ewsieg

I would like to, but I have to admit my overall mental health has been better as I've worked to limit my news / Trump news intake and I'll probably just stay away. That said, would love to be able to ask him a question with cameras around. None of the current reporters following him know how to. They should be able to see what some of these MAGA'esque podcasters he's bringing into the press pool and follow their lead. "Mr. President, as we all know, the only reason why we are dealing with this Ukraine/Russia war is because of the incompetence of the Obama administration. As you have rightly pointed out in the past, if Obama had provided a security agreement at that time, we aren't in this situation today. So can you outline the security agreements that will be put into place to ensure this issue is resolved when the fighting stops?"

While it would be neat to only hear the wind as you accelerate, I will always love the rumble of an older muscle vehicle. I know some EV's actually have external speakers but I want to say GM was looking at an external speaker system for a Corvette EV which would make it sound like a gas powered vehicle. Then you could just chose to turn it off/on whenever you want to. Kind of stupid option that if I had the money, I would take in a heartbeat.

I was pleasantly surprised to learn this the other day. Just didn't seem like he was Pope long enough, but he has been around longer than I realized. We have not officially left the Catholic church, but my daughters last year of catechism was awful and our priest would be happy to revert back to "MAGA" Catholicism. Apparently everything was better when folks showed up because they were afraid of being ostracized by family and community and just kept their head down while the priest gave mass in Latin. We haven't stepped back in that church since she was confirmed and I won't be going back there as long as the current priest is still there. Unfortunately with all the consolidation, he also oversees several other Catholic churches in the area, so we haven't even bothered to try and look elsewhere. I really hope someone that aligns with Francis' values is picked, we need those values to be celebrated again.

Week of 4/14 I wanted to only focus on things Trump has actually done, not things he's said as often he gets the focus of what he's doing by saying even more outrageous things. But I feel like what he has already done, plus the way he said the following, gives this an exception. The Bad - Trumps reaction to SCOTUS ruling on Garcia, his failed 'attempt' in bringing him back, and then his escalation this week that El Salvador could be used for 'homegrown terrorists' as well, stating it publicly in the WH with the press corp surrounding him next to another wanna be dictator. The GOP has been balking at the idea that Trump would ever violate SCOTUS which is reminiscent of how so many claimed they would not vote for Trump, but would vote for the republican nominee. Honorable mention - trade wars. The response from the Japanese is just further proof Trump has no sound policy. Japan would be good to announce a Fentanyl Czar and simply just say something like 'We will never put any tariffs on US goods', regardless if they plan to or not and they would probably be honored by Trump for being a true ally.

Really no different then when search engines first got popular. My wife to this day can't search for crap. She adds to much unnecessary crap or the most generic search words and is always upset when I can find a definitive answer immediately. Add in the "medical doctors" google created. Just because you went searching for something and stumbled upon something else doesn't mean you're drying from some extremely rare disease that got a search bump because it was Grey's Anatomy last week.

There is a catch 22 for me regardless if I wait a week or binge watch. Like you say, in some regards I get a week to try and understand certain aspects of a storyline or even just a comment which I may have taken one way when I watched it, but by the time I'm watching the next one I identified more context to it and better prepared to see how it develops. But then when I binge there will be small cues which I likely would have completely forgotten if I was going week to week which I catch when they might build on to it an episode or two later and it's still fresh in my mind. Guess it probably depends on what I'm watching and how much interest I have in it.

Rounding up illegals already in the country is a separate issue from illegals entering this country. Trump's rhetoric alone has done a ton regarding the border. Crossings are estimated to be down 95%. https://usafacts.org/answers/how-many-migrant-encounters-are-there-along-the-us-mexico-border/country/united-states/ Plus look at what he's doing to our economy, a bad US economy has always lowered illegal crossings and if he gets his way, we're going to have years of a bad economy which will help assist with this issue. I disagree with his tactics (both in terms of not liking how he dehumanizes this group and also the legality of his tactics) and I disagree with what we're seeing regarding deporting those that have legal protection to stay in the US, at least until a hearing. But he has helped control the southern border in a very short time.

Biden also ignored it for 2.5 years before finally doing something about it. For those 2.5 years, the influx affected citizens of hispanic origin, but Biden and the dems assumed that since they were all of the same color, they were all the same. Are you right about the bipartisan bill, absolutely, but again, for 2.5 years they watched the dems not only not do anything to fix the issue, but deny the issue existed. Obviously for some hispanics, the 2.5 years "Trumped" their thoughts against a bill that once it failed turned into a pissing contest about who screwed it up. Trump made the biggest appeal to urban cities that any republican has ever made in the last election with his blunt 'what do you have to lose?' Again, I think we will agree they certainly have more to lose and that Trump is proving that, but that goes to what I said earlier about democrats. Stop expecting votes simply because you believe you are better and start working to get those votes.

