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NOVEMBER 21,  2018

SHORT TAKES ON THE DRIFTING WRECKAGE – AT 11:56 P.M. ET: 

A MAN TO BE THANKFUL FOR – FROM THE SAN DIEGO UNION-TRIBUNE:  Ray Chavez, the nation’s oldest surviving veteran of the attack on Pearl Harbor, died Wednesday at the age of 106.  Kathleen Chavez, who had been her father’s live-in caregiver for more than 20 years, said he passed away peacefully in his sleep between 3 and 6 a.m. Wednesday. His health had declined in recent months and he was in hospice care when he passed.  Memorial services are pending. Kathleen said her father wished to be buried at Miramar National Cemetery.  Chavez surged into national prominence three years ago when fellow Pearl Harbor veterans recognized him as the oldest survivor of the 1941 Japanese attack that ushered the U.S. into World War II.  At its peak, the Pearl Harbor Survivors Association had 58,000 members. Today, there are fewer than 200, according to Stu Hedley, 97, who heads the association’s now-10-member San Diego chapter.  The greatest generation fades, and we miss them.

THIS IS NOT A LESSON IN DEMOCRACY – FROM BIZPACREVIEW:  Rider University in New Jersey sent a survey to students during the spring semester, asking them which restaurants they would like to see the school bring on campus. But when it became clear that Chick-Fil-A was the students’ top choice, the college disregarded the results of the survey.  The school will not bring the popular fast food chain to campus because “their corporate values have not sufficiently progressed enough to align with those of Rider,” according to a Nov. 1 email sent to Rider students and obtained by Campus Reform. The school went on to clarify that the decision was in an effort to “promote…inclusion for all people.”   I guess these brilliant educators are talking about the fact that one of the company's founders doesn't agree with gay marriage.  I wonder how many potential employees won't have jobs because Rider's administration wants to strut its ideological stuff. 

BE CAREFUL OUT THERE – FROM THE WEATHER CHANNEL:   Wind chills Thanksgiving morning will be in the teens, perhaps 20s below zero in northern New England and the Adirondacks of upstate New York. Subzero wind chills are likely in parts of southern New England, western and central New York and northern Pennsylvania, including Boston, Hartford, Providence, Albany and Syracuse.
Wind chill advisories have been issued for some parts of the interior Northeast for Thursday morning. Frostbite is possible in as little as 30 minutes in these areas.   These will be the coldest temperature anomalies - in other words, the temperatures most below average - anywhere in the Northern Hemisphere on Thanksgiving Day.   For some Northeast cities, high temperatures on Thanksgiving could be close to the coldest on record no matter what day of the month the holiday was celebrated (e.g. Nov. 22, Nov. 24, Nov. 26, etc.).  Be sure your car is in shape, with a fully charged battery.  As you'll recall, we had a traffic disaster in the New York area last Thursday, with many batteries, including ours, replaced the next day.

November 21, 2018       Permalink

TIGHT IN MISSISSIPPI – AT 9:45 P.M. ET:  And it shouldn't be.  There will be a runoff in the state on Tuesday for the US Senate seat vacated by Thad Cochran.  The seat is being temporarily held by Republican Cindy Hyde-Smith, who was appointed when Cochran resigned in the spring.  Her opponent is Democrat Mike Espy.

Ordinarily, this would hardly be news.  Mississippi is a solidly Republican state, and Hyde-Smith should be walking to victory.  But a series of blundering remarks by her, interpreted by some as racially tinged, have made the waters rougher.  Espy is an African-American.  From the Washington Examiner: 

The tightening Mississippi race for U.S. Senate is starting to look a lot like a preview of the 2020 presidential election, as President Trump and a slew of potential Democratic challengers have entered the ring to fight for their party contenders.

The contest between Republican Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith and Democratic opponent Mike Espy is headed for a runoff on Tuesday after both candidates tied on Election Day in a race that has seen a spending frenzy on both sides of the aisle.

