Ronald E. Yates's Blog, page 82

Europe’s Crisis of Survival

I lived in Europe for four years in the 1960s while serving with the U.S. Army Security Agency in Germany. Since then, I have returned multiple times and have watched the Europe I once knew change in ways that would have been unimaginable just a decade ago.

Today, I am posting a commentary by Italian Journalist Giulio Meotti who writes: “Sadly, the ‘death of Europe’ is drawing nearer, is becoming more visible and is more frequently discussed by popular writers.”

Why is this happening? What can be done to save the traditional cultures of nations like Germany, France, and Italy in the face of an unprecedented deluge of migrants from Africa and the Middle East, most of whom don’t comprehend or embrace Western European values and ideals of enlightenment, religious freedom, and independent thought?

Meotti raises those questions and provides some answers from a variety of sources, including European writers, religious leaders, and politicians. They quite rightly worry about the death of European culture in the face of the growing invasion of millions of impoverished and uneducated people from backwater nations. They fear that two thousand years of Judeo-Christian European culture and traditions will be obliterated by a population of migrants who are multiplying many times faster than their European hosts and who don’t share the same values.  A re these concerns warranted?

Or are they only the lamentations of white Europeans who fear those who are different from themselves?  The questions Meotti and other Europeans raise should concern Americans. After all, European ideals and principles are undeniably the foundation of our own Judeo-Christian political and cultural traditions. And no matter how often we hear some people talk about the “browning” of America and Europe, race is not the issue. What is, are our time-honored and long-established values of individualism, independent thought, political self-determination, religious freedom, and cultural cohesion.

Sharia law? No thank you, our system of jurisprudence is based on English Common Law, not on the adherence to the unyielding dogma of Islam which has a long history of eradicating or marginalizing other religions and replacing secular principles of governance with a religion still mired in the 7th century. Read on. 

[image error]

By Giulio Meotti

Europe is facing an existential challenge of unprecedented proportions, a downward spiral in which Europeans seem to be slowly dying out by failing to reproduce. It appears that Europe has also lost all confidence in the hard-won values of The Enlightenment, such as personal freedoms, reason, and science replacing superstition and the separation of church and state. These are critical if Europe truly wishes to survive.

Consider the following:

In Western Germany, 42% of children under the age of six now come from a migrant background, according to Germany’s Federal Statistical Office, as reported by Die Welt.
An investigation published in July by the weekly L’Express showed that in France, “between 2000 and 2016, the number of children with at least one foreign parent increased from 15 to 24 percent.” 

According to Catholic Bishop Andrew Nkea Fuanya of Cameroon: “If you look through history, where the Christian Church slept, got diverted away from the Gospel, Islam took the advantage and came in. This is what we see in Europe, that the Church is sleeping, and Islam is creeping in.  Europe is being Islamized, and it will affect Africa.” 

[image error]

The late historian Walter Laqueur, who, for his far-sighted prognosis about Europe’s crisis, has been called “the indispensable pessimist,” wrote that if current trends continue, a hundred years from now Europe’s population “will be only a fraction of what it is today, and in two hundred years, some countries may have disappeared.”

Laqueur was one of the first to understand that the current deadlock in which the continent finds itself goes far beyond economics. The point is that the days of European strength are over. Because of low birth rates, Europe is dramatically shrinking.

Sadly, the “death of Europe” is drawing nearer, is becoming more visible and is more frequently discussed by popular writers.

“At a time when literature is increasingly marginalized in public life, Michel Houellebecq offers a striking reminder that novelists can provide insights about society that pundits and experts miss,” the New York Times wrote about arguably the most important French author. Houellebecq “speaks” through his best-selling novels, such as Submission, as well as his public lectures. The last conference that Houellebecq attended in Brussels — on the occasion of the Oswald Spengler Prize, commemorating the author of The Decline of the West — was dedicated to that topic.

“To sum up,” Houellebecq said, “the Western world as a whole is committing suicide.”

[image error]

Why has Europe become so obsessed about its own declining demography and surging fertile immigration from Africa?

According to Ross Douthat, writing in The New York Times, “Western-supported population control efforts in the developing world” are “creeping back into the discussion” for three reasons:

“Because African birthrates haven’t slowed as fast as Western experts once expected, because European demographics are following Macron’s Law toward the grave and because European leaders are no longer nearly so optimistic about assimilating immigrants as even a few short years ago.”

Douthat is referring to two speeches by the French president, Emmanuel Macron. In 2017, Macron called Africa’s problems “civilizational” and lamented that they “have seven or eight children per woman.” In a second speech at the Gates Foundation last week, Macron said: “Show me the woman who decided, being perfectly educated, to have seven, eight or nine children. You can’t.”

[image error] Muslims praying in a Paris street

The question Macron implicitly raised is: How can Europe manage its own educated people with their low birth rates while confronting massive African and Middle Eastern fertility and immigration? It seems that Europe is in a demographic struggle with the rest of the world, and can only lose. 

These are critical questions if Europe truly wishes to survive. The distinguished historian Victor Davis Hanson recently wrote:

“Judged by the great historical determinants of civilizational power — fuel, energy, education, demography, political stability, and military power — Europe is waning. It is spending a mere 1.4% of its collective GDP on defense… And with a fertility rate of less than 1.6%, Europe is slowly shrinking and aging — hence the short-sighted immigration policy of Angela Merkel who sees immigration also as a solution to the demography crisis and a shortcut to low-cost labor.”

However, as Walter Laqueur wrote, “even if Europe’s decline is irreversible, there is no reason that it should become a collapse.”

How does one avoid that collapse?

At a recent European meeting, Italy’s interior minister, Matteo Salvini, who heads the anti-immigration League party, said:

“I’ve heard colleagues say that we need immigration because the population of Europe is getting older, but I have a completely different viewpoint… I believe that I’m in government to see that our young people have the number of children that they used to a few years ago and not to transplant the best of Africa’s youth to Europe. Maybe in Luxembourg, they need to do this, but in Italy, we need to help people have more children, rather than bring in modern-day slaves (from Africa) to replace the children we’re not having. I prefer to keep Italy for the Italians and start to make children again.”

