Current Affairs Donald Trump POS: Judgement cometh and that right soon

[Blue 1]

Remember that time Ted Nugent called Hilary Clinton a [Poor language removed]?

He got an invitation to the white house not long after that.

Totally hypocritical manufactured outrage from American conservatives here.

Disappointed Samantha Bee has apologised, actually.

I think Ivanka knew exactly what she was doing with that photograph. I wouldn't even give her the benefit of doubt that it was a naive/careless mistake. She's anything but naive.

 

[peteblue]

How? Describe to me how jobs will increase Pete? There are many more jobs associated with companies that use steel/aluminum than those related to making it and that isn’t even counting those in industries hit by reciprocal tarriffs.
There is lot to lose diplomatically, especially with our closest neighbors Canada and Mexico, Nafta talks in particular.

Trade continues, tariffs are applied, manufacturers either increase their prices and lose sales or ‘eat’ the tariff to maintain them. The USA has a trade in goods imbalance with the likes of the EU of about $150Bn, so not only could Trump reimburse his manufacturers who ‘eat’ the tariff, with the like for like tariffs, but would also have a surplus of excess tariffs on the £150bn imbalance of about $30Bn. So it’s doable. It’s an absolute pittance in the greater scheme of things, but the USA would not lose out.

Meanwhile, the EU could reimburse its manufacturers on the like for like numbers but would then also have to reimburse an additional £30Bn, which it doesn’t have, or leave the manufacturers to either put up prices on the $150Bn of goods or just eat the tariffs. There would be political chaos and infighting. So there would almost certainly be price increases and some though not all would now be available for US companies to take over and increase employment.....

It may not be good for international relations, but it will address the trade imbalance or at least reset the trading relationships. This will be a very short trade war...

 

[Steve0]

Trade continues, tariffs are applied, manufacturers either increase their prices and lose sales or ‘eat’ the tariff to maintain them. The USA has a trade in goods imbalance with the likes of the EU of about $150Bn, so not only could Trump reimburse his manufacturers who ‘eat’ the tariff, with the like for like tariffs, but would also have a surplus of excess tariffs on the £150bn imbalance of about $30Bn. So it’s doable. It’s an absolute pittance in the greater scheme of things, but the USA would not lose out.

Meanwhile, the EU could reimburse its manufacturers on the like for like numbers but would then also have to reimburse an additional £30Bn, which it doesn’t have, or leave the manufacturers to either put up prices on the $150Bn of goods or just eat the tariffs. There would be political chaos and infighting. So there would almost certainly be price increases and some though not all would now be available for US companies to take over and increase employment.....

It may not be good for international relations, but it will address the trade imbalance or at least reset the trading relationships. This will be a very short trade war...

Cant work out of that prognosis is wildly optimistic or wildly stupid.

 

[abelard]

Trade continues, tariffs are applied, manufacturers either increase their prices and lose sales or ‘eat’ the tariff to maintain them. The USA has a trade in goods imbalance with the likes of the EU of about $150Bn, so not only could Trump reimburse his manufacturers who ‘eat’ the tariff, with the like for like tariffs, but would also have a surplus of excess tariffs on the £150bn imbalance of about $30Bn. So it’s doable. It’s an absolute pittance in the greater scheme of things, but the USA would not lose out.

Meanwhile, the EU could reimburse its manufacturers on the like for like numbers but would then also have to reimburse an additional £30Bn, which it doesn’t have, or leave the manufacturers to either put up prices on the $150Bn of goods or just eat the tariffs. There would be political chaos and infighting. So there would almost certainly be price increases and some though not all would now be available for US companies to take over and increase employment.....

It may not be good for international relations, but it will address the trade imbalance or at least reset the trading relationships. This will be a very short trade war...

You have a sixteenth century understanding of economics. Back in contemporary reality though, supply chains are deeply integrated. It is not a matter of America making things exclusively in the US and then selling them in Europe, and vice versa. Automobile production in North America involves literally hundreds of transactions across the border, between high-skilled high-tech manufacturing in Ontario and lower-wage less-capital-intensive plants in the United States and Mexico.

