Donald Trump (All General Trump Conversations Here)
MOD OP EDIT: Please put general conversations about Trump here. Anything that is not exceptionally deserving of its own OP on this topic will be merged into this discussion. And let's keep things relatively polite. Thanks.
Comments (24161)
I’m not sure you’ve ever been civil, Tim. You can type both our names in the search bar and see nothing but exasperated name-calling and lies. And never once have I requested sanctions.
Billionaires and loyalists will provide Trump with muscle during his second term
[sup]— Daniel Drache, Marc D Froese · York University · Jan 13, 2025[/sup]
The distance between rich and poorer has increased, though I'll note that people like Gates, Buffett, Swift have donated/contributed considerably to various causes. The Clown administration seems to favor the rich.
I'm still at a loss as to why RFK Jr was picked as head of Health.
Trump doesn’t want to govern, but rule. He basically hates the government, unless and until he can make it conform to his will.
So, how is imposing massive tariffs on imports supposed to make prices go down?
They’d like him and thus the country to fail. Just watch how many times they refer to any of his successes.
[tweet]https://twitter.com/ggreenwald/status/1880979821901332773?s=46&t=IakyLvDoU1iHVTU4X-LNfg[/tweet]
I see American politics turning more into a team sport, where if you're calling yourself an "x" then you support these people and these positions (whether you agree or not) in a show of team loyalty; and to be a "y" you have to support these other people and other policies.
Sport modeling isn't good for govening. Sports are "winner take all" modalities. Governments are designed to be "make as many people able to basically live" as reasonably (politically) possible modalities.
The only serious commitment to successful governance is the commitment to insure children are raised with accurate enough knowledge, and true feelings of support during their growth period, to create better governance in their maturity through having the capacity, and willingness, to honestly consider more than one or two viewpoints in their decision making.
I do not talk smack (however fun it is) about the other side because we each looked at the situation and made our honest decisions. In the "sport" of politics, someone has to win and someone has to lose.
Will there be trade wars, the removal of the Department of Education funding, the weaponization of the DOJ and the FBI, camps of stateless people, and a new colonial ambition to signal our withdrawal from the alliances built over decades of shared adversity?
Uh...will he finally finish that Big beautiful wall he talked so much? I guess that is forgotten, and won't come up as it is, um, a bit embarrassing reminder that the first term promises weren't achieved.
What definately will happen is that has been already cleary shown after the election: Trump's attention goes from this to that and the administration will be chaotic as Trump is chaotic. And the Republicans (and people like NOS4A2) will spin this the best way possible. There's a lot of hopeful, wishful thinking going around. That nevermind the Trump tweets etc, the administration will work just fine. Well, the Biden administration was a disaster also, but I guess it worked just fine too. Yet be it about taking Greenland or renaming the Gulf of Mexico, it's everything about just being in the limelight and not actually planning something to the end.
The Wall is actually a perfect example. Nobody in the Trump community cares a shit about it anymore, so it's not going to surface again. And this is what will happen to many things that Trump is talking about to do. The next crisis, the natural disaster or terrorist attack or demonstrations will take nearly all of Trump's focus. Social media is focused on literally the present day. Something like sending away 11 million people in an union with democratic institutions would be a monumental task, which the Trump yes-men and -women won't be capable of doing. But it's great to promise that kind of things during the election. It will make enthusiastic the Trump base, and it will horrify the anti-Trump liberals, who are people Trump and his base want to horrify. All the proper media frenzy has been spurred by this, which is the main goal. A totally different issue is reality. Just what was accomplished with the 12 billion or so put into the Great wall of Trump wall just show what Trump is capable of doing.
Hence to a similar compartment we can put the bitching over Greenland. If you ask Trump or Trump officials, they surely will continue the line that "Purchase or aqcusition of Greenland is in the works" until the last days of the administration, but nothing really will happen. Because... the US won't invade or go to war with a NATO ally. But it will pass... just like the idea passed earlier.
Definitely, Trump and his followers don't know shit about how to actually run things, how to run a society and solve problems. It's a wrestling match and they're numb in their narcissism to the possibility of people getting hurt.
I'm really hoping that with the more powerful administration this time around, Trump oversteps so much that it goes too far. The west needs a big example of what uncontrolled populism can lead to. The best form of overstepping would be for his own followers to end up in a really awful position, giving them an existential crisis that can only be solved by waking up.
His first administration was kind of a snooze-fest, nothing drastic really happened. It was just incompetence making things worse in a way that was rather unseen by the public. But this new administration is so filled with lunatics that the stage is set for a real clusterfuck and I really hope it happens so that the pathetic and apathetic herd of the people wakes the fuck up.
I wonder if folks on this forum are able to acknowledge that, or if the cognitive dissonance would make their brains implode.
The first question is "what cease-fire"? A prisoner exchange would be more proper definition that has happened. A "cease-fire" in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict usually means that there simply isn't so many bombing strikes and rocket attacks as before.
And quite tellingly you are forgetting that the Biden administration was involved with the negotiations and took along also the incoming administration representatives. So both admins worked behind the back. And yes, Trump declared that there would be hell to pay. Of course, do note that also Bibi was finally influenced to back down here and negotiate. So there was also pressure on Israel too.
What is the positive thing that I will give credit to Trump that people do really think he would be so reckless that entangle the US into the fighting in Gaza or walk out of NATO. Those threats worked, for example NATO countries raised their expenditure because of Trumps threats at least partly, even if the main reason was Putin's invasion of Ukraine (and not the comments of any President).
But then again, many people do feel that Trump could go berserk and take the US out of NATO (and hence disassemble the Superpower status of the US). Yet many now understand this transactional populist. You can see it in the Greenland debate: the European countries aren't buying Trump's bluff. Hence they're not anymore surprised with Trump's rhetoric as the first time around.
The fact that Steve Witkoff was able to achieve this in a single sitting just goes to show how reluctant Biden was to put any meaningful pressure on Netanyahu.
What is 'quite telling' is that in light of this you're still trying to give Biden credit, while unwilling to acknowledge Trump did a good thing.
Biden pardons Fauci, Milley and the Jan. 6 committee in effort to guard against ‘revenge’ by Trump
https://apnews.com/article/biden-trump-fauci-milley-pardons-january-6-3cba287f89051513fb48d7ae700ae747
https://www.nbcnewyork.com/news/business/money-report/biden-pardons-his-family-in-final-minutes-in-office/6114398/?amp=1
Sorry, pal, I already answered those questions in this thread. Go find them if you wish and then maybe find someone who cares. Enjoy the next 4 years!
The latest T proposals speak of sending U.S. military down to the border before figuring out how that fits in with the other federal, state, and county jurisdictions.
As a citizen here, that promotes the expansion of federal power above that of local communities. It hurts the brain to have self-identified Libertarians support such measures.
More important than that is the proposed abandonment of regulation in all its forms. The efficacy of the anti-regulation movement will produce the most immediate outcomes for life in our nation. The environment, levels of education, standards of police behavior, acceptance of chosen forms of identity, equal rights under the law, national responses to health threats, etcetera.
Whatever bad and good we may have done for others, the dissolution of our infrastructure is what will consume the next decade.
Said like a true adult.
There is an ambiguity in your delight. You are above the fray.
Why comment when so satisfied with your superior position?
Is your condition bereft of any differences that choices made will affect outcomes? Your laughter is like that of the gods.
Maybe. But playful Gods. Not angry ones.
I get that you do not desire retribution. But there are others who do.
What to do with them? Will they have power in the coming days?
You seem confident that this question has nothing to do with your circumstances.
Some people think T is an existential threat. Some think he isn't.
SOme think Biden was a threat (though, not many have said existential in the way they have for T).
I don't care. What will happen will happen, and there's literally fuck all anything I do could possibly change about it. I enjoy my life and choose not to fall into the kind of paddling pool arguments being had here.
Definitely a good move!
READ: Jack Smith's final report on Trump's Jan. 6 case
[sup]— Avery Lotz · Axios · Jan 14, 2025[/sup]
Jack Smith’s Final Report on Trump Investigations (2025)
[sup]— John R Vile · The Free Speech Center, Middle Tennessee State University · Jan 17, 2025[/sup]
Guilty (or not) probably wouldn't have made much difference to his die-hard followers and their apparatuses. About as futile as deconverting a Pentecostal and for similar reasons. Might have made a difference to the election though. A different kind of rigging?
Quoting NOS4A2
Why do you think it was rigged?
I'm not a great fan of Biden, never have been after the disaster in Afghanistan. And with Ukraine, the nuke scare worked like a charm on Biden. Even if the guy had been long around during the Cold War.
But let's see what Trump does with Ukraine. At least Kellog is reasonable.
Quoting Tzeentch
That's what the Trump supporter hope or see through their orange tinted glasses.
And the philosophical, not any political or present day commenting, has never been a clown show.
So talking about the policies and what Trump is doing while in power is whining about a lost election? Or is it about talking about Trump and what he does as what this thread is about?
What's interesting is that some on this forum seem to be turning to Twitter rhetoric; using the same Trump-defense as all his other cultists.
Sending the military in has a look that the President is "really doing the most" to tackle an issue. Trump doesn't give a shit about federal, state and country jurisdictions and / or military readiness, as once the troops are on the border, well, they sit there.
Of course closing a border is totally possible. We've had to do it and I can assure you it's absolutely devastating for the border region. And this is where it goes from just rhetoric to reality. Naturally Trump doesn't want to close the Mexican border altogether. Mexico is a larger trading partner than China and there's far more of those who legal migrants. And Trump doesn't want the economy to stall. But since he's for raising tariff's with everybody, some kind of trade war can indeed happen. Hence it's going to be combination of trade and migration policies that will effect the economy. And that's why many are anticipating stagflation: inflation with weak or even negative growth. Yet as Trump is a "transactional" president and not ideological, he can change the most economically disastrous promises, if he understands the actual effects.
Quoting Paine
You can aptly talk about the power of the American oligarchs increasing with Trump. Never underestimate the power of Elon Musk. If it's between Elon and some Steven Bannon, it's the Bannon-type Trumpsters that will be the hangaround fans outside the circle of power telling themselves that Trump stands for them and their important.
Even with the double talk of "draining the swamp" or going after "the deep state". Well, the "Deep State" in Trumpland are only his political rivals and government employee that he is disappointed at. And not of course the "Deep State" he would like to have around to do his bidding.
Quoting Paine
This likely will continue regardless would it be a Trump or a Harris administration starting. The US is such a huge economy that the idea that infrastructure doesn't need federal aid, but the market forces will take care of it will continue. There are enough cities and municipalities that are prosperous enough to take care of their infrastructure, so why waste money? That some cannot do this, that they have severe economical problems usually suffering the opioid epidemic doesn't matter. The "Rust Belt" is there to give a base ground for populists like Trump promising that things will change with them.
Talking critically about the policies and what Trump is doing while in power is whining about a lost election.
Actually, any negative or critical talk of God Emperor Trump is a sign of the person suffering from Trump derangement syndrome, at least in the eyes of the cult members. Actually, anything that isn't supportive of Trump is a sign of that.
And these people simultaneously fail to understand that they are part of the problem. America (and large parts of the world, for that matter) are done with them, and people like them, the ideas they uphold and their hypocrisy.
The total lack of self-reflection amidst the moral whinging makes this collective mental breakdown even harder to watch.
It's like watching children getting confronted with reality. But they throw a tantrum and there is no adult around to spank them.
He isn't uniquely bad? Regardless of how bad others are, this is undoubtedly an odd statement about Trump.
Quoting Tzeentch
Why is it that people like you seem to defend Trump by just trying to flip things towards Biden every time? It's like you are unable to discuss Trump and criticism against him without adhering to whataboutism and trying to change the narrative to be about Biden. This thread is about Trump and so the defense against any criticism of Trump is not "but Biden also bad and badder than Trump".
Talk about childish level of attempt at philosophical intelligence on top of an such ad hominem answer.
Quoting Tzeentch
Which people? What ideas specifically?
Quoting Tzeentch
If you mean supporters of democrats, then compared to the conservative right wing I seem to see a lot of self-reflection. There's a lot of attempts at figuring out why democrats didn't gained votes among working class people. I've yet to see much self-reflection among the conservative republicans though. Or do you mean they're infallible and don't have to?
Quoting Tzeentch
Are you really defending Trump and his followers with that? Really? Trump, Musk etc.? They're the adults in the room? Give me a fucking break
I'm defending no one. I'm scolding you lot.
https://www.politico.com/live-updates/2025/01/20/donald-trump-inauguration-day-news-updates-analysis/a-government-hiring-freeze-and-end-to-remote-work-00199548
[tweet]https://twitter.com/jaketapper/status/1881385644984791262?s=46&t=IakyLvDoU1iHVTU4X-LNfg[/tweet]
Neither gives the impression that you are anything more than what you are yourself criticizing. You may want to turn that self-reflection back on yourself before you embarrass yourself any further.
What is the Paris Agreement? Trump pulled the US out — again
https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/climate/what-is-the-paris-agreement
https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/01/holding-former-government-officials-accountablefor-election-interference-and-improper-disclosure-of-sensitive-governmental-information/
The use of that emoji as a response just further cements how you follow the same rhetorical pattern as any other Twitter warrior.
I've asked and wondered why he's constantly allowed this behavior. Some have been banned for less, but the constant spamming in this thread of his Trump propaganda-level of discourse is surprising that it keeps getting allowed. And it seems it's all he ever does on this forum; pushing these narratives like an evangelical servant of the MAGA cult.
It's rather impossible to have a proper discussion about Trump, MAGA and the impact of them that's also elevated from the normal discourse online when we have people like that just constantly spamming bullshit and twitter crap-level rage baits.
I'm asking mods (@Jamal?) again... why? Isn't there at least some kind of level principle the lounge should be existing on as well? Or is the lounge just basically the trash heap of the forum? Then how would we ever be able to discuss news-related topics if it's basically "anything goes" and most threads get hijacked by single individuals who just spam threads to death as their main contribution to the forum? There has to be some level of proper discourse principles even for the lounge, no?
If it's how things go, fine, but I find it interesting to discuss these topics on a more elevated level that doesn't need to be full blown philosophical essays. Only, there's a fly in the soup.
[tweet]https://twitter.com/axios/status/1881733290274497003[/tweet]
Good. They’ve already been to around 1500 years in prison. I would wonder if we could compare that with the treatment of the arsonists and urine-chucking rioters of 2020.
The problem with the little J6 riot in comparison to the countless riots of the previous years was that J6 was imprinted on the anti-Trump psyche with record levels of propaganda, for instance the Hollywood-produced J6 inquiry. Hardly anyone remembers that rioters stormed the Whitehouse months earlier, indicted of crimes ranging from "attempted murder, assaulting a law enforcement officer, arson, burglary of a federally-licensed firearms dealer, damaging federal property, malicious destruction of property using fire or explosives, felon in possession of a firearm and ammunition, unlawful possession of a destructive device, inciting a riot, felony civil disorder, and others".
https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/over-300-people-facing-federal-charges-crimes-committed-during-nationwide-demonstrations
Quoting Tzeentch
? tweet; such magnificent exaggeration that "objectively" seems like a joke :)
Quoting NOS4A2
... because screw the environment!
More like "screw useless performative boondoggles".
It completely mishandled Ukraine and Gaza, and estranged half the world causing US power in the Persian Gulf and much of South-East Asia to all but collapse. It pushed Russia into the arms of the Chinese, and it pushed various influential countries to join the BRICS.
It did all of this by exhibiting the same sense of self-importance and estrangement from reality as the people who are having a breakdown over Trump's second term.
You’re right— but why some stupid stories and explanations are even accepted depends largely on evened people are afraid or unhappy. Biden and democrats could have done a lot more to help the majority of Americans instead of taking baby steps.
True, a lot of things were blocked by the reactionary courts or thwarted by Sinema and Manchin— but that’s only some of the story. He could have pushed as much as Trump is pushing now— and he didn’t. He half-assed it. So he lost.
The right is great at solving problems that they fabricated — like the emergency on the border that doesn’t exist, or the energy emergency that doesn’t exist, or guys playing in women sports that doesn’t exist. Maybe tomorrow jaywalking will be whipped up to be the problem of our time. Sounds ridiculous- but give it 3 months on Fox News, and we’ll all be talking about it. Like the “stolen election” bullshit.
So stories matter, but mostly vulnerable people fall for them. Social media have helped this process along.
Most of these executive orders are silly or performative. Some are outright ridiculous. The most stupid, and most damaging, are the environmental policies. But none of this was unexpected.
Here’s to shrinking the government (except for the parts that benefit the rich), cutting taxes for the rich, cutting regulations for the rich, having billionaires run agencies that oversee their industries, and new ways of denying climate change — for the next 4 years! Hazzah!
A political problem for social liberalism is that there is no reachable goal. It can only ever be a direction. Biden successfully pushed the US in that liberal direction through his actions. There could always be more. There are a complex set of reasons why there wasn't. Among the reasons: 1) improvements are never universal; some are helped, others aren't (consider the student loan forgiveness program). 2) each positive step typically has some negative consequences for some.
I think that is going to be an issue for social liberalism across time. Optimism is usually not the worst thing int he world though
Eh, that’s kind of nonsense. Or one could say the same thing about conservatism, or anything really. Just an east slogan for those who like to talk in generalities— because the actual work of details is too time consuming.
The fact is there were plenty of concrete measures that could have been taken, that were very popular, and that would have helped the majority of Americans. Take a look at the first proposals of the reconciliation bill. Or the PRO act. The child tax credit— Medicare for all, or a public option. Raising taxes on the wealthy. Declaring a climate emergency. Cutting defense spending. Etc etc. To say nothing of disastrous foreign policy decisions.
Those are all very real and very popular policies. Not just a “direction.”
Quoting Relativist
Yes, and the little that WAS done had some negative consequences, which the right wing will gladly hammer forever.
What makes you think it's nonsense? Is there some end-point in any liberalism, conservativism, or anything else?
Quoting Mikie
You overestimate the popularity of the things you listed, the ease with which they could be passed, and the negative consequences (real and perceived) of any specific proposal.
Interesting quesion. Do you think there needs to be an end point? I tend to think of these ideas more as dispositions or methods, not goals, and these methods set about intervening in the world which is in continual change.
Something so general and so irrelevant is nonsense to me — but maybe vacuous is better.
Quoting Relativist
No, I don’t. Take a look at any reputable polling on the issue. Public option — child tax credit — taxing the wealthy — child tax credit — unions, emissions reduction, etc. All have majority support, some well over 2/3rds.
Quoting Relativist
Which I’ve discussed at length for several years. In fact I created a thread devoted to it. There’s plenty that could have been done, with democrat control of Congress. I mentioned Manchin and Sinema — but there ways around that, if the willingness was there.
Quoting Relativist
No. I’ve discussed this at length as well. Plenty of negative consequences associated with these policies. See the climate change thread for examples, to name one issue.
I found a Kaiser poll. It showed that only 40% support of Republicans for a public option, and 25% supporting medicare for all. These numbers imply little, if any, support in Congress by GOP.
I doubt there'd be much GOP congressional support for anything in your list except for child tax credits- which Biden achieved in the American Rescue Plan. This is an example of something with no specific objective- it could always be higher.
Republicans. Good try. Bye.
No, your point was that I overestimated popularity. I didn’t.
Your second point was how I underestimate how difficult it is to pass legislation. I didn’t— but that’s a different issue.
You want to shift (1) into (2), but that’s your own doing. Popularity for a public option and passing a public option in congress, where one may need GOP support (although that wasn’t necessary in 2021 or 22), are separate issues.
It’s like saying Trump isn’t unpopular because Republicans polled support him by 90+ %. Kind of a strange thing to do.
The withdrawal from WHO is a strategic mistake apart from the idiocy of not engaging with public health problems as they emerge.
Quoting Mikie
You seemed to be unhappy with the job Biden did because he failed to do these things. Because of this, I inferred that you meant those things were so popular, they could pass easily. Sorry if my inference was wrong.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/jan/21/ross-ulbricht-silk-road-trump-pardon
Fair enough — no worries.
Let's remember the criminal actions that two of those prosecutions were directed towards:
Now we're going to witness the purging of the Department of Justice and the implanting of thousands of Trump political apparatchiks in their offices, hellbent on extracting revenge for those who tried and failed to bring Trump to justice.
The Washington Post's slogan is 'Democracy Dies in Darkness'. Wrong. We're witnessing it being strangled in the full light of day.
[I]President Donald Trump has been busy rescinding Biden-era Executive Orders in his first days in office, including one that had the potential to lower the cost of prescription drugs for Americans on Medicare.
Known as Executive Order 14087, it was designed to identify a list of prescription drugs that would, under the plan, require only a $2 copay a month for anyone on Medicare. Former President Biden had directed the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation, an arm of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, to look into ways to make prescription drugs cheaper for Medicare recipients.
[/i]
Then it will be "I want the US Army and Marines to fight these bastards." And actually we did see that earlier, btw. Just look how pissed off Trump was at general Milley. So this is just white washing and trying to rewrite history in a very Soviet way. Even if the Dems did go after him like the Republicans went after Clinton.
Hence my reference to apparatchiks. It’s obvious Trump intends to rule by decree and bypass both House and Senate. And he’s protected by the absolute immunity conferred by the Supreme Court last July.
Maybe but he’s sure as hell wanting to try. He’s already muscling both houses to allow him to pass Pete ‘Pass-the-Bottle’ Hegseth as Defence Secretary as an interim appointment.
By the way, we don't see this happening in otherwise comparable countries:
Did Alex Smith Die at Age 26 Because He Couldn't Afford Insulin? (— David Emery · Snopes · Sep 24, 2018)
Apropos the recent murder.
Someone elsewhere claimed that the recent pardons of insurrectionists are a way of building loyalty from militias and such. They might carry out unofficial acts. Not exactly a charitable comment, still consistent though.
Don't bet on him taking it up with The Boss.
Are they a BRICS nation?
Spain, a BRICS nation... You will figure out.
:rofl: :rofl:
I am fond of the poor geopolitical knowledge of some Americans. It is funny. These folks changed one old man for another. Imagine Republicans reaction if Biden would say things like that.
For example the idea of changing the Constitution (or bypassing the Constitution) of taking the birth right citizenship away is likely not going to succeed. But that doesn't matter so much for Trump.
If executive fiat would really overturn here the courts or the courts up to the Supreme Court would OK changing the Constitution, that would extremely worrisome.
We shouldn't forget that the US still has separation of powers.
And this is one of things that Trump might not understand or take into account. If he let's say puts high tariffs against Denmark in order to get Greenland, he is basically doing it with all EU. So in the end, just like with the first Trump administration, one can think that Trump will avoid the worst disasters.
Yet things like Trump going for the Panama Canal might really happen. We shouldn't forget what happened during the older Bush administration. How that will play out this time will be interesting, because Latin American countries might not like it (or simply don't like it). And naturally Trump, as being totally honest with his intensions, doesn't hide the imperialism at all. For Trump the idea of "China controlling the Panama canal now" might be enough of a reason for military action. The idea behind that, I guess, is that a Hong Kong company won the contract for operation of the container shipping ports located at the canal's Atlantic and Pacific outlets.
Many won't notice the things the Trump says, just what "expanding our territory" sounds like to Panamanians. It's like George Bush invading Iraq and then claiming the it's a Crusade America is on. Al Qaeda had a field day with that gaffe.
And the gaffes don't stop. Just like George W did two years ago confusing Putin's invasion of Ukraine with his invasion of Iraq, which is just hilarious!!!
https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/01/ending-illegal-discrimination-and-restoring-merit-based-opportunity/
:rofl:
https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/posts/113872782548137314
I personally doubt this will work, since such actions have already been tried, but Trump appears to be coming at it from a place of respect as opposed to that deep-state, media-derived hostility that’s been so common for years. We’ll see if it leads to more fruitful conversations.
What happened? Do you mean in Africa?
22January25
No mercy ...
Speaking truth to power: "Have mercy".
https://www.democracynow.org/2025/1/22/bishop_budde
[I]"She was nasty in tone, and not compelling or smart," said Trump, adding that Budde didn’t mention that some migrants have come to the United States and killed people.[/i]
His apparent logic: because [U]some[/U] immigrants have killed people, no immigrants (nor LGBTQ) are worthy of empathy.
https://apnews.com/article/trump-inaugural-prayer-service-washington-national-cathedral-interfaith-a95b36f962be93c8647cc5144266da11
:lol: God this guy has the communication skills of a 7th grader.
No doubt. Granted, Biden sucked at communicating too, but that’s his age. I’ve looked at older videos of Trump talking — he was a little better, but basically the same. The mind of a 12 year old.
I’m referring to the so-called George Floyd protests.
Love it. :lol:
:up: :up:
Is every aspect of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion bad? Could you please explain how it's been a failure?
Are you able to quote something that indicates any of that? I couldn't care less for the guy, but he's been pretty clearly interested in illegal immigrants, no? As for LGBT...when has he said he has lack of empathy? I'm genuinely interested. These are fairly specific claims.
He can't because his a far-right ideological zealot who buys into the pseudo-intellectual narratives that's been spewed out by the rightwing influencers online for the past 10 years. We've seen a lot of people fall down into that hole. It's cult-like behavior.
I agree. Typically nations that are in peace might be vulnerable to sanctions, but a country that is transforming to a wartime economy doesn't care so much about it. They are already playing that game at a totally different cost level.
60 million deaths in WW2? I thought it was more like 20-30 million.
The narrative that's going to be presented is the kind of deep state bullshit or stuff like that about some group "trying to push DEI propaganda" as a form of destruction of traditional values. That it's some form of societal takeover by a certain "group" to infect every part of society with such propaganda. What this "group" is, what their reasons for doing so is, what it all means... anything of that sort, is left obscured. It's basically the same narrative as any racist who points towards a certain ethnic group to blame for whatever shit they find themselves in.
It's even like "DEI" is just a name for something bad. It doesn't matter that it stands for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion. It doesn't matter that most consider these terms as being morally good for society, that we include everyone and doesn't segregate out certain people, that we have diversity that is proven to be historically good for society in the long term and that we fight against inequality to balance society into better economic stability. It doesn't matter that much of the ideas behind these three words are Nobel prize-winning concepts about how to make society a better place for the majority of people living in it.
No, "DEI" is just a three-letter word to these people, something "the other side" want to impose (without fully understanding the meaning behind it), and since the "other side" is doing it, it must be the work of the fucking antichrist and needs to be defeated.
It's MAGA-cultist and brainwashed populist behavior; being pushed around like voting-cattle in order to form democratic wins for puppet masters who realized they can herd this stupid group of sheep into giving them power without having to care for any of the rational normal people out there. They just need to puppet a small group that can pivot elections enough for a win.
"DEI" is just the next victim after "woke". Taking terms and words and turning them into rhetorical weapons to herd their stupid cattle around.
He has often attacked immigrants who are here legally with some protected status. Example: the Haitians who he told us "are eating the dogs". He's vowed to deport them (see: https://www.reuters.com/world/us/biden-says-attacks-haitian-immigrants-have-stop-2024-09-13/).
He's cancelled admissions for refugees previously approved for entering. (https://apnews.com/article/refugees-flights-trump-immigration-border-resettlement-33ebaa34bc4d0c069a22ee7aa5f8ff6d).
He's indicated he will deport mixed-status families - which means deporting US citizens with family members who are undocumented. (This is one specific group the bishop asked Trump to have empathy for). https://www.axios.com/2024/12/08/trump-immigration-deportation-us-citizens
He's claimed the 14th Amendment doesn't grant citizenship to anyone born in the US. https://apnews.com/article/birthright-citizenship-trump-executive-order-immigrants-fc7dd75ba1fb0a10f56b2a85b92dbe53
In 2017, he tried to eliminate DACA: https://www.nilc.org/articles/supreme-court-overturns-trump-administrations-termination-of-daca/
Of course, they’re lies. Get ready for 4 more years of them.
It’s racist and sexist.
Versus what he actually said:
So we’re back to straight up lying.
When I worked for Exxon-Mobil as a supervisor I had to attend DEI training. I found it informative and eye-opening. There was nothing about it that was discriminatory to any groups, including the white people that you seem concerned about.
It requires you to factor in people’s race or gender or sexuality as a factor in how you treat people. Do you do that?
As we are witnessing in former communist countries (where all property belonged to the state) and as we can read in history books, almost all wealth accumulated in the hands of the few started with some kind of injustice. Call it a war, occupation, genocide, theft, bribery, corruption, fraud, slavery, usury or whatever you want, there's not a single nation in this world that can convince me that its wealth started with fair work and fair distribution. Though there are hard working individuals and hard working nations (and the opposite to these), there was a chaotic age in the history of every nation when some people benefitted a lot and others were used, ripped off, oppressed and murdered. The wealth accumulated by the first and the poverty/woes that burdened the second in one or another way have been inherited by their descendants to this day (though there are exceptions for every norm). Hence, Trump's statement that the US is the only country ripped off by everyone is contradicted by both reason and historical facts. If Trump was right, the US should have been the poorest country in the world (but that's not the case at all). Trump being surrounded, also, by the same billionaires who flirted with Biden and Obama says a lot on how wealth was made by these billionaires and why the best capitalists in the US do not want big government for the people, but they are always looking for big contracts with the US government. Who is ripping off whom?
No, whatever you were quoting lied, you were just happy enough to repeat it uncritically. Will you not even correct yourself and say he was speaking about illegal immigrants?
Illegal immigration is a crime punishable by law in the United States. If one doesn’t want to be called a criminal, there are legal means through which to immigrate to a country. The anti-immigrant sentiment is that which conflates the two.
The difference is, it appears it won’t be filled with the typical symbolic crap, like when Biden violated the agreement with the Taliban by wanting to pull out of Afghanistan on September 11th, the anniversary of the World Trade Center attacks. And all that other cheapened rhetoric which serves only to further divide the people in that Slavic conflict.
I try. When I've failed to do that, I've offended people needlessly. I've seen other people who've underestimated individuals because of their gender. I've worked with other managers who used language that is racist and sexist. All these things are related to DEI.
I've worked in environments in which my workers were entirely male. We sometimes interacted in ways that would be offensive around women. I came to learn this sort of behavior is inappropriate. This is DEI.
I worked for Exxon-Mobile when the company began off-shoring jobs, to take advantage of cheap labor - and I led a group of 150 people based in Malaysia, Brazil, and Colombia. I was glad I'd received some DEI training specifically addressing their cultural perspectives.
He absolutely said those things, on "Truth" Social. Here's the full text:
[i]
The so-called Bishop who spoke at the National Prayer Service on Tuesday morning was a Radical Left hard line Trump hater. She brought her church into the World of politics in a very ungracious way. She was nasty in tone, and not compelling or smart. She failed to mention the large number of illegal migrants that came into the Country and killed people. Many were deposited from jails and mental institutions. It is a giant crime wave that is taking place in the USA. Apart from her inappropriate statements, the service was very boring and uninspiring one. She is not very good at her job! She and her church owe the public an apology! t[/i]
Trump told several lies here. The quote I gave contained no lies.
Using race as a factor in how to treat people or hire people or talk about people is racist, I’m afraid. You mentioned whites and assumed I was concerned about them, for example, even if I never mentioned nor even believe in such a grouping. This is how quickly your DEI training has morphed into routine racism and I am left to believe you employ the same logic to people you affiliate with any other race.
In anti-racist circles we don’t discriminate or even believe in such false demarcations.
Well shoot, I still can’t find the phrase “illegal” in your quote or in the one you cited, even though that’s the word he used. Maybe you can bold it for me:
“She was nasty in tone, and not compelling or smart," said Trump, adding that Budde didn’t mention that some migrants have come to the United States and killed people.”
His apparent logic: because some immigrants have killed people, no immigrants (nor LGBTQ) are worthy of empathy.
???
The divide is already there between the Russians and the Ukrainians. And Russians with others non-slavs.
ACTUALLY....
The crap did start with the Peace process made by Trump's administration. And here I can give some logic to Trump when you think about it. Because the reasoning just WHY the US was in Afghanistan was that otherwise it would be a "terrorist haven" from where the terrorist would somehow swim to attack Continental US. This idea was repeated again and again, that it made somehow far more sense to Americans than the Domino-theory from the Vietnam-era. If so, then the obvious point for Trump was that Taleban promised not to attack the US and not to be a "terrorist haven".
Well, the Taleban hadn't been in the first place the instigators of the 9/11 attacks, only the financier of the attack as a guest in Afghanistan. Hence it was obviously effortless for the Taleban to agree with this, because their objective was Afghanistan to be their Emirate (as it is now). Not attacking the US. This deal totally undermined the the Republic of Afghanistan: naturally the Taleban continued the fight, yet didn't attack the US.
Imagine if similar peace agreement was done by North Korea during the Korean war. I assume that gladly Kim Il Sung would agreed not to attack US forces or the USA, then dealt with Chinese help with the feeble South Korea.
Hope Trump has learnt the lesson of not trying to have a peace at all costs. Like with the Taleban. Because that was really crap.
Well, he will indeed increase the tariffs on our products anyway xD :lol: . It doesn't matter if it is 10% or 100%.
Are you specifically referring to people for whom this is the case? Cause otherwise, you're shitshooting.
I don't know anyone who thinks DEI is a good thing, or has resulted in good things for the institutions and governments who have brought it on. I don't think its fair to simply say these people aren't thinking. I happen to agree with them, ad have quite a bit to say abnout it.
For some people, the principle of not having race-or-sex-based policy is enough. And i think that's reasonable.
That may be your experience. Plenty of DEI courses/resources/people(and some i've been forced into undergoing) are extremely discriminatory. There is a reason people aren't that keen on being told their skin colour means they are unable to do X, or cannot avoid thinking Y etc.. etc.. The very concept of 'Whiteness' in this context is despicable. You can't reverse the behaviours minorities have felt the brunt of and call it "inclusion". I think most telling, is the extreme anger and abuse that comes the way of people calmly trying to discuss this (outside of this forum).
Re: DACA he has more recently said he's going to find ways to ensure they can stay. Otherwise, thank you.; Hadn't seen things quite so direct before.
The birthright thing... I have thoughts. I don't think that's capable of use as a cudgel.
Cancelling refugee status already granted, while adminstratively kind of sensible on paper given his differences with the Biden admin, is absurd and bordering on evil. What a shame..
Fwiw, I have no issue with teh Bishop. I have no issue with Trump having an issue with her either.
He said that in 2017 too. A few months later, tried to terminate their protected status. SCOTUS stopped it. He can just as easily change his mind this time around, and try to find a way around the SCOTUS ruling.
Quoting AmadeusD
Her message was perfectly reasonable. His criticism was not - it was irrational, rude, and full of lies.
DECLASSIFICATION OF RECORDS CONCERNING THE ASSASSINATIONS OF PRESIDENT JOHN F. KENNEDY, SENATOR ROBERT F. KENNEDY, AND THE REVEREND DR. MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR.
https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/01/declassification-of-records-concerning-the-assassinations-of-president-john-f-kenned/
Sure, but I doubt it.
I disagree about hte Bishop, and that's fine.
I said Trump's post was irrational, rude, and full of lies. Do you think it was rational, polite, and factually true?
They have reddish hair.
I don't know of any particular discrimination against them on that account, and neither should there be.
If there were, then DEI could apply to discriminators.
Something similar goes for people that require very large shoes, and whatever.
Yet there is discrimination that ought not be, to which these efforts are a reaction.
You may complain about whatever implementation details of course.
It's hardly new...
