Donald John Trump

Now, as to Walt's article...

Unfortunately, US interests were neither minimal, nor was the war considered unwinnable. The "Surge" was seen as a short-term answer to a long-term problem. While, it did succeed in many of it's short-term goals, it did ultimately fail in the long-term one of returning peace to all of Afghanistan.

The embracing and expanding of drones and special operations forces to chase down suspected terrorists all over the world, was likely because they are two of the more effective ways of getting these suspected terrorists. I'm not exactly sure how this is a failure...Other than than, certain writers of articles are expecting too much, too soon. This is a long-term solution, that pays dividends that do not make headlines - unless something goes terribly wrong.

The CIA tried to interfere with the Senate Investigations of torture...Considering the report is some 6.400 pages long, I am thinking they did not interfere too much.

The Obama Administration's record on whistleblowers is a mixed bag...Additional protections were given to federal whistleblowers in all areas except for the intelligence community. It was not a failure, nor was it a success, but a compromise.

The Arab spring and the US reaction to it has been criticized by all fronts - ranging from "He did not do enough" to "He did too much."

Obama did not vow to achieve a two-state solution by the end of his first term...What he said was "It will be the policy of my administration to actively and aggressively seek a lasting peace between Israel and the Palestinians, as well as Israel and its Arab neighbors. To help us pursue these goals, Secretary Clinton and I have asked George Mitchell to serve as special envoy for Middle East peace." Nor, was George Mitchell what you would call "pro-Israeli" either.

Still, it is amusing, how the author considers Afghanistan to be unwinnable, but peace between Israel and Palestine some how is winnable...Oh, well, anything so long as it can be made to make Obama look bad.

Neither side gave up their "old habits"...as Putin's actions have proven over and over again.

Hmmm, is this a successful failure or a failed success? Either, way the author felt it necessary to take a back-hand swipe at the Obama Administration.

Except, Obama's addressment of the Afghanistan problem was quite expensive and certainly not done as cheaply as possible, and in fact, required putting a good many "boots on the ground."

All interests are vital interests...Because, no matter how much other nations complain about the US being "The World's Policeman," who is the first one they call when the feces hits the rotary device?

 

Our only "competition" has been, and will likely remain, Russia. Despite this "great power political competition" - whatever that is - the other nuclear powers maintain much smaller stockpiles. Further, U.S. nuclear strategy, outside of MAD, has not been static. modernization of the current D-5 Trident II continues as we speak, and is expected to finish around 2021.

The US already has a robust nuclear force, and is in the process of modernizing it.

Further, you are assuming that potential adversaries are "sane" enough to be deterred...Daesh and North Korea do not fall into that "sane" category. Also, even if the US has the "latest and greatest" in nuclear weaponry...How will this deter India and Pakistan from initiating a nuclear war(which would have grave consequences around the globe)?

Finally, the US is continuing to develop it's Global Strike/Prompt Global Strike strategy, which is expected to takeover up to 30% of the targets assigned to US nuclear forces.

Open mouth, insert shoe store - brick by brick.

It is plainly obvious that you have no idea what you are talking about, and are now just making up things out of thin air.

His words are what is now called either "fake news" or "alternative facts", depending where on the political spectrum you lie. Or as I call them, complete and utter BS.

 

I would strenuously disagree with you there. The articles I've read in Foreign Affairs magazine are almost universally one sided and lacking in logic and fact. The titles and content are certainly "sensational" and often qualify as "fake news". Whether you want to consider them "mainstream media or clickbaiting is a matter of how you define the terms.

 

Just read today some US senators have started a "friends of Australia" caucus (bipartisan)...after The Don's rude phone call at the start of the year...Haha seems they don't like how we've been treated! - Don't worry, we're used to being treated like this...Britain, China etc etc...we'll live. : )
Like the thought though...onyuz USA!

 

I suspect some staffers did some research and found out you have topless beaches.....expect a Congressional fact finding tour any day now.

 

I remember going to the Gold Coast (QLD) when I was 16 ...sat down at the beach...two impossibly hot women dropped their towels next to mine, took off their tops and proceeded to rub sun screen over each other...I was just 16!
The weird part was, after several days of this, I became blase about it...they began to lose their power! I realised how the men in tribes dealt with their women walking around topless...they stop being sexual. Needless to say I promptly STOPPED going to the beach...I personal love affair was being messed with and I didn't want it to continue...im cured now. : )

 

A little disconcerting. Trump firing the man who was a head of the investigation into his alleged Russian collaboration. It's clear, ladies and gentlemen, what Trump's agenda is, and it has nothing to do with draining the swamp.

