rolling “Trump is gonna win” containment thread

You know the FTC has been a lot tougher under Biden, right?

Under President Joe Biden, the US has doubled down on efforts to block more mergers after decades of a light-touch approach by government. Assistant Attorney General for Antitrust Jonathan Kanter and FTC Chair Lina Khan have argued previous administrations were too permissive, leading to a rise in corporate concentration that has limited choices for consumers and contributed to higher prices.

“For too long, unchecked consolidation has meant big corporations getting bigger, giving them the power to raise prices for Americans and provide consumers with fewer options,” Biden’s National Economic Advisor Lael Brainard said in a statement. The new merger guidelines are “an important step to lower costs for consumers, ensure a level playing field for small businesses, and ensure antitrust enforcement is fit for purpose in today’s economy.”

No, I didn't know. That kind of news is too esoteric for widespread dissemination. Thanks for the link. Ofc it is to a business news outlet. Such business news outlets would also normally take an editorial stance that thinks anti-trust is only so much 'red tape' and government obstruction of the free market.

Don't want to wade through everything, but just want to point out that both Dollar General and Family Dollar are not actually $1/99¢ stores like Dollar Tree or 99¢ Only--they sell affordable stuff not too different from what you'd find at Walmart or CVS (from food to toys to lawn furniture) priced in flat dollar increments ($1/$3/$15 etc.).

they're also understaffed in a way that feels like it should be illegal. John Oliver has a good piece on it. we go sometimes for cheap party stuff and I'm often left wondering if there's only two people working there at any given time

like i almost wonder if putting multiple checkout lines there is a ploy to make people think they're not always understaffed

When I was working in rural Texas every small town had a Dollar General and a Mr. Gatti’s pizza buffet. Not a goddamn thing otherwise but you could get terrible pizza and Dorito’s.

...and Subway! I had a family reunion one year down in the Valley and every town on the way had one, even in the places that couldn't sustain a Dairy Queen.

I spent most of those two years in Llano in the Hill Country, which is sort of an outlier (~3000 people but a rural hub) so it had a real grocery store, DQ and a couple of good barbecue places (and a Dollar General and pizza buffet) but I still wound up driving an hour to the outskirts of Austin on a regular basis just to have some variety of shitty chain options.

I was living in a hotel so the grocery store was mostly useless aside from snacks but it beat the Dollar General where the AC was broken down for an entire summer.

My rural Montana town has a Subway and a Dairy Queen. I see people ordering at the DQ drive-thru window but have never been to either place myself.

i wonder if trump will win

...the scratchoff card he purchases from the machine at the front of the grocery store on his way out? that's a great question

Let's ask someone in a diner...or a Subway!

sloppy joe the plumber

DeSantis out - Trump is gonna win isn't he

If he is, it has nothing to do with DeSantis

The amount of money floating around just to get dumped into clearly doomed runs like Ron and JEB! is mind boggling.

When you understand the amount of money controlled by the US federal government (not to mention state and local governments) it becomes more understandable that the super rich feel the desire to control the outcome of elections. It's purely an investment strategy with added bonus powers.

also pretty sure any public person's image takes a hit donating to Trump in a way it probably wouldn't giving to someone like Jeb

I don't think the money is set on fire - I suspect some of it shlorps back into the same economy that it came from. Consultants, advertising, lawyers, lobbyists, etc. Who then spend a lot of it on consultants, advertising, lawyers, and lobbyists.

That said, howvere, they all live in nicer houses than mine.

ideal world is Mr. Choppy for all of them.

the fact that many dipshit fascist political consultants make more than teachers is appalling. talk about a dystopia.

I don't think the money is set on fire - I suspect some of it shlorps back into the same economy that it came from. Consultants, advertising, lawyers, lobbyists, etc. Who then spend a lot of it on consultants, advertising, lawyers, and lobbyists.

That said, howvere, they all live in nicer houses than mine.

"If there's a steady paycheck in it, I'll do anything you say."

I wonder if Haley will be able to buffalo Trump into debating her, now that its down to the two of them.

I've never heard "buffalo" as a verb, but I like it.

Buffalo Trumper
he's the ass of America

Buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo is a classic bit of language dorkery. (I confess I am okay with four but six is too many.)

I am more comfortable with the sequence "Chad, while Brad had had 'had,' had had 'had had.' 'Had had' had had a better effect on their grammar teacher."

https://i.imgur.com/hBRnzWd.jpg

Canonical buffalo buffalo is x7

wins, yeah, I know! I have never been able to get there. And I have tried! I have a degree in English and significant coursework in linguistics and after four or five buffalos my brain just shuts down. I admire people who get to seven. Take the W.

Sorry to drone on but there is another bit of geekdom where you try to end a sentence with as many prepositions as possible. It involves a parent who wishes to read a book about Australia to a child.

The hypothetical child says something like "Why did you bring that book that I don't want to be read to about Down Under up for?"

After that it gets recursive and it's tedious to reenact, so I will spare you.

Y'all are just off the chain.

The form of the 7 buffalo version is "Adjective noun verb noun (adjective noun verb)" where the part in parentheses is a dependent clause with an implied "that". So it's like: "California children eat cookies California children eat" but just replace all the words with "Buffalo".

xxp

Apologies to ilxors who prefer thread topic discipline to thread topic anarchy. We can redirect these digressions to more appropriate places if needed.

I was just about to say how I parse it differently to o nate & realised the version I know is actually x8

xp I love digressions. I also love nerdiness. Carry on.

I figured since we've all now settled on Trump is gonna win, may as well start fiddling with rapid-fire topic changes

threads with 2900 posts are allowed to shape their own interior symmetries

to be fair, I'd much rather spend my energy parsing that buffalo sentence than thinking about the titular dipshit any further.

If Trump wins, I am going to spend the following four years just saying "buffalo buffalo buffalo" to anyone who tries to talk to me

Titular dipshit's name is also a noun and verb, so we might be able to do something similar there. But I don't want to think about it.

Well, he'll be renaming the country Trump, so that may work well

Trumpopia

(And my prior post should have gone "Why did you bring that book that I don't want to be read to from out of about Down Under up for?")

Getting close to Smurf-talk, then. Trump trumped the trump trump by trumping the trump.

I'm trumped, Trump, I meant to trump the trump but trumped the trump trump before I could trump the trump. It won't trump again.

Trumps trump Trumps Trumps trump.

It's just Trumps all the way down.

You wanna Trump— What? Trump up and get Trumped
If you're feeling Trumpy Trump then press your Trump

Trumpception, Trumpocalypse, Trumptopia, Trumpaloopa

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/2016/11/07/a-preelection-trumpalooza/

for some reason I keep thinking of

snorgsnorgsnorgsnorgsnorgsnorgsnorg aaaargh my day is ruined

― the schef (adam schefter ha ha), Wednesday, May 23, 2007