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**Prestor Jon**

Verviedi wrote:
First of all, I am very sorry if this is late.
State politics, so possibly irrelevant. Pat McCrory has finally conceded to Roy Cooper. As much as I would like to say it will teach Republicans to not be bigoted and anti-labor, we all know it won't.

http://www.cnn.com/2016/12/05/politics/north-carolina-governor-concedes-race/index.html

The Republicans not only retained their veto proof majority in the state senate they actually gained another seat. So while people were angry enough to vote out McCrory by a narrow margin Cooper can't actually undo any of McCrory's bad laws without getting cooperation from the Republican senators who wrote the laws and passed them. Since all the senators who voted for HB2 are still in office I doubt they'll suddenly have a change of heart and repeal it.

**Verviedi**

It's always nice to think positive, and with the forced redistricting, some of their positions will be terminated and hopefully replaced with sane people.

**Dreadwinter**

Ah, looks like education is about to take another big hit from Trumps cabinet.

Great, now we know the next generation is screwed. We can complain about them even more than millennials! They don't need help, they need more BOOTSTRAPS!

**BaronIveagh**

Peregrine wrote:
No, this is completely wrong. The laws of war (including the taking of POWs) apply to wars between recognized states. If a group is not fighting on behalf of a recognized state then they are civilian criminals, just like gangs in the US shooting each other over drug deals can not be declared "enemy combatants" even if they shoot at the police..

Not true. The involved countries DO NOT have to recognize each other. Otherwise it would be impossible to apply the laws of war to any Civil War, since by their very nature, the two involved states do not recognize each other.

The requirement is that they be a member of a chain of command, that they wear a uniform or some other distinctive marking visible from a distance, bear arms openly, and conduct themselves in accordance with the laws of war.. That's.... pretty much it. Nothing in Geneva III about recognized states. Under the law, for example, ISIS would qualify, so long as they're not committing any other war crimes to the knowledge of their captors.

**sebster**

Sarouan wrote:
I include the social media when I talk about "medias", just to be clear.

That's a good point.

Yes, the media coverage was awful. It's however important to see why it became that way. Just look at the different medias, who were behind the articles and what were their political colors/ties. Also, be always aware of who owns the media in question, when it is the case.

The owners are part of the issue, but I'm not sure they're the larger part of the problem. Note that even with the most notorious case of owner manipulation, Murdoch's news empire, the doesn't push hard right bias because of his personal beliefs but simply because it sells.

The big problem with media coverage of politics is the fixation on the horse race. When a scandal breaks there is little coverage of the actual substance of the scandal and whether it actually matters or not. But what is covered, in large detail, is whether it will effect the campaign. After the debates coverage moved almost immediately to pundit speculation about what voters might have thought of the debate, who they might have thought 'performed' better, with almost no coverage of whether the statements by the candidates were true, sensible or even coherent.

They're still to be blamed for the part they played, of course. But I believe you're focusing on just one part of the real problem.

Because one of the reasons the coverage was so poor was the smoke screen launched by Republicans whenever it was possible. We also had a smaller scale of this on this topic, of course, but most people seem to be content to be blind.

Both sides play the media, and right now Republicans are playing the media much better, that's true. I think this is because right now Republicans are naturally favoured by the superficiality of media coverage, because so little of their current policy set has any real substance to it.

Well, you should blame them. Because they played a significant part in the election of Donald Trump. You can understand why they came to this result and how they use that strategy for their campaign, sure, but that doesn't make them unresponsible for this whole mess in the end.

Oh sure, the Republicans have played up to populist sensibilities for a long time now, to make up for the very small level of support for their core policies (tax cuts for the rich, reform of the social safety net). Taking a long term view, they are 100% responsible for this mess.

I was just commenting on the immediate situation, and how it might be seen by someone like a Conway dropped in at the last minute. Given the position they'd ended up in, they played the only cards available.

Most people just don't react as they should. They should be offended, they should say it loud and they should tell right in the face of racists that, no, what they are saying is unacceptable. They just let it slip, and that's how it wins in the end.