[image error]

Salvini sees a bleak future for Italy. Under stable conditions, he says, Italy’s population could collapse, reaching just over 16 million inhabitants compared to 59 million today. This disturbing projection emerged this year at Italy’s annual “Festival of Statistics and Demography,” where University of Rome professor Matteo Rizzolli said:

“Because this happens in a hundred years, even if we will be 8 million fewer in 20 years, if we keep on acting as we do, it will do nothing to promote the birth rate.”

Europe’s establishment is therefore perfectly divided between the so-called “Europeists,” who believe that new migrants are necessary to stop the EU’s demographic collapse, and the “Euroskeptics” who want to overcome it on their own.

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, for instance, has called on Europeans to stop the “demographic decline” by investing more in traditional families. Meanwhile, Italian Catholic Archbishop Gian Carlo Perego has said:

“The challenge for Italy is to reconcile a country that is dying with young people who come from elsewhere, to begin a new history. If we close our door to migrants, we will disappear.”

Salvini proposed yet another idea in an interview with The Times:

“A country which does not create children is destined to die…We have created a ministry of the family to work on fertility, nurseries, on a fiscal system which takes large families into account. At the end of this mandate, the government will be measured on the number of newborns more than on its public debt.”

At stake, Salvini said, is Italy’s “tradition, our story, our identity” — the left is using the fertility crisis as an “excuse” to “import immigrants.”

Europe’s decline and transformation can also be seen in France. According to new statistics released by the French National Institute of Statistics and Economic Studies, Mohammed and several other traditional Muslim names now top the list of most popular baby names in the French department of Seine-Saint-Denis (1.5 million residents).

It is noteworthy that two journalists with the mainstream newspaper Le Monde, Gérard Davet and Fabrice Lhomme, have just published a book entitled Inch’allah: Islamization à visage découvert (“If Allah Wills: The Exposed Face of Islamization”), an investigation of the “Islamization” of the Seine-Saint-Denis area.

Mass unvetted immigration to Europe has done it more harm than good, according to Walter Laqueur. “Uncontrolled immigration is not the only reason for the decline of Europe. But taken together with the continent’s other misfortunes, it has led to a profound crisis; a miracle might be needed to extract Europe from these predicaments.”

[image error]

Both Matteo Salvini and Michel Houellebecq have pointed out that the drama of an aging and tired Europe is not a partisan or electoral issue; it is a civilizational one. This issue will also decide the future of the European Union, which the open-borders policy might wipe out.

Time is running out. As Houellebecq said in a speech at the Frank Schirrmacher Prize:

“The advance of Islam is just beginning, because demography is on its side and because Europe, which has stopped having children, has entered a process of suicide. And it is not a slow suicide. Once you have arrived at a birth rate of 1.3 or 1.4, then, in reality, things go very fast.”

Giulio Meotti, Cultural Editor for Il Foglio, is an Italian journalist and author.

 

Successful Authors Who Never Finished College

There are those who believe that a university education is almost a prerequisite to becoming a successful author. Nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, you might be surprised to find out how many authors made names for themselves without finishing — or, in some cases, ever attending — college. Here are a few.

Ernest Hemingway

Hemingway was raised in Oak Park, Illinois. He never attended college. After high school, he went to work for The Kansas City Star. During World War I, he left for the Italian front where he became an ambulance driver. In 1918, he was seriously wounded and returned home. His wartime experiences formed the basis for his novel A Farewell to Arms (1929). He went on to write such major best sellers as For Whom the Bell Tolls, The Sun Also Rises, and The Old Man and The Sea. He won the Novel Prize in literature in 1954. Because he had suffered a series in injuries in two recent African plane crashes, he didn’t travel to Stockholm to accept the prize, Instead, he sent a letter to be read. In part, it said: “Writing, at its best, is a lonely life. Organizations for writers palliate the writer’s loneliness but I doubt if they improve his writing. He grows in public stature as he sheds his loneliness and often his work deteriorates. For he does his work alone and if he is a good enough writer he must face eternity, or the lack of it, each day.”

Jack London

[image error] Jack London

Jack London is famous for having a variety of very odd jobs (he had a stint as an oyster pirate) throughout his life, but you may not know that he began this practice at the ripe age of ten. By the time he was thirteen he had quit school, still working a handful of jobs, but devouring every book he could find. London eventually ended up at UC Berkeley, but his journey to college was hardly traditional. As a young boy, he found a librarian at the Oakland Public Library who was willing to mentor him, and, with her encouragement, London was essentially self-educated. He worked long hours at a cannery beginning at age 13 and later began to work as a tramp, begging for money. At 18, he spent a month in jail for vagrancy, only after which he returned to complete high school. A pub owner and friend loaned him the money to attend UC Berkeley, but London left a year later when the money ran out and never graduated. Even without a college education, he penned such classics as The Call of the Wild and White Fang. He published his first collection of short stories at age 24.

Harper Lee

[image error] Harper Lee

The Pulitzer-Prize winning author is a lesson in following your dreams. Lee had been interested in literature from high school, but in college, decided to pursue a career in law. Though her interest in writing only increased as she grew older, in her junior year at the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa, she was accepted into the school’s law program, set up so students could begin their law studies concurrently with undergraduate work. After only a semester, she dropped out and moved to New York City to become a writer. And we all know how that story ended — not too shabbily. Her most famous work was To Kill a Mockingbird. A sequel, Go Set a Watchman, was published in 2015. It was actually written by Lee before To Kill a Mockingbird, but is set some 20 years later.

H. G. Wells

[image error] H.G. Wells

The legendary science fiction author was pulled out of school when his father, a professional cricket player, fractured his thigh. Wells was only 11 years old, but the loss of the grand part of the family’s income forced the children to take apprenticeships — Wells hated his apprenticeship as a draper at the Southsea Drapery Emporium. His experiences there later inspired the novels The Wheels of Chance and Kipps. Every job he had was a nightmare until he was finally able to support himself as a teacher and to continue educating himself in hopes of becoming a writer. Wells went on to become a famous, science fiction novelist known for The War of the Worlds and The Time Machine.

George Bernard Shaw

The famous playwright attended several schools in his youth before dropping out entirely at age 14, finding little value in formal education. “Schools and schoolmasters, as we have them today,” he once wrote, “are not popular as places of education and teachers, but rather prisons and turnkeys in which children are kept to prevent them disturbing and chaperoning their parents.” A voracious learner and reader, he spent hours in the National Gallery of Dublin reading about art, history, and literature and beginning to write on his own. Some of his best-known novels include Pygmalion, Saint Joan, and Mrs. Warren’s Profession.

