US Politics Thread 2021-24

[Rockstar]

I added this here instead of the economy thread only because this is U.S. centered and I believe the information is more important to voters than the usual stupid blue anon q anon drama..

His Spotify podcast rolled his youtube channel into one monologue.

https://open.spotify.com/show/1vF8mP...ezNN4aUoA&dd=1

[Skybird]

John Ford: "It is well enough that people of the nation do not understand our banking and monetary system, for if they did, I believe there would be a revolution."

Politicians' profession is voter bribery, and for that they need more money than they have themselves, thats why they abuse and spend the money of others, namely that of their later victims. Cutting it short, the mechanism of how to get that money, are central banks and FIAT money regimes. Both inflate the amount of currency units in circulation and help redistributing real property from the have-littles to the have-much. To wait for the Fed confronting the government therefore implies the institution will disobey the very purpose and mission it was build for. How liklely is that...?

And thats not only the FED, but every central bank there is.

Voter bribery is the name of the game, and it lured Western democracies into overspending. Personally I think the damges by now are so high and unimagibaly monumental that the system is beyond repair. Even more so since their is no insight at the politicians' level. They all do clever plans and clever words to look electable. But that is a deception only.

Debts are too high in totals. You cannot recover from them. You can only hope to delay drowning in them until you are close to your biologcally inherent death anyway. Fixing tzhe debt crisis is one fo the thigns where I indeed think that it is a totally hopeless case. In 2020, the total global debts climbed to 226 trillion dollar. Thats 256% of the total global GDP. (Source: ICF Global Debt Database 2021/22).

[mapuc]

Some of my American friends here and on FB are complaining about the high age of the Candidate.

Why do they put their vote on them ?

There must be some other candidate who is young. Like Kennedy was when he became President in 1961.

Markus

[Skybird]

Originally Posted by mapuc

There must be some other candidate who is young.

Obviously there are not legit alternatives to Biden.

Even the Dems by majority do not want him, say he is too old - but they seem to agree that they have the by far best chances with him only.

However, only running by a slogan of "I am not Trump" may be a bit too little this time for Biden to win again.

[August]

Originally Posted by mapuc

Some of my American friends here and on FB are complaining about the high age of the Candidate.

Why do they put their vote on them ?

There must be some other candidate who is young. Like Kennedy was when he became President in 1961.

Markus

As a matter of fact there's is a Kennedy currently running for president.



https://www.cbsnews.com/news/robert-...lly-announced/

[mapuc]

Originally Posted by Skybird

Obviously there are not legit alternatives to Biden.

Even the Dems by majority do not want him, say he is too old - but they seem to agree that they have the by far best chances with him only.

However, only running by a slogan of "I am not Trump" may be a bit too little this time for Biden to win again.

What a Sca...err Sensation if none of the two main candidate wins but some third independent candidate 26 years old win the election.

The chance for this is astronomical little-As you wrote earlier they, both Dems and Reps, have pumped billions of dollars into this bribery of the American voters.

Markus

[Buddahaid]

Originally Posted by mapuc

Some of my American friends here and on FB are complaining about the high age of the Candidate.

Why do they put their vote on them ?

There must be some other candidate who is young. Like Kennedy was when he became President in 1961.

Markus

Here's an historical explanation of why.

[vienna]

Originally Posted by Rockstar

Speaking of oops. I bet a Chicom/Democrat party collusion investigation is brewing. Karma really is a biatch isn’t it? low hanging fruit, any day now.

...

Like all of the other GOP "blockbuster" investigations of the past (Whitewater, Benghazi, etc., etc. ...) this "ChiCom" link will most likely end with no one in the DEMs being seriously affected, if at all, and leave the GOP with yet another embarrassing failed investigation; shouldn't be too surprising, since the GOP hooked up with the ultimate loser, Trump, and is now having to deal with their fat, orange Albatross...