I apologize if I posted this recently. I seem to remember telling someone about this but a quick check doesn't look like I did it here. I grew up with a kid that went on to become a lawyer. He sells hats saying 'not guilty' and is always talking about the injustice of the police and prosecutors against citizens. If you need a lawyer, probably the type of guy you want. Based on that you'd think he was left leaning, nope, full on MAGA. He just posted something about how the media narrative on the MS-13 leader (that was so bad at it he had to go get a union job apparently) is so wrong and used the WH's narrative as proof..... but it's not a cult.

So, I get the point you're making, but when I hear this stuff it makes me feel like democrats haven't learned anything. Has he said some despicable stuff, absolutely. But he did gain numbers with hispanics. Instead of laughing at how absurd that is, it might be better for democrats to try and understand why instead of using their own biases to laugh it off. For instance, hispanics live in greater numbers near the southern border. What major issue did we have (for issues much more complex than just immigration policy) down there? The same major issue that blue states and blue cities realized was an issue after Abbot, DeSantis (and Biden, folks forget that) started sending migrants to their communities. It's clear that in just the last year or two democrats finally get it, but yet they are surprised it hurt them at the ballot box. Stop expecting votes because you think you're better and start working for them.

To be fair to you, he's not the same Bill Kristol he was in 2005. I feel like I followed his path closely where we don't want to say we've changed, we want to say the GOP changed and as a result, we were left behind. Truthfully though, we changed. Maybe no change on racial issues, but more empathetic. Definitely changed on social issues or at least how we value them. I can say for myself I felt the government wasn't needed for social change, the people would do that on their own and bake in any changes they made into government, so I didn't care about government involvement up front. Now with the attacks from the government on social issues, I see the importance I didn't recognize before. Can't say if it's the exact reasoning for Kristol, but sounds like it to me. Even some change on economic issues, he definitely doesn't sound like your traditional conservative when he refers to the tech bros as oligarchs.

I thought 8 minutes... but regardless, the difference is staggering. I was reading on reddit today about that planet that Romad linked above, it's about 120 light years away. We sent Voyager I out in the late 70's and I know Voyager II is catching up to it, but I think Voyager I is still the furthest man made object from earth. It's traveled the equivalent of 1 light day. Assuming it's heading directly for this planet, it only has about 2 million more years before it reaches it if my math is right.

This makes Trump look weak, so weak....the weakest. His administration has admitted that they screwed up and that Garcia should not have been deported. I will admit i'm hearing a ton of different 'facts' on this case, but it sounds like he was here for 7-8 years as an illegal and IMO, should have been deported during that time. But, he wasn't, possibly because he wasn't getting into legal trouble? Anyway, he finally applied for asylum, married an American citizen and appears to have been dealing with his immigration status as he should since. But Trump deports him by accident. Then "big strong man" Trump has to admit in front of the president of El Salvador that he's powerless to bring him back. Trump is paying for El Salvador to host these folks and the president of the 'free' world can't even find leverage regarding something he is paying for to get one simple request done. El Salvador would rank 53rd in GDP if it was a US state or territory. But nope, big bad El Savadorian president is too scary for Trump to deal with. This is so humiliating to Trump that he has to bow down to this two bit dictator. Wouldn't be surprised if Nayib cucked him with Melania. Wish we could have a president that could standup to these tiny poor countries that are apparently too strong for Trump to deal with.

It's certainly not meaningless .... it means about 30-45% higher.

Week of 4/7/25 The bad - Tariffs win again this week. There really was no comparison this week. Possibly you could argue the insider trading (which I get hasn't been proven, but something definitely happened), but even that could be argued as part of the tariff issue. I haven't been on the site much so I don't know if it was discussed, but if the buzz around Mark Carney is correct, we might still be dealing with the outlandish portion of the tariffs still in place, instead of just the stupid tariffs still in place. If the Carney stuff is true, this goes back to last week again and how unorganized Trump rolled these out were. If Trump really wanted to go after China, and focused his tariff decision specially on China, Carney and the countries he coalesced with wouldn't have identified and taken advantage of Trump with the bond market. Possibly the tariff war against China would have succeeded, instead, he created more enemies. Not only did he create more enemies, but he ensured this tariff gamble will cause issues for decades, not days. And decades only if we work to repair what this administration has done and there is no proof that will be happening anytime soon.

