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The Republican Agenda 2016 forward

lizkat said:
Sure, Trump will take the tariffs off again item by item or possibly en masse, and then claim he has rescued the economy from massive inflation. I'm sadly becoming more cynical by the day when it comes to thinking there's a way to beat fiction with facts in this ever more benighted country
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We started with the revisionist history during his first week. He deported women and children to Colombia in chains and in a military aircraft. Clearly these were not criminals. Then Colombia called him on his 💩 and he backed down, sending people the way he’s supposed to instead of treating kids like terrorists. But then he issued a statement claiming that Colombia actually capitulated.

And most MAGA folks bought it. I don’t know if they will buy it if/when they can’t pay their bills. Because if he waits too long on the tariffs, prices won’t recover quickly enough.
 
More on tariffs... the Republicans suddenly realize their upcoming intraparty foodfight over spending cuts and the budget is complicated by a need to replenish the $28 billion agricultural bailout fund that was established the last time Trump laid tariffs for the hell of it.

That fund was drawn down to only four billion dollars. Fortunately there's a 30-day pause on the exorbitant tariffs Trump has put on Canada and Mexico. That gives the GOP time to... um... well... fight with each other over jacking that Commodity Credit Corporation fund back up again, and $28 billion might not be enough since the 2018 tariffs laid were not up at 25%. Meanwhile Trump talks about raking in billions from tariffs. Yeah, ok.


Of course Trump has amnesia re the pushback from farmers on his first term tariffs. There was one article quoting a US grain producer in 2018 saying "while I appreciated that bandaid of a bailout, I wish that Trump hadn't shot me to begin with." Nothing suggests to me that such feelings will be different now if the tariffs are executed after this month-long pause.

The problem is that some cowardly Republicans are suggesting that the tariffs are just a negotiating tactic so no need to actually plan for ag bailouts. If that turns out not to be the case down the road, and the budget has not included money for the ag bailout, that bailout will still occur (bank on it) and the cost will accrue to future taxpayers as an emergency expense. Meanwhile the tax cut the Rs want for the wealthy will have been passed using smoke and mirrors to make them seem feasible budget-wise... and so an "unexpected" need for an ag bailout would become just another example of borrowing costs passed onto next generations... a practice the Rs say they're against and so is exactly why they fight for spending cuts. Yeah, sure. They fight for spending cuts when Dems have the House majority and want to restore public nvestment cuts made by Rs in previous sessions. The only thing the GOP cares about past deregulation is tax cuts... and the farm bill when push comes to shove.
 
^^ Sudden death by a somehow unnoticed football-field sized asteroid sometimes appeals to me.

I'm not happy to be back in the place again where I wake up and my first thought is not "yeah some coffee five minutes from now would be great" but rather "oh god I wonder what fresh hell is in the news today." I think I'm going to have to train myself upon awakening to hit the play button on a spare iPhone upstairs and have it override forebodings about the Beltway circus with good music to greet my day.
 
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It's amazing some people still don't understand who & what is covered in DEIA. Ah well, there's always one way to find out. 😏

FAFO

Bonus:

www.yahoo.com

Even MAGA is trolling Republican Nancy Mace for accidentally admitting she was a DEI admission

Nancy Mace just effed around and found out!
www.yahoo.com www.yahoo.com
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In an attempt to bash transgender people, Republican Rep. Nancy Mace accidentally announced that she was a DEI admission after bragging that she was the first woman to graduate from a formerly all-male military school, and now she's being mercilessly trolled by the internet and even her fellow MAGA diehards.

"I didn't fight like hell to become the first woman to graduate from The Citadel just for some man in a miniskirt to take away that achievement," Mace wrote on X on January 27. Mace was only able to attend The Citadel because Shannon Faulkner sued the military academy in 1994 after being denied admission.
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🤦‍♀️
 
Jay Mysteri0 said:
So, I see #thank you joe is trending on xit.

Evidently for now the tariff thing is handled.

Seemingly because the current president skillfully secured deals that got what Joe Biden already did.
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If someone who has less than a few $M is dim enough to vote for trump, understanding this will be too abstract.

There's a reason marketing BS like pricing things $1,999 work.
 
Jay Mysteri0 said:
So, I see #thank you joe is trending on xit.

Evidently for now the tariff thing is handled.

Seemingly because the current president skillfully secured deals that got what Joe Biden already did.

200w.gif
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ooh let’s all cheer for the guy who put out the fire he started himself!

To think that people this gullible use the term “sheeple” to describe others is the cherry on top of the sundae of stupidity.
 
Free speech is supposed to be a big part of the GOP agenda. Trump specifically mentioned it in his inaugural speech!

Hmm, so why is there a 1984-style list of banned words for scientists now?






👆Some are now saying “the words aren’t banned, just discouraged and unlikely to result in receiving grants…” Yeah, didn’t they say that books taken out of schools weren’t “banned” either? Sorry we aren’t that easily fooled.
 
