So what if Donald Trump is right? I
know, I know, I have panned him quite often in the past. But that
doesn't mean I won't give him some credit once in a while. It also
doesn't mean that I agree with his methods, because I don't. Nor
does it mean I am going to change my mind about not voting for him.
We all know that there is an imbalance
with trade. And the method to correct that has usually been the
application of tariffs or some kind of trade agreement that, one
would hope, levels the playing field a little. Everyone is being
affected by the cheaper imports from China, not just the US, or even
the EU. Their government heavily subsidizes their industries,
although they are not the only ones who do so. Obviously their goal
is to keep enough of their citizens employed to maintain stability.
But there is a cost to those who import the cheaper Chinese goods. There is also a plus, in that it does keep prices low for consumers. But if you don't have a job...
We have been talking, quite frequently,
about the immigration situation in Europe. On the surface one
wouldn't think about this in relation to the trade problems. But it
really is an interconnected world. The problem with cheap goods from
China driving local businesses out of business isn't just a problem
for the larger economies. Smaller economies which haven't had a chance to mature are also hit hard. But China isn't the only large economy guilty of this.
Perhaps solving one problem(trade) would go a
long way to solving another(immigration). So I have for you a very interesting
documentary regarding the workings of global trade. This one is
current. :)
186 comments:
"So what if Donald Trump is right?"
Right about what?
That the current trade structure is unfair and needs to be changed.
This is driving me crazy. I am still not getting updates for either comments or posts sent to my email. Yet I have not changed anything with either the email account or the blog, that I can think of. The last notification I got was on May 24.
Does he know what changes need to be made? ‛Cause if the answer to that is ‛No’ then it don't matter if he's ‛right’.
Does he know what changes need to be made? ‛Cause if the answer to that is ‛No’ then it don't matter if he's ‛right’.
Oh, that I can agree with. He appears to be just shooting in the dark. Kind of a dangerous thing, that.
"This is driving me crazy."
Do you not have a box to check at the bottom for follow-up comments?
It's actually kind of a dreary day, with some rain. Too we to do anything outside, so I think I'll actually have some time to read. Yah!
Yes, I'll try that.
But that's not what changed. Before I got notification for posts as well. All of those settings were through the blog. It's annoying.
"Before I got notification for posts as well."
I have a ‛third-party’ solution for that. (I get notifications when you make a new post, main page.) Let me know if you want to pursue it.
Before the Kim/Trump summit meeting gets started I thought I'd take a minute to point out that Kim doesn't need the summit to be a ‛success’, whatever that might mean. (To a large extent just getting Trump to the position where Trump offered Kim concessions, small concessions though they were, just to go ahead with the meeting, means Kim has already achieved a measure of success from his point of view.)
All Kim needs is that any lack of ‛success’ be blamed on Trump. This should not be hard to arrange. Then Kim can expect that the current sanctions regime (largely arranged by the Obama administration) will begin to fall apart.
I'm looking at Trump's latest blow-up with the members of the G-7, and especially with Canadian Prime Minister Trudeau but certainly not only with him to the exclusion of the other five, and I'm thinkin’ that Trump wants a lot of outrage on a lot of subjects, among a lot of parties--confusion reigning everywhere, as he goes into tomorrow's meeting with Kim Jong-un.
McCain is weighing in on this latest debacle of Trump's saying that Americans stand with our allies, even if our President doesn't. I can't speak for others, but I certainly don't approve of what Trump is doing.
Yes, trade is a problem. Yes, it needs fixing. But you don't do that by throwing out insults. Kind of sickening.
I have a ‛third-party’ solution for that.
Well, it probably doesn't matter about the posts, or even the comments. It's just I would like to know why it isn't working as it should.
The follow up comments check box works.
Almost forgot...
Justify has won the Triple Crown! Congratulations to Mike Smith. I have watched him race here at Canterbury. A talented rider.
Those were just me, testing.
Lynnette, excellent documentary from Deutsche Welle. There's a couple of things it doesn't mention. One is that both the EU and the US pay farmers to overproduce. Here in the EU, I used to think that was an unalloyed good thing. My parents generation experienced a time when there were food scarcities in Europe, and even diseases of malnutrition. Up until the first quarter of the 20th century 85% of children in the industrial cities of Europe and the US had rickets.
Subsidised overproduction means that farmers do not get wiped out by variable yields -- either crop failures in bad years or depressed markets in good ones. But the food has to go somewhere. From the 1950s the fledgling European Common Market sought to increase much needed food production capacity. But it was a victim of its own success. When I was a kid in the 70s we used to get "butter vouchers" -- free handouts that were designed to use up the growing oversupply. We famously had butter and beef "mountains" and milk and wine "lakes". Excess fruit and vegetables got ploughed back into the ground by the thousands of tonnes, and ploughed fields were sprayed with milk.
I remember in the 1980s part of the Live Aid appeal for the Ethiopian famine was to donate European butter oil, instead of supplying it cheap to European consumers. But that was a double edged sword. Nowadays, European and US overseas food aid is a disaster for some countries. Dumping of overproduced food on foreign markets ruins those countries' domestic economies and forces them to produce cash crops for export which are at the whim of world markets. I think this has been partly recognised and EU agricultural reforms aim to reduce the problem, but I don't know to what extent.
A second point not emphasised in the documentary is the effect of Germany's mercantilist policies within the EU. German's are fond of criticising the profligate Greeks and other nationalities who haven't managed to balance their budgets like Germany has. But they forget (or ignore) the disastrous effect that the introduction of the European single currency has had. Poorer EU economies like Greece, Portugal, Spain and Ireland used to have a safety valve when times got tough. Currency devaluations made their exports more competitive as well as effectively reducing comparative wages.
From the late 1970s onward, a new European monetary system allowed countries to vary their exchange rates versus a basket of European currencies which later became a notional currency -- the ECU (European Currency Unit). Ireland broke its peg with Sterling (which was performing very poorly in the 1970s) to join the new European exchange rate mechanism (ERM). Although it also performed very weakly against the deutschmark, trade imbalances were helped by cash transfers from richer to poorer EU countries from which second-world economies like Ireland and Greece benefited enormously.
The idea was that there would be a grand economic convergence, so that currencies could trade within an ever narrowing range of ERM exchange rate bands, leading up to the creation of the European Central Bank and the introduction of a real euro currency in 1999. From that date forward, the exchange rates of eurozone countries were rigidly fixed and the physical euro notes and coins were introduced in 2002. The problem is that some countries cooked the books to make it look like they were converging when, in fact, their economies were not remotely suitable for joining the euro. Such was the case with Greece.
Other countries like Ireland, Spain and Portugal had massive economic expansions, helped by the savings and pensions of the thrifty Germans looking for investment opportunities. The flow of cheap money caused these economies to overheat and, deprived of an exchange rate mechanism and the ability to set their own interest rates, they developed large asset bubbles especially in construction.
To cut a long story short, the point is that Germany -- which appeared to be Europe's magnanimous benefactor, making free cash transfers to poorer countries -- actually benefited enormously from its own largesse. As the world's largest exporter, Eurozone convergence created a huge pan-European market for German goods and also depressed the euro currency compared to where the deutschmark on its own would have been. Effectively Germany did what the US has accused China of doing: manipulating its currency to gain competitive trade advantages. But this has resulted in enormous debts in the worse off European countries.
In some of the documentary shots from the port of Hamburg, I noticed a feature that I'd seen in another documentary recently. For legal and safety reasons, loading and unloading of containers in areas manned by humans must be done by human crane drivers. This includes lifting containers off ships and placing them on trucks. But the vast storage area in between is completely run by robots. You can see the autonomous vehicles that move containers from place to place within the storage zone, which have replaced a large amount of human labour in that part of the port.
Looks like whatever progress was made at the G7 has been undone by a Trump tweeting from Air Force One. He's effectively called Trudeau a liar and says he's instructing US officials to disregard the communiqué from the session. He may be right about US trade disadvantages but he has the diplomatic skills of a bull in a china shop. One wonders what he's about to do to the Korean crockery. On that, he's just tweeted that he'll know if there's a deal in the offing "as soon as he gets in the room" because "he knows how to read people". Yeah, right ...
The morning news informs me that Kim and Trump are both in Singapore, and Dennis Rodman is on his way.
To cut a long story short, the point is that Germany -- which appeared to be Europe's magnanimous benefactor, making free cash transfers to poorer countries -- actually benefited enormously from its own largesse.
But will it be a fool's paradise? Because you have to deal with the massive amount of debt some of the poorer countries have accumulated. At least in one way or another. You also have the immigration issue, which Germany, and the EU as a whole, has probably had a hand in creating by their trade practices. As the documentary, and you, pointed out, particularly in agriculture, by decimating the local industry. And, yes, the US has played a role in that as well.
