Iraqi Oil... Smash or Pass ?

[RainbowUnicorn]

Trump criticizes US for not taking Iraq oil

Quote: "maybe we'll have another chance,"

http://edition.cnn.com/2017/01/26/politi...-isis-iraq

Irak war III ?



...thoughts ?

[Zinjanthropos]

Looks like Trump's the type of guy who once he starts something, finishes it. Didn't Churchill at the end of WWII want to carry on and take care of the Russians? Hindsight is always perfect. 

I wonder if future wars will be fought over green/renewable energy sources.

[RainbowUnicorn]

Looks like Trump's the type of guy who once he starts something, finishes it. Didn't Churchill at the end of WWII want to carry on and take care of the Russians? Hindsight is always perfect. 

I wonder if future wars will be fought over green/renewable energy sources.

i recall reading something about such a comment attributed to Churchill regarding Russia, however it is difficult to know if he said it or someone wanted to revise group think for added support of their own mascinations.

Renewables seems to make sense, but human history is not one for following the most sensible path.
The distrubution of income is going to be the big thing standing in the way of renewables.
millionaires & billionaires will be fine regardles of outcome so the front line economics of the working class masses is what will sway evolutions & revolutions as it always has.


China is set to be the global leader on renewables so it seems, with their solar power production factories putting out affordable solar panels.
a global race to renewables would be nicer than a global fight to control food & oil.

[C C]

Trump criticizes US for not taking Iraq oil [...] Quote: "maybe we'll have another chance," http://edition.cnn.com/2017/01/26/politi...-isis-iraq

Irak war III ?...thoughts ?

Defense Secretary has downplayed it (below). Trump likes to generate public disorientation with the inconsistent tone of his zigzag comments ("keeping a lot of balls in the air"), because he believes the confusion benefits him when it comes to deal-making. One wonders how long the world is going to keep reacting to this continuous "troll-baiting" from the POTUS before they finally either catch on or become exhausted. If the former campaign itself and the iterative reactions of SJWs to (pseudo)Alt-Right posters on political boards are any indication, then there's at least an uninterrupted stream of 4 more years of this transpiring in the chatter-sphere. (Barring betting house odds coming to roost).

Mattis on Trump comments: No US plan to seize Iraqi oil
https://www.aol.com/article/news/2017/02.../21717610/

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Donald Trump's core business philosophy from his bestselling 1987 book 'The Art of the Deal'
http://www.businessinsider.com/donald-tr...eal-2015-6

EXCERPTS: [...] Once you've made a deal, the only way it's going to be worth anything is to then attract customers, he says. Similarly, creating a public persona helps you get the most out of your next deals.

Trump says that he's always embraced a healthy dose of sensationalism and controversy to pique the media's interest.

"I play to people's fantasies," he writes. "People may not always think big themselves, but they can still get very excited by those who do. That's why a little hyperbole never hurts. People want to believe that something is the biggest and the greatest and the most spectacular."

[...]

"I never get too attached to one deal or one approach," Trump writes. "For starters, I keep a lot of balls in the air, because most deals fall out, no matter how promising they seem at first. In addition, once I've made a deal, I always come up with at least a half dozen approaches to making it work, because anything can happen, even to the best-laid plans."

[...]

"I always go into the deal anticipating the worst," he writes. "If you plan for the worst - if you can live with the worst - the good will always take care of itself."

[...]

Trump says that he likes to rely on his own research rather than the work of consultants, statisticians, or critics. He says that he's made it a habit to collect himself as many opinions as possible about a potential real estate deal to see how it will affect the area and who it will be catering to.

[...]

The only way you're going to make the deal you want, he says, is if you're coming from a position of strength and can convince the other side that you have something they need.

Trump says he's not afraid to blur reality to utilize leverage. "When the board of Holiday Inn was considering whether to enter into a partnership with me in Atlantic City, they were attracted to my site because they believed my construction was farther along than that of any other potential partner."

"In reality," he writes, "I wasn't that far along, but I did everything I could, short of going to work at the site myself, to assure them that my casino was practically finished. My leverage came from confirming an impression they were already predisposed to believe."

[...]

Deliver the goods. "You can't con people, at least not for long," Trump writes. "You can create excitement, you can do wonderful promotion and get all kinds of press, and you can throw in a little hyperbole. But if you can't deliver the goods, people will eventually catch on."

[...]

Fight back. Trump says that he prefers to be cooperative and positive, but that sometimes it's necessary to be confrontational when the other side is treating him unfairly or trying to take advantage of him.

"The risk is that you'll make a bad situation worse, and I certainly don't recommend this approach to everyone," he writes. "But my experience is that if you're fighting for something you believe in - even if it means alienating some people along the way - things usually work out for the best in the end."

