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US Politics: Sit Up Straight and Show Some Respect


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25 minutes ago, Casablanca Birdie said:

The Chinese are soon going to run out of US goods to put tariffs on, since the trade deficit is, what, $500 B? I need to check the number. Trump has lots of room to add tariffs.

What the Chinese need to do is add export tariffs, making money for their country instead of making money for the US. An extra 10 bucks on millions of tv units won’t deter Americans from buying cheap TVs and can pay any Chinese worker affected by the tariffs.

Also, note that NONE of the tariffs have actually started yet, except for Trump’s steel and aluminum tariffs. Right now we’re in the ‘phony war’ stage of things, the war of words.

They can stop buying Boeing planes.

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18 minutes ago, Casablanca Birdie said:

I see Fox News hosts are calling the detention centers ‘summer camp’.  :stillsick:

I didn’t think that could be real, but:

http://thehill.com/homenews/media/392922-laura-ingraham-describes-child-detention-centers-as-essentially-summer-camps

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1 hour ago, chiKanery et al. said:

Yes, and pepper spray is "essentially a food item" and waterboarding is like fraternity pranks. If there's an atrocity being committed, a blonde Foxbot is out there minimizing it.

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Trump loses temper over border wall funding

The president complained in a private meeting that Senate Republicans won’t fully fund his wall — and threatened a shutdown in September.

https://www.politico.com/story/2018/06/19/trump-border-wall-funding-immigration-653530

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The president said at the meeting that if Congress doesn’t give him the resources he needs for border security, he will shut down the government in September, according to one of the people familiar with the meeting. He did not give a specific number, but has been fixated on getting the $25 billion in a lump sum

.

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The Outrage Over Family Separation Is Exactly What Stephen Miller Wants

For President Trump’s senior adviser, the public outrage and anger elicited by policies like forced family separation are a feature, not a bug.

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2018/06/stephen-miller-family-separation/563132/

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A seasoned conservative troll, Miller told me during our interview that he has often found value in generating what he calls “constructive controversy—with the purpose of enlightenment.” This belief traces back to the snowflake-melting and lib-triggering of his youth. As a conservative teen growing up in Santa Monica, he wrote op-eds comparing his liberal classmates to terrorists and musing that Osama bin Laden would fit in at his high school. In college, he coordinated an “Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week.” These efforts were not calibrated for persuasion; they were designed to agitate. And now that he’s in the White House, he is deploying similar tactics.

 

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3 hours ago, Casablanca Birdie said:

The Chinese are soon going to run out of US goods to put tariffs on, since the trade deficit is, what, $500 B? I need to check the number. Trump has lots of room to add tariffs.

What the Chinese need to do is add export tariffs, making money for their country instead of making money for the US. An extra 10 bucks on millions of tv units won’t deter Americans from buying cheap TVs and can pay any Chinese worker affected by the tariffs.

Also, note that NONE of the tariffs have actually started yet, except for Trump’s steel and aluminum tariffs. Right now we’re in the ‘phony war’ stage of things, the war of words.

China can simply stop supporting the North Korean sanctions. It's a very big carrot and stick they wield. 

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48 minutes ago, Which Tyler said:

WTF?

We're definitely into full-blown "evil" category now.

And they're not even trying to hide it. As someone who knows what it's like to be separated from one's mother at a young age, this is horrific. 

 

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1 hour ago, DanteGabriel said:

Yes, and pepper spray is "essentially a food item" and waterboarding is like fraternity pranks. If there's an atrocity being committed, a blonde Foxbot is out there minimizing it.

This reminds me of a verse from one of my favorite songs:

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We got the bubble-headed-bleach-blond
Who comes on at five
She can tell you 'bout the plane crash with a gleam in her eye
It's interesting when people die
Give us dirty laundry

 

37 minutes ago, Srta. Zabzie said:

She is utterly and entirely morally bankrupt.  

This is what you get when you hire shock-jock talk radio hosts instead of, ya know, actual journalists, to head your “news” network.

