Lostwingman

Thanks. I pounded it out in 15 -20 minutes, deadline writing style, and all I can do is look at the mistakes now that I've scanned it with my editor eye. Sigh...
 
Back on subject, it really is fascinating to see how much Trump has changed the landscape of politics in such a short time. Since George Bush the Elder became President, the preponderance of legitimate Republican thought was to lower all trade barriers on goods coming into the country and let the "Free market" and "muh capitalism" take over. Anyone who thought different was a wild-eyed heretic or - worse - a Pat Buchanan supporter. This was a rejection of  Republican doctrine which had been in place since the founding of the party in 1856. But 24 years of backing by the conservative intelligentsia in various magazines, talk radio shows, think tanks, and Fox News and later websites and blogs had erased any mention of tariffs and protectionism from the GOP plank. This was baked into various state and national party platforms over that same time.
 
I remember being lectured to 8 or 9 years ago by a former Washington State Republican Party Chairman about how foolish I was to worry about trade deficits and exporting factories and manufacturing jobs to China and how much it helped the state economy being the geographical beneficiary of the make work of off-loading and loading Chinese cargo ships at the Port of Seattle. (Curiously, the guy sold out a couple years ago and is making a six figure salary as the lobbyist for one of the most liberal public sector unions in the country SEIU and various health insurance companies. Scum of the earth. I digress.)
 
It's amazing how thin that veneer was and how acceptable the notion of protectionism is in the GOP.
 
Yes, we know all polls are crap other than painting a rough thumbnail sketch. But here is a Politico poll showing that of 2,000 registered voters, 40 percent support Trump's proposal to place tariffs on steel and aluminum. 35 opposed.
Breaking down the numbers, 65 percent of Republicans were in favor. 24 percent of Democrats.
 
https://www.politico.com/story/2018/03/07/poll-trump-steel-aluminum-tariff-444104
 
Now a Quinnipac poll has different results but it still has the preponderance of Republicans backing the tariffs. 
 
https://poll.qu.edu/national/release-detail?ReleaseID=2525
 
Now obviously there is still a lot of push-back by leaders in the party and elected officials and various lobbying groups and organizations like the Chamber of Commerce who are going to continue to fight the President on this because how DARE middle and working class workers think that they deserve a living wage. But if the argument is between a bunch of bean counters muttering about the Ricardian model of economics versus - hey, LOOK! -  a new factory has opened in Ohio and a new steel mill in Pennsylvania and other important swing states, I can tell you which one is the sounder political move.
 
Edit: And again, this is VERY much a political move on the part of Trump. Look at the swing states on the map. Wisconsin, michigan, Pennsylvania, Ohio. These are Rust Belt states. He is crafting an Electoral College majority that - if he's successful - will win him 2020.

As always, the first thing to understand with President Trump is that these are negotiations. He's a negotiator. And I read these tariffs as an opening salvo to get politicians from these various countries to the negotiating table, preferably separately where we as the US have the advantage and not as a trade bloc. There are different strategies to open negotiations, and this is the classic ask twice as much as you want opening gambit.
 
Tariffs helped build American industry, starting from America's founding through the 19th Century Industrial Revolution and into the 20th Century, the "American Century". If we didn't have tariffs, we'd still be exporting cotton and raw materials to Liverpool in return for finished goods. As it is, thanks to the bean-counters and the politicians whom they've bought off since the 1990s, America has been reduced to exporting raw materials to China in return for finished goods. History has not been kind to countries in that predicament.
 
Of course the economists and bean-counters who are outsourcing jobs and factories overseas think they're immune to the lessons of history.
 
Back on subject, another advantage to domestic steel and aluminum production is an environmental one. American factories and foundries are by orders of magnitude cleaner than their Chinese and Indian counterparts. Environmentalists like to talk a big game about saving the planet by shutting down steel plants in Pittsburg and coal mines in West Virginia but all they've done is just out-sourced pollution to China (and India) who give zero fucks about poisoning their rivers and air. In countries with 1.5 billion people apiece, life is cheap.
 
