Trump Derangement Syndrome and Putin on the Front Lawn.

It has come to my attention that our examination of solar energy storage issues has brought us TOO MANY VIEWERS. That’s right. We now have too many viewers at EVTV and I have to put a stop to it. Not to fear. As always I have a brilliant solution at hand.

Too many viewers. Jack this is the INTERNET and you want MORE viewers. Yes, I know it’s the Internet. Al Bore and I invented it, remember.

We have hosted EVTV on Amazon’s AWS service since the earliest days of Amazon OFFERING AWS as a service. YouTube is not really precisely our venue and never was. YouTube is blocked in some countries but generally Amazon.com not. So I hide in the backroom server of the store.

One of the oddities of AWS is that I PAY for every download of EVTV from AWS. Always have. We now we have TOO MANY viewers. Amazon has decreased the rate but my bill still climbs. And I have to make some go away.

I know EXACTLY how to do that. Let’s talk about Donald Trump. It drives some of our viewers CRAZY. They are fully aware that I’ve called EVERY SINGLE SHOT, every twist, and every turn in the electric vehicle saga on target and ahead of time for nearly 10 years. They’ve watched me build DOZENS of electric vehicles successfully. And so how could I be THAT brilliant and SO WRONG about something as simple as Donald Trump.

Good question. But it assumes I’m wrong and they know something I don’t. Perhaps. I AM as you know the last man standing on the Internet who COULD actually BE wrong.

In any event, I can count on my politics to winnow the viewership and the most shrill TDS sufferers can also be pretty strongly identified with something else. They never DO anything, they never CREAT anything, and they are actually allergic to personally taking part in any kind of technical innovation at all. They limit their activities almost solely to ADVOCATING that somebody ELSE spend THEIR money on the cause dujour.

Our mission is to aid and abet those capable of taking personal responsibility for their world and taking direct personal ACTION to improve it for the benefit of all and at the brutalizing cost of their own time and treasure in doing so. If you’re not in THAT group, I just really have no motivation to pay the freight for you to view EVTV at all.

Another curious thing about our target group is they are not threatened by political opinion whatsoever. Many do NOT agree with my politics, and aren’t threatened by that in the slightest. Ho hum. Jack on Trump again. Some interesting points. But mostly on the top of his head.

I won’t lose a viewer there. But I might cause the occasional thought bubble to form. Little enough harm for the day.

The window on our politics and Donald Trump is largely formed by traditional media. Watching their death throes is fascinating to me, but for now, they still form the information lens of our society. And it has become so dirty that it is really difficult to see any notion of reality through it. I would urge you to start looking locally with direct primary evidence in your local area.

Cape Girardeau has just been named the most beautiful city to live in in the state of Missouri. And my lawn care guy just FIRED me. Understand that my last lawn care bill was $1295. And my “lawn boy” is actually a nice little company titled MY SIDE OF THE FENCE and the owner is a personal friend since the days of his youth when he was our regular waiter at a local upscale restaurant, MOLLIES down the street. He’s also a lector at our church. He FIRED me. Can’t do my lawn(s). Actually four residential properties and the EVTV commercial building.

It is a touch humiliating to be FIRED ignomiously by your lawn care service. But I understand the man’s position. He simply can no longer accomplish the work because he is now entirely UNABLE to hire help to do such work, particularly in the current July heat. The pool of people at the bottom of the economic pecking order available to do such work at even fairly signficant pay has just dried up. Why? They’ve all found better jobs elsewhere.

This is repeated at the local grocery store, and ALL fast food services in the city. They all have signs HIRING FOR ALL POSITIONS on the window where you GET YOUR FOOD. And many of the people BEHIND the window now are clearly coming to work from an adult shelter. The lower rung less desirable and lower paying jobs all over town are simply UNABLE to hire. In a University town? You’ve got to be kidding. We have 10,000 starving students. Ok, maybe not in July. But we have them most of the year.

Don’t take my word. Check it out in YOUR community. If you order food through a drive through it is now IMPERATIVE that you check your order before leaving the window. If you take it home for the kiddies, you may be surprised to find you have someone else’s order ENTIRELY. We are in desperate need of more Mexicans. They’re going to start to offer sign-on bonuses here in Missouri for anyone willing to cross the border illegally.

Another tell: all over Cape Girardeau, there are now scaffolding around ALL the buildings. Many of those same fast food establishments are tearing a perfectly good building down to the ground and erecting a brand new building in its place. Siemers Drive in Cape Girardeau is starting to resemble Shenzhen China. Every empty lot in this “new” commercial area is filling in and it is changing from one WEEK to another with entirely new businesses springing from the ground like mushrooms after a spring rain.

