Jump to content

TheProgressiveLiberal

Gold Members
  • Posts

    814
  • Joined

  • Last visited

Everything posted by TheProgressiveLiberal

  1. Let me get this straight: The President elect directing his future National Security Advisor to talk to the Russian government about new American sanctions just imposed is a bigger deal that the Secretary of State setting up her own email system outside of government oversight and lying to the public about the causes of an attack on an American embassy in order to prop up election prospects? You people are bonkers.
  2. If all he did was have his team communicate with foreign governments after he was elected, but before he took office, he's in the clear. Like Welshy said, this has been done by everyone. The Logan Act has never been enforced and would almost assuredly be ruled unconstitutional by the Supreme Court if anyone were ever convicted. William Perry, who was the Defense Secretary under Clinton and a member of Obama's campaign, secretly met with Iranian officials in Europe just after Obama's election. A centerpiece of Obama's election campaign had been new and open negotiations with the Iranians. http://foreignpolicy.com/2009/01/30/revealed-recent-u-s-iran-nuclear-talks-involved-key-officials-updated/ You have Bernie Sanders as a mayor traveling to Cuba in the 80s and meeting with government officials. If they so much as mentioned the embargo or mentioned something so small as a setting up a friendly baseball game then he would have been in violation of the Logan Act. It's a completely nonsense law from the 1700s when the country was being ripped apart about whether to side with Britain or France. If Flynn has more information than this about illegal activity it will be a problem. But communicating with the Russians one month before taking the Presidency, when Obama is specifically trying to throw a wrench in relations before he leaves, is not an issue.
  3. Just reporting the news. This is going to be a massive story and Trump is going to go nuclear. I wasn't on the jury and don't know what they heard, but it seems a stretch to give this guy the benefit of the doubt given his past history. I suppose the jury didn't hear about that stuff though.
  4. killiefan27: I was making no argument about whether it's right or wrong to have more environmental regulation. I was responding to what Trump has done differently than Clinton would have done which might make for better economic outcomes, especially for blue collar workers. National monuments don't have anything to do with Indian land. Obama had the highest amount of new national monument lands created of any President in history. The new rules applied to 60% of the water in the US, and was an end run around Supreme Court rulings limiting the authority of EPA bureaucrats to mess with property owners. Signals that the government plans to expand economic opportunity for manufacturing is not "meaningless." The owners of capital have to decide where to invest. One of the problems of the Obama era is that capital was going towards paper assets rather than brick and mortar assets. It's better for the working class if capital goes towards brick and mortar investments. I'm not making a trickle down argument theory about whether the rich should be taxed more or less. I'm saying it's better if they invest their capital in ways which provide employment to the working class. That number includes illegal immigrants. And for much of the Obama administration the rate of new immigrant workers outpaces the creation of new jobs. So far under Trump we are starting to see increased jobs at the same time as a slight decrease in the % of foreign born workers. I personally reject the idea that importing cheap labor is good for the overall economy. The owners of capital and land might make higher profits investing in the production of products which require near slave labor to reach those profits. I'd say that we should cut off the slave labor and make them redirect their resources towards other uses which may be less profitable, but better for the society as a whole. As I said, if the trends I noted continue for four years Trump will win reelection. I made no comment on whether this is likely or not likely.
  5. Kate Steinle's killer was acquitted of all charges except felon in possession of a weapon by a San Francisco jury today. Her killing was a major talking point during Trump's campaign. Here killer had been deported 5 times from the US. Best I can tell he had 5 criminal convictions in three different states outside of his convictions for illegal entry. The federal prisons for some reason turned him over to San Francisco to face a two decade old marijuana charge. The charges were dropped. Immigration had a hold on him so they could pick him up, but San Francisco as a sanctuary city released him rather than complying with the Federal Government. His defense in the Steinle killing was that he picked a gun up off the ground, and that it went off accidently. He threw the gun into the water and fled the scene. Not guilty on both murder and manslaughter.
  6. Trump noted the stupidity of our policy and the people we were backing during his campaign.