People should stop being 'offended'. People should stop saying 'don't say racist things because they offend me', they should start saying 'stop saying racist things because they are foolish and mistaken'.

Automatically Appended Next Post:

ulgurstasta wrote:
Except all her years of being a warhawk

A US warhawk isn't defined as anyone who happens to seek more US involvement in overseas affairs than you personally would like. It is defined in relation to all the other people in the halls of US power. In that regard Clinton sits on the more hawkish end of Democrats, but around about the centre compared to US politics overall.

If we look at her time as Sec of State, it takes an act of deliberate personal delusion to pretend that any other US politician appointed to that role would have done any differently, and most would likely have been far more aggressive.

Automatically Appended Next Post:

Ensis Ferrae wrote:
There was an article I saw a few months back now, IIRC I may have found it via Nick Hanauer's FB page, but he didn't write it.... Anyhow, apparently the anti-$15 people have latched onto the idea around here for this one particular pizza shop that had been open for some 30+ years around the U district. Long story short, the owner closed down, and both he and those anti-$15 types are blaming these initiatives on it closing.

What the article pointed out was this: If we take him at is word, and $15/hr killed his business, why is it that the same exact block of streets his shop was on has seen 5 pizza places open up since his closed, AND all 5 places are doing much better numbers than his shop ever did (IIRC the article may have said almost double, but I don't want to firmly say that)... Apparently, his business actually died because he got lazy at pizza, and was basically just a big donkey-cave to people, so they began speaking with their wallets.

Yep, and this is exactly the problem with so many people who argue from ideology. When you have a pre-determined position, such as the idea that minimum wage increases always kill jobs, then you accept any evidence for it. To anyone looking with an open mind, the story of a single pizza store is obviously not evidence to base a city wide law on. But to people who want to find support for the idea they already believe, then it not only counts as evidence, it actually ends up being seen a stronger evidence than city wide unemployment.

Automatically Appended Next Post:

Prestor Jon wrote:
Seattle enacted its new minimum wage law April 1, 2015 so it's been less than 2 years. The $15 minimum wage won't affect all businesses until 2021 it's being phased in over a period of 7 years.

While this is true, you should note that conservative punditry was proclaiming the death of Seattle businesses simply in anticipation of the new minimum wage.

Didn't happen. And it didn't happen because pundits like that are buffoons, with no interest in how the world actually works, just in repeating simple arguments to a market of people who like hearing those things, even when they're junk.

The point here isn't to say that any and all minimum wage increases are always good. It depends on market circumstances on whether a market can accept the new rate or not. In Seattle for instance where the majority of minimum wage jobs are local service jobs, the impact will be very small (or non-existent) compared to an area where minimum wage jobs are largely manufacturing or agriculture.

The point really is to just focus on the junk put forward by pseudo-economists on the right, who trade in ideologically driven, junk predictions, and have been shown in this case to be entirely wrong.

Automatically Appended Next Post:

whembly wrote:
First, this is an act of alt-right/fringe right terrorism, but no one's going to call it that - it'll be passed off as some crazy nut taking a conspiracy theory too far.

Pass if off just like that guy taking his cues from SPLC to shooting up the FRC office?

**Ustrello**

Who wants to guess how long its before Trump passes Grant in terms of nepotism?

http://money.cnn.com/2016/12/05/news/donald-trump-japan-ivanka-clothing-deal/index.html?sr=fbCNN120616donald-trump-japan-ivanka-clothing-deal0400AMVODtopLink&linkId=32000960

Ivanka Trump's clothing company has been in talks with apparel maker Sanei International for the past two years, Kohei Yamada, a spokesperson for Sanei's parent company, confirmed Monday.
The negotiations were first reported by the New York Times on Sunday.
President-elect Donald Trump met with Shinzo Abe in New York last month, an event that was closed to the news media. Photos released by the Japanese government showed Ivanka Trump among a small group of attendees.
It's unclear why she was there, but the situation highlights the potential for a conflict of interest between Trump's powerful new role and his family's businesses.
Sanei International's parent company is TSI Holdings. The biggest shareholder in TSI is the Development Bank of Japan, which is owned by the Japanese government.

