Credit Where Credit is Due: a shout out thread for Things Trump Did Right

[ZiprHead]

I note that Google Maps on my phone here in Australia no longer labels the body of water enclosed by Cuba, Mexico and the USA, at any level of zoom.

I can get it to label the Tasman Sea, or the North Sea, or the Sea of Japan, but not that particular gulf.

Do a search for "Gulf of America". Then do a search for "Gulf of Mexico."

 

[robnisch]

Speaking of the penny.
What happens to the ones still in circulation?
Do people horde them in the hope that the value will go up enough to bother.
Under current law you cannot melt them down.
I could do that at home if it was legal but the cost to smelt make it very unprofitable.

 

[Spacetime Inhabitant]

Nevertheless, the OED has absolutely no authority to tell us what a word means.

We are not discussing meaning, we are discussing etymology. It's not a question of authority, it's a question of historical factuality.

Then why does anyone bother referring to a language history book?
How about we try to understand what people mean, in the here and now?
Tom

Then why study history at all?

One reason is to avoid repeating it.

But pretending that the history of a word is more important than the modern usage is less than useless. It's a way to pretend that the modern world and vernacular language don't matter.

The common feature of Internet discussion, argumentum ad dictionarium, gets really old. I don't care about what some tea drinking Roman in 875ad meant by something that sounded like the word being used right now. And don't tell me you're right because the OED committee don't use the word I am using the same way.

Tom

Hey Tom, what is the modern meaning of these words - set, table, book?
EDIT: Also what does elite mean?

 

[bilby]

Nevertheless, the OED has absolutely no authority to tell us what a word means.

We are not discussing meaning, we are discussing etymology. It's not a question of authority, it's a question of historical factuality.

Then why does anyone bother referring to a language history book?
How about we try to understand what people mean, in the here and now?
Tom

Well, the discussion was about the origin of a word. What other references would you suggest??

How does understanding current usage matter to a discussion of a word's origins?

 

[bilby]

But pretending that the history of a word is more important than the modern usage is less than useless.

Well, it's a good thing that literally nobody here was doing that, then.

 

[bilby]

I don't care about what some tea drinking Roman in 875ad meant by something that sounded like the word being used right now.

There were no tea drinking Romans in 875AD; Tea first arrived in Europe in 1610.

There were arguably no Romans at all in 875AD; Certainly the Western empire had negligible power after about 476AD, after which date the "empire" was roughly the same in extent as modern Italy. The Byzantine (Eastern Roman) Empire lasted almost another millenium though, so it's very hard to pin down a single last date at which someone could be described as "Roman".

 

[bilby]

The common feature of Internet discussion, argumentum ad dictionarium, gets really old.

Yeah, as does the other common feature of Internet discussion, wherein the mere mention of a dictionary is sufficient for some tit who wasn't even following the discussion to jump in with both feet criticising something as "argumentum ad dictionarium", when it was absolutely not.

 

[Politesse]

I don't care about what some tea drinking Roman in 875ad meant by something that sounded like the word being used right now.

There were no tea drinking Romans in 875AD; Tea first arrived in Europe in 1610.

There were arguably no Romans at all in 875AD; Certainly the Western empire had negligible power after about 476AD, after which date the "empire" was roughly the same in extent as modern Italy. The Byzantine (Eastern Roman) Empire lasted almost another millenium though, so it's very hard to pin down a single last date at which someone could be described as "Roman".

The inhabitants of the early Holy Roman Empire also most certainly considered themselves a part of that same empire, especially the upper classes, for whom cultivating romanitas was an obsession with many manifestations that continue into today. The set that drinks wine, studies Latin, loves fountains, considers trips to Rome a part of their education...

 

[unapologetic]

There is a lot of dust being kicked up right now. Just like when you renovate a house things also look the worst when you rip out tile and walls before you rebuild it better. It is hard to make something better without it looking worse first.

