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A copy of "The Room Where It Happened," by former national security adviser John Bolton, is photographed at the White House. ASSOCIATED PRESS

NEW YORK — John Bolton’s memoir officially comes out Tuesday after surviving a security review and a legal challenge from the Justice Department. But over the weekend, it was available in ways even his publisher is hoping to prevent.

A PDF of “The Room Where It Happened” has turned up on the internet, offering a free, pirated edition of the former national security adviser’s scathing takedown of President Donald Trump, who has alleged that the book contains classified material that never should have been released.

“We are working assiduously to take down these clearly illegal instances of copyright infringement,” Simon & Schuster spokesperson Adam Rothberg said Sunday.

Piracy has long been a top concern among publishers, especially in the digital age, although the actual impact on sales is undetermined. “The Room Where It Happened” has been No. 1 for days on the Amazon.com AMZN, 0.57% bestseller list. The Associated Press was among several news outlets that obtained early copies of the book and reported on its contents.

On Saturday, a federal judge ruled that Simon & Schuster, a unit of Viacom CBS Inc. VIAC, -1.69% , could publish the book despite the Trump administration’s contention that it compromised national security. “The Room Where It Happened” was originally scheduled for March, but was delayed twice as the White House reviewed the manuscript.

Bolton’s legal team has said that he spent months addressing White House concerns about classified information and that Bolton had been assured in late April by the official he was working with that the manuscript no longer contained any such material

Rather than jump-start reelection campaign, Tulsa rally highlights Trump’s vulnerabilities

Trump making no effort at national unity; low turnout reportedly leaves president fuming


President Donald Trump walks on the South Lawn of the White House in Washington, early Sunday after stepping off Marine One as he returned from a campaign rally in Tulsa, Okla. 

ASSOCIATED PRESS

NEW YORK — President Donald Trump’s return to the campaign trail was designed to show strength and enthusiasm heading into the critical final months before an election that will decide whether he remains in the White House.

Instead, his weekend rally in Oklahoma highlighted growing vulnerabilities and crystallized a divisive reelection message that largely ignores broad swaths of voters — independents, suburban women and people of color — who could play a crucial role in choosing Trump or Democratic challenger Joe Biden.

The lower-than-expected turnout at the comeback rally, in particular, left Trump fuming.

“There’s really only one strategy left for him, and that is to propel that rage and anger and try to split the society and see if he can have a tribal leadership win here,” former Trump adviser-turned-critic Anthony Scaramucci said on CNN’s “Reliable Sources.”

The president did not offer even a token reference to national unity in remarks that spanned more than an hour and 40 minutes at his self-described campaign relaunch as the nation grappled with surging coronavirus infections, the worst unemployment since the Great Depression and sweeping civil unrest.

Nor did Trump mention George Floyd, the African American man whose death at the hands of Minnesota police late last month sparked a national uprising over police brutality. But he did add new fuel to the nation’s culture wars, defending Confederate statues while making racist references to the coronavirus, which originated in China and which he called “kung flu.” He also said Democratic Rep. Ilhan Omar, who came to the U.S. as a refugee as a child, whom he said “would like to make the government of our country just like the country from where she came, Somalia.”

Trump won the presidency in 2016 with a similar red-meat message aimed largely at energizing conservatives and white working-class men. But less than four months before early voting begins in some states, there are signs that independents and educated voters — particularly suburban women — have turned against him. Republican strategists increasingly believe that only a dramatic turnaround in the economy can revive his reelection aspirations.

“It’s bad,” said Republican operative Rick Tyler, a frequent Trump critic. “There’s literally nothing to run on. The only thing he can say is that Biden is worse.”

But the day after Trump’s Tulsa rally, the president’s message was almost an afterthought as aides tried to explain away a smaller-than-expected crowd that left the president outraged.

The campaign had been betting big on Tulsa.

Trump’s political team spent days proclaiming that more than 1 million people had requested tickets. They also ignored health warnings from the White House coronavirus task force and Oklahoma officials, eager to host an event that would help him move past the civil rights protests and the coronavirus itself.

