JustOneMinute

Is Anyone On The Fence About This?

Trump wants $5 billion for a border wall and a symbolic win. Pelosi and Schumer will give him a fence, or a partial government shutdown. Resist!

I love Schumer's soundbite: "The public expects us to be even smaller and less reasonable than Trump and we won't disappoint them."

I may have misheard that. Probably not.

Theresa May, Or She May Not

Brit PM Theresa May bails out on a Parliamentary vote on her Brexit deal. What next? Who knows!

DEAD POOL UPDATE: it seems like only a week ago we were contemplating the G-20 meeting in Paris, but really it was a week and a half. I can't handicap all twenty of these world leaders, but among Merkel, Macron, May and Trump, Merkel was already headed out the door (as of 2021) at the meeting. But she clings to power today, as do the other three leaders in the Dead Pool.

So who will be the first among this group (or the larger G-20) to be shown the door? Theresa May virtually any day? Likely! Macron next spring or sooner? Not so fast - as President of France (NOT Prime Minister) he was elected to serve a five year term in 2017. The Assembly would normally serve until then as well. So barring a complete collapse of the governing structure, Macron should be able to stay until 2022, even if events force him to replace his current PM leading a new coalition.

Trump may be impeached by House Democrats for having a bad comb-over but nothing revealed so far suggests there will be 67 votes in the Senate for removal. OTOH, unless re-elected Jan 20, 2021 is his end date.

So who lasts the longest? It seems weird that Macron, who may be the least popular of the four and with a country beset by riots, is most likely to be in office in 2022. PredictIt bettors say May is the next European leader to go (69% probability) followed by Macron (20%).

OK, my calls: May is the next to go, Trump will outlast the other three.

Lock 'Em Up Or Bust

Andrew McCarthy thinks the prosecutors of the SDNY are coming for Donald Trump.

The major takeaway from the 40-page sentencing memorandum filed by federal prosecutors Friday for Michael Cohen, President Trump’s former personal attorney, is this: The president is very likely to be indicted on a charge of violating federal campaign finance laws.

It has been obvious for some time that President Trump is the principal subject of the investigation still being conducted by the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York.

McCarthy explains that although Trump could have contributed the amounts in question fro his own account there would still be disclosure rules that were not followed.

This will be a major talking point for Trump supporters:

Moreover, campaign finance infractions are often settled by payment of an administrative fine, not turned into felony prosecutions. To be sure, federal prosecutors in New York City have charged them as felonies before – most notably in 2014 against Dinesh D’Souza, whom Trump later pardoned.

In marked contrast, though, when this was discovered that Barack Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign was guilty of violations involving nearly $2 million – an amount that dwarfs the $280,000 in Cohen’s case – the Obama Justice Department decided not to prosecute. Instead, the matter was quietly disposed of by a $375,000 fine by the Federal Election Commission.

My guess as to the Democratic spin is that the Obama-era violations were an administrative breakdown, not willful misreporting directed by The One. it'll be the old "the buck stops down there somewhere" defense.

As a bit of an aside, also in the news is the impact on our trade talks with China of the arrest of a prominent member of the Chinese ruling elite. I have no doubt that Chinese leaders believe their own system engages in politically motivated prosecutions, and they may suspect the US system does as well. Plenty of Americans also believe that, which is a bit awkward.

Even more of an aside is this:

“Her arrest will have phenomenal repercussions in China,” said Tao Jingzhou, a corporate lawyer in Beijing.

“The wealthy have already been worried for a long time about their safety and their wealth in America,” he added. “If the U.S. is going to pursue corruption and extraterritorial laws, that will increase.”

Wait, what? Wealthy Chinese have been worried "for a long time" about their status in the US?!? Uhh, they haven't been buying real estate in New York and San Francisco to avoid US prosecutors. That is "flight capital", and it is wealth that has been moved out of China against the day when a backlash against corruption sweeps aside the current ruling kleptocracy. A day that may never come, of course.

Well. Swerving back to the original distraction, here are more details about the charges against Ms. Meng. The US has been complaining about Huawei evading Iran sanctions for years. Ms. Meng had avoided the US, presumably fearing detainment:

Ms. Meng had traveled to the United States regularly in 2014, 2015, 2016, Mr. Gibb-Carsley said. Her last trip was in February and March 2017. In April 2017, Huawei found out about the United States investigation into the company when its subsidiaries were served with a grand jury subpoena, he said.

