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Post by Deleted on Nov 30, 2018 17:06:16 GMT -5
That's pretty terrible... unless there's context that makes it clear it was a joke.. but even then, pretty bad. Yeah, that's pretty bad. Almost like that (hopeful? I don't know if she won) Mississippi Republican congresswoman who said she'd be in the front of a lynching. she won.
she's the Senator
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Post by impulse on Nov 30, 2018 18:09:46 GMT -5
Yeah, that's pretty bad. Almost like that (hopeful? I don't know if she won) Mississippi Republican congresswoman who said she'd be in the front of a lynching. she won. she's the Senator
...of course she did. Sigh. |
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Post by The Captain on Nov 30, 2018 20:23:10 GMT -5
I get that Representative Kifowit was passionate about the piss-poor treatment of the veterans and upset about the deaths that occurred, as she and all Americans rightfully should be, but we cannot hope for the divisive rhetoric in this country to abate if we start saying "well, if you squint hard enough, you can sympathize with her, especially because someone on the other side made really bad comments on a totally unrelated manner that made that person more unsympathetic." Okay, I am editing this proactively. Don't want to escalate the thread, and I have to be honest this part got me pretty upset. I don't appreciate the implication I'm just pulling whataboutism and saying it's okay because someone else said something bad too. That is obviously not what I am saying. I am not excusing what she said, but I do understand where she is coming from. I think she mangled her words in her passion and outrage, but she said what she said, and she will need to pay whatever price that ends up being. I can understand someone's actions without excusing them. I've been clear on what I think she very obviously meant, but public leaders need to be able to keep their cool. And I definitely do not understand or excuse a lynching joke by a political representative in Mississippi under any circumstances. Full stop. I apologize for upsetting you with the above. It wasn't my intent to suggest you were engaging in "whataboutism", but rather more a cautionary statement about tribalism. We all have those people who we can sympathize with more than others because of similar traits, backgrounds, experiences, or even views, but I didn't for one moment take it that you were making the point that what Representative Kifowit said was somehow OK because of the actions of Mrs. Hyde-Smith. I agree that what Rep. Kifowit said was likely her being overzealous and letting her mouth move faster than her brain, while the words coming from Senator-elect (gahh...) Hyde-Smith are the result of ignorance. The problem is that we live in a world where sick people latch onto something and use it as motivation or as a directive to take action, so words like Rep. Kifowit's, regardless of her intention or if they just got away from her, can be potentially dangerous. Again, I apologize for upsetting you. Not what I was going for, but I certainly can see how it could have been interpreted as an attack on your character. |
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Post by beccabear67 on Nov 30, 2018 22:38:01 GMT -5
Someone mentioned a great fall...guess they want this to fail too....haters gonna hate...don't see Canada & Mexico frothing at the mouth here.
Ripping up a trade deal on no pretext whatsover, except for the opinion of one multiple bankruptcies/sue me if you want to get paid real estate developer, with your largest trade partner, and lying about a 'yuuge' deficit with them (and admitting he said it to Trudeau off the top of his head and that it was totally made up like most numbers that come out of his mouth)... a yuuge success; the new 'new deal'. Only took more than a year of volatility and causing doubt in investors while hurting lots of U.S. businesses who depended on Canadian materials and goods. Meanwhile we start buying and selling more than ever with non-U.S. partners. Way to win.  Talk sweet to fascist Russia, North Korea and Saudi Arabia, but abuse your closest allies and trade partners... great long term plan... not. |
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Post by impulse on Nov 30, 2018 23:02:34 GMT -5
Trump lights up a Christmas Tree at the White House and as expected, cue the regularly scheduled meltdown by his detractors in this thread. Someone mentioned a great fall...guess they want this to fail too....haters gonna hate...don't see Canada & Mexico frothing at the mouth here.
If he would just stick to doing regular harmless stuff like lighting Christmas trees and pardoning turkeys he'd have a lot fewer detractors. |
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Post by beccabear67 on Nov 30, 2018 23:25:21 GMT -5
And anticipating a comment about Canada looking to buy and sell with non-U.S. partners, we've been forced into that by the poor treatment of a juvenile mind who thinks a deal is bad simply based on that he hadn't made it. Our chief negotiator even got called juvenile names on twitter by the deal-maker in chief... who didn't even write his supposed book about the art of it. Really poor way to treat a long-standing and best paying customer!
