Hillary and Trump

[dawei]

Trump choosing Pence who is on record as being a bigot is ludicrous. What does that message send to an already divided country?

 

 

Nationalism can collapse on itself and further divide which is what I see happening. I see the appointment of Steve Bannon as a major problem in that Trump is moving further to the right.

 

Interesting points... I almost wish this was in the other thread as the folks that Trump surrounds himself with might of contributed to 'why he won' or at least why he didn't lose on some level.  Meaning, if he had Christie as VP, I think that would of really dulled his chances.

 

Likely folks just don't know Pence enough that it made enough of a difference... when he gets on camera, he is soft spoken and seeking a middle ground.  I'll accept that that is not his regular ideology but to be honest, I think we need to see what they 'do' in this administration.

 

Having picked Priebus as COS instead of Bannon who will be an advisor... I think that was a good decision.   Some folks warned of the former being too much an 'insider' but you need to establish this on some level; the latter can still counsel Trump which I think he wants from an outsider.

 

I'm just looking at what we have now... and the decisions going on now.  I find many of Trump's decisions so far to be rather good.   Are folks like Pence as VP the best?  We can't deal with such questions now... JMO.

[redcairo]

As most of you know, I live in Santa Fe NM which is a multicultural city. Anglo, Hispanic, Native American, African American and so forth. Everyone here for the most part lives in multicultural neighborhoods, except for the extremely wealthy who live behind walls and gated communities on the East side.

 

Given the above, will Trump send his storm troopers through every house and neighborhood with his xenophobic madness? Search every house which is a violation of our rights? A knock on my door in the middle of the night? Will he use the NDAA to justify this?

 

Good grief, you have really manually connected a lot of cables to come up with this. This must be what the media has been saying given the number of perfectly LEGAL AMERICANS who say things like that.

 

Lemme see....

 

* Trump wants to increase security at the border to lesson mass incoming and reduce terrorism risks, check.

* Trump wants to deport the convicted-criminals who happen to be illegally here, check.

* Trump wants to limit or stop immigration from terrorism-prone countries. We still take a million in a year. check.

 

Well obviously they will be knocking on your door in the night, going house to house with the gestapo, because OMG it's xenophobic madness and somewhere in that city is an American who is not white! You're all doomed!

 

Doooooooomed, I tell you!

 

No but really, seriously, this hitlerian terror stuff is just completely overwrought. Nobody cares what race or culture people in your city are. If they are illegal aliens someone might care but probably only if they're criminals.

 

I have never once -- show me! I am pretty sure there is not one example -- seen or heard of Trump (or anyone) saying that he had the slightest interest in rounding up Americans who weren't white and doing whatever it is you think they'd do to people. That's just out of this world crazy.

 

I mean like, if you just take two steps right, you'll be standing next to the people insisting he's a reptilian under that flesh mask.

 

RC

Edited November 15, 2016 by redcairo

[ralis]

Good grief, you have really manually connected a lot of cables to come up with this. This must be what the media has been saying given the number of perfectly LEGAL AMERICANS who say things like that.

 

Lemme see....

 

* Trump wants to increase security at the border to lesson mass incoming and reduce terrorism risks, check.

* Trump wants to deport the convicted-criminals who happen to be illegally here, check.

* Trump wants to limit or stop immigration from terrorism-prone countries. We still take a million in a year. check.

 

Well obviously they will be knocking on your door in the night, going house to house with the gestapo, because OMG it's xenophobic madness and somewhere in that city is an American who is not white! You're all doomed!

 

Doooooooomed, I tell you!

 

No but really, seriously, this hitlerian terror stuff is just completely overwrought. Nobody cares what race or culture people in your city are. If they are illegal aliens someone might care but probably only if they're criminals.

 

I have never once -- show me! I am pretty sure there is not one example -- seen or heard of Trump (or anyone) saying that he had the slightest interest in rounding up Americans who weren't white and doing whatever it is you think they'd do to people. That's just out of this world crazy.

