TheHiddenCatboy

It starts making sense when you remember that the GQP’s biggest beef with Kerry is the same beef they have with Obama and Clinton and Biden.

The GQP’s biggest beef is that all of those folks and many more are Democrats and get in the way of their Permanent Republican Majority.

I see you avoided answering my question, so it’s a lot harder to give you hard facts, but let’s look at a hypothetical purchase in Lithuania.

First, you don’t seem to understand how tariffs work. We don’t pay tariffs on exports. We pay it on imports. Let’s say you sell a widget from your page for $10. To get it into the USA, I’d have to pay you $10, and Uncle Sam $2. Doesn’t matter how much you sell or don’t sell. The shitgibbon has demanded his 20%, and so if I were to buy something from you, I’d have to give $0.20 for every $1.00 I give you.

But that’s just the start of the hurt. European Union countries are likely to tariff us back. So if you order your raw materials from the USA, your own country is gonna be standing there with its hand out. That 4.56 EUR you were going to pay a US company also has a 0.91 EUR extra charge added to it by your country. So you raise from $10.00 to $11.00 to make up that extra 0.91 EUR…which then means I have to pay $2.20 to the Shitgibbon, pushing my price up to $13.20 US, JUST so you can still make your profit target.

Some countries are mulling export taxes as well. Ontario, for example, is putting a 25% export tariff on electricity shipped to the northern US. If Lithuania decides that widgets need a 20% export tariff, now, suddenly, your 10.04 EUR item now has Lithuania holding its hand out looking for 2.00 EUR. You’re not gonna want to eat that, so your price needs to increase so you get the same profit as before. Let’s say…13 EUR to make up the tariff margin (you end up giving 2.60 EUR to Lithuania, and are still giving 5.47 EUR to your supplier, leaving you with 4.93 left over), and now I’m paying $14.21 plus $2.84, for a total of 17.05. And this is all before you start talking about charging me even more.

Digital products may currently escape this, so if you’re offering software or PDFs or NFTs or whatnot, you might indeed be not worried about the immediate nonsense going down.

I have no problem with you if you’re raising your prices on platforms that take a bigger cut of your sales. I’d suggest you shop around for better platforms, and nothing says you have to use US platforms. I’d support you on an EU platform if that meant I paid less and you got paid more. It just seemed you were saying you were going to target Americans more just 'cause. We didn’t all vote for the Shitgibbon over here.

As for your last three paragraphs? Yeah. “Preaching to the Choir” is what I’d tell you on that. Yes, the tariffs are stupid. And Trump is golfing while the economy burns.

If it ends with us cutting Trumpistan/the Neo-Confederacy off, I’m good. Just hope we have enough time to get decent people out of the Neo-Confederacy.

Eh, what do you sell and on which platform? I’d like to avoid you, firstly, and secondly, knowing that will give me an idea of what to tell you to expect.

I’m buying less these days. Going on less vacations. Picking up fewer wants, and limiting my purchases to needs. Reducing the amount of money I spend. I am seeing it as more money is going into savings now than when Biden was POTUS. Gonna need to do that because everything’s about to get more expensive. I need to get used to doing more with less, because otherwise, I’m going to take it right in the chin. As will many of my American counterparts.

You might escape scott free. Or you might not. Your country likely is tariffing everything from the USA, and the USA is likely tariffing you as well. You might find fewer people buy your stuff because not ONLY has the US tariffed money out of your buyers, you’re exploiting them as well, meaning they get double hit. While it’s your right to set your price to what you want, don’t be surprised if your sales take a hit. Also, it’s a very douchebag move to take advantages of your customers…just like what the Shitgibbon would do, so I do hope your customers look elsewhere for their sales. Too bad we as Americans don’t have that luxury to avoid tariffs.

To make this explicit, the law is what Trump and his merry band of miscreants say it is, unless we’re willing to step up as a country and say ‘No it isn’t’ and back those words up with action, if needed. All the words in the Constitution are is ink on a piece of paper, unless we’re willing to stand and fight for them.

