The Trump Presidency

Inflation does not remain. Compare the "inflation" of gold with the inflation of paper money. (Gold-backed money can "inflate", but only by becoming fiat money when the state breaks the promise to back the currency. Everything else is artificial and accidental, like inflation by finding new gold deposits.)

Of course, in every case of a contract we have to exclude contract breaking, as if that were not a standard aspect of human behavior in general. And, even more, for every behavior of the state we have to exclude that he breaks constitution and the own laws, even if this is known everyday behavior of the state. Else, there would be no point to prefer a state of law to an unrestricted police state.

Nonsense. There is a difference between violating legal obligations from worthless campaign rhetoric.

I don't care much about reft vs. light. My only problem with anarcho-communism is that I don't trust them that the "anarcho"-part is honest.

Oh, you know what I like? LOL. NATO frustration as a danger for me is even more funny.

The US population has always supported militarism in its worst. So, why a less democratic US would be more militaristic is your secret. One can count the 68 movement as some exception, but that was 50 years ago, and all what remains is some green-colored fascist animal-protection movement. And even at that time many were simply pro-communist, and therefore pro-Vietcong, not really anti-war. To start a war was always useful to win democratic elections. And "less curbing of the multinational corporate powers" - LOL, this is really the joke of the day.

You don't even understand that I do not ask Putin for protection. I support Putin only as far as he fights against the US unipolar world order, which he does. And what is dangerous are not some evil corporations, but only the cooperation of big corporations with the state. Which is unavoidable in any big state, and the only meaningful countermeasure would be decentralization (which is what makes decentralization almost impossible).

 

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There is now a sizable list of election results involving Republican candidates who survived seemingly unsurvivable scandals to win higher office. The lesson in almost all of these instances seems to be that enormous numbers of voters would rather elect an openly corrupt or mentally deranged Republican than vote for a Democrat. But nobody in the Democratic Party seems terribly worried about this...
-- Matt Taibbi

 

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trump criticized nato for not contributing as much to defense but the reality being most of that money would go to strengthening america's military's outposts in other countries. that is unipolar. remember what a conservative republican is or stands for or do you not know? you think this allying with russia has to do with fighting against a unipolar world order? russia, for chrissakes? the one we were in an arms race with in the cold war?

the head-scratching part is i'm not arguing about that so much as what is the problem with conservative republican logic? do you have any legitimate logic?

 

No. Comrade Schmeltzer's "logic" is whatever Putin says it is.

 

Why do you ask me about conservative republican logic? I'm an enemy of the US, the most criminal state of the world, that means of democrats as well as republicans, so my logic has nothing to do with the existence or non-existence of any logic among Trump and the republicans.

If there will be some detente between US and Russia is not clear at all. And nobody is interested in Russia in allying with the US. The US could be interested, say, in some alliance with Russia against Iran or China, but Russia is certainly not interested.

What Trumps behavior with the NATO looks like is that he really does not care about the NATO. Asking them to pay those 2% for "protection" simply means to extract as much money out of them as possible, and if they don't pay, so what, care about your safety yourself. This is not what one would do if one would really care about a long term unipolar world order based on NATO. Of course, the NATO will not immediately run away, they are almost all ruled by US puppets, but enforcing those 2% weakens the political support for NATO in these states.

 

NATO formed after WWII. Most of Europe was devastated by the war. Countries, like Germany and Japan, who had started the war, were restricted in terms of any future military build up, to make sure holdovers from the past would start war again. Russia, who was especially hit by the war, decided to double cross the US after already double crossing Germany. The USA was physically separate from the war, and took the generous and practical approach of supporting NATO, while countries rebuilt, due to the threat posed by Russian insecurity.

Now it is too expensive to give a free ride, instead of a helping hand, especially when Germany and Japan are peaceful and prosperous, and other NATO countries have long been rebuilt.

One of the problems of starting any temporary Government program, is its never wishes to end. It is always politically inadvisable to change the status quo even if it is wasteful and obsolete. These countries are not sick dependent children of the USA, but rather they are at the point where they need to man up. They will feel much better after they get their legs underneath them. The USA is not even asking to be paid back for what was loaned to them. The problem is the politicians are too used to the slush fund.

 

Which is how you came to say something about "libertarians" that wasn't true of "libertarians".

If some government does not step in and prevent market forces from operating it destroys the economy, and then begins the slow process of recovery from ruin - which takes much longer than the boom. This happens with fiat currencies as well, of course.

Boom and bust economies seldom achieve prosperity for regular people, and then only briefly. To avoid such cycles governments are instituted among men, and if they represent the interests of regular people they undertake the difficult task of curbing the market forces that produce them.

Excluding false promising government, there have been no major inflations. Government's role in preventing hyperinflation of the currency is fundamental.

