US Elections 2020

[filghy2]

For once you have posted a load of rubbish

Surely you are being ironic

There's an obvious question which evidently hasn't occurred to Fanti - if Trump's approach toward China has been so successful then why has China's behaviour worsened during his term of office?

[Stavros]

I was being rude, and should not have been, but was frustrated with the kind of opinion expressed by Mr Fanti, so divorced from fact that it is. China is vulnerable to all sorts of criticism, but has been since the Communists have ruled the country in 1949, and even then the history of atrocities against human beings goes back so much further. People are attacking China now for crimes that have been staring us in the face for decades. It smacks of hypocrisy because it is, and n Pompeo's case is a nauseatingg hypocrisy given the man's obvious attempt to present himself as a 'tough leader', when he has no leadership skills, and is no more tough than a nightly rant by John Oliver -or Sean Hannity.

Mr Fanti can speak for himself, though I doubt he will respond to my post, and it is not specific to this thread, but I do wonder why people refer to China-US trade as if it had suddenly become a matter of critical urgency when the issues raised by the President amount to an invention based solely on his personal resentment that China 'treated him so badly', as said before, merging his personal interests with those of the USA. We could do with a more balanced and objective view of US-China relations, but as it is now becoming an election, issue, there is no hope of that. Transforming it into an either/or issue, either you back the US against China, or you back China against the US, the President is putting himself and his daughter in a vulnerable position. Anotherr example of the fact that even after nearly 4 years in the job, he doesn't know much about politics.

The real issue, outside the remit of this thread, is why since 2008 the very people who have emerged to attack Globlization also claim the remedy for the crisis of 2008 is to replace 'regulation-lite' with zero regulation, as if they are so ignorant of the causes of the financial crisis that they seek to repeat its mistakes. And, for good measure, by removing all obstacles to free trade, what do they think this will enable China to do?

[blackchubby38]

Let me clear about something, I don't what's happening in Portland and Seattle to happen anywhere else in the United States. But I don't live in Chicago, so I don't know what the residents that live in the areas that effected by gang violence are going through. So I can't fault any of them for thinking this way.

http:////www.yahoo.com/news/chicagos...113718234.html

[MrFanti]

Let me clear about something, I don't what's happening in Portland and Seattle to happen anywhere else in the United States. But I don't live in Chicago, so I don't know what the residents that live in the areas that effected by gang violence are going through. So I can't fault any of them for thinking this way.

http:////www.yahoo.com/news/chicagos...113718234.html

I grew up in Chicago and that city is arguably the most corrupt city in the USA!
And all the violent crime that has been going on for YEARS and DECADES (not just recently) falls squarely in the laps of the current mayor and all the previous mayors before her.

I'm glad to see the residents getting fed up because it's about time after all these years and decades of violence in the streets of Chicago!

[Stavros]

The Independent has published what seems to me a fair profile of the VP candidates known to be under consideration, the article has probably been syndicated in the US Press too.
These are (in alphabetical order)-

Stacey Abrams
Karen Bass
Keisha Lance Bottoms
Val Demings
Tammy Duckworth
Michelle Lujan Grisham
Kamala Harris
Susan Rice
Elizabeth Warren
Gretchen Whitmer

https://www.independent.co.uk/us-ele...-a9641101.html

[filghy2]

I was being rude, and should not have been, but was frustrated with the kind of opinion expressed by Mr Fanti, so divorced from fact that it is.

Getting angry at Fanti for posting drivel is as futile as getting angry at the weather. No matter what you say it will have no effect on him. I don't know what motivates him: maybe he's delusional enough to think he's persuading someone, or maybe he just likes to be annoying. Best to just ignore his posts as others seem to have learned to do.

[filghy2]

More than 152,000 people have died from Covid-19 in the US so far. The increase in murders this year must be a small fraction of that (there were around 16,000 murders in the latest year). I'm curious as to why some people seem to think the latter may be a bigger issue in the election.

