Miscellaneous And Off Topic Subjects

[Dr. Strangelove]

As Trump enters his "I just want a deal" mode (and hey, Xi is a personal friend), it sounds like the China hardliners are getting pushed to the side. People with strong principles (for good or wrong) are finding out again that Trump's a chameleon on most issues and does what's best for Trump.

Peter Navarro will take no part in the next round of Chinese negotiations. WH sources say he has been "unprofessional"

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-05-16/top-trump-trade-adviser-is-said-to-be-excluded-from-china-talks

Wilbur Ross, another of the hardliners, is increasingly irrelevant.

https://www.politico.com/story/2018/05/14/ross-trump-china-trade-commerce-539279

Trade talks will be led by globalist cuck Steve Mnuchin instead.

[Dr. Strangelove]

Muller subpoenas Roger's Stone's social media advisor. Stone has said in the past that Mueller hasn't even asked to speak to him yet. Buddy, if a federal prosecutor is talking to everyone around you, but not you, and then issues a subpoena for the guy who ran your twitter account, I'd be nervous.

http://thehill.com/homenews/administration/388016-mueller-subpoenas-roger-stones-social-media-adviser

[Jeff Buchanan]

This piece written by author Matthew Steward appears in the pint version of the June Atlantic Magazine. The link below is provided to the complete text. It's long but I commend it to you for a through read. It is thought provoking.

The central thesis is that at all points in the history of great democracies survival was dependent on mitigating the impact of wealth inequality. The author covers all facets of inequality from income to education to zip codes to health care and more.

Many of us here, when this sort of discussion comes up, have cautioned about the risk in the American Republic of the growing resentment that the 99% have against the other 1%. The author busts that myth arguing, factually, that wealth distribution is actually more like 9.9% haves and 90.1%. have-nots. Stewart argues that the well-off, the 9.9%, go through a phase of acquiring more and more wealth that hardens them (crystallization) to the needs of those beneath them on the wealth scale

Yes, I know, more liberal clap trap supporting the need for income re-distribution. What impressed me about this piece is that the author debunks, with facts, every argument I've heard from the right and far right decrying the role of government in this task and praising the role of meritocracy, working hard and keeping one's nose to the grindstone to gain the rewards (wealth) that begets.

He concludes by warning that the 9.9%, instead of building the walls they build to protect themselves from the risk that the 90.1% might crash the party, should be advocating for a smaller divide on multiple levels to stem the crystallization.

One of the interesting parts of this piece to me was the discussion on DJT (who he dumps on as being the epitome of the New American Aristocracy (the meritocratic class), crystallized into an uncaring and unfeeling shit head) and how the electorate by various definitions of it, elected him. He is, according to Stewart, a reflection of the resentment of the 90.1%.

The 2016 presidential election marked a decisive moment in the history of resentment in the United States. In the person of Donald Trump, resentment entered the White House. It rode in on the back of an alliance between a tiny subset of super-wealthy 0.1 percenters (not all of them necessarily American) and a large number of 90 percenters who stand for pretty much everything the 9.9 percent are not.

Have a look at this. I'm particularly interested in Geezer's take based on facts he might present but not on the baseless tirades and attacks he occasionally mounts against those here who advocate for some level of social justice - a term he clearly hates.

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2018/06/the-birth-of-a-new-american-aristocracy/559130/

[iam416]

In that opus railing against America is there a proposed solution? I mean, other than to know be your neighbor and your neighbor’s children? The Atlantic. Of no parties nor factions.

[Jeff Buchanan]

In that opus railing against America is there a proposed solution? I mean, other than to know be your neighbor and your neighbor?s children? The Atlantic. Of no parties nor factions.

Well, I was waiting for that. Frankly, nothing of any import.

I think the strength of the piece is in how well the author documents the current wealth gap, puts it in a historical context and concludes that it may not be government action taken within its constitutional power to act but rather a realization by the 9.9% that there is risk in trying to further insulate themselves against a rising resentment from the 90%.

[CGVT]

Let those dirty takers eat cake!

[Da Geezer]

Jeff, I do hate the term Social Justice because it is a synonym for income redistribution. "Social Justice" is just a content-free but oh so virtue-signaling pair of words. I've never met anyone who is against social justice. But, the Jonah Goldberg definition of the term still is the best I've seen.

[ame="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rtBvQj2k6xo"]What is Social Justice? - YouTube[/ame]


Humans are not equally talented, equally ambitious, or equally healthy. Because of this, there will naturally be inequality of outcomes.
Every socialist state in the history of the world has failed because income equality presumes that all persons are equally talented, and that is factually not so. To steal from A to give to B using the power of government (the guns) is about the furthest thing I can think of from "justice".

Jeff, you are always using the Marxist paradigm of a pyramid-shaped income distribution. Historically, that has not been so in the US. We have had a diamond-shaped income distribution, with a vast middle class. Over decades, the prog control of education has convinced more and more youngsters that they are victims, in the article that the 10% (or fill-in-the-blank) is taking advantage of them. This whole victimology culture devastates individual initiative, but it surely puts power in the hands of persons like Hillary or Obama.

I happen to believe that life is unfair. Some are born on 3rd base. But economic mobility is still greater in the US than in any other country except possibly Estonia. I believe it would be better to teach students to aspire to become part of the 10% that takes care of the 90%.

And, Jeff, even in your perfect socialist state, there will still be a 1% or a 10% at the top. That never changes. All that changes is who is at the top, a merit-based group of people, or a power-based group.