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Post by Deleted on Dec 1, 2018 0:15:59 GMT -5
George Herbert Walker Bush, 41st President of the United States died today at the age of 94  |
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Post by beccabear67 on Dec 1, 2018 1:08:26 GMT -5
George Herbert Walker Bush, 41st President of the United States died today at the age of 94 I have had a lot of respect for George Bush Sr., he did a difficult job well for the most part, and he served in WWII. |
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Post by Roquefort Raider on Dec 1, 2018 5:54:15 GMT -5
Reaganomics didn’t work, but President Bush did a decent job with what he had. His handling of the first Gulf war, and especially his willingness to stop it at a point that accomplished the mission without destabilizing the entire region, was commendable. He was also a good neighbour to Canada.
Respect.
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Post by Deleted on Dec 1, 2018 6:28:22 GMT -5
Roquefort Raider -- I have friends in Canada that totally respect him and they admired him in his conviction dealing with the Gulf War.
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Post by The Captain on Dec 1, 2018 7:06:01 GMT -5
Trump lights up a Christmas Tree at the White House and as expected, cue the regularly scheduled meltdown by his detractors in this thread. Someone mentioned a great fall...guess they want this to fail too....haters gonna hate...don't see Canada & Mexico frothing at the mouth here.
If he would just stick to doing regular harmless stuff like lighting Christmas trees and pardoning turkeys he'd have a lot fewer detractors. Knowing Trump, he'd screw that up, pardoning Christmas trees and lighting up turkeys. As for Canada and Mexico not "frothing at the mouth" over the new trade deal, what choice do they have? They both have limited options, with the US as their largest trading partner and closest neighbor. Trump thinks that bullying someone smaller than him is "negotiating" and him winning, regardless of the end result for each party, is the only acceptable result. The economy isn't a zero-sum game, and the three NA countries have long benefited from the previous arrangement, but Trump had to make sure they knew who had the biggest...stick... on the block. |
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Post by Roquefort Raider on Dec 1, 2018 9:18:26 GMT -5
As for Canada and Mexico not "frothing at the mouth" over the new trade deal, what choice do they have? They both have limited options, with the US as their largest trading partner and closest neighbor. Trump thinks that bullying someone smaller than him is "negotiating" and him winning, regardless of the end result for each party, is the only acceptable result. The economy isn't a zero-sum game, and the three NA countries have long benefited from the previous arrangement, but Trump had to make sure they knew who had the biggest...stick... on the block. Precisely. Canada and Mexico are the kids surrendering their lunch money and pretending they weren't hungry anyway. (Good thing Nafta 2 is not that different from Nafta; things could have been much worse). The economic world order that was mostly set up by the United States under Bush and Clinton and developed under Bush Jr and Obama was based on the principle that economies can work together to benefit the lot of them. While that system has its own problems, such as an increasing gap between the highest and lowest incomes, it also allowed great economic development -particularly in developing nations, which needed it badly. It also allowed consumers in richer countries to have access to very cheap goods (a t-shirt today is cheaper than in 1985). As you point out, that was no zero point game: a good deal is one from which all partners benefit. Now we stand to lose that, because protectionism raises its ugly head again. "Oh, but we do that to save jobs!" goes the logic. But with a record low unemployment, that logic seems flawed. Yes, it's true, some sectors are hard-hit by modern economics... Assembly line workers don't get as many jobs as before, because robots do the work for less money, or because labor is cheaper in Asia... Coal mining is down because coal can't compete with natural gas and because it is so dirty... but rather than clinging to mid-XX century business models, western nations would be better advised to invest in education, to make sure their populations can embrace our technological world without longing for the days lumberjacks could earn a living felling trees with an axe. |
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Post by The Captain on Dec 1, 2018 10:43:13 GMT -5
As for Canada and Mexico not "frothing at the mouth" over the new trade deal, what choice do they have? They both have limited options, with the US as their largest trading partner and closest neighbor. Trump thinks that bullying someone smaller than him is "negotiating" and him winning, regardless of the end result for each party, is the only acceptable result. The economy isn't a zero-sum game, and the three NA countries have long benefited from the previous arrangement, but Trump had to make sure they knew who had the biggest...stick... on the block. Precisely. Canada and Mexico are the kids surrendering their lunch money and pretending they weren't hungry anyway. (Good thing Nafta 2 is not that different from Nafta; things could have been much worse). The economic world order that was mostly set up by the United States under Bush and Clinton and developed under Bush Jr and Obama was based on the principle that economies can work together to benefit the lot of them. While that system has its own problems, such as an increasing gap between the highest and lowest incomes, it also allowed great economic development -particularly in developing nations, which needed it badly. It also allowed consumers in richer countries to have access to very cheap goods (a t-shirt today is cheaper than in 