Like - handicapped access ramps?
Trump 2.0
- Thread starter James R
- Start date
Negative. I don't mind me a wee ramp. You can walk down it just as easily as stepping off the curb. They're already installed at plain old regular curbs all over the place.
I mean the weird little projecting bits of curb built at intersections that stick out into the righthand lane & effectively terminate it just before the intersection. I've read that these were intended as "traffic calming" features, but boy howdy you ain't lived 'till some sumbitch roars up that right lane trying to pass you before they get to one of those "devil's shoulder pads".
Oh. I've never seen those. Seen speedbumps but never that curb thing.
Hello, I suggest the discussion: how Trump can achieve the victory of Western democracies. The simplest solution for him would be to publicly announce to Putin, that the US will lift some sanctions on Russia, if Putin holds a referendum in Russia proposing peace with Ukraine and the West, unblocking YouTube, and lifting other internet blocks. Various offers and threats could be made, using both carrots and sticks: for example, he could offer to give Russia some Ukrainian territory, or threaten that if Putin doesn't hold the referendum, the US will begin supplying Ukraine with Tomahawk missiles. If this plan doesn't work, another one could be chosen: block the Strait of Hormuz again, ban Venezuela from exporting oil (and perhaps bomb some oil facilities there for effect), raise the price of oil to $200, and then publicly offer China and India cheap American oil if the dictators of these countries agree to hold referendums proposing democratization of their countries, and an alliance with the West.
exchemist
Valued Senior Member
Trump can’t “give Russia some Ukraine territory”. Only Ukraine can do that,
Pinball1970
Valued Senior Member
Yeah but if he bombed them and stuff then did some other things he might be able to.
Pinball1970
Valued Senior Member
Not sure, I was trying to think like Spathi and that's what came out.
About That ....
"Always Incisive" is a particular and peculiar cannabis strain, allegedly derived from Sour Diesel x Hash Plant, itself not unheard of, but legend says this is cultivated indoors on the heat and water of data centers with attuned CRT monitors providing surrogate sunlight. The resulting THC molecule is both extraordinary and most efficiently delivered by enema. What comes next is predictable.
Oh, right. Something about "cheap American oil" in sufficient supply to impress China (¿and India?) just doesn't read right. Smell right. Roll up and smoke the way it should. The Grape Ape (Mendocino x Skunk x Afghani), to the other, does just fine.
"Always Incisive" is a particular and peculiar cannabis strain, allegedly derived from Sour Diesel x Hash Plant, itself not unheard of, but legend says this is cultivated indoors on the heat and water of data centers with attuned CRT monitors providing surrogate sunlight. The resulting THC molecule is both extraordinary and most efficiently delivered by enema. What comes next is predictable.
Oh, right. Something about "cheap American oil" in sufficient supply to impress China (¿and India?) just doesn't read right. Smell right. Roll up and smoke the way it should. The Grape Ape (Mendocino x Skunk x Afghani), to the other, does just fine.
1) Create a treaty with other western democracies. Call it WATO or something, for Western Ally Treaty Alliance. Pledge mutual support if you are invaded.
2) Woo the remaining countries with foreign aid. Give them aid that goes to education and food for women and children. This will 1) make them happier and 2) educate the people, and educated people are more likely to choose democracy. Use that as a carrot to get them to join WATO.
3) Use economic sanctions against enemies who violate international law. Keep these sanctions in place until they stop. That's the stick.
3) Negotiate deals with aggressive other countries. For example, you could release some of the money confiscated from them by those sanctions if they stop their work on nuclear weapons.
That way no US soldiers die, we don't spend trillions on war, fewer people worldwide die, and countries join WATO out of a desire to prosper, not out of fear or hatred. And we get your "victory of Western democracies."
Of course we'd need a competent president for any of that to happen.
And then the antiliberal guard against the One World Government would ....
I mean, once upon a time, the conspiracy theory had something to do with the Catholics getting together with the Witches getting together with the Marxists, or something like that, and they were freaking out about Poppy Bush's New World Order.
Get a centrist Democratic technocrat to finish up the deal and watch it go over among Republicans about as well as the individual mandate.
Okay, so now Trump isn't even hiding the corruption, and is selling early access to market-moving news that he generates.
