Trump’s reverse Midas touch is taking hold:
Trump’s escalating trade war has spooked business executives. There’s already been a noticeable decline in business investment as corporate leaders say Trump’s tariffs and unpredictability are creating too much uncertainty, dissuading them from spending large sums on new buildings or equipment. Now there are early signs that business leaders are beginning to pull back on hiring, too.
[…]The United States had 7.3 million job openings in June, down from a peak of 7.6 million in November, according to the latest Labor Department data. While the decline is modest, economists are concerned hiring could dry up quickly as companies see no end in sight to Trump’s trade war and they look to cut costs. The reduction in job openings is also widespread across many different industries, signaling how cautious companies are becoming.
And his Ag Secretary Sonny Perdue is handling it well:
“I had a farmer tell me this in Pennsylvania,” Perdue said at a farm show in Minnesota last Wednesday, according to Agri-Pulse. “He said, ‘What do you call two farmers in a basement?’ I said ‘I don’t know, what do you call them?'”
Perdue said the farmer said: “A whine cellar.”
There was laughter but boo’s came as some members of the crowd did not find Perdue’s joke funny, just two days after China declared it would no longer buy any American agricultural products to hit back at Trump for imposing an additional 10 percent tariff on Chinese goods.
[…]Trump’s tariffs on China have led to farmers filing bankruptcy at never-before-seen rates.
Minnesota Corn Growers Association President Brian Thalmann said farm producers are not “starting to do great again” and that “things are going downhill very quickly.”
The rural parts of Minnesota are pretty red – hopefully Trump fucking up their livelihoods in an ill-considered pissing match with China will make a few former Trumpers out of farmers.
Baud
My comment downstairs fits here too.
https://balloon-juice.com/2019/08/13/tuesday-morning-open-thread-high-summer/#comment-7371866
Joe Falco
They can vote for the Democrat or stay in the smoking crater that used to be their home thanks to Trump’s trade wars. Either way, they got what they deserved with their last vote. Good and hard.
Brachiator
And yet these dopes are still showing up at Trump fund raisers.
Trump’s stupidity is diluting the value of their tax cuts, but they just can’t quit him.
MattF
OT. They’ve got the bleach, but not the anthrax or tire irons. Yet.
https://mobile.twitter.com/Dereklowe/status/1161253191360634880
sherparick
Farmers also used a fair amount of hard, physical labor (as anyone who has worked outdoor gardening and bush clearing, it is not unskilled). Much of that labor has been immigrants, documented and undocumented from Mexico and Central America. So in supporting Trump, they are making that labor scarce and there are no substitutes since, like most Americans, farmers have small families now and most children move off to the city. So with Trump, these guys have shot themselves in both feet. But Trump’s real patrons, the large corporate farms, love it as they buy up these bankrupts on the cheap.
Joe Falco
@Brachiator:
As far as we know, those business executives might be doing out of fear of Trump as well. Manbaby Mussolini has already shown a willingness to use whatever levels of power he can pull to punish people and businesses that upset him.
Frankensteinbeck
@Joe Falco:
To very little effect. Publicly snubbing Trump has been repeatedly shown to be good for sales.
Major Major Major Major
If there’s a whinier bunch than farmers I’ve never met them. They’ll continue supporting trump unless he cracks down on owners for using undocumented workers.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
I find that very unlikely.
Snarki, child of Loki
@sherparick: “So with Trump, these guys have shot themselves in both feet”
The shootings will continue until morale improves.
kindness
God love farmers but out here in California they are a particularly stubborn bunch. They don’t really care about how policies impact those around them (like water, pesticide & fertilization use). Out here they only seem to care about their own bottom line. They’ll continue to support Trump out here. Everywhere else, I can’t say.
God better love ’em because I have a hard time with it.
Raoul
Southern Minnesota elected freakshow moron Jim Hagedorn, so I’m not too confident.