Now we have Trump adding fuel to the fire. Where does it end? Another depression? Simplistic solutions don't necessarily work on complex problems.
BTW, I rather like DW, they have some interesting stuff going on. I also like the take from someone else besides US media.
One wonders what he's about to do to the Korean crockery. On that, he's just tweeted that he'll know if there's a deal in the offing "as soon as he gets in the room" because "he knows how to read people". Yeah, right ...
Oh, never fear...
...and Dennis Rodman is on his way.
Yup, that's what our diplomatic corps has become. *sigh*
Really getting tired of living in reality television land. Give me some intelligent well thought out discourse and policy.
"BTW, I rather like DW, they have some interesting stuff going on. I also like the take from someone else besides US media."
Yeah, likewise. I'll definitely keep an eye on that channel. It appears to be a kind of German version of BBC World. I was wondering what Deutsche Welle meant as it's not "German World" -- Die Welt (The World) is a well known German newspaper. As it happens my brother is over for a couple of days. He lives in Belgium almost on top of the Drieländerpunkt, the three-country point between Belgium, Netherlands and Germany. He works in the Netherlands, is married to a German, speaks German and (Flemish) Dutch, his kids speak English, French and German, and one of them speaks Russian. So I think I can take his word that Deutsche Welle means "German Wave", in the sense of a radio wave.
"Really getting tired of living in reality television land. Give me some intelligent well thought out discourse and policy."
I'm watching less and less television and more and more youtube. There's so much more in-depth, topic-specific content on youtube. Old-style TV has become such a watered-down bore, I can't see it lasting more than a decade or two more. The only problem is the Google algorithms for dishing up youtube suggestions. Whatever way it has me pegged I get an endless stream of right-leaning offerings. I'm going to have to create a leftwing alter ego in the form of a new Google account in order to achieve some balance ;-)
Charles Hurt, Republican/conservative pundit of some renown within Republican/conservative circles, writing in the Washington Times tells us that the picture of the G-7 surrounding the seated, arm-crossed Trump was a huge political win for Trump. (Doesn't play that way in Europe, but does play as a huge success among the dedicated Trumpkins.)
However, when it comes time to figure out what was the point of this display, Mr. Hurt doesn't get the question. Point? What point? Pissing off our allies was the point; there was no further point; there was only that point. That's all the dedicated Trumpkins need. Mr. Hurt would wonder how we missed that.
There's so much more in-depth, topic-specific content on youtube.
Yes, it seems so. While I have cable I still find that it's hard to find anything to watch. I do watch CNN for news, but it tends to repeat itself...a lot. YouTube has a vast stock of videos on various topics. It's finding those that are accurate and not too biased that can be the problem.
The only problem is the Google algorithms for dishing up youtube suggestions. Whatever way it has me pegged I get an endless stream of right-leaning offerings.
lol! I've had some rather odd suggestions pop up because of off the wall topics I've searched for on impulse.
Charles Hurt, Republican/conservative pundit of some renown within Republican/conservative circles, writing in the Washington Times tells us that the picture of the G-7 surrounding the seated, arm-crossed Trump was a huge political win for Trump.
Huh! Trump looks like a little boy being chastised by his mother(Merkel).
It looks like the meeting between Trump & Kim Jong Un is playing in Prime Time.
I'm expecting comparisons to be made between the G-7 picture and what will probably be a smiling Kim/Trump photo coming out of Singapore tomorrow evening.
Near as I can make it out, Kim and Trump have jointly agreed to make happy talk together and jointly declare that both of them have had a hugely successful meeting. (Took a couple of paragraphs to get it all said, but that was the gist of it.)
From what I am hearing it appears that Trump has given away ( join military exercises with South Korea) for, basically, nothing. Some are trying to put a good face on the whole thing by saying it's a start, but I'm not sure a start to what...
I have to say that Trump is sounding more and more like the stooge of very dictator out there.
"…I'm not sure a start to what..."
He appears to have perhaps poked a hole in the unified sanctions regimen. Maybe it's a start towards further evasion of the current sanctions program.
[Lynnette]: "From what I am hearing it appears that Trump has given away ( join military exercises with South Korea) for, basically, nothing."
At the press conference he said it was contingent on progress in negotiations.
P.S. I forgot about the BBC Newsnight youtube channel. Steve Bannon was interviewed a couple of weeks ago.
Progress ‛in negotiations’ would appear to be something short of progress towards disarmament.
On reflection I have concluded that an in person meeting was probably necessary for Trump to climb down from the near-hysterical stance he had adopted towards North Korea since his own election, and therefore it served a good purpose; it allowed Trump to walk out of the corner he'd backed himself into.
Trump's new North Korean friends are apparently spiriting their Kim poo back to North Korea.
I think I just found Marcus on youtube! ;-)
Citing unnamed ‛sources’, »ABCNews is claiming that Trump's one time lawyer\fixer, Michael Cohen, is going to flip on Trump and that Cohen's current lawyers are all going to ‛leave the case’--odd language that last part.
Pete: "I think I just found Marcus on youtube! ;-)"
No that's not me. I mysef have a miniscule footprint on the Internet. And I have NO inerest in becoming public figure. In fact, the only reason I write here is that it's basically just a 4-5 people blog.
I think I can safely say that EVEN if I got highlighted in some sort of story it would ba a challeging task for journalists to even get a photo of myself.
Of course I realise I am probably in some photo some "friend" of me decided to post and I am aware that EVERYTHING you ever write or say or post on the Internet could theoretically be connected.
But still, my digital footprint is very small.
Lynnette: Huh! Trump looks like a little boy being chastised by his mother(Merkel)."
Or you could see it like: Trump is just sittin' down and sayin' NO NEVER at the face of the mother of all moslem invaders Merkel who is dead set on flooding Europe and the west with infinity moslems and africans. Trump JUST SAYS NO, to that insane plan.
Lynnette, I have to aks yall. Whats your opinion on the defacto very real and very functioning WALL that Israel has against palestinians? (and also against any african migrants for that matter - mainly ethiopians)
Are you against that wall? Do you believe that the Jewish state of Israel is not allowed to protect itself with a wall?
And if that wall is A-OK, how come other peoples are not allowed the same sort of protection?
Which walls are OK in your mind? ONLY the ones protecting Israel or others as well of non of the above?
Pete: "I think I just found Marcus on youtube! ;-)"
Actually watched that to completion now. No it's not me in that Vid. But he does have a point. Although the point doesnt go far enough.
I predict this:
1. The Sweden Democrats will get 25%+ of the vote this September.
2. That will make them the biggest party.
3. The Social Democrats whose vision of themselves is a dominant 40%+ party will face a disasterous outcome. (and then proceed to slide into oblivience as Social Democratic parties are doing all over)
4. Globalist Liberslism will soon prove to have run its course.
5. Nationalism will rebound.
Graned this might take more than ONE election, but we're gonna see the trend in a few months time.
"I predict this:"
In a move I would not have predicted, the White House has recently begun quietly advertising at conservative events and setting up ‛booths’ at conservative gatherings, looking for qualified persons who'd be willing to accept employment at the Trump White House.
I'm sure they'll find folks Lee. Lots of folks are gonna wanna jump on the band wagon when Trump gets his Nobel Peace Price.
After all they gave that price to Obama just cause he was sun-tannned and spoke well. He had not done nothing, he was a dindunuffin as it was. Or maybe even a dindusummphin - what with all of them drone strikes and the disaster he let Hillary uneash upon Libya.
Trump is on the verge of dismantling the most serious nuclear threat on earth. And he hasn't started any new wars. He should get a Nobel Peace prize.
In any case WW3 against Russia was diverted, or at least delyed, when he bloodsoaked and bloodhungry ghoul Hillary, who never heard of a war she didn't want to ship off other people's sons to die in, eventuallly lost.
We all hope she will be dead and buried soon lest ya'll dumbasses get another shot at givin' her the reins to global destruction.
This morning's pre-announcement official leaks let us know that the China tariffs are on for the full $50 billion previously threatened.
Unlike the Europeans, the Chinese will, almost certainly, take this lying down.
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Or, maybe not.
I'm noticing a full-court press by the Republican Party this morning against the Mueller investigation. Republicans in the House especially are climbing aboard an effort to shut down the investigation now, before Mueller can wrap it up and make his report.
It seems that the Republican Party has now fully engaged with the White House strategy to make the coming mid-term election all about whether or not Trump can be impeached.
Just stopped in briefly. I have another family issue at the moment and will be back later...
P.S
I see that Cohen is now saying he will cooperate with the Feds. Hmmm...perhaps Trump's strong hints at pardons isn't really working.
It appears that China is not gonna just overlook Trump's newest tariff salvo, but will reciprocate. CBSNews
Which walls are OK in your mind?
