(04-13-2017 06:32 AM)BrewDog Wrote:  

(04-13-2017 04:32 AM)GlobalMan Wrote:  Every American man owes a debt of gratitude to Trump, not only for what he has already achieved for the country in real terms, and for what he will, but also for this whole ride that has brought life and comedy back into the lives of the American male and let him breathe like he hasn't in decades.

I would like to hear about these achievements if you could list a few. I'm not anti-Trump. I just want someone to tell me what he's done. Please, someone convince me that he's my savior.

Go back a page or two, big list.

So so far I'm seeing a lot of vague, emotional talk that lets some kind of conspiracy theory fill in the blank.

Let me quote myself again.

Quote:1. Immigration reduction.
2. Trade reform/bringing back jobs, manufacturing in particular.
3. No more stupid wars.

In a few words, "America first."

Maybe throw in a fourth for the supreme court.

Hence the visceral, aghast reaction to the strikes in Syria was entirely justified (despite my wish that the response here was a bit more measured and less doom and gloom). It was good that people voiced their opposition very loudly. That was a core campaign promise.

As long as Trump keeps to those themes, we're cool. If he doesn't, then I'll oppose with all powers I can muster, and if that doesn't work, I'll just sit out. I have other things going on.

If you're going to nitpick every single thing, you are inevitably going to be disappointed at some point. The very structure of a democratic republic guarantees some campaign promises can't or won't be fulfilled, whether because of expediency in negotiations or the sheer force of inertia. No one gets everything they want.

And so far what has happened this week?

1. Trump affirmed no change to Syria policy.
2. He reaffirmed that the wall is going to be built.
3. Illegal immigration on the border is down by around 70% since the inauguration.
4. Gorsuch confirmed.

That doesn't look suspicious to me. The only thing that does look suspicious is the stuff about Bannon, but we'll see how that goes.

Now, most of these things are very positive, right? And I know this can't really compete with the stories that people tend to make up in their heads, but you have to agree that these things are positive, right? Now imagine some other controversy in the future and information is conflicting, but it's easy to make some kind of sense of it objectively if you simply turn back to the three pillars of the campaign.

@ Gmac,

Yes, I have read 'The Art of the Deal' and I am sure that Trump is a terrific negotiator. However, he can only play with the hand that he has been dealt. Xi knows that tariffs on Chinese goods would cause a lot of pain in the US as well as China - at least in the short-term as they would be reflected in price increases for US shoppers. It's not as though that is free of consequences for Trump.

Somewhere in 'The Art of the Deal' Trump mentions that a good deal has to have something for everybody. He is of course quite right and this should be reflected in his approach to North Korea. This is why the six-party talks on Korean security need to be reconvened (as per the Chinese suggestion), so that a deal can be reached which gives something to everybody. For example, NK would give up all attempts to produce nuclear weapons, while the US would renounce a first strike and scale back the exercises with South Korea - something along those lines. Who better than the great dealmaker to do that, rather than have a war which is in nobody's interest - apart from weapons producers.

By the way that schtick with the 'over-promise and under-deliver' may work if you are arranging a one-off deal with somebody. However, if you have an ongoing business relationship with somebody, then over-promising and under-delivering will eventually result in your exclusion from the marketplace as the market wises up to you. This parallels the current political situation more accurately.

Regarding NATO

The US - and the UK - have not paid a greater contribution to the NATO budget over the years than the others out of the goodness of their hearts. They have done so because their financial contribution bought them more say within NATO. For many years - am not sure about currently - all of the senior military posts within NATO (not the Secretary-General) were reserved for US and British officers. The others just tagged along. Presumably, if the others now start paying more, then they will demand a greater say, which is of course only legitimate.

That will not happen. The Europeans will politely nod their heads at Donald Trump, go home and do nothing. For one thing, all the southern Europeans are cash-strapped. As long as I've been following politics (40 years) the US and UK have been urging the others to give more to NATO - nothing ever changes.

What will Trump do when that eventuates. Nothing. There is nothing he can do. Or do you suppose that he can come back and start making 'NATO is obsolete' comments again. He would lose all credibility.

If you start saying that all of Trump's statements during the campaign were just negotiating positions, as some have done, then you automatically hand him what amounts to a 'Get out of Jail Free Card'. The position is ultimately unfalsifiable. In fact, it reminds me of Hilary Clinton's statement - as relayed by wikileaks - that on each isssue one always has to have two positions - a public position and a private position.

(04-13-2017 07:16 AM)Gmac Wrote:  Have you read the Art of the Deal!?

I feel as though many of the loudest opposing voices right now here and elsewhere have not even fully studied the man.

It's like we're at page 1 of the thread again lol. Read up new guys.

You said it mate. If you think that Trump is cucking (and I admit, I did for about 24 hours) then you must believe that he has totally forgotten everything in Art of the Deal or that he never was really that man.

Not all is bad.

The globalists likely got a bit of a shock that Trump even won.

They may allow Donald Trump to delay the train to globalism more - some jobs may be allowed to return, the wall may be built in parts, immigration may slow down, the economy may improve for a change.

Essentially the American people have voted themselves a break from the globalist policies, which is actually not bad given the alternative.