Jane Austen

Money proved to be a problem for Austen and though she was originally a boarding school student, her education came to a standstill when her parents could no longer afford to keep her in the classroom. And still, she wrote “Pride and Prejudice,” “Mansfield Park” and “Sense and Sensibility.”

[image error] Jane Austin

Ray Bradbury

Ray Bradbury is a familiar name to the generations of high school students required to read his classic novel Fahrenheit 451. These students might be irked to discover that Bradbury barely finished high school himself and had no interest in attending college. This is not to imply that he was unmotivated; he started writing stories on butcher paper at age 11 during the Depression. He claimed he didn’t “believe in colleges” and put his faith in libraries instead, to which all children (even poor ones) had access. Bradbury even wrote Fahrenheit 451 in a library, renting a room with a typewriter for an hourly charge. Other books by Bradbury include The Martian Chronicles, Something Wicked This Way Comes, Dandelion Wine, and The Illustrated Man.

Maya Angelou

In response to the tragic circumstances of her childhood, including sexual abuse and racial discrimination, author Maya Angelou remained mute for five years. Even without speaking, these were the years she developed an intense love of language and books. She managed to graduate high school, but three weeks later she gave birth to her son. Unable to attend college and desperate for money, she worked as a pimp and prostitute. Angelou didn’t begin to concentrate on her writing career until she was almost 40, when her friend James Baldwin encouraged her to publish her now-famous autobiography I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings.

Truman Capote

This guy had a tough childhood. Born Truman Streckfus Persons, he was a small, eccentric child often abandoned by his parents. At the young age of 11, he resolved to become a writer and spent the rest of his childhood learning the craft. His mother, however, interrupted his plan when she sent him to military school to toughen him up. It was, predictably, a disaster, but Truman was hired as a copyboy for The New Yorker out of high school. He was 41 when he published his “nonfiction novel” In Cold Blood. Other books by Capote include Breakfast at Tiffany’s, Other Voices, Other Rooms, and The Grass Harp.

Mark Twain

[image error] Mark Twain

Samuel Langhorne Clemens was forced to drop out of school at age 12 and to work for food rations after his father died. By age 15, he was contributing articles to his brother’s newspaper. He later moved to New York City to work as a printer and, like Bradbury, educate himself in public libraries. Before becoming a journalist at almost 30, Clemens worked as a steamboat pilot for many years. When he reinvented himself as a writer, his work as a boat pilot would provide his new identity (“mark twain” is steamboat slang for measuring two fathoms). His book, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, is often called the Great American Novel. some of his other works include The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, A Connecticut Yankee in King Author’s Court, and The Prince and the Pauper.

Augusten Burroughs

Born into a family of eccentric, highly-educated individuals, Augusten Burroughs was christened Christopher Richter Robison. The future writer dropped out of school in sixth grade, but he obtained his GED at 17. Burroughs then changed his name and enrolled at Holyoke College as a pre-med student, only to drop out before the first semester was over. Burroughs published his controversial first memoir, Running with Scissors, in 2002. Other books include Magical Thinking: True Stories, Possible Side Effects, and A Wolf at the Table.

Charles Dickens

From a young age, Charles Dickens knew he wanted to be famous. One of eight children, Dickens received only sporadic formal education interspersed with factory jobs that offered abysmal working conditions. His father was thrown into debtor’s prison when he was a boy, and his mother and youngest siblings went to live with him there. Dickens’ experiences as an impoverished child would become the inspiration for many of his novels. He eventually became a freelance reporter and is now known as one of the foremost Victorian novelists, having authored such books as A Tale of Two Cities, Oliver Twist, and David Copperfield.

Jack Kerouac

Though he knew he wanted to be a writer, this famous member of the Beat Generation made it to Columbia University on an athletic—not an academic—scholarship. He was a skilled running back for the football team there, but he broke his leg during his freshman year. He made it back for one more season, during which he fought so often with his coach that he was compelled to drop out of school altogether. It was his journey to Columbia, though, that would introduce him to many of the Beats with whom he would soon launch a literary revolution. His best books include, On the Road, The Dharma Bums, Big Sur, and Desolation Angels.

William Faulkner

[image error] William Faulkner

This Nobel Prize winner never earned a high school diploma. Not tall enough to enlist in the U.S. Air Force, Faulkner lied his way into the Canadian Royal Air Force for one year before World War I ended. He later enrolled in the University of Mississippi, but he only attended classes for three semesters before dropping out. Faulkner went on to work as a bookseller’s assistant and postmaster before publishing his poetry for the first time at the age of 27. He went on to write such books as Intruder in the Dust, The Sound and the Fury, and Light in August.

 

 

“Everyone Is Smart, Except Donald Trump:” Rabbi Dov Fischer

Friends and followers. This is well worth the read, which is why I am posting on my blog today. Rabbi Dov Fischer makes good sense. Who is Rabbi Dov Fischer? Rabbi Dov Fischer is an attorney and adjunct professor of law, a Senior Rabbinic Fellow at the Coalition for Jewish Values, congregational rabbi of Young Israel of Orange County, California, and holds prominent leadership roles in several national rabbinic and other Jewish organizations. He has been Chief Articles Editor of UCLA Law Review, clerked for the Hon. Danny J. Boggs in the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, and served for most of the past decade on the Executive Committee of the Rabbinical Council of America. His writings have appeared in the Weekly Standard, National Review, Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, Jerusalem Post, American Thinker, Frontpage Magazine, and Israel National News. READ ON!

Everyone Is Smart, Except Trump

By Rabbi Dov Fischer

It really is quite simple. Everyone is smart except Donald J. Trump. That’s why they all are billionaires, and all got elected President. Only Trump does not know what he is doing. Only Trump does not know how to negotiate with Vladimir Putin. Anderson Cooper knows how to stand up to Putin. The whole crowd at MSNBC does. All the journalists do.

They could not stand up to Matt Lauer at NBC. They could not stand up to Charlie Rose at CBS. They could not stand up to Mark Halperin at NBC Nor up to Leon Wieseltier at the New Republic, nor Jann Wenner at Rolling Stone, nor Michael Oreskes at NPR, at the New York Times, or at the Associated Press. But — oh, wow! — Can they ever stand up to Putin! Only Trump is incapable of negotiating with the Russian tyrant.

