July 23, 2025

Trump and Epstein

Why is Trump so afraid of the revelations from Epstein?

It's taken a little while to connect the dots on this for me, but consider the following. Trump and Epstein have been friends and neighbors for at least the last twenty years, but it's taken me a bit to figure that they were likely business partners.

Epstein and Maxwell ran a prostitution and human trafficking ring, quite possibly with external funding from foreign nationals. The purpose of this ring was only incidentally about sex trafficking (as well as drugs and other activities), it was about intelligence gathering. Why use "underage prostitutes" when there were ample numbers of women (and men) who were at least quasi-legal? Because solicitation of underage prostitutes is statutory rape - it can get you thrown into federal prison, and often the only way that you can tell someone is not at least 18 years of age is to take them at their word (you don't ask an attractive person at a party whether they are jailbait, especially if you are drunk or on drugs). Epstein and Maxwell ran a honey pot - put prominent people into positions where they could then be blackmailed, not just for money but for political favors.

I think that Epstein likely started this with a few key people. Trump was likely one of the earliest marks that he captured, but Trump turned around and said "Let me get a cut of this, give me part of this blackmail infomation, and I'll make it worth your while."

It's been evident to me for years that Trump was blackmailing others. The sudden conversions of political enemies into allies became a running theme throughout his political career. Trump is not that charismatic - he's basically a mob boss, when you get right down to it, but one that could suborn not only politicians but wealthy businesspeople, journalists, and others. His agreement with Epstein was simple - the latter would run Trump's "intelligence gathering" while Trump stayed (very relatively) clean - the popular front man.

Eventually Trump turned on Epstein, because he had become too much of a danger to Trump, but that would happen after he became president. Epstein had the most damaging evidence of all against Trump - that he was using sex trafficking and blackmail as a way to fuel his rise to the presidency.

Trump has been declining cognitively for a while. He's let slip hints of this inadvertently. It's also something that his political enemies are finally beginning to leverage against him (those who he's been blackmailing) but those same people have to move very carefully around as well, because they don't want to have their own secrets spilled. They also have their own self-interests to look after, which is part of why those same people have been using this as an opportunity to leverage power because the hen house is basically now unguarded. It will eventually be closed, of course, but in the turmoil following these revelations, they hope to profit then fade back into the shadows.

My guess is that all of this seemingly buried information is now surfacing now because those same people feel threatened. Trump has done his job - he got elected, he pushed through the Heritage Foundation's list, but now he's superfluous, and his actions are threatening the stability of the wealthy and powerful. All of a sudden, people are talking about Epstein, they're talking about how unhealthy Trump is looking, they're actively speculating that maybe Trump should retire. This didn't come out of the blue. They (both the opportunists and those snared in Epstein/Trump's web) are still afraid of the MAGA base - I think the attack on the UHG executive last year rattled them - but at the same time, this feels orchestrated to me. Trump needs to go away, whether in a jet to a country without extradition (on a flightpath over deep water, mind you) or in a pine box, is becoming increasingly irrelevant.

I'm not sure what happens with the "afterward". Power vacuums are inevitably messy, and I suspect strongly that as Trump's network collapses, it will lead to both a lot of revelations and perhaps the likelihood of a more overt power-grab. These things normally do. However, I really do believe Trump will not be President by Christmas.

July 4, 2025

Trump's Macbeth Moment

Repost from an earlier comment

I am not so willing to condemn Vance as many are on this board. I don't think that Vance is all that terribly bright, but I do think he's smarter than Trump, and I also think that a new piece is on the board in the person of the new Pope Leo.

The currrent situation is, I think, right out of Shakespeare, in which Macbeth (the Thane or Earl of Glamis, one of the clans of Scotland at the time), kills King Duncan with daggers, in conjunction with his wife Lady Macbeth. She takes her own life in the same way, not so much out of remorse as guilt that she was involved in the killing, even as Macbeth becomes more fearful and paranoid, an attitude fueled by his advisors. One of Duncan's other thanes, McDuff, becomes suspicious of the perfidy of Macbeth, and ultimately wages war against the new King, getting close enough to the Keep at Dunsinane by the ruse of felling trees from Birnam Wood and using them as cover for his own army (this, by the way, is where the allusion to the Ents, the tree people in Lord of the Rings, comes from). Ultimately, MacDuff storms the keep and kills Macbeth.

