It is time to take care of unfinished business in Asia
[QUOTE=Tiny12;2968700]Tooms and Xpartan, You will never achieve true enlightenment until you learn to love Republicans. And Marquis, you must learn to love the Chinese. And the moderate Democrats. For until that happens you will live in ignorance and hatred. Learn how to love, and you shall see the Light. And the darkness shall be lifted from your hearts.
There is no need however to admonish you, Marquis, to love the Progressive Democrats, for you are one.
Buddha Tiny[/QUOTE]This is an intercontinental ballistic.
Missile the USA Air Force is launching.
Off the shores of California.
The missile doesn't carry a nuclear.
Warhead — it's just a test.
In 30 minutes, it will hit a target in the.
Ocean over 4,000 miles away.
On Jan. 20, Donald Trump will regain.
Control of these weapons.
And he's getting them at a very.
Volatile time in history.
Opinion.
The Editorial Board.
The.
President's.
Arsenal.
Share full article.
343.
By The Editorial Board.
The editorial board is a group of opinion journalists whose views are informed by expertise, research, debate and certain longstanding values. It is separate from the newsroom.
In the United States, only the president can decide whether to use nuclear weapons. It's an extraordinary instance in which Mr. Trump's decision-making power will be absolute. He will not need to consult Congress, the courts or senior advisers on when or how to use them. He will have a free hand to craft our nation's nuclear posture, policy and diplomacy.
On the campaign trail, Mr. Trump commented on the peril posed by the rest of the world's growing nuclear arsenals. His return to the White House offers new opportunities for him to steer America clear of those threats. His administration will need to act urgently and with creativity, all while also demonstrating the understanding that nuclear weapons are too dangerous to be brandished as a cudgel.
This article is part of the Opinion series At the Brink.
About the threat of nuclear weapons in an unstable world. Read the opening story here.
The leaders of China, Russia and the United States are in the midst of a new great-power competition, a global struggle for military, economic and geopolitical dominance. But not all aspects of this contest are zero-sum, especially in nuclear weapons matters. There are ample opportunities for all sides to improve their own national security conditions by staving off a costly arms race and dangerous confrontation.
Most Americans have never seen — or perhaps even contemplated — what it takes to be ready for nuclear conflict. Times Opinion gained rare, up-close access this summer to film what this looks like in the United States. Observing the missile launch procedures provided a glimpse at the inner workings of a warfighting machine that should never be set in motion.
Approximately three times each year, the USA.
Air Force performs this intricate test.
Service members pull a missile from an.
Underground silo in the Great Plains.
The missile is stripped of its nuclear payload and.
Shipped to Vandenberg Space Force Base.
Other nuclear nations conduct tests like these.
On a routine basis.
The global nuclear balance is more tenuous in 2024 than it has been in decades.
"Tomorrow, we could have a war that will be so devastating that you could never recover from it," Mr. Trump said in June. "Nobody can. The whole world won't be able to recover from it. ".
The last remaining major bilateral accord limiting the United States' and Russia's arsenals, New START, expires in just 14 months. And Russian leaders have rejected the Biden administration's offers to discuss a new nuclear arms control framework, which follows the dismantling of other accords meant to lessen the risk of conflict. We are on the precipice of living in a world that has no restraints on how many nuclear weapons are deployed.
President Vladimir Putin of Russia continues to raise the specter of escalating his war on Ukraine to nuclear use. India and Pakistan have an estimated 170 nuclear weapons each but are expanding their arsenals. USA Intelligence believes China plans to double by 2030 the size of its stockpile of an estimated 500 warheads, as it continues the most ambitious expansion and diversification of its weaponry in its history. North Korea has developed missiles designed to strike America. The war in Gaza threatens to expand into a wider regional conflict; Israel already has nuclear weapons and Iran is moving closer to building a bomb, risking a proliferation cascade throughout the Middle East.
