2024 OT Election Day Thread: Donald Trump elected POTUS, GOP wins Senate and House of Representatives

That's why I have some people on ignore here.

@Stevo_the_gamer: Since when did GameSpot have a far right infestation in the moderator ranks? Fandom really needs to clean house, methinks.

It was a collective effort approximately 15 years ago... the collusion was keen as it was villainous...it's always a conspiracy.

Same and why I block some people on Social Media :)

Everyone's dead because of woke.

https://x.com/Acyn/status/1885396140465807378

@uninspiredcup: Entire administration is nothing but bigots.

Peacefully, yes....as in, no violence during their time. Expressing penitence.....no, not required, but would be nice.....they don't, they do their full time.

I mentioned the SCOTUS because you had noted in one of your first posts post pardons that you were hopeful they would rectify what Trump did (unless I read that wrongly)? Mind you, when I speak of harsh sentences against those who've assaulted LE, I'm not including things such as resisting arrest.....biting, kicking, struggling.....acts of frustration and resistance to getting arrested, not willful malice directed at an officer with the intent to truly inflict harm. There's a distinction and it needs to be demonstrated, and punished, accordingly. But I don't qualify resisting arrest as necessarily attacking a police officer.

Anyway......what is the general gist amongst your professional peers regarding these pardons, Stevo? Even being in Cali, I'd imagine law enforcement strongly swings conservative, so what exactly are the excuses that're being thrown about to justify pardoning cop beaters by those whose voted for it?

Massive data purge underway now so hopefully things are at least being archived. Musk also now having access to data.

An unelected immigrant is basically in charge of the government.

The speed run continues

I'm not sure honestly what you're referencing, I do recall speaking to bojangles about hoping the Supreme Court would step in to prevent any blanket pre-emptive pardons like the egregious actions by former President Biden (which set an awful and disgusting precedent)...Nevermind the cowardice of the action minutes before stepping down as the President. But to be fair, it's hard to levy much (if any) blame towards the old man since he likely didn't even know what he had for breakfast. If any reform is to be made, I hope Biden's actions and Trump's pardons can instigate some much needed reform towards that abuse of the executive power (I don't think a President or a Governor should have the power to pardon anyone ever). If you want a conviction overturned, it's the power of the courts to interpret that decision. Not the executive.

Ah, a caveat to violence displayed against law enforcement. That's a fascinating minimization. So if it's "acts of frustration" which, by happen stance, inflict potential/attempted GBI or serious injury on an officer, then the punishment must be less compared to the specific intent to "truly inflict harm." What's your measure to prove specific intent when inflecting willful injury to another? I'm curious on what the distinction is--because the law does not distinguish that in California unless it's a homicide (ignoring capital murder). Perhaps where you reside?

I haven't heard any discussion about it actually. Typically, the grumblings I hear come from our FBI partners who are largely left-leaning compared to HSI who are more of a law enforcement arm (and thus right leaning).

This Friday night purge is nuts, but it is overshadowing the treasury official being canned, supposedly for refusing to fork over to Musk access to the payment systems it uses to send money out to everyone that gets federal money. I'm suspecting his federal spending freeze was intended to allow Trump to use the federal treasury to fund initiatives that won't pass Congress. His plan is to control the governments largest coffers. He'll no doubt want the federal reserve to open the coffers to him as well next, despite opposition from Fed leadership, I'm sure he's already plotting to remove him.

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/ckg0m79gm10o

The china ass leaker, announced that they will only give 10% tariffs to china (instead of the promised 60%)

And 25% to Mexico and Canada.

I would bet all my savings that china paid him massively through his meme coin scam.

This guy has been attacking USA allies and protecting USA rivals since he got in to power.

He is also threatening tariffs on the EU.

He is the strong big man when it comes to bullying allies, but when Russia and china comes with their big armies, he lays down in all four, opens up his buttcheaks and sucks their fingers while they penetrate his asshole.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2025/01/31/trump-tariffs-will-prices-go-up-down/78094724007/

This is the analysis of the products that will have their prices affected by the tariffs.

I believe this will be the USA "Brexit moment", an orgasm of patriotic self affirmation of a large number of people that barely understand how the economy works, followed by the depressed confusion 5 years in to the future, wondering who, but the Great leader, is to blame, for the master plan not having worked out.

So computer chips will probably go up in price.

Barely understand how the economy works indeed. I have seen some of the MAGA/America First types here get baffled when I mentioned some introductory concepts in economics. Calling them backwards.

