Pragmatically Distributed

The Meaning of the Georgia Special Election for the Special Counsel

The election means no one outside DC cares about the investigation for reasons that include the fact Comey himself admitted there was no evidence for collusion between Trump and Russia (then what is the point of the investigation!?) , the investigation is too complex for voters to understand, it isn’t a voter priority, or some combination of these plus other factors.

I have written that if Trump fires ends the investigation this summer the issue will be more or less completely forgotten by the midterms.  Georgia has proven me right.

To end the investigation Trump can –

• Pardon all his advisers but leave the special counsel office technically open but with nothing to investigate.
• Fire Mueller.
• Both issue pardons and fire Mueller.

I recommend pardoning advisers immediately and then remove the special counsel after Christopher Wray is confirmed as the new FBI Director.

Most importantly, Trump needs to bring the investigation to a close so I can stop writing about this topic.

Obamacare

The Senate vote is approaching.

To encourage the Senate to approve a partial repeal of Obamacare Trump should state publicly that the exchange subsidies will have to come to an end unless a comprehensive health care fix is sent to his desk.

The Congress is terrified of the exchanges collapsing before the midterms and will have to pass some sort of fix with or without repeal legislation.

Since they will have to address the exchanges at some point, holding the subsidies hostage will make it more likely the Senate and House send a partial repeal to Trump’s desk.

Continue reading “The End of Week Circulars for June 25, 2017”

It won’t look pretty.

But such a conflict will be unavoidable considering how the acquisition of an ICBM by North Korea poses an unacceptable risk to America.

I know about a bit about game theory and have acquaintances in the military.  Using my own knowledge of statistics and what I’ve gathered from talks in private, I can base this analysis of how a fight with North Korea will probably sort out.

Specifically, how a fight will escalate in the event of war:  Game theory is most famous for its Cold War era projections of how a conflict between America and the USSR would eventually escalate into a nuclear exchange.  Simulations based on game theory repeatedly indicated that even a conventional conflict would steadily escalate up to a nuclear conflict in part because the perceived downside to using nuclear weapons decreased as the risk of losing a conventional conflict increased.   The ease by which a nuclear exchange could be born from only a limited conflict is why the Soviets and Americans never fought a conventional battle directly against each other.

Because a Second Korean War could very well lead to a nuclear exchange, we will take the lessons of the Cold War to see how each side might view the risk-reward calculations in a war.

Continue reading “What a Military Conflict with North Korea Would Look Like”

Judging by the latest Washington Post leak from the special counsel’s office, Mueller seems awfully confident Trump won’t fire his ass.

I wouldn’t be so sure.

Continue reading “Firing Mueller – More Thoughts on Going Gingrich on the Special Counsel”

What drama was Comey’s testimony.

The Senators slobbered, the Senators drooled (more than usual) over every word.  But – being cheap dates at best; expensive whores at worst – they were always easy to con.

Impressing me is not nearly so easy.  But even I must admit being impressed for so much storm and fury that in the end signaled no collusion crimes at all had been committed, just as here predicted:

It’s almost impossible to conceive how there could have been an underlying crime between the Trump campaign and Russia without the evidence leaking to the media after Obama’s intelligence services, Hillary’s opposition research team, Comey’s FBI, the entire Democratic party, multiple Congressional Committees, almost all of the Republican establishment, and every media outlet on the planet spent over a year obsessively searching for proof.

If there were solid proof the media wouldn’t be wasting time “inferring” from pieces of “memos” written on cocktail napkins by anonymous, second hand, sources that Trump tipped off the Russians to the great, classified, secret that Israel is conducting intel operations in Syrian cities controlled by ISIS.

Putin would have never guessed.

In announcing there were no crimes to report on he spiced his (suspiciously) John Grisham-like written statement with quotes from Henry II in his oral testimony.

If he was capable of such a mesmerizing, grandstanding performance that, in the end, amounted to nothing more than a laughably weak framework for “obstruction of justice”, just imagine the scene if he had found a single particle of evidence for “collusion”.

Comey would have surely recited the last two acts of King Lear before the great stage of fools otherwise known as the United States Senate, moon walked across the Senate floor handing out articles of impeachment, and ended the night with a fireworks display over the Capitol Rotunda spelling out his name .

And did he ever prove Pragmatically Distributed right about his contempt for the Obama and Clinton Democrats (“Dear Loretta, remember how you ditched me on the tarmac altar?“) and the rumor-addicted media (“like feeding seagulls“):

For his next buzz he looked to the incoming Trump administration.  If he could bring down Hillary Clinton when she had the full institutional backing of the establishment, how much easier would it be for him to bring down this blowhard clown, Trump, when Comey would have the endorsement of the establishment?