Sea walls.
I just read in my paper that the arctic is melting faster than originally thought. The melt rate has tripled in the past decade which could lead to a worst case scenario.
In a move I would not have predicted, the White House has recently begun quietly advertising at conservative events and setting up ‛booths’ at conservative gatherings, looking for qualified persons who'd be willing to accept employment at the Trump White House.
lol! Likely a career destroying move.
Lynnette:
Me "Which walls are OK in your mind?"
Lynnette: "Sea walls."
OK so then the Mediteranian should serve as a wall, right? A sea wall to keep 'em africansn outta Europe?
Or wait, no, you took my immigration question and instead of answering it diverted it to a glazierirs-gonna-melt-and-then-we-all-die question. OK, got that, But that was not an answer to my question:
----------------------
"Lynnette, I have to aks yall. Whats your opinion on the defacto very real and very functioning WALL that Israel has against palestinians? (and also against any african migrants for that matter - mainly ethiopians)
Are you against that wall? Do you believe that the Jewish state of Israel is not allowed to protect itself with a wall?
And if that wall is A-OK, how come other peoples are not allowed the same sort of protection?
Which walls are OK in your mind? ONLY the ones protecting Israel or others as well of non of the above?"
-------------------------
So, Lynnette, are Jews in Israel morally right when they enact walls, and if so is any other people on earth entitled to do the same, or is it a privilige just for jews?
Please answer that without bringing melting Ice caps into the debate, as that is very much non related.
FIwas a yank:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PJe754cLbok
Hmmm. I thought we liked regular Trump approval rating updates round here... or is that only when they're sinking? Of course all preznits are on a one-way downward ride after inauguration day. It's the nature of the job. But it seems like Trump got quite a rebound over the NK summit. In fact, he's at the same level as Obama was at the same stage of his preznitzy.
[Lynnette]: "I just read in my paper that the arctic is melting faster than originally thought. The melt rate has tripled in the past decade which could lead to a worst case scenario."
Pretty sure that was the Antarctic. The crazy weather's continuing here ... just a different kind of crazy each month. Now we haven't had any rain for weeks. In Ireland! (At least on the east coast). Our forty shades of green are looking distinctly brown. We even had a named storm (Hector) a couple of days ago and the continental high managed to bat it away to our north, so we got literally a few drops. Last night the weather finally turned fresher and there was a short shower. I went outside just to feel delicious cool rain on my face. Complaining about rain is in the DNA here ... but I think I've had enough sunshine for a while. And I'm not dreaming it ... I spotted a gorse fire up on the hills yesterday which doesn't normally happen until the end of an exceptionally dry summer.
Wow! Just checked data for the weather station at Dublin airport. Even I didn't realise it was this dry. Rainfall for May was 19 millimetres. The 30 year average for May is 60 mm. The average for June is 67 mm. Up to the halfway point of June (15th) we've had 1.5 mm!!
"I thought we liked regular Trump approval rating
updates round here... or is that only when they're
sinking?"
Those were usually the result of Lynnette's fairly regular invocations of the spectre of impeachment, and my insistence that he'd never be successfully impeached unless his average ratings dropped to the 33-35% approval range and hung there awhile.
Lynnette has quit invoking the spectre of impeachment.
[Marcus]: Are you against that wall? (Referring to the Israeli wall)
Yes. But I doubt they would listen to me, even if I were president of the United States.
As for my seeming diversion into glacial melting in Antarctica (yes, Petes was right, I was in a hurry), that is an issue that will affect far more than the Israeli/Palestinians, thus my mentioning it.
But back to walls that hold out immigrants or are used for other types of security, I don't like physical walls that separate people. All they do is breed resentment, stagnation (in the case of the Palestinians and possibly others) and ultimately mask the deeper problems that people should be dealing with on another level. Simply put they hide things rather than solve them.
Israel, like China before it with its wall, is a sovereign state and what I think isn't going to matter a hill of beans to them. However, I hope that my viewpoint within my own country will in the end prevail.
But it seems like Trump got quite a rebound over the NK summit. In fact, he's at the same level as Obama was at the same stage of his preznitzy.
I am really starting to question my fellow countrymen. I might have to start a snakeoil business. I have a feeling I'd find lots of customers.
The crazy weather's continuing here ... just a different kind of crazy each month.
We have had a very dry spring with unusually high temps in May, which dried out my yard. Yesterday we had, between two different showers, 2.50 inches of rain. The last shower came down in sheets. I haven't seen it quite that intense in a very long time, if ever.
It's interesting that you should mention the time frame in which this is all happening. That was one of the things mentioned in a climate change book I have read, the possibility that this will not be a gradual change, allowing people to adapt, but a sudden see-sawing that will eventually lead to a catastrophic climate change.
It's still lookin’ dicey for The Great Wall of Trump. I don't think it's gonna come together for him, but he's still tryin’ for it.
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On the subject of his disapproval numbers…. He's looking at a roaring economy (thanks to continued stimulus spending and vastly increased government debt loads), and he's got a job approval rating of roughly where Obama's was when Obama was struggling with the depths of the Great Recession. Wouldn't be too wise to assume from those numbers that he's got anywhere near the backing that Obama had. First stumble….
Lynnette has quit invoking the spectre of impeachment.
You're right, that won't happen unless the majority flips to Democratic in Congress. I keep my fingers crossed that people will at least get rid of some Republicans during the mid-terms, but I really have lost some faith in the average American voter.
Speaking of the ‛first stumble’…. He's having some trouble keeping his Republican Congress whupped down on the subject of taking migrant children away from their parents at the border. We may be looking at his first stumble right there.
First stumble….
China tariffs.
We may be looking at his first stumble right there.
I was going to mention that, but I thought you meant economic.
The China thing ain't staggered him, …yet. The practice of seizing the migrant children may hit him first.
"President Donald Trump on Monday ordered the
Pentagon to establish a stand-alone Space Force as a
new branch of the armed forces.
***
"'Thankfully,' [Sen Bill Nelson, ex-astronaut, noted on
Twitter] 'the president can’t do [that]….
Politico
Speaking of trouble with his Republican Congress, CNN tried that line. I don't always like Trump's "fake news" stance -- he's a complete media whore himself -- but, god, CNN are pathetic.
So, a gang shooting in broad daylight (yes 8 PM is broad daylight in summertime sweden) at a place where I myself stroll past a couple a times a week. 3 dead, 3 wounded, and they say one of the wounded will either die or be a vegetable for life.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/malmo-shooting-latest-sweden-dead-internet-cafe-drive-by-gunman-a8405676.html
Really. No joke. I stroll past that place at least every other day. Not often at 8PM but often at 6PM or so, but if they can gun down folks at 8PM then I could just as well have been there too.
Lee was givin' us his bullshit "cover up" for multiculti that the vast increase in gang rapes and rapes at all might not even be a thing, but if MURDERS increased that might indeed be a thing. Because them could be tallied.
Of course the rape epideic with these amimals is way way worse than their murderous ways. BC these fucking desert monkeys starts to rape from the get go, even while living at immigrant housings, even before they get asylum status, they are out there raping anything that moves. Girls, women, boys, animals even (as far as Afghans go - arabs don't tend to rape animals at least).
The shooters, they are 2:nd gen immigrants. Or immigrants who came as children and grew up here. It takes some time to get established into a gang and get guns and seek a part of the drug market, or some such illicit market.
So recent asylum seekers are NOT to blame for the shooting spree or grenade attacks in Sweden. On the other hand, if previous waves of desert monkeys saw their spawn commit to criminal life what does that mean in he future for all them very much more numerous numbers of sand niggers we in Sweden admittted because of the trachery of our own leaders and because of the hordes that fucking communist hag Merkel in Germany let in? (May she roast in hell!)
Hell of a lot of disconnected ramblin’ ‛round goin’ on there. It seems that Trumpistry is perhaps contagious.
On the other hand it was only three sand monkeys who were well known criminals that got got and on the lulzy side two were brothers and their father apparently got a heart attack and died too, becauze shock his sons were criminals I guess. So 4-5 less fucking leaches for us swedes to pay money to. A win for sure.
Still they should keep that shit down in the sand box where they belong and not up here mongst civilised people. Real human beings could have got hurt!
Lee: "Hell of a lot of disconnected ramblin’ ‛round goin’ on there. It seems that Trumpistry is perhaps contagious."
I'm sure you can figure it out. You're not that unclever Lee.
And you DID say that the "rape epidemic" in Sweden (that I pointed to) was maybe not so real. You said if actual murder rates grew I might have a point.
Well we have muders up the ying yang all up in here. Often in "challenged areas" (meaning where brown people live) but now also in decent areas where white people live. It's gettin to be a real nuicance you know.