Raoul
@Brachiator: Right. Shoveling $12M at his re-election while he grossly insults Shizo Abe through mocking fake accents. They’re gonna ride this elevator to the bottom. (Hint: They all have short positions and offshore bank accounts, so what happens to the US economy doesn’t really worry them).
Major Major Major Major
@kindness:
Some of the pot farmers, pre-legalization at least, were also fans of slavery.
randy khan
I don’t know if you can turn too many farmers to the Dems, but having them stay home on Election Day would be fine, too, and policies that bankrupt them could do that.
Butch
Well, on the subject of business, we’ve been in business since 1995 and just had our slowest quarter ever – literally not one major order. I started looking for some part time work just to keep the bills paid and discovered that yeah, there’s plenty available, if $8.50 an hour sounds like a living wage to you. The pundit talk about the humming economy has been grating on me for a long time now.
On the other subject, I live in farm country and this area must be an anomaly because the farmers here can’t stand Trump. At least there’s that.
sdhays
@Brachiator: One of the biggest lies we’ve been sold is that business leaders (in general) are smart, talented people. With few exceptions, they’re not.
Zinsky
I expect the stock market to continue to crater. Vastly overvalued. A fall of 20-40% wouldn’t surprise me. Trump has no idea what the fuck he is doing. If we escape a world-shattering depression, it will be a miracle.
Raven
You don’t have to be lonely. . .
gbear
The democrats in MN are called the DFL – Democratic Farm and Labor party.
A lot of rural MN leans much more democratic than the ‘I got mine F you’ outer suburbs that surround the Twin Cities.
p.a.
Isn’t one of trump’s nicknames ShitMidas? Hasn’t been used for a while as he’s lived off the Obama economy’s momentum. Pigeons>roost.
Chris Johnson
@Butch: Yup. The only reason I’m hanging on (actually, growing, but it’s like pulling teeth) is Patreon, and I’m barely making minimum wage on a monthly basis.
I’m not sure what you do, but bear in mind these are times where if you can hang in there and not go under, you’re in a better position to bounce back because your competition is also being clobbered by the same social and economic forces. Get really frugal and do what you have to, but stay in there.
Also, just because Sanders was talking about the reality of this in 2016 doesn’t make him a good choice (but you probably know this). Trump was making promises along these lines too, but it was 100% manipulative lies. I’m liking Harris and Warren (not necessarily in that order) and looking forward to Warren’s plans. Bottom line: no more Russia-backed people, though that can be tricky: the Russia thing is to back EVERYBODY just to increase chaos and gain kompromat, and they’re bound to be supporting some people whose ideas aren’t wrong. Support the message not the mess.
p.a.
Also too, a bad economy for themselves is about the only thing that will change sociopaths’ voting pattern. Previous comment correct: we just need ’em to stay home. Picking up votes is just gravy.
Kay
What I love about them is they’re greedy and don’t care what happens to anyone else, but they are ALSO bad at what is supposed to be one of their core competencies, which is making good decisions and projections on what will happen as a result of economic policy. They’re constantly wrong. So we get absolutely no upside, not even the ability to plan with our meager, scraped together savings. That too we cannot have. They’re bold risk takers who are also always wrong.
How many times, do you think, are these people going to bet on the same set of policies and act shocked when it comes out exactly the same fucking way?
Cermet
@Butch: Not standing the orange fart cloud but voting Dem are two unrelated things in their minds; they’ll maybe skip voting for that pile of orange shit but will happily vote thug for all else. Hopefully, that will hurt the orange viper enough that the Dems take the presidency but long term, those fools will never learn until they’re thrown off their land. Then, of course, they’ll blame democrats anyway.
Steeplejack (phone)
@Butch:
Where is “here”?
bemused
@gbear:
MN 8th district has turned more red over the recent years due to district now including more central MN, farming areas, emergence of tea party, larger cranky senior citizen population, gun nuts and rabid pro-mining supporters who believe mining, including copper/nickel mining will bring back bountiful prosperity and probably a few more factors I’ve missed.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@p.a.: It could just be my biased perception, but to me, Rs tend to respond to a situation only when it affects them personally. I guess that’s the “I didn’t think the leopards would eat my face” factor.
mrmoshpotato
Trade wars are tremendous bigly easy to win!
