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The nonsense thread - Enter at your own risk! Warning… 100% off topic and full of nonsense inside (Read 890,474 times)
Joey
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Re: Politics thread - Enter at your own risk! Warning… Bullcrap inside
Reply #4400 - May 13th, 2019 at 9:00pm
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https://www.omaha.com/opinion/robert-j-samuelson-economists-ignorance-gap/articl...








" Robert J. Samuelson: Economists' ignorance gap.  "









" WASHINGTON -- The most intriguing and indisputable thing we have learned about economists in recent decades is that they don't know nearly as much as they thought they knew. We see evidence of this all the time. Just recently, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that the economy had created 263,000 payroll jobs in April. This was almost 40% more than the 190,000 that economists had previously predicted.

Something new and different seems to be happening in labor markets, as the growth in jobs has continued to be unexpectedly strong. But just what it is, how long it will last and whether it might soon be reversed are mysteries to most of us, including most economists.

It's part of the larger problem. As an economic journalist for roughly half a century, I have slowly and somewhat reluctantly come to the conclusion that many economists (and this applies across the political spectrum) often don't know what they're talking about -- a shortcoming that is sometimes acknowledged and sometimes isn't.

Before I appear unbearably arrogant and superior, let me state the obvious. Most economists I've dealt with over the years are extremely smart and well-informed. They're a lot smarter than I am. I've learned much from them; it's been one of the rewards of the job. Most are also public-spirited and generous with their time. With a few exceptions, they generally elevate the level of public discussion.

Still, the record is what it is, and it's not pretty. Time after time, economists have failed to foresee major economic trends. In recent years, global interest rates have plunged to historically low levels (a 10-year Treasury bond fetches 2.5%). Given the importance of interest rates in economic decisions -- they affect everything from housing to the stock market -- this is a big deal. But most economists did not anticipate the declines and still can't fully explain them.

Going back a bit further, economists did not predict double-digit inflation (monthly peaks of 12% in 1975 and 15% in 1980). Its emergence frightened and demoralized millions of Americans. Indeed, policies advocated by Democratic economists in the 1960s kindled the inflation. Now, ironically, inflation has unexpectedly remained low (generally less than 2% annually), and many economists have been baffled by that, too.

Productivity is another disappointment. As you probably know, productivity is just another term for efficiency. It means doing more with less. Higher productivity is the ultimate engine of higher living standards. It is crucial to economic success.

Over the past five decades, I cannot remember one instance when economists have correctly forecast a major shift in productivity growth, whether up or down. Not in the late 1960s and early 1970s, when productivity growth slowed. Nor in the 1990s, when productivity accelerated. And not now, when there's been a pronounced slowdown. (From 2010 to 2017, productivity growth has averaged 0.5% annually compared with a post-World War II average of 2%.)

The Trump administration's economists believe they will reverse these trends. Their corporate tax cuts will stimulate investment and productivity gains, the thinking goes. Maybe, but I'm skeptical. My view is that the ignorance gap is huge -- that is, the separation between what economists know (and by extension the rest of us) and what we need to know.

Of course, the most conspicuous example of this ignorance gap is the recent 2008-09 financial crisis and Great Recession. "Why did nobody notice it?" Queen Elizabeth famously asked. The answer is actually fairly easy.

Economists and others are conditioned by their own experiences, and a widespread financial panic in a rich society was not among those experiences. It hadn't happened in their lifetimes and couldn't happen. We had solved that problem through sensible government regulation and sophisticated financial management.

So it seemed. In reality, the belief that we had outlawed a financial panic rationalized more risk-taking behavior, which ultimately led to a financial panic.

The larger cause of  the ignorance gap is the very complexity and obscurity of a $20 trillion economy (the United States) or an $85 trillion economy (the world). To say that it is changing in detailed and often-unanticipated ways is simply to affirm that mere mortals, including economists, have never been very good at predicting the future.

What I think can be held against economists -- not all, but many -- is that they exaggerate what they know and how much they can influence the economy.

The aim is usually to gain and retain political relevance and power. But the actual result is often disappointment, as government performance falls short of promises. A little more humility might be in order. "

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Re: Politics thread - Enter at your own risk! Warning… Bullcrap inside
Reply #4401 - May 13th, 2019 at 9:22pm
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https://www.scmp.com/comment/insight-opinion/article/3004965/xi-jinping-can-take...




" Xi Jinping can take lessons from Kublai Khan in reaching out to the West . "






" In the 13th century, Kublai Khan reached out to the West. Can Xi Jinping do better? "





" The legendary Italian merchant Marco Polo built his name on extensive travel in the East and particularly China. However, history has not given enough credit to his father Niccolo and uncle Maffeo who took the Silk Road to China in 1266 when Marco was only 12 years old. Only on a trip to China in 1271, did the brothers bring the then 17-year-old with them.

When the Polo brothers met Chinese emperor Kublai Khan, the grandson of founding emperor Genghis Khan, the ruler of the middle kingdom liked the exotic foreigners. He asked them to deliver a letter to Pope Clement IV in 1267 requesting the Pope send 100 priests to teach Chinese people Christianity and Western science, among others. The letter also contained a gold tablet which stated that the brothers represented the Khan himself and it guaranteed their safety and all the necessary help throughout the lands controlled by the emperor.

Fast-forward to March 2019, and Chinese leader Xi Jinping’s visit to Europe and Italy’s signing up to the “Belt and Road Initiative”, a grand plan proposed by China to rebuild the economic engine of the world. However, this time Italians, especially its press, got a very different reception.

According to the Italian newspaper Il Foglio, a Chinese diplomat told its reporter covering Xi’s visit: “You have to stop saying bad things about China.” Refusing to shake her hand, the diplomat added: “I know very well who you are.”

The incident aroused as much ire as suspicion in Europe and the ripples are still spreading. Is the belt and road plan mainly an economic initiative or part of China’s efforts to subject the world to authoritarian rule? Can the West save its troubled economy with help from Beijing without sacrificing principles like free speech?

