Take me to the sun, PilotMan!

I wish man. I was in Toronto this week and it was cloudy and rainy. I get home, it's cloudy and rainy. Now it's cold and cloudy. I'm so over the short days. I need some sun too. Only 8 more days until the solstice. Haven't seen a winter around here like this for years and years.

Just to keep things on topic. Surely I shouldn't need to maintain my government mandated medical. I mean, my body, my choice. If I feel ok, then I'm ok. Nobody can tell me what to do or that I can't do my job!

This douchebag already raised my taxes once, I'm sure I'm not rich enough to get a tax cut this time around. Someone has to pay for the rich people to get these cuts!

Clearly the word has gone out that Trump requires 1 mil or more gifts to his inauguration fund.

The vassals required to provide tribute when a new king is crowned.

Some new polling ...


https://www.cnbc.com/2024/12/15/majo...policies.html?

There are 3 charts in article, too big to embed. They are

• Trump's Support
• Green light for Trump's Agenda
• Yellow & Red lights for Trump's Agenda

Under the Yellow & Red light, Raising Tariffs & Pardoning Jan 6 convictions were relatively high against. It would be good if Trump took heed. He may (and probably will) moderate his tariffs, but IMO no way he can back away from pardoning Jan 6 convictions.

Also Joe's economy/markets was polled. It wasn't that bad for me personally. But yeah, majority has clearly spoken.

Seems like MAGA is going all in on vaccines cause autism.

Interesting how conservatives went full on anti vaccine so quickly. It used to mostly just be crazy liberals.

Well, the New Grand Poobah overseeing our health system used to be a crazy liberal, so that tracks.

Guessing he isn't holding a meeting to follow through with a ban. Probably gets to play the hero and save the app all the young people like. An incredible self own by Dems in a cycle of self owns.

So, will Ivanka's fast-tracked Chinese trademarks suffice for this, or will El Presidente request further remuneration for this largesse?

It wasn't banned over China, it was banned for Israel.

Biden's DOJ announced it WILL NOT prosecute MCKINSEY for advising Purdue Pharma to "turbocharge" OxyContin sales amidst the opioid crisis.

ONE exec made a plea deal with a max sentence of 1 year.

Pathetic. A slap in the face to everyone who lost a loved one to the crisis. https://t.co/IhmSOM9CLl

— Rick Claypool (@RickClaypool) December 16, 2024

So the bourbon distilleries around here have started the public marketing campaign against tariffs, crying about how much international money they'll lose. The last time tariffs hit bourbon - you'll never guess who was President in 2018! - industry revenue from international sales dropped 50%.

I sat there watching these reports on 3 separate local TV stations last night and thought, "I bet 90% of you fuckers voted for Trump. You get what you deserve."

Those damned globalist bourbon distilleries.

Hope it’s juicy and salacious!

Jack Daniels is too woke.

Sent from my SM-S916U using Tapatalk

One step closer ...

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Has there been another President that shut down the government before taking office?

I'm glad I'm not the only one who was baffled by this. But apparently this is where we are now.

I was just wondering last week about why various antagonist countries don't get up to some shit in the period between an election and an inauguration, because I'd think an outgoing president isn't going to launch us into a shooting war that gets dumped in the new president's lap. Seems like an expoloitable period where one could make big gains without having to pay the regular price of admission.

Trump won't handle President Musk making all of the decisions.

Elon is too obviously horny for power.

Trump is going to get really annoyed if he continues to tweet threats to congress. That's Trump's lane.

The Trump-Elon breakup is going to be epic

Trumps like the mean teacher who made Musk hall monitor but that bit will go to his head and the teacher will strip that priveledge.

I get wanting a clean CR extension until the Trump & new congress are in but don't get the argument for increasing the debt ceiling.

I know Trump wants to do it so it can be blamed on Joe, but why do they want to increase the debt ceiling anyway? What am I missing, doesn't it go against what they are saying about smaller government, cutting things etc?

Should be an exciting several weeks. I'm thinking a shutdown will occur and someone will blink in Jan.

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Dems need to grow balls for the first time in my lifetime and just shut the government down and do a media blitz blaming it on Trump. It probably won't matter but it's exactly the type of play that MAGA would and is making. Let Trump inherit a government that has been shut down for a month.

DOLA:

I also hope all the farmers are waking up today and really appreciating Ramaswamy comparing the farm subsidies in the existing bill to showering an addict in cocaine. That is what the people they elected think of them.

Elon literally bought the Presidency, or so it appears.

I know Trump won't just allow Elon to so directly look like he's running things - especially to the public - because Trump wants people to know he's in charge and the bully pushing the GOP around, but the wildcard here is the dude is approaching 80, tired, losing his fastball (and mental capabilities), and Musk is taking up the slack of President Sundowning the Second.

Maybe Don Jr. will step in to prod Daddy to take the reins back, but I think Elon has assessed the situation and - at least at this point - feels pretty comfortable in doing what's he doing. Of course, he's also shown himself to be tone-deaf and a dufus in most basic human interactions, so...

Trump has been pretty open and honest about not giving one shit about the deficit. One of the reasons I slowly backed away from the GOP going back to the second Dubya election was my realization that "small government" was really not the goal. Both parties spend too much money; they mostly just differ on who is the primary recipient of it.