Hyde-Smith, who was appointed in April to temporarily fill the seat vacated by Thad Cochran, appears vulnerable in the deep-red state after becoming embroiled in a series of racially tinged controversies that have opened up a line of attack for her African-American opponent and his allies.

COMMENT:  The oddsmakers say that Hyde-White will still pull it out, but the closeness in the polls shows how hard Republicans work to lose elections.  The runoff is important.  Republicans currently stand at plus two seats in the Senate as a result of the recent election.  If they lose this seat that will go back to plus one, hardly a great achievement.

November 21, 2018       Permalink

POLITICS AND NUTRITION – AT 1:22 P.M. ET:   Yes, there is a relationship.  The true scholars among Urgent Agenda readers will appreciate this deep research.  From The Dallas News: 

If your relatives make a quick escape from the dinner table this Thanksgiving, it may not be because you served them dry turkey and lumpy mashed potatoes.

A recent study determined that some travelers cut their Thanksgiving dinner short when they were spending it in a place that voted differently than where they lived — effectively avoiding dinner discussions about the presidential election.

In "The Effect of Partisanship and Political Advertising on Close Family Ties," researchers Keith Chen and Ryan Rhola gathered location data from smartphones to track holiday travelers' drives, then matched that to voting data.

The billions of location pings, aggregated in 2015 and 2016 by data-gathering company SafeGraph, cover the 77 percent of the U.S. population that uses smartphones. The researchers isolated travelers who spent both Wednesday and Thursday nights in their own homes, avoiding people whose travel plans were constrained by, for instance, airplane tickets.

Chen and Rhola then assessed each location’s political leanings, based on results from the 2016 election. They also compared the results for 2015 and 2016 to control for the difference in years with and without major elections.

Their findings? Thanksgiving travelers who went somewhere with different political leanings from their own shortened their dinners by 30 to 50 minutes compared with those who traveled to districts with similar leanings.

Why the difference?

Overall, Chen and Rhola estimated that Americans cut out 73.6 million hours of time spent together on Thanksgiving 2016 — 52.2 percent from residents in Republican-leaning precincts and 47.8 percent from Democrat-leaning precincts.

Political advertising exacerbated the difference, according to the study, shortening dinners by 2.6 minutes for every 1,000 political ads in the traveler’s home media market. 

This accounted for 15.9 million hours lost, 46.3 percent of which was from residents of Democratic precincts and 53.7 percent from those traveling from Republican precincts.

COMMENTS:  Absolutely fascinating.  Doesn't it kinda confirm what many of us have thought – that politics affects choices we make that have nothing to do with politics?

So, start checking registration statistics for the place you'll be tomorrow.  Travel accordingly.

November 21, 2018       Permalink

PRESIDENT RISES AGAIN – AT 9:54 A.M. ET:  The president has hit 51% approval in the Rasmussen poll, the only daily tracker left.  This in spite of some gaffes and some rather petty and boastful comments he made after the election.  Maybe the American people have discounted his occasionally coarse indulgences.  Or maybe they're sending a message to the Democrats not to go crazy in their anti-Trump hatred.  From Rasmussen: 

The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll for Wednesday shows that 51% of Likely U.S. Voters approve of President Trump’s job performance. Forty-eight percent (48%) disapprove. 

The latest figures include 36% who Strongly Approve of the way Trump is performing and 40% who Strongly Disapprove. This gives him a Presidential Approval Index rating of -4.

COMMENT:  We always stress that this is one poll, and tends to show the president higher than in other surveys.  The poll result is best used to detect trends rather than hit specific numbers.  The trend for the president in the last week has been upward.  He has gained four points.

