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Trump / Musk (other than DOGE)

  • Thread starter Thread starter nycfan
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Donald Trump being 78 years old is quite literally the absolute least of why he was, and will once again likely be (obligatory “though I hope I’m wrong!”) a shit president.
 
finesse said:
A variant on herd immunity in a way.
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Bill Hamilton coined the phrase selfish herd to describe this phenomenon of numerical group defense. The bigger the herd, the better an individual’s odds of not being the meal.
The selfish part comes into play with the jostling for positions in the middle of the herd. The losers were the ones left more exposed on the periphery.
 
superrific said:
I mean, I suppose Congress could stop printing dollars. But that would cause the mother of all financial meltdowns, so I'm thinking no. And that wouldn't leave crypto in charge, either

As far as I can tell, the basic positions on crypto in America are 1) it should be eliminated, or at least highly regulated (for instance, so that people have to pay taxes on their gains) and 2) do nothing and let crypto keep pulling in suckers. Thiel etc are scared of position 1.

Crypto is not a currency, despite the name. At this point in existence, it's just a highly levered NASDAQ tracking index. Its correlation with tech stocks is very high, which is sort of the exact opposite of what its proponents think it is and the exact opposite of what you need from a currency. There are lots of different "coins," which means that any crypto takeover would have to decide which of the coins to adopt and which to jettison, and of course there's nobody in a position to make that decision (one could say let the market sort it out but the only way that has ever worked in the past was serial bankruptcies). There's no monetary authority to control the supply of crypto coins (the limit on 21 million bitcoins is actually no limit at all because they are fractionally divisible), and while the crypto idiots think that's a feature, it's a huge bug.

So, no, I don't think any crypto takeover is on the horizon. Not as far as the eye can see. Lots of things would have to happen to make that a reality, and most of them are bad. Some would be "world falls apart" bad. The irony is that if anyone did try to replace the dollar with, say, bitcoin, bitcoin's value would plunge to zero because the first effect would be to create a massive financial crisis, and in crises, investors run to safety. Which isn't fucking bitcoin.
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www.investors.com

Trump Expands Crypto Reach With Acquisition Talks, Coinbase Meeting

President-elect Donald Trump set to meet with Coinbase CEO. Trump Media stock bolts on crypto acquisition talks.
www.investors.com www.investors.com
 
superrific said:
The military has favored the GOP because 1) militaries are almost always conservative in nature; and 2) hippies re: Vietnam. It long predated the Iraq War.
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"Bill Clinton cut their Budget" Or was it Jimmy
 
CFordUNC said:
Donald Trump being 78 years old is quite literally the absolute least of why he was, and will once again likely be (obligatory “though I hope I’m wrong!”) a shit president.
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It will beyond shocking..It will pass in two years We shall see how much damage is permanent???
 
CFordUNC said:
Yeah. I agree, the inhumanity of such a scenario would be the worst aspect, and of course there would be dire economic ramifications felt by all of us, as well.

I tend to think that this whole "we're going to deport illegal immigrants" thing will look very similarly to the "build a wall and make Mexico pay for it" bullshit from the first term. There will be widely-publicized raids and round-ups of people who are *already* incarcerated or in the crosshairs of the legal system. There will be an enormous Trumpian show and performative theater, as there always is, and there will be all sorts of outright lying and fudging and obfuscation of statistics and data that will make it seem like the five-figure number of illegal immigrants "deported" actually numbers in the millions. But short of creating a concentration camp-style system of incarceration, it's hard to even understand logistically how Trumpers expect it to work.
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I think the difference is that some Trump supporters are demanding he do this and unlike a wall in remote areas, it would be hard to hide the lack of progress. People will see if construction sites are still full of immigrants.

I think it might be Trump’s goal to keep it minimal but he may have painted himself into a corner if so.
 
HeelYeah2012 said:
I was joking dude, relax.

Make no mistake, the Democrats should be embarrassed that they lost to a 78 year old Donald Trump and they should be doing some serious self-reflection about how out of touch they are with working class voters.

But I know it wasn’t a landslide lol. Our political climate is way too polarized right now for any kind of true landslide. Trump did win every state that was in play. But it wasn’t some Reagan-esque landslide.
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Anytime a party loses they need to reflect. But let's be serious and honest here. The only reason a scumbag criminal fraud like Trump was elected is that the majority of voters, and citizens, are very dumb at least on actual policy and causation. They voted Trump because of a spike in inflation. Nothing more and nothing less. A little add on was the Dems complete lack of attention and presence at the border, and Trump and team and far right media and radio making it sound like we are under siege and occupied by foreign criminals.

