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Politics. The feel in your country.

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  • screamingpalmscreamingpalm Member Posts: 37
    Not if it's not on the menu. It's not like we have anti-discrimination laws for something not intended to be offered. I can't go to McDonalds and then sue because they wouldn't conjure up raw cow's tongue covered in goat's blood and claim they violated my Satanic religious beliefs.
    Balrog99Proontbooinyoureyes
  • MathsorcererMathsorcerer Member Posts: 3,037
    The logic is the same, though--a business owner denying me service based on my beliefs/choices. In the interest of being equitable, though, let me change the scenario. Suppose a homosexual couple walks into a Muslim florist. I suspect that florist would be like the florist from the evangelical example and wouldn't want to support the happy couple.

    Arguing against small business owner rights is tantamount to arguing against personal rights. I will always err on the side of "personal rights" unless extenuating circumstances necessitate otherwise. Unfortunately, a homosexual couple's marriage does not count as "an extenuating circumstance" because broader or more fundamental rights are not being questioned or infringed.

    At this point, I need to reiterate: I am convinced that small business owners *should* serve all customers because that makes the most sense, economically. However, if a small business owner is a jerk and wants to turn away paying customers then I don't have a problem supporting their decision to close their own store. People should always enjoy the consequences of their choices, whether good or bad.
    ThacoBellProontbooinyoureyes
  • bob_vengbob_veng Member Posts: 2,308

    Men who are physically strong are more likely to have right wing political views

    http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-2325414/Men-physically-strong-likely-right-wing-political-views.html

    If you wonder how much strong i an :

    No one was wondering that. You are only worried about you and hey, you are fine because you are strong right.

    There's something you are missing. There are other people in the world. Your parents, grandparents, disabled people, women, children. They aren't as strong as you. What about them? They should get up out of their wheelchair and what exactly?

    So what right, you are strong now. In 10 years you might not be. When you are young you think things will last forever, they don't. You could have a major illness or a surgery gone bad or get hit by a car. Then guess what. Some other guy will be like we only need to worry about the strong, get lost. There's always someone stronger.
    My point is to show how tall, strong and intelligent man are more inclined to be right wing. While "beta males" tends to be SJWs. A low testosterone man will have a hard time trying to get stronger and will be more likelly to be left wing. The video of i training is because people tend to believe that gamers are weak.
    so you're not only strong, but particularly intelligent too? i'd like a display of that as well (i haven't quite bought into the idea yet)
  • jjstraka34jjstraka34 Member Posts: 9,850

    The logic is the same, though--a business owner denying me service based on my beliefs/choices. In the interest of being equitable, though, let me change the scenario. Suppose a homosexual couple walks into a Muslim florist. I suspect that florist would be like the florist from the evangelical example and wouldn't want to support the happy couple.

    Arguing against small business owner rights is tantamount to arguing against personal rights. I will always err on the side of "personal rights" unless extenuating circumstances necessitate otherwise. Unfortunately, a homosexual couple's marriage does not count as "an extenuating circumstance" because broader or more fundamental rights are not being questioned or infringed.

    At this point, I need to reiterate: I am convinced that small business owners *should* serve all customers because that makes the most sense, economically. However, if a small business owner is a jerk and wants to turn away paying customers then I don't have a problem supporting their decision to close their own store. People should always enjoy the consequences of their choices, whether good or bad.

    This is the argument I would expect you to have on this, since it is one of THE cornerstones of libertarian thought. But this would also mean (and Rand Paul made this exact argument in an interview with Rachel Maddow a few years ago) that restaurants wouldn't HAVE to serve black people. I mean no offense when I say this, but that sounds like a position that could only be held if you happen to be a person who knows (with about 99% certainty) that they are never going to be turned away from a business because of what they look like.
    screamingpalmProont
  • jjstraka34jjstraka34 Member Posts: 9,850
    bob_veng said:

    Men who are physically strong are more likely to have right wing political views

    http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-2325414/Men-physically-strong-likely-right-wing-political-views.html

    If you wonder how much strong i an :

    No one was wondering that. You are only worried about you and hey, you are fine because you are strong right.

