Bleeding Edge

Looking back at the Presidential elections of 2016 we can all admit that it’s been one hell of a ride.

A giant Rollercoaster ride that we’ve all had to get on and ride it to the bitter end — with brakes removed — just in order to get to where we are now.

And here we are: We Won.

But at times it was rather hard.

We fought both the intransigent government that had assigned us to an early death, and all the entrenched and all powerful “enemy” that controlled all the airwaves and the Media, along with all the Corporate money bags.

Still for the guerrillas amongst us — it was all Cheap Thrills, and Bravado, and at times we used up all of our Courage and fell back to our resilient Fighting Spirit in order to bring about this amazing result. We fought on, and held up with the our finger nails and the skin of our teeth…

All in an effort to save this country from going down the tubes in a mad rush to insanity, insignificance, and irrelevance, that we had been resigned to through the Obama-Clinton years that enveloped this great country into the straight jacket of Liberal Socialism.

We had a vision where our opponents had none. We had leadership where our opponents had a gender fluid melange of idiots and enemies of our Country trying to install a Manchurian candidate in our midst. We had clear goals and clear Mission where our opponents had nothing but smoke and mirrors and the store bought mass media propaganda machine. And we fought to the bitter end. We charged and kept on charging until our opponents turned tail and run.

We had the man who messaged the greatest message of Resilience ever” “Make America Great Again.” The glowing personality of Donald Trump came with the MAGA message that resonated with all Americans, especially the downtrodden ones, by saying that  “My dream is of a place and a time where America will once again be seen as the last best hope on earth.” God gave us Good Hope and a strong Leader to overwhelm our opposition. And we did. Great leadership with a Good Army always wins.

But we fought against all odds and won handily the overwhelming mandate to reshape this country for the future. There was some real sun shade in there too for our opponents. Thanks to the Democrats’ slave owning legacy, their giant hubris, their intolerance, their rigging of the primaries, their intolerable levels of systemic Corruption, their stupidity in thinking the Berners will follow them after getting burned, their god-awful bad product of a clueless candidate and her Muslim sidekick with her sex maniac weiner husband who was handling & storing classified State Secrets and Department of State high level American Military Intelligence in his porn infested laptop, and the very fact that we were always being underestimated as the underdogs — we won because all that played rather nicely into our hands.

We fought against the establishment that waged a ferocious battle, that at times it made it appear as a hopeless fight, and as a journey to Valhalla. Indeed it was a forced march through the valley of Death… And we persevered the long slog. This and our Courage to face down the opposition carried the day and we came out the other end stronger than ever before.

Of course we had some good advise and some special mentorship along the way:

And through our valor and fortitude, we carried the field of duty, and took the highest honor home.

And through our genius and resolve, we drew Victory from the clutches of defeat and Honor from the claws of despair. We pained and we bled, but we held on and persevered. We were unethically attacked, and we were called all sorts of names, but we shrugged it off. And although we were attacked from all sides, in nasty dishonorable ways that you don’t even expect, and in ways that are not even permitted by the Geneva Convention. Hell we are still attacked…

We are all still suffering the idiotic attacks of the rear guard of the Losers and we still deflect the revisionist arrows slung by the pvssies, the pansies, and the wussies all around us…

But we are strong and we know how to stand our ground. That is how we won, when we suddenly and surely turned the tides of fortune…

And at times it appeared as a crazy undertaking… but this was what we all signed up for and we gave narry an inch of ground to the well heeled enemy. And at the end we smoked them…

We won but it was a hell of an Emotional journey for all of us seriously involved in this knife fight.

Yet we fought stronger, harder, and more resolutely than the opposition, and that’s how we won. History proves that the strong will always win.

“The Battle in the end must be to the strong” –Winston Churchill 1899

And now that we’re a month past the election and most of the cabinet posts have been filled, it is increasingly obvious that we are about to experience a profound, President Elect led ideological shift, that will have a big impact on both the US and the world.