Explain to me why, in an age of floating currency exchange rates, a trade defecit is a problem. I doubt you can. If anything, it is a reflection a country's wealth, such that it can afford to increase its standard of living by importing goods and services from around the globe.

Edit: Anyone actually interested in these dynamics (as opposed to just ranting about it, along with other Alan Partridge-style gripes about young people, hemmorhoids, or the sky), should check out this: https://ftalphaville.ft.com/2016/02...-michael-pettis-updated-with-full-transcript/

 

[Harryflashman]

Remember that time Ted Nugent called Hilary Clinton a [Poor language removed]?

He got an invitation to the white house not long after that.

Totally hypocritical manufactured outrage from American conservatives here.

Disappointed Samantha Bee has apologised, actually.

I think Ivanka knew exactly what she was doing with that photograph. I wouldn't even give her the benefit of doubt that it was a naive/careless mistake. She's anything but naive.

It’s a surreal world where up is down and people who lie for a living , actually lie to the public like spicer or Huckabee-sanders and have to temerity to call people out for using what is admittedly foul language whilst employed by a man that said he grabbed women by the p**** and cheerfully went on Howard stern .

I genuinely can’t figure out what’s going on sometimes , honestly I can’t .

 

[DanEFC92]

 

[LinekersLegs]

Trade continues, tariffs are applied, manufacturers either increase their prices and lose sales or ‘eat’ the tariff to maintain them. The USA has a trade in goods imbalance with the likes of the EU of about $150Bn, so not only could Trump reimburse his manufacturers who ‘eat’ the tariff, with the like for like tariffs, but would also have a surplus of excess tariffs on the £150bn imbalance of about $30Bn. So it’s doable. It’s an absolute pittance in the greater scheme of things, but the USA would not lose out.

Meanwhile, the EU could reimburse its manufacturers on the like for like numbers but would then also have to reimburse an additional £30Bn, which it doesn’t have, or leave the manufacturers to either put up prices on the $150Bn of goods or just eat the tariffs. There would be political chaos and infighting. So there would almost certainly be price increases and some though not all would now be available for US companies to take over and increase employment.....

It may not be good for international relations, but it will address the trade imbalance or at least reset the trading relationships. This will be a very short trade war...

Governments handouts? Not only did I think that was politically anathema to you, how would they be determined/processed and what would be the associated costs?

You keep on waving your hands and promise job increases without detailing how you believe those extra jobs will be arrived at. It certainly isn’t what happened the last two times we tried tariffs.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/what-tariffs-has-the-u-s-tried-in-the-past-and-how-did-they-work-out/

It isn’t what is forecast this time either and these don’t even count the jobs lost to reciprocal tariffs
http://tradepartnership.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/232EmploymentPolicyBrief.pdf
The tariffs would increase U.S. iron and steel employment and non-ferrous metals (primarily aluminum) employment by 33,464 jobs, but cost 179,334 jobs throughout the rest of the economy, for a net loss of nearly 146,000 jobs;

Perhaps you can focus on one industry, like say a company that makes fridges and freezers, and explain why you think they will hire more people despite both their raw material costs going up and their export sales being slapped with tariffs? And if you believe all these price increases to be largely temporary, as you think it will be a short trade war, why would an employer go to the expense of recruiting staff especially in a tight labour market?

 

[LinekersLegs]

Even the steelworkers union thinks these moves are dumb!

More from @steelworkers, suggesting frustration with the administration if not a rift: "The regular chaos surrounding our flawed trade policies is undermining the ability to project a reasoned course and ensure that we can improve domestic production and employment."

 

[Number_25]

I hate Donald Trump with every molecule of my being

But he will win again in 2020.

The response to his presidency has lacked any sort of effort to convince the poor white working class that his policies are damaging to their best interests.

 

[Walken]

anecdotal but just throwing it out there

 

[abelard]

I hate Donald Trump with every molecule of my being

But he will win again in 2020.

