US Politics February 2019: This is one of the great losers of all time.

(sold to other financial institutions I mean)

Pickup trucks are $50K! Fords! granted their extended cab and I assume decked out. I don't understand how "Average Americans" afford them.

they don't just raise the bar; they are the bar

brownie, that's a good question! None of mine ever have been (4 new auto purchases over 30 years), but that's just one data point.

cheap consumer credit is bad for America

always see uncle leo from seinfeld in abrams

Yes, auto loans get sold to other banks just like mortgages do.

thx

Newer generations of autos are probably more desirable than new cars were 15 years ago. And I think taste has shifted towards more people wanting SUVs which are probably the more expensive option.

i don't the auto loan market is not big enough to ~~cause~~ macro problems in the same way as the mortgage market (or even student loans at this point?), if that's what you're thinking. but it's not a good sign.

*think

Pickup trucks aren’t $50k. They’re $25-35k. But! Loaded manly black suburban status symbols that Pledge Allegience to Americanism and play Sirius radio and have a V8 and chrome detailing and sit twelve feet high, dwarfing the next car at Cheesecake Factory and want to Drain Swamps? They’re like $50k or more, and that’s before the lady-silhouette mudflaps.

don't forget extra for the Truck balls

base f150 is 28k, top end model 67k https://www.ford.com/trucks/f150/models/?gclid=EAIaIQobChMItuqe9OW74AIVDL7ACh14ugAjEAAYASACEgItnPD_BwE&searchid=1697554981|||&ef_id=EAIaIQobChMItuqe9OW74AIVDL7ACh14ugAjEAAYASACEgItnPD_BwE:G:s&s_kwcid=AL!2519!3!272517223160!e!!g!!f150

don't forget the matte black paint job

In other news, the president will visit my campus on Monday to discuss Venezuela

To steal a joke, I hope he has his human rights observed and respected, Abrams-style

do you even HEMI brahs?

Pickup trucks aren’t $50k. They’re $25-35k.

The ones I saw were. Loaded, F450s, extended cab. Well above $50k sticker price.

fuck it, let's do 4 50s

lol I'm 32 and I've never owned a car with less than 130,000 miles

this is an ECOBOOST household my dude xxps

lol I'm 32 and I've never owned a car with less than 130,000 miles

― frogbs, Thursday, February 14, 2019 6:07 PM (forty-two seconds ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

with ya

I wanted a Jeep but couldn't afford one that didn't have ton of miles. Then a couple of acquaintances 15 yrs younger than me who worked at Whole Foods and Starbucks, respectively, bought low mileage Jeeps. I assume people are just ok with massive auto loans that I'm not.

yep

maybe I just think like a poor person but for all the crazy and cool advances that have been made in cars over the last 10 years I still can't figure out how it's gonna make my life better. like I know someone who is really enthusiastic about Tesla and how much of a game changer every little piece of technology is but at the end of the day, I dunno, you drive it to get somewhere, you still have to follow the speed limit and all that

the car i'm driving now is AWD, now let me tell ya THAT makes a huge difference given the winter we've had. before this I never had a car that wasn't totally awful in the snow. gonna miss the fun of driving straight into a snowdrift though

maybe I just think like a poor person but for all the crazy and cool advances that have been made in cars over the last 10 years I still can't figure out how it's gonna make my life better.

As someone who spent several years working in auto parts stores and warehouses I am deeply suspicious of 21st century cars - everything is computerized to the point that I worry that if the computer craps out, the whole thing is basically a giant steel paperweight you can climb in and out of. Especially since it's that much easier for the manufacturer to make things super-proprietary so you can't even take it to a regular mechanic, you have to go to the dealer for every fucking repair. Older, more mechanical cars seem like a safer bet to me.

Don't buy cars, people, ride the fucking bus

the bus is great

car loans are capital that is being diverted from its natural role building more train tracks

what is this bus you speak of

unperson otm

thing is "modern" cars are wayyyy more reliable and longer-lasting then "older, more mechanical" cars. it is unnerving how computeriffically complicated they are tho fer sure.

can one of those "modern" cars spirit me away from campus on Monday or

lol

this is the door to the american enterprise institute. does it look sort of odd to anyone else pic.twitter.com/R9tLznQjDY

— libby watson (@libbycwatson) February 14, 2019

yeesh

it’s on-brand!

come on those are obviously not nazi swastikas we all know the fun fact about the swastika being a popular symbol for thousands of years

i mean it’s only been 80 years or so since the swastika became linked with fascism, let’s give them time to think about this

My middle school cafeteria was covered in swastika tiles.