The nuclear risk isn't found only among America's adversaries. Allies without nuclear aims are now seriously discussing whether they also need nuclear capability. The recently impeached South Korean president, Yoon Suk-yeol, has raised the possibility of building a bomb, and polls have shown that 70 percent of Koreans think the country should. If South Korea proceeds, experts assume Japan will as well. Germany is debating whether it should develop its own nuclear program, and Poland has sought a more active role in NATO's nuclear sharing. Ukraine's leader, President Volodymyr Zelensky, has made his nation's need for a nuclear weapon clear if the country isn't granted NATO membership.
If Mr. Trump is serious about truly making America great again, this is one critical issue where he can make his mark. The United States spent the second half of the 20th century and into the next with a single stated goal when it came to nuclear weapons: to make the world safer from them. After its devastating bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, this aim was not a given — in the first several decades of the Cold War, the United States and the Soviet Union amassed nuclear arsenals large enough to destroy the human race many times over. By the early 1960's, the Americans and Soviets appeared to be on a collision course toward nuclear war, armed with the most dangerous technology man has ever produced.
The Cuban Missile Crisis put both countries on a new path. In 1963, the superpowers agreed to the first treaty on nuclear testing. By 1968, many nations of the world had agreed in the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty to a grand bargain: In exchange for nonnuclear states forgoing such weapons, the nuclear states would work to get rid of theirs. Facing ever more public pressure, American leaders and diplomats would spend the next five decades leading the effort to set limits on the number of nuclear warheads deployed, as well as establish transparency and clear lines of communication. Shrinking the nuclear arsenal became a bipartisan, generational effort.
Today, nearly all of that work has unraveled.
It can't be ignored that in his first term, Mr. Trump played a significant role in fostering at least some of the risk the world now faces. Yet, given the changed landscape, the United States will have no choice but to lead — something that, based on his campaign rhetoric, Mr. Trump appears to embrace.
In the past, Mr. Trump has said that he first appreciated the true danger of nuclear weapons after talking to an unlikely source: his uncle, an M. I. T. Professor. In 1986, when he was still principally a New York real estate developer, Mr. Trump reached out to the International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War, which had just received a Nobel Peace Prize for its disarmament work. He hoped to arrange negotiations with the Soviets to lower the nuclear threat.
Now it will be the job of President Trump to pull the world back from the brink. It's time to discuss what he and the United States should prioritize.
I.
America Should.
RENEW ARMS.
CONTROL TALKS.
Visiting Hiroshima in 2016, President Barack Obama was optimistic enough to call on nations that possessed nuclear weapons to "have the courage to escape the logic of fear and pursue a world without them. ".
Abolition is something the United States has not seriously considered — and cannot now afford to consider. With China's unprecedented nuclear buildup underway, the world faces, for the first time, the reality of not just two but three nuclear superpowers. The bipolar strategic balance of the Cold War no longer holds. American diplomats have no choice but to figure out how to restart sustained arms control negotiations and lay the groundwork for future generations to complete the job of nuclear disarmament.
America's tests provide the military with fresh.
Data on how its personnel and aging weapons.
Systems perform in a real-world scenario.
Air Force officers work every day on 24-hour.
Shifts in underground bunkers, awaiting.
The signal to launch if the president ever gives.
The order.
The tests also send an unmistakable message.
To America's adversaries that the nuclear arsenal.
Is ready if that command ever comes.
Mr. Trump's first administration refused to sign on to the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, in keeping with other nuclear nations' stance on the ban. It also unilaterally withdrew the United States from the Iran nuclear deal, the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty and the Open Skies Treaty. But Mr. Trump did demonstrate an ambitious willingness to sit down with Kim Jong-un of North Korea, even though those talks ultimately went nowhere.
He has a chance now to atone for past mistakes. Masoud Pezeshkian, the new president of Iran, has signaled a willingness to restart serious nuclear negotiations with the West.
