An even bigger scandal: when the ringleader went to Jared

You need to read this post by my friend, tech-investor Russ Daggatt about possibly the biggest political scandal in U.S. history: 

"Last August, Jared Kushner, son-in-law and (not coincidentally) the senior White House official in charge of the Middle East, received over a billion dollars from a firm seeking to sell nuclear technology to Saudi Arabia. Then, the House Judiciary Committee got confirmation Jared uses WhatsApp to communicate with foreign leaders (in violation of US law), including Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS known for ordering the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi). 

"The Trump administration has kept secret seven authorizations for sharing of sensitive nuclear technology with Saudi Arabia, despite the fact that the kingdom hasn't agreed to the anti-proliferation requirements of US law. (Oh, and Trump intervened to get his daughter Jared and Ivanka  and 23 others high-level security clearances when they were denied them through normal national security channels.)

Daggatt continues: 
“Let's go through this step-by-step (links below). In 2007, just before the collapse of the real estate bubble, Jared had the family company buy 666 Fifth Avenue in New York for $1.8 billion, financed by a $1.4 billion loan - the highest price ever paid for a building in New York, and is not among even the top 100 tallest buildings in the city. It was a disastrously overpriced acquisition, about 30% vacant, with its largest tenant saying it planned to leave. The loan was due in February. Jared had been scouring the planet - while serving in the White House - for possible investors to save his family from financial collapse. No rational investor would touch the thing.

‘But then, last August, a savior was found - Brookfield Asset Management - which took a 99-year lease on the building, paying the entire $1.1 billion in lease payments upfront (!) and allowing Kushner to retain ownership of the underlying land (the one thing of real value). Turns out, Brookfield also owns the nuclear services company Westinghouse (purchased out of bankruptcy last year), which is seeking to sell nuclear reactors to Saudi Arabia. (Trump's first National Security Advisor (and convicted felon) Michael Flynn, and Trump's buddy, campaign advisor, and the chairman of his Inaugural Committee, Tom Barrack, were also part of these efforts to sell nuclear reactors to Saudi Arabia. It gets complicated - among other things, Barrack was the guy who brought Paul Manafort in as Trump's campaign manager. This appears to be among the matters spun off from the Mueller investigation. But I digress.)

‘It was reported last October that Jared has been communicating with MBS, using his personal mobile phone, through the free encrypted messaging service WhatsApp, which conveniently does not store messages on its servers after they are delivered, leaving no record of the communications. (If only Hillary had used WhatsApp.) That appears to have been confirmed recently by the House Oversight Committee. Jared has also been bypassing the State Department and the US Embassy in Saudi Arabia in his direct dealings with MBS, excluding them from communications and meetings (much like Trump's direct dealings with Putin).'

(DB note: Then there's the stunning Qatari angle: they used US foreign policy to shake down the Qataris to help bail out 666 Fifth Avenue. Crum! They didn't even try to hide it behind a series of shell companies! It's almost in the open!)

‘We know Trump ordered John Kelly, to grant Jared and Ivanka security clearances, despite objections from the CIA and the White House counsel, among others. Trump and Ivanka had both previously stated publicly that Trump did not intervene in the granting of those security clearances after they had been held up for over a year. (What exactly is it that Ivanka does that requires a top security clearance? Getting personal trademarks from China?) Who knows what the hold up was. Maybe it was the 40 times Jared had to amend the paperwork for his security clearance, to disclose foreign government contacts he had previously omitted (in possible violation of law). Maybe it was his efforts during the transition to set up a secret back channel to the Kremlin through the Russian Embassy to evade US intelligence services (just one of those details omitted from his paperwork). Or maybe it was his global hunt for money. 

‘In any event, we have what looks like a possible billion dollar payoff to a senior White House official (and president's son-in-law) by a group seeking to sell nuclear technology to the world's major exporter of Islamist radicalism. And, at the same time, secret approvals of transfers of nuclear technology to that country. And I've really only touched on all permutations of this story. You'd think it would be getting more attention than it has.

