Week in Review

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Week in Review

02/20/2021

For the week 2/15-2/19

[Posted 9:00 PM ET, Friday]

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Special thanks to George R.

Edition 1,140

It seems like months ago that the Senate voted on the impeachment of Donald Trump, but it was only last Saturday.  It’s now over, including for your editor.  Consider this the final wrap-up on the Trump presidency and the election aftermath.  Oh, I may have a page or two on him from time to time, like if he addresses next week’s CPAC convention, but that’s it.  No doubt from here on this column will be much shorter, which I know you’ll be grateful for, as will your editor.

But what a show and aftermath we had last weekend, and then in the succeeding days. Where will the Republican Party go from here?  I’m guessing we don’t have a real good idea until the fall, when the stars truly begin aligning for 2022.

Instead, next week I will be writing a lot on Iran, I imagine.  As I spell out below events will be moving quickly on this front.

And then we have the ongoing disaster in Texas, of which I have plenty to digest below as well.

But for now, just two observations on this last one.  It’s more than a bit ironic that Texas has been pushing for Corporate America to relocate to the Lone Star State.  And the likes of Elon Musk, Wall Street and Silicon Valley are increasingly moving at least a portion of their operations there.

I bet they are thrilled by some of their choices today.  I mean nothing like having no power or running water and the realization that it can happen all over again.  Maybe not next winter, but in 2023 or 2024?  Is that good for your business?  For your employees?  Let alone the state has become part of Hurricane Alley and 40-inch rainfalls.

My second observation is, geezuz, I wish some people would just ‘wait 24 hours’ before jumping to conclusions on the causes of some disasters.  Instantly, a certain segment of the population was blaming wind power.  We know one thing.  If Donald Trump does address CPAC this week, he will be harping on this as the sole cause of Texas’ power grid issues, and it will be pathetic.

People…it’s called freakin’ winterization!  Or lack of same in the case of Texas.  I get into it in great detail later.

For now, the crisis is far from over even as the temperatures warm up to normal levels.  That just means more busted water pipes.  It’s going to be an unending story this coming week, a truly tragic one.  And it’s going to be the little guy that gets hurt the most…as it always is.  That sucks.

Trump Impeachment II…the finale…

Donald Trump wasn’t convicted in his impeachment trial, the 57-43 vote failing to reach the necessary two-thirds, but it was nonetheless the most bipartisan vote ever in favor of convicting a president.

Seven Republicans supported conviction: Sens. Richard Burr (N.C.), Bill Cassidy (La.), Susan Collins (Maine), Lisa Murkowski (Alaska), Mitt Romney (Utah), Ben Sasse (Neb.) and Pat Toomey (Pa.).  Only once before had even one member of a president’s party ever voted to convict, when Romney did so at Trump’s previous impeachment trial.

In total, 17 Republicans voted to either impeach Trump or convict him during these proceedings – with both the 10 House impeachment votes and the seven conviction votes being unprecedented.

Sen. Bill Cassidy issued a short video statement after the vote:

“Our Constitution and our country is more important than any one person. I voted to convict President Trump because he is guilty.”

Sen. Mitt Romney issued a news release:

“President Trump attempted to corrupt the election by pressuring the Secretary of State of Georgia to falsify the election results in his state.  President Trump incited the insurrection against Congress by using the power of his office to summon his supporters to Washington on January 6th and urging them to march on the Capitol during the counting of electoral votes.

“He did this despite the obvious and well-known threats of violence that day,” the senator said, while also accusing Trump of failing to protect the Capitol and those in it that day as well as his own vice president, Mike Pence.

“Each and every one of these conclusions,” Romney said, “compels me to support conviction.”

Sen. Ben Sasse said in a statement:

“An impeachment trial is a public declaration of what a president’s oath of office means and what behavior that oath demands of presidents in the future.  But here’s the sad reality: If we were talking about a Democratic president, most Republicans and most Democrats would simply swap sides.  Tribalism is a hell of a drug, but our oath to the Constitution means we’re constrained to the facts.”

Sasse said Trump lied by claiming he “won the election by a landslide,” spread conspiracy theories about widespread voter fraud in the election, tried to intimidate the Georgia secretary of state to “find votes” and overturn that state’s election and publicly and falsely declared that Vice President Mike Pence could simply declare a different outcome.

“The president repeated these lies when summoning his crowd – parts of which were widely know to be violent – to Capitol Hill to intimidate Vice President Pence and Congress into not fulfilling our constitutional duties,” Sasse said.  “Those lies had consequences, endangering the life of the vice president and bringing us dangerously close to a bloody constitutional crisis.”

Sasse also warned about what the Senate’s acquittal of Trump might mean going forward.

“A weak and timid Congress will increasingly submit to an emboldened and empowered presidency.”

Sen. Richard Burr, in his statement:

“January 6th was a grim day in our nation’s history.  The attack on the U.S. Capitol was an attempt to undermine our democratic institutions and overrule the will of the American people through violence, intimidation, and force….

“When this process started, I believed that it was unconstitutional to impeach a president who was no longer in office.  I still believe that to be the case.  However, the Senate is an institution based on precedent, and given that the majority in the Senate voted to proceed with this trial, the question of constitutionality is now established precedent.  As an impartial juror, my role is now to determine whether House managers have sufficiently made the case for the article of impeachment against President Trump.

“I have listened to the arguments presented by both sides and considered the facts.  The facts are clear.

“The President promoted unfounded conspiracy theories to cast doubt on the integrity of a free and fair election because he did not like the results.  As Congress met to certify the election results, the President directed his supporters to go to the Capitol to disrupt the lawful proceedings required by the Constitution.  When the crowd became violent, the President used his office to first inflame the situation instead of immediately calling for an end to the assault….

“The evidence is compelling that President Trump is guilty of inciting an insurrection against a coequal branch of government and that the charge rises to the level of high Crimes and Misdemeanors.  Therefore, I have voted to convict.

“I do not make this decision lightly, but I believe it is necessary.

“By what he did and by what he did not do, President Trump violated his oath of office to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States.”

Sen. Burr then issued a separate statement after the North Carolina Republican Party Central Committee voted unanimously to censure him: “It is truly a sad day for North Carolina Republicans.  My party’s leadership has chosen loyalty to one man over the core principles of the Republican Party and the founders of our great nation.”

Of the seven GOP senators who voted to convict Trump, two are retiring – Burr and Pennsylvania Sen. Pat Toomey – and only one will be on the ballot in 2022: Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska.

Sen. Lindsey Graham predicted on Sunday that GOP votes to convict former President Trump will give daughter-in-law Lara Trump a leg up in the North Carolina race.

“The biggest winner of this whole impeachment trial is Lara Trump,” Graham said on “Fox News Sunday.”

Sen. Bill Cassidy was censured by the Louisiana GOP.  Cassidy said on ABC’s’ “This Week” Sunday: “As these facts become more and more out there, if you will, and folks have a chance to look for themselves, more folks will move to where I was.  I’m attempting to hold President Trump accountable…and I am very confident that as time passes people will move to that position.”

Cassidy wrote Monday in a Baton Rouge newspaper that he “voted to convict former President Trump because he is guilty. That’s what the facts demand.”

The Utah GOP indicated support for both of the state’s senators, the other being Mike Lee, despite their differing votes.

“Our senators have both been criticized for their vote. The differences between our own Utah Republicans showcase a diversity of thought, in contrast to the danger of a party fixated on ‘unanimity of thought,’” the statement read.

But Saturday, after his vote to acquit, Sen. Mitch McConnell said, “Former President Trump’s actions that preceded the riot were a disgraceful, disgraceful dereliction of duty.  There’s no question, none, that President Trump is practically and morally responsible for provoking the events of the day.  The people who stormed this building believed they were acting on the wishes and instructions of their president.”

McConnell added that the rioters had been “fed wild falsehoods by the most powerful man on Earth – because he was angry he’d lost an election.”

The Republican leader said it was up to prosecutors to press civil or perhaps even criminal cases against Trump.

“He hasn’t been cleared of any of his actions as president, yet,” McConnell said.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi trashed McConnell for what she called a hypocritical decision to denounce Trump without voting to convict him.

“For Mitch McConnell to say all the things about Donald Trump and how horrible he is…and to vote to acquit him,” Pelosi said, “it was just an excuse he used.”

Former President Donald Trump issued a statement following the vote that read in part:

“Our cherished Constitutional Republic was founded on the impartial rule of law, the indispensable safeguard for our liberties, our rights and our freedoms.

“It is a sad commentary on our times that one political party in America is given a free pass to denigrate the rule of law, defame law enforcement, cheer mobs, excuse rioters, and transform justice into a tool of political vengeance, and persecute, blacklist, cancel and suppress all people and viewpoints with whom or which they disagree…

“This has been yet another phase of the greatest witch hunt in the history of our Country. No president has ever gone through anything like it, and it continues because our opponents cannot forget the almost 75 million people, the highest number ever for a sitting president, who voted for us just a few short months ago….

“Our historic, patriotic and beautiful movement to Make America Great Again has only just begun.  In the months ahead I have much to share with you, and I look forward to continuing our incredible journey together to achieve American greatness for all of our people. There has never been anything like it!”

President Joe Biden issued a statement after the Senate acquittal that read in part:

“This sad chapter in our history has reminded us that democracy is fragile. That it must always be defended. That we must be ever vigilant. That violence and extremism has no place in America.  And that each of us has a duty and responsibility as Americans, and especially as leaders, to defend the truth and to defeat the lies.

“That is how we end this uncivil war and heal the very soul of our nation. That is the task ahead.  And it’s a task we must undertake together. As the United States of America.”

Editorial / Wall Street Journal

“Mr. Trump’s Jan. 6 early-afternoon comments to House GOP leader Kevin McCarthy dismissing a plea to call off the rioters, as related second-hand by GOP Rep. Jaime Herrera Beutler, are further evidence of Mr. Trump’s dereliction.  As Mr. McConnell also noted, Senate acquittal does not absolve Mr. Trump of potential criminal or civil liability for actions he took in office.

“As for the seven GOP Senators who voted to convict, they deserve respect for their independent judgment.  As Edmund Burke famously explained to the Bristol electors in 1774, ‘It is his duty [as a Member of Parliament] to sacrifice his repose, his pleasures, his satisfactions, to theirs; and above all, ever, and in all cases, to prefer their interest to his own.  But his unbiassed opinion, his mature judgment, his enlivened conscience, he ought not to sacrifice to you, to any man, or to any set of men living.’

“Senators Ben Sasse and Pat Toomey in particular offered explanations rooted in constitutional principle.  Local or state GOP committees that vote to censure them are playing into the hands of Democrats, whose goal has been to divide Republicans over loyalty to one man – Donald Trump.

“On that point, what next?  In her fury on Saturday, Mrs. Pelosi ruled out a vote of censure… We’d still support such a resolution, though not if it includes language from Section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment barring Mr. Trump from holding federal office again.

“That would result in another partisan vote and let Mr. Trump tell his supporters that elites are disenfranchising them.  Mr. McConnell might have cited this as another argument for Senate acquittal, since conviction would have led to a simple majority vote to disqualify Mr. Trump. Far better to trust the voters to render their judgment if Mr. Trump chooses to run again.

“This is also the context in which to understand Mr. McConnell’s vote and his post-trial statement…. Mr. McConnell has spent the years since 2016 navigating the respect he owes the voters who elected Mr. Trump and the President’s profound character flaws.

“This wasn’t ‘enabling’ Mr. Trump.  The voters did that in 2016, aided by the Democrats who nominated Hillary Clinton.  For four years Mr. Trump’s conduct stayed largely within constitutional bounds – no matter his rhetorical excesses and Democratic efforts to drive him from office by violating norms and flogging conspiracy theories.  But Mr. Trump’s dishonest challenge to the 2020 election, even after multiple defeats in court, clearly broke those bounds and culminated in the Jan. 6 riot.

“Mr. Trump may run again, but he won’t win another national election.  He lost re-election before the events of Jan. 6, and as President his job approval never rose above 50%.  He may go on a revenge campaign tour, or run as a third-party candidate, but all he will accomplish is to divide the center-right and elect Democrats.  The GOP’s defeats in the two Jan. 5 Georgia Senate races proved that.

“The country is moving past the Trump Presidency, and the GOP will remain in the wilderness until it does too.”

McConnell then penned an op-ed in the Journal:

“Jan. 6 was a shameful day.  A mob bloodied law enforcement and besieged the first branch of government. American citizens tried to use terrorism to stop a democratic proceeding they disliked.

“There is no question former President Trump bears moral responsibility.  His supporters stormed the Capitol because of the unhinged falsehoods he shouted into the world’s largest megaphone.  His behavior during and after the chaos was also unconscionable, from attacking Vice President Mike Pence during the riot to praising the criminals after it ended.

“I was as outraged as any member of Congress. But senators take our own oaths.  Our job wasn’t to find some way, any way, to inflict a punishment.  The Senate’s first and foundational duty was to protect the Constitution.

