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JHan
JHan's Journal
JHan's Journal
February 23, 2017
*SNIP*
Mexican senator aims to hit U.S. for Trump's 'big lie' on NAFTA
The #MAGA Chronicles
A prominent Mexican senator wants to remind President Trump of the benefits of free trade -- by taking a big one away from the U.S.
Senator Armando Rios introduced a bill that would drastically cut down Mexico's purchases of U.S. corn.
Mexico bought nearly 25% of all U.S. corn last year, totaling $2.6 billion. It's the second biggest market in the world for U.S. corn only behind Japan.
Trump says NAFTA, the free trade deal with Mexico and Canada, has been a "one-sided deal" in which Mexico has won and America has lost.
Rios disagrees.
"The position of Donald Trump is a mistaken one and it's a lying one," Rios told CNNMoney Wednesday. "They have been insisting that Mexico takes advantage of the U.S. regarding NAFTA and that's totally false... It's a big lie, so there is a good way to show that this is not true."
Mexico bought nearly 25% of all U.S. corn last year, totaling $2.6 billion. It's the second biggest market in the world for U.S. corn only behind Japan.
Trump says NAFTA, the free trade deal with Mexico and Canada, has been a "one-sided deal" in which Mexico has won and America has lost.
Rios disagrees.
"The position of Donald Trump is a mistaken one and it's a lying one," Rios told CNNMoney Wednesday. "They have been insisting that Mexico takes advantage of the U.S. regarding NAFTA and that's totally false... It's a big lie, so there is a good way to show that this is not true."
*SNIP*
Rios' bill also reflects a broader push in Mexico to diversify its economy away from the U.S. and sign new or revised trade deals with nations in Latin America and Asia as well as the European Union.
"Right now we have hostile position from the U.S. and we have all our eggs in the same basket, so we should probably start diversifying in the short term," Rios said.
"Right now we have hostile position from the U.S. and we have all our eggs in the same basket, so we should probably start diversifying in the short term," Rios said.
February 21, 2017
- Tim Wise
This is some bitter truth..
"When white people are hurting economically we’re supposed to feel their pain and “bring the jobs back” to their dying rural towns. But when people of color lack jobs in the cities (in large part because of the decline of manufacturing over 40 plus years, as well as discrimination) we tell them to “move,” to go to school and gain new skills, and we lecture them on pulling themselves up by their bootstraps because the government doesn’t owe them anything. But apparently we DO owe white coal miners and assembly line workers their jobs back because remember, out of work white men are “salt of the earth” while out of work people of color are lazy."- Tim Wise
February 13, 2017
*snip*
*Snip*
What Liberals Dont Get About Free Speech In The Age Of Trump
A great read from start to finish, if I could post the entire essay I would....
What Liberals Don't Get About Free Speech In The Age of Trump by Katherine Cross
"Why have so few talked in detail about Milo’s specific acts of hate, from sexual harassing a blogger and supporting the abuse of Gamergate, to using derogatory slurs and anti-Semitic symbols, playing a role in the rise of hate crimes against Jewish people?
Why was there no battalion of op-eds in major newspapers about Adelaide Kramer, the trans woman Yiannopoulos harassed off of UW’s campus after he devoted the better part of his address there to attacking and slandering her? Whither her free speech, or her right to the education at UW that she had earned on her merits? Coverage of her story was limited mostly to online opinion outlets and Teen Vogue. Yiannopoulos warranted an editorial from the Los Angeles Times Editorial Board.
...where *were these noble defenders of liberty — from eggs on Twitter to carefully manicured beards at The Guardian when it emerged that US Customs and Border Patrol were searching the phones of certain people of color to see if they had criticized Trump on social media?
Why was there no battalion of op-eds in major newspapers about Adelaide Kramer, the trans woman Yiannopoulos harassed off of UW’s campus after he devoted the better part of his address there to attacking and slandering her? Whither her free speech, or her right to the education at UW that she had earned on her merits? Coverage of her story was limited mostly to online opinion outlets and Teen Vogue. Yiannopoulos warranted an editorial from the Los Angeles Times Editorial Board.
