Politics is Stupid

What could possibly be wrong in an 1100 page bill? :roll_eyes:

1 Like

I mean, there has at least been some opportunity for someone somewhere to read this one, as opposed to some of the CRs Congress has passed in the last 20 years.

Interesting seeing some people who have been saying Musk is an evil lying Bond villain is now totally believable when he claims something Biden’s admin would have published in a heartbeat if it was as unrefutably true as he seems to be saying. I’ve never understood the believe people because you want what they are saying to be true crowd.

It is a sad little lover’s spat. Meanwhile, real stuff is happening.

Marjorie Taylor Green: I didn’t read the bill before I voted in favor of it and I just now spotted the item in there that says states can’t regulate A.I. for ten years. That’s awful and I want the Senate to correct it for me.

The next day at the Committee she’s a part of, she gets asked about it. Suddenly she’s happy and proud she voted for the bill.

Man, I’ve been to a couple protests, but I obviously need to go to better ones, these dudes are handing out $30 PPE like it’s going out of style over in LA. I could use one of those in my shop for sure.

2 Likes

Padilla got what he was looking for. Considering the timeline on the Democrat Congress members commenting on it on X I’d say they likely already had the statements written before he pushed his way past security.

I don’t understand why people think pushing past police and security is a valid way to peacefully ask questions. This was a larger dude on the move, honestly he’s lucky they didn’t dog pile him right then and there, and it took 3+ agents to get him to move, even as he’s still trying to push past them.

If I do that, I’m getting shot, if I’m lucky. But more and more elected officials are acting like this, and something is going to happen. And some poor dude who’s been working for SS or the local police department and has nothing to do with any of these decisions is going to have their life changed forever so someone could have a 3 second video and do some fundraising. If this was the fascist regime people claim, he’d would have been clubbed down when he burst through the doors.

This has big ā€œThey should have just compliedā€ energy.

Marc Lamont Hill

Shinzo Abe

George Bush

Dave Chappelle

It gives don’t you know who I am? And, the rules don’t apply to me energy. Even after he had three agents on him he was still trying to push past them, she barely glanced his way.

Since when is just barging into a press conference and shouting how anyone does anything? Not to mention he doesn’t even say who he is until after he’s fighting back. He’s not wearing his security pin, and his fellow travelers were posting about it within minutes. Totally not a set up looking for a reaction to make the weekend news.

Kirsti Noem:

We are not going away. We are staying here to liberate this city from the socialist and burdensome leadership that this governor and this mayor have placed on this country and what they have tried to insert into this city

Yes, you got that right. The federal government is trying to ā€œliberateā€ the city from their elected leadership.

Just let it sink in for a moment how horrific that statement is. And it echoes what Trump has said.

It was after that statement that Padilla tried to ask his questions.

Let’s look at recent history.
Democratic judge arrested. Charges on this are still pending, but this should go nowhere as judges have immunity for judicial decisions - which this clearly was.

Democratic mayor arrested. Rhetoric from the DoJ was scathing about the mayor.
Charges were dropped because video evidence clearly showed that the DoJ rhetoric was lies.

Staff member at democratic Representative Jerry Nadler’s office was handcuffed for trying to prevent police from searching the office.
The last time anyone searched a representative’s office was under Bush Jr and both sides of the aisle went nuts about it.
There was a crucial difference between the two incidents too. In the Jefferson incident, there was a search warrant as Jefferson had taken $100K in an FBI bribe sting.
There was no search warrant in the Nadler case. DHS just barged in and started searching. When someone tried to prevent that illegal search that person was arrested.

Padilla. Charges on this will also be dropped because there is video evidence contradicting the nonsense spouted by DHS.

The message is clear. Oppose us and you will be arrested.
America is not becoming a dictatorship, it’s there.

1 Like

Even though there was a lot happening surrounding it, I held off saying anything further about Trump’s tariffs because they were changing so often, there wasn’t any point other than saying they were changing so often. He’d get into a snit, fire off another tariff, then change it or delay it a short time later. It got to be such a commonplace tactic that people started noticing, and then they cashed in.

Those people are stock traders. When Trump threatens to tariff a company or anything, it has two effects. For the target of the tariff, it causes their stock price to go down. If it’s a broader tariff like against a country, the stock market as a whole goes down. For the target’s competitors, it causes their stock prices to go up. Then when Trump changes his mind, the stock market goes back up.

The people watching for this buy stock ā€œon the dipā€ and sell when it rises again. It’s happening so frequently that it’s looking like market manipulation by Trump and insider trading by them. The problem is proving that Trump might be telling his friends ā€œGet ready. I’m gonna do it again.ā€ The public only finds out which politicians bought and sold stocks that were snit-affected months afterwards when their financial statements are submitted.
 

