IS TRUMP INSANE ENOUGH TO BLOW UP THE WORLD TRADE ORGANIZATION?

The World Trade Organization was created in 1995 with the primary purpose of regulating international trade, ensuring that trade between its 164 member nations flows, in its own words, “as smoothly, predictably, and freely as possible.” Given that these words are in direct opposition to his ethos as a human being—not to mention the fact that the U.S. entered the organization before he was in office—you could probably have guessed that Donald Trump hates the W.T.O. with every fiber of his papaya-colored soul. On the campaign trail he called the organization “a disaster” and, as with NAFTA, the Trans-Pacific Partnership, and the Iran deal, threatened to pull out of it post haste. And while he hasn’t made any moves to do so during his first year and a half in office, having more urgent fish to fry such as separating toddlers from their families, passing a giant corporate tax cut, and fighting with kneeling football players on Twitter, a terrifying new report suggests he’s finally ready to scratch that itch.

According to Axios, Trump has told top White House officials that he wants out of the governing body, having “[threatened to withdraw] 100 times.” A source who has discussed the subject with the president, and who knows such a move would “totally [screw] us as a country,” says that Trump has frequently told advisers, “We always get fucked by them [the W.T.O.] I don’t know why we’re in it. The W.T.O. is designed by the rest of the world to screw the United States.” While some aides have attempted to hold the president’s hand like the small child he is and explain to him that, in fact, the U.S. has done very well with the W.T.O., the arguments have been lost on him. (He apparently has not considered the 2018 “Economic Report of the President,” signed by him, that states: “[T]he United States has won 85.7 percent of the cases it has initiated before the W.T.O. since 1995, compared with a global average of 84.4 percent. In contrast, China’s success rate is just 66.7 percent.”)

Perhaps even more disturbing, considering the catastrophic global fallout that would result from the U.S. leaving the W.T.O., Trump’s economic advisers seem to be treating the president like he’s a thoughtful, rational human being rather than a capricious, unpredictable carnival barker:

[The] advisers do push back in the moment when he raises the idea of withdrawal. But they’ve never put in place a policy process to take the idea seriously, according to four sources with direct knowledge of his private comments. That dismissive attitude in the face of Trump’s insistence could ultimately prove to be a mistake—as history has shown with other policy ideas of which aides do not approve.

Take this one out the door @ https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2018/06/trump-world-trade-organization

Israel loves to play the victim

 Really?

What was this?

Israeli / Saudi Arabia Tactical Nuclear Strike on Yemen 2 stage dual warhead ! Bunker Buster Weapon ! A nuclear bunker buster, also known as an Deep Earth-Penetrating Weapon (EPW) First blast is the first stage blasting the surface layer and second blast (a few second later is the Main Charge detonating deep under the ground. This is not the Big ass Nukes of yesteryear. !

Care to read the rest?

http://www.veteranstoday.com/2015/09/...

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Trade War Basics

 In the end what you will witness is a "redistribution of wealth and spending". The US as the top world superpower days are over and you are witnessing the downward spiral.
I don't like or dislike it, it's the nature of the beast, no one, no group, no product or service remains the best forever, handle it.

My S-10 revisited

 I only received 3 emails on my truck and this post should answer all the questions.

This truck has every trick in the book, brand new carb, brand new nitros with 10pd bottle, relocated oil filter, fuel cooler, 12" rear - 3:83's, brand new Hoosiers, almost new exhaust with crossover, line lock, MSD, Too much to even add here.

At present I'm asking $12,000 but that's about to go up as I'm having more work done as far as the torque converter and possibly another transmission.
*I also have 2 videos with sound to share, will make a couple more at the track.

The price is firm. *******************GUARENTEED 9 SECOND TRUCK

*I went and took pictures of the suspension to answer 2 emails and as you can clearly see, you couldn't build the suspension and exhaust for under 10K unless you have your own machine shop.

Cold start.