...where *were these noble defenders of liberty — from eggs on Twitter to carefully manicured beards at The Guardian when it emerged that US Customs and Border Patrol were searching the phones of certain people of color to see if they had criticized Trump on social media?
*snip*
You can think whatever you like, and even say it without fear of government reprisal, but when you introduce force-multipliers for speech into the equation, things begin to get very hazy indeed. You have a right to a view; do you have a right to pronounce it to millions of New York Times readers, however? No. ....
To speak to so vast an audience is a privilege, not a right. To speak through a newspaper or magazine column, a TV talk show, an interview on national TV, a speech at a university, or a primetime debate program, is, by its very nature, a privilege not open to all. There are billions of people on this planet, each speaking their views at any one time, but they can’t all appear on the Today show. Once again, we intuitively grasp this basic logistical matter, but forget about it entirely when a raving bigot shows up, feeling cornered by an abstract principle into insisting that he or she be given not only space to speak, but the largest possible platform and audience for it.
It has been the pride of my life to be able to write editorial copy and speak at universities and conferences around the world. I do not, however, delude myself into thinking I have a right to any of these things. They are privileges I have earned. I have a right to the views I espouse here; I do not have a specific right to force the editors of The Establishment to use their platform for that espousal.
The same applies to Yiannopoulos at Berkeley. What people are really arguing about is whether Yiannopoulos has a right to be paid to go on a speaking tour, complete with hotels, a bus (yes, really), and an entourage. That is a separate question from whether he has a right to hold his views; he could spread them, as so many do, from street corners and subway stations. He does not have a specific right to any particular rarefied rostrum, however.
To speak to so vast an audience is a privilege, not a right. To speak through a newspaper or magazine column, a TV talk show, an interview on national TV, a speech at a university, or a primetime debate program, is, by its very nature, a privilege not open to all. There are billions of people on this planet, each speaking their views at any one time, but they can’t all appear on the Today show. Once again, we intuitively grasp this basic logistical matter, but forget about it entirely when a raving bigot shows up, feeling cornered by an abstract principle into insisting that he or she be given not only space to speak, but the largest possible platform and audience for it.
It has been the pride of my life to be able to write editorial copy and speak at universities and conferences around the world. I do not, however, delude myself into thinking I have a right to any of these things. They are privileges I have earned. I have a right to the views I espouse here; I do not have a specific right to force the editors of The Establishment to use their platform for that espousal.
The same applies to Yiannopoulos at Berkeley. What people are really arguing about is whether Yiannopoulos has a right to be paid to go on a speaking tour, complete with hotels, a bus (yes, really), and an entourage. That is a separate question from whether he has a right to hold his views; he could spread them, as so many do, from street corners and subway stations. He does not have a specific right to any particular rarefied rostrum, however.
*Snip*
One of the biggest problems with mainstream liberalism is its fetish for abstract principle over material reality. It is prone to forgetting that in a democracy, principles exist as a means to an end: the guarantee of maximal rights and liberties for the greatest number of people. ...
What liberalism’s fetish for abstraction does, however, is leave it woefully unprepared for rights conflicts, which are inevitable in a complex society. At some point, one person’s exercise of their rights will come into conflict with another person exercising theirs, and this dispute must be adjudicated upon. Someone’s rights will be abridged as a result, which will be necessary to guaranteeing democracy’s stated aims.
The right to free speech is essential; it is very, very far from abstract. Ask anyone who had their phone searched at a border crossing this past week. That scenario is the very reason we have a First Amendment: uniformed, armed officers of the state, searching the correspondence of a civilian to see whether they criticized the president, punishing them if offending material is found. More than anything our First Amendment exists to protect the rights of the ordinary person to criticize those in power without fear of reprisal from the state. Yet instead we debate the right of an already rich man to use his exalted platform to take away the speech rights of others.
This is largely because liberal abstraction — and its counterparts on the political right — are very shy about delving into the specifics of any one case, lest it complicate an otherwise triumphantly straightforward argument.
