Donald Trump

[stevebrooks]

Trump being an idiot about history again:

Speaking at a news conference with the French President, Mr Trump said tensions between Ukraine and Russia could spill over.

“There will be a point where it is not going to stop at those two countries,” he said.

“Already there is such involvement from other countries and it could really lead to a very big war, World War III, and we are not gonna let that happen either.”

What led to WW2 was the appeasement of Nazi Germany by "peacemakers." Maybe good intentioned but ultimately idiotic peacemakers who thought that giving in to the aggressors demands would bring lasting peace. If Russia is stopped in Ukraine and kicked out it will likely end there, if you give in and give Ukraine to Russia it will just give encouragement to Putin that he can do the same to other countries. Not only should other countries be involved, they should be involved far more extensively than they are at the moment. This man is an idiot, let's not listen to him. This is a man who, on visiting the Pearl Harbour Memorial of the Arizona had to ask one of his entourage why they were there and what it was all about!

In November 2017, Trump arranged for a private tour and photo op at the USS Arizona Memorial in Pearl Harbor.

As Trump arrived. He asked John Kelly. "Hey, John, what's this all about? What's this a tour of?" Kelly was taken back. Disrespected. John Kelly is a retired Marine Corps general and a Gold Star father. After he retired from the Marine Corps, he took charge of the Department of Homeland Security before acting as Trump's chief of staff. Kelly eventually resigned.

Trump seemed not to grasp that the USS Arizona Memorial is a hallowed tribute to the more than 3,546 armed service members and civilians who died or were seriously injured in the 1941 assault.

https://www.publicopiniononline.com/sto ... 657580002/

You can't expect a man of this level of ignorance to try and end a war, his idea of ending the war is basically for Ukraine to surrender, that never ends well, once you surrender that sets you on a path to surrender the next time Putin invaded a country, it would never end!

[pipbarber]

The interesting, or is it sad, thing is that I don't think AfD underperformed, they beat the SPD and this is the first time since reunification that any party has broken through the two party system and got more seats than either one of them in an election.. That wasn't winning the election in the traditional sense but it is a seismic shift in Germany we shouldn’t ignore or dismiss, IMHO.

Yes, the AFD got 21% of the vote and are now the second largest party in Germany. They doubled their vote from the last election and have gained 83 seats in the parliament. It was by far their best result in the 12 year history of the party.

If One Nation received 21% of first preference votes in Australia, and assuming it was evenly spread, they would have 15 senate seats and 30 in the lower house. Obviously the voting systems are not comparable but this is a huge result for these wannabe Nazis in Germany, as it would be for any third party in the Australian context.

Steve's point is valid though i reckon, the attraction of the far right will subside as things collapse and go to shit but i suspect things will have to get way worse than they are now before that happens, and unfortunately our election is this year, rather than in a year's time.

[stylofone]

the attraction of the far right will subside as things collapse and go to shit

My concern is that when things collapse and go to shit, the far right will exploit it and increase their power. The misinformation, scapegoats and conspiracy theories are all in place to let them lie their way to greater influence.

[pipbarber]

the attraction of the far right will subside as things collapse and go to shit

My concern is that when things collapse and go to shit, the far right will exploit it and increase their power. The misinformation, scapegoats and conspiracy theories are all in place to let them lie their way to greater influence.

Yeah, that's true, but perhaps only up to a point? And when that point is reached, elections are cancelled or manipulated to ensure regime survival because they know a fair and free vote will go against them. (Only 30% of the population actually voted for Trump). That will be something to look out for in regard to the midterms. A signpost for autocratic rule.

Anyway, if it gets to that point, and i'm betting it will, it doesn't look good elsewhere. No one will want to model themselves on maga (well, some will but not many) because autocracy, once it has shown itself to be that, is a hard sell in a democracy, or at least it has been historically.

That's about as hopeful as i can get.

[pipbarber]

I don't think the US will recover from maga, come to think of it.

Functioning democracies are predicated on the existence of a permanent bureaucracy in so far as they enable an incoming government to enact it's policy changes. Without a permanent bureaucracy every newly elected government would have to busy itself with employing and training thousands and thousands of people before it even bothers with a cabinet meeting. If government is the software, the public service is the hardware you run the program on.

