trump minus bannon

[ThunderIdeal]

colbert is a funny guy but i'm not taking my news from a satirist.  here is a link i already posted

 

http://original.antiwar.com/justin/2016/06/16/something-going-worse-thought/

 

long story short the USA backs radical islam, it has used them to fight wars since they used bin laden to flood afghanistan with sunni fighters to oust russia but the article discusses more contemporary events.

 

trump is right about this and no shallow commentary will convince me otherwise.

[Halcyon Daze]

You've been posting plenty satire yourself. Your previous post for instance. Satire is a powerful medium.

[BedOSpines]

why is satire a bad thing again?

[ThunderIdeal]

I never said it was, I just elected not to watch that particular satire.  Throughout this thread ive tried to show a bit of a deeper look at the unfolding donald trump campaign than you get from the typical press coverage.  I had already provided a link which sheds some light perhaps on donald's "something more" comment, by comparison any TV coverage is all arm-flapping jackasses

[BedOSpines]

True about the arm-flapping, I can't stand to turn on the tv anymore, seems everything on is nonsense. And I reckon Trump is a step up from Hillary but yea, I never would have guessed Trump would run for president, not in a million years lol it just seems laughable.

[nothinghead]

You might see the above stuff I posted as insignificant muck-raking. But it isn’t only things he’s said that the liberal media dislikes, it’s also things he’s done and policies he’s stood behind. I see examining the persona Trump wants to project as part of understanding his character, which in turn is useful in understanding where he stands on policy. I also don’t think we can divorce character from politics. Politicians don’t check their subjectivity at the door. They bring it into work, work it into policy, and make us live with their now institutionalised shitty hang ups about gay marriage or whatever smoke and mirror issue is the soup du jour. And as Halcyon Daze says, he's a successful salesman (cum-politician) - not exactly a trustworthy ethical type.

 

>free trade is a good thing.

Arguable, but a massive topic I can’t be bothered getting into. We can agree though, I think, that the overwhelming trend for free trade agreements has been deregulation of (usually already poor) working conditions, outsourcing of labour (i.e. “lost jobs”), impoverishment of already poor workers due to a race to the bottom conducted by owners of capital, hazards to worker and environmental health, and so on and so on. Trump’s business practices, as well as (I think I’m remembering this correctly, could be wrong tho) his support for free trade agreements prior to his political career betray him as a supporter of all the above practices, all in the name of corralling the almighty dollar.

 

Sanders, a Jewish leftist, never stood a chance. American politics is a massive cult of personality, and much of the candidates’ “personality” is delivered in large part by their massively wasteful and criminally costly advertising campaigns. I read the other day about a company, Euclidian Capital it may have been, that donated somewhere in the vicinity of 5-7 million to Clinton’s campaign. They don’t have any web presence whatsoever. It’s all about those campaign dollars, but even if Bernie had them what was he going to market? He did an okay job with some jingoistic sloganising, but when it came to policy a vast majority of Americans couldn’t swallow the idea of a national (much less international) common good without it being directly and compellingly linked to their individual desires.

On foreign policy actually Sanders has had a decent amount to say. Some of it, as I say above, is pandering and populist (“I supported the use of force to stop the ethnic cleansing in the Balkans. And, in the wake of the attacks on September 11, 2001, I supported the use of force in Afghanistan to hunt down the terrorists who attacked us.” What a sickening fucking comparison), but other bits have varying degrees of value:

War on Terror: “I voted against the war in Iraq, and knew it was the right vote then, and most people recognize it was the right vote today. The only mission President Bush and his neo-conservative friends accomplished was to destabilize an entire region, and create the environment for al-Qaeda and ISIS to flourish.”

History of socialism: “The US was wrong to try to invade Cuba; the US was wrong trying to support people to overthrow the Nicaraguan government; the US was wrong trying to overthrow, in 1954, the democratically elected government of Guatemala. Throughout the history of our relationship with Latin America we've operated under the so-called Monroe Doctrine, and that said the US had the right do anything that they wanted to do in Latin America.”

