Here’s a doozy from the always reliable source of an anonymous far right nobody pontificating on Twitter.
If Trump succeeds in forcing through mass deportations, combined with Elon hacking away at the government, firing people and reducing the deficit – there will be an initial severe overreaction in the economy – this economy propped up with debt (generating asset bubbles) and artificially suppressed wages (as a result of illegal immigration). Markets will tumble. But when the storm passes and everyone realizes we are on a sounder footing, there will be a rapid recovery to a healthier, sustainable economy. History could be made in the coming two years.
Elon Musk says “Sounds about right”
The first part might be right — the economy will be devastated by a Trump victory followed by mass deportations and firings. The last bit? Where the economy will be magically restored by people realizing this will be good for us? That’s pure fantasy, wishful thinking, nothing but moonshine. But hey, the belief in an all-powerful head of state with total control of everyone’s lives worked for North Korea, so maybe we should give it a shot. It’s not as if Republicans haven’t given us sound financial advice since the Reagan years.
Silly me, I believe that a sound, economy requires lots of workers with good jobs making good wages, so they have the money to buy corporate products, so that corporations have lots of customers (the primal need of any business.) That is, capitalism works best when it works, is that too hard too understand? This sounds like the conservative fad for massive tax cuts “shock treatment” except applied to the whole economy, not just government. The effects of this super shock will be even worse, remember Kansas, anyone?
“History could be made in the coming two years.”
yes, but probably in a bad way…
There has to be a surge of money to the wealthiest corporations and individuals before you can have (they allow) a trickle down of cash to the middle and lower class.
If they accomplish their goal, there will never be a full recovery from the damage they do to 90% of Americans. Once they pull the teeth from the Federal Government, they will never let it regain its control over the ultra-wealthy. Think of Egypt and building the pyramids.
Oh, the GOPQ are so sensitive, aren’t they? MAGA has been crying about the price of eggs and gasoline for MONTHS and here is billionaire Elon telling them they will have to suffer more “austerity” to … uh … to do what, exactly? Fix things? What things? When will eggs go from $100/carton to a chicken in every pot?
The only thing that Musk has actually run hands-on is Twitter. And some maniac is going to turn him loose on the economics of the Country? It is more than madness and, fortunately, a pipe dream.
… just like what happened with Twi#er after Musk took over. No wonder Musk approves this scenario, he has personal experience with it.
/s
If they succeed in implementing this insanity, only one of two outcomes are possible: it will be the biggest recession since 1929, or it will be the biggest recession including 1929.
As has been demonstrated repeatedly since the first years of the “Great Depression”, trickle down economics does not work. It does not benefit working people, and certainly not the poor. It does not help the general economy. And it’s questionable that it benefits the rich, though some of them believe in it fervently. Sadly large number of Americans are persuaded by this kind of BS. It’s taken nearly 4 years to recover from the last trickle down disaster but people are being told, and believe, that the economy is “struggling” and in bad shape. Of course, large economies always struggle in some sense but the indicators are that the economy isn’t doing too bad by comparison to 2020.
Tangential but anyone else remember the whole covid denialism thing with Trump saying covid would just go away and vanish and inmenawhile stick bleach where the sun don’t shine and take horse dewormer to cure it?
It only killed about four hudnred thousand Americans..
Source : https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2021/11/new-revelations-emerge-on-how-donald-trump-killed-400000-coronavirus-pandemic/
Trump lied and hundreds of thousands of people – that he was supposedly meant to serve and lead and do the right thing by according to this silly oath of office thingamajig – died becoz of it – &.. yet even after that & Jan 6th he’s close to potentially becoming POTUS again so obvs those deaths are forgettable.. somehow? The fuck?!
This might well not even happen.
Trump had 4 years to do this in his first regime. It didn’t happen then.
We don’t even have the people and infrastructure for mass deportations. It takes lots of immigration cops, detention centers, the court system, and the transportation to somewhere else. It will cost billions of dollars, and that money has to be allocated from the US treasury somehow.
Plus, cui bono? Who benefits?
Powerful economic interests employ those legal and illegal migrants in construction, agriculture, and meat packing among other industries. They aren’t going to watch their profits and cheap labor disappear.
Trump will need funding and laws from the US congress. Even with GOP control, he is unlikely to get it.
They know who funds their campaigns.
When has Trump and the GOP ever told the truth anyway?
And now wants to put RFK jr in charge of determining what health care we get. Prepare for the great DieOff to happen.
