Freedom Caucus folks decide the deficit is no big deal now if Trump wants to spend a trillion on infrastructure:

I'm a poor negotiator. I just come out and say $10 and say I won't move an inch.

Remind me not to take you to Morocco ;).

Figure one of Trump Island looks a lot like what would happen after the polar ice caps melt after nuclear war.

I used to live on Johnson Island and now near St Louis Island. On the Clinton map.

Would raising the minimum wage to $15 make prices go up so much that it kills the middle class?

18 months into $15 minimum wages in Seattle shows no impact on prices.

Australia has a min wage of $12.81 in US dollars (it was over $15, $15.96 to be exact in January of this year, until recent changes in exchange rate). They still seem to have a middle class.

Even in Seattle it wasn't like suddenly everyone is making $15 an hour. Employers with less than 500 employees have until 2021 to reach that mark iirc.

Those damned Trump supporters

Member of black Mississippi church arrested for arson

Labor costs are only one part of a businesses expenses. Raising the minimum wage will raise costs, but no where close to the point where we'd have to worry about inflationary effects.

I can confirm that our society hasn't devolved into a Hunger Games-esque world of tyranny and oppression of a rich elite over the poor.

So Mad Max hasnt shown yet? That is good news.

Not yet, but the day is still young!

Im curious, Australia seems like a great place. Is illegal immigration a concern at all there? Large numbers of refugees? Population boom? What is happening down under??? Does Australia welcome new people like the USA does? Why is our population at 300 million and Australias is at 23 million? Lots of questions for ya!

Yeah I'm not sure if this is what Groundhog was attempting to get into with a fairly innocent post but Australia's immigration policy is frequently mentioned as one of the worst among first world countries. Not apples to apples obviously but neither is the minimum wage argument.

Giant death spiders and other killer animals.

Dont forget the dingos. They eat the babies.

Australia is home to world's most poisonous [insert animal here]

Universal Healthcare covers spider bites, right? :)

Venomous. It's venomous. You will be fine if you skin and cook a brown snake. You will not be fine if it bites you.

So good.

https://twitter.com/samsteinhp/statu...30515313950720

Secretary of Offense. Nice. Love that stuff.

I know people think he's playing some kind of chess game on Twitter but stuff like this just makes him sound really stupid.

So the only way for the US to lower and shrink it's nuclear capability is for the world to come to it's senses regarding nukes, and that means.....?

Seriously, what does that even mean?

Clearly he's a Twitter mastermind currently distracting people from something. Apologists, enlighten please.

My issue is reconciling these dramatic, devastating character and strategy attacks with the results. Receiving 3 million more votes and losing the election by a mere 80 thousands well placed votes, to me, doesn't not suggest a massive, systemic character/stagey flaw.

I feel it has mostly to do with economic needs. For a lot of the country, the approach of "don't vote for my opponent, he's unfit" was wildly successful. Where it was slightly less successful was in a few areas where Clinton represented tripling down on a hopeless economic path.

Thats a nice way to spin the landslide the MSM promised that never happened and the actual political upset of the century that did.

After all these years, a many times asking, I still have no idea what you mean by MSM. You anthropomorphize it so much that I think you think it is a deity.

Actually, it does.

Hint: HRC's character flaws aren't the only ones involved here.

I'm amazed at how much damage some of the liberal supporters continue to do to their cause. Just for example:

-The whole deal with no one wanting to perform for the inauguration. While everyone is perfectly within their right to be a part of the event, the continued threats towards anyone who considers it along with the 'counter concert' being considered are not helping their cause in any way. It makes them look like bullies. They're looking and acting like the candidate they detest. That's not a good way to change perception towards the liberal side of things. If anything, it's creating a further divide that will not serve them well.

-The verbal attack on Ivanka on the plane. Same thing. The incident only helps to portray liberals as bullies and paints Ivanka as a sympathetic figure when she's attacked on public transportation with her kids literally sitting right next to her. She comes out looking mature and poised while the other guy comes out looking juvenile and petty.

