Ooooh….Trump on the stand was a disaster.
Couldn’t speak up. Couldn’t answer questions. Couldn’t stay on topic so badly the judge repeatedly told him to stop telling stories and answer the questions. He shot back with “why, you’re just going to rule against me anyway.”…a self fulfilling prophecy if I’ve ever heard one.

When he did answer, his answers were insanity like “banks don’t care about financial statements, I know, I’ve been doing this a long time.” Not a good idea to remind the judge that there are hundreds more instances of major fraud you aren’t being prosecuted for because of the statute of limitations.

Turns out banks DO care, and will be suing for the $180 million he cheated them out of in interest by lying about his collateral, plus interest and penalties…assuming he isn’t stripped of every dime by New York State first by disgorgement….which is taking back ill gotten gains.

Also nonsensical shit like “I could have added my brand value and immediately made those properties worth 10 to 100 times as much” forgetting that not only had they doubled the value or more for his “brand value” but again for “presidential value”.

And “they undervalued my properties here by 1000 times!” forgetting that not only was the $18-24 million appraised value agreed on and signed off by Trump, he actually went to court to get it lowered claiming Maralago WASN’T worth +-$20 million it was worth far LESS. Now he’s in court telling everyone that was another pure tax fraud lie he told in Florida to cheat Florida out of tens of millions in property taxes…if Maralago is really worth billions, not $18 million he claims for taxes, that means Trump owes evaded property taxes on $982000000, over $10 million per year for as long as he’s owned it….plus penalties and interest. That’s his DEFENSE! 🤦‍♂️ 😂

Most of his testimony was stricken as rambling and non responsive.

He was nearly thrown out of court for his out of control behavior. He acted like a spoiled three year old. Don’t be surprised if there’s a major contempt charge this afternoon….possibly remand.

Edit: Also don’t be surprised if he’s just dismissed from the stand, has his testimony stricken completely, and as the judge has warned the judge takes every negative inference possible, assuming every answer he would have given was the worst possible answer for Trump. That seems to be Trumps plan…attempt anything to later make the argument at appeal that the judge was biased and didn’t give Trump a fair trial…but the record proves otherwise and appeals courts read the record. That ploy won’t work…Trump’s lawyers are awful. It’s never a good strategy to try to lose as big as possible in court.

Now, keep in mind, this is just New York, where he’s already been found guilty and they’re just determining the punishment….other states he’s done fraudulent business in are undoubtedly watching closely to see if they should file next.

I love it when a plan comes together.

Today’s Republicans are lessor.
Less educated. Less moral. No ethics. Less truthfulness. Less humanity.
The educated, moral, and ethical Republicans have all left the party, it’s nothing more than idiotic cultists today, all crooks like Santos or proud racists like your last nominee for speaker who says he’s “David Duke without the baggage” and has gone to speak with the KKK and other racist organizations as a friend to them.

Your leader is a rapist who thinks he won one election against Obama, thinks Jeb Bush was president, thinks Biden might get us into WW2, and pretends he doesn’t understand that going to court to lower his appraisal value for taxes, under oath swearing they’re worth far less than the appraised value, then valuing his properties at 30000% of their appraised value under oath when applying for loans is a crime. That’s all just in the last week.

Biden and Fetterman are both totally lucid, rational, and grounded in reality despite one having a slight speech impediment….they both are insanely greater than dementia Don with his lumpy full diapers handing over top secret military classified documents to try and make a friend….for nothing more than a billionaires company, that billionaire then put the nuclear submarine specifications online for our enemies. He should be shot 20 times for that, it’s absolutely treason with no excuse.

No guessing necessary…he’s been repeatedly convicted of both…in fact he was convicted of criminally lying about finances again just yesterday. Exaggerating his net worth by up to $2.2 billion with frauds like claiming Maralago was valued at $650 million when applying for a loan against it when it had just appraised for around $25 million (and Trump actually went to court claiming the appraisal was too high!), claiming his apartment in Trump tower is 30000 sq ft when trying to get a loan when in fact it’s 10000 sq ft.

