Trump - 4 more years of this at least...

[Kickaha]

Now - to be clear, not a hydraulic engineer - I do not know if this move will have the desired effect or not - but the above seemingly contradictory statements suggest to me that the criticism of this action may have some ulterior motives.

It won't, there are multiple sources that say that, the water is not going to or doing what Trump is claiming

And to be quite frank, I am tired of the constant and unreasonable slagging off of Trump. If you believe in Democracy - He won the Popular vote, the house, the Senate and the Presidency. Like it or not - that is one Hell of a mandate from the people.

So, get with the program, it is what the people voted for.

Apart from the illegals being deported they aren't getting what they voted for, but it is early times, he also has the lowest approval rating of any President since WW2 so tell me again how popular he is

[F5 Dave]

Get with the program? Are you still under the misunderstanding that this set of islands is in the usa? Well not yet. We are not American. We have our own program.

[TheDemonLord]

It won't, there are multiple sources that say that, the water is not going to or doing what Trump is claiming

Are these 'multiple sources' in the room with us right now?

Apart from the illegals being deported they aren't getting what they voted for, but it is early times, he also has the lowest approval rating of any President since WW2 so tell me again how popular he is

He is Popular vote, all swing states, the Souse and Senate popular.

You will also note that his approval rating over the last six months or so has been climbing steadily.

As for the first part - Well, as an avid Trump fan, so far he is doing what I would want him to do and what I would have voted for him to do. So I am not sure how you come to the conclusion that they arent getting what they voted for.

In fact - from an outlet that I follow that supports Trump - here is one excellent comment that I think sums it up best:

Elon, what is best in life?

Elon: To cut useless programs and spending, see them driven before you, and hear the lamentation of the leftists!

[TheDemonLord]

Get with the program? Are you still under the misunderstanding that this set of islands is in the usa? Well not yet. We are not American. We have our own program.

Let me put it another way - Trump, in the USA, has an overwhelming mandate. His Policies were voted in by the people.

Curious then, that the people who claim vociferously to 'Defend Democracy' are trying every trick in the book to stymy and thwart his policies.

And yes - we do have our own program - and Chris Luxon, so far has been doing alright. Not as sweeping or as radical as Trump, but still moving in the correct direction.

The UK is the only outlier with Sir Keir Starmer - but funny how people bang on about Trump being the most unpopular president blah blah blah - with an approval rating just below 50% - and virtually no word from the mainstream Media about Sir Keir Starmer on 23%

[pritch]

So Musk's minions from DOGE entered the USAID offices and took down the memorial wall. The USAID staff operate in dangerous circumstances: war zones, disease outbreaks and natural disaster areas. Unsurprisingly some have died in the course of their work. I might be a bit slow but I fail to understand how taking down their memorial wall saves money.

[sugilite:Me]

So, wanna now how farcical trumps trade war excuse with Canada really is?
"According to data from the US Customs and Border Patrol, only about 0.2% of all seizures of fentanyl entering the US are made at the Canadian border, almost all the rest is confiscated at the US border with Mexico." So in 2004, about a suitcase worth at 14.6 kg
But what a great distraction from the fact trump cannot deliver on deporting every illegal immigrant - because that is in fact impossible. I will let John Oliver explain why in the video he made before the US election.



Americans need to roll up their sleeves and make the in situ solution of just deporting the criminals and providing work visas to the rest of the immigrants with jobs asap.


Evidence is growing that trump did steal the election. He was illegitimately elected and scammed the judicial system to do it, He should have been in jail, not have been running for office and given the opportunity to steal it.

[TheDemonLord]

Evidence is growing that trump did steal the election. He was illegitimately elected and scammed the judicial system to do it, He should have been in jail, not have been running for office and given the opportunity to steal it.

David Pakman is sometimes okay, I have watched a few of his discussions - I found his one with Triggernometry revealing though.

However - *looks over at the last 4 or so years of our back-and-forths in this thread* you sure you wanna open that can of worms.

Remember before the election, I did repeatedly state that in 2024 - under a normal election cycle - if we found that Trump had approximately the same number of Votes he did last time (which he did) and the Dems had significantly less votes than they had under Biden (which they definitely did) - then it would point strongly that the 2020 election was a statistical anomaly (which it was) - and given other fluctuations in vote count, even among objectively wildly popular presidential candidates (such as Obama in 08) - that the 2020 election results were well-outside the norm.

And you (among others) did regularly and gleefully critique that position...

Yet, in 2024, we had a typical election cycle (in terms of voting) and funnily enough, the numbers align with Trumps previous vote totals, the numbers for the Democrats align with the previous vote totals. No 4 am spikes in vote counts. Nothing weird at all.

And now you want to say there is evidence of Fraud...