Flashing 7

 Fuel cooler.

Laddered frame.

 Narrowed 12" w/ 3:83's

 Pro drive shaft loop.

 Brand new Hoosier 33x18" 50L - 15's

 Track required kill switch.

Is America Nearing a Second Civil War?

While some bemoan Punch and Judy politics the real issue tearing apart the country aren’t the stark ideological differences between Democrats and Republicans, conservatives and liberals, but rather the divide between those who want enforcement of federal immigration law and those who defy and obstruct the enforcers. 

This is an issue — and a debate — that has been percolating for years, though it arguably only came into full focus with President Donald J. Trump’s signature campaign promise to “build the wall.” In time, building a wall along the border of the United States and Mexico became a euphemism for enforcement of federal immigration law, including a crackdown on so-called sanctuary cities. 

As with much in this debate, sanctuary cities are nothing new.

The usual left-wing bastions became safe spaces for illegal immigrants years ago. However, cities and counties that prohibit local police from some or all cooperation with federal authorities charged with enforcing immigration laws gained new infamy after 32-year-old Kate Steinle was murdered along San Francisco’s famed Embarcadero waterfront by Jose Ines Garcia Zarat, a Mexican illegal immigrant who had been deported five times from the United States and had seven felony convictions to his name.

Just as Arizona tried to enforce federal immigration law during the presidency of Barack Obama, California has gone in the opposite direction and become a sanctuary state.

At stake isn’t just the potential loss of federal money, which in the case of California, the most populous state, is significant. California, where reportedly 10 percent of the workforce is in the United States illegally, didn’t just increase the stakes. It poured fuel on the fire with its open defiance of the feds.

As a result, a dangerous and divisive atmosphere not seen since the Civil War is engulfing America.

Then as now, the differences between the two sides are seemingly irreconcilable. And ironically enough, the battle lines are the same with Democrats once again taking what amounts to the secessionist position.

In Oakland, San Francisco’s neighbor across the bay, the Democrat mayor, Libby Schaaf, used the full weight of city hall to warn her constituents about impending raids a day before U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement made 150 arrests. 

Meanwhile, California Attorney General Xavier Becerra threatened state prosecution of businesses that disclose the legal status of their workers to federal authorities. This despite the fact that Becerra, a Democrat, swore an oath to “support and defend” and “bear true faith and allegiance” to the U.S. Constitution.

Under these circumstances it isn’t far-fetched to imagine a situation in which a sheriff or police chief, encouraged by the political leaders of a sanctuary city or state, physically hinders the feds from carrying out a raid in their locale.

Not only would this escalate the issue, but also it could turn what has been a heated political debate into civil unrest and even, dare I say, insurrection.

California’s deliberate undermining of the legitimate and lawful exercise of the federal government’s authority is beyond unconstitutional. It presents a danger for the Union.

Dennis Lennox is a political commentator and public affairs consultant. Follow @dennislennox on Twitter.

More than just my bank

 I won't go into details yet Fidelity Investments offers so many "free" options with free advice that I've been with them 7 years and will never go to another bank in this lifetime.

 See for yourself > https://www.fidelity.com/what-we-offer/overview

HOW ISRAEL COULD TAKE THE FIGHT DIRECTLY TO IRAN

The conflagration this past weekend between Israeli and Iranian forces is being billed as a new stage in the longstanding, albeit to date largely covert, war between the two adversaries. For the first time, Iranian troops perpetrated a direct attack on Israel, initially by sending a drone across the border from Syria and then by firing the anti-aircraft missile that downed an IDF jet which had reentered Israeli airspace after conducting a retaliatory mission.

The events were significant both because of the success in downing the Israeli warplane, the first such occurrence in decades, but also because it evidences Iran’s growing foothold in the Syrian theater, a development that Jerusalem vehemently opposes and has vowed to prevent at all costs. Overall, Iran’s actions suggest that it feels sufficiently emboldened to use its own forces to harm the Jewish state.

