Todays news had lots of stuff about North Korea suddenly talking more belligerently. Hidden in one of the discussions it mentioned one of the American officials having suggested that they should unilaterally disarm for aid like Iraq and Libya successfully did.
I can't think why they're suddenly suspicious of Mr 'Pray I don't alter the deal any further' :facepalm:
Todays news had lots of stuff about North Korea suddenly talking more belligerently. Hidden in one of the discussions it mentioned one of the American officials having suggested that they should unilaterally disarm for aid like Iraq and Libya successfully did.
To those paying close attention, North Korea seems to mean something very different when it says "denuclearization" than what most people would think. They typically use a Korean phrase I've most often seen translated as "denuclearization of the Korean peninsula". Since South Korea possesses no nuclear weapons this seems a bit odd, until you understand that the North Korean meaning is that "denuclearization" means that the U.S. removes its troops from South Korea and withdraws the umbrella of nuclear protection as well. This latest move is North Korea's way of emphasizing what they really mean.
The law enforcement official who leaked the suspicious activity report showing the payments to Cohen has spoken with The New Yorker, and said that he leaked it because he noticed that two other suspicious activity reports on Cohen appear to have disappeared from the Treasury Department data base where these things are kept.
Wasn’t this the plot of Attack of the Clones?
(It’s apparently possible for these records to be restricted in very rare (as in, no one remembers it ever happening rare) instances. So that may be what happened. But if not, oh boy...)
The law enforcement official who leaked the suspicious activity report showing the payments to Cohen has spoken with The New Yorker, and said that he leaked it because he noticed that two other suspicious activity reports on Cohen appear to have disappeared from the Treasury Department data base where these things are kept.
For those who are interested the article that broke this story can be found here.
Last week, several news outlets obtained financial records showing that Michael Cohen, President Trump’s personal attorney, had used a shell company to receive payments from various firms with business before the Trump Administration. In the days since, there has been much speculation about who leaked the confidential documents, and the Treasury Department’s inspector general has launched a probe to find the source. That source, a law-enforcement official, is speaking publicly for the first time, to The New Yorker, to explain the motivation: the official had grown alarmed after being unable to find two important reports on Cohen’s financial activity in a government database. The official, worried that the information was being withheld from law enforcement, released the remaining documents.
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.”
I don't think he's in trouble, and I repeat my long-held contention that he's going to be around until 2024 (I would happily be proved wrong).
As posted more than once, impeachment is a pipe dream, and not even necessarily the optimum outcome for the Democrats in terms of optics. In the meantime, Trump and his team are dominating and manipulating the popular domestic narrative and appear to have the right connections and the money to keep on doing so.
Impeachment is a dead duck and even with impartial media I'm not sure the Democrats could select a credible candidate and mount an effective campaign. Right now Trump's health would appear to be more of a problem than his (alleged) politics. With the best will the world (and the finest health care, for those who can afford it) he really doesn't appear to have another six years in him.
I'm reading Comey's book at the moment. Good stuff. He is my kind of lawyer, other than the fact that he's written this book. I'm reading about the Bush Administration at the moment, especially about a particular classified programme and the way that Bush dealt with it. Bush comes out of it as being prepared to listen to, consider and act upon advice contrary to Dick Chaney's opinion. I'm not sure, but I'll lay odds that only happened once...
I was listening to a podcast from 5:38 (I think), talking about a Democratic party primary battle in texas, between an 'establishment' Democrat and a 'progressive' Democrat. They were trying to narrow down a policy difference between the two, and they talked about healthcare, dreamers, and a couple of other issues. There was no substantive difference that the podcasters could discern, and they concluded that it was more a matter of style and strategy differences. They said that the 'establishment' Democrat was more likely to take a consensus approach, whereas a progressive would be more likely to shut down the Govt.
In what follows, 'right' means centrist and left of centre. 'Left' means democratic socialism, more or less. It's a broad-brush picture of political difference, and I'm probably being inaccurate in parts.
