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LOOKING AHEAD TO 2024

ahead-to-2024Most new cars sold in 2024 will have self-driving capabilities so that the number of auto fatalities will be falling rapidly.

That is an easy prediction, because the technologies have already been developed and roll-outs of the new cars are being planned and, in some cases, are underway.

There will be many seen and unseen new technologies in the next eight years, so by the end of the Trump administration (assuming he is re-elected), the world will look very different. Unfortunately, economic advances take place more slowly, and political advances even more slowly — without much advancement in 2,000 years.

Removing counterproductive regulations and taxes and reducing wasteful government spending should lead to higher growth and, hence, more and better jobs. However, new technologies have been rapidly eliminating manufacturing jobs everywhere — even in China.

If not in manufacturing, where will all the new jobs be? The truth is no one knows, but they are likely to appear as they always have in the past.

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HALF-FULL REPORT 01/20/17

trump-sworn-inFinally the day has come.  Deliverance Day, the end of the Nightmare of Zero.  A new dawn for America with more freedom, more prosperity, and more moral normalcy of traditional values. 

It is a day to celebrate with joy and exuberance.  Yet it is far deeper than that.  You may be like me, experiencing emotions hard to describe or contain. 

Watching Trump speak at the Lincoln Memorial last night, seeing him and his family in front of the giant statue of Lincoln as a chorus of Marines sang the Battle Hymn of the Republic while fireworks exploded over the Reflecting Pool of the Mall – frankly, it made me cry and shiver with goosebumps.

What is happening before our eyes is a true historical moment.  The throngs of people massed at the Inauguration Eve celebration last night knew it.  They were hugely happy – calling out “We love you!” to Trump – and at the same time there was a solemnity to their happiness. 

What they were feeling was far more than what revelers at, say, Times Square feel celebrating the Ball Drop on New Years Eve.  They knew they were witnessing and participating in the rebirth, indeed possibly the salvation, of their country.  They were experiencing an overwhelming sense of awesomeness that was palpable among them  It certainly was what I felt.

As this day unfolds, it may be as hard for you to contain these feelings as it is for me.  Savor the moment of this extraordinary day, January 20, 2017.  It is a day you will never forget.

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ZERO FADES AWAY AS TRUMP TRIUMPHS

zerofadesawayAmerica’s Nobody-in-Chief is finally going away, his last spasm of rhetorical onanism completely overshadowed by Donald Trump neatly turning the tables on the media purveyors of that pathetically fake “dossier.”

No one is listening to him. No one cares. While the helpless mainstream media frets over its irrelevance, Obama is left urging his minions to throw little tantrums out in the Deep State, trying to do just a little more damage to this country before he is finally exiled to comfortable obscurity. But payback is a Pelosi.

Soon Trump’s pen and phone are going to be wielded. All that last-minute regulatory nonsense is getting overturned. America will be a beacon of freedom to Cubans once again. The Western land thefts will be undone. We’ll drill, baby, drill. It’s going to be awesome, as will the tsunami of liberal tears.

And there’s nothing you haters can do about it. Nothing. Here’s why…

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DAVOS MAN IS SCARED AND WORRIED

The WEF annual meeting in Davos starts today (01/17-20)
The WEF annual meeting in Davos starts today (01/17-20)

It was Harvard professor Samuel Huntington who first hurled the epithet “Davos Man” at the new elites, railing against “gold-collar workers” with no use for the nation state, and divorced from organic societies rooted in tradition.

He warned of a cosmopolitan superclass of 20 million people, with interests diverging ever further from the anthropology of the parish. This rootless supra-culture was cornering the gains of the global economy, and capturing ideological power.

“They have little need for national loyalty, view national boundaries as obstacles that thankfully are vanishing, and see national governments as residues from the past whose only useful function is to facilitate the elite’s global operations,” he wrote.

Prof. Huntington has earned his posthumous vindication. The pull of the nation and ancestral memory is stronger after all. Everything that the World Economic Forum stands for on the eve of the 47th summit in Davos is palpably under threat.

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A MODEST PROPOSAL FOR DEM BOYCOTTERS

Street Art Protesting Maxine Waters
Street Art Protesting Maxine Waters

The Washington Post is reporting (1/17) that “over 40 Democrats in Congress are boycotting Trump’s Inauguration.”  This is a modest proposal regarding what to do about them.

