quickplay
Silver Hoya (over 500 posts)
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Post by quickplay on Nov 23, 2016 10:54:15 GMT -5
My only concern now is Trump's threat to place a 35% import tax on American products made in Mexico. A bad BAD idea. Protective tariff's are always a bad idea. Terrible idea - big economic powers have so many other things in the toolbox when it comes to trade. Tariffs are for small countries without other leverage who are trying to protect something. If we levy a 35% tariff on - say - sneakers, what's going to happen? It's still going to be a lot cheaper for Nike to make sneakers in Bangladesh or Vietnam. So they'll still make them there, pay the 35% to send those shoes to the US and mark them up by 35% when they put them on the shelves here. It's a lose/lose: no new jobs for the US, and higher prices for American consumers. The United States is THE world leader in services (80% of our economy, depending on how broadly you want to define it). That's our comparative advantage. We should be killing ourselves to figure out how to export our services everywhere in the world (and TPP and TTIP would be huge for that). Instead, political rhetoric gets focused on how we can "compete" with China and Mexico on manufacturing - where they have the comparative advantage in the form of cheaper labor. It would be like the US saying "Hey, we're the best in the world at basketball and could focus our sports resources on sending our best basketball players out into the rest of the world and market the hell out of them to our advantage. But India and Pakistan are KILLING us in cricket, so we should try to compete in cricket. Let's spend more time, energy, and resources there than on basketball." A fool's errand. From a strategic economic perspective, it's a losing game to tell Americans that you're going to bring back manufacturing jobs. The global economy doesn't care that you're skilled in metalwork for automobiles and would rather live in Sandusky, Ohio than anywhere else in the country (or the world). But if a Presidential candidate can convince you that he can make that work for you, that's political gold. And for all the talk about China, China is actually becoming a more expensive place to produce things (although still a lot cheaper than the US ever will be). But companies are looking elsewhere for cheaper labor. China itself is outsourcing more and more to the poorest parts of Africa. I'm sorry but I think you're still missing how much of a non-answer this is to the millions of people who see no viable economic futures in this country. So many people just start with the presumption of 'globalism is here to stay therefore you all must adjust to this form of it' as if it was some actual set of natural laws and not a system designed by international corporation to facilitate the most efficient profit-making structures for them throughout the world. The whole 'free market' of globalism is b.s. It's a free market for capital. That's it. Even in your sneaker example, shouldn't some brilliant new company figure out a way to produce shoes in the U.S. at a lower cost when that hypothetical 35% tariff is taken into account? The "market solutions" of globalism have been nothing but a race to the bottom, allowing multinationals to incorporate in the country that gives them the best tax advantages, actually exist in the country that gives the best tax advantages for that, hire workers in the country with the lowest wages and worker protections, set up factories in the countries with the lowest environmental standards, all while lobbying lobbying lobbying to gain further advantages. So after taking advantage of all the DIFFERENCES in systems around the world, the corporation then gets the protection of 'all countries must be treated the same' as far as tariffs/trade goes? How does that make sense? How is "globalism" anything but protectionism for corporations instead of people? "We should be killing ourselves to figure out how to export our services everywhere in the world" 1) What does this even mean? 2) If it's possible, what would be the continued advantage of our services? Within a few years won't the 'exportable service economy' just shift to a place where it's cheaper to produce? It's nothing but a race to the bottom. We use our military to protect American corporate interests. We use our trade policy to protect American corporate interests. These interests are now almost entirely removed from the interests of the American people. Unemployment at 5% ignores how Editedty the jobs that have been created are and how half of America has less than a month of savings. Things are not improving in a fundamental way. At what point is "we're a service economy, just figure it out!" going to stop being an acceptable long-term trade policy?
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quickplay
Silver Hoya (over 500 posts)
Posts: 733
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Post by quickplay on Nov 22, 2016 19:45:58 GMT -5
Where in all of this do the actual American people come into play? I don't know if protecting "American" corporations is as hot a selling point as it used to be...
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quickplay
Silver Hoya (over 500 posts)
Posts: 733
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Post by quickplay on Nov 16, 2016 10:38:08 GMT -5
I was not looking at exit polls to determine this... Hillary lost a portion of the Democratic voting coalition And Trump won a portion of the coalition...all you have to do is look at how the swing states voted. Besides being irrelevant there are no concrete numbers that say Romney did worse with Minorities than Trump. The only thing stating that are exit polls.. Please stop with the misinformation or start a new thread for it. Thx So exit polls say it, but you say exit polls are irrelevant therefore may not be discussed. And that's on top of unilaterally declaring that demographic voting in the election is "irrelevant" to discussion of the completed election. Maybe just chill out instead of going for the throat every time someone doesn't agree with your worldview?
