[AMV] Amerikaanse politiek #573: Republikeins racisme

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Op maandag 5 november 2018 23:12 schreef Kijkertje het volgende:

'Don't be hoodwinked': Obama says migrant caravan not biggest threat to U.S.

"Don't be hoodwinked. Don't be bamboozled. Don't let them run the okie-doke on you. Because while they are trying to distract you with all this stuff they are robbing you blind."- Barack Obama

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Op maandag 5 november 2018 23:20 schreef ExtraWaskracht het volgende:

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Achter wiens verwachtingen en beloftes? De economie onder Trump doet het met een bizar en onnodig begrotingstekort van meer dan 5% gelijkwaardig aan onder Obama die juist een dalend tekort op de begroting had... daar ging het ook in dat opzicht de goede kant mee op.

Nu klopt het dat na de crash onder Bush het maar 1 kant op kon gaan, maar het pakket aan maatregelen was voor een belangrijk deel wel een keuze van de Obama administratie (wat overigens los staat van hoe ik daar verder over denk) en dan doel ik met name het laten oplopen van de schuld. Het had goed gekund dat de veel conservatievere McCain daarin wel degelijk een heel andere keuze had gemaakt.

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Op maandag 5 november 2018 23:30 schreef Chivaz het volgende:

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En weer maken de democraten de fout om de zorgen rondom illegale immigratie niet serieus te nemen.
Ik kan mij niet voorstellen dat je als partij die zogenaamd opkomt voor de kleine man hun zorgen weg te zetten als flauwekul of erger nog racistisch geblaat.
Ook staat het natuurlijk haaks op wat Obama eerder vertelde over illegale immigratie.

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Op maandag 5 november 2018 23:12 schreef Kijkertje het volgende:

'Don't be hoodwinked': Obama says migrant caravan not biggest threat to U.S.

"Don't be hoodwinked. Don't be bamboozled. Don't let them run the okie-doke on you. Because while they are trying to distract you with all this stuff they are robbing you blind."- Barack Obama

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Op maandag 5 november 2018 23:53 schreef ExtraWaskracht het volgende:
Kun je hier wat argumenten bij geven? Ik zie wat screenshots en links, maar het is wat lastig in jouw hoofd te kijken hoe je argument in elkaar zit hoe Obama daar verantwoordelijk voor is. Is hij trouwens ook verantwoordelijk voor miljoenen mensen die nu een ziektekostenverzekering kunnen betalen?

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Op maandag 5 november 2018 09:06 schreef Ludachrist het volgende:

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Dat jodenhaat en vervolging direct toe te schrijven is aan het verlies van een wereldoorlog lijkt me een behoorlijke oversimplificatie.

twitter:

kylegriffin1 twitterde op maandag 05-11-2018 om 21:40:06 Justin Levitt, an ex-DOJ official who has been studying the issue for years, said he found just 45 credible cases of voter impersonation between 2000 and 2018, a period during which more than a billion votes were cast. https://t.co/oo8E37JWBt https://t.co/JKpTpbiV1x reageer retweet

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In his later encounter with reporters, the president offered no basis for suggesting that large-scale fraud was likely. "All you have to do is go around, take a look what's happened over the years and you'll see," he said. "There are a lot of people, a lot of people, in my opinion and based on proof, that try and get in illegally and actually vote illegally. So we just want to let them know that there will be prosecutions at the highest level."

Bron

twitter:

maggieNYT twitterde op maandag 05-11-2018 om 20:44:59 The president tweeted the raw footage used in the ad. He also in the past personally signed off on every ad and in many cases dictated the scripts. Hard to believe he didn’t know. https://t.co/FrXJOqCTJL reageer retweet

twitter:

seungminkim twitterde op maandag 05-11-2018 om 23:43:01 Trump, in interview with @ABC7, says the one regret he has from his first two years in office is his tone. "I would like to have a much softer tone. I feel, to a certain extent, I have no choice. But maybe I do. And maybe I could’ve been softer from that standpoint." reageer retweet

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Op maandag 5 november 2018 23:33 schreef Monolith het volgende:

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Ik ben het sowieso niet met je eens dat het na de crash onder Bush maar één kant op kon. Er wordt ook vaak geroepen dat men de boel had moeten laten klappen en "de markt haar werk laten doen". In mijn ogen was dat een heel groot risico geweest met potentieel tot gevolg dat de werkeloosheid nog veel verder was opgelopen.

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President Donald Trump has taken hard-line stances against North Korea, China, and Iran — and in the last 72 hours, each country pushed back on America’s pressure campaign.

On Friday, North Korea threatened to build more nuclear weapons unless the US offers some sanctions relief. Three days later, Chinese President Xi Jinping said Beijing would survive the trade war with America and continue exporting goods around the world. Also on Monday, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani vowed to “break” Trump’s latest and greatest imposition of financial penalties.

Each country has somewhat similar reasons for their anger: The US has imposed stringent economic penalties on them to force a change in behavior. Washington sanctioned Pyongyang to force North Koreans to dismantle their nuclear program; maintains tariffs on Chinese goods until the country opens its market to US companies; and has increased sanctions on Iran to get the country to abandon its aggressive foreign policy and pursuit of a nuclear weapon.

It’s not surprising that all three countries would bristle at America’s stances toward them. But what last weekend shows is that if Trump expects these nations to acquiesce to US demands, the plan isn’t working.