[sugilite:Me]

Musk now wants people working 120 weeks. He has also said it is illegal to release the names of 6 sleep deprived young interns he has working in his doge scam. Anyone reporting that on X is being instantly being banned. So much for Mr free speech absolutist.

My theory is his ultimate long term goal will be to crash the US economy, have trump blame the fed and introduce something like X coin as the default us currency "to protect the American people." and by happy coincidence be able to clip every transaction ticket from that point on. When the economy turns south as it is already looking to do, watch for the "it's the FED fault" rhetoric to fire up. I've been thinking more on his hitler salutes, while initially I thought it was a troll, my thinking is now that with him being surrounded by adulation at the time got to his head and it was a drunken power move. Considering his families reason for moving to South Africa because they thought apartheid was awesome - it tracks.
Oh yeah. musk just fired the government agency investigator charged with looking into his brain chip. Him having this un-elected all powerful position in the US government allowing free range to look after his own interests is simply insane and disgusting.

[Blackbird]

I follow a blogger in the US who has been a keen motorcyclist for most of his 70 -odd years. I thought a US take on what's happening might be interesting so I've appended his latest outburst:

Can it be Fixed? by Thomas Day

I would seriously love to be wrong in this turning point moment in US and world history, but I think the country is being stripped for parts the same way American companies were savaged starting in the 80s. Vulture capitalism has no national loyalty.

Last night I started working on a spreadsheet to demonstrate how easily someone like the Space Nazi could buy off this country. But it’s been a while since I put together a complicated spreadsheet and this one is complicated. I will finish it, maybe even today and when I do, I’ll write up my results and you’ll see them here. But after I gave up on it and went to bed, I started thinking about how damaged this country has been from Republican actions over the last 45 years, starting with Reagan or, really, starting with Nixon. And that thought stuck with me all through the night, until I woke up this morning comparing the sad remains of the United States of America to my history of abandoned cars because of rust damage from living in the Midwest.

If you’ve never lived in one of the rust belt states you might not have any idea how unrecoverable a car can become in a surprisingly short period of time. A friend of mine, who is a wonderful mechanic in Truth or Consequences NM always remarks on how much rust damage there is to my vehicles, even to the cars that I think are holding up pretty well. If you live in a Rust Belt state and you drive older vehicles, no matter how much work you put into a vehicle trying to keep it alive, sooner or later you’re gonna have to put it down because of rust. 20 some years ago I bought a late 90sFord Taurus station wagon for my wife as a surprise gift. She loved that car and took care of it as well as she'd ever taken care of a mechanical device. Like all Ford Taurus’es, eventually her station wagon needed major transmission work at about 160,000 miles. She really wanted to have the work done, it would have been about $3000 for the repairs. But the back hatch was rusted all along the bottom, the front and rear wheel wells were rusted out, there was major corrosion every place the body attached to the frame, and I made the decision for her to have the car scrapped.

In my 60 years as a car owner, I’ve had to make this decision around two dozen times. Between 1970 and the early 80s, I think I owned at least a half dozen Volkswagen Beetles and I was pretty good at keeping them mechanically maintained. But I lived in Kansas, northwest Texas, and Nebraska during those years and almost all of my driving was through heavily salted roads. I had to make the same decision that we made with that Taurus with every one of those vehicles. Because I’m an audio guy, I often had installed stereo systems in my cars that ended up being worth more than the car and I always removed those stereo systems before scrapping the car. During our lean years, that sound system might have moved from one car to another three or 4 times before it ended up being obsolete. In fact, I have the sound system from my last Ford Escort in one of my garages as the sound system for that work area. That car was also scrapped because of rust.

And now we are at a similar point with the frayed, beat-up, corroded and likely unrepairable remains of the United States of America. Just from my spreadsheet work last night on figuring out how easily Elon Musk could buy the entire Republican Party with his spare change, I have come to the conclusion that this vehicle/Constitution is not repairable. It is too corroded from within and without. We can fight to try to hang on to the good parts, but with 76 million Americans being foolish enough to take careful aim at their own feet and empty their weapons the fight is pretty hopeless. As reported by Forbes Magazine and confirmed by several sources, “the wealth owned by the top 1% of Americans as of the fourth quarter of 2022, according to the Federal Reserve, was $43.45 trillion, compared to $4.16 trillion by the bottom 50% of the Americans during the same period. (Forbes reported in 2021 that the top 1% that year comprised about 1.3 million households making more than $500,000 per year.) Within that that top category, the top 0.01% alone controlled $17.6 trillion in the last quarter of 2022.” Lucky for the “top 1%” literacy and numeracy in the majority of American adults is practically 3rd world (Trump’s “shithole countries”) levels.

