161 thoughts to “Open Thread Non-Petroleum, November 5, 2024”

    1. I’m wondering if we’re seeing “when times get tough, the voting public turns right”?

      I expect it to get much worse going forward.

      Are we doomed to protectionism, militarism, and a rise of the oligarchs as collapse (complexity (entropy) overwhelming progress) takes hold?

      2. “The Corleone family had internal enemies — but that was a movie with smart mobsters at the top… and this isn’t “

  2. Even though the election isn’t called, I’m stunned by all the support for Trump.

    I suppose I am living in a bubble (I live in a suburb in Texas, by the way), and I’ll need to rethink my ideas on America, the people it has, and who they want running it.

    Truly stunning.

    2. Would it be unkind to suspect that the U.S. voting majority consists of racist, misogynistic, willfully uninformed individuals whose primary concern is that gasoline for their 5,000 pound SUV costs $3.00/gal and that for a promise by a felonious, pathological liar, bankrupt casino owner, grifter and sex offender to lower prices they are willing to abandon the rule of law, our most trusted allies, public education, the people of Ukraine, the ecosystem, Social Security, Medicare and common decency?

      (Note: That was just a question, not an accusation.)

  3. Wonder if there will be some hard introspection by the Democrats.

    Probably not.

    1. In the Electoral College and the Senate, the US has an anti-majoritarian system biased to the right.
      The Supreme Court delayed prevented the legal cases against Trump from going forward.
      There is an unfortunate number of people who get their “news” from Fox and talk radio.

      Oh, and you have a huge number of racists and homophobes.

      The problem is not with the Democrats.

      The problem is with the people who wanted this and twisted the system to make it happen.

      1. Lloyd,

        It looks like Trump may win the popular vote nationwide. True there is a lot of misinformation.

      2. Yes, all those tens of millions of Americans are wrong because of Russian dezinformatsiya and/or being stupid and racist because of Fox/Twitter.

        Can’t wait for this to happen again in another four years then. Seems no lessons were learned.

        1. Those are all separate paragraphs- you’re the one who connected them.

          The US has had racists and homophobes long before Fox and Twitter.

          But most importantly, what makes you think there will be another election in four years?

          1. Election in four years?
            I’m expecting a Reichstag fire on about February 27th

            1. It’s really funny that, this time, he’ll definitely go full Hitler and validate every hysterical doomer fantasy about the man.

            2. Kleiber,

              This time he has more openly broadcast these behaviors than he did in 2016.

            4. What Americans did not vote for is the Supreme court ruling that gives the president immunity from prosecution for crimes they committed while in office if it was in ‘the interests’ of the country as he/she saw it.

              Well, I suppose they did vote for it by electing trump in his first term…granting him the power to stack the supreme court with his minions.

            5. Kleiber,

              Yes people were voting what they believed were in their economic interests first and foremost. Inflation has hit the working class hard in the US and people feel less well off than before Biden was in office, they remember a period before the pandemic when the US economy was doing well and median income was rising while inflation was low and they were voting for a return to those better times. Most people ignore the political chaos and don’t have time to pay any attention to it.

              Hopefully Trump does not do all the things he has claimed he will do on day one, that will be very chaotic and the economy is not likely to fare well.

              His promises are covered here

              https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/campaigns/presidential/3220465/what-trump-promised-day-one-white-house/

            6. Trump never built all that wall or got Mexico to pay for it nor did he “lock her up”. So I can confidently ignore most of the campaign circuit guff that came out. That’s just usual electioneering.

              I’d be impressed if he did half of what he promised.

            7. Kleiber,

              Trump tried to have his attorney general prosecute Hilary Clinton, they wouldn’t do it. This time with Trump likely to have both houses of Congress and a sympathetic Supreme Court there are no restraints on his power.

              He will pick an attorney general that will do whatever he asks. He will find a Defense Secretary, National Security Advisor, and Secretary of State that will also follow orders with no pushback.

              We will get an idea what Dictator on Day One looks like in Jan 20 or Jan 21, Canada may need to start building a wall on their southern border to keep out the poitical refugees from the US.

  4. I am strangely very serene about this: at least the ambiguity is over. The R has the Senate, too. They are going to get what they want.

    Whether the rest of us like it or not.

      1. Think of it this way. After this term, he won’t be eligible again.

        We can then deal with whatever other fuck ups the system churns out to maintain the illusion that electoralism means anything.

    1. HHH,

      So you think this will be a good thing? Interesting. We will see. So you don’t believe Trump will follow through on his promises? Or you think a fascist dictarship is a good thing? Not quite sure where you stand.

      1. The ones that congregate >350,000 strong to watch steel mindlessly go around a track in circles are now in power. They thought that paying 50 cents for 3 bananas was too much.

      2. Dennis,

        I think people have warped views or perceptions of reality. Like the economy is doing great when reality is far different.

        Too much gaslighting leads to a false sense of reality.

        Trump is no Hitler, no Stalin, no Mussolini. No dictator. Those are just opinions. Reality is different than those opinions. He is just Trump.

        Don’t worry though. He’ll likely be judged on how he handles the incoming depression we are headed into.

        1. HHH,

          We have Trumps words that tell us what he would like to do. We also have the words of those who have worked closely with him and have claimed he seems to have fascist tendencies.

          Trump lies so often that I can understand that one might discount anything he says. We will have to see how it plays out. He can claim later I said I would do all these things and won by a landslide and my supporters have control of both houses of Congress. He may do exactly what he has promised to do with few guardrails in place to stop him.

          Also note that the depression you foresee only creates the conditions for even greater presidential power which will make things even worse.

          It is a sad day for the USA, but democracy was nice while it lasted.

            1. Lazy and tired. He needs motivation and energy to do anything, so… nothing will get done and it will be really funny to see the MAGA people either deny reality or lose their minds.

            2. “Trump’s proven incompetence” => dementia

              Trump’s cabinet initiates the 25th amendment process to remove him from office, and if they succeed, JD Vance would become the new president.

              Trump shows no allegaince to anyone, and the cabinet members have none to him

            3. Paul:
              He was incompetent long before he became senile.
              Who can bankrupt a casino?
              It remains to be seen who will be in his next cabinet but expect it to look like a combination clown show and mobster movie.
              Try to imagine RFK jr., Elon Musk, Steve Bannon, Stephen Miller, Roger Stone, various disbarred lawyers, Paul Manafort sitting around a table making policymaking policy guided by the moral tone set by Roy Cohn.
              I’d look forward to Vance replacing him under the notion of choosing the devil I don’t know.

        2. Paul:
          I’m no NASCAR fan, but being so does not necessarily indicate the voting interests, shopping practices nor the intellectual competence of those that are.
          Try for a little tolerance.

