February 28, 2019

"President Trump and Kim Jong-un, North Korea’s leader, abruptly ended their second summit meeting on Thursday after talks collapsed with the two leaders failing to agree on any steps..."

"... toward nuclear disarmament or measures to ease tensions on the Korean Peninsula. 'Sometimes you have to walk,' Mr. Trump said at an afternoon news conference in Hanoi, the capital of Vietnam. He said Mr. Kim had offered to dismantle the North’s most important nuclear facility if the United States lifted the harsh sanctions imposed on his nation — but would not commit to do the same for other elements of its weapons program. That, Mr. Trump said, was a dealbreaker. 'It was about the sanctions,' Mr. Trump said. 'Basically they wanted the sanctions lifted in their entirety, but we couldn’t do that.' The premature end to the negotiations leaves the unusual rapprochement between the United States and North Korea that has unfolded for most of a year at a deadlock.... It also represents a major setback at a difficult political moment for Mr. Trump, who has long presented himself as a tough negotiator capable of bringing adversaries into a deal and had made North Korea the signature diplomatic initiative of his presidency."

Writes Edward Wong in the NYT.

A Trumpist would say this is what tough negotiation looks like. Looking unsuccessful is what makes it tough.

I'll just say what I regard as a Trumpism: We'll see what happens.

219 comments:

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Big Mike said...

@Achilles, you nailed it. @Inga, if you don’t recognize yourself then you need to stop fooling yourself — as Richard Feynman put it, once you set out to fool yourself, you fooling the easiest person you can ever set out to fool.’

Gk1 said...

Does anyone remember how Bill Richardson of the Clinton tribe was supposed to be the Nork wrangler? He was the go to guy that supposedly was revered by the Norks. Wonder where he is today? Like someone mentioned we aren't the ones with our tits in the wringer to sign a deal. It's the people eating stone soup living with 1950's transmission lines not the guy eating a Big Mac, flying back home on Air Force One.

alanc709 said...

If you want to know what a true liberal sounds like, look to Alan Dershowitz. He stands for many things, but will state publicly when the liberal media or government transgress those beliefs. He doesn't state things he knows to not be true. He doesn't assume that everyone who isn't a liberal is either racist, homo/xenophobic or inherently evil. I often disagree with his views, but I never doubt his sincerity.

Phil 314 said...

A left of center Facebook friend posted a Tweet from Michael McFall (I don't know who that is): "Obama never met once with Iran Supreme leader or President to get the Iran nuclear deal"

I don't understand to necessarily be a good thing. What am I missing?

narciso said...

Mcfaul was the ambassador to Russia who believed In the reset and thought that medvedev could operate independently of putin.

narciso said...

It would be charitable to call him a fool.
https://mobile.twitter.com/Doc_0/status/1101159636168835074

Rick said...

Inga...Allie Oop said...
“So you might want to work on your absurd belief you're a liberal.”

You might want to stop being absurd.


Says the person who claims Republicans want to implement The Handmaid's Tale. Maybe you should stop thinking of them as the enemy.

Oh wait, standards only apply to others. Carry on.

Jeff said...

I retired two years ago as a senior economist at the Federal Reserve Board. For GDP and other quarterly numbers, we always calculated annual growth rates as Q4 to Q4, i.e., you would calculate the annual growth rate for 2018 GDP as

100*((gdp[2018q4]/gdp[2017q4]) - 1)

I've programmed that calculation for both internal use at the Fed and external publication hundreds of times over my career.

The GDP growth rate for any particular year is supposed to tell you how much GDP grew over the course of that year. Ideally, you'd like to calculate it as the December 31 value for one year divided by the December 31 value from the previous year. But GDP is only available as a quarterly number, so the q4/q4 calculation is almost the best you can do. But since the GDP level itself represents the average GDP during a quarter, you can actually do a bit better.

If you average the fourth quarter level with the first quarter level, you get a pretty good estimate of what the unmeasured December 31 value would be if you could actually observe it. So you could construct a bunch of Dec 31 level estimates by averaging fourth quarter levels with the levels of the following first quarters to get an estimate of annual Dec 31 levels, and then use those to calculate annual growth rates. Statistically-minded economists like me propose doing this every now and then, but it never gets anywhere, mostly because nobody believes the numbers are all that accurate anyway. Extended calculations with inaccurate numbers don't improve their accuracy, so why bother?

Birkel said...

I agree with Jeff, ha ha!
That is the Real GDP estimate.

Inga...Allie Oop said...

“Says the person who claims Republicans want to implement The Handmaid's Tale.”

Liar. Provide a quote with me saying Republicans want to implement the Handmaid’s Tale. You repeat this lie so often yet you can not provide a quote with a link of me saying exactly that. You are absurd.

magamamma said...

XI and Kim were surprised, they are not used to American Presidents not giving concessions. hahah

Jeff said...

Birkel, broken clock, etc.

JAORE said...

Salesmen have a name for someone who just HAS to make a deal. It is not a complement.

Rick said...

AllieOop said...
the new Republican Party's future, The Handmaid's Tale.


I posted it yesterday. If you lay off the sauce you might recover some of those memories.

ken in tx said...



Almost everyone would agree with Inga's list of principles. Although I have observed Inga's comments for several years, I do not claim to know her or read her mind; however, her list of principles appears to be a list of code words that don't really mean what they seem to mean. For example, Civil Rights, to some, does not mean equal rights for everyone, but special privileges to some because of their skin color--as long as that skin color is not white. And anyone who disagrees is a bigot.

Drago said...

Rick (to Inga): "I posted it yesterday. If you lay off the sauce you might recover some of those memories."

Inga routinely brain-dumps her previous comments.

Considering the quality of those comments can you blame her?

Achilles said...

Drago said...
Rick (to Inga): "I posted it yesterday. If you lay off the sauce you might recover some of those memories."

Inga routinely brain-dumps her previous comments.


Actually she deletes them.

Then claims she never said it. Just like in this case.

A part of being wholly dishonest. You have to be completely disingenuous to be a democrat in the present era.

DeepRunner said...

Trump is playing the long game, as a smart businessman does. His comments about the torture of Otto Warmbier would have been more palatable if he had said what had happened to Warmbier was barbaric, savage, and a violation of human rights and human decency, without explicitly saying of course, Kim knew.

Face it, lefties, still butt-hurt over November 8, 2016, won't be happy, no matter what.

Bunkypotatohead said...

Even if something positive comes of the NK negotiations, the headlines will just be "Trump cuts deal with murderous dictator"

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