Week in Review

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Week in Review

12/26/2020

For the week 12/21-12/25

[Posted 9:00 PM ET, Friday]

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Special thanks to George L. for his support.

Edition 1,132

As I go to post, Christmas Day, early evening, we still don’t know what President Trump is going to do with the $2.3 trillion coronavirus aid and spending package.  Will he sign it or not?  Without his signature, about 14 million people will lose unemployment benefits on Saturday, and a partial government shutdown may begin Tuesday.

Apparently, Trump played golf with Sen. Lindsey Graham today and was briefed on the Nashville vehicle explosion (which I have zero comment on…I’ll wait for the facts with the rest of you).

Otherwise, the president continues to promote conspiracy theories, attack our great democracy, run roughshod over the rule of law, and continue his assault on the criminal justice system, while toying with the lives of countless Americans.

Next week we may get a better idea of his plans for Jan. 6, and whether it will be another day that will live in infamy.

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The week started out with President Trump contradicting Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on the source of the massive cyberattack against the U.S. government.

Pompeo had said in an interview last week, “This was a very significant effort, and I think it’s the case that now we can say pretty clearly that it was the Russians that engaged in this significant effort, and I think it’s the case that now we can say pretty clearly that it was the Russians that engaged in this activity.”

President Trump on Saturday morning then contradicted his top diplomat, tweeting that he has been “fully briefed” and suggesting that “it may be China” that’s responsible for the breaches.

Trump also speculated with no evidence that the hacks may have included “a hit on our ridiculous voting machines during the election, which is now obvious that I won big.”

Sen. Mitt Romney (R., Utah) said Russia acted with “impunity” in the cyberattack and the U.S. must respond.

“This invasion underscores that Russia acted with impunity. They didn’t fear what we would be able to do from a cyber capacity.  They didn’t think that our defense systems were particularly adequate.  And they apparently didn’t think that we would respond in a very aggressive way,” Romney said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”

“I think we have to have a very clear-eyed approach as to how we deal with Russia going forward. This demands a response and the response you’d expect to occur would be a cyber response,” said Romney.

Christmas Eve, having tossed a grenade that threatened to blow up the Covid-19 relief and government funding bill and force a government shutdown, the president went golfing.

Washington was reeling over his surprise 11th-hour demand that an end-of-year spending bill – which congressional leaders spent months negotiating – give most Americans $2,000 Covid relief checks – far more than the $600 members of his party had agreed to.  House Democrats tried to swiftly approve the $2,000 checks, but the idea was blocked by House Republicans during a rare Christmas Even session. 

Among the many serious issues facing tens of millions of Americans is evictions.  The federal eviction moratorium expires in January and the Covid relief package was to extend this through January.  A study by global investment firm Stout estimates up to 14 million households could already be close to eviction. Some states are extending moratoriums through their own programs.

The relief bill passed the House 359-53; the Senate approving hours later by a 92-6 vote.

And on Wednesday, Trump vetoed a $740.5 billion annual defense spending bill (NDAA), which had sailed through both the House and Senate with greater than two-third majorities earlier in the month, calling it a gift to China and Russia, while insisting an unrelated measure be attached to eliminate Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which protects tech companies from liability for most content published by their users.  He had also criticized the legislation because it contained a provision for renaming military installations that honor Confederate generals.  House Speaker Nancy Pelosi plans to vote to override the veto next week, with Majority Leader McConnell’s office pledging guidance on his intentions after the House acts.

The chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, Jim Inhofe (R., Okla.), said the defense bill is “vital to our national security and our troops.”  Inhofe said Trump’s complaints about technological liability could be addressed in different legislation.

“I hope all of my colleagues in Congress will join me in making sure our troops have the resources and equipment they need to defend this nation,” Inhofe said in a statement shortly after Trump’s veto.

The bill, which includes military pay raises, hazard pay and health benefits for soldiers, has successfully cleared Congress for the past 59 years.

Sen. Jack Reed of Rhode Island, the top Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee, said Trump’s declaration that China was the biggest winner in the defense bill was false.   Reed also noted the shifting explanations Trump had given for the veto.

“President Trump clearly hasn’t read the bill, nor does he understand what’s in it,” Reed said.

By the way, this same president hasn’t had a formal intelligence briefing since early October.

Trump, in attacking the Covid relief bill, conflated it with the government funding bill and got the provisions all mixed up, as is his wont, and his complaints on the amount earmarked for foreign aid were nonsensical as they were largely the figures that he had submitted in the White House budget that gets the whole ball rolling each year.

And then there were the pardons.

As of Tuesday, 60 of the first 65 people Trump had granted clemency to had a personal or political connection to the president, sixteen coming due to Trump’s admiration for a celebrity, 12 were brought to Trump’s attention by a television show, and 42 advanced his political agenda, according to data compiled by Harvard law professor Jack Goldsmith and the Lawfare blog.

Then on Wednesday, Trump granted clemency to another 29 people, including his son-in-law Jared Kushner’s father, Charles Kushner, former campaign chairman Paul Manafort and upgraded Roger Stone’s commutation to a full pardon.

Tuesday’s pardons included four men who had been convicted for their involvement in one of the most notorious incidents in the Iraq war, the killing of 14 civilians in Baghdad’s Nisour Square by employees of Blackwater, a private company hired to provide security to State Department officials in the country.

Ten men, two women and two boys, aged 9 and 11, were shot and killed in the 2007 incident.

One of the men receiving a pardon, Nicholas Slatten, was serving a life sentence after a jury convicted him in December 2018 of first-degree murder.

The other three defendants – Paul Slough, Evan Liberty and Dustin Heard – had been given mandatory-minimum sentences of 30 years each on manslaughter and firearm charges.

Slatten and his supporters had argued that he and the other three were scapegoated by U.S. officials to assuage Iraqi public opinion, which was inflamed by what many Iraqis considered an unprovoked massacre. The men were shot in the mistaken belief that a potential suicide bomber was moving toward the convoy they were guarding, defense lawyers argued.

U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth, who presided over the trial, rejected the scapegoating argument when he sentenced Slatten last year.

“The jury got it exactly right,” the judge said.  “This was murder.”

Blackwater’s founder, Erik Prince, the brother of Trump’s secretary of education, Betsy DeVos, is a bad guy.  I’ve written that before.  Military contracts became big business in Iraq and the security companies often acted with impunity, trigger-happy dirtballs.

“Lie to cover up for the president? You get a pardon,” Rep. Adam Schiff (D, Calif.), chairman of the House Intelligence Commission, tweeted on Tuesday.  “Corrupt politicians who endorsed Trump?  You get a pardon.  Murder innocent civilians?  You get a pardon.”

The Iraqi Foreign Ministry said the decision violates “the values of justice, human rights and rule of law” and “ignores the dignity of the victims.”  The Iraqis are right.

Adversaries took advantage of the moment.

“There must be a position not just from the Iraqi government, but from international societies and rights groups, that the United States operates with double standards,” Naeem Aboudi, an Iraqi lawmaker and former spokesman for Asaib Ahl al Haq, a paramilitary faction allied with Iran, said in an interview.

“These men were tried in U.S. courts, they are killers, and it was a very clear crime, with innocent defenseless civilians as its victims killed in cold blood.”

None of the victims had weapons.  The youngest, 9-year-old Ali Kinani, was in the backseat of his father’s SUV when the car was hit with a barrage of bullets.  One round split open the boy’s head and the father picked up his son’s brains.

At the same time this week, Trump intensified efforts to overturn the election, raising a series of radical measures, including military intervention, seizing of voting machines and a last appeal to the Supreme Court.

Sunday, Trump said he had spoken with Sen.-elect Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.), the village idiot, about challenging the electoral vote count when the House and Senate convene on Jan. 6 to formally affirm President-elect Joe Biden’s victory.

“He’s so excited,” Trump said of Tuberville.  “He said, ‘You made me the most popular politician in the United States.’  He said, ‘I can’t believe it.’  He’s great.  Great senator.”

The president has been increasingly reaching out to Rudy Giuliani, trade adviser Peter Navarro, disgraced former national security adviser Michael Flynn, and Flynn’s attorney, Sidney Powell, the chief conspiracy theorist.  In addition he is searching his Twitter feed for disinformation to promote.

Flynn had suggested on Newsmax that Trump could authorize the military to rerun the election.  “He could order the, within the swing states, if he wanted to, he could take military capabilities, and he could place those in states and basically rerun an election in each of those states,” Flynn said.

The next day, Flynn and Powell were in the Oval Office to discuss the idea.  As reported by the Washington Post and others, officials inside the White House said Chief of Staff Mark Meadows and White House counsel Pat Cipollone pushed back “strenuously” on the idea of martial law.  Plus the president does not have the authority to order such an action unless the states ask for inspections or investigations, and they have not.

Trump also suggested naming Sidney Powell as special counsel on voter fraud, which went nowhere.

Dominion Voting Systems has threatened to sue Powell and the Trump campaign for what it described as “wild, knowingly baseless and false accusations.”  Officials at the company have been physically threatened.

Then on Monday, outgoing Attorney General William Barr said he saw “no reason” to appoint a special counsel to look into the president’s claims of election fraud or the tax investigation into the affairs of Hunter Biden.

In his final press conference, Barr also broke with Trump in reinforcing that federal officials believe Russia was behind the cyberespionage targeting the U.S. government. 

Barr said the investigation into Hunter Biden’s financial dealings was “being handled responsibly and professionally.”

“I have not seen a reason to appoint a special counsel and I have no plan to do so before I leave,” he said.