I am no prophet but my predictions always tend to come true because I am a good student of History, and I also tend to invest myself deeply in the issues, and am also a serious expert in the reading of the Foreign & Domestic Policy tea leaves from most all countries of this Good God’s Earth…

“Good history and background are often forgotten today. Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” –George Santayana wrote in The Life of Reason, back in 1905…

That was true way back then just as much as it is today, and am here to tell you that the coming Trump Era will not just be a shift in government policy, but also a seismic shift in how government policy is discussed, defined, advocated for, and delivered. In America and world wide. Trump plays for keeps and he is a Great Man to boot. That is why he attracts so many moths to his brilliant flame. I know for myself that all the hate that brilliant men attract is from those lesser ones who have no energy of their own, the losers and the complainers, who seek to belittle Greatness so they don’t feel slighted by Life’s fortunes that favor the Flexible, the Strong, and the Intelligent above all else.

Mark my words, because Donald Trump is a Leader and a Deal Maker, and ais certainly not a wuss. As such, he is the one who negotiates long & hard, and doesn’t mind leading from the front, and thus getting banged around, or banging others around.

Sadly he is not allowed today to use his scimitar to take off people’s heads like his idol Alexander the Great did, but in some ways great and small — we can see his Victories forming all around.

Similarly, President Elect Donald Trump carefully chose for his cabinet, people who are bold winners, and hell-bent on playing hardball to make big changes and great things happen, in all areas of Government, but especially in the Big Three: Economics, Society, and Foreign Policy — as well as in all other areas of governance, such as education, environmental policy, social nets, etc.

Yet the economic and political realignment with China will define this incoming administration more than anything else. And in case you’ve missed it — it has already started. The new United States Asian Pacific foreign policy will be to stop the bullying Chinese from their creeping militarization of the South China Sea and from controlling Taiwan and all the seaways and the merchant shipping lanes access to all of the world’s commercial and military traffic in that Southern Pacific quadrant that is vital to all of us.

The fact that the Chinese choose to play “Go” at the Master level with five Dan status as a long term Strategy Game, whereas up to now the American administrations hardly knew how to play “Chess” against them — allowed them to define us as losers — in this vastly interesting and influential GeoPolitical game. This fact, is not lost to the military propeller heads of the smart geek Generals of the incoming administration. For Trump the telephone exchange with the Democratically elected President of  Taiwan, was just one small friendly conversation by phone, but for the world of sleeping Sino-American diplomacy placed on autopilot for more than five decades, was also a giant wake-up call.

A call like no other…

Perhaps a call to arms?

Or a call to attention, because China will have to be severely beaten back from their illegal annexation of the South China Sea that happened under the “opium pipe smoking” and “China admiring Obama-Clinton” administration, that somehow accepted the rise of China as an inevitability, and dreamed up stupid justifications, and “toilet paper treaties” to counter the reality of the vast militarization of the region under Chinese Supremacy. We’ve seen how the appeasement through”toilet paper treaties” like the Munich Agreement worked for us in the past when tyrants like Hitler and Stalin wrecked havoc on this world. And we are not fools to repeat it. Because today, from the Chinese militarization of the man made islands inside the Philippine coastal areas deep inside international water territories, and from their incessant need for control of the shipping traffic lanes of the South Pacific to the south China sea, to the militarization of near Earth Space, and from their satellite smashing lasers, to the intercontinental nuclear missiles of their mobile, airborne, and seafaring nuclear capabilities expansion — we have learned the truth behind China’s intentions and restless military ambitions.

As a matter of fact the Chinese tyrants are rather obvious in their cloak & dagger business.

But change is in the air…

Donald Trump’s phone call with the president of Taiwan early this month shattered the tired political wisdom of the Washington establishment regarding China and Taiwan, the island the mainland Chinese communists consider a breakaway province. Yet this seemingly innocuous phone call sent a powerful message to Beijing that major change is coming in America’s foreign policy, because Trump’s conversation with the Taiwanese president was startling but not naive. In fact, his exchange with President Tsai IngWen has paved the way for new and hopeful ties between Washington and this key democratic ally in Taipei. Our other allies in the Asian Pacific region like the Philippines, Thailand, Indonesia, Malaysia, Burma (Myanmar), and Vietnam — are all feeling far more secure as United States allies with the incoming Trump administration. After the inauguration of January 20th, they will feel a hell of a lot more free from Chinese interference too.