Reagan’s 8 years didn’t work all that well.
.1 He bought into the Supply Side Economics lie, that tax cuts pay for themselves.
.2. Cut taxes.
.3. Didn’t work. The annual deficit went up, not down.
.4. So they cut services to balance the budget.
.5. He also raised taxes 8 times to balance the budget.
The Trump regime’s cuckoo economic plans will do the same thing.
They will run up deficits and then fix them by drastically cutting government services, including what is left of our social safety net.
The US already has a housing problem resulting in a large homeless population.
You haven’t seen anything yet.
There will be large increases in the homeless population and more widespread poverty.
Thinking things strangely forgotten – do people not remember when Trump was a punchline to a political joke. A candidate so obvs absurd and ridiculuous that he could never win and it was great fun that the Repugs were embarrassing themselves by having him as their joke candidate, joke presidential nominee and it would end them or do them a great deal of damage..
Ah 2016, 2015, back before or around the time New Horizons was approaching Pluto. It seems not that long ago and yet a whole other era entirely..
In not so co-incidental musings I miss Modus Operandi, wonder what happened to them?
you don’t need billions to put kids in cages nor courts though that might not be such a problem.
As for cops and prisons I am sure they will be able to find some excellent independent contractors who will glad to do the work ($$$$). They have a large pool of people who they can draw on for needed workers.
It will more then two years to clean up the mess Von shits in pants will make. the 4 years Biden has had have not fixed it all mess from the first go round just yet but he made a good start.
Elon just admitted why he likes this plan.
What I learned from the 2008-ish economic issues was one simple thing: when most people are scrambling to cover basic needs, the rich assholes to whom money isn’t a means to procure necessities but rather a score card start buying everything up on the cheap. After the crisis when everyone starts to slowly recover, they own more. They bought it cheap when other people were struggling and desperate.
Let’s face it. Rich people love it when you and I struggle to get by. In their little race against each other to rack up the highest score, that’s the time when they sprint. Elon is giddy about this economic shock idea because even a self-important moron like him can figure out that if it happens he’ll make out like a bandit.
@ ^ unclefrogy : yes. Despite having a Congress he didn’t control and Trump’s treason SCOTUS with “Justcioes”that lied to get their jobs yet somehow cannot be impeached and jailed for gaining things by – effectively deceit.
Let’s remedy that on November 5th please Americans.
Get Kamala Harris and a Blue Congress in. Then reform, reform, reform and fucking fix things! Starting with SCOTUS and the abolition of the EC, gerrymandering, voter suppression, etc..
“When the storm passes…” Is it just me, or does this line make you think of Stormfront too?
Just like Hoover did in 1929, and twenty years later—voilà!—the nation’s economic engine was perking up fine with no intervening contributing events that anyone can remember!
StevoR @ #15 — As I assume you know, “the abolition of the EC” requires a Constitutional amendment. As much as I agree with the sentiment, it’s unlikely to happen even with a Blue Congress because of the preponderance of Red states. In other words, the piecemeal amendment process of the Constitution isn’t working…where’s that Equal Rights amendment?… because of the archaic notion of quasi-independent states to balance and reign in an overzealous Federal government. We need a Constitutional convention but opening that worm can would give the bastards even more opportunity to torpedo sane governance.
@9 Raven:
Trump ‘considering withholding funds’ for police who refuse to carry out his mass deportation plans
Sounds to me like Trump wants to defund the police.
Trumps cuckoo threats to raise tariffs and start trade wars with the rest of the world while cutting income taxes, has been done before.
It didn’t work.
The Smoot Hawley tariffs didn’t cause the Great Depression but they definitely made it a lot worse.
They were a failure and eventually were repealed.
Trump has no idea what he is doing here.
The local police are all funded from local taxes. They are state and local, not Federal. They get some Federal funding but it isn’t all that much of their budgets.
Trump could look this up in a few minutes.
Or he could long ago.
These days, I can’t see that he can do anything but make up wild statements that have nothing to do with reality.
I’m not even sure the president has the power to withhold funds that were allocated by law to the local police anyway.
@ 9
Trump didn’t have as many lackies and yes men back then he would during a future term. There were still people, even Republicans, in the bureaucracy willing to tell him “no.”
That’s not going to be the case if he gets in again, especially with the SCOTUS backing him up.
Speaking of history repeating itself (weirdly):
• During yet another crisis of legitimacy for both Parliament and the Crown, England recently held national elections resulting in a change in government. On July 4th.
