Trump's Card

[Lang Spoon]

Watch the Nazis, a warning from History. Maybe the last great history documentary the BBC ever did. Read Hitlers Willing Executioners (but with a massive pinch of salt). Shoestring totalitarianism, especially within Germany and not the occupied parts later.

Some people are just horrible spiteful cunts, and these are the cunts that allow bad things to happen. Maybe not all the 26% Of Republican leaning Americans, but most I’d wager. The nazi regime was not an all seeing eye. The eye relied on willing volunteers of gossip and rumour, sometimes given through fear, sometimes to get a neighbour’s land. Have you never met a farmer?

[Lang Spoon]

As a country we've been through murder-abetting situations on a much vaster scale than this. I'd like to see marching in the streets in every case, but when your government is this fucked up it's probably hard to find companies not to boycott.

Aye, but concentration camps on your own soil run for private gain, that’s pretty fucking novel these last 100 years. Japanese internment camps look like bleeding heart FDR compared to this. They could do almost anything, and you’d be going, sure the US has done worse before, or, it’s not Fascism yet it’s just a few bad apples.

[Patrick Thistle]

Who says it's not an Iraq or Vietnam level crime?

Does the level of crime somehow determine it's acceptability?

These are rhetorical questions.

[Benjm]

The Sarah Sanders restaurant thing reminds me slightly of when Labour MP Laura Pidcock said that while she tried to maintain cordial working relations with her Conservative counterparts she wouldn't choose to socialise with them. This brought howls of anger from the right wing press, claiming that she was insulting the fine traditions of cross party friendship and clubbability that make Parliament great. It was a striking example of people within a bubble thinking that the bubble is the real world and the lives of those affected by their machinations just an abstract and distant concern.

[Lang Spoon]

Please. My point wasn't that this isn't bad. It's not an Iraq- or Vietnam-level crime so it doesn't loom as large in the popular imagination. It's also not really all that new when you consider our penal system since the Reagan daze.

Jesus tap dancing Christ man.

[Lang Spoon]

Small children in cages in private prisons wasn’t implemented under Reagan. If that only gets a 3 on the Bruno outrage scale you must be mr Blasé blasé

[Lang Spoon]

I don’t think you’re an amoral centrist, I think you’re a very slightly leftish centrist, who enjoys splitting hairs and seems overly concerned with not riling people who are beyond redemption.

[ursus arctos]

https://twitter.com/kylegriffin1/status/1011022491429400576?s=21

[Tubby Isaacs]

Harley Davidson looking at shifting some production to Europe in response to tariffs.

[Lang Spoon]

Haha.

[Tubby Isaacs]

This could be fun in the mid terms.

[adams house cat]

Trump is a uniquely terrifying president who didn't fall out of the sky. He's a predictable outcome of where the GOP has been headed for decades. So was Sarah Palin. He's an agent of chaos. He'll either cause the GOP to reform itself or we'll continue if not complete our slide into oblivion.

Not just the GOP but politics in general. One of the reasons this has come to a head is the perception that Congress couldn't get anything done and a willful ignorance of the fact that President Obama was snookered at every turn by thinly disguised racism. The frustration is understandable. The tragedy is that the frustration and anger had gotten so deep that a racist misogynistic egomaniac who made promises to "clean house" and "drain the swamp" could seem an attractive alternative to the same old. I heard that a lot. "Washington needs cleaning up and Trump is the man." Many are still saying that. Some are still believing it.

The separated family policy is an enormity that, frankly, defeats my lexicon but it has not "just grown" like Topsy. The climate was there and the Hill has only itself to blame. Their blocking and delaying tactics during the Obama administration sowed the seeds and now thousands of families are suffering the rewards. El Trumpo would not have followed this path if he did not believe, in that unwrapped kebab that passes for his brain, that he could take a lot of people with him and he has. There are still followers who are prepared to ignore, excuse or justify any unspeakable act but there are enough committed voters with a conscience out there to win the House and the Senate being whittled down to. My worry is that should that happen this last year and a half will seem like a holiday. El Trumpo's belligerence, bellicosity, and simple venality will see him do anything at any cost to stymie the Dems and it could get very ugly indeed for two years with many, many more innocent people getting hurt.

[Amor de Cosmos]

Harley Davidson looking at shifting some production to Europe in response to tariffs.

They'd add $2,200 to the cost of every bike sold in Europe. No brainer really, except for someone with no brain.

[WOM]

I'm struggling to think of where they're moving it to. Unless they have a partner like MV Augusta whose factory they can use.

[ursus arctos]

To address the substantial cost of this tariff burden long-term, Harley-Davidson will be implementing a plan to shift production of motorcycles for EU destinations from the U.S. to its international facilities to avoid the tariff burden. Harley-Davidson expects ramping-up production in international plants will require incremental investment and could take at least 9 to 18 months to be fully complete.

.

[WOM]

Hmm. I know they have a plant in India. Would that work?

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

Who buys harley davidson's in europe? They're a fucking horrendously noisy thing.

[Ginger Yellow]

Hmm. I know they have a plant in India. Would that work?

Presumably. I don't think Europe has an FTA with either, so they'd presumably be on the same 6% tariff as the US was on before Trump did his thing.

[Satchmo Distel]

Hell's Angels? Motorhead fans?

[ursus arctos]

Lots of well off Germans and Italians.

[San Bernardhinault]

Who buys harley davidson's in europe? They're a fucking horrendously noisy thing.

The same people as buy them in the US. People who really don't care about annoying everyone else when they make huge amounts of noise to show off that they're middle aged men living out some teenage fantasy.

[Tubby Isaacs]

Meanwhile in Missouri.

https://www.missourinet.com/2018/06/...rumps-tariffs/

President Trump’s tariff on steel imports that took effect June 1 has caused a southeast Missouri nail manufacturer to lose about 50% of its business in two weeks. Mid Continent Nail Corporation in Poplar Bluff – the remaining major nail producer in the country – has had to take drastic measures to make ends meet. The company employing 500 people earlier this month has laid off 60 temporary workers. It could slash 200 more jobs by the end of July and be out of business around Labor Day.

[Tubby Isaacs]

Supreme Court seems to be OK with Texas gerrymandering.

[ursus arctos]

The election cases this term have been highly disappointing.

McDonnell is definitely getting his money’s worth from Gorsuch.

[Amor de Cosmos]

Who buys harley davidson's in europe? They're a fucking horrendously noisy thing.

Harley-Davidson, say that “in 2017, nearly 40,000 riders bought new Harley-Davidson motorcycles in Europe, and the revenue generated from the EU countries is second only to the U.S.”

Harley-Davidson said it plans to bear increased costs to avoid a decrease in sales in the EU. “On a full-year basis, the company estimates the aggregate annual impact [due to the tariffs] to be approximately $90 [million] to $100 million.”