Donny Jr., please protect me from North Korea

wait is russia the bad guys now?

That's true. Looks like your opposition to transgenders in the military is based on your understanding of practical matters rather than vacuous ideology, anyway.

I was pleasantly surprised to see that it wasn't "because it's gross".

So it seems that Trump is upsetting hard-line right wingers, having pushed some of them out of the WH, and now is having to defend this McMaster guy against the grass roots hardliners.

My most precious hope is that Trump continues to buck the super conservative Republicans who are using Trump to advance their agenda, which would be a welcome development in my opinion, but which also means that said hardliners would have no more reason to keep Trump around, which would be an excellent development. Let two birds drown each other with one stone...

http://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/04/us/politics/trump-mcmaster-national-security-conservatives.html

Odds that anything will happen?

Looks like they're striking to get a consistent 40 hour work week and to stop wage theft.

Their list of demands seems reasonable. I guess their tools were all taken and left outside in the rain during the strike.

Also, Martin Shkreli was found guilty of fraud. So the world has some justice.

"His mistake was taking money from rich people. If he had stuck to stealing from and killing poor people, nothing would have happened to him."

Oh but here come the Randroids!

"Wait wait wait, he committed fraud... but everyone he defrauded actually ended up getting a 3X return on their investment because he just took money from another one of his ventures?

I mean, illegal sure, but seems like he still held up his end of the bargain."

--

"I don't particularly like the guy, but I do believe him to be pretty smart. How can he be convicted of fraud if he got them a 3x return?"

But it doesn't.

So seeing as it is the proceeds of a crime, I assume the government will be seizing all of that money?

lol

Actually, yeah, the only true justice for a person like Shkreli involves more guillotines.

Re: the illegal actions taken in the letter I posted.

That is so gross. It's just greasy.

Illegal, too. Also, good luck with your heart. Hope you don't have any problems paying.

Thanks. I am feeling pretty much back to normal fortunately, I had forgotten how ****ty I was feeling because it became normal!

Typically mechanics have a fixed number of hours that a particular repair should take, and they get paid the same whether they get it done early or late. (I assume that minimum wage laws still apply.) Of course, that's always going to be a bone of contention. My guess is that if these guys are striking rather than simply finding work elsewhere, there are too many mechanics in the area. I hear that the profession is getting dumbed down. Rather than train people to understand what's going on, a lot of times they just get trained to rigidly follow a set of instructions.

That's really the heart of it. For some ridiculous reason, gender dysphoria has been singled out as some major thing that needs a massive amount of political attention. Like many psychological issues, it's not well understood at all, but people are so damn obsessed with virtue signaling, that they got is reclassified in the DSM from being a mental illness.

The upshot is that people with a fairly serious, poorly understood condition are having their treatment options turned into a pawn for self-righteous goobers who have nothing to do with themselves since gay marriage got legalized.

Armies are inherently difficult to control. That's been true forever. Getting a concentrated bunch of young men not to rape everything in sight is hard enough as it is. Gender desegregation has already resulted in a huge amount of sexual assault. For vulnerable people like the transgendered, it's going to be even worse. The military can't honestly guarantee their safety, and it's a waste of effort and resources to try.

I couldn't be an Air Force pilot, because among other reasons, I get hay fever. Tough. It's not there to be an opportunity for me to do what I want.

Employment and labor pricing is a difficult subject. There are two important phenomena to consider.

The first is that wages and working conditions are "sticky"; that is, wages and conditions become entrenched in culture and industry best practices, buttressed against market conditions both upward and down. This is obviously a mixed blessing for both parties. If you have ever had to switch jobs in order to get a market level raise, you have experienced this first-hand.

The second is that switching jobs is expensive. It takes time, effort, and it's risky. Most people will endure shocking amounts of abuse to avoid having to search for a new job.

Consequently, wages and work conditions are not good predictors of labor market health in the short term; you can have a "normal" labor market and still see workers choose collective action, because sometimes it's the only way to make a firm wake up and pay attention to the rest of the world.

