The Real timschochet

Math is math. When you tax items the price is added to the retail price. This isn’t rocket science. You may be determined to ignore reality but reality exists regardless of your ignorance.

I can’t comment on Johnson too much. From what little I know I like his social views and not too much of his economic.views. That’s my view of Karen Bassett as well. I wanted Rick Caruso. But Bassett has done a good job defying Trump. 2026 will depend on two things: if Trump’s tarrifs drive prices up nothing will save the Republicans. Likewise if the big beautiful bill hurts Medicare in ways people can feel.

See I find just the opposite particularly if they’re in a role like mayor. They won’t be able to do anything about economic policies, socialism, taxation, crap like that. But they will have a big influence on stuff like gay rights, trans rights, abortion, diversity, DEI, rights for undocumented immigrants- a lot of positive stuff very important to me.

Make no mistake this is mainly a Fock you to Trump.

Don't focus on stuff that will never happen.

He appears to be a Bernie guy so likely too leftist for me in a normal world. But on the other hand in this age of Trump highly preferable to any Republican: all hands on deck, right? We have to defeat MAGA wherever we can and sort it out later, that’s the only sane option these days. His views on Palestine, at first glance, are a little bit too left for me, as I regard myself on the center in this issue: I support Israel but not Netanyahu or the right wing, and I’m sympathetic to Palestinians but not to Hamas or violence. This guy is closer to AOC’s position and he wants to divest from Israel which I do not support. That being said the typical conservative labeling of him as anti-Semitic seems unjustified IMO.

Tel Aviv is where Netanyahu should be arrested. Once he is out of office he likely will be. Like Trump he is incredibly corrupt.

I know nothing about his positions. I’ll have to read about them. But I’m unimpressed by statements in this forum that he is a Communist (since all liberals are called Communists at one time or another.) I am delighted that he is a Muslim. I think that’s awesome.

It’s easy to laugh at toy prices going up but what it means is a lot of small businesses hurt and less spending power for consumers.

I don’t agree with you. I thought at the time, and still do, that it was a good agreement.

So economists predicted that we would start to see price increases by the middle of the summer and that’s starting to happen. So far the worst affected are toys and other products mostly made in China. It isn’t quite too late yet to avoid most of the pain that’s about to happen. Even now Trump can either announce a new deal with China and others, or he can come up with some new excuse to unilaterally reverse himself. Either way though it’s got to be fairly soon. The clock is ticking.

I don’t know that Trump failed here. Sure it looks like we didn’t eliminate the program completely. But maybe the aggressiveness of the action will bring Iran to the negotiating table. That’s the hope. Even if this happens critics will point out that if Trump hadn’t killed Obama’s deal none of this would have been necessary in the first place. And that very well may be true. But for me there’s no point in looking backwards. When assessing any action you’ve got to ask only if it makes sense at the time it happens.

Look we’ve had these arguments many times before, you guys know my position, I know yours. No point in trying to tell me they’re all criminals like @WhiteWonder just did. I don’t agree, I’m never going to agree so there you go. Most of you here have what I regard as the MAGA position on this issue, I don’t believe you represent the majority. I think the majority voted for you guys because Biden appeared to be out of control in the other direction and most people DO want some control on our borders. But not mass deportation of non-violent people. Anyhow we will find out in future elections.

The polls do NOT suggest that “overwhelmingly this country wants undocumented immigrants out.” Recent polls have suggested quite the opposite. I believe that eventually I will get what I want.

I don’t think that this is the sort of thing you can know about a leader until they’re in that position. So I don’t know for sure how Kamala would have handled it, but I believe she would have been fine.

For me it’s pretty simple: if they live productive lives here, obey our laws once here, and contribute in general to the nations well being (and I’m convinced most of them do) then I’m willing to overlook the crime of coming here illegally.

No I agree with you to some extent. When I wrote that we need to elect people who are opposed to mass deportation, I wasn’t necessarily referring to Democrats. Plenty of “Chamber of Commerce” Republicans are opposed as well. We need to elect Democrats AND Republicans who will commit themselves to a reform of our immigration program that will include a Pathway to Citizenship for most NONVIOLENT undocumented immigrants already here.

But they had changed the level of enrichment right?

He had MY full support until he wrote that Kamala would not have had the courage or fortitude to attack Iran. I don’t believe that. But I agree with him on the rest.

Thank you.

Those opposed to mass deportation, such as myself, need to realize that we’re not going to win this issue in the courts. We can slow it down some but the results are unpredictable and who knows? In the matter of existing law Trump and the conservative judges may be right. I personally certainly don’t know enough law to argue against. And we can’t stop them with protests either. Large protests are fine, so long as they are peaceful but they don’t really accomplish much. And when they turn violent they actually work against the cause at hand. The only way to defeat mass deportation is to elect enough people who are opposed to it to stop it. Thats it.

So long as Trump is President, minute by minute updates are the best we’re going to get. As I’ve pointed out several times he’s whimsical, spur of the moment, looks at everything through a narcissistic lens, and is transactional. There is no strategy, no long term plan. In most issues (particularly, these days, tariffs and immigration) I find this to be extremely problematic and wish strongly for a different President, practically any other President. But in THIS issue of Israel and Iran, in real time, it might work. I’m rooting in that direction anyhow.

Of course. But if Netanyahu backs off this is kind of a minor issue.

Israel has agreed to call off the retaliatory strike. So Trump was effective. Again I can’t complain about this.

He’s not begging. He’s demanding. And it’s good news. I can’t really complain about how Trump is handling this. It’s whimsical as always (he’s not playing 3d chess or any kind of chess) but in this situation it makes sense what he’s doing.