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quickplay
Silver Hoya (over 500 posts)
Posts: 733
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Post by quickplay on Nov 16, 2016 10:33:08 GMT -5
I think Trump's twitter account is going to be the closest we ever come to getting inside a president's brain...
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quickplay
Silver Hoya (over 500 posts)
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Post by quickplay on Nov 9, 2016 11:30:07 GMT -5
"If your already involved why are you so hurt??" Got it, you're just going to keep doing stupid crap like that. Have fun taking your ball and going home, wouldn't want you to actually have to make a substantive point! Are u surprised at how the Presidential Election has turned out? What do you make of the voting results? I find the results extremely disheartening, but not surprising. People in the country have too many legitimate problems for "shut up about your problems, can't you see how bad Trump is??" to be a viable electoral strategy, and the Clinton campaign really hurt itself by making that their main message. My hope is that he's mostly just ineffectual.
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quickplay
Silver Hoya (over 500 posts)
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Post by quickplay on Nov 1, 2016 12:23:09 GMT -5
Trump parrots Putin's talking points on a myriad of issues so not surprising. Every once in a while though Donald's default mechanism to defend everything Putin/Rusia shocks me. Today would be one of those days Americans were killed on that plane.... I want Clinton to be President over Trump - the one hesitation I have is her consistent history of warmongering. Due to this, I'm increasingly uncomfortable with Democrats' weird 2016 version of red-baiting. They can't mock anyone who doesn't agree with them as a wacky idiot conspiracy theorist and then demand that everyone make the same "Trump is a puppet of Russia" leaps that they do. It's just too directly hypocritical. They are so far apart on so many different important issues, I don't understand why they think that these accusations are the way to go.
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quickplay
Silver Hoya (over 500 posts)
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Post by quickplay on Oct 27, 2016 11:25:37 GMT -5
Here's the problem: if the situation were reversed, there would be a great outcry about how free speech was in danger from the right. When the shoe is on the other foot, so to speak, it's suddenly not that big a deal. I think it's a fair point to make that liberal views are more considered on campus (as the student body itself is more liberal), but I don't think chalk drawings are really where to make the stand.
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quickplay
Silver Hoya (over 500 posts)
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Post by quickplay on Oct 27, 2016 9:11:30 GMT -5
Nothing is more sacred in America than the right to not have your chalk drawing changed.
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quickplay
Silver Hoya (over 500 posts)
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Post by quickplay on Oct 20, 2016 11:20:38 GMT -5
I don't really care if Trump personally accepts the results or not. He's going to lose, and then he has no mechanisms for putting his claims into action. Are we hyperventilating at the prospect of Trump going on a twitter meltdown after losing?
And no, we don't KNOW the Russians are behind the hack. Being "consistent" with Russian actions is a world away this convenient rush to hand wave away all of the ugly stuff being released by Wikileaks as some sort of secret Russian operation to manipulate our elections.
My point is that we're going apoplectic about Trump's conspiracy theorizing, and then turning right back around and making claims such as yours, which are just fundamentally wrong. Please show me where we "know" Russia is doing this.
Again, I think Clinton over Trump is a very easy decision. But the media landscape has become so hyperbolic and aggressive that it's hard to take seriously.
"Trumps claims about rigged elections and maybe not accepting the results are insane conspiracy theories unprecedented in their danger in American history...especially considering the ACTUAL conspiracy is that Trump is a Putin puppet helping them rig the U.S. elections so that he'll do Russia's bidding if he wins!"
I mean, that doesn't strike you as a little...silly?
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quickplay
Silver Hoya (over 500 posts)
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Post by quickplay on Oct 20, 2016 10:27:20 GMT -5
It's so dangerous to claim the elections are being rigged!
Now, time to discuss Trump being a Russian puppet while they manipulate our elections in a manner unprecedented in history.
Not a comment on the candidates, but the double standards on some of these things from the media look especially bad when they're back to back.
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quickplay
Silver Hoya (over 500 posts)
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Post by quickplay on Oct 11, 2016 10:02:30 GMT -5
There is nothing serious about Trump as a politician. He's a clown. Being able to point out the obvious corruption in our system does not somehow qualify you to fix it, and he's shown that he's completely out of his depth at every step of the process. That being said, Clinton wanted to run against him. In her desire for personal power, she was willing to essentially extort the American people - it's me or Donald. Shorter quickplay : it's Hillary's fault that Republican voters chose Trump (ignore the fact that Ted Cruz was in the same sentence and they were the two front runners, and that this was basically saying "we don't want to face Rubio" rather than "we want Trump") This is politics - every Republican wanted to go against Bernie. Politicians want to face the weaker candidate. Want is not the same as working to elevate the candidate and using your deep connections with the press to get them to focus on fringe candidates in a serious manner. Further, "this is politics" is a meaningless thought-terminating cliche. So the way our country actually operates is "yawn," but a known creep and misogynist saying disgusting things ten years ago should dominate the news for a week. That'll fix things.
