade talks.  “Time is running out and we need to prepare for a hard Brexit,” he said.

EU leaders apparently rejected a proposal from Johnson for a Brexit call with German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Emmanuel Macron on Monday.

A Brexit without a trade deal will damage the economies of Europe, send shockwaves through financial markets, snarl borders and sow chaos through the delicate supply chains which stretch across Europe and beyond.

Emmanuel Macron said he still hoped a deal could be reached, but is under pressure from French fishermen not to give ground over their fishing rights.

Contingency plans for items such as plane and car travel are in place, including a measure to allow planes to keep flying for six months between the two jurisdictions “provided the UK ensures the same,” and to ensure safety certificates for products on planes can continue to be used to avoid the grounding of aircraft.

A regulation would also allow for road freight and passenger transport to continue between the two jurisdictions, ensuring that trucks can still go through the Channel tunnel.  But the lines will be unreal.

Will the Sunday deadline slip a little?

Turning to Asia…China’s exports surged to record levels in November, bringing the biggest monthly export haul in the country’s history, data released by its customs agency on Monday showed.

Exports grew by 21.1 percent last month from a year earlier, from 11.4 percent in October and well above analysts’ forecasts.

This was the highest growth rate since Feb. 2018, when exports grew by 44.5 percent.  November’s shipments had a total value of $268 billion, the highest on record.  It was the sixth consecutive month of export growth, with China’s factories continuing to capitalize on coronavirus lockdowns in the West.

Imports grew by 4.5 percent in November vs. a year ago, the third consecutive month of import growth.

With other parts of the world locked down, demand for medical gear and lockdown goods made in China was strong, with medical equipment exports soaring 38 percent, and electronics goods surging nearly 25 percent.

China’s exports to the United States soared 46 percent to $51.9 billion, while imports of U.S. goods were up 31.5 percent in the month, sending the U.S. trade deficit to $37.6bn, up 52 percent year on year.  This was 74.8 percent higher than in January 2017, when President Trump took office, and a higher deficit than at any point of his presidency to date, which is kind of funny, seeing as this was a central tenet of his trade policy…reduce the deficit with China.  Another promise not kept.

China’s consumer prices for November dropped for the first time in over a decade, though this is not considered a sign of faltering demand.

China’s CPI was down 0.5% from a year earlier, the National Bureau of Statistics said, after a 0.5% rise in October.  Volatile food prices were down 2.0% from a year earlier, weighing heavily on the headline number.

The big cause was pork – the main source of protein in the Chinese diet, which extended its decline, down 12.5% in November after October’s 2.8% drop.  Prices have been retreating as the supply recovers from the ravages of African swine fever, with increasing imports – not just of pork but of meats such as beef and lamb – making up for the domestic shortfall.

Producer, or factory-gate prices, were down 1.5% in November from a year earlier. Robust external demand and domestic infrastructure investment are expected to buoy demand for industrial goods and lift the PPI in the months ahead, economists said.

Japan’s GDP for the third quarter was revised up to an annualized 22.9% rate, after the second quarter came in at -29.2% ann.  Q3 over Q2 was up 5.3%, after Q2 over Q1 fell 8.3% amid the coronavirus lockdowns.

October household spending rose 1.9% year-on-year.

Street Bytes

--Stocks fell on the week, but not before the S&P 500 and Nasdaq hit new highs on Tuesday.  Overall, rising Covid infections, a surprisingly poor jobless claims figure, and lack of a coronavirus relief package trumped positive vaccine news and the spectacular, albeit irrational, debuts of DoorDash and Airbnb.

The Dow fell 0.6% to 30046, the S&P -1.0% and Nasdaq -0.7%.

--U.S. Treasury Yields

6-mo. 0.08%  2-yr. 0.12%  10-yr. 0.89%  30-yr. 1.63%

Treasuries rallied some without passage of a stimulus program out of Congress.

--Food-delivery company DoorDash launched its IPO Wednesday, raising $3 billion, but it easily could have grabbed more as the shares closed the first day of trading 86% over the offering price of $102.  The shares opened at $182 before closing at $189.  Absolutely absurd. 

So some said after that if DoorDash had issued its new stock at $135, it would have netted an extra $1 billion; important as the company said total operating costs for the most recent quarter were $914 million.

At the end of the first day, DoorDash was valued at $68 billion, or more than four times its worth at a private fundraising round six months ago, a market cap higher than the likes of Kraft Heinz., Lululemon Athletica Inc. and Ford Motor Co.

Investors are totally ignoring issues such as competition from rivals such as Uber Technologies, which could heat up next year as the distribution of vaccines reduces the need for at-home dining.

DoorDash co-founder and CEO Tony Xu saw his stake worth $2.7 billion based on the stock’s opening price

--Airbnb Inc. priced its shares at $68 apiece, in yet another sign of irrational exuberance in the IPO market.  The pricing set a valuation for Airbnb of about $47 billion.  And then the shares hit $146, up 115% on its first day, one of the best first-day price gains ever. 

At $146, the market capitalization for the home rental operator rose to $87 billion.  Delta Air Lines had a market value of about $30 billion, while Marriot and Hilton hotels had market caps of about $42 and $29 billion, respectively.

“Now that people are coming to Airbnb, they don’t necessarily have a destination in mind or dates, because they’re flexible.  We’re all obviously on Zoom, and so people are saying, ‘I want to go anywhere 300 miles around me, what can you show me,’ Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky told CNBC ahead of the IPO.  “Now we’re going to be getting a little bit more into the game of inspiration and matching people to the perfect home experience for them.”  Chesky’s Airbnb stake was worth around $11 billion.

--Oil inventories soared by more than 15 million barrels last week, according to the Energy Information Administration, an unexpected move marking the sharpest increase in about eight months.  The addition pushed stockpiles up to about 11% above their five-year average for this time of year. A week earlier, inventories fell by 700,000 barrels.  The market was expecting another drawdown.

