The Second Term of Donald J. Trump as President of the United States of America
- Thread starter sear
- Start date
" - he's a horrific human being
- a pathological liar
- one of the most corrupt individuals I've ever come across
- a racist, and
- an embarrassment to this country"
Oh!
A Republican.
Shiftless2
Well-known member
Subject: Stephen Harper: Feb 3, 2025, re USAl
Former Canadian PM Stephen Harper: "There is no migrant flow happening from Canada to the United States of any significant numbers... And I'm going to tell you right now, drugs, guns, crime—most of those things flow north, not south."
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If there is a problem with border security between the States and Canada, it's not on our side. Between Oct. 2023 and September 2024, roughly 43 lbs of fentanyl was seized passing from Canada to the States (compared to 21,100 lbs at the Mexico border). That's the equivalent of a single suitcase.
...but just two weeks ago, 1,840 LBS of cocaine was seized by the Toronto Police, coming from the States INTO Canada.
The Toronto Police have also found that 85% of crime guns they recover have entered Canada from the States.
What does President Trump intend to do to resolve this?
Move the goalposts some more, apparently.
First it was "drugs and illegal migrants are pouring in over the Canadian border!" (they aren't); then it was "we're subsidizing Canada by $200B/year!" (they aren't), then it was "Canada has been treating us unfairly!" (referring to the trade deals that HE signed last time he was in office), and now it's "they don't allow U.S. banks into their country!"
First, this is false; as of right now, there are 13 American banks that have branches inside Canada.
Second, here's the true part: it HAS been challenging for American banks to make much headway in Canada, but this is for a significant reason: Canada's tighter financial regulations mean that the way those American banks would LIKE to do business (and do south of the border) are illegal in Canada.
Remember during the financial crisis of 2008, when the American government had to bail out their largest banks or they wouldn't survive? ...Yep, because that's what happened.
Remember during the financial crisis of 2008
All reactions:
Former Canadian PM Stephen Harper: "There is no migrant flow happening from Canada to the United States of any significant numbers... And I'm going to tell you right now, drugs, guns, crime—most of those things flow north, not south."
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If there is a problem with border security between the States and Canada, it's not on our side. Between Oct. 2023 and September 2024, roughly 43 lbs of fentanyl was seized passing from Canada to the States (compared to 21,100 lbs at the Mexico border). That's the equivalent of a single suitcase.
...but just two weeks ago, 1,840 LBS of cocaine was seized by the Toronto Police, coming from the States INTO Canada.
The Toronto Police have also found that 85% of crime guns they recover have entered Canada from the States.
What does President Trump intend to do to resolve this?
Move the goalposts some more, apparently.
First it was "drugs and illegal migrants are pouring in over the Canadian border!" (they aren't); then it was "we're subsidizing Canada by $200B/year!" (they aren't), then it was "Canada has been treating us unfairly!" (referring to the trade deals that HE signed last time he was in office), and now it's "they don't allow U.S. banks into their country!"
First, this is false; as of right now, there are 13 American banks that have branches inside Canada.
Second, here's the true part: it HAS been challenging for American banks to make much headway in Canada, but this is for a significant reason: Canada's tighter financial regulations mean that the way those American banks would LIKE to do business (and do south of the border) are illegal in Canada.
Remember during the financial crisis of 2008, when the American government had to bail out their largest banks or they wouldn't survive? ...Yep, because that's what happened.
Remember during the financial crisis of 2008
All reactions:
3You and 2 others
Shiftless2
Well-known member
The Long, Strange Surrender: How Trump Handed Ukraine to Putin on a Silver Platter (and Smiled While Doing It)
It was always going to end like this.
You could smell it in the air—something rancid, like a well-done steak doused in ketchup, left to rot under a Florida sun. It wasn’t just the cheap cologne of bad deals or the faint musk of an oligarch’s overstuffed yacht. No, this was the reek of betrayal, marinated in stupidity, grilled over a bonfire of American credibility.
