Political Hippo Circle Jerk - America, farg YEAH!

[Eagles_Legendz]

F the idea of us building shoes in the rust belt again.  Free trade is good.  Protectionism is awful.  Econ 101 makes clear that tariffs universally drive up the price of goods. 

I feel bad for people who lost their jobs in those areas of the country.  I admit I can't put myself in their shoes.   But the solution is skills training for other professions, not pretending like its 1955.   

That nonsense used to be why I was center/right on economic policy.  Now, somehow, the republican president is king of protectionism/closed borders/anti-trade.

[Munson]

Basically ^^^^

We have historical precedent on what Trump's Anti-trade ideas will do---drive up prices of goods and not really do much to help employment. and coupled with what the right wing is going to do to benefits that help the working poor...well, it's going to be bad news for them when their assistence gets cut and prices go up.

Also major lol at what Trump is saying he's going to keep from the ACA. The provisions he's saying he's going to keep are literally like 96% of the reason why health insurance is more expensive. If you keep those benefits but get rid of the parts of the law designed to keep prices lower for people....it sure will be fun watching FoxNews suddenly defend higher health care premiums for the older and sicker.

[SD]

Look, I dislike the guy as much as everyone. I'm not condoning his lowest common denominator approach to the election, but protesting is useless at this point. Like I said, glass half full/devils advocate approach. I knew I'd be bashed but I refuse to be dragged down before the guy even takes office.

Like I said about Pederson, hate the hire, but I'll give the guy a year to prove me wrong. I'm giving Trump the same benefit of the doubt.

[Eagles_Legendz]

Difference is Trump has already given 18 months worth of shtein to know exactly where he's coming from.  I'm less depressed about trump and more about half the country deciding someone who campaigned openly based on misogyny and xenophobia should be president.

My only reason for slight optimism is he did better this week so maybe he won't be a complete psychopath.  There's a very very small chance he said all that shtein because he viewed this as reality tv and knew the market he needed to win the "competition" and that maybe in office he scales that back.  Not counting on it though.

[Munson]

Normally I'd be that way for any other Republican...Romney, for example, had some decent ideas on means testing Medicare and SS...but Truml built his message way too much on racism and xenophobia. Lives for POC are going to be worse regardless of his policies because his deplorable base just got their views legitimized. So I am a-okay with people showing him ASAP that they're going to attempt to stand in his and his followers way.

Paul Ryan is also going to get at least 2 years and probably more to basically do what he wants to Medicare, Medicaid, and SS. That's farging terrifying. A more capable Republican president would have his own ideas on those programs...Trump is just going to defer to Republicans who, in the House, are farging kooks.

[SD]

Difference is Trump has already given 18 months worth of shtein to know exactly where he's coming from.  I'm less depressed about trump and more about half the country deciding someone who campaigned openly based on misogyny and xenophobia should be president.

My only reason for slight optimism is he did better this week so maybe he won't be a complete psychopath. There's a very very small chance he said all that shtein because he viewed this as reality tv and knew the market he needed to win the "competition" and that maybe in office he scales that back.  Not counting on it though.

I disagree. He hit on all points that white voters could get behind. "Make America Great Again" = "We need to take our country back"...Anti-Muslim rhetoric because you know Syria/Benghazi/emails/ISIS/bad brown people...keep the Mexicans out because they drain our economy...Obama's divided the country not backing Police in the blm movement etc.

Obama was a rock star. He had so much appeal that he made it hard not to vote for him. He had his 8 years, whitey gave him a chance, now they're watching a divided country (I'm not blaming that on Obama) and a shady career politician trying to take his place. I used to say if any other Republican would have ran they would have beaten Hilary (except Cruz), well I'll say the same thing about the Democrats, any other Dem had ran they would have won.

[PhillyPhreak54]

Somehow the blue collar coal miners and manufacturing people have to come to realization and acceptance that the jobs aren't coming back.

Each election cycle they buy into whomever sells them the biggest load of shtein about their jobs coming back.

Rather than shtein on the EPA and the protective measures in place to keep pollution down pols should embrace this and incentivize wind/solar/other alternative companies to set up shop in the rust belt/coal areas. Create jobs rather than have these people thinking their factory job is coming back.

[PhillyPhreak54]

http://mobile.nytimes.com/2016/11/13/business/economy/can-trump-save-their-jobs-theyre-counting-on-it.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=a-lede-package-region&region=top-news&WT.nav=top-news&_r=0&referer=

[SD]

Somehow the blue collar coal miners and manufacturing people have to come to realization and acceptance that the jobs aren't coming back.

Each election cycle they buy into whomever sells them the biggest load of shtein about their jobs coming back.

Rather than shtein on the EPA and the protective measures in place to keep pollution down pols should embrace this and incentivize wind/solar/other alternative companies to set up shop in the rust belt/coal areas. Create jobs rather than have these people thinking their factory job is coming back.

Difference is the left promised to bring those jobs back, they didn't, so what do they have to lose with voting for Trump? They see a white rich businessman whereas they see Hilary as the last 8 years. I know this is hard for a lot of you guys to comprehend, and I'm all for green energy (except at the Linc), but a vast majority of the country is more worried about putting food on the table than they are about their carbon footprint.

[PhillyPhreak54]

That's why I said they'd vote for whichever politician panders hard enough for their votes.

Each cycle we get the finger down the throat gagging picture/video of the white collar pol trying to look blue collar in some factory with his Brooks Bros button down sleeves carefully rolled up as if he's working hard and a hard hat perched on his head. Appealing to the blue collar folks despite never going to do shtein for them in regards to that factory or mine job.

And food can be put on the table by working in alternative energy fields. Big oil doesn't really allow those to get traction. Why? Shareholders and lobbyists.

If a big wind farm moved into Kansas or Indiana or West Virginia and those affected from the shuttered coal mine or factory were hired...they have a job.

Also I fully support keeping manufacturing here. But until the American consumers are willing to pay the price of the American manufactured goods...ain't happening.

I see this daily. I sell about $900,000 worth of wood every month. Of that $900k an overwhelming amount is Chinese birch and other Chinese made plywood.

18mm paint grade Chinese birch = $27
3/4 paint grade domestic birch/maple = $45
18mm knotty alder plywood = $55
3/4 knotty alder plywood = $75+

which do you think we sell more of? The Chinese buy our alder (and Canada's) ship it to China and make it into panels and ship it back and it is still cheaper.

[Eagaholic]

Exactly what I told you all would happen a month and a half ago.  This Brit explains it better than I did though...


https://youtu.be/GLG9g7BcjKs

This is great btw. I'd thought all along that Trump had every chance of winning, up until about a week before the election when the polls showed otherwise and Comey's letters didn't seem to change the game. Micheal Moore predicted Trump winning months ahead of time on Mahar, on a couple of episodes, I think. And he said it would be because the left would become too complacent or unmotivated to respond. Mahar adopted the same point of view and they were right.   

[Rome]

USA/MEXICO posing together as a show of unity last night. 

Purely awesome. 

[PhillyPhreak54]

Shoulda built the damn wall in front of the USAs net!

[Eagaholic]

Haha

[MDS]

to say trump won needs to come with a big asterisk

he won the electoral college. he won just enough votes in several populated states to win a flawed, unnecessary and racist system that was put in place to protect slave states. its been modified and what not, but the point of it is to limit the amount of power populated cities can have on the republic.

well, once all the votes are counted (they are still being counted), hillary is going to have at least 1.5 million more than him. he just got enough votes where it mattered.

america did defeat racism. the system did not.