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Showing content with the highest reputation on 02/04/2025 in Posts
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interesting article by Prof. David Honig of Indiana University The best, most cogent and elegantly simple explanation into the inexplicably destructive negotiating processes of the president "The problem with Trump is that he sees only distributive bargaining in an international world that requires integrative bargaining. He can raise tariffs, but so can other countries. He can’t demand they not respond. There is no defined end to the negotiation and there is no simple winner and loser. " "Trump is utterly convinced that his experience in a closely held real estate company has prepared him to run a nation, and therefore he rejects the advice of people who spent entire careers studying the nuances of international negotiations and diplomacy. But the leaders on the other side of the table have not eschewed expertise, they have embraced it. And that means they look at Trump and, given his very limited tool chest and his blindly distributive understanding of negotiation, they know exactly what he is going to do and exactly how to respond to it. " "For people who study negotiations, this is incredibly basic stuff, negotiations 101" "From a professional negotiation point of view, Trump isn't even bringing checkers to a chess match. "3 points
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Let’s recap the FACTS before the MAGA cultists can get their gaslighting revisionism together 1) Dictator On Day One (DODO)threatened tariffs under false pretences, repeatedly trolled Canada about becoming the 51st state and using “economic force” to annex Canada 2) The drugs and illegal immigrants from Canada are a statistical zero, contrary to FODOs lies 3) DODO’s claim that Canada refused requests to help crackdown on the (nom-existent) fentanyl and human smuggling are a lie He also cited a number of other various lies about Canada as justification most of which HAVE NOTHING TO DO WITH TRADE so can’t be solved with Tariffs 4)Canada introduced a $1.3 Billion increase to border security anyway just to appease DODO 5) DODO said there’s nothing Canada can do to avoid tariffs and could never clearly state what exactly he wanted Canada to do or when he would be satisfied 6) Despite refusing to take JTs phone calls or have any communication woth Canadian officials, as soon as we announce countermeasures he call JT twice in one day, described the call as “pretty good” and stopped the trolling and annexation talk. DODO “postponing” his tariffs for “30 days” is just his path of retreat so he can change the subject and move on to something else. He lost. He is not going to revisit this in 30 days. All Canada had to do was offer a few symbolic toke gestures…even though Trump had just said there was nothing Canada could do to avoid his tariffs. The bully tried to take our lunch money, we popped in the nose and now he’s fading away.2 points
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RFK’s hearings remove all doubt: He’s not fit to lead a key federal health agency "Look, it’s never wrong to ask questions, even about “settled” science. But Kennedy has spent a near-lifetime promoting a dangerous, outright lie about vaccines, even in the face of hard proof that they work. That might’ve dissuaded many people from getting them and then later contracting illnesses they could’ve prevented. Oh, and by coincidence, his anti-Big Pharma claims just so happen to supply ammunition for fellow lawyers suing those companies. Kennedy’s bizarre beliefs go even further: He’s bought into conspiracy theories that the generally acknowledged story of 9/11 isn’t to be believed. He’s stood by claims that “electromagnetic radiation” from Wi-Fi “changes DNA” and is linked to cancer. Most of all, Kennedy lacks basic skills to run a large federal agency, particularly one where “following the science” is actually vital. True, he does support some worthwhile lifestyle changes that can make folks healthier — like better diets and exercise. But there’s too much wackiness in his background to trust America’s health to such a figure. Senators need to block RFK Jr.’s nomination — and keep America healthy again."2 points
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Trump got gains from this trade game. What did Canada get? Also, a significant reason why Trump took a stick to Canada is the ridiculous woke-green mess that Trudeau has championed in the West, a mess that has shamed Canada and cost Canadians countless billions. Trudeau must go. The wake up call from this is that we must never make ourselves so vulnerable again, neither in trade nor militarily, unless we want to become de facto Puerto Rico, which Canada is now. At least Puerto Rico uses the U.S. dollar. Our currency is weak and we earn significantly less than Americans now. We were in better economic shape than Americans a decade ago. I wonder what changed?2 points
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I just went to the grocery store tonight. The Canadian stickers were handy and supports your local farmer or BC produce. Most Canadians see this as an attack on their neighbor, not on Trudeau which is why it triggered an American boycott.2 points
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LMAO the fake reality you live in! This is a victory for Canada. Trudeau just re-announced his December border plan with a couple of small tweaks. To stop the imaginary fentanyl that doesn’t exist. Trump retreated from his illegal cash grab and this is his way out. Trump lost bigly2 points
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lol so the plan we'd already announced? Holy shit Trump is the easiest mark, no wonder Elon was able to take over the presidency.2 points
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Scott Moe had an interesting idea. He asked Trudeau to put CBSA under military command. That way the $2.6 billion ottawa spends on CBSA could then be reclassified as 'military spending'.2 points
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Trump's purge is targeting career prosecutors, not political appointees, so I don't know how he can get away with it. It's not safe to do your job anymore in the US.2 points