Is THIS the kind of American we want to live in? In the local dialect: “Duh…yah….”

Mingled in all this is a fascinating paradox that what purport to be intelligent people, with the benefit of University educations, in very nice suits with really some strikingly handsome neckties, seem strangely dazed, confused and clueless about issues that our local methamphetamine addicts with a sixth grade education seem to grasp intuitively.

I just watched Trey Gowdy, and the Fox News Sunday morning team, totally amazed at Donald Trumps European visit benumbed and seriously ALARMED that our imbecile President seems curiously unaware of the very deep EVIL of Vladimir Putin and the Holy Roman Russian Empire. And that he totally FAILED in his meeting and press conference with him. And of course the leader of the opinion was a little titty blonde girl younger not than my shirts, but than the shirts that I STILL WEAR. But Britt Hume, a Boardwatch subscriber from the late 1980’s on, fell right in with them, and Trey Gowdy, who I’ve always viewed as brilliant was waxing eloquent over how bad a blunder this was, though he had NO IDEA what would cause such bizarre behavior. I don’t think he was putting us on. He really doesn’t know.

Let me boil it down to basics. Trump went to Europe. He took a STICK to our allies insisting that they DOUBLE their expenditures on military hardware and personnel and do it NOW not in 2024 when they and he would no longer be in office anyway. Oh, and the figures he demands they already voluntarily signed up for DECADES PRIOR. And the ONLY clear and present foe all that military expense would be FOR was defense against RUSSIA. Plausibly ISIS but that threat seems to be going away anyway (no mention of this in the FAKE NEWS PRESS).

And he took Vladimir Putin into a room, talked with him for three hours mano-a-mano, and came out and gave him a CARROT. Very nearly a big wet kiss. This our traditional foe and nemesis.

WHAT PART OF THIS IS CONFUSING!!!!! You have to coach me a bit. What PART of all that causes you mental consternation? Since it is EXACTLY what I would do, I’m a little lost here.

Speak softly and carry a big stick. He’s putting the spurs to our purported allies to make sure we HAVE a big stick, while dramatically leading by example in increasing U.S. military spending. And he’s telling our opposition that we are very willing to find common ground where possible and let the air out of confrontation. Let’s personally just make peace. You and me Vladimir. Old buddy.

What really ARE the issues between the U.S. and Russia? The Ukraine? Crimea? Syria? Iran?

I don’t mean to be condescending or pull rank on you here. But can we agree that the knowledge of geography among most Americans, and certainly those of recent benefit of our educational system is just tragic? I mean absurd to the point of high comedy.

Crimea BORDERS on Russia and is 850 miles from it’s capital city of Moscow. It’s populated almost entirely by Russians and its history of being part of Ukraine at all has been dubious from the beginning. It is obviously of crucially strategic importance — TO RUSSIA. But precisely what pray tell is OUR interest in Crimea?????

I assume you know where YOU are. Click on the map image for a Google maps tour of where CRIMEA and the UKRAINE are. We’re sending arms to the Ukraine? For what purpose? SO the Ukrainians can be free? From what? Do you know any Ukrainians? Do you have Ukrainian relatives? And as I say, most importantly DO YOU KNOW WHERE UKRAINE IS?????

What would you think if Russia was pouring weapons into NEWFOUNDLAND??? What if we annexed CALIFORNIA and made it part of the United States? What should Russia’s position be?

Syria was a shitshow before either we or the Russians got there. I won’t do the history of the conflict but we CAN talk a bit about recent developments. Assad gassed some kids with Chlorine. Google it. Chlorine gas is a horror.

Trump announced out loud and before the world that we were going to send a bunch of missiles, in our video prime time slot, in another episode of his should-be-patented VIDEO WAR concept, (like video games but louder and with rubble). Putin manfully and heroically declared that if Trump dared to do such a thing, it would mean World War III and mutually assured nuclear destruction. And Trump said: “Hold my beer” and pushed the button.
Putin then immediately ordered all fighter planes out of the air and all ships to depart Syria poste haste – at least temporarily, proving finally and for all what a deeply evil boogeyman with supernatural powers he really is. And we lit up the sky and made a lot of noise and rubble over a nearly unpopulated area because of course Trump had announced the target so everyone could evacuate. Nonetheless there were some hapless yuck Russians who got blown up anyway. And Putin issued a mouthful of silence on the matter.

IS this not what you recall from the press on it?? There’s a reason for that.