However, Chinese diplomats should not let arrogance and rudeness get the better of them. Fighting diplomacy should give way to respect and professionalism, no matter how big the business deal is. If Chinese apparatchiks do not understand the complexities of modern international politics, just remember that the international media is not CCTV.

And there are other issues. According to the Washington-based Centre for Strategic and International Studies, Chinese companies got 89 per cent of the transport projects financed by China in the belt and road plan. Let’s be fair: Chinese companies do have an edge on low cost, high speed and lucrative financing schemes for infrastructure projects. However, the initiative should not be an overseas playground to consume China’s domestic overcapacity.

Elaine Yi Lu, director and professor of City University of New York and an expert on public budgeting and finance, suggested China set up a working body to handle procurement of high-value belt and road projects.

“Contracts without national security implications should be awarded to companies that are best suited to execute them, regardless of whether they are Chinese companies or not,” Lu said in an interview.

Italy was the first in the Group of Seven to endorse China’s scheme. “The [initiative] is a train Italy cannot afford to miss,” Italian economy minister Giovanni Tria told an audience at the Boao Forum in Hainan last month.

Italian politicians need to remember the West can also give something as they tried with Kublai Khan. He had asked the Polo brothers to bring something from the Pope – oil from the lamp at the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem. Now, Italy and its partners in the West should work to infuse China with a “new oil” of international standards and good practice. The lamp of hope, fairness and mutual prosperity will light China’s journey to national rejuvenation. Xi and his Western counterparts should outdo their ancestors in the 1200s. China can start by giving foreign media their own “gold tablets” with assurances not to intimidate and threaten reporters. "
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Re: Politics thread - Enter at your own risk! Warning… Bullcrap inside
Reply #4402 - May 14th, 2019 at 8:17am
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Re: Politics thread - Enter at your own risk! Warning… Bullcrap inside
Reply #4403 - May 14th, 2019 at 8:49am
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So...Trump wants $15 billion to give to his farm base that are being hurt by Chinese tariffs. Sounds a lot like Socialism to me. I'm surprised the GOP has time for this after working overtime to screw women on abortion and new "free rape' laws here in the dark South.
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Re: Politics thread - Enter at your own risk! Warning… Bullcrap inside
Reply #4404 - May 14th, 2019 at 9:23pm
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<  -------------- GIMMEKEEF   ?! .................. !!!!!!!!!!!   :







https://www.omaha.com/opinion/marc-a-thiessen-trump-didn-t-start-this-trade-war/...







" Marc A. Thiessen: Trump didn't start this trade war -- China did. "








" WASHINGTON -- Before President Donald Trump announced that he was imposing 25% tariffs on hundreds of billions of dollars' worth of Chinese goods, he got encouragement from an unlikely source: Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y. The Senate Democratic leader, who has little good to say about Trump most days, tweeted, "Hang tough on China, @realDonaldTrump. Don't back down. Strength is the only way to win with China."

That should have been a wake-up call for Beijing. When Chuck Schumer is tweeting support for Donald Trump, it's time to cut a deal.

But China didn't cut a deal -- and now it is paying a price. Those who suggest Trump started this trade war with China have it backward. Beijing has been waging economic warfare on the United States for years -- stealing our intellectual property, forcing our companies to transfer technology as a price of doing business in China and subsidizing state-owned enterprises to prevent U.S. businesses from competing in dozens of sectors of the Chinese economy. The difference now is that Chinese leaders are facing a president who is willing to fight back.

China apparently didn't think Trump would do so. The Wall Street Journal reports that Chinese negotiators believed they had leverage because Trump "was worried about the future course of the U.S. economy and therefore may be more eager to do a deal." Big mistake. The U.S. economy is strong, unemployment is at the lowest level in five decades and wages are rising. In fact, America's biggest economic problem is that we have more job openings than unemployed people to fill them.

China's economy, by contrast, is in trouble. Last year, China reported its slowest economic growth since 1990, and the Financial Times reports that many experts "believe its official data understates the true extent of the slowdown." While the United States has added about half a million manufacturing jobs since Trump took office, China's manufacturing sector is shedding jobs. And the Chinese population is aging rapidly as birthrates are falling, which means the workforce is becoming smaller and less productive.

Our economic strength against China's relative weakness gives Trump leverage in this standoff, and he is using it. Trump knows the United States can better withstand a trade war than China and that President Xi Jinping needs a deal more than he does.

Trump is wrong when he says tariffs are good for our economy because China is paying us "hundreds of billions of dollars" in tariff revenue -- money he can use to help farmers withstand the blow of lost sales to Beijing. China is not paying the cost of tariffs. American businesses and consumers are paying. But the fact that Trump mistakenly believes that tariffs are good for the economy should be a wake-up call for Beijing. He thinks he's in a win-win situation, and that means, in this game of chicken, Trump is not going to blink.

And while China is not paying the cost of the tariffs, their impact on U.S. consumers may not be as bad as some observers predict. As my American Enterprise Institute colleague Derek Scissors points out, our low rate of inflation neutralizes much of the cost of higher prices from tariffs, which will diminish over time. "If the U.S. places 25% tariffs on all Chinese imports and no substitution for those goods and services occurs, the additional cost would be $145 billion. That's a bit over 1% of 2018 consumer spending," Scissors writes, but "the cost will certainly not that be that high, because substitution will occur. And the cost will fall over time as more producers enter to replace Chinese."

In other words, our dynamic, growing, low-inflation economy can handle a trade war with China. That does not mean China will buckle easily. State ownership is the means by which the Communist Party directs the Chinese economy. Getting China to stop subsidizing large sectors of its economy, and to cease its theft of U.S. intellectual property, will be extremely difficult. But Trump knows he has no chance of doing so by filing complaints with the World Trade Organization. He is right to take a hard-line stance.

It's much easier to question the wisdom of launching trade wars with allies such as Canada and the European Union. But we should all be able to agree that China is an economic predator against which we need to fight back.

Trump is using tariffs to force China to open its markets to free trade and competition. Every American should be standing behind the president as he does so -- just like Chuck Schumer."

