Thanks for the shout out. You know, between the courts putting the kabosh on Trump's second travel ban and everyone treating this budget proposal like a joke made in poor taste, this week really feels like a week where common sense is starting to prevail again. Hopefully the trend continues, because if not, chances are the budget that finally does go through will be "interesting," though there is quite a bit of hope. One of the talking heads pointed out that a lot of these programs have survived decades of budget cuts, meaning that they're the programs that either have real and tangible value, are popular, or both. Severely gutting any of them would a pretty foolish thing to do, especially if you're a congressman that is constantly being held to some degree of credibility by your constituents. As an aside, you hear about Rex Tillerson's remarks about North Korea? I'm not looking forward to trying to explain to my coworker tomorrow that just like Iran and China, we aren't going to let things get out of hand with them either.
The way I interpret it is that for about four weeks, everyone was sort of going "...no... you can't do that. Uhm, no seriously... you're the president? And you can't do that. I know you're new at this but... you, like? Can't do that? And, uhh... you're not acting presidential." Then for another week we were at "Yeah you can't do that. I know you think you can do that but you can't. Look - it's been a month. You should know you can't do that by now. Also - you can't do that." Now? Now we're at "you can't do that, assclown. Okay, we'll run the country without you." "A senior administration official told CNN that Spicer and McMaster offered what amounted to an apology to the British government." This is literally the National Security Advisor forcing the White House Press Secretary to say sorry as if he were an errant toddler. He's not - he just works for one. Rex Tillerson is an executive, not a statesman. You're damn skippy we've got preemptive strike strategies and warplans and contingencies and wargames going back to the 1953 armistice. A diplomat would know not to show them to the daylight because our relationship with North Korea is one of pomp, circumstance and rattled-saber nuance but the fact that Tillerson didn't "rule it out" says more about his skill in front of a microphone than it does about our military posture. Remember - this is a company man who started working for Exxon straight out of college. Odds are good he knows more about oil than the rest of us combined ever will and that he rose from "dude who surveys oil wells" to CEO without ever leaving Exxon says a lot about his competency. But he's also a guy who's used to having a PR person speak for him.
I was thinking last night, and a few weeks ago, how maybe Trump won't be so good for our economy when it comes to international trade for any number of reasons. I thought if there was one mixed blessing about him getting his way in regards to deregulation and letting banks and businesses getting there way, it will give corporations a longer leash to try and work around any problems the government is making and still make those business deals go round. On the other hand, if that doesn't happen and things do get pretty screwed up, maybe it'll create a lot of hard lessons that we can learn from very quickly. For instance, if by some chance NAFTA gets nuked and we lose a lot of trade opportunities with Mexico and Canada, maybe we'll see shifts in how we handle agriculture and manufacturing that will lead to more robust local economies. Or something. I could see a similar scenario working out with congress. It's starting to look like a lot of the more rational Republicans and Democrats are starting to wise up as to how difficult things could become if they're not careful, so they're starting to hike up their pants and roll up their sleeves and seeing what they can do to get things fixed. Or I might be reading the situation wrong. But if I'm not, this could be the start of the end of hyper-partisanship. As for North Korea? Man, you're preaching to the choir here. I totally know Rex Tillerson talked out of turn here. China, South Korea, and Japan are all major trading partners with us and their economic happiness and security is in our best interest. South Korea and Japan are major military partners with us, Their national security is in our best interest. Then we have smaller countries from Vietnam to Thailand to the Phillipines to whoever else who's economic and national stability are in our best interest. When you factor that larger world powers like Russia and India aren't all that far away from all of this, regional stability in Asia is really, really important. We probably have contingencies upon contingencies upon contingencies in regards to North Korea, and they're probably under constant review and adjustment as needed. North Korea is like a really big oven, and we have a big ass collection of fire extinguishers right next to us in case anything happens. Rex Tillerson just happen to have broken the first rule of the fire extinguisher club. You don't talk about the fire extinguisher club . . . which is dumb. Someone must have told him about that rule.
A poorly-regulated economy is great for business in the short-term. That's the exuberance you're seeing in the stock market. Milton Friedman himself said that corporations have responsibility to their shareholders to be as ruthless and cut-throat as they can get away with because short-term profits are the only thing that matters. Unfortunately it's the long-term consequences of short-term advantages that tend to fuck everybody over - like repealing Glass-Steagall and the like. It's nice to think that all economies are resilient and everyone can get over a shock but it isn't true. Korea is an economic powerhouse because they became a military dictatorship and plowed into capitalism the way we plowed into the moon race. Britain is a has-been because they had to eat 15 years of austerity after WWII. We have an EPA to protect against things like Bhopal and when you drop a piece of the armor, you run a risk of getting stabbed hard especially when the general attitude of industry is "it's my job to swing the knife and if I hit something it's the government's fault for not putting a cordon around me." That said, bureaucracies are the most stable form of government and we have a hell of bureaucracy. As the GOP determines that they're better off working around the Trump administration than working with the Trump administration, the character of government will find a new normal. I mean... you know they were all stoked that they'd have the house, the senate and the executive but as it turns out, they've got a pretty useless executive. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/15/world/europe/germany-rex-tillerson.html?_r=0
I'm pretty hopeful that because our economy is so large, it'll hold up much better to hardships. There's a lot of diversity in this country, in resources, skill sets, etc. Maybe that size and diversity will add resilience and flexibility like our beuracracies. It's interesting to see that last month Tillerson traveled with a small press presence and this month he is doing the same. If I had to guess, he probably just doesn't like the entourage. If I woke up one day to find that people would want to follow me everywhere and listen to what I had to say, I'd be pretty uncomfortable too.
If I had to guess, it's like b_b said - he needed something to do with his retirement and "secretary of state" sounded regal enough. Of Trump's entire basket of deplorables he's one of my favorites because he doesn't seem particularly ideological. He's an oil man, has always been an oil man, acts like an oil man and beyond that, seems to be gamely attempting to do the work. In my fantasy world he thought about saying "I'm not qualified to be Secretary of State" and then noticed that nobody else Trump was considering was, either.