Ms. Meng and other executives then stopped visiting the United States, even though she has a 16-year-old son — one of three sons from a previous marriage — at a school in Boston, Mr. Gibb-Carsley said. Ms. Meng, who remarried, also has a daughter, according to an affidavit.

Mr. Martin pushed back on the idea that Ms. Meng had avoided the United States because she feared prosecution. After AT&T canceled a deal to distribute Huawei smartphones in the United States in January and the federal government banned the use of Huawei products in government contracts, Huawei essentially abandoned the market, Mr. Martin said.

“An entity would have to be tone deaf to not understand that the United States had become a hostile place for Huawei to do business,” he said.

 

Lessons In Ethics

Hands up if you're an office pool savant who collected on a bet that media darling Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez would be getting ethics lessons from Don Trump Jr.

Are We Making The Jobs Report Great Again?

We'll find out with the November jobs report in 10 minutes. Not that Wall Street has lacked for excitement this week.

Climate Change Solutions: Easiest Prediction Ever

Take these three stories together and the next few decades of climate change science and policy become obvious.

A. The big cities most threatened by rising sea levels are in Asia, with emphasis on China and India. The US will be spending $6 billioin a year defending New Orleans, New York and Miami. China will be spending $18 billion defending Guangzhou, Tianjin and Shenzhen. India will be spending $10 billion on Mumbai and Kolkata.

B. The fastest growth in carbon emissions in 2018 is coming from India (+6%) and China +(+5%). The US is up 2% and the EU is probably down. The biggest emitters are China (27% of global emissions), the US (15%), the EU (10%) and India (7%). Unsympathetic math says that IF China and India each grow by 5% per year for five more years their new emissions will roughly equal all of the current EU emissions. If the EU huffs and puffs and goes to zero emissions in the next five years (Bon chance, Macron!)  then net global emissions will still be higher. Not encouraging!

C. Geoengineering is likely to take to the skies over the US next year, despite grave concerns from Greens worried that this will be a distraction from the real fight to push us all back into caves.

The blindingly obvious upshot - China is the biggest emitter by far and has the most to lose from climate change. Also, as Tom Friedman has noted with approval, pesky Greens don't hold much sway there. Expect China, probably with the direct or tacit cooperation of India, to embark on some major geoengineering projects whether the rest of the world is on board or not. If a Pacific volcano can spread dust around the world, surely a motivated Chinese effort can do the same.

The ensuing diplo-scuffles will be fraught. Does the rest of the world impose trade sanctions on China? Does China hold the world hostage, arguing that developed nations owe the third world billions in compensation for our decades of polluting with carbon? And what, pray tell, happens of the apparent short-term consequences are benign to positive - does the rest of the world remain freaked out, or shrug and move on to the next problem?

I am confident that if Barbra Streisand is still alive, this Chinese venture will kill her. As to other consequences, well, I expect to live long enough to find out.

Mueller Skepticism In Vanity Fair

The Resistance braces for disappointment.

Out Like Flynn

Mueller recommends no jail time for Flynn, although he remains a felon.

I assume The Resistance is swooning over the news that Flynn provided substantial assistance and sat for nineteen interviews. That clanging they hear itsn't Salvation Army bells, its jail cells slamming shut! But for all we know, Flynn sat for a series of "I'd love to help and I'm telling you all I know, which s nothing" interviews. Which, BTW, can still be helpful to a old-school prosecutor trying to understand a case. Since Mueller is trying to invent a case (we think, and we might be wrong!) that may be less helpful.

We'll Always Have Paris

We'll always have Paris. But will we have the French in the Paris Accord on global warming? Macron suspends his green fuel tax.

Is Paris Burning?

Read their lips: "Pas de nouvelle taxes!".

Out of touch elites want to tackle global warming by raising taxes on a working class that is already tapped out. Protests ensue. Who could have seen that coming?

Georgia On My Mind (But Off My Playoff List)

Ok, wow - that Alabama-Georgia brawl convinced me that Georgia may well be one of the top four college teams in the country. It also convinced me that Oklahoma will be a more entertaining entrant in the College Football Playoffs. With last year's Championship game collapse and yesterday's SEC Championship loss, Georgia has had two bites of the apple - let Alabama beat someone else for a change. 

