Mega-Thread: Trump Focused Discussion

[Lorgar Aurelian]

I would think that even in the US, the vast majority of people do not actually WANT to shoot another person.

Of course people don’t want to, but when brown shorts are coming to take you away to a unknown fate under an administration that’s abusing civil rights left and right your opinions are dwindling fast and you should be ready to defend your self.

- - - Updated - - -

Well, you see ... life just isn't a John Wick Movie.
When you're distracted with the kids and groceries at the door, it's hard to back-flip immediatly into dual-weild-gun-kata mode.

Life doesn’t have to be John wick as there is no lack of real examples of people getting jumped while concealed carrying and defending them selfs either rightly or wrongly.

[Breccia]

Well, looks like McClintock is not the only one avoiding Town Hall meetings. Issa is doing the same thing. There is ongoing protest at his office demanding that he meets with them.

Want to know the last time Rep. Elise Stefanik met her voters?

...so would I. She damn near vanished.

[Lorgar Aurelian]

In this instance?
You are brown.
You are in the country legally but not a citizen.
You have a gun.
You get shot.
Questions never enter the conversation.

The thing is though you swap having a gun with resisting, running, or a jack boot just geting scared of his own shadow and the exact same thing happens.

At risk people can and should be ready to defends them selfs and others in there community’s when the authority’s have turned on them illegally at the behest of a fascist leader.

[Edge-]

Want to know the last time Rep. Elise Stefanik met her voters?

...so would I. She damn near vanished.

Unfortunately, unless the voters actually do something about it they can continue to not interact or engage with them like this.

It's a shame so many voters are so disengaged like this and just vote for the incumbent/party whatever. I was pretty displeased with my Reps last town hall and have sent him in feedback about it, and he usually hosts great town halls.

[SAY HER NAME]

Immigration agents arrest Palestinian activist who helped lead Columbia University protests


I have very little sympathy for these activists but I can always acknowledge the dangers of an administration abusing its powers to silence people for speech they dont like. Even if this wasnt illegal and the executive had full control on these matters it wouldnt justify it.

This guy is not a criminal, he is married with a kid and has a masters degree. For all intents and purposes he is the ideal immigrant but bc his speech doesnt comform to the new administration he is facing deportation. Thats sick.

[Rasulis]

White House official expects Q1 GDP to 'squeak' into positive category

Trump's White House is making the same mistake as Biden's. They keep talking about the economy from investors' perspective.

The typical middle-class household could care less about the GDP & market volatility. Out of over 8,000 items that make up the Consumer Price Index, the majority of consumers only care about a few items - food, housing and transportation.

[Edge-]

Immigration agents arrest Palestinian activist who helped lead Columbia University protests


I have very little sympathy for these activists but I can always acknowledge the dangers of an administration abusing its powers to silence people for speech they dont like. Even if this wasnt illegal and the executive had full control on these matters it wouldnt justify it.

This guy is not a criminal, he is married with a kid and has a masters degree. For all intents and purposes he is the ideal immigrant but bc his speech doesnt comform to the new administration he is facing deportation. Thats sick.

the fun part is they were going to cancel his student visa to deport him

he doesn't have a student visa, he's a permanent resident with a greencard

so they said oops that's what we meant, we're taking his permanent residency greencard

just clown shoes incompetence from the racists in the white house

[Bwgmon]

White House official expects Q1 GDP to 'squeak' into positive category

Trump's White House is making the same mistake as Biden's. They keep talking about the economy from investors' perspective.

The typical middle-class household could care less about the GDP & market volatility. Out of over 8,000 items that make up the Consumer Price Index, the majority of consumers only care about a few items - food, housing and transportation.

The majority of consumers aren't billionaires though, why should they get to determine what baskets the eggs are put into? /s

[Rasulis]

the fun part is they were going to cancel his student visa to deport him

he doesn't have a student visa, he's a permanent resident with a greencard

so they said oops that's what we meant, we're taking his permanent residency greencard

just clown shoes incompetence from the racists in the white house

A good lawyer can take it all the way to the SC. Which way it would go, I am not sure. He should be able to get out on bail also. Having ICE arrested him is unusual. The typical Green Card revocation case is usually administrative and handled by US Citizenship and Immigration Services.

[Breccia]

Trump's White House is making the same mistake as Biden's.

They are actually making a second, arguably worse, one.

Remember 2016?

Donald Trump thinks American GDP can grow more than 4 percent under his policies, more than double the average rate the U.S. has seen in this century.

“My great economists don’t want me to say this, but I think we can do better than that,” he said Thursday in a speech to the Economic Club of New York.

