quote:

Op zondag 11 maart 2018 13:00 schreef Monolith het volgende:

[..]

Het is maar wat je werken noemt. Zo effectief is het beleid in de Filipijnen niet:
https://www.reuters.com/a(...)t-year-idUSKBN19G05D

Iemand die doodgaat door een kogel in zijn hoofd gaat inderdaad niet dood aan een overdosis, maar het effect is niet veel anders.

Wat voor Singapore werkt is volstrekte controle van de overheid over de stadsstaat. Dat ga je natuurlijk niet voor elkaar krijgen in de VS.

quote:

Op zondag 11 maart 2018 13:00 schreef KoosVogels het volgende:

[..]

In de Filippijnen werkt het?

twitter:

NBCNews twitterde op zondag 11-03-2018 om 01:22:45 President Trump says the South Korean president told him: "Without Donald Trump, the Olympics would have been a total failure ... A little hard to sell tickets when you think you're going to be nuked." https://t.co/dl40sN9ZTY reageer retweet

twitter:

NBCNews twitterde op zondag 11-03-2018 om 01:34:31 President Trump says his new campaign slogan will be "Keep America Great!" https://t.co/g6qrBSjmuy reageer retweet

quote:

Op zondag 11 maart 2018 12:55 schreef Nintex het volgende:
De Trump rally van gisteren was een van de beste ooit.

quote:

"We’re the only advanced democracy in the world that makes it harder for people to vote." - Barack Obama (2016)

This is a fragile moment for the nation. The integrity of democratic institutions is under assault from without and within, and basic standards of honesty and decency in public life are corroding. If you are horrified at what is happening in Washington and in many states, you can march in the streets, you can go to town halls and demand more from your representatives, you can share the latest outrageous news on your social media feed — all worthwhile activities. But none of it matters if you don’t go out and vote.

It’s a perennial conundrum for the world’s oldest democracy: Why do so many Americans fail to go to the polls? Some abstainers think that they’re registering a protest against the awful choices. They’re fooling themselves. Nonvoters aren’t protesting anything; they’re just putting their lives and futures in the hands of the people who probably don’t want them to vote. We’ve seen recently what can happen when people choose instead to take their protest to the ballot box. We saw it in Virginia in November. We saw it, to our astonishment, in Alabama in December. We may see it this week in western Pennsylvania. Voting matters.

Casting a ballot is the best opportunity most of us will ever get to have a say in who will represent us, what issues they will address and how they will spend our money. The right to vote is so basic, President Lyndon Johnson said in 1965, that without it “all others are meaningless.”

And yet every election, tens of millions of Americans stay home. Studies of turnout among developed nations consistently rank the United States near the bottom. In the most recent midterms, in 2014, less than 37 percent of eligible voters went to the polls — the lowest turnout in more than 70 years. In 2016, 102 million people didn’t vote, far more than voted for any single candidate.

SPOILER

FAILING TECHNOLOGY

The legitimacy of an election is only as good as the reliability of the machines that count the votes. And yet 43 states use voting machines that are no longer being made, and are at or near the end of their useful life. Many states still manage their voter-registration rolls using software programs from the 1990s. It’s no surprise that this sort of infrastructure failure hits poorer and minority areas harder, often creating hourslong lines at the polls and discouraging many voters from coming out at all. Upgrading these machines nationwide would cost at least $1 billion, maybe much more, and Congress has consistently failed to provide anything close to sufficient funding to speed along the process.

Elections are hard to run with aging voting technology, but at least those problems aren’t intentional. Hacking and other types of interference are. In 2016, Russian hackers were able to breach voter registration systems in Illinois and several other states, and targeted dozens more. They are interfering again in advance of the 2018 midterms, according to intelligence officials, who are demanding better cybersecurity measures. These include conducting regular threat assessments, using voting machines that create paper trails and conducting postelection audits. Yet President Trump, who sees any invocation of Russian interference as a challenge to the legitimacy of his election, consistently downplays or dismisses these threats. Meanwhile, Mr. Trump’s State Department has not spent a dime of the $120 million Congress allocated to it to fight disinformation campaigns by Russia and other countries.

DISILLUSIONMENT

Some people wouldn’t vote if you put a ballot box in their living room. Whether they believe there is no meaningful difference between the major parties or that the government doesn’t care what they think regardless of who is in power, they have detached themselves from the political process.

That attitude is encouraged by many in government, up to and including the current president, who cynically foster feelings of disillusionment by hawking fake tales of rigged systems and illegal voters, even as they raise millions of dollars from wealthy donors and draw legislative maps to entrench their power.

The disillusionment is understandable, and to some degree it’s justified. But it creates a self-fulfilling prophecy. When large numbers of people don’t vote, elections are indeed decided by narrow, unrepresentative groups and in the interests of wealth and power. The public can then say, See? We were right. They don’t care about us. But when more people vote, the winning candidates are more broadly representative and that improves government responsiveness to the public and enhances democratic legitimacy.

These obstacles to voting and political participation are very real, and we don’t discount their impact on turnout. The good news is there are fixes for all of them.

The most important and straightforward fix is to make it easier for people to register and vote. Automatic voter registration, which first passed in Oregon just three years ago, is now the law or practice in nine states, both red and blue, and the District of Columbia. Washington State is on the cusp of becoming the tenth, and New Jersey and Nevada may be close behind. More people also turn out when states increase voting opportunities, such as by providing mail-in ballots or by expanding voting hours and days.

The courts should be a bulwark protecting voting rights, and many lower federal courts have been just that in recent years, blocking the most egregious attacks on voting in states from North Carolina to Wisconsin. But the Supreme Court under Chief Justice John Roberts Jr. has made this task much harder, mainly by gutting a key provision of the Voting Rights Act in a 2013 case. Decisions like that one, which split 5 to 4, depend heavily on who is sitting in those nine seats — yet another reason people should care who gets elected.

In the end, the biggest obstacle to more Americans voting is their own sense of powerlessness. It’s true: Voting is a profound act of faith, a belief that even if your voice can’t change policy on its own, it makes a difference. Consider the attitude of Andrea Anthony, the Wisconsin woman who was deterred by the state’s harsh new voter-ID law after voting her whole adult life. “Voting is important to me because I know I have a little, teeny, tiny voice, but that is a way for it to be heard,” Ms. Anthony said. “Even though it’s one vote, I feel it needs to count.”

She’s right. The future of America is in your hands. More people voting would not only mean “different political parties with different platforms and different candidates,” the writer Rebecca Solnit said. “It would change the story. It would change who gets to tell the story.”

There are a lot of stories desperately needing to be told right now, but they won’t be as long as millions of Americans continue to sit out elections. Lament the state of the nation as much as you want. Then get out and vote.

The problem isn’t just apathy, of course. Keeping people from voting has been an American tradition from the nation’s earliest days, when the franchise was restricted to white male landowners. It took a civil war, constitutional amendments, violently suppressed activism against discrimination and a federal act enforcing the guarantees of those amendments to extend this basic right to every adult. With each expansion of voting rights, the nation inched closer to being a truly representative democracy. Today, only one group of Americans may be legally barred from voting — those with felony records, a cruel and pointless restriction that disproportionately silences people of color.

In the months leading up to the midterm elections on Nov. 6, when the House, Senate and statehouses around the country are up for grabs, the editorial board will explore the complicated question of why Americans don’t vote, and what can be done to overcome the problem. The explanations fall into three broad categories.

SUPPRESSION

A 96-year-old woman in Tennessee was denied a voter-ID card despite presenting four forms of identification, including her birth certificate. A World War II veteran was turned away in Ohio because his Department of Veterans Affairs photo ID didn’t include his address. Andrea Anthony, a 37-year-old black woman from Wisconsin who had voted in every major election since she was 18, couldn’t vote in 2016 because she had lost her driver’s license a few days before.

Stories like these are distressingly familiar, as more and more states pass laws that make voting harder for certain groups of voters, usually minorities, but also poor people, students and the elderly. They require forms of photo identification that minorities are much less likely to have or be able to get — purportedly to reduce fraud, of which there is virtually no evidence. They eliminate same-day registration, close polling stations in minority areas and cut back early-voting hours and Sunday voting.

These new laws may not be as explicitly discriminatory as the poll taxes or literacy tests of the 20th century, but they are part of the same long-term project to keep minorities from the ballot box. And because African-Americans vote overwhelmingly for Democrats, the laws are nearly always passed by Republican-dominated legislatures.

In a lawsuit challenging Wisconsin’s strict new voter-ID law, a former staff member for a Republican lawmaker testified that Republicans were “politically frothing at the mouth” at the prospect that the law would drive down Democratic turnout. It worked: After the 2016 election, one survey found that the law prevented possibly more than 17,000 registered voters, disproportionately poor and minority, from voting. Donald Trump carried the state by fewer than 23,000 votes.

quote:

Op zondag 11 maart 2018 13:05 schreef DeParo het volgende:

[..]

Omdat?

quote:

Op zondag 11 maart 2018 13:08 schreef Nintex het volgende:

[..]

Duurde bijna 2 uur.

Donald behandelde vrijwel ieder onderwerp, pareerde iedere aanval die hij de afgelopen tijd op hem af heeft gekregen.

Rake en scherpe analyses van zijn tegenstanders als POCAHONTAS! en de politieke journalisten.

quote:

Op zondag 11 maart 2018 13:08 schreef Nintex het volgende:

[..]

Duurde bijna 2 uur.

Donald behandelde vrijwel ieder onderwerp, pareerde iedere aanval die hij de afgelopen tijd op hem af heeft gekregen.

Rake en scherpe analyses van zijn tegenstanders als POCAHONTAS! en de politieke journalisten.

quote:

Op zondag 11 maart 2018 13:10 schreef DeParo het volgende:

[..]

Links?

Trump unscripted and unleashed in Pennsylvania stump speech

quote:

Op zondag 11 maart 2018 13:11 schreef KoosVogels het volgende:

[..]

Jij gaat serieus twee uur naar zo'n bijeenkomst kijken?

quote:

Op zondag 11 maart 2018 13:12 schreef Nintex het volgende:

[..]

Trump unscripted and unleashed in Pennsylvania stump speech

quote:

Op zondag 11 maart 2018 13:02 schreef DeParo het volgende:

[..]

Het schrikt af, mensen zijn minder snel geneigd om in de drugshandel te stappen, alle criminaliteitscijfers behalve moord zijn lager.

[..]

Criminaliteitscijfers zijn een stuk lager.

quote:

Op zondag 11 maart 2018 13:08 schreef Nintex het volgende:

[..]

Duurde bijna 2 uur.

Donald behandelde vrijwel ieder onderwerp, pareerde iedere aanval die hij de afgelopen tijd op hem af heeft gekregen.

Rake en scherpe analyses van zijn tegenstanders als POCAHONTAS! en de politieke journalisten.

quote:

Op zondag 11 maart 2018 13:15 schreef DeParo het volgende:

[..]

Ik bedoelde eigenlijk van de politieke analyses die je benoemde.

Trump veers off script with insults about Democrats

quote:

Op zondag 11 maart 2018 13:02 schreef DeParo het volgende:

[..]

Het schrikt af, mensen zijn minder snel geneigd om in de drugshandel te stappen, alle criminaliteitscijfers behalve moord zijn lager.

[..]

Criminaliteitscijfers zijn een stuk lager.

quote:

Op zondag 11 maart 2018 13:04 schreef Nintex het volgende:

twitter:

NBCNews twitterde op zondag 11-03-2018 om 01:22:45 President Trump says the South Korean president told him: "Without Donald Trump, the Olympics would have been a total failure ... A little hard to sell tickets when you think you're going to be nuked." https://t.co/dl40sN9ZTY reageer retweet

twitter:

NBCNews twitterde op zondag 11-03-2018 om 01:34:31 President Trump says his new campaign slogan will be "Keep America Great!" https://t.co/g6qrBSjmuy reageer retweet

En een subtiele jab naar Jeb!

quote:

Op zondag 11 maart 2018 13:18 schreef westwoodblvd het volgende:

[..]

Als je kijkt naar het percentage mensen dat vindt dat de VS de juiste richting op gaat, vraag ik me af hoe goed die slogan gekozen is

quote:

Op zondag 11 maart 2018 13:18 schreef westwoodblvd het volgende:

[..]

Als je kijkt naar het percentage mensen dat vindt dat de VS de juiste richting op gaat, vraag ik me af hoe goed die slogan gekozen is

quote:

Op zondag 11 maart 2018 13:21 schreef xpompompomx het volgende:

[..]

Nontex zou nog staan je juichen als zijn held David Dennison hem letterlijk in zijn gezicht zou schijten.

quote:

Op zondag 11 maart 2018 13:17 schreef Monolith het volgende:

[..]

Mwoah, de officiële statistieken van politie en time en het soort onderzoek op basis van zelfrapportage dat bij ons door het CBS wordt uitgevoerd lopen wat dat betreft nog wel uiteen. In eerstgenoemde heb ik wat minder vertrouwen. Aangiftes gaan waarschijnlijk ook wel fors omlaag als de politie zich als een verkapte terreurorganisatie gedraagt.

Maar je zou mijn bron even kunnen lezen. De prijs van drugs is niet fors gestegen. Je ziet ook de effecten op drugsgebruik dat verder ondergronds gaat met alle gevolgen van dien:
https://www.washingtonpos(...)m_term=.f9019a9618d0

quote:

Op zondag 11 maart 2018 13:41 schreef DeParo het volgende:

[..]


[..]

Duterte's strijd tegen drugs was een tijdje gestopt, indrukwekkende cijfers maar protesten, nu is het weer hervat met ogenschijnlijke steun van de Katholieke Kerk en nadat de Filipijnen met andere landen hebben gesproken om FDI in het land veilig te stellen (als Europese staten sancties heffen). Dat is van belang om te zeggen omdat de Filipijnen het op dit moment best aardig doen economisch gezien. Het land groeit en Duterte is behalve op dit punt wellicht een vrij progressieve politicus die veel investeert in infrastructuur, werkgelegenheid, en armoede wilt bestrijden. Als het uitsluitend een oorlog was geweest tegen drugs zonder sociaal-economisch beleid dan had het waarschijnlijk weinig uitgemaakt maar op dit moment gaat het de Filipijnen niet zo slecht af. Het is vooral een ethische discussie.

quote:

Op zondag 11 maart 2018 13:41 schreef DeParo het volgende:

[..]

Duterte's strijd tegen drugs was een tijdje gestopt, indrukwekkende cijfers maar protesten, nu is het weer hervat met ogenschijnlijke steun van de Katholieke Kerk en nadat de Filipijnen met andere landen hebben gesproken om FDI in het land veilig te stellen (als Europese staten sancties heffen). Dat is van belang om te zeggen omdat de Filipijnen het op dit moment best aardig doen economisch gezien. Het land groeit en Duterte is behalve op dit punt wellicht een vrij progressieve politicus die veel investeert in infrastructuur, werkgelegenheid, en armoede wilt bestrijden. Als het uitsluitend een oorlog was geweest tegen drugs zonder sociaal-economisch beleid dan had het waarschijnlijk weinig uitgemaakt maar op dit moment gaat het de Filipijnen niet zo slecht af. Het is vooral een ethische discussie.

quote:

Op zondag 11 maart 2018 13:42 schreef Monolith het volgende:

[..]

Leuk generiek verhaaltje. Misschien kun je ook even ingaan op de aangedragen argumenten.

quote:

Op zondag 11 maart 2018 13:43 schreef westwoodblvd het volgende:

[..]

Allemaal leuk en aardig maar het standrechtelijk executeren van mensen die ervan verdacht worden iets met drugs van doen te hebben is voor mij een discussie die relevanter is dan infrastructuur.

quote:

Op zondag 11 maart 2018 13:45 schreef DeParo het volgende:

[..]

Infrastructuur creeert werkgelegenheid, economische groei, en weer nieuwe investeringen. Deze sociaal-economische groei zorgt ervoor dat mensen uit de armoede worden getrokken en minder snel in de criminele of drugswereld zullen belanden.

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Op zondag 11 maart 2018 13:47 schreef westwoodblvd het volgende:

[..]

En tot dat doel bereikt is, is het volgens jou legitiem om junks of mensen waarvan de politie denkt dat het junks zijn af te knallen?

quote:

Op zondag 11 maart 2018 13:44 schreef DeParo het volgende:

[..]

Dat doe ik ook. De cijfers zijn indrukwekkend. Criminaliteitscijfers, waar we nu eenmaal op moeten afgaan, zijn flink gedaan. Talloze arrestaties en inderdaad moorden wat dus niet gedaald is onder het bewind van Duterte. Verder kan het kloppen dat ziektes zich makkelijker verspreiden omdat mensen ondergronds gaan maar Duterte's strijd tegen armoeden en grootschalige investeringen zullen op de lange duur daar verandering in moeten brengen.

quote:

Op zondag 11 maart 2018 13:53 schreef J.B. het volgende:
Klein detail is overigens dat zowel de Filipijnen als Singapore eilanden zijn, dan is het sowieso al een stuk gemakkelijker om ongewenst spul buiten te houden. Zelfs dan blijkt het niet waterdicht te krijgen, maar dat besef dringt tot sommigen blijkbaar niet door.

quote:

Op zondag 11 maart 2018 14:02 schreef Monolith het volgende:

[..]

Nee dat doe je niet. Ik geef aan dat zelfrapportage een ander beeld geeft en dat de officiële statistieken wel met een korreltje zout genomen moeten worden en jij herhaalt gewoon dat de officiële statistieken indrukwekkend zijn.
Je steekt steeds je eigen verhaaltje af en laat je niet hinderen door de feiten of bronnen die worden aangedragen.

Daarnaast draai je ook om het punt heen. Bij de vraag of de war on drugs 'werkt' in de context van de grote hoeveelheden slachtoffers die het maakt. Dat zijn enerzijds slachtoffers van drugsgerelateerde criminaliteit, die jij hier niet specifiek uitzondert, maar met name ook mensen die de effecten van overmatig drugsgebruik ondervinden. Je roept dan maar iets over vermeende effecten van vermeend beleid, maar dat is volstrekt niet relevant. Het gaat om de 'war on drugs', niet om de vraag of je met sociaal beleid de oorzaken van drugsgebruik (deels) kunt wegnemen. Drugsgebruik was overigens voor de komst van Duterte al heel fors afgenomen.

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Op zondag 11 maart 2018 14:06 schreef DeParo het volgende:

[..]

Ik heb geen andere statistieken om op af te gaan op dit moment. Ik zie echter wel een ongekend aantal slachtoffers van de war against drugs op de Filipijnen, een ongekend aantal arrestaties, en als we de criminaliteitscijfers buiten beschouwing laten zie ik wel zeer positieve economische cijfers. De 'war on drugs' staat niet los van Duterte's sociaal-economisch beleid, zijn plan om armoede in te perken staat niet los van sociaal-economisch beleid, hij weet immers heel Goed dat zijn 'war on drugs' niet kan slagen als mensen geen perspectief hebben op een baan of sociaal-economische vooruitgang. Dat drugsgebruik voor de komst van Duterte al forst was afgenomen dat kan best, maar dat staat evenmin los van het feit dat de Filipijnen al voor Duterte goede economische cijfers konden neerleggen, het ene versterkt dus het andere.

quote:

Op zondag 11 maart 2018 14:20 schreef Monolith het volgende:

[..]

Dat moet natuurlijk wel degelijk los gezien worden want we bespreken het in de context waarin Trump elementen wil overnemen en dan specifiek de doodstraf voor het dealen van drugs.
Het is namelijk niet het sociaal-economische beleid van Duterte dat wordt geroemd, maar het zonder proces executeren van mensen die iets met drugs te maken zouden hebben.

Wat betreft slachtofferschap:
[ afbeelding ]

[ afbeelding ]

Gevoel van veiligheid:
[ afbeelding ]

quote:

Op zondag 11 maart 2018 14:03 schreef DeParo het volgende:

[..]