 

I mean like, if you just take two steps right, you'll be standing next to the people insisting he's a reptilian under that flesh mask.

 

RC

 

I don't trust the guy whatsoever! I am in perfectly sound rational mind to ask such questions as to his intent. I never said he will, but am wondering if?

Edited November 15, 2016 by ralis

[redcairo]

Well you probably need to preface such questions like "will he go way off the pier and create a gestapo and come to my neighborhood" with things like "COULD he do that even if he DID want to?"

 

You think everybody who doesn't look brown is gonna sit around and let a Gestapo go door to door seizing non-whites? Really? Have you absolutely no respect for the patriotism of your fellow Americans at all? Nobody I know would allow that. We all learned about Nazi Germany in school, you recall. And I know there are overtly racist bozos but they are a super tiny niche of the population. Most people are definitely not like that at all. Even people who are considered culturally prejudiced e.g. they expect hispanics to be maids, aren't racially prejudiced like "round up the non-whites," sheesh.

 

You know what's done before things like Gestapos are made? You know this. It's trackable worldwide through history. They SEIZE WEAPONS. This guy is the best thing for ensuring we keep weapons. That would not be the case if he intended to become the new SS leader.

 

RC

[wilfred]

[ralis]

Well you probably need to preface such questions like "will he go way off the pier and create a gestapo and come to my neighborhood" with things like "COULD he do that even if he DID want to?"

 

You think everybody who doesn't look brown is gonna sit around and let a Gestapo go door to door seizing non-whites? Really? Have you absolutely no respect for the patriotism of your fellow Americans at all? Nobody I know would allow that. We all learned about Nazi Germany in school, you recall. And I know there are overtly racist bozos but they are a super tiny niche of the population. Most people are definitely not like that at all. Even people who are considered culturally prejudiced e.g. they expect hispanics to be maids, aren't racially prejudiced like "round up the non-whites," sheesh.

 

You know what's done before things like Gestapos are made? You know this. It's trackable worldwide through history. They SEIZE WEAPONS. This guy is the best thing for ensuring we keep weapons. That would not be the case if he intended to become the new SS leader.

 

RC

 

 

Here is what I said; "Given the above, will Trump send his storm troopers through every house and neighborhood with his xenophobic madness? Search every house which is a violation of our rights? A knock on my door in the middle of the night? Will he use the NDAA to justify this?" Appears that I was asking questions.

 

I come from the school of Strunk and White as well as William Zinsser and if I were to write extremely well with precision, I would be on here all day. Not interested in that.

[redcairo]

Alright.

 

This is interesting.

 

For anybody who doesn't know, a sanctuary city is a city that has 'officially' refused to obey federal laws / provide information to authorities regarding the illegal persons in their territory. Basically they are saying, we know you're illegal, but come here and we will protect you. They are in effect openly refusing to follow the law -- it's like being a warehouse supervisor and telling your boss and the entire management team, "Fork you, I'm not sending in inventory numbers, I'll keep that stuff you say I can't have whether you like it or not, and no I'm not telling you where it is."

 

Trump said clearly that federal funding going to sanctuary cities would stop immediately.

 

This means anything the feds control -- and many agencies are federal (e.g. National Science Foundation) -- won't be open to that city. I have no idea what all monies or things this might entail. The point, obviously, is to get the leaders of the city to say gosh, we suddenly feel inspired to obey the law!, and do so. Or, in case sometimes the state is getting something either based on their size or for a project in a certain city, that would stop, so hopefully the state would step in and say guys, I'm the boss, and you have to obey MY boss, so get with the program. Anyway the point of the restriction -- you could call it an economic sanction except that I don't think the monies are 'owed' the cities, it's merely not volunteering to put the money there anyway -- isn't to save the money but rather to inspire them to cease and desist the behavior.

 

Some suggest that for quite some time the sanctuary cities have in many cases not just been on the borders, but have been strategically located in areas that could influence electoral votes. Especially if, like was recently reported (I don't think this has been proven yet or verified by an official agency), a few million illegal people in the country (or perhaps just people who voted separately) may be voting under the names of dead people. Here's a map.