And it is not just random people either, who demonstrate the inability to grasp even the basics: Their pick for the HHS doesnt even understand the basic tenets of how US healthcare is financed. The fact that I, a foreigner who is NOT even a doctor would be a better pick than RFK is deeply troubling. And I should not even qualify for an internship at the HHS.

And as yeah, the economic outlook for the US looks bleak. The tariffs may do significant damage to not only the US economy, but also US interests abroad.

@appariti0n: the wonderful thing about hyperbole is that you don't have to risk exposing all the things you don't know about any given topic, since everything can always be dismissed as joke

CDC websites and datasets are being taken down.

https://edition.cnn.com/2025/01/31/health/cdc-websites-gender-lgbtq-datasets/index.html

Is this normal? I dont remember something like this after Biden took power.

They're taking down all kind of sites. No, it's not normal. Also, they're firing people they don't have the authority to fire. Trump wants ass kissers that will let him be a dictator and maga is too in love to see this.

@LJS9502_basic: "Schedule F" of Project 2025. Remove internal resistance with Yes Men.

@mattbbpl: @LJS9502_basic:

As I had suspected. I don't remember the medical community making a big fuzz when Biden got in power about medical websites being taken down. But I was also not as involved back then either.

Some Trump supporters tried to assert that it was just a natural thing with the change of administrations.

Edit: And yes, I have gotten way more involved. Especially since January 20th. Since it is clear that the Trump Admin may very well pause or make significant cuts to funding for research on infectious disease. I decided to do my part and fund them instead. I have already donated 50 dollars, and I am considering donating more.

Money that I had set aside for a 50XX card, may instead go to fund medical research instead. Given how lame the 50XX generation has been. Also if I do, I will definately let a certain person on the System Wars board know :P Who has been mocking me for my 1070 for years now.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2025/02/01/tariff-mexico-canada-trump/?utm_source=reddit.com

Welp tariffs are officially going into place for Mexico, Canada, and Chy-na. I hope you right wing goons are happy with the incoming ridiculous rise in cost of living and crashed economy after another pointless trade war.

@Vaasman: there is also the fact that attacking the economy of Mexico will increase immigration from there.

One of the things that was keeping Mexican immigrants in place for the last few years was that it was easy to get a job in their home country.

Also the funniest thing is that he gave the highest tariffs to allied countries while giving the lowest tariffs to a systemic rival.

After protecting TikTok, this really looks like china found a way to pay their way in to being supported by trump.

Probably bought his crap crypto coin.

@Vaasman: If they could read, they'd be very upset.

Are you arguing that an elbow thrown in the struggle to resist being handcuffed that led to the accidental concussion of an LE officer is the same as that officer being thrown down to the ground and repeatedly kicked in the head, and that to grant such distinctions of violence is a “fascinating minimization“ of it?

Huh.

That’s a curious position to take, and an even more worrisome implementation in nuances of the law’s application. The measure, quite obviously, is (or should be) intent, and determinations of that are found within the intricacies of each violent encounter that cannot be addressed nor answered in generalized inquiry, only parsed through the lens of strict legal scrutiny on a case by case basis. How do you expect me to answer further past that? There are many variables in coming to determinations of intent in the committal of differing acts and levels of violence, but that, again, stems from intense and thorough legal scrutiny.

Of course there are caveats to expressions of violence, against LE or otherwise. That’s in no way a minimization of the destruction or harm violence inflicts, it’s simply demonstrating an understanding of the framework in which it is inflicted. That’s extremely relevant.

Yes, the crime remains the same. The crime is a general intent offense in California so the intent does not matter but merely the result. For example, for resisting an officer... it requires the act to be willful. The state defines that as "Someone commits an act willfully when he or she does it willingly or on purpose. It is not required that he or she intend to break the law, hurt someone else, or gain any advantage." It also holds common sense as well, it is reasonable to expect the likelihood of injury when someone uses their elbow (or any part of their body) to willfully (and violently) resist an officer.

It's not a "nuance" of the law, it's well established case law that's even codified in jury instructions and the California penal code. Feel free to read an example of California jury instructions here.

You are carefully crafting specific scenarios to create what you think should be nuance when violence is applied to a peace officer and that officer is injured. In fact, you are creating excuses for when violence can be applied to a law enforcement for a lesser punitive offense. Again, how does your state charge resisting arrest or injury to a peace officer/law enforcement officer?

