[!@#$%!]

199k jobs added in november, beating estimates, and unemployment down to 3.7% xD

[The Soup Nazi]

Originally Posted by !@#$%!

199k jobs added in november, beating estimates, and unemployment down to 3.7% xD

Democrats now need to SELL IT, which in this day and age is actually harder than adding 199 thousand jobs and keeping unemployment down in the first place...

[The Soup Nazi]

From The Washington Post:

Small segment of voters will wield outsize power in 2024 presidential race

The electoral college system empowers a sliver of the U.S. population in a diminishing number of battleground states. And the majority may not even prevail.

Not that we didn't know the big picture, but read the details... Godfuckingdamn this shit is scary. VOTE!

[The Soup Nazi]

The flipside to some of our posts? From Zakaria's newsletter:

Inflation Is Real

Don’t you know the economy is better, you ungrateful fools? That’s the message some Americans may be getting, incidentally and unfortunately, from celebrations of inflation’s taming, Bloomberg writes in an editorial—but it’s not a complete picture of how the economy is being experienced.

Yes, inflation has receded, and wages have risen, Bloomberg writes. But household budgets have still been tightened, and Americans still feel pain.

“Since 2020, prices overall have risen by roughly 20%,” Bloomberg notes. “Average wages have indeed risen a fraction more. But for many families, the cost of living depends especially on the prices of groceries, utilities, housing and credit. As reporting by Bloomberg Economics and Businessweek shows, groceries are up 25% since 2020; the food budget for a four-person household is up more than 30%. Housing is less affordable than it has been for years … The share of wages spent on interest payments … is at its highest since just before the crash of 2008—and close to a record. Unsurprisingly, debt delinquencies are rising fast. In short, many households don’t just feel worse off; they are worse off. An abruptly higher cost of living is most painful for those who are on fixed incomes, have lagging wages, or are struggling for whatever reason with financial insecurity. Telling them the economy is in excellent shape only adds insult to injury.”

Making a similar point in a New York Times guest opinion essay, former Obama Treasury adviser Steven Rattner points out that workers still aren’t sharing in the windfall brought by productivity gains, as they did decades ago. And as does Bloomberg’s editorial board, Rattner points at housing costs and lived economic experience beyond the numbers: “Consider one marker of generational progress: moving out. Nearly half of all Americans aged 18-29 live at home with their parents, the highest share since the Great Depression. In recent decades, rents in American cities have far outstripped income growth for young Americans, even those with college degrees. Those seeking to buy their first home and ‘climb the property ladder’ face the double whammy of high house prices and high mortgage rates, creating a massive affordability problem.”

[!@#$%!]

mierda... too friendly

https://www.lanacion.com.ar/el-mundo...s-nid09122023/

ooof... i hope it's just a tactical move because lula was fucking meddling with his election

====

and yeah zakaria has a point

ive been lucky this way around i guess

[The Soup Nazi]

Originally Posted by !@#$%!

mierda... too friendly

https://www.lanacion.com.ar/el-mundo...s-nid09122023/

ooof... i hope it's just a tactical move because lula was fucking meddling with his election

First thing Kast (Cacast) did when Milei won was to post a picture of himself with Milei. Get a room already, all you pervs.

Originally Posted by !@#$%!

and yeah zakaria has a point

Actually, the Zakaria newsletter isn't necessarily written by him - it's "compiled by Global Briefing editor Chris Good"... I'm sure FZ reads it before it's sent, though. But to your point about the point, yes, which is why I'm so worried about 2024:

 

[The Soup Nazi]

From Wonkette:

John Kennedy Catches 'Home Alone' On Cable, Shocked By Passage Of Time

That damn 'Bidenflation'!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e7dfCs0z5Eg

I rarely watch Home Alone these days, because as a father, it’s painful to even imagine such a nightmarish scenario as my beloved child ruining my Christmas trip to Paris. However, the 1990 John Hughes hit has become annual holiday viewing for most folks, including apparently the staff at right-wing garbage site Breitbart (NO LINK!), which made a big fuss over how the everyday grocery items Kevin McCallister (Macaulay Culkin) buys were so less expensive back during the George H.W. Bush administration.

