Make the US Politics Thread Great Again

Creative and cutting.

mm

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Interesting take:

Swedish leading daily Dagens Nyheter this morning:

“In the most solemn hall of world politics, the president of the USA is received as a laughing stock.

Top diplomats—professionals trained to keep a straight face—can no longer be bothered to pretend to be impressed when Trump plays at being a statesman.”

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Don’t really get the Trump obsession, yeah he’s a carnt but they’re all carnts. At least Trump is an open carnt.

U.S civilians were so sick of Cheney and Bush screwing them over the opposition got voted in, in a landslide on the promise of ‘change’ yet there was no change. Status quo for the elites, the corporatists and Wall Street, that’s why Donald Trump is Prez.

Trump didn’t start the Iraq war;
or the Libyan war;
or the Syrian war;
he didn’t ask for a 700bn Pentagon budget
Trump wasn’t responsible for a right-wing healthcare plan that didn’t cover 30 million Americans.

Who was the guy that gutted welfare, exploded the prison population and deregulated the banks? Oh yeah, that’s right - good ol’ Blinky Bill. Bush couldn’t even get NAFTA through, the Dems have become so right wing that they’ve pushed through ■■■■ that Reagan would only do in his wildest and wettest dreams.

So Trump is purely a symptom of a larger problem. The problem being when two parties turn their backs on the American working class. Trump actually ran to the left on H Clinton on trade and foreign policy. The Dems had a filibuster proof Senate and what did they do? They did nothing progressive. Gave the States a right-wing healthcare plan (no public option), they didn’t break up the banks, they made 'em bigger, they didn’t end the wars, they went from 2 to 7. They kicked 5.1 million families out of their homes to save the banks.

It must be ■■■■■■■ bleak being an American citizen because this ■■■■ isn’t going to go away anytime soon.

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Dems had a filibuster proof senate for a few months and gave healthcare to about 20% of the population for the first time in their lives. They also saved the car industry. Then Kennedy died.

They then tried to push a big stimulus package through and the republicans said no. And kept saying no.

Then the US public voted in republican house and senate and it was all over.

Also interesting how you absolve Trump of any responsibility for the Republican health care plan, and ignore the huge giveaway to the rich that was his tax cuts. I’m sure his trade war will be good for the USA too.

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Quite a day here today with Dr. Ford testifying about her assault at the hands of Kavanaugh. And then, Kavanaugh showing his true demeanor in his testimony. I have never seen more folks at work glued to a live telecast on their phones and laptops.

He will likely still get voted in tomorrow.

Here is a bi-partisan look at the “change” with good and not so good.

It isn’t quite as simple as that. US pollies vote along party lines much less than Aust pollies. Just cos there were a filibuster-proof majority of people who list ‘D’ next to their names in the Senate, doesn’t mean that they could do what they liked. A significant number of that majority are quite conservative, and an ever more significant number are beholden to big-money donors and wouldn’t have gone along with any serious attempt to rein in corporate excess, and just as many are so petrified by the desire avoid allegations of ‘weakness’ on security that they’d overcompensate by voting for any war anywhere. Getting a vote through the US senate for serious structural reforms is like herding cats.

Obama was a billion times better than Trump, but he still managed to set the stage for Trump because he (and Clinton, and Biden, and basically everyone who’s a holdover of the Clinton administration) has not yet come to terms with the fact that a lot of what was accepted truth about economics and politics in the 90s was crap. Deregulation and competition and priviatisation does not inevitably lead to a promised land greater efficiency, it often leads to cartel power and employees being screwed over. The inevitable result of open-borders trade and finance is not just cheaper consumer products and the ‘exporting of democracy’, but also the exporting of manufacturing jobs to third world countries, rampant tax evasion by international companies, and providing totalitarian regimes like China with a massive economic leg-up. The inevitable result of sending US forces to trouble-spots all over the world is not just peace and freedom, but massive expense and getting the US involved in dozens of grubby little guerilla wars in which there are often no good guys. The inevitable result of tech and the online revolution wasn’t just a golden-age of communication and availability of information, but also a boon to con artists, propagandists, and vicious extremists who could now find each other and their victims much more easily and anonymously.

I’m a bit more sympathetic to Obama’s foreign policy mistakes than his domestic ones. He tried hard to avoid a lot of the excesses of the Bush interventions, and he shot down Clinton when she wanted to intervene more heavily in Syria. And he reserved his interventions to places where there was already a significant popular uprising against a totalitarian govt, and he didn’t go in with ground troops. So he stepped back a little, but he was too cautious and stuck in the conventional wisdom to step back enough.

