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Like his father and grandfather (and Putin), Kim loves being unpredictable.  There are three reasons for this.  First of all, the element of surprise is obviously a strategic advantage.  Second, it makes him the focus of attention, and boosts his ego.  Third, the use of arbitrary power makes it clear to everyone that you are the man, and that the only sure way to avoid your wrath is to provide unconditional loyalty.

Trump values unpredictability for all of the same reasons.  The difference is that Kim and Putin aren’t really accountable to anyone in their respective political systems, while Trump is the leader of what used to be called the “free world.”  He has different obligations to the public.  He just doesn’t acknowledge them; to him, being president of the United States is no different than being the CEO of his companies.

Is Kim bluffing with his threats to call off the summit?  Most likely, he is sending a message to Trump that both of them can be capricious, and trying to find out exactly how desperate Trump is for a “win.”

The most likely outcome is still that the summit will go forward and that Trump will give away the store, but let’s be honest–this could go anywhere.

By virtue of geography, Gaza can be fairly described as the world’s largest open-air prison.  It is contained completely by Israel.  The inmates have no hope of attaining freedom on their own, by force or otherwise.

It is in that light that you should view the demonstrations at the border.  The Israelis are undoubtedly using disproportionate force in response in order to send the message to the protesters that the rest of the world is focused on Iran and doesn’t care about them.  The Palestinians, for their part, are probably playing a longer game.  It is true that no one is going to help them in the short run, but the images that are being created today will be etched in the minds of the Arab world for a long time, and Israel is just an Islamist revolution in Egypt away from having a serious problem on its hands.

My wife and I are big fans of “Fear of a Black Hat,” a mockumentary about a fictional African-American hip-hop group called NWH (the “H” stands for “Hats.”)  NWH is a caricature; its members can be described as follows:

1.  They lie outrageously all the time;
2.  They exploit and demean women;
3.  They glorify violence;
4.  They love to bluster and talk trash;
5.  They have a huge chip on their shoulder; and
6.  They despise the establishment.

Wait a minute!  Doesn’t this sound vaguely familiar?

Perhaps, when Trump’s term is over, he can go out on the road and perform as an elderly white rapper.  He could use the stage name “Cheetos” or “Orange Julius.”

The British public seems to have embraced the biracial American.  That’s good.  In a post-Brexit world, it gives you some hope for the future.

Donald Trump is likely to get a very different reception when he visits the UK in a few months.  That’s good, too.

If I have any readers in the UK, don’t let me down–go out and demonstrate!

Trump is sitting in the famous boardroom in Trump Tower with Angela Merkel, Emmanuel Macron, Theresa May, and Kim Jong-un.  He’s wearing his typical grumpy cat look.

TRUMP:  OK, you know the rules.  Each of you will be given an opportunity to explain what you’ve done for me over the last year.  Three of you will be fired.  One of you will be hired to do a special project for me.  Does everyone understand?

The group nods in agreement.

TRUMP:  Angela, we’ll start with you.  What have you done for me lately?

MERKEL:  Nothing specifically for you, but I’ve done my best to uphold liberal democratic values and the rule of law.  America ultimately benefits from that.

TRUMP:  That’s disgusting!  You’re fired!  Get out of here and never come back!  Merkel exits.

TRUMP:  What about you, Macron?

MACRON:  I invited you to our big national parade.  It gave you the idea for your own parade.  And we helped out with the military strike in Syria.

TRUMP:  That’s good, but not enough.  You’re fired.  Macron leaves.

TRUMP:  Now we’re down the the last two.  Theresa, what have you done for me?

MAY:  We invited you to meet the Queen.  I suck up to you in the face of violent opposition at home.  I even made Boris Johnson suck up to you and go on Fox News.

TRUMP:  Interesting, but you didn’t let me ride in a parade in one of those golden carriages.  What about you, Kim?

KIM:  First of all, I just need to tell you what an honor it is to sit in a chair that might have been used by Dennis Rodman.

TRUMP:  Yeah, I kind of miss Dennis.

KIM:  You should give him a job in your government.

TRUMP:  Come to think of it, maybe I should hire him to be my new VA head.  But back to business–what have you done for me?