It's possible, but I think still unlikely

The response to his presidency has lacked any sort of effort to convince the poor white working class that his policies are damaging to their best interests.

^but you're right about this. It's always amazing how people who are so bad at winning elections, even against such hilariously inept and odious opposition, are still so convinced that we have to keep doing things their way - and that's as true in Britain as it is in the US.

From Alex Pareene (always worth reading):
https://splinternews.com/chuck-schumer-is-not-cutting-it-1826336406

I’m not sure there’s a better possible illustration of “not up to the challenges of the political moment” than Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer standing outside a Washington filling station demanding that President Trump lower gas prices.

Last week, one day after Schumer and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi unveiled a good and necessary proposal to increase federal funding for teacher pay and public school resources in a USA Today op-ed, Schumer summoned the cameras for... this, instead.

At the Wednesday press conference, Schumer blamed the high price of gas on President Trump’s decision to withdraw from the Iran nuclear deal.

Chuck Schumer opposed the Iran nuclear deal.

Schumer also held this press conference as Republicans in California prepared to deliver the signatures necessary to place on the November ballot a repeal of California’s new, Democrat-supported 12-cent-per-gallon gas tax increase, a measure they hope will increase GOP turnout in the midterm elections. The gas tax increase is meant to help fund necessary infrastructure repairs and mass transit expansion.

One reason Schumer thought this was a good idea is because Democrats also did it to George W. Bush. In fact, the photo at the top of this post is not from Wednesday’s press conference. It is from April 2006. I couldn’t find a wire photo of this most recent press conference, because no one cared about it. (Roll Call and The Hill sent photographers and the New York Post wrote 150 words. The New York Times mentioned the press conference deep in the middle of a story about how oil prices are now falling.)

Here’s a photo of Senator Schumer with then-Senator Barbara Boxer in 2004:

Here's Chuck in 2005:

Gas prices are the perfect “bread-and-butter” issue for a politician like Schumer, who has some sense that economic issues dictate voter behavior, but who is far too captured by finance to support the sort of sweeping measures that would make most people significantly better off —at the expense of Chuck Schumer donors. The price of gas is also “nonpartisan,” in that no party supports higher gas prices, except that sometimes Democrats do, for good reasons, making it extra “nonpartisan” to be a Democrat who opposes high gas prices, for political expediency. (The fact that presidents are only remotely, barely, indirectly responsible for trends in oil prices also doesn’t matter, because politics is not supposed to be about making persuasive and true arguments, it is supposed to be about standing in front of a gas station blaming the president for how much it costs to fill up the family Silverado.)

To understand why Minority Leader Schumer—who failed to get a deal for DACA recipients; who gave multiple Democrats his tacit blessing to endorse Trump’s efforts to install a torturer as the head of the CIA and deregulate the banks; who announced his public support for Trump’s decision to move the American embassy in Israel to Jerusalem, making any peaceful and democratic resolution to the occupation even more remote and unlikely—took The Resistance to the pumps, you have to understand that everything he does as a politician is aimed at appealing to a well-off white suburban Boomer couple that only exists in his imagination.

That is not a joke or insult. It’s a fact, as he explained to The New Yorker’s Elizabeth Kolbert last year.

"The Baileys live in Massapequa, a town on the South Shore, across the bay from Jones Beach. Joe works for an insurance company; Eileen is an administrative assistant in a physician’s office. The couple have three children, two of whom are grown. Economically, the Baileys are doing O.K., but they worry about rising property taxes and what the future holds for their kids. They’re not strong partisans. They feel that politicians of both parties sometimes condescend to them, something they hate. The Baileys voted for Bill Clinton twice, then, in 2000, after much agonizing, pulled the lever for George W. Bush."

“To Schumer,” Kolbert says, “the Baileys represent the sort of voters that the Democratic Party too often neglects, and that it needs to reach in order to survive.” Again, they are not real. Schumer made this couple up, you will not be surprised to learn, in 1998, when he was running for the Senate seat he still occupies. Nothing in the political landscape since then has caused him to question if perhaps The Baileys should still be not just his electoral priority, but the priority of the party he now helps to run.

