U.S. Politics: One NothingBurger with 100% Mos-Cow, Side of Orange Slices and a Banana Daiquiri, Please

[Red Tiger]

1 hour ago, Free Northman Reborn said:

I assumed you weren't actually ignorant of the US's historically cozy relationship with Saudi Arabia, hence reading more into your question than what it asked at face value. Guess I overestimated you then. My apologies.

To answer your simple question then with a simple answer: The United States.

Im aware of this, but this really doesn't mean much when the US has a nasty habit of being cozy with and arming people, who they end up fighting in a decade or two. I thought I was gonna hear about something akin to the US' relationship with Israel.

[DMC]

28 minutes ago, Free Northman Reborn said:

Nor is it my intention to paint the Republicans as saints or heroes that do no wrong. I have views on particular issues. Whoever represents them in the political spectrum is irrelevant. The Russia issue is an example. Much of the Republican party is stuck in this anti-Russia paradigm. Which I think is outdated and ridiculous.

For someone that constantly accuses others of lacking genuine motives, this has quite a reek of hypocrisy to it.  You have the direction of causality wrong.  999 times out of a thousand, partisanship shapes attitudes, not the other way around.  Maybe I'm wrong.  Maybe you're the paragon of independent thinking, and have consistently pushed for closer US-Russia relations even during the Obama administration.  But the numbers say differently.  And your statements on China betray any legitimacy to the notion a more conciliatory approach to our adversaries is your general perspective.

[Kalbear]

38 minutes ago, Free Northman Reborn said:

Yet another example of the lack of consistency, yes. Saudi Arabia should be above Iran on the list of enemies. And yet they are warmly embraced. For some reason.

This particular issue is not a Democrat/Republican divide, I might add. The inconsistency stretches across both parties.

So again I ask - why should the US treat Russia fondly? What is the value that the US gets out of it? 

• Russia doesn't particularly restrict US action or military presence anywhere.
• Russia doesn't restrict the US economy particularly anywhere.
• Russia openly threatens US allies.

And we should reward this because...what?

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In my view, it is based on some emotive, unsubstantiated  opinions. For example, what logical reason would Russia have to hack US nuclear power systems now of all times? Even if they did hack some political party databases during the election (and note I state IF), why would they be the ones continuing with such actions if it is in their interest for the heat to die down on the isssue right now? I call bogus on that claim. Not criticizing you for posting it here, but questioning whoever is making it the claim in the first place. Far more likely to be North Korea, or Iran or some other current enemy of the US.

Except for all the evidence pointing otherwise, sure. 

Russia would love to hack nuclear power systems because it would destabilize the US as well as act as a threat against the US which the US cannot reasonably match. They are doing it now because the current POTUS openly seems to think as you do - that Russia isn't doing anything - and has shown zero inclination to punish Russia, and appears to be wanting to get rid of sanctions in exchange for nothing. If you as a nation-state wouldn't get punished for increasing your capabilities, why wouldn't you do it?

Note also that Russia benefits if the heat increases. If the US becomes embroiled in a partisan fight about Russian hacking, that's fine; the Russia part isn't nearly as important as the giant fight. 

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Secondly, on a more general point, does Russia suddenly have the most capable hackers in the world? Would every other adversary in the world not be aiming to take similar actions to further their interests, now and in future?  In fact, is the US not doing similar stuff to influence other countries's political processes by whatever means it has at its disposal?

It certainly is. So? Are you saying that because the US does it those countries shouldn't get mad at the US, or that no one should be mad when they do it to us?

Is it okay for Iraq to launch drone strikes on where you live because we're launching drone strikes in Iraq?

Russia does have one of the better hacking teams in the world. The NSA is probably the best overall, and then China, but Russia is right up there - and unlike those countries, Russia is far more willing to openly use it.

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Perhaps if the US and Russia established closer ties Russia would have less motivation to take such actions.

So you want to establish the policy that if a country openly attacks us, we should embrace them further? That's an interesting tactic. Why do you feel that way about Russia and not, say, Saudi Arabia?

