There are still some people who delude themselves that he will make things better. I read an AP article about 2 weeks ago where supposedly trump's support in rural areas *has gone up*. One person they quoted was in their 60's and that person along with their spouse were both on safety net programs for the elderly. This person had faith that "there is a plan, so if we need to suffer to make things better in the long run" that's ok.
These people will literally kill themselves ignorant to the fact that their delusions are killing the country they claim to love. Ever wonder why so many Germans kept supporting Hitler long after the glorious reich was obviously being crushed? Here's the same lunacy at play.
Find an already discriminated group, and play on people's fears and bigotry. Dehumanize. Put people against each other. Use party "loyalty". Not much of a stretch here.
Mike, why are the Dem’s not challenging the Tennessee results? That so many Republican votes came in ’at the last moment’ has been proven to be mathematically impossible. This appears to have happened in the swing states in the 2024 elections too in the exact same form, through vote banking and votes being registered from non-existent districts. Yes, it seems that obvious. ‘This will Hold’ group of veterans and math whiz’z have been keeping track. If the Dems don’t figure out what the hell Is going on before the mid terms, retroactive response will be, again, too late. And I don’t hear any of you guys even talking about it.
Yes, his lies are insulting. He's acting like 12 billion dollars is coming from him when it's actually coming directly from US, the American people. It's a cost we should not have to be paying for in the first place.
The problem is he and his Corrupt regime and the complicit Republicans and the Roberts 6 and the billionaires do NOT care! They WANT Americans to suffer. They are doing just fine, they are getting richer and richer very day with no end in sight.... The rest of us are suffering, just like they want us to. While they continue to take our money and take control of our country - so they can make even more money.
They need to understand that if they let so many people suffer they won't have customers for their products and will eventually get booted out of office and power
There is an old saying in the world of investing - pigs get fed and hogs get slaughtered. This statement points out how people who overplay their positions with too much optimism and greed get hammered when their positions fall.
I firmly believe the plutocrats and their enablers are making the same mistake. Their avarice for money and arrogance for complete political power is blinding them from seeing the anger that's rising from their policies. I think the reckoning is coming - they just don't know it yet.
It's happened before at the end of the 19th century when real populism, not the fake of today, took over many states, including the ones now red, took power from the rich, anti-trust, anti-monolopy, taxes on the rich, etc. We're living in a more dangerous era akin to the "gilded age".
For the grifter class it's a double win. First they are stealling more than ever. Second the people they compare themselves against, are getting poorer and poorer. Our psychological feeling is based upon how we percieve we are doig relative to others.
People who are successful at one level don't ask themselves whether that same strategy works at a higher level. In other words, does it scale?
We distinguish between "quantity" and "quality", but we don't appreciate that a big enough increase in quantity IS a change in quality! As a simple example I say that when it comes to money an increase in quantity by a factor of a thousand makes it a fundamentally different thing: A penny is fundamentally different than 10 bucks; $1,000 isn't like $1 million; and a billionaire is a different animal than a millionaire.
Trump could get away with running his grifts in New York City because he could always find another sucker who hadn't learned that Trump doesn't honor contracts, and his team of lawyers would delay a civil suit against him to the point where it was cheaper to take the bath from his broken contract than it was to keep paying lawyers to pursue an unending suit. Similarly, there was always somebody who hadn't caught on that he lied about anything if it benefited him.
He is trying the same strategies nationally now, and it turns out that this approach stops working when EVERYBODY catches on that he is a liar and a cheat. Those strategies don't scale.
I also think that most of the strategies that work to make you wealthy don't work to make you obscenely wealthy. In order to get rich you need to find a way to multiply your efforts. A surgeon can only perform so many operations in his lifetime, but Jeff Bezos can continue to hire more people for new distribution centers until is net worth makes Scrooge McDuck look like a pauper.
In other words, Bezos can exploit the ecosystem in which he operates. A couple of illustrations:
Shohei Ohtani did not become a better baseball player when he moved to the US from Japan, but there were a lot more fans in the US who were willing to shell out more money to watch him play here. And that is why his income jumped from "good" in Japan to "awesome" here.
