Category: Uncategorized

On the ex-diplomat they call Rex.

He’s glad to be gone, one suspects.

Trump fired him today

In the usual way.

Now a CIA guy is up next.

So you’re negotiating with the star of “The Art of the Deal!”  Lucky you!  Here’s what to expect:

1.  He’ll be woefully unprepared.  Your superior knowledge of the details will help.  Try to keep him away from his staff.

2.  He’s a drama king.  There will be lots of banging the table and threats to walk out.  Take them in stride.

3.  He just wants “wins.”  He’s perfectly capable of accepting your position if he can spin it as a “win.”

4.  He doesn’t keep his promises.  You can’t take anything he says seriously until he signs on the bottom line, and even then, he may well renege.  Just ask his contractors.

5.  He loves to take hostages.  Don’t give in to blackmail.

6.  He’s so vain.  Sucking up to him works wonders.  Make it clear that you think he’s the man; he’ll give you anything you want in return.

In short, there are lots of opportunities to play him as long as you know what you’re doing.

You’re the head of the RNC, and the prospects for the 2018 election aren’t looking too good.  The public isn’t giving you much credit for the roaring economy, and some of your swing voters (women in particular) are appalled by Trump’s antics.  What do you do?

You don’t need to convert anyone to win the midterms; you just need to fire up your base.  The best way to do that is to attack the Democrats, not to bang on about the GOP’s meager accomplishments.  Here’s how to do it:

1.  Double down on the culture wars.  The president helps you with that with his tweets on a daily basis.

2.  The Democrats are coming for your tax cut.  The voters may not be very impressed with their tax cut, but that doesn’t mean they want to give it back.

3.  The Democrats are coming for your guns.  No elaboration necessary.

4.  Control of the Supreme Court is at stake.  If Kennedy retires and the Senate turns blue, what will you do?

 

The factions don’t even agree on what makes America exceptional!

CLs:   American exceptionalism is about freedom from overreaching government.  God bless liberty and limited federal power!

Reactionaries:  God, guns, and guts made America great.  It’s all about our culture.

CDs:  God blessed America with lots of resources, an ideal geographical position, and a great legal/political system.  We are obligated to share the last with the world.

PBPs:  Economic man knows no country.

And so, the PBPs are the “globalists” in this group.  They have issues with the others–particularly the Reactionaries.

Here’s where the factions stand on military actions abroad:

CLs:  No nation-building, period.  We fight only when we’re attacked, and the military should be cut along with everything else.

PBPs:  War is bad for business.

CDs:  America is obligated to use force for humanitarian purposes.  That includes the spreading of democracy around the world.

Reactionaries:  We generally support the exercise of American power, and we love the military.  However, we’re not too sure about the nation-building thing; we would rather use the money at home to make American great again.

The Reactionaries are the wild card here.  They supported the Iraq War initially, but then turned against it.  They can go either way–just like Trump, who threw more troops into Afghanistan over his previous objections about wasting money and nation-building.

 

An unnamed Wall Street figure was quoted in an article in Politico a few days ago as saying something similar to “Trump may be a bit of a moron, but he’s our moron.” That pretty well sums up the relationship between the two.

Trump filled his cabinet with Wall Street types because he thinks rich people are winners and because he loves the idea of plutocrats sucking up to him.  The bottom line, however, is that Trump made a lot of his money just being a celebrity, and he never played by the same rules that Wall Street people do.  Wall Street is really a fairly gray, conservative, rules-bound place;  Trump never ran his business that way, and nothing has changed in his new job.

The most prominent Wall Streeter in his administration is now on his way out. Wall Street hates tariffs and the chaos that is Trump’s hallmark.  Where is this relationship going?  Barring a disaster, the two will probably continue to tolerate each other with a mixture of public adulation and private contempt.

As I’ve noted before, Trump isn’t Hitler; for one thing, he’s way too lazy.  But how does the Man on Golf Cart stack up against the Great Dictator?  Here’s my analysis:

                                    Trump           vs.            Hitler

Famous Book       “The Art of the Deal”     “Mein Kamp”

Military Service     Bone Spurs                     Gassed

Loved Dogs             No                                     Yes

Enemies                   Mexicans; Muslims       Jews

Russian Foil             Putin                               Stalin

Took Power             Legally                            Legally

National Revival     None Needed                Lost War

And the winner is . . . Trump.  Hitler gets points for loving dogs and being a veteran, but he lost the war, killed millions of people, and committed suicide. Trump hasn’t done any of those things yet.

Here are three prominent rationales for the tariffs, and my responses:

1. America is the citadel of democracy.  We wouldn’t have defeated Hitler and Tojo without our steel industry.  True, but: (a) Hitler didn’t come from Canada, which apparently supplies a large share of our imports; (b) military needs account for about 3 percent of domestic capacity;  and (c) weapons and warfare have changed a little bit since 1945.  How much steel is required to build a drone or a cruise missile?

2.  American industry grew up behind tariff barriers.  Historically, there is a case for protecting cutting-edge infant industries.  The American steel industry doesn’t exactly meet that standard.