‘Oh, and I almost forgot to mention: The National Enquirer, which Trump has used for decades to kill scandals, and (apparently) Saudi intelligence services may have teamed up for a hit on Washington Post owner (and Trump target) Jeff Bezos. No way the Saudis and the Enquirer would be doing that except at the direction (or at least, with the knowledge) of Trump. Saudis aren’t going to be going rogue on something like that. My take is that Trump seems to be using the Saudi intelligence services to do dirty work for him that the professional US intelligence services never would (just as he sought a back channel to the Kremlin through the Russian Embassy to evade US intelligence services).’

Thanks Russ. If even just one of you can wrestle a RASR to the ground and pin him long enough to hear you recite-aloud the above, and get him to WAGER whether ALL of the “Clinton Scandals” he clings to – if all of them together were proved (and none ever were) -- would amount to 1% of just this one aspect of the Confederate-GOP-Putinist treason.... 

Cornered by your demand that he put actual money on it, some RASRs have been known to declare that they now realize we’re ruled by a mafia gang. If you – yes you – can haul just one sinner back to the American Enlightenment, then this will be a good day for us all.

Links:

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/03/nyregion/kushners-building-fifth-avenue-brookfield-lease.html

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/26/us/politics/kushner-talked-to-russian-envoy-about-creating-secret-channel-with-kremlin.html

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/02/opinion/sunday/saudi-arabia-jared-kushner-nuclear.html 

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-westinghouse-m-a-brookfieldbusinesspa/brookfield-business-partners-to-buy-westinghouse-for-4-6-billion-idUSKBN1ET1MQ 

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/trump-administration-authorized-nuclear-energy-companies-to-share-technological-information-with-saudi-arabia/2019/03/28/1b5f0816-5180-11e9-8d28-f5149e5a2fda_story.html 

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/28/us/politics/jared-kushner-security-clearance.html 

There is more blatant proof here - just lying in the open - than all of the "Clinton-Obama Scandals" that the mad right spent 25 years and half a billion of our dollars "investigating," finding zilch.


A picture is worth…

Lest we forget the most-telling image of them all (and what Hollywood director would have dared with such a wretched-obvious villain cliché?)

Show it again to your aunt and uncle, and ask them if they ever saw James Bond characters who didn't scream more villainy.


== It’s mobs. Everywhere mobs ==

This article offers (duh!) comparisons between the Trump Organization and organized crime. But I take it much further. There are no other models that better map what we're up against. Putin, Kim, MBS (the Saudi leader), Erdogan, Duterte, Assad and the PRC all order assassin hits on opponents around the world with impunity while Trump defends all of them and blocks our institutions from taking counter measures. Some are 'communist' or ex-KGB or Sunni or Shiite or Catholic or casino moguls or U.S. Nazis -- but all those surface rationalizations and incantations are distraction BS.

Fundamental: some human males will be insatiably rapacious, absent of accountability. After 6000 years of feudalism, mafia tactics come naturally, wherever the Western Enlightenment cannot shine its new inventions of light and accountability. And the top shared goal of all these mobs - loosely led by Putin - is utter demolition of those tools and this enlightenment.

There are no other applicable models. (Well, the Chinese are a bit more complex, but the Kremlin has been the same, from the Czarist Okrhana to the Stalinist KGB to the post-communist-but-still-Stalinist oligarchy-mafia. And that one point should be shoved up your mad uncle's MAGA nose.) 

My father infiltrated the 1930s Nazi-Bund. As a gangland reporter he covered Capone. The Greatest Generation came to recognize this perennial threat to our flickering freedom, that strives above all to divide us and staunch our faith in facts and negotiation and a hope for reasonableness. 

And if you haven't yet, at my urging, watched the Costa-Gravas film "Z" then please do so ASAP.

Which crisis will we face next?

All right, here is the danger I fear most right now. The heads of four world powers desperately fear democracy in their own nations. All four want to trigger war between the United States and Iran.