“Some brilliant scholars believe the Senate can try and convict former officers.  Others don’t. The text is unclear, and I don’t begrudge my colleagues their own conclusions. But after intense study, I concluded that Article II, Section 4 limits impeachment and conviction to current officers.

“Everyone agrees that ‘treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors’ exhaust the valid grounds for conviction. It follows that the list of persons in that sentence – ‘the president, vice president, and all civil officers’ – likewise exhausts its valid subjects.

“If that list of current officers is not exhaustive, there is no textual limit.  The House’s ‘sole power of impeachment’ and the Senate’s ‘sole power to try all impeachments’ would constitute an unlimited circular logic with no stopping point at former officers.  Any private citizen could be disqualified.  This is why one House manager had to argue that the Senate possesses ‘absolute, unqualified’ jurisdiction. But nobody really accepts that.

“I side with the early constitutional scholar Justice Joseph Story.  He observed that while disqualification is optional, removal is mandatory on conviction. The Constitution presupposes that anyone convicted by the Senate must have an office from which to be removed. This doesn’t mean leaving office provides immunity from accountability. Former officials are ‘still liable to be tried and punished in the ordinary tribunals of justice.’  Criminal law and civil litigation ensure there is no so-called January exemption.

“There is a modern reflex to demand total satisfaction from every news cycle. But impeachment is not some final moral tribunal.  It is a specific tool with a narrow purpose: restraining government officers.  The instant Donald Trump ceased being the president, he exited the Senate’s jurisdiction.

“I respect senators who reached the opposite answer.  What deserve no respect are claims that constitutional concerns are trivialities that courageous senators would have ignored….

“Consider the claim that I could have steered around the jurisdictional issue by recalling the Senate between Jan. 14 and Jan. 20, while Mr. Trump was still in office.

“The salient date is not the trials’ start but the end, when the penalty of removal from office must be possible.  No remotely fair or regular Senate process could have started and finished in less than one week.  Even the brisk impeachment process we just concluded took 19 days. The pretrial briefing period alone – especially vital after such a rushed and minimal House process – consumed more than a week….

“Especially since the House didn’t vote until Jan. 13, any legitimate Senate process was certain to end after Inauguration Day….

“The nation needs real constitutional champions, not fair-weather institutionalists. The Senate’s duty last week was clear.  It wasn’t to guarantee a specific punishment at any cost.  Our job was to defend the Constitution and respect its limits.  That is what our acquittal delivered.”

Donald Trump responded to McConnell’s various statements Tuesday by calling him a “political hack.”

“The Republican Party can never again be respected or strong with political ‘leaders’ like Sen. Mitch McConnell at its helm,” Trump said in a lengthy statement.

He went on to write: “Mitch is a dour, sullen, and unsmiling political hack, and if Republican Senators are going to stay with him, they will not win again.”

An interesting statement from a man who singlehandedly lost the Senate in the Georgia run-offs.

Trump criticized McConnell for failing to do more to back his unfounded claims of election fraud. He also said McConnell “begged” for his endorsement in the senator’s home state of Kentucky while running for reelection last year – and suggested he’d work to defeat McConnell and his Republican allies, saying he planned to “back primary rivals who espouse Making America Great.”

“This is a big moment for our country,” Trump wrote, “and we cannot let it pass by using third rate ‘leaders’ to dictate our future.”

But at least for today, Trump is winning the internal battle with Republicans who want him to go away.  A Morning Consult/Politico poll released Tuesday said that “a majority of Republican voters (54 percent) said they would support Trump in a hypothetical 2024 presidential primary election.”

Republicans who back McConnell said Trump is the one who caused the GOP to lose control of Congress and the White House during last year’s elections.

George Will / Washington Post

“One of Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell’s many admirable traits is that he is uninterested in being admired.  He uses his demeanor to disguise the fact that he has normal feelings and so might welcome public approbation for his decisions.  He does not, however, make public decisions for the goal of pleasing the public.  His 2006 nay vote was decisive in preventing Congress from sending to the states for swift ratification a popular constitutional amendment that would have overturned the Supreme Court ruling that flag burning is constitutionally protected political expression.

“McConnell knew that if he voted on Saturday to convict Donald Trump, he would have been lionized, briefly, by many of his detractors, who are legion.  Because he is the most consequential conservative since Ronald Reagan, his vote would have begun a process to which he is committed, that of making Trump inconsequential.  But the time is not quite ripe. Like the author of Ecclesiastes, the Senate minority leader knows that to every thing there is a season….

“McConnell knows that Trump’s grip on the Republican base – its activist core, which is disproportionately important in candidate-selection primaries – remains unshaken.  But not unshakable.  Trump might soon have a bruising rendezvous with the prosecutors in the Southern District of New York.  (While explaining his opposition to the Senate’s convicting Trump, McConnell pointedly noted that ‘impeachment was never meant to be the final forum for American justice,’ and that ‘we have a criminal justice system’ and ‘we have civil litigation.’)  Trump’s potential problems, legal and financial, might shrink his stature in the eyes of his still-mesmerized supporters.  McConnell knows, however, that the heavy lifting involved in shrinking Trump’s influence must be done by politics.

“He has his eyes on the prize: 2022, perhaps the most crucial nonpresidential election year in U.S. history. It might determine whether the Republican Party can be a plausible participant in the healthy oscillations of a temperate two-party system.

“In Republican Senate primaries for open seats in Ohio, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Alabama and perhaps elsewhere, and against Senate incumbents, too – and in the challenge to Rep. Liz Cheney, third-ranking in the Republican House leadership, who voted to impeach – Trump probably will endorse acolytes. They will mimic his sulfuric rhetoric and, if nominated, many will lose in November.

“McConnell remembers, if few others do, the names of Delaware’s Christine O’Donnell (‘I dabbled in witchcraft,’ but ‘I’m not a witch’), Missouri’s Todd Akin (‘legitimate rape’ does not cause pregnancy), Indiana’s Richard Mourdock (a woman made pregnant by her rapist is carrying a ‘gift from God’), Nevada’s Sharon Angle (‘Second Amendment remedies’ might cure Congress’ shortcomings) and others who won and then squandered Republican Senate nominations in 2010 and 2012.  This was before McConnell began wielding the national party’s resources in defense of its interests in state parties’ decisions.

“A McConnell vote to convict Trump on Saturday would have made it easier for the ex-president’s minions to cast the coming 2022 intraparty contests as binary Trump-vs.-McConnell choices.  No one’s detestation of Trump matches the breadth and depth of McConnell’s, which includes a professional disdain for a dilettante. Trump enthusiasts are as hostile to McConnell as progressives are.  He is equally impervious to the disapproval of both factions.

“The Senate’s chaplain’s prayer that opened the impeachment trial’s first day included a familiar stanza from James Russell Lowell’s 1845 poem written during heated national debates about slavery and the looming war with Mexico: ‘Once to every man and nation comes the moment to decide, / In the strife of Truth with Falsehood, for the good or evil side.’  A political ‘moment’ can, however, be a protracted process, as McConnell, who titled his 2016 memoir ‘The Long Game,’ understands.”

Karl Rove / Wall Street Journal

“Donald Trump presumably liked it when Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell voted to acquit him because the senator believes impeachment of a former president is unconstitutional. But Mr. Trump had a very different reaction to Mr. McConnell’s floor speech Saturday, when he rightly said the former president was ‘practically and morally responsibly for provoking’ the Jan. 6 assault on the Capitol and for failing to denounce the violence while it was under way.

“On Tuesday afternoon Mr. Trump attacked Mr. McConnell at length, insulting him as a ‘dour, sullen, and unsmiling political hack’ who lacked ‘political insight, wisdom, skill, and personality’ and ‘doesn’t have what it takes, never did, and never will.’  That was reportedly the toned-down version.

“Mr. Trump’s aides may high-five each other over their rhetorical excesses, but they’ll never convince Mr. McConnell’s Democratic adversaries or Republican senatorial admirers that Mr. Trump’s slurs are accurate.  (Though some might concede Mr. McConnell is something less than a sparkling conversationalist at dinner parties.)

“Since the Senate’s first meeting in March 1789, only a handful of leaders have demonstrated a mastery of the upper chamber that matches the bespectacled Kentuckian’s.  His achievements are legion, including skillfully maneuvering Mr. Trump’s legislative accomplishments and judicial appointments through the Senate.

“The former president also said Mr. McConnell lacked ‘credibility on China because of his family’s Chinese business holdings.’  This smear was aimed at Mr. McConnell’s wife, Elaine Chao, whose Taiwanese-American family runs a shipping company active in the Pacific.  Neither Ms. Chao nor Mr. McConnell owns stock in the New York-based business and, it’s worth noting, Mr. Trump wasn’t concerned about all this when he made Ms. Chao his transportation secretary.

“In his statement, Mr. Trump even blamed Mr. McConnell for losing two Georgia Senate seats in Jan. 5 runoffs because the senator had endorsed $600 stimulus checks rather than matching the Democrats’ offer of $2,000.  Nice try, but Mr. Trump’s own Treasury secretary floated the $600 stimulus check idea on Dec. 8.  Instead of stopping him, Mr. Trump waited until after Republicans had lined up behind his administration’s proposal to announce, on Dec. 22, that he supported $2,000 checks.  The Georgia Republican senators looked like contortionists as they fell behind the president’s last-minute change of mind.

“Mr. Trump lost those Georgia seats by making his campaign appearances there not about the need for checks and balances on the incoming Biden administration, but instead about his rage over losing the presidential election.  As a FiveThirtyEight analysis found, ‘The better Trump did in a county in November, the more its turnout tended to drop in the runoffs.’  Enough of the former president’s screed will leave him appearing weaker while the Kentucky senator shows that Friedrich Nietzsche (and Kelly Clarkson) was right: What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.

“Mr. Trump may not be fully aware of shifting currents among congressional Republicans. More members now admit privately that Mr. Trump had no coattails in last fall’s election.  Especially in the suburbs, some Republicans and many GOP-leaning independents refused to take his lawn signs or support him.  That’s why so many Republican congressional candidates ran ahead of the former president.

“Mr. Trump crowed Tuesday that he ‘received the most votes of any sitting President in history.’   Then again, Joe Biden received more votes than any candidate n history – and seven million more votes than Mr. Trump.

“Despite possessing all the powers of incumbency and leading a united GOP, Mr. Trump lost the presidency.  If he returned for another White House contest, leading a divided party at war with itself and out of power, he’d be wiped out.

“Mr. Trump should now be focused not on settling scores, but on healing, uniting and expanding the GOP.  Politics is about addition, not subtraction.  So next time his crackerjack wordsmiths suggest a thermonuclear attack on other Republicans, Mr. Trump ought to let the one-day story that provoked them go away on its own.   But then he wouldn’t be Donald Trump, would he?”

Nikki R. Haley / Wall Street Journal

“We can’t go back to the pre-Trump GOP. Those days are over, and they should be.  But we lost our majorities in the House and Senate, and we’ve lost the national popular vote in seven of the past eight presidential elections.  Surely there’s room for improvement as a party. We should embrace the successes of the Trump presidency and recognize the need to attract more support.

“Here’s my take: Most of Mr. Trump’s major policies were outstanding and made America stronger, safer and more prosperous.  Many of his actions since the election were wrong and will be judged harshly by history.  That’s not a contradiction.  It’s common sense.

“Mr. Trump’s legal team failed to prove mass election fraud in court.  But election security is still urgently needed.  If you have to show photo ID to buy Sudafed or get on a plane, you should have to show photo ID when voting in person or by mail.  Again, these statements don’t contradict each other. They’re obviously true.

“So is this: Mr. Trump brought millions of new voters into the Republican Party, for which he deserves great credit, but the party also lost millions of voters.

“These are facts.  Admitting them, even when it hurts, is the only way to achieve progress.  Denying them and dismissing those who disagree with you on even one thing is a surefire way to go backward.  That’s true for Republicans who demand people praise everything Mr. Trump did. It’s just as true for liberals who demand everyone hate everything he did.

“I will gladly defend the bulk of the Trump record and his determination to shake up the corrupt status quo in Washington.  I will never defend the indefensible.  I didn’t do that when I served alongside President Trump, and I’m not going to start now.

“If that means I want to have it ‘both ways,’ so be it.  It’s really the only way forward – for the party and the country.”

So according to Politico, “Nikki Haley reached out to former President Donald Trump on Wednesday to request a sit-down at Mar-a-Lago, but a source familiar tells Playbook that he turned her down.”

Yup, there is no halfway with Trump. 

David Ignatius / Washington Post

“And now he’s really gone, acquitted under the rules yet condemned by the facts, nursing his grievances and planning his comeback from isolation at Mar-a-Lago. For the country, the question is how to ensure that Donald Trump remains there while the nation tries to recover from the damage he wrought.

“Perhaps it was Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, a character so memorably theatrical in his two-faced behavior that his dialogues might have been penned by Charles Dickens, who best summarized the evidence: ‘Former President Trump’s actions preceding the riot were a disgraceful dereliction of duty….This was an intensifying crescendo of conspiracy theories, orchestrated by an outgoing president who seemed determined to either overturn the voters’ decision or else torch our institutions on the way out.’….