This comes as OPEC and its allies last week agreed to start increasing oil output in January, suggesting the producers were preparing in part for stronger demand on the back of a rollout of vaccines.

But at the same time, the sharp rise in coronavirus cases globally has led to a string of renewed lockdowns, from strict measures in California to a delayed unwinding of lockdown restrictions in France and elsewhere across Europe, all crimping demand.

Nonetheless, at the end of the week, the bulls prevailed, vaccine talk winning out, the price of West Texas Intermediate closing at $46.56.

--Tesla CEO Elon Musk discussed the company’s planned $5 billion equity issuance at a virtual event on Tuesday.

“We were debating, should we raise money, should we not,” Musk said.  “In the end, we thought we can retire debt and increase the security of the company…probably a good thing. And for less than 1% dilution, it probably makes sense. It could have gone either way.”

As of Tuesday’s close, Tesla shares had surged 677% this year at $650, as it is on the verge of being placed in the S&P 500.  The company is on track to deliver about 500,000 electric vehicles in 2020, with estimates for 757,000 deliveries next year. A new Gigafactory is under construction near Berlin, following the opening of a factory in China.

And Thursday the $5bn equity raise was completed, the second such sale in three months.

Musk also confirmed that he has moved from California to Texas, saying he is spending more time in the state for a couple of reason. Tesla is building a factory near Austin to produce electric trucks. And Musk’s other company, SpaceX, has been developing a new Starship spacecraft in the state.

Musk had some harsh words for Tesla’s home state of California and the Bay Area.  “California is great,” he said, adding that Tesla is the last major manufacturer in the auto and aerospace industries in the state.  “My companies are the last two left,” he said.  But he compared the state to a sports team that has gotten fat and happy from successive championships.

“If a team has been winning too long they get complacent…and don’t win championships anymore,” he said.  “California has been winning for a long time and is taking it for granted.”

Musk has another strong reason for moving to Texas: taxes.  His 170 million shares of Tesla are worth $110 billion.  And he could pay billions of dollars if he were to be taxed at California rates instead of Texas, which doesn’t have a state income tax.  The top 1% of California taxpayers pay an average 12.4% in state and local taxes, according to the Institute of Taxation and Economic Policy, while the top 1% of Texas taxpayers pay just 3.1% in local sales and property taxes.

Musk also said of what he called the MBAization of corporate America, that managers are spending too much time with spreadsheets and board meetings, rather than focusing on improving their products.  [Daren Fonda / Barron’s]

Back to SpaceX and its Starship rocket, a prototype exploded while attempting to land on Wednesday after an otherwise successful test launch from the company’s rocket facility in Boca Chia, Texas.

The Starship rocket destroyed in the accident was a 16-story-tall prototype for the heavy-lift launch vehicle being developed to carry humans and 100 tons of cargo on future missions to the moon and Mars.

The self-guided rocket blew up as it touched down on a landing pad following a controlled descent.

In a tweet immediately following the landing mishap, Elon Musk said that SpaceX had obtained “all the data we needed” from the test and hailed the rocket’s ascent phase as a success, Starship reaching 8 miles into the atmosphere.

NASA awarded SpaceX $135 million to help develop Starship, alongside competing vehicles from rival ventures Blue Origin, the space company owned by Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, and Dynetcis.

--Commercial flights with Boeing 737 MAX jetliners resumed Wednesday for the first time since they were grounded worldwide nearly two years ago. Brazil’s Gol Airlines became the first in the world to return the planes to its active fleet, using a 737 MAX 8 on a flight from Sao Paulo to Porto Alegre.

--Airbus delivered 64 aircraft in November, bringing the total so far this year to 477, the planemaker announced Monday.  Deliveries included 7 wide-body A350 jets and 56 single-aisle jets including 54 of the main A320neo narrow-body family.

Airbus is heading towards a total of 550 or more deliveries in 2020 after a November tally in the mid-60s, down from 72 in October.

Boeing said last Friday it had delivered zero 787 jets in November, prompting it to lower output to five aircraft a month, the 787 one of two models competing with the Airbus A350.  The company then said on Tuesday it had received more cancellations than orders for its 737 MAX.

Boeing said it delivered seven aircraft in November, bringing its total to just 118 for the year.

--United and Delta Air Lines said they will scrap change fees for international tickets purchased in the U.S., joining rival American Airlines’ move, in a bid to revive demand for overseas travel.  United said it has scrapped change fees for international bookings through the year end and plans to further extend the policy, while also eliminating change fees on basic economy tickets purchased through March 31 next year.  Delta said it has permanently done away with change fees for international travel, and is also extending a waiver of change fees for all tickets purchased through March.

Last month, American said it will eliminate change fees for first class, business class, premium economy and main cabin tickets for all long-haul international flights.

--Lufthansa will have shed 29,000 staff by the end of the year and the German airline will cut another 10,000 jobs in its home country next year as it struggles to cope with the coronavirus, according to the Bild am Sonntag newspaper.  Lufthansa doesn’t expect air travel to recover to pre-pandemic levels before 2025.

--Ireland’s economy is largely dependent on tourism, so if you want an example of the impact of Covid-19 on air travel, Dublin Airport reported that some 23.5 million fewer people traveled through it in the first 11 months of this year compared with the same period in 2019, while November saw just 8 percent of the passenger tally registered last year.

--Car sales in China rose for a fifth straight month in November, rather important since it’s the world’s largest auto market.  The recovery from the pandemic here continues.

Passenger car sales grew 8% to 2.1 million vehicles last month from a year earlier, the China Passenger Car Association said Tuesday.  In October, sales rose by 8%.

To boost sales and cement the recovery, both Beijing and local governments have been easing restrictions and giving subsidies to car buyers.