His first rally in 110 days was meant to be a defiant display of political force to help energize Trump’s spirits, try out some attacks on Biden and serve as a powerful symbol of American’s re-opening.

Instead, the city fire marshal’s office reported a crowd of just less than 6,200 in the 19,000-seat BOK Center, and at least six staff members who helped set up the event tested positive for the coronavirus. The vast majority of the attendees, including Trump, did not wear face masks as recommended by the Trump administration’s health experts.

After the rally, the president berated aides over the turnout. He fumed that he had been led to believe he would see huge crowds in deep-red Oklahoma, according to two White House and campaign officials who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly about private conversations.

There was no sign of an imminent staff shakeup, but members of Trump’s inner circle angrily questioned how campaign manager Brad Parscale and other senior aides could so wildly overpromise and underdeliver, according to the officials.

Publicly, Trump’s team scrambled to blame the crowd size on media coverage and protesters outside the venue, but the small crowds of pre-rally demonstrators were largely peaceful. Tulsa police reported just one arrest Saturday afternoon.

It’s unclear when Trump will hold his next rally.

Before Oklahoma, the campaign had planned to finalize and announce its next rally this week. Trump is already scheduled to make appearances Tuesday in Arizona and Thursday in Wisconsin. Both are major general election battlegrounds.

At least one swing state governor, meanwhile, says Trump would not be welcome to host a rally in her state amid the pandemic.

Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, a Democrat, said she “would think very seriously about” trying to block Trump from hosting a rally there if he wanted to.

“We know that congregating without masks, especially at an indoor facility, is the worst thing to do in the midst of a global pandemic,” Whitmer said in an interview before the Oklahoma event, conceding that she wasn’t aware of the specific legal tools she had available to block a prospective Trump rally. “I just know we have limitations on the number of people that can gather and that we’re taking this seriously.”

Biden’s campaign, meanwhile, seized on a fresh opportunity to poke at the incumbent president, suggesting that Trump “was already in a tailspin” because of his mismanagement of the pandemic and civil rights protests.

“Donald Trump has abdicated leadership and it is no surprise that his supporters have responded by abandoning him,” Biden spokesperson Andrew Bates said.

Germany Dares Lufthansa’s Billionaire Top Shareholder to Scuttle Bailout

Birgit Jennen and William Wilkes Bloomberg June 22, 2020

(Bloomberg) -- Germany stood by its 9 billion-euro ($10 billion) bailout plan for Deutsche Lufthansa AG, daring the airline’s disgruntled top shareholder to shoot it down at a pivotal vote this week.

With Lufthansa fighting for survival after the coronavirus outbreak punctured a decades-long global travel boom, billionaire Heinz-Hermann Thiele is threatening to block the rescue plan -- which would dilute his 15.5% holding and influence -- at a shareholder meeting scheduled for Thursday.

But with the government signaling it’s unwilling to alter the package, the onus is on the 79-year-old investor to decide whether to support a deal he considers faulty or potentially trigger its rejection. The alternative would lead Lufthansa into uncharted waters, forced to reconfigure its survival plan with cash reserves running low and the threat of insolvency looming.

The government stands firm on the agreed package, which will be the basis for the shareholder vote, German economy ministry spokesman Korbinian Wagner said Monday. The German government explained the terms of the rescue to Thiele in a meeting attended by Lufthansa Chief Executive Officer Carsten Spohr and the two ministers who brokered the bailout, according to a state official. The parties didn’t discuss what would happen if the package wasn’t approved by shareholders, the official said.

“Now the shareholder meeting must decide,” Wagner said at the government’s daily press conference in Berlin Monday.

Lufthansa shares traded 3% lower at 3:07 p.m. in Frankfurt, after tumbling as much as 9%. Its bonds sank to three-month low.

“We face a fateful week for our Lufthansa,” Spohr said Sunday in a letter to employees seen by Bloomberg, warning that it’s not at all certain the bailout package will gain approval at the extraordinary general meeting.

