8 minutes ago, CallumWK said:

You think closing borders or removing taxes on tips falls in that category?

depends if you believe ICE is getting rid of dangerous illegal criminals or not.

depends where you get your information from.

depends if you think every word out of trump's mouth is a lie, etc ...

of course people are fighting. the reference point is completely the opposite and no one knows who to believe or what to believe.

15 minutes ago, CallumWK said:

Why not tell us how healthcare is going, or inflation.

He is going after insurance companies to try to get rates down.

But people don't realize how difficult it is for even a president to go after powerful corporations and pick their pockets.

He is even putting restrictions on Blackrock, another powerful company.

Sorry, but your endless rants about "Trump is crazy" are silly.

https://www.politico.com/news/2026/01/10/trumps-plan-to-strong-arm-insurers-into-lower-prices-is-met-with-skepticism-00718333

Some troll posts of no value have been removed.

4 minutes ago, save the frogs said:

He is going after insurance companies to try to get rates down.

He claims to have a healthcare plan since 2017, and has announced many times it would be implemented in the next few months. We are 2026 now and people have lost healthcare.

You start opening your eyes before you post more drivel

23 minutes ago, CallumWK said:

or inflation.

Inflation may continue to rise.

Standard of living in the west is still better than most countries.

Westerners have a higher standard of living than most other countries, but are probably the most miserable people in the world. Always complaining about everything.

Utopia doesn't exist anyway. Don't blame Trump for that.

28 minutes ago, CallumWK said:

You think closing borders or removing taxes on tips falls in that category?

Yes.

2 minutes ago, CallumWK said:

We are 2026 now and people have lost healthcare.

Nah, we went over this a while ago.

And I'm one of the few people who takes time to read the fine print.

If you're jobless, you can get healthcare through going back to school or volunteering, as I recall.

Only lazy people who want to cheat the system have no access to healthcare.

Why do I have to do all the work? Why don't you read things more carefully?

Yes President Trump is crazy, Crazy Smart and perhaps the best President in U.S. history.

An interesting book addresses this "Crazy Smart."

https://www.amazon.com/Crazy-Smart-Compelling-Winners-Winner-ebook/dp/B07CWK3G14

45 minutes ago, save the frogs said:

Sorry, but your endless rants about "Trump is crazy" are silly.

https://www.politico.com/news/2026/01/10/trumps-plan-to-strong-arm-insurers-into-lower-prices-is-met-with-skepticism-00718333

Do you even read the links you post?\

He gonna shave off 1500%, same as with the meds?

President Donald Trump plans to call health insurers to the table and demand lower prices as he seeks to allay voters’ concerns over affordability. But health policy experts, researchers and even some GOP members say it won’t be so simple.

Even if a deal materializes, there are reasons to be skeptical that voluntary cuts by insurance companies could bring significant, lasting health care savings for Americans.

“The answer is, could they shave some off it? Possibly. Is it going to be a significant reduction? No,” said Ed Haislmaier, a health policy research fellow at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative thinktank.

When you gonna start another bait thread, pretending not to be a hardcore MAGA, until the first 2 replies when you will start showing your real colours?

On 2/2/2026 at 9:18 AM, CallumWK said:

Who are you?

Trump supporter

3 hours ago, CallumWK said:

He claims to have a healthcare plan since 2017, and has announced many times it would be implemented in the next few months. We are 2026 now and people have lost healthcare.

You start opening your eyes before you post more drivel

Guess the Affordable Care Act (you can keep your dr and plan) wasnt very affordable

14 hours ago, CallumWK said:

When you gonna start another bait thread, pretending not to be a hardcore MAGA, until the first 2 replies when you will start showing your real colours?

I'm not a hardcore anything.

I might start another Trump thread. I don't promise I won't.

16 hours ago, Yagoda said:

You mean not one of the list make the average US citizens life better? Your are joking, right?

You think a wide open border and higher taxes are better? Got it.

Sure, got it, OPEC is the sole determinant of oil prices LOL

Inflation is sure better that the Biden years. And healthcare costs? Maybe if the Dems werent favouring the insurance companies over ordinary Americanss? And lets not talk about the effect of illegal aliens on health care costs, or fraud..billions and billions of dollars.