**sebster**

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/02/us/politics/obamacare-repeal.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=b-lede-package-region®ion=top-news&WT.nav=top-news&_r=0

Republicans appear to have their strategy for how to Replace and Repeal ACA. The problem they always faced was that while ACA remains somewhat unpopular, most of the things it does are quite popular. This is not uncommon when dealing with emotive issues that impact on people's wallets, but are complex enough that most people don't really understand how they work and so just assumed they're getting screwed.

This has left Republicans in a position where they have a campaign and ideological commitment to ending ACA, but don't want the negative repercussions that will come from any alternative system they would put in place. But they have a plan, Replace and Delay. Basically they would use budget reconciliation to bypass any Democratic filibuster in the senate, and defund ACA starting after the 2018 midterms. While Republicans couldn't touch the regulatory elements due to Democrat filibuster, without the subsidies and individual mandate the structure can't work, and once that 2018 deadline hit the system would go in to meltdown.

That would put pressure on Democrats to not only accept a repeal of all ACA, but also work with Republicans to form an alternative insurance market structure.

It's kind of clever really, Republicans are basically building a dead man switch to healthcare reform. Work with us to pass a new system by 2018, or everything explodes.

On the other hand, it's also fething bonkers, as Republicans are planning to attach a dead man switch to one of the largest parts of the economy, and one of the most essential parts of people's lives. This kind of plan ignores the risk that there will be no acceptable replacement plan by the deadline, which is more than a little likely given the large divide between the parties on this issue, and the intense politicking we've seen on the issue already.

Basically, this is not what governance looks like, but it is what the modern Republican party looks like.

**ulgurstasta**

sebster wrote:

ulgurstasta wrote:
Except all her years of being a warhawk

A US warhawk isn't defined as anyone who happens to seek more US involvement in overseas affairs than you personally would like. It is defined in relation to all the other people in the halls of US power. In that regard Clinton sits on the more hawkish end of Democrats, but around about the centre compared to US politics overall.

If we look at her time as Sec of State, it takes an act of deliberate personal delusion to pretend that any other US politician appointed to that role would have done any differently, and most would likely have been far more aggressive.

So she isn´t a warhawk, because all other establishment politicians are also warhawks?

None of us is a crook, because we are all crooks!

**sebster**

ulgurstasta wrote:
So she isn´t a warhawk, because all other establishment politicians are also warhawks?

Once your definition for 'warhawk' has captured every single person who might take the role, then really you've said nothing about any individual in that group, you've only really commented on your beliefs vs the US. I personally am shocked and amazed to discover a Swede who doesn't agree with mainstream US foreign policy, but besides that revelation you really haven't said much, certainly not about Clinton.

**ulgurstasta**

sebster wrote:
ulgurstasta wrote:
So she isn´t a warhawk, because all other establishment politicians are also warhawks?

Once your definition for 'warhawk' has captured every single person who might take the role, then really you've said nothing about any individual in that group, you've only really commented on your beliefs vs the US. I personally am shocked and amazed to discover a Swede who doesn't agree with mainstream US foreign policy, but besides that revelation you really haven't said much, certainly not about Clinton.

I'm amazed you have decided to stick with this logic, what does she have to do to qualify as a warhawk then by your logic? If it looks like a dog and acts like a dog it doesn´t stop being a dog because it hangs around with other dogs

**Peregrine**

Prestor Jon wrote:
The Republicans not only retained their veto proof majority in the state senate they actually gained another seat. So while people were angry enough to vote out McCrory by a narrow margin Cooper can't actually undo any of McCrory's bad laws without getting cooperation from the Republican senators who wrote the laws and passed them. Since all the senators who voted for HB2 are still in office I doubt they'll suddenly have a change of heart and repeal it.

