Tag Archives: Trump

Iran’s President Rouhani Could Be Mikhail Gorbachev

This video may not strike you as very serious. But seriousness is the whole point. We use Iran to justify a lot of bad behavior. Just a week or so back, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson announced that we’re going to indefinitely hold territory in Syria because we don’t like the fact that Iran has influence in a country it has had influence in for decades. We use the “seriousness” of the Iranian threat to ourselves and Israel to justify stuff. This doesn’t mean we’re actually serious about the Iranian threat.

Because if we were serious about countering Iran, we’d be using every possible opening. We’d have the ability to both deal with them diplomatically, and oppose them militarily in proxy wars, just like the Cold Warriors of Yore. But we don’t. Because nothing about US foreign policy is serious. Other than its consequences for the world. This video is a thought experiment, asking how we’d tread Iran’s president Rouhani if we were truly serious about countering threats from Iran.

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Jeff Sessions Is the Worst

The most important news is often the stuff we never hear about. This is especially true in the era of Donald Trump’s twitter feed. With this video, I attempt to uncover one of the more important aspects of Trump’s presidency, the career of Jeff Sessions at the Department of Justice. As Attorney General, Sessions is attempting to roll back a solid decade of progress in the arena of criminal justice, from civil forfeiture to marijuana legalization.

It’s frustrating to watch Sessions efforts be ignored. When Trump goes after him he even comes close to “resistance hero” status, or at least garners some sympathy. Jeff Sessions does not deserve our sympathy.

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We Beat OPEC!!! | NFTGA Chapter 15

Back when I started doing this channel full time, I put out a series called “Notes From The Golden Age“. Today’s video, on the defeat of OPEC, is a long delayed addition to the series. In the six minutes of the video itself, I just laid out the facts as I understand them: The fact that OPEC did its level best to raise the price of oil, and they failed. If you want to hear more about why that is, and hear some discussion of the revolution in petroleum affairs we’ve experienced over the past five years, you could do worse than this video here.

Put briefly, oil doesn’t cost what it used to. The origin of this development is probably OPEC itself. That cartel drastically reduced the oil on the market on a couple occasions in the 1970s, driving the price through the roof. Much has, quite rightly, been made of the Shale revolution in the United States. A range of technological advances has made oil extraction easier, cheaper, and viable in places that it wasn’t before. This revolution has made US production competitive with Saudi Arabia again, and caused the plummet in prices that started in mid 2014. But the Shale revolution is only the most dramatic cause.

The plummet in oil prices is the result of a range of reactions to OPEC’s obscene market power. An under-heralded one is energy efficiency. We have finally reached a point where economic growth is decoupling from growth in petrochemical use. Some of this is renewables, but more of it is the very, very unsexy business of making cars and air conditioning units run more efficiently. Another reaction to OPEC was the broadening of the search for petroleum. Coupled with Technological advances, a staggering range of countries now produce significant amounts of oil and gas. OPEC has been beaten. They largely did it to themselves.

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Saudi Arabia Learns The Truth About Donald Trump | ELAI 28

A lot of Saudi Arabia coverage focuses on the loose cannon effect the country has been having on Middle East politics for the past year. Little attention has been paid to the promises that have been made to the country, and the way those promises have not been honored. I thought it might be interesting to tell the story of 2017 from the perspective of Saudi Arabia’s rulers for once. I think it illuminates something many have been missing.

This video started out as a central idea I wanted to deliver about the Trump administration’s relationship with Saudi Arabia. Then it evolved into more of a Saudi Arabia year in review thing. This video is different from the recent ones in a number of ways. It tries to cover a lot, quickly. Not sure whether it’s worthwhile or not. Let me know @robbolaw

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Yemen Shows How Weak The US Congress Has Become | Congress 4 | Yemen 7

What few people recognize is how far the US Congress has fallen, and how quickly. US pop culture, almost from the beginning, has featured a high degree of skepticism about Congress. They’ve always been known as a bunch of corrupt, pompous windbags. That’s a healthy attitude to take towards one’s government. But I think this constant attitude of contempt has served to hide Congress’s fall.