The men who founded this nation knew these problems are likely insolvable. They warned against inherited wealth, wealth so great that it would overwhelm the power and contributions of the general population, an uneducated general population, and many of the faults we currently find ourselves mired in. Those same men were also mostly wealthy slave owners and they were afraid that democracy was an unwise (for their wealth and power) experiment. So, they built a “republic” that kept power in the hands of the idle rich and working people have been struggling to wrestle a democracy from a poorly designed republic ever since. Today that struggle is over and oligarchy has won, more than enough American citizens are so easily misdirected and uneducated that they willingly submit themselves to servitude. What happens next will be an example to the world and very well could spell the end for what remains of human civilization. The first week of the new Republican Administration indicates, to me, that this vehicle is rusted beyond repair and will either have to be abandoned or will end up stuck on the side of the road leaving its passengers stranded.

[TheDemonLord]

I follow a blogger in the US who has been a keen motorcyclist for most of his 70 -odd years. I thought a US take on what's happening might be interesting so I've appended his latest outburst:

The last part really does show that this person has either not read or not understood the Federalist papers. Ironically for someone who talks about the uneducated masses.

[pritch]

He has also said it is illegal to release the names of 6 sleep deprived young interns he has working in his doge scam. Anyone reporting that on X is being instantly being banned. So much for Mr free speech absolutist.

The names are freely available. Where a photograph accompanies at least one of the names there is the possibility that care be needed lest the person is apprehended by ICE and sent to Guantanamo Bay.

Musk seems more confused than normal, he doesn't make the laws. Yet. DOGE is not a government department and has no legal standing. Congress alone has the authority to create government departments and they have not yet done so.

The attachment sums up Trumps trade war.

[sugilite:Me]

Thank you for that sobering read Blackbird.

So, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt, herself an alleged criminal replied she would be an honest spokesperson for the American people in an obviously pre rehersed response to an expected question.
Only minutes later, she was caught through her fucking teeth that 50 million dollars in condoms being sent to the Palestinians She gets extra dishonesty points for wearing a christian cross while spitting on the thou shall not lie commandment.
https://www.stuff.co.nz/world-news/3...e-houses-claim

So when doge headed by musk who himself has unfortunately has been caught constantly lying pumps out reports like the following....
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/mus...payment-system
The lies have make it impossible to believe him, unless you are the maga base that believe everything trump and musk say no matter what and go on to applaud the dismantling of democracy in Americas transition to an oligarchy.

Previously the dems put up an ok fight against trump and his criminality. So what are the dems doing now?
Voting in a anti gun DNC boss, demanding non binary people be promoted to senior positions and rolling out grandad schumer to explain what guacamole is made from in an unconvincing ill contrived plan to show how bad trumps tariffs will be for the American people.

So yeah, Blackbirds mate is right - America is fucked. The only people that think otherwise are the trump apologists who have trumps dick shoved so far down their throat it is cutting off the oxygen supply to their brains.

[neels]

Remember before the election, I did repeatedly state that in 2024 - under a normal election cycle - if we found that Trump had approximately the same number of Votes he did last time (which he did) and the Dems had significantly less votes than they had under Biden (which they definitely did) - then it would point strongly that the 2020 election was a statistical anomaly (which it was) - and given other fluctuations in vote count, even among objectively wildly popular presidential candidates (such as Obama in 08) - that the 2020 election results were well-outside the norm.

And you (among others) did regularly and gleefully critique that position...

Yet, in 2024, we had a typical election cycle (in terms of voting) and funnily enough, the numbers align with Trumps previous vote totals, the numbers for the Democrats align with the previous vote totals. No 4 am spikes in vote counts. Nothing weird at all.

You are correct on a couple of points, the numbers of republican and democrat voters remains fairly constant, and the largest variation is when Obama was elected

The voter turnout appears to have been steadily increasing over the past few election cycles, although slightly decreased in 2024 against that trend.

The statistics would suggest that 2020 was in fact a fairly typical election cycle based on previous trends, with the most significant anomalies being with the two elections that Trump won.

In 2020, the most notable variation is the % of votes for other candidates, likely due to the number of traditional democrat voters who would never vote republican but refused to vote for Hilary, and notwithstanding that the democrats still won the popular vote.

in 2024, the reduced increase in number of eligible voters and corresponding decrease in democrat votes are inconsistent with the previous trends, which leads some credence to the reporting of efforts to disqualify voters from demographics likely to vote democrat.

Otherwise the variations are in the range of single digit percentages which is entirely believable, and are magnified by the distortions of the electoral college system.

[TheDemonLord]

You are correct on a couple of points, the numbers of republican and democrat voters remains fairly constant, and the largest variation is when Obama was elected

The voter turnout appears to have been steadily increasing over the past few election cycles, although slightly decreased in 2024 against that trend.

The statistics would suggest that 2020 was in fact a fairly typical election cycle based on previous trends, with the most significant anomalies being with the two elections that Trump won.