They did, but stuff like HB2 is heading to the courts (where we just flipped the state supreme court from right-leaning to left-leaning). If/when HB2 is struck down it's going to be a lot harder to pass a replacement, especially if the election next year changes the republican advantage in the legislature. And the fact that McCrory managed to get himself thrown out in a year where republicans won everything else should be taken as a warning sign for anyone who wants to continue his policies.

Automatically Appended Next Post:

ulgurstasta wrote:
I'm amazed you have decided to stick with this logic, what does she have to do to qualify as a warhawk then by your logic? If it looks like a dog and acts like a dog it doesn´t stop being a dog because it hangs around with other dogs

The point is that if you want to talk about "hawks" in US politics in any meaningful way then there has to be a division between "hawks" and "not hawks". Even if it's true by some standard that all major US politicians are hawks it's not a very useful thing to say if you're trying to compare policies advocated by those politicians. So if you define "hawk" to mean "aggressive foreign policy by US standards" then Clinton isn't really a hawk relative to other US politicians. She wasn't exceptionally peaceful, but she was clearly on the centrist part of the pro-war scale. And in an election where her opponent was openly saying "bomb the

out of ISIS" and "we have nukes, why don't we use them" it's utterly absurd to suggest that she was the pro-war candidate.

**Do_I_Not_Like_That**

I take back what I said about Trump playing it smart over Taiwan.

By backtracking, he comes across as weak and indecisive, rather than a shrewd operator with a touch of the realpolitik about him.

**Frazzled**

Half of Detroit votes may be ineligible for recount

http://www.detroitnews.com/story/news/politics/2016/12/05/recount-unrecountable/95007392/

Ingham County Clerk Barb Byrum explains how entire voting precincts may be non-recountable in the presidential election recount that began Monday in Ingham and Oakland counties. Chad Livengood, The Detroit News
Wayne RecountBuy Photo

(Photo: David Guralnick / The Detroit News)

One-third of precincts in Wayne County could be disqualified from an unprecedented statewide recount of presidential election results because of problems with ballots.

Michigan’s largest county voted overwhelmingly for Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton, but officials couldn’t reconcile vote totals for 610 of 1,680 precincts during a countywide canvass of vote results late last month.

Most of those are in heavily Democratic Detroit, where the number of ballots in precinct poll books did not match those of voting machine printout reports in 59 percent of precincts, 392 of 662.

According to state law, precincts whose poll books don’t match with ballots can’t be recounted. If that happens, original election results stand.

“It’s not good,” conceded Daniel Baxter, elections director for the city of Detroit.

He blamed the discrepancies on the city’s decade-old voting machines, saying 87 optical scanners broke on Election Day. Many jammed when voters fed ballots into scanners, which can result in erroneous vote counts if ballots are inserted multiple times. Poll workers are supposed to adjust counters to reflect a single vote but in many cases failed to do so, causing the discrepancies, Baxter said.

Even so, Baxter said it’s unlikely all 392 of the city’s precincts with mismatched numbers will be disqualified from a recount. The city is in contact with elections officials at the state of Michigan and Baxter predicted the numbers will match when the ballot boxes are re-opened for the recount, which starts Tuesday in Wayne County at Cobo Center.

“It’s a challenge, but we’re confident the ballots will match,” Baxter said. “I don’t think it’s going to be 100 percent, but it never is with a recount.”

County reports obtained by The Detroit News, though, indicate canvassers were provided no explanation for why the numbers didn’t add up in those precincts. They certified the results of the election anyway.

U.S. District Judge Mark Goldsmith ordered the hand recount of 4.8 million ballots just after midnight Monday, granting a motion in favor of Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein. It began Monday in Oakland and Ingham counties and continues at 9 a.m. Tuesday in Kalamazoo, Kent, Macomb, Ottawa, Washtenaw and Wayne counties.

The recount will begin throughout the rest of Michigan’s 83 counties in phases this week.