Defending non-compelled acts of remote agression: “I think you can argue that there are times and places where drone attacks have been effective, and there are times and places where they have been absolutely counter-effective and have caused more problems when they have solved. When you kill innocent people, the end result is that people in the region become anti-American who otherwise would not have been. So, I think we have to use drones very, very selectively and effectively. That has not always been the case.”

US imperialism: “Where Secretary Clinton and I disagree is the area of regime change. We can overthrow dictators all over the world. The point about foreign policy is not just to overthrow a dictator, it's to understand what happens the day after. In Libya, Secretary Clinton, as secretary of state, working with some other countries, did get rid of a terrible dictator named Gadhafi. But what happened is ISIS came in and now occupies significant territory in Libya. But this is nothing new. This has gone on 50 or 60 years where the United States has been involved in overthrowing governments.”

 

The link you provided is, to be a dick about it, rubbish. The author knows some basic economic principles but is either very confused when it comes to their application, or being sneakily ideological in a way that directs the discussion away from the salient points. He seems to be only taking into account middle-class American finances, and ignoring all else, including other nations’ middle-classes (which, for a middle-class American wouldn’t be entirely surprising). The very premise of the article is either shamefully misleading or laughably ignorant. To state outright that free trade is a threat to the ruling classes is one of those inversions so absurd that it's initially easy to swallow since it actually hurts to try to make sense of. “Free trade is a great concept, as are free markets and freedom.  The problem is none of these things exist in practice because they don’t provide sufficient advantages to the ruling class.” Is he having a laugh? They do exist in practice, and he doesn't bother to give even an idealised, utopic account of how free trade could/should work. I’ll break a couple of points down but won’t go through the whole thing:

“In microeconomic terms, it boils down to risk/reward.  That is, all investments will generate some expected cash flow but will face some risks of realizing those cash flows.” Well no, not all investments generate cash flow, but let’s move past that. Yes, free trade agreements are about maximising shareholder reward by increasing risk to the foreign workers generating the capital through commodity production that investors will then siphon the majority of into their own pockets. In the author’s opinion this process of outsourcing labour in order to maximise shareholder profits results in “the main beneficiary of existing trade agreements [being] corporations.  Second to finish are the undeveloped nations who receive employment and rising wages which translate into higher living standards.  At the shit end of the stick, as per usual, is your American middle class.” Let’s just assume that the author means a “developing nation” or the less appealing “underdeveloped nation,” since “undeveloped nations” don’t really exist, and if they did they wouldn’t have the infrastructure for production. In the absence of actual evidence about how free trade agreements benefit developing nations, I'll use the best historical example we have: since we’re on Trump and free trade agreements, let’s talk about NAFTA and Mexico. Any number of reliable sources (the ones I skimmed to remind myself about the particulars of this were Nicole Hassoun’s “Free Trade, Poverty, and Inequality” and Belinda Coote’s Poverty and Free Trade in Mexico) will show how NAFTAs key stated goals failed. It failed to reduce financial inequality, it failed to deliver the growth it promised (a concept I’m skeptical of, but as a free trade advocate I assume you’re not in the same boat on that), it failed miserably on its supplementary trilateral environmental policy supplement (NAAEC). It not only failed to enrich the US middle-classes, it failed in its goal to create a Mexican middle class (which was hoped for in order to expand the consumer base for the excess commodities being produced in this “free” economic paradigm). The reason? Rather than becoming rich from all the jobs opening up in the production sector, Mexican workers became even poorer and more disenfranchised as wealth flowed, according to plan, upward and northward and national economics and production shifted to cater to US wants, which Mexico apparently saw as a stepping stone to their own economic growth. The Centre for Economic and Policy Research report on NAFTA 20 years on, states a few of the details:

 

“From 1960-1980, Mexican real GDP per person almost doubled, growing by 98.7 percent. By comparison, in the past 20 years it has grown by just 18.6 percent. Mexico’s per capita GDP growth of just 18.6 percent over the past 20 years is about half of the rate of growth achieved by the rest of Latin America.”

“According to Mexican national statistics, Mexico’s poverty rate of 52.3 percent in 2012 is almost identical to the poverty rate in 1994.”

There was a significant increase in unemployment in the same period.

4.9 million Mexican family farmers displaced and a net loss of 1.9 million jobs.