These criminal lies are typical of how he did business for decades, and why he and his sons are now banned from doing business in New York and their New York businesses are all being seized to be sold to pay his creditors (for once), and why no banks will do business with them anymore. 😂

God gives people grace in many ways. One of those ways is by communicating His will through the preaching of His word. The hearing of the word imparts faith, which is a gift from God. You're wondering how you believe; when you listen to the word with a good heart God will give you the faith to believe it. He will also confirm His word with supernatural signs and wonders.

I don't know how true your appraisal is of those who have told you about the Lord, but your situation is better than those who have never heard. Plus you have me, newtboy, and I'm sure that makes you feel extremely fortunate. Yet scripture tells us that even if the messenger is bad it doesn't negate your responsibility. Faith and reason are complimentary. I think this quote is true: Christianity has not been tried and found wanting, it has been found too difficult and not tried.

I can't speak for the myriad of pretenders but there has only ever been one man who died for your sins. Jesus Christ is the promised Messiah that Moses and the prophets wrote about in the Old Testament. There are exact prophecies like the 70 weeks of Daniel which predict the exact date of His death for our sins. I believe what I believe because I have been changed by His grace. That's my only motivation in telling you or anyone about this, because He is real and you can know that for yourself. You can know that by putting even a slight intellectual effort into understanding the problem. You will find that there are good reasons to believe that God is real and good reasons to believe Jesus is who He said He is. I am a flawed vessel but I serve a God who doesn't need me to prove that He is real. He sends me because He is inviting you to seek Him and be saved.

I don't know what was the right decision. The fear mongering on both sides of the aisle makes it hard to appraise. But I don't get how people can't understand those that voted to leave. It seems like needlessly divisive hyperbole. Welcome to politics, I suppose.

In their shoes I would be concerned with the ongoing erosion of sovereignty over their lives. It seems indisputable that the further removed the decision makers are from the people, the less those people not only feel, and the less those people will actually be in charge. It also seems indisputable that more decisions were being taken by remote decision makers as time went on.

Again, one may have reasons to disagree, but to not understand it seems to say far more about the one failing to understand than anyone else.

@radx @enoch @eric3579

For one thing, give the executive or legislative power over the printing press in a crisis and they will not willingly give that power up and end up abusing it. For another, if you're simply printing money to spend then you depreciate and inflate your currency commensurately, at least in the long term. Relying heavily on this is the kind of thing that Venezuela does. There's a reason that governments instead take on their fiscal spending as debt. On that I would say, I've also become much more skeptical of fiscal stimulus in general but particularly in corrections or recessions. I'm okay with automatic stabilizers (unemployment benefits, the largely limitless kind with strings attached we have here in Australia) but not so much direct fiscal stimulus.

The fundamental issue to me is large, even extremely large fiscal spending will not affect business confidence levels of economic conditions. There is some fiscal multiplier effects (the multiple of the effect on national income over the spending injection by the government) but the worse economic conditions are, the lower this will be. Also, yes with say infrastructure spending, you're creating immediate jobs. Problem is these are in no way permanent jobs and simply pushes the can down the road on them finding new employment. Better to provide unemployment benefits and training to get them into a more permanent job faster.

Also large bouts of spending (again to use infrastructure as an example) tends to be hugely wasteful. Good projects require appraisals, consultation and careful planning. The notion of handfuls of 'shovel ready' projects is a political myth. You can instead span it out but then you don't get the mooted fiscal boost. In fact I would argue infrastructure spending is never appropriate as fiscal stimulus. It should be in a constant, planned process of improvement irrespective of business cycles or downturns. The US stimulus under Obama was largely long term spending projects like this as giveaways to the states. There is little evidence it eased the recovery or altered behaviour though. Many states simply enacted the same civic projects they would have otherwise and used this money instead of issuing debt like they would have otherwise - effectively they saved on interest.

