Thank You, Mr. Trump, Part 2, by Robert Gore | STRAIGHT LINE LOGIC

Thank You, Mr. Trump, Part 2, by Robert Gore

This is Part 2 of Thank You, Mr. Trump. Link to Part 1.

Hillary Clinton; her friends, sycophants, and supporters in government, the media, and the general populace; the leadership of the Democratic Party, and the Republicans who have announced they will support her are desperately wishing that much of her past would just go away. During the 1990’s, the Clintons’ low-bar goal was to elude criminal justice for their many scandals. They never answered inquiries unless compelled, or proved their innocence. Instead, they besmirched the inquirers, floated conspiracy theories (conspiracy theorists are only kooks when they challenge the government, not when they’re the president and his wife), stonewalled investigations, threatened, blackmailed, hid or destroyed evidence, and fed exculpatory material to their friends in the media. Everybody then moved on, until the next scandal: lather, rinse, repeat.

The Clinton’s 1990s scandals never really went away, and they have added to them since then. Bill pals around with a pedophile billionaire who procures underage females for consensual and allegedly nonconsensual sex on his private plane and island. Hillary has Libya and the emails. Jointly they have the Clinton Foundation. The usual suspects have labored assiduously not to investigate these new scandals and keep the old ones down the memory hole. However, the stench persists, as stenches do, and many Americans have neither forgiven or forgotten. Trump pushed Clinton criminality to the forefront with one adjective: “crooked.” Only Clinton’s most blindly deluded supporters have called this one outrageous. Hillary is crooked, and Trump deserves credit for not avoiding the issue, as many Republican hopefuls did when they still had hopes.

Compare the lack of mainstream outrage at Hillary and Bill’s transgressions and crimes, stretching back decades, to the hypocritical, hyperventilating, hysterical, and endlessly recycled outrage over anything Trump. Turning mountains into molehills and vice versa, the mainstream media, politicians, and commentators’ only real outrage is reserved for those, including Trump, who point out the obvious bias. Their over-the-top broadsides against Trump have, like the violence against his supporters, backfired spectacularly and confirmed his charges.

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Thank You, Mr. Trump, by Robert Gore | STRAIGHT LINE LOGIC

Thank You, Mr. Trump, by Robert Gore

December 2014, SLL posted an article: “Can’t Wait For That Next Election.” The article argued the positions of the two front-runners at that time—Jeb Bush and Hillary Clinton—were virtually indistinguishable.

Other than which campaign contributors get paid off, there would be very little difference between the potential presidencies of Jeb and Hillary. Commentators and opinion organs masquerading as news outlets will champion their guy or gal, and hyperventilate about perceived sins of the other side’s gal or guy, but when you get right down to actual policies, there has been little difference between Republicans and Democrats for many years; they are both the parties of government. It gets bigger, spends more, piles new programs on top of failed old ones, sticks its nose anywhere on the planet it sees fit, makes more promises, and goes deeper in debt. None of that is going to change—Jeb or Hillary—and the permanent Washington oligarchy and its dependents are fine with either one.

The first of the article’s two closing sentences was spot on, the second dead wrong.

The prospect of a Jeb-Hillary election should put the body politic in the same frame of mind as a restless teenager, ready to do something rash, dangerous, and destructive, just to relieve the tedium. That, unfortunately, is giving the body politic far too much credit.

A year-and-a-half later, critics denigrate Donald Trump as restless teenagers’ car keys and beer. Even those more sympathetic to Trump’s candidacy have identified emotional factors as the primary basis of his support (see “Much More Than Trump,” SLL, and “‘Dilbert’ Creator’s 6 Reasons Why Trump Will “Win In A Landslide” In November,” by Scott Adams). That’s not incorrect, but Trump has dramatically altered the terms of debate on the playing field that all right-thinking, civic-minded Americans believe that elections should be waged: the issues. Support or oppose him, Trump has performed a public service, mentioning the unmentionables that our minders and keepers would rather avoid (for the good of the people, of course).