“The trial is over, but the country needs a fuller record of what happened during the Jan. 6 assault on the U.S. Capitol, including the most painful details. Why was intelligence so thin? What coordination was there between Trump’s inner circle and the rally organizers?  Did members of Congress or the Capitol Police abet the attackers, knowingly or unintentionally?  Was the military so determined to avoid the overreaction of June 1, when peaceful protesters in Lafayette Square were forcefully dispersed, that it underreacted?  What did Trump supporters hope would happen next, if the count of electoral college votes was stopped and the election result was in limbo?* ....

“In the Republicans’ generally lame defense of Trump, I heard two points that come up nearly every time I talk with his supporters.  Both involve claims that Democrats have been hypocritical. Though I disagree, Democrats should have honest answers ready.  Not all of Trump’s 74 million voters believe the Democrats and the media are biased, but many do.

“The first grievance is that Democrats treated Trump as an illegitimate president from the moment he took office.  As Trump’s defense counsel Michael van der Veen put it in his closing argument, ‘Democrats were obsessed with impeaching Mr. Trump from the very beginning of his term,’ and Trump’s lawyers had video clips from 2017, 2018 and 2019 to make their point.  In Trump’s telling, he faced a ‘witch hunt.’

“That’s mostly nonsense. Trump brought ruin on himself with his reckless and divisive actions.  But it’s true that some Democrats favored ‘resistance’ after Election Day 2016; they opposed treating Trump as a legitimate elected president and insisted that crediting any Trump achievements was ‘normalizing him.’  Trump supporters pointed to this relatively mild resistance and accused Democrats of refusing to accept the 2016 election results – and turned that into an argument for the sedition that culminated on Jan. 6.

“The second grievance I hear repeatedly from Trump supporters is that Democrats are hypocrites because they condemn mob violence when it’s from the right, but not the left.  Again, to quote van der Veen’s overheated summary, Democrats ‘repeatedly made comments that provided moral comfort to mobs attacking police officers.’

“I don’t find many comments by leading Democrats that actually back up this charge.  But there are stray sound bites.  Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkan shouldn’t have said on June 11 that armed protesters occupying downtown Seattle had created a ‘block party atmosphere’ that could foretell a ‘summer of love.’ Whatever the excesses of federal law enforcement officers in Portland, Ore., Pelosi shouldn’t have called them ‘stormtroopers’ on July 17.

“Democrats need to be emphatic and impartial in condemning political violence, whatever causes it seeks to advance.  The peaceful racial justice protests that followed the killing of George Floyd were a national inspiration; the street violence that sometimes accompanied the protests was wrong.  If Democrats fail to make this distinction clearly, they open the door to Trump’s false claim that the ‘other side’ condones violence by its supporters.

“A process of reconciliation won’t work without reciprocal honesty.  Trump tried to torch our country, as McConnell said and many other Republicans seem to understand.  Responsible people need to help put out the fire. Truth is the best way to douse the flames and cool the embers.”

*House Speaker Pelosi announced an independent, 9/11-style commission will be established to review the security failures on Jan. 6.

--Two days after the Senate voted to acquit President Trump, three-quarters of Republicans say, 75-21 percent, that they would like to see Trump play a prominent role in the Republican Party, according to a Quinnipiac University national poll of 1,056 adults.  Overall, Americans say 60-34 percent that they do not want Trump to play a prominent role in the Republican Party.  Democrats say 96-3 percent and independents say 61-32 percent they do not want to see Trump playing a prominent role in the GOP.

A majority of Americans, 55-43 percent, say Trump should not be allowed to hold elected office in the future.  Republicans say 87-11 percent that Trump should be allowed to hold elected office.

And on typing this, your Republican editor went into a deep depression.

More than half of Americans, 54-43 percent, hold the view that Trump is responsible for inciting violence against the government of the United States.  When asked a follow-up question: 45 percent of Americans believe Trump is responsible and should face criminal charges, while 6 percent believe he is responsible but should not face criminal charges, and 43 percent say Trump is not responsible for inciting violence.

Nearly 7 out of 10 Americans (68 percent) think that Donald Trump did not do everything he could to stop the insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, while 25 percent say he did do everything he could to stop it. 

Biden Bits

--President Biden had a busy Friday, making his debut at the virtual G7 meeting which was chaired by British Prime Minister Boris Johnson.  [G7 being the United States, Japan, Germany, UK, France, Italy and Canada, comprising a little less than half of the global economy.]

The leaders called for stronger defenses against a future pandemic, including exploring a global health treaty, but the focus was on a green recovery – on the same day that the United States rejoined the Paris climate agreement.

“Jobs and growth is what we’re going to need after this pandemic,” Johnson told the opening of the meeting.

An official communique said the G7 would champion open economies, “data free flow with trust” and work on “a modernized, freer and fairer rules-based multilateral trading system.”

There was no direct reference to Facebook which cut news feeds in Australia.  Leaders supported the commitment of Japan to hold the Olympic and Paralympic Games in Tokyo this summer.

In a clear reference to China, G7 leaders said they “will consult with each other on collective approaches to address non-market oriented policies and practices.”

The tone was distinctly cooperative and collective – as Biden tried to project a message of re-engagement with the world and with global institutions after four years of Trump’s “America First” policies.

Leaders pledged billions of dollars to Covax, a coronavirus vaccination program for poorer countries.

Biden then gave a speech by video to the Munich Security Conference, delivering a stark warning to global leaders and policymakers that “democratic progress is under assault” in many parts of the world, including the United States and Europe.

“Our partnerships have endured and grown through the years because they are rooted in the richness of our shared democratic values,” Biden said.

“They’re not transactional.  They’re not extractive. They’re built on a vision of the future where every voice matters. Where the rights of all are protected and the rule of law is upheld.  None of us has fully succeeded in achieving this vision. And in too many places, including in Europe and the United States, democratic progress is under assault.”

Underscoring the message that the United States is reengaging with its traditional allies, Biden said, “America is back. The transatlantic alliance is back.”

“I believe with every ounce of my being that democracy must prevail,” Biden said, a reference both to the rise of authoritarianism globally over the past several years and to the cracks in American democracy demonstrated by the events of Jan. 6.

“We must demonstrate that democracies can still deliver for our people.  That is our galvanizing mission.  Democracy doesn’t happen by accident.  We have to defend it.   Strengthen it. Renew it.  We have to prove that our model isn’t a relic of our history.  It’s the single best way to realize the promise of our future.”

But while Biden talked of engagement, many leaders in Europe have sought ways to rely less on the United States.

French President Emmanuel Macron is looking forward – to an entirely new transatlantic “security architecture” for the 21st century.  Macron’s vision is an all-European defensive collective that is armed up and can act independently and ahead of “brain dead” NATO.  Biden knows this but made no mention of it.

Macron followed Biden and said while he appreciated Biden’s list of “common challenges…we have an agenda that is unique.”  He repeated a mantra of his the past year: that Europe has its own security issues that should not always require or rely on U.S. participation or permission, especially for military actions on Europe’s borders with the Middle East and North Africa.

I get into Biden’s Iran policy below.

Walter Russell Mead / Wall Street Journal

“It hasn’t been the most promising start.  Less than a month into Joe Biden’s presidency, and his administration is already engaged in spats with China, Russia and Iran.  It is also discovering that U.S. allies are not quite as happy with Mr. Biden’s Feb. 4 announcement that ‘America is back’ as many Democrats might have hoped….

“For the Biden foreign-policy agenda, this is a problem.  Driven by existential concerns about climate change, the erosion of democracy world-wide, and the rise of China, the new administration wants more U.S. allies to take difficult stands in support of Washington’s global vision.  This is not going to be popular.

“Many governments in Asia share U.S. concerns about China but feel threatened by America’s propensity to proselytize for democracy.  In the Middle East, key aspects of the Biden agenda alienate virtually everyone.  Many Latin Americans see Chinese money and influence as a healthy offset to U.S. hemispheric dominance.  While Europeans share some American concerns about China and Russia, Paris and Berlin see little reason to accept Washington’s prescriptions for dealing with them.

“The Biden administration sees a renewed American commitment to multilateralism as a way to sign allies up to an ambitious U.S.-led agenda.  But many allies, even close and deeply democratic ones, embrace multilateralism as a way to limit America’s ability to press policies on them that they don’t like.

“Interesting times lie ahead.”

--Democratic lawmakers formally introduced President Biden’s immigration bill Thursday, saying it is imperative to pass legislation that would repudiate the Trump administration’s rhetoric and allow 11 million unauthorized immigrants in the United States to apply for citizenship.

The 353-page bill aims to create the first major immigration overhaul since Republican President Ronald Reagan signed amnesty legislation in 1986 that legalized nearly 3 million people.

But members of both parties have tried to pass immigration reform so many times over the past two decades that it’s a waste of time to get into the specifics.  Plus you need 60 votes in a 50/50 Senate.  It ain’t gonna happen.

The Pandemic….

The severe winter weather impeded vaccine shipments to more than a third of the U.S. this week, forcing sites to close and cancel appointments due to a lack of shots. An estimated 6 million doses were delayed.

But the 7-day moving average in case numbers, hospitalizations and deaths is coming down, albeit more slowly in the last category, and as former director of the CDC, Tom Frieden, said in an interview this weekend, “It’s what we’re doing right: staying apart, wearing masks, not traveling, not mixing with others indoors.”  Not necessarily the vaccines…yet.

The numbers, though, are still higher than the spring and summer waves.  It’s like in the summer.  We couldn’t knock the daily case figure down to 20,000 and instead plateaued at 40-60,000 before the fall and winter surge.  Now we’re at 60-70,000, down from a 7-day rolling average of nearly 250,000, but, again, we need to get it below 20,000.  We’ll get there.  But getting the vaccines out before the variants take hold is critical.

Which is why in the meantime we still have to do the simple things…mask up, wash your hands, don’t mix with others indoors, don’t go to Cancun!

Covid-19 death tolls, as of tonight….

World…2,462,663
USA…507,746
Brazil…244,955
Mexico…178,108
India…156,240
UK…119,920
Italy…95,235
France…83,964
Russia…82,396
Germany…68,118
Spain…67,101
Iran…59,341
Colombia…58,511
Argentina…51,000
South Africa…48,859
Peru…44,690
Poland…41,823
Indonesia…34,152
Turkey…27,903
Ukraine…24,972
Belgium…21,821
Canada…21,576

Source: worldometers.info

U.S. daily death tolls…Sun. 1,111; Mon. 954; Tues. 1,787; Wed. 2,537; Thurs. 2,761; Fri. 2,428.

Covid Bytes

--A new Quinnipiac University poll of Americans revealed 73 percent were either very confident or somewhat confident they would be able to get a vaccine by the end of the summer.  25 percent said they are either not so confident or not confident at all that this will happen.

Personally, I am very confident that vaccine shots will be widely available by May.

By a 76-18 margin, Americans say that teachers in all states should be given priority for getting the vaccine.  They also say 73-22 percent that grocery store workers in all states should be given priority.

A plurality of Americans, 47 percent, say the reopening of schools in their community is happening at about the right pace, while 27 percent say it is not quickly enough, and 18 percent say too quickly.

--So on the school issue, the Biden administration is still all over the board and looking foolish.

California legislators agreed Thursday on a $6.5 billion proposal aimed at getting students back in classrooms this spring following months of closures.

--French President Emmanuel Macron has called on Europe and the U.S. to urgently send up to 5% of their vaccine supplies to developing nations. Macron told the Financial Times that failure to do so would entrench global inequality.

The vast majority of vaccinations have been administered by high-income countries so far.

The White House then said President Biden had announced a pledge of $4 billion in funding for a global vaccine-sharing scheme, known as Covax.

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said his nation will dedicate surplus doses to Covax.

If the vaccines aren’t distributed worldwide, the novel coronavirus will continue to mutate and could return to threaten the U.S. and others.

--A single shot of the vaccine developed by Pfizer and BioNTech is 85% effective in preventing symptomatic disease 15 to 28 days after being administered, an Israeli study found – news that could help guide policy makers setting vaccine priorities worldwide.

The Israeli study, conducted by the government-owned Sheba Medical Center and released today, also found a 75% reduction in all Covid-19 infections, symptomatic or asymptomatic, after the first shot. The peer-reviewed study was published in the British medical journal Lancet.

The data used was collected on the center’s 9,109 healthcare employees, who began their vaccination process starting on Dec. 19.

--However, while the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines appear to be highly effective against the more transmissible variant of the coronavirus first detected in Britain, according to newly published studies in the New England Journal of Medicine, the vaccines showed a decreased ability to neutralize the strain now dominant in South Africa, worrying some researchers and prompting Pfizer and BioNTech to announce they were taking steps to develop a booster shot or updated vaccine.  The White House said each vaccine developer is planning to update shots to address variants.

--Africa has surpassed 100,000 confirmed deaths from Covid-19 as the continent praised for its early response to the pandemic now struggles with a dangerous resurgence.

“We are more vulnerable than we thought,” John Nkengasong, the director of the Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, told the Associated Press.  He worried that “we are beginning to normalize deaths,” while health workers are overwhelmed.