I think you’re both right. They’re going to blame BOTH the media and the Dems. And their base is gonna eat that shit up.

Let me put it to you this way.

If we really cared about people in the country illegally, we’d aim for having people who hire these people under the table, also illegally, sanctioned. If you were honestly wanting to see less illegal immigration, you’d be deterring them from ever coming in by drying up the supply of under-the-table, low-paying jobs that attract them here. Maybe by advocating for a 10 x median annual salary for every undocumented worker found on your staff, enforced strongly?

If you can’t find it in your soul to do that, then all you’re here for is smashing disadvantaged people in the face.

You’re wrong. I suspect that’s not an uncommon occurrence for you and that your reaction will be the typical factless rant you people are really known for.

Fascism is all about demonising the ‘other’. It doesn’t care about truth and facts as long as there are enemies, external and internal, to scapegoat. Khelif is just a good boxer. Do you really think Algeria of all places would cover for a transgender female throughout her entire life, from childhood to when she got her Algerian passport that lists her as female through the ‘revelation’ that she was somehow male after beating down a Russian Oligarch’s undefeated prize fighter? No, but since the BS is out there, Reich-Wing authoritarian shitheads are harping on it to further their stupid fears that there are Transgenders EVERYWHERE.

And I agree with the others. This goes beyond opinion to slander. It’s Fascism because in this case, the slander is furthering the idea that transgendered people are somehow evil and wrong and must be opposed by all means … by attacking an Algerian who was assigned female at birth. Fuck off with that bullshit.

Go back and watch Star Wars Episode 3. That’s actually a good description of how a democracy falls to autocracy. The Republicans have been openly dreaming of a “Permanant Republican Majority” since AT LEAST Bush 43’s terms in office. And they’ve been laying the framework since Nixon – a newsentertainment channel that caters to Right-Winger fantasies, judges who put ideology over legality, partisan gerrymandering that concentrates Republican voters for power and dilutes Dem votes into meaninglessness, and political theories that basically advocate for the dismantling of our political systems if that will keep Democrats out of power even if they have a majority.

To answer your questions directly:

Can he do that? Yes. He can. Anyone can.

What would need to happen to convert our system to lifetime terms? There are a variety of ways, but they all boil down to the President doing outright illegal things under cover of a friendly Supreme Court. After all, they granted immunity to ‘official acts’, which we believe is cover for an autocratic takeover of the country.

What would need to happen to convert our system into a dictatorship/monarchy/whatevs? This is just a hypothetical situation. It’s July 2028. Mass incarcerations of Leftists, Immigrants, Muslims, and Minorities have begun and the country is in the throes of a civil war. Polling is reporting that Trump could lose the election, despite disenfranchising the Left’s voting base through various means. Trump announces he’s postponing the 2028 elections 'until things calm down, they have to get much better first before we can have a fair election." People sue. It doesn’t matter what happens in the lower courts, because they’ll appeal all the way up to the Supreme Court. The same 6 Conservative ideologues that said he has immunity for ‘official acts’ will rule that he has the right to suspend the election. And that, my friends, is how Democracy ends, with massive applause from the Alt-Right assholes that Clinton quite rightly fucking called “Deplorable”.

Can Trump actually make either of those happen? Yes. Yes, he can. The framework is already laid out. HK-65 laid it out elsewhere. Essentially, you start by shutting the Other Side out of government. You then take over all the levers of government. Then you set them so you can’t lose. You might need to just waive away the safetyguards that get in your way, and some you might use your lock on government to remove ‘legitimately’. If the 22nd Amendment gets in the way of a Republican dynasty, they’ll have it removed.

TL;DR? Never rely on checks and balances to stop authoritarianism. In the end, the Constitution IS just a piece of paper, and will be run over by authoritarian jerks if that means power.