The Sam Spade Memorial Good Post Gallery

[Santander]

Clinton will try to frame it this way, but Trump is no David Duke.

i think i trust david duke's opinion on who is the most david dukey more than i trust some internet rando's.

David Duke wishes he had the appeal and charisma that Trump somehow has. David Duke is 100x worse than Trump ever has been and ever will be. Despite what Atlas and others on the web may tell you, Trump really isn't a fascist. Calling Trump a fascist downplays actual fascists, like Duke.

[Santander]

I think we have a fundamental ideological divide in what society and nation mean to people. To some of us, society is something passed down from us - and although adding outsiders can and has enriched that inheritance before, people are not inherently entitled to a place because of white guilt, especially when they do not enrich that society. Others have a very different conception.

[Santander]

Of course he did. Modern far-right and right-populist parties and politicians (Drumpf included) are playing the exact same role communists did in the 1950s.

It is amazing that Russia has once again become the leading proponent of Reactionary politics, just like it was during the late 18th and 19th century, from inciting slavic sectarianism in foreign countries to promoting and propping up the far right across Europe.

Amazing that as we get further and further away from the breakup of the USSR, those 70 years look more and more like the super-imposed aberation they were, as opposed to the natural state of affairs it had seemingly come look like by the 1980's. Of course even doing that period the same type of stuff happened just done in the name of the people instead of the Tsar/Slavic unity or in this case Russian interest or whatever they would call it now. If that is not a stunning indictment of the failure of Communism, nothing is. Marxism was suppose to erase such nationalist inclinations.

[Santander]

Probably should clarify that I wasn't being serious. :/ There are good Protestant churches and bad Catholic practice's.

Still, I've always thought the Reformation as it turned out was a grotesque mistake. The Church should have been reformed, not cut away; and the nature of the Reformation led to endless bloodshed throughout Europe for centuries.

Wasn't there endless bloodshed throughout Europe for centuries before the reformation too?

[Santander]

Trump's supporters are the people the establishment have abused and lied to for 30 years in exchange for their votes. There are a number of hateful people in that group yes, but many of them are tired of having their issues ignored. The neoliberal agenda has ruined their lives, just like it has ruined many others and these are the voters that make up a substantial portion of the party, especially in the states that are trending Republican relative to the national average. The Republicans cannot keep tring to impose an Orange County, CA agenda on a Kentucky/MO/Indiana Party.

Jmfcst used to say whoever won his type of voter (high end/Evangelical/Sunbelt) was the nominee of the party. Now, the base GOP voter is a lower middle class guy in the suburbs of St. Louis. These people exist by the millions and in states that offer the paths of least resistance to GOP victory (The South and Midwest), therefore they now have outsized influence in the nominating process.

I will say again, Trump won this nomination when all the establishment candidates jumped on board the open borders band wagon. If you put all your eggs in the wrong basket, don't be surprised if people reject it. Romney was smart, realizing his path to the nomination was to go populist on trade and hard line on immigration. Bush, Rubio and Kasich realized the hard way what Romney calculated in 2007. This is also what I tried to explain to you way back when you were all gaga for Jon Huntsman.

This is the Republican Party. You cannot suppress its current base demographics, or you will end up with another Trump. If you think you can pull that off without consequences just as Jeb Bush tried, than clearly you have learned nothing and forgotten everything from the 2016 cycle.

Great post. Deserves to be framed and put in a museum.

[Santander]

I would think this describes my attitude toward social issues, but I am not sure if questioning such a fundamental position bars me from being a true Scotsman.

Depends on how you define social conservative.  I'm pro-choice and I consider myself socially conservative.  I think there should be at least two categories of social conservative a mean one and a nice one.  The nice ones leave other people alone as long as those people leave them alone.  The mean ones want to run everyone's lives.

I don't like abortion but I realize clamping down on it does more harm than good.  I would much rather have good sex ed and free contraception.  There is nothing "conservative" about lying to teenagers and restricting their access to contraception.

Honestly we would have a much calmer well ordered society if better sex ed and free contraception was available.  I simply don't see how having a bunch of broke uneducated people spitting out babies in tumultuous relationships makes society more "conservative".

How on earth could you consider this a GOOD post?

[Santander]

I can only imagine the reaction if Hillary won as expected.

