Lock him up….in Holland!

Let’s be clear with what’s going on in Washington, the GOP and Trump know damn well that they lost the election. Most of his supporters know that too (save a few of the Qnon nutters). What this is really about is intimidation of the democratic and legal process. Its about making the democrats reluctant to push the issue and prosecutors afraid of investigating or arresting Trump and his cronies. Its the sort of thing you’d expect to see in a tin pot autocracy.

And it also served to show how massively biased US law enforcement has become. The FBI have been warning for years that US law enforcement has bee infiltrated by far right groups (which explains why the police just stepped aside and let the crowd in). Consider that after the Portland protest Trump sends in a unmarked and masked militia to conduct a brutal crack down and mass arrests (some were arrested for just putting a chalk line on the pavement to let other protesters know the boundaries of the protest area so weren’t bothering anyone). During the BLM protests they deployed an army airborne division to the capital. His little photo op with a bible saw 400 arrests and the tear gassing of thousands of peaceful protesters. Yet, so far there’s only been a handful of arrests with what amounts to an insurrection, if not a terrorist act (they have recovered a number of pipe bombs and Molotov cocktails).

And Trump calls himself a law and order president, yet he has now incited a riot (which last time I checked is a crime, if this lot can do it, anyone else is allowed to break into the offices or homes of GOP politicians or their wealthy donors). Ya, him and his supporters want to be a law unto themselves. It was the ultimate expression of white privilege. Consider what would have happened if they’d been black or Muslim, do you think any of them would still be alive?

Certainly removing the anarchist in chief from power immediately, via impeachment or the 25th amendment would be advantageous, but would require finding an honest republican in possession of a spine. Longer term (after the 20th of January) Trump needs to be brought to justice and if his supporters are going to try and make that difficult, there is an alternative. Put him and his allies on a plane and bundle them off to the Hague.

What’s that you say, but the US isn’t a member of the International Criminal Court. Yes, but there’s nothing to stop them joining and furthermore the ICC isn’t the only court in the Hague. There’s also the much older (as in 1900’s era) Permanent court of Arbitration (which acts as a sort of legal advice entity), the International court of Justice (ICJ, which rules on disputed between nation states), as well as various temporary and semi-permanent tribunals dealing with various war crimes or disputes, e.g. the tribunal related to Genocide in the Yugoslav war.

Probably the case most relevant to Trump however is that of the trial of the Lockerbie bombers. This represented a complex legal situation, as the suspects were Libyan, the actual planting of the bomb occurred in Germany, which detonated over Scotland (Scot’s law being different from English law remember) in the hold of an American plane. So the trial was held in Holland, on an ex-US army airfield, with Scottish judges presiding.

Sending Trump to the Hague (either the ICC or some temporary court jointly set up by the US and the ICJ) presents several advantages. It gets him out of the country and away from his supporters for one. And even if we use US judges, they will be free to conduct their work without intimidation from Trump’s bigot brigade. Given that these trials tend to take awhile, to be very technical and well frankly, boring, your average Trump supporter would sooner gnaw their own leg off than listen to more than an hour of such deliberations. So they’ll quickly lose interest, forget about Trump and go back to watch NASCAR, pro-Wrestling or committing unspeakable acts of depravity with farm animals.

Furthermore, it would allow other counties to file charges against Trump. For example the Kurds for him conspiring to assist in a Turkish invasion of their territory, the Iraqi’s and Iranians for various unlawful killings of several people in Iraq. At the same time it would avoid political interference from Congress, should the GOP regain control in the mean time, as well as avoiding accusations of the court being bias by those on the right.

And for Trump himself, a Dutch trial would be some sort of personal hell. A spoiled little brat used to bullying those around him to get his way, would suddenly find himself in a venue where he gets talked down too by judges (and some of them might be black or Asian and we know his views on race). He’ll be expected to sit up straight, pay attention and only speak when spoken too (if he speaks out of turn, they’ll just cut his mic, and they’ll also likely take away is phone and stop him from tweeting). And no doubt once a Dutch prison doctor gets a look at him they’ll put him on a diet of salads, so no more junk food, pill popping, fake tan or whigs.

But either way it does highlight what the agenda has to be for Mr Vanilla Biden, forget about the usual left wing policies (plenty of time for that later). There’s not much point passing such legislation if the GOP can take over again and wreck it in a single term (just look at the damage Trump has done, the largest deficit in history, a 9/11 death toll every day, more people killed from covid than died fighting WW2). Instead political reform should be the priority. That means packing the supreme court, it means adding new states (so more senators and electoral college votes to tip the scales back towards the democrats), it means declaring the Trump supporting movements Qnon, Proud boys, etc. terrorist groups and then purging the security forces of their members (personally I’d take all the DC police on duty the other night and force them to draw lots and then randomly fire 1 in 10 of them and strip them of their pension benefits).