The cast of characters:

Duncan ... Joe Biden (and by proxy, Kamala Harris)
Macbeth ... Donald Trump
Lady Macbeth ... Elon Musk
Macbeth's advisors (Miller, Bannon, Eric Prince, Peter Thiel, etc.)
McDuff ... JD Vance, under the advisement of Pope Leo.

Musk's role in this is murky, but was probably finalized in October when Trump mysteriously took a flight to a campaign appearance in Montana, diverting for a couple of hours to another anonymous meeting before arriving very late for the early August rally. I'm guessing that Musk and Peter Thiel were both in attendance at the meeting, and it may have been there that Thiel's protege JD Vance was advanced as VP, while Musk (who would have been ineligible to become president) was given the role of helping to dismantle the existing government with the benefit of destroying records that could have incriminated him and his companies.

Casting Musk as Lady Macbeth makes sense here, because he was the one who, in conjunction with Trump, killed the King (stole the election) with at a minimum vote buying and using X in a massive disinformation blitz, and possibly in manipulating the vote tallies. After Trump "won", Musk was given free reign, until eventually his excesses brought him down and he was forced out of power (in effect, suicide by politics). Musk's business empire is in shambles and his reputation is ruined, and my suspicion is that he is very likely now a dead man walking because he knows too much about what actually happened.

With Musk's influence gone, Stephen Miller and Eric Prince stepped into the vacuum. Miller is an avowed neo-Nazi, and is likely a major planner of Project 2025. Prince stands to benefit financially as a provider of mercenary services and incarceration facilities, both of which he's heavily invested in. Thiel's influence has largely been on the crypto-side, and I suspect that it was Thiel's crypto-money that gave Trump a last minute much needed cash infusion. He is also angling to be the next Fed chairman after Powell.

Why Vance as McDuff? McDuff was an odd hero, even in Shakespearean terms. You really did not meet him in any significant capacity until the middle of the second act, and his primary role was to act as the agent of divine retribution. He is otherwise something of a non-entity. The story of Macbeth could have just as readily been called McDuff but it wasn't, because Shakespeare wanted to make it clear that the most interesting character study was that of the usurper, and McDuff was the one who, in the end brought the usurper down because of the latter's hubris and paranoia. (Note that this doesn't completely gibe with the historical evens of Macbeth, when assassination generally beat out old age as the leading cause of death for rulers.)

Vance was supposed to be Trump's replacement, someone who could be easily influenced by those "wiser, older heads around him" should something befall the man, and that influence would have been the current hardliners in the administration (most notably Miller and more indirectly Thiel) had not the Conclave of Bishops taken the unprecedent step of chosing an American liberal bishop from Chicago as the next Pope. Sometimes popes are chosen as strong leaders or able administrators, but sometimes popes are chosen to be advisors to key people. Trump is supposedly a Charismatic Christian (he declared himself a non-denominational Christian in 2020, after being a Presbyterian - more than likely the only god he believe in is himself). Vance is Catholic, however, and while there was a real attempt to diminish the meeting in the press, when Vance met with Leo after his ascension, he had a half an hour talk with the Pope. This is actually quite unprecedented, as has been occasional comments that Vance (not Trump) is in his prayers.

Musk's (totally expected) betrayal of trust was the worse thing that Musk could have done to Trump, because it fed into Trump's already well developed paranoia. Now his advisers, Miller and Thiel, possibly in conjunction with Trump's son-in-law, Eric Prince (which is purely an accidental naming, but it fits SO well into the monologue) have been poisoning his ears further, with talks of other plots. So much of Trump's actions are punitive, making other people suffer for all of the supposed abuse that was heaped on him, despite having a life far more privileged than almost anyone else on the planet. To a man troubled by one of the most powerful consciences in the world, even if it is external.

Will those seeds of doubt whispered by a new Pope to a president in waiting (Vance) be enough to make a difference? Hard to tell. JD Vance is married to an Indian woman. His book, Appalachian Elegies, while not perfect, is a reflection about people that I think is indicative of someone who does think about others in ways that exceed pure transactionalism. He has a capacity for insight that I think Trump completely lacks and probably has never had. Right now Vance is playing good little soldier, because Trump would make his life a living hell otherwise. At the same time, Vance has power over Trump in one very particular way: he could form a coalition of people in the White House to declare Trump incapable of fulfilling his duty for health reasons - Article 25 section 4. Trump's hold on power is NOT absolute, and he is developing political enemies far faster than he is developing allies. This will only escalate as the impacts of what he is doing harm others.