Moreover, the disaster that is DOGE, is stripping the public service of institutional memory. You can't sack everyone because the overall processors and procedures and general departmental functions will need to be relearned, or invented anew, every time.

And you can't politicise the public service. Even if an individual public servant detests the current government, they function in their role as efficiently as possible in exchange for the career guarantee that they won't be sacked when the next mob gets elected. It's a successful trade off that on the whole works.

Of course there's probably some inefficiency in the system, of course there are public servants that don't actually do all that much on a day to day basis but it's ok to leave a bit of fat on the bone, for times of emergency or crisis for example. And honestly, how much money would we really be saving by cutting down the bureaucracy to the bare minimum? And DOGE is going way further than that, they seem to be dismantling it entirely, abolishing entire departments.

Dismantling the public service is adjacent to dismantling democracy. And here we are, watching it happen, powerless.

If the Democrats somehow return to power they will have to rebuild the state, and while they're at it they may as well rewrite the constitution, depoliticise the judiciary and enact electoral reform. It's all starting to look like a two state solution to me.

[stevebrooks]

Another near miss at a US airport, this one was super scary for the pilot I am guessing! FAA investigating, well what's left of them anyway!

https://www.news.com.au/travel/travel-u ... c5d2c3e575

[pipbarber]

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/202 ... on-tariffs

Two points stand out to me. Firstly, maga have a better working relationship with Putin than it does with the EU, thus adding evidence to the claim that the US has 'changed sides,' as it were. And secondly, Trump is essentially a mercantilist in terms of international trade. There's a finite amount of wealth and if some other group has some, that's wealth that you don't have. It's batshit fucking stooopid. It's also contrary to not just neoliberal economic theory and long established free trade agreements, but also to classical free market philosophy. Adam fucking Smith would be objecting at this point. They're going to collapse the whole system.

(Just to clarify, I despise neoliberalism and i'd like it to fade into history but that doesn't mean replacing it with something way worse, but here we are!)

[stevebrooks]

And now for something completely different. So many Republicans around the country have been getting flack at town halls, remember not just from the "librels" but actual people who voted for them they have decided on a new tactic to help alleviate some of the pressure. Did you suggest listen o their concerns and take it to the GOP leadership? Did you say Petition Trump to stop Musk and DOGE? If you did you are wrong, what they are going to do is...stop meeting and listening to the people they represent;

A GOP aide said House Republican leaders are urging lawmakers to stop engaging in them altogether.

The town halls, and the rash of negative headlines, have been the first bit of public blowback for members who face voters next year. And the new reluctance to hold them indicates there are bubbling concerns about the impact the cuts could have on the GOP's chances of holding its thin majority in the House next year.

The viral nature of video clips spreading from one district to another means a bad confrontation in safe Republican territory could influence voters in battlegrounds.

Haha yeah that's real, they are simply going to stop engaging with voters at all, they do realise that only leaves one option right? The people coming to them wherever they are, protests, marches and even riots and violence in the end, yes it has come to this, marching in the street is the only way to get your elected representative to hear the people!

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/congre ... rcna193766

[stevebrooks]

We may need a thread of RFK Junior, but for the moment this will do, he is a Trump appointee after all.

Just cancelled meeting of experts on the flu vaccine as the prepare for next years flu season, so expect the flu vaccine to be cancelled. Just to be clear, 86 children and 19,000 US adults died from the flu this past year, and that's with the vaccine, imagine without it!

https://imgur.com/gallery/flu-vaccine-m ... da-pfmDWzS

And pulling funding altogether for the bird flu vaccine!

https://imgur.com/gallery/f-ck-BA0rD7y

[pipbarber]

https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2025 ... inst-trump

It is tempting to reduce the United States’ political crisis to the simple notion that poor choices at the ballot box yield poor outcomes.

However, the terrifying reality is that constitutional and legal safeguards, long assumed to be bulwarks against authoritarian rule, have proven alarmingly ineffective. That is because elite privilege and authoritarianism are part of the DNA of the US Constitution.

I found myself nodding along with this piece by Ziyad Motala from Al Jazeera.

It took me back a couple of years to the old forum and those daily legal videos old mate used to post about how safe and certain US justice is, apparently it mattered. Turns out not so much and it never fucking did.