2016 US Presidential Elections

[OrangeFlorian]

@Bahamut..........................................................................yes

 

[Project Dharma]

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Dude, the Koreans were based as fuck, they are my role models in case things go South after the Trump presidency. I'm planning to stand my ground and defend my property.

 

[Bharat Ek Khoj]

Funny thing is people against Trump want to move to Canada, and not Mexico or any Islamic country
Racism, Islamophobia anyone ?

 

[The Last Stand]

@Keshav Murali, I see you on reddit saar.

I am there for the memes.

 

[pmaitra]

Interesting Terminologies:

Bradley effect

The Bradley effect (less commonly the Wilder effect)[1][2] is a theory concerning observed discrepancies between voter opinion polls and election outcomes in some United States government elections where a white candidate and a non-white candidate run against each other.

Spiral of silence

The spiral of silence theory is a political science and mass communication theory proposed by the Germanpolitical scientistElisabeth Noelle-Neumann, which stipulates that individuals have a fear of isolation, which results from the idea that a social group or the society in general might isolate, neglect, or exclude members due to the members' opinions. This fear of isolation consequently leads to remaining silent instead of voicing opinions. Media is an important factor that relates to both the dominant idea and people's perception of the dominant idea. The assessment of one's social environment may not always correlate with reality.

 

[pmaitra]

By WILL RAHN CBS NEWS November 10, 2016, 6:00 AM
Commentary: The unbearable smugness of the press

Excerpts:

And can you blame them? Journalists love mocking Trump supporters. We insult their appearances. We dismiss them as racists and sexists. We emote on Twitter about how this or that comment or policy makes us feel one way or the other, and yet we reject their feelings as invalid.

We diagnose them as racists in the way Dark Age clerics confused medical problems with demonic possession. Journalists, at our worst, see ourselves as a priestly caste. We believe we not only have access to the indisputable facts, but also a greater truth, a system of beliefs divined from an advanced understanding of justice.

This is all a “whitelash,” you see. Trump voters are racist and sexist, so there must be more racists and sexists than we realized. Tuesday night’s outcome was not a logic-driven rejection of a deeply flawed candidate named Clinton; no, it was a primal scream against fairness, equality, and progress. Let the new tantrums commence!

That the explainers and data journalists so frequently get things hilariously wrong never invites the soul-searching you’d think it would. Instead, it all just somehow leads us to more smugness, more meanness, more certainty from the reporters and pundits. Faced with defeat, we retreat further into our bubble, assumptions left unchecked. No, it’s the voters who are wrong.

There’s a place for opinionated journalism; in fact, it’s vital. But our causal, profession-wide smugness and protestations of superiority are making us unable to do it well.

Read full: http://www.cbsnews.com/news/comment...ness-of-the-press-presidential-election-2016/

 

[Peter]

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[Razor]

Dude, the Koreans were based as fuck, they are my role models in case things go South after the Trump presidency. I'm planning to stand my ground and defend my property.

What firearms do you own??
What other preparations are you taking??

You should work with a local group.

Koreans were badass during those times.

 

[Project Dharma]

What firearms do you own??
What other preparations are you taking??

You should work with a local group.

Koreans were badass during those times.

I don't think anything will happen especially here (very liberal state). But I have emergency supplies in my home because this is an earthquake prone area and I anticipate looting in the case of a bad one. I have:

1) MRE kits
2) Crank operated radio/flashlight
3) Rain water barrels
4) First aid kit
5) Gas stove

As for firearms, I have a

1) Sig Sauer P226 Navy
2) S&W .357 Magnum
3) Mossberg 500 Shotgun

I also happen to have swords which look nice mounted on the wall but are functional if necessary. I'm not part of any group but happen to have family nearby who also own guns. If things go South, we will probably band together to survive.

 

[Razor]

I don't think anything will happen especially here (very liberal state). But I have emergency supplies in my home because this is an earthquake prone area and I anticipate looting in the case of a bad one. I have:

1) MRE kits
2) Crank operated radio/flashlight
3) Rain water barrels
4) First aid kit
5) Gas stove

As for firearms, I have a

1) Sig Sauer P226 Navy
2) S&W .357 Magnum
3) Mossberg 500 Shotgun

I also happen to have swords which look nice mounted on the wall but are functional if necessary. I'm not part of any group but happen to have family nearby who also own guns. If things go South, we will probably band together to survive.