A while back, I did a round-up regarding international affairs and their calamitous bungling, in recent weeks. But I left you with the impression that war with Iran might happen because of “stumbling,” as described here in The Atlantic. But in fact, things are far worse. It appears that a confluence of pivotal world leaders want  this to happen. 

Are these four nations all enemies of the U.S.? Heck no. One of them is an “ally” - Saudi Arabia. Another is best pals with our president - Russia’s Putin regime. The other two may shock you. They are the United States and Iran.

Both Donald Trump and the Iranian mullahs know that time is not on their side. Their people tire of them, daily. Hence, both of them try pumping up support through fear — of “terrorism” or “Satanic American meddling.” 

But eight years of almost-perfect safety, under Obama, has made paranoiac fear very hard to push, outside their fanatical base. Both Trump and the mullahs would benefit - domestically - from some kind of crisis — war, or a “Reichstag fire” — to reverse their slide.

The Saudi position is even simpler — and more shortsighted. They rightfully fear the rise of a Shia empire, arcing through Syria and Iraq and Iran to Bahrain and their own non-Sunni coast. But they believe rattling sabers and even hurling bombs will prevent this, even though such things have only strengthened the Ayatollahs, every single time. And in the event of a major conflict, the Persian regime will just cling for protection to their next door neighbor — nuclear armed Russia, sealing their nascent alliance.

Hence, of the four, the only one wanting an Iran-U.S. War for clever reasons is, of course, Vladimir Putin.  And well, we all know about his puppet strings to you-know-who.

Find all this implausible? Look at the foreign affairs team appointed by Trump, from Tillerson and Bannon on down. Every single one of them has called for confrontation with Iran, which would only undercut the democracy movements  among Tehran’s rising middle class. There are no exceptions. Every… single… one of Trump’s people have spoken glowingly of struggle with “Iran,” ignoring the fact that a majority of its people want to join the modern world.

Of course there is a final ingredient -- removing Iranian oil from world supply would instantly boost prices for... well, guess whom.

You can see this in the recent Travel Ban, which fiercely clamped on not just Iran (which - despite a lot of noise - has done us very little tangible harm, since 1980) but also our supposed best Shia ally — Iraq.  Moreover, there was word recently that the Trump Administration wanted to fire at an Iranian military skiff near Yemen, but was stopped by cooler heads. Only, what if the mullahs order more skiffs to charge ever closer? How long before we see some sort of Gulf of Tonkin incident, that serves the interest of both sets of rulers?

And no, forget this ramping up into something truly conflagration-level. Sure, Trump and Putin might like that, for their own reasons.  (Trump because he is a Republican, and Republicans like gaudy styles of war.) 

But that is where both the mullahs and the Saudi royals might balk. Certainly the Israelis, who know that Tehran already has a bomb. And they know where it's aimed.

== Which battle will Republicans choose? ==

A House committee voted on Tuesday to eliminate an independent election commission charged with helping states improve their voting systems as President Donald Trump erroneously claims widespread voter fraud cost him the popular vote. Let's be clear on this.  The EAC is the only force currently thwarting efforts to rig every voting machine in red states. (Blue states nearly all have paper ballot receipts that can be audited, limiting cheating.) 

There is no other conceivable reason to eliminate a voting-fraud-preventing agency that costs next to nothing, in a year when everyone is screaming about "voter fraud." The reason is simple.  The GOP intends to do even more election fraud.  It is a matter of survival.

Meanwhile, the president endorsed civil asset forfeiture, which lets police seize even innocent people’s property.  Hey libertarians!  Add this to the one hundred ways that Republicans are vastly, vastly worse than democrats for freedom. And any libertarian who chooses the GOP as his "hold my nose" choice or lesser of two weevils, is an utter dunce and traitor to Adam Smith.

== AH, hate Obamacare much? ==

"For seven years, opponents of the Affordable Care Act vowed to make its repeal their top concern, warning that the law would turn America overnight into a socialist dystopia. Now these opponents have unfettered control of the government and they aren’t even talking about repealing," reports Dana Millbank in The Washington Post. 

