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Post by mrsonde on Mar 24, 2016 17:35:18 GMT 1
But there's a huge difference between the sort of vague promises Trump makes In what way are they "vague"? They're far more solid and specific than your manifesto commitments. Do you not know what they are? Yeah, pass that onto Skippy No-Brain, why don't you? [/quote]Trump has no economic program - not one he's revealed to the world, anyway.[/quote] He'll withdraw from NAFTA. He'll cancel the trans-Pacific deal, and the deal with the EU. He'll heavily tax any American company that has outsourced its workforce. He'll reward any American company that has relocated abroad that returns. He'll invest in infrastructure repair and expansion in the US. He'll impose heavy tariffs on countries like China that are currently distorting world trade by their currency manipulation to undermine the American economy. He'll reverse the Obama tax-breaks on corporatons that outsource their factories to those countries, or reward the multi-trillion utterly wasteful and imminent threat to domestic security that's the AGW scam. He'll stop the enormous subsidies the American taxpayer has been paying for decades to Europe and Asia for their defence, and focus all those billions instead on ensuring that America is secure. He'll savagely cut the gargantuan American government public sector so that the current ballooning $19 trillion debt can at last be addressed. All of this he's stated, over and over, explicitly and emphatically. Contrast that with Clinton - the alternative I presume you approve of? What's her economic program? Do you have the first clue? Seeing as the majority of these problems are directly due to her husband's enacted policies, and the President she served under as his Sec State: more of the same, in a nutshell.
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Post by mrsonde on Mar 24, 2016 17:38:06 GMT 1
No, that's not quite what I said. Yes, it is. Stop digging, you ninny. Rubbish!! Dear me, Jean. I'll let you go now, it's all too cruel not to.
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Post by jean on Mar 24, 2016 17:56:34 GMT 1
Well, here's what you wrote: You've seized on a particularly inept and unsubstantiated paragraph that you happen to agree with, but which is obviously so shallow it should have been cut by any competent editor - not written in the first place, by any competent journalist, in fact. The rest, which is reasonable and interesting and well-balanced, you've completely ignored. You think the paragraph praises Trump, do you? If you want damning, though, you could try this, from earlier in the article: ...Trump...is an insult clown who has systematically gone down the list of American ethnic groups and offended them each in turn. He wants to deport millions upon millions of undocumented immigrants. He wants to bar Muslims from visiting the United States. He admires various foreign strongmen and dictators, and has even retweeted a quote from Mussolini. This gold-plated buffoon has in turn drawn the enthusiastic endorsement of leading racists from across the spectrum of intolerance, a gorgeous mosaic of haters, each of them quivering excitedly at the prospect of getting a real, honest-to-god bigot in the White House.
All this stuff is so insane, so wildly outrageous, that the commentariat has deemed it to be the entirety of the Trump campaign...Note that the author never denies that all this is a part of Trump campaign - what he says is that it is not the whole, the entirety of it. And it is not the part (he believes) which attracts most of Trump's followers.
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Post by jean on Mar 24, 2016 18:46:13 GMT 1
This is the trouble with Trump. There may very well be a lot wrong with TPP - I don't know as much about it as I do about TTIP, and there's plenty wrong with that - but Trump attacks it in the easiest of populist and xenophobic terms, which (it turns out) are misdirected anyway. Donald Trump likes to talk about how China takes advantage of the United States economy, so it wasn’t surprising to see him bring up the People’s Republic at the Republican presidential debate in Milwaukee.
When asked a question about the recently released Trans-Pacific Partnership, or TPP, Trump took to bashing China.
"The TPP is horrible deal," Trump said. "It's a deal that was designed for China to come in, as they always do, through the back door and totally take advantage of everyone."
"If you look at the way China and India and almost everybody takes advantage of the United States -- China in particular, because they're so good. It's the No. 1 abuser of this country," Trump said. "And if you look at the way they take advantage, it's through currency manipulation. It's not even discussed in the almost 6,000-page agreement."