That is the best case scenario that I see.

Quote:If you start saying that all of Trump's statements during the campaign were just negotiating positions, as some have done, then you automatically hand him what amounts to a 'Get out of Jail Free Card'. The position is ultimately unfalsifiable. In fact, it reminds me of Hilary Clinton's statement - as relayed by wikileaks - that on each isssue one always has to have two positions - a public position and a private Position.

No one ever said that though. Those three themes I highlighted are fairly non-negotiable, at least the general direction in which you treat them.

Look for big ideas. Don't nitpick every statement. That's thinking small, and it's only going to make you more anxious. What is the overall direction? What is the net?

The statements that are negotiating tactics should be fairly obvious. If they're not, I recommend more persuasion literature and less..."conspiracy" books, to put it crudely?

Meanwhile, looks like Scott Adams was right about the Syria strike ("fake response to a fake atrocity" that disarms a lot of his opposition). Albeit it was very, very risky. As seen by the justified outcry and the lingering reactions in this thread.

(04-13-2017 03:23 AM)rockoman Wrote:  MMX2010,

when you responded to Edmund Ironside in the way that you did you were implicitly speaking to anyone who shared his views.

With all this talk of spergs and sigmas you are trying to cast anyone who disagrees with you as having some kind of personality disorder, or as holding the views that they do only because they are some kind of personality type. I'm obviously not the only one who has noticed this. This is textbook case of an 'ad hominem' attack.

Further, you said somewhere in the thread above:

'When your god-emperor does something you don't understand, keep your mouth shut and your eyes open"

or words to that effect.

Don't you think enjoining people to keep their mouths shut defeats the purpose of a discussion board such as this. We are after all here to discuss with each other - and to do that without having pseudo-pysychological labels attached to us in an effort to diminish our arguments.

That's pretty dead on. Truth be told I didn't respond to MMX2010 just because I didn't see enough substance to continue the conversation usefully, and when things devolve to name calling and insults I try to just walk away and ignore it rather than get drug in. The accusations of "emotional response" ... even if there legitimately ARE emotions involved (and there are, on all sides) aren't really any more legit than when feminists dismiss anti-feminists as "just a bunch of men who are angry that their wet dreams of life being like Mad Men hasn't worked out for them." I don't even try to follow all the categorizations of "Sigmas" and "Spergs", though I've read at least some of the recommended essays on those things a while back. No idea what a Sperg is outside of hearing it in this thread, but if I was feeling more playful and energetic it would be pretty easy to determine some political figure who we all hate and create a meme where they are calling us all names and telling us to chill out and stop being emotional spergs because we disagree with something they did.

Here's something emotional for you ... there is a lot of intense viewing of what Trump really does and really accomplishes because for many of us the situation in this country (and western civilization in general) has deteriorated so much that we were ready to take up arms ... suicidal as that might have been ... if things continued on the same trajectory, as assuredly they would have if HRC had won. Trump is a last hope for peaceful change. I had not bothered to vote in years before this past election, and I don't expect to in the future if this revolt fails. Whether he was sincere or not, I truly believe that Trump was correct when he said this was our last chance. If we slip up they will tighten control of all information and administrative power to the point that there will never again be large scale organized resistance.

What none of us want from this administration is theater that keeps us all peaceful while the globalists tighten their control. Assuming Trump is truly legit, he has a very short amount of time in which he needs to make a great deal of change. He needs to destroy a lot of globalist power. The opposition is the deep state bureaucrats , management of global corporations, the media, the education establishment, globalist pawn politicians (almost all of the Democrats AND many, possibly most Republicans), a lot of political organizations that have been funded both by our subverted government and by globalists privately, and, oh yeah, ultra-rich globalists themselves. He can't take that all down at once by any stretch, but the clock is ticking to make progress such as it can't be easily reversed. I might be emotional about watching for potential results, but forgive me about that, since frankly if it doesn't go well I'd rather die fighting than watch what happens over the next couple of decades when trajectory reverts to the mean. I'm not as young as some of you, I've been watching this go on for a long time already and slowly come to realize that I was far too tolerant of the frog boiling going back to the 1990's.

(04-13-2017 03:28 AM)Leonard D Neubache Wrote:  Trump didn't have to be personally threatened or have his family put in the firing line. I believe he was simply taken aside and showed some economic levers by which the elites would plunge America into a hideous recession under his presidency. They told him he would end up a one term president and go into the history books as an utter failure.

They told him the carrot to this stick was that if he went along with the big plan then they would give him a shot at a second term through a series of superficial wins. For example, he would get his wall and get to deport a shitload of Mexicans but that in effect they would be replaced by muslims flown in by plane instead.

And they would have had this conversation with him at the 4 to 6 week mark after they started to put the brakes on his plans (the courts) and after the chance had passed for Trump to call out the deep state on an all-channel broadcast.

What I suspect is going to follow for the next 3 to 7 years is a series of superficial wins that will allow the fanatic MAGA crowd to shout down the doubters who point out that nothing is really changing for the better if you dig beneath the surface.

And you'll be able to track this outcome quite easily by taking notice of the diminishing levels of hate he draws from (((the old-media))), which started warming to him the second those missiles flew into Syria.