Seriously? Seven years railing it was work of satan. (In fact Obama crafted it after Romney-care/Heritage Care and the GOP's own platform, hoping they'd react with gratitude.) Seven years screeching and demanding immediate cancelation and replacement. Seven years they could have offered an alternative! Seven years you dopes have swallowed this koolaid...

... and now the max they are talking about is (1) tweaking a few fixes the dems were eager to negotiate, and (2) changing a lot of the names of things! Renaming the program and its parts. And you dopes will swallow that. You'll swallow anything you're told.

BTW... see here why GOPpers actually think that names matter more than substance.

== Disturbing Miscellany ==

Hayley Miller reports that despite the Trump administration’s renewed focus on fossil fuels, a new Pew poll says two-thirds of Americans favor a path to a renewable energy future. Writing from Hong Kong, Li Jing reports that Chinese officials say they are prepared “to take a leadership role” in defending the Paris climate accord no matter what the new Trump administration decides to do.  

Combat readiness — I've long pointed out that it plummeted for the US military under both Bushes and raised up to almost 100% under Clinton and Obama. One member of this blog community reported: "There are elaborate systems that track readiness: SORTS and DRRS.  When I was reporting for my unit, it was on a classified system, and we would evaluate our ability to conduct our mission vs our 'Designed Operational Capability (DOC) statement'...usually we had minimum number of qualified and current personnel and mission capable equipment.  If we were good to go, we were "C1" if not, we might be marginal or some degradation "C2", but always tried to avoid not mission capable "C3" or worse C4."

 Definitions: Department of Defense Readiness Reporting System (DRRS), improved upon by Status of Resources and Training System (SORTS).

Candidate Donald Trump was a big fan of leaks, especially when they targeted Hillary Clinton and reports of her deleted emails.  "Russia, if you're listening, I hope you're able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing," Trump said last July in Florida. "I think you will probably be rewarded mightily by our press."  

Now in the White House less than a month, President Trump is far less enthusiastic about leaks in general, and those involving Russia in particular.

Is Ohio Governor John Kasich gearing up for a primary run against Donald Trump in 2020, as this article suggests?  Or is something more immediate and bold afoot?  Someone report here if you notice Kasich meeting with McCain, Murkowski, Portman, Collins, Graham and others.  It’s too soon. But something bigger may be back-burner simmering.

Evan McMullen tried, hard, to help the folk of Utah to spurn the recent collapse of American conservatism. Had they listened, they might have escaped direct, shared responsibility for this calamity, instead of lining up with the most opposite-to-Jesus set of leaders America has ever seen. Well, McMullen and his minority of followers continue to stand up. They might seed a new American conservatism – an adult kind – to rise from the coming ashes.

Trump makes false statements about U.S. murder rate to sheriffs’ group. The president claimed the country’s murder rate is the highest it’s been in 45 to 47 years. But the rate actually is almost at its lowest point, according to the FBI.  You who are complicit and making excuses for this.  You are flirting with madness and riding a rabid tiger.

Meanwhile (same day) -- Open-carry advocates walked into a police station with a loaded rifle. Officers were not amused. Seriously, after declaring open war on the US Military and Intelligence officer corps, now the alt-right is doing everything in its power to bully police.  Seriously? You had those conservative-by-personality clades safely republican, some years ago.  Now the cops & spooks and generals are fleeing, like every single other knowledge and fact-based profession.

‘“I’m a Leninist,” Bannon proudly proclaimed.’  So goes the anecdote told by Ronald Radosh on The Daily Beast, about President Donald Trump’s Rasputin. ‘“Lenin,” he answered, “wanted to destroy the state, and that’s my goal too. I want to bring everything crashing down, and destroy all of today’s establishment.” Bannon was employing Lenin’s strategy for Tea Party populist goals. He included in that group the Republican and Democratic Parties, as well as the traditional conservative press.’

== North vs South ==

Having a blog community can be handy.  One of my commenters (and I have the best)  went and appraised how many cabinet members recent presidents have chosen from states on which side of the Civil War.

For comparison:

Obama's initial cabinet:      3 Westerners, 1 Confederate, 10 Unionists.