 

Although, there was no Russian collaboration, only a mass hysteria case rivaling in its ignorance and irrationality Salem witch trials. It's nice to know that nothing has changed from the medieval times, just because I've always believed people haven't changed at all since then.

 

Using Persuasion to Create Assets Out of Nothing
by Scott Adams

Yesterday President Trump unexpectedly said he would be “honored” to meet North Korea’s Kim Jung-un.
And that’s how a Master Persuader creates an asset out of nothing.

I’ll explain.

By holding out the possibility of meeting with Kim Jung-un, President Trump has conjured out of thin air a virtual “asset” that he can use for negotiating with North Korea. I’m sure the North Korean leader would like the international respect and recognition that such a meeting would confer. Best of all, Jung-un could use that future meeting as evidence for his citizens that he stared-down America and negotiated a great deal in which we remove some of our military assets while they end their nuclear weapons program. Or something like that.

The point is that President Trump created this “asset” out of nothing but persuasion. Now Kim Jung-un has something to gain, and something to lose. And that option simply didn’t exist a week ago.


Do you think this was a unique situation?

Consider that President Trump has already built a border wall with Mexico out of nothing but persuasion. Immigration from Mexico is down more than 50% just from Trump’s persuasion alone. I suppose we will get something like a physical wall someday too. But for now, Trump’s Wall of Persuasion is doing a lot of work.

Now take a look at the stock market. Optimism about a Trump presidency has increased the value of the stock market by a gazillion dollars (approximately) since election day. In other words, President Trump’s persuasion created a lot of something out of nothing. Again.

I hadn’t heard much about the alleged trillion dollars held offshore by American corporations until Trump started talking about repatriating it. If the tax code is tweaked just right, much of that money will come back. That’s like Trump’s persuasion creating something out of nothing too.

President Trump cancelled TPP, criticized NAFTA, and warned China that trade negotiations will be aggressive. That collection of persuasion will probably create money out of nothing for America.

If you think climate prediction models are unreliable, President Trump just conjured up a few trillion dollars in cost savings by favoring job creation and economics over CO2 reduction. Obviously that could be the wrong bet, but you see a consistent pattern: Trump traded something that might not be based on reality – the fear of global warming – for something he knows is real – the economic growth and cost savings.

President Trump’s tax plan will attempt to conjure up free money too, using a Trump variant of supply-side economics. The idea is that by cutting taxes you stimulate the economy and make the tax cuts pay for themselves by creating more income that can be taxed. In the past, corporations would have banked the extra cash from any tax savings and continued moving their operations to cheaper offshore workers. But in the Trump administration, moving operations outside the USA is harder. That means corporate tax savings will have a far greater chance of leading to higher employment here. And employment is THE biggest variable in economic prosperity. If the tax cuts create higher employment, Trump will have once again conjured something out of nothing.

 

TRUMP DERANGEMENT SYNDROME — SO BAD BUZZFEED’S POINTING IT OUT: Why Is A Top Harvard Law Professor Sharing Anti-Trump Conspiracy Theories?
“Among the prominent anti-Trumpers spreading unconfirmed information are famed constitutional scholars, Pulitzer Prize winners, and US senators.”
by Joseph Bernstein

One of the things Trump has accomplished is to make clear that our best and brightest and most responsible are none of these things.
Glenn Reynolds

Democrats and the mainstream media have spent the months since Donald Trump's election fixated on the the flood of unconfirmed reports, half-truths, and outright propaganda that accompanied his rise.

But some of the country’s leading liberal lights — respected figures including elected officials, prominent legal scholars, members of the media, and celebrities — are themselves sharing wild allegations about the Trump administration from unreliable sources.

Perhaps no one embodies this trend so well as Laurence Tribe. Tribe is one of the country’s foremost constitutional lawyers, the Carl M. Loeb university professor at Harvard Law School. He has argued dozens of cases in front of the Supreme Court. He’s a major figure in American public life, and in recent months Tribe has devoted much of his activity on Twitter to outraged extrapolation about the Trump administration. Often, these take the form of “big if true” tweets that cite unconfirmed reports about Trump’s possible misdeeds and are essentially conjecture.

On April 22, Tribe shared a story from a website called the Palmer Report — a site that has been criticized for spreading hyperbole and false claims — entitled “Report: Trump gave $10 million in Russian money to Jason Chaffetz when he leaked FBI letter,” a reference to the notorious pre-election letter sent by former FBI director James Comey to members of Congress that many have blamed for Hillary Clinton’s November loss.
[...]
Asked whether he had considered his role in spreading unconfirmed information, given his stature in American society, Tribe responded that “I really don’t have anything to tell you about my thoughts regarding my personal role in sharing information over social media in this usually agnostic manner.”
[...]
Tribe is far from alone among prominent liberals in sharing unconfirmed, speculative, and sometimes wild information. But he is emblematic of an information echo chamber that has grown up since the election around sites like the Palmer Report and figures like the anti–Russian influence crusader Louise Mensch, in which anti-Trump public figures share unreliable information, the very act of which the sources of these reports use to bolster their own legitimacy. It therefore operates similarly — though it is smaller and far less powerful — to the vast new right-wing online media that launders dubious claims through increasingly mainstream outlets before, sometimes, reaching the highest levels of government.

