Of course - no rank hypocrisy here. Why if Obama had made a policy breaking phone call between the time of his election and his inauguration, the Republicans would have been delighted.
âSo I think it was a terrific message to them: Weâre no longer going to be pushovers, and thereâs going to be consequences for their hostile and aggressive actions.â (Dana Rohrabacher)
This is a very provocative statement to make. What sort of âconsequencesâ are you suggesting, Dana? And define the âhostile and aggressive actionsâ on the part of the Chinese. You people are just itching for a physical altercation of some kind. I hope Trumpâs voters are readying up their young boys and girls for war time.
NoâŚit shows the man is reckless and doesnât care about diplomacy. Instead, it shows that he doesnât care if the Chinese demand the repayment of everything we owe them pretty much right away or they start doing nasty things to our imports. Oh, did you miss that memoâŚapparently the US has started to creep towards a positive trade deficit with China with them importing more to us then they export. BUT, I guess staging a call with the President of Taiwan is more important than keeping one of our largest trading partners happy. And then what? You go to war? By the time our troops make it halfway across the Pacific, our other trading partners will have cut us off and there wonât be a US economy worth mentioning.
Talk about stupid.
Has Donald Trump called for U.S. citizens to scan the label for country of origin on everything they buy, and told them they need to make every effort humanly possible to buy products only made in the U.S.A.? He vilifies Carrier for exporting jobs. Has he vilified Walmart for selling Chinese made goods cheaper than U.S. made goods? Has he asked Walmart to mark up their Chinese imports 35%, thus saving him the trouble of doing it when he becomes President? Why is Walmart waiting to do something the President-elect must wait weeks and months more to do, when they could be doing it now and proving they care about the nation and the nationâs workers?
Well, there it is. âYessiree! Donald is gonna show them furriners whatâs what!â
When I heard yesterday that this fuckwit was being considered for Secretary of State, my blood froze. Take a moment to consider even the remotest possibility of that being real, folks. Dana Rohrabacher??!
I think John Bolton might be preferableâŚOkay, now Iâm going to wash my mouth out with Drano for that gem.
There are ways to confront China when it oversteps. Just read yesterday about Obama having a quiet word with Xi months ago about unacceptable levels of industrial cyber-espionage. Told them if they didnât stop thereâd be negative steps taken as a consequence. Evidently they racheted the hacking back. The thing is not to hurt their pride, embolden their military hardliners, threaten the economic and military stability of the world, or any of that fun stuff. Trump invariably defaults to bluster and bullying and he doesnât have any ability to calculate the risk-reward ratio or simply ask if thereâs another way or if itâs even a problem that heâs confronting.
âIncompetentâ is the word. Not a âpushover,â but an âincompetent.â There.
Heâs not a pushover. Just a blusterer, and out and a bully. Admirable qualities in our chief executive.
Oh, and an admitted sexual predator.
The bigger problem is that almost nothing we buy any more is exclusively made in the US or any one country. That âAmerican-madeâ car? Most of itâs parts were made in Germany and Canada. That wooden chair? Made in China with American wood. The poor schmuck doesnât know how the global economy works.
I had a professor who was LBJâs intellectual-in-residence. He told of an instance in which the Soviets (as they then were) moved to meddle in the Middle East just after the Six-Day War. I think they sent some ships into the Eastern Mediterranean. Johnson ordered the Sixth Fleet carrier battle group, which was steaming west toward the central Med, to turn around and head toward Syria. The Soviets backed off. When one of Johnsonâs aides suggested making the move public, LBJ said, no. âThey know what happened. No need to rub their noses in it.â Thatâs the kind of intelligence Drumpf lacks.
But
He DID stay at a Holiday Inn Express last nightâŚ
Can we show that photo of Dana posing with the Taliban one more time?
Letâs remind ourselves about his great judgment. Iâm not sure if he is also one of the Republicans who used to tout the Talibanâs good conservative values.
Shows he an ignoramus mostly.
The significance of this story is how low Dana Rohrbacher bows, scrapes and curtsies to curry the favor of the Orange Wonder. Not surprising he got on Secretary of State shortlist 
Well heâs right. It doesnât show him to be a pushover. It does show him to be incompetent, uninformed and totally in over his head. And heâs not president so he should spend this time learning about the job he knows nothing about rather than breaking the planet before heâs legally allowed to.
And calling for people to make those purchasing choices would illustrate to them in a very personal fashion the fallacy of having an isolationist trade policy. Trump wants people to believe his trade policies will dictate America comes first, that the U.S. âwinsâ in all transactions. Who in the hell wants to do business with someone when the publicly announced intent of their trading with you is they win, and you lose? Would you buy a car from a guy that said âIâm going to sell you this car on my terms, making a profit margin I dictate, and youâre going to get raped in the deal. Iâm going to dance around and yell âYouâre a loser, I won, I won!!â and youâre just going to write the check and take it.â
WTF?
Well , he did say he would create jobs.
Imagine you searched the neighborhood bars of the nation for the most obnoxious, loud-mouthed half-potted bar know-it-all, the one who sits around watching Fox on the bar tv and periodically precedes a drunken rant of the dumbest, belligerent, ignorant nonsense conceivable with âyou know what we oughtta do?â And then you gave that person enormous power.
Yeah, thatâs what Trumpâs transition team is doing.
I have a cousin who is a used car salesman, and thatâs pretty much how he comes across.
The thing is, the only way we can really stop businesses from moving overseas is to stop them using the stock market as a giant casino; force CEOâs to no longer take exorbitant salaries; bring in companies from Europe who are more used to working with strict environmental laws and unions; and ease the tax and regulatory burden on true small businesses (defined as any company based in a state and doing business only within that stateâs borders). Some of that would have to be done by way of tax incentivization such as any board of any company making, say, more than 100% of the lowest paid person in their organization must pay a higher tax than the board of a company where their pay is no more than 100% of the lowest paid person in their organization. Other ways would be through laws which, for instance, would prevent the sale of stock in less than a weekâs time. Basically, once a stock is bought, it must be held on to for no less than a week before being sold.
This is about the only way I can see to grow jobs in the US.