I was quite surprised that the podcast didn't mention economics at all. In Australia, there are a few issues likely to divide what we would call the 'right' of the Labor party from its left faction, and divisions are formalised by established factions within the party. People will generally have internal and mostly quiet battles on policy matters and then present a united front around the winning position publicly. MPs are bound to vote the agreed position of the Parliamentary Party and risk expulsion if they do not. Outside the labor party there are other groups which would broadly agree with the socialist left agenda, but don't want to be bound by party discipline or for other reasons don't like the party.
One of the big differences between left and right is economics, with the right of the labor party having drunk the Thatcherite kool aid on issues like privatisation of public assets like railways, airlines, utilities and other large Government businesses, and resisting calls for such privatisations to be reversed. The left, on the other hand, would like to see some of these businesses back in public ownership. Private/public partnerships on infrastructure projects are also favored by the right. Both factions agree on the centrality of unions in workplace relations, but disagree on the importance of enterprise-level bargaining.
On tax policy, my cynical mind tells me that the right will do what is necessary to get elected, and that's almost their only aim. That means trying to engineer tax cuts, and only increasing the tax base when they are sure they won't get punished in the electorate. The left would like to see tax breaks for investments eliminated, and a tax system aggressively geared to redistribute wealth through the provision of Government benefits and services.
Are these sorts of policies actively pursued by elements in the Democratic party? What sort of Democrat would support what type of policies? Are these sorts of issues even on the radar in America (noting that fiendish anti-worker Supreme Court decision that came down yesterday about no collective arbitration).
Are these sorts of policies actively pursued by elements in the Democratic party? What sort of Democrat would support what type of policies? Are these sorts of issues even on the radar in America (noting that fiendish anti-worker Supreme Court decision that came down yesterday about no collective arbitration).
The main national issues that Democratic politicians are focusing on seem to be:
Preserving and/or expanding the Affordable Care Act (a.k.a. "Obamacare")
Reforming, repealing, or rolling back the Tax Cut and Jobs Act (a.k.a. the recent Republican tax cut for the wealthy)
First class people employ first class people and are not threatened by them. Second class people employ third class people to avoid being threatened by them, And Trump is a long way short of even second class.
Tempted to buy one fast as a monument to... something.
I actually have something similar somewhere, handed to me by some US general or other after an interpreting assignment. I was a bit nonplussed, to be honest.
This commemorative coin is going to be quite the collector's item. Does it confirm that we jumped into an alternative universe? The Korean leader looks a lot like the Gangham Style singer. The other guy looks like Shrek with a bad wig.
Simon Toad, nice to know someone else takes things as seriously as I do. If we cannot laugh we are done.
Had to like the Bolton idiot suggesting a Libyan outcome for NK. Which I think involves a rifle up the poopshoot. Guessing this Bolton isn't related to Michael.
Page is still down. I think everyone stateside is in bed at about 5pm my time. I'll try then.
I agree that Bolton is an evil bastard. I wouldn't put it past him to have deliberately spiked the deal so he can press Trump to intervene militarily instead. Trump's advisers can't all be dipsticks. Surely they could see that this meeting was a huge mistake along with all the rest of us. I know I personally have a brain the size of a planet, but I find that an inconvenience more than anything else.
I have a memory of Michael Bolton taking the piss out of himself and John recently, but I can't recall exactly what he did. I'm seeing a wind machine, a piano, hair extensions and a song.
"Time for jumping overboard
The transportation is here
Close enough but not too far
Maybe you know where you are
Fighting fire with fire" -Burning Down the House (Talking Heads)
I watched the all-wise and all-knowing David Brooks and Mark Shields on this, and they said "There have been ten Presidents try to do this using the full resources of the United States and its allies. They all failed. Trump is trying to do this without taking advice from anyone. But if he does it, it will be a tremendous achievement and he will deserve all the praise he gives himself."
I have reconstructed the quote from memory and a really bad acid flashback. I go on minuteman shift in a couple of hours.
I am proud to say that one of the few things I know about Kim Kardashian is that she lobbies for prison reform. All is forgiven.
I have seen some photographs of Kim Kardashian with Donald Trump. Anyone who will stand so close to a man with that look on his face has to be exceptionally self-confident.