Trump is old - he will be eighty next year. He evidences continued decline in cognitive capacity, he lashes out irrationally when he feels he's been offended, and not surprisingly, you are seeing him appear in public less and less. His appearance at his parade was telling - it should have been a shining moment for him, but he was falling asleep instead. He's increasingly being used as a prop to support a shadow agenda, and not a change agent in his own right.

Trump knew that he didn't have the stamina to be president again. He did so because his alternative was likely incarceration, and certainly a significant diminishment of his business holdings. That has not changed. Trump cannot retire gracefully, because it simply puts him back into legal jeopardy again, and he learned first hand that a Vice President will not automatically grant clemency. At the same time, Birnham woods is still circling, the physical manifestation of Vance as the agent of death. Trump, like most narcissists, fears death more than all things, because while I don't think Trump is a religious man, he is clearly a superstitious one.

Will Vance become the next president? I'd say the odds are high. I think if he does, he will likely throw out the incompetents and the sycophants, and start rebuilding what's been damaged. Will he be a good president? Probably not a great one - the country periodically thrusts strong powerful leaders into the office, where they wreak change upon the system for good or ill, but vice presidents historically have been spent picking up the pieces of their predecessor's excesses. At this point, it doesn't matter; McDuff was not the most interesting character in the play.

For Donald Trump, however, Birnam Woods is coming to Dunsinane.

February 20, 2025

The Second American Civil War Has Begun

The barbarians have stormed the gates. The security apparatus of this country is now under the control of a set of malignant narcissists who have no care whatsoever for the rule of law, indeed, they rejoice in its destruction.

I have been predicting for some time (a couple of decades now) that we were headed in this direction and that the US would fall from within. Congress, for all intents and purposes, has no checks on Trump, and as such they are now irrelevant, because Trump can now force banks to bend their knee and give him all the money he needs. The courts are discovering that Trump is simply ignoring him. What are they going to do? Arrest him?

I do not believe that Trump was legitimately elected, however, that is irrelevant now.

My belief is that the Republic, as we know it, is over. There may or may not be elections in 2026, but it won't matter, because the Dems will mysteriously lose big. The next stage is going to be a purge of military officers and a purity test to be administered for their replacements. They will be loyal to Trump, not the Constitution. That's how these things work. Businesses that had government contracts will all kowtow and will lay off anyone who isn't MAGAT, and CEOs of other companies will follow suit, because they don't want to be seen as being in opposition to a punitive, arbitrary, capricious government.

Once that happens, the next stage will be a bomb or drone attack that will take out the Capital Building (cf., the Reichstag Fire), with loyalists mysteriously out of town that day. Trump will use this as an excuse to declare martial law, suspend the Constitution, and declare himself Chaiman of the Board of the Trumplandia. Citing security concerns, he will move the seat of government to Mara Lago.

The reconstituted Congress will still be convened, but it will represent only MAGAT loyalists. The only real opposition is going to come from the States. At that point, I suspect that the West Coast (and possibly the Acela corridor) and the Canadian border states will secede, form mutual support pacts with Canada and Mexico, and will reach out to both NATO and (ironically) China for assistance. This is going to pit the military against itself.

I've been figuring that a breakup will occur, the question I was unsure about was not whether it would happen, but whether it would be a voluntary agreement or by war. I am increasingly pessimistic about this being peaceful. A second civil war will be devastating, but it is looking increasingly possible.

January 28, 2025

Buckle Up - Recession Is Coming Fast

I've been watching the falling dominoes today as a recent large language model (LLM) out of China beat the top of the line OpenAI model was about 1/50th the investment (or, put another way, it cost in a year what OpenAI spends in a week on training). This model, called DeepSeek, was also released open-source, meaning that for a fairly minimal investment, anyone could set up a top of the line AI model, rather than having to use OpenAI's very expensive services.

