Day: January 14, 2019

Siphon Off The Cash

Closing Thought–14Jan19

Well we watch the tube and the volatility of the markets….wild swings in losses and gains…..it is not normal.

And then there are the trade policies of our president…..his view of his tariffs are not anything like the views from financial pundits…..the news is not good from the tariffs…….out soy bean farmers think they are screwed even after the silly tariffs are removed….

With that said and reported……what about other sectors of our economy?

The financial magazine Forbes reports…..

President Trump likes to say that China and other countries are pouring money into the U.S. with the tariffs he has imposed. However, the countries that are sending goods to us aren’t paying the tariffs . The companies that import goods are paying them , which means U.S. companies need to raise prices (therefore a tax on consumers), lower their margins and have less profit (which also lowers the amount of taxes they pay to the government) or even go out of business.

The U.S. Treasury Department releases a monthly report, which provides how much in customs duties are received by the government (December’s is delayed due to the shutdown. so I have estimated that month’s result). Trump is correct that the payments have escalated in recent months. While they took a jump in the second half of fiscal 2018 (September) from the first half, they have almost doubled in the December quarter compared to the first half of fiscal 2018 before the additional tariffs were imposed.

First half of fiscal 2018: $3.1 billion per month

Second half of fiscal 2018: $3.8 billion per month

First quarter of fiscal 2019: $6.0 billion per month

Increase of 95% from the first half

Delta between $6.0 and $3.1 billion is $2.9 billion  The $2.9 billion monthly increase in customs duties over a full year is $35 billion, which is either passed on to consumers in higher prices or eats into company profits. This can potentially drive a company out of business such as a South Carolina TV manufacturer laying off 126 employees or a Missouri nail manufacturer laying off 200 of its 500 employees.

None of this “news” tracks with the bullsh*t fed to us by the “warrior from Wharton”……..(I still say this person did not get his degree legally…Daddy bought it for him)……these policies are doing NOTHING to make America Great again….NOTHING!

Tulsi: Another One Bites The Hook

There has been lots of interest on the Dems that will run in 2020….we have Booker, Harris, Warren, Biden, yada yada…..in other words the media is deciding who gets the coverage (right now)…..

There has been lots of interest on the Dems that will run in 2020….we have Booker, Harris, Warren, Biden, yada yada…..in other words the media is deciding who gets the coverage (right now)…..

The only announced candidate right now is Warren….Harris could announce soon and an outsider will announce…..Tulsi Gabbard of Hawaii…..(her I like)……

https://www.staradvertiser.com/2019/01/11/breaking-news/tulsi-gabbard-tells-cnn-she-is-running-for-president/

“U.S. Rep Tulsi Gabbard told CNN today that she is running for president in 2020 and will make a formal announcement next week.

The Hawaii Democrat disclosed her plans on CNN’s “The Van Jones Show,” which will air at 2 p.m. Saturday in Hawaii, the network said.”

I like her because she has been an Congressional opponent to our many wars…..I will keep an eye on her and check her foreign policy chops as well as her domestic plan….

She has a helluva uphill fight but she can do.

https://stephenlendman.org/2019/01/tulsi-gabbard-for-president/

After I wrote this draft yet another Dem has thrown his metaphorical hat into the fray……

Julian Castro may already be behind in the polls, but no matter—he’s boldly running for president. The former mayor of San Antonio and HUD secretary under President Obama officially announced his candidacy Saturday, framing it in the context of immigration: “When my grandmother got here [from Mexico] almost a hundred years ago, I’m sure she never could have imagined that just two generations later, one of her grandsons would be serving as a member of the United States Congress and the other would be standing with you here today to say these words: I am a candidate for President of the United States of America,” he told supporters in his hometown of San Antonio, per USA Today. By his side was his family, including twin brother Rep. Joaquin Castro, also a Texas Democrat.

How many more shall we see?  We still have to hear from Beto, Bernie, Kamala, Biden(?)……and so many others.

Bomb, Bomb, Bomb, (Pause) Bomb Iran

I can hear the late senator John McCain singing that song during the 2008 presidential election…..it is the mantra of the Neocons and their masters the Israelis for decades. Since 1979 the Israelis have preyed on the US neocon hatred for what the Iranians did to the US in that year.

SO when the news came out the Bolton had asked for plans for an attack on Iran made none of us old farts surprised…it it old hat to Neocon behavior…..

The attack—three mortar shells launched into Baghdad’s diplomatic sector by Iranian militants—injured no one, but the Wall Street Journal is now reporting that it “triggered unusual alarm” inside the Trump administration. National Security Adviser John Bolton responded by asking the Pentagon to draw up plans to attack Iran, a request so unusual and a response considered so outsize by many senior administration officials that it “definitely rattled people,” one such official tells the Journal. “People were shocked. It was mind-boggling how cavalier they were about hitting Iran.” An NSC rep says it simply “coordinates policy and provides the president with options to anticipate and respond to a variety of threats.” Bolton has long advocated regime change in Tehran, notes the Journal, and penned a 2015 New York Times op-ed with the headline, “To Stop Iran’s Bomb, Bomb Iran.”
I have been writing about this news for decades,….ever so oftewn the Neocons, when in control, throw a story like this one out there for the MSM to feed on for awhile……https://lobotero.com/2018/07/31/bomb-bomb-iran/

US–A Force For Good?