Earlier Thursday, his campaign said in a fact sheet that its planned tax cuts and deregulation will boost average annual GDP growth to 3.5 percent and “create as many as 25 million new jobs” in the next decade. The U.S. economy grew at roughly 2 percent in 2015 and last grew at a 4 percent annual rate in 2000.

The fact sheet cited “Trump economists” without independent backing. Independent analyses have often proven skeptical of the Trump campaign’s estimates.

Trump, speaking later in a restrained tone by his standards, started his speech by boasting about his gains in polls against Democrat Hillary Clinton. He then tried to contrast his plans from Clinton’s, claiming she would stifle the economy with regulation and tax increases on the wealthy.

“My plan will embrace the truth that people will flourish under a minimum government burden,” Trump said.

Trump contended his 4 percent growth goal will “reduce the deficit.” Previous independent analyses of his broad tax cuts have estimated they will bloat the U.S. deficit by trillions, even after economic growth is taken into account.

The election was two months later, everything Trump said was wrong, everything the experts said was wright.

But I can do better.

Our Ruling

Trump said that in "the last quarter, it was just announced, our gross domestic product … was below zero. Who ever heard of this? It's never below zero." He messes up his economic terms; the gross domestic product was not "zero." And the growth in the gross domestic product has been below zero 42 times over 68 years. That’s a lot more than "never." We rate his claim Pants on Fire!

That's from his announcement to run for office.

Trump has made GDP growth a big deal for him. And now, the WH is considering it good news if they can "squeak into positive category".

That admission is humiliating. The fact that they have to say "contrary to what all the experts are saying, we won't actually be less than zero" probably had them throwing up after they got off-camera. It's admission that they can't even do nothing correctly. Had they done nothing, GDP growth would have been the 3% that Trump inherited, not the barely above zero they're bragging about or the negative 3% everyone who knows what they're talking about is saying.

[hellhamster]

FOMC meeting is in 8 days. There's a big chance all of this is orchestrated to accelerate rate cuts, which were predicted to be in June. Inflation is much lower than expected so who knows.

Time will tell, but everyone with a tiny bit of sense has correctly called what is happening today. A negative 3% GDP growth is the best case scenario right now. A rate cut acceleration after a 10y-2y yield curve reversal is always horrible.

[Draco-Onis]

FOMC meeting is in 8 days. There's a big chance all of this is orchestrated to accelerate rate cuts, which were predicted to be in June. Inflation is much lower than expected so who knows.

Time will tell, but everyone with a tiny bit of sense has correctly called what is happening today. A negative 3% GDP growth is the best case scenario right now. A rate cut acceleration after a 10y-2y yield curve reversal is always horrible.

I don't know about that we could see no rate cuts because inflation expectations are higher due to Trump's policies. The range for the next reading is 3.5-4.5% not accounting for tariffs, Trump is creating the perfect stagflation storm for the fed. There really isn't a good move he is putting the economy between a rock and a hard place.

[Lynarii]

A good lawyer can take it all the way to the SC. Which way it would go, I am not sure. He should be able to get out on bail also. Having ICE arrested him is unusual. The typical Green Card revocation case is usually administrative and handled by US Citizenship and Immigration Services.

Assuming he even gets a lawyer.

Don't forget that the whole reason that places like Gitmo exist is so that the US can imprison people in places that the US constitution doesn't apply to. And there are already people being sent from the US to Gitmo and being denied access to legal support.

[Joszef Kiprich]

Assuming he even gets a lawyer.

Don't forget that the whole reason that places like Gitmo exist is so that the US can imprison people in places that the US constitution doesn't apply to. And there are already people being sent from the US to Gitmo and being denied access to legal support.

Yeah almost all "detention centers" , read jails, are very remote. 1 immigration lawyer accessible for every 2000 detainees. In Lousiana a lawyer has to drive at least 3 and a half hours to get to his clients. Not at all intentional ofcourse.

[Edge-]

https://www.sfgate.com/renotahoe/art...d-20209156.php

The U.S. Forest Service manages 78% of the land in the Lake Tahoe Basin. Yet, a hiring freeze on seasonal workers and recent firings of key staff have gutted an already-stretched-thin agency, putting on hold critical work in water quality, environmental restoration and forest fuels reduction projects while also diminishing the forest service’s capacity to manage the millions of visitors who come to Lake Tahoe every year — especially on the Fourth of July.