And this is to the benefit of global auto makers, grappling with weak sales elsewhere as coronavirus infections are surging again.

Honda Motor Co. said its China sales increased 22% in November from a year earlier, while sales at Nissan Motor Co. rose 5%.

For the full-year, the industry group sees sales falling 7%, due to the coronavirus-induced slump earlier in the year.  But it is looking for 7% growth in 2021.

--Facebook Inc. was sued by U.S. antitrust officials and a coalition of states that want to break up the company by unwinding its acquisitions of Instagram and WhatsApp, deals the government says was part of a campaign to illegally crush competition.

The Federal Trade Commission and state attorneys general led by New York said they filed antitrust complaints against Facebook Wednesday, alleging conduct that thwarted competition from rivals in order to protect its monopoly. 

This represents the biggest regulatory attack on Facebook in its history, and follows the Justice Department’s October lawsuit against Alphabet Inc.’s Google.

“Personal social networking is central to the lives of millions of Americans,” Ian Conner, Director of the FTC’s Bureau of Competition, said in a statement.  “Facebook’s actions to entrench and maintain its monopoly deny consumers the benefits of competition.  Our aim is to roll back Facebook’s anticompetitive conduct and restore competition so that innovation and free competition can thrive.”

New York Attorney General Letitia James said during an online news conference Wednesday that Facebook has squashed or hindered what the company saw as potential threats.

Facebook used “vast amounts of money” to acquire companies that could potentially threaten its dominance, particularly Instagram and WhatsApp, she said.   The effort was meant to “squeeze every bit of oxygen out of the room.”

Facebook points out the FTC approved of the acquisitions of Instagram and WhatsApp when they were proposed.  The company acquired Instagram in 2012 for $1 billion, when Instagram had no revenue, and paid $19 billion for WhatsApp in 2014.  Facebook saw messaging apps as a threat to social media companies, as CEO Mark Zuckerberg wrote in a 2012 email, and that the apps could be used “as a springboard to build more general mobile social networks.”

--A Federal Reserve report showed the net worth of U.S. households rose to a record in the third quarter as the value of stock portfolios and real estate surged, highlighting the skewed nature of an economic recovery that has disproportionately benefited wealthier Americans.

Household net worth rose 3.2% in the third quarter from the second to $123.52 trillion, the Fed said Thursday.  Household debt rose 5.6% to $16.4 trillion, its fastest pace in at least two years.

--In a wide-ranging new survey of attitudes toward the economy, 6 in 10 residents of California said they expect their children to be worse off financially than their parents.

More than two-thirds said California’s gap between the rich and poor is widening.

“People are gloomy,” said Mark Baldassare, president and chief executive of the Public Policy Institute of California, which conducted the survey.  “They’re very, very worried about the short term and the long term.”

--GE agreed to pay a $200 million penalty to settle federal claims that it misled investors by failing to disclose problems in its gas-turbine power and insurance businesses, capping a multiyear probe into GE’s accounting, including failing to inform investors of the rising risk in its legacy insurance portfolio that would eventually require more than $15 billion to boost its reserves.

“GE’s repeated disclosure failures across multiple businesses materially misled investors about how it was generating reported earnings and cash growth as well as latent risks in its insurance business,” said Stephanie Avakian, director of the SEC’s Division of Enforcement.

As is customary in such matters, GE settled the claims without admitting or denying the allegations, and the settlement order didn’t allege GE violated U.S. accounting rules or the most serious antifraud laws, but of course it did.

I’ve been doing this column a long time.  Going back to the days of Jack Welch, GE was always a little too cute in consistently beating earnings expectations by a penny, quarter after quarter.  That was playing around with sales recognition.

But under Welch’s successor, Jeff Immelt, things then got downright ugly.  He left the next CEO, Larry Culp, a total pile of merde.

--Toll Brothers Inc. said its sales rose 7% in the latest quarter from a year ago to $2.55 billion, well ahead of expectations.  CEO Douglas Yearley said: “We are currently experiencing the strongest housing market I have seen in my 30 years at Toll Brothers, and we continue to increase prices in nearly all of our communities.”

Toll continues to benefit from pandemic trends as many have left large cities in search of bigger homes in less crowded areas where they can work remotely and enjoy more space.

Toll’s home-building deliveries rose 10% from a year-earlier period.  The company said current quarter demand has remained very strong, with “nonbinding reservation deposits,” a precursor to contracts, up 48%.

And of course mortgage rates remain at historic lows.

--Like every other state, New Jersey’s restaurant scene is a disaster.  The New Jersey Restaurant and Hospitality Association said this week that 36 percent of restaurants and other hospitality businesses do not expect to survive without federal help.  78 percent of business owners expect to lay off more employees.

Morgan Stanley estimates that nationwide, 30 percent of independent restaurant operators will go under.

New York City’s restaurants will have their indoor dining shutdown again on Monday.

--Campbell Soup Company reported earnings and revenue for Q1 of fiscal 2021 that beat the consensus estimates, with quarterly revenue at $2.34 billion, up from $2.18 billion during the corresponding period a year ago.  For the current quarter it expects a 5% to 7% increases in revenue.

The company reported supermarkets have been bulk-purchasing its soups in preparation for winter sales and an extended coronavirus-led home confinement.  Soup sales surged 21% alone in the U.S.  Sales at the meals and beverages unit, which includes Prego pasta sauces (didn’t know this was Campbell) rose 12%.  But snack sales were up just 1% on muted demand for Lance sandwich and Goldfish crackers.

--Lululemon Athletica Inc. raised its holiday quarter revenue and profit forecasts on Thursday, as the pandemic induced popularity of home workouts boosted demand for athleisure apparel.  But the company warned spiking infections and ensuing capacity restraints imposed in multiple markets would limit fourth-quarter results.