I doubt that Elon Musk got any smarter when he immigrated here from South Africa, but what would be his chances of becoming the world's richest man if he stayed in Cape Town? He didn't become a better farmer, he just moved to a far more productive environment for his skills.
I think we intuitively understand that the wannabe plutocrats' plan to squeeze every last dollar they can out of this country for themselves will destroy the ecosystem that allowed them to become wealthy in the first place. The problem is that when they have exhausted the last strip mine we will all end up living on the barren tailings that are left. True, they will live better than the rest of us, but they will be limited to fortified islands unless they find a way to create a Panem like in the Hunger Games or an "Elysium" in space.
Getting back to the sea level rise issue: Our environment does not work on the scale of next quarter's Corporate financial reports; consequences may take millennia to show themselves. Discounting future returns based on how long it takes them to appear works for financial wizards, but not for existence itself. I don't think any of the founding fathers made that calculation when they were deciding whether to declare independence from Great Britain. We are lucky they didn't, since our lives today would be worth almost zero to them, after being discounted for 250 years.
I would love to see someone ask the question, "How long do we want the United States to exist into the future?" Then, as you pointed out in your post, we should ask what we could do to improve the chances of that happening.
Has an aside, I think that is one advantage China has over us. The Chinese see themselves as a continuously evolving culture that has lasted for at least 4,000 years. Find a museum with a display of Shang Dynasty bronze bowls and vases, and you will be amazed at the exquisite craftsmanship that culture produced 3,000 years ago. As a result the Chinese are comfortable taking a very long view of things. A 99 year lease on Hong Kong was no problem at all; it ran out in due time. We are going to have a helluva tough time competing with 1 billion smart people with that perspective. (Incidentally, 250 years is a thousand times as long as a quarter.)
If you are still reading this, I humbly apologize for taking so much of your time.
In regards to our environment. "Mother Nature Always Bats, and She Always Bats Last". She will have the final say! The wrong people are acting like they can just take and take and take and then put all the garbage back on the earth and everything will be just fine. Described as treating the earth as a "breast/toilet mother who endlessly provides, absorbs, and cleans up" in "Psychological Roots of the Climate Crisis: Neoliberal Exceptionalism and the Culture of Uncare" by Sally Weintrobe. They are not. The warning signs are everywhere and are being sent on a regular basis. And the wrong people are telling the rest of us - don't worry - we can and will just keep up our taking and destroying and everything will be fine. Until it is not. And then it will probably be too late for everyone.......
The "bailout" is a great deal for Trump. He hits the farming community for $40 billion is losses then "gives" them $12 billion back. I will send Trump $300,000 AFTER he sends me $1,000,000. Same deal, just on a smaller scale. Rich S. Octogenarian and Contrarian
Trump's biggest problem is that he's a rich guy who has never wanted for anything material in his life. He has no clue how the rest of the world lives. He believes he can do whatever he wants, and the consequences won't fall on him. So far, he's been correct about that, but karma is coming for him, and I hope it's soon.
That $12 billion is exactly what is wrong with Trump's economy. The soybean farmers need a bailout because Trump just had to have his tariffs and he failed to learn the first time when he tried to force the Chinese to pay more for American soybeans. It didn't work in his first term, so he had to bail out our farmers to the tune of $28 billion. Eight years later, he thinks tariffs will work this time somehow. He didn't or can't seem to understand that the Chinese can simply said, "no, we will buy from Brazil, just like in your first term." So because Trump is too stupid to understand the simple concept that China can pick who they want to buy from, he the US taxpayers are once again bailing our farmers out.
I really have two questions. One, why do farmers vote for Trump? Two, why do both Republican and Democratic politicians keep using the same failed farm policies. Instead of continuing to bail out farmers almost totally dependent on export markets like soybeans and corn, lets change our farm policy to support farmers and ranchers who grow food that Americans consume. I would rather help the orange, grapefruit, lettuce, tomato, cattle, and chicken farmers than encourage the overproduction of soybeans and corn that seems to always harm both the farmer and the American taxpayer. This $12 billion bailout could have paid for a lot of food for the poor or subsidized a lot of health insurance payments. Add the $40 billion Trump earlier this year gave to Argentina would fix a lot more of the holes in rural health care and in unaffordable health insurance premiums.
