HALF-FULL REPORT 08/30/19
The World is Lining Up in Trump’s Direction
Leadership
Leftists, liberals, socialists, and communists pretty much follow the same leadership principle known as transformative theory. It is visible throughout society and is pushed as the only acceptable practice in academia and most public corporations.
The United States Air Force and Marine Corps practice Skill Based Leadership. Officers progress from Company Grade to Field Grade to General Grade officers in a process that is roughly based on technical proficiency, organizational proficiency, and conceptualization proficiency.
Some conservative organizations practice servant-based leadership. A form of altruism, the concept involves service to a greater good and leadership, as in directing people. Efforts are being made by people like Soros to replace this type of leadership with raw virtue signaling. True practitioners understand the difference.
There are other forms of leadership, for instance the Boy Scouts teach Trait-Based leadership via the Scout Oath and Law. Many religions also practice Trait-Based leadership.
Conservatives have been known to fight amongst ourselves because we utilize a palate of leadership styles. This costs us dearly.
President Trump uses Contingency leadership. It means that forward motion is contingent on finding the right person to lead, right now. The theory has the expectation that all roles are temporary, and it is more efficient to rotate a leader than expect an existing leader to adapt to changing circumstances. It prevents the Peter Principle from overtaking an organization.
Bureaucracies are the polar opposite of contingency led organizations. It is challenging to replace nonperformers. Sometimes impossible.
Much of this week’s news can be viewed through the eye of Contingency Theory.
TTP members are unique in that they have profound leadership experience across many domains.
Please contribute your leadership insights on this week’s forum. What leadership style best fits the nation today? Are we evolving a new type of conservative leadership? Should we?
G7 Summit
President Trump had a successful G7 economic summit. The Cold War-era organization was established to coordinate economic policy.
Before the meeting, Trump proposed purchasing Greenland from Denmark to improve American access to the Arctic and block both Chinese and Russian interests.
Mette Fredriksen, Prime Minister of Denmark, quickly rebuffed Trump. However, President Trump did not like her tone and canceled a scheduled meeting with Denmark while letting the world know that Denmark under contributes to NATO.
Whether this was planned or not, the event established Trump as irritated and not inclined to suffer Diplo-speak. This appears to have worked out well for the United States.
Just before the meeting Trump signed a $7 billion trade deal with Japan and encouraged their building an aircraft carrier to be populated with F-35 aircraft.
He also supported Macron of France opening diplomatic talks with Iran’s Rouhini.
What will come of it? Stay tuned. It is too early to tell.
Besides threating China via the Greenland proposal, Trump was able to get the G-7 to unanimously chastise China for intellectual property theft and predatory trade practices. This is a first, and China quickly announced its intention to return to the negotiating table.
Trump also made an overture to Putin, who was kicked off the economic forum after Russia invaded Crimea. The intent is to prevent the development of a stronger alliance between Russia and China.
As expected, John Brennan accused Trump of being a Russian agent, yada yada yada. Nobody listens to John Brennan anymore.
Hurricane’s a Coming
Hurricane Dorian is bearing down on Florida and possibly Georgia. It might become a category 4 or 5 storm over the sea but is expected to fall back to a category 1 storm after making landfall. It is a big storm at this time.
The U.S. Navy is under Condition Sortie Alpha at Mayport (Jacksonville). This means that the fleet is heading to sea to avoid the storm.
It was a rare treat to be overflown by Navy P-8A Poseidon aircraft earlier today as Navy Wing 11 (Jacksonville) relocated to the nearby Rickenbacker Air National Guard Base.
I did not have my mobile phone with me as the aircraft made an impressive sight. And this made me wonder, just what happened to all the UFO sightings now that everyone has a camera in their pocket?
The storm will miss Epstein Island and the rest of the Virgin Islands but might smack Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic.
Industrial plants in Florida and the Kennedy Space Center are hunkering down. Loose items are being secured, and storage tanks for fuels and chemicals are being filled to maximize their weight.
It is a common practice for industry to order a tank truck of gasoline and possible diesel fuel before the storm hits so that employees can collect 5 gallons each day to run generators and fuel their cars. That is IF they return to work after the storm departs. When fuel supplies get tight, this practice guarantees there will be no shortage of workers.
Speaking of NASA
Pluto is a planet again! The left is furious. NASA administrator Jim Bridenstine apparently sees no reason why NASA should fear the International Astronomical Union’s wrath after they downgraded Pluto in 2006.
The left fears the slippery slope. If Americans decide what is to be taught in our schools and how we will name astronomical bodies, what will be next? I say a good job, Mr. Bridenstine! This is reverse incrementalism.
And Those Amazon Fires?
It turns out that the Amazonian disaster is really just about average for the July and August dry season and most of the fires are on already-cleared land.
The end of the world will need to wait.
NASA also disputes the whole “Lungs of the Earth” bromide pushed by the New York Times. The Amazon and the rest of South America produce about six percent of the world’s oxygen. Not the twenty to fifty percent being thrown about by media outlets.
