US US Politics General 2 - Discussion of President Trump and other politicians

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Should be a wild four years.

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Current members of the House of Representatives
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Current members of the US Supreme Court
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Members of the Trump Administration
https://www.whitehouse.gov/administration/
 
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Ecological: I haven't really seen anyone in this thread make this point. As much as humans like to pretend that we exist outside of the environment, we do not. We depend on functioning ecosystems just like any other biological entity. As Leopold said, had bluegrass not taken root in the cane-lands of Kentucky, we would not have settled that land when we did. Similarly in the West, if it was not for the snowpack of the Rockies, the Sierra Nevada, the Cascades, or the Wasatch Ranges, we would not be able to live on this side of the Rockies. We depend on functioning ecosystems for drinkable water, arable soil, irrigation in the dry season, and many, many other things. It is an inescapable fact that the more we expand as a species, the more damage we do to these ecosystems that we depend on. That isn't to say humanity should voluntarily go extinct, but mindfulness in our management and occupation of the land is necessary for the long-term survival of our, and many other species. Anyone who denies this is ignorant, willfully or incidentally.
This was precisely my concern reading all the talk about housing in the Rockies. Water scarcity issues are a huge out west. The idea that we can build endless homes in a parched environment to lower prices instead of just... you know... deporting all the shitskins is completely retarded. Reminds me of that meme about how 'the US still has space, you can fit trillions more people if you grind them into a fine dust and store them in silos.' Ideas about expanding population can't completely ignore things like drinking water, sewage, transportation of food if you're settling in a particularly non-arable region. Look at Central Asia for the perfect example of how that shit can go horribly wrong.
 
The exact population of Iran isn't an important issue.
Hard disagree. Memorizing demographics isn't actaully important to staying current on what's going on in Iran. It's more important to know about the terror networks they back throughout the Middle East, like their relationship with Hezbollah.
We expect our military leaders to analyze and understand the cultural and social makeup of a country we may go to war with, but we aren’t supposed to expect the same of the people that order our military to go to war? If you don’t understand the ins and outs of how a country works socially, you’re going to screw the region up more than if you left it alone. Look at Afghanistan and Iraq for a very recent lesson on why this matters. Just because a bunch of people live in the same country doesn’t mean they all like each other, especially in the middle east. Not to mention the sheer number of displaced civilians in a conflict involving Iran. Where are they all going to go? Who’s taking them?

Only an amateur would act aloof about understanding the social and cultural aspects of how a country works when it comes to warfare.
 
Libertarian says that tariffs are an interference in the free market, but Protected Designation of Origin laws aren't:
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Every comment is calling him out for this:
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The Ninth Circuit stayed the lower court's decision blocking Trump from federalizing the California National Guard:
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Yep! Pretty much all federal land in the West. That way rich zioboomers and fifty million H1B pajeets can “develop” it.

He thinks this’ll pay off the debt. How much, you ask? Two percent. Two fucking percent.

You want ruralites to violently revolt? This is how you do it. You want to get raped in the midterms? This is how you do it. You want our last pristine land to be (literally) shat upon? This is how you do it!

Words cannot express how much I despise these fucking decrepit cocksucking retards in congress.

>inb4 mati reacts
This chimp out is as justified as it gets
He says selling the land could help expand housing in the region but I'm skeptical of that. The article I linked claims that "the legislation does not require the potential housing built on sold public land to be deemed affordable" which isn't a good sign. Apparently this isn't even the first time a Utah politician on Capitol Hill tried to propose such a thing. One thing for sure though is should Lee succeed in his political goal, the policy that he wants to implement is something that can't be easily undone.
All I know is is that I voted for Mike Lee for this. You try being trapped in a box your whole life. The feds shouldn't have this much control:
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Utah should be for Utahn's. You can still have your parks, your monuments. But I'm done being trapped in that slice of white while the feds run roughshod over MY state.
I wish people started to call them Christophobic in response. “You just hate Christians and want them to get killed!”
It needs to fucking happen.
This was precisely my concern reading all the talk about housing in the Rockies. Water scarcity issues are a huge out west. The idea that we can build endless homes in a parched environment to lower prices instead of just... you know... deporting all the shitskins is completely retarded. Reminds me of that meme about how 'the US still has space, you can fit trillions more people if you grind them into a fine dust and store them in silos.' Ideas about expanding population can't completely ignore things like drinking water, sewage, transportation of food if you're settling in a particularly non-arable region. Look at Central Asia for the perfect example of how that shit can go horribly wrong.
People have lived in the rockies for hundreds, if not thousands of years counting the natives. Yes water is always an issue. There are solutions to these. Remember how Trump opened up the water for California. That could be done for the entire west. There were plans in the 50's for such a project. Would have piped water from Canada into the western half of the US.
 