Mr. Trump's campaign trumpeted his withdrawal from the previous deal, but in September, the candidate told reporters that he may be open to new talks. As reported in Politico, when asked about it, Mr. Trump said: "We have to make a deal, because the consequences are impossible. We have to make a deal. ".
Mr. Trump, to his credit, grasps the dangers here. Perhaps he can also use some of his influence with President Putin to come to terms on the issue. Here again, some of his campaign rhetoric offers a glimpse of hope. Referring to Mr. Putin, Mr. Trump said in 2023, "he goes, 'You know, we're a great nuclear power. ' he says that publicly now. " Mr. Trump added, falsely: "he never said that when I was here. Because you don't talk about it. It's too destructive. You don't talk about it. Now they're talking about it all the time. ".
To entice China to the table, Mr. Trump could express an openness to declare that the United States would not be the first to use nuclear weapons. The president-elect has shown a willingness to engage, inviting China's leader, Xi Jinping, to his January inauguration.
China has spent the past year signaling the importance of this issue as a necessary requirement for it to move forward in meaningful nuclear talks.
A willingness to engage on a blanket no-first-use policy may ease tensions and provide a foothold for more ambitious discussions.
II.
America Should.
ENSURE NUCLEAR TESTING.
BANS STAY PUT.
While the military still regularly tests the intercontinental ballistic missiles that would deliver a nuclear strike, it hasn't conducted an explosive underground test of the warheads themselves in more than three decades.
A moratorium on testing nuclear weapons has also held in China and Russia. There are growing fears this could soon change, as all three nations update and expand the infrastructure and sites needed to test nuclear weapons, according to commercial satellite imagery by Planet Labs PBC. The photos, analyzed by the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies, show each nation is adding buildings, cutting roads and boring tunnels — construction that many fear could presage live explosions.
A nuclear weapon doesn't need to be used in war to have lasting impact. More than 2,000 such weapons were tested during the 20th century, spreading fallout that still affects human beings, public health and the environment. That, in part, is why the United States, along with every other country with nuclear weapons, except North Korea, has voluntarily observed a testing moratorium since the 1990's. The next Trump administration should work to make sure it remains in effect.
The conservative manifesto Project 2025, published by the Heritage Foundation, specifically calls for preparing the nuclear testing site in Nevada for a new generation of tests, which — unlike the tests at Vandenberg — involve detonating actual nuclear explosives. Last summer, in the journal Foreign Affairs, Mr. Trump's former national security adviser Robert O'Brien wrote that "the United States has to maintain technical and numerical superiority to the combined Chinese and Russian nuclear stockpiles. To do so, Washington must test new nuclear weapons for reliability and safety in the real world for the first time since 1992 — not just by using computer models. " Given this logic, Russia and China would be justified in thinking the same.
Mr. Trump's campaign distanced itself from both Project 2025 and Mr. O'Brien's comments, and Mr. O'Brien has not yet been tapped to join the next administration.
While there is no nuclear warhead in this.
Missile, the military still must clear the surrounding airspace and stretch of ocean.
For safety.
If a part fails or the missile veers off course.
During flight, the military will destroy it by.
Remotely detonating onboard explosives.
Data from the missile streams into the Air.
Force's encrypted computer system inside the.
Launch monitoring center.
If Mr. Trump decides the United States should resume nuclear explosive testing, China and Russia will almost surely follow suit. Mr. Putin has already threatened as much. Emerging nuclear powers, such as Iran, would also presumably feel no restraint on carrying out their own tests.
On top of all this, it makes no strategic sense. Starting to test again now would erode the huge scientific advantage the United States enjoys today. The USA Government has conducted more than 1,000 known nuclear detonations — more than China and the Soviet Union combined. Data from those tests, combined with our unparalleled computing power, has allowed America to maintain and improve its arsenal in a way that its rivals can't.
III.
America Should.
REVIEW USA SPENDING.