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The incident constitutes a strategic shift, according to Lt.-Col. (ret.) Yiftah Shapir, a career officer in the Israel Air Force and the former head of the Military Balance Project at Israel’s Institute for National Security Studies, “as it marks the first occasion that the Iranians openly engaged Israel, whereas previously this was done via its proxies. It may be,” he qualified, “that the Iranians misjudged the [intensity of the] Israeli response and that the status quo will be restored for a period of time.”

By contrast, Saturday’s flare-up was not the first time that Israel directly struck Iranian assets. In December, the IDF reportedly destroyed a military facility being built by Tehran in al-Kiswah, just south of Damascus. Notably, in 2015, Israeli strikes killed at least six Iranian troops in the Syrian Golan Heights, including a general in the Revolutionary Guard Corps. Also targeted was Jihad Mughniyeh, son of the notorious former Hezbollah operations chief, Imad Mughniyeh, who was himself killed in an Israeli-attributed 2008 car bombing in Syria.

Furthermore, the Mossad has been implicated in the assassination of multiple nuclear scientists on Iranian soil, not to mention the deployment of the Stuxnet cyberweapon, a computer worm developed in conjunction with Washington that wreaked havoc on Iranian nuclear installations even after being discovered in 2010.

So whereas the latest confrontation along the northern border was in some ways exceptional, it does not inevitably entail a long-term escalation or that the conflict be brought out into the open, although these are both distinct possibilities.

In fact, while the political and military echelons have made clear that Israel is not seeking an escalation, its so-called “red lines” – namely, the transfer of advanced weaponry to Hezbollah in Lebanon, and Iran’s military entrenchment in Syria – continue to be violated; this, despite the IDF having conducted well over 100 cross-border strikes to protect its interests over the past 18 months. Additionally, Iran has started construction on a subterranean facility in Lebanon to manufacture long-range precision missiles that could allow Hezbollah to target, with great accuracy, critical Israeli infrastructure in a future war.

Taken together, these developments raise the question of whether Israel’s deterrence vis-a-vis Tehran and its Lebanese proxy may be weakening, which would necessitate modifying its military strategy.

“ISRAEL’S [decision-making process] now depends largely on what the Iranians and Hezbollah do moving forward,” Brig.-Gen. (res.) Nitzan Nuriel, former director of Israel’s CounterTerrorism Bureau, told The Media Line. “Throughout the years Israel has taken action all over [the region] to make sure that its interests are met. Israel needs to use all the tools available to it, including through its allies.”

While one incident is unlikely to cause a dramatic change in Jerusalem’s calculus, it is possible that the IDF could eventually adopt a page out of Tehran’s playbook by taking the fight directly to the Iranian heartland.

To this end, most experts agree that a full-scale military operation targeting Iran’s atomic facilities – the likes of which Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu reportedly advocated for in 2012, but which was shelved due to opposition from the defense establishment and the Obama administration – is currently off the table. While the debate previously centered on the possibility of setting back Iran’s nuclear program would justify the risks in such an operation, today the political climate has rendered the discussion moot.

The signing of the Iran nuclear deal in 2015 effectively ended the possibility for such a mission, the ramifications considered untenable. On the one hand, with the US still committed to the agreement – in addition to Russia, China and European nations – the political fallout from any major military foray into Iran would dwarf the backlash in the wake of the destruction of the Osirak nuclear reactor in Iraq in 1982 and the atomic facility in Deir ez-Zor in Syria in 2007. 

On the other hand, since the accord was forged Tehran has deepened its penetration into Lebanon, Syria and the Gaza Strip, all but ensuring that the targeting by Israel of its atomic infrastructure would ignite a war on all three fronts.