Facebook was kind of funny yesterday when 2 of my MAGA friends spent the morning touting the stock market bump. They seemed to get quiet as the day went on. As for this morning, i'm surprised it's holding up. What news could folks be expecting because the overnight news was not good?

Ok, so I can't provide examples which justifies how Trump is handling this, thus why his tariffs "won" worst of the week.

Note the smiley face at the end was to note a tongue in cheek comment. As for examples, I just didn't want to go down a rabbit hole of giving an example which could be looked at several different ways and getting into an argument of which way is the best way to look at it. Overall I'm just talking about trade barriers that aren't tariffs themselves and it's something the US even does, because everyone does it. With Trump, I'm not even saying he's right that the US is routinely on the bad end of those barriers, but simply that there has been an argument, at times by both sides of our political parties, stating we are on the wrong end. I can guarantee other countries can give arguments stating they are actually on the wrong end and I'm conceding that point. Broad examples are currency manipulation (china did this a lot for a long time, unless i'm wrong, I don't think that's considered as big of an issue now. Trumps tariff action may end up making this an issue again as others may move away from the dollar as the standard), quotas, administrative barriers (think required permits/licenses that simply don't get processed), bribery (some Jersey folks might just call that the cost of doing business), even censorship can be a barrier.

I almost gave a few anecdotes, but I'm cognizant that even with those, there are arguments against it being a trade issue. For instance currency manipulation, is it a trade issue? IMO, yes, but it's not only done for trade purposes. Even Obama focused on trade and did so because he felt there were issues which put the US at a disadvantage. (TPP gained traction under Obama). In the end, it was your party that for most of my adult life was more amenable to tariffs. If you want to argue your party is stupid, I'll happily concede and give you the win for this argument. 🙂 In the end, I'm not defending Trump. Rather you want to believe that people felt the US was on the wrong side of trade agreements in the past or not, my issue and complaint is with how he's handling it.

The entire point of trade is to take advantage of what you have to offer. So China has been able to offer cheap labor. In return we have cheaper access to products that had originally been manufactured here. So we lose manufacturing jobs, but the overall benefit is supposedly evened out by the cheaper cost of living. The UAW says we can still keep some of those jobs here, but corporations like Target, Walmart, Meijer, etc enjoys having that cheap product to sell and they tend to win out. Plus since it's made cheaply, it tends to break more, thus you have to buy it more often. In the end, are you getting the benefit you were promised? At that is just an example of what trade mismatch can bring. Now if you want to look at advantage, look at what Trump is doing with the gov't. He's cutting so many workers in areas that the service they provide can't be provided anymore. Yet he can say he isn't cutting the service, he can point to paperwork showing it's fully funded. In the end though, he is putting up a barrier to getting that service executed. Many countries have done this to avoid a trade war, they simply build obstacles that they can say are outside of trade itself, and use those obstacles against only those they want to keep out.

I almost pushed my 401k to just Money Markets / Bonds a few days ago. But I figured with so much tariff talk, that the 'drop' was already priced in. Crap, maybe it was to a point and we still saw what we saw, jeez. Bummed I didn't do it, but hey, not like I actually believe I'll be able to retire anyway.

Week of 3/31 The good - Wisconsin may have helped us get rid of Elon. The bad - The tariffs. And let me fully explain my thoughts because in some ways, I understand Trumps complaint. Other countries have take advantage of us and in turn, our corporate overlords have ensured the gov't doesn't push back to much so they can get their advantage too. There is a legitimate reason why the UAW isn't against these tariffs. But good god, you call this the art of the deal? It took reporters documenting what they saw with the tariffs to figure out what the US complaint was on tariffs *after* they had been announced and that's how other foreign leaders learned what the US was upset about. If the art of the deal is to confuse the **** out of your counterpart, then I guess the execution was spot on. And he's out there demanding interest cuts after pulling this ****. This is a big bold plan and even if you felt it was the right way to go, springing it on the entire world without any explanation shows just how in the clouds this administrations head is. He literally just seems to think everything is 'widgets' and companies can move plants and personnel on a dime.

...indicative of what was otherwise a normal person, who's kind of spiraling. Acting out based on what the last person that spoke to him about is par for the course with Trump.

Sorry about the news MB. What type of work do you do? Also, while I think you also have Trump derangement syndrome, I would love to see more TDS in congress.

I saw a conservative leaning guy on X laughing at the Tesla boycott because 'everyone knows boycotts don't put a dent in major corporations, just look at Budweiser, it's not like they went out of business'. Umm, it was your folks boycotting Budweiser. It also cost them market share.