Remember the four years when Anderson Cooper was President of the United States? And before that — when the entire Washington Post editorial staff jointly were elected to be President? Remember? Neither do I.

The Seedier Media have never negotiated life and death, not corporate life and death, and not human life and death. They think they know how to negotiate, but they do not know how. They go to a college, are told by peers that they are smart, get some good grades, proceed to a graduate degree in journalism, and get hired as analysts. Now they are experts, ready to take on Putin and the Iranian Ayatollahs at age 30.

That is not the road to expertise in tough dealing. The alternate path is that, along the way, maybe you get forced into some street fights. Sometimes the other guy wins, and sometimes you beat the intestines out of him. Then you deal with grown-ups as you mature, and you learn that people can be nasty, often after they smile and speak softly. You get cheated a few times, played. And you learn. Maybe you become an attorney litigating multi-million-dollar case matters. Say what you will about attorneys, but those years — not the years in law school, not the years drafting legal memoranda, but the years of meeting face-to-face and confronting opposing counsel — those years can teach a great deal. They can explain how to transition from sweet, gentle, diplomatic negotiating to tough negotiating. At some point, with enough tough-nosed experience, you figure out Trump’s “The Art of the Deal” yourself.

Trump’s voters get him because not only is he we, but we are he. We were not snowed flaked-for-life by effete professors who themselves had never negotiated tough life-or-death serious deals. Instead, we live in the real world, and we know how that works. Not based on social science theories, not based on “conceptual negotiating models.” But based on the people we have met over life and always will hate. That worst boss we ever had. The coworker who tried to sabotage us. We know the sons of bums whom we survived, the dastardly types who are out there, and we learned from those experiences how to deal with them. We won’t have John Kerry soothe us by having James Taylor sing “You’ve Got a Friend” carols.

The Bushes got us into all kinds of messes. The first one killed the economic miracle that Reagan had fashioned. The second one screwed up the Middle East, where Iraq and Iran beautifully were engaged in killing each other for years, and he got us mired into the middle of the muddle. Clinton was too busy with Monica Lewinsky to protect us from Osama bin Laden when we had him in our sights. Hillary gave us Benghazi and more. And Obama and Kerry gave us the Iran Deal, ISIS run amok, America in retreat. All to the daily praise of a media who now attack Trump every minute of every day.

So let us understand a few things:

NEGOTIATING WITH NATO

NATO is our friend. They also rip off America. They have been ripping us off forever. We saved their butts — before there even was a NATO — in World War I. They messed up, and 116,456 Americans had to die to save their butts.

Then they messed up again for the next two decades because West Europeans are effete and so obsessed with their class manners and their rules of savoir-faire and their socialist welfare states and their early retirements that they did not have the character to stand up to Hitler in the 1930s. Peace in our time. So they messed up, and we had to save their butts again. And another 405,399 Americans died for them during World War II. And then we had to rebuild them! And we had to station our boys in Germany and all over their blood-stained continent. So, hey, we love those guys. We love NATO.

[image error] Nato Leaders. Who is paying their fair share?

 

And yet they still rip us off. We pay 4% of our gigantic gross domestic product to protect them, and they will not pay a lousy 2% of their GDP towards their own defense. Is there a culture more penny-pinching-cheap-and-stingy than the delicate constituents of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization? These cheap baseborn prigs will not pay their fare. They are too cheap. They expect America to send boys to die for them in one world war, then another — hundreds of thousands — and then to pay for their NATO defense even a century later. And then they have the temerity to cheat us further in trade

Long before Trump, they set up tariffs against us for so many things If the average American knew how badly Europe has been ripping us off for decades with their duties, no one in this country would buy anything European again. We would say, as a matter of self-respect and personal pride, “I no longer will buy anything but American, no matter what it costs.”

Every American President has complained about the cheating and imbalance — the NATO penny-pinching-cheapness, the tariff and trade imbalances. In more recent years, the various Bushes complained about it. Even Obama complained about it. But they all did it so gently, so diplomatically. They would deliver the sermon, just as the pastor predictably tells the church-goers on Sunday morning that he is against sin, and the Europeans would sit quietly and nod their heads — nodding from sleeping, not from agreeing — and then they would go back out and sin some more. Another four years of America being suckered and snookered. All they had to do was give Obama a Nobel Peace Prize his ninth month in office and let Kerry ride his bike around Paris.

So Trump did what any effective negotiator would do: he took note of past approaches to NATO and their failures, and correctly determined that the only way to get these penny-pinching-cheap baseborn prigs to pay their freight would be to bulldoze right into their faces, stare them right in their glazed eyes with cameras rolling, and tell them point-blank the equivalent of:

[image error] The Nations of Nato

“You are the cheapest penny-pinching, miserly, stingy, tight wadded skinflints ever. And it is going to stop on my watch. Whatever it takes from my end, you selfish, curmudgeonly cheap prigs, you are going to pay your fair share. I am not being diplomatic. I am being All-Business: either you start to pay or, wow, are you in for some surprises! And you know what you read in the Fake News: I am crazy! I am out of control! So, lemme see. I know: We will go to a trade war! How do you like that? Maybe we even will pull all our troops out of Europe. Hmmm. Yeah, maybe. Why not? Sounds good. Well, let’s see.”



So Trump stuffed it into their quiche-and-schnitzel ingesting faces. And he convinced them — thanks to America’s Seedier Media who are the real secret to the “Legend That is Trump” — that he just might be crazy enough to go to a trade war and to pull American boys home. They knew that Clinton and Bush x 2 and Kerry and Hillary and Nobel Laureate Obama never would do it. But they also know that Trump just might. And if they think they are going to find comfort and moderating in his new advisers, John Bolton and Mike Pompeo, alongside him. Nuh-uh.

So CNN and the Washington Post and all the Seedier Media attacked Trump for days: He is destroying the alliance! He attacks our friends!

Baloney. Obama was the one whom the Left Echo Chamber… Chamber… Chamber — never called out for attacking our friends — Israel, Britain, so many others — while cozying up to Hugo Chavez, bowing to dictators, and dancing the tango for Raul Castro. Trump is just the opposite: He knows who the friends are, and he wants to maintain and strengthen those friendships.

