I’m all in for Trump randomly deporting immigrant citizens, sending a mob at the capitol, breaking the lives of millions of the minorities and the poorest, being best friend with a pedophile, insulting our allies and threatening annexion of other coutries, but crashing The Market??? That’s not ok. He’s suppose to help ME make money by exploiting others, if I have to lose money it’s not fair!! ------- What a stupid broken evil country.
That’s the conservative MO, in my experience. Don’t care until it personally affects them. That’s why they’ll beat their chests about the sanctity of marriage, but get divorced. Or talk about protecting life, until their mistress needs an abortion.
I mean true but also even people who have a shred of empathy don’t always show it until they get a firsthand story. Partially human nature, but yes mostly dog shit moral philosophy giving them an excuse to not care about others.
so many people literally either have no clue about what his actual policies are, are have been so indoctrinated by our shitty schooling that their view of the world is incredibly warped
Sure, but a mindset change has to start somewhere. A wild thought, but maybe they’ll invest time, if only a little, in the other side and slowly but surely realize how screwed up they used to think?
It is no issue tho. From spending enough time on americanized internet i have come to the conclusion that everyone in the U.S. is more or less secretly a pedophile.
“Numerous impeachments? That’s fine.
Convicted of numerous felonies? No that’s fine, lol.
Adjudicated rapist? That’s fine as well, she was probably asking for it, women amirite!!.
Six bankruptcies and multiple failed businesses, you say? Yeah that’s also fine because it was the other people and not him.
Proven record of scams, even on charities? No, that’s just good business.”
…
“Wait, he’s messing with my money now? This is intolerable, this is disgusting. How unfair, oh woe is me!!!”
Yeah, this guy’s not redeemed. The last and worst thing a MAGAt can do is take off their fucking red hat and put on a blue one like nothing they did happened.
Fuck that. Carve “MAGA” into this douche’s forehead and then he can rejoin sane society.
Because the problem isn’t gone. Their opinions haven’t changed, they are just finally seeing personal impact from them. These people are going to fall for the same stupid shit another Trumpalike touts in 2032. They need intensive reeducation, not to be welcomed and treated like nothing happened.
Maybe this gatekeeping is why Trump won in the first place. The right approach, IMO, is to meet people where they are and convince them to join your side based on policies they support.
Harris should have been railing against tariffs, throwing Biden under the bus because he, too, continued and expanded tariffs. She should have explained the consequences for tariffs and why free trade is good for everyone. Conservatives like the idea of fewer restrictions, so appeal to that.
But no, she muttered something about “price gouging” with no real plan to fix it. She said she’d largely keep doing what Biden did, when people obviously wanted change. She didn’t even try to meet those concerns, her campaign was basically, “I’m not Trump,” which almost worked until she made it clear that she’s basically just Biden 2.0, but from a different demographic.
Don’t let perfect be the enemy of good. Court people based on common ground instead of purity tests.
She had a plan to fix the price gouging though. Fucking hell, I agree with the rest of your post but seeing people continue to lie about her campaign is so frustrating
Sort of? But “price gouging” isn’t the issue at all, the issue is inflation and lack of supply. If you limit how a company can charge for an in-demand product (say, eggs), there’s much less incentive to find more supply (say, imports from another country). It’s nonsensical.
But I don’t think that’s why she lost. I think she lost because she said in an interview that, given hindsight, she wouldn’t change anything if she were in power instead of Biden. That’s a giant slap in the face to the average voter who saw a ton of problems during his administration and want to see something change to address those problems.
It often takes a personal crisis to get people to doubt the cult/white supremacist group/multilevel marketing scheme they’ve been a part of for a long time
Yes, but it still doesn’t explain why they vote GOP. Dems have an economic record of faster growth, lower unemployment, better stock market performance etc, and still they vote GOP.
