August 17, 2018--A Pocket Full of Distractions

I finally figured out why Trump doesn't button his suit jackets. Until now I thought it was a vain attempt to hide his William Howard Taft-like girth. 

Now I realize it was for another, to him more urgent reason--to give him quick access to the list of distractions he has secreted away in his inner jacket pocket so it is always ready at hand for him to refer to in order to change the subject when he does something wrong or makes a fool of himself. To distract us and the media. 

To change the subject, for example, from Omarosa and the N-word tapes to cancelling former C.I.A. director John Brennan's security clearance. 

Trump has this list nearby in the same way he has the nuclear codes at the ready. Those are schlepped along wherever he goes by a military aide in the so-called "football." 

The list of distractions, to him much more important, Trump carries himself. Close to the heart.

I was able to sneak a look at the list the other day, and for the sake of checks and balances and the historical record I here for the first time reveal what's on it.

He has the distractions categorized--so, for example, there are distractions in waiting about immigrants. They include--

Point out serious felonies perpetrated by illegal immigrants to remind your supporters they are murders and rapists.

Announce all children separated from their parents at the border have been reunited.

Claim Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi support amnesty.  

Mention Nancy Pelosi along with "no-collusion" at every opportunity or whenever her name comes to mind.

Under the distraction category Women--

Mention Maxine Waters every time you appear in public. Remind people that she supports Nancy Pelosi and this is evidence of her low IQ.

Talk about how smart you are: where you went to college, your IQ, how much money you are worth. About that, triple what your personal accountant itemized on your most recent 1040 form. (Don't worry about the tax implications)

Invite Laura Ingraham, Janine Piro, and Megyn Kelly to the White House for, like Obama, lunch on the lawn. (Don't mention Obama)

On August 26th, National Dog Day, announce you've changed your mind about Hillary Clinton. (Your supporters will stop chanting "Lock her up" every time you mention her name. Instead, they will bark)

Announce that you and Melania will be adopting a shelter dog. (You're the first president since FDR not to have one)

African-American distractions include--

Talk about black people who are some of your best friends: Don King, Mike Tyson, Dennis Rodman. Invite them to lunch on the White House lawn. (Consider inviting Obama, who is a black African)

Invite Miss Universe Pageant winner Paulina Vega to lunch on the White House lawn. (She may be from Colombia but she is still black)

Call Nancy Pelosi a low-IQ dog to demonstrate you are not a racist.

There are many media distractions. Here's just one that touches a few bases--

Announce you're going on Don Lemon's show to talk about your black friends. (He's black)

It's on CNN. (This shows the intrepid side of you--your willingness to venture into enemy territory. It's not the same as visiting Afghanistan, but we all know that's the last place in the world you'll be visiting.)

And with Lemon you get a three-fer: His blackness, CNNness, and his gayness. (He's out of the closet)

Then there are North Korea distractions--

Reprieve "Little Rocket Man." (To flatter him consider "Big Rocket Man")

Shoot down a North Korean jet off the coast of South Korea.

Bomb Syria

Bomb Tehran.

Bomb Venezuela.

Bomb Pyongyang.

Nuke Pyongyang.

Bomb San Fransisco (Nancy Pelosi's district).

Finally, there are the firings distractions--

Fire chief of staff Kelly.

Fire Jeff Sessions. (The attorney general)

Fire Stephen Miller. (Your senior advisor)

Fire Kellyanne Conway. (Counselor to the president--you)

Fire Sarah Huckabee Sanders. (Your press secretary)

Fire Mike Pence. (Forget that you can't do that. Fire him anyway)

Fire Sean Spicer. (Ignore that you already did that)

Fire Michael Flynn (Ditto. Fire him again)

Fire Steve Bannon. (Ditto)

Fire Paul Manafort. (Ditto)

Fire Anthony Scaramucci. (Ditto)

Fire Omarosa. (Ditto)

Fire Jared. (Your son-in-law)

Fire Ivanka. (Your daughter)

Fire Melania. (Your wife)

Fire Barron. (The youngest of you 3 or 4 sons)

Fire Nancy Pelosi. (Soon again to be Speaker of the House)

June 13, 2018--Trumped In Singapore

He couldn't wait to get out of town. 

After a total of about three of hours of meetings--first a one-on-one 45 minutes with Kim Jong-un, then a brief lunch and another meeting that included advisors (John Bolton among them so Kim and the North Koreans could see the man who most wants to nuke them), then, like a couple of kids who stole their parents' car, after showing Kim the interior of the president-mobile (called the Beast by the Secret Service), and a brief press conference where all the questions were about North Korea and not Stormy Daniels, Trump hustled up the steps to Air Force One, told the pilot to put the pedal to the metal, and raced away before he could trade more away to the North Koreans than he already had. For example, casually agreeing without a quid pro quo to end annual "war games" the U.S. has for decades engaged in with the South Koreans.