The United States, Russia and China are now feverishly overhauling their nuclear arsenals in sweeping multibillion-dollar efforts that the federal government benignly calls "modernizing. " The Pentagon plans to update the nuclear arsenal over the next 30 years, including the missiles, bomber jets, submarines and warheads, at nearly $2 trillion.
Mr. Trump could roll back some of that effort. Why must the USA Military replace all of its weapons in one go? Hundreds of millions of dollars could be saved simply by buying fewer of them. Even if Mr. Trump doesn't want to cancel anything, he could at least give himself the political space to rethink such investments by appointing a commission to examine the full range and progress of the modernization plans, which are already over-budget and behind schedule.
The cost of this one test launch: $18 million. It.
Takes about 200 service members to carry it out.
Two officers act as if they've received the.
Presidential order, turning keys on.
Their consoles that ignite the 79,432-pound.
Missile's rocket engines.
Once the weapon roars into the night sky, a.
Message flashes on screens: "MSLA," shorthand.
For "Missile Away. ".
Project 2025, however, rejects congressional efforts to find more cost-effective alternatives to the current plans, calling instead for a nuclear escalation that could rival President Ronald Reagan's at the height of the Cold War.
While Mr. Trump may have distanced himself from Project 2025 on the campaign trail, Christopher Miller, a former USA Army Special Forces colonel who served as his acting defense secretary, was the lead author of its 42-page chapter on defense. Some other alarming proposals include that the second Trump White House prioritize nuclear weapons; develop nuclear-armed, sea-launched cruise missiles, which were withdrawn in the early 1990's; and continue a Biden-era effort to develop a sweeping, untested "cruise missile defense of the homeland" — all of which would require a significant budget increase to bankroll.
Mr. Trump has often condemned the hawkish attitudes of other conservatives. This is the time for him to show that he believes nuclear escalation is a bad idea. It's taken some political courage for Mr. Trump to stake out an independent path from Republican orthodoxy on war-and-peace issues, and this is a chance to put his own views into action.
IV.
America Should.
END SOLE AUTHORITY.
President Trump will command about 3,700 weapons that he alone is empowered to launch. Any decision responding to an incoming nuclear attack on the United States would have to be made within as little as 15 minutes.
It is concern over any precipitous action that led Senator Edward Markey of Massachusetts and Representative Ted Lieu of California, both Democrats, last year to propose legislation to prohibit any president from launching a first-strike nuclear weapon without congressional approval.
Although it is unlikely to be taken up by this Republican-led Congress, the bill would not undercut Mr. Trump's ability to respond to a nuclear attack, an authority all presidents have had and should have.
Agreeing that a pre-emptive nuclear strike should also be endorsed by Congress would be a signal to the world that the United States is serious about limiting nuclear brinkmanship — that disputes among nations should not turn on impulsive nuclear threats of the type that Mr. Putin regularly issues. Mr. Trump wouldn't be weakening himself. He'the be showing the world that he rejects hollow threats.
Fire and exhaust light up the foggy coastline.
As the Minuteman III missile traces an arc across.
The Pacific.
Roughly a half-hour later, a dummy warhead.
Falls away, re-entering the Earth's atmosphere at.
A blistering four miles per second.
It strikes the target area — a lagoon in the middle.
Of the Marshall Islands' Kwajalein Atoll — like a.
Lightning bolt.
Data from this exercise in June will help USA.
Commanders fine-tune future tests scheduled.
Under the next Trump administration.
One paradox of the nuclear age is that it has often been the most bellicose leaders who become the most committed — and who are the most effective — at securing arms control deals and shrinking global stockpiles. Dwight Eisenhower, who led the allied war effort against the Nazis, came to warn against the military-industrial complex. Nikita Khrushchev and John F. Kennedy were swaggering brinksmen until they brought the world close to annihilation. Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev each came to see that nuclear weapons were vastly more dangerous in an unstable world.