Lets not even talk about economic growth or record market highs.

There's so much BS here I will have to reply in separate posts!😆

"And lets not talk about the effect of illegal aliens on health care costs, or fraud..billions and billions of dollars."

'Immigrants’ Recent Effects on Government Budgets: 1994–2023'

https://www.cato.org/white-paper/immigrants-recent-effects-government-budgets-1994-2023?utm_source=hootsuite&utm_medium=twitter&utm_term=&utm_content=&utm_campaign=

"Recent increases in immigration have rekindled concerns about their effects on government budgets. This paper updates a model of these effects first developed by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM) to shed light on how immigrants, both legal and illegal*, and their children affect government budgets.

For each year from 1994 to 2023, the US immigrant population generated more in taxes than they received in benefits from all levels of government.

Over that period, immigrants created a cumulative fiscal surplus of $14.5 trillion in real 2024 US dollars, including $3.9 trillion in savings on interest on the debt.

Without immigrants, US government public debt at all levels would be at least 205 percent of gross domestic product (GDP)—nearly twice its 2023 level."

*Underlined and Italicised by me.

"And lets not talk about the effect of illegal aliens on health care costs, or fraud..billions and billions of dollars."

Yeah, about that fraud being predominantly an immigrant problem:

1 minute ago, BLMFem said:

There's so much BS here I will have to reply in separate posts!😆

"And lets not talk about the effect of illegal aliens on health care costs, or fraud..billions and billions of dollars."

'Immigrants’ Recent Effects on Government Budgets: 1994–2023'

https://www.cato.org/white-paper/immigrants-recent-effects-government-budgets-1994-2023?utm_source=hootsuite&utm_medium=twitter&utm_term=&utm_content=&utm_campaign=

"Recent increases in immigration have rekindled concerns about their effects on government budgets. This paper updates a model of these effects first developed by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM) to shed light on how immigrants, both legal and illegal*, and their children affect government budgets.

For each year from 1994 to 2023, the US immigrant population generated more in taxes than they received in benefits from all levels of government.

Over that period, immigrants created a cumulative fiscal surplus of $14.5 trillion in real 2024 US dollars, including $3.9 trillion in savings on interest on the debt.

Without immigrants, US government public debt at all levels would be at least 205 percent of gross domestic product (GDP)—nearly twice its 2023 level."

*Underlined and Italicised by me.

Sure. Guess you havent been in an emergency room in the USA. They take the fraud into account in their "model"?

3 minutes ago, Yagoda said:

Sure. Guess you havent been in an emergency room in the USA. They take the fraud into account in their "model"?

When you get owned, better gently tip-toe away, okay?

1 minute ago, BLMFem said:

When you get owned, better gently tip-toe away, okay?

If thats the case, you would have stayed away after you ran away the first time.

13 minutes ago, BLMFem said:

"And lets not talk about the effect of illegal aliens on health care costs, or fraud..billions and billions of dollars."

Yeah, about that fraud being predominantly an immigrant problem:

Got it. Somali fraud is because of non Somalis.

I dont know why you even bother, we all know you believe in an open US border, no one is illegal on stolen land, etc

In many of our minds there's no doubt that Trump is completely insane, totally unhinged, morally bankrupt, a pathological super freak, and the worst leader America could possibly have at this moment in time. In addition he's one of the most dangerous men on the planet, declining rapidly, and incredibly unstable.

Trump is diminishing America's reputation and influence throughout the world rather precipitously, I don't think he's just destroying American history. Certainly historians will write about this chapter as being an incredibly dark period, brought on by a psychopathic megalomaniac who is completely out of control, but even this will pass. Trump is getting very old, he's getting very feeble, and he's not going to be around much longer. He's diminishing the GOP to a rather staggering degree and the destructive effects of his ridiculous tariffs will not be felt for another year or two. When that happens a lot of MAGA devotees are going to be very angry, and very disappointed, and very surprised. 

 

You mean he wasn't really working for my well-being after all? He really didn't care about me? I'm so surprised! I thought he was a much different man than he turned out to be. Geez. Perhaps I was a bit gullible and naive? I really believed him. 

