2024 ELECTION THREAD

I haven't read Wolff's book, but I find it incredibly unlikely that U.S. generals told Trump that WWIII was a certainty within a week if the U.S. cut aid to S. Korea. That isn't how military people normally talk.

This is incorrect. Off the top of my head:

FISA, the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (i.e., repeal of Glass-Steagall), the ACA, the Patriot Act, and various policies that contributed to the downfall of the Soviet Union.

With a little time, I'm sure that I could come up with a lot of other examples.

again, i mentioned spying already

ah yes just a magic coincidence FIRE upped political contributions 10x in the years leading up the repeal and that repeal led to the 2008 economic crisis

no breakthrough whatsoever, still utterly terrible compared to other western countries - fact you view this as a major shift tells me we're never going to agree on this

lol, c'mon now, i included this one

pepsi, blue jeans, and gross soviet corruption is what did this

so congrats, our military spending is almost as much as the rest of the world combined, we have social services which provide nothing yet cost 20x more than other western countries, all our infrastructure is crumbling, we don't even have high speed rail

we're pathetic and slowly heading towards bankruptcy

I missed your reference to spying. I wasn't suggesting that all of the policies that I mentioned were to the good. You said that there were no significant policy changes since 1970.

And neither the Dems and GOP will solve any of these as they are both bought and paid for.

I don't get the fascination with high speed rail in America. Particularly as a "the least we can possibly do" sentiment you just alluded to, like it's a total no-brainer.

What problem are we trying to solve there? Who are these people that need to travel long distances in a short period of time for a higher price than an airplane ticket?

Europe is brought up as an example, but nearly the entirety of Europe can fit within US borders, and they have more than twice the population. Plus, most of the truly high-speed rail is contained within western Europe, presumably where the population density is higher still.

The last time a project like this was floated in Wisconsin, it mathed out as more efficient to contract door-to-door limousine service for 3 riders per vehicle, replacing the limos every 6 years and paying the drivers $100k/yr than it would be to build the rail infrastructure for a shittier overall experience and barely saving any time on the trip once you account for getting to/from the train station and needing to slow the train down through every population center, not to mention any extra stops along the way.

Amtrak can't pay their bills on even the most highly-trafficked routes in America. Who the hell would be using this service?

I can get on board for the cool-factor, but it seems like such an enormous waste of money given the relatively low demand such a service would generate. Sink that eleventy billion dollars into more free ponies that people might actually ride.

Yeah, I agree. I think the geography prevents this from being a reasonable solution. I like the idea, but it just doesn't seem practical.

i dont know enough about rail specifically, but you think a high speed rail ticket from dallas to houston would cost more than a flight?

if that's so then why is the airline industry lobbying millions of dollars against an industry that has no potential to steal their business. those guys must be idiots.

im surprised your boy Walker didnt embrace that project, must not have bribed him enough like foxconn. how's that foxconn working out for you up there by the way?

You can buy a round trip flight from Dallas to Houston today for $126, plus $5 in fees.

A round trip train ticket is $70-110 depending on which station you start at, plus fees that I can't find details on.

That's at today's prices, so you're right the train is less expensive. However, I don't know what the upcharge would be to get on a shiny new high speed rail line and cut your travel time from 4.5 hours to 2 hours. The plane gets you there in under 90 minutes.

Edit: I drive by the downtown Foxconn location every day on my way to work. I assume you meant the large facility in Racine that never happened, though. It's still a big empty field. Foxconn themselves have reaped a few million dollars in non-refundable tax credits so far, but the state budget is no worse for wear. That's the thing about incentivizing companies with promises of tax breaks. We didn't have that money to begin with, and when the company doesn't come through with their end of the bargain, we still don't have that money.

I think we bought a few houses to build a freeway exit, though. So that money went up in smoke.

What you should be asking me is how this downtown trolley that we spent god knows how many billions of dollars on is going. Answer: It still only gets ridden by homeless people wanting to stay out of the cold.

I think history will look back at trump's handling of covid and that will keep him out of the bad to terrible president catagory. He will get a lot of credit for fighting to keep the economy and schools open (or open back up sooner than dems wanted), fighting against dems and those in his own party to minimize how much free money was being splashed around, working with drug manufacturers to create the vax sooner than the dems would have (I don't think this is debatable considering how anti-pharma dems have been over the last 20 years), shutting down travel to places where covid spread was the worst early on, etc.

This is really funny. Good job.

We still have no clue how history will look back on Trump. It will all hinge on whether he wins or loses the 2024 election as well and his trials

The same can be said for Biden . If he loses History will look at him first as the guy that lost to Trump.

I disagree, the things I mentioned in my previous post are enough to make him a near lock for at minimum a good president. Throw in cutting taxes and a few of his other pro-economic-growth policies and it is hard to say he was a bad president as history will care more about the good he did for people more than the mean things he said on twitter.

In saying all that I must add trump is extremely volatile and if anyone can jump from good to bad president within a day's notice it is him.

