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Author | Topic: The Trump Presidency | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Chiroptera Inactive Member |
Yesterday's column by Paul Krugman:
The Frauding of America’s Farmers I've never bought the notion that so many red state nihilists vote Republican and support Trump because the Democrats have ignored the needs of rural white America. US conservatives basically want a return to traditional hierarchy (including the traditional racial and gender roles) and the traditional heroic narrative that describes traditional America. The economic problems are more an excuse to allow the racism to be more explicit; the fact that they claim to believe even the most absurd of Republican claims strikes me as a desperate attempt to deny to themselves they're voting for racism and misogyny. Krugman doesn't quite say all of that, but his line of thinking is in the same direction.
So what were farmers thinking? My guess is that they let the will to believe override their judgment. Trump seemed like their kind of guy. He certainly seemed to share their dislike for urban elites who, they imagined, looked down on people like them. So they convinced themselves that he knew what he was doing, that he would win his trade war and that they would be among the victors sharing the spoils. Edited by Chiroptera, : Handwriting recognition keeps spelling krugman with lower case k. <- See?Hard as it is to fathom, Mr President, just because you’re the leader of the free world doesn’t entitle you to a free pass. Unfortunately, just a free press. -- Neil Cavuto |
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Chiroptera Inactive Member
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From the New York Times:
Justice Dept. Investigates California Emissions Pact That Embarrassed Trump The Trump Administration is opening an anti-trust investigation into the four auto makers that signed a deal with California to continue to follow that state's auto emissions standards, which are stricter than the Trump Administration's Climate Catastrophe Clusterfuck. The intent is obviously to pressure business to follow Trump's lead. It seems to be partly working:
The investigation appears to have already had an effect. Another auto company, Mercedes-Benz, had been poised to join the California agreement. But after the German government learned of the federal investigation into the other companies that had signed on, it warned Mercedes not to join, according to a person familiar with the matter who spoke anonymously about it because of the sensitivity of the negotiations. Paul Krugman's column yesterday has something to say about Trump's anti-business policies:
Trumpism Is Bad for Business His take is that Trump's inconsistency and unpredictability makes it hard for real business to plan.
The big complaint business has about Trump’s trade war isn’t just that tariffs raise costs and prices, while foreign retaliation is cutting off access to important markets. It is that businesses can’t make plans when policy zigzags in response to the president’s whims. They don’t want to invest in anything that relies on a global supply chain, because that supply chain might unravel with Trump’s next tweet. But they can’t invest on the assumption that Trump’s tariffs will be permanent, either; you never know when or whether he’ll declare victory and surrender. Environmental policy, it turns out, is similar. Business leaders aren’t do-gooders, but they are realists. Most of them understand that climate change is happening, that it’s dangerous, and that we’ll eventually have to transition to a low-emissions economy. They want to spend now to secure their place in that future economy; they know that investments that worsen climate change are bound to be long-run losers. But they’ll hold off on investing in our energy future as long as conspiracy theorists who consider global warming a gigantic hoax and/or vindictive politicians determined to erase Obama’s achievements keep rewriting the rules. The types of businesses that do well with Trump economic "policies" are thosepredatory companies with short term plans to mine vulenable communities: To be fair, however, some kinds of business do thrive under Trumpism namely, businesses that aren’t in it for the long run, operations whose strategy is to take the money and run. These are good times for mining companies that rush in to extract whatever they can, leaving a poisoned landscape behind; for real estate speculators sponsoring dubious ventures that take advantage of newly created tax loopholes; for for-profit colleges that leave their students with worthless degrees and crippling debt. In other words, under Trump it’s springtime for grifters.Hard as it is to fathom, Mr President, just because you’re the leader of the free world doesn’t entitle you to a free pass. Unfortunately, just a free press. -- Neil Cavuto |
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Chiroptera Inactive Member |
I'm wondering whether people aren't going to want to chance the 2O2O election and so will try to talk Trump into resigning so Pres. Pence can pardon him.
Hard as it is to fathom, Mr President, just because you’re the leader of the free world doesn’t entitle you to a free pass. Unfortunately, just a free press. -- Neil Cavuto
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Chiroptera Inactive Member
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The literal interpretation of specific words is not the only way to convey meaning, intent and message. Certainly that is one way, but it is not the only way. You do understand that, don't you ? It's rather odd the rightwing wasn't this concerned about literal meaning when, say, they were screaming about Ilhan Omar's anti-Semitism.Hard as it is to fathom, Mr President, just because you’re the leader of the free world doesn’t entitle you to a free pass. Unfortunately, just a free press. -- Neil Cavuto
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Chiroptera Inactive Member
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I already got tired of conservatives offering advice to Democrats, oh, twenty years ago.
For this generation of far-right nationalists, religion is not a question of ethical conduct; it is purely about identity and peoplehood. -- Jan-Werner Müller |
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Chiroptera Inactive Member |
How is this not settled law? Because some peoples' views on "executive privilege" *cough* Kavanaugh *cough* seem to change depending on who's the President.For this generation of far-right nationalists, religion is not a question of ethical conduct; it is purely about identity and peoplehood. -- Jan-Werner Müller
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Chiroptera Inactive Member
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I haven't read the actual report, but the portions that Percy quoted sound very much like the complaints those on the Left have been making about the secret FISA warrents since FISA was enacted.
Funny how the process becomes a problem when rich white guys in positions of power become the subjects.For this generation of far-right nationalists, religion is not a question of ethical conduct; it is purely about identity and peoplehood. -- Jan-Werner Müller
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Chiroptera Inactive Member |
An editor at The Christian Post has abruptly quit the publication after it aligned itself with Donald Trump as part of a spiraling evangelical Christian civil war. You see, this is what I was talking about. Use your position to stop evil. If that's not possible, resign your position so you don't promote evil. Don't wait until you're going to retire anyway when it doesn't matter any more and you've already enabled evil in the meantime.
...a spiraling evangelical Christian civil war. Is it really a civil war? 'Cause right now it looks to me more like a few dissidents being liquidated.
Trump called Christianity Today a far-left magazine, after its attack on him. Because that's now what "far-left" means now: stuff I don't like.For this generation of far-right nationalists, religion is not a question of ethical conduct; it is purely about identity and peoplehood. -- Jan-Werner Mller
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Chiroptera Inactive Member |
Well, Trump did run on a campaign to stop the endless wars in the Middle East. I guess if Iraq votes to force US troops to leave their country, that would be one more step in fullfilling one campaign promise.
For this generation of far-right nationalists, religion is not a question of ethical conduct; it is purely about identity and peoplehood. -- Jan-Werner Mller
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Chiroptera Inactive Member |
To be fair, he probably got confused when he couldn't find the part that says, "The President can do whatever he wants and everyone else can just suck it."
For this generation of far-right nationalists, religion is not a question of ethical conduct; it is purely about identity and peoplehood. -- Jan-Werner Mller
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Chiroptera Inactive Member |
Well, you have to remember how the contemporary US conservatives interpret the Constitution:
"We win every time, all the time. Those other people should just shut up and go away."The first principle is that you must not fool yourself and you are the easiest person to fool. -- Richard Feynman
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Chiroptera Inactive Member
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To quote Rebecca Schoenkopf on Wonkette
Sorry you didn't want to pack the Supreme Court, Joe Biden, but you're going to pack the motherfucking goddamn Supreme Court. But [Frederick] Douglass was not gone; he was merely dead. -- David W. Blight
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