Last week at Trump's inauguration, he was crowing about $500bn AI Initiative (Stargate) with the CEO and VC Tech Bros prancing around on the stage. In one day, the Chinese managed to show that the emperor has no clothes, has probably doomed openAI, and led to a staggering $600 BILLION dollar loss in market cap for nVidia. From where I sit, Stargate looks like it's dead in the water, and everyone from Elon Musk and Larry Ellison to Sam Altman are now looking at MAJOR losses in their portfolio that I don't think are coming back any time soon.

There is a certain amount of schadenfreude in all of this, but its bitter stuff, because I suspect that you're about to see the collapse of the tech sector stock market over the next few months as major investors and banks, already squeezed by overinvestment and anemic returns, are going to start laying off people left and right in order to free up enough money to keep their MacMansions from getting foreclosed.

In tech, we've been in a soft recession for a while now - here in Seattle, even before this debacle, Microsoft just announced another 6,000 layoffs, and other companies looked to be following suit. However, after today, I anticipate something I've been worried about for awhile, as margin calls hits investors in companies outside of tech that were nonetheless heavily vested in tech stocks. I've been more or less unemployed outside of writing a tech newsletter for a while now, and I think things are only going to get worse.

I'm not a financial person, just a tech analyst, but I would recommend that staying as liquid as possible right now is likely to be a real good idea, unless you have very deep pockets. The banks were selling off $3 Bn in X (nee Twitter) debt in the last few days, and I know that most of those same banks are also holding a lot of highly leveraged paper from other "HOT" tech bro pie in the sky investments, so contagion is a very real possibility.

November 19, 2024

Disillusion of the Union

I'm going to lay out some thoughts here that I suspect people may argue with. I'm not giving right-wing talking points, this has come from nearly fifty years of watching politics in this country, and while I hope I'm wrong, I don't think I am.

1. We are in a slow motion Civil War (that's about to heat up). If you've ever watch cell meiosis occur, you're seeing the same phenomenon taking place in the body politic. In the 1950s, the two major political parties were pretty balanced -- the Democrats were a little more pro-labor, the Republicans a little more pro-business, but there was enough overlap that both parties could support a left and right wing and a moderate center. Today, on the other hand, the parties are completely polarized. The house is divided, and it's beginning to crumble. People are now moving from or to states on the basis not of work or lifestyle but increasingly of politics, especially as it is becoming easier and easier to work remotely.

2. One consequence of this is that those states which are mostly urban are becoming more "progressive" where as those states with relatively few urban spots are becoming more regressive over time. This was very evident to me in this election, where a comparatively small minority of the population in rural areas ends up having a very disproportionate impact politically because land does vote via gerrymandering.

3. Trump was ... inevitable. What differentiates Trump from almost everyone else is that he does not abide by the rules. He is by definition a criminal, but he's also found that with enough money and intimidation, he can break things with impunity. He's also learned the lesson that all rich people learn if they want to stay rich - you never use your own money. However, Trump is also on his revenge tour. He is going to get his revenge on everyone who he believes has slighted him. In a way, this is probably for the best, because a more dispassionate person would figure out how to lock in power while seemingly satisfying the masses. Trump is going to go in as a wrecking ball, which is what his handlers want, but I think that his various advisors (most notably Bannon and Musk) are going to run afoul of him quickly before he can do all that much damage. This may be about the time that they 25/4 Trump, assuming he doesn't get taken out by a drone that mysteriously happens to penetrate presidential airspace.

4. If neither of these things happen, the next most likely will be that the country is going to rupture into several different regions, probably focused around the major municipalities - New York, Chicago, Atlanta, Houston, San Francisco and maybe Seattle and Denver. Oddly enough, I don't think it's going to go Red vs. Blue. Why? The problem we face right now is that we are reaching a stage where megapoli, rather than states, are driving political divisions. In Washington State, the top 5 counties account for 68% of the population, and this number is increasing (the state overall is growing, but the metropolitan counties are growing much faster.

Not surprisingly, the West Coast (specifically along the I5 Cooridor) is the home of the Resistance to Trump, along with the Acela line cities (Alexandria, VA to Boston, MA) and Chicago. They will increasingly not recognize the authority of Trump as president, and it is also increasingly likely that Trump will send troops to "pacify" these cities. Where will those troops come from? More than likely the Southeast and Texas. I wouldn't be surprised if they are also "unidentified" (thinking back to Portland) and may end up being a mix of military troops and ICE. At this point, I expect that the governors will call out their national guard units and mobilize police. At that point we are in an undeclared Civil War.

