Drudge Retort: The Other Side of the News

Drudge Retort

User Info

cutiepie

Subscribe to cutiepie's blog Subscribe

Menu

Special Features

Comments

__________
#74 | Posted by shrimptacodan at 2025-02-05 02:49 PM
TOLD YOU WHAT THIS WAS.
a tool
Iran has just made an "overture".

Iran has made many "overtures" before, during and after Trump-1 - "deny, delay, deflect" is their game, too.

BTW, here's Iran's latest "overture" over Trump shutting down USAID - Tehran, 2025-02-04:
Iran has rare praise for Donald Trump. Trump's cuts to U.S. foreign aid funding could stop the opposition in Iran.

Re "tool" - everybody knows it's a "tool" that only impresses and makes the "Apprentice" cult followers drool and makes Trump feel like he is a "great dealmaker," but except for show and ill will, delivers nothing of substance that couldn't be done with plain conversation with trade partners. But then, there wouldn't be a show, and no claiming "wins"... and what's the fun in that for Trump?

Maslow's Law: "When your only tool is a hammer, everything looks like a nail" - he only knows "this one weird trick" that is not needed with friendly small/weaker countries that rely on and value trade with the US, and doesn't work with stronger countries (like Canada, Mexico, China, EU-10 etc.) who can use counter-tariffs that will hurt US economy/employment, and could specifically target weaker industries, as we've just seen.

Tariffs should only be used in cases of product dumping (selling below their cost), but unfortunately has evolved to be used for protectionism (which didn't work), and now as an "invitation to [some] negotiation" - that's just stupid, and really invites trading partners to diversify their sales channels to depend less on unpredictable trade with US - that only hurts the US in the long run.

Not that Trump cares about the US or the "long run" - he "won" so many "great deals" that ended up in bankruptcies or shuttered businesses that he couldn't find contractors who would work with him and most banks wouldn't lend him money, so he had to launder money from Putin's cronies, before and even after "Apprentice" made him look like "successful businessman."

Here is what Murdoch's WSJ editorial says about the "tool" Trump and his "deals" - "... even though both countries agreed to do things they were already doing" :

|------- Trump 'blinked' before his tariffs could cause real damage
If the North American leaders need to cheer about a minor deal so they all claim victory, that's better for everyone. The need is especially important for Mr. Trump given how much he has boasted that his tariffs are a fool-proof diplomatic weapon against friend or foe. Mr. Trump can't afford to look like the guy who lost. [Claudia] Sheinbaum in particular seems to recognize this, and so far she's playing her Trump cards with skill.

None of this means the tariffs are some genius power play, as the Trump media chorus is boasting. The 25% border tax could return in a month if Mr. Trump is in the wrong mood, or if he doesn't like something the foreign leaders have said or done. It also isn't clear what Mr. Trump really wants his tariffs to achieve. Are they about reducing the flow of fentanyl, or is his real goal to rewrite the North American trade deal he signed in his first term? If it's the latter, there's more political volatility ahead.

Mr. Trump's weekend tariff broadside against a pair of neighbors has opened a new era of economic policy uncertainty that won't calm down until the President does. As we warned many times before Election Day, this is the biggest economic risk of Donald Trump's second term.
-------|

He may look like a "hero" and "genius" to his unquestioning adulating followers, but to the rest he looks to be a tool.
__________

__________
Cackling Putin Pals Celebrate Trump's 'Simply Sensational' First Week of U.S. Self-Destruction - DB, Julia Davis, February 3, 2025

|------- ... Vladimir Solovyov gloated about the latest developments. He said, "It's awesome, right? The Canadians and the Mexicans thought that all was well, but Trump told them, "By the way, I don't like you either." Solovyov played a clip of Trump announcing his tariffs on Canada and Mexico, which was followed by jolly cackling from pundits in the studio. ...

Sardaryan added, "I want us to pay very close attention to the latest statement of Marco Rubio, it was simply sensational. I had to re-check it three times from different sources because I got an impression that this was a statement by Sergey Viktorovich Lavrov - not Marco Rubio... He said what we've been asserting for three years." Sardaryan interpreted the words of the new U.S. Secretary of State to mean that the United States is abdicating its global leadership position in favor of multipolarity.

Sardaryan added that Tucker Carlson was unleashed to publicly "demolish Zelensky" because the Trump administration needs to devalue him in the eyes of the American population, cultivating public opinion to accept future decisions towards Ukraine that will be radically different from the approach of the previous administration. Sardaryan said that Rubio's statement demonstrates that America and Russia will finally be "speaking the same language" with respect to Ukraine.

Sardaryan noted how energized and happy everyone in Russia seems to be about the demise of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), which aided countries recovering from disasters, trying to escape poverty, and engaging in democratic reforms. He urged Russia to capitalize on this development and step in to fill the void by creating a domestic equivalent of the program. He emphasized that this program wouldn't be based on philanthropy but rather serve as a tool to exercise influence over the countries that would benefit from Moscow's aid. He stressed, "Foreign assistance should be part of our foreign policy..." Solovyov concurred, "It could be a phenomenal lever."

In 2020, political scientist Dmitry Evstafiev predicted the disintegration of existing political institutions in the United States, prompted by Trump's outright rejection of bipartisanship, which will be replaced by an authoritarian system he is striving to create. Russian experts are happy to report that during his second term, Trump is doing just that. Andrey Sidorov, Deputy Dean of world politics at the MSU noted that the United States is now rapidly moving towards a dictatorship - and the American population won't be able to change this trajectory using the usual democratic means.