Domestically, his caution was much more destructive, in a passive, sleepwalking-towards-disaster way. If you want a single image that would have won the Dems the 2016 election, it would have been a parade of shackled bankers in orange jumpsuits, heading off to jail for their roles in the GFC. But he wimped out on this. Everyone got the message loud and clear - if you’re powerful, the system won’t touch you. HSBC knowingly laundered over a billion dollars of drug cartel money, and nobody even got fired for it, and Obama’s justice department was fine with that, He was too weak to make it clear to people on the ground that the system worked for them, so people voted for a guy who promised he’d smash the system.

And, yeah, there were other reasons. The republican party at the moment is an utter trainwreck of awfullness and awful people will always vote for them because of that, but this doesn’t mean the dems can just coast. They have to grapple with the unintended negative consequences of the stuff that 20 years ago they believed (even if it was in good faith) were unalloyed positives. This is a hard thing to do in a political/media environment that brands people as liars or hypocrites if they ever change their mind on anything, but it’s gotta be done. “Free markets and free trade and strengthen business and cut regulation and workplace flexibility” ain’t a vote winning slogan any more. People have met these things and know what they really mean now.

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It was amazing to watch. No such thing as compassion or common sense with some of those senators.

Just saw this, pretty hilarious. I don’t know who this guy is or what he stands for, but must be pretty bad to have your family do this.

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Haha the guy blames Obama for brainwashing his family.

The US is having close to full employment and wage breakouts.

On a measure of the economy and how its serving the people, I would have Trump’s America in a heartbeat.

It’s why he will win another term.

I find it remarkable its still going so well considering the trade war. I guess companies are literally moving back to the USA to manufacture.

Good on him.

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I question your stats.

Their stock market is in a bubble thanks to stock buy-backs made possible by his tax cuts. Trumps America is a house of cards and when it comes tumbling down its gonna hurt a lot of people

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His defence was that “every family has its crazy aunts or uncles”. I’m pretty sure if half a dozen of your own siblings publicly condemn you, then you are the crazy uncle.

Not talking about the stock market.

I’m talking about people in jobs.
Real rising wages.

And as a result they have rising costs(inflation and housing costs). Hence the driving up of US interest rates.

Of course there is the Obama started it brigade, but the fact is Trump is making America(American manufacturing and protecting their IP) great again. Which is exactly what he promised to do.

Take away the outrage at his sexist comments and dodgy private business dealings or that he exhibits cronyism(I’d argue though cronyism is rife everywhere in US and Australian politics) and otherwise the American economy is doing quite well in servicing the people…

I wish we had US housing affordibility(outside of the obvious hotpots like silicon Valley or New York) and rising wages.

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I was under the impression that wages hadn’t increased, can you send a link?

A stock market crash will be a blood bath and will have a huge impact on jobs and wages.

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Yep, I’ve seen zero data to show the tax cuts have had any impact on wages. I’m happy to look at anything that shows positive impacts of Trump’s policies. So far I’ve not seen any data that supports the Republican position.

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Which companies are literally moving back to the USA?
An increase in import tariffs on intermediate goods serves to increase the costs of manufactured goods for domestic consumption (hence a tax on domestic consumers) and makes the goods less competitive on the export market.
Trump is claiming the measures are taken for security purposes. However the measures may drive some domestic producers offshore.

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Harley Davidson moving all production bound for Europe out of the US to save the tariffs Trump imposed killing off their business.

As the economy is reaching full employment there has been some upwards pressure on wages. But Obama started this, the entire world economy is strong, and Trump dumped trillions of tax cuts into it. No wonder it’s doing well, especially as the trade war hasn’t bitten yet.

Not sure how someone can claim the minimal improvement under Trump is worth anywhere near the deficit spending he’s done. Especially before we see the impact of his trade war.

Okay, so unemployment is very low in the US - basically at its lowest since at least the late 60s/early 70s. That’s actually pretty impressive. But is it down to Trump? Under Obama, it went from a post GFC peak around 10% down to 4.8%. Under Trump, it’s currently 3.9%.

Are wages going up? Yes. Because unemployment is incredibly low, it’s how that works. Interestingly, wages growth isn’t particularly high - particularly compared with pre-2000s rates. It’s a more flexible (read: favourable to business) labour market these days - more part time/casual employment, less security.

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