Trump has made it clear that he's going to start purging military ranks with his "review board". If he carries this out, then you will end up seeing O7 and above ranks having to choose between their oath to the constitution and their oath to Trump. Some will choose Trump, some will choose the Constitution with Trump as the duly elected president, some will retire and go home ... where I suspect they will be hired by the various state national guard units.

The question ultimately is going to come down to whether Trump can actually staff up the military, or if he's going to go the route of working with hired contractors (Blackwater, etc., being the most glaringly obvious). I suspect he'll do the latter - it fits in with his overall fear of and disrespective of the military.

This isn't going to be a set-piece war. I think once he goes down that path, the United States as we know it is dead.

Again, I hope I'm wrong. I didn't think it possible that Trump would get back in the White House, though, and I cannot see a scenario where in four years time he will peacefully leave.

November 8, 2024

Is it time to consider a looser union?

I've been thinking about this for a long time. What we have right now is not working - we go from election to election, careening between trying to be a responsible world leader and being an increasingly dangerous and unstable empire.

It's worth noting that Europe does not have a strong central leader, rather deliberately so. It has independent countries, though they tend to form regional blocs. Each bloc tends to establish internal policy, and yes, it goes from conservative to progressive and back, but overall these blocs are stable.

The US has states that act in sort of the same way. Some of those states, such as California, Texas, New York, and Florida, have economies that are as large as some of the largest countries elsewhere (California, for instance, has a higher GDP than India). Others are far smaller (North Dakota is about the same size as Serbia as an example). A nice visual that shows this:

https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5df75b994c1bf307fe492432/d6186eff-9b1a-42d4-b886-727df3db198c/Map+graphic+template+%28Presentation%29+%2810%29.jpg

One of the problems that we face in the US is that while the economies of each of these states is largely independent (they tend to act in regional blocs), social policies, foreign policy and cultural imperatives are increasingly being dictated from above. As the recent election showed, this can often mean that what is perfectly acceptable and even desired by one state or region (a female president of color, for instance), may be unacceptable by another state or region, and this consequently brings resentment, fear, and conflict between regions with different cultural boundaries. This can have disastrous consequences.

Perhaps it is time for the US to restructure - create four to six autonomous regional blocs, each of which handles its own internal AND foreign policy, maintain its own healthcare, welfare and taxation system, with the federal government then providing common shared services. Each region would have a regional center, ensuring that its member states have the support that they need. The federal structure would then exist primarily to deal with intercontinental issues, to establish common standards and to resolve disputes.

Again, to put this in perspective.When the US was first constituted under Articles of Confederation, this failed, in great part because at the time there was neither the population density nor the wealth necessary to support such a structure. This is why we moved to a federal system in the first place. However, today this is no longer true. Regional blocks (such as the West Coast). have larger populations than the United States did until about 1900.

This is one area where I tend to disagree with most Democrats. I don't think that the Southeast will ever be in agreement with the West Coast or the Northeast on most issues, nor do I think that Texas is suddenly going to go blue or California go red. They are just too culturally different. (I'm not really even sure that Texas and the Mountain States completely see eye to eye with the Southeast, for that matter).

There are several advantages to this - with the US as large as it is, it becomes challenging to create a one-size fits all healthcare system, especially when you have to deal with philosophical differences between fair and free economic theory. The same applies to retirement and basic living subsidies, and the role of religion in society. Moreover, it provides a level of contagion. As it is right now, the President is too powerful, and changing administrations at this level have world-wide ramifications. When you have a good leader and administrator, the country can move mountains, when bad, the same country can level them. By breaking up power, you may end up with different regions aligning with different combatants in a war, but it also means that there will be some support rather than all or nothing (it also cuts down on "adventuring&quot .

Furthermore, I suspect that this process is already underway. People are self-separating, moving out of areas that do not match their particular aspirations and into areas that more closely align. This means that the polarization that we have seen will only become more pronounced over time, not less. This becomes even more the case as the ability for people to work remotely climbs. Over time, this also becomes a referendum of its own, because as the population in a region rises and falls, so too will the economy. Right now, the overarching federal system protects states from their own follies, usually by the states that manage their economies well. In such a system, that safety net goes away.