It is no different from a parent telling a 35-year-old son: “I have been supporting you for thirty-five years I put you through college by signing four years and $100,000 PLUS in Loans. You graduated college fifteen years ago. For fifteen years I have been asking you nicely to look for a job and to start contributing. Instead, you sit home all day playing video games, texting your friends on a smartphone I pay for, and picking little fuzz balls out of your navel. So, look, I love you. You are my flesh and blood. But if you are not employed and earning a paycheck — and contributing to the cost of this household — in six months, we are throwing you out of the house.” That boy is NATO. Trump is Dad. And all of us have been signing for the PLUS Loans.”

NEGOTIATING WITH PUTIN.

Putin is a bad guy. A really bad guy. He is better than Lenin. Better than Stalin, Khrushchev, Kosygin, Brezhnev, Pol Pot, Mao. But he is a really bad guy.

Here’s the thing: Putin is a dictator. He answers to no one. He does whatever he wants. If there arises an opponent, that guy dies. Maybe the opponent gets poked with a poisoned umbrella. Maybe he gets shot on the street. Maybe the opponent is forced to watch Susan Rice interviews telling the world that Benghazi happened because of a YouTube video seen by nine derelicts in Berkeley and that Bowe Berghdal served with honor and distinction. But, one way or another, the opponent dies.

[image error]Trump knows this about Putin. And here is what that means: If you insult Putin in public, like by telling the news media just before or after meeting with him that he is the Butcher of Crimea, and he messed with our elections and is an overall jerk — then you will get nothing behind closed doors from Putin. Putin will decide “To heck with you, and to heck with the relationship we just forged.” Putin will get even, will take intense personal revenge, even if it is bad for Russia — even if it is bad for Putin. Because there are no institutional reins on him.

But if you go in public and tell everyone that Putin is a nice guy (y’know, just like Kim Jong Un) and that Putin intensely maintains that he did not mess with elections — not sweet little Putey Wutey (even though he apparently did) — then you next can maintain the momentum established beforehand in the private room. You can proceed to remind Putin what you told him privately: that this garbage has to stop —or else. That if he messes in Syria, we will do “X.” If he messes with our Iran boycott, we will do “Y.” We will generate so much oil from hydraulic fracturing and from ANWR and from all our sources that we will glut the market — if not tomorrow, then a year from now. We will send even more lethal offensive military weapons to Ukraine. We can restore the promised shield to Eastern Europe that Obama withdrew. And even if we cannot mess with Russian elections (because they have no elections), they do have computers — and, so help us, we will mess with their technology in a way they cannot imagine.

Tump knows from his advisers what we can do. If he sweet-talks Putin in public — just Putin on the Ritz — then everything that Trump has told Putin privately can be reinforced with action, and he even can wedge concessions because, against that background, Putin knows that no one will believe that he made any concessions. Everyone is set to believe that Putin is getting whatever he wants, that Trump understands nothing. In that setting, Putin can make concessions and still save face.

[image error] Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin

That is why Trump talks about him that way. And that is the only possible way to do it when negotiating with a tyrant who has no checks and balances on him. If you embarrass the tyrant publicly, then the tyrant never will make concessions because he will fear that people will say he was intimidated and backed down. And that he never will do. Meanwhile, Trump has expelled 60 Russians from America, reversed Obama policy and sent lethal weapons to Ukraine, and is pressing Germany severely on its pipeline project with Russia.

THE BOTTOM LINE

At the end of the day, Donald Trump is over seventy years old. He has made many mistakes in his life. He still makes some He is human. But Trump likewise has spent three score and a dozen years learning. He has seen some of his businesses go bankrupt, and he has learned from those experiences to be a billionaire and not let it happen again. No doubt that he has been fooled, outsmarted in years past. And he has learned from life.

Trump is a tough and smart negotiator. He sizes up his opponent, and he knows that the approach that works best for one is not the same as for another. It does not matter what he says publicly about his negotiating opponent. What matters is what results months later.

In his first eighteen months in Washington, this man has turned around the American economy, brought us near full employment, reduced the welfare and food stamp lines, wiped out ISIS in Raqqa, moved America’s Israel embassy to Jerusalem, successfully has launched massive deregulation of the economy, has opened oil exploration in ANWR, is rebuilding the military massively, has walked out of the useless Paris Climate Accords that were negotiated by America’s amateurs who always get snookered, canned the disastrous Iran Deal, exited the bogus United Nations Human Rights Council. He convinced Canada and Mexico that he would walk out of NAFTA if they didn’t negotiate a new and fair trade agreement (they did), and he has the Europeans convinced he would walk out of NATO if they don’t stop being the cheap and lazy parasitic penny-pinchers they are

He has slashed income taxes, expanded legal protections for college students falsely accused of crimes, has taken real steps to protect religious freedoms and liberties promised in the First Amendment, boldly has taken on the Lyme-disease-quality of a legislative mess that he inherited from Reagan-Bush-Clinton-Bush-Obama on immigration, and has appointed a steady line of remarkably brilliant conservative federal judges to sit on the district courts, the circuit appellate courts, and the Supreme Court.

What has Anderson Cooper achieved during that period? Jim Acosta or the editorial staffs of the New York Times and Washington Post? They have not even found the courage and strength to stand up to the coworkers and celebrities within their orbits who abuse sexually or psychologically or emotionally. They have no accomplishments to compare to his. Just their effete opinions, all echoing each other, all echoing, echoing, echoing. They gave us eight years of Nobel Peace Laureate Obama negotiating with the ISIS JV team, calming the rise of the oceans, and healing the planet.

We will take Trump negotiating with Putin any day.

 

RAVE REVIEWS BOOK CLUB: A Community of Authors Supporting One Another

A NOTE TO AUTHORS AND READERS

Today I want to tell you a little about the RAVE REVIEWS BOOK CLUB, where I have been a member since 2014. RAVE REVIEWS BOOK CLUB is a virtual book club made up of authors and readers. Authors know that in today’s hyper-competitive book market it’s difficult to get your books noticed, let alone promoted, marketed and sold. Readers know that there are so many titles available that it’s difficult to tell what books are worth their time.

According to Bowker, the world’s leading provider of bibliographic information and management solutions designed to help publishers, authors, and booksellers better serve their customers, the number of independently-published books last year topped the 1 million mark for the first time and the total number of ISBNs issued in the previous year rose 28% over 2016, to 1,009,188. [ISBN stands for “International Standard Book Number.” ISBNs are the global standard for identifying titles.]

