monitoring Trump and relevant contemporary events

Here.
https://www.tripadvisor.com/ShowUserReviews-g294458-d318176-r125134022-Palace_of_Parliament-Bucharest.html

“A must see”
5 of 5 bubblesReviewed January 30, 2012

Second largest building in the world after Pentagon, biggest in Europe a lavish, rich and expensive palace build only 25 years ago. Marble platted walls, marble floors, silk, expensive wood essences, 3500 chandeliers all made out of crystal (Medias crystal - Medias city in Transylvania), halls the size of football field, ceilings with gold and so on. If ever in Bucharest you gotta see it you'll be amazed of what a small nation can do.
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“Amaizing building, many rooms,”
5 of 5 bubblesReviewed February 13, 2012
An interesting building, a big one. You have to see it to believe it
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“Interesting”
5 of 5 bubblesReviewed January 27, 2012
Worth the visit if only for the massiv building and the very interesting interior.

I remember seeing a huge, ugly, Russian building in Bucharest.

Quote:

I was sent to Romania in 1988 and I still remember what terrible shape Bucharesti was in. I was never so happy in my entire life as when the aircraft I was in left Communist airspace.

That really was an ugly place and time. Why were you there or can you not say?

I was temporarily assigned to the State Depart, and they sent me to the American embassy in Bucharesti. The city was berift of charm, it was so poor and so neglected. A stench hung over the city that permeated my clothing, I could never get it out my clothes and I had to toss them.

(Let me pm the rest, I'm sure it's boring to everyone else).

Diane Silvers Ravitch (born July 1, 1938) is a historian of education, an educational policy analyst, and a research professor at New York University's Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development. Previously, she was a U.S. Assistant Secretary of Education.

Personal memories from communist-era Bucharest? Hell no that doesn't sound boring.

tony5732 wrote:

Minimum wage IS too high. It causes inflation and companies to move to other countries.

Notice Tony you get voted down on accurate statements dealing with economics.

On a general note a huge majority of people simply do not understand economics even in simplistic terms.

I don't blame them it's not a very exciting topic but still, they are very easily swayed by lies because it's too boring to research.

With such a great access to a tool for learning most people ignore it for false data that sounds good.

With all that said, minimum wage policies are terrible for the public, not better.

In light of a recent monthly release from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), time for a quick trip to the glorious pacific northwest and the Seattle, WA area to revisit what’s been happening there in the wake of that city’s rising minimum wage.

You may recall that even prior to Seattle’s minimum wage law being enacted, we were treated to a nonstop barrage of what the deleterious effects were going to be. In fact, claims were made that those effects were in evidence prior to the law even being enacted:

Quote:

Seattle's new minimum wage law takes effect April 1 but is already leading to restaurant closings and job losses

That was but one of many, many pieces, built on nothing but ideology, that warned of the perils of raising the minimum wage. That it simply can’t work because the immutable laws of economics tell us that if the price of something goes up, the demand for that thing must fall.

So, almost two years later, how are things working out? [..]

The unemployment rate in the city of Seattle – the tip of the spear when it comes to minimum wage experiments – has now hit a new cycle low of 3.4%, as the city continues to thrive. I’m not sure what else there is to say at this point. The doomsayers were wrong. The sky has not fallen. The restaurant business, by all accounts, is booming (in fact, probably reaching a saturation point when one looks at eateries per capita). I think it’s safe to say we’ve got enough data – over almost two years now – to declare that Seattle has not suffered adverse consequences from its increases in the minimum wage, and has certainly not experienced the dire effects foretold by the anti-min wage crowd.

The CIA has concluded in a secret assessment that Russia intervened in the 2016 election to help Donald Trump win the presidency, rather than just to undermine confidence in the U.S. electoral system, according to officials briefed on the matter.

Intelligence agencies have identified individuals with connections to the Russian government who provided WikiLeaks with thousands of hacked emails from the Democratic National Committee and others, including Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman, according to U.S. officials. Those officials described the individuals as actors known to the intelligence community and part of a wider Russian operation to boost Trump and hurt Clinton’s chances.

“It is the assessment of the intelligence community that Russia’s goal here was to favor one candidate over the other, to help Trump get elected,” said a senior U.S. official briefed on an intelligence presentation made to U.S. senators. “That’s the consensus view.”

...officials devised a plan to seek bipartisan support from top lawmakers and set up a secret meeting with the Gang of 12 — a group that includes House and Senate leaders, as well as the chairmen and ranking members of both chambers’ committees on intelligence and homeland security.

...The Democratic leaders in the room unanimously agreed on the need to take the threat seriously. Republicans, however, were divided, with at least two GOP lawmakers reluctant to accede to the White House requests.

According to several officials, McConnell raised doubts about the underlying intelligence and made clear to the administration that he would consider any effort by the White House to challenge the Russians publicly an act of partisan politics.

Consider: how many people posting here who stand proudly as conservatives and republicans have changed their notions even the slightest bit regarding Trump since he gained the nomination, though their opinions were commonly far more tempered before that, quite regardless of anything he has said or done?

That epistemological isolation and the extremist partisanship which undergirds it is no small problem.

What's positive here is that almost all mainstream media across the country is aware of how uniquely dangerous this man is and they continue, for the most part, to keep pointing out the avalanche of events and instances which further demonstrate the dangers.

The election of Donald Trump to the Presidency is nothing less than a tragedy for the American republic, a tragedy for the Constitution, and a triumph for the forces, at home and abroad, of nativism, authoritarianism, misogyny, and racism. Trump’s shocking victory, his ascension to the Presidency, is a sickening event in the history of the United States and liberal democracy. On January 20, 2017, we will bid farewell to the first African-American President—a man of integrity, dignity, and generous spirit—and witness the inauguration of a con who did little to spurn endorsement by forces of xenophobia and white supremacy. It is impossible to react to this moment with anything less than revulsion and profound anxiety.

glitterbag wrote:

I was temporarily assigned to the State Depart, and they sent me to the American embassy in Bucharesti. The city was berift of charm, it was so poor and so neglected. A stench hung over the city that permeated my clothing, I could never get it out my clothes and I had to toss them.

(Let me pm the rest, I'm sure it's boring to everyone else).

Personal memories from communist-era Bucharest? Hell no that doesn't sound boring.

I've never been to Bucharest. Only places I visited while the communists were still in charge were several cities in Poland, Prague, and Budapest. As much as we were raised to think of the Eastern Bloc as a grey and homogenous whole, the differences between the three countries were striking. I'm sure Romania was quite a different (and particularly depressing) story again.

David Remnick at the New Yorker, first paragraph:
The election of Donald Trump to the Presidency is nothing less than a tragedy for the American republic, a tragedy for the Constitution, and a triumph for the forces, at home and abroad, of nativism, authoritarianism, misogyny, and racism. Trump’s shocking victory, his ascension to the Presidency, is a sickening event in the history of the United States and liberal democracy. On January 20, 2017, we will bid farewell to the first African-American President—a man of integrity, dignity, and generous spirit—and witness the inauguration of a con who did little to spurn endorsement by forces of xenophobia and white supremacy. It is impossible to react to this moment with anything less than revulsion and profound anxiety.