Also, the data on murder rates don't seem to indicate any clear pattern in terms of which political party is in control of states or cities. In fact, the states with the highest murder rates are red states. So why are some people presenting this as if it were a Democrat problem?
https://worldpopulationreview.com/st...-rate-by-state
https://www.neighborhoodscout.com/bl...te-cities-2019

[Stavros]

Getting angry at Fanti for posting drivel is as futile as getting angry at the weather. No matter what you say it will have no effect on him. I don't know what motivates him: maybe he's delusional enough to think he's persuading someone, or maybe he just likes to be annoying. Best to just ignore his posts as others seem to have learned to do.

I get frustrated with a lot of posts, and it is in my nature to be argumentative, though I hope because of the arguments not just for the sake of it. We have had some offensive people on these boards before, but not Mr Fanti. I think it is matter of how one views some issues, because of ideology, because of an aversion to it, on the basis of personal experience, knowledge, and so forth. As I like the rough and tumble of debate and argument, it is a pity people who post here don't engage in moe of it, and I don't want to stop it. Mr Fanti is robust enough to defend himself, if he wants to.

And sometimes there are specific issues. Watching the series, Once Upon a Time in Iraq in the present-day context, is moving (because of the individual stories), illuminating, and depressing because the crisis in Iraq in 2002-2003 was manufactured to suit the need the Republicans had to punish the Arabs for 9/11, but chose the wrong Arabs. The point that is not made in the TV series, perhaps because it is more about the personal experience of the 2003 war and its aftermath, rather than the politics, is that the very same Saddam Hussein who was a monster in 2003, had not only been a US ally when Iraq was fighting a war with Iran in the 1980s, the atrocities that sustained him in power were just as common in 1979 as they were in 2002-2003. Indeed, when Saddam took control of the Ba'ath Party in 1979 one of the first things he did was round up members of the Iraqi Communist Party and deal with the Saddam-style= imprisonment, torture and death. And it was the CIA that gave him so many of the names of Party members he didn't already know.

Now fast forward and suddenly China is the enemy, the very same China that is embedded in the US economy through its purchase of US debt, its inputs into the industrial and consumer economy, the US education system and so on. When the Chinese and the US normalized their relations in the 1970s, Russia had been the primary common factor, as the US was prepared then to overlook the multiple crimes and millions upon millions of deaths caused by Mao's catastrophic policies -the Great Leap Forward c1958-60) and the Great People's Cultural revolution (1966-69?) to make the new relationship work. So great has been the death and devastation of Mao's policies Covid 19 looks like a footnote to Chinese history in comparison.

But is it not the case, that ever since 1979, and indeed, that other trifling event in 1989, the US has been prepared to 'look the other way' when China behaves badly, and just 'take the money'? President Xi has yet to match Mao in terms of mega-deaths at home, though Mao's foreign adventures were not as effective as China's have been since, particularly in Africa, a continent that the US has tended to use as a lucrative mineral mine, or a toilet for their own shitty delusions. But if Nixon and Kissinger could and felt they had to deal with Mao, why not Xi, when China is more entangled with the US than Mao was?

The more obvious factor is that it is now the policy of one man, the US President, that has decided Confrontation is the best policy. It is a tactic he has used in the past in business, just as, when exposed as a bankrupt, a tax cheat or a law breaker, he created lawsuits designed to put his accusers in the dock. Not accused, but proven to have received illegal financial and political assistance from Russia in the 2016 campaign, he now embarks on investigatons designed to attack the people who proved it, on the basis that they are wrong.
Because this is a man unique in history, who is right about everything- even Buddha, Moses, Jesus and Muhammad admitted to having faults and making the wrong judgment. It doesn't matter how many times, and how many people insist that Hydroxychloroquine does not deal effectively with Covid 19, he cannot and he will no retract his claims, because he cannot and must never say sorry or say he is wrong about anything, so he is stuck with this nonsense, even as he can't see what a fool it makes of him- or just doesn't care.