Regardless whether he saw himself as a future President, Comey’s actions are  remarkable for the tremendous contempt they showed for the political process and the establishment.

But why shouldn’t he be contemptuous? Look at who the other anti-Trump actors are in this saga.

NeverTrump?  Political incompetents who couldn’t get Obama elected mayor of San Francisco.

The Progressives?  Raving lunatics who hide in safe spaces clinging bitterly to their playdough whenever they run into an offensive hashtag, and who in good moods dream of controlling the universe with gay sex and transvestite perverts.

After years listening to frail Senators waste hours asking Comey rambling questions, monitoring the sewer of corruption that is the political establishment without being allowed to cleanse it, surrounded by the preening mediocrities that dominate Washington DC, dealing with high functioning drug addict graduates of “elite” universities, why wouldn’t Comey have thought it right for someone actually talented and disciplined such as himself to become the key player in the Progressive establishment.

Because Comey played the Democrats like a violin as thoroughly as he played every Republican besides the even more devious Trump, we officially declare Comey the Fifth Branch of government which, like the non-Constitutional Fourth Branch (the Bureaucratic Branch), answers to none of the three Constitutionally empowered branches, and only occasionally answers the voicemail of the incompetent Fourth branch.

Continue reading “James Comey, The Fifth Branch of Government & How to Fire Mueller”

Britain’s General Election

Scottish and Northern Ireland Unionists took my advice and, quite unexpectedly in Scotland’s case, saved the UK from a Corbyn government.

The closeness of the election was apparently due to the decline of UKIP:  Their pro-Brexit working class voters reverted back to Labour while their white collar voters returned to the Tories.

I am not familiar enough with the negotiating minutiae to guess how the results will impact Brexit talks beyond causing their delay while the Tories decide on how to conduct a leadership challenge.

I do know that the Corbyn-Mandelson dynamic still has a ways to play out within Labour particularly with Brexit negotiations looming (with or without PM May) and the Corbyn wing being quietly anti-EU and the Mandelson wing being in the tank for Juncker, et al.

Originally, the Fabian’s were expecting May to crush Corbyn for them.  But by overperforming it has become impossible for the Blairites to remove Corbyn on their own.

Corbyn rubs the Blairite wing the wrong way because Corbyn, as an actual Marxist, doesn’t want to crush the remnants of the British proletariat.  Blairite Fabians, which is to say “Anti-Proleterian Communists” are very interested in finishing the bastards off once and for all, regardless whether or not the end game sees the ISIS flag raised over Westminster for good.

How well Corbyn can keep a hold on his party with the still powerful Mandelson partisans looming in the background will go a long way to explaining how the next election goes.

The Tories would be well advised to encourage tensions between Labour’s proletarian and anti-proletarian factions as much as possible.

Comey – Again

It’s time to start considering a pardon of Flynn and other former, or current advisers, such as Manafort for any procedural crimes (perjury, tax evasion, registration issues, etc) if the Russian investigation is now focused on a reckless fishing expedition for procedural crimes, not an underlying “collusion” crime with Russia.

I’m tempted to say Trump should also consider eliminating the special counsel since Comey admitted he manipulated the administration into appointing one in order to convert the original intelligence probe (which is not a criminal investigation) into a criminal investigation.

However, why would Comey admit empowering a special counsel was his intent?

By saying this Comey, now exposed as the devious operator I always said he was, must know that his admitting it to the Senate will only risk provoking Trump into firing the special counsel.

Does Comey actually want Trump to fire Mueller?

If so, why?

Dilbertian Persuasion

In terms of spinning this pointless distraction to his advantage, Trump should continue to undermine Comey’s aura as a subject matter expert by raising more confusion in the minds of voters about what is actually being investigated.

Something, more or less, along these lines:

• “Comey testified I am innocent of collusion.  If there was no collusion, why isn’t the case closed?”  “Bizarre/Strange/Weird”!
• “If there was no collusion, what was Comey DOING this whole time?”
• “The investigation is pointless if Comey says there was no collusion.  This is a media distraction.”

Obamacare Repeal

The odds of the Senate approving a repeal bill are good so long as Trump holds the possibility of ending exchange subsidies over the heads of Senators.  The exchanges are imploding.  As they fall apart the Senate will calculate, correctly, that they will eventually have to vote on something to fix the exchanges.  If actual legislation is inevitable they might as well come to an agreement soon on a partial repeal now that the House has sent them their bill and they have a Republican President eager to sign something.