Again, you fucking 77000 idiots…
Sab
@Butch: Same around here. In Ohio we cannot criticize tariffs at all because of job losses twenty years ago, but Trump’s tariffs are killing the newer jobs. A lot of our local jobs are re-tooling imported parts for the American market, or assembling imported parts into finished products. And those industries are being killed by the tariffs. I think Lordstown fits in that category.
Kay
Farmers do whine a lot though. They never admit when they’re doing well so it would be reasonable for people to think they’re crying wolf, although probably not if you’re ag secretary and supposed to know something. But all the low quality Trump hires are like this- they work for Donald J Trump, not any of you. They’ve made this abundantly clear. If they break ranks he fires them in the most cowardly and humiliating way possible. They make this decision. All of them. It’s them or you and they pick “themselves”.
Raoul
@sherparick: Except for a few big raids to keep the rubes entertained, Big Ag hasn’t had to deal with consequences for their reliance on mass immigrant labor. But I have read that many smaller farms are having labor challenges.
mrmoshpotato
@Dorothy A. Winsor: They’ve been the party of “Fuck you. I got mine.” for decades.
Yarrow
@Dorothy A. Winsor: One of the defining characteristics of Republicans: lack of empathy. They cannot imagine something bad that happens to someone else might also happen to them.
germy
https://dailygazette.com/article/2019/08/13/schumer-pledges-help-for-hemp-growers
Kay
Trump is promising to cut spending if he’s re-elected. We all know what that means- ramp up the huge Right wing “deficit hawk” machine that is on hiatus for tax cut time and go after Medicaid, Medicare and Social Security. It’s a two-fer for them. They get the massive tax cuts they’re all benefiting from and they get to scold and threaten people and destroy the entitlement programs they’ve been gunning for since FDR. One- two punch.
The first term was bad. The second term will be catastrophic. That’s the bankruptcy part of the Trump business plan.
Raven
@bemused:
Come gather ’round friends and I’ll tell you a tale
Of when the red iron pits ran a-plenty
But the cardboard-filled windows and old men on the benches
Tell you now that the whole town is empty
cmorenc
@Chris Johnson:
Yet another potentially great Geico commercial would be: “Do prophets make good chief executives?” Actually, the clever agency who comes up with the Geico commercials probably already thought of that one already, and very reluctantly had to dismiss it because of the potential offense to humor-impaired devoutly religious folks.
Kay
Just a head’s up- AG Barr is giving speeches where Democrats are weak on crime. It’s key to the race-based conservative campaigns and has been for 50 years- they need to scare people about rampant crime “in urban areas”. He wants a return to the war on drugs.
He hasn’t done a lick of work other than protecting Donald Trump or campaigning for Donald Trump and that won’t change.
It’s why he was hired.
We’ll have to see if political media play along. My bet is “yes they will”, judging by their nutty and embarrassing response to “the caravan” campaign tactic. Barr is an elite. He’s in the club.
rp
@mrmoshpotato: This isn’t directed at you, but I wish folks on the left would stop talking about the 77,000 votes. Or at least put it in context. It’s clear (to me at least) that the election was stolen and that Trump isn’t a legitimate president, so I don’t think it’s accurate to say that HRC would have won if not for a few thousand idiots in three states.
Raven
@Kay: But Hillary caused Benghazi because she was in charge.
Major Major Major Major
@Dorothy A. Winsor: remember the woman whose husband was deported and she still supports Trump? Just because he’s deporting “the good ones,” she’s still happier that he’s deporting more of “the bad ones.” Classic.