The carrier’s chances of securing backing for the proposal suffered a blow after only 38% of shareholders registered to vote by a deadline over the weekend.

That means Lufthansa’s management must secure two-thirds of votes to win the day, rather than a simple majority. That also means Thiele effectively has a blocking minority, assuming he registered. The airline declined to confirm.

Germany’s third-richest man has expressed dissatisfaction with the rescue, saying the state is profiteering, and was expected to press Finance Minister Olaf Scholz for last-minute changes, according to the people, who asked not to be named discussing a private meeting.

State Stake

Terms of the package of loans and equity investment call for Lufthansa to issue a 20% stake to the government in Berlin at the nominal price of 2.56 euros per share, a change that needs to be approved at the online EGM.

“The federal government should confine itself to the financial aid packages, which are fundamentally very positive, and should not grow into the role of a return-oriented investor,” Thiele told the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung newspaper last week.

It was unlikely that the government would give ground before the vote, as Scholz articulated earlier, having rejected other scenarios as unacceptable or impossible to deliver in time to meet Lufthansa’s cash requirements, one of the people said.

Analysts at Citibank Inc. see three scenarios for Lufthansa this week.

One would see the vote pass with Thiele’s support. The second envisages a failure of the deal, with the government then withdrawing its offer of a 20% stake, a relatively minor part of the deal in terms of the cash it would give to the carrier. The third scenario would see Thiele scupper the deal and then expand his holding as the share price fell.

Lufthansa on Monday fell out of Germany’s bluechip DAX index after its share-price decline this year. The decision to remove the airline was taken by Deutsche Boerse earlier this month.

Monday also marks Lufthansa’s self-imposed deadline for an agreement with unions on as many as 22,000 job cuts, though the sides may agree to a limited cost-reduction package to buy time as talks continue.

The group’s board is separately due to meet with Brussels Airlines, having threatened to put the unit into bankruptcy or up for sale if it fails to secure a bailout from Belgium to match rescues for Swiss and Austrian divisions. It wasn’t clear if the meeting would go ahead given the circumstances.



‘Balanced Offer’

Whether Thiele, a former army tank commander, is prepared to put his 750 million-euro stake at risk isn’t clear. Economy Minister Peter Altmaier has said previously that the airline will be saved at any cost -- perhaps giving the investor hope that Germany would ultimately revisit the basis of the bailout if left with no other choice.

Spohr said in his letter that Lufthansa is preparing for all scenarios, including ways to avoid grounding its jets and continuing communications with the German government should the vote be lost.

“The aim of the board, obviously, is to avoid an insolvency and all the consequences that would bring,” he said.

(Updates with discussions from meeting in fourth paragraph)

©2020 Bloomberg L.P.

Lufthansa set for showdown with billionaire investor Thiele over $10 billion bailout

Billionaire shareholder Heinz Hermann Thiele is set to meet Germany’s economics minister on Monday to discuss his objections to the $10 billion state rescue package

POST FRIEDMAN, HAYEK, ETC. 

STATE CAPITALISM SAVES MONOPOLY CAPITALISM

Published: June 22, 2020 By Lina Saigo

Lufthansa’s future is at stake after its biggest shareholder says he might vote against the €10 billion government bailout. GETTY IMAGES

Shares in Lufthansa dropped 5.8% on Monday, ahead of a crunch meeting between the German airline’s biggest shareholder, Heinz Hermann Thiele, and Germany’s economics minister on Monday to discuss a $10 billion rescue package.

Thiele, a 79-year-old billionaire, has built up a 15.5% stake in Lufthansa LHA, -3.34%, making him the carrier’s largest shareholder. Thiele has raised objections against the government’s bailout, which would see the state taking a 20% stake in the airline and two seats on its supervisory board.

Read:Lufthansa: Shareholders may not approve bailout

Thiele has pointed to other European airlines, such as Air France-KLM AF, -3.79%, which have received state aid in the form of loans rather than government shareholdings.