From a non-us perspective, I would tend to call it the Fox Effect. Capitalist brainwashing of the under-educated, who lack the basic capacities of intellectual self-defense. When you control all the media you can make people believe that a black president asking for dijon mustard on a burger is a big deal, while a rich white president being a convicted rapist and best friend with the most notorious pedophile of the past 50 years is anecdotal, or fake, or a witch hunt, or “look, the woke are transitioning your kids”. Americans have been brainwashed to believe they the strongest, toughest, smartest people and that it’s practically in their genetic so they dont need to educate themselves. Hopefuly to good thing of pedo-don being president is that it will lead to the downfall of the US.
Aren’t Americans responsible for their own retirement fund via various investment portfolios? Seeing your retirement money or college fund for your kids disappearing is bound to ruffle some feathers.
Yes, to an extent, though most don’t actually take that responsibility seriously.
We have Social Security, which will provide some amount of retirement based on how much you’ve put in, and it gives more weight to the first contributions (i.e. poorer people) than last contributions (i.e. wealthier people). Basically, it works like this (link w/ more details if you care:
90% of the first 1.2k/month taxable earnings
32% of the next ~$6k/month taxable earnings
15% of everything up to the cap
That’s not the amount of the benefit, but the amount of income considered for your benefit, and only for your top 35 years of earnings. This gets run through a calculation that determines your Social Security benefits. People who put in more get more, but people who put in less get a higher ratio of the amount they put in. It gets further complicated by marital status and whatnot.
Maybe? This is the data I see so far (here’s a related NBC article if you don’t trust Newsweek). If the Trump admin pisses off old people, they’re going to be screwed in the midterms. It seems the main change will be to service, not benefits (so longer call wait times, slower website updates, etc). SS was given a 2.5% COLA update this year, so AFAICT benefits aren’t being cut at all.
From the NBC article:
According to a May report from the Office of the Inspector General, people were already experiencing prolonged wait times working with the SSA. The report noted that in-office appointments could be completely booked up for more than 40 days in the future and that it could take months for promised services to be delivered. The report said 65% of Social Security beneficiaries were unaware that there were online services for the agency.
That seems to be the main impact, not actual benefits.
Process counts as much as benefits. Difficulty making payments is a form of sabotage. Even delaying payments counts as a cut because some ppl will die before having received a payment they would have.
Why else would Musk be messing with SSA? “Efficiency” ? Why not take him at his word? A couple choice quotes from that article:
“Most of the federal spending is entitlements,” Musk told the Fox Business Network. “That’s the big one to eliminate.”
"Musk said Monday that federal entitlements are “a mechanism by which the Democrats attract and retain illegal immigrants by essentially paying them to come here and then turning them into voters.”
I didn’t see anything related to making payments, only customer support. So signing up for benefits, changing deposit accounts, etc. Those things can largely be resolved through the SSA’s self-service portal, so there’s a good chance states and charities will step up to fill in the gap.
But it’s still not clear what exactly the changes are. They claim to be targeting “fraud and waste,” but I haven’t seen a breakdown of the tangible changes other than “some offices were closed.” I generally don’t take Musk at his word, and haven’t for years (or even ever), so I’m looking for some credible journalism to go over it in detail. If it was a serious issue, we’d see a ton of highly credible news agencies making a big deal out of it. Given that we don’t, either the investigation is on-going (this was pretty recent) or it’s not an issue.
So I guess we’ll have to wait and see what the impact is. So far, it doesn’t seem like there have been any major impacts yet, other than some more wait times for getting an in-person appointment (which isn’t necessary at all to sign up for benefits).
“Most of the federal spending is entitlements,” Musk told the Fox Business Network. “That’s the big one to eliminate.”
Right, and that requires legislative action which Trump has repeatedly said he’s not going to consider, because that’s political suicide.
"Musk said Monday that federal entitlements are “a mechanism by which the Democrats attract and retain illegal immigrants by essentially paying them to come here and then turning them into voters.”
That’s not how any of this works, and Musk knows it. To get SS, you need to have a Social Security number, which you can’t get on many legal visas, not to mention entering illegally. You also need proof of 40 quarters of paying into Social Security, meaning you need to have legally paid taxes for 10 years (non-consecutively). Voting is also constitutionally limited to citizens, not even permanent residents, so there’s absolutely no basis for that either.