    There's something you are missing. There are other people in the world. Your parents, grandparents, disabled people, women, children. They aren't as strong as you. What about them? They should get up out of their wheelchair and what exactly?

    So what right, you are strong now. In 10 years you might not be. When you are young you think things will last forever, they don't. You could have a major illness or a surgery gone bad or get hit by a car. Then guess what. Some other guy will be like we only need to worry about the strong, get lost. There's always someone stronger.
    My point is to show how tall, strong and intelligent man are more inclined to be right wing. While "beta males" tends to be SJWs. A low testosterone man will have a hard time trying to get stronger and will be more likelly to be left wing. The video of i training is because people tend to believe that gamers are weak.
    so you're not only strong, but particularly intelligent too? i'd like a display of that as well (i haven't quite bought into the idea yet)
    I think this whole discussion is a bad idea.
    MathsorcererThacoBellProontbooinyoureyes
  • Grond0Grond0 Member Posts: 7,305

    Can you expand on what costs you are referring to?

    I'm not suggesting that simply holding dollars results in costs to the US. As I put in my original comment though I am suggesting that foreign governments and enterprises won't simply hold ever-increasing amounts of dollars, but put the funding to use. If they buy US companies for instance the profits from the operation of those companies will partially or entirely be lost to the US economy.

    Being the world reserve currency means absolutely nothing. If the world decided to switch to something else, it would not matter in the slightest. The petrodollar is a similar fear-mongering tactic that has no basis in reality. You make all of these claims with no supporting evidence, logic, or theory- global reserve currency has nothing to do with the value of the dollar, etc.
    The value of the dollar reflects the demand for dollars. The fact that the dollar accounts for around 2/3 of official foreign currency reserves and a lot of international trade is denominated in dollars has helped maintain the demand for dollars. That position is not guaranteed to remain in the future. For instance the Chinese Yuan was approved by the IMF as a reserve currency in October 2016. Thus far there has been little demand for the Yuan, but that could change.

    Yes, the worldwide recession A.K.A. the 'Minsky moment'. Guess who Minsky was and why he was the one who predicted it? ;) You consistently refer to "flows"... I assume you buy into QTME and velocity of money garbage from Milton Freidman? :D I am interested in what exact effects you are referring to here.
    I'm not a fan of Friedman at all. The argument I was presenting was simply that there are a lot of transactions between countries that don't directly affect standards of living. For instance if you buy insurance from a company in another country the citizens of that country don't see any direct benefits in the way suggested in Mosler's essay. There would though be indirect benefits, e.g. as a result of better employment prospects and retained profits. If there were a general move to no longer buy insurance from that country the effects would be significant.

    There is no foreign capital involved. Enlighten me then on what foreign capital exists here? So what if foreign investors use their dollars to boost our economy by spending into it? How on earth is that a bad thing? If they transfer their dollars overseas and decide not to use risk-free assets at the Fed, so what? I fail to see how this is a dire situation.
    Capital is not static. If profits are generated through a transaction they may simply be spent for consumption purposes - and I agree if that were done in the US that would help the economy. However, those profits can also be used as capital for investment purposes. While purchasing US goods benefits the US economy, that's not the case if US companies are foreign owned.



    I accept your point though that the essay you posted is a simplified version of Mosler's views. Looking at this summary of Modern Monetary Theory suggests that a more detailed version of the theory does accept some of the criticisms I made, e.g. that trade deficits are beneficial in the short run, but not necessarily so in the longer term and that converting foreign held holdings of dollar denominated assets to another currency can affect the exchange rate.
    screamingpalmbooinyoureyes
  • bob_vengbob_veng Member Posts: 2,308

    bob_veng said:

    Men who are physically strong are more likely to have right wing political views

    http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-2325414/Men-physically-strong-likely-right-wing-political-views.html

    If you wonder how much strong i an :

    No one was wondering that. You are only worried about you and hey, you are fine because you are strong right.

    There's something you are missing. There are other people in the world. Your parents, grandparents, disabled people, women, children. They aren't as strong as you. What about them? They should get up out of their wheelchair and what exactly?