Online comp sales surged 93% in the third quarter, which more than compensated for declines in store traffic.  Sales at retail stores during the holiday season may remain down, as surging virus infections in the United States and Europe and new lockdown measures keep consumers away from the malls.  Still, the company expects fourth-quarter revenue to rise by a mid-to-high teens percentage, better than a prior forecast.

Net revenue rose 22% to $1.12 billion in the third quarter ended Nov. 1, exceeding expectations, while earnings of $1.16 per share beat estimates as well.

As an aside, suddenly in my advertising market we’re seeing ads for Lululemon’s Mirror product, which seems cool.  I had no idea they had acquired it, and if you didn’t know either, it was a $500 million acquisition earlier in the year and now they’re spending money marketing it.

--FireEye, a top cybersecurity firm used by government agencies and companies around the world who have been hacked by the most sophisticated attackers, was itself hacked, with evidence pointing to Russia’s intelligence agencies.

FireEye revealed Tuesday that its own systems were pierced by what it called “a nation with top-tier offensive capabilities.”  The company said hackers used “novel techniques” to make off with its own tool kit, which could be useful in mounting new attacks around the world.

FireEye has made its living partly by identifying the culprits in some of the world’s biggest breaches and while it didn’t explicitly say who was responsible, it’s pretty clear that in calling in the FBI, the case is being turned over to its Russian specialists.

FireEye uses its own sophisticated hacking tools to look for vulnerabilities in a company or government agency’s systems.

As the New York Times reported: “The hack raises the possibility that Russian intelligence agencies saw an advantage in mounting the attack while American attention – including FireEye’s – was focused on securing the presidential election system.  At a moment that the nation’s public and private intelligence systems were seeking out breaches of voter registration systems or voting machines, it may have been a good time for those Russian agencies, which were involved in the 2016 election breaches, to turn their sights on other targets.”

--Goldman Sachs Group is weighing plans for a new Florida hub for its asset management arm, which would be another potential blow to New York’s stature as the de facto home of the financial industry.  The bank’s success in operating remotely during the pandemic has convinced members of the leadership team that they can move more roles out of the New York area to save money.

Goldman could yet opt for Dallas, where it has been accelerating its expansion.

Manhattan now has the most office space available since the aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks.

--Brad K., steel expert, passed along a report that “buyers report situations where the steel mills are either not quoting certain products or are allocating products (controlled order entry).  One steel buyer earlier this week described a situation where their main supplier offered them tonnage at ‘X’ price, but the price was only good for a few short hours.  They managed to get the mill to agree to 24 hours and did place the tonnage.

“We expect prices to continue to rise as supplies remain tight and lead times extended.  As spot hot rolled prices hit $900 per ton (which we are already seeing at the high end of our range), we will be at levels only seen twice in the history of our index (2008 and 2018).  In the past, such peaks have been followed by sharp and prolonged drops in prices.  Steel buyers are nervous about overpaying or buying at the peak of the market. This may actually keep prices high as inventories will remain tight.”

For Brad K. and those trying to buy steel for their various businesses, it’s nuts.  I know Brad, a friend from childhood who owns a company, is working 14 hour+ days.  Get some sleep, B.K.!

--From Christina Goldbaum and Will Wright / New York Times: “In Boston, transit officials warned of ending weekend service on the commuter rail and shutting down the city’s ferries.  In Washington, weekend and late-night metro service would be eliminated and 19 of the system’s 91 stations would close.  In Atlanta, 70 of the city’s 110 bus routes have already been suspended, a move that could become permanent.

“And in New York City, home to the largest mass transportation system in North America, transit officials have unveiled a plan that could slash subway service by 40 percent and cut commuter rail service in half.

“Across the United States, public transportation systems are confronting an extraordinary financial crisis set off by the pandemic, which has starved transit agencies of huge amounts of revenue and threatens to cripple service for years….

“The financial collapse of transportation agencies would especially hurt minority and low-income riders who tend to be among the biggest users of subways and buses.”

The transit agencies desperately need federal aid, an estimated $32 billion nationwide.  New York City alone is facing a $6.1 billion deficit next year.

Months ago, I told you of how I monitor daily two large parking lots I pass in my travels that each hold roughly 150 cars and, pre-pandemic, were both packed with commuters heading into New York.  All these months later, there are no more than 6-8 spots filled in the two combined.  I’ve just found this staggering.  Needless to say, New Jersey Transit is among the agencies struggling mightily.

--The Metropolitan Opera said Monday that it needs to slash its workers’ long-term contracts by 30 percent to survive – a proposal rejected by the union representing its employees, according to the New York Times.

Because of the impasse, the Met is locking out a few dozen stagehands still working amid the pandemic.

Most of the Met’s nearly 300 stagehands have been furloughed since April.  Under the Met’s proposal, a promise of up to $1,500 a week for many employees is attached to the long-term contractual pay cut.

Once, and if, the Met’s revenue returns to pre-pandemic levels, half of the cuts would be restored.

The Met hopes to reopen next fall, with work for more stagehands planned to begin well in advance.

--Howard Stern is staying with SiriusXM for another five years.  While terms of the deal weren’t announced, Forbes magazine has reported that Stern was making $90 million per year (you’re reading that right) on his existing contract.

Stern’s archive of audio and video will continue to be licensed to SiriusXM for seven years after the contract ends through 2032, the company said.

Stern made the leap from terrestrial radio to satellite in 2006.  When he first struck a deal for the move in 2004, SiriusXM had about 600,000 subscribers.  As of Sept. 30, it had 34.4 million, according to the company’s latest securities filing.

As Stern put it, “Now that I can work from home, I simply don’t have an excuse to quit.”