 

 

 

RC

Edited November 15, 2016 by redcairo

[Karl]

Europe is a sanctuary continent in which its leaders and police force don't care who has arrived illegally.

[Wells]

.

Edited March 2, 2017 by Wells

[Wells]

.

Edited March 2, 2017 by Wells

[Karl]

Insane narcissistic soziopath confirmed...again.

Not to forget racist, xenophobic, fascistic, sexist, mysogenist. She has expressed those views many times, but amazingly her supporters lack the ability to hear it.

[Wells]

.

Edited March 2, 2017 by Wells

[Wells]

.

Edited March 2, 2017 by Wells

[dust]

Perhaps when that 'trickles down' to seeming like a reality to more people, it might help. For now, it's mostly numbers and pictures that don't mean much to people who aren't seeing it in their lives. The number of jobs lost in this country in the last 40 years is absolutely *staggering.* This is not something just conservatives say. Bernie Sanders has been at the front of that issue for decades too.

I don't know on what numbers you're basing this 40 years of job loss, maybe it's true -- I'd appreciate some kind of attempt to actually back it up! -- but by any measure employment rate has increased in the last few years. How does that not directly affect people?

 

And the response to this, the response to a decent recovery from the worst recession since 1945, is to let some lying businessman with a questionable mental state convince everyone that the country's doing worse than ever and that everyone's losing their jobs and that immigrants are flooding in with automatic weapons and that the only way forward is to elect him as leader so that he can "Make America Great Again", like it was... when? When was life better?

 

Go find an elderly person who's not bitter and nostalgic, someone who was old enough in the 1930s or '40s to know the situation, someone who has actually been paying attention the whole time, and you will be told that people have never had it so good!

 

I'm not claiming that all is chocolate-coated wonder, and I'm not saying that many people don't have a right to feel like their life is shit. Those who are long-term unemployed, or drowning in debt, or in any other dire situation, are obviously going to feel that way, and they have every right to feel angry or disappointed in the way their country has let them down (where it is indeed the fault of the country and not their own fault). But most of the numbers show that -- in terms of longevity, healthcare, crime, employment, personal choice, and a few other measurements -- Westerners including Americans are doing very well for ourselves. Electing Trumps and Farages isn't going to make things better.

 

 

 

Fab -- you never see those stats when the left is insisting we must seize all firearms from law-abiding citizens. :-)

 

I don't dance the left-right shuffle. There are those who see that guns are dangerous and stupid, and those who believe they are a 'right'. A good American friend of mine who was vocally anti-Trump (and pro-Sanders), is fiercely pro-gun rights. Don't know why it has to be a left-right thing.

 

I also don't know why it's relevant. Rather than simply conceding that crime isn't actually increasing, and that people's "feelings" that crime is increasing do not change the reality, you bend the discussion to try and get me to argue about gun laws? I don't care about American gun laws.

 

If you all want to live in a hive of murder, be my guests -- just don't bring them over here. People in the UK don't need guns to settle disputes or protect ourselves and we're not electing a government on whom we fear we might have to use firearms to protect ourselves...

 

 

 

 

On another note: I notice -- unless I've missed it -- that nobody is taking it upon himself to defend or explain any of the Trump quotes I listed. I suppose because it would be easier to defend a castle made of cheese.

Edited November 15, 2016 by dust

[Wells]

.

Edited March 2, 2017 by Wells

[Wu Ming Jen]

Trump wants to build a wall, Mexico is paying for it and America is outraged.

 

There was a slight mistake in the planning so according to the blueprints Mexico gets texas and california back. Both states are now ready to succeed from the union.

 

In other news the amount of mental energy spent by US citizens on a very long and painful election process has left many exhausted. Germany and China  have offered to build the wall saying they have the best experience for the job.

[Wells]

.

Edited March 2, 2017 by Wells

[MooNiNite]

nvm.

