Lol they said that and my first thought was, “what, is there a risk of some billionaire CEO bursting into the courtroom to exact revenge?”

I mean…can we really ascribe a political ideology to someone who specifically demands to not be taken seriously? If they were going for “right-wing”, then they are their own worst critic.

— Michael Scott

Democracy: the worst form of government except for all the others.

This link gives a 404 now. Archive anywhere? Was it legit?

Good. I want more of them to do it. Let’s get past the phase where people still try to rationalize ways in which it’s not what it literally is.

This service isn’t for CEOs, it’s for upper middle class people with recency bias.

I’d like to request that you please read my posts in full before responding, and don’t skim it and assume you understand the jist of what I’m saying. This method is failing you.

I think your COVID denialist is showing a bit

I’m not saying covid was equivalent to the flu, I’m saying that for the vast majority of cases, it didn’t progress to be life threatening. That’s just the data.

My point is, that makes a big difference when you’re talking about people who ignore data and don’t have empathy outside their in-group. What they see every day matters more than what anyone tells them, or what theoretical people are experiencing. And once the full economic impact of these executive orders becomes felt, it’s going to affect almost everyone far more than a being “out sick” for a couple weeks. They won’t have jobs, they won’t be able to afford food, it’s not something they will be able to ignore.

If you seriously think the red states…are going to ever come around to acknowledge that they were swindled by this loser and turn on him en masse, I’m not sure what to tell you.

Again, his core base will buy into his rhetoric for sure, they’ll get grifted to their grave. But his core base didn’t get him elected, people voting against inflation did, and rhetoric won’t put food on their table, that’s why Harris lost.

Those who voted against inflation are on their last leg as it is. 10 years ago 70% of the US was living paycheck to paycheck, 5 years ago credit card debt began to spike, today the general population holds more debt than our entire GDP. Most people simply don’t have the luxury of being complacent during this term. Protests today won’t fizzle, they’ll progress into civil unrest. And Trump has made it clear by the amount of power he’s consolidating under the executive branch that he has no intention of ceding power in a future election, so he’s going to be the one most people blame for the situation. Not his base, but most people.

I don’t agree that covid was a representative “test run” of suffering we’re willing to tolerate, because I think 1% of people with 100% suffering (i.e. death) is not the same as 99% of people with, let’s say 50% suffering (losing jobs, not having enough food, poor healthcare). Like it or not, for most people, covid was a minor inconvenience. For most people it did amount to a flu. But this presidency is poised to be much more impactful to more people, IMO. And I think that will make a huge difference in how red states react.

It is impressive how bad their picks have been. I honestly don’t think they could be worse if Putin was appointing them directly.

If that were possible, then I think it proves their point that people are overreacting to the “fake news media”.

But I don’t think that will be possible, because it really seems like there’s no way all of these piss poor executive orders won’t have very tangible repercussions on the working class. It’s already starting with govt workers being laid off, all retail chains telling shareholders that they’ll be raising prices in response to tariffs, grocery prices continuing to rise, and people having loved ones shipped off to Guantanamo.

IMO, today it’s protests, and in a year if it continues on this course, it will turn into outrage. Many many people are at their breaking point, not politically, but just from the ability to survive. He’s going to say it’s AntiFa, BLM, and Communists trying to stop him from saving the country, but only his core base will continue to accept that. Rhetoric and excuses don’t put food on the table.

I want someone to

• hand her a standardized test and ask her to strike out any questions she believes to be inappropriate for students to be asked, and once she has gone through and created a test that meets her standard of anti-wokeness,
• ask her to take it.

And I promise you she will fail it outright. I’ll be impressed if she gets 30% of the questions right.

I do not claim to be an expert on this, just some dude with the internet, so answering that is going to be a team effort.

I’m not sure I follow what you mean by “borrowed” here. Do you mean money borrowed by the Treasury, or by people?

Yes, that’s exactly the point I made.

The boomer generation is getting old. There are more people drawing from SS than paying into it.

• As a result, social security has been running a deficit since 2010
• In 2023 social security made up 1.3T, or ~20% of our deficit.
• According to a report last year, at this rate the social security fund will deplete in 2035

DOGE is shooting for optics, not actual savings. Cutting penny production is about $90M out of the $6.1T deficit. Which isn’t as useful to the American people as the headline is for DOGE. Their goal is to get one of these headlines every month to make it look like they’re doing something useful.

But 70% of our deficit is: Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, Military, and Interest payments on debt.

• They can’t cut interest payments, period.
• They won’t cut military, obviously, but there is probably a lot of low hanging fruit here that they should be scrutinizing.
• They might cut SS or Medi*, predictably eating the faces of their base.

And if they cut literally everything except for these, we’d still run over a $4T deficit. Meanwhile, the quality of life for Americans by cutting all that will get measurably worse.

So yeah, more likely is that they’ll keep aiming for random little optics opportunities, while trying to find ways to funnel more of this money to Musk and his buddies via govt contracts.

They just have to say it’s something Obama did that Trump is undoing. I actually think the less the right wing media even acknowledges it happening, the more successful it will be.

They’re acting like he said these things 10 years ago when he was a stupid kid, and has apologized since then.

He said it 5 months ago, and he tried deleting them so he didn’t get caught, not out of shame or apology.

They know this, they just don’t care anymore. I’m surprised they made any statements at all.

His kids are apparently half Indian, which was why he said that.

This is also why I was never a fan of the Antifa abbreviation. If you’re gonna say you’re anti-anti-fascist, I want you to fully say it.