Patrick Poole at PJ Media has a long post with lots and lots of links. As with most everything else at the Clinton DoS, it was pay-for-play with regard to Boko Haram. Lots of people died, but at least Hillary and the Clinton Foundation did well.
Posted by: Steve White ||
07/29/2016 00:00 ||
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[Reuters] European suppliers to the oil industry, hit by their customers' spending cutbacks over the past two years, have produced stronger than expected second-quarter earnings and are cautiously pointing to signs of recovery in demand. A couple of oilfield roughnecks sitting on a stack of pipe, enjoying lunch in the late 1930's.
These companies, which encompass oil drillers, engineering groups, oil services providers and seismic surveyors, have had to slash jobs, costs and investments to cope with the fallout from a 60 percent drop in the oil price since 2014.
The tide may be turning now the oil price has stabilized but any recovery for these companies will be uneven because those that find it tough to cut capacity and costs will lag others with more flexible business models.
"The oil price has gradually increased since it bottomed out in January, indicating a turning tide for the oilfield service industry expected in the second half of this year," consultancy Rystad Energy said. 'Boom and Bust - Supply and Demand' are common terms of the industry.
h/t Instapundit
By now you’ve no doubt seen the international crisis which was spawned when Donald Trump answered a question about the DNC email hack, saying he hoped that the Russians found the rest of her 30,000 erased emails. Flipping through the cable news networks this morning you’d think that he just offered to sell the nuclear codes to the highest bidder. The reactions have been swift and ominous from all corners.
...Trump is sarcastic. He’s easily exercised. And when he starts in on a subject and the room temperature rises, you get more of that. The media loves to act offended and point to this as a reason why he must not be qualified to lead America. But the fact is that sarcasm and the occasional expletive are part and parcel of how much of the nation actually speaks. This has left the media completely flummoxed, leading to the headlines about how Trump is going to sell out our national security to Russia. IMO, it's a case of drinking their own ink --- since anybody who disagrees with them is a moron, and morons can't use sarcasm... Also, most of them are not particularly bright - constantly suppressing your own thoughts in favor of Pravda will do this to you, even if you didn't start (as most of them did) as a second rater.
#3
Sarcasm can be a good punch-blocking technique while you set your opponent up for the knockout. If you're already a bit dull, detecting sarcasm can be a challenge. Forget the weasel words. Smartly employed, I have no problem with sarcasm.
#6
Trump knows how to troll. He is one of the better ones.
That statement about the DNC hack was pure trollness and just brilliant. It made the issue stick in people's minds, reminded them that there are other emails that might be worse and there was no good way for Hillary to respond without looking like a tosser.
The media and DNC will bring out the old weapons that worked against milquetoast Republicans about them being racist, Hitler and out to kill minorities and poor people. The problem is, it won't work against Trump. He just doesn't give a shit and will throw more troll poo over the fence back at the DNC and the media will fall into the trap of putting it on every front page.
#7
Sure made the MSM look stupid when they showed the clip and you could easily see he was being sarcastic but they couldn't, or at least pretended they couldn't.
Posted by: Abu Uluque ||
07/29/2016 13:29 Comments ||
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#8
The media were quite prepared to cover over illegality from the preferred candidate!
[NATIONALREVIEW] Hillary’s pathetic self-indulgence leads her to moan about her plight even as the media fête her. On Sunday, Hillary complained about her victimhood at the hands of the brutal vast right-wing conspiracy: "I often feel like there’s the Hillary standard, and then there’s the standard for everybody else."
Scott Pelley of CBS News, who was purportedly interviewing her, then followed up by asking, "Why do you put yourself through it?"
Hillary’s answer: " ’Cause I really believe in this country."
Nobody believes that for a heartbeat. Not when she’s dismissing the problems of Americans in order to pander to Cecile Richards of Planned Parenthood ...has received federal funding since 1970, when President Richard Nixon signed into law the Family Planning Services and Population Research Act. It is sometimes described as the gynecololgical wing of the Democratic party. or remind Americans of the importance of transgender bathrooms.
Now, Hillary believes that she can succeed by labeling Trump arrogant and self-centered. But Americans already know he’s arrogant and self-centered. They think he’s out to help blue-collar Americans, that he’s ready to protect them from the vicissitudes of the global economy and the evils of crime.
Americans have no idea why Hillary Clinton ... sometimes described as For a good time at 3 a.m. call Hillary and at other times as Mrs. Bill, never as Another John Foster Dulles ... is running. This they do know: She doesn’t share their priorities.
Posted by: Fred ||
07/29/2016 00:00 ||
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#1
Hillary’s answer: " ’Cause I really believe in this country."