Quoting paraphrasing Plato
Quoting Aurelius
Quoting Aurelius
Quoting paraphrasing Burke
Quoting Mill
Quoting Wiesel
oh for fucks sake there's absolutely nothign defensible about sex and race based hiring or policy practices.
I was trying to understand what you were actually disagreeing with when you said, "I disagree about the Bishop"? I thought (mistakenly?) you were disagreeing with my assessment of Trump's post.
Oh dear. Standing by and doing nothing? Is that what you guys think?
The very first step to ending racism is to quit being racist. One cannot banish this demon by evoking it, institutionalizing it, and by teaching it in corporate board meetings. It’s why a couple years ago racial college admissions were roundly ruled unconstitutional: it violated the equal protections clause. Your interventions consisted in denying many people of Asian descent access to Harvard, not because they oppressed someone or did anything wrong, but because they had the wrong racial characteristics.
And that’s why claims of justice around this topic is a huge farce. You don’t in fact distinguish between the guilty and the innocent, the perpetrator or the victim, you distinguish only between so-called races, even where doing so is completely unjust and evil.
Ironically, those institutions that considered race in admissions were less diverse than those that didn’t.
https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2023/07/14/private-selective-colleges-are-most-likely-to-use-race-ethnicity-as-a-factor-in-admissions-decisions
It all depends on what we want of our institutions. If we want them to be a reflection of society, it might make sense to hire people from certain ethnic background or gender.
Take the judiciary. We want people with the most thorough knowledge of the law and sharpest argumentative skills to populate the judiciary. We also want the judiciary to be diverse in order to facilitate the exchange of ideas from different perspectives, expose cultural biases it may have and display in practice that people are judged by their peers and not by a class of people foreign to them. Those two values, legal knowledge and argumentation and equal representation may be contradictory. The language of law is steeped in tradition, its practices are culturally formed and people with a greater command of the jurisdiction's tongue are at a great advantage in law school. That might lead to the judiciary being populated by a certain class of people. However, representation is important in law, the law of the land is based on a common network of trust, a legal order we subscribe to. Without fair representation such a legal order is unstable, because certain classes of people may lose their faith in it. Therefore it may well be necessary to remedy this dynamic and engage in policies that advantage certain groups normally at a disadvantage.
Look at this piece by Ronald Dworkin
here
I very much agree.
Didn’t think I’d be writing that in 2025.
24January25
[quote=FOTUS 47's Cabinet]Pete Hegseth confirmed as Sec'y of Defense[/quote]
:rofl:
Trump uses mass firing to remove independent inspectors general at a series of agencies
[I]The Trump administration has fired more than a dozen independent inspectors general at government agencies, a sweeping action to remove oversight of his new administration that some members of Congress are suggesting violated federal oversight laws...The Washington Post, which first reported the firings, said that most were appointees from Trump’s first term.[/i]
Among the criminals pardoned by Trump is Enrique Tarrio. Tarrio was given a 22-year sentence after being convicted of seditious conspiracy for planning the break-in of the Capitol on 1/6. The message this sends: loyalty to me is more important than rule of law.
Tarrio was a guest of Alex Jones, where he said, “The people who did this, they need to feel the heat, they need to be put behind bars, and they need to be prosecuted."
“Success is going to be retribution,” he added. “We gotta do everything in our power to make sure that the next four years sets us up for the next 100 years.”
Since they would feel unconstrained by law, they have a lot of power to wield. The parallels to Hitler's brown shirts do not seem hyperbolic.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/25/us/politics/cia-covid-lab-leak.html
Narratives are turning.
The US was the world's largest humanitarian donor. No more.
Since the IGs are a crucial element of Congressional oversight, it will be interesting to see if the GOP will let this go forward. At the very least, having to seat this many new officers is not how the legislators were imagining their Spring.
As the matter involves the balance of power between the executive and the legislative branches, even the most hard core trumpsters may not kiss the ring for this.
I was not predicting who came out on top. Just pointing to a paradox to accepting trump's conditions for those interested in doing a particular job.
25January25
[quote=FOTUS 47's Cabinet]Kristi Noem confirmed as Sec'y of DHS.[/quote]
:fear:
Trump Kicks Crypto Policy into Gear and Hammers Nail in US CBDC Coffin
That many nails may follow, and that this abomination of surveillance, financial repression and unrestrained currency devaluation may be thrown in the ocean never to resurface.
US Air Force removes lessons on black WWII pilots from training
[I]
Donald Trump's move to block diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) initiatives has led to the US Air Force removing material on the role of black and female pilots during World War Two from its training programmes.
A military official said "immediate steps" were taken to remove material to "ensure compliance" with the US president's order, the BBC's US news partner CBS reported.
Trainee troops were previously shown footage of pioneering servicemen and women as part of DEI courses during basic military training.
Trump signed an executive order banning such programmes in the federal government soon after returning to office, fulfilling a pledge he repeatedly made during the campaign.[/i]
[I]President Trump’s administration has made it clear that deporting illegal immigrants is a priority, and we are proud to do our part here in Mississippi to help support his agenda and protect our citizens.”
Keen and Barton suggested offering a $1,000 reward to registered bounty hunters for each successful deportation they help facilitate, which would be funded by the general assembly and administered by the state treasurer, according to a press release from his office.[/i]
If this passes, non-Whites should steer clear of Mississipi.
In the military one needs to form a new identity, one based on group unity and emphasizing the achievements of one racial group works against that goal. As a veteran, the military should be color-blind and work towards unity, not fragmentation, in group identity.
IMHO racism is best fought by emphasizing commonality and common goals rather than repeatedly emphasizing difference and/or prior victimhood within groups. The approach should be more future-oriented.
To be clear, this isn't focused on the military, but the military is still a workplace.
[I]"More than half of workers (54%) say their company or organization pays about the right amount of attention to increasing DEI. Smaller shares say their company or organization pays too much (14%) or too little attention (15%), and 17% say they’re not sure. Black workers are more likely than those in other racial and ethnic groups to say their employer pays too little attention to increasing DEI. They’re also among the most likely to say focusing on DEI at work is a good thing (78% of Black workers say this), while White workers are the least likely to express this view (47%)."[/i]
Suppose we were to put it to a vote. The majority of voters are white- the group least likely to be victims of prejudice. Would it really make sense to eliminate it based on a majority vote? I don't think so.
This sort of bourgeois-feel good ahistoricism is always futile. In order to "emphasize commonality and common goals","future-oriented" whites should stop disproportionately benefiting political economically asap from the centuries-long legacy of dispossessing, enslaving, exploiting and discriminating against nonwhites. After all, it's "racism" that (still) systematically "emphasizes difference" (re: ethnic/color supremacy) and antiracist survivors who have always "fought" for "commonality" (i.e. we are all equally human).
We should eliminate it because studies show DEI training makes people more racist. DEI doesn't work to promote colorblindness, it works to promote victim hierarchies and race consciousness. It fragments, not unifies. And the grifters at the top make bank.
[I]“White people raised in Western society are conditioned into a white supremacist worldview. Racism is the norm; it is not unusual. As a result, interaction with White people is at times so overwhelming, draining, and incomprehensible that it causes serious anguish for People of Color.”[/i]
This resulted in a backlash. This seems hardly surprising. Essentially telling people they are evil, but didn't know it, would piss people off and make them defensive.
I was surprised to read that, according to the study, this sort of inflammatory language is common in diversity training. It makes me glad the study was done. I can absolutely agree that this is a terrible approach. But it doesn't mean diversity, equity, and inclusion aren't positive objectives, nor that effective training is impossible. In fact, it wouldn't be hard to purge this sort of thing from the training and focus on positive messages. I have in mind the sort of DEI training I received at Exxon-Mobil, which I described in another post.
But I am wondering, now, how all this scheme is going to play out for the US economy and the cost of living. All these years I have been living in the US, I have come to believe that these males from Central America are the most hard-working people out there. I don't see them becoming burden to the government, like some other asylum-seekers who may come to USA/UK/EU just for the benefits. I hope someone tells Trump this.
I don't know about you guys, but I do believe that these people from Central America work hard in the US and I doubt that the jobs they will leave will be filled by poor Americans :roll: Maybe those HB1 jobs may be filled by American graduates, but tomato picking and pizza making (twelve hours per day)? Will Trump really reduce the cost of living?
There are summaries, please do the leg work yourself and look it up. It is also discussed in Michael Sandel's lecture on the subject if I am not mistaken.
Quoting tim wood
Yes, a great many things occur to me, thank you, but what are you implying? Indeed there might be a need for affirmative action, I am not disagreeing with that.
Quoting tim wood
It would be nice, though it is impossible. If all practioners were above average, the bar for 'average' would be raised. I would like there to be competent people yes, but competency is one of the possible criteria.
Quoting tim wood
Yes, I agree. It seems we are not in disagreement, and in agreement, also with Dworkin I think. Like I said, I think there are two arguments for affirmative action. One s reparation for past wrongs and the other is equal representation. The facetious counter argument of 'color blindness' is poignantly laid to rest by 180 Proof.
@180 Proof :fire:
Not really. The undocumented workers are making more in the US than they could in their home country. The fact we'd take advantage of that seems similar to choosing to purchase products manufactured in countries with low wages, because they're cheaper.
Irrespective of the morality and legality, their presence is baked into the economy:
"More than two-thirds of U.S. crop workers are foreign born, according to the USDA. Many of them came to the country through the H-2A visas, but officials estimate that 42% of the workers are undocumented migrants." -- https://www.cbsnews.com/news/trump-deportation-plan-effects-undocumented-farmers/
So the cost of harvesting will increase, and some may not get harvested at all.
I have no statistics, but I understand home construction utilizes a lot of undocumented workers. Prices will rise.
The Social Security trust fund will be negatively impacted:
"In 2022, unauthorized immigrants contributed $25.7 billion in Social Security taxes, typically by working under borrowed or fraudulent Social Security numbers. Unauthorized immigrants, however, are ineligible to claim Social Security benefits."
https://bipartisanpolicy.org/explainer/immigration-social-security-solvency/
Undocumented workers are consumers: they spend the money they make, so they contribute to GDP.
I'm not suggesting we should have open borders, but rather that the full impact of proposed actions should be taken into account and plans adjusted accordingly.
T administration has their best people on it.
Quoting Investigate Midwest
The broad sweep of the federal raids has already prompted many workers to stay home in California.
The broad sweep is a thumb in the eye of the Legislative Branch as they involve appropriated funds.
Since the order is so immediate, efforts are being made to get a restraining order to stop it.
:rofl: Since when are Trump’s activities ever in response to ‘the public interest’? He’s driven wholly and solely by what Buddhists call ‘the three poisons’: hatred, greed and delusion.
Thanks, comrade. :fire: :mask:
I hope all is well with you, Tobias, and that your corner of the world is not yet an oligarchic shitshow.
These kind of statistics were given and noticed in Brexit, btw, when people started looking at what the Poles and other EU-citizens were doing in the UK.
And yes, you will get problems with these kind of policies. Or then the Trump administration will fail in it's policy. And that can very well happen. Remember the wall that Mexico would pay for?
As I've said, Americans will have their own version of BREXIT-type economy under Trump, if he goes through with the deportations. It's simply math.
Meanwhile, the 'funding freeze fiasco' is an example of the always spectacular Trumpian ham-fistedness. After practically paralyzing the entire Federal Government, Trump says, ooops, better not do that. But no doubt he'll keep trying. He hates Government, and he's in an ideal place to disable it.
This also means that the most dire fears about Trump aren't realistic.
Quoting Wayfarer
As he is the head of the executive branch, I guess that is called self-loathing then.
Hope you're right. But he could do a lot less than the most dire, and still be dire. Consider what is within his power, a misjudgement in an international economic or military crisis could be *extremely* dire.
Quoting ssu
He hates Government for many reasons, but one is definitely because of the prosecutions that were launched against him between his terms. He just sacked a whole bunch of prosecutors from DoJ because of their association with those cases, plus he's just offered redundancies to practically the entire Federal workforce. His loathing of the deep state is well-documented, but it turns out that the deep state turns out to be much of the federal beauracracy. He wants to turn the Government into a subsidiary of Trump Inc, and at the moment, he's not getting a lot of pushback. Congress is completely supine. They're terrified of crossing him.
Sounds very fascist to me. Installing fear and sacking people who oppose him. A fascist, slowly restructuring government into an oligarchy. Building holding camps for refugees in order to solve a “problem” before its final solution.
Hopefully there are still people in government who aren’t afraid of him and who can oppose him with the backing of law until such laws don’t exist anymore. It’s still a functioning bureaucracy with laws that can oppose him.
Of course. And the real issue perhaps is how not only does the "Overton Window" of what is acceptable change, a lot of policies can have a surprising effect. When Trump declares that he wants to increase the territory of the US and doesn't rule out military action either in Panama or against an ally, this can have the effect that it undermines the whole internationally based order system and the UN charter. Might makes right is the outcome, if the international order based structures fall.
This might be the real negative aspect of Trump's populism, not something that directly happens by Trump's actions, but indirectly happens. When it becomes OK to annex territories, you can sure that many countries will follow suit and won't try to apply silk gloves as earlier (like Morocco). Ruanda's actions in DRC seem to be an example of this.
Meanwhile, must-read WaPo article on MAGA censorship of free expression under the banner of 'protecting free speech' (perfect Orwellian doublespeak).
[quote=A new era of government censorship has dawned;https://wapo.st/4hD1gUZ]On Day 1, President Donald Trump signed an executive order titled “Restoring Freedom of Speech and Ending Federal Censorship.” This might have sounded like banal lip service, reaffirming commitment to the First Amendment. In reality, it was the start of an Orwellian effort to root out wrongthink from government ranks and the private sector.
The first kind of speech to be shushed was scientific speech.
Last week, the administration ordered a blackout on public communications from government health agencies — in the middle of flu season and a global zoonotic outbreak. For the first time since 1952, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention withheld its weekly report on morbidity and mortality data updates.
The blocked issue was slated to contain two important new studies about bird flu transmission, KFF reports. The move echoed Trump’s data-suppression approach to covid-19. (“If we stopped testing right now,” he said in June 2020, “we’d have very few cases, if any.”)
Other federal departments, such as the Energy Department, were also ordered to cease public communications unless they had explicit approval of the acting secretary, according to memos shared with the Post. Some agencies have been blocked from sharing data even within the government. Others have canceled previously approved data access or other exchanges with outside researchers.
In one case, a University of North Carolina legal scholar was told his scheduled talk at a U.S. attorney’s office was canceled. The topic of the event: complicity of German lawyers in the creation of the Nazi state. You can’t make these things up.[/quote]
No need to make it up. You can watch it happening.
Quoting Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
unless you were one of the many nations planning their responses to every conceivable proposal.
[tweet]https://twitter.com/doge/status/1884612616347066536?s=46&t=IakyLvDoU1iHVTU4X-LNfg[/tweet]
Plus the overpaid, useless employees of the government needs purging. The CEO of the New Deal Tennessee Valley Authority is stepping down from his role, and his 10.5 million dollar a year paycheck. Shit like this needs to continue.
https://apnews.com/article/tennessee-valley-authority-tva-ceo-a243548291623ef36ca293144c5d9c5f
Finally, it’s time to turn the tables on the persecution and rid these agencies of the political henchmen, as appears to be occurring. It’s great to see them unceremoniously removed and denied security clearance.
Things are going swimmingly so far!
Well, it does not seem to be an oligarchy but we elected the most far right populist government in the history of the country. The Netherlands is a coalition government country and now Anti-immigration party, pro-farming party, pro-business party and a middle to conservative party which used to be popular with the people now rule the country. Most parties do not have people with a lot of administrative experience. The institutions hold, but the Cabinet Ministers simply seem not to do very much. It is the opposite of the Trump government in terms of assertiveness. I do not mind that I must say and to be fair they do not take steps to demolish institutions like the courts of law or the administrative apparatus. At least for now they operate within the law. They have floated proposals though to curb the right to demonstration, which is worrying, but they still play by the democratic rulebook at least now. Funnily enough even right wing voters by a large majority would have voted Kamala...
I do wonder why neither in Europe nor in the US the left has not found an answer. The discourse has turned solely towards meritocracy to the detriment of solidarity. It is strange because there is sympathy for proposals to tax the rich and even to make international agreements to tackle climate change. I do not think the left is out of touch with the views of the constituency, I think the views of the constituency is out of touch with the left because of years of depoliticization and embracing a liberal conservative responsibilization discourse with productivity and selling oneself as a commodity in an international market place as mantras.
Yep, because someone is getting kickbacks somewhere (probably true, as the world is a corrupt place) lets turn on all civil servants without due process. Haven't you been offered a post at the ministry of justice yet? Funny thing is, I am quite confident that NOS is actually a govt informant so I am refraining from too much interaction...
Hey, last administration you guys thought I was a Russian bot. Looks like your conspiracy theories have elevated me a bit in your hearts and minds. I appreciate that.
You want John Brennan and John Bolton to keep their security clearance? I wonder why…
F.C.C. Chair Orders Investigation Into NPR and PBS Sponsorships
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/30/business/media/npr-pbs-fcc-investigation.html
Let’s find out if they’re as crooked as their staff.
He's just a Canadian waiting for civilization to break down so he can finally get some peace of mind.
That’s nice, especially from a nurse.
I support life in all its forms. :love:
PRESIDENT DONALD J. TRUMP LAUNCHES MASSIVE 10-TO-1 DEREGULATION INITIATIVE
“The Order requires that whenever an agency promulgates a new rule, regulation, or guidance, it must identify at least 10 existing rules, regulations, or guidance documents to be repealed. “
https://www.whitehouse.gov/fact-sheets/2025/01/fact-sheet-president-donald-j-trump-launches-massive-10-to-1-deregulation-initiative/
:rofl:
Always like to check in with the Trump cult.
Canada is a protectionist nation, still descending further into socialized, Keynesian mercantilism long past its due date. For example, its had over 200% tariffs on American milk and butter for decades, so as to establish dairy prices and manage supplies like a good interventionist government would. There isn’t even free trade between provinces, so this outrage is hilarious. But thanks to these tariffs the globalist government is speaking of lowering taxes and slashing regulations, which is unheard of. This might be the kick in the pants this nation needs.
You guys will probably be annexed after Greenland.
Wouldn’t be bad. Anything is better than being tethered to the British crown.
You can say that again!
[tweet]https://twitter.com/ap/status/1886108056267722846?s=46&t=IakyLvDoU1iHVTU4X-LNfg[/tweet]
Specifically, Trump wants to make Canada a state. 90% of the Canadian population lives on the border, and from what numerous Canadians have told me, a lot of Canadians want to cross over and live in the US. So Canada might depopulate when Trump gets his way.
But anyway, Trump trade wars are starting, so good luck with the effects of those. Could we later then talk of Trump layoffs in US factories that have been dependent on the integrated commerce between the US and Canada and Mexico? How this wouldn't end up in inflation, I don't know.
And firing of 15 inspector generals? Inspector general ought to be really independent, but once it's the Trump administration, there's the possibility of them not being so independent. Adam Schiff remarked on this too:
Didn't Trump say that the tariffs were imposed in an effort to cut down the flow of fentanyl?
I’m sure all those fired Inspector Generals were remarkable and upstanding characters, and whomever Trump appoints will be evil incarnated. The mythology couldn’t have it any other way. Here is a question for you, though: who is the one person in the world who has the authority to appoint and fire Inspector Generals? Is it Adam Schiff?
USAID is subject to the foreign policy guidance of the President, the Secretary of State, and the National Security Council. Sorry, but the policies you are used to are changing. The organization has spent close to half a century using American taxpayer money to improve Egypt’s economic growth, for example, and look how that has turned out. You get the thirty-year reign of Hosni Mubarak, who amassed a $70,000,000,000 fortune to some estimates, and $700,000,000,000 in others. Do you want FINAID to start throwing vast sums of your money around there, or any other country?
I know it hurts to be weaned from such sweet milk as American taxpayer dollars, but look at the debt. The spending is out of control and there are some good Europeans who sound like they want to help as much as the US does.
He sure did.
[tweet]https://twitter.com/trumpdailyposts/status/1886440603996840266?s=46&t=IakyLvDoU1iHVTU4X-LNfg[/tweet]
I approve of that. Nicely done.
Personally, I’m against tariffs in principle. So I was skeptical of Trump’s moved here. But as leverage they seem to have their practical use.
And now Beijing wants a seat at the table.
“Beijing Prepares Its Opening Bid to Talk Trade With Trump”
https://www.wsj.com/world/china/beijing-prepares-its-opening-bid-to-talk-trade-with-trump-ccec3ca4?mod=hp_lead_pos3
The US was an oddity. Countries don't usually behave magnanimously the way it used to, giving out aid, supporting the UN, fostering democracy in the world, etc. I think that was just a leftover from the Cold War when some sort of ideological war was supposed to be playing out. It's time for the US to revert to the way countries usually are: selfish, ruthless, aiming to literally destroy competitors rather than creating a level playing field for all.
Plus, it's pretty well established that the US government used to accept drug imports in order to crush noisy sections of the population, so it's significant that fentanyl abuse was highlighted. I wonder if that came from Vance.
So, what's the plan, the drug traffickers will be discouraged by the prospect of tariffs?
I think the point is to convince these governments to help tackle the problem, which is apparent in all countries involved.
Right. Maybe have the countries that are dependent on us stop fucking us over.
At the very least. I think Zelensky was saying that he received all of the weapons he was promised, but the rest, over 100 billion dollars, is missing. Where has it gone?
I don’t know if this translation is accurate or not, so take it with a grain of salt.
[tweet]https://twitter.com/georgepapa19/status/1886204963816165403?s=46&t=IakyLvDoU1iHVTU4X-LNfg[/tweet]
Yeah. Peace with Israel has continued without Islamists taking over. So?
Or you think it would be better to have Egypt as a failed state too, something equivalent of Syria? Btw, I think Egypt is one country that was off the aid cutting bloc (if I remember correctly).
Sure, I'm not a fan of the institutionalised aid given by rich countries to poor ones. There's a lot of negative aspects. Starting from the fact that aid doesn't usual give the growth. But all of it? Not all has been a just lost cause. Things like famines have become far more rare in Africa.
Africa is the last place that has large famines. Ok if those become larger?
How about Central and South America? And of course one might ask, you think the security of the US or Canada (that's where you live) is going to better with more nations going into such a dire state as Haiti?
Quoting NOS4A2
(See here)
Seems more of an excuse, because Canada likely isn't cheating in trade as China. Hope the Canada, Mexico and the EU make a coordinated stance against Trump's trade war. But in the end, it's the Americans themselves that have to pay the price.
Each of the Provinces have been focused upon particular targets to boycott. The emphasis upon targeting states that support Trump is not a feature of the Mexican statements.
Edit to add: Canada buys 30 days.
Most of the wood Americans use comes from Canada. Canada doesn't require the sustainability rules for harvesting wood that Americans do. It would benefit the planet if the US stops buying Canadian wood altogether. I'd like to see that happen, actually.
[tweet]https://twitter.com/justintrudeau/status/1886529228193022429?s=46&t=IakyLvDoU1iHVTU4X-LNfg[/tweet]
And US steel producers ready to higher prices to match the price of imported steel. Yes, that's the way!!!
“OK, we’re NOT going to impose huge sanctions on our two nearest and main trading partners, Mexico and Canada. They were real nice to me, told me what a great president I am, and said they’ll send troops.”
Yet more ‘volleys of incompetence’, as the NYT put it last week.
Meanwhile, Trump is insisting that the FBI is 'corrupt' and that the investigations into the January 6th insurrection and his illegal retention of classified documents were the 'weaponisation of the Justice Department' which should 'never happen again'. :vomit:
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-14359179/Donald-Trump-Elon-Musks-USAID-closure-hit-BBC-charity.html
This and other examples of “humanitarian aid” has proven a wasteful and corrupt system.
:up:
Shit's gonna fly.
Don’t worry— I’m sure the very stable genius has thought this through. His knowledge of Middle East relations is terrific and huge.
"War on Drugs", Nixon. Been there, done that. We now know, without a doubt. that the real way to address drug abuse is from the demand side, not the supply side.
[quote=Wikipedia]In June 2011, the Global Commission on Drug Policy released a critical report, declaring: "The global war on drugs has failed, with devastating consequences for individuals and societies around the world."[5] In 2023, the UN high commissioner for Human Rights stated that "decades of punitive, 'war on drugs' strategies had failed to prevent an increasing range and quantity of substances from being produced and consumed."[13] That year, the annual US federal drug war budget reached $39 billion, with cumulative spending since 1971 estimated at $1 trillion.[14][/quote]
War on Drugs is just an excuse for Trump, he sees money there to access toward building a wall or whatever the fuck his plan is. He doesn't give a shit about the people who die from fentanyl overdose.
Deaths predicted amid the chaos of Elon Musk’s shutdown of USAid
[I]Critical supplies of life-saving medicines have been blocked and children left without food and battling malnutrition as multiple effects were reported across the globe after Elon Musk resolved to shut down the US government’s pre-eminent international aid agency....
...Analysis confirms that several thousand women and girls are likely to die from complications during pregnancy and childbirth as a direct result of Trump’s order to freeze aid to the agency for 90 days.[/i]
I assume Trumpists will dance with joy with each death, because it translates to cost savings.
In 2024, Canada made up just 0.2% of U.S. border fentanyl seizures. Trump's second biggest complaint is that Canada is ripping the U.S. off... by selling stuff to them and not buying the same amount back.
How Bill Cassidy, a lifelong vaccination advocate, wound up voting for RFK Jr. as health secretary
[sup]— Anne Flaherty, Will McDuffie, Cheyenne Haslett, Allison Pecorin · ABC News · Feb 4, 2025[/sup]
Sellout. Circus.
Out of all his pie-in-the-skies this is Trump’s worst idea ever, sure to set the region on fire and send all involved into a spiral of evil. The only way he can redeem himself is if this turns out to be some negotiating tactic.
They trot out that kind of argument every few years. In opposing Trump’s border wall during his first terms they claimed border apprehensions were so low that no wall was required, and it’s such a small problem that people shouldn’t worry about. But what others care about is what isn’t apprehended, and what isn’t seized.
The Canada/US border is the largest border in the world. Canada’s fentanyl labs have been known for years, as has its tradition of drug smuggling. One ”superlab” busted just last fall (and close to the border) was estimated to be able to produce 95,500,000 fentanyl doses, which far exceeds domestic consumption. So why should we not wish to stop this drug from crossing the border?
It’s stupid to blame Trump and not the people who fund bullshit like Iraqi Sesame Street. It’s their fault aid is tied to massive government waste and corruption.
What? You would actually judge some of Trumps actions on a scale of evil rather than on a scale of greatness?
Quoting NOS4A2
Isn't everything a negotiating tactic for him? His MO, inflict as much pain as possible, or the threat of pain, until the opponent give in and gives you what you want. The thing left unknown in many cases, is "what the hell does he want?", and this produces the appearance that he's going around inflicting pain, and threatening pain for absolutely no reason.
Regardless, Trump could have ordered review of all the programs and done selective shutdowns. It's a product of executing a simplistic solution with callous disregard for the consequences. That's why I labeled it manslaughter, and not murder.
That is the craziest shit I have ever heard. Let's do it!!
Yeah, it’s a bad idea. I cringed when I heard it. It contradicts “America first” and the reasons people voted for him.
Sesame Street is normalcy in Iraq? USAID is a division of America’s so-called “soft power”, an imperialist arm of the US government. Think of what they did in cuba, for instance. There is no intent to restore anything to normalcy, but to further US interests in those regions and abroad.
[tweet]https://twitter.com/cspan/status/1887158431695393123?s=46&t=IakyLvDoU1iHVTU4X-LNfg[/tweet]
By threatening to give Netanyahu what we wants he's showing Netanyahu's intentions for all the world to see.
The world reacts with outrage, the Middle-East threatens to explode, international support for Israel erodes further, etc.
Trump has all the room he needs to back out, Netanyahu takes another blow, and hopefully that will be the final straw that does him under.
Let's see what happens.
Turn around 180 degrees, arrive in the same exact spot, rebrand or rename, then claim everything is different and has been fixed. See NAFTA. See healthcare (oh wait, 0 was done on that), see oil production (already highest ever under a Biden), see massive voter fraud (which doesn’t exist), see border crossings (which were steady for years before and during his first term), see stock market (was trending upward first term, has hit record highs under Biden), etc etc.
His only positive accomplishment is that he doesn’t like wars because he knows they’re unpopular, and may affect his popularity. Otherwise the only thing that will change is the government will be even shittier and Wall Street will get their tax cuts again. Woohoo.
In any case it’s an innovative and bold idea. Though if Biden’s Gaza Pier is any indication (another wasteful USAID boondoggle), it will be difficult to implement. Let’s see what comes of it.
:rofl:
Partisan hacks are funny.
They could build a golf course through the graveyards where 70% of the dead are women and children.
Bold and innovative!
Trump pressured Netanyahu to accept a cease-fire. For now that's the status quo, and it's the only reason I'm reserving judgement on what it is we are looking at.
To be clear, the forced displacement of 2,000,000 Palestinians at the end of an American rifle barrel is an outlandishly awful idea, which is why I am assuming Trump has a different intention.
I'd say the whole idea that Trump pressured Netanyahu to get a cease-fire is put into question now. Since you love speculating on negotiating tactics then this could've all been one big trade off for Netanyahu to pretend to end the war and give an optical win in exchange for Trump taking Gaza off of Israel's hands. Who knows just one theory for how things played out.
In any case if you're gonna act like this is some 4D chess move by Trump then at least come up with something better.
Whatever you say, buttercup.
Right, because his long history of great ideas forces one to pause.
Meanwhile the markets went down, and then the market went up, and some people played the market and made a lot of money very quickly indeed. And in another month they can do the same again. And that is what it's about making big big bucks from insider trading.
Other factions have bigger ambitions that encompass surviving the societal collapse on the horizon becoming the elite of sovereign individuals served by techie servants and robots. The rest of us have no place in this imagined future. This is of course a conspiracy theory based on The Sovereign Individual, by William Rees-Mogand James Dale Davidson.. The author was a right wing hereditary peer, not to be confused with his son Jacob Rees-Mog, who was active in promoting, and making large amounts of money from, the disaster that was Brexit. Peter Thiel wrote the preface to the 2000 reprint of the book.
If anyone has an old guillotine in their basement somewhere, now might be a good time to check it for woodworm and renew the ropes and such.
[tweet]https://twitter.com/politico/status/1887271539210387593?s=46&t=IakyLvDoU1iHVTU4X-LNfg[/tweet]
[tweet]https://twitter.com/17thankq/status/1886953142727655914?s=46&t=IakyLvDoU1iHVTU4X-LNfg[/tweet]
Meanwhile, Hakeem Jeffries spells out the Democrat view on MAGA extremism.
But he is not fond of war.
And even the staunchest Trump critic would have to admit that the idea that the US is going to volunteer to conduct Israel's 'Endlösung' for them is virtually unimaginable.
His first final solution speech. Now Hitler never made a final solution speech, it was implemented discreetly. It is difficult to tell the difference between market manipulations that will be flip-flopped, and real policies that await only a further accumulation of power. But the trend towards sovereign individuals is a global, economic fact, and automation leaves no place for the masses either as producers or consumers,
Added to that, addressing climate change or not addressing climate change means a population collapse. So taking over Greenland, and Canada accord with the long-term good sense of Sovereign Survivalists and wars with Panama, Denmark, Palestine address the climate crisis in their own way.
Unfortunately, the democrats have no plan at all other than resistance, and they are resisting economic and environmental necessity with no actual policy apart from "being agin'it".
I am somewhat gloomy; Nation states are going to cease to exist and most of humanity likewise. I don't have any plan that will contrive this without huge pain and suffering, and massive further damage to the environment. I don't think any decent, sensible human being would even be prepared to preside over such a transition, and thus we have Trump.
Yeah they’re X posts. God, have I been the only one seeing them this whole time I wonder?
I see them when I both preview and look at my posts. They are still there when I look right now.
Thanks for letting me know I probably looked like a madman without all that context.
Which i interpret as "you weren't supposed to say that bit out loud yet." or thereabouts.
Even if the Mar-a-Gaza project talk is ridiculous with Trump making large parts of the plan up on the spot, we still listen to what the US president says. And as I've stated, it just doesn't go off as "a negotiation tactic" or Trump playing "4D-chess". What the US president say does have consequences. At least knowing Trump.
So we can assume that once the next crisis just around the corner blows up, then perhaps Denmark can be more calm and not worrying that a NATO member state could annex by military force it's territory (which is btw goes against NATO article 1. but who the fuck cares anymore about international agreements between nation states or members of NATO). Even Panama might think they are off the hook. As if the threats are only a "negotiating tactic". But all it takes is someone to ask Trump still considers that Panama and Greenland should be part of the US, guess what he will say? Even if he can say a lot, one likely response is that both goals "are still under work".
And the damage has been done.
“After this therefor because of this”. The consequences and damage occurs in the reaction to Trump’s statements, not in the statements themselves. The ebbs and flows of the markets are indicative of this.
But when you threaten others, yeah, they'll notice that you are bully (just like Mexico and Canada showed by not basically doing much). Yet the effect is simply untrustworthiness: you simply cannot trust the US because one administration will say one thing and another something totally else. I think this view is getting very popular.
Trump really would like Molotov.
I've been thinking lately about how Stalin took over. He started by quietly making lists of people to target.
But where the comparison ends (for now) is that Trump and Musk haven't done anything that hasn't been wildly popular with voters, and frankly, I like it.
I think they should have left the tariffs on Mexico to discourage American industries from having their manufacturing done right across the border, for instance in Juarez.
The whole intersectional and progressive grip on culture throughout the world is largely astroturfed, payed for by American tax-payer dollars. It is forced; there is nothing organic about it.
Americans have been thanklessly funding foreign NGOs, media, Universities, and subsidizing the aid of other wealthy countries, like Australia.
Hidden beneath the facade of humanitarian benevolence is routine imperialism. “Experts” who lament a lack of access to such a piggy bank are now fearful China will step in to fill the void.
[tweet]https://twitter.com/trumpdailyposts/status/1887888749654347905?s=46&t=IakyLvDoU1iHVTU4X-LNfg[/tweet]
I absolutely agree this cannot be topped.
On the other hand, this "Truth" Social post puts his abject stupidity on full display:
"20 years ago, Autism in children was 1 in 10,000. NOW IT’S 1 in 34. WOW! Something’s really wrong. We need BOBBY!!! Thank You! DJT”
That's true. But Americans are still giant do-gooders, so the flow of private aid will continue.
From what little I've seen not much of the "aid" part has been cut from the program, and both Trump and Rubio like the idea of foreign aid. Except not much of USAID is aid, as far as I can tell, save for the clever acronym. Hopefully we'll get to see a full audit.
DOGE shares some of their cuts on X.com:
[tweet]https://twitter.com/DOGE/status/1887604598141297083[/tweet]
Oh. I thought they stopped almost all foreign aid. They didn't?
Not according to them, at least.
https://www.state.gov/prioritizing-americas-national-interests-one-dollar-at-a-time/
What you describe was the post war settlement. It worked ok for a few decades, until it ran out of steam as a result of the rise of China.
Now the US is committing Hari kari as a response and geopolitics is again in flux.
Fortunately Russia was broken before Trump’s second term, or things would be far worse now.
For me now the question is, will the new world order have two, or three competing superpowers? And will the US be one of them?
--https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2025/02/federal-judge-birthright-citizenship-donald-trump-ignore-law.html
As a businessman, Trump treated contracts, and laws, as inconveniences. It's no surprise he'd continue this as President.