At one point I was really into prepping for SHTF. Good old days.

Mossberg 500 seems good for home defense, esp. version with shorter barrel.

 

[OrangeFlorian]

I want one of these
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[OrangeFlorian]

If Donald Trump kills NAFTA, Canada could benefit: Walkom
We’d still have free trade. But U.S. corporations would no longer have the right to override Canadian law.

U.S. President-elect Donald Trump talks to the media with his wife Melania Trump after a meeting with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell(R) R-KY on Capitol Hill in Washington on Thursday. (YURI GRIPAS / AFP/GETTY IMAGES)

By THOMAS WALKOMNational Affairs Columnist
Fri., Nov. 11, 2016
Donald Trump says he’ll tear up the North American Free Trade Agreement if he can’t renegotiate a better deal. That has spooked Canadians.

We should relax. We should take a deep breath. Depending on how it’s done, getting rid of NAFTA could work for us.

Even without NAFTA, goods could continue to flow tariff-free back and forth across the Canada-U. S. border. That’s because the original Canada-U.S. Free Agreement of 1989, which eliminated most of these tariffs, has never been repealed.

It was superseded by NAFTA in 1994. But it continues to exist. And should NAFTA be axed, it will automatically come into play again.

That’s the view of trade experts, such as Osgoode Hall’s Gus Van Harten. It is also the view of the government of Canada, as expressed through its ambassador to Washington, David MacNaughton.

So what are the differences between the FTA and NAFTA? One is that the earlier deal doesn’t include Mexico — which means that, so far at least, it is not on the U.S. president-elect’s hit list.

The second is that, unlike NAFTA, the original Canada-U. S. pact doesn’t allow foreign corporations to challenge Canadian laws.

This so-called investor-state dispute settlement mechanism has turned out to be the most controversial part of the three-nation trade and investment pact. American corporations have used it to override Canadian environmental and regulatory laws that they said interfered with profitability.


A 2015 study found that of the completed NAFTA disputes involving Canada, roughly half were decided in favour of the corporations.

Others never made it to the dispute-resolution stage because Canadian governments caved in.

By contrast, no Canadian corporate attempt to challenge U.S. laws under NAFTA has ever succeeded.

In short, a U.S. decision to pull out of NAFTA could benefit this country. Technically, Canada and Mexico could continue on with the pact. But it was designed around the giant U.S. market and makes little sense without it.

The Canadian government has boldly announced it is willing to renegotiate NAFTA if that’s what Trump wants. MacNaughton told reporters this week that Ottawa would particularly like to address America’s persistent bias against importing Canadian softwood lumber.

Good luck on that one. The original FTA was supposed to clean up the softwood lumber mess. It didn’t. Neither did NAFTA. America’s politically connected lumber producers have successfully scuppered free trade in this commodity. They are not likely to give up.

More to the point, a renegotiated NAFTA is likely to go badly for Canada. Trump has campaigned and won on a promise to deliver trade deals that better protect American workers. If he pays any attention at all to Canada (and with luck he won’t) he will want visible gains from this country in any renegotiated deal.

Trade is not supposed to be a zero-sum game but in some instances — particularly when one of the players wants to demonstrate dominance — it is.

What can we do?

First, take Trump seriously. He promised to renegotiate or scrap NAFTA. We should assume he means it. He is not likely to give the back of his hand to the working people of America’s rust belt who assured his victory.

And he can do so unilaterally — even if free-traders in the new, Republican-dominated Congress object.

As the New York Times reported earlier this year, U.S. presidents may have to win Congressional approval to pass new trade deals. But thanks to a series of laws passed over the 20th century, they need no such approval to scrap or override existing trade deals.

If Trump wants to slap a punitive tariff on imported goods, he can legally do so.

If he wants the U.S. out of NAFTA, he need only give six months notice.

There is no guarantee that the president-elect won’t turn his rage against Canada. He may decide to scrap the original FTA as well as NAFTA. If so, Canada will have little choice but to resurrect some version of John A. Macdonald’s national policy of tariff-protected industrialization.

But if Trump kills just NAFTA, that won’t be so bad. It hasn’t been a good deal for us either.


Thomas Walkom’s column appears Monday, Wednesday and Friday.

