George Rebane
Trump won big in Hanoi. By walking away with a smile when the Ugly Fat Kid overreached by offering to give some to get all, our president maintained his creds and caused the UFK to call a midnight news conference to claim a misunderstanding – ‘No, no, no, we didn’t demand that all the sanctions be lifted.’ Bullshit; Trump would never have left had not the UFK overplayed his hand. Now, with visions of a prosperous Vietnam in his head, the UFK will be ready for some real give and take – I predict that he will seek the next meeting before the end of this year. In the meantime the friendly parting will maintain the UFK’s good behavior – no testing. All in all, a brilliant piece of foreign policy with a country that for 60+ years no other president has made any progress.
RR has concluded early and often (here) that our Millennials are America’s dumbest generation – both they and their parents were ‘educated’ in leftwing unionized public schools. That most of them now view socialism favorably over open market capitalism gives abundant testimony that they will readily vote America into tyranny. The culmination of dumbth indeed.
Union columnist Terry McLaughlin reminds us (here) in detail of how biased and one-sided are our lamestream media. After two years of investigating Trump’s supposed “collusion” with Russia to throw the 2016 election, on 12feb19 NBC reported, “After two years and interviewing more than 200 witnesses, the Senate Intelligence Committee has not uncovered any direct evidence of a conspiracy between the Trump campaign and Russia. That's according to sources on both the Republican and the Democratic side of the aisle." During this time the lamestream devoted more than 36 hours of intense coverage attempting to convince America that the evidence for collusion existed and was about to be released. Instead of banner headlines for this announcement, all the lamestream outlets together basically ignored the bipartisan announcement from the Senate committee. “But just take a moment to sit back and compare 2,202 minutes of media coverage of potential collusion with Russia — with supposedly unbiased journalists accusing a sitting American president of misconduct, lack of patriotism, impeachable offenses, or worse — to the less than one minute of coverage within the first 48 hours of an announcement that no evidence has actually been uncovered in a serious two-year bipartisan investigation, and it is abundantly clear why many Americans have lost faith in the honesty and trustworthiness of the media.”
Harvard law professor Cass Sunstein, our favorite manager of the masses (here), has a new book On Freedom. There he argues that too much freedom is really not all that good for us – “What if people do not know how to find their way?” - that certain unnamed elites should really be in positions to mercifully limit our choices to only the proper ones, and then “nudge” us to the correct one before we stray too far from the social ideal, this to be prevented by structuring the country’s “choice architecture”. While Big Brother looms large in the background, Sunstein never quite explains “which of us deserves the exalted position to design and impose nudges on others, and for what ends?” (more here) But not to worry, after the Green New Deal gets into gear, Bernie, Nancy, Chuck, and AOC will know exactly how to set up such ‘exalted positions’; all we have to do is vote correctly in 2020.
Italy will offer Universal Basic Income real soon now. They’re going to make up the shortfall for all people earning less than their poverty threshold – but wait! If you subsequently get a job or a better paying job, then the government will cut back you UBI payments to the extent that your earnings exceed that threshold. Now that brilliant tactic is really going to motivate people to go work and get paid less. (more here) Finland already had to roll up its experiment with UBI because people got real used to living on unearned handouts and only put forth effort in the black markets to increase their (untaxable) incomes. To their benefit, even a bunch of Italy’s leftwing politicians are worried about this UBI’s impact on the national fisc which, next to Greece, is Europe’s shakiest. The UBI was ushered in by the electorate voting for socialist Luigi Di Maio who was able to marshal Italy’s byzantine legislative machinery to launch their UBI. That’s what enough not-too-bright voters and socialists candidates can do – given our Millennials, along with Bernie, Liz, and Kamala, we should not be too sanguine when next year rolls around.