Eleven people who work at the Lake Tahoe Basin Management Unit lost their jobs last month in the so-called “Valentine’s Day Massacre” led by Elon Musk’s U.S. Department of Government Efficiency, according to former employees. The job losses compound chronically low staffing, plus a hiring freeze on seasonal workers that went into effect last fall. In all, the management unit has lost a third of its recreational staff, including the lone permanent wilderness ranger position in Desolation Wilderness.

The Lake Tahoe Basin Management Unit is the smallest forest in California, but it sees more visitors than any of the state’s national parks. The management unit’s 156,335 acres are a fifth the size of Yosemite National Park, yet data shows the management unit welcomes almost twice as many visitors as Yosemite. But the forest service has gone dark in communications about how Lake Tahoe will be impacted by the Trump administration’s mass firing of forest service employees last month.

The only news coming out of the management unit since the firings have been public notices about prescribed burns. An inquiry sent by SFGATE in February to the management unit about how many people were fired went unanswered. On Monday, a spokesperson for the U.S. Department of Agriculture sent SFGATE an emailed statement that said 2,000 forest service employees had been fired but did not give any further information about how the firings were spread forest by forest or how many people had been let go at the management unit.

In that information vacuum, two former forest service employees and South Lake Tahoe residents — Nadia Tase and Kelly Bessem — have organized a small resistance to make known the full weight of the impacts coming to Lake Tahoe, aligning with similar rogue initiatives led by people who work on public lands. Tase worked for the forest service in Lake Tahoe for 13 years before she took another job on Election Day in 2016. Bessem was a hydrology technician and seasonal employee until she was let go last fall, due to budget cuts.

“I have to speak up for my colleagues [who] can’t speak for themselves because they’re afraid of losing their job,” Tase said in a phone interview with SFGATE this week. “It’s a very strange world right now, and things are not happening the way they typically do. They are just very scared.”

Both Tase and Bessem say they have been in touch with current and former forest service employees. Tase published a letter to the editor in South Tahoe Now on Feb. 23 that detailed the jobs lost — and what Tahoe should expect in the coming months as a result.

“If this purge were truly about government efficiency, these would not be the individuals to target,” Tase wrote in the letter on South Tahoe Now. “These are some of the hardest working people, the most dedicated, the most productive worker bees that simply put, get stuff done.”

The Trump administration fired people who built trails. They managed aquatic invasive species efforts and led creek and meadow restoration projects that play into Lake Tahoe’s vitally important water quality goals — the projects that, to borrow from the League to Save Lake Tahoe’s tagline, quite literally “keep Tahoe blue.”

The cuts mean fewer people to pick up trash left by tourists on beaches, put out illegal campfires in the backcountry and enforce rules about bear canisters. Tahoe’s popular Taylor Creek Visitor Center and Tallac Historic Site will have reduced hours. While many forest service beaches and campgrounds are operated by concessionaires, places that are run by the forest service, including Luther Pass Campground and Watson Lake Campground, will also see shorter opening seasons.

The loss also represents decades of experience, Tase said. Some of those people had more than 20 years of experience working for the management unit.

“We lose these positions. We lose that ability to serve the public,” Tase said.

Two people who worked on aquatic invasive species projects were also fired. Tahoe has seen recent success with projects eradicating aquatic invasive species. Last fall, the forest service joined the Tahoe Regional Planning Agency to remove heavy, sunlight-blocking mats that eradicated a 17-acre infestation of aquatic weeds in Tallac and Taylor creeks.

Monitoring needs to continue so the weeds don’t return, said Bessem, the former hydrology technician. Yet the two employees fired in February were both leaders on the aquatic team.

Three people who were fired worked on fuels reduction projects that protect Lake Tahoe communities from wildfire danger — all the more prescient in Lake Tahoe, since forest-thinning projects saved hundreds of homes in Christmas Valley from burning in the Caldor Fire.

The Trump administration has frozen funding for partner nonprofits the Lake Tahoe Basin Management Unit has traditionally relied on to lend extra hands and support critical work, such as fuels reduction projects that buffer Tahoe’s forest-dense neighborhoods from wildfire risk.

In Tahoe, the Great Basin Institute has partnered with the management unit on a large-scale forestry project to reduce the risk of wildfire across the Tahoe Basin. But the institute nearly had to furlough staff because, at the start of the Trump administration, it stopped receiving payments from the federal government for work completed months ago, said Great Basin Institute CEO Peter Woodruff.

Payments have resumed for work completed months ago, and the institute avoided furloughs, Woodruff said. However, all new work that doesn’t have funding already committed has been suspended.

“The forests are being asked to do heroics or shutter critical facilities and recreation,” Woodruff said. “Typically, we’d be a solution in these circumstances when they reach their own limitations, they reach into whatever backup funding they may have and shift to our labor force, but that’s not possible this time around.”

