Political Roundtable Part XIII

[sfam]

It's like Kaepernick kneeling anyone athletes should be allowed to have their opinions. Fowler's comments were not inflammatory - the comments back, not so much.

It is one of the biggest concerns I have with this country right now - is the lack of free speech.

We should consider this when we have the dialog in this thread - so much of the country never gets to have these kind of dialogs.

Just a minor change to this, I don't think its the lack of free speech - we have tons of that. What we lack are safe spaces for dialog for those with differing views. This is the essence of peacebuilding - to create the conditions for actual dialog to occur. This is a necessary condition for bridging differences.

In many places, peacebuilders can can literally take years to get the conditions necessary where actual dialog can occur. Some of the really cool examples are in partially connected environments. An example is where peacebuilders will give one ethnic group - a set of villages - simple ways to record videos of themselves, and then will take and play those videos in a jimi-rigged drive in movie theater to the other ethnic group and play those videos, and then allow that group to record their reactions and then them back. This is done well before they ever advocate face to face discussions, for instance.

[sfam]

To say Trump HAS NOT sexually assaulted women, which prompted my response - in addition to dismissing Trump's own words where he says he does this without permission, where he says he walks in on women changing because he owns the pageant and all the rest, you have to dismiss all of these women who came forward. This list missed those that came after the middle of October, but I think you get the point. These are not new stories, never have been.

Spoiler:

Again, some people still believe Bill Cosby is without fault, so I don't doubt the power to suspend disbelief. But none of these people benefited from coming forward. Quite the opposite in fact- they were hounded by Trumps Trolls.

Trump has been a target for 40 years because he's rich and a known womanizer. The fact that some unsubstantiated allegations exist means nothing. And any 10-year-old allegation that came forward in the past year involving known Democrat operative attorneys like Gloria Allred are HIGHLY suspect.

Every one of those instances that could conceivably be characterized as "assault" have been vehemently denied by Trump and there is no proof of any of them whatsoever. Most are highly suspect because they occurred in public places but have no witnesses, or the allegations came forth many years later after Trump was on the verge of winning the presidency.

I'm not saying Trump is a saint. There is no doubt in my mind that he has spent much of his life objectifying women. I just don't think it's uniquely awful or even all that surprising. I'd say his behavior is roughly in line with about half of the rich and famous people in Hollywood and politics. When you are rich, powerful and reasonably good looking, you get used to many women throwing themselves at you and you eventually learn to treat all of them with much less respect. It's certainly not a good character trait, but it's not the same thing as assault.

So... here's what you said, nate:

1. "The fact that some unsubstantiated allegations exist means nothing." -- "Some," nate? Haven't there been quite a large number of them? Hasn't he in fact stated explicitly that he engages in this activity repeatedly? So... how does that combination "mean nothing" pray tell?

2. "any 10-year-old allegation that came forward in the past year involving known Democrat operative attorneys like Gloria Allred are HIGHLY suspect." I.e. they're suspect in that they come from a political enemy -- at least that's what I take you to mean. Then again, we wouldn't expect to see them coming from his political allies, would we? Are allegations of corruption against the Clintons also "HIGHLY suspect" if they come from political enemies of the Clintons? In short, don't negative allegations often (maybe usually) come from an enemy rather than a friend? Does that mean they are "suspect" by definition?

Should they be cast aside, or should the issues be investigated? Lets say corruption in the case of the Clintons & sexual assault in the case of Trump? Both? Neither? Only investigate the Clintons? Only Trump?

3. "Every one of those instances that could conceivably be characterized as "assault" have been vehemently denied by Trump and there is no proof of any of them whatsoever." If denied, then eo ipso false? If denied, then eo ipso not worth investigating? Oh, and isn't admitting & bragging about it a kind of "proof?" If not of any particular one of these instances "vehemently denied by Trump" then a fortiori of others? No? He's lying, & the women are too?

