Generational Dynamics World View

[pbrower2a]

(02-27-2018, 01:37 PM)Warren Dew Wrote:

(02-27-2018, 10:35 AM)Cynic Hero Wrote: A Strike must go "all In" not striking North Korea or doing a half-measure limited strike is sheer folly. The Boomer refuses to comprehend the causes of the various issues both regarding the Korea issue or the world in general because doing so would force the boomer to admit that their preferences are the problem that the entire "peace dividend" since the late 1980s just led to the US being regarded as a wuss. The Boomer is emotionally attached to globalism and the peace dividend because those are the policies THEY advocated. Yet the same boomers refuse to let Xers and Millies into the government because they think the Xer or Millies MIGHT commit genocide in the future. Thats what makes boomer governance tyranny because boomers insist on trying to control the natural flows of events and social evolution and that is contrary to nature.

Every generation hangs on to power as long as possible.  You'll have your turn; you just have to be patient.

The youngest Boomers are still in their late 50s, so Boomers are not yet in their last act on the historical scene, especially when many Boomers are following the GI practice (that the leading Silent seem to practice) of staying active physically and socially, which is good for longevity and the preservation of social prominence, Add to this, Boomers are the lightest smokers of all earlier American generations since at least the Transcendental Generation and have tended to eschew the hardest liquors in favor of milder beer and wine (which are easier to drink in moderation than the hard stuff) if they drink at all. Keep fit and stay connected -- such is good for getting old without becoming decrepit until one is really, really old.

Donald Trump is definitely not the last act for the Boomer generation. The next Boomer President may still be a conservative promoter of tradition and free markets, but as such will redefine conservatism so that it promotes thrift, a work ethic, intellectual probity and curiosity, family, expertise and competence, personal responsibility including the creation of wealth, and wholesome tradition even at the expense of class privilege and bigotry of any form. (That is not very "Trump-like"), The next Boomer President may also be a liberal as either a repudiation of Donald Trump to the greatest extent possible. Like other Idealist leaders in the past, Boom leaders have redefined American life as much as is possible at the time. Donald Trump is no exception at that, and the dispute about him is not whether American life  (in economics, culture, and politics) but instead whether the Trump redefinition is the right definition. Donald Trump exemplifies the rent-seeker, an economic figure innovative only in how he is able to grab more of other people's money without improving what people other than the rent-grabbers get; he has gotten rich by raising the rent while trying to keep public services limited (to keep his property taxes as a cost of doing business down) and foisting schlock entertainment upon us. He is capitalism at its worst -- exploitative and lacking in innovation.

For a non-American analogue, Donald Trump is Neville Chamberlain without a moral compass. But we know well who followed in Great Britain -- the definitive Gray Champion in the Howe-Strauss lexicon. Churchill was much in the background in the 1930s because he would have offended Hitler about as much as a Trotskyite Commie of Jewish origin, then a seemingly-unwise thing to do. By May 1940 practically all British people had come to recognize Adolf Hitler as a demonic menace to everything that they cherished, and Churchill could offend Hitler as much as he saw fit. But that is how a Crisis Era goes.

OK -- neither Putin nor Xi is Hitler -- or anything near that. But Trump is not the last act for Boomers. He is almost certainly the penultimate (second-to-last) Big Act for Boomers before leadership devolves to the sorts of Reactive leaders (Washington, John Adams, Grant (faults and all), maybe Garfield (had he not been assassinated), Cleveland, Truman, and Eisenhower -- and Obama, who does not fit the Howe-Strauss model of an Idealist) that take over at the end of or soon after a Crisis Era. The Reactive leaders from after the Revolutionary War and Depression-WW II Crises -- and Obama -- are generally recognized as above-average Presidents. (Those mediocre-to-poor Presidents between  Andrew Johnson and William McKinley took on Civic characteristics, if awkwardly, due to their roles in the Civil War as wartime heroes in the sense that Jefferson's Republicans and Kennedy's GIs did).

[Warren Dew]

(03-01-2018, 09:19 AM)John J. Xenakis Wrote: By the way, take a look at the last three paragraphs of today's
article, where I advocate stuff.

I don't see the advocacy there.  Unless you think people make rational choices about whether to be crazy or not?

[Warren Dew]

(03-01-2018, 11:01 AM)pbrower2a Wrote: The youngest Boomers are still in their late 50s, so Boomers are not yet in their last act on the historical scene

I don't necessarily disagree, but when I look at the political scene, I don't see a lot of candidates.  I suppose Pence would qualify.  Governor Baker of Massachusetts would qualify, except I don't see how a liberal Republican could gain traction in national politics.

[John J. Xenakis]

(03-01-2018, 09:19 AM)John J. Xenakis Wrote: > By the way, take a look at the last three paragraphs of today's
> article, where I advocate stuff.

(03-01-2018, 11:13 AM)Warren Dew Wrote: > I don't see the advocacy there. Unless you think people make
> rational choices about whether to be crazy or not?

So when I say that al-Assad is using Sarin gas on civilians, then you
say that I'm advocating military action (which I'm not).

But when I say you'd have to be crazy to invest in South Africa, then
you say that I'm not advocating anything (which I am - don't invest in
South Africa).

I think you're mocking me.

[pbrower2a]

(03-01-2018, 11:17 AM)Warren Dew Wrote:

(03-01-2018, 11:01 AM)pbrower2a Wrote: The youngest Boomers are still in their late 50s, so Boomers are not yet in their last act on the historical scene

I don't necessarily disagree, but when I look at the political scene, I don't see a lot of candidates.  I suppose Pence would qualify.  Governor Baker of Massachusetts would qualify, except I don't see how a liberal Republican could gain traction in national politics.

At this point I predict that anyone involved with Donald Trump will be discredited. Mike Pence is unelectable -- just too far to the right of the middle-point of the political spectrum. He was headed for defeat in a governor's race in Indiana, a state  decidedly to the right of center.

Democrats have a quarterback controversy for the Presidential nomination.

All in all I see Donald Trump as an unmitigated disaster except as someone who does everything so wrong that anyone who follows him can do the exact opposite and generally do right. I see the chaos in the White House, with high level turnover almost resembling that of a fast-food place. I see a vindictive President  not in full control of his emotions who has little regard for precedent and protocol.

it is also possible that America is becoming less polarized by region  on political affiliation. I see the biggest losses of support for the President, according to polling, in states in which he won by the largest margins.

[pbrower2a]

I pay attention to approval polls for the President, and although the polling is not consistent in techniques or by the same entities, and you can always assume some margin of error, you cannot argue against everything. All in all the current President is in deep trouble in his prospect for re-election which he claims to be seeking. Eight years ago, Obama was not doing anywhere near this badly even if there was a well-funded and well-organized Tea Party Movement ready to vilify him for having mismatched socks. And let's not forget the delightful sign reminding us that

The Zoo has an African LION
The White House has a LYIN' African.

Obama still got reelected.  It helped that he wasn't much of a liar.



Approval for President Trump


 (favorability in Illinois -- close enough for my purposes there due to a paucity of posts)

The site from which I got this (and I generated the image) uses the old-fashioned red for Democrats and blue for Republicans because it is a history site with most emphasis on US elections.  Not all states are shown, but enough are to allow one to make guesses on 2020.