Edited November 15, 2016 by MooNiNite

[Karl]

I don't know on what numbers you're basing this 40 years of job loss, maybe it's true -- I'd appreciate some kind of attempt to actually back it up! -- but by any measure employment rate has increased in the last few years. How does that not directly affect people?

 

And the response to this, the response to a decent recovery from the worst recession since 1945, is to let some lying businessman with a questionable mental state convince everyone that the country's doing worse than ever and that everyone's losing their jobs and that immigrants are flooding in with automatic weapons and that the only way forward is to elect him as leader so that he can "Make America Great Again", like it was... when? When was life better?

 

Go find an elderly person who's not bitter and nostalgic, someone who was old enough in the 1930s or '40s to know the situation, someone who has actually been paying attention the whole time, and you will be told that people have never had it so good!

 

I'm not claiming that all is chocolate-coated wonder, and I'm not saying that many people don't have a right to feel like their life is shit. Those who are long-term unemployed, or drowning in debt, or in any other dire situation, are obviously going to feel that way, and they have every right to feel angry or disappointed in the way their country has let them down (where it is indeed the fault of the country and not their own fault). But most of the numbers show that -- in terms of longevity, healthcare, crime, employment, personal choice, and a few other measurements -- Westerners including Americans are doing very well for ourselves. Electing Trumps and Farages isn't going to make things better.

 

 

 

 

I don't dance the left-right shuffle. There are those who see that guns are dangerous and stupid, and those who believe they are a 'right'. A good American friend of mine who was vocally anti-Trump (and pro-Sanders), is fiercely pro-gun rights. Don't know why it has to be a left-right thing.

 

I also don't know why it's relevant. Rather than simply conceding that crime isn't actually increasing, and that people's "feelings" that crime is increasing do not change the reality, you bend the discussion to try and get me to argue about gun laws? I don't care about American gun laws.

 

If you all want to live in a hive of murder, be my guests -- just don't bring them over here. People in the UK don't need guns to settle disputes or protect ourselves and we're not electing a government on whom we fear we might have to use firearms to protect ourselves...

 

 

 

 

On another note: I notice -- unless I've missed it -- that nobody is taking it upon himself to defend or explain any of the Trump quotes I listed. I suppose because it would be easier to defend a castle made of cheese.

 

You can't trust the labour reports, they are fictitious. So, better to look at productivity, interest rates and debt (both public and private).

 

These give a far better picture. Remember that interest rates were rolled back in order to ' stimulate' the economy. The FED has stated that it is the jobs number that determines when they raise interest rates, but after 8 years the rate has risen only 0.25% nominally, due to inflation, this means interest rates have continued to decline.

 

Productivity has fallen. If all these people were finding good paying jobs then productivity should have been increasing, therefore wages and tax incomes should have increased, but they haven't. The debt continues to increase, both public and private.

 

We must also factor in the increase in population, when we are measuring employment, the numbers now, compared to the numbers 8 years ago should be greater, but they aren't. Population has increased but jobs haven't, therefore on that measure alone things are worse.

 

Next look up the stats for older workers compared with younger who have entered the work force. It is the over 55s that have been forced out of retirement, perhaps because their pensions are now insufficient due to the destruction of their savings by forced low interest rates, but perhaps also because their kids have had to move back home after college because they can't find jobs paying sufficient for them to go solo.

 

Finally look at the numbers of people first time home owners, this has fallen drastically as people don't have the cash, because they likely have no jobs, or jobs that don't pay well.

 

The idea that the US has weathered the recession is not true at all. Simply put, the Government has printed money like a banana republic. This has created bubbles in assets and tech industries through stock market floatations. Stocks, bonds and the dollar are in a serious bubble. All that money filters down to baby sitters, gardeners, interior designers, cafes, restaurants and all the other services that surround bubble economics. The FED has failed to increase interest rates because it can't. Any uptick will pop the bubbles and plunge the economy into a tailspin. They can only kick the can down the road until one day the market will call a halt.