But since he was re-elected after what he pulled in Jan 6, it appears that large swaths of Americans don't care about rule of law either.
People care a lot about the rule of law as it pertains to their situation. Those who believe that the election was stolen from Trump in 2020 saw the system as failing and that vigilante reaction was a reasonable response.
That is a different kettle of fish from looking at Trump's past treatment of contracts and creditors. In NYC, he lost the ability to do deals as his word became null. He found a bigger aquarium to urinate within afterwards.
Not necessarily. 60-70% of Republicans believe the 2020 election was stolen, and therefore Trump was justified in trying to remedy that situation.
I don't have statistics, but it appears to me that few Republicans understand that Trump committed obstruction of Justice during the Mueller investigation and in the documents case. Many also deny that he sexually assaulted E Jeane Carroll, and that it was therefore fine to defame her for her "lies".
It also seems that many are unaware of, or deny his guilt, at his various fraudulent activities (Trump U, Trump foundation, real estate valuations, and election fraud), or they consider the crimes minor.
So...some voters may actually respect rule of law, but are in denial about Trump. Of course, I expect that many believe that "Rule of Trump" is a greater good than rule of law.
That would mean 30-40% of Republicans plus a mass of independent voters don't care about rule of law. I think it's actually higher than that.
I see your point.
“The Danger of American Fascism,” Henry Wallace (1944)
Your mileage may vary.
[sup]Some other snippets/sources:
• America, Fascism, and God: Sermons from a Heretical Preacher (2005) by Davidson Loehr
• American fascists: the Christian Right and the war on America (2006/7) by Chris Hedges (pdf)
• Christianity - Christianity and Fascism (2007) by M D Magee
• Did FDR's Vice-President Write an Op-Ed About 'American Fascism'? (2018) by Arturo Garcia
• Am I My Brother’s Keeper? : Local and Global Responsibility in the Digital Age (2020) by David Gethings
[/sup]
Maybe they think it’s corrupt, therefore can’t be trusted.
There’s also this thing where they know that what Trump does is wrong and there will be some economic pain etc. But it’s necessary to make American great again, or to break out of the malaise.
I'm sure all of that is part of the picture. Embracing rule of law takes a lot of trust in society and government. Where that trust has eroded, it's natural that alternatives become attractive.
They do, but IMO it's because of their faith in Trump. Trump's defense of his crimes entails blaming the system. It's reminiscent of OJ insisting LAPD conspired to get him. The difference is that OJ didn't sell this to the public like Trump does. In his supporters minds, Trump can do no wrong - so they embrace the ridiculous deep state conspiracy theory against him. The GOP assists by pushing the alleged weaponization of the DOJ.
Which crimes are those again?
You say “crimes” plural but refuse to name one. That’s because all you got is the trumped-up Bragg charges, and now you can say he’s a felon because his accountant wrote “legal expenses” instead of “hush money”, a charge so laughable it puts everything into perspective. So horrific are Trump’s crimes in the perversion of anti-Trump mythology that you let yourself use OJ Simpson as an analogy.
[tweet]https://twitter.com/doge/status/1888046273543979183?s=46&t=IakyLvDoU1iHVTU4X-LNfg[/tweet]
A few posts back I mentioned a few of the prominent crimes: https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/966696
Civil cases misconstrued as criminal ones. Why won’t you tell the truth and say he lost some lawsuits, I wonder? Amnesia?
None of which resulted in any criminal convictions, correct?
You’ve convicted him of crimes but no one else has. Crazy how that works out.
He was convicted of 34 felonies tho. Nobody cares, they elected him anyway.
Fraud, black and white. Many would go to jail for such a crime.
His accountant wrote “legal fees” instead of “hush money”. This might have been a misdemeanor whose statute of limitations ran out in 2019 (if ndas were illegal), but now a felony proven with inadmissible evidence, allegedly to hide another crime that cannot be mentioned. This the first time in history anyone has been convicted of this shit.
I think he appeared in other comedies as well during that era. Never appeared on Seinfeld, though. And Seinfeld is the best sitcom of all times.
And the other 33 felonies?
Same one, repeated 33 times.
Well, that makes no sense.
It's probably the first time in history that anyone has recorded hush money as legal fees. Fraudsters are known to be very creative in their efforts to evade the law.
Then what should he have written?
They used to be so proud of a Swift endorsement. Now no one is into their brand.
Taylor Swift Was Booed at the Super Bowl—and Donald Trump Was Cheered. What Is Going on?
[tweet]https://twitter.com/glamourmag/status/1888757921439523022?s=46&t=IakyLvDoU1iHVTU4X-LNfg[/tweet]
10February25 (FAFO day 21)
As the "deep state" is being bulldozed and replaced – with fear-muzzled, bipartisan acquience – by the Project 2025 state, I'm reminded of the world-historical power of human stupidity ...
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/967127
Nothing, because it was not an allowable expense. That's why it's fraud, he recorded it as "legal expenses", when it was a personal payment. For example, have you ever tried claiming money you paid to a prostitute as "legal expenses" on your tax return?
It was not Trump who designated the payments, which were legal. It was others at the organization. There is no evidence that Trump even knew what they were for. He only signed for it, as he often did with his money. Big crime, I guess.
The alleged crime was that he falsified business records with the intent to disguise another crime, and that alleged crime was that he used “unlawful means” to promote his election, or some obscure bullshit. The problem is no intent to disguise another crime was proven, no “unlawful means” were found. Nor was there any crime to disguise in the first place.
In any case, Trump’s new elite law team has recently formed to appeal the ruling, and we’ll find out who the real criminals are.
Trump's election must have fried something in your brains or something, or maybe you were never very clever to begin with.
Every day I find it harder to take this forum seriously.
Do want us to add a little addendum that excoriates the Vietnam War after each comment, in a thread that has nothing to do with the topics you mention?
If you want more anti-American threads go check out Reddit.
It just makes you look like a bunch of ignorant morons is all - pretty disappointing on a forum that's supposedly filled with intelligent people.
To be fair it is a free for all in this thread, so go nuts and remind us of Vietnam. I don’t care. I just think it’s stupid to insult people for writing about the topic of a thread. Maybe start a new one.
Do you share the enthusiasm of your man Viktor Orbán for the "current president"?
Quoting Viktor Orbán
I'm not really trying to insult anyone. It's just getting embarassing.
"My man" Viktor Orban? Did I miss something or are you just exhibiting the same type of intellectual rabies as everyone else in this thread?
I don't think so. I only remember he has spoken approvingly of Viktor Orbán's struggle against the EU and NATO.
Do I have intellectual rabies?
No there isn't. They are express policies of racism, sexism and bigotry. On their face, and on analysis. Quoting Benkei
That's a wild leap to make. Not one which applies to me, at any rate. I have no idea what the rest of that comment is getting at/supposed to say/what the point it. Sounds like you just don't like people disagreeing with you, and so say things to convince yourself of a moral high ground.
Quoting tim wood
You cannot solve a problem by doing the same thing which caused it (unless you're suggesting there are extant conflicting policies - some of which arbitrarily protect or raise certain groups, and some of which remedy that obvious injustice - but obviously, that's batshit to claim). And the proof is already in the pudding on this one, anyhow. It's not really an 'opinion' issue anymore.
That wasn't my impression, rather the opposite, it's intended to apply when choices aren't based on merit (which isn't hypothetical), hence diversity equity inclusion.
Either way, RFK Jr sure wasn't appointed head of Health on merit. :D
Someone somewhere else was trying to come up with historical analogies to ...
HIV, transgender care, climate change and other federal websites go dark
[sup]— April Rubin · Axios · Jan 31, 2025[/sup]
Quoting Donald J. Trump · Feb 10, 2025
As USAID retreats, China pounces
[sup]— Robbie Gramer, Eric Bazail-Eimil, Phelim Kine · POLITICO · Feb 10, 2025[/sup]
I guess so too, because I know that if I did something like that I'd be considered a criminal. I mean, you sign for something criminal, then later claim that you didn't know anything about what you signed for. I'm sure the judge would just laugh at my excuse, and say, you know, the reason you sign for it is to acknowledge that you know what you are paying for, sorry buddy you're guilty. Shit like that just doesn't ever hold up in court.
Quoting Tzeentch
Obviously, the latter is the subject of the thread, the former is not.
Already suggested you put together a thread on these things. Hit it.
(Don't you already have a mile-long list + who where when + means motive opportunity etc?)
Surely if you care this much about Trump and whatever bullshit lawsuit they managed to land, then I'd expect you to be tearing the place down over the actual evil the US perpetrates and has perpetrated on a daily basis.
For all of your sakes I hope on some deeper level you realize how childish this phoney exhibition of moral indignation is. If not, then it really begs the question of what you are doing on a philosophy forum - you obviously don't have the disposition for it. Go back to Twitter or something.
It seems that all agencies will now have a Doge minder.
https://bsky.app/profile/joshtpm.bsky.social/post/3lhx4akbffs2z
You Cant Do That Bro (— Politics Girl · Feb 11, 2025 · 2m:57s)
(I don't know the legal details.)
A day in the Life of Sue Republican (— Sonny Vermont · Jul 5, 2022)
[tweet]https://twitter.com/SonnyVermont/status/1544240522549755905[/tweet]
[b]Trump administration sues New York state over immigration[/b]
[I]Attorney General Pam Bondi said Wednesday that the Justice Department is suing the state of New York and its top officials for prioritizing "illegal aliens over American citizens."
"As you know, we sued Illinois and New York didn't listen. So now you're next," Bondi said....
Bondi, in her first news conference since being confirmed, said “millions” of people “with violent records have flooded into our communities, bringing violence and deadly drugs with them,” and that states like New York with permissive immigration policies were contributing to the problem.
[/i]
I welcome this, because it will lead to a rational analysis of the facts. It's well known that the crime rate among immigrants is lower than the general population. The Trump side can argue that even a single violent act by an immigrant would have not occurred if the particular culprit weren't here.
But there's another relevant factor: undocumented immigrants fearful of being deported are unlikely to report crimes committed against them. That's why police departments have historically refrained from enquiring about this and taking action. Perfect border enforcement is impossible, so my going-in assumption is that this argument will be dispositive.
A trial will constitute a well-moderated debate of the facts. I'll be surpised if Trump wins this, but either way, it will provide a good opportunity for critical thinkers to make an informed, rational judgement.
Every illegal alien has committed a crime. That’s a 100% crime rate.
Sure, though the accusations have been drugs murder rape ... that's a few dealers murderers rapists (according to P01135809) ... (and cat eaters or something :grin:) ... Some of this stuff brings up memories, ah never mind, you wouldn't understand anyway.
Remember when Biden cancelled the border wall then two years later his own party begged him to restart it again? I bet life was a breeze not having to pay attention back then.
[tweet]https://twitter.com/politico/status/1890077369454481896[/tweet]
I’ve asked about it previously and it seems so. Rather than being a thread of discussion it’s just a propaganda channel for Trump evangelism.
Not sure what the point is. Maybe it could be cleaned up of meaningless spam propaganda? If a link doesn’t come with any substantial comment, maybe don’t allow it? Otherwise it’s just gonna fill up with spam.
It is a place for Trump apologists to try out their messages. Perhaps it makes them stronger but sometimes they stop saying particular things.
Health workers out
Regress
Who's this good for anyway?
Sue Republican?
There's some good in it for those who will save or make money.
The fundamental problem is that the negative consequences will be: 1) marginal - the majority of people won't suffer directly from failures to find treatment for diseases. 2) not felt in the short term. New treatments that might have otherwise been developed would not have have made a difference during Trump's term.
Remember when Trump put kids in cages.
https://www.cnn.com/2025/02/14/politics/jd-vance-us-troops-russia-ukraine-intl-hnk?cid=ios_app
Order to drop New York Mayor Adams’ case roils Justice Department as high-ranking officials resign
[I]NEW YORK (AP) — Manhattan’s top federal prosecutor, Danielle Sassoon, and five high-ranking Justice Department officials resigned Thursday after she refused an order to drop corruption charges against New York City Mayor Eric Adams — a stunning escalation in a dayslong standoff over the Trump administration prioritizing political aims over criminal culpability.[/i]
For years, Trumpists falsely accused the DOJ of being politicized, to provide cover for Trump's criminal behavior. Now they're overtly politicizing it.
[tweet]https://twitter.com/doge_eth_gov/status/1890230684570226879?s=46&t=IakyLvDoU1iHVTU4X-LNfg[/tweet]
The debt spiral won't be stopped until we address entitlements. Don't you agree?
Depends on the entitlement. I think out-of-control and unnecessary spending is the main culprit.
That would be true of all borrowing and spending. But it appears the debt to GDP ratio was falling in the decades following the enacting Medicare, so I suppose there are far greater drivers of the debt.
Never! Who would have thought?
The uncontroversial fact is that the deficit reflects spending more than is taken in. Therefore it can be lowered by decreasing spending, increasing revenues, or both.
2024 spending was $6.9 Trillion; revenues: $4.9 Trillion (deficit: $2 Trillion)
Spending breakdown:
24% Health Insurance (Medicare,Medicaid, CHIP, ACA)
21% Social Security
13% Defense
13% Interest on national debt
8% Federal pensions (govmt & military)
7% Economic security programs (Earned income tax credit, child tax credit, SNAP, SSI)
5% Education
2% Transportation
1% Natural resources & Agriculture
1% Science & Medical research
1% Law enforcement
1% International (embassies/consulates, humanitarian aid)
5% All other
Source
Every year's deficit is added to the national debt. Offset by projected decreases in interest rates.
Decreasing domestic spending will be contactionary (less money going into the economy; lower GDP; lower revenue)
Decreasing taxes is expansionary (more money going into the economy, higher GDP, partly offsets the lost revenue).
Deporting undocumented workers is contractionary (fewer consumers spendin $), and reduces revenue (primarily social security and medicare). Also will raise prices because of higher cost of labor.
New tarriffs will increase revenue, but raise prices so it will be contractionary).
-----------------------------
There's no easy solutions, because all options entail both negative and positive aspects.
Thanks for the breakdown.
[tweet]https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1890529020892058055?s=46&t=IakyLvDoU1iHVTU4X-LNfg[/tweet]
[sup]— Anne Applebaum · The Atlantic · Feb 13, 2025[/sup]
Ouch. Is that confirmed? The article paints a glooming picture.
Trump’s assault on USAID leaves China soft power opening in Southeast Asia (— Erin Hale · Al Jazeera · Feb 13, 2025)
China rights monitors suspend work, lay off staff after U.S. aid freeze (— Laurie Chen, Antoni Slodkowski, Clarence Fernandez · Reuters · Feb 14, 2025)
Lawmakers worry China could take over after Trump pauses foreign aid (— Chris Boccia · ABC · Feb 14, 2025)
US out, China in.
Watch Mexico and Canada.
• (pre-emptive) strong appeal to nationalism
• gathered/appeased/rallied religious conservatives (+ extremists + disillusioned)
• threatened other countries
• efforts to sideline (or remove most) non-loyalists, merits less relevant
• moves to ditch some protection of minorities (or vulnerable)
• lied
• parroted Putin regarding Zelenskyy
• some initial steps to suppress free media (Putin is ahead)
• "our country has a sickness and I'm the cure", or whatever (campaign trails)
(Did I miss any?)
For some reason, I can picture him going "If Putin can, watch me".
EDITED links
Here's the response from the German Defense Minister. He had a planned another speech, but had to reply to Vance. Notice that he answers to Vance in German (4 min), then continues with English the prepared speech. Worth listening to the rest of the speech (which could be in the Ukraine thread).
The politician's classic move. Promise the moon, to get elected, then admit it's not possible.
Some expected him to announce a massive withdrawal of troops from Europe. That didn't happen. Yet.
Trump is the only declaring anything in this administration. But it's great days for Russia and China as Trump is rapidly eroding the US position.
Trump really wants to please both the leaders of Russia and China.
:up:
My take on it is that Trump has no favorites, which means he feels exactly the same about the UK or France as he does about Russia or China. So the concept of "allies" is a dead one under the Trump regime.
He's demonstrated that he'll ignore treaties. He may not formally withdraw from NATO (as Bolton predicted), but I seriously doubt he would fulfill a commitment to help if a NATO country were attacked.
Are you under the impression that his "lesson" was well-received by his "students"?
JD Vance attacks Europe over free speech and migration
"The address was met by silence in the hall, and later denounced by several politicians at the conference. German Defence Minister Boris Pistorius said it was "not acceptable".
"The EU's foreign policy chief, Kaja Kallas, characterised Vance as "trying to pick a fight" with Europe, home to some of the US's closest allies."
"Vance went on to criticise the use of laws enforcing buffer zones, saying that free speech was in retreat and alleging that the Scottish government had warned people against private prayer within their own homes."
Unsurprisingly, his speech was well-received by the leader or the right wing "Alternative for Germany (AfD) party"
Yes. You missed the Trump administration overtly using the DOJ to achieve political objectives, by ordering them to drop the prosecution against Eric Adams.
It looks like Macron may be thinking that as well. This from Politico: Macron calls emergency European summit on Trump, Polish minister says.
This is an interesting move also from the point of view of reducing some of the tension between Poland and France that has developed over the last two decades. Macron has stepped away from being the Trump Whisperer.
In his press conference on Feb 13, Trump made it abundantly clear that he completely agrees with Russia with regard to Ukraine.
He said Russia had to go in to Ukraine, to prevent their joining NATO ("They've been saying that for a long time that Ukraine cannot go into NATO. And I'm Ok with that.")
It's Ukraine's own damn fault ("it was not a good war [for Ukraine] to go into, and I think they have to make peace, that's what I think.")
Russia deserves some of Ukraine's territory ("They took a lot of land, and they fought for that land, and they lost a lot of soldiers").
When asked if he viewed "Ukraine as an equal member of this peace process?" Trump responded, in the negative ("It's an interesting question. I think they have to make peace. Their people are being killed, and I think they have to make peace." )
Press conference transcript.
Lol. :lol:
Seems you don't follow Trump when he sees Putin or see his "allies". Oh, he has favorites.
Trust me, when he believes Vladimir Putin more than his own American intelligence services, that tells something. Now he wants to have Russia (and Putin) back on the G7 (making it again G8). And he is constantly talking to Putin and now meeting him to talk about Ukraine, not with Zelenskyi. And he never says any slightest critique about Putin. Never. The guy has an abnormal fascination on Putin, starting when he tweeted that would Putin be his new friend when hosting a Beauty peasant competition, Miss Universe, in Moscow. Putin didn't see him back then... back then he was a not important.
Nearly 10,000 fired as Trump and Musk step up government purge
[sup]— Timothy Gardner, Leah Douglas, Nathan Layne et al · Reuters · Feb 14, 2025[/sup]
Trump Admin fires nuclear staff—Oops, they were in charge of US weapons stockpile
[sup]— ET Online · Feb 15, 2025[/sup]
Quoting Brian Allen · Feb 14, 2025
[tweet]https://twitter.com/allenanalysis/status/1890596433004224592[/tweet]
EDIT: Wait a second, did I miss an opportunity to steal some nuclear stuff...? Dang.
Good point. He does trust authoritarians, and mistrusts democratic leaders. But in terms of making "deals", I don't think he'll intentionally pick Russia over UK. The net result would be the same, because of the trust issue - and his stupidity.
In days gone by, he didn't have the power to summon Putin-the-powerful.
Now he does, both, and revels in it?
(Just conjecture on my part, I'm no telepath.)
Trump Names El Chapo Ambassador to Mexico :D
[sup]— The Borowitz Report · Dec 1, 2024[/sup]
Not at all. He dressed them down as the enemy within, and their countries as totalitarian shit-holes.
Quoting jorndoe
Few things. First about deals, Putin can immediately give him deals (read bribes) or hints of deals which Starmer cannot absolutely do. Dictators can do that. The Prime Minister of UK isn't a dictator, so Trump has a problem with that. This is why he truly can make deals with the Gulf States and Saudi-Arabia, and they surely will play along with that.
Then this mess about personal relations, personal likings and opinions. First of all, what Trump seems to totally forget is that he is the representative of his country, he's not talking as himself. Yet he is talking as he would as a media personality, not the representative of the US about the US policy. Others aren't so direct because of this, but does Trump care, no.
Let's just forget this absolute horse manure of this being a "negotiating tactic" or "4D Chess". It's simple: power simply has gone to Trump's head. He really means what he says. He truly would want to enlarge the territory of the US into Greenland, into Panama. Even to have some kind of arrangement of that wonderful Mediterranean beachfront territory named Gaza strip, without the annoying Palestinians that should go somewhere else. This is what this old man thinks, these are his true objectives. The only "negotiating tactic" is that if he cannot get these territories want he wants, he gets something else. Yet the objective is territorial expansion. There is no hiding of this truth. And this defines everything that Trump is about and what he does. Trump's total ignorance or basically hatred of a "rules based international order" can be understood from this point of view, because all those rules are in his way.
It sounds totally ridiculous, but it isn't. Republicans can attempt to waive off this as acting as in WWE Pro Wrestling, where Vince McMahon puts a sideshow to the wrestling with insane twist plots and always, always stays in character where the fictional character and reality come together. It's a show, even if accidents happen. Yet it's no coincidence that Trump has gotten into the show:
After all, it's World Wrestling Entertainment. Well, international relations isn't entertainment. It's deadly serious. And people will listen to the US president as talking the official line of the state of United States. And territorial annexations or even the talk of them are the Pandora's box that will quickly poison the atmosphere.
Diplomats are diplomatic for a very serious reason as relationship between sovereign nation states can easily sour. Hatred and mistrust can be easily created and hence the act of being "diplomatic". Foreign leaders usually try avoiding commenting the internal politics of another country. But that diplomacy can be then put aside. At some level, being "diplomatic" is stretched too much and the politician has to start to think about his or her domestic appearance. And then the gloves come off.
Secondly, the issue of Trump meeting Putin and possibly making a surrender treaty like with the Taleban in Doha:
The Polish foreign minister summed up quite well the situation in Munich yesterday, when he was asked what he would to tell Trump. Sikorsky responded, as the Polish are quite straight forward:
Sikorsky also mentioned that European control the Nobel Peace prize (which Trump, the man of peace, surely wants) and got laughs for that. Yet his statement was very clear about just what it as stake here. This seems to be missing for many Americans that consider that "Ukraine isn't unimportant and is a costly sideshow" or the kind of "forever war" that basically is done only for the military industrial complex or just go along with Trump.
With Trump acting like Trump, the US Superpower status is in a tailspin. I'm afraid that this will continue just like it has now. Some might argue that it's going to be just four years or until a heart attack of an old man, but the damage has been done. There can always come another Trump or the continuation of this hostile attitudes against the allies and basically total lack of understanding how the position of the US has depended on alliances. Just like if Russia would have a revolution tomorrow and Putin would be ousted like Assad and a pro-Western government would be formed there wished to approach the West, there would always be the doubt of how long the Westernizers are in power before the Putinist return. That change takes really decades and a real effort from the people themselves, just as with the Germans.
Now we might need to take another look at Ukraine's independence. Trump and Putin are in the midst of dividing it between themselves. We'll see how that works out.
And I would be very happy if I'm wrong and it won't be as bad. Giving up on Putin and giving Putin everything, Trump can be the largest weak dick ever that has been on the US presidency. Because Trump isn't dividing anything to himself. What is he dividing for himself? He will be the biggest surrender monkey in all of history if he goes along with Putin as Neville Chamberlain had far more backbone than Trump. You see, Neville did declare war with Germany later.
But then again, he might just have a photo-op with Putin and then do the right thing and not cave in.
Trump has proposed American ownership of some of Ukraine's rare earth mineral deposits, and wants to send American troops to stake these claims.
Do you have something for reference on this?
It's like selling the house for way under the market value, but then arguing that you benefit greatly from the "deal", because the new house owner accepted that you can use the lawnmower. :vomit:
And that guy has done more to stop the war in his first month than Europe and the previous administration have done in years.
Or like giving NATO what it wants. Finally some leaders willing to grasp the reality of the situation and compromise.
Oh I found it myself. Zelenskyi publicly stated how he rejected the Trumpian nonsense:
So now we know. Trump would hand over Ukraine if he would get rare earths of Ukraine (or something). Putin will happily give his sidekick that.
It’s called diplomacy, a skill European’s seemed to have misplaced. Look how well all the silly war-mongering and war-profiteering has worked out until now.
[tweet]https://twitter.com/doge/status/1890849405932077378?s=46&t=IakyLvDoU1iHVTU4X-LNfg[/tweet]
:rofl:
Nothing close to diplomacy. In diplomacy you engage the sides, not leave them out and decide on yourself. And the attempts on war-profiteering are made by Trump. This is Trump's at what he does best: makes lousy deals.
So Trump will meet his dear cherished friend Vlad and they will make then a suggestion, which Trump will then try to force Zelenskyi to accept or face punishment.
Sure, hopefully there is enough spine in Europe not to leave the Ukrainians alone. At least there's support here. I know some that have fought in Ukraine. I salute them, they are real heroes.
Your country isn't broke from 22 million dollars. Not even the 40 billion. It's the mandatory part plus the interest on the debt. Not the discretionary side.
Oh sorry, I mean the United States of America. You are living in Canada, right, so it's not your country.
Sides have been engaged, which is a far cry from what Europe and NATO has done. It’s a shame because it appears the Euros just sat around, having expensive summits, and let the war continue. It must be difficult to sit around and watch neighbors die. But hey, at least they have the comforting rhetoric and sabre-rattling to help them sleep at night.
It’s my country wherever I go, pal. I can still vote if I wanted to. Canada might even be the 51st state.
This is couch cushion stuff. Politicians who ignore entitlement reform are not serious about debts and deficits. Wouldn't you agree?
This is stuff spent in other countries on boondoggle projects that have nothing to do with the American tax-payer. Entitlements, on the other hand, are designed to benefit the tax-payer. The former needs to be addressed before the latter.
The war will work out great for Putin and Trump if they manage to divvy Ukraine's assets and leave the locals with nothing. That, is a lack of diplomacy.
The latter isn't going to be addressed AT ALL by Trump. He's already said entitlements are off the table. So the couch cushions are pulled, DOGE rearranges some deck chairs more efficiently, and the Titanic steams on.
How else will they pay back their loans?
At any rate, the state will be slimmer and tax-payer dollars should be redirected to cover the cost of those areas.
Step into the twentieth century NOS, there's no need to payback loans. Just do what we all do, and pay interest on it forever.
Look:
Quoting Relativist
Quoting NOS4A2
Trump starts Ukraine peace talks as he and Putin plan Saudi meet
[sup]— Francesca Chambers · USA TODAY · Feb 12, 2025[/sup]
Ukraine balks at signing Trump deal to hand over its mineral wealth
[sup]— Veronika Melkozerova, Joe Gould, Jamie Dettmer · POLITICO · Feb 15, 2025[/sup]
Should we expect the Putin excuse-makers and apologists soon?
Hmm... Arrest Putin while he's in the Middle East, get him on a Tulip fertilizer transport to The Hague, trial. No big deal; he'll get a slap on the wrist. I don't think there's anything out on P01135809 at this time (except at home).
Lindsay Graham actually had a good suggestion: that if Russia violates the newer Ukraine borders, this would trigger automatic entry into NATO. Are you good with that?
It's mission: is to work together with local, regional, and global partners to build resilient, inclusive and accountable democracies. "
No doubt, you think this is a waste of money, but many of us feel it is a worthwhile cause. I would have no problem scrutinizing it with a cost/benefit analysis, but that's not the DOGE way. And that's the problem.
As Trump is doing the bidding for Putin, they don't have to.
Trump is likely impatient to get the "peace agreement" on Ukraine as he promised, which totally plays for Putin. Ukraine has to do concessions, Putin, his dear friend, doesn't. Simply put it, Putin can simply continue the war. Bully Trump won't put Putin any limits, but he has the ability to threaten Ukraine.
Hopefully European leaders get their act up as they are now meeting in Paris. They have to understand (and likely do understand, but won't say it) that the Superpower status of the US just ended and Russia is achieving it's greatest victory. The US is run now by a president whose power has gone to his head and hapless weak dicks that will ruin American leadership and status in this World.
Something did look familiar...
Trump’s Schedule F plan, explained
[sup]— Alex Tausanovitch, Michael Angeloni, Erica Newland, William Ford · Protect Democracy · Jun 11, 2024[/sup]
RFK Jr in, Presidential Executive Order signed:
Quoting ESTABLISHING THE PRESIDENT’S MAKE AMERICA HEALTHY AGAIN COMMISSION · The White House · Feb 13, 2025
There are already all kinds of studies (+ ongoing). Some of these areas are heavily studied. Are they fishing for different results in medical treatments (vaccines), food production techniques (GMO), electromagnetic radiation (5G), ...?
That list is peanuts. You also know that, please do not presume other people are silly
This actually makes a lot of sense. Some political processes and election procedures are in dire need of strengthening.
Quoting ssu
Well, the problem seems to me that the EU is basically a rather fledgling state and has indeed resided under Pax Americana for way too long. The paradox is that the EU is only capable of cooperation in times of crisis. It should drastically reorient its policies, realistically wield its economic power and turn very quickly towards building up a credible defense policy. It has to sacrifice parts of its standards of living and that will not be popular with voters.
The NATO alliance was beneficial to both sides. By keeping the EU as US vassals militarily, also benefitted the US greatly. The EU's economic power basically supported US hegemony. If the US does not support the EU militarily, the EU will also withhold its support and its resentment towards the US will have dire consequences for both blocks. The EU should also have accepted Turkey by the way. The problem is, the EU is the Roman empire at the beginning of the Middle Ages.
EU countries were terrible vassals. They never paid any tribute. :grin:
Quoting Tobias
How so?
They had a hearing the other day, the “Eliminating Waste by the Foreign Aid Bureaucracy”. Journalist Michael Shellenberger testified before the senate that CEPPS is a part of the global censorship complex, basically a deep-state foreign election-meddler.
https://www.hsgac.senate.gov/wp-content/uploads/Testimony-Shellenberger-2025-02-13.pdf
A bipartisan bill was introduced last fall to end the funding of international censorship, using your worthy cause as an example of its worst excesses, when it discussed censorship strategies with the government of Brazil as it went about dissenting voices on Rumble and X.
https://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/118/hr9850/text
Nice and friendly ancronym s and copy from a website just isn’t enough for me, nor anyone else who can see beyond their own skull.
https://cnxus.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/usaid-disinformation-primer.pdf
Take a look at at and identify a few things that we should all be outraged about. Personally, it looks to me like solid advice. Here's an example:
Step-By-Step Guide to Combatting Disinformation
I. Do a Visual Assessment
Assess the overall design. Fake news sites often look amat have lots of annoying ads, and use altered or stolen images Overall, does the news article and website seem hi quality?
2. Identify the News Outlet
The Wall Street Journal and CNN are examples of news you haven't heard of the news outlet, search online for more information. Is the news outlet well known, well respected, and trustworthy?
3. Check the Web Domain
Many fake news URLs look odd or end with ".com.co" or (e.g., abcnews.com.co) to mimic legitimate news sites. Does the URL seem legitimate?
4. Check the "About Us" Section Trustworthy news outlets usually include detailed backgro information, policy statements, and email contacts in the "About/About Us" section.
Does the site provide detailed background informa and contacts?
5. ldentify the Author
Fake news articles often don't include author names. If inc search the author's name online to see if he or she is well and respected.
Does the article have a trusted author?
6. ldentify the Central Message
Read the article carefully. Fake news articles often push or viewpoint, have an angry tone, or make outrageous claims Does the article seem fair, balanced, and reasonab
7. Assess Spelling, Grammar, and Punctuation If the article has misspelled words, words in ALL CAPS, poor grammar, or lots of "!!!," it's probably unreliable.
Does the article have proper spelling, grammar, and punctuation?
8. Analyze Sources and Quotes
Consider the article's sources and who is quoted. Fake news articles often cite anonymous sources, unreliable sources, or sources at all.
Does the article include and identify reliable sources?
9. Find Other Articles
Search the internet for more articles on the same topic. If you can't find any, chances are the story is fake.
Are there multiple articles by other news outlets on topic?
10.Turn to Fact Checkers
FactCheck.org, Snopes.com, PolitiFact.com are widely trusted checking websites.
Do the fact checkers say the news story is true?
What is bad about this advice?
Quoting frank
You guys are always obsessed with the same thing. :roll: What do you really expect? To just cut spending on social welfare to feed your paranoia of not trusting the rest of the world?
If your president even has the guts to threaten Denmark, one of NATO's founding states, what advantage is it to keep paying the tributes?
The whole premise is bad. Misinformation and “false beliefs” is not a threat, never has been, and their constant wolf-crying only empowers the most powerful governments, institutions, and corporations to seize control of what is true or false. So not only is it a waste of money, their works puts a chilling effect on press and speech freedom all around the world.
Of course they did. They supported the dollar as world currency, they supported the US arms industry with billions in orders, their greatest scientists went to US universities and they rhetorically backed US interventions.
History tells a different story.
The fascist gnomes' beliefs in dissidents, as if most people are not basically decent human beings, are never a threat of course because fascists cover each other's asses.
Perhaps the past tense is apt here.
But seems that many Americans really aren't seeing what is happening here.
Quoting Tobias
Americans don't seem to understand how much of their prosperity did come from role that the US dollar was given and how much their role in the global arena was based on allies and soft power. They just assume that because of the awesomeness of the US the dollar is used as globally reserve currency. First and foremost, one doesn't need a reserve currency. One can have a basket of currencies and the foreign exchange market is to handle. Not having a reserve currency has been the standard for nearly all of history. It's an exception that has benefited the US for a long time.
And with those alliances the US the military-industrial complex has prospered hugely. Now if that alliance is called into question, Europe will not buy arms from an entity, that it cannot be sure will be there to give possible needed supplies. US has become instantly a very questionably source. Yes, Europe will increase it's defense spending, already defense spending is put to be not included in budgetary and debt limits. But this is because the US cannot be trusted and those euros will go into building up the European defense industry.
I think there's no example in history where a leader of a prominent country voluntary gives his power away to his enemies breaks up the alliance system which earlier it has worked so much for.
How do Americans benefit from the dollar being used in global trade? It's just something the world did because of perceived American stability.
Which region and currency could be considered more stable going forward? Canadian dollar? The Euro? It could very well be that the Canadian dollar takes over if the world look for stability. The Euro is entangled in so much internal problems in the EU and with the threat from Russia it's going up and down all the time; however, the Euro might also be stable because it is entangled in so many nations, making it a true international currency rather than tied to a single nation. If crypto doesn't end up being a world currency, the Euro might if the US dollar keeps getting hammered by the ideocracy that is the US.
Mark Blyth said the Russians asked the Chinese to ditch the dollar (which could have resulted in a run on the dollar). The Chinese refused because they're too heavily invested in the US. The world economy is too integrated right now to do much about the reserve currency. Somewhere down the line they might change, but I don't see how it really makes much difference.
It can also change slowly by more unnoticeably exchanging currency into something else. And only after a more broad overview will it be obvious that nations change currency reserves into something else. In order to not unbalance the economy too much. The Chinese reluctance has more to do with how China use business to become powerful. The obvious mistake that Russia is doing is believing that they can use military force to gain geopolitical power, but that's an old dream for conservatives. The new world order is that of China's strategy to buy in and own companies in other nations while setting up dependence trade between them and the rest of the world. Effectively making them too much of a pillar of world economy to ever be threatened by war. Some understands this and sanction against China, but far too many are naive and stupid when it comes to how China operates. Like, I don't understand how so many naive and stupid business owners in Sweden want to establish factories for Chinese companies, and then when national security deny such business to be established based on national security issues, these CEOs are surprised and sad they couldn't start that business. The lack of education and knowledge about this is astounding. I'd say, regardless of how effective a business gets by using China, cut down and cut out business with China completely until they show themselves to be a nation functioning on human rights values.