“The legislation will end up hurting many of the people it purports to help. Debt-fueled spending sprees may "feel good" today, but it's like showering cocaine on an addict: it's not compassion, it's cruelty. Farmers will see more land sold to foreign buyers when taxes inevitably rise to meet our obligations. Our children will be saddled with crippling debt. Interest payments will be the largest item in our national budget.” - Vivek Ramaswamey

Thank goodness the people elected Vivek to prevent this stuff from happening....

"Congress has known about this deadline since they created it in late September. There's no reason why this couldn't have gone through the standard process, instead of being rushed to a vote right before Congressmen want to go home for the holidays. The urgency is 100% manufactured & designed to avoid serious*public debate." - Vivek Ramaswamy

This is an old argument but one that needs to be reemphasized. The people changed course for a reason. Will anything come of this? Maybe not, but it’s hard to argue we don't overspend. Currently, the U.S. Taxpayer owes the national deficit 2 full years of 100% income tax/unpaid work to get our deficit to $0. Now obviously we can’t do that, but we can raise taxes. But even an increase in our income taxes to meet the current overspending would need at least a 25% - 33% jump so we can simply break even. But as taxes go up, our GDP suffers, and what happens after we tax people that much and the government still just tacks on 25-33% more overspending? It’s a death spiral. I hope something can happen and simply raising taxes is not the only answer. Budget cuts are needed for long term sustainability of our government and our ability to pay for our government.

Way to completely miss the point. Unelected billionaires probably shouldn’t have their hands in the levers of power. You’re not going to get an argument about the deficit but considering we just reelected the guy responsible for 25% of that and he has zero interest in curbing spending I wouldn’t hold your breath.

So he compared farm subsidies to what exactly? I’d also like to add that everything he said about the debt is bullshit because his boss wants to raise the debt ceiling. It’s talking out of both sides of his mouth.

What do you expect from a guy so clueless that one of his early campaign talking points was that we would fire missiles into Mexico at the cartels, without Mexico's permission.

Amazing how the same people attacking Soros are cheering on Musk for being 100 times more controlling.

From what I can tell, they want to "cost-cut" the stuff they don't like so they have more money to add to the debt they want to saddle us with for the things (people and corporations) they do like.

Both parties do much of the same thing in general, but the advantage the GOP has taken on this is that they've managed to convince the very people they are about to hurt to vote for them so they can give more money to the people who look down on them and don't give a shit whether they live or die. It's pretty fascinating to watch this dynamic play itself out.

I actually agree with most of this. The question is whether you believe 2 billionaires wirh zero government experience and a bunch of random volunteers are the best people to lead a committee making recommendations on what to cut. It's clear they don't understand how social security and others parts of the budget work. Musk also has a very vested interest in where to make cuts and where not to in order to benefit his businesses.

Rand Paul putting Musks name out there as a potential House Speaker and other GOP reps supporting the idea by unironically saying it's time to take down the establishment is peak GOP.

It’d a bogus argument. George and Alex Soros invested nearly double what Musk invested this year (if you include the insane radio station takeover Soros did) and Soros influences a lot of the Democratic candidates behind the scenes. The only difference is Musk is transparent about it, which is part of the reason people have more respect for him and Musks message resonates into votes better.

We can’t sit there and say we can’t do it because Musk when we
know on the other side it’s Soros.

But that aside, people with lots of experience have been in charge and effectively have said, “it’s too nuanced and complex for anyone to solve”. I’m good with people outside the DC bubble giving it a go. Will it be awesome? No. Will it suck? Maybe. But can we continue saying the issue is too complex to solve? I don’t believe so.

The debt is huge but first step is to stop the bleeding and get rid of the deficit.

There is no easy path, not everyone (or anyone) will be happy but do agree we are probably in a "death spiral" and something needs to be done.

Pie chart of 2024 budget ...

Just a moment...

The deficit is $1.83T = Revenue $4.92T - Spending $6.75T or about 27%. If we can't get agreement, I'm in favor of just cutting each line item by -27% until the grownups become more responsible.

https://fiscaldata.treasury.gov/amer...ional-deficit/

Elon spent 44 billion on Twitter.

What does Soros have to do with the argument that Musk and Vivek are poor choices to lead a committee on this? Everything isn't my side vs your side. You're the person that was on here championing Trump as the guy that was going to bring everyone together and yet you answer any question about the Trump administration by pointing fingers.

Soros has nothing to do with this. Your guy won the election it's time to accept his decisions based on merit rather than what ifs that aren't happening.

Is your stance really that it's better to do a poor job than not do anything?

Show me one time Soros took a victory lap after tanking a bipartisan funding bill on a social media platform he owns and used to massively influence the outcome of an election.

You can't cut spending in this country without cutting the military budget and that is not going to happen. All this is is shuffling some money from programs into the pockets of a few billionaires.

Actually you can. But there is certainly places in the military you can cut expenses.

Most of the programs talked about have minimal impact on the budget and actually hurt the economy more, thus lowering tax revenue.

He literally works behind the scenes, how could he do that and also take a victory lap? I’m shocked you didn’t know this about Soros.

Good luck with the dark budget for the military. You want to understand why toilets cost 10,000 and hammers cost 500, you have to realize that the military basically launders its own budget money in order to have an off the books spending habit that they've had for decades.

Doesn't seem like he works that much behind the scenes if you know all about him.