Thiele believes an indirect state participation via state-owned German development bank KFW, +0.52% could be an alternative to an outright government stake, according to Reuters.

On June 1, Lufthansa’s supervisory board approved the bailout, which would force it to transfer up to 24 coveted takeoff and landing slots at Frankfurt and Munich airports to some of its biggest rivals. The airline has also said it is looking to slash 22,000 full-time positions, as it struggles to cope with the unprecedented slump in air travel caused by the coronavirus pandemic.

Read:German Airline Lufthansa to Cut 22,000 Jobs.

However, the bailout requires the support of more than two-thirds of its shareholders — who are due to vote on the package at an extraordinary shareholder meeting scheduled for June 25.

According to Citi analysts, only 38% of the shareholder base has registered to vote at this coming Thursday’s bailout-ratifying extraordinary general meeting. “Obtaining the two-thirds required to pass this bill is looking like a struggle. There are three possible outcomes on Thursday, in our view,” the analysts wrote in a note to clients on Monday.

Thiele will meet with Lufthansa Chief Executive and Chairman Carsten Spohr, Germany’s economics minister Peter Altmaier, and the two German ministers who brokered the rescue package in an online meeting on Monday, according to several news reports.

In a letter to employees on Sunday seen by Bloomberg, Spohr said “We face a fateful week for our Lufthansa,” and warned that it wasn’t certain the bailout package will gain approval at the EGM on Thursday.

According to Citi analysts, only 38% of the shareholder base has registered to vote at this coming Thursday’s bailout-ratifying EGM, effectively giving Thiele the ability to veto the proposed package. “Obtaining the two-thirds required to pass this bill is looking like a struggle,” they said.

The Citi team outlined its view on three possible outcomes on Thursday:

1) The bailout passes, the stock rises short-term and Lufthansa spends the next three years rebuilding the business in preparation for a significantly dilutive rights issue.

2) The bailout doesn’t pass, and the government quickly offers to remove its planned equity stake, which Citi believes is “arguably the best outcome for the shares & management team.”

3) The bailout doesn’t pass, no new terms are immediately offered by the government and management resignations follow. In this scenario, Citi predicts that the stock will fall significantly and Thiele could buy more equity and provide cash financing near-term, by collateralizing his stake in rail and commercial vehicle supplier Knorr-Bremse KBX, +2.08%, which would allow him to provide €5 billion plus loans to Lufthansa.

“The major shareholder ends up with a large stake in two German industrial names and enacts a multiyear turnaround plan at Lufthansa which includes the sale-and-leaseback of valuable unencumbered fleet and the spinoff of the much-discussed €3-5 billion MRO [maintenance, repair, and overhaul] business,” Citi wrote in the research note.

Lufthansa had discussed an initial public offering for shares in Lufthansa Technik before the coronavirus crisis.

Colin Kaepernick is a hero — like Pat Tillman — and deserves another chance in the NFL, says Brett Favre

Published: June 22, 2020 By Shawn Langlois

A Nike Ad featuring Colin Kaepernick GETTY IMAGES

‘I can only think of, right off the top of my head, Pat Tillman is another guy who did something similar. And we regard him as a hero. So, I’d assume that hero status will be stamped with Kaepernick, as well.’

That’s Green Bay Packers legend and Hall of Famer Brett Favre wading into the thorny Colin Kaepernick debate in an interview with TMZ Sports.

He was comparing Kaepernick, who was willing to sacrifice his NFL career to protest racial injustice, to Pat Tillman, the former Arizona Cardinals defender killed after leaving football to join the Army Rangers following the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

Tillman played four seasons in the NFL before leaving for Afghanistan.

Kaepernick was in his sixth season with the 49ers in 2016 when he began kneeling during the national anthem. He was cut after that season and ultimately filed a grievance that the NFL and its owners were colluding to keep him out of the league.

Favre says Kaepernick still has the skills to play.