Bi-partisanship? LOL. There’s no point appealing to republicans better nature, as they demonstrated last night (by continuing to pander to tinfoil hat wearing nutters) they don’t have any morals. Until the republicans demonstrate they deserve such treatment I’d freeze them out of the political process completely. In fact I’d quietly let them know that further misbehaviour will have consequences. For example, if republicans dispute Biden legitimacy of being president, simply cut any federal programme that benefits those who funded their campaigns (they want to whinge about federal spending, fair enough practice what you preach, in fact just to piss the MAGA lot off, spend the money on Obamacare or planned parenthood). If the GOP don’t play along with the reform of the supreme court, remind them it can be packed with moderate justices, or a bunch of 20 something left wing loons. The choice is up to them.

In short the democrats have a busy schedule, as they’ve got 2-4 years (they should pick up more seats than they lose at the mid-terms, but I won’t risk it and try to get everything passed before then) to save the country from fascism.

Shameless hypocrisy and the cult of fantasy

Well you do have to hand it to the republicans. If you are going to tell a lie or con someone, better to go for the big con. And so we have their tax plan, that will give billionaires a massive tax cut, yet put up the taxes on middle income Americans (after a brief interlude of 4 years). At the same time it will blow a massive hole in the US government budget, causing the deficit to skyrocket.

A pair of liberals (Jeff Sessions and some chicken little called Paul Ryan) spread fake news about the dangers of deficit spending

Exactly how much higher the US deficit will rise to is unclear, some say $1 trillion another report estimates $1.7 trillion (against a current deficit of $440 billion, so a doubling or quadrupling of the deficit). Suffice to say this makes a mockery of the GOP mantra throughout the Obama era. We were told, from the very first days of the tea party that their objection to Obama was because he was black because he was spending way too much money and threatening the health of America’s finances. Several times they threatened to shut down the federal government because they refused to raise the US debt ceiling. Now blink and they’re saying well bolix to that, my new Gulfstream ain’t going to buy itself.

Of course, this is hardly a huge surprise. For Republicans the deficit has long been a political football. They’ll use it against the democrats when they are in power, then spend like a sailor on shore leave afterwards. The five most recent Republican presidents have all run deficits, generally worse than their democratic predecessor, with Reagan being the worst offender (although Trump/Pence will almost certainly now exceed him) and Bill Clinton being the only recent US president to return a significant budget surplus.

Obama did indeed run up some large deficits, which means he stands out from other recent democratic presidents (who ran much smaller deficits, or ran a surplus). But he was dealing with one of the worst recession in ninety years, a crisis which was the fault of the Republicans and their mismanagement of the banks. He certainly didn’t bring this deficit down nearly as quickly as he should have, that is true. But in his defence he did try to cut spending and proposed some tax increases, but the Republicans fought every step of the way.

Tax cuts to the wealthy have consistently had the opposite effect republicans claim

Now the GOP will no doubt claim, oh but this will stimulate the economy and create loads of jobs, which will then increase tax revenue. Well firstly there is very little evidence to prove that these supply side economics actually works, indeed if anything the evidence suggests the opposite is true. The economy is like an orchestra. Lots of different factors come together to make it work. You need inward investment, a reliable energy source, a stable political system, an educated workforce, access to foreign markets, etc. Although one must note Trump’s proposed protectionist measures will likely impact on a number of these and could well restrict economic growth.

And when we say the economy is like an orchestra its perhaps better to look on it as more like a school band. It succeeds in battering out a tune, not because of the idiot in the back out of sync with the rest of the band, but despite him. But the GOP, like the parents of this spoilt little brat, filter out all of that and assume the band’s success is all down to their little darling’s ill timed and out of tune musical torture.

But even if we give the GOP the benefit of the doubt, the level of growth that would be necessary to reduce the deficit is pretty significant. Do the maths and you’ll see that US economy would have to grow by a rate of 30-50% over 5 years (6-10% per year!) to cancel out this deficit. That would require a level of economic growth equivalent to China or Ireland in the 2000’s, which is simply not going to happen. Especially when you factor in the impact of the baby boomer retirements, which will pull tens of millions of taxpayers out of the work force and then claiming their retirement benefits.

What about cutting spending? While the GOP don’t mention it in these tax plans, its almost certain when these colossal deficits become evident massive spending cuts will have to follow. Indeed, this might be the whole point of the tax cut, because it will give them the excuse to basically sell of the US federal government (to themselves!). Well the flaw in this plan is, like I said earlier, Obama tried that, but the only things with enough zeros behind them that could be cut and make a difference to the deficit are things like defence spending or retirement funding. And those are the very sacred cows the GOP won’t cut. Obamacare, for the record, was set up to be revenue neutral (it costs money but by making workers healthier and more productive it should cancel out its own impact on the deficit).