    So what right, you are strong now. In 10 years you might not be. When you are young you think things will last forever, they don't. You could have a major illness or a surgery gone bad or get hit by a car. Then guess what. Some other guy will be like we only need to worry about the strong, get lost. There's always someone stronger.
    My point is to show how tall, strong and intelligent man are more inclined to be right wing. While "beta males" tends to be SJWs. A low testosterone man will have a hard time trying to get stronger and will be more likelly to be left wing. The video of i training is because people tend to believe that gamers are weak.
    so you're not only strong, but particularly intelligent too? i'd like a display of that as well (i haven't quite bought into the idea yet)
    I think this whole discussion is a bad idea.
    i want to be swayed by the sheer force of his unbridled intellect
    Balrog99smeagolheartProont
  • Grond0Grond0 Member Posts: 7,305

    Again, the main point is that people do not *have* to like each other. As proof that they don't, I direct you to the main page of any news service.

    Clearly people don't have to like each other, but that's not the same thing as allowing discrimination. I don't think it was a sign of a healthy society seeing the sort of signs up outside boarding houses in the UK - "no blacks, no jews, no gypsies". That's no longer legal and public views have shifted enough that I think it would be very rare now if it were legal - and I think that's good.

    There seems to be a reasonable consensus on this thread that essential services should be exempted from the ability to discriminate, though there may be room for debate on what is essential - for what it's worth I would include broadband in that.

    For non-essential services it might be worth referring to the court judgment on one of the baking cases I posted about quite recently. In that the judge said that discrimination should not be permitted when all that was being sold was standard retail items - so you couldn't decide not to sell someone an existing sandwich on display in the shop just because they were gay. However, where you were selling a non-specific service you could discriminate - and in that case the right of the shop to refuse to bake a cake was upheld. Personally I think if you purport to provide services to the general public you should do so without discriminating at all, but then I don't share the mindset of strongly religious people.
    jjstraka34MathsorcererscreamingpalmProont
  • screamingpalmscreamingpalm Member Posts: 37
    Thanks for the reply! I just wanted to hit a couple of points...
    Grond0 said:


    I'm not suggesting that simply holding dollars results in costs to the US. As I put in my original comment though I am suggesting that foreign governments and enterprises won't simply hold ever-increasing amounts of dollars, but put the funding to use. If they buy US companies for instance the profits from the operation of those companies will partially or entirely be lost to the US economy.

    Partially perhaps, but you also have to consider the wider proposals of MMT for context (something Mosler failed to do at the time of that writing). A Federal Job Guarantee at a living wage being one pillar, which changes the dynamic of workers' share v capital share of the National Income (GDP). Same line of thought applies to the point you made below of foreign owned companies.

    The value of the dollar reflects the demand for dollars. The fact that the dollar accounts for around 2/3 of official foreign currency reserves and a lot of international trade is denominated in dollars has helped maintain the demand for dollars. That position is not guaranteed to remain in the future. For instance the Chinese Yuan was approved by the IMF as a reserve currency in October 2016. Thus far there has been little demand for the Yuan, but that could change.
    This is actually a fair and valid point... cheers! I believe that the MMT view is that taxes are what drives the currency, not the external sector. I can agree that it could account for some demand, though I would need to see some data on this.

    Grond0
  • MathsorcererMathsorcerer Member Posts: 3,037
    edited March 2018
    *I* am going to care about the price of cars this year--the teenager is 17 now and she will need a vehicle this summer. *yeesh*

    edit/add
    Grond0 said:

    Clearly people don't have to like each other, but that's not the same thing as allowing discrimination. I don't think it was a sign of a healthy society seeing the sort of signs up outside boarding houses in the UK - "no blacks, no jews, no gypsies". That's no longer legal and public views have shifted enough that I think it would be very rare now if it were legal - and I think that's good.

    We know better these days. Anyone putting up a sign like that would be out of business before the ink on their newly-ordered business cards dried.

