The Refried Presidency: Trump Hateful Machine/Fossil Fuel Boogaloo or Whatever Continuation

And yet there's so many places now that will give you a "cash discount". The credit card fees that businesses have to pay are ridiculous now.

 

Yeah, but you are old AF. We don't even pay my kids' allowance in cash. We just transfer money into their bank accounts and they pay with their phones.

 

I'm always reminded of this, when we get to see/read certain posters over here:

"In Maga, Stupidity Is a Badge of Honor."

 

Nowadays you can get discounts some places if you pay with cash, at restaurants in particular that’s getting more common. And then many other places are going to card only, weird times we’re living in.

I work at a healthcare clinic and our company went card only a couple years ago. Primary reason was so they don’t have to pay anybody to do bank deposits, plus the security risk involved in keeping cash on hand. We still get some people mad they can’t pay with cash or check (old people, mostly).

 

I always try to pay cash with independent businesses, especially hospitality. Their bills have skyrocketed over the past few years, so any reduction in the fees can only help.

 

“A U.S. judge on Friday blocked the Trump administration from revoking Harvard University’s ability to enroll foreign students,” Reuters reports.

 

That, and the fact that a cashless society will be a surveillance society. Even more than it already is.

 

I'm not sure on the legality of this, but Trump posted on Truth social that if Apple does not manufacture iPhones in the US, he will put a 25% tariff targeted on iPhones. That would seem to violate US law as the tariff would be targeted against a single cellphone manufacturer and gives a market advantage to Apple's cellphone competitors. None of them are manufactured in the US either and it seems anti-competitive to punish Apple when their competitors do the same thing.

https://apnews.com/article/trump-tariff-apple-iphone-tax-170021e8fad22878d0183b5d48971087

 

https://bsky.app/profile/ericagroshen.bsky.social/post/3lproc5c6ls25

It's happening. Cuts to Bureau of Labor Statistics.

 

As if on cue, Legal Eagle put out a video and that made me say the same thing. How anyone can support this is....you have to be a miserable sob.

 

But the South African jet is better--it comes with built-in Vuvuzelas

 

Did you and I miss this whole COVID epidemic that ginned up distrust of expertise?
Did you and I miss the idiotic cabinets drumpf appointed both times, both very much devoid of expertise and knowledge in many seats?
Do you not recognize the decades-long campaign of lies and stupidity by fox and other maga outlets?


Remember, dumbasses who can't read their own names vote, and their votes count just as much as people who CAN read. That you went into a verbose reply to a simple statement needlessly convolutes two realities:

One side is speaking to the dumbasses of the world, who dislike being "talked down to," and they're winning.

The other side is trying to "out-think themselves," and they're losing.


Full stop, a lack of expertise, a lack of knowledge, doubt over the need for formal education, and just barefaced stupidity has worked, and will continue to work for maga. So, IMO, its incorrect to try to gin up any other conclusion than "Stupidity Is A Badge of Honor."


...Or, your side can continue to keep losing. Your choice.



EDIT: Congrats to your Spurs. For as much dunking as we do on Spurs, you guys should also enjoy this moment.

 

Regarding cash, up until a few years ago, I'd see pay-to-park machines that would give change back in dollar coins. People were PISSED when they'd get five coins back.

For pennies, here's what I'd do:
Stop making them, but allow them still to be used as legal tender.

If someone has debit/credit, charge them the exact amount.

If someone has cash, charge the exact amount.

I'm not a fan of this round up/down business.

There will be a time when cash goes away entirely, much to the chagrin of Ohio Republicans, who recently passed a law (IIRC), that high school sports must accept cash. It's generally the older generation who insists that cash *must* be accepted because "Legal Tender" is printed on US bills. They're wrong. It means it *can* be accepted, but any business isn't forced to accept it.

Those parking companies love not having to send their attendants out with $100 in fives as change. It's a lot safer for the attendants who don't end up with gobs and gobs of cash and it means all that cash doesn't have to be counted. It also means the end of having to tell people to drive to the nearest ATM because they don't have $20 in cash for the parking fee. Almost everyone has some sort of digital payment system, whether it's their card, phone or watch.

 

Right. The ridiculous blow-out so fashionable now, and the comical make-up, are (like high heels) ritualized outward symbols of making wimmens inferior to the manspherians. All this outward ritual takes time and effort which is the focus, after all, of what said wimmens are supposed to be doing with their time, and they could not possibly be expected to do manly, generative things like fight cave-bears or pull anybody up by the bootstraps, which as we all know is the sole province of Team XY.

It's weaponized trad-wifery, as kabuki theater.

 

No, NO, NO! No one pulls anyone else up, you have to pull yourself up by the bootstraps, you lazy bum!

 

Pennies will still be allowed to be used as legal tender. They will just be removed from circulation as banks get them and return them to the Mint.

This would be a horrible idea. Pennies "only" have a lifespan of 20-30 years and that doesn't count the pennies that are just straight up lost. While there may be plenty of pennies in circulation now, if production of pennies was stopped, there would quickly become a shortage of pennies to make change if there isn't any rounding.

 

Blast, my cover is broken!

 

As someone that has to deal with the stupid things in my job, I hope not. In fact, I've been rounding on a personal basis and no one cares - not the people getting the change and not the store if the till is off some amount of pennies.

We already round up and down - just to the penny. When you have percent modifiers on the price (a sale or a tax) or a thing is priced at a fraction of a penny (like gasoline) you gets bits less than a penny which are rounded.

We used to have a half-penny coin. It was retired when it was worth far more than the current penny. Rounding was clearly not a problem then.

 

It's all part of a similar thing. They can't have a higher authority than the king. If someone speaks with the authority of science, then they have authority greater than the king and are an enemy of the proper order of things.

 

CGP Grey had a video on getting rid of the nickle recently. He also identified the issue of rounding to the nearest 10c problematic because of the quarters, so his suggestion was to get rid of the quarter and issue a 20c piece or kill the dime and round to the nearest .25.



Also don't forget about the 3c piece.

 

I think keeping the dime and quarter are fine. The rounding gets a little uneven, but not to an egregious amount.