55% or higher dark blue
50-54% medium blue
less than 50% but above disapproval pale blue
even white
47% to 50% but below disapproval pale red
42% to 46% medium red
under 42% deep red

gray -- no recent poll (sorry, Arizona and Pennsylvania).

100-Disapproval




55% or higher dark red
50% to 54% or higher but not tied medium red
50% or higher but negative pale red
ties white
45% or higher and positive pale blue
40% to 44% medium blue
under 40% deep blue



gray -- no recent poll (sorry, Arizona and Pennsylvania).

Nothing from before November. Polls from Alabama, New Jersey, and Virginia are exit polls from 2017 elections, which could hardly be more definitive. 

At this point, the best estimate that I can have for the electoral result of 2020 when I do not have a match-up between a Democratic nominee and Donald Trump is to figure that Donald Trump will do no better in any state than 100 less disapproval. I see disapproval as extremely sticky. People who disapprove of him will not vote for him; they have given up on him. Should there be a conservative third-party or independent nominee running against him, then that candidate will cut into the usual vote for a Presidential nominee. You might argue that an unusually-weak nominee against President Trump could lose, that the political culture could change to the benefit of conservatives (such as a right-wing religious revival like the rise of the Religious Right while Jimmy Carter was President), or that the President might be associated with some wildly-popular legislation. It is all possible, but is yet to happen. It is also possible that the President could face an economic meltdown like that that doomed Herbert Hoover or that he could bumble his way into a diplomatic or military debacle as horrid as that of the hostage situation in Iran that doomed the Ca4rter Presidency.

Yes, disapproval is sticky. I also watched the polls in 2010 to 2012, and I saw disapproval go over 50% only once in a state that President Obama would win in 2012. That was 51% (barely) in Ohio at the peak of the savaging of that President by the Tea Party, and he eventually won the state -- just barely. People who disapprove are rarely receptive to any pitch to support the incumbent seeking re-election. Yes, with a shrewd campaign an incumbent can turn undecided voters into his voters, and at this point I expect President Trump to do that because the undecided are clearly on the Right side of the political spectrum.

The numbers in the lower map represent what I now consider ceilings (100 less disapproval) for the vote for Trump in 2012. Back in 2010 through 2012 you would have never seen approval ratings near-even in states that the President won by 15-20% for Obama. You see such approval ratings in states such as Alabama, Arkansas, Tennessee, and West Virginia.


Now let us remember that this proves little more than that Donald Trump is highly unpopular as President. It could be that  America might vote decisively for a very different conservative in 2024 for President, and that Donald Trump is the wrong right-winger to be President. True. After all, Barack Obama and Ronald Reagan had much the same political skill sets for the Presidency.

[pbrower2a]

Now here is another model. I start with the Cook Partisan Voting Index (also known as Cook PVI) that predicts how states would vote for President in an election split 50-50 based upon electoral results of the last two Presidential elections. As in the source (same as above), red favors Democrats and  blue favors Republicans in accordance with the color scheme of a website that largely discuses the electoral history of America.


Color and intensity will indicate the variance from a tie (ties will be in white) with  in a 50-50 election with blue for an R lean and red for a D lean. Numbers will be shown except in individual districts, Cook PVI here:

int      var
2        1-4%
3        5-8%
5        9-12%
7        13-19%
9        20% or more



Cook PVI assumes a 50-50 Presidential election, reasonable since 2000 because except for the 2008 Presidential election all such exception, those five all were basically even for almost the entire electoral season. One can use polling to predict whether the next Presidential election will be a 50-50 proposition, and if not, how far the likely reality diverges from that assumption.

As examples, in a 50-50 Presidential race on average

California and New York would go 62-38 for the Democrat
Connecticut and Delaware would go 56-44 for the Democrat
New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin are effective ties
Iowa and Ohio would go 53-47 for the Republican
Mississippi and Missouri would go 59-41 for the Republican
Oklahoma and Utah would go 70-30 for the Republican.

That is an estimate based upon the states. Favorite Son effects could play a role, as could such local conditions as recent events or promises to do things tha might specifically nelp an important industry for the state. 



For DC (not measured) and Congressional districts that vote independently of states, I have common sense for Dee Cee and the congressional votes for those districts.

DC -- way out of reach for any Republican.

ME-01 D+8
ME-02 R+2

NE-01 R+11
NE-02 R+4
NE-03 R+27

(data from Wikipedia, map mine)

............

Variation from PVI (polls from October 2017 and later):






Orange implies that President Trump projects to do better than Cook PVI based on 100-DIS. In Minnesota I have a 49-47 poll with which to work, and people in that thread tell me that the pollster who got those results is suspect. So the President is doing 2% better in California in accordance with 100-DIS than Cook PVI suggests. Not significant, obviously, because that is the difference between losing the Golden State 60-40 instead of 62-38.

.......

Based upon my 100-DIS ceiling, Donald Trump seems to be doing better than the usual Republican in Minnesota. The poll that suggests such is one from the time in which the President was pushing infrastructure. That resonated well with iron miners in northern Minnesota who used to be reliable Democratic voters. More infrastructure spending implies more jobs, more hours, and more pay for people in the iron-mining industry. That proposal fizzled, and a new poll for Minnesota might have Trump doing badly as Republicans usually do in Minnesota. Otherwise, I look at the sea of green, darkest shades generally in states that Donald Trump won decisively. I am not predicting that he will lose such states as Alabama, Arkansas, Kentucky, Tennessee, Texas, and West Virginia in 2020. But he is down enough that he will have to spend time campaigning in states that have been safe for Republicans since at least 2004 in Presidential races. He will have to spend his biggest resource as a candidate (campaign time) for re-election defending states that Obama had no reasonable chance of winning. His advertising budget for campaign ads will likely be busted.

Such is what I now predict. If you want to argue against me by saying "Donald Trump really is a great President, and liberals don't realize that yet", then you introduce a conjecture with weak-to-non-existent evidence. At this point I see a rigged election that ensures the re-election of Donald Trump and the consolidation of Republican majorities in both Houses of Congress far more likely based upon the appearance of electoral shenanigans in 2016.

Do I see any good sign to this other than that a President that I despise seems nearly certain to be a one-term President? Yes. America seems to be becoming much less polarized, and that toward the end of the current Crisis Era, quality of political service will matter more than such issues as regional and ethnic identity. We Americans will be less amenable to demagogues of any kind, which means that we are approaching a time in which we prefer bland effectiveness to flamboyant huckstering in political life, basically Dwight Eisenhower instead of Huey Long.

[John J. Xenakis]

*** 2-Mar-18 World View -- Bangladesh formally protests Burma's (Myanmar's) troop buildup near border

This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com

• Bangladesh formally protests Burma's (Myanmar's) troop buildup near border
  
• April monsoon rains will have disastrous impact on Rohingya camps in Bangladesh
  

****
**** Bangladesh formally protests Burma's (Myanmar's) troop buildup near border
****


Rohingya refugees' tents are likely to be washed away in the flooding and landslides from the April monsoons (Guardian)

Bangladesh summoned Burma's (Myanmar’s) ambassador on Thursday as
hundreds of Burmese armed soldiers and police came to a border fence
near Burma's border with Bangladesh, and appeared to be moving heavy
weapons, including mortars and machine guns, to the area.