Cutting out whole government departments (as the GOP proposes) on the one hand, won’t cut the budget enough and secondly will leave key economic sectors effectively an unregulated wild west. The financial crisis, the collapse of ENRON and various other scandals of the G. W. Bush era showed the dangers of such deregulation (and again most of Obama’s deficit was run up repairing the damage from these crises). So budget cuts of this kind would cause more harm than help. Its the equivalent of setting your house on fire in the middle of a blizzard in order to keep warm.

But anyone looking to debate Republicans on this issue is wasting their time. We need to recognise the fact that American conservatives aren’t a political movement any more (they’d need these things called “policies” first!) they are basically a cult. A cult of angry people who’ve concluded that solving the problems that make them angry sounds like a lot of hard work, so instead they’ve placed the comforting lies of their demagogue leaders above facts and decided to go urinate in a ballot box. This is not strictly speaking a right wing phenomenon (Corbyn’s supporters in the UK, Sinn Fein in Ireland, etc.) but it has certainly taken over the political right to a much greater extend.

Trump the brilliant business man managed to lose money in the one industry where the house always wins!

Indeed, so much so that it wouldn’t be accurate to call American conservatives Christians anymore either. Many even go so far as to suggest they’d believe the word of Trump over the words of Jesus. This is a cult that is openly anti-intellectual and hostile to facts of any kind.

Consider the fact that Trump now claims things he was caught on tape saying never occurred. There’s phenomenon with US shootings, going right back to Columbine High, where every time a shooting occurs, conspiracy theories flood the internet, often leading to the victims of said shootings and their families being harassed and threatened by pro-gun activists.

Now the problem with these fantasy cults is that they are entirely self destructive and self defeating. As the woes of the brexiters demonstrate the aren’t going to get to have their cake and eat it. They will almost certainly leave the UK worse off than it was prior to brexit. And longer term, the likely outcome will be either the UK rejoins the EU (on not nearly as generous terms as it now enjoys) or the UK probably breaks up. For anyone who voted for brexit as some sort of protest against the Tories, well firstly you’re an idiot and secondly for the next two decades the priority for the government (whether its labour or the Tories in power) will be brexit and dealing with the fallout afterwards. Meanwhile your local public services will wither and die, your local hospital will close….or be sold off to some American multinational. You essentially voted to be ignored even more than you were being ignored before.

And the second problem, as Trump demonstrates, is that while these demagogues can’t fulfil their outlandish promises, they can use their time in office to feather their own nests and do a few favours for those who helped them into power, as these tax cuts and a number of Trump’s political appointments demonstrates.

As with the brexiters, any angry Trump voters who voted for him so that those pricks in Washington will pay attention to the forgotten America. Well you’re a moron. And now you’ll be ignored and forgotten even more. And the likely outcome of your decision is national bankruptcy. Which given how massively dependant many mid-west (and generally Republican voting states) are on federal spending will spell disaster, as many in these states are reduced to penury.

The only socialism in America, aside from tax cuts for billonaires, is liberal voting states propping the economies of republican voting states

In short, voting for “populists”, or the cult of fantasy as we should really call them, is the equivalent of the chickens voting to put the fox in charge of the hen house, just because he promised to built a wall around the hen house and make the wolves pay for it. This begs the question, what happens with this process runs its course and the lies of the cult of fantasy are exposed and the followers realise they’ve been had.

Well firstly don’t expect that to happen any time soon. I mean look what’s happened to many cults throughout history. Many literally go down in flames with their cult leader (blaming his enemies for forcing him into killing them all), long after it should be obvious they’ve been conned. It will take sometime for the penny to drop.

I guarantee you, a decade from now the line the Daily Mail will take is that the UK was forced out of the EU against its will. And its economic woes since then are all the fault of the EU and the handful of migrants that are still allowed into the country (who will presumably be forced to go around wearing little yellow stars). Whoever is the poor unfortunate sap of a democrat who has to clean up the massive deficit mess left behind by Trump and co. will be blamed by fox news for the very mess Trump is now creating. Why they will say with nostalgia can’t we go back to those glorious times when Trump was in charge. And why can’t we name some national landmarks after him (because you’ve already named everything after Reagan!).

Its possible that we could see the collapse of the mainstream parties and the rise of some sort of third way, as was seen in France recently. But the electoral system in both the US and UK are more or less designed to make it impossible for any alternatives to the two party system to emerge. So my guess is that the end result of the cult of fantasy is that governments will become ever more extreme, with lurching to the extremes of the right and then the left, getting more authoritarian with every iteration. Meanwhile nothing gets done, nothing changes and the problems build up until its possible the whole system of western style democracy might well collapse. Unfortunately I suspect Putin’s Russia is a template for what we can expect future governments to look like.

Now everyone’s been Trumped

Analysis
So its Trump, how can 60 million people be that dumb! Many are trying to put the spin on it, that it was working class Americans in rust belt states fed up with how they are treated in Washington that swung the election. Well no, the polling data (both before and after the election) shows the vast majority of Trump voters are middle class or upper class whites who generally have a better than average income. The majority of low income whites still voted for Hillary. Certainly some more of them than did vote for Trump than would normally be expected in an election, but in theory this was cancelled out (to some degree) by an increased level of turn out and voting for Hillary by ethnic minority voters.

