Tag Archives: Trump

Is it really that hard to understand that unproductive public spending lowers productivity?

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Is there anyone anywhere who actually believes that the present recovery in the US has anything to do with Obama? Actually there are lots of people just as ignorant as that, amongst whom is Obama himself. I get the same level of irritation when I read how economic “managers” here in Oz wonder why productivity growth is so pathetic and real wages are falling even as they see before their eyes the construction of streetcars in Sydney, trains in Melbourne and the diversion of tens of billions of dollars into preventing a non-heating planet from heating. Anyway, this is Trump v Obama on why the American economy has been rising since Obama left the presidency.

President Trump fired back Monday after former President Barack Obama, in a subtle swipe at the commander in chief, claimed credit for the economic gains in both their terms.

Obama tweeted Monday morning to note the anniversary of his signing the 2009 economic stimulus package.

“Eleven years ago today, near the bottom of the worst recession in generations, I signed the Recovery Act, paving the way for more than a decade of economic growth and the longest streak of job creation in American history,” Obama tweeted, alongside a photo of his signature on the bill.

But, the Trump campaign, in a statement to Fox News, countered that the economy was recovering only because of the actions Trump took to undo his predecessor’s policies.

“President Trump reversed every single failed Obama-era economic policy, and with it, reversed the floundering Obama/Biden economy,” Trump campaign national press secretary Kayleigh McEnany said. “Obama and Biden orchestrated the worst economic recovery in modern history.”

Actually, everyone else did more or less the same as Obama, Australia included, with more or less the same results. Modern macro is about as disastrous as a policy can be, although we may yet see Modern Monetary Theory given a try by one of the socialists now running for President as a Democrat.

40.01% odds that Trump will lose

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Saw this the other day and it reminded me how chancy everything is: 2020 odds jump for Trump, 59.99% chance for reelection, 16.7% for Sanders. I realise how infra dig it is to have a president tweeting, or demonstrating that socialism doesn’t work, or creating more peaceful outcomes across the world than we have seen in decades, but you can’t please everyone.

The media and the university-educated are the most bizarre in their opposition to Trump, showing I am not sure I even know what. And what about this?

JOBS SOAR
WAGES ACCELERATE!

We had the best economy in the world and elected Rudd. You just never know what’s in people’s heads. As in:

Yet there are many soft spots in the economy that Democrats can work with, Furman said. For example, a Congressional Budget Office report in December concluded that Trump’s 2017 tax cuts disproportionately benefited wealthy Americans. The CBO, a nonpartisan institution, forecasts that the richest 1% of Americans will enjoy roughly triple the gains in after-tax income compared with the bottom fifth.

Nor has the economy’s growth reversed long-running wealth disparities. Federal Reserve data shows the top 1% owned more than 32% of the nation’s housing and financial wealth, up slightly from when Trump was inaugurated.

Nothing like envy to ruin everything. If you don’t pay tax already you cannot have a tax cut, but so what?

Recovering a lost position

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There is little doubt in my mind that Trump blundered in his initial response to the Turkish threat to enter Syria and attack the Kurds. He may wish to end American involvement in the Middle East, and he may wish to reduce American casualties in these various conflicts, but the Americans also didn’t spend almost two decades in dealing with Al Qaeda and its offshoots to throw it all away in a hasty withdrawal, specially when visiting deep harm on one of America’s principal allies is the aim. And there were plenty of others to lay down the line to the President beside myself. So Trump has done what is necessary to repair as much as he can, which begins with this letter, reprinted from Trump talks Turkey, Beltway clutches its pearls. The first part is the letter, which the president of Turkey said was thrown straight into the bin (and how likely is that?) while what follows after are the responses from the criminally insane media.

Erdoğan didn’t say much of anything, but here’s the crazed headline response from Washington:

“Is This Real?”: Trump Sends Third-grade Reading-level Letter To Erdoğan —Vanity Fair

This letter Trump sent to Erdogan is ‘so weird we had to check with the White House to make sure it’s real’ —MSNBC

Jake Tapper: I thought this Trump letter was a joke … it’s real —CNN

Trump’s Letter To Turkey’s Erdogan Shows President Is ‘Deeply Unwell,’ Says Historian: ‘So Threatening, So Unhinged, So Bizarre’ —Newsweek

Read President Trump’s Bizarre Letter to Turkey’s President —New York magazine

Trump’s Letter To Erdogan Was So ‘Adolescent’ People Thought It Was A Fake —HuffPo

You can see the full makings of a freakout. They’re off their rockers with this one.