Wat een flauwekul. Heb jij ooit naar een kaart gekeken? De grenzen van de Filipijnen bijvoorbeeld zijn vrijwel onmogelijk te verdedigen tegen smokkelaars. Als het Amerika al niet lukt de zeegrenzen volledig af te sluiten denk jij dat dit de Filipijnen wel lukt? Bovendien gaat het voor Duterte om een binnenlandse strijd? Die zou Trump net zo Goed kunnen voeren [in theorie].

quote:

More than a year into his presidency, Donald Trump is making the nation’s courts look a lot more like him: white, male and straight.

To date, Trump has nominated 87 people to be judges with lifetime tenure on U.S. district courts, circuit courts or Supreme Court. Eighty of them are white, or nearly 92 percent. One is black, one is Latino and five are Asian or Pacific American. He hasn’t nominated any Native American judges.

The president also keeps nominating men. Sixty-seven of his court picks are male, compared to 20 who are female. That translates to about 77 percent being men.

Trump hasn’t nominated any openly LGBTQ people to the federal courts.

It’s even more apparent how homogenous Trump’s picks are when compared to his recent predecessors. A Congressional Research Service analysis looked at the first 26 district and circuit court nominees from the last four presidents: Bill Clinton’s were 73 percent white, George W. Bush’s were 81 percent white, Barack Obama’s were 46 percent white, and Trump’s were 96 percent white.

SPOILER

Advocates for a more diverse federal bench say it’s crucial that the nation’s courts reflect the demographics of the populations they serve.

“People of color, LGBT individuals and women can supply effective, nuanced ‘outsider’ perspectives and insights about critical questions regarding abortion, criminal law, employment discrimination and related complicated issues,” said Carl Tobias, a University of Richmond law professor and expert on the federal judicial nomination process.

Brad Berry, general counsel for the NAACP, called Trump’s court picks “troubling.”

“The varied life experiences that judges bring to the bench quite often inform their views on the questions presented to them for decision,” Berry said. “It is for that reason that diversity on the bench ― racial, ethnic and gender ― is so critically important to the fair operation of our judicial system and, equally important, to the perception of fairness in that system.”

In addition to being overwhelmingly white, male and straight, Trump’s court picks are very conservative. Some have records of being hostile to the voting rights of black people. Others have records of being incredibly anti-LGBTQ. A number of them have argued against women’s reproductive rights.

Members of the Congressional Black Caucus have been criticizing the president for months over his judicial nominees. Not only has he selected just one black person to be a judge ― Terry Moorer, a nominee to the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Alabama ― but he has infuriated civil rights leaders with another nominee, Thomas Farr, who defended North Carolina’s voter suppression law and racially discriminatory gerrymandering.

“Because African-Americans have always been disproportionately affected by federal court decisions, the Congressional Black Caucus is virtually obligated to investigate the fairness of the federal judiciary, no matter who is president,” Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-D.C.) said during a caucus forum in January on judicial diversity.

“These lifetime appointments will have monumental impacts on the future of the nation and on all Americans, none more so than on African-Americans and others seeking an equal place in our country,” she said.

HuffPost reached out to the White House to ask why Trump keeps nominating white men to be judges, and if he plans to nominate more diverse people going forward.

Spokesman Hogan Gidley said their nominees have all been wonderful.

“The President has delivered on his promise to nominate excellent judges, beginning with Justice Gorsuch, and he will continue nominating outstanding candidates,” Gidley said. “We appreciate the hard work of [Senate Judiciary Committee] Chairman [Chuck] Grassley and [Senate Majority] Leader [Mitch] McConnell, and we urge the Senate to confirm all of the remaining nominees because it’s what the American people deserve.”

quote:

Op zondag 11 maart 2018 14:49 schreef J.B. het volgende:

[..]

Hoezo? Alle omringende landen liggen op vrij grote afstand en zowel Brunei, Maleisië, Vietnam, Indonesië, Thailand, Singapore, Taiwan als China hebben de doodstraf voor drugsmisdrijven. Dus niet alleen is smokkelen moeilijk omdat er een behoorlijk grote natuurlijke grens om de Filipijnen heen ligt, ook hebben alle omringende landen een enorm streng drugsbeleid waardoor de smokkel uit die landen sowieso enorm onaantrekkelijk zou moeten zijn. Dat is temeer bewijs dat een streng drugsbeleid niet werkt, en de VS heeft een landsgrens van duizenden kilometers met Mexico en Canada waardoor import sowieso praktisch onmogelijk kan worden stilgelegd.

quote:

Op zondag 11 maart 2018 12:52 schreef westwoodblvd het volgende:

[..]

Omdat de doodstraf niet tot minder drugsdealers zal leiden. In bepaalde staten kan je de doodstraf krijgen voor moord. En daar wordt ook gewoon doorgemoord. Het probleem is reëel maar de oplossing niet passend.

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Op zondag 11 maart 2018 13:45 schreef DeParo het volgende:

[..]

Infrastructuur creeert werkgelegenheid, economische groei, en weer nieuwe investeringen. Deze sociaal-economische groei zorgt ervoor dat mensen uit de armoede worden getrokken en minder snel in de criminele of drugswereld zullen belanden.

quote:

Op zondag 11 maart 2018 18:44 schreef Trumpinator het volgende:

[..]

Dat ben ik dus totaal oneens met je. Trump heeft gewoon gelijk. Drugsbaronnen en -dealers geef je gewoon een spuitje. Weg met die lieden die zoveel levens verwoesten

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Op zondag 11 maart 2018 18:55 schreef Tijger_m het volgende:

[..]

En gek genoeg doet Trump daar tot op heden helemaal niets mee. Sterker nog, het gebrek aan besluitvaardigheid op dat vlak heeft een aantal projected stilgelegd.

quote:

Op zondag 11 maart 2018 18:57 schreef ExtraWaskracht het volgende:

[..]

Trump werkt zelfs ook belangrijke infrastructuur tegen...: Chao confirms Trump pushing Ryan to withhold Gateway project funding

quote:

Op zondag 11 maart 2018 18:56 schreef Tijger_m het volgende:

[..]

Maar dat doet Trump dus niet, he?

Oh, even voor de goede orde, de problematiek met drugs die blanken treft (en daar gaat het natuurlijk om) is vooral de ongebreidelde legale verstrekking van legale opiaten.

twitter:

kurteichenwald twitterde op donderdag 01-03-2018 om 16:20:02 Ah, what the hell....this is the portion on Trump's drug use from the Newsweek story that set off a war. Matt Mcallaster, soon fired under sex discrimination cloud, said he was 2 frightened to publish despite push by every other editor. I've left Newsweek. https://t.co/11ODJuYQVU reageer retweet

quote:

Op zondag 11 maart 2018 14:07 schreef martijnde3de het volgende:
Er is weer een nieuwe serieuze officiële kandidaat bij, Adam Kokesh libertarische partij. Hij had al eerder bekend gemaakt dat hij mee ging doen in 2020, maar hij heeft nu een eigen site.

Ik verwacht niet dat hij president gaat worden, maar in 2016 haalde de libertarische partij 3.27% ( bijna 4,5 miljoen stemmen ) van de stemmen en haalde zelfs een keer 15% in de peilingen.

In huis en senaat racen, pikken ze vooral stemmen af van republikeinen, maar in 2016 kregen ze meer stemmen van boze democraten( vooral onafhankelijken die normaal democratisch stemden ) .


https://kokeshforpresident.com/

[ afbeelding ]

quote:

Op zondag 11 maart 2018 19:35 schreef Nintex het volgende:

[..]

Zijn platform is praktisch, we schaffen de federale overheid af.

Ik had hem eerder kansloos geacht, maar nu door al het fake news van CNN e.d. het presidentsschap is neergezet als een soort van Eye of Mordor zou het best nog wel eens kunnen resoneren in 2020.

quote:

Op zondag 11 maart 2018 19:35 schreef Nintex het volgende:

[..]

Zijn platform is praktisch, we schaffen de federale overheid af.

Ik had hem eerder kansloos geacht, maar nu door al het fake news van CNN e.d. het presidentsschap is neergezet als een soort van Eye of Mordor zou het best nog wel eens kunnen resoneren in 2020.

twitter:

realDonaldTrump twitterde op zaterdag 10-03-2018 om 18:23:16 Spoke to Prime Minister Abe of Japan, who is very enthusiastic about talks with North Korea. Also discussing opening up Japan to much better trade with the U.S. Currently have a massive $100 Billion Trade Deficit. Not fair or sustainable. It will all work out! reageer retweet

quote:

The Japanese, who have been wary of offering Kim a propaganda platform, were blindsided by the news. Diplomats at the Japanese Embassy in Washington, gathered for a goodbye party for Ambassador Kenichiro Sasae on Thursday evening, scrambled to react when the news broke.

Trump hastily called Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and invited him to visit the White House in April to confer ahead of the summit with Kim, which officials said will take place by the end of May.

“Nobody thinks the North Koreans are serious in Japan,” said Michael Green, the NSC’s Asia director under President George W. Bush, who is meeting with officials in Tokyo this week. “Given how he blindsided the entire national security team . . . I would bet this does not happen.”

WP

quote:

Lawyers associated with President Donald Trump are considering legal action to stop 60 Minutes from airing an interview with Stephanie Clifford, the adult film performer and director who goes by Stormy Daniels, BuzzFeed News has learned.

“We understand from well-placed sources they are preparing to file for a legal injunction to prevent it from airing,” a person informed of the preparations told BuzzFeed News on Saturday evening.

It was not immediately clear what legal argument the lawyers would be making to support the considered litigation, and Trump and his legal team often have threatened litigation without following through on those threats in the past.

Michael Cohen, Trump's personal attorney who previously was a longtime lawyer for the Trump Organization, directed questions about the possibility of litigation to Larry Rosen, who Cohen told BuzzFeed News is “my attorney handling this matter.” Rosen — a partner in the firm LaRocca, Hornik, Rosen, Greenberg & Blaha — acknowledged his role in the matter generally but did not comment directly on the possibility of seeking an injunction.

BuzzFeed News has learned that CBS plans to air the 60 Minutes interview with Clifford next Sunday, March 18.

SPOILER

An action to try to prevent the interview from airing would be the latest in a flurry of developments in a case that began just before the 2016 election when Cohen paid Clifford $130,000 in return for her silence about a sexual relationship she allegedly had with Trump in 2006. At the time, Trump was under intense pressure over comments he’d made about his treatment of women in the run-up to the vote.

The Wall Street Journal revealed the payment — and Cohen’s route to making it — in January this year, but its details became public only on March 6 when Clifford’s lawyer, Michael Avenatti, filed a lawsuit seeking to void what Avenatti now calls the “hush arrangement.”

The lawsuit followed a temporary restraining order Cohen obtained in arbitration — on behalf of EC, LLC, the company Cohen set up to facilitate the payment — in late February to keep Clifford from talking about the temporary restraining order, the 2016 payment, or the underlying “confidential information” the payment intended to protect.

In the suit, Avenatti alleged that the settlement agreement signed by Cohen and a previous lawyer for Clifford either was never valid because Trump had not signed it or otherwise agreed to its terms, which purport to bind Trump, or should be declared unenforceable because the agreement violates public policy. Avenatti included the settlement agreement as an exhibit to the lawsuit.

The next day, Avenatti and Clifford appeared in a photograph with Anderson Cooper, which Avenatti posted to Twitter — including “@60Minutes” in the tweet.

Cooper is a correspondent for CBS News’ 60 Minutes in addition to his CNN anchor job, and CNN later reported that Cooper had taped an interview with Clifford for 60 Minutes.

Asked for comment, Rosen — Cohen's lawyer — wrote, "We represent EC, LLC in connection with the arbitration pending in California, in which a TRO against Ms. Clifford was previously obtained." He made no specific comment regarding the possibility of seeking an injunction to stop the 60 Minutes interview from airing.

Cohen reportedly intervened previously, in 2011, to stop In Touch Weekly magazine from publishing an interview with Clifford in which she detailed the alleged relationship. Four former employees of the magazine told the Associated Press that Cohen had threatened to “aggressively pursue legal action” in connection with the planned story. The magazine, which then held back the story, published the full interview in February, following the Wall Street Journal’s reporting on the 2016 payment.

Any litigation aimed at stopping CBS News from airing Cooper’s interview likely would be an uphill battle, given protections for press freedom against prior restraints — most famously laid out in the Pentagon Papers case in which the Supreme Court ruled that the New York Times and the Washington Post could publish, over the objections of the Nixon administration, classified documents that detailed the history of US decision-making on Vietnam.

Complicating any effort to stop the airing of Clifford’s interview would be the fact that 60 Minutes is not a party to Clifford’s 2016 settlement.

The Supreme Court has a long history of opposing efforts to stop publication in advance, ruling in 1931 that prior restraint was an inappropriate way to deal with alleged press abuses: "Subsequent punishment for such abuses as may exist is the appropriate remedy, consistent with constitutional privilege." In other words, lawsuits — for defamation, for example — can follow publication.

Spokespeople for CBS News did not respond to requests for comment over the weekend.

"Why so many steps to keep the American people from learning the truth?" Avenatti wrote in an email Sunday morning. "And to think that all this time we all thought this was a democracy where we actually valued free speech..."

quote:

Op zondag 11 maart 2018 20:00 schreef KoosVogels het volgende:
Wat vond je er dan van dat Trump Roy Moore steunde?

quote:

Coons later said Biden was simply whispering words of encouragement to Maggie, who was visibly uncomfortable during most of the photo op.

https://edition.cnn.com/2(...)r-whisper/index.html

quote:

Op zondag 11 maart 2018 20:21 schreef brokjespoes het volgende:

[..]

Is totaal niet vergelijkbaar bytheway.

quote:

Op zondag 11 maart 2018 20:26 schreef KoosVogels het volgende:
Met Moore heb je dus geen moeite?

quote:

Op zondag 11 maart 2018 20:26 schreef brokjespoes het volgende:

[..]

Wie? Ik?

(Ik sprong er alleen even in wegens het bekende fake-news-Biden-filmpje, heb je mijn honderd duizend miljoen anti-Moore cartoons gemist? )

quote:

Todd: 'So the image of en American President encouraging boos of the American press corps and discouraging boos of a dictator from North Korea'

Mnuchin: Trump's attacks on the press are 'campaign rally issues' | Meet The Press | NBC News

quote:

Op zondag 11 maart 2018 20:39 schreef Kijkertje het volgende:

[..]

Mnuchin begint snel over andere punten

Mnuchin: Trump's attacks on the press are 'campaign rally issues' | Meet The Press | NBC News

quote:

Op zondag 11 maart 2018 20:49 schreef Nintex het volgende:
Chuck is gewoon op zijn teentjes getrapt door de dis van Trump

Trump calls Chuck Todd 'sleeping son of a bitch'

quote:

Op zondag 11 maart 2018 20:51 schreef KoosVogels het volgende:

[..]

Mwoah, dat hij de pers uit laat joelen en het publiek tot kalmte maant als Kim ter sprake komt, zou ieder normaal mens moeten storen.

quote:

Op zondag 11 maart 2018 20:52 schreef Nintex het volgende:

[..]

Hij probeert te voorkomen dat Kim zijn keutel intrekt.

Hij moet met Kim over nukes gaan praten. Met CNN en MSNBC over pornosterren.
Het lijkt me heel slim om niet een beeld de wereld in te gooien van Trump die Kim dist aan de vooravond van een historische ontmoeting.

quote:

Op zondag 11 maart 2018 20:52 schreef Nintex het volgende:

[..]

Hij probeert te voorkomen dat Kim zijn keutel intrekt.

Hij moet met Kim over nukes gaan praten. Met CNN en MSNBC over pornosterren.
Het lijkt me heel slim om niet een beeld de wereld in te gooien van Trump die Kim dist aan de vooravond van een historische ontmoeting.

quote:

President Donald Trump traveled to western Pennsylvania Saturday night on a rescue mission: State Rep. Rick Saccone (R) is fighting for his political life in a House special election on Tuesday and the President's visit was aimed at rallying the GOP base in a district he won by 20 points in 2016.

Trump's speech --- largely unscripted -- ranged (and raged) for more than an hour, and barely mentioned Saccone until the end when Trump handed Saccone the mic and allowed him to say a few words.

It felt more like a therapy session -- with Trump venting and attacking his enemies -- than a political rally. I went through the entire transcript and pulled out the most memorable lines. They're below.

SPOILER

1. "Hello Pittsburgh. Hello Pittsburgh."
"Hello Cleveland!"

2. "And a lot of steel mills are now opening up because of what I did."
Trump signed the steel tariff measure on Thursday. So, that's, um, fast work.

3. "Pennsylvania is the state that gave us the 45th president of the United States."
This is beyond third person. It's like fourth person, says a reporter for CNN.

4. "A lot of evil. A lot of bad people. A lot of bad people."
This is Trump talking about Washington. It's a throwaway line, but think about what he is saying here. It's not just that there are people who disagree with him in Washington. It's that these people are bad, they are evil. Rhetoric like this has consequences. I think Trump knows that but doesn't really care because it works for him.

5. "President Moon of South Korea said without Donald Trump, the Olympics would have been a total failure. That's true. True."
Ok, follow this logic: Trump is tough on Kim Jong Un and North Korea → Kim backs down off his nuclear threats → Olympics succeed. Done and done!

6. "It's a little hard to sell tickets when you think you are going to be nuked."
FACT CHECK: True!

7. "He's a sleeping son of a bitch."
This is a sentence from the President of the United States. (He's talking about "Meet the Press" host Chuck Todd.)

8. "But they show me young, handsome."
Self deprecation, thy name is not Donald Trump.

9. "They are very happy with what I'm doing."
Trump is talking here about Japan. And he's wrong.

10. "A certain anchor on CNN ... fake as hell CNN, the, fake as hell CNN, the worst, so fake, fake news."
This is a "sentence" from the President of the United States.

11. "Arnold Schwarzenegger failed when he did the show and he was a movie star. Martha Stewart failed."
How did Trump get onto the ratings for "The Celebrity Apprentice"? Oh, I have no idea.

12. "NBC is perhaps worst than CNN, I have to tell you. And MSNBC is horrible."
Updated Trump media rankings: 1. CNN 2. NBC 3. MSNBC ("horrible").

13. "So here they are, they are outside, these wonderful representatives, very high level from South Korea, are saying all of these things, de-nuke, and all of the things that they can't believe, because it's like five years ahead of schedule."
Every English teacher in the country just fainted.

14. "No, no, they are saying Obama. Obama. Obama. Obama was driving you down."
Your guess is as good as mine. Quite literally.

15. "I'm joking about being president for life."
"There is a grain of truth in every joke."

meer: https://edition.cnn.com/2(...)nsylvania/index.html

quote:

Op zondag 11 maart 2018 21:20 schreef Szura het volgende:
Hopelijk verandert ook dit verkiezinkje dat Trump aanraakt in dunne poep. Hup Lamb.

quote:

Op zondag 11 maart 2018 20:49 schreef Nintex het volgende:
Chuck is gewoon op zijn teentjes getrapt door de dis van Trump

Trump calls Chuck Todd 'sleeping son of a bitch'

quote:

Op zondag 11 maart 2018 21:01 schreef CNN het volgende:
7. "He's a sleeping son of a bitch."
This is a sentence from the President of the United States.

quote:

Trump barely mentioned Saccone until the end when Trump handed Saccone the mic and allowed him to say a few words.

twitter:

SethAbramson twitterde op zondag 11-03-2018 om 21:10:42 When you're a president who's done nothing wrong, you hire a lawyer who specializes in impeachments.This is known. https://t.co/bs2By1gA4V reageer retweet

quote:

Op zondag 11 maart 2018 13:08 schreef Nintex het volgende:

[..]

Duurde bijna 2 uur.

Donald behandelde vrijwel ieder onderwerp, pareerde iedere aanval die hij de afgelopen tijd op hem af heeft gekregen.

Rake en scherpe analyses van zijn tegenstanders als POCAHONTAS! en de politieke journalisten.

quote:

Op zondag 11 maart 2018 13:48 schreef DeParo het volgende:

[..]