The 54-nation continent of 1.3 billion people has barely seen the arrival of large-scale supplies of vaccines, but a variant of the virus dominant in South Africa is already posing a challenge to vaccination efforts.

Nkengasong was nonetheless hopeful that the continent would be able to vaccinate 35% to 40% of its population before the end of the year and 60% by the end of 2022.

--China refused to give raw data on early Covid-19 cases to a World Health Organization-led team probing the origins of the pandemic, one of the team’s investigators said, potentially complicating efforts to understand how the outbreak began.

The team had requested raw patient data on the 174 cases of Covid that China had identified from the early phase of the outbreak in the city of Wuhan in December 2019, as well as other cases, but were only provided with a summary, said Dominic Dwyer, an Australian infectious diseases expert who is a member of the team.

Dwyer told Reuters that gaining access to the raw data (“line listings”) was especially important since only half of the 174 cases had exposure to the Huanan market, the now-shuttered wholesale seafood center in Wuhan where the virus was initially detected.

--A worrisome study out in Washington state found pregnant women were infected with Covid-19 at a 70% higher rate than others at similar ages.

Additionally, rates of infection among pregnant women of color were far higher than researchers expected, according to the study published in the American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology.

--The Department of Homeland Security seized more than 11 million counterfeit N95 masks meant for front-line workers in recent weeks, including more than 1 million on Wednesday, officials said.

--About 33 percent of service members have declined voluntary vaccinations, defense officials said, acknowledging that more inoculations would better prepare the military for worldwide missions.

The Navy reported the fourth death of an active-duty sailor from Covid-19 complications, a 42-year-old Aviation Support Equipment Technician.

--The United States has administered 59,585,043 doses of Covid vaccines as of Friday morning and delivered over 78 million doses, the CDC said.  17,039,118 have received the second dose.

--The World Health Organization has asked six African countries to be alert for possible Ebola infections, as Guinea on Tuesday reported new cases and Democratic Republic of Congo said its new infections were a resurgence of a previous outbreak.

Guinea declared an outbreak of the virus on Sunday in the first return of the disease there since the 2013-16 outbreak, while Congo has confirmed four new cases this month.

The last outbreak in West Africa killed more than 11,300 people, mostly in Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia.  Guinea has so far recorded up to 10 suspected cases and five deaths.  Three of the deaths were related to attending a burial.

Wall Street and the Economy

On the heels of a spectacular retail sales report for January, up 5.3% when 1.1% was expected, the Atlanta Fed’s GDPNow barometer for the first quarter surged to 9.5%.  Economists seem to have underestimated the impact of the latest round of stimulus checks, the $600 that was mailed out at the end of last year, mostly received in January.  Ex-autos the figure was 5.9%.

Ian Shepherdson, chief economist at Pantheon Macroeconomics, called the January increase “remarkable” and predicted that spending would keep growing in the coming months as the country began making progress against the coronavirus and consumer sentiment continued to improve.

Every retail category was up, from auto dealers to department stores.  The positive news followed three consecutive months of retail sales declines, which worried policymakers that efforts to soften the financial effects of the pandemic were falling short.  Sales had fallen 1% in the traditionally strong month of December, raising fears for a “double dip” recession unless the federal government provided more financial assistance.  And now we’re looking at another huge package, potentially in March, with $1,400 more in stimulus checks a key feature.

But at the same time, you had a godawful weekly jobless claims figure of 861,000, far greater than expected, with the prior week being revised upward to 848,000. 

Separately, January housing starts came in less than expected, while existing home sales for the month were at the second-highest level since the housing bubble of 2006, 6.69 million annualized, vs. December’s 6.76 million.  The median home price was $303,900, up 14% from a year ago, though the surge in the sale of $1 million homes is skewing the average.

January industrial production was up 0.9%.

And producer prices for January rose a far-greater-than-expected 1.3%, 1.2% ex-food and energy; 1.7% and 2.0%, respectively, vs. 12 months ago.  Needless to say this rattled the bond market some and bears watching.  As you’ll see below, there are all kinds of strong hints on the prospects for inflation.

The Texas Crisis

Blackouts commenced Monday.  Some hospitals were left without water and heat, forcing patients and staff to transport human waste in trash bags and refrain from showering or even washing their hands.

You also had a crisis for some Texas farms and ranches, leaving livestock dead from exposure and raising fears that herds could run short of food and water.

Forced shutdowns of plants that process milk and make animal feed are disrupting the state’s agricultural supply chains.  Some farmers were forced to dump tankers of milk on fields because it can’t be processed, and state agriculture officials feared livestock may have to be euthanized if they cannot be watered and fed.

Sanderson Farms Inc., one of the biggest U.S. chicken companies, estimated Tuesday that as many as 200 of its approximately 1,900 Texas chicken houses were without power, and dozens have ruptured or frozen water pipes.  And animal feed production is a big issue here as well.  Plus icy roads simply impeded deliveries of all products.

By Wednesday, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott told a media briefing that he was banning gas from leaving the state through Feb. 21 to ensure in-state power generators had ample supplies.  But Bloomberg reported he’s requiring Texas gas be offered for sale in-state before being shipped elsewhere.

Under the Constitution’s so-called commerce clause, state governments are prohibited from interfering in interstate trade.  Abbott said a disaster declaration he issued on Feb. 12 gave him latitude to impose such restrictions.

Abbott sowed confusion in a gas market already dealing with massive upheaval.  Many accused the governor of abuse of power.

The crumbling of the state’s gas supplies as Arctic temperatures took hold at the start of the week has been one of the driving factors behind the cascade of outages.

And the battle between the fossil fuel industry and the renewables sector continued.  One railroad commissioner took the opportunity Wednesday to slam windmills and solar arrays that have become a bigger and bigger part of Texas’ energy mix.

“The take away from this storm shouldn’t be the future of fossil fuels but rather the danger of subsidizing and mandating unreliable, intermittent resources,” Commissioner Wayne Christian said.

Texas produces more gas than any other state, with output at about 23 billion cubic feet a day before the deep freeze; about a quarter of total production from the Lower 48 states, Bloomberg data shows.

Texas also exports gas by pipeline to Mexico.  Gas was flowing again after the extreme cold interrupted its operation earlier in the week.

Yes, utilities from Minnesota to Mississippi have been imposing rolling blackouts to ease the strain on electrical grids buckling under high demand during this week’s extreme cold, and power outages in California have become a rite of summer and autumn, partly to reduce the wildfire threat.

But 3 million+ Texans losing electricity in a state that takes pride in its energy independence underscores the gravity of a problem that is occurring in the U.S. with increasing frequency.

The record cold caused Texans to turn up their heaters, including many inefficient electric ones and demand spiked to levels not seen even during the hottest days of summer, when millions of air conditioners are on.

“The state has a generating capacity of about 67,000 megawatts in the winter compared with a peak capacity of about 86,000 megawatts in the summer. The gap between the winter and summer supply reflects power plants going offline for maintenance during months when demand typically is less intense and there’s not as much energy coming from wind and solar sources.

“But planning for this winter didn’t imagine temperatures low enough to freeze natural gas supply lines and stop wind turbines from spinning.  By Wednesday, 46,000 megawatts of power were offline statewide – 28,000 from natural gas, coal and nuclear plants and 18,000 from wind and solar, according to the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, which operates the state’s power grid.

“ ‘Every one of our sources of power supply underperformed,’ said Daniel Cohan, an associate professor of civil and environmental engineering at Rice University in Houston, tweeted.  ‘Every one of them is vulnerable to extreme weather and climate events in different ways.  None of them were adequately weatherized or prepared for a full realm of weather and conditions.’” [David Koenig and Michael Liedtke / AP]

By the way, gas-fired plants and wind turbines are commonly protected against winter weather – all over the freakin’ world!  You don’t hear about extreme windmill issues in North Dakota, or western Pennsylvania (as any driver of the Pennsylvania Turnpike knows), or the North Sea, for that matter, which experience extreme cold from time to time.  I forgot that in 2011, a freeze in Texas also led to some power-plant shutdowns and blackouts, though nowhere on today’s scale.  A national electric-industry group then developed winterization guidelines for operators to follow, but they are voluntary!  And they also require expensive investments in equipment.

Well none of this stopped Republican Gov. Abbott from going on Sean Hannity’s Fox News show the other night to slam renewable energy.

“It just shows that fossil fuel is necessary for the state of Texas as well as other states to make  sure we will be able to heat our homes in the winter times and cool our homes in the summer times.”

Abbot added that Texas’ emergency “shows how the Green New Deal would be a deadly deal for the United States of America.”  Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortex (D-NY), one of the architects of the proposed Green New Deal, shot back on Twitter.  “Gov. Abbott needs to get off TV pointing fingers & start helping people,” she wrote.  “After that, he needs to read a book on his own state’s energy supply.”

Fox News host Tucker Carlson said early in the week: “Global warming is no longer a pressing concern here… The windmills froze so the power grid failed.”  

No, you freakin’ asshole.  Everything was getting hammered.

In the case of Texas this week, the main problem was natural gas production stalled, and that’s where the majority of Texas’ power supply comes from.  In the wintertime, wind makes up less than 10 percent, by some estimates, of the state’s overall mix of power generation.

But the politicization of weather is playing out as President Biden has made combating climate change a key tenet of his administration.

The thing is power systems nationwide increasingly are not structured to deal with the extremes we are seeing in the weather amid predictions of more extreme heat waves and water shortages.  Many electric grids just aren’t able to handle the extremes.

And in Texas, the power infrastructure isn’t required to cold-proof their assets.  Generators in chillier regions are typically compelled by federal or state rules to protect their plants from the elements, but Texas, not being under the federal umbrella, by choice, can leave their pipes, valves and pressure gauges exposed.  It’s cheaper.

Will Englund / Washington Post:

“When it gets really cold, it can be hard to produce electricity, as customers in Texas and neighboring states are finding out.  But it’s not impossible.  Operators in Alaska, Canada, Maine, Norway and Siberia do it all the time.

“What has sent Texas reeling is not an engineering problem, nor is it the frozen wind turbines blamed by prominent Republicans.  It is a financial structure for power generation that offers no incentives to power plant operators to prepare for winter.  In the name of deregulation and free markets, critics say, Texas has created an electric grid that puts an emphasis on cheap prices over reliable service.”

Editorial / Wall Street Journal

“Why are millions of Americans in the nation’s most energy-rich state without power and heat for days amid extreme winter weather?  ‘The people who have fallen short with regard to the power are the private power generation companies,’ Texas Gov. Greg Abbott explained.  Ah, yes, blame private power companies…that are regulated by government.

“The Republican sounds like California’s Democratic Governor Gavin Newsom, who lambasted private utilities for rolling blackouts during a heat wave last summer.  Power grids should be able to withstand extreme weather. But in both these bellwether states, state and federal energy policies have created market distortions and reduced grid reliability.

“Mr. Abbott blamed his state’s extensive power outages on generators freezing early Monday morning, noting ‘this includes the natural gas & coal generators.’  But frigid temperatures and icy conditions have descended on most of the country.  Why couldn’t Texas handle them while other states did?

“The problem is Texas’ overreliance on wind power that has left the grid more vulnerable to bad weather.  Half of wind turbines froze last week, causing wind’s share of electricity to plunge to 8% from 42%.  Power prices in the wholesale market spiked, and grid regulators on Friday (Feb. 12) warned of rolling blackouts.  Natural gas and coal generators ramped up to cover the supply gap but couldn’t meet the surging demand for electricity – which half of households rely on for heating – even as many families powered up their gas furnaces.  Then some gas wells and pipelines froze.

“In short, there wasn’t sufficient baseload power from coal and nuclear to support the grid.  Baseload power is needed to stabilize grid frequency amid changes in demand and supply.  When there’s not enough baseload power, the grid gets unbalanced and power sources can fail.  The more the grid relies on intermittent renewables like wind and solar, the more baseload power is needed to back them up.

“But politicians don’t care about grid reliability until the power goes out.  And for three decades politicians from both parties have pushed subsidies for renewables that have made the grid less stable….

“The renewables lobby found GOP allies in windy states like Texas, Oklahoma and Iowa.  Former Enron CEO Ken Lay, who had made a big bet on wind, begged then Texas Gov. George W. Bush in 1998 to lobby Congress to extend (a 1992 tax credit due to expire in 1999) for five years.  Congress has since extended it more than a dozen times, most recently in December.

“Wind producers persuaded former Gov. Rick Perry to back a $5 billion network of transmission lines to connect turbines in western Texas to cities.  This enabled them to build more turbines – and collect more tax credits….

“Coal and nuclear are more strictly regulated and can’t compete, and many coal plants have shut down in Texas and elsewhere… Many nuclear plants are scheduled to shut down, including large reactors in New York and Illinois this year.

“Renewables and natural gas are expected to substitute, but Texas is showing their limitations….

“Many states also have renewable mandates that will force more fossil-fuel generators to shut down.  New York has required that renewables account for 70% of state power by 2030.  Then layer on Democratic policies at the federal level that limit fossil-fuel production and distribution.