USA Today also ran with this “wow, inflation exists!” feature. “Bidenomics” just can’t catch a break.

Kevin picks up milk, bread, toilet paper, laundry detergent, fabric softener, cling wrap, macaroni and cheese, a turkey TV dinner, orange juice, and a bag of plastic Army men. The damage is $19.83. Apparently, those same items today would run you about $44.40. Thank God they finally indicted Hunter Biden. Our long national price-gouging nightmare is over at last. A half-gallon of milk is $1.71 again. It’s a Christmas miracle.

Republican Sen. John Kennedy from Louisiana claimed these items would cost $72.28 (thanks to #Bidenflation), but I’m more inclined to trust the nice lady on Tik Tok. Anyway, this might blow your mind, but it’s been 33 years since 1990, when Color Me Badd was blowing up the charts. Chicago’s minimum wage at the time was just $3.80. It’s now $13. Chicago’s median household income in 1990 was around $32,252. It’s now about $70,000. None of these figures explain how Kevin’s parents afforded that straight-up mansion where they lived, but there’s nothing to indicate that Joe Biden’s economic policies have “crushed family holiday budgets.”

Kennedy is a stupid man (no, I’m not impressed that he attended an Ivy League school) who thinks his supporters are even dumber. If Biden had wrecked the economy with the same efficiency that Scar’s leadership devastated the Pride Lands, there would be a more drastic inflationary impact from Trump’s reign of terror to now. There isn’t. Biden never pulled the “Emergency Socialism Self-Destruct” lever. Maybe the grocery items Kevin bought were slightly cheaper over Christmas 2020 when we were all stuck home alone, but I prefer our current reality to the Quarantine Times.

It’s interesting to compare 1990 prices to 33 years prior in 1957. The median income when Grease was the word was about $5,000. Every item at McDonald’s cost less than 25 cents, and a hamburger was 15 cents. The average movie ticket price was around 62 cents, and a comic book was 10 cents. I vividly recall 1990 as the year when all comics were suddenly a dollar, and my parents were aghast.

Maybe Andy Rooney might’ve grumbled on “60 Minutes” back in the day that Cary Grant’s character in Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House paid $56,000 for his “dream property” in the country, but now you’d have to pay at least 10 times that! Rooney was a professional curmudgeon. You should demand more from your elected officials, although you can’t really expect more from Republicans like Kennedy.

Anyway, here’s an adorable Google ad featuring the then 38-year-old Macaulay Culkin safely and legally home alone.

OPEN THREAD!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-lfHXKbsMLE

[The Soup Nazi]

And now, from Zakaria's newsletter, a brief trip to HELL:

Warnings, From Trump and Others, About a Second Trump Term

Former US President Donald Trump is up to his old tricks, promising to turn the US into a dictatorship for only the first day of a second Trump presidency.

Given that Trump sought to retain power despite losing an election in 2020—and encouraged an armed mob to march on the US Capitol after the failure of other gambits, such as pressuring local officials to say the election was stolen; leaning on Vice President Mike Pence to nix the votes of two states; and reportedly considering replacing the acting US attorney general with an ally who would use the power of the Justice Department to undermine and perhaps overturn the election result, before senior department officials threatened to resign en masse if Trump did it—critics have no trouble believing him.

Not long before Trump’s comment, Washington Post editor-at-large Robert Kagan argued in a long and detailed essay that Americans may soon live under an actual Trump dictatorship.

“Can Trump win the election” in 2024? Kagan asked. “The answer, unless something radical and unforeseen happens, is: Of course he can. … If Trump does win the election, he will immediately become the most powerful person ever to hold (the presidency). … What limits (presidential) powers? The most obvious answer is the institutions of justice—all of which Trump, by his very election, will have defied and revealed as impotent. A court system that could not control Trump as a private individual is not going to control him better when he is president of the United States and appointing his own attorney general and all the other top officials at the Justice Department. Think of the power of a man who gets himself elected president despite indictments, courtroom appearances and perhaps even conviction? Would he even obey a directive of the Supreme Court? Or would he instead ask how many armored divisions the chief justice has?”