This trade war... with our allies (Canada, Mexico).

Good god! I did not vote for this (no really, I voted Harris).

I hope...

@nintendoboy16: trump has to stop all those ilegal Canadian immigrants that are ruining the country. He has no choice.

Why won't Canada control the border?

They just let all the polar bears cross the border without checking them. Americans can't take it anymore.

So someone fighting off someone in self-defense or protection of another is equal to someone assaulting someone else to rob them, and would be punished the same?

Admittedly you have me outclassed here in the knowledge of the law and I'm no lawyer, so I'm not going to challenge you too hard on this, but it makes me wonder: on what basis is the severity of violence wagered? Is all violence, no matter the reason committed, up and to the point of homicide, given equal punitive measure under (CA) law? That's difficult for me to believe. With that logic, wouldn't all murder be classified equally? What's the difference if the result is the determinant?

I live in PA, and I'm unaware as to the exact strictures of the law regarding this.

Shh, you're not supposed to notice that stuff.

We're supposed to be wasting time talking about big-ticket nonsense, not pointing our the incredibly shady shit happening with zero oversight in the server rooms.

Meanwhile, I'm just wondering whether Musk or Zuckerberg gets first dibs on access to all of the US' social security information.

So, after having read up on this…..mitigating factors, there ya go.

Effectuated through due process, but effectively the same, no? Crime is determined by the outcome, ok, yet the severity of the sentence is wagered in light of mitigation. Fair enough, just a different way of achieving the same goal.

So would you still claim that violent crimes mitigated to the lesser punitive constitute a “fascinating minimization“ of violence? i’m not attempting to excuse or minimize any violence, but the fact is, violence occurs across a broad spectrum of circumstances as to why it should be accorded differently in punishment meted.

Remember a few months back, when I was saying Musk would leverage DOGE to do whatever he wants with the US Treasury, and you guys were all like "nah, it's cool, he's just an advisor"?

Elon Musk’s Team Now Has Access to Treasury’s Payments System

I think that's even worse than I predicted, tbh.

Did Trump not learn his lesson after the disasterous last trade war in which he had to bail out farmers...

Or does he just not care?

@Maroxad: this tariffs are way more encompassing than the previous one and include all 3 major trade partners.

Trump also says he will include the EU.

This will definitely generate much more inflation than the previous tariffs.

And this time will also dissolve the USA political clout, as these tariffs are being imposed on allied countries.

So why would other countries cooperate with the request of the USA now ?

This second trump presidency will be considerably worse than the first and will facilitate china taking over the USA, because the USA previously relied on a net of allies to contain china. Now the allies may align with china to escape the bullying of the USA.

It baffles me how some people thought the US would be respected under Trump again.

Trump has destroyed pretty much all US goodwill in less than 2 weeks.

@Maroxad: the vast majority of people that voted for trump probably don't understand long term consequences.

They are simpletons that enjoy the idea of projected strength and short term gain.

They don't think in terms of long term ramifications, how reliability affects reputation or how alliances and stability facilitate economic development.

Simple dramatic actions to generate short term economical benefits are the rule.

Trump won't live long enough to see the consequences of killing his country trustworthiness and sending their allies away.

Their followers won't ever be able to understand the link between these actions and consequences 10 years from now.

This will be a new Brexit.

When the stupid rule, the long term prospects don't matter.

What even are his goals here? To force allies to buy useless american shit they don't need or want?

This is generally how almost everybody thinks, humans are hardwired to think about short term rewards. It's why stuff like many diets fail along with many other goals and why Trumps dumb shit is so effective.

That and threat, with easy answers to threat indoctrinated through repetition.

Dickheads like Tucker Carlson are like cult leaders to them, can feed them any old shit on the fly. Nothing say really matters to them, they are directed.

@uninspiredcup: not everybody. People that think short term are perpetually poor.

People that think long term are also common, they save a percentage of their income, invest, purchase property and rent it to others.

Other people only think about what will happen one week from now.

I am not saying all trump supporters are short term thinkers (although I am sure a large proportion are), some of them are just so emotionally invested in trump, that they will avoid thinking about this disaster, or create excuses.

@rmpumper: my guess is that he is trying to renegotiate nafta again.

The issue is that the last re- negotiation (usmca) was signed by trump and he himself said it was the most fair trade deal ever.

It's hard to come back from that.

So the new excuse is fentanyl and immigration.