I'm just taking your word for what you like, here. Do I believe you? In a way - I do believe you can actually like what you say you like, and still prefer Putin and Trump to NATO and Clinton, because I believe your blind spot for fascism is real. You don't see it coming.

Silly boy. You think the US is as bad as militarism gets? It isn't even as bad as US militarism can get, it isn't even as bad as it got just a few years ago - and you back the people most likely to make it worse.
Take away the democratic curbs on the US military, such as remain, and you very well may get a look at what militarism can be - think Japan in 1938, only with nukes, and world based, and no US around, and enough money to buy the Chinese army and use it too.

The US plutocrats, if they take over - and they are getting closer, with the current Republican Party ascendency - will have an army at their disposal. And they aren't all buffoons. Imagine the Iraq War competently managed, and with no need to pretend to any good motive.

Putin will buy into the same "unipolar" world order you have mislabeled "US".

They don't. To the US plutocrats currently leveraging the Trump Presidency, NATO is just a tool or an obstacle - some of the aggravating political noise they have to get around or use because they can't get their hands on military power with all these governments in the way.

I'm beginning to wonder if there is a single US rightwing authoritarian propaganda absurdity you have not swallowed whole, taken as gospel truth. You seem to have no reality filter or conception at all - you post here the most bizarre and comically nonsensical ravings of US wingnut talk radio with apparent sincerity, as if you believed them, and after a while I begin to think you do.

And not just me, but the posters you respond to like this:

That's why they ask - that kind of posting, above, where you continually present goofy agitprop straight from the US Republican feed. As I have mentioned before, this stuff is completely familiar to ordinary US citizens. We've been inundated with it for thirty or forty years now, believers and unbelievers alike.

So this is not merely revealing, but grim:

Says the guy who never sees fascism coming. Let's hope we're still laughing at the little joke of the day, in five years.

 

"We also know that we Europeans must really take our fate into our own hands," she added, underlining Europe's frustration with Mr Trump on climate policy in particular." ~A Merkel 2017​

Putin couldn't of asked for a better result....

Maybe Trump failed to ask himself how much it would cost to replace NATO if paid for by the USA tax payer. I guess we are about to find out...

Gosh! Trump needs no back channel. He could go direct...and still get away with it...

 

Governments usually make things worse. In history, they have liked to present themselves as minting coins with standard content of precious metals, this usually worked some time, until everybody believed it, and then they started to falsify the coins.

If the state starts to do something in this domain, things become usually worse. Because the politicians care more about the difficult task to enrich themselves.

This is the point of commodity-backed currencies. One can easily detect when the government stops to hold its promise, and, then, get rid of the paper which is worthless after this. This may cause a short sharp crisis, yes, but it is mainly a crisis for those who have falsely trusted the government. Foolishness is costly in the free market. For the other people, the loss is what they have in cash for regular payments, thus, not that much.

I see no big deal in fascism. The economic system of fascism is the winner everywhere, against the free market. Unfortunate, but already fact, everywhere, so this part cannot go much worse. Politically, there is also no big difference.

I see and compare what the US is doing in the world, and cannot see any big difference. The change from open wars to support of terrorism and fascism to do regime change, which was what Obama was doing, makes things even worse. The difference is that now the de facto US soldiers openly headcut children and are proud of it. Not that this matters much on the real battlefield. But it also means bad news for all non-vassal states, because they all have to wary about preventing color revolutions and terrorism, and this care does not make these states more civilized and free.

The "good motives" happen anyway only in the Western press, not in reality. So, what makes the difference is not the US, but if there are powers outside the US strong enough and willing to stand against. There was none in the 90s. Now there are Russia and China, and much more with their support.

This is the hope of the Kissinger line: To unify with Russia to create the NWO. I think it is too late. Initially, Putin was yet open to such an offer, but nothing was offered. Now its too late. Russia knows that in strategic partnership with China Russia will be a big enough winner. So, the NWO will be an Eurasian. Bad luck for the US.

In defense of the anti-war 68 I read the usual personal attacks of copying "US rightwing authoritarian propaganda absurdity". Nice try, but I needed no US source to see, live, what the "totally anti-militaristic and pacifistic" German green party did as their first action after becoming part of the German government: It was starting the first war of aggression from Germany after 1945. And this was in no way an accident. The latest action where "anti-fascist" Green politicians played a role was demonstrative support of the Ukrainian Bandera fascists.

 

this is what trump and his compatriots have incited and encouraged directly and indirectly.

 

ISIL must be laughing... This is the guy that is supposed to be leading the multi national alliance against Daesh!

 

So?

A major inflation is a disaster for the entire economy, and everyone in it except a few profiteers - and criminals, etc, who gain power, of course. Boom and bust economies harm most people caught up in them.