As for Trump, all the rest of us can see is that the president remains crazy like a fox.

After all, what better way to address a near-dictator hell-bent on killing Kurds than with a do-this-or-I’ll-beat-the-crap-out-of-you letter of this kind?  It’s actually appropriate, because it’s language a thug like Erdoğan can understand.  What better way to talk to him than with words like this?  Trump leaves the Ankara dictator with no uncertainty as to what Trump wants and what Trump will do, same as a godfather in some place like Howard Beach might get across.  Strongmen respond to strong words, not namby-pamby niceties, and Trump just laid it out for Erdoğan what he’s got to do in language he can understand and what’s going to come down the pike if he doesn’t.  An intractable tyrant isn’t going to negotiate nicely, after all, so New York–style street frankness works better.

What’s more, the tone of the letter was unexpected.  It had the strategic element of surprise.

Trump, of course, is under high political pressure at home, even from Republicans, over the U.S. pullout in Syria, as it’s viewed as harmful to our Kurdish allies who helped fight ISIS.  The press is flooding the airwaves with pictures of Kurdish misery, some actually fake.  The other thing is that not all of the Kurds are U.S. allies; Kurdistan is a big place, and some Kurds are firebomb-happy Marxist terrorists and presumably the ones Erdoğan wants out of the picture.  But there may be some allies caught up in Turkey’s offensive, and as Republicans pile on to Trump and insist on endless war, Trump is telling Erdoğan to get the heck out.

It’s appropriate, and now that all presidential conversations with world leaders are now subject to leaks, heh might as well release it.  It was going to get leaked anyway.

It might just work, given that nothing else works with Erdoğan.  The Turkish president’s staff claim he’s thrown it in the trash, but rest assured: he hasn’t.  Trump has his attention now, and he’s going to try to stop him.

It’s talking Turkey.  It may be rough, but rough is good for a thug like Erdoğan.  What’s important in diplomacy is that the message is clear.  Erdoğan now knows the deal.  Too bad the Beltway doesn’t.

So this is where we are now: Donald Trump Triumphant After Successful ‘Tough Love’ Diplomacy with Turkey.

President Donald Trump hailed the ceasefire agreement with Turkey on Thursday, noting that his unconventional approach had brought everything to a peaceful conclusion….

“I guess I’m an unconventional person, I took a lot of heat from a lot of people, even some of the people in my whole party,” Trump said.

Trump said that Turkey had a “legitimate problem” with the Kurds in the 20-mile safe-zone and that his unconventional approach had dislodged previous roadblocks to the deal.

He thanked the Kurds for their patience, saying that they were “incredibly happy with the solution,” as it would help save their lives.

If he doesn’t wish to say in public that he had screwed up, it’s OK with me. But he did screw up and only the uprising from many many Republicans made him see the light. I hope it taught him a lesson, because had he not done what he did, this would have followed him all the way to November next year. In this way, it will be gone in a week.

China has been waging war on the US for decades

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This is from Bazza McKenzie, discussing PDT’s policy on China. He is replying to John Hinderaker at Powerline.

John apparently does not realize China has been waging war on the US for decades, with the intention of displacing the US as the world’s dominant nation, and doing it with the aid of a congress of traitors and Wall Street. PDJT is fighting back on behalf of the US and succeeding.

PDJT does not want or expect a deal. Any honest deal (end their mercantilist trade policy, state owned industry, IP theft and forcible IP transfer, opioid shipments to US), enforceable against China, would implode their economy. Thus they will not do it voluntarily.

PDJT is gradually imposing it on them anyway, but he is doing it at a pace which allows US supply chains to adjust without massive disruption to the US economy. Thus he goes through the motions of seeking a deal and imposing tariffs gradually but continuously. It has taken the Chinese some time to realize what he is doing because they are so used to dealing with traitorous,, self-serving politicians happy to sell out their countrymen.

At the same time PDJT is educating the public to the threat posed by China. He has already achieved strong public recognition of that and by 2020 the recognition will be stronger and China’s commiecrat candidate will be pilloried in public by PDJT for working on behalf of the enemy.

The number of people I hear mention tariffs as a major count against Trump is stunning. Managing the economy is only one part of a President’s job. Foreign policy and national defence is another, and a much much bigger part as well.

