That Medium article about 34 k a year really puts things into perspective Tiny12. I appreciate it, so many times when I'm down, and I'm thinking of finally eating that bullet, I try to remind myself there are people way worse off than me out there. Last coupla months I even try to remind myself by watching this video over and over again. It's about illegal coal mining in India and how people have to do it just to survive. Living in what can only be described as a kind of hell.
Yet within hours, I start to fall into the trap of feeling despondent. In a lot of ways, we in the industrialized countries can't really see how good we have it, cause we don't have the poverty and abject horror of the rest of the world in our faces. Instead, what we have shoved into our faces is all this social media nonsense, and shit like keeping up with the joneses, never being good enough, never having enough, etc.
I've seen so much of this world, I'm still living with some form of depression and PTSD from the time I was in South East Asia decades ago courtesy of uncle Sam, that'll haunt me till the day I die. Maybe that's why I have such a love for Bangkok, cause it was an oasis of peace and sexual joy for me back then when I was surrounded by death.
It's ironic, I go back there to remember, but more than that, to forget.
If the "much worse than the worst case scenario" occurs -- you get laid off and NVDA and your other shares go to "0" (which they won't) -- you can go to Bangkok and live a pretty darn good life on social security and pensions. Now, you may not be able to afford a 2000 Baht a night bar-girl budget. BUT, Tooms found some young vixen who worships the ground he walks on and he doesn't appear to be paying her much, if anything. If he can do it you can too.
Seriously, you should get some serious exercise if you're not already. It really improves your mood.
That Medium article about 34 k a year really puts things into perspective Tiny12. I appreciate it, so many times when I'm down, and I'm thinking of finally eating that bullet, I try to remind myself there are people way worse off than me out there. Last coupla months I even try to remind myself by watching this video over and over again. It's about illegal coal mining in India and how people have to do it just to survive. Living in what can only be described as a kind of hell.
Yet within hours, I start to fall into the trap of feeling despondent. In a lot of ways, we in the industrialized countries can't really see how good we have it, cause we don't have the poverty and abject horror of the rest of the world in our faces. Instead, what we have shoved into our faces is all this social media nonsense, and shit like keeping up with the joneses, never being good enough, never having enough, etc.
I've seen so much of this world, I'm still living with some form of depression and PTSD from the time I was in South East Asia decades ago courtesy of uncle Sam, that'll haunt me till the day I die. Maybe that's why I have such a love for Bangkok, cause it was an oasis of peace and sexual joy for me back then when I was surrounded by death.
It's ironic, I go back there to remember, but more than that, to forget.
Is there any hope NVDA will ever recover? Or Goog for that matter? Or even AAPL at this point? *sigh*
Sure, NVDA is back to 120, but it's still no where near it's all time highs, FML
I'm about to sell everything fellas, so get your dry powder ready, cause almost every single time I sell, that stock will rocket. It's uncanny, sometimes within the hour. I've seen on many occasions when I buy shares of a stock, like fucking clockwork, within minutes, it will crash. So I'm feeling very down and despondent now, ready to call it quits on my positions in the Mag 7, so all of yous get ready to buy.
I don't know how people do it. Willing to take tens of thousands of Dollars in realized losses so they can get back in at a lower price, to then maybe break even months or years later? In that case, why not just hold? Keep dollar cost averaging down? Why do I have to sell? Doesn't make any sense. I get it, it's probably day traders, or people buying puts, but I'm no Jordan Belfort, I'm not a stock market whiz like Charlie Sheen in that movie, or like Rogue Trader guy of Barings Bank (anybody remember him? I'm just a schmuck that was too stupid and bought stocks in the mag 7. I am indeed one of the sheeple. A schmuck that's too scared to get into options.
But like they say, scared money don't make money. Hence I don't make money. Except in my shitty job that's already laying off people. But weirdly they haven't laid me off yet. Such is life my friends, people who want to be fired, get to stay. People who love their jobs, get fired. People who actually want to live die, while people like me who want to die, are still somehow alive.
Folks, I'm the reverse Cramer thesis embodied in human form. Buy what I sell, sell what I buy.