Nee. Ik zei al dat het een ethische discussie is maar dat betekent niet dat het niet kan werken.

quote:

Op zondag 11 maart 2018 14:07 schreef martijnde3de het volgende:
Er is weer een nieuwe serieuze officiële kandidaat bij, Adam Kokesh libertarische partij. Hij had al eerder bekend gemaakt dat hij mee ging doen in 2020, maar hij heeft nu een eigen site.

Ik verwacht niet dat hij president gaat worden, maar in 2016 haalde de libertarische partij 3.27% ( bijna 4,5 miljoen stemmen ) van de stemmen en haalde zelfs een keer 15% in de peilingen.

In huis en senaat racen, pikken ze vooral stemmen af van republikeinen, maar in 2016 kregen ze meer stemmen van boze democraten( vooral onafhankelijken die normaal democratisch stemden ) .


https://kokeshforpresident.com/

[ afbeelding ]

quote:

More than a dozen top election officials across the country are raising concerns about a provision in a Homeland Security Department reauthorization bill that would allow President Trump to dispatch Secret Service agents to polling places.

A letter signed by 19 bipartisan secretaries of state to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) demands the Senate leave out a proposal from final legislation that would allow Secret Service agents to accompany lawmakers to polling places when they vote.

“This is an alarming proposal which raises the possibility that armed federal agents will be patrolling neighborhood precincts and vote centers,” reads a letter obtained by The Boston Globe.

“There is no discernible need for federal secret service agents to intrude, at the direction of the president, who may also be a candidate in that election, into thousands of citadels where democracy is enshrined," the letter continues.

One of the letter's signatories, Democratic Massachusetts Secretary of State William Galvin called the DHS proposal "worthy of a Third World country."

“This is worthy of a Third World country,” said Galvin. “I’m not going to tolerate people showing up to our polling places. I would not want to have federal agents showing up in largely Hispanic areas.”

"The potential for mischief here is enormous,” he added.

A spokeswoman for the agency denied that the Secret Service agents would be used in a law enforcement capacity, stating that the "clarifying language" was a response to a 2016 incident in which poll workers stopped agents from accompanying a lawmaker to vote over concerns it violated federal law.

“The only time armed Secret Service personnel would be at a polling place would be to facilitate the visiting of one of our protectees while they voted,” Secret Service spokeswoman Catherine Milhoan told the Globe.

quote:

Op zondag 11 maart 2018 20:26 schreef KoosVogels het volgende:

[..]

Met Moore heb je dus geen moeite?

Michael Moore attends Russia-sponsored anti-Trump rally

quote:

Op zondag 11 maart 2018 21:01 schreef brokjespoes het volgende:
The 64 most outrageous lines from Donald Trump's untethered Pennsylvania speech (CNN)

[..]

(eigenlijk heb ik alleen de eerste 15 gekopieërd, voor de rest klik je maar op het linkje.)

SPOILER

1. "Hello Pittsburgh. Hello Pittsburgh."
"Hello Cleveland!"

2. "And a lot of steel mills are now opening up because of what I did."
Trump signed the steel tariff measure on Thursday. So, that's, um, fast work.

3. "Pennsylvania is the state that gave us the 45th president of the United States."
This is beyond third person. It's like fourth person, says a reporter for CNN.

4. "A lot of evil. A lot of bad people. A lot of bad people."
This is Trump talking about Washington. It's a throwaway line, but think about what he is saying here. It's not just that there are people who disagree with him in Washington. It's that these people are bad, they are evil. Rhetoric like this has consequences. I think Trump knows that but doesn't really care because it works for him.

5. "President Moon of South Korea said without Donald Trump, the Olympics would have been a total failure. That's true. True."
Ok, follow this logic: Trump is tough on Kim Jong Un and North Korea → Kim backs down off his nuclear threats → Olympics succeed. Done and done!

6. "It's a little hard to sell tickets when you think you are going to be nuked."
FACT CHECK: True!

7. "He's a sleeping son of a bitch."
This is a sentence from the President of the United States. (He's talking about "Meet the Press" host Chuck Todd.)

8. "But they show me young, handsome."
Self deprecation, thy name is not Donald Trump.

9. "They are very happy with what I'm doing."
Trump is talking here about Japan. And he's wrong.

10. "A certain anchor on CNN ... fake as hell CNN, the, fake as hell CNN, the worst, so fake, fake news."
This is a "sentence" from the President of the United States.

11. "Arnold Schwarzenegger failed when he did the show and he was a movie star. Martha Stewart failed."
How did Trump get onto the ratings for "The Celebrity Apprentice"? Oh, I have no idea.

12. "NBC is perhaps worst than CNN, I have to tell you. And MSNBC is horrible."
Updated Trump media rankings: 1. CNN 2. NBC 3. MSNBC ("horrible").

13. "So here they are, they are outside, these wonderful representatives, very high level from South Korea, are saying all of these things, de-nuke, and all of the things that they can't believe, because it's like five years ahead of schedule."
Every English teacher in the country just fainted.

14. "No, no, they are saying Obama. Obama. Obama. Obama was driving you down."
Your guess is as good as mine. Quite literally.

15. "I'm joking about being president for life."
"There is a grain of truth in every joke."

meer: https://edition.cnn.com/2(...)nsylvania/index.html

quote:

Op zondag 11 maart 2018 18:55 schreef Tijger_m het volgende:

[..]

En gek genoeg doet Trump daar tot op heden helemaal niets mee. Sterker nog, het gebrek aan besluitvaardigheid op dat vlak heeft een aantal projected stilgelegd.

quote:

Op zondag 11 maart 2018 22:00 schreef Knipoogje het volgende:

[..]

Dat klopt. Ik denk dat als je in Nederland alle mensen met syndroom van Down afknalt, dat ethisch niet correct is, maar het werkt wel: de zorg en overheidskosten zullen dalen. Als je daarna ook alle marokkaantjes in Amsterdam met een strafblad onthoofd, dan zal de criminaliteit ook behoorlijk dalen
Maar ethisch voelt het toch niet fijn.

quote:

Op zondag 11 maart 2018 23:18 schreef Monolith het volgende:
Nog een stukje over Harley-Davidson, die in het gedoe omtrent de importheffingen van meerdere kanten klappen lijken te krijgen:
https://www.theguardian.c(...)otorcycles?CMP=fb_gu

quote:

Op zondag 11 maart 2018 23:19 schreef DeParo het volgende:

[..]

Elke Amerikaanse fabriekant die staal gebruikt zal klappen krijgen plus de consument. Je Ford of Tesla wordt er waarschijnlijk niet Goedkoper op.

quote:

Op zondag 11 maart 2018 22:19 schreef Kijkertje het volgende:
Election officials raise concerns over bill that would let Trump send Secret Service to polls

[..]

quote:

Op zondag 11 maart 2018 23:19 schreef DeParo het volgende:

[..]

Elke Amerikaanse fabriekant die staal gebruikt zal klappen krijgen plus de consument. Je Ford of Tesla wordt er waarschijnlijk niet Goedkoper op.

quote:

Op zondag 11 maart 2018 23:46 schreef Monolith het volgende:
Gewoon weer één of ander kutkloontje in ieder geval.

quote:

Op zondag 11 maart 2018 22:33 schreef Nintex het volgende:

[..]

Wat ik zei, het was een meesterlijke rally.

quote:

Op zondag 11 maart 2018 23:46 schreef Monolith het volgende:
Gewoon weer één of ander kutkloontje in ieder geval.

quote:

American Oversight and Dominique Bravo went to court today to compel the Department of Justice (DOJ) to release the secret warrant applications that they filed to conduct surveillance of former Trump campaign staffer Carter Page. The warrant applications established probable cause that an individual associated with the Trump campaign was engaged in a crime or was a foreign agent.

Normally, even the existence of applications for warrants issued under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) would be classified – but the Trump administration took the unusual step of declassifying them as part of the Nunes Memo in order to further its case against the Mueller investigation.

Trump’s goal may have been to selectively release only information that buttressed his campaign against the FBI and Mueller, but the law doesn’t work that way. Once things are declassified, they’re declassified. So right after the Nunes Memo was released, American Oversight and Dominique Bravo filed two Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests with DOJ’s National Security Division and the FBI: one seeking the FISA applications themselves, and one seeking the identities of the DOJ attorneys who submitted them and Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) judges who approved them.

The FISA warrant applications matter because they will allow all of us in the general public to see for ourselves the legitimacy of the criminal investigation into Carter Page—and, potentially, the Trump campaign.

SPOILER

The White House and its allies in the media and Congress have been working overtime to discredit the Mueller investigation, the FBI, the FISA courts, and any suggestion that there was anything worth investigating about the Trump campaign. They have alleged a conspiracy that some mysterious “deep state” must have been behind the surveillance of Page. Just yesterday, two prominent Republican chairmen in Congress called for a second special counsel to investigate the FISA system.

The public needs to know the truth, and thanks to the Nunes Memo and the declassification of the FISA applications, we also have a clear right to obtain those documents under FOIA.

Although there are other FOIA requests about the wiretapping, our requests were written specifically in light of what was declassified in the Nunes memo, and were designed to hold the government to task for the implications of that official acknowledgement.

DOJ failed to respond to the FOIA requests as required by law, so today we filed suit in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York, asking a judge to order the government to release the warrant applications and the other records we requested.

Case law makes clear that when the government officially acknowledges conduct that would otherwise be classified, that acknowledgement has consequences for what they are required to disclose under FOIA. In this case, the government made a decision to declassify the existence of the FISA applications relating to Carter Page, and at least some of the contents of those applications, making it untenable for the government to pretend that they still have a basis for withholding this information from the public.

quote:

Op maandag 12 maart 2018 00:01 schreef Puddington het volgende:

[..]

Heeft Nintex in ieder geval iemand om mee te circlejerken.

quote:

Op maandag 12 maart 2018 00:02 schreef Kijkertje het volgende:
The Nunes Memo Declassified the Carter Page FISA Applications – So We’re Suing to Release Them

[..]

quote:

Op zondag 11 maart 2018 23:19 schreef DeParo het volgende:

[..]

Elke Amerikaanse fabriekant die staal gebruikt zal klappen krijgen plus de consument. Je Ford of Tesla wordt er waarschijnlijk niet Goedkoper op.

quote:

Op maandag 12 maart 2018 00:13 schreef Nintex het volgende:

[..]

Grappig dat je Tesla noemt. Elon Musk is een voorstander van de importheffingen. Hij is van mening dat Trump nog een stapje verder moet gaan zelfs.

quote:

Op maandag 12 maart 2018 00:13 schreef Nintex het volgende:

[..]

Grappig dat je Tesla noemt. Elon Musk is een voorstander van de importheffingen. Hij is van mening dat Trump nog een stapje verder moet gaan zelfs.

quote:

Op maandag 12 maart 2018 00:19 schreef Tijger_m het volgende:

[..]

Nog grappiger is dat Musk klaagt over import tarieven van auto's NAAR China onderwijl niet in staat zijnde om genoeg auto's te bouwen om zelf maar bestaande orders te vervullen.

quote:

Op zondag 11 maart 2018 23:21 schreef Monolith het volgende:

[..]

Klopt, maar Harley wordt er ook nog weer uitgelegd bij eventuele vergeldingssancties.

quote:

Op zondag 11 maart 2018 21:23 schreef brokjespoes het volgende:
Trump barely mentioned Saccone until the end when Trump handed Saccone the mic and allowed him to say a few words.

quote:

There's a reason Trump said hardly anything about Republican candidate Rick Saccone during a rally in Pennsylvania on Saturday night that was supposed to promote his candidacy.

The reason: Trump thinks Saccone is a terrible, "weak" candidate, according to four sources who've spoken to the president about him.

• Trump held that opinion of Saccone before leaving for the rally, and I've not been able to establish whether his time on the ground with the candidate changed his mind.

• Trump isn't the only top Republican who’s found Saccone underwhelming. The widely-held view from Republican officials: Democrat Conor Lamb is a far superior candidate to Saccone and running a far better campaign. Lamb is running effectively as Republican Lite. He's pro-gun and says he personally opposes to abortion (though he supports abortion rights).

• The thing that most irks senior Republicans involved in the race: Saccone has been a lousy fundraiser. Lamb has outraised Saccone by a staggering margin — nearly 500 percent.

[..]

quote:

Op maandag 12 maart 2018 00:55 schreef Kijkertje het volgende:

[..]

Trump privately trashes Rick Saccone

[..]

SPOILER

quote:

Op maandag 12 maart 2018 00:42 schreef DeParo het volgende:

[..]

De VS kan dat alleen compenseren als ze hogere importtarieven gaan heffen op volledige auto- en motorproducten waardoor je geen Honda of Yamaha meer kan kopen maar alleen die Harley Davidson bijvoorbeeld.

quote:

Carol Rains, a white evangelical Christian, has no regrets over her vote for President Trump. She likes most of his policies and would still support him over any Democrat. But she is open to another Republican.

“I would like for someone to challenge him,” Ms. Rains said, as she sipped wine recently with two other evangelical Christian women at a suburban restaurant north of Dallas. “But it needs to be somebody that’s strong enough to go against the Democrats.” Her preferred alternative: Nikki R. Haley, the United Nations ambassador and former South Carolina governor.

One of her friends, Linda Leonhart, agreed. “I will definitely take a look to see who has the courage to take on a job like this and do what needs to be done,” she said.

While the men in the pulpits of evangelical churches remain among Mr. Trump’s most stalwart supporters, some of the women in the pews may be having second thoughts. As the White House fights to silence a pornographic actress claiming an affair with Mr. Trump, and a jailed Belarusian escort claims evidence against the American president, Mr. Trump’s hold on white evangelical women may be slipping.

According to data from the Pew Research Center, support among white evangelical women in recent surveys has dropped about 13 percentage points, to 60 percent, compared with about a year ago. That is even greater than the eight-point drop among all women.

SPOILER

“That change is statistically significant,” said Gregory A. Smith, Pew’s associate director of research, who also noted a nine-point drop among evangelical men. “Both groups have become less approving over time.”

If that drop in support translates into a lack of enthusiasm among core Trump supporters in the midterm elections in November, as it did for many of President Barack Obama’s voters in 2010, the Republican Party could be more vulnerable in its efforts to maintain control of Congress. In 2020, it would also possibly open a lane for a primary challenger to the president.

The women in suburban Dallas all conceded they have cringed sometimes at Mr. Trump, citing his pettiness, impulsiveness, profanity and name calling. Still, they defended him because he delivered on issues they cared most about, such as the appointment of Justice Neil M. Gorsuch to the Supreme Court.

“Certainly we are all embarrassed, but for the most part he represents what we stand for,” said Ms. Leonhart, who is active in the women’s ministry at her church.

A clear majority of white evangelical women, even in the face of the #MeToo movement and renewed claims of marital infidelity against the president, continue, along with white evangelical men, to form Mr. Trump’s most cohesive block of support.

Mr. Trump’s ability to connect so strongly with evangelical voters was among the most notable surprises of the 2016 campaign. Since his election, he has courted evangelical leaders aggressively and, more important, has delivered on promises to appoint conservatives like Justice Gorsuch to federal courts. Men who see themselves as leaders of religious conservatives, such as Franklin Graham, Jerry Falwell Jr. and Tony Perkins, the president of the Family Research Council, have remained doggedly supportive.

And the majority of evangelical women remain in his corner.

But it has not been easy.

“I don’t know any evangelical woman who is going to defend the character of the president,” said Carmen Fowler LaBerge, host of “The Reconnect,” an evangelical-centered radio show.

“Many things the president says and does are things that many evangelicals use as examples with our kids of what we should not do,” added Ms. LaBerge, who did not support Mr. Trump in 2016. “This is not who we are as evangelicals. This is not how we treat people.”

Some evangelical women simply keep their views private. Gathered at a well-appointed home in Falls Church, Va., last week, eight Christian women agreed to talk about their feelings about the president, on one condition: that they not be identified.

They feared reprisal in the workplace, at their children’s schools, even at their church. They meet in secret and have a private Facebook group, which its organizer said has about 160 members, to talk about their support for Mr. Trump.

They said that Christian voters who backed Trump had been derided as unthinking, unsophisticated hypocrites, but for many of them that only affirmed their resolve. One of the women said that her parents had come to the United States illegally from El Salvador and that she was born a short time later. Her father is now a citizen. She supports Mr. Trump and his hard-line plans on immigration.

“I would say that this year has only made me more of a certain supporter,” said another of the women, Joanna, who agreed to be identified only by her first name. “I’ve been really excited to see him come through with his promises, one by one, against incredible odds.”

Still, there is a tension among evangelical women. They said they largely cast their votes against Hillary Clinton more than for Mr. Trump.

“At least in my experience, it was more of an anti-Hillary vote than a pro-Trump vote,” Ms. LaBerge said.

Karen Swallow Prior, a professor at Liberty University who opposed Mr. Trump and voted for a third-party candidate, said, “Now that Trump is in office and we are evaluating his performance then, I am glad to see that people are less in lock step and thinking critically about him as a leader, and it doesn’t surprise me that his overall support would decline from 80 percent.”

“I was one of those culture war evangelicals in the ’80s and ’90s,” Ms. Swallow Prior said. “I was appalled by the candidacy and presidency of Bill Clinton. It was hammered into my mind that character mattered, and that did change when Trump came along. In some ways, I felt betrayed by my evangelical peers who taught me and cemented in me the idea that character matters. I didn’t abandon that belief. I feel like some evangelicals did.”

Her outspoken criticism is all the more notable given that the president of Liberty University, Mr. Falwell, remains one of the president’s most vocal defenders.

Evangelical voters, often portrayed as a monolith, are becoming increasingly difficult to define. The support for Mr. Trump reflects a growing pragmatism among evangelical voters who are willing to accept a less than ideal model of Christian faith in exchange for policies that they endorse.

“I think they’ve become experienced and very practical,” said Frances FitzGerald, the author of the recent book “The Evangelicals: The Struggle to Shape America.” “By large majorities they used to believe that to be elected, you had to be of good character. No longer. It’s ‘We want a president to do what we want him to do, and he’s going to do it if we turn out and vote.’”

Mr. Trump also appeals to white evangelicals in other ways with his strong language, disruptive view of presidential norms and his policies on taxes. “Religious right rhetoric has always been very martial — isolationist and martial at the same time,” Ms. FitzGerald said.

In surveys conducted by LifeWay Research in Nashville, evangelical voters in 2016 cited the economy (30 percent) and national security (26 percent) as their top two issues. Abortion was cited by just 4 percent, said Scott McConnell, the company’s executive director.

Evangelical voters began to emerge as a political force with their support for Ronald Reagan in 1980 and became a more coherent movement with the 1988 presidential campaign of the religious broadcaster Pat Robertson and the rise of Christian Coalition. But there are now few obvious leaders of religious conservatism, and voters have become more conventional in their assessment of candidates.

And even among religious conservatives, the Pew poll suggests tolerance for Mr. Trump has its limits.

“It may simply be that there’s not a single breaking point as much as a tipping point, the ‘Oh Lord, I can’t stand another one of these,’” said William Martin, a scholar at the Baker Institute for Public Policy at Rice University and author of “With God on Our Side,” which charted the political rise of the religious right.

quote:

The attacks, meant to stir up populist enthusiasm, could backfire if they instead spur fears that jobs in Trump country might be in jeopardy.

President Donald Trump, expressing his ire over trade imbalances this weekend, made a peculiar choice: He focused his criticism on two European brands, BMW and Mercedes-Benz, that have significant investments in two of the nation’s most Trump-friendly states.

“Open up the barriers and get rid of your tariffs,” Trump said of the European Union’s trade policies in a wide-ranging and rollicking address in Pennsylvania Saturday. “And if you don’t do that, we’re going to tax Mercedes-Benz, we’re going to tax BMW.”

Trump made no mention of the German brands’ significance to two states that formed part of the bedrock of his support in 2016. BMW has an assembly plant employing more than 9,000 people in Spartanburg, South Carolina; about a third of the BMWs sold in the U.S. in 2017 were produced in the country, the company said. A Mercedes-Benz factory employs 3,500 people near Tuscaloosa, Alabama, according to data from the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers.