Did they tell you that on the outbreak of peace with Russia a few years ago, NATO announced they were going to move missile defence installations into Poland and Romania, hundreds of miles closer to the Russian border? Oh they did NOT???? Whatever were they thinking?

The FACT is that our real areas of conflict with Russia are TRIVIAL and almost entirely CONTRIVED to keep you spending money on military hardware. Just as it was during the cold war. You’re being defrauded for MONEY.

Let us turn to the purported “issue at hand” the “deeply troubling” issue of Russian meddling in our holy and sacred political process. I know. But that IS the meme and that IS the narrative nomatter how absurdly insulting it is to anyone with an IQ NOT requiring an adult shelter facility.

In a brilliant stroke and one of the few modern examples of actual TREASON in recent history, Mueller/Rosenstein held a press conference announcing 12 indictments of Russian GRU agents directly caught RED handed so to speak in election meddling.

I heard that press event in its entirely and the ENTIRETY of the ACCUSATIONS was that Russia had employed a fake meme on Facebook termed Guccifer 2.0 to distribute really cute and catchy snarks against Hillerary Clinton. I never tired of them.

And secondly that they had in an act of cyberwar hacked INTO the Democratic National Commmittee server and stolen Hilleraries precious e-mails and exposed them to the world.

There is so much so dicked up with this I hardly know where to begin. First, the FBI and the Intelligence community HAVE NEVER SEEN the DNC server. So they could hardly know that the root password of this Linux server was “admin”. Talk about data security. Or that John Podesta’s gmail account password was “password”. They did mention spear fishing. Actually it’s Pfishing and no one familiar with using the technique or guarding against it has used the term Spear Pfishing for about a dozen years. It’s just Pfishing. Getting OT security teams to help secure data is a good idea.

Second, what were Hilleraries e-mails doing on the DNC server? They never were. They were on Hilleraries private server in her bathroom and if they were obtained by Russians, Rosenstein just admitted that Hilleraries private server WAS hacked by Russians. The DNC server had a bunch of information about the plot to steal the Primary from Bernie Sanders. Never mentioned nor addressed, except by Putin, was the fact that no one has ever questioned that the very damning admissions in Hilleraries e-mails were all true or that the DNC info about outright corruption and stealing were true as well.

What I found VERY interesting was that Wikileaks and Julian Assange were not mentioned either. Though Assange HAD posted an offer of $20,000 for information regarding the MURDER of Seth Rich, who worked for the DNC at the time. And Wikileaks is of course where we actually got the damning Hillerary e-mails.

Neither the FBI nor the intelligence community can determine with ANY assurance of accuracy WHO hacked the server without examining the server and really most probably having detailed logs of the IP traffic and a VERY good idea of when it actually occurred. So we can ONLY be talking about secondary human sources reporting he said she said information. And I’m sorry. Our intelligence community and FBI have no magical powers people. Putin has no magic powers. And Mueller has no magic powers. And Rosenstein has no magic powers.

The INDICTMENT is not a conviction, indeed no evidence has been offered, it is a PURELY political ploy in an ONGOING effort by professionals in the EXECUTIVE BRANCH OF THE GOVERNMENT to unseat the duly elected President of the United States of America and it apparently bothers them NOT ONE WHIT that they do so in the context of very important relationships with world powers that have more than enough nuclear weapons to destroy our civilization. That is HOW BADLY and how DERANGED they are with regards to Trump. They would prefer YOU be blown up in Nuclear holocaust to Trump remaining as President.

The concept of Russian MEDDLING in our elections in any serious sense is patently absurd. Our actual ELECTION apparatus is unbelievably fractionalized and entirely run by elderly patriots at local election boards that in Missouri are almost ENTIRELY independent even of the Secretary of State of MIssouri and who each manage elections entirely differently from all other counties and which would NEVER cede their personal power and prestige to an Internet connected system. My wife is on the local election board and did her Doctoral thesis on Information Technology of Elections. I DO know and I KNOW I know in this case.

The ONLY meddling with those systems, and several resulted in convictions and jail time, were by DEMORATS running the machinery in select districts. Note that there were NO Republicans even accused of such a thing. They prefer the time honored technique of Gerrymandering of course.

But apparently what we DID have was not collusion or meddling, but an actual CONSPIRACY among high ranking professionals in the Justice Department and FBI to wiretap Donald Trump during his transition and a deliberate plot to frame him with evidence of Russian Collusion to have him impeached and removed from the Presidency. An attempted COUP by career bureacrats in Washington DC.