 

I think you mean ancient times...

Nero. Trump. 'Nuff said.

 

This is absolutely friggin' hilarious! Perhaps, the Grand Ols Party, needs to be re-named the "Know Nothing Party".

How, quickly they have forgotten how they crowed against Obama's nuclear deal with Iran. Yet, here they are pathetically attempting to justify a similar deal with North Korea as a "good thing."

Yes, folks, this is Idiocracy in action.

No, it is not a unique situation...It is a figment of someone's overactive imagination.

Except, this is just BS. Mexican immigration has been way down before Trump was even elected. Claiming Trump did something that he did not do is what Trump calls "alternative fact.", and the rest of us call a bold-faced lie."
Illegal Immigration Is Actually Declining
Why Is the Undocumented Immigrant Population Dropping?
Apprehensions of Mexican migrants at U.S. borders reach near-historic low
Why fewer Mexicans are leaving their homeland for the U.S.
Fewer immigrants are entering the U.S. illegally, and that’s changed the border security debate
Bill Clinton: Zero net migration from Mexico since 2010
Apprehensions of Mexican migrants at U.S. borders reach near-historic low

You mean the stock market that under Obama's shift went from 8,166 to 18,260...That Stock Market?

Then someone has not been paying much attention to his surroundings.

But, if Trump tweaks the tax code they way he wants, the money still won't come back, because the Corporations won't be paying taxes on it. Because, somehow, I do not see Trump raising taxes on all the corporations that he owns or is a part of...Oh, I'm sorry...His sons are a part of.

Yes, yes...and the Republicans did the same thing about Obama...Point, please.

Quite similar to Trump clinging to the baseless "Birther" issue with Obama...What goes around comes around. Trump needs to put on "big boy" pants and suck it up.

Except Trump has backed away from NAFTA and wilted with China. So much for Trump's so-called "aggressiveness.

Free money? There is no such beastie...Unless Trump's idea is to print more money - which has it's own set of pitfalls.

IIRC, this only worked out in the 1920's, but , of course, everyone remembers the big Bust that followed. In recent times, Reganomics mostly failed, as did Bush II's attempt at supply side economics and the big Bust that followed that.

 

As time passed, he played a more active and independent role in government and foreign policy. During his reign, the redoubtable general Corbulo conducted a successful war and negotiated peace with the Parthian Empire. His general Suetonius Paulinus crushed a major revolt in Britain. The Bosporan Kingdom was briefly annexed to the empire, and the First Jewish–Roman War began. Nero focused much of his attention on diplomacy, trade and the cultural life of the empire, ordering theatres built and promoting athletic games. He made public appearances as a poet, musician and charioteer; in the eyes of traditionalists, this undermined the dignity and authority of his person, status and office. His extravagant, empire-wide program of public and private works was funded by a rise in taxes, much resented by the middle and upper classes.

Some modern historians question the reliability of the ancient sources on Nero's tyrannical acts. A few sources paint Nero in a more favourable light. There is evidence of his popularity among the Roman commoners, especially in the eastern provinces of the Empire, where a popular legend arose that Nero had not died and would return. At least three leaders of short-lived, failed rebellions presented themselves as "Nero reborn", to enlist popular support.

 

Nero played while Rome was burning. Right now, for a golf club Trump is yearning.

 

Do you have any proof that Trump is attempting to offer a similar deal?

The number of illegal immigrants crossing into the United States from Mexico declined by 40 percent from January to February, Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly said on Wednesday.
The downturn came after President Donald Trump took office on Jan. 20 vowing to deport many of the estimated 11 million illegal immigrants in the United States.
The flow of illegal border crossings as measured by apprehensions and the prevention of inadmissible persons at the southern border dropped to 18,762 persons in February from 31,578 in January, Kelly said in a statement.
He said the U.S. Customs and Border Protection agency, which compiled the data, historically sees a 10 percent to 20 percent increase in apprehensions of illegal immigrants from January to February.

He means that lately (for three years) the Dow Jones was almost flat, it changed after Trump had been elected:

He wants lower taxes because the US had the third highest corporate income tax rate in the world, and this is harmful to the economy. Nobody said Trump is going to raise taxes.