  7. Now that Trump has gotten his “get out of jail free” card, watch him abdicate to Vance; or, better yet (as people I know seem to think), Vance will invoke the 25th Amendment to get his (Trump’s) sorry ass out of there so the Republicans can continue their work without having to deal with a bumbling senile idiot.

    1. I was thinking the same. Vance would then choose Haley as his VP, so that she couldn’t challenge him in 2028.

  8. FIVE WAYS A TRUMP PRESIDENCY WOULD BE DISASTROUS FOR THE CLIMATE

    “We’ve got to get off fossil fuels as quickly as possible,” said Michael Mann, a climate scientist at the University of Pennsylvania. “It’s hard to see that happening in the event of a Trump victory.” Mann added that “a second Trump presidency is game over for meaningful climate action this decade, and stabilizing warming below 1.5C probably becomes impossible”.

    https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/oct/28/donald-trump-climate-change-environment

    2. Fact is, all Presidents elected have been a disaster for the climate. Putting this one at the helm at the point of reaching 1.5 C above normal is folly on the order of classical Greek tragedy. Things couldn’t be worse.

    3. Washington has abandoned any pretense of dealing with abrupt climate change.

      1. ..or allies, Ukraine, public schools, Senate confirmation, NATO or any of that messy democracy stuff.

    1. I’m hoping that Trump’s mafia streak returns – he did oust various members of his cabinet ensemble (especially Bannon) to operate under the spell of his son-in-law kushner who seems to have an Atlantic coast Judeo-royalist mindset that appears to be mostly aligned with mainstream American politics.
      Hopefully he’ll repeat and betray the techbro project ’25 mediabro factions for Kushner, as crazy as it seems.

      1. Robert,

        Trump will put loyalists in place this time, so his power will be unfettered. Not many in Congress who will stand up to him, so no check there either, Supreme Court seems to think Trump is above the law, so not much of a check there either.

        What could possibly go wrong?

        Interesting to see one of his final campaign stops where he said, I should have never left the White House.

        Maybe he doesn’t plan to leave ever?

        1. “Maybe he doesn’t plan to leave ever?”
          There is a 90 year old precedent to declare a national emergency and assume dictatorial power. Given Trump’s cynicism, he’ll probably declare a climate emergency.

  11. How many workers, or their family members will be deported?
    When will we know that Federal Hate Crime laws are no longer being enforced?
    How will we know when Journalists and whistleblowers are being muted by coercion and threats against their family?
    How will we know when communications by individuals is being censored, cataloged for reprisal, and erased by AI enabled NSA on behalf of the Neo-authoritarians? Perhaps I am naive and it already is, but I am talking the talk not even making it beyond your device.

  12. I hope you don’t have any family on fixed income, or just getting by. Trumps plans are going to ramp up inflation in a big way.

  13. Methinks I see in my mind a noble and puissant nation rousing herself like a strong man after sleep, and shaking her invincible locks: methinks I see her as an eagle mewing her mighty youth, and kindling her undazzled eyes at the full midday beam; purging and unscaling her long-abused sight at the fountain itself of heavenly radiance; while the whole noise of timorous and flocking birds, with those also that love the twilight, flutter about, amazed at what she means, and in their envious gabble would prognosticate a year of sects and schisms.

    Methinks not. But MAGA folk do. Are they right?.

  14. As I said above, I have a slightly different perspective. I actually truly believed this race was a dead heat, and honestly, I think most candidates in office toe the consensus, and I don’t think this will be too different under Trump again. Trump vs Harris actually wasn’t the biggest issue for me. I just don’t understand these sweeping Republican wins, and why they can never be replicated by Democrats. I had the same feeling back in 2004.

    What I’m stunned by, is the massive support for Trump, which I didn’t see coming. I know that makes me sound like an effete urban liberal, but so be it! Any identity one has, you are going to be stunned by the massive amount of people with a different identity. If you visit a foreign nation, you are going to be stunned by the amount of people there who are….natives of their country! Even though they are foreigners to you.

    That’s what I’m talking about. This is a strange, demographic phenomenon that I just don’t understand, and, it appears, will be in America for a very, very long time. White, conservative, religious, right wing people in the hinterlands are very, very good at having families, continuing through the generations, and getting each other to think in a groupthink consensus that they are the real America, they must always vote Republican, etc.

    I’m just going to have to accept that that is, in fact, America. America doesn’t consist of multiracial, liberal people in the cities, and even if it did, they don’t have the influence I thought they had.

    1. It’s intriguing that the Trump/Vance ticket was visibly and rhetorically about maintaining white male control of power in the country, in the face of the relatively small number of white male voters – NBC exit polls in 10 key states indicate that white men made up 34% of votes, and only 60% of white males voted for Trump – so only about 22% of his support from white males. He had an incredible breadth of appeal, with the majority of Latino men and white women voting for him. Much has been made of black men voting for Trump, but it was a tiny portion of the electorate – about 1%.

      The Democrats should be thinking about their messaging and values, and why many of these are alienating vast swathes of the electorate.

      Like most on this site, I both mystified and in awe of Trump’s ability to inspire enthusiasm for his personality and his message of anger, fear & violence. He strikes a resonant chord in the country’s psyche which I once thought was confined to a weird fringe of the population.

      1. Brian said:
        ” He had an incredible breadth of appeal”

        Not in places such as Massachusetts and Vermont where the current count is 2 to 1 for Harris. In NYC proper, I bet it’s higher than that.

        The issue is structural and geographic. One can’t have a candidate catering to an educated and aware electorate and also have it work elsewhere. You wonder how Obama won so readily in 2008, but that was before Republicans started gerrymandering and creating red enclaves encouraging straight party ticket voting. Gerrymandering killed Ohio, Texas, Pennsylvania.

        1. Paul:
          We can’t blame redistricting when Trump has won a national majority of voters.
          I think the biggest message is that for almost a generation that working class people, the majority of the population, feel like they are not getting their share of the wealth being created in the nation. That is true and reinforced by the drumbeat of right wing media and politicians saying over and over that the Democrats are to blame because they are focused on weird social issues. Democrats have focused on spending federal money to redistribute wealth but these efforts generally work around the margins, adding a few jobs, aiding the poor, improving infrastructure. No Democrat could stay in office if he/she attacked the beneficiaries of the mal distribution of wealth because they need the rich donors to get re-elected.
          Unless Trump manages to take control of the electoral process or die I predict that he will be thrown out again in 2028 because he won’t even try to fix deep seated problems and he will create even more problems, worse problems.

          1. It’s this. And also, Harris was polling less than half what Biden and Hillary got in NY.

            This is class realignment. The people gaslighting the nation saying things are okay are the wealthy well off elites that are on >$100k. Harris gained them. Trump massively gained people below that.

            Please DNC, keep telling people everything is fine. Worked out so well.