"LOL, what a bunch of [r-words]! They said he could win Minnesota and he can't even win safe-R North Carolina."
"How stupid and educated are the Trump cultists to expect a win!"
"It was so obvious. No one would consider that kind of lunatic! America is stupid but not that stupid"
"Just as I predicted - a shy Hillary effect. Easy 10 point win!"

Comparably, Trump supporters around here have allowed Hillary people time to grieve as we understand the loss was tough, especially under these circumstances. I apologize more people coming out and acknowledging that they actually voted for him is tough on you.

Proof that smilo is possibly the best poster here.

[Santander]

May I please remind you all that for that sort of posts, there's this thread?

I'm confused about what the delineating line between those two threads is supposed to be.

Reservoir posts are short, simple yet clever. Gallery posts are thoughtful, articulate, complex, and take effort.

Brevity can be scintillating.

[Santander]

Starting a trade war, especially with one of our closest allies and largest trade partners, isn't very smart policy. But Canada was subsidizing their logging and likely their dairy industry as well, thereby giving them an unfair advantage over American logging and dairy industries. That's the kind of free trade that has negatively affected American workers and industries for decades now. If they want to enjoy tariff free trade with us, then our industries should be on equal footing and thereby able to compete. Canada was given a 90 day notice in advance of this action to address the issues, but they refused.

Virtually everything is wrong here.    Softwood lumber and dairy are two separate issues but they have one thing in common in that neither is covered by the NAFTA agreement.

1.Softwood lumber.
Canada and the U.S have different rules and history on forestry.  In the United States, many forests are privately owned, and those that are owned by the government are essentially sold for long periods of time to logging companies by auction at public auctions.  In Canada, provincial governments lease out logging rights to companies and the companies pay a tax called a stumpage fee for each logged tree.  

The United States logging companies have decided that these stumpage fees are an unfair trade subsidy in comparison to either the auction costs when the lands are auctioned off, or, when the company owns the lands outright, for the roads and other improvements they have to pay for themselves in order to access and ship out the timber.  In Canada, since the government continues to own the land, the governments pay for the roads.

Although this is not part of the NAFTA agreement, since both Canada and the U.S are members of the WTO, Canada has sued U.S governments  who have placed duties on Canadian lumber over this alleged unfair trade subsidy under the WTO provisions and auspices.  Canada has won every single time as the various courts have ruled that the stumpage fees charged provide the governments a fair return.  However, as the saying goes "how many divisions does the WTO have?"

Every time Canada wins the case, the U.S and the American lumber companies simply proceed to another court.  

This is protectionism pure and simple and the U.S lumber interests form a very powerful lobby who have been very successful at what economists refer to as 'rent seeking.'

Those who gain from the tariffs are the owners of the lumber/logging companies, pure and simple.  The tariff is a direct tax from people who buy goods with more expensive lumber (whether Canadian or American) that goes straight into the pockets of the company owners.  In virtually all cases where the government has imposed this tariff, the rules even stipulate that the money from the tariff goes to the so-called aggrieved party: the U.S lumber company.

2.The situation in dairy (and poultry) is that both Canada and the United States provide enormous subsidies to their farmers.  In the U.S, this subsidy is direct, in Canada it is in the form of so-called 'supply management' which is, in reality, a monopoly cartel.

Ideally both the subsidies and the cartel should be eliminated, but, while Trump decries the Canadian system, I suspect he'll be less interested in taking on American dairy farming interests.

I don't think there is any connection between the softwood lumber duty and reopening NAFTA. Canada and the U.S negotiated a 10 years softwood lumber agreement over all of those issues in 2006 (it limited the amount of softwood lumber that could come into the U.S from Canada),and that deal expired last year.  President Obama was apparently unwilling to have the U.S negotiate a new deal that would bind the hands of his successor.

[Santander]

Can we please use the new thread?

https://uselectionatlas.org/FORUM/index.php?topic=261105.0

No. There's nothing wrong with this one.

[Santander]

Lmao. I love how the AAD cult is trying to turn Tony against Virginia (and failing entirely) because you can't handle the fact that one of your echo chamber's idols was a total douche who wasn't even that good of a poster.

It's not just the AAD cult. I don't actually support any of the cultish behavior on Atlas, such as this thread or the bad post thread, etc. but I also support tradition. I came here voluntarily, I feel I should assimilate into it, even if i disagree.