“The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission is supposed to ensure grid reliability, but under Barack Obama it promoted renewables over reliability.  Democrats opposed efforts by Trump appointees to mitigate market distortions caused by state renewable subsidies and mandates that jeopardized the grid.  On present trend, this week’s Texas fiasco is coming soon to a cold winter or hot summer near you.”

The Journal’s numbers above on wind are deceptive.  Texas counts on wind to meet only 10% of its winter capacity, according to the state’s grid manager.  Bloomberg says it is as high as 25% in the wintertime (vs. up to 60% other times of year).  Natural gas and coal make up the lion’s share, comprising 70% to 80%.

Editorial / Bloomberg

“Evidently no one thing went wrong. The failure was systemic and multifaceted.  The extreme cold shut down power from fossil-fuel and nuclear plants when instruments and pipelines froze. As the problems cascaded through the state’s electricity grid, outages due to frozen wind turbines made a small contribution to the losses – though nowhere near as much as critics of renewable energy have claimed. The system as a whole had not been weatherized to the necessary standard.

“In Texas, two other factors compounded that basic vulnerability. First, the state has, by design, a relatively self-contained grid.  This limits its ability to draw power from elsewhere in emergencies. Second, its lightly regulated energy producers compete vigorously on price, which leads them to economize on maintenance and back-up systems. Most of the time, the benefit to consumers is real – cheap power.  But the delayed cost of those forgone investments is what consumers are now having to endure….

“Investing in resilience is a form of insurance.  It costs money, and it’s reasonable to ask how much is enough.  The cost of guarding against every conceivable climate extremity would be prohibitive, and warm states such as Texas are right to apply different standards of weather resistance than those that make sense in Alaska.  But this doesn’t excuse policy makers simply turning a blind eye to infrequent yet recurring events that cause massive losses when they happen.  And the tradeoff gets worse with time.”

Europe and Asia

We had flash PMI readings for February in the eurozone, courtesy of IHS Markit, with the composite index at 48.1 vs. 47.8 in January (50 the dividing line between growth and contraction).  Manufacturing was at 57.7, a 36-month high, but services were 44.7.

Germany’s flash manufacturing figure for this month is 60.6, a 36-month high, with services at 45.9, a 9-mo. low.

France reported manufacturing at 55.0, but services at 43.6.

Chris Williamson, IHS Markit:

“Ongoing Covid-19 lockdown measures dealt a further blow to the eurozone’s service sector in February, adding to the likelihood of GDP falling again in the first quarter.  However, the impact was alleviated by a strengthening upturn in manufacturing, hinting at a far milder economic downturn than suffered in the first half of last year.  Factory output grew at one of the strongest rates seen over the past three years, thanks to another impressive performance by German producers and signs of strengthening production trends across the rest of the region.

“Vaccine developments have meanwhile helped business confidence to revive, with firms across the eurozone becoming increasingly upbeat about recovery prospects. Assuming vaccine roll-outs can boost service sector growth alongside a sustained strong manufacturing sector, the second half of the year should see a robust recovery take hold.

“One concern is the further intensification of supply shortages, which have pushed raw material prices higher.  Supply delays have risen to near-record levels, leading to near-decade high producer input cost inflation.  At the moment, weak consumer demand – notably for services – is limiting overall price pressures, but it seems likely that inflation will pick up in coming months.”

Yes, just as in the U.S., the inflation watch is on.

In the UK, the flash manufacturing reading for February was 54.9, while services came in at 49.7, a 4-month high, and following a sharp reduction in January at the start of the national lockdown.

Eurostat reported that eurozone GDP fell 0.6% in the fourth quarter in a flash estimate, -5.0% over a year ago.

December 2020 industrial production was down by 1.6% in the EA19, also per Eurostat.

While there is cause for optimism, especially after we get through the first quarter, Germany’s Economy Minister Peter Altmaier dashed hopes of business lobby groups for a quick reopening of the economy, saying the country should not rush to ease coronavirus restrictions as this could risk another wave of infections.

“Business can’t flourish if we get a third wave of infections,” Altamaier told German television before a meeting with industry associations.

Italy: Prime Minister Mario Draghi called on Italians on Wednesday to pull together to help rebuild the country following the coronavirus pandemic and promised his new government would introduce sweeping reforms to revitalize the battered economy.

In his maiden speech to parliament, the former head of the European Central Bank said his broad-based administration would throw all its efforts into defeating Covid-19, while looking to leave a stronger, greener nation for future generations.

Draghi won a mandatory confidence vote in the Senate by a huge margin (262-40). His immediate priorities will be ensuring a smooth coronavirus vaccination campaign and re-writing plans for how to spend more than 200 billion euros ($240bn) of European Union funds aimed at rebuilding the economy.

Draghi also put a strongly pro-European stamp on his administration, which includes parties such as the right-wing League which have been highly critical of the euro common currency and Brussels bureaucracy in the past.  “Supporting this government means sharing the irreversibility of the choice of the euro, it means sharing the prospect of an increasingly integrated European Union that will arrive at a common public budget,” said Draghi, who received a standing ovation from senators after his address.

If Draghi succeeds in reviving Italy after the worst recession since World War II, it would give a boost to the whole EU, which has long fretted over Italy’s chronic sluggishness.

Draghi is among Europe’s most respected figures after his eight-year stewardship of the ECB, and his nomination as prime minister was celebrated by the financial markets – with an Italian bond sale on Tuesday drawing record demand.

But he faces daunting challenges, with many sectors of the economy stalled and others surviving solely because of state handouts.  Draghi said he could not protect every job or business, adding: “Some will have to change, even radically.”

Brexit: Little this week on this front, except Boris Johnson elevated his chief Brexit negotiator David Frost to the cabinet, putting him in charge of relations with the European Union, replacing Cabinet Office minister Michael Gove.

Frost will attempt to resolve interruptions to goods flowing between mainland Britain and Northern Ireland, as well as gaining access to the bloc for financial services firms in London, though we’ve already seen Amsterdam, Paris and others are swallowing up the business. 

But I can’t help but note a proposal from UK rail industry leaders to build a tunnel between Northern Ireland and Scotland, under the Irish Sea between Stranraer and Larne.  The two towns are 31 miles apart but a preferred route for the tunnel, based on 120-year-old research by Victoria engineer James Barton (yes, 120 years old), would be diverted to avoid Beaufort’s Dyke, a 1,000-foot deep trench in the Irish Sea.

According to UK High Speed Rail Group, a new connection would bind Northern Ireland closer to Great Britain, and would “address problems in the economic status of the North post-Brexit.”

Now this sounds very cool.  Too bad I won’t be alive before something like this is built.

But in reading a story about this in the Irish Times, I got a kick out of a proposal Boris Johnson once made, suggesting a bridge between Stranraer and Larne, an idea that was widely derided by engineers.

As in a bridge across the stormy stretch of water, which would require dozens of support towers at heights “never achieved anywhere in the world.”

The tunnel would be a dream for golf tour operators in Ireland and Scotland.

Turning to Asia…China is wrapping up its formal Lunar New Year holiday so activity will begin to pick up in manufacturing, the stock market reopening yesterday.  Early reports show consumption at retailers and restaurants over the holiday (Feb. 11 to Feb. 17) hit 821 billion yuan ($127bn), representing a 29% jump from last year’s pandemic-disrupted holiday, and a 4.9% increase from the same period in 2019, long before the coronavirus swept across China.

The rise in spending came as tens of millions of Chinese residents heeded authorities’ call to stay put during the holiday because of the coronavirus, denting what is traditionally the busiest travel season of the year.  Instead, they redirected their disposable income to gifts, food, entertainment and other sectors that suffered during the height of the pandemic last year.

Japan reported a slew of data, including flash readings on February PMIs, with manufacturing at 51.3, services 45.8.

Japan’s government cut its assessment of the economy for the first time in 10 months, as the country struggles through a renewed state of emergency to respond to a winter jump in Covid cases.

In its monthly report for February, the Cabinet Office continued to describe overall conditions as improving from a severely low base, but said consumer spending was weakening again.

Cutting the assessment is a potential signal that Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga may be paving the way for more economic stimulus down the road, as he holds on to hopes conditions can improve enough to allow the Tokyo Summer Olympics to be held.

The government downgraded its view of private consumption for the first time since October, reflecting the damage from the state of emergency called last month to contain the virus in Tokyo and other major urban areas.

Analysts see the economy falling back into contraction this quarter, with the growth resuming after that.

The Ministry of Finance did release data earlier that showed Japan’s economy surged in the fourth quarter of 2020, but it was not enough to keep the country from negative growth for the year.  The economy grew 3% between October and December compared to the same period in 2019 (an annualized pace of nearly 13%), but growth was considerably slower than in the previous quarter, when the economy expanded 5.3%.

Japan’s economy shrank 4.8% over the full year, its first contraction since 2009.

Separately, exports accelerated in January, +5.2% month on month, +6.4% yr./yr., much better than expected, led by a jump in Chinese demand, +37.5% in the year to January, the biggest gain since April 2010, led by chip-making equipment, plastics and nonferrous metal.  U.S.-bound shipments fell 4.8%.  Reflecting soft domestic demand, imports fell 9.5% year on year.

Japan’s core consumer prices (which excludes fresh food prices) fell 0.6 percent in January from a year earlier. 

Back to the Olympics, the Tokyo 2020 organizing committee asked Olympics Minister Seiko Hashimoto – a woman who competed in seven Games as a skater and a cyclist – to be its new president following the resignation of the former head over sexist comments.

Lastly, Japan’s Nikkei 225 index closed above 30,000 for the first time since August 1990.

Street Bytes

--Stocks were mixed this week with the Dow Jones up 0.1% to 31494, having earlier hit a new closing high on Wednesday of 31613 in this holiday-shortened week, while the S&P 500 fell all four days, but just 0.7% overall, and Nasdaq lost 1.6%. 

Today, however, some cyclicals roared after a strong earnings report from Deere & Co., which led to record highs in both Deere and rival Caterpillar, while investors sold off some tech stocks that have rallied through the pandemic.  

--U.S. Treasury Yields

6-mo. 0.04%  2-yr. 0.11%  10-yr. 1.34%  30-yr. 2.13%

The yield on the 10-year is now up 27 basis points (0.27% in three weeks) as the bond market, both here and overseas, begins to sniff out rather strong signs of inflation, with further massive stimulus still in the cards and economies on the mend (vaccines slowly but surely getting rolled out), especially once we get through the next month or two.

--Oil prices climbed as the frigid Texas temperatures curtailed production in the largest crude producing state, with some production potentially curtailed for weeks.  A fifth of U.S. refining output has also been knocked offline.  But in the end, power issues in 13 states reduced oil production by more than 4 million barrels a day nationwide, or roughly 40% of total production, as wells froze up and gas lines were clogged with ice, as the industry relies on electricity and you had the blackouts in the state.  Warmer weather will do wonders, but all wells need electricity.

Meanwhile, Saudi Arabia is expected to raise output in the coming months, perhaps announcing such a plan when OPEC and allied oil producers meet next month.   The output rise wouldn’t kick in until April, given the Saudis already have committed to stick to cuts through March.  But Saudi’s  energy minister said it was too early to declare victory against the coronavirus and that oil producers must remain “extremely cautious.”

By the end of the week, oil, as measured by West Texas Intermediate, which had traded over $61.00 amid the crisis, backed off to close at $59.01.

--Shares in Walmart Inc. fell 6% on Thursday following a disappointing earnings forecast, with the company saying full-year sales and profit growth will slow as it reinvests in its business and lockdowns end, after revenue soared to $560 billion last year as people stocked up on groceries during the pandemic.

The company has invested heavily in online, advertising and healthcare businesses over the past year, using pandemic-led sales momentum to diversify beyond brick-and-mortar retail.

Walmart forecast adjusted net sales to grow in the low single digits in fiscal 2022 which ends Jan. 31, much lower than the 8.5% growth seen in the preceding year.  It also expects earnings per share to be flat-to-slightly up, below the 2.2% growth analysts had been expecting, according to Refinitiv.

“We’re going to invest more aggressively in capacity and automation to position ourselves to earn the primary destination with customers, we are absolutely playing offense here,” CEO Doug McMillon said at an investor day conference.

Walmart expects capital expenditure to increase 27% to about $14 billion this year, focusing on key areas like supply chain and automation.

The world’s biggest retailer also missed expectations for fourth-quarter profit as it took on about $1.1 billion in pandemic-related costs during the quarter, including higher wages for warehouse workers, bonuses for store employees and costs related to keeping its stores clean.  The company, which employs 1.5 million hourly workers in the United States, also said it was raising wages to more than $15 per hour on average for many of these folks, while its minimum starting wage will remain $11 an hour.  Pay will depend on the location.

The pay raises will be for store workers in digital and stocking roles; roles that have been especially important during the pandemic, including workers that gather products from store shelves for online orders picked up in parking lots or delivered to homes.

[Rivals Amazon.com and Target Corp. have made $15 an hour their starting wage for all workers.  The current federal minimum wage is $7.25 an hour.]