            1. You still can’t explain why Obama did so well. Those areas were always poor and it was a Rust Belt long before Obama appeared on the scene. How would have Obama possibly do better now? The severe gerrymandering and local party control was a response by Repubs to never allow somebody like Obama to be elected again.

              As a result of this starkly bifurcated voter structure, a Democratic candidate would have to tell the truth (e.g. vaccines do work, Putin is evil, etc) to appeal to smart voters in urban areas while lying like Trump to appeal to non-college-educated voters in rural areas (i.e, natural immunity is all you need, funding Ukraine is taking away money better spent elsewhere). Impossible to do both if a candidate has any principles.

              This morning on MSNBC, they claim that if only Harris had catered to a few more Midwest swing-state voters by softening on some trivial issues she wins — ignoring those in charge gerrymandered the districts, guaranteeing a Republican outcome independent of any issue.

              “We can’t blame redistricting when Trump has won a national majority of voters.”

              It’s actually a plurality, not a majority. Gerrymandering encourages straight-party-line ticketing, and also dissuading blue voters from voting in that district because it won’t make a difference in electing their congressman. So voters go there knowing they will vote red across the board, and blue are just less motivated. Before gerrymandering less party identification. Doesn’t take much to change outcomes by several percent .

            2. Paul:
              According to the latest data from CNN (4PM eastern) it is a real majority:
              Trump 50.8%
              Harris 47.5%
              with only NV and AZ not finalized.
              With AZ 52.3% and NV 50.9% for Trump it isn’t going to change much.

          2. JJHMan,

            Trump cannot be re-elected without a constitutional amendment. Only 2 terms are allowed and a maximum of 10 years in office (in the case where someone becomes President midterm due to the death of the President). See the 22nd Amendment

            https://constitutioncenter.org/the-constitution/amendments/amendment-xxii

            Trump will be done on Jan 20, 2029. Unless there is an overthrow of the US Government or the Constitution is amended.

            The 22nd Amendment was passed by Congress in 1947 and ratified 4 years later in 1951.

            1. Yes, re your penultimate paragraph. Isn’t Trump proposing an overthrow of both the government and the constitution? Didn’t Hitler abolish the German constitution three months after being elected and swearing allegiance to it?

            2. Dennis:
              John Norris beat me to the punch. Have you forgotten that this is the guy who tried to overthrow the 2020 election? Do you doubt that he would summon an even bigger mob than he did on 1/6/21?
              Please don’t tell me Trump has a higher respect for the rule of law, or even more human decency, that his German role model.

            3. John Norris and JJHMan,

              In this case Trump would be explicitly not following the Constitution. In the previous case Trump was very devious he never explicitly suggested that his supporters breach the Capitol Building (though obviously that was what he was trying to incite).

              Trump has many fascist tendencies, but it is not clear that he will stage a coup. Even though he was elected, I think the response might be like the Lyrics from the Beatles Revolution:

              You say you’ll change the constitution
              Well, you know
              We all wanna change your head.

    2. I had a pretty much identical response to the news. I think that there are a couple of issues that caused this outcome.
      Outrage works. Only 3mm fewer republicans showed up for this election vs the last one. But 18mm fewer democrats showed up. That pretty much determined the outcome.
      It was clear that Biden was not fit to be a candidate yet the democrats chose to not have open primaries but just put in Biden. Harris was pretty much a DEI VP and was sent to fix the unfixable border mess which made her borderline unelectable. When Biden dropped out / was pushed out after that disastrous debate she picked a running mate who may appeal to some good old boys but in states that didn’t matter, instead of the governor of PA which was the key to the whole thing.
      It was just a total clusterfuck on the dem side – and vague ( yes I think they are VERY important but don’t resonate at all) things like “inclusion” and “working together” simply don’t work to get people out to vote. Like I said – outrage and some (imaginary) “them” enemies work much better. This is not rocket science but for some reason the “when they go low, we go high” party doesn’t understand that when they go low, we go lower, would work way better. If Harris had called Trump “Donny Diaper” or something like that it would have worked way better.
      And don’t forget the role of media – so afraid to call out Trump for who he is and what is stands for because they may appear to be one sided – in the whole debacle. Only some social media was Trump exposed for what he was but certainly not in the MM. The fear of appearing partisan played a material role in enabling Trump&Co but Fox did not have any such qualms so for dems it was a fight with one hand tied behind their back.
      Rgds

        1. All of this is true but it doesn’t change what Trump is, nor the demographics that voted for him.

          Just as it is overly intellectual to insist on the woke agenda in the United States, and criticize those that resist, it is also overly intellectual to insist that problems with the woke agenda are what drive people to Trump.

          Nonsense! Trump is America, America is Trump. He is a reflection of them and their values, that’s why they show such support for him. Think about it. If they didn’t like Trump, they would just sit out the election, just like so many Democrats regularly sit out elections. They actually are white male christian authoritarians from the exurbs and backwoods, and those women and minorities who support that and don’t want any change in the power structure. And there are enough of them to continue to win, more or less for the rest of our lifetimes.

          They are fully aware on a subconscious level that democracy in a multiracial empire means more of the wrong people (women, blacks, and recent hispanic and asian immigrants) gaining more political clout, which is an absurdity and travesty to them, so they have to act in the present to stop that, and make sure it can never happen going forward.

          This is rednecks saying they own America, plain and simple, no ifs ands or buts. And they are right! They actually do own America. That’s the part that I have to accept.

          1. Even in my utter disdain for those who did vote for Trump I don’t think that’s the whole picture
            I might be naive in thinking that the real MAGA types, the racist, misogynistic, violence prone goons so dear to Trump’s heart are a majority of my fellow citizens. I prefer to think that most people are going to vote against whoever is in power as long as the sense of failure is so pervasive. Neither party has done much in recent years that people have directly benefitted from although much of the Biden agenda lays a ground work for future benefits. Most people just don’t look very far out either in economic terms or as to how the social structure affects them.
            There are also a lot of non-MAGA single issue voters that Trump shamelessly pandered to; the fervent anti-abortion crowd, those sick of our international responsibilities, the Zionists, and the Any Rand libertarians who imagine a corporate owned nirvana.
            It seems that democracy can be its own worst enemy.

          2. Bret Stephens wrote: “A Party of Prigs and Pontificators Suffers a Humiliating Defeat”

            What I don’t get is why they think getting beat up by a gang of rednecks that believe that the South will rise again is humiliating?

            92% for Trump below in one county (typical), which might mean that the male vote is possibly 99%. It’s really just sad.

            1. Another example from Alabama. Two counties stacked. Bibb County to the north, 82% for Trump. Perry County to the south, 71% for Harris.
              I went to Google StreetView and looked at the county line. Not hard to find a county road pointed north that turns from dirt to pavement precisely at the line crossing. Nope, inflation is NOT what’s causing the move toward Trump — the reality is a systemic disparity that the Republicans condone, and they have the right mix of gerrymandering and voter suppression to maintain it.

