Full Metal Junkie
Active Member
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Admiral Beez
Superstar
He won't last. Trump's first term saw five SecDef (Mattis, Shanahan, Esper, Spencer and Miller), six if you include Esper returning for a second try until he was tossed again for Miller. Hegseth, and many of this January's appointees will be gone before summer 2025. Chaos is the name of the game, and any Yes-men who seemingly cannot deliver on the impossible or Yes-women who aren't sufficiently flirty will quickly be replaced by the next sycophant in line.
Musk will also get tossed this winter.
Opinion | Trump and Musk: The Bromance That Cannot Last
Now that he has been elected, Donald Trump will probably not honor the promises he made to Elon Musk.
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Full Metal Junkie
Active Member
Sure, this guy won't last. But there will be plenty of other unqualified yokels for trump to chose from.He won't last. Trump's first term saw five SecDef (Mattis, Shanahan, Esper, Spencer and Miller), six if you include Esper returning for a second try until he was tossed again for Miller. Hegseth, and many of this January's appointees will be gone before summer 2025. Chaos is the name of the game, and any Yes-men who seemingly cannot deliver on the impossible or Yes-women who aren't sufficiently flirty will quickly be replaced by the next sycophant in line.
Musk will also get tossed this winter.
Paywall free: https://archive.is/0l7McOpinion | Trump and Musk: The Bromance That Cannot Last
Now that he has been elected, Donald Trump will probably not honor the promises he made to Elon Musk.www.nytimes.com
One thing is for sure: trump is heavily plagiarizing the script of the 2006 classic "Idiocracy"
christiesplits
Senior Member
It somehow keeps getting worse.
Trump picks Rep. Matt Gaetz to serve as attorney general
Trump picks Rep. Matt Gaetz to serve as attorney general
Admiral Beez
Superstar
Ha. Dollars to doughnuts his first act is to reduce the national unrestricted age of consent to 16.
Age of consent in the United States - Wikipedia
gabe
Senior Member
The Trump low IQ clown car is filling up fast!
Towered
Superstar
What's the dish on this guy? I'm out of the loop.
afransen
Senior Member
Matt Gaetz is most famous for being investigated for trafficking underage girls for sex by the Justice Department, which he will now lead.
Matt Gaetz once faced a sex trafficking investigation by the Justice Department he could now lead
President-elect Donald Trump’s pick for attorney general, Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida, was once embroiled in a sex trafficking investigation by the Justice Department he’s been tapped to lead
abcnews.go.com
picard102
Senior Member
Sure you would.
kEiThZ
Superstar
I get the temptation to project Trump 1.0 on to this. I do it too. We should resist. Trump 2.0 is fundamentally different. He has a mandate (that he perceives to be strong) and the government trifecta. He will get the personnel he wants. And they will get to do what they want.
One of the policies they are pursuing, for example, is reclassifying a whole lot of civil service jobs and all general officers as political appointees. This is a major change. Whatever your thoughts about the US Government and military, it is still among the most meritocratic insitutions in the US. It is practically impossible to advance as field grade officers (Maj, Lieutenant Colonel, Colonel) without at least one graduate degree. And most have more than one. Virtually all of their generals have two graduate degrees and quite a few have PhDs. And quite a few of them from Ivy League schools too. When I was on exchange in the US at NPS doing my engineering degree, my US Navy friends who were mechanical engineers had exactly two options for their graduate studies: NPS or MIT. That should give you an understanding of how much they value education and the quality of their officer class and senior public service. Prioritizing political views will, of course, be quite the shit show.
But there's two separate classes of impact. Long term the impact will be massive if the culture that I described above changes. The reason that the US Government can lead research so well and their military is so good at adapting technology quickly is that education. Unlike our military where fewer officers have graduate education and even fewer of them have STEM graduate education, it's not uncommon in the US to find a public service executive or a general with a STEM PhD. They can quickly understand what new tech means and comprehend how to deploy it quickly. This culture going away will have an impact. The short term impact is very different. The SecDef is routinely providing options to the President for various international events. Somebody that lacks discipline, cultural awareness and sensitivity is simply going to offer up worse advice and options. But this time around, there won't be adults to stop them. And they won't admit mistakes. So I think these guys will last longer in their jobs and simply stumble from one crisis to the next, getting progressively worse because they are also shedding all that educated talent along the way.
Calling it now. He quits before he gets fired. And then his co-chair Ramaswamy will wear a lot of the unpopular stuff.
Look at the US federal budget. There is no way to cut $2T (while leaving defence spending intact) without seriously cutting social security and medicaid. If they even come close (and many Republicans before them have tried), it will be unpopular. One thing they might get away with is legislating cuts for future generations. The same way Harper proposed raising the OAS age to 67, a decade after he was out of office. But if they want to keep the Trump tax cuts, there's no real way other than chopping social programs. Even all the departments they want to cut, like the Department of Education, or getting rid of the Environmental Protection Agency, will only save them a few hundred billion.
Northern Light
Superstar
Ha. Dollars to doughnuts his first act is to reduce the national unrestricted age of consent to 16.
Age of consent in the United States - Wikipedia
en.wikipedia.org
Well, were that true, he'd get at least one thing right.
I mean, that's Canada's age of consent (after we raised it from 14); and 16 is generally at the high end of OECD norms.
Don't get me wrong, I haven't dated that young in decades.......but I think a 16 year old young adult male or female is perfectly capable of giving informed consent, and criminalizing such conduct is excessive.
*****
That said......... Mr. Gaetz does have to get through a Senate Confirmation process, which even some Republican Senators are suggesting he will not.
From: https://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory...ng-investigation-justice-department-115842848
kEiThZ
Superstar
^ The US has the driving age set at 18 and the drinking age set at 21. Not uncommon to see young soldiers, sailors, airmen, guardians and marines, who have a combat ribbon, who can't buy a drink off-base. So, in that context, reducing the age of consent would be unusual. I think it would be less of an issue if the guy pushing it wasn't such a creep.
Admiral Beez
Superstar
Well, it looks like we are going back.
apnews.com
Republicans win 218 US House seats, giving Donald Trump and the party control of government
Republicans have won enough seats to control the U.S. House, completing the party’s sweep into power and securing their hold on U.S. government alongside President-elect Donald Trump.
apnews.com
lenaitch
Senior Member
To be clear, the US doesn't have a 'national' drinking age; that is a State matter. But the federal government does use tax and financial levers through the Federal Uniform Drinking Age Act (1984) to keep the states in line. A state could have a lower age but they like the money. Similarly, the Safe Teen and Novice Driver Uniform Protection Act (2011) does similar with federal transportation funding. Money talks.
kEiThZ
Superstar
Doesn't have to be de jure. It's de facto the case because of national policy. Not sure that's germane to the discussion here. They have 21 as their drinking age. How they achieve it, isn't really important.