Isn't That Special

It's not so much that 45* doesn't know what the fuck he's doing - the real problem is that he's doing the bidding of someone (Uncle Walt prob'ly), and he thinks all he has to do is sell it - without knowing one fucking thing about any of it.

The time he wasted pumping out all that sailboat fuel yesterday - complaining about Obama - becomes a little clearer in light of this reporting in Business Insider from a few weeks ago:

(I may have put this up already, but it bears repeating)

• The Pentagon inspector general issued a report to Congress saying that the Islamic State is again growing in power in Syria and Iraq, with approximately 14,000 to 18,000 militants. 
• The report specifically said President Donald Trump's decision to rapidly draw down troops in Syria and pull diplomatic staff from Iraq increased instability and allowed the militants to regroup. 
• Former Special Presidential Envoy Brett McGurk, who resigned following the drawdown announcement, has repeatedly warned of this scenario, saying that Trump's policies would lead to chaos and "an environment for extremists to thrive."

A report from the Pentagon inspector general found that President Donald Trump's decision to rapidly pull troops out of Syria and divert attention from diplomacy in Iraq has inadvertently aided the Islamic State's regrouping in Syria and Iraq.

The Department of Defense's quarterly report to Congress on the effectiveness of the US Operation Inherent Resolve mission said that "ISIS continued its transition from a territory-holding force to an insurgency in Syria, and it intensified its insurgency in Iraq" — even though Trump said ISIS was defeated and the caliphate quashed, The Wall Street Journal reported.

Many officials and experts have repeatedly warned that a rapid US withdrawal from Syria would enable ISIS to regroup into an insurgency after their battlefield defeats by the US-led coalition.

And don't forget that as we exit Afghanistan, we'll probably be obliged to hand over a shit load of weaponry to the Taliban - because the "government" we've been trying to install for almost 20 years is likely too corrupt and weak to stand up on its own, so our best option will be to help the bad guys (Talibanis) in their fight against the really bad guys (ISIS).

On That G7 Mess

45* spent over an hour on a word safari through The Merry Old Land Of Oz yesterday at the end of a G7 summit meeting that saw the other 6 leaders further isolate the US, which means (to me anyway) we can no longer refer to the President Of The United States as "the leader of the free world".

WaPo Fact Checker:

In a lengthy news conference at the conclusion of the Group of Seven summit of industrialized democracies, President Trump made numerous false, misleading or inaccurate statements on a variety of issues. Here’s a tour through some of the more noteworthy ones, in the order in which he made them.

“The tariffs have hit them [China] very hard. In a fairly short period of time, the United States will have collected over $100 billion in tariffs.”

As we have repeatedly noted, U.S. tariffs are a tax on the American people, not China. The tariffs are generally paid by importers, such as U.S. companies, who in turn pass on most or all of the costs to consumers or producers who may use Chinese materials in their products. (Technically, we should note that as a matter of demand and supply elasticities, Chinese producers will pay part of the tax if there are fewer goods sold to the United States.)

Numerous economic studies have found that the tariffs are costing American households hundreds of dollars a year. Moreover, China has retaliated by hiking duties on U.S. exports, costing the U.S. the equivalent of about $40 billion a year in lost exports. That’s why Trump has already spent $28 billion to bail out farmers who have lost access to Chinese markets.

Trump never appears to factor in those costs when he claims the United States will soon have collected $100 billion in tariffs. We’re not sure where that figure comes from. Comparing the customs revenue in the monthly Treasury statement before and after Trump started imposing tariffs on China in March 2018, we estimate that thus far an additional $37 billion has been raised through the end of July. Not all of that is on Chinese goods — Trump has imposed other tariffs — so he’s barely breaking even.

“The United States, which has never collected 10 cents from China.”

This is false. Tariffs have been collected on Chinese goods since the early days of the Republic. President George Washington signed the Tariff Act of 1789, when trade between China and the United States was already established. Tariffs on Chinese imports have generated at least $8 billion every year since 2009.

“Iran is a country that is not the same country that it was two and a half years ago when I came into office.”