    People often miss the second part of my whole view on this topic: 1) allow business owners to make poor decisions then 2) let the business owner accept the consequences of their choices. If those choices are poor ones--turning away customers for some illogical reason--then the business owner will become a failure and will have to find some other way to make a living.
    Balrog99ThacoBellProont
  • deltagodeltago Member Posts: 7,811

    The logic is the same, though--a business owner denying me service based on my beliefs/choices. In the interest of being equitable, though, let me change the scenario. Suppose a homosexual couple walks into a Muslim florist. I suspect that florist would be like the florist from the evangelical example and wouldn't want to support the happy couple.

    Arguing against small business owner rights is tantamount to arguing against personal rights. I will always err on the side of "personal rights" unless extenuating circumstances necessitate otherwise. Unfortunately, a homosexual couple's marriage does not count as "an extenuating circumstance" because broader or more fundamental rights are not being questioned or infringed.

    At this point, I need to reiterate: I am convinced that small business owners *should* serve all customers because that makes the most sense, economically. However, if a small business owner is a jerk and wants to turn away paying customers then I don't have a problem supporting their decision to close their own store. People should always enjoy the consequences of their choices, whether good or bad.

    The logic is not the same because nothing is preventing you from eating halal meat.

    You can't walk into a KFC and ask for a Whopper then claim the staff aren't meeting your needs. KFC doesn't serve beef. It's the same example as a Muslim run restuarant.

    Muslims, as customers, also do not expect every restaurant to cater to their religious beliefs. However, where there is a large populace of Muslims, you will see halal meat on menus because they do not want to lose that business to the store down the street.

    If you walked into a Muslim establishment and they refused to serve you halal meat because you weren't Muslim, then that'd be discrimination.

    I also don't think you know too many western muslims. They are very tolerable of other people's beliefs.

    -

    I will also say, recent (within the last 100 years), American history proves that communities would rather segregate and prevent equal opportunities and services for everyone and it needs to be regulated to prevent it from happening again.
    jjstraka34screamingpalmProont
  • Grond0Grond0 Member Posts: 7,305

    We know better these days. Anyone putting up a sign like that would be out of business before the ink on their newly-ordered business cards dried.

    People often miss the second part of my whole view on this topic: 1) allow business owners to make poor decisions then 2) let the business owner accept the consequences of their choices. If those choices are poor ones--turning away customers for some illogical reason--then the business owner will become a failure and will have to find some other way to make a living.

    I can imagine that working well in cities. However, are there really no small towns left in America where a few dominant personalities could effectively enforce a culture of discrimination ...
    Proont
  • semiticgoddesssemiticgoddess Member Posts: 14,903
    Never be ashamed of your views. You should always have enough confidence in your own ideals to voice them and defend them.
    Balrog99screamingpalmThacoBellProont
  • jjstraka34jjstraka34 Member Posts: 9,850
    edited March 2018
    The tariff decision was, predictably, a complete clusterf**k. From NBC News:

    With global markets shaken by President Donald Trump's surprise decision to impose strict tariffs on steel and aluminum imports, the president went into battle mode on Friday: "Trade wars are good, and easy to win," he wrote on Twitter.

    But the public show of confidence belies the fact that Trump's policy maneuver, which may ultimately harm U.S. companies and American consumers, was announced without any internal review by government lawyers or his own staff, according to a review of an internal White House document.

    According to two officials, Trump's decision to launch a potential trade war was born out of anger at other simmering issues and the result of a broken internal process that has failed to deliver him consensus views that represent the best advice of his team.

    On Wednesday evening, the president became "unglued," in the words of one official familiar with the president's state of mind.

    A trifecta of events had set him off in a way that two officials said they had not seen before: Hope Hicks' testimony to lawmakers investigating Russia's interference in the 2016 election, conduct by his embattled attorney general and the treatment of his son-in-law by his chief of staff.

    Trump, the two officials said, was angry and gunning for a fight, and he chose a trade war, spurred on by Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross and Peter Navarro, the White House director for trade.

    Ross had already invited steel and aluminum executives to the White House for an 11 a.m. meeting on Thursday. But Ross, according to a person with direct knowledge, hadn't told the White House who the executives were. As a result, White House officials were unable to conduct a background check on the executives to make sure they were appropriate for the president to meet with and they were not able to be cleared for entry by secret service. According to a person with direct knowledge, even White House chief of staff John Kelly was unaware of their names.

