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The Trump administration has crafted a draft bill — ordered by the president — that would declare America's abandonment of World Trade Organization rules, according to Axios. The bill essentially provides President Donald Trump — who has argued for a better position for the U.S. in big trade pacts — a license to raise U.S. tariffs at will, without congressional consent and largely outside of the international rules governed by the WTO. The bill, titled the "United States Fair and Reciprocal Tariff Act," would give Trump unilateral power to ignore the two most basic principles of the WTO and negotiate one-on-one with any country.
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'FART' Bill Indicates Trump's Intention to Dump WTO
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I don't want people to love me. It makes for obligations.
-- Jean Anouilh
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Azuma Hazuki on Tuesday July 03 2018, @06:30AM (75 children)
By this I mean: completely self-centered, utterly unpredictable, dangerous to ally and enemy alike, and with approximately zero input from outside reality. The dumb son of a bitch is trying to turn us into North Korea, and he doesn't even fucking KNOW he's trying to do that. In all my short life I never expected to see someone at the head of a country drive it *backwards* into Hell.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 5, Insightful) by bob_super on Tuesday July 03 2018, @06:44AM (19 children)
What amazes me the most is that the fiscally conservative R guys, who hounded Obama for years when he was going textbook-Keynes at the greatest recession, are letting him do this.
Just because they are afraid to lose.
So we get isolationism. Do you know what doesn't match very well with isolationism and trade wars ?
$21815 Billion dollars debt! [usdebtclock.org]
Utter Madness ... And the Dems are focused on crying about illegal immigrants.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by isostatic on Tuesday July 03 2018, @07:40AM (7 children)
Print a $21b note, job done.
National economies are not like household accounts.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by bob_super on Tuesday July 03 2018, @07:47AM
You're off by three zeros.
Printing a note valued at a year's worth of GDP is a great way to convince investors to put their money elsewhere, which doesn't quite jive with a trillion per year federal deficit.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 03 2018, @09:19AM (5 children)
We already print money like it's nothing. How do you think we got into this situation in the first place?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 03 2018, @04:21PM (4 children)
Please elaborate. Inflation has been sub-par until very recently.
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Tuesday July 03 2018, @08:26PM (3 children)
Inflation is at its highest rate since 2012. [inman.com]
(Score: 3, Insightful) by The Mighty Buzzard on Wednesday July 04 2018, @01:56AM (1 child)
Dude, inflation has been nonexistent to piddly since late Clinton, early Bush. Saying it's a record since 2012 is like saying one street puddle is deeper than another; you still can't fish in either of them.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by arslan on Wednesday July 04 2018, @07:08AM
Gotta love wordsmithy stats. Oblig. dilbert: https://morningstoryanddilbert.files.wordpress.com/2014/06/91764-strip.gif [wordpress.com]
(Score: 2) by isostatic on Wednesday July 04 2018, @07:15AM
10 year rolling US inflation over the last 40 years.
https://i.imgur.com/wIgfDoX.png [imgur.com]
(Score: 2) by deimtee on Tuesday July 03 2018, @10:11AM (5 children)
Wow, that's a lot of money. Who do you owe it to?
If you cough while drinking cheap red wine it really cleans out your sinuses.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 03 2018, @12:18PM (4 children)
The government mostly owes it to itself: http://www.businessinsider.com/who-we-owe-federal-debt-to-2013-10 [businessinsider.com]
So see, it doesn't even matter (somehow).
(Score: 4, Informative) by The Mighty Buzzard on Tuesday July 03 2018, @03:04PM (3 children)
To foreign investors, actually. The people who buy Treasury bonds.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 03 2018, @08:43PM (2 children)
Actually, the largest holders of federal government debts are state and local governments, last time I checked.
Next time, do your damn homework before posting. And who were the idiots who modded you up as informative? Your personal army of sock puppets?
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Wednesday July 04 2018, @02:04AM
Sorry, you're simply incorrect. Foreign entities hold a bit more than six times [thebalance.com] as much as all state and local holdings combined, or slightly less than half of all public debt.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Wednesday July 04 2018, @02:06AM
As for who modded me, I just checked and it was a couple of people I routinely get in heated arguments with.
Pro-tip: if you have database access, you don't need sock puppets and if you have intelligence you don't need database access.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 03 2018, @12:46PM
What amazes me is this
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1999_Seattle_WTO_protests [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 4, Insightful) by DeathMonkey on Tuesday July 03 2018, @02:54PM (3 children)
Utter Madness ... And the Dems are focused on crying about illegal immigrants.
We can be pissed off about more than one thing at a time...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 03 2018, @03:37PM (2 children)
Yeah, but it's always on the wrong things. There's still no introspection, still blaming others for their own failures, and still trying to play both sides of the aisle through deceit. Real liberals are dumb as dirt by sticking with these bastards, and really do show their own evil by compromise and appeasement on matters of civil rights and individual liberty.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 03 2018, @05:27PM (1 child)
Observe the D team establishment in horror that candidates like Ocasia-Cortez can win.
Then once you've done that, you will begin having nightmares, because you will wonder why the press would be hailing Ocasia-Cortez as a hero instead of burying her victory and giving her the Bernie Sanders treatment (the silent treatment)?
And how is Bernie Sanders still in the news? Isn't he an outsider? Some crazy I-VT guy? Some old white dude to whom we must never listen because identity politics? Or did they replace him with a pod person?