Republican President-elect Donald Trump won Michigan by a razor-thin margin, 10,704 votes. Presumably, Clinton’s best opportunity to eliminate that margin rested in finding uncounted ballots in Wayne County, which she carried by a 2-1 ratio.

Disqualifying huge numbers of precincts would make it “almost impossible” for the former New York senator to make up the votes, said Ernest Johnson, a Democratic political activist who worked to get out the vote for Clinton.

“It’s a real long-shot now because, if I were looking for 10,000 votes, the first place I’d look is Wayne County,” Johnson said. “That’s a huge problem. ... But if anything good comes of this it brings up this problem (with voting machines) that needs to be corrected.”

$100K bill for Genesee Co.

Besides Wayne, Clinton carried Oakland, Washtenaw, Genesee, Ingham, Kalamazoo, Marquette and Muskegon counties.

None had nearly as many problems as Wayne. But at least 13 of 222 precincts in Genesee County are not balanced. More than half of those were in heavily Democratic Flint, according to county canvassing reports. The election was still certified by its board of canvassers.

“The trouble is there’s too much leniency with the board of canvassers,” said John Gleason, Genesee County’s clerk. “They’re not as stringent as need to be because they think it won’t affect the outcome of the election.”

Gleason, who estimated the recount will cost the cash-strapped county $100,000, said he expects the numbers to reconcile when workers begin the county recount on Wednesday.

“It’s impossible to tell at this point how many will and how many won’t be re-countable,” added Joseph Rozell, elections director for Oakland County.

In the first six hours of Ingham County’s recount Monday, six of 30 precincts from Lansing could not be recounted. One of the ballot containers had a hole in it, making it susceptible to tampering and not recountable, county Clerk Barb Byrum said.

Elections officials in Washtenaw and Marquette counties told The News on Monday that votes in all precincts were reconciled.

Krista Haroutunian, chair of the Wayne County Board of Canvassers, said recount workers will have to sort out the issue when they encounter these ballot boxes where the numbers don’t reconcile with the election records.

“When a recount is started, these numbers could change based on information discovered during the course of the recount, according to our procedures,” Haroutunian said. “You don’t know until you get in the middle of it.”

Two tries to match numbers

State law spells out a prescribed criteria for determining whether a precinct can be recounted. Workers first check to make sure the number of ballots on the seal of the container matches the ballots recorded by workers on Election Day.

“If the seal number matches, then we know it’s not been tampered with,” Rozell said.

If numbers don’t match, then workers can count all of the ballots in the precinct twice to see if there was an error made by workers on Election Night.

“If it does not match after the second count, then it’s not recountable,” Rozell said.

Entire precincts can be set aside in a recount if the ballots are stored in an unapproved container or if it isn’t properly sealed.

At Ingham County’s recount operation Monday at the county’s fairgrounds in Mason, ballots were stored in suitcase-like containers that were sealed with plastic zip-ties that had to be cut for workers to take out the ballots.

Byrum plans to have the ballot bags guarded each night during the recount by a sheriff’s deputy.

Elections officials instructed Ingham County recount workers who reconciled the ballot numbers on the second count to count them a third time to verify the numbers.

“The certified election results would stand if a precinct is determined to be non-recountable,” Byrum told reporters.

**Do_I_Not_Like_That**

I think you guys should just copy our method of organizing elections, or take a leaf from Norway, Finland, or Iceland etc etc , who also have first class electoral systems.

It would save you a lot of hassle. No system is perfect, and ours is no exception, but

as I've said before, I'd never even heard of voting ID until I joined dakka

**reds8n**

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/2016/12/08/the-rockefeller-family-fund-vs-exxon/

*lack of surprise face*

It's the tobacco companies all over again.

**Breotan**

OMG. Cheetos is trolling the world of fashion and trolling Trump, too.

https://shop.cheetosstore.com/colour-de-cheetos-bronzer

**BigWaaagh**

reds8n wrote:
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/2016/12/08/the-rockefeller-family-fund-vs-exxon/

*lack of surprise face*

It's the tobacco companies all over again.