No longer fearing additional sanctions against Russia, Solovyov returned to his usual status as Trump's most influential Russian fanboy.
-------|

No surprises there, including Tucker Carlson role... but doesn't this have the tones of 1939 Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact?
__________

__________
So why is Trump doing this?

For the spectacle and quick "Winning!" which he hopes will boost his "ratings" and standing.

But also, for the same reasons Dems have been doing it before, and Biden did just recently, when not only he didn't cancel Trump's tariffs, but added some new ones ("targeted," of course) - because certain segments of trad Dem constituency, like unions, are attracted to protectionism, and because it also perfectly fits Trump's fake "populism" and "America First" themes - his guru on this issue was lifelong Democrat Prof. Peter "Don't call it a trade war!" Navarro. It doesn't matter that the math or policy doesn't work - it worked/works politically for him, and that's all that matters to him.

It also made it difficult for Dems to explain why "Trump's tariffs are bad" when it's a policy they've been associated with all along.

www.yahoo.com - How Trump wins from his damaging trade wars - YFin, 2024-02-09

|------- The former president promised to boost American manufacturing through import tariffs and other protectionist measures, and it didn't work. Yet the voters Trump was appealing to rewarded him anyway, according to a new study by prominent trade economists. That may explain why Trump now says he'll intensify his trade wars if elected to a second term.

... Trump's first trade war helps explain why. The study, by economists David Autor, Anne Beck, David Dorn, and Gordon Hanson, found that Trump's China tariffs did more harm than good to the US economy. Yet they boosted political support for Trump in key parts of the country. Whether through Trump's hucksterism or some other machination, voters seemingly embraced a policy that helped nobody and hurt some.

The study has three conclusions: First, the Trump tariffs produced no boost in manufacturing employment. Second, China's retaliatory tariffs reduced US agricultural employment. Third, Trump's farm bailout helped offset some, but not all, of the job losses in agriculture.

The Tax Foundation, for instance, finds that Trump's tariffs lowered US employment by 166,000 US jobs, with retaliatory tariffs killing another 29,000. The higher taxes paid by importers, meanwhile, amount to $74 billion in increased government revenue over a decade. Contrary to Trump's insistence, however, it's not China paying those higher taxes. It's American firms that import the products, pay the tax and pass the higher costs onto consumers.

The tariffs worked to Trump's advantage anyway.

... "The trade war appears to have been successful in strengthening support for the Republican party," the study concludes. "Residents of tariff-protected locations became less likely to identify as Democrats and more likely to vote for President Trump. Voters appear to have responded favorably to the extension of tariff protections to local industries despite their economic cost."

... The Autor study proposes two possible reasons Trump gained politically from tariffs that didn't really help anybody. The first is that "voters were misinformed about the employment impacts of the trade war." Trump certainly did his best to misinform voters. He called the two-way tariff escalation an "amazing deal" and a "momentous step" and repeatedly bragged about a manufacturing resurgence that never happened.

... Or, Trump made a deliberate and cynical show of trying to help, knowing it wouldn't matter. Sometimes, telling voters what they want to hear might be enough.
-------|

Because of general economic illiteracy and the allure of fake populism, often [both] parties choose "good politics / bad policy" over "good policy / bad politics."
__________

__________
Full text at:
upload.democraticunderground.com

...

Here in America, as we reflect on the many things we have to be grateful for, we should take a moment to recognize that one of the key factors behind our nation's great prosperity is the open trade policy that allows the American people to freely exchange goods and services with free people around the world. The freedom to trade is not a new issue for America. In 1776 our Founding Fathers signed the Declaration of Independence, charging the British with a number of offenses, among them, and I quote, "cutting off our trade with all parts of the world..."

...

America's most recent experiment with protectionism was a disaster for the working men and women of this country. When Congress passed the Smoot-Hawley tariff in 1930, we were told that it would protect America from foreign competition and save jobs in this country - the same line we hear today. The actual result was the Great Depression, the worst economic catastrophe in our history; one out of four Americans were thrown out of work. Two years later, when I cast my first ballot for President, I voted for Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who opposed protectionism and called for the repeal of that disastrous tariff.

Ever since that time, the American people have stayed true to our heritage by rejecting the siren song of protectionism. In recent years, the trade deficit led some misguided politicians to call for protectionism, warning that otherwise we would lose jobs. But they were wrong again. In fact, the United States not only didn't lose jobs, we created more jobs than all the countries of Western Europe, Canada, and Japan combined. The record is clear that when America's total trade has increased, American jobs have also increased. And when our total trade has declined, so have the number of jobs.

Part of the difficulty in accepting the good news about trade is in our words. We too often talk about trade while using the vocabulary of war. In war, for one side to win, the other must lose. But commerce is not warfare. Trade is an economic alliance that benefits both countries. There are no losers, only winners. And trade helps strengthen the free world.

Yet today protectionism is being used by some American politicians as a cheap form of nationalism, a fig leaf for those unwilling to maintain America's military strength and who lack the resolve to stand up to real enemies - countries that would use violence against us or our allies. Our peaceful trading partners are not our enemies; they are our allies. We should beware of the demagogs who are ready to declare a trade war against our friends - weakening our economy, our national security, and the entire free world - all while cynically waving the American flag. The expansion of the international economy is not a foreign invasion; it is an American triumph, one we worked hard to achieve, and something central to our vision of a peaceful and prosperous world of freedom.

