I'm replying to both your
Message 676 and
Message 694 in this single message.
First
Message 676.
K.Rose writes in Message 676:
Percy writes in Message 673:
Both Phat and K.Rose have been asked whether Trump's actions since taking office is what they voted for. Neither answered.
...
So come on, guys. It's an easy question.
It is.
It's an easy yes or no question, and neither the word "yes" or "no" appears anywhere in your message. Not so easy, I guess.
I expect Trump to do his Trump-stuff, which is seemingly chaotic and unpredictable.
Seemingly? As if there's method in his madness? No, there is none. It is actual, for real chaos and unpredictability.
Since you expected Trump to be chaotic and unpredictable, and since those are qualities he's displayed since taking office, then I assume your answer is yes, this is what you voted for. The question is why? What examples of history can you draw upon where chaos and unpredictability came out well for a country?
Mercurial, they say.
Sure, but more importantly, also venal and vengeful.
But that's all part of his style, his arena.
Trump style of bullying creates chaos, and he operates amidst chaos better than most and so finds that it works effectively for him in getting his way. They used to say the same about Steve Jobs. Seems to be true of Elon Musk, too.
And he usually comes out on top.
Really? How many bankruptcies? How many lost court cases challenging the 2020 election? I think you're a victim of the Trump reality distortion field.
He has a short time to turn around a very large ship,...
You mean the very large ship that Biden guided out of a pandemic and into a growing economy and low inflation compared to the rest of the pandemic world? As Trump even said at one point when speaking about his proposed tariffs, a recession is possible, which is not the kind of turning around of the ship one really wants. The stock market also considered a recession possible, with the market free falling while tariffs were on, then stampeding back when they were "paused" with no reason given. More transparency, I guess.
...which calls for big, quick actions, not nibbles at the edges.
Using an analogy, when one is interested in major home improvements, one doesn't want a bomb but a well-designed and implemented plan.
He knows that there's an army of adversaries who will try anything to undermine him. Anything. Need we go into Russiagate, lawfare, assasination attempts, etc.?
If you'd like to discuss Russian involvement in Trump's 2016 campaign, the proper place to do that would be
The Trump Presidency. And isn't Trump the king of lawfare? And I think everyone on both sides of the aisle takes a very dim view of assassination attempts.
In Trump we Trust is a little over the top, but I'll give him 4 years...
He already had four years. He cozied up to dictators, mismanaged a pandemic, tried to extort Ukrainian president Zelenskyy, stole classified documents, was impeached twice, lied about the 2020 election (he's still lying about it), incited an insurrection, was convicted on 34 felony counts, and pardoned insurrectionists. He's still the volatile, imprudent and ignorant person he's always been. Please explain the appeal he has for you.
...heck, look at the bozos we've given decades to, guys who simply managed our decline soothingly;
What decline? We're still the strongest country in the world militarily and economically. Are you one of the guys who believes Trump when he says he inherited a bad economy from Obama and then from Biden? There are actual hard numbers, you know.
[Smoot-Hawley is] believed to have made the Great Depression much worse
By whom? Gotta watch those "is believeds".
You have to be truly ignorant of history to not know about the impact of Smoot-Hawley on economies world-wide back in the 1930's. I'll say this for you - you're sure not afraid to parade your ignorance. This is from
Great Depression - Wikipedia:
quote:
In an initial response to the crisis, the U.S. Congress passed the Smoot–Hawley Tariff Act on 17 June 1930. The Act was ostensibly aimed at protecting the American economy from foreign competition by imposing high tariffs on foreign imports. The consensus view among economists and economic historians (including Keynesians, Monetarists and Austrian economists) is that the passage of the Smoot–Hawley Tariff had, in fact, achieved an opposite effect to what was intended. It exacerbated the Great Depression[28] by preventing economic recovery after domestic production recovered, hampering the volume of trade; still there is disagreement as to the precise extent of the Act's influence.
What is now clearly understood (go ahead, call me on my "clearly understoods") is that FDR's investment in government make-work perpetuated the GD, and the only thing that brought us out of it was WW2.
I think you must have been listening to conspiracy theorists on YouTube again. Recovery in the U.S. began in the mid-1930s
But that's another discussion, and a distraction to this discussion.
There's nothing to discuss. The Great Depression is a very well studied topic with a broad consensus on many facets among economic historians.
Moving on to your
Message 694.
K.Rose writes in Message 694:
Percy writes in Message 684:
You want to compare money as a medium of exchange to a tariff war?......"Round up the usual foreigners."
Trump detractors are world-class gaslighters.
The gaslighter is Trump.
Millions of unknown, unvetted people are sneaking into the country,...
The numbers vary over time, but it
*is* a large number, though toward the end of the Biden administration the numbers dropped dramatically.
...being transferred to scattered locations about the country, foisted on unsuspecting communities that are overwhelmed by the influx,...
This is true. Illegal immigrants are being bussed and flown by governmental authorities in Texas and Florida to places like New York City, Martha's Vineyard, Washington D.C., Chicago, Philadelphia, Denver and Los Angeles. Don't believe me? Read this press release by Texas Governor Greg Abbot:
Texas Transports Over 100,000 Migrants To Sanctuary Cities
...with many of these illegals committing heinous crimes?
This isn't true. You are being fed a false view of reality, i.e., you're being gaslighted. What is your source for this false information? Dare I guess Trump?
This is not a problem they say.
