I-5 wrote:Pasted from a twitter series post (I won't say who it came from yet, but some of you probably already know who):
"I’m no political pundit but I grew up w a dad who was a federal prosecutor & he taught me a lot & I’ve also sat a fair amount of poker w serious players & l’ll say this: I do not think Trump is trying to ‘make his base happy’ or ‘laying the groundwork for his own network’, or that ‘chaos is what he loves’. The core of it is that he knows he’s in deep, multi-dimensional legal jeopardy & this defines his every action. We’re seeing 1) a tactical delay of the transition to buy time for coverup & evidence suppression 2) above all, a desperate endgame, which is to create enough chaos & anxiety about peaceful transfer of power, & fear of irreparable damage to the system, that he can cut a Nixon-style deal in exchange for finally conceding. But he doesn’t have the cards. His bluff after ‘the flop’ has been called in court.
His ‘turn card’ bluff will be an escalation & his ‘River card’ bluff could be really ugly. But they have to be called. We cannot let this mobster bully the USA into a deal to save his ass by threatening our democracy. THAT is his play. But he’s got junk in his hand. So call him.
I will allow that he’s also a whiny, sulky, petulant, Grinchy, vindictive little 10-ply-super-soft b**** who no doubt is just throwing a wicked pout fest & trying to give a tiny-hand middle finger to the whole country for pure spite, without a single thought for the dead & dying. But his contemptible, treasonous, seditious assault on the stability of our political compact isn’t about 2024, personal enrichment or anything else other than trying to use chaos & threat to the foundation of the system as leverage to trade for a safe exit. Call. His. Bluff.
Faith in the strength of our sacred institutions & founding principles is severely stretched...but they will hold. They will. He’s leaving, gracelessly & in infamy. But if we trade for it, give him some brokered settlement, we’ll be vulnerable to his return. We can’t flinch."
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End of post. Agree or disagree? I've also heard that he's collecting money to line his legal defense, as well as building followers for a new media channel. But the bottom line is that the SDNY is waiting for him, and as soon as he's free from the White House, they're coming for him, and he is rightfully SCARED.
I-5 wrote:RIv, I don't think it takes any intelligence to be SCARED. He's trying to delay the inevitable.
Unless that strategy has been proposed by one of Trump's advisors, that kind of rational, calculated action is beyond Trump's mental capabilities.
I-5 wrote:What's so great is that all the bluster and hot air you hear, both at his rallies and on some right wing media about fraudulent elections...it all falls apart in front of a judge. Fake news works great in media, but it just doesn't work in a court of law.
c_hawkbob wrote:It honestly seems as though he is doing just as much harm as possible on his way out; from accelerated federal execution (and even trying to authorize hangings and firing squads to facilitate) to selling off oil exploration leases on pristine federal land to fleecing his own donators to line his own pockets, all seemingly born of pure spite and hatred.
Then with his pathetic incessant whining and begging for anything to happen to allow him to stay in office, and all of his staunch tough guy supporters turning into the same whiney little snowflakes ... this is truly an embarrassing time to be a patriot with a functioning brain.
I-5 wrote:I think quite a few people here did expect he would behave better, as in 'go quietly away'. I sure did not. I agree that it won't take years to recover, but only because I don't know if we will EVER recover from the trash he brought in (126 republicans signed their name to the BC lawsuit that the Texas AG tried to bring to the SCOTUS). There is no going back to nomal, ever.
No one will care after a few years. One nice thing about humans is they have a marvelous ability to return to normal after the stressors are gone. Humans are very forgetful and move on to the next thing to stir them up after the other issue is gone.
I-5 wrote:Normally I'd agree, no one being is that important...but this is not one of those times. No one has ever trashed the office like this scum has, and unless they start changing laws around what a president can and can't do, he has opened the door to someone possibly worse in the future (like someone said, was it RIv?), what if he had actually been smart? He will be memorable the way Washington, Lincoln, or FDR was memorable, but for the very worst reasons. Just judging by how many americans needlessly died because of his inaction, that has already cemented his place at the bottom of the barrel. All those families who needlessly lost loved ones, including his supporters, will never be the same. I wish I was wrong, but I know I'm not.
Trump can go F himself. If any of us spend much more time thinking about that piece of trash narcissist after he is gone, we will be wasting even a few seconds doing so as other than humor.
Wash your brain of this scumbag as soon as you can once he's gone.
Trump can go F himself. If any of us spend much more time thinking about that piece of trash narcissist after he is gone, we will be wasting even a few seconds doing so as other than humor.
Wash your brain of this scumbag as soon as you can once he's gone.
I-5 wrote:You’re fooling yourself if you think he’ll be gone from anyone’s mind (even yours) after Inauguration Day. He will still be holding power over the cowards of the GOP with his threat to run again...that is, unless he goes to prison.
Will the country return to some sense of normalcy once the pandemic ends and people resume their regular lives again?
Will the country return to some sense of normalcy once the pandemic ends and people resume their regular lives again?
I-5 wrote:We all want it to, but I don’t think we can reasonably expect it to. The post Covid-world will have permanent changes, just like the post-Trump world. It would be naive to expect otherwise. Exactly what those changes are no one can say, but I predict the airline industry will be a huge example for one, in terms of companies going out of business, and how the travel industry will change even after the vaccine is administered (not unlike how airline security changed permanently after 9/11). Politics-wise, also expect permanent changes, and maybe the death or reformation of a party. Most of all, I hope they put in hard laws to replace unwritten codes of what a president can and can’t do.