4. "I'd say his behavior is roughly in line with about half of the rich and famous people in Hollywood and politics." Forgive me for asking, nate, but how the hell would you know, if you don't mind explaining...?

5. "When you are rich, powerful and reasonably good looking, you get used to many women throwing themselves at you and you eventually learn to treat all of them with much less respect. It's certainly not a good character trait, but it's not the same thing as assault."

Tell me this: where did anyone suggest that what you describe would be the same thing as assault? But, once again, in this thread not for the faint of heart, how the hell would you know whether that's true? & how would you know whether/& how often women have been "throwing themselves at" Donald Trump? How the hell would you know what Donald Trump eventually learned about how "to treat all of them?"

In fact, you don't know any of this stuff, do you nate? In fact, you just made it all up. It's a common debating technique -- to shift the ground of what's being discussed. In this case, you confected a little tale that turns Donald Trump's admitted -- hell, self-proclaimed! -- pattern of putting his hands on women's privates into the unfortunate result of "women throwing themselves at" him.

Good job, nate: you just made them, the women, responsible for Trump's self-proclaimed groping. You might want to ask yourself whether you really want to do that. Whether you want to sink to that in order to defend this guy.

5. "Most are highly suspect because they occurred in public places but have no witnesses, or the allegations came forth many years later after Trump was on the verge of winning the presidency." But, neither of those facts mean a thing. The first is false as a generalization; many occurred in not at all public places.

The 2d, that women made the allegations public when doing so could harm the person who assaulted them, doesn't make them suspect either. Do you think it's easy for a woman to come out and say "that 'rich & powerful' (to use your designation) man assaulted me?" Or do you think it might be a difficult thing to do? Seems to me that when you feel maybe you can actually get back at the perpetrator might be the time you screw up your courage. Would that be hard for you to understand?

None of the above proves that Donald Trump did or didn't do anything, of course. And "where there's smoke there's fire" is neither legally significant nor always true.

Hence, if you like, you can continue to dismiss all this & blame women for how Donald Trump brags that he treats them. But, in that case, it might be sensible to avoid trying to take the higher moral ground anywhere else in this thread. The moral grime with which you'll have covered yourself doesn't come off that easily.

One thing strongly favoring most accusers, they have associates or friends they shared their distress when the incident occurred. To say that someone made up a story, say 30 years ago, shared it with someone who remembers it 30 years later really strains credulity.

Again, people will overtly disbelieve evidence right in front of them. Trump stated in his own words that he gropes without permission. That his exact behavior has been corroborated by scores of women should concern all of us. The fact that Nate is probably right - that many men in positions of power probably engage in predatory behavior does not make me feel better about this.

[SUPERBALLMAN]

Watch on YouTube

[payitforward]

My personal experience is after putting a Make America Great Again sign in front of my home I had the sign and my mailbox smashed. I also received an anonymous letter delivered by mail which was filled with profanities calling me an A$$ Hole and rambled on about how Trump was as evil as satan.

Oh he's much worse than Satan... Hell, even Putin is worse than Satan....

No, really, what I meant to write was this -- did the dork who wrote the letter include a return address? If so, you can write him back. You know... be loving, peaceful, prove how wrong he is. Oh, and make him pay to fix the mailbox! No... you described "an anonymous letter." Too bad.

I'm no Trump fan, but I hope you responded by putting up an even bigger sign!

Thanks, no it had no return address, and the letter itself gave me the impression it was written by someone with mental problems, very rambling, lots of profanity and references to God and the bible. I was actually worried something bad might happen.

But I think the letter, mailbox and sign were done by different people. I also had some trash thrown, and the occasional person yell F you as they drove by. I did tape the sign and put it back up btw.

The letter does sound like it was from someone disturbed. I'd say the extraordinarily high level of tension right now may make the disturbed even more disturbed.

Middle of last year, someone opened a boutique distillery in my area. He took one of the signs that has "Trump" on one line and "Make America Great Again" on the line below it, and he cut off the "T" & "p" in Trump, leaving "Rum -- Make America Great Again."