[joeblast]

I don't know on what numbers you're basing this 40 years of job loss, maybe it's true -- I'd appreciate some kind of attempt to actually back it up! -- but by any measure employment rate has increased in the last few years. How does that not directly affect people?

 

And the response to this, the response to a decent recovery from the worst recession since 1945, is to let some lying businessman with a questionable mental state convince everyone that the country's doing worse than ever and that everyone's losing their jobs and that immigrants are flooding in with automatic weapons and that the only way forward is to elect him as leader so that he can "Make America Great Again", like it was... when? When was life better?

the banksters pulled the rug back then just like they did in 2008.

 

 so what makes you think that a 25 dollar an hour mfg job is equivalent to a min wage retail job or mowing lawns?  job quality has plummeted, so this whole transition to a quarter unemployed service economy guts the income of the lower earners.

 

lol decent recovery...you may be able to produce some statistical manglings that make it appear ok from 150,000 feet, but dig into the minutiae and its a train wreck driven by legal bankster counterfeiting.

Edited November 15, 2016 by joeblast

[Karl]

the banksters pulled the rug back then just like they did in 2008.

 

so what makes you think that a 25 dollar an hour mfg job is equivalent to a min wage retail job or mowing lawns? job quality has plummeted, so this whole transition to a quarter unemployed service economy guts the income of the lower earners.

 

lol decent recovery...you may be able to produce some statistical manglings that make it appear ok from 150,000 feet, but dig into the minutiae and its a train wreck driven by legal bankster counterfeiting.

I was naive enough to believe that people at least understood the situation was pretty dire. This is the problem of course, they actually have no understanding of why half the population voted for Trump.

[redcairo]

I've been busy working (and sleeping) so have missed a bunch but I will try to get to it over the week. :-)

 

This is back to the "why people had such different expectations of support for HRC vs. DJT" question.

 

[dust]

You can't trust the labour reports, they are fictitious. So, better to look at productivity, interest rates and debt (both public and private).

 

These give a far better picture. Remember that interest rates were rolled back in order to ' stimulate' the economy. The FED has stated that it is the jobs number that determines when they raise interest rates, but after 8 years the rate has risen only 0.25% nominally, due to inflation, this means interest rates have continued to decline.

 

Productivity has fallen. If all these people were finding good paying jobs then productivity should have been increasing, therefore wages and tax incomes should have increased, but they haven't. The debt continues to increase, both public and private.

 

Evidence?

 

I'm going to do that thing that everyone else does where unless I'm shown absolute proof, I'm not going to believe a word you say! Why do my own digging when someone else can do it for me?

(And in most cases, 'Even if you do show me proof, I might not believe you!')

 

(Makes life easier, is my guess. Don't have to question my beliefs unless someone else makes a genuine effort first.)

 

 

 

We must also factor in the increase in population, when we are measuring employment, the numbers now, compared to the numbers 8 years ago should be greater, but they aren't. Population has increased but jobs haven't, therefore on that measure alone things are worse.

 

I'll do a bit of my own work here, cos it's quite easy..

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Employment-to-population_ratio

 

Looking at the numbers from OECD nations, I'm seeing a general increase in percentage -- excepting USA and UK right after the Great Recession, though numbers are slowly climbing again, and either way we're doing better than many.

 

Also see the graph..

 

 

 

 

 

 

Next look up the stats for older workers compared with younger who have entered the work force. It is the over 55s that have been forced out of retirement, perhaps because their pensions are now insufficient due to the destruction of their savings by forced low interest rates, but perhaps also because their kids have had to move back home after college because they can't find jobs paying sufficient for them to go solo.

 

Finally look at the numbers of people first time home owners, this has fallen drastically as people don't have the cash, because they likely have no jobs, or jobs that don't pay well.

 

The idea that the US has weathered the recession is not true at all. Simply put, the Government has printed money like a banana republic. This has created bubbles in assets and tech industries through stock market floatations. Stocks, bonds and the dollar are in a serious bubble. All that money filters down to baby sitters, gardeners, interior designers, cafes, restaurants and all the other services that surround bubble economics. The FED has failed to increase interest rates because it can't. Any uptick will pop the bubbles and plunge the economy into a tailspin. They can only kick the can down the road until one day the market will call a halt.