The Burmese troops have been surrounding a strip of land dubbed "no
man's land," because it is beyond Myanmar's border fence but on
Myanmar's side of a creek that marks the international border. There
are about 5,300 Rohingya Muslims living in a makeshift camp in the no
man's land area.

Since 2011, Burma's mostly Buddhist security forces have been
committing mass atrocities on mostly Muslim ethnic Rohingyas living in
Rakhine State, what the United Nations says is "a textbook example of
ethnic cleansing," and which some Western governments are calling
genocide. The atrocities by Buddhist security forces include gang
rape, violent torture, execution-style killings and the razing of
entire villages, in a scorched earth campaign. The atrocities by
Buddhist security forces worsened considerably last August when
Rohingya activists killed several Burmese security forces in attacks
against 30 Burmese police outputs. Many Rohingyas were forced to flee
into neighboring Bangladesh. Today, there are about 700,000 Rohingyas
living in refugee camps in Bangladesh, and about 5,300 have stayed in
the small no man's land camp on the Burma side.

Myanmar's unexplained military buildup near the Bangladesh border is
raising new tensions between the two countries. After Burmese forces
have repeatedly conducted mass slaughter and scorched earth operations
against Rohingya civilians, it's feared that Burma is about to do it
again. Burmese forces have already been using loudspeakers ordering
the Rohingyas to get out, and according to some reports have been
throwing stones.

After the Bangladesh protest on Thursday, the Burmese forces near the
camp withdrew their heavy weapons, but the troops remained, and
they began firing live bullets into the air.

Last year, under heavy international pressure, Burma agreed to accept
the return of hundreds of thousands of refugees that had fled to
Bangladesh. The agreement was farcical in that it's never going to
happen. It's like the ceasefire that Russia and Syria agreed to as
the exterminate civilians in East Ghouta. These agreements are only
used as political cover to continue exterminations, genocide, and
ethnic cleansing.

It's not known what the Burmese troops are planning, but no one would
be surprised if they're planning a massive new attack on the civilians
in the camp, including women and children. BD News (Bangladesh) and Daily Star (Bangladesh) and AP and AFP

****
**** April monsoon rains will have disastrous impact on Rohingya camps in Bangladesh
****

Nearly 700,000 Rohingyas have crossed the border from Burma into
Bangladesh in just the last six months. Refugee camps were created
for them by stripping the land of trees and other vegetation, to make
room for shelters, mostly made from tarpaulin and bamboo.

Many of these shelters were built on slopes and hillsides.
When monsoon rains arrive in April, these slopes will turn
to mud, and many of these shelters will collapse and be washed
away. It's believed that about 100,000 people will be displaced
at the time.

Aid agencies are preparing in advance by setting up emergency medical
centers to prepare for spread of diseases like diarrhea, dysentery,
and mosquito-borne diseases like dengue, malaria, and others. Light
machinery will be installed and work crews established at ten
strategic points across the district to clear major drains and
waterways after landslides and mud cause road closures and blockages.

The Rohingya situation has been mostly out of the news for the last
few weeks, but it could escalate to a major new crisis very quickly if
Burmese troops commit new atrocities on Rohingyas while the monsoon
rains displace hundreds of thousands of them.

Some people claim that Buddhism is a "religion of peace," despite the
massive Buddhist on Buddhist genocide in the Killing Fields of
Cambodia in 1975-79. For the last six years, it's been clear that the
Buddhists in Burma have been taking lessons from their brethren in
Cambodia, and are repeating the Cambodia genocide on the Muslim
Rohingyas in Burma. Some people claim that Buddhists are better than
Muslims, but from the point of view of Generational Dynamics, there is
no difference at all between Buddhists and Muslims except that they us
different religious justifications when they exterminate, torture and
commit atrocities on innocent civilians that they don't like. That's
the way the world works. UN Migration Agency and Reuters and Guardian (London)

Related Articles

• Rohingya ARSA attack on Burma (Myanmar) police complicates fantasy repatriation plans (08-Jan-2018)
  
  
• Burma's (Myanmar's) ethnic cleansing of Rohingyas witnessed by BBC reporter (09-Sep-2017)
  
  
• Burma's (Myanmar's) leaders may be inspired by Pol Pot's Cambodian 'Killing Fields' genocide (29-Sep-2017)
  
  
• Violence between Buddhists and Muslims in Myanmar/Burma escalates dramatically (28-Aug-2017)
  
  
• Meiktila, Burma, violence has echoes of Kristallnacht (05-Apr-2013)
  

KEYS: Generational Dynamics, Burma, Myanmar, Bangladesh, No man's land,
Rohingyas, Islam, Buddhism, Cambodia, Killing Fields

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John J. Xenakis
100 Memorial Drive Apt 8-13A
Cambridge, MA 02142
Phone: 617-864-0010
E-mail: john@GenerationalDynamics.com
Web site: http://www.GenerationalDynamics.com
Forum: http://www.gdxforum.com/forum
Subscribe to World View: http://generationaldynamics.com/subscribe

[John J. Xenakis]

*** 3-Mar-18 World View -- Turkey suffers military setback in 'Operation Olive Branch' in Afrin Syria

This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com

• Turkey suffers military setback in 'Operation Olive Branch' in Afrin Syria
  
• Turkey doubles down on Afrin-Manbij operation, despite US opposition
  

****
**** Turkey suffers military setback in 'Operation Olive Branch' in Afrin Syria
****


Turkish special forces being deployed to Afrin, Syria, last month (RT)

Turkey's forces suffered heavy losses on Thursday during its
"Operation Olive Branch" in Afrin, with the military announcing that
eight soldiers were killed and 13 more wounded, making this the
deadliest day for Turkey since the Afrin operation began on January
20. Turkey's defense minister announced that, since the operation
began, a total of 41 Turkish soldiers had been killed.

Turkey considers the YPG Kurds to be terrorists, because they're
linked to the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK). The PKK has perpetrated
large terrorist attacks in Turkey in the last two years, and has
conducted an on-and-off separatist insurgency against Turkey's
government for thirty years. The US and the EU also consider the PKK
to be a terrorist organization, though not the entire YPG.

The Kurds have set as a goal the creation of an independent state of
Rojava along Syria's northern border with Turkey. Turkey considers
that objective to be an existential threat.

Turkey launched the Afrin operation to thwart a YPG objective to
establish the state of Rojava. Turkish troops are backed by an
estimated 22,000 "moderate rebels" in the Free Syrian Army (FSA),
while the YPG is estimated to have about 8,000 to 10,000 fighters in
Afrin. According to Turkey's defense minister, 116 fighters from the
FSA have been killed since the operation began. Turkey also claims
that 2,295 "YPG - PKK - ISIS terrorists" have also been killed.

According to reports, the Turkish forces that were killed on Thursday
were special forces units that had been recently deployed to Afrin.
They had been chosen because of their previous urban warfare
experience in fighting the PKK. The YPG fighters ambushed the Turkish
forces by hiding out in tunnels, and then emerged from the tunnels for
the ambush.