Leaving Russia in the enviable position of having spent $10 or $12 million dollars on public relations to influence the election and instead causing a politically partisan SHITSTORM of epic proportions literally tearing the fabric of U.S. Democracy apart. Talk about the return on your dollar. I can guarantee you if THIS is the outcome, Vladimir would be a moron not to give the GRU $100 million in 2020 and tell them “SHow me what you can do with THAT!”

As Pogo said, “We have met the enemy… and he is US!”

I watched the entire press conference with Putin, and the entire Chris Wallace interview. I found him brilliant, urbane, genteel, and very clever with a surprising sense of humor.

Was he lying? Of course. That’s his job. He is very much an advocate for Russia and works tirelessly to return it to its former glory. He truly wants to Make Russia Great Again. He should have a freakin hat. I’m thinking a RED hat.

Trump’s carrot. And the press conference. He misspoke? I don’t really know WHAT this guy is doing in dealing with the shitstorm. But walk with me talk with me.

With regards to Russian meddling in a U.S. election:

TRUMP: “Well I really don’t see why they would.”

or the corrected version:

TRUMP:”Well I really don’t see why they wouldn’t.”

What specifically is the DIFFERENCE between these two phrases? I find both probably truthful and oddly NOT mutually exclusive. He said nothing both times. I don’t see why they would. It’s hopeless. I don’t see why they wouldn’t. It couldn’t hurt (Russia that is). Your parsing a non-statement of nothing. If it makes you all feel bettter, “wouldn’t”. Got it.

So it makes PERFECT sense to me that his mission in going to Europe was to spank the shit out of our friends and allies and suck up to Putin. He’s brilliant. And I only say that in that it is EXACTLY what I would do and I would make it a priority of the Presidency to do JUST THAT. And in just that way.

We live in a different world now. It is interconnected by a global Internet that honors no national boundaries. It detects censorship as damage and routes around it. And it allows and promotes long distance attacks on computer servers. IT has some negatives, outweighed by enormous positives. Change your password from “password” and your root level access to a politically important server from “admin”. Better yet, pony up for some actual IT expertise in actually hardening your system in effective ways using modern tools. Only if your server is at least as important as the Chinese restuarant where we order lunch online.

This is NOT magic guys. It’s done to death. And it IS a war. The only people NOT in it effectively is the U.S. government and the Russian government. But they will be. At least clumsily so. You have to defend against online malefeasance. Get used to the idea.

Rather forgotten in all this was the Chinese government sponsored hack of the Office of Management and Budget U.S. government server where they downloaded detailed information on 22 million past and present US Government employees. Korea’s attack on Sony. Etc. The WAKEUP CALL was 20 years ago. If you are just now waking up, you might as well go back to sleep. You’re outta the game at this point.

Does Trump trust and believe his own intelligence community and FBI? The one run by John Bannon who is so professional and non-partisan that he did his level best to discredit him before and after his election and last week accused him of Treason? The FBI run by James Comey, Andrew McCabe, and Peter Strok? Who launched a modern day coup and tried to unseat the duly elected President of the United States, an actual ACT of Treason?

Oh yeah, he trusts them. He trusts Putin too. He’s just a really innocent TRUSTING kind of guy, which you need to be to survive 30 years in Manhattan Real Estate.

On another topic, I am also struck by again the almost UNIVERSAL condemnation of Trump on the topic of Trade. And again, this is juxtaposed with my intense admiration of both his genius and his cajonnes. It simply takes my breath away, on both counts.

The financial press has chimed in with the DemoRat propoganda machine to condemn his actions and indeed, the moment seems dire with China talking about another $200 billion in Tarrifs and Trump threatening another $500 billion raise and call. Understand this affects me personally as we spend a fortune on goods from China and so in effect do our customers.

But Trump in no sense started a Trade War. He’s simply the first U.S. President to show up for it. Our “foes” declared war long ago, selling freely into the huge U.S. market for their products while totally excluding U.S. products through a masterful maze of tarrifs, currency manipulation, regulatory barriers, everything in the arsennal. Since we did NOTHING in response, our FRIENDS decided they’d try it too. And THEY got away with it with no response. I could go ON AND ON about this. But a couple of easy to understand examples. This is not reports. This is first hand knowledge.

We are purportedly in a North American Free Trade agreement with our ‘dear friends” in Canada. I can order anything I want from Canada totally tarrif free. But we had a guy in Canada order 9 additional braided battery straps. With shipping, we charged him $76 dollars for them. But they were hung up in Canadian customs for six weeks because he didn’t want to pay $75 import duties on them. Their “tarrif” in this “free trade zone” was higher than the price of the goods and only a dollar less than the goods plus shipping. What kind of “free trade” is that?