• The US elections, with impending gunpowder treason and plots, are on the fifth of November. Four hundred nineteen years to the day afterward, so maybe it’s a 419 scam — we’re being asked to pay in advance a little bit of freedom in return for a promise of a lot more freedom (especially from pesky government regulations) later, in the name of a New Yorkian real-estate prince…
I didn’t read that as trickle down economics. I read it as increasing people’s wages and decreasing debt, will at first be horrible for the economy, but once it settles will create a more solid and stable economy. Illegal immigration does lower wages overall, this is just common sense supply and demand. Waste in government does increase the tax burden on the people. Reducing both of these will be good for an economy. If you think we need illegal immigrates to do the work residents don’t want to for a fraction of the minimum wage, then you also have to say that slavery was good for the economy.
raven @ # 11: [Reagan’s]i>… annual deficit went up, not down.
Which added to the national debt. Reagan, who had made deficit reduction his primary issue, ended up more than doubling (almost tripling) the national debt accumulated by all the presidents in US history. (GHW Bush finished the tripling part.)
ducksmcclucken @ # 24: Reducing both of these will be good for an economy.
And you think a Trump/Vance/Musk administration can do that? Ha-ha, ho-ho, and hee-hee!
raven @11:
And that’s really old news. Google for “starve the beast”. The idea is to drive the government so deeply into debt that there’s no money left for “those people”.
Wikipedia has a quick intro that probably doesn’t lead us far astray.
Even the Cato Institute, which agrees with the goal, knows that that tactic doesn’t work.
Deport people, fire people: concrete promises of actrion.
People will then feel good, and prosperity will arrive: funny how the end result is just vague notions of feeling better.
The only promise in there is pain, then, somehow, we’ll get better.
So you are illiterate.
Trump ran up huge budget deficits and increased the National Debt by $7.8 billion.
You can’t cut taxes and have decreasing debt. It is impossible.
When Alabama tried to get rid of all their illegal workers, it was a disaster. A lot of those were farm workers and US citizens never appeared to take those jobs. What happened was an agricultural failure.
Alabama quickly decided that maybe getting rid of necessary workers that weren’t replacable was a dumb idea and they stopped enforcing their own laws.
Brownback in Kansas tried the old Supply Side Economics lie and it also failed.
Trolls like Trump and ducksmcclucken live in fantasy worlds where doing the same failed things over again will one day work.
The only promise in there is pain, then, somehow, we’ll get better.
Important quibble: the promise is that a sizeable plurality of people, at least, will get to see others shafted and punished, so they can FEEL that “something’s being done” about “those people” allegedly responsible for “our” misery. Tinkle-down economic “theory” has always been about scapegoating the poor while the rich get everything they want with no pesky sacrifice.
@27
With you and me suffering the pain, not Musk and his rich cronies. And things will only get better for the Muskovites not those at the bottom of the heap.
ducksmcclucken
Remember, Republicans also want to strike down child labor laws. Removing “illegal” immigrants will decrease wages as children, the working poor, and prison labor (slavery) have to fill those jobs. They also plan to reduce the IRS so they can’t go after tax cheats. As I understand it, each dollar spent on the IRS to enforce the law gets seven dollars back in lost revenue. All reducing the IRS is going to do is make it easier for tax cheats causing a bigger problem. Keep in mind they see “waste” in helping people, not in say accepting a bribe from a CEO to contract out at an inflated price to their company, ie “military industrial complex”.
What they want will only make things worse for millions of people. The only ones who will profit are the obscenely wealthy.
You know what also trickles down? Piss.
@so… you are pro slavery? I mean who’s going to want to work in hot fields all day for next to nothing pay? Let’s just take advantage of poor people who have no legal protections. They can work as many hours for as little as we want to pay them.
Also, not a single word about reducing taxes was in that twitter or x post. Not a single mention. It is just about illegal Immigration and reducing waste, and how hard that will be at first but is the right first step.
The only person talking about slavery is you.
I don’t think they should get “next to nothing pay”. Give them a fair living wage.
As for taxes — we’re not stupid (but you might be). Musk is talking about cutting government spending by a third, or about 2 trillion dollars. He’s going to do it by “increasing efficiency”. Anyone with a fleck of brain in their cranium knows he’s lying. Don’t you?
It never takes long for the right wingnuts to start lying.
The troll with the stupid name is strawpersoning and lying.
No one said that.
A lot of farmworkers, legal or not, in California are unionized.
One of the people who aided that effort in the late 1960s was…me as a teenager.