November 21,  2018     Permalink

NOVEMBER 20,  2018

SHORT TAKES ON THE DRIFTING WRECKAGE – AT 11:55 P.M. ET: 

GREAT BREAKTHROUGH IN EDUCATION – FROM DAILYWIRE:   A university in the United Kingdom is so concerned about the fragile egos of its students that it has banned lecturers from using capital letters when assigning work.  Leeds Trinity released a memo to its staff regarding their students in which the university stated that uppercase letters might “scare them into failure.” In addition to that ruling, the memo also instructed the teachers to make sure their writing was friendly and eschewed overbearing and negative language.  The memo stated, “"Despite our best attempts to explain assessment tasks, any lack of clarity can generate anxiety and even discourage students from attempting the assessment at all. Generally, avoid using capital letters for emphasis and "the overuse of 'do', and, especially, 'DON'T'."  Historians 500 years from now will look at documents like this as examples of the mentality that destroyed Western civilization.

SAD – FROM THE HILL:  Salt Lake County Mayor Ben McAdams (D) defeated incumbent GOP Rep. Mia Love by fewer than 700 votes in a hotly contested race for Utah’s 4th Congressional District, turning the district blue for the first time in six years.  The race had been initially too close to call, with both McAdams and Love at different points taking a slight edge over each other. In the end, the Associated Press called the race for the Democrat on Nov. 20.  Polls had showed McAdams with a slight edge over Love, with Sabato's Crystal Ball shifting her race from a “toss-up” to “leans Democrat” just days before the election.  Love had faced an uphill battle in the district, where President Trump's approval rating has been underwater amid a midterm election that has been widely framed as a referendum on the president.  Mia Love is talented, an African-American Republican in a very white state.  I hope she stays in politics. 

SHRINKING OF AN INDUSTRY – FROM HOT AIR:  Contrary to suggestions of a slow-down, the number of Americans severing their ties to cable and satellite TV soared to the largest number ever during the third quarter this year.  For the first time satellite and cable TV providers lost more than a million subscribers from July through September this year. To be exact, they lost 1.1 million customers. Which is a lot of of monthly fees gone poof!  Dish TV lost 367,000 satellite subscribers in the third quarter compared to gaining 16,000 in the previous third quarter. It added only 26,000 new ones to its Sling service this time.
In a financial report AT&T said DirecTV lost 359,600 satellite subscribers during the quarter, while adding only 49,000 new subscribers to DirecTV Now, its streaming TV service...“Cord cutting does not appear to be slowing at all,” according to MoffetNathanson, a media and telecommunications research firm.  Technology advances and devours the technology it replaces.

November 20, 2018       Permalink 

WE ARE OVERWHELMED BY OBNOXIA – AT 2:20 P.M. ET:  What is it with Democrats?  They keep tormenting us despite our kindness and warmth.  Can we send them to charm school?  Maybe provide warm and cuddly service animals?  Anything to stop the behavior.   Consider Stacey Abrams, from NPR: 

Democrat Stacey Abrams isn't backing down from her fight against what she calls voter suppression tactics and election mismanagement after losing the Georgia governor's race. In fact, Abrams said she experienced the problems in her state firsthand — after nearly being denied a ballot during early voting.

In an interview with Morning Edition host Steve Inskeep, the Democratic gubernatorial nominee said that when she went to vote last month, a poll worker initially told her that she had requested an absentee ballot and couldn't cast an in-person vote. Abrams replied that she never filed for an absentee ballot, and after a conversation with the site's manager, the matter was quickly resolved.

"I did it quietly. I didn't turn it into a major conversation because, for me, it was about getting through the process," Abrams said. Followed by cameras to the polls, she said kept the snafu under wraps because "I was not trying to embarrass anyone, but I did want it fixed."

Oh please.  That's not voter suppression.  That's incompetence.  And there's plenty of it.  She keeps talking about voter suppression but hasn't provided one bit of proof.  Show us the evidence.  Stacey, you lost an election.  Prepare for the next one.

And get this ego, out of control, from Breitbart: 

Left-wing billionaire Tom Steyer, who spent millions in the 2018 midterm elections pushing for the impeachment of President Donald Trump, is preparing to launch a campaign for president in 2020, according to Politico.

Politico’s Alex Thompson wrote Monday evening:

The former billionaire investor, climate activist and impeachment agitator Tom Steyer will take several steps toward a 2020 presidential bid Tuesday.

