Europe

While the establishment may breathe a sigh of relief looking back at political developments and events in Europe - which was spared some of the supposedly "worst-case scenarios" including a Marine le Pen presidency, a Merkel loss and a Geert Wilders victory - in 2017, any victory laps will have to be indefinitely postponed because as Goldman writes in its "Top of Mind" peek at 2018, Europe's nationalist and populist tide was just resting, and as Pascal Lamy, the former Chief of Staff to the President of the European Commission admitted earlier this year, "Euroskeptic politicians are

Authored by Robert Gore via Straight Line Logic,

What a difference eleven months make.

Shortly after Donald Trump was inaugurated he fired Michael Flynn.

What’s become the conventional subtext is that the intelligence agencies have launched a “soft coup” against Trump, he has been significantly weakened, and the Deep State has scored a major victory.

“Plot Holes,” SLL, 2/26/17

Via GEFIRA,

The last episode of the successful movie – Star Wars – is actually a lot less about the stars in space and much more about culture and class. Most importantly, it reflects the dangerously growing disenfranchisement of the race-and-gender obsessed liberal upper class and everyone else.

For the second day in a row, most Asian markets - at least the ones that are open - were dragged lower by tech stocks and Apple suppliers, with the MSCI Asia Pacific Index down 0.2% led by Samsung Electronics and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing in response to the previously noted report that Apple will slash Q1 sales forecasts for iPhone X sales by 40% from 50 million to 30 million. Most Asian equity benchmarks fell except those in China. European stocks were mixed in a quiet session while U.S.

Authored by Giulio Meotti via The Gatestone Institute,