No, they don't. What they say is that some of the claims foisted on you by Trump are false. No one is saying illegal immigration isn't a problem. What the other side is saying, has been saying for years, is that walls are not the solution, and that inflicting cruelty and hardship upon already unfortunate people is not who we are as a people.
No, [they say, ] Trump is the problem because he wants to fix the mess.
Trump is lying to you about the nature of the mess.
Because he's a racistsexistbigothomophobe.
Well, yes, that's true, but it's not why they think he's wrong about how to handle illegal immigration.
The government is $39 trillion in debt,...
You're wrong but close:
U.S. National Debt Clock : Real Time. The national debt is a legitimate concern, but how is Trump addressing the problem?
...bloated bureaucracies can't account for huge sums of outgoing money,...
Can you fill in the details?
...all sorts of evidence of astounding inefficiency, ineptitude, and corruption?
Again, can you fill in the details?
This is not a problem they say.
No, "they" do not say that. They say little to no evidence has been presented to back up the claims.
No, DOGE is the problem because a bunch of billionaires are exposing the decades of corruption; Doge must be stopped by any means necessary.
That would be one billionaire, Musk, assisted by a force of inexperienced half-baked techies who are wreaking havoc across multiple federal agencies.
The USA has a vanishing manufacturing base,...
Not "vanishing" but decreasing in size, because that's not where the wealth creation is. Putting our money and effort into more profitable sectors of the economy is why the U.S. is as wealthy as it is compared to the rest of the world. Returning to a larger manufacturing sector would mean more people working low-paying unskilled jobs like on assembly lines and in sewing machine sweatshops.
...we rely on our chief adversary to supply us with critical goods,...
I assume you mean China and are perhaps referring to rare earths. If that's what you mean then do you support Trump's trade war against China?
...we have an unsustainable trade deficit with the world,...
Why trade deficits are not a bad thing has been explained to you multiple times, yet you keep repeating this nonsense. You've learned well from Trump - just keep repeating the lie.
...the dollar is threatened as the world currency,...
During the "on" period of Trumps on-again/off-again tariffs, the Chinese yen was viewed as the safer haven for money. I've made the point before that isolating ourselves from the rest of the world through very high tariffs diminishes our influence, including in terms of the dollar as a global currency. Given your concerns about the dollar remaining the global currency, why would you support the Trump tariffs?
...the heartland's erstwhile manufacturing economy has been replaced with a fentanyl culture?
Where'd you get this one?
This is not a problem they say.
I'll say this for you, you've sure learned well from Trump. "They're saying" is the way he begins many of his most outrageous claims, e.g., "They're saying it was the biggest inaugural crowd in history," or "They're saying that illegal immigrants are crossing our borders to commit heinous crimes." (I'm paraphrasing)
[They say,] No, this has actually made us "wealthy" you see; don't believe your lyin' eyes.
Who is this "they"? I doubt there is any "they" saying fentanyl that has made the U.S. wealthy.
That's your critical analysis? Really?
There are no representatives from any countries in those articles, just "expert" and assorted academics.
You didn't request anyting about government officials, who would necessarily have to be very careful politically in what they say because of their position. But as this paragraph makes clear, nobody is buying Trump's math. How could they? It's transparently bogus. To accept it would identify you as someone who can't do simple math:
quote:
President Donald Trump announced an aggressive, far-reaching “reciprocal” tariff policy Wednesday, leaving many economists and U.S. trade partners to question how the White House calculated its rates.
Certainly no country that is addressing the trade imbalances that Trump uses in his math.
This is ungrammatical. I have no idea what you mean.
I would say you may want to look a little more closely at things.
Can you be a bit more specific, and same to you, buddy, who can't seem to bring any facts to the table.
I don't think it's clear to most what Trump is actually doing.
That's because it isn't even clear to Trump what he is doing. That's why he'll do one thing, then the other, then initiate something, then pause it, and so on and so on. There's no plan there, just random "whatever he happens to feel at the time" statements and actions.
There are threats from without that he is handling very deftly with a huge hammer and chainsaw, however silly this might sound.
"Deft" is not a word that many would apply to Trump, but your sledgehammer and chainsaw characterization was pretty much on the money.
And they aren't the threats that I expect most people think they are.
I think most people understand the threats Trump poses economically, militarily and climatically to the world ("clean coal"?), and socially to the U.S. in the form of normalizing racism, xenophobia and homophobia
At the same time he is addressing threats from within (deepstate, globalists, TDS folks, unconstitutional lawfare, treacherous republicans,...) and trying to energize a dispirited and divided nation.
Boy, you've bought into the whole panoply of Trump grievances. "Deepstate" is a fiction. Globalization with all the free trade and exchange of ideas it brings is a good thing. The only ones with TDS are those deranged people who have bought into Trump's nonsense. Lawfare, meaning the use legal action or even just the threat of legal action as a means of intimidation, is a Trump way of life. And "treacherous Republicans" are just members of Trump's party who happen to hold different opinions, not disloyal foes. People of integrity frequently disagree. People who have no integrity just go about calling people names.
Just saw the latest news today - looks like he is succeeding.
You mean pausing the tariffs? Before he was succeeding because he imposed the tariffs, and now he's succeeding because he took it back? Sounds to me like it doesn't matter much to you what Trump does. Whatever he says or does, either one way or the opposite, it's all good to you.
--Percy
Edited by Percy, : Typo.
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