There’s just one problem with Trump’s rant on China, as Sen. Rand Paul emphatically pointed out at the debate: China isn’t actually a part of the Trans-Pacific Partnership.
To give Trump the benefit of the doubt, we asked some experts if there is any way China could benefit "through the back door" from the TPP. The short answer: no.
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Post by mrsonde on Mar 26, 2016 20:27:37 GMT 1
Huh? Look, Jean, anyone can go back and read what you wrote, and what you quoted. To try and pretend now that actually you were selecting the one paragraph you agree with, because it barely refers to your own manifesto commitments, is simply laughable. But carry on. Evidence? Where, when, how? AKA illegal immigrants. 11 million people who have crossed the Mexican border from Mexico and Central America. He wants to deport them because firstly, shock horror, this is the law. Not just US law - it's the law in every country on the globe. Yes. Leaving aside the barbarism that muslims are "an ethnic group", what exactly is the objection to this proposal? We can discuss that if you want - Trump is the only politician with the courage and independence to even consider doing so. Obviously, such a move is fully justified and historically well-precedented. America is supposedly currently "at war" with the Taliban and ISIL - did you not know? Do you know what these enemies have in common? Do you know what the US did to German and Japanese citizens during WWII - and Britain, indeed? He's said, quite accurately, that Putin clearly knows what he's doing, and has repeatedly run rings round both Obama and the Europeans. What other "strongmen and dictators" has Trump said he admires, please? God knows what that refers to. The Mussolini?! I'd be proud to be insulted like this from a journalist of this sort of integrity and professionalism. So? As has any politician who ever even raises the question of immigration. Even referring to it is an insult, and a no doubt unintended comliment to such "leading racists". Not that Trump has talked about "immigration" particularly - all he's talked about is illegal immigration. Tell me - is it Green policy to abolish our borders? Apart from "twenty or thirty years in the future, when is we get into power everything will have turned lovely and sweet like the final episode of The Good Life", I mean. Is it Green policy to allow anyone who wants to live here to do so? Is it Green policy to give citizenship to anyone who's currently here illegally? Please tell us - you owe it to the world to make your political proposals clear. There are no haters like the far-Left or the fervent anti-racist (there's such a huge overlap here that the or is pretty redundant.) The sort of people who storm into a private political meeting and start throwing punches, then get effusvely congratulated on every liberal mainstream channel. Evidence that Trump is a "bigot"? Slightest piece of evidence, please? Threepenny gutter journalists like this don't need to apologise for such terms, of course (creepy enough to cover his ass against any defamation charge, you notice?), but then they're a bit more canny than Gordon Brown. Yeah - exactly what I've said. And which he repeats, without apparently the slightest iota of self-awareness! What is so "insane" What is so "wildly outrageous" Can not a single one of you bleeding-heart liberals make even a ham-fist of an argument to support your own hate-filled slurs? Has the level of political discourse really become so polluted by the decades of indoctrination of the post-war liberal-left elite that you're all simply unable to articulate even your own value-system? Simply froth at the mouth with bile and venom as soon as anyone even mentions "immigration"? What he says is that this is less than 5% of it - and he hasn't even shown that it's that, merely repeated the usual mainstream prejudicial distortion of what he's actually said. You know, it strikes me that Trump's intelligence and salesmanship is so out of reach of this sort of hamfisted "commentator" that they're actually doing his work for him. If that's so, I'd guess he has a real chance of beating Hillary easily - and this won't turn up in the polls at all. People are less stupid and gullible than you clearly believe. I suspect that there's a very widespread revulsion at this sort of propagandistic manipulation throughout the whole of middle-America - and all those who are so equally as fed up with it on the Democrat side - a very large number of blacks and latinos included - are in huge numbders going to ditch-and-swith from Sanders to Trump. Can't follow the sense of that sentence. If you mean that his "hate" and "offence of every ethnic group" and being a"gold-plated buffoon" is not what attracts most of his followers - well, duh.