To paraphrase what Trump said: Let China keep the stupid submarine drone, and let’s wait and see where their thieving attitude gets them…

The ambitions of China’s leadership in Empire building will be surely and sharply checked, by the incoming administration who are unapologetic about their own American Empire and about their individual Success in Life — and are hardly going to be willing to sacrifice any of this in the altar of globalization.

So let the Chinese keep the drone and keep playing their little games — the hammer of Thor, has now been raised…

This is not posturing because the generals in the new administration are students of Patton and MacArthur, and good students of History that recognize the facts surrounding America’s relationship with China. In their perspective and in a historical sense, the facts show that our relationship with China has been a one-way arrangement for many years, and particularly and insidiously so, for the past eight. It is now time for America to respond more firmly to China’s aggressive and unproductive behavior. After all Diplomacy is good when done with a strong stick.

History will prove Trump and the Generals right because the evidence is beyond dispute, and China has proved time and again that it is an untrustworthy partner for the United States, and chooses to always play dirty and antagonize their most beneficial trading partner… We’ve seen this over the last two decades, because despite acquiring permanent, normal trade-relation status, China continues the serious currency manipulation and other unacceptable behaviors. Just recently, the U.S. criticized China for its lack of transparency and charged it with violating tariff quota agreements on corn, wheat and rice.

Further, Chinese state-sponsored and state-owned companies have maintained aggressive cyberattacks against the United States. With many millions of Americans’ most personal and sensitive financial information now in the hands of the Chinese, and especially all the Government workers biometrics, and private security and financial data, stemming from the theft of all the data of the Office of Personnel Management. That whole witches’ brew of malfeasance and dastardly behavior of the Totalitarian Communist regime constitutes direct acts of State sponsored Terrorism, and yet our Chinese friends don’t seem to get it.

Because of that all of our friends and allies in Asia starting with Japan and South Korea, are seriously concerned by what is happening in the region. They recognize that the current U.S. strategy towards China and North Korea is in shambles, and are eagerly awaiting the opportunity to partner with the U.S. in order to develop a new long-term approach that will bring a new sense of security and economic prosperity to the region. That is why Prime Minister of Japan Shinzo Abe met twice with President Elect Donald Trump. And that is the net effect of Trump’s foreign policy approach: Our Pacific relations will be improved as ties between the U.S. and countries in the region like Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Philippines, Vietnam and Indonesia, who have been yearning for a strong America that will lead and work with them in a collaborative way to deal more effectively with the emerging threats emanating from China, and to strengthen their quest for Democracy and Progress, increase significantly.

The Big Game is now in full swing and the doctrine of Empire that Winston Churchill described in his early book Solard is now fully manifest again.

Also all the Americans who have had their personal data stolen by the Chinese, or have lost their jobs to unfair competition from the Chinese are thankful for Trump’s strong approach, because he is leading America to take the initiative towards developing strategic policies that will address China’s inappropriate behavior and hold its Communist leaders fully accountable.

And now the honest American patriots who voted for Donald Trump, rightfully feel that they deserve to turn the tides here and now, with the overwhelming mandate they’ve given to this new White House Administration to bring Victory home again…

To play on that essence, the thing with the incoming Trump administration is that they all comprise a group of strong leaders and winners, that also have significantly unique individual temperaments. Of course this multiplicity of ideas, and their vastly different views, will be a benefit at seeing things as they truly are, from all different perspectives and vantage points. And some of their ideas and observations of course have to be meshed, or amalgamated in the months ahead as this triumphant leadership team takes office and starts working on their plan for a strong Empire. And all that will be revealed in a month’s time. Their prior personal & business empire building acumen, will surely come handy to assist all of them, and all of us too, as they embark on the project of reinvigorating the American Empire.

It’s a Big Job that they’ve chosen to do and they all have to fit in big shoes. So regarding all other matters, economics will be the key to decision making, because all governmental decisions have unintended and intended economic consequences. And in this primary issue, this new administration hates weak, unproductive, socialist ideas, people, and policies, and it admires strong, can-do, profit makers that will lead to a positive economic outlook and a vibrant home Economy — regardless of whatever happens in the rest of the World. That is the most significant change this New and highly Competent and Competitive US Administration will usher in…

The New President will surely shift the noosphere, and the perception within the political and social environment, from one that makes profit makers villains with limited power, to one that makes them heroes with significant power.