Can the D team establishment really change? A comparison was drawn in an article I saw on NYT while attempting to find the sauce for some hyperbolic statement wswswswswsws had made this morning between the Tea Party and the Democratic Socialists of America.
We saw how the Tea Party turned out. Instead of a libertarian movement (which was supported by small l libertarians before it was infested with religious crazies), we got an authoritarian nightmare fueled by cheez pizza conspiracy theories.
Why do I get the sense that instead of a socialist movement (which may be supported by small s socialists before, perhaps, being infested with religious crazies [wikipedia.org]... well perhaps I place my pet fear here because I haven't worked out the real answer...), we will get an authoritarian nightmare fueled by misogynerd conspiracy theories?
Shirley the lizard people don't intentionally foreshadow the plot in the 2020 season of the hit reality TV show, The Candidate!
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Tuesday July 03 2018, @09:01PM
The modern Democratic party, or at least its machinery and all parts of it over the age of 45 or so, are dead. A lost cause. Worse, a festering gangrenous wound that's taken up so much of the body it can't be amputated. They did this to themselves in the late 60s and early 70s, and like all huge creatures, it takes the head a while to say ouch when someone steps on the tail.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 03 2018, @08:34AM (11 children)
You say that like its a bad thing. America answerable to no one is the best possible outcome you dummy.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 03 2018, @09:59AM (8 children)
Isn't that one of the required steps before the fall of an empire? Anyone who thinks "America is so special that it can never happen here" doesn't realize that achieving that mindset is another required step in the fall of an empire.
America is turning into Cartman.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 03 2018, @10:44AM (7 children)
To be fair, that mindset is almost two hundred years old. [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 03 2018, @03:40PM (6 children)
To be really fair, that mindset is around 13 billion years old.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 03 2018, @03:52PM (5 children)
I'm pretty sure that 13 billion years ago there was no mind which could have had a mindset, be it this or another one.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 03 2018, @05:07PM (4 children)
There you go again, limiting your thinking to Earth.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 03 2018, @08:48PM (1 child)
Perhaps you could explain your teleological views to us. It could be quite entertaining.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 03 2018, @11:54PM
Well, you see, billions of years before the Earth was the 3rd rock from its Sun there were other intelligent life forms. In fact, they were so intelligent that they knew tariffs were a dumbass idea, and that thinking your empire can never fall was one of the required steps before your empire fell.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 03 2018, @11:53PM
No, he is further limiting his thinking to humans only, not understanding (or not wanting to) that everything we do is perfectly natural.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 04 2018, @11:30PM
I was gong to retort to GP, "anthropocentric" but really, terracentric (heliocentric?) is much more encompassing.
Still, "mind" isn't not solely a human purview, even on earth. The very stupidest humans, who are granted human rights, are often less intelligent, by quantitative measures, than smart instances of other apes, cephalopods, cetaceans, who are given no rights despite having "superior" minds on all metrics than the very stupidest humans.
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Tuesday July 03 2018, @09:18PM (1 child)
But that's just the thing, America is *not* answerable to nobody and it's impossible in any world with a global economy for this to be the case. Everything is connected to everything else.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Wednesday July 04 2018, @02:18AM
Truth. But while we do tend to swing our collective dick* around, we more often than not get the shit end of the stick from the WTO and other international bodies of that stripe. Trump's absolutely correct in his assertion that we need to drop being regulated by any entity that actively hates us but I'm not at all convinced he can negotiate us a better deal.
* Yes, you own a percentage of a metaphorical dick. Don't play with it too much or you'll go blind though.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by bradley13 on Tuesday July 03 2018, @08:36AM (31 children)
Listen, either you believe that global, tariff-free trade is a good thing. Or you believe that tariffs and subsidies make sense, and trade agreements are something to be handled individually. I can argue for either of those positions, and sometimes do.
The think is: the current situation is purest hypocrisy. Here I am, sitting in the middle of Europe. Free trade zone? Bzzzzt...wrong. Every country still has its subsidies and import barriers. These are especially visible in the agricultural sector, but they are also present in other places. One minor example: If you would like a tablet of Tadalafil in Switzerland, it will cost you $30. Cross the border into Germany, they allow generics for that medication, and the price is $5.
So everyone is "free trade" all day, until it comes to the home market. Suddently, it's "our milk industry needs protection", or "our poor pharma industry", or whatever else gets the politicians the money.
So is Trump being selfish? Or is he merely being honest?
Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 03 2018, @08:49AM
"So is Trump being selfish? Or is he merely being honest?"
They are not exclusive.
(Score: 4, Informative) by c0lo on Tuesday July 03 2018, @08:51AM (3 children)
Switzerland - bad example to illustrate your point. Not an EU member.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 4, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 03 2018, @10:07AM
But using Switzerland as an example is very Trumpian - use a false example that somehow bolsters the lies you are telling.
BTW, what's wrong with Switzerland? Their immigrants are nice people; wonderful people. Can't get much whiter, or less resistant, than those wonderful Swiss people.
(Score: 2) by bradley13 on Tuesday July 03 2018, @10:27AM (1 child)
Not in the EU, no, but we still have all the various trade agreements. The example I gave would be the same across the French-German border.
Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Tuesday July 03 2018, @10:37AM
You sure? At least in regards with the generic drugs, my googlefu indicate that is pedalling hard on them [globaldata.com]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 1) by shrewdsheep on Tuesday July 03 2018, @10:25AM (1 child)
Where are the import barriers? You can drive freely through Europe (Shengen) and sell your stuff where-ever you like without paying any tariffs. Subsidies in the agricultural sector are harmonized on the European level (and actually paid by Europe). There are certainly other national subsidies, but those must comply with European rules (my knowledge ends here as to what those would be exactly).
(Score: -1, Redundant) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 03 2018, @12:43PM
Not for much longer. [nytimes.com] A single country refusing to enforce it's external borders should have been enough for the rest of the EU to expel that country. Now we have Germany building internment camps, an area in which they've previously demonstrated considerable expertise. Merkel should be in prison.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 03 2018, @12:24PM (3 children)
He is being naive just like normal American citizens. Or shall I call him dumb just as Americans are called outside of USA. For decades and decades USA through heavy funding of UN (~50%) and by direct interference forced countries to open their markets so USA could sell its shit - countries where it became impossible to compete with Made in USA because they didn't have the technology because it was funded by DARPA and trivial things like VCR were apparently of important to national security, and couldn't say NO because they would suffer trade embargoes. If you wanted to survive you became part of NATO and let USA run your country as it wished. Mostly it worked out well as long as your country didn't held any strategic importance, such as Japan and Germany (remember Made in Japan of 80s?), otherwise you became Pakistan.
Remember USA was called global police? Were its rulers really so naive that they worried about well being of women and children in oil-rich countries? No, right? They sold it back at home as such.
Some can argue that 9/11 might have caused this, some may say Iraq war did it. I don't know, but Trump obviously doesn't understand that the whole system of "allies" and "open market" was devised by Americans themselves. The only problem is that Made in USA isn't a big thing anymore because the industry has moved into software and software is not that difficult to compete with (so far). Manufacturing has moved to China, and open market isn't bringing much benefits to it anymore. I dare to wonder what the world is going to look like...
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 03 2018, @02:27PM (2 children)
This fits well with my other post here about how there seems to be a group of people who are constantly confused by Trump. I'm pretty sure he does understand that, he just thinks the americans who devised it were incompetent/etc:
http://time.com/4386335/donald-trump-trade-speech-transcript/ [time.com]
(Score: 5, Insightful) by DeathMonkey on Tuesday July 03 2018, @03:51PM
For 99% of issues you can find quotes of Trump directly contradicting himself and taking both sides of the issue.
On this one issue, to be fair, that is not the case.
And on this one issue, we're not confused by Trump at all. We're confused by Republicans.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 04 2018, @04:33AM
Also called Dunning–Kruger effect [wikipedia.org] which is why he is naive/dumb.
You think North Korea is bad having a nuclear bomb? Think USA being north korea. You know it is going to happen - bringing manufacturing back involves doing everything the republican "economists" don't want to do. It worked out well for Mr. Kim, it will work out well for Trump too.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 03 2018, @12:50PM (1 child)
What's funny (in a hypocritical sense) is that the people who would most complain about dropping the wto are the same ones who've been fighting against the same organization for decades.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 03 2018, @07:25PM
Occupy/Anti-WTO types are a fringe within the Dem tent.
(Score: 2) by meustrus on Tuesday July 03 2018, @02:10PM (13 children)
When did something as academic as economics become a matter of "belief"? Shouldn't we try to do what we know works instead of picking an economic God like there's no way to know what actually happens in the afterlife?
If there isn't at least one reference or primary source, it's not +1 Informative. Maybe the underused +1 Interesting?
(Score: 2) by suburbanitemediocrity on Tuesday July 03 2018, @02:51PM (10 children)
In post modernism, everything is a belief and there are no "truths".
(Score: 3, Touché) by The Mighty Buzzard on Tuesday July 03 2018, @03:08PM (6 children)
Except that fundamental premise, of course.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Azuma Hazuki on Tuesday July 03 2018, @09:07PM (5 children)
Any time I hear someone say "postmodernism means there's no truth herpaderp hurr how did they come to that conclusion they're stealing the concept durk-a-derrhhhh" I immediately do a mount /dev/hazuki/face /mnt/desk.
Postmodernism, as distinguished from the modernism that came before it, simply implies a rejection of a teleological impulse behind human history. That is, ideas like Marxism's dialectical materialism, which every illiterate RWNJ pig jackoff on this site would peg as "postmodern" due to not knowing what the hell they're talking about. Postmodernism proper only means that there's no concrete end goal in sight, that we have to make it up as we go along.
It does *not* even imply, let alone explicitly call for, epistemological scepticism. Now that this has been made clear, I expect not to see that sort of laziness out of you or anyone else who could reasonably have been expected to read this again. Let's be less wrong, shall wel? And incidentally, I'm not a postmodernist; you can perhaps call me a neo-Modernist, if there is such a thing.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 4, Informative) by suburbanitemediocrity on Tuesday July 03 2018, @10:04PM (1 child)
https://www.allaboutphilosophy.org/postmodernism.htm [allaboutphilosophy.org]
Is there a better source that you would recommend as everything that I've read seems to agree with this including wikipedia:
https://www.britannica.com/topic/postmodernism-philosophy [britannica.com]
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Wednesday July 04 2018, @03:41AM
If they truly don't believe there is a such thing as absolute truth, they have rather neatly torpedoed their justification for believing this in the first place. Gotta have an axiom *somewhere* yanno...