In 2020, the most notable variation is the % of votes for other candidates, likely due to the number of traditional democrat voters who would never vote republican but refused to vote for Hilary, and notwithstanding that the democrats still won the popular vote.

in 2024, the reduced increase in number of eligible voters and corresponding decrease in democrat votes are inconsistent with the previous trends, which leads some credence to the reporting of efforts to disqualify voters from demographics likely to vote democrat.

Otherwise the variations are in the range of single digit percentages which is entirely believable, and are magnified by the distortions of the electoral college system.

Ah - but that is using Percentages, not absolute numbers - I did a similar graph and posted it a while ago, with come commentary - in fact, here it is:

Attachment 355137

So, I first want to post this crappy little Excel Graph that I took a few minutes to make. Look at the line with Vote Totals, there are some outliers - for example Obama in 2008 is a big jump - but he was widely popular - both right and left agree he was massively popular.

Then you have Biden. This result, statistically, sticks out like a sore thumb.

This does not prove there was fraud, it was stolen or fortified or whatever. I do not have the evidence for that. All I am saying is that Bidens vote count on 2020 is exceedingly suspicious. Especially when the vote tallies before and after for both Trump, Hilary and Kamala are all in-line with each other.

To put it blunty: Biden's vote tally in 2020, now that we've seen both the Republican and Democrat vote tallies in 2024, Stinks.

Obama had a 10 million vote swing, pretty big - but Obama was, in 2008, wildly popular.

Biden had a 16 million vote Swing.

Now - in order to believe that Biden was the most popular President, Ever....

You have to believe that nearly 10 million people - who hated Trump so much that they got off their arses to vote for Biden... either switched their vote to Trump or did not vote at all.

Trump is as divisive today as he was back in 2016 - and in both 2020 and 2024, the same hysteria about him being president was there. Along with all the Lawfare, hoaxes, smears etc.

Quite simply - I think that is an implausible scenario. In fact, I thought it was so implausible that I even predicted what would likely happen:

One thing I am quite looking forward to for this election cycle is to see what the Voting Stats look like. Now, I will grant that since Joe was stabbed in the back and ousted, it is not a perfect like-for-like comparison - but in there are a number of things that I am interested to see what they look like.

For example

- What the total Vote count is. If you look at the last ~20 years of elections, the total vote count has been reasonably consistent for both sides around the 60 Million mark - with notable exceptions being Barack Obamas first election in 2008 (but he was wildly popular then) - but that was only 69 Million - an Increase, but within +/- 10% of other vote tallies. Then you have Biden whose vote tally is 81 Million! Nearly 30% higher than the previous highest vote tally.

- What the split is in certain states. If you look at Georgia between 2020 and 2016, we see Trump with a small increase in his previous tally in that state - everyone that voted for him last time voted again for him this time and a few more. But we see nearly a million extra votes for Biden, that is a 25% increase - whereas if we compare to Obama, we see although he lost that state, his numbers (and again, wildly popular candidate in 2008) are within +/- 10% of previous numbers.

Suffice to say - I am highly interested in what the numbers say.

Now - to be clear, if the numbers settle back down to be in-line with previous election cycles, it does not mean that there was or was not any form of fraud or election cheating or anything. And certainly it is not evidence enough to stand in front of a Judge and deliver a convincing argument.

But, to my dear friends who frequent these arguments - should that come to pass, would you be willing to say that the 2020 election results were disproportionately unusual?

And I dare say - I was pretty bang on with my predictions - both the Republican and Democrat candidates in 2024 had results that were within the reasonable expected limits, based on all other election results.

[sugilite:Me]

in 2024, the reduced increase in number of eligible voters and corresponding decrease in democrat votes are inconsistent with the previous trends, which leads some credence to the reporting of efforts to disqualify voters from demographics likely to vote democrat.

Otherwise the variations are in the range of single digit percentages which is entirely believable, and are magnified by the distortions of the electoral college system.

Thank you for the great post.
The magas launched so many voter suppression laws over the last 4 years, the dems could not keep up with fighting them.
I "think" it was Georgia lot that got a law through that anyone, and I mean anyone could protest a persons right to vote, and that person instantly became ineligible to vote. Militias of magas founded online groups protesting countless voters and you can bet the maga rulers will never release those numbers. And that was just one scheme to subvert democracy and give trump an illegitimate win.
Note: I see you quoted tdls posts which I no longer see, just keep in mind when reading his answer, that it was written by the only person I ever saw that was upset that trump did not get enough press for the failed assassination attempt. I was not even seeing that from mainstream maga on fox news etc. So I guess tdl is ultra elite maga?

In breaking news, it looks like netanyahu must of handsomely donated to trumps slush fund. trump is proposing the US take over the Gaza strip.
trump may not of started any wars last time, but looks to be definitely making up for it this round.
https://www.stuff.co.nz/world-news/3...ence-netanyahu