[federalist] In Tom Friedman's world, a Cabinet officer's faithful execution of a president's policies after private disagreement is both 'cowardly' and 'slimy,' not to mention cause for eternal damnation. The Dictator-Loving Friedman has lost his shit mind
In 42-plus years of analyzing lawyers' briefs, I have gained some experience in spotting written advocacy that resorts to a variety of mechanisms to camouflage a weak argument. Sometimes authors use personal attacks and inflammatory but baseless accusations to cover up the weakness of their argument.
So it is with political journalists and advocates (an overlapping set, to be sure). Tom Friedman, The New York Times’ resident "intellectual" foreign affairs columnist, demonstrates this technique in spades in his recent unhinged personal attack on Secretary of State Mike Pompeo for not publicly disagreeing with President Trump's decision to recall Ukraine Ambassador Marie Yovanovich.
Friedman's charge is that Pompeo's failure to voice his public disagreement with Trump's decision shows that even though Pompeo finished No. 1 in his class at West Point ‐ a composite of academic, leadership, and physical fitness rankings ‐ "he must have flunked all his courses on ethics and leadership." Friedman lards up his baseless argument with inflammatory, red-meat personal attacks that can fairly be described as sophomoric, in the sense that they are more typical of something written by an inexperienced but passionate youth, rather than a serious man.
Thus, Friedman's analysis is that Pompeo is "cowardly" and "slimy," he must have "failed or skipped" all West Point's classes on ethics and leadership, and his failure to behave as Friedman would demand is "one of the most shameful things I have ever seen in 40 years of covering U.S. diplomacy." He has "the mark of Cain on his forehead" and it "will not wash off." Continuing his biblical references, Friedman assures us it is really a "simple" matter: Pompeo will "lose his soul."
Well, what on Earth is the basis for damning Pompeo's soul to hell? It is this, in Friedman's words:
Though he reportedly argued privately to the president to keep Yovanovitch in place, Pompeo faithfully executed Trump's order without uttering a word to defend his ambassador's reputation in public.
In the Friedman world, a Cabinet officer's faithful execution of a president's policies after private disagreement is both "cowardly" and "slimy," not to mention cause for eternal damnation.
Posted by: Frank G ||
11/26/2019 12:12 ||
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[TheNews.com.pk] Alarm bell number 1: Never in our history have our net international reserves stood at negative $11 billion. Are we facing an economic crisis? An economy facing an “economic crisis will most likely experience a drying up of liquidity, a falling GDP and rising prices due to inflation”.
Question number 1: is our liquidity drying up? Question number 2: is our GDP rising or falling? Question number 3: are our prices rising due to inflation?
For the record, our net international reserves are now at negative $11 billion. What that means is that our liquidity has already dried up (read: no dollars left). As of November 30, international reserves with the SBP were $7,265 million; short-term drains (12 months or less) amounted to roughly $11 billion; and forward swaps stood at roughly $7 billion.
An emergency is “a serious, unexpected, and often dangerous situation requiring immediate action”. In 2013, we ran to the IMF when our net international reserves had fallen to negative $7 billion. In 2008, we ran to the IMF when our net international reserves had fallen to negative $2 billion. Imagine: our net international reserves now stand at negative $11 billion.
Alarmingly, we are gulping down around $2 billion a month. China’s loan of $1 billion that came in July is long gone. The $1 billion received from Saudi Arabia in November is gone. Saudi Arabia’s billion that came in December is also gone. Do we have a policy other than the so-called ‘packages from friendly countries’?
How terribly sad that America under President Trump is not one of those friendly countries willing to gift Pakistan with a few spare billion dollars provided by the hardworking American taxpayers... and most of the Pakistanis who used to live here illegally in order to send much of their paycheck back home fled after 9/11.
Alarm bell number 2: The devaluation of the rupee is not working. The rupee has fallen by 30 percent and our exports have also fallen from $1.968 billion in November 2017 to $1.843 billion in November 2018 (exports are down by an alarming six percent). Once again, the rupee has fallen by 30 percent and our imports have only gone down from $4.758 billion in November 2017 to $4.626 billion in November 2018 – a fall of less than three percent. Clearly, the policy of devaluation is not working. Do we have any contingency?
Alarm bell number 3: As of August 2018, we “booked the highest-ever budget deficit of Rs2.26 trillion or 6.6 percent of GDP”. Conveniently, we don’t include losses from public-sector enterprises, the electricity sector and the government’s commodity operations because if we do then our budget deficit would be around 10 percent of GDP. This year, as has been the case in previous years, expenditures are out of control and revenue collection is below target.
Alarm bell number 4: Circular debt has gone up from Rs1.14 trillion in August 2018 to a current figure of Rs1.4 trillion. Alarmingly, we are adding an average of Rs1.8 billion a day every day of the year.
Our biggest enemy on the economic front is uncertainty. Uncertainty is defined as a “situation which involves imperfect or unknown information”. To be certain, economic activity and uncertainty are correlated. What is our deficit-funding strategy? Do we even have one? Are we going to the IMF or not? Do we have an alternative strategy to tackle our external vulnerabilities? What are we doing on the FATF front? Do we have a strategy to tackle internal financial turbulence? What’s the future of the rupee? Uncertainty is bad for business – really bad.
