jimjam wrote:I would love to join you for lunch some day. Let me know if you are in the area.
I submitted two abstracts to speak at our annual summit in Boston this year. I won't know if I'll get selected for another few weeks. Will keep you posted. If I do, I should be in the Boston area in May.
jimjam wrote:We disagree on almost everything but I suspect we would get along just fine.
I'm sure we would. My cop buddy and I have a mutual friend we call "the communist," and I bounce back and forth between them in our debates. We have quite a good time. "The communist" derides everything the cop and I say about the "deep state," and I sometimes agree with him. The communist and I laugh at our somewhat hard of hearing cop buddy, who speaks louder every time he doesn't think he's heard. It extends to his TV remote control, where he ends up screaming "Netflix!" or "YouTube!!!" into the remote control instead of speaking more clearly or cutting out some other background noise like loud music. Since the communist and I are both techies, we find the spectacle absolutely hysterical. Since I no longer drink, I don't stay for the all night bullshit sessions, but I make sure they are safe as I'm the designated driver so they can be extra naughty.
jimjam wrote:And, yes, I am enjoying the good life in America but that does not preclude me from calling out a con artist for what he is ……. a con artist who dazzles and entertains working Americans while, at the same time, giving it to them up the ass while working at the behest of the plutocracy.
Naturally, I disagree on that point. I think Trump is the best friend the working class (American citizens) have had since probably Lyndon Johnson. Let's face it, Carter sucked. Clinton was an extension of Reagan, although he had intended to implement ObamaCare back in the 1990s but they made the mistake of trying to explain the policy to the electorate first, which is why Nancy Pelosi said you have to vote for the legislation to find out what's in it.
Trump is also a friend of Wall Street, but not so much a friend of labor arbitrageurs. He is the only president since Reagan to seriously use tariffs as a cudgel. There were some uses against Japan after Reagan too, but for the most part the Reagan and Clinton eras were putting free trade agreements in place. Reagan more or less inspired it, Bush began the negotiations, and Clinton enacted all that stuff into law.
Trump's efforts with tariffs have helped with manufacturing employment, but we're only seeing the early stages of it. The tariffs are completely fucking over the Chinese economy, and since they are a pride/shame culture, they will not admit they are screwed right now. American manufacturers don't like being compelled to hire more expensive Americans, so they complain about their margins a bit.
Years ago, I used to say that the media and celebrities had to be getting paid to take the political/social positions they took. Now, pretty much everyone with any sense understands that is the case. However, what I am seeing very clearly now is that a major institutional problem with our government is a nexus between security clearances, non-disclosure agreements and non-prosecution agreements. In a few cases, Trump has made a significant difference, but it is still left to the public to put the pieces together--I'm speaking namely of cancelling Brennan's security clearance and publishing the Nunes memo and other things the FBI/DoJ wanted to keep classified. I would publish a lot more of it if I were Trump, because I think destroying the establishment is more important than national security at this point. That is, I think the biggest threat to national security is from within--hopelessly ineffective, arrogant and insolent pricks running the country, because they can prosecute people and are above the law themselves.
jimjam wrote:Lighten up Jack. I know it doesn't translate well in this medium but I am being facetious at least 45% of the time.
Oh, I am much of the time too. I do think that the #NeverTrump types, however, are missing the bigger picture--the major historical implication of Trump's presidency. Trump didn't launch the Gilets Jaunes anymore than Putin did. Trump did not create Brexit. Globalism and the self-styled elite have seen their apex. They are fighting for their political lives now, and may find themselves fighting for their actual lives at some point. I don't think they realize that themselves. In the 1930s, a lot of the FDR programs weren't done to help the poor, but rather to protect the rich from the poor. Today's elite aren't quite scared enough to realize that time is up on open borders and injecting the third world into the first world.
Prosecuting Manafort illustrates--again, we have to put the pieces together--that Manafort had some sort of amnesty deal with the FBI/DoJ beforehand. They had the goods on him, but they could not prosecute him. I am guessing that is probably also true with Michael Flynn--although, in that case it is different. Much of what our military and intelligence does is criminal in other countries. So they get a non-prosecution agreement with the United States in order to do their jobs. Prosecuting Flynn was a mean-spirited partisan hit, because he was not on board with the anti-Russia attitude of the neocons. Again, it required an independent counsel to prosecute Flynn, because of the non-prosecution agreement. For whatever reason, the neocons gave Obama and his flunkies a pass on his 8-year foreign policy failure. Prosecuting Russian companies, etc. was just window dressing. Prosecuting Stone is just breaking a butterfly on a wheel. Except for Flynn, they are all sort of regrettable characters. The only one that really deserved a prosecution was Manafort, and he was clearly an FBI informant for a time. I'm beginning to think the primary purpose of appointing the independent counsel was to prosecute those who have non-prosecution agreements with the DoJ. Otherwise, it's
raison d'être really doesn't make much sense. Mueller has spent ridiculous amounts of money that no sensible prosecutor would spend on something like the Stone case or the Papadopolous case.
