Miscellaneous And Off Topic Subjects

[froot loops]

I'm not sure why Corbyn could wield any more power as PM than any of the others for the last decade.

[Dr. Strangelove]

Well, of course the media is focused on Trump's altered NHC forecast track - yeah, the one with the black marker pen showing an extension of the track into Alabama. TBF, the early spaghetti models did show outlier tracks heading that way but still ....... he misspoke and as usual, fails to own up to it or better yet just ignore this issue as there are far more pressing ones nationally and internationally.

The big news is that Chinese officials speaking through various and sundry persons making tweets or announcements in the papers usually associated with the official Chinese party line, have announced that Trade talks will resume in Washington in October and "a breakthrough is likely" with "new developments" in the works. I can't find any details and that's not surprising. My bet is that China will come up with roughly the same thing it did in May with some different wording. Trump is up against it and the Chinese know it. The Chinese are uncomfortable with what's going on with their economy at home and their world wide plans to extend their influence around the globe and Trump knows it. So, RPS = R-R. Of course, the Dow is up 450. Expect a moderate sell-off on Friday. It's the way it is. Meanwhile your portfolio is still up about 9% YTD. Not bad considering all the ridiculous volatility.

Assad is about to claim victory over his rebellious countrymen. The last hold out of them is in Idlib. Assad presides over a country where he has been directly responsible for the loss of 500,000 lives and the displacement of millions. The country's infrastructure is in ruins, the economy? What economy. He will rule brutally and mercilessly with complete disregard for human rights. The terrorists that are given free reign within his boarders will inflict their brutality far beyond Syria's boarders creating instability in the ME and abroad. I'm not sure the world could have prevented this outcome like it did to brutal dictators in the Balkans. This circumstance was infinitely more complicated but still ........

Finally, the UK is a mess. Conservativism is collapsing. The biggest risk in the vacuum thereby created is a populist alignment with the Tories in an inevitable election that Parliament is forcing that could bring Corbin to power as PM. Unabashed socialist policies within the UK could flourish under such an outcome. The British economy will tank. Brexit will drag on.

So, yeah, let's talk about Trump's stupid Hurricane track chart.

Jeff, The press had moved on from Trump's "Pray for Alabama, they're getting hit hard!" comments but Trump revived them yesterday with his stupid altered map. I don't know if he always does stuff like that deliberately, because he thinks ANY fight with the press is a win for him. I think it's more often than not an unconscious reaction from him as his ego is pathetically fragile. He's a shockingly insecure man-child.

If you haven't noticed, he's quadrupled down today, even getting a Coast Guard Admiral to fall on his sword for the President's honor. Trump's posted at least 5-6 times about it today.

On China, you seem to align with me in that we've heard the news about 'tremendous progress being made' quite a few times already. What's amazing is how hungry the market is for a resolution that they keep falling for this.

I don't believe anyone brought up the ISM number released on Tuesday that showed American Manufacturing had its first month of contraction since 2016. Look at the below chart. Does anyone believe it's just "coincidence" that manufacturing peaked, then slowed, then rapidly declined around the same time the trade wars began?


image%20(32).1567530803894.png

https://www.cnbc.com/2019/09/03/the-...sm-survey.html

[Dr. Strangelove]

Case in point, this story

John Roberts, Fox News' White House correspondent, got summoned to the Oval Office today a little after 3. Roberts sent an email around the office, detailing what happened. Someone at Fox then leaked that email to CNN (which is interesting in itself, but for another day)

Trump wanted to set the record straight. Alabama had been threatened by Dorian. He showed Roberts old maps of hurricane tracks, some as old as a week ago, intending to prove his point. Roberts raised the point that by Sunday morning, those models were obsolete. Trump seemed to acknowledge he was right but still insisted HE was right because at one point, Alabama was threatened. Trump also apparently griped about something Shepard Smith had said on Fox just minutes before Trump had sent for Roberts.

Jeff, it's not the media's fault this story goes on and on and on. Yeah, I'm sure they are loving it, but Trump keeps feeding them more. This is what's at the top of his mind right now.

https://www.cnn.com/2019/09/05/polit...use/index.html

[Jeff Buchanan]

To be clear, There is no defending Trump on this gaff and his insistence that he was right. While most of the East coast from South Carolina to Virginia is under threat of wind and flooding damage from Dorian, he goes full out trying to defend his erroneous statements. Meanwhile, Dorian, just a few days earlier laid utter waste to the Abacos precipitating what will be a humanitarian crisis there. Is this a concern to him? It appears not as he is more focused on defending himself. No surprise there.

