Donald Trump for President of the USA

Of course it will be close lusty but I’m not sure any closer than it would have been v Biden. Clearly Harris will have supporters but surely as VP before she should have already had that support as part of the ticket? Equally there will be some who would have supported Biden who will pass on Harris. She has a lot of work to do in a short space of time and also in that time she has to be impeccable and I’m not sure she can be. Time will tell but I still can’t see her beating the Donald and indeed I hope she doesn’t.

observer wrote:Donald Trump is reportedly backing out of a scheduled September debate.
That's according to Sam Stein, of The Bulwark and MSNBC, who wrote on the social media app X on Thursday night that the decision was made, "given the continued political chaos" surrounding Joe Biden and the Democrat Party.

I don’t blame him Obs, why risk anything this close to the election? Trump just needs to stick to script, not do or say anything that’s contentious and let the Democrats trip themselves up. He has nothing to gain now but everything to lose by debating.

Whitesince63 wrote:
I don’t blame him Obs, why risk anything this close to the election? Trump just needs to stick to script, not do or say anything that’s contentious and let the Democrats trip themselves up. He has nothing to gain now but everything to lose by debating.

So you probably agree that a convicted felon should not debate an experienced prosecutor... a far cry from what he thought would be an easy debate with Joe Biden. But don't the people deserve to hear from both candidates? I would love lower taxes, but how do you accomplish that? Trump promised that in his first term and raised the debt by 7.8 trillion. So now, I would like to hear how he can lower my taxes and not raise the debt that will cripple America for years to come. I would like to hear how he would end the war in the Ukraine in one day. Not just rhetoric, but specifics. And to be fair, I would like to hear the same from the VP. I don't believe that to be possible unless you cede the Ukraine to Russia.  The same scenerio he claims for Gaza. Please allow me to hear how the candidate will end that war in one day. Lastly, explain to me trickle down economics... how you lower taxes for corporations and the wealthy and expect those cuts to help everyone else.  Marketing his tax cut, Trump swore up and down that “the rich will not be gaining at all with this plan.” Speaking of his own finances, he insisted that the bill was “going to cost me a fortune … believe me.” Signing the cut into law in December 2017, Trump hyped it as “one of the great Christmas gifts to middle-income people.” These weren’t minor distortions. They were bald-faced lies. - Rolling Stone, October 2020.  
The proof is in the pudding... I would like the debate to hear how he would make my life better. Personally, I would like the Felon vs The Prosecutor debate to be heard by those making a decision on who should be President.

Just by way of general explanation to those who may be unfamiliar with the term of 'trickle down' economics.

It basically means giving massive tax cuts that benefit the very rich, who (so the theory goes) will reinvest the tax savings they make to create new jobs.

Does it work?

Well Liz Truss (who W63 voted to be Prime Minister) implement this ideology in her mini budget on the 23rd September, 2022.

It crashed the UK economy.

It crashed the economy because by creating massive tax breaks to the very rich, created a massive black hole that needed to be funded by other means - as if it couldn't the country would basically go bust because it couldn't pay its debts - for instance all public workers including the NHS, police, the army, the council's bin collectors, etc, etc, could not be paid and even more importantly the UK could not pay its national debt to world creditors and in effect we could not continue to borrow money to continue to trade with the world.

September 2022 United Kingdom mini-budget
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/September_2022_United_Kingdom_mini-budget

The result was that three weeks later, Truss had to sack her main political ally, Chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng and appoint her bitterest rival Jeremy Hunt, in his place, to scrap almost 100% of her 'trickle down' budget.

Truss was forced to resign on the 20th October, 2022 - just 49 days from being elected as Prime Minister.

Truss went on to lose her seat in the 4th July, General Election recently, having her 26,000 majority overturned.