So many people are hung up on Yiannopoulos’ right to free speech (without enumerating the specifics, e.g. a right to this platform, a right to payment from this institution, et cetera, none of which are democratic rights per se), while ignoring the rights his hate-mongering specifically abridges. This recent editorial in The Guardian by Matthew d’Ancona does not even try to reckon with the rights-conflict issue raised by Yiannopoulos’ planned Berkeley rally, and it’s quite typical in that regard. For the principle-obsessed pseudo-civil-libertarian, details only confuse the matter. D’Ancona merely gestures at it through yet more generalizing language, saying: “In a pluralist society, the line of least resistance is to shield citizens from offence. The problem is that everyone is offended by something, or by many things.” But this discourse of “offence” is a refuge for those who do not wish to speak of substance.
What liberalism’s fetish for abstraction does, however, is leave it woefully unprepared for rights conflicts, which are inevitable in a complex society. At some point, one person’s exercise of their rights will come into conflict with another person exercising theirs, and this dispute must be adjudicated upon. Someone’s rights will be abridged as a result, which will be necessary to guaranteeing democracy’s stated aims.
The right to free speech is essential; it is very, very far from abstract. Ask anyone who had their phone searched at a border crossing this past week. That scenario is the very reason we have a First Amendment: uniformed, armed officers of the state, searching the correspondence of a civilian to see whether they criticized the president, punishing them if offending material is found. More than anything our First Amendment exists to protect the rights of the ordinary person to criticize those in power without fear of reprisal from the state. Yet instead we debate the right of an already rich man to use his exalted platform to take away the speech rights of others.
This is largely because liberal abstraction — and its counterparts on the political right — are very shy about delving into the specifics of any one case, lest it complicate an otherwise triumphantly straightforward argument.
So many people are hung up on Yiannopoulos’ right to free speech (without enumerating the specifics, e.g. a right to this platform, a right to payment from this institution, et cetera, none of which are democratic rights per se), while ignoring the rights his hate-mongering specifically abridges. This recent editorial in The Guardian by Matthew d’Ancona does not even try to reckon with the rights-conflict issue raised by Yiannopoulos’ planned Berkeley rally, and it’s quite typical in that regard. For the principle-obsessed pseudo-civil-libertarian, details only confuse the matter. D’Ancona merely gestures at it through yet more generalizing language, saying: “In a pluralist society, the line of least resistance is to shield citizens from offence. The problem is that everyone is offended by something, or by many things.” But this discourse of “offence” is a refuge for those who do not wish to speak of substance.
February 11, 2017
the channeling of Huxley and Alinsky in a series of tweets:
"Liberties aren't given, they are taken" - Huxley
"Action comes from keeping the heat on. No politician can sit on a hot issue if you make it hot enough."- Alinsky.
Kurt should know better, and he was proper schooled. This is not the time for respectability politics:
February 3, 2017
Whoever is running Frederick Douglass' presidential campaign for 2020 needs to impress upon him..
.. the urgency of making a statement about the Bowling Green Massacre. His silence is deafening. He needs to talk more and more about this.
https://twitter.com/natasharothwell/status/827393205372981250
To his credit, his meme game is strong: https://twitter.com/FDouglass2020/status/827545751781666817
February 3, 2017
Douglass-Tubman 2020 - Getting recognized more and more...
The glory that is black twitter:
February 1, 2017
I don't care if the Republicans remove the filibuster..
They used it far too effectively against Obama.
If they remove it now, it's on them.
So let's raise the stakes for 2018 and 2020.
We have to recapture Congress and the Presidency, and if Republicans remove the filibuster now, whenever they're in the minority they'll have fewer tools of obstructionism on hand to frustrate a Democratic President.
February 1, 2017
Remember?
I have to begin by saying my original plan for this visit was to focus on our agenda to help small businesses and entrepreneurs. This week we proposed new steps to cut red tape and taxes to make it easier for small businesses to get the credit they need to grow and hire.
I want to be a small business president. My father was a small business man. And I believe that in America, if you can dream it, you should be able to build it.
And so, we’ll be talking a lot more about small business and about our economic plans in the days and weeks ahead.
But today, here in this community college devoted to opening minds and creating great understanding of the world of which we live, I want to address something that I am hearing about from Americans all over our country.
Everywhere I go, people tell me how concerned they are by the divisive rhetoric coming from my opponent in this election.