Liberals need to realize that they're going to create a bigger political monster on the other side with these actions. It's not going to end like they think it will.

Extremist dipshits have been doing that for years. It's not a liberal thing.

Trump posse browbeats Hill Republicans - POLITICO

Concern troll is concerned.

There's a huge difference between brow-beating career politicians who are all part of the problem and threatening a woman with kids or an entertainer who have no participation in the corruption that our government currently represents.

If you could put a -R suffix to news feeds that have a Republican bent and a -D to those who have a Democratic bent (even marginally and that's an important point) it might be easier to understand.

Fox News -R
AM Radio -R
CNN -D
NBC -D
CBS -D
ABC -D
PBS -D
Comedy Central -D
MTV -D
New York Times -D
Los Angeles Times -D
Huffington Post -D
Hollywood Movies -D


I'm think the general feeling is if a news feed reaches a large audience, it's MSM. And when you weigh them together, the MSM tilts left. One of the main reasons Fox News has so many viewers is because the choices for the Center-Right and Right are limited. In the early 90's it was so bad that Fox News catered to the Center-Right and a ground swell of support arose.

Maybe it's because of faulty polling that so many assume people want a left-wing bent. I don't know, but it's there.

I'm sure the guy with all the business interests/conflicts of interest will turn all that around.

Well if a heavy hitter such as Hollywood Movies tilts left then the MSM must be left.

A woman with kids is is interesting label for a member of the transition team with a permanent White House office.

And for the record, I don't think the confrontation was appropriate, but she isn't a child and works for the admin.

A big part of the problem is the way any lean on any social subject is considered definitive. Many of the D outlets are pretty fiscally conservative, especially on entitlements. The networks have for years run Sunday morning shows with a much higher percentage of conservatives. Hollywood almost never touches foreign policy except in a pro-military view.

On social issues, I'd agree traditional conservatives don't see their issues on tv, but on fiscal and foreign policy issues it isn't nearly as one dimensional as you'd like to portray.

I'm still flabbergasted that she was on JetBlue. In coach.

I don't think even hardcore Trump haters(hello!) think that guy was anything but a silly twat that deserved to get kicked off and made a fool of. I wasn't aware of it until your post, formed that snap judgement, reading the story and his husbands tweets just strengthens that opinion. He got off easy.

While I appreciate you trying to turn "harrassing family members on a plane" into a divisive partisan issue.... just no. Stop it.

You are still making the same fallacy that has been going on all year: popular votes and national polls are irrelevant to the election of a president, always have been. The election is played by a different rule and winning by that rule is all that matters.

I am struck as to the vote difference in California alone: Clinton won by nearly 3.5 million votes but there is no such thing as strength of victory in any states. I didn't add it up but I wonder how much did California and New York alone contribute to popular margin?

My point, and has been all year, is that it never mattered how many votes for a candidate that nationally polled or turned out. Turning out 7.3 million votes in CA and 3.4 million more than an opponent is not an indicator of any macro. It's the segmentation that matters.

Hmm, still not making my point, bear with me. Presidential elections have never been a national election, so any talk of polls and results nationally is irrelevant. The way I look at it is that a majority of the country (about 57%) did not favor Clinton but that only a handful of states skewed the aggregate numbers. It's like one of those unique golf games (skins? ryder?) where it doesn't matter what your strokes score was but only the number of holes won.

I also do not believe in landslides or mandates as there have been only 4 in my lifetime (64, 72, 80 and 84). Despite what Bill Clinton thought of himself, he didn't have one and neither does Trump.

Plenty of entertainers took the brunt of Trump supporters before and after the election. Regardless, it's detestable behavior regardless of who it is directed at.

Ivanka is also not just a "woman with kids". She's a top adviser to Donald and he has stated she will have an active role in his administration. She was also not threatened.

Com'on Donald, anything but a nuke war (or arms race)

(I'm good with a economic/trade war with China and the Wall)

Ironically enough, the "Clinton Archipelago" per the last page in this thread will take the brunt of any attack should it ever escalate that far.

