re: And WhileThe Trump Admin Is Focused On Regime Change In Venezuela…

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A lot of folks in the bubble deny the rising tide of discontent.

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Populist Americans are pissed at what they see as Foreigners First, and they are abandoning Trump. They don’t see him as MAGA and feel betrayed. Trump doesn’t help that with things he’s doing and saying.

Many here prefer to ignore this data, as are many in the Republican Party. The problem is by ignoring and pretending it’s not broken then you let everything we’ve built crumble apart. We will see President AOC in 28 at this rate.

Interdasting, poll right on the heel of the Democrat shutdown and the public pain from that.

I've since well before the election that whoever won would be presiding over a recession and I still stand by that prediction. You can't frick your economy with ~$2T in stimmy checks and various social program benefit increases while also fricking over your supply chain and expect just some "transitory" inflation.

If we weren't already hovering around 100% with our debt to GDP ratio prior to that, we might be pulling out of it already. Instead, we're now looking at annual deficits of ~$2T when just 20-25 years ago that amount represented the entirety of federal spending each year (and we were transitioning from budget surpluses to small deficits).

Since the GFC the federal government (run by both parties) have been fricking the economy hard with deficit spending. Today's deficit spending outpaces GDP growth most years since the GFC whereas prior to that it was a rarity.

The bottom line on this is that if we cut spending enough to right the fiscal ship, we're going to have a deep recession, possibly a depression. If we don't cut spending enough to right the fiscal ship, we're going to crash the value of the USD and send us into a deep depression (see: Weimar Republic).

The third option of slowly cutting back spending is a pipe dream as eventually the political pressures of needing to spend more in order to help assure re-election would become too great for too many politicians and we would just end up with the 2nd option eventually.

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I work in the construction industry as well. It's as strong as it's ever been. Im in NWArkansas so it might be better than your "worse than the great recession" bullshite your spewing.

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Same down here in Baldwin Co. Alabama

OP is full of shite and it hasn't slowed down in NWA since 2012

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I didn’t say neocon is a made-up boogeyman. Not at all.

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So are you claiming Marco Rubio isn’t a neoconservative? Your parenthetical enumeration was convoluted.

Whatever the case, my point here is whatever your opinion of Marco Rubio or neoconservatism, Rubio is a neoconservative. This is not a value judgement but an objective evaluation of the foreign policy agenda that Rubio has consistently supported.

Rubio arguing for the permanent occupation of Iraq during the Obama era in the video clip above crystalizes that reality. Rubio emphasized the need for a sustained American occupation to combat extremist groups and support the building of democratic institutions in Iraq.

Marco Rubio’s views on Iraq and his neoconservative foreign policy position was clearly stated in a 2012 roundtable interview sponsored by the Council of Foreign Relations. As a think-tank wholly infested with neocons and globalists, the CFR is the well-spring for much of the current crisis:

A Conversation with Senator Marco Rubio…

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MODERATOR: So speaking of resistance, you seem a lot more bullish and optimistic about the Arab Spring than a lot of folks in the Republican Party and, by the way, a lot of folks in the Democratic Party. How do you see that changing now and conforming to what American hopes are.

RUBIO: Well, I'm a believer in democracy. I believe that democracy ultimately gives us more pragmatic and more accountable leadership. Democracy's not a guarantee of the election of pro- American leaders. I think that's the first thing we have to — because just because you have a democracy doesn't mean you're going to elect people that are with us all the time.

By the way, that's not just true in the Middle East. I mean, that's true in Europe, that's true in Canada, that's true in the Western Hemisphere. Democracies elect people sometimes that are pro-American and sometimes that aren't pro-American, but I think what we — or at least see things the way we want them to see, is probably a more accurate way to describe it. But in the long term it's in the national interest of the United States to have democratic societies.

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So Rubio further believes that the United States has moral duty to export — by violent means if necessary — American style democracy abroad. The problem is that many of these Middle Eastern nations not only have no cultural proclivity or desire to live in free and pluralistic societies, but indeed display outright hostility to such societies.

What Rubio promoted here is utter b#llsh*+ and proved catastrophic for the entire region. This line of thinking directly contributed to Iraq being engulfed in flames by the molt of ISIS for nearly half a decade.

Marco Rubio repeatedly has demonstrated that he believes the United States is destined to decide the fate of other nations and is a neocon through and through. Rubio now promoting a regime change operation in Venezuela demonstrates a leopard does not change his spots.

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I work in the construction industry as well. It's as strong as it's ever been. Im in NWArkansas so it might be better than your "worse than the great recession" bullshite your spewing.

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My business is based in Birmingham Alabama and we work throughout the multi-county metropolitan area and we are slow. Though a few local markets in the metro region have remained steady, overall home sales are down and new housing starts are flat.

Again, excepting the early days of the COVID-1984 scamdemic, I haven’t seen a slowdown like this since the Great Recession. Your mileage obviously may vary.

Real estate prices down throughout most of Alabama in 2025. Here’s where they’re down most…

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Trump is upside down on the economy and foreign policy but he is right side up on crime and border security.

Trump need only to jettison the neocons from his administration and start to focus like a laser on the economy; then those two categories will correct themselves.

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That was his plan all along. Trump’s policies were to stimulate the economy via tax cuts (there were some tax cuts due to indexing rates to inflation and these benefit the investing class disproportionately), remove regulations that are inhibiting growth, arm-twist other countries into investing in American (often using tariffs), and put American workers into a great bargaining position by kicking out competing immigrants.

All of these things take time, but the Trump Administration blitzkreiged most of it through in the first six months in the hope that results would start to show by the midterms.

Foreign policy is trivial compare to your one point - the economy. Americans are going to vote according to whether they are feeling optimistic about that. Hardly any care about wars overseas. If the economy starts growing at 5% without a big jump in inflation, and if that happens soon, the midterms should be good for Republicans. If not, it’s going to be a tough two years.

ETA: These plans of Trump have become a little clear when viewed in the from this vantage point. Look at the way he is removing tariffs on foods now. He used them to bully in negotiations, and now he is removing them.

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Rising tide of discontent?

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Step outside your bubble.

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I haven’t seen a slowdown like this since the Great Recession.

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Pro tip, when you see an insane boom in a specific commodity or industry such as housing late 2020-2023, expect a nasty bust on the back side. The oil patch is famous for this--and so is housing. This is nothing new at all.

All this tells me is people are so stupid that they will believe the news media instead of what they're actually experiencing themselves.