[DMC]

So, this is kinda out of left field, but I read this article yesterday morning and my mind's been on this topic ever since.  For all the - entirely appropriate - complaints about the Democrats needing to strengthen their bench, I really like the prospective Democratic field for president in 2020.  

You have Harris, Booker, Gillibrand, Warren, and Cuomo.  Even though most of the left hates Cuomo, I like him and think a Trump-Cuomo battle would be a lot of fun for...many reasons.  I also like the Castro brothers, and Julian should have a national future if he plays his cards right, but it's too early.  He should run for something else in the meantime - I understand not taking on Cruz next year but if he wins a statewide office in Texas he all of a sudden goes straight to the top of the pile.  I'm also leaving out celebrity candidates like The Rock and Zuckerberg (and, guess I should note, recycled candidates like Clinton, Sanders, and Biden that shouldn't run).  They may well win for all I know - political scientists lost when Trump won - but I prefer to focus on professional politicians.  Suppose that makes me old school now.  

Anyway, so we have Cory Booker, Andrew Cuomo, Kirsten Gillibrand, Kamala Harris, and Elizabeth Warren (btw, I know Gillibrand has specifically denied running in 2020, and I think Warren has too, but c'mon).  I'm wondering, lovers of both Martin and politics, whom out of those five would you prefer?  I could see any as the nominee and be happy with  it.  Well, maybe not Warner.

[Dr. Pepper]

I assume you mean Elizabeth Warren?  

Of that bunch, I'd probably only be interested in Harris and Warren, and that would probably be reluctant interest. I've only recently begun reading about Harris and her positions, but I'm most impressed with her work for environmental and financial causes.  She appears to be a bona fide progressive and like any decent person supports good socially liberal positions.  A casual wiki browse tells me that I probably somewhat like her gun and death penalty position.  I'd just need to dig in more and see how she evolves over the next 2-3 years.  

Warren is ok.  Honestly, my biggest issue with her is that she didn't run in 2016 and I'm also tired of the old guard.  Obviously she's not technically OG since she hasn't been in politics all that long.  Maybe I'm just being ageist.  I want to see myself reflected in office.  A woman of color, close to millennial or Gen X, a bonus if she's queer.  

[DMC]

4 minutes ago, Dr. Pepper said:

I assume you mean Elizabeth Warren?

Wow.  Yes, sorry.  Should edit that.  I think I had John Warner on my mind for some reason, who was once married to Elizabeth Taylor.  Anyway, thanks for your thoughts!  The reason I'm not on board with Warren is because I don't think her political temperament would withstand a campaign.  I know that's ridiculous to say in the age of Trump but it's still how I judge politicians, at least on preference.  I also don't think she'd be very successful pushing a legislative agenda.  But she's great in the Senate.

[Red Tiger]

I want Harris to run for all the reasons Dr. Pepper mentioned, but also because she takes no shit from anybody, plus she has a great legal background.

[Red Tiger]

1 hour ago, dmc515 said:

So, this is kinda out of left field, but I read this article yesterday morning and my mind's been on this topic ever since.  For all the - entirely appropriate - complaints about the Democrats needing to strengthen their bench, I really like the prospective Democratic field for president in 2020.  

You have Harris, Booker, Gillibrand, Warren, and Cuomo.  Even though most of the left hates Cuomo, I like him and think a Trump-Cuomo battle would be a lot of fun for...many reasons.  I also like the Castro brothers, and Julian should have a national future if he plays his cards right, but it's too early.  He should run for something else in the meantime - I understand not taking on Cruz next year but if he wins a statewide office in Texas he all of a sudden goes straight to the top of the pile.  I'm also leaving out celebrity candidates like The Rock and Zuckerberg (and, guess I should note, recycled candidates like Clinton, Sanders, and Biden that shouldn't run).  They may well win for all I know - political scientists lost when Trump won - but I prefer to focus on professional politicians.  Suppose that makes me old school now.  