G.W. Bush's initial cabinet: 1 Westerner, 5 Confederate, 9 Unionists.

Clinton's initial cabinet:       2 Westerners, 6 Confederates, 6 Unionists.

Bush the Elder's cabinet:   3 Westerners, 4 Confederates, 7 Unionists.

Reagan's initial cabinet:    2 Westerners, 1 Confederate, 10 Unionists.

Carter's initial cabinet:      2 Westerners, 4 Confederates, 7 Unionists.

(skipping Ford as he inherited the cabinet of:)

Nixon's initial cabinet:      3 Westerners, 1 Confederate, 8 Unionists.

Reagan’s was the most tilted in favor of the Union, followed by Obama. 

Trump’s is by-far the most tilted toward former Confederate states.

See Trump’s cabinet, with C for confederate state, U for union state, W for western state (not admitted in 1865):

C: TX (SecState)

U: NY (SecTreas)

W: WA (SecDef)

C: AL (AttyGen)

W: MT (SecInt)

C: GA (SecAg)

C: FL (SecComm)

C: TN (SecLabor)

C: GA (SecHHS)

C: FL (SecHUD)

C: KY (SecTrans)

C: TX (SecEnergy)

U: MI (SecEd)

U: PA (SecVA)

U: MA (SecHS)

3 Westerners (states not admitted during the War)

4 Union

9 Confederate States

2016 estimates (Census Bureau):

Current population of today’s Confederacy: 113 million

Current population of the West: 33.5 million

Current population of the Union: 177 million

Total population of the United States: 323.5 million

Probability that a randomly chosen Cabinet member would be from:

* the Union: (177/323.5) = 54.7%

* the Confederacy: (113/323.5) = 34.9%

* the West: (33.5/323.5) = 10.3%

Probability that a randomly chosen Cabinet would contain:

4 or fewer Union denizens: CDF(binomial, 15, 0.547, 4) = 2.7%

9 or more Confederate denizens: 1 - CDF(binomial, 15, 0.349, 9) = 1.2%

Conclusion: There is a statistically significant bias against the Union and in favor of the Confederacy in choices for Cabinet members. 

Of course there are quibbles.  Indiana long ago stopped being for the Union and Virginia is ditching Dixie. Many Western states are confederate hotbeds.  Still….

== Ask... Demand ... they define when America was Great! ==

The struggle for our civilization will be a long and complicated one, especially as our greatest weapons – facts – have been undermined with clever - though ancient - appeals to tribalism. It appears we shall have to slog through refutation after refutation. 

Ironically, you can refute the current “everybody knows that” poisons with even stronger things that “everybody knows.”

Take the nostrum: “Make America Great Again.” I do not recall even a single Democratic pol, or sage pundit, or reporter ever asking – even once – “WHEN was America’s iconic moment of greatness?”

Of course one reflexive answer is obvious – the halcyon 1950s of “Happy Days.” Only notice that it’s never actually said, in order to avoid the unfavorable comparisons that I make here:  Was 1957 America Better Than Today?  

In fact, you get nowhere by denigrating the 1950s.  

What’s vastly more effective is to lead these nostalgic folks out onto a limb, getting them to express admiration for the “Greatest Generation” that endured a depression, crushed Hitler, contained Stalinism, went to the Moon, spanned the continent with infrastructure and universities, and built a market economy so strong and rich that we could then afford to take on a myriad old sins, like poverty, racism, sexism and planetary neglect.

Do the Greatest Generationers deserve our gratitude and respect? Sure! Might they have been better and greater than their boomer children? Well, sure… maybe… though that insults them as having been poor parents.  Still, yes, those men and women of the Greatest Generation truly were great! 

Only, didn’t they achieve all those mighty things at high tax rates on the rich? And with fierce regulation of banks and monopolies?

Weren’t all those mighty accomplishments of the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s achieved with strong labor unions? With intense national respect for teachers and scientists? Wasn’t that when the most trusted American was a journalist (Edward R. Murrow, followed by Walter Cronkite), the most admired was a scientist (Jonas Salk), and the most beloved – by far – was Franklin Delano Roosevelt?