An early start to the holiday season and a boost from stimulus money late in the fourth quarter drove demand for electronics, toys and groceries.  Sales at U.S. stores open at least a year surged 8.6%, excluding fuel, in the three months ended Jan. 31, well above analysts’ expectations of 5.6%, and an acceleration from the third quarter, when sales climbed 6.4%.

Online sales rose 69% in the quarter, blowing past a 35% increase in the year-earlier period, but slower than a 79% surge in the third quarter. 

Operating income rose 3.1% to $5.49 billion in the quarter, or $1.39 per share adjusted while the Street was expecting $1.51.

--The aforementioned Deere & Co. upgraded its fiscal 2021 earnings forecast after profit more than doubled in the first quarter on improved demand for farm and construction machines and a higher adoption rate for its technology offerings.  The world’s largest farm equipment producer expects annual net income in the range of $4.6 billion to $5 billion, higher than the $3.6bn-$4bn forecast earlier.

High crop revenues are enabling farmers to retire debts and upgrade machinery after years of challenging market conditions, lifting sales of tractors and harvesting combines.  Deere expects such sales to drive up its worldwide farm machine sales by 26%-28% in 2021. Industry sales of large agricultural equipment in the United States and Canada – the company’s biggest combined market – are forecast to grow by 15% to 20% this year.

Earnings for the first quarter came in at $3.87 per share compared with $1.63 per share last year.

Deere’s shares surged nearly 10%.

--European planemaker Airbus axed its dividend for a second year and predicted flat deliveries this year as it braces for more uncertainty after posting a 2020 loss.

But the fact that Airbus was able to give an outlook was seen as a positive.

Rival Boeing, mired in a separate crisis over the grounding of its 737 MAX that saw Airbus reclaim the title of largest global jetmaker, is not yet giving detailed views.

Airbus CEO Guillaume Faury said the forecast was for “at least” 566 deliveries, unchanged from last year when production was 40% below its peak.

--Portugal’s national airline, TAP, is in need of another 500 million euros ($600m+), far more than the government budgeted.  TAP asked for state aid in April after suspending almost all of its 2,500 weekly flights and reported losses of more than 700 million euros ($850m) for the first nine months of 2020.

--TSA checkpoint travel data:

2/18…39 percent of 2020 levels
2/17…36
2/16…34
2/15…39
2/14…43
2/13…46
2/12…46

--Consumer Reports released its Top Picks for 2021, a closely followed annual list that provides  recommendations on the best vehicles available for sale based on reliability data, customer satisfaction, testing and sustainability.

Mazda was ranked as the top brand of the year, besting much more expensive brands like Tesla, BMW and Jaguar.

Mazda has kept its focus on mainstream buyers with vehicles like the Mazda CX-30, which starts at about $22,000 and was named as one of Consumer Reports’ Top Picks.

In the listing of 32 automotive brands, Mazda was followed by BMW, Subaru, Porsche and Honda. 

Lexus, Toyota, Chrysler, Buick and Hyundai made up the second five. 

Mitsubishi, Land Rover and Alfa Romeo brought up the rear.

The Tesla brand was No. 16.

--Jaguar Land Rover’s luxury Jaguar brand will be entirely electric by 2025 and the carmaker will launch e-models of its entire lineup by 2030, it said on Monday as it joined a global race to develop zero-emission vehicles.

JLR, owned by India’s Tata Motors, said its Land Rover brand will launch six pure electric models over the next five years, with the first one coming in 2024.

--Robinhood Markets and Citadel, two of the central players in the GameStop Corp. saga that gripped the markets last month, used congressional testimony to push back against conspiracy theories circulating in Washington that they coordinated to restrict retail investors from adding to their bets.

Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev said in written testimony for a Thursday House Financial Services Committee hearing that the brokerage halted trades to meet demands from its clearinghouse.  Claims it sought to help hedge funds are “absolutely false and market-distorting rhetoric,” he said.

Ken Griffin, Citadel’s billionaire founder, said in his prepared remarks that he didn’t learn Robinhood had barred GameStop buy orders until after the restrictions were publicly announced.  “I want to be perfectly clear: we had no role in Robinhood’s decision to limit trading in GameStop or any other of the ‘meme’ stocks,” said Griffin.

Gabe Plotkin, a hedge fund manager whose firm took heavy losses during last month’s Reddit-fueled trading, told Congress that he was “humbled” by the experience.  According to his prepared testimony, Plotkin said: “Melvin Capital played absolutely no role” in the decisions of trading platforms to limit the buying and selling of GameStop shares.  “In fact, Melvin closed out all of its positions in GameStop days before platforms put those limitations in place.”

Plotkin also clarified that Melvin Capital wasn’t “bailed out” by the $2.75 billion it received from Citadel, Point72 Asset Management (Steve Cohen) and others last month. Even though the firm was going through a “difficult time,” it always had adequate funding and wasn’t seeking a cash injection.

Melvin Capital lost billions closing out its GameStop position and reducing other wagers.

So Thursday, the committee held a virtual hearing on the issue and lawmakers grilled the CEOs of Reddit, Robinhood, Citadel and Melvin.

Also attending was the investor who spearheaded the frenzy in the WallStreetBets Reddit forum, Keith Gill, known as “DeepF---ingValue.”

During his testimony, Gill, also known as “Roaring Kitty” on YouTube, featured a poster of a kitten draped with his signature red headband that he typically wears during his live streams in the background.

“A few things I am not,” Gill, a day-trading suburban dad, said at the beginning of his address.  “I am not a cat.”

Robinhood CEO Tenev offered an apology for the company’s decision to temporarily curb trading in some stocks, including GameStop, on Jan. 28 amid extreme volatility.

“Despite the unprecedented market conditions in January, at the end of the day, what happened in unacceptable to us,” Tenev said after being questioned.  Committee Chairwoman Maxine Waters interrupted Tenev during his opening remarks, which was rather rude, but then that’s who she is.

Lawmakers took different positions on the implications of the trading frenzy that emerged on message boards.  Democrats focused questions for Tenev on whether Robinhood’s simplified app and commission-free business models helps or hurts individual investors.  Several Republicans praised the executives for helping to lower transaction costs for small traders and called for less regulation of Wall Street.

Frankly, the topic bores me, though I find the action in the markets amusing when such frenzies develop.

More importantly, focus on strict capital requirements from the Bank of America’s on down, as has been successful since the Financial Crisis, and let the small guy do whatever he/she wants.

--Bitcoin topped $50,000 for the first time Tuesday, doubling in value in less than two months, hitting $55,600 this afternoon last I saw.

The $50,000 level is an “emotional level for people in the space,” said Brian Melville, head of strategy at trading firm Cumberland.  But it is also a simple result of supply and demand, he added.

From August through December, about 150,000 new bitcoins were minted, he estimated.  The firm calculated that about 359,000 bitcoins were bought in the same period, and that imbalance has continued in 2021.  “It’s a really important metric to watch,” he added.

Well, I’ll try to follow this aspect going forward.

--As noted last week, lumber prices have been hitting new highs, though at a time of year when there is normally a slowdown in wood-products sales; just another sign of the pandemic building boom continuing into 2021.  Mills are backlogged with orders well into March, according to pricing service Random Lengths, just like I told you last week was the issue with steel mills.

--Wall Street analysts have been cutting their expectations for U.S. hotel operators’ key revenue measure by 5% to 10% this year, convinced the resurgence in coronavirus cases and the worst drop in annual occupancy rates ever mean a recovery may still be years away.

Average hotel occupancy dropped to a low of around 22% last April, according to analytics firm STR.  We recovered to the 50%+ level, but then the level fell back to around 40% as the variants began to hit.

STR cut their 2021 growth outlook for U.S. hotel industry revenue per available room (RevPAR) to about 22% from 30% previously.  U.S. hotel RevPAR dropped by about 50% to $43.20 last year, the lowest since 1995, and is expected to recover to $52.55 in 2021, with 2019 levels of $86.60 not expected until 2024.

Most expect the first bounce to come from leisure travel, but chains like Hilton and Marriott, which rely more on business travel, will be struggling for longer.

Marriott ended 2020 with an annual loss of $267 million, closing the books on the chain’s toughest year.  In March 2020, Marriott furloughed about two-thirds of its 4,000 staff at company headquarters in Bethesda, Md.  It also furloughed about two-thirds of its corporate staff abroad and tens of thousands of hotel staff – from managers to housekeepers – some of whom aren’t expected to return.

The results were reported after the death of longtime CEO Arne Sorenson, who died on Monday after a long battle with pancreatic cancer that had reduced his work schedule on Feb. 2 to receive more aggressive treatment, the company said at the time.

He was only the third CEO in the company’s 94-year history – assuming the role in 2012 – and the first outside the Marriott family to take the helm of the world’s biggest hotel chain.

“Arne was an exceptional executive – but more than that – he was an exceptional human being,” said J.W. Marriott, Jr., executive chairman and chairman of the board.

“Arne loved every aspect of this business and relished time spent touring our hotels and meeting associates around the world. He had an uncanny ability to anticipate where the hospitality industry was headed and position Marriott for growth,” Marriott added.  “But the roles he relished the most were as husband, father, brother and friend.”

Under Sorenson, Marriott became the largest hotel company in the world after acquiring Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide in 2016 in a $13 billion deal, adding brands including the W Hotel chain, The St. Regis, Sheraton and Westin.

Marriott will name a new CEO within the next two weeks.

From his many appearances on CNBC, Arne Sorenson just seemed like a good and honest man.  RIP.

Foreign Affairs

Iran: The Biden administration said it would be willing to meet with Iran to discuss a “diplomatic way forward” in efforts to return to the nuclear deal quit by President Trump in 2018, a first step toward easing tensions.

It’s a risky move, after a slew of U.S. sanctions cratered Iran’s economy and infuriated other world leaders, who argued that the 2015 accord and the inspections regime it created had reined in Tehran’s nuclear program.

“The United States would accept an invitation from the European Union High Representative to attend a meeting of the P5+1 and Iran to discuss a diplomatic way forward on Iran’s nuclear program,” State Department spokesman Ned Price said in a statement Thursday.  The P5+1 is comprised of the five permanent members of the UN Security Council – China, Russia, France, the UK and the U.S. – plus Germany, the signatories to the original accord.

While European parties to the deal welcomed the U.S. overture, Iran’s foreign minister suggested it didn’t go far enough.

The offer to hold talks was aimed at restoring a diplomatic pathway with Iran, which has been gradually abandoning its commitments under the nuclear deal in response to the Trump administration’s “maximum pressure” sanctions campaign.  U.S. and European officials are particularly alarmed by Iran’s decision to stop letting the International Atomic Energy Agency conduct snap inspections by suspending the so-called Additional Protocol from Feb. 23.

The European parties to the deal welcomed the Biden administration’s move to return to diplomacy with Iran, while urging Tehran not to follow through on threats to halt nuclear inspections.

Iran had given an ultimatum of Feb. 23 for the U.S. to begin reversing sanctions, otherwise, it says, it will take its biggest step yet to breach the deal – banning short-notice inspections by the IAEA.    

The U.S. and the European parties to the accord have urged Iran to refrain from this step and repeated their concerns over recent actions by Tehran to produce uranium enriched up to 20% and uranium metal.

Today, Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif suggested in a tweet that the measures didn’t go far enough.   

When sanctions are lifted, “we will then immediately reverse all remedial measures. Simple,” Zarif tweeted.

China’s Foreign Ministry tweeted Friday that the U.S. rejoining the accord was “the only correct approach to resolve the impasse on the Iranian nuclear issue.”

British Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab said, “We’re obviously concerned about the risk of further non-compliance by Iran with the JCPOA.  All the more reason to re-invigorate trans-Atlantic diplomacy.”

President Biden has said that he will use the revival of the nuclear deal as a springboard to a broader agreement that might restrict Iran’s ballistic missile development and regional activities.

Tehran has ruled out negotiations on wider security issues such as Iran’s missile program.

In another sign of diplomatic good will, the U.S. said it’s lifting Trump-era travel restrictions on Iranian envoys that severely limited their movements in New York City. The envoys won’t be totally free to travel, as some restrictions predating the Trump administration would remain in effect.

But before anyone jumps to conclusions, at least today, it’s the next week or two that will be critical.  The U.S. wants Iran to first return to compliance with the deal, while Iran says the U.S. must undo sanctions first because it pulled out of the agreement.  This is the bottom line.

The Biden administration can’t be seen as offering too much and risk getting burned.

President Hassan Rouhani wants to save the accord and his legacy before he leaves office later this year, but he’s determined not to cave into U.S. demands.  His hardline opponents oppose any engagement with the U.S. and want closer ties with Russia.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken said last month that if Iran returns to compliance with the accord, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, the U.S. would seek to build a “longer and stronger” agreement to address what he called “deeply problematic” issues.

Critics say those issues include Iran’s ballistic missile program, as well as “sunset” provisions in the nuclear agreement that allow restrictions on processes like uranium enrichment to expire over time.  The JCPOA, they argued, went too far in easing existing sanctions on Iran in exchange for too few limits on the country’s longer-term nuclear ambitions.