This is a favorite line for Trump, and it’s wrong. He claims that the administration’s “maximum pressure” policy has left Iran unable to continue its regional activities. And although the administration’s sanctions have had a significant impact on Iran’s economy, there are also clear signs of Iran’s continued support for proxies and an aggressive stance against sanctions. We detailed the problems with this claim in this video:

“We made a ridiculous deal. We gave them $150 billion, we gave them $1.8 billion, and we got nothing. We got nothing.”

This is yet another Bottomless Pinocchio claim. Trump often makes it sound like the United States cut a check to Iran as part of the Iran nuclear deal, formally known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). He also always uses too high an estimate, $150 billion, for the assets involved.

But this was always Iran’s money. Iran had billions of dollars frozen in foreign banks around the globe because of international sanctions over its nuclear program. The Treasury Department estimated that once Iran fulfilled other obligations, it would have about $55 billion left. The Central Bank of Iran said the number was actually $32 billion.

As for the $1.8 billion (actually, $1.7 billion), this was related to the settlement of a decades-old claim between the two countries, not the Iran nuclear agreement. An initial payment of $400 million was handed over on Jan. 17, 2016, the day after Iran released four American detainees, including The Washington Post’s Jason Rezaian. The timing — which U.S. officials insisted was a coincidence — suggested the cash could be viewed as a ransom payment.

But the initial cash payment was Iran’s money. In the 1970s, the then pro-Western Iranian government under the shah paid $400 million for U.S. military equipment. The equipment was never delivered because the two countries broke off relations after the seizure of American hostages at the U.S. Embassy in Iran. Two other payments totaling $1.3 billion — a negotiated agreement on the interest owed on the $400 million — came some weeks later.

“That [Iran nuclear] agreement was so short-term that it expires in a very short period of time. With a country, you don’t make a deal that short. Countries last for long times, and you don’t do short-term deals, especially when you’re paying that kind of money.”

The JCPOA was adopted in October 2015 and formally implemented on Jan. 16, 2016, by the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council — China, France, Russia, Britain and the United States — and Germany and Iran.

We have previously examined Trump’s claim that the deal would expire in seven years and Iran was then free to build nuclear weapons. It’s not clear what he meant, but he may have been referring to “Termination Day” in October 2025, when provisions of a U.N. resolution endorsing the deal expire, or he may have been referring to the fact that some provisions of the JCPOA itself expire 10 years into the deal, in 2026.

But as a signatory to the Non-Proliferation Treaty, Iran has pledged not to develop nuclear weapons — ever. In agreeing to the JCPOA, Iran recommitted itself to the Non-Proliferation Treaty. Iran also agreed to abide by the International Atomic Energy Agency’s Additional Protocol. It has committed to ratify this agreement in 2023.

Other parts of the JCPOA would remain in force for years after 2026, including international monitoring of Iran’s production of uranium ore and centrifuge parts and restrictions on uranium enrichment and reprocessing of spent fuel.

“They’re allowed to test ballistic missiles. You’re not allowed to go to various sites to check. And some of those sites are the most obvious sites for the creation or the making of nuclear weapons.”

Trump is generally wrong about inspections. Under the JCPOA, Iran’s declared nuclear sites, such as the Natanz uranium enrichment facility, will be under continuous monitoring by the International Atomic Energy Agency — and the IAEA would have immediate access. Under the deal, for 10 years, Iran will have limits on the enrichment permitted at Natanz; the IAEA will be able to keep close tabs on the production. The JCPOA even allows IAEA monitoring of Iran’s centrifuge production and storage facilities, the procurement chain, and mining and milling of uranium — verification measures that many experts say exceed previous negotiated nuclear deals.

The issue involves the question of what to do if the IAEA learns of suspicious activity at an undeclared site. The IAEA can demand instant access — but Iran could refuse. So the JCPOA sets up a process to resolve the standoff, described in a 29-page document known as Annex 1, that could take up to 24 days to resolve.

This provision was added to remove a loophole in the Additional Protocol, which requires IAEA access to suspect sites in 24 hours but does not have immediate consequences for a nation that refuses to permit access. Some critics have said the 24-day time frame is too long, but that’s not the same as having no access as Trump claimed.

As for missiles, it’s worth recalling that the JCPOA was the product of lengthy negotiations. Iran insisted the deal was limited to the nuclear program, not its missile program. Limits on Iran’s ballistic missiles thus have been handled under U.N. Security Council resolutions, including the one that implemented the deal, which helped slow down Iran’s missile development. In theory, if Iran cannot develop nuclear weapons, it makes the missile program less fearsome.