The federal gasoline tax, by the way, hasn’t risen since 1993, which means, adjusted for inflation, it’s fallen to its lowest level in nearly 30 years. Transportation recently overtook energy as America’s largest source of carbon emissions. After dropping off in the wake of the financial crisis and recession, U.S. transportation emissions have been steadily on the rise, due largely to increased air travel and sales of large trucks and SUVs, which become more popular when gasoline is cheap. The current goal of the Paris climate agreement is try to halt the rise in global temperatures at 1.5 degrees Celsius. The Climate Action Tracker, in its analysis of the U.S.’s projected future emissions, says, “if all countries were to follow the US’s approach, warming could reach over 3°C and up to 4°C..” Four degrees of warming would be catastrophic for humanity and the planet.

But weigh all that against the Baileys, who obviously care about the price of a gallon of gas, because, in Schumer’s imagination, they were all getting ready to drive out to Orient Point for Memorial Day Weekend. Gas prices certainly matter more to them than exempting certain banks and credit unions from requirements to report data about potential discriminatory lending practices.

The Baileys also, existing as they do in the mind of a 67-year-old politician with a local news producer’s nose for a fresh moral panic, probably care about teens vaping, and e-cigarettes being marketed to them with “cool” candy flavors. That is why Schumer held an anti-Juul press conference on Friday, in which he called on the FDA to “ban the kid-friendly e-cig flavors.” It’s not clear if he, while standing outside a high school, surrounded by cameras, brought up his new and important proposal to raise teacher pay. (The Baileys aren’t teachers, and Massapequa schools are quite well-funded anyway.)

This is Chuck Schumer’s political playbook, and he has not updated it since he invented the Baileys in 1998. It guided him as Democrats failed to provide any meaningful check on George W. Bush, up until Bush’s overwhelming incompetence and his administration’s corruption finally exhausted the goodwill he received for having had 9/11 happen on his watch and then using it to whip up support for an unrelated war and endless occupation, several bloody years into which an angry nation finally elected some Democrats on the platform of “not being Republicans.”

Or it was the gas prices, maybe, if you’re Chuck Schumer, and that was your big idea back then, and also now. If the Democratic Party ever manages to win back the U.S. Senate, it’ll be in spite of Chuck Schumer’s political instincts.

 

[Number_25]

The Baileys also, existing as they do in the mind of a 67-year-old politician with a local news producer’s nose for a fresh moral panic, probably care about teens vaping, and e-cigarettes being marketed to them with “cool” candy flavors. That is why Schumer held an anti-Juul press conference on Friday, in which he called on the FDA to “ban the kid-friendly e-cig flavors.” It’s not clear if he, while standing outside a high school, surrounded by cameras, brought up his new and important proposal to raise teacher pay. (The Baileys aren’t teachers, and Massapequa schools are quite well-funded anyway.)

I used to work for a fairly prominent Labour MP in his constituency office, and this is exactly the sort of thing he'd have done.

Devoid of any ambition, other this his own in becoming PM.

 

[Pittsburgh Footy]

I hate Donald Trump with every molecule of my being

But he will win again in 2020.

The response to his presidency has lacked any sort of effort to convince the poor white working class that his policies are damaging to their best interests.

It's worse than that. We need to define "their best interests". Most logical people define this as their best economic interests. And I won't even say Democrats here, I'd say generally anything left of Trumpism has not got through to the working poor that his policies hurt them, despite trying to talk rationally.

But the issue is more one of social issues. And the poor white working class that voted for Trump, as a whole, care more about perceived social changes, race and LGBT issues, the softening of America issues, etc, as the ones they care more about than any issues having to do with their bottom line.

And Killary and Obummer this and that, etc.

And that's scary. And it's difficult to combat.