Anyway, so we have Cory Booker, Andrew Cuomo, Kirsten Gillibrand, Kamala Harris, and Elizabeth Warren (btw, I know Gillibrand has specifically denied running in 2020, and I think Warren has too, but c'mon).  I'm wondering, lovers of both Martin and politics, whom out of those five would you prefer?  I could see any as the nominee and be happy with  it.  Well, maybe not Warner.

Holy shit, they make Cuomo sound like Tywin Lannister's descendant.

[DMC]

Just now, Red Tiger said:

Holy shit, they make Cuomo sound like Tywin Lannister's descendant.

LOL.  Yes, they do.  The author certainly has a flair for the dramatic.

[DMC]

42 minutes ago, Dr. Pepper said:

I want to see myself reflected in office.  A woman of color, close to millennial or Gen X, a bonus if she's queer.  

BTW, I DGAF about gender, ethnicity or sexual orientation, but I agree on the generational thing.  Maybe it's still remnants of rebelling against my parents at 32, but I think it's passed time baby boomers stopped running this country.

[OldGimletEye]

On 7/8/2017 at 0:06 PM, Kalbear said:

On the government doing big projects - it's almost as if the government doesn't have massive funding windfalls like they did in the 50s and 60s, and for some reason we don't have trillions of dollars sitting around. 

A real mystery

Not disagreeing with your point, but I just wanted to elaborate that a lot of this is do to conservative flim flammery.

We could afford to spend on some useful stuff right about now. And that would help to drain all the remaining slack from the labor markets. The latest core pce number was 1.4.

Of course, it goes without saying I don’t have any interest in Trump’s proposed way of going about things.

 Conservatives of course will say, “but, but, what about the national debt!!”(of course when tax cuts for the rich are not involved, it’s a different story). But you know, the yield on 20 Year Treasuries is about 2.2%. A lot of current debt could be rolled over into that (the average duration of the federal governments debt is about 10 years.)

I think most people would say were likely to average about 4% nominal GDP growth over the next 25 or 30 years.

Which means NGDP > R:

And that means that current 20 trillion dollars or so (as a percentage of GDP)  gets very, very small in medium to long run.

What you really worry about is average deficits (but we have some leeway there, assuming NGDP > R) going forward because according to the CBO were projected to hit a debt/GDP ratio of about 150% in the 2040s  (and really even that’s not too scary. It’s the stuff after that might get scary).  But, that problem would largely get solved if we ditched our overpriced healthcare system. You know, do something like single payer. Its not necessary to leave the poor without access to medicare like conservative health care policy “expert” bull shit artist guy, Avik Roy says.

I think its rather interesting that somebody like Lloyd Blankfein is now running around saying, "golly maybe we should do some infanstructure like China or something!" I don't recall Blankfein making this argument back in 2011. I guess Obama didn't kiss his and Wall Street's ass enough or something or maybe with Trump in office Blankfein sees some might big lucrative contracts in Goldman Sach's future. What I do kind of remember, though, is Blankfein running around being a deficit scold and arguing for tighter monetary policy.  It would seem Blankfein has changed his tune.

And I also don't remember Trump having much to say about infrastructure spending back in 2011, nor do I recall him saying anything about "priming the pump" back then. Interesting he had nothing to say, when the case was much stronger.

Anyway, the point, I guess I making here, a lot of this isn't just about fiscal constraints, rather its more about a lot of intellectual flim flam from certain people, conservative sorts of people that is. I mean I know you know that. I just wanted to go more into it.

[DMC]

12 minutes ago, OldGimletEye said:

I think most people would say were likely to average about 4% nominal GDP growth over the next 25 or 30 years.

I agree with a lot of your post but this is something I've been meaning to point out for a while.  Real GDP per capita growth has languished between one and two percent since the Great Recession.  That's obviously different from nominal, which is what you were referring to, so again, I don't necessarily disagree.  But this is important for two reasons:  One, Real GDP per capita is the best indicator to use in economic voting models, and it predicted the incumbent party would lose in 2016.  Two, I don't think this is going to change.  3-4% Real GDP growth will be outliers in the years ahead even in good times, not the norm.

