Category Archives: Donald Trump

UPDATED (3/13): The Great Negotiator Never Negotiated With Nikki Haley. Trump Gave Her Power And Let Her Keep John McCain’s Foreign Policy Positions

Donald Trump, Foreign Policy, John McCain, Neoconservatism

Another mainstream Republican President Trump has empowered big time is Nimrata Nikki Haley, the 46-year-old daughter of immigrants from Punjab, India, former governor of South Carolina (where she disrespected Southern history by removing Robert E. Lee’s battle flag), and now US ambassador to the United Nations. I wonder which wars Haley will launch when her time comes to really call the shots?

Haley, heavily pushed by the Ivanka-Jared wing of the White House, waltzed into her job without conditions, having been given “a free hand to set foreign policy.”

Diplomats say “She doesn’t know enough about foreign policy to know what is her foreign policy.” Well, she knows enough to “distance herself from the new president on multiple key foreign-policy fronts, carving out an approach that hewed closer to Republican foreign-policy leaders in the Senate, including Bob Corker, Lindsey Graham, and John McCain. She pilloried Russia, denouncing Putin as an untrustworthy rival and dismissing the prospects of working productively with Assad in the war against the Islamic State.”

Even as she accepted Trump’s offer to serve at the U.N., Haley distanced herself from the new president on multiple key foreign-policy fronts, carving out an approach that hewed closer to Republican foreign-policy leaders in the Senate, including Bob Corker, Lindsey Graham, and John McCain. She pilloried Russia, denouncing Putin as an untrustworthy rival and dismissing the prospects of working productively with Assad in the war against the Islamic State….
Haley’s European colleagues noted that her core positions from Russia to Syria and Ukraine aligned neatly with their own, making her a potential partner who might soften the contours of the president’s controversial policies. “She couldn’t have been better from our point of view,” says one U.N. Security Council member. “She positioned herself comfortably at our end of the administration’s spectrum.”

MORE: “Candidate Haley: The portrait that emerges is of a retail politician turning U.N. diplomacy into a ticket to the White House.”

UPDATE (3/13):

The newly hired has Haley’s approval:

Neocons are happy about Mike Pompeo:

The woman who should have had the job. An old-school Democrat:

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Why Libertarians Should Shrug-Off Memo Mania

Democrats, Donald Trump, Iraq, libertarianism, Paleolibertarianism, Republicans

A NEW ESSAY, “Why Libertarians Should Shrug-Off Memo Mania,” is at the Mises Institute’s Power and Market blog. An excerpt:

First came the Republican memo, courtesy of the Republican House Intelligence Committee chairman Devin Nunes. Their memo detailed the surveillance abuses against one Carter Page, enabled by a kangaroo court which was strengthened immeasurably by the old Republican-Party boss, George Bush.

Bush II had fortified the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC), and the Stupid Party greased the skids for the expansion of FISA infractions. Following Barack Obama’s lead, Republicans have reauthorized the controversial Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), which has resulted in the “incidental” collection of the communications of American citizens, and likely served as an impetus for prosecutions.

Enter Rep. Adam Schiff, Democrat from California. He and the other Democrats on the House intelligence committee have now presented their distillation of the counter case, namely that the “FISA warrant and repeated renewals to conduct temporary surveillance of Carter Page” were all justified. Well of course.

Media eminences—Republican Mark Steyn, for instance—have accused the Democrats of assaulting the rule of law. The libertarian, however, might wish to avoid wading into an intra-party fracas. Why intra-party? Because the Democrats and the Republicans of DC share most of their political DNA.

Am I saying libertarians have no dog in the fight over whether “Hillary Clinton and the DNC funded the [dodgy] dossier that was a basis for the Department of Justice’s FISA application”?

Do we not care that the “venerated” FBI “had abused its surveillance authority and relied improperly on politically motivated sources—namely former British spy Christopher Steele who had been paid by Fusion GPS, a private intelligence firm hired first by conservative underwriters and then retained by Democrats during the 2016 campaign”?

Precisely.

Put it this way: What libertarians should care about is that the “America’s political police”—the Federal Bureau of Investigation and its malignant offshoots—is being thoroughly discredited by its most enthusiastic advocates. This is of a piece with the creative destruction generated, inadvertently, by Donald Trump.

Moreover, the meta-perspective argued for here relies on a recognition that America is regularly convulsed by episodes of mass, hysterical contagion.

What is “hysterical contagion”?

Sociologists explain it as the spread of symptoms of an illness among a group, absent any physiological disease. It provides a way of coping with a situation that cannot be handled with the usual coping mechanism.

Arguably, the Trump-Russia “collusion,” “obstruction of justice” probe and the attendant frenzied behavior and belief-system it has engendered meets the definition of mass hysteria. With an exception: This particular form of mass madness involves a meme, a story-line that catches on and sticks. In particular, it is the emotional pitch with which the Trump-Russia collusion group-think is delivered, day in and day out, that has gripped and inflamed irrational, febrile minds. …

… READ THE REST.  “Why Libertarians Should Shrug-Off Memo Mania” is at the Mises Institute’s Power and Market blog.

And at the Ron Paul Institute.

 

 

 

Liberals Complain Trump Has Failed To Fill Many Jobs. But Every Oink-Sector Job That Remains Unfilled Is A Blessing.

Donald Trump, Economy, Government, Labor, Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim, libertarianism, The State

Leftists—in that label I always include most conservatives—continue to gripe that “hundreds of senior administration posts—including seven of nine top jobs at the State Department—remain unfilled. And positions that get filled often don’t stay that way.” (“Land of the flee: Staffing the White House,” The Economist.)

However, every libertarian-minded individual should grasp that government positions not filled is cause for celebration, not lamentation.

These jobs are invariably political appointments, unproductive and parasitical in nature, and a drain on taxpayers. For the most, workers in the Oink Sector are utterly dispensable.

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Hiring The Best People, POTUS? Start By Firing The Family And The Fashion Models

Donald Trump, Family, Foreign Policy

Sadly, it’s true. The one vow Trump made that “went the way of many campaign promises” was candidate “Donald Trump’s promised to hire only ‘the best people.'” (“Land of the flee: Staffing the White House,” The Economist.)

For example, there are now two former models—with no particular gifts or qualifications other than their guile and good looks—in senior positions in the White House: Ivanka Trump and Hope Hicks.

The First Daughter is conducting diplomacy with South Korea, no less. Ivanka is as qualified as her silly husband is to meddle in the Middle East. But at least Jared Kusher is a mute. He doesn’t speak.

“Ivanka Trump Briefed South Korea President on North Korea Sanctions Despite Reportedly Lacking Permanent Security Clearance,” blared a 2/23/18 Newsweek headline. Never mind security clearance. Steve Bannon attested that Ivanka Trump was as “dumb as a brick.”

And you can take that to the bank.