They get paid a living wage already.
If they are in our country legal or or not, they are covered under the protection of our laws.
More lies.
Trump has spent most of the last 4 years talking about reducing taxes. He actually did reduce both high earner and corporate taxes during his term.
Trump, a few days ago, explained how he will end federal income tax.
I’m not wasting any more of my valuable time of this troll.
He is stupid and he lies and then lies some more.
I don’t remember the time that illegal immigrants worked to prevent increasing the federal minimum wage, or engaged in union- busting crimes, or routinely ignored multiple federal laws involving the FEC and the EPA.
It is the height of hypocrisy for the animate pondscum from South Africa to demonize ‘illegal’ immigrants since he himself qualifies. I think harvesting the food supply is a greater priority than anything musk has ever done.
I much prefer the Harris plan, which involves taxing the billionaires and their unearned income at a fair rate.
@34 I’m not saying musk or trump will be successful in those endeavors, either is the original poster. What is being said is that IF they are successful in doing both, reducing illegal immigration and reducing government waste, that it will be terrible for the economy at first but once wages aren’t being undercut by hiring illegal immigrants for a fraction of the legal minimum pay, which will allow for better wages which means less borrowing and debt, so that can bring stability of not have a roving debt bubble shifting around.
taxes can be responsibly reduced because 1, more people will be paying taxes and at higher rates, taxes can be reduced if costs have been reduced, meaning reduce the size of waste. Yes, I think it’s mostly a pie in the sky post by who ever that person is, but i did not see trickle down economics in that, that’s trickle up. Stop undercutting the people who already make the lowest legal wage and it will trickle up. I was just pointing that out, that’s not what post is advocating for.
But this strange defense of illegal labor practices, “because no one else once to do it” is just a sorry excuse to maintain slavery rather then confront the difficult issue of illegal immigration.
@35 California definitely has better protections, so do some other states and there are advocates.
Taxes on the bottom 25% of workers could be eliminated in a very simple way without hurting the economy or engaging in a naziesque policy of mass deportations
We only need to increase the taxes on unearned income for those who are in the top ten percent and eliminate the loopholes of tax havens. They can certainly afford to pay at the same rate as people like nurses and teachers and other middle-class folk.
These people have a child’s eye view of economics.
The solution to “illegal immigrants” is to make them legal and allow them to form unions. Labor only loosely follows supply and demand only inso far as you ultimately literally need people to do things. The reality is that capitalism cannot work with a true “free labor market”(a fictional concept that doesn’t exist but that’s another discussion) therefore the government has always, and will always under the dictatorship of the bourgeois, work to create slack in the labor market. Simply deporting people will impoverish everyone.
Whoa, it seems that the US are aiming for economic suicide – and taking a good chunk of the world with them.
Reminds me a bit of some Brexit predictions: some pain at first, then prosperity for all! Or… maybe not.
@40: not really, children can be way smarter than this. These are full-on psychotics by now.
We’ll know in a few days. Personally, I have no wish to see a reenactement of 1929, only powered by wannabe fascists.
Fingers crossed.
A year-old article about another place, one which did this is a “lite” way:
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2023/jan/17/shortfall-of-330000-workers-in-uk-due-to-brexit-say-thinktanks
Basically, increased trade friction from leaving the economic bloc, decreased labour supply from closing borders. And wage growth as fewer people compete for the jobs there are.
@42 @43 – Right on!
Sorry for the double post but Mrduck is a great example of why people need to read Marx, not because he’s right about everything, but because he things in terms of contestations of power in material terms. Like liberalism treats “the economy” like it’s this force of nature we can only indirectly manipulate by like twiddling with interest rares, when the reality these are all questions of social power. Like yeah wages have to follow supply and demand to some degree, but that’s not why wages have been flat or declining for 40 years. Low wages are a political and social decision that needs to be contested by a classes of interested parties. Acting like these sorts of political factors are outside of economics leads to some really stupid places, “if we just decrease the pool of labor then magically bosses will decide to not be dicks and increase wages and not just speed up the labor process or outsource to wherever they sent all their workers. Thus allowing us to have more money to buy the way fewer total commodities at higher prices! I’m super smart by the way.” -MrDuck
Sure, we should trust our economy to galaxy-brain Elon Musk.
X was supposed to be a bank by now
StevoR @ #15 — As I assume you know, “the abolition of the EC” requires a Constitutional amendment.
Incorrect. At least if “abolish the EC” just means a system where the popular vote would decide the winner, which is really what matters.