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Post by jean on Mar 26, 2016 23:22:46 GMT 1
I'm just quoting the thoughtful and well-balanced article that came with such a recommendation from you, Nick. You didn't like the first paragraph I quoted from it, so I quoted another. It's your author you're arguing with, not me. Perhaps it wouldn't have been a bad idea to read the article yourself before endorsing it so wholeheartedly. You appear to think that What he [ie the author] says is that this [ie the bigotry, the racism, the buffoonery] is less than 5% of it [ie the Trump campaign]... But he never does say that. That figure is just something you've invented.
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Post by fascinating on Mar 27, 2016 19:23:35 GMT 1
In a poll of Republican voters, they were asked if they support or oppose the bombing of Agrabah. 30% said they were in favour of bombing "it".
Agrabah is a fictional country in the story of Aladdin.
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Post by mrsonde on Mar 27, 2016 22:59:04 GMT 1
In a poll of Republican voters, they were asked if they support or oppose the bombing of Agrabah. 30% said they were in favour of bombing "it". Agrabah is a fictional country in the story of Aladdin. A far too-clever-by-half set-up that means exactly nothing, unless it's that "pollsters" of this pre-engineered type are all utter charlatans that shouldn't be touched with a bargepole by any responsible media. Chris Morris made the same point over a decade ago, and people like you are still falling for it.
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Post by mrsonde on Mar 27, 2016 23:08:54 GMT 1
I'm just quoting the thoughtful and well-balanced article that came with such a recommendation from you, Nick. Yes, you've quoted the bits you agree with, which as I've shown are not in the least thoughtful, and totally ignored the main substance of the article, which was. "My" author? Of course I'll argue with the sort of crap that seems to so persuade you - it's not reasoned, it's not evidenced, it's entirely without merit. I see. You think I endorsed the whole article "so wholeheartedly". Interesting. Deep psychoanalysis is required I think to understand how you arrived at that bizarre conclusion. Or, a far more likely explanation, you don't actually believe what you're saying yourself, you just think people are stupid and can't see through your attempts to manipulate them. No - less than an hour's worth of comment in over twenty hours of speeches he analysed were the figures he cited. I'm not a maths genius, but that seems about accurate.
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Post by mrsonde on Mar 27, 2016 23:32:55 GMT 1
This is the trouble with Trump. There may very well be a lot wrong with TPP - I don't know as much about it as I do about TTIP, and there's plenty wrong with that - but Trump attacks it in the easiest of populist and xenophobic terms, which (it turns out) are misdirected anyway. No, you clearly don't know anything about TPP, and I very much doubt you know any more about TTIP either. Nothing Trump says is "misdirected" - it's exactly spot on, with admirable concision and incisiveness. I can't see anything "xenophobic" about it either - this is the new euphemism for "racist", I take it, now you've so thoroughly worn that term out? It doesn't need to be! Any more than the US needs to make a separate deal with the Swiss. What "experts" are these, then? The same sort of "experts" who are currently being consulted about whether Brexit would be good for British trade, or bad, or for security, or bad, or for keeping immigrants out, or bad? The short answer is, quite obviously and unequivocably, yes. At the moment, for example, it's not really possible for China to do what they've been doing in Europe, dump their over-production of steel at less than cost-price on the American market, thereby driving the home production out of business, as here. After TPP, they will be able to do so: they can just sell it through a shell company in Singapore or Taiwan or Malaysia. Similarly, there'll be absolutely nothing that any President or Congress could do to prevent Ford or GM cars made in China being sold in American showrooms - no penalty or tariff could be applied, even if someone - someone with diametrically opposed beliefs to Obama and Clinton, obviously - would wish to. The first GM cars made wholly in China rolled out last month - that's what GM did with Obama's near-trillion bailout, for "the good of the American workers." At least the Japanese had the sense and politeness and grace to ensure that their incursion into the American car market - again, achieved by blatantly unfair manipulation of trade arrangements, and exploitation of the forgiving, tolerant, and ideologically self-sacrificial attitude of the liberal-left American elite - was partly offset by ensuring American workers were employed, in America, making parts, assembling, even making whole cars to export back to Japan. The Chinese have no such foresight, sense of responsibility, or empathetic dignity: and those directing these corporate leviathans long ago lost anything remotely resembling it.