    By midnight Wednesday, less than 12 hours before the executives were expected to arrive, no one on the president's team had prepared any position paper for an announcement on tariff policy, the official said. In fact, according to the official, the White House counsel's office had advised that they were as much as two weeks away from being able to complete a legal review on steel tariffs.

    In response to NBC News, another White House official said that the communications team "was well-prepared to support the president's announcement" and that "many of the attendees had been in the White House before and had already been vetted for attendance at a presidential event." A different official said of the decision, "everyone in the world has known where the president's head was on this issue since the beginning of his administration."

    There were no prepared, approved remarks for the president to give at the planned meeting, there was no diplomatic strategy for how to alert foreign trade partners, there was no legislative strategy in place for informing Congress and no agreed upon communications plan beyond an email cobbled together by Ross's team at the Commerce Department late Wednesday that had not been approved by the White House.

    No one at the State Department, the Treasury Department or the Defense Department had been told that a new policy was about to be announced or given an opportunity to weigh in in advance.

    The Thursday morning meeting did not originally appear on the president's public schedule. Shortly after it began, reporters were told that Ross had convened a "listening" session at the White House with 15 executives from the steel and aluminum industry.

    Then, an hour later, in an another unexpected move, reporters were invited to the Cabinet room. Without warning, Trump announced on the spot that he was imposing new strict tariffs on imports.

    By Thursday afternoon, the U.S. stock market had fallen and Trump, surrounded by his senior advisers in the Oval Office, was said to be furious.
    MathsorcerersemiticgoddessProont
  • bob_vengbob_veng Member Posts: 2,308
    edited March 2018
    muslims according to their religion, shouldn't settle and continue living in communities where they can't meet their religious obligations (in general this is to some extent true for most religions), so if there's one muslim living in a town of non-muslims, islam does not require him to impose on the town that they start producing for him the kinds of food that he is allowed to eat, but it requires of him to adapt, because the burden for being a proper muslim is on him.

    based on this, you can't make a parallel with gays. muslims have certain obligations and require certain conditions in the community for those obligations to be met (the religions expressly recognizes this fact, it being a highly prescriptive religion, and in that norm-creating sense fairly realistic), which can be construed as muslims having some special needs-requirements that set them apart from non-muslims.

    gays don't have any special needs, they have EXACTLY the same (basic) needs as everyone else.
  • MathsorcererMathsorcerer Member Posts: 3,037
    deltago said:

    I also don't think you know too many western muslims. They are very tolerable of other people's beliefs.

    My chemistry lab partner in university was Muslim. His wife was in the school's choir alongside the mezzo-soprano whom I was dating at the time. We had dinner at their house a couple of times and even went to their mosque with them. No, I definitely think I know from firsthand experience how tolerant Western Muslims are of other people. My example was chosen at random.

    Is the government going to start telling people where to live in a effort to get everyone to play nicely with each other? If not, then as distasteful as it may be we must accept the reality that human beings do not like each other very much and that we self-segregate. Unfortunately, you simply cannot regulate individual people's choices in this matter. Most people self-segregate according to race because that is the only outward thing many of them see, especially when they do not take the time to get to know people. In the long run, the one color which makes all other colors irrelevant is green--if you want racial equality you must start with economic equality. Economic equality starts by having people who are already successful get together and pool their money to help younger, up-and-coming business people from their community get started (or at least making sure that young adults from their community go to university).
    ThacoBellBalrog99Proont
  • bob_vengbob_veng Member Posts: 2,308
    edited March 2018
    i find it acceptable that deceased gays shall not be buried in a certain strictly denominatinal cemetery ("radical baptist church of gay-hating cemetery"), and in that sense be discriminated against. i find it an acceptable implicit clause of freedom of religion, and i take freedom of religions extremely seriously because historically it comes before all freedoms and is the civilizational cornerstone of all other freedoms. but they must be allowed to be buried without discrimination in all non-denominatinal cemeteries and society must ensure this. to accept such a state in a society that fails this standard is completely weird to me. i don't see how that's based on any principle.

