Real World Event Discussions
A thread for Democrats Only
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Tuesday, June 5, 2018 11:41 AM
"Maybe if the Democratic Party wasn't so toxic it would have more support."
Jack, we disagree on a lot of thing... OK, almost everything ... but I'm 100% with you on this.
And speaking of Hillary, as the perfect exemplar of everything wrong with the party, in this situation the cream did not rise to the top. Nope. The scum floated up.
SECOND is a troll because it constantly misrepresents what people post, fails to address their actual positions, and resorts to personal attacks when its brain isn't working (which is most of the time).
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Tuesday, June 5, 2018 12:09 PM
Quote:I feel like the scum coagulated at the top. You know poop can float, right?
Originally posted by 1kiki:
"Maybe if the Democratic Party wasn't so toxic it would have more support."
Jack, we disagree on a lot of thing... OK, almost everything ... but I'm 100% with you on this.
And speaking of Hillary, as the perfect exemplar of everything wrong with the party, in this situation the cream did not rise to the top. Nope. The scum floated up.
SECOND is a troll because it constantly misrepresents what people post, fails to address their actual positions, and resorts to personal attacks when its brain isn't working (which is most of the time).
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Tuesday, June 5, 2018 7:50 PM
Quote:America’s allies should respond to steel tariffs with targeted sanctions on the Trump Organization.
Originally posted by JEWELSTAITEFAN:
I feel like the scum coagulated at the top. You know poop can float, right?
Our trade partners are planning to respond to President Donald Trump’s imposition of new taxes on steel and aluminum imported from those countries by hitting back with tariffs of their own, raising prices for the American people. Our trade partners should forget about retaliating against America. Instead, retaliate against something Trump cares about: his money.
When China wanted to get Trump to let the Chinese tech conglomerate ZTE off the hook for repeatedly violating sanctions against North Korea, it didn’t try to make concessions to the American people. It had a Chinese state-owned enterprise approve a huge loan to an Indonesian real estate project that will feature Trump-branded hotels, condos, and a golf course.
America’s democratic allies probably can’t (and certainly shouldn’t) bribe Trump and his family in this way, but they both can and should do the opposite: work together on a package of targeted sanctions narrowly designed to inflict pain specifically on the Trump Organization.
The countries Trump is taxing are not only friendly — they are literally bound to the United States by mutual defense treaties.
The idea that they represent a potential threat to America is either laughable or alarming, suggesting that Trump harbors aspirations of completely severing America’s traditional diplomatic relationships.
In light of the unusual combination of geopolitical absurdity and delicacy that the situation poses, at a press conference last week, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau reached into the bag of rhetorical clichés we normally see American officials deploy against authoritarian regimes abroad:
Quote:While it’s a good speech, the reality is that Trudeau’s policy countermeasures are aimed at the American people, and so is what we know of Europe’s response. The EU’s idea is that if they punish Paul Ryan’s constituents by levying new taxes on Wisconsin’s Harley-Davidson motorcycles, it will induce Ryan to bring pressure to bear on Trump.
I want to be clear on one point: Americans remain our partners, our allies, and our friends. The American people [are] not the target of today’s announcement. We hope that eventually common sense will triumph. Unfortunately, the actions taken today by the American government do not seem to be headed in that direction. This is not the American people. We have to believe that, at some point, common sense will prevail. But we see no sign of that in this action today by the US administration.
A better path would be to take Trudeau’s analysis seriously — America’s allies should come together and retaliate against Trump rather than retaliating against the American people.
www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2018/6/5/17422492/sanction-trump-organ
ization
Canada could add a tax to Trump properties equal to any tariff unilaterally imposed by Washington. The European Union could revoke any travel visas for senior staff in the Trump organization. And the United Kingdom could temporarily close his golf course.
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Wednesday, June 6, 2018 1:36 AM
Quote:After doing the arithmetic, it just so happens that Trump is a bigger turd than previously estimated: Trump’s steel tariffs will cost 400,000 Americans jobs, a new estimate says.