?

I explained it wasn't one-dimensional...if after what I wrote all you get is I'm suggesting this is binary, then it's not really worth discussing it. I couldn't begin to tell you if the left-wing bent is 51%-49% or 99%-1% but it's significant. I wouldn't expect you to understand because you agree with the left-wing bent. So it's much more difficult for you to see it. The only example I can provide, and why I provided it, is Fox News and AM Radio. That gives you an idea of how you can see it there and then you'll have to flip the script a bit to see it for the others.

Unsurprisingly, you completely missed his point.

So you want your media to be fair and balanced?

Welcome to the maddening world of false equivalence journalism (from a climate reporter who knows) | Fusion

How False Equivalence Is Distorting the 2016 Election Coverage | The Nation

The danger of fair and balanced - Columbia Journalism Review

False equivalence: how 'balance' makes the media dangerously dumb | Bob Garfield | Opinion | The Guardian

Beware of false balance: Are the views of the scientific community accurately portrayed?

https://thinkprogress.org/to-improve...s-c4b50fa1dddf

I said only that there is a left-wing bias and was respectfully asked to explain what MSM meant in that regard.

With most politicians you assume they're lying when they say shit. With Trump you hope he's lying.

Can't one of his advisors negotiate with Twitter to put him on ghost mode and then generate bots so that he appears to get replies and mentions?

My son had an interesting take on (kind of) this topic earlier tonight.

My wife said something along the lines of what you said, about maybe getting him off Twitter, my 18 y/o said it'd be the worst thing he could do with younger supporters. His feeling was that Trump's tweets (though I could argue that his Twitter style is more accurate) were the single most effective medium with younger supporters. Remember, he does know a lot of Trump voters in his current cadre at school, he swears that the tweets had more influence "than every ad, debate, article, everything else combined"

I do think that is interesting, but I guess I'd just note that governing via Twitter is much different than campaigning via Twitter. The latter can be very effective, the former carries big risk.

Granted, it's anecdotal but I know him pretty darned well & his take on the role of Twitter surprised even me. And he's not a big Twitter person generally, uses it strictly for random amusement pretty much, so it's not anything like that skewing him on it afaik.

Such topical spam.

Looks like the "just ignore it" phase towards his mind dumbing tweets has already hit at least for this small subset of folks on this board.

What's the first thing House Republicans do?

Neuter the House ethics enforcement.

Draining that swamp!

I feel like if this election has taught us anything, its that it doesn't matter what's really true, only that the first thing someone says about a subject is the truth.

At least Trump sort of called them out on it and it looks like they may be reversing it?

I don't think people are used to the constant trial balloons right now. Everybody thought that Congress and Trump would just be ramming things through once they take power. I think they've wisely put a TON of trial balloons out there in public to see which parts of the shit hit the fan. They're definitely still going to put through a lot of things they believe in, but the degree to which they do it appears to largely be related to the level of outrage (or lack thereof) that each receives when they put it out there in mostly social media.

We'll see if it works or not in the long run, but I'd rather have this than surprises. Even the ethics thing yesterday was clearly a trial balloon that popped. Also improved Ryan's standing as showing he has a pretty good pulse of what the general population would think of it.

A trial balloon is where you leak something to the press or throw it out on a Sunday morning political show, not where you ACTUALLY VOTE TO MAKE THE CHANGE.

OK

LOL

Another win for Trump. If GM does the same, Trump's going to get a lot more favorable treatment in the next election in Michigan.

Ford to scrap Mexico plant, invest in Michigan; CEO cites Trump policies | Fox News

Ryan said he was against it, but also agreed to bring it to the floor after membership voted for it. After it leaked to the press he got killed and then got membership to kill it after it became clear it wasn't going to pass.

Ryan looks good is a unique interpretation.

Dunno if this is the right place for it, but Megyn Kelly is leaving FOX News to go to NBC.

Log In - New York Times


No report on how much the deal is, but Kelly was making $15mil a year, so it's likely quite a bit more than that.