Editorial / Wall Street Journal

“President Trump accomplished a great deal in four years, but as he leaves office he can’t seem to help reminding Americans why they denied him a second term.

“He could focus on the positive, such as the Covid-19 vaccines and his Arab-Israeli peace breakthrough.  Instead he’s calling Members of Congress and asking them to object on the House and Senate floor to the results of the Electoral College count.

“This won’t change the outcome, but it will put pressure on Republicans to embarrass themselves by indulging Mr. Trump’s attempts to delegitimize the results.  We hope the Members ignore his pleas.

“Meanwhile, after days of silence over the hack on U.S. government agencies and private companies, Mr. Trump chimed in Saturday to add confusion.  Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said Friday that the evidence clearly points to the Russians for the hack.

“But Mr. Trump tweeted that ‘Russia, Russia is the priority chant when anything happens because Lamestream [media] is, for mostly financial reasons, petrified of…discussing the possibility that it may be China (it may)!’  Then he linked the hack to a possible ‘hit on our ridiculous voting machines during the election, which is now obvious that I won big, making it an even more corrupted embarrassment for the USA.’

“Mr. Pompeo has no incentive to dissemble about Russia’s role, and Americans deserve to know the truth about what happened.  Mr. Trump doesn’t want to admit he lost, and he can duck the inauguration if he likes. But his sore loser routine is beginning to grate even on millions who voted for him.”

Editorial / Wall Street Journal…four days later…

“President Trump is leaving office as he entered, with a whirlwind of action that gets more attention that it accomplishes.  He may also take down his party’s chances of winning the Senate runoffs on Jan. 5. Does he care?

“On Wednesday Mr. Trump vetoed the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) that passed the House and Senate with overwhelming votes.  He said the bill doesn’t include the repeal of Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act that provides liability protection for online platforms.

“ ‘Section 230 facilitates the spread of foreign disinformation online, which is a serious threat to our national security and election integrity.  It must be repealed,’ Mr. Trump said in a veto statement.  The bigger threat to security is the recent Russian hack of the U.S. government, not social media companies….

“The NDAA isn’t perfect, but it extends hazard pay for U.S. forces that is set to expire at the end of the year.  Mr. Trump’s statement called the bill a ‘gift’ to China and Russia.  But we doubt China will see it that way, since it establishes a Pacific Deterrence Initiative that authorizes $2.2 billion for, among other things, putting more military assets in China’s backyard and conducting exercises with allies.  The bill also includes an overhaul of the aging U.S. nuclear deterrent, as well as cybersecurity provisions to protect command and control of U.S. nuclear systems.

“The House and Senate probably have the votes to override the veto, but the event could still cause problems for GOP Sens. David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler as they try to win their seats in two weeks. They’ll now have to flip their previous votes in favor of the NDAA or put themselves at odds with Mr. Trump.

“The same goes for Mr. Trump’s threat to veto the giant Covid relief and omnibus spending bill that passed Congress this week.  If he objected to the bad policy in the bill, he’d have a point.  But Mr. Trump is griping that the $600 direct payments to Americans in the bill are too small; he wants $2,000, which would cost another $350 billion or so.  The President’s negotiators signed off on the $600, and now Democrats are echoing Mr. Trump’s new demand and putting the Georgia Senators in a second bind.

“Losing control of the Senate would let Democrats take a machete to his legacy, but only one man knows what is really going on in the head of Donald J. Trump.”

Editorial / Washington Post

“The nauseating pardons and commutations President Trump issued this week are all troubling in their own way.  But there’s no question which are the most damaging.

“There were, firstly, the corrupt Republican politicians whose only claim on a pardon is their political support of the president.  It may or may not be coincidence that some of Mr. Trump’s strongest early backers also committed some of the most flagrant acts of self-enrichment.  Former California congressman Duncan D. Hunter, for example, spent hundreds of thousands in campaign dollars bankrolling a lavish lifestyle that included a Lake Tahoe getaway with one of his mistresses, tuition for his children and plane rides for his pet rabbit.  When he got caught, he blamed ‘fake news,’ the ‘deep state,’ and even his wife and son for his predicament.  He will end up serving no prison time….

“Also on the list were several figures in the Russia investigation.  George Papadopoulos and Alex van der Zwann received brief prison sentences for lying to investigators, in what the White House dismissed as ‘process-related crimes,’ arguing that the pardons would help ‘correct the wrong’ of the Russia probe.  In fact, the Russia investigation was grounded in the reality that the Kremlin tried to aid Mr. Trump, an effort the president’s campaign welcomed, even as he surrounded himself with people with fishy connections to Russia.  Lying to the investigators examining this potentially grave national security issue was a substantial crime.

“The pardon of former Trump campaign Paul Manafort was worse still; a longtime shady dealer, he committed a series of financial frauds to fund an over-the-top opulent lifestyle.  Yet he was another crony for whom Mr. Trump ‘felt badly’ when special counsel Robert S. Mueller III finally held him to account.

“It’s bad enough to have a president acting like a mafia don, rewarding criminality as long as it is accompanied by personal fealty.  But a third set of pardons poses a unique threat to national security, the safety of U.S. troops operating abroad – and morality.  In pardoning four Blackwater guards convicted of murder or manslaughter for an unprovoked 2007 massacre of 14 Iraqi civilians, Mr. Trump renewed the stain of that fateful day.  The fact that he did not pardon a fifth Blackwater guard who cooperated with prosecutors underlined his contempt for the rule of law. The message to those who fight in America’s name will be that they can shoot fleeing civilians, including children, and get away with it.  As with Mr. Trump’s earlier interference in military justice, this does a grave disservice to the vast majority of Americans who act with honor in the most difficult circumstances.  The message to foreign countries is not to expect that the United States will hold its own accountable even for astonishing acts of inhumanity.  That is counterproductive as well as wrong: Why would foreign governments allow Americans accused of crimes abroad in the future to be repatriated to the United States for trial?

“Other presidents have misused the pardon power to help cronies.  Mr. Trump this week went much further in debasing his office and the nation’s moral standing.”

Noah Bookbinder / USA TODAY

“In a coup de grace, Trump also pardoned four Blackwater guards convicted in a 2007 shooting that killed 14 Iraqi civilians and wounded 17.  Blackwater, of course, was founded by Erik Prince, a prominent Trump backer (who was himself caught up in the Mueller investigation) and the brother of Education Secretary Betsy DeVos.

“It is now clear that for Trump, no matter what the crime – whether it is corruption, lying to law enforcement or even war crimes – justice does not apply to those who have been loyal to him.  We have one justice system for his predominantly rich, white and male friends and allies, and another for the rest of America.

“It will likely get worse. The president will be in office until Jan. 20 and is reportedly planning to issue more pardons.  Those will surely include many more of the privileged and connected and could include preemptive pardons for the president’s allies, his family and perhaps even himself.  A self-pardon might well not hold up legally, but the pardon power is broad, and most of these other potential pardons likely would stand.”

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The Pandemic

This week’s news was dominated by countries taking action to place new restrictions on travel to and from the United Kingdom on Sunday due to concern over a new strain of the coronavirus that is spreading rapidly there.  British medical experts said the new variant may be up to 70% more transmissible than the old one, though there was no evidence it was more lethal or causes more severe illness.  It may have originated as far back as September.  South Africa also detected a new coronavirus strain and the numbers in both the UK and South Africa have been soaring.

The United States has not banned travel from the UK, but is insisting on a negative Covid test prior to boarding.

New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, with scores of flights having already arrived in that state (and Newark, N.J.) asked the federal government to impose new rules on travel from the UK.

“We have about six flights a day coming in from the UK and we have done absolutely nothing,” Cuomo said.

The governor sees the situation as a sequel to what happened in the spring, when travel from Europe was allowed for far too long, allowing the virus to spread uncontrollably throughout New York and the country for weeks.

“How many times in life do you have to make the same mistake before you learn?” Cuomo said.  “Other European countries have done a ban. We haven’t.  Doing nothing is negligent.”

For his part, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson had to drop plans to ease coronavirus restrictions over Christmas.

“Given the early evidence we have on this new variant of the virus, the potential risk it poses, it is with a very heavy heart I must tell you we cannot continue with Christmas as planned,” Johnson told a news conference.

As for our own country, we were told not to travel this holiday season, but the TSA checkpoint numbers showed quite a few Americans chose not to obey the directives.  However, the numbers are all over the board and there is little doubt in my mind that after New Year’s, we’ll settle back into the mid-30s range.

12/24…33 percent of 2019 numbers
12/23…61
12/22…50
12/21…38
12/20…42
12/19…43
12/18…41
12/17…34
12/16…29
12/15…27

Covid-19 death tolls, as of tonight….

***The numbers through New Year’s are bound to be an inaccurate reflection of actual activity on any particular day due to the holidays and shorter staffs in the health departments responsible for such data.

And as I write this…half the states in the U.S. did not report any figures today.

World…1,756,943
USA…338,263
Brazil…190,515
India…147,379
Mexico…121,172
Italy…71,359
UK…70,195
France…62,427
Iran…54,440
Russia…53,659
Spain…49,824
Argentina…42,422
Colombia…41,690
Peru…37,368
Germany…29,968
Poland…26,992
South Africa…26,276
Indonesia…20,847

Source: worldometers.info

U.S. daily death tolls…Sun. 1,414; Mon. 1,841; Tues. 3,376; Wed. 3,401; Thurs. 2,835; Fri. 1,197

Covid Bytes

--Pfizer and BioNTech will sell an additional 100 million doses of the Covid-19 vaccine to the United States, doubling the previously agreed upon sale, the companies and the Trump administration announced Wednesday.

