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@Frank said in US Politics:
@Nepia Damn you are your thorough research
Though I think the basic point that Obama created a shitload of part-time work and then touted it as adding new jobs when it was often just people working less still stands.No it really doesn't.
As Nepia says the report actually says -
"Under Obama, 1 million fewer workers, overall, are working than before the beginning of the Great Recession."
Not the "before the great recession" bit. That wasn't Obama. The actual message of that report is that "the US is only a million jobs short of where it was before George Bush oversaw the 2nd biggest recession in US history"
And all of the recovery in jobs came under Obama.
Its like saying FDR destroyed a stack of American jobs because employment in 1935 was below 1927
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@Frank said in US Politics:
@Nepia Damn you are your thorough research
Though I think the basic point that Obama created a shitload of part-time work and then touted it as adding new jobs when it was often just people working less still stands.You give me too much credit, not thorough research, I just assumed you were emulating your idol so it best if I actually read the report in question.
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Boeing caves.
http://www.aol.com/article/2016/12/21/after-meeting-with-president-elect-trump-boeing-ceo-says-air-fo/21632905/One day later...he's at it again - ha ha
Pitting the two defense companies against one another. Pretty standard businessman thinking.
http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/trump-asked-boeing-price-comparable-18-super-hornet/story?id=44357090He is probably aware of his increased chance of assassination, going against various entrenched interests.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4048776/Trump-confirms-ll-maintain-private-security-force-alongside-Secret-Service-preside.html -
@Frank said in US Politics:
Boeing caves.
http://www.aol.com/article/2016/12/21/after-meeting-with-president-elect-trump-boeing-ceo-says-air-fo/21632905/Only thats bullshit as well.
$4m was never the cost. So Boeing have agreed it will be under 4m, despite never saying it would be over 4m, with zero evidence to show it even hitting 4m.
The only concrete number put on it was the $1.65m the DOD earmarked for it. So even with a 100% cost overrun, Trump just handed Boeing 700k.
Its the same speel as the Carrier jobs where he saved less than half & gave the company subsidies they have actually come out & said they will use to automate jobs.
Its not even like this shit is in the fineprint, its about a paragraph 2 of alomst everything. But that doesn't fit in a tweet.
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Oops, yes. Its not 700k he's handed them. Its $700 million.
Other estimates out it at 2.8b for 2 planes -
http://fortune.com/2016/12/10/air-force-one-actual-cost/
"Despite Donald Trumpâs $4 billion estimate, the Air Force estimated a five-year total cost of $2.8 billion for Air Force One. This includes $351.2 million in Fiscal Year 2017, $625.6 million in Fiscal Year 2018, $741 million in Fiscal Year 2019, $573.7 million in Fiscal Year 2020 and $487.3 million in Fiscal Year 2021"
So by playing hardball he's, at worst, just given Boeing the greenlight to over-run by at most $1.2 billion over the agreed price.
Thank god a businessman is cutting these deals. And his supporters cannot do basic math.
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Heres a good sign of things to come in the US -
(short version Reps have the senate & congress in Nth Carolina, but just lost governership. They are now rapidly passing a stack of laws that reduce the incoming Governors power & ensuring the Reps in future run the electoral board in election years. Thats after a stack of other thinfs they tried to push through got struck down in the courts)
Shenanigans in North Carolina set a lousy example for Americaâs broader politics
WHEN, almost a month after the vote, Pat McCrory admitted defeat in North Carolinaâs governorâs contest, abandoning his graceless demand for a recount, it looked as if Republican efforts to sway the stateâs elections were finally exhausted. A voter-ID rule, and other restrictions passed by Republican legislators, had been scotched by a federal court that found they targeted black voters âwith almost surgical precisionâ; but, say voting-rights activists, limits on early voting opportunities still suppressed black turnout. Gerrymandering had already helped to assure Republican supermajorities in the state legislature. That means lawmakers will be able to override the veto of Roy Cooper, the incoming Democratic governorâa reason, some observers thought, that they might not be too concerned by his victory.