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Trump pauses Canadian tariffs for 30 days in deal with Trudeau Trump blinks again! now its about banks and cars? wtf? like Canada doesn't buy cars? Trump mistaken, U.S. banks can and do operate in Canada US still paying as Canadians stop buying US products and US alcohol still off the shelf. Go Canada!1 point
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Human history is full of fools whose brains were completely destroyed, erased by the hot p!ss of power who tried to command the mountains, the Sun and planets etc. And now this fat maron completely off his trolley wants to turn back the time itself. Or at least trying to sell it to his dumb part racist/fascist mob. To the 1950s somewhere, the golden age. Before the civic movement, the liberties and MLK. See how it all clicks and falls into place. But the time doesn't work like that. And as sure as the night follows the day it'll bring a stupid and pointless disaster to his country, including his brainless following. And the Republican party nodding, struggling not to notice and look the other way and expressing (voiceless) concerns will be sunk in it: the sh*t, the stink and the shame for all the time to come. And it will carry this (his) mark for like, ever now because: how and what can erase it? You know what happened to the party of Hitler, right? And now, you are the party of the Lying !diot. For the posterity to study with a magnifying glass, detest and wonder. Indefinitely. Every shameful name and the signature, the stinking glory and blazing infamy. Go on, back to pretending that you've got nothing to do with it and it's only business as usual. No prophesies, only the firm and infallible logic of time, brainless choices to painful consequences. Will it teach them something, anything? That would be one of those questions the Almighty herself can be baffled by.1 point
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I'd say you're pretty quick to pass judgement on an individual for being a Nazi and racist by watching a 10 second clip. I've got nothing else to say to you.1 point
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I got an old army buddy who is OPP Asian Crimes Unit now he says the Chinese are the biggest mafia in Canada by far, nobody else even comes close the Mexican drug cartels are only their proxies, subcontractors Canada is more of a hub for organized crime than Mexico is it's just organized crime at the state run geopolitical level, backed up by the Chinese Communist Party so far above the streets that it is invisible Chinese gangsters don't sell on the street, they buy politicians in Ottawa1 point
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What he wanted to achieve is pretty clear and typical of clueless bullies: to make an example of presumably, weaker and more dependent members of the community so that the rest would fall in line whenever he points his fat finger to. The stupid gamble misfired big deal and straight into the std face, as below1 point
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Trump ran on it! he would replace income tax (the progressive tax system) with tariffs (a regressive tax system)! its the GOP "conservatives" wet dream! Navarro is still pushing it even though its clearly going to fail! it has always been a fail. it would never actually work. Navarro: Trump will ‘structurally shift’ American economy with tariff revenue there is no master chess player thing going on here. just pure stupidity by Trump and his teleprompt readers. the GOP know this too but are so damn scared of being primaried that they are content to just let it fail. and possibly let the country fail for awhile too. of course, the latest clear indication that the "tariff economic agenda" is a failure had to be reframed as some kind of win! Navarro on Trump’s tariff threats: ‘It’s a drug war, not a trade war’ we'll see how long it takes for Trump to abandon the whole tariff idea. he was damn sure that he could raise enough revenue to pay for extending his tax cuts. thats impossible. “It’s an absurd idea for many reasons, the biggest being that it is mathematically impossible to replace the income tax with tariffs,” Erica York, senior economist and research director at the right-leaning Tax Foundation. “Imports are a much smaller tax base than taxable income, and there’s no way to squeeze enough revenue from taxing imports to fully replace taxing income. A swap like this would hike taxes on working-class taxpayers and invite harmful retaliation against US exports.” “At first blush, fully replacing $2.4 trillion in income taxes would require a 75% tariff on America’s $3.2 trillion in annual imports,” he said. “However, even that unrealistically assumes that Americans continue purchasing the same imports at nearly double the price.” Trumps first term China tariffs cost taxpayers $26B just for farmer welfare. And its forever because China now buys those products from Brazil. Republicans eye bigger farm bailout amid Trump trade wars "A USDA fund Trump tapped for a $28 billion farm bailout during his first-term tariff clash with China is now running low, lawmakers say. After upcoming payments are made, there will only be an estimated $4 billion left" "It’s not just the immediate threat of price spikes and economic losses that’s of concern. There’s also a fear that tariffs could reshape markets for decades to come: China, for example, has increased its purchases of corn, soybean and other farm products from Brazil and other rising competitors since the 2018 trade war."1 point
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How do you know it went anywhere? If I owe someone 20 bucks and pay them 10, that other 10 isn't "missing."1 point
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This topic is about abandoning Ukraine so I think this is an appropriate place to discuss tens of billions in missing aid money that supposedly went to that country. Once again, specifically...billions in Ukraine aid money....unaccounted for. You're not even curious in the slightest about this?1 point
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Back to Ukraine. The Biden/Harris administration did send an enormous amount of aid to Ukraine, but as it turns out, a lot of it cannot be accounted for. Who is saying that? Volodymyr Zelensky. It seems that certain people may have become fabulously wealthy from all this aid that may not have had enough strings attached.1 point