The first 70 million doses of the new agreement will be delivered by June 30 and the full order by July 31.

“This new federal purchase can give Americans even more confidence that we will have enough supply to vaccinate every American who wants it by June 2021,” HHS Secretary Alex Azar said in a statement.

Disconcertingly, there have been more allergic reactions to the Pfizer vaccine than originally estimated, though researchers are zeroing in on the cause.

Meanwhile, Moderna’s vaccine began rolling out this week.

--This is the deadliest year in U.S. history, as deaths in 2020 are expected to top 3 million for the first time and the pandemic is largely to blame.

Final mortality data for the year will not be available for months, but preliminary figures suggest that the United States is on track to see more than 3.2 million deaths.  That would be about 400,000 more than in 2019, when there were 2,839,205, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

U.S. deaths increase in most years, so some annual rise is expected, but the 2020 numbers amount to a jump of about 15% - and could go higher once all the December deaths from the post-Thanksgiving Covid surge are counted.

Either way, it would mark the largest single-year percentage leap since 1918, when tens of thousands of U.S. soldiers died in World War I and hundreds of thousands of Americans perished in the 1918 pandemic.  When all the carnage was accounted for, deaths in 1918 were 46% higher than in 1917, mainly due to the fact the Spanish Flu was far deadlier for children than Covid-19.

That said, U.S. life expectancy is going to suffer a significant fall in 2020.

--South Korea reported a record 1,241 new coronavirus cases Friday (for Thursday).

--Taiwan reported its first local coronavirus infection in more than eight months on Tuesday in a case linked to a New Zealand pilot.

The local woman was a close contact of a New Zealand cargo plane pilot who worked for a Taiwanese carrier and is thought to have been infected during his flight operations in the United States last month.

The pilot tested positive last Friday and the woman on Tuesday.

Just imagine what a huge deal this was on Taiwan…one case.  What an incredible job leaders there have done.  The pilot was fined $10,000 for lying about his contact history.

Taiwan has just seven deaths and 780 cases!  The country has a population of 24 million.  So less than 100 in the United States, if we had the same ratio to population (the U.S. at 331 million).

--Israel’s cabinet approved a third national lockdown of as long as four weeks to curb the spread, again.  Stores, malls and most schools will be closed starting Sunday.  The government is trying to get the number of new cases back below 1,000, but the figure has been above 2,500 for much of the last two weeks.

--Nine people were killed after an oxygen ventilator exploded at a hospital treating Covid patients in southern Turkey, officials said.  Turkey has been hitting new daily records for  coronavirus cases and deaths.

--Why is California having such a hard time dealing with Covid?  The restrictions are in place, but few seem to be following them.  The shopping malls in the Los Angeles area, many being outdoors, were packed, especially as folks realized packages ordered online wouldn’t arrive in time due to the crush experienced by the postal and delivery services.  And so packed shopping malls became a flashpoint despite the pleas on the part of most officials to stay home and avoid their families for the holidays.

A local NBC News video sparked outrage online because it showed cars vying for parking spots at one outdoor mall in Commerce, just like at any other holiday season.

“If you’re still out there shopping for your loved ones for this holiday season…then you are missing the gravity of the situation that is affecting hospitals across L.A. County,” said health services director Dr. Christina Ghaly.  “Though they may seem benign, these actions are extremely high-risk.”

As of early in the week, only 2.5% of the state’s intensive care unit beds were available.

--This is scary…from Joel Shannon / USA TODAY

“For months, the hundreds of scientists and researchers who live in Antarctica have inhabited the only continent in the world without a reported case of Covid-19. But now the virus has reached even there.

“Three dozen people at a Chilean base have tested positive, the country’s army announced Monday.  On Tuesday, a regional health minister in Chile said there are 21 infections involving people aboard the Chilean navy’s Sargento Aldea supply vessel.”

U.S. personnel at Antarctic stations will have no contact with the Chilean stations.  Hundreds of personnel from all over still descend on the place as part of routine operations.

I mean it’s not like Antarctica has a Mount Sinai Hospital to go to.

Trump World

--As noted above, President Trump pardoned his former campaign chairman Paul Manafort, associate Roger Stone and Charles Kushner.  Manafort was convicted as part of the special counsel probe into Russian meddling in the 2016 election.  Trump had earlier commuted the criminal sentence of Stone, who was convicted of lying under oath to lawmakers.

It was the second wave of pardons Trump had issued in two days.  In total on Wednesday, he issued full pardons to 26 individuals and commuted part or all of the sentences of an additional three people.

Trump’s pardoning of Manafort spared the long-term Republican operative from serving the bulk of his 7 ½-year prison term.  Manafort, 70, was among the first in Trump’s inner circle to face charges brought by Special Counsel Robert Mueller as part of his probe into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election.

Stone was convicted in November 2019 by a Washington jury of lying under oath to lawmakers also investigating Russian interference.  Trump commuted his sentence in July, a day before Stone was due to begin serving a term of three years and four months.

Kushner, father of Jared Kushner, was sentenced to two years in prison after pleading guilty in 2004 to 18 counts of tax evasion, witness tampering and making unlawful campaign donations.  In an unusual twist, Kushner was prosecuted by Chris Christie, the former governor of New Jersey who has served as an advisor to Trump.  Christie has called Kushner’s case “one of the most loathsome, disgusting crimes” he prosecuted.

Nebraska Republican Sen. Ben Sasse on Wednesday blasted the president, saying in a statement, “This is rotten to the core.”

The statement added that “felons like Manafort and Stone” had “flagrantly and repeatedly violated the law and harmed Americans.”

--Trump tweets:

Last Saturday, the president was tweeting some of the following.

“He didn’t win the Election.  He lost all 6 Swing States, by a lot.  They then dumped hundreds of thousands of votes in each one, and got caught.  Now Republican politicians have to fight so that their great victory is not stolen. Don’t be weak fools!”

“The Cyber Hack is far greater in the Fake News Media than in actuality.  I have been fully briefed and everything is well under control. Russia, Russia, Russia is the priority chant when anything happens because Lamestream is, for mostly financial reasons, petrified of…

“…discussing the possibility that it may be China (it may!).  There could also have been a hit on our ridiculous voting machines during the election, which is now obvious that I won big, making it an even more corrupted embarrassment for the USA. @DNI_Ratcliffe @SecPompeo”

“GREATEST ELECTION FRAUD IN THE HISTORY OF OUR COUNTRY!!!”

“Why isn’t Congress giving our people a Stimulus Bill? It wasn’t their fault, it was the fault of China.  GET IT DONE, and give them more money in direct payments.”

“Martial law = Fake News.  Just more knowingly bad reporting!”

During the week….

“They are slow walking the signature verification in Georgia.  They don’t want results to get out prior to January 6th.  They know what they are trying so hard to hide.  Terrible people! @BrianKempGA”

“Distribution of both vaccines is going very smoothly.  Amazing how many people are being vaccinated, record numbers.  Our country, and indeed the World, will soon see the great miracle of what the Trump Administration has accomplished. They said it couldn’t be done!!!”

“THE DEMOCRATS DUMPED HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS OF BALLOTS IN THE SWING STATES LATE IN THE EVENING. IT WAS A RIGGED ELECTION!!!”

“Republicans in the Senate so quickly forget. Right now they would be down 8 seats without my backing them in the last Election.  RINO John Thune, ‘Mitch’s boy’, should just let it play out.  South Dakota doesn’t like weakness.  He will be primaried in 2022, political career over!!!”

“@BrianKempGA and his puppet @GeoffDuncanGA, together with the Secretary of State of Georgia, are very slow on Signature Verification, and won’t allow Fulton County to be examined.  What are these RINOS hiding?  We will easily win Presidential State race. @KLoeffler and….

“….@sendavidperdue will not be able to win on January 5th unless these people allow Signature Verification in presidential race. K & D need it for their race also, & Georgia spirit will rise to such a high that they will easily bring home a great victory.  Move fast @BrianKempGA”

“Big news coming out of Pennsylvania. Very big illegal ballot drop that cannot be accounted for Rigged Election!”

“Our embassy in Baghdad got hit Sunday by several rockets.  Three rockets failed to launch. Guess where they were from: IRAN.  Now we hear chatter of additional attacks against Americans in Iraq…

“…Some friendly health advice to Iran: If one American is killed, I will hold Iran responsible. Think it over.”

“After seeing the massive Voter Fraud in the 2020 Presidential Election, I disagree with anyone that thinks a strong, fast, and fair Special Counsel is not needed, IMMEDIATELY.  This was the most corrupt election in the history of our Country, and it must be closely examined!”

Thursday…Christmas Eve, for crying out loud…after he golfed….

“I saved at least 8 Republican Senators, including Mitch, from losing in the last Rigged (for President) Election.  Now they (almost all) sit back and watch me fight against a crooked and vicious foe, the Radical Left Democrats.  I will NEVER FORGET!”

“Twitter is going wild with their flags, trying hard to suppress even the truth.  Just shows how dangerous they are, purposely stifling free speech. Very dangerous for our Country. Does Congress know that this is how Communism starts? Cancel Culture at its worst. End Section 230!”

“VOTER FRAUD IS NOT A CONSPIRACY THEORY, IT IS A FACT!!!”

“At a meeting in Florida today, everyone was asking why aren’t the Republicans up in arms & fighting over the fact that the Democrats stole the rigged presidential election?  Especially in the Senate, they said, where you helped 8 Senators win their races.  How quickly they forget!”

“More than one million Americans have already received the China Virus Vaccine, a record pace!”