      3. Yeah, I’m getting the feeling that democracy (whatever that means) is dead. Social media tech bros developed the tools to manipulate voters that goes far beyond the crude propaganda of the 20th century. Now we are in an oligarchy. It isn’t just America by any means. You see the same thing happening in Europe, especially in small countries with their own language where it is relatively easy to dominate public opinion.

        1. Al: “Social media tech bros developed the tools to manipulate voters that goes far beyond the crude propaganda of the 20th century.”

          Never occurred to me until I heard it mentioned in the last few hours, but it’s possible that this is the “Pete Rose Election” in that enough online election-market-prediction players voted the same way that they bet that it was enough to swing the election. Pete Rose famously bet on his own team to either win or lose, I think it was to win, so I think the vote was to have the underdog Trump to win so they can get the biggest return.

          I have followed Rutgers statistics professor @HarryDCrane on-and-off via Twitter for several years and he nailed this past election by stating that it was at least partly on the betting market. He’s an anti-Nate-Silver in that the two do not get along. He’s going to outline it further.

    3. SPG99 said:

      ” White, conservative, religious, right wing people in the hinterlands”

      The news media never showed this stat.

      They showed white vs non-white for Trump
      They showed male vs female for Trump
      They showed non-college vs college for Trump
      They showed south vs north for Trump
      They showed religious vs non-religious for Trump

      But they didn’t show this put together in which case it may have been 80% for Trump.

      They didn’t show this stat because it’s absurdly embarrassing and because this is the contingent that watches all college football, auto racing, pro wrestling, etc and they would risk losing TV ratings by waving it around.

      1. I am speaking in generalities, and if I offend, it’s too bad, because these people offend me on a regular and continuing basis, and many people around the world as well. That’s the whole basis of their ideology: America, we’re number 1! And I’m number 1 in America!

        I have a right to get offended, because these people would shoot me dead in a heartbeat for even considering to vote Democrat.

        All is fair in love and hate, war, and politics. We are not in this together! I will never fall for that ever again, and I will never again fail to see America for what it is. Bridges are burnt. America voted for Trump in 2024, so therefore, I no longer consider myself American, even if I live here.

        1. SGP99, maybe 35% of the electorate control the country thanks to the power of the gerrymandering algorithm. FF geologists will appreciate this because it’s a geographic algorithm designed to optimize returns based on targeting the most likely locations. Not the same as kriging but an algorithm that is effective for what it accomplishes.

  15. It didn’t make one iota of difference who won in the big picture of the future. How we get there though, may be a little bit different.

    People seemed to vote according to their desire to continue using their existing cars with cheap fuel to help them survive the immediate future, they were not the interested in the longer term, or just don’t believe the rhetoric we keep getting fed. (doesn’t matter if real or not!!).

    They were also interested in jobs/industries now at ‘home’, which they seem to think is more likely with Republicans, no matter the leader. In other words, build industry in the USA using coal, gas or whatever to continue the dream of prosperity, as this is priority one, no matter the consequences for ‘the future’.

    ‘The future’ is an ephemeral concept, as people need to eat today, need their car today, need/want their widgets in the house today.

    1. “It’s 80°F in Michigan in November. Who fucking cares who the president is?!”

      1. You will be interested in an article I will have published on 3 Quarks Daily in two weeks which expresses your sentiments exactly. It will be called “One November Day.” I’ll post it here when it appears.

            1. These types of initiatives do have inertia – think of all the money / subsidies that were available during the Obama years, and the huge help that was for wind/solar. Once that has been installed it is hear to stay. And the technology base grows, the experience of actual performance grows etc. I find it somewhat ironic that TX is a state with a relatively high percentage of wind/solar in the energy mix.

    2. I think you are largely right. And since you are right, it doesn’t bode well for the future, because the future must be planned for.

      If we are just interested in the present…which we must be to some extent, and what nature has selected us for, it must necessarily mean we are not interested in the future. Hence the running up of deficits, using up resources now, etc. Because we have to grow our economy, survive now, and leave the tab and a dry, deserted world to future generations, who we are not designed to care about, since we are only designed to care about our own progeny.

      But hey…we made a bunch of money in the stock market, drove our trucks, flew our planes, and owned the libs and showed those uppity blacks and immigrants who is really boss!

      1. SGP99 …. ” it doesn’t bode well for the future, because the future must be planned for.
        If we are just interested in the present…which we must be to some extent, and what nature has selected us for, it must necessarily mean we are not interested in the future.”

        I agree fully, we will never stop using up natural resources as fast as possible while we have democracy. People will always vote for the shorter term, as they need to eat, sleep comfortably, get around today, and this year. A promised hardship for the next decade why we build whatever future will never win.

        This is precisely why every politician promises that everything will be better off, both now and in the future, under them. Under Harris the American people saw that it was more of the same, which is themselves becoming worse off on average now (cost of living, not keeping up with averages etc), so decided to vote for the other side.

        We have to also remember that both sides are after the swing voters in swing states, none of the rusted on voters from either sides counted, they cancelled each other out. So in the end it’s always a very small percentage of the population that changes course in every democracy, putting in power those that promise to make this small part of the populations life better off.

        If the incumbent has made this same small section of the population’s life worse off, or the perception of being worse off, on average, then they can expected to be kicked out.

        1. ” it’s always a very small percentage of the population that changes course in every democracy”

          Union vs confederacy almost cancels out. The residual is prone to manipulation by gerrymandering and voter suppression. NYT always had these feature stories on talking with customers at a cafe on some small town main street. Pointless but revealing on how metastable the balance is.

    1. Trump overseeing a country with 4% of the world’s population, but 20% of COVID-19 deaths leading to global inflation as a side-effect of economic reboot (rationale: hey, I deserve extra money as payback for when my company was doing nothing). Yet they vote Trump back in?

      1. Probably a more damning reading is now bad the opposition was when Trump got in.

        Anyway, you can cure COVID with bleach. It’s easy.

    2. This has the makings of high tragedy: Right when we cross the threshold into climate mayhem, the most unsuitable person imaginable to handle it all is elected. That’s right, elected. And the electorate will have no one to blame but themselves.

      Blow me about in winds, roast me in sulphur/ Wash me down in steep-gulfs of liquid fire!

  18. Pre-election we had some banter about interest rate prospects. I’m curious of you would adjust your views on this Dennis with current events-
    “inflation has reached the Fed target and the Fed funds rate ( and interest rates in general) are likely to be lower in the future.

    I replied-
    “I disagree about the interest rate prospects over the next decade…expecting higher levels than the last decade. One of the big reasons is that the deflationary effects of economic globalization will be going in reverse. Secondly, labor costs are going higher than the trend over the past decade (aging, immigration restrictions, ‘lying flat’ mentality).”