This was the 7th greatest losses in terms of swing (overthrown majority) in the entire history of Parliament.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Kingdom_general_election_records

Changed my mind about Kelly for running mate. Governor Tim Walz is edging it for me. He is sharp, relatable, direct when required, funny and also happens to be the highest ranking member of the armed forces ever to serve in Congress.

wanderlust wrote:Changed my mind about Kelly for running mate. Governor Tim Walz is edging it for me. He is sharp, relatable, direct when required, funny and also happens to be the highest ranking member of the armed forces ever to serve in Congress.

That's not exactly true.

He's the highest non-commissioned member of the armed forces ever to serve in Congress.

He was a sergeant never an officer.

As command sergeant major, Walz holds the distinction as the highest-elected enlisted member ever to serve in Congress, a point of pride colleagues sometimes brought up at Capitol Hill hearings.
https://www.mprnews.org/story/2018/10/03/tim-walz-national-guard-career-minnesota-governor-race


Fair play to him though.

Donald Trump has questioned Kamala Harris' racial identity during a heated exchange at a convention for black journalists.

Trump falsely claimed the vice-president and presumptive Democratic nominee had only emphasised her Asian-American heritage until recently when, he claimed, "she became a black person".

"I didn't know she was black until a number of years ago when she happened to turn black and now she wants to be known as black," he said at the National Association of Black Journalists convention in Chicago on Wednesday.

"So I don't know - Is she Indian? Or is she black?"

Ms Harris' campaign said Trump's "tirade... was simply a taste of the chaos and division" that has characterised his campaign, while the White House called the comments "repulsive".

Ms Harris is the first black and Asian-American vice-president, with Indian and Jamaican-born parents. She attended Howard University, a historically black university, and joined the predominantly black Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority.

She became a member of Congressional Black Caucus after entering the Senate in 2017.

Trump's claims prompted a heated exchange with ABC News' correspondent Rachel Scott, one of the moderators of Wednesday's event.

"I respect either one," the Republican said in reference to Harris' racial identity. "But she obviously doesn't because she was Indian all the way and then all of a sudden she made a turn and she became a black person."

White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said no one "has any right to tell someone who they are, how they identify. That is no one's right."

"Who appointed Donald Trump the arbiter of Blackness?" asked Representative Ritchie Torres of New York. He described Trump as a “relic of a racist past".

The Republican nominee and former president has a history of attacking his opponents on the basis of race.

He falsely accused Barack Obama, the country's first black president, of not being born in the US.

Trump attacked former UN ambassador and his Republican primary opponent Nikki Haley by falsely claiming she could not be president because her parents were not US citizens when she was born.

Ms Harris has faced a series of attacks since becoming the presumptive Democratic nominee. Many criticized the decision, saying she was chosen only because of her race.

Tim Burchett, a Republican congressman from Tennessee, called her a "DEI vice-president" - a reference to diversity, equity and inclusion programmes.

On Wednesday, Scott pushed Trump to clarify whether he believed Ms Harris was a "DEI hire". He replied: "I really don't know, could be."

Ms Harris has described growing up engaged with her Indian heritage and often visited the country. Her mother also immersed her two daughters in the black culture of Oakland, California - where she was raised, she said.

Trump also attacked Ms Harris' credentials during the discussion, saying she had failed her bar exam early in her legal career. His comments were met with murmurs from the crowd.

"I'm just giving you the facts. She didn't pass her bar exam and she didn't think she would pass it and she didn't think she was going to ever pass it and I don't know what happened. Maybe she passed it," he said.

Ms Harris graduated from the University of California Hastings College of Law in 1989. The New York Times reported that she failed her first attempt and passed at the second. The state bar of California says less than half of first-time test takers pass the exam.

The Chicago discussion began with a contentious back and forth between Scott and the former president. Trump accused the journalist of giving a "very rude introduction" when she began the conversation asking about his past criticism of black people.

She cited Trump calling black journalists' questions ''stupid and racist'' and that he had ''dinner with a white supremacist at your Mar a Lago resort''.

"I love the black population of this country, I’ve done so much for the black population of this country,” he responded.

