15 thoughts on “News/Politics 12-29-15

  1. I read in this edition of World , concerning the Chinese economy;
    “”more and more money is leaving the country.”
    Where is it going?
    Other than building a hotel in Chicago, There seems to be no place for money to go.

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  2. Cdn real estate never bottomed out in 2008 and one of the reasons was overseas investment in Toronto and Vancouver.

    Its part of an interesting phenomenon in which foreign elites place “markers” in Canada in the form of investments, real estate, or family. And when things go south back “home” they run to safety. Hence private schools have students from Russia, Africa and Asia. Condos sit empty in Toronto and Vancouver. And I teach kids whose fathers run “businesses” in Iraq, Lebanon, UAE, Iran, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Kosovo, Kazakhstan, etc while mom raises the kids here. It drains money from those economies to Canada as we offer a safe, tolerant haven for the third world’s upper middle class

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  3. We’ve just entertained relatives who live in Montreal. I asked about the nationalities and they said there were many. To our surprise, though, they also said many people really love the US. “We’ve met all sorts of people who only have positive things to say about the US.”

    So very interesting. While we are convinced our nation has a lot of problems, others see us as a beacon of sanity.

    I remember when Hong Kong was being turned over to the Chinese; many wealthy women traveled to Vancouver to give birth in a Canadian hospital . . .

    Our relatives are pregnant, too, and their little one will be born in Montreal–which everyone in the family things is a great idea!

    Dual-residency rocks? 🙂

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  4. A beacon of sanity? They’re kidding, right? 😉

    Question: What does the Trump phenomenon do to the Republican party, beyond this immediate chaos? Read an editorial today that suggests the party is basically being blown up and can never be the same or easily regroup after this.

    Sadly, there hasn’t been a winsome conservative view articulated in Washington for some time, which I think laid the groundwork for the current mess.

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  5. One of my nephews married a Chinese girl. She wears Prada. She has a Masters in Accounting from an American university. I learned when Chinese citizens die, their money goes back to the State. If one of their children marries a foreigner then the parents can get money out of the country by giving money to the child.

    Remember, there are over a billion Chinese. If a million Chinese become citizens of another country by marriage, and they each get $1,000 from their parents that means $1 billion has left the country. If each child got $100,000 then $100 billion has left the country. If 1,000 Chinese children were given $1 million then $1 trillion would have left the country.

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  6. Guesswho, one good thing about the Trump phenomenon is that the RNC was preparing to shove another mealy mouth moderate down our throats. Mostly likely JEB! At least Trump has derailed that. If people will only realized that there are some good alternatives to moderate or Trump.

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  7. I don’t think Jeb ever had a chance. He was entirely unimpressive and never rose above single digits in the polls. He’ll get creamed in the primaries (but he would have been creamed anyway).

    The problem is Trump continues to lead (by quite a bit). We’ll see what happens once the actual caucuses and primaries start, but it’s looking like it’ll be very unpredictable. I never thought Trump had a chance of getting enough votes to get the nomination. Now, I’m not so sure.

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  8. The party powers-that-be simply aren’t “all” powerful.

    I don’t even consider Trump a conservative (I don’t believe he’s pro-life and or pro-traditional marriage, for example). But he’s certainly tapped into an anger that exists out there (due to the Obama leadership vacuum, which I understand).

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  9. I’m becoming suspicious of the polls. I don’t want to sound like that ignorant NYTimes critic from years ago, but I don’t know anybody who supports Trump. I see things on FB, but I’d like to think I know a pretty broad swatch of people and no one actually thinks Trump would make a decent president.

    They may agree with some of what he says (that proverbial broken watch line), but surely people see through him. WHO says he’s the leader?

    And if you were called for one of those surveys (has happened to me twice in 38 years of being on the voter roles–though that is one more time than I’ve been asked to serve on jury duty), what would you say given the options? Would you be more inclined to say “none of the above,” or “Trump” just to stick it at the pollsters?

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  10. It’s possible the polls are skewed — starting in Feb and moving quickly through May-June, the actual voting should tell more of the story

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