KIM:  I gave you an opportunity to talk trash on a global scale.  You may even win a Nobel Peace Prize because of me.

TRUMP:  This is a tough one, but . . . Kim, you’re hired!  May leaves the boardroom; Kim exults.

KIM:  So what’s the project?

TRUMP:  Japan and South Korea have huge trade surpluses with us.  I want you to blow them away.

KIM:  I’m on it.  They leave together.

The US and the EU commonly impose economic sanctions on wrongdoers and their associates for the purpose of encouraging compliance with international norms.  Russian oligarchs close to Putin, for example, have been targeted in this fashion.

If the EU wants to get tough with Trump, why don’t they impose sanctions on him, his family, and his businesses for reneging on the Paris Agreement and the Iran deal and for violating WTO rules?  They could refuse entry to him, freeze his assets, and take his golf courses and hotels into receivership until he cleans up his act.

Wouldn’t that piss him off?

Wouldn’t that be great?

Yes, my muse is in overdrive today.  Wait until you see what I have prepared for the next few days!

The NSC leader named John

Wants Iran’s current government gone.

He’s dreaming of war

Though exactly what for

Is a mystery to both him and Don.

The great would-be emperor Xi.

He doesn’t think trade should be free.

He’ll subsidize tech.

Make the system a wreck.

To bring the US to its knees.

On the newbie dictator named Kim.

He’ll kill people just on a whim.

No problem with Trump.

Liberals make him a grump.

But strong men are ok with him.

If there was ever any doubt, it should be gone by now–Donald Trump has fired the EU.  The same demeaning ritual has been repeated over and over again:  Trump announces his plan to change American policy; the Europeans troop to his office, suck up to him, and beg him to change his mind; and he ignores them.  Disbelief is turning to anger.  Something must be done to show Trump that life doesn’t imitate “The Apprentice,” and he is not the boss of the EU.

But what?  The EU can remain consistent with its rules-based approach to problems and call on the assistance of the WTO, but that takes years.  Blowing up NATO and jacking up defense budgets won’t be welcomed by EU taxpayers.  The emerging illiberal democracies in the EU don’t really agree with the rules-based approach, anyway.  Another way has to be found.

There is one:  protectionism.  Historically, the EU has been far more protectionist than the US.  Today, with the shoe on the other foot, I suspect it would be relatively easy to unite the continent on the basis of sanctions against the US.  These could be removed once the US returns to its senses, which will probably happen sometime around January 20, 2021.

I’ve never interviewed Hillary Clinton, and I probably never will.  If I did, however, it would go something like this:

I enter her office, where she is waiting.

C:  Thank you for seeing me today.

H:  My pleasure.  I understand you were one of my supporters during the campaign.

C:  Yes, but not an uncritical one.  In particular, I had concerns about your position on the TPP.

H:  Well, I never demanded uncritical support.  Unlike some other people we know.

C:  I would like to ask you some questions about your two campaigns, your tenure as Secretary of State, and the current state of America and world affairs.

H:  That sounds ambitious.  Shoot.

C:  Let’s start with the 2008 campaign.

H:  That seems like a long time ago.

C:  I have opined that you will go down in history for being unlucky more than anything else.  Part of that was the timing of the Great Recession.  If it had happened six months earlier, you would have been elected in 2008.  Do you agree?

H:  I’ve never considered that, but yes, I think the economy would have been a much bigger issue, and that would have helped me.

C:  I have also opined that one of your biggest problems in 2008 was that you couldn’t decide whether you were running as a man or a woman.  You seemed to resolve that in 2016.  Do you agree?

H:  In 2008, the idea of a woman president was more of a novelty, and I assumed I would be running against a Republican who would attack me for being soft on national security.  So yes, that was an issue.  It was less of a problem after I had been Secretary of State.

C:  Your Iraq War vote was also a problem.  I have always assumed that it was motivated, in part, by your concerns about being attacked from the right in a presidential campaign.  Am I right?

H:  Unfortunately, I was persuaded by bogus information from the Bush camp, just like everyone else.  But yes, it did enter my mind.  I can’t lie about that.

C:  If you had been elected instead of Obama, how different would the country be today?

H:  Not very.  I would have been a bit more willing to use force abroad.  I would have been tougher on the GOP in Congress earlier.  The broad policy outlines would have been the same.  We didn’t really disagree on policy, even during the campaign;  it was all about personalities.