The fix was in. The con had reached its inevitable punchline. And somewhere in Moscow, Vladimir Putin was sipping a vodka, toasting Donald Trump—the gift that keeps on giving.
Ukraine was doomed the second Trump got his bloated carcass back into the Oval Office. The man is allergic to principles. Diplomacy, in his mind, is just a real estate hustle with nuclear warheads. So when he started talking about Ukraine like a used-car salesman trying to unload a lemon—maybe it’s Russian, maybe it’s not, who knows?—it was clear that Zelenskyy was about to get stiffed harder than a waitress at Mar-a-Lago.
Then came Pete Hegseth, the walking fever dream of a Fox News segment, now Trump’s Defense Secretary. He stepped up to a NATO meeting and announced what everyone had feared but few could believe: a return to Ukraine’s 2014 borders was unrealistic.
Translated from Trump-speak, this meant Ukraine was being cut loose. Good luck against the Russian war machine. The Budapest Memorandum, the so-called security guarantee that convinced Ukraine to give up its nukes back in 1994, might as well have been printed on a cocktail napkin. Ukraine had cashed in its chips decades ago, and now the casino was being repossessed by the Russian mob.
You had to admire it. The patience. The long con.
Vladimir Putin didn’t have to do a damn thing. He just sat back and waited while America elected the one guy who would do the job for him.
Back in 2014, when he first carved off Crimea like a chunk of stale bread, the world put up some weak-kneed resistance. A few sanctions. Some sternly worded statements. But it was Obama, and at least he had the decency to look uncomfortable about it.
Then Trump came along, purring like a cat that just found a pile of Russian rubles in his litter box. Suddenly, Crimea wasn’t an invasion—it was a territorial dispute. Sanctions weren’t a punishment—they were unfair to Russia.
Now the orange wrecking ball is back in charge, and the Kremlin can barely contain its glee. The plan is simple. Trump pulls ....
CONTINUED
Shiftless2
Well-known member
From FB - haven't checked the numbers yet
They say they’re "cutting" Medicaid by $880 billion.
In 2023 the federal government paid $606 billion and states paid $274 billion towards Medicaid. Coincidentally that totals up to $880 billion.
This isn’t a cut or a trim, this is the effective elimination of the program.
66,000,000 Citizens are on Medicare. 72,000,000 Citizens are on Medicaid. That is 138,000,000 US citizens lives and well being being threatened by Republicans.
And that's not counting the people on SNAP
They say they’re "cutting" Medicaid by $880 billion.
In 2023 the federal government paid $606 billion and states paid $274 billion towards Medicaid. Coincidentally that totals up to $880 billion.
This isn’t a cut or a trim, this is the effective elimination of the program.
66,000,000 Citizens are on Medicare. 72,000,000 Citizens are on Medicaid. That is 138,000,000 US citizens lives and well being being threatened by Republicans.
And that's not counting the people on SNAP
Nothing to match the U.S. draft dodgers that fled to Canada during the Vietnam War.
And for generations Canada has been good enough to work within the bounds of civility to address it.
During the brief tenure of Trump's 2nd term, U.S. / Canada border security hasn't changed substantially.
What has instead changed, Trump's brash, accusatory executive style, guaranteed to severely handicap the formerly cordial international relationship of these adjacent American nations.
I'm conservative.
I consider it a spectacular, monumental blunder that U.S. federal government ever allowed itself to sabotage itself by inflicting a Ponzi scheme, a pyramid scam like Social Security on the good People of the United States.
We can't unring the bell. Many millions coerced at gunpoint to comply (your congressperson might prefer substituting the verb "participate", a vulgar euphemism) will not benefit from having the rug pulled out from under them. BUT !!
We needn't brandish this albatross around our necks for perpetuity. Simply making Social Security participation voluntary for citizens entering adulthood / the labor force would be a substantial improvement.
