Re: MERGED: The Politics Thread
« Reply #6645 on: March 05, 2018, 08:33:23 AM »
I hope all other nations that smart that in their answer they only apply import tariffs to the same products, but in the same absolute dollar numbers.
That wouldn't work due to currency fluctuations - it would have to be in a percentage.  But I agree with your point, if the US add 20% tariff so should the EU.

the total amount, in average. If it is a billion more or less then it is unfortunate. It's just to nullify the intentions.

The point is if the EU does it for other products in response, it is just a level of escalation nobody needs.
Anti-social behaviours lack consideration for the well-being of others. Any types of conduct that violates basic rights (human rights is one of them) of another person. It can show as covert or overt hostility.

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Hiram

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Re: MERGED: The Politics Thread
« Reply #6646 on: March 05, 2018, 09:46:19 AM »
the total amount, in average. If it is a billion more or less then it is unfortunate. It's just to nullify the intentions.
That'll just lead to arguments and more, as you say "escalation".

Better to artificially lower your currency like the Chinese do and make your product so cheap. The British did this (accidentally) with Brexit and it has worked quite well.
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TheZookie007

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Re: MERGED: The Politics Thread
« Reply #6647 on: March 05, 2018, 06:38:25 PM »
I wonder why he even is trying this. He doesn't use American-made steel in his buildings; most of it comes from "Jina".

In other news: wow, such an incredible, amazing, hard-to-believe coincidence!
Quote

NPR: "Before Trump Announced Tariffs, Icahn Sold Off Millions In Steel-Related Stocks"

A former adviser to President Trump sold off $31.3 million in stocks he owned in a steel-dependent company, just days before the president announced hefty tariffs on foreign-made steel.

Carl Icahn, a billionaire investor and Trump's former "special adviser to the president on regulatory reform," sold the shares between Feb. 12 and Feb. 22, according to an SEC filing that was first reported on by the left-leaning website ThinkProgress.

The shares Icahn sold, in the Manitowoc Company, have lost value fairly steadily over the past month but took another tumble Thursday and Friday after Trump announced that he would impose a 25 percent tariff on imported steel.

Manitowoc is a global manufacturer of cranes and is therefore highly dependent on steel. Reuters mentioned that the company's stock fell more than 6 percent Thursday in a story about how companies around the world were reacting to the tariff announcement...

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rtpoe

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Re: MERGED: The Politics Thread
« Reply #6648 on: March 05, 2018, 07:28:04 PM »
Meanwhile, in an profile in the New Yorker, it was noted that Christopher "Secret Dossier Man" Steele had ANOTHER memo / report / briefing / file where he told how a senior Russian official had let slip that the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs had heard that The Kremlin had "leaned" on Trump to stop considering Mitt Romney as SecState, and instead replace him with a nice corporate tool, specifically Rex Tillerson......

!!!WHOAIFTRUE!!!

Now Trump and Romney aren't exactly **94** buddies, but Mitt WAS being considered for the job for quite some time.

And it IS true that of the $120 million the State Dept has been given to counter Russian meddling in our elections, Rexxon has spent a grand total of ZERO dollars. Nor has he instructed the NSA to go after the Russian meddlers at the source.......

Is there an end to the corruption and collusion?
rtpoe

The last fling of winter is over ...  The earth, the soil itself, has a dreaming quality about it.  It is warm now to the touch; it has come alive; it hides secrets that in a moment, in a little while, it will tell.
-  Donald Culross Peattie

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TheZookie007

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Re: MERGED: The Politics Thread
« Reply #6649 on: March 06, 2018, 12:38:59 AM »

Is there an end to the corruption and collusion?

Sadly, no. Just take a look at what Ben Carson is (not) doing over at HUD, for example:

Quote

We have been saying for months that Ben Carson is seriously unqualified to be secretary of the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). His track record speaks for itself. He has been protested for trying to take away fair housing. He has been accused of using taxpayer dollars for private planes. He is being investigated for his family’s involvement at HUD. He is accused of using taxpayer dollars to pay for his extravagant office renovations. This is just a handful of the messiness he created. Now, in an interview with The New York Times, Carson appears to know he is a disaster.

In one of his most bizarre comments ever, Carson told the NYT about HUD, “There are more complexities here than in brain surgery.” Really? Well, then maybe you need to go back to brain surgery — the lives of low-income people are in your un-gifted hands. This clearly sounds like he is admitting that he doesn’t know what he is doing....