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There's a lot of this going on alright and he's tapped into the destructiveness that's been running through America's right-wing base since it was captured by the wave of populism that swept up the likes of the Tea Partiers and finally swamped the Republicans with MAGA. He's the Vandal and Troll in Chief. In the meantime the opportunistic sharks following Trump's ship around is who we probably need to keep an eye on.1 point
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Prosecuting CRIMES is NOT "weaponizes the law," LIAR. It is and always has been the US criminal justice system. Duh1 point
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You got that backwards. And trudeau caved and said he woudln't take action without the support of all premiers, and sask and one other province took her side, and if anything she dressed him down pointing out it's his fault alberta only has one customer. Nice try tho1 point
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And that was his intent. Like I said his primary negotiating tactics seems to be kicking over all the tables and creating confusion to put people off their game and be uncomfortable when they sit down to negotiate. And remember we still have the threat of tariffs over our head, this is the 30-day pause Good luck with that1 point
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before Trump ; "Canada is a White Supremacist Settler Colonial Abomination guilty of Genocide by the UN definition !" enter Trump ; "come all you bold Canadians, rally round the Colours !" MAGA FTW1 point
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I don't think he's even started to get what he wanted. I think he looks at what he's gotten as a free bonus. I don't think he really cares about it at all. I think you and others are grossly grossly overestimating how much he cared about the border. Especially the Canadian border. I don't think he gave a Flying Fig about it. This was all theater and positioning to create a favorable environment for him to get what he really wants In what way, Trudeau has behaved exactly as trump wanted him to from all appearances. He's never thought well of Trudeau in the slightest That is a direct result of the choices the voters made in the last election. By that time every single person in Canada should have known that Trudeau was a failure and a terrible leader. But despite the fact that more people voted for conservatives than the liberals the liberals got enough support and key areas to take power. Then the NDP decided to keep them alive at all costs until sing got his pension And this is the result. It's literally what people voted for. You wanted corrupted incompetent? Well you got it Vote woke go broke. People need to learn.1 point
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There's an orange man in office who clearly isn't qualified for the job. That's the only answer.1 point
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Sure. So what? This is today. Want to hear about the oppression and injustice the Irish went through? "I have seen the Indian in his forest and the negro in his chains, and I thought as I contemplated their pitiable conditions, that I saw the very extreme of human wretchedness, but I did not then know the condition of unfortunate Ireland." "No Irish or dogs allowed" Ever heard of the Holocaust? For a 30 year period, it was required that all children, incl native children, attend school. If there wasn't one nearby they had to go to a residential school. This period ended in 1950. At its height, no more than a third of native kids attended residential schools. I see. Would you like to talk about the mass cultural trauma of Jews? They seem to be doing pretty well, regardless. And without colonialization where would they be now? Still living a hand-to-mouth existence as savages with an average lifespan of about 30 years.1 point
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Trump didn't think something through? Said something stupid? We've been watching this same shitshow for a decade already.1 point
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Go watch Hannity or Ingram or something, they'll have you straightened out in no time.1 point
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Depends how much you like authoritarian dictators with a cult of personality.1 point
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No reason to think Trump will keep his word on this anymore than he has before. Even if this does get settled, Canadians will never really trust the US again and maybe that's a good thing.1 point
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oh yeah, he is the chess genius who is 10 steps ahead at all times. i'd argue the opposite. he shoots in the dark to see what happens. often shooting himself in the foot. this is a good case in point. he implemented maximum leverage before even sitting down to the negotiating table and discovered that he had no leverage. so how the hell are you going to negotiate when the party opposite have already experienced that you have no cards? no, ideally you threaten leverage... hoping that the other side also view it as such. and then you slowly extract what you want while holding that leverage over their heads. particularly if that leverage is untested. he did the opposite.1 point
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As I was just saying in the other thread I don't think that's true. I think things played out exactly the way trump wanted them to all along. This is basically what I was claiming trump was doing 2 months ago, it's classic for him. He creates a bunch of panic tons of confusion gets everyone running around and then when everyone's in a panic he steps up and talks about what he really wants and everybody's kind of off their game. He never actually asked for anything explicit at our border. And we didn't give him anything new to get this 30 days. But now he's kind of created the environment he wants for trade negotiations, and it was interesting that he said that Canada and Mexico both would be meeting with a number of trades ministers and people in his administration rather than border security agents primarily. I think this is exactly what he had in his mind when he started this 3 months ago and I don't think anything has happened in the meantime has changed his mind or altered what he intended to do from the get-go.1 point
