Donald trump. what is your take on him?

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hodad said:
I was reading an interesting revisit of our recent history with North Korea.  Interestingly, as the author points out, NK gained nukes during the "get tough" era of GWB, not during the "appeasement" years.  As the author points out, that might have happened anyway, but the process was most likely speeded along by the saber-rattling tough-guy approach of the Bush team. 
And Trump is the same only sillier/stupider/insaner. 
Also of note:  a similar "appeasement" approach kept Iraq from using/developing WMD (though it didn't stop Bush from lying us into a war.)  And it's also working in Iran (though Trump is trying to screw that one up too.) 

Regardless of the political blame game, no administration has had a successful strategy when it comes to nations trying to get a seat at the 'nuclear power' table. India, Pakistan, China, etc...
It's fair to say all these nations pursuing nuclear weapons see the benefit. N Korea has a terrible economy and just gets clobbered by sanctions.
Luckily, none of the nations that developed nuclear weapons have decided to use them (except one, obviously).  India / Pakistan seemed to calm down in fact. For a country to see economic opportunity is the best way to transition away from war mongering (except maybe in the USA) 
 
dmp said:
Regardless of the political blame game, no administration has had a successful strategy when it comes to nations trying to get a seat at the 'nuclear power' table. India, Pakistan, China, etc...
It's fair to say all these nations pursuing nuclear weapons see the benefit. N Korea has a terrible economy and just gets clobbered by sanctions.
Luckily, none of the nations that developed nuclear weapons have decided to use them (except one, obviously).  India / Pakistan seemed to calm down in fact. For a country to see economic opportunity is the best way to transition away from war mongering (except maybe in the USA)
The larger risk from nuclear proliferation is that some terrorist organization gets their hands on a bomb...  After the collapse of the soviet union, the US spent a huge pile of money and effort encouraging them to secure their sundry weapons spread around.

Pakistan and India are far from calm, it ebbs and flows. A high point was them playing cricket, a low point was recent trouble in Kashmir (a disputed region between the two countries).  Afghanistan (only 60% controlled by their government) is a second front for india to ply against Pakistan (mainly by indirect troublemaking, funding anti-Pakistan interests).

I shared recently that joining the nuclear club seems like the only defense against meddling from world powers (like the US). Gaddafi gave up his nuclear ambitions and paid the price...  We reap what we sow, it doesn't matter what we say, or tweet, what matters is what we do.

Good luck to us and everybody else. The pay me later is coming due.

JR 
 
Gaddafi gave up his nuclear ambitions and paid the price... 

Saddam paid the price too... 

Good luck to us and everybody else. The pay me later is coming due.

The vote for a reality TV star, utterly unqualified and over his head, with the background, judgment, and common sense of immature child, as President of the country with the most powerful military in history, is coming due.    Sorry for the run on sentence.
 
dmp said:
  Keep trying to shill against Democrats, tands. It looks ridiculous I think, but I don't spend all my time reading conspiracy propaganda websites.
Maybe some more "what ifs" about Hillary if she were President? How many babies do you think she would have eaten by now?

No problem, dmp, and you be sure to keep shilling for people who just sell you out, time after time.  :)

As for Clinton, well we'd all be corporate vassals instead of Americans right now via TPP, and well into another optional war in Syria. These two facts alone are enough to make Trump an improvement.
 
https://twitter.com/Pyrmha108/status/895466171444600832
 

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tands said:
As for Clinton, well we'd all be corporate vassals instead of Americans right now via TPP, and well into another optional war in Syria. These two facts alone are enough to make Trump an improvement.

Hard to argue with made up nonsense.  I guess if you base your judgment on fiction, any wingnut could do better. Hillary would have turned into a lizard and eaten babies.  In the words of Rush Limbaugh: "Hilary Clinton wants to abort America!" (real quote)
 
Just because you didn't know about it, that doesn't mean it doesn't exist, dmp.  Keep talking though, it's good.

The song Democrats are now singing about Russia and Putin is one the neocons wrote many years ago, and all of the accompanying rhetorical tactics — accusing those who seek better relations with Moscow of being Putin’s stooges, unpatriotic, of suspect loyalties, etc. — are the ones that have defined the neocons smear campaigns for decades.