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Zero-sum Trump: What you learn from reading 12 of Donald Trump's books
http://www.vox.com/a/donald-trump-books

EXCERPT: For Donald Trump, calling someone a loser is not merely an insult, and calling someone a winner is not merely a compliment. The division of the world into those who win and those who lose is of paramount philosophical importance to him, the clearest reflection of his deep, abiding faith that the world is a zero-sum game and you can only gain if someone else is failing.

[...] Once you start viewing Trump as a zero-sum thinker, you start to see signs of it everywhere. In his classic The Art of the Deal, he seems almost hesitant about imparting business tips, as the presence of more talented dealmakers would inevitably leave him worse off. "As for those among you who do have the genes, who do have the instincts, and who could be highly successful, well, I still hope you won't follow my advice," he cautions. "Because that would just make it a much tougher world for me."

In some areas of business, this is a basically nonsensical statement. While Apple and Microsoft clearly sometimes gained at each other’s expense, the fact of the matter is that neither would be remotely as big, and neither’s founders would be remotely as wealthy, if the other hadn’t existed.

But Trump did not come up in the computer industry, or in any other industry that rewards entrepreneurs for growing markets and innovating for consumer benefit. He came up in Manhattan real estate. In Manhattan real estate, wealth is not created by offering new products that make consumers’ lives better. There is only so much land, and strict building regulations and permitting mean the buildings on that land can only be so tall. You make money through working around those regulations and being the one to get the rights to build on a valuable parcel, while other people don’t.

Manhattan real estate is a zero-sum game.

Precisely, it’s an area of business characterized by what economists call "rent-seeking." A "rent," in economic terms, is income received not because you’re creating something of value but because you control something that’s scarce and valuable due to policy decisions. The classical example is, well, literal rent. Money you receive because you own a parcel of land doesn’t come to you because you’re producing a valuable good and are trading it to someone who needs it more than you do; it comes because the current system of property rights gives you a right to charge people money to use that swath of earth.

As a landlord, Donald Trump has made his living through maximizing rents, both the literal and economic kinds. He does not create wealth, but takes it from others through political lobbying and regulatory jockeying. And he has taken it upon himself not just to make money from real estate but to tell the world that his experience in real estate shows he knows how the economy really works.

The result, as Adam Davidson has astutely noted, is that Trump’s "whole worldview is based on a rent-seeking vision of the economy, in which there’s a fixed amount of wealth that can only be redistributed, never grow. It is a world­view that makes perfect sense for the son of a New York real estate tycoon who grew up to be one, too."

Trump, the author, lays out a vision of the world based on his own limited and blinkered experience of the business world, one that mistakes the absolute worst, most dysfunctional parts of the American economy for the way the entire world works.

[...]

[Trump] always believed in the fundamental zero-sum nature of the world. Whether he’s discussing real estate in New York, or his ’00s reality TV career, or his views on immigration and trade, he consistently views life as a succession of deals. Those deals are best thought of as fights over who gets what share of a fixed pot of resources. The idea of collaborating for mutual benefit rarely arises. Life is dealmaking, and dealmaking is about crushing your enemies.

"You hear lots of people say that a great deal is when both sides win," he writes in Think Big and Kick Ass, co-authored with Bill Zanker of the Learning Annex. "That is a bunch of crap. In a great deal you win — not the other side. You crush the opponent and come away with something better for yourself." To "crush the other side and take the benefits," he declares, is "better than sex — and I love sex."

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The Ingenious Marketing Strategies Behind Trump's Success
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/arc...ss/508835/

EXCERPT: In May of 2016 [...Jerry] Cave argued that “by taking [Pat] Buchanan’s positions, blending them with [Howard] Stern’s tactics, and adding in his own talent, Trump has managed to produce a success that is all his own.”

I often thought of Cave in the months that followed, and not just because we maintained a regular correspondence, in which he endeavored to convince me that Trump’s election was inevitable. Cave had been a news-radio executive, an advertising manager, and a magazine publisher, and is now a media consultant. He approved of Trump’s message, and enthusiastically supported his campaign. But more than that, he drew on his own decades in media and marketing to explain why he thought Trump would be more successful than polls or pundits were predicting.

I promised that I’d call him up when the election was over, whatever its result, to talk through what he’d observed. And so we spoke last week; our conversation has been edited for clarity and length....

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It’s not chaos. It’s Trump’s strategy.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/...story.html

EXCERPT: Trump often provokes a fresh, whiplash-inducing controversy that eclipses the current one, triggering a new round of free media coverage that cements his place at the forefront of the news cycle.

How Trump’s ‘disarray’ may be merely strategy
http://m.washingtontimes.com/news/2017/f...-strategy/

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Political Positions of Donald Trump