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Reply #4405 - May 14th, 2019 at 9:30pm
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...
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Reply #4406 - May 14th, 2019 at 9:51pm
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<  -------------- Some Guy   ?!  ....... !!!!!!!    :







https://www.bbc.com/news/business-48267680






" Markets calm amid hopes for US-China talks . "









" Global stock markets have steadied amid hopes that the US and China will resume talks next month, following an escalation in their trade war.

On Monday, China said it would hike tariffs on $60bn (£46bn) of US exports, causing stock markets to tumble.

But later US President Donald Trump said he expected to meet China's president at the G20 summit in Japan.

He also said he had not decided whether to go ahead with threatened tariffs on another $325bn of Chinese imports.

At a briefing on Tuesday, China's foreign ministry spokesman Geng Shuang said: "The two heads of state maintain contact through various means."

But when asked whether China was making preparations for a possible Xi-Trump meeting, Mr Geng said: "I have no information at present about the specific question raised."

Asia markets rose in early trading on Wednesday, with the Shanghai Composite adding 0.9%.

The gains in Asia followed a modest rise on Wall Street. The Dow Jones Industrial average closed 0.8% higher after falling more than 2% the previous day when China announced its retaliatory measures.

The S&P 500 climbed 0.8% and the Nasdaq ended 1.1% ahead.

European indexes also recovered with London's FTSE 100 up 0.8%, Germany's Dax 0.4% higher, and the French Cac 40 up 0.9%.

On Friday, Washington doubled duties on $200bn of Chinese goods, having accused Beijing of trying to renegotiate a trade deal.

The war of words between the countries had intensified after the latest round of US-Chinese trade negotiations ended in Washington last week without a deal,

Mr Trump warned China not to raise levies and urged US firms to buy goods from other countries such as Vietnam.

But Mr Geng told a news briefing in Beijing that China would "never surrender to external pressure".

From 1 June, China will impose duties on US goods including beef, lamb and pork products, as well as various varieties of vegetables, fruit juice, cooking oil, tea and coffee.

As well as ordering a tariff increase on $200bn worth of Chinese imports, Mr Trump had directed the US trade department "to begin the process of raising tariffs on essentially all remaining imports from China".

The US released a list of those additional Chinese products that could face higher levies.

But after China's response, he said he had "not made a decision" on whether to go ahead with those additional levies.

He also said the US had "a very good relationship" with China, and the two sides would talk at G20 summit on 28-29 June.

"Maybe something will happen," he said. "We're going to be meeting, as you know, at the G20 in Japan and that'll be, I think, probably a very fruitful meeting."

The US argues that China's trade surplus with the US is the result of unfair practices, including state support for domestic companies.

It also accuses China of stealing intellectual property from US firms.

But Mr Trump's approach in the dispute has put him at odds with his own top economic adviser, Larry Kudlow, who has said "both sides will suffer".

On Tuesday, the president remained defiant, tweeting: "In one year Tariffs have rebuilt our Steel Industry - it is booming! We placed a 25% Tariff on 'dumped' steel from China & other countries, and we now have a big and growing industry."
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Reply #4407 - May 14th, 2019 at 10:15pm
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<  ------------- Nanky   ?!   .... !!!!!!!!!!!   :







https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/06/opinion/vietnam-tet-offensive.html









" What I Saw During the Tet Offensive . "

By Joseph Zengerle





" When I arrived in Vietnam in late December 1967, I thought we might be winning the war. Gen. William Westmoreland, the American commander in Saigon, had just given a speech in Washington stating that the end was beginning “to come into view.” As a 25-year-old Army captain assigned to be Westmoreland’s special assistant, I would be handling highly classified intelligence for him, as well as sensitive privacy communications we called the “back channel.”

After my first weeks, the edgy vigilance about enemy action I’d had eased up. One evening in early January, colleagues from the office drove me downtown, along the wide tree-lined boulevards that framed the French colonial architecture of Saigon, to the old Continental Hotel. There, under fans slowly circling above the elegant patio, we looked out on the heavily trafficked square and sipped wine, interrupted occasionally by the rumble of distant artillery reminding us of the war going on outside the city.

The atmosphere at the Military Assistance Command, Vietnam headquarters, or MACV, was intense but orderly. I saw Senator Birch Bayh, a young Democrat from Indiana, meet with Westmoreland, and I wondered if Bayh had been sent to test the general’s political fitness — after all, it had been less than 20 years since Gen. Dwight Eisenhower had been persuaded to run for president. The previous year, Westmoreland had appeared on the cover of Time for the third time, in a photo of him addressing a joint session of Congress. A year earlier, he had been the magazine’s Man of the Year.

Abruptly, for me, within days the relative equilibrium I’d found on arrival began to change. In early January I tried to phone one of my roommates from West Point, who was commanding an infantry company upcountry. I finally reached his first sergeant. He gave me a crisp and brutal report: “Sir, you’re too late. The C.O. tripped a booby trap this morning crossing a stream bed on patrol in the Bong Son Plain area. His last words were, ‘Top, come get me.’”

Not long after that phone call, I was awakened at about 3 a.m. by explosions near my bachelor officer quarters at the Khai Minh Hotel. I grabbed my .45 and ran downstairs in my shorts to help organize a perimeter defense. Helicopter gunships were firing rockets into a cemetery a couple of blocks away. We secured a Military Police jeep (the MPs were responsible for security in Saigon) to establish a line of communication, but a wounded soldier somewhere had grabbed a push-to-talk handset and wouldn’t let go, alternately pleading for help with his injury and describing armed Vietnamese, presumably Vietcong, advancing on his position. A coordinated, large-scale enemy assault had erupted throughout South Vietnam at the beginning of the Vietnamese New Year; the Tet offensive had begun.

An armed convoy came to my quarters to take me and others to MACV. There were a large number of top-secret documents in my office that needed to be destroyed. I went outside to burn the papers in a special incinerator but had to take cover because of enemy rounds ricocheting off the incinerator, fired at me from across the street near Tan Son Nhut, South Vietnam’s largest airport and the headquarters of the United States 7th Air Force.