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This is just jaw-dropping.

In 2012, Curtis Yarvin — Peter Thiel’s “house philosopher”—called for something he dubbed RAGE: Retire All Government Employees. The idea: Take over the United States government and gut the federal bureaucracy. Then, replace civil servants with political loyalists who would answer to a CEO-type leader Yarvin likened to a dictator.
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“If Americans want to change their government, they’re going to have to get over their dictator phobia,” he said.
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He continues:

We’ve got to risk a full power start—a full reboot of the USG. We can only do this by giving absolute sovereignty to a single organization—with roughly the powers that the Allied occupation authorities held in Japan and Germany in the fall of 1945. This level of centralized emergency power worked to refound a nation then, for them. So it should work now, for us.”
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The CEO he picks will run the executive branch without any interference from the Congress or courts, probably also taking over state and local governments. Most existing important institutions, public and private, will be shut down and replaced with new and efficient systems. Trump will be monitoring this CEO’s performance, again on TV, and can fire him if need be.
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And…

Finally, it is not sufficient to have an army of parachute ninjas large or smart to drop into all the agencies in the executive branch. Many institutions of power are outside the government proper. Ninjas will have to land on the roofs of these buildings too—mainly journalism, academia and social media.
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My bold in all cases.

Yarvin also recommends Trump ignore any court order that says he can’t do something.

Yarvin’s plan was written in 2022, and the author of this article goes on to say Musk is already well on the way to implementing it.

You know, multiple times before Inauguration Day I thought Trump has threatened to do so much of this crazy stuff—and our MAGA government was willing enough to go along with it—that Biden would have been justified in declaring a national emergency, evoking the Insurrection Act, and declaring MAGA a seditious threat and removing any MAGA loyalists from government.

Not Republicans, just MAGA traitors. Of course on the Republican side that would’ve left Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski and a few others.

I didn’t think the electorate would seriously go for the idea, but knowing what we know now, it would’ve been preferable to the dismantling of democracy that Musk is doing.

www.thenerdreich.com

'Reboot' Revealed: Elon Musk's CEO-Dictator Playbook

In 2022, one of Peter Thiel's favorite thinkers envisioned a second Trump Administration in which the federal government would be run by a “CEO”
www.thenerdreich.com www.thenerdreich.com
 
Thomas Veil said:
This is just jaw-dropping.




He continues:




And…



My bold in all cases.

Yarvin also recommends Trump ignore any court order that says he can’t do something.

Yarvin’s plan was written in 2022, and the author of this article goes on to say Musk is already well on the way to implementing it.

You know, multiple times before Inauguration Day I thought Trump has threatened to do so much of this crazy stuff—and our MAGA government was willing enough to go along with it—that Biden would have been justified in declaring a national emergency, evoking the Insurrection Act, and declaring MAGA a seditious threat and removing any MAGA loyalists from government.

Not Republicans, just MAGA traitors. Of course on the Republican side that would’ve left Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski and a few others.

I didn’t think the electorate would seriously go for the idea, but knowing what we know now, it would’ve been preferable to the dismantling of democracy that Musk is doing.

www.thenerdreich.com

'Reboot' Revealed: Elon Musk's CEO-Dictator Playbook

In 2022, one of Peter Thiel's favorite thinkers envisioned a second Trump Administration in which the federal government would be run by a “CEO”
www.thenerdreich.com www.thenerdreich.com
Click to expand...
When it was first published, many thought that Mein Kampf was jaw-dropping, not to mention downright deranged in its purported world vision.

However, the problem was that this was a manifesto, a blueprint, if you like, for future action.

Nobody could credibly claim that this was a surprise, any more than they can do so with Curtis Yarvin, Peter Thiel's pet thinker.

The other thing to note - and, as a woman, I pay very close attention to this - is how these young - and middle aged - affluent white males, these techbros, this broligarchy, think about women.

Most of them have downright peculiar views on demographics (by which, of course, they mean white demographics), while some of them - and I don't have the actual reference to hand - have already argued that women ought to be deprived of the franchise because some of the issues that female voters may deem a priority (issues such as welfare, education, health, housing) are - to them - a complete waste of time, money, resources and proverbial space.
 
Thomas Veil said:
This is just jaw-dropping.




He continues:




And…



My bold in all cases.

Yarvin also recommends Trump ignore any court order that says he can’t do something.

Yarvin’s plan was written in 2022, and the author of this article goes on to say Musk is already well on the way to implementing it.

You know, multiple times before Inauguration Day I thought Trump has threatened to do so much of this crazy stuff—and our MAGA government was willing enough to go along with it—that Biden would have been justified in declaring a national emergency, evoking the Insurrection Act, and declaring MAGA a seditious threat and removing any MAGA loyalists from government.

Not Republicans, just MAGA traitors. Of course on the Republican side that would’ve left Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski and a few others.