I ordered some blanks to fit into the Tesla Model S gear box so you could mate to VW transaxles from China. To have them made accurately, I sent ONE to China. They charged a $200 tarrif on the go-by sample, but I pay NO tarrif for the dozen shafts I ordered from China.

At this point it is EVERYBODY. The U.S. has 4% of the feet and 32% of the shoes in the world. We are STILL the largest market in the world by a lot. And these countries are just as Donald Trump describes them, pulling a raid on the piggy bank while your elected officials have looked the other way very deliberately. In steel, aluminum, batteries, and wine, as it so happens, this is actually predatory attacks. The GOVERNMENTS, including our friends in Australia, actually pay the manufacturers money as a subsidy so they can undercut U.S. producers in an attempt in the case of steel and aluminum to put them out of business.

We used to have 13 of the 15 largest aluminum producers in the world. We are down to two. And they are fading fast.

The Chinese government pays steel and aluminum producers CASH to make sure they undercut U.S producers in sales in the United States. To add insult to injury, they then deliberately devalue their currency against the U.S. dollar. This is an ATTACK.

Trump once again has worked this out and decided to counter. Not with tit for tat as most of the child minds believe but with a brilliant proposal that just sucks the air out of the room.

Let’s present two choices. How about we just cutoff trade with all of you. You can no longer sell your products in the U.S.

Effectively, and incrementally, and very effectively in the other sense of the word. You see, that just won’t work. Germany would be bankrupt in less than a year. The EU bank would collapse in less than that. China would collapse economically. It would be a global disaster. Armageddon. Zombie apocalypse. The end of civiliation. For Americans it means price increases, inconvenience. For Germans and CHinese, it means bankruptcy. It means a depression.

And the huge risk is of course a worldwide depression affecting indeed the U.S. as well.

He has another option to offer. When doesn’t he? Free trade. But not free trade as in Paul Ryan free trade. A pan-global free trade zone. ZERO tarriffs allowed. If you deploy A tarrif on anthything from anybody, you are simply excluded from world trade.

What would a world with TRULY free trade look like? Well we’re not entirely certain. You see tarrifs are really a tax. And like all taxes, they suppress economic activity and take money out of the economy. But these have crept in little by little and bit by bit over time until they have tentacles into everything worldwide. And its a niggle here and a nobble there. But at this point, it pervades all economic activity and it is invisible. But cummulatively it is ENORMOUS. We’ve been boiling the frog for so long and so slowly, we don’t know what a live frog looks like any longer. We think it’s like hot oily green milk.

It really isn’t a matter as to whether the other countries will cave. They already know they have to. The question is a game of liars poker. Can they hold out long enough for the idiotic Americans to stop Trump themselves. And I admit it is an open question. From what I can ascertain through this dirty lens of fake news television, it is very much an open question. China chooses massive rampup. Germany very cunningly targets tarrifs on Trump states for the 2018 election. They MIGHT be able to get Americans to do what they cannot – stop Trump. But if Americans don’t, they will absolutely have to capitulate.

And of course what is missed by the American people is why would we bother to go through all that at all?

Here’s the why. Trump is visioning IMPOSING PROSPERITY on a global basis. Free trade wouldn’t hurt Germany, it would dramatically increase the standard of living there. The price of AMerican goods would fall forcing all prices to fall. But it would be inconvenent for the unholy alliance of benefactor industries and the political elite – corruption and greed if you will.

This would be replicated worldwide. In every nation. American companies would have a sudden windfall from sales overseas, paying workers more who can then purchase lower cost goods from Germany and China.

You see the entire tarriff scam is a HUGE hidden tax on EVERYTHING. Truly global and absolute FREE TRADE would be the single most stimulative thing EVER DONE BY ANYONE to ALL economies WORLDWIDE and simultaneously.
We don’t even KNOW the outcome – its never been done before. But it would be HUGE and hugely beneficial to individuals.

The scope and daring of the vision is what fails on the buy-in. Nobody thinks he can do it. Well actually he does. And I do. And oddly he may have convinced the ultimate free trade hawk of all time. Larry Ludlow. But generally it is TOO big and TOO GRAND a vision to succeed. Kind of like declaring you are going to convert all automobiles to electric.

But picture this, if he DOES succeed, NOBODY ON THE PLANET will be able to get their grass cut EVER AGAIN. We’ll just have to give up grass. And it will be the DEATH of FAST FOOD.

Think about it….

Jack Rickard

Oh, yeah. We did a video this week. Something about a PowerSafe 100. If you watch it here it’s a link to YouTube and I don’t have to pay for it…