The problem with Kim Kardashsian visiting the oval office was that she was advocating for the pardon of Alice Marie Johnson who has served 20 years for a drug offense. Kim was not necessarily talking about prison reform. Just a week ago Trump pardoned Jack Johnson, a black fighter who had been charged with taking a white woman across state lines for immoral purposes (the words of the time). He did so at the request of Sylvester Stallone.
Now I am not saying either Ms. Johnson or Mr. Johnson should not have gotten pardons, I am objecting to the way celebrities are influencing Trump to make these pardons.
President Trump is imposing steep tariffs on steel and aluminum from three of America's biggest trading partners — Canada, Mexico and the European Union.
The trade penalties, 25% on imported steel and 10% on imported aluminum, take effect at midnight, Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross told reporters Thursday.
<snip>
The administration is separately moving ahead with tariffs on Chinese goods.
I am an economic numbskull, but I don't like the growing gap between rich and poor in Australia. My understanding is that the USA has always had a pretty massive gap. I don't reckon free trade has done much for equity in developed countries, so I don't support it. I also think that China will continue to be a threat to Australia while it grows richer. The richer it is, the more it will look to expand its influence and its borders. Free trade will ultimately make China the big kid on the block, if it hasn't already.
Putting up trade walls might make things different in China and promote an undoing of the political control for economic prosperity deal between the Party and the Chinese People. It might also turn China into an unstoppable economic powerhouse with a sufficiently strong internal market to enable it to give the finger to the rest of us. I really have no idea, but it does worry me.
As for equity in developed countries, I can only see trade barriers taking us back to the 1970's in Australia, the only problems being inflation and boom and bust economies. Jobs were mostly fine because of other factors, especially a big public sector cushioning job losses and providing a bedrock of stable employment.
So what is in free trade for the workers that we don't get with trade barriers?
It will come back to bite trump in the bum, you mark my words.
Tariffs on imported raw materials won't help troubled US manufacturing industry and will be inflationary. I haven't looked at Ford's & GM's share prices. Once the EU's list of US products on which tariffs will be applied I'm sure Trump will spin this to blame the EU (and Canada and Mexico) rather his own dumb policies.
I really don't see Trump losing support. The only way to remove him in 2020 will be for sufficient of those who didn't vote in 2016 to vote for a candidate other than Trump.
Once the EU's list of US products on which tariffs will be applied I'm sure Trump will spin this to blame the EU (and Canada and Mexico) rather his own dumb policies.
Will they believe everything he says for evermore?
Once the EU's list of US products on which tariffs will be applied I'm sure Trump will spin this to blame the EU (and Canada and Mexico) rather his own dumb policies.
Will they believe everything he says for evermore?
Banks believe him, women believe him; he says what they want to hear (ie, that nothing is their fault). AFAICT he is no more decent than Nixon and has none of Tricky Dicky's intellect. None. Not even a little.
I am an economic numbskull, but I don't like the growing gap between rich and poor in Australia. My understanding is that the USA has always had a pretty massive gap
Nope, up until Ronald Reagan the income differential between a CEO and the average laborer of his company (and the CEO was usually a "he") was about 15 times. Now it is about 530 times.
The things that changed were Reagan busting unions and the tax restructuring that favored trickle down economics--the idea that as people on top got more wealthy they would share that wealth.
The recent Trump tax cut only continues that trickly down heresy. The average American saw only $1.50 tax savings per week. Meanwhile, thanks to Trump, gasoline prices have increased, and various imported materials will increase, and some of Trumps strongest supporters may lose their jobs because of retaliatory tariffs being imposed by our allies.
Sorry, friends, we hope to resolve this problem by 2020.
Banks believe him, women believe him; he says what they want to hear (ie, that nothing is their fault). AFAICT he is no more decent than Nixon and has none of Tricky Dicky's intellect. None. Not even a little.
This woman doesn't believe him. Not even a tiny bit. What I would like to hear him say is that he's been wrong about everything he's done, and will be immediately rectifying the evil policies he has put in place. It would mean that he would actually have to do some work.
Comments
I can't think why they're suddenly suspicious of Mr 'Pray I don't alter the deal any further' :facepalm:
To those paying close attention, North Korea seems to mean something very different when it says "denuclearization" than what most people would think. They typically use a Korean phrase I've most often seen translated as "denuclearization of the Korean peninsula". Since South Korea possesses no nuclear weapons this seems a bit odd, until you understand that the North Korean meaning is that "denuclearization" means that the U.S. removes its troops from South Korea and withdraws the umbrella of nuclear protection as well. This latest move is North Korea's way of emphasizing what they really mean.