The union of Democrats and neocons is far more than a temporary marriage of convenience designed to bring down a common enemy. As this new policy group illustrates, the union is grounded in widespread ideological agreement on a broad array of foreign policy debates: from Israel to Syria to the Gulf States to Ukraine to Russia. And the narrow differences that exist between the two groups — on the wisdom of the Iran deal, the nobility of the Iraq War, the justifiability of torture — are more relics of past debates than current, live controversies. These two groups have found common cause because, with rare and limited exception, they share common policy beliefs and foreign policy mentalities.



The implications of this reunion are profound and long-term. Neocons have done far more damage to the U.S., and the world, than any other single group — by a good margin. They were the architects of the invasion of Iraq and the lies that accompanied it, the worldwide torture regime instituted after 9/11, and the general political climate that equated dissent with treason.

With the full-scale discrediting and collapse of the Bush presidency, these war-loving neocons found themselves marginalized, without any constituency in either party. They were radioactive, confined to speaking at extremist conferences and working with fringe organizations.

All of that has changed, thanks to the eagerness of Democrats to embrace them, form alliances with them, and thus rehabilitate their reputations and resurrect their power and influence. That leading Democratic Party foreign policy officials are willing to form new Beltway advocacy groups in collaboration with Bill Kristol, Mike Rogers, and Mike Chertoff, join arms with those who caused the invasion of Iraq and tried to launch a bombing campaign against Tehran, has repercussions that will easily survive the Trump presidency.

https://theintercept.com/2017/07/17/with-new-d-c-policy-group-dems-continue-to-rehabilitate-and-unify-with-bush-era-neocons/
 
Gulags, dmp. Reappropriation. The works. It would have been awesome.

Advocates for climate action should stop defending the rich

Emily Atkin, in an article for The New Republic, has written the latest in a recurring genre of articles defending rich advocates for action against climate change. A year or so ago, Vox gave us Rich climate activist Leonardo DiCaprio lives a carbon-intensive lifestyle, and that's (mostly) fine; now, Atkin has set out to establish that Al Gore’s Carbon Footprint Doesn’t Matter. In common, both of these pieces take on a popular right-wing talking point: rich liberals who live carbon intensive lifestyles yet advocate for government action against climate change are hypocrites. This, Atkin argues,

    is deceitful faux-populism...climate change advocates who don’t live a carbon-neutral lifestyle aren’t hypocrites because, for the most part, they’re not asking you to live a carbon-neutral lifestyle. They’re asking governments, utilities, energy companies, and large corporations to increase their use of renewable energy so that you can continue to live your life as you please, without contributing to global warming.

Atkin is correct on one thing - the left does need to reckon with the "learjet liberal" rhetoric - but this is not the way to do it. The reason that Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, and other voices on the right have so much success with this attack is that it contains a kernel of truth: climate change is largely the fault of the rich. As Chancel and Piketty detailed a few years back, "top 10% emitters contribute to 45% of global emissions, while bottom 50% contribute to 13% of global emissions." People see Al Gore living a lifestyle that clearly has more of an impact on the world than theirs, and they resent climate change solutions that threaten to make his lifestyle their problem.

Atkin tries to finesse this point by blaming climate change on a series of abstractions - governments, utilities, energy companies, and large corporations - but everyone knows that all of these institutions are controlled by the rich. Later, she leans on an argument by David Vox that the contributions to climate change by individual rich people are insignificant - but this technicality misunderstands the fundamentally classed nature of learjet liberal rhetoric. It works not because people necessarily hate Al Gore in particular, but because people generally resent the rich as a class, and are happy to find targets for their anger.

Fortunately for the left, there's a simple response to this talking point: reclaim class warfare. The fight against climate change has to be understood as a fight against capitalism. If you leave climate action in the domain of private decision making, then of course rich people who make decisions to disproportionately pollute are hypocrites when they call for action against climate change. But if you understand climate change as a fight to take personal discretion out of the equation - to abolish private property, and place these matters in the hands of democratic governance - that's another matter.

