Miscellaneous

First Lady Melania Trump is vastly underestimated.  She is planning Macron’s visit to our country, which includes a tour of Washington’s home, Mount Vernon, today.

After rendering great service to the American Revolution, Lafayette came to the home of his spiritual father to say good bye in 1784.   He urged an immediate end to slavery.  Back in France, he participated in the early stages of the French Revolution.  He returned for a triumphal tour in 1824, and paid his respects at Washington’s grave.

His most treasured gift to America  is on display today  at Mount Vernon  —   the key to the Bastille.

Vive le France.

If there’s someone smarter than Angelo Codevilla out there, I haven’t heard of them.  Here’s the link to Codevilla’s piece on Trump’s obstruction of the bureaucracy (not justice).

Since 2008, in a successful effort to prop up the economy and the stock market, the Federal Reserve has kept interest rates artificially low by quantitative easing, or printing money.  That’s changing, and the rate on 10 year Treasuries will soon exceed 3%, and is trending higher.

With no more easy money, the markets may be in for a rough ride.  Or not.  But for retired investors such as myself, who want income, not growth, this is good news.  We’ll finally get a decent return on our money.  This is normal.  But for go-go investors, easy money is like a drug to which they are addicted.  It’s loss will be painful.

I’m no stock expert.  We made our money in the 90’s, when it was easy pickings.  But I did have the good sense to listen to Bob Brinker’s “Money Talk”.   In January of 2000 Brinker called the top of the NASDAQ bubble, and told his listeners to sell 60% of their holdings, which I did.  Then I thought, why am I in with the remaining 40%?, and sold it all.

I paid a horracious capital gains tax.  But by selling when I did,  Babbie and I could afford to pull up stakes in Alaska and come back to California.

It’s good to listen to people who know more than you do.

Here’s the link to most vicious take down of the Main Stream Media I may have ever seen.

How is it that otherwise solid conservatives like Rep. Trey Gowdy and AG Jeff Sessions are not offended by Rosenstein, Mueller and their ilk?

The formative years of both Gowdy and Sessions were in the U. S. Attorneys Office in the Department of Justice.  Both worked closely with the FBI, and were dedicated law enforcement professionals.  This priesthood was  their first loyalty and it’s blinded them to the abuses now taking place.

I knew men like this in the U. S. Attorneys Office in Alaska.  They think they have some kind of higher calling, even a higher loyalty, as James Comey puts it.  They think they’re special, but they’re not.

Speaking of Comey, he’s cartooned on the cover of The Week, by, I believe, the great Michael Ramirez.  I asked my wife what she thought of him, and she asked me if he was the guy who wrote the book.  She doesn’t care about Comey or this whole Russia/email business, and wishes it would all just go away.

Sorry, James Comey, you’re not making your case.

[correction: the cartoonist on the cover of the current The Week is not Ramirez, but Howard McWilliam]