[Dr. Strangelove]

Qatari financier goes on the record to acknowledge that Michael Cohen demanded $1M from him in exchange for favors and influence. The meeting took place during the Transition, in Trump Tower. The Daily Mail reported this last night but the guy first goes on the record here I think.

https://theintercept.com/2018/05/16/michael-cohen-qatari-investor-ahmed-al-rumaihi-michael-cohen-solicited-a-million-dollars-from-me/

[Dr. Strangelove]

Ronan Farrow's been killing it in investigative reporting this year. This is a good story.

Whoever leaked the suspicious activity report for Michael Cohen spoke to Farrow. He's an unnamed law-enforcement official. Quite possibly Avenatti's source as well. He says there are at least two more SARs for Cohen out there, involving more money than the one we know about, that appear to have been "pulled" or given highly restricted access in the Treasury Dept's system.

The fact that the other two SARs had been restricted or hidden by someone motivated the leaker to release the one he had access to.

******

The payments to Cohen that have emerged in the past week come primarily from a single document, a “suspicious-activity report” filed by First Republic Bank, where Cohen’s shell company, Essential Consultants, L.L.C., maintained an account. The document detailed sums in the hundreds of thousands of dollars paid to Cohen by the pharmaceutical company Novartis, the telecommunications giant A.T. & T., and an investment firm with ties to the Russian oligarch Viktor Vekselberg.

The report also refers to two previous suspicious-activity reports, or SARs, that the bank had filed, which documented even larger flows of questionable money into Cohen’s account. Those two reports detail more than three million dollars in additional transactions—triple the amount in the report released last week. Which individuals or corporations were involved remains a mystery. But, according to the official who leaked the report, these SARs were absent from the database maintained by the Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, or FinCEN. The official, who has spent a career in law enforcement, told me, “I have never seen something pulled off the system. . . . That system is a safeguard for the bank. It’s a stockpile of information. When something’s not there that should be, I immediately became concerned.” The official added, “That’s why I came forward.”

https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/missing-files-motivated-the-leak-of-michael-cohens-financial-records

There's also this:

Cohen appears to have misled First Republic repeatedly regarding the purpose of the Essential Consultants account. In paperwork filed with the bank, he said that the company would be devoted to using “his experience in real estate to consult on commercial and residential” deals. Cohen told the bank that his transactions would be modest, and based within the United States. In fact, the compliance officers wrote, “a significant portion of the target account deposits continue to originate from entities that have no apparent connection to real estate or apparent need to engage Cohen as a real estate consultant.” Likewise, “a significant portion of the deposits continues to be derived from foreign entities.” David Murray, a former Treasury official focussed on illicit finance, told me, “There are a ton of red flags here. The pattern of activity has indicators that are inherently suspicious, and the volume and source of funds do not match the account profile that was built when the account was opened.”

[Kapture1]

[CGVT]

*yawn*

[Kapture1]

Mueller will not seek to indict President Donald J Trump

[Ghengis Jon]

A responsibility of every American citizen to each other is to preserve and protect our freedom by recognizing what truth is and is not, what a fact is and is not and begin by holding ourselves accountable to truthfulness and demand our pursuit of America's future be fact-based -- not based on wishful thinking, not hoped-for outcomes made in shallow promises, but with a clear-eyed view of the facts as they are, and guided by the truth that will set us free to seek solutions to our most daunting challenges.

If our leaders seek to conceal the truth, or we as people become accepting of alternative realities that are no longer grounded in facts, then we as American citizens are on a pathway to relinquishing our freedom.

- Rex Tillerson, speaking at VMI.

That ought to bring all the Trumpanzee ass lickers out of the woodwork. A year ago Rex was the greatest businessman on the planet second only to Very Stable Genius. Today, how dare he tell the emperor that he has no clothes?

[Kapture1]

He was talking about the cognitive dissonance that you have experienced since Nov 2016. The alternative reality you have been living in. Which is evident by the way you interpreted his speech lol

[iam416]

A nice little entry on Palestine: https://www.nationalreview.com/corne...graphy-unrest/

The topic sentence is: "it is clear that the story is less about Jerusalem than about Gaza."

No similar protests erupted in the West Bank, whose Palestinian population has a much more direct interest in Jerusalem. Partly that reflects the shifting plate tectonics of the region. The Fatah-run Government of Palestine, which runs the West Bank and nominally Gaza as well, is aligned with Saudi Arabia and other Sunni states, many of which have been pursuing a cautious d?tente with Israel, signalling both rhetorical and de facto willingness to accept the existence of Israel.

The above, of course, fits in with current regional power struggle (Fatah, e.g., is probably roughly as hard line as Hamas, but they're benefactors differ). As does this:

Palestine’s leader, Mahmoud Abbas, remains a Holocaust denier and has withdrawn his envoy to the U.S. over the Jerusalem move, so it’s premature to pop the champagne corks, but the reaction on the West Bank has been comparatively restrained, and Abbas still claims to be moving towards “the two-state solution and an agreement that will bring about the establishment of a Palestinian state next to the State of Israel.” There’s no sign that the embassy move will change the long-term dynamics; leaders like Abbas know how to score propaganda points, but also when to recognize a fait accompli. Gaza, governed by Hamas and aligned with Iran and Syria, is another story, and the calls for “days of rage” in protest were joined by the Iranian and Syrian leadership singing from the same hymnal. The reaction in Gaza should properly be seen partly as a result of Gaza’s own situation, and partly as an extension of the broader tensions between the U.S., Israel, Saudi Arabia, and the Gulf States (on the one hand) and Iran, Syria, and Russia (on the other), reflected in the termination of the Iran Deal and the simultaneous escalation of rocket war between Israel and Syria.

The rest of the entry talks about how difficult the Gaza situation is both for the folks living there and for the folks that want a viable solution -- hence, the "unfixable tragedy"