How do we get here from there? Likely via a Constitutional Convention and from there, a plebiscite of each state and territory. The problem that we face is that we probably should have had such a convention regularly, say every 40 years. I was originally opposed to the idea myself, but given the current situation, I see it as preferable to the alternative, which is living in a totalitarian country ruled by a narcissistic conman.

November 6, 2024

OHIO going BLUE?!!!

Ohio vote tally
28.4% of expected vote

D
Kamala Harris
·
906,171 votes
53.3%
R
Donald Trump
·
783,447 votes
46.0%
L
Chase Oliver
·
6,201 votes
0.4%
Others
·
5,463 votes
0.3%

November 6, 2024

VA and NH tip into blue

I've been using Bing: https://www.bing.com/search?FORM=U504DF&PC=U504&q=election

November 3, 2024

There comes a time, in many entertainer's careers,

where they realize that nobody is coming to the club anymore to see them, no one is going to a movie starring them, they find themselves getting fewer and fewer engagements, until eventually they've had to sell everything they had at the height of their career and are facing ruin and bankruptcy. The smart ones are self-aware enough to bow out gracefully, to find that magic moment where they can go with their reputation intact, with fond memories by their fans. For others, the realization comes far too late. This is the fate of Trump.

For him the tipping point came in November 2020. Had he conceded the election, it's likely that he would have been considered a poor president by the historians, but still idolized by millions. That was the point he could have gone out on a high note, and his post-presidential career would likely have been filled with ample rewards.

However, he didn't. He kept the same schtick going, hoping to regain the crowds, the adulation, the power. Trump has always been a weak man, prey to his own vices, but the single biggest one of those was pride, in his case which metastesized as hubris. After he was defeated, he could not accept that he was no longer considered good enough to lead the country, that he deserved to lead the country, not having learned anything from the last four years.

We have long had a convention in this country, after a president is defeated, that he must meet with his successor in a collegial manner, for them to both clear the air after frequently bruising campaigns and to impart knowledge and wisdom gained from four years in one of the hardest jobs in the world. It's a good custom, because in any election, there can be only one winner, and we hope that the people that we elect our mature enough to recognize that.

It was obvious to me after Trump refused to meet with Biden after he lost that Trump was too immature to ever be president again (It was obvious long before that, but this moment I think defined Trump indelibly). It was also the moment that he could have walked away with his dignity, and likely moved onto the next phases of his life, older but wiser. But he couldn't move on. His hubris had become so dominant that it could not accept that he wasn't perfect. People who believe they are perfect are incapable of learning - they have evolved as far as they ever will, and they would only devolve from there.

For the last four years, we have watched the devolution of Donald J. Trump. We have watched as he became more thuggish, more demeaning, more abrasive and threatening. Gone was the apparent charm and good lucks, in its place was an increasingly decrepit old man who used every artifice possible to appear like he was ageless. No doubt the presidential portrait, tucked away in a spare storage area in the White House, has been becoming more cracked and festering, to the point where even it could not hide his moral degeneration and burst into greasy flames smelling vaguely of McDonald's fries and unchanged depends.

I don't know who will win on Tuesday, though my gut feeling is that Kamala Harris will become our first female president. However, what I can say about Trump is that while he will not go gently into that good night, he will, nonetheless, go.

October 26, 2024

Will RFK, Jr., Sink Trump?

I mailed my ballots here in Seattle last night, and noticed when we got to president that (1) Kamala Harris and Tim Walz were right there at the top (Yay!) but also that (2) RFK Jr. was on the ballot in Washington State. I saw elsewhere that he was frantically trying to get his name off the ballots elsewhere, but that he's being overruled by state supreme courts pretty much unanimously.

This got me to wondering - will RFK, Jr., sink Donald Trump? I think back to all of the Nicki Haley votes that she received AFTER she had dropped out and endorsed Trump. I don't think he's going to take many votes from Kamala Harris - the people who are likely to vote directly for Harris are not going to find RFK an attractive alternative, but there are a fair number of Republicans who cannot bring themselves to vote for a Democrat who may nonetheless not be able to stomach Trump, who they would otherwise pull the lever for holding their nose. I similarly can see independent voters doing the same thing.

He may not account for much - perhaps 2-3% in total, but that could make a huge difference between a tight race and blowout, especially in swing states.

Thoughts?