Kay
I don’t know a thing about Texas but I completely get why it’s so much fun to talk about turning it blue, why there seems to be so much enthusiasm. That would be amazing, as far as stopping the far Right. Boom. One state. Everything shifts.
Chyron HR
@rp:
63 million people who should have known better voted to put that thing in the White House, and there’s no excuse for them.
Kay
@Raven:
I didn’t think they’d actually go there- overtly campaign on arresting more people- because it seems to have shifted a little away from that. One good thing Kasich did was he took a whole category of crimes and put them in a lower tier. With a “stroke of his pen”.
Barr wants to bring back the drug war! Admittedly it’s very olde timey. They must be pining for Reagan for again. The fake Reagan they invented and worship. Their Founding Father.
rp
@Chyron HR: Of course, and I’m not making any excuses for the 63 million actual Trump voters. but focusing on the narrow margins in Wisc., Mich., and Penn. implies that Trump won a legitimate if narrow victory. it also reinforces the moronic “Hillary should have campaigned in Wisc.!” argument.
Major Major Major Major
@rp: treating the election as 100% stolen does nothing to inform us how to organize for this election. At best it’s unhelpful.
Raven
@Kay: Gee I wonder what the focus of the new drug war will be? West Virginia?
Kay
Obviously when I say AG Barr wants to arrest more people I mean “black, brown and poor white people”
They no longer arrest (very) upper income people at all. They’ve all been granted immunity. I think there’s a DOJ opinion that says that- they’re now all in the Donald Trump category of “above the law”. Hell, when they catch them they let them go!
germy
@Kay: The drug war is an excellent tool for targeting “undesirables” like minorities, students, activists, etc. Barr wants to continue that tradition.
germy
Paul Campos, in LGM:
bemused
@Raven:
Dylan may have left Minnesota when about 20 years old but he did capture Iron Range mining booms and busts in his song. Now republican Iron Range pro-miners are all in for copper/nickel mining and firmly believe the venture capitalist companies can mine the BWCA safely and not pollute our water.
Kay
@Raven:
The arrests on opiates and (earlier and now again) meth have been disasters. This county went 70% Trump and even we have a drug court. I think it was the kids. They were incarcerating so many parents it became this huge, rippling disaster. They don’t care about the addicts but everyone agrees the kids are collateral damage. So they put them on alternate tracks. Meth is back with a vengeance BTW. It’s always top one or two. They no longer make their own. It’s cheaper to buy it.
bemused
@Kay:
I’d be in favor of war on pharma corps ceos in the form of hefty jail time.
mrmoshpotato
@rp: How’s it inaccurate when she lost MI, WI and PA by ~77000 votes and lo and behold ~77000 people voted for Stein in those states? The Democratic party’s platform is a hell of a lot closer to the Green’s than it is to the pollute-everything Republicans, and yet “Eww Hillary!” went 77000 voters.
ETA: It is also the fault of the 63 million racist fascists who apparently wanted to become migrant farm workers or day laborers (yes, way over simplifying) but at least they voted FOR someone.
Jager
An old farm joke is timely once again: “You know how to starve a farmer? Weld his mailbox shut.”
bemused
@Kay:
I’ve been reading about MN getting serious about treatment courts in my local paper. It’s about time for rational tactics instead of just throwing people in jail.
Olivia
The rural parts of Minnesota are pretty red and you will never find a bunch of stubborn fools who can’t admit they were wrong like the stubborn 2nd generation American fools we have in rural Minnesota, so don’t hold your breath.
Take it from someone who grew up among them and is related to a bunch of them. A large number of them have only strayed a few counties away from where they grew up and their worldview is teeny tiny. Kind of like the blind man feeling an elephant’s tail and concluding that the elephant is shaped like a rope. And now they have Fox news telling them what is their truth.