The thing is, ChatGPT actually has a lot of safety mechanisms to keep it from getting into any kind of "relationship" with others as it's actually pretty retarded, so idk what the fuck this loser did but it must have been an autistic amount of training.
A bit late to this one, but do you suppose it might've been a different model or something working from GPT's API, but he and the news used ChatGPT as sort of a genericized trademark (Kleenex, Trampoline etc) to describe a catchall (or just didn't know the difference themselves) so the lowest common denominator could understand?
 
Libertarian says that tariffs are an interference in the free market, but Protected Designation of Origin laws aren't:
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You ABSOLUTELY can make Champagne in the Pacific Northwest. Mt. St. Helens blowing up caused the Yakima Valley, for example, to have the EXACT same soil quality and climate as Champaign, France due to all the ash. It's why they've been ripping down Apple orchards by the hectacre and putting in grape vines, it's why you can't buy grapes online and have them shipped to Washington/Oregon/Idaho anymore -- they don't want to risk blight being imported or oddball varieties ruining the specific varieties they're growing commercially.

Seriously:

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Oregon, Washington, Idaho -- they've all been mass swapping away from apples and hops and potatoes for wine grapes pretty much as fast as the wineries and vineyards can support them doing so, and I doubt it'll stop anytime soon. As for Champaign, they literally imported the same grapes and grow them throughout Yakima Valley -- but they can't call it Champagne, so they call it "Sparkling White Wine" while they try and get some cutesy name to stick. Next time you're at Costco look at their wines, they brag about where they're from -- I've been to 6 of them over the past 3 years and 5 of them had Yakima Valley wines in them and the one that didn't had an Oregon wine.
 
Libertarian says that tariffs are an interference in the free market, but Protected Designation of Origin laws aren't:
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Every comment is calling him out for this:
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The woman's $64 planner is clearly a generic drop shipped model that she only customizes the cover of. The unit price for bulk blanks is probably $3, but since she's a drop shipper, she probably doesn't buy blanks, or in bulk, which would put her unit price for a small custom notebook order from China at $25-$50.
This is 100% a logistics issue of her trying to minimize risk instead of trying to maximize profits. If she instead purchased blanks in bulk from China for $3 and then outsourced cover printing to a US company for say another $5, and then replaced the blank covers with the custom covers, she would have a $8 unit price, and either have higher profit margins, or could lower costs to chase higher volume.
Let's say she now needed to buy her blanks in America due to high tariffs, and it costs her $5 instead of $3, now she has a $10 unit price. But instead, she's a drop shipper who buys the whole unit for $25-$50 from China, and the tariffs make it now cost $60-120 because she refuses to reduce costs by assembling it herself and sourcing materials elsewhere.
No sympathy for dropshippers,
 
Can't delete the rest of the quote box and didn't mean to even tag it.

As for on-topic, using PDO laws-are they just used for food/drink items? - as comparison to tariffs, think I kinda understand what they were trying to sauget a loose link between in terms of influencing consumer habits and when either elements are stripped back, PDO food/drink have more a status purchase value/attachment from vast alternatives i.e Sparking wine/Champagne while tariffs are more if you don't buy the local "brand". it will cost more, almost like a mirror of what PDO's designed for
 
It’s a meme. Memri TV is an Arabic TV channel that occasionally (frequently) has batshit insane Muslims on saying shit like “tie me to a missile and fire me at Tel Aviv, I am ready” and “By Allah, I shall give you a taste of my shoe”. So 4chan said “hmmm, needs more crazy” and started recaptioning them. The fun comes from guessing which ones are real and which are fake.
This is slightly incorrect. MEMRI TV is the Middle East Media Research Institute, which started after the GWOT to just monitor all the crazy shit that goes on TV over there. Becoming a resource for memes was just natural, yes.
 
