My god, what’s the end game here? I’m in Madrid at the moment. I’ve been here since December 1. It’s safe, clean, and beautiful. Cafes, tabernas, and restaurants are full. People leave their laptops on the table when they use the restroom with no concern at all. My health insurance is 120 euros a month (I’m 58). It’s like a Shangri-La. That said, I’m thinking of coming home to California. I feel too far away from my kids and community. I’m starting to wonder if that’s a crazy idea.
The picture of Taco there..........thats how he will look embalmed in the Orange coffin!!! Bring it on!!!!! Keep feeding him cases o diet coke and dozens of Big Macs!!! Get the heart rate up to 2,000 BPM!!!!
Using the analogy of going to a gunfight with a knife, Trump is going to the Xi meeting with a wet noodle. Both America and Taiwan should brace themselves cuz they’re going to be sold down the river.
Dan Rather and Team Steady - your posts are becoming more useful and clear. Please keep holding up TRUTH and the sobering reality of a fallen American Empire due to a malignant narcissist raiding all national resources in his desperate grab of power, money, fame and idolatrous worship. He and the forces backing him are responsible for millions of lives that will be lost, and the potential extinction of the planet.
Chinese culture has survived millennia. It demonstrates a "Great Wall" is not a viable option. It's questionable if the "United States" will even make it to its semiquincentennial. The world is realigning without the U.S. - or, to be more accurate, to protect itself from the belligerent "mad king" erecting golden idols to himself and threatening to wipe out civilizations in a nuclear glow. Hate never made any nation great.
China is not a power much longer--house of cards. Somehow the Chinese were foolish enough to let Big Tobacco in to society, like a Trojan Horse. Within 10 years from now, the extreme health care problems resulting from several decades of chain-smokers in China (300 million Chinese) will serve as an economic tax on production and economic growth. Within 20 years, China's desperate need for health care products and services will ensure its net exports are negative.
Trump's Iran War (all part of his future Nobel Peace Prize?) is really Bibi's Iran War. TACO can't get the Iranians to behave the way that Bibi wants. One Iranian official referred to it as Operation Trust Me Bro.
I am sure Trump will garner agreements to build hotels and golf course all over China. Taiwan will be punted into the China Sea. Russia re-armed and Ukraine vilified. Xi looks at Trump and sees what he is: a weak man who happens to be the president of a powerful country. The man himself is weak, and has proven how weak he really is by his own words and actions.
Trump always approaches global diplomacy like a man trying to negotiate free mozzarella sticks while sitting next to the fire he just started. Meanwhile the rest of the world is sitting there like, “Sir… this is the global economy.”
I believe Trump views world politics as some kind of poker game. All right. Having played high stakes poker tournaments for years, I do know some facts of the game, and one fact is this:
When you sit down and view the players, if you don't know who the "mark" is....it's you.
Like baseball, a lot goes on at a professional poker table the amateur never sees. Poker is a combination of factors: odds, mathematics, probabilities, error, intelligence, and a little luck. None of which are 100% reliable. But there is one factor the pro can count on: human nature.
The human animal reacts in certain ways to certain stimulus almost universally. It is a science. It is the one thing at the table with a 90% degree of mathematical certainty in an environment in which luck is around 10% of the whole. Poker pro's know this. They spend years studying human behavior, honing their craft. At a table of eight players, they know how any one of them will react in a given situation, before they do, with a high degree of accuracy, within fifteen minutes of sitting down. They pretty much know what you're holding, and how you're going to play it, every hand. How?
Tells.
Everyone has "tells". Look away when you bet....it's a tell. Your knee shakes under the table....it's a tell. It's not how much you bet bet, but the way you bet....a tell. Look at your cards...it's a tell. Don't look at your cards...it's a tell. Play with your chips... look out! Confusing? Not to the pro's. It's the language of the game. And if you don't speak it, you're going home empty handed. There is a reason why in a 300 player tournament, the same eight or ten guys, or gals, are at the final table. It's not an accident.
Now, Donald views himself as quite the poker player. He's always referencing the great " cards" he's holding. Like most amateurs he feels the best cards always win...and they don't. He doesn't know that the really great players are the ones who win the hands, and the games, no matter what the cards they are holding. Why? Because they know that the game really isn't about the cards. In some cases, the cards are immaterial. Pro's play the players, not the cards.
Always.
