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Now that we have a new thread, in order to ensure that this thread continues to meet TL standards and follows the proper guidelines, we will be enforcing the rules in the OP more strictly. Be sure to give them a complete and thorough read before posting! NOTE: When providing a source, please provide a very brief summary on what it's about and what purpose it adds to the discussion. The supporting statement should clearly explain why the subject is relevant and needs to be discussed. Please follow this rule especially for tweets.
Your supporting statement should always come BEFORE you provide the source.If you have any questions, comments, concern, or feedback regarding the USPMT, then please use this thread: http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/website-feedback/510156-us-politics-thread |
On March 28 2018 09:26 zlefin wrote:Show nested quote +On March 28 2018 09:07 A3th3r wrote:On March 28 2018 08:23 IyMoon wrote:On March 28 2018 08:20 Mohdoo wrote:Behind an annoying pay wall. To bypass, google the title of the article. I've done so and pasted it below:
SEOUL—The U.S. and South Korea agreed to amend their free-trade deal to address American concerns about a growing deficit and resolve friction over tariffs on South Korean steel, Seoul’s trade ministry said in a statement Monday.
The changes to the deal, which have been blamed by President Donald Trump for expanding the U.S. trade deficit, focus on rebalancing trade in the auto sector—a major source of South Korea’s trade surplus with the U.S., the ministry statement said.
Speaking on “Fox News Sunday,” Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said the U.S. expected to sign the agreement with South Korea soon.
“South Korea will reduce the amount of steel that they send into the United States as part of this. So I think this is an absolute win-win,” Mr. Mnuchin said.
Under the new terms, South Korea would double the import quota for American-made cars that meet U.S. safety rules—but not Korean ones—to 50,000 from 25,000 per U.S. car maker each year, the statement said.
And South Korea will now allow the U.S. to keep its 25% tariffs on pickup trucks in place for 20 more years. The truck tariffs had been set to expire in 2021.
In return, the U.S. agreed to give South Korea a permanent exemption from 25% import tariffs on steel. South Korea had been temporarily excluded from the metals tariffs.
The U.S., however, has set a quota to reduce South Korean steel imports. The quota has been set at 2.68 million tons a year, or 70% of South Korea’s annual average steel exports to the U.S., the statement said.
South Korea is the largest importer of Chinese steel and the third largest steel supplier to the U.S. The U.S. has expressed concern that South Korea serves as a conduit for inexpensive Chinese metal to enter the U.S.
Was the tariff really going to hurt SK so badly? This seems like a shit deal for them The concession that was won there was that that there will be reduced steel imports from SK, which benefits a favorite company of this administration, U.S. Steel. Regarding what they got on the deal, South Korea imports a lot from China anyways so if they so choose they could import more from SK & less from China directly. Anyways, there is a need for a lot of raw materials in the US & so there are countries that can help with that to some degree as South Korea just did now. The US keeps a tariff on foreign trucks in place to protect GM, Ford, & Chevy. Honda & Volkswagen build a lot of vehicles in the US with factories that are located in the US anyways so those don't have that much of an impact on those factories since they are locally based. Anyways, it's all very complicated and there aren't many ppl that fully understand the situation did the US get anything actually worthwhile from the deal? (i.e. reduced steel imports from SK is not a benefit for the US, it's only a benefit for trump's optics)
More US cars sold in SK, right?
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Sidenote, I seem to remember SK being the 2nd highest steel importer to the US - behind only Canada.
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Chapter 3, Louisiana is so super fucked.
The threat posed to Tabasco is replicated along much of Louisiana’s coast, where a football field of land is lost every 100 minutes. Around 2,000 sq miles of land, roughly the size of Delaware, has vanished from the state since the 1930s due to a cocktail of maladies and self-inflicted wounds, stemming from the overdevelopment of the Mississippi river and an unquestioning embrace of extractive drilling, topped off by the wrenching global consequences of climate change.
The US has already been stripped of half of its wetlands since Europeans arrived and Louisiana, which accounts for a bulk of these losses, is on course to lose all of its wetland within two more centuries, according to the US Geological Survey.
A master plan set out by the state government last year forecast a further 2,250 sq miles of Louisiana could be lost over the next 50 years, forcing 27,000 buildings to be flood-proofed, elevated or bought out.
The plan sets out billions of dollars in work building protective seawalls, restoring marshland and increasing the amount of nourishing sediment carried to wetlands by the Mississippi, which hasn’t been left to meander naturally since New Orleans was established 300 years ago. Thousands of people still face being relocated, but while state authorities have acknowledged this fate they have yet to grapple with the vast cost and emotional whiplash it will entail.
“You go to Plaquemines parish and people will say they are already flood-proofed because they can pull their boat up to their door,” said Rudy Simoneaux, an engineer at the Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority. “It asks a lot of a shrimper or a crabber to relocate inland to Baton Rouge. They depend on the water. People are prepared to just rebuild and rebuild.”
The western half of Louisiana, where Avery Island sits, is particularly vulnerable as it is starved of the wetland-creating sediment dispersed by the Mississippi and Atchafalaya rivers. There “aren’t many options” for the region under the master plan, Simoneaux conceded.