There is an extremely achievable way to make the EC irrelevant without any Constitutional amendments, and that is the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact. All it requires is passage in enough state legislatures to make 270 EVs. So far, they’ve locked down 209 EVs, with Nevada’s 6 are in progress (sort of).
I’d encourage everyone here who’s a US voter to check their state’s status, and write your reps if it hasn’t fully passed yet.
Trump learned long ago that if you were in a position to move money around you could dip your beak. The biggest source of that burning through all the money is the federal government. Man, did he ever enjoy that!
That is all he is thinking.
Weird seeing someone here try to justify the utter BS of the “economy” plan Trump and his allies want. Literal scores of economists have sounded the alarm that a Trump presidency will be bad for the economy and inflation. Also, why trust a man who’s known to crash his businesses down to the ground? Also, why trust a man who literally makes no sense when he speaks especially when economic issues are brought up. He literally rambles and grunts until he stops thinking and moves on. Also, are we really gotta try Brexit but expect a different outcome? Even the Cato institute, far from being a woke group, admits immigrants are needed to bolster the economy and work in some jobs nobody actually wants. I live in an area where immigrants are needed to keep the local industries afloat. The last Trump presidency saw the local economy decline and we all suffered for it. Because even legal immigrants were impacted. Obviously being opposed to high levels of illegal immigration are one thing but being ok with mass deportations that will wreck the economy and the process itself will take so much money. Also, who will replace all those workers? Are people really this dumb? We are ok with considering voting in a dude who openly said he’ll start a political inquisition if you disagree with him and fill his cabinet with nepotism? Do you not trust a Dem prez (history shows the economy flourishes more under a Dem) to help with the economy? People always watch those documentaries on the rise of authoritarianism or fascism or see how politically unstable other countries are and say “how can people support that”? This is how.
This is complete drivel. First, you’re misrepresenting what the passage PZ quoted says – it doesn’t talk about “reducing illegal immigration”, but “forcing through mass deportations”. Such a gross misrepresentation is an obvious tell that you are not arguing in good faith. And with unemployment as low as 4%, mass deporations – setting aside the atrocious cruelty, inevitable violence, and vast costs involved, and the question of where people are to be deported to – the result would be that most of those jobs would be unfilled. In addition, Musk “hacking away at the government” means throwing tens of millions of US citizens into destitution as Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid are destroyed. Possibly, “FischerKing” has at least understood these points, and hence admitted that the result would be immediate economic crisis as businesses collapse, tax receipts crater, essential work is not done, and millions starve. They might just as well follow up with “Then a miracle will occur”, because what they do follow up with is just a statement of a quasi-religious faith in right-wing nostrums.
@34. PZ Myers :
Increasing efficiency by sacking people and massive cuts is what Musk did toTwitter. How well did that work? Not very at all, indeed it was disasterous.Things broke and stopped working.
Remember these are the people who see govt as a problem and want supposedly govt small enough “to drown in a bathtub.” Kinda anyhow. This is a bit at odds with Project2025 and Christianist tryanny which they also want. Guessing if they get in you’ll get the worst of both worlds.
An interesting vie of what mass deportatios wuld do to the USA:
http://saideman.blogspot.com/2024/10/mass-deportation-what-does-it-mean.html
Also, can we stop sanewashing the beliefs and policies of people who have no actual policies but sincere devotion to the idol so to speak. It’s written in plain text yet we have people interpreting it and claiming to know what the text “truly means” or what supposed esoteric knowledge is embedded in it to reveal how great it actually is. This defending is nearing religious proportions and sounds like a zealot making apologia for their holy texts. Just stop @ducksmcclucken. Just say you like Musk and Trump despite their obvious flaws and spare us the contradictions and intellectual dishonesty.
“I mean who’s going to want to work in hot fields all day for next to nothing pay?”
Want? No one. Forced? Kids, prisoners, and the desperate.
Oh, I’m sure once the Trumpcamps are up and running and they’re rounding up people by the million to put into them that they’ll find some alternative way to furnish agribusinesses and some other industries with cheap labor. (Look up “Monowitz”.)
@ 18. robro : What #47 jack lecou said plus see my comment here :
https://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2024/10/04/infinite-thread-xxxiii/#comment-2241380 (#288)
In essence, yeah, it will be tough but find a way and note Amendments can be past and states added as theywere in past.
Especially if there’s a blue wave and there’s a Democratic Congress
Fix the EC, fix SCOTUS, fix the political sysrtem and reform, reform, reform!
