Trump

Trump and Kim.

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There is intense interest in the present meeting in Singapore of President Trump and Kim Jong-Un. Some observers are hoping it fails, because it is Trump, of course.

Bill Maher, the “comedian” on late night TV hopes the economy collapses to “get rid of Trump” but is mildly optimistic about the meeting with Kim.

Bill Maher thinks President Donald Trump’s agreement to meet with North Korea’s Kim Jong-un is “so crazy, it just might work.” Faint praise indeed.

More important is this article from Asia Times.

Unlike his father, the 34-year-old Kim has been active in pursuing pro-market economic growth and may be aiming to emulate Deng Xiaoping, the architect of China’s reforms in the late 1970s. Kim’s recent sacking of three senior old-guard military officials may hint that he is ready to offer some important concessions to prepare a favorable diplomatic environment for concentrating on economic development.

Some interesting ideas there.

Meanwhile, the G7 trade talks went nowhere and that might be just as well.

In the past 25 years all manufacturing and investment into Mexico and Canada has been reliant on their position to exploit the NAFTA loophole; the backdoor access to the U.S. market. If Trump shuts down that loophole, and brings the manufacturing and assembly back to the U.S., investment North and South of the U.S. border will drop exponentially and the Canadian and Mexican economies will likely shrink rapidly.

We live in interesting times.

Ugly Identity Politics and Ugly Language

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Inspired by a lovely photo of motherly affection and play, Samantha Bee diminished Ivanka Trump with ugly remarks. Such simplification comes from an ugly perspective, characteristic of the Hollywood that applauded Harvey Weinstein, Kevin Spacey, and Roman Polanski, its politics represented by Ted Kennedy and Bill Clinton. Power is all – in boardroom, bedroom, Congress. Bee’s offensive comments were the quintessential vision of “progressives” and post-modernism power the essence of any relationship, category the essence of identity.

Raymond, in Gramscian Damage notes that “in the 1930s members . . . got instructions from Moscow to promote non-representational art so that the US’s public spaces would become arid and ugly.” Ugliness begets nihilism begets decline begets suicide. Beautiful (productive, generous, transcendent) ideas are seldom couched in ugly words. The beauty of the individual a portrait domestic or heroic is replaced by spiritless representations of the group – the “worker,” “farmer.” Few visions are less likely to produce felicity than seeing familial, parental, spousal relationships in terms of power and “category.” (Nor ones more likely to destroy these bonds.)

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“. . . the significant, blood-sport destruction of my business . . .”

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Leon Cooperman: Two changes that could help fix what is wrong with our regulatory process:

It seems logically manifest to me that something transpired between September 2016 and March 2017 that led to the Commission’s dramatically downwardly-revised settlement offer. Despite numerous attempts to ferret it out, I have been unsuccessful in getting a response, either from the current chairman or from his predecessor who oversaw my case (and who told me, when I saw her at a conference after she left office, that even innocent people often find settling with the government preferable to hazarding the system). As an American taxpayer, I believe that I deserve an answer to my question. And as an analytical person, it is hard for me to reconcile the significant, blood-sport destruction of my business that this matter has occasioned without understanding the dynamics behind the resolution from the Commission’s perspective.

“Something transpired between September 2016 and March 2017” that led the SEC to dial back the brutality of its regulatory attack on Mr. Cooperman’s firm. I wonder what that something could have been?

Elections have consequences. The Obama administration was so openly hostile to business, and so casually willing to use its power to reward allies and punish critics, that prominent business people were reluctant to criticize the Administration publicly, especially in the early days before the 2010 elections. If I recall, Mr. Cooperman was more courageous than most of his contemporaries in expressing public concern about Mr. Obama’s policies.

As the man said, this is how you get more Trump.

The Truth is Starting to Seep Out about the Spy in the Trump Campaign

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Way back during the transition from the Obama Administration, the evidence of illegal surveillance of the Trump Campaign began to appear. First, Admiral Mike Rogers warned Donald Trump, the president-elect, that he was under surveillance by the Obama Administration.

June 2016: FISA request. The Obama administration files a request with the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISA) to monitor communications involving Donald Trump and several advisers. The request, uncharacteristically, is denied.

October 2016: FISA request. The Obama administration submits a new, narrow request to the FISA court, now focused on a computer server in Trump Tower suspected of links to Russian banks. No evidence is found — but the wiretaps continue, ostensibly for national security reasons, Andrew McCarthy at National Review later notes. The Obama administration is now monitoring an opposing presidential campaign using the high-tech surveillance powers of the federal intelligence services.

On Tuesday November 8th, 2016 the election was held. Results announced Wednesday November 9th, 2016.

On Thursday November 17th, 2016, NSA Director Mike Rogers traveled to New York and met with President-Elect Donald Trump.

Trump moved his transition team to his private golf course immediately.

The other Mike Rogers, a Republican who was deeply compromised by the Benghazi matter, was quickly dropped from the Trump transition team.

This worried the DNC mouthpiece WaPoo. Admiral Rogers probably also warned Trump about the former Intel Committee Chair.

The FBI surveillance and CIA complicity has continued with the appointment of insider Mueller.

Then they took down Mike Flynn who had once written a letter supporting the complaint of a woman named Robyn Gritz, an FBI agent who had worked with McCabe’s team, and accused him of sexual harassment.

In 2013, she filed an Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) complaint against her FBI supervisors alleging sexual discrimination and hostile work environment. In 2014, she amended her complaint by averring that she suffered “a hostile [work] environment, defamation of character through continued targeting by Andrew McCabe.”

The FBI’s response claimed that she had become “underperforming, tardy to work, insubordinate, possibly mentally ill…”

She was forced out.

In May 2014, Flynn provided a letter on Pentagon stationery which stated that Gritz “was well-known, liked and respected in the military counter-terrorism community for her energy, commitment and professional capacity, and over the years worked in several interagency groups on counter-terrorism targeting initiatives.” He added, “Her work consistently produced outstanding results in the most challenging environments.”

That is the back story of why the FBI went after General Flynn. Plus, of course, he had resisted Obama’s out reach to Muslims.

Despite his underlings’ concerns, McCabe’s plan of retaliation against Flynn proceeded apace. According to Joseph diGenova, the newest member of President Trump’s legal team, McCabe set up Flynn for the interview that led to the general’s indictment for lying to the FBI. One of the agents who was tasked with this maneuver sought private legal advice.

Now, the New York Times, at last, admits the presence of a spy in the Trump campaign. Of course, the Times’ version is the FBI/CIA version with enough spin to make the left feel justified.

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Preference Cascades and Past Elections

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So, I meant to write something sarcastic and slashing about … whatever over the last weekend, but I got distracted by life, and by a couple of different news reports one of them being that Kanye West apparently has gotten in touch with his inner conservative and decided for the moment to come out enthusiastically for Trump. While not a particular fan of his brand of pop music and acknowledging that his judgement may not be all that the man married a Kardashian, for g*d’s sake I have never heard of anyone calling him a stupid man. Talented yes, fabulously successful, and financially well-rewarded for exercising those talents; there must be more to him than pure dumb luck. Lamentable as it is to me that present-day celebrities wield more social influence than is good for them, and for us … that someone with that much influence in the black community is pointing out some self-evident truths must count for something.

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