(07-09-2018, 11:22 PM)Classic-Xer Wrote:(07-08-2018, 05:46 PM)pbrower2a Wrote:(07-08-2018, 01:41 PM)Classic-Xer Wrote:(07-06-2018, 04:25 PM)pbrower2a Wrote:(07-06-2018, 04:00 PM)Classic-Xer Wrote: I think he's been pretty successful so far despite all the resistance he has faced from your side and a portion of my side as well.
Did you see what happened to soybean futures?
Farmers and ranchers usually vote Republican. They went from New Era Republicans in the late 1920s to New Deal Democrats by the early 1930s.
No, I did not see this coming, but when you start seeing approval ratings in the 30s for the President in Arkansas and Nebraska, the President has a big problem.
So, you support the Chinese Government effort to sway the 2018 election results in your/their favor. From what I see here and else where, blues have a serious lack of character issue that extends from the top to the bottom. Now, if I were a never Trump Republican (a discard) , I'd exploit the opportunity and begin an effort to take over the leadership of the Democratic party which will place all the rotten eggs in one basket. Hint.....How many billions upon billions will have to be raised and spent by the Democrats to over come a strong candidate with a powerful message & signs of a commitment to keeping his word to a large segment of American society commonly referred to as the American working class. LIBERALS ARE A JOKE!!!!
If the Russians think that they can get a better deal with Donald Trump as President and the Chinese think they can get a better deal with just about any Democrat as President, then why shouldn't the Chinese act upon our political system? Maybe more subtly and with more concern for plausible deniability... Trump apparently sold out to the Russians in full knowledge of what he was doing.
But let's talk about tariffs, taxes, and the farm-and-ranch vote. The farm-and-ranch vote is usually complacently and strongly Republican, and in some states (like Ohio, Florida, and Iowa) strong enough to make the difference in some statewide elections. Farmers and ranchers usually vote Republican because Republicans typically offer lower taxes. Farmers and ranchers are usually cash cows (pardon the pun!) for federal, state, and local taxes. Taxes are a big cost of farming and a big charge against earnings.
Tax cuts rarely fail to appeal to farmers and ranchers so long as those do not come at the cost of crop supports, water projects, and food stamps (food stamps are run by the Department of Agriculture, and farmers and ranchers do not want that goose to be killed to stop it from laying golden eggs for farmers, ranchers, and food processors.
Donald Trump may not have recognized that tariffs would hurt farmers and ranchers -- but farmers and ranchers know now. Farmers and ranchers vote their economic interests, and free trade might be enough to make them into Democratic voters long enough to prevent Republicans from holding onto the House of Representatives in 2018 and the Presidency in 2020 -- and the Senate in one of those two years. One of the most basic rules of (small l) liberal (small d) democratic politics is to not hurt supporters.
I wonder how many people who harvested crops last year will be wearing a "Make America Great Again") cap as they harvest their crops last year or two years ago. No, I am not talking about those caps that might be replaced with "World Champion Indians 2018" caps in northern rural Ohio. Maybe it will be something more like "Too bad I can't use Trump lies as fertilizer!"
Policies that hurt farmers can cause them to change their ways of voting. Watch the Electoral College in 2020.
I feel sorry for people who voted for Trump and got the shaft. Soybean farmers are not the first, and they won't be the last.
I thought Democrats are staunchly opposed to the idea of foreign powers meddling in our political process these days. I doubt most American ranchers and farmers are going to be hurt by the tariffs imposed by the CHINESE GOVERNMENT. I assume China must not be worried about its own ability to feed a billion Chinese. I wonder if North Korea or Vietnam would be interested in purchasing their soybeans instead of China. Yeah, this falls crop for China might be in doubt but next years crop will be sold and shipped to other markets. The Chinese elites are going to learn how little we ( the American people) care about them and the lives of the people under them. Evidently, the ones who for Trump thinking he was lying about getting tough on China who are angry and threatening to turn on him today for keeping his word should have voted for Clinton and higher taxes and the trade policies that blues with shifty values like you and most others (values that are used this way to get this or that way for that and so forth) were using against me a few years ago.
Me, I'm principled and my values don't shift with the wind or switch by the issue. OK. You've been showing America how f-d up, unreliable and largely uncaring you guys are about anything that isn't associated with the term liberal for a couple of years now. It's nothing new to me, I've been seeing it for over a decade and I've been pointing it out to lackadaisical Democratic voters for over a decade with a fair amount success. Like I said, what's left of the Bush era Republicans (the fascists of that time) are now coming your way and are taking seats on liberal news networks like CNN and MSNBC. As I've said, nature has its own way of sorting out people and nature is becoming the primary force at work today.
Tariffs foster trade wars. A long-standing consensus is that free trade is a good thing, and that tariffs are the worst sorts of taxes, the ones that vastly distort the overall economy to reward those entities that could never compete in a world market. Tariffs are, above all else, taxes -- bad taxes. There are better ways to raise taxes, like increasing tax rates on income.
Free markets don't always work as people want them to work. As it is with employment (think of all those humanities majors who have jobs as baristas and even domestic servants) so it is with production. We might as well let comparative advantage dictate that we do what we do comparatively better.
Few people saw how badly Donald Trump would abandon free trade; his statements on economics were muddled. But he's a landlord, and he has never had to manufacture anything. He knows less about economics than do many farmers, let alone high-tech or rust-belt industrialists, know about economics.
Gallup showed his weekly approval at 41% and disapproval at 56% most recently, so people on the whole are severely disappointed with what they have. This said, demagogues like Donald Trump who promise everything to everyone and use nebulous appeals with loaded language that even they might not fully understand rarely formulate a coherent policy in office. 41% approval and 56% disapproval is nothing new for this President. Obama never quite got there, reaching 43% approval as his low point.
I have noticed that MSNBC has been inviting many Republican dissidents with Trump to get on the air and has been treating them with kid gloves. Yes, MSNBC is decidedly to the Left -- but its news reporting is accurate, which is a great difference from FoX News. Credibility wins in the struggle between opposing views on politics. Remember that there have been conservatives who have cherished rational thought and logical process when such were the defenses against the Radical Left. The semi-fascist Right has pushed them aside because they do not fully accept the irrationality and viciousness of Movement Conservatism.
America will be far better off when it has moderate conservatives who offer reasoned appeals to tradition and respect for commercial institutions (that of course have cause to give the common man a stake in the economic order) as a default against political and cultural radicalism. Legal precedent, diplomatic protocol, law and order, sobriety, a work ethic, old standards of personal decency, and treatment of learning as a desirable object in itself merit defense when they are under attack. The liberals have learned this as if it were sudden revelation. Genuine conservatives have always known this, but the Hard Right has offered something very different.
Liberals may be adopting conservative values just as the Right offers demagoguery, unreason, mass resentments, crony capitalism, and anti-intellectualism. The American Right is adopting fascistic tendencies as means of achieving and consolidating power. Fascism is national ruin -- and if America goes fascist, fascism will bring destruction comparable at the least to that in Japan and Germany to America -- and over a wider area. Fascism will also bring national shame. America has a good record in Crisis Eras because it has typically had leaders with moral compass. Donald Trump has no moral compass, and that is even more dangerous than where he is on the Left-Right spectrum..
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.