Donald Trump ran a campaign of peace through strength. Time will tell if he can deliver what he promised. But all Americans should rejoice if Mr. Trump leaves the world a safer place from nuclear weapons than it was when he took office for the second time.
The editorial board is a group of opinion journalists whose views are informed by expertise.
As fanciful, lazy, academic and failed in the Real World as ever, I see.
[QUOTE=Tiny12;2968772]That's not what I wrote. I said a majority of Americans and I think Biden's [B]economic policy[/B] sucked.
An NBER paper earlier this year written by economists at the IMF and Democrat Larry Summers explains why. You can download the paper here.
[URL]https://www.nber.org/papers/w32163[/URL]
Or read a summary here.
[URL]https://www.forbes.com/sites/theapothecary/2024/03/23/summers-inflation-reached-18-in-2022-using-the-governments-previous-formula/#text=argue%2 C%20%E2%80%9 Cwill%20 understate%20 the%20 pressure, November%202022%2 C%20 and%20 remains%20 elevated.[/URL]
If you look at the official numbers, the median American wage earner saw prices increase about 1/2 of 1% more than wages during the Biden administration. Compare to the Trump administration, when wages rose by almost 7% more than prices. Those are wages before tax. After income tax, median real wages were up more than 7%, because of the Trump tax cuts for the middle class.
But the official numbers don't take into account the increase in interest payments borne by Americans, manifested in higher house, car and credit card payments and the like. The consumer price index, the way it was calculated prior to 1983, did take that into account. What Summers and the rest did in the NBER study was go back and calculate CPI using the pre-1983 method. And then they compared it to consumer sentiment.
Using the old methodology, which includes interest expense borne by consumers, inflation peaked at 18% in November, 2022! And if you look at consumer sentiment, which can serve as a proxy for how much Americans believed Biden's economic policy sucks, it tracks the Summers et al CPI a lot better than the current CPI.
In other words, the workingman is way behind the eight ball. And that's the reason Biden got poor numbers for economic policy in surveys.
Now undoubtedly you're not going to accept that. We had a similar discussion about why Americans thought the economy sucked under Carter because of high inflation, and, reading between the lines, you attributed it to mass psychosis.
Why do I (as opposed to the majority of Americans) think his economic policy sucked? We've been through that a million times. Since Biden took office, the economy has done well (no recession), we've been at peace, and we were over the worst of the pandemic. Yet his policies, as implemented with the help of a Democratic controlled Congress in 2021 and 2022, have put us on track to rack up fiscal deficits around 6% per year as far as the eye can see! That's not sustainable. It's a recipe for disaster.
Far from buying votes as expected, the Democrats' profligate spending ignited inflation and caused them to loose the election. However, yes, if you're part of the welfare class, or received benefits from the massive amounts of corporate pork spread far and wide by the Biden administration, then you probably think the economy is / was hunky dory.[/QUOTE]That is a perfect example of the fanciful, lazy, academic theories that conservatives hang onto like rats on a rafter but that fail miserably in the Real World.
Joe Biden's [B]economic policy results[/B] are better than any conservative Repub's economic policy results since the inception of the Repub Party. Which isn't saying much, I realize. But they are also better than most other Dem's policy results. Which is saying a tremendous amount.
But, of course, in the mind of a conservative, Repub or not, those policies [B]suck[/B] because they don't fit some fanciful, lazy, academic notion that sounds great, looks great on paper and appears to be oh so easy to enact (lazy) but that always fail miserably in the Real World.
Of course, those conservative notions are never really tested when producing positive Real World results really matter and are critical to economic survival for millions of Americans.
Why? Because no outgoing Dem has ever handed those kind of horrific economic results to an incoming Repub to handle and resolve. No. Only outgoing Repubs hand those kind of horrific economic policy results conditions for incoming Dems to handle and resolve. And without exception it was after the Repub had applied those wonderfully fanciful, lazy, academic economic policies that sound great, look great on paper but also without exception have failed miserably to produce anything but horrific economic results in the Real World.