That overestimated their maturity. Instead they called a special session of the General Assembly, in which they summarily diluted the power of the governorship before Mr Cooper assumes it in January. Mr McCrory, the defeated incumbent, has begun to sign the measures into law in the dying days of his tenure.
The changes include a requirement for the governorâs cabinet picks to be approved by the state Senate (hitherto they have been made at his discretion), plus a cut in the overall number of officials he appoints by around two-thirds. The clout of the incoming superintendent of education (unsurprisingly, a Republican) would be augmented at the governorâs expense. Mr Cooper will lose control of the state election board, which will nominally become bipartisan, its chairmanship alternating between the partiesâbut serendipitously falling to Republicans in the years most elections are held. The court system has been rejigged. All this will hamper Mr Cooperâs efforts to pursue his agenda, while boosting statehouse Republicansâ ability to advance theirs without his consent.
In some young democracies, it is normal for politiciansâ views of the proper power of any given office to depend on their chances of occupying it. But, in Raleigh, this constitutional sabotage caused outrage. It has re-energised protesters who for years have objected to reactionary initiatives on voting rights, abortion, health care and other neuralgic policies. Dozens have been arrested (including one in a Santa costume). As Mr Cooper said, the sneak attack on his authority recalls the most scandalous of those moves: when, in another hastily scheduled session, lawmakers rushed through the so-called âbathroom billâ, which meddled with transgender restroom use and municipal anti-discrimination rules.
A backlash against that law cost the state investment, jobs and beloved sporting eventsâand helped Mr Cooper narrowly see off Mr McCrory, in a state Donald Trump won soundly. As The Economist went to press, legislators at last seemed set to repeal it. But they seem not to have been chastened by the fiasco, nor by the federal-court judgments against both their voting machinations and gerrymandering, which was recently ruled unconstitutional, too. When voters demur, evidently their strategy is retain power by fixing the system: a terrible harbinger for Americaâs broader, dismally partisan politics.
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My friend who has lived in China for a long time sent me this (not written by him). I thought it was a good read.
Western observers tend to have a naive view of China as this place that's brutal for the common man but things get done. It's only true up to a point, and then things become hilariously, tragically stupid.
Because Chinese crony capitalist interests were/are aligned with globalist interests, SJW values are no problem for Chinese business elites. Itâs social conservatives in the Chinese government that keep things like LGBT and divorce rape laws from gaining more traction in the East, while the massive economic growth in China from 1980 to 2010 destroyed a lot of social order with the help of a corrupt money-[/i]worshipping administration.
This is going to get long, so I'll put the tl;dr version here: Xi Jinping is essentially a Chinese Trump, except he's got the power to arrest people but not the power to state his aims in any way that deviates from communist dogma. In this sense, China and the US (plus Russia, though Putin's been at it alone for 20 years), as nations, are fighting the same struggle against destructive globalist interests.
below is an analysis to support the above
The Chinese have their own "drain the swamp" thing going on with Xi's anti-corruption campaign which also conveniently targets the lieutenants of the old Chinese Communist Party general secretary Jiang Zemin. This guy represents a key branch of the globalist, crony capitalist elite.
From 1992 to 2007 or so, Jiang was pretty solidly in charge, during which time he built a massive powerbase by essentially turning over the state industries, army, secret police, and courts over to his cronies. The massive corruption that resulted essentially wasted most of China's newfound economic wealth by funneling it into useless projects (ghost cities, anyone?) and then the pockets of officials and/or oligarchs. The situation is far worse than in the US or anywhere with a functioning legal system and something resembling free press.
Yes, the US is being exploited terribly. A lot of wealth ended up in Chinese hands. But to the benefit of whom? Not the Communist Party, which has had its morale and power structure massively undermined by Jiang's corruption, and not the majority of the Chinese masses. The cash is in the hands of Chinese oligarchs who have no national loyalties. They have escaped anywhere where it is convenient. Another part of the cash is in the hands of western oligarchs who are seeing China dry up and moving production to other places (and hopefully back to the US).