"It must be because of M.I.T., my relationship with M.I.T., very smart. I say, 'What would happen if the boat sank from its weight and you're in the boat and you have this tremendously powerful battery, and the battery is now underwater, and there's a shark that's approximately 10 yards over there?" Trump said. "By the way, lot of shark attacks lately. Did you notice that?"

During a meeting with the European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, abruptly switched from discussing immigration to saying this: “The other thing I say to Europe: we’ve – we will not allow a windmill to be built in the United States. They’re killing us. They’re killing the beauty of our scenery.”

Trump proceeded to speak, non-stop and unprompted, for two minutes about windmills, claiming without evidence that they drive whales “loco” and that wind energy “kills the birds” (the proportion of birds killed by turbines is tiny compared with the number killed by domestic cats and from flying into power lines).

The abrupt changes in conversation are an example of Trump “digressing without thinking – he’ll just switch topics without self-regulation, without having a coherent narrative”, said Harry Segal, a senior lecturer in the psychology department at Cornell University and in the psychiatry department at Weill Cornell Medicine. Segal said another characteristic of Trump’s questionable mental acuity is confabulation. “It’s where he takes an idea or something that’s happened and he adds to it things that have not happened.” A high-profile example came in mid-July, when Trump claimed his uncle, the late professor John Trump, had taught Ted Kaczynski, better known as the Unabomber, at MIT.

Trump recalled: “I said: ‘What kind of a student was he, Uncle John? Dr John Trump.’ I said: ‘What kind of a student?’ And then he said: ‘Seriously, good.’ He said: ‘He’d correct – he’d go around correcting everybody.’ But it didn’t work out too well for him.”

The problem is: that cannot possibly be true. First, Trump’s uncle died in 1985, and Kaczynski was only publicly identified as the Unabomber in 1996. Second, Kaczynski did not study at MIT.

“The story makes no sense whatsoever, but it’s told in a very warm, reflective way, as if he’s remembering it,” Segal said. “This level of thinking really has been deteriorating.”

I got rid of – just one I got rid of the other night, you buy a house, they have a faucet in the house, Joe, and the faucet the water doesn’t come out. They have a restrictor. You can’t – in areas where you have so much water they don’t know what to do with it. Uh, you have a shower head the shower doesn’t uh, the shower doesn’t, you think it’s not working. It is working. The water’s dripping out and that’s no good for me. I like this hair lace and [sic] – I like that hair nice and wet. Takes you – you have to stand in the shower for 20 minutes before you get the soap out of your hair. And I put a, a thing – and it sounds funny but it’s really not. It’s horrible. And uh, when you wash your hands, you turn on the faucet, no water comes out. You’re washing whole – water barely comes out it’s ridi – this was done by crazy people. And I wor – wrote it all off and got it approved in Congress so that they can’t just change it.”

“Any fair-minded mental-health expert would be very worried about Donald Trump’s performance,” Richard A Friedman, a professor of clinical psychiatry and the director of the psychopharmacology clinic at Weill Cornell Medical College.

He added: “If a patient presented to me with the verbal incoherence, tangential thinking, and repetitive speech that Trump now regularly demonstrates, I would almost certainly refer them for a rigorous neuropsychiatric evaluation to rule out a cognitive illness.”

11 minutes ago, Yagoda said:

If thats the case, you would have stayed away after you ran away the first time.

8 minutes ago, Yagoda said:

Got it. Somali fraud is because of non Somalis.

I dont know why you even bother, we all know you believe in an open US border, no one is illegal on stolen land, etc

I gave you solid advice but, alas, you've chosen to ignore it. Such a shame.

Back to the report published by the Cato institute. Are you surprised by how incredibly positive legal and illegal immigration is for the US economy? I mean, I knew they were net contributors but had no idea their contribution was so massive that they, according to the report, prevented a fiscal crisis!

Again (from the report linked above):

• "For each year from 1994 to 2023, the US immigrant population generated more in taxes than they received in benefits from all levels of government.

• Over that period, immigrants created a cumulative fiscal surplus of $14.5 trillion in real 2024 US dollars, including $3.9 trillion in savings on interest on the debt.

• Without immigrants, US government public debt at all levels would be at least 205 percent of gross domestic product (GDP)—nearly twice its 2023 level."

How you like them apples?