Nerves were frayed, even at high levels. One very early morning I received an “immediate” message through the general service network for Westmoreland from Adm. U. S. Grant Sharp, the head of Pacific Command and Westmoreland’s immediate superior. I decided the message was not critical enough to awaken Westmoreland but instead woke the major general who was his operations chief to handle the matter.

As I later learned from Westmoreland’s chief of staff, Maj. Gen. Walter Kerwin, Sharp discovered I had not immediately delivered his message to Westmoreland and was furious, directing that I be court-martialed. Kerwin called me into his office, asked what I had done with the message, told me of Sharp’s direction and, like a Dutch uncle (Kerwin’s nickname was Dutch), said to make sure I followed Sharp’s preferences in the future.

Tet had put everyone on an acute war footing, but I found that it also relaxed formalities. I showed Westmoreland a classified message concerning the surface-to-air Talos missile, which was to be used to shoot down enemy aircraft. He wrote a note on the message, explained to me its meaning and told me to meet with the commanding general of the 7th Air Force at Tan Son Nhut to coordinate rules of engagement — a mission otherwise way above my pay grade.

There was also a kind of camaraderie that developed under the pressure of Tet and its aftermath. I was impressed by the relationship between Westmoreland and his deputy (and soon to be successor), Gen. Creighton Abrams. The two had graduated the same year from West Point, 1936. Both had distinguished themselves in combat during World War II, Westmoreland under Gen. Maxwell Taylor and Abrams under Gen. George Patton. I saw nothing but mutual regard between the two, observing occasions when Westmoreland would ask something of “Abe,” who would respond in his gravelly voice, with familiarity yet deference for all to see: “Yes, sahr.”

I remember one particular private conversation I had with Abrams. Shortly after Tet, American forces had suffered a combat setback near a region nicknamed the Parrot’s Beak, a bit of Cambodian territory that jutted into South Vietnam toward Saigon. After I asked about the engagement during a customary daily briefing I gave him, Abrams rose from his simple steel desk, picked up a ubiquitous cigar, pulled out a telescoped pointer, squatted down in front of a map board in his office, described the disposition of friendly and enemy forces, and explained why he thought things had not gone well — the sort of careful, thorough response a general officer would give a peer, near-equal or a visiting dignitary, but not a junior officer like me. I had been nervous asking the question, and deeply surprised with his response; by such grace is loyalty cemented.

The intensity of the fighting during Tet also concentrated the chain of command. Signals intelligence indicated a noteworthy movement of the North Vietnamese Army in I Corps, the tactical area immediately below the Demilitarized Zone that included Hue, the imperial city of Vietnam that was largely occupied by enemy forces during Tet. Westmoreland was away, so I woke Abrams and showed him the information. Bleary-eyed, he asked for pencil and paper. Sitting on the side of his bed, he deliberately wrote an articulate operations order that I sent to the Marine commanding general in the area, moving artillery, armored, airborne and infantry units to respond to the threat, stating that he would establish a jump command post and arrive the next day. The occupation of Hue was eventually lifted.

A powerful demonstration of our military might regularly arose out of the Combined Intelligence Center in the basement of MACV headquarters (my office was in an additionally secured area at the rear of the center). Westmoreland and Abrams would be briefed, on large maps showing all information that had been gathered, by senior staff like the brigadier generals in charge of intelligence and the Combat Operations Center. The goal was to determine targets for B-52 bombers flown out of Guam to support ground operations. There were three B-52s, or “cells,” in each strike, in what was called Operation Arc Light. Each B-52 bombed an area half a kilometer wide and a kilometer long; each carried a payload of 80 or more 500-pound bombs, arriving in the silence of the jungle from an altitude of 33,000 feet. To observe the decision-making process and be in the middle of the “brain” directing such firepower across such vast spaces was a humbling experience; it was like watching a Thor toss thunderbolts.

A striking incident occurred a few weeks after Tet. Westmoreland summoned me to his office. I had already seen him that day; such a call at his initiative was unusual. I closed his door and he showed me a message he had written requesting 200,000 or more troops (there were about 500,000 troops in-country then). He told me: “Send it back channel to” Gen. Earl Wheeler, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. “Show it to no one else.” I sent the message to Wheeler. After review at the highest levels, the request was denied.

Tensions remained high. At the end of March, I received from the White House an advance copy of the speech President Lyndon Johnson was scheduled to make to the nation on March 31. It did not contain the passage in which he declared he would not run for another term; that he added, secretly, at almost the last minute. I printed copies and went to Westmoreland’s conference room, where he had gathered with Ambassador Ellsworth Bunker, Abrams and others. Westmoreland asked when the speech would be delivered. I responded with the hour and minute, Saigon time. Abrams barked: “How come you’re always so goddamned positive?”

A few days later, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated. My wife, Lynda, was working at the State Department, and I learned that Washington was under curfew. I stood in a long line to make a Military Auxiliary Radio System call to her. MARS calls relied on civilian ham operators relaying straight-line shots across the Pacific, tower to tower. Lynda told me she saw downtown Washington on fire from the top of our apartment building on Connecticut Avenue. I asked from the capital of the war zone whether there was anything I could do for her in our nation’s capital. She said: “Yes. Come home.” We heard the ham operators chuckle.

The next month, President Johnson promoted Westmoreland to chief of staff of the Army and named Abrams to replace him. Soon after, I went to Tan Son Nhut to catch a military hop to Danang to command a small unit in I Corps with the 23rd Infantry Division, known as Americal, whose area of operations included My Lai, where Lt. William Calley and his platoon had killed South Vietnamese civilians two months earlier. Pacing in the airport waiting area, I passed a sailor’s transistor radio leaning on an open window sill and heard the announcement that Senator Robert F. Kennedy had been shot.