Source
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On March 28 2018 08:24 {CC}StealthBlue wrote:
Remember in the last thread when I said Google should ban InfoWars from YouTube? But some said freedom speech and all that. Defend this.
Is this not outright defamation?
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Canada11382 Posts
On March 28 2018 10:55 WolfintheSheep wrote:Is this not outright defamation?
I don't think so. He immediately clarifies that he is not saying Hogg is a Hitler Youth, but rather Jones' concern is over youth movements. In effect, youth are gullible and therefore dangerous. Just because youth are for it, doesn't mean it's inherently a good thing... at least that's my translation from fearmongering shock radio-speak.
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It takes a special sort of people to attack kids for protesting by calling them Nazis. Especially kids who are protesting to not be shot while they go to school. It isn't a big ask for politicians to do something to try and prevent that.
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Canada11382 Posts
Well, he isn't. But I think it probably is a big ask. No one is forcing me to watch Jones, so he can yell away in his corner of youtube- so long as it isn't defamation or slander. I haven't been impressed with youtube's efforts to clean house, and I doubt politicians will do much better. Partially it's just sheer volume of content being generated. 300 hours of video uploaded per minute and 500 million tweets per day. What politician can wade into that mess with any degree of nuanced understanding?
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On March 28 2018 12:25 Plansix wrote:
It takes a special sort of people to attack kids for protesting by calling them Nazis. Especially kids who are protesting to not be shot while they go to school. It isn't a big ask for politicians to do something to try and prevent that.
Rick Santorum certainly doesn't agree. Those kids should be learning CPR to deal with the consequences instead of asking people to prevent the incident happening. Because that is how insane your country is becoming/has become/gibbergibberwalnutwalnut.
As for the Jones story. Meh. He's Jones. I'm surprised it took him this long. He'll never be properly punished for the lives he's negatively impacted.
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On March 28 2018 09:07 A3th3r wrote:Show nested quote +On March 28 2018 08:23 IyMoon wrote:On March 28 2018 08:20 Mohdoo wrote:Behind an annoying pay wall. To bypass, google the title of the article. I've done so and pasted it below:
SEOUL—The U.S. and South Korea agreed to amend their free-trade deal to address American concerns about a growing deficit and resolve friction over tariffs on South Korean steel, Seoul’s trade ministry said in a statement Monday.
The changes to the deal, which have been blamed by President Donald Trump for expanding the U.S. trade deficit, focus on rebalancing trade in the auto sector—a major source of South Korea’s trade surplus with the U.S., the ministry statement said.
Speaking on “Fox News Sunday,” Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said the U.S. expected to sign the agreement with South Korea soon.
“South Korea will reduce the amount of steel that they send into the United States as part of this. So I think this is an absolute win-win,” Mr. Mnuchin said.
Under the new terms, South Korea would double the import quota for American-made cars that meet U.S. safety rules—but not Korean ones—to 50,000 from 25,000 per U.S. car maker each year, the statement said.
And South Korea will now allow the U.S. to keep its 25% tariffs on pickup trucks in place for 20 more years. The truck tariffs had been set to expire in 2021.
In return, the U.S. agreed to give South Korea a permanent exemption from 25% import tariffs on steel. South Korea had been temporarily excluded from the metals tariffs.
The U.S., however, has set a quota to reduce South Korean steel imports. The quota has been set at 2.68 million tons a year, or 70% of South Korea’s annual average steel exports to the U.S., the statement said.
South Korea is the largest importer of Chinese steel and the third largest steel supplier to the U.S. The U.S. has expressed concern that South Korea serves as a conduit for inexpensive Chinese metal to enter the U.S.
Was the tariff really going to hurt SK so badly? This seems like a shit deal for them The concession that was won there was that that there will be reduced steel imports from SK, which benefits a favorite company of this administration, U.S. Steel. Regarding what they got on the deal, South Korea imports a lot from China anyways so if they so choose they could import more from SK & less from China directly. Anyways, there is a need for a lot of raw materials in the US & so there are countries that can help with that to some degree as South Korea just did now. The US keeps a tariff on foreign trucks in place to protect GM, Ford, & Chevy. Honda & Volkswagen build a lot of vehicles in the US with factories that are located in the US anyways so those don't have that much of an impact on those factories since they are locally based. Anyways, it's all very complicated and there aren't many ppl that fully understand the situation Anyways, there is a need for a lot of raw materials in the US & so there are countries that can help with that to some degree as South Korea just did now. How does this help the US need for raw materials when SK reduces its steel export to the US by 30%.
Yes it reduces the trade deficit but that in itself does nothing. It will increase the price of steel in the US, increasing the price of every supply chain that uses steel at some point and leads to higher prices for goods in the US or lost jobs to compensate.
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The thought is probably that increase in steel price will make local production more profitable and therefore create jobs. The rest of population will in effect subsidy steel production via increased prices on goods containing steel.