3 hours ago, BLMFem said:

Are you surprised by how incredibly positive legal and illegal immigration is for the US economy?

Mixing legal and illegal immigrants together is stoooopid.

I guess Google owners are Dems?

Because when I do a google search, the first 10,000 pages that show up support your argument. Man, what a conspiracy. Control people's minds by controlling google search results.

There are many problems with illegal immigrants, outlined in the link below which I will not debate with charlatans. It's a topic too stupid to even debate. Wealthy business owners like it because they can pay below minimum wage.

https://www.fairus.org/issue/illegal-immigration/whats-wrong-illegal-immigration

5 hours ago, save the frogs said:

Mixing legal and illegal immigrants together is stoooopid.

No its incredibly positive. 20 million uneducated criminals sucking on the government nipple while roaming around is great, especially when they are counted in the census.

20 hours ago, save the frogs said:

Mixing legal and illegal immigrants together is stoooopid.

I guess Google owners are Dems?

Because when I do a google search, the first 10,000 pages that show up support your argument. Man, what a conspiracy. Control people's minds by controlling google search results.

There are many problems with illegal immigrants, outlined in the link below which I will not debate with charlatans. It's a topic too stupid to even debate. Wealthy business owners like it because they can pay below minimum wage.

https://www.fairus.org/issue/illegal-immigration/whats-wrong-illegal-immigration

Translating MAGA-speak:

"I do not like the irrefutable proof in the linked report, so I will not debate this further, and as a final diversion I'll add a link to a random anti-immigration website."

Thanks for your invaluable contribution and I look forward to your non-participation in future discussions on immigration!

I'm slowly beginning to ignore most of the Trump stuff - at least where possible. In some ways, paying attention to his every comment and threat is a sucker's game.

On 2/3/2026 at 7:06 PM, BLMFem said:

"Attention, attention, all personnel: Bad Grandpa has escaped the psych ward."

https://x.com/SpencerHakimian/status/2018517470915805691?s=20

Just goes to show that he is batsh!t crazy but the MAGAs don't want to see it, so they don't! MAGA logic!!! LOL

6 minutes ago, xylophone said:

Just goes to show that he is batsh!t crazy but the MAGAs don't want to see it, so they don't! MAGA logic!!! LOL

So, he's not a liar anymore, now he's just crazy

11 minutes ago, Yellowtail said:

So, he's not a liar anymore, now he's just crazy

He is still both a liar and seems to be crazy!

On 2/3/2026 at 8:48 AM, CallumWK said:

How about telling us what he has achieved that makes the lives of the average US citizen better?

You think closing borders or removing taxes on tips falls in that category?

Lower energy prices are not his doing, it is because of OPEC.

Why not tell us how healthcare is going, or inflation.

Let me address your question. 

Reducing immigration while the US has a housing shortage is helpful. 

For people at the lower end of the income distribution curve, not paying taxes on tips is helpful.

Inflation is lower than in the Biden years, which is helpful. 

34 minutes ago, Fact said:

Let me address your question. 

Reducing immigration while the US has a housing shortage is helpful. 

For people at the lower end of the income distribution curve, not paying taxes on tips is helpful.

Inflation is lower than in the Biden years, which is helpful. 

Both legal and illegal aliens put downward pressure on wages, and upward pressure on housing. Illegal immigrants also compete for the same medical ad social programs as the working poor.

4 minutes ago, Yellowtail said:

Both legal and illegal aliens put downward pressure on wages, and upward pressure on wages. Illegal immigrants also compete for the same medical ad social programs as the working poor.

This is more pronounced for the low-income workers.

But while immigration improves living standards on average, the economic literature is divided about whether immigration reduces wages for certain groups of workers. In particular, some estimates suggest that immigration has reduced the wages of low-skilled workers and college graduates. This research, shown by the blue bars in the chart above, implies that the influx of immigrant workers from 1990 to 2006 reduced the wages of low-skilled workers by 4.7 percent and college graduates by 1.7 percent. However, other estimates that examine immigration within a different economic framework (the red bars in the chart) find that immigration raises the wages of all U.S. workers—regardless of the immigrants’ level of education.

https://www.brookings.edu/articles/what-immigration-means-for-u-s-employment-and-wages/