Is there anything positive to say about Trump's presidency?

wrath
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I understand that you are stuck in the mindset that gun control is good, while abortion restrictions are evil, so the two campaigns are completely different to you. I suppose a “pro-life” person would have some equivalent set of arguments.
My point was only that the two campaigns are similar in their tactics, and that they receive public support when perceived to be under threat. some observations:

Supporters of both causes feel that they are literally saving lives

Supporters of both causes deny that they advocate a total ban, but their most fervent supporters want just that.

Common sense restrictions, you know, for safety.

Both campaigns manipulate statistics for their followers, who generally lack comprehensive knowledge of the subject.

Both campaigns are, at their core, very concerned with restricting what other people can do.

Banning types of abortion is a tactic for incremental prohibition, just like banning types of guns or ammunition. “partial-birth abortions” and “cop killer” bullets are both arguments used to sway the ignorant to support a portion of your platform.

But the bottom line is that President Obama helped sell millions of guns, and Trump got millions of people motivated to support women’s rights. I would prefer that neither were needed, but it is what it is.

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It makes me irrationally angry that I agree with that man about anything, but dippin dots are fucking terrible.

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Excuse me? You can just stop putting words into my mouth right there. I’m not going to put up with that.

You understand no such thing. You might wish I was in that mindset, because it would be far easier for you to argue against such a black-and-white strawman, but I have clearly said absolutely nothing that so much as implies that kind of viewpoint, and you’re just talking out your ass right now.

And my point was that they’re not, and I gave clear evidence of that, complete with references to the official party platforms.

One of the big stories to come out of the early republican debates was whether or not the candidates supported a ban on abortion even if the health of the mother was threatened! There is absolutely no denial that the anti-abortion side wants to ban abortion. As I pointed out, the fricking official Republican Party platform states outright that they want to modify the Constitution to do so! What fantasy world are you living in?!?!

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Hey, can you two make a new topic?

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I am out.

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My apologies. Did not mean to hijack the topic.

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A positive thing to say about the Trump presidency is that now that he has office, a GOP controlled Congress, and soon will have a GOP controlled SCOTUS there are no more excuses for policy failures. Trump owns every choice 100% and there’s nobody he can blame.

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But gun are just like fourth trimester abortions, right? By using TrumpLogic™ he’s just expanding on what Obama was trying to do, but better.

ETA: I’m done derailing as well. I didn’t see @singletona082’s plea to “take it outside” before replying.

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The TPP is dead? I guess we’ll see if that’s ultimately good or not, since it might make individual countries create even more draconian treaties between each other now.

Also, the whole threat of a tariff thing may actually be more effective than a tariff at all - companies are rethinking where they set up shop because the threat is nebulous. I’m all for local products and if the threat of tariffs means more local production, great - provided it doesn’t make products even more unaffordable to those without means by removing any alternative.

As a Canadian, I don’t take issue with the idea of a global rethink of trade and protection policies as a whole. What I fear is that process being undertaken by those with either 1) ulterior motives or 2) no clue as to what sound policy would look like. But those are just potential futures at the moment. The actual act of navel gazing going on with trade partners around the world right now is not necessarily a bad thing.

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Conversely, there are many more reasons for policy failures.

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I think it’s a qualified good. The TPP and other agreements of its kind are called “trade” agreements, but they’re really not about trade. Trade barriers from tariffs/excises/etc. are largely a legacy of the past and getting rid of those (which generally is sound economic policy) is just a fig leaf. They’re designed to limit the regulatory rights and autonomy of individual nations by forcing local/national regulations, intellectual property disputes, patent disputes, and other things megacorps love to use to siphon capital out of the proles into WIPO where the multinationals have a much stronger suit at overturning them.

The reason I’m less worried about individual countries (for the short term) is that the big player in this was US based multinationals wanting to push the worst of draconian US corporate anti regulatory and IP-maximalism onto the globe. With the US out, we’re all better off. For all that Trump’s brand of ignorant zero-sum nationalism is toxic for trade and a problem in itself, the US isn’t likely to be starting up those kind of TPP-style vampiric “trade” partnerships for a while.