I stopped defending this president months ago and admitted the error of my ways in doing it up to that point.

On China: Trump is going to claim victory no matter what the outcome of the forthcoming talks. That sickens me as no one is a winner in this harmful engagement, undertaken, perhaps with reasonable objectives but those objectives muddled or completely lost in Trump's maniacally egocentricity.

My hope is that this jackass of a president, the worst of that kind in my memory that goes back to Eisenhower, will get voted out of office about a year from now. The guy is a buffoon, his act is indefensible. Whatever perceived good the policies of his administration might have brought or will bring are significantly mitigated by his prodigious character flaws.

[Dr. Strangelove]

Lots of (probably hyperbolic) drama in this piece, but one amusing nugget

Pence's team went to Brad Parscale, Trump's campaign manager, and asked if he might add a question regarding Pence's favorability rating to their polling in battleground states. Parscale said, ahhhh, sorry, but it's too late to change the poll.

He was lying. The question was actually already being asked and Pence's favorability rating was proving to be higher than Trump's everywhere it was being asked. But Parscale didn't want the Pence people knowing that, and he didn't dare tell Trump either.

Someone leaked it anyways.

https://news.yahoo.com/tensions-strain-between-trump-pence-heading-into-2020-election-090031895.html

[Dr. Strangelove]

Really didn't take long for Murdoch's tabloids to decide Boris was a punchline

EDIT: Ahhhh, just noticed this is the Scottish version. They're quite a bit less Tory-friendly

EDup6ABWwAgXeVF.jpg

[Jeff Buchanan]

Not a terribly revealing read but nonetheless insightful. The gist is that China is more concerned with long term domestic economics than the trade war. Manufacturing has slumped but this is, in part, due to cyclical factors. Lower prices attendant to the trade war have been offset by devaluation of the Yuan. Again, as I posted earlier, there are two factions pressuring Xi. One is the military who want a hard line with Trump. The other is the moderates who want the trade war settled but not at all costs.



He's NOT! Trump skeptics know this. His supporters don't. This is one reality that the press needs to hammer home. More voters coming fact to face with Trump's Joseph Goebbelesque almost maniacal attempts to shape an alternate reality is a good thing for the country.

https://www.scmp.com/economy/china-economy/article/3025866/us-trade-war-having-little-direct-impact-china-economy

[Hannibal]

The problem with throwing Trump under the bus for his behavior is that the only viable alternative to Trump in the next election appears to be a member of the kook Left. The Democrat Party is now a collection of foaming-at-the-mouth lunatics who have fully embraced open borders, Marxism, anti-White racism, and nut case Social ideas that are so extreme that they weren't even on the radar just ten years ago (e.g. transgender children). Every single one of America's major institutions, from academia to corporate America has embraced the insanity. The country is rapidly descending into Marxist-inspired chaos and there is nobody who has a chance of being President who is willing and able to stop it. Trump was elected to stop the illegal immigration and he has failed. The only thing that we got out of his presidency was the symbolic achievement of getting elected. That's not trivial but it's not enough.

I think that Jeff is underestimating the number of Trump supporters who are sick of his behavior but don't really see an alternative. Another forum that I post in that used to be very pro-Trump is now pretty much in full eyeroll mode every time that he opens his mouth or tweets something stupid, He still gets crowds at his rallies but I have no idea who is going to those rallies at this point. The guy's support seems really weak to me.

[Dr. Strangelove]

Weird disparity between the official jobs report and the ADP report yesterday (ADP showed 60,000 more jobs). Anyone hear an explanation?