#3
I didn't connect Fred's snippets with the title, so I read the whole thing. Now I understand.
But I'm not so sure it's accidental. Or the narcissist may really believe she will continue to follow his great legacy and make him look even better. He knows that ain't gonna happen if she loses.
Posted by: Bobby ||
07/29/2016 7:29 Comments ||
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#4
Like the accidental fundamental transformation destruction of America?
ScottPelley of CBS News, who was purportedly interviewing her, then followed up by asking, "Why do you put yourself through it?"
Hillary’s answer: " ’Cause I really believe in this country." For money and ego.
#6
Asked: "Why do you put yourself through it?"
Saint Hillary's answered: " ’Cause I really believe in this country." (She began to cough as if she had something stuck in her throat.).
The article also stated:
"She’s manipulating, cynical, and nasty. She’s instinctively defensive, brutally cutting, and utterly cold."
One of Bernie's supporters used the "C" word to describe her when interviewed.
h/t Instapundit
...One reason Conservatives are advised by Conservative leaders to disagree with Trump is his position on Free Trade. The problem for me is that I do not see Free Trade, particularly laissez faire Free Trade, as necessarily Conservative at all,
The advantages of Free Trade are lower prices for stuff. That means they are more cheaply produced. As the economist David Ricardo wrote, there is a principle of comparative advantage that coupled with free trade guarantees maximum profits for when there are no trade restrictions, and impediments to free trade are supposed to be mutually disadvantageous.
But do understand, what is conserved is lower prices. Nor social stability. Not communities. Not family life. Indeed those are often disrupted; it’s part of the economic model. Under free trade theory, it’s better to have free trade than community preservation, better to have ghost towns of people displaced because their jobs have been shipped overseas; better to have Detroit as a wasteland than a thriving dynamic industrial society turning out tail finned Cadillacs and insolent chariots and supporting workers represented by rapacious unions in conflict with pitiless corporate executives.
The theory of free trade includes liquidity: liquidity in capital flow, and liquidity in labor relocation.
What was conserved by turning Detroit into a wasteland? How was that conservative? Wouldn’t it be more conservative to argue that if everyone pays a little more for stuff made here, by people who work here, we are better off than having it made south of the border and inviting our people to go work there at their prevailing wages?
Go further. You don’t have to move. We’ll pay you for not working and you don’t have to move. Of course we’ll have to raise taxes on those who do work to pay those people no longer working, but that’s life. But after unemployment benefits work out ‐ in my days the government would pay you $26 a week for 26 weeks ‐ you’re in trouble. So much so that welfare benefits kept being raised. Food stamps, which became larger and bought more items. Negative income tax. And if you dropped out of the labor force ‐ no longer looking for a job ‐ you are no longer unemployed. The unemployment rate just went down. You stopped looking for a job. Of course you don’t have a job ‐ you are certainly not employed ‐ but you aren’t unemployed and don’t count toward the unemployment rate. I wouldn’t have thought that sort of lying to the people by government officials was a very Conservative thing to do at all.
Would a 15% tariff on cars have saved Detroit? It would mean that I would have had to pay about $5000 more for my 1988 Ford Eddie Bauer V8 Explorer I bought in 1999. I could have afforded that. And I suspect that I’ve paid more in income taxes sent to welfare recipients in Detroit than that. Is paying people not to work more Conservative than trying to keep their jobs ‐ and manufacturing capabilities and potential here, bot dismantling it and leaving its former site to rust away ‐ Conservative?
And is encouraging people not to work ‐ at least making it easier and more possible ‐ building a Conservative nation?
What, precisely, is being conserved here? Also, free trade should be bi-directional. And nobody else in the World is that kind of sucker.
Good article in pointing out that their are more priorities than money that motivate people.
It's not surprising that Marxists reduce everything to money in trying to control people. Proggies (aka Marxists) can't conceive of anyone not being driven by monetary greed so if you don't agree with the left you are obviously too stupid to tie your own shoes and need to be "led".
#3
It's not Free Trade when it's rigged on both sides to the advantage of castes or special interests groups. That's not just international trade, it's also interstate commerce that obstructs or 'regulates' industries favoring native businesses over national businesses - see dairy and limited liquor distribution, automotive sale businesses etc by state. We're not even talking subsidizes that pols and precipitants are so fond of that alter price levels. Then there are 'partnership' deals, that require someone, group or family, on the inside of the governmental/business entity to get a piece of the action in order to do business in the state or nation. Free Trade has long lost its meaning. Sort of like Mom (but before the sex change operation), the Flag (now made overseas), and Apple Pie (additives with 5% apple content).