On the economic collapse thing, frankly I've been pleasantly surprised that we haven't had at least a stock market collapse so far. I'd think most people who understand the dire situation would have expected a crash given how the market can be manipulated between the amount of resources the globalists control, the media, and how prices are set at the margin and can be influenced by high speed trading algorithms. When the market ran up after the election, I actually thought maybe they were just setting it up for a bigger fall (and doing the run up during what was technically still the Obama admin, so that historically they could attribute the upside to him and the downside to Trump.) I don't know for sure whether the lack of a major market crash so far has been because the big money isn't quite as monolithically opposed to Trump as I thought, or because it's still being held as an axe over his head. Frankly if it's the latter, I think he needs to let them do their worst, and an orchestrated market crash is the kind of thing for which we all would need to buck up, keep a stiff upper lip, and fight through because it's to be expected and this isn't a minor disagreement we are having here, it's a cold war.

I'll be completely supportive in the face of damage inflicted by the enemy. I'm not supportive of concessions made that hollow out the movement. Tick tock, gentlemen.

(04-13-2017 06:26 AM)MMX2010 Wrote:  

(04-13-2017 05:41 AM)Nowak Wrote:  If Trump's attack on Syria really was only smoke and lights, it's still treachery and people still are suffering because of this.

There's no such thing as a place where no one suffers, nor s decision where no one suffers.

Which will lead to more suffering? This has already been discussed Ad nauseam. Trump isn't a savior, he's a slightly better GOP president who will still wage cuck workers. He can build the wall ,he'll be a terrible president if he and his treasury sec successfully deregulate or completely repeal Dodd Frank and fuck over the US and world economy like America did in the past with CDO's if there's another crash.

Farage and Le Pen would never push through retarded legislation like this. You need to talk to more foreigners or Americans living outside of the US. US foreign policy can and has been a disaster,Assad is a force of stability. Europeans especially need someone who wont lead to more invasions.

(04-13-2017 08:19 AM)Libertas Wrote:  

Quote:If you start saying that all of Trump's statements during the campaign were just negotiating positions, as some have done, then you automatically hand him what amounts to a 'Get out of Jail Free Card'. The position is ultimately unfalsifiable. In fact, it reminds me of Hilary Clinton's statement - as relayed by wikileaks - that on each isssue one always has to have two positions - a public position and a private Position.

No one ever said that though. Those three themes I highlighted are fairly non-negotiable, at least the general direction in which you treat them.

Look for big ideas. Don't nitpick every statement. That's thinking small, and it's only going to make you more anxious. What is the overall direction? What is the net?

The statements that are negotiating tactics should be fairly obvious. If they're not, I recommend more persuasion literature and less..."conspiracy" books, to put it crudely?

Meanwhile, looks like Scott Adams was right about the Syria strike ("fake response to a fake atrocity" that disarms a lot of his opposition). Albeit it was very, very risky. As seen by the justified outcry and the lingering reactions in this thread.

From your list I think you will get No. 1 - reduction of immigration.

(04-13-2017 09:03 AM)Edmund Ironside Wrote:  

(04-13-2017 03:23 AM)rockoman Wrote:  MMX2010,

when you responded to Edmund Ironside in the way that you did you were implicitly speaking to anyone who shared his views.

With all this talk of spergs and sigmas you are trying to cast anyone who disagrees with you as having some kind of personality disorder, or as holding the views that they do only because they are some kind of personality type. I'm obviously not the only one who has noticed this. This is textbook case of an 'ad hominem' attack.

Further, you said somewhere in the thread above:

'When your god-emperor does something you don't understand, keep your mouth shut and your eyes open"

or words to that effect.

Don't you think enjoining people to keep their mouths shut defeats the purpose of a discussion board such as this. We are after all here to discuss with each other - and to do that without having pseudo-pysychological labels attached to us in an effort to diminish our arguments.

That's pretty dead on. Truth be told I didn't respond to MMX2010 just because I didn't see enough substance to continue the conversation usefully, and when things devolve to name calling and insults I try to just walk away and ignore it rather than get drug in. The accusations of "emotional response" ... even if there legitimately ARE emotions involved (and there are, on all sides) aren't really any more legit than when feminists dismiss anti-feminists as "just a bunch of men who are angry that their wet dreams of life being like Mad Men hasn't worked out for them." I don't even try to follow all the categorizations of "Sigmas" and "Spergs", though I've read at least some of the recommended essays on those things a while back. No idea what a Sperg is outside of hearing it in this thread, but if I was feeling more playful and energetic it would be pretty easy to determine some political figure who we all hate and create a meme where they are calling us all names and telling us to chill out and stop being emotional spergs because we disagree with something they did.

Here's something emotional for you ... there is a lot of intense viewing of what Trump really does and really accomplishes because for many of us the situation in this country (and western civilization in general) has deteriorated so much that we were ready to take up arms ... suicidal as that might have been ... if things continued on the same trajectory, as assuredly they would have if HRC had won. Trump is a last hope for peaceful change. I had not bothered to vote in years before this past election, and I don't expect to in the future if this revolt fails. Whether he was sincere or not, I truly believe that Trump was correct when he said this was our last chance. If we slip up they will tighten control of all information and administrative power to the point that there will never again be large scale organized resistance.

