US Politics: Free Trade, Freer Trade, and Nuclear War

[Shryke]

26 minutes ago, S John said:

I agree.  It’s actually amazing.  You repeatedly hear conservatives saying that they disregard what he says and pay attention to what he does.  A convenient way to excuse his more embarrassing outbursts.  You also see a good deal of celebrating that his comments ‘trigger’ liberals, as if that is some kind of policy win.  This is such a low standard that it’s honestly pathetic.  To a large extent they’re still reveling in the election victory.  I do sincerely hope that the president being a good troll isn’t enough to win those swing states come 2020.

A big reason that Trump won in 2016 is that he had no political record to run against and his opponent had a decades long record to dig into for things to criticize.  That won’t be the case next time, and Trump is racking up things to criticize in record time.  I was watching Bill Mahr a few weeks ago and he said something like in the next election the Democrats should run with the slogan ‘let’s get back to normal.’  He was mostly joking but I think there’s more than a nugget of truth in there.  There’s been so much disarray and scandal in only a year and a half.  I think Trump fatigue might be a very real factor in 2020.

It is. It's one of the defining motivations of the right-wing.

"Today’s conservatism is the opposite of what liberals want today, updated daily."

[Mlle. Zabzie]

17 hours ago, Tywin et al. said:

I need one clue. Is it an actual word or a play on words?

Also, when I previously Googled your name, I accidentally clicked on a picture that said zabzie and the results were…..creepy. It’s probably benign, but after a few random pictures, all our avatars started popping up.

Um, I display a lot of those traits. Oh No!  

Doesn’t help that the original reason I wanted to be a lawyer is not in play anymore, so I guess I’ll just have to save the world, one law suit at a time.  

Hint: if you know my real name IRL it’s painfully obvious. 

Also - the world doesn’t want to be saved.   You might as well make lots of money and pick and choose your pro bono clients. 

@Triskele  I am absolutely a lawyer witch and a damn good one. 

@Shryke this is actually one of the worst parts of today’s political discourse. I personally don’t think the Democratic Party has all the answers but when your opposite defines itself in the negative as that which you do not like, it is impossible to have a coherent policy discussion. 

[Fragile Bird]

The stock market reaction has been relatively muted, although, whoops, Dow is down 320 now. We'll see if it picks up speed through the afternoon or if we'll see a miraculous turn-around again. eta: Whoops, down 395.

More interesting, people are starting to talk about a coming Bear. Art Cashin, one of the grand old men on the floor (one of the 5 directors of the trading floor) says this market is looking a lot like 1987, when the market dropped 22% in one day. And  the Chief Investment Officer from Guggenheim was talking about the possibility of a 40% correction. The founder of Vanguard, Jack Bogle, calls this the most volatile market he has ever seen.

Larry Kudlow says the US is NOT in a trade war with China.

The Chinese say if the additional tariffs are instituted, they will hit back, and all options are open (nuclear option - refusing to buy US debt).

And for the 2nd year in a row, Trump will NOT attend the correspondents' dinner.

https://www.cnbc.com/2018/04/05/market-volatility-is-reminiscent-of-the-1987-crash-art-cashin.html

https://www.cnbc.com/2018/04/06/guggenheim-investment-chief-scott-minerd-sees-a-recession-and-a-40-percent-plunge-in-stocks-ahead.html

 

[Kalbear]

honestly it's entirely rational to ignore personal failings if you're getting political gains. it is exactly the same logic used with clinton in the 90s. this shouldn't be that weird. 

[Mlle. Zabzie]

@Fragile Bird the idea that we aren’t long overdue for a bear is laughable. We should have had one already. Note that jobs numbers were off even though unemployment held and the very low 4.1 percent. I expect a lot of volatility and then a pretty big correction over the next 12 months. 

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

1 hour ago, S John said:

I agree.  It’s actually amazing.  You repeatedly hear conservatives saying that they disregard what he says and pay attention to what he does.  A convenient way to excuse his more embarrassing outbursts.  You also see a good deal of celebrating that his comments ‘trigger’ liberals, as if that is some kind of policy win.  This is such a low standard that it’s honestly pathetic.  To a large extent they’re still reveling in the election victory.  I do sincerely hope that the president being a good troll isn’t enough to win those swing states come 2020.

So much this!

I have no idea why conservatives are taking pride in the fact that Trump trolls liberals. Are they 13 years old? Is that how they want their children to be when they grow up? It doesn’t make any sense unless you accept that they don’t actually care about anything other than power. And it’s similar with revealing in the electoral win. I still have conservatives telling me that I just mad because he won and Killary lost. It’s just a deflection so they can avoid talking about real life things.