Another person who noticed how often this was happening is Robert Armstrong, columnist for Financial Times. To avoid having to re-explain it multiple times, he came up with an acronym: TACO, which stands for Trump Always Chickens Out.

The way Trump always chickens out with his tariffs has to do with the response he gets to them. That response doesn’t come from the target of the tariff. It comes from what he views as his personal rating system: the stock market. And because he’s using the stock market as a rating system for them, it undermines the image he’s projecting with his tariffs.
 

When you look at a lot of these late night or suddenly-announced tariffs, they appear to be based on anger or looking tough and strong. Trump is trying to bully the world into doing what he wants, scaring them into making a deal. But because of TACO, it shows he can’t even be a bully right. He wants to look like a strong and tough negotiator, which can be a legitimately useful negotiation tactic, but because of TACO, he repeatedly fails at the art of this kind of deal.

If you’re a bully, the standard method if getting what you want is you make a demand of someone that’s weaker than you, and then you either say or in some other way imply what the consequences will be if the victim doesn’t give you what you want. If they obey, you collect what you demanded and then you make more demands because they will almost always continue to give in after the first time. If they don’t give you what you demanded, you follow through with the consequences to show them why obeying is the better option, or at least, the less painful option if the consequences are physical.

If you’re approaching this as a business deal, the way it can legitimately work is you make sure you’re the first one to speak. That can be making the initial offer, or in Trump’s case, imposing a tariff. When you speak first, what you say/offer is more than what you actually want. You create a buffer that’s used during the negotiations. The other side makes a counter-offer, and you go back and forth until you reach the point that you really wanted. If the negotiations end with you getting more, bonus.

What you will hear Trump say when he changes his mind, delays a tariff or whatnot, is usually a couple of things. It’s that a deal has been made or he talked with the other side and liked what they said, so he’s giving them a break by reducing or delaying the tariff.

Where he undermines himself is in most cases, the ā€œdealsā€ are usually just an agreement to start talking about a deal. He has concepts of a deal. It’s wasn’t instantly finalized like he claimed or implied. After he put tariffs on countries worldwide, including locations with just U.S. military personnel and the islands with just penguins on them, he said he got 200 deals, which were more than the number of targets, so some places apparently agreed to more than one deal. But those were also concepts of a deal, rather than actual deal deals.

More than that, he undermines himself and shows he’s failing as a bully and tough negotiator by watching the stock market. He’s not looking at how the target of the tariff reacted. He’s looking at a separate indicator of whether others liked what he did. In every case, the stock market has said, ā€œNot cool, dudeā€ and plummeted. Trump sees his ā€œratingsā€ dropping, so he chickens out and makes his ratings go up again. Every time he does this, he fails to get the target to meet his demand. He didn’t bully them into submission. He didn’t force them to negotiate. Whichever way the winds of the stock market blow determines what happens.

In quite a few cases, the effect on the stock market is coupled with the effect on the bond market. When both drop, his personal ratings drop even more, so he TACOs even more. The bond market is the more powerful of the two because it’s the measure of how much other countries are willing to buy the debt of this country in the form of bonds that will be repaid later.
 

For all of his bluster, all of his bravado, all of his chest beating, all of his bullying and intimidation, Trump is showing he’s a very weak negotiator because his guide in making decisions boils down to ā€œMarket go up, me doing good. What? Market go down? Undo! Delay! Waffle!ā€

1 Like

Wild take. This has big ā€œthey should have compliedā€ energy. DHS essentially invaded Los Angeles. The mayor, city council, and even the LAPD didn’t ask them to come and didn’t want them there. And you’re more concerned with the manner in which Senator Padilla entered the press conference? He was advocating for his constituents, something most GOP politicians seem to have forgotten how to do. Republicans don’t give a shit about rules or decorum but every time a Democrat matches that energy they get torn to shreds. And then the legacy press and Republican voters act like the big mean Democrat came in and shit all over everything the nice Republican was trying to do. I’m sick of it. Republicans aren’t held to a lower standard. They’re held to no standard at all. If Biden or Obama and their administrations had done even one tenth of what the current regime has done they would have been impeached and removed from office so fast it would have made your head spin. Trump does it and everyone just shrugs. That’s his superpower, dodging accountability and having people make excuses for him. And it’s destroying the country.

1 Like

The new ā€œTeflon Donā€ā€¦

More concerned? No, but that’s the topic of discussion. I could go all over the place and miss the point that if anyone pushes through security to try to interrupt a press conference and starts shouting they’ll get detained. Not sure why this is hard to understand. He didn’t even have the pin congress is supposed to wear for identification on, which is apparently pretty unusual, which screams press opportunity.

