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Tommy’s meltdown

Posted: October 6, 2020 by chrisharper in media
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By Christopher Harper

“Our democracy is in terrible danger — more than since the Civil War, more than after Pearl Harbor, more than during the Cuban missile crisis, and more danger than during Watergate.”

It’s rare to see a meltdown like the one DaTimes’ Tommy Friedman had in his column, which included the sentence above.

Just think about it. Tommy, who supported that great leader Mike Bloomberg in the Democrat primaries, thinks President Trump is leading the country into a civil war. He’s responsible for worse conditions than Pearl Harbor, and his leadership has led the country into a potential nuclear war? Trump is worse than Nixon?

Tommy compares the United States with Lebanon during its civil war. Tommy’s office at United Press International was just across from mine at Newsweek in Beirut. I was there, too, and I don’t see any comparisons between a war that left more than 100,000 dead with what’s happening in the United States. 

Somehow Tommy transitions from the Lebanese civil war to social media and the problems they have created. I’m no fan of Facebook and Twitter and their leftist slant, but the hyperbole of comparing guerrillas with rocket-propelled grenades in Lebanon to trolls with hurtful words is a bit much.

The solution to all of America’s problems, Tommy opines, is Joe Biden. Seriously?

“The Democratic Party sorted through all the choices, and, led by older Black men and women in South Carolina, rejected the Democratic socialist candidate and said they wanted a moderate unifier named Joe Biden,” Tommy says.

What alternate universe is Tommy living in? South Carolina voted overwhelmingly for Trump in 2016, and Democrats have virtually no power throughout the state except to vote in a meaningless primary every four years. 

What happened is that the Democrat power brokers knew that Bernie Sanders would lead to a massive election defeat. Hence, they backed a four-time loser in presidential primaries that they could control. 

Tommy’s meltdown continues in his description of Trump as “the most dishonest, dangerous, mean-spirited, divisive, and corrupt person to ever occupy the Oval Office.”

Seriously? Maybe Tommy forgot fellow journalist Warren Harding, who engaged in the most scandal-ridden presidency in history.

Maybe Franklin Pierce, who set the stage for the Civil War, or James Buchanan, who followed through on Pierce’s pro-slavery campaign? Maybe Andrew Johnson, the first president to be impeached? 

But Tommy chooses not to reflect on history; he’s on a ridiculous role. 

Tommy concludes: “So help register someone to vote for Joe Biden. Phone bank for Joe Biden. Talk to your neighbor about Joe Biden. Volunteer for Joe Biden. Drive someone to the polls to vote for Joe Biden.

“Do it as if your country’s democracy depends on it, because it does.”

DaTimes needs to put Tommy out to pasture like Americans have to do with Joe. 

The Biden money tree

Posted: September 29, 2020 by chrisharper in elections, Uncomfortable Truths
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By Christopher Harper

As DaTimes delves into the illicitly obtained tax returns of Donald Trump, the news organization has failed to analyze the finances of Joe Biden, who heralds himself as the “common man.”

That common man and his wife made more than $30 million over the past two years through book deals and speeches, costing about $100,000 a pop.

What is appalling is all the information about the Biden family and its shenanigans that DaTimes fails to follow up on, preferring instead to continue its partisan attacks on Trump.

As I delved into the Biden family finances, I was surprised to find the most detailed account in POLITICO before it jumped on the Biden bandwagon. See https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2019/08/02/joe-biden-investigation-hunter-brother-hedge-fund-money-2020-campaign-227407

As the former vice president rolled out his tired speeches for another run, POLITICO analyzed the sleazy back story of how Biden’s family took advantage of his government positions.

That story is far more than Hunter’s recent antics in China and Ukraine. The story goes back to Biden’s first days in the Senate.

As POLITICO puts it in the 2019 investigation, “[V]entures, over nearly half a century, have regularly raised conflict-of-interest questions and brought the Biden family into potentially compromising associations. This investigation offers the most comprehensive account to date of the politically tinged business activities of Biden’s brother and son, and is the first time former associates of James and Hunter have alleged that the pair explicitly sought to make money off of Joe’s political connections.”

As Joe was entering the Senate in 1973, including a seat on the Banking Committee, his younger brother James operated Seasons Change night club with help from unusually generous bank loans.

From 2001 to 2008, Hunter worked as a Washington lobbyist for the banking industry—a period when Joe pushed a sweetheart deal on bankruptcies that benefited his son’s employer, MBNA.

James and Hunter take over Paradigm Global Advisors as Joe sat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Paradigm was the first of several such companies that James and Hunter used to expand into China, Ukraine, and elsewhere, riding on the coattails of Joe’s government position.

With his brother as vice president, James joined HillStone International, which in 2011, obtained a $1.5 billion deal to build houses in Iraq.

In 2013, Hunter traveled to Beijing with his father on official business. While there, he introduced his father to his Chinese business partner, Jonathan Li of Bohai Capital, with whom he had concluded a lucrative real estate deal.