“China has been taking out of this country $500-plus billion a year for many, many years — many, many years.”

Trump consistently inflates the U.S. trade deficit with China. It was $380 billion in 2018, $337 billion in 2017 and $309 billion in 2016, according to the Commerce Department. Notice that it has continued to grow under Trump.

As we often note, countries do not make or lose money on trade deficits.

A trade deficit simply means that people in one country are buying more goods from another country than people in the second country are buying from the first country. No matter what, people are receiving goods in exchange for their money.

“I’ve spent — and I think I will, in a combination of loss and opportunity, probably it’ll cost me anywhere from $3 billion to $5 billion to be president.”

Trump offers no evidence for this claim. It’s highly dubious, especially when he may not even be worth much more than $3 billion. (Yes, Trump claims he’s worth $10 billion, but Forbes has run the numbers and estimated $3.1 billion.) Note that Trump refers to a “loss and opportunity,” which suggests he’s counting deals that were only a figment of his imagination.

“I ran one election, and I won. Happened to be for president.”

Trump often rewrites his biography to gloss over the fact that he unsuccessfully sought the Reform Party nomination in the 2000 cycle. He announced the creation of a presidential exploratory committee on Oct. 7, 1999, but officially ended his campaign on Feb. 14, 2000.

“Having to do with a certain section of Ukraine, that you know very well, where it was, sort of, taken away from President Obama; not taken away from President Trump, taken away from President Obama. President Obama was not happy that this happened because it was embarrassing to him, right? It was very embarrassing to him. And he wanted Russia to be out of the — what was called the G-8. And that was his determination.”
There are so many things wrong in this passage, made as Trump defended his effort to invite Russia to the next G-7 meeting. Russia, under the leadership of President Vladimir Putin, in 2014 seized the Crimea section of Ukraine, in violation of international law. Crimea was not taken from Obama, as Trump oddly claimed, but from Ukraine.

The decision to expel Russia from the Group of Eight — and to refuse to participate in a planned summit at Sochi, Russia — was unanimously approved by the other seven members in an effort to punish Russia for its actions. The action was also accompanied by sanctions on Russia by the assembled group.

“International law prohibits the acquisition of part or all of another state’s territory through coercion or force,” the G-7 communique said. “To do so violates the principles upon which the international system is built. We condemn the illegal referendum held in Crimea in violation of Ukraine’s constitution. We also strongly condemn Russia’s illegal attempt to annex Crimea in contravention of international law and specific international obligations. We do not recognize either.”

Putin has remained unrepentant about the seizure of Crimea and has not met the demands set by the G-7 to allow Russia to return to the annual gathering.

“If it was annexed during my term, I’d say, ‘Sorry, folks. I made a mistake.’ Or, ‘Sorry folks.’ ”

Hmmm. How often has Trump said he was sorry — or that he made a mistake?

Oy

A near-perfect example of how hard they're trying to convince us Cult45 is legit.

The effort to get us to think in terms of "the leader of the country is the country" is some seriously creepy Daddy State bullshit.

Notice also, they're trying to make it look like the Dems are being hypocritical, since they complained about Mitch McYertle's policy of blocking everything Obama wanted to do. The difference being that Obama intended (eg) to make Healthcare affordable and more accessible, while Repubs want to do just the opposite.

Both sides my ass

.@PressSec: “At some points Democrats have to decide whether they love this country more than they hate this president.” pic.twitter.com/gVQPfDSZ0B

— Fox News (@FoxNews) April 23, 2018

 

It never ceases to amaze me how they tell us they're doing things so very differently, while at the same time they insist they're just doing things according to the way things are always done around here.

A reply overheard on Twitter:

Hey Sarah, I'm a Democrat.

I served in Saudi Arabia '02, Iraq '05, Afghanistan '10 and Afghanistan '12.

At no time did I ever see you over there.

I never saw a Trump either.

Trump worked with Russia to undermine our democracy.

You're cool with it. We aren't. Fuck you.

This New Episode

... in what has already become a very old and very stale White House Reality Show.

