US General Election 2016

{{{ I see there was another shooting in a school- two shot- one female student critical one male badly hurt- and this is apparently being touted as a huge success by the gun folk and a shining example of how arming teachers works because the shooter was himself shot.

What? Seriously? Americans think the following is acceptable- 'send your children to school, we cant stop shooters trying to kill them but thanks to arming teachers there is a good chance only a few students will be murdered or maimed for life each time before we shoot the culprit so send your loved ones to us!' How can that be acceptable let alone something that is praised? The mind boggles

The notion that guns have nothing to do with shootings is laughable in its ridiculousness- yet millions of Americans seem to believe it. Despite all the evidence to the contrary and simple sense that more guns = more shootings.    }}}


Source- FBI


source- small arms survey  (note out of those Switzerland, Finland, Austria, Yemen and Cyprus all have compulsory military service )


source- center for responsive politics (and note these figures only include official payments to candidates, they expend about double that amount when you include their advertising and backing of pro-gun candidates that are not donations )

{{{Also saw some NRA cretin trotting out the old 'guns dont kill, people do line' another piece of complete gibberish designed to distract from the truth of the argument. A gun is a tool designed specifically to kill and do so rapidly. That is it primary purpose and reason for existing. People plus guns= shootings. You cant take the people out the equation but you can take the guns out. So people dont kill the guns do, but only in the hands of people- they dont fire themselves and if the people dont have a gun to fire then they cant fire one. Its that simple- what is so hard to understand here?    }}}

You will notice that about 1/3 of the posts in "Further Proofs that America is Wacko" concern guns.

{{{So, Trump, the man who campaigned railing against foreign military endeavours, calling the Iraq war a terrible decision and a disaster, and likewise Syria, Libya ect- just made Bolton, one of the most hawkish proponents of such military interventions, as his National Security guy?
Hello beginning of the end of the world!! }}

I nominate Wally Shawn for National Security Advisor:



{{{Look on the bright side Petty. If Trump doesn't sign the Omnibus Spending Bill like he's saying this morning, the military will be defunded and Bolton can't start WWIII }}}

{{A chance to finally see Trump the Negotiator in Chief as an actual trade deal is struck with S Korea- if you remember this is one of those deals Trump has called horrible and awful and unfair to the US.
So what different with the new deal as opposed to the Obama era one? Well almost nothing at all! No tariffs on S Korean products no major changes.
What has changed- well Trumps team are touting two main things- previously the US could only ship and sell 250,000 cars to S Korea- Trump has got that up to 500,000. With only one slight snag- the US has never even managed to sell 250,000 cars there- S Koreans dont buy US cars, in fact under the old deal the most cars sold was 11,000 so increasing the amount the US can theoretically export to 500,000 looks good on paper but in-effect is meaningless.
The other thing being touted by Trump is that for the first time in a trade deal ever there is a deal not to devalue currency as sales tactic- only its not in the main body of the text and it isn't enforceable by any legal mechanisms- in short its a gentleman's agreement to agree not to do it to each other and just taking each other at their word.

So yeah- first major shake up of an 'awful' trade deal gets a trade that's almost exactly the same as the 'awful' one with a couple of additions which in practice dont actually mean anything at all! }}}

{{So the trade war begins! China have begun by putting tariffs on US products- I see fruit is contained in it- that going to include your cranberries Dave? I hope not. }}

Not sure there is much market for cranberries in China. Maybe for cranberry juice mixes?

Actually I'm not sure if cranberries in any form other than juice would be a product outside North America. Then again, juice may be the major form inside north America as well. Any insight on this Dave?

Asia takes health properties very seriously when it comes to foods, so a lot of our berries end up over there. Mostly dried I think. Yep....this is probably going to hurt....

{{ Bugger I feared that might be the case Dave- I think the tarriff on fruit and veg is 15%- I'm guessing that will put quite a squeeze on the margins- and what I know about farming is that its nearly all margins! }}}

Agriculture, and particularly small farmers, always take some of the hardest hits on these things because we've got a perishable commodity that we've got to sell and we can't just stop producing if the market isn't good. On top of that, anybody in the world who wants to make a point to a particular law maker can just google their home state and district to see what they grow.... Like I said before, we're seen as pawns in this chess game

I'm reading a book called Debunking Economics. One of the points it makes is that the prototype for supply curves used in economics - the cost per unit of production as a function of the number of units produced - is based on farms. Typically if farmers want to produce more they are hampered by a resource crunch: less quality bogland in Dave's case. So that after a certain point producing more cranberries would make the cost go up. We know very well that most businesses act in the opposite way: more production leads to less cost per unit because the limitation is the initial infrastructure investment rather than the resources.