Kay
@bemused:
There won’t be any prison time. There will be settlements announced with a huge novelty check like we all won the lottery. It will be a tiny portion of what they made on the misery and they’ll all go back to business as usual. Just a cost of doing business. A show. I sometimes think the last real white collar prosecution we will ever see was Enron. It’s like there was some informal “gentlemen’s” agreement never to do that again. Once was enough! My God, haven’t they suffered enough? Remember how sad they were? I still have nightmares.
low-tech cyclist
@Major Major Major Major:
Maybe so, but the Dems are missing a bet here if they don’t do a full-court press in places like Iowa and Minnesota about how Trump’s tariffs are killing farmers, and Trump’s henchmen are turning around and calling the farmers a bunch of whiners.
(Narrator voice: they’ll miss the bet.)
Kay
@bemused:
The research on drug courts is mixed. Urban areas in Ohio have had them now for more than a decade so they have data.
The thing is they pick the “most likely to succeed” of the class. They pick their population. So this is the best of that group and it’s still spotty. I agree though- they needed to try something and this is the best they could come up with. The truth is they could no longer afford to incarcerate so many people. It’s ruinously expensive. Those stories you hear about how they could send all of them to a private boarding school and spend less? That’s true.
bemused
@Kay:
You’re right, of course. I entertain myself with fantasies of long prison sentences for corrupt ceos and the entire trump mob.
I shouldn’t because then it depresses me knowing none of them will see a jail cell.
rp
@mrmoshpotato: It’s not inaccurate. But how many of those were legitimate Stein voters? The whole thing stinks to high heaven, and I think we need to point that out as often as possible
mrmoshpotato
@bemused:
You too are hoping for gallows in NYC’s Central Park?
Kay
@bemused:
The juvenile drug courts have better success rates, but that’s true across the board for juveniles, including sex crimes. They really can reach them in a good program. We have a university-backed program for juvenile sex offenders and we all try to get ours in there. It’s challenging, the people who run it are serious, but it’s humane and high quality. They parcel out the beds to either the squeakiest wheels or the kids who have something going for them- grades or a good, even temperament or a genuine desire to get better. The rest go to Ohio’s juvenile prison system, which sucks and where they will never get better, only worse.
bemused
@Kay:
Then the private prison corps swoop in to incarcerate even more people. I seem to remember that some top aides to Jeff Sessions went to work for private prison corps.
bemused
@mrmoshpotato:
I try not to say things like that out loud.
Don K
@Raoul:
Right. Businessmen love recessions, because they make workers too afraid to ask for raises for 10-12 years, and the businessmen are hedged against downturns. Rick Waggoner (ex-CEO of GM) famously was fired when GM went Chapter 11, and I doubt he’s worried where his next meal at Morton’s or Ruth’s Chris is coming from. Banksters know they’ll be bailed out, get to keep their jobs, and be allowed to pay themselves bonuses in the event of a meltdown.
rikyrah
@Kay:
Told you when he was nominated…
He never met a Black person that he didn’t believe DIDN’T belong in jail.
mrmoshpotato
@rp: How does “legitimate Stein voters” come into play? It’s like the idiots who voted for Dump “ironically.” Sorry, there are no “ironic” numbers on the number line. If I have 4 dollars and you have 5 dollars, you have more than me, end of story.
Uncle Cosmo
@p.a.: FWIW sometimes I refer to him as “Sadim” – reverse Midas. Sometimes “Sadim Insane”.
rikyrah
@Kay:
Can’t feel bad for them, Kay.
I was feeling sorta bad…but, the whole..
” yes, he’s destroying our markets, but I’m still gonna vote for him.”
I’m done.
Just done.
mrmoshpotato
@bemused: Mind you, that’s the hopeful end result to the American Nuremberg trials, not a lynching.
Steve in the ATL
@Kay:
Of course, if you’re trying to get kids away from drugs then a private boarding school is the last place you’d send them!
rikyrah
@Kay:
The November 2018 Elections saved the American Social Safety Net…folks forget that.
rikyrah
@rp:
No, we shouldn’t stop talking about it.