Given that not a single promise ever made by Supply Side Economics ever once came true, is the prescription for making America Great again truly to reverse every single thing that the Greatest generation did and believed in? 

Hey, just askin’

 == Wrapping up...==

Okay, some tactics should be beneath us. Still, one can get a chuckle out of this site that will connect you by phone to some Trump business venture, around the world, so you can do what foreign leaders and oligarchs already can do… talk policy through the back door of DT’s businesses.  

According to a classified FBI counterterrorism policy guide obtained by The Intercept, “white supremacists and other domestic extremists” have been joining law enforcement agencies across the United States.

Counter-factual drivel abounds: "Unlike his predecessors, Trump is serious about winning. To do so, he is even willing to take the radical step of accepting Israel as an ally." See where I long ago discussed how Republicans and Democrats wage war.

The Turkish Parliament passed constitutional amendments last weekend that could allow President Recep Tayyip Erdogan to amass unprecedented power. 

“Let me tell you what is coming. After the sacrifice of countless millions of treasure and hundreds of thousands of lives, you may win Southern independence if God be not against you, but I doubt it. I tell you that, while I believe with you in the doctrine of states rights, the North is determined to preserve this Union. They are not a fiery, impulsive people as you are, for they live in colder climates. But when they begin to move in a given direction, they move with the steady momentum and perseverance of a mighty avalanche; and what I fear is, they will overwhelm the South." 

-- Sam Houston, denouncing the Texas convention’s decision to secede, in 1861.

Poking both right and left in the eye

This time I will aim jabs in both directions! Because even you… yes you… indulge in some pretty simplistic stuff. This is Contrary Brin... and hence, though I think one 'side' is a lot more-wrong than the other, I despise the notions of oversimplifying 'sides.'

First though… is this the start of my prediction coming true, about a Donald Trump veer to the center?  Trump proposes to double Clinton's spending on infrastructure.  Yes, all he's done is take a popular Democratic platform goal and multiply it by two, in order to seem even more populist.  But that's exactly what I originally forecast, back when I thought that DT was a disciplined and brilliant conniving manipulator, instead of just a gut-reflexive one.

It could still happen.  The huge silver lining to a Trump candidacy would be if - at the debates - he announced "of course I now understand that climate change is real and that Supply Side 'economics' is not."  If he did that... and his torching of the GOP forced American conservatives to re-evaluate the confederate madness inflicted by Rupert Murdoch... then there could be real benefits.  But no... he is way too impulsive and ill-disciplined.  Which brings up the opposite extreme possibility --

Might Donald Trump duck out of the Presidential Debates, as he did several times during the Primaries? His whining about “rigged against me” this-or-that have become routine.  But this analyst tells the history of presidential debates and how they might vanish. 

The wild card? If Libertarian Gary Johnson achieves 15% in polls, he can get onstage with HC and DT.  And yes, the first order effect of helping give twenty million fiscal conservatives who don't care about bathrooms a home away from the mad GOP-confederacy sounds alluring. But DP strategists know there'd be a downside.  Especially if Green Party's Jill Stein wrangle a slot... or whines from the sidelines.

America’s favorite capitalist – the Oracle of Omaha – Warren Buffett, whose investment brilliance and down home modesty has won him hero status, once boggled the world by making his principal heir… Bill Gates!  In the sense that the unassuming Buffett needs no fancy charitable institution named after him.  So he picked the best-run one he could find (sorry Clintons) and will leave most of his wealth to the Gates Foundation. A rarity, he is admired across all walks of life and from moderate left through moderate right. 

The far left won’t favor a capitalist under any conditions, even when the true enemy of flat-open-fair capitalism is, in fact, feudalism. As for the far right, they know very well how Buffett despises oligarchy and Supply Side Voodoo so-called “economics.”  Now see Buffett campaigning for Hillary Clinton in Nebraska and demanding that Donald Trump release his tax records.  You want a businessman?  I got your businessman, right here.