When you think about it, it makes absolutely zero sense from an environmental standpoint to transport scrap metal and coal across the country - past shuttered factories and steel plants - to Seattle and other West Coast ports in order to load them onto cargo ships in order to ship it across the Pacific to China where it has to be offloaded, shipped to foundries and factories, repackaged as finished goods, reloaded into shipping containers, sent back across the Pacific to Seattle and other West Coast ports in order to then ship the goods back across the United States.
 
Another factor is quality of the product. Chinese steel is absolute garbage, as are the mechanical parts and tools made from it. Anyone who has had any experience with construction or mechanical parts made from Chinese steel knows this. Which is why it is zero surprise that the guy sitting in the Oval Office who made his fortune building skyscrapers, hotels, resorts, and casinos using steel doesn't want the country solely dependent on Chinese steel and aluminum imports. Donald Trump's schtick as an eccentric billionaire is that he hob-nobs with his construction workers, hard-hatted guys named Eddie and Vinny and Tony who work with their hands and who aren't afraid to tell their boss "Hey, Donald, dis steel we're getting ain't no gud". 
 
It's the difference of buying something "cheap" at Walmart, knowing you'll have to throw it away after a couple months versus dropping a little bit extra on a quality item that can last years (or a lifetime). Take the Craftsman tool line for instance. Craftsman used to put out a good made in USA product that was affordable and which would theoretically last a lifetime. And if it didn't, you returned the tool for a new one, no questions asked. Well, just like everything, the Craftsman line got sold off piecemeal by Sears in a blatant profit grab by its corporate board, the tools are now made in China, with a joke of a warranty, and the things fall apart after one or two uses. I had to buy a ratchet set once upon a time after this happened and the thing fell apart in my hands while I was working on my 'Stang.
 
Of course economists, bean-counters, and politicians who have never gotten their hands dirty in their life and who don't know how to even change their oil, let alone an alternator, or a battery, or a fuel pump don't understand or care. And the crazy thing is, these "cheap" Chinese parts which are supposed to be so much affordable than American aren't even cheap. Look up the price of a Chinese made car battery. It's ridiculous. 
 
Finally, in my TLDR post, there is the trickle-down effect of protecting American manufacturing jobs. It is written in stone as part of the Republican Ten Commandments that tax cuts are GOOD, and trickle-down economics works, so if you give a tax break to the rich (and middle class) this will help the economy since folks will spend money and yada yada. 
 
So it is always confusing that the biggest proponents of trickle-down economics, the sort of guys who jerk off each evening to a picture of milton Friedman, HATE tariffs. They're the sort who'd sell out their country and fellow citizens in order to save twenty bucks on a flat screen TV. 
 
What is ignored, is the societal costs of not having a thriving industrial base. Particularly in a continental power of 310 million people. We're not Norway or Portugal or Austria who can get by on a one-trick economic pony, relying on oil profits, or wine, or exporting Austrian economic theories to gullible Libertarians. The US economy has to be multi-faceted because of the diaspora of our population across multiple climatic and economic zones. 
 
If I have to spend $10 extra dollars on an American made washing machine so my fellow American in Scranton can have a good job, that means I'm not sending $20 dollars to the state and federal government to pay for that man's food stamps and welfare checks. If that man has a good job, it means his son and daughter are all the more likely to get a good upbringing and good education. If that man doesn't have a job it means he's more likely to divorce his wife. it means his son is more likely to engage in a life of crime. That son will rob from me. I have to pay for a police officer to arrest him,  two lawyers to defend and prosecute him, and money to jail him.  It means his daughter will be all that more likely to have kids out of wedlock herself. Or get an abortion.
 
And what slays me is that many of the same people who oppose protecting American industry, great "thinkers" like William Kristol, or the brainiacs at National Review, or Ben Shapiro who's never worked a real job in his life, all profess to be good, godly Christians (or Orthodox Jews) who are so holy and saintly. And yet when it comes to American manufacturing jobs, these guys are like the shitters in an online video game telling their team to "Git gud". As if everyone wants to spend six figures on a college education so they can sit in a cubicle typing code the rest of their lives.
 