What none of us want from this administration is theater that keeps us all peaceful while the globalists tighten their control. Assuming Trump is truly legit, he has a very short amount of time in which he needs to make a great deal of change. He needs to destroy a lot of globalist power. The opposition is the deep state bureaucrats , management of global corporations, the media, the education establishment, globalist pawn politicians (almost all of the Democrats AND many, possibly most Republicans), a lot of political organizations that have been funded both by our subverted government and by globalists privately, and, oh yeah, ultra-rich globalists themselves. He can't take that all down at once by any stretch, but the clock is ticking to make progress such as it can't be easily reversed. I might be emotional about watching for potential results, but forgive me about that, since frankly if it doesn't go well I'd rather die fighting than watch what happens over the next couple of decades when trajectory reverts to the mean. I'm not as young as some of you, I've been watching this go on for a long time already and slowly come to realize that I was far too tolerant of the frog boiling going back to the 1990's.

(04-13-2017 03:28 AM)Leonard D Neubache Wrote:  Trump didn't have to be personally threatened or have his family put in the firing line. I believe he was simply taken aside and showed some economic levers by which the elites would plunge America into a hideous recession under his presidency. They told him he would end up a one term president and go into the history books as an utter failure.

They told him the carrot to this stick was that if he went along with the big plan then they would give him a shot at a second term through a series of superficial wins. For example, he would get his wall and get to deport a shitload of Mexicans but that in effect they would be replaced by muslims flown in by plane instead.

And they would have had this conversation with him at the 4 to 6 week mark after they started to put the brakes on his plans (the courts) and after the chance had passed for Trump to call out the deep state on an all-channel broadcast.

What I suspect is going to follow for the next 3 to 7 years is a series of superficial wins that will allow the fanatic MAGA crowd to shout down the doubters who point out that nothing is really changing for the better if you dig beneath the surface.

And you'll be able to track this outcome quite easily by taking notice of the diminishing levels of hate he draws from (((the old-media))), which started warming to him the second those missiles flew into Syria.

On the economic collapse thing, frankly I've been pleasantly surprised that we haven't had at least a stock market collapse so far. I'd think most people who understand the dire situation would have expected a crash given how the market can be manipulated between the amount of resources the globalists control, the media, and how prices are set at the margin and can be influenced by high speed trading algorithms. When the market ran up after the election, I actually thought maybe they were just setting it up for a bigger fall (and doing the run up during what was technically still the Obama admin, so that historically they could attribute the upside to him and the downside to Trump.) I don't know for sure whether the lack of a major market crash so far has been because the big money isn't quite as monolithically opposed to Trump as I thought, or because it's still being held as an axe over his head. Frankly if it's the latter, I think he needs to let them do their worst, and an orchestrated market crash is the kind of thing for which we all would need to buck up, keep a stiff upper lip, and fight through because it's to be expected and this isn't a minor disagreement we are having here, it's a cold war.

I'll be completely supportive in the face of damage inflicted by the enemy. I'm not supportive of concessions made that hollow out the movement. Tick tock, gentlemen.

The world economy is treading on wafer thin territory. It might not even be the US who could cause the next crises. China economy uber alles could. Their economy is totally based of fraud and hot air,well Silicon valley and WS are also, but I'm not seeing potemkin cities being built in the west to pump of GDP figures

(04-13-2017 08:19 AM)Libertas Wrote:  ...
Meanwhile, looks like Scott Adams was right about the Syria strike ("fake response to a fake atrocity" that disarms a lot of his opposition). Albeit it was very, very risky. As seen by the justified outcry and the lingering reactions in this thread.

So, a fake response to a fake atrocity to appease the fake media and debunk their fake allegations of fake Russian ties and fake consensus of same.

But it matters not. We have entered binary land, where you're either with Bush or you're with the terrorists. Americans have engaged their patriotism armour and even if you support nine out of ten of Trump's moves then you're still one short. That's why you're not fit to be an American, and why you're just a potato farmer in New Zealand. You know. One of those backward, irrelevant places where patriotic Americans were planning to escape to a year ago, but since their guy won they've neatly tucked those travel plans in the back of their sock drawer along with any capacity for dissent. For the next three years it's "oh Dear Leader", and to hell with anyone who fails to lock step. Remember, when Trump A/B tests, the only correct answer is "Trump!"

Let's just pray that their Jackson doesn't end up being a Custer.

It's important to remember that Trump is merely a messenger. He was voted in because of the policies that he proposed first, and his personal and being Trump second. Donald Trump is not a sport team per se, so the ""If you can't support us when we lose or draw, don't support us when we win." doesn't apply to him. And as mentioned before, he must be consistently reminded of that from his base. The opposition (globalists, neocons, etc) are extremely aggressive in their fight, and we either match them or lose out our man.

There has been genuine cause for concern over the last 10 days. It's not just the strikes, and the words...but deeper even with the behavior that made Trump the man we all rallied behind. I had a quick glance at his personal twitter handle. The last time he made a rebellious "Trump-esque" tweet was:

Exactly a few hours before the gas attack in Syria.