== Why no hearings about any of this? ==

President Obama just ordered release of the infamous “28 pages” from the 9/11 report, that GW Bush declared secret, pages showing that the hijackers "were in contact with, and received support or assistance from, individuals who may be connected to the Saudi Government." No real surprise there, as this Salon report shows: “Saudi Arabia has been a major source of financing to rebel and terrorist organizations since the 1970s,” the European Parliament wrote in a 2013 report, adding, “countries like Saudi Arabia, Qatar, United Arab Emirates and Kuwait do too little to stop rich and conservative donors from financing terrorists through charitable and religious institutions.”

There’s lots more, but again the question rises: why did the FBI not question - way back in 2001 - the scores of royals and Saudi government officials and radical Salafist-Wahabbi activists who were in the U.S. at the time of the 9/11 attacks, many of whom were shown to have known or even given money to 9/11 attackers? To what extent did GW Bush run interference so they could leave the country, without questioning?  Above all… why were no Benghazi-style hearings held about that? Or the billions in raw cash that Dick Cheney sent to Baghdad, that promptly and simply disappeared?

(Could be one of two dozen reasons that the Republican Party Convention in Cleveland never even mentioned the names of their previous two presidents? Something never before seen.)

But that was just the beginning of a horrendous series of treasons that included lying about “weapons of mass destruction” in order to send America into quagmire wars costing trillions of dollars and thousands of US lives. (Oh, and about a million non-American lives.) Wars whose only clear beneficiaries were Iran, the Saudis and Cheney family companies. 

Just remember that the GOP in Congress never raised a single question about any of that, next time you hear “emails” or “Benghazi.”  Stunning hypocrites.

Oh but now I will shock by aiming a poke at a shibboleth of the left.

== Proving we’re not monolithic… I dissent on trade! ==

Sorry, but I do not like party catechisms and litmus tests. And even though well over half of the lunacy in current American life comes from a raving, anti-science and anti-fact confederacy… well.. there are some ‘democratic' dogmas that I deem to be premature or rash or ill-considered.  One of those is reflexive opposition to globalized world trade.

Take the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) and NAFTA. These are deemed top enemies by populists of both left and right – one of the few areas in which their rhetorics overlap. But what I've seen makes me lean toward support for TPP.

For one thing, it welds the nations of SE and East Asia together with the U.S. in ways that help to maintain the one best thing that ever happened to the world, the American Pax or unprecedented world peace, that all of you shrug and simply take for granted, but that – compared to 6000 years of grueling-awful history, is a damned miracle. 

Globalized trade is directly responsible for the fact that ¾ of today’s children come home with schoolbooks each day to dwellings that have light and toilets and refrigerators. The stunning failure of globalization opponents to take that into account could qualify as inadvertent or cryptic racism.

Have some of the world’s elites also benefited, disproportionately, from globalization?  Damn straight, and I am on record for wanting and demanding actions to correct that imbalance that has flowed into the gaping maws of cheaters.  Look up the “Helvetian War.”  But that aspect can be solved via rigorous, militant and aggressive transparency - by vigorous politics demanding re-negotiation - without needing to choke off the one thing that uplifted billions around the world, more than all the foreign aid and charity combined.

TPP also sets new rules on labor and ecology that the signatory nations must obey and that brings them all much closer to responsible standards. Sure… folks in enlightened countries like New Zealand complain that their environmental rules may be weakened under TPP!  And am I worried about that?  Hell yes! See below where I talk about RENEGOTIATION. Still, just getting Vietnam and Laos etc aboard with basic enforcement of bans on child labor and pollution will be wonderful.

More TPP benefits. It protects intellectual property better. And don’t for a minute shrug that off. American inventiveness is the goose that has laid the world’s golden eggs for 70 years.  It is time to save the goose from short-sighted fools who would destroy the engine that uplifted the world. 

Above all, it sets a new plateau that China knows will become the standard and if they don't start living by these rules, they will not be invited to the party.

