Don't blame me, I voted for the other guy. (Politics General)

Ciaran
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Senior Moderator
友情は魔法だ
@Zincy  
Desperation. This is what it smells like. They’re no longer afraid of not being right about their tax cuts, now they’re terrified they might have been wrong and are doing everything they can to make it look like everything’s ok.
 
It’s like watching a child try to prove that they didn’t throw a baseball through your window because that’s not their ball. And if that doesn’t work then they try to argue that your window was already broke.
 
Any guesses on the next step? I’m guessing “This is Obama’s fault”. Except that doesn’t sound crazy enough for the QAnon folks, so I’m betting my money on “This is Hillary’s fault”.
Zincy
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In Vino Veritas
@Ciaran
 
The odds of a slowdown have breached the 60% mark, the odds of a contraction are slightly lower, with the odds of a full-blown recession being between 38-40%. They have every reason to panic, even the slightest whiff of a slowdown will sink Trump.
 
He has done so little to expand his base, and tied himself so much to the economy, that if his one trick pony even stumbles he’s in trouble. The “he may be trash but the economy is good” crowd will find themselves without a cover.
Ciaran
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Senior Moderator
友情は魔法だ
@Zincy  
To be completely honest, if he had done the infrastructure projects he’d promised, and the jobs programs, and actually found a way to transition people from coal to new energy solutions, or reduced the deficit or balanced the budget - any of those things he promised to do for the economy and the country - hell, even if he’d built that moon base he kept talking about - I would have voted for him next year.
 
But he didn’t do a single one of those things, and in most cases he and the rest of the Republicans only made it worse.
 
Next year, I’ll be voting against people who hate state’s rights, and who hate infrastructure, and who hate small businesses and who saddle big businesses with unreasonable and pointless tariffs and visa loopholes.
 
In the past that meant voting against Democrats. But now it’s the Republicans who are pulling that shit, and they are SO MUCH WORSE about it than the Democrats ever were.
 
Better Democratic style “tax and spend” than Republican style “borrow and spend and never ever plan to pay it back”. And better Democratic style “big government” than Republican style “the Federal government controls every fucking thing in the country and states and individuals have zero rights”.
 
I honestly wish the Federal government in the US had rules and laws that actually allowed more than two parties. But if I have to choose between what the Republicans have done since they came to power, or what the Democrats did when they were in power, I’ll go with the “Let’s have a middle class again and see how that helps”.
The Smiling Pony
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( ͠° ͟ʖ ͡° )
@Background Human  
People only knew Trump for being a proud caricature of a 20th century robber baron and scummy NYC landlord born with a silver spoon that spent years on a racist campaign against the US president, and it made him president.
 
Literally no such thing as bad press in the USA. Even Eppstein probably had book and movie deals lined up for millions before… whatever happened in that cell.
Dustcan
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Dogs
Looking up the history of the Southern Strategy got me this gem from Reagan’s chief advisor.
 
Not sure if I should censor the N-word or not, so I’ll just give a warning ahead of the time that the N-word is used a lot.
 
Atwater: As to the whole Southern strategy that Harry S. Dent, Sr. and others put together in 1968, opposition to the Voting Rights Act would have been a central part of keeping the South. Now you don’t have to do that. All that you need to do to keep the South is for Reagan to run in place on the issues that he’s campaigned on since 1964, and that’s fiscal conservatism, balancing the budget, cut taxes, you know, the whole cluster.
Questioner: But the fact is, isn’t it, that Reagan does get to the Wallace voter and to the racist side of the Wallace voter by doing away with legal services, by cutting down on food stamps?
Atwater: Y’all don’t quote me on this. You start out in 1954 by saying, “Nigger, nigger, nigger”. By 1968 you can’t say “nigger”—that hurts you. Backfires. So you say stuff like forced busing, states’ rights and all that stuff. You’re getting so abstract now [that] you’re talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you’re talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is [that] blacks get hurt worse than whites. And subconsciously maybe that is part of it. I’m not saying that. But I’m saying that if it is getting that abstract, and that coded, that we are doing away with the racial problem one way or the other. You follow me—because obviously sitting around saying, “We want to cut this”, is much more abstract than even the busing thing, and a hell of a lot more abstract than “Nigger, nigger”. So, any way you look at it, race is coming on the backbone.
 
That’s a lot to unpack and digest.
Ciaran
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Senior Moderator
友情は魔法だ
@Dustcan  
Speaking as someone who lived through that era, yes. That rings very true.
 
The only part that is missing is the “We need states in the US that are as poverty stricken as Mexico so we can have that ‘dollar a day labor’ here, without having to ship our manufacture back and forth over borders. And that’s what the south was built for.”
 
I wish I was making that up. Anyone else ever been to one of Kurtzig’s manufacturing ASK/MANMAN meetings?
AaronMk
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Sky funeral
@Dustcan
Speaking as someone who lived through that era, yes. That rings very true.
The only part that is missing is the “We need states in the US that are as poverty stricken as Mexico so we can have that ‘dollar a day labor’ here, without having to ship our manufacture back and forth over borders. And that’s what the south was built for.”
I wish I was making that up. Anyone else ever been to one of Kurtzig’s manufacturing ASK/MANMAN meetings?
 
Never been to one of those meetings but I can see it. A lot of people like to say Detroit died in the seventies and shit. But the truth of the matter is Detroit was dying in the forties when the Big Three discovered they could find safety and cut expenses by decentralizing manufacturing. Taking a page from post-Pearl Harbour military decentralizing for their assets auto-manufacturing took the same route; albeit probably to also cut the Union’s ability to organize and coordinate if they couldn’t do it all in the same location (the Rouge River area for instance was - and still is a stinking, shitty - site for manufacturing in Detroit). So factories and jobs were shipped out into the suburbs, and then out of county, then out of state, and then out of country.
 
At a specific point I can imagine very early they found they could get bigger bang for their buck shipping work increasingly out of Detroit when the counties or towns they were looking at were willing to bend over backwards for them to do so. Then when Reason and Carter logic kicked in by the twilight of the century lower tariffs and duties made going out over the country’s borders looked tasty.
 
And that’s how Detroit died. Stricken with automotive cancer in the late forties and was bleeding out by the fifties.
Ciaran
ラ・ゼッタ - For supporting the site
Silly Pony - Celebrated the 13th anniversary of MLP:FIM, and 40 years of MLP!
Shimmering Smile - Celebrated the 10th anniversary of Equestria Girls!
Lunar Guardian - Earned a place among the ranks of the most loyal New Lunar Republic soldiers (April Fools 2023).
Crystal Roseluck - Had their OC in the 2023 Derpibooru Collab.
Flower Trio - Helped others get their OC into the 2023 Derpibooru Collab.
A Lovely Nightmare Night - Celebrated the 12th anniversary of MLP:FIM!
Princess of Love - Extra special version for those who participated in the Canterlot Wedding 10th anniversary event by contributing art.
Tree of Harmony - Drew someone's OC for the 2022 Community Collab
Elements of Harmony - Had an OC in the 2022 Community Collab

Senior Moderator
友情は魔法だ
@AaronMk  
Yeah - when “Just In Time” came along, all the rules changed. Suddenly you could order the parts you needed just as they were required, and final assembly became less a problem of “Where do we store all this stuff” and much more of a “Where can we get these the cheapest and at the last second”, even if that meant being evil.
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