Now that I thought was an imaginative way to deface a sign!

[Dat2U]

Remember when I said Milo will reap what he sows? Well now his career is basically over. If you still support him something is very wrong with you.

[closg00]

Oh-yeah, sweet sweet Karma has found Milo, book deal canceled and his ability to troll for cash has been severely damaged if not destroyed.

So in the future we know that conservatives will give a warm welcome to racists, misogynists, and xenophobes, but they draw the line at advocates of pedophilia. Grateful for the little things.

[Benjammin]

Don't worry, Hollywood will still support a pedophile if they're talented and part of the group.

Sent from my XT1575 using RealGM mobile app

[payitforward]

One thing strongly favoring most accusers, they have associates or friends they shared their distress when the incident occurred. To say that someone made up a story, say 30 years ago, shared it with someone who remembers it 30 years later really strains credulity.

Again, people will overtly disbelieve evidence right in front of them. Trump stated in his own words that he gropes without permission. That his exact behavior has been corroborated by scores of women should concern all of us. The fact that Nate is probably right - that many men in positions of power probably engage in predatory behavior does not make me feel better about this.

It seems obvious to me that Trump is a person of low character in many ways. This is utterly unconnected to his politics. There are people of low character on all points of the political spectrum & people of high character as well.

Above all, it is not something to be connected with "conservatism." I was opposed to Ronald Reagan's politics, but it was obvious to me that he was a person of extraordinarily high character. Viz. http://bit.ly/2m3Zy7e

Indeed, I'd like to leave the question of Trump's character behind us, if that would be ok with others (which I'd say is doing his supporters here a favor, btw ), because it takes up space that would better be devoted to discussing his actions in office.

The main point of my response to nate was that the contortions required to slip Trump out of the net of his own lifelong behaviors put him in the position of suggesting that the women themselves bore the responsibility for incidents of this kind. I doubt nate would take that stance explicitly. This too is a good reason to leave Trump's character aside.

As to "many men in positions of power probably engage in predatory behavior," what does "many" mean? &, as far as that goes, men not in a position of power do as well. As a Christian -- or better say: as a thoughtful human being -- I'm sure nate agrees that the existence of evil is not an excuse for evil.

All the same, to me at least it seems likely that we can discuss e.g. protectionism more usefully than any of the above.

[TGW]

Watch on YouTube

Just curious...why did you post this?

[payitforward]

This morning's WSJ notes that the Trump regime is considering changing the way it reports imports & exports in order to make trade balances look worse than they are (& in some cases, the Journal says, turn trade supplements into trade deficits!).

This would be done by changing the way of counting goods that pass through the US unaltered on their way to another country. At present, they're counted as imports when they arrive & as exports when they leave, which makes obvious sense.

Trump is considering counting them as imports when they arrive but no longer counting them as exports when they leave the country. E.g. a German car headed to Canada arrives at a US port of entry & is trucked on to Canada. In the new calculation, goods of this kind would be counted as negatively affecting our trade balance with Germany.

From the article: "Career government employees objected last week when they were asked to prepare data using the new methodology, according to the people familiar with the discussions. These employees at the U.S. Trade Commission complied with the instructions, but included their views as to why they believe the new calculation wasn't accurate. One person familiar with the discussions said the employees were told the new calculations were to be presented to members of Congress."

Comments?

[dckingsfan]

It is one of the biggest concerns I have with this country right now - is the lack of free speech.

We should consider this when we have the dialog in this thread - so much of the country never gets to have these kind of dialogs.

Just a minor change to this, I don't think its the lack of free speech - we have tons of that. What we lack are safe spaces for dialog for those with differing views. This is the essence of peacebuilding - to create the conditions for actual dialog to occur. This is a necessary condition for bridging differences.

Two things to this - not so much free speech on college campuses where it really needs to happen (although on ~ 20% of the country has a college degree).