“It’s not easy for a guy his age — black or white, Hispanic, whatever — to stop something that you’ve always dreamed of doing, and put it on hold, maybe forever, for something you believe in,” he said. “I thought he was a dynamic player when he was playing in his prime. He’s still young and hasn’t been hit in several years, so there’s no reason to think that he’s lost that much of a step.”

Watch the interview:

Kaepernick might finally get his chance at a return. NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell told ESPN last week he’d welcome Kaepernick back into the league and he’d encourage a team to sign him.

But not everybody is ready to embrace Kaepernick, and the comparison between him and Tillman also struck a nerve as Favre became a top-trending topic on Twitter TWTR, -0.93% . Of course, it quickly devolved into partisan bickering, like everything else on social media these days:

Tennessee newspaper apologizes for ‘horrific’ ad that warns ‘Islam’ will nuke Nashville

Published: June 22, 2020 By Shawn Langlois

THE TENNESSEAN

The ad began with “Dear Citizen of Nashville.” From there, it got dark in a hurry.

The Tennessean newspaper, the biggest in the Tennessee, on Sunday ran an ad from a prophecy group called Ministry for Future for America, which said its mission is to “proclaim the final warning message” from the Bible and warned that “Islam” would blow up a nuclear bomb in the city.


The eight-paragraph, full-page ad featured a photo of President Donald Trump and Pope Francis and careened between such topics as Vladimir Putin, the Democratic Party and 9/11. The group also warned of the likelihood of “another civil war.”

Read some of it in this tweet:
The Tennessean issued an apology on Sunday for the “bizarre, pseudo-religious” ad.

“Clearly there was a breakdown in the normal processes, which call for careful scrutiny of our advertising content,” said Michael A. Anastasi, vice president and editor, noting in the statement that news and ad sales divisions operate independently. “The ad is horrific and is utterly indefensible in all circumstances. It is wrong, period, and should have never been published,” he said.

The newspaper, which launched an investigation, said its advertising standards clearly forbid hate speech and the ad was immediately pulled from future editions.

Jeff Pippenger, a spokesperson for the Ministry of Future for America, stood by the content in the ad and on the group’s website, telling the New York Times that the newspaper owed the group a full refund and did not say how much the ad cost.

“It seems to me the criticism is more aimed at the editorial staff at the newspaper,” Pippenger said, “and the criticism about my religious convictions is simply what happens when you let your religious convictions out into the public arena.”

New York’s Museum of Natural History to remove Teddy Roosevelt statue

Statue symbolizes colonialism, museum says; Roosevelt’s great-grandson agrees

Published: June 21, 2020 By  Associated Press

Visitors to the American Museum of Natural History in New York in 2017 look at a statue of Theodore Roosevelt. ASSOCIATED PRES

NEW YORK — The American Museum of Natural History will remove a prominent statue of Theodore Roosevelt from its entrance after years of objections that it symbolizes colonial expansion and racial discrimination, Mayor Bill de Blasio said Sunday.

The bronze statue that has stood at the museum’s Central Park West entrance since 1940 depicts Roosevelt on horseback with a Native American man and an African man standing next to the horse.

“The American Museum of Natural History has asked to remove the Theodore Roosevelt statue because it explicitly depicts Black and Indigenous people as subjugated and racially inferior,” de Blasio said in a written statement. “The City supports the Museum’s request. It is the right decision and the right time to remove this problematic statue.”

The museum’s president, Ellen Futter, told the New York Times that the museum’s “community has been profoundly moved by the ever-widening movement for racial justice that has emerged after the killing of George Floyd.”

“We have watched as the attention of the world and the country has increasingly turned to statues as powerful and hurtful symbols of systemic racism,” Futter told the Times.

Officials said it hasn’t been determined when the Roosevelt statue will be removed and where it will go.

“The composition of the Equestrian Statue does not reflect Theodore Roosevelt’s legacy,” Theodore Roosevelt IV, a great-grandson of the president, said in a statement to the Times. “It is time to move the statue and move forward.”

Futter said the museum objects to the statue but not to Roosevelt, a pioneering conservationist whose father was a founding member of the institution and who served as New York’s governor before becoming the 26th president. She said the museum is naming its Hall of Biodiversity for Roosevelt “in recognition of his conservation legacy.”