The Biden Administration

--President-elect Joe Biden offered his most detailed assessment yet for what he hopes to see in another round of economic stimulus next year, assuming the $900bn deal brokered with Congress is eventually signed by President Trump.

Biden praised the agreement, but he repeated his assertion it was only a “down payment” and that he would be asking lawmakers for billions more next year.

Among the items on his wish list are direct payments, spending for vaccine distribution and aid to local governments, a sticking point between Democrats and Republicans.  Biden also mentioned an extended moratorium on evictions and foreclosures as well as extended unemployment benefits, which under the new legislation would expire in March.

Biden brushed aside skepticism over the ability to pass another stimulus next year given the last measure took eight months to work through Congress and was accomplished only after Congress dropped some of the more contentious provisions, such as aid to state and local governments and liability protection for businesses.

“I don’t think it’s a honeymoon at all.  I think it’s a nightmare,” Biden said, arguing that Republicans would be hearing it from their constituents facing economic hardship as well as Democrats.  “They’re not doing me a favor.”

Biden emphasized that aside from spending more on vaccine distribution, “We’ll need more funding to help firefighters and police, many of whom are being laid off as I speak. The same with nurses risking their lives on the front lines.”

--President-elect Biden also blasted President Trump’s response to the cyber hack of government agencies and U.S. businesses, saying the administration must publicly identify the culprit of the sophisticated attack and take action in response.

“This assault happened on Donald Trump’s watch, when he wasn’t watching,” Biden told reporters.  “It’s still his responsibility as president to defend American interests for the next four weeks.  Rest assured, even if he doesn’t take it seriously, I will.”  Biden added “I see no evidence that it’s under control,” responding to Trump’s assertion shortly after the attack came to light.

--James T. Areddy and Andrew Duehren / Wall Street Journal

“Hunter Biden ramped up business activities with European and Chinese tycoons as his father exited the vice presidency four years ago. For him it was a potential path to income; for the tycoons, the Biden family name promised to burnish their reputations.

“The dealings got the younger Mr. Biden a discounted stake in a private-equity firm in China and consulting arrangements with a Romanian property magnate and overall allowed him to maintain a globe-trotting lifestyle, according to interviews, documents and communications reviewed by The Wall Street Journal.  A Chinese energy tycoon gave Mr. Biden a 2.8-carat diamond, and entities linked to him wired nearly $5 million to Mr. Biden’s law firm, according to an investigation by Senate Republicans.

“These arrangements now loom over President-elect Joe Biden.  A federal criminal tax investigation into Hunter Biden’s business dealings is under way, with findings potentially trickling out in coming months.  His business ties to well-connected people in China and other places could add to scrutiny of foreign-policy decisions taken by the Biden administration over possible conflicts of interest.  All are likely to provide ammunition to Republicans.

“Sen. Chuck Grassley (R., Iowa), who has led the Senate Finance Committee whose Republican staff helped investigate Hunter Biden, has said he would continue to look into what he says are possible counterintelligence and criminal concerns related to Mr. Biden’s business dealings.

“ ‘Based on all the facts known to date, Joe Biden has a lot of explaining to do,” Mr. Grassley said recently.

“Hunter Biden has said he takes the tax investigation ‘very seriously’ and is ‘confident that a professional and objective review of these matters will demonstrate that I handled my affairs legally and appropriately.’….

“None of the Journal’s reporting found that Joe Biden was involved in his son’s business activities.  The tax investigation doesn’t implicate the president-elect, according to people familiar with the matter.”

Yes, it’s an important story, so we’ll let the investigations run their course, as William Barr said should be the case.  No need for a special prosecutor.

Wall Street and the Economy

The economic news wasn’t particularly good this week as we had various readings on November activity.

Personal income in the month fell more than expected, -1.1%, while consumption (consumer spending) declined -0.4%.

November durable goods did rise 0.9%.

But existing home sales for the month declined for the first time in six months, -2.5% month-on-month to a 6.69 million annualized pace, but up 25.8% from a year ago.  The median existing home price rose 14.6% year-over-year to $310,800. The issue is inventory, as in lack of same, down to a record low with just a 2.3-month supply.

November new home sales unexpectedly plunged 11% to 841,000 annualized.

Weekly jobless claims, while better than expected at 803,000, down from the prior week’s figure of 892,000, were still above the 665,000 level of the 2008-09 Great Recession, as the claims number has been since March.

We did have our final look at third-quarter GDP, +33.4%.  But with the generally negative tone of this week’s data, the Atlanta Fed’s GDPNow barometer for the fourth quarter fell from 11.1% to 10.4%, which would still be very solid, though I expect it to come down further with December’s figures, amid some of the renewed coronavirus restrictions nationwide.

Europe and Asia

Zero economic data points worth discussing for the eurozone this week, and next, with a flood of data the first week in January.

But we did have the following rather important news.  First, how it went down this week…

…Brexit: Prime Minister Boris Johnson said on Monday that there were still problems in Brexit trade talks and that Britain would thrive without a deal.  Johnson said he spoke to French President Emmanuel Macron about border issues, but not about Brexit.

“The position is unchanged: there are problems,” Johnson told a news conference when asked if there would be a trade deal.  “WTO terms would be more than satisfactory for the UK. And we can certainly cope… It’s vital that everybody understands that the UK has got to be able to control its own laws completely and also that we’ve got to be able to control our own fisheries,” he said.

And then on Christmas Eve, the two sides reached agreement.

Ursula von der Leyen, the German head of the European Commission, emerged from the wrangling with her reputation enhanced.  “It was a long and winding road,” von der Leyen said, quoting Paul McCartney.  “But we have got a good deal to show for it… Finally we can leave Brexit behind us and look to the future. Europe is now moving on.”

“We have taken back control of our destiny,” Boris Johnson told reporters. “People said it was impossible, but we have taken back control.”

To the EU, Johnson said: “We will be your friend, your ally, your supporter and indeed, never let it be forgotten, your number one market.”

German Chancellor Angela Merkel desperately wanted a deal as she sees Britain as too close, too big and too important to be allowed to drift away without one.

The trade pact still requires approval by the British Parliament, which is slated to vote Dec. 30, and European leaders (the deal provisionally applied for up to two months to allow time for the European Parliament to scrutinize and ratify the deal), but it removes a major potential economic liability that had been hanging over Britain: the start of tariffs between the country and its largest trading partner.

Very broadly speaking….

The backbone of the deal is tariff-free and quota-free access for the UK to one of the world’s biggest markets that goes beyond the EU’s deals with Canada or Japan.

There will be mutual recognition of trusted trader programs, meaning UK producers will have to comply with both UK and EU standards.

There will be no more automatic recognition for doctors, nurses, architects, dentists, pharmacists, vets, engineers.  They will now have to seek recognition in the member state they wish to practice in.

UK nationals no longer have the freedom to work, study, start a business or live in the EU. Visas will be required for stays over 90 days. Coordination of some social security benefits such as old-age pensions and healthcare will make it easier to work abroad and not lose any pre-existing build up on contributions to national insurance.

On the issue of fisheries, the UK will leave the common fisheries policy.

The annual turnover of EU fishing vessels from British waters is around 650m euros – compared with 850m for the UK-flagged fleet.  New quotas reducing the EU’s share by 25% are due to be phased in over 5 ½ years.  After this, the two sides will hold annual negotiations.

The EU vessels that fish six to 12 nautical miles from the British coastline will be able to continue during the transition, but access will be negotiated thereafter.

On State Aid, the EU had insisted the UK align with its rules.  Brussels was concerned that the UK government would seek to find a competitive advantage through subsidies.  The UK successfully killed off this idea and will set up its own subsidy regime, a major concession by the EU.  The deal nonetheless allows both parties to adopt remedial measures if there is evidence that the domestic enforcement body has failed to uphold shared principles.

Both sides agreed to a minimum level of environmental, social and labor standards below which neither must go.

Ursula von der Leyen said there would be a review after four years to ensure the level playing field was working.

Aside from fisheries, dispute resolution was the biggest obstacle to a deal.  If either side feels trade is being distorted, it can take measures after consultation.  There will be an arbitration panel.  But it seems there will be other UK-EU governance committees to implement and enforce the treaty.

Aviation and haulage (trucking) will continue as before with passenger and cargo planes still able to fly and land in the EU including stopover flights from Heathrow and elsewhere in the UK that originated from outside the UK.  Haulers will also be allowed to continue to drive without special permits allocated in limited numbers to countries outside the EU. This comes as a relief to the logistics industry which feared drivers being locked out in significant numbers.

But there will be a new deal on flights, which is being negotiated.

As for the Ireland issue and the border, there do not appear to be any changes.

In the end, though, the trade deal grants Britain more rights within the European Union than any other third country. But it does create a ton of paperwork and inevitable delays and does not include services, which make up some 80 percent of the British economy.

There will be cross-border frictions on transactions, which will now require customs checks and new documentation.  Everything from food safety regulation and exporting rules to product certification will change. The Brexit-caused disruption will hit the British economy.

And it’s going to have a larger and more negative impact on Britain, given the comparative size of the two entities. Britain earns about 13 percent of its gross domestic product from exports to the EU, while the EU earns just 3 percent of its GDP from exports to Britain.

But investors and business groups were relieved that a break without a deal had been avoided.

Needless to say this is a still unfolding story, and will be for months, and years, to come.

---

We had a preview of chaos at the ports this week as angry truckers were stranded outside the English port of Dover, many since Sunday, though this was due to concerns on the part of France regarding the new Covid variant in the UK.  Many of the truckers were now going to miss Christmas with their families.

Finally, the French government agreed to ease its travel ban, Wednesday.  French citizens, British nationals living in France and haulers are among those now able to travel – if they have a recent negative Covid test.