[OldGimletEye]

On 7/8/2017 at 3:11 PM, Free Northman Reborn said:

As for the threat he supposedly poses to the United States. I'm sorry. But I fail to see which of the US strategic interests are so heavily endangered by Russia. Do they threaten the US economic dominance of the world? No, but China does, and in fact presents an ever increasing threat on that front, as Trump rightly pointed out during his campaign.

Okay, a few things here:

It’s one thing to say “we must be stop China because they may do bad things….”

It’s quite another, in my view, to say, “we must stop China because of their growing economy.” I don’t know where we’d get the right to stop another nation from trying to raise the standard of living of it’s people.

The irony here of course is for years conservatives said,”You gotta get rid of Communistm. You won’t have any growth to you get rid of it. Free markets are best! And China said, well, okay, well do that (in part at least)” And now they are having some success and conservatives are like, “Oh my god I can’t believe this is happening!!”.

Anyway, Trump gets a lot of stuff wrong on trade. Trump’s story is everyone is taking advantage of us. But, the truth is that a large part of our deficits is because we our the worlds premier international currency and the world’s banker basically. You can run trade defecits and still be at full employment and experience growth.

The issues are really something else. The issues are distributional issues, which we could have addressed but decided not to do so, cause we decided to preach Ayn Rand instead, and the fact the trade imbalance can drag the natural rate of interest too, low, which can be handled.

I’m not saying there aren’t few issues for us and China to work out. There are. Also, do I trust China completely at this juncture? No I don’t. But, conflict is not invertible and our trade relations is likely to make future conflict less likely. Also, keep in my mind China is likely to spend more on consumption in the future. The Chinese government knows that. And when that happens many of the trade deficits are likely to reverse.

On Russia. You know, I was very glad Obama decided not to get the US involved in the Ukraine or the Crimea. I’m not a fan of us over  extending ourselves or getting into conflicts not in our interest. That said, I don’t trust Putin. And I am certainly not willing to piss on our traditional alliances with the Europeans that we have had for many years. Particularly because those are basically open liberal democracies and really I think we should hang together. I do not wish to see the spread of authoritarianism, like the kind Putin practices, even if I’m not very high on installing democracy at pistol point.

[OldGimletEye]

On 7/8/2017 at 8:20 PM, dmc515 said:

 3-4% Real GDP growth will be outliers in the years ahead even in good times, not the norm.

Real GDP growth will be about 2%. I referenced nominal GDP specifically, because that is what matters for the dynamics and path of debt.

[Dr. Pepper]

27 minutes ago, dmc515 said:

BTW, I DGAF about gender, ethnicity or sexual orientation, but I agree on the generational thing.  Maybe it's still remnants of rebelling against my parents at 32, but I think it's passed time baby boomers stopped running this country.

Honestly, while issues related to gender, race and sexuality are extremely important to me and I'd absolutely love to see a reflection of myself and people I know in all levels of offices, generation is probably way in front of all that in the coming elections.  By and large, the generations which my parents and grandparents belong to do not have my best interests in mind, they do not vote for the best interests of my children or grandchildren.  In fact, they tend to vote aggressively against our future.  Perhaps a political historian could tell me if this is typical or if it's something new.  It is probably quite ageist and I'm not trying to make excuses for this particular brand of bigotry, but I don't want boomers making the decisions any longer because I want my kids to have the best chances possible.  

[Mexal]

3 hours ago, Free Northman Reborn said:

Interesting post.

In my view, it is based on some emotive, unsubstantiated  opinions. For example, what logical reason would Russia have to hack US nuclear power systems now of all times? Even if they did hack some political party databases during the election (and note I state IF), why would they be the ones continuing with such actions if it is in their interest for the heat to die down on the isssue right now? I call bogus on that claim. Not criticizing you for posting it here, but questioning whoever is making it the claim in the first place. Far more likely to be North Korea, or Iran or some other current enemy of the US.

Secondly, on a more general point, does Russia suddenly have the most capable hackers in the world? Would every other adversary in the world not be aiming to take similar actions to further their interests, now and in future?  In fact, is the US not doing similar stuff to influence other countries's political processes by whatever means it has at its disposal?