And that's where Donny goes down. Aside from the obvious fact he is a squirming bucket of "tells", he is doomed, and always has been, because he doesn't listen to advice. He takes no instruction. He thinks his adversary is beneath him. His ego is his worst enemy.
All of which will sink him when he sits down at that table full of sharks in Beijing. He is an amateur, they know it, and he is, WE are, the fattest mark for the taking these guys have ever had the pleasure of taking to the cleaners. They'll stake him out in the first five minutes, string him along for a bit, put him on " tilt" and polish him off at their leisure. It's an old story in poker... and politics. To quote a poker vulgarism, they'll send him home "with a red ass and a nickel in his mouth".
Remember Neville Chamberlain? He came back from meeting Hitler at Munich with a little piece of paper, waving it, calling it "peace in our time". The British ate it up. Winston Churchill called it an " unmitigated defeat". Within six months the world was at war. Another example in history of a "great" poker player..... who wasn't.
A leader of the free world should lead a coalition of nations and business leaders insisting communist dictatorships play by our rules— e.g., stay out of Taiwan, pay compensation to retool affected communities, remember that the customer is always right.
It’s such a beautifully diplomatic way of saying, “The adults are nervously waiting to see what the unstable "rich" guy says at dinner.”
The global economy right now has the exact energy of restaurant staff watching a table they already know is about to ask for the manager, three substitutions, and a refund.
Thank you Sir for identifying the real issue of a failed Diplomatic Corps and Foreign Service Division that was dismantled by an idiot Administration to remove push-back on foreign idiocy involving amateurs. America is stumbling over its own stupidity in dealing with NATO, World Economy, United Nations and Security behind a President that doesn't know squat about the Global Economy and NATO Defense.
My god, what’s the end game here? I’m in Madrid at the moment. I’ve been here since December 1. It’s safe, clean, and beautiful. Cafes, tabernas, and restaurants are full. People leave their laptops on the table when they use the restroom with no concern at all. My health insurance is 120 euros a month (I’m 58). It’s like a Shangri-La. That said, I’m thinking of coming home to California. I feel too far away from my kids and community. I’m starting to wonder if that’s a crazy idea.
President Xie is another leader who is capable of running rings round DJT, and he will
The picture of Taco there..........thats how he will look embalmed in the Orange coffin!!! Bring it on!!!!! Keep feeding him cases o diet coke and dozens of Big Macs!!! Get the heart rate up to 2,000 BPM!!!!
Using the analogy of going to a gunfight with a knife, Trump is going to the Xi meeting with a wet noodle. Both America and Taiwan should brace themselves cuz they’re going to be sold down the river.
Thank you, Mr. Rather. So appreciate you and your team.
I hear your voice as I read your words, and even when a subject is a distressing one, there is comfort to be found in that.
Dan Rather and Team Steady - your posts are becoming more useful and clear. Please keep holding up TRUTH and the sobering reality of a fallen American Empire due to a malignant narcissist raiding all national resources in his desperate grab of power, money, fame and idolatrous worship. He and the forces backing him are responsible for millions of lives that will be lost, and the potential extinction of the planet.
Chinese culture has survived millennia. It demonstrates a "Great Wall" is not a viable option. It's questionable if the "United States" will even make it to its semiquincentennial. The world is realigning without the U.S. - or, to be more accurate, to protect itself from the belligerent "mad king" erecting golden idols to himself and threatening to wipe out civilizations in a nuclear glow. Hate never made any nation great.
Not bad analysis.
China is not a power much longer--house of cards. Somehow the Chinese were foolish enough to let Big Tobacco in to society, like a Trojan Horse. Within 10 years from now, the extreme health care problems resulting from several decades of chain-smokers in China (300 million Chinese) will serve as an economic tax on production and economic growth. Within 20 years, China's desperate need for health care products and services will ensure its net exports are negative.
Trump's Iran War (all part of his future Nobel Peace Prize?) is really Bibi's Iran War. TACO can't get the Iranians to behave the way that Bibi wants. One Iranian official referred to it as Operation Trust Me Bro.
I am sure Trump will garner agreements to build hotels and golf course all over China. Taiwan will be punted into the China Sea. Russia re-armed and Ukraine vilified. Xi looks at Trump and sees what he is: a weak man who happens to be the president of a powerful country. The man himself is weak, and has proven how weak he really is by his own words and actions.