The government's role should be, must be regulation, NOT administration.
Merely substituting the investment, continue diverting the same percentage of worker's salary to retirement, but instead of Social Security (a government institution), an IRA / 401k style investment.
There are differences.
Neither is a panacea.
The correct, conservative way to terminate these hideous suicidal institutional monstrosities is to phase them out as harmlessly as they were phased in.
$36,219,764,087,577
Updated daily from the Debt to the Penny dataset.
The longer we dawdle, the more formidable this self-created monster grows.
Even if Trump's bull-in-a-china-shop style is benevolently intended (there's scant evidence to corroborate that) the welfare of millions may be threatened by it.
It won't change much.
But how many, how many millions of those at risk because of this are Trump / MAGA voters?
Shiftless2
Well-known member
The problem isn't the concept - the problem is that the program was never properly funded in the first place.
BTW, the national debt does not include the funding shortfalls for Social Security and Medicare - that's by definition so the reality is the "real" national debt is at least $150 Trillion dollars (and yes that's with a "T") higher than the $36 trillion. you've cited. Of course Musk and the GOP could simply eliminate those programs (which is what they want to do) - and that figure doesn't include funding shortfalls for state and municipal pensions either (we've already seen some cities declare bankruptcy to get out from under the weight of their municipal pensions).
On the topic of SS, there is no separate fund with your name on it. Reality is all income (i.e., SS taxes) are pooled together with the government contributions and invested in special issue government bonds. Pensions are paid out of that pool of funds - some people will die relatively early and not collect much, if anything, and others will live a very long time and collect far more than their contributions (and the associated government contributions) will cover.
If you spend much time on the actuarial boards you'll discover that Social Security is what's known as a "PAYGO" (Pay as You Go) - that is, current benefits are paid out of the contributions of people who are currently working. When you retire your benefits will be paid by the contributions of people who are working at that time (think of it as your benefits will be paid by your children, grandchildren, and if you live long enough your great grandchildren).
The problem - when Social Security was established there was something like 16 active workers for every retiree. Today there are three workers per retiree and in the near future that number is expected to reduce to two.
As for the Social Security Trust Fund (i.e., all the accumulated taxes and interest) that's predicted to be exhausted in the very near future as well.
That's a widely held view.
Several differing forms of implementation of this might be an improvement.
My personal preference is a system which is absolutely 100.000 ...% insolvency proof. A simple way to guarantee that is to NOT pool / slush the $money. Each individual citizen pays into their own, and only their own, entirely their own retirement. I KNOW !
Social Security does more than that.
Problem is Social Security is fast careening toward insolvency as the ratio of workers paying into the system continues to shrink in proportion to plan recipients, as you've observe in #167.
personal note:
It's not speculation, a wild hunch. Very early in my career, with only a high school diploma I set aside $10% of my income. The set-aside fluctuated, reaching nearly 30% when that became practical.
It worked so spectacularly well I retired at age 43, and now over 70 live comfortably on an estate hundreds of acres inside New York State's Adirondack Park.
It's not a hypothesis based on a fantasy based on two plus two equals a bagillion style $math.
It works.
I'm living proof.
Certain modifications may be necessary to render it catastrophe tolerant. If my arm fell off it wouldn't have worked as well. But the basics are guaranteed.
And the stunner in all this is, I didn't need no steenkin' government program. I did what it seemed to me to be the sensible thing to do.
Indeed.
If you have a link which lists the grand total, please post it. Generally Brillig and such sites restrict their figure to exclude that.
Which compounds the insanity of the current system.
Let no one infer what I shall never imply.
I do NOT advocate metaphorically pulling the rug out from under ANYone that has been coerced into depending on this system, myself included.
But this financial cataclysm can be phased out in more than one way. I advocate a way which reduces harm to negligibility.
iirc Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan [D-NY] tried to compel government to obey the law and separate this revenue into a "lock-box". BUT !!
