Trumps Presidency 2025

[romad1]

Emperor Palpatine speaks

[Tigerbomb13]

2 minutes ago, romad1 said:

Emperor Palpatine speaks

Trump on the DOJ's charges against Rep. McIver: “Oh, give me a break. Did you see her? She was out of control…The days of woke are over…She was shoving federal agents. She was out of control. The days of law and order are over in this country.”

Fixed it to what he actually meant

[CMRivdogs]

Let me see if I have this correct. I'm still eligible for a booster shot since I have ILD/Pulmonary Fibrosis. But it's potentially that my wife, who is my caregiver, possibly doesn't qualify?
 

Edit. She'll qualify. My son, a potential secondary caregiver, does not.

Edited yesterday at 03:33 PM by CMRivdogs

[CMRivdogs]

17 minutes ago, Tigerbomb13 said:

Trump on the DOJ's charges against Rep. McIver: “Oh, give me a break. Did you see her? She was out of control…The days of woke are over…She was shoving federal agents. She was out of control. The days of law and order are over in this country.”

Fixed it to what he actually meant

Of course no one asked him about all the J6ers who did the same thing. He pardoned them...

Quote

The term “woke” originated in the era of lynching when Black Americans had to “stay woke” to the possibility that they might be subjected to extralegal violence. MAGA has appropriated the term “woke” & made it an epithet that describes any person who criticizes racism, sexism, homophobia, etc.

 

[gehringer_2]

1 hour ago, ewsieg said:

To preface this, I need to reiterate that I don't think Trump is a smart man.  That said, what if he is backing into a good position with these tariffs?  Here me out.

As I've noted before, I think Trump is a democrat.  Anytime he speaks about the economy he reminds me of the democrats I grew up with.  Granted they didn't sound as dumb, but overall he thinks the gov't should have a bigger role in the economy (at least when he's in charge), has lots of trouble with trade, thinks only blue collar work is real work (except for his cronies and himself as they eat on gold plates), likes tariffs, and doesn't care about the budget, etc.

But good or bad (you know my opinion), he can captivate and make changes that could be considered unthinkable and laughable days before.  Like the fact that we're pretty much settled in with 10% tariffs across the board and 38% on China and everyone is like 'whew, at least it wasn't where he started'.

So let's look at Walmart this week coming out and saying that they will be passing on the tariff costs to consumers and Trump comes out and tells them to eat it.  This is the exact post:

"Walmart should STOP trying to blame Tariffs as the reason for raising prices throughout the chain. Walmart made BILLIONS OF DOLLARS last year, far more than expected,"

As we all know, these tariffs are a tax.  Throughout history, these taxes were passed on to consumers.  He's telling corporations to buck up and pay the tax.  Granted he can't force them to do so, but look at Tesla and how buyers fled from Elon.  Heck, some socially conscious people were so put off on Elon that they went back to gas powered cars.  

So what if Walmart does choose not to pay the tax

 

But it doesn't really work that way. Corporations fundamentally don't pay taxes of any kind and they don't "decide" whether to pay taxes or not. The consumer pays them all no matter what the form of the tax. The tariff is no different from the corporate income tax in that regard. All corporate taxes or any kind are simply cost of sales that get added to however a company sets their prices, and in the end any retailer's margin is not a matter of their willingness to pay taxes but the willingness of their competitors to take a smaller or margin, or not. As long as Walmart's competitors raise their prices to protect their margins, so will Walmart. And as long as they all need a given margin to return enough on capital to their investors to stay afloat, they will all raise prices to protect their margins.

The only tradeoff is that there is a point where price increases will shrink the market and total sales fall, which again pressures corporate ROI. There will be an optimum point where there is a trade off between margin and volume, but that won't be decided on by the store's politics. And of course, total market sales contractions have another name - recession.

Edited yesterday at 03:58 PM by gehringer_2

[ewsieg]

I mean in my fictional world where this could work, other companies would also be afraid of dealing with the same wrath as Walgreens and 'eat the cost' too.   

So fast forward to 4 years from now, when a democrat wins, he can go to the public sector and say hey, you essentially accepted a 17-19 percent tax increase (average of 10% from everyone and 38% on the roughly 1/3 of products incoming from China), We're going to eliminate the tariffs and replace with a simple 12% increase to the corporate tax rate.  Essentially codifying it.

Obviously I don't believe this, but I'm going to choose to believe this is the ultimate goal/outcome for my own well being.

[gehringer_2]

26 minutes ago, ewsieg said:

I mean in my fictional world where this could work, other companies would also be afraid of dealing with the same wrath as Walgreens and 'eat the cost' too.   