There was a telling interaction on TV last week with Matt Schlapp, who is the CEO of the American Conservative Union, the group that runs CPAC. He was being pressed on Trump’s claim that Mexico will pay for the wall. After several BS dodges, he blurted out that if the US gets a $25b surplus from Mexico via trade, then that equates to them paying for the wall. Reality has ceased to be real for thus that are ride or die with Trump.

Quote

A big reason that Trump won in 2016 is that he had no political record to run against and his opponent had a decades long record to dig into for things to criticize.  That won’t be the case next time, and Trump is racking up things to criticize in record time.  I was watching Bill Mahr a few weeks ago and he said something like in the next election the Democrats should run with the slogan ‘let’s get back to normal.’  He was mostly joking but I think there’s more than a nugget of truth in there.  There’s been so much disarray and scandal in only a year and a half.  I think Trump fatigue might be a very real factor in 2020.

Sadly I’m not sure that it will matter. Trump has had so many scandals that people are becoming numb to it. Most people, especially those that don’t regularly follow politics, just roll their eyes and/or shake their heads and go on with their day. I fear these are the same people who will look the other way and still vote for him because of the economy.

[Mlle. Zabzie]

5 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

So much this!

I have no idea why conservatives are taking pride in the fact that Trump trolls liberals. Are they 13 years old? Is that how they want their children to be when they grow up? It doesn’t make any sense unless you accept that they don’t actually care about anything other than power. And it’s similar with revealing in the electoral win. I still have conservatives telling me that I just mad because he won and Killary lost. It’s just a deflection so they can avoid talking about real life things.

There was a telling interaction on TV last week with Matt Schlapp, who is the CEO of the American Conservative Union, the group that runs CPAC. He was being pressed on Trump’s claim that Mexico will pay for the wall. After several BS dodges, he blurted out that if the US gets a $25b surplus from Mexico via trade, then that equates to them paying for the wall. Reality has ceased to be real for thus that are ride or die with Trump.

Sadly I’m not sure that it will matter. Trump has had so many scandals that people are becoming numb to it. Most people, especially those that don’t regularly follow politics, just roll their eyes and/or shake their heads and go on with their day. I fear these are the same people who will look the other way and still vote for him because of the economy.

I definitely know some people in the second camp (and they also attribute the economy to him which is d u m b dumb). But I’m not sure what the economy looks like in 6-12 months and certainly not in 2020. We are due a recession. 

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

1 hour ago, Mlle. Zabzie said:

Hint: if you know my real name IRL it’s painfully obvious. 

I know your first name, and still have no clue. I’ve looked it up in a several languages. Nothing. I’ve looked up the different meanings of your name in several languages. Nothing. I’ve seen Zabzie used by a few other women for twitter and Instagram handles, and they have different names than you. I terrible with anagrams, but even playing around with that yielded nothing. NOTHING!

Argle Bargle!!!!!!!

Quote

Also - the world doesn’t want to be saved.   You might as well make lots of money and pick and choose your pro bono clients. 

If the world didn’t want to be saved, why did it create religion?

BOOM!

Lawyered!

[Fragile Bird]

29 minutes ago, Mlle. Zabzie said:

@Fragile Bird the idea that we aren’t long overdue for a bear is laughable. We should have had one already. Note that jobs numbers were off even though unemployment held and the very low 4.1 percent. I expect a lot of volatility and then a pretty big correction over the next 12 months. 

Yes, I've been saying we historically have at least a minor correction every year and a bear every 4 years, and the only time in 9 years we've even had a correction was after the Brexit vote, so we are long overdue.

However, back after the volatility in February I was saying the US economy is strong and no one was talking about a bear or a recession for at least 18 months. With everything Trump has been doing, that talk has completely changed.

[Shryke]

33 minutes ago, Mlle. Zabzie said:

I definitely know some people in the second camp (and they also attribute the economy to him which is d u m b dumb). But I’m not sure what the economy looks like in 6-12 months and certainly not in 2020. We are due a recession. 

Here's just one article I found on this phenomenon, with a neat graph, but you can see it repeated everywhere:

https://www.jsonline.com/story/news/blogs/wisconsin-voter/2017/04/15/donald-trumps-election-flips-both-parties-views-economy/100502848/

Quote

 

When GOP voters in Wisconsin were asked last October whether the economy had gotten better or worse “over the past year,” they said “worse’’ — by a margin of 28 points.

But when they were asked the very same question last month, they said “better” — by a margin of 54 points.

That’s a net swing of 82 percentage points between late October 2016 and mid-March 2017

 

Literally the instant Trump was elected a huge portion of GOP voters decided the economy was actually doing well and a good chunk of Democrats thought it was actually doing poorly.

