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Trump's Second Term

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Andy_Ross said:
Not a cult

Bessent: "The president is the most economically sophisticated president certainly for 100 years, perhaps in history."

https://twitter.com/x/status/1940803544153477353
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That's the opinion of a fellow who doesn't know who pays tariffs, so he was unable to answer that question when testifying before Congress. You'd think a Secretary of the Treasury would know things like that, but he doesn't.

I'm told he once knew stuff like that, but ignorance of economics having become one of the most important qualifications for the position he now holds, he put serious effort into becoming ignorant of the subject.

Andy_Ross said:
How many?

Trump: "Very importantly for Iowa, this bill rescues over 2 billion family farms from the so-called estate tax or the death tax."

https://twitter.com/x/status/1940931854246216056
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Hard to argue with his numbers. He is, after all, the guy who saved the lives of 258 million Americans during his first hundred days in office.
 
Poll: Most feel democracy is threatened and political violence is a major problem

NPR said:
Ahead of the July Fourth holiday and the country's 249th birthday, three-quarters of Americans say democracy is under serious threat, according to a new NPR/PBS News/Marist poll.

Nearly three-quarters also see politically motivated violence as a major problem.

The findings come at a time of great political volatility. In the midst of Donald Trump's second term as president, the country is polarized and sharply divided.
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The overwhelming majority of respondents — 76% — said democracy is under serious threat. That's statistically unchanged from April of this year, but down significantly from August of 2023 when 87% overall said there was a serious threat to democracy.

Republicans are largely responsible for the decline, going from 88% saying there was a serious threat — while Democrat Joe Biden was president — to 57% now.

In this most recent poll, 89% of Democrats, 80% of independents and 57% of Republicans said there is a serious threat to the future of democracy. Respondents did not specify what they see as constituting that threat, and Democrats and Republicans likely have very different reasons for saying so.
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There are many other interesting items in the poll:
  • Politically motivated violence is seen as a major problem
  • There is little confidence in political leadership
  • Republicans largely approve of their own party in Congress, while Democrats are split on theirs
  • Who belongs in the country is a major political divide
  • People continue to say Trump should follow court orders
  • There's a split over Iran attacks
Full story at NPR
 
If I was living in the States, I would be extremely concerned over the massive budget given to Immigration and Customs Enforcement. This is starting to look chillingly like the Gestapo: a massive police agency that has little respect for the law and little oversight. They've already built one concentration camp in an inhospitable location, and the director of the Department of Homeland Security has publicly said she wants to see one in every state.

Congress Gives ICE More Money Than It Could Have Ever Imagined

The New Republic said:
It’s impossible to overstate how much power ICE just got from Trump’s budget.

Donald Trump’s budget bill, which was passed by the House of Representatives Thursday and now awaits the president’s signature, will balloon immigration and border enforcement spending astonishingly—so much so that Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s budget will overshadow every single federal law enforcement agency, and U.S. spending on immigration enforcement will surpass all but 15 countries’ military budgets.
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According to AIC Senior Fellow Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, each year, ICE will now be flushed with more cash than the Federal Bureau of Investigations; Drug Enforcement Administration; Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives; U.S. Marshals Service; and Bureau of Prisons combined. In fact, with the bill’s passage, Reichlin-Melnick told Democracy Now!, ICE will become the largest federal law enforcement agency “in the history of the nation.”
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newrepublic.com

Congress Gives ICE More Money Than It Could Have Ever Imagined

It’s impossible to overstate how much power ICE just got from Trump’s budget.
newrepublic.com newrepublic.com
 
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No, Rep Luna, the 4th of July was not brought to you by the right to bear arms (and then only if you're in a well-regulated militia.) I will grant you the no taxation without representation part.

(Here's hoping the Bluesky link works for everyone. I know I've given other posters grief for posting raw links!)

https://bsky.app/profile/jaylyall.bsky.social%2Fpost%2F3lt3k5scpk22r
 
Blue Mountain said:
No, Rep Luna, the 4th of July was not brought to you by the right to bear arms (and then only if you're in a well-regulated militia.) I will grant you the no taxation without representation part.

