Basically, yes. Trump is like a Lazy Susan at a restaurant table. He brings good and bad things, and all you can do is snatch the good things while they’re in front of you, and hope the bad things don’t cause too much damage when they arrive. The same good policy he supports today is the one he opposes tomorrow once Putin, Bannon, or someone has whispered in his ears.
Terrible analogy as he brings mainly bad while chewing away at the foundation of building and blasting holes in the walls and setting fire to the kitchen & bathrooms.
I think his Trump accounts thing was not a bad idea.
If you have a kid born after Jan 1, 2025, your kid is eligible for a tax-advantaged investment account, and the government will contribute $1,000 toward it.
If more people started investing for their kids right away, their kids could be set for life.
We looked into it but I can remember why we didn’t get one. We have a 529 for our kid and now that the 529 can be used for IRA contributions in addition to educational expenses, it seemed like the most flexible option.
I think of him as a blazing house fire. Yes, it may drive the rats away and kill the roaches, but far more damage is being done than good.
What “good things” are you talking about, specifically?
Things like the pandemic $1,400 checks, Operation Warp Speed, sale of fighter jets to US allies, legalization of psychedelics for mental therapy research, Right to Try, First Step Act, etc. All good things.
Acorns found by the blind squirrel.
When the Lazy Susan brings those things, you can only snatch them, then sort of get into a bunker and ride out the mayhem caused by the 90% of bad items on the Susan that are coming your way, too.
I thought the $1400 checks were part of President Joe Biden’s $1.9 trillion American Recovery Plan?
I got one such check early in 2020, when Trump was still in office.
But yes, it was still a blind squirrel and his rare acorn.
If I recall correctly, he delayed the release of those checks by a couple of weeks so he could literally put his name on them.
Y’all don’t remember when he almost killed his own reconciliation bill because he wanted larger checks (from $600 to $2,000)?
Dems rushed to pass the CASH act, which McConnell then killed in the Senate. It wasn’t until Joe Biden that Americans got the $1,400 difference.
In short: Trump couldn’t get $1,400 at the height of the greatest national disaster to strike this country in a hundred years, when his own party controlled the Senate. What chance does he have of passing $5k handouts now?
Well, there’s the possibiliity that when faced with losing power/control, they’ll vote for anything that might stave that off.
I mean, we saw during the pandemic that political considerations and scoring points were more important than public health with all the masking and social distancing stuff.
Not a thing he’s done, but having other countries like Canada diversify their trading partners seems like a good idea. Certainly not the blunt and hostile way he’s doing it, of course.
I for one applaud the Trump administration for securing the new Greenland deal.
Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Anne Applebaum, a senior fellow at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, likewise said, “This is more or less the same deal that has been in place in Greenland for eight decades.”
“Any new nuances could have been added without the threats, drama, clumsy covert campaigns and overt attempts to buy influence,” added Applebaum, who’s also an Atlantic staff writer.
Oh. N/M.
The US should never have had to agree to anything with Iran in the first place. That’s my point- why are we negotiating with them at all? They behave, or we bomb the shit out of them. That’s how it should work with international bad actors and rogue states. Only if they choose to interact properly with the world, then they get treated like a proper nation.
That’s pretty much the agreement with Obama. And they did behave, and we didn’t bomb them.
I’m not saying Trump is doing anything right. Not at all.
What I was saying is agreement with @Snarky_Kong about the US needing to flex more on the international stage, and using Iran as an example of the perils of NOT flexing more over the course of decades.
In other words, it shouldn’t have taken until Obama’s agreement to get Iran to come to heel, had we been more proactive and assertive internationally in the 80s and 90s.
To be clear, I do not agree with “do what we say or we’ll bomb the shit out of you.”
We both probably enjoy a good dump.
Firstly, starting in the 80s and 90s conveniently misses inciting events like the US toppling a democratic government. And secondly it’s not like the US was treating Iran with kid gloves at this time: there were sanctions including on countries that traded with iran, crippling their economy. They also aided Iraq in the war and shot down a passenger jet among many other actions.
Trump’s war on Iran has been disastrous and this attempt to claim it was forced by the (lack of) past actions is one of the worst justifications I’ve seen.
I agree with nothing Trump does ! I almost puke at the distant sound of his cranky voice !