What does a TRUMP presidency look like?

[celedhring]

The usual rule over here is to use Spanish/Catalan names when they have a traditional name that has been used for ages. I.e. Stockholm = Estocolmo. Then for those that don't have a traditional Spanish form, you use the native name as best as you can. Pronunciation then comes at the pleasure of the speaker, but i.e. newcasters are expected to learn and do it in the native language.

Yeah. I think newscasters etc get told how to pronounces places that are new to us all - eg that Icelandic volcano a few years ago.

That was my job once 

I always imagine there's a panic in Broadcasting House, London any time something happens in Wales as they desperately hunt for someone who can tell the newscaster how to say, for example, Llanfair-yng-Nghornwy.

Much, much easier today with youtube and smartphones, but back in the day, if I wrote a piece with a foreign name, I had to research its pronounciation, which involved finding a native speaker and get him/her recorded and then give the recording (again, analog era!) to the newscaster. As HVC points out, we often just danced around the names to avoid headaches ("accident in town north of Bucarest").

[Solmyr]

[Razgovory]

I never noticed that Dr. Johnson looks kind of like Trump till today.

[The Brain]

I'm not a fan of people going out of their way to use the native pronunciations of personal names or places. It breaks the flow of speech when you suddenly pronounce a word in a completely different style, and it also often sounds contrived and pretentious. Add to this the effect of sometimes only thinking that you know the native pronunciation. I would find it a bit ridiculous if an English-speaker tried to pronounce my name in Swedish, or Stockholm in Swedish. When I speak English I use English pronunciations of my name and of Stockholm.

What's your name? We should practice pronouncing it.

What's in a name?

Control.

Ew. Take it back.

[Maladict]

mispronouncing the name as written in the original language.

An example please.

It's about vowels mostly. So English speakers would typically pronounce the last syllable in Hamburg and Heidelberg in the same way, when it's incorrect for either.

[Razgovory]

mispronouncing the name as written in the original language.

An example please.

It's about vowels mostly. So English speakers would typically pronounce the last syllable in Hamburg and Heidelberg in the same way, when it's incorrect for either.

Yeah, well look what happened to Georgia.  We can't get even close to pronouncing the real name so we renamed it.  You're lucky we didn't just call Heidelberg "Detroit jr".

[Sheilbh]

From the NYT

[Zoupa]

Americans gave this man the nuclear codes.

Growing up, I never thought I'd witness the fall of the american empire.

[merithyn]

Me neither.

Now he's saying he's going to end Social Security and Medicare.  He's a fucking gem.

[Admiral Yi]

Me neither.

Now he's saying he's going to end Social Security and Medicare.  He's a fucking gem.

What I heard is that he is going to suspend payroll taxes.

[merithyn]

Me neither.

Now he's saying he's going to end Social Security and Medicare.  He's a fucking gem.

What I heard is that he is going to suspend payroll taxes.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/us-policy/2020/08/08/trump-payroll-tax-cut/

President Trump pledged on Saturday to pursue a permanent cut to the payroll taxes that fund Social Security and Medicare if he wins reelection in November, a hard-to-accomplish political gambit that some experts see as a major headache for the future of the country's entitlement programs.

Trump unexpectedly promised the policy action as he signed a directive that aims to help cash-starved Americans amid the coronavirus pandemic. The order allows workers to postpone their payroll tax payments into next year but doesn't absolve their bills outright — though the president said he would seek to waive what people owe if he prevails on Election Day.

"If I'm victorious on November 3rd, I plan to forgive these taxes and make permanent cuts to the payroll tax," Trump said at a news conference in Bedminster, N.J. "I'm going to make them all permanent."

"In other words, I'll extended beyond the end of the year and terminate the tax," Trump later added. "And so we'll see what happens."

Trump signs four executive orders after economic relief talks with Democrats collapsed

Major changes to the tax code fall entirely to Congress, so Trump alone cannot waive Americans' tax debts or enact permanent changes to tax law. Democrats and Republicans alike already had balked at Trump's push for a payroll tax holiday in negotiations over the next round of coronavirus aid, suggesting a more lasting tax cut may be even tougher to secure if Trump does indeed win reelection.

In doing so, though, Trump would be embarking on a fraught process that could have catastrophic fiscal effects on programs including Social Security, which watchdogs recently have warned is in dire financial straits, expected next year to have costs that exceed its total incomes.

"By having a permanent cut, that immediately makes you ask the question on what's going to happen on the benefits side," Garrett Watson, a senior policy analyst at the Tax Foundation, said. "That would make it worse if you didn't have a source of revenue to backfill [the cut]."

Shortly after Trump issued his directive, AARP raised a series of potential problems created by the president's order, including for employers who have to track the deferred taxes and new economic anxieties for the nation's retirees.

"Social Security is more crucial than ever as Americans face the one-two punch of the coronavirus's health and economic consequences," Nancy LeMond, the group's executive vice president, said in a statement. "But, this approach exacerbates people's already-heightened fears and concerns about their financial and retirement security."

For now, the exact workings of Trump's order remain unclear. Typically, employers automatically deduct payroll taxes from their employees' paychecks and send that money directly to the federal government. Under Trump's order, however, those payments are postponed between September 1 and the end of the year. Trump said Saturday it would result in "bigger paychecks for working families," while taunting Democrats, including former vice president Joe Biden.

Biden responded in a statement that Trump threatens to "undermine the entire financial footing of Social Security," adding: "He is laying out his road map to cutting Social Security."

Some economists, meanwhile, questioned the wisdom of Trump's payroll tax policy. Along with the uncertainty over how it'd actually be implemented, the directive doesn't help some of the people facing the greatest hardship as a result of the coronavirus, said Chye-Ching Huang, the senior director of economic policy at the left-leaning Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.

"Even if people were to see a bigger paycheck in a number of weeks, the underlying policy is really poor policy," she said. "The people who would be seeing the biggest increase in their paychecks still have jobs, still have earnings ... People who lost jobs or retired or get income from other sources would see no help from this."

[The Brain]

From the NYT

I can kind of see his reasoning, but putting Putin on Mount Rushmore would still be a little weird I think.

[Syt]

Americans gave this man the nuclear codes.

Growing up, I never thought I'd witness the fall of the american empire.

I thought this article was a good assessment: https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/political-commentary/covid-19-end-of-american-era-wade-davis-1038206/

[Valmy]

He said last year he wanted to cut social security and medicare. He bullshits about everything so who knows? He made a big list of all the things he promised to do right before the election in 2016 and, to the best of my knowledge, he has failed to do almost all of them.

Cutting payroll taxes seems to be helping the people who didn't lose their jobs, which is fine I guess but maybe the President should notice lots of people recently lost their jobs.

[garbon]

Americans gave this man the nuclear codes.

Growing up, I never thought I'd witness the fall of the american empire.

I thought this article was a good assessment: https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/political-commentary/covid-19-end-of-american-era-wade-davis-1038206/

Hmm, that seemed like a litany of everything bad thst has ever been said about America.