"Well we have muders up the ying yang all up in here."
You have failed to integrate your immigrants. That's gonna cause the development of a criminal class. It's just gonna happen. Doesn't matter if the immigrants are Afghans or Irish or Italians; failure to integrate the immigrants is gonna get ya an ethnic criminal class.
Ya'll screwed up.
I mean we all know that this latest shooting and a couple of the ones before are linked to the Khodr family (some claining to be kurds some saying they'e arabs).
The Farkho family (who are among criminal gang leaders in Berlin and Cologne as well), and the El-Zeizy famali, strinlng in Malmö. Then you have the Kahdr family in Gothenburg that is really the strongest bunch of criminal desert misfits there.
These low life "people" are known. To the police and to everyone. Arab clans wreaking havoc in civilised countries. But our laws are aied at a civiliced populace and has no real impact on these savages.
Yet there's a very simple sulution. The Duterte style solution. Just KILL THEM ALL. Why not?
Just murder every one of those sons of bitches on the streets and the rest of us will be better off for it.
But for that we need a Duterte, or at least a Trump, to call the shots. Someone who calls a spade a spade and answers a knife with a gun.
The practice of seizing the migrant children may hit him first.
As usual he's doubling down. Same goes for the tariffs on China. He's threatening more retaliatory tariffs after they responded in kind. So the stock market is getting the shivers again.
There is growing outrage over the separation of children from parents, but I don't know if it will be enough. I'm losing faith in people's ability to judge.
Yet there's a very simple sulution. The Duterte style solution. Just KILL THEM ALL. Why not?
So you believe that becoming an outlaw gang yourself is the solution?
Lee: "You have failed to integrate your immigrants. That's gonna cause the development of a criminal class"
Integration is a canard, It will NEVER happen. I myself will NEVER integrate with africans, arabs or afghans. Never.
And the only thing that seperates me from the vast majority is I admitt it. The rest of the vast majoroty is just as ethno-centrist as I am but they are too afraid of being un-PC to admitt it.
Face it: there's no white Swede, not ONE, who wants their own kid to attent a "multicultural" school. Not ONE. Hence private schools and (the affluent
) keep from meeing them at all.
Similarly amongs ya'll yanks. You may say ya'll are so multicultural and you may hold that multiculti banner so high. Still the VERY MOST pririty of a white couple is to send their child to a predominately white school. It might not be called a "white" school but a "good" school instead, but we all know what it means.
And for that matter even BLACK parents if they have the means want their kids to go to a white school. Why is that?
You KNOW that's just the plain thruth Lee. And Lynnette, you know it too. But I still know ya'll won't admit to it.
Lynnette:
"So you believe that becoming an outlaw gang yourself is the solution?"
I did NOT say that. I said a "Duterte solution". Duterte is running dethh squads in the Phillipines and he was ELECTED to do so and his people LOVE him for doing it.
That's not by any strech of the imaginagtion an "outlaw" thing. And I would never ever propose any outlaw activity.
I just think we should amend our law to permit a Durerte style governor to deal once and for all with the foreign filth we suffer from. With EXTREME PREDJUDICE!
I just can't really see a viable solution under our current paradigm. It'll only get worse otherwise.
See, Lynnette, if you're childless you don't even have a say in the matter. you're a brown withered leaf. It you have kids you´re insane.
A nation, a homeland, is something one generation inherits and something they in turn aim to pass off in a better way to their heirs. This was always true.
Do y´ll reallly think passing off white america, the beacon of freedom and ingeounuity, to the brown hords that you wouldn't want your own children in school with but who due to you will eclipse white cuture and bury it, is sane?
GREAT news from based Italy. Not only are they denying dockage to "people" smugglin´shipd they are also putting down the shoe on those fuckking gypsies we all hate.
It's not as I don't pity a poor woman sitting begging with a cup (actually, I don'). But only a moron like Pete S cannot see that that begger is in fact a slave and the vast ortion of gthe moneis goes to gthe gypsy kings in Romania (that I hate even more).
Every single coin a wannabe doogooer like Ptete puts in a beggars cup is another brick on a mansion in Tirana. Plus another reason to keep the begging slave on a pavement in Dublin.
It's a 1:1 deal. Pete and his liberal cohorts gets a well-feelz; the gypsy king in Romania gets his msnsion built, and then there's the 2:2 when Pete and his librul allis gets to shame white society for not helping the poor beggars enough...
"[Integration] will NEVER happen."
That doesn't change the fact that your failure to integrate your immigrants is a guarantee that you will thereby create an ethnic criminal class in Sweden. It will happen. Your failure guarantees it.
I did NOT say that. I said a "Duterte solution".
Oh, sorry.
I just think we should amend our law to permit a Durerte style governor to deal once and for all with the foreign filth we suffer from. With EXTREME PREDJUDICE!
Okay, not "outlaw", more like something else.
Have you ever read "The Book Thief"? Or seen the movie? It's set in Nazi Germany. Good book, but sad, very sad, that people could do that to each other.
And so it begins.
European Union tariffs on products from the United States will go into effect on Friday.
"Trade wars are good, and easy to win."
Donald J. Trump
Lee: "That doesn't change the fact that your failure to integrate your immigrants is a guarantee that you will thereby create an ethnic criminal class in Sweden. It will happen. Your failure guarantees it."
It would have happened eeven if we DID try, and "we" DID it's just I did not.
The main fault them "integration" proponents start off with is that they think these dune coons WANT to be like us. Well, they don't. They despise us for our weakness, they think our women are whores, they hate us either for our religion or for the lack of one.
It baffles me that there are so many complete morons who think that an Afghan can become a "swede" in all matters that count by a fucking two week integration course.
As if a swede would suddenly turn diehard Taliban after a two week Qouran study course.
Lynnette, would you "integrate" willingly in Afghanistan after two weeks being tought by some Mullah?
Ad if not, why do you suppose an Afghan will readily accept western ways?
But for me all that crap is neither here nor there. I just want to lock the gates and start to throw unwanteds out.
And for anyone saying "it can't be done", of course it can be done, it's just a matter of will on our part. It's not like them monkeys could put up any kind of a challenge on their own part, is it?
"‛we’ DID it's just I did not."
‛Ya'll’ is plural (a point Petes has never quite figured out, leading him to create some amusing posts that he didn't know were amusing); it meant Swedes in general, not Marcus in particular.
A two-week course and then quit trying was asking for failure.
WTF should we do then?
Start beating our wifes, locking in our daughters, praying to a peadophile deity, throwing fags off of rooftops and start chewing kath?? Throw away 1000 years of development just to please some unwanted dune coons?
Why the fuck would we even WANT to "integrate" with these animals?
If they could ASSIMILATE that'd be one thing, but they can't and they won't and they don't want to either.
They just want to keep on beating their whifes and locking in their daughters, while their apeish offspring are let free to rape ours, and just generally behave like fucking monkeys and go on shooting sprees with weapons they are too fucking inept to even design and build themselves. That's what they want. No negotiaton possible. We need Duterte style enforcement. KILL THEM ALL.
"WTF should we do then?"
Integration can be compelled. (Better, it can be encouraged to the point that it's gonna happen in spite of reluctance or resistance.) Once they're properly integrated assimilation will naturally follow of its own accord. That's how it works.
Our friends at McClatchy have discovered an interesting string of high-dollar cash purchases of Trump properties. Russian oligarchs with cash finding ways to move said cash to Trump.
Whoda thunk it? Mueller maybe?
It seems that Trump has now signed an executive order (he's fond of those) reversing his child separation policy.
The dedicated Trumpkins won't like to admit that their Great Leader backed down. Gonna be an interesting day or two whilst they figure how to spin this.
Whoda thunk it? Mueller maybe?
And anybody else who looked closely enough and didn't have a political bias.
It appears that the Trumpworld spin on the border separations is going to be to play Trump as the ‛Savior of the Children’ in the face of a Congress that would not act to save them. Trump steps in and saves the day; crisis averted again (as in the Korean face-off).
I suppose if you stretch your imagination enough you could get that out of Time's new cover. Some don't see it that way, though.
The Trump administration's policy that effectively separated families crossing the US border has held up a big, glaring mirror to America's moral character. In TIME magazine's latest cover, the reflection is met with indifference in the face of human suffering.
In the stark photo illustration, the towering figure of Trump looms over a sobbing child, who is the subject of a now-iconic photograph taken recently by Pulitzer Prize-winning photographer John Moore.
"Welcome to America," the illustration reads.
Trump was at a campaign rally in Duluth yesterday. He has quite a few supporters in out state Minnesota, especially in the mining industry, which has seen a renewal.
However, the devil is in the details:
Bust to Boom on the Iron Range
The taconite mines are back in action, factories are expanding and new stores and restaurants are popping up from Grand Rapids to Silver Bay.