Another rightwing authoritarian canard, familiar in the US. Half the guys I work with say stuff like that - as if venality and monetary greed were the only motives around. (You wonder why you get mistaken for a standard Republican Party shill around here? You talk just like one).
Without government intervention, inflation compounds into hyperinflation and destroys economies. It's a vulnerability of capitalist markets

We noticed.

That's not true. If you need evidence, look at the extraordinary effort and money and time the bad guys put into undermining and confusing and manipulating voters before they can do the bad things. The difference between a US where the bad things can be done openly - and we are getting there, thanks in part to a lot of low-information voters who think as you do - and one where they must be hidden and somehow justified, is a significant one.

Or compare the W administration with the Clinton and Obama ones on either side.

The only change was the drawback from open war. W was doing all the other stuff too - even worse, actually. And launching open war on top of it.

The real US soldiers - not your "de facto" non-US soldiers, but regular US army under command - were doing that kind of stuff, and proud of it apparently, under W.
You may see those days again - Trump certainly favors them, Putin has no objections.

That's not what I was talking about. I was talking about Tillerson's unipole, Koch brothers unipole, Bechtel's unipole, Goldman Sach's unipole - they'll cut Putin and his pals in, but that has little to do with "Russia".

Now you are handing me irrelevant crap about some recent Germans.
You posted nonsense about the anti-war movement in the US in 1968 - ignorant bs very familiar to any informed US person, as propaganda found all over rightwing authoritarian backed media in the US. The anti-war factions in the US have been slandered from pillar to post for fifty years by paid liars and year-round billioniare-backed media efforts -

( the problem is that they were and are right about some very bad but very profitable warmongering, and their history of being right is a threat to future warmongering.)

and you have apparently swallowed that media swill wholesale - in other matters too, not just this one. You have yet to post disbelief of a single trope or canard they put out, a single lie they tell.

That you object to having your posting labeled like that is good, speaks well for you - but the label is completely accurate.

Given your inability to filter even the silliest and least sensible calumny from US rightwing authoritarian propaganda, you won't mind I hope if I don't take your description of the German Greens at face value? Lord knows who you have chosen to believe over there where you have information to backstop your lousy judgment, but damn.
.

 

Why would the US tax payer need to replace NATO, instead of simply disposing it? Let the other NATO states care about their own defense, and the US tax payer care about the US borders. Once the US produce arms, some even claim they produce good arms, NATO states caring about themselves instead of living for free under US protection would be not a problem for US arms sales, not?

LOL. Hyperinflation happens with fiat money only. It is impossible without a state.

What remains was a mixture of irrelevance (W vs. Obama, Tillerson) and the usual claims that all what I say is something one can see in some US rightwing sources too.

If you think that you have to make propaganda for such rightwing sources, ok. I do not care about this. Even if Hitler himself had proposed some idea, this does not make the idea in itself bad. If it is worth to think about this idea, I will do it.

The question is what is, then, the point of repeating all the time that boring "this is rightwing" meme? Looks like the totalitarian thinking, where the wrong origin of some idea is extremely important, is so deeply internalized that you automatically apply it, as if it would be an argument. It is not.

I may have been unjust to US 68's, based on what I have more information about, namely the same movement in Europe, especially Germany. I doubt, because this was a global movement, and the Germans were in a large part simply copying heroes, ideas and so on coming from America. But maybe that pro-communist aspect that this movement has had in Germany and France was, indeed, not global but local specifics.

 

BTW: Michael Glennon, in the June Harper's Magazine, has an analysis of Trump's battles with the Security agencies - that axis of bad guys you were calling the "deep state" when it was allied with Clinton (supposedly - the FBI was in it, and factions of that agency dislike Clinton, but in the main they do seem to disfavor Trump then and now). Harper's is a left-leaning publication with some good writing, and Glennon is very well informed, so you can get an idea of what you wanted to be talking about. Glennon does not want Trump to lose to the Security State, btw - he knows who Trump is, and would not object to seeing him impeached, but that doesn't mean he thinks the Security State should be allowed to win this fight.

 

It has happened in States with commodity backed currency - France after the Revolution, say. Although that one was enemy attack - forgery by England. And war, enemy action, is the common instigator of major inflation - war involving a capitalist economy, with its market vulnerability, especially.

Of course currency itself is impossible without government of some kind - and modern industrial economies require State level currencies. Industrial capitalism is impossible without fiat money, whether commodity backed or not. So all of this discussion presumes a State.

And if that State does not do the right thing, quickly, when inflation begins to accelerate, the result will be severe harm - even ruin - as capitalist markets amplify the avalanche.

You miss the point. What you are repeating are particular and idiosyncratic lies and slanders - falsehoods, peculiar arrangements of concepts that work as deceptions. The chance of them being independently arrived at is low even for one - after a dozen or more such events it is zero. So these are not thoughts you have had that are for independent reasons parallel or similar to other people's thoughts - these are particular lies and slanders that have an identifiable source long familiar to me, and that source is not you.