 

I actually think you can make an argument for separating children from their parents for a short period of time while they’re being processed, but the way they’re doing it is so ham fisted and cruel, which indicates to me they’re intentionally abusing these children, which is obviously disgusting.

I wonder how this is playing outside of the U.S.

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17 minutes ago, Martell Spy said:

The Outrage Over Family Separation Is Exactly What Stephen Miller Wants

For President Trump’s senior adviser, the public outrage and anger elicited by policies like forced family separation are a feature, not a bug.

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2018/06/stephen-miller-family-separation/563132/

 

Miller and Trump both, it's part of the strategy.  They want to stay at the top of the news cycle at all times, even if its negative.  Maybe its just me, but it seems like in past administrations in my lifetime there have been weeks at a time where things were generally quiet and I didn't give too much (or any) thought on what the President is doing.  Certainly stretches of multiple days.  Nowadays if I'm out in the field or something for a several days I know that when I come back into cell phone coverage range there will be at least ONE thing that Trump did during that time that made the top of the news, and maybe several things.    

But I think this is all part of the game for Trump & Co.  We will not be allowed to forget about who is in charge for any significant amount of time until those people are no longer in office.  During the campaign Trump employed his bombastic style as a way to get the media to do some of his work for him (for free), and it worked.  It is still working and they are still doing this.  And why wouldn't they?  Trump's base already deeply distrusts the media and Trump has cultivated that feeling.  Negative stories about Trump have a hard time gaining any traction against him and actually often reinforce their view that the media is biased an unfair.  Meanwhile, clearly pro-Trump outlets like Fox get a pass on their own bullshit because they act as a balance to the overwhelmingly liberal (in their view) media.     

It's a pretty masterful distortion and I'm not really sure how to untie that knot.  I'm sure the admin. would prefer if more of the media attention was positive, but they've gotten pretty good at turning negative stories into 'liberals out to get Trump' stories which is the next best thing.  And while I think Trump is a dishonest bully and I don't like him one single bit, honestly, so far not a single one of the parade of scandals that the media (social and traditional) has gotten into a lather over as the point where Trump finally crossed the line has changed a damn thing about the fact that Trump and his party currently have full control over the legislative and executive branches of government.  His approval ratings have been steadily improving, for Christ sake.  And the real coup is going to be if jack shit comes out of the Mueller investigation.  If whatever comes out of it isn't irrefutably damning to Trump himself, it'll have been better if it hadn't happened at all because all the relentless press coverage over the past year or so will be far too easy to spin as the witch hunt that Trump says it is.  If that happens, get ready for 4 more years.  

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27 minutes ago, chiKanery et al. said:

I wonder how this is playing outside of the U.S.

Heard on NPR that Germany considers this to be a massive human rights violation and thinks that they personally would never allow such a thing. That we are is shocking to their core. 

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@chiKanery et al. I'll get at your question from a slightly indirect angle.

Back in 2004, I was in high school, and a member of the school's theater group. Our teacher had decided we'd perform a play about the fate of children in Auschwitz (yes, quite the heavy stuff...). While I had tenuously supported NATO's war in Afghanistan, I was happy Schröder had kept us out of Iraq, a war whose stated purpose made no sense to me even back as a teenager. A week before our first performance, news of the torture at Abu Ghraib broke. Before our first performance, our teacher reminded us that what we showed was important, particularly considering what was going on in Iraq. I thought she was a bit hyperbolic, if essentially right in her criticism of Abu Ghraib. I have kept that opinion for over a decade, even in the face of what we now know about Guantanamo, about the justifications of the Iraq war and its ramifications: Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo were horrible places, but they nevertheless weren't the places of annihilation of entire peoples, and while they were terrible, they at least happened in a context of war and terrorism. They were utterly wrong. They were evil. But while they weren't justifiable, they were at the same time understandable, at least to some degree.