I don't think losing this election will tarnish what he did for this country though.

bahbah gets the good drugs

You do realize that most of us were alive the last two election cycles, right? We heard the last two election cycles how if given the chance trump will dismantle the whole intelligence community, start a world war, end democracy, the economy would be bad, violence around the world would increase, violence in America would increase and countless other threats.

What we saw his last term was that countries waited for him to leave office before they attacked their neighbors, the threat of terrorism fell off a table, the intelligence community was focused on protecting the US (where before and after him it focused at least some attention on trying to influence political votes), instead of trying to remove names from a ballot when trump is in office we had free elections and violence in the US spiked after he left office.

What we have seen has been the complete opposite of what the left warned us what would happen with trump in the oval office. I know lying to voters and threatening people with how bad stuff will get if trump is elected worked last time and the left was correct in betting on voters being stupid, but using the same lie twice seems like a bad gamble. It reeks of desperation.

I dont see the tax cuts as a good thing as it drove up the deficit and it mainly benefited the rich

No wars is the big one. Pushed hard on Nato members to pay their fair share, Abraham accord .

Oh please the USA will survive another Biden Presidency and another Trump presidency. Another Biden term is gonna screw the country as well

baba and loozen are brainwashed by the Authoritarian Playbook.

The Autocrat's Playbook concisely describes the steps autocrats traditionally take to achieve their dictatorial aims

The book was sent to 60 selected elected officials, U.S. Supreme Court justices, the media, and leaders in the
areas of arts/entertainment, the environment, labor/business/industry, education, religion, and civil society.

These 60 books included "a personal letter, explaining why each person was selected to receive it

https://protectdemocracy.org/work/the-au...

it's not the cost of rail, that's the cost of american ineptitude

it cost us 50x more dollars per mile to lay down track than it does for other countries

our system is entirely corrupt and government spending is just a money faucet given insiders who legally bribe officials through political donations and offers of sweet consulting jobs when they leave their government office

one of the most profitable business ventures in america is to cozy up with military procurement officers, buy up a small company that say makes the gaskets for our jets. They cost $28 to make, they are sold to the military at $75 a pop. That company gets bought out by a conglomerate which has those "good relations" and overnight they increase the price to $750 each. Military still pays for it. Says "they are mission critical and nobody else makes them" and call it a day and just coincidentally spend their last 10 years of retirement collecting 650k from that exact company in no job consulting position - which is just payback for the millions they made them by signing off on continuing to use them as a supplier.

Meanwhile, it's only $15 million dollars a year, which in the grand scheme of things is nothing so it's not investigated nor remedied. These things build up. Soon we're paying $15 million on everything when it should only be $500,000 and that is you get serious cost overruns.

So then people without much critical thinking then think that high speed rail actually does cost what they are quoted and not that no, that's the cost of doing it through the current massively corrupt system where all bidders are long term government contractors who play the game well.

It's sickening and this is why I'd rather we have a monkey at a typewriter at president in hopes to change that rather than another establishment guy who is going to keep that gravy train flowing.

Literally everything we have from healthcare, to insurance, to building highways, upgrading infrastructure, miltiary spending - absolutely everything we have that is bought with taxdollars cost several multiples more than the rest of the world. It's disgusting. We are a kleptocracy but because it's not backroom deals with secret handovers of briefcases of cash but rather structured in a legalized manner, most people aren't even aware.

We see the cop in India telling the guy he'll ignore the traffic violation for $20 and say "wow India is corrupt" but that's small corruption and what we have is far larger and much less benign.

Rachel Maddow has brainwashed you

Ah yes trump been amazing .
With the greatest health system in the world, US has the majority of death in the world from COVID by a huge margin from Brazil being number 2 lol.
Brazil been known to have a great response to COVID and amazing health system 2 for finishing with such a better score then the US in death toil right ?

https://www.statista.com/statistics/1093...

Tax cuts and increases have major long-term effects on the economy and things like the deficit so I think your assessment that this tax cut is premature at best. Raising the standard deduction (which trump did) was massive for the poorest of Americans so I think suggesting it mainly helped the rich is flat out wrong.

There is a good chance you have me confused with another poster. I am for the party that has their current favorite to be the presidential nominee taken off the ballot in some states and fought hard for personal freedoms during covid when dems fought hard to take them away.

Kind of like calling the witch ugly Canada's healthcare system is in very bad shape and some of the provinces like BC are sending patients to the USA

Though Florida is trying to buy drugs from Canada as they are in some cases 1/10th of the price in the USA

Why do trumpers always bring up maddow? Personally I've seen maybe five minutes of her schtick. I don't need someone to tell me how bad Trump is or wants to be. He explains it quite well every time he opens his mouth.

Baham keep calling the US health care system the best in the world due to the private sector being so important .
I’m just following his logic.

So great president at the helm.
Amazing health care .
End up at the top of death toil in the world far far far above any other countries .
And COVID wasn’t suppose to be dangerous much .

Makes a lot of sense right ?
It can’t be all true with the results it did .
One must be wrong .