The president’s plan to impose tariffs of 25 percent on steel imports and 10 percent on aluminum imports prompted consternation from lawmakers and business leaders concerned that major employers in those states might cut back in the face of higher costs. Trump’s latest attacks, meant to stir up populist enthusiasm, could backfire politically if they instead spur fears that jobs in Trump country might be in jeopardy.

Dan Ikenson, director of the trade policy center at the libertarian Cato Institute in Washington, said Trump likely hopes tariffs on European car imports would spur the German companies to make more vehicles in the U.S. But he said the unpredictability of Trump’s trade policies would more likely have the opposite effect.

“A countervailing factor would be a reluctance of the Germans to ‘reward’ this behavior, especially if it's unclear where trade policy is going,” Ikenson told POLITICO. “His unorthodox and sometimes erratic behavior ultimately discourages investment in the United States.”

SPOILER

A White House spokesman did not respond to a request for comment Sunday. Trump has long said he believes it is unfair that the U.S. imposes a 2.5 percent tariff on European cars, while Europe has a 10 percent tariff for cars built in the U.S.

He warned of possible new tariffs last week on Twitter after the European Union said it might take steps in response to new steel and aluminum tariffs. "They make it impossible for our cars (and more) to sell there," Trump wrote. "Big trade imbalance!"

Even before the president named the company Saturday, BMW was warning that targeting European cars would come back to bite the U.S.

“Should we get tariff walls, it would have an impact on jobs in the United States,” BMW CEO Harald Krueger said last week, according to Reuters.

Trump won South Carolina in 2016 with nearly 55 percent of the vote, and he racked up more than 60 percent of the vote in Alabama.

But recent events showed he might not be invincible there. The candidate Trump endorsed in the Alabama Senate primary last year, Republican Luther Strange, lost. After Trump switched his backing to Republican nominee Roy Moore, he lost too, a shocking upset that made Doug Jones Alabama’s first Democratic senator in 25 years.

Daimler, the parent company of Mercedes-Benz, has a total of 23,500 employees in the U.S., according to data the company provided to POLITICO. Of 280,000 vehicles produced in Alabama last year, about 70 percent were exported, the company said. BMW also exports more than 70 percent of what it produces in South Carolina, the company told POLITICO, with China and Germany as the top two destinations.

Exports of cars made in the U.S. could be hit if America’s trading partners responded to new taxes from Trump with their own restrictions.

A Daimler spokesperson declined to comment on Trump’s Saturday remarks. BMW also did not comment Sunday.

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), an on-again-off-again critic of the president’s policies, told CBS News last week — after Trump threatened to tax European car imports without naming companies — that Trump should leave BMW alone.

“China wins when we fight with Europe,” Graham said. “China wins when the American consumer has higher prices because of tariffs that don't affect Chinese behavior.” Asked about Trump’s Saturday remarks, a spokesman for Graham did not comment directly but pointed to the CBS News interview.

Trade experts said targeting imported cars with tariffs without going through a process like the White House followed with steel and aluminum would certainly cause international pushback.

“It is not clear how long such a tariff would stand unchallenged,” said Kristin Dziczek of the Center for Automotive Research.

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Op maandag 12 maart 2018 02:10 schreef OMG het volgende:

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Waarom zou je die niet meer kunnen kopen als er hele Hondas en dergelijke gewoon hier in de VS gemaakt worden?

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Op maandag 12 maart 2018 05:03 schreef DeParo het volgende:

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Als dat zo is worden die net zo Goed getroffen door importtarieven op staal. Of het nu Honda of Harley Davidson is, punt gaat vooral om hoe je banen in Amerika houdt, voor de Amerikanen.

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Op maandag 12 maart 2018 00:13 schreef Nintex het volgende:

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Grappig dat je Tesla noemt. Elon Musk is een voorstander van de importheffingen. Hij is van mening dat Trump nog een stapje verder moet gaan zelfs.

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Op maandag 12 maart 2018 05:46 schreef Ulx het volgende:

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Niet door tarieven op grondstoffen te heffen. Daar raak je iedereen mee en je loopt het risico dat het goedkoper is het eindproduct gewoon maar gelijk te importeren.

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Op maandag 12 maart 2018 08:45 schreef DeParo het volgende:

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Het is een beetje dom tarieven op grondstoffen te heffen als je die grondstoffen zelf niet hebt he Ulx.

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Op maandag 12 maart 2018 08:47 schreef Ulx het volgende:

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Dan maak je de produkten die je van die grondstoffen maakt duurder. Op zich prima. Maar als de produkten zèlf niet extra belast worden als je ze importeert kun je ze beter in het buitenland laten maken en importeren.

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Op maandag 12 maart 2018 08:58 schreef DeParo het volgende:

[..]

Vage redenatie. Dus omdat je tarieven heft op grondstoffen die je zelf niet hebt compenseer je dat door het 'eindproduct' duurder te maken? Maar daarmee heb je weer het risico dat het volume kleiner wordt en de inkomsten minder hoog. Als het product dusdanig schaars is en de vraag dusdanig hoog dat je dat kan 'lijden', en dus winst maakt op die prijsverhogiging, had je die tarieven op grondstoffen in eerste instantie helemaal niet nodig omdat je die prijs sowieso al kon opschroeven met een dergelijk verschil tussen vraag en aanbod in het voordeel van de producent.

Je laat inderdaad producten maken in het buitenland omdat de productiekosten hier normaal gesproken lager liggen. Voor veel bedrijven heeft dat vooral te maken met in de directe nabijheid te zijn van de 'supply chain' of simpelweg arbeidskosten. Als een hele industrie zich in het buitenland bevindt, en een grondstof simpelweg alleen voor die industrie wordt gebruikt, dan kan het inderdaad van nut zijn om tarieven op die grondstoffen te zetten.

Maar ik zie nogmaals niet het voordeel van dat soort tarieven op grondstoffen?

quote:

President Donald Trump, expressing his ire over trade imbalances this weekend, made a peculiar choice: He focused his criticism on two European brands, BMW and Mercedes-Benz, that have significant investments in two of the nation’s most Trump-friendly states.

“Open up the barriers and get rid of your tariffs,” Trump said of the European Union’s trade policies in a wide-ranging and rollicking address in Pennsylvania Saturday. “And if you don’t do that, we’re going to tax Mercedes-Benz, we’re going to tax BMW.”

Trump made no mention of the German brands’ significance to two states that formed part of the bedrock of his support in 2016. BMW has an assembly plant employing more than 9,000 people in Spartanburg, South Carolina; about a third of the BMWs sold in the U.S. in 2017 were produced in the country, the company said. A Mercedes-Benz factory employs 3,500 people near Tuscaloosa, Alabama, according to data from the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers. (...)

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Op zondag 11 maart 2018 13:05 schreef DeParo het volgende:

[..]

Omdat?

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Op maandag 12 maart 2018 09:31 schreef Ulx het volgende:
Trump targets European car-makers with big plants in states he won

[..]

Slimme move. Of zo.

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Op maandag 12 maart 2018 09:59 schreef DustPuppy het volgende:

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Alsof er dan wel ineens meer Amerikaanse auto's hier verkocht worden.

De meeste Europeanen willen die Amerikaanse rommel helemaal niet.

Daarbij zijn die dingen ook vaak veel te groot voor onze wegen.

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Op maandag 12 maart 2018 05:03 schreef DeParo het volgende:

[..]

Als dat zo is worden die net zo Goed getroffen door importtarieven op staal. Of het nu Honda of Harley Davidson is, punt gaat vooral om hoe je banen in Amerika houdt, voor de Amerikanen.

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Op zondag 11 maart 2018 13:26 schreef Monolith het volgende:

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Er zijn mensen die POL verwarren met SHO.

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Op maandag 12 maart 2018 09:59 schreef DustPuppy het volgende:

[..]

Alsof er dan wel ineens meer Amerikaanse auto's hier verkocht worden.

De meeste Europeanen willen die Amerikaanse rommel helemaal niet.

Daarbij zijn die dingen ook vaak veel te groot voor onze wegen en zuipen ze veel te veel.

quote:

1. Size. Most US small to midsize Fords, GM and Chrysler cars aren’t actually engineered in the US. They’re usually developed in Europe or Asia and assembled in the US (or more frequently, Mexico) so there’s not much point in selling a US-made Ford Focus when they’re already churning them out in Germany.

2. The SUV and Truck market. Two things happened in the large vehicle market (where the US was traditionally stronger) over the last 30 years; the growth of the SUV, and the “truck” market. Light trucks are a uniquely North American phenomenon; not because other countries don’t have pickups, but because in the US they’re not classed as cars, but trucks, so are taxed differently (less) and can be built to lower safety and emissions standards (this is now changing, but was the case for decades). This meant the US big three went all in on trucks and continue to make money hand over fist on them (far more unit profit than cars) but at the expense of their car business, which has come to be eclipsed by Japanese and even Korean manufacturers in the US. In parallel the growth of the SUV was a particularly US phenomenon, but grew from the truck, not car business.

These two things meant US large and luxury cars fell further and further behind the Europeans and Japanese due to investment in trucks, and when the Europeans and Japanese began to enter the SUV market they engineered them to car, not truck standards. American brands have been struggling to catch up ever since, and rarely even try to sell their SUVs in Europe because they are so far behind on quality. Jeep are about the only ones who’ve ever had a go and they did well for a while, but now they are well behind the quality curve (despite Italian and previously German owners). US large sedans are just as off the pace and the whole market for those is in decline anyway.

3. Diesel. Until VW wrecked the whole market, diesel was heading for total dominance in Europe due to punitive CO2 taxation rules. Diesel has never really been a thing in US cars so usually when a US manufacturer tries to enter the European market, they have to find a suitable diesel engine (Italy’s VM has historically been the go-to provider) and invest in a load of extra engineering for a niche market. So now they rarely bother. Hybrids and electrification may mean a bit of a global rationalisation of powertrains (Japan has always had a problem with the European diesel obsession as well), which might help American companies.

4. Brand. US car brands have almost zero cachet with badge-obsessed Europeans. The Japanese invested in Lexus (and more recently Infiniti) with mixed results, but at the higher value end Cadillacs and Lincolns are fairly meaningless, and US car manufacturers have failed to get traction at the bottom end (a disastrous rebadging of Daewoos as Chevrolets for Europe for example), ironically because there’s just enough brand awareness to make a Korean Chevy “wrong”. There is one exception to this though; Tesla. A high end brand that’s getting traction (especially in Scandinavia), largely because they’ve ridden a wave of huge tax-breaks, just like all those prehistoric truck-makers back in US.

There are other reasons around various strategic mistakes the US companies have made (Ford’s end-run around the brand problem with Premier Automotive, GM’s mishandling of SAAB and others, Chrysler’s ownership woes etc.) but in the end, American cars have been made for America, and don’t usually travel well.

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Op maandag 12 maart 2018 09:01 schreef Ulx het volgende:

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Nee. Jij moet staal importeren vanuit het buitenland. Daarover komt nu extra belastingen en dat staal wordt daardoor 25% duurder. ----> Jij gaat je produkten ook duurder maken. (tenzij je een communist bent of zo.)
Jij koopt de produkten direct vanuit het buitenland ---> Dan is er geen extra 25% kosten en wellicht is dat goedkoper. ---> meer winst1 WINNING! (OK, pech voor de lokale werknemers die niet meer nodig zijn.)

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Op maandag 12 maart 2018 10:49 schreef Tijger_m het volgende:

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Tarieven zijn daarvoor dus niet de weg, dat weten we al decennia.

Tenzij je liever alleen een bepaald soort banen houd en andere banen kwijt wil, natuurlijk, dan werkt het wel maar dat is dus nogal slecht voor de economie als geheel.

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Op maandag 12 maart 2018 09:31 schreef Ulx het volgende:
Trump targets European car-makers with big plants in states he won

[..]

Slimme move. Of zo.

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Op maandag 12 maart 2018 09:55 schreef klappernootopreis het volgende:

[..]

Dat vraag ik me ook af, hij zou eigenlijk een rally voeren voor de GOP (die er bij de midterms niet bijster goed voor staan.) en niet voor zichzelf. Dat gaan ze hem bij de GOP niet in dank afnemen, dat hij misbruikt maakt om zichzelf te promoten, terwijl hij de republieke partij laat hangen.

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Op maandag 12 maart 2018 11:26 schreef DeParo het volgende:

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Natuurlijk kunnen bepaalde producten die afhankelijk zijn van staal duurder worden. En natuurlijk kunnen ze dan geimporteerd worden tenzij over het volledige product, bijvoorbeeld de auto, ook weer nieuwe tarieven op worden geplaatst. Dit heeft niks met grondstoffen te maken tenzij je denkt dat staal een grondstof is misschien.

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Op maandag 12 maart 2018 11:27 schreef DeParo het volgende:

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Tarieven kunnen best werken. Bijvoorbeeld tarieven op auto's en/of/ hoogwaardige producten is veel zinvoller voor een ontwikkelde economie dan staal tenzij het om een specifiek product van staal gaat.

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Op maandag 12 maart 2018 11:41 schreef Ulx het volgende:

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Staal als grondstof inderdaad. Of halffabrikaat als je dat liever hebt. Whatever. Geef het beestje een naam.

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Op maandag 12 maart 2018 11:46 schreef Ulx het volgende:

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Op Harley-Davidsons bijvoorbeeld. Of op Jack Daniels.

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Op maandag 12 maart 2018 11:30 schreef DeParo het volgende:

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GOP toch al in zwaar weer. Trump wat minder.

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Op maandag 12 maart 2018 12:02 schreef klappernootopreis het volgende:

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Trump heeft geen enkele binding met de Republikeinse partij meer, lijkt het. Hij gaat volledig zijn eigen weg. Dat gaat op gegeven moment helemaal mis, je HEBT backup van die partij nodig.

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Op maandag 12 maart 2018 12:00 schreef DeParo het volgende:

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Zal weinig uithalen. Maakt die merken alleen maar exclusiever in Europa. Harley-Davidson faalde al om andere redenen terwijl Jack Daniels kan profiteren. Mensen willen nog steeds die *noem eens een kleur* label.

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Op maandag 12 maart 2018 12:09 schreef Ulx het volgende:

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Nou....De EU pikt wèl produkten uit GOP of swingstates...Andere landen ook. .Ga maar als afgevardigde uitleggen aan je kiezers dat je voor een handelsoorlog was als daardoor die mensen hun baan kwijt zijn geraakt.

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Op maandag 12 maart 2018 12:10 schreef DeParo het volgende:

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Als de EU zo de Amerikaanse verkiezingen gaat beinvloeden zijn ze een stuk geniepiger dan ik dacht ^^.

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Op maandag 12 maart 2018 12:15 schreef Ulx het volgende:

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Ach, tradewars are easy to win, zei een wijs man ooit. Zo'n vaart zal het niet lopen.

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Op maandag 12 maart 2018 12:30 schreef Ulx het volgende:
Hoezo zouden we er wel uitkomen? Met Trump?

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Op maandag 12 maart 2018 12:32 schreef DeParo het volgende:

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Ja. Trump heeft er helemaal geen belang bij een handelsoorlog met Europa te beginnen.

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Op maandag 12 maart 2018 12:33 schreef Ulx het volgende:

[..]

He just did.....

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Op maandag 12 maart 2018 12:06 schreef DeParo het volgende:

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Dat maakt ze tegelijkertijd ook erg afhankelijk van hem.

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Op maandag 12 maart 2018 12:38 schreef DeParo het volgende:

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Voorlopig zijn het vooral dreigementen.

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Op maandag 12 maart 2018 12:38 schreef DeParo het volgende:

[..]

Voorlopig zijn het vooral dreigementen.

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Op maandag 12 maart 2018 12:58 schreef Ulx het volgende:

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Gebakken lucht?

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Op maandag 12 maart 2018 12:00 schreef DeParo het volgende:

[..]

Zal weinig uithalen. Maakt die merken alleen maar exclusiever in Europa. Harley-Davidson faalde al om andere redenen terwijl Jack Daniels kan profiteren. Mensen willen nog steeds die *noem eens een kleur* label.

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Op maandag 12 maart 2018 09:59 schreef DustPuppy het volgende:

[..]

Alsof er dan wel ineens meer Amerikaanse auto's hier verkocht worden.

De meeste Europeanen willen die Amerikaanse rommel helemaal niet.

Daarbij zijn die dingen ook vaak veel te groot voor onze wegen en zuipen ze veel te veel.

quote:

Op maandag 12 maart 2018 12:00 schreef DeParo het volgende:

[..]

Zal weinig uithalen. Maakt die merken alleen maar exclusiever in Europa. Harley-Davidson faalde al om andere redenen terwijl Jack Daniels kan profiteren. Mensen willen nog steeds die *noem eens een kleur* label.

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Op maandag 12 maart 2018 13:53 schreef Monolith het volgende:

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Jij denkt dat de prijselasticiteit van motoren of whisky nul of zelfs negatief is en dan ook nog voor specifieke merken? De Schotse whiskymarkt ondervindt het tegenovergestelde. Over Harley heb ik gisteren nog een artikel gepost.
En waar een prijsstijging vanuit het bedrijf zelf nog ten goed komt aan de omzet, is dit puur het opdrijven van de prijs zonder dat dit ten goede komt aan het bedrijfsresultaat. Gevolg is dat je volumedaling dan dus ook niet (deels) wordt gecompenseerd door prijsstijgingen van het product.
En de <kleur> label whiskylijn is van Johnnie Walker, niet van Jack Daniels.

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Op maandag 12 maart 2018 14:13 schreef DustPuppy het volgende:

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Johnnie Walker is dan ook schoonmaakmiddel. Als dat wat duurder wordt, wordt het gewoon niet meer gekocht vermoed ik.

Pak dan een Tullamore Dew, als je toch slobber-whisky wil die nog wel te zuipen is.

Of Seagrams, ook goede budget-whisky.

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Op maandag 12 maart 2018 14:24 schreef Monolith het volgende:

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Bedoel je niet Jack Daniels i.p.v. Johnnie Walker? Jack Daniels is gewoon bedoeld om cola aan te lengen. Johnnie Walker heeft ook nog wel een wat duurdere range al is het niet echt te vergelijken met de in wat beperktere oplagen geproduceerde Schotse single malts.

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Op maandag 12 maart 2018 14:24 schreef Monolith het volgende:

[..]

Bedoel je niet Jack Daniels i.p.v. Johnnie Walker? Jack Daniels is gewoon bedoeld om cola aan te lengen. Johnnie Walker heeft ook nog wel een wat duurdere range al is het niet echt te vergelijken met de in wat beperktere oplagen geproduceerde Schotse single malts.

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Op maandag 12 maart 2018 14:25 schreef DustPuppy het volgende:

[..]

Ik heb tot de Gold label geprobeerd en die was ook niet echt best.

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Op zondag 11 maart 2018 20:22 schreef Monolith het volgende:
Aardige longread van een voormalige speechwriter van Bush over de evangelische stroming:
http://theatln.tc/2Dg6fY1

quote:

It is remarkable to hear religious leaders defend profanity, ridicule, and cruelty as hallmarks of authenticity and dismiss decency as a dead language. Whatever Trump’s policy legacy ends up being, his presidency has been a disaster in the realm of norms. It has coarsened our culture, given permission for bullying, complicated the moral formation of children, undermined standards of public integrity, and encouraged cynicism about the political enterprise. Falwell, Graham, and others are providing religious cover for moral squalor—winking at trashy behavior and encouraging the unraveling of social restraints. Instead of defending their convictions, they are providing preemptive absolution for their political favorites. And this, even by purely political standards, undermines the causes they embrace

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Op maandag 12 maart 2018 14:24 schreef Monolith het volgende:

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Bedoel je niet Jack Daniels i.p.v. Johnnie Walker? Jack Daniels is gewoon bedoeld om cola aan te lengen. Johnnie Walker heeft ook nog wel een wat duurdere range al is het niet echt te vergelijken met de in wat beperktere oplagen geproduceerde Schotse single malts.

quote:

I do not believe that most evangelicals are racist. But every strong Trump supporter has decided that racism is not a moral disqualification in the president of the United States. And that is something more than a political compromise. It is a revelation of moral priorities.