After the Second World War, America led the way to dismantle trade barriers and create a world trading system that set the stage for decades of unparalleled economic growth. ... We want to open more markets for our products, to see to it that all nations play by the rules, and to seek improvement in such areas as dispute resolution and agriculture. We also want to bring the benefits of free trade to new areas, including services, investment, and the protection of intellectual property. ...

Yes, back in 1776, our Founding Fathers believed that free trade was worth fighting for. And we can celebrate their victory because today trade is at the core of the alliance that secure the peace and guarantee our freedom; it is the source of our prosperity and the path to an even brighter future for America.
__________

_________
Gallup poll:

At 47%, President Donald Trump's initial job approval rating for his second term is similar to the inaugural 45% reading during his first term, again placing him below all other elected presidents dating back to 1953. Trump remains the only elected president with sub-50% initial approval ratings, and his latest disapproval rating (48%) is three percentage points higher than in 2017, marking a new high for inaugural ratings.

Trump's current job approval rating, from Gallup's Jan. 21-27 poll, is not significantly different from the 51% readings earned by George H.W. Bush and Ronald Reagan in the early days of their presidencies. However, initial evaluations of Trump differ in that Americans are much more likely to disapprove of his performance rather than have no opinion, as was the case for the elder Bush and Reagan.

John Kennedy had the highest inaugural approval rating, at 72%, followed closely by Dwight Eisenhower and Barack Obama, who both had strong starts with 68% readings. Jimmy Carter received a 66% approval rating, while Richard Nixon, Bill Clinton, Joe Biden and George W. Bush had ratings between 57% and 59%.

Although Trump's latest rating is weak compared with past presidents' initial readings, it is among the best he has received as president. His personal high point during his first term was 49%, which he earned on several occasions in 2020.

Trump averaged 41% approval in his first term and is the only president not to receive a job rating of 50% or higher at any point in his presidency. He left office in January 2021 with the lowest rating of his presidency, 34%, after the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol.
_________

__________
#38 | Posted by boaz at 2025-01-30 03:02 PM
I don't know where you ... are getting your "polling" LOLOLOLOLOLOLOL

From your own link - www.newsweek.com :

|------- ... [Trump] remains one of the least popular U.S. presidents in history. According to the Gallup poll, Trump still has the lowest approval rating of all elected presidents, dating back to 1953, and he remains the only elected president with sub-50 percent initial approval ratings.

An Ipsos poll conducted between January 24 and 26 showed 46 percent of voters disapprove of Trump, while 45 percent approve.
-------|

Don't you think it's pathetic and weird to celebrate Trump's "honeymoon" poll that is much lower than all previous presidents' at this stage except only his poll from 8 years ago?

|------- Trump began his presidency in 2017 with a 44.6 percent approval rating and a 41.4 percent disapproval rating, based on applying our current averaging methodology retroactively. Before that, the record low for initial net approval rating was set by former President George W. Bush in 2001, at +28 points. However, former President Joe Biden started his first term at +22 in 2021.
-------|

"Joe Biden started his first term at +22 in 2021" - despite being lower than all (except Trump-45) was still far and away better than Trump's "new and improved" second term... and how did that end?

What all these polls really show is that, while people rejected Dems and try to give GOP a benefit of the doubt, they really don't like... Trump.

This poll, like many others, just confirms that most people didn't vote for Trump, they voted against and "fired" Biden / Harris incompetent administration and campaign - just like voters in most European countries are attempting to 'flip' their unpopular governments, most of which happen to be left-of-center. But in UK, where they 'flipped' Tories, the Labour is already less popular than Tories were.

People want "change," no matter how pathetic and weird that "change" may be.


Just to show how bad Harris / Dems campaign was:

House was lost by about 7K votes - one of the closest in decades.

Harris lost 3 "Blue Wall" states by less than 230K votes - underperformed the margins of win for Trump in 2016 (lt 75K) and Biden in 2020 (lt 45K).

She underperformed in 4 states where 4 Dem Senators (3 of them women!) won - AZ, NV, MI, WI - wins there would put her within 5-6 EC votes, but still not enough to win! She absolutely needed PA but didn't choose the popular centrist Dem Governor of PA as her VP - which could have changed the tone and professionalism of campaign. Critical decision / mistake that right off the bat made electoral math and path to winnig incredibly difficult, and punctuated how unserious she / her campaign was to begin with. Tim Walz kept talking about guns and hunting - that shows they had no clue what the voters were concerned about, and how little they thought of the voters they needed to reach.

She underperformed J-Biden by a mile - when Trump reached 74M votes (same as his total in 2020) she had 11M less votes than Biden had in 2020 - again, EC voters that count (ex-CA/OR/WA) stayed home in droves / voted against Harris.

She needed and tried (once) to distance herself from Biden/Bidenomics but couldn't, because:
a) Loyalty
b) Her campaign was essentially run by [inherited] Biden's election team, even though she had time to put together her own - another critical mistake
c) She never had a "Sister Soulja moment" and kept trying to please "all sides" on many issues

Campaigns should add from a pool of available "undecided" voters, she managed to divide and subtract.
__________

__________
#26 | Posted by Hagbard_Celine
And look how much he's managed to do with such little support?

Presidents, especially "lame ducks" who just escaped prison time and are looking for revenge, "don't need no stinking support" to do the damage they are allowed (or even not allowed, but to be adjudicated later) to do by law. "Stroke of the pen - law of the land!" - Paul Begala on Bill Clinton's EOs.

Makes everyone that came before him seem ineffectual by comparison.

You are confusing "hyperactivity" with effectiveness and positive (in normal sense of the word) results - welcome to ADHD / Attention Deficit and Hyperactivity Disorder!