I don't think agreeing to bring it to the floor is a negative thing. He may not have liked it, but I don't want a House leader who thinks he can shut down the entire system on his own if the majority of people are for it. That's a far worse scenario. He did exactly what he should have done.

So MSNBC is going more conservative? These don't sound like NBC shows and CNBC has a lower audience than MSNBC.

It sounds like she'll have a daytime show on the network NBC, not MSNBC if I'm reading correctly. That's a big step up from cable news.

Did Ford choose to stay on their own or did they get a bunch of corporate welfare like Carrier?

I hate to tell you this, but no one is going to care if this trend continues. If he's putting jobs back into places that desperately need jobs or are about to have jobs move overseas, it's a huge win for him. I agree that we'll see how this plays out over time, but it's a huge PR win for him up front.

The exactness of where her daytime and evening news magazine shows are going to air is due to the fact that NBC News runs MSNBC. So NBC News announcing she's going to have a daytime show every day and a news magazine show on Sunday evenings can be either.

Or, it could be the daytime show on MSNBC and the Sunday evening magazine show on NBC proper (before football).

Edit: Right now, during daytime, NBC has Dr. Phil from 3-4 and the Ellen from 4-5. Both are pretty good shows for the network. So it's likely that Kelly's daytime show is on MSNBC.

At this point, we don't really know.

Damn fake news! :)

Doubt cast that Russian gov't tried to hack Vermont utility, Washington Post says - CBS News

I agree. I don't even have a problem with certain incentives to keep jobs in the states if it makes financial sense. But there is a difference in saving jobs and having the government pay to save jobs.

In the end it'll be interesting to see where the unemployment rate is in 4 years compared to today.

The article mentioned syndication which made me think NBC.

Fox News spun the hell of that story.

In the interview with Cavuto, Ford's CEO said that they were going to build the next generation of the Ford Focus in the plant they were building. The decision to scrap the new plant was made because they've seen a decrease in demand for small cars and don't need the capacity anymore. They will instead build the next generation of the Ford Focus in an existing plant in Mexico.

Cavuto even asked him directly if he would have done this even if Donal Trump were not elected and he said "Yes, absolutely."

The decision to not build the new plant in Mexico had absolutely nothing to do with Trump.

The CEO did give Trump's proposals partial credit for the decision to increase their investment in Michigan (a plant that builds electric cars) by $700 million. But he did state that there were no negotiations with Trump or his administration.

Most of the Russian hacking stuff has been trash. And the Washington Post has been the worst major media outlet at spreading it. The media buying into everything the current administration is shoveling reminds me of the WMD crap. If you read the stuff they just released, it's heavy on circumstantial evidence but light on any real evidence.

Matt Taibbi wrote a good takedown on the Washington Post a month back. Their reporting on this has been terrible.

'Washington Post' 'Blacklist' Story Is Shameful, Disgusting - Rolling Stone

1) Dr. Phil & Ellen are syndicated shows, not network shows. They air on various network affiliates on a market-by-market basis. WXIA/Atlanta has him, that's an NBC. WMAZ/Macon has him, that's CBS. The same stations both have Ellen in those markets, but in Augusta Phil airs on the NBC while Ellen airs on the CBS affiliate. There may be some tendency for O&O (network owned & operated) but none of the networks have a dominant position in the U.S. with those (indeed, it's prohibited by law)

2) That said, I've seen enough local ratings to know that ANY affiliate who gets an ownership mandate to drop either of those high performing shows for a start-up will be a very pissed off local station.

Ah, interesting. I didn't realize they weren't owned by the networks.

Mike Rowe hit this one on the head pretty well. Pretty much what the majority of Americans will take from this situation.

I don't think Rowe "hit it on the head", but I do think that a good many Americans in the Rust Belt will have the same opinion (though perhaps not a majority of Americans).

Oh, I think there's more than that. Most of the Midwest and South would buy in as well.

The thing with minimum wage is we are already paying for it. If someone makes $8/hour they require government assistance elsewhere (food stamps, Medicaid, etc).