The first time I met Democrat Maxine Waters was nearly a generation ago when she was a Member of the California State Assembly.

At the State Capitol in Sacramento with the Republican Minority Leader of the State Assembly, I entered a “Members Only” elevator just as Assemblywoman Waters was about to close the door. She gave the Republican Leader a dirty look, then glanced at the customary “no smoking sign” and blew smoke in my face.

A Member of the U.S. Congress since since1990, Maxine Waters remains perennially angry. If Al Sharpton were a transsexual, he would be Maxine Waters, except she may be more demagogic, if that is possible.

A quintessential political hack, she sees everything in terms of race, gender, class, in that order. Extra points if you’re a Palestinian or Muslim.

She has presided over a political machine; her daughter has collected hundreds of thousands of dollars to sell her mother’s name. Given the family’s moral clarity, it is hardly surprising to find Waters (“I wouldn’t waste my time”) as one of at least 42 Members of Congress, more than one in five Democrats, boycotting the swearing-in of Donald J. Trump as our 45th president.

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COLLEGE SAFE SPACES ARE SANCTUARIES FOR FASCISM

UC Davis protest against a conservative speaker (01/13)
UC Davis protest against a conservative speaker (01/13)

Hammers, broken windows and fights. That’s what a safe space for free speech looks like at UC Davis. 

Safe spaces are places where everyone who isn’t a safe space fascist feels unsafe. The more safe spaces a campus has, the less freedom of speech the students and faculty dare to enjoy.  

UC Davis has a great many safe spaces. 

The University of California institution has safe spaces for illegal aliens (the Undocumented Student Center) and for asexuals (the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer, Intersex, Asexual Resource Center) which hosted a “Tampon Tea Party.”

It has segregated safe space housing in Campbell Hall for black students and the Women's Resources and Research Center will provide safe spaces and “Mind Spa Services” for anyone offended by Christian views on abortion.

But all the safe spaces were about making life unsafe for everyone who wasn’t a left-wing fascist.

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TAIWAN TO TRUMP: WE ARE NO BARGAINING CHIP

taiwan-on-mapLast night (01/18), 40 hours before Donald Trump’s swearing-in as president of the United States, Taiwan’s “Representative” in the U.S. (i.e., de facto Ambassador) laid out what Taiwan wants from the relationship – and it does not include being offered up as a “bargaining chip” in the United States’ relationship with China.

Speaking at a dinner celebrating 80 years of diplomacy at Twin Oaks, the Washington, D.C. estate owned by Taiwan’s government, Representative Stanley Kao praised the current state of U.S.-Taiwan relations.

The relationship has “never been better in recent memory,” he said, even if engagement is “quiet and low-key” at times. Taiwan hopes to continue that momentum under the new Trump administration – with a caveat. The relationship “should be based on its merit and not used … as some kind of bargaining chip,” Kao said, to applause from the audience.

Kao’s comment touches on a concern that Trump may view Taiwan, formally known as the Republic of China, as a bargaining chip in the larger U.S.-China relationship.

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CLIMATE BIAS AND IGNORANCE VS CLIMATE REALITY

california-rainsThe rains have returned to California, and the six-year drought appears to be largely over.

We have heard countless assertions from journalists and politicians, ignorant of the weather history of California and the other western states, that the drought was a result of global warming.

In the January edition of Scientific American, there is a well-told story, “California Megaflood: Lessons from a Forgotten Catastrophe” by B. Lynn Ingram, a professor of earth and planetary science at the University of California, Berkley. She notes:

“Geologic evidence shows that truly massive floods, caused by rainfall alone, have occurred in California every 100 to 200 years. The only megaflood to strike the American West in recent history occurred during the winter of 1861-62. California bore the brunt of the damage.

 

This disaster turned enormous regions of the state into inland seas for months, and took thousands of human lives. The costs were devastating: One quarter of California’s economy was destroyed, forcing the state into bankruptcy.”

The floods, by the way, followed “two exceptionally dry decades.”

People are endlessly surprised by some unusual weather, geological, political or economic event, often with the erroneous assumption that such a thing has never happened before. This lack of historical knowledge is not confined to the poorly educated, but often experts in some field or another do not know the history of their own discipline.