 

[Project Dharma]

If Donald Trump kills NAFTA, Canada could benefit: Walkom
We’d still have free trade. But U.S. corporations would no longer have the right to override Canadian law.

U.S. President-elect Donald Trump talks to the media with his wife Melania Trump after a meeting with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell(R) R-KY on Capitol Hill in Washington on Thursday. (YURI GRIPAS / AFP/GETTY IMAGES)

By THOMAS WALKOMNational Affairs Columnist
Fri., Nov. 11, 2016
Donald Trump says he’ll tear up the North American Free Trade Agreement if he can’t renegotiate a better deal. That has spooked Canadians.

We should relax. We should take a deep breath. Depending on how it’s done, getting rid of NAFTA could work for us.

Even without NAFTA, goods could continue to flow tariff-free back and forth across the Canada-U. S. border. That’s because the original Canada-U.S. Free Agreement of 1989, which eliminated most of these tariffs, has never been repealed.

It was superseded by NAFTA in 1994. But it continues to exist. And should NAFTA be axed, it will automatically come into play again.

That’s the view of trade experts, such as Osgoode Hall’s Gus Van Harten. It is also the view of the government of Canada, as expressed through its ambassador to Washington, David MacNaughton.

So what are the differences between the FTA and NAFTA? One is that the earlier deal doesn’t include Mexico — which means that, so far at least, it is not on the U.S. president-elect’s hit list.

The second is that, unlike NAFTA, the original Canada-U. S. pact doesn’t allow foreign corporations to challenge Canadian laws.

This so-called investor-state dispute settlement mechanism has turned out to be the most controversial part of the three-nation trade and investment pact. American corporations have used it to override Canadian environmental and regulatory laws that they said interfered with profitability.


A 2015 study found that of the completed NAFTA disputes involving Canada, roughly half were decided in favour of the corporations.

Others never made it to the dispute-resolution stage because Canadian governments caved in.

By contrast, no Canadian corporate attempt to challenge U.S. laws under NAFTA has ever succeeded.

In short, a U.S. decision to pull out of NAFTA could benefit this country. Technically, Canada and Mexico could continue on with the pact. But it was designed around the giant U.S. market and makes little sense without it.

The Canadian government has boldly announced it is willing to renegotiate NAFTA if that’s what Trump wants. MacNaughton told reporters this week that Ottawa would particularly like to address America’s persistent bias against importing Canadian softwood lumber.

Good luck on that one. The original FTA was supposed to clean up the softwood lumber mess. It didn’t. Neither did NAFTA. America’s politically connected lumber producers have successfully scuppered free trade in this commodity. They are not likely to give up.

More to the point, a renegotiated NAFTA is likely to go badly for Canada. Trump has campaigned and won on a promise to deliver trade deals that better protect American workers. If he pays any attention at all to Canada (and with luck he won’t) he will want visible gains from this country in any renegotiated deal.

Trade is not supposed to be a zero-sum game but in some instances — particularly when one of the players wants to demonstrate dominance — it is.

What can we do?

First, take Trump seriously. He promised to renegotiate or scrap NAFTA. We should assume he means it. He is not likely to give the back of his hand to the working people of America’s rust belt who assured his victory.

And he can do so unilaterally — even if free-traders in the new, Republican-dominated Congress object.

As the New York Times reported earlier this year, U.S. presidents may have to win Congressional approval to pass new trade deals. But thanks to a series of laws passed over the 20th century, they need no such approval to scrap or override existing trade deals.

If Trump wants to slap a punitive tariff on imported goods, he can legally do so.

If he wants the U.S. out of NAFTA, he need only give six months notice.

There is no guarantee that the president-elect won’t turn his rage against Canada. He may decide to scrap the original FTA as well as NAFTA. If so, Canada will have little choice but to resurrect some version of John A. Macdonald’s national policy of tariff-protected industrialization.

But if Trump kills just NAFTA, that won’t be so bad. It hasn’t been a good deal for us either.


Thomas Walkom’s column appears Monday, Wednesday and Friday.

I have a couple of people at work who were able to come over here because of NAFTA from Canada and Mexico and then later convert to a work visa. It will definitely lower immigration from those countries, no complaints from me.