As far as those ethics violations (stemming from his wife and son being too involved at HUD), he claims they just wanted to “help.” He believes Ben Carson Jr  is “integrally important” but they are “ethically pure.” Clearly, if Lil’ Ben is “integrally important” than he is too involved at HUD. Was his son “integrally important”while he was performing brain surgery? If not, brain surgery is easier than running HUD so Ben Carson Jr. should not be involved.

We also can’t forget the team at HUD is a mess. Raffi Williams,  the incompetent HUD spokesman, has time to attack people on social media and lies to major news outlets like The Guardian. Other HUD employees, like Lynne Patton, called April Ryan “Miss Piggy” on social media.

The whole operation is slop. If Ben Carson had any respect for his country, he would resign immediately or at least let someone who knows what they are doing take the [reins].

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TheZookie007

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Re: MERGED: The Politics Thread
« Reply #6650 on: March 06, 2018, 12:41:36 AM »
And if that wasn't bad enough, former campaign aide Sam Nunberg went on either a drug- or alcohol-enabled tear on the afternoon news shows to -- well, Stephen Colbert breaks it down here better than I.
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TheZookie007

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Re: MERGED: The Politics Thread
« Reply #6651 on: March 06, 2018, 09:40:44 PM »
"I have the best people..."

CNN: "Trump economic adviser Gary Cohn to resign"
« Last Edit: March 06, 2018, 09:43:19 PM by TheZookie007 »
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TheZookie007

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Re: MERGED: The Politics Thread
« Reply #6652 on: March 06, 2018, 10:02:10 PM »
CNN's Fareed Zakaria: "Amid the flurry of news about Hope Hicks and Jared Kushner and this week’s Trump reality show on guns, it would be easy to miss what’s happening in China. But it is huge and consequential. China is making the most significant change to its political system in 35 years. What impact will this have on China and the world? That’s the question that every policymaker, business executive and investor should be asking."

Meanwhile:
"In closed-door remarks obtained by CNN, President Trump praised China's President Xi Jinping for recently consolidating power and extending his potential tenure, musing he wouldn't mind making such a maneuver himself."

Someone's going to say that we shouldn't care because it was a "joke". But no one's laughing.
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3deroticer

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Re: MERGED: The Politics Thread
« Reply #6653 on: March 06, 2018, 10:35:55 PM »
I listen to today group news reporter talk about Trump lying thru his teeth to the Swedish PM, and nobody but Bill Kristol says he wasn't really lying, but he was just projecting optimism, as his duty of the president. That's what they call lying today, not a joke but projecting optimism. They are making lying seems presidential for the new normal.
"Yesterday, Reince Priebus called this whole story a 'nothing burger,'" he said. "Well these emails have turned it into an all-you-can-prosecute buffet."

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TheZookie007

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Re: MERGED: The Politics Thread
« Reply #6654 on: March 07, 2018, 12:28:55 AM »
Today's trending hashtag on Twitter:

#DavidDennison

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Re: MERGED: The Politics Thread
« Reply #6655 on: March 07, 2018, 12:09:51 PM »
I listen to today group news reporter talk about Trump lying thru his teeth to the Swedish PM, and nobody but Bill Kristol says he wasn't really lying, but he was just projecting optimism, as his duty of the president. That's what they call lying today, not a joke but projecting optimism. They are making lying seems presidential for the new normal.

No. Trumpelstilsken goons already made clear this are alternative facts. Lying is non existent when something comes from Trumpelstilskens troups. Lying is only lying when it comes from their opponents.
Anti-social behaviours lack consideration for the well-being of others. Any types of conduct that violates basic rights (human rights is one of them) of another person. It can show as covert or overt hostility.

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rtpoe

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Re: MERGED: The Politics Thread
« Reply #6656 on: March 07, 2018, 07:21:13 PM »
Today's trending hashtag on Twitter:

#DavidDennison

An alias for El Presidente referenced in a lawsuit. Seems that Donnie Boy "forgot" to sign that non-disclosure agreement with Stormy Daniels, so she's suing him.

Just think. Instead of a president being sued by an "adult entertainer", we could have had a president whose only flaw was having a vagina.
rtpoe

The last fling of winter is over ...  The earth, the soil itself, has a dreaming quality about it.  It is warm now to the touch; it has come alive; it hides secrets that in a moment, in a little while, it will tell.
-  Donald Culross Peattie

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TheZookie007

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Re: MERGED: The Politics Thread
« Reply #6657 on: March 08, 2018, 11:15:56 AM »


An alias for El Presidente referenced in a lawsuit. Seems that Donnie Boy "forgot" to sign that non-disclosure agreement with Stormy Daniels, so she's suing him.