    even cake makers have a special excuse for their refusal - their work is self expression, because making a wedding cake is a creative form of artisanship, akin to art, and you can't force that kind of self expression upon someone. that is a serious argument, even though cake makers are usually not being creative at all, but in the case of cemeteries - there's no such excuse
  • MathsorcererMathsorcerer Member Posts: 3,037

    Ross had already invited steel and aluminum executives to the White House for an 11 a.m. meeting on Thursday. But Ross, according to a person with direct knowledge, hadn't told the White House who the executives were. As a result, White House officials were unable to conduct a background check on the executives to make sure they were appropriate for the president to meet with and they were not able to be cleared for entry by secret service. According to a person with direct knowledge, even White House chief of staff John Kelly was unaware of their names.

    This is the most bizarre paragraph from that article. The Commerce Secretary invited people to the White House but didn't tell anyone whom he had invited, not even the Chief of Staff? You have to have a security background check to be found "appropriate" to meet with the President?
  • FinneousPJFinneousPJ Member Posts: 6,455
    bob_veng said:

    muslims according to their religion, shouldn't settle and continue living in communities where they can't meet their religious obligations (in general this is to some extent true for most religions), so if there's one muslim living in a town of non-muslims, islam does not require him to impose on the town that they start producing for him the kinds of food that he is allowed to eat, but it requires of him to adapt, because the burden for being a proper muslim is on him.

    based on this, you can't make a parallel with gays. muslims have certain obligations and require certain conditions in the community for those obligations to be met (the religions expressly recognizes this fact, it being a highly prescriptive religion, and in that norm-creating sense fairly realistic), which can be construed as muslims having some special needs-requirements that set them apart from non-muslims.

    gays don't have any special needs, they have EXACTLY the same (basic) needs as everyone else.

    I wouldn't say religion imposes special needs. It imposes wants. Need is a very strong word. I need food to live. I don't need a specific diet but I may want one.
  • bob_vengbob_veng Member Posts: 2,308
    edited March 2018
    i think it's somewhere between a need and a want. i think it should be considered more intrinsic to someone's person, than his ordinary preferences such as taste in movies etc, because it has (could have) implications on his ability to function in his family and close community. on the maslow's scale, i'd put them in the middle


    whereas cultural and purely consumeristic needs are above it - status-based choice of car etc.

    edit: in substance, in the core of the argument, i have a feeling that you agree with me
    FinneousPJZaghoulProont
  • FinneousPJFinneousPJ Member Posts: 6,455
    Yes, that seems reasonable. I am very glad you brought up the hierarchy with a picture. It evades the degeneration into pure semantics. Good job!
    bob_vengZaghoulProont
  • SorcererV1ct0rSorcererV1ct0r Member Posts: 2,176


    My point is to show how tall, strong and intelligent man are more inclined to be right wing. While "beta males" tends to be SJWs. A low testosterone man will have a hard time trying to get stronger and will be more likelly to be left wing. The video of i training is because people tend to believe that gamers are weak.

    Your source only says upper body strength is correlated with right-wing political views. It says nothing about height, testosterone, or intelligence.

    I'm not too surprised by the finding. Conservatives place more value on physical strength and are more likely to work out. Also, conservatives are less likely to have a college degree, which means they're more likely to have a blue-collar job that requires more physical strength.

    You imply that liberal men are genetically inferior to conservatives, saying that people favor liberal policies if they're weak and ineffectual. This comes off more like self-congratulatory bragging about the superiority of one's body and mind and views than a scientific judgment.

    Education is more correlated with liberal views. Does this mean we should congratulate liberals on their superior enlightenment?
    Considering the amount of indoctrination courses, of course you are right.
    I don't know where people get the idea that college is there to indoctrinate people. I've been through college and in all of the liberal arts courses and I've had liberal professors, and yet I was never once required to support any particular viewpoint. My professors gave due credence to conservative ideas and my university invited conservative speakers on campus (Robert Gates gave a marvelous speech for which I took lots of notes).