[2mar19 update] The crippling counters by our leftwing politicians and courts to stopping illegal entrants and contraband is having the predicted impact – more people than ever are climbing border fences and walls. Government stats cite “The proportion of foreign nationals attempting to cross the border illegally rather than reporting to legal ports of entry has risen in the past year, according to the data. Those crossing illegally made up 73 percent of all border crossings from October 2017 to January 2018 and then rose to 83 percent for the same period of time ending on Jan. 31, 2019, NBC News reported Friday.” (more here) Why’s that? Well, we all know that most entrants claiming asylum don’t have a leg to stand on, and before Trump they were admitted at legal crossing points, told to appear in a US immigration court at some future date, and then turned loose never to be seen again. Today we tell such asylum seeker to stay in Mexico until their court date comes up. But the overwhelming share of them know they can’t qualify for asylum, so they go back to Mexico and then attempt illegal crossings somewhere down the line where they think the border is most porous. Today they’re coming in over such porous spots at just the underside of a million a year because we can't do the right thing and build the needed wall/fence border security infrastructure. And the anti-American Left continues to trumpet through their lamestream outlets that this does not constitute a national emergency. (BTW, the size of an army division is about 15,000 troops. At 80,000 illegal entrants per month, that is like an invasion force of five divisions each and every month. And we haven’t even started reviewing the growing dollar cost of illegals in the country.)
The trip to Hanoi with the Fat Ugly Kid was a moment of unparalleled success. It was the first time in memory a US President did not give them anything, nada, zilch. No easing of one sanction. No being played for a sucker.
We have inherited a mess. Trump has increased the sanctions, put our fleet off their waters, and told them we are not messing around. Put up or shut up.
We need to give NK some time to prep for the next meeting. We do not even how how their decision process works. Like all despots, there is a circle around him that needs to get on board and on the same page. And some might be crazy. We don’t even know for sure who the calls the shots. NK has 1,200 IP address for the entire nation, less than LWW. Our intel is almost non-existent when knowing what is really happening within their decision making processes. Good intel, that is.
We do know NK sits on top of a big pile of misery, malnutrition, starvation, hopelessness, enslavement, and imprisonments with a standing army of one million..on alert. The Fat Kid may be the face of the Kingdom, but he may or may not be in charge. All we know is that NK is big concentration camp above and one big time graveyard beneath.
NK can now hit Seattle or Portland with nukes, which puts more seriousness and urgency from our POV. No more dicking like previous Administrations saying we are not sure if they have nukes, we are not sure about this, not sure about that. No more dicking around saying we can’t keep the sanctions up cause their people would be eating grass. NK does not care if their people eat grass! That is who they are.
What I can’t figure out is why Kim’s regime would ever want to give up their nukes. Why would they ever want reunification with the South? Or even why they would want to join the community of nations in good standing. That would bring openness, and openness is antithetical to the Hermit Kingdom, to the inner circle’s survival, literally. Perhaps money. All despots could use some more money and never turn it down. The biggest threats to despots and mobsters for more than a century has not been from eternal threats, but the guys standing behind him. Et tu, Brute?
Perhaps “visions of a prosperous Vietnam in his head, the UFK will be ready for some real give and take – I predict that he will seek the next meeting” after much preparation hashing it out back at home and getting the closed circle on the same page. Much prep work. Trump has been hitting the “visions of a prosperous Vietnam” hard. The carrot. Perhaps NK can continue to rule with the iron fist and make some money and gain some legitimacy in the world’s eyes. Trump gave Kim a new set of glasses.
Whatever comes down the pike, it will be incremental. All of it will be incremental. Heck, we and SK are still at war with them since 1951 in their mindset. And the looney left could not contain their glee that no deal was signed, expecting a one and done or something. They are idiots. Total stupid idiots and rooting against America, not Trump.
MSMBC and CNN gave 428 minutes to Cohen and 12 minutes to Hanoi. And the looney left idiots here boasted of the TV saturation coverage Cohen got as some kind of proof that they were raining on Trump’s parade and stealing the limelight. All the while the Fat Ugly Kid or some crazies surrounding him can hit Portland and Seattle. Priorities.
Trump’s actions in Vietnam was not clever, they were a stroke of foreign policy genius....considering that Trump is dumb as a box of rocks and our best and brightest experts and National Security analysts never did what Trump did in 60 years. And Putin will play Trump like a fiddle and Trump has no experience, and Trump does not know what he is doing.p, and......
https://www.newsbusters.org/blogs/nb/ryan-foley/2019/02/28/cnns-sciutto-trump-will-soften-demands-get-win-nk-summit-distract
It was a huge defeat to Trump....right. I could not be happier with No Deal... for all of us,
Posted by: Bill Tozer | 01 March 2019 at 08:06 AM
,,,millenials the dumbest??? You forgot Trump!!!
https://tinyurl.com/yy524mn8
Posted by: AVMan | 01 March 2019 at 02:01 PM