The former president criticised the conversation hours later on his social media platform. "The questions were rude and nasty, often in the form of a statement, but we CRUSHED IT!" he said.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c06k07dn1zjo

Kamala Harris is bringing her newly-minted presidential campaign to Georgia, a state that some Democrats now consider up for grabs in the closely contested election.

The vice-president held a star-studded campaign rally in Atlanta on Tuesday, at which she challenged her Republican rival Donald Trump to meet her on the debate stage.

Pop star Megan Thee Stallion and rapper/singer Quavo performed while Democratic Senator Raphael Warnock also addressed the crowd of about 10,000 people.

The possibility of Democrats winning in the battleground state was a stretch one month ago, but some analysts now believe a new face on top of the ticket and a fresh burst of energy may change everything.

Ms Harris replaced Mr Biden as the presumptive Democratic nominee after the president announced he was withdrawing from the race.

"It has been a reset button in so many ways," Amy Morton, the CEO of Georgia-based consulting firm Southern Majority, told the BBC.

"It completely changed the landscape of Georgia."

Taking the stage in Atlanta to a raucous crowd on Tuesday evening, Ms Harris said the momentum in the race was shifting.

She described her "people-powered" campaign as the underdog in the race, but pointed to how Mr Biden carried the state in 2020.

"I am very clear the path to the White House runs right through this state," she said.

Ms Harris later turned to the subject of September's presidential debate, which Mr Trump has not fully committed to yet.

"Donald, I do hope you'll reconsider to meet me on the debate stage because, as the saying goes, if you got something to say, say it to my face."

Swing states like Georgia, which Mr Biden won by the narrowest margin in 2020, are fiercely contested because they can lean either to Republicans or Democrats and play a decisive role in presidential elections.

It's a state Republicans are looking to flip back red.

Donald Trump will also be campaigning in Atlanta on Saturday - at the same venue as Ms Harris - to cement his support in the swing state.

Congressman Hank Jackson, a Georgia Democrat, told BBC News an "explosion of enthusiasm has been unleashed" since Ms Harris stepped up as the nominee, adding that she had "activated... all demographics" in the state.

Democrats in Georgia depend heavily on strong turnout among black voters, a state with one of the highest African American populations in the country.

Polls were suggesting that the state was drifting away from Mr Biden, University of Georgia Professor Charles Bullock told BBC News.

The state is on Ms Harris's "watch list", he added, noting she has made more than a dozen visits.

In a campaign strategy memo, Harris campaign chair Jen O'Malley Dillon lists Georgia as one of several Sun Belt states - as well as North Carolina, Arizona and Nevada - where the campaign plans to focus efforts ahead of November.

Before Mr Biden dropped from the race, Ms Morton, a Democratic political consultant in Georgia, said she was concerned about voter turnout, finding many throughout Georgia to be less engaged than when they broke records in 2020.

But now "that's changed completely", she says.

"We've gone back into all of our planning to calculate for higher turnout because enthusiasm on the ground is so much more apparent than it was in the beginning of June."

Ms Morton said she had seen upticks in volunteer signups and social media engagement for down ballot candidates too since Ms Harris entered the race.

Recent polling suggests Ms Harris leads Trump by one point - 43% to 42% - among registered voters nationwide, according to a Reuters/Ipsos survey.

Ms Morton said she thought those margins would only increase, specifically among Georgia voters.

But there is still strong support for Trump in the state.

Georgia is "Trump country", said Marjorie Taylor Greene, a Republican congresswoman from the state. She posted details about his Saturday event on Twitter and claimed Ms Harris was a "radical extremist".

Ms Harris has been facing attacks over handling the crisis at the southern border as vice-president and in her special role trying to stop the migrants at source.

Although Georgia is far removed, the murder of Laken Riley, a 22-year-old nursing student allegedly killed by a Venezuelan who had entered the US illegally, made the issue of immigration more important to Georgian voters.