Chris Hayes as well as several other MSNBC hosts used to be classic "bothsiders", hanging on to the bewildering notion that Repubs love the country as much as Dems do and whatever horrific results their policies and stewardship produce is just the luck of the draw, shit happens, surely they meant well but it just didn't turn out well.
So it has been a pleasure to watch him and others finally come around to the unavoidable conclusion that those horrific results are hardly an accident and instead they are exactly what Repubs craft their policies to produce and, if there is the slightest chance that their policies won't Crash the economy and wipe out millions upon millions of jobs, then that is when they will rush in with whatever blithering, blathering Repub stewardship is required to get it back on that intended track.
Biden didn't start any war, putin did. Biden should be respected for his resistance against the russian war machine. USA used to be, and still is, a great country but I have never seen USA act so weak as it is today under trump. Trump is letting USA get bullied by russia! No other US president would have that lack of confidence in their country!
I have not seen trump end any war, all I have seen trump do is to strengthen putin and putin is not interested in peace. Ergo trump has prolonged the war at the expense of the Ukrainian people!
Churchill words still rings true to this very day: You were given the choice between war and dishonor. You chose dishonor, and you will have war!
Trump is either colluding with russia or just the worst negotiator and president the US ever had.
It's also important to note that the truth is that trump doesn't have any policies, morals or values. He's just doing the opposite of his predecessor and tries to ruin anything the former president accomplished. Spite and pettiness, that's the leading star for trump's presidency.
Claiming a vote for Trump was a vote for Peace has to be one of the most delusional, idiotic assertions anybody has ever made.
Trump declared War on America and led his violent mob of cop-killing insurrectionist "patriots" into battle on American Soil to initiate it!
For 200 plus years America had built an economy, foreign policy and standing as the World's Greatest Nation.
And now a MAGA Cult has empowered a ridiculous, fully-scripted game show host, con man, pathological liar, all-time Worst negotiator, 34 times convicted Felon and officially all-time Worst previous president to tear it apart brick by brick with absolutely zero concept of what to put in its place and a 100% certainty that whatever it is will not be as good as much less better than what they tore down.
Get a grip Tooms. Biden is not some kind of intellectual giant. He's suffering from dementia. He would have lost. You're using a similar argument with those 118,000 Muslims as election deniers use to explain how Biden purportedly stole the 2020 election. And it should be obvious to you Democrats should have run someone besides Harris. Your party has increasingly moved to the left and that's a mistake. Democrats like Bill Clinton make good presidential general election candidates. People like Kamala Harris do not. There was no way I'd vote for her because she wanted to raise the capital gains tax to 43.4%, more than the 28% rate that would maximize government revenue. And in 2020 she campaigned to ban fracking. Others had different reasons not to vote for her. If you want to win, nominate candidates with sane policies, instead of those who pander to Progressives.
The 2020 election deniers are claiming millions of fake votes, fake ballots, were laughed out of court 60 times and can not show a single shred of compelling evidence of significant election fraud.
The less than 115,000 vote swing from Trump to Harris, less than a 1 percentage point swing in just PA, MI and WI, the "Blue Wall", changing the outcome from All Blather All The Time About Tariffs to No Blather About Anything Stupid is irrefutable math based on the actual number of votes for both candidates and nothing whatsoever to do with unclaimed "election fraud" .
That irrefutable math proves beyond all possible doubt that the election was very, very close. No landslide. No Mandate.
Trump did not flip any other typically Blue State thanks to any typical Dem demographic switching to his side on any of his claimed issues of the economy, immigration, inflation, crime, what trannies do with their pee-pees, pronouns or anything of the kind except for those 3 Blue Wall states that happened to have some 400,000 - 600,000 Muslim voters whose Community Leaders made it their business to punish the Biden Administration for supporting Israel in its War in Gaza, which they conflated to mean supporting Netanyahu, who held all the cards on swinging their votes depending on when he decided to honor a cease-fire agreement.
And then it only took less than 115,000 of those angry Muslim votes out of the hundreds of thousands of them in those 3 swing states to "give the presidency to Trump."