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Post by jean on Mar 27, 2016 23:40:53 GMT 1
...less than an hour's worth of comment in over twenty hours of speeches he analysed were the figures he cited... I suppose that bit was edited out of the version of the thoughtful and well-balanced article you linked to? Because it certainly isn't there on the page when I open the link.
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Post by fascinating on Mar 28, 2016 9:44:29 GMT 1
In a poll of Republican voters, they were asked if they support or oppose the bombing of Agrabah. 30% said they were in favour of bombing "it". Agrabah is a fictional country in the story of Aladdin. A far too-clever-by-half set-up that means exactly nothing, unless it's that "pollsters" of this pre-engineered type are all utter charlatans that shouldn't be touched with a bargepole by any responsible media. Chris Morris made the same point over a decade ago, and people like you are still falling for it. It means that 30% of of Republican voters support the bombing of a country that does not exist. What do you mean by responsible media? Who would you include on your list?
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Post by mrsonde on Mar 28, 2016 10:07:52 GMT 1
No it doesn't. It means that 30% of the few hundred people they asked who said they were Republicans support the bombing of a place or perhaps even person or organisation they're clearly unsure about. What was the question, what was the context given - they surely didn't just ring up someone and ask "do you support or oppose the bombing of Agrabah?"
It also means that nearly 20% of those people who said they were Democrats also supported such bombing. Given the fact that nearly half of all Americans have a black or latino or middle eastern background, and that the sizeable majority of such ethnic groups are committed Democrats (anti-Republican, to be more accurate), then it's easy to see how that difference of ten or eleven percent arose. Is "Agrabah" Arabic, or African, or Hispanic?
Of course, a much more professionally conducted poll may well support the hypothesis that Republican voters are more inclined to support a strong military, an aggressive defensive posture, and a generally more assertive attitude to how to react when they're assaulted. I suspect most of us would share that intuition. It's hardly earth-shattering; neither does it indicate in the least that Republicans are more dangerous, stupid, or gung-ho than Democrats. It may merely indicate a more rational, pragmatic, and possibly patriotic attitude.
As I say, as it stands the poll "means" absolutely nothing - other than that people will generally say what you want, especially if your question touches upon something that's emotionally moving to them. Morris's point about getting celebrities to condemn the fictional drug "cake" wasn't to take the piss out of gullible celebrities, like Ali G - though that clearly was an entertaining aspect. As ever, his target was the media.
By "responsible media" I mean specifically information outlets that adhere to standards of objectivity in their inquiry and integrity in their communications. There's also a responibility to be aware and reasonably intelligent and educated about what those standards are and what that integrity consists in. Such an obviously deeply flawed exercise as this "poll" shouldn't have been given a second's consideration before being dismissed as the stupid stunt it was. Unless, I suppose, as a well-analysed object lesson to their readers on how easy it is for people to be duped and manipulated.
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Post by fascinating on Mar 28, 2016 10:58:44 GMT 1
Yes, as well as 30% of Republicans supporting the bombing of Abagrah, 20% of Democrats would do also. Scary isn't it? That's about it. This from the Guardian report: "In its poll, Public Policy Polling asked the 532 Republicans: “Would you support or oppose bombing Agrabah?” While 57% of responders said they were not sure, 30% said they supported bombing it. Only 13% opposed it." www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/dec/18/republican-voters-bomb-agrabah-disney-aladdin-donald-trumpSo, is there any news organisation that fits your criteria as a "responsible media".
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Post by marchesarosa on Mar 28, 2016 13:54:01 GMT 1
What about dihydrogen monoxide that dangerous chemical that folk fear? It can burn and suffocate! It can be found in lakes and reservoirs!
HIPPIES? I think these are your average know-nothing "environmentalists".
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