With such a glut of books like that flooding the book market, authors need all the help they can get to find an audience for their work, while readers also need assistance navigating their way through all the chaff to find quality books. That’ where the RAVE REVIEWS BOOK CLUB (RRBC) comes in. Here’s what RRBC says:

“The Mission of RAVE REVIEWS BOOK CLUB is to Profile, Promote & Propel the careers of Indie authors. The only way that WE can do that is by supporting each of our authors with book sales and HONEST reviews.  If you are an individual who is in the habit of skimming through the FREE sample that is given by Amazon, and then “claiming” to have purchased and read, this may not be the club for you. We encourage and hope that each of our members will run out and purchase (either in e-book or paperback format) the selected author’s books AND when finished with the complete read, post an honest review. When it is your turn, and your book is in that wonderful seat of being Profiled, Promoted & Propelled, you will want the same courtesy extended to you. We proudly work on the HONORS SYSTEM here at #RRBC.

“Our mantra at RRBC is those that are most supportive here, are the ones who are most supported here.  Those who are expecting to add their name to our roster and then disappear without making any connections within the club, or without supporting any of their fellow members, probably won’t get out of it, what they are expecting.  What you put in here, is what you’ll get out here.”

Here is what your membership will entail:

*The listing of up to 3 of your books in our online catalog;

*The ability to add book covers to 2 of those initial titles;

*The ability to add an unlimited number of book titles and covers for an additional fee of $5 each;

*FREE or highly discounted entry into all our fee-based writing contests;

*FREE listing of your *approved* blog and website and your Facebook page;

*For approved works, inclusion in our annual RAVE SOUP FOR THE WRITER’S SOUL Anthology;

*Discounted rates to our future Writer’s Conferences and Book Expos;

*Our site receives upwards of 800 – 1000 hits per day and the majority of those hits are views to our Online Catalog, where member-author books are being purchased, read and reviewed; GRAND EXPOSURE FOR YOUR BOOK(S);

*Being selected as BOOK OF THE MONTH, “SPOTLIGHT” AUTHOR and a #PUSHTUESDAY winner has taken some of our member’s Amazon rankings from the 1 million plus mark, down to #38, #35 and as low as #22 on Amazon’s Top 100 Best Seller’s List! Just wait until it’s your turn!

“Thanks for stopping by!  Please support Indie authors and help us to bring books back and encourage more reading by re-tweeting on Twitter and sharing this page on Facebook and your other social media sites.

“We look forward to your support and your membership.  Do tell your friends about us!!!”

Here’s a link where you can check out RRBC:

RAVE REVIEWS BOOK CLUB 

The Lost Years of Billy Battles (Book Three in the award-winning Finding Billy Battles Trilogy)

It’s been a few months since Book Three (The Lost Years of Billy Battles) in the Finding Billy Battles Trilogy was published, so I want to remind my followers to check out the book if you haven’t already. I would also appreciate it if you would write a review on Amazon or elsewhere if you have read this final book in the trilogy.

[image error]

For those who don’t know about Book Three here is a little background along with some comments from readers who have already read the book.

About the lost years of Billy Battles:

The year is 1914, and the world is in turmoil. In Europe, the Great War is raging. In Asia, bloody insurgencies are in progress against the colonial powers of Europe. In Mexico, a bloody revolution is ripping that nation to shreds and threatening to spill over into Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona.

Meanwhile, in Chicago, Billy Battles and his wife, the former Baroness Katharina von Schreiber, have managed to live an uncommonly sedate life for almost ten years. But, with one telephone call their peaceful world is shattered.

Katharina and Billy set off on a succession of wild adventures that will alter their lives for all time. Their new and violent world is one brimming with miscreants, secret agents, betrayal, and tragedy. But most importantly, it triggers Billy’s mysterious decades-long disappearance. Where is he? What happened? The answers are in The Lost Years of Billy Battles, Book 3of the award-winning Finding Billy Battles trilogy.

What readers are saying about this final chapter in the amazing life of Billy Battles:

“This well-written conclusion to the Billy Battles Trilogy is its crown jewel. The characters are so vivid and compelling it’s hard to believe that this is a work of fiction. Astounding imagery puts you right in the thick of things. In more ways than I can count, this book is a masterpiece.” Marcha Fox, author of the Star Trails Tetralogy Series.

“I’ve begun few books as eagerly as I did this one. Having read the first two volumes of Ronald E. Yates’ extraordinary trilogy, Finding Billy Battles, I couldn’t wait to continue his story in the final volume, The Lost Years of Billy Battles. The third installment lived up to the exceedingly high standard set in the first two volumes. Billy Battles is as dear and fascinating a literary friend as I have ever encountered. I learned much about American and international history, and you will too if you read any or all of the books. Each is an independent work, but if read in relation to the others, the reader experiences that all too rare sense of complete transport to another world, one fully realized in these pages because the storytelling is so skillful and thoroughly captivating. Trust me; you’ll want to read all three volumes.”  Carrie Meehan, Chanticleer Reviews

“Ron Yates is a master of historical fiction. The Lost Years of Billy Battles is an epic finale to an incredible lifetime.”  Scott Skipper, best-selling author of Artifact and many other titles.

“Exclamations all OVER the place about this wonderful trilogy!” Heidi Mastrogiovanni, screenwriter and author of Lala Pettibone’s Act Two

“A perfect finish to a masterful series expertly written and researched as only award-winning author Ron Yates could do. The characters were terrific!” John Howell, author of Circumstances of childhood.

“This is a series of books that kept me thinking about the storyline even when I was not actively reading.  I constantly looked forward to where the story took me and suffered a huge letdown when the story ended.  I did not want the story to end but wanted it to go on. The characters were very easy to get to know and to picture in my mind. I also got a great history lesson as I read about all of the adventures of Billy Battles. Before reading the series, I was totally unaware of the US involvement in the Philippines and the ‘invasion’ of Veracruz.” Larry Plano, First Reader 



“A trilogy that will have your attention from book 1, Finding Billie Battles. Book 3, The Lost Years of Billy Battles, brings back so many characters you’ve come love and hate. I’m sorry it’s over but will have the chance to begin again. Thank you, Ron Yates, for sharing your gift.” Terry Bruton, First Reader

Here is the Amazon link:

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07DKD5MYX/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_hsch_vapi_tkin_p1_i0

I want to especially thank my Editor, Susan Hughes and my First Readers for their exceptional work in going over the book with incomparable assiduousness. (Billy Battles would NEVER use those last two words!)

