BUSINESS PLAN: President Trump’s new National Security Strategy plan released yesterday describes an America focused on making money, limiting immigration, and withdrawing as a block against authoritarian rulers and a force for freedom around the world. It’s all about us.

  “We seek good relations and peaceful commercial relations with the nations of the world,” it says, “without imposing on them democratic or other social change that differs widely from their traditions and histories.”

  Presidents usually update the National Security Strategy just once in every term. The strategy codifies Trump’s well-established dislike of Europe’s liberal governments and his readiness to ignore human rights abuses around the world.

  The strategy also says that Europe faces the “stark prospect of civilizational erasure” and pledged that the US would support like-minded “patriotic” parties across the continent … read that to mean right wing nationalist and nativist  … to prevent a future in which “certain NATO members will become majority non-European.”  That means “non-white.”

DOUBLE TAP: New information about the so-called “double-tap” strike on a suspected drug boat in September has it that two survivors were struggling in the water for as much as half an hour and were waving at something before they were killed in a second strike. 

  The question is whether it was a war crime to kill two men fighting to remain with an overturned boat. There was no other boat or aircraft reported to have been in the area at the time.

  While debate continues about that incident, the Pentagon announced the destruction of a 23^rdsuspected drug boat yesterday, killing four people and bringing the number of dead to 87 in these attacks.

  In a strange conflict of strategies, the US Coast Guard continues to interdict drug boats rather than blow them up. The Coast Guard released video from a helicopter this week showing a sniper disabling the engines of a boat before crewmen recovered 20,000 pounds of cocaine.

THE REGIME: 

— The world soccer governing body FIFA yesterday gave President Trump its just-created “Peace” award. Flattery gets you everywhere with Trump.

  FIFA president Gianni Infantino awarded Trump a golden trophy, a golden medal, a certificate, and told the President: “This is your prize, this is your peace prize.”

  In a brief acceptance speech Trump referenced conflicts he claims to have ended and that “we saved millions and millions of lives.”

— The Supreme Court said it will hear arguments about President Trump’s attempt to end birthright citizenship as guaranteed in the 14^th Amendment. “The Citizenship Clause was adopted to grant citizenship to freed slaves and their children, not to the children of illegal aliens, birth tourists, and temporary visitors,” Solicitor Gen. D. John Sauer wrote in his appeal.

THE WAR ROOM: Ukrainian forces continue to lose ground as Russian diplomats string along peace talks to no end.

  Russian President Vladimir Putin claimed that his forces after months of fighting had seized the strategic Ukrainian city of Pokrovsk, although parts of it are still contested.  

  Russia, if it wants peace at all, is keeping up the pressure to reinforce its demands at the negotiating table. Overnight Russia flooded Ukraine with 650 attack drones and 51 missiles. They are preparing for winter warfare. Putin wants to take all of the eastern area of Ukraine known as the Donbas, about 20 percent of the country.

STREAMING DEALS: The consolidation of the Hollywood entertainment business continued yesterday with Netflix arriving at an $83 billion price to buy Warner Brothers. This follows the purchase of Paramount by Skydance.

  Writers and actors are alarmed. The Writers Guild issued a statement saying, “The outcome would eliminate jobs, push down wages, worsen conditions for all entertainment workers, raise prices for consumers, and reduce the volume and diversity of content for all viewers.”

  The deal would give Netflix over 420 million streaming subscribers worldwide, making it a monster of the medium.

  Actress Jane Fonda raged in a letter to a trade news publication, calling the sale of independent Warner Brothers “an alarming escalation in a consolidation crisis that threatens the entire entertainment industry, the public it serves and — potentially — the First Amendment itself.”

  The takeover gives Netflix control of such moneymaker franchises as Batman, Harry Potter and “Game of Thrones.”

  Warner’s cable channels including CNN, TNT, and HGTV, would be spun off into a new publicly traded company, Discovery Global. 

THE OBIT PAGE: Architect Frank Gehry, who designed some of the monuments of modern architecture including the wavy Disney Hall in Los Angeles, has died at age 96. 

   His firm, Gehry Partners, pioneered ways of using technology to build geometrically complex buildings, beginning with the satellite branch of the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain that became a magnet for visitors. Soon, cities around the world were looking to hire Gehry to re-energize their architecture and civic lives.

SLEEPING WITH ELEPHANTS: The jezebel of journalism, Olivia Nuzzi, is parting ways with Vanity Fair magazine after further revelations about her proclivity to mix business with pleasure.

  Nuzzi was forced out of her position as New York Magazine’s Washington correspondent after revelations that she had a salacious sexting romance with the married Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Then recently her ex-fiancé Ryan Lizza revealed that Nuzzi had a fling with former South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford, famous for claiming to have been hiking the Appalachian trail while he was having an affair with a mistress in South America.  Sanford was a candidate for President when Nuzzi bedded him.

  Word of the Sanford affair cost Nuzzi her job with Vanity Fair. The old adage of journalism bears repeating here: “You can sleep with elephants if you want to, but if you do, you can’t cover the circus.” 

BELOW THE FOLD:  The Oxford University Press chose “rage bait” as its word of the year, even though that’s two words. All we have to say about this is …“6-7.”

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