His "Trump Media" company are selling a service that would allow access to Trump's (and other high-profile account's) posts on Truth Social a short time before they become publicly available. And how much are they selling this service for? A mere $100,000 a month. Yep - you can now literally get market-moving news before anyone else... if you're willing to pay the significant fee for a service that directly benefits the POTUS due to his majority shareholding of the company.
Yes, some other providers offer the same service - such as X charging c.$42k per month for a similar "firehose" - but there's a few orders of magnitude in the scale involved between X (c.7 billion monthly visits) and Truth Social (c.5 million).
The difference is purely Trump, and that he uses Truth Social to announce US policies, and is also the majority owner of Truth Social. X doesn't create the news and info that it's selling. Trump does.
Fortunately there are already plans to introduce legislation to stop this, but, yeah, this is the USA, so anything that might stop corruption at the highest level in these Trumpian days is bound to fail.
His "Trump Media" company are selling a service that would allow access to Trump's (and other high-profile account's) posts on Truth Social a short time before they become publicly available. And how much are they selling this service for? A mere $100,000 a month. Yep - you can now literally get market-moving news before anyone else... if you're willing to pay the significant fee for a service that directly benefits the POTUS due to his majority shareholding of the company.
Yes, some other providers offer the same service - such as X charging c.$42k per month for a similar "firehose" - but there's a few orders of magnitude in the scale involved between X (c.7 billion monthly visits) and Truth Social (c.5 million).
The difference is purely Trump, and that he uses Truth Social to announce US policies, and is also the majority owner of Truth Social. X doesn't create the news and info that it's selling. Trump does.
Fortunately there are already plans to introduce legislation to stop this, but, yeah, this is the USA, so anything that might stop corruption at the highest level in these Trumpian days is bound to fail.
This is actually a longtime conservative/GOP principle.
Once upon a time, my father said something to me, and, sure, whatever, but some time later, reading through a Doonesbury collection, I remember coming to understand that it was common to think that way. The elder Slackmeyer had been caught and convicted of insider trading, and as my father said of Milken, they didn't even know what they were doing was illegal.
But here's the idea: The law says you can't do something. But someone just outlined a scheme by which they can, because they're not [(doing this)], but [(doing that)], and there was just no way for them to know it was illegal since there was no law against it.
In the Milken case, libertarians continue to assert↱ he did nothing wrong, with one explaining, "But there was nothing illegal about the use of junk bonds per se. Instead, Milken pled guilty to six felony counts of illegal activity, five of which had been previously understood to be simple technical violations of the law rather than actual crimes."
Interestingly, they blame Rudy Giuliani: "Why, then, did Milken plead guilty and accept a prison sentence rather than fight the charges and pay a fine for technical violations? The reason was that an aggressive and politically ambitious prosecutor, Rudolph Giuliani, the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, took extreme measures to go after Milken."
After all, this telling insists, "Milken’s 'crime' was that he had not properly documented the ownership of some stock".
The underlying claim is that Milken wasn't really doing what the accusation says he was doing, but, rather, he was doing something else that had such a common appearance that an ambitious Giuliani prosecuted, and Milken, for reasons unknown, pled guilty to illegal activities (technical violations) that are not actual crimes. Because he wasn't doing that other thing; technically speaking, he was doing this thing, here, that isn't illegal because nobody made a law against it yet.
That's basically what you're seeing here: Trump is not, in this telling, doing anything illegal because he calls it something different.
It's a hell of a legacy for the Mises school; what a contribution to humanity: It's not illegal if you just call it something else because you say so.
And that's also Republicans at least since Reagan. This is what it looks like. They've been working toward this for over forty years.
But a little scrap of folklore: These people also believe insider trading should be legal, because those kinds of market-affecting conspiracies are good business. Once upon a time, even in the twenty-first century, there was a scandal including recordings of brokers discussing how they swindled their clients, including the elderly, and yes, we all pretended shock and horror, but these years later it's unclear how we actual feel, as a society, about that behavior.
In its way, this corruption is #WhatTheyVotedFor. The way in which it is not is similar to the pogrom: They couldn't imagine the finer detail of the unimaginable.
In its way the entire conservative politic in these United States runs on E&O. See, inasmuch as the law allows for technical violations (actus rea) without intention (mens rea) that are, as such, not crimes, this ethic would labor to calculate chains of technical violations to just whoopsie their way into what they always wanted but could not justify under law. And as with the pogrom, it's one of those American way kinds of things, such that the conservative complaint is not that it happens, but that it inconveniences them as individuals in some way.