I didn’t think the electorate would seriously go for the idea, but knowing what we know now, it would’ve been preferable to the dismantling of democracy that Musk is doing.

www.thenerdreich.com

'Reboot' Revealed: Elon Musk's CEO-Dictator Playbook

In 2022, one of Peter Thiel's favorite thinkers envisioned a second Trump Administration in which the federal government would be run by a “CEO”
www.thenerdreich.com www.thenerdreich.com
Click to expand...

Too few people took this seriously. People thought Trump would be incompetent like last time. Well… he’s even more incompetent this time. But his handlers? Oh they are Nazis with a plan. They let him rant about pointless culture war nonsense while they eliminate government agencies and completely ignore Congress and the courts.
 
This is where we are now.
  • Kids are afraid to go to school for fear ICE will grab them there and their parents won’t know what happened to them.
  • Parents are afraid they’ll be grabbed while their kids are in school.
  • Attendance is dropping because of this.
“It’s, you know, students not knowing, ‘Is my best friend going to be here tomorrow?’” he said. “When you have a situation with somebody from law enforcement at a school, that’s not just traumatizing to that one individual student they are getting, it’s traumatizing to the thousands of other students that are also in the building and see what’s happening.”
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Massachusetts Attorney General Andrea Joy Campbell has put out guidance on how school officials should respond should immigration agents attempt to question or remove students. “As part of a school district’s broader planning efforts related to circumstances that might make it unsafe for a child to return home, they should prepare for the event in which a parent is arrested or detained by ICE,” the guidance states.
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So much like a police state. 🙁

How teachers are preparing themselves and their students for immigration sweeps
 
Thomas Veil said:
This is where we are now.
  • Kids are afraid to go to school for fear ICE will grab them there and their parents won’t know what happened to them.
  • Parents are afraid they’ll be grabbed while their kids are in school.
  • Attendance is dropping because of this.




So much like a police state. 🙁

How teachers are preparing themselves and their students for immigration sweeps
Click to expand...
And the key thing about police states is that it isn't about imposing a state of outright terror - that is, unless you are a complete psychopath - but, rather, creating an environment, or world, where people will come to police themselves, and thereby choose not to engage with (or openly oppose) the state, as they come to choose (in the interests of crude survival, or professional survival, or - worse - complicit support for egregious actions) what to support, what to oppose, who to throw under the proverbial bus, (or stab in the back), and what to avert their eyes from as the state goes about its appalling business of oppressing whoever and whatever it will come to define as The Other.

In such a state, - unless and until the rulers demand public declarations and demonstrations of admiration and approbation for the administration (and never underestimate the bottomless and boundless appetite for adoration on the part of autocratic and oligarchic ruling elites) - and even then, many will choose to abase themselves with such abject expressions of public affection - although some - for whom this may be an internal red line - will not, deciding that a declaration of love (irrespective of whether such a declaration is expressed publicly or privately) should be something over which they get a choice, something where they get to choose the object of their affections, and something over which they should be allowed to exercise some degree of autonomy - many, if not most, people will still abase themselves in the most abject manner to the capricious whims of their deranged and malevolently narcissistic rulers.
 
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From the GOP's department of "F you I got mine" comes:

www.nytimes.com

Republicans Love Trump’s Spending Cuts. Just Not in Their States.

Even as they praise the president’s unilateral actions to slash federal spending, G.O.P. lawmakers have quietly moved to seek carve outs or exemptions for their own constituents.
www.nytimes.com www.nytimes.com

Ms. Britt was one of the first Republicans to raise concerns at home soon after the Trump administration directed the National Institutes of Health to slash $4 billion in overhead costs for medical research grantees, a move that has since been paused by a federal judge. Ms. Britt, whose state has received more than $518 million in N.I.H. grants for projects currently active there, told a local news outlet that she would press administration officials to take a “smart, targeted approach” to cuts so as to “not hinder lifesaving, groundbreaking research at high-achieving institutions” such as the University of Alabama at Birmingham.
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After Mr. Trump ordered a 90-day freeze of foreign aid shipments, Senator Jerry Moran, also of Kansas, was among the only Republicans who publicly urged Secretary of State Marco Rubio to quickly resume foreign food aid shipments abroad so American growers, including sorghum farmers in his state, would not lose out on a major market for their surplus product.American growers sold about $713 million of goods to Food for Peace program in the 2023 fiscal year.
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Cheering on Trump's destruction of federal programs... except for the ones that benefit your district. This is your Republican Party.
 
Remember all the “deficit hawks” who would only agree to raise the debt ceiling in exchange for cuts to programs they disliked?

They are pushing for a debt ceiling increase of $4.5 trillion!

apnews.com

House Republicans unveil blueprint to extend $4.5 trillion in tax cuts and lift the debt ceiling

House Republicans have set the stage for advancing many of President Donald Trump’s top domestic priorities.
apnews.com apnews.com

Don’t worry, next time there is a Democratic President, they will suddenly remember that the debt ceiling is a problem and can never be raised.
 
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