I have no idea what has happened in the inner circle/social media team/ or Donald himself since then. It may be chess, it may be one camp is over-reacting, it may be nitpicking, but something just feels off. There is an air of confusion re: what's going on with Admin members (Haley, Rex, Mattis, Trump) contradicting each other and giving mixed signals re: international affairs, Bannon' waning influence, some of the recent inner circle appointees and the smoke regarding internal struggle in NSC and among advisors.

Hopefully we will have a clearer picture in a week time.

Trump's stunning u-turns on NATO, China, Russia and Syria

http://edition.cnn.com/2017/04/12/politi...ato-syria/

   

   

(04-13-2017 09:20 AM)Leonard D Neubache Wrote:  

(04-13-2017 08:19 AM)Libertas Wrote:  ...
Meanwhile, looks like Scott Adams was right about the Syria strike ("fake response to a fake atrocity" that disarms a lot of his opposition). Albeit it was very, very risky. As seen by the justified outcry and the lingering reactions in this thread.

So, a fake response to a fake atrocity to appease the fake media and debunk their fake allegations of fake Russian ties and fake consensus of same.

But it matters not. We have entered binary land, where you've either with Bush or you're with the terrorists. Americans have engaged their patriotism armour and even if you support nine out of ten Trump's moves then you're still one short. That's why you're not fit to be an American, and why you're just a potato farmer in New Zealand. You know. One of those backward, irrelevant places where patriotic Americans were planning to escape to a year ago, but since their guy won they've neatly tucked those travel plans in the back of their sock drawer along with any capacity for dissent. For the next three years it's "oh Dear Leader", and to hell with anyone who fails to lock step. Remember, when Trump A/B tests, the only correct answer is "Trump!"

Let's just pray that their Jackson doesn't end up being a Custer.

I'm just gonna go ahead and call this entire paragraph the "so" tell for cognitive dissonance.

(04-13-2017 09:03 AM)Edmund Ironside Wrote:  ...
I don't know for sure whether the lack of a major market crash so far has been because the big money isn't quite as monolithically opposed to Trump as I thought, or because it's still being held as an axe over his head. Frankly if it's the latter, I think he needs to let them do their worst, and an orchestrated market crash is the kind of thing for which we all would need to buck up, keep a stiff upper lip, and fight through because it's to be expected and this isn't a minor disagreement we are having here, it's a cold war.

I'll be completely supportive in the face of damage inflicted by the enemy. I'm not supportive of concessions made that hollow out the movement. Tick tock, gentlemen.

I stated in an earlier post that Trump had a month after his inauguration to call out the deep state and force their hand, but his ego allowed him to believe he could outgame them. I think that ship sailed precisely when he failed to respond in open and honest terms to his immigration orders being scuttled by some pissant judges from who-gives-a-fuck-where. At that point (his first serious hurdle as President) he could have come out and told everyone that tyrant billionairres and their bought-and-paid-for lackeys were working to make sure that nobody could Make America Great Again. He would have drawn a sharp line between Americans and their enemies. From that point on anyone that acted against his mandate would have painted a huge target on their backs. The heat alone might have made the crawl back into their lairs.

Sure, they would have thrown everything at him, including the kitchen sink, but at the end of the day he would have been The Teflon Don.

Judges stop immigration ban? See? Globalist stooges!

Markets dive? See? Billionairre elitist market manipulators!

RINO wall blockers? See? Republicans in name only!

But he wanted to play the role of the guy that could eject the bad crowd from the party without breaking the mood. Without upsetting his other patrons. And now it's too late to simply be honest. Shame. His base would have gone to hell and back for him. Now he's stuck with just himself and a dwindling team of die-hards against every globalist sociopath in the world.

(04-13-2017 09:20 AM)Leonard D Neubache Wrote:  

(04-13-2017 08:19 AM)Libertas Wrote:  ...
Meanwhile, looks like Scott Adams was right about the Syria strike ("fake response to a fake atrocity" that disarms a lot of his opposition). Albeit it was very, very risky. As seen by the justified outcry and the lingering reactions in this thread.

So, a fake response to a fake atrocity to appease the fake media and debunk their fake allegations of fake Russian ties and fake consensus of same.

But it matters not. We have entered binary land, where you're either with Bush or you're with the terrorists. Americans have engaged their patriotism armour and even if you support nine out of ten of Trump's moves then you're still one short. That's why you're not fit to be an American, and why you're just a potato farmer in New Zealand. You know. One of those backward, irrelevant places where patriotic Americans were planning to escape to a year ago, but since their guy won they've neatly tucked those travel plans in the back of their sock drawer along with any capacity for dissent. For the next three years it's "oh Dear Leader", and to hell with anyone who fails to lock step. Remember, when Trump A/B tests, the only correct answer is "Trump!"

Let's just pray that their Jackson doesn't end up being a Custer.

Guys, do you remember that time that Leonard said "wow, I'm not posting in this thread anymore", then proceeded to post in the same thread about 20+ more times in a week? I wonder who the overly emotional party is here.