The shift from the this past Obama administration to this New Trump administration will probably be even more significant and resourceful, than the 1979-82 shift from the socialists to the capitalists in the UK, US, and Germany — when Margaret Thatcher, Ronald Reagan, and Helmut Kohl came to power. To understand that ideological shift you also might read Thatcher’s “The Downing Street Years.”

Or, you might reflect on China’s political/economic shift as marked by moving from “protecting the iron rice bowl” to believing that “it’s glorious to be rich.”

A celebration of Commerce and Business Enterprise will be the wedding of State policy with the Mercantillist ideas of this Democratic Republic.

Job creation is already rising, with all enterprises looking to repatriate jobs, factories and capital for investment purposes.

Wealth generation increases as does employment across the board. Industrial centers are rejuvenated. Detroit is a case in point, with General Motors reinventing itself in the place of it’s roots.

New enterprises will find capital sources all over again.

Unicorns will ride again…

It will all work out spectacularly well.

Unicorns, will come back in fashion and so will the now shuttered IPOs. Wall Street has already shown it’s desire to exceed expectations with the Trump bump and the already great increases in heights achieved and peaks scaled of Dow Jones and all other industrial averages. A mere month after the election and all the Stock Market Indexes are more than 10% up hitting stratospheric Highs.

Greed is Good again… now that the marriage of Entrepreneurship with Adequate Capital formation, reduced business regulation, and superior Scientific and Technological Intellectual property — will allow all Startup enterprises to compete an an even Darwinian playing field with the largest of incumbents and bag these old pachyderms in their sight guns. Innovation will carry the day. Entrepreneurship and New Technology will trump established and entrenched arteriosclerotic businesses and failing elephants.

That is also great news for the young Technology and Science Startups that have been shunned by the Public Markets this far, in this long and impotent recovery from the longest and largest Recession in our Economic History.

This particular shift by the Trump administration could have a much bigger impact on the US economy than one would calculate on the basis of changes in tax and spending policies alone because it could ignite animal spirits and attract productive capital. Regarding igniting animal spirits, if this administration can spark a virtuous cycle in which people can make money, the move out of cash (that pays them virtually nothing) to risk-on investments could be huge. Regarding attracting capital, Trump’s policies can also have a big impact because businessmen and investors move very quickly away from inhospitable environments to hospitable environments. Do you remember how quickly money left and how quickly it all came back to places like Spain and Argentina because of simple leading policy changes?

A pro-business US with its rule of law, political stability, property rights protections, and (soon to be) favorable corporate taxes offers a uniquely attractive environment for those who make money and/or have money. These policies will also have shocking negative impacts on certain sectors.

Regarding foreign policy, we should expect the Trump administration to be comparably aggressive. Notably, even before assuming the presidency, Trump is questioning the one-China policy which is a shocking move for most pundits and liberal bureaucrats, but a heavenly wish for all proponents of Democracy in China. Policies pertaining to Iran, Mexico, and most other countries will probably also be more aggressive, and changeable. Whatever doesn’t work will be dismantled and new things will be tried as this is the mantra of Successful Enterprise Leadership.

A big part of the new US foreign policy will be how to intend with Project Europe and with the newly unfettered and independent United Kingdom of England and the rest…

The fractured European Continent that has so many languages and so little cohesiveness should stand as a good example of what the US should never do, because the European leaders have failed to strengthen the only true bond that holds Europe together and that is their Christian Religion and Enlightenment stemming from it.  Instead the bureaucrats in Berlin and Brussels think that an amalgamation of the Babel of European languages can somehow knot together the Peoples of Europe, under the fiat of the Euro consultants & technocrats of Brussels who invite more and more Muslim tribes and nations into the fold of this Breaking apart Union, because they can’t find their heads out of their asses.

So how to navigate this shoal without damaging the Special Relationship with Great Britain, will be a true test of the Trump leadership.