Based on reporting it seems the last remaining obstacle to a deal is how to phase out the Medicaid expansion.  I recommend breaking the deadlock over this issue by giving a longer phaseout to any state if a Republican Senator wants their own state exempted.  The remaining states would have Medicaid phased out more quickly.  This may be the best compromise for Conservative Senators who want a more aggressive timeline and Moderate Republicans who worry about their own constituents losing coverage.

Pragmatically Distributed was right, again.

Judged by his prepared remarks Comey will go before the Senate with only fragments of an obstruction of justice case he was building but did not finish in time.

His prepared remarks are somewhat weaker than what I expected, and my expectations were already low.  Trump’s request that Comey look into dropping the case against Flynn dealt with a narrower investigation into a discussion held between Flynn and Russia during the Presidential transition, not a request to drop the broader counter-intelligence probe.

Since you asked, McCarthy, Flynn was grilled by the FBI because Comey had no evidence to backup an underlying conspiracy between Trump’s campaign and Russia.

If there were strong evidence of a conspiracy, Comey surely wouldn’t have wasted valuable FBI time devoted to hunting for Comey’s next glowing headline by trying to trap Flynn on an ancillary procedural crime.

Once charges were filed against Flynn, and perhaps Manafort for not reporting income from Russia and Ukraine, the plan – as I believe it was – would be to keep records of new hostile encounters with an increasingly frustrated Trump until Comey had enough events to go public with accusations of obstruction of justice.

The salivating over Comey’s pending testimony among anti-Trumpers turns out to be a shadow of what Comey would have been able to deliver if he been given more time to passively-aggressively provoke Trump.

With the release of Comey’s opening statement, it’s finally beginning to dawn on a few anti-Trumpers that what Comey comments had assembled to date are arguably inappropriate, but still collectively inadequate to base an obstruction of justice case on.

CNN took down its “Comey Clock” soon after his remarks were posted.

And most of #NeverTrump was forced to concede Thursday’s testimony will be a letdown.

His testimony leaves Trump in a good position to spin to his own advantage Comey’s words.  Trump and his surrogates can repeat that according to former FBI Director (A) Trump is not under investigation and (B) Trump did not obstruct the investigation.

There will be some attempt to counter-spin and say Comey is indicating obstruction may have been committed.

But this argument undermines anti-Trump because, in Scott Adams’ terms, it undermines Comey’s status in the public’s mind as a legal subject matter expert.

The image the public has of FBI Directors is that they, as experts, are supposed to know when a crime has been committed and what laws were violated.

If Comey dodges making a definitive statement about what Trump’s status is in the investigation or whether he did anything illegal, Comey’s appearance will be the opposite of what the public expects of FBI agents; namely, decisive, clear, and straightforward.

By equivocating on whether any of Trump’s actions amounts to obstruction or collusion with Russia, Comey will lose the deference he was given as a legal expert.  Not sure who to believe if Comey can’t be relied on, the interest of the public will gradually drift away from the story.

Overall, this is has proven to be Geraldo’s vault for the Democrats and good news for Trump who will then be able to turn the tables and begin investigating the Obama administration’s illegal unmasking of not only Trump’s team but also other Republican candidates during the 2016 primaries.

I tell you statistics is a legitimate field of science.   Many of you doubt it because of  incoherent answers given by climate “scientists” in response to reasonable questions.   Answers such as, “weather is not climate” when asked why climate models can supposedly predict temperatures 100 years out but cannot predict the weather two weeks out.

In statistics this is nonsensical.

When a statistician (or pseudo-statistician in the case of climate scientists) says they have a model that explains any kind of outcome what they mean in simple English is they have a mathematical representation (model) of explanatory (independent) variables that capture the magnitude to which these explanatory variables hold a causal relationship (not “correlation”) to an outcome (dependent variable).

It is not necessary at all for a statistician to draw conclusions from a model.  “Results are inconclusive” is a perfectly acceptable way to close out a scientific study.

But the Greens have drawn a conclusion – the science is settled.

The scientific conclusion they have settled on, in English, is:

• Global Warming (AGW) is occurring.
• They have measured the effect of various atmospheric influences (independent variables) on climate temperatures (the dependent variable).
• Explanatory variables impacting climate include changes in solar flare activity (changes which are currently impossible for NASA astronomers to predict in advance), ocean currents, those much maligned carbon levels, etc…
• Out of all variables, they have concluded man made carbon emissions have the most effect on projected climate conditions.
• The effect of carbon emissions, and other atmospheric influences, on climate are mathematically and accurately represented in their climate models.
• The degree of impact carbon has on climate is projected to have catastrophic consequences.