Most know that my little expertise is in the Middle East and in foreign policy….so when I cannot get a speak by the SecState I go to friends in the Middle East and get the speech that way.

I was sent a video from Egypt of Pompeo’s speech….okay after I listened I sat there and had to listen again….what a pile of manure from an official of the US…..first he said that the US was a force for good…that when the US retreats chaos reigns….(think about that for a moment)…..

I had begun a draft in analysis of this piece of manure speech by an amateur diplomat….and I was notified that I had a piece in waiting……

“An arrogant tirade extolling the U.S. as a liberator not an occupier, a defender not an aggressor—a depiction that runs totally counter to the sordid U.S. history of invasions and occupations all over the world.”

A speech delivered by U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo in Cairo, Egypt on Thursday was immediately chided by critics as bellicose and ahistorical “hogwash” that did more to reveal the incoherence and dangers of the Trump administration’s foreign policy than anything else.

Pompeo’s speech is voodoo diplomacy and not very damn accurate but I would expect such LIES from a Neocon lackey…..but please read the speech for yourself and you decide what part of it is true…..if you can…..

Thank you, Frank. Thank you to Frank Ricciardone. Thank you for your service to America as well, in addition to the duties that you perform here.

I’ve had the good fortune to be a frequent visitor here to Egypt and the Middle East as Secretary of State. In my prior role as CIA director, I was here with some frequency, and I came here too as a member of Congress. Every time I come, I get to see something new, something wonderful.

This trip is especially meaningful for me as an evangelical Christian, coming so soon after the Coptic Church’s Christmas celebrations. This is an important time. We’re all children of Abraham: Christians, Muslims, Jews. In my office, I keep a Bible open on my desk to remind me of God and His Word, and The Truth.

https://www.state.gov/secretary/remarks/2019/01/288410.htm

This was a typical Neocon blathering…..anti-Iran, anti-Obama…..their policies are such crap that all they have is to blast Iran and Obama….garbage foreign policy…….https://lobelog.com/pompeo-in-cairo-anti-obama-anti-iran-and-little-else/

This speech was so much bullsh*t that it made for painful watching….sorry but anyone listening to that speech that was not a Neocon is laughing hysterically under his/her breath.

China Versus Taiwan

Let me say from the onset that I am by no means an expert in Chinese affairs…..but this is something that has been boiling for 5 decades or longer.

For over 50 years there have been two Chinas…Mainland and the island of Taiwan….and in all that time they have been at the others throat.

But why have they been hating each other all that time?

Let me make this situation as simple as possible.

Now that you know why the hatred is there and simmering just below the surface of geopolitics….

In the first week of 2019, as China grabbed headlines for landing a spacecraft on the far side of the moon, a New Year’s Day editorial in the nation’s official military newspaper told its readers that “war preparations” should be a top priority for the year. The following day, President Xi Jinping offered a forceful reminder of what Beijing considers its most likely focus of conflict to be: Taiwan.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-apps-taiwan-commentary/commentary-will-china-go-to-war-over-taiwan-idUSKCN1P11IT

And to help with the understanding of this situation….a short video may help…..

Taiwan is an ally of the US and if push came to shove with China I think the US would side with Taiwan and act accordingly….even if it meant going to war.

In his opening speech of 2019, and his first ever on the subject of Taiwan, the Chinese president Xi Jinping was characteristically uncompromising. Forty years after Beijing agreed to stop its daily shelling of the Taiwanese islands of Quemoy and Matsu, and launched a policy of commercial seduction, relations have coarsened. Addressing an audience of military and party officials and his country’s wider public on 2 January, China’s nationalist president-for-life signalled his impatience with the status quo, refused to rule out the use of military force and warned “foreign powers” against intervening in what Beijing regards as a domestic matter. For any Taiwanese viewer, it was a chilling moment.

https://www.newstatesman.com/culture/observations/2019/01/china-and-taiwan-s-dangerous-face

With that said there has been a study that does not think the US could win a state vs state war with China……

One of the first things one learns as an infantry platoon leader is that he who tries to secure everything with his soldiers on the battlefield usually ends up securing nothing. Unfortunately for U.S. national security, this old maxim appears to have been forgotten at the strategic and political level by some of America’s brightest minds in the defense community as evidenced in a recent report.

The November 2018 study Providing for the Common Defense, issued by the National Defense Strategy Commission, a congressionally-mandated blue-ribbon panel led by former U.S. Undersecretary of Defense Eric Edelman and retired U.S. Navy Admiral Gary Roughead, recommends that the United States should spend more on its armed forces and reinforce its global military presence lest Washington be confronted by a national security emergency at a period when the nation is at a “greater risk than at any time in decades.”

https://thediplomat.com/2018/12/would-the-us-really-lose-a-war-with-china-and-russia/

I know that everyone thinks the US is the bees knees but is it possible that we could not win a state vs state war with China?