Meanwhile:

Talk about creepy

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Perhaps a bit of common sense at last from the Foreign Editor at the Oz: Back trump on Iran, with Netanyahu, Putin’s co-operation. But first he says this:

Now, I think that crew of creepy right-wingers in the US and Australia who think Putin is a great friend of Western civilisation are just about crazy.

My goodness, who are such people? What do they say? Quotes and references, please. The Russians have their interests and we have ours and sometimes they overlap. But Russia is no longer the Soviet Union and there are many things the US and Russia can achieve together since their and our interests often overlap. And guess what we find right after the above?

But in strategic policy, in the real world, the choice is often between the evil and the even more evil. Russia’s presence in Syria may have produced something somewhat less horrible than its absence would have produced. Look at the other main actors in Syria — Islamic State, Iran, ­Hezbollah. They are all worse for humanity in Syria, and worse for Western interests, than Russia has been.

For whatever its many sins, Moscow has played the role in Syria that the West once played in troubled countries — it has restored order.

And on the American president:

The Trump administration is right to repudiate the pathetically weak deal Barack Obama did with Iran. Trump wants to enforce the red lines Obama once had for Iran — no uranium enrichment, no ballistic missiles and so on. Canberra should support this.

With this conclusion:

Trump does good as well as bad. We should explicitly and publicly support US policy on Iran.

Well, yes indeed we should. And on much else as well. Did you see this, for example: North Korea: satellite images show dismantling of missile test facilities. Quite a lot of good is being done by PDT, in fact, with very little bad of any kind so far as I can see.

Trump’s Russian Revolution

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Some further reflection on PDT’s dealing with Putin in Helsinki. The truly repulsive bit of the media flak were that nothing positive about the president would ever have been said by the clowns in the media no matter what had happened, not to mention that the last people in the world you would take instruction from on foreign relations, or on anything else for that matter, are journalists. All from Lucianne today.

Trump in Helsinki (II): A Long View
Chronicles Magazine, by Srdja Trifkovic    Original Article
Posted By: trapper– 7/20/2018 1:36:31 PM     Post Reply
Five days after the Helsinki summit I am inclined to believe that President Donald Trump either knows exactly what he is doing—that there is uncanny finesse and foresight behind his bluster—or else that he is guided by an almost unfailing intuition, with similar results. Trump’s refusal to parrot the Intel-deepstaters’ “Russiagate” narrative at last Monday’s press conference is a case in point. [snip] No evidence of any kind exists to prove Russian meddling in 2016, or thereafter. It never will be found, because Podesta’s and DNC mails were leaked, not hacked.
Whisper it but despite his terrible week, Trump
may be absolutely RIGHT to pursue this new
bromance with Putin
Daily Mail (UK), by Piers Morgan    Original Article
Posted By: ladydawgfan– 7/20/2018 3:04:46 PM     Post Reply
President Trump’s had a very bad week. By appearing to side with Russia over his own intelligence agencies on the question of election interference, he made himself look unpatriotic, anti-American and as weak as a ‘wet noodle’ to quote Arnold Schwarzenegger. Trump’s subsequent attempt to wriggle off his self-imposed hook by claiming he meant to say ‘wouldn’t’ not ‘would’ was laugh-out-loud ridiculous. But at least he seemed to realise the offence his original comments had caused. Yesterday, Trump reverted to type and doubled down on the furore by inviting Russian president Vladimir Putin to the White House in a few
Republican Voters Buoy
Trump on Russia/Putin
Real Clear Politics, by Caitlin Huey-Burns    Original Article
Posted By: Toledo– 7/20/2018 11:38:31 AM     Post Reply
As President Trump continues to stumble past his press conference with Russian President Vladimir Putin earlier this week, Republican voters are handing him a lifeline. Though many GOP lawmakers have been critical of the president´s statements in Helsinki, party voters are registering their support for Trump´s handling of Putin. According to a CBS News poll released Thursday, 68 percent of Republicans approved of the president´s performance, even as 55 percent of voters overall, including 53 percent of independents, disapproved. And a Reuters/Ipsos poll released Tuesday found that 71 percent of Republicans approved of Trump´s handling of Russia even as more
Who Is Betraying America?
Real Clear Politics, by Caroline Glick    Original Article
Posted By: garnet– 7/20/2018 11:25:23 AM     Post Reply
Did US President Donald Trump commit treason in Helsinki when he met Monday with Russian President Vladimir Putin? Should he be impeached? That is what his opponents claim. Former president Barack Obama’s CIA director John Brennan accused Trump of treason outright. Brennan tweeted, “Donald Trump’s press conference performance in Helsinki [with Putin] rises to and exceeds the threshold of ‘high crimes and misdemeanors.’ It was nothing short of treasonous.” Fellow senior Obama administration officials, including former FBI director James Comey, former defense secretary Ashton Carter, and former deputy attorney general Sally Yates parroted Brennan’s accusation. Almost the entire US media joined them in condemning
Trump Keeps on Ticking
American Spectator, by George Parry    Original Article
Posted By: Pluperfect– 7/21/2018 5:27:02 AM     Post Reply
Pearl Harbor. Kristallnacht. Treason. High crimes and misdemeanors. These are some of the hyperventilating left’s overheated and ludicrous characterizations of President Trump’s remarks at his Helsinki press conference with Vladimir Putin. Listening to the Democrats and their wholly owned media subsidiary, you would have thought that Trump had (a) smilingly handed Putin a large red “reset” button or (b) had been caught on a hot mic during a global nuclear security summit murmuring to Putin’s representative that, after the midterm elections, he would have more flexibility in his dealings with Russia or (c) had signed off on a deal to give
Trump invites Putin to DC
and trolls the Trump-haters
American Thinker, by Thomas Lifson    Original Article
Posted By: PageTurner– 7/20/2018 11:08:47 PM     Post Reply
President Trump appears to be playing out a geopolitical agenda with Russia´s Vladimir Putin and keeping his cards so close to his chest that even his director of National Intelligence, Dan Coats, is in the dark. When the White House revealed yesterday that Putin has been invited by national security adviser John Bolton to the White House for talks, Coats was publicly humiliated at the Aspen Security Conference, where he learned about the invitation onstage, “where he had been telling the audience that the U.S. is ´under attack´ by Russian cyberforces,” according to Dave Boyer and Seth McLaughlin of the