So economists and businessmen think in different ways. Trump is thinking like a businessman, which means the opposite model, based on farming, gets crunched.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/trump-order-national-guard-protect-border-mexico-official-193154120.html?.tsrc=bell-brknews

Talk about starting a military action with no exit strategy. I'm afraid once this starts it will end up being permanent. Except that many people will stop signing up for National Guard and it will end by attrition.

{{Got to hand to Trump he is a sneaky bugger at times! Ive noticed a pattern in his actions regards certain events, highlighted well today with Fox News headline regards China's decision to cut tariffs on US cars. The headline screams -

'China Caves to Trump's Economic Pressure' and thats the line being pushed.

Except these changes were long planned, before Trump stated his trade war, the economic conference at which it was announced was planned before Trump began his trade war. As China itself says these were preexisting plans as part of China opening up its economy and integrating more with the global economy, and doing so at their own pace as they feel their country can sustain and manage it.

"These measures are based on our consistent policy and stance, our own development and our own pace. Linking China's strategic choice to the current China-US trade frictions is a baseless interpretation."

Now as President Trump would have known for a long time that China was planning to do this- so why start a war of words with them in the first place just weeks before the announcement? Well now it looks like, as Fox put it, 'China caved' to Trump. Trump the great negotiator.

Its quite devious and almost clever in its own way- attack something you know is changing in the near future anyway, then when it changes claim it only changed because of you attacking it! He did something very similar regards jobs in the US auto industry. }}}

{{{ The missiles are flying as I type- start of war? Reports they are hitting Damascus not airfields. }}}

"The nations of the world can be judged by the friends they keep. No nation can succeed in the long run by promoting rouge states, brutal tyrants and murderous dictators."- President Trump

{{Fine, fine words from Trump, but um Saddam Hussein, Colonel Gadaffi, the entire Apartheid regime in SA, and not to mention overthrowing legitimate democratically elected leaders in South America and replacing them with dictators sympathetic to America. Breaching the Geneva convention on the treatment of prisoners of war, advocating torture and breaking international law by invading sovereign states with the intention of regime change and lets not forget the only nation in the world to use nuclear weapons of mass destruction against civilian populations-  hurrah America. Ah the smell of hypocrisy in the morning! }}}}

{{{Still trying to work out what the point of these strikes were- they wont have hit anything of consequence thanks to Trump telegraphing to Russia nearly a week ago now this was coming, giving them all the time they needed to move anything crucial out of the way.
I am also struggling to find a legitimate reason for why Assad would have used chemical weapons when he did in an area of Syria Assad and Russia were just about to take over having won militarily there and negotiated a deal with the ant-government troops. There is no strategic advantage when you are clearly winning a war into enraging your enemies and bringing condemnation on yourself when your on the verge of taking what you want by conventional means. The narrative makes no sense.

There is however strategic reasons if Assad didn't do it. Israel and Mossad would be my top suspects as they have long been hawkish on Syria and want to stop Iranian expansion and involvement and they have Saudi as their unusual bedfellows on that one.
But at least that narrative has some logic to it unlike the official narrative which as far as I can see does not.}}}

well it was nice knowing you all.

Humans are fucking idiots.

Pettytyrant101 wrote:{{{ I am also struggling to find a legitimate reason for why Assad would have used chemical weapons when he did in an area of Syria Assad and Russia were just about to take over having won militarily there and negotiated a deal with the ant-government troops. There is no strategic advantage when you are clearly winning a war into enraging your enemies and bringing condemnation on yourself when your on the verge of taking what you want by conventional means. The narrative makes no sense. }}}

So how do you feel about the reasons and narratives for dropping atomic bombs on two Japanese cities in 1945 when the end of WWII was already pretty much inevitable? The argument is made that it "shortened the war" by demoralizing the enemies, which it probably did (at a horrible cost.)