Counterclockwise swastikas are basically peace signs iirc (and as I'm sure someone affiliated with them will eventually argue).

maybe I just think like a poor person but for all the crazy and cool advances that have been made in cars over the last 10 years I still can't figure out how it's gonna make my life better.

I think it depends how bad you are at driving. I am shit at parallel parking, I have bashed and dented other cars while maneuvering around a parking lot, I have cut people off in traffic inadvertently; the new generation of cars which parallel park for you and proximity-warn you when you're too close to another vehicle would materially affect my driving experience. Fully autonomous driving would be an even bigger deal, but I'm unconvinced that's actually happening, and if it did, it would probably have the negative effect of making people like me use cars more (because if I can spend 30 minutes reading instead of driving I'm way more likely to take a car to someplace 30 minutes away.)

Then again, I drive a 19-year-old car so I obviously have not put my money where my mouth is on this

There were some very swastika-looking patterns on the upholstery of the spectators' chairs at the State of the Union. I noticed it when they cut to whoever was being shouted out during that portion of the speech.

Rep. @IlhanMN pointed out that Elliot Abrams pleaded guilty to lying to Congress 30 years ago. Amazingly enough, within 90 seconds of her saying this Abrams started lying to Congress again: https://t.co/Ji1Mbpv8Dv

— Jon Schwarz (@schwarz) February 14, 2019

Seems like the exterior design is under historical protection: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Mellon_Building

In late June 2013, the National Trust sold the Mellon Building to the American Enterprise Institute for $36.5 million. The Trust said it will lease space on the top two floors of the Watergate Office Building. The National Trust holds a permanent historic preservation easement that protects both the interior and exterior of the Mellon Building.[8][9][10]

Still, it's odd to see swastikas just hanging out there.

My controversial opinion is that not showcasing swastikas should maybe trump historical preservation, I dunno.

there's a really old building in Manitowoc that has swastikas on it. someone suggested removing them and the Manitowoc county FB page had a meltdown over it. it's such a silly argument - I feel like these folks oughta just grow Hitler moustaches and tell everyone they're paying tribute to Charlie Chaplin

consul.

The use of fasces in public architecture across the United States was unremarkable. Fasces were part of the standard visual vocabulary of classicism. Like the lamp and the scales, they represented a particular attribute of the classical view of justice: physical power or the ability to impose order. The American Founders admired Roman republicanism, drawing from it both their pen names and many of their principles. Thus, the House of Representatives, in one of its first official acts in 1789, adopted the fasces as the emblem of its sergeant at arms. The House fasces—still visible to the Speaker’s right when the full House meets in the House chamber—has 13 rods, one more than in the Roman model, to represent the unified strength of the original American states. Yet despite their popularity in the Federal era, fasces weren’t a common motif in nineteenth-century architecture.

When he came to power in Italy in 1922, Mussolini resurrected the symbol and employed it to represent the strength and unity of the Italian state. Political fascism made physical power and the ability to impose order central to its ideology, and so the term “fascism” quickly became synonymous with authoritarian regimes. Mussolini made the fasces symbol almost as common in Italy as the Nazi swastika became in Hitler’s Germany. If people associate the fasces with fascism less than they associate the swastika with Nazism, it may simply be because Il Duce’s historical infamy pales beside Hitler’s (and that of our World War II ally, Stalin). Fasces were carved into countless Italian public buildings. An entire complex—the Littoria—was made to resemble giant stylized fasces. Mussolini put fasces on the Italian flag, stamps, military insignia, and even manhole covers. As early as 1922, the Washington Post reported that “Mussolini has ordered the coinage of money in a new design, bearing the fasces . . . ‘as the emblem of ancient Rome and the new Italy regenerated by the fascisti.’ ”

https://www.city-journal.org/html/when-fasces-aren%E2%80%99t-fascist-13651.html

do you guys not know any Indian people? I mean maybe swastikas should be removed from buildings built before the nazis even existed, I honestly don't know, but I'm also used to seeing swastikas in different contexts now