Skeptics, targeting how much explanatory power the models actually have, go on to question how representative these models are of real trends by asking how they can predict climate but not weather.

To this, the mainstream anti-carbon crackpots squawk back – weather is not climate!

We call this talking point and those who make it crackpot because weather is informationally relevant to climate.

Or, in mathematical language, the explanatory variables that impact weather and climate overlap with each other.

From this it follows if explanatory variables for climate and weather overlap, and, if climate “scientists” do understand the actual scientific relationship between carbon and climate, then it should be possible for climate “scientists” to convert their statistical models of climate into accurate statistical models of weather conditions using climate variables that climate shares with weather.

At least, if weather cannot be projected out on a day by day basis, on a decade by decade timescale.

The fact they would not dare to predict weather beyond two weeks, let alone a century, using explanatory factors similar to the factors used in their climate projections indicates they do not have serious confidence in their expression of the relationship between the forces governing these highly complex atmospheric feedback loops.

And if they do not understand these relationships, there is no reason to act on their anti-carbon recommendations.

Weather is indicative of information about climate.

At a minimum, not being able to predict weather using models similar to climate models seriously calls into question their “settled” position on climate.

For them to insist that “weather is not climate” is as mathematically ridiculous as an economist saying –

• They have a regression model that predicts national consumer spending trends over 5 years using inflation, wages, unemployment rates, etc., as explanatory variables.
• The conclusion drawn from this economic model is that inflation is the most important variable.
• But their model cannot be adjusted to explain quarterly consumer spending on the state level.

This, too, is ridiculous for the same reasons “Climate is not weather” is:  Explanatory variables of national consumption rates overlap with many explanatory variables of consumption rates at the state level.

Any economist who tacked on this lousy caveat about state spending at an academic conference of economists would immediately be bombarded with hostile questions about how he can conclude anything about national spending if his statistical reasoning cannot be converted to handle state spending.

But this is precisely what climate “scientists” are saying by “Weather is not climate!”.

No legitimately “settled science” spends so much energy evading questions with analogies this flimsy.

These Legs are for Collusion

She’s guaranteed herself a second interview with Putin.

But what will she wear to the rematch?

Anti-Trump Proves Worthy of Comey’s Contempt

We interpreted Comey’s actions as FBI Director as most consistent with a strategy to build an obstruction of justice case against Trump by goading him into making a series of borderline statements that, collectively, made up obstruction.

We also believed the universe of anti-Trump forces were kept in the dark about Comey’s exact plans and that, by keeping anti-Trumpers in the dark, Comey was demonstrating contempt for anti-Trump.  Even Comey’s deputy was out of the loop given that his deputy testified publicly to Congress that he had not seen evidence of interference into the investigation by Trump’s administration.

As it turns out, anti-Trump forces are still deserving of his contempt.

The reporting on the Russia investigation is still anticipating that an impeachable offense will emerge from it.

What they don’t realize is that, by firing Comey after just four months, Trump has ruined Comey’s strategy.  He left the FBI Directorship too soon for him to accumulate enough private statements by Trump to construe them as anything more than “pressure” or “inappropriate”.

But anti-Trump has not realized Comey’s gambit is over.

Comey was the most dangerous actor against Trump because Comey was the only person in the anti-Trump nexus with an attention span greater than a moth.

With Comey out of the way, anti-Trump would be better off moving to some other strategy instead of clinging in desperation to a strategy that is non-operational in Comey’s absence.

That anti-Trump still hasn’t figured this out proves Comey’s judgment of them as easily manipulable stooges was right all.

The Paris Accord Warrants Impeachment

Obama’s impeachment.

The Paris accord was clearly a treaty; treaties are mandated by the Constitution to be put to the Senate for ratification.

Instead of doing his Constitutional duty by sending the Paris accord to the Senate for a vote, Obama tried to give it force of law without Senate approval.

This blatantly illegal action by Obama clearly warranted impeachment.  Fortunately for him the rest of the elite followed the “Comey rule” of law enforcement which mandates that Democrats are not allowed to be legally punished for breaking the law.

Paris is Burning, Paris will be Burning

Trump burned the Paris accords.

Before Trump sent them up in flames, Macron preemptively retaliated against Trump’s withdrawal with an aggressive handshake.

Macron should worry about Trump.  After two recent ISIS terrorist attacks in Britain it won’t be long before another mass-casualty strike is made against France.

When ISIS comes to shake Macron’s hand we’ll see how well he handles a real enemy on camera.  We expect not even the Western media will be able to spin his response to terrorism as a macho staredown won by Macron.

