Trumps Presidency 2025

[romad1]

Hey, 

 

Its almost as if this jackass' actions have consequences. 

[Sports_Freak]

Did Trump invite the WBC Champion Venezuela team to the White House yet? 🤣🤣🤣

[Sports_Freak]

14 hours ago, gehringer_2 said:

I don't know which is worse, a President that spends his time just making **** up, or that there is a public so gullible it still believes anything he says.

OK, I heard him once again say all the wind turbines are made in China and China doesnt use wind. Either he knows that's not true and he's lying or he Doesn't Know The Facts. So he's either a liar or he's stupid. Maybe...both?

Dozens of links;

https://www.forbes.com/sites/mattrandolph/2026/01/12/china-does-in-fact-have-wind-turbines-a-lot-of-them/

 

https://news.cgtn.com/news/2025-10-21/China-tops-world-in-installed-wind-power-capacity-for-15-years-1HEDmW7qBq0/p.html

[gehringer_2]

25 minutes ago, Sports_Freak said:

OK, I heard him once again say all the wind turbines are made in China and China doesnt use wind. Either he knows that's not true and he's lying or he Doesn't Know The Facts. So he's either a liar or he's stupid. Maybe...both?

Dozens of links;

https://www.forbes.com/sites/mattrandolph/2026/01/12/china-does-in-fact-have-wind-turbines-a-lot-of-them/

 

https://news.cgtn.com/news/2025-10-21/China-tops-world-in-installed-wind-power-capacity-for-15-years-1HEDmW7qBq0/p.html

China is a weird place to us. They are dictatorial, repressive, tyrannical in lots of ways, and Xi has become a cultist. But we mistake them if we think they aren't also trying to build themselves a better country. In that regard they may have a better government than the  'people, earth and future be damned full speed ahead for quarterly profits" corporate serving government we have here today. They have massive coastal populations to protect and have no anti-science bias driving their policies and thus do not live in any political fantasy world about the risks of climate change.

Even in the Pandemic, we criticized China for the level of repression, but that repression was because Xi thought he could prove to the world that China could save more of its people by the discipline available  in China's society than the west could in their systems. He ended up having to back track, but it's worthwhile to remember that his objective was saving his people when you think about how China works.

Xi was a student of the Soviets and is a dedicated Marxist, but the system in China is more Confucian, paternalistic than it ever was in the USSR.

Edited 12 hours ago by gehringer_2

[romad1]

6 hours ago, gehringer_2 said:

China is a weird place to us. They are dictatorial, repressive, tyrannical in lots of ways, and Xi has become a cultist. But we mistake them if we think they aren't also trying to build themselves a better country. In that regard they may have a better government than the  'people, earth and future be damned full speed ahead for quarterly profits" corporate serving government we have here today. They have massive coastal populations to protect and have no anti-science bias driving their policies and thus do not live in any political fantasy world about the risks of climate change.

Even in the Pandemic, we criticized China for the level of repression, but that repression was because Xi thought he could prove to the world that China could save more of its people by the discipline available  in China's society than the west could in their systems. He ended up having to back track, but it's worthwhile to remember that his objective was saving his people when you think about how China works.

Xi was a student of the Soviets and is a dedicated Marxist, but the system in China is more Confucian, paternalistic than it ever was in the USSR.

Xi's china is as orwellian as any of the Communist regimes have been.  They have their own foundational lies that they continue to service like the Soviets did to protect the RBMK reactors of Chernobyl.  

They may have directed industry to be smarter about climate and use of alternative energy but they are also massively over extended financially to support a real-estate surplus.  They are completely hollowed out by the one-child policy.  

They are going to pay for all of that. 

[romad1]

This is good

 

[romad1]

I actually don't think he's a gem so much as "good for him" 

[chasfh]

9 hours ago, Sports_Freak said:

Did Trump invite the WBC Champion Venezuela team to the White House yet? 🤣🤣🤣

I think there’s at a least half a chance that Trump invites the US team and claims they are the real champions. I wonder which of them would show up?

[Motor City Sonics]

Is Trump threatening to deport those players yet?    Can McGonigle play 2b? 

[romad1]

11 minutes ago, chasfh said:

I think there’s at a least half a chance that Trump invites the US team and claims they are the real champions. I wonder which of them would show up?

 

[gehringer_2]

2 hours ago, romad1 said:

They are completely hollowed out by the one-child policy.  

and now that they want it to go away, it won’t.

They suffer all the ills command regimes will always suffer, but they still have much better vision than the Sovs ever did. Unfortunately that is probably because after Mao they developed a reasonable method of succession that kept them out of another cult of personality dictatorship. There was Deng in the background for a long time but Deng was a one of. But now Xi has thrown a Monkeywrench into that process big time.And thus they are regressing.

OTOH, on one score, I think predictors of demographic disaster as countries come to stable population numbers just need to look at Japan to see their arguments are overdrawn. I think it has a lot to with a simple misreading of economic data. If your population is growing at 3%/yr like people became habituated to, and your GDP goes flat, you’ve got a situation that’s going to cause deep social stress. If your GDP goes flat when your population has decreased by 1%, per capitas are still rising and the countryside stays happy as a clam. The only people it’s gloom & doom for are the local imperialists and pols paranoid their nation might “fall behind” some other nation in economic rank (we certainly get that one here) but populations don’t really care about that unless the demagogues work at it, the only economics people really care about are their own and maybe their neighbors’.