So what are the alternatives then? The government here in Australia also heavily spent on roads, home subsidies and schools but notably also gave all income earners a cash deposit of AUD $300-950. The latter is probably the closest you can get to a pure fiscal stimulus - immediately cash to spend, injected not into banks than might save it but given particularly to low / medium income earners most likely to spend it. Again what we saw is that it hardly altered consumer / household behaviour. Many saved it, many spent it on large one off purchases (e.g. TVs, in which case most of that value was transferred overseas). So we gave a dollop of cash as stimulus to the global economy of which Australia is a drop in the ocean. Basically my attitude is, if you maintain good infrastructure, effective education systems, adequate but efficient regulation, reasonable tax rates, and importantly competitive markets, the best way to get through a crisis is to let the market stabilize by itself. Provide assistance and retraining to workers who lose their jobs by all means, but don't expect government spending to be some kind of savior.

I agree on the inflation aspect of your post. There were certainly no shortage of self-declared monetarists buying up gold in anticipation of high inflation, but as you say dollops of cash in the economy are meaningless if they are idle and the economy under capacity. The question now with unemployment in the US at 5.5% whether capacity is finally pushing LRAS levels. Probably not, participation rate is low and falling, and the unemployment rate is woefully underrepresenting forced part timers. Also as you mention the dip in oil will temper prices on the input cost side. The Fed certainly seems to think so and has started tightening rates but as so much commentary in the investing world is saying, this may turn out to be a mistake and they may end up having to reverse course.

Baby Appraiser Dub has been added as a related post - related requested by PlayhousePals.

This video has been dubbed! *related=http://videosift.com/video/Baby-Appraiser-Dub

I honestly would have chosen the silver bar. If there wasn't a camera crew there, I wouldn't take either, because I'd just think the silver was stolen and would be paranoid about taking it. But since there was a camera crew, I would think it's some kind of gimmick, and they expect everyone to take the Hershey's.
I probably wouldn't sell the silver or get it appraised, just keep as a souvenir.

+1 for the technical appraisal at the end.

Dunno, looks like an honest reaction there, can see the tears welling up in his eyes...

My parents bought their house in 1967 for around $12,000. Paid it off finally in the early 80s, did NOTHING to it but general upkeep and the odd paint job. Got it appraised for just under $500,000 last year.

...but this is Victoria, so $500,000 is like, 900sqft condo area.

Everything that is brought to a show is appraised, the more interesting ones get moved to a second room while the appraisers do additional research, and then only the most interesting items get put in front of the camera. In fact, even if the item is interesting (or particularly valuable) but the owner is a bit boring (or clearly knows the value and is just looking for an appraisal so he can re-insure it) then those often get cut, too.

All that to say: the show producers must have enjoyed the "trolling" because only a handful of the items brought in to a show get put in front of a camera.

Love it. I somehow doubt this will make it on the show, but I love that they don't argue about it and just give him an appraisal.
Kudos Antiques Roadshow.

I'm not a fan of Hamas at all.

If you were being extremely generous, you could argue that they have some extremist elements with some very unsavory views.

A more reasonable appraisal is that they are a pretty fucking awful organisation with a horrific humans rights record* who genuinely do want the jews annihilated.

But hey, do you know what will help the situation? Israel bombing schools! That will absolutely make the people of Gaza realise that israelis aren't bad guys at all. In no time at all, that will help foster a culture of understanding and harmony.

* And let's be honest here, the same is true for almost all Islamic states.

Chick isn't dancing very well. It's the truth, not degradation or hate. Why the hyperbolic reaction? Jesus. I think anyone who records themself dancing, edits the footage, and uploads it for all to see is doing two things:
1. Implying the dancing is worth watching.
2. Inviting comment/appraisal

Edit: The VS post also frames the dancing as "groovier" than the well-known groovy dancing girl. That girl's dancing was overrated to start with but that framing also invites comment/appraisal.

Thumbs up for 2:25 though.