  7. I'm not debating you that he's been a failure on the legislative front. All of his accomplishments are administrative and can be undone when a Democrat get's back in charge of the executive branch. You suggested that since he has no important legislative achievements that any good news about the economy is incidental to the Presidency and would perhaps be better under Clinton. I'm suggesting that Trump has been reversing Obama regulations that held back the economy, and this is especially true in sectors of the economy that rely heavily on blue collar work. Specific regulatory policies: 1. Revoked rules put in place in 2010 which limited new offshore and Artic drilling. 2. Began process of withdrawing the national monument status Obama added to over 500 million acres of public land, which would allow economic development of the resources on those lands. 3. Repealed numerous Obama executive orders which made it more difficult to develop natural resources and construct power plants. 4. Began process of repealing Obama rules which massively expanded the definition of what types of water were potentially subject to bureaucratic control under the Clean Water Act. 5. Allowing local politicians to request expedited review of environmental permits for economic development, so that government bureaucrats in the environmental agencies can't stifle economic development with which they disagree by dragging their feet on the permitting. More general guidelines which provide positive signals to business: 1. Ordered the Secretary of Commerce to review all trade agreements for any that he thinks should be renegotiated. 2. Established a new Office of Trade and Manufacturing tasked with coming up with ways to reduce our manufacturing trade deficit. Appointed an economist who authored a book called Death by China to head the new office. 3. Ordered the Secretary of Commerce to investigate illegal steel and aluminum dumping by foreign companies. 4. Ordered the Secretary of Commerce to conduct an overview of which federal regulations most hinder manufacturing, and whether they should be repealed. Those are just a few examples from his first couple of months. There were also numerous executive orders dealing with fewer regulations on financial companies, but I was sticking with more blue collar work for my list. Hillary would have made such work subject to even more regulation than Obama, instead of less as Trump. Despite all the doom and gloom that you hear about the economy in the fake news, the actual polls show massively increased business confidence since Obama has been gone. People have to decide where to invest their money. If rich people invest it in capital expansion rather than paper assets that's good for working people in the economy. http://news.gallup.com/poll/215048/small-business-owners-optimism-highest-years.aspx?g_source=ECONOMY&g_medium=topic&g_campaign=tiles https://www.nfib.com/surveys/small-business-economic-trends/ Notice the giant jump about the time a certain historical event happened. There's also statistics showing that the job growth has been going to Americans at the expense of immigrants. During Obama's Presidency the % of the workforce which was foreign increased 2% to 17%. Under Trump we already seeing job growth at the same time that the foreign % of the workforce is starting to edge down. The gains are going to American workers. This is probably as much due to the tone set by Trump administration (and perhaps the media hysterics scaring illegal immigrants out of large parts of the country and into sanctuary cities) as any actual policy change. Even the Economist admitted that blue collar wages were starting to increase under Trump, though they of course offer a bunch of caveats as to why this might be incidental or short term: I do think that Trump being in office is already creating modest improvements in blue collar employment, while Clinton would have led to more modest negative results. There's evidence to back this up. We will see if the trend continues throughout his term. If it does he will probably win a second term despite all the chaos.
  8. On sports talk radio they were discussing how the morning news shows in the US interrupted their programs for the breaking news that Harry was engaged. Apparently they literally stopped the interviews in the middle. They were wondering if he's the only person in the whole world whose engagement would get that treatment in the US. I didn't even know she was half black from the photos until I started to see all the headlines about it.
  9. Major regulatory changes. The US has become more and more an administrative state guided by vague legal statutes over the past decades, and it was the hallmark of the Obama years. Trump has taken a bulldozer to the Obama regulations.
  10. True redneck country. Brothers Osborne Cadillac Three Hipster bro country, dude. Some of it's pretty good, but don't act like it's David Allan Coe.
  11. I couldn't read that article because I'm maxed out on NY Times this month, but I'm sure a Stanford degree will go very far in whatever country he's from. He should consider himself lucky the US let him in to earn such a valuable degree.
  12. How about these rich companies train Americans to do the jobs instead of getting the government to import people who are already trained.