 

No, you know what, I'm going to not do any of that. Like I said before, nobody else ever bothers actually looking up numbers when I ask, or taking note of the ones I link, so I'm going to start doing that too.

 

Why not show some evidence?

Edited November 16, 2016 by dust

[Karl]

I'm not here to teach you economics. If you want to know the kind of detail you are asking for, then I require payment. I will teach you if you want, but I'm not about to do so on a forum. I've shown you why the stats are skewed. You are saying to me that you don't believe me, so fine, that's your look out and you must make your own decisions in light of what you believe to be true. I'm saying that if the scenery appears to be going past the car window slowly and you have just been overtaken by an old guy on a bike, then you aren't likely doing 100mph no matter what the speedometer reads.

 

If you want to believe something else then you are free to do so, but I can't spend the time to take you through something that took me over 4 years of study in a couple of posts. It would be pointless to show you several hundred reports by the FED and it's committee, nor to point you to the stock market over valued public share issues against debt leverage ratios and profitability unless you can put it all together.

 

Start with asking why the FED has not increased interest rates by anything greater than 0.25 % in 8 years, if it's 'data dependent' and the most important headline number is the NFP number. Ask why the FED sits on an enormous balance sheet that it shows no desire to shrink. Ask why it is paying the banks interest in a zero bound environment.

 

These figures are correct, I'm not making them up, they are reported widely in the FOMC minutes. Why haven't the rates increased ??

Edited November 16, 2016 by Karl

[redcairo]

Have limited time, but I will say this about the debate: there's a pretty famous saying that statistics can be swung any way you want. But it's important to note that this is most easily done by the inclusion or exclusion or "grouping" or decisions about "comparing" of the stats in question. You can provide a number that indicates a different, even opposite impression of reality by how granular you choose to be.

 

For example, I'll choose a totally diff subject: let us say we wanted to know something like, how many people were convicted criminals who were illegals in the last ten years. Perhaps I look at some official number and realize that will look bad to the public and cause contention, and I want to argue this point.

 

Instead of providing the stats on illegals convicted of criminal behavior in the last ten years:

 

Option 1: Perhaps I will "blend" legal immigrants, who generally have better than average person stats, and illegals together. The number combined, much smaller than the larger population of course, may even average out to slightly lower than 'average person' crime. Now, I can argue that "in fact, immigrants have a lower crime rate than the regular population!" with impunity, and be accurate, but only because of how I 'grouped' the numbers. This is "disingenious," when arranging to tell the truth in order to provide an implication or statement that in the context of the conversation intent is actually a lie.

 

Option 2: Perhaps I will be very careful to use nation data rather than state data, which blurs the fact that people in Alaska probably do not have much of an illegal immigrant problem I'm guessing, but people in New Mexico might. If the debate is over passing state or county laws requiring citizen proof for example, this is a critical point. There is a reason that Arizona and Alabama created the harshest laws in the nation about it (many of which either failed utterly or were struck down) while states such as Wyoming haven't. Generally, states aren't motivated by "everyone being racist" or something, they are motivated because while some of the benefits are helpful (taxes from employing industries working the servitude-slave trade with illegals) many of the costs or problems are burdensome. For a hopefully non-inflammatory example, the schooling system when a very large portion of its students don't speak english has money and resource issues (and testing and other issues) arise. Anyway, one could look for school stats that again aren't granular enough in what they group, or fail to mention omissions that are critical, that changes everything.

 

Option 3: Perhaps I will really go off the pier of manipulation and give a variety of honest numbers dishonestly compared, such as using the total number of criminal illegals "known to be in the country at this time" vs. the total number of illegal immigrants in some huge time span like 50 years, and come up with a % based on that, for comparison. There's an endless list of options if one is willing to be creative without conscience.

 

RC