The Next President is...

[brabus]

1 hour ago, GrndPndr said:

et voilà !

Mexico president makes deal with Trump to pause tariffs for a month, put 10K troops on border

Maybe it’s not 4D chess, but in less than 24 hrs from my initial post regarding tariffs on our allies, we have wildly succeeded with one of them. CA will soon follow. 
 

I’m not in blind support of tariffs, but I am open minded and so far in the last month (including before he took office) Trump has been wildly successful with them, whether via actual implementation or threat of. So far we’ve seen tons of leftist doomsdayers proven wrong multiple times on this front. Remains to be seen how a long term tariff strategy works, but the “we’re so fucked!” cries on X, etc. are laughable.

Edited February 3 by brabus

[gearhog]

2 hours ago, GrndPndr said:

et voilà !

Mexico president makes deal with Trump to pause tariffs for a month, put 10K troops on border

I had been cautiously optimistic about what this admin could/would accomplish.

I know this is a bad analogy, but for some reason the only one that comes to mind: I was in high school in 1992 when the rules were changed to allow the "Dream Team" play in the Olympics. I couldn't wait to see how they would do. When they were finally on the court, it was just overwhelming domination of every player from every country they competed against. They outmaneuvered their opponents seemingly every play of every game. Amazing to watch. America ended up in first place, over 100 points in every game, average 50 point spread.

This may or may not continue, but it's pretty awesome right now.

[gearhog]

The hilarity never ends. Just wow. 🤣

https://x.com/clashreport/status/1886489936028696939

[HeloDude]

For some reason I don’t seem to care what the progressives think about Trump or his team/what they’re doing for the country, when those same progressives over the last decade have told us how evil the US is…

[uhhello]

42 minutes ago, HeloDude said:

For some reason I don’t seem to care what the progressives think about Trump or his team/what they’re doing for the country, when those same progressives over the last decade have told us how evil the US is…

Agreed.  They are more than welcome to come up with better ways to get it done but the track record for the progressive side isn't quite spectacular.  Also, they seem to be doubling down on going farther left of center based off the DNC elections.  

[Lord Ratner]

5 hours ago, GrndPndr said:

Yes, most folks don't understand that Trump is using these as a leverage for negotiations.  I'll argue in that vein (sts) that it is working so far, he has reactions from everybody who's been "tariffed."  Otherwise he would be like the previous POTUS, who sat there with hi d*ck in his hand, doing nothing.

To be fair to the other side, it's not actually clear that he's using these solely as a negotiating tool. When the president talks about the wonders of President McKinley, the only way to interpret that is that the tariffs are part of a plan to fund the government. Now I happen to support that plan, but it certainly pours water over the argument that Trump is just trying to twist everybody's arm with tariffs. At a certain point, unless we want to that inflation run wild, increase income taxes, and all the other stuff that will be required to bring our debt under control, tariffs are a pretty great way to fund your government. There's a reason so many places use them.

[Sim]

And Canada folded. 

[gearhog]

I had to open up my FlightRadar account to see if this was true.

Rivet Joint orbiting near Sinaloa, Mexico. F yeah.

 

Edited February 4 by gearhog

[StoleIt]

2 hours ago, Sim said:

And Canada folded. 

[gearhog]

A week ago:

 

An hour ago:

[brabus]

That would be awesome, take my money El Salvador!

[Banzai]

But to what end? If we are bringing back manufacturing, shouldn’t tariffs stand? Or is that not really what’s happening? Gives real GWB mission accomplished vibes, something that has happened before:

Lets his base think he did something because they won’t look into it deeply, but in reality nearly all of the Canadian promises (including the $1.3B of spending) were made during the Biden admin back in December, and the Mexican promises are mirrors to to previous Biden concessions (that didn’t work) as well.

[tac airlifter]

3 hours ago, Banzai said:

But to what end? If we are bringing back manufacturing, shouldn’t tariffs stand? Or is that not really what’s happening? Gives real GWB mission accomplished vibes, something that has happened before:

Lets his base think he did something because they won’t look into it deeply, but in reality nearly all of the Canadian promises (including the $1.3B of spending) were made during the Biden admin back in December, and the Mexican promises are mirrors to to previous Biden concessions (that didn’t work) as well.

The recent agreement is only a 30 day tariff pause, during which time we confirm Mexico & Canada are meeting terms.  

[ClearedHot]

Hearing there is a bit of a crisis at AFPC as a lot of civilians are quitting over the return to work mandate.  Didn't realize they had that many work from home types.  Also hearing the staff at TPS got hammered, they are all remote.

[dream big]

1 hour ago, ClearedHot said:

Hearing there is a bit of a crisis at AFPC as a lot of civilians are quitting over the return to work mandate.  Didn't realize they had that many work from home types.  Also hearing the staff at TPS got hammered, they are all remote.