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The Equal Sign Can Be a Real Bitch, by Robert Gore | STRAIGHT LINE LOGIC

The Equal Sign Can Be a Real Bitch, by Robert Gore

If one had to choose a single symbol to represent the apex of human thought and achievement, a strong candidate would be the equal sign: =. That sign says that the symbols and mathematical operations to the left of it are equal to the symbols and mathematical operations to the right. Furthermore, to retain equality, anything done to the left side of the equation must be done to the right side. The equation is the heart of elementary arithmetic, the most complex principals of mathematics and science and their real world applications, and everything in between. Only logical challenge can disprove an asserted equality, and no amount of wishing will turn an inequality into an equality. The equal sign represents humanity’s capacity for ruthlessly pristine logic.

Many people shun mathematics, science, and logic, seeking refuge in their antitheses. A good part of human intellectual history has been attempts to either ignore equalities or turn inequalities into equalities. Forgiving, sloppy, delusional illogic is usually collective. Every age has its particular refuges. Our age has rejected the mathematics of debt. What can logically not occur, a perpetual inequality—consumption greater than production— has become the foundation of the global economy. As the tagline for Zero Hedge notes: “On a long enough timeline the survival rate for everyone drops to zero.” In the same vein, on a long enough timeline, consumption equals production. Understand that equality, and the future comes into stark relief.

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Governments Turn to Commercial Spyware to Intimidate Dissidents, by Nicole Perlroth | STRAIGHT LINE LOGIC

Governments Turn to Commercial Spyware to Intimidate Dissidents, by Nicole Perlroth

If you were worried that there might be some isolated, backward country somewhere in which its citizens still had civil liberties, worry no more. Thanks to a booming international trade in spyware, governments everywhere have access to tools that allow them to monitor and record everything their citizens do. From Nicole Perlroth at nytimes.com:

SAN FRANCISCO — In the last five years, Ahmed Mansoor, a human rights activist in the United Arab Emirates, has been jailed and fired from his job, along with having his passport confiscated, his car stolen, his email hacked, his location tracked and his bank account robbed of $140,000. He has also been beaten, twice, in the same week.

Mr. Mansoor’s experience has become a cautionary tale for dissidents, journalists and human rights activists. It used to be that only a handful of countries had access to sophisticated hacking and spying tools. But these days, nearly all kinds of countries, be they small, oil-rich nations like the Emirates, or poor but populous countries like Ethiopia, are buying commercial spyware or hiring and training programmers to develop their own hacking and surveillance tools.

The barriers to join the global surveillance apparatus have never been lower. Dozens of companies, ranging from NSO Group and Cellebrite in Israel to Finfisher in Germany and Hacking Team in Italy, sell digital spy tools to governments.

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You Say You Want a Devolution? by Robert Gore | STRAIGHT LINE LOGIC

You Say You Want a Devolution? by Robert Gore

The Civil War, as it’s known in the north, or the War of Northern Aggression, as it’s known in the south, supposedly “settled” an issue for time and all eternity: that the smaller political units known as states could not leave the larger political unit known as the United States, at least not without the larger unit’s consent. Unless they emigrate, 320 million people are bound to a political arrangement from which there is no other escape hatch, and the 50 states don’t have the option to leave. Similar strictures are in effect around the world. Why?

Centralization, command, and control—the tendencies that defined the twentieth centuries—are in their death throes, done in by their failures and the residual progress they’ve failed to kill. The signs are everywhere. If war is the health of the state, then states are sickly indeed. The most militaristic government on the planet, that of the United States, has not cleanly won a war since 1945, unless one wants to call Grenada a war. What has stymied the US has not been superior military force—the US has the world’s biggest arsenal and most technologically advanced military—but the force that is stymying centralization at every turn: decentralization.

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Castrated, by Robert Gore | STRAIGHT LINE LOGIC

Castrated, by Robert Gore

After three decades of internecine war, Abdul-Aziz bin Saud, allied with the fundamentalist Wahhabist Islamic sect, consolidated the House of Saud’s dominance over Arabia in 1932 with the tacit support of regional imperial power Great Britain. The bedrock of the Saudi Arabian economy, the massive pool of oil in the Al-Hasa region along the Persian Gulf coast, was discovered in 1938 and development began in 1941. Towards the end of World War II, President Roosevelt and Abdul-Aziz reached a handshake deal that has governed relations between the two nations ever since: Saudi Arabia would guarantee the flow of oil to the US at a reasonable price; the US would protect the Saud regime.