At Tuesday's rally, Ms Harris said she would resurrect the border security bill that she said Trump helped kill, and sign it into law.

She also touted her experience visiting underground tunnels at the California border and as a prosecutor taking on human traffickers

Mr Bullock said Trump will have to be careful in his messaging to Georgian voters. His personal attacks on Ms Harris - and not on her policies - could alienate women voters who found him offensive, he said.

Trump's allies have attacked Ms Harris’s background, claiming she was a "DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion) hire".

Ms Harris could also gain ground in the state by appealing to a significant group of establishment Republican voters who are less sold on Trump.

"There is a share of them - and these would be white college educated voters - who maybe find Trump offensive, they may not have liked the chaos of his administration, they may not like his misogyny," Mr Bullock said.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c51y4zvgv28o

I'm confused about Trump's racial identity - is he German or Scottish?
And what about his kids? Are they Czech?

It's all too confusing....

wanderlust wrote:I'm confused about Trump's racial identity - is he German or Scottish?
And what about his kids? Are they Czech?

It's all too confusing....

Or Swedish as he once claimed?

Sluffy wrote:Just by way of general explanation to those who may be unfamiliar with the term of 'trickle down' economics.

It basically means giving massive tax cuts that benefit the very rich, who (so the theory goes) will reinvest the tax savings they make to create new jobs.

Does it work?

Well Liz Truss (who W63 voted to be Prime Minister) implement this ideology in her mini budget on the 23rd September, 2022.

It crashed the UK economy.

It crashed the economy because by creating massive tax breaks to the very rich, created a massive black hole that needed to be funded by other means - as if it couldn't the country would basically go bust because it couldn't pay its debts - for instance all public workers including the NHS, police, the army, the council's bin collectors, etc, etc, could not be paid and even more importantly the UK could not pay its national debt to world creditors and in effect we could not continue to borrow money to continue to trade with the world.

September 2022 United Kingdom mini-budget
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/September_2022_United_Kingdom_mini-budget

The result was that three weeks later, Truss had to sack her main political ally, Chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng and appoint her bitterest rival Jeremy Hunt, in his place, to scrap almost 100% of her 'trickle down' budget.

Truss was forced to resign on the 20th October, 2022 - just 49 days from being elected as Prime Minister.

Truss went on to lose her seat in the 4th July, General Election recently, having her 26,000 majority overturned.

This was the 7th greatest losses in terms of swing (overthrown majority) in the entire history of Parliament.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Kingdom_general_election_records

Sluffy, can we at least stop this now proved to be false assertion that Truss crashed the economy when the BoE themselves have finally admitted that it was their unilateral and totally unnecessary decisions which was the major cause of the carnage which ensued? Of course she was unwise to quote uncosted policies, that was just stupid but that in itself didn’t create the problem. If the bank itself can admit that then surely you can? ‍�

Whitesince63 wrote:Sluffy, can we at least stop this now proved to be false assertion that Truss crashed the economy when the BoE themselves have finally admitted that it was their unilateral and totally unnecessary decisions which was the major cause of the carnage which ensued? Of course she was unwise to quote uncosted policies, that was just stupid but that in itself didn’t create the problem. If the bank itself can admit that then surely you can? ‍�

That is simply not true.

To begin with a WORKING PAPER expresses the views of the authors NOT THE BANK OF ENGLAND.

This is what it actually states on the paper itself that I link you to -

Staff Working Papers describe research in progress by the author(s) and are published to elicit comments
and to further debate. Any views expressed are solely those of the author(s) and so cannot be taken to
represent those of the Bank of England or to state Bank of England policy. This paper should therefore
not be reported as representing the views of the Bank of England or members of the Monetary Policy Committee, Financial Policy Committee or Prudential Regulation Committee.