Reuters:

For at least two decades, leaders in North Korea have been seeking a personal meeting with an American president.

Now, as a summit unexpectedly appears possible, analysts fear U.S. President Donald Trump’s understaffed administration may lack the expertise to successfully turn a political spectacle long sought by Pyongyang into a meaningful opportunity to convince North Korea to abandon its nuclear program.

South Korean officials said Friday Trump almost immediately agreed to meet North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, without preconditions, by the end of May. Even proponents of a diplomatic approach towards North Korea worry the administration could be rushing into a summit with little time to prepare.

Such a summit - the first time sitting American and North Korean leaders have ever met - would typically happen after each side had made at least some concrete agreements, said Suzanne DiMaggio, a senior fellow at the New America think tank, who has engaged North Korean officials at unofficial discussions.

“It will have to be managed carefully with a great deal of prep work,” she said on Twitter. “Otherwise, it runs the risk of being more spectacle than substance. Right now, Kim Jong Un is setting the agenda and the pace, and the Trump administration is reacting. The administration needs to move quickly to change this dynamic.”
It runs the risk of being all can and no beans? There's just a bit of a risk here?

One of the things you never ever do is lend your entire nation's standing and prestige to a 3rd rate tin-plated phony by jumping into negotiations with him - what the hell was Kim Jong Un thinking?

And oh yeah - I've asked you before, Press Poodles - please stop trying to report on Cult45*'s weird little shit show by gunning it all through your Presumption of Regularity filter.

There's nothing regular about this. There's nothing that's even real about anything this putz is doing.

So stop reporting on how different all this shit is, and start concentrating on how thoroughly fucked up it is.

Small Men, Big Problems

A coupla things about North Korea.

First, it's been less than a full generation since North Korea came relatively close to being wiped out by famine.

Nobody knows for sure what the numbers are - estimates range from 250,000 to 4 million dead N Koreans. That's anywhere from 2% to 18% of the total population. By comparison, what do you suppose happens to this country if somewhere between 3 million and 52 million Americans died over a 5 year period?

Now, some good old fashioned Keynesian Stimulus can do wonders to help you recover from just about anything, so a massive investment in a nationalized push towards (eg) nuclear weapons would definitely boost the economy, but that assumes you have a shitload of credit or the ability to monetize your national debt, neither of which was available to North Korea in the 90s.

One of the big reasons for that famine was the loss of patronage. The Soviet Union cratered and cut their support. China stepped in, but they had their own problems with drought and shortages and lack of hard currency, so they had to bail too.

Anyway, N Korea gets practically nothing done without the help of a Patron State.

Second (to shorten the story), Putin makes out like a bandit if he stirs the shit in SE Asia.

And while he risks creating the monster - a deliverable H-bomb means never having to say, "Yessir, whatever you want, boss" - Uncle Vlad gets a net benefit just by pimping the chaos and looking for the opportunities.

About The North Korea Thing

I think I'm gonna need a little more assurance that 45* isn't just trying to bull his way into a deal for something like: The Trump Jong Un Hotel in beautiful downtown Pyongyang.

He has to get the focus off the Russia thing, but if he can make a few bucks on it too - well that's even better.

Today's Self-Inflicted Foot Wound

It's never about anything but trying to make himself look good.

Read the transcripts at WaPo

A "highlite":
 Pena Nieto: Yes, Mr. President. The proposal that you are making is completely new, vis-à-vis the conversations our two teams have been having. But I have gathered this from the position that you have taken in terms of trade. I think we have the route to continue having balanced trade between both nations. And frankly, to tell you the truth Mr. President, I feel quite surprised about this new proposal that you are making because it is different from the discussion that both of our teams have been holding —

 Trump: Enrique, if I can interrupt – this is not a new proposal. This is what I have been saying for a year and a half on the campaign trail. I have been telling this to every group of 50,000 people or 25,000 people – because no one got people in their rallies as big as I did. But I have been saying I wanted to tax people that treated us unfairly at the border, and Mexico is treating us unfairly. Now, this is different from what Luis and Jared have been talking about. But this was not a new proposal – this is the old proposal. This was the proposal I wanted. But they say they can come up with some other idea, and that is fine if they want to try it out. But I got elected on this proposal – this won me the election, along with military and healthcare. So this is not a new proposal this is been here for a year and half.