Shortly after I had arrived in Vietnam, six months earlier, the Army had offered to send me to graduate school on my return in order to teach at West Point. Following the King assassination, I requested approval of my resignation as a commissioned officer. In 1968, an average of 45 Americans died in Vietnam every day. With any luck, in another six months, I would be going home. "
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Re: Politics thread - Enter at your own risk! Warning… Bullcrap inside
Reply #4408 - May 15th, 2019 at 9:00pm
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https://www.omaha.com/opinion/brian-klaas-deepfakes-are-coming-and-we-re-not-rea...








" Brian Klaas: Deepfakes are coming, and we're not ready .  "










" If 2016 was the election of “fake news,” 2020 has the potential to be the election of “deepfakes,” the new phenomenon of bogus videos created with the help of artificial intelligence. It’s becoming easier and cheaper to create such videos. Soon, those with even a rudimentary technical knowledge will be able to fabricate videos that are so true to life that it becomes difficult, if not impossible, to determine whether the video is real.

In the era of conspiracy theories, disinformation and absurd denials by politicians staring down seemingly indisputable facts, it is only a matter of time before deepfakes are weaponized in ways that poison the foundational principle of democracy: informed consent of the governed. After all, how can voters make appropriate decisions if they aren’t sure what is fact and what is fiction? Unfortunately, we are careening toward that moment faster than we think.

Deepfakes are created by something called a “generative adversarial network,” or GAN. GANs are technically complex, but they operate on a simple principle. There are two automated rivals in the system: a forger and a detective. The forger tries to create fake content, while the detective tries to figure out what is authentic and what is forged. Over each iteration, the forger learns from its mistakes.

Eventually, the forger gets so good that it is difficult to tell the difference between fake and real content. And when that happens with deepfakes, those are the videos that are likely to fool humans, too.

Of course, fakes and forgeries are not new. Whether it was the Soviets airbrushing out “undesirables” or Hollywood special effects, convincing imitations of reality have been around for a while. But in both instances, there were only a few masters of the trade who could pull off a convincing fake. Deepfakes, on the other hand, require little technical expertise, meaning that virtually anyone with the right software will be able to make any fake video of just about any person seemingly saying whatever they want.

That democratization of forgery is just around the corner. “I would say within another 18 to 24 months, that technology is going to get to a point where the human brain may not be able to decipher it,” Hany Farid, a professor of computer science at Dartmouth College, recently told me. Soon, the forger will consistently fool us. “The things that keep me up at night these days are the ability to create a fake video and audio of a world leader saying I’ve launched nuclear weapons,” Farid told me. “The technology to create that exists today.”

Once those videos go online, millions of people will fall for them. But the really scary question is this: Will any nuclear-armed governments fall for them, too, and launch a counterattack based on a lie?

Deepfakes could also imperil the democratic process itself. It’s not difficult to imagine a scandalous, but fake, video being posted online right before polls open, or to imagine conspiracy theorists sharing a doctored video aimed at destroying a political opponent. That’s not so far-fetched, given that it’s already happened, albeit with old-school editing rather than deepfake technology.

But, as Farid worries, perhaps the larger threat comes from the destruction of democratic accountability. “Because if it is, in fact, the case that almost anything can be faked well, then nothing is real.” Once deepfakes exist, politicians can pretend that any disqualifying behavior has actually been created by a neural network.

So how does reality fight back? Unfortunately, detecting fake content after it’s uploaded isn’t really an option. Technology companies and news networks will need to consider adapting to this technological frontier with “secure imaging pipelines,” which verify and authenticate content at the source when it is created. Just as Twitter users have verified check marks, so too could videos posted online, marking them as authentic and unedited. But ultimately, the solution lies with us.

Deepfakes are a threat to our democracy because of underlying political deficiencies that make us an easy target. A significant chunk of the U.S. electorate dabbles in conspiracy theories, encouraged by a president who promotes them himself. And the groups most likely to be fooled are those who have low levels of media literacy and are unable to discern questionable sources from reliable ones. If better forgers are coming, we, as citizens, need to ensure that voters are educated to become better detectives. "
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<  -------------  Some Guy   ?!   ..... !!!!!!!!!!!   ............   '  Politics Ain't Beanbag !!!!!!  '  ..........  Rough Stuff !!!!!     :








https://www.arcamax.com/politics/mod/davidignatius/s-2208414





" On the world stage, Trump's disruptive style has diminishing returns  .  "




David Ignatius on May 15, 2019








" WASHINGTON -- President Trump has styled himself in foreign policy as the Great Disrupter. And for a time, this unpredictable approach served him reasonably well. Leaders from China, North Korea and Iran found themselves off balance, and they sometimes made what looked like concessions.

Trump's problem is that, after two years, foreign nations seem to have figured him out. Rather than crafting quick deals that Trump could tout as wins, these adversaries have played a waiting game. They appear to sense in Trump an impatience and hunger for the spotlight that undermine his ability to negotiate.

Trump in recent weeks has moved toward confrontations with China, North Korea and Iran. In each case, the White House has maximum goals without a clearly discernible strategy for achieving them. Trump's statements oscillate between hardline rhetoric and invitations to personal diplomacy. Sometimes he appears to contradict positions that his advisers have taken. Once, this back-and-forth might have produced leverage for Trump; now, it often just yields confusion.

Looking at the various global showdowns, you can see a common theme -- of adversaries that appear more willing to take risks in resisting Trump's demands. Trump's response is often to double down. This dynamic carries a danger of miscalculation.

In the trade war with China, Trump embraced the perennial U.S. desire for a "level playing field." But he pursued it with a blunderbuss, through escalating tariffs. Trump seemed convinced that China would eventually make concessions that he could claim as a victory. Such a deal seemed imminent this month, and Trump said on Monday that it was 95% done when Chinese leaders balked.

U.S. experts offer two theories about why China resisted a settlement. One is that Trump's negotiators wouldn't promise to remove promptly all tariffs imposed on $250 billion in Chinese products, and the Chinese didn't trust an erratic American president to eliminate them eventually. Another theory is that Trump's bravado had convinced the Chinese that he was actually in a weak position and could be pushed.

Either way, Trump's negotiating style seemed to be part of the problem. Trump and President Xi Jinping will meet at next month's G20 summit perhaps for a reset.

