511–520 of 857 posts
> $100 million Is that a lot? Seems relatively inconsequential in the grand scheme of things, but perhaps a warning of larger moves to come.
It’s the symbolism more than direct financial impact. You get 100 moves like this and it starts to become real money.
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You clearly DON’T “get it”.. obviously Trump is different than Hitler, but to say he’s nothing remotely close is some serious handwaving. ICE is acting a LOT like the Gestapo. Trump is telling obvious lies and his supporters simply parrot it as fact. That was a big part of Hitlers power, the propaganda machine that made it acceptable for otherwise intelligent people to pretend to believe the obvious lies. Trump is ag…
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Also -- it's fairly well documented at this point that ICE is often without a warrant, and is detaining and in some instances deporting US citizens. These aren't one offs, and looking at what's going on in MN makes that pretty clear.
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> Today, US policymakers see China as the main adversary. That is not evident at all in how any US policymaker acts these days. China is stronger than ever, precisely due to US actions. Every day, the US gives up power and throws it away, and China picks it up off the ground for free. The supposed "China Hawks" are all chicken hawks without anything to back them up.
The ODNI Threat Assesment is the only official stance and is apolitical. China has been top of the list for nation-state threats for more than a decade. https://www.dni.gov/index.php/newsroom/reports-publications/...
The US intelligence community is correct in its assessment, but US policy is not acting in any way consistent with both the US being the dominant world power and taking that ODNI assessment seriously.
Current US policy makers are instead trying to hide in their shell like a turtle, and greatly restrict US power so that it must not confront or deal with the threat from China.
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Who cares about reputation? He's spent countless hours advocating for telcos and neutering the FCC without disclosing the significant income he earned or his work as a telco lobbyist, so why start now?
That's news to me. Citation needed, and as much as I detest Rayiner and what he stands for I think that if you make statements like that you should do it under your real account.
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This is not a one sided thing. The US has been allowed to do a lot of things under the NATO umbrella that it benefited from (such as: selling a vast quantity of arms). Soft power is a thing and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization came into being to deal with exactly the kind of situation that we are viewing today. To see the US bow out, and in fact threatening allies is duplicitous at best.
NATO came into being to deal with the USSR, which was the preeminent threat to all NATO members. The US wasn't expected just to come save Europe; European states had real military power and the will to bring it to bear against the US's main adversary. In a conflict with the USSR, the US could rely on Europe to fight with them. Very valuable. Today, US policymakers see China as the main adversary. But European states…
I note in the current Europe/Ukraine vs Russia fighting there are no US troops, although they did send weapons for which we are grateful
>China as the main adversary
neither China nor Russia are about to bomb the US but in terms of threats to US interests and hybrid warfare we have the full scale war in Ukraine vs only some threats over Taiwan and on the hybrid front I hear rumors the the Russians cultivated a US property developer code name Krasnov and he went on to cause some havoc back in the US.
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At some point the US will lose the Dollar, and it will turn out that US productivity is just like everyone else's.
What do you mean? All the best companies the world have seen recently is in US though. Google, Apple, Nvidia to name a few. What am I missing in your argument?
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NATO came into being to deal with the USSR, which was the preeminent threat to all NATO members. The US wasn't expected just to come save Europe; European states had real military power and the will to bring it to bear against the US's main adversary. In a conflict with the USSR, the US could rely on Europe to fight with them. Very valuable. Today, US policymakers see China as the main adversary. But European states…
> stop relying on America to fight the Russians for them, That's a very uncharitable take. Europe relies on NATO to fight the Russians. Of course it does. There is no alternative, and the US would never allow other credible alliances to form. Because why would they? It's certainly not in their interest. It's good that Europe spends more in security, and it's good that Europe seems to be serious about Ukraine. However…
This has been policy from at least the Clinton administration, and it has worked great to ensure that the US remains the biggest fish in the NATO pond, even if it is not bigger than all the others put together. Now that the current administration is tearing NATO in real time and the President is saying that his 'personal morality' trumps international law and treaties (never mind that ratified treaties stand on the same level as the Constitution, per the Constitution itself), I would imagine that the other members are working around the clock to implement their contingency plans and ramp up domestic military production and other avenues of procurement.
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The deficit reliably starts to come down whenever a Democrat leadership is in place. It then jumps back up under the Republicans.
It blows my mind that republicans are still seen as the fiscally responsible party.
Just say "Fiscal responsibility" enough times and it's magically true, and nobody will listen to the educated people pointing at literal receipts because they are "the elites", which is a group that somehow doesn't include the people who's wealth has grown 10x based on explicitly pro-rich person fiscal policy for decades.
It's why they blame democrats for "globalism" as well, despite the fact that the entire country loudly voted for Reagan because of his "lets reduce taxes and magically get rich" narrative.
Or how it's constantly said that "Democrats turned their back on blue collar workers". Said by people voting for the "Unions are inherently bad" party.
Everything about American behavior makes sense when you understand them as especially prone to swallowing marketing and ideology as truth.
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Canada needs cheaper cars than US manufacturers want to provide. US brand cars have all been going higher dollar and further up market in recent years. Quebec is famous for the "Quebec Special". Cars with manual everything. No AC. Manual windows. Completely stripped down to be as affordable/disposable as possible. Also the roads are absolute shit, they never wash off the salt, there used to be no inspections and titl…
Is this a thing? I have never heard about that, living in QC for the last 20 years and owned and rode dozens of cars. The car salesman looked at me as a rare species when I wanted a manual Soul. I have never seen an no AC or manual windows car here.
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It’s over 50% and there are plenty of plainly obvious parallels both historical and contemporary.
It is 49.8% (people who voted Trump in 2024) of 64.1% (people who voted in 2024), or 31.9% or ~1/3 of the total eligible voting population, which is what your parent states.