    Dennis-
    “Why do you believe interest rates will be higher?”
    My reply-
    “One reason is the gradual trend away from the US dollar as the reserve currency of the world transactions.
    Secondly…a trend to toward protectionism.
    Third…prospects for rising national debt load.”

    Well, now we have Trump 2. Does this change the equation as you see it Dennis- will Trump replace Powell, how many workers does he actually deport, how deep does economic protectionism become?
    Thanks in advance for your thoughts on this.

    I’m guessing this is the last interest rate cut Powell can justify, short of a catastrophic event.

    1. Hickory,

      I think I was being too optimistic earlier and thought that Harris would get elected. Given the results of the election, my expectation of inflation has changed. If we assume Trump follows through on his promise of large tariffs, I would expect a return of higher rates of inflation which would lead to higher interest rates. Other promises Trump has made such as prosecuting his enemies and closing the Southern border along with mass deportations would lead to chaos generally which would lead to lower economic growth, which tends to reduce inflation while also being likely to lead to a labor shortage which might lead to higher wages which would cause inflation to increase.

      Overall I think the likely trajectory would be for less economic growth and higher prices.

      As for the drill baby drill mantra, this will have no effect on oil prices in the US because any extra production is just exported and the amount of any increase in production would have little effect on World prices. Also if prices go down profits will be lower and there will be less drilling.

      When you listen to Trump talk on these subjects it is pretty clear he was sleeping during economics class. He is a moron on economics.

      1. Thanks Dennis.
        I have two additional concerns (ok really 20, but here are two)
        -he is vindictive and will do what he can to penalize states that did not vote for him. Many of these states are highly productive parts of the countries economy. But these guys see themselves as being in a culture war above all else and will ignore the downside to the country.
        -Musk has purchased what he wants, and a big part of that is making his xAI predominant and untethered for his uses such as satellite (surveillance contract) and robotics (policing and military…under trump the distinction between these two forces may be blurred). He is looking forward to having much more fun, as he puts it.

        1. I’m with you on the question of AI and robotics: this is a time when we should be planning careful and considered legislation on these issues, not putting a libertarian meathead with a huge conflict of interest in charge.

          Also, the legacy auto industry is going to need help to try and survive over the next four years.

          They’ll get that money…and they’ll still fail. The only question is how much money goes down the toilet.

    2. Did you see the recent employment data?

      12,000 jobs added in October. If we get another number anywhere close to that for the month of November we will definitely be seeing more rate cuts.

  19. If Trump does a he says on tariffs we can expect the US to dramatically lag the world in taking advantage of dropping prices for electric vehicle batteries, and photovoltaics.

    1. Hickory,

      Yes the tariffs are a very bad idea, but it plays to the working class who think it will mean a return to the 50s and 60s when manufacturing was strong in the US. The US has set itself back by at least 4 years on the transition to sustainable energy by electing Trump. Most people in the US are more concerned with the price of groceries and don’t really think beyond their next paycheck, just the way it is.

  20. If Trump and Musk crash the economy the way they promised, then I guess 2024 will be peak carbon emissions.

    1. Not quite yet I think. Too much momentum on this global bulldozer.
      But I do expect Trumps policies to stoke inflation in many other countries…not just here. Are you seeing that discussed in the German/Euro news?

      1. Hickory …… ” Too much momentum on this global bulldozer.”

        Beautifully expressed and exactly the outcome for our future while we have the energy to do so, no matter what the form of energy used.

        We, as in humanity as a whole, will only stop destroying other species when we no longer have the energy to do so. We have plundered the natural world so heavily we can’t get the energy and food from that source, which leaves the minerals of the planet left, that take immense and increasing energy, to gain access to, process into useable forms and transported to where needed.

        As civilization as we know it will always need to continually replace all needed metal and minerals due to entropy and dissipation, then we either destroy all other life on the planet or cease civilization at some point.
        Luckily for the environment, the source of energy being fossil fuels, that we use to power our civilization are limited, so the process of civilization will eventually cease.

        I fully agree with you that it will continue until it can’t, so watch for when oil starts an accelerating decline of production, not the “peak” as it’s during the overall energy availability decline when we have the real trouble, possibly 5-10 years into the future..

        1. I would like to waste some fuel for a good purpose….enough to send Musk and his Trump bros to Mars for a long long long vacation.

        2. Hideaway

          In total you might be right. If the government becomes too large then the situation becomes a dumbed downed one. “What is in it for me says the voter?”. Growth will prevail. The drive towards something better will meet limitations and then authoritarian tendences will be the norm most likely if the downturn begins to match the lower resource base.

          What might be interesting in the more complicated picture is that a couple of hundred people that know each other is all it takes in order to align towards not only a common target, but even a radical one. The reason is that a human being can only know so many humans to align and influence, so the group can not be too large. When the europeans mapped the aboriginal australians in the 1800s they were surprised to find a couple of hundred “extremely” different cultures. From cannibals, to peaceful, living with nature, exploiting nature, authoritarian, consensus seeking and many other categories. What is happening in the real world is that a closely aligned power structure of people that know each other could be at a local level or on top of a national state. That is why a patchwork theory could be likely. Depending on local power structures you could have wildly different outcomes going forward. The global alignment is just too difficult it seems… Just look at the Aserbajdsjan COP 29 meeting at the moment.

      2. HICKORY —
        But I do expect Trumps policies to stoke inflation in many other countries…not just here.
        Why? Tariffs in the US should reduce demand and drive down prices elsewhere as manufacturers look for other customers.

        Also I expect major disruptions in international supply chains, which will shut down a lot of the economy. I am more worried about a 1930s style deflationary spiral than inflation. Trump’s tariffs won’t apply to Asian imports to Europe.

        Germans are more worried about the ally they have trusted so long is losing its marbles. They are more worried about democracy and world peace more than the price of consumer goods when it comes to Trump.

  21. Higher quotations across a range of commodities push the FAO [Global] Food Price Index to its highest level in 18 months…

  22. “Kamala Harris was not a flawed candidate.
    America is a flawed country.”

    What do you think comrades?

    1. This is from a Simpsons episode from 1994. Still very much relevant today.

      https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FfW8iv1XoAAIq_2.jpg
      (left is the democratic convention, right republican one)

      Yes she is a flawed candidate. Once again the democrats couldn’t reach the voter base. They decided to focus on identity politics instead of real issues that affected the everyday voters. They decided to stick it out with the elite class instead of addressing real issues that affect most Americans. The American people from lower to middle class are sick of the establishment which they see no longer represents their interests. This can be seen with wealth inequality which is out of control.

      Trump presented himself as exactly what these people were looking for. A populist who will get rid of the establishment. Hence he destroyed Kamala in the election. Of course he is full of shit, he isn’t anti-establishment, but he and his PR team sold it extremely well. Wealth inequality will continue to grow despite what Trump voters think.