Xi Jinping came to power as a result of compromises between Jiang's cronies, prestigious retired cadres, and the scandal that offed Bo Xilai (a Politburo member in the Jiang camp). The MSM is willfully ignorant of the fact that Xi Jinping's anti-graft campaign is directed squarely against Jiang Zemin, and to a Western audience not interested in internal Chinese politics anyway it goes largely unnoticed.
I'm almost certain that western globalists cover for Jiang and other "big tigers" that have roused Xi's ire. First, they bash Xi personally for every negative thing that happens under his watch (when a lot of it is just CCP SOP). Second, there was little coverage or concern about Chinese human rights abuses, in particular against the Falun Gong spiritual group, which was ordered suppressed by Jiang personally, while media coverage now is filled to the brim with reports about disappeared rights lawyers and whatnot. Instead of evaluating Jiang on his human rights or economic legacy (both of which are terrible), the MSM puts out articles about how netizens are praising his quirky, toad-like personality as a mark of more open times.
Just as there are SJWs and Trump supporters in the US, there are nationalist and globalist forces at work in the CCP. Setting aside MSM coverage of Xi Jinping for a moment, looking at his administration in a learned manner shows several things: most obviously, Xi has offed dozens of powerful officials given their jobs by Jiang and thousands of regional functionaries who earned their livelihood by feasting on the people's money. After kicking bureaucratic ass, he recently gained the official patronage for "core leader" of the CCP by Party elders like Hu Jintao (who is widely regarded as a well-intentioned but powerless figurehead during his time in office a Chinese Obama, anyone?).
Xi has often bypassed the authority of other Politburo Standing Committee members, three of whom are powerful legacy officials tied to Jiang Zemin. One of them, Zhang Dejiang, probably used his position to engineer the situation in Hong Kong to embarrass Xi internationally.
Away from flashpoints like the South China Sea, Xi is wresting control of the state-owned industries and trying to streamline them. This is easier said than done, but it's definitely giving his corrupt enemies the finger. More recently, Xi and his ally Wang Qishan created a civil (i.e. not directly controlled by the Party) anti-corruption agency that in theory would be able (and in practice is likely to) âbombard the headquartersâ of the well-protected Jiang group holdouts on the Standing Committee in a way that is politically awkward if Xi relies to intra-Party organs.
In promoting his policies, pro-Xi Chinese media has alluded to the feats of Chinese emperors in cleaning up bureaucracy. Xi himself has stressed the influence that ancient heroes had on him, while quietly downplaying the importance of revolutionary literature.
Xi has even targeted an international consequence of Jiang Zemin's leadership: assistance to North Korea's nuclear program. In September the CCP arrested a woman official who was selling banned materials to Pyongyang; her case arose a week following a high-profile legislative purge made possible by the slow erosion of Jiang associates in the relevant province.
Under Xi Jinping, a few retired Party cadres have spoken out severely against the legacy of Jiang Zemin, even making direct reference to his human rights abuses (something that should have gotten them arrested). One guy even got an article published in a respected magazine with official connections that praises Russia for its democratic experiment. So long as they stick to the "Jiang bad, Xi is reforming the country" narrative, it seems
While China and America are certainly rivals, the war by Xi and Trump against globalist designs is asymmetrical.
Trump has put the guy who Xi knew personally while he was in Iowa in the 1980s into the position of Chinese ambassador. This means there's a good chance Xi wants stable communication and understanding of the General Secretary.
After all, Xi is trying to rule China and Trump is trying to run America. Why let globalists and SJWs get in the way.
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Lets not forget the real issue - what is happening to Mike Pence's body
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@NTA said in US Politics:
@Frank said in US Politics:
because YouTube deleted a bunch of them
Why was that?
Any number of reasons, one of which could be because YouTube are dishonest and biased as he'll.
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