The GOP is royally screwed in 2024; if the GOP puts up Trump as a candidate, they will continue to lose the White House and, mostly, have whatever tenuous hold they have on the House vanish again; Trump has already demonstrated, twice, he cannot get a plurality, much less a majority of the popular vote, even when he and the GOP made a full court press in the 2020 Election; Trump only won the EC in2016 because he gamed the Electoral System and was given a huge boost by Hillary's over-confident neglect regarding the same; Trump never was, and never will be, the choice of the majority of voters in the US, and, given the growing rumblings in his own party's ranks, he has probably even less appeal and support with the Party's voters in 2024; hell, right now, just about anyone could defeat Trump, even Clinton, if she were to face off against him again...

As of this writing, Trump seems to be the de facto nominee of the GOP in the 2024 Presidential Election. Why? Because he's gonna game the Primary system like he did in 2016. Remember, almost all the states where the GOP has Primaries, the races are 'winner takes all', meaning a GOP candidate in those states doesn't have to get a majority of the votes in those states in order to claim all the delegates for those states, he/she only has to get the most votes of any other candidate on the ballot in those states; say you have five candidates on the ballot and they equally split the vote, 20% of the votes to each, but one gets 20%+1 vote, making them the winner of all the delegate votes in that state, yet the fact is 80% of that states voters opted for someone else, hardly making the 'winner' the peoples real choice at all; Trump just has to make sure his minions can secure at least the bare minimum of a win in each state and he harvests all of the delegate votes, ensuring he will be the nominee...

...and the other way the GOP is royally screwed is if they somehow manage to prevent Trump from screwing up their 2024 prospects and deny him a nomination, you just know Trump will start a campaign of his own, probably some sort of a MAGA derivative, and siphon off votes from whoever the GOP nominates in his place; Trump's ego is too big and his penchant for vengeance to strong to allow the optic of being slighted by his own party to go unchallenged...

Watching the news about Biden's run for reelection, I wondered if Biden's move isn't just a bit of a 'rope-a-dope' against the GOP; Biden announces he's running, the the Trumpettes push for the GOP to nominate Trump, a very weakened candidate at best, and, once Trump is locked in, Biden and the DEMs find some reason for Biden to drop out and run another DEM in his place; as I said almost anyone can beat Trump in his current condition, and the GOP would be faced with having to replace Trump as a countermeasure only to then face Trump as a 'spoiler' if he decides to 'get even' with the GOP; the GOP should look long and hard at they way they intend to select their nominee in 2024...




<O>

[Rockstar]

Meanwhile as team red and team blue battle over pointless arguments, rope-a-dopes, low hanging fruit and one liners about a senile old man jacked up on Adderall to help him remember how to string two words together, his crackhead son and a load mouthed entertainer who doesn’t know when to stop talking.

Crime and Covid Set up the Next Bank Crisis
Yet another "Perfect Storm"

PETER ST ONGE
APR 15, 2023

https://stonge.substack.com/p/crime-...-the-next-bank

This week saw big announcements from major retail chains that could mean serious trouble for $11 trillion of commercial real estate, and the banks that need it.

First, Whole Food closed it’s flagship San Francisco store after just one year, citing “employee safety” — theft, violent crime, bathrooms full of needles.

Meanwhile, WalMart announced they’re closing half its stores in Chicago, also citing crime and theft. They said they were losing “tens of millions” on the stores and noted they have never made money in Chicago after 17 years of trying.

WalMart also closed its last remaining stores in Portland, laying off 600 workers after “record-breaking thefts.” The nearby Nike store was also shuttered after mass shoplifting including 15 overnight break-ins in 2 months — that’s about one every 4 days. You’d have to hire a guy just to tally up what was stolen out of the store-room every night.

The Warnings in Plain Sight

This shouldn’t have been a surprise: In December WalMart and Home Depot CEO’s both warned retail theft was hiking prices and closing stores; Home Depot said retail theft is “spreading faster than Covid.”

The epicenter is big cities, whose administration fell apart during Covid. Lockdowns immediately started driving people out of the cities, because remote workers no longer wanted to live in expensive and increasingly crime-ridden hellholes.

At one point it cost 10 times more for a moving truck from California to Texas than the other way around. Because nobody wanted to move in to California but lots of people wanted to move out.

But the stores held on, hoping things might go back to the way they were.