I've seen proposals that would target larger retailers. After a certain number of employees or income you are required to pay the higher minimum wage. This would make sense as those companies benefit from our government much more than smaller companies and they should be paying a larger share.

I guess it comes down to how you want it to be doled out. Right now Walmart pays $10/hour and we subsidize the other $5/hour. The alternative is Walmart pays the $15/hour and while this may increase prices, it should lead to less government spending and lower taxes to offset it.

He's right that we need more companies to do what Ford and Wal-Mart did by keeping jobs and buying in the US. It would also help if these companies paid taxes and didn't hoard money in offshore havens when they benefit a great deal from our country. But if they were paying me millions to market their products, I wouldn't bring that up either.

He also doesn't bring up that manufacturing of the Ford Focus is still moving to Mexico. But then again he probably didn't know that since his source was the same Fox News article that horribly spun the story. For some reason, MBBF felt the need to edit that part out.

FWIW, this article has a lot more information

Ford invests $700M in Mich., cancels plan for Mexico plant

These individual announcements will be great PR if the economy stays hot, but they won't matter if things go south. In four years if the economy is strong Trump will win and if it isn't he won't. All of the daily wins/losses don't really matter.

He's already addressed that in his proposed tax changes. He's proposing a corporate tax rate of 15%, which is competitive with nearly all countries that currently house offshore HQ's (Ireland is amongst the lowest at 12.5%). Economists estimate that a drop to 15% of the tax rate would increase the GDP by 4-5% just because of the bump in corporate tax income that would occur when businesses move back their HQ's to take advantage of the more favorable rate.

I'm so old I remember when the deficit actually mattered.

Thanks to Donald Trump, I've added one full time position to my farm.

Of course I filled that position with a person from Nicaragua.

Ford Cancels Mexican Plant but Is Still Moving Small Car Production - NBC News

Some of this stuff scares the crap out of me. Would we even really know publicly (edit: Or rather, would it have been a news story on the "front page") that Ford was building a $1.6 Billion plant in Mexico if it weren't for Trump's "rhetoric"? How many other companies are doing this? Why didn't we ever hear much about this when Obama was the President?

Is Trump the more effective vocal leader of getting his concerned aired nationally? Albeit, it's mostly negative from the MSM, but at least we are learning about this at the general masses level.

Yes, we would. We did. We do.

The other counterpoint here is that as great as 700 people keeping their jobs is the viability of Ford is going to have a much bigger effect on Americans in a huge number of ways. I hope that Ford and other companies are able to operate with duties to stakeholders (including pensioners and retirees) in mind rather than only focusing on jobs. In a perfect world those two are aligned and you can do both, but the world is far from perfect.

Gosh, all this talk has me wondering what people would have thought about Obama if he had ever done anything to help out the auto industry.

Trump's public war with the intelligence community is nuts. It's amazing what lengths he's willing to go to defend Putin.

The "Intelligence" briefing on so-called "Russian hacking" was delayed until Friday, perhaps more time needed to build a case. Very strange!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 4, 2017

Source for that? I think the corporate tax rate is somewhat too high, but I'm not sure 15% is a better answer than 25 (current federal rate is 35%, and effective rate is closer to 27, which is a different issue), and you'd need a lot of businesses moving listed HQ's back to the US to increase GDP that much. (I also assume you mean taxable corporate income in the last sentence, not corporate tax income.) But there are also reasons beyond lower tax rates to charter a company or specific divisions in a different country.

That's awesome. What does the new person do?

How many assholes are in that Schumer family? Chuck wants to be the Dem hero by holding up confirmations, and Amy still hasn't left the country like she promised. I'm sure Canadians would love to hear her talk about her vagina for two hours.

That is one scorching hot take. Thanks for sharing it.

Exactly right. The counter point is the problem for sure. We are competing with foreigner that can do our manufacturing jobs the exact same but don't pay workers (or retirees or pensioners) much of anything compared to our standards.

This isn't a knock on Obama, but other than that, another solid post.