 

[OrangeFlorian]

The NAFTA Myth

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6 COMMENTS
TAGS Free MarketsWorld HistoryInterventionism

11/30/2013Murray N. Rothbard
Editor’s Note: The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) was approved by Congress 20 years ago this month. Rothbard’s essay on NAFTA, reprinted below, is available in the collection Making Economic Sense.

For some people, it seems, all you have to do to convince them of the free enterprise nature of something is to label it “market,” and so we have the spawning of such grotesque creatures as “market socialists” or “market liberals.” The word “freedom,” of course, is also a grabber, and so another way to gain adherents in an age that exalts rhetoric over substance is simply to call yourself or your proposal “free market” or “free trade.” Labels are often enough to nab the suckers.

And so, among champions of free trade, the label “North American Free Trade Agreement” (Nafta) is supposed to commandunquestioning assent. “But how can you be against free trade?” It’s very easy. The folks who have brought us Nafta and presume to call it “free trade” are the same people who call government spending “investment,” taxes “contributions,” and raising taxes “deficit reduction.” Let us not forget that the Communists, too, used to call their system “freedom.”

In the first place, genuine free trade doesn’t require a treaty (or its deformed cousin, a “trade agreement”; Nafta is called a trade agreement so it can avoid the constitutional requirement of approval by two-thirds of the Senate). If the establishment truly wants free trade, all it has to do is to repeal our numerous tariffs, import quotas, anti-“dumping” laws, and other American-imposed restrictions on trade. No foreign policy or foreign maneuvering is needed.

If authentic free trade ever looms on the policy horizon, there’ll be one sure way to tell. The government/media/big-business complex will oppose it tooth and nail. We’ll see a string of op-eds “warning" about the imminent return of the 19th century. Media pundits and academics will raise all the old canards against the free market, that it’s exploitative and anarchic without government “coordination.” The establishment would react to instituting true free trade about as enthusiastically as it would to repealing the income tax.

In truth, the bipartisan establishment’s trumpeting of “free trade” since World War II fosters the opposite of genuine freedom of exchange. The establishment’s goals and tactics have been consistently those of free trade’s traditional enemy, “mercantilism” — the system imposed by the nation-states of 16th to 18th century Europe. President Bush’s infamous trip to Japan was only one instance: trade policy as a continuing system of maneuverings to try to force other countries to purchase more American exports.

Whereas genuine free traders look at free markets and trade, domestic or international, from the point of view of the consumer (that is, all of us), the mercantilist, of the 16th century or today, looks at trade from the point of view of the power elite, big business in league with the government. Genuine free traders consider exports a means of paying for imports, in the same way that goods in general are produced in order to be sold to consumers. But the mercantilists want to privilege the government-business elite at the expense of all consumers, be they domestic or foreign.

In negotiations with Japan, for example, be they conducted by Reagan or Bush or Clinton, the point is to force Japan to buy more American products, for which the American government will graciously if reluctantly permit the Japanese to sell their products to American consumers. Imports are the price government pays to get other nations to accept our exports.

Another crucial feature of post-World War II establishment trade policy in the name of “free trade” is to push heavy subsidies of exports. A favorite method of subsidy has been the much beloved system of foreign aid, which, under the cover of “reconstructing Europe,” “stopping Communism,” or “spreading democracy,” is a racket by which the American taxpayers are forced to subsidize American export firms and industries as well as foreign governments who go along with this system. Nafta represents a continuation of this system by enlisting the U.S. government and American taxpayers in this cause.

Yet Nafta is more than just a big business trade deal. It is part of a very long campaign to integrate and cartelize government in order to entrench the interventionist mixed economy. In Europe, the campaign culminated in the Maastricht Treaty, the attempt to impose a single currency and central bank on Europe and force its relatively free economies to rachet up their regulatory and welfare states.

In the United States, this has taken the form of transferring legislative and judicial authority away from the states and localities to the executive branch of the federal government. Nafta negotiations have pushed the envelope by centralizing government power continent-wide, thus further diminishing the ability of taxpayers to hinder the actions of their rulers.

Thus the siren-song of Nafta is the same seductive tune by which the socialistic Eurocrats have tried to get Europeans to surrender to the super-statism of the European Community: wouldn’t it be wonderful to have North America be one vast and mighty “free trade unit” like Europe? The reality is very different: socialistic intervention and planning by a super-national Nafta Commission or Brussels bureaucrats accountable to no one.