Congress had a towering funding shortfall. And the sleazy solution was to slush $SS revenues in w/ the general treasury.
The MOC responsible for this betrayal KNEW they were creating a monster. BUT ! They also knew the calamity it would cause would be enough years in the future they could simply retire rather than deal with it.
They created the mess, making things easier for themselves, knowing
others would have to clean it up
or not.
sear's IRA / 401k substitute sidesteps all of that.
a) Yes.
b) It needn't ever have been.
c) Advocates for the status quo tout ... . Fine. BUT !!
d) They neglect to remedy the seemingly insurmountable complications.
Driving a wood stake through the heart of PAYGO, terminating it immediately for metaphysical perpetuity is not merely a practical necessity.
Failing to do so will bedevil our legislature and the People until they do.
Meanwhile:
You're in rare company Don.
The only U.S. president ever to have been twice impeached, the only U.S. president to be party to armed insurrection to overturn a presidential election
mirroring the only U.S. president ever to have resigned in disgrace. BUT !
I have confidence in you Mr. Trump. I have zero doubt you'll find ways to sink lower still, before you exit the office, or die.
Shiftless2
Well-known member
Shiftless2
Well-known member
And now for a brief musical interlude
We'd be the laughing stock of the solar system if it weren't so shockingly perilous, placing the button under the orange finger.
"I'm a unifier. This country is totally divided. Barack Obama has divided this country unbelievably. And it's all, it's all hatred. What can I tell you? I've never seen anything like it.
Now: I'm going to unify the country. I'll be a unifier. I think I'll bring people together. And that includes Blacks and Whites and everything. I think people will come together." Republican primary candidate Trump October 2015
We're ready Donald. When do you intend to begin?
Shiftless2
Well-known member
Shiftless2
Well-known member
Shiftless2
Well-known member
SpaceX isn't the only NGO that contracts w/ NASA.
If Musk spent $hundreds of $Millions of $dollars to get these crooked government officials elected
should it surprise us if Musk's DOGE ruse is also an excuse to attempt to obtain competitive advantage
in space with SpaceX,
or here on Earth with Tesla?
An ethical president would know that even if this "access" is not unmistakably inappropriate,
it at least bears characteristics of what is inappropriate. BUT:
In a second Trump administration, such conventions apparently do not apply.
Shiftless2
Well-known member
Why limit himself to those two entities - after all, he's branched out into other industries before.
Conservative portion of blue state looking to break off and join neighboring red state
By Charles Creitz Fox News / Published February 17, 2025 11:44am EST'Greater Idaho' movement gains steam as Oregon counties vote to secede
Idaho State Rep. Barbara Ehardt joins 'Fox & Friends' to discuss policies pushing conservatives to leave Oregon and explains the process for the 11 counties to secede.
Oregon's ideological fault lines exposed during the anti-police riots of 2020 are again coming to the fore, as the Greater Idaho movement looks to sever the conservative geographic majority of the state from the urban progressive movement.
"This movement has always been about the people of Eastern Oregon, getting their voice heard and helping those communities get the kind of state-level governance they actually want," executive director Matt McCaw told Fox News Digital.
Conservative portion of blue state looking to break off and join neighboring red state
The Greater Idaho movement intends to break the Beaver State's easternmost counties away and make them part of Idaho, which many on the right approve of.
www.foxnews.com
Civil war can not merely be catalyzed but triggered by the conditions Trump has fomented.
His own flagrant lawlessness is merely part of it. Pardoning his Jan. 6 insurrectionist co-conspirators (technically "legal" even if exceedingly non-traditional) clearly identifies which side of the lawful / criminal divide Trump occupies / favors.
There's vastly more at issue here than the risk of a tersely worded letter to the editor of the local newspaper.
The previous Civil War was gray against blue.
The next? Red against blue?
