US Politics Mega-thread - Page 8532

On August 23 2017 23:29 JimmyJRaynor wrote:
Trump is helping his negotiation team quite a bit with his "we're pulling out of NAFTA" talk. kudos to "the donald" on that.I really hope NAFTA goes away and there is just a Canada//USA Free Trade deal a la Reagan/Mulroney era deal. i don't want "free trade" with mexico. i don't trust mexico to enforce proper workplace standards.

On August 24 2017 00:34 zlefin wrote:

I don't see how that helps the negotiations at all; adn trade deals usually do more to enforce workplace standards than not having trade deals. You don't seem like you're that familiar iwth the actual effects of trade deals, waht they include, how they work, and what the net benefits/costs are.

On August 24 2017 00:37 JimmyJRaynor wrote:

i'm happy with the 1984 US/Canada FT deal. The 1993 NAFTA deal was one of Chretien's few failures.

On August 24 2017 00:40 zlefin wrote:

um, ok. your opinion is noted.
but you being happy with it isn't really much of an indication of anything as to its actual quality or cost/benefits; or the benefits of trade deals and free trade in general.

On August 24 2017 00:43 JimmyJRaynor wrote:

both trade deals had zero impact on Ontario's willingness to dedicate the necessary boots on the ground to enforce its workplace standards. Ontario's underground economy is blossoming relative to the early 80s..... its a zero regulation, no rules underground economy that is a libertarian's wet dream.

On August 24 2017 00:27 KwarK wrote:

.....
So the middle is always in the middle. That's how it works. It's in the name. Then there is left of centre, and right of centre. These are two equally sized blocs, because, as the name suggests, the centre is in the middle.

What you have just done is attempted to define the right as "Republicans" and then, by showing that there are not many Republicans, attempted to prove that there are far more people left of the centre than there are right of the centre.

That's not just an unhappy logical implication, that's an impossible logical implication. If there is more on one side of the where you think the middle is than there is on the other side, you're wrong about where the middle is.

I'm going to go ahead and propose a rival explanation for you. The political right is bigger than the Republican party. It includes people who don't agree with you on everything. You're just further right than they are and therefore from your perspective they look left to you. This would be fine if we used right and left as individual subjective terms. But we don't. So it's not fine. So you need to stop.

On August 24 2017 00:52 KwarK wrote:
I mean all I'm really getting from your rebuttal is "fake news", "liberal colleges", and "out of touch New York elites".

On August 24 2017 00:37 JimmyJRaynor wrote:

Trump is threatening to pull out as a negotiation tactic. he knows Canada needs the US more than the other way around. Great move by Trump.

i'm happy with the 1984 US/Canada FT deal. The 1993 NAFTA deal was one of Chretien's few failures. Primary "blame" rests with Mulroney on deal #2, however, Chretien promised to re-open negotiations and never did. For full context, Mulroney did a nice job with the 1984 US/Canada deal though. in between all this Kim Campbell was all kinds of useless.

On August 24 2017 00:48 Danglars wrote:

So you need to open yourself up to the rival explanation. The Republican Party represents millions of Americans. It holds incredible majorities of governorships and state houses. It trades back control of the House and Senate (recently setting a record for House seats held) and the presidency every few years. But incredible majorities of journalistic talent were fostered in left wing journalism schools and joined their bubbles of opinion in New York and DC. They were then humiliated by missing the Trump phenomenon and blamed everyone but themselves.

Your argument is that since there's always a center, there can never be a bias, therefore there isn't a substantial bias. Sorry, pal. They've set their ideological tent up and now you can watch the fake news roll off the presses (routinely denied here by this forums leftists). It has given Trump wide latitude to lie because they surrendered their trust with too visible of an ideological slant. It's bad for everybody societally-speaking, but simultaneously good for ratings because you can tune in to Trump bashing or media bashing at your leisure.

The president's bad, the media establishment is bad, both parties are insular and poor representatives, the country is more divided than ever, and this seems unlikely to change in the intermediate term. Nobody wins Kwark, but keep pretending your preferred villains are truly villainous and your preferred outlets are fine.

On August 24 2017 00:48 Danglars wrote:

So you need to open yourself up to the rival explanation. The Republican Party represents millions of Americans. It holds incredible majorities of governorships and state houses. It trades back control of the House and Senate (recently setting a record for House seats held) and the presidency every few years. But incredible majorities of journalistic talent were fostered in left wing journalism schools and joined their bubbles of opinion in New York and DC. They were then humiliated by missing the Trump phenomenon and blamed everyone but themselves.

Your argument is that since there's always a center, there can never be a bias, therefore there isn't a substantial bias. Sorry, pal. They've set their ideological tent up and now you can watch the fake news roll off the presses (routinely denied here by this forums leftists). It has given Trump wide latitude to lie because they surrendered their trust with too visible of an ideological slant. It's bad for everybody societally-speaking, but simultaneously good for ratings because you can tune in to Trump bashing or media bashing at your leisure.

The president's bad, the media establishment is bad, both parties are insular and poor representatives, the country is more divided than ever, and this seems unlikely to change in the intermediate term. Nobody wins Kwark, but keep pretending your preferred villains are truly villainous and your preferred outlets are fine.

On August 24 2017 01:02 IgnE wrote:


have you considered the rival rival explanation? that republican principles and policies are largely so intellectually and morally bankrupt that educated, thoughtful people would be too embarrassed to ever identify as such even if they aso want to pay lower taxes?

my anecdotal evidence suggests that highly educated conservatives are more likely to identify as independent or even, god forbid, libertarian, than to identify as a republican. its like admitting to being a brain dead simpleton.

On August 24 2017 01:11 KwarK wrote:
Incidentally on the liberal colleges front, had my first lecture with a new professor last night and in his introduction to the course he said he was "skipping" Title IX because he didn't do political correctness. Title IX protects people from discrimination and harassment on the grounds of their sex. Apparently that was too politically correct for him. In the time he saved by skipping Title IX he was able to tell us all about Atlas Shrugged and how it changed his life.

I don't think there is very much crossover between people who believe colleges are a massive liberal indoctrination camp and people who have been to a college.