Hell Has Finally Frozen Over!

[Parsad]

Can you imagine 5-10 years ago, if we said that in 2018, President Donald Trump would have a "historic" summit with Kim Jong Un and Denis Rodman will travel to Singapore to provide support for the meeting!  Would anyone have been called elitist for laughing at such an event?  Or prescient?  Yet here we are...President Donald Trump is going to be best buddies with Kim Jong Un and Denis Rodman is the consigliere to both!  The Rapture is upon us...welcome to hell!  Cheers!

[rkbabang]

I don’t know when I jumped over to this timeline, but it is sure more interesting than the one I used to be on

[OracleofCarolina]

Can’t wait till Kanye joins the cabinet to see you reaction ..haha

[alpha]

 

To top it off Larry Kudlow is the chief economic adviser and he just had a heart attack before the summit began.

 

 

[Parsad]

About 7-8 years ago, I was at a meeting where Larry Sarbit was presenting.  He talked about a book that discussed historically, how no matter what the circumstances, but the United States always got the President it deserved at that time.  What does that say about the times we live in today!  Sorry, I can't remember the title of the book, but if I remember, I will let you know. 

 

Canada, Mexico and the European allies are trade enemies, while the President of the U.S. caters to a brutal North Korean dictator and fights to have the Russians added to the G7.  This almost seems to be some dystopian future taken out of a graphic novel written by the creator of the Walking Dead.  But it's not so much of a fearful environment as one that is simply satirical or completely unbelievable. 

 

Then you have jackasses swearing at the President on television.  The President seeking revenge by Twitter.  Staff quiting every other week.  The spokesperson literally lying to the press after each question.  And Evangelicals forgiving infidelity like it was like changing jobs!  Bizarro world has nothing on us!  Cheers!

[EliG]

 

h/t @greatquarter

[augustabound]

Welcome to Trump National Golf Course in Pyongyang, North Korea.  ;D

[Cardboard]

What is this thread again? Another bout of Hillary didn't win?  :'(

 

If the Democrats had organized this meeting with the exact same end result, the media and those in this thread would have called this the greatest peaceful diplomatic effort ever. Give them the Nobel Prize!

 

You guys are unreal. While I don't appreciate all of what Trump does, there is a lot of truth in what he says. Even Buffett used to warn about trade deficits. Buffett was more politically correct but, still the same message.

 

And trying to reach peace with North Korea and Russia is not a bad idea IMO. A nuclear exchange is not good! We should also not tell other countries how they choose to lead themselves. We had our own revolutions to determine that. It is up to them to figure it out.

 

Cardboard

[rkbabang]

A picture is worth a thousand words

[rkbabang]

What is this thread again? Another bout of Hillary didn't win?  :'(

 

If the Democrats had organized this meeting with the exact same end result, the media and those in this thread would have called this the greatest peaceful diplomatic effort ever. Give them the Nobel Prize!

 

You guys are unreal. While I don't appreciate all of what Trump does, there is a lot of truth in what he says. Even Buffett used to warn about trade deficits. Buffett was more politically correct but, still the same message.

 

And trying to reach peace with North Korea and Russia is not a bad idea IMO. A nuclear exchange is not good! We should also not tell other countries how they choose to lead themselves. We had our own revolutions to determine that. It is up to them to figure it out.

 

Cardboard

 

All joking aside you are correct.  They gave Obama a Nobel Peace prize for making some anti-war noises during a political campaign (wars which he went on to escalate dramatically in his 8 years in office becoming many times the mass murderer his predecessor was).  By any standard Trump should be awarded the next Peace Prize for this.

 

[EliG]

If the Democrats had organized this meeting with the exact same end result, the media and those in this thread would have called this the greatest peaceful diplomatic effort ever. Give them the Nobel Prize!

 

On the flip side, Fox News HATED the idea of Obama talking to foreign dictators. Guess how they feel about Trump doing it???

 

 

[rkbabang]

If the Democrats had organized this meeting with the exact same end result, the media and those in this thread would have called this the greatest peaceful diplomatic effort ever. Give them the Nobel Prize!

 

On the flip side, Fox News HATED the idea of Obama talking to foreign dictators. Guess how they feel about Trump doing it???

 

 

 

Yup, they are all hypocrites on both sides.  It's more about their team wining with absolutely no first principles driving any of their opinions.  If my team does it is good, if their team does it, it is bad.  Neither side is any better than the other when it comes to this.

 

[CorpRaider]

I don't think they are all hypocrites on both sides.  I think there are hypocrites on both sides (many) and one should endeavor to avoid polluting your mind, and society, with their views and to seek out and support the more principled, rational voices.

[augustabound]

What is this thread again? Another bout of Hillary didn't win?  :'(

 

If the Democrats had organized this meeting with the exact same end result, the media and those in this thread would have called this the greatest peaceful diplomatic effort ever.

 

And trying to reach peace with North Korea and Russia is not a bad idea IMO.

 

If another republican president were to organize a meeting people would have said it's the greatest peaceful diplomatic effort ever. This is Trump.

 

Reaching peaceful agreements with either of those nations should be a good idea but people don't trust him.