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 4, Insightful) by AthanasiusKircher on Wednesday July 04 2018, @01:26AM
Sorry to disagree, but what you state is one possible implication of postmodernism, but certainly not the only one. I've known many academics in many field who would identify with the "postmodern" movement, and many of them believe strongly in relativism of various degrees. The most hardcore definitely believe constructs like "truth" and "logic" are merely products of one possible Western rationalist philosophy (particularly analytic philosophy), and "deconstructing" truth and even notions of single concepts of "fact" are very commonly accepted as part of the methodology for escaping the legacy of a narrow-minded perspective (often also characterized by such folks as Eurocentric, imperialist, and colonialist).
When I first encountered hardcore relativism in the academy a couple decades ago (and it was around for decades before that), I was worried about the implications, one of which was the deconstructing of truth that could ultimately be used by fascist political movements. Alas, the rhetoric and methodologies of the far left academics has now been appropriated by right-wing forces as we now have entered a "post-truth" era in broader culture... The vision of the late 60s deconstructionists has now finally come to fruition, just used for political purposes they never acknowledged could happen.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Wednesday July 04 2018, @02:34AM (1 child)
You're ruining a perfectly serviceable joke by taking it seriously.
Are you kidding? That my favorite activities are fishing and napping is widely known. In the past eighteen years or so I've turned down far more work than I've done. Laziness isn't just a trait with me, it's my life's ambition.
Okay, okay. I know you meant intellectual laziness. I don't really put any serious thought into postmodernists because I view them as absurd but mostly harmless as long as they don't go trying to proselytize it out to the general population. So I don't have much to say about them unless someone drops me an easy setup for a joke.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by suburbanitemediocrity on Wednesday July 04 2018, @09:01PM
Except they are proselytizing it out to the general population.
(Score: 2) by meustrus on Tuesday July 03 2018, @03:42PM (2 children)
No "truths" doesn't mean no "facts". We figured out how to address the bias of human belief by relying on facts in the 17th-18th centuries; it's called Rationalism. And while I'd be the first to complain about the lack of the Scientific Method in the squishier fields like economics, it's a hell of a lot less subjective than mere "belief".
If there isn't at least one reference or primary source, it's not +1 Informative. Maybe the underused +1 Interesting?
(Score: 2) by suburbanitemediocrity on Tuesday July 03 2018, @10:26PM (1 child)
All facts are subjective as there is no objective reality. My truth is different than your truth.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 03 2018, @11:56PM
And my truth is that your truth sucks monkey balls.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Azuma Hazuki on Tuesday July 03 2018, @09:19PM (1 child)
Economics was never that much more rigorous than religion to begin with, mostly because, like most or all organized religion, it's based on false assumptions. The idea of the rational actor and the possibility of limitless growth, exponential or otherwise, are the two chief culprits here. The assumption that all economics is a zero-sum game or worse is a plausible third. All of these are effectively idols.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 4, Informative) by PartTimeZombie on Tuesday July 03 2018, @11:59PM
That's more or less what I came here to say.
I was somewhat shocked when a friend's son applied for an economics job in our national Reserve Bank and was not even given an interview, because his master's degree in economics was from the "wrong" university.
It turns out they only accept economics grads from one particular university, because they have learnt the "correct" things.
From what I understand there are various high priests in economics and there have been schisms over the years, so he was excommunicated.
Don't worry though. He works as a builder, and is doing very well for himself.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by The Mighty Buzzard on Tuesday July 03 2018, @03:07PM
Not necessarily. It's quite possible to think that neither are a good answer. That I don't care to put the thought in to find a better one is another matter but saying one must be correct is like saying either the Democrats or Republicans must be correct.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Tuesday July 03 2018, @09:17PM (2 children)
Tariffs and such have their place, but like violence, they need to be wielded intelligently like a scalpel, not like a sledgehammer. And they're an admission, in my opinion, that globalization on its own, that naked laissez-faire capitalism, *does not work.* They're the affirmative action of economics, and like AA, they're a bolt-on solution to a problem of our own making.
I am holding out what little hope I have for technologies of abundance to take over and people to stop thinking in terms of zero-sum scarcity or worse. I think it'll happen, too. Eventually. But at the rate things are going, most of the human race will die off first, and the remaining civilization will likely look like something out of Warhammer 30,000 for a good while. Maybe even forever if we're unlucky.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Wednesday July 04 2018, @02:47AM (1 child)
I'm not a fan of them in general either and most certainly not a fan of them being poorly used. They're mostly an admission that when you have extreme economic differences between nations, it's going to cause problems that need addressing though. That and an admission that nationally subsidized industries are dirty pool and can tank an entire global economic sector if allowed free reign.
I really wish people would stop thinking in terms of zero-sum scarcity as well. Wealth is not remotely zero-sum. Every effort a human being takes that betters someone's life (including their own) has created wealth from nothing but said effort. Torvalds, for instance, has created insane amounts of wealth with money barely even entering into the equation.