In short, 100% of that statement is wrong. The best explanation for him making it is to justify additional ID checks on the Social Security system, which is honestly probably a good thing due to how much Social Security numbers get abused. So it might end up being a net positive long term, though it’ll cause some issues in the short term as people navigate any changes that get made (esp. poor and tech illiterate people who may not have the resources to navigate it).
I want to make it extremely clear that I’m not a fan of Trump, Musk, or DOGE, I just happen to like some of the side-effects of broken clocks being right twice/day (these changes should mostly go through Congressional approval, not EO).
The quotes are not there for their accuracy, but to illustrate Musk’s outlook and intentions. He sees all entitlements as a bad thing per se and will break whatever norms and rules he can get away with to get rid of them, citing great replacement lies as a justification to the far right and citing “efficiency” as a sop to the less-far-right. Whether he can get away with it remains to be seen, but my original comment was an off-the-cuff “Musk is trying to destroy social security”, not a detailed argument about what has happened so far. I think, given the experience of so many other government agencies with Musk and DOGE, that this is a fair statement for casual posting.
Whether he can get away with it remains to be seen
Sure, and Trump will be ultimately responsible for it. Musk is his lapdog, and ultimately the buck stops at the President’s desk. And that means issues in the mid-terms if Trump lets Musk get away with it.
This country and a lot of the world has a me first mentality. A lot of people can look past some really fucked up shit if it’s not directly causing them harm.
But what this shows is that even for those who want an evil system that benefits them, this administration is a disaster. There’s literally nothing good about it, even for greedy, evil capitalists.
I’m all in for Trump randomly deporting immigrant citizens, sending a mob at the capitol, breaking the lives of millions of the minorities and the poorest, being best friend with a pedophile, insulting our allies and threatening annexion of other coutries, but crashing The Market??? That’s not ok. He’s suppose to help ME make money by exploiting others, if I have to lose money it’s not fair!! ------- What a stupid broken evil country.
This is pretty much what I get from that. Not a shred of empathy.
That’s the conservative MO, in my experience. Don’t care until it personally affects them. That’s why they’ll beat their chests about the sanctity of marriage, but get divorced. Or talk about protecting life, until their mistress needs an abortion.
Even then, they don’t learn empathy. “Well my case is different” they say while on welfare
The only moral abortion is my abortion.
https://youtu.be/yTwpBLzxe4U - Craig T Nelson, ladies and gentlemen, formerly known as Coach.
“I’ve been on foodstamps and welfare. Did anyone help me out? No.” – Craig T Nelson.
There you go folks. And don’t forget to keep yer govmint mitts off my medicare!
I mean true but also even people who have a shred of empathy don’t always show it until they get a firsthand story. Partially human nature, but yes mostly dog shit moral philosophy giving them an excuse to not care about others.
so many people literally either have no clue about what his actual policies are, are have been so indoctrinated by our shitty schooling that their view of the world is incredibly warped
Lack of empathy means an abundance of evil.
Sure, but a mindset change has to start somewhere. A wild thought, but maybe they’ll invest time, if only a little, in the other side and slowly but surely realize how screwed up they used to think?
Some surely will. Let’s just hope enough people will follow.
He’s not just friends with a pedo, court docs confirm he himself is a pedo.
It is no issue tho. From spending enough time on americanized internet i have come to the conclusion that everyone in the U.S. is more or less secretly a pedophile.
“Numerous impeachments? That’s fine.
Convicted of numerous felonies? No that’s fine, lol.
Adjudicated rapist? That’s fine as well, she was probably asking for it, women amirite!!.
Six bankruptcies and multiple failed businesses, you say? Yeah that’s also fine because it was the other people and not him.
Proven record of scams, even on charities? No, that’s just good business.”
…
“Wait, he’s messing with my money now? This is intolerable, this is disgusting. How unfair, oh woe is me!!!”