But it's not your house alone, or Rump's. It is OUR house. We all share it. Tearing it all down at once like this will make it unlivable for many. (I need my Medicare.)

Paying the mint and the BPE to produce them

I did not say the Fed produced them.

system so far appears to be working as our founders intended.

Bullshit. The founders did not intend for a president to grab this much power.

No one has become dictator quite yet.

We should wait for it? We should trust Rump? After all his lies? After all his underhanded business deals?

But look at what is getting done compared to the uniparty president we usually have warming the chair in the oval office.

So any change at all is welcome to you. Even a dictatorship.

The kind of greatness @RVonse wishes upon our country.
No wonder this place is becoming a shithole.

M.A.G.A. Where G = 3rd. world.

Since when does the Federal Reserve have anything to do with producing coins?

I did not say the Fed produced them. I said "Paying the mint and the BPE to produce them..."

Paying the mint and the BPE to produce them is an investment in infrastructure. And the Fed makes a profit on the collector's market taking some of them out of circulation. This is why it took so long to kill the penny.

Cite?

Er...
You're gonna spank me for this. A month ago I watched a doc on YouTube. They interviewed people from the mint and the fed about the penny. I misspoke. It's the Mint that makes profit on collectable coinage, like gold bullion coins.

MAGA was and is ready for adults to take charge and fix problems.

That almost sounds responsible. But the MAGAots were/are too stupid to realize Rump played them for personal power.

Bringing us back OT again. Looks like Trump is well on his way getting us out of war (another of his campaign promises):

Wow. Rump is drinking Putin's cool-aid.

 

[unapologetic]

Grammer rules

 

[Swammerdami]

Speaking of the penny.
What happens to the ones still in circulation?
Do people horde them in the hope that the value will go up enough to bother.
Under current law you cannot melt them down.
I could do that at home if it was legal but the cost to smelt make it very unprofitable.

Today the wholesale value of the zinc in the U.S. 1¢ piece is 0.7¢. If you could melt it down and cast it into salable ingots all for FREE you'd still take a loss.
The U.S. mint spends more than that to manufacture a penny but that's due to overheads: Complying with DEI, giving payola to Chelsea Clinton, distributing free pennies to jihadist children in Iran, etc. [/satire]

No need to check the wholesale value of the miniscule amount of copper in the present-day U.S. 1¢ piece. RVonse seems to believe it was to recover COPPER that the brilliant Trump stopped minting pennies. RVonse is MORE helpful than the proverbial stopped clock that is correct twice a day: With the broken clock stuck at 11:23 you can never be SURE that it's NOT 11:23. With RVonse you DO have that guarantee! He thinks there is significant copper in the penny: That means there ISN'T. (Can anyone point to ANY post where RVonse has EVER been right about ANYTHING?) [/satire?]

 

[KCFlyer]

Bullshit. The founders did not intend for a president to grab this much power.

I am thinking of writing a history of America. My working title is "From Red Coats to Red Hats - The Rise and Fall of America".. Every single day of Trump's term only proves to me that the "patriots" who worried about the Constitution under any Democrat really only cared about 14 words. But give Trump enough power and I think they would even let him trample those 14 words. It's amazing that "owning libs" trumps their beloved constitution.

 

[Swammerdami]

Bullshit. The founders did not intend for a president to grab this much power.

I am thinking of writing a history of America. My working title is "From Red Coats to Red Hats - The Rise and Fall of America".. Every single day of Trump's term only proves to me that the "patriots" who worried about the Constitution under any Democrat really only cared about 14 words. But give Trump enough power and I think they would even let him trample those 14 words. It's amazing that "owning libs" trumps their beloved constitution.

I had to Google to find a set of 14 words by  David Lane (white supremacist); I'm not sure they're the same 14 words KCFlyer refers to.

We must secure the existence of our people and a future for white children,[1][5][6][7]
because the beauty of the White Aryan woman must not perish from the Earth.