  13. I think we've reached peak virtue signaling. Malibu, a city with 21 miles of the best coastline in California and 12,900 people (87% non-Hispanic white, 6.1% Hispanic), declared itself a sanctuary city after Trump's election. The people who live there are very adept at using green and land use laws to stop any development that would allow more people to live in the city, hence why it's almost all very rich white people. Now just a few months later: http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-malibu-homeless-soup-kitchen-20171124-story.html#nws=mcnewsletter
  14. I won it one year. Ahmadinejad and Kim Jong Un were the runners up.
  15. Go to 49:38. Sorry, it says European explores in general, not Vikings specifically. I misremembered.
  16. Last week I just watched a PBS documentary on the Pilgrims if you're wondering where I got that. It looks like there is debate about which disease exactly wiped out the Indians and how it was introduced. What's undeniable is that almost all the Indians along the coast of New England were dead when the Pilgrims arrived. Contemporary accounts from the settlers talk of empty villages full of bones. https://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/16/2/09-0276_article Here's a quote from the colony governor, William Bradford. " . . .and the people not many, being dead and abundantly wasted in the late great mortalitie which fell in all these parts about three years before the coming of the English, wherin thousands of em dyed; … ther sculs and bones were found in many places lying still above the ground, where their houses and dwellings had been; a very sad spectackle to behould.“ Happy to be corrected if you think I'm wrong about something.
  17. Just the Wikipedia. Nothing big. Like I said, I just read the Wikipedia. It mentioned a few high profile politicians calling for the release of the kids and public outrage. Mentions the Chief Inspector of Prisons saying he admired the progress of the killers and calling in the press for their early release. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/492487.stm It also includes a public quote by the 2nd highest judge in England calling the sentence "Institutionalized vengeance by politicians playing to the gallery." I took that to mean there were some government officials arguing in public that the sentence should be reduced, which would create outrage on the other side. Did these arguments mention not reach the general public? I have no idea.
  18. None of these cases became famous in the US, so I just googled them. It seems like there was no controversy with the adults and everyone agreed that they should be sentenced to life. With the kids there was a public campaign to get them out early, and the European Human Rights Court agreed. That's bound to create outrage and entrenched opinions for the people on the other side of the issue. The controversy and debate is the reason for the vitriol. Also throw in that the opinion of both sides is about equally socially acceptable, which is abnormal for controversial issues. It's the perfect storm.
  19. Probably because the adults you mentioned are in jail for life. The sentence given to kids is bound to be controversial, especially with the route taken to get them out. That said, if my child was murdered by another young child I'd like to think I'd hope they were able to be rehabilitated and live a productive life.
  20. f**k theory. Just build a rocket and shoot yourself into space.
  21. I think I was getting some eye rolls and sarcastic comments. It's beyond doubt that the left uses racial classifications to try and drive people away from identifying as white, and to give them economic and cultural benefits if they do identify as something else.
  22. http://www.cnn.com/2017/11/22/politics/sebelius-clinton-white-house-behavior/index.html Obama Cabinet member Kathleen Sebelius admitted that Hillary Clinton was involved in attempting to smear the character of women who accused Bill Clinton of rape and sexual harassment. Don't you think that your country should break up on an ethnic line?
  23. A week or so back I was mocked for my suggestion that the census get rid of Hispanic as a racial/ethnic option. Here's an article from The Hill about the attempts of a Cuban American Republican's attempt to join the Hispanic Congressional Congress. It gets into the weeds a bit with how this designation was created by the left, and some of the reasons why. http://thehill.com/opinion/civil-rights/361359-democrats-do-no-good-when-they-kick-hispanic-republicans-to-curb The Obama administration attempted to create another new official ethnic group, Middle Eastern, out of white. The goal is to create the cultural conditions for flight from white, which helps the modern left, rather than flight to white, which makes it more likely that people will view themselves as just "American." If you don't know, in previous generations Middle Eastern immigrants fought hard to be considered white, and won at the Supreme Court. Today their descendants are indistinguishable culturally from other white Americans. The most famous is probably the walking Texas stereotype, Johnny Manziel. The newer immigrants from these same countries see a greater economic and cultural benefit in being separated from white America.
  24. Same thing that happened with the Soviet Union, another attempt at a "proposition nation" on a massive scale.
×
×
  • Create New...