Despite the deaths of Turkish forces, the operation in Afrin appears
to have unified the Turkish citizens, at least the citizens who aren't
Kurds. Kemal Kiliçdaroglu, the leader of the main opposition
Republican People’s Party (CHP) is fully supporting the operation:

<QUOTE>"We trust our army, we have no doubt that they will
succeed in their mission to fight terror. ...

We cover the coffins of our martyrs with a Turkish flag. My
citizens, let’s hang the Turkish flag on our homes, offices and
working places until our martyrs rest in peace."<END QUOTE>

However, Kiliçdaroglu has previously said that he does not want
Turkish troops to enter Afrin's city center:

<QUOTE>"I do not approve of an offensive into the center of
Afrin because it shouldn’t be about capturing a city. Why did we
enter the Afrin district [in the first place]? To eliminate terror
organizations on our border."<END QUOTE>

On Friday, a number of CHP lawmakers went onto their social media
accounts, and changed their pictures to an image of the Turkish flag.
France 24 and Yeni Safak (Ankara) and Hurriyet (Ankara)

****
**** Turkey doubles down on Afrin-Manbij operation, despite US opposition
****

The fact that the operation to take control of Afrin is taking several
months instead of several days has the advantage that it has postponed
a possible major confrontation for several months, and possibly
forever.

Once the Turkish army has taken control of Afrin, the plan is to move
farther east and perform the same operation in the town of Manbij.
The problem is that there are also US troops around Manbij. The YPG
has been the main fighting force to defeat the so-called Islamic State
(IS or ISIS or ISIL or Daesh), backed up by weapons, airstrikes and
training by US forces.

Turkey does not distinguish between the YPG, the PKK and ISIS,
considering all of them to be terrorists. According to Turkey's
deputy prime minister Hakan Cavusoglu, the PKK-YPG terror group have
committed many war crimes:

<QUOTE>"The recruitment of children, which is one of the six
grave violations identified by the UN resolutions, is just one of
the crimes against humanity committed by PKK/YPG.

PKK/YPG has a bloody record of using land mines and toxic gas,
using civilians as human shields, and targeting hospitals, refugee
camps and civilian residential areas."<END QUOTE>

In mid-February, American Secretary of State Rex Tillerson visited
Turkey's president Recep Tayyip Erdogan, at a time when Turkey was
saying that the US-Turkey relationship was at a "critical point."
Erdogan is particularly infuriated by the weapons and support that the
US gives to the so-called "YPG-PKK terrorists." Turkey's foreign
minister said, "Ties with the U.S. are at a very critical point. We
will either fix these relations or they will break completely."

At the time, Tillerson said:

<QUOTE>"We are keenly aware of the legitimate security
concerns of Turkey, our coalition partner and NATO ally. We will
continue to be completely transparent with Turkey about our
efforts in Syria to defeat ISIS, and we stand by our NATO ally in
its counterterrorism efforts."<END QUOTE>

Turkey took that statement to mean that the US and Turkey are allies,
and that the US and the YPG are NOT allies.

On Thursday, an unnamed US official reinforced Tillerson's comment:

<QUOTE>"We are very careful not to use that word [alliance]
for the YPG. We are not using the YPG as an ally of the U.S. Our
ally is Turkey and that is something that the Secretary [of State
Rex] Tillerson emphasized in his remarks in Ankara. We have a
long-term, enduring, historic alliance and partnership with Turkey
and that is not going to change.

The U.S. has made it clear from the beginning that our military
cooperation with the YPG was a temporary, tactical arrangement
aimed entirely at combating [ISIS]. We have made it clear that
once ISIS was defeated we would have no plans for an enduring
military relationship with the YPG and certainly no plans for an
enduring political relationship with the Democratic Union Party
[PYD]. That has not changed."<END QUOTE>

On Friday, Turkey's Prime Minister Binali Yildirim indicated that
Turkey is doubling down on the fight with YPG, and that the fight
would go beyond Afrin:

<QUOTE>"This operation based on international law and our
legitimate rights will continue to the end. [Giving] any day or
date [when it will end] is out of the question here.

[The operation will end after] the complete wiping out and
neutralization of terror organizations. Wherever there is
terrorism, they will be our target."<END QUOTE>

Right now, Turkey's forces appear to be bogged down in Afrin, and this
could mean that Turkey's plans to move on to Manbij will never be
realized.

The US military says: "We remain committed to fulfilling our promises
regarding the YPG presence in Manbij. It is a city with a lot of
people and somebody has to provide security there but our intention is
that will not be the YPG."

That leaves open the question of who will provide security for Manbij.
If it's not the US, and it's not the YPG, and it's not the Turks, then
perhaps it's a local Arab militia, or perhaps it's Bashar al-Assad's
army. This remains to be seen. Anadolu and Washington Examiner and Daily Sabah (Ankara) and Hurriyet (Ankara)

Related Articles

• Turkey gets bogged down with military 'Operation Olive Branch' in Afrin, Syria (20-Feb-2018)
  
  
• Syrian war escalates sharply, after Israel, Iran, Turkey and Russia all lose aircraft (11-Feb-2018)
  
  
• Turkey begins its air and ground invasion of Syria's Afrin (21-Jan-2018)
  
  
• Turkey's tanks and troops cross border into Syria's Idlib (13-Oct-2017)
  

KEYS: Generational Dynamics, Turkey, Operation Olive Branch, Syria,
Free Syrian Army, FSA, Republican People’s Party, CHP,
Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Mevlut Cavusoglu, Kemal Kiliçdaroglu,
Islamic State / of Iraq and Syria/Sham/the Levant, IS, ISIS, ISIL, Daesh,
Afrin, Manbij, Rojava, Rex Tillerson, Binali Yildirim,
Kurds, People's Protection Units, YPG, Kurdistan Workers' Party, PKK,

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John J. Xenakis
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[John J. Xenakis]

(02-28-2018, 03:42 PM)David Horn Wrote: > The new paradigm is always a change from the current paradigm, and
> only a faint echo of any before it. In this case, the rapid
> change from the Industrial Age to the Information Age to a
> Post-Modern Age, replete with post-humanism, makes any guessing of
> long term change nearly impossible.

> My son ('77) and his wife ('79) are now considered Xennials. They
> aren't Xers; I know that for certain. But they were born early
> enough to have knowledge of the analog world, yet fit comfortably
> in the digital one. Their children are 13, so they fit well in
> this equally cuspy period between Millies and TBD. I understand
> my children fairly well, and love my grandchildren, but I don't
> claim to understand them -- not entirely. We're leaving them a
> very messy world, but your assumption that a major war is needed
> to reset it to normalcy is rejected by my children and
> incomprehensible to theirs.

> Neither of us will live to see how this plays-out in the long
> run. We can do our best to make it as beneficial as possible in
> the near term. After that, it's theirs.

Your saying that "a major war is needed ... is rejected by my children
and incomprehensible to theirs" is an interesting statement
because it's a microcosm of why generational theory works.

A couple of times in the last year or two, I've been questioned by
someone 80 or so years old, and I said, "If you're really 80 years
old, then you know what's coming as well as I do." In both cases, the
response was just a silent acknowledgment because they do, in fact,
know what's coming as well as I do.