This happens to be a safe space, IMO - multiple opinions, and challenges with less than the ordinary vitriol. I think that there are opportunities for safe spaces online - most just don't take advantage. Why is that?

[nate33]

Just another day in Sweden:

Sweden: Looting, Cars Torched, Police Attacked as Riots Break out in Migrant Suburb
by VIRGINIA HALE, 21 Feb 2017

Riots broke out on Monday night in the suburb of Rinkeby, where a majority of residents were born overseas, just hours after the country’s Prime Minister attacked U.S President Donald J. Trump for linking mass migration with rising violence in Sweden.

The riots, in which cars were set ablaze and shops were looted, resulted in the Stockholm suburb looking “like a warzone” according to a journalist who was at the scene.

“Our officers were attacked by a number of people, some of them masked, who threw stones. They felt under so much pressure that a shot had to be fired”, said police spokesperson Lars Bystrom.

http://www.breitbart.com/london/2017/02/21/sweden-cars-torched-looting-riots/

[sfam]

This morning's WSJ notes that the Trump regime is considering changing the way it reports imports & exports in order to make trade balances look worse than they are (& in some cases, the Journal says, turn trade supplements into trade deficits!).

This would be done by changing the way of counting goods that pass through the US unaltered on their way to another country. At present, they're counted as imports when they arrive & as exports when they leave, which makes obvious sense.

Trump is considering counting them as imports when they arrive but no longer counting them as exports when they leave the country. E.g. a German car headed to Canada arrives at a US port of entry & is trucked on to Canada. In the new calculation, goods of this kind would be counted as negatively affecting our trade balance with Germany.

From the article: "Career government employees objected last week when they were asked to prepare data using the new methodology, according to the people familiar with the discussions. These employees at the U.S. Trade Commission complied with the instructions, but included their views as to why they believe the new calculation wasn't accurate. One person familiar with the discussions said the employees were told the new calculations were to be presented to members of Congress."

Comments?

My larger comment is its largely folly to identify complex products like cars as American or not, as most of the parts come from places scattered across the world.

I think the method of tracking imports and exports could become messy, but unless there is a really good reason for changing the scoring, I doubt it will go anywhere in congress or otherwise. More to the point, the amount of churn happening will probably make small changes like this near impossible to push through in a believable way.

One can only wonder the reason though for messing with re-export numbers. I can imagine Trump telling his economic team how horrible the trade deficit was, and then when presented with the actual numbers, indicated he wanted them to look worse than that. If that "is" the reason, you gotta think it will come out.

[sfam]

It is one of the biggest concerns I have with this country right now - is the lack of free speech.

We should consider this when we have the dialog in this thread - so much of the country never gets to have these kind of dialogs.

Just a minor change to this, I don't think its the lack of free speech - we have tons of that. What we lack are safe spaces for dialog for those with differing views. This is the essence of peacebuilding - to create the conditions for actual dialog to occur. This is a necessary condition for bridging differences.

Two things to this - not so much free speech on college campuses where it really needs to happen (although on ~ 20% of the country has a college degree).

This happens to be a safe space, IMO - multiple opinions, and challenges with less than the ordinary vitriol. I think that there are opportunities for safe spaces online - most just don't take advantage. Why is that?

Good point. I totally agree with the lack of free speech on campus. The whole "fragile ears" thing is pretty weird to me.

We used to hope that online interaction would become the place of harmony in the world because we are all "connected". It turns out instead, people just want to be surrounded by their own "Daily Me" of opinions.

To me it comes down first to a lack of trust, and now an established online culture of trolling and attention getting.

[payitforward]

Also from the Journal: "Last week the Journal reported that the Trump administration has drafted preliminary economic-growth forecasts for federal budgeting that rely on far rosier assumptions than most projections."

Is this how Trump will "make America great again" I wonder? Kind of like the record-breaking attendance at his Inaugural, huh? And the record-breaking landslide election victory too?

Or maybe it's a typical attack from that perfect example of enemy left-wing media, the Wall Street Journal?