Like so many born into wealth, the House of Saud has mistaken fortuitous circumstances for divine favor, haughtily condescending to a world that goes along with its pretensions because of its oil. Saudi Arabia is dependent for its security and armaments on the west, particularly the US. No particular skill is necessary to extract (its reserves are among the world’s shallowest and easiest to tap), transport, or export its oil. It exports most of its oil because it has little industry, although its riches have made it a financial center and funded one of the world’s most generous welfare states. Much of the actual labor is performed by immigrants. The partial diversion of oil revenues has kept the non-House of Saud population pacified.

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America Needs to Throw-up, by Robert Gore | STRAIGHT LINE LOGIC

America Needs to Throw-up, by Robert Gore

You went out last night for “a couple of drinks,” but you knew you were going to get drunk. You paid attention to someone who was not attractive or interesting, but you wanted to have sex. You and your newfound partner got in a car that neither one of you should have been driving, managed to avoid the police or an accident, and made it somewhere where you could copulate. That wasn’t what it is made out to be—it never is when you’re drunk—and the pleasure you managed to extract, if you were able to function at all, was minimal and forgettable.

Except circumstances won’t let you forget. After you pass out into a few hours of something that is not sleep, you wake up and there next to you is the hideous thing, name unremembered, with which you coupled. You stumble into the bathroom, drink copious amounts of water, take multiple Advils, and stare at yourself in the mirror. Suddenly, up it comes, that noxious combination of alcohol and bar food; you toss your all in the porcelain pit. And you realize it isn’t the residual beer and whiskey in your system, it’s absolute self-contempt, self-loathing, and self-abasement: your body and your barely functioning mind rendering their verdict on what you did.

Having much for which to loathe itself, America needs a painful but purgative puke, one that prompts a wholesale reexamination. Some people when they reach bottom realize that they have not only screwed up their own life, they have grievously harmed others, especially family and friends, if there are any left. Look at the mess the US has made of what it claims as its remit: the entire world. Considering itself exceptional and indispensable, it tells both friends and foes what they can and cannot do, and throws its weight around to get its way. Wars have been fought, governments subverted and deposed, bribes proffered, tyrannies succored, as a small coterie, drunk on power, tries to order the world as they see fit.

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Profiles In Irrelevance, by Robert Gore | STRAIGHT LINE LOGIC

Profiles In Irrelevance, by Robert Gore


When electroshock revives a heart attack victim, nobody pretends the resuscitation has cured the patient, it has only prevented him from dying. The heart attack may have been caused by overeating, smoking, stress, drinking, or lack of exercise. The physician will prescribe various drugs, but a true cure requires dramatic lifestyle changes and perhaps counseling to understand why the patient engages in self-destructive behavior.


A good portion of the American electorate wants to administer electroshock to a bloated, sclerotic government. A smaller percentage recognize that the patient’s symptoms will be terminal absent drastic and immediate changes. A relative handful are interested in diagnosing the philosophical and intellectual root causes responsible for the morbid deterioration.


Hillary Clinton is the embodiment of the disease, the obese grotesquerie who fills two trays at the all-you-can-eat buffet and goes back for seconds, thirds, desserts, and multiple refills of the Diet Coke. She has never met a domestic program or a foreign war she didn’t embrace, and the chance that she would shrink the government’s girth and power is infinitesimal. The corpulent state has made her and her husband quite wealthy and rewarded their cronies. Hillary and her party stand for nothing more than more: government, power, and corruption. Any noises she might make about curbing the government are just that—noise—the Diet Coke washing down the feast.


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Trump Is Right—–Dump NATO Now, by David Stockman | STRAIGHT LINE LOGIC

Trump Is Right—–Dump NATO Now, by David Stockman

From David Stockman at davidstockmanscontracorner.com:

If you want to know why we have a $19 trillion national debt and a fiscal structure that will take that already staggering figure to $35 trillion and 140% of GDP within a decade, just consider the latest campaign fracas. That is, the shrieks of disbelief in response to Donald Trump’s sensible suggestion that the Europeans pay for their own defense.