However, chances are the labor market isn't "normal". There are many possible reasons why wages and working conditions might regress, not just a simple oversupply. Here is another theory:





Small businesses in the US are not doing well. Recent studies have shown that US firms are now closing at a higher rate than they form; that almost all job gains since the GFC have been added at the largest firms; that wages at the largest firms have stagnated the most; and that the labor share of revenue is in sharp decline. These are all signs that the US labor market is increasingly subjected to monopsony conditions. Labor monopsonies do not reduce total employment - they can, in fact, increase total employment - but compensation and conditions inevitably degrade, since workers have few alternatives.

Another possibility is collusion. Note that this action is aimed at new car dealerships, specifically. When problems are isolated to a specific kind of operation within a larger industry, and bounded in a specific region, it strongly suggests collusion among the owners. If business owners agree beforehand to wage ranges and conditions, no amount of over- or under-supply can affect those conditions.

Collective action cannot help in situations of labor oversupply, but conversely, they are the only way to address labor market monopsonies and collusion. That suggests the workers may believe their problems are being caused by monopsony and collusion, rather than oversupply or a handful of idiot bosses.

They address that in the list of demands, they claim the hours required for each job has been lowered a few times so that people are almost always going over time, so they aren't getting paid.

That's definitely a thing that can happen as well, and it may be indicative of an economy that's a lot less strong than is looks. We look to small businesses for a lot of our innovation and growth.

I wouldn't have thought of auto repair as something where that would be a big deal, but now that I think about it, nearly all the dealerships in my town are owned by a single company. Employees probably don't get the kind of experience or expertise they'd need to find employment at a specialist firm, either.

I've been thinking for a while now that a really effective social safety net program would be expanded job relocation assistance. It would reduce the power of local monopsonies, and it would help growing companies compete with established interests by allowing them find employees that they need. It also might get broad bipartisan support if introduced correctly, since it appeals to conservative and liberal values.

That's certainly possible. But it's always a bone of contention.

So apparently the WH is a SV startup. But with better odds than most, since Peter Thiel estimates even odds of success:



But publicly,


https://www.buzzfeed.com/ryanmac/peter-thiel-and-donald-trump

As much as you claim to follow Levin, I'm curious. He's clearly not a Trump guy so what do you mean by your statement above?

In my experience, the talk radio crowd takes a tribal, take-no-prisoners approach. Whatever dislike Levin has for Trump is being deeply buried under his feeling of duty to castigate those in the "liberal media" who admittedly would love to sink his presidency by a death of a thousand cuts. Lots of talk about the "deep state", a supposed silent "coup" by Obama people still in government, etc.

It's not that he loves Trump-but that he has to bend over backwards to defend the man, but Trump is making it difficult even for lawyers who've spent their lives coming up with legal theories to justify originalsm and are therefore well equipped to come up with elaborate rationalizations of right wingers in government.

It's just that Trump's brazen way of going about the things he does is so transparently indefensible that the talk radio schtick becomes so obviously propaganda, seeing how they tow the line to the bitter end.

Can someone explain to me why we're supposed to hate Iran? I mean, I'm no fan of Hezbollah, but I think the rhetoric we're given is a little excessive.

Did you forget about Israel?

Because Iran is mortal enemies of America's great Middle Eastern ally, Saddam Hussein.

...What?

Iran is an ally of Syria and Russia and does not share the geopolitical interests of the U.S.?

That's how I understand it, at least.

I mean, I suppose the Sunnis/Israelis have a mutual dislike for any deterrents in the region.



Heh, thanks Reagan.



I mean, we kind of force the alliance between Iran and Russia, don't we? With decades of rhetoric labeling them one of the worst threats and slapping sanctions. I'm not sure if there's many geopolitical interests average Americans support that the Iranians resist, though.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-08-08/americans-are-dying-younger-saving-corporations-billions?cmpid=socialflow-twitter-business&utm_content=business&utm_campaign=socialflow-organic&utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=social

Oh thank God.

lol

They were mean to us that one time after we were mean to them.