SPOILER

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That’s scary, because the whole point of the talks is to convince North Korea to stop building nukes, not continue making them. US intelligence, however, shows that North Korea is still making more bombs, but aims to hide that from the US and the international community. Now Pyongyang wants to let the Trump administration know the window for denuclearization is closing.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo responded to the statement on “Fox News Sunday.”

“We’ve seen this as we go through negotiations. Stray voltage happens to be all around us,” he told anchor Chris Wallace. “We know with whom we’re negotiating. We know what their positions are. And President Trump’s made his position very clear, no economic relief until we have achieved our ultimate objective.”

Pompeo will meet with Kim Yong Chol, arguably the second-most powerful person in North Korea, later this week for another round of talks.

Robert Carlin, a leading North Korea expert at the Stimson Center think tank, noted in the Koreas-focused 38 North website on Monday that Kwon had omitted any reference to Trump. That indicates “the overall tone in Kwon’s piece was not so much of confrontation but of ridicule about the US position,” Carlin wrote.

That’s definitely still a problem, since America’s stance — and each side’s unwillingness to budge — could threaten the current peace. “I am worried that the detente of the last few months could be in serious trouble,” Kazianis said.

China is angry with the US over the trade war

Trump has placed around $250 billion in tariffs on Chinese goods — about half the total worth of goods the US imports from China — this year in his escalating trade war. It’s part of a strategy to force Beijing to let American companies freely sell to the country’s consumers, compel it to stop stealing the intellectual property of US businesses, and cripple China’s economy in the process.

That, naturally, has rankled Xi, China’s increasingly authoritarian leader. During a Monday speech intended to kick off the China International Import Expo, Xi took thinly veiled shots at the US — and Trump specifically without saying his name.

People who dislike China’s economic practices “should not just point fingers at others to gloss over their own problems,” he told the audience. “They should not hold a flashlight that only exposes others while doing nothing themselves.”

twitter:

tictoc twitterde op maandag 05-11-2018 om 14:05:07 Chinese President Xi Jinping just gave a keynote speech on trade. Here are the highlights.Read more via @business https://t.co/CbIPTIwgAc https://t.co/eTa3xqxPnd reageer retweet

He did promise to cut import taxes and export around $30 trillion in products and services over the next decade and a half. But he also made sure to note that China would survive mounting economic pressure from the United States.

“Great winds and storms may upset a pond, but not an ocean,” Xi said. “After 5,000 years of trials and tribulations, China is still here. Looking ahead, China will be here to stay.”

It’s quite a defiant message, and it comes at a particularly tense time. Washington-Beijing relations have soured recently as the US rejects any talks with China to end the trade war, hoping the standoff will compel the country to cave to American demands. What’s more, Trump and Xi plan to meet during the G20 summit later this month, and it’s possible that Xi’s speech could make that meeting a bit awkward.

It also behooves both leaders to end the spat soon. Last month, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) — a world body that helps keep the global economy stable — released a major report that projected the world’s economy will grow by 3.7 percent this year, which is 0.2 points lower than they had estimated in April. That’s the same rate of growth as in 2017, but the trade war is a major reason for the slight dip in expectations.

The IMF also noted that the trade war could curb China’s economic growth by about 2 percent over the next two years. If true, it would be a major blow to China’s economy, which prioritizes continued growth above all else.

It’s no wonder, then, that Xi is upset.

Iran says it will “break” US sanctions

At midnight on Monday, the Trump administration reimposed sanctions on Iran that were lifted once the 2015 Iran nuclear deal was in place. The goal, as the administration said, is to force Tehran to stop funding proxies in the Middle East, supporting Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad, stealing money from regular Iranians, and improving its nuclear program.

In effect, the US wants Iran to change everything about itself — or else.

twitter:

SecPompeo twitterde op maandag 05-11-2018 om 17:10:17 The U.S. has reimposed tough sanctions on #Iran’s regime as part of our relentless pressure campaign to convince the regime to change its destructive behavior. Iran’s regime has a choice: change its behavior and act like a normal country or watch the escalating pressure continue. https://t.co/Yg0e8ovDPs reageer retweet

Iranian leaders, and especially President Hassan Rouhani, have shown their displeasure with the Trump administration’s decision.

“We will proudly break the sanctions,” Rouhani said during a meeting of Iranian economic officials on Monday. That may be tough, as the US just placed penalties on more than 700 people, organizations, and vessels — mainly targeting the country’s oil, banking, and shipping industries — stopping them from accessing the international banking network and the US market.

Rouhani remains defiant despite the economic stranglehold. “We have to make Americans understand that they cannot talk to the great Iranian nation with the language of pressure and sanctions,” he said during a televised address.

While the sanctions are meant to hurt the regime — and could do so — they currently impact regular Iranians the most. In October, a top UN court ruled that the US had to ease its sanctions on Iran for humanitarian reasons. Specifically, the US was told it could not restrict exports to Iran of food, medicine, and other items because it threatened the lives of ordinary citizens there.

It’s unclear if the pressure on the Iranian people could lead to a revolt that would eventually topple the regime, but it seems that’s what the US administration wants. John Bolton advocated as much before he joined the administration as national security adviser, although officials deny regime change is the goal.

Even if the idea is actually to make Iran change its behavior, sanctions likely won’t work. Ali Vaez, an Iran expert at the International Crisis Group, released a report last Friday that shows Tehran has rarely changed its behavior in response to financial pressure.

“A 40-year analysis of Iran’s economic performance and regional policy reveals little to no correlation between the two,” he wrote, “as Tehran has continued to pursue policies it deems central to its national security no matter its degree of economic wellbeing at home.”

That means Iran’s anger — and America’s frustration — will continue to mount in the coming months.