People in younger generations really do reject the concept of a world
war, or find it incomprehensible. That's why people in the 1930s
found Winston Churchill incomprehensible (and it's also a good part of
the reason why people today find Donald Trump incomprehensible).
Until nuclear-tipped ballistic missiles actually begin landing on Los
Angeles, Washington and Boston, the minds of people in younger
generations are simply incapable of grasping what's going to happen,
and then they get completely traumatized when it does happen.

The same thing is true on the financial side. I watch financial shows
on CNBC, Bloomberg and FBN, and it's always the same. The stock
market is always going to keep going up, and the worst that will
happen is a 10-20% correction before the market goes up again. If an
older person comes on and talks about a major crash, he's humored and
patronized, and quickly removed from the set.

Here's a joke from the 1950s:

> Stock broker: In the 1920s, they used to believe that stocks would
> just go up and up and up

> Client: Really? What do they believe now?

To most people today, that isn't a joke so much as two random
statements that don't mean anything. In other words, it's just as
totally incomprehensible as the concept of a world war.

As for making things "as beneficial as possible" for younger people, I
believe the best way to do that is to give them the tools they
can use to make what's coming comprehensible to them, so that
they can prepare for it.

I used to write the following at the end of some of my articles:

> No one can stop what's coming, any more than anyone can stop a
> tsunami. You can't stop what's coming, but you can prepare for
> it. Treasure the time you have left, and use the time to prepare
> yourself, your family, your community and your nation.

I don't write that anymore, but it's still good advice.

[Warren Dew]

(03-01-2017, 01:27 AM)Warren Dew Wrote:

(02-25-2017, 09:01 AM)Warren Dew Wrote:

(02-24-2017, 10:42 PM)John J. Xenakis Wrote: I wrote the above in 2003, so it should not surprise anyone that today
I consider the proposed "border adjustment tax" to be a very dangerous
idea.

I'm glad you feel this way, and I agree.

I do want to note that there is an underlying trade issue that the border adjustment tax attempts to address.  Specifically, the EU provides a VAT rebate on exports, and imposes a VAT on imports.  This has the effect of subsidizing exports and putting a tariff on imports.

However, the border adjustment tax is the wrong way to respond, for the reasons you mention, and also for reasons having to do flaws in its basic structure.  Because it isn't based on the actual tax content of exports, it would distort economic incentives to manufacturers.  For example, companies will have an incentive internally to subsidize exports by charging lower prices for exported goods than they charge to Americans for the same goods.  It is also likely to run afoul of WTO rules.

Edit:  and let's not forget the increase in the value of the dollar, estimated by some at 25%, relative to other currencies.  This is said to 'cancel out' the effects of the border adjustments, but it also provides a huge windfall for overseas holders of dollars like China and Japan, with no benefit to Americans.

The right way to address this issue is to attack the VAT based subsidies and tariffs.  This might be possible to do under existing WTO rules.  If not, the US should pressure the WTO to change the rules to prevent the abuse of VAT rebates and tariffs.  In addition, the US should probably negotiate aggressively with the EU; the EU has become a de facto protectionist region, which runs strongly counter to US interests.

We could also shift the US federal government from being income tax supported to being VAT supported, but that would be a much heavier political lift, likely requiring repeal of the 16th amendment.

I have to change my position on this, because I didn't fully understand the proposal.

In fact, the proposal actually is to shift at least corporate taxes to a VAT instead of a corporate income tax, at a lower percentage tax rate.  This permits us to take advantage of the same border adjustment that the WTO has already ruled to meet its rules by states that already use a VAT, including for example most EU states.

That also means that, rather than initiating a trade war, all this does is put our policies in line with, for example, EU policies.

Given there will likely be an exchange rate adjustment that largely cancels the border adjustment, this will essentially make the corporate tax rate lower in the US, encouraging production in the US, in exchange for giving foreign holders of US currency a one time windfall, and in the longer term reducing the foreign holdings of US currency on which the US charges an effective inflation "tax".

I'm neutral to mildly positive on this deal.  In an ideal world, we would fix the WTO ruling that permitting border adjustments of VAT, but that would be harder to fix.

Paul Ryan needs to do a better job of explaining this package.

I just wanted to note that without the border adjustment tax, we're now imposing much less well thought out tariffs that are already causing threats of retaliation and counterretaliation.  We should have done this the sensible way when we had a chance.

[John J. Xenakis]

*** 4-Mar-18 World View -- China pushes to invest heavily in Iraq's energy infrastructure

This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com

• Burkina Faso terror attack targets France's anti-terror Operation Barkhane
  
• China pushes to invest heavily in Iraq's energy infrastructure
  
• African Cédric Bakambu joins China's Sinobo Guoan Football Club
  

****
**** Burkina Faso terror attack targets France's anti-terror Operation Barkhane
****


Burkina Faso soldiers patrol the army's headquarters in Ouagadougou (AFP)

Eight soldiers died and 12 were seriously wounded on Friday by a major
terrorist attack in Ouagadougou, the capital city of Burkina Faso, on
the army headquarters and the French embassy. Eight attackers were
also killed. Burkina Faso is a landlocked nation in West Africa, and
one of the poorest countries in the world.

The al-Qaeda linked Jama’at Nusrat al-Islam wal-Muslim (JNIM, Group
for Support of Islam and Muslims) claimed responsibility for the
attack. JNIM was formed in 2017 by a merger of four Mali-based
al-Qaeda linked groups, including Ansar Dine, Al-Qaeda in the Islamic
Maghreb (AQIM), Al Murabitoon, and Katibat Macina (Macina Liberation
Front). These groups were responsible for a surge of hundreds of
al-Qaeda linked attacks in Africa's Sahel (the strip of Africa just
below the Sahara desert, separating the Arab north from Black Africa
to the south), including Mali, Niger and Burkina Faso.

Burkinabe president Roch Kabore urged the public to be calm on
Saturday: "In these difficult moments, I would like to reaffirm to
Africa and the entire world my unshakeable faith in the capacity of
the Burkinabe people to preserve their dignity and ferociously oppose
their enemies."

Although there were no French casualties, it's thought that
the attack was meant to target France's Operation Barkhane,
which ws launched in August 2014, and has been effective in
targeting al-Qaeda linked terror groups throughout the region.

Several extremist groups have also vowed to step up attacks on the
France-led "G5 Sahel" counter-terrorism force, led by France and
containing 5,000 troops from five Sahel nations -- Chad, Niger,
Burkina Faso, Mali and Mauritania.

However, not surprisingly, many people believe that the level of
terrorism is increasing in the region, despite the deployment of
these counter-terrorism forces. Radio France International and Deutsche Welle and Reuters and AP

Related Articles

• Jihadist attacks in Mali surge with rise of al-Qaeda linked JNIM (04-Oct-2017)
  
  
• Islamic State in Greater Sahara (ISGS) blamed for deaths of US troops in Niger (08-Oct-2017)
  
  
• France promotes 'G5 Sahel' peacekeeping force in west Africa after jihadist attacks (16-Aug-2017)
  
  
• Acting unilaterally, France sends army and air force into Mali (12-Jan-2013)
  
  
• France's new president Macron commits troops to Mali 'as long as necessary' (20-May-2017)
  

****
**** China pushes to invest heavily in Iraq's energy infrastructure
****

China has been pushing to invest billions of dollars in Iraq's
energy infrastructure, especially Iraq's oil fields.

