Hour One
Tuesday 25 August 2020   / Hour 1, Block A: Elizabeth Peek @LizPeek, TheHill and Fox News; in re:   Astoundingly, Democrats say that Trump has done nothing about the virus and at the same time  blame Trump for the virus.  . ..   If the states in lockdown open, retail, vehicle and house sales will shoot up. Currently the key about the market is that consumer net worth is way up from where it was a month ago.  The market will take a hit between now and the election.    A remarkable rebound in the US and much around the world. In Norwalk, Connecticut,  the neighborhoods are crawling with realtors; cash offers for houses that are on the rail line.   Unemployment claims continue to be onerous in NY, for example because of enforced shutdown by the governor and the mayor of New York City—the latter has no plan to bring the city back to life, which is devastating to small businesses.  Weekend: hundred of people were lining up at breadlines/food pantries; they may have worked in hospitality. Blue governors and blue mayors: what would national GDP look like if things were open?  Ed Yardeni says it’d be up 25%.  Joe Biden with his tax increases for the rich. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-economy-kudlow/us-economy-rebounding-strongly-fresh-aid-coming-to-unemployed-kudlow-idUSKCN25F2KL
Tuesday 25 August 2020   / Hour 1, Block B:  Elizabeth Peek @LizPeek, TheHill and Fox News; in re:  At last week’s DNC convention, pollution-free tech by 2025, implicit is the end to the fossil fuel industry. In Pennsylvania, there are 25,000 jobs in fossil fuel. Joe Biden’s campaign is prosing to eliminate those jobs; Green jobs are worth 50% of what people earn now. How can Biden win Pennsylvania? Biden promises expenditures of $4 trillion; schools, $3 trillion; free college, more.  Also, ”I’ll shut down the economy to save us from Covid.”  What?  The one policy he offered in his speech was about Covid; avoided police, abortion, etc.  His handlers are concerned hat the more you see of Biden, the more he wanders into the stratosphere.  https://www.marketwatch.com/story/biden-says-he-would-shut-economy-down-to-stop-spread-of-covid-19-2020-08-23
Tuesday 25 August 2020   / Hour 1, Block C:  New World Report. Joseph Humire @jmhumire, @securefreesoc, and Senator Maria Fernanda Cabal @MariaFdaCabal, in re: Iran with missiles; Venezuela obtaining some; Pres Duque of Colombia thinks they could get in the hands of armed terrorists threatening Colombia. Terrorists currently re already in Colombia: narcotics and theft of gold, which they exchange for food and petroleum.   US Southern Command.  Regional and hemispheric threat, much intended by Maduro.  Weekly stories of Iranian-Venezuelan activity, largely to legitimize the alliance. Arms transfer hasn't been made, but is planned. 
       Presumption that a Biden victory would [help] the Castro regime, linked to Russia and other bad actors in the region.  Cuban intell services are said to be what’s holding Maduro in power. Nice to open trade relations, but in Cuba trade is not free, and political opponents are jailed and worse.  Iranian commerce: 30% or more in the hands of the IRGC.  Cuba has trained guerrillas for more than 50 years, has made Colombia a violent country, often in concert with Pablo Escobar—burned a lot of buildings with people inside.  How could Duque have relations with Cuba?
Tuesday 25 August 2020   / Hour 1, Block D:  New World Report. Joseph Humire @jmhumire, @securefreesoc, and Senator Maria Fernanda Cabal @MariaFdaCabal, in re: Evo Morales, Bolivia; he fled to gather forces and money, now has denounced a criminal complaint of sex abuse—of a 14-year-old girl—less than two months before an election (Girl is now 16 and with Morales  in Argentina, where Morales has sympathy from Kirchner, who gives him dipl protection and couriers. Christina Kirchner has multiple charges against her. An alliance of state-destroying old guard.)   He was a pol before being president, and involved in narcotrafficking, He became a sort of warlord, incl in his personal behavior.  Charges began as electoral, then went to corruption, and now sex trafficking.   Jungle between Colombia and Panama is much used for criminality.
 