    I remember attacking Marxist political theory as reductionist in a long rant and all I got was a quiet disagreement from the professor. I remember arguing with an actual Marxist professor (the old school kind) and the result was a heated and interesting discussion for which I was never even criticized, much less penalized. I remember disagreeing with a left-leaning scholar and attacking her research and my professor was perfectly polite when he disagreed with me (and I actually changed my mind as a result; I was too quick to assume the worst in that scholar). I have a long-running and very intense disagreement with all kinds of things in academia, especially in regards to liberal bias.

    But they absolutely did NOT try to force their views on me.

    The notion that professors are only there to support a single viewpoint is a pernicious stereotype. I know from personal experience that the exact opposite is true. All they ever encouraged us to do was to think critically, draw conclusions only after collecting data, and challenge biases not just in others, but in ourselves. They specifically taught us not to be indoctrinated.
    Gender studies, the amount of antifa on universities

    PS : Is funny how the left logic works:
    - Poor lefitist = he is represented by the left
    - Poor right wing = Ignorant man
    - Rich lefitist = Austruistic
    - Rich right wing = Egoistic

    That is the logic that many lefitists applies.
  • bob_vengbob_veng Member Posts: 2,308
    man, those austrualians...
    Proont
  • semiticgoddesssemiticgoddess Member Posts: 14,903
    @SorcererV1ct0r: I do not view conservatives as ignorant or egotistical, and I object to the notion that this is how liberals see the world.

    You're judging half of the United States based on a stereotype.
    ThacoBellProont
  • jjstraka34jjstraka34 Member Posts: 9,850
    edited March 2018
    So, more news in regards to the tariff debacle. According to an article in Politico, the EU is now apparently specifically planning to target and impose tariffs and duties on companies specifically targeted in the home States of Mitch McConnell and Paul Ryan:

    But European Union officials are already planning retaliatory actions, targeting products from politically sensitive Republican-run states, including the imposition of tariffs on Harley-Davidsons made in Speaker Paul Ryan’s home state of Wisconsin; duties on bourbon made in Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s home state of Kentucky; and duties on orange juice from Florida, a critical swing state.

    “We will put tariffs on Harley-Davidson, on bourbon and on blue jeans — Levis,” European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker told German television. Commissioners from the EU’s 28 member countries plan to discuss the countermeasures on Wednesday.

    Across the globe, Trump’s plan to impose a 25 percent duty on steel and a 10 percent duty on aluminum imports would alienate dozens of countries in Europe, North America and Asia, many of them longtime allies and trading partners, who could turn the tables by targeting key U.S. sectors such as agriculture and aircraft, based in states that elected him and fellow Republicans.


    Sounds like an actual plan, juxtaposed to Trump's total impulsiveness. Moreover, even if Trump was dead-set on doing this, how could he possibly not have discussions about this with auto-makers and those in the food industry, who use massive amounts of imported steel and aluminium?? There is no possible way to get across just how dumb this particular move was. And politically and economically, it may be the biggest mistake Trump has made yet.
    Proont
  • deltagodeltago Member Posts: 7,811
    Something tells me these tariffs aren't going to happen.

    In two weeks time, everyone is going to move on from it to some other idiotic thing he said and completely forget about it.

    Besides his reasoning for the tariffs would be shot down in the WTO extremely quickly especially if it blankets Canada. From a WAPO article:

    “Applying tariffs to Canada, despite its being part of the U.S. defense industrial base since the 1940s, will strengthen WTO claims that this decision is not really about national security,” said John Veroneau, a George W. Bush administration trade official now with the firm Covington & Burling.

    It's a distraction. I think we all need to act like the Chinese here who said (from the same article):

    China’s Iron and Steel Association slammed what it called a “stupid protectionist move” but simultaneously said it would not have a big impact on China. “Nothing can be done about Trump. We are already numb to him,” Li Xinchuang, vice secretary-general of the association told Reuters.
    Wei Jianguo, a former Chinese vice commerce minister, said the move would go against the WTO rules and hurt U.S.-China relations. “China does not want to see a trade war with the United States. But if Trump insists, China is not afraid of it,” Wei said.
    Grond0MathsorcererProontbleusteel
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