Ultimately, the "learjet liberal" rhetoric resembles nothing so much as the old right-wing complaint about leftists who use iPhones. If your solution to the problems of our age just involves better personal decision making in a free market, then yes, there is something inconsistent about criss-crossing the ocean in a private jet or using cheap consumer electronics. But if your solution is to change the system entirely, and to take personal decision-making out of the equation, then it stops making sense to hold one's consumption under capitalism against them.

http://www.carlbeijer.com/2017/08/advocates-for-climate-action-should.html





 
Sniping back and forth aside...
With these beliefs:
- wealth inequality is a major problem
- a major imbalance between labor and capital exists
- wealth brings power, which dominates politics, and the rich get richer
- capitalism optimizes for money only

What is the path forward?

I've been reading about macro economics this past year and see a lot of value in what all the major players were writing
Keynes, Friedman, Hayek, but they didn't experience what we are now living.
Property rights and the opportunity to profit from your hard work and ingenuity are important to a successful society and economy. But how to fix the problems of Capitalism we are now so deeply in trouble with?



 

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You know the answer.

You're reading fascist freaks. Read Marx. Or rather, someone paraphrasing Marx.
 
link=topic=60036.msg843952#msg843952 date=1502402385]
You know the answer.
You're reading fascist freaks. Read Marx. Or rather, someone paraphrasing Marx.
[/quote]

I've read actual Marx.
Keynes was far from a fascist freak.
I'd suggest you read some actual books rather than the websites paraphrasing (propagandizing) them.[quote author=tands
 
In capitalist society, creative activity takes the form of commodity production, namely production of marketable goods, and the results of human activity take the form of commodities. Marketability or saleability is the universal characteristic of all practical activity and all products. The products of human activity which are necessary for survival have the form of saleable goods: they are only available in exchange for money. And money is only available in exchange for commodities. If a large number of men accept the legitimacy of these conventions, if they accept the convention that commodities are a prerequisite for money, and that money is a prerequisite for survival, then they find themselves locked into a vicious circle. Since they have no commodities, their only exit from this circle is to regard themselves, or parts of themselves, as commodities. And this is, in fact, the peculiar "solution" which men impose on themselves in the face of specific material and historical conditions. They do not exchange their bodies or parts of their bodies for money. They exchange the creative content of their lives, their practical daily activity, for money.

As soon as men accept money as an equivalent for life, the sale of living activity becomes a condition for their physical and social survival. Life is exchanged for survival. Creation and production come to mean sold activity. A man's activity is "productive," useful to society, only when it is sold activity. And the man himself is a productive member of society only if the activities of his daily life are sold activities. As soon as people accept the terms of this exchange, daily activity takes the form of universal prostitution.

The sold creative power, or sold daily activity, takes the form of labor; labor is a historically specific form of human activity; labor is abstract activity which has only one property; it is marketable; it can be sold for a given quantity of money; labor is indifferent activity; indifferent to the particular task performed and indifferent to the particular subject to which the task is directed. Digging, printing and carving are different activities, but all three are labor in capitalist society; labor is simply "earning money." Living activity which takes the form of labor is a means to earn money. Life becomes a means of survival.

This ironic reversal is not the dramatic climax of an imaginative novel; it is a fact of daily life in capitalist society. Survival, namely self-preservation and reproduction, is not the means to creative practical activity, but precisely the other way around. Creative activity in the form of labor, namely sold activity, is a painful necessity for survival; labor is the means to self-preservation and reproduction.

The sale of living activity brings about another reversal. Through sale, the labor of an individual becomes the "property" of another, it is appropriated by another, it comes under the control of another. In other words, a person's activity becomes the activity of another, the activity of its owner; it becomes alien to the person who performs it. Thus one's life, the accomplishments of an individual in the world, the difference which his life makes in the life of humanity, are not only transformed into labor, a painful condition for survival; they are transformed into alien activity, activity performed by the buyer of that labor. In capitalist society, the architects, the engineers, the laborers, are not builders; the man who buys their labor is the builder; their projects, calculations and motions are alien to them; their living activity, their accomplishments, are his.

Academic sociologists, who take the sale of labor for granted, understand this alienation of labor as a feeling: the worker's activity "appears" alien to the worker, it "seems" to be controlled by another. However, any worker can explain to the academic sociologists that the alienation is neither a feeling nor an idea in the worker's head, but a real fact about the worker's daily life. The sold activity is in fact alien to the worker; his labor is in fact controlled by its buyer.