The nuclear negotiations with North Korea have been even more puzzling. Trump went for a showy but vague denuclearization statement in his first summit with Chairman Kim Jong Un in Singapore. His State Department advisers then worked to prepare a roadmap for step-by-step negotiations to achieve that goal; but Trump, impatient with slow progress, pushed for another showy maximal agreement at the Hanoi summit in February.

When that summit collapsed, Trump tried flattering Kim and publicly endorsed the incremental approach. Kim, perhaps sensing uncertainty in Trump's changing positions, turned up the pressure by resuming missile tests this month. The U.S. matched Pyongyang's show of strength by seizing a North Korean ship allegedly carrying forbidden cargo.

The bottom line is that with North Korea, as with China, Trump's disruptive style has had diminishing returns.

Which brings us to the most dangerous of the confrontations, the test of strength with Iran. As Trump tightened the vise of sanctions on the Iranian economy, Tehran seems to have opted for counter-disruption. Israel and other Middle East allies have warned of Iranian preparations for sabotage or military action; the U.S. responded with an aircraft carrier group and B-52 bombers.

When several tankers were damaged off the UAE this week, perhaps by an Iranian mine, The New York Times reported that the administration had updated plans to send as many as 120,000 U.S. troops to the region if necessary. But as always with Trump, there have been mixed signals: The White House is exploring whether to refer the tanker incident to the United Nations, and Trump has said he's waiting for a call from Iranian leaders.

Trump's approach as he strides toward the brink in negotiations often seems that of a gambler. He's operating on instinct and luck, rather than a careful strategy. He's not counting cards, or precisely calculating the odds. He's winging it, hoping he can bluff the other players. He plays hunches; he blusters his adversaries and then flatters them; he focuses on the optics of looking strong, as opposed to the fundamentals.

The philosopher Isaiah Berlin famously divided people into hedgehogs, who know one big thing, and foxes, who know many little things. Trump may snort like a hedgehog, but his shifting deal-making approach may be closer to a fox -- albeit an uncertain one -- and the other animals in the forest seem to have figured that out.

========

Follow David Ignatius on Twitter: @IgnatiusPost.




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It's a shitstorm over here. Property management was not aware that single ply was being used in any buildings.
developing...


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<  --------------- Another Friday Evening    ..................  Another Night of  ................ Wait for it !!!!!!!   .......   :







That is right .   THAT IS RIGHT !!!!!!   : 




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*****  " DRINKING WITH Xi :     "  Season Ending  ' Steely '  Edition     !!!!!!!  "   *****






Hello Me Stonesian Brothers and Sisters    






  **** “  Give Her Some Funked Up Music    ……  She Treats You Nice !   ….  Feed Her Some Hungry Reggae   ……. She Will Love You TWICE !!!!   “ *****



     Hello Me Stoneslings . Well , The Rolling Stones’ rescheduled tour dates are FINALLY here .   Needless to say the new Glendale , AZ ( Phoenix )
date is going to be absolutely SCORCHING !     ….. Nasty !  Phoenix , AZ in the Dead ‘ Heat ‘ of Summer    ----- most charming . I feel like Johnny
Carson flying out to Washington DC in the dead of winter ( circa : January 1981 ) to host President Reagan’s Inaugural Gala  [ Johnny did not
really care to emcee the event but Reagan was smart enough to engage Frank Sinatra in the matter  ;  saying ,  “ No “  to a President - Elect
is one thing but nobody , NOBODY says “ No “ to Frank  ]  .   Smiley    …… Reagan’s  ‘ Dumb Guy  ‘  facade was even better than Bushie41’s  ‘ Wimpy
Guy ‘  façade .  GREAT ACTOR !  He was simply ,  ………..  THE BEST !  … Can one really do ANY job without being a Fantastic Actor ?

     Speaking of acting ,  Emperor Xi , His Entourage and myself all met up Friday Evening at The Brazen Head for myriad , multitudinous and dare
I say  …  umpteen Premium Guinness Pints . As Senior VIP Bar Manager Heather   --  scantily clad in her diaphanous , silken and translucid blouse top
(  …  necessary to display / exhibit  ‘ The Girls ‘  [ those things paid for themselves in one EVENING !    ….. well , almost  Smiley  ]   )    --- proffered round
after round  of Jagerbombs , Pints and copious shots of that damn BarenJager  ( Yes , Xi is back on his honey – flavoured liqueur kick )  ,  The Emperor
and myself got down to business . In foreign affairs he is like a Rome Consul    ---- he sees the whole world ;  his disposition : never Manichean and his
long game rivals that of Tiger Woods . Still , we both agreed this is NOT like The North Korean negotiations where the topic is nuclear weapons / nuclear
annihilation   --- In that specific case :  No Deal is DEFINITELY better than a BAD Deal .  I remarked to The Emperor ,  “ there are some individuals who feel you
are NOT All – Powerful and these same cats feel you have to answer to the Chinese People every single day . “   Xi brayed ,  “ Let me remind
these  ‘ certain individuals ‘ that any President who can constitutionally declare himself ‘ President For Life ‘ remains quite Impressive by ANYONE’s
book .  Eighteen Months is a sliver of time and can be spent  -- if necessary  -- endlessly arguing about the size / shape of a Conference Table . “
( See : 1968   --  LBJ and the United States / Vietnamese Paris Peace Accords  )  .  Xi continued  ,  “ By delaying a trade deal , President Trump has
just opened the door to his political enemies   ---  what is to prevent the Biden People from pulling a  ‘ Richard Nixon  /  Anna Chennault  1968 ‘  ?
( using backchannel communications to tell the Chinese to  ‘ Hold Tight and wait until 2021 ;  You will get a better Trade Agreement under a brand new
Democratic Administration . ‘  “ )  The DEMS will then sit back and watch the stock market and the economy deteriorate right up to the election .   

