Trump’s America

[MissingInAction 25001]

Just had a double sonic slammer and I want to die.

[royiv 9236]

3 hours ago, TwiceHorn said:

Also about as plain an antitrust violation as you could come up with.

Dickbrain.

I’m willing to bet that the FTC is going to be gutted pretty quickly.

[Horn Dogg 3868]

2 hours ago, tx 3 putt said:

It’s probably a $300 Chibson from alibaba.

[BrickHorn 18214]

3 hours ago, MotownHorn said:

How am I voting to give your kid health insurance and extra help in school while you’re voting to take that away from your own kid?!? Make it make sense.

The explanation is: many Trump voters either weren’t paying attention or dismissed the concerns as triggered libtard scare tactics. Trump’s victory was a direct result of ignorance (inadvertent or willful) combining with naive, selfish exceptionalism (“Certainly the GOP would never do anything to harm my interests”). 

This is supported by the Washington Post study showing that, when not told which candidate supports a policy, people across the spectrum generally approved of damn near all of Kamala’s policy proposals and mostly hated Trump’s. Either voters made an educated decision to vote for policies they disliked, or they were ignorant of their chosen candidate’s policy positions. All of the conservative shock and dismay about cabinet picks and saber-rattling on immigration, health care, etc. leads me to believe the latter was the more prominent driver. 

[Longhorn_Fan68 33859]

3 hours ago, tx 3 putt said:

If I ever attend a show and one of the performers pulls out that guitar I am noping the fuck out there as soon as I can

[Red Five 40820]

This could go anywhere, but a neighbor I barely know just stopped me on a dog walk to say how happy she was about the election. I tried to brush it off but she just kept going. When she said something like "Trump is a businessman and Biden was just too dangerous" I called her a crazy fucking loon and walked off. I do not feel bad in the least. 

Edit: There was a lot of crazy spewed in about 30 seconds, but she also said something about "Biden was arming our enemies so they could attack us". I think it's borderline dangerous to randomly stop someone on the street and start spewing that horseshit. I'm not handling this whole thing well at all and she might as well have stopped me to laugh in my face about my dead dog or something.

Edited 11 hours ago by Red Five

[MissingInAction 25001]

You should shit on her lawn and piss on her door.

[Hermanator 7031]

Great video from a good philosophy channel

[Hermanator 7031]

1 hour ago, Horn Dogg said:

It’s probably a $300 Chibson from alibaba.

$300? try $89

[Horn Dogg 3868]

1 hour ago, Longhorn_Fan68 said:

If I ever attend a show and one of the performers pulls out that guitar I am noping the fuck out there as soon as I can

Luckily Toby Keith is already dead, so we may avoid that situation.

[royiv 9236]

15 minutes ago, Horn Dogg said:

Luckily Toby Keith is already dead, so we may avoid that situation.

If you went to a Toby Keith concert before he died or a Kid Rock show now, you get exactly what you signed up for.

[Sbbruin 21825]

At first I thought he was eating a booger a la Spaulding Smails.  But instead getting a numby gummy from the hielo?

 

[Francisco 2.0 32385]

https://apnews.com/article/delta-airlines-trump-biden-regulation-c4393d5f763d95c8286d4069563032dc

 

Quote

The chief executive of Delta Air Lines says the incoming Trump administration will be a “breath of fresh air” for airlines after what he calls government “overreach” under President Joe Biden.

The airline industry has chafed under consumer-protection regulations imposed by the Biden administration. And Delta is facing a federal investigation into its slow recovery from a global technology outage this summer.

Delta CEO Ed Bastian made the comment as he and fellow Delta executives prepared to host Wall Street analysts at an investor day Wednesday in Atlanta.

 

Quote

Bastian noted that President-elect Donald Trump campaigned on a pledge to reform the federal government and reduce its size.

The airline executive said Trump promised “to take a fresh look at the regulatory environment, the bureaucracy that exists in government, the level of overreach that we have seen over the last four years within our industry. I think that will be a breath of fresh air.”

Southwest Airlines CEO Robert Jordan struck a similar tone after a speech last week in Dallas.

 

Spoiler

Delta used its investor day to build support for the company, which reported a profit of $2.6 billion in the first nine months of this year after earning an industry-leading $4.6 billion last year.

The airline stood by its previous forecast that adjusted profit in the fourth quarter will be between $1.60 and $1.85 per share. The company said its 2025 revenue will rise by a mid-single-digit percentage over 2024. Analysts expect a 6% increase, according to a FactSet survey.

Consumer advocates are wary of a second Trump administration, fearing that it could try to roll back a rule requiring automatic refunds after canceled flights and another that requires airlines to advertise the full price of fares upfront, including mandatory fees and taxes.

On Monday, the airline industry trade group praised Trump’s pick for transportation secretary, Sean Duffy, a former Republican congressman from Wisconsin and reality-TV star who is a co-host of “The Bottom Line” on Fox Business. Duffy lobbied for U.S. airlines and their unions during a dispute with Persian Gulf carriers. 

