Trump 33: Making Norman Bates Look Like a Choir Boy

[GreyhoundFan]

Junior put a humor hashtag on this post, but since neither he nor Dumpy seem to have an actual sense of humor, I'm wondering if he's sending up a test balloon for the BTs or distracting from everything else going on:

 

[JMarie]

On 6/24/2018 at 10:18 AM, AmazonGrace said:

This is a real thing that the White House did

The only thing I would use this for would be to level a wobbly table.  And that's if I couldn't find a matchbook.

[Cartmann99]

23 minutes ago, JMarie said:

The only thing I would use this for would be to level a wobbly table.  And that's if I couldn't find a matchbook.

Frisbees for Chihuahuas.

[JMarie]

1 hour ago, Cartmann99 said:

Frisbees for Chihuahuas.

If they're made with lead-based paint, I wouldn't want a Chihuahua chewing on them.  What's that, you say?  Lead-based paint?  That's illegal!  But Trump seems to want to dismantle all those health- and environment-friendly regulations, so who knows?  Just don't call it a comeback (apologies to LL Cool J).

[AmazonGrace]

Your president knows no other country with judges

[AmazonGrace]

 Of all the people he could be feuding with, Trump is feuding with Jimmy Fallon.

 

 

The President of Petty Grievances

[AmazonGrace]

Trade wars are easy to win: 

 

[GreyhoundFan]

So.much.winning: "The first layoffs from Trump’s tariffs are here"

Spoiler

The first casualties of President Trump’s trade war are 60 workers at Mid-Continent Nail, America’s largest nail manufacturer. They lost their jobs on June 15 at a factory in a part of Missouri that voted overwhelmingly for Trump. The whole company could be out of business by Labor Day.

This is a potential game changer in Trump’s trade strategy, especially if it marks the start of more companies announcing layoffs. On Monday, Harley-Davidson said it will be moving some “production” offshore because of the trade war (Europe hit Harley with a 31 percent tariff in response to Trump’s steel tariffs on Europe). Harley won’t confirm whether jobs are leaving the United States, but the union representing many Harley workers, the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers, is worried.

The Trump administration has argued that these tariffs will save jobs and that the cost to America will be minor. But now there are real job losses. Now there is a human face to the pain that so many trade experts have been warning about.

The political pressure on Trump to stop the tariffs (especially on America’s allies) is likely to escalate. In Missouri, a state with a close U.S. Senate race, the layoffs are already becoming a hot election issue. Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.) is planning a visit to the nail plant on Friday.

Mid-Continent Nail blames the layoffs on Trump’s tariffs, and the company says all 500 employees could lose their jobs by Labor Day. The next round of cuts could come in a matter of days.

The trouble for the company started at the end of May when Trump put a hefty 25 percent tariff on steel imports from Mexico and Canada. Mid-Continent had been importing steel from Mexico that American workers would then turn into nails.

After the tariff, the company was forced to hike its prices, and customers fled. Orders are a mere 30 percent of what they were a year ago, said George Skarich, the vice president of sales. He suspects many customers are now buying Chinese nails.

“There’s a lot of uncertainty and a ton of fear in Poplar Bluff,” home to Mid-Continent, Skarich said. He voted for Trump and says he’s “disappointed” and “sad” at what's happening to a town and a company he loves.

If Skarich had a minute with Trump, he says he’d tell him these tariffs aren’t hurting China, they are hurting Missouri. The workers who lost their jobs on June 15 were contract workers paid about $10 an hour, but the next round of layoffs will hit longtime employees, many of whom are making $13 to $14 an hour, plus benefits. That's a middle-class job in Poplar Bluff, where the median income is just over $31,000 a year.

Trump campaigned on “jobs, jobs, jobs.” He promised to be the “greatest jobs producer God ever created.” He and his team regularly argue that the tariffs are going to save jobs and even bring jobs back from overseas. But the vast majority of economists and business leaders have warned that many more jobs are likely to be lost than saved.

The Tax Foundation predicts 48,585 job losses from the tariffs Trump has already enacted on imports of washing machines, solar panels, steel, aluminum and $50 billion in Chinese products. That figure would soar to over 250,000 job losses if Trump moves forward with tariffs on another $200 billion of Chinese products, the Tax Foundation said.

Predicting the outcome of a trade war is difficult. The overall U.S. economy is unlikely to fall into a recession because of this, most economists say, but it’s likely to curtail growth a bit as companies hold off on hiring more workers or building new factories. And some parts of the country are likely to be hit hard. Europe, Canada, Turkey and China are targeting their tariffs at towns that voted for Trump.

Supporters of Trump’s tariffs point out that the protectionist moves have yielded job gains. Nearly 4,700 American jobs have been created since the steel and aluminum tariffs went into effect; for example, U.S. Steel announced it would restart blast furnaces in Illinois. Many of these positions are union jobs that come with $60,000 salaries and benefits.

“Idled steel and aluminum capacity is being restarted as we sit here,” Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross said at a Senate hearing last week.

But the situation in Missouri is a warning sign of how the tariffs are helping some workers and harming others, and that's tricky politics for Trump, who looks as though he is picking winners and losers.

Workers in New Madrid County, Mo., are celebrating as Magnitude 7 Metals is restarting an aluminum product line, giving 450 workers back their jobs. But just an hour away in Poplar Bluff, 500 workers could be out of a job by the end of the summer.

The president’s focus has been on saving jobs that make raw steel and aluminum, but there are many more jobs that are harmed by the tariffs because they turn raw metal into something else, such as a car or airplane. The longer the tariffs are in place, the more companies are likely to have to make cuts.

Experts have warned Trump that the tariffs are likely to cause more job losses than jobs saved, and the early signs of that are starting to play out in small towns south of St. Louis

As the job losses mount, so may the pressure on Trump.