And just as Brussels has forced low-tax European countries to raise their taxes to the Euro-average or to expand their welfare state in the name of “fairness,” a “level playing field,” and “upward harmonization,” so too Nafta Commissions are to be empoweredto “upwardly harmonize,” to ride roughshod over labor and other laws of American state governments.

President Clinton’s trade representative Mickey Kantor has crowed that, under Nafta, “no country in the agreement can lower its environmental standards ever.” Under Nafta, we will not be able to roll back or repeal the environmental and labor provisions of the welfare state because the treaty will have locked us in — forever.

In the present world, as a rule of thumb, it is best to oppose all treaties, absent the great Bricker Amendment to the Constitution, which could have passed Congress in the 1950s but was shot down by the Eisenhower administration. Unfortunately, under the Constitution, every treaty is considered “the supreme law of the land,” and the Bricker Amendment would have prevented any treaty from overriding any preexisting Constitutional rights. But if we must be wary of any treaty, we must be particularly hostile to a treaty that builds supranational structures, as does Nafta.

The worst aspects of Nafta are the Clintonian side agreements, which have converted an unfortunate Bush treaty into a horror of international statism. We have the side agreements to thank for the supranational Commissions and their coming “upward harmonization.” The side agreements also push the foreign aid aspect of the establishment’s “free trade” hoax. They provide for the U.S. to pour an estimated $20 billion into Mexico for an “environmental cleanup” along the U.S.-Mexican border. In addition, the United States has informally agreed to pour billions into Mexican government coffers through the World Bank when and if Nafta is signed.

As with any policy that benefits the government and its connected interests, the establishment has gone all out in its propaganda efforts on behalf of Nafta. Its allied intellectuals have even formed networks to champion the cause of government centralization. Even if Nafta were a worthy treaty, this outpouring of effort by the government and its friends would raise suspicions.

The public is rightly suspicious that this effort is related to the vast amount of money that the Mexican government and its allied special interests are spending on lobbying for Nafta. That money is, so to speak, the down payment on the $20 billion that the Mexicans hope to mulct from the American taxpayers once Nafta passes.

Nafta advocates say we must sacrifice to “save” Mexican President Carlos Salinas and his allegedly wonderful “free-market” policies. But surely Americans are justly tired of making eternal “sacrifices,” of cutting their own throats, on behalf of cloudy foreign objectives which never seem to benefit them. If Nafta dies, Salinas and his party may fall. But what that means is that Mexico’s vicious one-party rule by the PRI (Institutional Revolutionary Party) may at last come to an end after many corrupt decades. What’s wrong with that? Why should such a fate cause our champions of “global democracy” to tremble?

We should look at the supposed nobility of Carlos Salinas in the same way we look at the other ersatz heroes served up to us by the establishment. How many Americans know, for example, that under Annex 602.3 of the Nafta treaty, the “free-market” Salinas government “reserves to itself” all exploration and use, all investment and provision, all refining and processing, all trade, transportation and distribution, of oil and natural gas? All private investment in and operation of oil and gas in Mexico, in other words, is to be prohibited. This is the government Americans have to sacrifice to preserve?

Most English and German conservatives are fully aware of the dangers of the Brussels-Maastricht Eurocracy. They understand that when the people and institutions whose existence is devoted to promoting statism suddenly come out for freedom, something is amiss. American conservatives and free-marketers should also be aware of the equivalent dangers of Nafta.

 

[OrangeFlorian]

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[Sakal Gharelu Ustad]

I don't think anything will happen especially here (very liberal state). But I have emergency supplies in my home because this is an earthquake prone area and I anticipate looting in the case of a bad one. I have:

1) MRE kits
2) Crank operated radio/flashlight
3) Rain water barrels
4) First aid kit
5) Gas stove

As for firearms, I have a

1) Sig Sauer P226 Navy
2) S&W .357 Magnum
3) Mossberg 500 Shotgun

I also happen to have swords which look nice mounted on the wall but are functional if necessary. I'm not part of any group but happen to have family nearby who also own guns. If things go South, we will probably band together to survive.

The badass Indian guy!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

[OrangeFlorian]

apparently thats a thing.............................

 

[Project Dharma]

The badass Indian guy!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Nah not badass, but will defend my family and property if needed.

 

[OrangeFlorian]

First meme president to be elected of all time. praise kek
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[OrangeFlorian]

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