"Effectiveness" or "effectively" don't inform about the direction (positive or negative) or give a comparison to a standard of the given effect.

Quantity of activity doesn't imply quality of results. It's true that, in some cases, "quantity has a quality of its own" - presidency is clearly not that case.

Spitballing out loud, worse yet rashly acting on, dumb ideas that his "best people" provide to him, are signs of HD, not sound judgment. That's how Trump run into the ground and bankrupted nearly every business (including real estate and gaming), while stuffing his own pockets - yet still was broke until Mark Burnett (current US envoy to UK) stumbled onto him for "unreality TV" show Apprentice:

www.newyorker.com - How Mark Burnett Resurrected Donald Trump as an Icon of American Success | With "The Apprentice," the TV producer mythologized Trump " then a floundering D-lister " as the ultimate titan, paving his way to the Presidency. (must read if you want to know more about Trump / "branding" / marketing / "power of media" / "unreality TV")

Enjoy the Celebrity Apprentice 4.0 s**tshow, if you want. You can also buy "matching" $TRUMP and $MELANIA memecoins and whatever else he's selling.

Unfortunately, unlike the weekly TV show we didn't have to watch, we must live in the "unreality TV" he is putting on. Hopefully the results won't be disastrous and irreparable for the US, like it was for his businesses.
__________

__________
#8 | Posted by MSgt at 2025-01-29 11:11 AM
"Rasmussen Reports surveyed 1,245 likely voters between January 21-23, and asked a very simple, straightforward question "Who do you trust more?" The choices were Donald Trump, the news media, or not sure. A plurality of 44 percent chose Trump. Only 41 percent chose the news media. Fifteen percent were unsure."

Whatever you think the "news media" is now - does social media and podcasts, where people get their "news" "fed" to them, count? - the "news media" has been polling less and less trustworthy for decades, so this "simple" poll - comparing new President to "something" most people don't have high opinion on and care about even less - in first days of Trump's "honeymoon" period is not only meaningless ("simply" designed to show Trump "winning" SOME poll - talk about bias!) but isn't at all favorable to Trump! 56% said he is not trustworthy, and that's compared to "news media" which usually polls in low 30s - latest 2024 media poll showed 69% have no or little trust in "major" news media.

Now Reuters/Ipsos poll just few days later (and still not "full Trump") Jan 24-26:
|------- Americans disapprove Trump's early moves, Reuters/Ipsos poll finds
The poll had a margin of error of about 4 percentage points.

"While it does seem Trump is getting a honeymoon to some extent, his numbers are still not impressive by historical standards..."

During Trump's first term, his approval rating hit as high as 49% during his first weeks in office but he closed out his term at 34% approval.

It may be too early to evaluate whether Trump is squandering his political capital... But the poll shows that many of his early actions have been supported only by his hardcore base. ...

Only 25% of respondents supported renaming the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America. 59% of respondents, including 30% of Republicans, opposed Trump's moves to end federal efforts to promote the hiring of women and members of racial minority groups. 59% of respondents - including 89% of Democrats and 36% of Republicans - said they opposed ending birthright citizenship.

Public is split along partisan lines on billionaire Elon Musk, Trump's most prominent ally. 75% of Republicans in the survey said they had a favorable view of Musk, 90% of Democrats said they had an unfavorable view.

50% of poll respondents said the country was on the wrong track when it came to the cost of living, compared to 25% who said it was moving in the right direction. The rest said they weren't sure or didn't answer the question.
-------|

So early polls are not great now and a lot of time to go down from here (as they tend to do with Trump) particularly because he can't do much about the economic issues the public really worries about (consumer confidence dropped and other numbers this week were not good and well below expectations)... not that he cares anymore. But the GOP at some point might.
__________

__________
#50 | Posted by hamburglar at 2025-01-28 09:06 AM
Sitzkrieg with the tinfoil hat

No tinfoil. Nancy P. (and some other Congress-critters) ability to trade on inside info is one of the reasons why NANC/"Nancy" outperformed the "market," even with the reporting lag, price averaging and mixed with other, less "informed" Congressional trades in the fund. One could probably do better just tracking Nancy P. and few others in leadership positions.

That's also the reason for so many calls to ban members of Congress from active trading... yet this can lead to them "whispering" the trades to managers of their "blind" accounts, so no visible trades = no tracking funds or ETFs like NANC or KRUZ.

So, double-edged sword.

#41 | Posted by LampLighter at 2025-01-27 08:40 PM
... but how the Chinese seem to have leap-frogged US tech companies.

DeepSeek didn't leap-frog US companies in technology... but it's definitely shown we may have to rethink some "AI"-related economics, especially for non-critical/non-RT environments, like consumer-facing LLMs.

Some of this may actually be very good for AI development ("faster, cheaper, better") but not necessarily for all current vendors and suppliers to AI industry.

Since it's open-source, several companies (e.g., Aurora Mobile) already announced plans to incorporate R1 into their existing products or tech. Inference engine and other logic/calc parts may be developed/enhanced/speeded up through discrete ASICs, to move further along.

Far from perfect analogy, but they are looking to build, at least initially, [on] cheap BYDs, while many are stuck on Teslas.
__________

__________
#19 | Posted by sentinel at 2025-01-27 03:03 PM
"I wonder how Nancy P knew to sell her Nvidia stock just under 2 weeks ago."
Probably uses AI.