Indeed its worth remembering that she carried the popular vote, Trump carried the key swing states by only a tiny margin. The reality is that a Trump victory should have been mathematically impossible had it not been for large number of both wealthy or middle class Americans turning out to vote for him. So Trump is on their head, they are now responsible for whatever mess he makes.

A more crucial factor was that the “never Trump” block within the GOP clearly dithered at the final moment. I mean Republicans are such hypocrites. They launch all of that assault on Bill Clinton and Obama, go around thumping their bible complaining about how America now has no morals anymore….then vote for “grab them by the pu%&X” Trump, who is worse than Bill and far more corrupt than any president or candidate has ever been (Trump university for example, shady deals, Mafia connections) and will be spending some portion of his presidency in court. He may actually end up being indicted on bribery charges before he takes up office. And we can’t just point the finger at white men, the polling data shows a majority of white women also voted for him in certain older age groups. And least we forget Trump is likely to run up a massive deficit, far larger than Obama, so all that BS from the GOP about the debt ceiling over the last few years was clearly just political street theatre.

One fact is clear, is that facts no longer matter anymore. We are truly in the post truth world. And don’t even take my word for it. The analysis of a neuroscientist of Trump supporters is that there’s something wrong with their brains. They have an enlarged and overactive Amygdala, which means they are much more likely to overreact to perceived threats (whether real or imagined). They also have demonstrated an inability to be capable of separating fact from opinion, a trend we saw over in the UK prior to the brexit vote. In short, they believe crazy things because they don’t want to look bad in the eyes of their peers and because they gain some sort of sadistic pleasure out of the fact that it winds up liberals when they do this. Many of these are also increasingly getting their news from Facebook, or Alt-right websites who have both been accused of polarising subscribers by only showing them web pages that won’t challenge their views in an effort to get up site hits.

And there is also the Dunning-Kruger Effect, by which many overestimate their own ability. I see this all the time as a lecturer. The people who will most overestimate their performance tend to the low achievers, who then can’t understand how it is that they failed (I’m not joking they’ll be on like 18% and want it remarked convinced that somehow we got it wrong). By contrast some of the high achievers tend to underestimate their performance (and come to me straight after the exam with the “well I know I’ve failed, what now?” line….when in fact they finished top of the class!). Or put another way, many Republicans don’t realise how dumb they actually are.

And finally there is the racism. As in the brexit vote, some will try to argue that Trump winning had nothing to do with racism. Actually no, it very much had everything to do with it. Again the polls show that. The two leading reasons given for voting Trump were terrorism and immigration (i.e. no more darkies). On economic issues, even with low wage blue collar workers, Hillary won out easily. The simple fact is that many Americans who voted for Trump were quite willing to sacrifice some of their economic well being to see the wall build and America become a more racist place. There’s no way to sugar coat it. What Trump shows is that America is a very racist and misogynistic place.

If Trump and his supporters aren’t fascist, why do they keep getting caught making fascist salutes

Which is hardly surprising given how the GOP have been pushing those over stimulated Amygdala buttons for many decades now. They’ve effectively brainwashed a large chuck of the US population to the point where they cannot separate fact from fiction and believe in new age myths over real data and statistics. Where some fantasy pedalling creationist, climate denying whack-job is given the same credibility as a Nobel prize winning scientist. In doing so they’ve done great damage to American democracy. I mean I was talking to someone from China the other day and enquired what he thought of democracy and he just laughed. I mean seriously, if you were Chinese, horrible thought the Communist party is, would you rather have a system that elects Putin, Trump or votes for brexit?

Trump’s other supporters
And then there’s the other group of Trump supporters, Jill Stein and Gary “Aleppo” Johnson voters. Let’s be clear, you effectively voted for Trump. Go through the data, you’ll see that in the 5 key swing states (any 3 of which would have handed the election to Hillary) and if only half of those who voted for Stein and Johnson voted for Hillary she’d have won (or if all those in 3 of those states who voted for Stein voted Hillary, she would have won).

When Jill met Putin…..

One can’t argue with the maths, Hillary is not the president thanks to these voters. In effect by voting for either of these candidates in a swing state was the moral equivalent of taking part in a firing squad, but convincing yourself that you fired the blank round every time. Trump is on your head as well. I hope you like him, because its now your fault as much as it is the Republicans.

Hillary robbed at email point

Hillary tries on her inaugural gown

And given how narrow the victory was one has to look back at the e-mail scandal and the FBI’s last minute intervention. This clearly had an impact, its difficult to believe it didn’t. Now while its clear the polling data was off, it still had Hillary in about an 8% lead prior to Comey’s letter. The final polls put Hillary about 4% up. So one assumes that it caused a 4% swing against Hillary, while the polls were actually off by about 4% as well. I’m reminded of this scence from the Simpsons where Mr Burns runs for office.