Yes, yes it is. Funny how the "merchants of denial" simply rolled up their pro-tobacco shingle and rolled out their pro-climate change denier shingle.

**Ustrello**

Breotan wrote:
OMG. Cheetos is trolling the world of fashion and trolling Trump, too.

https://shop.cheetosstore.com/colour-de-cheetos-bronzer

Will we see southern trump supporters boycott their favorite chip company? What will they eat at the muddin championships

**sebster**

ulgurstasta wrote:
I'm amazed you have decided to stick with this logic, what does she have to do to qualify as a warhawk then by your logic?

To qualify she'd have to be more of a warhawk than most US politicians. You know, someone who is likely to take the US on a more aggressive foreign policy than is the historical norm. She ain't that.

What you're doing here is pointing out that she is more of a warhawk than you, a left leaning Swede. Well yeah, she is more of a warhawk than you, but making a big deal about that is a lot like if you were walking along, and then stopped dead in the middle of the street and started shouting 'holy gak you guys that dog that is walking this way has four legs, isn't that amazing and something we should talk about!'.

You're trying to make a big deal about a thing were Clinton is like almost all her contemporaries. There are some Democrats who more dovish, and there's Democrats and a whole lot of Republicans who are more hawkish. That's the US spectrum.

Automatically Appended Next Post:

Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:
I take back what I said about Trump playing it smart over Taiwan.

By backtracking, he comes across as weak and indecisive, rather than a shrewd operator with a touch of the realpolitik about him.

As I said to you earlier, you keep talking about Trump's Taiwan call as though there was a conscious decision involved. Trump didn't decide to break with diplomatic protocol, he simply wasn't aware of it.

Once you accept that all the analysis about a decision to stand to China, or weakness in backing down, all that stuff starts making no sense. Trump done goofed, because he isn't accepting State Dept briefings. That's the whole story here.

**WrentheFaceless**

So, to an uninformed observer, how bad was the Taiwan call? How angry is it likely to make China?

**sebster**

Frazzled wrote:
Half of Detroit votes may be ineligible for recount

Yeah, this is why the post-election scrutiny is good. Not because the election was rigged (it wasn't) or because maybe somehow Trump didn't really win (he did), but because you need to review voting systems after elections.

Is anyone willing to post that they believe US voting systems are reliable and sufficient across the country? No? Then you should all support review and reform of systems, and part of that process is an audit run in every state, after every election.

**Frazzled**

WrentheFaceless wrote:
So, to an uninformed observer, how bad was the Taiwan call? How angry is it likely to make China?

I hope it made them very angry. They have staked a claim on 2/3 of the freaking Pacific as their personal pond. F that.

**Ustrello**

WrentheFaceless wrote:
So, to an uninformed observer, how bad was the Taiwan call? How angry is it likely to make China?

Pretty angry. Gotta remember that the KMT and CCP fought a brutal civil war for over 20 years and then when the KMT was about to lose they fled to Taiwan and took it over. They were about to be invaded when the Korean war broke out and we decided to protect them from the CCP. Then for 20ish years Taiwan held Chinas UN security counsel spot and mainland china believes that it is the true ruler of Taiwan, so the spot is kinda sore for them.

**Do_I_Not_Like_That**

sebster wrote:
ulgurstasta wrote:
I'm amazed you have decided to stick with this logic, what does she have to do to qualify as a warhawk then by your logic?

To qualify she'd have to be more of a warhawk than most US politicians. You know, someone who is likely to take the US on a more aggressive foreign policy than is the historical norm. She ain't that.

What you're doing here is pointing out that she is more of a warhawk than you, a left leaning Swede. Well yeah, she is more of a warhawk than you, but making a big deal about that is a lot like if you were walking along, and then stopped dead in the middle of the street and started shouting 'holy gak you guys that dog that is walking this way has four legs, isn't that amazing and something we should talk about!'.