Nobody is claiming Trump won the swing on those primarily single-issue votes due to election fraud.
Just that those were the deciding number and percentage (less than 1 point) of votes based on the Players on the Field and the uncontested math proves it.
Meanwhile, in an era of "Change" around the world, the Dems flipped House seats until the GOP now has maybe 1 to spare and my oh my so the Red States of Ohio, Montana and West Virginia elected Repub Senators. Impressive.
How many times have I replied to this? RTF. You ignore Congress, wars, a pandemic, oil price shocks, the business cycle, what's happening in other countries, Fed policy, the effects of globalization and technology on the economy, and the effects of policies that extend past presidential terms. You look only at what party the president belongs to. Republicans may have fucked up around the time of Hoover, close to 100 years ago, but since it's been the luck of the draw. The president doesn't have much effect on GDP growth or employment during his term compared to other factors.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, we know; luck of the draw, wild 100 years' long coincidences, crazy economic cycle that hates Repub presidents and loves Dem presidents, Witch's Curse on Repubs, etc, etc, etc.
Tell that to President Defund and Remove the Pandemic Prevention team leaders from those Chinese labs contrary to all expert warnings for him not to do something so dangerous and stupid.
Or is it President Blather on and on about imposing 25%-200% tariffs on our closest and best trading partners.
Or how about President Cut Taxes for Corporatons supposedly to "stimulate" the economy, create jobs and drive up GDP Growth to 3% annually, 4%, 5% maybe 6% even when the CEOs it benefited the most assured him they had no intention of doing any such thing with that windfall money and, sure enough, they were right.
Just luck of the draw. Shit happens. Any President following Obama from 2017 to 2021 would have been ranked The Worst President in USA History with the Worst Jobs Creation Since Herbert Hoover.
It was simply destined to happen to whoever won in 2016 because, hey, what about Congress, the guy who delivers coffee to the BLS Offices, Melania's latest hairstyle, oh so many other critical factors.
Chris Hayes is full of shit about half the time. He's spot on here though. One correction, the wholesale price of champagne would go up 3 X, not 2 X, showing again that math is not Democrats' strong suit.
Lutnick may have drunk the Kool Aid. Shame on Scott Bessent, he knows better.
If he's spot on here, what exactly are you complaining about? That Trump's minions don't keep their pieholes shut? Or that Trump's tariffs will hit Americans even harder than Chris suggests?
Can you (begrudgingly, of course) drop your doubletalk and finally admit that Trump is simply catastrophic for the US economy?
So now we can add Obama's historic recovery from the likewise historic GW Bush's Great Repub Recession, Economic Disaster and Massive Jobs Destruction to FDR's historic recovery from Coolidge / Hoover's Great Repub Depression, Economic Disaster and Massive Repub Jobs Destruction and Biden's historic recovery from Trump's Great Repub Economic Disaster, Repub Recession and Massive Repub Job Desstruction to your list of "nothing big or important" Winger Selective Amnesia symptoms. LOL.
Which is it that triggers this classic Winger Selective Amnesia in you? Is it the fact that every one of those classic Repub Supply-Side / Trickle-Down policies RESULTED in predictable Great Repub Depressions / Great Repub Recessions, Economic Disasters and Massive Repub Jobs Destruction or the classic Dem Recoveries, Expansions and Historic Job Gains that followed? Both?
How many times have I replied to this? RTF. You ignore Congress, wars, a pandemic, oil price shocks, the business cycle, what's happening in other countries, Fed policy, the effects of globalization and technology on the economy, and the effects of policies that extend past presidential terms. You look only at what party the president belongs to. Republicans may have fucked up around the time of Hoover, close to 100 years ago, but since it's been the luck of the draw. The president doesn't have much effect on GDP growth or employment during his term compared to other factors.
They are just going with what they were fed in the media about it at the time.
The same way they to this day think one of the best Presidents of all time, Joe Biden, "didn't know who he is, where he is or what he is doing". LOL. They are slaves to whatever spin the MSM feeds them without opening their eyes and ears to what is clearly and easily observable as well as fully reported if they take the time to focus on it beyond the spin.