Please.
StevoR:
Well, yes. If one is on the Republican side, that makes perfect sense!
Exactly their agenda.
Yay! Fix the EC — it will become a fixed body.
Set into place even more. A solid institution, a foundational one.
Perfect. Make sure it stays there, a fixture.
Yeah, they’re for sure trying to put the fix in.
Same thing, no? Once the fix is in, the political system is but a mask.
Oooohhh, yeah, baby. <stroke> Reform!
(You perfectly exemplify the MAGA attitude, just from the other side.
The very same sort of rhetoric, the very same sort of appeal to some slogan)
@stevor #12
After Ed Brayton died, they do the usual hilarious commenting on Lawyers Guns Money: https://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/
@57 How is trying to fix the system ideologically the same as trying to destroy the system?
US democracy has a problem thanks to EC where one person’s vote is not worth the same depending on which state of the union they live in. For example, Wyoming has three electoral votes and only 532,668 citizens (as of 2008 estimates). As a result each of Wyoming’s three electoral votes corresponds to 177,556 people. National average of voters per elector is 565,166. These people have 3.18 times as much clout in the Electoral College as an average American, or 318% (as listed in the pdf chart, downloadable below).
https://archive3.fairvote.org/assets/Uploads/npv/2008votersperelector.pdf
Things have only gotten worse since 2008.
jo1storm:
Heh. So much for my play on words and semantic shifting, eh?
It’s not the same thing, obviously.
So.
Whence this destruction about which you ask, which you yourself introduced into the conversation?
Fixing, not destruction, that’s what the topic was.
Still.
I suppose that, in the sense that to fix it is to change it and that to change it is to destroy the old system and replace it with a new system, there is a form of destruction, but also of creation (net result: old system no more, new system instituted, still a system in place).
—
As far as the USA system goes, I reckon voluntary voting (get the vote out!) and first past the post (none of this proportional preferential stuff!) are worse features than the EC.
But that’s for them (USAnians) to fix/change/destroy, not other people.
(Good luck with that! ;) )
Just be nice
What?
You imagine mass deportations are nice, cluckmcduck?
(O happy day that the country is immiserated and millions suffer! So nice!)
[meta]
Two links:
1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penal_labor_in_the_United_States
2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_incarceration_rate
So, to be fair, the USA is not entirely dependent on cheap labour by non-citizens.
Lose that labour, well. Criminalise more and more stuff and people, get their labour for free.
(The one exception for slavery, no?)
[OT]
Russia is running out of prisoners.
(Statistics are like that: incarceration rates are down!)
Be nice, is it that hard
Well, yes, for those who advocate mass deportation. Impossibly hard, even.
(Question answers itself, no?)
BTW, McCluck, even if one adhered to the ends justifying the means, those ends should at least be realistic.
It’s financial and economic and social stupidity, and it is not nice.
(Qanon logic, basically. Impresses mCDucks)
@60 Electoral college was invented by a bunch of elitist slave-owners who really disliked the idea of democracy, with their dislike going from “suspicious of democracy” to “absolutely loathing the idea of direct democracy and everything it stands for” and for that reason alone (although there are many very good ones) electoral college should really be removed all together.
Today I really don’t have patience for your inanity and dumb wordplay, John. Today is the day of mourning in Serbia for the consequences what (very republican-like) national party did in Novi Sad yesterday.That building served great for over 60 years and then they decided to “renovate” it so their cronies can take a piece of 65 million euros. They changed the original design, made it fancy with extra tonnes of glass and metal two months ago. Yesterday their fancy addition came crashing down and now they are pretending that part wasn’t renovated.
jo1storm:
The wordplay is not the message. That you missed it is incidental, though not uninformative.
Specifically, the message was not about equating fixing things with destroying things, which was your very question, the one you directly addressed to me.
But fine, you first ask me a question, then tell me you have no patience for my answer.
What a thing to do!
(You could have saved yourself the effort of asking but then ignoring my response; no patience needed there)
@69 F* off, mate. F* off with your “devil’s advocate” BS. F* off with your bad faith arguments. F* off with your cherry-picking or your trolling or your crap.
How about that? Is that clever enough wordplay for you? Is that clear enough message for you?
What happened yesterday in my country is politics and what happens when you mess it up badly enough. People die. That’s what’s waiting for US if Trump gets a second mandate. That’s what happened in Australia with your Abbot government, that’s what’s happened in UK under Tories. People die.