This, though, is worse than 2004. These children did nobody any harm. They had no choice in the travel they committed. And there's no US war against Mexico, no Latin-American terrorist organisations hell-bent on destroying the USA. On top of tht, they are children.

It's still not on the level of the crimes of the Nazis. But it's a significant step up from the evils the US have committed in the 21st century so far.

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4 hours ago, Casablanca Birdie said:

The Chinese are soon going to run out of US goods to put tariffs on, since the trade deficit is, what, $500 B? I need to check the number. Trump has lots of room to add tariffs.

What the Chinese need to do is add export tariffs, making money for their country instead of making money for the US. An extra 10 bucks on millions of tv units won’t deter Americans from buying cheap TVs and can pay any Chinese worker affected by the tariffs.

Also, note that NONE of the tariffs have actually started yet, except for Trump’s steel and aluminum tariffs. Right now we’re in the ‘phony war’ stage of things, the war of words.

Well, the deficit doesn't ultimately matter, what matters is total trade, which is reportedly at $636 billion.  And yes, export tariffs will presumably be a part of their response considering their comparatively far lower imports on US goods.  The Big Kahuna between the two is the US importing cell phones and electronics, and it's notable Trump hasn't touched that - suggesting that yes, this is mostly the usual case of Trump talking out of his ass.

3 hours ago, chiKanery et al. said:

Thing is, Trump isn’t want to back down and the tariffs are really popular with his base, as well as the people advising him (keep in mind some of the people who opposed tariffs have now left his Administration). They may not be as big as Trump is claiming, but have no doubt, he will hit China with tariffs.

Also, while they may not have as many targets as Trump, they have one that can do the most damage: soy beans. A lot of states that went for Trump are huge soy bean producers, and hitting them with tariffs could do a lot of damage to Trump electorally.

Trump isn't wanna back down but Trump also isn't wanna start a global recession, so his administration is want to make sure any "trade war" is primarily hype.

3 hours ago, Casablanca Birdie said:

I see Fox News hosts are calling the detention centers ‘summer camp’.  :stillsick:

I've even heard FNC is anchored by "basic human beings" with "brains."

1 hour ago, Martell Spy said:

Trump loses temper over border wall funding

I'm shocked!

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3 hours ago, chiKanery et al. said:

Man didn't realize how much this was burying the lede.  Laura Ingraham sucks, we've all known that for decades now, but Sessions' response:

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"Well, it's a real exaggeration, of course," Sessions told Ingraham. "In Nazi Germany, they were keeping the Jews from leaving the country. But this is a serious matter. We need to think it through, be rational and thoughtful about it. We want to allow asylum for people who qualify for it, but people who want economic migration for their personal financial benefit, and what they think is their families' benefit, is not a basis for a claim of asylum. But, they can make that claim, we will process it, and I will review the situation and make a decision."

Gotcha, so the difference is in how Nazis treated Jews that weren't Germans.  Wonder how that worked out.

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And, actually, the Nazis tried very very hard to get the Jews out. There’s a reason the Final Solution was thusly named. The problem is that that phase has blood on almost everyone’s hands...even lovely old Canada...so we all mostly try to pretend it never happened.

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Yep. The dirty secret about the Nazis marking passports of Jews with star symbols was that this wasn't done to keep German Jews from emigrating. It was done at the request of the Swiss government who wanted to be able to reject Jewish refugees at the border because "the boat was full". (Note, also, that that rhetoric was revived on the right both in Switzerland and Germany during the refugee crisis.)

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12 minutes ago, James Arryn said:

And, actually, the Nazis tried very very hard to get the Jews out. There’s a reason the Final Solution was thusly named. The problem is that that phase has blood on almost everyone’s hands...even lovely old Canada...so we all mostly try to pretend it never happened.

The most interesting thing about reading Arendt's Eichmann in Jerusalem isn't the banality of evil, but rather reading about Eichmann pushing the half-baked plan to "resettle" all Jews in Madagascar.

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