To the surprise of absolutely nobody, Trump signs a trade deal, got nothing real in return, and calls it a win anyway.

30-50b in agricultural purchases over 2 years? China was buying ~25 billion a year before the trade spat. China buys 12 billion in agricultural products globally, per month. Did I mention China has been under internal pressure due to rising pork prices? They are literally trying to import more agricultural products today to keep food prices down.

Intellectual property protections? Empty promises once more. New laws and new protections? Proven jokes. China has been beefing up IP protection for years and enforcement has been... selective. The only reason they're beefing up enforcement overall is they got domestic and well-connected companies now asking for enforcement. Foreign firms asking for enforcement is still very much hit/miss.

Agreed enforcement mechanisms that start with low level officials then escalated upwards? (this is per Mnuchin's descriptions of the enforcement mechanism before this pact was signed off on) Read that again. And again. US basically agreed to delay penalties when **** goes south and let China talk and talk and talk. Companies aren't going to bother lodging complaints that will take years to sort out.

This dumb deal joins the deal with NK and USMCA as another deal where Trump went through all the trouble to get the other side to agree to things they were going to do anyway or have no plans of actually doing.

Legal question: Is it theoretically possible to elevate UIGEA to the Supreme Court?

I'd rather deregulate than regulate online poker. Deregulated poker was amazing 10 years ago.

Rooting for Stormy

+I will die laughing if SCOTUS rules against Trump despite him having stacked the justices in his favor

It doesn't matter how many people deny the racism, Wookie has spoken.

He was the worst mod, just the nut low. It got so bad that management had to come along and just excise the entire cancerous lot to protect the healthy parts that remained.

Yeah its funny that even though there are far less racists in america now than there were 20 years ago, the word "racist" gets thrown around now more than ever.

I wasn't the biggest wookie fan as mod to be fair. But at least he kept the insincere 'debate' out of the forum.

There are no fewer than 5 high-frequency posters in here that have zero interest in actually discussing politics. They merely spout off baseless conspiracy theories and crazy talking points - almost always right wing - and do so without any sort of moderation. And it's embarrassing.

You have people honestly saying that minorities, women and gays are better under Republican policies. People saying Ukraine influenced the last election. People thinking Mr. Trump isn't actually racist somehow. And this is kosher here somehow.

Cite the racism stat please. (One of the things that used to be enforced by the worst mod ever was that you had to support claims like that or retract them. ****ing crazy, I know.)

It is racist to support Trump, but that's not the only reason he's racist.

Rounding up gays, Jews, political enemies, etc. was enforcing the law. What the law is matters, as is how it is enforced.

LOL, this is bullshit. Your understanding is incorrect. Also, seeking asylum is legal, and it is a human right.

Correct. If Trump wants to violate the due process rights of these people, he should get together a coalition to repeal the 14th Amendment. Until that happens, he's breaking the law in his treatment of these people.

You're still in here with apologia for Trump's worst offenses. That's even worse!

B) so they can get at democrats tax returns though C would not shock me

You are one stupid mofo..

I don't think there is a single, definitive measure that could be used to decide the factual claim here. Particularly because of different possible ways of defining racism, i.e. measures of individual prejudice would be quite different from measures of institutional/structural issues.

For the latter, I'm not aware of any holistic attempts to measure trends, and I'm not sure how it would work. But for individual attitudes, there are several large surveys that provide some evidence. The most widely used is the General Social Survey. Even there, though, the survey has asked a number of different questions in different ways over the years, so it's not trivial to boil it all down into one measure.

So, caveats in mind, my impression of data that I've looked at from GSS is that there isn't a very clear trend over 20 years for some of the questions they ask, though there are definitely trends over 50 years. But, for at least some questions, in the last decade, there appears to be a trend towards wider acceptance of anti-racist views. As an example, consider this question:

The percentage is still pretty shockingly high, in my view, but the trend looks real. It should also be noted that it appears to be largely driven by changes in Democrats' attitudes:



See also this report which documents other similar trends in GSS:

I browsed the site for like 2 hours, mostly the I resign thread, and I just don’t see how you can say that site allows for wider range of opinions.

It very much looks like certain 2p2 posters wanted an unmoderated echo chamber, got their echo chamber, then realized echo chambers are bad.

I was wondering why some old “exileds” were posting in volume again. Now I know.

It is very odd but some have the really bizarre idea that a usa based politics forum maybe shouldn't exclude ~half the usa voters.

grizy: I can see how it's ambiguous but when Will said "this forum" he meant this one (P&S), not Unstuck.

lol, what kind of revisionist bullshit is this? We were kicked out of 2p2 by the management for being too liberal.

I was going to say that but I didn't want to steal your thunder

Except no one has been locked out for being too liberal. Or too left wing. Or even for trolling.

So was WN lying when he agreed with what I said?

Will your undying obsession with me ever end? This is really what you’ll be doing the rest of your life?

I mean, I'll agree that it's not a perfectly adequate characterization of the outcome, but I don't care enough to quibble with it. And I understand why trolly would disagree with the idea that Unstuck happened because some 2p2ers wanted an unmoderated echo chamber.

Anyway when I responded to grizy the first time I left out my reaction to that bit because I decided it wasn't worth getting into, which was clearly the correct play and I have since erred, but whatever.

I had an inkling that I should have just left that post be. But couldn't because I just misinterpreted the "this" in "this forum."

Silly me.

Oh, well, spilled milk, cooked rice, cows out the barn, so on and so forth.

Sure but 2+2, me or you haven't banned trolly or the rest for being left, liberal or trolling while trolly would ban us in an instant.

He is spreading a lie that it's fair to point out. Maybe it would play better in an echo chamber

You don't know ****, Jon Snow.

chez, I'm pretty sure WN would appreciate it if you pumped the brakes on your weird-ass obsession with me and stopped with this, or at least maybe make your lies less obvious.

And of course I would ban you, you're stalking me across multiple forums. You get that this is creepy as ****, right? Like, I'm not an interesting person, there are plenty of celebrities for you to creep out over.

I guess I will never fully understand the criteria for post deletion and temp bans

Skimming, so apologies if I missed things. Just want to point out that even if his claim about fewer* racists is factual, it does not necessarily support his implied claim that people getting called racist "now more than ever" is out of line. The rise in willingness to express racist positions in the Trump era would also need to be accounted for.