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quickplay
Silver Hoya (over 500 posts)
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Post by quickplay on Oct 11, 2016 8:45:11 GMT -5
There is nothing serious about Trump as a politician. He's a clown. Being able to point out the obvious corruption in our system does not somehow qualify you to fix it, and he's shown that he's completely out of his depth at every step of the process.
That being said, Clinton wanted to run against him. In her desire for personal power, she was willing to essentially extort the American people - it's me or Donald.
I can't believe we're all rallying around, patting ourselves on the back for agreeing that Trump, this complete joke of a celebrity, let alone a politician, is bad. Again, "not Trump" will not be directing policy under a Clinton administration. She will be, and that includes everything from her warmongering with Russia to her army of paid PSYOP shills (nobody bothered by the deep level of shilling domestic propaganda that is going on? Think it's going to get BETTER after she's elected?). Anyone actually think she won't push the TPP through? (whether you're pro/anti isn't the issue - she's clearly misrepresneting herself on the agreement)
I understand that the election is coming up but we're only a few years removed from the biggest financial crisis in a lifetime, multiple ridiculous wars and violent coups (leading to more terrorism, who ever could have seen that??), the implementation of the most intrusive surveillance state in the history of mankind, and the Supreme Court determining that legal fictions should be allowed to participate in elections just as much as you, short of casting the actual vote.
The Clinton team wanted to elevate Trump because they knew that her policies would otherwise be unpalatable to many in her own party. Instead we're now so heavily propagandized that we're arguing over whether or not there's a technicality where sexual assault isn't sexual assault.
The Clintons knew Trump well. Bill and Don would jet down to pedophile Jeffery Epstein's sex island on the "Lolita Express"
That's the man they wanted to run against. Tells you a lot about this ridiculous circus today.
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quickplay
Silver Hoya (over 500 posts)
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Post by quickplay on Sept 28, 2016 17:36:27 GMT -5
The article actually cites "general commotion" alongside other brutal crimes such as "crowding the sidewalks."
The trash I can understand, and the University should be proactive in reducing that and cleaning up afterwards.
But this article is literally just people complaining about living near a university. Come on now.
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quickplay
Silver Hoya (over 500 posts)
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Post by quickplay on Sept 27, 2016 12:53:18 GMT -5
A lot of last night's coverage epitomized what bothers me about this election. None of the candidates had anything substantive or interesting to say, and then it was right off into the world of spin.
I tried Foxnews for a few minutes to see their take, but they must have been watching a different debate than me because watching Trump and Hannity make out while talking about how awesome they are was just bizarre.
Then MSNBC spent about an hour patting themselves on the back for how much smarter they are than all those neanderthals who support Trump. As if their coverage had anything deeper than the yin to Fox's yang.
Constant military interventions, a growing surveillance police state, a fundamentally corrupt political system, half of America living paycheck to paycheck - I guess those things can just wait until the 2020 election.
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quickplay
Silver Hoya (over 500 posts)
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Post by quickplay on Sept 19, 2016 13:22:19 GMT -5
I understand what the claim is, I'm saying I'm very skeptical of the "operational" efficiency of the Clinton foundation, so their own claims about what they do is hardly a strong counterpoint to rely on, regardless of the 6% number.
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quickplay
Silver Hoya (over 500 posts)
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Post by quickplay on Sept 19, 2016 9:44:13 GMT -5
I'm sure the number is higher than 6%, but much of the counterpoints come from unsubstantiated claims by the Clinton Foundation itself.
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quickplay
Silver Hoya (over 500 posts)
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Post by quickplay on Sept 15, 2016 9:28:46 GMT -5
Well there's a simple way to choose who to vote for - do you prefer being punched in the face or kicked in the ribs?
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quickplay
Silver Hoya (over 500 posts)
Posts: 733
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Post by quickplay on Sept 13, 2016 13:36:16 GMT -5
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quickplay
Silver Hoya (over 500 posts)
Posts: 733
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Post by quickplay on Aug 5, 2016 11:57:13 GMT -5
"If your already involved why are you so hurt??"
Got it, you're just going to keep doing stupid crap like that. Have fun taking your ball and going home, wouldn't want you to actually have to make a substantive point!
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quickplay
Silver Hoya (over 500 posts)
Posts: 733
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Post by quickplay on Aug 5, 2016 11:49:06 GMT -5
Yes, when I write that people who are already involved can be concerned about this issue, a response of 'well then get offline and get involved' is incredibly lazy.
Again, feel free to explain why it's crazy to be concerned about the CFR, you sort of skipped that little part for your incredibly thoughtful snark.
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