This is what the BoE working paper said -

Abstract
We introduce a framework to understand and quantify a form of liquidity risk that we dub
Liquidity After Solvency Hedging or ‘LASH’ risk. Financial institutions take LASH risk when
they hedge against losses, using strategies that lead to liquidity needs when the value of
the hedge falls, even as solvency improves. We focus on LASH risk relating to interest
rate movements. Our framework implies that institutions with longer duration liabilities than
assets – eg pension funds and insurers – take more LASH risk as interest rates fall, because
solvency concerns rise in a low rate environment. Using UK regulatory data from 2019–22
on the universe of sterling repo and swap transactions, we measure, in real time and at
the institution level, LASH risk for the non‑bank sector. We find that at peak LASH risk, a
100 basis points increase in interest rates would have led to liquidity needs close to the cash
holdings of the pension fund and insurance sector. Using a cross‑sectional identification
strategy, we find that low interest rates caused increases in LASH risk. We then find that
the pre‑crisis LASH risk of non‑banks predicts their bond sales during the September 2022
LDI crisis, contributing to the yield spike in the bond market.

Bank of England

Staff Working Paper No. 1,073
LASH risk and interest rates
Laura Alfaro,(1) Saleem Bahaj,(2) Robert Czech,(3) Jonathon Hazell(4) and
Ioana Neamțu(5)

https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/-/media/boe/files/working-paper/2024/lash-risk-and-interest-rates.pdf


In simple words what the BoE is saying is that the regulations requires institutions such as banks, insurance companies and pension funds to hold a certain amount of cash to deal with any runs they may have on them and meet all reasonable demands for 'cash on demand' by their clients.

Nobody had planned for a massive underfunded budget (something like £39 billion irrc?) which crashed the economy because no one was prepared to by the government guilts needed to keep the country in money (liquidity).

The shock was so great that the pension funds (which specialise in long term investments) had to hold a fire sale of these investments to retain liquidity.

These fire sales added to the global perception that the country had collapsed its economy and added to the increase in interest rates we had to give to attract investors to keep buying the government guilts.


If you like the paper is looking into the lessons learnt and is saying if we had another Truss mini budget we would have to plan for it now to regulate for pension funds to have to put aside a greater amount of cash to meet liquidity requirements from future unfunded budgets.


Labour have already said they would bring in legislation to ensure no future budgets would be presented by any political party without full explanation as to how they would be funded.


If I may say so W63, once again you believe the spin and fake news that you want to hear rather than simply fact checking things for yourself.

Sluffy, they fooked up just accept it for goodness sake.

Whitesince63 wrote:Sluffy, they fooked up just accept it for goodness sake.

Well if you are referring to Truss and Kwarteng then you are absolutely correct.

If you aren't then how stupid are you???

I've found the paper that was being talked about - and being misrepresented (fake news)

I've linked you and everyone else to it.

On the cover of the paper is printed a clear and unambiguous disclaimer that the paper DOES NOT represent the view of the Bank of England.

I've even given you an idiots guide to what the paper means and says ffs!!!


Truss fucked up the economy so badly that legislation is being passed to prevent ANY government doing so again - that's how bad it was!

A look at the contents of Labour’s new Budget Responsibility Bill

The Bill introduces a ‘fiscal lock’ to ensure the OBR produces a forecast to accompany any ‘fiscally significant measures’


1 August 2024
3 min read
The King’s Speech on 17 July 2024 confirmed that one of the new Labour Government’s priorities would be legislating to ensure that all significant tax and spending changes are subject to an independent assessment by the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR). On 18 July 2024 the legislation to achieve this, the Budget Responsibility Bill (the Bill), was introduced to the House of Commons and given its first reading.

Labour originally proposed introducing a fiscal lock following the Truss Government’s ‘Growth Plan’ in 2022, which announced £46 billion worth of tax cuts. A briefing document accompanying the Bill states that the negative financial market reaction to the Growth Plan was in part due to the fact that the OBR was not asked to produce a forecast or scrutinise the measures.