Notice that American voters never seem to benefit from any of Trump's economic or tariff policies.
Thank you, Mike. Trump has no idea what it's like to be a U.S. citizen! The day he made the video in a grocery store, talking about "groceries" as if it was a new word, was probably the only time he's been in a grocery store.
This is a great synopsis of what has been right before our eyes since the day he was sworn in. The fact that he's been able to make it this far into his first year is surprising but, his followers believe in him through thick and thin, no matter how outrageous what he says may be.
The outrageous grift that is happeneing right before our eyes is unbelievable! Trickle down economics isn't going to help all of the rest of us who are just trying to make it in our little part of this world.
When Trump was running for reelection on an anti-immigration platform, I predicted it would be disastrous for our economy, and if he were actually able to export some 12 million people without legal status, it might even trigger a Second World Depression. Obviously he, and his MAGA cultists are slow learners.
Trump giving a speech at a Casino about the economy is clearly sending a 'message'.
I am sure Trump will feel at home (used to own Casinos) so expect him to trash talk the place compared to his, that he bankrupted.
People feeling the 'pinch' of the economy do not feel like they have disposable income. Casino's are for people who have dreams of wealth and love the fantasy of extravagance. This will come across as being grossly 'tone deaf' to any and all who are not at least 'well off' or in the complete thrall of Trump.
Yet again, Trump is working hard to get himself impeached and thrown out of office, come 2027.
That $12 billion must make American farmers wonder why Argentina is more than 3 x more important to Trump than they are.
That is a very good point!
From your lips, to God's ears. (And Happy Holidays to all. Better days are ahead --- if we keep working for them!)
In the immortal words of Bob Barker: “This guy sucks!”
LOL
There are still some people who delude themselves that he will make things better. I read an AP article about 2 weeks ago where supposedly trump's support in rural areas *has gone up*. One person they quoted was in their 60's and that person along with their spouse were both on safety net programs for the elderly. This person had faith that "there is a plan, so if we need to suffer to make things better in the long run" that's ok.
These people will literally kill themselves ignorant to the fact that their delusions are killing the country they claim to love. Ever wonder why so many Germans kept supporting Hitler long after the glorious reich was obviously being crushed? Here's the same lunacy at play.
Find an already discriminated group, and play on people's fears and bigotry. Dehumanize. Put people against each other. Use party "loyalty". Not much of a stretch here.
Yep absolutely. Unfortunately, it works almost all the time.
Mike, why are the Dem’s not challenging the Tennessee results? That so many Republican votes came in ’at the last moment’ has been proven to be mathematically impossible. This appears to have happened in the swing states in the 2024 elections too in the exact same form, through vote banking and votes being registered from non-existent districts. Yes, it seems that obvious. ‘This will Hold’ group of veterans and math whiz’z have been keeping track. If the Dems don’t figure out what the hell Is going on before the mid terms, retroactive response will be, again, too late. And I don’t hear any of you guys even talking about it.
Yes, his lies are insulting. He's acting like 12 billion dollars is coming from him when it's actually coming directly from US, the American people. It's a cost we should not have to be paying for in the first place.
This whole article is spot on Mike. Thank you.
Yes, and if the farmers get a check he signed with their name on it, they will think he personally gave them the $$$. Stupid fucks!
The problem is he and his Corrupt regime and the complicit Republicans and the Roberts 6 and the billionaires do NOT care! They WANT Americans to suffer. They are doing just fine, they are getting richer and richer very day with no end in sight.... The rest of us are suffering, just like they want us to. While they continue to take our money and take control of our country - so they can make even more money.
They need to understand that if they let so many people suffer they won't have customers for their products and will eventually get booted out of office and power
There is an old saying in the world of investing - pigs get fed and hogs get slaughtered. This statement points out how people who overplay their positions with too much optimism and greed get hammered when their positions fall.