Trump always approaches global diplomacy like a man trying to negotiate free mozzarella sticks while sitting next to the fire he just started. Meanwhile the rest of the world is sitting there like, “Sir… this is the global economy.”
China has more cards then Trump. I'm just hoping he doesn't say or do something really awful while in China.
I believe Trump views world politics as some kind of poker game. All right. Having played high stakes poker tournaments for years, I do know some facts of the game, and one fact is this:
When you sit down and view the players, if you don't know who the "mark" is....it's you.
Like baseball, a lot goes on at a professional poker table the amateur never sees. Poker is a combination of factors: odds, mathematics, probabilities, error, intelligence, and a little luck. None of which are 100% reliable. But there is one factor the pro can count on: human nature.
The human animal reacts in certain ways to certain stimulus almost universally. It is a science. It is the one thing at the table with a 90% degree of mathematical certainty in an environment in which luck is around 10% of the whole. Poker pro's know this. They spend years studying human behavior, honing their craft. At a table of eight players, they know how any one of them will react in a given situation, before they do, with a high degree of accuracy, within fifteen minutes of sitting down. They pretty much know what you're holding, and how you're going to play it, every hand. How?
Tells.
Everyone has "tells". Look away when you bet....it's a tell. Your knee shakes under the table....it's a tell. It's not how much you bet bet, but the way you bet....a tell. Look at your cards...it's a tell. Don't look at your cards...it's a tell. Play with your chips... look out! Confusing? Not to the pro's. It's the language of the game. And if you don't speak it, you're going home empty handed. There is a reason why in a 300 player tournament, the same eight or ten guys, or gals, are at the final table. It's not an accident.
Now, Donald views himself as quite the poker player. He's always referencing the great " cards" he's holding. Like most amateurs he feels the best cards always win...and they don't. He doesn't know that the really great players are the ones who win the hands, and the games, no matter what the cards they are holding. Why? Because they know that the game really isn't about the cards. In some cases, the cards are immaterial. Pro's play the players, not the cards.
Always.
And that's where Donny goes down. Aside from the obvious fact he is a squirming bucket of "tells", he is doomed, and always has been, because he doesn't listen to advice. He takes no instruction. He thinks his adversary is beneath him. His ego is his worst enemy.
All of which will sink him when he sits down at that table full of sharks in Beijing. He is an amateur, they know it, and he is, WE are, the fattest mark for the taking these guys have ever had the pleasure of taking to the cleaners. They'll stake him out in the first five minutes, string him along for a bit, put him on " tilt" and polish him off at their leisure. It's an old story in poker... and politics. To quote a poker vulgarism, they'll send him home "with a red ass and a nickel in his mouth".
Remember Neville Chamberlain? He came back from meeting Hitler at Munich with a little piece of paper, waving it, calling it "peace in our time". The British ate it up. Winston Churchill called it an " unmitigated defeat". Within six months the world was at war. Another example in history of a "great" poker player..... who wasn't.
And now it's our turn.
Excellent.
A leader of the free world should lead a coalition of nations and business leaders insisting communist dictatorships play by our rules— e.g., stay out of Taiwan, pay compensation to retool affected communities, remember that the customer is always right.
I’m terrified that he will let Taiwan be taken. And gain very little for the taking of it.
---> The world is holding its collective breath as the most powerful man on the planet prepares to meet with Donald Trump.
^^^ Love this sentence!!
It’s such a beautifully diplomatic way of saying, “The adults are nervously waiting to see what the unstable "rich" guy says at dinner.”
The global economy right now has the exact energy of restaurant staff watching a table they already know is about to ask for the manager, three substitutions, and a refund.
It also says that despite all his ALL CAPS crowing, DT is NOT the most powerful man on the planet.
Thank you Sir for identifying the real issue of a failed Diplomatic Corps and Foreign Service Division that was dismantled by an idiot Administration to remove push-back on foreign idiocy involving amateurs. America is stumbling over its own stupidity in dealing with NATO, World Economy, United Nations and Security behind a President that doesn't know squat about the Global Economy and NATO Defense.
Thank you for sharing this explanation, Dan - it really helped me understand more of this much bigger picture.
I’d settle for a real STROKE..
Get that heart rate up to 500 Beats per second!!! ....More Whoppers and cases of diet coke!!!
Scary and sad that this man represents our country. Even scarier and sadder is the number of people who still support him.