Look: disasters are bad, but for you to use them as a bludgeon is kinda boorish.
If you really didn’t want me to respond, you’d not have asked me a question, nor repeatedly addressed me.
Obviously.
@71 F* you. That’s not a fcking disaster, earthquake is a fcking disaster, this is a f*cking crime.
Yes, I did ask you multiple questions. those questions were: “How about that? Is that clever enough wordplay for you? Is that clear enough message for you?” So answer them. Are those clear enough?
@65. ducksmcclucken : Nice to who and why?
Are they nice in turn? Do they deserve niceness/
Aye, caramba. Another thread filled with John being un pendejo manjo.
Pissing off Lynna wasn’t enough of a fucking clue that you should absolutely shut your abusive mouth since you seem incapable of having a conversation like normal humans. She even itemized every obnoxious comment made by John in her thread and he had the fucking nerve to claim righteous indignation. Now Lynna is taking a break because of your incessant hydrant pissing nonsense, and it is mostly due to the giant asshole morales.
This is not your personal debate forum Don Quixote, and the problem isn’t everyone else, it’s you. Shit- stirring knob.
@68. jo1storm
Truth. Quoting for that. 100%. Spot on.
@57. John Morales :
Italics and footnotey letters added for clarity & reference.
(a) No, it does not. The current system with the EC and things I specifically mentioned suits them fine and tilts them in their direction. The reforms I suggest making 1 person 1 vote and more decidedly do NOT.
(b) Its abstract not fixed. Also wow. Even for you pedantry in excelsis ad absurdum.
(c) I am literally advocating the exact fucking opposite here. So Aye- yi-yi yi yi.,.
PS. John Morales : For pities sake please just take a break and stop pissing so many people here off.
Seconded (as is usual even if i don;t say it) StevoR.
indianajones, but then, there would equally not be an issue if people were not pissed off, would there?
You do get I am most certainly not actually trying to piss people off, don’t you?
(Obs, not succeeding, but there is no intent. Only perceptions.
I shan’t say perceptions of inferiority, but… well, I know what the usual accusations are.)
StevoR, do ya remember who advocated for you?
Remember?
E.g.
Was a time you came back here, Unsilentbob appealed to PZ on the basis you should be banned, I spoke up for you. I suppose that pissed people off no less. As always, I could be wrong.
—
What you seek is for me to tread carefully on eggshells lest anyone at all be upset by what I write.
Nothing about disputing actual claims, quoting actual claims, or any of that.
I am not that good at being bullied; cf. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reactance_(psychology)
@79 John, did you really have to speedrun “Narcissist prayer”?
People told you multiple times “Don’t be a jerk” and your response to that is
“But I am not intentionally a jerk. It’s their fault they react to me as if I am being a jerk and get upset. Besides, I feel psychological resistance to the idea of not being a jerk. I feel like not being a jerk to people around me curtails my freedom of being a jerk.”
I still stand by my comment I made in July:
https://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2024/07/26/were-talking-big-money-here-sam/#comment-2230254
Quote:
Now back to work for me. See ya around.
No worries, jo1storm.
Nope.
BTW, I do like how me making one comment and then responding to people is supposedly ‘narcissism’.
(You do get I respond to you no less than to others, though of course that doesn’t imply you are lesser)
Thank you for your thoughtful, relevant observation about trickle-down economics.
(Back to work you go)
‘You do get I am most certainly not actually trying to piss people off, don’t you?
(Obs, not succeeding, but there is no intent.’
This, when it has been pointed out in considerable detail exactly what it is that ‘pisses people off’, over many subjects, many times, in various circumstances, by many people (incl me, but with this many people, that is neither here nor there), this can in fact only be intentional. You might not think that whatever you do should ‘piss people off’ but I refuse to believe that you could possibly be unintentional because that implies either A) you are unaware that it does (impossible) or B) accidental about it every time (also impossible). Or C) both (impossible^2). See also ‘When everybody I meet is an asshole then…’.
And here I am actually contributing to your serial and intentional thread jacking. Shame on me. My apologies to everyone else.
You can assert all you want, but the reality is some people are less tolerant than others.
Again: I am not trying. I am just me.
There is no thread-jacking; what happens is many people, over many subjects, many times, in various circumstances, post critical comments to or about me to which I respond. It adds up, cumulatively. That’s to what you are contributing.
(Were there fewer of those, there’d be fewer retorts from me)
@83 Lol.
John Morales playbook number two:
Step 1: Post snarky bullshit comment.
