A new US Republican thread 2016

[Scarpia]

Just thought this post by Jacobolus deserves a repost. Three years ago and basically 100% correct on every point.

At the very least it will be an amusing, if cringeworthy at times, presidency.

“Amusing” in the same way it’s “amusing” when your baby just crawled out the window and is currently falling 10 stories to the pavement below, but hasn’t quite hit the ground yet. Or “amusing” when your dog just ate 2 pounds of chocolate, but you didn’t catch it in time to pump his stomach so he’ll soon overdose and die a painful death. Or “amusing” when you get sexually assaulted by an orange man with bad hair, but you can’t go to the police or the newspapers because he owns the whole town and just threatened to have your family killed.

There’s a significant probability that in defanging the EPA, cutting funding for alternative energy, defunding climate research, eliminating or scaling back pollution controls on transportation and power generation, and promoting coal/oil/gas extraction and distribution, Trump will single-handedly push runaway climate change past the point of no return, rendering a significant proportion of the world’s land area uninhabitable in 100 years, and driving the largest mass extinction event of all time.

More proximately, there is a significant chance of a serious economic crisis sometime in the near future, to which Trump’s policy responses will likely be terrible, leading to a severe global economic recession. The US Federal Reserve has no more room to cut interest rates, and the GOP is unlikely to pass a large financial stimulus bill. So the after-effects in the US will be similar to the trajectory of Europe over the past 10 years. This recession could easily be worse than the previous one if not handled well.

A Trump presidency will cut taxes on the wealthiest, and work to help them siphon money out of the country and hide it in overseas tax shelters, making up the difference by regressively increasing taxes on the working class and middle class. It will loosen regulations on the financial services industry, leading to fraud, abuse, and continuing (worsening) large-scale indebtedness.

A Trump presidency backed by a GOP congress and supreme court will give increasing powers to police, intelligence services, and the military, scooping up increasing amounts of private communication and using them to go after journalists, dissidents, et cetera. He thinks we should open up libel laws to make it easier for him to silence critics. Note that Trump is currently embroiled in dozens of lawsuits for fraud, breach of contract, and the like.

As president Trump has promised to intentionally target families of “terrorists” for extra-judicial killing, bring back torture even in cases where it doesn’t work, “bomb the shit out of” civilians in countries he gets into conflicts with, start a war with Iran because their sailors made rude gestures at Americans on a passing boat, charge US allies around the world protection money by threatening to stop defending them, suggested we should drop out of NATO and other alliances, given Putin a green-light to do whatever he likes in Eastern Europe and the Chinese to do whatever they like in the South China Sea, and recommended that many more countries should have nuclear weapons. He apparently asked multiple times “why don’t we use our nukes”, and has recommended modernizing and expanding US nuclear stockpiles.

* * *

I feel very sad for the places which voted for Trump. They are extremely vulnerable and are going to get fucked hard by his policy agenda. Between being exploited/defrauded by unscrupulous lenders and businesses, having their towns wrecked by industrial pollution, having all their local businesses driven out of business by large-scale competitors from far away, having their schools and other local institutions and services defunded driving anyone with any ambition to leave and never come back, losing federal funding for social safety net programs and potentially losing retirement benefits, losing healthcare when their local insurers decide it’s unprofitable to do business someplace with non-functioning state support, having costs of food rise if/when undocumented immigrants are blocked from doing agriculture work and in some places having their agriculture industries severely strained thereby, having costs of everything else driven up by tariffs and trade wars, et cetera. Their 40+ year-ago blue collar industrial jobs are gone for good: modern industry is done with robots, not masses of unskilled and semi-skilled human laborers.

Essentially nothing Trump has promised will do anything to help anyone in economically broken and culturally irrelevant interior states full of angry uneducated old white men with guns. At least he won’t take their guns away, I guess.

[Lbibass]

Just thought this post by Jacobolus deserves a repost. Three years ago and basically 100% correct on every point.

At the very least it will be an amusing, if cringeworthy at times, presidency.

“Amusing” in the same way it’s “amusing” when your baby just crawled out the window and is currently falling 10 stories to the pavement below, but hasn’t quite hit the ground yet. Or “amusing” when your dog just ate 2 pounds of chocolate, but you didn’t catch it in time to pump his stomach so he’ll soon overdose and die a painful death. Or “amusing” when you get sexually assaulted by an orange man with bad hair, but you can’t go to the police or the newspapers because he owns the whole town and just threatened to have your family killed.

There’s a significant probability that in defanging the EPA, cutting funding for alternative energy, defunding climate research, eliminating or scaling back pollution controls on transportation and power generation, and promoting coal/oil/gas extraction and distribution, Trump will single-handedly push runaway climate change past the point of no return, rendering a significant proportion of the world’s land area uninhabitable in 100 years, and driving the largest mass extinction event of all time.