At any rate, I think Mueller's efforts have backfired in a strategic sense and will have the opposite of the intended effect to intimidate over the long term--why the establishment hasn't figured that out after their efforts to silence the Tea Party is beyond me. Already, Stone has pointed out that more people were sent to arrest him than were sent to kill bin Laden; and more to arrest him than sent to rescue the CIA mission in Benghazi. Stone is a gadfly douche bag. I will give you that much, but he actually has a very good point here. Without making too much of Stone (he's really not an important character), he illustrates how fucked up the deep state really is, and huge chunks of the population agree with him on that assessment.
As I said years ago, Hillary Clinton's email scandal would be a big deal, that it was in fact criminal, that the criminal aspect of it was actually the minor part of the story, that she had seriously compromised US national security, AND THAT IN SPITE OF IT BEING CLEARLY AND UNMISTAKEABLY CRIMINAL, SHE WOULD NEVER BE PROSECUTED FOR IT.
So far, I've been pretty spot on in that analysis. Yet, to prosecute someone like Roger Stone for lying to Congress and not prosecute Hillary Clinton, James Comey, James Clapper, Andy McCabe, John Brennan, et. al. is to underscore the complete lack of justice and the utter contempt of people like Mueller for the appearance of justice. It does not make Stone look guilty of some seriously morbid crime, somehow tied to Russia, and make Clinton and the deep state as clear as the wind-driven snow. On the contrary, it has revealed a two-tiered justice system, and the fact that senior government officials really ARE BEYOND THE REACH OF THE LAW. They also seem to revel in it, which I think is a very dangerous game for them to be playing. They didn't care that Christopher Steele was getting killed by Ansar Al Sharia--Obama went to fundraiser the next day. Yet, they found it very important to have early morning raids on Manafort and Stone--larger than the raid on bin Laden, who killed thousands of Americans and launched a war whose costs run into the trillions of dollars. I'll refrain on commenting on what I think is obvious rampant cocaine use for another time. However, I think the establishment cabal is far more fucked than they realize.
jimjam wrote:pic is Comrade jimjam in Red Square a long time ago (kid Putin is off to the right just outside of camera range )
Brave man. Better hope Mueller doesn't see this thread.
The communist has some good stories of getting the shit kicked out him in Czechoslovakia before the wall came down. They were spending US dollars and living high on the hog instead of changing money as the law required. He had a funny one a few weeks ago too about a trip in Cambodia, where he didn't want to pay the ridiculous airfare between Pnomh Penh and Angor Wat. So he went to the edge of town and negotiated with a cabbie, who agreed to take him half way. Then, the cabbie asked for all his small change--like Venezuela, paper bills are worthless due to hyperinflation. So the communist thought he was getting fucked. Anyway, they are driving down the road and coming to a bridge. A kid with an AK-47 comes out to the road and waves them to the side with his AK. The communist thinks the cabbie is going to stop and talk to them. Instead, the cabbie floors it and the kid jumps off the road. The commie hits the floor of the car to avoid what he thinks is going to be a shootout. He sees the cabbie grab a small stack of the bill and throw them out the window. So the communist gets up and looks and sees the kid drop the AK-47 and goes scurrying for the bills (probably a few bucks at most). He said that happened three or four more times before he got to the halfway point, where he'd have to find another cabbie--apparently they have a little cartel, and if the cabbie went any further than that halfway point, the cabbie would be in serious danger. Anyway, the commie gets a room and goes for drinks that night, and ends up seeing a bunch of UN soldiers there. So he asks them how the road is between there and Pnomh Penh. They ask why. He tells them about his trip from Pnomh Penh and their jaws hit the floor. "You drove that road?" "Yea" "We don't even drive that road. We fly in." Anyway, he got another cab, and there were no more AKs the rest of the way. I have some pretty colorful friends. Known the cop since the second grade, and the communist since the 9th grade. Great friends.
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