Step 2: Wait until somebody responds.
Step 3: It’s showtime! Act offended, act like everything is acceptable to “get back” at the person responding, act like a jerk.
Rinse and repeat.
The only thing trickling down is your piss. And when people tell you. “Please don’t piss ON THE OTHER PEOPLE, you can piss everywhere else you want”, you reply with “But if I don’t piss, I’ll die! My bladder would burst! Are you trying to kill me?!”
People tell you “Can you argue in good faith? Can you at least spend some effort not trying to piss people off when you’re communicating?” and you reply with
“I can’t work under those UNREASONABLE CONSTRAINTS! Telling me to communicate like that is like banning a comedian from telling jokes!”
My first comment ever to you John was asking you to be better in 2022. Sadly, you didn’t listen.
Now, to get this thread back on topic. Trickle down doesn’t work. Musk’s plan won’t work, because a huge number of businesses would go bust for the reason their whole business model depends either on cheap (illegal) workforce or government subsidies or both. Those businesses are in essential industries. As in, if you mess those up you’ll get starvation. You get homelessness. You get Mad Max world. The way those businesses would try to keep the status quo going will be to use their considerable power to replace those missing laborers with either child labor or slave labor (which means mass incarceration). Probably from those homeless and starving populations. We get “Grapes of Wrath” 1929 financial crises times 10.
This is 2024.
@85 Yeah, it is 2024, John. You didn’t improve your behavior in 2 years. And that’s kind of sad, really.
Here’s the comment: https://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2022/11/23/well-that-explains-a-lot-about-that-shooter/#comment-2158985
Um, it is not I who is acting offended, jo1storm.
It is you who is currently driving this interaction, so clearly today you do have patience. Yay?
I do find it remarkable that you can recall your very first comment to me, which you claim was a request to change myself to accommodate your predilection. I myself don’t recall it, though I vaguely remember you getting upset over something or other.
(Possibly not the best way to start a conversation with many people, and certainly less than optimal if you do that to me)
Tell ya what JM, so as not to thread jack, why don’t you, me, jo1storm go find an old thread, your choice of where and carry on there? That way we can all know that this is not just truly performative assholery on anyones part. Whaddya say?
I say you are trying to goad me, indianajones.
For you, it’s personal, no? Common-sense and civility are by the bye.
It is notable how you ask me to thread-jack some old thread instead of this (to you, current) one.
I’d rather not hijack any threads at all.
(Care to consider what proportion of my comments are direct responses to people, and who in fact is driving the engagement?
It is rather minuscule)
[oh, today is my birthday. I was born in 5 Nov 1960]
Whaddya say?
(I now know the answer as to whether my wife loves me)
—
Guy Fawkes’ day.
USA Election day.
(Aussie, so today is it for me)
@87
You could have just followed the link, John. My request was for you to be better. Not to accommodate me.
I guess you make so many bad and troll logic arguments and that so many people call you out and tell you to be better that for you that day was just Tuesday.
Happy birthday. Be better. I wish you to get better soon.
jo1storm, you sure are becoming gregarious.
Heh. Have a look at that link; it is not you writing to me.
Bad guess.
(Your competence at guessing is quite evident)
—
Still, today you really do have patience for my alleged inanity and dumb wordplay, jo1storm.
So, from “@69 F* off, mate. F* off with your “devil’s advocate” BS. F* off with your bad faith arguments. F* off with your cherry-picking or your trolling or your crap.” you have gone to “Happy birthday”.
No worries. Ta. Very nice.
By tomorrow (my time) I shall likely know the result of the USA election.
And I wish you’d got my little joke @85 (among others).
(Ah well, fishies and wishes, eh?)
@79. John Morales :
Yes, I do remember and I appreciate that.
I am NOT calling for you to be banned and have spoken in your defense before too stating that I do not think you are a troll and that i do not want to see you banned.
I stil hold that view.
I do however find some of your comments exasperating sometimes and I note that you have annoyed some of the other regular commenters her eincluding Lynna and I’m just asking you totake a short break and not to wind people up quite
so much and annoty others quite so much if can.
Its not so much that you should “tread on eggshells” – for starters that’d be a waste of eggs! It’s more that you should try to be a bit more considerate of others here, maybe not misconstrue either deliberately or accidentally common expressions of speech and quirks of language and just try to play a bit nicer with others as the expression generally goes.
I don’t think you are being bullied here. I hope not. Bullying you (or anyone else) is certainly NOT my intent or what I seek to accomplish here.