At some point Mr. Lane doubled his word count to 14+14, adding a second clause to explain WHY we must secure the Caucasian future.
I'm also happy to worship female pulchritude, regardless of race, but the weirdness of this juxtaposition reminded me of Dr. Strangelove where General Jack D. Ripper segues from the need for nuclear war into a comment about "our precious bodily fluids."

 

[Swammerdami]

"Make America Great Again"? America was great 200 years ago. Give credit to Trump and Musk for their moves toward restoring that greatness. Sarah Cooper -- I love her -- discusses the History of Wealth.

 

[bilby]

America was great 200 years ago.

In 1825 the USA was an agrarian backwater that nobody outside America really cared about, or had much reason to care about, other than as a source of cotton and tobacco, and as a market for African slaves.

The only sense in which America was "great" 200 years ago was in geographical extent, having doubled her size in 1803 with the Louisiana Purchase.

America had potential 200 years ago, but wasn't anywhere close to "great" relative to other nations, or in any objective way other than land area, until her Industrial Revolution in the late C19th, and the Great War in the early C20th. So more like 100-150 years ago.

Of course, it's almost infinitely arguable what constitutes "greatness" in a nation; But while that makes it hard to decide when and whether a nation is great, it doesn't stop us from being confident that the USA in 1825 isn't (yet).

The first half of the C19th saw a titanic struggle amongst empires to become Great Powers, and to become greatest amongst these. All of the participants had at least a toe-hold in Europe, and the two with the least European territory (Ottoman and Russian) were the most backward and least likely to prevail. America wasn't even in the game, much less an important player.

The New World was seen, in 1825, as a source of wealth and power to be exploited by the great empires, not as anything great in themselves - not even the USA, which had a government unique in her jurisdictional independence from Europe, despite being entirely dependent on Europe as both a source of manpower (much of it indirectly in the form of slaves imported by Europeans), and a market for the cash crops grown by that manpower.

In 1825, Canada was, arguably, "greater" than the USA, because Canada had the benefit of being a part of the British Empire, and as such had better access to investment from wealthy European speculators. Neither North American polity was anything to write home about, though.

 

[Elixir]

Extraction industries are the ONLY thing that ever made America “great”.
Vast natural resources, plundered to the max, made America wealthy.
Then, Americans created a scale using the ideology of greed, wherein wealth=greatness.
There will be no going back to “greatness” unless America plunders Africa, and the Chinese have gotten there first.
With the destruction of USAID, America is no longer even in the game.
The Royal Shithole of Trumpistan is all we are left with.

 

[unapologetic]

The U.S. mint spends more than that to manufacture a penny

The face value of coins or bills are irrelevant to the Mint and BPE. They are tools. Their value is in their usefulness as a 'Medium of exchange'.
Even if they cost $5 to produce, the Fed (or treasury?) would pay that if they needed them that bad.
The penny's usefulness is dying out regardless of the cost.
Copper was taken out of the penny not to reduce the cost, but to keep the public from removing them from circulation. (which has happened to the 95% copper ones)

 

[KCFlyer]

I'm not sure they're the same 14 words KCFlyer refers to.

The 14 words I am referring to are only words in the constitution that MAGA Constitution lovers give a shit about...."the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed"

 

[unapologetic]

Speaking of the penny.
What happens to the ones still in circulation?

I remember the Government taking Silver Certificates out of circulation. Exchanging them for actual silver. I can't think of any other examples of removing money from circulation. I don't see them doing that for zinc Pennys.
I don't see common dates ever being worth more than face value.
I see them, in practice, becoming un-spendable. And getting turned into banks, until there are few enough to be collectable.

There was a nickel shortage once. Some stores bound 5 Pennys together, with an ad. Those are collectable now. Nickel's usefulness will increase as pennies disappear.

 

[Swammerdami]

America was great 200 years ago.

In 1825 the USA was an agrarian backwater ...

You didn't click to the YouTube, did you?

And once again neglected to supply an appropriate emoticon to help out the humor-impaired.