Now they’re giving up hope.

SFO: the new Detroit, now going Nationwide

San Francisco is particularly bad.

The crime was front and center last week when the founder of Cash App, Bob Lee, was stabbed to death on a San Francisco street. He’d actually moved to Miami to escape San Francisco’s crime, but was back in town for a one-day meeting.

Now regular people have had enough and are getting out before house prices crash — they’re already down $200,000 in San Francisco.

The city itself is draining out at record speed, turning San Francisco into a ghost town: 29.5% of offices in San Francisco are empty — almost one in three. Pre-pandemic that was 3.6% — you had to sell your first born to get office space in Downtown San Fran.

There’s now over 27 million square feet of empty office space, with millions more coming up for renewal where the tenant may just walk away.

One major developer just walked away from an $84 million project they bought in 2019 — they just gave it back to the bank. Gap sold their $80 million building for a 40% haircut, and another $250 million project is getting bids about one-quarter pre-pandemic price — a 75% haircut.

In other major cities it’s not much better: Bloomberg says nationwide vacant space is at a record high, almost 20%. So one in five offices in America are empty. Nationwide, one study predicts 10,000 stores will close per year.

Impact on Banks

And so, just a month after the March bank runs, we’ve already got a new “perfect storm” on the horizon. Because if one in five retail and commercials isn’t getting rent, the owner is going to default on his bank loan.

That comes to about $11 trillion in commercial loans outstanding — about 20 to 50 times more than the capital buffers in the entire US banking system. If trillions in commercial loans have to take 40% or 75% haircuts, we could see yet another 2008-scale crash to go with the one we’ve already got from the Fed-induced bank panics.

The bigger concern is what breaks next. Our obscenely over-leveraged ponzi industrial complex is shot through with Rube Goldberg monstrosities where it’s only a matter of time until something breaks, and the guardians don’t even understand what they’re watching.

Since the beginning of the bank crisis just a month ago, gold’s up 150 dollars — over 7% in a month. While Bitcoin’s up almost 50%. If they keep it up — which they probably will given bureaucrats are handing taxpayers and dollar-holders on a silver platter — safe-havens like gold and Bitcoin go from far-sighted speculation to must-have portfolio insurance: a lifeboat.

Thanks for reading, and subscribe for weekly updates. Choose free, or the $5 option to help keep it free for newcomers. See you next time!

[Rockstar]

Democrats Praised the 2022 Spending Levels They Now Claim Would Mean Disaster

Spencer Brown
April 25, 2023 7:30 PM

https://townhall.com/tipsheet/spence...-fall-n2622426

President Biden, officials within his administration, and Democrats on Capitol Hill have been doing their level best to attack the debt ceiling and spending reduction bill put together by House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) and his fellow Republicans.

Karine Jean-Pierre insisted last Friday that the House GOP's plan — which would raise the debt ceiling as is necessary to avoid a default while rolling spending back to FY2022 levels from just four months ago — would mean the lungs of America's children would be poisoned and Americans' bones could be "quite literally melted" by chemicals. Her claims were, of course, nonsense as were her new claims trotted out in this week's briefings.

You see, there's one big problem with the Biden administration's and congressional Democrats' attacks against spending levels in McCarthy's plan dubbed the Limit, Save, Grow Act: Those same Democrats were over-the-moon excited when they set those spending levels for FY2022. So satisfied with that level of funding, in fact, that they passed a continuing resolution to keep funding the government at FY2022 levels for the remainder of the calendar year (end of September - end of December).

For example, when Biden signed the FY2022 appropriations bill into law that set levels where McCarthy's plan would again cap them, the president said the legislation "sends a clear message to the American people that we’re investing in safety, health, and the future of Americans."

Continuing his remarks, Biden said FY2022 spending "would make education and housing more affordable for American families, support law enforcement, provide veterans world-class healthcare, prioritize mental health and substance use treatment, confront the climate crisis, and advance American leadership abroad."

[Rockstar]

San Francisco Bay Area’s economy is collapsing. Probably why California’s homelessness increased 42% while other states declined by 9%.

https://layoffs.fyi/

Government keeps on with uncontrolled spending injecting more and more currency into the money supply and causes inflation. And until people wise up to that fact YOU will keep paying the price for and the ones feeling the pain.