Belgium and the Netherlands also relaxed bans on arrivals from the UK, as long as they have a recent negative result.

But more than 50 other countries, including Italy, India and Pakistan, are continuing to block travelers from the UK.

Separately, British car production fell only slightly in November due to a weak Nov. 2019 by comparison when some plants were closed due to Brexit concerns, but year-to-date production so far in 2020 is down 31%.

“Yet another decline for UK car production is of course concerning, but not nearly as concerning as the New Year nightmare facing the automotive industry if we do not get a Brexit deal that works for the sector,” the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders said.

Turning to Asia…nothing of note from China, while we had some important data in Japan.

Retail sales in November rose a less than expected 0.7% year-on-year, while the jobless rate fell to 2.9% from 3.1% the month before.

Tokyo’s core consumer price index (ex-fresh food) for December, a barometer for the nation overall, fell at the fastest pace in ten years, -0.9%.  For the Bank of Japan, which has been targeting 2% inflation for seemingly decades, not good.

In Taiwan, November exports surged 29.7% to a record high $57.8 billion, according to the Ministry of Economic Affairs.  The ministry said December would likely see growth of 29% to 33%.

Taiwan’s export orders are benefiting this quarter from a boost in holiday-season buying and tighter pandemic controls in Europe and the U.S. driving demand for technology products as people increasingly work and study from home.

The export figures include orders for goods that are made overseas by Taiwan’s firms, and include products such as the iPhone, which is assembled in China and elsewhere by companies whose ownership is in Taiwan.  Such orders indicate local companies with facilities in China, Southeast Asia and elsewhere are seeing robust business.

Street Bytes

--Stocks were mixed in the holiday-shortened week, with the Dow Jones tacking on 0.1% to 30199, while the S&P 500 lost 0.2% and Nasdaq gained 0.4%, after hitting a new closing high of 12807 on Tuesday.

The addition of Tesla to the S&P 500 had led to volatility, as last Friday, ahead of the formal move, institutional buying of Tesla shares forced the stock up as index-tracking managers rushed to add the shares to their funds.  But then the stock fell about 6% on its first day as part of the index Monday, though it bounced back some by week’s end.

Separately, CEO Elon Musk said he’s open to the possibility of joining his various businesses under one umbrella, though he’s likely just toying with the idea.  [Tesla, SpaceX, tunneling outfit The Boring Company and brain-implant startup Neuralink.]

--U.S. Treasury Yields

6-mo. 0.09%  2-yr. 0.12%  10-yr. 0.92%  30-yr. 1.66%

--Commercial crude inventories in the U.S. recorded a weekly decline in mid-December, falling 600,000 barrels to 499.5 million in the week ended Dec. 18, the Energy Information Administration said Wednesday.  Stockpiles remain about 11% above their five-year average for this time of year.  Inventories dropped by 3.1 million barrels a week earlier, so a second straight decline, but this is after a startling 15 million barrel buildup earlier this month.

But prices were impacted by the assumed passage of a coronavirus relief bill, which is expected to fuel consumption and thus translate into stronger demand for oil.  Talk of a Brexit agreement also helped.

Overall, oil slipped to $48.30 on the week.

Separately, Venezuela has resumed direct shipments of oil to China after U.S. sanctions sent the trade underground for more than a year, according to Refinitiv Eikon vessel-tracking data and internal documents from state company Petroleos de Venezuela (PDVSA).

The U.S. State Department has no comment as yet.

China has joined Venezuela’s close allies – Russia and Cuba – in publicly criticizing sanctions on the OPEC member.

--Airlines are preparing to call back tens of thousands of workers they let go in October as part of the coronavirus relief bill, assuming it eventually gets signed, as it includes $15 billion for airlines to pay all their workers.

Many airline executives remain hopeful that there is pent-up demand for travel that could be unleashed next summer, at which point the airlines will need as many pilots, flight attendants, mechanics, and baggage handlers as they can get in order to keep up.  Airlines furloughed over 32,000 workers in October when the government aid they received last spring ran out.

But the new Covid variant that emerged in the UK, and now elsewhere, illustrates how quickly prospects for a recovery in travel could change.

United Airlines said it plans to bring back its workers, but cautioned that it may be only temporary.

“The truth is, we just don’t see anything in the data that shows a huge difference in bookings over the next few months,” said CEO Scott Kirby and President Brett Hart in a message shared with employees on Monday.

American Airlines said on Wednesday it still plans to recall furloughed employees and give them paychecks by Dec. 24, even after President Trump threatened to not sign the coronavirus relief bill that includes the payroll support.

“While this is an unexpected development, we are moving forward with recall plans and furloughed team members will receive funds in their accounts on Christmas Eve as planned,” a spokeswoman said.

--Lufthansa and its pilots reached an agreement that secures jobs until end of March 2022 and could help reduce costs by as much as $550 million.  Like its rivals, Lufthansa is struggling to deal with global travel restrictions and grounded fleets.  Lufthansa had said it would have to lay off 1,000 pilots in the second quarter it if couldn’t seal a wage agreement with the unions.

The agreement includes an extension of shortened working hours in 2021 as a well as a reduction in working hours with corresponding salary cuts.

--An Air Canada Boeing 737-8 MAX on a test flight suffered engine issues that forced the crew to shut down one of the plane’s engines and make an emergency landing in Tucson, Arizona, Aviation24.be reported.

Shortly after takeoff, the crew received an indication of hydraulic low pressure in the left engine, the website said.  The three-member crew of the empty plane initially decided to continue the flight to Montreal, but shut down the engine and diverted to Tucson after receiving an indication of a fuel imbalance from the left-hand wing, Aviation24.be said.

--Back to United, it is dealing with a serious issue.  A recent UAL flight 591 bound for Los Angeles from Orlando, Fla., was diverted to New Orleans for a medical emergency.  A passenger was then transported to a local hospital, where he was pronounced dead.

It then came to light United couldn’t confirm whether the passenger had Covid-19, but said it had received information indicating he did have symptoms of the disease when he traveled.  The airline said it had been contacted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Medical responders told United at the time that the passenger had suffered cardiac arrest.

But a passenger posted on social media that the deceased’s wife had told emergency responders that her husband had Covid symptoms.  United requires passengers to affirm before traveling that they haven’t been tested positive, experienced common symptoms of the disease, or been exposed to someone who tested positive in the previous two weeks.  But it is virtually impossible to verify if the passengers are answering truthfully, and it certainly seems this couple didn’t.

One brave passenger issued mouth-to-mouth to try to revive the victim.

--China has launched an investigation into Alibaba Group for suspected monopolistic behavior, regulators said on Thursday.  Regulators had previously warned the e-commerce giant about the so-called “choosing one from two” practice under which merchants are required to sign exclusive cooperation pacts preventing them from offering products on rival platforms. 

Financial regulators will also meet with Alibaba’s Ant Group in the coming days, according to a separate online statement by the People’s Bank of China on Thursday, escalating scrutiny over the twin pillars of billionaire Jack Ma’s internet empire.  The meeting is to “guide Ant Group to implement financial supervision, fair competition and protect the legitimate rights and interests of consumers,” the statement said.  Ant said it has received a notice from regulators, and that it will “seriously study and strictly comply with all regulatory requirements and commit full efforts to fulfil all related work.”

Regulators have become increasingly uncomfortable with parts of Ant’s sprawling empire, chiefly its most lucrative credit business that contributed close to 40% of Ant’s revenue in the first half of the year.

Once hailed as drivers of economic prosperity and symbols of the country’s technological prowess, Alibaba and rivals like Tencent Holdings Ltd. face increasing pressure after amassing hundreds of millions of users and gaining influence over almost every aspect of daily life in China.

“It’s clearly an escalation of coordinated efforts to rein in Jack Ma’s empire, which symbolized China’s new ‘too-big-to-fail’ entities,” said Dong Ximiao, a researcher at Zhongguancun Internet Finance Institute.  “Chinese authorities want to see a smaller, less dominant and more compliant firm.”

Ma has all but vanished from public view since Ant’s initial public offering was pulled last month.  As of early December, he was supposedly advised by the government to stay in the country.

Those following the situation closely have told the South China Morning Post that they don’t think Ma is going to be arrested, but the very public rebuke from earlier is a warning that Beijing has lost patience with the outsize power of its tech moguls, increasingly seen as a threat to the political and financial stability President Xi Jinping values most.

Chinese official media at week’s end played down the significance of the antitrust probe, framing the move as a necessary technical step to ensure the healthy development of the industry.

People’s Daily, the official newspaper of the Chinese Communist Party, published two opinion pieces in two days interpreting the investigation as a move to help, not harm, the industry.

“For the platform economy, the strengthening of anti-monopoly supervision will not bring about a ‘winter’ of the industry, but rather a new starting point for better and healthier development,” the newspaper said in its second commentary on Friday.

Shares in Alibaba fell 13% Thursday in response to the news.

--Apple shares jumped nearly 5% on Tuesday after Reuters reported that the iPhone maker is aiming to produce a passenger vehicle by 2024 with its own battery technology.  Central to the company’s strategy is a new battery design that could “radically” reduce the cost of batteries and increase the vehicle’s range, according to the report.

Shares of electric-car maker Tesla fell in response on Tuesday, after suffering losses following its debut on the S&P 500 the day before.

Apple has decided to tap outside partners for elements of the system, including lidar sensors, which help self-driving cars get a three-dimensional view of the road, Reuters reported.  So shares of Velodyne Lidar, which I had never heard of, a supplier of lidar systems for Apple’s fleet of self-driving test vehicles, jumped 14%.