1985). As you point out, that was no zero point game: a good deal is one from which all partners benefit. Now we stand to lose that, because protectionism raises its ugly head again. "Oh, but we do that to save jobs!" goes the logic. But with a record low unemployment, that logic seems flawed.And just look at the recent news to see how this is flawed. Bayer is cutting thousands of workers and selling off business units, GM is closing plants and laying off thousands of workers, and Campbell's Soups just put two activist investors on its board, who will likely want to sell off parts of the company. Companies are beholden to the stock market and their shareholders, and the easiest way to goose that stock price and make the rich folks even richer is to get rid of employees and lower that bottom line. Think GM would have laid off those workers and shuttered those plants without Trump's tariffs? Highly unlikely. One minor note on this, because I work for a company that owns a fleet of electricity-generation plants. Coal can compete with natural gas during the winter months because of the demand for natural gas for heating. We often run our coal plants hard in the late fall (we've run the one I am based at all this week and into the weekend, which we rarely do, because of the colder temps in the northeast), through the winter, and into the early spring. Our coal plants make little money in the warmer months when demand for nat gas for heating is down, and while this may change as LNG exports grow, you are generally correct in that coal, as a whole, is a declining industry (although it is still needed to make steel). To do this, the mindset of the last 40 years needs to change. Kids need to be taught the STEM fields, to be sure, but there also has to be a discussion regarding the trades. There is no shame in being a plumber or electrician or iron worker or any of those other "manual labor" jobs, but it's been preached for decades that the only way to truly succeed in life is to go to college, get a degree, then get a job. I know a recent high-school grad who, while being a smart kid, took welding classes while in school, and when he came out, he got a job making more than $50K/year to start as a welder. No student loan debt, no delay in starting his adult life, just a transition into the workforce as a productive member of society. Robots aren't going to be able to fix plumbing or wire a newly-constructed house or build a skyscraper, and as soon as we teach kids that it's OK to get their hands dirty and to not have a diploma on the wall, the better off we, and they, will be. |
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Post by Roquefort Raider on Dec 1, 2018 11:57:18 GMT -5
There is no shame in being a plumber or electrician or iron worker or any of those other "manual labor" jobs, but it's been preached for decades that the only way to truly succeed in life is to go to college, get a degree, then get a job. I know a recent high-school grad who, while being a smart kid, took welding classes while in school, and when he came out, he got a job making more than $50K/year to start as a welder. No student loan debt, no delay in starting his adult life, just a transition into the workforce as a productive member of society. Robots aren't going to be able to fix plumbing or wire a newly-constructed house or build a skyscraper, and as soon as we teach kids that it's OK to get their hands dirty and to not have a diploma on the wall, the better off we, and they, will be. The trades are definitely undervalued in academia, even if some efforts are made to correct that these days. We have for too long devalued the nobility of work for the prestige of some kind of diploma, aven diplomas that don't mean much in the real world. |
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Post by beccabear67 on Dec 1, 2018 14:01:14 GMT -5
We were basically told the way to make a deal was that Trump had to look like he'd gotten a 'win', something he could boast of at his bizarre rallies (um, you know they are totally bizarre still right?).
Tens of millions of business people in the U.S. and Canada doing business but petulant celebrity ego man didn't have anything to do with it so he had to force himself in the middle of it all and throw it all into turmoil and doubt for a year and half. The only way things got done was for people being responsible and doing their job representing those tens of millions of business people to put their personal opinions and egos aside and make the best of a pointless situation forced upon us all. Foreigners all cheaters and malevolent, unless they're in anti-democratic fascist dictator countries I guess. Fake stats on black violence re-tweeted by Trump... what motivation can there possibly be for that? Other than? Ever an apology for his 'mistake' on that one? This alone should have kept anyone from empowering him.
I admire George Bush Sr.'s responsibility in cleaning up after record spender Reagan even though it made him look bad with some base. Reagan more than tripled the U.S. national debt; it was the time of blank checks to anything military and sometimes that went to $8,000 coffee pots. Reagan did say some good things I remember however, like urging fellow Republicans to work toward getting military style assault weapons out of neighborhoods, support the Brady bill, and that the communist Soviet Union was an evil empire (but as with ex Nixon and Ford people continuing to rise to the surface there are a lot of ex CCCP people still effecting Russia today).
But I digress... Bush Sr., McCain, Eisenhower, Lincoln... these are the Republicans to be thankful for. And Reagan did have a fair amount of real experience going into the job as did Bush Sr., but somewhere he found himself selling arms to Iran (as well as Iraq) and arming people in Afghanistan without checking out who they were other than anti-Soviet. Bush was the responsible one who cleaned up afterward.
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