So if you didn't know from where you were getting these "ideas" of yours, now you do. Information.

 

No. In fact, we have already cyber currencies which live nicely without the state. Ok, bitcoin is a quite strange combination - fiat money without a state. But it exists.

Then, a currency is in some part the solution of a technical problem, which is solvable with modern information technology and in fact already solved. There are electronic markets which allow extremely fast daytrading. This daytrading makes sense only if the charges for exchange are extremely low, so that you can profit even from very small changes of the price. With such markets existing and working (which clearly possible without a state), all the commodities which can be used in such fast daytrade markets could be used as currencies, without the need to prefer a single one.

This would effectively look more like barter. I have stored my "money" in such a trader account in various commodities, with some amount of oil, wheat, gold, whatever you can trade there. I go to the shop. The prices in the shop are given in one of these commodities. Say, the baker gives the bread prices in wheat. My app translates this in some denomination I like, which may be one of these commodities, or a basket of them of my personal choice. So I can easily compare prices even if the other baker has priced his bread in gold. If I buy the particular piece of bread, the exchange of my basket of commodities into wheat is, with minimal costs, done by the market, and the baker gets his amount of gold on his market account too. All this using the actual exchange rates of all these commodities on that market.

In other words, the currency solves a problem which in fact no longer exists with modern information technology.

For giving the information that what I say are falsehoods and so on, a simple "wrong" or even shorter "no" would be sufficient. Which source has the priority for the particular idea is of no interest, as long as I do not claim priority or so. Thus, it is useless as information.

Except for the totalitarian mind, where evil origin is a decisive counter-argument. Or simply the attempt to present me as a distributor of the evil rightwing propaganda - some cheap ad hominem, which works only for the left here in the forum. The language of the part I have underscored suggests such defamatory intentions.

 

Decomposition: That's apparently where Trump is at the moment. He appears to be psychologically decomposing before our eyes. He is emotionally withdrawing. He is becoming even more divorced from reality. We may be rapidly reaching a case for the 25th Amendment whereby the POTUS is relieved of office by his direct reports.

"The more access the public has to seeing President Trump in both scripted and unscripted situations, the more obvious it becomes that there is a marked deterioration in Mr. Trump’s cognitive functioning. The person who holds this office must have the mental capacity and endurance to withstand the pressure, responsibility, and exposure that comes with this role. Mr. Trump cannot uphold the duties of this office because even in his first 100 days, his insight and judgment have disintegrated to the point at which his public statements, accusations and tweets seem delusional. Delusions are fiercely protected by their holders. Not shockingly, Trump feels otherwise, declaring, “I think my strongest asset maybe by far is my temperament. I have a winning temperament.” His distorted thinking, disorganized conduct, and erratic, impulsive behavior, combined with his fixation on his own importance directly imperils our safety as citizens of the United States and he must be removed from the line of duty."

https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/me-we/201703/why-donald-j-trump-is-unfit-be-president

http://www.cnn.com/2017/05/30/opinions/trump-home-all-alone-borger/

http://www.salon.com/2017/05/28/listen-the-state-of-emergency-around-donald-trump-and-mental-health/

http://www.vanityfair.com/news/2017/05/donald-trump-brain-health

 

Given, of course, modern information technology. Not only a State, but a modern industrial one capable of managing an economy that can launch geostationary satellites.

That's not only not clear, it appears to be false.

Bitcoin does not exist without a State.

As entertaining as it would be to watch the inevitable come around to the folks who actually wanted to put a functioning and secure satellite uplink in between themselves and their next meal, I don't want it to happen to me.

It's not a counter-argument - it's information. You seem to actually believe these are your ideas, that they are derived from reason and evidence, that you are operating here as someone with their own opinions, and so forth.

When a simple and completely accurate description of your posting reads like a defamation, maybe you should take a minute to think things over.

One of the dark comedies playing out now in the US media is the public discovery, by various propaganda minions of the Kochright, that their paymasters were evil and their audience is actually screwed up - that their slander and agitprop and lying didn't just fade out after its use-by date, but accumulated and fermented in the minds of its targets. That they've been creating an army of orcs at the behest of billionaires, orcs now joined in battle and unreachable by reason etc. That the story of Dr. Frankenstein and his monster/President is their story - and it doesn't have a happy ending.

 

It was reported today that we now have evidence Russians were discussing the fact Russia had financial information which would compromise Trump. Now that I find believable given what little is known about Trumps sleazy business dealings.

http://www.cnn.com/2017/05/30/politics/russians-trump-campaign-information/

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/nation-world/national/article152934589.html

Trump does have a history of money laundering: http://www.cnn.com/2017/05/22/politics/trump-taj-mahal/