 

And, finally, much to Trump’s chagrin, his country’s trade agreement damaged Mexican lives so badly that even the stepped up border policing (part of NAFTA’s aims) couldn’t stop a massive (79%) increase in emigration from Mexico to the US. This is part of the reason Trump’s combination of anti-Mexican immigration and pro-American labour/manufacturing are such a potent combination for those who don’t understand how trade and immigration are historically interlinked, especially in the US.

 

So who won out of NAFTA? Well, partly China’s economy (but certainly not it’s working class). North American oil industry was a big winner. Mining did pretty alright (it would have anyway, though). Two extremely environmentally costly industries got a boost from free trade, and continue to. Most of the remaining defenders of NAFTA merely cite “the economy” and “US corporations” as the winners of NAFTA (Canada is kind of an interesting case, but let’s leave it out since there are other free trade deals at play between Canada-US that make it complicated). NAFTA concentrated wealth upwards.

 

All of these facts makes the article you linked even more confounding:

“while those who generate investors’ profits through labour and consumption haven’t seen a real wage increase in more than 15 years, the investors have seen an almost 400% increase in real profits.”

 

Sure, that’s true and it’s not fair, but then he says:

 

“That means they are not passing the cost savings onto the consumer through lower prices, they are pocketing the savings!”

Yes, that’s how transnational capitalism functions. How can an economist even be confused about this?

Unfortunately the insinuations that free trade, done correctly, amounts to American financial equality aren’t backed up by any historical evidence of this being the case, nor does the author even offer any convincing theoretical arguments about why it could be the case. He doesn’t seem aware that US corporate capitalism formed around a century ago when dynasty-based industrialism transformed into the speculative stock market. In a few decades the speculation economy became the dominant economic form, and the triumph of venture over industry is one of the factors in the management and maintenance of the class system in the US. Yet to return to a manufacturing economy, as Trump suggests and this author seems to support, would mean massive impoverishment in the US and a steep decline in working conditions. I mean, a free market economy and the capability to manage where manufacturing takes place doesn’t really make sense, does it? In a free market economy the market should determine where manufacturing takes place - and that comes down to where costs are lowest and profits can be highest.

>is it fair to criticise what he wants to do as a political leader based on his actions as a businessman?

Absolutely. He’s shifting from a career in business to politics, and he’s bringing with him all his business principles, anecdotes, nomenclature, metaphors, mindset, and, personality.

 

> like most of us, he has to try and succeed when the rules, the playing field, are designed to favour others.

I’ll have to plain disagree there. I think most would concur that the playing field of American political campaigns comes down to capital clout - something Trump is not short of. The playing field in the US is always designed to favour the rich.

 

> i don't see him as a well connected fatcat

Why not? Do you disagree that business is, in large part, about networking and connections? Do you think Trump made millions in a vacuum, or by the sweat of his own back? I don’t know how you can have the idea that Trump isn’t plugged into the business world. Even if it were true that Trump is winning against the odds of a system antagonistic to his ways and means, he’s garnered a good deal of his popularity by peddling ignorance and vitriol about those people we all love to hate, the lower classes. He hasn’t become popular for being a visionary with an intelligent, unique, or pragmatically workable view on international politics. But if you’re detemined to like him for being an outsider, then you should be even more passionate about Sanders.

 

>[Clinton] is a woman though, so that counts for something in a libtard sort of a way.

I think this probably is to her campaign detriment. It isn’t as if you hear the same self-congratulatory “FIRST BLACK PRESIDENT” bleating about “first woman president.” Although liberal media is nominally anti-sexist, I still think Clinton’s sex will work against her in “the hearts and minds” of bigoted Americans. Have a look at this article for some reasonable points on why (http://time.com/4347962/hillary-clinton-donald-trump-likability/) and, for balance, this stupid piece of writing that confirms your sentiments about US liberal identity politics (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rebecca-bohanan/the-bernie-vs-hillary-bat_b_10132260.html).

 

I'm with you on the role of the US in fostering conflict in the Middle East. If anyone's interested in a history of this packaged in a thought-provoking documentary style, Adam Curtis'

is really good.