Once again, thank you, and I hope you will give The Lost Years of Billy Battles a look see.

 

 

A Peek at My High School Yearbook: How on Earth Did I Pass my FBI Background Check?

With all of the intense scrutiny Judge Brett Kavanaugh’s high school yearbook received from the Senate Judicial Committee last week; I just had to take a look at my old high school yearbook to see what kind of reproachful and censorious information it contained about me.

After looking at it the other day, I wonder how I passed the FBI background check for my U.S. Army Security Agency Top Secret & Crypto security clearance back in the 1960s.

There were some pretty spicy comments in there, especially from former girlfriends. One girl even thanked me because in the biology class we took together “you knew all the answers.”

[image error]

I can only assume she meant answers to biology tests. Of course, in today’s hyper-sensitive world that cryptic statement could mean a lot of things. Ahem.

Other girlfriends said they were happy to have known me and thanked me for the “good times” we had together. What did they mean by THAT? Did I do something inappropriate? Hmmmm. Well, let me see. There were those times when we used to “make out” in the backseat on double dates. . . .

Sometimes we even (gasp) drank 3.2% beer that I used to buy illegally (uh oh!) before I was 18—the drinking age in Kansas. I don’t ever recall barfing or ralfing after a few cans of the insipid stuff like Judge Kavanaugh has been accused of doing, but I’m sure all of us (our girlfriends included) got a buzz on. Then we had to consume mass quantities of Sen-Sen mints before going home to hide the telltale beer pong on our breaths.

I have wracked my brain trying to recall any gang rape parties that I might have attended, and for the life of me, I can’t recollect any. I am pretty sure I never attended any in which I was the featured attraction. Of course, something as hazy and ambiguous as a gang rape is undeniably challenging to recall. I do remember going to a lot of sock hops in the high school gym during which guys and girls removed their shoes (gulp) and danced in our socks (how salacious and naughty).[image error]

Then there were those evenings at Winstead’s in Kansas City’s Country Club Plaza where several of us unruly and rowdy couples would stuff ourselves into a booth and be crushed against one another while we drank malted milks and wolfed down fries and steakburgers. I do recall once dropping ketchup on my date’s new crinoline pink and white poodle skirt. Boy, was she pissed. But she still gave me a goodnight kiss when I walked her to her door. So all was well. At least, I think it was. . . .

Okay, back to my yearbook. It was called “The Indian.” I know, I know. Not politically correct. In fact, those of us who attended Shawnee-Mission North (my high school in the Overland Park, Kansas suburbs of Kansas City) were called “The Indians” as opposed to some politically safe name like the wildcats or the cyclones.

Were we really “Indians?” I’m pretty sure there wasn’t one real Native American in the entire student body. It was, without a doubt, the most shocking form of cultural appropriation, and for that, I apologize. But wait! Shawnee-Mission North is still “The Indians,” and the logo is still a Native American wearing a war bonnet. Oh well. No need to apologize, after all. That association won’t get me denounced and pilloried by the Senate Judiciary Committee.[image error]

But back to my misspent youth when I was going to all of those risqué sock hops, making out in the back seat of jalopies, having “good times” with girlfriends, and providing them with “all the answers.”

Given all of the terrible things I did when I was 16, 17, and even 18, I wonder how I was able to live a mostly efficacious and praiseworthy life—first as an intelligence operative in the U.S. Army, then as a foreign correspondent for the Chicago Tribune, and then as a Professor and Dean of journalism at the University of Illinois. Will wonders never cease?

I can only imagine what my life would have been like had I been subjected to the same rapacious grilling that Judge Kavanaugh endured at the hands of some of the members of the Senate Judicial Committee.

If all of my teenage years had been disclosed publicly, I’m pretty sure I would have been disqualified by the Court of Public Opinion, let alone from the Supreme Court of the United States.

But wait. I don’t even have a law degree. Oh, well. Never mind.

 

 

 

 

 

The “TREAT” Reads Blog Hop, Day 13

(NOTE: Today ForeignCorrespondent is hosting the last day in the second annual RRBC “TREAT’ Reads Blog Hop. #RRBC #RRBCTreatReads)   

[image error]

“Greetings!  Welcome to the 2nd RRBC “TREAT” Reads Blog Hop!  These members of RRBC have penned and published some really great reads and we’d like to honor and showcase their talent.  Oddly, all of the listed Winners are RWISA members!  Way to go RWISA!

We ask that you pick up a copy of the title listed, and after reading it, leave a review.  There will be other books on tour for the next few days, so please visit the “HOP’S” main page to follow along.

Also, for every comment that you leave along this tour, including on the “HOP’S” main page, your name will be entered into a drawing for a gift card to be awarded at the end of the tour!”

 

[image error] Author, Michael Hicks Thompson

Book: THE RECTOR – https://www.amazon.com/dp/098452827X

[image error]

 

Book Blurb: Thompson’s engaging, high-energy Christian murder mystery is narrated by Martha McRae, a woman living in a small Mississippi town who seeks to solve the mystery of the sudden death of pastor David Baddour. Throughout the novel, readers are introduced to the cast of characters who inhabit the small Delta town in the 1950s. The book gleefully mixes all the elements of a small-town murder mystery—gossip, foul play, backstabbing—and, as more is revealed about Pastor Baddour and the other townspeople, more mysteries, hypocrisies, and dangers add to the intrigue. Thompson’s tale looks intimately at what it means to function in a community—how a population can reveal and obscure the truth. The Rector works as a suspenseful murder mystery, Thompson also incorporates a spiritual and religious undertone to the story. This Christian Murder Mystery successfully intertwines faith in its plot twists with surprising results.

  This small-town tale, set in the 1950s, delves into religion, spirituality, and murder; and is exceedingly clever and cunning. The small community of Solo, Mississippi, is rocked after the murder of a prominent religious figure. Law officials consider the case closed, much to the dismay of widow Martha McRae. She questions how the young rector could die so unexpectedly. After sharing her suspicion with her bible study leader, Betty Crain, a chain of events is set off in the small southern community. Gossip soon abounds with murmurings of foul play, murder, and loss of faith. In the case of whodunit, Martha soon finds that asking questions has put her own life in peril, as she comes face to face with evil.