You, too, "can invest like Nancy P" - with a little lag, but no AI necessary and, like "the Congress" outperforming "the market":

Two ETFs - Congressional Dems (symbol:NANC / "Nancy") and/or Congressional GOP (symbol:KRUZ / "Cruz")

|------- "We're often asked why... don't we simply hold the "best" traders in Congress or try to pick off member's options trades?
... We launched these ETFs to highlight what members of Congress are trading. We fully support banning members of Congress from active trading, as does Unusual Whales, our data provider.

When a member discloses a trade, we explicitly choose the midpoint of that disclosure range... no matter what the member actually bought or sold. This choice is what drives all the relative allocations in both NANC and KRUZ.

The wisdom of the crowd is once again delivering superior returns with less risk...

These holdings are all expertly managed, fantastic businesses that generate enormous cash flows. But it is telling that the divisions we see in politics are also present in the portfolio holdings between the left and the right.

The top 10 holdings of one ETF are Microsoft, Amazon, Apple, Salesforce, Alphabet, Nvidia, Disney, Crowdstrike, Tesla, and API Group.
The other has ConocoPhillips, Shell, Accenture, NGL Energy, Philip Morris International, Fedex, Comfort Systems, Intel, United Therapeutics, and PayPal.

... The most important question for now is why the Democratic portfolio outperformed. It isn't that Democrats are necessarily better traders. Something more important is happening.

We are living through the early stages of what it is going to take to rebuild the world in NATO and non-NATO aligned customers, supply chains, and vendors. The U.S. restrictions on chips were really the early tremors of a decade-long decoupling. That takes time to evolve and will fundamentally shift the term structure of interest rates.

This instability is going to create cycles when a hopeful, optimistic outlook might outperform, and there are times when a value-based, everything-is-going-to-hell focus might outperform. ...
-------|

And if you did your DD on "Trump trade," since November 5 the coffee and cocoa futures are up about 50 percent... Far from Greenland... Then again, it just might be a "climate change trade"... Pick whichever "cause" floats your boat, if you care.

OT: Re DeepSeek, it's 20x-40x cheaper cost all-in, and about 50x less computational-intensive (think speed and energy cost) - so, yes it's a Big F**king Deal, even though it's trained on a very different set of data (for now?), so the comparative results are not really comparable at this point or near future.
__________

__________
Trump is not the only one who can play the stupid game of "trade wars" and "tariffs" - he will claim credit and say that "his tariffs" led to "favorable trade agreement" and that all the previous presidents didn't know how to "Make America First and Great Again."

Like a "geek show" as a prelude to "freak show" at circus - en.wikipedia.org, en.wikipedia.org.

It's all part of the Celebrity Apprentice 4.0 s**tshow he keeps running to make him look the "man, the legend, like you've never seen before" and justify the "beautiful tariffs" - something about small men with small penises and "Napoleon complex."

www.rawstory.com - Canada vows 'Trump tax' on U.S. in response to tariffs" - AFP, 2025-01-20

www.reuters.com - Mexican leader stresses sovereignty, holds off on retaliatory tariff threats - Reuters, 2025-01-22

apnews.com - Mexico's President Sheinbaum offers sarcastic response to Trump's 'Gulf of America' comment - apnews.com - AP, January 9, 2025
|--- Claudia Sheinbaum suggested dryly that North America should be renamed "America Mexicana", or "Mexican America". "Sounds nice, doesn't it?" she added. ---|



www.newsweek.com - Only 20% of Americans Support Trump Pardoning Jan 6 Rioters: Poll - 2025-01-20

Seems, he "doesn't get no respect" anywhere, except from "blinded by the light" sycophants.


But all this "hyperactivity" is just a distraction from Trump staying out of prison, trying to get Nobel Peace Prize for "'peace' in the Middle East and the World" and the "Abraham Accords," and him and his family enriching themselves by selling worthless things and tokens to mindless adoring cult followers.
__________

__________
www.npr.org - What's An NFT? And Why Are People Paying Millions To Buy Them? - NPR, 2021-03-05

The NFT scam was more "sophisticated," somewhat legalistic about what partial "rights" one would acquire to a "digital art," and a lot more complicated, involving more steps to execute.

This scam is considered a "lottery" unless you are nimble and equipped with specialty trading bots networks, or receive non-public information on "coin" ICO, or pre-allocation.

www.nbcnews.com - Memecoins like Fartcoin are riding Trump's victory to huge valuations. - NBC, 2024-12-17

|------- Yes, it's called Fartcoin. Yes, it is totally useless.
And yes, it has nevertheless grown in value over the past week to a market capitalization of more than $800 million " about equal to those of Office Depot, Guess jeanswear, and the parent company of Steak N' Shake. ...

"A lot of it is people thinking, 'I can get some sort of edge by having a better chance at a lottery ticket..."

Memecoin buyers and sellers alike are, for the most part, aware that their trading activity amounts to the riskiest kind of gambling, Bautista said. It's all about exiting one's position to avoid getting left with "holding the bag" and failing to trade up and strike while the price is hot.

"Because they're worthless, you're betting on the 'greater fool,'" he said, referring to the idea that someone else will pay a higher price for a given memecoin. "You're thinking, 'I'm early to this, someone will buy the bags.' But there's no underlying... value." ...

Blockchain data shows at least one holder of a coin (PNUT) created in the wake of the Peanut the Squirrel incident last month, which involved the death of a rodent possibly being kept without permission by a New York man, is sitting on nearly half a billion dollars. ...