Iraq is strategically important to China's government, military, and
the "One Belt, One Road" grand strategy that supposedly will link
everything in Europe and Asia to China by 2050. Any relationship in
the Middle East is important to China also because of China's enormous
thirst for imported oil.

China is the world's biggest importer of oil. Any shortage of oil in
China could trigger a hard recession in China and lead to unrest.
Iraq represents a major opportunity to increase the flow of oil
imports.

In January, it emerged that China intended to construct an oil
refinery on the port of Fao on the Arabian Gulf with two Chinese
companies, Power China and Nerco Chinese. The refinery would have a
capacity to produce 300,000 barrels per day. Iraq has also just
awarded a control China-based Zhenhua Oil to further develop Iraq's
East Baghdad oilfield. Chinese state-owned enterprises are now the
biggest oil investors in Iraq, especially the modernization and
development of Iraq’s oil infrastructure.

Iraq's oil refining capacity was curtailed when the so-called Islamic
State (IS or ISIS or ISIL or Daesh) overran much of northern Iraq in
2014. Iraq has been recovering, and is now OPEC’s second-largest oil
producer, after Saudi Arabia.

Ironically, both Iraq and Saudi Arabia are restricted in the amount of
oil that they can sell to China. The reason is that the OPEC
countries have agreed to production limits in order to keep the price
of oil from falling. Arab News
and Reuters and Xinhua

Related Articles

• Iran gives operational control of its Chabahar seaport to India (18-Feb-2018)
  
  
• China launches 'One Belt One Road', raising objections and violent protests (14-May-2017)
  
  
• More on China's New Silk Road through the 'Caspian Trade Corridor' (27-Feb-2016)
  

****
**** African Cédric Bakambu joins China's Sinobo Guoan Football Club
****


Televised introduction of Cédric Bakambu to Beijing's Sinobo Guoan Football (Soccer) Club (Al-Jazeera)

China's Sinobo Guoan Football (Soccer) Club has paid a reported amount
of $91 million to sign Cédric Bakambu, making Bakambu the most
expensive soccer player in African history. He was born in France,
but switched his allegiance to the Democratic Republic of Congo
in 2015.

The reason that I'm including this story is because of the startling
screen shot above, which was from Bakambu's televised introduction on
Chinese television. The screen shot shows eight people on the team,
with Bakambu in the middle in the fourth position. I don't know who
all these people are, but the people in positions #5 and #8 appear to
be European.

The others are all Chinese, and they're all doing everything possible
to avoid looking at the camera. The person in position #3 is holding
up two fingers to his eye which might mean that he's scratching an
itch around his eye, or it might mean that he's using his fingers to
express disdain in some way to the television audience.

This video was broadcast on al-Jazeera, and as I watched it I found it
really startling. China is known to have some extreme racism issues
with Africans, and this screen shot seems to put them on display.
BBC Sport



KEYS: Generational Dynamics, Burkina Faso, Ouagadougou, Roch Kabore,
Mali, Niger, France, Mauritania, Chad, G5 Sahel Force,
Group for the Support of Islam and Muslims,
JNIM, Jama’at Nusrat al-Islam wal-Muslim, Ansaroul Islam,
Ansar Dine, Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, AQIM,
Al Murabitoon, Katibat Macina, Macina Liberation Front,
China, Iraq, Fao, Saudi Arabia, OPEC, Power China, Nerco Chinese,
Islamic State / of Iraq and Syria/Sham/the Levant, IS, ISIS, ISIL, Daesh,
Cédric Bakambu, Sinobo Guoan Football Club,
Democratic Republic of Congo

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John J. Xenakis
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E-mail: john@GenerationalDynamics.com
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[Cynic Hero '86]

(02-27-2018, 01:31 PM)John J. Xenakis Wrote:

(02-27-2018, 10:35 AM)Cynic Hero Wrote: >   A Strike must go "all In" not striking North Korea or doing a
>   half-measure limited strike is sheer folly. The Boomer refuses to
>   comprehend the causes of the various issues both regarding the
>   Korea issue or the world in general because doing so would force
>   the boomer to admit that their preferences are the problem that
>   the entire "peace dividend" since the late 1980s just led to the
>   US being regarded as a wuss. The Boomer is emotionally attached to
>   globalism and the peace dividend because those are the policies
>   THEY advocated. Yet the same boomers refuse to let Xers and
>   Millies into the government because they think the Xer or Millies
>   MIGHT commit genocide in the future. Thats what makes boomer
>   governance tyranny because boomers insist on trying to control the
>   natural flows of events and social evolution and that is contrary
>   to nature.

When I described the first strike option above, I wrote, "let's assume
that it's done so cleverly that it doesn't lead to an immediate war
with China or to massive retaliation on Seoul."

What you want is both immediate war with China and also massive
retaliation on Seoul.  That's why I'm always writing about the
destructiveness and self-destructiveness of Generation-X.  You would
welcome a world war that kills four billion people, just as people in
your generation welcomed the financial crisis they created by
knowingly selling fraudulent subprime mortgage backed security.

Your bizarre, vitriolic hatred of Boomers has made you completely
nihilistic, willing to destroy the whole world if it means getting
your revenge against Boomers.  The world is in very bad shape today,
but you would bring it to total destruction, which excites you.  This
makes you a very dangerous person, and puts people around you in
physical danger.

The Definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting to get a different result.

[Cynic Hero '86]

A Third possible Course of action to Korea that I largely ignored before would be to Arm South Korea and Japan with Nukes and remove restrictions on those countries Militaries.

[pbrower2a]

(03-04-2018, 03:31 AM)Cynic Hero Wrote: A Third possible Course of action to Korea that I largely ignored before would be to Arm South Korea and Japan with Nukes and remove restrictions on those countries Militaries.

South Korea and the People's Republic of China agree on the desirability of a nuclear-free Korean peninsula. South Korea does not allow the US to put nuclear weapons in its territory. I am sure that Japan and Russia would go along with that in the event that the North Korean regime should be overthrown.

So far as I can tell, North Korea has about as much to fear from China as from the USA. It wouldn't take much. You can be sure that the Chinese already have a shadow government ready to take over in North Korea in the event that it should be compelled to invade North Korea. (also for South Korea, Japan, Vietnam, Laos, Myanmar, Thailand....) Missiles overflying China with a destination in the USA? That, technically, is an act of war against China (and Russia, and likely also Canada).  South Korea is a big t4rading partner of the People's Republic of China and has made large investments.

Don't mess with the Panda.

[John J. Xenakis]

(03-03-2018, 11:54 PM)Warren Dew Wrote: > I just wanted to note that without the border adjustment tax,
> we're now imposing much less well thought out tariffs that are
> already causing threats of retaliation and counterretaliation. We
> should have done this the sensible way when we had a
> chance.

Whether those tariffs will be enacted is far from certain.

What we're actually seeing is a repeat of a script that we've seen
several dozen times in the last year. Trump says or tweets something,
the mainstream media becomes hysterical for several days, and in the
end Trump wins because he was successful in controlling the media.