Foreign Affairs

China: Tuesday, Hong Kong police arrested eight more activists over an anti-government protest in July, the latest move by authorities in a relentless crackdown on opposition forces in the Chinese-ruled city.  The police did not identify those arrested.

And then today, Jimmy Lai, the publishing tycoon and prominent critic of the Chinese Communist Party, was charged with colluding with foreign forces under Hong Kong’s national security law, police said.

Lai is the most high-profile person to be formally charged under the security law.  If convicted, he could face up to life in prison.

Lai has pushed other countries to punish China for its erosion of freedoms in Hong Kong.  He traveled to the United States last year to meet officials including Vice President Mike Pence and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.  And he has called for sanctions on Chinese officials.

It isn’t clear what Lai did specifically to violate any securities law.  The trial can also be held behind closed doors.

The U.S. has levied sanctions on top officials at the Chinese legislature over the national security law imposed on Hong Kong.

Chinese foreign vice-minister Zheng Zeguang said, according to a statement from the Chinese foreign ministry: “Hong Kong affairs are the internal affairs of China, and the U.S. has no justification to intervene.  China will make reciprocal countermeasures and continue to take all necessary measures to firmly defend the country’s sovereignty, security, and development interests.”

Zheng accused the U.S. of being the “largest black hand” behind the chaos in Hong Kong, and of creating trouble for China through the excuse of human rights and democracy.

Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi called on Monday for Beijing and Washington to resume a dialogue to reset ties.

“The most urgent task currently is for the two sides to work together to remove all sorts of barriers to achieve a smooth transition in China-U.S. relations,” Wang said, according to a brief on the Chinese foreign ministry’s website.

“At the same time, based on the direction of mutual benefits for our two peoples and countries, we need to strive to restart dialogue, return to the right track and rebuild trust in this next phase of relations.”

Wang added: “Engaging in comprehensive containment against China, and even advocating for ‘decoupling’ and a ‘new Cold War,’ this is making a historical, directional and strategic error. We expect and believe that the U.S.’ China policy will return to objectivity and rationality sooner or later.”

Separately, at the Milken Institute 2020 Asian Summit on Tuesday, Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross, in the keynote speech, called China the major economic and military threat to Asia.

“China continues to be both the largest potential market and the principal military and economic threat in the region.”

The Trump administration continues to impose sanctions and restrictions on Chinese companies and officials as its term comes to an end.  President-elect Joe Biden has strongly hinted he will remain tough on Beijing when he takes office and has no immediate plans to lower existing tariffs.

Regarding the trade deal with China, Ross said China had implemented 57 technical commitments and bought over $23 billion worth of an agreed target of agricultural products.

“That’s around 70 percent of the agreed total, but unfortunately they have purchased [lower] percentages of other items,” he said, without elaborating.

“Now China has announced its recovery from the pandemic, we hope they will meet the [deal’s] two-year target,” he said.

Josh Rogin / Washington Post

“The tectonic plates of the military balance in Asia are shifting underneath our feet.  It’s happening slowly and inexorably, but over time the magnitude of the change is becoming vividly apparent.  As the United States prepares to change its leadership, China’s military advancement and expansion are now a problem too glaring to ignore.

“Adm. Philip Davidson, who is nearing the end of his tour as the head of U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, has been warning about the changing military balance in Asia throughout his tenure. But his warnings have often fallen on deaf ears in a Washington mired in partisanship and dysfunction. The Trump administration talked a big game about meeting the challenge of China’s military encroachment, but Davidson’s calls for substantially more investment to restore the regional balance that has deterred Beijing for decades have gone largely unanswered.

“China’s military has moved well past a strategy of simply defending its territory and is now modernizing with the objective of being able to operate and even fight far from its shores, Davidson told me in an interview conducted last month for the 2020 Halifax International Security Forum.  Under President Xi Jinping, Davidson said, China has built advanced weapons systems, platforms and rocket forces that have altered the strategic environment in ways the United States has not sufficiently responded to.

“ ‘We are seeing great advances in their modernization efforts,’ he said.  ‘China will test more missiles, conventional and nuclear associated missiles this year than every other nation added together on the planet. So that gives you an idea of the scale of how these things are changing.’

“Davidson confirmed, for the first time from the U.S. government side, that China’s People’s Liberation Army has successfully tested an anti-ship ballistic missile against a moving ship. This was done as part of the PLA’s massive joint military exercises, which have been ongoing since the summer. These are often called ‘aircraft carrier killer’ missiles, because they could threaten the United States’ most significant naval assets from long distances.

“ ‘It’s an indication that they continue to advance their capability. We’ve known for years they’ve been in pursuit of a capability that could attack moving targets,’ Davidson said.  I asked him whether they are designed to target U.S. aircraft carriers.  ‘Trust me, they are targeting everything,’ he replied.

“Chinese missile and rocket forces now represent ‘a great asymmetry’ in the region, Davidson said, that presents a threat along the first island chain, which stretches from the Koreas down through Japan to Southeast Asia and Taiwan.  He has advocated integrated air and missile defense in the region and on Guam, which is strategic but vulnerable.

“Davidson’s watch has almost ended.  The Wall Street Journal reported this week that President Trump plans to nominate Pacific Fleet commander Adm. John Aquilino to succeed him. But before that change will likely take place, a new president will take office in Washington, one who is promising to review the U.S. strategic approach to Asia early on. What Joe Biden’s officials will find is that the PLA of 2021 is quite different from the PLA they last dealt with in 2016.”

Iran: France, Germany and Britain said on Monday they were alarmed by an Iranian announcement that it intended to install additional, advanced uranium-enriching centrifuges and by legislation that could expand its nuclear program.

“If Iran is serious about preserving a space for diplomacy, it must not implement these steps,” the three powers, who along with China and Russia are party to a 2015 nuclear containment deal with Tehran, known as the JCPOA.