As for post-scarcity, you and I won't live to see it. I doubt my nephews and nieces will either. Being able to dip into an unlimited well sounds really appealing but we haven't even figured out where the well is or what it would look like yet.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by acid andy on Friday July 06 2018, @01:12PM
I'm not so sure. If the customer gains more in terms of value than they pay for the good or service it seems to me that that is approaching charity rather than capitalism. Giving value away for free means you lose out on potential profits and end up less wealthy than you otherwise would have been.
If a cat has kittens, does a rat have rittens, a bat bittens and a mat mittens?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 03 2018, @08:43AM
Sorry, but i think he knows, take a look at the secret negotiations between Trump and Kim:
https://youtu.be/JeNuj2hLKH4?t=255 [youtu.be]
(Score: 5, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 03 2018, @10:33AM (1 child)
How is this unpredictable? Here he is saying he would do it before being elected:
http://fortune.com/2016/07/25/donald-trump-free-trade-wto/ [fortune.com]
Trump seems very predictable for to me, he actually trys to do what he says he wants to do. It seems more likely that some people find him unpredictable because they have a totally inaccurate mental model of him. Perhaps they get their info from "fake news", or are intolerant so they live in an echo chamber, etc.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by meustrus on Tuesday July 03 2018, @03:46PM
That's no accident. Trump is an expert at getting people to think he is fighting for their interests. It's about the only thing he's really good at, and it is the foundation of his negotiation skills. This naturally leads people to "have a totally inaccurate mental model of him", because Trump himself convinced those people to insert their own motivations into it.
Honestly, it reminds me of the Kims of North Korea. Always making promises, always getting their opponents to back down by making symbolic concessions, always going back to what they really want to do as soon as those opponents decide they're getting through.
If there isn't at least one reference or primary source, it's not +1 Informative. Maybe the underused +1 Interesting?
(Score: 3, Informative) by DannyB on Tuesday July 03 2018, @04:57PM (6 children)
Trump shakes hands with dictators.
Trump openly admires Putin.
Trump admired that China didn't have to deal with pesky nuisance elections.
Trump noted how in N. Korea people quietly and attentively paid attention when the dictator spoke.
Trump doesn't like due process. (1. immigrants, 2. when he said police should bang suspect's head against the car, don't be too nice)
Every performance optimization is a grate wait lifted from my shoulders.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Tuesday July 03 2018, @05:08PM (5 children)
You ever heard the phrase "talking shit"? Trump does that. A lot. Include that fact in your assessment of his actions in the future and you'll have a much more accurate understanding of who he really is.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 03 2018, @05:20PM
There's talking shit, and there's believing the shit you talk.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by DeathMonkey on Tuesday July 03 2018, @05:46PM (3 children)
You ever heard the phrase "talking shit"? Trump does that.
So on the one hand we're not supposed to be surprised that he's going this route because he said he would.
But on the other hand, we shouldn't believe anything he says because he's always talking shit.
There's that award-winning cognitive dissonance we've come to know and love!
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 03 2018, @06:41PM (1 child)
All you need to do is wrap your head around this:
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/17/us/politics/trump-blacks-african-americans-girlfriend-charlottesville.html [nytimes.com]
https://www.cnn.com/2018/01/11/politics/trump-bannon-wsj/ [cnn.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 04 2018, @01:41AM
Permanent is not what death is in a science fiction movie franchise.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by The Mighty Buzzard on Wednesday July 04 2018, @02:50AM
Man, if you can't understand people well enough to tell when someone's talking out their ass, that's on you. I mean it's something that most folks have figured out by the time they're a teenager but I won't shit on you for having a learning disability.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by HiThere on Tuesday July 03 2018, @06:16PM
Why do you assume he doesn't understand that this will damage the country? So many of his actions seem designed to do just that, that my default assumption has become that any action he's in favor of is intended to either financially benefit him personally, or to damage the country. Often he seems to prefer to do both at once.
To me this speaks more of a foreign agent than of someone who is stupid.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Tuesday July 03 2018, @06:35AM (14 children)
-e.
All the call makers publicly announced that the steel tariffs will raise the price of each new car by several thousand dollars
But Trump a couple days publicly stated that his opponents "better be careful"
I sometimes contemplate returning to Canada by petitioning for political asylum. It happens that my attorney in Halifax funds his pro bono human rights work by taking on such paid clients as me in 2003.
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 2, Touché) by c0lo on Tuesday July 03 2018, @07:07AM (2 children)
(Allow me to retort:)
"You say it like it's a bad thing"
(ＧＲＩＮ)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 0, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 03 2018, @07:28AM (1 child)
"Don't be cute!" Donald Johnson Trump, to Hilary Davidson Motorcycle Co.
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 03 2018, @02:03PM
Hilary Davidson Motorcycle Co.
Hilary Davidson Motorcycle Co.? Really? You people really do find a way to lower the bar, and every day prove yourselves even stupider than our lowest expectations before (and these days, they're pretty low). That level of dumb really takes talent. I guess it does show you're good at one thing, though.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 03 2018, @07:33AM
You mean, Trump is fighting global warming? ;-)
(Score: 5, Informative) by unauthorized on Tuesday July 03 2018, @12:42PM (9 children)
Oh get off your moral high horse. You can just immigrate to Canada very easily, the USA will not stop you from leaving. You are not being politically persecuted and your vain virtue signaling is spitting in the face of anyone who faces the threat of unjust detainment, torture or outright execution by a state power.