Minnesota’s Iron Range is experiencing an economic revival that seemed unlikely as recently as two years ago, when idled mines and job losses battered the region.
“Obviously the entire economy up here rotates around the mines. So if the mines are doing good, then we all do good,” said Erik Leitz, who with his wife opened the BoomTown Brewery & Woodfire Grill in Hibbing six months ago.
A newfound optimism will greet President Donald Trump when he makes his first visit to northern Minnesota on Wednesday.
The Iron Range is Trump country. He won big in 2016 in the Eighth Congressional District, which includes Hibbing and other key mining cities. A Star Tribune Minnesota poll taken in January found that 70 percent of northern Minnesota’s residents approved of the way he was handling the economy and jobs.
Lee: "Integration can be compelled. (Better, it can be encouraged to the point that it's gonna happen in spite of reluctance or resistance.) Once they're properly integrated assimilation will naturally follow of its own accord. That's how it works."
Blahdiblah, no it does NOT work. We've (not me but society) bent over backwards trying and it simply does not work. Plus we DO NOT WANT IT!
I told you that before. Integration means you take different cultures and blend them. Like you could take yellow and blue and mix them to end up with green. I will NEVER integrate with these monkeys, and they do not want to integrate with us either - they just want our stuff. They ONLY came here for free stuff and money, not cause they liked us - they hate us.
And why should we try. If there's a serious problem with immigrants why should we go the long way around and try some insane integration scheme, when it's much more easy and certainly more reliable to just remove the cause of the problem. Get them the fuck outta here. Like Stalin said - no man, no problem.
I mean, if you get gangrene you cut it out, you don't try in vain to live with it, do you?
On a positive note: we're seeing changes over here. Real changes and fast ones. The Visegrad nations stood tall under severe pressure and remain stalwarths. Now with Austria and Italy on their side it's gettin' more and more impossible for the Communist EU chieftains to push multiculty. Now that the BASED ethnocetrist ideology we need is no longer just on the outskirts but in the core European nations, we're making real gains.
Even the worst of the worst culprits, the evil former Stasi informant and still commie whore, Merkel (May God send her to hell for all eternity), is being forced back and might soon be replaced. (I would have liked to see her hang in Berlienerplatz but I guess we can't get everything we want)
In Sweden it's basically a given that the Sweden Democrats will rise from 12.9% to just around 30% and become the biggest party in parliament. Throwing over the Social Democrats who see themselves as "state bearing" and identify as a 40% plus party and a party that has been the biggest for a hundred years - and now they will lose out by a 5-8% margin. Because they gave fuckall for their own people and worried more about grown men from fucking Afghanistan posing as "children".
So yeah, we're reaching my ballpark soon. And then the expulsions will begin for real. We will take back Europe for Europeans. Bet that! Also Duterte style death squads are NOT really just imaginations of mine, they might well come to pass. We are Europeans after all, we've done it all before better than anyone.
Here is Merkel, the Stasi whore, marching in East Germany with the Stasi youth wing:
http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2013/05/21/article-2328536-19EB9CC3000005DC-960_634x391.jpg
Who knows how many free thinking people that disgusting whore sent to the commie torture chambers?
For her crimes (of being a Stasi whore) she should really be strung up by piano wire, but we're not there yet and we might need to show compassion, so ousting that commie-bitch is an important first step. And it seems we're gettin' there.
"I told you that before. Integration means you take
different cultures and blend them."
Yes, I remember you telling me that. You were wrong then. You're still wrong. That's not what it means.
The word is derived from the Norman French, and originally from Latin, not from Swedish. Apparently you people don't know what it means. Perhaps that explains why ya'll ain't been doin’ it right.
Educate me then, oh wise one. Pray tell what does "inegration" mean?
Used in an ethnic integration context (first such contextual use appears to be American from the 1930's or 1940's depending on the source one consults), it means that the minority ethnic group mixes freely with the majority ethnic group. (Think of a spoonful of salt spooned over a bowl of cornmeal--not yet integrated. Then take a whisk and whisk the contents of the bowl vigorously distributing the salt, more of less equally, among the larger volume of cornmeal--now integrated.) Salt is still salt; cornmeal is still cornmeal. But the two are integrated within the bowl.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GaCMXyN3qJ0
Europe should steer away from America. (Unless america adopts Trumpism which it seems it won't do). We should then insead ally with white Russia. Strike a bargain with China. Leave he americas to their own devices. And while white America was once a challenger, even a suprior, the future browner and browner AMERICA will once again serve as a mere colony and raw material producer.
A crime ridden dystopia where MS13 gangland warriors fight it out with black gangs and the few remaining whites with money huddle in enclosed encaves, rich as fuck but with no freedoms.
11:26 PM in Sweden according to Google.
Lee:
"Used in an ethnic integration context (first such contextual use appears to be American from the 1930's or 1940's depending on the source one consults), it means that the minority ethnic group mixes freely with the majority ethnic group. (Think of a spoonful of salt spooned over a bowl of cornmeal--not yet integrated"
But they hate us and we hate them tho. How you gonna integrate them groups? And the hate is only inceasinng mind you. Integrate that whydontcha?
I have a much better recourse. I'll tell ya that.
Lynnette:
11:26 PM in Sweden according to Google.
And so? Evening in Europe means daytime in America. So what?
"How you gonna integrate them groups?"
The point is to integrate the people, not the groups. Ya just dump the salt on top of the bowl of cornmeal and you have the salt still ‛grouped’ together. The idea is to break up the grouping, mix the salt in with the cornmeal. (You got the whole thing figured wrong from the start.)
Yall can dump all the salt ya want over there, a somali aint never ever gonna become a Swede. It aint happenin´. No way no how.
Yall can mebby have ém if yall want ém. BC they are soon outta here fur sure anyways.
I believe your fellow Swedes have been rapidly granting them citizenship.
Turns out this whole "separated small girl" meme was just another lie:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5869829/Father-two-year-old-face-child-separation-crisis-speaks-out.html
Just like the drowned baby meme outta Turkey was a lie and the gas baby meme outta Syria was an obvious lie.
Libtards, neocons and cat-ladies swallowing all this shit up... SMHD.
Every fucking time an anti-massimmigration stance is made these fuckers come up with a "OOOHHH, think of the children"-meme and paster it all over their lying tabloids. And dumbfucks all over just suck it up. Amazing really.
https://d15shllkswkct0.cloudfront.net/wp-content/blogs.dir/1/files/2015/05/Think-of-the-Children.jpg
Lee:
"I believe your fellow Swedes have been rapidly granting them citizenship."
Well, you might suffer under the illusion that an act is always final and cannot be reversed. That a citizenship granted cannot be reversed.
I ask you, why?
Of course if we can grant a person swedish citizenship we can also strip a person from it. Mebby laws need to be changed, but laws can be changed (and they will be).
"Turns out this whole 'separated small girl' meme was
just another lie:"
Trump's lie as a matter of fact. Team Trump had announced a ‛zero-tolerance’ policy, claiming that they were filing criminal charges against all illegal immigrants. Turns out they were only filing charges on about half of them (due to inadequate enforcement of the new policy downstream), and they knew they weren't getting all of them, but they said they were anyway. This child happened to be among the nearly half who weren't getting swept up in the new ‛zero tolerance’ program even though the Trump administration had said that they were.
"…you might suffer under the illusion that…citizenship granted
cannot be reversed."
Nope; I have no such notion. But, it's gonna seriously complicate your proposed program, perhaps beyond what you can convince your countrymen to support.
Just as I am starting to think that I like Melania Trump she goes and makes a fashion choice which makes me question her real feelings about the border situation. Causing controversy is apparently not reserved for Donald Trump alone.
Melania Trump seems to have gotten way too clever with that one; nobody knows what the hell it was supposed to mean.
Indeed. I'm starting to wonder if she wouldn't have made a good actress as well as a model.
She would have had to work on that accent.
Turkish President Erdoğan was announced his victory in the Presidential elections held this weekend. Official counts are not yet available, but Erdoğan's preemption of the official counts would appear to make it clear that he's gonna see to it that the official results are in accord.
New plan: It appears that Trump now wants to interdict people on the Mexican side of the border, before they can cross over to the United States, and somehow prevent them from ever applying for asylum in the first place. (TrumpTweets)
Ahh, now he is floating the idea of just kicking them out of the country without any due process.
The common aspect of his rapidly evolving new positions is that they're blatantly unconstitutional.
Huh! Harley Davidson is moving some of its production overseas to avoid tariffs.
Ain't Trumpland grand?
This is Harley's second announcement of the off-shoring of jobs just this year. (The first one got lost in the noise over one of Trump's other outrages.)
The common aspect of his rapidly evolving new positions is that they're blatantly unconstitutional.