What had occurred and who won and who lost was revealed in the maximum leaders' two faces--Kim's was all private smiles for what he had accomplished (getting the president of the United States, the president of the most powerful nation in the entire history of the world, to fly 18,000 miles for a few hours of handshakes and, especially, thousands of photographs) while not needing to agree to anything much less actually having to give up anything such as his intercontinental nuclear missiles that are capable of reaching Chicago.

Trump's face, on the other hand suggested that he was either choking on what they served at lunch or knew how snookered he had been by that 34 year-old nut-job who, it turns out, is no nut-job but a brilliant manipulator who should not be laughed off but taken seriously, very seriously.

Kim is the one who channeled The Art of the Deal while the coauthor forget its dos and don'ts.

Why this might be is worth thinking about.

Both men needed this meeting. Many assumed it was Kim who leads a country that is beyond falling apart. He doesn't even have a plane that could get him safely from Pyongyang to Singapore. Forget providing electricity or food for his people.

Trump was holding all the cards, it was thought, including the crazy card--his advisors whispering to Kim that Trump is so deranged and uncontrollable that unless he was genuflected to might actually bomb North Korea back to the Stone Age. Though most of the country already is in the Stone Age.

The truth is that Trump is the desperate one. 

Kim might have a few more generals and family members who want to topple him but he can take care of that pretty easily--poison them or let his dogs literally tear them apart.

Trump, though, has Robert Mueller. Does more need to be said?

As further evidence that Trump is off his feed was his pathetic attempt the day before the summit to trash Justin Trudeau, who, as a result, is not just off the charts in popularity in Canada but I have friends who want to lure him to the U.S. so he can serve as our president.

But the evidence I want to share about Trump's mental health, in case you missed it, was the semi-coherent spritz he offered about North Korean real estate.

He actually said--

They have great beaches. You see that whenever they're exploding the cannons into the ocean [Huh?]. I said look at that view. Wouldn't that make a great condo beyond that?
You could have the best hotels in the world right there. Think of it from a real estate perspective [!]. You have South Korea, you have China, and they own the land in the middle. How bad is that? Right? It's great.

In spite of myself I'm beginning to feel sorry for him.

May 29, 2018--Kim & Trump Together At Last

Don't be taken in by all the on-again off-again business about whether Donald Trump and Kim Jong-un will or won't meet on or about June 12th.

They'll meet. 

About that you can bet the house. And they will make a deal. Or a version of a deal, including possibly a faux deal. They'll be OK with that since anything resembling one will work. Will work for each of their purposes.

Never before have there been two political adversaries who so desperately need a deal. And so we will have one.

Kim's country is falling apart. Not that for decades, since his grandfather's rule, has there been much remaining to fall apart. Pretty much everything has been collapsing since the Second World War. Though one would not even be able to notice how fallen apart things are, especially after dark, since with the exception of the capital, Pyongyang, there is no power and thus there are no electric lights.

That should be the worst of the situation. Even more dire, most North Koreans are grossly undernourished if not out and out starving with parasitical worms common in most North Koreans' digestive systems.

But there is a small North Korean elite who are loyal to Kim as long as they keep getting their goodies (electricity, TVs, things to buy, and overseas trips and bank accounts). If they sense that Kim is imperiled by unhappy elements within the country and thus might be in danger of being overthrown, the military might rise up and preemptively do the overthrowing. 

Kim has had dozens from the elite killed, including, especially brutally, family members. As a signal that he can play rough. But he could be more precariously in office than he appears to be from our vantage point halfway around the world.

So any deal would prop him up, particularly if some of our sanctions were lifted and things for ordinary North Koreans improved. After Kim and Trump meet, if we see lights burning at night across the country, we'll know things are getting better.

Evidence that Trump will be satisfied by any version of a deal is his more than usual refusal to do any prep work prior to the summit. Briefing papers have been prepared but he has refused to be briefed. He plans to wing it, guided by his "instincts," which he has previously proclaimed are the best in all of history.

He knows making a deal, even one in which he makes more concessions than Kim, will boost his approval ratings by at least 10 points and this could help Republicans in November maintain control of the House. And if that were to happen, there will be no impeachment. 

So the stakes for Trump are very high.

A deal would also allow Trump yet more leverage when it comes time to savage the Mueller report and the inevitable additional indictments that will be forthcoming this fall or winter.