Space Command
China and Russia have been operating their versions of Space Command for a while. Their mission is the destruction of satellites and space assets with missiles, lasers and perhaps rail guns. The United States has operated a Space Command responsible for satellite uplinks and downlinks, but the new Space Command will address satellite survivability and rapid replacement.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0wfuA8CuBHI
One must ask why American warships near the South China Sea perform funny maneuvers during the middle of the night and collide with other vessels. Chinese GPS spoofing is a likely cause, and the new Space Command will be responsible for hardening space assets.
Election of 2020
Kirsten Gillibrand dropped out this week. She served as the junior Senator from New York from 2009 and was in the House before that. She performed poorly as she tried to grab some of that old Hillary Mojo.
Her departing pledge is to throw her support behind female candidates regardless of their biology and to raise $1 Million for female candidates everywhere. But she says that she does not see race or gender.
Democrat Seth Moulton also tapped out.
Republican challengers to Trump now include former Massachusetts Governor Bill Weld a Libertarian-Republican, former Illinois Congressman Joe Walsh, a TEA Party Republican, and maybe John Kasich, a Romney Republican.
Trump’s approval rating is now at 93% for Republicans. As long as the president is breathing, it is hard to imagine the nomination going to one of his challengers, and if catastrophe strikes, Mike Pence is popular and a known quantity.
Fox News
Trump warned Fox that they have moved too far left and signaled to his supporters that they should look for alternatives. If Fox loses conservatives, then all of cable news will be turned off in conservative households. This will not only destroy Fox but the rest of the cable news channels.
It is time for the Murdoch boys to pull their heads out of their rears and stop trying to become the new CNN.
While we are talking about has-beens in the news, there is this:
A Safir nuclear-capable missile exploded during preparations for launch in Iran. President Trump said that the United States had nothing to do with it and declassified this photo.
So if the Great Satan had nothing to do with it, then who? Might just be bad luck as the North Koreans also seem to have been having problems with similar missiles.
It sure upset Dan Rather, that old standard of integrity and all.
MSNBC’s Lawrence ODonnell is running scared and apologized on-air after reading a tweet from Eric Trump. It seems that NBC understands their liability for ODonnell’s false reporting about Russian oligarchs cosigning loans to Trump from Deutsch Bank.
Netflix
Trouble is brewing over at Netflix. With both Barak and Michelle on their Board of Directors, what could go wrong?
It seems that Dave Chappelle can go wrong, and liberals are talking about boycotts.
Chappelle is a vulgar comedian with a long history of satire and social commentary. He mocks different parts of society and used to have a strong following among hipsters.
Well now, they say he went too far with this 4-minute piece about Jusse Smollett. The left are starting to eat their young.
Caution: Strong language
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wZXoErL2124
Economy
Saudi Arabia announced the largest IPO in history. ARAMCO will go public in two stages on the Tokyo stock exchange in 2020 and 2021. Tokyo is friendly with Riyadh, and it looks like the Kingdom can use the cash.
The market is up again. Employment and economic activity numbers for July are in and look great. So where is the recession?
The dollar remains strong, although the Euro is slipping. It seems that the United States represents 55% of worldwide consumer demand while no other country exceeds 7.5%. The rest of the world needs access to American consumers, and their attitudes are starting to change as they realize this.
The yield curve is inverted some days and some days not. This means people are buying bonds. It does not mean that Americans are buying those bonds.
Even with the strong economic performance, the University of Michigan reports that consumer sentiment fell to 89.3% in August. That is a respectable number considering the multimedia, all-out information blitz trying to trash talk the economy into a recession.
This means that media credibility is not what it used to be.
She Ain’t What She Used to Be Either
Ruth Bader Ginsberg looks different.
Compare her photo taken in 2018 with the one taken three days ago. Is she having a reaction to chemo drugs? She hardly looks like herself. Her eyes have no spark.
Chinese Troops Enter Hong Kong
Protestors in Hong Kong continue to march in the streets. China is significantly increasing its military footprint under cover of garrison rotations. There is no rotation. New military units are entering, none are leaving.
China is advising consumers to spend, spend, and spend some more to maintain economic stability. Meanwhile, Trump started calling the county “Fentanyl China.”
If you are the CEO of a major American company, would you want your brand associated with the 60,000 yearly American deaths from fentanyl overdoses?
Corporate CFOs might like Chinese low production costs, but marketing directors might be feeling a bit squeamish right now.
After all, Proctor & Gamble took an $8 billion write off after insulting conservative men with their SJW Gillette products advertisements.
Trump is doing what no other Republican has done. He is using market pressure against his enemies. You might think that the free-market party would have understood marketing, but then Romney-Kasich-Bush and all.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dN8SoArb2rk
James Comey, Off the Hook?
William Barr scolded James Comey with his IG report this week but decided not to prosecute Comey for turning classified material over to the New York Times. There was a technicality in that the content had not yet been classified by Comey and his pals.
The Great Awakening is the process of the average American realizing that the country has two justice systems. One for insiders and one for everyone else.
What jury will ever take an FBI agent at his word again? This is a credibility disaster for the Feds as the public realizes that the system protects the elites to the bitter end.
It also means that the FBI is now free to pursue personal vendettas. This too is a catastrophe.
All in all, a good week for the good guys.
Mike Ryan is a consultant to the minerals, primary metals, fibers, and Chemicals industries.