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

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#47 | Posted by ClownShack at 2025-01-31 05:05 PM
I'm sure Trump is worried about his approval rating while he loots the nation and kills civil rights.

He doesn't give a damn... but Dems should - Dems / Biden / Harris lost to THAT GUY... twice! and nearly 3 times!

Maybe, just maybe there is a reason / lesson there somewhere, that Dems keep not learning? Maybe it's not what THAT GUY does, but what the Dems do [especially when they get the power]?

Because the voters prefer THAT GUY, who they clearly don't like, don't trust, don't respect, to the "best and brightest" of Dem party?

"If you always do what you've always done, you will always get what you've always got."

"Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results."
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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.
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#38 | Posted by boaz at 2025-01-30 03:02 PM
I don't know where you ... are getting your "polling" LOLOLOLOLOLOLOL

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#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:

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#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.
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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.
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#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.
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#36 | Posted by BellRinger at 2025-01-27 07:23 PM
Our political culture is stupid.

"Democracy is a pathetic belief in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance. No one in this world, so far as I know... has ever lost money by underestimating the intelligence of the great masses of the plain people. Nor has anyone ever lost public office thereby." - H.L. Mencken, Quotations from America's Critic

However, what's even more stupid to begin with, yet nearly inevitable, is having a "political culture" - today it's pretty much a substitute for / definition of "personality cult".
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#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. ...
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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.
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Donald Trump has issued an executive order that represents a direct assault on section 1 of the 14th amendment.

Ivana Marie Zelnichkova Trump - married to Donald from 1977 to 1990, US citizenship in 1988
Donald Jr - born in 1977
Ivana Marie / "Ivanka" - born in 1981
Eric - born in 1984

Melanija Knavs / Melania Knauss Trump - married to Donald since 2005, US citizenship on July 28, 2006, first naturalized citizen to become first lady.
Barron William Trump - born March 20, 2006

[After receiving U.S. citizenship] Melania sponsored her parents using the "chain migration" immigration process that her husband later repeatedly criticized. Melania and Barron maintain dual citizenship, both in the United States and Slovenia.
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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."

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... it is a major concern for ethics watchdogs.

"Ethics? We ain't got no ethics! We don't need no ethics! I don't have to show you any stinking ethics!"

Where have these "ethics watchdogs" been in the last 10 years and what did, could, can they do... except "express [major] concern"?

The "First crypto President" / "Slick Donald" strikes again...! Celebrity Apprentice 4.0 s**tshow is just starting. "You're fired! And you're fired! And you're fired!"

$TRUMP coin went to $72 in mere hours before dropping to $39. But wait, there is more!

Melania Trump posted : "The Official Melania Meme is live! You can buy $MELANIA now."

Only 15% are floated for distribution. Went from pennies to $10 in no time.

$MELANIA "coin" website and domain were created / registered just yesterday! Next on tap - $BARRON, $IVANKA, $DONJR "meme coins"?

"Drop It Like It's Hot! Drop It Like It's Hot!" - Snoop Dogg at the "Crypto Ball" in D.C.

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#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. ...
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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?

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#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. ...

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President-elect Donald Trump on Tuesday said he will create a new agency called the External Revenue Service to collect tariffs and other forms of revenue that come from foreign sources

OMG! All this time we have imposed tariffs, but were not "collecting" $$ from them? Mamma mia, now I understand why we have record trade (and fiscal) deficits!

This one weird Trump trick is genius! This man knows more about taxes than anybody ever!

Finally we will have an AGENCY to collect TARIFFS, and all kinds of deficits will just disappear!

Never mind the legislation George Washington signed on July 31, 1979 creating the US Customs Service (currently known as Customs and Border Protection Agency) that does the collections of import duties now, it's old and needs reBRANDing / re-TRUMPing... like NAFTA / USMCA, Gulf of Mexico / Gulf of America, Greenland / Trumplandia etc.

More departments / agencies = Efficiency!
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#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.

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#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.

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#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.
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Correction - dates:

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"The U.S. economy is the envy of the rest of the world..."
-- the Numbers Tell a Different Story

Isn't that what "Dark Brandon" kept saying? So if the "economy" / "employment" / "manufacturing" / "inflation" NUMB3RS are so great, why did Harris+Dems lose the election? Did no one enlighten "Deplorables" how good they have it and they owe it all to Biden/Harris administration policies? I mean, look at OUR 401(k)/IRA/Roth accounts!

So another NYT article with feel-good rehash of 'wonderful economy' ... with no effort to hear voters and their 'economies' as the inevitable result of demand-side / "trickle-up" Bidenomics - "From the middle out / from the bottom up..." money "trickle up" to those who own/control appreciable hard and liquid assets and income generators.

Maybe, looking at other NUMB3RS, it was not "the envy of 65%-70% of the people of the rest of the USA" and so they rejected and "flipped the government" just like many in the rest of the world did, regardless of what side (left/right) they were? And will flip back if not deliver - UK Labor is already deeply unpopular.