(Here's hoping the Bluesky link works for everyone. I know I've given other posters grief for posting raw links!)

https://bsky.app/profile/jaylyall.bsky.social%2Fpost%2F3lt3k5scpk22r
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Taxation without representation was a big deal, but let's not forget either that the tea act, a major factor here, might properly be called a tariff.
 
Andy_Ross said:
Not a cult

Ambassador Monica Crowley: "A new birth of freedom is exactly what we're experiencing right now, because our current president is a direct inheritor of the founders' heroic character -- a profoundly brave man driven by the noble fight for American freedom, guided by the hand of God."

https://twitter.com/x/status/1940926588041765253
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I want to gather some propaganda statements from Iran, russia, and North Korea, and some from , and challenge people to tell them from the more recent statements by American bootlickers. The quote above could've come straight out of the propaganda bureau of Iran or some other theocracy.
 
This has been an exhausting week. As of the close of the day on July 3, my positive/negative score on the Trump administration stands at -912.

3 July 2025
The Republicans have passed their budget bill; following are implications over the next decade. I’ve scored all of them at -2 because most are not supported by a majority of the US population and have been widely condemned within the US.
-2: Gives an immediate and massive $175 billion to Immigration and Customs Enforcement, more than most world militaries
-2: Cuts to Medicaid could remove medical care from 12-17 million people ($1T cut; does not kick in until 2026)
-2: Cuts to SNAP could put 40 million people at risk of food insecurity ($185-$230 billion cut)
-2: 16 million children could lose school meals
-2: Cuts to Medicaid could force the closure of hundreds of rural hospitals
-2: Cuts to clean energy programs could destroy the American clean energy sector
-2: Tax changes could transfer as much as $1 trillion in wealth from the 99% to the 1%
-2: Tax cuts could add an extra $4 trillion to the US debt over and above what was forecast before the bill

In other news:
-1: Trump insults Jamie Raskin (House, D-Maryland) on Truth Social [351]
-1: Trump gloats that “hundreds of Billions of Dollars in Tariffs are filling up the coffers of Treasury” [352]
-1: Trump: “Out of 77 economists [in a poll] I came in second. I want to find the guy that came in first.” [353]
-1: Trump claims 2 *billion* Iowa family farms have been rescued from the inheritance tax
-1: Bessent: “The president is the most economically sophisticated president certainly for 100 years, perhaps in history.”

References

351. Trump: “Rep. Jamie Raskin, a third rate Democrat politician, has no idea what is in our fantastic Tax Cut Bill, nor would he understand it if he did. This DOPE has been consistently losing to me for YEARS, and I love watching his ugly face as he is forced to consistently concede DEFEAT TO TRUMP — And tonight should be another of those nights. Raskin is a bad politician, and a TOTAL LOSER!”

352. Billions of dollars taken *out* of the US economy, because importers pay the tariffs.

353. Which poll, run by who, and published where?

354. Trump: “Very importantly for Iowa, this bill rescues over 2 billion family farms from the so-called estate tax or the death tax.”
 
As I understand it most, if not all the effects of the cuts in Trump's bill will take effect after the mid-terms, so the Xmas Voting Turkeys won't realise until it's too late, worse they'll probably be saying "The Dems said all these bad things would happen and they haven't so the Dems are liars". Then the axe will fall.
 
JUST IN: Mike Johnson is dropping TRUTH NUKES right now on the floor.

"See, we are the first nation in the history of the world that acknowledged our rights do not derive from government, they come from God."

"You see those words up there? It says, 'In God we trust.'"

"We're different. We're distinct. We're exceptional, because we acknowledge that right there."

https://twitter.com/x/status/1940834784487375163
 
Andy_Ross said:
JUST IN: Mike Johnson is dropping TRUTH NUKES right now on the floor.

"See, we are the first nation in the history of the world that acknowledged our rights do not derive from government, they come from God."

"You see those words up there? It says, 'In God we trust.'"

"We're different. We're distinct. We're exceptional, because we acknowledge that right there."

https://twitter.com/x/status/1940834784487375163
Click to expand...

Good to know his grasp of history is as good as his grasp of jurisprudence.
 
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