The idea that a president is supposed to be ushing into the Oval Office the latest movie star hottie to fuck and suck him without worry about it leaking into the headlines is the stuff of the old Pentouse Forum articles aimed at a 14 year old boy mindset.
Especially a President like Bill Clinton who had to fend off Nude Grinbitch's constant Repub attempts to thwart and reverse the Great Dem / Clinton Economic Recovery from 12 years of Reagan / Bush mismanagement and skyrocketing debt and deficits. A recovery that began a year before Grinbitch and his Repubs took control of Congress and with historic economic legislation in 1993 that did not get a single Reoub vote.
So Clinton was supposedly somehow a sexual slacker for not making sure a hotter intern than a 21 year old Monica Lewinsky had reason to go in and of the Oval Office throughout the day without raising alarm and occasionally give him a free blowjob, is it?
LOL. Yeah. Right.
For goodness sake! It's a joke Tooms. We've established that I would fuck a donkey. Monica Lewinsky is a step up from a donkey.
Chris Hayes is full of shit about half the time. He's spot on here though. One correction, the wholesale price of champagne would go up 3 X, not 2 X, showing again that math is not Democrats' strong suit.
Lutnick may have drunk the Kool Aid. Shame on Scott Bessent, he knows better.
Typically pro Repub Mainstream Media's over-the-top Repub-enabling collective gasp over Biden's minor vocal tick at a debate did its intended job of terrifying big money donors into forcing Biden out of a race he would have won. Again. In a debate that 30% of the viewers thought Biden won compared to 20% thinking Obama won against Romney in 2012, BTW.
At that point, with 100 days left, the campaign money could only go to Harris.
And, given she was up against Trump's 7 solid years of constant campaigning for his 2nd term election when he wasn't playing golf, racking up record high deficits with nothing to show for it, happily presiding over a genuine USA Combat War in the Middle East for the entirety of his 1st term and leading his violent mob of cop-killing insurrectionists into battle on American Soil in his War Against America, as a "man of peace", of course, producing and exacerbating Trump's Pandemic Part 1, locked in as he knew he would be with at least 49.8% of the Dumb Repub Hillbilly Cult Member Electorate, Harris was the best candidate to run against him.
As the election results clearly showed; but for a shift of less than 1 percentage point of votes from Trump to Harris in just 3 swing states, the only three that mattered and where most of the campaigning was done, the only typical Blue States that Trump flipped and those flips only due to less than 115,000 angry Muslims across those 3 states, a less than 1 percentage point shift across those three states, "giving him the presidency" because Netanyahu carefully timed his cease-fire agreement to come into effect after the election.
LOL. The idea that a Trump-supporting Repub, pretend "Bothsider / Neithersider" whose idea of supporting Trump this time was to vote for someone whose name, Clark something or whatever, nobody can even remember, is "schooling" anyone on who the Dems should have nominated, is pretty funny. LOL.
As this Trump's Pandemic Part 2 term unfolds with the economic and national security disasters it is sure to bring as it is already bringing, I sure hope with all my heart that he gets everything he campaigned on for those 7 solid years and then some. And I want the tariffs and tariffs blather, the mass deportations and production of another Trump's Pandemic to do as much damage to America as possible. And especially to the only three states with enough highly motivated and mobilized angry Muslims that mattered and determined the presidential election outcome; PA, MI and WI.
God willing.
I want this election outcome to teach America a lesson and a really, really hard one that it will not forget for many decades to come, especially those 3 "Blue Wall" states.
I am even hoping that the "man of peace" Trump makes good on his post-election promise to take Canada, Greenland and Panama "one way or another"! LOL.
Can't wait to see how the voters in Michigan and "lower" Red States where the auto industry employs millions react to the Great Move of their jobs to the New Great USA State of Canada where there are already lots of auto factories and opportunities to poach from Michigan and other states starting on Day One! Lololol.