It remains unclear who would assemble an Apple-branded car, but supposedly the company would rely on a manufacturing partner to build vehicles.

--The Trump administration sued Walmart Inc. Tuesday, accusing it of helping to fuel the opioid crisis by inadequately screening for questionable prescriptions despite repeated warnings from its own pharmacists.

The Justice Department’s lawsuit claims Walmart sought to boost profits by understaffing its pharmacies and pressuring employees to fill prescriptions quickly.  That made it difficult for pharmacists to reject invalid prescriptions, enabling widespread drug abuse nationwide, the suit alleges.

Walmart responded in a filing, saying the lawsuit “invents a legal theory that unlawfully forces pharmacists to come between patients and their doctors, and is riddled with factual inaccuracies and cherry-picked documents taken out of context.”

“Blaming pharmacists for not second-guessing the very doctors [the Drug Enforcement Administration] approved to prescribe opioids is a transparent attempt to shift blame from DEA’s well-documented failures in keeping bad doctors from prescribing opioids in the first place,” Walmart said, adding that it “always empowered our pharmacists to refuse to fill problematic opioids prescriptions, and they refused to fill hundreds of thousands of such prescriptions.”

Walmart had been expecting this complaint and sued the government preemptively in October.  That suit accuses the Justice Department and DEA of attempting to scapegoat the company for what it says are the federal government’s own regulatory and enforcement shortcomings.

Walmart started with cut-rate prices on opioids that initially drove shoppers to its stores, the government alleges.  Middle managers pressured pharmacists to work faster, the suit says, believing quick-fill prescriptions drew customers to stay and keep shopping.

--Zillow Group said Monday it expects 2021 to be “a year unlike any other” for the U.S. housing market with annual sales growth of 21.9% over 2020 for a total of 6.9 million homes sold.

For 2021, Zillow said it predicts annual sales growth to be at its fastest pace since 1983 as the vaccine rollout and expected future economic recovery will bring more sellers into the market to meet the strong demand for homes and ultimately create more transactions.

Moreover, the company said that the adoption of digital innovations in the real estate market during the pandemic will help boost the pace of transactions for 2021 and beyond.

“Zillow expects a perfect storm of market conditions to create the hottest spring shopping season in recent memory,” Zillow said in a statement.

“It’s likely Covid-19 vaccine distribution will be well underway in the U.S. by the spring, and local economies and schools should be in the process of opening back up,” it added.

--Exercise bike maker Peloton Interactive Inc. said on Monday it would buy peer Precor in a deal valued at $420 million as it looks to boost its U.S. manufacturing capacity and market share for fitness products.  

Demand for streaming exercise services and home work-out equipment soared during the pandemic from people largely working from home.

“We have seen a ton of growth.  No one would wish a global pandemic on anybody, but it’s been a tailwind for our business,” Peloton President William Lynch said on Monday.  But the surge in demand forced the company last month to admit that the wait time for certain products had been “unacceptably long.”  The acquisition is supposed to address that issue by adding major U.S. manufacturing capacity.

--New York’s Metropolitan Transportation Authority is expected to receive $4 billion from the coronavirus relief bill if it’s signed, which would allow it to operate the city and state’s commuter rail, bus and subways without the feared 40% to 50% service cuts in 2021.  The fact is, though, ridership remains down about 80%, and the MTA is likely to need further bailouts over the next few years.

For outsiders who don’t understand, the rails, subways and buses are how the region’s essential workers get around and their fares have been rising far more than their incomes over the years.

--A California judge ordered billionaire “Bond King” Bill Gross to stop tormenting his Laguna Beach neighbor by blasting the “Gilligan’s Island” theme song on a mind-numbing loop.

Orange County Superior Court Judge Kimberly Knill said there was “clear and convincing evidence” that Gross and his partner, Amy Schwartz, blared that and other tunes to harass neighbor Mark Towfiq in retaliation for a complaint he filed about a sculpture outside Gross’ oceanfront mansion.

Speaking from the bench, Knill cited what she called credible testimony from Towfiq, his wife and two local cops who heard the racket – as well as foreboding text messages Gross fired off after Towfiq complained about the music.

The music, which played from July into October, was a “knowing and willful course and pattern of conduct constituting harassment,” Knill said.

She slapped Gross and Schwartz with a three-year restraining order banning them from playing music outside their home when no one is in the backyard pool area.  They also can’t contact or come within five yards of Towfiq and his wife, except in connection with legal proceedings or if they’re on their own property.

This is not the first time Mr. Gross has acted like a jerk, but we hereby award him with the 2020 StocksandNews Corporate Jerk of the Year Award…trophy in the mail.

--Nat Ives of the Wall Street Journal reported that Corona-branded beer and hard seltzer remained basically unchanged in the U.S. this year, according to IRI, a Chicago-based market research firm.  This despite all the early coronavirus headlines that suggested Corona could be damaged as a brand with a suddenly awkward name.

Some polling back in February noted that consumer sentiment around the brand was deteriorating.  But data and analytics company YouGov PLC noted Monday that the situation changed soon thereafter.

Foreign Affairs

Israel: A bill proposed to avoid the Knesset’s dispersal and the fourth elections over the last two years failed to pass on Monday night, and now Israelis are headed back to the polls in March.

47 MKs voted for, 49 against and so the Knesset was dissolved.

The heads of Likud (Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu) and Blue-and-White (Benny Gantz) thought that there would be a majority to pass the bill, but they were surprised when three Blue-and-White MKs and one Likud MK voted against it.

Netanyahu tweeted in response to the vote that the “Blue and White [party] withdrew from the agreements and dragged us to unnecessary choices during the Corona crisis. We do not want elections and we voted against them tonight as well, but we are not afraid of elections – because we will win.”

Gantz had made new demands for preventing a new election, but it was about the 2020 budget, which never formally was adopted due to all the emergency measures this year, and then setting a deadline for passing the 2021 state budget by January 5.

“I regret that the prime minister is preoccupied with his trial and not the public interest and is prepared to drag the entire country into a period of uncertainty, instead of ensuring economic stability and a rehabilitation of the economy,” Gantz said.

“If Likud won’t meet our demands, we will head to elections with our head held high, having put Israel before everything else, and let the voters decide,” Gantz said at the time.

So we’re headed for another vicious campaign, something Netanyahu specializes in as he spouts one outrageous claim after another to secure his far-right base.

Iraq: The barrage of rockets launched at the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad Sunday was the largest attack on the capital’s Green Zone since 2010, numbering 21 missiles, the top U.S. military commander for the Middle East said.

Iraq’s president denounced the rocket firings as a “terrorist act.”

An after-action review by the U.S. Central Command indicated the attack was much larger than the eight rockets that the Iraqis initially reported.

The attack appears to have been countered by the American D-RAM radar-guided defensive systems that the U.S. has deployed to protect the embassy, American officials say, and other rockets missed their mark.

No Americans were hurt in the attack, which damaged two buildings.  One Iraqi soldier was injured.

Afghanistan: Acting Defense Secretary Chris Miller secretly traveled to Afghanistan (which as is the case in all these missions we learned after the fact) to affirm one of President Trump’s final orders in office – the controversial drawdown of U.S. troops to just 2,500 by Jan. 15 – while U.S. officials press for peace in talks with Afghan government and Taliban leaders.

What irks the hell out of me, aside from the drawdown, is that just one week earlier, Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Mark Milley was there for the same purpose, to assess the drawdown.  Why the hell then waste a ton of money sending an “acting” secretary who is out in weeks anyway?

Miller, as a member of the U.S. Special Forces, was among the first into Afghanistan in Dec. 2001, and it seems he just wanted to take a little nostalgia tour on the American taxpayers’ dime.

In the meantime, the violence continued.  A car bombing in Kabul targeting an Afghan lawmaker killed at least nine people, officials said, with the lawmaker surviving the blast though injured.

Afghanistan has seen a sharp rise in violence, particularly bombings, in recent weeks as the Afghan government and Taliban hold talks to find an end to the almost 20-year-long war.

Other bombings were reported in four different provinces, killing scores of security forces and civilians.  One in Ghazi killed 15 children, though this may have been the result of the children trying to sell a piece of unexploded ordnance.

China: Hong Kong media tycoon Jimmy Lai was granted bail ($1.3 million) on Wednesday and placed under house arret by the city’s High Court.

Lai, founder of Next Digital, which owns Apple Daily newspaper, spent 20 days in custody after first being charged with fraud, then with collusion under the Beijing-imposed national security law.

No word on a trial date.

Separately, Taiwan’s navy and air force were deployed on Sunday as a Chinese aircraft carrier group led by the country’s newest carrier, the Shandong, sailed through the sensitive Taiwan Strait, the day after a U.S. warship transited the same waterway.

Beijing has been angered by increased U.S. support for Taiwan, including new arms sales and visits to Taipei by senior U.S. officials, further straining already poor Sino-U.S. ties.

The other day, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said that President-elect Biden should work to “rebuild mutual trust” with Beijing. Wang urged Biden to have the “right perception” of China and cooperate with Beijing “to restart dialogue, return bilateral relations to the right track and rebuild mutual trust.”

“We have noted the four priorities laid out by President-elect Joe Biden. We believe that at least three – Covid response, economic recovery and climate change – provide space for cooperation between our two countries,” Wang said.

Wang said the Trump administration’s decision to confront China on multiple fronts at the same time – the “all of government” approach – was “going in a wrong direction.”

“China is not a threat to the United States, was not, is not and will not be a threat to the United States,” he said.