So fast forward to 4 years from now, when a democrat wins, he can go to the public sector and say hey, you essentially accepted a 17-19 percent tax increase (average of 10% from everyone and 38% on the roughly 1/3 of products incoming from China), We're going to eliminate the tariffs and replace with a simple 12% increase to the corporate tax rate.  Essentially codifying it.

Obviously I don't believe this, but I'm going to choose to believe this is the ultimate goal/outcome for my own well being.

I actually have a different view - I think the conventional liberal idea of 'making the corporations pay their fair share' is just virtue signalling rhetoric. I'd would just as soon see corporate income taxes stay low for the sake of US competitiveness, and because the corporate income tax is fundamentally regressive - lower income consumers spend more of their income on corporate products. But the balance is I want to see dividends taxable as ordinary income on the graduated scale. The historical precedent for low capital gains taxes was that it was a double tax because the corporation was already taxed - low corp income taxes kill that argument. Then the adjunct to that is that the 100% reset on capital gains on inheritance has to be modified. Too much capital gain escapes taxation completely under those rules.

Those are my perfect world tax system dreams....😉

[gehringer_2]

1 hour ago, CMRivdogs said:

Let me see if I have this correct. I'm still eligible for a booster shot since I have ILD/Pulmonary Fibrosis. But it's potentially that my wife, who is my caregiver, possibly doesn't qualify?
 

Edit. She'll qualify. My son, a potential secondary caregiver, does not.

I suppose if there is such a thing as herd immunity for Covid the US has reached it by now. Hell of a way to find out though.

Edited yesterday at 04:51 PM by gehringer_2

[ewsieg]

I wonder about the legal implications of the FDA stating this.  Does this mean insurance companies won't pay for boosters or can't?  Covid is now essentially the flu.  I really don't have a problem taking the booster at this point or not, but the option should be there.  Honestly is it still a booster at this point?  If i'm not mistaken, isn't the formula being updated regularly based on current Covid virus patterns?  It's basically equivalent to a flu shot now, right?

[gehringer_2]

1 hour ago, ewsieg said:

I wonder about the legal implications of the FDA stating this.  Does this mean insurance companies won't pay for boosters or can't?  Covid is now essentially the flu.  I really don't have a problem taking the booster at this point or not, but the option should be there.  Honestly is it still a booster at this point?  If i'm not mistaken, isn't the formula being updated regularly based on current Covid virus patterns?  It's basically equivalent to a flu shot now, right?

I've lost track since it's been a couple of years, but the FDA would have standing if the vaccine suppliers have never converted their emergency approvals to "full" approvals. Short of that,  no - I don't see what could could prevent Pfizer or Moderna supplying all the vaccine they wanted as long as someome paid for it - private insurance, OOP or whatever.

We followed the pandemic very closely in real time (my SO is a MPH) - watched all the demographic numbers from WashCo Public Health and it's true, in the absence of identifiable co-morbidity, the danger to the young was vanishingly small, and now that kids are growing up in the presence of circulating virus, probably even less so. At the time the issue around children was mostly that they were a spread vector to those around them higher at risk.

[CMRivdogs]

More Executive Branch grifting. This Regime has a good chance of surpassing Harding's administration for the most grifters. If they already haven't done so 

 

Edited yesterday at 10:37 PM by CMRivdogs

[CMRivdogs]

https://contrarian.substack.com/p/back-the-blue?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email
 

[CMRivdogs]

 

[1984Echoes]

7 hours ago, ewsieg said:

I mean in my fictional world where this could work, other companies ...

If you're looking for a "successful" outcome in Trump's Tariff War...

It's not in the path you are trying to follow. In which Trump is a "closet Democrat".

If you want to follow the "path of success" with these tariffs... you need to follow Trump as the "closet Establishment Republican". To whit:

What does Trump immediately state after he talks about his beautiful tariffs?

It's not the MAGA "Everyone needs to BUY AMERICAN!!!"

No... it's the Establishment Republican battle cry: "I want to make DEALS!!! I want these countries to remove their unfair trade BARRIERS and UNFAIR TARIFF LEVELS! I want LOWER TARIFFS!"... and other such. He also wants other countries to invest more into the United States.

This is what he has done with his deals with the U.K., Saudi Arabia, etc...

Guess what?

That's ESTABLISHMENT REPUBLICAN!!!