Jerome Powell says the Fed is ready to ‘bring some pain’ to households and businesses. ‘These are the unfortunate costs of reducing inflation’

https://fortune.com/2022/08/26/jerom...-jackson-hole/

Trying to get record inflation to come down without triggering a recession has been the Federal Reserve’s major project this year.

Though signs currently point to the possibility that high prices might be moderating, the bank isn’t about to loosen up its policy tightening, according to chair Jerome Powell. In fact, it’s likely to keep hiking interest rates throughout this year until it’s certain that inflation is in the rear view mirror.

And Americans will feel the short-term effects of that policy tightening, Powell said at a policy speech at the Jackson Hole Economic Symposium on Friday morning. “Reducing inflation is likely to require a sustained period of below-trend growth,” he said. “While higher interest rates, slower growth, and softer labor market conditions will bring down inflation, they will also bring some pain to households and businesses.”

In spite of inflation, the U.S. labor market has remained strong since the country emerged from the pandemic. Powell said that the market will have to weaken before inflation can be considered under control. “These are the unfortunate costs of reducing inflation,” he said. “But a failure to restore price stability would mean far greater pain.”

Powell added that history offers the lesson that central banks shouldn’t relax their policies too quickly in the face of falling prices and other signs of a cooling economy. If they do, they risk inflation quickly getting out of control all over again.

Inflation currently sits at 8.5% year-over-year as of July, slipping from a four-decade high of 9.1% in June. “While the lower inflation ratings for July are certainly welcome, a single month’s improvement falls far short of what the committee will need to see before we are confident that inflation is moving down,” Powell said, referring to the Federal Open Markets Committee, which convenes to make the bank’s monetary policy decisions.

In April, inflation fell to 8.3% after reaching a previous peak of 8.5% in March. But prices continued to climb in the months that followed, proving that one-time fluctuations can be misleading.

The bank will continue to use its tools “forcefully” to restore the balance of supply and demand despite the most recent positive news about inflation, according to Powell.

The Fed instituted its first interest rate hike, of 25 basis points, in March. A larger 50 point basis point hike followed in May.

When inflation proved persistent in June, the bank initiated its largest interest rate hike since 1994, of 75 basis points. An increase of the same size followed in July. The Federal Open Market Committee does not meet in August, but Powell said that a similarly “unusual” increase is possible when it meets in September.

“Without price stability, the economy does not work for anyone,” he said during Friday’s address.

[Buddahaid]

No gas pump lines yet.

[Rockstar]

So you’re waiting for longer lines at the pump? That was caused by OPEC sanctions protesting the United States’ support for Israel in the Yom Kippur War.


But thanks to naive American voters not paying attention to our congress there has been decades of unbridled government spending and increasing government debt. Thanks to those elites they just pin the pain on you. There is inflation, people are losing jobs and lay-offs, major retailers are closing up shops and moving to safer states, banks are closing, major metropolitan areas are turning into drug havens and war zones, homelessness increasing. People now turning to credit cards more than ever just to make ends meet. A corporate run on banks drying up future loans. I could go on.

[Buddahaid]

The wealthiest are getting the tax breaks on the backs of working class. Every republican president in modern history has pushed congress to cut taxes for the wealthy while cutting services for everyone else in order to make up shortfalls.

The gas line remark was a jab at Miami.

[Rockstar]

Wasn’t one of Biden’s key campaign promises to repeal the Trump tax cuts? If I remember there was great wailing and gnashing of teeth over it. So why didn’t Biden and the Democrat controlled house and senate at the time repeal Trump’s tax cuts?

Trump Tax Cuts Set to Win Staying Power as Democrats Drop Plans - Bloomberg





And now you know why the tax cuts are there and why nobody in either party will not do anything of any significance about it. And why should they when you keep voting for the same ones over and over and over and over again. Go team Rope-a-dope!


Interesting thing about the two videos is the Democrats blamed ‘they’. Trump at least had the balls to tell you the truth.