In 2017, protesters splashed red liquid on the statue’s base to represent blood and published a statement calling for its removal as an emblem of “patriarchy, white supremacy and settler-colonialism.”

Opinion | Diplomacy That Will Live in Infamy - The New York ...

www.nytimes.com › 2009/12/06 › opinion

Dec 6, 2009 - Theodore Roosevelt, not F.D.R., had a greater effect on Japan's decision to ... In a secret presidential cable to Tokyo, in July 1905, Roosevelt ...

Taft–Katsura agreement - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org › wiki

The Taft–Katsura Agreement was a 1905 discussion between senior leaders of Japan and the ... The memorandum was not classified as a secret but no scholar noticed it in the archives ... President Theodore Roosevelt later agreed that War Secretary Taft had ... "Taft's Missions to Japan: A Study in Personal Diplomacy.

‎Details · ‎Context · ‎Korean reaction

Teddy Roosevelt's Secret Deal with Japan: An Interview with .. 

Teddy Roosevelt's Secret Deal with Japan: An Interview with James Bradley. Historians/ ... A hundred yea

Nonfiction: Some little-known tales of Teddy Roosevelt ...

 

In 1905 President Teddy Roosevelt dispatched Secretary of War William Howard Taft on the largest U.S. diplomatic mission in history to Hawaii, Japan, the ...

Demon Fuzz - Afreaka! 1970 (FULL ALBUM) [Jazz/Progressive rock

Jazz/Progressive rock 1970 UK

Tracklist: 1. Past, Present and Future (9:55) 2. Disillusioned Man (4:59) 3. Another Country (8:33) 4. Hymn to Mother Earth (8:12) 5. Mercy (Variation No. 1) (9:40) Bonus tracks: 6. I Put a Spell on You (3:55) 7. Message to Mankind (3:54) 8. Fuzz Oriental Blues (6:46) Smokey Adams - vocals Paddy Corea - congas, flute, saxophones Clarence Crosdale - trombone W. Raphael Joseph - guitar Ray Rhoden - keyboards Jack Joseph - bass Steve John - drums

WITCH - INTRODUCTION [FULL ALBUM].FROM ZAMBIA
Setlist

 01 Introduction 00:00

02 Home Town (Instrumental) 03:44 

03 You Better Know 08:11

04 Feeling High 11:43 

05 Like A Chicken 15:20 

06 See You Mama 18:30 

07 That's What I Want 23:05

08 Try Me (Instrumental) 26:06

09 No Time 30:31 

Label: Zambia Music Parlour ‎– ZMPL 7

 Format: Vinyl, LP, Album

 Country: Zambia 

Released: 1974 

Band Members 

1 Emanyeo Jagari Chanda (lead vocals, cowbells, marracas) 

2 John “Music” Muma (rhythm guitar, backup vocals) 

3 Gideon “Giddy King” ''Mwamulenga'' Mulenga (bass) 

4 Boyd “Star MacBoyd”Sinkala (drums) 

5 Chris “Kims” Mbewe (lead guitar, lead vocals, acoustic guitar) 

6. Paul “Jones” Mumba

DEPARTMENT OF WISHFUL THINKING

Opinion: History suggests Trump is heading for a fall in November

Never very popular, Trump is now shackled with a terrible economy and a persistent pandemic

Published: June 20, 2020 By Paul Brandus

When the year began, I thought President Donald Trump was in pretty good shape to win a second term. This obviously isn’t the case now. I don’t have to tell you what the pandemic, the economic collapse that followed, Trump’s own behavior—which seems to be getting worse—and more have done to weaken him electorally.

Trump defied history four years ago, and he could certainly do so again in November. But history is not on his side in several critical ways.

An unpopular president

You’ll recall that Trump was elected president with 46% of the popular vote. According to two aggregators of polls — Real Clear Politics and FiveThirtyEight — he has never advanced more than a point or two beyond this, peaking back in February and March in the 45% to 47% range.