      The democrats have no one to blame except themselves but they won’t, they will continue blaming everyone else for their demise. They are so out of touch. The elitism in the democratic party is shining bright. They need some real grassroots reflection. For me you could almost smell the elite donors and lobbyists taking over the democratic party when they chose Hilary instead of Bernie to run against Trump. Worse decision ever.

      1. Iron Mike,

        All of what you say I agree with. Note however that Harris dod not focus at all on identity politics and only a small fraction of Democrats focus on those issues.

        Harris was fighting strong headwinds, and unpopular president with 40% approval, the memory of very high inflation and currently high prices which people see at every visit to the grocery store and a very short period where she was a candidate (by US standards) against a very well known person and former President.

        No incumbent party in the US in modern times has ever regained the Presidency when their party’s president had approval ratings under 45%.

    2. Humans are flawed…all of us.
      Our constructs of government, religion, and corporation are all flawed.

      Our only choice is to work to do our best with our attributes and with our faulty nature.
      So far, we are vast vast underachievers on the scale of good behavior.

      1. “Congratulations on being one of our top readers globally – you’ve read 334 articles in the last year”

        I’m defiantly flawed

    3. Somewhat of both.

      I mean, come on. What is Kamala Harris doing campaigning with Liz Cheney. Why isn’t she talking seriously about inflation, wages, and housing prices.

      Not a bad person or candidate, but unaware. Trump is aware. Of course he won’t do anything, but he is aware, and speaks to his base, the largest demographic in America, that he is aware.

      1. You hit on why the “Kamala is for they/them” ads were so incredibly effective and should go down alongside “Swift Boat Veterans for Truth,” “Morning in America,” and “Daisy” as some of the most politically devastating ads of all time. Here you had Kamala, in her own words, advocating for a strange, niche policy instead of actually discussing issues that the majority of the electorate cares about. Painted her as completely out of touch. Yes, the video was from 2019, but they carefully hid that to make it seem like it was from this year. Then the message is topped off by basically proclaiming Kamala isn’t looking out for your best interests. That’s not a new trick, but the brilliant part was updating it for the present by invoking the “what are your preferred pronouns?” movement that most people just find weird.

        The New York Times ran an article claiming that Bill Clinton realized how much the ads were going to tank the Harris campaign, but his concerns were brushed aside when he took them to Harris’ people. By the time the Harris campaign finally realized the ads were causing a shift in momentum, they had her film her own direct response ads, but decided not to run them because they didn’t test well in focus groups. Their response was ultimately to mount no response at all.

        The Harris campaign just had terrible, terrible political instincts, and Trump’s victory could have been foreseen if you were paying close attention to the advertising and messaging aspect of the race.

        1. So somebody created a disinformation campaign, so what? How is that the fault of people that didn’t fall for it? They couldn’t counter because it’s impossible to enter the right-wing echo chambers. And if someone tried to censor, they would scream about 1st amendment rights.

          Thus what you are describing is how the gullible can fall for it, not how to make those people less gullible in the future. Now that the election is over the argument is that education must not work because the educated states did not vote for Trump, and so anybody that doesn’t support a winner must be stupid. I actually saw that argument on Twitter a few days ago.

          In the previous election cycle of 2020, education won out, as I tweeted below. And its become worse — nothing anybody can do as long as 1/2 the country still believes in the confederacy.

            1. They really aren’t, Mike Lee. If they were, there might actually be Marxists in American power instead of idiot liberals and batshit conservatives.

              Weird how union busting Pinkertons and Red Scare McCarthyists managed to stop the left from actually doing much.

      2. SGP99,

        She was talking about all of those things and had specific policy proposals on those issues. Trump’s policy was I will fix it, not really a policy at all. He spent a great deal of time telling everyone how terrible our nation was and how half the country is the enemy within. Hard for a vice president to win when 60% of the nation disapproves the job the current president is doing.

    4. I have realized that Kamala Harris and her family are very lucky, to have lost this election.
      She now has an open door to a path of a simpler and more graceful life.
      No need to authorize bombings, arrests, or decide who are the big winners or losers on policy decisions like poverty, medical care, and borders of countries.

      She can step away, and perhaps find a satisfying constructive role in moving forward some issues important to her. From humble beginnings, back to a more humble life.
      I wish her well. Joe Biden too.

      1. Any political parties not in power are lucky once the oil cracks start showing. Obama was unlucky to be in charge for the 2008 market crash, and he got some credit for funding the LTO shale solution. I think of it as a game of musical chairs, and whoever is in the wrong position when the music stops will get blamed,

    1. And they grin about it. The host is a Putin collaborator and the lawyer pronounces “eXspecially” with the X, showing he’s likely home-schooled.

      Reminds me that it’s about time to flush the Xitter. A chat application like X/twitter is not exactly impressive technology. When I got an account back in 2008, we all laughed that it was like a Unix talk application that you could program in a day.

      All that Xitter does now is allow one to peer into the cesspool of humanity.

    2. I have a feeling this and the tariffs just won’t happen. There is no way big business is going to lose their cheap labour AND make their imports more expensive while eating that cost too.

  25. “Donald Trump is a symptom of our diseased society. He is not its cause. He is what is vomited up out of decay.”

  26. And so it begins-

    Don’t be surprised if Trump invokes the Defence production Act on behalf of Musk targeting the Nvidia production of the new Blackwell chip coming out soon. He will co-opt the entire company output so that it can be deployed by Musk for his xAI, allowing dominance of the next phase of AI development. Musk will be tasked with running the government AI programs on sectors like national security, policing and defense, with defacto control over agencies like NSA and CIA. It will also enable xAI to provide capability for his ambitions in space/satellite systems, autonomous driving, state and social media control, and the Optimus robotics program.

    Fort Hood, TX March 19 2027- “President Vance stands side by side with Security Chairman Musk for the official ‘Christening’ ceremony of the Optimus-T. T for tactical. Armed, autonomous, mobile, swarm capable, loyal, fearless and tireless.”
    Vance was quoted “Enemies of our nation, both foreign and domestic, now have everything to fear. Consider this official notification…you have been warned”

    1. Good capture, for the people in Gaza, the election was a non-event, since both candidates bends over for you know who…

      1. Interestingly the US prez national voting results show that over 50% of Muslims went for Jill Stein of the Green party. She is a Jewish person who is opposed to the Israeli policy towards Palestinians (although she has no viable solution to the whole situation…just like everyone else).
        On the other hand, the US Jewish voters went 78-79% for Harris and was one of the few minority groups who didn’t show any shift toward Trump, now or before.

        As so it goes. Crowded world.