Twitter: @mhthompsonsr

The “TREAT” Reads Blog Hop, Day 12

(NOTE: For the next two days ForeignCorrespondent will be hosting the second annual RRBC “TREAT’ Reads Blog Hop. #RRBC #RRBCTreatReads)   

[image error]

“Greetings!  Welcome to the 2nd RRBC “TREAT” Reads Blog Hop!  These members of RRBC have penned and published some really great reads and we’d like to honor and showcase their talent.  Oddly, all of the listed Winners are RWISA members!  Way to go RWISA!

We ask that you pick up a copy of the title listed, and after reading it, leave a review.  There will be other books on tour for the next few days, so please visit the “HOP’S” main page to follow along.

Also, for every comment that you leave along this tour, including on the “HOP’S” main page, your name will be entered into a drawing for a gift card to be awarded at the end of the tour!”

[image error] Author, Nia Markos

Book: ELEMENTS – https://www.amazon.com/dp/B06XDK1PLW/

Book Blurb: For eighteen-year-old Alexa finding a place to put down roots after being forced into a nomadic life by her paranoid mother was not as simple as she had believed. Her attempt to settle down in the coastal town of Beverly comes to an abrupt halt. Within months an explosion levels her apartment building, and all her preconceived ideas of her world come to an end.

[image error]

Now on the run, Alexa can only follow Bet, her roommate, into the unknown, where the worlds of the Sidhe race of faeries, warlocks, daemons, and shadows, threaten her very existence. Pulled into a prophecy that she together with Aidan, the Sidhe Prince, would right their worlds, Alexa finds herself fighting against the prophecy’s telling of her being bound to Aidan. What makes it worse is her increasing attachment to his brother Liam.

With her destiny set centuries ago, can she save their worlds in time, does she have a choice in whom to love, or will choosing her own path lead to their destruction?

Twitter: @NiaMarkos

 

The “TREAT” Reads Blog Hop! Day 11

(NOTE: For the next three days ForeignCorrespondent will be hosting the second annual RRBC “TREAT’ Reads Blog Hop. #RRBC #RRBCTreatReads)   

[image error]

“Greetings!  Welcome to the 2nd RRBC “TREAT” Reads Blog Hop!  These members of RRBC have penned and published some really great reads and we’d like to honor and showcase their talent.  Oddly, all of the listed Winners are RWISA members!  Way to go RWISA!

We ask that you pick up a copy of the title listed, and after reading it, leave a review.  There will be other books on tour for the next few days, so please visit the “HOP’S” main page to follow along.

Also, for every comment that you leave along this tour, including on the “HOP’S” main page, your name will be entered into a drawing for a gift card to be awarded at the end of the tour!”

[image error] Author Amy Reece

Book: THE WAY TO HER HEART – https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01D5FJ41M/

Book Blurb: No amount of counseling can bring Josh Harris back to his old self. After a tragedy that changed his life forever, eighteen-year-old Josh has lived in a year-long fog of medication and confusion. It’s all he can do to not think about his dad—a culinary genius who raised him in the kitchen. Thankfully, Josh inherited his golden palate and sixth sense for cooking, which is the only thing that makes sense anymore.

[image error]

For a seventeen-year-old girl, life can’t get much worse… Bernie Abeyta is a senior in high school and lives with her drug-addicted mother, but has managed to keep her grades up so she can get into college. With her father in prison and her mom’s sleazy boyfriend getting too close for comfort, Bernie turns to her best friend Gabby Rodriguez for help, but discovers Gabby has gone missing. Distressed over her friend’s sudden disappearance, Bernie resorts to living out of her car while she looks for answers and tries to avoid foster care.

Part love, part mystery, part cookbook—and all heart.

Twitter: @AReeceAuthor

JOIN ME FOR THE REMAINING BOOKS IN THE “TREAT”  READS BLOG HOP   (Just type #RRBCTreatReads in your Twitter search box.)

Saturday, 9/29/18:  “ELEMENTS” by Nia Markos

Sunday, 9/30/18:  “DESTINY’S PLAN” by Victoria Saccenti & THE RECTOR by Michael H. Thompson

 

The “TREAT” Reads Blog Hop! Day 10

(NOTE: For the next few days ForeignCorrespondent will be hosting the second annual RRBC “TREAT’ Reads Blog Hop. #RRBC #RRBCTreatReads)   

[image error]

“Greetings!  Welcome to the 2nd RRBC “TREAT” Reads Blog Hop!  These members of RRBC have penned and published some really great reads and we’d like to honor and showcase their talent.  Oddly, all of the listed Winners are RWISA members!  Way to go RWISA!

We ask that you pick up a copy of the title listed, and after reading it, leave a review.  There will be other books on tour for the next few days, so please visit the “HOP’S” main page to follow along.

Also, for every comment that you leave along this tour, including on the “HOP’S” main page, your name will be entered into a drawing for a gift card to be awarded at the end of the tour!”

[image error] Author, Wendy Scott

 Book: HIEROGLYPH– https://www.amazon.com/dp/B016IZYDE4/

[image error]

Book Blurb: 13-year-old TC has a secret. No one knows she possesses a supernatural power.

Can TC help her Uncle Max, an archaeologist; to unearth enough evidence to prove Ancient Egyptians visited Australia before he’s discredited in the media by those that want the past to stay buried?

“Some would say that I have a gift, but to me, it’s always been a curse. Before I changed my mind, I tugged off my gloves and whipped my head left and right, checking to see that no one was watching. I sucked in a breath and steadied my nerves then thrust my hands against the stones and touched one of the cartouches. Time and place ripped away.”

  An enthralling archaeological mystery, mixing the supernatural with humor and suspense.

Twitter: @WendyJayneScott

JOIN ME FOR ALL OF THE BOOKS IN THE “TREAT”  READS BLOG HOP   (Just type #RRBCTreatReads in your Twitter search box.)

Friday, 9/28/18:  “THE WAY TO HER HEART” by Amy Reece

Saturday, 9/29/18:  “ELEMENTS” by Nia Markos

Sunday, 9/30/18:  “DESTINY’S PLAN” by Victoria Saccenti