Get a grip Tooms. Biden is not some kind of intellectual giant. He's suffering from dementia. He would have lost. You're using a similar argument with those 118,000 Muslims as election deniers use to explain how Biden purportedly stole the 2020 election. And it should be obvious to you Democrats should have run someone besides Harris. Your party has increasingly moved to the left and that's a mistake. Democrats like Bill Clinton make good presidential general election candidates. People like Kamala Harris do not. There was no way I'd vote for her because she wanted to raise the capital gains tax to 43.4%, more than the 28% rate that would maximize government revenue. And in 2020 she campaigned to ban fracking. Others had different reasons not to vote for her. If you want to win, nominate candidates with sane policies, instead of those who pander to Progressives.
And Trump was doing the same thing. I do not get why there is so much hate towards Trump as he was doing the same thing as Biden was doing in his first term.
The big difference between the two was how pro war Biden was. He never met a war that he did not like. If the American people were at all down for a war, he would have sent troops off to fight. He even tried to say we were going to fight Russia until his staff corrected him.
A vote for Trump was a vote for peace. That was the big difference between the two and making peace in Ukraine was one of Trump's best campaign points. Unlike what Xpartan wants, I hope Trump succeeds with it. There has been too much dying in Ukraine.
Biden didn't start any war, putin did. Biden should be respected for his resistance against the russian war machine. USA used to be, and still is, a great country but I have never seen USA act so weak as it is today under trump. Trump is letting USA get bullied by russia! No other US president would have that lack of confidence in their country!
I have not seen trump end any war, all I have seen trump do is to strengthen putin and putin is not interested in peace. Ergo trump has prolonged the war at the expense of the Ukrainian people!
Churchill words still rings true to this very day: You were given the choice between war and dishonor. You chose dishonor, and you will have war!
Trump is either colluding with russia or just the worst negotiator and president the US ever had.
It's also important to note that the truth is that trump doesn't have any policies, morals or values. He's just doing the opposite of his predecessor and tries to ruin anything the former president accomplished. Spite and pettiness, that's the leading star for trump's presidency.
During his last presidency trump withdrew from the Iran deal and now suddenly he wants to reinstate Obama's deal with Iran.
This is the first cult leader in the White House, never before have so many Americans stopped thinking for themselves and just followed their leader blindly. It's unworthy of USA and its unamerican! This is what people do in countries like North Korea and Russia. Absolutely disgraceful.
I wonder how much this has to do with the deep scars from the financial crisis in 2008-2009?
I don't know fellas, I'm pretty desperate, Monica Lewinsky in her 20's looked kinda attractive. I probably would pay money to get a blowjob from her in a Bahnofvierstel type brothel place, but if she was giving it out for free, so much the better.
Besides, it's not about her looks, it's about having the power to have a somewhat attractive chick give you a blowjob, just cause. And she's one of the few cases we know of. I'm sure the dude had way hotter chicks blow him. I bet every president has. Why wouldn't they? Yes, money is the world's greatest aphrodisiac, but so is power.
They are just going with what they were fed in the media about it at the time.
The same way they to this day think one of the best Presidents of all time, Joe Biden, "didn't know who he is, where he is or what he is doing". LOL. They are slaves to whatever spin the MSM feeds them without opening their eyes and ears to what is clearly and easily observable as well as fully reported if they take the time to focus on it beyond the spin.
The idea that a president is supposed to be ushing into the Oval Office the latest movie star hottie to fuck and suck him without worry about it leaking into the headlines is the stuff of the old Pentouse Forum articles aimed at a 14 year old boy mindset.
Especially a President like Bill Clinton who had to fend off Nude Grinbitch's constant Repub attempts to thwart and reverse the Great Dem / Clinton Economic Recovery from 12 years of Reagan / Bush mismanagement and skyrocketing debt and deficits. A recovery that began a year before Grinbitch and his Repubs took control of Congress and with historic economic legislation in 1993 that did not get a single Reoub vote.
So Clinton was supposedly somehow a sexual slacker for not making sure a hotter intern than a 21 year old Monica Lewinsky had reason to go in and of the Oval Office throughout the day without raising alarm and occasionally give him a free blowjob, is it?