Reagan, Obama, you name the President, would have lost re-election when the working class lost a quarter of their purchasing power.

In fact, I believe that many women that were outraged over abortion, still voted for Trump because they are struggling to feed their kids. And that was the #1 voter issue.

If there was any screwup, it was putting the VP on the ticket, making it very hard to distance from Biden's inflation (no Biden did not cause it, but it was on his watch, and that is what voters judge on.) Not only was it nearly impossible to distance herself, she would have had to stab Biden in the back to do so, she wouldn't and it probably wouldn't have worked anyway. So it all comes back to Biden (and Jill) for not bowing out BEFORE the primaries. when he was obviously fading fast.

There is no mandate, any more so than any other President that has won. MAGA is feeling it because they also won the popular vote this time which the old Pub party rarely did. Dems almost always win both the popular vote and electors, often winning the popular vote when losing the office -- at least the past few decades.
 
tallheel95 said:
I keep wanting to reply to different threads but I'm just having a hard time finding the words at the moment. All of this (re-election, cabinet picks, etc) is pretty crushing. And honestly I'm very concerned about big ticket items (the geopolitical situation and nuclear proliferation, human rights, climate change) and how this next administration is shaping up to be completely unprepared to handle any of these topics. I vacillate between putting my head in the sand and despairing. But in response to this thread, I just know that mass deportation or detention will be terrible for so many people, including LE and military members who will be handling this situation. I have talked with several former military (usually NG) who were deployed down to the border at various times. I've also had conversations with veterans who were involved in the withdrawal from Afghanistan and it was awful. People get desperate when they feel like their freedom and options are ending (think people hanging onto the wheels of a plane when it is taking off, people getting crushed in crowds, etc). Also when you have detention camps, you have to decide how much you are going to police the detainees... I've heard of veterans witnessing murder, child molestation, etc in these situations. I hear a lot of trauma in my job, and I know there is so much suffering to come on all sides of this equation. :(
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Thank you for this perspective. Yes, I imagine it will be hard for many people in the NG to herd migrants into cars and send them to camps.
 
Kraftyheel89 said:
Anytime a party loses they need to reflect. But let's be serious an honest here. The only reason a scumbag criminal fraud like Trump was elected is thar the majority of voters, and citizens, are very dumb at least on actual policy. They voted Trump because of a spike in inflation. Nothing more and nothing less. A little add on was the Dems complete lack of attention and presence at the border, and Trump and team and far right media and radio making it sound like we are under siege and occupied by foreign criminals.

Reagan, Obama, you name the President, would have lost re-election when the working class lost a quarter of their purchasing power.

In fact, I believe that many women that were outraged over abortion, still voted for Trump because they are struggling to feed their kids. And that was the #1 voter issue.

If there was any screwup, it was putting the VP on the ticket, making it very hard to distance from Biden's inflation (no Biden did not cause it, but it was on his watch, and that is what voters judge on. Not only was it nearly impossible to distance herself, she would gave had to stab Biden in the back to do so, she wouldn't and it probably wouldn't have worked anyway. So it all comes back to Biden (and Jill) for not bowing out BEFORE the primaries. when he was obviously fading fast.

There is no mandate, any more so than any other President that has won. MAGA is feeling it because they also win the popular vote this time which the old Pub party rarely did. Dems almost always win both the popular vote and electors, often winning the popular vote when losing the office -- at least the past few decades.
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Yep, all of this. Democrats were left holding the inflation and incumbency bag in a year where every other developed democracy around the globe has seen anti-incumbent backlash because of inflation. There is really nothing else to read into the election other than that. One can certainly sift through data and try to figure out where and how Democrats lost on the margins, but ultimately it doesn’t matter, because of inflation and incumbency.