I-5 wrote:You’re fooling yourself if you think he’ll be gone from anyone’s mind (even yours) after Inauguration Day. He will still be holding power over the cowards of the GOP with his threat to run again...that is, unless he goes to prison.
NorthHawk wrote:These types of things do change societies, but we won’t know how or to what extent for probably a decade.
Then we will be able to look back and see what changes occurred and what effect they had.
NorthHawk wrote:These types of things do change societies, but we won’t know how or to what extent for probably a decade.
Then we will be able to look back and see what changes occurred and what effect they had.
Aseahawkfan wrote:I do expect the government to implement better quarantine and faster lockdown procedures as well as a better global information network, but people would go back to normal right now if they were allowed to.
I-5 wrote:I think quite a few people here did expect he would behave better, as in 'go quietly away'. I sure did not. I agree that it won't take years to recover, but only because I don't know if we will EVER recover from the trash he brought in (126 republicans signed their name to the BC lawsuit that the Texas AG tried to bring to the SCOTUS). There is no going back to nomal, ever.
RiverDog wrote:I don't think that everyone would 'go back to normal' right now if they were allowed to. There's still going to be a significant percentage of the public that will be reluctant to travel on certain modes, like cruise ships. The pandemic undoubtedly has changed some social patterns. I have friends from work that have taken other jobs and moved hundreds of miles away. One of my brothers-in-law had to enter assisted living. I have a neighbor that sold his home and have yet to meet the new occupants. Routine things like that pile up over the course of the year and it will take time before we socialize with a modified network of friends at the same degree as we did before the pandemic.
Hopefully we can get all 50 states to agree on a process for responding to a pandemic, but it won't be easy. The pandemic has exposed huge fractures in the social fabric of the nation, particularly where a blue state shares a border with a red state, like Washington and Idaho. It would require a Constitutional amendment to establish a common pandemic response plan as anything not defined in the Constitution, like a pandemic response, is left up to the states.
I do think that the aftermath will produce better cooperation between nations with regard to a pandemic response, but that, too, won't be easy. It's going to be difficult to gain the cooperation of closed societies, like China, Russia, and Iran.
RiverDog wrote:I don't think that everyone would 'go back to normal' right now if they were allowed to. There's still going to be a significant percentage of the public that will be reluctant to travel on certain modes, like cruise ships. The pandemic undoubtedly has changed some social patterns. I have friends from work that have taken other jobs and moved hundreds of miles away. One of my brothers-in-law had to enter assisted living. I have a neighbor that sold his home and have yet to meet the new occupants. Routine things like that pile up over the course of the year and it will take time before we socialize with a modified network of friends at the same degree as we did before the pandemic.
Hopefully we can get all 50 states to agree on a process for responding to a pandemic, but it won't be easy. The pandemic has exposed huge fractures in the social fabric of the nation, particularly where a blue state shares a border with a red state, like Washington and Idaho. It would require a Constitutional amendment to establish a common pandemic response plan as anything not defined in the Constitution, like a pandemic response, is left up to the states.
I do think that the aftermath will produce better cooperation between nations with regard to a pandemic response, but that, too, won't be easy. It's going to be difficult to gain the cooperation of closed societies, like China, Russia, and Iran.
Aseahawkfan wrote:I thought this would happen as well. Then I saw that CCL and RCL were booking cruises with the only thing holding them back is the government mandates. The only thing holding people back from full on returning to normal and not caring is the government. Not to say some wouldn't care, but people are mostly doing what they're told to do. Once that impediment is out of the way, they'll start cruising, going to restaurants, and not caring.
I was quite surprised as I was reluctant to invest in cruise lines. But it seems as soon as people are able to cruise again, they're going to do it. Same with flights. Enough people don't give a crap they'll start rolling again. Apparently gamblers are itching to get back to Vegas and Macau. It's pretty crazy.
More people should invest and follow the financial news. Not just for the money making opportunities, but to see human behavior. People don't care as much as the media would have us think. They go about their business without concern without the mandates or government recommendations. Enough people will return to their old ways once the government mandates are lifted that it will not be noticeable that anything changed other than what the government or business requires. People hate changing their habits unless it is some new tech or a great benefit. You see that so often when you study companies and the economy.
RiverDog wrote:Interesting. You could be right.
There is a lot of pent up demand, particularly with retired people like me. Our income hasn't been hurt whatsoever by the pandemic because we're on fixed income. With nothing to spend it on, we have more money to spend on traveling and other things now than we did a year ago.
6 months or so ago, we decided to upgrade our motor home situation, so we've been in the market for a new one. Due to dimensional constraints in the building we want to park it in, there's only a handful of models that will work, but we couldn't find any in the entire Northwest, new or used. Our 18 year old old RV sold for more than what I hoped to get for it without us even to have to put it on the market. There is a huge demand for them as camping is about the only thing that's been allowed during the pandemic. We finally ended up putting a deposit down on a new, factory ordered motor home from a dealership in Las Vegas. They're going to pay for my travel expenses to go pick it up this spring.
That's why I'm so anxious to get vaccinated: So I can have a little fun when I go to Las Vegas to pick up my motor home.
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