“This shit is affecting me, ME!! He crossed a line I can’t follow him out”
Yeah, this guy’s not redeemed. The last and worst thing a MAGAt can do is take off their fucking red hat and put on a blue one like nothing they did happened.
Fuck that. Carve “MAGA” into this douche’s forehead and then he can rejoin sane society.
So you want to alienate everyone who might be interested in changing the outcome of the next election? Why so much gatekeeping?
Because the problem isn’t gone. Their opinions haven’t changed, they are just finally seeing personal impact from them. These people are going to fall for the same stupid shit another Trumpalike touts in 2032. They need intensive reeducation, not to be welcomed and treated like nothing happened.
That’s not going to happen.
Maybe this gatekeeping is why Trump won in the first place. The right approach, IMO, is to meet people where they are and convince them to join your side based on policies they support.
Harris should have been railing against tariffs, throwing Biden under the bus because he, too, continued and expanded tariffs. She should have explained the consequences for tariffs and why free trade is good for everyone. Conservatives like the idea of fewer restrictions, so appeal to that.
But no, she muttered something about “price gouging” with no real plan to fix it. She said she’d largely keep doing what Biden did, when people obviously wanted change. She didn’t even try to meet those concerns, her campaign was basically, “I’m not Trump,” which almost worked until she made it clear that she’s basically just Biden 2.0, but from a different demographic.
Don’t let perfect be the enemy of good. Court people based on common ground instead of purity tests.
She had a plan to fix the price gouging though. Fucking hell, I agree with the rest of your post but seeing people continue to lie about her campaign is so frustrating
Sort of? But “price gouging” isn’t the issue at all, the issue is inflation and lack of supply. If you limit how a company can charge for an in-demand product (say, eggs), there’s much less incentive to find more supply (say, imports from another country). It’s nonsensical.
But I don’t think that’s why she lost. I think she lost because she said in an interview that, given hindsight, she wouldn’t change anything if she were in power instead of Biden. That’s a giant slap in the face to the average voter who saw a ton of problems during his administration and want to see something change to address those problems.
Am I allowed to upvote all of you?
Nope, but I do accept fun memes, dealer’s choice.
It often takes a personal crisis to get people to doubt the cult/white supremacist group/multilevel marketing scheme they’ve been a part of for a long time
Yes, but it still doesn’t explain why they vote GOP. Dems have an economic record of faster growth, lower unemployment, better stock market performance etc, and still they vote GOP.
From a non-us perspective, I would tend to call it the Fox Effect. Capitalist brainwashing of the under-educated, who lack the basic capacities of intellectual self-defense. When you control all the media you can make people believe that a black president asking for dijon mustard on a burger is a big deal, while a rich white president being a convicted rapist and best friend with the most notorious pedophile of the past 50 years is anecdotal, or fake, or a witch hunt, or “look, the woke are transitioning your kids”. Americans have been brainwashed to believe they the strongest, toughest, smartest people and that it’s practically in their genetic so they dont need to educate themselves. Hopefuly to good thing of pedo-don being president is that it will lead to the downfall of the US.
You think their media tells them that?
You’re just now realizing people are selfish assholes? 2016 wasn’t proof enough somehow?
Aren’t Americans responsible for their own retirement fund via various investment portfolios? Seeing your retirement money or college fund for your kids disappearing is bound to ruffle some feathers.
Yes, to an extent, though most don’t actually take that responsibility seriously.
We have Social Security, which will provide some amount of retirement based on how much you’ve put in, and it gives more weight to the first contributions (i.e. poorer people) than last contributions (i.e. wealthier people). Basically, it works like this (link w/ more details if you care:
That’s not the amount of the benefit, but the amount of income considered for your benefit, and only for your top 35 years of earnings. This gets run through a calculation that determines your Social Security benefits. People who put in more get more, but people who put in less get a higher ratio of the amount they put in. It gets further complicated by marital status and whatnot.