I remember watching this with amazement on the first weekend of
Trump's presidency. That weekend there was going to be this huge
march on Washington by feminists, being described by the mainstream
media as the greatest women's march in history. During the night on
Friday night, Trump tweeted a couple of things -- I don't even
remember what the tweets were about, but the mainstream media
considered them outrageous.

The mainstream media went completely hysterical. So all we heard on
the news on Saturday is how Trump was violating the first amendment
and was using Twitter to be a new Joseph Goebbels. He was also a new
Adolf Hitler because of whatever the content of the tweets was. He
was already the worst president in American history and he should be
impeached as quickly as possible. Others on the left were more direct
in saying that Trump should be jailed or shot or beheaded.

One argument that even Republicans used was that Trump shouldn't be
tweeting because it distracts from his agenda. He should be talking
about his policy issues, and the fact that the news was all about his
tweets proves that he's sabotaging himself since nobody is talking
about his agenda.

But that was never going to happen anyway. If it hadn't been for
Trump's tweets, the discussion all weekend would have been one woman
after another talking incessantly about how Trump was a deplorable --
"racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamaphobic — you name it."

So this was an almost total victory for Trump. The feminist march was
ignored by the press, and was completely forgotten by Monday. Within
a couple of more days, the press was consumed by Trump's next tweet,
and that dominated the news for a few days.

Since day one, Trump has been successfully mocking and baiting the
mainstream media and the left, and it works every time. Even now, as
I'm typing this, I'm hearing on CNN that Trump is "unglued,
unravelling, uncontrollable" and "the White House is in chaos." I
could have heard exactly this same thing in the first week of Trump's
term. It's the same thing, over and over again, week after week after
week after week. Meanwhile, from what I can tell, Trump keeps driving
his policy agenda forward as well as Obama or any other president.
According to supporters, Trump has accomplished 63% of his policy
goals in the first year, which is excellent.

It's the media in chaos, not the White House. This past week, the
mainstream media was in total chaos, as Trump used two statements to
drive the news agenda.

First, the gun control statement - restrict some gun sales, don't be
afraid of the NRA. This was a total victory by Trump, as he
completely disarmed the attacks by the left-wing and the mainstream
media on Trump over gun control. In the end, I doubt that anything
will be done except perhaps to outlaw gun stocks.

Second, the trade tariff statement. One thing that I heard that I
never knew before is the claim that the US is almost tariff-free,
while the EU and China have massive anti-American tariffs already.
The people in the tsunami of criticism against Trump have not
criticized this statement, leading me to believe that it's true. If
so, then Trump's statement was extremely effective and successful in
illuminating an important situation.

So whether any tariffs will actually be put into place will have to be
seen. But in the meantime, the political discussion now has on the
table this big discrepancy in tariffs between the US and other
countries. So, once again, Trump has scored a big success.

So maybe the left is right. Maybe Trump is unbalanced, has Alheimers,
is spiraling completely out of control, is about to resign, is lashing
out, etc., etc., etc. But after a year of hearing the same crap from
the left, week after week after week after week after week, there is
no reason to believe any of the crap on the left. The constant flood
of vitriolic, hate-filled, hysterical, chaotic statements from the
left and the mainstream media simply do not fit the facts of what's
actually getting done.

In the meantime, the REAL problems -- North Korea, South China Sea,
Syria, etc. -- are getting worse every day, but are ignored by the
left and the mainstream media because they're completely full of crap
and can't talk about anything else but the crap they're full of.

[Warren Dew]

I agree regarding the tweeting. However, the previous round of tariffs that were announced are already in place, so I don't see any reason to believe that this round won't go in place too. These tariffs don't require legislation, which is part of why they end up being badly targeted.

[John J. Xenakis]

(03-04-2018, 05:48 PM)Warren Dew Wrote: > I agree regarding the tweeting. However, the previous round of
> tariffs that were announced are already in place, so I don't see
> any reason to believe that this round won't go in place too. These
> tariffs don't require legislation, which is part of why they end
> up being badly targeted.

Maybe. But until we see the details, we won't know whether
they're super-protectionist, or merely symbolic.

[pbrower2a]

(03-04-2018, 11:51 AM)John J. Xenakis Wrote:

(03-03-2018, 11:54 PM)Warren Dew Wrote: >   I just wanted to note that without the border adjustment tax,
>   we're now imposing much less well thought out tariffs that are
>   already causing threats of retaliation and counterretaliation.  We
>   should have done this the sensible way when we had a
>   chance.

Whether those tariffs will be enacted is far from certain.

The economically-orthodox part of the Right already shows its opposition. Tariffs are anti-competitive; they cause great dislocations and force distortions of market economics.

Quote:What we're actually seeing is a repeat of a script that we've seen
several dozen times in the last year.  Trump says or tweets something,
the mainstream media becomes hysterical for several days, and in the
end Trump wins because he was successful in controlling the media.

I remember watching this with amazement on the first weekend of
Trump's presidency.  That weekend there was going to be this huge
march on Washington by feminists, being described by the mainstream
media as the greatest women's march in history.  During the night on
Friday night, Trump tweeted a couple of things -- I don't even
remember what the tweets were about, but the mainstream media
considered them outrageous.

Reagan and Dubya both said outrageous things, only to back down. Trump does not back down. He thus develops a reputation for extremism. His best is the unexpurgated worst of Reagan or Dubya. Whether this makes him extreme or stubborn is hard to tell. But I look at the polls, and he has been consistently behind Obama, who had a similarly-vociferous and well-organized opposition from the Right. But Obama kept his approvals in the mid-40s rather consistently, which was always within striking range for winning the next election with a spirited, competent campaign. He barely won the popular vote in 2012, but he did. Trump is out of the range of winning re-election with the polling that he now has, which seems to fluctuate on Gallup polling between the upper thirties and low forties.

Quote:The mainstream media went completely hysterical.  So all we heard on
the news on Saturday is how Trump was violating the first amendment
and was using Twitter to be a new Joseph Goebbels.  He was also a new
Adolf Hitler because of whatever the content of the tweets was.  He
was already the worst president in American history and he should be
impeached as quickly as possible.  Others on the left were more direct
in saying that Trump should be jailed or shot or beheaded.

You exaggerate about the perception of the President. The mainstream media despises him because he violates the usual rules of political conduct without a compelling need for such.  They see trouble in a political leader whoshows disdain and contempt for anyone and any group that voted against him. Because he is without precedent in America, one must look to foreign countries, and the  patterns do not look good.

Calling for the President to be imprisoned or killed is not mainstream rhetoric.

Quote:One argument that even Republicans used was that Trump shouldn't be
tweeting because it distracts from his agenda.  He should be talking
about his policy issues, and the fact that the news was all about his
tweets proves that he's sabotaging himself since nobody is talking
about his agenda.

But that was never going to happen anyway.  If it hadn't been for
Trump's tweets, the discussion all weekend would have been one woman
after another talking incessantly about how Trump was a deplorable --
"racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamaphobic — you name it."

I am satisfied that his tweets are exactly what he means. His agenda is an America that fits a Marxist stereotype of what capitalism is, an economic order that sweats the worker for near-starvation pay and accommodations that he can barely survive. He is beyond any denial a pathological narcissist who holds a solipsistic view of reality. This is someone with the intellectual development of someone in elementary school.