In exchange for his sold activity, the worker gets money, the conventionally accepted means of survival in capitalist society. With this money he can buy commodities, things, but he cannot buy back his activity. This reveals a peculiar "gap" in money as the "universal equivalent." A person can sell commodities for money, and he can buy the same commodities with money. He can sell his living activity for money, but he cannot buy his living activity for money.

The things the worker buys with his wages are first of all consumer goods which enable him to survive, to reproduce his labor-power so as to be able to continue selling it. And they are spectacles, objects for passive admiration. He consumes and admires the products of human activity passively. He does not exist in the world as an active agent who transforms it. But as a helpless impotent spectator he may call this state of powerless admiration "happiness," and since labor is painful, he may desire to be "happy," namely inactive, all his life (a condition similar to being born dead). The commodities, the spectacles, consume him; he uses up living energy in passive admiration; he is consumed by things. In this sense, the more he has, the less he is. (An individual can surmount this death-in-life through marginal creative activity; but the population cannot, except by abolishing the capitalist form of practical activity, by abolishing wage-labor and thus de-alienating creative activity.)

more

https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/perlman-fredy/1969/misc/reproduction-daily-life.htm
 
So here's a real life scenario: I worked a fulltime job over the past year and paid the mortgage on the house I own.
I also spent my weekends (and some evenings) building a bathroom addition on the house so it has a second bathroom.
The bathroom addition probably added $20k in value to the house.
Did I earn that value?  Or should it be shared equally with society somehow?
What's wrong with spending your time building and creating things of value?

I think there are problems with Capitalism, but I don't think a planned system of economic distribution works. Why else would I work on adding a bathroom to my house?

 
You actually paid the bank that has your mortgage three times what your house cost. Fix up your bathroom all you want, it's yours. But tell me, is there any reason you should be allowed to own two houses and rent the one you don't need to live in to someone who has none?
 
JohnRoberts said:
Seriously... Bush did it?  If all they needed was a kinder, gentler approach why didn't they stop for pres Obama?  ::)

JR
You didn't read the article I linked to.  The author pointed out that NK may or may not have been cheating on the deal.  The deal actually covered plutonium and not uranium, apparently, which left NK some wiggle room.  And I see why that would be of concern.  However, just because the Bush people said they were cheating, you think I should believe that?  They said the same about Iraq, and that was an absolute freaking lie (well documented) that cost us hundreds of billions of dollars. 

But the truth (that the UN program was working in Iraq) did not suit the  worldview of the Bush people, so lie they did in order to get us into war. 

If things were working in NK (and it did not seem to be doing so badly, even if there indeed were minor transgressions), it did not serve the Bush worldview for that to be true.  And so it wasn't.  And whatever infraction, real or imagined, was used as an excuse to take the "get tough" approach and run as fast as far as possible from those horrible surrender monkeys at the UN. 

And it was at this time that NK got its nukes. 

Now, I'm not going to try to say that it wouldn't have happened otherwise, because I'm not an idiot.  But the Bush approach was at best as ineffective as anything else in NK, and it's fairly likely that it exacerbated the situation. 

It's fair to say that in the case of Iraq, sanctions were very effective and going to war was extremely stupid. 

I think it's also fair to say that the nukes deal in Iran has been working pretty well, and if the new idiot in charge would shut his freaking mouth, things would continue to go well.  And it's a fair bet that taking a "get tough" approach with Iran right now would lead to a much worse outcome than pursuing the current path. 

But I expect none of this means anything to you, because it doesn't agree with your world view, and the real world doesn't matter if it doesn't meet your expectations.  That's just how it is with modern American conservatives.
 
tands said:
You actually paid the bank that has your mortgage three times what your house cost. Fix up your bathroom all you want, it's yours. But tell me, is there any reason you should be allowed to own two houses and rent the one you don't need to live in to someone who has none?
That is a great question. Property rights are OK but "rent seeking" should be regulated by the Government?
Should all apartments be outlawed? People can only legally live in a residence that they own? What if you want to buy a house but you could only afford it if you let your buddy have a room and chip in?
I  agree on this - homeownership rates are dropping as hedge funds etc buy up houses and turn them into rentals. It's not helping anyone. Somehow this and other negatives of Capitalism need to be curtailed.

The bank mortgage isn't nearly as bad as you assumed - I've paid about half the value currently and if I keep up payments for 10 more years I'll have the whole thing paid off and come in at about the current value. Low interest rates have been good.
 
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