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 03 2018, @04:48PM
Oh get off your moral high horse. You can just immigrate to Canada very easily, the USA will not stop you from leaving.
No, but Canada probably won't let him/her in. They've made it much harder for Americans to immigrate, and given how many of us have turned out to be bottom-feeding scum (just look at our president), who can blame them?
(Score: 4, Insightful) by DeathMonkey on Tuesday July 03 2018, @05:49PM (1 child)
Oh get off your moral high horse.
Conservatives don't like the use of hyperbole unless it's protected by the magic (R).
BTW, you guys promised me I'd be able to marry my dog once we let the gays do it. I'm still waiting...
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 03 2018, @08:35PM
You've been misinformed. It you wait for the gays to do it, you will have to wait for your dog to divorce them again before you can marry it.
(Score: 2) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Wednesday July 04 2018, @01:06PM (4 children)
By that are you referring to Officer Angel who forced me to empty my pockets, take off my shoes then enter a bare concrete holding cell despite my quite reasonable and quite truthful assertion that I had a right to a toilet?
Or are you referring to the two members of Oregon Health & Sciences University's finest who burst in the very instant I had no choice but to urinate on the floor?
The ones who hurled me with great force against the concrete wall?
Then the two of them turned me diagonally upside down then dropped me on the concrete floor?
When I regained consciousness three days later, while I could visualize the correct spelling of my own name when I thought about it, I was completely incapable of spelling it right when I tried to write it on paper with a pencil.
Is that the unlawful detainment you are referring to?
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 2) by unauthorized on Wednesday July 04 2018, @03:11PM (3 children)
Yeah, none of that actually happened, didn't it?
(Score: 2) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Wednesday July 04 2018, @09:51PM (2 children)
The last time I went to the Emergency Room it was because I was unable to spell any of the words in a simple email correctly.
I know damn well how to spell, thank you.
Despite my knowing how to spell, say, "Soylent" correctly, I repeatedly and insistently typed "Soiluntt", caught my mistake, backspaced all the way over it then just as insistently typed "Soiluntt" again and again, over and over.
Had I filed a Federal Civil Rights Lawsuit, I would have taken OHSU to the cleaners. It's not just that two of OHSU's finest damn near lobotomized me but that that hospital was build _decades_ ago. Doubtlessly that holding cell and some others just like it have been there that whole time.
... during which time quite likely thousands of Portland's mentally ill folk were trapped inside, with no toilet...
... and a while back I found an article written by a Law School student who was traumatized by an Elementary School teacher who refused to permit him to leave class so as to use the toilet in the Boy's Room.
That fine upstanding young legal scholar recited Chapter And Verse from dozens of Supreme Court Opinions that quite resoundingly affirmed the right of All Us Americans To Use The Loo...
... and to do so in PRIVATE!
It happens that the entire volume of my commode-free holding cell was under continuous video surveillance.
In the end I didn't want to give OHSU any grief because their work saves the lives of countless desperately sick people.
So I rang up their General Counsel then pointed out that my Civil Rights Complaint could, at their option:
... or...
It's not just I recently found out the hard way that my brain damage is permanent...
... but that I never received word from anyone at OHSU that they had taken me up on my quite-generous settlement offer by installing those toilets.
The very first they'll here from me is when I hire the very nastiest, the very drug-addictedliest, the very concealed-carry permitliest process server that my recent Completion Paycheck can buy...
... to serve my Federal Civil Rights Complaint on OHSU's President.
It happens that very first thing after I regained consciousness in one of OHSU's locked psychiatric wards - to be clear, _not_ a neurology ward - I repeatedly explained to the nurses at the desk their responsibility under the laws regarding Spoliation Of Evidence...
... that they impound all the security camera recordings of that entire emergency room, not just my lavatory-free holding cell...
... for use as evidence against them in my soon-to-be-filed lawsuit.
Surely you must agree, they took my quite reasonable as well as quite-enforceable not request but requirement to be the ramblings of a madman?
Spoliation Of Evidence is the Civil Procedure's equivalent to the Criminal Felony of Destruction Of Evidence. It's not exactly unlawful, but if I give Hizzonnor good reason to believe that OHSU spoliated those vidz...
... then the Presiding Judge will issue...
... a...
... Spoliation Instruction...
... to the jury...
... in which the judge directs the attorney to rule as if I was telling the Gospel Truth about what that Spoliated Evidence would have demonstrated to the jury...
... as well as to regard that assumption of that spoliated evidence's content as HEAVILY prejudicial against the respondent.
I'm not going to sue for damages, just for lost wages. Five years of homelessness, plus sixteen years of brain-damaged unemployment, at the last regular salary I earned just before I got beaten senseless by those two bright-shiny-badge-wearing-and-service-pistol-packing-goons...:
$130,000.00 * 21 = $2,730,000.00.
The one tiny morsel of comfort that I am able to take away from all that I've endured is that I'll finally be able to pay Mom back for all the money she's lent me over the years...
... and to the extent I can speak intelligibly to customs officials, my decades-long plans to travel the world during my alleged Golden Years might actually come to fruition.
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 05 2018, @07:24AM (1 child)
MDC your story makes me cringe and empathize. I hope like hell (real useful huh) that you take them for all you've lost and all the potential you couldn't bring to fruition, and that every other institution with similar despicable practices takes note, and adjusts their behaviour.