If utilitarian calculations are to be applied, they need to be fully applied. For a package of political benefits, these evangelical leaders have associated the Christian faith with racism and nativism. They have associated the Christian faith with misogyny and the mocking of the disabled. They have associated the Christian faith with lawlessness, corruption, and routine deception. They have associated the Christian faith with moral confusion about the surpassing evils of white supremacy and neo-Nazism. The world is full of tragic choices and compromises. But for this man? For this cause?

quote:

Op maandag 12 maart 2018 15:03 schreef OllieA het volgende:
En nog een, uit hetzelfde stuk https://www.theatlantic.c(...)66/?utm_source=atlfb:

[..]

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Op maandag 12 maart 2018 15:13 schreef Tchock het volgende:

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Evangelicals ontbreekt het volgens mij gewoon aan kritisch nadenken over wie zij willen dat hen vertegenwoordigt (uiteraard een schromelijke generalisatie, maar alsnog). Trump staat voor alles wat de Kerk afkeurt maar wordt gesteund omdat hij een Republikein is.

Het is een afwezigheid van principes, van staan voor wat je waardevol vindt.

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Op maandag 12 maart 2018 15:13 schreef Tchock het volgende:

[..]

Evangelicals ontbreekt het volgens mij gewoon aan kritisch nadenken over wie zij willen dat hen vertegenwoordigt (uiteraard een schromelijke generalisatie, maar alsnog). Trump staat voor alles wat de Kerk afkeurt maar wordt gesteund omdat hij een Republikein is.

Het is een afwezigheid van principes, van staan voor wat je waardevol vindt. Daarmee tonen ze inderdaad hun eigen morele failissement aan. Het alternatief is dat de Kerk de waarden van Trump zelf ook aanhangt. Dit is wellicht een visie waar de schrijver niet aan wil omdat deze erg pessimistisch is.

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Op maandag 12 maart 2018 15:15 schreef westwoodblvd het volgende:

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Het gaat ze niet om de persoon, maar om zijn daden. Eigenlijk heel pragmatisch. Als de duivel himself president zou willen worden met een anti abortus en anti homo platform, zouden ze nog op hem stemmen.

quote:

Op maandag 12 maart 2018 15:16 schreef klappernootopreis het volgende:

[..]

En Nu Stormy Daniels weer in het spel is, zal Trump een stuk populairder bij de evangelische achterban worden. Toch??

quote:

Op maandag 12 maart 2018 15:18 schreef Tchock het volgende:

[..]

Precies. En daarmee laten ze zien zelf voor niets te staan.

Als de Kerk zelf haar morele gezag verliest, waarom zou je de kerk dan nog volgen?

[..]

Ja, inderdaad. Hoe meer er aan Trump wordt getrokken, hoe meer de steun verhardt. Ook al gaat dat linea recta in tegen hun eigen waarden.

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Op maandag 12 maart 2018 15:23 schreef klappernootopreis het volgende:

[..]

Het probleem met verharden is dat op gegeven moment de verbinding bros wordt. Trump toont niet echt aan dat hij een echte Republikein is. De steun voor Trump komt vooral uit de teaparty/ultraconservatieve hoek. De kiezer voor de republikeinse partij is natuurlijk breder. Op gegeven moment hebben ze er genoeg van en zullen ze flippen, met alle gevolgen van dien.

quote:

Op maandag 12 maart 2018 15:25 schreef Tchock het volgende:

[..]

Dat dacht ik vele maanden geleden al, maar de werkelijkheid blijkt anders. https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/trump-approval-ratings/

Hoe je dit moet uitleggen is een andere vraag. Misschien is het een teken van extreme verdeeldheid en gebrek aan relevant politiek midden.

twitter:

realDonaldTrump twitterde op zondag 11-03-2018 om 16:16:22 Rasmussen and others have my approval ratings at around 50%, which is higher than Obama, and yet the political pundits love saying my approval ratings are “somewhat low.” They know they are lying when they say it. Turn off the show - FAKE NEWS! reageer retweet

quote:

Op maandag 12 maart 2018 15:29 schreef xpompompomx het volgende:

[..]

Trump gisteren:

twitter:

realDonaldTrump twitterde op zondag 11-03-2018 om 16:16:22 Rasmussen and others have my approval ratings at around 50%, which is higher than Obama, and yet the political pundits love saying my approval ratings are “somewhat low.” They know they are lying when they say it. Turn off the show - FAKE NEWS! reageer retweet

Kijk je op Rasmussen: 44%/.

quote:

Op maandag 12 maart 2018 15:36 schreef Tchock het volgende:

[..]

Of hij is volledig gestoord aan het worden, dat kan ook. Misschien verwart hij approval met disapproval?

quote:

Op maandag 12 maart 2018 15:36 schreef Tchock het volgende:

[..]

En dan is Rasmussen nog eentje die consequent erg positief is vergeleken met de meeste pollsters.

Maar het gaat om de afsluiting van die tweet natuurlijk: "They know they are lying when they say it. Turn off the show - FAKE NEWS!" Trump blijft de media delegitimiseren omdat daar het meeste kritiek vandaan komt met over rellen en het onderzoek van Mueller. Indoctrinatie van de kiezers is dit om straks naar te verwijzen als er een onthulling komt.

Of hij is volledig gestoord aan het worden, dat kan ook. Misschien verwart hij approval met disapproval?

quote:

Op maandag 12 maart 2018 15:37 schreef westwoodblvd het volgende:

[..]

Trump krijgt alleen polls te zien waarin hij goed scoort. Niet vergezocht om te denken dat hij simpelweg niet beter weet.

quote:

Op maandag 12 maart 2018 15:13 schreef Tchock het volgende:

[..]

Evangelicals ontbreekt het volgens mij gewoon aan kritisch nadenken over wie zij willen dat hen vertegenwoordigt (uiteraard een schromelijke generalisatie, maar alsnog). Trump staat voor alles wat de Kerk afkeurt maar wordt gesteund omdat hij een Republikein is.

Het is een afwezigheid van principes, van staan voor wat je waardevol vindt. Daarmee tonen ze inderdaad hun eigen morele failissement aan. Het alternatief is dat de Kerk de waarden van Trump zelf ook aanhangt. Dit is wellicht een visie waar de schrijver niet aan wil omdat deze erg pessimistisch is.

quote:

Op maandag 12 maart 2018 15:38 schreef Tchock het volgende:

[..]

Die polls zijn er niet.

quote:

Op maandag 12 maart 2018 15:44 schreef westwoodblvd het volgende:

[..]

Rasmussen heeft hem van tijd tot tijd met 50%. Klopt niet, maar ze zijn er wel.

quote:

Op maandag 12 maart 2018 15:43 schreef OllieA het volgende:

[..]

Wat hier imho ook een grote rol speelt is dat Mike Pence VP is. Eén hartslag verwijderd van het presidentschap.
Uit een longread over Pence die ik hier onlangs gepost heb, begreep ik dat voor de evangelische Trumpstemmers de aanwezigheid van Pence maakt dat het doel de middelen heiligt.
God heeft een plan voor Pence (aldus Pence) en dit slag evangelicals steunt Trump, om uiteindelijk Pence aan de macht te krijgen.

Dat ene hartslagje is immers een peuleschilletje voor God.

quote:

Op maandag 12 maart 2018 15:46 schreef klappernootopreis het volgende:

[..]

Pence zal natuurlijk direct vleugellam worden gemaakt door het liberale deel van de GOP.

quote:

Op maandag 12 maart 2018 15:45 schreef Tchock het volgende:

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Ja, oké, maar dat is alsnog lager of even hoog als Obama.

En er zijn ook polls met 70+% disapproval, natuurlijk, de reden waarom je als rationeel mens beide moet negeren.

quote:

Op maandag 12 maart 2018 15:48 schreef Tchock het volgende:

[..]

En/of door de Democraten, als die het Huis winnen. Als Pence president wordt denk ik niet dat zijn achterban daar heel veel mee opschiet.

En dat is aangenomen dat Trump wordt afgezet, wat we ook nog maar moeten afwachten maar waar ik zelf weinig hoop op heb.

quote:

Op maandag 12 maart 2018 15:53 schreef klappernootopreis het volgende:

[..]

Trump zal niet onderuit gehaald worden door een politieke actie, maar door een klein vergrijp.

quote:

Op maandag 12 maart 2018 15:49 schreef westwoodblvd het volgende:

[..]

Maar Trump is geen rationeel mens. Ik denk dat hij ofwel niet weet ofwel het niet wil weten hoe impopulair hij daadwerkelijk is.

quote:

Op maandag 12 maart 2018 15:54 schreef Tchock het volgende:
Ah, ideaal.

Heb je ook alvast de lotto-nummers en de uitslag van Sparta - Ajax van volgend weekend?

quote:

Op woensdag 27 december 2017 15:17 schreef Tchock het volgende:
Anders gewoon niet allemaal zo zuur tegen elkaar doen. Kan ook.

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Op maandag 12 maart 2018 16:07 schreef brokjespoes het volgende:

[..]

[..]

There's always a tweet / Fok! post...

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Op maandag 12 maart 2018 11:27 schreef DeParo het volgende:

[..]

Tarieven kunnen best werken. Bijvoorbeeld tarieven op auto's en/of/ hoogwaardige producten is veel zinvoller voor een ontwikkelde economie dan staal tenzij het om een specifiek product van staal gaat.

quote:

The pornographic film actress who says she had an affair with President Trump offered on Monday to return $130,000 she received from Mr. Trump’s personal lawyer in 2016 for agreeing not to discuss the alleged relationship.

In exchange, the actress, Stephanie Clifford, seeks an end to her deal to keep quiet about what she says was an affair with Mr. Trump that started in 2006 and lasted for several months.

In the letter, which was sent to Mr. Trump’s personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, early Monday, Ms. Clifford’s lawyer, Michael Avenatti, wrote that Ms. Clifford would wire the money into an account of Mr. Trump’s choosing by Friday.

Mr. Avenatti set a deadline of noon Tuesday for Mr. Cohen to answer the offer from Ms. Clifford, known professionally as Stormy Daniels, to answer his offer.

Under the terms of the deal detailed in the letter, a copy of which was obtained by The New York Times, the contract ensuring Ms. Clifford’s silence would be “deemed null and void’’ once she returned the sum called for in her original contract.

SPOILER

Under Mr. Avenatti’s offer, Ms. Clifford would then be allowed to “(a) speak openly and freely about her prior relationship with the President and the attempts to silence her and (b) use any publish any text messages, photos and/or videos relating to the President that she may have in her possession, all without fear of retribution and legal liability for damages.”

The letter also seeks agreement that neither Mr. Trump nor the shell company that Mr. Cohen used to pay Ms. Clifford, which he represents as a party to their October 2016 deal, would move to block the broadcast of an interview that Ms. Clifford taped with “60 Minutes” last week.

“As we have always said, this is about a search for the truth and the ability of Ms. Clifford to tell the American people what really happened so they can make their own determination,’’ Mr. Avenatti said in a statement. “Our offer proves this out.”

The offer puts the president and Mr. Cohen — who deny that Mr. Trump had an affair with Ms. Clifford — in a challenging position.

If they agree to Mr. Avenatti’s terms, Ms. Clifford can speak openly about not only the sexual relationship she claims to have had with Mr. Trump shortly after his wife, Melania, gave birth to the couple’s son, Barron, but also about what she describes as an effort to silence her “hush money.’’

The money, which Mr. Cohen has said came from his own personal funds, is the subject of complaints lodged by the group Common Cause with the Federal Election Commission and Justice Department. Common Cause argues that the payment violated campaign finance laws.

If they reject the offer, they could be seen as effectively acknowledging the existence of a continuing effort to keep Ms. Clifford silent about an affair that Mr. Cohen and the president say did not happen.

The original deal that Ms. Clifford signed required all parties involved to take any disputes into a private arbitration process. Last month, Mr. Cohen won a temporary restraining order against Ms. Clifford through an arbitrator.

But last week, Mr. Avenatti filed a lawsuit claiming that the initial agreement — and thus, the arbitration requirement — was invalid because Mr. Trump did not personally sign the contract.

Mr. Avenatti’s new offer requires the signatures of “all parties,’’ including that of the president.

quote:

Op maandag 12 maart 2018 16:38 schreef Kijkertje het volgende:
Stormy Daniels Offers to Return Payment to End Deal for Her Silence

[..]

quote:

Op maandag 12 maart 2018 16:38 schreef Kijkertje het volgende:
Stormy Daniels Offers to Return Payment to End Deal for Her Silence

[..]

quote:

It took a few weeks to land on his radar, but President Trump now views Veterans Affairs Sec. David Shulkin as a major problem. Trump has been telling associates he doesn't know what's happened at the VA, but he doesn't like what he's hearing and he may have to fire Shulkin if the situation further deteriorates.

The short version: After the VA's inspector general reported that Shulkin used taxpayer dollars to pay for his wife to go to Europe, the VA secretary has been telling anyone who will listen that Trump appointees in his agency are conspiring to undermine him. He started handling his own media relations because he doesn't trust the agency's communications staff.

[..]

quote:

Trump surprised Shulkin by dialing in Fox & Friends host Pete Hegseth on speaker phone to get his opinion of the legislation, according to two sources with knowledge of the conversation.

quote:

Op maandag 12 maart 2018 16:48 schreef Tchock het volgende:

[..]

Wat is die Daniels ook een ongelofelijke muts, hè. Vlak voor de verkiezingen accepteer je een schijntje om een verhaal niet naar buiten te brengen wat Trump wellicht het presidentschap had kunnen kosten, terwijl ze er eerder al van alles over had verteld in interviews. Vervolgens gaat ze met die NDA op zak langs allerlei praatprogramma's om interviews van niks te geven en daarna gaat ze ineens bij de rechter het contract van tafel proberen te krijgen.

En dan aanbieden dat je het geld wel terug wil geven.

twitter:

carlquintanilla twitterde op maandag 12-03-2018 om 16:36:50 BREAKING: Larry Kudlow is the leading contender to replace Gary Cohn as NEC chair, reports our @jimcramer @CNBC @larry_kudlow reageer retweet

quote:

Op maandag 12 maart 2018 16:56 schreef Kijkertje het volgende:

twitter:

carlquintanilla twitterde op maandag 12-03-2018 om 16:36:50 BREAKING: Larry Kudlow is the leading contender to replace Gary Cohn as NEC chair, reports our @jimcramer @CNBC @larry_kudlow reageer retweet

quote:

Op maandag 12 maart 2018 16:51 schreef Kijkertje het volgende:

[..]

Het zijn allemaal niet van die lichten idd. Wellicht ging ze er (zoals zovelen) van uit dat hij toch geen president zou worden?

Maar beter laat dan nooit toch?

quote:

Op maandag 12 maart 2018 17:02 schreef Tchock het volgende:

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Ik begrijp niet waarom ze het verhaal niet gewoon in 2016 verkocht heeft aan een blad of tv-zender. Had ze miljoenen voor kunnen krijgen, hoogstwaarschijnlijk.

quote:

Op maandag 12 maart 2018 16:59 schreef Monolith het volgende:

[..]

Heeft Trump een cokedealer nodig?

quote:

In the mid-1990s, Kudlow entered a twelve-step program in order to deal with his addiction to cocaine and alcohol. He subsequently converted to Catholicism under the guidance of Father C. John McCloskey III

quote:

Op maandag 12 maart 2018 16:48 schreef Tchock het volgende:

[..]

Wat is die Daniels ook een ongelofelijke muts, hè. Vlak voor de verkiezingen accepteer je een schijntje om een verhaal niet naar buiten te brengen wat Trump wellicht het presidentschap had kunnen kosten, terwijl ze er eerder al van alles over had verteld in interviews. Vervolgens gaat ze met die NDA op zak langs allerlei praatprogramma's om interviews van niks te geven en daarna gaat ze ineens bij de rechter het contract van tafel proberen te krijgen.

En dan aanbieden dat je het geld wel terug wil geven.

quote:

Op maandag 12 maart 2018 17:41 schreef xpompompomx het volgende:

[..]

Opmerkelijk is ook wel de totale stilte over Daniels op Trump's Twitteraccount.

quote:

Op maandag 12 maart 2018 17:41 schreef xpompompomx het volgende:

[..]

Opmerkelijk is ook wel de totale stilte over Daniels op Trump's Twitteraccount.

quote:

Op maandag 12 maart 2018 18:33 schreef Kijkertje het volgende:
Dem Gains in CD18 Special

[ afbeelding ]

quote:

Prediction: If Republican Rick Saccone scrapes out a close win in tomorrow’s special election for a House seat in southwestern Pennsylvania, Donald Trump will claim it was all because of Donald Trump. But if Saccone falls just short, Donald Trump will claim it was all because Saccone didn’t sufficiently emulate Donald Trump.

But either way, it will be very bad news for Trump. This isn’t just because this election is deep in the heart of Trump country. It’s also because the failure of the Trump/Republican argument to prevent this contest from being so close also carries ominous signs for the GOP this fall.

SPOILER

In the race’s final days, much of the GOP’s messaging appears focused not so much on the Trump/GOP tax cuts, or even on Trump’s tariffs, but rather on immigration, crime and Nancy Pelosi. An outside group allied with the House GOP recently launched spots slamming Democrat Conor Lamb as a “Pelosi liberal” and for allegedly supporting “sanctuary cities and amnesty for illegals.” The National Republican Congressional Committee has recently released ads that slam Lamb, a former prosecutor, as soft on gun traffickers. A super PAC allied with Trump has an ad that mentions the tax cuts but talks more about “Pelosi liberals.”

A Democratic strategist working with the Lamb campaign who tracks ad buy information tells me that these ads represent the main spending on the GOP side in the closing days. Indeed, last week, Dave Weigel and Josh Kraushaar both reported that Republicans had previously aired ads touting the tax cuts but cycled them out of the messaging, because, as Kraushaar put it, they were “barely moving the needle in the district’s working-class confines.”

The reason the downplaying of Trump’s tax plan — and the emphasis instead on hot-button issues such as immigration — matter can be found in the makeup of this district. This is a place where Trump’s claim that his tax cuts are good for working people should carry weight. Trump won it by 20 points, and it has many of the sort of working-class white voters who apparently looked to Trump as an economic savior. But it turns out that this fact may explain why the tax cuts are not sufficiently resonating.

‘More a populist district than a conservative district’

“This is more of a populist district than it is a conservative district,” Mike Mikus, a Democratic strategist from southwestern Pennsylvania who ran a previous race in that district, told me today, referring to the leanings of voters in steel and coal country in places such as Washington, Westmoreland and Greene counties, which Trump carried in 2016 by 61-36, 64-33 and 70-28, respectively. Those are huge margins, a reminder that this district is mostly deep, deep, deep Trump country.

Still, Mikus argued to me that the district is more “economically diverse” than is commonly understood, with a large chunk of the more educated voters coming from the suburbs of Pittsburgh in Allegheny County. But this, too, highlights something important. Republicans hope that the tax plan will also stanch losses among college-educated and suburban white voters who might stomach Trump’s excesses and vote their bottom lines instead. Yet it seems clear that Lamb will do well in those areas, perhaps mirroring places such as Virginia, where Trump’s sexist, racist and xenophobic provocations are shifting white suburban voters toward Democrats and supercharging turnout among them to boot.

And if anything, Trump and Republicans are doubling down on those cultural provocations. In addition to the ads referenced above, Trump’s rally in Moon Township over the weekend featured full-blown race-baiting and authoritarian appeals, with brutal attacks on the media and on a prominent African American congresswoman as “a low IQ individual.” This, apparently, is what is necessary to excite Trump country and get those Trump and GOP voters out — even amid this awesome Trump economy.