Wang defended China’s policies in Xinjiang and Tibet, saying that they were not subject to foreign interference, and that the U.S. sanctions over these issues were based on “false information” and violated international law.  “As an independent sovereign state, China naturally has to respond,” he said.

Wang also criticized the Trump administration’s recent expansion of sanctions on Chinese companies and individuals, and the restriction on some Chinese to travel and study in the U.S. ostensibly for security reasons.

“To view all Chinese students, experts and scholars in the U.S. as spy suspects actually says more about the mentality of the accusers and their lack of confidence,” he said.

“China has no intention to pick a fight with the United States, either in diplomacy, media, or any other field.”

Au contraire, mon frere.  Joe Biden needs to send a signal of strength early on after he takes office.

Today, a top Japanese defense official urged Biden to “be strong” in supporting Taiwan in the face of an aggressive China, calling the island’s safety a “red line.”

“We are concerned China will expand its aggressive stance into areas other than Hong Kong.  I think one of the next targets, or what everyone worries about, is Taiwan,” State Minister of Defense Yasuhide Nakayama told Reuters.

Japan shares strategic interests with Taiwan, which sits in sea lanes through which much of Japan’s energy supplies and trade flow.

Russia: Russian law enforcement agencies opened a criminal case against Lyubov Sobol, an ally of Alexei Navalny, and took her in for questioning early on Friday after raiding her home, Navalny and his supporters said.

Supporters said the police action appeared to be a response to Sobol visiting the home of an alleged FSB security service agent in Moscow.  Navalny had earlier said the man took part in a botched plot to poison him in August.

The FSB has dismissed Navalny’s allegations as a provocation designed to discredit it.

Monday, Navalny revealed he carried off a sting operation that culminated in the stunning revelation he had phoned one of the agents responsible for his attempted poisoning and duped the agent into providing details of the operation.

Meanwhile, Russia expects nothing good in relations with a “deeply hostile” U.S. under the incoming administration of Joe Biden and has no plans to make unilateral concessions to improve ties, Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov said.

“We are heading from bad to worse,” Ryabkov said in an interview with the Interfax news service published Wednesday.  “The next U.S. president has been left with a bad legacy and it will take a long time for him to sort this out.”

Moscow hasn’t initiated any contacts with Biden’s transition team “and we are not going to do this,” said Ryabkov, who oversees Russia-U.S. relations.  “In the end, it’s up to the Americans to decide what, when and how to make our bilateral relations.”

The comments come as Washington has blamed Russia for the massive cyberattack that hit a wide range of government departments and Fortune 500 companies.  Russia has denied responsibility.

Ryabkov dismissed the controversy, saying Russia registers hacking attempts from U.S. and other foreign sources “every day” and “we don’t make a fuss about it.”

“We definitely don’t expect anything good,” Raybkov said of the incoming Biden administration.  It would be strange to expect better ties “from people who, many of them, have spent their careers engaging in Russophobia and throwing mud at my country,” he said.

Throwing mud for good reason, my good sir.

Lastly, Vladimir Putin signed a bill that prevents former Russian presidents and their families from being held legally responsible for anything they do for the rest of their lives, according to The Guardian.

The legislation also means former presidents and their families would not have to answer to law enforcement or allow searches of their persons or properties.  Under current Russian law, a president is immune from prosecution related to activities conducted while in office, but can reportedly be tried for treason or crimes deemed grave by the courts.

This is a big deal.  Some of us have been waiting for it for years, after Alexei Navalny and others began to expose the personal fortunes of the likes of Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev and Putin.  Vlad is worth $billions, according to Navalny’s work and that of various intelligence agencies.  And let’s just say this wasn’t exactly accumulated through legal means.  Newsweek reported in 2019 that Putin’s net worth could be between $70 and $200 billion.

Ethiopia: This nation is rapidly turning into a state of chaos with fighting breaking out in a new region, Ethiopian troops killing 42 in western Benishangul-Gumuz region, as Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed said he was sending more soldiers to secure the region bordering Sudan, a day after unidentified gunmen killed more than 222 people in a village there, as the Red Cross confirmed today (the death toll soared from an initial estimate).

Ethiopia has been grappling with outbreaks of violence, most recently in Tigray, since Abiy was appointed in 2018 and accelerated democratic reforms that loosened the state’s iron grip on regional rivalries.

The government has called for parliamentary elections on June 5, 2021, as Abiy tries to quell the strife.

Random Musings

--Presidential approval ratings….

Gallup: 39% approval of President Trump’s job performance, 57% disapproval; 87% of Republicans approve, 34% of independents (Dec. 1-17).  A distinct change from the Nov. 5-19 numbers…43% approval, 55% disapproval, 90% Republicans, 39% independents.
Rasmussen: 45% approve of Trump’s job performance, 52% disapprove (Dec. 23).

--According to a USA TODAY/Suffolk University Poll, asked how history would judge Trump’s presidency, 16% of registered voters surveyed between Dec. 16-20 said Trump will be seen as a great president, 13% as a good president, 16% as a fair president, and 50% as a failed president.  Five percent are undecided.

But while an overwhelming 70%-26% say it is time for Trump to concede the election now that the Electoral College has voted, Republicans by double digits, 57%-37%, say he shouldn’t.

71% of Republicans said they would support him if he ran in 2024, and another 16% say they would consider it.  Just 10% say they wouldn’t.  I want to see these numbers in six months.

--Robert M. Gates / op-ed New York Times

“President-elect Joe Biden appears to be framing his foreign policy around three themes: re-engaging with America’s friends and allies, renewing our participation in international organizations and relying more heavily on nonmilitary instruments of power. Considering the challenges posed by China and other countries, as well as transnational threats that range from pandemics to climate change, these are, in my view, the correct priorities.  (Though, of course, unparalleled military power must remain the backdrop for America’s relations with the world.)

“In each case, however, a return to the pre-Trump status quo will be inadequate to the task.  In each, it is necessary to reform, revitalize and restructure the American approach.

“Our NATO allies, as well as Japan, South Korea and others, will welcome America’s reaffirmation of its security commitments and its switch to respectful dialogue after the confrontational Trump years. But the new administration ought to insist on our allies doing more on several fronts.  President Trump’s pressure on them to spend more on defense was a continuation of a theme across multiple presidencies.  That pressure must continue.

“But it’s not just on military spending that the new administration needs to take a tough stand with allies.  Germany must be held to account not just for its pathetic level of military spending, but also for trading the economic and security interests of Poland and Ukraine for the economic benefits of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline running from Russia to Germany.

“Turkey’s purchase of the Russian S-400 air defense system against repeated American warnings must have costs.  (Recently imposed sanctions are a good start.) …Actions by member states contrary to the interests of other allies ought not be ignored.

“The United States needs to take the lead in NATO, an ‘alliance of democracies,’ to devise consequences for member states – such as Turkey, Hungary and, increasingly, Poland – that move toward (or have totally embraced) authoritarianism. There is no provision in the NATO Charter for removing a member state, but creative diplomacy is possible, including suspension or other punitive steps.

“Mr. Biden’s embrace of the international organizations that Mr. Trump has spurned must be accompanied by an agenda for their improvement. Despite their many problems, these organizations serve useful purposes and can be effective conduits for American influence around the world….

“The new administration must insist on the far-reaching organizational reform of international organizations (such as the W.H.O.), using all the diplomatic and economic leverage we can muster to make effective reform actually happen.  Simply showing up again is not good enough.

“Closer to home, as the new administration commits to far greater reliance on nonmilitary tools like conventional diplomacy, development assistance and public diplomacy to protect America’s interests and advance our objectives, it needs to recognize that those tools overall are in serious need of investment and updating.  Our national security apparatus – designed in 1947 – needs to be restructured for the 21st century….

“Finally, America’s strategic communications – our ability to spread our message and influence governments and peoples – are pitifully inadequate and outdated.

“In the early 2000s, President Hu Jintao of China committed some $7 billion to vastly expand China’s international media and influence capabilities.  By way of contrast, in 1998, Congress abolished the U.S. Information Agency; subsequently, ‘public diplomacy’ was tucked into a corner of the State Department in an organization that today doesn’t even report directly to the secretary of state.

“There is no coordination of messaging across the government, and efforts to make better use of social media and other new technologies have been laggard and disjointed.  Surely, the country that invented marketing, public relations and the internet can figure out how to recapture primacy in strategic communications.

“Misgivings linger abroad about whether American re-engagement (and reliability) will last beyond this new administration – and about the new president’s views on the use of military power.  That said, there is considerable relief among most of our allies and friends that Mr. Biden has won the election.

“This provides the new president with considerable leverage to revitalize and strengthen alliances and international institutions and to show at home that doing so advances American interests around the world and the well-being of our own citizens.  This would be an enduring legacy for the Biden administration.”

--Jonah Goldberg / New York Post

“Throughout President Trump’s capture of the GOP, many Republicans have held fast to the hope that after he leaves office, the party can return to the sunny Reaganism of the Before Times.  Of course, Trump’s bitter-enders have made it clear that they’d be happy to tear down not just the party, but the country itself to avoid having to live in a post-Trump world.

“It might have seemed as if we hit rock bottom this month, when the Texas attorney general sued the swing states that decided the election for Joe Biden, demanding to have tens of millions of legal votes erased and the election effectively handed to Trump.  More than 100 Republican House members and 17 Republican state attorneys general lent their names in support.

“The Supreme Court rejected that idiotic suit, but no rebuke or reason seems to be able to divert this movement from where it’s headed. Allen West, the head of the Texas Republican Party, issued a bizarre statement after the ruling, suggesting that perhaps ‘law-abiding states should bond together and form a union of states that will abide by the Constitution.’