And no more Ohio State - they might be able to beat anyone but they can surely lose to anyone. Show me Alabama, Clemson, Notre Dame and Oklahoma.

We'll find out soon enough. High Noon, roughly.

Bush 41 Joins Barbara

George H.W. Bush has passed on.

It may be odd but (as long-time readers will recall) my clearest memory of Bush 41 is his second Presidential debate with The Duke. I watched it with an ardent liberal, who basically chose to hide under a towel after fifteen minutes. If it had been a fight, the refs would have stopped it.

The debate was most famous for The Duke's response to a hypothetical question about his position on capital punishment vis-a-vis the prospective rape of his wife. The gist of his response - I would slather the killer with oatmeal and talk him to death. OK, I may be paraphrasing a bit unfairly. But only a bit!

As bad as that response was, it was matched or exceeded by a seeming softball in which Dukakis was asked to name some of his heroes alive today. His gist: All my heroes are dead. Inspiring! Bush 41 went second, and with time to mull it over realized that heroes normally have names, so he provided an admirable list.

Obviously there was a lot more to Bush's life. There is a quote I have not been able to run down was someone's reaction to his 1992 defeat, after successfully overseeing the peaceful collapse of the Soviet Empire. Clearly it would hardly have mattered what Bush got right if he had gotten that wrong but he lost to Bill Clinton anyway. As I recall it, the quote was along the lines of "You level mountains and lose office because someone has a problem with a molehill". Not empathetic, since in 1992 it was the economy, stupid, but whoever said it had a point.

On To Moscow!

Michael Cohen claims to have chased a Trump Tower-type deal in Moscow until just before the Republican primary in 2016, despite previous testimony that he (and more to the point, Trump) dropped the effort before the Iowa primaries.

Possible explanations:

(a) Cohen is lying. Problematic, since there are (or ought to be) emails and phone records that overlap with his new story (e.g., a phone chat with an aide to Putin's press secretary).

(b) Trump has been lying. Possible!

(c) Fog of deal-making. Folks who have worked on the Big Deals, whether it be a real estate project, a book/movie deal, an elaborate tax scheme, or something else know that deals generally have the potential for a zombie status, where they aren't alive but no one can quite kill them. Why? Because there are generally many constituents, most of whom did not achieve whatever there current status is by taking "no" for an answer. Knowing nothing about it, we can be sure that if Trump has been pursuing a property idea for Moscow there are financiers, property owners, builders, prospective tenants, government officials and various middlemen that can see a payday for themselves if a deal happens. In fact, a day later the Times reports that Felix Sater, a grifter in Trump's orbit, had pushed a Moscow deal for years and never stopped.

So. Knowing Trump's reputation and impulsive and subject to giving weight to the last person with whom he spoke, it is entirely plausible that at some strategy session in January 2016 Trump agreed to cut the Moscow push and focus on the Presidential run. That may or may not have made business and political sense but it was of no help to intrepid dealmaker Sater, who soldiered on. Cohen took his calls, played along a bit, and may or may not have kept Trump in the loop. If Cohen can produce evidence of email exchanges or notable meetings with Trump on this topic, that will be one thing; if his evidence that he briefed Trump is that Cohen remembers giving him an updated elevator pitch while in Trump Tower or mentioned it in one of their many phone calls, well good luck with that - maybe it didn't happen, maybe it did and Trump brushed it off and promptly forgot.

As to whether this is evidence of collusion with the Russian government during the election, well, not in itself. For those excited by the possibility that Trump lied, well, wait until they learn about the daily sunrise (and the monthly full moon!).

ERRATA: Back when he surfaced I mocked the absurd notion that Team Trump would outsource their Moscow outreach to George Papadopoulos, who had no history of Russian contacts and had not been in Trump's orbit long enough for his coffee to get cold. That was obvious then and confirmed now - Trump's top people knew how to reach people in Moscow even without the help of Mr. P.

Speed Chess

Interesting - the defending world champion was content to play for a draw in the conventional format and take his chances in the speed chess tie-breaker. And it worked easily.