Dots

... sometimes they lead to some interesting places.

45* ... The Mooch ... BayRock ... Felix Sater ... Russian Mob.

BTW - Nicolas Maduro moves Venezuela into the Asshole Dictatorship column, and 45* himself has nothing to say one way or another.  So maybe that can be seen as 45* making some kind of "progress" cuz at least he isn't standing and cheering for the prick - the way he's done with almost every other Asshole Dictator.

WaPo:

Citing Maduro’s “outrageous seizure of absolute power,” the U.S. government froze any American assets he may have and banned Americans from doing business with him. The move came after Maduro heralded the Sunday vote creating a new super-congress made up entirely of government backers. The newly cast legislators included his wife and son. The body will have sweeping powers to rewrite the constitution and redraw Venezuela’s governing system.

“Maduro is not just a bad leader,” said President Trump’s national security adviser, H.R. McMaster. “He is now a dictator.”

But BTW BTW - Where the fuck is Rex Tillerson?

We'll Miss It When It's Gone

Via Crooks & Liars

"But it's the unscripted Trump that's real. A man who barks out bile at 140 characters, who wastes his precious days as president at war with the west's institutions..."

Who's In Charge Here?

45*'s Grand Alienation Tour has made it pretty clear that almost every one of our old buddy countries is deciding Angela Merkel will be running the show from on out.  

And the US can fuck off until we come to our senses and put a grownup in the Oval Office again.

This Fuckin' Guy

HuffPo (updated):

When U.S. officials claimed two weeks ago that an American aircraft carrier was heading toward waters near North Korea, it was actually sailing in the opposite direction, The New York Times and Defense News report.

“We have the best military people on Earth. And I will say this: He is doing the wrong thing,” Trump added, referring to Kim Jong Un.

But Defense News pointed out on Tuesday that photos released by the U.S. Navy showed the aircraft carrier passing through the Sunda Strait in Indonesia, about 3,500 miles from the Korean Peninsula, last Saturday. It was moving away from North Korea when U.S. officials said it was moving toward the peninsula, the Times confirmed on Tuesday.

One little thing first, if I may: We can't have the best baddest butt-kickin'-est military in the world and at the same time a military that's depleted and badly in need of another $50 Billion blah blah blah. Not that any of that comes as news, but it's helpful for me to remind myself just who this 45* asshole is. 

And we need to remember he's prob'ly being manipulated into getting us to spend the money on lots of cool new big-ticket MeatSpace gadgets that're mostly worthless in the CyberFight that's going on now.

So anyway, he loves to think being "unpredictable" makes him some kind of mastermind. His main tactical approach is to keep everybody off balance - including the people around him. And that can work - it's worked very well to make him one of the world's great douchenozzle promise-breakers who won't be held to account for anything by anybody. 

But when you're POTUS you can't just shoot from the hip. You need the people around you to know something about what the fuck you've got in mind.

Without some level of careful consideration, everybody ends up looking stoopid; the "bad guys" catch on pretty soon (or think they have - which is the biggest problem), and before long he's "unpredictable-ing" a few hundred thousand actual people to death.

A Good Point

Today's winning quote:

"If it were good foreign policy, Donald Trump would not be doing it." --David Frum

hat tip = Crooks & Liars

Anybody Tired Of Winning Yet?

The Coming War(s)

Trade Wars that is. 

I've spent a lot of time and effort playing Snarky McFreak-Out since 11-8-16, and I'll continue in that vein for as long as I can (because it's pretty fun), but I have to get back to my semi-wonk self and start looking at the specifics behind what I think is obviously gonna be a whole series of clusterfucks as Trump Drains The Swamp Into His Cabinet So They Can Funnel Tax Dollars Into Their Pockets.

And we might as well start with trade.

Brookings Institution:

The aim of these policies, as stated by Trump, are to address harms to U.S. workers from trade and to improve trade deals he sees as not being in the U.S. interests. These are certainly worthwhile goals. The problem is that Trump’s current trade proposals will work against each other, threatening to cancel out any gains, and likely inflicting additional costs on the very people he has pledged to help. And, as the U.S. is approaching full employment, the key challenge is less about more jobs but rather about getting at the concentrated losses in particular communities.