But Accountable.US, a watchdog nonprofit group, said putting Duffy in charge of the department that oversees airlines was a sign that Trump is “putting his friends and their corporate special interests ahead of American consumers.”

Bastian did not specify which Biden regulations he considered overreach, but Delta and other carriers are suing the Transportation Department to kill a rule requiring greater transparency over fees that the carriers charge their passengers. 

The group Airlines for America said the rule would confuse consumers by giving them too much information. An appeals court panel blocked enforcement of the rule while the airlines’ lawsuit goes ahead.

Airlines also oppose an inquiry that the administration recently launched into their frequent-flyer programs. Delta has received more than $2.4 billion in revenue from its loyalty program so far this year.

But the hardest blow against Delta could come from a Transportation Department investigation into the airline’s slow recovery from a technology outage in July. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said investigators were focusing on whether Delta’s treatment of passengers affected by canceled and delayed flights violated federal consumer-protection rules.

Southwest Airlines reached a $140 million settlement after a Transportation Department investigation into a similar but larger breakdown in service in December 2022.

Delta initially said it was cooperating with the investigation. In October, Delta sued CrowdStrike, the cybersecurity provider whose faulty upgrade to Microsoft computers triggered the outage.

 

[royiv 9236]

12 minutes ago, Francisco 2.0 said:

https://apnews.com/article/delta-airlines-trump-biden-regulation-c4393d5f763d95c8286d4069563032dc

 

 

 

  Reveal hidden contents

Delta used its investor day to build support for the company, which reported a profit of $2.6 billion in the first nine months of this year after earning an industry-leading $4.6 billion last year.

The airline stood by its previous forecast that adjusted profit in the fourth quarter will be between $1.60 and $1.85 per share. The company said its 2025 revenue will rise by a mid-single-digit percentage over 2024. Analysts expect a 6% increase, according to a FactSet survey.

Consumer advocates are wary of a second Trump administration, fearing that it could try to roll back a rule requiring automatic refunds after canceled flights and another that requires airlines to advertise the full price of fares upfront, including mandatory fees and taxes.

On Monday, the airline industry trade group praised Trump’s pick for transportation secretary, Sean Duffy, a former Republican congressman from Wisconsin and reality-TV star who is a co-host of “The Bottom Line” on Fox Business. Duffy lobbied for U.S. airlines and their unions during a dispute with Persian Gulf carriers. 

But Accountable.US, a watchdog nonprofit group, said putting Duffy in charge of the department that oversees airlines was a sign that Trump is “putting his friends and their corporate special interests ahead of American consumers.”

Bastian did not specify which Biden regulations he considered overreach, but Delta and other carriers are suing the Transportation Department to kill a rule requiring greater transparency over fees that the carriers charge their passengers. 

The group Airlines for America said the rule would confuse consumers by giving them too much information. An appeals court panel blocked enforcement of the rule while the airlines’ lawsuit goes ahead.

Airlines also oppose an inquiry that the administration recently launched into their frequent-flyer programs. Delta has received more than $2.4 billion in revenue from its loyalty program so far this year.

But the hardest blow against Delta could come from a Transportation Department investigation into the airline’s slow recovery from a technology outage in July. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said investigators were focusing on whether Delta’s treatment of passengers affected by canceled and delayed flights violated federal consumer-protection rules.

Southwest Airlines reached a $140 million settlement after a Transportation Department investigation into a similar but larger breakdown in service in December 2022.

Delta initially said it was cooperating with the investigation. In October, Delta sued CrowdStrike, the cybersecurity provider whose faulty upgrade to Microsoft computers triggered the outage.

 

This is enraging, but I guess I can’t disagree with this quote given the results of the election:

Quote

The group Airlines for America said the rule would confuse consumers by giving them too much information.

 

[Francisco 2.0 32385]

And for those of you still using cable internet:

Cable companies and Trump’s FCC chair agree: Data caps are good for you

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2024/11/cable-companies-and-trumps-fcc-chair-agree-data-caps-are-good-for-you/

 

Quote

The Federal Communications Commission's plan to investigate and potentially regulate data caps is all but dead now, after President-elect Donald Trump's announcement that he will promote Commissioner Brendan Carr to the chairmanship role.

The FCC last month voted 3–2 to open a formal inquiry into how broadband data caps affect consumers and whether the commission has authority to regulate how Internet service providers impose such caps. The proceeding is continuing for now, as the FCC comment and reply comment deadlines are November 14 and December 2. You can view the docket here.

 

Quote

Broadband industry lobby groups knew they would face no possibility of data-cap regulation once Trump won the election. But they submitted their comments late last week, making the case that data caps are good for customers and that the FCC has no authority to regulate them—the same arguments that Carr made when he dissented from the vote to open an inquiry.

NCTA—The Internet & Television Association, representing cable firms including Comcast and Charter, told the FCC that what ISPs call "usage-based pricing" expands options for consumers and promotes competition and network investment. NCTA claimed that the offering of plans with data caps "reflects the highly competitive environment as providers seek to distinguish their offers from their competitors'."

