Category Archives: Foreign
EU US Ireland Unhappy Bite Of Apple
Ireland has a 12.5% corporate tax rate. The US has a 39.5% rate.
So Apple moved its Intellectual Property operations to Ireland. And, due to a complicated 1990s agreement, the company doesn’t even pay the 12.5% rate. It’s more like .005%. (Apple did pay $3 billion in U.S. income taxes in the third quarter.) You can read how it works here, complete with a chart.
Ireland is happy with the arrangement. Apple has $200 billion parked there and employs lots of people.
EU Bite Of Apple
The U.S. is unhappy because it’s not able to take its full 39% bite out of Apple. The European Union is unhappy too.
So unhappy that it has ordered Ireland to collect $14 billion in taxes from Apple.
Now the U.S. is unhappy with the EU. The Treasury Department says the money grab damages U.S. – EU economic relations.
Hillary’s Alt-Right Conspiracy Theory
In a speech on Thursday, Hillary updated her Vast Right-Wing conspiracy theory to an Alt-Right conspiracy theory. As a result The NYT reports the actual Alt-Right is thrilled.
Race Card
The speech was an attempt to trump Trump with the race card. She also accused The Donald of subscribing to dark conspiracy theories.
Putin Card
Then she played the Putin card by theorizing that Vladimir Putin is the “Godfather of this global brand of extreme nationalism.”
By Friday afternoon the news was focused back on the Clinton Foundation. Paul Joseph Watson has a great YouTube sendup of Hillary’s speech, tinfoil hat and all, here.
No Clinton Foundation Access for Benghazi Dead
An AP story says 85 of 154 meetings Hillary Clinton had regarding private interests, when she was Secretary of State, were with Clinton Foundation donors.
Clinton Foundation Access Fit For A Prince
Some of those donors represented foreign interests too. Politico reported that the crown prince of Bahrain used his Clinton Foundation connection to get a meeting with Secretary Clinton. That was after he struck out going through “normal channels. So Clinton Foundation executive Doug Band emailed Huma Abedin with the request:
“Cp of Bahrain in tomorrow to Friday[.] Asking to see her[.] Good friend of ours,” Band wrote Abedin on her State Department email address on June 23, 2009.
Abedin responded the same day, a Tuesday, that the crown prince had asked to see Clinton through “normal channels” on Thursday and Friday.
“I asked and she said she doesn’t want to commit to anything for thurs or fri until she knows how she will feel. Also, she says that she may want to go to ny and doesn’t want to be committed to stuff in ny [sic],” Abedin wrote via her State account, following up that she meant “stuff in dc.”
Band responded to the first message, “Cool.”
Two days later, on June 25, 2009, Abedin wrote Band: “Offering bahrain cp 10 tomorrow for mtg [with ] hrc[.] If u see him, let him know.”
“We have reached out thru official channels,” Abedin added in the same message.
Band responded: “Nice[.] Abdullah is his guy[.] He’s great[.]”
Crown Prince Salman had committed $32 million to scholarships through the Clinton Global initiative.
Obama No Ransom Iran Nuclear Deal Narrative
Earlier this month he WSJ reported that the Obama administration shipped Iran a pallet of foreign cash worth $400 million. President Obama scolded the press for asking if the delivery of the unmarked bills, in an unmarked plane, in the middle of the night was ransom.
You’ve probably seen his four step reply:
1) The payment was old news.
2) It was Iran’s money.
3) It’s illegal to trade dollars with Iran.
4) We don’t pay ransom.
Then he mocked reporters by saying, it “defies logic” that we would pay ransom. He also said the story “reads like a spy novel.”
So it does.
For good measure State Department spokesman John Kirby tweeted:
“Reports of link between prisoner release & payment to Iran are completely false.”
So the WSJ reporters, Jay Solomon and Carol E. Lee, dug a little deeper and learned that the payment was “specifically timed to the release of several American prisoners held in Iran.” The money was loaded onto an Iranian cargo plane in Geneva, Switzerland. And it wasn’t released until a plane departing Tehran with the prisoners was “wheels up.”
It’s Not Ransom. It’s Leverage. Or Not.
Based on the new information Kirby was asked by a reporter:
Q: “In basic English, you are saying you wouldn’t give [Iran] the 400 million in cash until the prisoners were released, correct?”
A: “That’s correct,” Kirby responded.
Iranians call it “ransom” (they’re already collecting more ransom chips). Kirby calls it “leverage.”
Obama spokesman Josh Earnest said, “I never used the world leverage” – leaving Kirby hanging out to dry.
Rodney Dangerfield of Jihad
ISIS is becoming the Rodney Dangerfield of Jihad.
Last week Trump called Obama the founder of ISIS. The next day Hugh Hewitt threw him a life line saying, “I know what you meant. You meant that he created the vacuum, he lost the peace.”
But The Donald doubled down calling Obama the “ISIS MVP” and adding Hillary as “cofounder” for good measure.
Mollie Hemingway in The Federalist points out that Trump has made the same claim for a long time. He did it three times in January and nobody made a big deal of it. Yet this time the media got all literal insisting that Obama did not actually incorporate ISIS.
Joe Biden claimed Republicans would put “y’all in chains”. That has yet to happen. Nobody took it literally.
Trump did say later in the Hewitt interview:
“I mean, with his bad policies, that’s why ISIS came about… If he would have done things properly, you wouldn’t have had ISIS… Therefore, he was the founder of ISIS.”
Still, Politifact gave him a Pants on Fire rating on the ISIS foundation issue.
Rodney Dangerfield of Jihad
Hemingway says the real point is that Americans are fed up with way Republicans and Democrats fight wars “where enemies receive decades of nation building instead of crushing defeats.”
Crowds are cheering Trump’s hard statements about Obama and Clinton’s policies in the Middle East because they are sick and tired of losing men, women, treasure and time with impotent, misguided, aimless efforts there.
She says Buzz Feed’s Andrew Kaczynski got more to the heart of what’s wrong with Donald Trump. He reminds us that Trump himself repeatedly called for the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq.
Does that mean ISIS has two daddies?