And that was after the Repub inherited historically great economic conditions, as FDR / Truman handed Eisenhower, JFK / LBJ handed Nixon / Ford, Carter handed Reagan, Clinton handed Bush2, Obama handed Trump and Biden is handing Trump again.
So one can only imagine the new depths of horrorific [B]results[/B] those Repub economic policies would produce if they ever once were put to the Real World challenge that virtually every Dem has had to face and surmounted over the past 100 years of [B]sucked Repub economic policy results.[/B].
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A reminder of what Most People say about the economy and their situation
Remember "the best economy ever" that Donald Trump and his Repubs produced starting on "day one" after inheriting already damn good economic conditions from Obama-Biden back in 2017?
I mean, before "the China virus" came out of nowhere and developed into a worldwide economy-destroying Pandemic that "Nobody predicted would happen" except every expert in the field but only if some so-called potus was stupid enough to defund and remove the Pandemic Prevention team leadership that had been stationed in those Chinese labs, which Trump then promptly did?
You know, the Trump economic nirvana years that polls if not specific election results indicated Americans were pining to repeat again?
[B]Most Americans say finances haven't improved since 2016 election.
Twenty-seven percent of people earning under $30,000 a year said their finances have worsened since the last presidential election.[/B]
[URL]https://www.nbcnews.com/business/consumer/most-americans-say-their-finances-haven-t-improved-election-n923776[/URL]
Behold what poll respondents virtually ALWAYS say about the economy and their own financial situation.
Similarly, polls have almost always shown that "most people" think Repubs are better at handling the economy than Dems.
However, that is most certainly NOT the way "most people" vote when the [B]sucky[/B] Repub economic policy [B]results[/B] have the economy crashing down around our ears and millions of jobs are being wiped out. They don't elect more Repubs to "handle" the problem. Nope. They elect more Dems to "handle" the problem.
When do they NOT run out to elect Dems and elect Repubs or allow Repubs to get elected instead? All too often it because they are in reality fairly satisfied with their own economic and financial situation.
Similar to what the 1. 47 percentage point more Trump voters than Harris voters did this time around. That is despite the actual and specific reason Trump was elected instead of Harris being because a relative handful of angry, Netanyahu-hating but already regretful Muslims were mobilized to vote for Trump instead of Harris in the only three states that mattered in order to express their hatred for Netanyahu.
And all of that is very much in keeping with my observation many months ago that the greatest threat to a 2nd term election of Joe Biden (but then it became Kamala Harris) was that, despite the perennial grousing about the economy we see from poll respondents, the reality is Bidenomics has produced "too good" of an economy, which generally means people stay home and don't bother to vote because, hey, what's the worst that could happen in this "Bothsider / Neithersider", selective Amnesia world.
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The Fed should chat with Larry Summers about this
[B]Fed cuts by a quarter point, indicates fewer reductions ahead.[/B]
[URL]https://www.cnbc.com/2024/12/18/fed-rate-decision-december-2024-.html?__source=androidappshare[/URL]
[QUOTE]Powell has indicated that the rate cuts are an effort to recalibrate policy as it does not need to be as restrictive under the current conditions.
We think the economy is in really good place. We think policy is in a really good place, he said Wednesday.[/QUOTE]Hasn't Powell heard Larry Summers' pronouncement on this? The Fed should be as angry about the state of today's [B]sucky[/B] economy as that relative handful of Netanyahu-hating but already regretful Muslims across just three states that "gave Trump the presidency" while Trump has also acknowledged as much. They should be lowering the Fed Funds Rate to 0% or near it to pull us out of this horrible economic downturn like they had to with at least 4 Repub presidents' economic policy results over the past 100 years!
Doesn't the Fed have access to all those lovely charts and graphs that Larry Summers and his slavish devotees refer to that prove this economy [B]sucks[/B] because Biden's [B]economic policy sucks[/B]?