Hillary had a massive lead prior to the Comey’s intervention

While Hillary has to take some of the blame, she may not have been the best choice of candidate (recall I never said I liked her much myself, its just I could see the difference between her and Mr Disaster). And she lost this election more than Trump won it (she got several million less votes than Obama got, while Trump got less votes that Romney got!). But clearly she’s right in pointing the finger at the FBI’s intervention, noting that if true, then Comey broke a long standing electoral law and should, along with Rudolph Giuliani and Senator Chaffetz be subject to a criminal investigation. Of course with Mr stop and frisk now likely to be the attorney general, that seems unlikely to actually happen.

Bernie
Inevitably some of the Bernie brigade are chirping about how Bernie would have won it. And yes I’ve seen polls showing that. However we have to put this in context. He hadn’t just fought an election campaign and have baseless racist/sexist smears thrown at him by the GOP, with the direct assistance of the FBI. Yes, he might just have pulled it off (this election favoured the outsider), but equally its possible is that he’d have still lost, perhaps by a larger margin.

Most Americans are trained from birth to consider anyone calling themselves a socialist to be coming for their wallet, their gun and their bible,in that order. Now I know that’s BS, but that’s still what many think. And there are large number of Americans, including quite a lot in the electoral block that typically vote democrat, who will not vote for an atheist as president. Bernie may have tied down a bit more of the white working class vote, but he’d have seen lower turn out among ethic minority groups from strongly religious backgrounds. And Blomberg would have followed through with his threat to run as a 3rd party candidate.

Again, look at the demographics of those who voted for Trump (who actually voted, ignore this myth about angry blue collar voters) its difficult to see Bernie making a bigger dent. Yes he might have won, but it would have been close. Then again, technically Hillary won, it was only this dumbass electoral college system that stopped her.

Trump v’s reality
So what can we expect from Trump? Well he’s biggest opponent is likely to be this little thing called “reality” and he can’t build a wall around that. Take for example his plan to put a 45% tariff on China and 35% on Mexico. Ya, that’s the thing, stick it to the Chinese, that’ll show’em….hay why’s my I-phone now 45% more expensive? And gas prices just went up, and when I went to buy new tires for my buick they were 35%….oh wait, now I see!

The only thing protectionism will achieve is it will make everything more expensive. Now while that’s not a big deal for those who can afford to pay 45-35% more for everything, its not so great news for anyone on a tight budget. Yes some companies might move their factories into the US, but only those who exclusively sell to Americans. As other nations will retaliate with tariffs of their own, they’d be shutting themselves out of the international market by moving into the US. It would in short, make more economic sense for Apple to relocate out of the US and abandon the American market than lose the rest of its world sales. America simply lacks the economic clout to fight a trade war with China or the EU. Trump and his supporters might think its 1928, but its not.

Then he wants to build the wall and deport all of the immigrants. Now ignoring the engineering and practical problems with all of that, the enormous costs and the fact that the Wall has been obsolete since the Wright brothers invented this thing called “planes”. And who is going to do their jobs? Do you think unemployed people in the rust belt are going to trek halfway across the country to take up manual labour jobs picking crops and cleaning toilets in California or Texas for 6 months a year, then go home again? The end result of his policy will be labour shortages and crops left to rot in the fields. As a result of Trump’s policy we could well see queue’s forming outside shops, much like in Venezuela recently, as certain items become scarce.

Economists fear the US deficit exceeding 100%….

Then there’s the deficit, his plan is to run up a massive deficit, up to $5.3 trillion to $10 trillion. Certainly, he’d push America pass the long feared threshold of 100%, at which point its likely investors will start to panic, US debt will be downgraded and interest rates will soar.

…..because it raises the risk of national bankrupcty

Now Trump says, oh I’ll renegotiate the debt or print more money. Ya, and you do realise that will devalue the US dollar? Meaning beyond a certain point, he’s no longer a billionaire (because a billion bucks suddenly ain’t worth that much). And this would also have to push up salaries, including those of state employees. government contractors will start charging the state more for their services. Lenders will charge a higher rate of return, so again interest rates go up. In short economic meltdown.

Another member of the Billionaire’s club! Trump’s plans would make everyone a billionaire just like him!

Certainly the “print money” option is a good idea, in a crisis, as a temporary means of restoring order. But as a long term debt management strategy its the equivalent of buying Trump wine and mixing it with water and then trying to sell it, only nobody wants to buy it at the original price, instead they’ll only buy it at a discount price. Trump is basically trying to argue that he can still make money selling this diluted wine at a lower price than he buys it. And recall the largest holder of US debt is pension funds based in the US not China.

Trump v’s congress
The second problem for Trump is that a number of his policies will not last long in congress.