And holy fuck, right outa the chute, there's something I missed because I wasn't really paying attention the way I shoulda done.

For instance, Trump has stated that he plans to renegotiate NAFTA —the trade agreement with Mexico and Canada. Mexico and Canada are the U.S.’s largest export markets, together buying more U.S. goods and services than any other country. President Obama also proposed renegotiating NAFTA in 2008 and the TPP was his response. So from one perspective the TPP already achieves this goal.

But should Trump withdraw from the TPP and then seek to renegotiate NAFTA, any concessions on the part of Canada and Mexico will also require concessions by the U.S., i.e., lower tariffs and other trade barriers.

So I still (obviously) don't know all I need to know, but I gotta say Brookings is a decent thing to follow. They tackle some of the big stuff and explain it in a bite-sized-chunks kinda way. I think I'm learning.

Today's Tweet

Trump seems even more terrifyingly uninformed when you read his words as text. Here is the ONLY thing he’s ever said about the war in Yemen: pic.twitter.com/qyP7xyXDjV

— Jonathan Riley (@JonRiley7) January 6, 2017

Somethin' wrong with that guy.

Rachel

Maddow: The president making policy happens whenever the president speaks on a national security matter. https://t.co/Dd7sd2TZnc

— Maddow Blog (@MaddowBlog) December 23, 2016

So, Conway tries mightily to gloss it over but ends - as she always does - by saying, "Oops, Mr Trump didn't really mean that..."  Which I'm sure will come as a great relief to all of us as we try to dig out from under the steaming pile of Trump's awesomeness.

Beyond Words

"Aleppo is a place where the children have stopped crying." Scenes of sheer terror and grief in the last hospital in the last days of Aleppo pic.twitter.com/sy1NgjD4gY

— Channel 4 News (@Channel4News) December 16, 2016

Informed Comment:

After Aleppo, Russians prepare to defy Trump re: their Iran Alliance

the left-leaning Lebanese newspaper al-Safir [Ambassador] reports that the armed resistance to the regime of Bashar al-Assad in the East Aleppo pocket is finished. Reports from Wednesday morning say that the ceasefire that Russia and the regime signed onto in hopes that the few hundred hold-outs among the guerrillas would leave has now broken down amid heavy fire. Civilians also continue to flee the areas under rebel control, though the humanitarian corridors promised by Russia appear never to have materialized. The plan had been to allow some rebels to flee to Idlib, where the rebels led by al-Qaeda have a perch. Nevertheless, hundreds of rebels attempted to flee East Aleppo, as did noncombatants.

The Russian victory in Syria against fundamentalist Sunni Arab militias was made possible in part by Iran. Russian fighter jets simply bombing from on high would have been useless. It was Iran that directed the Lebanese Hizbullah and the Iraqi Shiite militias to join the fight, backing up the some 35,000 to 50,000 Syrian soldiers who remain and have not defected. The Russians gave these forces air support, bombing rebel positions until the Shiite militias and the remnants of the Syrian Arab Army could over-run them.

Nobody has any real idea what's going on in Syria except that Putin is reaping benefits by way of adding Client States to his sphere of influence, so it makes sense to me that Trump is on board - wherever there is crisis, there is opportunity.  It makes sense because it makes money, and the element of human tragedy provides Trump et al plenty of cover by allowing them to blame Obama for the whole mess (and notice, we're back to blaming Obama for everything now that Hillary has been dispatched - convenient, it ain't it?).

This looks a lot like we're taking the rise of the Authoritarians to a new level.  On a few occasions, we pay some lip service to the people caught in the middle, but the point for these assholes sounds pretty simple: 

"If those people were worthy of survival, they'd be strong like us. They aren't strong, so they're not like us, so they're not worthy. Let the snowflakes and the women and the libtards worry about weaklings - we're too busy being awesome, so fuck 'em."

Ace Lyons

A retired USN Admiral weighs in on killing our way out of our problems in the Middle East.

(via Right Wing Watch)



Interesting that this is one of the boneheads Trump listens to, even as he continues to look at David Patraeus (basically the "Father of" the Counterinsurgency Strategy this Lyons guy says is the wrong way to go).