This isn't straight up republicans versus democrats. This is one guy that very few people in the world trust working with arguably the 2 most dangerous nations in the world and very few trust his motives.

 

I thought at this point something like that should be crystal clear.

[rkbabang]

I don't think they are all hypocrites on both sides.  I think there are hypocrites on both sides (many) and one should endeavor to avoid polluting your mind, and society, with their views and to seek out and support the more principled, rational voices.

 

Yes, of course. I’ll rephrase that to there are many hypocrites on both sides.

 

I love this story. I guess wishing for an economic collapse is better than hoping for nuclear war, but the principle is the same only the magnitude is different. “Sorry if that hurts people”  I’m sure he isn’t.

 

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/bill-maher-is-hoping-for-an-economic-collapse-so-he-can-get-rid-of-trump-sorry-if-that-hurts-people

 

[bobozou]

rkbabang - i just want to point out a subtle, but essential, difference between the following two statements (I don't follow maher, and I don't want to talk about politics)

 

1) "I wish for an economic collapse, to simply prove a point"

 

vs

 

2) "I wish for an economic collapse, to prove a point - in order to improve future decision making, and to create a better LONGTERM (vague, but generally implied to be significantly longer than a single human lifetime) outcome"

 

Often times, people are making statements that sound like the former, but really mean the latter

 

Without speaking to the American public's view of Trump & economy specifically, human beings (everywhere) are generally pretty poor at effectively drawing cause/effect relationships when a) things are complex/multi-variate, b) things are lagged (or not literally immediate), and c) things impact their own well-being.

[netnet]

Quick question->Checking Munger's list of misjudgements, we have a number of factors including the lollapaloza in for a multiplied combination of factors for those Trump defenders.

 

Trump will go down as one of the worst presidents the US has ever had, just on foreign policy:

• He seems hell bent on destroying the Atlantic alliance that won the cold war;
  
• He denounces Trudeau (who doesn't get along with Canadians, for crissakes?) and
  
• He effusively praises a man, who has killed his own uncle and own brother and starved his people to assemble an arsenal of nukes. Trump has given him status points and blind sided (again) a staunch ally, S. Korea, by stopping military exercises with nothing concrete in exchange. (the fact that we deal with other nasties, like PRC, is no excuse for Trump to give Kim the gift of being seen as an equal to the president of the US. This is an absolute and astonishing consession.  You have to deal with China given it's economic and geopolitical weight.
  

Trump is the textbook definition of the Dunning-Kruger effect

(I never post on the politics section because there (generally) no discussion or convincing just venting; so there, I have vented ;) )

[Parsad]

Quick question->Checking Munger's list of misjudgements, we have a number of factors including the lollapaloza in for a multiplied combination of factors for those Trump defenders.

 

Trump will go down as one of the worst presidents the US has ever had, just on foreign policy:

• He seems hell bent on destroying the Atlantic alliance that won the cold war;
  
• He denounces Trudeau (who doesn't get along with Canadians, for crissakes?) and
  
• He effusively praises a man, who has killed his own uncle and own brother and starved his people to assemble an arsenal of nukes. Trump has given him status points and blind sided (again) a staunch ally, S. Korea, by stopping military exercises with nothing concrete in exchange. (the fact that we deal with other nasties, like PRC, is no excuse for Trump to give Kim the gift of being seen as an equal to the president of the US. This is an absolute and astonishing consession.  You have to deal with China given it's economic and geopolitical weight.
  

Trump is the textbook definition of the Dunning-Kruger effect

(I never post on the politics section because there (generally) no discussion or convincing just venting; so there, I have vented ;) )

 

I don't know about this.  It's what I thought, but the results are mixed.  The man is a complete idiot in terms of grace, manners, intellect and is a total misogynist and a bigot.  But he knows what has worked for him over the years and he sticks to it like a stubborn mule...and if it works for him...then he truly believes it works for everyone else.  I read somewhere that his modus operandi is "No friends, no enemies!"  He unleashes chaos because it then creates confusion and opportunity.

 

Cardboard has gone off the deep end like many and swallowed the kool-aid, but the hardcore right-wing nutjobs did reveal something very important...that the democrats had become extremely complacent, and that there were as many nutjobs on this side as well! 

 

Now you have a divisive country, where the President is hell-bent on taking a wrecking ball to everything built over the last two administrations, in particular the administration that made fun of him.  Boy are people now regretting that correspondent's dinner where Obama enjoyed 2 minutes at Trump's expense...and Trump the petulant bully that he is will never let it go.  And you have a republican party that will now literally forgive anything Trump does...you could see lynchings again, and they would ignore it.

 

In the meantime, he succeeds slowly and steadily at executing his promises...by hook or crook (literally Scott Pruitt of the EPA is a crook), he's finding ways to get what he wants done.  And as long as the republicans get lower taxes and keep their guns, they will support this guy to the end of the world...and we just may see it!  Cheers!

[nickenumbers]

Totally agree with Parsad.

 

Take the rule book, and standard politician motivations and incentives and throw it out the window when it comes to Trump.

 

I love watching the incumbent politicians and power brokers worry and plan against Trump and to date it has been like taking a whiz into the wind.