[ThunderIdeal]

Just found this which features our own John pilger. It is by no means a difficult read and anyone who still has no idea where im coming from should have a glance

 

https://www.lewrockwell.com/2016/06/john-v-walsh/antiwar-left-likes-trumps-foreign-policy/

[ThunderIdeal]

On 21/06/2016 at 6:55 PM, hashslingr said:

He hasn’t become popular for being a visionary with an intelligent, unique, or pragmatically workable view on international politics. But if you’re detemined to like him for being an outsider, then you should be even more passionate about Sanders.

 

i like sanders as a person, i read all of your quotes in his voice.  he voted in favour of rand's audit the fed bill (which cruz missed, possibly showing him for the dirty snake he possibly is) and i've seen an old video of him tearing into alan greenspan so good on him;  the man has chutzpah.  i like him but i don't think government should be deeply involved in wealth reallocation.  that could be another whole big discussion, and it's actually semi-relevant, but who cares, if you're of that persuasion then i'm not going to argue about it.  i'll just say this, sanders received a lot of small donations which turned out to come from welfare recipients, so his campaigning is an extreme version of what always makes a big slice of australian election campaigns  "vote for me because i'll take money from somewhere else and you'll reap the rewards".

 

sanders has been in government his whole life.  he's an outsider among insiders i guess.  should i be passionate about sanders? i'm passionate about flushing socialism down the toilet but its such a great way to win votes so i'm not holding my breath.  in my view anybody who wants the government playing a large role in their wellbeing is a kind of child who doesn't seek realisation of their place in the world... also, we're not just talking about any old country that may or may not choose socialism, we're talking about america, a country founded on specific ground-breaking ideals

 

-----------------------------------------------

 

does anyone still believe that trump is either racist, unstable/warlike or a bad businessman?

 

 

Edited June 24, 2016 by ThunderIdeal

[-RC-]

4 minutes ago, ThunderIdeal said:

 

  in my view anybody who wants the government playing a large role in their wellbeing is a kind of child who doesn't seek realisation of their place in the world...

 

 

 

 

Couldn't agree more. "But they're here for my benefit, and have my best interests at heart always. They know what they're doing, she'll be right..."

Edited June 24, 2016 by Responsible Choice
spulling

[nothinghead]

^ On the same point, I disagree completely because I see it the other way around: plenty of voters looking for radical change aren't so much looking for the government to fix their lives for them, as to stop interfering with their lives, or to interfere for the common good rather than the status quo. An example might be Indigenous Australian activists who want the government to play a role in their wellbeing (returning land, subsidising communities properly etc.) not because they are childish or can't find their own way in the world, but because the government is already part and parcel of their everyday life and ignoring that fact isn't doing them any favours.

 

We can see through comparative studies that poverty in the first world is largely manufactured. It isn't down to "lazy poor people," stupidity, incompetence, or any of those sorts of scapegoats. We saw clear evidence of the power of this myth, though, in Greece's financial crisis where the dodgy financial management by the state was blamed on "lazy southern Europeans." Or in the subprime disaster in the US where, again, rich people making dodgy deals for personal gain lead to poor people being blamed for being stupid enough to overextend their finances (though, of course, looking at what actually happened, it was the irresponsible trading of collatoralised debt obligations and other sneaky tricks that led to the subprime crisis - factors that a majority of non-economists had no way of finding out about or understanding fully). In my view anyone who thinks about governance strictly in terms of individuality and self-realisation is missing the point of governance, which is essentially to manage policies that ensure society runs relatively smoothly (rather than to facilitate individual gain).

 

There's also the point about how we want governments to interfere in our lives. Libertarians are rabidly against government intervention, except when it comes to agreements like TPP which suit their ideology. Often such libertarian views are passed off as natural (no trade restrictions brings about an organic market) when they are actually just as manufactured as trade embargoes, or any other governmental regulation. You only need to see the number of pages in the various TTIP documents to realise that Free Trade is anything but an organic market paradigm.

 

> i don't think government should be deeply involved in wealth reallocation.

 

That's interesting to me since it's something I've come to take for granted. Are you against/complacent about wealth equality in general, or do you just not think that those sorts of measure should be within the purview of the state?