Originally posted by JEWELSTAITEFAN:
I feel like the scum coagulated at the top. You know poop can float, right?
After Donald Trump announced tariffs on steel and aluminum from the US’s closest allies last week, economists warned that they could result in thousands of US job losses. The latest numbers from The Trade Partnership, a DC-based economics research firm, suggests that the impact will be even worse than originally estimated.
Some 400,000 jobs will be lost, with 16 losses for every job created by the tariffs, the group said today. That’s more than three times the number of job losses it expected earlier.
As Quartz has explained, it’s true that steel producers in the US may see a slight rise in jobs due to tariffs. However, the (much larger) industries that depend on imported steel will suffer, like automakers, construction groups and even financial services. Just over 400,000 people in the US work in metal-producing jobs, economist Jed Kolko wrote in March, but 4.6 million work in jobs that depend on metal.
Employers in industries that use metal will have to pay more for raw materials, charge more for products, and could trim or move jobs. “Steel consuming industries face annual employment declines of 97,614 in each of the first one to three years the tariffs, quotas and retaliation are in place,” the Trade Partnership says.
More on which American Industries lose jobs, and how many, at https://qz.com/1297697
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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Saturday, June 9, 2018 5:29 AM
Trump Sure Seems to Like Russia a Lot, Doesn’t He?
Over the course of 16+ months, President Trump has acted consistently and with some success to destabilize and break up the western alliance — both its formal manifestation in NATO but also its less formal dimensions in trade and other partnerships. He has also worked consistently on really every front to advance the interests of Russia.
Less obviously to many Americans, he’s been doing something similar in East Asia. The U.S. alliance with Japan and South Korea…is not simply to protect against North Korea. It is to build a series of security relationships with countries on that periphery to act as a counterweight to the regional (perhaps world) great power, China.
….The last twenty four hours of attacks on our closest allies capped by President Trump’s seemingly out of the blue demand to bring Russia back into the G-7 (making it again the G-8 which it was for most of the post-Cold War era until Russia was expelled over the annexation of Crimea) simply brings the matter into a newly sharp relief. If candidate Trump and President Putin had made a corrupt bargain which obligated President Trump to destabilize all U.S. security and trade alliances (especially NATO, which has been Russia’s primary strategic goal for 70 years) and advance the strategic interests of Russia, there’s really nothing more remotely realistic he could have done to accomplish that than what he has in fact done.
Take a moment to let that sink in. I need to take a moment to let it sink in. It’s shocking to me. It’s shocking to me what’s happening….We have a President who clearly got a great deal of assistance from Russia in getting elected….He’s doing all the stuff he’d have been asked to do if such a corrupt bargain had been made. At a certain point — and I’d say we’re clearly at or past that point — it really doesn’t matter whether we can prove such a bargain was made. I’m not even sure it matters whether it was explicit or even happened. The bank robber helped the teller get the job and now the teller just won’t seem to lock the safe or even turn on the alarm. We can debate forever whether the teller is just absent-minded or has some odd philosophical aversion toward locks. The debate may be unresolvable. It truly doesn’t matter.
www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2018/06/donald-trump-sure-seems-to-like
-russia-a-lot-doesnt-he/
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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Saturday, June 9, 2018 6:49 AM
Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Trump Sure Seems to Like Russia a Lot, Doesn’t He?
Over the course of 16+ months, President Trump has acted consistently and with some success to destabilize and break up the western alliance — both its formal manifestation in NATO but also its less formal dimensions in trade and other partnerships. He has also worked consistently on really every front to advance the interests of Russia.
Less obviously to many Americans, he’s been doing something similar in East Asia. The U.S. alliance with Japan and South Korea…is not simply to protect against North Korea. It is to build a series of security relationships with countries on that periphery to act as a counterweight to the regional (perhaps world) great power, China.