P I of II
Trump DOJ brings down 'Sovereign' District of New York
By Mike Davis Fox News / Published Updated February 17, 2025 10:02am EST
NY prosecutor who was ordered to drop case against Eric Adams resignsActing Deputy Attorney General Emil Bove just delivered a civics lesson to a now-former top New York prosecutor who was apparently confused about who she worked for.
It all began when Bove, as authorized by Attorney General Pam Bondi, directed Acting United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York Danielle Sassoon to dismiss the federal indictment against New York City Mayor Eric Adams. The Biden Justice Department had indicted Adams on a somewhat questionable bribery charge after he had voiced public criticism of President Biden’s policies on illegal immigration.
TRUMP'S JUSTICE DEPARTMENT ORDER TO DROP PROSECUTION OF NYC MAYOR ERIC ADAMS SPARKS RESIGNATIONS
When he assumed office, President Donald Trump issued an order to de-weaponize the Justice Department, which had engaged in lawfare against him for years. In the spirit of this order, Bove—while not addressing the merits of Adams’ prosecution or impugning the integrity of the prosecutors—ordered the dismissal without prejudice, meaning charges can be brought in the future.
New York City Mayor Eric Adams departs Thurgood Marshall United States Courthouse in New York City on Friday, November 1, 2024. (Adam Gray for Fox News Digital )
Bove provided two rationales for the decision. First, the indictment reasonably could be viewed as interfering with the November 2025 mayoral election in which Adams is a candidate. Second, the indictment would hinder Adams’ ability to assist the Trump administration in its illegal immigration enforcement activities. Bove ordered, for instance, that Adams’ security clearances be restored. Bove made clear that the Trump Justice Department and Adams had not bargained to dismiss the indictment in exchange for Adams’ assistance. Adams and his counsel agreed to the dismissal without prejudice, and the unopposed motion awaits a ruling by Manhattan U.S. District Judge Dale Ho.
Some may perceive this as news about New York City Mayor Adams.
The more consequential story here is corroboration that President Trump values loyalty to himself as more important than his sworn, official obligation to "take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed",
enumerated twice in the United States Constitution, including part of the presidential oath of office:
ARTICLE2. SECTION 1. 7
Before he enter on the Execution of his Office, he shall take the following Oath or Affirmation: - "I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my Ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States."
ARTICLE2. SECTION 3.
He [POTUS] shall ... take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed
The FOX slant continues:
SDNY prosecutors acted like spoiled brats instead of following a lawful order
That's FOX' characterization.
Here's a peek at how it looks from the other side of the pond.
B B C
Flurry of resignations after DOJ tells prosecutors to drop Eric Adams case
BBC News / Madeline Halpert & Mike WendlingDanielle Sassoon said she "cannot agree to seek a dismissal driven by improper considerations"
Several prosecutors - including the top US attorney in Manhattan - have resigned after the Justice Department directed the New York office to drop a corruption case against New York City Mayor Eric Adams.
It was first announced on Thursday that Danielle Sassoon, a conservative lawyer recently promoted by President Donald Trump, had resigned after refusing to dismiss the case, a move she said would set a "breathtaking and dangerous precedent".
Her departure was followed by the resignations of at least five other top justice department officials.
Danielle Sassoon: Flurry of resignations after DOJ tells prosecutors to drop Eric Adams case
Top New York attorney Danielle Sassoon is among several prosecutors to quit over an order to drop a corruption case against Eric Adams.
www.bbc.com
P II of II
FOX curries favor with Trump in ways recognizable in North Korean media currying favor with Kim Jong Un.If the issue were one resignation from a loony lefty FOX might be well within bounds reporting it this way.
But several officials have reportedly also resigned, rather than be party to reprieve in the Mayor Adams corruption case.
And according to the BBC article in #179 Sassoon is "a conservative lawyer recently promoted by President Donald Trump".
So if Sassoon is unworthy of the office, doesn't that mean Trump too is unworthy, for having promoted her there?