Very much a Trump MO.
There was a reason some things were put in our Constitution. It was to avoid acquiring a dictator.
The morning's TrumpTweets suggest that Trump sees the Harley-Davidson move to manufacture overseas as a danger to him equal to that of the border separations.
Lee:
Me:"…you might suffer under the illusion that…citizenship granted
cannot be reversed."
Lee responding: "Nope; I have no such notion. But, it's gonna seriously complicate your proposed program, perhaps beyond what you can convince your countrymen to support."
You are correct there, I must give that to you. At present point in time we're not ready to reverse any citizenships granted. We're not doing that even for rapists or murderers.
But I'm talking trajectory here. And I definetly feel that I and mine are on an upwards trajectory. And in some small amount of time these for the moment unimaginary recources will be made standard practice. We're gettin there.
As for ya'll. Ya'll envision a Midterms that puts the breaks on the Trump train by Dems winning here and there.
As far as I see it ya'll will be faced with a red wave that will make Trump ever more potent in the second half of his first term, leading him up nicely to a second term.
Of course yall's POLLS won't tell that story. But if you're still dumb as fuck enough to trust polls, then you deserve to be surprised.
After all - America is still white enough to pull that through, regardless of boomer librul evengelicals or old cat ladies who betray their race and heritage; for the sake of wars for Israel and/or infinite brown hordes from the third world entering white nations.
We'll see I guess, but my track record compared to yourse is bretty gud so far. So I think my prediction should be taken seriously here up in this muttafukka. Fur realz.
Lynnette:
"Huh! Harley Davidson is moving some of its production overseas to avoid tariffs."
What we call here "A storm in a glass of water". Meaning a big deal is made of a minor, insignificant thing.
IF HD even go through with this what is the impact on the US economy of a single motorcykle manufactorer moving a portion of their business to Europe?? We're talking percents of percents of percents here, and all for show.
Really??
How many manufactoring jobs did you lose to the Chinese during the previous two adminisratons? Tally them whydontcha? Where was your whining then?
Is the loss of a part (no one knows how big yet - it's just a statement) of a single manufacturer of motorcycles that are not even popular outside the USA really a big deal, compared to all the manufacturing you lost so far and nobody said fuckall about?
You really are stupid. I'm sorry but you are. There's just no other way to put it.
Plus the only reason HD is a big deal here is for sentimental value. It's an AMERICAN brand and losing it hurts, just like losing Volvo to the Chinese hurt sentiments in Sweden far more than the economic impact warranted.
BUT, this HD decision is made for show, it probably means they put up a single small workshop somewhere in Europe if that. IF they were serious about cutting costs they would be going to China with he rest of 'em. But they are wise enough to know that'd backfire at their brand.
This is just bullshit and it will have zero effect on american jobs or the economy in the USA. Plus HD will prolly stay on in America for that matter.
"You really are stupid. I'm sorry but you are."
You missed the importance of the event (which is political, not economic). Even after Trump put in three tweets just this morning, denouncing Harley-Davidson and threatening them with retribution, even after I mentioned his tweets, you still don't see it.
That doesn't make her the stupid one.
By a 5-4 margin the Supreme Court has upheld Trump's travel ban.
The morning's TrumpTweets suggest that Trump sees the Harley-Davidson move to manufacture overseas as a danger to him equal to that of the border separations.
Well, if he were smart, he would.
I've been delving into the history of the Great Depression via YouTube documentaries. Some interesting things going on back then besides the crash on Wall Street. So many factors led to the worst economic decline in US history.
"By a 5-4 margin…"
Mitch McConnell's gambit, the tanking of the nomination of Merrick Garland, has paid off for the Republicans once again. It's too bad that the intense partisanship of Washington D.C. has so deeply infected the Supreme Court, as well as the more overtly political branches of government.
You wanna start a betting war with me wether the majority of Harley Davidson riders are also Trump supporters, or not?
Bet this: HD will default on this one. Fur sure. (Actually they made a terrible fault on this one, one that might really cost them.) And they will back track. Just you wait.
I remember back in 2010 in Sweden when an online shoe store went political and told their audience on Youtube that they did not want business from those who had voted Sweden Democrats. Well, a year later they got bankrupted.
Same as for that stupid resturanteur in Virginia lately who threw out a Trump co worker. She might see a quick rise from social doo gooders in the short term but their memory is short and her business is doomed. It will default within a year or two. Good riddance.
Harley Davidson will too realise that they are a brand closely related to the USA as an idea and that going against MAGA was a VERY stupid idea.
What we call here "A storm in a glass of water". Meaning a big deal is made of a minor, insignificant thing.
But, Marcus, only history can judge if an event is minor or insignificant. Sure, HD is only one company, but there are many many more out there who will be scrambling to insulate themselves from Trump's tariffs, in whatever ways they can, regardless of whether or not it will hurt American workers.
Not to sound like Annie, if you remember her, but many in corporate America tend to look after themselves first. And when you pull a string here something moves miles away.
Since this is Harley's second move of jobs just this year, I'll bet they're committed to the move, and they carry it through, threats from Trump notwithstandning. (Be easier to settle that bet than a bet on whether most Harley owners are Trumpkins or not.)
Lee: "You missed the importance of the event (which is political, not economic)."
That just makes it even worse Lee. Don't you see that? People can see that this is not really an economic decision FOR Harley Davidson but a political one AGAINST Trump.
Can you not see that? Or do you see it but hold out a hope that yout fellow counrymen are to stupid to see it?
I'm gonna laugh and laugh and laugh when the Republican Trumpists win the midterms so hard ya'll not know what even to say but whine.
"That just makes it even worse Lee."
OMG, you are thickheaded. The importance of the event is political rather than economic. That doesn't mean the impetus for the decision was also political. I rather doubt it was. (Ain't her being stupid here.)
Mitch McConnell's gambit, the tanking of the nomination of Merrick Garland, has paid off for the Republicans once again.
And made the country an even more divisive place.
It's too bad that the intense partisanship of Washington D.C. has so deeply infected the Supreme Court, as well as the more overtly political branches of government.
It was a partisan vote. But then, as someone pointed out, if Hillary had gotten elected, although she probably wouldn't have done a travel ban, and she had appointed a Supreme Court Justice, it would have likely fallen differently. So elections really, really do count.
Lynnette:
"But, Marcus, only history can judge if an event is minor or insignificant. Sure, HD is only one company, but there are many many more out there who will be scrambling"
Are you for real? Scarmbling to get out?
Tell me then oh wise Lynnette, where did the industrial jobs in America go? And under whose administration did they vanish? Fact: the exudus stared under the false conservative Bush 2 and escalated under the worst president for America in the history of times Obama. They fucking dismantled your industries, apart from the war industries they needed intact to be able to fuck the rest of the world up.
Do you seriously think you can be a great nation of a 1% exremely rich and the rest of you get by on brewing lattes for one another?
"And under whose administration did they vanish?"
I think we can reasonably trace the off-shoring of American jobs back to the early 70's (the Nixon administration); although it picked up steam under President Reagan.
People can see that this is not really an economic decision FOR Harley Davidson but a political one AGAINST Trump.
If they work for HD in the plant that is now closing because the jobs are going overseas all they are going to see is their job going away. Like you said, just like all of those manufacturing jobs that went to China before.
"So elections really, really do count."
Well, I've held since the beginning that Trump was bound to do some serious damage, although I do expect the Republic to survive. I do not expect the Republican Party to recover--I think that particular collapse will become quickly evident if they lose badly during the upcoming mid-term elections, as I currently expect will be the result.
I think we can reasonably trace the off-shoring of American jobs back to the early 70's (the Nixon administration);...
Dang it! He always beats me to the punch.
Once we normalized relations with China we were off to the races.
"He always beats me to the punch."
I probably type faster.
Well, I've held since the beginning that Trump was bound to do some serious damage, although I do expect the Republic to survive.
I have to trust that it will too. And in reality all of our various checks and balances are actually working. It's just that people have to decide what kind of country they want to live in. Elections do matter.
So if you're out there protesting the Supreme Court decision or police brutality or unfair travel bans, you've got to put your vote where your mouth is.
I probably type faster.
lol!
Since the passage of the Republican Tax Cuts earlier this year, stock buy-backs (to the benefit of the corporation and its stockholders) have exceeded the value of wage hikes for employees by a margin of 68 to 1. AmericanProspect
The tax cuts have worked as designed (not as ‛sold’, but as designed).
Herbert Hoover was a Republican.
Just a small tidbit of American history.
"Herbert Hoover was a Republican."
There are people who're rooting for a recession or even a depression, to dirty up Trump. I am not among them.