For example one of the first groups he’ll be upsetting with any trade tariffs will be the US automotive lobby. This is a cabal of car makers, fossil fuel companies, construction firms (who build and maintain roads) and auto dealerships. A lot of US auto parts are shipped in from abroad (most notably Mexico), as is lots of its fossil fuel supply. They will be more than a little upset at the thought that their cars should be more expensive and their profits should take a hit. And these are not the sort of people you want to mess with. Keep in mind the global warming denial machine is just one tiny part of this lobby group. At a local politics level, these guys wield a lot of power (as this Adam ruin’s everything mentions), typically 20% of local sales tax comes from automobile sales. Who do you think local politicians will listen too, Trump or the guys who fund their campaign and the main source of local tax revenue?

In short, Trump messes with these guys, and they’ll see to it that the GOP will get crucified in the mid-terms. And the GOP know that, so they ain’t going to endorse a lot of the things he’s proposed. Likely they’ll pick and chose. For example his tax cut plans, they’ll go for the idea of cutting taxes to the wealthy or getting rid of estate taxes, but likely leave out the bit about closing off loopholes. Which given how ruthlessly Trump has relied on those loopholes himself (he’s probably not paid any tax for 18 years), its likely he’ll go along with. This will, as noted, push up the deficit, leave many poor Americans worse off, while the wealthiest one % are much better off. As fo

The GOP will also go after various ideological issues that play well with their electorate, e.g. repeal Obamacare, ban abortion and gay marriage, deport migrants (although oddly enough not his wife!), make gun ownership compulsory (except for Muslims and minorities of course!), etc. The environment, well they’re pretty much going to ban that, with consequences much like in this Simpson’s sketch  (its scary how old Simpson’s episodes are starting to play out in reality).However, they will likely face Filibustering tactics from the democrats, who will effectively now try to shut down congress and count down the clock on Trump’s presidency. And the GOP can hardly complain as this was essentially their tactics under Obama. In short, its likely the log jam in US politics will get worse under Trump not better.

There are some positive policies that might emerge, the GOP and Trump being the hypocrites that they are, they can be prone to a strong element of “not invented here” syndrome. e.g. Obamacare. Mitt Romney was dead set against this, and I mean who the hell came up with this job killing idea?…Mitt Romney did, Obamacare was modelled along the lines of similar policies in various American states…including one brought in by Mitt Romney! This explains Trump’s dithering on repealing Obamacare. He’d be replacing it with something very similar, just a bit more expensive and not as effective.

Similarly he might get certain things passed, who knows maybe even some modest gun control measures, some job creation through another stimulus package (much of which will inevitably find its way into his and his supporters pockets of course), simply because he proposed these things rather than Obama or Hillary. But beyond that, I’d brace yourself for disappointment.

Trump v’s the world
Trump will also face opposition worldwide. Pulling back from the Paris climate deal is not that straightforward, its now entered into international law, he’s going to find it very difficult to pivot away without suffering blow back. And the deal explicitly states that a country must give 4 years notice before leaving, so that’s not even possible within his presidency.

He also wants to make friends with Putin and break with the NATO alliance. Ya, run that by your generals first! They would be appalled and point out the dangers in such a policy towards US interests. Most of America’s forward deployed forces are in Europe. They rely on European airspace to supply forces in the middle east, conduct intelligence in Russia and watch for possible missile launches. Losing that is simply not acceptable as far as his generals will be concerned.

And I take it he doesn’t want to get re-elected? You do know that one of Putin’s allies happens to be a little place called IRAN who took delivery incidentally of S-300 anti-aircraft missiles a few weeks back. These missiles effectively make it very unlikely that Israel could now carry out any attacks against Iran without losing a lot of aircraft. As one US general put it “Iran is now Israel proof”. Even the US forces would now have to accept causalities from any bombing missions against Iran. Which means Trump would upset the Israeli lobby by cosying up to Putin.

And it takes some doing to have the Israeli’s and the Arab world against you. Those Muslim’s he wants to stop from coming into the US happen to control over 50% of the world’s oil production and hold many strategic bases. They now might just go away and form an alliance with the Chinese.

More worryingly its very easy to see how Trump and Putin could get into conflict with each other. For example, egged on by pro-Putin rhetoric from Washington Putin goes into the Baltic states, much like how Saddam mis-read signals from Washington and went into Kuwait. NATO forces, including American forces respond. And note that US commanders in the field don’t necessarily have to call the president before opening fire. If US forces or civilians come under attack, (or NATO allies ask the US commander for assistance) they can respond without waiting for a presidential order. So Trump would have to explicitly order his forces to stand down, even if it meant abandoning American civilians and military forces to be shelled and bombed. He’d be committing the very crime that the GOP tried to claim Hillary committed with regard to Benghazi, except on a much larger scale. He would be vilified, even by his own supporters as a new Benedict Arnold and likely Congress will have him out of office so fast his wig will spin.