In March 2014, Russia invaded Crimea’s Ukrainian peninsula, and Joe led the Obama Administration response. A month later, Ukrainian gas company Burisma Holdings gave Hunter Biden a lucrative board position worth $600,000 a year.

Perhaps DaTimes should expend the same amount of effort in unraveling the Biden family’s fortune as it did on Donald Trump.

Stupidity and the economy

Posted: September 22, 2020 by chrisharper in economy

By Christopher Harper

As the Ragin’ Cajun James Carville put it: It’s the economy, stupid!

Despite the whack-a-mole strategies put forward by Biden and his team, voters in crucial swing states say the economy is their top issue for this election.

Keep in mind, 2019 was a record-breaking year for the U.S. economy. Median income hit its highest level ever, and the poverty rate dropped to a 60-year low. The pre-coronavirus economy under President Trump was the strongest in decades. Hispanics, Blacks, Asians, and women all saw their incomes rise faster than the national average.

As a result, it’s also clear that Trump is the best choice to lead the post-pandemic comeback for the economy.

On the other hand, Biden has promised higher taxes and a massive amount in federal spending—a combination that’s likely to turn the economy into an absolute mess.

DaPost’s Henry Olsen is one of the few media types to call attention to the bad medicine for the economy that Biden has proposed. See https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/09/16/joe-bidens-agenda-is-frighteningly-expensive/

As Olsen noted, the Manhattan Institute estimated that Biden’s plans would cost more than $8 trillion over the next 10 years. Analysts from the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School put the increase in federal spending a bit lower at $5.4 trillion over the next decade.  

Either figure means the federal government’s share of the economy would expand dangerously. Penn’s model implies that Biden’s plans would make federal spending roughly a quarter of gross domestic product by 2030, the highest figure outside of the post-recession budgets in 2009 and 2020 in more than 50 years. With local and state governments adding 15 percent to that slice of GDP, the public sector would account for 40 percent of the U.S. economy.

That’s as close to socialism as the nation has ever been.

Biden’s plan also doesn’t pay for itself even though it would significantly increase taxes. The competing analyses agree that Biden’s tax proposals would raise about $3.5 trillion in new revenue.

That’s a shortfall of somewhere between $2 to $4.5 trillion. Federal budget deficits are dangerously high and unsustainable, particularly after the outlays for the pandemic, and Biden would make the situation much worse. 

As Olsen notes, Biden’s proposals would be among the largest in decades—more than former Democratic nominees John F. Kerry, Barack Obama, and Hillary Clinton combined.

Not surprisingly, few Democrats and media types have pointed out the obvious: Biden’s plans would be an economic disaster.

Maybe it’s time to roll out Carville to preach to the choir.

The real Mideast deal

Posted: September 15, 2020 by chrisharper in middle east
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By Christopher Harper

Donald Trump has built the most effective strategy in the Middle East EVER.

Having covered the Middle East for many years as a reporter, I’ve never seen such successes. The administration has convinced the first Arab state in decades, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain, to recognize Israel. Another predominantly Muslim country, Kosovo, has established diplomatic relations with Israel.

Although Barack Obama received the Nobel Peace Prize in 2009 for opening a dialogue with Muslim countries, he and Joe Biden frittered away eight years of watching the Middle East devolve into a region dominated by Sunni and Shia extremists.

Civil war raged in Libya and Syria. The Islamic State reared its ugly head in Iraq and Syria. Then the 2015 Iran nuclear deal compounded the problems.

Known officially as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, the agreement was intended to delay Iran’s development of an atomic bomb. Instead, the lifting of economic sanctions emboldened Iran to expand its reach to solidify a Shia alliance that stretched through Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, and Hamas in the Gaza Strip.

Terrorists launched operations across Europe, leaving hundreds dead.

That’s the landscape that Trump and his administration inherited.

Trump scuttled the nuclear deal with Iran. After that, a military coalition cut the Islamic State down to size. Although remnants of ISIS continue to exist, its leadership was left either dead or in disarray, with little income and land from which to launch terrorist attacks.

After that success, Trump and his team turned their attention toward the peace process that resulted in the agreements between Arabs and Israelis.

That process continues this week in Qatar as U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, and Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross are meeting with officials from Qatar to sign agreements on cultural and economic cooperation.

Qatar has had ongoing disputes with its Arab neighbors, particularly Saudi Arabia. This week’s agreements are seen as a way toward settling those arguments and perhaps bringing both countries toward official recognition of Israel. Simultaneously, the first face-to-face talks between the government of Afghanistan and the Taliban began in Doha, the capital of Qatar.

The naysayers point to the lack of any new agreement between Israel and the Palestinians. The Israel-Palestinian-first strategy has left the Middle East without any significant movement on peace and a spate of violence since the Oslo accords of 1993.

Trump’s new approach to the Middle East has created an environment in which the Palestinian leadership, who almost always miss an opportunity to gain more recognition of their rights, may start negotiating as they see their Arab backers make peace with Israel.

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