 

I don't understand why socialism is a recurring issue in US politics. The nation has never been socialist and it doesn't seem likely that they'll become so in the foreseeable future. Look at how divisive an issue as simple as health care became. Myself living in a country that has had a rapid erosion of socialist gains in healthcare, housing (close to 0% homelessness), education, crime, and has replaced these with US style individualistic politics that lead to corruption and high level mutual back scratching, increasing poverty, increasing crime, decreasing standards of education and healthcare, homelessness, dramatic opening of the gap between rich and poor - which is a key cause of social unrest and dissatisfaction - and so on, I'm often confused when people are dead against socialism (with the exception of wealthy people who've forged a personal narrative about how they pulled themselves up by their own bootstraps and why can't everyone else). The main downside I see with it is that it makes it difficult to become obscenely rich, but I'd much rather live in a society with content neighbours than have the chnce to rise above them with wealth. What is the problem with functional socialist democracies?

[ThunderIdeal]

before i even finish reading your reply, australian aboriginals are exempt from my statement for now and are certainly owed a helping hand by the country as a whole!

 

libertarians probably agree with aspects of the TPP.  i'm not an expert on these agreements (how could i be?) but there's little doubt in my mind that they (all of them) are some kind of extension of cronyism under the guise of free trade.  a free market by definition doesn't require a secretly-authored encyclopedia of legalese. 

 

(i appreciate you taking the time to contribute thoughtfully but it is a large topic, i can see many ways it might pertain to the thread but ultimately i only have a certain amount of energy for this thread so i don't have much to say unless we narrow it down a bit lest this turn into the most epic of mass-debates)

 

Are you against/complacent about wealth equality in general, or do you just not think that those sorts of measure should be within the purview of the state?

 

i have an entire rationale behind why i think socialism is dumb which i constructed bit by bit.  it isn't stored at the front of my brain in a digestible form for online consumption, partly because there must be better explanations littering the web (i wonder if i googled 'how dumb is socialism' what that search might yield) but mainly because there's nothing in it for me.  if theres nothing in it for me then fuck it i'm a lazy person..... but no, that's not my argument!  and i don't blame lazy people for collecting welfare, i blame governments for offering it.  capitalism is broken in practise (of course i'm against astronomical wealth inequality) but socialism to me is broken in principle, because a government in the business of wealth redistribution distorts the market that drives their revenue, becomes itself bloated and inefficient beyond redemption (governments naturally do this, let alone when it's their mandate to do so), saddles enterprise with tax and ultimately fosters a population that REQUIRES their care, and that last one is the clincher. 

 

anyway, is there a functional socialist democracy, one that has stood the test of time i mean?  it's not really a fair question since IMHO there aren't many examples of functional governments.

Edited June 24, 2016 by ThunderIdeal

[-RC-]

Plenty of voters are looking for radical change, but they are largely insignificant to the vast majority that think one of the two major parties ( or three even) can 'fix' the 'unavoidable' backpedals of their predecessors. Those with the most cash get the top spot. That's empirically true in the U.S., and that simply comes down to the fact that the more people see and hear your spiel on the telly, the more they believe it. If that isn't true, why does advertising comprise so much of any campaign's budget? Because it has no effect? Why is it a battle of the wallets in the U.S. then?

 

Not wanting the government interfering in my life and wellbeing stems from, FOR ME, the belief that the more governance we have, the less beneficial it is for the people. Indigenous Australians are case in point: Before they had the 'proper' governance they prospered and were at one with the natural world around them, wanting for nothing. Since they have had the 'proper' governance they have been straight fucked, and have as a result been wanting for centuries ever since. Poverty is manufactured, because you cannot have the rich without the poor. It's yin and yang yo.

 

In that vein:

 

The highest type of ruler is one of whose existence the people are barely aware - Lao Tzu

[nothinghead]

Fair play Thunder.

 

The usual example of a modern, functional social democracy is the Nordic model. You can check out this document for a rundown on it. Unfortunately along with the economic globalisation the model embraced came its death knell since such systems require a critical mass to function - part of the reason proponents of US capitalism were so paranoid about communism. An important point to note about the Nordic model is that it didn't decline so much because of internal contradictions or failures, but because of external factors related to globalisation.