And possibly, if California, and specifically LA, hadn’t been pushing back against federal enforcement of immigration laws they wouldn’t have to be ā€œinvadedā€. ICE doesn’t have to be invited, it’s a federal function. Trump’s administration still isn’t hitting the numbers of deportations that Biden and Obama hit, they are just hitting the harder targets (and as usual for federal agents, making a fucking mess of it) I have been saying for years that the feds are screwed up agencies, but people only care when Republicans are in charge because the mistakes during Democrat governments aren’t publicized.

Also, citation for Republican representatives/congresscritters forcing themselves into closed meetings and shouting down the person speaking. Yes, MTG and the Waitress chick both scream and show their asses on the regular in session, a place where they are supposed to be at least.

By accounts I’ve seen Padilla was escorted in by FBI and law enforcement. They knew who he was.

  1. The only person I’ve seen say that is Padilla.
  2. Even if he was the SS agents that stopped his forward progress towards the podium still don’t know who he is.
  3. what exactly was his plan if he wasn’t stopped, walk right up to her face and continue shouting? There is no way he did not get exactly what he was looking for here. Even if the agent recognized him it’s not like they would just let him continue to advance, and once they stopped him he kept trying to push past. From the video he looks an awful lot like all the other links I posted above.

In other news, the SHORT Act is close to being passed. Ending 2nd amendment discrimination against poor people and removing the elite upper class exceptions to the law. Not to mention saving people’s hearing. Removing another technicality the ATF just loves to shoot dogs over.

Republican Lawmaker Kat Cammack recently had an ectopic pregnancy. But because she is in Florida, doctors refused to perform the abortion - because they feared losing their licences or worse. She had to contact DeSantis in order for them to perform the life-saving procedure.

You’d think that the experience might have caused her to rethink her stance on abortion, which is draconian at best. But no! Apparently it’s the Democrats’ fault.

Her convoluted ā€œlogicā€ is that the Democrats have been fear-mongering and this caused the doctors’ fear.
This ignores the fact that doctors have already been prevented from performing life-saving abortions, even before the latest horrific law was put in place. I really don’t know how anyone can be surprised that doctors are afraid to act without legal orders.
I’m aware that she was only 5 weeks along and was therefore not even covered by the 6 week ban, but I still can’t blame the doctors for being cautious.

We’re never going to agree. I’m on team California her because the way these immigration laws are being enforced are bullshit. Just rounding people up with no due process and sending them to God knows where. You remind me of my father. You don’t want justice. You want order. And you’re hardly alone in that. But that’s a big reason this regime has been able to fuck us so hard. Because people prioritize order over actually doing following the law. Court orders are nmere suggestions now. The GOP majority in Congress is complicit because they just rubber stamp whatever bullshit comes out of his Adderall addled brain. He’s unilaterally slapped tariffs on many, many countries, which he does not have the power to do. That’s Congress’s job. As it also was to authorize the use of of military force in Iran. But Congressional Republicans just sat by and let him do both. Like what the hell are we even paying these people for? SCOTUS is in his pocket as well. Merrick Garland deserves a lot of the blame for that, as well as for not prosecuting Trump in a timely manner for January 6. I know you’re going to come at me about the primary but I think we’re mostly in agreement that the Dems botched it and that Biden should have dropped out earlier.And now he’s throwing a 50% tariff at Brazil because they had teh audacity to prosecute Bolsonaro for his crimes. If Biden or Obama had done one tenth of this the GOP woud still be screaming about it. Instead, crickets. And the legacy press, particularly the NYT, acts as if this is just business as usual.

New Hampshire man denied re-entry after canadian visit
He has a green card, but had 2 convictions, Marijuana possession & driving with a suspended licence - back in 2007. He has been back and forth between USA & Canada once a year and has had no problems until now. He puts his current issues down to the new administration.

I’d have a lot of sympathy for him - if he hadn’t voted for Trump.
Predictably, the comment section is on point.

Then they came for me.

He thought they would just break up OTHER people’s families, not HIS family

People feel differently when it affects them directly, eh?

I laughed when he said he supported Trump. It’s hard to feel bad for a person who supported the deportation of immigrants, while also forgetting he is an immigrant.

If he’s not an American citizen, he may have supported Trump, but he couldn’t have voted for him. Only citizens have the right to vote.

When I was going to school for IT, there was a Canadian student who complained that she couldn’t vote. I remember saying, ā€œIf you want to vote, become a citizen.ā€

Okay, so a green card is different to citizenship?

Sorry, I know some of the rules there, but obviously not all of them :frowning:

Green card means they’re in the country legally as a permanent resident. They may or may not be working towards citizenship.

1 Like