Honestly other than that, I can't possibly imagine why they are considered more trustworthy than Saudi Arabia. More antagonistic relationship with Israel I guess?

Okay, so what I consider to be the Power 4 of "conservative talk radio" that cover 12 hours of the weekday are Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, and Mark Levin with Glenn and Mark being the "bookends". The absolute worst example of what you are referring to is Sean Hannity. The man is an absolute sell out, loves Trump, literally hates anybody that disagrees with Trump on anything. I knew he was combative but Trump exposed him as fanatical and certainly not conservative.

Rush is very pro-Trump but he's locked into parties. He very subtly implied that he endorsed Cruz but he doesn't endorse during primaries so you had to read between the lines. Anyway, Rush will pretty much always back Republicans rhetorically except when their cowardly, which is often.

Glenn is very critical of Trump period. Mark on the other hand doesn't spend most of his time criticizing Trump because he chooses to spend most of his time addressing the inaccurate and targeted attacks on Trump. That's not to say at all that any criticism of Trump is inaccurate but the blood is in the water and the politically motivated left and media are going to keep going with the false attacks and attempt to neuter the administration. BTW, none of my comments is meant to be a defense of Trump because there are plenty of valid criticisms. It's just that the real and fake criticisms already have nonstop coverage. If one host wants to spend his time dismantling the fake criticism, that's actually a very good thing. Hell, they're still trying to discredit him for presenting the case that the previous administration was surveilling (rightly or wrongly) the Trump campaign.



This is kind of how you lose me. Originalism doesn't need any "legal theories". It's just a plain, common sense understanding that the words in the constitution should be understood as they were written. And how do you get from Trump to "right wingers in government"?



Yeah, some do that. Levin doesn't. Beck doesn't. Hannity does. Limbaugh does. I have certainly gravitated further towards the ones that don't.

The Islamic sectarian dimension is important. The US' most important allies in the region -- Jordan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Turkey -- are Sunni regimes, and Iran and Syria are Shi'ite regimes. As the fighting in Syria and Iraq has become more and more sectarian, it's increased the extent to which sectarian identity is the key fault line which divides the region. The Sunni states have tried to convince American presidents to take the side of the Sunni regimes, and while Obama was reticent to do so (which is partially why so many Arab states were so infuriated and insulted by the Iran deal), Trump has made it central to his Middle East strategy.

The other thing is that Arab gulf states spend a lot of money to influence Washington think tanks and the rest of the foreign policy establishment to take an anti-Iran stance. They exert much more influence in Washington than Israel does.

Also, the conflict between the US and Iran is a legacy of the cold war. Initially, the US actually supplied Iran with much of its nuclear technology in the 1950s. The US and Iran were allies at that point, and the US did not yet appreciate the dangers of nuclear proliferation. But after the 1979 Islamic Revolution, Iran became a Soviet ally, and the Soviets provided Iran with nuclear technology and missile technology/helped train Iranian rocket scientists, in part to undermine the US in order to make a point to the US that it couldn't push the USSR around and tell it what military technology it could and couldn't sell.

And China. In my hometown we've random slogans (not really political, they're mostly motivational quotes) printed on asphalt on the pedestrian roads by the main square, and a lot of them are in Chinese. I'm from the same city Lenin was born in, so I guess we get a lot of Chinese tourists, but, yeah, Iran, China, and Russia are closer than ever with the "sanction everyone we don't like" U.S. politics of late.

http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/08/04/why-trumps-new-immigration-bill-makes-sense-215457

http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/09/trump-clinton-immigration-economy-unemployment-jobs-214216

Any thoughts on Borjas' views?

Also:



https://theintercept.com/2017/08/09/gulf-government-gave-secret-20-million-gift-to-d-c-think-tank/

https://www.wsj.com/articles/how-trump-won-in-two-dimensions-1502320256

Completely destroys the "socially liberal, economically conservative" title people give to themselves. Or at least, shows that's not representative of American voters.