 

Amusing.

[SharperDingaan]

The US has a way of dealing with disuptors that goes back a very long way. They serve for a while, then they don't.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_presidential_assassination_attempts_and_plots

 

So far the man has lived for a very long time - but most would expect that the candle cannot have much left.

Were there an 'accident' tomorrow; would there be millions 'dancing in the streets', or just thousands with 'heads held low' ?

How many votes is that worth ??

 

SD

 

[rkbabang]

The US has a way of dealing with disuptors that goes back a very long way. They serve for a while, then they don't.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_presidential_assassination_attempts_and_plots

 

So far the man has lived for a very long time - but most would expect that the candle cannot have much left.

Were there an 'accident' tomorrow; would there be millions 'dancing in the streets', or just thousans with 'heads held low' ?

 

SD

 

 

I've never liked any president in my lifetime (including Trump), but wishing for someone's death is not something I'm capable of.

Had you said the above about Obama, you would have had a hundred messages posted already of people screaming at you.

 

[SharperDingaan]

The US has a way of dealing with disuptors that goes back a very long way. They serve for a while, then they don't.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_presidential_assassination_attempts_and_plots

 

So far the man has lived for a very long time - but most would expect that the candle cannot have much left.

Were there an 'accident' tomorrow; would there be millions 'dancing in the streets', or just thousans with 'heads held low' ?

 

SD

 

 

I've never liked any president in my lifetime (including Trump), but wishing for someone's death is not something I'm capable of.

Had you said the above about Obama, you would have had a hundred messages posted already of people screaming at you.

 

We aren't wishing any harm on anyone.

We are just stating fact. The US has a long-record of disposing of disruptive presidents that goes back centuries. Not once, but multiple times, and Wikipedia is only referencing those attempts that were publicly reported. We were just blunt.

 

Events of this type have low probability, high impact economic outcomes, and as such - are 'black swan events' well in-scope for an investment board. We just had the poor taste to highlight that the probability would appear to be rising, and the temerity to suggest that such an event might be popular.

 

Louis XVI lost his head to the French revolution. Similar story with Tzar Nicholas II in the Russian revolution.

Events of this type are common, we just prefer not to be reminded of them.

 

SD

 

[Parsad]

The US has a way of dealing with disuptors that goes back a very long way. They serve for a while, then they don't.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_presidential_assassination_attempts_and_plots

 

So far the man has lived for a very long time - but most would expect that the candle cannot have much left.

Were there an 'accident' tomorrow; would there be millions 'dancing in the streets', or just thousans with 'heads held low' ?

 

SD

 

 

I've never liked any president in my lifetime (including Trump), but wishing for someone's death is not something I'm capable of.

Had you said the above about Obama, you would have had a hundred messages posted already of people screaming at you.

 

I think you would have had hundreds of messages screaming if Obama had done this:

 

https://www.yahoo.com/news/trumps-astonishing-concession-kim-jong-un-north-korea-190814681.html

 

The deal with Iran pales in comparison...it would be like giving Kim Jong Un and China a bottle of two-buck "chuck!"  China and Russia are playing Trump like a fiddle and this is going to create a big problem for some administration 15-20 years down the road when the U.S. starts to look alot like Great Britain on the global stage.  Cheers!

[Spekulatius]

^ This is what happens when you have a grown up child playing Mr. President. The politics are just hunches of his gut instincts or are they just brain farts. He likes the company of dictators more than of his allies, because the dictators appease him and that is all that counts at the moment.

[rkbabang]

The US has a way of dealing with disuptors that goes back a very long way. They serve for a while, then they don't.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_presidential_assassination_attempts_and_plots

 

So far the man has lived for a very long time - but most would expect that the candle cannot have much left.

Were there an 'accident' tomorrow; would there be millions 'dancing in the streets', or just thousans with 'heads held low' ?

 

SD

 

 

I've never liked any president in my lifetime (including Trump), but wishing for someone's death is not something I'm capable of.

Had you said the above about Obama, you would have had a hundred messages posted already of people screaming at you.

 

I think you would have had hundreds of messages screaming if Obama had done this:

 

https://www.yahoo.com/news/trumps-astonishing-concession-kim-jong-un-north-korea-190814681.html

 

The deal with Iran pales in comparison...it would be like giving Kim Jong Un and China a bottle of two-buck "chuck!"  China and Russia are playing Trump like a fiddle and this is going to create a big problem for some administration 15-20 years down the road when the U.S. starts to look alot like Great Britain on the global stage.  Cheers!

 

Of course, only it would be most of the people now criticizing trump defending him, and the people now praising Trump criticizing him.  It's so predictable it's almost funny.

 

The same people who called Bush an actual war criminal, called for his arrest and prosecution, and were marching in the streets in protest praised Obama for doing worse.  It's all about teams, that's all.

 

I happen to agree with what Trump is doing. Imagine if North Korea or China were playing war games with Cuba in the Gulf of Mexico?  The US has no right to be over there at all.  Our ships have no business outside of US waters and our troops have no business outside US territories.  And I would have said exactly this any time you asked me during my entire adult life regardless of who was president.