As I noted last week, a report from the International Atomic Energy Agency said Iran plans to install three more cascades, or clusters, of advanced IR-2m centrifuges in its enrichment plant at Natanz, which was built underground to withstand any aerial bombardment.  Iran’s nuclear deal with the major powers says Tehran can only use first-generation IR-1 centrifuges, which refine uranium much more slowly.

The powers further said that a new law obliging Iran’s government to halt UN inspections of its nuclear sites and step up enrichment beyond the deal’s was also incompatible with the accord and Iran’s wider non-proliferation commitments.

“Such a move would jeopardize our shared efforts to preserve the JCPOA and also risks compromising the important opportunity for a return to diplomacy with the incoming U.S. administration,” they said, referring to Joe Biden.

An official close to Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has denied rumors on social media about the top authority’s deteriorating health, as an Iranian journalist reported that Khamenei may have transferred power to his son amid concerns over his declining health.

The son, 51-year-old Sayyid Mojtaba Hosseini Khamenei, oversees several important security and intelligence departments in the country.  For over 10 years, European strategists have pegged Mojtaba as a potential successor to the supreme leader.

If the rumor was true, it doesn’t seem the son can remain in power long, as under Iran’s constitution, the supreme leader’s successor is to be chose by the Assembly of Experts, which currently consists of 88 ayatollahs.

Israel: Morocco became the latest to agree on Thursday to normalize relations in a deal brokered with U.S. help, Morocco the fourth Arab country to set aside hostilities with Israel in the past four months, joining UAE, Bahrain and Sudan, driven in part by U.S.-led efforts to present a united front against Iran and roll back Tehran’s regional influence.  President Trump, as part of the deal, agreed to recognize Morocco’s sovereignty over the Western Sahara, a desert region where a decades-old territorial dispute has pitted Morocco against an Algerian-backed group.  No other Western nation has accepted this arrangement.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a statement: “This will be a very warm peace.  Peace has never – the light of peace on this Hanukkah day has never – shone brighter than today in the Middle East.”

Meanwhile, a prominent Saudi prince harshly criticized Israel on Sunday at a Bahrain security summit that was remotely attended by Israel’s foreign minister.

Prince Turki al-Faisal, who led Saudi intelligence for more than two decades and served as ambassador to the U.S. and UK, said any normalization deals needed to help the Palestinians obtain their own independent state.

He described Israel as a “Western colonizing” power and said Israel has “incarcerated (Palestinians) in concentration camps under the flimsiest of security accusations – young and old, women and men, who are rotting there without recourse to justice.  They are demolishing homes as they wish and they assassinate whomever they want.”

Although the prince has no official position, his stance is mirroring that of King Salman.  In contrast, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman has signaled greater willingness to quietly engage with Israel to counter Iran and boost foreign investment in the kingdom.

Random Musings

--Benjamin L. Ginsberg, longtime Republican election lawyer / Washington Post

“The country was lucky that President Trump and his reelection campaign were so inept. He ultimately lost by a wide margin, and his challenges to the results have been farcical. His rhetoric ramped up in inverse proportion to his ability to produce evidence supporting his charges of systemic ‘fraud’ or ‘rigged’ elections.

“The United States might not be so lucky next time.  What if the 2020 election had been as close as it was in 2000, and the outcome hinged on a state (or states) with a truly narrow margin?  How would the country have fared under a Trump-style assault on democracy’s foundations?

“Trump’s attempts to negate millions of votes by challenging state certifications revealed cracks in those foundations. Some shoring-up is clearly needed before the next election cycle begins.  A good place to start might be with the appointment of a bipartisan commission that would propose election reforms to Congress and the states.  Here are half a dozen suggestions to get things started.

“Revise the Electoral Count Act of 1887, a law that came perilously close to being invoked for the first time in its history.  Its muddled language would not have provided clear answers to myriad crucial questions.  What happens if a state submits competing slates of electors?  How to determine if a ‘majority’ of the electoral college refers to all 538 electors or only those present and voting?  If choosing the president fell to the House, with a single vote for each state, could a majority of members prevent the swearing-in of enough minority members (who nonetheless represented more states) so that the majority’s presidential candidate would win?  The 1887 law clearly needs updating and clarifying.

“The testing of voting machines needs to be strengthened to discourage fictional tales of ‘cheating algorithms.’  Most states now require sample ballots to be run through each machine both before an election and before tabulation to confirm that each machine is counting correctly.  Increase the number of test ballots and amend laws so that in post-election litigation, any complaining about the machines would be an obvious case of sour grapes.

“Given that mail-in balloting exploded during the pandemic, and voters could well continue to favor their use, improving the security and processing of mail-in voting is vital. Technological advances that upgrade signature-match methods should be incorporated into law.  States should allow the processing of mail-in ballots well before Election Day to avoid delays in reporting results, and states need to clarify whether election officials can contact voters to ‘cure’ mistakes and omissions on absentee ballot envelopes.

“All states should make their vote certification process purely a matter of administrative processing, and not subject to the sort of political gamesmanship that marred the election aftermath in Michigan.

“One thing the post-election wrangling made clear is that states need to consolidate jurisdictions responsible for overseeing voting and for counting ballots.  Right now, about 10,500 jurisdictions have that responsibility – far too many to ensure that all qualified ballots are treated equally. That’s a lurking equal-protection problem, especially in a very close election.

“Finally, it would be helpful if the Supreme Court took up the Pennsylvania case brought to it just before the election.  The court’s actions now preclude the possibility of a ruling that would affect the state’s final tally, but clarification on two issues would be welcome.  Is the legislature the sole body that can determine a state’s ‘time, place and manner’ for elections, or can a state’s supreme court and governor play a role?  And does Election Day mean only the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November, as Congress stipulated in 1845, or do absentee ballots postmarked on Election Day but received later qualify?