Moreover, as US President Donald Trump mulls withdrawing altogether from the deal, any Israeli action targeting Iran’s nuclear program – military or otherwise – could be self-defeating as it could hinder the American leader’s efforts to either reimpose “crippling” sanctions on the Islamic Republic or at the very least strengthen the atomic agreement by addressing, perhaps in a follow-up pact, Tehran’s ballistic missile program and regional adventurism.

Nevertheless, Israel has non-military options according to former Mossad chief Danny Yatom. “Israel should consider all possibilities, including targeting Iran directly, but as part of a grand strategy. I would not exclude the potential that Israel will also use proxies,” he contended to The Media Line.

“This could include mobilizing the People’s Mujahedin of Iran [MEK], for example, which may have carried out the killing of Iranian nuclear scientists on Israel’s behalf. Jerusalem has allegedly provided funding, training and possibly arms to the exiled anti-regime group.  

The Paris-based MEK maintains a presence in Iraq and covertly in Iran, from where it has been accused of fomenting civil unrest, including the recent week-long nationwide protests. Recently delisted by the US as a terrorist group, the group also purportedly has links to Saudi Arabia and therefore could act as an intermediary between the Jewish state and Riyadh to facilitate the coordination of their positions. The Iranian dissident organization also monitors Tehran’s nuclear program (in fact it was the first non-state actor to reveal it) and might therefore serve as an additional intelligence source for Israel moving forward.

Full article @ https://www.jpost.com/Arab-Israeli-Conflict/How-Israel-could-take-the-fight-directly-to-Iran-542785

How Pharma Companies Game the System to Keep Drugs Expensive

I help the University of Utah hospital system manage its drug budgets and medication use policies, and in 2015 I got sticker shock. Our annual inpatient pharmacy cost for a single drug skyrocketed from $300,000 to $1.9 million. That’s because the drug maker Valeant suddenly increased the price of isoproterenol from $440 to roughly $2,700 a dose.

Isoproterenol is a heart drug. It helps with heart attacks and shock and works to keep up a patient’s blood pressure. With the sudden price increase, we were forced to remove isoproterenol from our 100 emergency crash carts. Instead, we stocked our pharmacy backup boxes, located on each floor of our hospitals, to have the vital drug on hand if needed. We had to minimize costs without impacting patient care.

This type of arbitrary and unpredictable inflation is not sustainable. And it’s not the way things are supposed to work in the United States. Isoproterenol is a drug that is no longer protected by a patent. Theoretically, any drug company should be able to make a generic version and sell it at a competitive cost. We should have had other options to buy a competitors’ copy for $440 or less. But that’s not happening like it should. The promise of generic medications is getting further from reality each day. As the U.S. Senate considers President Donald Trump’s choice to head the Food and Drug Administration, now is the time refocus efforts on generic drugs.

How generics are supposed to work

The 1984 Drug Price Competition and Patent Term Restoration Act gave pharmaceutical companies exclusive protections for innovating a new drug. If they brought a new therapy to life, they enjoyed patent protection to effectively monopolize the market. That was the payoff for shouldering the high risk and high costs of developing new drugs.

But once the patent and the exclusive hold on the market expires, the legislation encouraged competition to benefit consumers. Any drug company would be able to manufacture non-brand name versions of the very same drug, so-called “generics.” And for a while, the system worked well.

Not anymore. The system intended to reward drug companies for their innovations, but eventually protect consumers, is systematically being broken. Drug companies are thwarting competition through a number of tactics, and the result is high prices, little to no competition, and drug quality problems.

The ways companies stop generics

One of the ways branded drug manufacturers prevent competition is simple: cash. In so-called “pay for delay” agreements, a brand drug company simply pays a generic company not to launch a version of a drug. The Federal Trade Commission estimates these pacts cost U.S. consumers and taxpayers $3.5 billion in higher drug costs each year.