Because still the most important diplomatic Foreign Policy Question is whether this administration will be aggressive and thoughtful, or aggressive in deal making and still risk taking yet business as usual global leader. The interactions between Trump, his heavy-weight advisors, and them with each other will likely determine the answer to this questions. For example, on the foreign policy along with the domestic policy front, what Trump, Priebus, Flynn, Tillerson, and Mattis, among others like Icahn who will lighten the Regulatory burden on business — the New Administrations’ incoming individual leaders will collectively represent how much the new administration’s policies will be new sailing course, or corrective tacks, or even aggressive and thoughtful course corrections, or just new and aggressive racing maneuvers.

Am pretty certain that we already know what it will be because the twitter announcements are already in…

Now, let’s look at some of the new White House appointees via some statistics to characterize what they’re like. We do this, because most of the people entering the new White House administration have already held serious senior posts of Responsibility and Leadership. Posts that required world class expertise, pragmatism, and sound judgment, with a notable skew toward the very successful businessmen, at the top of their game. This is a Dream Team of Executives for the most Executive Jobs in the World.

And all of these players have given us vast examples of their handwriting, and of the leadership skills time and time again, so that we can honestly trust them as the “trusted hands” on the steering wheel of the ship of State. Their particular perspectives on Ideology and their past Experiences, will weigh heavily on the New White House Administration…

We can even get a rough sense of the experience of the new Trump administration by adding up the years major appointees have spent in relevant leadership positions. The table below compares the executive/government experience of the Trump administration’s top eight officials* to previous administrations, counting elected positions, government roles with major administrative responsibilities, or time as C-suite corporate executives or equivalent at mid-size or large companies.

Trump’s administration stands out for having by far the most business experience than any administration in history. Ever…

On the government experience spectrum, the incoming Trump administration is about average. To qualify this: The average experience comes clearly in line when compared with the experience of the people vesting the Carter and Reagan administrations.

And when the cumulative years of executive/government experience of Trump’s appointees, are counted — then Trump’s White House is the second-highest scoring of all presidential cabinet groups.

Obviously, this is a very simple, imprecise measure, and there will be gray zones in exactly how you classify people, but it is indicative of the incoming CHANGE in government efficacy and effectiveness.

Below we show some rough quantitative measures of the ideological shift to the right we’re likely to see under Trump and the Republican Congress. First, we look at the economic ideology of the incoming US Congress. Trump’s views may differ in some important ways from the Congressional Republicans, but he’ll need Congressional support for many of his policies and he’s picking many of his nominees from the heart of the Republican Party.

As the chart below shows, the Republican members of Congress have shifted significantly to the right on economic issues since Reagan; Democratic congressmen have shifted a bit to the left. The measure below is one-dimensional and not precise, but it captures the flavor of the shift. The measure was commissioned by a National Science Foundation grant and is meant to capture economic views with a focus on government intervention on the economy. They looked at each congressman’s voting record, compared it to a measure of what an archetypical liberal or conservative congressman would have done, and rated each member of Congress on a scale of -1 to 1, with -1 corresponding to a typical liberal and +1 corresponding to a typical conservative.

When we look more specifically at the ideology of Trump’s cabinet nominees, we see the same shift to the right on economic issues. Below we compare the ideology of Trump’s cabinet nominees to those of prior administrations using the same methodology as described above for the cabinet members who have been in the legislature. By this measure, Trump’s administration is the most conservative in recent American history, but only slightly more conservative than the average Republican congressman. Keep in mind that we are only including members of the new administration who have voting records, which is a very small group of people so far.

While the Trump administration appears very right-leaning by the measures above, it’s worth keeping in mind that Trump’s stated ideology differs from traditional Republicans in a number of ways, most notably on issues related to free trade and protectionism. In addition, a number of key members of his team—such as Steven Mnuchin, Rex Tillerson, and Wilbur Ross—don’t have voting records and may not subscribe to the same brand of conservatism as many Republican congressmen.

There’s a degree of difference in ideology and a level of uncertainty that these measures don’t convey, and when we compare the Trump and the Reagan Administrations, things become even clearer, since the above was a very rough quantitative look at Trump’s administration. To draw out some more nuances, we can zoom in on Trump’s particular appointees and compare them to those of the Reagan administration. Trump is almost all done filling in his key appointments, so the picture is emerging and our observations are based on his key appointments so far, yet looking closer, a few observations are worth noting. First of all is the overall quality of government experience in the Trump administration that looks to be on par with Reagan, while the Trump team’s strong business experience stands out.