That will include a six-figure web ad buy on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and Instagram along with a full-page ad in USA Today and other Gannett newspapers outlining a political platform, a revamped TomSteyer.com, and the announcement of five town halls across the country, the first of which will be in the crucial early primary state of South Carolina, according to copies of the ad and platform provided to POLITICO.

The first town hall is set for Dec. 4 in Charleston, S.C., and the next will be in Fresno, Calif., sometime in December, according to Aleigha Cavalier, senior communications adviser for TomSteyer.com who also works for Steyer’s climate-focused group NextGen America. There will be one town hall for each of the “5 rights” on Steyer’s platform: the right to an equal vote, to clean air and water, to learn with pre-K education through college, to a living wage, and to health.

Steyer has spent hundreds of millions of dollars on other Democrats’ campaigns in recent years. He was the party’s top donor in 2014 — buying few wins but allowing him to force the party to stage an all-night talk session about climate change on the Senate floor.

In 2018, he spent over $100 million on an effort to push for impeachment, reinforcing that message the day after the election in a New York Times op-ed.

COMMENT:  I think we've all felt the wanting of Steyer.  It's all around us.  I just don't know how America will be able to resist.

As far as Stacey is concerned, she'd best be silent for a time.  She's wearing out her welcome.

November 20, 2018       Permalink

IT'S THE ECONOMY – AT 11:32 A.M. ET:  You may have noticed a number of economic stories that have come to the fore in the last week.  The reason is that the 2020 campaign has begun, and the economy will probably be the deciding issue.  If it remains strong, Trump could be re-elected, possibly by a substantial margin.

But if the economy goes south, Trump could be defeated by a new face, and could even face a primary challenge from one of the vast number of Republicans who intensely dislike him.

First the good news, from Townhall:   

A new poll from Gallup shows President Trump's approval rating on the economy just hit a new high.

According to the numbers, 53 percent of Americans give "positive remarks" on his economic policies. Gallup's bottom line: "Americans' relatively high approval ratings for Trump's handling of the economy reflect the public's overall positive sentiments on a number of economic indicators, including some readings that are as high as or higher than they have been in at least 18 years."

Meanwhile, it isn't just Gallup that shows an improvement for the President on this issue. CBS News also has a new report showing a whopping 74 percent of Americans rate the economy as good.

But the cloudy news, from CNBC:

Goldman Sachs believes the U.S. economy will slow significantly in the second half of next year as the Federal Reserve continues to raise interest rates and the effects of the tax cut fade.

"Growth is likely to slow significantly next year, from a recent pace of 3.5 percent-plus to roughly our 1.75 percent estimate of potential by end-2019," wrote Jan Hatzius, chief economist for the investment bank, in a note to clients on Sunday. "We expect tighter financial conditions and a fading fiscal stimulus to be the key drivers of the deceleration."

The bank sees the economy expanding at 2.5 percent in the fourth quarter of this year, down from 3.5 percent last quarter. Real GDP growth will come in at 2.5 percent again in the first quarter of 2019, but then will slow to 2.2 percent, 1.8 percent and 1.6 percent in the next three quarters, respectively.
Goldman sees the Fed raising rates this December and then four more times in 2019. It will do so because inflation will reach 2.25 percent by the end of next year because of tariffs and increasing wages, the bank predicted, noting there was also a chance of an "inflation overshoot."

"With a large overshoot of its labor market target under way, the FOMC (Federal Open Market Committee) will likely be reluctant to stop until it is confident that the unemployment rate is no longer on a downward trajectory, a point we expect to reach only in early 2020," the note said.

COMMENT:  Of course, the president will have an argument ready if things slow down.  He'll claim, and possibly with some merit, that the slowdown started with the election of a Democratic House, as investors were frightened off by the prospect. 

That may work, or not.  But Trump's trump card is a strong economy.   His backup is the chaos in the Democratic Party. 

A year from now we'll be looking at actual candidates, and CNN will tell us that they will save America from TRUMP or BUSH or CHENEY or FOX NEWS.

November 20,  2018     Permalink