“Now, Team Trump appears to be moving past the election altogether, since it has failed spectacularly to alter that reality.  Instead, former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn has been leading calls for martial law to save the Trump presidency.

“Over the weekend, Kelli Ward, the head of Arizona’s Republican Party, tweeted to assure Trump that Arizona is ‘working every avenue to stop this coup,’ using the hashtag #CrossTheRubicon.  The best defense of Ward is that she has a thumbless grasp of what that phrase actually means: Julius Caesar’s illegal crossing of the Rubicon River with his troops marked the end of the Roman Republic and the beginning of Caesarian tyranny.

“As ridiculous as such talk is, many GOPers still think this is all a temporary fever, a last gasp of Trump’s cynical performative nonsense aimed at venting anger and raising money. They think the GOP can still go back to being the party of Reagan.

“One reason for skepticism is the latest move by Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas. Cruz has long been a reliable bellwether for the mood of the broader GOP base, which is why he switched from one of Trump’s biggest critics to one of his biggest supporters – and why he offered to argue the Texas lawsuit before the Supreme Court.

“No politician in recent memory has wrapped himself more in Reagan’s legacy than Cruz. He’s read all the biographies, can quote all the big speeches and has said countless times that he models himself after the Gipper.

“So it was revealing that on Friday, Cruz single-handedly scuttled an effort to protect Hong Kongers facing persecution for supporting democracy. The measure, so uncontroversial that it passed unanimously by voice vote in the House, is vintage Reagan.

“ ‘We shall continue America’s tradition as a land that welcomes peoples from other countries,’ Reagan declared in his 1981 speech on immigration.  ‘We shall also, with other countries, continue to share in the responsibility of welcoming and resettling those who flee oppression.’

“Indeed, Cruz issued a statement in June commemorating the 33rd anniversary of Reagan’s Berlin Wall speech, saying, ‘America should remember’ that ‘our principles can tear down walls.’  While the Berlin Wall may be gone, he added, ‘the evils of tyranny still exist today, and nowhere is that more evident than in Hong Kong, where the Chinese Communist Party has moved to crush Hong Kong’s autonomy and strip away their freedoms.’

“This Christmas, Cruz says we can’t lend support to potential victims of tyranny, because giving them temporary protection could be ‘used by the Chinese Communists to send even more Chinese spies into the United States.’  He also suggested that the time-limited, Hong Kong-specific adjustment is really a Trojan horse for the Dems’ radical approach to immigration.

“None of this withstands close scrutiny. But that’s not the point.  If Cruz thinks fighting for Reaganite principles is a political loser, that should tell you something about how far we are from a return to Reaganism.”

--Last time I didn’t have a chance to note the comments of Jennifer Horn, former chair of the New Hampshire Republican Party, and a co-founder of The Lincoln Project, in an op-ed for USA TODAY.

“My mother spent a lifetime trying to teach me to stand for what is right.  ‘You do the right thing because it is the right thing,’ she would tell me, ‘no matter how hard it might be.  You will be better and stronger for having done so.’

“I became a Republican in part because those values seemed inherently aligned with the Republican Party as I understood it: a voice for equality, freedom and constitutional conservatism, with a rich history of fighting for what was right because it was right.

“I ran for Congress and became the Republican nominee running on those beliefs.  I was elected to two terms as the chairman of the New Hampshire Republican party and advancing those values.  I have spent the past 20 years engaged in the fight for these foundational American principles – as a Republican.

“For the past five years, however, I have found myself fighting for what I thought were the principles of my party in the face of the ever-deteriorating character and integrity of party representatives.  They have revealed their impotence and decrepitude as they have fallen, one by one, at the feet of the most corrupt, destructive and unstable president in the history of our country.

“It seems there is no assault on human dignity too great, no attack on democracy too extreme, to inspire the Republican weaklings in Congress to speak up or stand up to President Donald Trump.

“With very few exceptions, election Republicans have been silent in the face of this president’s most contemptuous and at times barbaric actions.  They have defended and excused his impeachable betrayals.

“Worst of all, they have openly supported his attempts to sabotage the Constitution and dismantle democracy as we know it.  Trump’s post-election attempts to invalidate millions of legitimate votes through an abuse of the judicial system, culminating in a Texas lawsuit to block Joe Biden wins in Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, amount to no less than an attempted coup.  And they have been openly encouraged and supported by every level of the Republican Party.

“I have been asked thousands of times how I can continue to call myself a Republican in the face of such dangerous, anti-American actions.

“The truth is, I cannot.

“Those ideals that I have spent so many years fighting for – liberty, conservatism, constitutional leadership – are no longer the principles of the Republican Party.  Never did I believe I would see the day when the party of Abraham Lincoln would try to invalidate millions of legitimate ballots and enlist in an effort to overthrow the lawful government of the United States.

“Yet, that is where we are today.  In the weeks since the election, the GOP has ransacked the Constitution.  Republicans have demeaned our republic with their attempts to steal an election as if we were no more than a third-rate banana republic.  They have humiliated themselves and disgraced our great nation.

“As I watched the Republican Party and its elected leaders across the country coalesce around the most unpatriotic assault on our elections that I have ever seen, it became clear to me that the party of Lincoln is no more.

“Just as Abraham Lincoln understood that America could not continue to stand with so destructive an institution as slavery, so have I come to understand that America and today’s Republican Party cannot coexist.

“The GOP has become so destructive an institution – by embracing racism, accepting hatred and cruelty as the foundation for policy, and by advocating for and advancing the overthrow of democracy in America – that it has become wholly incompatible with the constitutional pillars of our country….

“More importantly, however, I am reminded in this moment that freedom and democracy are fragile concepts. They are not tangible objects to be protected by tucking them in the back of a drawer.  Each one of us as Americans must be ever engaged in their preservation.

“As long as today’s Republican party holds sway over our nation, freedom and democracy are at risk, and every one of us must set aside our partisan differences and tribal instincts in their defense.”

--Former Democratic presidential candidate Andrew Yang has thrown his hat into next year’s mayoral race in New York City.  It is already a super-crowded field that includes Comptroller Scott Stringer, Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams, former Citigroup executive Ray McGuire, and at least four others.

Yang does have name identity, while his running makes it more difficult for Ray McGuire, because Yang and Stringer are finance guys.  McGuire would be my favorite, though I have told you in the past I’m intrigued by Eric Adams.  We’ll see who the Republicans settle on.

--Dozens of West Point cadets have cheated in one of the biggest exam scandals to hit the elite military academy in decades, officials said.

More than 70 were accused of breaking West Point’s Cadet Honor Code in a math test while studying remotely because of the pandemic.

Most of the cadets have admitted to cheating on May’s exam.  Instructors became suspicious when they noticed irregularities while marking the calculus tests.

Seventy-two of the cadets involved are in their first year, while another is a second-year student.

Fifty-five who have admitted cheating have been sent on a six-month rehabilitation program and will be on probation for the rest of their time at West Point.

Some cases were dropped for lack of evidence or because the cadets dropped out, while several others face hearings before a board composed of fellow students to determine if they will be penalized or expelled.

The Cadet Honor Code, engraved in stone on a memorial at the school, reads: “A cadet will not lie, cheat, steal, or tolerate those who do.”

In a statement, Lt. Gen. Darryl Williams, the academy’s superintendent, said: “The honor system at West Point is strong and working as designed.  We made a deliberate decision to uphold our academic standards during the pandemic.  We are holding cadets to those standards.”

--Pope Francis celebrated a low-key Christmas Eve Mass made somber by the coronavirus and said people should feel obliged to help the needy because Jesus himself was born a poor outcast.  The Mass was held in a rear section of St. Peter’s Basilica with fewer than 100 participants and only a small number of cardinals and bishops in attendance.  It is usually held in the main section of the basilica where up to 10,000 people attend.

“The Son of God was born an outcast, in order to tell us that every outcast is a child of God,” Francis said in his homily.  Francis said Christmas should make everyone reflect on “our injustice towards so many of our brothers and sisters” instead of pursuing “our endless desire for possessions” and ephemeral pleasures. 

“God came among us in poverty and need, to tell us that in serving the poor, we will show our love for him,” said the 84-year-old pontiff.

Today, Francis made a Christmas Day plea for authorities to make Covid-19 vaccines available to all, insisting that the first in line should be the most vulnerable and needy.

“Vaccines for everybody, especially for the most vulnerable and needy,” Francis said in off-the-cuff remarks away from his prepared text, calling the development of such vaccines a “light of hope” for the world.

“We can’t let closed nationalisms impede us from living as the true human family that we are,” he said.

The pandemic’s impact on life dominated Francis’ reflections on the past year.

“At this moment in history, marked by the ecological crisis and grave economic and social imbalances only worsened by the coronavirus pandemic, it is all the more important for us to acknowledge one another as brothers and sisters,” he said.

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

We pray for our healthcare workers.

God bless us, everyone.

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Gold $1882
Oil $48.30

Returns for the week 12/21-12/25

Dow Jones  +0.1%  [30199]
S&P 500  -0.2%  [3703]
S&P MidCap  +1.2%
Russell 2000  +1.7%
Nasdaq  +0.4%  [12804]

Returns for the period 1/1/20-12/25/20

Dow Jones  +5.8%
S&P 500  +14.6%
S&P MidCap  +12.2%
Russell 2000  +20.1%
Nasdaq  +42.7%

Bulls 63.6
Bears 17.1…no update of these #s this week

Merry Christmas to all! …Mask up, wash your hands.

Happy Birthday to our Dr. Bortrum, who turns 93 on Monday. 

Brian Trumbore

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