August 12 2024

Final Olympics update
1 Is Kamala Harris really ahead of Donald Trump? 
2 Economic Cracks in Swing States Challenge Harris's Bid
3 West Texas Natural Gas Prices Plummet Below Zero Amid Supply Glut, Showcasing US Energy Power
4 ‘Never a nice thing to do!’: Iran Hacks Trump Campaign
5 Iran Plans 'Harsh Punishment' for Israel, Weighing Retaliation Without Sparking Wider War
8/12/1992 The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) is concluded between the United States, Canada and Mexico, creating the world's wealthiest trade bloc and generating a political flashpoint two decades later

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Final Olympics update

The Summer Olympics competition has come to an end on Day 16. The United States closed things out in Paris tied with China in total gold medals on the heels of the U.S. women’s basketball team’s win. On a more sour note, though, American gymnast Jordan Chiles must return her bronze medal from the floor exercise after the sport’s governing body modified the results of the event final.

Article Source: WaPo

1 Is Kamala Harris really ahead of Donald Trump? 

The polls have tightened considerably since Joe Biden dropped out of the race and Kamala Harris secured the Democratic nomination. Many polls show Harris even with Trump and some even show her ahead.  I don’t attach huge importance to national polls, as the election is won and lost in the electoral college. Harris needs to win the national vote by about 4% to win the electoral college based on the experience of the last several election cycles. In 2020, Biden won the national popular vote by 4.5% or about 7 million votes. His combined margin of victory in New York and California was 7 million votes - his total popular vote margin. 

The 2024 election will be decided by handful of battleground states and several hundred thousand voters. Specifically, Arizona, Georgia, North Carolina, Nevada and the blue wall states of Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Michigan. They are called the “blue wall” because they used to be reliably Democratic before Trump won them in 2016. While President Joe Biden and former president Donald Trump were known quantities to voters during the summer, Vice President Kamala Harris is new to many voters. As such, editorially I won’t run any Trump-Harris polls until after the first presidential debate in early September.

Article Source: Ad Astra

2 Economic Cracks in Swing States Challenge Harris's Bid

For all the turbulence that has shaken the US presidential contest this summer, voters have been consistent in saying the economy is their top election issue. But the economy that matters most isn’t national: It’s in the seven swing states poised to decide the race. That group is home to 61 million people and had a combined gross domestic product in 2023 of $4.4 trillion, an output rivaling Germany’s. And it’s showing some economic cracks that could prove a political obstacle for Vice President Kamala Harris, who will have to answer to voters for the record of President Joe Biden’s administration. In the so-called Blue Wall industrial states — Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin — where the political stakes are now highest, the combined growth from 2019 to the end of 2023 was just a third of that seen outside swing states, once you adjust for inflation and population increases. In Arizona, which has enjoyed strong real GDP per capita growth, inflation and soaring housing costs hit household budgets hard, much as they have in Nevada and North Carolina. Georgia has benefited from new investments in electric vehicle plants, but it’s also seen its growth diluted by a swell of new residents. Those burdens help explain why Biden struggled to get his economic message to resonate in these critical states, even as the US unemployment rate sat near historic lows, inflation cooled, and the country’s recovery from the pandemic downturn became the envy of much of the world. Democrats will court voters on a wide range of issues, including abortion and the future of US democracy, and Harris’ move to the top of the ticket has galvanized their base. But the mixed picture in swing states underscores a hard truth for the party: National data may point to a healthy US economy, but voters’ perceptions of it are heavily shaped by conditions on the ground where they live

Article Source: Bloomberg

3 West Texas Natural Gas Prices Plummet Below Zero Amid Supply Glut, Showcasing US Energy Power

Two years ago, natural-gas prices surged after Russia invaded Ukraine and restricted supplies of the fuel to many European countries, terrifying Western leaders. Now, the fuel is so abundant that some U.S. energy producers are often paying other businesses to take it away. Natural gas has traded below zero for much of the year in West Texas, home to the country’s largest oil field, the Permian Basin. Companies operating in the region are drilling primarily for crude oil, but natural gas typically comes out of the ground with that oil — so much of it that on some days, drillers run out of places to store the gas or the pipeline capacity to send it to the Gulf Coast or California, where there is demand for it. The result is an upside-down local market where producers are paying buyers to take a valuable commodity. In West Texas, natural gas closed below zero on 57 days this year through July, up from nine in all of 2023, according to S&P Global Commodity Insights. In May, prices on what’s called the spot market — where last-minute trading happens — closed as low as negative $4.60 per million British thermal units. That same day in Florida, natural gas — used to cook, heat homes and generate electricity — fetched more than $3.