I firmly believe the plutocrats and their enablers are making the same mistake. Their avarice for money and arrogance for complete political power is blinding them from seeing the anger that's rising from their policies. I think the reckoning is coming - they just don't know it yet.
It's happened before at the end of the 19th century when real populism, not the fake of today, took over many states, including the ones now red, took power from the rich, anti-trust, anti-monolopy, taxes on the rich, etc. We're living in a more dangerous era akin to the "gilded age".
For the grifter class it's a double win. First they are stealling more than ever. Second the people they compare themselves against, are getting poorer and poorer. Our psychological feeling is based upon how we percieve we are doig relative to others.
Spot on!
People who are successful at one level don't ask themselves whether that same strategy works at a higher level. In other words, does it scale?
We distinguish between "quantity" and "quality", but we don't appreciate that a big enough increase in quantity IS a change in quality! As a simple example I say that when it comes to money an increase in quantity by a factor of a thousand makes it a fundamentally different thing: A penny is fundamentally different than 10 bucks; $1,000 isn't like $1 million; and a billionaire is a different animal than a millionaire.
Trump could get away with running his grifts in New York City because he could always find another sucker who hadn't learned that Trump doesn't honor contracts, and his team of lawyers would delay a civil suit against him to the point where it was cheaper to take the bath from his broken contract than it was to keep paying lawyers to pursue an unending suit. Similarly, there was always somebody who hadn't caught on that he lied about anything if it benefited him.
He is trying the same strategies nationally now, and it turns out that this approach stops working when EVERYBODY catches on that he is a liar and a cheat. Those strategies don't scale.
I also think that most of the strategies that work to make you wealthy don't work to make you obscenely wealthy. In order to get rich you need to find a way to multiply your efforts. A surgeon can only perform so many operations in his lifetime, but Jeff Bezos can continue to hire more people for new distribution centers until is net worth makes Scrooge McDuck look like a pauper.
In other words, Bezos can exploit the ecosystem in which he operates. A couple of illustrations:
Shohei Ohtani did not become a better baseball player when he moved to the US from Japan, but there were a lot more fans in the US who were willing to shell out more money to watch him play here. And that is why his income jumped from "good" in Japan to "awesome" here.
I doubt that Elon Musk got any smarter when he immigrated here from South Africa, but what would be his chances of becoming the world's richest man if he stayed in Cape Town? He didn't become a better farmer, he just moved to a far more productive environment for his skills.
I think we intuitively understand that the wannabe plutocrats' plan to squeeze every last dollar they can out of this country for themselves will destroy the ecosystem that allowed them to become wealthy in the first place. The problem is that when they have exhausted the last strip mine we will all end up living on the barren tailings that are left. True, they will live better than the rest of us, but they will be limited to fortified islands unless they find a way to create a Panem like in the Hunger Games or an "Elysium" in space.
Getting back to the sea level rise issue: Our environment does not work on the scale of next quarter's Corporate financial reports; consequences may take millennia to show themselves. Discounting future returns based on how long it takes them to appear works for financial wizards, but not for existence itself. I don't think any of the founding fathers made that calculation when they were deciding whether to declare independence from Great Britain. We are lucky they didn't, since our lives today would be worth almost zero to them, after being discounted for 250 years.
I would love to see someone ask the question, "How long do we want the United States to exist into the future?" Then, as you pointed out in your post, we should ask what we could do to improve the chances of that happening.
Has an aside, I think that is one advantage China has over us. The Chinese see themselves as a continuously evolving culture that has lasted for at least 4,000 years. Find a museum with a display of Shang Dynasty bronze bowls and vases, and you will be amazed at the exquisite craftsmanship that culture produced 3,000 years ago. As a result the Chinese are comfortable taking a very long view of things. A 99 year lease on Hong Kong was no problem at all; it ran out in due time. We are going to have a helluva tough time competing with 1 billion smart people with that perspective. (Incidentally, 250 years is a thousand times as long as a quarter.)
If you are still reading this, I humbly apologize for taking so much of your time.