“Citizen petitions” offer drug companies another way to delay generics from being approved. These ask the Food and Drug Administration to delay action on a pending generic drug application. By law, the FDA is required to prioritize these petitions. However, the citizens filing concerns are not individuals, they’re corporations. The FDA recently said branded drug manufacturers submitted 92% of all citizen petitions. Many of these petitions are filed near the date of patent expiration, effectively limiting potential competition for another 150 days.

“Authorized generics” are another tactic to limit competition. These aren’t really generic products at all; they are the same product sold under a generic name by the company that sells the branded drug. Why? By law, the first generic company to market a drug gets an exclusivity period of 180 days. During this time, no other companies can market a generic product. But the company with the expiring patent is not barred from launching an “authorized generic.” By selling a drug they’re already making under a different name, pharmaceutical firms are effectively extending their monopoly for another six months.

Another way pharmaceutical firms are thwarting generics is by restricting access to samples for testing. Generic drug makers need to be able to purchase a sample of a brand-name product to conduct bioequivalence testing. That’s because they have to prove they can make a bioequivalent product following the current good manufacturing practices (CGMP) standard. These manufacturers don’t need to conduct clinical trials like the original drug company did.

But the original drug developer often declines to sell drug samples to generics manufacturers by citing “FDA requirements,” by which they mean the agency’s Risk Evaluation and Mitigation Strategies program. The idea behind this program is a good one: give access to patients who will benefit from these personalized medicines, and bar access for patients who won’t benefit and could be seriously harmed. However, brand drug makers are citing these requirements for the sole purpose of keeping generics from coming to market.

Problems with generic drug makers

Although makers of a branded drug are using a variety of tactics to create barriers to healthy competition, generic drug companies are often not helping their own case. In 2015, there were 267 recalls of generic drug products—more than one every other day. These recalls are for quality issues such as products not dissolving properly, becoming contaminated, or even being outright counterfeits.

A few high-profile recalls have shaken the belief that generic drugs are truly the same. In 2014, the FDA withdrew approval of Budeprion XL 300 — Teva’s generic version of GlaxoSmithKline’s Wellbutrin XL. Testing showed the drug did not properly release its key ingredient, substantiating consumers’ claims that the generic was not equivalent. In addition, concerns about contaminated generic Lipitor caused the FDA to launch a $20 million initiative to test generic products to ensure they are truly therapeutically equivalent.

In some cases, patent law also collides with the FDA’s manufacturing rules. For example, the Novartis patent for Diovan expired in 2012. Ranbaxy received exclusivity for 180 days for the first generic product. However, due to poor quality manufacturing, Ranbaxy couldn’t obtain final FDA approval for its generic version. The FDA banned shipments of Ranbaxy products to the United States. Ranbaxy ended up paying a $500 million fine, the largest penalty paid by a generic firm for violations.

Due to these protracted problems with the company that had won exclusivity, a generic product did not become available until 2014. The two-year delay cost Medicare and Medicaid at least $900 million. Ranbaxy’s poor-quality manufacturing also delayed other key generic products like Valcyte and Nexium. Ironically, it was Mylan—involved in its own drug pricing scandal over its EpiPen allergy-reaction injector—that filed the first lawsuit to have the FDA strip Ranbaxy of its exclusivity. Mylan made multiple attempts to produce generic products but was overruled in the courts.

Ways to Fix the System

Pharmaceutical firms are currently using a set of tactics to make their temporary monopolies semi-permanent. Eliminating these tactics will not be easy. Still, doing so will fulfill the deal that policy makers offered to drug makers and consumers: a temporary monopoly on sales to help pay for drug development.

First, restrictive distribution programs need to be stopped. Generic companies must also be allowed to purchase samples of these medications to conduct bioequivalence studies. (One measure to close these loopholes already has bipartisan support.) Next, pay-for-delay agreements should be eliminated as well as a corporation’s ability to issue citizen petitions with the intent of delaying generic competition.