Wasn’t this the plot of Attack of the Clones?
(It’s apparently possible for these records to be restricted in very rare (as in, no one remembers it ever happening rare) instances. So that may be what happened. But if not, oh boy...)
For those who are interested the article that broke this story can be found here.
It goes on from there. Also in Trump-related news yesterday a whistleblower claims Cambridge Analytica had plans to suppress the black vote in the 2016 election, Trump attorney Michael Cohen apparently tried to hit up Qatar for US$1 million in December 2016, and Trump was recorded referring to undocumented immigrants as "animals". So a big news day on a lot of different fronts.
Impeachment is a dead duck and even with impartial media I'm not sure the Democrats could select a credible candidate and mount an effective campaign. Right now Trump's health would appear to be more of a problem than his (alleged) politics. With the best will the world (and the finest health care, for those who can afford it) he really doesn't appear to have another six years in him.
Something fishy here
Can anyone spell Emolument?
I'm reading Comey's book at the moment. Good stuff. He is my kind of lawyer, other than the fact that he's written this book. I'm reading about the Bush Administration at the moment, especially about a particular classified programme and the way that Bush dealt with it. Bush comes out of it as being prepared to listen to, consider and act upon advice contrary to Dick Chaney's opinion. I'm not sure, but I'll lay odds that only happened once...
In what follows, 'right' means centrist and left of centre. 'Left' means democratic socialism, more or less. It's a broad-brush picture of political difference, and I'm probably being inaccurate in parts.
I was quite surprised that the podcast didn't mention economics at all. In Australia, there are a few issues likely to divide what we would call the 'right' of the Labor party from its left faction, and divisions are formalised by established factions within the party. People will generally have internal and mostly quiet battles on policy matters and then present a united front around the winning position publicly. MPs are bound to vote the agreed position of the Parliamentary Party and risk expulsion if they do not. Outside the labor party there are other groups which would broadly agree with the socialist left agenda, but don't want to be bound by party discipline or for other reasons don't like the party.
One of the big differences between left and right is economics, with the right of the labor party having drunk the Thatcherite kool aid on issues like privatisation of public assets like railways, airlines, utilities and other large Government businesses, and resisting calls for such privatisations to be reversed. The left, on the other hand, would like to see some of these businesses back in public ownership. Private/public partnerships on infrastructure projects are also favored by the right. Both factions agree on the centrality of unions in workplace relations, but disagree on the importance of enterprise-level bargaining.
On tax policy, my cynical mind tells me that the right will do what is necessary to get elected, and that's almost their only aim. That means trying to engineer tax cuts, and only increasing the tax base when they are sure they won't get punished in the electorate. The left would like to see tax breaks for investments eliminated, and a tax system aggressively geared to redistribute wealth through the provision of Government benefits and services.
Are these sorts of policies actively pursued by elements in the Democratic party? What sort of Democrat would support what type of policies? Are these sorts of issues even on the radar in America (noting that fiendish anti-worker Supreme Court decision that came down yesterday about no collective arbitration).
The main national issues that Democratic politicians are focusing on seem to be:
In more Trump-related news Ilan Goldenberg (a former Obama-era diplomatic negotiator) has a Twitter thread detailing all the mistakes made during the recent negotiations with China. Goldenberg claims the Trump team's actions are "a textbook case of nearly EVERY SINGLE THING you should NOT do". (ALL CAPS in the original.) Click through for details.
First class people employ first class people and are not threatened by them. Second class people employ third class people to avoid being threatened by them, And Trump is a long way short of even second class.
Does he never get anyone to correct his dreadful grammar? A small gripe in the scheme of things, but still ...
Wasn’t trump recently asking for the Nobel peace prize?
But what is the fate of the Trumpcoin?
I actually have something similar somewhere, handed to me by some US general or other after an interpreting assignment. I was a bit nonplussed, to be honest.