Oh, but then there is this:
[QUOTE]Moreover, the Fed will have to deal with the impact of fiscal policy under President-elect Donald Trump, who has indicated plans for [b]tariffs, tax cuts and mass deportations that all could be inflationary[/b] and complicate the central banks job.
We need to take our time, not rush and make a very careful assessment, but only when weve actually seen what the policies are and how theyve been implemented, Powell said of the Trump plans. Were just not at that stage.[/QUOTE]Well, we know Trump has already increased the price of imported goods and products since the election. His repeated insistence that he will add 10%-25%-200% across-the-board tariffs on so many imported goods and services "on Day One" has created uncommonly high and early retailer demand for front loading inventory that has driven container and shipping costs to increase. The higher costs of which will be passed on to the American Consumer and will absolutely positively not be paid by China, Canada, Mexico or any other countries.
Then again, until Larry Summers weighs in on it nobody really knows what to think about it.
Numbskull Repub President-elect Musk has spoken!
Numbskull Repub President-elect Ramaswamy has not as of this writing weighed in but Numbskull President-elect Musk and Numbskull Repub President-elect Banning have been very clear that they want ChristoFascist Mike to follow the venerable tradition of the Know Nothing, Do Nothing Deadbeat Repub Party in simply shutting down the government instead of earning so much as one more day of their generous American tax-payer dollars paychecks by actually working for their pay.
[B]Trump joins Elon Musk in opposing House GOP's government funding bill.[/B]
[URL]https://www.cnbc.com/2024/12/18/trump-joins-elon-musk-in-opposing-house-gops-government-funding-bill.html?__source=androidappshare[/URL]
Note to Larry Summers: THIS is why Biden and the Dems had no choice but to get as much economic stimulus into the system as early as possible to pull America and the rest of the world out of the colossal and unprecedented disaster of Trump's Pandemic and whatever variation of it might have mutated into existence at any moment back in early 2021 in the first trip to the well. As long as THIS current incarnation of the Know Nothing, Do Nothing Deadbeat Repub Party exists and it was easily predictable by historic precedence that they would be granted at least a Pink Tinkle Majority in the House by the usual fine and clear understanding of how the national economy works, legislation and governance gets done by the American Electorate, there was no way they could count on incrimental increases if or when it might be desperately needed.
The fact that Biden and the Dems ONLY over-estimated by a dime or two and arguably if even that much in order to make it unnecessary to go back to the Numbskull Repub Congress Pink Tinkle well any time after January 2023 and that America only had to endure a relatively minor transitional rate of Inflation compared to the rest of the world is a testament to his and the Dems' true brilliance in what could and should be done to prevent another Great Repub Depression as well as, very possibly, millions more Americans and others mass murdered by Trump's incompetence.
This current incarnation of the Know Nothing, Do Nothing Deadbeat Repub Party is infinitely more malignant and hateful of America than when Nude Grinbitch's version of it for the last 6 years of Bill Clinton's presidency simply meant they kept themselves busy doing nothing but a couple of expensive and wasteful government shutdowns while they spent their few working days just sniffing around Clinton's dick and balls to find out where they've been.
It is currently more malignant and hateful of America than when they pushed for shutdown after shutdown, finally got the USA credit rating lowered and were happy to spend their few working days ranting about Obama's tan suit and whether or not he was called "Barry" in his university days.
No, this time around they have managed to gin up their hatred for America to another level. It is going to be a wild and potentially most damaging to America and Americans' conservative Repub ride for the next four years.
Those less than 115,000 domestic terrorist-inclined angry, Netanyahu-hating Muslims who shouted "Allahu Akbar" as they sailed into polling places in those three states to swing the election to Trump instead of Harris sure got their anti-America goals met. Perhaps more than even they ever hoped for or expected.