I'd say that globally, nations with good human rights values and structures should go into an alliance. Based on low corruption and democratic values within each nation. Build a military security, free trade between themselves, free movement, and a strong political collaboration. Then cut out all the nations who can't live up to those standards only to invite them when they prove to be on that level. It gives an incentive to join the alliance/union, but also a security and protection against the undeveloped shitty nations who don't give a shit about human rights. It then becomes easier to pressure these nations on their violations to human rights. And they will not be able to form that great of an alliance themselves, since they operate on so much corruption and authoritarianism that they eventually implode. We can see it in the BRICS collaboration, that the foundation is so shaky it's a parody of actual international collaboration.
I think that we should ditch the geographical locations and look more towards national values. Like a EU but globally, for stable democracies who operate on human rights. Of course there's fine details in this, but as a broad concept, there's no reason the EU couldn't expand into being in alliance with countries like Canada and New Zeeland for example. Opening up free trade and travel like that will expand the power of the union into something more than just some defense against Europe spiraling back into world wars again.
But we ought to remember that Europe was the cauldron of not only the politics of freedom, but also of repression and absolutism. Now, at this moment, it’s difficult to discern which spirit prevails on that continent.
In Germany you can be arrested for insulting a politician online. 60 minutes just did a little show on it, revealing to millions of Americans the political state of that country.
[tweet]https://twitter.com/60minutes/status/1891282865381429292?s=46&t=IakyLvDoU1iHVTU4X-LNfg[/tweet]
In the same episode the CBS crew follow around German stormtroopers as they raided people’s houses in the middle of the night and steal their laptops, phones, and other properties, for allegedly posting online things the state does not approve of. What appears to be routine in that country is anathema to the bill of rights in the United States, so-much-so that Americans ought to wonder why their tax-dollars go to defending the Old World from outside enemies when perhaps they should look at the ones within.
We know that the current European establishment is averse to so-called political strongmen, and perhaps rightfully so, but the political weakmen (to coin a term) have proven themselves to be not much better. They appear similar in method and lust for control and power, differing only in rhetoric and style. Vance mentioned that the Romanian courts annulled the election and upended democracy when the populist candidate won, on the premise that Russian misinformation promoted him. Democracy and the free-flow of information becomes a hurdle when their side loses, and never themselves are to blame.
All of this should promote one to wonder: Why are we in NATO? And why are American tax-payer dollars supporting this illiberal order?
A typical example of a political weakman would be German diplomat Christoph Heugsen, in response to Vance:
I think you (as well as frank) and others have a weird obsession that we owe you something. A false belief that you are protecting us pro bono. I don't even understand your position since you are Canadian, not American.
NATO and other Western-like and American-ish institutions, like the International Monetary Fund or United Nations, were made to orbit to the side of American interests. It is even funny since the US was the only country in recent history to drop nuclear bombs on another sovereign nation. Hence, I think American foreign policy should have never been entitled to build 'institutions' of the free world. But I understand the context, and Europe was helpless and divided, so we were basically forced to accept the rules of your world.
What you can't do now is destroy what you imposed on us after decades. Dissolving NATO and trying to build an EU military organisation seems the most rational thing to me.
Alas, you guys will always be there. You don't trust the elites of Brussels unless your friends (AfD, for instance) are the ones in charge. It is sad how we always misunderstood Russia. Weren't they the evil here? Because now your 'elected' and 'democratic' politicians are the ones who are threatening. We did a damn effort dispensing Russian natural resources because they were the threat, and look how many economic sanctions our institution put on their shoulders.
Why haven't we done the same when you nuked Japan? Ah, got ya. Because the 'good' ones were acting in that case.
Decades of being a pain in the ass imposing how the world should act: McDonald's everywhere, Hollywood films and flawed Apple devices too. Now, you don't want the rest of the world as your favourite toy because most of us don't buy the paranoia of your convicted felon in charge. :groan:
"Why are we in NATO?" is a question Europeans should ask not you, mates.
I am American.
But you're absolutely right about everything else. I believe the US should not have inserted itself in European affairs, policed the world, and it is culpable for all of which you mention. Its cultural imperialism has rendered the EU into an overtaxed woke tyranny, a state of affairs which many seek to defend. For a while Europeans were too busy enjoying their freedoms to want to defend them. Who knows where you'd be if the Americans hadn't infiltrated the European psyche? I'm not sure. All I know is it needs to end, and that time might be now.
Sorry, my bad. I think I read you were Canadian somewhere in this long thread.
Fine. Thanks. We approached a similar point, and I hope it will be taken politely, but we can't know what the future holds.
I am Canadian.
No, I agree with all you wrote Javi.
You know, Japan started that.
It's better than military influence, right?
How? You really don't know?
This is the problem. Because your whole system of debt spending relies on this!!!
You don't have to care about a possible current account crisis. You don't have to worry about foreign currency reserves. Here's an important part from the link above:
Just think about it this way. Assume that your government needed money, but had to take a loan in euros, and only then changed this to dollars to pay salaries of government workers or to pay social security. Well, evidently the government would have to then to pay that loan back in euros, and you would have to have a foreign currency reserve. Now if you would then just do what you do now, print money, and take that debt from the central bank, this would weaken the dollar. Then those euro-debt would rise in value and be an even bigger problem. You aren't in charge of euros, the ECB is.
But as your dollar is the reserve currency, you don't have to give a fuck about this. You can always print more dollars! Because crucial things like oil are bought and sold in US dollars, even by third party countries. Because they are OK with this, because of the whole goddam "international ruled based order", which your brain dead president is now trying to destroy, because somehow it's bad for you.
So don't think it's just the awesomeness of the US economy, it's basically what your greatest generation gave to you by winning WW2 and being the only major country around that wasn't bombed to shit. Keynes tried to talk some role for the pound or the idea of Bancor, but no, it would be the US dollar as the reserve currency.
And this is why you should understand that when Putin or Xi Jinping talk about the unfair edge given to the dollar, it's a direct attack against the US.
Why Putin loves gold. They have that in Russia too, and you cannot print it.
I think all large banks keep foreign currency reserves.
Yeah.
Coming from an administration that itself is a word police erasing wrong words government website and punishes new agencies if the dare to talk about "Gulf of Mexico". Yet that isn't the ironic thing here, it's that an administration which doesn't care at all about the separation of powers and simply uses executive orders as coming from an absolute monarch then comes to preach about the freedom of speech with making overtures to the elections of specific countries.
So hell your freedom in JD Vance's speech, it doesn't have anything to do with freedom or democracy or what a republic and a justice state should stand for. Everything is just partisanship, supporting your party and there are no values at all, just beneficial and advantageous political positions. Only when it would be a democrat president, you would be for the limitation of executive power and giving back the Congress the role it has (assuming you would have majority there) and would be worried about the separation of powers or the independence of the courts. But when you have the power, you are voting to have the Caesar. Because evidently the Republic doesn't work.
And many, including my own president, made the correct conclusion of JD's scolding: this was far more for the American audience (people like you) than it was to engage Europeans.
Quoting NOS4A2
And the elections are rescheduled for May. So your pro-Putin candidate can win then, if the Romanians really want him.
[quote]Former liberal leader Crin Antonescu, the candidate announced by the coalition formed by the Social Democratic Party, the National Liberal Party, and Hungarian minority party UDMR for the presidential elections, stated that far-right politician C?lin Georgescu should be able to run in the upcoming elections. According to the schedule agreed by the ruling coalition leaders, the presidential elections should be held again in May.[/Quote]
Reserves of private banks aren't the same as the reserves kept by the central bank. Private banks use the given currency of the country, they don't have to worry about the current account.
Only in Russia the accounts of the private banks are also the accounts of the government. No really, even before Putin, it was like Gazprom financed the war in Chechnya during the Yeltsin era, because Gazprom had money and the Russian government didn't.
I'm not sure that if the US Navy goes to fight the Chinese, it will be solely financed by Merril Lynch or Chevron.
The US debt is mainly to US banks.
Do notice, that already the largest owner of US treasury debt is the Central Bank itself. When that is the majority ownership, guess what happens at some instance?
What?
Think about it. If all the debt that you put out is bought by your own central bank, what will that mean to the dollar?
And by all means this isn't just about the US. Everybody is doing the same.
Nothing
I don’t know. At least military action has obvious counter-actions and power plays that are quantifiable. This entanglement into every corner of global trade and industry gives them insight into so much more than traditional espionage and an ability to circumvent normal channels of influence.
People in the west are so naïve as to think that a communist state would operate on the same divide between the free market and government, but there’s absolutely nothing free about the market in China and therefor any influence by corporations with takeovers and establishing business in other nations is opening a back door into their nations that people believe is just about some Chinese company… no, it’s both the company and state involved.
This is why national security in almost all free democracies warn about Chinese companies growing too powerful within their borders. Compared to the Vodka-fueled absolute moron-state that is Russia, China is smart and plays the long game into power. The only thing at the moment that can ruin things for them is their own economy collapsing.
Hear, hear!
Monetary economics is something that people should know. It truly impacts everybody.
I disagree. It has very much engaged the Europeans. It is viewed as a Crisis, a major turning point.
With this in mind, I have started a new thread:
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/15786/european-or-global-crisis
Especially at the German elections, which rather upset both the acting administration and the opposition (only with the AfD cheering for the support they).
Well, perhaps European countries should start to root for the Democrats to take back their country from the threat of tyranny of Trump and Trump's efforts to dismantle the Republic. That I guess would warm the Atlantic ties, right?
People try still to be diplomatic and to work with the Trump government. That's the point here.
We should not root for anyone but to build a shield capable of protecting us from the coming high-voltage wave when the last pillar of their democracy finally collapses.
Last I heard your president was raving with celebrities and taking drug tests.
JD’s historic speech wasn’t for Europeans, it was for the stuffy bureaucrats in the room, many of whom were wearing military uniforms for some reason. In fact Vance defended the European citizens who were roundly silenced by the weak commissars of European governments for the smallest of speech and thought crimes. Does anyone in the EU do the same? The parasitic tentacles of the EU better find another host to suck the blood from because the Great Satan is no longer going to stand around and allow it, especially when the Old World descends back into the tyranny that ruined it in the first place.
Well that didn't sound psychotic at all.
It’s text. It doesn’t sound like anything. Are the voices in your head throwing you off?
That is strikingly similar to a Speech by Prime Minister Viktor Orbán given at a meeting of the Patriots for Europe Party.
Some of the more purple bits would also be at home at the Alternative for Germany where Vance gave a cheery high five.
Strikingly similar? It's not even close. I'm not sure if you're joking or trying to pull a fast one.
That was the former prime minister Sanna Marin, a social democrat, quite a clueless character, yet let's say an average politician that handled COVID and NATO-membership well:
Our new President is Alexander Stubb, a conservative, studied in the US, ex-foreign minister and ex-prime minister and a far better politician that is quite apt in international politics.
It's like confusing Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez with Marco Rubio. But hey, both are American politicians with Latin heritage, so not much difference anywhere in their political views or abilities, right?
Quoting NOS4A2
You think this stupid culture war rant goes anywhere near the severity of basically what just happened? How clueless can you really can be here? The country that is by a straight line 9 kilometers from myself is hellbent on building it's lost empire back by attacking it's neighbors and cutting sea cabals connecting my country to others just 40 kilometers from me. Yet then culture warrior JD Vance calls that "Russia isn't our threat", but the stupid brain dead culture war? Oh, because there's these excesses that have happened to individuals, all that culture war DEI stupidity as that would be the most important this and then he's rooting for German party of his liking?
Above all, this was a security conference, so that's why there were so many military people around, which shouldn't come to you as a surprise to NOS4A2. What I found was that Vance, as Trump, isn't interested in security policy. Nope, fuck it. Put the comments of Vance, Hegseth and Trump together and Europe has to understand that at least for this time, the US has by itself given up on it's Superpower status and seems to be doing the bidding of Putin.
Europe really has to take care of itself and has to simply to stop listening to Trump. The US is no more the leader of the West so we really shouldn't listen to it at all. Just let him alone with his tweets and tantrums. Likely Trump will get his way and get out of NATO.
The only thing the EU should do is to approach Canada and get a trade deal with it as to deal with the inevitable Trump tariffs hitting. We absolutely cannot rely on US gas exports. Canada would be a far better and trustworthy trading partner.
The sound of silence.
Don't bother with him, he's a zealot. I think this thread would be much better if people just ignored his rants. We have to endure the constant spam of Trumploving tweets and crap, but don't feed the troll, then it gets worse.
[quote=NY Times, 19 Feb]As far as Mr. Trump is concerned, Russia is not responsible for the war that has devastated its neighbor. Instead, he suggests that Ukraine is to blame for Russia’s invasion of it. To listen to Mr. Trump talk with reporters on Tuesday about the conflict was to hear a version of reality that would be unrecognizable on the ground in Ukraine and certainly would never have been heard from any other American president of either party.
In Mr. Trump’s telling, Ukrainian leaders were at fault for the war for not agreeing to surrender territory and therefore, he suggested, they do not deserve a seat at the table for the peace talks that he has just initiated with Mr. Putin. “You should have never started it,” Mr. Trump said, referring to Ukrainian leaders who, in fact, did not start it. “You could have made a deal.”
Speaking at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida, he went on: “You have a leadership now that’s allowed a war to go on that should have never even happened.” By contrast, Mr. Trump uttered not one word of reproach for Mr. Putin or for Russia.[/quote]
The 'initial talks' in Riyadh were about 'doing business' with Russia. You would have to wonder what kind of money Putin would put on the table for Trump Inc for such treatment.
So this is it. The great betrayal has begun. The USA will walk away from Ukraine and align itself with Putin against NATO. This is, of course, even to Republicans, a complete outrage, but who's going to stand up?
Sorry, I don’t follow Finnish politics. No matter who leads, I bet they’re beholden to Brussels.
No, I do feel bad for the EU members and all those countries who have essentially been doing the bidding of the US for decades. I don’t know why they never disengaged years ago, especially given the thankless anti-US sentiment which seems regnant there. How you can trust the leaders who have left you so unprepared to stand on your own feet while rattling their sabres and funding that war, I’m not sure, but I doubt any change is forthcoming.
But it was only a matter of time until that umbilical was cut. And now, given the totalitarian trends of those governments, it seems like the perfect time to wean yourself off the tit. Don’t you think?
Nor should the US trust trading with the EU. The U.S. has a 2.5% tariff on Europe’s vehicle imports, for example, while the EU charges U.S. imports at 10%. It’s bad when Trump does it but we’re silent when the EU does it, it seems. All they have to do is be fair and they have nothing to fear, but I don’t think fair trade is in their capacity.
In 1939, Stalin and Hitler made a deal.
In 2025, Lavrov and Rubio met, and Putin and Trump made a deal. [sup](? but I'm no prophet, so let's see)[/sup]
(More plain lying to everyone's faces, and no US politicians/leaders call'em out, except so-called "fake news"?)
Meanwhile, Putin and Trump's chummy dealings don't mention/address Russian ships roaming northern waters, so Canada and Greenland need US protection from them.
Many sellouts, much spinelessness, cowardice, hypocrisy, all that.
, you just want all of them/it to go away, right? Countries, states, laws, ... And any tidbit that can somehow be cast negatively (an exercise in rhetoric) is hence aired to that end? :D
Sure, but private actors can’t hold it, and I think a certain reserve gets more “popular” if both the private and government sectors can hold capital. There’s also an incentive to hold a singular currency as the more who does it, the more stable it gets. That’s why the US dollar’s gotten so stable.
What do you mean by that? Just remember that if Brussels or basically EU bureaucracy is whimsical and inefficient, the integration process still does have it merits. Especially after we witnessed what happened to the UK and the absolute disaster that was. Nope, post-Brexit UK was a proof that in the end, the positive aspects overlie the negative ones.
Do not fall in with your populism ideology on everything. European integration wasn't made because it serves financial gains to someone, it emerged because of the millions of Europeans killed in two World Wars. Our continental civil wars had just become so lethal that a dramatic change had to be done.
Quoting NOS4A2
Actually, there hasn't been anti-US sentiment in Europe, just as there hasn't been anti-US sentiment in Canada. Of course, that can change, even in the country you live thanks to Trump.
Quoting NOS4A2
Just what governments are you referring to? The US with the totalitarian Trump administration which doesn't care a shit about the separation of powers? Perhaps.
Quoting NOS4A2
I would think that now as Trump is hellbent in ruining everything, the EU should approach Canada and perhaps also Mexico. These three entities should start working on trade between themselves in order to compensate for the damage Trump is doing. I think it's extremely reckless to trust the US on anything. Trump isn't a glitch, it's what Americans want and that makes the US a very untrustworthy trading partner.
Canada could join the EU? Perhaps! :grin:
Aligning itself with Putin against NATO is the real issue here. But Trump simply doesn't get it.
At Doha peace talks Trump made a disastrous peace treaty (which Biden then fullfilled). Yet that was just Afghanistan. And then the US had already lost Central Asia to Russia. Now if Trump makes another disastrous peace treaty (or overtures for that), next in line is Europe.
Trump clearly hasn’t.
Next one to try the tight rope walking will be UK's Keith Starmer. As if Trump would be interested in hearing what Starmer says. But hey, Trump hasn't yet met the new King (or at least Charles as a king), so I guess that there's something that Trump would be interested in the UK.
I think the basic problem is that too many European leaders act if Trump would be a normal political leader, which he isn't. They ought to simply be far more tougher, because with that they'll get the idiot's respect. Publicly humiliating him won't work.
This is the stuff of nightmares. And it kept me awake last night. //ps thought this was the Ukraine thread, probably a better place for this issue.//
[I]
"On National Slam the Scam Day and throughout the year, we give you the tools to recognize Social Security-related scams and stop scammers from stealing your money and personal information.?
Help protect your loved ones and people in your community this Slam the Scam Day by:?
Learning about the latest scams. Information can empower you to quickly recognize a scam. Signs of a scam include:
An unexpected problem or offer of a prize or benefit increase..."
Pressure to act immediately, and
A request for an unusual payment like cryptocurrency, gift cards, gold bars, and wire transfers...[/i]
@NOS4A2 must be outraged at this censorship of free speech! Surly scammers have a right to say whatever they want.
Viktor plays your song:
Quoting ibid
Bannon sang a similar tune, especially in the Breitbart days. Is that not where you go for your "Deep State" updates?
[sup]— Reanna Smith · Irish Star · Feb 18, 2025[/sup]
Discredit, take over, or remove? More Putinism?
Well, all critique is "TDS", "fake news", "woke" or whatever cultural trend they dislike today, right?
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/kash-patel-said-come-journalists-now-hangs-fbi-candidacy-rcna182661
‘LONG LIVE THE KING’: Trump increasingly embraces monarchical imagery
[sup]— Danny Nguyen · POLITICO · Feb 19, 2025[/sup]
"CONGESTION PRICING IS DEAD. Manhattan, and all of New York, is SAVED. LONG LIVE THE KING!" –President Donald J. Trump (— The White House · twitter/x · Feb 19, 2025)
Think he'll declare himself Jesus returned, too?
They don't care because they don't understand anything. That's how he got there in the first place. The majority of people who got him into office are uneducated and totally unaware of anything outside their small community bubble they live in.
Democracy in the US is not working. You can't have a representative democracy when a majority of people gets manipulated into voting against their own self-interest. So many voters regret voting Trump now, why? Because the veil fell after he won and actual reality kicked in. This shows how the US isn't a real democracy. If the US wants to be, they need to install laws and regulations that makes it impossible for someone like Trump to get into power.
But the US system is lazy and without vision or interest in actual politics. The US system embraces individual powerplays, it has fine-tuned itself to only incorporate individuals who have seats of power to gain money and reputation, it's not made for actually running the country.
It's the different authorities under the government that through bureaucracy barely manage to hold the country together. And now Musk guts out these people.
In the previous Trump period, these authorities held on and did their job, but now every layer and section of the US system is infected by the stupidity of him. Maybe the "crash" I've spoken about will come sooner than I thought. When things get so bad in the US that everyone does the reasonable thing and removes Trump from office. That's not corruption, that's the logical thing to do when someone is unfit for leadership.
And if that doesn't happen, the amount of people he guts through this chaos, there will be a lot of loners affected who want retribution. If we thought two attempts on his life was much, I don't think that will slow down. With what Musk is doing, and the reckless behavior Trump shows, how many loners will attempt retribution?
It's absolute chaos.
This is the problem of democracy which Plato described in The Republic, and the reason why he designated democracy as the worst, or most corrupt form of government, to be surpassed in corruption only by tyranny which doesn't even qualify as a form of government. The average citizen is not inclined to educate oneself, concerning what constitutes good leadership, and ends up voting for whoever promises to please them.
In theory, democracy looks like the greatest form of government. In practise though, politics is an extremely difficult, and time consuming field of study. If a person doesn't engage oneself in this study it is likely that one will not make a good choice in the vote. To avoid the guilt of whimsy, the voter succumbs to populism or "mob rule".
Which is why I've always proposed that political philosophers need to work on a successor to our current democracy. Something that begins with democracy, but evolve it into something that synthesize the people with the politicians and bypass the biases and manipulation that is inevitable through our current systems.
If the people are too stupid, lazy or uneducated to function in a democracy, and politicians so fundamentally interested in power that they would form tyranny, if they could. Then the act of intellectuals and philosophers should be to figure out a new form of government that mitigate the problems of both paths.
As I see it, there's a problem with how many functioning democracies today, fundamentally just concluded that "democracy is the end goal", just because it exists in relation to the tyranny of the world. They can only see it in this good light because of the contrast to the evils of the world. So they're blind to the problems democracy has in itself.
If people could ignore the tyranny and authoritarianism of the world and evaluate democracy in of itself, figuring out how to evolve it to another form, then that is the key to solve the issues we see in the US today.
But even so, the US system is bad even when comparing to other democratic nations. Why does the US roll out the carpet for someone like Trump, but Scandinavian nations are able to keep the bullshitters mostly away or subdued in parliament? There's a fundamental difference in government that makes a nation more or less able to be corrupted. If the US would change its system, abandon the constitution and modernize it rather than embrace it as some form of "word of God", then things would become much better for the US and the world.
The problem is that the US fought for being independent from monarchy, but in turn created a democracy that essentially operates as a pseudo-monarchy, in which King Trump basically acts however he wants, illegal or not, and there are no consequences.
The problem is that the people and rest of government in the US, just accepts it. Rather than remove him from office. The impeachment process and consequences is just a show, it's just fiction, there are no consequences for it.
Previous presidents and people in power removed themselves and resigned out of a sense of responsibility. There was virtue in handling your power with respect and care to the nation, and that virtue was a sign of high status.
Now that this virtue is gone and there's only nihilism and self-centered interests at play, there's no guardrail against people like Trump.
You are essentially winning on being anti-virtuous. You become popular by being a "bad guy". People finds it cool and edgy. And the US system isn't built for that. The US system is built on the premise that the people in power act responsible on their own, that they act virtuous.
But the Reagan administration pushed in the extreme individualism that defined the modern era. You only have yourself to be virtuous towards, fuck the people, fuck everyone else.
So the system breaks as there are no virtuous, responsible people left and there are no actual guardrails to make sure there are, keeping the monsters out of office.
This is the core of the problem.
[tweet]https://twitter.com/warlorddilley/status/1892656617323143561?s=46&t=IakyLvDoU1iHVTU4X-LNfg[/tweet]
Trump comes close to the red line of openly defying judges, experts say
Is the United States in a Constitutional Crisis?
"O Canada!" :party:
Congrats, Team "Fifty-first State", for overtime defeat of Team DOGEbag!
2025 World Hockey Champs! :clap:
Oh, please can the name "orange poodle" spread online, it would anger that waste of space of a man so much.
[sup]— Senator Bernie Sanders · Feb 20, 2025 · 21m:40s[/sup]
Sanders is the real deal, genuine. And he's fine with me disagreeing with whatever policy he'd like.
A couple of thousand years ago, the first Roman emperor, Augustus, started turning the Republic into an empire. He told Romans he was the only one who could save Rome, and they believed him; he kicked off an imperial cult. A couple hundred years later, under Commodus, the Pax Romana ended, and the Republic had become an autocracy at the whims of the emperor.
Europe has already started to close it's borders and for example Denmark has always been one of the countries against mass migration. We have already closed totally our eastern border against the international agreements that we've signed. And the EU is OK with that as they understand the threat of hybrid attacks. So this is all bullshit intended to create this idea of "woke Europe" that doesn't handle these issues, as if populist loonies are the only answer.
And furthermore, the whole "culture war" issue is meaningless chatter compared to the Pandora's box now opened by the US surrender. And I think these people are totally clueless on what is happening. Vance believes the 4-D chess negotiation tactic of Trump. As if Trump would suddenly change for the Putin's happy poodle -stance that he has had for even earlier than his presidency.
Reckon it will happen under this cast of actors? Or might it take more productions of this play to be actualized?
In other words, how resilient is the Republic of the USA?
In your opinion?
curious smile
Not resilient enough in my view. Trump is methodically dismantling and dissolving independent agencies and actors and replacing them with party apparatchiks and people who will swear loyalty to him over the Constitution. He is acting so brazenly and with such reckless haste that the judicial system cannot keep pace. He’s also now protected by the Supreme Court guarantee of immunity for all official acts by a President. You may remember he said on the campaign trail, vote for me in 2024, you won’t have to vote again. He walked it back later but I think he really meant it. We are watching a right wing takeover of the American Republic.
You don't think that there's enough wanna-bes (power hungry) in the Congress to slow the Trump march down? Or don't they have the political/constitutional power to curb a runaway president? Or is it more of a "Roman Senate vs Julius Caesar" rerun?
Unfortunately, the overall impression is one of lacking the resilience for those reasons (et al) that you outlined.
Insightful and considered as expected, thank you.
And, no, your pocket is not wet. Just we're in agreement, this time.
thankful smile
Time to get thinking and doing with the short, medium and long term implications at the top of the agenda.....perhaps.
Probably need to scrub out the local political toilet first.
Not meant as commentary one way or the other party wise, just how they do or don't interact. That's what needs the dunny duck/Ajax clean.
Pie in the sky?
wishful smile
Maybe?
Better ere on the side of caution, even here.
sad self preservative smile
Do you hold the view that America will be a Christian nationalist dictatorship before the end of this year?
And the part of the US who don't want this and oppose this will just sit there and take it? That's just lazy.
When there's an actual takeover into authoritarianism, people will pick up arms. I think Alex Garland's "Civil War" had a pretty clear setup for why the civil war started. A president doing a third term and who used force on his own people when they opposed it. A president like this would be lynched before ever making reality of his authoritarian fantasy.
With how power-hungry and attention-seeking senators and politicians are, why isn't there republican politicians who take advantage of the current situation and oppose Trump? Like, use any consequence against them to build a following among republican voters who don't want someone like Trump, but still want a republican politician?
It's the perfect time for someone with their own politician ambition to stand up and make a name for themselves since Trump is the only one in focus when talking about the republican party. So anyone who's blatantly and harshly standing against him would stand out so much that the marketing creates itself.
Build a following among rational people, form alliances with the Lincoln project and any republican who's stuck under Trump against their actual will.
People and politicians need to be brave enough to risk criticism from colleagues. Where's the damn fighting spirit? It's remarkable how lazy and apathetic the opposition is.
Downright fucking pathetic really.
If they’re not, it won’t be through lack of trying.
Quoting Christoffer
There are some protests starting to appear but it’s going to take a lot more than protests. The Democrats don’t have a clear leader.
:100:
Dems need someone who's smart and articulate to regularly put forth an easy to understand narrative (i.e. the truth).
But something to bear in mind, is that DJT is making an enormous number of enemies. Who in the intelligence community or defence is likely to support him, after the way he’s denigrated them? He’s trying to replace everyone with MAGA loyalists, but how many are there, really? For every MAGA fanatic there must be half a dozen disenfranchised careerists who bear him only animosity. If push really came to shove and it comes down to ordering troops in against protestors…….
Quoting Wayfarer
A problem is that most non-Trumpists will fulfill their Constitutional duty. Their only discretion will be to reject an illegal order. Sending troops against protestors has a legal loophole Trump will use: he has discretion to call anything an "insurrection" and use troops (per the Insurrection Act). Consider how he used his discretion to label Mexican cartels "terrorists", so he can bomb them if he wants to.
Any visible opposition to DJT from these areas will be spun to give DJT the "Proof" of the "Deeeep State". At least in the current environment.
Quoting Wayfarer
The protestors will be labelled... traitors, unamerican, mostly illegal immigrants, deviants... the usual tropes, by DJT.
And who will protest such labelling? Obviously not the "average" US citizen or that would have happened by now. So far just tacit support for the President.
Sounds like similar vibs happening elsewhere in the world not just the US.
Just surmising.
sad smile
Agreed. You're more succinct.
smile
They don't have a clear leader, but they have a clear cause. But it isn't enough, just look at younger generations who don't care about protesting or anything.
I'm trying hard not to be an older person complaining about a younger generation as is always the case in all generations. But there's something off with younger people today not caring for how to run a nation. They are generally speaking so brainrotted on social media and trash culture that they seem to be totally oblivious and uneducated about how to actually care for democracy.
I think people in power have taken advantage of the apathy that western stable democracies formed and how lazy people within these nations truly are. The constant feed of bullshit that the common people eats up and is drawn to like flies have placed them in a state of trance-apathy, wandering around like zombies without any thought going into politics and how to care for the society they wander around in.
For these young people, "the world" and "the nation" is some fiction they experience in film, series, YouTube, TikTok and games. It's not something "real".
Like, I tried to ask a group of young people why they aren't putting any effort into supporting someone their age to go into politics with representing their issues, primarily being able to afford their own place to live and the problems of getting a decent income and the combined response was simply "there's no point" and "we're just doomed".
It's absolute stupidity.
It might be that these young people had so many helicopter parents that they never developed a necessary sense of responsibility. That without it, they always seek some other authoritarian figure to take care of things, take care of them. And when such a figure isn't around as they get into adulthood, they simply give up because they have no ability to take actual responsibility for themselves or other people.
While this is a generalization and there are some young people trying to fight for themselves, it's remarkably pathetic how few there are. Compare that to any other previous generation and how large young movements were. Either through counter-culture or outright political movements.
If young people continue to act like spoiled kids never growing up and taking responsibility for themselves and their future, then this generation will be named the pathetic generation or the apathetic generation.
Especially since they're "making it cool" to just attach themselves to some older authoritarian leader. Essentially just affirming the notion that this generation is unable to grow up and continues to be children with some daddy or mommy that they want taking care of them.
There's never been a better time to shout... grow up!
That the concentration of market into a few hands, who are in allegiance with the central and highest power in the nation, is... in fact, the road to actual fascism.
And as long as it isn't prevented, it is an actual risk as this has been demonstrated building up the power behind the fascist states of the past.
It is rather interesting that in a time when all of the largest tech companies face anti-trust law court cases, they all gather around Trump and aligning with him. One has to wonder what has been said between them all off-record. But it seems pretty clear that Trump promised them something as long as they comply. And since Zuckerberg and Bezos, at the same time, removed DEI departments and got rid of fact-checking on Facebook and other social media, it's safe to assume they are all in allegiance with Trump in order to not be broken up or get into trouble with the law.
How is it not obvious what Trump is doing? How many laws needs to be broken? People getting angry when he says that he is above the law, but do nothing when he acts on it.
Isn't there enough here to warrant his arrest? Because this is as corrupt and fascist as Russia and the people of the US just accepts it. What a pathetic nation the US has become.
The US Vice President, J D Vance, is a fan of Curtis Yarvin, who is anti-democracy, and coined "RAGE" (Retire All Government Employees), Dark Enlightenment, and all that. This coincides somewhat with Trump's Schedule F, and some of Musk/DOGE's heavy-handed activities. Vance is 2nd in line for the US Presidency.
The US Speaker, Mike Johnson, is a young Earth creationist, holding that the Earth is about 6000 years old (actually the universe is about that age, too). The private/quiet Johnson can be described as a Christian nationalist, and has been working on a number of related projects. It's the Bible first (his reading thereof), plus whatever fringe, but he's not stupid. In most democracies, he wouldn't have much chance of such a high political position. Johnson is 3rd in line for the US Presidency.
Maybe the Secret Service should take extra care to keep Trump safe?
OK, tossing the tinfoil hat now. All better.
He should tell Trump there’s no use drilling for oil, then.
Trump is still popular, and they fear the Trump croud. And Elon Musk.
After Americans have felt what those sweet tariffs in a trade war mean for their expenses, they will still support Trump. And the diehards will support even after the economy goes into recession.
Only then will they go after him. Now the start is that they correct the evident lies, like Ukraine didn't start the war.
* * *
The likely new Chancellor and election winner Merz didn't hold back on his critique of Trump & the Gang.
Trump did congratulate the victors of the German elections, the first diplomatically reasonable thing to do, if he doesn't want to anger the conservatives even more. Likely outcome I assume is a coalition of the CDU/CSU with the social democrats.
If Trump thinks the CDU will get in bed with the AfD, think again...
But where the US is now is somewhere where we haven't seen it:
Alongside North Korea among others...
The incoming chancellor of Germany says it well, adding to the comment that US interference in the elections was worse than Putin's interference:
Trump is doing such great job in alienating the former allies of the US, than even Putin has to intervene in his moment of triumph to get his plans through, as Trump in his stupidity would wreck it from the start.
I guess some kind of insanity has taken over Americans, as the Trump supporters simply cannot see how detrimental all this is to the position of the US in the global stage. It boils down to this ludicrous idea that somehow the US doesn't need the World or it's prosperity has nothing to do with the World outside it's own borders.
Yet, if the US rid themselves of this cancer and forms a new paradigm of politics with an exclusion of charlatans and the corrupt, they may return their credibility. Most people know that what drives and leads the US today is a sickness, not a vision.
The sickness need to die and the world waits for the US immune system to deal with it.
At any rate, if Germany is any indication, it appears they squandered that opportunity and followed their natural inclination towards totalitarianism. Massive censorship regimes and online “safety” bills brought about by frigid commissars stand largely unopposed by the people they are meant to censor, and routinely do. And it appears no party of freedom rises to correct the trajectory, just right-and-left versions of the same regime.
Now that their benefactor pulls away and no longer supports their chosen trajectory, it’s no surprise they nip at the hand that has fed them for so long. What more can be said about the birthplace of fascism and communism, save for that the European Union is beginning to look like the Soviet one.
Americans and American companies are now free to bribe officials in foreign countries. This encourages extortion - representatives of US companies could previously reject demands for bribes by virtue of the fact that they would be breaking US law.
AA: you missed everything. And the CIA missed the GOP candidate in Butler PA.
AA: The main goal is to destroy the Deep State. There's going to be a lot of collateral damage.
me: Like the state? :smile:
me: Canada, Greenland, ..., don't want to be enrolled in the US, by the way. Is the alienation part of destroying "the Deep State"? // You know that Xi and Putin are having a field day, yes?
AA: Yes. One of the main promises was Schedule F, which would destroy many bureaucracies. These agencies over time have suffered capture by the CIA and DNC. They both do good and bad, are slush funds for unapproved spending, fund NGOs which then catalyze coups. // It's time to destroy the state as we know it. A lot of guilty and innocent people will be destroyed in the process.
me: "he would see this country burn if he could be king of the ashes" // — Varys · https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2178798/characters/nm0384152 // "an evil man will burn his own nation to the ground to rule over the ashes" // — someone · https://www.truthorfiction.com/sun-tzu-rule-over-ashes-quote/
me: so what does Canada / Greenland have to do with any of that?