    1. Just a big guffaw from me that the tech bros think they can geoengineer our way out of (now) certain doom.

      Western liberal democracies were absolutely never going to address this any other way, and now even the pretence of trying to has faded as material conditions make people even less likely to care.

      2°C by 2030, guys.

  29. Paul, the momentum of the Harris/Trump race shifted around the first week of October. That’s when the second “they/them” ad started airing. And they weren’t within right-wing echo chambers. The first ad aired during local news and the like on mainstream media. When the Trump campaign discovered they had struck gold with the messaging, they poured millions into placing the ads within nationally-televised college football, NFL, and MLB games. That is, the only TV programming remaining that not only gets a big audience, but an audience watching live and so therefore likely to actually see the ads.

    A Democratic super PAC determined that the third of the three ads was one of the most effective Trump ads of the entire cycle.

    https://www.nytimes.com/2024/11/07/us/politics/trump-win-election-harris.html

    About a week after the September debate, Mr. Trump started spending heavily on a television ad that hammered Ms. Harris for her position on a seemingly obscure topic: the use of taxpayer funds to fund surgeries for transgender inmates. “Every transgender inmate in the prison system would have access,” Ms. Harris said in a 2019 clip used in the ad.

    It was a big bet: Mr. Trump was leading on the two most salient issues in the race — the economy and immigration — yet here he was, intentionally changing the subject.

    But the ad, with its vivid tagline — “Kamala is for they/them. President Trump is for you” — broke through in Mr. Trump’s testing to an extent that stunned some of his aides.

    So they poured still more money into the ads, running them during football games, which prompted Charlamagne Tha God, the host of the Breakfast Club, a popular show among Black listeners, to express exasperation — and his on-air complaints gave the Trump team fodder for yet another commercial. The Charlamagne ad ranked as one of the Trump team’s most effective 30-second spots, according to an analysis by Future Forward, Ms. Harris’s leading super PAC. It shifted the race 2.7 percentage points in Mr. Trump’s favor after viewers watched it.

    The anti-trans ads cut to the core of the Trump argument: that Ms. Harris was “dangerously liberal” — the exact vulnerability her team was most worried about. The ads were effective with Black and Latino men, according to the Trump team, but also with moderate suburban white women who might be concerned about transgender athletes in girls’ sports.

    Those were the same suburban women Ms. Harris was trying to mobilize with ads about abortion.

    Democrats struggled to respond. At one point, former President Bill Clinton told an associate, “We have to answer it and say we won’t do it.” He even raised the issue in a conversation with the campaign and was told the Trump ads were not necessarily having an impact, according to two people familiar with his conversations. He never broached the topic publicly.

    The Harris team debated internally how to respond. Ads the Harris team produced with a direct response to the “they/them” ads wound up faring poorly in internal tests. The ads never ran.

    For the Trump team, the transgender attacks — along with other ads showing Ms. Harris laughing or dancing in a colorful blouse and pink pants — fit into a broader Trump goal: to make her look like a lightweight.

    Mr. Trump was already running as a felon. In the eyes of his team, the transgender ads made her look unserious, foolish and outside the political mainstream.

    The ads
    1. https://www.ispot.tv/ad/fBuJ/donald-j-trump-for-president-taxpayer-money
    2. https://www.ispot.tv/ad/fKhf/donald-j-trump-for-president-it-sounds-insane
    3. https://www.ispot.tv/ad/frYn/donald-j-trump-for-president-kamala-and-transgender-athletes

  30. Global temperatures have hit 1.5c higher than pre industrial levels.

    The way some people here are so upset about Harris, one would think that she and Biden had reversed the destruction of the planet. In fact they achieved absolutely nothing.

    https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/jan/17/greenland-losing-30m-tonnes-of-ice-an-hour-study-reveals

    The scale of melting in Greenland and Antarctica are even worse than predictions made at the start of the Biden administration.

    Global warming is being held in check by billions of tonnes of ice melting and by plants cooling the area around them.
    As the ice melts there will be more heat destroying more vegetation.

    https://www.wri.org/insights/global-trends-forest-fires

    Many people do not know that to prevent global warming, not only did CO2 emissions need to peak around the turn of the last century but global deforestation needed to have been reduced to zero by then also.

    Perhaps these facts are too overwhelming for most people so they discuss irrelevant Harris and irrelevant Trump instead. A discussion they can cope with and pretend to themselves that it matters.

    1. If you punch people in the face with terrible news because whatever they do just isn’t good enough, what you create isn’t a desire to do good, but people who are afraid to point to anything positive because somebody else will come in to tell them they are idiots for thinking that, the news is FaR WoRsE than we could have ever imagined, we’re all gonna die, etc, etc. Just stop it bro.

      1. Meanwhile, if you look at the results of decades of “we still have time, just recycle and buy LED lightbulbs”, we see that we’ve already solved climate change and things are better than ever.

        Wait a minute…

        Also funny framing that post above in light of Trump. Keep talking about how bad Orange Man is. Act shocked when people vote for him anyway to STFU the people relating the doom of his tenure coming to pass.

        1. You don’t have to tell people to buy LEDs they do it in their own interest.

          https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=51858

          You are stuck in the 20th century. Not just Incandescent light bulbs, also cassette tapes, mechanical watches, cathode ray tubes, typewriters, film cameras, analog TV, Morse code, slide rules, rotary dial phones, carburetors and plenty of other stuff you may have grown up with simply disappeared because people no longer wanted them. Now you only find them as collectors’ items or in narrow niches.

          You aren’t alone. Practically all public discourse is mired in the past. Basically only the tech bros and the Greens even try to predict the future. You may claim they mostly get it wrong, but at least they look forwards instead of backwards.

          I first noticed this with German political parties, which name themselves by their ideology. You have the Christian Democrats, still mired in a cult of the late Roman Empire. Then their are the Socialists, still seeing the world through the lense of late 19th century labor struggles. The Liberal Democrats are also firmly stuck in pre-Keynesian economics, well known to be a fallacy. And of course you have the AfD, reviving the nationalist ideologies that ravaged much of the world in the 20th century.

          Then you have the Greens. They predicted in the 1970s that nuclear was a dead end and solar would disrupt traditional energy markets. They also warned that current economic policy was unsustainable Everybody laughed at the Greens, but they were right. Nobody else was even close. Of course they said a lot of dumb things too, but at least they were looking forward, not backwards.

          Populists like to wet their pants about people pointing out the advantages of new technology. It’s lazy and backwards looking.

      3. Nitelight

        After reading your post I have decided to write to the numerous scientists who have studied the subject of soil erosion and tell them that the conclusions they are arriving at are far to depressing and they should alter the facts to make us all happy.

        https://www.ceh.ac.uk/cy/news-and-media/blogs/how-land-use-change-altering-global-patterns-soil-erosion

        Conclusions they should not include is that the world is losing its ability to feed the 8 billion people on the planet. The 35 billion tonnes of precious soil is lost each year will mean more and more people will be faced with hunger. Add to this increasing droughts that scientists say are spreading and serious consequences are inevitable.