More proximately, there is a significant chance of a serious economic crisis sometime in the near future, to which Trump’s policy responses will likely be terrible, leading to a severe global economic recession. The US Federal Reserve has no more room to cut interest rates, and the GOP is unlikely to pass a large financial stimulus bill. So the after-effects in the US will be similar to the trajectory of Europe over the past 10 years. This recession could easily be worse than the previous one if not handled well.

A Trump presidency will cut taxes on the wealthiest, and work to help them siphon money out of the country and hide it in overseas tax shelters, making up the difference by regressively increasing taxes on the working class and middle class. It will loosen regulations on the financial services industry, leading to fraud, abuse, and continuing (worsening) large-scale indebtedness.

A Trump presidency backed by a GOP congress and supreme court will give increasing powers to police, intelligence services, and the military, scooping up increasing amounts of private communication and using them to go after journalists, dissidents, et cetera. He thinks we should open up libel laws to make it easier for him to silence critics. Note that Trump is currently embroiled in dozens of lawsuits for fraud, breach of contract, and the like.

As president Trump has promised to intentionally target families of “terrorists” for extra-judicial killing, bring back torture even in cases where it doesn’t work, “bomb the shit out of” civilians in countries he gets into conflicts with, start a war with Iran because their sailors made rude gestures at Americans on a passing boat, charge US allies around the world protection money by threatening to stop defending them, suggested we should drop out of NATO and other alliances, given Putin a green-light to do whatever he likes in Eastern Europe and the Chinese to do whatever they like in the South China Sea, and recommended that many more countries should have nuclear weapons. He apparently asked multiple times “why don’t we use our nukes”, and has recommended modernizing and expanding US nuclear stockpiles.

* * *

I feel very sad for the places which voted for Trump. They are extremely vulnerable and are going to get fucked hard by his policy agenda. Between being exploited/defrauded by unscrupulous lenders and businesses, having their towns wrecked by industrial pollution, having all their local businesses driven out of business by large-scale competitors from far away, having their schools and other local institutions and services defunded driving anyone with any ambition to leave and never come back, losing federal funding for social safety net programs and potentially losing retirement benefits, losing healthcare when their local insurers decide it’s unprofitable to do business someplace with non-functioning state support, having costs of food rise if/when undocumented immigrants are blocked from doing agriculture work and in some places having their agriculture industries severely strained thereby, having costs of everything else driven up by tariffs and trade wars, et cetera. Their 40+ year-ago blue collar industrial jobs are gone for good: modern industry is done with robots, not masses of unskilled and semi-skilled human laborers.

Essentially nothing Trump has promised will do anything to help anyone in economically broken and culturally irrelevant interior states full of angry uneducated old white men with guns. At least he won’t take their guns away, I guess.

It's truly eye-opening he was able to predict all of that with such accuracy. The fight against LGBTQ+ rights is especially frighting as well.

[Wazrach]

The fight against LGBTQ+ rights is especially frighting as well.

Really now?

[abrahamstechnology]

Come on.

[PAPA_Benzene]

The fight against LGBTQ+ rights is especially frighting as well.

Really now?

Literally in all existance, why is there politcal poop on a keyboard forum? Jesus christ go on ResetEra for godsake.

[swampangel]

Literally in all existance, why is there politcal poop on a keyboard forum? Jesus christ go on ResetEra for godsake.

You're in the off-topic forum. Nobody dragged you here.

[flowerlandfilms]

Literally in all existance, why is there politcal poop on a keyboard forum? Jesus christ go on ResetEra for godsake.

You're in the off-topic forum. Nobody dragged you here.

Off topic but on point.
As a progressive I feel all vintage keyboards should be automatically registered to vote when they turn 18.

[abrahamstechnology]

I feel that the right for switches to bear click leaves shall not be infringed.

[mr_a500]

First they take away the beam springs with solenoid, saying "Nobody needs a solenoid these days!" Next, they take the regular beam springs, then the pingy Alps, then all clicky switches, then linears and finally the rubbish rubber domes. Next thing you know, were in a God-damned touchscreen society where only criminals have keyboards.

[User101]

First they take away the beam springs with solenoid, saying "Nobody needs a solenoid these days!" Next, they take the regular beam springs, then the pingy Alps, then all clicky switches, then linears and finally the rubbish rubber domes. Next thing you know, were in a God-damned touchscreen society where only criminals have keyboards.

Apple is working on a technology, something like a touchscreen but with "key feedback"
Yeah, just imagine if they put that shit in their computer. I guess the butterfly switches are no better anyhow.

[Wazrach]

I think the worst crime is saying "it's just a keyboard".