Given Trump’s recent and disturbing reference to his opponents as “vermin,” Kagan raised another dictatorial issue: the notion of Trump, once back in power, pursuing vendettas. “And who will stop the improper investigations and prosecutions of Trump’s many enemies?” Kagan asked. “Will Congress? ... Will Fox News defend them, or will it instead just amplify the accusations?”

In a follow-up essay this week, Kagan identified ways to avoid a Trump dictatorship, most notably anti-Trump Republicans siding with Democrats to vote against him in 2024, if Trump emerges as their party’s nominee. Seemingly less convinced Trump will win the GOP nomination, The Wall Street Journal argues in an editorial that opponents like Nikki Haley have a powerful argument against Trump in his own record.

Regardless of dictatorship fears, a second Trump term figures to be less restrained than the first. At CNN Opinion, historian and CNN political analyst Julian Zelizer identifies seven reasons why, including Trump’s survival of past impeachments and the likelihood that his Cabinet would be filled with inexperienced allies prone to saying “yes.” With Trump’s possible return looming, and with Ukraine aid held up amid partisan gridlock, Susan Glasser writes for The New Yorker that in Washington, a “true year-end panic has set in.” The Atlantic has published a full issue of staff reporting and analysis on the consequences of a Trump return to the White House. At The New York Times, Jonathan Swan, Charlie Savage, and Maggie Haberman report rising fears that a second-term Trump will pull the US out of NATO, as the first-term Trump considered doing according to former Trump National Security Advisor John Bolton.

The rest of the world must prepare now, writes Financial Times columnist Edward Luce, warning that a second-term Trump might disengage the US from the world, allowing Russia and China to advance their agendas and giving US allies like Japan, South Korea, and Australia reason to obtain nuclear weapons.

[The Soup Nazi]

Originally Posted by !@#$%!

mierda... too friendly

You're not surprised though, are you? Every country has one of these, and by and large they dig each other.

[!@#$%!]

Originally Posted by The Soup Nazi

You're not surprised though, are you? Every country has one of these, and by and large they dig each other.

they maybe have a common enemy, it doesn't mean they have to be the same

latin america unfortunately suffers from a long history of the tyranny of good intentions, whereby if you say that you're for the poor you're given a pass for all sorts of atrocities. like, say, cuba, imprisoned. but fidel alphabetized the island! lol. and in venezuela, maduro susbidizes sardines! (and has exported 6 million refugees)

of course those left tyrants are the enemies of progress and prosperity. not that progress and prosperity don't come with their own problems, but it's easy to want the natives of some faraway land to reject science and modern goods and services while one enjoys all the comforts of technology and is on the winning side of global commerce. so no, latin america doesn't have to be just a tourist destination for rich gringos and europeans looking to slum it. latin america doesn't have to be "third world" . prosperity can happen with open markets, free enterprise, and the rule of law

but anyway, "the right" tends to band around in opposition of the left, but it doesn't mean they are the same necessarily. odd to see an authoritarian nazi spawn member of a marian cult hanging out too much with a globalist libertarian who has a rabbi and dislikes the pope lololol (although catholic right wingers preferred ratso and the polish guy before him. "anticommunists." but i digress.) there are lefts and lefts like there are rights and rights. those people are not the same, but they might have a common enemy, yes

and at this moment i just hope some economic liberalization can save argentina from their disgracefully impoverishing clusterfuck. that would be some real progress

[The Soup Nazi]

Alexei Navalny has "disappeared".

ETA: https://news.google.com/topics/CAAqJ...S&ceid=US%3Aen

[!@#$%!]

Originally Posted by The Soup Nazi

Alexei Navalny has "disappeared".

ETA: https://news.google.com/topics/CAAqJ...S&ceid=US%3Aen

i'm sure they've killed him. he said way way before not to moan for him. not that it's not fucked up. it's fucked up

==

anyway so you guys rejected the ultra right wing constitution huh?

good for you

who knew that being stuck with the pinochet legacy could be a "good thing" relatively?

