Opening Our Country Council

On Tuesday, President Trump will announce who will make up his Opening Our Country Council. I would like to guess who he will name:


Trump’s Chief Economic Advisor Larry Kudlow

Berkshire Hathaway chairman and CEO Warren Buffet

New York Governor Andrew Cuomo

California Governor Gavin Newsom

Texas Governor Greg Abbott

 Fed Chairman Jerome Powell

Texas Senator Ted Cruz

Disney CEO Bob Iger

Gates Foundation Chair Bill Gates

Alibaba Chairman Jack Ma

NIH Director Anthony Fauci (maybe not)

Headlines

Trump warns against panic amid first US coronavirus death

Coronavirus live update: White House issues new travel warnings, first US death confirmed

Americans canceling domestic travel ...

Molten: Poll shows Trump earns more than twice as much trust as media

Russia pledges to reduce tensions following Turkey talks

Amazon sellers struggle to keep products in stock amid coronavirus outbreak

Gates: may be ‘once-in-a-century’pathogen we’ve been worried about’

Google, Facebook, and Twitter support internet free speech — in Pakistan

New York might cancel Republican presidential primary

Washington state confirms first coronavirus dearth

Independents outnumber registered Republicans for the first time ...

Trump calls for lower rates amid coronavirus fallout: ‘Fed should start being a leader’

Coronavirus in Italy, over 1,100 infected, 29 dead

American Gulag

It seems clear to me, kind reader, that the United States had, during the last four or five years, moved dangerously close to creating the old Soviet Union gulags... in that it was trying to (and did) imprison people solely for their political opinions. By that I mean prison time was obviously being handed out for no legal reason other than whether this person is a Trump supporter. George Papadopoulos, Rick Gates, Michael Flynn, and Roger Stone have been mousetrapped by dirty FBI cops and a sympathetic legal system as a way of punishing them for their support of the Orangeman.

Their actual ‘process crimes’ (primarily inconsequential lying under oath) feel very much like set-ups wherein they and their families were crushed financially by the sheer power and perfidy of a corrupt and politicized Obama FBI and Justice Department ... organizations that Attorney General Barr is doing his best to restore to dignity and fairness. (Notice I have not included in this list Trump’s old lawyer, Michael Cohen, or his former brief campaign manager, Paul Manafort ... bot of whom were convicted of serious felonies: money laundering, tax evasion and corruption ... unconnected to the Trump campaign.)

And an even more disturbing aspect of this politicalization of crimes in the Washington, DC swamp is that known perjurers such as Comey, McCabe, Clapper, Brennan, Sally Yates, Susan Rice and maybe higher-ups ... are still walking free ... and under no legal jeopardy (that we know of currently). And, if they are being investigated and found guilty, is this political persecution too?

Nah!

Perhaps, it’s a good thing that we have no Siberia equivalent?

Headlines

House Intel to work through recess on impeachment inquiry

White House deliberates block on all US investment in China

McConnell: If House acts, Senate must have trial ...

Senate ‘assault weapons’ has ban outlaws 205 guns

Audio of private meeting shows oil industry ripping into Trump administration

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi says Attorney General William Barr has ‘gone rogue’

13 House Dems don’t support [impeachment]!

John Kasich on Trump-Ukraine call: ‘Nobody talking about this’ in Ohio

Cuomo clarifies he supports impeachment inquiry after blaming ‘leftists’

Bitcoin nosedives 22% this week to lowest level since June

Epstein butler dishes on Paris pad guests including Bill Gates, Steve Bannon

Dam breaking? MSNBC says ‘Biden got a nice little deal for his boy’

Too Much Wealth?

Capitalism works! It works so well that socialism and communism can suck off some of the wealth it creates and it still survives. Where capitalism is left relatively unencumbered, as in the United States and parts of the British Commonwealth, it creates wealth, enormous wealth. For instance here are some of the successes of this economic system:

- A Beverly Hills mountain-top estate is valued at a cool $1 billion

- A deVinci painting recently sold in New York for $453 million (in this case the buyer rumored to be a Saudi prince)

- During the holidays due to large influx of mega-yachts, some are parked at St. Barths as far as a mile out to sea

- Bill and Melinda Gates donated §4.78 billion to charity last year but still were 12th overall in wealth. Jeff Bezos gave away $2 billion, yet was still was the wealthiest man in the world (before his divorce settlement.) Last year Warren Buffet donated $3.6 billion to the Gates Foundation.

- In the 25 years since China adopted capitalism (albeit state-controlled), it has gone from a third-world economy to the number two wealthiest nation.