In this case, the 'war on China' is entirely personal because of his resentment at the fact he was shut out of the 'China Dream' for so many years, and even with his daughter raking in the dollars from her Chinese investments, it is not enough and anyway, she is a privlleged American and above the law.

So here we are: China and Covid 19- the two issues the President barks about most, are the two issues in this campaign which make him the most vulnerable to attack -those serious about defeating him, at least in terms of political arguments, if not at the ballot box- need only let him use these ropes to hang himself. Unless, with the assistance of his Attorney General, they find a way to consolidate his position as the most unique of US Presidents, and postpone the elections for a year. I expect to be proven wrong on the last point, but I wonder if this is not being discussed behind closed doors in the White House? Maybe it is time for Under-President Kushner to put in an appearance. At least we know in the UK the Prime Minister has now little or no interest in Covid 19 and his absorbed with the Brexit Process that, after all, will define his reputation for years to come.

China's investments in the US-
https://www.investopedia.com/article...sury-bonds.asp

An interesting paper on the rapprochement between China and the US
https://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi...cws.2006.8.4.3

All five episodes of Once Upon a Time in Iraq are now on the BBC iPlayer-
https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episod...ies-1-5-legacy

[KnightHawk 2.0]

More than 152,000 people have died from Covid-19 in the US so far. The increase in murders this year must be a small fraction of that (there were around 16,000 murders in the latest year). I'm curious as to why some people seem to think the latter may be a bigger issue in the election.

Also, the data on murder rates don't seem to indicate any clear pattern in terms of which political party is in control of states or cities. In fact, the states with the highest murder rates are red states. So why are some people presenting this as if it were a Democrat problem?
https://worldpopulationreview.com/st...-rate-by-state
https://www.neighborhoodscout.com/bl...te-cities-2019

Because their would rather believe what the Clueless Buffoon In Chief, a person who has been downplaying the CO-VID 19 Global Pandemic from the very beginning says over the health experts, and in reality it isn't a Democratic problem, it's a Trump problem because he doesn't take any responsibility at all for his negligence and his administration failure to the global pandemic and come up with a nationwide plan on how to deal with the virus,instead of letting states fend for themselves. and blaming everyone else around him.

[blackchubby38]

More than 152,000 people have died from Covid-19 in the US so far. The increase in murders this year must be a small fraction of that (there were around 16,000 murders in the latest year). I'm curious as to why some people seem to think the latter may be a bigger issue in the election.

Also, the data on murder rates don't seem to indicate any clear pattern in terms of which political party is in control of states or cities. In fact, the states with the highest murder rates are red states. So why are some people presenting this as if it were a Democrat problem?
https://worldpopulationreview.com/st...-rate-by-state
https://www.neighborhoodscout.com/bl...te-cities-2019

If Trump loses the election his response to the Coronavirus will be the main reason why he loses it. But if he wins reelection, the idea that Democrats will be/are weak on crime and civil unrest will be one of the reasons why.

Now when it comes to the states with highest murder rates, yes its true that some of them are red states. However, the cities they occur in have long history of being run by Democrats.

New Orleans.-- The last time they voted for a Republican was at the end of the 19th century.
St. Louis.- The last Republican mayor was in 1949.
Detroit.- The last Republican mayor was in 1962.
Baltimore.- The last Republican mayor was in 1967.
Chester.- As alternated back and forth between the two parties.
Gary.- The last Republican mayor was in 1943.
Chicago.- The last Republican mayor was in 1943.

That's just the mayors. There is a very good chance that the Democrats also made up a considerable part of the city councils in those respective cities.

I will point out that the Democratic Party has changed over the past 50-60 years.

Now as we have discussed before, there are other reasons for a city having high crime rates. But poor leadership is one of them. Just look what's happening here in NYC. So it is fair to say that Democratic party bares some of the blame when it comes to certain cities having a history of high crime rates.