(04-07-2017 05:15 AM)Leonard D Neubache Wrote:  Wow. This has been the most disappointing day in a long time for a number of reasons. I'm already growing weary of playing table-tennis with various members who I respect and enjoy the contributions of. I'm getting the sense that nothing good is going to come from speculating on this. So I'm going to drop my opinion here and leave it at that. Afterward I'll eject from the Trump threads until I see a light at the end of the tunnel, which I now contend will be never.

On a similar note, pay close attention to the many people who now want to shame any sort of nationalism displayed by Americans.

Everybody was all pro-nationalism, anti-globalism a week ago, but oh, how quickly their tunes are switched back to the "ignorant American sheep" insults.

And no, I'm not referring to legitimate, non-snarky criticisms of Trump or US foreign policy, before anyone throws out that strawman again.

(04-13-2017 08:19 AM)Zelcorpion Wrote:  Not all is bad.

The globalists likely got a bit of a shock that Trump even won.

They may allow Donald Trump to delay the train to globalism more - some jobs may be allowed to return, the wall may be built in parts, immigration may slow down, the economy may improve for a change.

Essentially the American people have voted themselves a break from the globalist policies, which is actually not bad given the alternative.

That is the best case scenario that I see.

You certainly are the eternal pessimist.

Important article:

https://www.wsj.com/articles/trump-and-x...1492033631

(04-13-2017 10:04 AM)Enigma Wrote:  ...
Guys, do you remember that time that Leonard said "wow, I'm not posting in this thread anymore", then proceeded to post in the same thread about 20+ more times in a week? I wonder who the overly emotional party is here.
...
On a similar note, pay close attention to the many people who now want to shame any sort of nationalism displayed by Americans.

Everybody was all pro-nationalism, anti-globalism a week ago, but oh, how quickly their tunes are switched back to the "ignorant American sheep" insults.

And no, I'm not referring to legitimate, non-snarky criticisms of Trump or US foreign policy, before anyone throws out that strawman again.

You're absolutely right on me going back on my claim I'd bail and correct to call me out on it, but in the end I figured it would be stupid to walk away if it meant abandoning the thread to anti-reason.

And some of the posters here questioning Trump are not anti-American (same with us or against us binary demand) and are in fact very pro-American. Case in point, we wouldn't bother pointing out serious pitfalls in Trump's actions if we didn't give a shit, or worse, if we wanted him to fail.

Non-Americans are quite relevant pundits because we're not getting caught up in the ground-level patriotic fervour that has a tendency to blind people. Claims of emotionalism or defeatism are misplaced. Any of us should care greatly about the outcomes and to care is emotion.

I'll say it for the hundredth time. I hope all my criticisms of Trump turn out to be misplaced, but I'm not going to cuck for the guy on the assumption that he's infallible or that he hasn't been flipped.

Quote:Trump Fu

In the last couple of weeks, it seems that everyone has celebrated and castigated Trump, sometimes on the same day. Examining the range of opinions on Trump’s presidency so far is like looking through a kaleidoscope. No matter how gently you hold it up to your eye, you see something different than last time you looked through it. In normal times, it is easy to know where everyone stands. The Liberals think the Republican president is Hitler and they think the Democrat is Jesus. The Right adjust accordingly.

With Trump, all of the pundits are standing in the darkness, silhouetted by a wall of light and sound. We can sort of see them moving and we hear noises, but it is hard to know who is saying what about whom. Every once in a while a face from the crowd pops into view and says something good or ill about Trump. One minute Bill Kristol is sneering about Trump and then all of sudden Lindsey Graham is praising Trump. The Alt-Right is one minute hooting about Syria and then praising the new border push.

It really is exhausting, but it is part of how Trump plays the game. It is a good reminder that traditional metrics are not much use when judging Trump the politician. It’s also why he mowed down the GOP field with a cell phone and a twitter account. It was not that he broke their rules. It was that they wasted a lot of time complaining about Trump breaking their rules. Meanwhile, Trump was out giving voters a reason to support him. It is a classic form of political distraction that Trump has adopted to the modern communication age.

Similarly, Trump is wildly unpredictable, at least he seems unpredictable. That’s a big part of how he plays the game. He wants everyone to think the range of choices for him include some collection of unknown options that no one has yet to consider. That keeps foes on the defensive, making them tentative, even when they have the advantage. By appearing to have no clear strategy and routinely breaking old habits, Trump appears to be a wild man, who is capable of anything. Therefore, there’s no way to plan for him.

The big weapon Trump has in this regard is his willingness to attack unexpectedly. He always looks to attack when everyone is sure it is foolish to do so. He went to the very pro-military state of South Carolina and called John McCain a loser for getting shot down and captured by the Vietnamese. He questioned McCain’s conduct as a prisoner. The media howled about how he went too far, but his opponents suddenly got very nervous as they realized they could never relax around Trump. He could attack at any moment.

Another thing about Trump that makes him an extreme outlier in national politics is that he is not an ideologue. Most of our politicians are quite stupid. All of their intellectual energy is focused on the endless scheming and game playing that is politics. What passes for ideology in American politics is really just a laundry list of policies aimed at buying votes from interest groups. That’s why they sound like robots. They stick to the script, even in the face of a public revolt, because that’s the safe and easy way to do it.