And I understand that concern, because it’s like nothing we’ve heard before from a nominee for president of the United States from one of our two major parties.
From the start, Donald Trump has built his campaign on prejudice and paranoia.
He is taking hate groups mainstream and helping a radical fringe take over the Republican Party.
His disregard for the values that make our country great is profoundly dangerous.
In just this past week, under the guise of “outreach” to African Americans, Trump has stood up in front of largely white audiences and described black communities in such insulting and ignorant terms:
“Poverty. Rejection. Horrible education. No housing. No homes. No ownership. Crime at levels nobody has seen." Right now," he said, "you walk down the street and get shot.”
Those are his words.
But when I hear them, I think to myself: How sad. Donald Trump misses so much.
He doesn’t see the success of black leaders in every field, the vibrancy of black-owned businesses, the strength of the black church.
He doesn’t see the excellence of historically black colleges and universities or the pride of black parents watching their children thrive. And he apparently didn't see Police Chief Brown on television after the murders of five of his officers conducting himself with such dignity. He certainly doesn’t have any solutions to take on the reality of systemic racism and create more equity and opportunity in communities of color and for every American.
It really does take a lot of nerve to ask people he’s ignored and mistreated for decades, “What do you have to lose?” Because the answer is: Everything.
Now, Trump’s lack of knowledge or experience or solutions would be bad enough.
But what he’s doing here is more sinister.
Trump is reinforcing harmful stereotypes and offering a dog whistle to his most hateful supporters.
It’s a disturbing preview of what kind of president he’d be.
And that's what I want to make clear today:
A man with a long history of racial discrimination, who traffics in dark conspiracy theories drawn from the pages of supermarket tabloids and the far, dark reaches of the internet, should never run our government or command our military.
Ask yourself, if he doesn’t respect all Americans, how can he serve all Americans?
Now, I know some people still want to give Trump the benefit of the doubt.
They hope that he will eventually reinvent himself – that there’s a kinder, gentler, more responsible Donald Trump waiting in the wings somewhere.
Because after all, it’s hard to believe anyone – let alone a nominee for president – could really believe all the things he says.
But the hard truth is, there’s no other Donald Trump. This is it.
Like she repeated this over and over and over and over.
She got criticized for this speech and there was backlash. She was too "harsh", she was "descending to his level" they said.
Chris Matthews got in on the action and while discussing the speech with ex GOP Chairman Michael Steele, lamented that it dragged politics to a level it shouldn't be and he and Michael agreed that Hillary was wrong. Trump's gaslighting had so infected political media, the pundits couldn't see the truth if it slapped them in the face.Maybe Chris should eat crow now, because this speech was prescient about the dangers of a Trump presidency.
Hillary warned us time and time again about Trump, and was criticized for being too negative and too "anti- trump" even when her speeches weren't all about Trump. In fact, most of her speeches were about her policy positions and plans but the media didn't have time to discuss such unimportant things.
It is important to be ANTI TRUMP because of what he represents. He is a throwback, a dying breed of American who looks back instead of forward. He is regressive and autocratic and wants to hold on to an old tired view of the world that is tribalistic, nationalistic and provincial - to do so he will allow religious theocracy to take hold, he will fuck the environment over and justify doing so because it's a god given right, and wealth=right in his mind. He'll allow backward right-libertarian ideologues to steer policy and crush socialism in favor of feudalism and he will starve green energy initiatives in favor of extractive industries. He will turn his back to the promise of 21st century civilisation: Liberalism - open markets, green energy, cosmopolitanism, diversity, secularism, a vast social safety net, democracy.
The true progressive position is to be AntiTrump and all he stands for, on that score Hillary was right.
Folks want Hillary to say something about the OrangeClusterFuckofMadness in the WH. Well she did..
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/08/25/hillary-clintons-alt-right-speech-annotated/?utm_term=.2d4a3ad0d95fRemember?
I have to begin by saying my original plan for this visit was to focus on our agenda to help small businesses and entrepreneurs. This week we proposed new steps to cut red tape and taxes to make it easier for small businesses to get the credit they need to grow and hire.