[sfam]

Just another day in Sweden:

Sweden: Looting, Cars Torched, Police Attacked as Riots Break out in Migrant Suburb
by VIRGINIA HALE, 21 Feb 2017

Riots broke out on Monday night in the suburb of Rinkeby, where a majority of residents were born overseas, just hours after the country’s Prime Minister attacked U.S President Donald J. Trump for linking mass migration with rising violence in Sweden.

The riots, in which cars were set ablaze and shops were looted, resulted in the Stockholm suburb looking “like a warzone” according to a journalist who was at the scene.

“Our officers were attacked by a number of people, some of them masked, who threw stones. They felt under so much pressure that a shot had to be fired”, said police spokesperson Lars Bystrom.

http://www.breitbart.com/london/2017/02/21/sweden-cars-torched-looting-riots/

What a literal hell hole. Thank the stars I don't live there!

How weird is it that you now have both the President and about a third of the US that will be overtly looking for and cheering violence in Sweden of all places? Just because the President watched a biased Tucker Carlson episode and spouted about it. The man with a 100 billion dollar intel operation gets his "situational awareness" from Tucker Frickin Carlson.

This is like the weirdest diplomatic engagement ever.

[payitforward]

Just a minor change to this, I don't think its the lack of free speech - we have tons of that. What we lack are safe spaces for dialog for those with differing views. This is the essence of peacebuilding - to create the conditions for actual dialog to occur. This is a necessary condition for bridging differences.

Two things to this - not so much free speech on college campuses where it really needs to happen (although on ~ 20% of the country has a college degree).

This happens to be a safe space, IMO - multiple opinions, and challenges with less than the ordinary vitriol. I think that there are opportunities for safe spaces online - most just don't take advantage. Why is that?

Good point. I totally agree with the lack of free speech on campus. The whole "fragile ears" thing is pretty weird to me.

Me too. Don't cancel a guy like Milo, for example. Just be prepared to debate him. And, above all, "sunshine is the best disinfectant" as Justice Holmes wrote.

[Induveca]

I suggest everyone take a trip/move to a country where you don't understand the language without actively listening.

Love the board, but not having American democrats and Republicans bickering 24/7 visually and aurally has been great for my soul.

[Induveca]

Sfam, I do *A LOT* of business with a major Swedish tech company. It is indeed awful, particularly in the suburban areas.

The government is doing their best to beat back the issue, but they have royally **** themselves in the name of "tolerance and acceptance".

[sfam]

Texas hunters claimed they were shot by ‘illegal aliens.’ Authorities say they shot each other.

Nope, no illegal alien hysteria here. It's all those rapists with calves the size of catelopes.

Hunting guides Walker Daugherty and Michael Bryant were leading a hunting party in southern Texas in early January, when they claimed immigrants illegally crossed the nearby Mexico border, converged on their camp in the middle of the night and tried to rob them.

Gunfire erupted. When the smoke cleared and the fight was over, Daugherty was bleeding from a shot to his abdomen. Another member of the party had been shot in the arm.

After being airlifted to the hospital, the men told authorities that immigrants who crossed the border from Mexico wanted to steal an RV some of the hunters were using. In statements made through friends and family, they went further, suggesting that the assailants wanted to kill everyone in the party, as the Albuquerque Journal reported....

...“The attack has the family concerned that the attack was not just an attempt to rob the property,” the statement read, according to the Albuquerque Journal. “They believe the assailants intended to kill all the party. The attackers were strategically placed around the lodge, and the men were fired upon from different areas.”

Sid Miller, the Texas Agriculture Commissioner, shared the story with his 400,000-plus followers on Facebook.

“This is why we need the wall and to secure our borders,” Miller wrote in a since-deleted post that was shared more than 6,500 times. “There are violent criminals and members of drug cartels coming in and it must put a stop to it before we have many more Walker Daughertys.”

What really happened, Sheriff Dominguez said, was much simpler and less nefarious: Daugherty shot his client, and Bryant shot Daugherty.