Encouraging and enforcing high-quality standards for medications must also be an industry imperative. To create transparency around drug quality, the FDA has proposed a system of letter grades for manufacturers. In an economic study, one official notes that lack of transparency “may have produced a market situation in which quality problems have become sufficiently common and severe to result in drug shortages.”

Another way to achieve greater transparency in medication quality is to change the product labeling laws. Labels should disclose the medication’s manufacturer. Currently, hospitals and pharmacies don’t always know which company actually made the product. This makes it difficult to base purchase decisions on quality.

Generic medications can provide great benefits for patients and health systems when there is adequate competition and quality. But their promise is unfulfilled, and it’s costing consumers. By eliminating restrictive distribution schemes, pay-for-delay, and citizen petitions as well as providing more transparency around quality, hospitals, clinicians, lawmakers, and the new leaders at the FDA have a clear opportunity. They can start to reverse rising health care costs and ensure quality medications are accessible to the American people.

Critics are dismissing the Trump-Kim summit as fake diplomacy

Twenty-four hours on from the conclusion of the Singapore summit, much of the commentary on the meeting and the agreement signed between Donald Trump and Kim Jong-un has had a decidedly dismissive tone. Robert Kelly, an expert on inter-Korean relations at Pusan National University, described it as “even thinner than most sceptics anticipated”.

The critics undoubtedly have a point, as the bilateral agreement contains little but vague promises and aspirations. Most importantly, we are no further forward in terms of the key issue of denuclearisation. Kim’s commitment to that goal as set out in the document is just as nebulous as it was before the summit, with no movement having been made towards tying him down to specifics.

Nevertheless, before dismissing the summit entirely, we ought to reflect on where we are now in comparison to where we were a year ago, when Trump was calling Kim Jong-un “little rocket man” and threatening to rain “fire and fury” down on him. Today the fear of nuclear war that existed at that point has largely dissipated and for that we ought to be thankful (though President Moon Jae-in of South Korea deserves as much or more credit for that development than either of the two leaders who met in Singapore).

Moreover, despite the lack of concrete progress at the Trump-Kim meeting, there remain reasons to be optimistic about the future of the negotiations, the most important being that both leaders appear to want to reach an agreement, albeit for rather different reasons.

For his part, Kim Jong-un appears to have decided that now is the moment to attempt to normalise North Korea’s relations with the rest of the world. Having achieved the objective of making North Korea a nuclear weapons state, he is seeking to parlay that into a series of concessions from the international community – diplomatic recognition, security guarantees, the lifting of sanctions – that will both stabilise his regime and allow it to enter into international relations as a “normal” state.

For his part, Trump seems to be fixated on getting a deal primarily for the sake of getting a deal. Having told the American people repeatedly that he is the greatest dealmaker who ever lived he is desperate to prove it to them and to the rest of the world. His desire to conclude a deal is evident in the way that he has made all the running since Kim made the original opening move. From that point onwards Trump has been the one offering up concessions, from agreeing to talk to the North Koreans in the first place – thus conferring legitimacy on a regime Washington has shunned for more than 60 years – to pledging to end joint US-South Korean military exercises yesterday. Meanwhile, Kim has made only vague promises of denuclearisation in return.

A further reason to believe that an agreement is possible is that Trump might just be able to sell a deal with North Korea to the American people. If Barack Obama had made the concessions Trump has so far offered, the Republican right would have been calling for his impeachment, but as yet Trump’s actions have produced barely a peep of protest. As with Richard Nixon and the normalisation of diplomatic relations with China, Trump’s position as a perceived hardliner and his influence over the Republican voting base may make it possible for him to cut a deal with North Korea that would not otherwise be possible.

Clearly, there is much that can still go wrong, and only a fool would feel confident that we are now on the run-in to a historic breakthrough in US-North Korean relations, especially given the capriciousness of the two leaders involved.

Nevertheless, those making generally downbeat assessments of yesterday’s meeting may yet prove to be overly pessimistic.

Steven Hurst is a reader in politics at Manchester Metropolitan University