In regards to our environment. "Mother Nature Always Bats, and She Always Bats Last". She will have the final say! The wrong people are acting like they can just take and take and take and then put all the garbage back on the earth and everything will be just fine. Described as treating the earth as a "breast/toilet mother who endlessly provides, absorbs, and cleans up" in "Psychological Roots of the Climate Crisis: Neoliberal Exceptionalism and the Culture of Uncare" by Sally Weintrobe. They are not. The warning signs are everywhere and are being sent on a regular basis. And the wrong people are telling the rest of us - don't worry - we can and will just keep up our taking and destroying and everything will be fine. Until it is not. And then it will probably be too late for everyone.......
Yes! We always assumed that the earth was "infinite". "Infinite" only exists in mathematics and it is more bizarre than you can imagine.
The Earth is radically finite.
"Externalities" only exist in economics textbooks.
The "bailout" is a great deal for Trump. He hits the farming community for $40 billion is losses then "gives" them $12 billion back. I will send Trump $300,000 AFTER he sends me $1,000,000. Same deal, just on a smaller scale. Rich S. Octogenarian and Contrarian
Trump's biggest problem is that he's a rich guy who has never wanted for anything material in his life. He has no clue how the rest of the world lives. He believes he can do whatever he wants, and the consequences won't fall on him. So far, he's been correct about that, but karma is coming for him, and I hope it's soon.
That $12 billion is exactly what is wrong with Trump's economy. The soybean farmers need a bailout because Trump just had to have his tariffs and he failed to learn the first time when he tried to force the Chinese to pay more for American soybeans. It didn't work in his first term, so he had to bail out our farmers to the tune of $28 billion. Eight years later, he thinks tariffs will work this time somehow. He didn't or can't seem to understand that the Chinese can simply said, "no, we will buy from Brazil, just like in your first term." So because Trump is too stupid to understand the simple concept that China can pick who they want to buy from, he the US taxpayers are once again bailing our farmers out.
I really have two questions. One, why do farmers vote for Trump? Two, why do both Republican and Democratic politicians keep using the same failed farm policies. Instead of continuing to bail out farmers almost totally dependent on export markets like soybeans and corn, lets change our farm policy to support farmers and ranchers who grow food that Americans consume. I would rather help the orange, grapefruit, lettuce, tomato, cattle, and chicken farmers than encourage the overproduction of soybeans and corn that seems to always harm both the farmer and the American taxpayer. This $12 billion bailout could have paid for a lot of food for the poor or subsidized a lot of health insurance payments. Add the $40 billion Trump earlier this year gave to Argentina would fix a lot more of the holes in rural health care and in unaffordable health insurance premiums.
Notice that American voters never seem to benefit from any of Trump's economic or tariff policies.
Thank you, Mike. Trump has no idea what it's like to be a U.S. citizen! The day he made the video in a grocery store, talking about "groceries" as if it was a new word, was probably the only time he's been in a grocery store.
Mike,
This is a great synopsis of what has been right before our eyes since the day he was sworn in. The fact that he's been able to make it this far into his first year is surprising but, his followers believe in him through thick and thin, no matter how outrageous what he says may be.
The outrageous grift that is happeneing right before our eyes is unbelievable! Trickle down economics isn't going to help all of the rest of us who are just trying to make it in our little part of this world.
I think the people around him are telling him everything is good because that mush melon has no clue what's going on in the real world.
But we are in a new Golden Age, --for Grifters and Scammers. Since Trump and his buddies belong to both groups, they are enjoying the new Golden age.
When Trump was running for reelection on an anti-immigration platform, I predicted it would be disastrous for our economy, and if he were actually able to export some 12 million people without legal status, it might even trigger a Second World Depression. Obviously he, and his MAGA cultists are slow learners.
Trump giving a speech at a Casino about the economy is clearly sending a 'message'.
I am sure Trump will feel at home (used to own Casinos) so expect him to trash talk the place compared to his, that he bankrupted.
People feeling the 'pinch' of the economy do not feel like they have disposable income. Casino's are for people who have dreams of wealth and love the fantasy of extravagance. This will come across as being grossly 'tone deaf' to any and all who are not at least 'well off' or in the complete thrall of Trump.
Yet again, Trump is working hard to get himself impeached and thrown out of office, come 2027.