The Bill therefore introduces a new ‘fiscal lock’, which gives the OBR the power to produce a full fiscal forecast or assessment of ‘fiscally significant measures’, which are any single announcements, or a series of announcements over the course of a single financial year, which make permanent tax or spending commitments worth more than 1 percent of the UK’s Gross Domestic Product (currently approximately £30 billion).

The Bill says that supplementary details about the fiscal lock can be included in the Charter for Budget Responsibility, which sets out the OBR’s role and how it carries out its duties. To support parliamentary scrutiny, draft charter text has also been released providing more details of how the fiscal lock will operate in practice.

Under the fiscal lock, where the Government announces to Parliament a measure (or measures) that has not been included in an OBR economic and fiscal forecast, the OBR has the power to decide to produce a full fiscal forecast or assessment, at its own discretion, if it judges the lock has been triggered. In the event of a breach, the OBR would alert the Treasury Committee and notify it of the intention to publish an assessment or updated forecast.

Emergency, temporary measures lasting fewer than two years – such as the response to the Covid-19 pandemic – will not be subject to the fiscal lock. However, HM Treasury (HMT) would be required to make it clear alongside any such announcement why it considers the situation to be an emergency, and the OBR will have the discretion to trigger the fiscal lock and prepare a report if it reasonably disagrees with HMT’s explanation.

In a letter to the Head of the OBR, Richard Hughes, the Chancellor Rachel Reeves confirmed that the fiscal lock in no way changes the usual publication of OBR analysis and is not intended to increase the number of forecasts in a financial year.

The second reading of the Bill took place on Tuesday 30 July 2024, and it will go to a Committee of the Whole House on 4 September 2024.

Although the Bill appears to be being fast-tracked through the Commons, the speed at which it will be finalised may make little practical difference. Given Labour has introduced this legislation, and Reeves said that the Government values “the OBR’s vital role in providing independent, credible and high-quality analysis”, it would be surprising if the OBR finds itself in a position where it needs to activate the fiscal lock during the course of this Parliament.
https://kpmg.com/uk/en/home/insights/2024/07/tmd-a-look-at-the-contents-of-labours-new-budget-responsibility-bill.html


Fwiw - not that you could ever accept it - the BoE acted to prevent the economy collapsing totally after Truss 'Mini Budget'.

They were the good guys who saved the day - not the ones who caused the problems!!!


Christ you really have been brainwashed to believe all the lies that you clearly do.

wanderlust wrote:Changed my mind about Kelly for running mate. Governor Tim Walz is edging it for me. He is sharp, relatable, direct when required, funny and also happens to be the highest ranking member of the armed forces ever to serve in Congress.

Good choice.

He still isn't "the highest ranking member of the armed forces ever to serve in Congress" if you feel the need to quote yourself then the least you should do would be to edit out your fake news after it was pointed out to you some days back.

Anyway this is the article published on the same day as your original post giving the strengths and weaknesses of the Vice President options that Harris had.

Top contenders emerge in Harris VP hunt

Tim Walz, Minnesota governor

Mr Walz is a battle-tested leader who served 12 years in Congress before becoming governor in 2018.

He has gained national attention for his strategy calling Donald Trump and JD Vance "weird".

The phrase caught on with a number of Democrats - including Ms Harris. "He's just a strange, weird dude," Mr Walz said of Trump during a fundraising event on Monday.

His plainspoken and small-town Midwestern persona could appeal to independent and conservative voters.

The 60-year-old led Minnesota through the 2020 protests over George Floyd's death in Minneapolis

He deployed the National Guard to help quell riots that broke out during the demonstrations.

Mr Walz served 20 years in the National Guard, taught high school and also worked as an assistant football coach.

Vulnerabilities: Mr Walz's political foes have criticised his handling of the Covid-19 pandemic and the 2020 protests, with Minnesota GOP chairman David Hann recently telling Fox that he believes Mr Walz "was fearful of alienating his progressive base" with a more forceful response.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/ce4q832w7dgo


Hope Kamala and Tim win though!