AA: It's not the 'nation' that's being burned. It's the Deep State. Trump is extremely pro-nation, a libertarian nationalist. He's anti-other-nations, anti-couping other nations, and old school populist/industrialist/working-man-jobist. // Canada and Greenland are strategic.
me: Whuzzat mean? Concretely, I mean. // (Then there's Panama, Mexico, Mar-a-Gaza.)
AA: Canada being a state aids in the oncoming multi-polar world. Both countries would be stronger and more prosperous for it. // Greenland will provide future shipping route, minerals, and a stronger northern position which China and Russia would we weaker due to. // Panama and Mexico are obvious. // Gaza is weird. It's a failed defeated state. The US would have an economic and geopolitical foothold there by rebuilding it along with other Arab nations. The main goal being to unify that area making Iran an uninvited party.
me: so, annexation?
AA: territories, states...
me: Canada and Greenland become parts of the US? // (Or should I read your comments differently)?
AA: Yes. If the argument can be made.
me: You don't see any problem here?
AA: No. I'm a fan of the Monopoly on Violence....because hostile states among us believe in it.
me: what if you're wrong?
AA: Those that execute the monopoly on violence find themselves in a state of being wrong, when they over use that argument and other with that same right execute it against them. // At that time a state can as, if losing in a conflict where and when they would have done something differently. // ...keeping in mind the idea of "wrong" and "right" are strategic rather than moral.
me: what if you're wrong on whatever rationale/assumptions? // A country turning on itself is the supreme victory of adversaries.
AA: That's what's happening right now in the USA. The USA has been terribly violent (regime change, coups, wars) since WWII. It's people are reassessing how the next 50 years looks and it's more isolationist. So securing the region according to the Munroe Doctrine and preparing for multipolarity is the better pathway.
me: I meant what if your rationale/assumptions are off? (you've expressed a few here)
AA: As in "mistakes". It's game theoretical.
me: well, mistakes with inter/national consequences. (Have you run simulations or something?)
AA: Making mistakes, not taking risks, .... all of it has consequences. // Of course not. But we may be entering an age wherein AI is making the tough decisions.
me: What consequences are you seeing? // Say, what if you're off about CIA in general or specifically (above)?
AA: _ is censoring my discussing this.
What do you make of it?
(Though tempting, I haven't brought up any psychological terms.)
Or..."AA" is an alcoholic (former member of AA) who fell off the wagon.
Well, here's the problem... that sickness dying is the problem. What else will die with it?
Likely when the effects of those so lovable tariffs and trade wars hit Americans, they won't be so happy about Trump. Yes, you can have the democrats taking back the Congress and later the Presidency, or a new party or parties will emerge to do that perhaps. But the damage has been done. People aren't going be sure if populists came back later into power in the US. And Trump and the Trumpist will blame the foreigners for everything. They won't admit that the fault was Trump himself, that is for sure.
Take for example the next thought experiment. Assume that Russians finally would get tired about Putin and his kleptocracy and the whole regime would falter in a revolution. Russians would have had enough the imperial bullshit and opt to establish relations with the West. Fine, but you think people would again do what they did after the Cold War? That Russia is changed forever? The threat of Putinists retaking power would be looming there. You really have to make a true change totally in the wholee society in order to others to believe you have changed. Like Germany did after WW2. Well, that's not likely to happen in Russia. Just as likely as Trump, like Brexit for the British, isn't going to be so bad that all think it was terrible like... the Third Reich. The Brexiteers are quite lively and active even now. Hence likely the US will continue as an untrustworthy or faltering ally, and hence it's 80 year reign after WW2 has basically just ended. This won't go over.
Just look at above at the totally delusional rant that our favorite American that lives in Canada just wrote earlier in this thread . The scolding rant from JD Vance in Munich has a firm believer there. Someone who thinks that the culture war is the more pressing issue as the threat to Europe than actual war and to for us to have a defense against an aggressor, who surely won't stop once Trump has given Ukraine on a silver platter to him, just show how unreal this all is. Nope, that pinko-liberal gay Europe that attacks through DEI-programs the freedom of speech is the real threat, not the hybrid attacks and sabotage of Putin. Putin is their friend, because Trump likes him. And when Trump wants Greenland, Fox News has to badmouth Denmark of being like Venezuela, of course. Don't let Americans notice how insane their president is.
And then there's the argument of Europe resting on it's laurels while American did everything. Like our countries sent troops to Afghanistan for the Americans to decide for us to pull out and for Trump to surrender the country to the Taleban. And that Sweden and Finland haven't been under the NATO umbrella for all the time, with Sweden even making it's own nuclear weapons and still having that welfare state, doesn't matter. Oh, the nasty Europeans are going get what they deserve when America pulls out. That's the way these Americans will look at their work done by generations crumbling, with glee with a bit of shadenfreude as it would be someone else's misfortune than theirs.
And the next outcome is that the brilliant Trump peace deal likely won't happen, so no Nobel peace prize for Donald. Because of Trump, of course. A Rubio or a Kellog could actually even now work out a real peace deal, but as Trump takes the arena with Putin, there's no hope. Trump will do what Putin wants, and that won't fly with the Ukrainians. And Trump will get a tantrum, and will see Ukraine and Europe as being at fault here. And in the end, they have to spread hatred of Europe, because Trump failed. Perhaps they'll call again French Fries Freedom Fries. Or similar.
With Trump it's a fight between reality and the unreal, the lies that Trump says. And that will simply mean nothing will come out of it. Or many bad things will come of this.
At first, the most-stupid trade war ever will shread the good relations. Just look at how US-Canadian relations are deteriorating.
It's extremely easy to make people hate foreigners. Just assume that our countries in the Nordics would behave like Russia, and all hell would brake loose. Sweden could say that Finland is a purely artificial construct and naturally should be part of Sweden. Sweden could declare itself as a protector of the Swedish speaking minority in Finland, whom it would consider native Swedes and actually citizens of Sweden. Or Denmark could ask for Skåne back. Or Sweden and Denmark should compete which can get Norway, because the country has belonged to both of them. Hey, they have oil, so that would take care of financial problems, right? Watch what would be the reaction of the people and how they would start to look at their neighbors. Yet this would be and is totally OK for the Trump supporter, if the Swedish (or Danish) government would be on the Trump train and spreading the alt-right gospel. They deserve Norway or Finland, or Skåne or whatever.
But nope, we are the gay liberal Europe that keeps it's borders open. And seem to which have good relations with each other. We do have good relations. Because somehow we know that is better than hating your neighbors and instilling hatred between the people.
You can talk absolutely crazy things and people won't notice how crazy they are, if you say you are "just thinking out of the box" or don't care about the "Overton window".
When Trump pulls the US out of NATO, these people will cheer like crazy: "Finally, out of it! Good riddance!"
Which is an over-reaction. But so is NATO. Its 30 years out of date, at least.
How was it out of date? It has worked well.
No NATO state has been attacked and NATO countries haven't gone to war with each other (like Greece and Turkey). If there would be no NATO, the Baltic States and Eastern Europe would be in the similar situation as Georgia, Moldova or Ukraine are now. Or worse. Putin would already have been pressuring them for a long time. And perhaps Greece and Turkey would have had a border war.
The absolute lie promoted here is that Russia wouldn't acting as it is if there wouldn't be a NATO. This is simply shown not to be true when you look at Moldova... and it's frozen conflict. Moldova never has approached NATO in anyway, yet it has Russian troops inside it. Likely there would be "frozen conflicts" or similar events in the Baltic States (like Russian peacekeepers in the country), if they wouldn't be in NATO. This is the fact that the Putin appeasers simply refuse to even think about. Putin is the one making his country "Great Again".
And when one NATO country was attacked by non-state actors, article 5 was implemented. And to help the US. And in the end there were more NATO forces than American forces in Afghanistan, when the US decided to pull out after Trump had shown his brilliance in making surrender deals.
And the alternative? Just look at the alliances that the US has in Asia. Bilateral defense agreements with the actual countries having nothing to do with each other. South Korea and Japan don't work together. The only "alliance" is adding UK to the US-Australian bilateral agreement, which is quite natural since UK and Australia already have a defense agreement. No SEATO there anymore.
Besides, the Western European Union (WEU) was dissolved. Everybody, including the US, was happy with NATO back then.
Now perhaps a similar arrangement has to be made with Canada, UK and Norway and Iceland have to taken into a new defense pact as the US seems not to need any allies. Perhaps taking orders from the Kremlin is enough.
US, Ukraine agree to terms of critical minerals deal
https://www.reuters.com/world/zelenskiy-plans-travel-us-meet-trump-minerals-deal-sources-say-2025-02-25/
Gabbard Says More Than 100 Intelligence Officers Fired for Chat Messages
The chats had been set up to discuss sensitive security matters. But a group of employees used them for discussions that contained sexual themes, intelligence officials said this week.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/25/us/politics/gabbard-nsa-firing-explicit-chat.html
It turns out the intel community is just a bunch of redditors.
[tweet]https://twitter.com/realchrisrufo/status/1894417072568111300?s=46&t=IakyLvDoU1iHVTU4X-LNfg[/tweet]
I thought NATO had to do with opposing communism. Communism is gone.
The ambition of the Soviet State to control adjacent countries has been preserved under a new set of justifications.
The Chechen wars are a vivid example of a Soviet policy becoming a new Russia modus operandi. The methods of population displacement and favoring a fawning regime are identical.
Now they just have to find a way to get their hands on that good stuff in Donbas.
Extortion (and on Putin's wishlist):
Exclusive: US could cut Ukraine's access to Starlink internet services over minerals, say sources
[sup]— Andrea Shalal, Joey Roulette, Marisa Taylor, Idrees Ali, Don Durfee, Dave Gregorio, Emelia Sithole-Matarise, Daniel Wallis · Reuters · Feb 22, 2025[/sup]
Society and world orders evolve, what was once one thing evolves into something else. Most things in society started out as one thing and evolved into something else. Police forces were a pretty new thing as we see them today, so why don't police forces still act on orders by the head of state, acting from their orders? Because it evolved.
Alliances evolves too, what NATO was is not what NATO is today. Today it's an alliance to protect against mostly corrupt states from making hostile actions. And I would say it functions as its intended. Russia is not very keen on invading the Baltics for instance, even though those nations are pretty easy to conquer, much more easy than Ukraine.
Mostly, it's people who aren't even living in proximity to hostile states who complain about NATO. It's another reality for those who live close to and having their borders constantly violated by a hostile nation.
But as I've discussed earlier, I think a new alliance needs to be formed. That is defined by democratic stability and low corruption. In which it's not just an alliance in military power, but for all things like free trade and travel. It would more easily brand itself as an alliance of the "good".
Because people argue over the origin of NATO constantly in some belief that such a thing even matters today. It doesn't. And arguing about it is as useless as arguing over who has the right to a land based on hundreds of year old decisions.
The modern world, after the wall fell, internationally evolved into better agreement about how borders were drawn. It's become part of how the world argues for peace. And through trade agreements and travel, most nations have settled into a better society without invading each other. But there still are rotten eggs trying to behave like the old times and NATO went from an alliance of the cold war to an alliance to protect this new world order, against those nations which tries to play the old games.
Imagine that we dismantled NATO tomorrow, it's gone. There's no more NATO... *POOF*
And then the day after tomorrow, the nations of the world gathered around and discussed forming a new alliance to help protect each other, leading to a new military alliance, under a new name, say "Alliance of Military Protection Internationale", AMPI for short. Most of the old NATO members, who already have a good military collaboration, sign up for it, forming basically the same composition of nations as NATO, only, it's not called AMPI and is not formed based on the old reasons, but primarily out of the modern condition and nation's need for an alliance of protection.
What has effectively changed in that scenario? Other than basically changing the name?
I see what you're saying, but the US put trillions into NATO because it was defending itself by containing communism. The US isn't defending itself through NATO now. It's just exercising global influence. I think most Americans would question the wisdom of continuing to take that role. What's in it for us?
If Canada Wants a Plan B for Trade, Europe Could Be the Answer
[sup]— Arthur Dennyson Hamdani · The Walrus · Feb 25, 2025[/sup]
There's been some chatter about defense as well.
France convenes second meeting on Ukraine with other Europeans, Canada
[sup]— John Irish, Michel Rose, GV De Clercq · Reuters · Feb 18, 2025[/sup]
NATO is a security treaty organization, which the European Union lacks. As states do have security issues even after Communism is gone and we don't have the old Cold War going, there is a need for NATO.
Why NATO has worked is because it's so totally dominating alliance. Nothing comes close to it. And European countries have arranged their militaries to work under NATO and with NATO. If there is no NATO, a lot of countries need to radically change their posture. And European countries have seen the obvious advantages with having an alliance.
Without NATO, Europe is a far more volatile and destabilized place. It's quite important that the armed forces of Europe are basically working together and not being against each other. The tensions between Greece and Turkey do show that there are and could be more tensions. Otherwise there could be tensions between Hungary or Romania etc. So just as with European integration, there's a solid reason for an European security integration.
Then just add one former Empire that is apparently reconquering it's territory, so you do have an urgent need for a security arrangement. Unlike some try to argue, there is a real threat that Russia poses for Europe.
Quoting frank
The strength of the US or it's role of being a Superpower has come from it's ability to have allies, that voluntarily give it a leadership role. Europeans have been OK with this. The whole reason for us to listen what an US President blabbers about.
With no alliance, your out of the equation. Europe will go it's own way and won't listen to you. It won't buy your weapons and won't listen to you, because you are untrustworthy.
And as I've said, the whole reason for the USD to be a reserve currency is because of the Superpower status. NOT because of your economic position. Why the hell would we give you the position of reserve currency, if you are just our competitor and nothing else? That is ludicrous!
The impact will be that you won't have so warm ties with Europe and simply be a competitor, like China. Once we don't share the values, then we will drift away from each other. You really think that is a good idea?
Just look at his official photo.
Quoting Benkei
Is being mean and going low rational? I would think it's an emotional response, not rational. People did forecast that after the chaotic end of his last presidency and all the court drama that Trump has endured, he would be embittered and vindictive. And that's what he appears to be.
Trump is destroying all the pillars that the US has stood on. The US doesn't hold anymore values it once shared with Europe, and Trump will wreck the US economy as it wrecks it's own government. When the reasoning is based on such ignorant and foolish hallucinations like the US would become more prosperous by starting huge trade wars with everybody or that raising up prices with tariffs doesn't raise prices, the end result will going to be bad.
But there's the crowd that wants this to happen and live in a dream world where Trump is doing the right thing. When it all fails, as it will, they will just immerse themselves with even more ludicrous reasons how Trump's efforts were undermined by the deep state and the evil foreigners.
Yes, it's a form of rationality in that we can follow and predict his reasoning.
Quoting ssu
But he and his cronies will profit so this doesn't matter.
Quoting ssu
Of course, get rich or die trying. The illusion "this" could be yours is why most people buy (into) shit.
Yet Trump supporters are totally fine with this, because they have blocked away any criticism towards their leader. This is the way that conspiracy theorists work: they think that everything has been this huge conspriracy, and what they want is to have the conspiracy of their own as they don't believe that the antidote to conspiracies would be openness and stronger democratic institutions. People are sheeple, so it is necessary to use propaganda. Now the correct propaganda of the anti-deep state people. Conspiracy theorists are the enemy of a democracy, because they don't believe for starters that a democracy could or would be possible.
The US has at the moment the historically delusional idea of isolationism. The collaborations through NATO is not contained within the operation of NATO. It's like installing tax incentives on something which boosts an influx of tourists, the tax incentive is essentially a loss of tax income, but it boosts the economy anyway through the resulting tourism.
What I mean is that economy doesn't work like you're hinting at. Trillions into NATO over its entire lifetime is nothing compared to the unquantified income of how other transactions have been between the nations within this alliance.
Such an alliance becomes a security to do further business between nations as it is as much a prevention of war against NATO members as it is between NATO members. Effectively it becomes a somewhat better deterrence than both threats or the UN.
Society isn't a company in which everything is a basic balance sheet. It's operating on so many hidden parameters that anyone just looking at costs fail to see the benefits and future gains. It's not something that can be looked at in quarter-term results.
And how do you know that the US isn't defended through NATO? The very point of NATO is deterrence, it's not just defense whenever there's an actual war. What if leaving NATO actually opens up the US to threats far greater than things have been if they would have stayed in NATO? That the fact that a military strength like Russia didn't go that well in Ukraine shows that there's a lot of hubris in the idea of just military might. Comparably, look at all the American hubris throughout history, Vietnam war, Gulf war etc.
On top of that, NATO isn't just military collaboration, it's intelligence. The members share intelligence information that isn't visible as pure military. And the US also has a lot of defensive bases that are part of defense lines for the US as a first line of defense further away from the US borders; these are NATO collaborations. So without NATO, intelligence information might be cut off and these defensive lines disappear.
I don't think most Americans understand anything about NATO. And showing by how the US citizens voted, I don't think most of them have even basic understandings of foreign politics or how the world actually works in trade and collaborations.
But if NATO disappears, then there will just be a new alliance among the other nations. It's too effective as deterrence and security to just be removed, regardless of the US involvement or not.
But the US shouldn't be as naive as to think they're untouchable if they leave NATO. It's more than just a numbers game.
I'd wish the conspiracy theorists all unite under their own flag, make a unity of bullshit and fascism so it's easier to categorize them as extremists and fight them. Right now, they're so scattered and so undefined that it's impossible to fight against it while they're also too stupid and disorganized to ever do any serious harm. They simply act as a big iron chain to society, holding back good progress, holding back improvements and holding back fighting climate change.
They're a sickness that holds society in bed, making everyone apathetic and without energy. Honestly, I hate them all and despise their disgusting stupidity. The negative consequences to society over time is larger than people seem realize.
I agree.
Could you explain how it is? The US has a giant nuclear arsenal with the ability to deploy them with ICBMs, medium range missiles, submarines, and Air Force bombers. Why does the US need NATO? I'm asking.
You think warfare is only military means and explosions? People listed all those things as well for Russia and then it turned out the military strength wasn't enough. Then we can also look at how a single Swedish submarine sunk one of the USs largest cruisers during a Baltic exercise.
And looking at the innovation rate of China, what would happen if China went to full scale war with the US after leaving NATO?
NATO is not just a numbers game for military spending and hardware, it's an alliance of collaboration, of spreading out into the world as an extended shield. Imagine a US crippled by internal politics, not in NATO, cut off from intelligence collaborations.
And also add all other things I said, that the consequences of being in NATO is also affecting collaboration outside of NATO as the collaborative security also means higher safety trading and collaborating between NATO members in other areas.
If this was a RTS (strategy game), you're the type of player who would just produce as many soldiers and vehicles as possible and then be surprised by someone utilizing their resources better to hit your weak spots rather than just using brute force. Like the single submarine taking out the cruiser because it was technologically superior going against hubris.
[tweet]https://twitter.com/realannapaulina/status/1894951400582586877?s=46&t=IakyLvDoU1iHVTU4X-LNfg[/tweet]
Should the public display only mask the private ones as it does in other countries, I guess we’ll soon find out.
[tweet]https://twitter.com/cspan/status/1895184801088368705?s=46&t=IakyLvDoU1iHVTU4X-LNfg[/tweet]
You do know that Russia has more nuclear weapons than the US has, btw.
Why do you need NATO?
Let's see.
1) You could do inflict most crushing military victory when you created an alliance and got UN support when George Bush formed a huge alliance and liberated Kuwait. But that was during the time when the US gave a thought to building alliances as it had had to anticipate always the reactions of the Soviet Union. There was a lot of support from NATO countries, one British division and one French division alongside a large amount of aircraft and naval vessels. It all adds up. Just with few men killed, you basically destroyed one of the largest armies in the World, which was on the cusp of truly getting a nuclear deterrent. And you understood not to go further than the liberation of Kuwait (as back then you valued thei views of your allies).
2) You needed NATO in Afghanistan. In the end there were more NATO troops in Afghanistan than US troops.
3) You needed NATO Countries in Iraq. But here... as the neocons didn't care about alliances, you got only basically the UK. In the end it didn't go as planned, too few men and then when you actually did win the Al Qaeda, you went away and got ISIS to emerge from the void.
4) Obama didn't bomb Syria and hence lost his face by drawing an imaginary line with NATO members, even UK, saying no. Here you saw your own limitations WHEN NATO countries wouldn't join you. But naturally you forget it. And anyway, Syrian civil war came to it's conclusion no thanks to you.
5) You will need NATO countries if you get into a war with China. Or you will just deal with it all alone?
Right. Let's think about that.
Imagine how that will go when no Asian country is willing to come to your side when you face of China and NATO countries and Australia just "hope that tensions between China and the US will de-escalate". The idea of going alone just shows how piss has gone into the head of the US. Just as the US doesn't seem to care about the values it has shared with the West anymore (but goes with Russia and North Korea). And wants to start the most stupid trade war. Well, pay then happily the tariffs thanks to Trump.
It really comes down to this: when you cannot understand how much of the current prosperity you have is thanks to the Superpower status, it's really the epic failure of your own government to make it's case for this. Other countries have happily given the US the leadership role. But once other countries don't listen to you, you will understand it.
LOL!!! :lol:
Well, this administration will SURELY erase every connection that Trump had with Epstein, who "liked girls on the young side" as Trump called it.
(Of course, what is cut out in this video are the young girls dancing that Trump is commenting to Epstein)
* * *
Then back to Trump being Trump, as usual...
Ok.
Quoting ssu
The average American struggles to make ends meet. They worry about how they're going to afford to retire. The ones just below average show up to the emergency room to get healthcare and when they're told that they need to stop working to get over their pneumonia, they start crying and explaining that they're working two jobs and they have to take care of their kids and they can't take any time off.
That is America. Thanks for the leadership role.
And do you think that starting a trade war, which likely ends up in a global downturn, will help that?
Do you think raising the prices of consumer products will help that? How does it help you when Canada understands that it has to turn away from US trade and start trading more with other countries, like with the EU and have stronger economic ties with the union? Tell me, how does that help you?
Your economy isn't in it's infancy, those American corporations have themselves pushed the factories into China, just like Elon has in China. Now thinking that tariffs will help you, when they clearly won't (just look at what similar thinking in the 1930's ended up with).
Quoting frank
You don't want to have a welfare state, you don't want universal health care or free education. You could easily have that, but you do not want it. You want to give tax breaks to the rich and believe that the best thing is not only to man the highest positions in the administration with billionaires, but to give unchecked power to the richest man in the World. That's the United States Americans seem to want and vote for. Because obviously, for some reason you buy the argument that is this rule by the rich or then everything else is Venezuela type socialism.
It's all that you are doing yourself by your own choosing. And loosing that leadership role won't make it anymore easier. Actually it's the American defense companies that will be hurt when Europe starts focusing on it's own military industry.
In fact, you can both have a strong military and a welfare state and people be prosperous. But that means that the rich do have to pay taxes. Sweden during the Cold War is actually a great example of this: a rather small country could have it's own military industrial complex capable of building top of the line fighters, submarines and even building an own nuclear weapon. And also creating that welfare state.
The thing that either it's guns or butter is the wrong idea.
It has the potential to. A trade war would help American labor as long as it doesn't coincide with a panic that crashes the system.
Quoting ssu
I'm not sure why you're having this reaction. Are you afraid Russia is going to invade your country and Europe will just stand by and let it happen?
If tariffs would be so awesome, why then have they not created the wealth. They don't. That's why country after country has stopped using them.
Tariffs give the domestic industry not to compete with the outside World. They can rest on their laurels and at best simply higher their prices to the level of the foreign competitors. And why not? That brings more money to them especially if people need the stuff, like for eating.
The argument for tariffs and trade barriers is reasonable when you lack the technology or the industry in total and want to create it from nothing. Then trade barriers have worked. But the US is already a top player in global economics. This reasoning doesn't simply work.
And let's remember on the eve of this most stupid trade war, the Smoot Hawley tariffs from the 1930's:
Now Trump is doing exactly the same, but even higher tariffs when the World is far more integrated than it was in the 1930's.
Quoting frank
I could give a thorough explanation, but I would be repeating myself a lot. But simply put it. If you think that Russia will stop at Ukraine is like believing that a millionaire once he has had his first million will be satisfied and not go for the next million.
So, I'll first ask you:
If just a short while ago Putin was paying Taleban for killed American troops, why do you want now to give him Ukraine on a silver platter and favor the same regime now? Russia has called the US an enemy state and Russian ideology has been anti-American during the Putin era. Why then be submissive to an overtly hostile nation, that is far weaker to you, which doesn't play by the rules you have earlier supported? And why then be hostile against countries, that have been friendly towards you?
Putin surely can play Trump by talking of being allies again and hinting at great deals. But why go with that?
We can go over the reasons why Russian imperialism and military aggression is bad for Europe, but now the question is just why to start appeasing those, who see the US as it's enemy and alienate those, who thought being your allies?
I think I was the one who told you that a trade war precipitated the Great Depression. Now you're teaching it back to me.
Quoting ssu
Basically because the US can destroy Russia without Europe's help. If the US needed European support, it would be a different story.
I find it puzzling how many still take Trump's word for much of anything.
Not only believe him but parrot what he says argumentatively.
Weird.
The US and Australia signed a free trade agreement in 2005. Australian officials are now negotiating tariffs that Trump wants to impose on them.
The US-Mexico-Canada Agreement was signed by Trump in 2018.
If the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act came to Trump's mind, then something's off, otherwise he's just ignorant.
Quoting frank
It just sucks knowing that things will be worse off for everyone.
Quoting frank
Then there's the actual things to do when the US has to be involved. Which aren't so biblical wars as WW3. And then having allies is crucial.
Just think about it. Trump is likely going to war in Mexico and then the absurd Mar-a-Gaza idea. And this from him when there is no serious NEW crisis around or an attack that has to responded to!
Quoting jorndoe
For him it's just words, but his administration will go onward with those words.
Quoting jorndoe
This is the whole irony. Trump simply just wants a trade war. The reasons he takes out of thin air.
That's why I've been so pessimistic about the outcome.
That’s the polite version.
There are opinions bubbling up that Trusk will precipitate a very serious recession, which will begin to become apparent in March-April. What with shedding hundreds of thousands of public services positions and ramping up tariffs, one does not need a degree in economics to understand why. And that with that, the corresponding sudden elimination of many in fact vital public services, like vaccination clinics and food safety checks and weather forecasts and innumerable other services that have come to be taken for granted, I would suspect the US is going to be in a very bad way before too long. But then anyone with half a brain could always have seen that by ‘Making America Great Again’, he actually means totally f***ing it up. Of course, DJT will never take any responsibility for doing it. (I wonder if he’ll start to blame Musk when the sh*t hits the fan, which it surely will.)
Quoting jorndoe
It’s long been said that DJT will basically repeat the last thing that someone he will listen to says to him. Hence after the Putin call, he repeats Putin’s lines about Ukraine and everyone freaks out. But wait! Macron shows up with a new script, and he starts repeating that. Then Zelenskyy! He’s no dictator! Did I say that? Then Keir Starmer -yes, we must make Putin pay. Purely a creature of impulse and emotion, and almost zero rationality. That’s why behind-the-sciences reactionaries have seized on him - he’s an empty vessel, a Trojan Horse.
But here I think the UK and it's Brexit shows just how otherwise sane people will fall for insanity and totally unsubstantiated promises and views if not for outright lies. There were no benefits of braking well established trade. Just look at the Brexit thread: the British PF members weren't enthusiastic about the Brexit and it's outcome far earlier than the actual economic effects became reality. But the denial persisted for a long time. Soon would the economic benefits of the UK cutting it's ties to the EU become apparent! Just wait... and then we got to the Labour government, when the Brexiteers could start venting their anger on just how bad things are. That is the likely future in the American case too.
Do notice that nobody is cheering for the trade war and the tariffs. Not even @NOS4A2 (even if he lives in Canada).
When I look at European media and newspapers here, it's evident. Already last week sent shock waves around and the general consensus seems that the US will be now an untrustworthy ally which doesn't share the same values as Europe does. Only the politicians in charge try to moderate their comments and speak diplomatically in order not to anger Trump. Add to this trade wars starting what, next week?
This should be very alarming as this is the way you do brake friendships and make the World far more dangerous. I've been listening to what Canadian politicians have to say about the current relationship with the US and never I've heard so bitter and offended remarks. Questioning the sovereignty of another country isn't a laughing matter, as Americans seem to think.
Does "struggles" mean that they have to go to work five days a week?
Quoting frank
Worrying is self-inflicted anxiety.
Living paycheck to paycheck is pretty common.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
It often comes from a heroin deficiency.
I cheer retaliatory tariffs. It’s not fair that everyone gets to tariff the US but the US is not allowed to tariff them. The reason we do not talk about tariffs otherwise and you never made a peep during other trade wars is because only Trump can make everyone freak out about it.
According to the guardian:
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/feb/26/altgov-elon-musk-doge-federal-workers
A small band of bureaucrats have taken their anti-Trump efforts to social media, turning their conspiracy theories into outright government insubordination. At best this appears to be a non-story. The “AltGov” operates on an app called Bluesky, known for congealing woke and weird political and fetish communities into information silos, protected from any other information. The presence of preferred pronouns indicate their woke bonafides and the live-action-roleplaying indicative of this sort of ideology.
But knowing the weaknesses involved and the absence of any opposition in these silos, radicalization is almost inevitable. How far will they take it? Sabotage? Murder? Terrorism?
Maybe that’s why Trump hasn’t threatened tariffs on Australia.
[tweet]https://twitter.com/realdonaldtrump/status/1895566669281636846?s=46&t=IakyLvDoU1iHVTU4X-LNfg[/tweet]
Then you cheer for Canada, Europe and Mexico! Because they didn't start this stupidity.
Good for you!!!
Trump the lunatic has to be stopped.
He’s still done more than any of the Euro bureaucrats, and he’s only been in office a month. Europe looks like it wants to fight to the very last Ukrainian because they don’t like Putin. I wonder who will start world war 3?
Pretty much what Breitbart News reports.
You read Breibart news?
Even if that is representative of "the average American", how is it anything other than having to work for a living?
Quoting frank
I do not believe that is representative of "the average American".
What do you think Trump means when he said:
"I have determined that president Zelenskyy is not ready for Peace if America is involved, because he feels our involvement gives him a big advantage in negotiations."
Why would he not want American involvement in "Peace" if he feels American involvement in "Peace" gives him a big advantage?
US intel shows Russia and China are attempting to recruit disgruntled federal employees, sources say
» crass
Behind the Trump offensive, a quiet struggle for control of strategic metals (archive)
[sup]— Bastien Bonnefous · Le Monde · Feb 21, 2025[/sup]
Nobody was talking about working for a living. Ssu was saying America is rich because of its global influence. I was saying the average American isn't rich.
Now you're contradicting yourself. You said:
"The average American struggles to make ends meet. They worry about how they're going to afford to retire."
That is intentional misinformation, unless by "struggles to make ends meet" you really mean "has to work to make a living". The average American has to work to make a living. And, the average American manages a comfortable lifestyle on the average American income which is around $65,000 annually.
https://www.sofi.com/learn/content/average-salary-in-us/
Furthermore, if they pay their taxes they automatically pay into social security so "worry about how they're going to afford to retire", is completely unfounded. Unless the acting president has indicated that he may sign an executive order ending the social security program, such worry is irrational.
Only 15.7% of Americans make that much. 57% of Americans make that or less. here
Since you think $65,000 is enough to make ends meet without struggle for an average family, I'm guessing you're like a 100 years old?
Because she's lying lol. It's incredibly common for people to make up politically biased lies about police. Just like police "invited Occupy Wall Street" to march across the Brooklyn Bridge before arresting them midway through (never happened, they just decided to cede ground to angry demonstrators and arrest them when reinforcements arrived, granted [I]some[/I] of those arrested who were further back might have simply followed the crowd on), and just as very many people claimed to see Michael Brown gunned down in Ferguson who were later proved by surveillance tapes to be blocks away, or "police just began spontaneously clubbing people at the 2012 NATO summit" (also not what happened). Politicos lied about all those events, or else suffered serious amnesia about events they claim to have been feet away from.
The New York Times had an entire article on "misremembering" after numerous people took to social media to claim they had seen an unarmed black man gunned down in Times Square while running from police. But video released later that day showed a man swinging a hammer at police before being shot at close range. Did they hallucinate? This was the excuse. Yet I highly doubt people hallucinated seeing Mike Brown killed from half a mile away, they just lied about it because it suited their politics.
There is ample video of what happened on the 6th and ample evidence that at least some of those charged and pardoned had made plans explicitly to breech the building and disrupt the election certification.
Yes, people lie about events they are at in person all the time, and they edit video to support their lies. It's hardly shocking, activists are found doing this constantly. People who get arrested and charged with crimes (as is the case here) also lie about it, all the time, it shouldn't be strain credulity.
But clearly a jury forced to sit through all the evidence and video thought some of the pardoned were guilty unanimously.
BTW, 147 rioters when to trial and two (2) were found not guilty by juries. That's an insanely high success rate for "actually, no crimes happened."
What is she lying about? Quote her lie.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
So the surveillance video that was shown was just edited? That's your solution?
What is missing in this discussion is the basic skill of identifying the assertions of others. You and Wayfarer want to say that someone is lying, but you won't quote that person or put any effort into demonstrating what was asserted. Wayfarer explicitly refuses to even watch the video, despite maintaining his claim of lying. It's pretty important to be able to identify and present the claims of others on a philosophy forum, so the fact that we've resorting to accusations of lying without any effort in identifying claims is a remarkably big problem.
He should have been impeached when the opportunity arose, obviously, and would have been, but for Mitch McConnell's gutlessness. The Republican Party is utterly culpable in this matter. They put a criminal in the oval office, one who is hellbent on destroying constitutional democracy, and he then let the world's richest man loose with a chainsaw.
NY Times comment on yesterday's spectacle: 'It was a sickening spectacle: the man who tried to upend democracy bullying the man who is fighting for democracy.'
The old republicans need to realize that there's no republican party anymore. It's just MAGA and Trump loyalists. The sooner they realize this, the sooner they could organize into a new republican party. Maybe even brand it as such, "new republicans" to win on sounding "edgy new".
Key point is that people need to realize that republicans are gone. The ones in power in that party are these MAGA fanatics and Trump loyalists.
Everyone needs to wake the fuck up to this.
And now there seems to be a lot more without a job, thanks to you-know-who.
I suppose some might be replaced with AI systems, too.
Then there are tariff wars, raising prices further, thanks to you-know-who.
EDIT: that rhymed :D
Done much for Putin! Otherwise, he has done shit about any peace, made actual peace talks worse as he is just giving everything on a platter to Putin. Enough of this silly Trump "wants peace" bullshit.
Russian stocks going up anticipating the normalization of ties. Trump doing his best for Russia!
Well, first, I just realized this is a [I] different[/I] anti-vaccine female doctor who was convicted. The one I recalled from earlier is literally on bodycam footage punching police officers in the face, hence my incredulity.
Is it possible that some people wandered into the scene of the riot? Certainly. Just as I am sure some people arrested on the Brooklyn Bridge really did think they were being allowed to march across it (I was there that day, it seems one could easily have just followed the crowd on). And just as some people who were at George Floyd protests that descended into rioting might not have seen any rioting.
