Donald Trump couldn’t do worse than contact the winners and runners-up of his old show “The Apprentice” (when he was hosting it) to offer one of them the vacant National Security Advisor position.

Posted by: Jen | Sep 12 2019 23:00 utc | 104

Posted by: psychohistorian | Sep 10 2019 17:21 utc | 13
For felt two decades by now, I wonder if it is helpful to label someone a troll. We all mirror to some extend. One could call it hope, maybe. Or the optimists approach vs the pessimist.
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But this is interesting:
“Trump’s innermost preoccupation is radical trade realignment which will reverse trade flows, repatriate industrial capacity & reallocate global prosperity, which will deflate the USD as reserve currency (defuse the Triffin Paradox), which will cause the petrodollar-financed Mil-Indust-Complex to contract via attrition without a pitched and frontal battle that he could well lose.
and this, seemingly variation on a more recent meme, that made over here too, into the German Weakly Die Zeit. The author called it Russia’s “hybrid warfare”. E.g. state owned production and irocnically enough, suspicion of Russia hiding part of its MIC complex in some type of creative acounting. Like the US of A? Irony alert:
“If Russia can develop superior weapons systems on 1/9 the budget, the Pentagon will need to acclimate to new fiscal realities.”
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Posted by: Vig | Sep 13 2019 10:59 utc | 106

@13
The stolen global prosperity that the bankers ‘patriated’ into the USD (via petrodollar recycling) was not left sitting idly in the American consumers’ pockets. That would run counter to the international bankers’ credo of stealing from EVERYONE ALL THE TIME.
The FIRE economy was revved up in a hurry to sop up the ill-gotten dollarized windfalls. As a young Deputy Treasury Sec Volcker informed then-NSA Director Kissinger (circa 1970) that the way to maintain hegemony while running twin deficits was to steal the surpluses of everyone else i.e, run ever-bigger deficits. Luciferean backwardation. The finite storehouse of gold gave way to the near-infinite flow of oil. Remember too, the bankers awarded themselves a 300% pay raise by tagging the hapless Faisal with ‘oil embargoing’ and hiding the whole two-step behind the Yom Kippur War. They also averted a major debt fiasco by rescuing the beleaguered oil companies with massive price increases. Come on. Let’s take a moment to salute just how purely genius evil genius can be.
Since the Triffin Paradox mandates domestic trade deficits, US productive capacity was shipped overseas, thus simultaneously minting the China Miracle and initiating the US Managed Decline Arc. US household income peaked Jan 1973 –same month Joe Biden (‘China poses no threat to the US – that’s why I let Hunter sign deals in the back of AF-2’) arrived in DC as a 32-year-old Senator. Delicious irony.
My hunch on Trump -call it wishful if you like- is that he is fully confident a demoralized and idled American population (long since drifted into opioids and other self-destructive vices) can be re-normalized back into nation-among-nations status, the old virtues of can-do-itness can be reprised and the crutch of reserve currency status, which does more harm than good both domestically and internationally, can be scrapped. Domestically, this manifests as a titanic Main Street-vs-Wall Street struggle to which Trump is hopelessly outnumbered, except for a bedrock and immovable 45% of the voting public. Half the nation is nothing to sneeze at.
America in the middle is like a dry sponge. When was the last time anywhere on the planet people lined up for 48 hours to attend a political leader’s rally? The People sense an exit from the yolk of neo-liberal trickle-up theft. The Left is famous for labeling Trump’s economic populism incipient fascism. But it’s really the natural enthusiasm of a long-unaddressed people. Managed Democracy with its crafty camera angles, distorted crowd counts and moribund political mannequins cannot match the effusions of an aroused Direct Democracy.
For seventy years America the Nation has been expropriated by America the Empire (the latter really being a transnational entity masquerading as an organic fixture. Catherine Austin Fitts calls it the Tape Worm)
There’s ample time to bemoan Bolton’s yet-to-be-announced successor. TODAY, as signaled by receding oil and gold prices, the world is a safer place for Bolton’s departure.

Posted by: FSD | Sep 13 2019 17:15 utc | 108

Kirakou talking about why he wrote his June prediction (which turned out to be right).
As he wrote in June – it has nothing to do with Bolton’s policies, it had to do with Bolton leaking info out and pissing Trump off.
Kiriakou also saying 2 people are replacement candidates: Steven Beigun and Douglas Macgregor
Biegun is the guy handling North Korea – which I presume is responsible for the positive work which Bolton singlehanded interrupted while Macgregor is isolationist.
It seems like the question then is North Korea treaty or Afghanistan withdrawal.
MacGregor will push the Afghanistan “declare victory and go home” while Biegun probably makes more sense in place to potentially also “win” North Korea.

Posted by: c1ue | Sep 14 2019 18:11 utc | 110

@ #111
All I presented is what Kiriakou wrote/talked about.
Ultimately, he has built credibility both from being a publicly prosecuted whistleblower and having correctly called Bolton’s departure.
If one of the 2 people he names winds up as NSA, that would only reinforce the record he had built.
You’re welcome to any opinion you like – but that’s not the same as someone who has made public pronouncements and been borne out by actual history.

Posted by: c1ue | Sep 14 2019 20:00 utc | 112