[Ghengis Jon]

There is no problem with throwing Trump under the bus for his behavior. It is the GOP that has caused the only viable alternative to Trump in the next election could quite possibly be a member of the kook Left. It is a pendulum swing from the unhinged right to the looney left and this knee jerk reaction is indisputably on the shoulders of Trump's mindless Congressional sycophants. The Republican Party is now a collection of foaming-at-the-mouth lunatics who have fully embraced caging children, Nazism, White racism, and nut case ideas that are so extreme that they weren't even on the radar just ten years ago (e.g. activist judges/rapists to the USSC). Every single one of America's major institutions, from academia to corporate America has embraced the insanity. The country is rapidly descending into fascist-inspired chaos and there is nobody who has a chance of being President who is willing and able to stop it. Trump was elected solely because his opponent was Hillary Clinton, not because of his delusional campaign promises. The only thing that we got out of his presidency was the symbolic achievement of Trump getting elected. That in itself is a horrific scar on the honor and history of the United States. Now, thanks to Trump, there is a real risk of an equally bad successor, albeit without the mental illness and slavish devotion to Vladimir Putin.

[Jeff Buchanan]

The problem with throwing Trump under the bus for his behavior is that the only viable alternative to Trump in the next election appears to be a member of the kook Left.......

Agreed in a sort of throws arms up in the air exasperation over the choices here. There is some hope that Warren and Sanders will get boxed out in the primaries by truth knowing voters - that unrecognized group of moderates who talk up the Green New Deal, National Health Service and Free College at cocktail parties they attend to impress friends but have much more conservative views in private. Biden, the least bad option - would emerge as the Dem nominee.

I tend to agree with you in general though that the free lunch crowd touting the value of socialist policies has taken over academia (nothing new just more vocal and influential among the naive) but not sure about corporate America, including the service sector, still a bastion of free market capitalism. Their public face is totally into green to support sales but their inner core is all about unrestrained profit and deregulation.

Trump has lost the Ag sector of the economy and there is no way mid-America farmers are going to vote for Warren or Sanders. Biden for them is the least bad of two bad options.

Finally, I still believe that the fundamental framework of American politics as it was designed can restrain excess in either direction - socialism or capitalism. The risk of, course, is this sort of unraveling of the political process as it was intended to broker sound legislation as an end product of the current state of identity politics.

[Hannibal]

Jeff -- corporate America is currently committing suicide and it is both a fascinating and horrifying phenomenon to watch. Major companies, including long time bastions of free market capitalism and also social Conservatism, have changed drastically in the past decade or so and that trend has accelerated drastically in the past few years. I see it in both the products and services that are marketed to me and in my own company.

Companies are losing astronomical amounts of money pandering to Left Wing Social Justice Warriors (SJWs). If they were dedicated to free market capitalism, then they would not be doing this. What you are seeing is not a devotion to free market capitalism. It is the phenomenon of major institutions getting infected by the brain cancer that is Cultural Marxism.

[froot loops]

Weird disparity between the official jobs report and the ADP report yesterday (ADP showed 60,000 more jobs). Anyone hear an explanation?

This happens a lot

[froot loops]

Really didn't take long for Murdoch's tabloids to decide Boris was a punchline

EDIT: Ahhhh, just noticed this is the Scottish version. They're quite a bit less Tory-friendly

EDup6ABWwAgXeVF.jpg

Are the tabs using Boz as their nickname for Johnson? Dickens is rolling in his grave.

[Hannibal]

There is no problem with throwing Trump under the bus for his behavior. It is the GOP that has caused the only viable alternative to Trump in the next election could quite possibly be a member of the kook Left. It is a pendulum swing from the unhinged right to the looney left and this knee jerk reaction is indisputably on the shoulders of Trump's mindless Congressional sycophants. The Republican Party is now a collection of foaming-at-the-mouth lunatics who have fully embraced caging children, Nazism, White racism, and nut case ideas that are so extreme that they weren't even on the radar just ten years ago (e.g. activist judges/rapists to the USSC). Every single one of America's major institutions, from academia to corporate America has embraced the insanity. The country is rapidly descending into fascist-inspired chaos and there is nobody who has a chance of being President who is willing and able to stop it. Trump was elected solely because his opponent was Hillary Clinton, not because of his delusional campaign promises. The only thing that we got out of his presidency was the symbolic achievement of Trump getting elected. That in itself is a horrific scar on the honor and history of the United States. Now, thanks to Trump, there is a real risk of an equally bad successor, albeit without the mental illness and slavish devotion to Vladimir Putin.

startrek-picard-facepalm-700x341.jpg