Does the fact that some George Floyd protestors didn't come face to face with any rioting or police brutality mean it didn't happen, or that all rioters should be given pardons?
Or more relevant, if someone with obvious political motivations and a vested personal interest in downplaying a riot was present at an extremely well-documented riot, and claims they saw no rioting, should we really presume they are credible until decisively proven otherwise? This is someone who was arrested at the scene of a riot and who pled guilty, but their claims that nothing untold was happening should be taken at face value?
I think it's entirely possible that [I]some[/I] people were overcharged, or perhaps should not even have been charged in the first place. This is very common during violent protests and riots, the wrong people get punished, or punished too severely. In fact, I would even judge this likely. This isn't a conspiracy so much as a function of how the justice system works and the chaos inherent in such events.
However, the original discussion here was the charge that all the prosecutions were unjust and thus that the wholesale pardons were just.
What's the idea here, that no crimes were committed that day? That [I]all[/I] those pardoned were innocent? That the police somehow tricked people into bringing weapons and writing emails about disrupting the certification, then baited protestors into attacking them on video?
This seems to me every bit as outrageous as "no crimes were committed during the Minneapolis, Ferguson, or LA riots, and all involved should be pardoned." Some of those pardoned were in for felony assault they are on tape clearly committing and have prior convictions for other violent crimes, rape, etc. It seems ridiculous to me that the blanket pardon could be considered anything but a gross violation of the rule of law.
Okay.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
Is that what is being claimed? The question here is, "Why was Gold charged with a 20-year evidence-tampering sentence?"
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
That looks like a straightforward strawman.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
Maybe it's somewhere between these crazy extremes? It doesn't do much good to strawman the opposite extreme when Hochschild or Gold demonstrate that the initial extreme does not obtain. That's like saying, "Gold said not everyone (or every time) was violent, therefore she is claiming that no one (and no time) was violent!" This is a way of rhetorically propping up the thesis that is under fire.
It's not a strawman, [I]everyone[/I] was pardoned. Nowhere in the article is there any indication that he does not think this is a good thing. Actually, he seems to heavily imply that if anything bad happened it was some sort of conspiracy, a "false flag."
Actually, forget "imply,' he outright calls those engaged in violence "paid provocateurs" (obviously under deep, deep cover, since many had long histories of far-right activism, some with prior convictions for political violence).
Which is frankly, contradictory. This would imply that the people being pardoned, the ones caught on tape attacking law enforcement, were agent provocateurs... (so we shouldn't be happy about the pardons).
Or, if it wasn't a false flag (after all, he seems happy about everyone being pardoned) it was actually the police's fault for making people assault them and then baiting them into forcing their way in:
Now this [I]is[/I] a strawman. Mentioning the statutory maximum and then pretending that prosecutors were charging for the maximum is bad faith argument. Vandalism can also be charged as a felony, and simple check or mail fraud also comes with multi-year maximums, but these are for serious versions of the crime. From what I understand she got a fine and 60 days in jail.
The page you referred does not show what you claim here at all. That's just more misinformation.
102?
What I see on that page is the following:
"In 2023, just over 50 percent of Americans had an annual household income that was less than 75,000 U.S. dollars. The median household income was 80,610 U.S. dollars in 2023."
It then says:
"Preliminary estimates show that the average poverty threshold for a family of four people was 26,500 U.S. dollars in 2021, which is around 100 U.S. dollars less than the previous year. There were an estimated 37.9 million people in poverty across the United States in 2021, which was around 11.6 percent of the population."
There is simply nothing there to support your claim that the average American is struggling to make ends meet. It appears like you are trying to create that illusion with disinformation. Why would you be doing this? Having to budget one's finances is basic household economics, it is not struggling to make ends meet.
Giving everything on a platter to Putin! Kiev will be a Russian city should any peace deal involving Trump go through! If only we give the Ukrainians more money and weapons everything will be alright!
In effect, though, what the EU and NATO are doing is sacrificing their own economies and Ukrainian soldier’s lives on the altar of what amounts to political theater. We know none of this is about democracy, freedom, human rights and other verbal claptrap or else it would have raised a huff when the US ousted the democratically-elected leader of Ukraine, causing a civil war. Or it might denounce Germany’s abysmal freedom of speech. We know it isn't some principled stand against Russian expansionism or meddling because the EU has been trying to annex Ukraine for years, for the sole purpose of exploiting it for grain and fuel. We know it isn’t about sovereignty because the EU is supranationalist. So all this preening comes at the expense of the reality. Hell, only one country involved in that war attacked EU jurisdiction when it sabotaged those pipelines, and oddly enough it’s the same country the snivelling bureaucrats there wish to fund.
Wrong. Ukrainians themselves decide how long they will fight. If they want to continue the fight for their independence, we can give them the weapons.
Quoting NOS4A2
Wrong, this is about those values and the independence of sovereign states and defense of the Russian reconquista Putin has started. And Putin would have started that with or without NATO. The collapse of the Soviet Union was the greatest tragedy in history, remember?
Quoting NOS4A2
Wrong again. The Ukrainian revolution wasn't a US controlled ouster (like Operation Ajax), but a uprising that Ukraine has had many. That not even the Donbass rebels wanted this thug back tells how unpopular the leader was. (After all, wouldn't it had been credible for them to have Yanukovych as their leader?)
Quoting NOS4A2
It is a stand against Russian expansionism and meddling. So wrong again, NOS.
Quoting NOS4A2
Lol. Going off the far end here? Nations can send in their applications if they want to join. And even in the negotiations, then can view it that it's not worth it. Just like, well, Norway did. Hilarious to see EU as an Great power, as everybody knows its a confederation of quite independent states.
Quoting NOS4A2
Wrong again. For members like Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Finland, Sweden, Romania, it genuinely is about sovereignty. It starts from things that Russia demands to have a veto on what actions as sovereign states can European countries do. Like to join EU or to join NATO. That kind of sovereignty issues.
Quoting NOS4A2
Your the one living in the Trump coocoo-echo chamber.
Quoting NOS4A2
Russia is actively cutting cables in the Baltic (Gulf of Finland), just some kilometers off where I live, so...
As you live Canada, why don't you go to the local pub there wearing your MAGA hat and ask how eager they are to join the US as the 51st state.
.
[I]The White House is reportedly dropping Russia from its list of threats to cybersecurity and is instead honing in on China, part of the Trump administration’s apparent broader effort to curry favor with the Kremlin and push for a peace deal that would end the country’s ongoing war in Ukraine....
...According to The Guardian, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) has received a new list of directives that largely omit Russia as a threat to monitor. ...
...A source familiar with the matter who spoke to the outlet on the condition of anonymity said agency analysts were verbally told to not follow or report on Russian threats, adding that a “Russian-related” project was consequently “nixed.”[/i]
Right, forced conscription. No elections. Opposition parties banned. Nationalized media. “Ukrainians themselves decide”.
All of that is deep-state dinner-theater. Russians have been saying for decades that they would intervene should Nato integration sharpen ethnic divisions and create civil war in Ukraine, which it did. They have been saying for decades that Ukraine’s NATO membership is threat to national security and they would have to take appropriate measures. Not a single one of them mentioned a return of the Russian empire. Americans in particular have known about this for decades and the cables prove that they knew about it, but did it anyways.
“Nyet means Nyet. Russia’s NATO enlargement Red Lines”.
https://wikileaks.org/plusd/cables/08MOSCOW265_a.html
Independent and sovereign states, eh? Which law has supremacy, Finnish law or EU law?
That is a recent "red line" of Putin's, that Trump uncritically accepts. Go back a few years, and Putin expressed indifference to former USSR states joining NATO, including Ukraine.
"In May 2002, when asked for his views on the future of Ukraine’s relations with NATO, Putin dispassionately replied, 'I am absolutely convinced that Ukraine will not shy away from the processes of expanding interaction with NATO and the Western allies as a whole. Ukraine has its own relations with NATO; there is the Ukraine-NATO Council. At the end of the day, the decision is to be taken by NATO and Ukraine. It is a matter for those two partners'" (source)
Putin raised no complaints when Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania joined NATO in 2004.
The article I cited above suggests that Putin's main driver is opposition to democratic reforms:
"Russian president Vladimir Putin wants you to believe that NATO is responsible for his February 24 invasion of Ukraine—that rounds of NATO enlargement made Russia insecure, forcing Putin to lash out. This argument has two key flaws. First, NATO has been a variable and not a constant source of tension between Russia and the West. Moscow has in the past acknowledged Ukraine’s right to join NATO; the Kremlin’s complaints about the alliance spike in a clear pattern after democratic breakthroughs in the post-Soviet space. This highlights a second flaw: Since Putin fears democracy and the threat that it poses to his regime, and not expanded NATO membership, taking the latter off the table will not quell his insecurity. His declared goal of the invasion, the “denazification” of Ukraine, is a code for his real aim: antidemocratic regime change."
Well, I live in a country that has "forced conscription", where in my constitution it is written that "All Finnish citizens have a duty to defend their country". We, just like Sweden, have the idea of "Total defense". That's what you need to deter a bully next to you that will interfere in your matters and will try to dominate you. Worked against Stalin, will work against Putin. The doesn't have to have such, because you have oceans on both sides and Canada and Mexico.
And Ukraine's constitution declares that no elections under wartime. So you just go with meaningless Kremlin lines there of Zelenskyi being a dictator. Russia doesn't have free elections even during peacetime.
Quoting NOS4A2
For you, because you don't believe in your country. Or at least the country you moved away from (the US). If you believe that grifters like Elon Musk and Donald Trump will somehow save your country, when the don't give a rats ass to the values which America stood for, that's your problem. Luckily, as we have seen on this forum, not all Americans share your ideas. Yet when you think that your own government is the real enemy, then it's totally understandable that you believe the Kremlin lies. Unfortunately Putin isn't your friend.
Quoting NOS4A2
And they intervened also in Moldova, which by Constitution cannot join a military alliance. Sorry, but you cannot ignore the ugly truth that this is also an imperial enterprise, the reconquista of Novorossiya, because Ukraine is an artificial country. Russia would have done this and had bases in the Baltics already for a long time if there wouldn't have been a NATO.
Quoting NOS4A2
So you are totally clueless about this. Start with Putin's "On the Historical Unity of Russians and Ukrainians" speech. That's Putin's Mein Kampf where he spills out what is the right future for Ukraine. And then there's ample amount of Russian propaganda about this intended for the Russian people and how Russia will conquer back Novorossiya, New Russia, as it was called.
A picture of a woman holding the "Correct" map in 2015:
Quoting NOS4A2
You understand the difference between a confederacy or an union. I've always said that the EU is a confederacy of independent states desperately trying to be an union. So in the end, it's Finnish law. Just as it is if the country is us or Hungary or Spain etc.
One of the reasons that the footage of US President Donald Trump’s clash with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky was so compelling to Western audiences was the sheer unfamiliarity of such a scene.
Leaders routinely have arguments behind closed doors, but this one was very deliberately broadcast. The host not only inflamed US Vice President J.D. Vance’s provocations of the Ukrainian leader, but he made sure to keep the media in the room for the full 50-minute drama. As Trump said in the closing line: “This is going to be great television.”
But to Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping, and anyone else familiar with Marxist-Leninist political management, it was instantly recognisable. This was a “struggle session”. That is, an orchestrated ritual humiliation of a political enemy, conducted in public, often with crowd participation. A common feature is that the target is denounced by people they thought were close to them.
The struggle session had its origins in the writings of Soviet leader Josef Stalin on the subject of criticism and self-criticism. It was later embraced by China’s Mao Zedong against suspected “class enemies”.
Mao’s youthful zealot Red Guards notoriously employed violence, torture and even murder in struggle sessions during the Cultural Revolution. The reformer Deng Xiaoping banned the struggle session.
But now Trump has introduced it to US foreign policy. Putin would have recognised and relished the performance in the Oval Office: the ritual, public humiliation of the man who has inspired millions in defying Putin and embarrassing his army. Conducted by Zelensky’s most important ally to date, the United States. But why would Trump do it? The world has long puzzled over his affinity for Putin, the former KGB colonel who seeks to neuter the US, dominate Europe and destroy the West. The attraction is inexplicable.
But the evidence now is incontrovertible: We should accept that Trump acts as an agent of Putin....
[/quote]
That would really be Trump in 1940. But the intelligence services of the Third Reich weren't so good as Soviet/Russian intelligence services have been.
Quoting Heather Cox Richardson
If true, then treason.
Thanks for this post. The bit about the struggle session was interesting. It was obviously a set-up, and stopping the aid so abruptly today was the obvious follow-up. Europe cannot make that good in a hurry. But I don't buy the idea that Trump is simply an agent of Putin.
Quoting jorndoe
Trump's relationships are transactional. What's he getting out of it? I think part of the answer is that he's clearing his desk in order to attend to China and another part is that he's trying to peel Russia away from China. Ideally, he would like Putin as an ally, but making him neutral would help too. It's quite likely that he sees Putin as a better ally than Europe.
I don’t think Putin or Russia did anything to cultivate Trump as an asset, but that nevertheless that is what he has become, much to Russia’s surprise and delight. It’s beyond their wildest dreams, something they could never have engineered.
True, they never could have engineered it. But what Trump is doing was planned in advance in the US. The details are not public, of course, but the direction of travel is well documented. It is hard to believe that Putin was not aware of the possibility. It may even have been what he was waiting for.
Your first two sentences make complete sense to me but your answer to your own question doesn't.
I don't buy for a minute Trump has a geopolitical agenda - he's never shown any inclination to understanding international relations or find a country on a map. Whatever motivates him has to be much nearer in time, benefit and probably more personal, considering his obvious narcissism.
The fact of the matter is that the only way to stop Trump internationally is to push back. To not give in to his behavior. If he push hard, others need to push harder, to make sure he realizes he might lose something. In his eyes, he's not losing anything by losing relations with other nations, he's focused on "owning" the deals with these nations. He's behaving as a company in deals with other companies, not as collaborating nations.
As such, other nations cannot act on diplomacy as usual, they need to adopt the dealmaking behavior of Trump. And if they do it correctly, they will put him in his place.
Quoting Benkei
Well, there's lots of room for speculation and different opinions. But bear in mind that he has people around him as advisers/colleagues - notably Musk and Vance. They are very different people.
Quoting Christoffer
I get the impression that all the European Governments have recognized that and are working hard to adjust. They'll likely work out what they can do and how to do it before long. Whether they can "put him in his place" is another matter. There'll be a lot of damage that can't be repaired - ever.
The range of industry partnerships that can be achieved within EU could just cut any trading of these things towards the US. If we also organize trade deals with Canada, essentially free trade, we gain access to a massive set of resources. If the EU establish these things we can cut off the US entirely without much setbacks to the economy, but it would tank large parts of the US economy, especially if the trade moves from being between Canada and the US to Canada to the EU.
Now it’s not so much that Ukrainians want to, it’s that they have to. Something-or-other oblige’s them, even with the 90,000 desertions, the people hiding or else be black-bagged by roving bands of conscription police. By “forced conscription” I mean they’re kidnapping people in the street and sending them to the front lines. Is that what Finland does? And sanctioning political opponents? Consolidating media? Banning critics? Banning languages? Banning religious organizations? Is that how the Fins deter bullies?
A woman holding a map. Ok.
There is nothing in Putin’s essay about any imperial ambitions. The essay is nothing like Mein Kempf, at all. Why would you say that, knowing anyone can read it and see that your claims are untrue? Where do you get this from? Who or what is telling you what to think, here?
European law has primacy, I’m afraid.
https://eur-lex.europa.eu/EN/legal-content/glossary/primacy-of-eu-law-precedence-supremacy.html
I don’t think so. I think the underlying hostility towards Zelensky was there all along, but what happened was JD Vance didn’t like being challenged on TV and saw an opportunity to be fake-indignant, as is his performative nature— and of course, Trump couldn’t just sit there and look like less of a manly man, so he had to jump in as well.
They both looked like ridiculous children, and expressed themselves so inarticulately and stupidly that even though I like the idea of a ceasefire, I was cringing. I’m sure his followers eat it up.
But anyway — it wasn’t “planned.” The resentment was right below the surface, and Vance broke the glass. Zelensky did himself no favors by getting frustrated at reporters not letting him talk and Vance’s comments about diplomacy. But in his defense, he’s really not holding many cards — Trump’s right about that. That can be very irritating.
Ukraine also has red lines known as borders; most sovereign nations do.
Quoting Ludwig V
I guess he should transact away, though there's more to politics.
Backstabbing long-standing allies then means no more trust.
If he ditches NATO, moves all focus to China and there's an uptick in related activities, then he shouldn't be surprised if he's alone in case "Little green men" start appearing in Alaska or whatever.
Economics, trade, US$ dependencies, whatever, seems to be moving off, which I'm sure he'll find someone else to blame for, and his flock will believe him.
European law has primacy in some matters like obligations and contracts. Yet national law still has its primacy in key aspects like the constitution and criminal law/procedure. Nonetheless, it is important to highlight that the EU law is not about to hold a "primacy" but to get a community acquis with the aim of rowing together in the same direction.
It had borders. Then two republics seceded from the land. One wonders why we never rattled our sabres and threw around our cash when Kiev invaded them, given our talk of borders and sovereignty and all.
I guess border and sovereignty don’t mean so much anymore. That was fast.
Well, that seems like a good idea - and the markets didn't like Trump's Tariffs on Canada. But it may not be possible and even if it is, there'll be a lot of disturbance and lost business. So it's a serious upset.
Quoting Mikie
You may be right. Trump often does have a point. What's irritating is the way he sets about dealing with it. Zelemsky also has a point. Their proposed deal buys the Russians off in the short term and leaves Ukraine wide open to phase 2 of the special operation whenever Putin is ready. No doubt what Trump and Vance meant about him having no cards was that they could pull the plug on their aid and throw him to the Russians. So that's what they've done. They may have miscalculated, but it'll be a very close thing. And in the light of that, I find it hard to believe that it wasn't planned. (Nevertheless, I would have signed the deal on the basis that it gave me time to work out how to manage without the US. When that is sorted out, the minng contract becomes a mere piece of paper.
Quoting jorndoe
Yes. But it doesn't just affect Trump. No matter who's the next President, we will all know that any deals could be upset by whoever is the next President. The fracture in NATO is very likely permanent. Geopolitics re-shaped in 40 days.
Really?
Putin starts it like this:
Try to say this, they are just one people, is quite an offense of another sovereign state. And he doesn't think this only as a shared heritage.
Possible only in partnership with Russia. Quite clear there.
And then there's a multitude of lies how the Russian people have been robbed of Ukraine and how the independence of Ukraine is this machination from the evil West, hence the artificiality of a sovereign Ukraine.
Hence it's the Bolsheviks and later on former head of Soviet Union that made this unjust thing for mother Russia. Now if you don't see the imperialism in this, you don't see much and are not as bright as I thought you are.
Quoting NOS4A2
You think. If you think that the EU members are like Ohio and Wyoming, think again.
* * *
And now you do have the most dumbest trade war. So happy self-mutilation with raising prices that with 25% tariffs are a sure thing.
I'm just waiting when the idiot will start the trade war with the EU. Won't be long, I guess.
Trump is quite likely going to walk away from NATO, so I guess that's all that great winning. After all, when Elon agrees on something, it has to be a great idea.
I just occasionally view X as it's simply a propaganda machine: however you can try to find the sane people's tweets/messages, along comes Elon Musk and the bunch.
All of it is to argue that the “anti-Russian project”, as he calls it, is unwarranted. “Partnership” assumes 2 separate entities, not one. Drawing on their shared history he goes on to describe this partnership in detail, how good it used to be and how much the Russian federation supported it, and laments the loss of the “economic unity”. Sounds like ambitions of the EU, to me. Right or wrong none of it shows a hint of any imperial ambition, despite what the cold-war propagandists of the Atlantic Council says. Further, the unmitigated fears of EU annd NATO leaders, and especially Zelensky’s claims that he is the bulwark stopping Putin from invading the rest of Europe, and democracy itself, is complete nonsense.
But because of your bright leaders that all might change and once again the Europeans invite world war as they insert themselves in a conflict they have no business meddling in. Now we get to watch them virtue-signal right into destruction.
Of course, Trump’s tariffs are essentially a tax on the American citizen. That’s why it’s all so funny when people like Trudeau turn all Trumpian in response and starts to tax his own citizens. I suspect the EU will follow suit.
Canada isn't going with 25% tariffs on everything, so the response isn't Trumpian. I find the 100% tariffs on Tesla quite apt to the situation. And of course, it can be something else:
And on the other nonsense you write, it just reinforces my views that NATO is going to be dead, or at least Trump cannot be counted on. Perhaps the most optimist scenario is that the US goes for a while out during the Trumpian fit, just as De Gaulle took France a bit out from the pact for a while.
But likely the damage has been done.
Either he was going to accept the deal, say thanks and bugger off, or, if he got uppity, they'd pull this scene to have an excuse to cut him off.
But where does this idea come from that Trump wants to 'ally Russia'?
That's literally the dumbest thing I've ever heard.
Sure, it's very dumb, but if he's not trying that, then what the fuck [I]is[/I] he doing?
This kind of information the Trump administration doesn't want to be leaked out. Unfortunately for Trump, the local Federal Reserve Banks are not part of the government. There also is a real possibility of a stock market crash, if they aren't ready to support the market. Gold, anyone? Especially if there is a crash, also gold prices might go down for a while.
Exactly.
If Trump is a genius and is playing a blinder in ending this war. We will see him turn the screw big time on Putin in the coming days. Perhaps after Zelenskyy has signed the mineral deal. So we will have our answer at that point. Alternatively if he follows a course of some kind of appeasement and continues to attack Europe then we will know that he is a Putin ally.
The Hilary Clinton campaign. People here don’t like to remember that during Trump’s first term they were duped by a campaign hoax in what might have been the greatest blunder in history, leading precisely to the anti-Russian rhetoric and even violence we see today. That’s a chapter we should never let them forget.
And is there any gold left after they have been there? :joke:
No seriously, have you noticed that gold has been quite persistent...
Wrong again. This is similar lie like the peaceful protest of Jan 6th.
See here
But as the Mueller report didn't find direct cooperation, then the whimsical idea that you promote has surfaced. Just like the Jan 6th attack on Congress didn't lead to an autocoup by the former President, it had to be a peaceful demonstration and Trump won those elections. Similar dubious logic. (Which already was backed then discussed on this forum)
And now we see the effect of this.
That’s all you have is the fruit from that poisonous tree known as crossfire hurricane, and the years spent repeating it. Of course, as other probes have proven, that investigation was significantly flawed and full of errors.
There were smiles and handshakes and button-presses and such, four US administrations ago, roughly the same Russian administration as now, that decidedly ended with the invasion of the Little Green Men and what followed.
So forget the war and "the dictator of Ukraine" and NATO, Russia has so much to offer Trump!
So will Lavrov get the famous reset button for Trump to push with Trump?
But oh! In your echo chamber they have "unproven" this. Oh yes...
You guys were duped by the Clinton campaign and will never come to terms with it. That’s fine by me; your errors have resulted in world we live in today, and you have to live in it. Enjoy!
That’s right. As the Durham report found “the government possessed no verified intelligence reflecting that Trump or the Trump campaign was involved in a conspiracy or collaborative relationship with officials of the Russian government”, and “neither U.S. law enforcement nor the Intelligence Community appears to have possessed any actual evidence of collusion in their holdings at the commencement of the Crossfire Hurricane investigation”, and that they “failed to uphold their important mission of strict fidelity to the law”.
Worse are the details.
“The matter was opened as a full investigation without ever having spoken to the persons who provided the information. Further, the FBI did so without (1) any significant review of its own intelligence databases, (2) collection and examination of any relevant intelligence from other U.S. intelligence entities, (3) interviews of witnesses essential to understand the raw information it had received or (4) using any of the standard analytical tools typically employed by the FBI in evaluating raw intelligence. Had it done so…the FBI would have learned that their own experienced Russia analysts had no information about Trump being involved with Russian leadership officials, nor were others in sensitive positions at the CIA, the NSA, and the Department of State aware of such evidence concerning the subject. In addition, FBI records prepared by Strzok in February and March 2017 show that at the time of the opening of Crossfire Hurricane, the FBI had no information in its holdings indicating that at any time during the campaign anyone in the Trump campaign had been in contact with any Russian intelligence officials.”
“The FBI discounted or willfully ignored material information that did not support the narrative of a collusive relationship between Trump and Russia.”
https://www.justice.gov/archives/media/1381211/dl
Given this, why do you keep waving these investigations around?
So I'll repeat:
Hence:
I do. But you never write things like this:
And we know why you won’t, ssu.
Accomplishing their goals.
For those who prefer to read rather than watch, here's NPR's fact-check:
https://www.npr.org/2025/03/04/g-s1-50488/trump-congress-joint-address-fact-check
Pam Bondi ends FBI effort to combat foreign influence in U.S. politics
[sup]— Ken Dilanian · NBC · Feb 6, 2025[/sup]
Quoting jorndoe
The Trump administration is ending everything that would put him in the questionable light in any way...
As you know, Jan 6th was a peaceful protest and Trump won the 2020 elections. :smile:
But when interviewed by Sean Hannity this week, she said:
[I]"Well, first and foremost, we got rid of the Jack Smith team. Gone. Those people are gone...We're still trying to find … a lot of people in the FBI and also in the Department of Justice who despise Donald Trump, despise us, don't want to be there....You have to do the right thing and right now we're going to root them out...We will find them, and they will no longer be employed.”[/i]
-- 'Everything is on the table' on DOJ purge of Trump haters, AG Pam Bondi says
Loyalty to Donald is now a condition of employment in the DOJ.
Meanwhile:
Jan. 6 prosecutors demoted by Trump-appointed U.S. attorney in Washington
[I]"The lead prosecutors on both the Oath Keepers seditious conspiracy case and the Proud Boys seditious conspiracy case, among the highest-profile Jan. 6 prosecutions, were demoted to work cases in D.C. Superior Court"[/i]
I would not be surprised if Trump were to award the Presidential Medal of Freedom to Enrique Tarrio and Stewart Rhodes, who were convicted of seditious conspiracy and (of course) pardoned by Trump.
In reality, the Russians have said nothing publicly about leaving Ukrainian territory or stopping the war. In reality, they have spent the past decade building a cult of cruelty at home. Now they have exported that cult not just to Europe, not just to Africa, but to Washington too. This administration abruptly canceled billions of dollars of food aid and health-care programs for the poorest people on the planet, a vicious act that the president and vice president have not acknowledged but that millions of people can see. Their use of tariffs as random punishment, not for enemies but for allies, seems not just brutal but inexplicable.
And in the Oval Office, Trump and Vance behaved like imperial rulers chastising a subjugated colony, vocalizing the same disgust and disdain that Russian propagandists use when they talk about Ukraine. Europeans know, everyone knows, that if Trump and Vance can talk that way to the president of Ukraine, then they might eventually talk that way to their country’s leader next.[/quote]
That, combined with other terminations of intelligence gathering along with the attempts to delete data in each department points to a willingness for invisibility and silence.
Mueller took over crossfire hurricane. He even hired people who worked on Crossfire hurricane, started crossfire hurricane, and many more from the FBI. They were let go once their anti-Trump bias was exposed, but it’s still poison from the same tree. Speaking of facts, Durham did not acknowledge it was most certainly warranted. He wrote an entire chapter on how flimsy it all was.
You just made two provably false statements in one sentence.
[tweet]https://twitter.com/nypost/status/1897273270493200666?s=46&t=IakyLvDoU1iHVTU4X-LNfg[/tweet]
[tweet]https://twitter.com/yashar/status/1897676558607045023?s=46&t=IakyLvDoU1iHVTU4X-LNfg[/tweet]
This seems to be a good way to drive away any kind of investment since no long-term planning is possible.
The only people that seem to be benefitting are EU weapons and plant manufacturers. And Russia.
No need to choose. It is a race against time. Rob the store with electric wheelbarrows before the local cops arrive.
[tweet]https://twitter.com/rapidresponse47/status/1897737448542568648?s=46&t=IakyLvDoU1iHVTU4X-LNfg[/tweet]
[sup]— Max Kozlov, Smriti Mallapaty · Nature · Mar 6, 2025[/sup]
Some parts of the current US government want a cultural revolution (by imposition).
Maybe revolution isn't the right word.
I'm guessing they intend not to stop with putting Bibles back in schools and getting rid of homosexual marriage.
6March25
from Paris, France
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/974404
An up and down market may not be good for investors, but it is a perfect environment for a trader to make lots of money.
Don't forget China, which probably stands to benefit the most from all of this.
That's billions of people worth of benefit!
That's kind of nationalistic though.
ActBlue, the Democratic Fund-Raising Powerhouse, Faces Internal Chaos
At least seven senior officials have left the group, setting off deep concerns about its future as it confronts scrutiny from congressional Republicans.
https://archive.ph/DFegW
Perhaps Trump is hinting that he will "walk away from NATO as they don't pay" as nobody is paying the 5% of GDP, including the US. Or actually I think a Baltic country is already paying so much and Poland will likely spend on defense soon as much. But of course reality or the facts don't matter. It's a figleaf like the absurd Fentanol-line was for the Canadian tariffs.
I think that Trump will do what Elon and Vladimir Putin will want: He will walk away from NATO because "they don't pay".
Never have I seen a nation dismantling itself as now. And even if the tariffs are ended, the instability and the uncertainty will create the Trump recession. And in the end there will be the Constitutional crisis.
I think the outcome is that the US can possibly even have it's own second revolution... or civil war. This guy isn't Ceaser. He really is more like Nero. An entertainment guy also.
When Augustus turned Rome into a dictatorship, he lauded the health of the Roman Republic. They never officially had a revolution.
So here is a joke to explain how Trump got the job. :lol:
"I should be in charge," said the brain , "I run all the body's systems, without me nothing would happen."
"I should be in charge," said the heart , "I circulate oxygen and nutrients all over."
"No! I should be in charge," said the stomach, "I process the food that gives us energy."
"I should be in charge," said the legs, "without me the body couldn't go anywhere."
"I should be in charge," said the eyes, "I allow the body to see where it goes." "I should be in charge," said the anus, "I am responsible for waste removal."
All of the other body parts laughed at the anus and insulted him. So he shut down. Within a few days, the brain had a terrible headache, the stomach was bloated, the legs got wobbly, the eyes got watery, and the heart pumped toxic blood. They all decided that the anus should be the boss.
What is the moral of the story? Even though everybody else does all of the work the ass hole is usually in charge.
Quoting Jack Barsky
[sup]— David Connett · Guardian · Mar 8, 2025[/sup]
There is always a story hidden beneath the layers of anti-Trumpism.
World War 3 is coming.
To the point:
US Senator Jeff Merkley, "Is President Trump a Russian asset?"
[sup]— Jeff Merkley · Mar 8, 2025 · 3m:56s[/sup]
[tweet]https://twitter.com/implausibleblog/status/1898443595692073339[/tweet]
"Asset" might be a bit vague. Not that he must be, yet there's more evidence than what Merkley brings up. There seems to be enough to warrant an independent investigation.
Trump came into the picture because he appears to want to remove sanctions.
In the name of making America great again, Trump is undoing the very things that made America great.
Primarily because the slogan never had any real meaning. It's just marketing, it's just like a cult who bullshits good sounding incoherent rants and the followers just eats it all up.
Nothing Trump says is real, it's made up in the moment in order for him to get an ego boost. He's basically like a child craving attention...
...but society tries to analyze what he literally says. So, is he the stupid one or is society stupid for playing along that game?
The truth is still there, regardless of the bullshit. The courts have ben captured, but he cannot capture the market.
That's what the article is pointing out, and where things will get interesting.
What market?
I like the crude oil futures market. As with any free market, the price reflects all the information in the market, things like what season it is, what pipeline was just destroyed, etc. Donald Trump doesn't want to control any markets, in fact he just gutted regulations that were put in place after 2009.
Sure. The question being asked is, to what extent does the market control Trump?
Interesting that someone who purportedly does not want to "control any markets" guts legislation put in place to protect consumers from all sorts of financial injury knowingly and inevitably caused by certain business practices all of which were possible as a result of a lack of those same regulations. This lack of regulation leading up to 2008 played a key causal role of the 2008 financial crisis that left millions of innocent Americans financially injured without recourse. He gutted the measures put into place to stop such practices.
For someone who claims to be focusing upon waste fraud and abuse... well... that's a bit too fucking rich for my tastes.
Disgusting.
60 Minutes on Trump’s Illegal Firings of Inspectors General.
I don't know. When it comes to trade, Americans are much more heavily regulated that Europeans, or really just about anybody else in the world. This is coming from attempts by Americans to mitigate the worst aspects of capitalism (that it occasionally crashes). Why doesn't anyone else in the world care about that? I'm asking, I don't really know.
Vacations canceled, refundable or not.
American liquor taken off shelves here and there (voluntarily).
Canadians have been putting properties in the US up for sale.
Seems like a trend; don't know the effects, or how easy/difficult it'll be to recover the relationship.
FYI, this one is:
Watchdogs fired by Trump raise alarms over future of independent government oversight (— Scott Pelley, Aliza Chasan, Maria Gavrilovic, Alex Ortiz · CBS · Mar 9, 2025)
Eradicating Anti-Christian Bias
[sup]— The White House · Feb 6, 2025[/sup]
The title might as well be read as "Promoting Christianity".
Project 2025 (Wikipedia)
Who are the Dominionists backing conservative candidates? (Northeastern University · Nov 15, 2022)
[tweet]https://twitter.com/marcorubio/status/1899021361797816325?s=46&t=IakyLvDoU1iHVTU4X-LNfg[/tweet]
The trade wars Trump is kicking off are an attempt at controlling markets. They are a sharp departure from the "Neo-liberalism" that touted the benefits of unfettered capitalism.
The need for regulation is not only to protect the public from financial and environmental harm. The rules place the competing companies on a level playing field where some do not gain advantage by doing bad things. A lawless future combined with massive tax cuts will make the crony capitalism of the 19nth century look quaint.
Can't wait to read the review. There is mounting skepticism, however, emerging from such claims being made:
Quoting AP
Rubio's statement about 'consulting with Congress' is odd:
The way such consultation worked previously is that the Inspector General reported to Congressional committees. Here is last year's report on: Fraud and Abuse in USAID.
Rubio's statement sounds like a reversal of who is advising who.
[tweet]https://twitter.com/whitehouse/status/1899151926777749618?s=46&t=IakyLvDoU1iHVTU4X-LNfg[/tweet]
He's a non-citizen who provided material support for a foreign terrorist organization. Hopefully the first of many more to come. Non-citizens can absolutely be removed if they engage in terrorist activity or provide support to one.
A visa is a privilege and to use it spit in the face of a country which gave you it deserves repercussions. Khalil led crowds which attacked police.
Ah, interesting. It’s a current US 60 Minutes feature, I guess it’s geoblocked where you are. I won’t post any more of same.
And why is Trump saying ‘it’s a horrible thing’? Because Biden passed it, and it’s a success. In typical Trump style, any success attributable to his perceived foes must be destroyed, no matter the cost to the country or to business.
Perhaps you’re right. But if his crime is “aligning with Hamas”, or anti-semitism, it’s not a good enough reason to deport him, especially if he was in the country legally.
[tweet]https://twitter.com/dnigabbard/status/1899176257406857274?s=46&t=IakyLvDoU1iHVTU4X-LNfg[/tweet]
It looks like justice to me.