        We could change these predictions but it will take far more than most people are prepared to do.

  31. Let me remind everyone there’s probably not one person out of a million who votes based on peak oil or climate change.

    People vote on human connection and emotion. On tribalism, and whom they perceive will defend and represent them. They vote for the people who resemble them, and promise to either continue the status quo, if its working out, or change, if it’s not.

    You might hate me for saying it, but Donald Trump cannot get more than 74 million votes if he is disliked. People like him, they like the way he looks, speaks, attacks, and they see him as one of their own. They themselves look up to him as the billionaire bully. They don’t want anyone to tell them to park their cars and stay at home and stop using oil, or share anything with those other nasty looking people, and poor people, and immigrants, etc. You might not understand it, but that just proves you are actually in the minority.

    I personally knew there were alot of them, but I didn’t grasp just how many there were. But obviously, there are lots of them. It’s clear they haven’t been, ahem, using condoms for the past 40 years. It is what it is, and they win because there are more of them than there are us.

  32. Dennis. Hope you can take some good natured ribbing.

    As I have never been a Musk fan, and watched the left allow Musk’s Tesla to get away with all sorts of safety violations because Musk was “saving the planet,” I am getting a little satisfaction as Dark MAGA has a hand in all aspects of the Federal Government.

    Granted, it won’t be a good thing, and I doubt people will remember the lesson the next time some self proclaimed planet saver shows up.

    I did enjoy the SNL cold open and look forward to more skits with Dark MAGA Dana Carvey. At least until he is arrested.

    1. Treason doth never prosper. What’s the reason? Why if it prosper, none dare call it treason
      — Sir John Harington

      I don’t expect to see any of these people in jail.

      When Bush was going on about the “New World Order” I don’t think he meant Russia turning into a mafia state and then American turning into Russia. Or maybe he was.

      1. IOW, everything gets normalized. Just within the last few months, campaign speeches are filled with swear words that are banned on the radio and will get a station’s license revoked. That’s the least of the forms of normalization. The worst are concerning Putin and turning Gaza into rubble,

    2. Shallow sand,

      The left is not monolithic, many in Congress concerned with the safety of Tesla’s are on the left. My personal feeling is that if a Tesla is used as recommended it is safe. When I first tried my Tesla on autopilot, I renamed it autocrash. No driver assist type features work perfectly anyone who assumes they do is likely to realize quickly that they do not.

      Cars have accidents, just a fact of life. If you drive without paying attention, you are likely to crash.
      Full self driving is getting better, but I wouldn’t recommend it to anyone, it only works properly some of the time and is unpredictable, but it has improved over time. Doubt it is ready as a robotaxi service before 2028.

      Musk just keeps getting worse and worse. Maybe he hopes he can sell cars to the right, doubt that goes well.

      2. One common thread with Elon Musk over his career has been as an engine of Creative Destruction
        “Creative destruction refers to the incessant product and process innovation mechanism by which new production units replace outdated ones” [paypal, tesla, space x]

        I see a possible confluence forming between this theme and the republican power brokers/policy makers message.
        Part of creative destruction is the culling of ‘dead wood’. Trump for example has no problem with breaking things.
        Do not be surprised if government programs that support poor and elderly enter a long phase of being phased back.
        It should be acknowledged that a large cohort of the young male vote that Trump garnered did not appreciate the economic restrictions related to the Covid pandemic, especially since they felt less vulnerable to death from it than the elderly and unfit who ended up being the primary population at risk.
        Culling of dead (or undesirable) wood of the economy and population is a unspoken policy to watch out for. Twitter provides the platform for justification and cheer-leading.

        He says he wants humanity to go to Mars. Its a big contract he is angling for. Sorry, but to me it looks like a massive frivolous waste of resources. This place is the gem of the Universe.

      3. “Musk just keeps getting worse and worse.” ~ DC

        I used to get called a ‘Russian Fossil Fuel Troll’ for casting shade on the utterances of one Elmo Musk #DorkMAGA

        Oh how the times have changed.

        Does Fred Magyar ever come by for a chat?

        Anyone who ever thought Musk was a good man is EASILY duped; first he duped the Dims, now he’s duping the Repugs. It’s embarrassing; a nation of dupes and fanatics.

        1. +1

          I remember.

          It just goes to show how easily people are fooled. Even the smart ones….

        2. Fred Magyar died while kayaking near where he lived in South Florida on August 16, 2019.

          The last time he wrote a comment here was that morning, when he said he would be taking a “mental health vacation from posting on the internet.”
          https://peakoilbarrel.com/arguments-over-rcp8-5/#comment-685377

          His years of comments here and on related blogs make mention of his experience as a deep sea diver and how he would dive in the coral reefs of South Florida. His LinkedIn profile confirms this information, and also states he lived in Hollywood, Florida. He mentioned here about living near Jimmy Buffett’s Margaritaville Hollywood Beach (https://peakoilbarrel.com/eias-electric-power-monthly-february-2019-edition-with-data-for-december-2018-and-the-complete-year-results-for-2018/#comment-669193)
          https://www.linkedin.com/in/fred-magyar-018b4818

          A dive club of Ft. Lauderdale, Florida stated that a Fred Magyar died while kayaking off Dania Beach, Florida on August 16, 2019. Dania Beach is located in between Hollywood and Ft. Lauderdale.
          https://www.facebook.com/kayubadiveclub/posts/2934577846617547/

          1. Thanks. I had often wondered what happened to Fred. I am sorry that he has died.

          3. Thank you for letting us know. I enjoyed hearing his perspective, even when not on the same page.

  33. “Trump’s chief of staff pick worked as a tobacco lobbyist during 2024 campaign”

  34. As Trump’s personnel choices signal mass deportations are coming, New York Times columnist Paul Krugman explains how this will spike inflation—and why Trump voters will soon realize they’ve been had.

    “Stephen Miller will be deputy chief of staff for policy; Tom Homan, his former head of ICE, will be “border czar”; and South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem will be Homeland Security secretary.”

    https://newrepublic.com/article/188344/krugman-trump-voters-shocked-badly-scammed

    1. That interview is a good one…many strong points. (you can click on transcript to read it, rather than listening to it as podcast if you wish).

    2. Survivalist,

      I doubt Paul Krugman is correct in his assertion. There is no evidence inflation will spike. We will see as of course the future is unknown. The voters are fucked either way. Just look at the wealth inequality. Regardless of who is in government that won’t change, it will only increase.

  35. Trump Picks ‘Lobbyist for War Criminals’ to Lead Pentagon

    Probably a good choice for our Repug friends

    1. 44 yr old Fox newscaster w no administrative experience. But he has a manly jaw.

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