     CONSENSUS : Xi and The Great Man  ---- President Donald J. Trump (  “ SUPREME “  Leader ! ) need to get a deal . Make the best possible settlement ,
grab it and bring it on home where one can spin the friggin SH# T out of the covenant  .  By Election Day 2020 ,  nobody will give a Rats Ass about any
compact’s cloudy and fusty IP/AI  Details    ----- they just want to sell their Red State Crops / Manufactured Products to the Chinese  … and FAST !
     It was at that EXACT moment when Heather lustily clambered over to our side of the bar ,  whispered  ‘  something  ‘  into Emperor Xi’s ear  ,  and the
two of them sauntered off into the Robert Emmett Room for the rest of the Evening …….with requisite Bottle of BarenJager 😊 . No Static . At ALL !






*************************     … “  I LOVE YOU ALL !!!!!!!!!!!  “   
    *****************












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<  ------------ Looking GOOD !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!   :








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<  ----------------- N  -  Nanky   ?!   ....... !!!!!!!!!  :






https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-43650637






" Anna Chennault: 'Steel butterfly' who charmed US and China. "








" Also known by her Chinese name, Chen Xiangmei, she was a stylish fixture on Washington DC's political circuit - but also an unofficial diplomat who skilfully navigated the currents and eddies of 20th Century politics.

She met former US presidents John F Kennedy and Richard Nixon, and former secretary of state Henry Kissinger. She also met China's Deng Xiaoping and Taiwan's Chiang Kai-shek.

All were reportedly impressed by the woman dubbed by the Washington Post as the "legendary steel butterfly".

"There can only be one Chen Xiangmei in the world, let alone the US," declared Deng after he met her in 1981.

Perhaps the key to her charm was her ability to be all things to all people.

To the Americans, she was a staunch anti-communist. But to the Chinese, she was a renowned war hero's widow. And to the Taiwanese, she was a key lobbyist who ensured vital US support.

Born in 1923 in Beijing to well-educated and wealthy parents, she attended university in Hong Kong and later became a reporter for a Chinese news agency.

In 1944, she received the assignment that would change her life. She was sent to Kunming to interview US Maj Gen Claire Chennault, the leader of the Flying Tigers volunteer group of US pilots who battled against Japanese planes to protect China.

She and the general, who was three decades older, fell in love.

After World War Two ended, Maj Gen Chennault divorced his wife in the US and married Chen Xiangmei. He died in 1958 from cancer.

At the time Anna Chennault, as she was known by then, was just 35 years old. Together with her two young daughters, she moved to Washington DC where she made a new life for herself as a journalist, translator, and businesswoman running her late husband's air transport companies.

Over the years, she became one of America's most influential private citizens, known as much for her charm and persuasiveness as for her glamorous image.

She was famed for her parties in her penthouse apartment at the Watergate complex - yes, that Watergate - which drew the who's who of the US political scene. Among them was Richard Nixon, who she supported as a Republican activist and who called her "Dragon Lady".

"She was somebody who interpreted China to Americans, government officials, businesses and the public, to a certain extent. Plus, she interpreted the United States to all these Asian countries," her biographer Catherine Forslund told the Washington Post.

Her life was not without controversy - one of her late husband's companies was purchased by the CIA and was reportedly used for anti-communist activities. And then there was the infamous "Chennault affair".

In 1968, the FBI secretly recorded Mrs Chennault telling the South Vietnamese government to boycott the Paris peace talks. A secret liaison for Nixon, she had essentially sabotaged a peace deal in order to improve his chances in the US presidential election.

She was accused of treason by outgoing president Lyndon B Johnson. But days later Nixon won the election, and she was never prosecuted.

Anna Chennault may have been a figure of intrigue, but as Chen Xiangmei she was seen as someone quite different.

To China, which still holds the Flying Tigers and Claire Chennault in high regard, she has primarily been seen as the keeper of her husband's flame. In 2015, she even received a medal from Chinese President Xi Jinping.

She was also seen as a successful overseas Chinese figure, one who played a key and patriotic role as a go-between for the US and China when the latter began opening up after the Cultural Revolution.

The Chinese press has focussed on her US political achievements, such as becoming the "first Chinese to have entered the White House" when she received a presidential appointment from John F Kennedy.

China's state news agency Xinhua called her "a famous Chinese-American and envoy of friendship for the US and China".

Such praise may be extraordinary considering that she was initially, for many decades, a strong opponent of the Communists in China.

By 1950, the Chinese Civil War had ended and the Kuomintang had set up a government in Taiwan. Mrs Chennault was close friends with Kuomintang leader Chiang Kai-shek and his wife Soong Mei-ling.

For years, she lobbied US politicians on behalf of Taiwan, and was dismayed when the US chose to recognise the Chinese Communist government in 1979.

But as the political winds began to shift, apparently so did her stance. In 1981, she was sent by Ronald Reagan to China as an unofficial US emissary, amid warming relations.

It was the first time she had visited her homeland in more than three decades. There, she met with Communist leader Deng Xiaoping, and US newspapers carried a picture of them smiling and shaking hands.

Upon her return to Washington, Mrs Chennault insisted to the US press that she had not had "a change of heart" about the Communists, but also admitted that people must be "humble enough to learn, courageous enough sometimes to change their positions".

Meanwhile in Taiwan, she continued to be feted for her earlier anti-communist efforts, and its foreign ministry this week paid tribute to her "long-term interest and active contributions to US-Taiwan relations".

Later in life, she devoted her time to improving relations among the three places, and was said to have acted as an unofficial conduit for successive governments. She led one of the first groups of Taiwanese business executives to visit mainland China in 1990, as well as US trade missions to China and other parts of Asia.

When she began her political career as a powerbroker, she appeared to resent the lack of recognition, telling People magazine that she "despised" being described as a mere "hostess".

But she eventually seemed to make peace with her behind-the-scenes role. "My whole life, from studying in exile to working in journalism to fighting it out alone in the US, has been filled with all kinds of bittersweet experiences," she told Chinese reporters in 2002.