[quote=AP;https://apnews.com/article/hhs-employee-buyouts-kennedy-cdc-nih-medicaid-bf5a746518b2b3fe967ab95a8e2a1a65]WASHINGTON — Most of the 80,000 federal workers responsible for researching diseases, inspecting food and administering Medicare and Medicaid under the auspices of the Health and Human Services Department were emailed an offer to leave their job for as much as a $25,000 payment as part of President Donald Trump’s government cuts.
The workers have until 5 p.m. on Friday to submit a response for the so-called voluntary separation offer. The email was sent to staff across the department, which includes the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, and the National Institutes of Health as well as the Food and Drug Administration, both in Maryland.
The mass email went out to a “broad population of HHS employees,” landing in their inboxes days before agency heads are due to offer plans for shrinking their workforces. HHS is one of the government’s costliest federal agencies, with an annual budget of about $1.7 trillion that is mostly spent on health care coverage for millions of people enrolled in Medicare and Medicaid.
There was no immediate comment Sunday from HHS.[/quote]
Doesn't it matter to anyone that Trump is attacking and dissolving essential government services from within? Will it matter when people start dying and disease outbreaks begin to occur? Can't Americans see what is being done to their country?
That's not what this AP article indicates. It's a voluntary buy-out that's been offered, although $25,000 is chump change for a buy-out. But if someone was going to change jobs anyway, it might be tempting.
It ‘indicates’ that most of the 80,000 workers were offered $25,000 to quit their jobs.
Poor Elon! Must be just awful for him. When all he’s doing is trying to help out!
And if someone was planning to work in this field of research for their entire career, hearing:
Quoting AP
is tantamount to saying:
"Take this chump change or leave with nothing."
It’s true. There is no reason for it nor any reasoning behind it. All of his cuts are available for anyone to see yet no one can choose one that was a bad idea to remove. Maybe you will take the challenge?
https://doge.gov/
Until then it’s just a blizzard of lies and conspiracy theories, and it’s activating violent psychos to take it upon themselves to take matters into their own hands outside the democratic process.
Where is all this information sharing happening?
https://doge.gov/ And the official x account.
Yea. That's a pretty old down-sizing thing. In fact, I think $25,000 is probably a figure from some time in the last century. :grin:
Quoting Paine
No, it isn't. Are you American?
ICE Arrests Columbia Student Who Helped Lead Pro-Palestinian Protests
Trump seems to be conflating "pro-Palestinian" with anti-Semitic. The person in question is Mahmoud Khalil, a green-card holder, who's pregnant wife is a American citizen.
DHS spokesman, Tricia McLaughlin, alleged he “led activities aligned to Hamas, a designated terrorist organization” . I suspect the "tie to Hamas" is no more than being pro-Palestinian.
[I]“Donna Lieberman, the executive director of the New York Civil Liberties Union told CNN’s Boris Sanchez 'there is not a hint of a claim” that Khalil ever worked with Hamas.
The claim is that his opposition to the activities of Israel with regard to the Palestinians are grounds for him to be deported. And that is simply illegal,' Lieberman said. “It’s wrong. And it reeks of McCarthyism.”[/i] -- source
I see the claims but not the documents supporting them. You know, the sort that Congress would demand.
Seriously?
But again, the question I asked was not if Trump might control the markets, but the extent to whciht he markets might control Trump.
The ongoing slump in Wall Street, the result of policy chaos.
It is rare to have a position argued so forcibly.
The likely new Canadian leader Mark Carney: "In trade, as in hockey, Canada will win."
Ah, I love the smell of trade war in the morning... :blush:
Yes.
Quoting Banno
Wall St appears to be ranging right now, which means it's just going up and down between two levels. It's presently going down, yes. It will hit a certain level and start going back up. Something bigger than unease about Trump would have to appear to make it head back down and cross the "support" level it's been respecting for about six months now. Anyone who tells you they know what it's going to do next is full of it. Absolutely no one knows.
Quoting Paine
I'll take that as a "no."
No, as I’ve already stated.
It’s an official government website from an official arm of the executive branch. Transparency is tough to grapple with, but given past administrations, I kinda get it.
Ok. :rofl:
Yeah, a central banker who has pictures with Ghislaine Maxwell. The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.
And anyway, wasn't this totally predictable when an lunatic idiot in charge thinks that cross-the-range 25% tariffs will help the economy, but won't raise inflation / lower consumption?
How about for that stagflation, people?
Quoting NOS4A2
Oh, he's a friend of Trump?
Okay, well, those circles are small. What can you say. :lol:
A "no" from what?
The claims made by the Administration?
Sounds like you're unfamiliar with the topic.
They say being struck by lightning is a good thing.
Then why don't you short some stocks?
One has been litigated with a microscope and proven stupid, the other is being defended and ruled fake news by the commentariat.
The free speech claim is just a smoke screen by his supporters. It's his other activities that got him notice. He will have his day in court, and then he will get his ass kicked out.
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c4gdwde82ldo.amp
At this point it’s impossible to discern who is or isn’t a potential assassin in Anti-Trumpistan.
The market corrects and then continues. They will abide, it's actual prices of milk and gasoline and bread that will get people up in arms.
Nonsense.
It's been my experience as a day trader.
Last time I did anything like that (shorting the market) was during the Financial Crisis 2008, when I invested some money to an inverse fund. Luckily I did get my money back with some profit, but that was a really, really delicate move. I remember that then the alarm bell was for me when an financial advisor didn't find any stocks to invest in (which had happened never in my life and hasn't happened later). And actually in this forum (or it's predecessor) I got a stern warning before the first bank collapses happened and I started to look just how bad it was and what kind of a bubble there was in the US housing market. So never underestimate this Forum, actually.
What I've done now is take away some investments from stock and have more in cash and gold. And sold some timber, because the prices are high and likely my country will too face the Trump recession, the timber prices can even go down. And because it's physical timber, you basically do it once in your lifetime. My children can then sell again when they are at my age.
I've learnt that you can be happy when you just avoid the huge collapses and not lose your money in them.
Quoting Benkei
And as we can assume that Trump does follow the market and does listen to the complaints from industry execs, he will continue to hesitate for a while with the tariff stupidity. Because he cannot yet forget them totally. And that's enough to keep the markets really on the edge.
I'll accept that as true since consumer protections in the US are higher in this area due to the absence of a general duty of care for brokers and banks. But even then, anecdotal evidence in a single economic activity leads you to making general claims about regulation in these respective economic regions. I trust you see the issue with that leap?
That pretty much characterizes the US markets. There is a high level of fear that flips the market trend almost daily. Smart people are gradually withdrawing from investing in individual stocks not knowing which tariffs will whack their industry next. There is definitely money to be made by the bears.
Haven't you insisted that such influence on people is impossible?
Did you want a list of the things I can't do that everyone else in the world can?
It is. What is possible is people believing nonsense. A combo of moral panic and decline in mental health is a bad idea.
[tweet]https://twitter.com/kashpetalpdy/status/1899314295164612776?s=46&t=IakyLvDoU1iHVTU4X-LNfg[/tweet]
Quoting tim wood
This is a really distasteful topic.
Do mean the man who banned Epstein from his club for hitting on young girls?
There you go. You didn’t even know that did you? I wonder why. Glad I could help.
My pleasure.
Always informative.
More news.
[tweet]https://twitter.com/cbsnews/status/1899596488579154343?s=46&t=IakyLvDoU1iHVTU4X-LNfg[/tweet]
Especially after they banned all the Trump supporters. :lol:
Hate to admit it, but the Chinese foreign ministry seems to be more or less right about the fentanyl accusations. They did take the opportunity to raise threats.
Investors spy the dawn of a tectonic shift away from US markets
[sup]— Dhara Ranasinghe, Amanda Cooper, Yoruk Bahceli, Tom Westbrook, Samuel Shen, Elisa Martinuzzi, Richard Chang · Reuters · Mar 6, 2025[/sup]
I suppose something like this might happen. Who would Trump blame, then?
Quoting Donald J. Trump · Mar 11, 2025
How many in his audience will buy that one can boycott illegally? When someone in his position rants like so, there will be people who buy it (sort of seeding/feeding the crap), so maybe a better question is what effects it will have.
This sounded to bizarre to be true, so I googled it. Here's one of the many stories that shows it's true:
Donald Trump insults himself by slamming trade agreement he signed in live blunder
The actual news is providing some stiff competition for the Onion.
Clearly.
Amongst other things, some consumer protection laws used to forbid predatory and other fraudulent financial business practices where otherwise innocent and unknowing consumers trust what's being told to them by whoever is supposed to be providing them a service. Add to that the loosening of the language in banking regulations, as well as loosening of banking rules/restrictions allowing all or most banks to behave like investment banks instead of traditional banks and the sheer lack of oversight after the Clinton administration nixed Glass Steagall(which kept financial institutions from recklessly tanking the market/economy like they had earlier), and you had banks creating and selling financial instruments that 'looked like' traditional safe mortgage-backed instruments. They weren't. Rather, they were based on bad(horrible) loans that every single party involved [b]except the consumers[b] knew were doomed for default/foreclosure. Hence, that's the reason the instruments were created. They even had a name for them. NINJA loans. In the end, the only ones holding the bag were those poor unwitting folk who purchased these mutual funds and the homeowners.
The real estate agents, companies, underwriters, and lending institutions had already made their money.
It was called the financial crash of 2008/09. You may be too young to remember. I'm not.
Trump just dismantled the consumer protections enacted afterwards. He's also systematically firing everyone and anyone who would have oversight over his and other government officials' actions.
On the one hand, he claims to want to root out waste, fraud, and abuse, and on the other he gets rid of everyone who's responsible for doing so.
Yeah. He's full of shit and has convinced all sorts of otherwise unknowing people that he's 'fixing' something. He's fixing it alright. In his and his friends' favor. Just another day in an America where the overwhelming majority of regular blue-collar working-class people are being convinced to vote against their own best interests.
Of the wars that Trump is lusting to have, this is the second likeliest war that Trump will have. He definitely wants the war against the Mexican cartel with armed drones swirling there... at some time. When he remembers that.
With all that's happening... I'm wondering if there's not a lot of gathering data on everything they do. So many things are so obviously corrupt (as in the video I shared previously), that I'm wondering if people wait for the mid-terms and then rage hellfire onto everyone involved in all of this.
The thing is that Trump acts like a child, if no one tells him to be careful he's just going to do whatever he feels like and he doesn't seem to care for laws and regulations. So there will probably be tons of violations gathered and filed.
I think he feels invincible; being elected regardless of all the legal battles and being sentenced guilty last year, it probably fueled his narcissism so much I think he feels untouchable. And that's a good thing - because that may push him into a recklessness that comes to bite him in the ass later on.
If there are no consequences, then that's proof the US is a fundamentally corrupt state. Even if we say so, it's not before it's obvious that the people might do something about it.
Never underestimate the strength of denial. People won't admit that they made any errors themselves. So let this all just sink in. Have Americans feel it in their wallet or purse when they go buy food or something else. Let the economy tank as it's doing.
Have you noticed anybody defending Trump's annexations here? Is there a broad movement for all of this? Entanglement in foreign wars was what the issue that the MAGA people hated. So does then a war Mexico, Panama even Greenland go so well with that crowd? Or even with Canada? What threat does Canada be for the US? Nothing.
https://www.euronews.com/my-europe/2025/03/12/bypassing-parliament-is-a-mistake-meps-sidelined-on-new-rearm-europe-plan
It’s interesting to watch what a parasite does when it finds itself without its host. For so long many EU states were able to build up their bloated welfare states under the protection of the US military and American taxpayer, who were essentially subsidizing their livelihoods until now. I suspect the old world will turn back to their old ways before long.
Jealous of what?
This just shows how little you know of Europe.
The European Parliament isn't here important. It's the national Parliaments, because the decisions are rearmament is in the end made at the national level. The European Parliament is an OK talking arena that focuses on what the Commission and the EU bureaucracy is doing and what EU laws are made. That's fine, but this is actually a country-level issue.
Quoting NOS4A2
Yeah, let's see what happens to Americans when the dollar isn't anymore the reserve currency and the World isn't their host anymore.
That’s not what the head of the European People's Party said. I guess he knows very little about the EU, according to ssu.
Let’s see what happens to Europe when the reserve currency is the Yuan.
Do you understand the difference and the different roles of the European Parliament and the national Parliaments of each member state? And when it come to national defense, it's the member states that decide this. Ursula can simply talk about EU budgeting agreements etc. Another thing is what the countries actually do.
Quoting NOS4A2
You know that the USD being a reserve currency was a political decision made in Bretton Woods. There's no "natural" reserve currency. The most natural things is to have it like it has been for hundreds if not a few thousand years: you have different currencies and if you are handling international trade, then have a basket of currencies.
Is parliament just a parliament in name only, then? I could care less, to be honest.
But Ursula isn’t just talking about it; she’s come up with a plan to borrow hundreds of billions of dollars to send to member states so they can spend it on military or Ukraine without any oversight of EU parliament, whether parliament means anything to you or not. I guess that’s the schizophrenic nature of having both national and continental authorities. we’ll see what members do with it.
I agree.
https://bsky.app/profile/empressmusings.bsky.social/post/3lkffdwwjts2k
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/egg-prices-bird-flu-inflation-denmark-b2715100.html
[sup]— Courtney Kube, Gordon Lubold, Carol E Lee · NBC · Mar 13, 2025[/sup]
Where do you live? Under a stone?
I may be wrong, it’s difficult to read with how unpredictable Trump is. But he’s seems to be so crazy that he will look for an opportunity to introduce martial law and then he doesn’t need to bother with government, or laws, or lawyers anymore. Then before the next election he will start a proxy war somewhere and cancel all elections. Or maybe Musk will have rigged elections by then and he can hold sham elections. Anyway, the U.S. is so divided that should he introduce martial law it will spark vigilante movements, which is develop into a civil war. There/s plenty of ammo sitting around and people are already organising into protest groups.
Here's the Italian parliament brawling
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mye5TNnpHUI
You think that's going to happen here?
Well not today, but once those invasion plans are firmed up for Panama, who knows ...?
I've noticed.
Quoting NOS4A2
Great! That's positive that we agree on something.
Ok, so when we understand that the reserve currency is a political decision and the reason for this political decision are the alliances that the US has had, why then brake these alliances?
The obvious question here is for the EU countries to think: "Wait a minute, why do we pay for our oil and liquefied natural gas in dollars, that doesn't come from the US? Shouldn't we pay in euro?" This would help the euro bond market, because people would need euros. And if Europe has this row with Russia, it doesn't have that with Brazil, India, South Africa and China. Those countries would do happily also without having to have US dollars for trade that isn't with the US.
Let’s hoe for a safe return.
https://www.nasa.gov/blogs/spacestation/2025/03/16/spacex-dragon-docks-to-station-with-four-crew-10-members/
ISS is manned and can have astronauts there, even longer. I think this was just basically a cost cutting decision not to create a new flight, but just follow the time table, because nobody needed an evacuation.
And is cost cutting evil? Ask your DOGE.
I’m still curious, though, why have an EU parliament if you don’t want them to have any oversight? It’s all so odd that Europeans need two governments, a government for their government, but why another parliament?
You’re thinking like Biden now.
It has oversight of the European Union itself and makes EU legislation. So you have these members of European Parliament, who focus on what the Council and the EU institution itself do. From their website:
Defense is actually more a question of national budgets and national decisions how to improve the armed forces etc.
I actually don't want that the Finnish Parliament wouldn't have the power to make laws in Finland, that everything would be decided by the EU Parliament. This would be catastrophic. Then I would agree with the view that Finland (and other member states) wouldn't be anymore sovereign states. As I've said, it's an union, that basically is a confederacy made up of independent countries. That's why it always looks so weak.
Quoting NOS4A2
Changing the space flight program by adding missions may be beneficial to SpaceX, but is it to the taxpayer less costly? That's the question.
Did they add a mission? I don't know, actually. (Now I'm the ignorant here)
The bigger question here is what happens after ISS to human spaceflight.
[tweet]https://twitter.com/nayibbukele/status/1901238762614517965?s=46&t=IakyLvDoU1iHVTU4X-LNfg[/tweet]
[tweet]https://twitter.com/secrubio/status/1901241933302825470?s=46&t=IakyLvDoU1iHVTU4X-LNfg[/tweet]
Anyway as I say Trump is so unpredictable who knows what’s going to happen.
You know those federal rulings, who’s going to enforce them?
And if there is martial law introduced and elections cancelled, will there be political violence, or will those peaceful people just go along with it?
https://bsky.app/profile/muellershewrote.bsky.social/post/3lkj34vjvvs2b
“Defy a court order”. They were already out of the country, where no American judge has jurisdiction. I guess you ought to have wondered when an Obama-appointed judge believed he had power beyond his jurisdiction.
Does your prediction include Biden’s defiance of the Supreme Court?
[tweet]https://twitter.com/joebiden/status/1795969437595500905?s=46&t=IakyLvDoU1iHVTU4X-LNfg[/tweet]
The plane was “over the ocean”, it involved a crime (even though it was a civil lawsuit), and therefore the District Court of Washington DC has jurisdiction of the plane over international waters, according to the brilliant lawyer Tim Woods!
[i]News Releases
Biden withdraws illegal student loan forgiveness schemes
This brings to an end Biden’s lawless efforts to transfer debt from borrowers to the American taxpayers
Post Date:12/20/2024
For immediate release
Biden withdraws illegal student loan forgiveness schemes
TOPEKA - (Dec. 20, 2024) –Today, the Biden administration’s U.S. Department of Education announced plans to withdraw proposed regulations that would have cancelled student loans for some borrowers. Biden’s proposed illegal student loan forgiveness schemes would have forced blue collar Kansans, many of whom did not go to college, to pay off the student debt of New Yorkers with gender studies degrees to the tune of at least $274.3 billion.[/i]
https://www.ag.ks.gov/Home/Components/News/News/141/1292
He continued to cancel student debt despite the Supreme Court’s decision.
https://www.reuters.com/world/us/biden-cancels-additional-12-billion-student-debt-2024-07-18/
The point is that the whole “defying a court order” thing is overblown, and certainly won’t lead to civil war, not unless the reactionary responses to these actions lead to violence against other citizens.
In which case it will be necessary to introduce martial law.
https://bsky.app/profile/50501movement.bsky.social/post/3lkkkrvu5as2r
I don't think it is worship. His one consistent goal has been to normalize outrageous and immoral statements and behavior. The product is not aligned to a policy agenda outside of what the Trumpster specifically promotes. Such an articulation would run afoul of his view of the state as something an individual is conned into believing. The fortress of solipsism can never be assailed.
No, Trump has never defied the Supreme Court. The point about showing that Biden did defy the Supreme Court is that you and your types and the propagandists that lead you were suspiciously missing during these times, even defending it, and that the typical sky-is-falling response is the same as it has always been. You don’t care the courts are defied, only that your folk devil is punished for it.
My goal is simply to oppose a bad idea, like when you and your cousins fell for the “very fine people” lie. I still haven’t received a thank you.
Quod Erat Demonstrandum.
Yes, according to you. The Tokyo convention is about crimes committed in flight. Only someone who has no grasp of reality would bring that up, and like clockwork, there you are.
"The Education Department said that the relief was made possible via its work to overhaul the Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF) program.
PSLF allows public employees, such as teachers, firefighters, members of law enforcement, and people who work for nonprofit organizations, to apply for forgiveness after making 10 years' worth of payments on their federal student loan balance."
https://www.axios.com/2024/07/18/biden-cancels-student-debt-pslf-program
I myself had loans forgiven that way may years ago.
[tweet]https://twitter.com/thedailybeast/status/1901688599059345484?s=46&t=IakyLvDoU1iHVTU4X-LNfg[/tweet]
[tweet]https://twitter.com/repluna/status/1901762764902719651?s=46&t=IakyLvDoU1iHVTU4X-LNfg[/tweet]
[tweet]https://twitter.com/trumpdailyposts/status/1901658616790454708?s=46&t=IakyLvDoU1iHVTU4X-LNfg[/tweet]
Yeah. Kind of what you might expect from a petulant child. His followers apparently don't care.
No evidence for Trump claim about 'void' Biden pardons and autopen
[sup]— Lucy Gilder, Tamara Kovacevic, Shayan Sardarizadeh · BBC · Mar 17, 2025[/sup]
Seems that we agree. At least this day.
There have been many terrible days for US foreign policy. Yet many fantastic days for Russia.
Quoting NOS4A2
How then if there's a war in Panama, Mexico...
Or when there's a war...
[sup]— Tim Sullivan, Elliot Spagat, Regina Garcia Cano · AP · Mar 17, 2025[/sup]
Consolidating more powers? (With his flock cheering in the background?)
Just his recent choices in the Middle East. Everything else I like. So we probably don’t agree.
Now bombing countries and encouraging Israel while failing at a ceasefire in Eastern Europe.
What’s funny is that there’s no outrage from the petty partisan imbeciles who railed against Biden (often for far less). Just shows yet again that most people have no values or principles — just the unadulterated need to root for their preferred WWE wrestler, or sports team — no matter what they do.
Straight from the playbook of Victor Orban's Hungary, actually. Cannot be said anymore that the separation of powers is working in the US.
I'd also add the threats of annexation of Canada and Greenland. Perhaps it's too odd for Americans to understand this, but talking about annexation is really bad. The "nastiest country" isn't taking as a joke Trump's delusions. That Prime minister Carney visited France and UK and Canada is rethinking the purchase of the F-35 is very telling. Now if 25% tariffs are put up on all Canadian exports next month, that will just make this breakup worse.
Looking at the octogenarian Democrats, I think simply they aren't understanding just what Trump is really doing to the Republic. How do they suppose that Trump will be reigned in? But Republicans saying "That's too far"???
(No shit. But that's your response? And Paddle signs?)
When can we expect to see his tax records?
[tweet]https://twitter.com/kash_patel/status/1902173259304522175?s=46&t=IakyLvDoU1iHVTU4X-LNfg[/tweet]
New York City ran him out of town by stopping doing business with him. It took a bit of time because of the lawsuits and the game of playing competing contractors against one another. The last banks gave up on him and he left town.
The same process will happen again.
[i]Prohibition to enter the United States and then the repression of a French researcher who came to attend a conference, because he had expressed a "personal opinion" on American research policy.
"I learned with concern that a French researcher", on a mission for the National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS), "who went to a conference near Houston was prohibited from entering US territory before being expelled," said the Minister of Higher Education and Research, Philippe Baptiste, in a statement transmitted to the France-Presse (AFP) agency (AFP). "This measure would have been taken by the American authorities because the phone of this researcher contained exchanges with colleagues and friendly relations in which he expressed personal opinion on the policy carried out by the Trump administration in matters of research," he added.
Read also | Article reserved for our subscribers "in the United States, science is attacked, hampered, and even prohibited"
According to a diplomatic source to AFP, the incident occurred on March 9. This spatial researcher would have undergone random check when he arrived, during which his professional computer and his personal phone would have been searched. Similarly, messages evoking the processing of scientists by the Trump administration would have been found. He would have been criticized for messages "which reflect a hatred towards Trump and can be qualified as terrorism". His professional and personal equipment would have been confiscated and the researcher would have been sent back to Europe the next day.
Reminder of freedom of opinion
According to another informed source of the file to the AFP, "hateful and conspiracy messages" were reproached for the French researcher by the American authorities. An FBI investigation would have been announced to him, for which "the charges were abandoned," said the source.
"Freedom of opinion, free research and academic freedoms are values ??that we will continue to claim proudly. I will defend the possibility for all French researchers to be faithful, in compliance with the law, "said the Minister of Higher Education and Research. The Embassy of the United States in Paris, requested by AFP, referred to customs services. The American customs, contacted, did not react immediately.[/i]
source: https://www.lemonde.fr/international/article/2025/03/19/etats-unis-un-chercheur-francais-refoule-pour-avoir-exprime-une-opinion-personnelle-sur-la-politique-menee-par-l-administration-trump_6583618_3210.html
It’s disingenuous to pretend Congress is the same as the administration. The administration has only moved to cut political bureaucrats. But returning the FBI to its mission of fighting crime appears to have its benefits.
[tweet]https://twitter.com/collinrugg/status/1902499980210008303?s=46&t=IakyLvDoU1iHVTU4X-LNfg[/tweet]
Senators Justin Eichorn, Eric Lucero, Steve Drazkowski, Nathan Wesenberg, Glenn Gruenhagen take creepiness to another level (Mar 18, 2025):
SF 2589 as introduced - 94th Legislature (2025 - 2026)
That's B.S.. They've gone after anyone who was involved in the investigations and prosecution of Trump's crimes, and the crimes by those involved in 1/6. Also, Trump has specifically installed partisan loyalists at the top echelon of the DOJ, one of which is Kash Patel (who had published an enemy's list).
At this point anyone who's still supporting the Republican party ought be considered in the same light as an outright supporter of a fascist regime.
That’s right, Crossfire hurricane and now a new one, Arctic frost, which we’re just learning about. It looks like it all ties into the electors scheme case, the Jack Smith case, those “crimes” you keep mentioning though can never detail.
According to emails this case may have been instigated by an anti-Trumper named Timothy Thibault, a political agent who resigned in disgrace after whistleblowers accused him of shielding Hunter Biden. It was later found he was sharing sensitive info using FBI emails (and nude photos of his girlfriend), and also that he violated the Hatch Act. That’s just some of the routine rot cut from that agency, which you defend.
MAGA Republicans advocating for American interests in a nutshell.
MAGA hats might be viewed in a different light in twenty years from now, but that doesn't mean a thing today.
Notice how easy it seems to be to put the lid on for example the university students.
First it was Trump posts and fear from the "libtards":
Then it was actual deportations and the university faculties doing just as Trump wanted them to do:
I assume that this above is the consequence from the deportation of Rasha Alawieh, a Lebanese physician.
Of course, when it comes to terrorism and drug trafficking, the harsh "due process" is already there. But the fact really isn't to go with the "due process" stuff, but show just how quickly something can be done and judges and "due process" can stand away. Tom Homan, Trump's border czar, stated this attitude quite well.
If they are, it will be due to the sheer incompetence of the Republican party. The party's goals and priorities are clear.
Unfortunately, the science of marketing psychology shows how effective constant hammering of bullshit actually is for indoctrinating others... though attempting it on a philosophy forum might be a tall order.
It is market research.
You can't "trigger the Libs" unless you know what sets them off. Back in the heyday of Breitbart and Red State, participants would boast of visiting other sites to do that sort of thing. They have become more careful since then.
While the brilliant theories of those who have gotten everything wrong until now are fun, no, it’s for the pure joy of rubbing reality in the faces of those who would otherwise refuse it.
[tweet]https://twitter.com/whitehouse/status/1902826832052793794?s=46&t=IakyLvDoU1iHVTU4X-LNfg[/tweet]
You repeat the same stories and when they are challenged in detail, you retreat until you can proffer them again.
You support a self-described authoritarian whose exercise of a "unitarian Executive" contradicts your claim to being a Libertarian who views all of government to be an infringement upon your freedom.
You often point to the corruption of the global system of transactions but never acknowledge your team's role in that regard.
You copy and paste X tweets like you were working for the man.
I’ve never claimed to be a libertarian. You claimed I read Breitbart, without evidence. You believed and spread the same lies as Joe Biden that Trump praised neo-Nazis, claimed your cousins did as well, and have yet to thank me for rubbing your face in the reality. You just make stuff up, so it continues to be quite easy to dismiss it all as wild imaginings
So, what does the name mean to you? There are your posts about denying a "social contract".
U.S. District Judge William Alsup ruled that the Trump administration must immediately reinstate all of the probationary employees it fired from the departments of Defense, Treasury, Agriculture, Energy, Interior and Veterans Affairs.
The mass firings of federal workers were a “sham” effort by the Office of Personnel Management ? the human resources agency of the federal government ? to skirt laws in order to drastically reduce the size of the federal workforce, Alsup said. ....
The White House has already signaled it will appeal the ruling.
“A single judge is attempting to unconstitutionally seize the power of hiring and firing from the Executive Branch. The President has the authority to exercise the power of the entire executive branch — singular district court judges cannot abuse the power of the entire judiciary to thwart the President’s agenda,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said in a statement.[/quote]
This is another example of the use of amorphous terms such as 'The President's Agenda' to rationalise actions that Federal Judges have found illegal and unconstitutional on various grounds. Here, what has happened is that the Federal OPM (Office of Personnel Management) database was used by DOGE to send a mass email to thousands of employees firing them on the grounds of 'performance', when no review of performance had been taken into account. Furthermore the Judge ruled that the OPM is itself not the hiring or firing agency for these positions, which is properly the agencies themselves:
and
These cases, and the Venezualan expatriation flights, are the real frontlne of the confrontation between Trump and the Judiciary. It's perfecly obvious that Trump views the law and the judiciary as impediments to his imperial will and as sources of irritation and frustration on those grounds.
'The Doctor Will See You Now'
(“Reality” = the stupid Tweets I happen to like today.) Hey, whatever brings one joy. I get to have the joy of laughing at them, so it’s a win-win.
I find it a ridiculous idea. It’s neither social nor a contract.
It’s REALITY! Why are you all laughing?
Fixed.
Reality, brought to you by Twitter.
Spreading those realities, one tweet at a time. Gives great joy to your average mental patient too.
Isn’t that ironic. You had to change and bold my words to your liking.
Your reality involves searching for things like videos of weird individuals inserting their fingers in their ass and wiping them on Teslas, which you then post on a philosophy forum and joyfully call reality. In your reality, that incident captures the essence of the backlash against Musk.
Reflect on that for a minute.
I’ll pass.
Please don’t encourage self-reflection. It’s not like this is a philosophy forum…
Anyway — Please let him just continue. It almost always guarantees a laugh whenever I check.
Excellent!
I can’t imagine the reality for someone who has shrilled so relentlessly over the years for any politician, much less for one like Trump.
This feels like animal abuse... poor animal going through the motions of trained behavior, like a circus animal that only the oblivious audience can appreciate.
[tweet]https://twitter.com/thejusticedept/status/1902773864582750689?s=46&t=IakyLvDoU1iHVTU4X-LNfg[/tweet]
Why don't the Republicans make it into law that every democrat thinking of buying a new car has to buy a Tesla? At least Donald could make an executive order of that. Because Elon needs help!!!!!
Still proudly wearing that MAGA hat when you go to the supermarket in Canada, NOS? :wink:
It’s already law. Yes, the DOJ concerns itself with terrorism, no matter how retarded it is. Do you guys fire-bomb Ladas to get back at Putin?
Trump rescinds executive order after law firm agrees to provide $40m in free services
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/mar/20/trump-rescinds-executive-order-paul-weiss
[tweet]https://twitter.com/trumpdailyposts/status/1902854782731035059?s=46&t=IakyLvDoU1iHVTU4X-LNfg[/tweet]
Really highlights what Trump is about.
3 people face federal charges for Tesla attacks. Are such acts domestic terrorism?
On this site anyway. But check Twitter — it’s very common. Hence so many Tweet reposts; he spawns from there.
When they do it, it’s terrorism. When we literally storm the Capitol because our cult leader told us the election was stolen, it’s a friendly tour.
:rofl: I love it.
Ex-FBI agent who accused agency of political bias is charged with disclosing confidential records
https://apnews.com/article/fbi-agent-arrested-c1d202f3e8e305797ed86a89d20e8f9e
Democrats forced to buy Tesla's? Wow!
Quoting NOS4A2
Lol.
A Lada is a very rare vehicle in Finland. They all were bought back to Russia when the borders opened. And guess what, it's not the most durable and long lasting car. Mainly collectors have Ladas in Finland.
They’re not mine. But they share the same wild sentiment as you.
Ssu’s peaceful protesters.
Anyone remember the attack on the Capitol? “No one died! It’s just some property damage.”
Anyone die from the Tesla vandalism? No. “Domestic terrorism!”
It’s just so easy. Who can take partisan trolls seriously? Even if they PRETENDED to have principles, maybe they wouldn’t be so easy to spot.
Still trying to wrap my head around someone pretending to care about distorting reality while relentlessly shrilling for a politician.
Our partisan troll takes it very seriously. It's not arson or vandalism, this is 9/11 level terrorism, and thus the perpetrators ought to be handled like terrorists. Although even he lives in Canada, where he should see what an impact Trump's condescending behavior stirred up with those "nasty" Canadians, he won't see where Trump is leading the US.
This will just get worse.
King Donald is just drooling for the opportunity to go after the "domestic terrorists", protesters that dare to oppose his reign. As the economy goes south thanks to the tariffs and Trump uncertainty, the US is on a collision course that will create the epic trainwreck.
Yes, that has caused me to think it is a parody.
[tweet]https://twitter.com/katiedaviscourt/status/1902951863819112867?s=46&t=IakyLvDoU1iHVTU4X-LNfg[/tweet]
NOS4A2 can be entertaining, but he seems to be get lazy, just posting a whole lot of X files now.
Quoting NOS4A2
In the 80's if you showed up to a party in a Lada, you had to park around the block.
I am a little worried about the trans folk as they are bound for men's prison. Now that's something that's concerning. Not that they belong in a women's prison, but still.
I also love my Tesla and the thought of it getting vandalized because of Elon is enraging.
One can tell from the comments in this very thread that they actually believe these acts are harming Elon, and not innocent people, even fellow anti-Trumpists. For instance there was that guy carving swastikas into that Jewish guy’s cybertruck. These sorts of symbolic fantasies which lead to real-world consequences is why they lose elections.
2 of the 3 attacked charging stations. That could lead to people being stranded when their charge dies. It hurts everyone and wastes electricity and time. I'm glad the DOJ is putting its foot down. Teslas are also amazing vehicles, imho peak american ingenuity.
https://bsky.app/profile/muellershewrote.bsky.social/post/3lkwtcrbemk2r
For it to be terrorism, these arsonists would have to be attempting to pressure the U.S. government into banning Tesla, outlawing tech billionaires, or perhaps forcing Musk to finally finish building that Hyperloop he promised a decade ago. But there is no grand anti-Tesla manifesto, no underground resistance fighting the tyranny of overpriced self-driving software that doesn’t work. There’s not even a particularly cohesive movement—just pissed-off individuals torching status symbols.
And yet, because Tesla is Musk’s sacred cow, and Musk has successfully bought himself a direct line to lawmakers and regulators, we must all now pretend that this is a crime of national consequence. We must feign horror that people might not like a man who turned a revolutionary electric car company into a meme stock-slash-cult. That individuals, acting alone and without coordination, might express their frustration in a way that is destructive but nowhere near the level of, say, blowing up a federal building.
Hating Musk is not a political position, no matter how much he’d like to believe he’s the ideological lynchpin of the free world. It’s a personal preference, much like preferring your autopilot to not drive you into a stationary object at highway speeds. The notion that vandalizing Teslas is a threat to the nation is as ridiculous as calling a key scratch on a Ferrari an act of economic sabotage. If anything, this is proof that Musk has ascended to the final stage of billionaire pathology: where even the slightest inconvenience to his interests is rebranded as an attack on civilization itself.
Tesla can’t compete with that, so they will have to make buying a Tesla compulsory. Just like they made buying a Trabant, or Lada compulsory in the eastern block.
https://on.ft.com/4iqhsdd
People destroying Teslas is analogous to a big spat of people destroying electric bikes that we had in Europe. That was absolutely not treated as a threat to national, or European, security. People just hated the bikes for various reasons.
Europeans are being influenced by anti-Trump messaging just like Americans. Haven't you noticed?
It does appear to me as downplaying - at least, when we consider the probable reaction if the opposite had happened. People would have undoubtedly jumped on the opportunity to prophesize the return of fascism, drawn parallels to the rise of Hitler, etc.