 

 

Spoiler

Data caps enable "innovative plans at lower monthly rates," the lobby group said. The NCTA also wrote:

Usage-based pricing is a widely accepted pricing model used not only for communications services, but also for the sale of many other categories of goods and services. Such consumption-based pricing equitably and efficiently ensures that consumers who use goods or services the most pay more than those that do not. Indeed, in the communications context, the notion that requiring very heavy users of a service to pay more than light users has long been determined to be a reasonable pricing structure. It would be economically unsound to prohibit broadband providers from engaging in usage-based pricing in the absence of any harm caused by such practices.

 

Carr and fellow FCC Republican Nathan Simington made similar arguments when they dissented from last month's vote to open an inquiry. Carr blasted what he called "the Biden-Harris Administration's inexorable march towards rate regulation," and said that "prohibiting customers from choosing to purchase plans with data caps—which are more affordable than unlimited ones—necessarily regulates the service rates they are paying for."

Many Internet users filed comments asking the FCC to ban data caps. A coalition of consumer advocacy groups filed comments saying that "data caps are another profit-driving tool for ISPs at the expense of consumers and the public interest."

"Data caps have a negative impact on all consumers but the effects are felt most acutely in low-income households," stated comments filed by Public Knowledge, the Open Technology Institute at New America, the Benton Institute for Broadband & Society, and the National Consumer Law Center.

Consumer groups: Caps don’t manage congestion

The consumer groups said the COVID-19 pandemic "made it more apparent how data caps are artificially imposed restrictions that negatively impact consumers, discriminate against the use of certain high-data services, and are not necessary to address network congestion, which is generally not present on home broadband networks."

"Unlike speed tiers, data caps do not effectively manage network congestion or peak usage times, because they do not influence real-time network load," the groups also said. "Instead, they enable further price discrimination by pushing consumers toward more expensive plans with higher or unlimited data allowances. They are price discrimination dressed up as network management."

Jessica Rosenworcel, who has been FCC chairwoman since 2021, argued last month that consumer complaints show the FCC inquiry is necessary. "The mental toll of constantly thinking about how much you use a service that is essential for modern life is real as is the frustration of so many consumers who tell us they believe these caps are costly and unfair," Rosenworcel said.

ISPs lifting caps during the pandemic "suggest that our networks have the capacity to meet consumer demand without these restrictions," she said, adding that "some providers do not have them at all" and "others lifted them in network merger conditions."

ISPs: Pandemic doesn’t show caps are unnecessary

The NCTA tried to counter Rosenworcel's claim that the widespread lifting of data caps during the early part of the COVID-19 pandemic shows that the caps aren't necessary.

"Because of the extraordinary circumstances of the pandemic and with so many people working and learning from home, broadband traffic during the pandemic surged between 30 percent and 50 percent across mobile and fixed networks," the NCTA wrote. "Recognizing this national emergency, cable and other providers paused data plans and took many other steps to ensure Americans stayed connected to the Internet."

The NCTA argued that the temporary lifting of caps "does not change the fundamental economics of usage-based pricing... Providers were able to suspend usage-based pricing temporarily during the pandemic, recognizing that this was an extraordinary circumstance and that eventually schools and workplaces would reopen."

The FCC also received opposition from USTelecom, wireless lobby group CTIA, and America's Communications Association (formerly the American Cable Association). USTelecom claimed that banning data caps would force ISPs to raise prices.

"Requiring all users to pay for unlimited data would raise prices for consumers who use little data," USTelecom wrote. "This difference in price could be the deciding factor in whether an individual can, or wants to, subscribe to broadband. Moreover, requiring flat pricing plans with unlimited data would effectively require those who use less data to subsidize those that use more."

 

Edit:  Have no idea why the copy/paste struckthru that block of text.

Edited 8 hours ago by Francisco 2.0

[Evil Bill Obrien 3255]

[Macanudo 12974]

4 hours ago, Longhorn_Fan68 said:

If I ever attend a show and one of the performers pulls out that guitar I am noping the fuck out there as soon as I can

You think it will actually work??

[Willfully Horn 7994]

3 hours ago, MissingInAction said:

You should shit on her lawn and piss on her door.

Back in college, I knew a woman who went door to door to raise money for Greenpeace. One cranky old homeowner went off on her, and used pretty demeaning invective. She turned around, walked out on to his lawn, dropped her pants, and left a crap. Say what you will, crazy isn’t dull.

[royiv 9236]

6 minutes ago, Willfully Horn said:

Back in college, I knew a woman who went door to door to raise money for Greenpeace. One cranky old homeowner went off on her, and used pretty demeaning invective. She turned around, walked out on to his lawn, dropped her pants, and left a crap. Say what you will, crazy isn’t dull.

What did she wipe with?

[Dnaguy 11910]

10 minutes ago, royiv said:

What did she wipe with?

Spite poops are always ghost poops.

 

[royiv 9236]

28 minutes ago, Dnaguy said:

Spite poops are always ghost poops.

 

I’m not familiar with the genre.

[Sawbonz 27521]

8 hours ago, Chad Fuck said:

Lol.  You think maga eats vegetables?