To be clear, Saccone could still win. But if Lamb keeps it close, it will still show that the Trump/GOP tax cuts aren’t enough to get educated suburban white voters to put aside their distaste with Trump in the numbers Republicans need. What’s more, this race is shaping up as a referendum on whether Republicans can hold Trump’s blue-collar white base, including the disaffected union Democrats who defected in 2016, in Trump-like numbers. But Mikus suggested to me that Lamb, who has campaigned on a pro-labor message, may be showing how Democrats can begin to reverse that trend, because even in Trump country, he’s “bringing some of those voters home.”

If so, this will show that candidates matter, to be sure. But it will also show that Trump’s agenda — which is basically Orthodox Ryanism overlaid with reckless protectionism in the form of the tariffs, plus a lot of bombast — isn’t enough to prevent good Democratic candidates from bringing back some of those voters. And that could have an impact on Democratic chances of winning the House this fall, since that turns in part on whether they can put some of these more working-class districts in play.

quote:

Op maandag 12 maart 2018 18:36 schreef Ulx het volgende:

[..]

Morgen is het toch?

twitter:

SethAbramson twitterde op maandag 12-03-2018 om 17:52:41 In light of today's feature story on Felix Sater, I'm re-upping this thread on Sater I wrote two and a half months ago. Glad major media is finally focusing on Sater's *present* ties to the FBI, not merely his historical ones. https://t.co/77vXai8Y06 reageer retweet

twitter:

SethAbramson twitterde op dinsdag 02-01-2018 om 16:06:26 (THREAD) The evidence that Trump business partner Felix Sater is a cooperating individual in the Mueller probe is now overwhelming—and if he is, he's the most dangerous witness against Trump Mueller has (and that *includes* Flynn and Papadopoulos). I hope you'll read and share. https://t.co/e4c6UR5Fy6 reageer retweet

quote:

Op maandag 12 maart 2018 16:48 schreef Tchock het volgende:

[..]

Wat is die Daniels ook een ongelofelijke muts, hè. Vlak voor de verkiezingen accepteer je een schijntje om een verhaal niet naar buiten te brengen wat Trump wellicht het presidentschap had kunnen kosten, terwijl ze er eerder al van alles over had verteld in interviews. Vervolgens gaat ze met die NDA op zak langs allerlei praatprogramma's om interviews van niks te geven en daarna gaat ze ineens bij de rechter het contract van tafel proberen te krijgen.

En dan aanbieden dat je het geld wel terug wil geven.

quote:

Op maandag 12 maart 2018 18:44 schreef PippenScottie het volgende:

[..]

Vrij briljant wat ze nu doet.

Trump wordt nu gedwongen om

a) toe te geven dat hij een affaire heeft gehad met een pornoster en hiervoor zwijggeld heeft betaald. Dit zet vervolgens de deur open ok te onderzoeken of hiervoor, illegaal, campagnegeld is gebruikt.

b) te ontkennen dat er sprake is van een geheimhoudingsverklaring. Wat Daniels de vrijheid geeft om haar verhaal te vertellen. Mocht ze inderdaad foto’s, video’s of voicemails bezitten dan bereikt dit presidentschap een nieuw dieptepunt.

Hoe dan ook, de VS heeft een president die vatbaar is voor chantage en het is een legitieme vraag hoeveel andere Stormy Danielsen er zijn en wat zij voor hun stilte terugkrijgen.

quote:

Op maandag 12 maart 2018 18:47 schreef martijnde3de het volgende:

[..]

Wie was hier ook alweer de gene die beweerde dat Trump goede banden had met de maffia( niet dat ik dat geloof )? Als dat zo is, dan kan Stormy binnenkort gaan zwemmen met een stuk beton.

quote:

Everything You Need To Know About The Pennsylvania 18th Special Election

March came in like a lion; will it go out with a Lamb? Voters in Pennsylvania’s 18th Congressional District will decide that on Tuesday as they vote in the first of many federal elections in 2018. Like in previous races for Georgia’s 6th Congressional District and Alabama’s U.S. Senate seat, the party that wins the Pennsylvania special election will be said to have the momentum heading into the pivotal midterm elections later this year. In our view, that’s a bit overblown — in reality, it’s the margin of victory that tells us what to expect in midterm results, and Democrat Conor Lamb is likely to overperform in Pennsylvania no matter who wins. We will still be watching that margin closely, though, and a decisive victory by Republican Rick Saccone could be a sign that that something in the political environment has changed. So here’s what you need to know to follow the race.

1. The partisanship
This seat became vacant in October 2017 after the resignation of GOP Rep. Tim Murphy, who admitted to an extramarital affair and allegedly asked his mistress to have an abortion despite his stated pro-life views. Before the scandal, the Republican had won eight consecutive elections in this district1 by margins of no fewer than 15 percentage points. In both 2014 and 2016, no Democrat even bothered to run against Murphy. President Trump carried the 18th District by nearly 20 points (58 percent to 39 percent); Mitt Romney won it by a similar margin in 2012. According to FiveThirtyEight’s weighted average of presidential results,2 the Pennsylvania 18th is 21 percentage points more Republican-leaning than the nation as a whole.

That’s very red — but so were most of the other places where we’ve seen special elections so far this cycle, and Democrats in the vast majority of those races have consistently done better than the partisan leans of their districts would predict. The margin in federal special elections specifically has moved 16 points toward Democrats compared to each constituency’s usual partisan lean. If that happens again in Pennsylvania, Democrats will be nipping at Republicans’ heels.

But there’s reason to believe the swing in Pennsylvania could be even greater. First, in special elections for Pennsylvania state legislative offices this cycle, Democrats have outperformed expectations to an even greater degree: a 29-point shift in the margin. Second, the Pennsylvania 18th is actually ancestrally Democratic. Before Murphy was elected in 2002, the area3 was represented by Democrat Frank Mascara, who opposed abortion and gun control and projected a blue-collar image. That legacy lingers today in the fact that there are still more registered Democrats in the district than registered Republicans (46 percent of registered voters to 41 percent). Even though they’ve grown accustomed to voting Republican for president, voters in the 18th clearly aren’t opposed to casting a ballot for Democrats under the right circumstances. For example, the area currently within the 18th Congressional District voted for Sen. Bob Casey, who also campaigned as a pro-life, pro-gun Democrat, by 11 points in 2006.

2. The players
And lo and behold, Lamb fits the same socially-conservative-Democrat mold. A 33-year-old former federal prosecutor and Marine, Lamb says he is personally opposed to abortion4 and opposes new gun control laws. His GOP opponent Saccone, meanwhile, is a four-term state representative who brags he “was Trump before Trump was Trump.” Saccone is known as a rock-ribbed conservative but not as a strong fundraiser: He has raised almost $920,000 for the race and claimed just over $300,000 cash on hand as of Feb. 21. By contrast, Lamb has raked in $3.9 million and was sitting on a nearly $840,000 war chest.

Saccone won’t lack for resources, however, thanks to the GOP cavalry. As of Friday, independent-expenditure groups, including the Congressional Leadership Fund and National Republican Congressional Committee, had spent almost $10.5 million to prop up Saccone; Democratic outside groups had put in just $1.8 million. Even with Lamb’s $3.1 million in spending, liberal forces are being heavily outspent. The Democratic dollars are going farther, however, because candidates benefit from lower TV advertising rates than outside groups do. As of the beginning of March, 42 percent of broadcast TV ads aired so far were pro-Lamb, while 58 percent were pro-Saccone.

3. The polling
Four pollsters5 have surveyed the Pennsylvania 18th in the past month, and they all agree that the race is within the margin of error. Here are the latest numbers:

The two candidates are essentially tied in the average of the polls (although, for what it’s worth, Monmouth, the only FiveThirtyEight gold-standard pollster6 to look at the race, has Saccone ahead by 3 points7). However, despite the fact that the polls show a tight race, even a runaway win by one of these candidates wouldn’t be that much of a shocker. Polls of U.S. House races already carry a lot of uncertainty, and they’re even less reliable for special elections. Since 2004, polls taken within three weeks of a special House election have missed the final result by an average of 5 percentage points, and their true margin of error was 13 percentage points in either direction.

4. The political geography
Taking in coal mines, covered bridges, wealthy suburbs and lush state parks, the Pennsylvania 18th stretches from Pennsylvania’s southwest corner up north past Pittsburgh International Airport to the Ohio River, then cuts east across the Monongahela River to the Laurel Highlands. It encompasses parts of four counties: Allegheny (home to 43 percent of the district’s voters, based on 2016 presidential results), Westmoreland (33 percent), Washington (22 percent) and Greene (2 percent).

The 18th District’s slice of Allegheny County consists of Pittsburgh’s southwestern suburbs and is a swing region — Democrats typically find most of their votes here. The other three counties, more rural and far-flung, are normally Republican strongholds, although they have strong historical ties to organized labor, a traditionally Democratic constituency.

If you’re watching the special election results as they come in (polls close at 8 p.m. Eastern), pay attention to these county-by-county variations; they can help you project the ultimate winner. Assuming that the whole district shifts left or right uniformly (more on this in a second), we’ve calculated an approximate benchmark for how we would expect each county to vote if the election were exactly tied districtwide. If the counties are voting more Republican than their benchmarks, then Saccone is on pace to win. If they’re voting more Democratic, then Lamb is ahead. (The not-so-grisly math behind these benchmarks: We used the same weighted average of the last two presidential elections to arrive at a partisan lean for each county, then moved it 21 points in Democrats’ direction — because that’s how much the entire district needs to shift leftward to deliver Lamb a victory.)

ranted, the district may not shift uniformly. Westmoreland, Washington and Greene all voted much more Republican with Trump on the ticket than with Romney, while Trump seemed to scare away some Romney voters in Allegheny. Lamb’s Blue Dog appeal may mean he wins over more Obama-Trump voters than Romney-Clinton voters, making the 2016 election a poor template for 2018. In such a scenario, it’s quite possible that Lamb misses the mark in Allegheny but still wins the election by overperforming in Westmoreland and Washington, so use these benchmarks with a grain of salt.

5. The aftermath
Tuesday will likely be the last time you hear about a competitive district in the Pennsylvania 18th, but whoever emerges victorious in the special will likely have to fight hard to keep his seat in the regularly scheduled November 2018 election. How can this be? Earlier this year, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court struck down the state’s current congressional map as too gerrymandered in favor of the GOP; in February, the court imposed new district lines that are friendlier to Democrats. The new map splits most of the current 18th District between the new heavily Republican 14th District and the swingier, suburban 17th District.

If Saccone wins on Tuesday, he has said that he would seek re-election in the 14th, but if Lamb wins, he is expected to go after the 17th, even though he would have to face incumbent Republican Rep. Keith Rothfus there. Of course, the loser could decide to take a second bite of the apple in either the 14th or the 17th as well. After all these long hours of campaigning and millions of dollars spent, it’s entirely possible that, at the beginning of 2019, Conor Lamb and Rick Saccone will both be members of Congress.

Both will also have to decide their next moves almost immediately after the last drink is poured at their election-night watch parties on Tuesday. The deadline to file to run in November is March 20, one week later.

quote:

Op maandag 12 maart 2018 19:13 schreef martijnde3de het volgende:
De belangrijkste Senaatsverkiezingen:

Gop moet zich vooral gaat richten op de staten met een Trump-approval van boven de 50%, terwijl de democraten een goede kans hebben op Florida.

[ afbeelding ]

quote:

Op maandag 12 maart 2018 19:19 schreef livelink het volgende:

[..]

Wat opvalt is dat de democratische kandidaten al bekend zijn, terwijl nog lang niet alle republikeinse kandidaten bekend zijn zo te zien. Hebben de Republikeinen zoveel moeite om kandidaten te vinden?

quote:

Op maandag 12 maart 2018 19:21 schreef westwoodblvd het volgende:

[..]

Komt omdat de democraten allemaal incumbents zijn terwijl in veel gevallen de Republikeinse primary nog moet plaatsvinden.

quote:

House Intelligence Panel Wraps Up Russia Probe Interviews (WSJ)
Committee is set to write a report as Senate and Mueller investigations continue

WASHINGTON—The House Intelligence Committee has finished interviewing witnesses in its yearlong probe into Russian interference in the 2016 election, according to a person familiar with the matter, signaling the end is near of a contentious investigation that has revealed deep partisan divisions on the panel.

The Republican-run committee is now preparing to write a report based on the testimony of dozens of witnesses and thousands of pages of documents.

The panel has interviewed more than 50 individuals, the last of whom was Corey Lewandowski, the former manager of Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign, who testified last week. The panel didn’t interview the president, but it did call many of his closest aides and confidants over the course of the investigation, including his son-in-law Jared Kushner, his son Donald Trump Jr. and his former senior strategist Steve Bannon.

Republicans on the committee and in the full House of Representatives think it is now time to conclude the panel’s investigation, according to people familiar with the matter. A Senate panel, the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, is conducting a similar investigation. Both are aimed at establishing public accountability.

Separately, special counsel Robert Mueller is conducting a criminal investigation into Russian interference and any ties to Trump associates in that effort, as well as other matters. That Mueller probe has returned several indictments of former Trump associates.

The aim of both the House and Senate probes has been to examine further a January 2017 conclusion from the U.S. intelligence community that the highest levels of the Russian government were involved in directing the electoral interference to boost Mr. Trump at the expense of his Democratic rival Hillary Clinton. Russia’s tactics included efforts to hack state election systems; infiltrating and leaking information from party committees and political strategists; and disseminating through social media and other outlets negative stories about Mrs. Clinton and positive ones about Mr. Trump, the report said.

Mr. Trump has denied any collusion between his campaign and Russia, and Moscow has repeatedly denied any government effort to influence the U.S. election. Three Russian companies and 13 Russian citizens were indicted last month on charges of engaging in a widespread effort to interfere in the 2016 presidential election.

Since last year, Democrats on the House committee have said they are unhappy with what they deem a lack of thoroughness in the GOP-run investigation. In late February, they publicly identified six individuals whom they wanted to subpoena and several topic areas they thought warranted additional inquiry, but they were rebuffed by the Republican leaders on the committee.

The chairman of the committee, Rep. Devin Nunes (R., Calif.), temporarily stepped aside from leading the Russia investigation last year after he was accused of mishandling classified information.

In March 2017, he said at a news conferences on Capitol Hill that secret documents he had viewed confirmed U.S. intelligence officials had collected information about Trump transition aides while spying on foreign officials, and had improperly disseminated details about the Americans.

It was later revealed that Mr. Nunes got that information from the White House.

Texas Republican Rep. Mike Conaway took the reins of the probe last April. An ethics investigation later cleared Mr. Nunes of any wrongdoing in his handling of classified information, but he has largely allowed Mr. Conaway to finish the investigation.

The Senate panel has functioned with more bipartisan cooperation and is also in the writing stage of its own reports on Russia.

The Senate panel’s first product is expected to be an election security report for state and local governments, to be released in coming weeks. The lead authors on that report are a bipartisan duo, Republican James Lankford of Oklahoma and Democrat Kamala Harris of California. The Senate panel expects to produce additional reports on social media, potential collusion and other topics related to the investigation.

quote:

Op maandag 12 maart 2018 19:33 schreef Pietverdriet het volgende:
Trump wil de import uit de EU zwaar gaan belasten, staal, alu, auto’s en klaagt dat zij hun landbouwproducten niet kunnen exporteren.
Waar heeft hij het eigenlijk over? Welke landbouwproducten mogen de EU niet in?

quote:

Op maandag 12 maart 2018 19:33 schreef Pietverdriet het volgende:
Trump wil de import uit de EU zwaar gaan belasten, staal, alu, auto’s en klaagt dat zij hun landbouwproducten niet kunnen exporteren.
Waar heeft hij het eigenlijk over? Welke landbouwproducten mogen de EU niet in?

quote:

Op maandag 12 maart 2018 19:39 schreef ExtraWaskracht het volgende:

[..]

Zonder bron is het wat lastig om hierop te reageren. Ik weet wel dat de EU voornemens is om bepaalde landbouwproducten extra te belasten als reactie op zijn verhoging van het importtarief op staal, zie bv. hier. Dit betreft bv. mais en sinaasappel(sap) en andere landbouwproducten volgens dat artikel... mss dat hij dat bedoelt?

quote:

Op maandag 12 maart 2018 19:45 schreef thesiren.nl het volgende:

[..]

Was dat niet genetisch gemodificeerde landbouwprodukten en groeihormonenvlees?

quote:

Op maandag 12 maart 2018 19:46 schreef Pietverdriet het volgende:

[..]

Nee, hij bedoeld dat de EU gestraft moet worden omdat zijn hun landbouwproducten niet kwijt kunnen

quote:

Op maandag 12 maart 2018 18:44 schreef PippenScottie het volgende:

[..]

Vrij briljant wat ze nu doet.

Trump wordt nu gedwongen om

a) toe te geven dat hij een affaire heeft gehad met een pornoster en hiervoor zwijggeld heeft betaald. Dit zet vervolgens de deur open ok te onderzoeken of hiervoor, illegaal, campagnegeld is gebruikt.

b) te ontkennen dat er sprake is van een geheimhoudingsverklaring. Wat Daniels de vrijheid geeft om haar verhaal te vertellen. Mocht ze inderdaad foto’s, video’s of voicemails bezitten dan bereikt dit presidentschap een nieuw dieptepunt.

Hoe dan ook, de VS heeft een president die vatbaar is voor chantage en het is een legitieme vraag hoeveel andere Stormy Danielsen er zijn en wat zij voor hun stilte terugkrijgen.

quote:

Op maandag 12 maart 2018 19:54 schreef ExtraWaskracht het volgende:

[..]

Ja, maar wat is de context van deze uitspraak dan? Hij haalt wel vaker oorzaak en gevolg door elkaar... en Joost-mag-weten wat zijn bronnen dan weer zouden zijn. Vaak is het gewoon wat als laatste in het nieuws was, en wat dan leugenachtig wordt verdraaid of geprojecteerd...

quote:

Countries with European Preferential Treatment Gaining Market Share

Currently, the EU has preferential trade agreements in place with more than 50 countries, including important agricultural and food producers such as CAFTA-DR countries, South Africa, Chile, Colombia, Peru, and Mexico among many others. Shipments of agricultural and food products from these countries to the EU more than doubled in the last fifteen years, while U.S. sales increased at a considerably lower rate. Moreover, the market share of U.S. exports has been declining, while European trade partners enjoying preferential agreements have notably increased their market participation over the same period. Tariff preferences granted to these countries give them an advantage over U.S. exports.

quote:

Op maandag 12 maart 2018 20:29 schreef livelink het volgende:

[..]

Nu is de balans wel erg zoek in import en export tussen de EU en de VS als het gaat om landbouwproducten.

hier een analyse. Lijkt er ook mee te maken te hebben dat de EU betere handelsafspraken heeft met andere landen dan de VS.

[..]

quote:

U.S. Posts Biggest Budget Deficit Since 2012 (Bloomberg)

The U.S. recorded a $215 billion budget deficit in February -- its biggest in six years -- as revenue declined.

Fiscal income dropped to $156 billion, down 9 percent from a year earlier, while spending rose 2 percent to $371 billion, the Treasury Department said on Monday. The deficit for the fiscal year that began in October widened to $391 billion, compared with a $351 billion shortfall the same period a year earlier, according to the Treasury report.

The data underscore concerns by some economists that Republican tax cuts enacted this year could increase the U.S. government debt load, which has surpassed $20 trillion. The tax changes are expected to reduce federal revenue by more than $1 trillion over the next decade, while a $300 billion spending deal reached by Congress in February could push the deficit higher.

Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin has said the tax cuts will pay for themselves through faster economic growth.

A combination of higher income tax refunds and a drop in the withholding of individual income and payroll taxes led to the reduction in receipts, according to an analysis by the Congressional Budget Office released last week.

“Increases in wages and salaries were more than offset by a decline in the share of wages withheld for taxes,” the CBO said. That trend reflects new guidance issued in January by the Internal Revenue Service over how much of employees’ paychecks should be withheld based on the new tax rules, according to the CBO.

The deficit in February was also impacted by the timing of certain payments, CBO said.

quote:

Op maandag 12 maart 2018 20:43 schreef ExtraWaskracht het volgende:

[..]

