Bonam

Despite all the terrible things Trump said, he won the election. Now that he won, barring unforeseen circumstances between now and the inauguration date, he will become president. The peaceful and orderly transfer of power from one administration to the next is a cornerstone of American democracy. As for friends and families shunning each other over political disagreements... that's stupid. People shouldn't let the idiotic staged performances of corrupt incompetents a thousand miles away influence their personal lives.

Yeah people have the right to show their displeasure, free speech and all. But it's dumb. Just like it was dumb after Obama won, too.

The whole democratic narrative that a bunch of hillbilly racists took over the country by electing Trump is shown to be a lie though. The Republican nominee got pretty much exactly as many votes as the Republican nominee always gets. But Democrats stayed home, thus losing themselves the election. In some sense, as much as I find a president Trump distasteful... it's kind of fun watching all the liberals be shocked and dismayed as their bubble burst around them. So much melodrama, "woe is me", the "world is ending" posts everywhere.

On the contrary, that chart shows exactly what I said. Republican turnout was essentially the same, only down slightly (~2 million). Meanwhile Democratic turnout was down ~7 million, a huge change.

I've seen plenty calling for riots, insurrection, disobedience, secession, etc. No side of the political spectrum has a monopoly on getting riled up and staying stupid stuff. And calling Trump supporters "stupid idiots" for the last 2 years is a big part of what led him to win. All those idiots didn't take kindly to being insulted and they made sure to come out on election day to spit in the faces of those who insulted them. Unlike democratic voters who for the most part weren't very excited about their candidate and didn't bother coming out... 10 million fewer voters than in 2012.

Each year, we borrow more since we run deficits each year. Any new borrowing is at the interest rates prevalent in that year. If/when interest rates rise, the debt mix that we service will start to increase in terms of its average servicing cost as the preponderance of old low interest rate debt slowly becomes replaced with newer higher interest rate debt. I agree that relative to other times, now is a good time to borrow due to interest rates being near historical lows. But just because now is a better time than other times to borrow, doesn't mean we should borrow if we don't need to. Canada is in an enviable position compared to most other western countries in terms of debt-to-gdp ratio, due to fiscal prudence by a long succession of Canadian governments, and I would like to see that fiscal prudence continue. That means not borrowing just because we can, even if it's tempting to do so, unless there are very very good reasons.

No. It's coincided with growth in North America. The primary driver of economic growth in North America over the past ~150 years has been productivity growth (that is, technological innovation).

Had a bunch of idiots protesting here in Seattle. What is there to protest? The election is over and as distasteful as we might find Trump, he won it fair and square, and it's not like the results were close or ambiguous at all.

Looks pretty comparable to me, with Japan doing slightly better much of the time. Canada did it with one of the highest (per capita) rates of immigration of any country in the world and Japan with one of the lowest. Immigration and population growth is not necessary for economic growth.

Saw roving bands of protesters around here. What the heck is the point, election is over people.

Maybe Trump will repeal and replace Obamacare with universal single payer

The contempt that was poured onto Trump and his supporters by the media and liberals definitely energized them and made them come out and vote for Trump. Just like the Remain campaign in Brexit painted the Leave side as a bunch of racists and bigots. Once again, another illustration that insulting the people you want to vote for you simply does not work.

Agreed, Fox was hardly a stronghold of Trump support throughout the campaign.

I don't think so. No doubt, Trump is a racist and sexist. But that's not why he won the election. He won the election because he had a message that resonated (even if based on false empty promises and non-factual claims). Clinton had no message, she conceded the direction of the conversation to Trump for the entire duration of the campaign. The Clinton campaign evidently thought that their best bet was to lay low and hope that Trump would sink himself with his own words. That backfired, badly. Trump knew exactly how many voters he needed and how many he could afford to alienate, and his words resonated with exactly the number of people they needed to resonate with. You don't win an election by letting your opponent control the story. The democrats picked a uniquely terrible campaigner. Everyone thought she had the nomination in the bag in 2008, but Obama came out of nowhere with some decent campaigning skills and took it away from her. And even this year, she almost lost to Sanders, another obscure out of nowhere person, and hardly the picture of a democratic champion.

American lefties are still pretty right by Canadian standards. And a lot of people talk crap about moving to Canada election night and the morning after but in a few days everyone will be back to their normal lives.

Also of interest seems to be the historically low turnout in this election. 120 million votes, down from 130 million in the last 2 elections. Only about 50% turnout.

True, but the Republican party also deserved an "egg on their face" but now they have control of the presidency, senate, congress, and very soon the supreme court too. Trump will have a minimum of 2 years (but likely longer) to do essentially whatever he wants.

Depends what one means by "discovered". I would think that it's likely that most of the territory of Canada and the US had been seen by human eyes at some point before Europeans arrived. But does one person or a small group of people having passed somewhere while hunting or whatever count as "discovering" if there is no record, no maps, no names, etc, and a generation later no one knows that that place exists. But anyway it's a bit of a moot point... peoples have been migrating around and overwhelming other peoples since the dawn of human history. There were many waves of migrations from Asia into Europe, often destroying or radically altering the existing cultures, for example. It is only really since WWII that the idea that borders shouldn't be changed any more has taken root, that we should prevent groups from pushing out other groups and taking over their territory. Prior to WWII, this was largely seen not only as acceptable behavior but in fact something of an imperative for any nation that could do so. Leaders that could take and hold new territory for their nation/state/empire were widely admired. While technology has transformed society drastically since then, it seems doubtful that present day borders represent an everlasting equilibrium. The post WWII consensus of no more military expansion has been a result first of a nuclear balance of power in the Cold War, and more recently, of the relative "benevolence" of the world's remaining superpower. But the US is in relative decline (it's share of the world's gdp, population, and military power are all falling as other nations advance), and it cannot solely enforce the present world order forever. Meanwhile, the relative peace of the threat of mutual assured destruction can now be circumvented by any advanced nation that wanted to spend enough money on defensive technologies, since a nuclear attack could now plausibly be neutralized with a sufficient set of layered anti-missile defenses.

As for WA state, I think the two local things of interest here are the carbon tax (I-732) and the transit referendum (Prop 1). Probably a much bigger impact on the life and finances of an average Seattleite than the presidential result.

They've been doing it in every US election cycle for at least 20 years, so presumably they think they are getting their money's worth.

Hardly matters, given that foreign nationals and corporations can freely donate as much money as they want to Super PACs through their US-based subsidiaries. Super-PAC contributions from European entities are about a factor of 100 times higher than those from Canada.

Because protections around free speech should extend to how you name your wifi network?

I don't think Canadians have inherently more or less "business acumen" compared to other people around the world. If Canada lacks major companies compared to similar countries, I would look for the causes deeper than just assuming it is an inherent deficiency in Canadian people or culture. As for the service sector, which you bemoan comprising 70% of the Canadian economy... you should know that your vaunted example of Sweden has the service sector comprising 71% of the economy. And the United States, home of most of the world's most innovative corporations (which you lament Canada having too few of) has a service sector comprising 80% of its economy (the highest of any country in the world). The reality is almost everything that isn't literally sitting in a factory operating a machine or working on a farm is considered to be part of the "service sector". Engineers, inventors, entrepreneurs, scientists, programmers, educators, doctors, etc, which are the driving forces behind most of the innovation, technological progress, and economic growth that we see in the present and going forward are all in the "service sector". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_sector_composition

And if we weren't paying that, we'd have $360 billion to invest over the next 12 years (instead of borrowing to invest $186 billion). Debt is a ball and chain on government finances, and yet people want to pretend that just borrowing more will solve the problem.

Chelsea Clinton vs Ivanka Trump