[The Soup Nazi]

 

https://news.google.com/stories/CAAq...S&ceid=US%3Aen

[The Soup Nazi]

Navalny "found".

Alive (more or less) in a penal colony called IK-3 Polar Wolf, located in Kharp, Siberia, "beyond the Arctic Circle". Because Moscow wasn't cold and dark enough, you see.

[The Soup Nazi]

Tesla Blamed 'Careless Owners' For Factory Defects, Because Hey, They Knew They Were Buying A Tesla

No defect, no defect, YOU'RE the defect!

[Antagon]

Originally Posted by The Soup Nazi

 

https://news.google.com/stories/CAAq...S&ceid=US%3Aen

It's kind of a pity this only works on a state-by-state basis when there are ample reasons he should be barred from running again, period. But I guess it's better than nothing. I'm hoping this will domino into a bunch of other states following suit - looking towards Georgia and New York - not that the latter would make much of a difference based on where his voters are. But it would be a nice added bonus to see his former home state giving him the boot. Was there another state with running investigations/court cases? I've sort of lost track, the guy leaves a trail of crime and gross misconduct wherever he sets foot.

[!@#$%!]

Originally Posted by Antagon

It's kind of a pity this only works on a state-by-state basis when there are ample reasons he should be barred from running again, period. But I guess it's better than nothing. I'm hoping this will domino into a bunch of other states following suit - looking towards Georgia and New York - not that the latter would make much of a difference based on where his voters are. But it would be a nice added bonus to see his former home state giving him the boot. Was there another state with running investigations/court cases? I've sort of lost track, the guy leaves a trail of crime and gross misconduct wherever he sets foot.

what is the real pity is that americans live in 2 alternate realities that seldom meet

republicans have started an impeachment inquiry against biden with no evidence of wrongdoing whatsoever. im not saying that biden is a saint, but come on. he's already guilty of amazing conspiracies, in their wacko minds

but hey!

 

a cult is a cult is a cult is a cult

that is what's really going on. a cult

=

while the usa is a country, yes it's got a bigger territory than europe, has 50 states instead of 27 or 28 nations (i forget the exact number, sorry), has 75% of the population, etc etc

now if you compare the usa to europe as a whole you'll have a better scale to grasp things. europe has orbán and duda and wilders and le pen and meloni & co (she's more reasonable than her associates it seems). and that person in slovakia and some swedes and germans etc etc. oh and you have your own austrian corporals as well. europe as a whole is held together by brussels rules i guess, but what happens in various places is still their own local thing. about a third of eu countries have not even adopted the common currency


the us federal government has more central power over its union than brussels over its own, of course, especially since we had the civil war. but states have their rights per the constitution and that's the way it's been from the start. i can sit on an entire home armory in one state, and get arrested for having a pocket knife in the next one

so when you think of "states" think about portugal, denmark, bulgaria, ireland, cyprus... not as the same thing as our states, but just for scale and perspective. wyoming has a population right between those of malta and luxembourg. california, similar to poland. florida, more than romania. new york state more than the netherlands. pennsylvania, more than belgium.... etc etc. massive place!

=

and now to stich it all together from my rambling mess: the trump cult is what is keeping the states from working more cohesively at the federal level, as of late

and so the states go off on their own. as they are entitled to do. here in this case, because they run their own elections

but it's not like the states have always worked well together. from the origins, the constitution was supplemented by the bill of rights, the division between free and slave states set the stage for a bloody civil war, etc etc.... and now we have this shit

[The Soup Nazi]

Now Maine says T**** can go fuck a goat.

SCOTUS is gonna have to move in faster that they wanted to, if they wanted to at all (they didn't). And Clarence Dawg won't recuse himself. And there it will die. But in the meantime, bring on the popcorn, I guess?

[The Soup Nazi]

A stupidly fun one to start the year:

Lauren Boebert blames Barbra Streisand and Ryan Reynolds for making her switch districts

[The Soup Nazi]

Who knew death threats work.