Wall street’s man
And the bad news for anyone who did vote for him because your angry about the elites in Wall street in congress, well your a moron, stay away from ballot boxes in future. One little feature of election night I noted, firstly the Asian stock market crashed, dropping 1000 points in a few hours (as you’d expect if you’d followed the campaign). So heavy were these losses that the Dow didn’t open the next day, as it had lost 5% as a consequence of these losses in Asia. Then when it opened rather than the expected falls continuing, instead it barely moved.

Then the Asian markets regained their earlier losses within 24 hrs. To me this indicates that Wall street insiders knew something the Asian stockbrokers didn’t know (but quickly worked out), the fix is in. This behaviour means one of two things A) Wall street knows that something’s planned, Trump will not be president, he’ll have himself a little “accident” in a few days time, the electoral college will vote for Mike Pence or Hillary instead, etc. Or B) He’s been fixed, they’ve got some dirt on him or bought him, he’s their man.

I’m tending towards the second option, given that he’s now talking of repealing the Dodd-Frank act, a key bill brought in by Obama to prevent another financial crisis. In short all that BS during the rallies about going after wall street and draining the swamp, no it was all lies. He’s going to do nothing of the sort. If anything he’s going to make it easier for Wall street to screw the little guy, not the other way around.

Either that or the first option is correct and he’s not going to be president for some reason.

Trump and the UK
There are some in the UK who cheered Trump’s election. Theresa May won’t have been one of those. Firstly, after going to all this trouble to get brexit to kill off UKIP it does not suit the Tory agenda to now have UKIP going around portraying themselves as the UK Trump party. Also there has never been any doubt the UK could get a trade deal from the US, the question was always how beneficial it will be. Its a bit like trying to buy a car. If you’re in a hurry you’ll get it if you pay more than its worth. You want a fair price it takes a lot longer. You may have to walk away from a few deals first.

And again, remember Trump will have to get the details of such a deal past Congress. Recall the US auto lobby. Recall May has essentially committed to getting tariff free trade for the UK car industry. Its not possible to square those two circles. If Trump concedes on this point, he’ll face massive opposition from a very powerful lobby group (who been trying to stop European made cars, essentially those owned by their bitter rivals in Japan, from gaining a foothold in the US market), with their fingers in many swing states (and the pockets of many politicians) and some of the very voters who put him in power work in this industry. If Theresa May concedes, she can be looking at hundreds of thousands of job losses in the lead up to an election. There’s a solution, but its not that easy, it will take time and careful negotiation.

And if the UK ends up part of some sort of transatlantic trading bloc, they could face sanctions and punitive tariffs from the EU and China. Given that the UK does more of its trade with the EU than America, if it has to pick a side, the logical thing to do would be to pick the EU (of course there I go with my “logic” and “facts” again). This is the whole reason why so many voted remain. The UK is too small to be a world power by itself anymore. Its option are to either pool its resources with the rest of Europe, or become a vassal state of an existing empire, literally the 51st state in all but name.

And another reason for voting remain, is that the fear of the UK becoming essentially airstrip one (of 1984 fame) if it leaves the EU. You may enquire what’s to stop the US moving its forces in Europe and stationing them in Britain. Well, firstly geography (the Middle East is too far away! And you’d still need overflight rights from the Europeans). Secondly, this would be political suicide for the Tories. All of that controversy back in the 80’s over US missiles in the UK would spark off again. This is exactly the sort of controversy that could blow the Scottish independence referendum wide open or give Corbyn a fighting chance in 2020.

Trump’s Impeachment
The GOP wanted to impeach Hillary “in her ball gown”. This does seem unlikely, most of the controversies she has been accused of were simply made up or over-egged. More importantly the GOP have now set the bar for what constitutes grounds for presidential impeachment so low, its basically a given that any president whom they don’t like, if they can get the necessary votes, he can be removed from office.

And Trump has been involved in numerous scandals already, as noted he will be spending quite a bit of time in and out of court as it is. Also there are already warning signs of where a possible future scandal will erupt. Making white supremacist Steve Bannon as possible white house chief of staff for example, or that odorous brown envelope distributing toad Myron Ebell as head of the EPA, appointing his own relatives to senior posts, yet they also are trustees on the trust fund that will manage his finances during the presidency. You could start a sweepstake on how long before the balloon goes up.

And the democrats show every sign that they are going to come out of the gate swinging on the 21st of January. They feel that they have been cheated out of the presidency and are likely out for blood. They don’t have a majority enough to start impeachment, but they can start making waves. The GOP will likely try to hang onto Trump, so long as he’s useful. If he proves himself to be the disaster many expect him to be, the democrats won’t have to try very hard to convince enough of the Republicans to back impeachment. Personally I reckon a Trump impeachment attempt (successful or not) is essentially a matter of when not if.