3.  Even if tariffs reduce the overall wealth of the country, they’re worth it, because they protect middle-class jobs.  On what basis do you conclude that the jobs that we will lose as a result of retaliation aren’t for the middle class?  If you’re concerned about inequality, why not skip the tariffs and support tax and spending reforms that help working people instead of plutocrats?

The fact is that tariffs are a particularly inept way of redistributing wealth, advocated by people who typically react with horror at the notion of government-imposed wealth redistribution, because the benefits go to workers, not the “undeserving poor.”

1.  You read about it here first, folks!  I wrote a satirical account of a Trump/Kim meeting last year.  Now we get to see if the reality matches my projection.
2.  Trump admires fellow strongmen, is desperate for a “win,” and will be poorly prepared.  Kim probably thinks he can snow him.  He may well be right.
3.  The fact is, I don’t really care.  Trump can give away the farm as long as we avoid war.  The North Korean nuclear program isn’t a big enough threat to justify the costs of war.

A few weeks ago, the NYT ran an op-ed from a woman who identified herself as a stalwart of the Tea Party.  The gist of it was that the whole point of the Tea Party was to regain control over the size of the federal government, and that the GOP had betrayed the movement by signing off on the new budget agreement.  Paul Krugman responded by saying that the actual purpose of the Tea Party was to prevent the federal government from helping “those people,” not to reduce federal spending overall, so the budget agreement was not a betrayal of principle.  Who was right?

Both of them, in their own way.  This question, like many others, revolves around the GOP factions.

The Tea Party was actually a movement containing both Reactionaries and Conservative Libertarians; the latter oppose all increases in the size of government on principle, while the former are primarily concerned with funneling government money to the right people.  The two factions were temporarily united in their loathing of the measures that Obama took to fight the recession.  Now that the GOP is in power, however, they have gone their own ways.  The op-ed writer was a justifiably disgruntled CL; Krugman was talking about Reactionaries.

The Tea Party is a concept that, due to events, is past its expiration date.  That is the reason you don’t hear anything about it anymore.

The most popular response to mass shootings by NRA members is “Only a good guy with a gun can stop a bad guy with a gun.”  Of course, the good guy with the gun has to have the same training and weaponry as the shooter and has to be fully prepared for the assault.  In the real world, that doesn’t happen.

The second most popular response is “The bad guys will get guns anyway, so a prohibition will only take guns out of the hands of law-abiding citizens.”  The next time you hear a politician say this, you should ask him if he thinks we should get rid of all of our drug laws, because, after all, the bad guys will always be able to get their hands on illegal drugs.

The fact is that most mass shooters buy their guns legally, and many of them would lack the knowledge and the fortitude to get them on the black market.  An assault weapon ban would be a drop in the bucket in our overall American carnage, but even a drop in the bucket would help.

It won’t happen on a national level, of course, for the reasons I’ve described previously.  State and local regulations in blue states are the best we can do.

                 I Love Tariffs

I love tariffs in the springtime.

I love tariffs in the fall.

I love tariffs in the winter, when it drizzles.

I love tariffs in the summer, when it sizzles.

 

I love tariffs every moment.

Every moment of the year.

I love tariffs.

Why do I love tariffs?

‘Cause the election’s near.

 

Parody of “I Love Paris” by Cole Porter.

It’s interesting that Trump and the GOP continue to poll so poorly even with the economy roaring along.  Either the American public is sophisticated enough to understand that Trump doesn’t deserve the credit for the economy, or, more likely, it is more moved by values.

And so, it seems, Bill Clinton’s slogan wasn’t necessarily correct.  The economy matters, but values matter more.

In a column in the NYT last Friday, David Brooks opined that the left was in sight of total victory in the culture wars, but risked a political backlash by pressing their advantage too hard.  Was he right?

Mostly, yes, but I would frame the issue a bit differently:

1.  Anyone who watched the Oscars on Sunday would have to say that the left has already won the culture wars.
2.  The problem is that the left sees its position as being so self-evidently correct that it attaches little or no value to its victory, and continues to search for other battles to fight.
3.  The right has responded, not by engaging with the left, but by retreating to a Fox News-fueled bubble, and by throwing its energy into politics.  The evangelical right’s embrace of Trump is the logical conclusion of this phenomenon.
4.  Thus, the backlash is already here.
5.  Can it get worse?  Demographics are already working against the right.  One can imagine a situation ten years from now where a large segment of the right starts supporting out-and-out fascists in the face of continuing defeats in both the cultural and political arena.
6.  And so, if the left wants to keep the country we have, a degree of empathy and compromise would help.

Salt-of-the-earth white Christian farmers came out in droves to vote for a thrice-married Manhattan casino owner because, as the GOP nominee, he clearly embodied their conservative values even though he promised to engage in trade wars that were not in their interests.  Today, they are facing the prospect of being used as hostages in the trade wars, and they’re unhappy.

Just what exactly did they think was going to happen?  Oh, well; they may not be able to export, but at least they have Gorsuch.  Surely that is enough.