I enjoy being proven right as much as any analyst.  Unlike most analysts, I have the fortune of being right more often than not.

Such as here.  Here.  Here.  And here.

I am not as foresighted as Metternich.  But I am usually on the right track.

In Britain, Jeremy Corbyn threatens to put to the test my theory that Progressive Fabian Socialists are not Communists because the Fabians (and related groups across America and Europe) are anti-proletarian “Communists”.  Which defeats the whole point of a truly Communist dictatorship of the proletariat.

If I am correct, should Corbyn form a government, the first major act of the Labour party will be to sack him in favor of an anti-proletarian Blairite Labour leader who will sink a Brexit that was backed by the proles.  Corbyn has made noises in the past unfavorable to the European Union, and genuinely seems sympathetic to what remains of the British working class.  Unfortunately for him, the anti-proletarian wing of his party is strong enough to remove him just for daring to have these sentiments.

If Corbyn is not be reliable on Brexit, the likes of Mandelson and such will not take chances with him and be sure to install a Labour leader fully opposed to exit at the nearest opportunity.

But, Britain, please do not put this theory – Progressives are “anti-proletarian Communists”, hence, not Communists – to the test.

I have more than sufficient evidence for this case.  It does not need a Corbyn government as an extra data point to the existing historical record.

In this system there are three characteristic elements: 1) a series of brilliant thoughts, which however are nearly always spoiled to some extent because they are incompetently set forth likewise; 2) a narrow, philistine way of thinking sharply contrasting with that brilliant mind; 3) a hierarchically organised religious constitution, whose source is definitely Saint-Simonian, but divested of all mysticism and turned into something extremely sober, with a regular pope at the head, so that (Thomas) Huxley [4] could say of Comtism that it was Catholicism without Christianity.

…

Then there is another point I should like to correct, the note on p 513. [5] Marx never was Secretary General of the International but only Secretary for Germany and Russia. And none of the Comtists in London participated in the founding of the International. Professor E Beesly [6] deserves great credit for his defence of the International in the press at the time of the Commune against the vehement attacks of that day. Frederic Harrison [7] too publicly took up the cudgels for the Commune. But a few years later the Comtists cooled off considerably toward the labour movement. The workers had become too powerful and it was now a question of maintaining a proper balance between capitalists and workers (for both are producers according to Saint-Simon) and to that end of once more supporting the former. Ever since then the Comtists have wrapped themselves in complete silence as regards the labour question.

I will be more than happy to leave what the Fabian reaction would be in the aftermath of a Corbyn victory as a historical hypothetical.

Hamiltonian economics should, like all theories, be judged by its explanatory power.  We have begun to introduce our economics to the reader in Part I and Part II.  To prove their worth we tackle this old paradox in our terms:

Why are unemployment rates lower in Western economies with the easiest hire and fire laws?

Employees are resources.  Like other resources how they are put to work in business operations is determined by the Hamiltonian business cycle.

A review of Hamiltonian cycles:

All business cycles start with demand.

Cyclical booms are driven by booming demand, usually in a particular sector that is specialized to meet whatever type of demand is in vogue.

Demand in a sector spurs on what we call sector momentum.  As sector momentum builds, more and more resources are allocated to business operations designed to satisfy this demand.

Among these resources is labor.

Cyclical busts occur when booming demand falls below projections.  Businesses in previously booming sectors are left with over-allocated resources.  Reallocation of these resources occurs to factor in new market signals about demand.  During bust phases, labor that had been invested in satisfying demand during the boom is usually laid off.

In the West, laws that restrict how free businesses are to cut staff are ultimately self-defeating because they interfere with how well businesses can align labor resources with operations that meet demand during both boom and bust phases.

During upswings in customer demand, employers in nations such as France are deterred from hiring staff because they will not be able to easily release them (i.e., reallocate labor resources) during the inevitable downswing.

Nations that broadly support at-will employment have a relative competitive advantage. In these economies employers have more flexibility to adjust their employment levels to track changes in the business environment than nations with strict labor laws.

The greater flexibility offered by Capitalistic labor laws is advantageous because the changes in value signaled by the customer and environment are inherently unpredictable and constantly changing.  Resources, like employees, must change when value changes.  If labor resources, or any other resource, cannot easily be reallocated (or released), business performance is consistently performs at sub-optimal rates during both the bust and the boom phases because businesses cannot react to their environmental conditions.

Paradoxically, flexible labor laws result in lower unemployment levels because businesses working under those conditions have more efficient processes thanks to being able to more efficiently allocate labor resources as decision makers see are warranted by customer demand.