The American Politics Thread

I don't know, bud. Maybe this statement from Kevin Mandia might help:

 

Here's the video from his testimony:
https://www.c-span.org/video/?426227-101/senator-rubio-confirms-campaign-staff-targeted-russian-hackers

 

He's not a government official, but is a member of one of the firms that confirmed CrowdStrike's assessment. Do I need to explain that government agencies rely on outside experts? The government does not work in a vacuum.

omphaloskepsis wrote: Aardvark, can you prove that a DNC employee did not leak emails?  You never answered that question. Please provide ONE piece of hard evidence that a DNC employee did not leak the DNC emails to WikiLeaks.  Thus the name...WikiLeaks.    I will accept Government officials testifying under oath, like the video I provided above.

Speeches(which was very difficult since he literally doesn't stay on any one specific subject for more than three short sentences):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ZjRJmMmVb4: 90% of the speech is purely about Hillary, but he mentions two trade deals which he's gonna 'change' and lowering taxes, followed by among others the claim that this alone will bring back 25 million jobs.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-64nfy6i58w: 'We're gonna open a new factory', 'Wait till you see what we do', no further explanation, more talking about Hillary. Trade deals are bad. 'Jobs are being stolen'; by whom? No further explanation, no further logic, only antagonization. 'I'll tell them, if they want to move a factory, I'll make them pay taxes, so they won't do it!' 'We're the highest tax nation in the world, so I'm gonna cut the taxes'; you're literally among the very lowest... 'We're gonna eliminate every job-killing regulation'; no specifics.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qsvy10D5rtc: 'We're gonna rebuild our infrastructure and put millions of people to work for it'; not a terrible idea but pretty ambitious after 'massive tax cuts'. No further explanation. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xpj1lVf6yzM: Basically only talk about Clinton; 'She says she's gonna bring tremendous jobs back but she wouldn't know how to... I'm gonna bring jobs back'; no further explanation. Also about education: 'Everyone is gonna go to the school they want to go to, there's enough money in the government, you just need to end the bureaucracy.' Once again, dubious and ambitious and without further explanation of this bureaucracy, except for 'take the money they're already getting, but just let them go to the school they want to go to. We just have to re-prioritize spending.' Nice idea, but what are you gonna take it from? Weren't you suggesting tax cuts? Do you also realize that this is some hardcore European socialism? 'We will be saving money!' What. Anyhow we saw how this went down. 'I will lift restricitions on the production of American energy so that these students will have jobs when they graduate. It will add half a million jobs a year.' No specifications on these so-called restrictions, but apparently highly educated people are the people being duped here? Weren't these restrictions for a good part thought up to protect the employees in America to make sure they keep their jobs and actually get high payment he's going for. 'We only have bad jobs, the good jobs are gone'; he means no-education factory conveyor belt jobs? Those are the only ones he's mentioned. And please, I'm not the one trying to attack him, he's the one talking around it. You want to remove bad regulations to get jobs? So which type of regulations are you going to be removing? You're going to pay big money to create jobs? Where is this money suddenly coming from? Aren't these the things you want to know? Like, the actual workings of this idea instead of him saying 'this is all bad, I'm gonna do everything that's good'. If he wants to talk about priorities, let him clarify how he's gonna give you tax cuts, higher education, higher wages, higher equality, less crime, less bureaucracy, less corruption, less opposition, cheaper healthcare, better roads, better hospitals, better relationships abroad, a stronger army, less terrorism, less drugs, more treatment for drug addicts and a massive guarded concrete wall if the only thing you're gonna solve money out of is foreign intervention(despite expanding the army and military arsenal anyways) and renegotiating some trade deals and you have no further efficiency strategies planned out? Is your pandering bullsh*t sensor then not already tingling? He has his cake, eats it too, then eats it again, then stuffs it up his ass, then cuts open his stomach and stuffs that and then he turns into a cake and implodes. 

But let's look at some interviews for more clues, once again, just taking the first useful ones from Youtube:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SkHa2-c_8Pk: 'There's no reason these jobs have dissipated.' How about saving costs, regardless of regulations? Also love those sidenotes with the claim of what a disaster Europe is, but that's something fro another day.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V0d2rojo7js: 'When you have to wait 10-15 years for an approval, and you don't get the approval, that's no good. We're gonna clean it up, we're gonna speed it up'; no specification on the measures, no specific restriction mentioned, no mention of what these restrictions are for or what's gonna change if you remove them. 'We're gonna have to impose a major tax on companies that leave, build their product and think they're gonna sell it right to our border like we're a bunch of jerks. That's not the free market, that's the dumb market! It has to be fair. You can do it by making tax cuts, that's what everyone likes, but the way you stop it by a tax, I've come up with a number of 35%, but if they don't leave there's gonna be no tax, so they're not gonna leave'; it is free market and if you need to impose a tax if they move that means it would normally save them money to go abroad, but okay, in practice you're just dropping taxes to get jobs, although products will be more expensive.

So the only solution he has mentioned, without any reservations or further corrections or reforms added is: let them do whatever if they stay here, make it impossible for them to exist if they go abroad. This is an idea, a simple idea, it is not a plan. Even when pushed, Trump can not tell you more about the issue than this banal solution. Omphalo, I know that you know that this is a very complex problem. I know that you have filled in the gaps of this plan with further logical reasoning and speculation. Unfortunately for you, your representative has shown no sign of understanding any of these issues. He has not mentioned them or recognized them. This man has been a salesman for the biggest part of his working life, and I know, because my father was a salesman, this includes the ability to make people feel confident about what you're selling by body language and framing of words. Trump clearly has a lot of experience with this since he has sold this banal idea to your country without specifying any of the results or downsides of this idea, talking over it, repeating himself and filling it up with ensuring words. 

Let me clarify, there is nothing inherently wrong an isolationist free market, it has worked well for Japan, but wouldn't you, as a well-thinking adult, prefer a candidate who can tell you why his idea would beat alternative solutions, who can tell you what is inherently problematic about measures for safety and against corporate fraud without resorting to baby talk about the scary evil government, who can at least tackle the issues of wage disparities between nations, the higher prices and decreasing export that will initially come from these measures and the gap left by these extreme new tax cuts with a well-rounded strategy instead of raving one-sided banter? The plan of isolationism could very well be made to work eventually but do you not deserve a better leader to make this work?

I need you to clear up a few things for me.  You said-  also making sure that these wages will actually go to the markets for essential products for living so that these can become more affordable while less goes into the savings acounts of the rich, so that this money will then be used by (now once again unregulated) investors to create economic bubbles which screw over the entire world like it already has, or otherwise by investing heavily in the exporting economy to create new jobs 1.Can you explain how wages will actually go for essential products for living versus Chinese plastic toys via credit card debt?   2. Under your plan Bureaucracy would balloon?  Are you OK with that?  ...How do you stop graft, kickbacks, fraud, and corruption via regulations?  I say this because,  The Empire State building was built in a year without tons of regulations.  With regulations, A modern Empire State building would take years to build and bunch of paper pushers (regulators who produce nothing you can eat or use) will grow into an octopus bureaucracy.   3. I will address only one Trump idea at this time....If you receive food stamps and welfare aide and you are able to work...You must either work, go to school, or volunteer to help disabled or old folks.

To address some of these issues...