 

[abelard]

It's worse than that. We need to define "their best interests". Most logical people define this as their best economic interests. And I won't even say Democrats here, I'd say generally anything left of Trumpism has not got through to the working poor that his policies hurt them, despite trying to talk rationally.

But the issue is more one of social issues. And the poor white working class that voted for Trump, as a whole, care more about perceived social changes, race and LGBT issues, the softening of America issues, etc, as the ones they care more about than any issues having to do with their bottom line.

And Killary and Obummer this and that, etc.

And that's scary. And it's difficult to combat.

This is why the Democrats would do well to focus on things like, for example, the teacher strikes (instead of whatever Chuck Schumer thinks he's doing hollering in front of gas stations). Most of the people marching in Oklahoma and Arizona were Republicans, and many of them, especially in West Virginia, voted for Trump.

The Dems don't really have much wiggle-room on issues such as "how much should we fawn over police for murdering whoever they feel like with impunity, provided they aren't white", or "should we go back to arresting gay people for sodomy, or just fire and castrate all them instead?" - which so many of certain type of Republican longs for. It would be appalling and immoral to do so, obviously, but it would also cause irreperable damage to their base of educated white people and ethnic minorities. Anyhow, in an age of Fox News outrages appearing instantly and daily on twitter, it is easy to forget that by and large, the left is utterly wiping the floor with the right in the "culture wars". This, certainly, is how conservatives feel.

What the Dems can do, on the other hand, is attempt to change the conversation, by engaging people in places like West Virginia on things which they also care about, such as stagnant wages, terrible public services, dictatorial and absurd workplace regulations and culture, a general lack of opportunity, the hollowing out of rural towns, and the opium crisis etc. It might not win over everyone here, but as 2016 shows us, you only need to flip a few persuadable voters in a few key places to acheive a sweeping result.

We are now so bombarded with nauseating #Resistance culture, where Pavlovian opposition to each and every thing Trump says or does becomes an instantaneous crusade, that it is easy for us to forget it was the Democrats, much more so than Republicans, who have pioneered crushing teachers' unions and lavishing money at even the sleaziest charter schools for the past decade.

But teachers who work in places where nobody reads the New York Times or follows Ezra Klein on twitter haven't forgotten this.

 

[Pittsburgh Footy]

This is why the Democrats would do well to focus on things like, for example, the teacher strikes (instead of whatever Chuck Schumer thinks he's doing hollering in front of gas stations). Most of the people marching in Oklahoma and Arizona were Republicans, and many of them, especially in West Virginia, voted for Trump.

The Dems don't really have much wiggle-room on issues such as "how much should we fawn over police for murdering whoever they feel like with impunity, provided they aren't white", or "should we go back to arresting gay people for sodomy, or just fire and castrate all them instead?" - which so many of certain type of Republican longs for. It would be appalling and immoral to do so, obviously, but it would also cause irreperable damage to their base of educated white people and ethnic minorities. Anyhow, in an age of Fox News outrages appearing instantly and daily on twitter, it is easy to forget that by and large, the left is utterly wiping the floor with the right in the "culture wars". This, certainly, is how conservatives feel.

What the Dems can do, on the other hand, is attempt to change the conversation, by engaging people in places like West Virginia on things which they also care about, such as stagnant wages, terrible public services, dictatorial and absurd workplace regulations and culture, a general lack of opportunity, the hollowing out of rural towns, and the opium crisis etc. It might not win over everyone here, but as 2016 shows us, you only need to flip a few persuadable voters in a few key places to acheive a sweeping result.

We are now so bombarded with nauseating #Resistance culture, where Pavlovian opposition to each and every thing Trump says or does becomes an instantaneous crusade, that it is easy for us to forget it was the Democrats, much more so than Republicans, who have pioneered crushing teachers' unions and lavishing money at even the sleaziest charter schools for the past decade.

But teachers who work in places where nobody reads the New York Times or follows Ezra Klein on twitter haven't forgotten this.

I agree with this. The farther left and "nauseating" the left goes, the more easily those in the middle get turned off.

We need to be mindful of this.