Just think. Instead of a president being sued by an "adult entertainer", we could have had a president whose only flaw was having a vagina.

Remember when the Republicans in Congress decided to impeach a president for having consensual (albeit still in violation of his marriage vows) sex with an intern, with much sturm und drang? Remember how long and hard the "evangelicals" excoriated him? And how much hate that was generated and spilled over onto his wife, who subsequently became junior Senator from the state of New York, and Secretary of State, and the Democratic nominee for President?

Notice the silence of the graveyard coming from most of those same Republicans (and from all of the "evangelicals") now.

I hate hypocrisy but I especially hate religious hypocrisy because it gives their innocent co-religionists a bad name.
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TheZookie007

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Re: MERGED: The Politics Thread
« Reply #6658 on: March 08, 2018, 11:45:35 AM »
And speaking of hypocrisy: remember when the GOP liked to tout itself as the "party of fiscal responsibility", and as the "party of law and order" (ignoring for the time being the racist undertones of that phrase)?

Exhibit A1:
"Aqua Buddha [aka Sen. Rand Paul, R-KY] was shocked—shocked!—that his Republican colleagues suddenly became enamored of deficit spending. Of course, he had no problem a few weeks ago voting for the deficit-exploding tax cut of abomination, but 35 years of Republican economic orthodoxy holds that tax cuts increase revenue. Of course, this has been proven wrong every time the Republicans gain enough power to put this fantasy into practice, but Paul wasn’t speaking to that, either. He trotted out every cheap trick in his bag, mocking scientific studies with funny names, and he even summoned up the ghost of the late William Proxmire, whose “Golden Fleece” awards were a comedy staple in the Senate during a different time.

And the whole thing was a preposterous farce. The bill was priced to move and all Paul accomplished, besides burnishing his rep among his several fans, was to inconvenience whoever it is that’s at work in the federal government at three in the morning. The bill finally passed both houses of Congress just as the sun was coming up, and the president* signed it as soon as it hit his desk. All that was left was the bitter recriminations.

The DACA beneficiaries are still out in the cold, their fates hanging on a promise from Mitch McConnell. (N.B.: McConnell’s promise was premised on the government’s staying open. Technically, of course, it didn’t, and McConnell is quite the weasel. If he wanted an out, he’s got one.) Republicans who still believe in the fiction that theirs is the party of “fiscal responsibility”—Bob Taft is dead, and he ain’t coming back, kids—are weeping and gnashing their teeth over what their party “stands for” any more. It stands for what it’s stood for ever since Ronald Reagan fed the party the monkeybrains. It stands for plutocracy and corporate laissez-faire, with a leavening of sanctimony and a pinch of Jesus."

-- Esquire Magazine: "It Was All a Giant Farce", by Charles Pierce

Exhibit A2:
"Even before the Trump tax cuts passed, the Congressional Budget Office was forecasting a $1.5 trillion deficit in 2027 as entitlement spending swells. How could that get as high as $2 trillion? The first step would be to extend individual tax cuts that are set to sunset after 2025, as the GOP vows to do. That could add about $150 billion to the 2027 deficit...

Here's another coming shock: The Trump tax legislation was supposed to cut government health care spending by $53 billion in 2027 by repealing the individual mandate, but ObamaCare may end up costing substantially more — not less — due to Trump's policies. Despite repeal of the individual mandate and a sign-up period for HealthCare.gov that was half as long, the number of people signing up for coverage barely fell from a year ago, and the total could end up being higher once unpaid enrollment is winnowed out, because millions more were eligible for free ObamaCare bronze plans this year...

Putting everything together, as deficits widen from tax cuts that don't expire, state and individual behavioral shifts that further reduce tax revenues, and higher-than-expected ObamaCare costs, debt service costs will balloon as well.

A  new projection is out from the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget that the annual federal deficit will hit $2.1 trillion in 2027 on the current trajectory, including a fuller range of tax extensions, disaster relief, a lifting of annual spending limits known as the sequester and all the additional debt service."
-- Investor's Business Daily, Jan. 11, 2018: "Economy: Here Comes A $1 Trillion — Scratch That — $2 Trillion U.S. Federal Deficit"

Exhibit B:
"When Joe Arpaio, the former Maricopa County sheriff, announced his Senate candidacy on Tuesday, he became the fourth viable Republican 2018 congressional candidate who’s been convicted of a crime. And like two of the other GOP cons running for office, he has cited his criminal record as a partial justification for his candidacy.