Here's another one:

https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2018/1/30/16945146/trump-economic-record

Quote

 

It wasn’t, in other words, that something changed in the economy, Republicans gave Trump credit for it and then decided to start praising the economy. The mere fact that Trump had won the election made Democrats feel somewhat worse about economic conditions and Republicans feel a lot better.

Actual economic conditions, meanwhile, really have improved — but only at a modest pace that is entirely continuous with previous trends.

 

 

[Shryke]

56 minutes ago, Kalbear said:

honestly it's entirely rational to ignore personal failings if you're getting political gains. it is exactly the same logic used with clinton in the 90s. this shouldn't be that weird. 

Why shouldn't it be that weird? Say what you want about Clinton, he was at least competent and at the time it was basically viewed as a matter of infidelity. Trump failings are ridiculously more and ridiculously worse. There is a massive difference in scale here, even if it's roughly the same phenomenon. It's the difference between a cut and a gaping chest wound the size of a watermelon.

What this actually reveals, the thing that is somewhat unexpected, is that for the Republican party there is no limit. There is no failing that is too great.

[Zorral]

He puts the election of orangeade directly into the intention and assistance of Putin.  Without Putin's financial aid and assistance the guy wouldn't have even been on the public stage in the 2000's.

Quote

Timothy Snyder, history professor at Yale University and the author of On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century (Tim Duggan Books, 2017) and The Road to Unfreedom: Russia, Europe, America (Tim Duggan Books, 2018) explores how to avoid the slide into authoritarianism and what he calls "unfreedom.

 

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

15 minutes ago, Shryke said:

Here's just one article I found on this phenomenon, with a neat graph, but you can see it repeated everywhere:

https://www.jsonline.com/story/news/blogs/wisconsin-voter/2017/04/15/donald-trumps-election-flips-both-parties-views-economy/100502848/

Literally the instant Trump was elected a huge portion of GOP voters decided the economy was actually doing well and a good chunk of Democrats thought it was actually doing poorly.

Here's another one:

https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2018/1/30/16945146/trump-economic-record

 

I’d chalk it up to partisan news. On Fox et al., every day during Obama’s presidency they hammered home how bad the economy was. The debt clock was a regular feature. Now there is no discussion about the national debt and every is raving about the stock market (which they never did under Obama). Inversely, liberal media sources used to defend Obama’s economy. However, now they run lots of stories about impending trade wars and make a big deal out of the Dow dropping while ignoring it when it makes gains.

We’re doing this to ourselves because of our absurd need to have our beliefs reinforced.

Objectivity is dead.

Sports with Erik at 10:15.

[Fragile Bird]

On the bright side of things, Canadian media are predicting positive news about NAFTA possibly next week, based on the fact that a scheduled meeting has been transferred to Washington. For an announcement?

[Shryke]

9 minutes ago, Fragile Bird said:

On the bright side of things, Canadian media are predicting positive news about NAFTA possibly next week, based on the fact that a scheduled meeting has been transferred to Washington. For an announcement?

There's news of some sort of "deal" being reached on the automotive issues with other stuff to come later. From what I read, it basically sounded like nothing but political theatre and non-binding and all the details still need to be negotiated later.

Basically, sounds like the same clusterfuck it's always been cause Trump is a moron.

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

Honestly, is it even possible to make a real deal with Trump? He’ll be shaking your hand one day and cheating on the agreement and/or ripping it up the next day. One of my big fears is that the rest of the world just decides not to make deals with the US which leads to us getting boxed out for a long time to come.

[James Arryn]

3 hours ago, Shryke said:

It is. It's one of the defining motivations of the right-wing.

"Today’s conservatism is the opposite of what liberals want today, updated daily."

This should not be surprising; conservatism as a movement was almost everywhere born as a reaction to Liberalism, often even being directly rooted in the Counter-Enlightenment school of thought. 

[Week]

1 hour ago, Tywin et al. said:

Honestly, is it even possible to make a real deal with Trump? He’ll be shaking your hand one day and cheating on the agreement and/or ripping it up the next day. One of my big fears is that the rest of the world just decides not to make deals with the US which leads to us getting boxed out for a long time to come.

Hey man, Trump's name is on a book that somebody else wrote -- the ART of the DEAL. Does having your name on someone else's work not mean anything anymore??

Trump is an inverse Keyser Soze -- The greatest trick that Trump ever pulled was convincing the world that he matters.

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

Dow down 650 right now. It's been so schizophrenia as of late. 

[Fragile Bird]

2 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

Dow down 650 right now. It's been so schizophrenia as of late. 

I just came home from a walk (read: catching Pokémon ) and turned on CNBC. 686! Since you posted!

I think this is called clear the decks for the weekend. God knows what else he will say!