Well, tonight, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei reiterated that the U.S. must first return to the deal and lift sanctions if it wants talks with the Islamic Republic, calling it Iran’s “final policy” in an Instagram post.

Joe Biden said in his remarks to a security conference in Germany today that the threat of nuclear proliferation meant it was important to engage with Iran.  “We must also address Iran’s destabilizing activities across the Middle East and we’re going to work in close cooperation with our European and other partners as we proceed.”

Meanwhile, Israel is watching intently.  President Biden and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu held their first phone conversation this week and Biden told his counterpart that he intends to strengthen defense cooperation with Israel.  Biden also “emphasized U.S. support for the recent normalization of relations between Israel and countries in the Arab and Muslim world,” the White House said in a statement.

But it’s clear Netanyahu is not in favor of the United States renewing talks with Iran and Israel will do its own thing.

Stay tuned.

Iraq: Secretary of State Blinken said the U.S. is “outraged” by a rocket attack on Monday in the Iraqi Kurdistan region that killed a civilian contractor and injured several others, including a U.S. service member and several American contractors.  From photos I saw, damage was extensive.

“I have reached out to Kurdistan Regional Government Prime Minister Masrour Barzani to discuss the incident and to pledge our support for all efforts to investigate and hold accountable those responsible,” Blinken said in a statement.

Three (of 14) rockets struck the base in Irbil where U.S. forces are based.

Lebanon: A Lebanese court on Thursday dismissed a judge who had charged top politicians with negligence over last year’s Beirut port explosion, infuriating families of victims who said it showed that the state would never hold powerful men to account.

Judge Fai Sawan had led the investigation into one of the largest non-nuclear blasts in history.  In December, he charged three ex-ministers and the outgoing prime minister with negligence. He had showed true courage.

200 people died in the August blast when a huge stockpile of ammonium nitrate, stored unsafely for years, detonated at the capital’s port.  Thousands were injured and entire neighborhoods destroyed.

Families of the victims gathered at Beirut’s justice palace on Thursday night to protest against Sawan’s removal from the probe.  Clad in black, they cradled photos of their dead loved ones and held picket signs that read: “Where are the investigation results?”

One woman summed it up perfectly in an interview with Reuters: “We had hope for justice, even if just one percent, justice for my brother so he could rest in his grave.  We’re truly in a rotten country…I swear we’re tired. We want the truth.”

It’s true, Lebanon is hopelessly corrupt.  It’s also a beautiful country with beautiful people.  They deserve far better.  The protests will continue.

At the same time, Prime Minister Saad al-Hariri said there had been no progress on the formation of a government.  Hariri spoke on the 16th anniversary of the assassination of his father, ex-premier Rafik al-Hariri.  I can’t believe it’s been 16 years, as I went to Beirut for the first time just weeks after this tragedy, standing at the bomb site (my room also overlooked it), and paying my respects at Hariri’s casket, and those of the others killed in the attack.

China: In a CNN town hall on Tuesday evening, President Biden said he stressed to Chinese President Xi Jinping during their two-hour phone conversation last week that the U.S. would continue to assert its role as a voice for human rights on the world stage, and that there would be “repercussions” for China’s human rights abuses.

“We must speak up for human rights.  It’s who we are,” Biden said.  “There will be repercussions for China, and [Xi] knows that,” he said, without giving details.

“China is trying very hard to become the world leader and to get that moniker, and to be able to do that, they have to gain the confidence of other countries. And as long as they’re engaged in activity that is contrary to basic human rights, it’s going to be hard for them to do that.”

Liu Weidong, a U.S. affairs expert from the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, said Biden’s warning of potential consequences was a sign to China and the American public that the administration would not let go of its human rights concerns.

“In China, there is an understanding that there is some room for improvement in bilateral relations under Biden’s administration, so if he is just engaging in rational rhetoric on this issue, China will not have an excessive response,” he said.  “Biden will definitely take action on this going forward, as he has already said he would on Hong Kong and Xinjiang issues, things that Trump did before with sanctions on relevant companies and individuals.

“Biden definitely will not be softer than Trump on this and will continue the policy approach, but may not be more severe than Trump’s policies right off the bat,” Liu said.

Xi has countered that issues relating to Hong Kong, Xinjiang and Taiwan were “China’s internal affairs and concern China’s sovereignty and territorial integrity.”

Meanwhile, China is exploring whether it can hurt U.S. defense contractors by limiting supplies of rare-earth minerals that are critical to the industry, the Financial Times reported.

Industry executives said government officials had asked them how badly companies in the U.S. and Europe would be affected if China restricted rare-earth exports during a bilateral dispute, the FT reported, citing sources.

The move throws the spotlight back on the group of elements that are used in everything from smartphones to fighter jets, and have previously been a focus in the deteriorating trade relationship between China and the U.S. China controls most of the world’s mined output, with an even tighter hold of the processing industry, leaving American industries with few avenues to immediately secure short-term supply if curbs were to be put in place.

China accounts for 80% of rare-earth imports into the U.S.

The Trump administration was working on expanding domestic output of rare-earth minerals and the Biden administration is not expected to change many of those policies.

Separately, Hong Kong’s High Court denied bail on Thursday to media tycoon and Beijing critic Jimmy Lai, the most high-profile person to be charged under the Chinese-ruled city’s national security law.

The Court of Final Appeal, the city’s top court, ruled last week that a lower court’s decision last year to grant him bail applied “an erroneous line of reasoning” but allowed Lai’s team to make a fresh application for bail to the High Court.

North Korea: The wife of leader Kim Jong-un appeared in public for the first time in over a year, according to state media.

Ri Sol-ju joined her husband at a concert on Tuesday to mark the birthday of Kim’s late father and former leader, Kim Jong-il.  Her absence stoked speculation over her health or a potential pregnancy.

South Korea’s National Intelligence Service had reportedly told officials that Ms. Ri was avoiding appearing in public due to concerns over Covid and may have been spending time with her children.

Russia: The White House’s top cybersecurity adviser said on Wednesday an investigation into a sprawling Russian hacking operation against the U.S., known as the SolarWinds hack, will take several more months to complete.

White House Deputy National Security Adviser for Cyber and Emerging Technology Anne Neuberger said that a total of nine federal agencies and 100 private-sector companies had been affected by the hack, which first came to light in December. She also said that a number of the affected private-sector companies were technology companies, which were breached to facilitate access to other victims.

While multiple U.S. government officials have said the hackers came from Russia, they have offered little additional detail.  “We believe it took them months to plan and compromise,” said Neuberger.  “It will take us some time to uncover this layer by layer.”

Separately, a former Russian newspaper journalist accused of treason says state investigators have still not told him exactly what his alleged crime was, over six months after his arrest.  Ivan Safronov, 30, covered military affairs as a reporter before starting work at Russia’s space agency last May.  He was detained last July and is being held in prison, accused of passing military secrets to the Czech Republic.

Safronov, whose treatment has provoked an outcry among some Russian journalists, faces up to 20 years in jail.  He denies treason.

“They say I committed a crime in 2017, but they don’t say exactly what I did – they tell me to remember,” Safronov said in an interview published on Monday by Kommersant newspaper, where he used to work.

Meanwhile, supporters of Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny held candlelight gatherings in residential courtyards across Russia on Sunday despite warnings that they could be arrested.

Myanmar: Anti-coup protests continue across the country as the military warns that protesters could face up to 20 years in prison if they obstruct the armed forces.  Long sentences and fines will also apply to those found to incite “hatred or contempt” towards the coup leaders, the military said.

Hundreds of thousands have been taking part in the protests in recent days.  The demonstrators are demanding the release from detention of their elected leaders, including Aun San Suu Kyi, and the restoration of democracy.

Random Musings

--Presidential tracking poll….

--A Quinnipiac University poll found that four week after being sworn in as president, Joe Biden received a positive approval rating of 50 percent, vs. 38% who disapproved, little changed from February 3rd, when the split was 49-36.

Democrats approve 91-2, Republicans disapprove 82-11.

After one month in office, Feb. 22, 2017, Donald Trump’s ratings split was 38-55.

Rasmussen: 49% approve, 49% disapprove of President Biden’s job performance (2/19).

--The same Quinnipiac poll found that when Americans are asked who is representative of the Republican Party today, 28 percent said Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, 25 percent said Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming.  This is truly nuts.

At least when the question is posed, looking ahead, 45 percent said they would like to see Cheney have a bigger role in the GOP, 14 percent say Greene, with 41 percent not offering an opinion.

--CNN claimed Wednesday that it has reinstated a “rule” that prevents Chris Cuomo from “interviewing or covering his brother” – after the host completely ignored the nursing home death cover-up scandal engulfing Gov. Andrew Cuomo.

Last year, Chris Cuomo repeatedly interviewed his older brother about the coronavirus pandemic, engaging in often-cringey banter that initially helped boost the ratings for the 9 p.m. “Cuomo Prime Time.”

But the controversy over the Cuomo administration’s admitted cover-up of nursing home death numbers – first revealed by the New York Post – hasn’t been mentioned on Chris’ show.

That’s despite critical coverage on other CNN shows, including from Jake Tapper and his “State of the Union” Sunday morning, on which he criticized the state Health Department’s since-rescinded, March 25 directive for nursing homes to admit Covid-19 patients.

“So Gov. Cuomo, who has declined to appear on this show despite dozens of requests over the past year, including this past week, made a bad decision that may have cost lives,” Tapper said.  “And then his administration hid that data from the public.”

Well, now federal prosecutors and the FBI are probing the Cuomo administration’s handling of nursing homes and long-term care facilities during the Covid crisis, according to a report Wednesday.

The U.S. attorney’s office in the Eastern District of New York has launched an investigation focusing on the work of some of the senior members of the governor’s coronavirus task force, the Albany Times Union first reported.

State officials now say more than 15,000 residents of nursing homes and assisted-living and adult-care facilities were confirmed or presumed to have succumbed to the coronavirus since March of last year – a tally that is around 50% higher than earlier figures released by the state. For months, the state didn’t answer requests from lawmakers and journalists asking for the number of facility residents who died in hospitals.

Democratic and Republican state lawmakers criticized the delay as well as a statement last week by the governor’s top aide, Melissa DeRosa, that the state held off releasing the fuller count in August because of fear that former President Trump’s administration would politicize the information.

Andrew Cuomo’s job approval rating has dropped 10 points since January, a new Siena College Research Institute poll of 804 New York voters found.  Cuomo’s overall job approval fell to 51-47, down from 56-42 in January.  When asked if they approved of how the governor had made public information about nursing-home deaths, 39% said they approved compared with 55% who didn’t.

But 61% of respondents said they approved of Mr. Cuomo’s efforts to respond to the pandemic, compared with 34% who disapproved, a rating that is essentially unchanged from January.

Editorial / New York Post

“Start with this governor: Apologize.

“Say sorry to the thousands of New York families that lost a loved one in a nursing home in the wake of your deadly March 25 order that forced homes to accept contagious Covid patients.

“Say sorry to the 20 million people of New York state, whom you’ve been deceiving for nearly a year about the nursing-home horrors.

“Say sorry to all those you’ve blamed to distract from your own guilt, from the staffers at the homes to all the federal officials you’ve claimed are actually responsible for that order and/or your coverup.

“Apologize, and quit trying to duck responsibility by promoting a pack of lies.

“That’s what the governor was doing again Monday, in his first press conference since The Post broke the news that his top aide, Melissa DeRosa, admitted to Democratic legislators that the gov and his people intentionally covered up the truth for months.

“Gov. Cuomo is sticking to his ‘Blame Trump’ cover story, pretending that the coverup was motivated by fear that the then-president would somehow use the truth in a politicized federal investigation.

“Then again, he’s spent months trying to blame the Trumpies for the original, deadly March order to nursing homes to accept Covid-contagious patients that hospitals wanted to dump on them, without question.  Never mind that other state states didn’t read the federal directive as requiring anything like that.

“Monday, he even added a perverse twist: State lawmakers should have known the coverup was all about Trump, because The Post reported in August that a federal probe had begun.

“Set aside the fact that then-Attorney General Bill Barr’s Justice Department was not taking improper orders from the White House… The bigger problem is that the coverup started months before that.”

--David Perdue, the one-term senator from Georgia who lost a runoff election last month against Senator Jon Ossoff, filed paperwork on Monday indicating that he plans a comeback effort – this time against Georgia’s other new senator, Raphael Warnock.

Warnock prevailed over Senator Kelly Loeffler in their runoff, 51-49 percent.  The two were running in a special election to fill a six-year term; the winner of the 2022 Senate race will serve a full term.

--Sen. Ted Cruz claims it was “obviously a mistake” to escape Texas for Cancun as his home state reeled from the power crisis. 

Amid blistering criticism, Cruz cut his trip short by two days (his wife and their friends were supposed to join him), and on returning to Houston Thursday night he was greeted by a police escort as some 500,000 Texans remained in the dark and about 7 million people were under a boil water advisory.

In a statement released during the day, the Republican blamed the getaway on his young daughters, saying he was only chaperoning them to Mexico.  After touching down in the U.S., he apologized for the tone-deaf trip, but doubled down on his parenting skills.