Also, Donald Trump did not win the presidency for a second time because the Democrats did anything majorly wrong politically or ideologically per se. He won the presidency because 74 million Americans decided that they preferred his brand of incompetent, chaotic, corrupt governance- nothing more and nothing less. And despite all of that, his win was so razor thin narrow that he couldn’t even drag all of the other downballot Republicans across the finish line behind him. The damage that a second Trump presidency is going to do to the Republican party, who will have to face the electorate in 2026 and 2028 and beyond without Donald Trump on the ballot for the first time in over a decade, is going to completely crater the party. People think that the general American electorate is stupid, and maybe it is, but when Joe Working Class and Jane Middle Class are staring down the barrel of 10% inflation, 12% mortgages, a tanked economy that has no agricultural, construction, or service industry workers, and kids dying from preventable diseases, there is going to be backlash. I think people are making a mistake believing that low propensity voters are inherently Republican voters.
 
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superrific said:
They can't possibly confirm him and retain any self-respect whatsoever. Talk about a historic abdication of responsibility. Gaetz wouldn't just be the worst AG ever. He wouldn't be the 2024 White Sox of AGs. He would be a junior high baseball team trying to compete in MLB bad. And yes, cue the jokes.
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Since when do Republicans give a shit about self-respect?
 
CFordUNC said:
I tend to think that this whole "we're going to deport illegal immigrants" thing will look very similarly to the "build a wall and make Mexico pay for it" bullshit from the first term.
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I don't think so. The Trump transition team didn't really give a fuck about the wall. They didn't staff the cabinet departments with that in mind.

Look at what Trump is doing now, though. He is very, very serious about the mass deportation. Notice how he's appointing mainstream Pubs to departments like State, Interior, Energy -- i.e. the issues he doesn't give a fuck about. Then look at DHS, DOJ, DoD. Those are the positions he does care about, and there he is putting his unqualified lackeys.

I don't know if you remember this, but when Noem's dog-killing thing came out, I had an explanation of why she put it in there. She was auditioning for DHS. She was telling the world, "I will use violence if necessary to accomplish my goal." The dog was a metaphor for migrants. And it looks like I was right. She got the job she wanted.

Maybe the mass deportation is just the new wall, but it doesn't look that way right now.
 
CFordUNC said:
Suckers, losers, things of that nature?

I don’t have a longer frame of reference than this because I’m not old enough, but wonder if the reason that the GOP such substantial support from military members right now is because of how it seemed (not saying it was actually true) in the early to mid 2000s that the Republicans were the “support the troops” party and the Democrats were the “Bush lied, thousands died” party?
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I think they have always been more right. Obviously there are plenty of Democrats in the military as well.

But, anyway, the Republicans are now fully in the “Bush lied, thousands died” because Trump is. Their reversal on that issue is a clear sign of the power of the cult.
 
Kraftyheel89 said:
Anytime a party loses they need to reflect. But let's be serious and honest here. The only reason a scumbag criminal fraud like Trump was elected is that the majority of voters, and citizens, are very dumb at least on actual policy and causation. They voted Trump because of a spike in inflation. Nothing more and nothing less. A little add on was the Dems complete lack of attention and presence at the border, and Trump and team and far right media and radio making it sound like we are under siege and occupied by foreign criminals.

Reagan, Obama, you name the President, would have lost re-election when the working class lost a quarter of their purchasing power.

In fact, I believe that many women that were outraged over abortion, still voted for Trump because they are struggling to feed their kids. And that was the #1 voter issue.

If there was any screwup, it was putting the VP on the ticket, making it very hard to distance from Biden's inflation (no Biden did not cause it, but it was on his watch, and that is what voters judge on.) Not only was it nearly impossible to distance herself, she would have had to stab Biden in the back to do so, she wouldn't and it probably wouldn't have worked anyway. So it all comes back to Biden (and Jill) for not bowing out BEFORE the primaries. when he was obviously fading fast.

There is no mandate, any more so than any other President that has won. MAGA is feeling it because they also won the popular vote this time which the old Pub party rarely did. Dems almost always win both the popular vote and electors, often winning the popular vote when losing the office -- at least the past few decades.
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You’re right that inflation was huge but we had people on this very board acting like inflation and prices were no longer an issue because the year over year inflation rate had normalized - ignoring the fact that prices had gone up 25% cumulatively in a 3 year span or whatever it was.

It was always going to be inflation and immigration if the republicans won. And it was always going to be abortion if the democrats won.

But when you lose a tight election, as someone on the other side who is open to splitting my tickets, it makes me hope the Democrats will at least give some consideration to no longer dying on certain hills that are so absurd, like men playing in women’s sports, illegal immigrants being good because they perform our tough labor, etc.
 
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