But you can see it's not actually a real reason by the fact that Canada has been included. Everyone knows Canada is not a major source of ilegal immigrants and drugs.

And even when it comes to Mexico, trade policy does nothing to prevent fentanyl or immigration.

Fentanyl is way too concentrated and small to be able to be fully found and stopped at the border, and can easily be produced within the USA as it's a synthetic drug.

Immigration actually decreases when Mexico is in a good economical position as most immigration is economical in nature.

So, what he is trying to do is bully his way in to an unfairly favourable trade deal.

And I am not sure it's impossible to do it, as both the Canada and Mexico economy are much smaller than the USA.

So short term wise, after the inflationary period, it might work.

But you have now created two enemies in the border, that are now willing to cooperate with your geopolitical rivals when before they were favoring you.

So, as most trump desitions, this might have a short term benefit, but has already set a much bigger long term problem.

And this is without taking in to consideration inflation.

Even when they realise there might be consequences, I think they've got this naive delusion that any negative consequences will only hurt the people that Trump promised to hurt - namely Democrats and minorities. They're awfully trusting people, Trump supporters.

It's also wild to think that they're suddenly such strong fans of big government and big corporations running the place.

If Trump was convinced to sell everyone's personal data to Facebook and Twitter and Amazon tomorrow, he could. They're friends. Nobody would see it happen, and nobody could stop him. There would be no punishment for it. This is the stuff right wingers used to be petrified of, and now that it's more possible than ever, they're actively cheering it on.

Much like Trump before him. The new (shadow) president lies about my country, to fearmonger over refugees and immigrants.

smh... These are gonna be 4 long years.

I see you met my harassers.

So many of them have been on some extreme elimination or non-medical application of Keto diet for a few months, experience short term weight loss, keep replying to my posts, as well as those of other empirical vegans. Then they disappear after a few months. Likely because their diet was only ever sustainable short term.

But yes, my facetiousness aside... you see people generally ignore long term goals. It is one reason why Climate Change, despite being an existential threat to humanity, alongside biodiversity collapse and disease is often ignored by politicians. And at best only given lip service. With peopole prioritizing providing modern comforts, rather than making even the most trivial sacrifice to counter climate change... case in point: The Dutch Farmer protests.

Pretty sure the republican and indeed Brexit type hostility towards education is by design. As the uneducated are easier to control and manipulate. Which can be used by authoritarians (which is one reason why many european countries teach critical thinking skills and media literacy in school).

At this point I am starting to think trump is a long term china plant.

I already understand why he is so supported in china now.

I am wondering what can be done to counter the bullying? Perhaps Canada, Mexico and the EU can support the brics initiative to replace the dollar. That would reduce a lot of the power of consumption of the USA and bring a degree of balance to the power dinamics.

Another aspect would be to better integrate their economies together and over tax USA tech champions to allow local rivals to take the social media and video distribution roles. They may not be as good, but they would be localy produced. China has already done that with TikTok, bilybily, weibo, etc.

Another option would be to force a sale of the local operations of those platform to a local company and operate them locally.

The EU most certainly has the technical personnel to do it as well.

@nirgal: I feel like that would have leaked earlier if he was. Trump usually says the quiet part out loud, and he's really good at leaving a paper trail for his crimes.

Still, Trump is handing world supremecy to China on a platter. The US is an incredibly unreliable trading partner at the moment and it has withdrawn all of its influence in world forums, so the opportunity is there for the next aspiring empire to take centre stage.

I can't believe he passed any of his classes in business school TBH. I think it's a bit of his stupidity and his thinking everyone will back down to him and his ego won't allow him to change course. And, of course, contrary to what maga believes, he doesn't give a damn about anyone but himself.

Russian plant. He was in Russia back in the 70s and you can guarantee they have some dirt on him.

@LJS9502_basic: There's no dirt in existence that could possibly hurt him at this point. He's doing this because he wants to destroy the West.

His ego is huge. That's why he won't back down from the tariffs. Maga Congress is complicit because they know this is bad for the country.

@Maroxad: @LJS9502_basic: No one is this stupid. It's malicious. It almost has to be.

Some of the bad policy, like tariffs on allies, could MAYBE be explained by him watching too much Fox News. But some of what he has done has been performed with surgical precision.

It's malicious.

P2025?

I'm kinda believing he is into it to save and enrich himself, people behind P2025 consider him a cheap and useful tool to get their agenda through.

Respected.