Bautista said that indeed, algorithmic trading, which has long been part of mainstream trading on Wall Street, is now routinely deployed in the memecoin space. He estimates that of the top-20 traded coins in crypto, half are memecoins whose trades are almost entirely driven by bots designed to spot and respond to price movements. ...

World Liberty Financial, a crypto project "inspired by Trump" ... Trump has been named as an eventual "financial beneficiary" of World Liberty.
-------|

This is description of $WLFI "coin" - "World Liberty Financial is the DeFi project backed by Donald Trump and his family members including Eric Trump, Donald Trump Jr. and Barron Trump. World Liberty Financial is a project with the goal of strengthening the global status of the US dollar in the DeFi space" - which must be a sick joke, because the only purpose of these "coins" is to exchange these worthless "currency" into USDs.

As $TRUMP and $MELANIA "coins" show, apparently, even $WLFI cash-grab, along with pumped-up DJT stock scam, has not been enough.

insidebitcoins.com - Trump Family's World Liberty Financial Token Sales Surge Following $TRUMP And $MELANIA Meme Coin Launches - IBC, 2025-01-20
__________

__________
#12 | Posted by LampLighter at 2025-01-17 12:00 AM
Am I the only one here who is noticing a pattern of purchasing the actions of Pres-elect Trump?

The "pattern" has been obvious and seen and heard by just about anyone who is not blind and deaf.

That's actually the problem that Jeff Yass was talking about in your excerpt:
|------- The group's president last year wrote: "Giving the government the power to ban apps and pick and choose between competing apps is a huge restriction on ... freedom."

The former president, who had originally spearheaded efforts to ban TikTok during his time in the White House, reversed his stance last week, posting on his own social media platform that getting rid of TikTok would benefit Facebook and that he doesn't want that to happen, suggesting Facebook is a bigger problem for the country. ...
-------|

Yes, the biggest immediate beneficiary of TikTok going "dark" would be Meta/Facebook's Instagram, so Zuckerberg "pivoted" early and is also one of the latest "donors" to Trump's inauguration.

What these business owners and CEOs understand all too well : "The government big enough to give you things is the government big enough to take things from you."

Maybe if we didn't keep giving more and more powers [and control over money, or selective "non enforcement" of laws, or making "laws" that attempt to "buy votes" through Executive Orders / actions, etc.] to Presidents / Executive branch, or the government in general, there would be less corruption?

www.newsweek.com - Biden Won't Enforce TikTok Ban as He Punts to Trump - 2015-01-17

www.newsweek.com - Student Loan Update: Thousands Benefit from New Round of Debt Forgiveness - 2025-01-17

www.newsweek.com - FTC Chair Lina Khan Launches Flurry of Lawsuits Before Trump Takes Office - 2025-01-17

But... in 4 years, we'll have "our" President, and then... everything he/she does will be smart, fair, just and good...

Here's a "happy" thought: "President Joe Biden's average approval rating was one point higher than President-elect Donald Trump's approval during his first term, according to Gallup."

Live by the sword...

"Power attracts the corruptible. Suspect any who seek it. ... All governments suffer a recurring problem: Power attracts pathological personalities. It is not that power corrupts but that it is magnetic to the corruptible." - Frank Herbert

"Nothing discloses real character like the use of power. It is easy for the weak to be gentle. But if you wish to know what a man really is, give him power." - Robert G. Ingersoll
__________

__________
#3 | Posted by LampLighter at 2025-01-14 10:47 PM
Donald Trump Jack Smith Report: Six Key Bombshells
www.newsweek.com
... A report by special counsel Jack Smith into Donald Trump's alleged attempts to overturn the 2020 presidential election result has been released, despite efforts by Trump's lawyers to keep it suppressed.

Some of these are hardly "bombshells" - in fact, either a nothing-burger or well known :
* Attempts To Keep Vice President Mike Pence Mentally Isolated
* Trump's Control Over The January 6 Rioters
* Trump's Educated Women Problem
* Trump Fails To Present Evidence Of Fraud In Arizona

"Bombshells"? Really?

This is just Part 1 of the Jack Smith report. The really interesting info is in Part 2, which deals with the "declassified" SCI and other secret files Trump took, hid and refused to give up voluntarily in Mar-a-Lago, and now hopes to bury that part of the report, once he gets a hold of DOJ. That's where "the bodies are buried" and what most voters didn't hear much about (unlike J6) because much of it was classified and because there are still open cases on two Trump's co-conspirators:

www.rawstory.com - Dems make surprising request to allow release of Mar-a-Lago classified documents report - RS, 2025-01-16

Now this would contain quite a few bombshells!
__________

__________
#18 | Posted by LampLighter at 2025-01-15 02:32 AM
As I have posted on another thread, wage increases have surpassed inflation since 2023. ...

Difference between the inflation rate and growth of wages in the United States from November 2020 to November 2024
www.statista.com

February 2023 seems to be the turning point your current alias' comment wants to hit, where wage growth exceeds inflation.

There are several "economic" issues with this "economic statistic":

1. This data is not cumulative. Inflations (and wages) accumulate: plot and overlay them both over "cumulative S-curves" and you'll see that inflation curve is way higher than wage curve over last 4 years - simple math, smaller percentage of initially larger number may give you a larger delta over higher percentage from smaller number. Just because the average wage growth overtook average inflation for a period of time (in this case ~1.5 yr) doesn't necessarily compensate, and in fact may still increase the loss of real purchasing power. You can plot and verify this in any spreadsheet.