Ja, het kan natuurlijk zijn dat hij het weer eens had over de handelsbalans en in dit geval dan specifiek over landbouwproducten, maar zonder context is dat giswerk. Verder zei Pietverdriet dat ze hun producten hier niet kwijt zouden kunnen, wat zou duiden op een of andere onevenredige barriere of verbod.

Ik weet trouwens niet goed wat je bedoelt met dat de balans wel erg zoek is als het gaat om landbouwproducten. Het lijkt erop alsof je vindt dat het uitmaakt, maar ik zie niet in waarom dat uit zou maken.

quote:

Op maandag 12 maart 2018 20:56 schreef ExtraWaskracht het volgende:

[..]

quote:

Op maandag 12 maart 2018 20:57 schreef livelink het volgende:

[..]

Het maakt in die zin uit dat de VS hun export naar de EU heeft zien afzwakken ten gunste van landen die kennelijk met de EU andere afspraken hebben gemaakt en andere tarieven hebben afgesproken. En dat zie je dus duidelijk terug in bijvoorbeeld deze grafieken.

[ afbeelding ]

Ik kan me goed voorstellen dat dit voor de VS een zorgelijke ontwikkeling is en dat ze daar iets aan willen veranderen. De manier waarop Trump dat doet lijkt me minder efficiënt.

quote:

Op maandag 12 maart 2018 21:00 schreef ExtraWaskracht het volgende:

[..]

Ja, dat kan allemaal, maar ik heb nog steeds geen idee over welke uitspraak het nu gaat van Trump... om een of andere reden wordt daar geen duidelijkheid over verschaft.

twitter:

realDonaldTrump twitterde op maandag 12-03-2018 om 13:20:03 Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross will be speaking with representatives of the European Union about eliminating the large Tariffs and Barriers they use against the U.S.A. Not fair to our farmers and manufacturers. reageer retweet

quote:

Op maandag 12 maart 2018 21:03 schreef livelink het volgende:

[..]

Trump zal nooit ergens duidelijkheid over verschaffen. Hij heeft er zelf kennelijk geen enkele behoefte aan om kennis te vergaren en kennelijk voelt verder ook niemand in het Witte Huis zich geroepen om dingen te verduidelijken.

Dus het klopt dat dit mijn eigen interpretatie van zijn tweet is. Ik zou het graag anders zien.
Deze tweet dus

twitter:

realDonaldTrump twitterde op maandag 12-03-2018 om 13:20:03 Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross will be speaking with representatives of the European Union about eliminating the large Tariffs and Barriers they use against the U.S.A. Not fair to our farmers and manufacturers. reageer retweet

quote:

By 9 a.m. Friday, Greg Scheurich already had fielded his fifth call of the day from a metals importer trying to determine how President Trump’s new tariffs would work. “It’s really confusing, tough to understand,” said Scheurich, president of CNC Machine Products, a manufacturer of bearing components. For Scheurich, the perplexing thing about Trump’s tariffs on imported steel is that, in the name of helping U.S. steel makers, the president may be dooming some other American companies like his.

In the nation’s capital, the new import taxes are viewed as a turn by the United States toward economic nationalism as well as a chance for the president to deliver on a promise to his working-class constituency.

For Scheurich, 69, whose production of industrial parts depends almost entirely on importing specialized steel from Japan and Sweden, the restrictions on foreign-made metals pose a direct threat to his business. Though the president insists tariffs will force companies like his to “Buy American,” Scheurich confronts a more complex globalized reality. “What people don’t understand about the steels I use is it doesn’t have anything to do with price. I’ve tried to find domestic sources,” he said. “ ... I’m not importing it because of price. I’m importing it because of quality and (because) I can get it.”

Scheurich said he has to buy from foreign companies because decades of consolidation in the domestic steel industry have left few U.S. mills producing the high-quality steel he requires. The limited amount of American steel he can obtain too often has obvious flaws, he said.

The president’s 25 percent import tax will effectively cut him off from his steel suppliers and starve his business. CNC’s customers will buy their parts from manufacturers outside the U.S. rather than absorb his higher costs, he said. “If they would give me options about where to go domestically — no problem!” he said. “I don’t think they understand; I got nowhere else to go.”

SPOILER

CNC is among scores of U.S. companies that depend upon foreign steel mills for specialized products they cannot obtain — or cannot obtain in sufficient quantities — at home. In the weeks ahead, they all will be lining up at the Commerce Department to seek relief from the president’s new trade barriers.

To endure a bearing’s wear and tear inside a construction vehicle, wind turbine or even a dental drill requires specific materials. The bars, tubings and forgings Scheurich uses to produce his components are made of a specialized steel bolstered, or alloyed, with elements such as nickel or chromium to enhance their strength and corrosion resistance.

As the domestic steel making industry has shrunk to a fewer number of companies, such specialized production has gotten squeezed. Only 7 percent of U.S. production is of alloy or stainless steel, according to Platts, a market research firm.

Oil pipeline companies, which need special gathering lines, casings and tubing made of alloy steel, have no choice but to look overseas. according to John Stoody, vice president of the Association of Oil Pipe Lines.

“Higher production costs for a niche market subject to cyclical swings in the oil sector led U.S. producers to shift to more higher volume and reliable products and markets,” Stoody said via email.

The U.S. migration away from such specialized production has been spurred by intense import competition. The U.S. last year imported more than 6.3 million tons of steel alloy products, up nearly 75 percent since 2002, according to the Commerce Department. That is a far faster rate than steel imports overall, which rose 16 percent during the same period to 34­­ million tons.

Even as U.S. demand for such products was growing, the number of specialty steel producers in the U.S. dropped by half since the 1970s, Denny Oates, chairman of an industry trade group, testified before a Commerce Department investigation last year. The industry blames dumping by foreign producers, especially from China.

“These producers have suffered from the problems of competition with subsidized and dumped imports, abetted by excess capacity abroad,” said Ron Lorentzen, a former Commerce Department trade official.

In November, the Commerce Department concluded that companies from Russia, Belarus and the United Arab Emirates were guilty of dumping carbon and alloy wire rod in the U.S. and assessed duties that exceeded 400 percent on some products.

Over his three decades at CNC’s helm, Scheurich has adapted to a series of competitive challenges.

In the late 1990s, Scheurich bought about half of his annual steel needs from U.S. mills. But today, he can obtain from U.S. mills only about 2 percent of his $10 million in annual steel purchases.

The quality of the domestic steel that Scheurich can acquire is often disappointing. Showing a visitor around his 50,000 square foot factory, Scheurich points out the differences between immaculate steel forgings from Japan and an American alternative.

“Look at this!” he says, pointing to visible imperfections in the surface of the U.S. product.

Along with foreign materials, Scheurich relies upon foreign technology to produce his customized parts. A new $1.5 million Japanese automated machine tool turns generic steel bars into precision crafted parts. A $275,000 robot is on order. Scheurich said he tries to replace his equipment every four or five years, to keep abreast of technology — something he says U.S. steel producers have failed to do.

Developing CNC’s border-straddling supply lines took time and was not without headaches. Scheurich’s customers require him to use certain mills and securing approval for a new one involves a cumbersome process that lasts at least six months.

He nurtured ties with his Swedish suppliers on annual moose-hunting excursions and forged relationships with Japanese executives over endless rounds of golf. When he first turned to Japanese mills, his father Raymond, a U.S. Air Force veteran of the war in the Pacific, stopped talking to him for a time.

Concern over the tariffs’ impact is evident on the factory floor, where workers average hourly wages of $16 to $20. Some wonder what will be the cost of the president’s effort to boost employment at steel mills and aluminum smelters.

“I can kind of see what they’re trying to do — make more jobs,” said Bobby Beyer, 21, a machine operator. “But at the same time, it’s also taking jobs away from other people.”

Across the floor, machinist Michael Elabed, 27, gestured toward his bosses and said: “If it hurts these guys, it hurts me.”

As the tariff imbroglio flared over the past week, Scheurich found himself monitoring events in Washington, including the visit of Sweden’s prime minister Stefan Lofven to the White House. Trump used the occasion to reassure his guest that he would impose the tariffs in “a very loving way.”

In his announcement, the president invited U.S. trading partners to haggle over whether they could find other ways to address U.S. security worries other than paying the new import taxes. He also set in motion a bureaucratic process that could determine whether CNC Machine Products lives or dies.

The company’s fortunes rest upon one paragraph in the proclamation the president signed Thursday, which authorized Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross to establish a process for excluding from the tariffs any steel products “determined not to be produced in the United States in a sufficient and reasonably available amount or of a satisfactory quality.”

The Commerce Department has until March 18 to determine how to adjudicate exclusion requests. In 2002, the last time the U.S. imposed tariffs on imported steel, a similar process was established four months before the tariffs went into effect. President George W. Bush included the first group of exempted products in the tariff proclamation, allowing Scheurich’s production to proceed without interruption.

Today, he has enough inventory to cover the next few months, though less than he would like. He suspects his next shipment from Japan, due March 15, will be smaller than usual.

“It’s a bump in the road, but it’s a big one,” he said of the tariffs, standing in his factory. “If I can’t figure something out, we could close her down.”

Scheurich, and many of his employees, voted for Trump and remain supporters. He even likes the idea of tariffs, just targeted more narrowly at China. The president’s policies have aided the company, which booked about $22 million in revenue last year, he said.

Now, along with his son, Jeff, the company’s vice president for manufacturing, Scheurich is banking on the notion that the tariffs are just the visible element of a presidential negotiating strategy.

“I’m hoping there’s something behind it, which I think there is,” said Jeff, alluding to Trump’s self-image as a master negotiator.

“We’re hoping,” Scheurich said.

“We’re hoping,” his son repeated.

quote:

Op maandag 12 maart 2018 20:58 schreef Tchock het volgende:

[..]

Sinds oktober is het tekort al bijna net zo groot als in de hele jaren 2014, 15 of 16.

quote:

Op maandag 12 maart 2018 21:15 schreef ExtraWaskracht het volgende:

[..]

En dat in een hoogconjunctuur. Wordt nog leuk als ze daarmee doorgaan en er straks weer een recessie is.

quote:

Op maandag 12 maart 2018 21:18 schreef Tchock het volgende:

[..]

De blits maken met het uitdelen van een belastingkorting over de rug van toekomstige generaties.

Toch klassiek meer iets voor links, maar Trump is er uitstekend in. En de GOP gaat er ook gewoon in mee, de partij van de fiscale verantwoordelijkheid.

quote:

Op maandag 12 maart 2018 21:28 schreef Kijkertje het volgende:

[..]

TRUMP: 'Phase 2' tax cut might be on the way

quote:

Op maandag 12 maart 2018 21:28 schreef Kijkertje het volgende:

[..]

TRUMP: 'Phase 2' tax cut might be on the way

quote:

Op maandag 12 maart 2018 19:33 schreef Pietverdriet het volgende:
Trump wil de import uit de EU zwaar gaan belasten, staal, alu, auto’s en klaagt dat zij hun landbouwproducten niet kunnen exporteren.
Waar heeft hij het eigenlijk over? Welke landbouwproducten mogen de EU niet in?

quote:

Op maandag 12 maart 2018 22:43 schreef Monolith het volgende:
Nog steeds wel gewoon toss-up lijkt me, al is het inderdaad wel zo dat opkomst allesbepalend gaat zijn.

quote:

Op maandag 12 maart 2018 22:56 schreef ExtraWaskracht het volgende:

[..]

MoE van 5.1%. Aardig in tossup gebied dus nog idd.

quote:

House Republicans say no evidence of collusion as they end Russia probe

Republicans on the House Intelligence Committee announced Monday they found no evidence that the Trump campaign colluded with Russia and that they are shutting down their yearlong investigation.

The committee's Republicans are also disagreeing with the intelligence community's assessment that Russian President Vladimir Putin was trying to help the Trump campaign over Hillary Clinton, a notion that aligns with President Donald Trump's viewpoint on election meddling.
The conclusions will be met with sharp disagreement from Democrats and are bound to inflame partisan tensions on a committee that's been beleaguered by partisanship throughout the course of its Russia probe.

Rep. Mike Conaway, the Texas Republican leading the Russia investigation, said Monday that the committee had concluded its interviews for the Russia investigation, and the Republican staff had prepared a 150-page draft report that they would give to Democrats to review on Tuesday morning.
"We found no evidence of collusion, and so we found perhaps some bad judgment, inappropriate meetings," Conaway said. "We found no evidence of any collusion of anything people were actually doing, other than taking a meeting they shouldn't have taken or just inadvertently being in the same building."
Democrats say there are still scores of witnesses the committee should call, and argue that Republicans have failed to use subpoenas to obtain documents and require witnesses to answer questions that are central to the investigation.

SPOILER

Conaway told reporters that he feels the committee has investigated all avenues it needed to probe, and he argued that the panel would not have been able to obtain the information Democrats were seeking had they gone the route of subpoenaing witnesses or trying to hold them in contempt.
Conaway, for instance, said the June 2016 Trump Tower meeting between senior campaign officials and a Russian lawyer where dirt on Clinton was promised was "ill advised." But he said that the committee did not turn up any evidence of collusion, arguing the promoter who organized the meeting had exaggerated what the Russians would provide.
The committee's report will conclude that they agree with 98% of the intelligence community's January 2017 assessment that Russia meddled in the 2016 election, according to a committee aide.
But the panel's Republicans take issue with the key finding that Putin was trying get Trump elected. Conaway said it was clear the Russians were trying to sow discord in the 2016 US election, but Republicans did not establish the same conclusions as the CIA that they specifically were trying to help Trump.
The committee's Russia investigation included interviews with 73 witnesses and a review of roughly 300,000 pages of documents, Conaway said. They included key figures like Donald Trump Jr., Jared Kushner and Steve Bannon, but Democrats have argued that those witnesses failed to fully provide documents or answer important questions.
Conaway said he hopes that Democrats can work with Republicans on the draft report, and he wants to take their feedback as they shape the final report. He declined to put a timeline on when the report would be made public, as the committee intends to submit it to the intelligence community for declassification beforehand.
Conaway said Democrats will agree with some elements of the report, such as the social media interference, but he acknowledged they'd take issue with others.
It's widely expected Democrats will draft their own report that argues a case for collusion, as well as spells out all the avenues the committee did not investigate.
In addition to subpoenas and witnesses, Democrats have long raised issues about looking into Trump's finances, something the committee had not probed. Conaway said he saw no "link" between Trump's finances and the committee's investigation, and he did not want to go on a fishing expedition.
The Republican report will also say how "anti-Trump research" made its way from Russian sources to the Clinton campaign through the opposition research dossier on Trump and Russia. Conaway, however, stopped short of saying there was "collusion" between Clinton's campaign and the Russians, something the President has alleged.
The end of the Russia interviews is only the latest battleground on the House Intelligence Committee, which has been consumed by partisan fights for the better part of a year, from Chairman Devin Nunes' role in the investigation and more recently over competing memos about alleged surveillance abuses at the FBI during the Obama administration.
Several Republicans on the panel have been signaling for several weeks now that they're ready for the Russia investigation to wrap up, arguing that Democrats are trying to extend the probe into the campaign season.
"To me, I don't see anything else that's out there that hasn't been explored," Rep. Pete King, a New York Republican, told CNN last week.
But Democrats say the committee has raced through its final interviews, while allowing witnesses to pick and choose which questions they answer.
The committee issued a subpoena to former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon in January, but in his return testimony he still did not answer questions about his time in the White House.
Democrats also sought subpoenas for the committee's last two witnesses, outgoing White House communications director Hope Hicks and former Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski, but Republicans did not issue them.
"There are a number of steps that I think any credible investigator would say, 'These need to be done,' and we still hope that they will be," Schiff said following Lewandowski's interview last week.
There are still two committees in the Senate that are investigating Russia's 2016 election meddling: the Senate Intelligence and Judiciary Committees.
Still, only the Senate Intelligence Committee appears to be pushing forward at full speed on its probe, as Senate Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley is preparing to release transcripts of the committee's interviews with participants of the June 2016 Trump Tower meeting — a potential sign the committee is done investigating that matter.
The Senate Intelligence Committee is preparing to put out recommendations and hold a hearing on election security this month. Senate Intelligence Chairman Richard Burr has said he's separating out the election security issues for the 2018 primary season while the committee continues to investigate questions about collusion and the 2016 election.

quote:

Op maandag 12 maart 2018 23:18 schreef Mike het volgende:

[..]

Link: https://edition.cnn.com/2(...)nclusions/index.html

Niet echt verrassend dit.

quote:

Op maandag 12 maart 2018 23:18 schreef Mike het volgende:

[..]

Link: https://edition.cnn.com/2(...)nclusions/index.html

Niet echt verrassend dit.

quote:

Several witnesses thought to be central to the investigation never came before the panel, including Mr. Trump’s former campaign chairman Paul Manafort, his deputy, Rick Gates, Mr. Trump’s former National Security Adviser, Michael Flynn, and his campaign foreign policy adviser George Papadopoulos, all of whom are under indictment by the special counsel.

Others, including George Nader, an adviser to the United Arab Emirates with ties to current and former Trump aides, only recently came to the committee’s attention.

quote:

Op maandag 12 maart 2018 23:18 schreef Mike het volgende:

[..]

Link: https://edition.cnn.com/2(...)nclusions/index.html

Niet echt verrassend dit.

quote:

“We have not been informed that there will not be any more interviews conducted; we have also not been informed that the investigation has ended,” a senior Democratic aide on the committee said.

WSJ

quote:

Op maandag 12 maart 2018 23:24 schreef SureD1 het volgende:

[..]

Ben benieuwd naar Schiff zijn kijk op de zaak...

quote:

Op maandag 12 maart 2018 21:50 schreef Monolith het volgende:

[..]

Ze moeten eerst maar eens wat reparatiewerk gaan uitvoeren op de veel te haastig ingevoerde 'phase 1'.

twitter:

kylegriffin1 twitterde op maandag 12-03-2018 om 22:55:15 These stories all came out TODAY:—Ivanka still connected to Trump Org. https://t.co/c6GAmBh8Ij—Don Jr. has biz ties to Trump donor who's pitched to the gov't https://t.co/9KgVhsqS1K—Qataris believe they have evidence of illicit influence by UAE on Jared https://t.co/MOTUf1rrFZ reageer retweet

quote:

Op dinsdag 13 maart 2018 01:26 schreef Eficaz het volgende:
Rick Saccone

Rick Saccone on rallying with Trump in Pennsylvania

quote:

Op maandag 12 maart 2018 13:53 schreef Monolith het volgende:

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Jij denkt dat de prijselasticiteit van motoren of whisky nul of zelfs negatief is en dan ook nog voor specifieke merken? De Schotse whiskymarkt ondervindt het tegenovergestelde. Over Harley heb ik gisteren nog een artikel gepost.
En waar een prijsstijging vanuit het bedrijf zelf nog ten goed komt aan de omzet, is dit puur het opdrijven van de prijs zonder dat dit ten goede komt aan het bedrijfsresultaat. Gevolg is dat je volumedaling dan dus ook niet (deels) wordt gecompenseerd door prijsstijgingen van het product.
En de <kleur> label whiskylijn is van Johnnie Walker, niet van Jack Daniels.

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Op maandag 12 maart 2018 16:28 schreef Tijger_m het volgende:

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Waarom is dat zinvoller als je weet dat je eigen producten dan tarieven opgelegd krijgen in het buitenland en juist die waardevolle producten daar last van gaan krijgen waarbij nog aangetekend kan worden dat de meeste buitenlandse producenten IN de VS produceren.

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Op maandag 12 maart 2018 13:08 schreef thesiren.nl het volgende:

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Dat noem eens een kleurtje is Johnny walker.
Maar inderdaad gericht op directe produkten die je niet goedkoop je land in wilt hebben Kun je wel wat spelen met tarieven. Maar gewoon staal roepen is niet slim, te veel industrieën zijn er afhankelijk van en sommige vormen maken ze in de us niet.
Het opzetten van een complete mill om hetzelfde staal van TATA na te maken gaat alleen een hoge kostenpost opleveren, en in de tussentijd gaan de prijzen voor eigen consumenten omhoog.
Dat blik voor zijn diet cokes komt dat ook niet van TATA?