But then take a gander at this one from Tiger Beat On The Potomac (thanks, Charlie), aka: Politico, with the understanding that pimping confusion and volatility is Trump's stock-in-trade, and it gets a tiny bit easier to see that maintaining any kind of delicate balance anywhere in the world is in no way any kind of priority for Mr Unpredictable.

In confusion there is profit.

This isn't politics; it's a fucking robbery.

Meanwhile, Out There In The World

Trump's avoidance of the President's Daily Brief is not something we seem to be terribly worried about. It makes me wonder if he's counting on getting the information 2nd hand from his yes-man-asshole-sycophants advisers, or if he really thinks he can just go with his gut. And either way, I guess, that's just pretty fucked up right there.

Anyway, even tho' it sounds a bit huffy and pearl-clutchy in places (and it could be little more than self-promotion - this is the Trump Era remember), here's a cheery little yarn from John Pilger at AlterNet:

When I first went to Hiroshima in 1967, the shadow on the steps was still there. It was an almost perfect impression of a human being at ease: legs splayed, back bent, one hand by her side as she sat waiting for a bank to open. At a quarter past eight on the morning of 6 August, 1945, she and her silhouette were burned into the granite. I stared at the shadow for an hour or more, unforgettably. When I returned many years later, it was gone: taken away, “disappeared”, a political embarrassment.

When I first went to Hiroshima in 1967, the shadow on the steps was still there. It was an almost perfect impression of a human being at ease: legs splayed, back bent, one hand by her side as she sat waiting for a bank to open. At a quarter past eight on the morning of 6 August, 1945, she and her silhouette were burned into the granite. I stared at the shadow for an hour or more, unforgettably. When I returned many years later, it was gone: taken away, “disappeared”, a political embarrassment.

So, instead of putting somebody in charge of the operation who knows quite a bit about it because she actually helped formulate it and implement it - which means she could make changes in ways that don't threaten the enterprise (not to mention the continued existence of human habitation of the whole fucking planet), we decided in effect, that it doesn't really matter what else happens as long as Hair Fuhrer gets to line his pockets to the point where we might be able to catch a few nickels and dimes from the overflow.

The basic premise here is that Trump will Un-Manage this shit. He doesn't take the briefings (I think) because he's delegating the whole thing. He'll take status reports - and he'll make a show of being large-and-in-charge by issuing loud boisterous demands for results - but the point is that he's still just using his position to get the ultimate inside information so he can boost his profitability.

This is not politics - this is a fucking robbery.

Fake lord have mercy.

A Razor Blade In The Apple

Buzzfeed:

The secretive private legal system written into many international trade treaties is the epitome of a “rigged game,” Sen. Elizabeth Warren told BuzzFeed News. But it is not set in stone, she said. In an interview in her office on Capitol Hill, she outlined three steps that could get rid of it entirely.

This legal system, which empowers foreign businesses to sue entire countries for hundreds of millions or even billions of dollars, was the subject of an 18-month investigation by BuzzFeed News published last week. Among the findings: Executives convicted of crimes have used the system to avoid punishment, and companies have used the mere threat of a lawsuit to gut a country’s laws.

Warren described a case, highlighted in the investigation, that she said “really jumped out in front and put the human face on what this obscure clause can actually do”: A court in El Salvador found that a factory had poisoned a village with lead, failing for years to take government-ordered steps to prevent the pollution. But by threatening to take the matter to this global super court, lawyers for the company helped it avoid a criminal conviction and the responsibility for cleaning up the community and providing needed medical care.

“The company that damaged so many people just gets to slip away,” Warren said of the case. “This is a reminder how the game is rigged.”

If there's something like "the other side" of this one, I haven't heard much of it yet. My main thing is that the ISDS thing wreaks of privatization and corporatocracy.  Too much power in too few hands.

Hillary has made some noise about swinging around in opposition to TPP, even tho' her buddy, Virginia Gov Terry McCauliffe says she'll swing right back once she's been sworn in - so we just don't know.

All the more reason to find out as much as possible about any given candidate's leanings on something like "Free" Trade.  Guess it's time to email Jane Dittmar on this one.

It might be nice if a Press Poodle or two got up on their hind legs and started asking real questions, specific to things like ISDS.

PS) Elizabeth Warren - please come to my house so I can hold you and pet you and call you George...