2. Wages and inflation numbers are "average" numbers; however, the growth in wages is much higher at the top quartile (including WS and financial / professional sectors and performance bonuses when stock market took off in October 2022 - OpenAI/ChatGPT announcement - which explains early 2023 average wage/inflation "turning point") while bottom quartiles had slower growth in wages but much higher expenses / "inflation" as percent of their earnings, particularly in shelter and food segments - "real inflation" was not distributed equally at every level.

3. Also, inflation [growth] applies to everyone (even if unequally), but wage growth only applies to [current] wage-earners, but doesn't include those out of work / job market - retired / "grey" population of non-wage-earners is higher... yet labor participation rate is 62.5% - still below pre-pandemic and near 1977 levels - of which ~20% are working part-time, maybe multiple and/or gig jobs.

Inflation "number" is also underweighted, particularly for lower end-user segment, e.g., in the last 20 years Social Security annual COLA increases averaged about 2%, while Medicare Part B premiums increases averaged ~5% annually. (www.statista.com - Part B premiums 2003-2022)

That's why Biden's approval on economy was ~33% - almost exactly corresponding to ~60-70% of people thinking "we are in recession" / "country is on the wrong track" - numbers that Dems kept ignoring or chalked up to "deplorables" and "ignorance."

www.newsweek.com - As Biden Bids Farewell, Americans Sting Him in Final Verdict - NW, 2025-01-15
|------- His approval on a number of issues - immigration, foreign affairs and the economy - similarly returned with approval ratings of 31 percent, 32 percent and 33 percent, respectively. Unsurprisingly, then, the overall rating for his presidency sits at 38 percent of respondents calling it a success and 61 percent calling it a failure.
-------|

Economy average/compound growth # looked good - but distribution was top-heavy, as was predictable from demand-side / "trickle-up" economy, especially compounded by "industrial policy" of mostly wasteful spending, particularly on "manufacturing" which, according to last week's numbers, is still in recession.
__________

__________
#8 | Posted by LampLighter at 2025-01-10
And since then I have asked the question, ~do we want for-profit healthcare to make those life decisions for us?

Probably because you are asking the wrong questions, based on the wrong premise, despite living in a state which has Insurance Capital of the World.

Contrary to most people thinking that "other developed countries" have a "free and universal" healthcare, in reality none of them are either "free" and "universal" - people who say that either don't know that they are paying for it, how and how much they are paying for it, or that the "right" to something doesn't guarantee [timely] access to it.

People dreaming of "free all-you-can-eat" healthcare in "other countries" have never lived, worked or "experienced" healthcare systems there or don't realize that many of them are going broke and costs keep going up - because "not-for-profit" model (IOW, losing money on product/service) is generally not sustainable, unless subsidized by other sources.

Also, you conflate ["for-profit"] medical insurance [industry] with ["for-profit"] healthcare [sector] - "solving" (or destroying) private insurance won't provide cheaper, better or faster healthcare.

Most people in the US are insured through their employers and are satisfied with their insurance choices, despite "free and universal" proponents using occasional anecdotal "issues" to rage about "for-profit" healthcare system.

www.nytimes.com - Most Americans Say They Have Good Health Insurance, Polls Show | Less than 1 percent of likely voters ranked health care as their top issue. - NYT, 2024-12-13

I remember, a notable silence from the GOP supporters here.

... And besides the wrong questions, you are also asking the wrong people.

Before fork-lifting national healthcare, why not ask some "laboratories of democracy" - states - to implement the "one-size-fits-all all-you-can-eat free and universal healthcare [insurance?]" and show these no-good "greedy, for-profit" insurance companies and the people how government can get it done "faster, cheaper, better"?

Apparently, some tried and failed to find a version of government-provided "healthcare/insurance" - like "Single-payer" or "Medicare for All" - which guaranteed the "right" to healthcare but wouldn't bankrupt the state, e.g.:

www.latimes.com - Single-payer healthcare meets its fate again in the face of California's massive budget deficit - LAT, 2024-05-16

en.wikipedia.org - Vermont health care reform

cohealthinitiative.org - What's going on with universal health care in Colorado? - 2019-02-16
|------- "An insurance card doesn't necessarily guarantee you access either" ... Vermont, a state that spent years working on a single-payer health care system, serves as a cautionary tale. ... Likewise, the cost of Amendment 69 was estimated at $36 billion per year, more than the entire state budget. -------|

www.vox.com - Colorado single-payer initiative failure - 2017-09-14
|------- ... voters rejected ... single-payer system by... 79 percent to 21 percent -------|

Try understanding why these failed... before trying to "fix" something that actually works and people like. "Grass is always greener..."
__________

__________
#5 | Posted by sitzkrieg at 2025-01-09 08:19 AM
If you get that number direct from a consultant companies API, it's algorithmic.
If a human consultant looks at a spreadsheet using the same formula and tells you a number, it's not algorithmic.

Oh, horrors, "algorithmic" spreadsheet automation! If government has the problem with "algorithms," what are government lawyers going to do about "AI"?

As I've said before, there is nothing here that cannot be done using data from Zillow, Redfin or many other public, private, corporate and other sources and basic spreadsheet. How do people "in the wild," without PMCs, compare housing / rental prices?

RealPage, and their numerous competitors, simply provide automated service (and related services, like tenant screening, billing, etc.) for something any landlord can already do by using Zillow or Redfin, Apartments.com, Homes.com, etc. and using average $/sqft, average rent prices in given area ('premium' / 'discount') and basic spreadsheet formulas.

This is yet another Elizabeth Warren's "stupid populist consumer protection trick" which is going to "protect" no one, but burnish her "cred" with financial/economic illiterates, and blame poor government policies and decisions on "gouging" and "greedy" corporations.