Perhaps if the US and Russia established closer ties Russia would have less motivation to take such actions.

In the end we just disagree on the pros and cons of allying with various countries. Possibly because we have different world views and different end states in mind. To me the primary reason the USSR was our enemy, was their Communist ideology. Putin himself in a previous interview states that he was quite perplexed that the West did not embrace Russia after the Communist party lost power in Russia. How they govern their nation internally, and how they try to exert themselves as a regional power should not concern the US, when there are so many larger issues on which the two nations can cooperate successfully.

Because they can? They're testing our infrastructure and possibly planting malicious software in our power grids. Why wouldn't they if they know the US isn't going to do anything to retaliate? In 2015-16, did anyone wonder why the DNC got hacked? Just because their isn't a readily available reason doesn't mean it's not a precursor to something else down the road, especially if a non friendly government comes into power.

Why do you question whether Russia hacked the DNC? All of our intelligence agencies have agreed it happened. All of the Senators and House members with access to the classified intelligence has agreed it was Russia. I still don't understand people saying "if" like it's not an agreed upon fact. It's only Donald Trump who disagrees and we all know he doesn't actually read anything.

Now, you ask why Russia would continue disinformation campaigns or hacking of our elections when they want this to die down. Why do you think they want this to die down? Right now, the disinformation, the Russia hacking and the refusal of Trump to acknowledge it is a driving force in fracturing our political system. We're far away from this but it's helping push hyper partisanship on both sides and it's effectively brought our government to a halt. To think Russia doesn't benefit from the USA being ineffective in pretty much everything is naive. Their goal is to disrupt our democracy and hurt our country and if you think everything is going swimmingly, you're not paying attention. Furthermore, there are no consequences to their actions. None. So no reason to stop.

Does Russia have the most capable hackers in the world? Probably not. But they're good, have the desire to infiltrate and we lack effective cyber security in a lot of our systems. Can other countries do things? Sure, but they don't have the same goals as Russia. China hacked the OPM and stole information. North Korea hacked Sony and released internal memos. And Russia lead a massive disinformation campaign to affect our election. Might we see more adversarial countries try to replicate this? Maybe. But that's why acknowledgement and consequences are important and why not doing anything is going to bite us in the ass. 

Give me some examples on how a Russia/US relationship will benefit the world? While doing that, please also explain how it'll effect our NATO and Western allies and how it aligns with our stated goals in the world. I'm genuinely curious where Russia would be a better ally to solve issues then the countries we currently rely on.

[DMC]

1 minute ago, Dr. Pepper said:

 By and large, the generations which my parents and grandparents belong to do not have my best interests in mind, they do not vote for the best interests of my children or grandchildren.  In fact, they tend to vote aggressively against our future.  Perhaps a political historian could tell me if this is typical or if it's something new.  It is probably quite ageist and I'm not trying to make excuses for this particular brand of bigotry, but I don't want boomers making the decisions any longer because I want my kids to have the best chances possible.  

Well, old people tend to vote for their own interests and turnout in larger numbers than anyone else.  That's been the case far before the baby boomers.  My problem with the boomers running the country is I'm so over all the sixties battles that permeates almost every political debate while they're in charge.  This is particularly the case with foreign policy, but is relevant in arguments among economic and social issues as well.

4 minutes ago, OldGimletEye said:

Real GDP growth will be about 2%. I referenced nominal GDP specifically, because that is what matters for the dynamics and path of debt.

Right.  That's why I added all those qualifiers.  Although I would say the CBO estimating an average of two percent growth over so many years is....optimistic.

[OldGimletEye]

On 7/8/2017 at 8:33 PM, dmc515 said:

Although I would say the CBO estimating an average of two percent growth over so many years is....optimistic.

Well after the Trumpster gets done, that's probably true.

[DMC]

3 minutes ago, OldGimletEye said:

Well after the Trumpster gets done, that's probably true.

Way to bring me down man.

[OldGimletEye]

On 7/8/2017 at 8:40 PM, dmc515 said:

Way to bring me down man.

LOL. 

I guess just call me Debbie Downer.