….The last twenty four hours of attacks on our closest allies capped by President Trump’s seemingly out of the blue demand to bring Russia back into the G-7 (making it again the G-8 which it was for most of the post-Cold War era until Russia was expelled over the annexation of Crimea) simply brings the matter into a newly sharp relief. If candidate Trump and President Putin had made a corrupt bargain which obligated President Trump to destabilize all U.S. security and trade alliances (especially NATO, which has been Russia’s primary strategic goal for 70 years) and advance the strategic interests of Russia, there’s really nothing more remotely realistic he could have done to accomplish that than what he has in fact done.
Take a moment to let that sink in. I need to take a moment to let it sink in. It’s shocking to me. It’s shocking to me what’s happening….We have a President who clearly got a great deal of assistance from Russia in getting elected….He’s doing all the stuff he’d have been asked to do if such a corrupt bargain had been made. At a certain point — and I’d say we’re clearly at or past that point — it really doesn’t matter whether we can prove such a bargain was made. I’m not even sure it matters whether it was explicit or even happened. The bank robber helped the teller get the job and now the teller just won’t seem to lock the safe or even turn on the alarm. We can debate forever whether the teller is just absent-minded or has some odd philosophical aversion toward locks. The debate may be unresolvable. It truly doesn’t matter.
www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2018/06/donald-trump-sure-seems-to-like
-russia-a-lot-doesnt-he/
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
LOL...
There's still been zero evidence that Russia helped in the election at all.
Fuckin' Leftists. Hillary lost. Get over it already.
Do Right, Be Right. :)
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Saturday, June 9, 2018 7:24 AM
Quote:I’m not an unreconstructed Cold Warrior who hates Russia. Nevertheless, Vladimir Putin is unquestionably a bad guy: he rigs elections, he tosses critics into prison, he’s built his populist cred on horrifically homophobic policy, he shuts down any media he doesn’t control, he threatens his neighbors, and he rules as an autocrat. It’s certainly no wonder that Trump seems to admire him. It’s pretty plain that Trump would like to rule that way too if he could figure out a way to do it.
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
LOL...
There's still been zero evidence that Russia helped in the election at all.
Fuckin' Leftists. Hillary lost. Get over it already.
Do Right, Be Right. :)
But it’s worth noting that this isn’t just about Russia. If Trump came to office and started doing everything in his power to help France and hurt the rest of Europe, that would hardly be any better, even if France is currently a more admirable country than Russia. An American president isn’t obligated to literally ignore the interests of the rest of the world, but an American president is supposed to generally put America’s interests first. Trump talks about that constantly, but he sure doesn’t seem to do it in practice.
But if there’s anything even worse about this, it’s the fact that the Republican Party and 6ixStringJack just doesn’t seem to care. A few of them speak out occasionally, usually if they’ve decided not to run for reelection, but that’s about it.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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Saturday, June 9, 2018 8:10 AM
Quote:You seem to be speaking from complete and utter ignorance of Russia, like most people.
Nevertheless, Vladimir Putin is unquestionably a bad guy: he rigs elections, he tosses critics into prison, he’s built his populist cred on horrifically homophobic policy, he shuts down any media he doesn’t control, he threatens his neighbors, and he rules as an autocrat.
When Putin came to office, Russia had taken the worst drubbing of its recent history. It had just been treated to "shock treatment" from the western world that saw it economy de-industrialize and collapse by 30%, life expectancy drop by 6-7 years, mob bosses swoop in and claim vast swathes of Russian assets under the guise of "privatization", it's territorial claims shrink by 14% and its military sink into rusty oblivion. It was the kind of collapse that many are predicting for the United States. Putin reversed all that. The GDP rose by 200% (after falling under Yeltsin) and unemployment dropped by half. https://www.nationalgeographic.com/magazine/2016/12/putin-generation-r
ussia-soviet-union/ Putin's popularity is a bread-and-butter issue, as well as a national-pride issue. Only lately, under economic sanctions and political pressure from the West, has Putin used the Orthodox Church and militarism to glue the society together. But a man (and his staff) who dragged Russia out of the depths by the scruff of its neck is admired by many.