The context for me has always been and continues to be:
The number of REGULAR DEMOCRATIC PARTY VOTERS DENIED THE FRANCHISE DUE TO VOTER SUPPRESSION…
WAS FAR LARGER THAN THESE 77,000
Major Major Major Major
@low-tech cyclist:
Oh, for sure. I was just complaining about farmers in a comment section, not suggesting official Dem messaging :)
I could see Warren making that argument without flexing my imagination much.
rikyrah
@Kay:
Texas is the White Whale
mrmoshpotato
@rikyrah:
True. If Fat Bastard (h/t Mike in NC) could, he’d have all tax revenue funnel into his bank account ala Putin. “My daddy Vlady said I could have an authoritarian kleptocracy too!”
PaulWartenberg
when it comes to trump voters we will finally see if it was “economic anxiety” all along, because if the 62 million usual suspects among the unemployed manufacturing workers and unemployed coal miners and unemployed rust belt families STILL vote for trump’s failures then it’s a clear sign that racism and sadism were the REAL reasons those deplorables backed that Shitgibbon.
PaulWartenberg
when it comes to trump voters we will finally see if it was “economic anxiety” all along, because if the 62 million usual suspects among the unemployed manufacturing workers and unemployed coal miners and unemployed rust belt families STILL vote for trump’s failures then it’s a clear sign that racism and sadism were the REAL reasons those deplorables backed that Shitgibbon.
mrmoshpotato
@rikyrah: I agree. I’m just focusing on the hard numbers here, even though I do blame all sorts of Russthuglican fuckery too.
Steeplejack (phone)
Warning: anecdata ahead!
I don’t have a Twitter account, but I do get on there with my browser quite often to “follow” certain people and just explore from there. One thing I have been amazed by is the degree to which “Trump people” and red-state types in general completely reject the possibility of ever voting for a Democrat. It’s like if you suggested that if the Republican was really bad would they maybe vote for Satan? No way!
Even thought leaders like George Will are the same way. A month or so ago he was ranting about Trump in almost Jennifer Rubinesque terms, and somebody—I think Morning Joe—asked him if he would vote for a Democrat. Will looked like he had been poleaxed and then said something like “Mumble, mumble, maybe Hickenlooper.”
So, with the fate of the Republic hanging in the balance, still can’t vote for the Democrat (who actually gets the nomination). They have all internalized 40 years of Democrats being demonized as not just political rivals but illegitimate, existential enemies to be destroyed.
I assume this comes as no surprise to those of you who get on Facebook, which I don’t (except to get random updates from a couple of family members).
So I feel like “getting the message across” to these people in the belief that they will vote for a Democrat is a waste. Better to mobilize our base, grow our base and get out the vote.
mrmoshpotato
@PaulWartenberg: Narrator: Turns out racism and sadism were the REAL reasons those deplorables backed that Shitgibbon.
Steeplejack (phone)
@Steve in the ATL:
But they’d move up to a more genteel class of drugs!
mrmoshpotato
@Steeplejack (phone): Why We Never Trust A Never Trumper
mrmoshpotato
@Steeplejack (phone): “Jeeves! Chop up a few lines of nose candy for me!”
Uncle Cosmo
@Kay:
It might be an urbane [sic] legend, but IIRC someone did an analysis comparing CEO compensation in one year to corporate performance the year after, & found a strong correlation – a strong negative correlation. One interpretation I’ve heard is that Boards of Drecktors would attribute excellent performance to the Chief Execrable Oaf up top, who was then showered with largesse, when in fact the performance was largely a matter of dumb luck & next year the numbers tended to revert (sometimes drastically) to that mean ol’ mean. Carly Fiorina at HP may be a case in point.
Uncle Cosmo
@mrmoshpotato:
Just fucking stop already. Mango Mussolini received nearly 63 million votes nationwide. Even if you confine your attention to the 4 pivotal states (PA/WI/OH/MI), Agolf Twitler got nearly 9.5 million votes therein. IOW the problem is one fuck of a lot bigger than some semi-mythical 77,000 “idiots” & we had all best acknowledge that.