Rise of Fascism

Of course we are making a very dangerous assumption here. That all the checks and balances of the US government will work. But what if they don’t? G. W. Bush should have been at the least investigated over the Iraq war and those “black flights” but he wasn’t (even Trump agrees with this). Its quite clear that Trump and a number of his inner circle have fascist tendencies. The way he’s now flip flopping like John Kerry at a summer footwear convention does suggest that they regard their own supporters as sheep. Mindless drones in a cult of personality who are too be manipulated, control and where necessary betrayed.

Keep in mind that Hitler was helped into power by the very sort of people who helped Trump into power, because they saw him as a useful idiot, who could be used to keep the plebs in line, while they the establishment still secretly ran things. Of course they didn’t count on Hitler ending democracy and relying on his cult of personality to rule by degree. The checks and balances of the US state are about to be subject to destructive testing that will test them to their limits.

If they fail the consequences are pretty grim. As Obama pointed out, one has to worry about a vain insecure man like him, who can’t be trusted with a Twitter account, having access to the nuclear codes. We are very close to midnight I fear.

And if the checks and balances fail, let us remember who got us here. Republicans, (so called) conservatives, plus Jill Stein and Libertarian voters, this one is on all of you. Historians of the future may judge your actions very harshly. My own guess its we that Trump in power probably signals that the US has receded from its high water mark. The US has essentially voted to go backwards, to retreat from the world, to be a less progressive place, to be the new “sick man” of world politics (by putting a sick man in charge). And that is the real problem with this election result.

You’ve been Trumped too

All in all, I think Trump was summed up rather well by Michael Forbes, the farmer who opposes Trump up in Aberdeenshire. In the recent film you’ve been Trumped Too, he reminisced that when Trump came to Scotland half the country loved him (including Alex Salmond) and half hated him. Now everyone hates him as they realised he’s a complete con artist, who tells tall tales, never delivers, he just fills his own pockets and massages his own ego.

My guess is that this is the reality, Trump is out for one person – himself. He doesn’t care if the country falls apart so long as he comes out on top. And that’s who America voted for!

Irony still not understood

The UK’s energy secretary Amber Rudd is showing signs that she possesses a superpower – a complete immunity to understanding the concepts of irony or hypocrisy.

She has been complaining that councils are taking too long to make decisions on Fracking, suggesting that they are just delaying the inevitable and should just hurry up and make a decision within 16 weeks, threatening that the government will take the power to decide off councils who are seen to be dithering.

Of course this all but betrays the fact that the government’s plan is to railroad over local opposition to fracking and drive applications through, even when there’s a clear majority of locals against it. This is in stark contrast to their policy on wind energy where they are trying to halt onshore wind on the off chance it might spoil the view from ones hunting estate/golf course.

And councils will point out that the reason why its taking them so long is that they are presented with a room full of evidence that they then have to shift through. And with government austerity they can’t pay for the staff to process such applications any quicker. So if Amber Rudd wants things moved along, how about wandering down to number 11 and asking Osborne to pay for some extra staff for councils?

Also there’s a more worrying message. I would argue that fracking has gotten a bad name for itself because the Bush Adm. promotion of it created a massively under-regulated industry. It became a wild west and inevitably you ended up with some jack-asses who didn’t know what they were doing making a mess. If fracking was better regulated, this won’t be a problem, or so I am told by those in academic circles who are promoting it.

I recall a situation in Ireland where a major chemicals company moved into the area around my home town of Cork. The first thing they did before so much as turning a sod, was conducting an intensive environmental audit of the whole area. This was so that they knew everything in the environment (natural and unnatural) as well as every source of existing pollution. That way if anyone from the Irish environment agency, or some ambulance chasing lawyer, came along and accused them of putting this or that into the local ground water. They would have the evidence to prove, nope not us, that’s likely the fertiliser plant down the road.

You would think the fracking company’s would do the same and that the government would support such a policy. A careful environmental audit prior to any fracking, a few trial operations under intense environmental scrutiny, which would then serve to determine best practice for future operations, as well as establish what the actual environmental impact of fracking is likely to be. Instead Amber Rudd seems to favour the wild west approach that’s got fracking such a bad name state side.

And there is also further hypocrisy. The justification for cutting subsidies for renewables (or “Green crap” as Cameron put it) has supposedly been to cut back on bills. This is despite the fact that renewable and energy efficiency subsidies cost about 6% of the average UK bill, about £50-75 per household per year. In the worse case scenario (had we stuck to the energy plans of past governments), this subsidy could have potentially doubled over the next decade. By contrast, the IMF have a report out that estimates that subsidies towards fossil fuels costs the UK about $635 per person (about £400, i.e. at least 4 times more than any subsidy to renewables would ever cost us!).

The reality is that the government does not give a damn about climate change, value for money for householders, nor do they care whether the lights go out. They are merely promoting the energy options that will most benefit certain vested interests in the nuclear and fossil fuels industry….which incidentally also includes one of Rudd’s own advisers I might add. What is more worrying is that much of the Tories anti-renewable agenda is simply ideological. An ideology which is putting the UK out of step with all but a handful of other loony right wing governments, and risking the country’s long term energy future.