Do You Buy From Amazon?

I do, so I found this bit amusing:

"“People will buy it,” Treibel said. “Amazon customers generally are affluent and irrational and they just want it quick.”

It's from an Atlantic piece on how someone is exploiting the Trump and Sanders campaigns.

Trump and Agriculture

Politico has a piece on the A-Team Trump has assembled to advise him on agricultural policy.

I wonder why he has the support of so many agricultural leaders when his economic team and foreign policy team are so weak? 

I suspect a mixture of these things are operating:

• Trump couldn't care less about agriculture, so there's little need for the team and Trump to agree on issues.  Trump can rubber stamp almost anything they come up with. In contrast Trump has positions on foreign affairs and economics which turn off a lot of the "establishment".
• rural areas are strongly pro-Trump, so the ag team represents catering to their interests.  The picture's not so clear when it comes to other areas
• academics are less important to the ag establishment than they are in the other areas.  Like economics, the ag team doesn't seem to have many academics.
• ag leaders on the team are either less interested in free trade and immigration than those not on the team, or they figure they might be stuck with Trump as president and it's worth it to gain positions where they can affect policy (because they know a Trump presidency isn't going to pay much attention to agriculture.
• Something completely different.  :-)

Contrarian: Descriptive Not Prescriptive

I'll probably be alone in this, but my interpretation of Trump's statement is, it's a one-sentence digression describing what the gun nuts could do if his prediction of Clinton taking away guns came true.  I'm led to this because Trump famously isn't big on Second Amendment rights, or hasn't been in his past. So he outlines a sequence: Hillary aiming to take guns away (wrong), appointing Justices who share her aim (wrong because she doesn't aim to take guns away), yielding an inevitable result if you don't elect Trump.  But Trump's mind, which skitters like a moose calf on ice, undermines his projection by playing with the idea that gun nuts might assassinate Clinton.  It's not pushing the idea, it's the spur of the moment statement of a smart ass who never leaves a thought, or nonthought, unexpressed.

The Hazards of Inconsistency

Daniel Drezner has a piece on MorningJoe's interview with ex-CIA head Hayden which might be setting records for him for the number of comments.  His big problem is the revelation that several months ago a high level foreign policy type was briefing Trump, and Trump asked three times during the interview why the US couldn't use nuclear weapons. (This was Joe Scarborough belatedly revealing the information.)

I've a different problem, based on Hayden's comments: Trump's inconsistency.  Hayden is a former bureaucrat, as am I, and apparently we both share a belief that perhaps the most important quality in a leader is consistency.  Whatever good and bad qualities a leader has, the supporting players, including the permanent bureaucrats as well as the leader's personal retinue, can adapt.  Is the leader an idiot? Then speak and write simply, and keep complex issues away. Is the leader intellectually omnivorous? Write 100 page tomes on every issue?  Is the leader a drunk? Structure his time so the drunk periods don't overlap with decision making.  Does the leader fly off the handle and order "off with their heads"? Agree, and do nothing.

Note: some of my examples are written based on the revelations of the Nixon tapes and the memoirs of Nixon's official family,another from Reagan's.

The point in all this is, if the leader is inconsistent from day to day, it's much harder for the good bureaucrat to adapt to compensate for his/her deficiencies and maximize her/his strengths.

Did Ukraine Pay Its Share of NATO?

My title asks a question arising from DJTrump's weekend ABC interview, the one where he promised Putin would not go into the Ukraine.  All the attention has been on the question of whether he knew that Russian troops, under the guise of separatist rebels, already control the eastern part of the country.  (Trump later said he knew, that blamed Obama, and when he was president there would be no change.

Earlier in discussing Estonia, I believe, Trump said that it was foolish for the US to protect nations in NATO if they didn't pay their share. (That's a loose paraphrase.)  So putting the two together, I have to assume that not only is the Ukraine a member of NATO, or would be admitted on January 21, and they have borne their full share of defense costs for NATO.  Otherwise Trump is inconsistent, or perhaps like other 70 year olds (and older) he's forgotten what he said before.

Issues We Need Discussion On

What we really need from the presidential candidates is a discussion of their post-election financial plans.  Is Trump going to put his operations into a trust?  If his children play a part in the administration how is that going to work (i.e., they can't administer the trust). As for Clinton, how is the family going to separate itself from the Clinton Foundation?

Trump's Ag Man

Here's a Tom Philpott piece on Trump's key man on agriculture issues.  I don't know that we learn much about policy issues--the idea is first win, then develop policies.  Sounds like Trump.

Why the Russians Don't Matter

Sometimes I have kneejerk reactions based on ancient history--that's today's post.  Back in the 50's and 60's conventional wisdom believed that the Soviets wanted Democrats to win presidential elections because they were "softer" on nuclear weapons, test moratoriums, test bans, etc.  This was probably true.  But I felt then and feel now that in principle what the Soviets wanted, what the Russians want, what whoever wants, is basically irrelevant.  It may be the same sort of reaction as the Brits had when Obama spoke in favor of their remaining in the EU.

When we look at foreign policy, it's a question of our values, of our interests, and of the realities.  Now one of the realities may be a nation's attitude, but the real questions lies in our power.

Carolyn Hax is an advice columnist for the Post; one of her refrains in giving advice is to take responsibility for what you control, don't get tortured by what the other people want, do, say. Same applies in foreign affairs: is it wise for us to continue NATO guarantees to the Baltic countries or not? That's a different issue than whether Putin is trying to install in office someone who might not continue NATO guarantees.  We shouldn't react against Trump on the basis of Putin's supposed support for him; we should react against Trump because he would be a bad protector of our values and interests in the midst of world realities (mostly because he doesn't know our values, interests, or the realities.

Most Surprising Paragraph of Yesterday--M.Obama

From Powerline, the conservative blog, Paul Mirengoff writes:

Sanders’ address was preceded by a speech by Elizabeth Warren and an introduction by Keith Ellison. Before that, Michelle Obama spoke. I didn’t hear her speech, but assume she was good. She always is. [Emphasis added.]

Powerline hasn't gone completely soft; Scott Johnson was not impressed. 

I'm avoiding watching the convention, but given the praise for Michelle's speech I just watched it on Youtube. Glad I missed it--I'm too old to cry.

President Trump Is Scary?

Ezra Klein is afeared of the prospect of a Trump presidency.

While I bow to few in my dislike of such a presidency, I also remember being upset at the idea of a Nixon presidency in 1968 and a Reagan presidency in 1980.  I'm pretty sure Trump is smarter than Reagan and perhaps a nicer guy than Nixon, even if he's more egoistic than either, which is a high bar.  In the long run our institutions are stronger than any individual. 

"Pudgy Old Man"

Is that what Ann Althouse thinks the next president of the US should be (her reaction to Trump's entry to the convention in silhouette).?  How about a pudgy old woman? (Althouse hasn't discussed her 2016 vote.)

I have to say, our next president is going to be pudgy, which is a good indicator that Michelle Obama's influence does not extend everywhere.

Trump and Lawsuits

I'd like to know how many lawsuits Trump or his enterprises have filed, how many have been filed against them, and the won-settled-lost figures for each category

When I wrote the above sentence, I was suffering a loss of faith in the Internet: I should have known better.

"An exclusive USA TODAY analysis of legal filings across the United States finds that the presumptive Republican presidential nominee and his businesses have been involved in at least 3,500 legal actions in federal and state courts during the past three decades. They range from skirmishes with casino patrons to million-dollar real estate suits to personal defamation lawsuits.

Read the whole thing.