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Op maandag 12 maart 2018 12:53 schreef klappernootopreis het volgende:

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Niet helemaal. Een president is in principe in dienst van zijn partij en de grondwet. Hij is geen alleenheerscher, hij hoort het beleid van zijn partij uit te dragen, en al dan niet bipartisan wetten door het congres te loodsen.

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Op maandag 12 maart 2018 12:54 schreef klappernootopreis het volgende:

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Hij heeft vaker dreigementen geuit mbt politieke acties. remember DACA?

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Op maandag 12 maart 2018 12:58 schreef Ulx het volgende:

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Gebakken lucht?

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Op maandag 12 maart 2018 23:24 schreef SureD1 het volgende:

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Ben benieuwd naar Schiff zijn kijk op de zaak...

Rep. Adam Schiff: GOP protecting Trump, not investigating

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Op dinsdag 13 maart 2018 04:36 schreef Kijkertje het volgende:

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Rep. Adam Schiff: GOP protecting Trump, not investigating

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Op dinsdag 13 maart 2018 08:15 schreef SureD1 het volgende:

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Dank! Precies wat ik dacht dus... party over country. Extrawaskracht ook dank voor het statement! Het zal van Mueller moeten komen! Ben eens benieuwd of de VS het VK gaat steunen als er vandaag sancties tegen Rusland worden genomen.

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Op dinsdag 13 maart 2018 08:20 schreef Vader_Aardbei het volgende:

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Lol, precies de zielige reactie die ik verwachtte hier te lezen. Mueller gaat met helemaal niets komen. Hij is bijna klaar en straks zal het uitlopen in een enorme teleurstelling voor de anti-Trumpets.

Sowieso schofterig om te doen alsof dit een Republikeins feestje is. Heel veel van die Republikeinen waren ook fervent anti-Trump. Ze hebben geen enkele reden om die man te beschermen. En er zaten ook Democraten in. Ze kunnen piepen en stotteren, maar er is niets partijdigs aan dit comite.

Face it. Dit is het begin van het einde van de ''DRUMPF werkte samen met Rusland'' discours. Bereid je maar voor.

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When Donald Trump came to office, many feared that he would break up our close economic relations with Mexico and/or start a trade war with China. So far, neither has happened.

It’s true that our free trade agreement with Mexico and Canada is still under threat, and Trump has placed tariffs on some Chinese goods. But his trade ire seems increasingly focused on an unexpected target: the European Union, which he tweeted has “horrific barriers & tariffs on U.S. products going in.”

This is odd on several levels. To the (very large) extent to which Trumpism is based on racial enmity, picking a fight with Europe, of all places, seems strange. Furthermore, the U.S. has always looked favorably on the E.U., which is, for all its faults, a major force for peace and democracy. Why rush into a spitting match with our allies that only serves the interests of enemies of freedom like Vladimir Putin? Oh, wait.

Beyond all that, however, Trump is just wrong on the facts. “U.S. exports to the European Union enjoy an average tariff of just 3 percent,” says the U.S. government’s own guide to exporters.

Where is Trump getting his misinformation?

SPOILER

Probably from Peter Navarro, his trade czar, whose star is clearly rising. And the story of Navarro’s rise tells you a lot about the nature of the Trump administration — a place that rewards sycophants who tell the boss what he wants to hear.

First, how was Navarro recruited? According to reporting in Vanity Fair by Sarah Ellison, now at The Washington Post, during the campaign Trump told Jared Kushner to find some research supporting his protectionist trade views. Kushner responded by going on Amazon, where he found a book titled “Death by China.” So he cold-called Navarro, one of the book’s authors, who became the campaign’s first economic adviser.

Navarro has an economics Ph.D. but holds views very much at odds with the mainstream. True, taking advice from a heterodox figure can sometimes work out well, since orthodoxy isn’t always right. But giving heterodox views a hearing only works if the people seeking advice are themselves open-minded thinkers, willing to put in the hard work of understanding opposing views and assessing the evidence. If this sounds to you like a description of Donald Trump, you might want to seek professional help.

In fact, Navarro’s nonmainstream views mainly seem to involve basic conceptual and factual errors. One of these errors, which bears directly on the Trump-Europe spat, is a complete misunderstanding of the trade effects of value-added taxes (VATs), which the U.S. doesn’t have but play a large role in most European countries’ revenue.

In Navarro’s version of the world, for example as expressed in a campaign white paper, VATs give European companies a huge, unfair trade advantage. U.S. products sold in Europe have to pay VAT — for example, they must pay a 19 percent tax if sold in Germany. This, says the white paper, is just like an import tariff. Meanwhile, German producers pay no VAT on goods they sell in America; this, the paper says, is just like an export subsidy. I’m pretty sure that’s what Trump means when he talks about “horrific” tariffs.

But what this story misses is the fact that when German producers sell to German consumers, they also pay that 19 percent tax. And when U.S. producers sell to U.S. consumers, they, like German producers, don’t face any VAT. So the tax doesn’t tilt the playing field at all, in either market. In reality, a VAT has nothing to do with competitive advantage; it’s basically a sales tax — a tax on German consumers — which is why VATs are considered legal by the World Trade Organization.

So how does someone who misunderstands such a basic, well-understood point about taxes and trade get to be a key economic adviser? As I said, it’s because he tells the boss what he wants to hear. More than that, he’s willing to abase himself in extraordinary ways.

Here’s what he told Bloomberg recently: “My function, really, as an economist is to try to provide the underlying analytics that confirm his intuition. And his intuition is always right in these matters.” Wow.

I mean, one expects White House aides to share many of the president’s views and defend him in public. But this goes far beyond that. Not only is Navarro proudly declaring that he’s a propagandist, not a policy analyst — that his role is solely to confirm Trump’s prejudices — he’s also engaging in an utterly un-American level of sycophancy. Since when has it become acceptable to declare that Dear Leader is infallible?

Now, it’s a commonplace, but also a euphemism, to say that Trump has authoritarian instincts. A more accurate statement would be that he expects the kind of treatment tin-pot dictators demand, free from any criticism inside or outside his government and greeted with constant hosannas of praise.

And everyone who isn’t willing to play the full game, who has tried to play by something resembling normal democratic rules, seems to be fleeing the administration. Soon only the shameless sycophants will be left. This will not end well.

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Op dinsdag 13 maart 2018 08:20 schreef Vader_Aardbei het volgende:

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Lol, precies de zielige reactie die ik verwachtte hier te lezen. Mueller gaat met helemaal niets komen. Hij is bijna klaar en straks zal het uitlopen in een enorme teleurstelling voor de anti-Trumpets.

Sowieso schofterig om te doen alsof dit een Republikeins feestje is. Heel veel van die Republikeinen waren ook fervent anti-Trump. Ze hebben geen enkele reden om die man te beschermen. En er zaten ook Democraten in. Ze kunnen piepen en stotteren, maar er is niets partijdigs aan dit comite.

Face it. Dit is het begin van het einde van de ''DRUMPF werkte samen met Rusland'' discours. Bereid je maar voor.

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Op dinsdag 13 maart 2018 08:24 schreef DustPuppy het volgende:

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Democraten zijn pas naderhand geïnformeerd over de 'conclusie' van het comité.

Hoezo niet partijdig? Leg eens uit?

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Op dinsdag 13 maart 2018 02:22 schreef DeParo het volgende:
Ik weet te weinig

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Op dinsdag 13 maart 2018 02:30 schreef DeParo het volgende:
Dat ligt aan de markt

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Op dinsdag 13 maart 2018 02:31 schreef DeParo het volgende:
Ik denk dat hij het doet

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Op dinsdag 13 maart 2018 02:35 schreef DeParo het volgende:
In principe misschien maar

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Op dinsdag 13 maart 2018 02:36 schreef DeParo het volgende:
Wat is de status

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Op dinsdag 13 maart 2018 02:37 schreef DeParo het volgende:
Misschien. Denk niet voor

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Op maandag 12 maart 2018 18:33 schreef Kijkertje het volgende:
Dem Gains in CD18 Special

[ afbeelding ]

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White House declines to endorse UK view that Russia was behind nerve agent attack in England

• The UK government has accused Russia of being behind a nerve agent attack on a former double agent in Salisbury, England.
• But the White House refused to endorse this view in a press conference on Monday.
• White House press secretary Sarah Sanders said the US government condemns the attack, but did not mention Russia by name.

The White House has declined to endorse the UK government's assessment that Russia was behind the recent attempted assassination of a former double agent in Salisbury, England.

On Monday, British Prime Minister Theresa May said it was "highly likely" that the Russian government was behind the attack that has left Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia critically ill, calling it "an unlawful use of force by the Russian State against the United Kingdom."

But when White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders was asked repeatedly about the incident at a press conference in Washington DC later on Monday, she would not say whether the American government agreed with this attribution, and did not mention Russia by name.

"The use of a highly lethal nerve agent against UK citizens on UK soil is an outrage," Sanders said in response to a question about the attack and Russia's role. "The attack was reckless, indiscriminate, and irresponsible. We offer the fullest condemnation."

The journalist them pressed her, asking if this meant the US was not pointing the finger at Russia.

"Right now, we are standing with our UK ally," Sanders said. "I think they're still working through even some of the details of that, and we're going to continue to work with the UK."

May's remarks accusing Russia came hours prior to the White House press conference.

Sanders was then asked a third time about the UK government's assessment, and said only: "We stand with our ally and we certainly fully support them, and are ready if we can be of any assistance to them."

The UK government has said it has identified the nerve agent used on the Skripals on March 4 as being from the Novichok family. Novichok nerve agents were developed by Russia during the Cold War, and are highly toxic — as much as 10 times more deadly than the lethal XV nerve agent.

There are two possibilities, May said — Either the attack was orchestrated by the Russian government, or "the Russian government lost control of this potentially catastrophically damaging nerve agent and allowed it to get into the hands of others."

US secretary of state Rex Tillerson has been less reticent about apportioning blame, however. He said on Monday that the poisoning "clearly came from Russia," AP reported, and that it "will trigger a response."

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Op dinsdag 13 maart 2018 08:30 schreef brokjespoes het volgende:
Verzoekje aan DP:

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Zou je dit soort reactie-tsunami's alsjeblieft in 1 of 2 posts kunnen doen? Het leest zo vervelend.

Bij voorbaat drank!

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Op dinsdag 13 maart 2018 08:32 schreef DustPuppy het volgende:

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Need you more proof that this White House is compromised?

twitter:

realDonaldTrump twitterde op dinsdag 13-03-2018 om 01:49:27 THE HOUSE INTELLIGENCE COMMITTEE HAS, AFTER A 14 MONTH LONG IN-DEPTH INVESTIGATION, FOUND NO EVIDENCE OF COLLUSION OR COORDINATION BETWEEN THE TRUMP CAMPAIGN AND RUSSIA TO INFLUENCE THE 2016 PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION. reageer retweet

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Op dinsdag 13 maart 2018 08:47 schreef xpompompomx het volgende:
En Dennison schreeuwt het uit:

twitter:

realDonaldTrump twitterde op dinsdag 13-03-2018 om 01:49:27 THE HOUSE INTELLIGENCE COMMITTEE HAS, AFTER A 14 MONTH LONG IN-DEPTH INVESTIGATION, FOUND NO EVIDENCE OF COLLUSION OR COORDINATION BETWEEN THE TRUMP CAMPAIGN AND RUSSIA TO INFLUENCE THE 2016 PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION. reageer retweet

MEER HOOFDLETTERS, MEER WAARHEID.

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Op dinsdag 13 maart 2018 08:32 schreef DustPuppy het volgende:

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Need you more proof that this White House is compromised?

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Op dinsdag 13 maart 2018 08:50 schreef thesiren.nl het volgende:
THE HOUSE INTELLIGENCE COMMITTEE HAS, AFTER A 14 MONTH LONG IN-DEPTH INVESTIGATION, FOUND NO EVIDENCE OF INTELLIGENCE OR COLLUSION BETWEEN THE TRUMP BRAIN HALVES

Fixed

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Op dinsdag 13 maart 2018 09:04 schreef klappernootopreis het volgende:

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[ afbeelding ]

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Op dinsdag 13 maart 2018 09:03 schreef ExtraWaskracht het volgende:
De standaard kliek als MangoTree en Vader_Aardbei leven kennelijk in een of andere droomwereld dat de meesten denken dat Trump per se schuldig bevonden gaat worden oid, omdat er een onderzoek gaande is. Niets van dat. Het zou me niks verbazen als ze niks concreets vinden, maar het moge duidelijk zijn dat hij wel dat hij een nuttige Russische asset is: hij helpt de staatsfinancien om zeep, breekt ministeries af, breekt andere instituties af, laat een machtsvacuum waar China en Rusland in kunnen duidelijk en zet de transatlantische relatie op het spel.
Mocht Mueller iets tegen Trump zelf vinden zal het denk ik eerder zitten in obstruction of justice of bv. het witwassen van geld zijn. Dat zijn campagne heeft samengewerkt was natuurlijk al wel duidelijk bij monde van Papadopoulos en dat ze wilden samenzweren was ook allang duidelijk bij monde van Donald Jr.: ‘I love it.’

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Op dinsdag 13 maart 2018 09:03 schreef ExtraWaskracht het volgende:
De standaard kliek als MangoTree en Vader_Aardbei leven kennelijk in een of andere droomwereld dat de meesten denken dat Trump per se schuldig bevonden gaat worden oid, omdat er een onderzoek gaande is. Niets van dat. Het zou me niks verbazen als ze niks concreets vinden, maar het moge duidelijk zijn dat hij wel dat hij een nuttige Russische asset is: hij helpt de staatsfinancien om zeep, breekt ministeries af, breekt andere instituties af, laat een machtsvacuum waar China en Rusland in kunnen duidelijk en zet de transatlantische relatie op het spel.
Mocht Mueller iets tegen Trump zelf vinden zal het denk ik eerder zitten in obstruction of justice of bv. het witwassen van geld zijn. Dat zijn campagne heeft samengewerkt was natuurlijk al wel duidelijk bij monde van Papadopoulos en dat ze wilden samenzweren was ook allang duidelijk bij monde van Donald Jr.: ‘I love it.’

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Op dinsdag 13 maart 2018 09:12 schreef klappernootopreis het volgende:

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Mueller heeft al een paar bekentenissen op zak. Daar kun je niet omheen, wat je ook zegt.

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Op dinsdag 13 maart 2018 09:14 schreef DustPuppy het volgende:
Ik heb wat Mueller betreft sterk het vermoeden dat hij achter de Trump organisatie itself aangaat, vanwege het wit-wassen van zwart Russisch geld en in het verlengde daarvan het omzeilen van de Magnitsky act (waar het allemaal om begonnen is).

De mensen die hij spreekt, de onderzoekers die hij aanstelt, de zaken die hij opvraagt, alles wijst erop dat dit één van de grote speerpunten is.

En Trump mag dan (op dit moment) onschendbaar zijn, maar de rest van zijn familie niet.
Eens kijken hoe hij gaat reageren als zijn familieleden één voor één worden aangeklaagd.

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Nikki Haley: US prepared for military action in Syria if UN doesn't act

United States Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley on Monday said the U.S. is willing to take military action to end the Syrian bombing of civilians if the U.N. is unable to do so.

“When the international community consistently fails to act, there are times when states are compelled to take their own action,” Haley told the Security Council, noting that this is one of those times.

“We warn any nation determined to impose its will through chemical attacks and inhuman suffering, but most especially the outlaw Syrian regime, the United States remains prepared to act if we must,” Haley said. “It is not a path we prefer. But it is a path we have demonstrated we will take, and we are prepared to take again.”

Haley compared the current situation in Syria to a period last year when the Syrian government’s chemical weapon attacks led the U.S. to launch a missile attack against the Syrian military.

The council passed a resolution calling for a ceasefire in late February but it has been unable to put an end to the Syrian government’s bombings or get the government to permit humanitarian access.

U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres said the bombings in Ghouta have only gotten worse since the Security Council called for the ceasefire, noting that the Syrian government — helped by Russia and China — has significantly increased its controlled territory in the region.

Defense Secretary James Mattis on Sunday warned the Syrian government that “it would be unwise for them to use weaponized gas” following reports of chlorine attacks in Ghouta, an area surrounding the capital city of Damascus.

Although Mattis did not threaten military action, he noted the previous airstrikes that followed a gas attack and said President Trump has “full political maneuver room” to take whatever action he deems necessary.

French President Emmanuel Macron, speaking at a press conference in India, also warned Syria that it would carry out targeted strikes if it found “irrefutable evidence” that chemical weapons were being used to kill civilians, Reuters reported.

The Syrian civil war is entering its eighth year.

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We’ll respond if lives of our military, incl. from strikes on Damascus, are endangered – Russian MoD

Moscow is ready to respond if lives of the Russian servicemen are endangered, including by strikes on Damascus, head of Russia's General Staff Valery Gerasimov said.

“There are many Russian advisers, representatives of the Russian Center for Reconciliation of Opposing Sides and [Russian] servicemen in Damascus and at Syrian defense facilities,” Gerasimov stated.

However, in case lives of Russian military personnel are put in danger, the Russian Armed Forces will respond with certain measure to both “missiles” and “lauchers” which are delivering these projectiles.

Russian MoD says it has information that militants in Syria are planning to stage chemical attacks against civilians under the guise of the Syrian government. According to Gerasimov, they have already sent ‘civilians’ in Eastern Ghouta who will ‘play victims’ of chemical attacks.

Members of the White Helmets and film crews are already there, he pointed out.

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Op dinsdag 13 maart 2018 09:03 schreef ExtraWaskracht het volgende:
De standaard kliek als MangoTree en Vader_Aardbei leven kennelijk in een of andere droomwereld dat de meesten denken dat Trump per se schuldig bevonden gaat worden oid, omdat er een onderzoek gaande is. Niets van dat. Het zou me niks verbazen als ze niks concreets vinden, maar het moge duidelijk zijn dat hij wel dat hij een nuttige Russische asset is: hij helpt de staatsfinancien om zeep, breekt ministeries af, breekt andere instituties af, laat een machtsvacuum waar China en Rusland in kunnen duidelijk en zet de transatlantische relatie op het spel.
Mocht Mueller iets tegen Trump zelf vinden zal het denk ik eerder zitten in obstruction of justice of bv. het witwassen van geld zijn. Dat zijn campagne heeft samengewerkt was natuurlijk al wel duidelijk bij monde van Papadopoulos en dat ze wilden samenzweren was ook allang duidelijk bij monde van Donald Jr.: ‘I love it.’

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Op dinsdag 13 maart 2018 10:44 schreef Montov het volgende:

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Het halve Trump moeras is aangeklaagd of betrokken bij contacten met Rusland, en nog durven sommigen triomfantelijk de realiteit te erkennen. Wanneer individuele identiteit zo verwoven is met partijpolitiek dan worden persoonlijke principes erg makkelijk aan de kant geschoven.

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Op dinsdag 13 maart 2018 10:45 schreef klappernootopreis het volgende:

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Nepotisme ten top.

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Op dinsdag 13 maart 2018 09:35 schreef DustPuppy het volgende:
Beetje offtopic/crossposty, maar dit is ook een ding:

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Reactie van de Russen:

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Potentieel nieuw direct conflict?

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Op dinsdag 13 maart 2018 10:56 schreef Szura het volgende:
Vandaag is het Stormy-dag of niet?

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Op maandag 12 maart 2018 21:18 schreef Tchock het volgende:

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De blits maken met het uitdelen van een belastingkorting over de rug van toekomstige generaties.

Toch klassiek meer iets voor links, maar Trump is er uitstekend in. En de GOP gaat er ook gewoon in mee, de partij van de fiscale verantwoordelijkheid.

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Op dinsdag 13 maart 2018 08:21 schreef xpompompomx het volgende:

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Heb je de democratische leden van het panal al gehoord hierover? En denk je dat ze er achter staan?