The Lake Tahoe Basin Management Unit also lost employees who held fireline qualifications, Tase said. They might not be firefighting personnel, but they still do firefighting work in the Tahoe Basin, during a fire and after. These were the people who rehabilitated the fire breaks that crews cut through the forest during the Caldor Fire, she noted, reducing erosion and sediment flows into Lake Tahoe.

More in the article, but the cuts to the National Parks and Forest Service are going to have consequences for quite some time. I just hope tourists aren't their usual shitty selves and follow rules/don't fuck up these incredible natural wonders.

[hellhamster]

I don't know about that we could see no rate cuts because inflation expectations are higher due to Trump's policies. The range for the next reading is 3.5-4.5% not accounting for tariffs, Trump is creating the perfect stagflation storm for the fed. There really isn't a good move he is putting the economy between a rock and a hard place.

My numbers are indicating that inflation fell off a cliff unexpectedly since last week, like below 2%. Maybe it's an anomaly I donno. Probably something something demand driven.

[Poopymonster]

The thing is though you swap having a gun with resisting, running, or a jack boot just geting scared of his own shadow and the exact same thing happens.

At risk people can and should be ready to defends them selfs and others in there community’s when the authority’s have turned on them illegally at the behest of a fascist leader.

If you want to get your citizenship, stay in the country, play by the rules, make a better life for yourself and your family, and you shoot someone. Regardless of whether someone entering your dwelling addressed themselves as ICE, cop, government agent, criminal breaking and entering your home, or Jesus Christ himself, you just got put under the microscope by the government.
As a brown person, that is the last thing you want in this country.

[Breccia]

Ladies and gentlemen, the snowflake in chief:

MICHAEL BIRNBAUM: Is President Putin disrespecting you by attacking Ukraine when you’re trying to make peace there, Mr. President?

TRUMP: Who?

MICHAEL BIRNBAUM: Is President Putin disrespecting you by attacking Ukraine when you’re trying to make peace there?

TRUMP: What did he do?

MICHAEL BIRNBAUM: Well, he’s attacking Ukraine.

TRUMP: Is he disrespecting me?

MICHAEL BIRNBAUM: Yeah.

TRUMP: Who? Who are you with?

MICHAEL BIRNBAUM: I’m– Michael Birnbaum, Washington Post.

TRUMP: Uh, you’ve lost a lot of credibility. Go ahead. What else?

You will notice that Trump never answered the question.

"It's objectively worse that Trump didn't recognize Putin's name, either by context of the question, or merely being Russian President Vladimir Putin."

You again!

"I know you routinely call Trump senile and/or retarded, but at this point, every human being on Earth should know by name and reputation the name of the leader attacking Ukraine. There is no amount of background noise or distraction that could be blamed for making 'who?' the correct question."

I'll also add that "you've lost a lot of credibility" is the kind of handwaving dismissal an asshole like me uses to disregard American royalist traitors and terrorists on an anonymous gaming forum. It's not the language a very stable genius should be using when asked a direct question, as the leader of the free world, by one of America's most famous publications.

[Kaleredar]

https://www.sfgate.com/renotahoe/art...d-20209156.php



More in the article, but the cuts to the National Parks and Forest Service are going to have consequences for quite some time. I just hope tourists aren't their usual shitty selves and follow rules/don't fuck up these incredible natural wonders.

It’s not even necessarily a matter of people not intentionally fucking things up or acting like dickweeds (which I’m sure will happen anyway) but simply a matter of the sheer volume of people. Even if every person acted responsibly the sheer matter of thousands of people pouring through any given area is going to take a toll.

I’m kinda wondering why they… keep the parks open at all? Not to diminish the importance of national parks, but with such little staffing it just doesn’t seem worth the undue toll on the park employees and the land. Much like with covid, they could very well temporarily shut down the parks and keep them in sort of a “maintenance mode” or strictly limit hours/attendance with a big “closed due to trump cuts” plastered out front.

Trying to “continue on as normal” while excessively tolling the employees and the park itself while things are very much not normal doesn’t seem the way to go.

[Draco-Onis]

My numbers are indicating that inflation fell off a cliff unexpectedly since last week, like below 2%. Maybe it's an anomaly I donno. Probably something something demand driven.

FOMC usually takes the long view for their decisions so I don't think weekly inflation plays any role. They most likely do not want to be in a situation where they do a cut and have to raise rates the next quarter. It's possible they will split it down the middle and make smaller basis point rate cut.