Of course the real reason the aforementioned intellectuals who are so much smarter than everyone else hate blue collar manufacturing jobs is because those people voted for Donald Trump.
 
(Gotta go IRL) Finally, there is the very real "multiplier effect" of manufacturing jobs. The sort of men (and women) who work at a factory tend to have a more positive effect on the economy.  Even the raving liberals at HuffPo seem to feel that way.
 
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/jerry-jasinowski/jobs-multiplier_b_4002113.html

A partnership between Republic Steel and a Minnesota iron ore company says it plans to restart a northeast Ohio blast furnace that's been idle since 2016.  The Elyria Chronicle-Telegram reports Lorain Pig Iron LLC says the furnace capable of producing 1 million tons of pig iron annually could be operating at the Lorain mill by the end of 2018. The partnership between Republic and ERP Iron Ore is considering restarting a second furnace at the mill to produce pig iron used in steel production.

yes it is a railgun, i was gonna hold the news for a while,you guys are sure keep eyes on it huh? ))))
the railgun sea trial is based on 072-III class landing ship CNS-936 'HaiYangShan'

just a prototype sea trial, the gun itself are build by Dr.MaWeiMing's team from University of naval engineering in Wuhan. 
 

OK, by now you may have seen news announcing that Xi Jinping has removed the term limits on the Chinese presidency and how this now makes him a strongman who will oppress the gays and Tibetians, blah blah blah.

I didn't sit through a bunch of boring-ass lectures on the role of yellow journalism in the Spanish-American War so I could fall for the exact same shit one hundred and twenty years later.  This is sensationalism, pure and simple.
 
The actual event has long since occurred.  The title of the presidency in China is largely ceremonial.  Deng Xaioping (PBUH) never held the official title of President or Premier or even Party Secretary, but everyone knew that he was the motherfucker what's in charge.
 
QED, if Xi Jinping is changing the constitution now, it's because he has already consolidated his power.  Do you seriously think he'd reveal his master-stroke if there remained the slightest chance of anyone affecting its outcome? He did it years ago.  Behind closed doors.

Most of Louisiana is utterly unlivable, so yeah.

Sadly, it is illegal to shoot invasive species like Californians and other out-of-staters in Washington state.

Also @Donward fix your state.
 

I still wouldn't want to eat it.  Dog probably doesn't deserve it either.

CNN, the most trusted source in news.
 
 
Guy digs through trash, has smoke blown in his face by a Russkie, and gets escorted out by a tracksuit wearing stereotype acting as security.

Do you even CNN?
 

Did we already get this one?
 

He lived in the wrong timeline

He lived in the wrong timeline

He lived in the wrong timeline

He lived in the wrong timeline

He lived in the wrong timeline

[clapiing uncontrollably]

You know, there used to be a time when the Soviets decided to influence an election, it meant an entire government would fall to the red banner of revolution; another domino having fallen.
Today the Russkies can barely scrape together the wherewithal to buy a few Facebook ads while trolling normies on Twitter.
Sad!

I see only stone cold facts here.

That Tucker Carlson thing was unbelievably bizarre, I could not disagree with or roll my eyes at a single thing he said.
 
What strange land is this where people like this are the last public voices of reason we have left?

I would describe it more as fragmentation.  Look at how contentious the 2008 Obama/Clinton primary was, and how contentious the 2016 Sanders/Clinton primary was.  There's no glue holding the Democrats together anymore, and all attempts to re-establish a hierarchy have failed.  This sort of Hobbesian all-for-themselves infighting really brings out the crazies.  Crazies don't normally have a shot at getting power.  When the Democrats were on their A-game, like in the Bill Clinton days, crazies were kept out of sight.  But now the crazies smell blood in the water and think that now could be their time to shine.  But it's just a symptom of the entire party fraying and coming apart.
 
The Republicans were having this problem to a lesser degree, but they have learned fairly quickly that they must submit themselves to the golden-plated whims of Emperor Trump.

the media is still bad (not strictly politics related)