The maximum Social Security benefit for someone starting taking it at 67 is $3,822/month, and the maximum for someone at 70 is $4,873 (data current for 2024). Your average retiree is probably seeing something closer to $2k/month though.
In other words, Social Security does exist, but you’ll want some of your own retirement savings as well for a more comfortable retirement.
Ofc Musk is trying to destroy social security as we speak
Maybe? This is the data I see so far (here’s a related NBC article if you don’t trust Newsweek). If the Trump admin pisses off old people, they’re going to be screwed in the midterms. It seems the main change will be to service, not benefits (so longer call wait times, slower website updates, etc). SS was given a 2.5% COLA update this year, so AFAICT benefits aren’t being cut at all.
From the NBC article:
That seems to be the main impact, not actual benefits.
Process counts as much as benefits. Difficulty making payments is a form of sabotage. Even delaying payments counts as a cut because some ppl will die before having received a payment they would have.
Why else would Musk be messing with SSA? “Efficiency” ? Why not take him at his word? A couple choice quotes from that article:
I didn’t see anything related to making payments, only customer support. So signing up for benefits, changing deposit accounts, etc. Those things can largely be resolved through the SSA’s self-service portal, so there’s a good chance states and charities will step up to fill in the gap.
But it’s still not clear what exactly the changes are. They claim to be targeting “fraud and waste,” but I haven’t seen a breakdown of the tangible changes other than “some offices were closed.” I generally don’t take Musk at his word, and haven’t for years (or even ever), so I’m looking for some credible journalism to go over it in detail. If it was a serious issue, we’d see a ton of highly credible news agencies making a big deal out of it. Given that we don’t, either the investigation is on-going (this was pretty recent) or it’s not an issue.
So I guess we’ll have to wait and see what the impact is. So far, it doesn’t seem like there have been any major impacts yet, other than some more wait times for getting an in-person appointment (which isn’t necessary at all to sign up for benefits).
Right, and that requires legislative action which Trump has repeatedly said he’s not going to consider, because that’s political suicide.
That’s not how any of this works, and Musk knows it. To get SS, you need to have a Social Security number, which you can’t get on many legal visas, not to mention entering illegally. You also need proof of 40 quarters of paying into Social Security, meaning you need to have legally paid taxes for 10 years (non-consecutively). Voting is also constitutionally limited to citizens, not even permanent residents, so there’s absolutely no basis for that either.
In short, 100% of that statement is wrong. The best explanation for him making it is to justify additional ID checks on the Social Security system, which is honestly probably a good thing due to how much Social Security numbers get abused. So it might end up being a net positive long term, though it’ll cause some issues in the short term as people navigate any changes that get made (esp. poor and tech illiterate people who may not have the resources to navigate it).
I want to make it extremely clear that I’m not a fan of Trump, Musk, or DOGE, I just happen to like some of the side-effects of broken clocks being right twice/day (these changes should mostly go through Congressional approval, not EO).
The quotes are not there for their accuracy, but to illustrate Musk’s outlook and intentions. He sees all entitlements as a bad thing per se and will break whatever norms and rules he can get away with to get rid of them, citing great replacement lies as a justification to the far right and citing “efficiency” as a sop to the less-far-right. Whether he can get away with it remains to be seen, but my original comment was an off-the-cuff “Musk is trying to destroy social security”, not a detailed argument about what has happened so far. I think, given the experience of so many other government agencies with Musk and DOGE, that this is a fair statement for casual posting.
Sure, and Trump will be ultimately responsible for it. Musk is his lapdog, and ultimately the buck stops at the President’s desk. And that means issues in the mid-terms if Trump lets Musk get away with it.
This country and a lot of the world has a me first mentality. A lot of people can look past some really fucked up shit if it’s not directly causing them harm.
Yes…
But what this shows is that even for those who want an evil system that benefits them, this administration is a disaster. There’s literally nothing good about it, even for greedy, evil capitalists.
First world countries in a nutshell
to be fair i think this is pretty par for the course for people in general. not caring until things affect you directly.