Now a concession!  Folks have good reason to be angry at the secrecy under which TPP was negotiated.  In fairness, it was a complex deal and early press could have messed up everything.  But indeed, I am pissed too.  Details should have been leaked long ago so that western political protests could have been added, coercing even higher labor and environmental and equal-trade standards.

Here’s the deal though… it’s probably not too late for that.  Clinton, in particular, is now behooved to shelve the TPP, as it stands and demand a renegotiation, compelled by the US voters.

== But there’s an even deeper reason ==

What bugs me most of all is the subliminal racism and stunning lack of ability to see long term self-interest on the part of those who have decried – for example – the North American Free Trade Agreement, or NAFTA.

Those who denouce NAFTA for losing some American jobs are fools who miss a key point.  It was and remains stunningly, staggeringly, spectacularly in our interest for Mexico to become a prosperous, middle class country.  And NAFTA is the biggest thing doing that, as we speak. Rapidly, right now. 

When that happens it will be easier for a prosperous, continental North America to defend a border with - say Guatemala - than for the U.S. to build some infantile-stupid giant wall against a poverty-stricken Mexico.

The latter is the gopper fixation now... and it is obsolete!  Immigration from Mexico is now NEGATIVE! Mexico is on the rise and we helped do that and they know it.  We are helping make another Canada, next door, and boy will that be a happier soft landing than any alternative.

Failure to recognize that aspect of NAFTA is a stupidity shared across the spectrum, from right to left.  Already Mexico is importing vastly more from the U.S. than it did before, and that will rise as this investment pays off.

Were there corruptly derived components to NAFTA or TPP?  I am sure. And I would address those with fierce measures to strip elites of all secrecy.  But the self-righteously indignant hate of trade treaty opponents, who did not try reading or parsing or rank-ordering good and bad portions, meant that they could not use their ire to force negotiations that might retain the good and reduce the bad.

In fact, that possibility… “let’s see if we can get the good stuff and eliminate the bad”… never occurs to dogmatists.  Of the sort that infest a wing of one of the U.S. parties… and that comprise the sum total of nearly all members of the other party, nowadays.

Canceling TPP entirely will not help the child laborers that it would ban and send to school, nor the improved environmental codes Vietnam and Malaysia would have to obey, nor the inspectors for health and safety in factories, nor the auditors requiring payment of royalties for stolen American inventions. It won't make Japan open up its markets to nearly all our farm exports, which TPP demands. It WILL embolden China and cause new allies to scurry away from us.

The fact that all of this will come as a surprise to most TPP opponents is just sad. There was something worth improving.  Your opposition could have been the stick in a carrot-and-stick campaign to improve it.

Instead, knowing nothing but reflex, you killed a potential egg-laying goose.

  

== And finally… ==

“A man with a conviction is a hard man to change.” So opens Leon Festinger’s account of doomsday cults and conspiracy believers in When Prophecy Fails. “Tell him you disagree and he turns away. Show him facts or figures and he questions your sources. Appeal to logic and he fails to see your point.” Festinger coined the term “Cognitive dissonance” - for when reality clashes with our deepest convictions. We’d rather recalibrate reality than amend our worldview.

To be clear, this applies to all dogmatists - or humans. Possibly even you. Indeed, I admit that I must struggle to read, rather than contemptuously skim, when presented with facts  that might force some adjustment.

Read this article. Scientists are trained to say: “I might be wrong” and to allow contradictory evidence to sway them. And still, it is not the mantra but the fiercely competitive quality of science that keeps it moving forward against obstinate human nature.  Alas, many other fields - especially politics - have no such feedback loops.  Indeed, I knew we were in for delusional times, when Congress banished  from Capitol Hill all the geeks and fact checkers of the Office of Technology Assessment. The criminal traitors who performed that raving-dogmatic act should not be qualified to be dog catcher.

Oh… this  article is also truly informative about the Mt Pelerin conference of 1947, in Switzerland, where neo-liberal (or ultra free market) conservative economics got its momentum to take over the world. Which sounds a lot like the “trillies conference” in EXISTENCE, portrayed happening exactly a century later, very nearby the same locale.