Then there is the Nobel Peace Prize. If they make a deal it would be difficult for the Swedish Academy not to award one to Trump (and Kim) and this would allow him to further obliterate all traces of Barak Obama and his presidency. More than anything else, perversely, Trump's controlling obsession.

Why, one might wonder, would Kim trade away his nuclear weapons based on promises from the world's most dishonest and untrustworthy leader?

Again, things for him are desperate and it's the only card he has to play.

That reminds me a joke. One of my father's. He had only two or three jokes in his repertoire, so pay attention.

It's about sardines.

Louie gets a call from his friend Dave. "Louie," Dave says, "Do I have deal for you. A warehouse full of canned sardines. And they're yours for a special price. Only $5,000." So Louie buys the sardines.

A week later, Louie calls his cousin Murray and says, "Murray do I have a deal for you. A warehouse full of canned sardines. Priced especially for your only $7,500." 

Sight unseen Murray buys the sardines and after a few days calls his friend, Steve, "Steve," he says, "Do I have a deal for you. A warehouse full of sardines. They're for sale at a special price just for you--$10,000."

This sounds like a good deal to Steve and after sending Murray a check he goes to the warehouse to check out his sardines. They are in huge shipping crates. He opens a crate and then one of the cans of sardines.

They smell awful. "I'll try another one," he thinks. "This one must be a defective tin." But the next one and the one after that are also spoiled. 

So, angry, he calls Murray to complain that all the sardines are rancid. 

Murray is not surprised and tries to calm Steve down.

"You don't understand," Murray says. "These are not eating sardines. They're buying and selling sardines."

So Kim will tell Trump that he has a deal for him. He's willing to denuclearize because his atomic weapons are not for bombing purposes but for trading purposes.

At least let's hope so.

On Sale at the White House Gift Shop

May 2, 2018--Let's Make A Deal

With Kim Jong-un saying last Sunday that he will give up his nuclear arsenal if Trump pledges not to invade North Korea, Kim and Trump could conclude a deal in less than half an hour. 

What else would need doing besides Trump figuring out the  theatrics of the summit meeting?

If Trump didn't require more than a day in Moscow in 2013 to run the Miss Universe Pageant, talk about a Moscow Trump Tower, and do whatever that night in Moscow's Motel 6, the situation with North Korea, thanks to Kim, is shaping up to be even more of a walk in the park.  

Of course Trump will make that pledge if that's all it takes. No need for dozens of diplomats (which we, by the way, no longer have) to work on the devils in the details. All Kim has to do is agree to having a couple of UN disarmament people resident in North Korean to make sure Kim complies. And all Trump has to do is, well, not very much. 

No need for Kim to schlep all the way to Singapore or Mongolia to meet. He doesn't have a dependable airplane to get him there anyway and the train he rides around in is so ladened with bombproofing that it can rumble along at only 22 miles per hour. He'd have to leave Pyongyang tomorrow to get to Singapore by mid May. 

To make things simple and convenient they could meet on Air Force One. Trump could fly it into Pyongyang Sunan International Airport and Kim could use an Uber to get to the meeting.

I'm making light of this because I think I may be hallucinating. I temporarily increased my meds last week and I don't trust myself these days.

But the more serious side of me senses the makings of a deal. To sign off on one there needs to be self-interest on all sides. 

And there is.

Let's start with South Korea. If we stumble into a war on the peninsular, which was feeling more and more likely just before the Olympics--remember "little rocket man" and who had the bigger nuclear button--military experts estimated that in the first half hour up to half a million Koreans would be killed. Of course, Pyongyang would be bombed back to the Stone Age and Seoul to the Iron Age, there would be no winners, very much including the global economy. So hyper-capitalistic South Korea doesn't want to go there. No more Samsung? No more Kia? No more Hyundai? 

Also, nationalist South Korean president Moon would very much like to shrug off the heavy American presence and hand, freeing his country of client statehood.

China also would like to see the U.S. less dominant in Asia. It is their goal to have us withdraw our 23,500 troops from Korea and for us to be less dominate in the regional economy. And our diminished role advances China's aspirations and worldview. 

Of course they would have to figure our a way to deal with a new Tiger Economy, millions of refugees wanting into China, and the possible unification of Korea. Korea would instantly become the new Germany and thus an economic power to reckoned with. China would have to figure out how to accommodate and/or co-opt that.

What a deal would mean to North Korea is evident. People there would have electricity and food, the roads would be fixed and Kim would have an Air Force One of his own. He also could use the money that participating in winning the Nobel Prize would provide. Perhaps for Kim, more than anything else, he would morph from pariah status to player on the world stage.