[oblong]

5 minutes ago, gehringer_2 said:

and now that they want it to go away, it won’t.

They suffer all the ills command regimes will always suffer, but they still have much better vision than the Sovs ever did. Unfortunately that is probably because after Mao they developed a reasonable method of succession that kept them out of another cult of personality dictatorship. There was Deng in the background for a long time but Deng was a one of. But now Xi has thrown a Monkeywrench into that process big time.And thus they are regressing.

OTOH, on one score, I think predictors of demographic disaster as countries come to stable population numbers just need to look at Japan to see their arguments are overdrawn. I think it has a lot to with a simple misreading of economic data. If your population is growing at 3%/yr like people became habituated to, and your GDP goes flat, you’ve got a situation that’s going to cause deep social stress. If your GDP goes flat when your population has decreased by 1%, per capitas are still rising and the countryside stays happy as a clam. The only people it’s gloom & doom for are the local imperialists and pols paranoid their nation might “fall behind” some other nation in economic rank (we certainly get that one here) but populations don’t really care about that unless the demagogues work at it, the only economics people really care about are their own and maybe their neighbors’.

Paul Ehrlich died the other day.

I first became aware of him from my conservative/libertarian days of reading PJ O Rourke and he wrote about the famous bet Ehrlich and Julian Simon made.

[romad1]

8 minutes ago, gehringer_2 said:

and now that they want it to go away, it won’t.

They suffer all the ills command regimes will always suffer, but they still have much better vision than the Sovs ever did. Unfortunately that is probably because after Mao they developed a reasonable method of succession that kept them out of another cult of personality dictatorship. There was Deng in the background for a long time but Deng was a one of. But now Xi has thrown a Monkeywrench into that process big time.And thus they are regressing.

OTOH, on one score, I think predictors of demographic disaster as countries come to stable population numbers just need to look at Japan to see their arguments are overdrawn. I think it has a lot to with a simple misreading of economic data. If your population is growing at 3%/yr like people became habituated to, and your GDP goes flat, you’ve got a situation that’s going to cause deep social stress. If your GDP goes flat when your population has decreased by 1%, per capitas are still rising and the countryside stays happy as a clam. The only people it’s gloom & doom for are the local imperialists and pols paranoid their nation might “fall behind” some other nation in economic rank (we certainly get that one here) but populations don’t really care about that unless the demagogues work at it, the only economics people really care about are their own and maybe their neighbors’.

I was recently sweating the baby dearth in 2020-2021 for the softball program I managed.  We had a much smaller t-ball group.  That seems to have balanced out.  

I get what you are putting down, nobody in Europe really cares that all the small towns have fewer people than houses because agriculture is mechanized and talent flows to the cities where life is more fun.   China is just an extreme case because they have 4 residential spaces for every person and the investment that built that housing is looking to recoup its cash. 

[ewsieg]

11 hours ago, Sports_Freak said:

Either he knows that's not true and he's lying or he Doesn't Know The Facts. So he's either a liar or he's stupid. Maybe...both?

He's both, sometimes its evident, sometimes its not that clear.  On the ignorant portion, and I hope she doesn't get mad at me, but my wife's grandma (rest in peace) would just take tidbits of information and form them into new 'policies'.  So Papa had heart issues and was on a drug which he was told not to eat too many green peas.  Apparently too much of a certain vitamin in them that could make the drug more ineffective.  Did Grandma understand this....no.  Instead she preceded to tell the family that they need to stop eating peas because it's bad for the heart.  She didn't lie, cheat, and steal, so it was obvious when she said something like this you could trace it back to some info she got.  Unfortunately with Trump, who knows, could be lying about it, could be saying it based on some tidbit he's unable to fully process in his brain, could simply be saying it because at the time it sounded like the best way to retort as he really doesn't care if its true or not.

[Motown Bombers]

 

[gehringer_2]

1 hour ago, romad1 said:

because they have 4 residential spaces for every person and the

The apartment tower overbuild is a good example of people not being willing to tell the truth in a command system.

[gehringer_2]

43 minutes ago, ewsieg said:

He's both, sometimes its evident, sometimes its not that clear.  On the ignorant portion, and I hope she doesn't get mad at me, but my wife's grandma (rest in peace) would just take tidbits of information and form them into new 'policies'.  So Papa had heart issues and was on a drug which he was told not to eat too many green peas.  Apparently too much of a certain vitamin in them that could make the drug more ineffective.  Did Grandma understand this....no.  Instead she preceded to tell the family that they need to stop eating peas because it's bad for the heart.  She didn't lie, cheat, and steal, so it was obvious when she said something like this you could trace it back to some info she got.  Unfortunately with Trump, who knows, could be lying about it, could be saying it based on some tidbit he's unable to fully process in his brain, could simply be saying it because at the time it sounded like the best way to retort as he really doesn't care if its true or not.

I think with Trump there is also the basic sales shtick idea run amok. I've known guys in sales orgs that learn the art of making up anything and everything they can throw at a customer to close a deal. There are two problems when Trump runs this a President. The 1st is that he *is* too dumb to know or remember to make mostly unverifiable or difficult to verify or ambiguous claims, which a good salesman will keep himself to. The second is that unlike a guy making one sale who is going leave that possibly dissatisfied customer to his customer service org and go on to his next deal, as Pres you don't get to walk away Tuesday from the countries, voters, legislatures you tried to snow on Monday.

[Mr.TaterSalad]

 

What dip****s actually believed this guy would cut energy prices would be cut in half?