 

But I agree with you that we have few examples of high-functioning governments, and when they do appear high-functioning it's fleeting and has plenty of negative consequences. For instance, the postwar US economic boom that I believe is the target period of Trump's "make America great again"(?) (sounds a bit like Howard and picket fences), was due in large part to military technologies being deployed in commercial/civilian life, and similar transitions with companies like Monsanto going from wartime torture gasses to mass producing DDT, PCBs, before switching back to inhumane chemical weapons like Agent Orange and other environmentally hazardous substances.  The coalescence of the military and public spheres paved the way for a permanent war economy that has, in large part, supported US hegemony ever since. My point is (and this is not directed at you, Thunder, since you've made clear already that you're not an advocate of this) that people are often quick to point out the flaws in socialism or other potential systems of governance, but conveniently ignore the failures of capitalism, or write them off as collateral damage. Part of this collateral damage includes climate change and mass extinction.

 

RC it's worth noting in light of your post that the Nordic model largely left indigenous peoples (Sami) out, and major economic enterprises like mining continued to nick their land and displace them. So yeah, not trying to claim here that an economic system can resolve all our ethical dilemmas, but it can provide a framework in which it's at least possible to address them.

[ThunderIdeal]

your name was racketmensch, yes?  there no longer seems to be a 'username history' function.

 

i thought to myself after posing the challenge, hmmm probably sweden, and had a little look at the source of their prosperity (since wealth redistribution relies upon extant wealth).  it's actually a good example, they're nothing if not exceptionally prosperous.  look at their neighbour though, norway, their wealth comes right out of the ground so thats a great scenario for socialism (australia is somewhat similar).  venezuala?  mucho crudo, good times, good times.  when the lifeblood of these socialist nations ceases to flow (or fetch a good price) they're in biiiiig trouble.

 

although we're all in big trouble.

 

in case anyone else is reading this, america's permanent war economy includes actual permanent war, which is handy for enforcing the petrodollar which is also largely responsible for supporting US hegemony.

 

anyway, i don't brush aside the failures of capitalism.  if i did maybe i wouldn't be excited about political change.  capitalism works in principle, i think, and getting to the point where it works in practise is who knows, achievable one day?  meanwhile if a few small countries want to be exemplary socialist paradises then who am i to thumb my nose at them, i wish them good fortune.  i've begun reading the document on the nordic model.

 

(sorry for wanting to flush them down the toilet earlier)

Edited June 24, 2016 by ThunderIdeal

[ThunderIdeal]

bernie just sold out to clinton

[nothinghead]

Yep that was one of mine.

 

>when the lifeblood of these socialist nations ceases to flow (or fetch a good price) they're in biiiiig trouble. /although we're all in big trouble.

 

That's true, although it's true of any economy, whether it's primary resource based, tech sector, manufacturing etc. Once either supply and/or demand dries up, you're in trouble. The U.S. ticks all three of those boxes, which lends it more stability than Norway's primarily petroleum-based economy. Although, Norway is a much much small country with a lot of oil, and unlike a lot of wealthy nations does not run at a deficit. But Norway's socialist reforms predate their discovering how much worth of natural resources they sit on. Finland, not a nation rich in natural resources on a scale comparable with Norway, is regularly put amongst the top education systems in the world. Danes and Icelanders do pretty well for themselves too.

[ThunderIdeal]

http://buchanan.org/blog/trump-found-formula-125372

 

i like this chapter from your nordic model document.:

 

chapter 1.5 many proposed solutions are unworkable

 

i'm not sure who wrote that but shortsighted short term solutions not ideal?  basic concept that doesn't get nearly enough play.

[ThunderIdeal]

News from liberal paradise Sweden

 

http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/8375/sweden-rampant-sexual-assaults

[nothinghead]

Just to be pedantic liberalism and socialism are by no means interchangeable terms, if that's what's being implied. And to be clear, social democracy in Sweden looks nothing like it did 2,3,4 decades ago. It's still mostly there in infrastructure, but not so much in spirit anymore, and it is being replaced by a more capitalist democracy (can I put those words together?). What I mean by "in spirit" is if you look at the social democrat party's shift in policy over the last decades they are no longer the same party. Like how Labor is no longer so much about working class ideals and "putting the people first." So the current situation in Sweden is not the best one to get an idea of a working social democracy from, I wouldn't think. 