Trump too in important circles is a pariah but if he were to sign off on such a deal he would have a chance to get off that schneid. It might even help Republicans win more seats in the House of Representatives than currently projected and make it less likely that Trump would be impeached. It might also be an incentive for him to declare mission actually accomplished and decide to turn the keys over to Mike Pence.

He also could use the Nobel cash.

Kim at Pyongyang Airport

March 9, 2018--Denuclearization?

The blog posting after this one was written before the announcement that Donald Trump and North Korean president Kim Jong-un plan to meet in May to discuss the possible end of Pyongyang's nuclear weapons program. 

This note is to indicate that I am not ignoring that potentially world-changing event. Though like other liberals who detest Trump, I haven't yet figured out what tone to take when discussing it. Caught off guard by the announcement, the late night MSNBC hosts from Rachel Maddow to Lawrence O'Donnell couldn't stop dealing with Trump in a begrudging, joking way. Their shows were planned to be about Stormy Daniels and such. For my views about North Korea see Wednesday's blog (two below) which ahead of the news about North Korea, I feel, pretty much rings true.

March 7, 2018--Korea

Finally, maybe, perhaps, could it be at last that there is some good news from Korea?

Change often comes about in unexpected ways.

South Korean leaders worked hard to convince North Korea to join an all-Korean contingent of athletes at the recent Olympics. 

Even maxim-leader Kim Jong-un's sister attended, sitting in the VIP box fewer than 10 feet from Vice President Pence, who did not even have the manners to smile in her direction. (His wife travels with him wherever he goes to keep him from paying attention to beautiful young women.)

Things felt so frosty that it seemed as if Trump couldn't wait for Pence to leave so he could get on with the business of nuking Pyongyang.

For the new president of South Korea, Moon Jae-in, having North Koreans participating in figure skating and ice hockey was less about sports or medal counts than high-stakes geopolitical politics.   

Moon ran for office as a new-style leader who would not wake up every morning with his marching orders delivered to him by our ambassador (assuming we ever again have one) but as one who would find his own way on the Korean peninsular, especially testing to see if there is any chance to make a deal for some sort of rapprochement before we, "fire and fury," incinerate both Koreas.

That opportunity may be coming into focus. Earlier this week high-level South Koreans travelled north where they had substantive discussions with their North Korean counterparts, including in the North Korean delegation, Kim's sister--the "Korean Ivanka." 

After the two days of meetings Kim announced that he would order the suspension of missile and nuclear testing during any talks Moon might be able to broker between the North and the United States. Further, Kim hinted, he is willing to discuss the denuclearization of North Korea, America's and the world's ultimate objective.

Trump's response? Moderate. Reasonable. Rational. No tweets about "Little Rocket Man" and "whack job." Just indications of appropriately skeptical openness to Kim's initiative.

Could this be, might this be, perhaps this represents . . .

I am reluctant to compete these sentences and jinx the situation.

But here's the framework for a deal. Admittedly, a stretch--

We agree to discussions (remember during the campaign how Trump said he would be willing to meet with Kim, that to do so would be "his honor"). South Korea, China and even Russia eagerly await the results and, back-channel, encourage Kim to be negotiable. 

After a couple of months, there is the outline of the deal--

In exchange for ratcheting-back their nuclear program, on route to reducing it, the North agrees not to develop nuclear weapons that are small and dependable enough to be delivered by their ICBM missiles that already have the capacity to reach the United States.

In return, we agree to draw down our military presence in South Korea, withdrawing the bulk of our current contingent of 23,500 troops. The UN agrees to deploy inspectors on both sides of the border to guarantee that North Korea and the U.S. fulfill their commitments.

Longer term, the country is unified, following the examples of Vietnam where there is now one Vietnam, and Germany where there is now one Germany. To help in the process, the economic behemoth, South Korea, devotes trillions to the modernization of North Korea, which in turn over time also becomes an economic powerhouse.

Trump one way or the other is forced to give up carrying out any tail-wag-the-dog actions in a desperate attempt to deflect attention from the now rapidly encroaching Mueller investigation. He has to settle for stumbling into helping to promote world peace.

Kim Jong-un and Donald Trump share the Nobel Peace Prize. Trump finally, with this at least, reaches parity with his predecessor. 

OK, too much, scratch that. But they are widely adulated. Enough so that Trump decides not to run for reelection, reminding us endlessly how he fulfilled all his promises. How the mission has been accomplished.

In fact, if anything like this plays out, unlikely partners as Kim and Trump are, they would deserve a lot of credit.