His current approval ratings — 40.8% (FiveThirtyEight) and 42.5% (RCP) — are a decline of about five approval points in each. Given how bad things are right now — a possible second wave of the pandemic and the worst unemployment rate in 90 years — Trump should count his lucky stars that it’s not worse. It’s a reflection of just how much his base continues to stick to him like glue.
This is the best thing — perhaps the only thing — that the president has going for him right now.

What does history tell us when a presidential incumbent has numbers this low?

Trump’s Gallup approval is 39%. Going back to 1950 — nearly three-quarters of a century — only two presidents were weaker at this point in their re-election years: George H.W. Bush in 1992 (37%) and Jimmy Carter in 1980 (38%). Both of them lost their re-election bids.

And both Carter and Bush lost with economies that were far better than what Trump is dealing with now. Unemployment in May 1980 was 7.5%; in May 1992 it was 6.1%. Trump’s jobless rate now is nearly those two rates combined: 13.3%, and even the Department of Labor says were it not for data that was “misclassified,” the real jobless rate today would be three full points higher: 16.3%.

At 39%, Trump is barely within shouting distance of where Barack Obama stood this time in 2012: 46%. But Obama wasn’t dealing with a pandemic (in fact he had successfully faced a possible pandemic down), the stock market was surging and unemployment was plunging. He went on to win 51% of the popular vote and 332 electoral votes. Bill Clinton (1996), Ronald Reagan (1984), Richard Nixon (1972) and Dwight Eisenhower (1956) did better, in most cases spectacularly better.

Stock market hopes

Nor does the stock market offer any comparative advantage to Trump. In the full years before Carter and Bush’s re-election bids, the S&P 500 SPX, 0.21% rose 18.4% in 1979 and 32.5% in 1980—but again, Carter lost. It rose 30.5% in 1991 and 7.6% in 1992 — but again, Bush lost.

Trump’s stock market? The index jumped 31.5% last year, but as of yesterday is off -3.3% year-to-date.

In addition to unemployment and stocks, history is also against Trump in another big way: he’s the fifth president to lose the popular vote but win the Electoral College. So what happened to the other four popular vote losers when they sought re-election?

John Quincy Adams was crushed by Andrew Jackson (1828); Rutherford B. Hayes declined to run again (1880), and Benjamin Harrison lost to Grover Cleveland (1892).

That leaves just one popular vote loser who managed to win a second term: George W. Bush in 2004. And he barely did so. Had just 59,229 votes in Ohio gone the other way, John Kerry would have won the Buckeye state and with it, the presidency. Sidebar: for you Electoral College haters, consider that Kerry would have become president despite losing the popular vote by more than 3 million votes.

Double whammy

To recap: Trump faces a double historical whammy: He’s a weak incumbent and a popular-vote loser to boot. Other presidents have been shown the door with economies that were better than what we have today. There are fears of a second wave of the coronavirus; the president can barely acknowledge that this remains a problem, a problem that continues to kill thousands of Americans each week.

I said that six months ago, Trump was in pretty good shape to win another term. Now, history suggests he’s headed for a quick exit.


More from Paul Brandus
The media landscape is far more friendly to Trump than he likes to admit

With apologies to 1860 and 1932, we’ve never had an election in circumstances quite this challenging

The one big difference between Trump and Hoover

Exclusive: After BP takes a hit, investors widen climate change campaign

Matthew Green and Simon Jessop Reuters June 21, 2020

Landell-Mills, head of stewardship at Sarasin & Partners, poses for a photograph at their office in London

By Matthew Green and Simon Jessop

LONDON (Reuters) - Investors managing £1.8 trillion ($2.2 trillion) in assets are widening a campaign pressing oil majors to better reflect climate risks in their accounting, and will soon target other businesses with heavy fossil fuel exposure, the group said on Monday.

The investors believe their campaign is working, noting the "hugely important" news of BP joining other oil majors in lowering the value of its assets amid a global transition to cleaner energy, said Natasha Landell-Mills, head of stewardship at asset manager Sarasin & Partners.