Let's hear the rest of the story, from the sane, non-political, market side:
www.ajc.com - Cortland settles with DOJ in RealPage rental price-fixing probe - AJC, 2025-01-08

|------- "In December, RealPage said the antitrust division told the company it had ended the criminal probe.

Cortland spokeswoman Rachel Prude confirmed in an email Tuesday that the company's employees were no longer under investigation.

"We believe we were only able to achieve this result because Cortland has invested years and significant internal resources into developing a proprietary revenue management software tool that does not rely on data from external, non-public sources," Prude wrote. "We look forward to putting the federal government's investigations behind us."

RealPage said it will "vigorously" defend against the claims.

"We are disappointed that the DOJ, just one month after abandoning its baseless criminal investigation and less than two weeks before the agency changes hands, is expanding its civil lawsuit related to use of revenue management software," RealPage said.

"Fewer than 10% of all rental housing units in the U.S. use RealPage software to suggest rental prices, and our software recommendations are accepted less than half the time, as the DOJ has acknowledged." ...

"This lawsuit will do nothing to make housing more affordable..."
-------|

www.skadden.com - Scadden Arps:
|------- Courts are not required to accept the DOJ and FTC's arguments " and the courts that have considered them so far have not...

The use of algorithms to access and analyze vast amounts of information about market conditions, including competitor pricing, may in fact be profoundly pro-competitive, facilitating more informed, competitive pricing that better reflects supply and demand in the marketplace...
-------|

this is why people hate lawyers.

Yep! And to "amend the complaint," this is why people hate politics and government [lawyers], who can bankrupt or force them into stupid "settlements," unless they are big enough to fight. That's why companies merge, buy out competitors - "go big or go home [bankrupt]".
__________

__________
#17 | Posted by catdog at 2025-01-07 09:43 AM
The S&P 500 gained more than 23% this year after rising 24% in 2023. The back-to-back gains of over 20% is the best performance for the benchmark index since 1997 and 1998, according to data from FactSet. The S&P 500 is up by around 53% over the past two years, after a poor performance in 2022 that saw the index fall 20%.

The S&P 500 was up approx. 66.8% during the reign of Dotard I. During Diamond Joe Biden's presidency, the S&P is up 73.5%, even with a drop of 20% in 2022. Somehow that's bad.

Fantastic facts and NUMB3RS! Which point out exactly the follies of Bidenomics - money went "from the bottom up and from the middle out" / i.e., "rich got richer, poor got poorer" (see my previous post about how money flows in the demand-side/"trickle-up" and the "industrial policy" inflationary economies) and why less than two upper quintiles (people like "us"!?) could feel good about THEIR economy (i.e., people falling behind on their bills, credit, especially ones "on fixed income" who can't keep up with inflation but, with people living longer, are increasing in number, and they vote).

Also, as you pointed out the "market" had a huge downturn right after wasteful bi-partisan 2021 $1.2T Infrastructure bill (and "manufacturing" hasn't recovered since), until October 2022, - that's when OpenAI made a ChatGPT announcement and sparked Mag7 "irrational exuberance" of market bubble... Exactly what did "Dark Brandon" (who, as every President, wants/gets the "credit") have to do with that "market cycle"? Where would this market (and the "economy") be without "AI"?

Also, despite this wonderful market, what was consistently swept under the rug by "mainstream" media and ignored by Dem campaigns, that for a long time at least two out of three people (in the lower quintiles) thought the country was "on the wrong track" and the "economy was in recession" and that Biden's negative "job approval/disapproval" ratings

As you well know, "the market is not the economy" (especially "cap-weighted indexes" like SPX) and in recent decades has been more and more divorced from, or even inverse to, the economic realities... because of the Fed and interest rate considerations. "QE forever" has conditioned the market dependency on lower interest rates. Often, what's bad for the economy was deemed good for the market, because, e.g., the Fed's policies and interest rates are tied to perceptions of economy and "weaker economy = lower interest rates", which are good for the market etc. So "weak" economy is good for the market, "strong" economy is good for the market - "heads you win, tails you win."

That's why "Are you better off than you were 4 years ago?" in the last few weeks of the campaign resonated so well with the less-affluent class, while Harris campaign was having glam-time with entertainment celebrities and giving interviews to friendly media that "nobody" cared to watched.

Remember Covid? The unemployment rate went up a little more than a lot. It's now at 4.2%, which is close to full employment.

Unemployment (U-3) rate, as flawed a NUMB3R as it is (much better range of indicators of job market conditions exist), obviously, came down pretty much everywhere else in the world since COVID. Yes, all Presidents claim credit for "low" #s, and blame "others" for "high" #s. Hell, in Russia it's 2.3% (along with inflation of 9% and CB rate of 21%) -

Obsessing about / comparing against COVID (un-)employment rates is just another example of "lying to yourself" - the sooner Dems stop doing that to themselves (and the rest of us), the faster they can start forming new, centrist, leadership that works for the people, not just know-nothing spoiled privileged brats.
__________

__________


Correction - dates:

thehill.com - Carville on Harris loss - 2025-01-02

thehill.com - Carville:
"We didn't make it about voters... They don't want an election about you or your opponent. ... we lost that."
- 2024-01-04
__________

Drudge Retort
 

Home | Breaking News | Comments | User Blogs | Stats | Back Page | RSS Feed | RSS Spec | DMCA Compliance | Privacy | Copyright 2025 World Readable