And if anyone doubts that both Party's will eventually come to realize that was indeed the "tie-breaker" demo and motive that swung the election from Harris to Trump, let's see how much pandering and catering to the Muslim communities in PA, MI and WI each Party lavishes on them starting sometime in early 2028. And if he is still installed and not in prison, let's see what Netanyahu does that year to manupulate that demo into "giving the presidency" to his preferred nominee then. LOL.
Oh, so the world famous Martin Wolf got that Summers scoop. Last week.
[QUOTE=Tiny12;2969063]I'm about to give up Tooms. This is like arguing theology with a Southern Baptist minister.
Summers is more upset than you are about Democratic losses in the election. Furthermore, he agrees with you, and me, that if Trump does what he said he will, his policies would have the potential to be more inflationary than Biden's. Summers however notes that Trump's advisors like Bessent are very aware of and sensitive to markets, which hopefully will help save Trump from himself. You've already seen him back off on his threat to fire Jerome Powell. What Summers doesn't say, because he's a partisan Democrat like you, is that Biden's people weren't as knowledgeable about markets. His chief economic advisor was a social worker. Janet Yellen had good instincts, but the Elizabeth Warren appointees in the White House were calling the shots.
This is all in an interview of Summers by the FT's Martin Wolf last week. Summers also basically repeated my explanation to you of why Harris lost (higher prices, including increases in the cost of money). And here was his response to Wolf's contention, similar to yours, that supply shocks, shortages and the war in Ukraine were primarily responsible for inflation: "I find it surprising that people who I respect would take the position that you just laid out. I'd advise those at some distance from the debate that they may want to give more weight to the views of those who forecast inflation than to the views of those who were confident it would not take place. And were confident when it started to appear, it was only transitory. ".
You realize the reason the Dow dropped 1100 points today was because the Fed signaled it won't drop rates as quickly as many expected? And it's entirely possible part of the reason is that the Fed fears the inflationary effects of what Trump says he wants to do? Or is reacting to similar fears on the part of bond investors, who've moved yields up recently?[/QUOTE]Interesting that Summers' big media coverage on this comes after the election and on the world famous Martin Wolf private party club.
He probably would have gotten that message to a wider audience if YOU had bothered to mention it here before you were cornered into it. And prior to the election would have been nice.
That is quite a difference from the whirlwind media coverage good ol' Dem-partisan Larry got or apparently even tried to get in the lead up to the 2022 midterms and in the years prior to the handful of angry Muslim election of Trump last month, wouldn't you say? At one point the name "Larry Summers" was better known and repeated throughout Mainstream Media and HERE as Kamala Harris.
Of course, MSM and You were a lot more motivated and fond of posting, airing and repeating his Biden / Dem-slamming message back then.
Do I even need to point out the difference?
[QUOTE=Tiny12;2969063]I'm about to give up Tooms. This is like arguing theology with a Southern Baptist minister.[/QUOTE]Here is the big difference; a Southern Baptist minister has zero evidence that there is a god or that the spirit of long dead and buried Jesus Christ gives a shit about human beings or anything else on planet Earth.
By stark contrast, I have all available evidence, data and the historical record on my side proving that no Repub potus' policies and stewardship of the past 100 years produced anything but crap results vs that of, say, Jimmy Carter much less Bill Clinton, Barack Obama and Joe Biden in terms of economic recovery, economic expansion and average annual jobs creation unless that Repub has also tripled the National Debt to counter the crap results of his policies and stewardship without it.
On my side of the argument, I've got every major downturn, every historic jobs destruction and none of the major economic recoveries, economic expansions and historic jobs creation for Repubs over the past 100 years vs every major economic recovery, economic expansion, historic jobs creation and none of the Great Depressions, Great Recessions or Historic Jobs Destruction for Dems.
Southern Baptists ministers only have, "oh, but look at the pretty trees. ".
The latter of which is a hell of a lot closer to the way Repubs, Bothsiders and Neithersiders argue in favor of their beloved Repubs than you probably are willing to acknowledge.