In that context, it's not so strange people are overreacting to what outside of the political context would indeed merely be an act of vandalism.
Pretending that political context doesn't exist does indeed smell of partisanship. Why would a European be partisan over US politics? You tell me, but that's pretty common these days.
This is an old political trick, one that has been used to great success in my own (shameful) home country where Pim Fortuyn was murdered under very similar circumstances.
There is a Tesla Takedown Movement, with the demand “Sell Your Teslas. Dump Your Stock. Stop Musk Now.” According to the website, “Hurting Tesla is stopping Musk. Stopping Musk will help save lives and our democracy.”
There is also an online map called DOGEQUEST, referencing the government agency, and it doxxes Tesla Owners and dealerships. The icon on the map is a Molotov cocktail.
And, again, three professors and researchers of domestic terrorism and extremism come to the exact opposite conclusion to the dismissive ones posted above.
3 people face federal charges for Tesla attacks. Are such acts domestic terrorism?
Lastly, the swatting of pro-Trump and musk political figures could lead to death.
‘I just fell to the ground’: Some of Trump and Musk’s most public supporters targeted in a wave of swatting incidents
It's not a what if. January 6th happened.
I think you don't get it. The US is going off a cliff. The toxic populism of Trump will get people to oppose him and there is nothing to calm things down. The polarization and the divide will just increase more. Trump has a loyal base and that will stand with him to the end and Trump, just as he was before in his earlier administration, only concentrated on it. Trump will just anger more and more his opposition, just like he has enraged the Canadians. For the Canadians it isn't just a trade war, Trump himself is a threat to the country. In the US Trump will continue disregard totally the separation of powers, and with the likely stagflation, he will make things worse. Trump wants to change things rapidly in such pace that it will end up in a chaotic mess.
Vandalism against a private company is already portrayed as domestic terrorism shows what the response will be and how Trump will respond to political protests against him. Of course, this is really is self defeating, because the tough stance against any protests will just increase the fears that people have against Trump. And add to that the dire economic situation, which will just get worse.
You see, in a functioning democracy when the shit really hits the fan, the political parties can put political competition aside and work together. I've seen it now twice in my country, with the opposition coming full on to side of the administration and politicians reacting extremely quickly in unison. First with the Pandemic, then with Putin's attack on February 24th 2022 attack. The American response to the Pandemic is here quite telling. Did it unify the country? No, of course not, it just increased the political polarization and distrust in the government. And that polarization is just going on, continuing, just increasing it's speed...
Americans are losing their ability to come together. Populism does this as it partitions people. Even if they would be hit by a meteorite or the goddam Yellowstone supervolcano would erupt, this wouldn't get the Americans to get together. The efforts of individual people would surely be praised, but likely there wouldn't be rallying to your government in this case. The political infighting would continue. We already have seen how Trump confronted the pandemic.
Well, exactly. And look how they marketed that as a full blown attempt at a coup d'etat.
Now those same people are getting up in arms about this Tesla thing being seen in its proper political context. The same people, mind you, who were in such a rush to quickly forget two assassination attempts on the leader of the opposition.
It's perfectly appropriate to see this in the context of political violence/intimidation, but of course "the other side" is categorically unable to acknowledge their own wrongs.
It's partisan through and through.
Your inability to tell the difference between vandalism by angry people and the storming of a parliamentary hearing buttressed by right wing activists waving confederate flags and other seccessionist movements, where the new President would be inaugurated is telling.
Quoting Tzeentch
Exactly. It wasn't a planned autocoup, because then Trump would have prepared for it. Now he just through something of a Hail Mary pass at the last moment. Now the Secret Service drove Trump to the White House against his wishes where he watched in awe as his supporters stormed the Capitol. Was that inappropriate? Hell yes. Quite more than vandalism against Tesla cars.
Quoting Tzeentch
Indeed. And this is why everything is going to hell in a hand basket, as they say.
And people will be in shock if and when the violence erupts. All you need is a few people with a self loading rifles feeling they are under attack and decide to shoot back. And then you have people killed because of politics and that will be normalized. Have we just forgotten the George Floyd riots during the prior Donald Trump administration? Then it was blacks rioting because of police action. Now just how worse it will be when the rioting is against the Trump administration? Jan 6th rioters would die for their President. Do not underestimate their dedication.
Quoting Benkei
But this is the real problem here.
That crowd you are talking about is in power. It's the base that Trump listens to, because Trump isn't trying to build any bridges here to anybody else. Do you really think they wouldn't stand up for their President, if asked to? When Trump would declare that the deep state is there to overthrow the Trump presidency?
And I'll just repeat it here. Canadians are the example of what happens when Trump simply just dismisses the fact that polite neighbors might really get angry from his ideas. Not even the MAGA people themselves take the idea of annexing Canada and Greenland seriously, but Canada and Greenlanders and naturally the Danes do take this seriously. They that are confronted with Trump's hostility, will notice every Mark Rutte that simply laughs away the matter when Trump starts talking about annexing territories from it's allies. They won't see it as this some kind of Professional Wrestling excessive hyperbole that is just show. They will see it as reality, as Trump won't back down.
They take all the bullshit from Trump quite seriously. This is a way that really the serious polarization happens, because if an ultimate sign of hostility is to talk about annexation, then the ultimate act of hostility against a democracy is to question and not care about the separation of the powers and the US Constitution.
The reason for this is that the overton window has been blown open, especially on cultural issues. So sometimes you can't "come together" and you just need to fight off nasty ideas. I know as a democracy we pride ourselves on tolerance but that tolerance must have a limit. We cannot tolerate the rot that is occuring in our institutions of higher learning. We cannot tolerate the endless streams of illegal immigrants and gang members and sex traffickers making their way into the US. And we certainly cannot tolerate the idea that anyone can just be any gender/sex they feel without it leading to mass chaos. This is what brought Trump to power.
That and a bunch of neo-Nazis.
This is ridiculous. The biggest problem with the gender identity issue is the intolerance that many people have with it. The only legitimate issue I see is sports participation, which can be unfair to biological girls. That could be dealt with without infringing on other freedoms of TG people.
Quoting BitconnectCarlos
Immigration and asylum law needs to be updated, but the entry and residing of undocumented people shouldn't be conflated with gang activity and sex trafficking. Less that 4% of violent crimes are committed by undocumented immigrants. This is another case of Trump leveraging bias for political gain.
Did you forget about locker rooms? Among others.
Then you have bathrooms. And prisons. And if we're talking military service, which group do transgender recruits go with? The men or the women? Or do they get their own personal drill instructors? I know some wonderful transgender people, but the idea that all gender identities simply must be respected on the legal level will usher in chaos.
Still too much. That figure should be at 0.
It has nothing to do with that.
I'm pointing towards a political climate that has already resulted in two assassination attempts on Trump that we know of, which is part of the context in which these recent events must be viewed.
It's simply disingenuous to hand-wave lesser forms of political unrest as though this context doesn't exist.
It's also a question of whether the picture the media is trying to sketch corresponds with reality and the views of the average American.
Exactly. It’s just hilarious to watch. The spineless, principle-less, fact-free partisans are such fantastic hypocrites it’s quite incredible.
January 6th: patriots peacefully protesting.
Tesla cars destroyed: domestic terrorism.
I’m not in favor of destroying Teslas. I don’t like seeing it, and I don’t think it’s great strategy (although Tesla shares ARE plummeting). It’s the hypocrisy that I get a kick out of.
It’ll always appear as downplaying. Take a look at January 6th. What’s that, exactly? I myself don’t think it’s what the democrats make it out to be — but it’s also not what the republicans try to spin it as.
If Trump supporters were burning Teslas, I wouldn’t like it. I don’t like it now. But I would be pushing back against those that spin it. In this case I see much exaggeration. I don’t see that many people in power — or on philosophy forums — coming out in defense of it.
And if they had found and lynched Mike Pence. Or found Nancy Pelosi.
Your and NOS4A2’s attempts to normalise the tearing down of the constitution by a populist is pretty mediocre. Why should we continue to repeatedly explain this and point out reality when you just ignore it and repeat the same mediocre platitudes?
My brother in Christ Denmark has opinions about Greenland and every European country is in hybrid warfare with Russia.
Yeah, I think that's fair enough.
At the same time, amid a poisoned political climate, these somewhat low-key events are no longer so innocent.
The spin should be recognized for what it is, but simply dismissing it as 'business as usual, nothing to see here' whenever it's convenient (aka: when it's directed at one's political opponents) is the other side of the extreme, and that's what prompted my initial reaction.
Trump's actions haven't solved those problems, it ignores them. For example, where SHOULD a transgender person go to the bathroom? Biological women taking testosterone develop a masculine physical appearance. If they use the ladies' room, this will frighten many.
Re: the military- drill them with their biological sex. Trump has denied them the right to serve at all.
[Quote]I know some wonderful transgender people, but the idea that all gender identities simply must be respected on the legal level will usher in chaos[/quote]
Not sure what you are referring to. My view is that they shouldn't be discriminated against. This doesn't mean a trans-woman should be treated identically to a biological woman. It's reasonable to debate what accommodations are appropriate, because I don't think there's an obvious, universal answer. Trump has solved no problems in this regard, because it simply ignores the reality.
wat
Oh it’s definitely not business as usual. But I think we all know we’re well beyond that.
From my perspective, the Republicans put this train in motion, starting with Palin and the tea party (maybe even the Contract with America) and McConnell’s Senate shenanigans. Their media hasn’t helped; in their attempt to justify their unpopular agenda they’ve had to undermine truth and science and mathematics and reality far more than Dems.
The democrats are spineless corporatists and bureaucrats, but as similar as both parties really are I don’t see them as equal either— they’re not the ones that took us off the rails. So I’m certainly biased in that way — but I think I’m correct to be.
I think this is fair. Compare how Obama was treated in conservative media — he held a coffee while saluting! He wore a tan suit! He asked for dijon mustard! He’s a Muslim! He wants to make himself king! Not to mention endless references to Hitler. For years and years this happened. I couldn’t stand Obama, but it was almost never criticism of doing too LITTLE for working people, or for bailing out banks and the auto industry, or for betraying people on the public option, or for the drone wars. When he was criticized for this, it was minimal— largely because conservatives applaud much of it themselves.
“Liberal” media are also hysterical and largely unfair. The Russia stuff from the beginning was obviously ridiculous to anyone not wearing DNC blinders, the stuff about not disavowing David Duke was BS, the stuff about Charlottesville was BS, the pathetic worship of Robert Mueller, etc.
BUT — and this is where the “all politicians lie” and “both parties are the same” simplemindedness breaks down — Trump has beyond a doubt given them far more to work with. His lies are more numerous and more blatant, his corruption and lack of knowledge about the world, the economy, the military, the government, history, science, philosophy, art — everything except self-promotion— is unlike anything that’s come before. And he’s great at dog-whistling and implications, always making sure (probably thanks to years of being sued and dealing with lawyers) he has plausible deniability.
Imagine Obama likening his opposition to vermin and communists, or implying or explicitly advocating for jailing them. Or saying the election was stolen? What would the reaction on Fox News have been, when they blew a gasket over a condiment preference?
Trump is indeed different. You can’t whip your side into a frenzy and become ever-more extreme in your rhetoric and advocacy of violence and then be surprised when there’s an assassination attempt. I don’t like assassination attempts either — no one serious does — but once again the hypocrisy was so heavy afterwards it was nearly unbearable.
It’s an endless circle of calling out hypocrisy. Both sides are usually correct when they do so. That doesn’t make them equal. Republicans are simply more dangerous and bigger hypocrites. If saying that automatically makes one “biased,” fine. Then we need more bias— because it’s true.
I thought you would see it now in Canada, where I assume you are living. It's not about the Overton window been blown open, when you question the sovereignty of a state and it's territory. Culture war issues are totally insignificant and meaningless political discourse compared to questioning the borders of another state, which is similar to summoning up the Devil. It goes far further than any "Overton window" of what things are correct to talk about as it is a clear existential threat one is making. And this was evident when JD Vance gave his infamous speech at Munich, which seems to have been more focused for his MAGA audience back home. The ludicrous idea from Vance that "Russia isn't a threat", but the Culture war issues and the selective idea of "freedom of speech" are the problems of Europe shows clearly this tone deaf and overtly hostile attitude to countries that are really preparing for war. The true colors of the Trump administration have been shown, even if diplomatically everybody is just silent about the issue and hope that this is only a temporary collapse. For now, it's just some random French senator that can tell how things are, that we have a Nero in Washington. But that diplomacy will wear off, if and when Trump continues with his "great television".
So you can repeat all the culture war issues of DEI and the libtard snowflakes in the universities, which are as petty meaningless as burning flags or taking the knee when the national anthem is played compared to the trashing of the security system that have held for 80 years and kept our peace until today. To think that culture war issues are somehow at the same level of issues of war and peace, of German leader saying that Europe has to go independent of the US, or of the Polish leadership is openly discussing getting nuclear weapons, is hilarious. Europe is promising to rearm itself at breakneck speed pouring far more into defense than Russia and China combined. The threat of war is higher than any time of since perhaps the Cuban Missile crisis. The European rearmament started because of Putin, not because of Trump. But yes, now the crescendo in the rearmament is because of Trump, the leader which we cannot trust.
Quoting BitconnectCarlos
And neither do we, even if in your imagination of a libtard Gay Europe you might not perhaps understand that. And it doesn't take a fucking populist fringe party to bring that tougher stance immigration as the MAGA people seem to think.
Quoting BitconnectCarlos
And did you vote for Trump to annex Canada, Greenland and Panama? Did you vote for Trump to destroy the alliances actually that have benefited the US, created the Pax Americana, have made NATO countries to stand alongside you when Article 5 was implemented after 9/11? Did you vote for higher prices and economic recession? Because that's what you seem to get now.
And actually Putin has to think the same way here. Yes, the Kremlin can now acknowledge that the US is in line with them, yet Trump's friendliness is only temporary. Hence best to play this as the useful idiot. I don't see how Trump will repair this to be better. He is fixated in his own ideas and there are no safety rails anymore as there were in Trump's first administration, but people around him eager competing in pleasing his whims.
Quoting Tzeentch
Well, the country is polarized. That's for sure. Yet I think many simply don't see just what is happening around them. I genuinely think that there are only few if any Americans share Trump's delusions of the grandeur of annexing Canada. And many I guess do think that having allies is a good thing. Or that the Constitution should be followed especially by those in power.
French scientist denied US entry after phone messages critical of Trump found
[sup]— Robert Mackey · Guardian · Mar 19, 2025[/sup]
[tweet]https://twitter.com/skynewsaust/status/1903242817192989140?s=46&t=IakyLvDoU1iHVTU4X-LNfg[/tweet]
Why are they like this? The EU has a soy meltdown because they have to fund their own defense. It’s like an unweaned child who never learns to take care of themselves, and when finally set free to stand on their own feet, they spin around and spite their parents. They say the US is untrustworthy, when they have been living off the efforts of the American taxpayer.
This problem is intractable. You'd honestly want Trump to legislate on this? It's too thorny. Let the passable transwomen go into the women's restroom and the ones that don't pass into the men's, but of course it's never so easy because passing is subjective and subject to change.
Quoting Relativist
A judged blocked it. In any case, I would not want e.g. Blaire White or Nikita Dragon training with the men. Estrogen also causes one to lose muscle. Even if it didn't the thought of men showering and changing with transgender women is insane.
Quoting Relativist
You aren't familiar with the view that one's gender identity should be respected? "Trans women are women" is a common slogan. If you're carving out another category for them you're not as progressive as you might think.
34,000 People. Biggest Political Rally in Denver Since 2008. (— Bernie Sanders · Mar 22, 2025 · 2m:3s)
AOC and Bernie Sanders draw thousands of people at 'Fighting Oligarchy' rally in Denver (— Sudiksha Kochi · USA TODAY · Mar 22, 2025)
apparently has no particular understanding of the situation/environment.
By the way, it's not the EU in particular here, but Europe.
They have national independence, are diverse, you find all kinds of haggling and bureaucracy. There's been hesitance, for example that Germany should rise again, and Hungary is...out on the side. Just watch, someone will start yelling that von der Leyen (the EU), or whoever, is going for a power grab. Whatever.
I guess Macron tried to start cutting through all that with some success. Whatever happens, the situation/environment at hand benefits Putin's Russia, and disadvantages Europe's nations, hence the attempt to...do something.
Europe's contribution to NATO is higher than the US'. By GDP %, some individual nations are lower, some higher, and it's a legitimate enough complaint that those lower should carry more weight.
Right, but it’s really important that the right people go into the right toilet cubicle, so we have to have the collapse of the post world order.
These people have really drunk the cool aid, there’s no rhyme or reason, once you’ve taken a sip. And so the oligarchs and populists can come and help themselves to whatever power they want, earn billions of $, by building an empire or corruption. Trash the modern society, throw away peace, carve up the world with authoritarian dictators.
And for what? Something about Hillary Clinton’s emails and some toilet cubicles. The more intelligent among them swallow a narrative about an overweight government, waste in aid and social security programmes, economic stagnation etc. But it amounts to the same thing, just with a slightly more coherent narrative.
Sure there are problems in our modern world, but there always will be, civilisation on a large scale is difficult with lots of compromises, acceptance of inequality, nepotism and tolerable levels of suffering. But any kind of utopia, or unrealistic improvements in these things is always a long way over the horizon and has to be carefully built over long periods of peace and stability.
Beware the snake oil salesmen at your peril.
Now we have this libertarian nut job narrative meeting Kremlin deceptive misinformation and in the middle we find the MAGA crowd drunk on this cool aid putting a two bit conman in the White House to come and rescue us. Christ on a bike.
Can't help but think about who benefits. Foreign adversaries come to mind.
Of COURSE I don't want Trump to legislate on it, and his executive orders have created more problems.
Too thorny for what? Too thorny to be solved? There are difficult areas, and I expect it would take time- as did the evolution toward gays in the military and same-sex marriage. Both those "problems" are solved, notwithstanding the objections of those who are intolerant. The wholesale discrimination that Trump has ordered only appeals to the intolerant, as far as I can tell. Some aspects may be OK, but what's problematic is the process- a royal decree and bullying by Trump, with no consideration of consequences.
Quoting BitconnectCarlos
It shouldn't have been issued in the first place, and it will be appealed.
The transgendered have historically been treated unfairly and been publicly ridiculed. It behooves us to redress this. I'm not claiming to have the answers, but I am confident the problems can be addressed. IMO, the general principles should include avoiding discrimination, making reasonable accommodations, but also avoiding hurting others. I would have no problem telling TG girls (who have had the prior physical benefit of testosterone) they weren't allowed to participate in girls sports, because this is unfair to biological girls. So they may not get everything they want, but they deserve to be listened to, and to receive sensible accommodation.
I find the Finnish the warning quite sound:
The Danish one is similar:
But it's not only this. As the German report tells, the border officials can be mini-dictators and the victims aren't just sexual minorities:
I think things can be changing now:
How do you feel about them in women's locker rooms? Or restrooms? Maybe it would matter how long they've been transitioning and what their results are? There's no easy answers. It's not Trump's fault. It's the difficulties inherent in trans life. Some people will transition for years and still not be passable.
Homeland Security makes cuts to offices overseeing civil rights protections
[sup]— Rebecca Santana · AP · Mar 21, 2025[/sup]
What's the likelyhood of Trump being so insane that he would truly annex the Panama Canal Zone AND Greenland?
Taking back to US control the Canal Zone is real possibility.
But Greenland, really?
Because when you look at a map with Canada and Greenland being a part of the US, you can understand where this delusional ideas come from. Talk about grandeur:
Are Americans here truly OK with this? This what you really want? Because Trump sure as hell wants this.
Are you OK with Brussels annexing Ukraine? Or do you prefer euphemisms like “European integration”?
We can change all the bathrooms to gender neutral. We can make locker rooms gender neutral too. We can get rid of all gendered spaces (biologically-based). We can let people change their documents so that names and sex have zero relation to reality. After all, reality is clearly decided by the individual, not nature or anything external to that individual. :roll:
I love my trans brothers and sisters, but certain challenges arise.
Vance: Denmark, which controls Greenland, is not doing its job and it's not being a good ally (— ONEST NETWORK · Mar 24, 2025 · 20s)
JD Vance warns Denmark 'not a good ally' & hints Trump could invade Greenland (— The Sun · Mar 24, 2025 · 2m:25s)
The Greenlanders should just repeat "Thanks, but no", and send them home, but they're more diplomatic than so.
The Thule base has been around since World War 2. Cooperation between Greenland/Denmark and the US. Extending the cooperation should be easy enough. Land grabbing is a whole other matter. Trump/Vance are lying (again).
Is your main concern that countries should respect one another's sovereignty?
There ARE easy answers: gender-neutral restrooms, single occupant restrooms. Single occupant shower/changing rooms in gyms are also feasible.
Trump is absolutely at fault. He has
-ordered the removal of TGs from the military and denyed them the ability to serve.
-blocked gender-affirming care from health-care providers
-forbade counselling in schools for students with gender identity problems.
Well, EU membership, just as with actually NATO membership, countries have asked themselves to join, not that they have been forced to join. Countries like Norway have even negotiated about joining EU and then have decided that the benefits aren't so good and opted not to join. If you assume that the EU would be another imperialist player, would it let tiny but oil rich Norway not to be a member? Not how the EU works.
When Ukrainians seeing how Poland and other European countries have prospered in EU when their country has stagnated, hope to join the EU is quite understandable. Friendship with Russia didn't given them prosperity.
But I guess you might have gone too far down the rabbit hole and eagerly accept bullshit lies of Putin and think that there's nothing good even in what your own country has done (before Trump) and it's just the strong against the weak. And to say anything else is just naive.
Well, as I live in the country that ought to have the happiest people in the World (which is crazy btw), I disagree. We're still the good guys here and don't hate our government. :wink:
Quoting Punshhh
Trump sending his national security advisor looks a bit sinister.
Quoting frank
Mainly yes. Especially when you start craving for territories from others, it's really like opening a Pandora's box or summoning the Devil. Nothing else can harm relations so easily. And I'm fully aware that many times countries do intervene in the politics of others and especially if a country collapses into Civil war, yet it's really a big step then to go to annexations. Especially when there is no desire among the people to join another country.
The absurdity of all of this is that if Trump wasn't so obsessed to annex Greenland, make it part of the US, the "neo-imperialist" option would be there, which likely would succeed as John Bolton has described. The US would simply behind closed doors push Denmark to give independence to Greenland, then make security arrangements with the new independent country and help the new country to it's feet (and thus getting a close relationship with the country). Now Greenlanders do want independence, but they also understand that there's just 50 000+ of them and they simply don't have the income to provide all the services that now Denmark is providing, starting from things like Greenland has no universities and the Greenlanders can now study higher education in Denmark.
Now what would some JD Vance (or her wife) look like going to Greenland and supporting the freedom of Greenlanders and stating that the people have the right for independence and would stand among them waving the red-white flag? VERY DIFFERENT!
And anyway, the idea that more territory gives you more prosperity is basically an outdated idea...
But that's not what Trump's America stands for. Not at all.
Quoting CNN
Hard to see how anything Trump does is in 'the interests of everyday Americans', when it seems obvious that he's mostly interested in serving the ruling elite that he is inserting into every rung of American governance and culture.
Quoting NY Times - Trump Fuels a ‘Machinery’ of Misinformation
A presidency built on the ground of mendacity, where lies and deception are institutionalised and propagated from the highest levels of Government.
Finally, a major security breach courtesy some sloppy IT admin from the White House:
[quote=CNN; https://edition.cnn.com/2025/03/24/politics/yemen-strikes-journalist-cabinet-signal-chat/index.html]US officials reacted with shock— and in many cases, horror — to revelations in The Atlantic that top members of President Donald Trump’s Cabinet sent detailed operational plans and other likely highly classified information about US military strikes on Yemen to a group thread on a messaging app to which a reporter had accidentally been added.
The Trump administration acknowledged the messages, sent over the nongovernment encrypted chat app Signal, seem to be authentic without offering any explanation for why senior officials were discussing national defense information outside of approved classified government systems.[/quote]
Who remembers the faux outrage over the Hilary Private Server emails?
Quoting Trump · The White House · Mar 13, 2025
Doesn't seem normal to me either, but that by itself isn't as objectionable + serious + putrid as much of what he said.
I'm guessing someone told him Greenland and Canada will be prime real estate when climate change starts getting more severe. It's a little early to worry about that though.
Territorial expansion is something very close to heart for him indeed.
Sure. Who wouldn't want a massive ice sheet?
It's exactly this: https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/15633/kingdom-come-inc-by-benkei
My favorite is comparing the scandals that the Republicans uphold by Congressional investigations to tarnish Democrats and then compare them to the fumblings that Republicans do.
The Signal-app use scandal is the latest hilarious issue. Comparing it to Hillary's "private server" incident. But if you mix up "JD" with "JG" and don't notice that among members you have put in an reporter and then just talk about future military operations, that's so hilariously pathetic.
Well, just think of it as “American integration” then. Just use your little euphemisms you use on yourself and others and apply them to the United States. you’ll start to feel better.
[tweet]https://twitter.com/khqa/status/1904556409166983445?s=46&t=IakyLvDoU1iHVTU4X-LNfg[/tweet]
Nice piece of journalism, captures the insanity.
Infamy infamy, they’ve all got it in for me.
Electing Trump was an act of sabotage?
Waltz is telling colleagues that he has never met or talked to Goldberg, according to Fox News. Yet Goldberg is saying Waltz added him. If you've ever used Signal you'll note that when someone is added to the chat group, you're notified of who joined. So I'm supposed to believe an employee of the Trump administration added an anti-Trump architect of a few Trump hoaxes to a private chat, no one noticed, and continued to discuss war plans in from of him. How is that possible in your view?
*edit*
https://www.npr.org/2025/03/25/nx-s1-5339801/pentagon-email-signal-vulnerability
Apart from going through attack plans on Signal, before the attack was implemented. Perhaps simple Waltz mixed up "JD" and "JG" and nobody of them noticed anything. Too hard for anybody to check who is on the Signal-group! :grin:
You simply don't do that. It's just a sign of utter carelessness and indifference to security protocols. It's the attitude that only "little people" face dire consequences for these kinds of breaches, but not the Trump team. You see, it's so much easier to talk these issues by the Signal app, than you the cumbersome approach of going into a secure room, leaving your mobile away and then speaking there.
If true, then they were derelict in using Signal.
Yes, they were indeed derelict in using Signal.
And if it wasn't Waltz, but "hackers", is it really better?
JD and JG typo can happen, it's a possibility.
Look, this is the kind of things similar to speaking on a normal phone and not on a secure line secrets that shouldn't get public. Just ask Victoria Nuland. :wink:
I don’t consider the words of Jeffry Goldberg to be evidence. All he provided was two screenshots, and none of them shows any invite. And given his history and animus towards all involved, it is not beyond him to fabricate the whole damn thing, or be a dupe of some other campaign.
Though it is possible that Waltz invited one of the worst, rabid, anti-Trump journalists, from one of the worst, rabid, anti-Trump publications to read in on a chat with the vice-president, and the highest cabinet positions, the sheer unlikelihood of it demands consideration of other possibilities.
Of course you don't. You trust your biases:
Quoting NOS4A2
This is why know one should take you seriously.
Quoting NOS4A2
Did anyone think the invite was intentional? The implication is that it was careless. Waltz may have had Goldberg's number misidentified, or it was in his computer's clipboard. As I noted, the app may have been hacked. Use of this app was probably inappropriate.
But it turns out, there was no classified information conveyed in the chat. See: this.
Silly Goldberg should have posted the info as soon as he received it.
Hypocrisy, thy name is GOP.
As was put in a recent podcast, the current ruling elite is protected by the law, but not bound by it, whereas its opponents are bound by the law, but no longer protected by it, due to the purging of the ranks of law enforcement of those not loyal to the President, and his bullying of the legal profession so as to discourage their legal representation. It is unequal in all respects, and becoming more so every day.
So the current political situation is not a story with two morally equivalent sides. Important to remember.
ROFL!
[I]"When the Fox host asked [Waltz]how Goldberg’s number ended up in the group, Waltz responded: “Have you ever had somebody’s contact that shows their name and then you have somebody else’s number there? "[/i] -- source
Sound familiar? (See my prior post)
"Should be fired on the spot!"
Clearly you read it. Why did you deliberately leave the rest out?
“Of course I didn’t see this loser in the group. It looked like someone else. Whether he did it deliberately or it happened in some other technical mean is something we’re trying to figure out.”
Edit: There is in fact now photographic evidence that Waltz added him to the group. Whether he was disguising himself as someone else is not clear, but Waltz should probably resign either way.
Quoting Eileen Workman · Feb 13, 2025
In Ursula Le Guin’s novel The Lathe of Heaven, George Orr wakes to discover that he has the power to control reality through his dreams. Each night while he sleeps, the world changes in profound and unexpected ways. In the morning, Orr alone remembers reality as it was. Soon, Orr (named, one would assume, for George Orwell) finds himself under the care of a psychiatrist, who, realizing that Orr has these powers, tries to use them to turn the world into a utopia. This does not go well for the world.
It doesn’t go well because dreams have their own logic. They are nonlinear and to some degree nonsensical, and so directing oneself to dream of world peace may result in an alien invasion. Technically the dream has been fulfilled. Earthlings have stopped fighting with one another, but only because all of Earth is now ruled by an alien species. In this new dream reality, a world ruled by aliens becomes the only world you have ever known.
That is what the American experience is beginning to feel like in 2025: Not as if we are living in President Donald Trump’s reality, but as if we are living in his dream. As the showrunner and director of TV shows including Fargo, Legion, and the upcoming Alien: Earth, I think a lot about how audiences navigate the tension between horror and the absurd. Now we’re all in this liminal space of the president’s devising.
When the Trump administration pretends that the three branches of government are not and never have been equal, it creates a state of unreality in the minds of everyday Americans, similar to that of a dreamer in a dream. When the president and his proxies ignore both laws passed by Congress and Supreme Court decisions, they seek to replace the vérité of our shared history and experience with a fantasy, turning the stabilizing force of precedent into the quicksand of dream.
Only in a dream could the bicycle you’re riding become a pony. But if you tell the pony in the dream that he used to be a bicycle, he will deny it. I’ve always been a pony, he will say. And because this is a dream, you will accept that. But what if you’re awake and your government is doing things and saying things that seem nonsensical? What are you supposed to think when you search for the Gulf of Mexico on Google Maps and discover that it no longer exists? What happens if, as a next step, the history books are revised to erase all records of the name? In this new reality, that body of water has only ever been called the “Gulf of America.” You can imagine the argument that will happen years from now, where you swear there was once a Gulf of Mexico, but, for the life of you, you just can’t prove it.
Over the past two months, the rule of law in this country has been replaced by the rule of whim. The whim is not just that of one man but of a loose cabal of Cabinet members and “special advisers” who are combining revenge fantasies with small-government dreams, xenophobic visions, and cryptocurrency delusions. And so former national-security officials have had their security clearances revoked, government agencies have been fed into the wood chipper, “alien enemies” have been deported despite a judge’s court order, and a vaccine denier and pseudoscience champion has been confirmed as the secretary of Health and Human Services.
The only thing these dreamers have in common is that they want to control reality itself, to rewrite the past, present, and future simultaneously. Their actions create a maelstrom of daily news and revisionist history that the mind struggles to combine into a coherent reality. As a result, we are moving from a waking state to a dream state, where logic is flexible and anything can happen.
The movie Inception introduced us to a world in which corporate spies infiltrate the dreams of CEOs. Once inside, they steal secrets or, in the central action of the film, seek to implant an idea that the dreamer will, upon waking, turn into a reality. Inception, as they call this process, is considered almost impossible because of how difficult it is to make someone believe that an outside idea is their own. In this framework, however, the logic of the waking world is distinctly different from that of the dream. It assumes a waking world in which things make sense. Where facts have meaning. Not a world whose richest man brandishes a chain saw onstage and hires teenagers nicknamed “Big Balls” to gut the federal government, while the president of the United States reposts an AI video of the Gaza Strip as a luxury resort destination.
Inception did not envision a world in which only dream logic exists even when the dreamer is awake; a world where the federal government is trying to both shut down the Department of Education and weaponize it in order to remake how and what children in this country are taught. A world in which the president signs an executive order invoking the Alien Enemies Act against immigrants from Venezuela, even though the country is not at war with Venezuela. In the administration’s dream logic, the executive order itself creates a preexisting state of war, allowing it to issue the order. The logic is circular. Without being at war, the administration cannot use the act to justify the deportations. Or whatever. The bicycle is a pony. The logic is dream logic.
In the past century, authors in Russia, China, and other countries with totalitarian regimes have written about how absurd life becomes under autocracy. But until you experience it yourself, you can’t fully comprehend the illogic of it—or, I should say, the dream logic of it. It is a feeling as much as an idea, a surreal sense of unreality, from which the dreamer wills himself to wake up.
As the Austrian-born psychologist Bruno Bettelheim wrote about life under fascism: “Thus has tyranny robbed men of their sleep and pursued them even in their dreams.”
In this warped reality, rather than dreading sleep, we begin to dread waking up, because every day there is a new dream, one that, like George Orr’s, threatens to fracture our reality yet again. Our job over the next four years is to remember what life was like before the dream so that one day we can make the world a logical place again.[/quote]
And that is why I find it remarkable that everyone is so passive. With all that has happened so far, is the US able to wait 4 years in this manner? No one is doing anything, because the US people seem to respect the process of democracy so much that when its obviously broken in letting these people in and letting them do what they do, they are fundamentally blind to the dangers they've let into the house.
It's as if a cabal of Belphegor has been given the keys to power and the population is slowly becoming an army of sloths, drugged by their declining intellect through social media, failing their ability to distinguish truth from lies, danger from safety; all while Belphegor himself grows fat on their delusional love and hate - The critics are passively believing that speaking up makes a difference - While the followers praise him as the second coming of Christ.
A postmodern regime that if nothing is done will collapse into utter chaos. All while Putin laughs and promotes his troll factories.
No one is doing anything.
That is the only thing positive that comes out of this. The feeling in Europe is chaos, but also a renewed comradery between nations. A sense of building something new together. It's unexpected, but nice to see happening.
However, the US will always be a major factor on the world stage and the idiocy leads to things like threats to Greenland and Denmark of annexing Greenland.
Fundamentally, I don't think anyone really cares if the US collapse as long as they screw themselves up and no one else gets hurt, but there's lots of tentacles out from the US that hurts people and if the US falls, the world will be thrown into chaos anyway, regardless of their "America first" politics.
So I much rather see Americans deal with the trash cans leading the nation. Remove them by force if they go too far. They're already standing on the edge of authoritarian abuse of power so all it takes is a misstep that hurts the US population in some way the population can't accept. Or maybe the US population is so docile that they'll just act all Germany in the 30s, crawling on their knees in front of the orange fatman, kissing his Bigmac-greased fingers or standing in-line to get groped while Elon Musk dances around with a chainsaw flamethrower. A population of mindless husks, zombies who're neither dead or alive, puppets of the orange man, the fat oozing from the yellow king.
So yes, let it all fall until the right people rises up, shedding their apathy.
If someone doesn't know, Pituffik Space Base (renamed former Thule Air Base) is in the middle of nowhere even by Greenlandic standards, 1500 km or so north from Nuuk. One of the remotest places where US servicemen are deployed, who likely will give a warm welcome to family Vance.
If they get lost on the way there... it would be the most poetic downfall for Vance and Trump's politics.