I'm so sorry for your experience. You have my deepest empathy.
-Anonymous Coward (i of N)
(Score: 2) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Thursday July 05 2018, @10:18AM
It comes as a great comfort to me just now
I'm having a hard time just now as I ran clean out of Happy Pills a couple days ago. This because I was busted flat and so unable to cover so much as the copay
Just a few days off my mess won't make me crazy but it has made me feel physically sick. It's hard to describe but among other symptoms I get the same kind of chills as when one is feverish from the flu
Happily day before yesterday I finally got paid More Money Than G-d for completing the macOS USB Function Driver that I for Fresco Logic. For a solid thirty hours I not so much with great glee but with the narrowly driven focused of an obssesed madman I blew a smoking radioactive crater into that check as I let loose the pent-up floodgates of a meticulously prepared spreadsheet in which I budgeted even the very smallest of planned purchases such as a pack of band-aids from the drugstore
But fucki me sideways with a taxidermied is constructor I failed to watch the clock and so missed The last bus from North Portland into Vancouver
Happily I'm flushed with cash so I commenced my graveyard shift at Sharis Restaurant And Pies by stuffing myself silly with a T-Bone steak and eggs flushed down with lots of volcano hot lignite black coffee
I was doing real well but the abrupt withdrawal of my meds is really getting me down
While many have been the days I dreamt of vengeance there's no court of law so powerful as to bring back the serenity and dignity of three or four years of panic stricken madmen who were trapped in OHSU's medieval oubliettes not only with no toilets but as well with no telephones with which they could have called for help as well as for comfort, nor any nurse call buttons by which they might have been spared agony as well as their fear for their own very lives had they suddenly taken physically ill.
My work to fight the stigma against us madmen is performed with a stoic patience and good humor but it gets me down sometimes. I mean it really does: that the architect who designed those bare concrete cells could have so thoughtlessly disregard our common humanity and so failed to design in so much as those primitive amenities as provided for those whose crimes are so great as well as so foul that they are condemned to pay their considerable debts to society by expiring their brief Ticks in the chambers the chairs or the injectable lethals.
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 05 2018, @07:12AM
> You can just immigrate to Canada very easily, the USA will not stop you from leaving.
LOL! The USA isn't stopping anyone from becoming citizens of other countries. But the Canadian permanent resident process, and the Canadian citizenship process, sure do turn down USA citizens just like they turn down Pakistanis. Oh, you're highly educated, financially well off, and have family in Canada? Well then again it doesn't matter where you're from, you'll have a relatively easy time becoming a PR and then a citizen.
But to say "oh just leave for Canada, it's easy" is a lie. It's not easy to get a permanent residence in Canada at all, or there would be far far more Canadians and far far fewer global refugees. Even a Canadian work permit is a royal pain outside of a youth work-travel program and some industries with allowances.
Your dismissal, which I've heard before, really bothers me. "Just leave for somewhere better if here is shitty" presupposes there's someplace both better and willing to take people. Not true, in general.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by BsAtHome on Tuesday July 03 2018, @09:41AM (33 children)
So, the logical next steps:
- Get out of the UN (and kick them out of the country)
- More power to the president
- Make dissent a criminal offense
- Change the constitution to remain president for life
- Invade Canada and Mexico - prepare to anex the rest of the south american continent
(Score: 3, Touché) by realDonaldTrump on Tuesday July 03 2018, @10:03AM (4 children)
Thank you for your support! So many countries have a President for life. China, Russia, many more. And it's terrific for them. Let's make our Constitution great again! #RepealThe22nd [twitter.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 03 2018, @04:10PM (2 children)
why do you feel the need to lie?
Russia does not have president for life. Putin has been abusing the loopholes, yes, but there is no "president for life" law.
When Putin reached the max term, he let his pal win the next elections, and after that run for president again.
In other words, yes, in Russia there is no law saying that you can be president only x years, but it says that you can only be president x years in a row.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 03 2018, @04:29PM
I think they changed the law, when Putler's terms maxed out.
(Score: 2) by realDonaldTrump on Thursday July 05 2018, @02:25AM
Did I say law? I didn't say law. But look how long President Putin has been President. And he switched with Medvedev, with Dmitry Medvedev. But I think Vladimir Putin was in charge the whole time. They called him Prime Minister Putin, he was very strong. And he's still very strong. And you don't think he's a President for life, OK, let me know when he resigns. Or loses an election. And I'll eat a #MAGA [twitter.com] hat!!!!
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 03 2018, @04:40PM
To be fair, you could make your Constitution great again by following the damned thing for once.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 03 2018, @10:40AM (1 child)
- Rename country to People's Democratic United Republic of America
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 03 2018, @04:20PM
I prefer this as a new name for Our Great Union (tm):
Republic of Excited Trumpian Americans Restoring Dignity to the States, or RETARDS for short.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 03 2018, @02:26PM (6 children)
We would never anex Mexico. That would make them de facto US citizens, and Trump wants nothing more than to deport anyone and everyone who might be, be related to, or even know, a person with less-than lily white complexion.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 03 2018, @02:55PM (1 child)
TDS is strong in this one.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 03 2018, @05:09PM
We want to build a wall to keep them out, and then annex them? That makes as much sense as banning Muslims who don't have oil, but saying the ones who do have oil are fine people.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Tuesday July 03 2018, @03:15PM (2 children)
Personally, I would. It would take a giant shit on the US economy but it would remove the massive income disparity pressure from our southern border, which would leave us better off in the long term. It would also lower the value of the dollar which would make domestic production much more viable.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Tuesday July 03 2018, @05:42PM (1 child)
The Mexico-Guatemala border is only 541 miles, and none of it requires Eminent-Domain of US citizens.