That’s not Trump. He is not married to any policy. In the campaign, he would regularly say something one day and then take it back two days later when it proved to be unpopular. It is safe to assume, for example, that Trump has zero interest in health care. He’ll sign off on anything that is popular with the voters. He’s also willing to dump a bad policy without worrying a bit about being called a hypocrite or inconsistent. Trump is practical about these things. If it does not work, he tosses it aside and moves onto to the next thing.

This will be terribly frustrating for partisans, but Trump is a goal oriented guy. The never ending circus has a point. In the case of the Syrian attack and the blow up with the Russians, it is looking like the point of it all was to play a little domestic politics, but a whole lot of international politics. The way he handled the Chinese leader last week is looking like a game to get the Chinese to do something about North Korea, in order to save face. The “Crazy Trump” act hurling missiles at Syria is excellent cover.

It’s easy to read way too much into these accounts, but the Chinese are now saying extremely bellicose things to the North Koreans. Bush and Obama used every trick they knew to get the Chinese to address the North Koreans and failed. Suddenly, the Chinese are issuing ultimatums. It could simply a be a coincidence and China has been planning to rid themselves of the Kim family for a while, but it is hard to imagine anything like this happening under the last four presidents. They lacked the boldness to try it.

None of this is to suggest that Trump is going to be good for our team, however you interpret that. It’s just that using the old metrics to assess Trump is a category error. He’s not a regular politician and these are not regular times. No one should have imagined Trump as their white knight. At best, Trump flips over the tables and creates enough chaos to give those outside official Washington a chance to join the fight. Trump the Destroyer of Worlds is going to be exhausting for everyone. That’s just part of the deal.

http://thezman.com/wordpress/?p=10028

On H-1B "guest worker" visas, some talk, still not much significant action.

I hate to link WaPo, but the issue doesn't get much mainstream attention, and 98% of that is total propaganda, so this is unusual in that it's only partially propaganda and does propose some measures that would be in the right direction (even though it continues with the myth of labor shortages.) Forgive the wall of text, I want to save people from needing to give WaPo any clicks.

Quote:THE TRUMP ADMINISTRATION is taking its first, cautious steps to clean up the much-abused H-1B visa system, by which skilled foreign workers are imported to fill jobs in the technology sector and other specialty occupations. The moves so far, mainly involving tighter oversight, are fine but inadequate. Deeper reforms are needed for a program that, while vital to maintain the nation’s competitiveness, has been used to displace well-paid and older American workers with cheap and ostensibly temporary foreign labor and to turn some of those guest workers into virtual indentured servants.

As a candidate, Donald Trump talked out of both sides of his mouth, at different points saying he favored importing skilled guest workers into the United States and saying he didn’t like it, citing well-documented instances of abuse. (Among the worst involved Disney, which required American workers to train their lower-paid foreign replacements.)

Now, as president, Mr. Trump is starting to move. Just as tens of thousands of H-1B applications were filed last week, the administration announced that enforcement agents would intensify site visits to the companies that rely most heavily on the guest-workers program, especially Indian outsourcing firms that use it to import tens of thousands of information-tech workers annually. The goal will be to ensure that the guest workers qualify as “specialty” labor, which is a requirement of H-1B visas.

At the same time, the Justice Department announced it would not tolerate employer misuse of that program to discriminate against or displace American labor.

Employers and some economists are at odds over the extent to which companies face a shortage of American workers to fill tech and other skilled jobs. A frequently cited figure of 500,000 unfilled positions may be somewhat inflated, but there is no doubt that U.S. colleges and universities cannot keep up with the demand for graduates, especially with advanced and highly specialized degrees.

Hence the importance of the H-1B program, which grants 85,000 visas annually to guest workers, nearly three-quarters of them from India — a fraction of the overall applications. Of that number, many have only bachelor’s degrees and are chosen by lottery; just 20,000 are foreign graduates of U.S. universities with advanced degrees.

Reforms are needed on several fronts. For starters, H-1B visa holders already in the country should be allowed to change jobs to prevent their exploitation by employers. More fundamentally, the program should be retooled to ensure that genuinely high-skilled labor is prioritized, not that of entry-level programmers. That may disadvantage the big Indian outsourcing firms that flood the system with applications; so be it.

The current minimum salary of $60,000 for some programmers and other H-1B recipients must also be raised to an amount closer to the prevailing wage for comparably skilled American workers, which is more than $100,000. Otherwise, the visas will be continue to be used in too many cases to push U.S. employees onto the unemployment rolls.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/...story.html (link provided for annotation but the above is the whole article.)

There is also a Brietbart article about a White House meeting on the subject. Plus side the meeting happened, and Stephen Miller seems like a good person to be involved. Downside, no indication of anything solid coming, and Trump didn't even show up for the meeting. So it could be interpreted as trying to appease without doing anything.

Quote:WASHINGTON, D.C. – President Donald Trump’s senior adviser Stephen Miller held a closed door meeting this week at the White House to discuss the controversial H-1B foreign guest worker visa program.

Attorney Sara Blackwell tells Breitbart Texas exclusively that she attended a meeting set up by Miller, saying that Trump was initially expected to attend. Blackwell represents Americans fired by U.S. companies after being told they would be replaced by H-1B labor.