Also, There is far more diversity in Russian media than you imagine.
Quote:The USA is on a financial slippery slope. We might NEED a leader who could "rule that way" ... and be damn grateful for getting one ... if our finances collapse like some are predicting (and I happen to think they are right).
It’s certainly no wonder that Trump seems to admire him. It’s pretty plain that Trump would like to rule that way too if he could figure out a way to do it.
Quote:Hello??? What has Trump done to "help Russia"? BE SPECIFIC.
But it’s worth noting that this isn’t just about Russia. If Trump came to office and started doing everything in his power to help France and hurt the rest of Europe
Quote:YES HE IS, if those interests are counter to ours. I have often asked What are America's interests? It is a question that you have DEEPLY ignored. I'm glad to see that you're FINALLY getting around to the topic, but I'm sure your interest will last until the next anti-Trump screed, and then you'll be off and riding that hobby-horse. A piece of friendly advice: Until you define "our" interests, you should probably keep your mouth shut before proclaiming that Trump is working against them because otherwise you'll sound like an idiot.
An American president isn’t obligated to literally ignore the interests of the rest of the world,
-----------
Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE men poor - William Blake
As long as you insist that everything is the Republicans'/ Democrats' fault, then you fail to grasp the REAL problem with American politics.
America is an oligarchy http://www.fireflyfans.net/mthread.aspx?tid=57876
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Saturday, June 9, 2018 4:36 PM
Quote:How much did Putin pay you to shift the blame to Americans? So long as incompetent Yeltsin was in charge, Russia was doomed.
Originally posted by SIGNYM:Quote:You seem to be speaking from complete and utter ignorance of Russia, like most people.
Nevertheless, Vladimir Putin is unquestionably a bad guy: he rigs elections, he tosses critics into prison, he’s built his populist cred on horrifically homophobic policy, he shuts down any media he doesn’t control, he threatens his neighbors, and he rules as an autocrat.
When Putin came to office, Russia had taken the worst drubbing of its recent history. It had just been treated to "shock treatment" from the western world that saw it economy de-industrialize and collapse by 30%, life expectancy drop by 6-7 years, mob bosses swoop in and claim vast swathes of Russian assets under the guise of "privatization", it's territorial claims shrink by 14% and its military sink into rusty oblivion. It was the kind of collapse that many are predicting for the United States. Putin reversed all that. The GDP rose by 200% (after falling under Yeltsin) and unemployment dropped by half. https://www.nationalgeographic.com/magazine/2016/12/putin-generation-r
ussia-soviet-union/ Putin's popularity is a bread-and-butter issue, as well as a national-pride issue. Only lately, under economic sanctions and political pressure from the West, has Putin used the Orthodox Church and militarism to glue the society together. But a man (and his staff) who dragged Russia out of the depths by the scruff of its neck is admired by many.
Also, There is far more diversity in Russian media than you imagine.Quote:The USA is on a financial slippery slope. We might NEED a leader who could "rule that way" ... and be damn grateful for getting one ... if our finances collapse like some are predicting (and I happen to think they are right).
It’s certainly no wonder that Trump seems to admire him. It’s pretty plain that Trump would like to rule that way too if he could figure out a way to do it.Quote:Hello??? What has Trump done to "help Russia"? BE SPECIFIC.
But it’s worth noting that this isn’t just about Russia. If Trump came to office and started doing everything in his power to help France and hurt the rest of EuropeQuote:YES HE IS, if those interests are counter to ours. I have often asked What are America's interests? It is a question that you have DEEPLY ignored. I'm glad to see that you're FINALLY getting around to the topic, but I'm sure your interest will last until the next anti-Trump screed, and then you'll be off and riding that hobby-horse. A piece of friendly advice: Until you define "our" interests, you should probably keep your mouth shut before proclaiming that Trump is working against them because otherwise you'll sound like an idiot.