Hour Two
Tuesday 25 August 2020   / Hour 2, Block A:  Gregory R Copley: Defense and Foreign Affairs; Gregory R Copley, The New Total War of the Twenty-first Century and the Trigger of the Fear Pandemic, in re: China is a hostile power integrated into the global supply chain. Bai De He: “China reaches out to the world” — with brutality to Uyghurs, letting a Nobel prizewinner die in prison.  In the last meeting, the old factions we re not carrying enough clout to overturn Xi, who nonetheless is still walking on eggshells. He has unprecedented grasp on power and retribution. People are urging him to retire.  He has to travel with an onerous retinue of armed guard, much larger than American.  Paranoia, change schedule, are secretive, and the like. s He plays on needing to have a breathing space to deal with crises, China is contracting at a head-spinning rate; no US dollars, looking for other trading mechanisms (renminbi is not hard currency).  The source of the contraction is Pres Trump. China has to see him defeated, and have the Democrats take t the Congress and Senate. Rarely has the fate of a great power been so closely linked with an election in another great power.
. . .  Xi hopes to break up India’s control of SE Asia, keep Thailand and Myanmar out of the ASEAN bloc.
.
Economic Threats: The most significant challenge to the current economic situation for the PRC came with the massive drawdown on hard currency foreign exchange reserves which were spent funding Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) projects and loans abroad. This was matched by the unconstrained spending on foreign acquisitions of mineral re- sources to meet domestic vanity projects — empty cities and highways to nowhere — which served only to escalate the PRC gross domestic product (GDP), without adding durable infrastructural strength to the PRC economy.
The CPC had lost its massive economic clout by the time, in September 2018, that Xi declared the start of “the New Thirty Years War” with the US. It was not the ideal time for Beijing to declare its defining war, but it was a measure of the decision by Xi to at- tempt to intimidate the US and other states to accept the PRC’s “rise” at a time when real economic performance dictated that it was already in decline.
Tuesday 25 August 2020   / Hour 2, Block B:  Gregory R Copley: Defense and Foreign Affairs; Gregory R Copley, The New Total War of the Twenty-first Century and the Trigger of the Fear Pandemic, in re: People have trouble with news, which in large part are lies. “Truth is so important is has to be protected by a network of lies”—Churchill, in context of WWII operations.
“The Big Lie” –information dominance warfare; part of a fairly consistent and professionalized ability to keep projecting destabilizing information into the marketplace.   Psy-ops. Voters can't figure out who’s lying. Candidates have to appeal based on personality.
.
The reality that the Communist Party of China (CPC) has truly interfered in the elections of the US in 2020 — on a scale which even the Soviets could never have dared in the 1917 to 1990 timeframe — highlights the global dimension of the sewer of “big lie/little lie” hostility which has helped polarize the US polity. In this regard, despite the fact that the PRC itself is in strategic reversal, the CPC has won a great victory. It has helped cripple the US and the West. The reality of CPC interference in the 2020 US elections is never raised by the Democrats because it helps them.
Tuesday 25 August 2020   / Hour 2, Block C:  Harry Siegel @harrysiegel,  New York Daily News and Daily Beast, in re: Five hundred days till next New York mayoral election, and 220 subway windows suddenly broken, the mayor, DeBlasio, seems to have checked out.  In May and June, 32 were broken; last year, 2 broken. All the bridges were rusted from no maintenance. 
Tuesday 25 August 2020   / Hour 2, Block D:  Bill Whalen @Hooverwhalen, in re: The letter C anent the RNC convention. Portland violence violent cities are under Democratic mayors.  Trump should have pointed out the connections between protests and violence.
 
Hour Three
Tuesday 25 August 2020   / Hour 3, Block A:  John Tamny @johntamny,  RealClearMarkets,  in re: Politicians exist to spend money, In the private sector, success means having fewer hands on deck; in the public sector, success is usually seen as exponential expansion of staff and expenditures.  A tax on the rich is a tax on me because that’s more control the pols have on the economy. Government can’t stimulate economic growth because all it can do is [distribute] growth that’s already occurred.   Jerome Powell is a Keynesian.   A recession is a sign that we’re fixing what we did wrong before. When govt steps it, it delays the natural recovery.
Tuesday 25 August 2020   / Hour 3, Block B:  John Tamny @johntamny, RealClearMarkets, in re:  Automatic stabilizer in DC: big spending surges arrive with an advance system for added stimulus. Govt grows during recessions [because of govt spending], which elongates recessions. 
Tuesday 25 August 2020   / Hour 3, Block C:  Joseph Sternberg @josephsternberg, @WSJOpinion, in re: English life in the time of the virus
Tuesday 25 August 2020   / Hour 3, Block D:  Joseph Sternberg @josephsternberg, @WSJOpinion, in re: The A-level scandal
 
Hour Four
Tuesday 25 August 2020   / Hour 4, Block A:  A Self-Made Man: The Political Life of Abraham Lincoln Vol. I, 1809–1849 (1) Book 1 of 3: The Political Life of Abraham Lincoln, by Sidney Blumenthal [1 of 8]
Tuesday 25 August 2020   / Hour 4, Block B:  A Self-Made Man: The Political Life of Abraham Lincoln Vol. I, 1809–1849 (1) Book 1 of 3: The Political Life of Abraham Lincoln, by Sidney Blumenthal [2 of 8]
Tuesday 25 August 2020   / Hour 4, Block C:  A Self-Made Man: The Political Life of Abraham Lincoln Vol. I, 1809–1849 (1) Book 1 of 3: The Political Life of Abraham Lincoln, by Sidney Blumenthal [3 of 8]
Tuesday 25 August 2020   / Hour 4, Block D:  A Self-Made Man: The Political Life of Abraham Lincoln Vol. I, 1809–1849 (1) Book 1 of 3: The Political Life of Abraham Lincoln, by Sidney Blumenthal [4 of 8]