Before you bring up Smoot–Hawley as a Bogeyman, I too was taught about the 'evil's of that back in school. However after sitting through 8 years of a de facto depression (using the metrics of 1930s rather than the manipulated metrics of today), that scare is losing its value as we do not have Smoot-Hawley and yet we still have a long term depression running. People's images of the 30s Depression is largely long lines of hungry out of work men in black and white film. However the vast majority of the workforce was employed through that time in a flat economy. IIRC around 75%, less the black community whose numbers were much lower. Sounds familiar? So was Smoot-Hawley the devil or the scapegoat?
Mr. Pournelle is asking the questions that need to be raised. If government exists to serve the people, who really is being served by 'Free Trade'. It ain't free if its rigged to the advantage of a few or others over the many.
#4
Pournelle is offering a common misunderstanding of free trade as a strawman. Free trade creates wealth. It's that simple. Tariffs are a tax paid by consumers - American citizens. Read your Adam Smith.
And if it's rigged, gamed or otherwise abused, that's not free trade. Another strawman.
Pure free-trade is fine but impossible for several reasons not the least of which is an imperfect knowledge base.
Another narrative derives from the "best for the common good" approach. Pournelle is pointing out that individuals have different definitions of good and you can't aggregate economic wealth creation and declare it best. All you can say is that this maximizes total wealth in the system, whether or not that's good is a whole nother story.
So it's not a straw man at all just a part of a much larger and more complex story having to do with societal organization.
#6
I get the basic argument on free trade, but I also get that we really don't have "free trade" -- we have "managed trade" with NAFTA, TPP and the other agreements out there.
Mr. Trump is correctly pointing out that in a managed trade situation, America has been a sucker for a long time -- we're transferring a significant amount of wealth (and per Mr. Pournelle, social stability) to other countries, in return for cheap goods. Okay, everyone likes inexpensive stuff, but the question is, what did we give up for that? Trump and Pournelle point out that we've given away too much.
I'm all for "free" trade, but I don't think it exists, and I don't think we can work our way to it. So if it's going to be managed trade, we need to get a better deal.
Posted by: Steve White ||
07/29/2016 10:28 Comments ||
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#7
Another narrative derives from the "best for the common good" approach.
Ah, but for libertarians, there is no "common good."
#8
Tariffs are a tax paid by consumers...yes, but non-tariff taxes are paid by the consumer for the welfare system to support those not working and the bureaucracy that goes along with that welfare. Where is the lesser cost and graft to be found?
#12
Ah, but for libertarians, there is no "common good."
Ah, Pappy, but we're talking about economists and politicians.
When you speak about the aggregate system totals rather than specific transactions than there is a "common" good defined as total aggregate wealth which is used to justify these "free" trade deals and writes off the suffering of Detroit, for example, as just acceptable collateral damage. After all the aggregate is the measurement of success..
This ignores two salient points.
1) is the average issue: On average this is best for everyone. Like the man with one foot in ice and the other in boiling water feels fine, on average.
2) free trade is the sum of all the individual transactions that are made by individuals based on their view of what's best at that moment for them. Therefore, an aggregate, as a measure of worth, is meaningless. Think of college grades if I get an A in physics and an F in sociology I'm a C student, does that mean anything at all?
#13
Free trade creates wealth that is true...for those who are already wealthy. The rest of us get fucked. Nobody is seeing those sweet profits from manufacturing in Bangladesh and China other than international companies.
If you want to imagine the future, imagine the American worker, being laid off, forever.
#15
Our 330 million people have 330 million requirements which, can be met by the same 330 million people....'freely trading' with one another.
If those 330 million discover they have a trading surplus, stop production until surplus is exhausted, or ship the surplus overseas. If those 330 million discover they have a trading shortfall, then and only then, should oversees stuff be brought in.
I suppose this is far too simplistic. Probably far too late for such a foggyish old concept.
#16
The thing about "free trade" as it exists today, with the Mandarinate we have running the country, it amounts to some semblance of a free market for people who run what were once import/export businesses and are now just import businesses, and no economic freedom if you do anything else for a living.
#17
And if it's rigged, gamed or otherwise abused, that's not free trade. Another strawman.
That statement is a convenient distortion. The discussion by everyone else so far is an illustration of competing fundamental values and attempts to clarify & share them.
#22
The problem with free trade is that intellectual capital - paid for in one way or another over generations by the citizens of a country - flows in the opposite direction.
You may be able to buy cheap TVs from China, but China gets to know how to make cheap TVs, which is far more valuable.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
Hillary Clinton