It wasn't about Trump, it was about failed American liberal elites. Whatever Trump says doesn't make them any less failed.

Money are created out of nothing every time economy expands.

Supply-side economics = meaning economic growth can be most effectively created by investing in capital and by lowering barriers on the production of goods and services.
It's obviously correct because creating barriers and removing capital from markets is harmful.

 

What part of Scott Adams' passage that you quoted did you not understand?
According to Scott Adams, Trump nuclear deal with North Korea = Good...

According to Scott Adams, Obama nuclear deal with Iran = Bad...
Scott Adams' Blog

Gotta love idiotic Republicans.

And you believe this?

31,578 apprehensions in January, 2017...Hmm, that is pretty high don't you think?
In 2016, it was only 23,758. In 2015, it was 21,514.
Does this mean that the election of Donald Trump is responsible for a 25%-32% rise in immigration in January?

Well, if we are "cherry picking" our data...Paying no nevermind to the 224% increase in the stock market under the Obama Administration.

Your looking only at the statutory corporate tax rate...Look at the effective tax rate - after all those corporate deductions, write offs, corporate welfare, etc. are taken into account, and you will see that the US effective corporate tax rate is comparable, if not slightly less than the world average.

Actually, yeah it is...The Republicans and Trump spread hyperbole and false claims about the Obama Administration...I can only presume that you consider the Republicans and Trump to be failures as well.

But, then again, near about everything President Trump says makes him more and more "failed."

Except, the expanding economy created the money...Not "nothing."

If only it were as simple as that...There would have been no Great Depression, depressions, recessions, or all of those bubbles "bursting" in the early 2000s. Reality can be a harsh teacher sometimes. Which is why "supply side economics" remains a theory, no one has been able to actually prove it.

 

I asked for the details of Trump's deal with North Korea, not Scott Adams' opinions.
It was you who said that both deals were going to be identical.
Time to prove you claim.

It wasn't about Obama but about a sudden surge just because a new president was elected. The stock marked plainly expressed its opinion: Obama bad, Trump good.
And btw it took 8 years to reach 224%, and Obama started from a very low level as the financial crisis was in full swing at that time. It's easy to go up if you are at the bottom.

And what are those mythical deductions and welfare? Let's use a few examples from NYS Department of State, Division of Corporations:
COMPANION PET CREMATIONS INC.
COMPASS MOVING AND STORAGE LLC
COMPANY ONE DANCE, LLC

What are the benefits available to those three? None.
For those getting their knowledge of economics from Superman movies, those are typical and most common corporations, not some fantasy ones capable of moving continents at will.

The truth is corporations are paying 40% in the US.
15% (small corporations), 19% (large ones) in Poland.
Although actually in the communist Poland the tax rate was as in the US today - 40%.

So more regulations, more taxes is good. Nice to know.

 

If you want the details of Trump's nuclear deal, then why did you only post Scott Adams' opinions?
You didn't want details, you wanted Scott Adams' opinion...Which is what you posted. If you wanted details, you would have posted details.

If it is that easy, then why did it take so long for the US to get out of the Great Depression?
How many go from worst to first?

It is not as easy as you would have us believe.

Please post any of their tax returns so we can go over them in detail...

Also, you do seem to be quite ignorant of US tax law...As LLCs do not pay, and are not taxed at Corporate Tax Rates.

As I had said earlier, LLCs do not pay corporate taxes...So, three becomes one.

Again, please post their tax returns, so we can examine them.

Still...
Deducting Business Expenses
31 Small Business Tax Deductions
Top Tax Deductions for Your Small Business
Top 20 Tax Deductions for Small Business
12 Small Business Tax Deductions | Bankrate.com
10 Most Overlooked Small-Business Tax Deductions
I believe you were saying that there were no benefits available...When, in truth, there are plenty.

It would behoove you to stop watching these Superman movies, and move on to something with more intellectual content.

Quite odd that you continually neglect the effective tax rate on US businesses...
The effective tax rate on sole proprietor businesses(over 70% of US businesses) is 13.3% - Lower than Poland.
Small business C Corporations is around 17.5%
Small business partnerships is around 23.6%
Small business S Corporations is around 26.9%
Large Corporations pay around 14%.

The effective tax rate that businesses pay, simply does not match up to the statutory tax rate that you claim they pay...

 

Please, with all due respect it is nonsense.
Of course all expenses are fully deductible in Poland. It's so obvious I wouldn't even dare to mention such obvious things.
I'm speechless that Americans have to be informed specifically that: auto expenses, expenses of going into business, books, travel, interests, new equipment, moving expenses, charitable contributions, taxes, employees' pay are deductible.
So no its 15-19% after all expenses and deductions in Poland, 40% in the US.