“Strengthening election laws and modernizing the processing of ballots are important, but no matter how laws are written or what upgrades are instituted, bad actors can find a way to test the limits.  The 2020 election showed that the United States’ laws and institutions can always be improved. Yet the reason the system held and Trump failed was that countless individuals honorably did their duty under those laws, even while sometimes under furious attack from the president and his allies.

“As a Republican, I am especially proud of how those from my own party charged with running and certifying elections met the moment. They and their colleagues in the states and localities are the reason the country passed this stress test.  The Founders, in their wisdom, designed a system that could rely on Americans themselves as the nation’s last line of defense.”

--Thomas Boswell / Washington Post

“If the final score has no integrity, you have no sport. The reason for the game’s existence disappears.  Nobody watches a crooked game.

“Of the nearly 400 champions crowned in Major League Baseball, the NFL, the NBA and the NHL, only one – the 2017 Houston Astros – was a proven team of cheaters. And they were exposed in two years.

“Why so few?  Because everyone in sports – whether player or coach, commissioner or owner, broadcast partner or team trainer – knows that cheating, defrauding the public, strikes at the existence of their business.

“The stakeholders battle to keep their game clean, not because they are noble but because it is profoundly in their self-interest.  It is an issue of continued existence.

“A normal person finds it easy to grasp how many ‘eyes’ are constantly on both teams in any game for high stakes.  The umpires are paid to enforce rules. The opposition team has every incentive to spot – and expose – cheats. The entire sport needs to defend its integrity if it wants to keep selling its product.  The media would give their eye teeth to break open a big scandal.

“Ever since the 1919 Black Sox fixing scandal (exposed quickly) nearly killed baseball, the sport has obsessed on preventing fixes – a team trying to lose a World Series, something vastly easier than finding a way to cheat to win one. Pete Rose, the hit king, was banned for life for gambling on the team he managed – to win. That was enough. Integrity of the game is the third rail.

“If it’s incredibly hard to throw a title series or cheat to win one, if a face-of-the-sport star can’t get away with gambling on his team to win because so many eyes, and so many people’s jobs and interests, are aligned with keeping the game clean, then how unfathomably hard, with a massive number of culprits, would it be to orchestrate cheating on a massive scale in a presidential election?

“Yet the human mind operates in curious ways.  We are reasonably good analysts of events that happen in the scale of our own lives – for example, cheating in a game. We can imagine how it might be attempted. But, as knowledgeable sports fans, we also know how many levels of ‘cops’ are built into the fabric of the institution.

“But human imagination also has limits – different limits for different people. Some subjects seem too vast for many people to believe they can grasp them on their own. They are paralyzed by size and stop trusting their own judgement, just when they should be relying on that common sense most.

“Yes, a World Series and a presidential election are similar – except in size and importance.

“America’s whole political system is just as dependent for its viability, for its very life as a democracy, on the credibility of the final score of its elections, as sporting events are on the integrity of their final scores.

“And everyone in politics, just like everyone in sports, knows it. So from inside and outside the system, they are watching, and have been watching since the maturation of our modern political enterprise – to spot cheating and fraud, to catch dead voters and duplicate voters, to check and cross-check the accuracy of any machines that might be tampered with.

“This isn’t new.  Each generation improves the methods to watch, and catch, the other side if it tries to play outside the lines.  This isn’t about tactics – some legal, some not – such as voter suppression and redistricting. This is just counting votes.

“And America is damn good at it. Because, at every level down to the smallest county precinct, for every Republican that’s near a ballot – making sure his or her side isn’t cheated out of a single vote – there is a Democrat nearby with the same job.

“The heart of our elections are the hundreds of thousands of people – regular, decent people – who maintain the honesty of the process. They take enormous pride in that job, because it is their personal contribution to democracy, regardless of who wins.  Because they are sane, they know their candidate wins sometimes, loses sometimes, and sometimes Uncle Ned writes in the dogcatcher for president.  We’ve had 200 years of practice.

“In sports, and politics, only one thing is unthinkable, so destructive that it is a kind of ultimate vandalism toward the game or the country: to claim that you have been cheated, on a massive scale, out of victory, without any solid evidence to prove it.

“Imagine a coach in the Super Bowl who claims, before the game, that his team will either win or be beaten by cheating.  He says there’s no third choice. We think it’s ‘gamesmanship’ – getting in the other guy’s head.

“But then he loses and for a month goes on conspiracy-ridden tirades about why his team didn’t lose by the clear margin shown on the scoreboard. The refs were crooked, his players were drugged, the balls were slippery when his team had possession and on and on.  He demands replays and gets them, but the decisions stand as called. His charges, based on nothing but his anger and dishonesty, are eventually so bizarre, so far outside what people in the game know could possibly happen, that even many of the coach’s closest allies, those in his own organization, concede they lost, that the final score of 306-232 was not just sort-of-accurate but precisely correct.

“ ‘Come on, Coach,’ they say.  ‘Don’t be a sore loser.  Don’t damage the game. Because you’re famous, some people may really believe that you lost because of a conspiracy so perfect that it leaves no evidence.’

“In sports, such a coach – and there has never been one like this in any major sport, ever – would be told to accept defeat or find a new job.  In fact, just one such false cheating charge, without proof, might get a Vince Lombardi fired.

“Current polls show that only a fraction of those who voted for Donald Trump believe he honestly lost the election. That means tens of millions either still think he won or are not sure. His national margin of defeat of about 7 million votes: Why not wish it away?

“Millions, their good sense numbed by the size and gall of the lie being fed to them, now doubt the integrity of the game.  When that happens in sports, the game dies.

“Now the ‘game’ whose integrity is under attack, whose justification for existing is undermined every day by the president of the United States, is democracy itself.