But, for whatever reason, when wealth bubbles occur, there always seems to be a way to bleed off the excess:

- The Pharaohs built the great pyramids and the Sphinx

-The Catholic Church built the great cathedrals of Europe

- The Chinese Song Dynasty built the Great Wall ... and modern China builds million-person “ghost” cities

- The US multi-billionaires hold gigantic conferences on global warming

Actually the negative interests rates in Europe and Japan nay well be another symptom of too much money sloshing around. In Germany, you can loan the government one million Euros and, in ten years, it will give you back 5 thousand Euros less. Some deal! Perhaps, just perhaps those Democrat candidates advocating a wealth tax are responding to this notion of too much wealth. We’ll see.

Three Oracles

Just watched on CNBC an interview with three oracles who have been quite successful in their ability to make gobs of money. They were questioned on many topics ... from bitcoins to autonomous cars. The three oracles were Warren Buffet and Charlie Munger of Berkshire Hathaway ...  and Bill Gates of Microsoft fame. The back and forth among these three suggested answers to most of the world's conundrums ... mostly with good humor and humility.

However, before we unwashed believe that this trio have all the answers, please remember the following:

- Warren Buffet was one of the biggest supporters of Hillary Clinton for president

- Charlie Munger believes that single-payer healthcare is the answer to our spiraling medical costs

- Bill Gates believes that man-made global warming is one of the world's biggest problems


Now, one or two of these oracles might turn out to be right, but I strongly doubt all thre have the answers.

Headlines

[Jared] Kushner loses access to top-secret intelligence

Poll: More Americans blame government failures than guns in Florida shootings

Schiff has given 227 TV interviews -- in year!

Judge rejects lawsuit seeking to stop border wall ...

Mueller drops charges against Gates, court OKs spring break trip

Kevin Spacey's Foundation to close

Deems flip two more [state] seats, 39 since Trump elected ...

Rasmussen: Trump approval 7% higher than Obama at same time in presidency ...

Trump hasn't directed NSA chief to strike back at Russian hackers

Officials from four countries tried to figure out how to manipulate Jared Kushner

Consumer confidence [at] 17-year high ...

Heritage Foundation: 2/3 of [Trump] agenda already done, faster than Reagan ...

The 1% of the 1%

It is now a big fat myth that the Republicans are the party of the rich.

I read a headline yesterday that said that Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos and Warren Buffet together have as much money (almost $250 billion) as the lowest 1/2 of the U.S. population! To me, this is a surprising statistic  and caused me to go to Google to check out its validity. I asked for the top 10 wealthiest Americans and here is what Forbes magazine indicates who these nabobs are:

#) Name, Wealth, Source of Wealth

1) Bill Gates, $89.0 billion, Microsoft

2) Jeff Bezos, $81.5 billion, Amazon

3) Warren Buffet, $78.0 billion, Berkshire Hathaway

4 ) Mark Zuckerberg, $71.0 billion, Facebook

5) Larry Ellisom, $59.0 billion, Oracle Software

6) Charles Koch, $48.5 billion, Koch Industries

7) David Koch, $48.5 billion, Koch Industries

8) Michael Bloomberg, $46.8 billion, Bloomberg LP

9) Larry Page, $44.6 billion, Google

10) Sergey Brin, $43.4 billion, Google

I'm not sure that these 10 are the 1% of the 1% ... but I bet it's close. Now, here's the test to determine if you will receive an unlimited EBT card and an Obamaphone: What do 8 out of 10 of these billionaires have in common?  Hint: It involves politics ... lefty politics ... moonbat lefty politics ... knee-jerk moonbat lefty politics. Except for the Koch brothers, they're all liberals ... even those older fellows, Bloomberg, Ellison and Buffet.

So you see, faithful readers, that notion that Republicans are the party of the wealthy is just more fake news.

Headlines

All from Internet news sites. Guess which from CNBC?

GOP faces wrenching call: Running with or away from Trump

California NAACP wants to replace 'racist' Star Spangled Banner

GOP senator [Corker] announces hearing to probe Trump's 'authority to use nuclear weapons'

Border Patrol losing agents faster than it can hire them ...

Republicans have a serious suburban problem in 2018

Trump critics fear DOJ is using merger deal to punish CNN

Gates, Bezos, Buffet richer than poorest half of USA ...

Beijing residents on Trump: 'More honest than Obama'

CBO: Obamacare mandate repeal would cut deficit by $338 billion

China state-controlled media sides with Trump over American 'fake' media

Palm Springs City Council now entirely gay ...

Trump: South Korea agrees to 'tremendous' U.S. weapons purchase