C:  You seem to be very proud of your work as Secretary of State even though you had to be persuaded to take the job.  Am I right about that?

H:  Yes.  I didn’t really want the job initially, and it was hard work.  Way too much travelling.  But I think we did a lot of good in the world.  Some of that will even survive the current administration.

C:  Obama has been criticized for being overly rational in his foreign policy, and ignoring the overriding importance of emotion and nationalism.  Do you think that is fair criticism?

H:  I don’t apologize for being rational, but yes, there is probably something to the idea that we underestimated the power of irrationality.

C:  The reset with Russia didn’t really work.  What do you think happened?

H:  Well, part of that was just excessive expectations.  A big part of it was our support for democratic revolutions in Ukraine and the Middle East.  That made Putin very uncomfortable.

C:  Do you have any regrets about that?  About Libya, to use just one example?

H:  What we were supposed to do, ignore our allies and let Qaddafi murder his people because it would upset Putin?  Libya hasn’t exactly turned out the way we planned, but that’s more due to the follow-up than the original decision to get involved.

C:  Let’s move forward to 2016.  Some of your supporters blame Bernie Sanders for damaging you during the primaries.  Do you agree?

H:  Bernie didn’t help, but I don’t harbor any grudges against him or his supporters.  He had a particular point of view that deserved to be heard.  He campaigned for me without any reservations after he lost.  I don’t blame him for Trump.

C:  Do you regret not spending more time in the Rust Belt at the end of the campaign?

H:  Not really.  I just wasn’t very popular there.  Going there didn’t help.

C:  What was it like being on stage with Trump looming behind you?

H:  It was weird and creepy.  I’ll leave it at that.

C:  I have the impression that you felt you let women down in 2016.  That appeared to bother you more than your personal loss.   True or false?

H:  Definitely true.  All the little girls out there who were being inspired by me, and then I was beaten by a patently unqualified man–that really hurt.

C:  Do you think we’ll see a woman president in your lifetime?

H:  Yes, but it will take some time.  My suspicion is that the first woman president will come from the GOP, and will be a sort of steel magnolia type.  We’ll see.

C:  You said during the campaign that you were the only thing standing between us and the end of the world.  Have you changed your opinion on that?

H:  Have you seen what’s going on out there?

C:  We’re running out of time, so I will just ask you for a brief critique of Trump.

H:  We’re now living in a world in which we have better relationships with strong men than with democratic states, and we appear to be headed in the same direction at home.  We take money from the poor and give it to rich people to buy government bonds to fund the deficit.  That’s appalling.  The road back to sanity starts in November.

C:  Thank you for your time.

Stormy Daniels played herself in an SNL sketch last week.  While this was undoubtedly amusing, was it a good idea?

No.  Trump has done this country a great disservice by blurring the lines between politics and reality TV.  This kind of activity ultimately plays into his hands.

It’s clear in hindsight that the crowds of culture warriors baying for Sarah Palin at the end of the 2008 campaign were a foreshadowing of the success of Donald Trump.  The question for today is, would Palin have been worse than Trump?

The answer is no, even though she was (and is) an even brighter red Reactionary than Trump, because:

1.  Palin isn’t a habitual liar;
2.  Palin isn’t as driven by her ego as Trump;
3.  Palin hasn’t shown any signs of being an authoritarian;
4.  Palin isn’t corrupt, at least to my knowledge; and
5.  Palin had experience in government, and had a track record of reaching out to members of both parties in Alaska.

 

Gina Haspel stated under oath yesterday that she would refuse a direct order from President Trump to torture prisoners.  It was an appropriate question, and the correct answer.

The real issue, however, is whether we can believe her.  What actually happens if we have a large-scale terrorist attack, and the order to torture is issued, as it almost certainly would be?  Will she view the severity of the crisis as an extenuating circumstance that releases her from her promise?

Based on her record and her comments about what happened after 9/11, the most likely response is yes.  And so, in my opinion, she should not be confirmed, even though she probably will be.

Scenario #4:  The GOP hangs on to the House and increases its majority in the Senate.

Result:  It’s Obamacare repeal time again, y’all!