You're trying to make a big deal about a thing were Clinton is like almost all her contemporaries. There are some Democrats who more dovish, and there's Democrats and a whole lot of Republicans who are more hawkish. That's the US spectrum.

Automatically Appended Next Post:

Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:
I take back what I said about Trump playing it smart over Taiwan.

By backtracking, he comes across as weak and indecisive, rather than a shrewd operator with a touch of the realpolitik about him.

As I said to you earlier, you keep talking about Trump's Taiwan call as though there was a conscious decision involved. Trump didn't decide to break with diplomatic protocol, he simply wasn't aware of it.

Once you accept that all the analysis about a decision to stand to China, or weakness in backing down, all that stuff starts making no sense. Trump done goofed, because he isn't accepting State Dept briefings. That's the whole story here.

OK, OK, you were right this time.

I get carried away sometimes, especially when I'm reading another biography of Bismarck, see how easy he made it look, and wonder why politicians don't have his skill anymore.

Then you realize politicians of Bismarck's caliber come along once every two or three hundred years

**whembly**

eh... the China issue.

Either Trump's is blindly reacting to everything he does, or he has some people around him helping him craft a strategy. How do you know which is which?

To be a fly on their wall...

Here's a contrarian view:
Trump’s Taiwan call wasn’t a blunder. It was brilliant.

Relax.

Breathe.

Donald Trump’s phone call with the president of Taiwan wasn’t a blunder by an inexperienced president-elect unschooled in the niceties of cross-straits diplomacy.

It was a deliberate move — and a brilliant one at that.

The phone call with President Tsai Ing-wen was reportedly carefully planned, and Trump was fully briefed before the call, according to The Post. It’s not that Trump was unfamiliar with the “Three Communiques” or unaware of the fiction that there is “One China.” Trump knew precisely what he was doing in taking the call. He was serving notice on Beijing that it is dealing with a different kind of president — an outsider who will not be encumbered by the same Lilliputian diplomatic threads that tied down previous administrations. The message, as John Bolton correctly put it, was that “the president of the United States [will] talk to whomever he wants if he thinks it’s in the interest of the United States, and nobody in Beijing gets to dictate who we talk to.”

Amen to that.

And if that message was lost on Beijing, Trump underscored it on Sunday, tweeting: “Did China ask us if it was OK to devalue their currency (making it hard for our companies to compete), heavily tax our products going into their country (the U.S. doesn’t tax them) or to build a massive military complex in the middle of the South China Sea? I don’t think so!” He does not need Beijing’s permission to speak to anyone. No more kowtowing in a Trump administration.

Trump promised during the campaign that he would take a tougher stand with China, and supporting Taiwan has always been part of his get-tough approach to Beijing. As far back as 2011, Trump tweeted: “Why is @BarackObama delaying the sale of F-16 aircraft to Taiwan? Wrong message to send to China. #TimeToGetTough.” Indeed, the very idea that Trump could not speak to Taiwan’s president because it would anger Beijing is precisely the kind of weak-kneed subservience that Trump promised to eliminate as president.

Trump’s call with the Taiwanese president sent a message not only to Beijing, but also to the striped-pants foreign-policy establishment in Washington. It is telling how so many in that establishment immediately assumed Trump had committed an unintended gaffe. “Bottomless pig-ignorance” is how one liberal foreign-policy commentator described Trump’s decision to speak with Tsai. Trump just shocked the world by winning the presidential election, yet they still underestimate him. The irony is that the hyperventilation in Washington has far outpaced the measured response from Beijing. When American foreign-policy elites are more upset than China, perhaps it’s time for some introspection.

[Trump’s Taiwan charade]

The hypocrisy is rank. When President Obama broke with decades of U.S. policy and extended diplomatic recognition to a murderous dictatorship in Cuba, the foreign-policy establishment swooned. Democrats on Capitol Hill praised Obama for taking action that was “long overdue.” Former President Jimmy Carter raved about how Obama had “shown such wisdom,” while the New York Times gushed that Obama was acting “courageously” and “ushering in a transformational era for millions of Cubans who have suffered as a result of more than 50 years of hostility between the two nations.”