The Deep State and Donald Trump

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Back in Oz and the first thing I see at the airport is that ludicrous front page on The Australian: Putin backlash hits Trump after Helsinki summit supplemented by its fool editor-at-large Paul Kelly with his Friends betrayed, foes rewarded: Trump’s Russia reset, not to mention the foreign editor with his ridiculous Trump’s duty to call out Putin for crimes.

As it happens, I spent the journey home reading my signed copy of The Deep State: 15 Surprising Dangers You Should Know which essentially highlights everything you knew but through the sheer massing of the facts and the detail really does bring the dangers presented by our “elites” to a level of clarity that is quite quite astonishing. If you are anti-Trump then you are trying to contrive a Venezuelan future for us as well. You are either ignorant, stupid or malevolent, but there is no justification for running an anti-Trump screed when the American President is all that stands between us and a socialist future of wealthy elites who use politically correct thoughts to identify their ideological enemies, who are, in general, you and me. Then there is Tucker Carlson who discusses these things as well.

John Brennan is mentioned everywhere by everyone. Well how about knowing this when you hear his name, and he is merely representative and in no way an outlier: John Brennan Entered CIA in 1980 Though Voted Communist in 1976:

Barack Obama’s CIA chief, John Brennan, told the Annual Legislative Conference of the Congressional Black Caucus, on 15 September 2016, in Washington DC, that when he had applied in 1980 to join the CIA, he admitted to them that in the 1976 Presidential election, when Jimmy Carter was running against Gerald Ford, Brennan had voted instead for the candidate of the US Communist Party, Gus Hall, and that he was then greatly relieved to find that this information didn’t cause rejection of his CIA-application.

These people are our enemies, and to see them quoted in the mainstream is not just a disgrace but something you really need to fear.

AND IN ADDITION: From P in the comments with gratitude: Everyone Is Smart Except Trump. Here are the first and last paras but you really should read it all.

It really is quite simple. Everyone is smart except Donald J. Trump. That’s why they all are billionaires and all got elected President. Only Trump does not know what he is doing. Only Trump does not know how to negotiate with Vladimir Putin. Anderson Cooper knows how to stand up to Putin. The whole crowd at MSNBC does. All the journalists do. . . .