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HALF-FULL REPORT 01/13/17

yellow-journalismTo understand this revolting week, we need to talk about Porter Goss and the Rogue Weasels at the CIA.  But before we do, let me tell you a story…

… Trump’s press conference on Wednesday (01/11) was explosively historic.  He called Buzzfeed, that first published the obviously phony dossier, “a failing piece of garbage.”  The CIA leaking it was “something that Nazi Germany would do.” 

Then Jim Acosta of CNN started yelling questions, to which Trump responded, “Not you, your organization is terrible.”  Watch and enjoy…

… Meanwhile, on Tuesday (01/10) night in Chicago,  Zero gave his farewell address.  At least that’s what I heard.  One of my major 2017 New Years Resolutions is to never ever pay any attention whatever to anything Zero says from now on.

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GO TO EGYPT

The Sphinx – photo by Jack Wheeler
The Sphinx – photo by Jack Wheeler

Luxor, Egypt.  Haven’t you always wanted to go to Egypt?  To see the Sphinx and the Pyramids, sunset on the Nile, the Tomb of King Tut, experience ancient mankind’s most glorious civilization?

It’s all here – and yet, tragically for millions of Egyptians, people around the world who dream of seeing all of this and so much more are afraid of coming here.

Why?  For that you have to read Joel Wade’s The Benefits of Ignoring TV News in today’s TTP (01/12).

When I announced our visit to Egypt, I got a number of replies saying they’d love to go, they always wanted to, but it was just too scary now.

These are folks who have been watching way too much TV news.  Maybe they’re scared now to go to Ft. Lauderdale.

Joel is talking about the damage that watching TV news can do to individuals.  Here you see the damage it is doing to an entire country.

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THE BENEFITS OF IGNORING TV NEWS

effects-of-tv-newsSometimes, what’s most important for our sense of happiness and well-being is what we don’t do.

There are vices such as smoking, alcohol and drug abuse, and impulsive anger that very clearly and predictably can destroy our health and happiness.

But of the common hurtful behaviors that come up with my clients year after year, one stands out significantly: watching TV.

I don’t mean watching an occasional show or movie at home. Nor do I think we have to get rid of our televisions entirely. But every time we sit down and turn on a news show, we’re likely to feel worse by the time we’re finished.

This is true to a lesser extent with news or talk radio – and how we spend our time online – but I want to focus on the presentation and powerful images of TV news.  Here’s the problem with TV:

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HOW GEORGE SOROS DESTROYED THE DEMOCRAT PARTY

george-sorosIt was the end of the big year with three zeroes. The first X-Men movie had broken box office records. You couldn’t set foot in a supermarket without listening to Brittney Spears caterwauling, “Oops, I Did It Again.” And Republicans and Democrats had total control of both chambers of legislatures in the same amount of states.

That was the way it was back in the distant days of the year 2000.

In 2016, Republicans control both legislative chambers in 32 states. That’s up from 16 in 2000.

What happened to the big donkey? Among other things, the Democrats decided to sell their base and their soul to a very bad billionaire and they got a very bad deal for both.  Here’s the story.

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WHAT TRUMP CAN DO ON IRAN RIGHT NOW

Ayatollah Boroujerdi in his prison cell
Ayatollah Boroujerdi in his prison cell

The great Ayatollah Hossein Boroujerdi is briefly out of Tehran's infamous Evin prison, where he had been held in miserable conditions for a decade.

He is one of those dissidents who are so beloved by the Iranian people that the murderous regime of Ali Khamenei does not dare to put them to death, or even on trial.  They routinely torture them instead, and deny them medication for their grave ailments, hoping that they will die of “natural causes.”

When regime security forces went to arrest him, thousands of his supporters protested, blocking miles of highway. Khamenei, Rouhani et. al. still fear those people, ten years later.

He’s out on parole, but don’t think the regime is showing mercy. They typically release prisoners for a few weeks at a time—that way everyone sees the miserable state to which they have been reduced—and then drag them back.

There is something President-elect Trump can do right now.

Donald Trump should invite Ayatollah Boroujerdi to the inauguration. 

Such a dramatic move would deliver several important messages:

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