"Under eight US presidents, I have taken on many important but unpaid jobs. This road I've travelled on has been very interesting - so I have not lived for nothing."
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<  ------------ Some Guy   ?!   ...... !!!!!!!!!!!!   :








https://www.arcamax.com/politics/mod/davidignatius/s-2211026?fs







" With Huawei, Trump confronts China's tech threat head on . "


David Ignatius on May 22, 2019







" WASHINGTON -- Huawei's name is often translated in English as "Chinese excellence." The Trump administration last week embarked on a campaign to rebrand the tech giant, in effect, as a "Chinese threat" and check its expansion in the West.

The Huawei assault may be the Trump administration's most important long-term strategic decision, because it confronts China's technological challenge to America head on. The goal is to prevent Huawei from dominating 5G wireless communications, the next phase of the digital revolution, by blocking use of its technology by America and its partners.

President Trump's action was the digital version of a combat-mobilization order. Because of Huawei's alleged threat to U.S. national security, he put it on the so-called "entity list," which forbids U.S. firms from selling technology to it without special permission. The impact was clear Monday when Google announced that it would stop selling updates of its Android operating system for Huawei phones.

The wiring of the global economy is entangled, so the Commerce Department granted a 90-day delay, probably to allow Google to send security patches and other urgent fixes. Commerce, meanwhile, has 150 days to draft rules that would block U.S. companies from buying Huawei equipment, though legal experts predicted that Huawei might successfully challenge that ban in U.S. courts.

It's a measure of Trump's erratic deal-making style that the first question for many observers was whether the president was serious about banning Huawei, or whether he was simply applying more pressure to get his stalled trade deal. Trump backed off last year from a similar squeeze against ZTE, another big Chinese telecom company, after a personal plea from President Xi Jinping.

Trump-watchers doubt he's bluffing this time. He recently told close advisers, "We have to win the 5G fight, period," according to former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, who attended the session. "I don't think we have any choice," Gingrich told me, because the alternative to checking Huawei is Chinese dominance of digital infrastructure.

"Huawei is the poster child of China Inc.," argued Christopher Johnson, a former top CIA analyst who's now with the Center for Strategic and International Studies. "If this campaign is successful, we've demonstrated that Xi's whole narrative that China has created an alternative to the West is false."

The danger, Johnson cautioned in an interview, is that if Trump forces European allies to choose between America and China, "You may not like their response."

Working with allies, never Trump's strong suit, will be crucial here. Right now, there's no good alternative to Huawei's 5G technology. Somehow, the U.S. needs to encourage catch-up work by South Korea's Samsung, Finland's Nokia and Sweden's Ericsson. Bizarrely, the administration didn't pre-brief allies on its Huawei plan.

U.S. intelligence agencies will applaud Trump's action. For a decade, they've warned that Huawei was creating a global platform for Chinese spying. "These measures were taken in the nick of time, before 5G from Huawei became engrained in our technological society," argued one former senior CIA operations officer.

But Americans, and Chinese too, should think carefully about what's ahead. Analysts this past week have talked of a technological "decoupling" and a "digital Iron Curtain" descending on the global economy. That sounds like a description of a world in which everyone would be worse off -- a mobilization for a conflict like World War I, which historians now judge was unwise and unnecessary.

"We are stuck in a reactive game of tit for tat," warns a senior executive of a giant U.S. technology company. He says America must think carefully about "what hybrid international order we are seeking, recognizing that it has to be one where we coexist with China as a major power." This executive's concern, shared by others, is that Trump is making decisions with big long-term consequences for short-term political reasons.

"This is the kind of blunt and risky instrument one might employ as the last step on the escalatory ladder," said former Deputy Secretary of State William Burns in an interview. "I worry that we've leaped over other, more targeted tools that could have addressed or mitigated specific concerns with less collateral damage."

As so often with Trump, the real question is what end-state he seeks with his campaign of maximum pressure. What does success look like? Is it the destruction of Huawei as a 5G competitor or simply a reduction of its market reach? Does Trump want technology coexistence or a restoration of American dominance?

Trump is about building walls. But he should be especially careful about this digital barrier, behind which the U.S. might stand while the rest of the world races forward. "

========

Follow David Ignatius on Twitter: @IgnatiusPost.

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<  ------------- We Never Get Tired of Winning  !!!!!    .............. All We Do is WIN !!!!!!!!!!!!     ...... Win !    .... Win !!!!  ..... WIN !!!!!!!!!!!!!!   ......... President Trump for LIFE  ?! . !!!!!!! :








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I had a roll of two ply sitting in front of my office this morning.
What's up with that?

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Some Guy wrote on May 23rd, 2019 at 7:35am:







...


The difference being that the man on the left is actually able to conduct State business while on the course, unlike the buffoon on the right.
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“What rap did that was impressive was to show there are so many tone-deaf people out there,” he says. “All they need is a drum beat and somebody yelling over it and they’re happy. There’s an enormous market for people who can’t tell one note from another.” - Keef
 
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Edith Grove wrote on May 23rd, 2019 at 10:02am:
Some Guy wrote on May 23rd, 2019 at 7:35am:







...


The difference being that the man on the left is actually able to conduct State business while on the course, unlike the buffoon on the right.



WASHINGTON (AP) — U.S. officials say the Pentagon will present plans to the White House to send up to 10,000 more American troops to the Middle East to beef up defenses against potential Iranian threats.

The officials say no decision has been made and it’s not clear if the White House will approve sending all or just some of the requested forces. Officials say the troops will be defensive forces, and the discussions include additional Patriot missile batteries and more ships.



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Re: Politics thread - Enter at your own risk! Warning… Bullcrap inside
Reply #4424 - May 23rd, 2019 at 10:39am
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Edith Grove wrote on May 23rd, 2019 at 10:02am:
Some Guy wrote on May 23rd, 2019 at 7:35am:







...


The difference being that the man on the left is actually able to conduct State business while on the course, unlike the buffoon on the right.


Trump doesn't know what State business is. Id love to track the buying and selling of stock by those insiders at Mar A Lago on Mondays. Hearing Trump talk about sanctions and tariffs I'm sure they got a lot of inside trader info....BTW Didn't Trump basically quit yesterday when he took his ball out of the infrastructure meeting? This cunt has to go.
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