With the one two punch of Newt Gingrich’s “reforms” in the 1990’s (discussed here) and the expansion of the government after 9/11, Congress has lost the plot almost entirely. It’s only by looking at the power and principle that Congress could stand on just a few short decades ago, that we can get the full picture. That’s what this week’s video comparing Congress’s abdication of responsibility for Yemen to their treatment of Nicaragua in the 1980’s is intended to do.

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State Tax And The Death of the Republic | SALT | Congress 3

One of the biggest problems with our impoverished media sector is the fact that nobody covers anything that matters anymore. We’ve got a lot of outrage, and a lot of time and effort spent on simple compelling stories. But if you’re truly interested in what’s going on in the world, or the direction that our government is going in, these stories are largely useless. What matters is almost always a lot more complex.

This channel’s first big hit dealt with one of those issues. We were the only folks looking at the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA) who didn’t expect to make millions off of it. So we were able to show what the ramifications of the legislation were to a wide audience. I’m beginning to think that the elimination of the State and Local Tax Deduction (SALT) is a similarly important issue. Sounds boring, but the implications are immense. This video attempts to lay out that story.

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3 Reasons Saudi Arabia Is More Dangerous Than Iran | ELAI 24

It occurs to me that I haven’t exactly been clear about what I want to be done about Saudi Arabia. I absolutely do not want to employ the conventional arsenal of regime change. I don’t even think our “historic alliance” should be abandoned. We just need to spend less time going in with them on stupid ideas like the Syrian and Yemeni “civil wars”. Because without us, they can’t to much to make their stupid ideas a reality. It’s now abundantly clear to everybody outside of the arms industry or Washington, DC that Saudi Arabia is not a useful ally. So let’s stop treating them as such. When they suggest a foreign adventure or a proxy war, lets treat them with exactly the same level of interest we’d have for a similar project from Bulgaria or Tanzania: Not Much.

This video answers a question I’ve gotten a few times in the comments. How can I be so pro-Iran yet so anti-Saudi Arabia? It’s simple really. I don’t want Iran to become the new Saudi Arabia, I just want to call an end to the decades of useless antagonism. Iran has not done us anywhere near as much harm as Saudi Arabia has. So we should treat Iran the same way we treat a more “distantly allied” Saudi Arabia. That would be quite a step up. It’s quite literally the least we can do.

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Is Trump Ending US Power? | Iran & The Suez Crisis

Trump’s tremendous Iran screw up makes me think of the Suez Crisis. But then almost everything does. I may be a little obsessed with the Suez Crisis. There’s a certain poetry to it. Maybe because it’s one of those rare examples of the United States doing the right thing. But as this video explains, it is also a warning. The Suez Crisis is my choice for the end of the British Empire. It’s an example we should all be thinking of more as Donald Trump accelerates the end of the US Empire.

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Donald Trump’s Iran Deal Plan Makes Zero Sense

Donald Trump’s wrecking ball trick has been tried before. In fact it’s pretty much the only trick he has. But this time it’s different. Things like the Climate Change agreement are easy to re-visit. By the next administration folks can come back to it. The Iran Deal is different. He hasn’t managed to destroy it yet, but if he does, the damage he does to US-Iranian relations, and the reputation of the country will be permanent. The Opportunity of the JCPOA, the possibility of a broader peace between the US and Iran, has probably already been squandered. The chances of Iran becoming a North Korea style Nuclear hermit have also been increased.

This video focuses on the basics of why Trump’s actions are so insane. Later in the week we should get into the repercussions. But earlier today I saw the Iranian Foreign Minister making a very valid point that didn’t make it into either. If Trump succeeds in destroying this deal. Which he is likely to do from the US perspective anyway. How does any country ever trust the United States again?

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What Washington, DC Doesn’t Understand About War…

It’s amazing how little most policy makers know about history. If it’s not about Neville Chamberlain and appeasement, they probably haven’t heard of it. This is a real problem. As the stewards of a power that might actually have a few real competitors a couple decades from now, they really need to start learning.

This week I’ve been in Bavaria, a formerly independent region of Germany. This prompted a number of ruminations on Germany, France, and their relative power throughout history. All that inspired this video, which reveals the central fact Washington, DC is missing: There is nothing worse for the power on top than war.

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