We're running a very edgy economy at the moment and that's with a massive stimulus package running. The Fed has used up all its anti-depression tools because the Republican legislatures wouldn't run a stimulus deficit back when it was needed, and now that we need to rachet back on the deficits the Republicans crank it up instead.
If this bubble bursts we're liable to find out that the government has very few tools left with which to combat a faltering economy.
There are people who're rooting for a recession or even a depression, to dirty up Trump. I am not among them.
Nor am I. I don't believe in shooting ourselves in the foot just because we don't like Trump. That was just a warning comment.
I see that the Supreme Court has struck down a law requiring non-union members to pay fees for sharing of some of the bargaining services provided by the union.
I tend to disagree with this, because if they are getting something from the union bargaining then they should pay some of the cost.
"I tend to disagree with this, because…"
I'm not fully up on the particulars of the case, although I do tend to agree with your point. More particularly to the point of our prior discussion of the changes in the Court, I notice that they struck down a precedent of fifty-one years' duration to make what will be seen as an overtly partisan, 5-4, decision. This will count as another blow struck against respect for the law.
Lee: "I do not expect the Republican Party to recover--I think that particular collapse will become quickly evident if they lose badly during the upcoming mid-term elections, as I currently expect will be the result."
I shall hold you to that when the Trumpian RED WAVE crushes the Dems in the midterms.
Trump and Trumpism will be so boyued I can even imagine the WALL will be built for real.
"…when the Trumpian RED WAVE crushes the Dems in
the midterms."
Unlikely to happen. (Although, things could change; it's a long way to the mid-term elections.)
However, a ‛Trumpian wave’ would not signal the recovery of the Republican Party.
I refer you to David Brooks, conservative writer for the New York Times.
I further refer you to John Boehner, formerly the Republican Speaker of the House, quoted on FoxNews
Justice Anthony Kennedy has just announced he is retiring.
Well, it looks like we are stuck with a conservative court for some time to come.
In short, moderates are screwed.
"Justice Anthony Kennedy has just announced he is retiring."
Saw that; yeah, that's gonna prove out real bad.
*sigh*
When it rains, it pours.
I'm afraid our chances of an easy recovery from the ‛Citizens United’ decision is have almost disappeared for the foreseeable future.
How coincidental. I was wondering literally yesterday which of the supreme court justices would be likely to go first. I was suggesting that the preznit should choose people with eight years left on the clock, to increase the chance of them getting replaced during a Republican administration ;-)
So maybe Trump, the fake conservative, could indirectly end up being the most pro-life preznit ever. Good news for future unborn Americans.
[Lynnette]: "I've been delving into the history of the Great Depression via YouTube documentaries."
Do post some links. I looked into some of it during the Global Financial Crunch, but interested in some more.
Ireland just doesn't get weather forecasts like the one I've just seen. Not just no rain, but no clouds predicted for the next week. While driving across country on a piano-shopping trip with my god-daughter yesterday, the car thermometer hit 30°C (yes, I realise foreigners will not realise how exceptional that is). The only rain shower I've seen since the start of May is a distant memory. Lawns are looking decidedly un-green. My sandy one in Wexford is ... well, the colour of sand.
Rainfall totals are insane. Two days left in June and we've had 4.8 mm of rain. Last year's total for June was 86.4 mm. The 30 year average is 66.7 mm. I've seen a number of small gorse and heather fires on the hills, but in the north of England they have a moorland fire burning that can be seen from space. The army are out fighting it, schools are closed, houses evacuated and people wearing masks. That sort of shit happens in California and South Australia, not northern England!
Ice-cream sales are up thousands of percent. The sea front in south Dublin looks like a crowded subway platform. There is a shortage of industrial tanked carbon dioxide for beer and soft drinks.
I keep dreaming of cold weather. Came across a version of my fave piece of choral music from Minnesota, with the composer himself at the piano. Those snowy woods look very inviting right now. Speaking of Minnesota and weather, Trinity College Dublin had a conference on the RHESSI space-based solar observatory last week, and Dr. Lindsay Glesener from U.Minnesota gave a public talk which I attended. Very interesting.
The Krauts are out! Germany just exited the world cup before the knock-out rounds for the first time since 1938. And it was a completely humiliating 2-0 defeat to South Korea which sent them home.
In the same group, Sweden beat Mexico to come out tops, though Germany's defeat puts Mexico through to the next round anyway.
I'm sure Marcus will see something poetic about Sweden triumphing over a crushed Germany. Though I don't think Merkle can be blamed for the bunch of nancy boys that Germany fielded in Kazan ;-)
A glimmer of hope for the Dems in New York. The new congressional candidate is Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. She's a Bernie fan and a democratic socialist. And although she is young, photogenic and eloquent, the agenda she is pushing is butt ugly and anti-family. But the reason I say it's a glimmer of hope for the Dems is that she might actually give a shit about the people she claims to represent. And people who could be persuaded to vote might actually take notice. Unlike the Democratic incumbents who talk a good talk and shit all over the communities whose allegiance they claim. That's the Dem approach that got Trump elected. Here's Ocasio-Cortez talking about that. And here's her campaign vid that went viral. She was outspent ten to one by the incumbent. Here's a talk I came across about how campaign funding has damaged American democracy.
I think she's the first ‛Bernie fan’ to win a contested primary. Although… The night of the primary her competition was in Washington D.C., working his caucus in his bid to replace Nancy Pelosi as Speaker when the Democrats win back the majority. Getting ahead of himself there. It may well be that not looking after his own district is what did him in. Might be early yet to announce her as a glimmer of hope for the Democrats.
Recent satellite photos have shown that the North Koreans have been upgrading and expanding their nuclear weapons testing sites these past few weeks. NBCNews
Lee: "Unlikely to happen. (Although, things could change; it's a long way to the mid-term elections.)
However, a ‛Trumpian wave’ would not signal the recovery of the Republican Party."
Correct, the old Republicans, Bush style, are dead. We can agree to that. But I venture that Trumism has ursurped the Republican party to such a degree that old-Reps will have to choose: Run with Trumpism or forever surrender to the Dems. SOME will chose the former, but eventally most will go for the latter. And they are still numerous enough.
I really fail to see the appeal folks like you Lee seem to see in the continued browning of America.
Why are the countries these people flee from shitholes? Not because of their locations, which are really quite adventageous. But because of the people there.
So: the people in one place breed out of bounds and turn the place into a shithole. Then they "flee" to white's mans land to escape their shitholes but inevitably bring that shitholery with them. And in great enough numbers the new destination will revert into a shithole also.
How is that difficult to see? You just have to look at a heavily "refugee"/immigrant area and think: Do I really want this for all of our country?
Do you Lee wish for shitholery to spread all across America until the entire continent resembles a shithole, like Haiti to name an example?
"SOME will chose the former, but eventally most will go
for the latter."
What they choose will depend largely on what happens in the mid-terms. If there is a rout of Republicans, the Democratic wave that the Democrats are hoping for (but don't really expect in the Senate), then the old-line, neo-con and corporatist Republicans will likely fade away from the Party of Trump. If the Democrats fail to pick up significant seats then the old-line Republicans will likely decide that the Republican Party is still worth fighting for, and they'll probably launch an drive to regain control. (Probably won't work, but that'll be the option I'd expect them to try.)
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Re: Marcus @ Thu Jun 28, 01:14:00 pm ↑↑
You seem to be laboring under the mistaken impression that I'm in favor of immigration in large numbers.
You've apparently decided that you cannot see what you cannot understand, and so you've decided to not see all of my earlier posts where I've said categorically that we don't need more people; we got enough people already. I am not in favor of taking in refugees and have said so many times. If we take in people it should be on an individual basis, cases individually decided, and because there's something in it for us.
Pete:
"The Krauts are out! Germany just exited the world cup before the knock-out rounds for the first time since 1938. And it was a completely humiliating 2-0 defeat to South Korea which sent them home."
We all love that. Myself not so much outta a dislike for them there Krauts, but rather seeing the reigning champions humbled.
Also I feel great joy for South Korea. They were predicted losers in the group and have very few internationally known players (I can think of only one). They did not advance from the group either. BUT they bested he current World Champions and got ahead of them in the group. I think that alone will earn them a heroes return in SK, even if they are out of the tournament.
"In the same group, Sweden beat Mexico to come out tops, though Germany's defeat puts Mexico through to the next round anyway."
Sweden winning that group was extremely unexpeced. I would have bet Germany on top and the second for either Sweden or Mexico was about 50/50.
I'm very pleased with the way the swedish team plays. Now we get Switzerladn in the 8'ths and that's by no stretch impossible, although it's a tough opponent.