In particular, the amount of business leadership experience among Trump top cabinet nominees is overwhelming. So now America, our friends all around the World, and our foes on China and elsewhere — must get ready for a different brand and a new game playing method, away from the “GO” tradition, because Donald Trump just made his own board and started playing his own version of this game…

Trump understands that setting the stage, and the first preliminary moves of the first pieces on the board, absolutely define the rote, the rhythm, and the flex of the game. So the outcome is described at the very first move when populating the Infinite Possibilities board of this game of Kings.

Trump like a Master Player, strategically positions his game pieces where he wants them to be optimally positioned in order to spring to action. And even though the Reagan administration had somewhat fewer years of government experience, the typical quality of that experience was higher, with more people who had served in senior government positions. Reagan himself had more political experience than Trump does, having served as the governor of California for eight years prior to taking office, and he also had people with significant past government experience in top posts, such as his VP, George HW Bush.

By contrast, Trump’s appointees bring lots of high quality business leadership experience from roles that required pragmatism and judgment. Rex Tillerson’s time as head of a global oil company is a good example of high-level international business experience with clear relevance to his role as Secretary of State (to some extent reminiscent of Reagan’s second Secretary of State, George Shultz, who had a mix of past government experience and international business experience as the president of the construction firm Bechtel). Steven Mnuchin and Wilbur Ross have serious business credentials as well, not to mention Trump’s own experience.

It’s also of note that President Elect Donald Trump for his Foreign Policy, has leaned heavily on appointees with military experience, by appointing three generals for Defense, National Security Advisor, and Homeland Security, while Ronald Reagan compensated for his weakness in that area with appointees from both military and civilian government backgrounds. Bush had been CIA head and UN ambassador, and Reagan’s first Secretary of State Alexander Haig, was Supreme Allied Commander of NATO forces during the Cold War.

Also, Trump has seemed less willing to make appointments from among his opponents than Reagan was, because Ronald Reagan’s Chief of Staff had chaired opposing campaigns, and his Vice President had even run against him.

By and large, deal-maker businessmen will be running the government.

Their boldness will almost certainly make the next four years incredibly interesting and will keep us all on our toes.

Now let’s all together and hit the RESET button, and start working hard to help the incoming Leadership to clean out the remaining cobwebs of the last eight years of pipe smoking and scare mongering, silly revisionist & lax administration, that went around the world destroying countries and creating nothing of value for the American people.

Yet we all rallied and came together to exercise our Democratic Right to Vote and that is what brought this new Change to the World. We all came together and voted. Such a simple act and yet such a giant impact…

Like pressing a button, and amazing things happen.

As a true businessman Donald Trump will now stand at the helm of the country — and at long last, he will make “Business” the Business of America.

The incoming Donald Trump administration will reset the World. Mark my words for it. We’ll start winning again, and that is the beauty of Donald Trump, and his winning Leadership team.

Trump ushered-in an era of winning and I believe his Christmas gift to the World is also the liberation of Aleppo and the trashing of the Islamic fundamentalists and their ISIS brethren from that ancient and largely Christian city of Syria. This was a signal victory accomplished by the Christian forces of Russia cooperating with their allies and this preserves the last place in the Middle East, where Christians can coexist safely with all other religions (except Israel).

And for America his Christmas gift was Jobs, jobs, and more jobs, and the promise of repatriation of Capital and great Startup investments to follow. America will grow and it’s economy will start producing surpluses instead of deficits all over again. That is great for America but it’s also great for the World, because when America has the requisite surpluses, no one can deny the fact that the US Dollar supports the World’s economy and the benefits propagate themselves to all the Peoples all over the Earth.

What’s good for America is Great for the World.

The New Year and the New Administration promises Greatness.

Jobs, prosperity, and great wealth generation will follow. The incoming tides will lift everybody’s boat. Whether it’s the ship of state or the little dinghy of the private family office — we all benefit.

That is the Promise, the Donald Trump White House will deliver in the coming months.

And as the Real Donald Trump just tweeted:

Donald J. Trump ‏@realDonaldTrump  23h23 hours ago