The writer is a columnist based in Islamabad.
Posted by: John Frum ||
11/26/2019 00:00 ||
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#1
They'll get their funding as soon as a compromise with FATF bigwigs is reached. A lot of indirect feeds to accounts in European and Panamanian banks.
Gawd knows they're practically trying to let them off the grey list. They've had to make categories different shades of grey on the blacklist to accommodate 'the difficult situation' of poor Pakistain.
[IsraelNationalNews] She is receiving a first rate education in an Israeli university, but would like Israel to cease to exist.
A chat I recently had with an Arab university student studying in Israel throws much light on why there is no peace between Israel and her neighbors. Our chat is especially relevant to these days, unfortunately, when Moslem terror organizations are firing rockets into Israeli towns.
I must emphasize that the person I met was not illiterate. She was a young, "educated" woman taking a master’s degree at the Ben Gurion University of the Negev in the Israeli city of Beer Sheva, one of the best universities in the region. We began chatting while waiting for a bus. She told me she came from eastern Jerusalem, an area that she called "Paleostine". She opened her heart to me, sharing her uncensored thoughts about Israel, when I told her I was Ottoman Turkish and not Jewish, because the government of The Sick Man of Europe Turkey
Continued on Page 49
#6
Remember Arafat. Back then the problem was corruption rather than Islam. Saudi money made the world a worse place. What would things be like if we let Saddam have the place.
#8
Islam has been at war with the non-Islamic world for nearly fourteen centuries, but for the occasional lull when they felt too weak to do more than cheer on other bullies (Kaiser Bill, Hitler, the Soviets).
[PJ] Over the weekend, Gov. Greg Abbott (R-Texas) shared an inspiring video ‐ a man in a wheelchair scaling a rock-climbing wall, with his wheelchair hanging below him! The video has personal meaning for Abbott, who was paralyzed from the waist down at age 26. Twitter users said they would rather die than lose the use of their legs, and one even told Abbott that God put him in a wheelchair. Abbott's responses were perhaps even more inspiring than the original video.
"So great to see but if I ever end up in a wheelchair I’m just ending it," one user wrote in response to the video. He would rather commit suicide than live without his legs.
"That’s what I thought before I ended up in a wheelchair," Abbott responded. "I’ve done more AFTER the accident that left me paralyzed than before that accident. With God all things are possible."
"God didn’t cause the accident that left me paralyzed, but He did help me persevere over that enormous challenge," the governor replied. "I’m a testament that the glory of God is revealed by a young man’s back being broken in half and still rising up to be Governor of Texas. With God all is possible."
Donkey populations are being pushed to the brink of collapse by the demand for their skins, a leading charity has warned.
Millions of donkeys each year are being stolen, transported and killed as traders harvest their hides to export as an ingredient for the traditional Chinese medicine ejiao.
The Donkey Sanctuary has reported that the animals are in a state of "global crisis" and has called on governments to put an urgent halt to the trade.
In an update to itsUnder The Skin campaign, the charity revealed that local populations have been "virtually wiped out" in several countries as the numbers being slaughtered are "unsustainable".
The Chinese donkey population has declined by 76% since 1992 and since 2007, donkey populations have declined by 28% in Brazil, by 37% in Botswana and by 53% in Kyrgyzstan.
The gelatin from the hides provides a key ingredient in ejiao production, which requires 4.8 million skins per year. The demands cannot be met within China, leading traders to source skins in Africa, Asia and South America.
Donkeys are key to the livelihoods of more than 500 million people world wide, particularly in some of the world’s poorest communities and projections suggest that the ejaio industy will require more than half the world’s current donkeys over the next five years to meet demand.
Stephen Njoroge from Kiserian, near Nairobi, Kenya, is totally dependent on his donkeys for his livelihood, and all of them were stolen on the same night.
"I used my donkeys for general transport, collecting water, taking vegetables to market and carrying construction materials," he said.
"I am still recovering from the loss. I have heard much about the donkey slaughterhouses and they are causing the thefts in this area ‐ they should be closed down straight away; it is the only way to stop the thefts."
To provide enough skins, pregnant jennys, foals and sick animals are being stolen and transported miles without food, water or rest before facing appalling conditions in slaughterhouses.
One slaughterhouse in Africa was immediately closed after witnesses recorded footage of dead and dying donkeys some with open, maggot-infested wounds. Aborted foetuses were also seen as well as skinned carcasses dumped next to live donkeys awaiting slaughter. The slaughterhouse has since reopened.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
[PJ] Over the weekend, Gov. Greg Abbott (R-Texas) shared an inspiring video ‐ a man in a wheelchair scaling a rock-climbing wall, with his wheelchair hanging below him! The video has personal meaning for Abbott, who was paralyzed from the waist down at age 26. Twitter users said they would rather die than lose the use of their legs, and one even told Abbott that God put him in a wheelchair. Abbott's responses were perhaps even more inspiring than the original video.