The woman's $64 planner is clearly a generic drop shipped model that she only customizes the cover of. The unit price for bulk blanks is probably $3, but since she's a drop shipper, she probably doesn't buy blanks, or in bulk, which would put her unit price for a small custom notebook order from China at $25-$50.
This is 100% a logistics issue of her trying to minimize risk instead of trying to maximize profits. If she instead purchased blanks in bulk from China for $3 and then outsourced cover printing to a US company for say another $5, and then replaced the blank covers with the custom covers, she would have a $8 unit price, and either have higher profit margins, or could lower costs to chase higher volume.
Let's say she now needed to buy her blanks in America due to high tariffs, and it costs her $5 instead of $3, now she has a $10 unit price. But instead, she's a drop shipper who buys the whole unit for $25-$50 from China, and the tariffs make it now cost $60-120 because she refuses to reduce costs by assembling it herself and sourcing materials elsewhere.
No sympathy for dropshippers,
You've had a generation of businessmen and women who've lived through an era of government protections and simplified supply chains and so can't be assed with any meagre complexity.

Even the billionaires of today who got their cash from tech still operate with what are fundamentally simple business premises, since everything they do can largely be done domestically online or an a computer, and if production of goods is required they were still able to get everything they need from China. This affected the technology/electronics boom of the 80s too, since most electronics manufacturing was starting to be based out of Japan (a remnant of this is in back to the future I.E. "all the best stuff's made in Japan") before then moving to China. People attribute Japan's economic decline to a cigarette tax of all things, and not the mass movement of industry to their cheaper Chinese neighbour - I'm beginning to think attributing the blame of economic downturn on anything but the mass movement of industry is a conspiracy theory to keep China blameless and corporate offshoring out of the headlines.

You don't stick together a valuable product domestically anymore since the 80s at least since its just been cheaper to have it done wholesale abroad like you said. Now that there's some actual barriers in the way, anything that might require some actual thought has them scared shitless or deeply confused, like you just asked them how they'd feel if they didn't eat breakfast that morning.

Regarding logistics, I've heard horror stories of shipping base goods (cloth, steel, etcetera) out of China, since they apparently sell shoddy shit to non-Chinese whilst keeping the higher quality stuff for domestic manufacturing, but that's largely anecdotal.
 
People have lived in the rockies for hundreds, if not thousands of years counting the natives.
Small numbers of people.
Yes water is always an issue. There are solutions to these. Remember how Trump opened up the water for California. That could be done for the entire west.
Trump removing that water was a calculated gamble. It's a gamble that imo was worth it as the city was on fire, but it's not like there was an infinite water tap and Trump walked up to it, shrugged, and turned it on, thus cutting the Gordian Knot. If California has a drought year, that decision will have catastrophic consequences. The reservoirs fill when rain is heavy and that water needs to be held for times when water is scarce. It is a limited supply.
There were plans in the 50's for such a project. Would have piped water from Canada into the western half of the US.
I think it would be the height of idiocy to fuel a population boom in the West by sourcing water from a foreign country. You're putting a gun to your head and giving them control of the trigger. One of the big things that the US has going for it is the capacity for self-sufficiency.

ou ABSOLUTELY can make Champagne in the Pacific Northwest. Mt. St. Helens blowing up caused the Yakima Valley, for example, to have the EXACT same soil quality and climate as Champaign, France due to all the ash. It's why they've been ripping down Apple orchards by the hectacre and putting in grape vines, it's why you can't buy grapes online and have them shipped to Washington/Oregon/Idaho anymore -- they don't want to risk blight being imported or oddball varieties ruining the specific varieties they're growing commercially.

Seriously:

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Oregon, Washington, Idaho -- they've all been mass swapping away from apples and hops and potatoes for wine grapes pretty much as fast as the wineries and vineyards can support them doing so, and I doubt it'll stop anytime soon. As for Champaign, they literally imported the same grapes and grow them throughout Yakima Valley -- but they can't call it Champagne, so they call it "Sparkling White Wine" while they try and get some cutesy name to stick. Next time you're at Costco look at their wines, they brag about where they're from -- I've been to 6 of them over the past 3 years and 5 of them had Yakima Valley wines in them and the one that didn't had an Oregon wine.
Not true at all. How would a volcano erupting give an area the same soils as Champagne? Champagne is built on an immense limestone basin, formed during the period when France was a shallow tropical sea with a few islands. There's pretty much no volcanic soil there. The climate in the winegrowing regions in Washington is also COMPLETELY different from Champagne. It has extremely hot days, a large temperature swing, and very dry conditions with farming only made possible via irrigation. Champagne is a very cool region, marginal for grapes even, which you need to make good sparkling wine. Dry farming is common due to ample rainfall, with deep-rooted vines digging into fractured chalk bedrock. The sort of hundred degree days that are pretty normal for Washington could spoil a Champagne vintage. There's also the human element of Champagne. The Romans mined chalk there, the region is honeycombed with hundreds of miles of tunnels and chambers that are used to age the wine, an essential part of Champagne (multivintage blending and long sur lie aging). This has been expanded over centuries. No infrastructure like that exists in Washington and it would be much more difficult to dig it out of the flood basalt bedrock that characterizes the area.