What has Anderson Cooper achieved during that period? Jim Acosta or the editorial staffs of the New York Times and Washington Post? They have not even found the courage and strength to stand up to the coworkers and celebrities within their orbits who abuse sexually or psychologically or emotionally. They have no accomplishments to compare to his. Just their effete opinions, all echoing each other, all echoing, echoing, echoing. They gave us eight years of Nobel Peace Laureate Obama negotiating with the ISIS JV team, calming the rise of the oceans, and healing the planet.

We will take Trump negotiating with Putin any day.

Dummkopfs

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This was sent to me by my Californian former friend and associate who has gone native in one of the looniest parts of the planet. It comes from a post titled, All the Times Angela Merkel’s Face Said “S.T.F.U. You Dummkopf Orange Oaf”. Still there was this:

Merkel dug deep and paid Trump some compliments using words and phrases you know he just ate up, mentioning the “strength” of his sanctions on North Korea, and claiming that last year’s tax legislation has made the U.S. a “very interesting place for our companies” to invest. Still, one need only take a gander at Merkel’s notoriously weak poker face to understand that inside, she was screaming I can’t believe I have to occupy the same airspace as this knuckle-dragger.

Other photos which are not of much interest but I do find the take quite revealing of the empty heads on the left, reflected first by Merkel herself, and then by the author of this story, and then finally by the representative sample of one made up of my high school associate who has made millions but has not taken an international trip since 1966!

Here she is listening to Trump’s usual rant about how NATO allies don’t pay their bills

Here she is listening to him tell a painful story about how he saved money on the Israeli embassy, and wondering if she can get away with never meeting with him again

Here she is reacting to his attempted joke about German labor laws

Here she is thinking, Life in East Germany wasn’t so bad compared to this

There is, of course, the other side of the story: Look who ISN’T coming to dinner! Trump snubs Merkel by not inviting her to White House when she lands from Germany – so she heads out for selfies at a bar instead.

Angela Merkel landed in Washington D.C. Thursday and unlike Obama, Trump did not invite her to dinner

Instead she went for a walk in Georgetown and into J. Paul’s, a bar-restaurant which offers a $14.99 cheeseburger and posed for selfies

In 2011 Obama had taken her to 1789 in Georgetown where Colorado rack of lamb is $59

Trump is hosting Merkel for a working lunch at the White House, instead

Merkel will be remembered as one of the most destructive European leaders in history. The PDT legacy so far puts him among the greats.

“It would be a great thing to have a good relationship with Russia, Trump said”

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PDT is afraid of nothing. Here they are, out to railroad his presidency because of some alleged form of pre-election collaboration with Putin and Russia, and here he is, just yesterday, collaborating with Putin and the Russians: Putin and Trump talk Syria, election meddling at brief meeting. The US and Russia working together against a common enemy works for me, and apparently for them as well.

U.S. President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin agreed a statement on Syria during a brief meeting at a summit in Vietnam on Saturday and Putin again dismissed allegations of meddling in last year’s U.S. election.

And walking into the media-Democrat Lion’s den, this is how the article ends.

“It would be a great thing to have a good relationship with Russia,” Trump said.

It would indeed. It would be great if the relationship between Russia and the United States could somehow be reset. It would be a true benefit if the President could have more flexibility now that the election is over, if you know what I mean, which no Democrat following the party line would ever do.

And then there’s this, in late-breaking news: South Korea, China agree to manage North Korea issue peacefully, in stable manner. It would be great to have a good relationship with China too.

The approach to foreign policy America has desperately needed

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Via Instapundit whose heading is Ridiculous, it’s not getting any press as if anything PDT did right would ever be mentioned: Trump’s Malaysia Gambit: Call It Another Win. Who would have thought foreign policy would be one of his major strengths? The following is only for those to whom foreign policy counts:

Trump’s Malaysia gambit is an excellent example of the kind of realpolitik approach to foreign policy that America has desperately needed for more than a decade. Rather than coddling tin-pot dictators and terrorists at the White House, we have an administration that is willing to work with leaders who are willing to work with the United States, reach mutually beneficial agreements, and along the way strengthen U.S. national and economic security both abroad and at home. . . .

We’ve seen what happens when we have a president unwilling to defend and uphold our nation’s interests at home and abroad. It will take years for us to recover, but the Trump White House is digging in and rebuilding that trust and that national interest one ally at a time and whether the media elite and its friends like it or not.

It’s not long so you should read it all. As discussed already, the most transformative president in American history. The more you see what he does, the more vile his opponents become.