And that, too, is common among conservatives. It keeps coming up: "Just say no to socialism, and keep your hands off my Medicare!" Or, "Just say no to criminal aliens, and keep your hands off my gardener, maid, nanny, spouse, and favorite local restaurant!" And, "Just say no to corruption, and keep your hands off my revenue opportunities!"
Similarly, this state seizure of the means of production as part of a strongman's regime of corruption is going to be just fine with Trump's anticommunist voters as long as it doesn't inconvenience them personally.
And, yes, in American tradition there are reasons for this, and no, they don't have to make sense to anyone, not even the beholder.
____________________
Notes:
Yago, Glenn and David R. Henderson. "Junk Bonds/The Strange Case of Michael Milken". Econlib. (n.d.) Econlib.org. 4 August 2026. https://www.econlib.org/library/Enc/JunkBonds.html
Henderson, David. "The Strange Case of Michael Milken". I Blog to Differ. 14 July 2026. DavidRHenderson.Substack.com. 4 August 2026. https://davidrhenderson.substack.com/p/the-strange-case-of-michael-milken
exchemist
Valued Senior Member
Well at least Europe has managed to see off that attempt by the Kushners (with Trump not far behind, I am sure) to buy the World Cup. And Congress has actually managed to see off the billon dollar slush fund of public money that Trump proposed to use to pay to convicted crooks whom he happens to like. And even the DoJ has had to admit that his vindictive pursuit of that guy who touched a piece of that reflecting pool coating would go nowhere in court. So that's a bit of low-grade intimidation that has failed.
But on the whole I agree: the corruption of this presidency is of epic proportions. Surely, if it can be brought to an end, there have to be amendments to the Constitution to prevent it ever happening again. The US president has far too much power.
Hmm. I'd look more closely at what was offered by Blanche to the GOP holdouts for his nomination. Yes Blanche said the slush fund was dead in the water, not going ahead, but there's an important things to note:
The underlying agreement between Trump and the DoJ hasn't been cancelled. That agreement said that any change to the terms had to be agreed in writing, and Blanche admitted that no such change had been written and agreed He also said that the underlying document was an enforceable contract so Trump could sue for the DoJ breaching it by not paying out the slush fund money. So all Blanche has done in his confirmation hearing is say that the DoJ will breach the contract, but was silent ('cos noone asked) on whether the contract will be enforced in other ways (e.g. the money paid out in another way etc).
Also, the contract with the DoJ gave Trump and his family immunity from audits by the IRS. Blanche said nothing about that aspect.
So, unless Congress actually gets something litigated, they're likely to prove to be an impotent barrier to the agreement between Trump and the DoJ. Stopping it will fall back to the courts, and the non-MAGA judges, but if it gets to the Supreme Court then Trump will likely get what he wants.
Interestingly, Pirro may lose her job over it, with Trump saying that she "folded too early" (I think I've quoted correctly).
But more interestingly, many critics are saying that Trump's involvement and urging of Pirro to prosecute, is an impeachable offence: high crime and misdemeanor, as it alone is clear evidence of the President trying to break down one of the other two pillars and control it himself. But, again, nothing will come of it. Maybe after November elections?
You'd like to think that they see an issue and correct for it, but it's also possible the majority of the country don't see the corruption, or don't care about it. You know, "Trump's just a great businessman, and of course he can make money. Good for him for spotting an opportunity. This is the land of opportunity, right!"
Plus a Supreme Court that seems to want to back him up doesn't help matters.
How It's Going (Willing Marks Edition)
Critics note↱―
―and, well, yeah, he did post that↱.
And there's no point in calling his voters suckers. This is all it was ever about; this is #WhatTheyVotedFor.
Critics note↱―
It's no longer American First. It's "Only Trump."
―and, well, yeah, he did post that↱.
And there's no point in calling his voters suckers. This is all it was ever about; this is #WhatTheyVotedFor.
TheVat
Valued Senior Member
There's nothing a narcissist likes more than when millions of people join him in the narcissism. He's a hollow man who's in love with that echoing space inside himself.
exchemist
Valued Senior Member
Quite funny to see the effect of the BBC's gambit of demanding to see all Trump's financial records, to support his $10bn damage claim. This has now resulted in his legal team scrambling to narrow the claim to exclude damage to his businesses and restrict it to mere reputational damage. They will struggle to attach a $10bn price tag to that.