No, no, no -- he wasn't asking for it; "everyone" was saying he should get it!
I think I'm going to buy three if they are not too dear and give two away as Christmas presents.
Had to like the Bolton idiot suggesting a Libyan outcome for NK. Which I think involves a rifle up the poopshoot. Guessing this Bolton isn't related to Michael.
I agree that Bolton is an evil bastard. I wouldn't put it past him to have deliberately spiked the deal so he can press Trump to intervene militarily instead. Trump's advisers can't all be dipsticks. Surely they could see that this meeting was a huge mistake along with all the rest of us. I know I personally have a brain the size of a planet, but I find that an inconvenience more than anything else.
I have a memory of Michael Bolton taking the piss out of himself and John recently, but I can't recall exactly what he did. I'm seeing a wind machine, a piano, hair extensions and a song.
It came out recently that T's staff sometimes ghost-writes his tweets--and even puts in spelling errors on purpose.
So they may well do that with his letters, too.
To make them look authentic?
But remember Samson's final act?
If I had my way, I would tear this building down.
1) DT comes across as an ignoramus being played by a warmonger (Bolton);
2) Kim Jung Un's prestige is increasing (he was not the one to pull out of the talks); and,
3) The threat of sanctions is weakened.
How long, O Lord.
Is it 6 years if Turnip gets re-elected?
"Time for jumping overboard
The transportation is here
Close enough but not too far
Maybe you know where you are
Fighting fire with fire" -Burning Down the House (Talking Heads)
I have reconstructed the quote from memory and a really bad acid flashback. I go on minuteman shift in a couple of hours.
Which makes you wonder whether this meeting of two renowned behinds took place in the West Wing.
I have seen some photographs of Kim Kardashian with Donald Trump. Anyone who will stand so close to a man with that look on his face has to be exceptionally self-confident.
Now I am not saying either Ms. Johnson or Mr. Johnson should not have gotten pardons, I am objecting to the way celebrities are influencing Trump to make these pardons.
Reaction:
This seems like it's going to be getting pretty ugly pretty quickly.
Putting up trade walls might make things different in China and promote an undoing of the political control for economic prosperity deal between the Party and the Chinese People. It might also turn China into an unstoppable economic powerhouse with a sufficiently strong internal market to enable it to give the finger to the rest of us. I really have no idea, but it does worry me.
As for equity in developed countries, I can only see trade barriers taking us back to the 1970's in Australia, the only problems being inflation and boom and bust economies. Jobs were mostly fine because of other factors, especially a big public sector cushioning job losses and providing a bedrock of stable employment.
So what is in free trade for the workers that we don't get with trade barriers?
Which, perhaps, is what he's hoping for.
Tariffs on imported raw materials won't help troubled US manufacturing industry and will be inflationary. I haven't looked at Ford's & GM's share prices. Once the EU's list of US products on which tariffs will be applied I'm sure Trump will spin this to blame the EU (and Canada and Mexico) rather his own dumb policies.
I really don't see Trump losing support. The only way to remove him in 2020 will be for sufficient of those who didn't vote in 2016 to vote for a candidate other than Trump.
Will they believe everything he says for evermore?
Banks believe him, women believe him; he says what they want to hear (ie, that nothing is their fault). AFAICT he is no more decent than Nixon and has none of Tricky Dicky's intellect. None. Not even a little.
Nope, up until Ronald Reagan the income differential between a CEO and the average laborer of his company (and the CEO was usually a "he") was about 15 times. Now it is about 530 times.
The things that changed were Reagan busting unions and the tax restructuring that favored trickle down economics--the idea that as people on top got more wealthy they would share that wealth.
The recent Trump tax cut only continues that trickly down heresy. The average American saw only $1.50 tax savings per week. Meanwhile, thanks to Trump, gasoline prices have increased, and various imported materials will increase, and some of Trumps strongest supporters may lose their jobs because of retaliatory tariffs being imposed by our allies.
Sorry, friends, we hope to resolve this problem by 2020.
This woman doesn't believe him. Not even a tiny bit. What I would like to hear him say is that he's been wrong about everything he's done, and will be immediately rectifying the evil policies he has put in place. It would mean that he would actually have to do some work.
I know. Dream on.