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On March 28 2018 19:02 Silvanel wrote:
The thought is probably that increase in steel price will make local production more profitable and therefore create jobs. The rest of population will in effect subsidy steel production via increased prices on goods containing steel. Or importing it from somewhere else is still cheaper and you made your products more expensive and got a bunch of people fired for nothing.
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As much as I hate Jones, I think what he's done is close enough to Obama/Bush/Trump with a Hitler 'stache that he can get away with it. You can't watch the video and think "oh, this kid was actually a Hitler Youth" anymore than you can see those signs and think "oh yeah, Obama really is Hitler."
It's not as bad as e.g. doctoring and sharing a photo shoot so that it looks like someone is tearing up the Constitution and then being like "oh, lighten up, it's just satire" because the image alone contains no clues to that effect.
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On March 28 2018 21:29 TheTenthDoc wrote:
As much as I hate Jones, I think what he's done is close enough to Obama/Bush/Trump with a Hitler 'stache that he can get away with it. You can't watch the video and think "oh, this kid was actually a Hitler Youth" anymore than you can see those signs and think "oh yeah, Obama really is Hitler."
I know quite a few conspiracy theorists who actually do think that Obama would have been Hitler 2.0 if he wasn't thwarted by heroic Republicans, that Hillary was literally an anti-christ demon, and that Obama is a Kenyan Muslim who literally created ISIS.
For the record, the last part was believed by our current president.
People really are this stupid. And even worse, they vote and spread their ignorance across social media, meaning that they often have an impact.
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The doctored photo of Emma Gonzalez tearing up the Constitution is particularly fucked up.
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On March 28 2018 21:55 farvacola wrote:
The doctored photo of Emma Rodriguez tearing up the Constitution is particularly fucked up.
I actually prefer that one. But I get what's messed up about faking it.
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On March 28 2018 21:44 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:Show nested quote +On March 28 2018 21:29 TheTenthDoc wrote:
As much as I hate Jones, I think what he's done is close enough to Obama/Bush/Trump with a Hitler 'stache that he can get away with it. You can't watch the video and think "oh, this kid was actually a Hitler Youth" anymore than you can see those signs and think "oh yeah, Obama really is Hitler." I know quite a few conspiracy theorists who actually do think that Obama would have been Hitler 2.0 if he wasn't thwarted by heroic Republicans, that Hillary was literally an anti-christ demon, and that Obama is a Kenyan Muslim who literally created ISIS. For the record, the last part was believed by our current president. People really are this stupid. And even worse, they vote and spread their ignorance across social media, meaning that they often have an impact.
It's one of the biggest drawbacks of social media. Instead of being a place where the majority with a reasonable belief backed by evidence can convert the minority with the "wrong" belief, it's an echo chamber of conspiracy theory, lies and deceit where the easily confused and tricked (Which is a way too large amount of the population) gets drawn in. Once you read enough articles on how bad Hillary is, even the most resilient minded starts believing in it.
Even I myself was in the "Well, Hillary is bad but not as bad as Trump" train, but have later realised my mistake and come to understand that she probably wouldn't have been a bad president at all (Probably not as good as Bernie tho).
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Definitely not as good as Bernie, but still highly preferable to Trump.
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What would have made Hillary so bad for the country isn't really about her as much as it's about how the country would have reacted.
The fact that the Correct The Record Troll army SuperPAC was circumventing campaign law coordinating directly with the campaign wasn't drawing 1% as much attention as Russian trolls have from liberals, but they were both exploiting the same vulnerabilities in social media.
Now we're actually paying attention to at least the vulnerabilities, even if we're still going to ignore the problematic nature of a presidential campaign openly coordinating with a SuperPAC run by scum like David Brock of all people.
It's like that for 1000 different issues. Additionally Hillary would have been passing legislation that favored centrists/the right more effectively than Trump. So essentially rather than the rather ineffective rightward lurching we've experienced, it would have been a much slower roll with the McCaskills and Manchins leading the way and Hillary supporters explaining it away as better than Trump would have been.
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On March 28 2018 22:04 farvacola wrote:
Definitely not as good as Bernie, but still highly preferable to Trump.
Dunno. Can you just imagine how hard the current senate/house would dig their heels in under a Bernie Sanders Presidency? If they were dedicated to ruining Obama they'd have wanted to burn down the white house over an actual leftie living there.
Everything involving the Parkland kids is fucked up beyond recognition. It's fine to dislike what they're saying (Conservative values and that), but the response is to recognise that they're grieving and trying to deal with it, not make spurious assertions that they're akin to the Hitler youth and SENDING THEM DEATH THREATS.
There's no point in pointing out the right has lost its mind, everyone knows that. I'm beginning to wonder what will make the majority of Conservatives wake up and realise that its gone too far. I'm waiting to hear about an actual attempt to kill one of the Parkland kids and the right start laughing about it/applauding the upstanding Conservative for trying to defend the Constitution against these parasites. And I'm not even sure that wouldn't be their response at this point.
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I imagine conservatives would claim to be just as angry and downtrodden under Sanders as they were under Obama, but given the fact that Sanders isn't black, I'm not sure that'd actually pan out.
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EPT