In my opinion, Sweden even qualifying is a great achivment. To go on after the group plays is very great. Every success after this is amazing. So even if we fail against the Swiss this has been a success. (I bet you as Irish would have about the same aspirations for your team)
Pete: "I'm sure Marcus will see something poetic about Sweden triumphing over a crushed Germany. Though I don't think Merkle can be blamed for the bunch of nancy boys that Germany fielded in Kazan ;-)"
Nah, not really. I'm just surprised is all. We beat Korea fair and square. We lost to Germany after a heroic performance due to some late bad luck. We then crshed Mexico.
I am surprised Germany was so lame. I definetly thought they would win the group and I never expected a swedish win against them. Though I though sweden was the ONE team that could beat or at least deaw against them. Turns out it was the other way around and they beat us but lost to both Mexico and funnily to South Korea also.
I don't think there's a living person on earth who could have predicted that!
BTW Pete: who're you rooting for? Of course I root for Sweden and hope Sweden will win.
Also I have placed a bet of 500 SEK on Russia at 75 times the money back (BC the odds were so great and homefield is always that) so they would be my second pick. (I would much rather se Sweden win than personally win 37.500 SEK on a bet).
But I feel Kroatia is the best team I have seen so far. Really tight knit and with quality in every position. I think they might could go all the way.
[Petes]: Do post some links. I looked into some of it during the Global Financial Crunch, but interested in some more.
I actually thought about doing a post, but I just haven't had the time. I've looked at a couple documentaries, trying to peel back the layers and look at root causes of the crisis.
These are full length videos, but give insights that some may not be aware of. Each seems to add a piece to the puzzle. It really seemed the perfect storm of things that played a role, between business, people's euphoria after WWI and poor government policies.
I started researching because of so many things that are going on today that could play a role in an economic collapse if some things are duplicated. The Great Recession seemed to mirror only a certain aspect of the Great Depression, that being the banking practices of easy credit.
Lee: "You've apparently decided that you cannot see what you cannot understand, and so you've decided to not see all of my earlier posts where I've said categorically that we don't need more people; we got enough people already. I am not in favor of taking in refugees and have said so many times."
Yes but Lee how do you square that with support for the Dems, who will surely just open up the floodgates even more in the future just to piss off Trumpians?
In a nation with a multi party parliament there might be a party for you.
But in a two party system like the US there really only are two choices. And if you're anti mass immigration then Trump is surely your best bet.
Of course immigration might not be at the top of your agenda, and you might feel the Dems have better positions on other topics, so that might make you swing for them instead. I get that.
Myself, in Sweden, and I know Sweden is not America, there is only ONE concern that trumps all: migration politics. It impacts all other policies: health care, taxes, crime, etc. They are all impacted by immigration.
I get that in the USA it's of slightly less concern. But here with our insanely high taxes and wellfare for all it just stabs me right in the gut that a fucking somali breeder with 9 kids who really despises every swede and all of sweden can come here as a wannabe refugee and get just about as much, or often even more BC of their breeding habits, money as an old swedish retiree who worked all his/her life. I just want 'em OUTTA here. Every last singe one of 'em. Just GTFO, this is MY country!
Can you understand that sentiment?
Trump is a racist and a fascist, and that is certainly not my best bet for the future of my country.
We can put up with a few hundred thousand more Spanish speaking refugees we don't particularly need easier than we can put up with fascists taking control of the country.
Trump is a fascist? Do tell how.
A racist I might get. After all almost every single person is one, it's just that most deny it both to the world at large and to themselves, but they are still racist - it's a tribal instinct we're born with. You are one, Lynnette is one, PeteS is a belated one, and I'm an open one.
We can't help it, we're all racists. All over the Globe. But funnily it's only a crime if white people are for some (((reason))). But never mind that now, let's go on to the fascism.
So Trum's a Faschist? How do you square that? In a Mussolini-style or what? Has Trump made attempts at dismantling the democracy in the USA, BC that's what a real fascist would do. Does he want to replace the Constitution with a one party rule? BC I see him rather as a follower of the constitution, and his opponents saying the Constitution is some sort of "open letter".
Can't really see how Trump is a Fascits: do explain.
"Has Trump made attempts at dismantling the democracy
in the USA…"
Yes.
"I see him rather as a follower of the constitution…"
He barely knows what's in it, much less does he wish to bound by it.
"BTW Pete: who're you rooting for? Of course I root for Sweden and hope Sweden will win."
Nobody, really. I catch the odd game by accident if I happen to fall across it. Some of it's enjoyable and even quite gripping, and sometimes it's an excuse to go for a beer. But it's all completely inconsequential to me at the end of the day. If I happen to be distracted or otherwise engaged on the day of the final I'll quite likely forget its even on until I see the news later. Unlike my pals who have probably known the dates for the last four years and have them in their diary. I'm delighted Ireland aren't in it, because my country people lose all reason and sense of proportion when there is a sniff of a chance. And I intensely dislike the cult status of sport in general. Without doubt, sport is the opium of the masses. Gimme a maths book any day (and an internet troll to argue about it with ;-)
"A racist I might get. After all almost every single person is one, it's just that most deny it both to the world at large and to themselves, but they are still racist - it's a tribal instinct we're born with. You are one, Lynnette is one, PeteS is a belated one, and I'm an open one."
Nope, having a tendency toward tribalism does not make us all racists. Any more than having a tendency toward sexual conquest makes us all rapists. If you believe that, then what's your problem with your Afghan rapist? He's a rapist, you're a racist, both of you just giving in to your genetic predispositions. Actually, you're the worst of the two, because you claim the moral high ground while advocating the literal extermination of your fellow humans. You bleat on about western Christian heritage while indulging your basest instincts. Rational western Christian thought long ago made an unassailable case for equality of the races. You're the one that's gone all medieval.
"Gimme a maths book any day…"
If you really had any native interest in such matters I'd expect you'd be better at it.
The Republicans are urging a prompt nomination of a replacement for Kennedy, and figure on having a new Justice in place by the time the Court reconvenes in the fall. They seem to think this will bring the evangelicals out for Trump come November. I'm not sure the evangelicals will see the need to come out for Trump if they've already got their Bible-Thumper Justice already seated, but it may be that they'll still come out to reward him for that. I just don't know.
Rumor has it that John Kelly, currently Trump's Chief of Staff, is not long for the position.
Ordinarily I'd think it a little early to start predicting Kelly's departure, but I read that Kelly has taken to holding some ‛off the record’ background briefings here of late, which might signals a feeling of insecurity.
Another one bites the dust...
*sigh*
I think I will be seeing strawberries in my sleep. That is one thing neither the rabbits or the deer eat.
Must be a peculiarity of Minnesota rabbits.
It's been the dryest June in Dublin for 75 years. Hosepipe ban starts Monday. We are officially running out of water. No rain forecast out to mid-July either.
I left those links for you in the next post, Petes. :)
Hosepipe ban starts Monday.
We always have an odd/even watering restriction here starting in June. You can only water on odd or even days depending on your house number.
Right now it's high 90's temps through most of next week. This is the same weather we had in late May. What we usually get in late July or early August. Although even then it doesn't usually last quite so long. We've had some decent rain recently, which has helped.
We can put up with a few hundred thousand more Spanish speaking refugees we don't particularly need easier than we can put up with fascists taking control of the country.
Indeed. I suspect we would eventually find ourselves in Revolution 2.0.
"I suspect we would eventually find ourselves in Revolution 2.0."
I've been noticing increasing speculation on a new Civil War (sometimes described as a probable ‛Cold’ Civil War; sometimes presumed to likely be ‛hot’ instead) among the chattering punditry. It's seemingly most talked up by the right-wingers. I find this odd what with them having all the keys to the government in their control right now.
I'm still working out a theory for why they'd be prepping for the idea of political combat, even political violence. Part of it seems to rest on the idea that they're still not ‛respected’, which seems to really piss them off, and they like being pissed off so they keep talking about that. But, there's another angle in there too. I'm still working on it.
Pete: "you claim the moral high ground while advocating the literal extermination of your fellow humans."
Blahdiblah. I never bought into the storyline that it's somehow a basic human right for one group of people to reallocate into the domain of another group of people just because the former are unable to create prosperity so the want to go and live off of the latter's prosperity.
That's basically my whole deal here. I do not want to "exterminate" anyone. I hope for the best for anyone, but I will not invite anyone to come live off of me - and the same goes for my sense of belonging to a certain people and a nation.
You don't wanna drown in the Mediterranian? Then don't rush out into it in a rubber boat because you want access to other peoples lands and resources. Stay and create your own prosperity. Simple as that.
As for the "extermination" you allude to, you might be thinking of me saying we need a Duterte style solution to some problems. First of all that's somewhat tounge in cheek, but also I DO believe in harsh punishments for some sets of criminals.
It's not enough to get together, sing Kumbaya, and grill Halal hot-dogs when we're dealing with serious hardened thugs. They just need to get got and get got hard and fast.
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