The fact is, NATO has been an obsolete waste for 25 years. Yet the denizens of the Imperial City cannot even seem to grasp that the 4 million Red Army is no more; and that the Soviet Empire, which enslaved 410 million souls to its economic and military service, vanished from the pages of history in December 1991.

What is left is a pitiful remnant—–145 million aging, Vodka-besotted Russians who subsist in what is essentially a failing third world economy. Its larcenous oligarchy of Putin and friends appeared to live high on the hog and to spread a veneer of glitz around Moscow and St. Petersburg. But that was all based on the world’s one-time boom in oil, gas, nickel, aluminum, fertilizer, steel and other commodities and processed industrial materials.

Stated differently, the Russian economy is a glorified oil patch and mining town with a GDP the equivalent of the NYC metropolitan area. And that’s its devastating Achilles Heel.

The central bank driven global commodity and industrial boom is over and done.As a new cycle of epic deflation engulfs the world and further compresses commodity prices and profits, the Russian economy is going down for the count; it’s already been shrunk by nearly 10% in real terms, and the bottom is a long way down from there.

The plain fact is Russia is an economic and military weakling and is not the slightest threat to the security of the United States. None. Nichts. Nada. Nope.

Its entire expenditure for national defense amounts to just $50 billion, but during the current year only $35 billion of that will actually go to the Russian Armed Forces. On an apples-to-apples basis, that’s about three weeks of Pentagon spending!

Even given its non-existent capacity, however, there remains the matter of purported hostile intention and aggressive action. But as amplified below, there has been none. The whole demonization of Putin is based on a false narrative arising from one single event.

To wit, the February 2014 coup in Kiev against Ukraine’s constitutionally elected government was organized, funded and catalyzed by the Washington/NATO apparatus. Putin took defensive action in response because this supremely stupid and illegal provocation threatened vital interests in his own backyard.

The openly hostile government installed in Kiev the very next day by the State Department threatened to join NATO, persecute the Russian-speaking minority in eastern Ukraine, renounce its multi-billion financial obligations to Moscow and imperil Russia’s rental arrangement for the homeport of its Black Sea naval fleet in Sevastopol (Crimea). The latter has been the historic anchor of Russia’s national security policy under czars and commissars alike.

Moreover, the putsch installed by the “regime change” crowd at the CIA, State Department and so-called Endowment for Democracy while Putin was minding his own business at the Sochi Olympics was crawling with adherents of the “Right Sector”. The latter is a fascist movement that looks to a World War II Nazi collaborator, Stepan Bandera, as its national hero.

That’s right. The new prime minister imposed by US Assistant Secretary of State and card-carrying neocon, Victoria Nuland, and affectionately known as “our man Yats” was part of a neo-Nazi cabal.

To continue reading: Trump Is Right—–Dump NATO Now

Much More Than Trump, by Robert Gore | STRAIGHT LINE LOGIC

Much More Than Trump, by Robert Gore

It started in Vietnam. The men who chose to fight for America on Vietnam’s front lines did so for honorable reasons. While there was no immediate threat to the US, some were concerned about falling dominoes and the march of communism. Some were animated by an idealistic desire to secure democracy and liberty in a land that had never known those blessings. Perhaps some went believing that if the leaders of the country said this war was in America’s best interests, it must be so. For those who were draftedt, they did, perhaps reluctantly, what they perceived to be their duty.

Whatever their motivations, those who fought found their idealism shattered. Many of the South Vietnamese they thought they were fighting “for” despised the US as the latest in a succession of imperial powers using a corrupt, puppet government as the cat’s paw for its domination. Short of total immolation of both friend and foe—it was often impossible to differentiate the two—there was no effective strategy against guerrilla warfare waged by the enemy fighting on its home turf. The Vietcong proved as difficult to vanquish as hordes of ants and mosquitos at a picnic. The victory the generals and politicians insisted was just another few months and troop deployments down the road never came, and the soldiers knew it never would, long before reality was acknowledged and the troops brought home.

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