Part of his agenda is to make those who 'fail to recognize His Greatness' to suffer for such. Politics is ideally something far richer than settling scores. Yes, he is a bigot, a classist, and a sexist; and he will never be able to slough off the 'grab them by their crotches' statement.

Quote:So this was an almost total victory for Trump.  The feminist march was
ignored by the press, and was completely forgotten by Monday.  Within
a couple of more days, the press was consumed by Trump's next tweet,
and that dominated the news for a few days.

But what he says stays in people's consciousnesses. Offense becomes subconscious as something else offends the sensibilities of decidedly more than a majority of Americans.  In 2018 Democrats will be running against his sexist behavior in a culture that shows much less tolerance for sexual harassment than it recently did.

Just think of the most recent affront to most sensibilities. Arming teachers in the classroom?I would rather that a live rattlesnake slither into a room than that I carry a firearm into it -- and that is simply a question of danger. (Of course by carrying a weapon I would become more like an enforcer than a teacher. The roles of teacher and prison guard are incompatible). I am concerned that someone would take the gun from me and use it against a fellow student who snitched on him or on a teacher (me) that that student hates. The  only way in which I would ever have possession of a firearm in a classroom would be if I had just wrested it from someone who brought it in.

As for the live rattlesnake -- I would clear the classroom if any snake were to get loose... and get help.

Quote:Since day one, Trump has been successfully mocking and baiting the
mainstream media and the left, and it works every time.  Even now, as
I'm typing this, I'm hearing on CNN that Trump is "unglued,
unravelling, uncontrollable" and "the White House is in chaos."  I
could have heard exactly this same thing in the first week of Trump's
term.  It's the same thing, over and over again, week after week after
week after week.  Meanwhile, from what I can tell, Trump keeps driving
his policy agenda forward as well as Obama or any other president.
According to supporters, Trump has accomplished 63% of his policy
goals in the first year, which is excellent.

The mainstream media do not have the influence that you claim. As for the Left -- people are attacking the President from the Right on economics and foreign policy. This Presidency looks more like a bad royal court than the well-oiled machine of Barack Obama or Dwight Eisenhower. His foreign policy is so much a repudiation of the Obama foreign policy that it repudiates even Ronald Reagan.


So his supporters are happy? Whoop-dee-doo! Whoop-dee-doo! Whoop-dee-doo! Don't tell me that the likes of Mugabe, Chavez, Castro, and Kim are without supporters.

Quote:It's the media in chaos, not the White House.  This past week, the
mainstream media was in total chaos, as Trump used two statements to
drive the news agenda.

First, the gun control statement - restrict some gun sales, don't be
afraid of the NRA.  This was a total victory by Trump, as he
completely disarmed the attacks by the left-wing and the mainstream
media on Trump over gun control.  In the end, I doubt that anything
will be done except perhaps to outlaw gun stocks.

Then he backed down as the all-powerful National Rifle Association made clear what it wants. The smart, eloquent kids and teachers that the Mainstream Media found at Marjorie Stoneman Douglas High School gave reasoned, mature expressions of grief at the pointless loss of good friends. This is very different from Sandy Hook because the child victims were early-elementary children who could not formulate  mature responses to seeing their good friends slaughtered. Take a 17-year-old with an IQ of 130, and you have someone of the usual level of maturity of grad students. Add to this well-organized protests in front of the Florida State Legislature with placards that make good sense (the antithesis of "The ZOO has an African LION/ The WHITE HOUSE has  a Lyin' African", and you can see the demise of the idea that a troubled person has a right to a firearm. The middle-class parents of the middle-class victims of the horrific crime did well, too, at expressing the effort that they put into raising kids to that level. So how many sales of firearms are wor5th a human life?

Quote:Second, the trade tariff statement.  One thing that I heard that I
never knew before is the claim that the US is almost tariff-free,
while the EU and China have massive anti-American tariffs already.
The people in the tsunami of criticism against Trump have not
criticized this statement, leading me to believe that it's true.  If
so, then Trump's statement was extremely effective and successful in
illuminating an important situation.

Free trade is good for consumers, and it is good for keeping down the cost of doing business. The only rationale that I can see for tariffs is that in a developing country, imports are luxury goods purchased by economic elites while non-elites are generally outside the cash economy. Otherwise, tariffs are highly-discriminatory versions of sales taxes and they load costs onto anything that uses the item with a tariff. Construction is the largest variable use of iron and steel, and raising the cost of imported steel can greatly inflate the cost of building, repairing, or replacing a bridge. The "glass box" skyscrapers that give great cities 'vertical space' become more expensive to build  while giving a huge windfall for anyone who already owns a bunch of them (such as Trump interests).

Quote:So whether any tariffs will actually be put into place will have to be
seen.  But in the meantime, the political discussion now has on the
table this big discrepancy in tariffs between the US and other
countries.  So, once again, Trump has scored a big success.

I expect legislative failure. The 'Left' in the Democratic Party would rather make things better for workers through the strengthening of labor unions and the institution of big public projects. The 'Right' has its mavens of free trade. That is enough to stop the costly, distorting tariffs that President Trump has pushed.

Quote:So maybe the left is right.  Maybe Trump is unbalanced, has Alzheimers,
is spiraling completely out of control, is about to resign, is lashing
out, etc., etc., etc.  But after a year of hearing the same crap from
the left, week after week after week after week after week, there is
no reason to believe any of the crap on the left.  The constant flood
of vitriolic, hate-filled, hysterical, chaotic statements from the
left and the mainstream media simply do not fit the facts of what's
actually getting done.

He has succeeded only at enacting a tax cut that will enrich his social class and hurt everyone else with wild promises that wonderful things will ensue because when the filthy rich get even more filthy rich they invest in sybaritic excess such as castles and palaces.  If you believe that, then maybe I can offer you a piece of the lost fortune of Murderer Qaddafi or Satan Hussein in return for sending me a few thousand dollars. Problem is, I'm not Nigerian, and federal law enforcement would catch me quickly for wire fraud just for offering such.

Quote:In the meantime, the REAL problems -- North Korea, South China Sea,
Syria, etc. -- are getting worse every day, but are ignored by the
left and the mainstream media because they're completely full of crap
and can't talk about anything else but the crap they're full of.

They are getting worse because our President can't demonstrate a spine in the presence of Vladimir Putin or
Xi. The mainstream media seem to be treating Syria and North Korea with deadly seriousness in part because the media rely heavily upon advertisers for profit. China is more troublesome because about every large American corporation is heavily invested in or imports much stuff from China. Go too harshly on China and you might lose advertising revenue from Apple, General Motors, or Wal*Mart.

Yes, there are some obnoxious people on the Left, and you are free to treat me as one of those fools in need of a philosophical enema. This said, we would be far better off with some other President less erratic than the current President, even if that President is some conservative Republican. Donald Trump is a borderline fascist and not a conservative.

[John J. Xenakis]

** Paragraph 2:

(03-04-2018, 08:00 PM)pbrower2a Wrote: > Reagan and Dubya both said outrageous things, only to back
> down. Trump does not back down.

** Paragraph 12:

(03-04-2018, 08:00 PM)pbrower2a Wrote: > Then he backed down as the all-powerful National Rifle Association
> made clear what it wants.