I want to be a small business president. My father was a small business man. And I believe that in America, if you can dream it, you should be able to build it.
And so, we’ll be talking a lot more about small business and about our economic plans in the days and weeks ahead.
But today, here in this community college devoted to opening minds and creating great understanding of the world of which we live, I want to address something that I am hearing about from Americans all over our country.
Everywhere I go, people tell me how concerned they are by the divisive rhetoric coming from my opponent in this election.
And I understand that concern, because it’s like nothing we’ve heard before from a nominee for president of the United States from one of our two major parties.
From the start, Donald Trump has built his campaign on prejudice and paranoia.
He is taking hate groups mainstream and helping a radical fringe take over the Republican Party.
His disregard for the values that make our country great is profoundly dangerous.
In just this past week, under the guise of “outreach” to African Americans, Trump has stood up in front of largely white audiences and described black communities in such insulting and ignorant terms:
“Poverty. Rejection. Horrible education. No housing. No homes. No ownership. Crime at levels nobody has seen." Right now," he said, "you walk down the street and get shot.”
Those are his words.
But when I hear them, I think to myself: How sad. Donald Trump misses so much.
He doesn’t see the success of black leaders in every field, the vibrancy of black-owned businesses, the strength of the black church.
He doesn’t see the excellence of historically black colleges and universities or the pride of black parents watching their children thrive. And he apparently didn't see Police Chief Brown on television after the murders of five of his officers conducting himself with such dignity. He certainly doesn’t have any solutions to take on the reality of systemic racism and create more equity and opportunity in communities of color and for every American.
It really does take a lot of nerve to ask people he’s ignored and mistreated for decades, “What do you have to lose?” Because the answer is: Everything.
Now, Trump’s lack of knowledge or experience or solutions would be bad enough.
But what he’s doing here is more sinister.
Trump is reinforcing harmful stereotypes and offering a dog whistle to his most hateful supporters.
It’s a disturbing preview of what kind of president he’d be.
And that's what I want to make clear today:
A man with a long history of racial discrimination, who traffics in dark conspiracy theories drawn from the pages of supermarket tabloids and the far, dark reaches of the internet, should never run our government or command our military.
Ask yourself, if he doesn’t respect all Americans, how can he serve all Americans?
Now, I know some people still want to give Trump the benefit of the doubt.
They hope that he will eventually reinvent himself – that there’s a kinder, gentler, more responsible Donald Trump waiting in the wings somewhere.
Because after all, it’s hard to believe anyone – let alone a nominee for president – could really believe all the things he says.
But the hard truth is, there’s no other Donald Trump. This is it.
Like she repeated this over and over and over and over.
She got criticized for this speech and there was backlash. She was too "harsh", she was "descending to his level" they said.
Chris Matthews got in on the action and while discussing the speech with ex GOP Chairman Michael Steele, lamented that it dragged politics to a level it shouldn't be and he and Michael agreed that Hillary was wrong. Trump's gaslighting had so infected political media, the pundits couldn't see the truth if it slapped them in the face.Maybe Chris should eat crow now, because this speech was prescient about the dangers of a Trump presidency.
Hillary warned us time and time again about Trump, and was criticized for being too negative and too "anti- trump" even when her speeches weren't all about Trump. In fact, most of her speeches were about her policy positions and plans but the media didn't have time to discuss such unimportant things.
It is important to be ANTI TRUMP because of what he represents. He is a throwback, a dying breed of American who looks back instead of forward. He is regressive and autocratic and wants to hold on to an old tired view of the world that is tribalistic, nationalistic and provincial - to do so he will allow religious theocracy to take hold, he will fuck the environment over and justify doing so because it's a god given right, and wealth=right in his mind. He'll allow backward right-libertarian ideologues to steer policy and crush socialism in favor of feudalism and he will starve green energy initiatives in favor of extractive industries. He will turn his back to the promise of 21st century civilisation: Liberalism - open markets, green energy, cosmopolitanism, diversity, secularism, a vast social safety net, democracy.
The true progressive position is to be AntiTrump and all he stands for, on that score Hillary was right.
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Gender: FemaleMember since: Sun Sep 11, 2016, 01:18 AM
Number of posts: 10,173