"As the job losses mount, so may the pressure on Trump." -- nope, he'll just blame Obama and his sheeple will believe him.

[AmazonGrace]

Spanky has another genius take 

Pretty sure who won doesn't like him much either

[NotQuiteMotY]

On 6/23/2018 at 1:06 AM, AmazonGrace said:

 

This is just pisses me off no end. It's not bad enough that it's the veterans experiencing this, it's the communities around those bases, too. Chemicals used on bases gets into the groundwater and from there into the local water supply. Everyone drinks it, showers in it, washes their clothes with it.

I worked for several years, including while pregnant, near an active military base and on the actual grounds of a retired base. News about hazardous flame-retardant chemicals in the groundwater came out a few months before I left. I was relatively lucky, since not only did I not live in the community but the building I was at filtered their water and proactively checked the levels of the drinking water when the news first came out.

THIS is why we need honest, accountable organizations to make sure this doesn't happen and that, when it does, actions are taken to fix or mitigate the damage.

[apple1]

OK - (hoping this is the right thread)...

The Supreme Court has now ruled that the 3rd iteration of the travel ban is constitutional. If I understood correctly - the travel ban was requested to last 90 days for security reasons to prevent dangerous individuals from countries with a terrorism problem from entering the US. (Yes, I know...)

That was over a year ago. So the 90 day "dangerous" period is long over, correct? What happens now? I have not heard media discussing this. Did I miss something here?

[Audrey2]

2 hours ago, apple1 said:

OK - (hoping this is the right thread)...

The Supreme Court has now ruled that the 3rd iteration of the travel ban is constitutional. If I understood correctly - the travel ban was requested to last 90 days for security reasons to prevent dangerous individuals from countries with a terrorism problem from entering the US. (Yes, I know...)

That was over a year ago. So the 90 day "dangerous" period is long over, correct? What happens now? I have not heard media discussing this. Did I miss something here?

Oh, silly Apple, 90 days wasn't defined by planet. Since Trump wants a space force, his buddies have been reading up. He means 90 Venus days.

"

Venus

So, Venus has the longest day of any planet in our solar system. It completes one rotation every 243 Earth days. Its day lasts longer than its orbit. It orbits the Sun every 224.65 Earth days, so a day is nearly 20 Earth days longer than its year."

[CTRLZero]

59 minutes ago, Audrey2 said:

He means 90 Venus days. 

Oh, geez, I was just getting used to Scaramucci time...

[AmazonGrace]

 

[JMarie]

He does realize Ocasio-Cortez is also a Democrat, right??

https://www.cnn.com/2018/06/27/politics/trump-joe-crowley-new-york/index.html

Quote

President Donald Trump mocked the No. 4 House Democrat, Rep. Joe Crowley of New York, for losing in a primary to 28-year-old first-time candidate Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on Tuesday.

"A slovenly man named Joe Crowley got his ass kicked by a young woman who had a lot of energy," Trump said. "She had a lot of energy. I guess he didn't see it. They couldn't find him."

 

[AmazonGrace]

2 hours ago, JMarie said:

He does realize Ocasio-Cortez is also a Democrat, right??

https://www.cnn.com/2018/06/27/politics/trump-joe-crowley-new-york/index.html

 

No he doesn't 

 

[RainbowSky]

Harley already sent jobs elsewhere after the tax business a few months ago. I feel like they're just trying to "bad press is still press!" themselves.

[AmazonGrace]

If Putin asks him to drop NATO he will

[Howl]

Quote

“It lends itself to charlatans who take two isms — nationalism and populism — and use them to open up space to be able to abuse power,” Biden said. “I think that’s what’s going on right now in America.”

Word, Joe.

Ahhhhh, Russia, the country that is attempting to destroy our electoral system as we know it with a multi-pronged approach of social media manipulation, hacking voting systems and money (NRA, anyone?).

 

Quote

@AmazonGrace said: If Putin asks him to drop NATO he will

Trump is currently helping implement Putin's foreign policy objectives globally. 

Of interest is that the Magnitsky Act is still in place.  Of even more interest, did Trump ever sign off on Russian sanctions or is that something else that fell through the cracks? 

[AmazonGrace]

There's nothing to sanction because Putin says they're cool 

note he contradicts himself within a single tweet. Russia had nothing to do with meddling... Wait, they did meddle to help Hillary

 

 

[Howl]

Rufus H. Reindeer, I may have to go on a news fast soon.  After the travel ban, the border, SCOTUS opening, and the ongoing Trump Putin bromance and whatever else comes along on a daily basis, I'm about to clutch my pearls, take to the couch and have dear hubs bring me iced tea in a quart jar.  I've got to read Michael Hayden's book The Assault on Intelligence: American National Security in an Age of Lies by Tuesday; there are 20 people in the library queue waiting to read it. 

And Trump/Putin discussing election meddling?  Can't wait for the more accurate SNL version of that little tête-à-tête. 

 

 

[CTRLZero]

Remember when Trump was complaining about Amazon ripping off the US Postal Service and there were reports he wanted to double Amazon's USPS shipping rate?  (Less than a Venus day!)  Anyway, yesterday the news came out that Amazon is offering an "entrepreneurial opportunity" for people to start up their own neighborhood-based delivery services, skirting the USPS and other major delivery services.  Hope the USPS is happy about that, since Amazon was not a major user of their services, right?

Amazon starts own delivery service

 

[AmazonGrace]

Because of course they do 

 

[Howl]

2 hours ago, CTRLZero said:

Amazon starts own delivery service

"Also helping expand its reach: Amazon Flex drivers who use their own vehicles to deliver packages."

The Uberization of delivery services, and more gig economy. 

[47of74]

The devil made me do it....