This is an opinion article and does not represent necessarily khazen.org view

by cnbc.com --Jake Novak -- No matter where you turn, the news is filled with embarrassing stuff about President Trump. The CIA whistleblower complaint about his conduct on a call with Ukraine’s president has turned into a full-court impeachment scandal. But through all of this, Trump’s approval rating is at its highest level of the year according to the Hill-HarrisX survey, and the other major polls taken since this Ukraine phone call whistleblower story emerged show few changes from the last surveys taken before the news broke.

How is this possible? Anyone still asking that question simply hasn’t come to terms with why Donald Trump won the 2016 election in the first place. In short, Trump was elected to be the ultimate disruptor and to play that disruptive role as much as possible. “Drain the swamp” wasn’t just a campaign slogan, but a visceral feeling against establishment Washington in every way. Millions of Americans who voted for Trump and still support him chose him precisely because he is nasty, breaks the rules, and shows little respect for the political establishment at every level.

To really be mad at Trump for asking foreign leaders to investigate Joe and Hunter Biden or Hillary Clinton, the voters need to believe that Clinton and the Bidens aren’t inherently corrupt. They must also believe that just about all the rules and established groups within American government, especially the intelligence community, deserve unquestioned respect. Here’s a newsflash: a very large number of Americans don’t have that trust and respect, and they’re generally OK with Trump being the junkyard dog who digs it all out.

by linked-in –– Facebook took another aim at Snapchat by announcing a new messaging app for Instagram users. Threads, the name of …

(Reuters) - Some members of Saudi Arabia’s ruling family and business elite have expressed frustration with the leadership of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman following the largest-ever attack on the kingdom’s oil infrastructure last month. It has sparked concern among several prominent branches of the ruling Al Saud family, which numbers around 10,000 members, about the crown prince’s ability to defend and lead the world’s largest oil exporter, according to a senior foreign diplomat and five sources with ties to the royals and business elite. All spoke on condition of anonymity. The attack has also fanned discontent among some in elite circles who believe the crown prince, known in the West by the initials MbS, has sought too tight a grip on power, the sources said. Some of these people said the event has also fueled criticism among those who believe he has pursued an overly aggressive stance towards Iran. “There is a lot of resentment” about the crown prince’s leadership, said one of the sources, a member of the Saudi elite with royal connections. “How were they not able to detect the attack?”

This person added that some people in elite circles are saying they have “no confidence” in the crown prince, an assertion echoed by the four other sources and the senior diplomat. The crown prince nonetheless has staunch supporters. A Saudi source within circles loyal to the crown prince said: “The latest events won’t affect him personally as a potential ruler because he is trying to stop the Iranian expansion in the region. This is a patriotic issue, and so he won’t be in danger, at least as long as the father lives.” A second senior foreign diplomat said ordinary Saudis still want to unite behind MbS as a strong, decisive, dynamic leader.

The Saudi government media office did not respond to detailed questions from Reuters for this article. The crown prince, during a television interview aired Sunday by U.S. broadcaster CBS, said that defending Saudi Arabia was difficult because of the kingdom’s large size and the scale of threats it faces. “It’s challenging to cover all of this fully,” he said. He also called for “strong and firm” global action to deter Iran but said he preferred a “peaceful solution” to a military one.

 (Bloomberg) -Dana Khraiche- Lebanon’s slow-churning currency crunch is fast engulfing Bashar Boubess’s business. The miller pays for wheat imports in dollars but bakeries buy his flour in Lebanese pounds. For weeks now, the bank has refused to exchange those pound earnings back into the hard currency he needs to replenish supplies. His wheat stocks have dropped 30%. Boubess has turned to money changers to keep his business alive, but it’s expensive: they demand more pounds for every dollar than the increasingly unrealistic official rate. “If I sell to the bakeries in dollars, I’d just be transferring the problem to them,” said Boubess, owner of Modern Mills of Lebanon. “I don’t know if we can last the week. What am I supposed do?” More than two decades after Lebanon pegged its pound to the dollar, providing an anchor of stability as the economy emerged from civil war, the moment of reckoning may finally be arriving.

The central bank on Tuesday announced that it will guarantee a supply of dollars at the official rate of 1,507.5 pounds to cover imports of wheat, gasoline and pharmaceuticals, which retail at government-regulated prices. The measure could go some way to averting social upheaval, after weeks of strikes and protests, but it also amounts to a tacit acknowledgement that everyone else is working to a parallel rate. The divergence is small -- Boubess, for instance, said he last paid 1,595 per dollar to buy $50,000 at an exchange bureau -- and top officials including Prime Minister Saad al-Hariri have said the peg is a red line. But the widening imbalance has raised fears among Lebanese that a steeper slide is now only a matter of time.

The central bank’s reserves have fallen some $4 billion in the last two years to reach about $37 billion in July. As confidence has plummeted, even ordinary people have begun to transfer their dollar savings abroad or hide notes under their mattresses. “You can’t help but be affected by what people are are saying and I’ve thought of transferring my money abroad,” said Rose, a widow who’s living on her late husband’s retirement savings and declined to give her name for privacy. “But if everyone withdraws their money, what will happen? There’ll be a crisis?”