"The question all company directors and their shareholders now need urgently answered is, 'Where else might company positions be overstated?'" the group of more than 20 leading funds said in a joint statement seen by Reuters.
BP declined to comment on the campaign.

The investor group can't be certain whether its efforts played into BP's decision to reduce the value of its assets by up to $17.5 billion, announced on June 15.

But they have already begun lobbying building materials company CRH and plan to write to Anglo-Australian miner Rio Tinto , which supplies the steel industry. Along with cement, steel is a major source of greenhouse gases.

"We will be rolling out similar engagements with other fossil fuel-dependent companies," Landell-Mills, who is coordinating the campaign, told Reuters in an interview.

The investors were also planning to include European and U.S. banks financing fossil fuel projects, Landell-Mills added.

Rio Tinto did not immediately respond to a request for comment. CRH declined to comment.

Early last year, the investors began lobbying the Big Four accounting firms - EY, Deloitte, PwC and KPMG - to do more to ensure climate-related risks are adequately reflected in company financial statements they audit. The campaign is one of a number of efforts by investors to push companies on environmental policies, amid concerns many businesses are both contributing to the planet's warming while also failing to take full stock of the risks they face.

Major fund managers including BlackRock have issued increasingly strident public statements about climate change, while other investors have threatened to pull money out of Brazil unless Amazon deforestation is curbed.

The campaign led by Sarasin & Partners emphasizes the legal duty companies have to ensure their financial statements fully reflect how government moves to ratchet up climate action and the falling costs of renewable energy are likely to affect future profitability.

"It's a very serious thing from their perspective," said Landell-Mills. "This is a matter of ensuring there is no misrepresentation going on."

Accounting for potential future losses can weaken a company's balance sheet, making it harder to finance new investment in carbon-intensive activities such as oil exploration, the investors argue.

The coalition includes Sarasin & Partners, M&G Investments, Jupiter Asset Management, NN Investment Partners and pension funds such as the Brunel Pension Partnership and Denmark's PKA.

"POTENTIALLY OVERSTATING"

Although it was difficult to independently assess the impact of the campaign, Landell-Mills pointed to a series of moves that align with the investors' demands in letters https://sarasinandpartners.com/stewardship-post/paris-aligned-accounting-is-vital-to-deliver-climate-promises sent to BP, Anglo-Dutch major Shell and France's Total in November. In the letters, seen by Reuters, the investors questioned whether the companies' oil price assumptions, which form the bedrock of their accounts, were aligned with the 2015 Paris climate accord, which implies sharp cuts in fossil fuel use.

Before BP's writedown, the group's letter to the British oil major said: "We have concerns that, at present, BP's accounts may be overlooking material climate considerations, and consequently potentially overstating both performance and capital." The same language was used with Shell and Total.

Total did not immediately respond to a request for a comment. Shell said it had "comprehensively responded" to similar demands by the investor group, and included climate risks in its accounts.

"Since that time, Shell has also published an ambition to be a net zero energy company by 2050, or sooner," Shell said in an email to Reuters on Sunday.

Last week, BP cut its benchmark Brent oil price forecasts to an average of $55 a barrel until 2050, from $70, saying it expects a collapse in oil demand during the coronavirus pandemic to accelerate a low-carbon transition.

BP also said it would have to review some plans for early stage oil and gas exploration projects.

Meanwhile, Shell also lowered its long-term Brent crude expectations to $60 a barrel, from the 2018 price of $70, in its 2019 annual report published in March. Total also reduced its price assumptions at about the same time.

While majors often adjust price assumptions, the investors noted that Shell's auditor's report contained substantially more references to climate risks than the previous year.

"It's tip of the iceberg," Landell-Mills said. "And investors will have to understand that they (oil majors) are not going to be able to pay dividends like they did before."


(Reporting by Matthew Green Simon Jessop; Additional reporting by Zandi Shabalala in London; Editing by Katy Daigle and Lincoln Feast.)