An American president isn’t obligated to literally ignore the interests of the rest of the world,
-----------
Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE men poor - William Blake
As long as you insist that everything is the Republicans'/ Democrats' fault, then you fail to grasp the REAL problem with American politics.
America is an oligarchy http://www.fireflyfans.net/mthread.aspx?tid=57876
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boris_Yeltsin#Illness
Yeltsin could never wrap his brain around the proverb: A fool and his money are soon parted. Yeltsin sold stock shares at ridiculously low prices in Russia's most valuable state enterprises in exchange for bank loans to cover government operating expenses. That is exactly what a fool I know did with her jewelry: She toke her rings and bracelets to a pawnshop: $80,000 in jewelry became $5,000 in cash, which she then wasted.
Putin, not brain damaged like Yeltsin, actually knows what he is doing, which makes all the difference in Russia’s improved fortune. Wouldn’t it be great to have an American Presid
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Saturday, June 9, 2018 6:38 PM
Quote:Does it seem ironic that the Libs which whine about Putin now saw no problem with Slick Willie pulling the rug out from under Russia and Yeltsin, right at the most critical time for transforming into a potential bastion of freedom, Democracy, and industrious economy?
Originally posted by SIGNYM:Quote:You seem to be speaking from complete and utter ignorance of Russia, like most people.
Nevertheless, Vladimir Putin is unquestionably a bad guy: he rigs elections, he tosses critics into prison, he’s built his populist cred on horrifically homophobic policy, he shuts down any media he doesn’t control, he threatens his neighbors, and he rules as an autocrat.
When Putin came to office, Russia had taken the worst drubbing of its recent history. It had just been treated to "shock treatment" from the western world that saw it economy de-industrialize and collapse by 30%, life expectancy drop by 6-7 years, mob bosses swoop in and claim vast swathes of Russian assets under the guise of "privatization", it's territorial claims shrink by 14% and its military sink into rusty oblivion. It was the kind of collapse that many are predicting for the United States. Putin reversed all that. The GDP rose by 200% (after falling under Yeltsin) and unemployment dropped by half. https://www.nationalgeographic.com/magazine/2016/12/putin-generation-r
ussia-soviet-union/ Putin's popularity is a bread-and-butter issue, as well as a national-pride issue. Only lately, under economic sanctions and political pressure from the West, has Putin used the Orthodox Church and militarism to glue the society together. But a man (and his staff) who dragged Russia out of the depths by the scruff of its neck is admired by many.
Also, There is far more diversity in Russian media than you imagine.Quote:The USA is on a financial slippery slope. We might NEED a leader who could "rule that way" ... and be damn grateful for getting one ... if our finances collapse like some are predicting (and I happen to think they are right).
It’s certainly no wonder that Trump seems to admire him. It’s pretty plain that Trump would like to rule that way too if he could figure out a way to do it.Quote:Hello??? What has Trump done to "help Russia"? BE SPECIFIC.
But it’s worth noting that this isn’t just about Russia. If Trump came to office and started doing everything in his power to help France and hurt the rest of EuropeQuote:YES HE IS, if those interests are counter to ours. I have often asked What are America's interests? It is a question that you have DEEPLY ignored. I'm glad to see that you're FINALLY getting around to the topic, but I'm sure your interest will last until the next anti-Trump screed, and then you'll be off and riding that hobby-horse. A piece of friendly advice: Until you define "our" interests, you should probably keep your mouth shut before proclaiming that Trump is working against them because otherwise you'll sound like an idiot.
An American president isn’t obligated to literally ignore the interests of the rest of the world,
All those decades of work by reasonable folk to end The Cold War, only to be squandered by the Perpetrator-in-Chief.
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