Washington is great for red wines, and a few cooler regions can grown Pinot Noir and Riesling very well. There's even some very small patches of limestone. Oregon does nice Pinot, Chardonnay, and Riesling, being more cool. But all the wines aren't really anything similar to Champagne. This is why Ricardo used wine as his example when he argued for limited free trade - it's a good the characteristics of which are tied to its region of creation, so it makes sense to lower trade barriers for it.
 
This is why Ricardo used wine as his example when he argued for limited free trade - it's a good the characteristics of which are tied to the its region of creation, so it makes sense to lower trade barriers for it.
Except for that if that was the case, then no one would buy Californian Champagne and PDO laws would be meaningless. Yet, France refuses to get rid of the useless laws because they know that their wines can't dominate without it.
 
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@WelperHelper99

So the only “private land” in that map is the white and the Indian reservation?
Yes
Small numbers of people.

Trump removing that water was a calculated gamble. It's a gamble that imo was worth it as the city was on fire, but it's not like there was an infinite water tap and Trump walked up to it, shrugged, and turned it on, thus cutting the Gordian Knot. If California has a drought year, that decision will have catastrophic consequences. The reservoirs fill when rain is heavy and that water needs to be held for times when water is scarce. It is a limited supply.
The water is from Canada where they have bucketloads of it. It was no gamble. It was smart.
I think it would be the height of idiocy to fuel a population boom in the West by sourcing water from a foreign country. You're putting a gun to your head and giving them control of the trigger. One of the big things that the US has going for it is the capacity for self-sufficiency.
You assume we couldn't take Canada over if they ever tried stopping the flow. Lmao.
 
Except for that if that was the case, then no one would buy Californian Champaign and PDO laws would be meaningless. Yet, France refuses to get rid of the useless laws because they know that their wines can't dominate without it.
PDO laws are basically a government-enforced brand, and were originally created to counteract rampant fraud. People buy California sparkling wines. Some Champagne houses have even set up shop in California. That's not a contradiction. You can make sparkling wine anywhere, but sparkling wine from Champagne is different - anyone who drinks wine even on a hobbyist level knows this. This is why when you compare market share globally between California and Champagne on $50+ bottles Champagne blows California out of the water. Champagne's position is that it's basically a version of fraud to put 'Champagne' on a bottle that isn't from the region and follows its production rules, and I agree with them. If it's the same, why not just call it California Sparkling Wine? Why not make your own separate sparkling appellation like Franciacorta or Cava or Prosecco? Or like England has done? The only motivation is that same motivation that guides a Nigerian who slaps a Gucci label on a knockoff bag and sells it down by the wharf - you're trying to get an undeserved markup off a fraudulent presentation of your product. It's dishonest.

PDO laws are also not just about the name. Champagne wines have to be aged a certain amount sur lie. Only limited years can be declared vintage. Yields are restricted on a yearly basis to ensure that you aren't overcropping and getting dilute, low-quality fruit. While American AVAs have restrictions they are nowhere near this strict. These rules impose significant restrictions on farmers if they want to use the name Champagne in order to increase the quality of the product and therefore the prestige of the brand.
 
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PDO laws are also not just about the name. Champagne wines have to be aged a certain amount sur lie. Only limited years can be declared vintage. Yields are restricted on a yearly basic to ensure that you aren't overcropping and getting dilute, low-quality fruit. While American AVAs have restrictions they are nowhere near this strict. These rules impose significant restrictions on farmers if they want to use the name Champagne in order to increase the quality of the product and therefore the prestige of the brand.
It's still a trade barrier and "free trade" libertarians should be in favor of removing them. Even if an American winery complied with all of the French rules, they still would not be allowed to sell in France purely because of where they are.
 
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