MomSense
@mrmoshpotato:
My take on it is that voter suppression in those states cost us a lot more than the 77,000 votes cast for 3rd/Green Party. I think the election was stolen and was only able to be decided by so few votes because of GOP voter suppression, Russian attacks on our election, our pathetic news media, and Comey. Comey was probably the biggest factor for those undecided voters who swung to trump at the end. It was a perfect storm.
The Moar You Know
@Kay: Interesting. After a decades-long absence, coke is making a comeback in SoCal amongst the high school kids.
Not a welcome development. It’s the most dangerous simply because the lethal dose is not dose-dependent.
Raven
@bemused: More than one, The Ballad of Hollis Brown comes to mind.
MattF
@Steeplejack (phone): George Fucking Will is something of a special case. My guess is that he’s still expecting the Resurrrection and Apotheosis of St. Ron.
Uncle Cosmo
@Yarrow: Actually the less nakedly cynical among the Far Wrong display a limited kind of negative empathy: They believe “our side” is no more (& in fact less) moral, ethical or law-abiding than they are. So whenever they hit upon an immoral, unethical &/or illegal scheme to promote their own interests, they are absolutely certain that “we” are doing the same, or worse.
mrmoshpotato
@MomSense: It is bigger than that but we don’t have solid numbers on suppression, people who couldn’t be bothered to vote, etc.
Raven
@Raven: I realize it’s South Dakota but still. . .
Butch
@Chris Johnson: Also to Sab….sorry I was gone for a while. We’ve been really careful not to accumulate any debt and keep our overhead as low as possible so we’re making it. It’s upholstery…..and we know it’s affected the entire industry. We get panicked called from our suppliers several times a week now because nobody in this field is doing well. We know several competitors that just shut down for the summer because it was cheaper than staying open.
rp
@mrmoshpotato: Because I think the voting machines were hacked. I’m not sure there were actually 70,000+ Stein voters in those states.
@rikyrah: We’re on the same page. The voter suppression is a big part of what I’m talking about: The 2016 election wasn’t on the level and Trump isn’t a legitimate president.
cain
@Zinsky:
Even then the party won’t abandon him because his base won’t either. They are going to cling to their God inspired manbaby to the end.
bemused
@Uncle Cosmo:
They have to believe that so they can do whatever corrupt thing they want to do without a pesky conscious poking them.
glory b
@sherparick: My father was an African American who grew up in the rural South, post depression. He knew how to chop and pick cotton, and it is a skill.
Lots of the black residents of the south who used to do the agricultural and food processing work (like those chicken plants in Mississippi) left for the industrial jobs in the now-Rustbelt. The vacuum was taken up by Latino workers.
And, lest we forget, a good number of them came to the area to rebuild after Katrina. The black population was displaced, and couldn’t return in family groups. Lots of the mostly-Mexican workers stayed around for other jobs after the repairs were done.
glory b
@MomSense: I’ve said numerous times before, I smell more of a rat. In PA, the only statewide Repub winners in the last SIX elections were Trump and Pat Toomey.
I don’t believe that there are that many voters who voted for Trump and Toomey but then voted for Dems the rest of the way down.
rikyrah
@glory b:
You have brought it up, and I have come around to believing you. Something rotten happened in PA.
catclub
@Kay:
One reason that the economy is doing pretty well now is all the deficit spending. If you actually CUT government spending that tailwind goes away.
They might cut and have those cuts come due after 2024, if Trump is in office, but there is no way they will cut while they can get the blame for the economy cratering.
catclub
@cain:
and it also does not mean even a serious recession. The 2008 recession was going to happen whether the stock market followed or not.
Jobs in the real economy were cratering. The 2000 stock market fall barely affected the economy ( by comparison).
Now, with the economy doing well but not great, there is still no room for a long fall down ( nuclear winter or equivalent, excepted).