“Stephen Miller was definitely in charge of the meeting,” Blackwell told Breitbart Texas. “And there’s no doubt that this is the same Stephen Miller that we’ve known that’s in the White House. He cares about this issue. He wants to amend it.”

“Since I got involved in this, Stephen Miller has cared about this issue,” Blackwell said. “And now we know, Stephen Miller still cares about this issue.”

Blackwell said the meeting largely focused on what the President and Congress could do for the H-1B visa, but said no reforms were discussed.

“It was not directed at anything,” Blackwell told Breitbart Texas. “We just met for an hour discussing H-1B. That doesn’t mean reform isn’t being discussed.”

That's the first part, there is more at http://www.breitbart.com/texas/2017/04/1...ourt-h-1b/

The Breitbart article includes this quote

Quote:Without the H-1B, computer science job availability in the labor market would be up 11 percent and wages in the tech industry would have increased by five percent, Breitbart News reported

which I think vastly, vastly understates the impact. Five percent impact to wages? I'm confident that the damage done to IT wages by years and years of this program is closer to 50%. Americans are laid off, then have to try to find different jobs, and forced to accept lower pay if they want to make their mortgage payments. Keep cycling through that long enough and "average wages" in IT are in a place so far removed from where they would be without guest workers that no one really knows where they could be. Also we've now had a couple of decades of heavy use of this program, accelerating offshoring (by rapid knowledge transfer) and deliberately giving work experience to non-citizens over citizens. Experienced US IT workers for the most part are beaten down and bleeding and have had no support from any administration from either party in decades. Most of the ones who think things are fine are the 20-something kids who assume they have a career trajectory and don't realize that the trajectory is going to be flat or negative unless something big changes.

(04-13-2017 10:29 AM)Leonard D Neubache Wrote:  

(04-13-2017 10:04 AM)Enigma Wrote:  ...
Guys, do you remember that time that Leonard said "wow, I'm not posting in this thread anymore", then proceeded to post in the same thread about 20+ more times in a week? I wonder who the overly emotional party is here.
...
On a similar note, pay close attention to the many people who now want to shame any sort of nationalism displayed by Americans.

Everybody was all pro-nationalism, anti-globalism a week ago, but oh, how quickly their tunes are switched back to the "ignorant American sheep" insults.

And no, I'm not referring to legitimate, non-snarky criticisms of Trump or US foreign policy, before anyone throws out that strawman again.

You're absolutely right on me going back on my claim I'd bail and correct to call me out on it, but in the end I figured it would be stupid to walk away if it meant abandoning the thread to anti-reason.

And some of the posters here questioning Trump are not anti-American (same with us or against us binary demand) and are in fact very pro-American. Case in point, we wouldn't bother pointing out serious pitfalls in Trump's actions if we didn't give a shit, or worse, if we wanted him to fail.

Non-Americans are quite relevant pundits because we're not getting caught up in the ground-level patriotic fervour that has a tendency to blind people. Claims of emotionalism or defeatism are misplaced. Any of us should care greatly about the outcomes and to care is emotion.

I'll say it for the hundredth time. I hope all my criticisms of Trump turn out to be misplaced, but I'm not going to cuck for the guy on the assumption that he's infallible or that he hasn't been flipped.

This is how you closed the post that I just quoted back to you.

Quote:So it came and went. The last chance to name the beast. The last chance for a bloodless revolution. The last chance to restore freedom without a body count. From here on in it will be disappointment after disappointment, as surely as the sun rises. Trump will get his wall and America will get plane-loads of muslim immigrants instead of truck-loads of Mexican ones.

And by the time the next president takes his place, that wall will be used to keep Americans in, not Mexicans out.

And after declaring that America has been doomed since the first month of Trump's presidency, you've gone on to accuse people who don't share your same nihilistic world view as North Korean-like drones engaging in "anti-reason".

Silicon Valley is globalist territory.

Trump would do well to smash the Zuckerspergs and frame it as a fight for American workers.

I can't see a lot of downsides for that.

If he doesn't do exactly what I say then we'll all know that he was part of a 20 year globalist conspiracy and is actually a lizard person.

It will all be over. Everything will be a lie. All our base will belong to them. The only thing left will be to decide which order we want to eat our children in. I will be on suicide watch, and will never touch another keyboard for as long as I live.

This is my sworn statement, and may lightning strike me dead if I waver from it!

(04-13-2017 10:58 AM)Enigma Wrote:  This is how you closed the post that I just quoted back to you.

Quote:(snipped Cure lyrics)

And after declaring that America has been doomed since the first month of Trump's presidency, you've gone on to accuse people who don't share your same nihilistic world view as North Korean-like drones engaging in "anti-reason".

It was a depressive rant. May Roosh strike the likes from beneath it. It was over the top. Too much. You are correct to a greater degree than I am correct. Lesson learned.

I will try to frame all future criticism in a more level and balanced fashion. I don't want to bum out the other train passengers.

p.s. I'm not even being sarcastic. I'm serious. That post has aged incredibly poorly. I still think Trump's move there was shit but it wasn't apparently as bad as first thought.