I told my dad when Trump's Tariffs were starting to cause economic disaster: "1) He needs to back off these tariffs because he's not going to win. 2) They're going to cause a Recession or a Depression. 3) No, he does NOT have the same adviser's as in his first admin and therefore the guardrails are off and he's showing his maximum stupidity. (PS: My MAGA Dad LOVES my explicit commentary about DJT... Haha, (NO!)) I have to wait until Maga Mom leaves the room though she doesn't appreciate how blunt and honest and not holding back when I talk Trump (hint: not different then how I type here...). "Chris, wait a sec, Mom's just heading out the door...". 4) "Dad the ONLY way he wins any of these is to start IMMEDIATELY cutting deals! And he's going to have to move FAST because this is causing IMMEDIATE turmoil... so how exactly is he going to move faster than "immediate" dad? 5) And he's certainly not going to get good advice from the sycophants, "yes-men", or boot-lickers that he's put into this admin."

 

My MAGA cousins love me so much.

 

But if Trump is cutting big beautiful deals in all these tariff wars...

He's not a "closet Dem".

He's a "closet Establishment Republican".

IMO.

And I wish him well with these "deals". It works for me.

Edited 23 hours ago by 1984Echoes

[Tiger337]

1 hour ago, 1984Echoes said:

If you're looking for a "successful" outcome in Trump's Tariff War...

It's not in the path you are trying to follow. In which Trump is a "closet Democrat".

If you want to follow the "path of success" with these tariffs... you need to follow Trump as the "closet Establishment Republican". To whit:

What does Trump immediately state after he talks about his beautiful tariffs?

It's not the MAGA "Everyone needs to BUY AMERICAN!!!"

No... it's the Establishment Republican battle cry: "I want to make DEALS!!! I want these countries to remove their unfair trade BARRIERS and UNFAIR TARIFF LEVELS! I want LOWER TARIFFS!"... and other such. He also wants other countries to invest more into the United States.

This is what he has done with his deals with the U.K., Saudi Arabia, etc...

Guess what?

That's ESTABLISHMENT REPUBLICAN!!!

I told my dad when Trump's Tariffs were starting to cause economic disaster: "1) He needs to back off these tariffs because he's not going to win. 2) They're going to cause a Recession or a Depression. 3) No, he does NOT have the same adviser's as in his first admin and therefore the guardrails are off and he's showing his maximum stupidity. (PS: My MAGA Dad LOVES my explicit commentary about DJT... Haha, (NO!)) I have to wait until Maga Mom leaves the room though she doesn't appreciate how blunt and honest and not holding back when I talk Trump (hint: not different then how I type here...). "Chris, wait a sec, Mom's just heading out the door...". 4) "Dad the ONLY way he wins any of these is to start IMMEDIATELY cutting deals! And he's going to have to move FAST because this is causing IMMEDIATE turmoil... so how exactly is he going to move faster than "immediate" dad? 5) And he's certainly not going to get good advice from the sycophants, "yes-men", or boot-lickers that he's put into this admin."

 

My MAGA cousins love me so much.

 

But if Trump is cutting big beautiful deals in all these tariff wars...

He's not a "closet Dem".

He's a "closet Establishment Republican".

IMO.

And I wish him well with these "deals". It works for me.

He's neither Democrat nor Republican.  He only cares about himself.  I know you know that.  

[1984Echoes]

1 hour ago, Tiger337 said:

He's neither Democrat nor Republican.  He only cares about himself.  I know you know that.  

I'm not arguing his personality.

I'm taking ewsieg's hope and pointing it in a specific, corrected, direction.

Nothing to do with Trump's many malignancies...

[GalagaGuy]

To be a good American patriot, am I supposed to buy a Ford made in Mexico, a Chevy made in Korea or a Toyota made in Kentucky?  Just want to be sure I'm on the right team.  🤔

[Tiger337]

22 minutes ago, 1984Echoes said:

I'm not arguing his personality.

I'm taking ewsieg's hope and pointing it in a specific, corrected, direction.

Nothing to do with Trump's many malignancies...

It sounds like you have a fun family.  No MAGAs in my family.  Most people in my family don't give a **** about politics.  I didn't either until the country elected an authoritarian moron as their president.   

[chasfh]

11 hours ago, CMRivdogs said:

Let me see if I have this correct. I'm still eligible for a booster shot since I have ILD/Pulmonary Fibrosis. But it's potentially that my wife, who is my caregiver, possibly doesn't qualify?
 

Edit. She'll qualify. My son, a potential secondary caregiver, does not.

I knew they were going to start stealing vaccines from us. Motherforkers.

[chasfh]

3 hours ago, CMRivdogs said:

 

That’s how you know they know they have no defense for whatever terrible thing they are doing: they go ad hominem on the questioner. You see it with Trump and mainstream media anytime he’s asked a question of accountability by them. It’s the Kremlin playbook.