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Because now they see the US as an even more unreliable partner...to the point of being a threat. It's all so much water under the bridge now with Trump flooding the world with shit.1 point
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absolutely true! but when he was able to get the words out they made perfect sense from the perspective of administrative policy of the country. when he got the words out he wasn't talking about immigrants eating peoples pets, or revenge against those he hated, or the beauty of economic tariffs, or Hannibal Lecter, or that shower heads go drip drip drip, or Putin is a great guy, that Kim Jong Un is a great guy, Mark Milley deserves to die, anything about sharks, the election was rigged, Mexico will pay for the wall, all immigrants are violent, grabbing women by the ****, banging pornstars while your wife is pregnant, political opponents should be in jail, J6th riot was a beautiful day... i can't list it all and you know it.1 point
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Exactly. Trump 1 handed Biden a dumpster fire. Recovery and growth under Biden were strong--particularly compared to global peers. But Trump has vowed to undo everything that Biden accomplished, and it appears that promise extends to the economy. Trump is dumb, but his voters are worse.1 point
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you think Biden is stupid because thats what you've been told to believe. let me ask you a question... has Trump not inherited a US economy on steroids? is the stock market not at all time highs? is the unemployment rate at record lows? is inflation at the Treasury target rate? if thats "dumb" then... more "dumb" please!1 point
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yeah, except he doesn't understand ANY of that. he's dumb as a post. and his team are a bunch of TV prompt readers. the ramifications of his little non-trade war is a great example. Canada is going to get off its ass and start building trade relations with OTHER nations. Canadians have already dealt a huge blow to US businesses as just over the course of days as they stopped buying US goods. thats not going away anytime soon. Canadians are pissed that the US president would make such references that we should be the 51st state. F!ck America! Canada has the 4th largest reserves of natural resources on the planet and the second largest oil reserves. Canadians should be thanking Trump for reminding us that we can do more for ourselves and leave the US out of the equation. macro economics is too much for the brain of Trump and all of his believers. the US is king because it is the integration point of the worlds economy. isolationism will dismantle that and the US will no longer be king. other countries will be better off and better integrated amongst themselves. this is economics 101.1 point
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We have no interest in punishing people for being Americans we're punishing TRUMP and his enablers. You miss the memo? Foregoing Florida orange juice for a while is bugger all a price to pay, hopefully we'll see an exodus of snowbirds and visitors to go along with that, Punishing Washington State isn't high on the list.1 point
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oh yeah! what a win! here he was going to subjugate every other economy on earth with his genius "beautiful word" tariffs... that was HIS WHOLE ECONOMIC AGENDA! in the toilet. a few extra troops on the Mexican border? he could have called and asked and they would have done it. it isn't any sweat. the ramifications of his insane ideas will continue. people here in Canada are not going to just start buy US products again. they are pissed.1 point
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Mexican troops at the border? they're already there! they already turn a blind eye and greased palm out for the cartels. what about Trumps economic agenda? what is that again? oh right! he now doesn't have one.1 point
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Trumps ENTIRE economic agenda is in the toilet! you can't see that this was a total walkback? that he was struggling to find anything to chalk this up as a win? the DJI just took a dump! his entire economic agenda was based on tariffs to raise government income for tax cuts. that just went down the toilet. now he's got... NOTHING. its too complicated for him and his TV prompt readers.1 point
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and add to that most Walmart product is Chinese sourced not American sourced.1 point
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That is irrelevant to the crime he committed. If he stumbles across a minor in an alley and then has sex with here... it is not a defense or relevant fact that he was not looking for one. Irrelevant. If he had, he would have been charged and found guilty of actually engaging in sexual relations with a minor/rape.1 point
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Trump is a bully. He is very hostile to Canada because he doesn't like Canada's leaders. He doesn't understand how the world works and thinks he alone can change the world so that every other country are slaves to his country. He was on the news again this morning insulting Canada. He treats America's closest ally like an enemy of some kind. He is doing great harm in the world. He is a psychopath and displays hate constantly. The next four years will be difficult. It is very unpleasant to listen to him.1 point
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Yes, but if Julius Caesar gets tossed, we have an Octavius Caesar in a heartbeat. It is Caesar's role to ensure the citizens are served. It costs money to operate a 21st century government and on Tuesday, it is going to cost a lot more. We see our fellow corespondents on this forum complaining about high taxes at one moment, but then say we need to spend another $50 billion to give to NATO. While I am a firm believer in NATO, when the rubber its the road, I've been assured NATO will not protect us. Canada does not have the capacity to prevent invasion.1 point