But when Trump broke with decades of U.S. diplomatic practice and had a phone call with the democratically elected leader of Taiwan, he was declared a buffoon. Well, if they didn’t like that phone call, his critics may hate what could come next even more. Trump now has an opportunity to do with Taiwan what Obama did with Cuba — normalize relations.

There are a number of steps the Trump administration can take to strengthen our military, economic and diplomatic ties with Taiwan. My American Enterprise Institute colleague Derek Scissors has suggested that Trump could negotiate a new free-trade agreement with Taiwan. “Taiwan’s tiny population means there is no jobs threat,” Scissors says, but Taiwan is also the United States’ ninth-largest trading partner. A free-trade agreement would be economically beneficial to both sides and would send a message to friend and foe alike in Asia that, despite Trump’s planned withdrawal from the Trans-Pacific Partnership, the United States is not withdrawing from the region.

On the military front, Trump could begin sending general officers to Taipei once again to coordinate with their Taiwanese counterparts and hold joint military exercises. On the diplomatic front, Bolton says the new administration could start “receiving Taiwanese diplomats officially at the State Department; upgrading the status of U.S. representation in Taipei from a private ‘institute’ to an official diplomatic mission; inviting Taiwan’s president to travel officially to America; allowing the most senior U.S. officials to visit Taiwan to transact government business; and ultimately restoring full diplomatic recognition.”

Beijing would be wise not to overreact to any overtures Trump makes to Taiwan. When China tested President George W. Bush in his first months in office by scrambling fighters and forcing a U.S. EP-3 aircraft to land on the Chinese island of Hainan, its actions backfired. After the incident, Bush approved a $30 billion arms package for Taiwan, announced that Taiwan would be treated as a major non-NATO ally and declared that the United States would do “whatever it took” to defend Taiwan. His actions not only strengthened U.S. ties with Taiwan but also set the stage for good relations with Beijing throughout his presidency.

China does not want to make the same mistake and overplay its hand with Trump. Trump’s call with Taiwan’s president was a smart, calculated move designed to send a clear message: The days of pushing the United States around are over.

That may horrify official Washington, but it’s the right message to send.

**feeder**

His "brilliant moves" are going to backfire spectacularly when Jinping makes fun of his doofy hair on Twitter and the orange goon makes the "smart, calculated move" to get in another fething twitter war.

He's not an outsider, he's a fething bottom feeder. Seriously, he's surrounded himself with the worst and the lowest people the US has to offer.

You poor guys are fethed for the next 4 years, unless of course, you are already very wealthy and posting on Dakka.

**Do_I_Not_Like_That**

Apart from Benghazi

I nomrally keep an open mind and give your posts a fair hearing, Whembly

but I hate to point out the fatal flaw in that article:

TRUMP BACKTRACKED

Yes, it would have been a smart move...if he hadn't backtracked

Obama made himself look half-assed when he didn't back up his red line, and now Trump, who hasn't even got his foot in the door of 1600, has made a blunder already...

**A Town Called Malus**

No, Trump just does what he feels like at that moment in time. He doesn't apply his brain, a trait that makes Twitter his perfect social media outlet due to it catering towards quick, easy responses with no critical thought thanks to the character limit.

**Do_I_Not_Like_That**

A Town Called Malus wrote:
No, Trump just does what he feels like at that moment in time. He doesn't apply his brain, a trait that makes Twitter his perfect social media outlet due to it catering towards quick, easy responses with no critical thought thanks to the character limit.

He can't be banned or suspended from twitter, even if an act of Congress was passed, because a) 1st amendment rights or something and b) from January he would just veto it

Society gets the leaders it deserves, as the old saying goes...

**tneva82**

Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:
I take back what I said about Trump playing it smart over Taiwan.

By backtracking, he comes across as weak and indecisive, rather than a shrewd operator with a touch of the realpolitik about him.

There's never been anything smat in what he did. Just deliberate sabre clashing with China.