Whelp, maybe that’s why they always jack up orders and it takes them forever. 

[17D_guy]

1 hour ago, dream big said:

Whelp, maybe that’s why they always jack up orders and it takes them forever. 

I retired admits the craziness of COVID (out in June). Once they all went remote all the delays in civilian hiring ceased. It was amazing how fast we got position descriptions approved.

 

Additionally there are people that can still provide for the mission but are medically unable to be in the office. This is one of my wife's workers, he works on the F-22 test program. Probably going to have to quit and go on disability now.

[ClearedHot]

It was reported today that a staggering 38% of the FBI's field agents were assigned to investigate the Jan 6th.  All the crime in the country and the FBI dedicated that much of our capability to investigate some idiots running around the capital and one police officer who died of a heart attack. 

[brabus]

2 hours ago, ClearedHot said:

Hearing there is a bit of a crisis at AFPC as a lot of civilians are quitting over the return to work mandate.  Didn't realize they had that many work from home types.  Also hearing the staff at TPS got hammered, they are all remote.

Good, don’t let the door hit you in the ass on the way out. If we could cut 80% of the civs, we’d be much better off. 

[SocialD]

Wonder how many of the AFPC folks were in office and then moved away when they went remote.  Pretty hard to move back right now with prices/interest rates where they are currently sitting.  To 17D's point, another Guard unit in the state found that many of their office workers became MORE productive when they went remote.  While I'm sure plenty need to be back in the office, this once size fits all mandate is hard to back. 

 

Lots of examples of people being more productive than in the office, where they have many distractions and people bogarting their time.  My GF WFH for a company that is a contractor for the FAA.  They've found their workers are much more productive with WFH.  She'll hop on the computer an hour prior to normal work day, because that's when the dogs wake us up, and she'll knock out a bunch of stuff.  She'll also jump on the computer after work hours, if I get called out on a trip, just to get ahead.  Many of these things would not happen if she was required to go into office.  Nevermind she'd have to quite because that office is 9 hours away.  She already quit one job because they tried to make her go in office, which was over 3 hours away.

 

I'm with Brabus in that there are plenty who need to go away.  I fear that all the ones that do go away are the ones we want to keep.  The ones who are a drain on their offices will never leave, because they'd have to actually produce out in the civilian market.  

Edited February 5 by SocialD

[HeloDude]

This is much more about reducing the size of government/federal employees than it is getting people back into the office.  But since it’s extremely difficult to fire/layoff a federal employee, getting them to leave on their own sounds like the next best thing.

Do we really need 2.4 million federal employees?…and that’s not even counting the military or those working for the post office.

[uhhello]

27 minutes ago, HeloDude said:

This is much more about reducing the size of government/federal employees than it is getting people back into the office.  But since it’s extremely difficult to fire/layoff a federal employee, getting them to leave on their own sounds like the next best thing.

Do we really need 2.4 million federal employees?…and that’s not even counting the military or those working for the post office.

Yeah, I also think thats the strategy employed here but also agree that the good ones are going to leave.

[brabus]

1 hour ago, SocialD said:

I fear that all the ones that do go away are the ones we want to keep.

That’s a valid concern/negative of the cut with an axe approach. The perfect solution would be to honestly assess which jobs actually *need* to be in person and which jobs have data to support better productivity in office vs. remote. There are plenty of jobs out there that are legitimate for remote work, but as helodude pointed out, this is probably just a mechanism to reduce the bloated gov, which needs to be done, but certainly sucks to lose good ones in the process. 

Edited February 5 by brabus

[Lord Ratner]

So I guess we're going to take over Gaza. I got to admit, this new season of the Trump show has been *exciting* 😂🤣

[uhhello]

9 minutes ago, Lord Ratner said:

So I guess we're going to take over Gaza. I got to admit, this new season of the Trump show has been *exciting* 😂🤣

Hard pass.  How can this be a good thing.  

[17D_guy]

I read in a book once about the UN taking over the holy sites and providing peacekeepers from the Vatican who respected both sides and reduced the tension and violence. I thought that was a good idea, then I turned 13 and watched the news.

I think (and hope) he was talking out his ass again. We "resettle" the population there and put troops...likely to make Iraqi look like a brief holiday.

That said I could be wrong, have been before and will be again. I'm not rooting against Donny, I don't ever hope America fails. But this one...big oof.

All that said, I'm wondering how the Muslim population in Michigan, and protest students are now feeling for not voting for Genocide Joe?

EDIT - Also wondering how this fits in with the "America First" policy? I could be cynical and point out real estate developer, and Jared the Kush saying Gaza was good beach front property...but that seems way too on the nose. Again, prob just shit talking...I hope.

Edited February 5 by 17D_guy