Miscellaneous And Off Topic Subjects

[froot loops]

We used to laugh when China would run with a fake Onion story as if it were real. Here is your daily reminder our incoming administration will be run by paranoid, nut-job conspiracy theorists. Michael Flynn Jr. Will not rule out that Hillary Clinton ran a pedophilia ring out of the Comet Pizzeria. He is continuing this vicious rumor even after a gunman showed up there because of this awful false news story.

Http://www.businessinsider.com/jake-tapper-pizzagate-michael-flynn-son-2016-12

Make America Great Again

[Dr. Strangelove]

House GOP leadership signals it would NOT support the sort of tariffs Trump is calling for

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/05/us/politics/house-republicans-trade-trump.html?_r=0

[hack]

https://twitter.com/allahpundit/stat...95831710797824

LOL.

However, there will be tangible results that will result in improved and modernized airports which will make them more economically booming, which they will be able to attract more traffic, more landings and takeoffs, which include fees, more cargo being moved back and forth through them. It's gonna be an interesting philosophical argument, the idea of conservatism and smaller government, less government.

[Dr. Strangelove]

If any good comes at all from a Trump Presidency it'll be exposing Limbaugh as a craven, soulless hack, who'll quickly change his tune to retain his dying audience.

Reagan, free market economics, and free trade all quickly abandoned because his callers no longer like them.

[Dr. Strangelove]

LOL this is great. I can't believe this is what the next 4 years are going to be.

[ame]https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/806134244384899072[/ame]

[ame]https://twitter.com/sissenberg/status/806147576298774528[/ame]

[froot loops]

If any good comes at all from a Trump Presidency it'll be exposing Limbaugh as a craven, soulless hack, who'll quickly change his tune to retain his dying audience.

Reagan, free market economics, and free trade all quickly abandoned because his callers no longer like them.

It will be more than just Limbaugh. Look at all of these GOP pols changing your tune to try and get a job. Good grief, Jon Huntsman is praising Trump for Taiwan to try and get a job. Craven for power.

Daniel Larison will be an interesting read for the next 4 years.

[entropy]

well.. that's politics Froot. A very frustrating part of politics. Both sides do it and are not immune to pandering for votes.

anyone who thought Rush was anything but a Republican radio show was na?ve. He's not a conservative. He's a republican.

[entropy]

and when Trump crashes and the country votes for a D next election, he'll proclaim the Republicans lost their conservative values and he was right all along.

[Dr. Strangelove]

Limbaugh has gone after enough Republicans in the past (i.e. McCain) that I thought he was more of an ideological purist. Guess not.

And yeah, he is straddling the line just barely enough to claim that he was right all along should The Donald slip in popularity.

[Hannibal]

I'm not seeing the big hypocritical pivot by Limbaugh that you guys are seeing. Go read the transcript of the entire monologue.

[Dr. Strangelove]

Trump sent out that tweeting blasting Boeing with bad information in it. Boeing's current contract is only worth $170 M.

http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2016/12/06/trump-attacks-boeings-deal-new-air-force-one/95033188/

And there's now speculation that Trump was simply upset over Boeing's CEO being critical of him in an article with the Chicago Tribune over his trade & China policies.

Criticize the Donald and he WILL use the power of the govt to harm your business

[AlabamAlum]

It's gonna be a long four years. He's a petulant child and he has the nuclear football.

[entropy]

https://news.uchicago.edu/article/2016/12/05/climate-change-will-drive-stronger-smaller-storms-us?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=dec2016

article on new research regarding climate change

[iam416]

It's gonna be a long four years. He's a petulant child and he has the nuclear football.

It's like the Mike Price Reign in Tuscaloosa.

[Da Geezer]

hack:

You claim regularly that government cannot increase GDP, so any claim that an uptick in outlook is due to any expectations of something from government is an inconsistency you'd have to explain.

Well, if you keep hitting yourself on the head with a hammer it might feel good when you stop. That doesn't make hitting yourself in the head good policy. The optimism we see now is in the stopping. Some of us view "not hitting yourself on the head with a hammer" as normative behavior rather than something government "does".

The expectation is not something "from" government. The expectation is that government ceases to be a drag on the economy because Trump has said he wants to eliminate the most harmful regulations and also decrease taxes. Regulations are really nothing but a pernicious and non-transparent tax and the average American family pays 29% of their household income toward regulation (see my post about a week ago).

I've never said that government can't positively affect GDP. Of course, it can. Tax cuts are an obvious example. But those governmental activities that accelerate GDP all result in less government. That is a big distinction.

What I have said is that the $ 100,000 salary paid to an EPA bureaucrat is counted toward GDP when, in fact, the "duty" of the bureaucrat often is to institute rules that substantially decrease production. I say that the 100k should not count toward GDP. BTW, this is in the context of negative interest rates.

Announced yesterday was that the Pentagon had "lost" $ 125 billion, and had covered up the report that came to that conclusion. We now have 1,000,000 DOD employees supporting 1,300,000 military personnel. I just don't believe we need that many civilian employees. If we were to cut the civilian staff to 500k, I wouldn't view that cut as something government "does".

BTW, what I believe has a name. It is called zero-based budgeting.