 

But yeah, misogynistic crime seems pretty rife in Sweden. It's worth keeping in mind that Sweden is thought to have a higher rate of reporting sexual assault (possibly because it has a tradition of better equality between the sexes compared to a lot of places - a tradition it would be sad to see eroded by crimes like these) than most places, but that doesn't change the fact that those reports appear to be becoming much more frequent. In fact all sorts of crime seems to be up in Sweden - you read of gang related shootings all the time, something that used to be reserved for bikies but now happens all over the shop. Well, in certain specific parts of the shop, anyway.

[ThunderIdeal]

Im aware, else I would have used the much catchier (and telling?) "socialist paradise".  I gather Sweden like Europe generally is very liberal, and I like liberal in theory, for instance the way conservatives fear homosexuality/drugs/everything and cling to religion... Ugh..  Issues that are secondary to economy IMO (on which our governments sell us out be they left or right) but I feel like liberalism is hijacked by this childlike naivety/idealism and political correctness...  

 

Its a seperate issue to our discussion of welfare but it belongs in the Trump thread, Cuz.. In case you skimmed the article it specifically blames immigrants who seem to be getting off pretty easy, and although its a bullet list it doesnt touch all of the issues.

 

The Swedish police came up with a "dont grope me" wristband and a compelling hashtag.  Way to protect your young girls Sweden.

 

Im not going to throw my ugly opinion around excessively, draw your own conclusions.

 

Edited July 8, 2016 by ThunderIdeal

[nothinghead]

Nah from what I've read you seem to be on the money.

 

One point I'll add is, yeah Sweden seems to be pretty liberal, except on drugs. They've got gay marriage and are extremely secular, by and large, and hit a lot of those liberal targets. But try to get anything stronger than sunscreen and you're out of luck. Their next-door-neighbour Denmark has also had a strong socialist tradition and again still has a lot of that in place, but goes completely the other way on stuff like drugs, political correctness, immigration etc.

[ThunderIdeal]

This is MUST READ. Not about Trump.

 

http://www.garretgalland.com/passing-parade/how-george-soros-singlehandedly-created-the-european-refugee-crisisand-why/

[ThunderIdeal]

The Donald is on fire folks.  He just laid into hillary at the party convention.  Barring any funny business (eg propogandists already talking about the need to assassinate or oust him in a coup if he wins so surely electoral fraud would also be justified??) Trump steamrolls Clinton in the election.  Even if he doesnt he has changed the Republican party, hes changed the world.  He smote jeb bush like a bug, it was embarrassing, and for that alone hes a champ in my eyes.  What a bloody champ.

Edited July 22, 2016 by ThunderIdeal

[DiscoStu]

3 hours ago, ThunderIdeal said:

The Donald is on fire folks.  He just laid into hillary at the party convention.  Barring any funny business (eg propogandists already talking about the need to assassinate or oust him in a coup if he wins so surely electoral fraud would also be justified??) Trump steamrolls Clinton in the election.  Even if he doesnt he has changed the Republican party, hes changed the world.  He smote jeb bush like a bug, it was embarrassing, and for that alone hes a champ in my eyes.  What a bloody champ.

 

he's already had everything the left can throw at him

 

- constant negative press

- incessant lies

- completely ignoring clinton

- assassination attempts

- violence from clinton/sanders supporters against trump supporters

- character assassination of his family

- "double agents"/people inside the republican party trying to scuttle his campaign

 

and probably more i can't think of, but he continues on and is now leading clinton in some states, and in others clintons lead is rapidly diminishing. i don't know if people genuinely like trump or they just hate the lizard queen that much. either way trump is a sure thing, there's literally nothing the left can throw at him now he hasn't withstood already. they're all out of ammo, and no ones even began to attack clinton yet.

 

 

[DiscoStu]

1 minute ago, DiscoStu said:

electoral fraud would also be justified

 

this is the only thing they have left which they haven't already tried. i wouldn't put it past clinton to commit fraud on a mass scale to achieve power.