“It was obviously a mistake and in hindsight I wouldn’t have done it,” he told reporters outside the airport.  “I was trying to make decisions.  When you’ve got two girls who’ve been cold for two days and haven’t had heat or power and they’re saying, ‘Look we don’t have school why don’t we go, let’s get out of here.’”

Earlier, in a statement, Cruz said: “With school canceled for the week, our girls asked to take a trip with friends.  Wanting to be a good dad, I flew down with them last night and am flying back this afternoon,” Cruz said.

Cruz Thursday night then fled to the comfort of Fox News and host Sean Hannity, where he pleaded his case and received a receptive audience.

There are so many things wrong with this, as many Texans call for Cruz to resign.  For starters, aside from the fact his state was in crisis and he could help in securing federal aid perhaps quicker than others could, the CDC had urged: “Travelers should avoid all travel to Mexico” because  of the coronavirus.

The chairman of the Texas Democratic Party, Gilberto Hinojosa, said Cruz “is proving to be the enemy to our state by abandoning us in our greatest time of need…. Cruz is emblematic of what the Texas Republican Party and its leaders have become: weak, corrupt, inept, and self-serving politicians who don’t give a damn about the people they were elected to represent.”

Cruz, Monday night, had told a San Antonio-based radio host that he was fortunate not to have lost power at his Houston home, while urging his fellow Texans to stay home because of the danger posed by the storms.

“Don’t go out on the roads.  Don’t risk the ice… Keep your family safe, and just stay home and hug your kids.”

David Graham / The Atlantic

“Nero fiddled while Rome burned; Ted Cruz jetted to Cancun. And although the emperor was at least ensconced in a lavish, louche palace, the senator from Texas was stuck in economy class with the peasantry.

“Cruz’s appeal as a politician, such as it is, has never been about being lovable or relatable, but the latest incident is embarrassing even by his standards….

“It is tempting to turn the ‘hypocrite’ label on Cruz, but his sin is worse. Every politician is a hypocrite at some point.  Cruz’s error is not that he was shirking a duty he knew he should have been performing. It’s that he couldn’t think of any way he could use his power as a U.S. senator to help Texans in need.  That’s a failure of imagination and of political ideology….

“Cruz’s callousness about his constituents’ suffering is not just morally appalling.  It is also – and this probably weighs more heavily on Cruz – politically dangerous.  There’s growing evidence that even Republicans drifted toward a larger role for government in the Donald Trump era.  Cruz desperately wants to be president, and while he has been happy to debase himself in sycophancy to Trump, he has not adopted Trump’s more populist view of government.  Some of his Republican rivals, however, have.  Senator Josh Hawley of Missouri, with whom Cruz stood in inflating bogus claims of a stolen 2020 presidential election, has called for government to intervene more to help citizens.  Who knows what is in Hawley’s heart (if anything), but he knows this is potentially popular.  Blackouts and frozen pipes are not.

“If Cruz’s problem were mere hypocrisy, that might be manageable.  Politicians (even Ted Cruz) are deeply susceptible to shaming, and voters’ memories are short.  But Cruz’s problem is deeper. He didn’t go to Cancun despite knowing he should be hard at work; it just didn’t occur to him that he could help. That, too, is a kind of power failure.”

--A study from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Center for Health Statistics published Thursday found life expectancy in the United States dropped to its lowest level in 15 years, and even lower for Black Americans and Latinos, during the first half of the coronavirus pandemic.

Data through June 2020 shows life expectancy at birth for the total U.S. population fell from 2019 by a year to 77.8 years, the lowest since 2006.

Life expectancy for Black populations declined the most from 2019 – by 2.7 years, to 72 years – its lowest level since 2001.  Latinos experienced the second-biggest decline, falling 1.9 years since 2019 to a life expectancy of 79.9 years, lower than when it was first recorded in 2006.

Black Americans are hospitalized with Covid-19 at 2.9 times the rate of white Americans and die at 1.9 times the rate, according to CDC data.  Latinos are hospitalized at more than three times the rate and die more than twice the rate of white Americans.

Even before the pandemic, overall life expectancy in the U.S. was declining because of a variety of public health issues.

Health experts fear U.S. life expectancy in 2020 as a whole will be worse than the half-year numbers because they do not account for the fall and winter surges that led to record Covid deaths.

--Doyle Rice / USA TODAY

“The U.S. has endured a wild stretch of harsh winter weather lately thanks to an invasion of the infamous polar vortex.  It may be counterintuitive, but could global warming have caused this?

“First, an explainer: The polar vortex is a gigantic circular upper-air weather pattern in the Arctic that envelops the North Pole.  It’s a normal, natural pattern that is stronger in the winter and tends to keep the coldest weather bottled up near the North Pole. The jet stream usually pens the polar vortex in and keeps it there, but at times, some of the vortex can break off or move south, bringing extremely cold weather down into the U.S., Europe, and Asia.

“Some scientists – but not all – say there could be a connection between global warming and the wandering polar vortex: The theory is that when weird warmth invades the Arctic, some of the cold that’s supposed to stay up there – including the vortex – sloshes down south into North America and Europe.

“ ‘There is evidence that climate change can weaken the polar vortex, which allows more chances for frigid Arctic air to ooze into the Lower 48,’ University of Georgia meteorology professor Marshall Shepherd said.

“While the vortex is a natural phenomenon, and polar vortex breakdowns happen naturally, there is likely an element of climate change at work.

“Woodwell Climate Research Center climate scientist Jennifer Francis, who has published a study on the phenomenon, said in 2019 that ‘warm temperatures in the Arctic cause the jet stream to take these wild swings, and when it swings farther south, that causes cold air to reach farther south.’…

“A study in 2018 in the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, co-written by Atmospheric Environmental Research meteorologist Judah Cohen, found that ‘over recent decades, the stratospheric polar vortex has shifted toward more frequent weak states,’ allowing it to stray from its home above the North Pole.

“Warming in the Arctic, with shrinking sea ice, is goosing the atmospheric wave in two places, giving it more energy when it strikes the polar vortex, making it more likely to disrupt the vortex, Cohen said….

“And as for the deadly tornadoes in the South this week, scientists say there is no clear connection between that type of severe weather and human-caused climate change.  While climate change does have a documented effect on many extreme weather events, it has no clear connection to severe thunderstorms nor the tornadoes they produce.

“In fact, a 2016 report from the National Academy of Sciences found that of all weather phenomena, severe storms (and tornadoes) have the least connection to human-caused climate change.”

--Separately, California’s annual rainy season is getting underway about 27 days later now than it did in the 1960s, according to new research.  Instead of starting in November, the onset of the rains is now delayed until December, and the rain, when it comes, is being concentrated during January and February.

The precipitation season has become shorter and sharper, the research shows.  Less rain is falling in the so-called shoulder seasons of autumn and spring, and more is falling during the core winter months.

The worst fires occur in the fall, rather than in the hottest summer months, because that’s when vegetation is at is maximum dryness.

--Editorial / Wall Street Journal

“A familiar voice in American media and politics has gone quiet. Rush Limbaugh, the most listened-to radio host in American for 30 years, died Wednesday at age 70.

“We recall how bracing the Rush Limbaugh Show was in its early days.  For decades the airwaves had been governed by the Fairness Doctrine, a federal regulation requiring stations to balance ‘controversial’ claims with ‘contrasting viewpoints.’  The rule gave incumbent candidates and mainstream news outlets a near-monopoly on public discourse.  Ronald Reagan scrapped the Fairness Doctrine in 1987. By the 1992 presidential campaign, the radio star’s first name was known across the U.S.

“Limbaugh, whose show ran on weekdays from noon to 3 p.m. East Coast time, was invaluable to the conservative movement in the 1990s.  He would spend an hour explaining supply-side tax policy or making the case for deregulation.  Millions of Americans had never heard a coherent argument against the welfare state or Roe v. Wade until they tuned in to Limbaugh’s show.  He played an enormous role in popularizing conservative ideas and policies.

“His critics called him a racist and about everything else, which was always unfair.  His real offense was to gain millions of weekly listeners by mocking the left’s pieties.  He dissected environmental scare campaigns, and he ridiculed the news media for finding epidemics of homelessness only during Republican administrations.  In 1994 Bill Clinton called a St. Louis radio station from Air Force One to complain about Limbaugh’s criticism – not for the last time blaming scrappy radio hosts for his own political woes.

“In recent years, with the rise of more acerbic competitors and a general souring of public discourse, Limbaugh took on a more exasperated tone.  He also moved to the Trumpian right on issues such as trade, immigration and foreign policy.

“But unlike others on the talk-radio right, he kept his sense of humor and rarely let anger drown his fundamental optimism about the Untied States. His great strength was never to take himself too seriously.  Limbaugh knew he was an entertainer, not an intellectual or politician, and he said so many times.  He was popular because he was superb at his craft and represented traditional American values that the dominant culture too often demeans.”

Back in the days when I was traveling a ton, particularly my long trips out west and drives through the Dakotas, Nebraska, Arizona…I was on the road most of the time going from one destination to another during Rush’s show hours, and I never failed to tune in, plus when I was in the car just doing errands locally.  It was really pretty simple.  I just found him entertaining, and often funny as hell.

No, I’d be listening and disagreeing, for sure, but as the Journal said, Rush had a tremendous sense of humor.

He took as a badge of honor the title “most dangerous man in America.”  He said he was the “truth detector,” the “doctor of democracy,” a “lover of mankind,” a “harmless, lovable little fuzz ball” and an “all-around good guy.”  He claimed he had “talent on loan from God.”

Forbes magazine estimated Rush’s 2018 income at $84 million, ranking him behind only Howard Stern among radio personalities. 

Rush, to his detriment, however, could often be downright cruel and I found no humor in that.  That said, no one framed the Republican platform better and more entertainingly than he did, certainly better than any party leader.

But as David Masteo, Deputy Editorial Page Editor of USA TODAY put it, Rush, to some of us, missed the moment…like going back to 2015:

“Limbaugh’s powers then were immense.  He could get any Republican leader or conservative thinker on the phone in a minute.  He had an army of dittoheads just like I had been and he had 30 years of affection from everywhere in the conservative world for his role as the happy warrior for the right on cause after cause.

“If Rush had stood up at that moment and said no, there’s a chance that the last four years of history would have been different.  Who can say what would have happened.  But no voice on the right had a better chance of rallying voters around a principled conservative instead of a reality TV huckster who says he paid to have the Clintons come to his wedding.

“Rush could have wielded the power of satire to tear Trump down with a power that no voice in the mainstream media could match.

“Instead Limbaugh spent his last years embracing an unprincipled huckster and betraying the conservative ideal he taught me to love.  I am not sorry to see that end.  It was a tragedy.”

--Kim Kardashian West filed for divorce today from Kanye West after 6 ½ years of marriage.

Guys, be careful.  Kim is high maintenance.

Girls, be careful.  Kanye is VERY high maintenance.

--Finally, we had the Perseverance rover land on Mars successfully Thursday in a glorious moment for the U.S. space program.  The NASA rover successfully landed after accomplishing the riskiest step yet in an epic quest to bring back rocks that could answer, once and for all, whether life ever existed on Mars.

Ground controllers at the space agency’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, jumped to their feet, thrust their arms in the air and cheered in both triumph and relief on receiving confirmation that the six-wheeled Perseverance had touched down on the red planet, long a deathtrap for incoming spacecraft.  It was a final tension-filled 11 ½ minutes for the signal to reach Earth.

Perseverance, the biggest, most advanced rover ever sent by NASA, became the ninth spacecraft to successfully land on Mars, every one of them from the U.S., beginning in the 1970s.

The car-size vehicle arrived at Jezero Crater, hitting NASA’s smallest and trickiest target yet: a 5-by-4-mile strip on an ancient river delta full of pits, cliffs and fields of rock.  Scientists believe that if life ever flourished on Mars, it would have happened 3 billion to 4 billion years ago, when water still flowed on the planet.

Over the next two years, Percy, as it is nicknamed, will use its 7-foot arm to drill down and collect rock samples with possible signs of bygone microscopic life.  The goal is to bring the samples back to Earth as early as 2031.

NASA is teaming up with the European Space Agency to bring the rocks home.

China and the UAE also have spacecraft orbiting Mars at this time and China hopes to land a smaller rover in May or June.  If successful, the two rovers will then start arguing with each other over who has the better political system.

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Pray for the men and women of our armed forces…and those who have fallen.

We honor our healthcare workers and first responders.

God bless America.

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Gold $1783
Oil $59.01

Returns for the week 2/15-2/19

Dow Jones  +0.1%  [31494]
S&P 500  -0.7%  [3906]
S&P MidCap  -0.4%
Russell 2000  -1.0%
Nasdaq  -1.6%  [13874]

Returns for the period 1/1/21-2/19/21

Dow Jones  +2.9%
S&P 500  +4.0%
S&P MidCap  +9.9%
Russell 2000  +14.8%
Nasdaq  +7.7%

Bulls 59.1
Bears 18.1

Hang in there…Mask up, wash your hands. 

Brian Trumbore

 

 

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