Article Source: NYT

4 ‘Never a nice thing to do!’: Iran Hacks Trump Campaign Accounts

For the third presidential election in a row, the foreign hacking of the campaigns has begun in earnest. But this time, it’s the Iranians, not the Russians, making the first significant move. On Friday, Microsoft released a report declaring that a hacking group run by the intelligence unit of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps had successfully breached the account of a “former senior adviser” to a presidential campaign. From that account, Microsoft said, the group sent fake email messages, known as “spear phishing,” to “a high-ranking official of a presidential campaign” in an effort to break into the campaign’s own accounts and databases. By Saturday night, former President Donald J. Trump was declaring that Microsoft had informed his campaign “that one of our many websites was hacked by the Iranian Government — Never a nice thing to do!” but that the hackers had obtained only “publicly available information.” He attributed it all to what he called, in his signature selective capitalization, a “Weak and Ineffective” Biden administration.

There is little doubt, investigators say, that the Iranians want to see Mr. Trump defeated. As president, he withdrew from the 2015 nuclear deal, reimposed economic sanctions on Iran and then, in January 2020, ordered the killing in Iraq of Maj. Gen. Qassim Suleimani, the commander of the Quds Force, a clandestine wing of the Revolutionary Guards responsible for foreign operations. Four years later, the Revolutionary Guard Corps appears still determined to avenge Suleimani’s death, and just last week the Justice Department announced it had charged a Pakistani man who had recently visited Iran, accusing him of trying to hire a hit man to assassinate political figures in the U.S., most likely including Mr. Trump.

Article Source: NYT

5 Iran Plans 'Harsh Punishment' for Israel, Weighing Retaliation Without Sparking Wider War

Iran and its allies are weighing how to retaliate forcefully for a pair of killings attributed to Israel in Beirut and Tehran without igniting an all-out war none of them want. Iran can’t afford a war with Israel, which would likely pull in the U.S., just as a new presidential administration takes over in Tehran with problems including a reeling economy. Iranians still hold painful memories of the country’s last extended conflict, an eight-year war with Iraq that decimated a generation, and for decades Tehran has preferred to harry its rivals in the region through a network of foreign militias.
WSJ

Iran is set to carry out an order by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei to "harshly punish" Israel over the assassination of a Hamas leader in Tehran, a Revolutionary Guards deputy commander was quoted as saying on Friday by local news agencies. "The supreme leader's orders regarding the harsh punishment of Israel and revenge for the blood of martyr Ismail Haniyeh are clear and explicit ... and they will be implemented in the best possible way," said Ali Fadavi, cited by Iranian media.
Reuters

Article Source: WSJ, Reuters

8/12/1992 The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) is concluded between the United States, Canada and Mexico, creating the world's wealthiest trade bloc and generating a political flashpoint two decades later

Sources

1. https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/olympics/2024/08/11/paris-olympics-2024-live-medals-usa-results-day-16/

3. https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2024-election-swing-state-economy/?srnd=homepage-americas

4. https://www.nytimes.com/2024/08/08/business/energy-environment/natural-gas-negative-prices-texas.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare

5. https://www.nytimes.com/2024/08/11/us/politics/trump-campaign-hacking-iran.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare&sgrp=c-cb

6. https://www.wsj.com/world/middle-east/iran-wants-to-strike-back-at-israel-but-cant-afford-a-wider-war-a5f9cc1a?st=32s052rjqkqu9a9&reflink=article_copyURL_sharewa; https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/iran-leaders-order-harshly-punish-israel-will-be-carried-out-guards-deputy-chief-2024-08-09/