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This is interesting (not sure how accurate or complete it is, mind):

Pros

The TPP boosts exports and economic growth, creating more jobs and prosperity for the 12 countries involved. It increases exports by $305 billion per year by 2025. U.S. exports would increase by $123.5 billion, focusing on machinery, primarily electrical, autos, plastics, and agriculture industries.

It does this by removing 18,000 tariffs placed on U.S. exports to the other countries. The United States has already withdrawn 80 percent of these tariffs on imports. The TPP evens the playing field.The agreement adds $223 billion a year to incomes of workers in all the countries, with $77 billion of that going to U.S. workers. (Source: “TPP Fact Sheet,” US Trade Representative.)

All countries agreed to cut down on wildlife trafficking, especially elephants, rhinoceroses, and marine species. It prevents environmental abuses, such as unsustainable logging and fishing. Those that don’t will face trade penalties.

Cons

Most of the gains in income would go to workers making more than $88,000 a year. Free trade agreements contribute to income inequality in high-wage countries by promoting cheaper goods from low-wage countries.

That would be particularly true for the TPP because it protects patents and copyrights. Therefore, the higher-paid owners of the intellectual property would receive more of the income gains.The agreement regarding patents will reduce the availability of cheap generics, making many drugs more expensive.

Competitive business pressures will reduce the incentives in Asia to protect the environment. Last but not least, the trade agreement could supersede financial regulations. (Source: “Eyes on Trade,” Public Citizen, September 12, 2013.)

Emph mine - suggesting that the TPP would have helped exporters while those competing with importers are already suffering.

(also doesn’t really highlight the bit about letting companies sue countries).

I am not against free trade, I think isolation and trade wars are a bad idea (which Trump will shortly demonstrate to the class). I think a trade agreement as a bloc to help remove tariffs but protect low-paid workers would be a good idea, but I always got the impression that the TPP was a massive overreach/corporate handout, and trying to hide all the details was a dead giveaway.

I think abandoning the whole idea probably just lets China in to dominate when the TPP was partially intended to shut them out - perhaps why Trump doesn’t like it. But I thought I read somewhere that most of the countries in the TPP already have free-trade agreements with the US, so they won’t all go away.

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This is a nice write-up on the issues with TPP, and why despite the theoretical economic gains from removing some tariffs (which are rarely realized fairly), there’s a lot more going on that benefits the very few at the cost of the very many. There’s a lot of poison pills.
http://economixcomix.com/home/tpp/

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Sure… but wasn’t that already off the table, anyway? Sanders also opposed it and Clinton took that line during the campaign. It wasn’t getting through congress, either. If anything the election killed the TPP already. He was kind of just grandstanding with the executive order, yeah?

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It was (though there were some Greens who were sure the lying she-devil Wall Street tyrant would immediately go back on her promise, I’m very confident given Clinton’s record that she’d have kept to that promise). So it’s not really a positive so much as a net neutral.

(Given Trump’s cabinet picks they’ll probably figure out other demonic quasi-legal invocations to make corporate persons more equal than human persons so that even if he signed the TPP it’d be the least of my worries, but that’s not a positive thing to say so I’ll only say it parenthetically so it doesn’t count against the thread topic).

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Thanks to him we have images like this:

Woman of Steel indeed!

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You can’t spell “freedom” without…

remember kids, there is no “i” in freedom.

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However, to blatantly steal Ricky Gervais’s joke, if you look hard enough, there’s a me.

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I was all for opposing the TPP when Sanders and Clinton railed against it.

Now that Trump is actually moving to do so, I’m eyeing that position with more than a little suspicion, and wondering what horrible thing Trump’s going to replace it with, and how soon we’re going to wish we were in the TPP.

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I do find it weird that there was all this fear and hate of top from the geek sector and now that trump has killed it rveryone’s acting like that might not have been a good move.

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