Who do you believe: :The meme or your lying eyes?

That is Spengler, discussing Wolfe, Bannon, and the latest anti Trumpie boy kerfuffle.

I rarely agree with Spengler, but he usually has good points in his essays.


The news is full of the anti trumpieboy talking points, so I will post to a few "well, what about this" type articles: why? Because I hate talking points and memes.

then there is AnneAlthouse, who mentions to Rosanne Barr's discussion of why her new sitcom character will be pro Trump. Fair enough. But then she quotes Rosanne:

“I’m not a Trump apologist. There are a lot of things he’s said and done that I don’t agree with.” And: "It’s always a lesser of two evils," but she "could not vote for Hillary Clinton is because of Haiti."

heh. Someone else noticed the Haiti rebuilding debacle. Here is the BBC report on what she is talking about.

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and here is Dilbert's take.

The Small Business Optimism Index hit an all-time high. That’s the new Presidential Approval Poll...I contend that business optimism — and small business optimism in particular — are the new standard for presidential approval because “economics” captures most of what a president influences.

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Trumpie boy is now musing if he should start bribing giving pork barrel money for local projects to congressmen to get things passed in congress.

well, I hate to remind you: That is how LBJ worked in the good old days, and he got the Civil Rights bill passed. Check out Stephen King's alternative history of the US if that bill hadn't been passed.

and of course, greasing palms is not unknown in business.

from "BackToSchool"

Thornton Melon : Oh, you left out a bunch of stuff. 

Dr. Phillip Barbay : Oh really? Like what for instance?

Thornton Melon : First of all you're going to have to grease the local politicians for the sudden zoning problems that always come up. Then there's the kickbacks to the carpenters, and if you plan on using any cement in this building I'm sure the teamsters would like to have a little chat with ya, and that'll cost ya. Oh and don't forget a little something for the building inspectors. Then there's long term costs such as waste disposal. I don't know if you're familiar with who runs that business but I assure you it's not the boyscouts.

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For all the talk about Oprah as president, they forget that she ran only a business in Hollywood, while pushing touchy feely and magical thinking as opposed to logical thinking.

True, her "book club" got a lot of women reading classics (well, duh). But she also pushed The Secret, a book that blamed the poor for being poor, because if they started magical thinking they too could be rich.

While Trumpieboy had to check on the workers (meaning he talked to ordinary people), check he wasn't being overcharged or cheated (hands on stuff with smart and sometimes sleezy operators), while managing the day to day financial stuff. True, he went bankrupt, showing his business acumen was lacking, but he also remade his money.

In other words, Oprah lives in a crazy egotistical bubble where your thought will magically change the world.

Trumpie boy lives in a reality based pragmatic world, and talks crazy while changing things for the better. David Brooks comments:

Imagine if Trump didn’t tweet. The craziness of the past weeks would be out of the way, and we’d see a White House that is briskly pursuing its goals: the shift in our Pakistan policy, the shift in our offshore drilling policy, the fruition of our ISIS policy, the nomination for judgeships and the formation of policies on infrastructure, DACA, North Korea and trade.

It’s almost as if there are two White Houses. There’s the Potemkin White House, which we tend to focus on: Trump berserk in front of the TV, the lawyers working the Russian investigation and the press operation. Then there is the Invisible White House that you never hear about, which is getting more effective at managing around the distracted boss.

Why, yes....

uh, maybe he is tweeting to keep his enemies off balance, because if they noticed what he was doing, they'd really go bonkers and stop it?

I believe the saying is: Crazy like a fox.

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oh by the way: Anyone notice that North Korea is talking to South Korea? True, it's about the Olympics but they also are accepting aid from SoKo businessmen...and this is a few days after the SoKo stopped a ship bringing them illegal petrol....hmm...

and StrategyPage has this on China's part in the NoKo problem. For later reading.