There would be a lot easier to build The Wall, and make Mexico pay for it.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Wednesday July 04 2018, @02:54AM
Yup, plus we'd get some damned nice beaches, lots of tequila, and many a senorita. You know what, I convinced myself. Screw the downsides.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 03 2018, @05:24PM
> We would never anex Mexico.
It's not like it ever happened before [wikipedia.org], eh?
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Tuesday July 03 2018, @03:12PM (18 children)
The second and beyond steps do not follow logically from the first. Protectionism/Isolationism and totalitarianism have no mandatory relationship whatsoever. Thus your entire premise is fundamentally flawed.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by BsAtHome on Tuesday July 03 2018, @03:36PM (3 children)
Well, as hyperbole goes, it is flawed, of course. However, the state of affairs seems to indicate that mandatory relationships have nothing to do with what is actually happening. Sometimes fantasy simply cannot predict the idiocy of real life.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Tuesday July 03 2018, @04:00PM (2 children)
All true but assuming that just because a guy's got policies you disagree with and a bit of an authoritarian bent that he's going to go full on Stalin is an astoundingly enormous stretch.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Tuesday July 03 2018, @04:36PM (1 child)
Could you imagine NSA spying on Americans 20 years ago?
"astoundingly enormous stretch" != impossible.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 3, Touché) by The Mighty Buzzard on Tuesday July 03 2018, @05:10PM
Absolutely. My brother worked for MCI up in Tulsa and told me all about the NSA having an office in their building that all the circuits ran through and how even talking about it was a firing offense.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Tuesday July 03 2018, @04:32PM (13 children)
When the things go to shit (and isolationism tends to lead there), you need a strong hand to continue down this path.
Since isolationism imply "us vs them", the usual way to totalitarianism goes through defining an external enemy and practising the "daily hate" routine. Isolationism and totalitarianism form a symbiotic pair.
A dose of protectionism is actually good for developing countries - those fathers of yours practised it quite... umm... joyfully** [wikipedia.org] in their time.
---
**I'm sure they could use "gayly", but nowadays... in the "founding fathers" context... mmm... better not
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2, Disagree) by The Mighty Buzzard on Tuesday July 03 2018, @05:12PM (11 children)
You're seeing a relation where there isn't one. Pick a totalitarian regime at random and you're very likely not going to see isolationism.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 4, Informative) by c0lo on Tuesday July 03 2018, @05:20PM (10 children)
North Korea
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 03 2018, @06:04PM (2 children)
Every damn time he makes such statements there is always an immediate example of how he's wrong.
I dream of a day when his brain functions normally and I pray it is caused by a infectious virus with no bad health outcomes. That way he can spread it and we might be able to get this country into a semblance of working order.
(Score: 4, Informative) by c0lo on Tuesday July 03 2018, @06:09PM
Alas, it will never happen.
Not because he's a buzzard, no, those do have normally functioning brains. But because, like his country, he holds the delusion he's mighty.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Wednesday July 04 2018, @02:57AM
The trick is you gotta read what I actually say instead of what you want me to have said.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Tuesday July 03 2018, @06:24PM
Yes, but also Thailand.
They aren't necessarily connected, they are only frequently connected. Also isolationism is only directed against those either areas not controlled or those controlled groups needed as scapegoats. When you expand the borders, you've got new folks to be isolationist against.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Wednesday July 04 2018, @02:56AM (5 children)
I said pick one at random not cherry pick one. Please don't link the xkcd.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Wednesday July 04 2018, @03:21AM (4 children)
No, mate, who do you think I am?
It just happened I was just that lucky**: I did pick at random and my first pick was the relevant one.
(large grin)
---
** Not only I was lucky in this particular instance but, in general, I'm resistant to suggestions imposing restrictions that don't make sense.
Be if only to make the life harder to those who want to define a particular frame of reference (I think the right-wing usians call frame a "narrative", but I might be wrong).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Wednesday July 04 2018, @03:53AM (3 children)
That restriction absolutely makes sense though. It's a way to keep from having to look at every totalitarian regime around now and throughout history. I dunno about you but I have better things to do than spend years studying for an Internet argument. In any case, the point was that most totalitarian regimes aren't isolationist today and haven't even historically been.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Wednesday July 04 2018, @04:00AM (2 children)
Did I say that?
I thought that I said "totalitarianism and isolationism regimes can happen, in which case the two traits go quite well hand in hand".
At least, that's what I wanted to say.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Wednesday July 04 2018, @04:29AM (1 child)
Ahh, I gotcha now. Like porn and chicken. Not related but complimentary nonetheless.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Wednesday July 04 2018, @04:44AM
A bit more than just complementary, they sorta enhance each other: isolationism makes easier to define an "enemy", totalitarianism make easier to "fight the enemy following the glorious leader" and offers legitimacy to the leader and the "righteous fight" enhances the isolationism.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 05 2018, @07:14AM
That's gaily, not gayly. Tsk!