Chemical weapons are now "the poor man's nuke" and in their way they're just as psychologically horrifying. I'd guess that Assad was sending a message -- "You know you've lost. Surrender now unconditionally. We may kill you anyway, but at least it won't be as horrible as the alternative."

Seems strategic to me....

{{He didnt have to- Japan was a long way from American bases and troops even with South Pacific stuff- Assad has these rebels surrounded and the might of the Russian military at his shoulder, nor had he any particular reason to rush. There were 3 rebel government holdouts in that area an d they had systematically already taken down the first two without any need or reaosn to resort to chemical attacks as conventional was doing just fine. There was nothing different about the 3rd area to warrant a change in strategy.
Using chems to send  a message to the rebels would so obviously be outweighed by the message in return other countries would provide that its strategically pointless to do it- the potential repercussions far outweigh any advantage use of chems would give them, especially when they were doing just fine winning with conventional arms.

ps I dont think the US was justified in the slightest in dropping nukes on Japan- it was an utterly appalling criminal act of terrorism using the worst possible means to indiscriminately slaughter civilians and pollute and destroy ecosystems and punish generations to come with abnormalities and mutations. There is no justifying it, its a huge black moral stain on anything American does as I dont see how you atone for such an act of utter barbarity.}}

Pettytyrant101 wrote:{{ the potential repercussions far outweigh any advantage use of chems would give them, especially when they were doing just fine winning with conventional arms.}}}

Possibly, but the actual repercussions were relatively minor and so he can now frame himself as a tough guy who stood up to the bullying of the Great World Powers and made them blink. It's a strategy that seems to have been working for for Kim Jung Un. Also worth pointing out that the Allied Forced had been doing just fine with conventional weapons in 1945 too. Germany had surrendered months before, and Japan was up against the ropes. The defeat of Japan with conventional weapons was just a matter of time and money.

{{{ ps I dont think the US was justified in the slightest in dropping nukes on Japan- it was an utterly appalling criminal act of terrorism using the worst possible means to indiscriminately slaughter civilians and pollute and destroy ecosystems and punish generations to come with abnormalities and mutations. There is no justifying it, its a huge black moral stain on anything American does as I dont see how you atone for such an act of utter barbarity.}}

I agree, but let's not forget that the UK's hands are not clean. This was all done under the Quebec Agreement with the UK. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomic_bombings_of_Hiroshima_and_Nagasaki

Under the Quebec Agreement with the United Kingdom, nuclear weapons would not be used against another country without mutual consent. Stimson therefore had to obtain British permission. A meeting of the Combined Policy Committee was held at the Pentagon on July 4, 1945.[94] Field Marshal Sir Henry Maitland Wilson announced that the British government concurred with the use of nuclear weapons against Japan, which would be officially recorded as a decision of the Combined Policy Committee.[94][95][96] As the release of information to third parties was also controlled by the Quebec Agreement, discussion then turned to what scientific details would be revealed in the press announcement of the bombing. The meeting also considered what Truman could reveal to Joseph Stalin, the leader of the Soviet Union, at the upcoming Potsdam Conference, as this also required British concurrence.

What are you guys talking about? The Obama administration removed the chemical weapons from Syria through diplomacy in 2013. This couldn't possibly happen. That was an effective, scandal free, presidency; and Obama is such a presidential person. There's no way that didn't work.

{{David- I genuinely did not know that, which is annoying.  Doesn't change anything mind you just spreads the blame for such an atrocity round more. Mind you one of the reasons I voted for independence was to get away from the English mentality to be a world power and empire again ect- all it does is cost lives and money that could be better put to use, and all we ever do anyway is what the US asks us to do- see this attack, or Iraq, or Libya ect


Bungo- I seem to recall Obama went to Congress to get permission to conduct a strike and the congress, then Republican controlled, refused to give him the votes to act. Likewise the UK Parliament at the time voted against taking action and France was against such a strike, so there was also no allied support for the action. Especially so soon after Iraq had so spectacularly exploded in everyone's face.
Given all this Obama went to the UN and did the next best thing available and got a deal where Russia would be responsible for the removal of any chemical weapons.  }}}

Pettytyrant101 wrote:{{David- I genuinely did not know that, which is annoying.  }}}

You're welcome!