Arpaio was convicted of misdemeanor criminal contempt of court in July 2017 for defying a court order requiring him to stop illegally detaining people he suspected of being undocumented immigrants based on their race. President Donald Trump pardoned him one month later.

The other convicted criminals running for office as Republicans are Don Blankenship, the former head of the coal mining company Massey Energy who is running in the Republican primary to challenge Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.); former Rep. Michael Grimm, who is challenging incumbent Rep. Dan Donovan (R-N.Y.) to reclaim the Staten Island congressional seat he once held; and Rep. Greg Gianforte (R-Mont.), who is running for re-election.

Blankenship served one year in prison on a misdemeanor conviction for conspiring to evade safety laws after the death of 29 miners at his Upper Big Branch Mine in 2010. Grimm, a former FBI agent, pleaded guilty to felony tax evasion in 2014. And last year, Gianforte also pleaded guilty to misdemeanor assault for body-slamming a reporter days before winning a 2017 special election. So far, the national Republican Party has said it supports Donovan over Grimm, but it is also backing Gianforte, who is the only one of these convicted candidates currently in office. The party has not endorsed anyone in either West Virginia or Arizona.

The only Democrat with a record running for office is David Alcorn, convicted of stalking, who is one of nine candidates for the party’s nomination in New Mexico’s 2nd Congressional District. The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee would not support Alcorn, saying 'he is not fit to run for office.'"
-- Huffington Post, Jan. 10, 2018: "Republicans Have 4 Convicted Criminals Running For Congress In 2018"
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TheZookie007

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Re: MERGED: The Politics Thread
« Reply #6659 on: March 08, 2018, 11:59:15 AM »
And speaking of hypocrites, let us go to the great state of Texas.

Washington Post: "Rafael ‘Ted’ Cruz accuses his Democratic opponent of changing his name to appeal to voters"

"At 7 p.m. Tuesday, the primary polls closed in Texas, and Sen. Ted Cruz's challenger was soon confirmed as Rep. Beto O'Rourke — a congressman born and raised in El Paso who had outraised Cruz nearly 3-to-1 in recent weeks and lifted Democratic hopes of finally cracking the Republican monopoly on statewide politics in November.

Less than two hours later on the same evening, Cruz released a radio ad against his Democratic threat on Twitter.

It was a jingle. It went like this:

I remember reading stories liberal Robert wanted to fit in,
So he changed his name to Beto and hid it with a grin.
Beto wants those open borders and he wants to take our guns.
Not a chance on earth he'll get a vote from million of Texans.
If you're going to run in Texas you can't be a liberal man.


It was set to the tune of Alabama's "If You're Gonna Play in Texas (You Gotta Have a Fiddle in the Band)," if that helps.

Besides some issues with the meter, the song was criticized on two related fronts.

1) While O'Rourke's first name is indeed legally Robert and he is white, he has used the traditionally Hispanic nickname Beto for decades. He also has not tried to hide his real one. Texas Monthly reported the nickname was given to him [while] growing up in a heavily Hispanic town near the Mexican border. O'Rourke even gave The Washington Post a chi!dhood photo of himself in a “Beto” sweater last month to prove it. While Cruz suggested he had changed his name to manipulate Hispanic voters, O'Rourke identified himself as “Robert 'Beto' O'Rourke” to the El Paso Times in 2002 — 10 years before he won his U.S. Congress seat — for an article about a local 20K race.

2) “Ted” Cruz did exactly the same thing. Before moving to Texas as a chi!d, he was born Rafael Edward Cruz — in another country, no less. Cruz was not the first to inaccurately accuse O'Rourke of faking up a name. The Monitor in McAllen, Tex., posted a chain of warring letters to the editor late last year.

From Jake Longoria in Mission, Tex.: “It never ceases to amaze me how easily the voters of the Rio Grande Valley are bamboozled by someone who adopts a nickname that somehow bestows some type of Hispanic connection on them.”

Felipe Garcia in Edinburg, Tex.: “I will take a white ‘Beto’ over an ‘Uncle Tomas’ Cruz any day of the year.”
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