“If this happened in sports, we would have no problem analyzing the issue. We would not bother to put some technical, psychological name on the coach’s problem.  In sports, you can say the obvious.

“My grandfather, Joshua, and his brother, Rollie, born in the 19th century, would have kept it simple while rocking and spitting tobacco into their coffee cans on a front porch in a farm town of 1,500.

“ ‘That fellow’s crazier than a chicken with its head cut off,’ one would say.  They had chopped off chicken’s heads.

“You couldn’t have fooled my grandfather and his brother.  They had common sense. And they knew crazy.”

--With the Georgia Senate runoffs now looming, Republican Senator Kelly Loeffler debated her Democratic challenger Rev. Raphael Warnock last Sunday, while Republican Sen. David Perdue opted out of debating Democratic challenger Jon Ossof, leaving Ossof alone on the debate stage.

Loeffler sidestepped questions on Trump during her debate, instead calling Warnock a “radical liberal,” while Warnock criticized Loeffler’s stock trades after the wealthy businesswoman was appointed senator a year ago.  Each criticized the other’s interpretation of the Christian faith.

Regarding Trump and his claims the election was rigged, Loeffler said, “It’s vitally important that Georgians trust our election process and the president has every right to every legal recourse.”

--Editorial / Wall Street Journal

“There aren’t many giants in American life, and on Monday we lost another. Chuck Yeager, the first man to travel faster than the speed of sound, died in his home at the age of 97.

“In 1947, Yeager, a young Air Force pilot from the little town of Hamlin, W. Va., was chosen to fly a rocket-propelled plane, the Bell XS-1, on a supersonic flight over the Mojave Desert.  On October 14 he flew the plane, which he named Glamorous Glennis after his wife, at a speed of Mach 1.06 – 700 miles per hour.  The night before he had broken two ribs by falling off a horse, and he could barely reach up to seal the hatch, but only his wife and a close friend knew about it.

“In a 1985 memoir, Yeager famously expressed his sense of disappointment at crossing the threshold of sound and creating the world’s first sonic boom.  ‘And that was it,’ he wrote.  ‘After all the anticipation to achieve this moment, it really was a let-down.’

“But by then he had defied death more often than anybody knew. As a pilot in World War II, Yeager shot down at least 13 enemy fighters.  He once downed five German aircraft in a single day.  Yeager was shot down himself over France, but made it across the Pyrenees and into Spain, sometimes disguised as a peasant and carrying a wounded companion. When the war ended, Captain Yeager was 22.

“He led missions in the Korean and Vietnam Wars, too, and spent a well-earned retirement giving speeches and conducting himself with decency and honor.  Chuck Yeager was an American of an older, rarer kind: ready to take a risk for his country, courageous beyond measure, utterly without pretense.”

--Speaking of heroes, original Tuskegee Airman Brigadier General Charles McGee celebrated his 101st birthday on Sunday.  Born on Dec. 7, 1919, McGee served as an American fighter pilot and is now one of the last living members of the Tuskegee Airmen, an all African-American military pilot group who fought during World War II as part of the 332d Fighter Group.

He was a career officer in the United States Air Force for more than 30 years and flew a three-war total of 409 combat missions in World War II, the Korean War, and the Vietnam War.  He has one of the highest combat totals and longest active-duty careers by any Air Force fighter pilot in history.

For his service, McGee received the Distinguished Flying Cross and Bronze Star Medal, along with many other military honors. In 2007, as a member of the Tuskegee Airmen, McGee received the Congressional Gold Medal.  In 2011, he was inducted into the National Aviation Hall of Fame and on Feb. 4, 2020, he was promoted from colonel to brigadier general.

--Research from the Global Carbon Project showed the pandemic reduced global greenhouse gas emissions by a record 7% this year.  But the reductions are probably a short-lived effect of stay-at-home orders and the resulting economic downturn, and are bound to vanish once a Covid vaccine becomes widely available and transportation and industry returns to pre-pandemic levels.  For that reason, the dip in emissions is not expected to significantly slow the warming of the planet.

--According to retired Israeli general and current professor Haim Eshed, the State of Israel made contact with aliens, but this has been kept a secret because “humanity isn’t ready.”

Speaking in an interview to Yediot Aharonot (later translated by the Jerusalem Post), Eshed – who served as the head of Israel’s space security program for nearly 30 years and is a three-time recipient of the Israel Security Award – explained that Israel and the U.S. have both been dealing with aliens for years.

And this by no means refers to immigrants, with Eshed clarifying the existence of a ‘Galactic Federation.’

The 87-year-old former space security chief gave further descriptions about exactly what sort of agreements have been made between the aliens and the U.S., which ostensibly have been made because they wish to research and understand ‘the fabric of the universe.’  This cooperation includes a secret underground base on Mars, where there are American and alien representatives.

Eshed insists President Trump is aware of them, and that he was “on the verge” of disclosing their existence. 

Well, this would explain the hundreds of thousands of ballots dumped in the middle of the night at key swing states for Joe Biden.

That, or focus on Eshed’s age and perhaps a bout with an undigested bit of beef, visited by three spirits on the first night of Hanukhah.

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

Thank you to all the healthcare workers and first responders.

God bless America.

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Gold $1843
Oil $46.56

Returns for the week 12/7-12/11

Dow Jones  -0.6%  [30046]
S&P 500  -1.0%  [3663]
S&P MidCap  -0.2%
Russell 2000  +1.0%
Nasdaq  -0.7%  [12377]

Returns for the period 1/1/20-12/11/20

Dow Jones  +5.3%
S&P 500  +13.4%
S&P MidCap  +8.6%
Russell 2000  +14.6%
Nasdaq  +38.0%

Bulls 64.4…extraordinary run of over 60…warning sign
Bears 16.8

Hang in there.  Mask up…wash your hands.

Happy Hanukkah.

Brian Trumbore

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