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When I was thinking of the possible pros or cons of Brexit I never had "end up with a totally deranged, insane US President setting fire to the entire global economic order, however at least the UK will face half of the tariff the madman puts on the EU" as a Brexit "benefit". :bulb:
And we didn't stop to think why Landrover paused exports to the USA TO EVALUATE WHAT A 25% TARIFF WOULD MEAN FOR THEIR BOTTOM LINE.Quote:
Originally Posted by RandBlade
Indeed, a 25% car import tariff regardless of country of origin is utterly absurd.
Then to combine that with a 20% tariff on all EU products regardless of what they are (even stuff the US has no intention of making itself) and a 10% tariff on all UK products regardless of what they are . . . even more batshit crazy.
Trump was a loon first time around, he's even worse now.
If he actually wanted to make people make deals and bring down barriers with his hardnosed approach he'd have started with one or two of the more "offensive" countries like Vietnam (not China), gone all-in and when he got some results moved on and targeted another couple, making it clear that he intended to continue until all these "unfair" tariffs were gone. Way easier for the US economy and stock market to swallow and work with and other countries would have worked to reduce their risk which would provide what he claims he wanted one way or another anyway. Instead we have this. Because he either is a lunatic, or he's working to some personal agenda which has no business being considered in the Oval Office.
And now he's blinked and the 20% for the EU etc has gone and its 10% for all, except China, Canada and Mexico.
Piss up and brewery come to mind. He's not a President, he's just a monkey flinging poo at the wall and seeing what sticks.
No way to run a country. God knows how anyone can think about investing at the minute when there is no stable economic environment whatsoever.
But he's spot on in handing out an insane amount of US tax payer money to Israel, like all the other US presidents before him, and funding an unnecessary genocide. Right, old chap?Quote:
Originally Posted by RandBlade
Do you ever think about anything else?Quote:
Originally Posted by BluntHorse
I think it's the result of a man believing in in his own greatness. The craziness lies mostly in his conviction that he can solve the harmful imbalances and grievances all at once and all at the same time. Given the damage he's done so far I no longer see a way back to the old situation. I can't predict how big the lasting damage of this for America and the world will be. I can tell you that the next time am American tells me about checks and balances, I will laugh in his face.Quote:
Originally Posted by LittleFuzzy
I'm sure they do, but they're here to pick fights and they're not getting the ones they want so. . .Quote:
Originally Posted by EyeKhan
Of course I do. EyeKhan, I see you are sick of hearing about it. Imagine how the people who are living through it - now starving as you read this, with likely many family members murdered - are feeling. Do they have the option to think about anything else? This isn?t some natural disaster. It is man made. It?s my duty as someone privileged to raise my voice for them and expose the sick freaks who enable and support their suffering.Quote:
Originally Posted by EyeKhan
When I was a kid in high school and found out about WW2 atrocities at the death camps, and was asked, what would you have done if you were there? I said obviously I would be horrified and do what I could against it. So did everyone else in my class.
Now as an adult I am watching a live streamed genocide by both the victims and the perpetrators. Children pulverized.
Where is ?never again? ? Or was that just for Jews?
You wanna hear a little bit of truth? The problem is you. The more you try convince us about your cause du jour the less we care. It's people like you who destroy every semblance of interest in what happens in Gaza. You and that other twat in Sweden clearly don't understand when you should shut it up and stop using words to offend until they don't mean anything coming out of your mouth.Quote:
Originally Posted by BluntHorse
I was saying back in December, don't know if I posted in on here, that I gave it six months before he called out the military to violently suppress protests and demonstrations, and that within two years either the American people with quietly tolerate the dissolution of their democracy or there would be a violent revolt put down or an ongoing civil war. So far, we're on track.
This regime will have two goals now that they've got a military leadership at least partly on-board with their line. First, now that they've provoked/created incidents to call out troops on, they're going to keep pressing to try and create instances where those troops don't fully fulfill their orders, either legal or illegal. They need this pretext to create a formal role for currently private independent forces for what will eventually become security battalions, politically reliable forces they can call for the dirtier work and to serve as a shield against any restive elements in the military with ideas of a counter-coup. Probably they will turn to some kind of deputatization of "loyal" militia elements. The pardoned Jan 6ers provide a base which can help them identify and recruit those people and groups which will be personally loyal to the regime, not the country or Constitution.
The second goal will be to "blood" the military. The broader military can never be wholly politically reliable, it's too large and must necessarily draw from too broad a base in the country as a whole, it will have divided loyalties. So this regime needs to generate ways to make sure the public is afraid of it and distrusts it, to keep it isolated from public support so it can't develop as an independent "pole" of power which can potentially resist the regime. Governance in any authoritarian (or fascist) society still fundamentally rests on the consent of the governed. Consent can be coerced, but people still need to go along with that status quo for any governnance system to function. Authoritarian regimes need to keep groups divided to maintain their security, isolation encourages just going along.
I hope you have a pleasant relocation to Portugal or Ireland or wherever, should the need arise
It seems someone didn't appreciate those tariffs, or whatever the other thing was (Greenland or something) and suddenly the thing that was literally already known for several years is a major story.
Because all the propaganda networks were playing up that dumb conspiracy for years now. Hard to pivot this quickly.
Tbf the WSJ's two big scoops appear to be new news. Fascinating to see the NYT etc. trying to help Trump out even on this issue.Quote:
Originally Posted by Steely Glint
For sure, but they could at the very least not talk about it this much.Quote:
Originally Posted by Loki
I think the poem one was new but that's not actually evidence in a legal sense just a bad look, and wasn't the other one just a statement that Trump is 'in the files' (whatever 'the files' are), which we already knew?Quote:
Originally Posted by Aimless
They don't talk about it. I saw a graphic about Fox the other day. Mentions of Obama: 30. Mentiona of Epstein: 2.
I honestly don't know, but it seems to have been new and alarming enough that Bondi found it necessary to inform Trump at a meeting (per WSJ), and dozens - if not hundreds - of FBI agents were instructed to specifically flag any mentions of his name!Quote:
Originally Posted by Steely Glint
But anyway I mostly agree with you. I know they say everyone has to eat, but political journos make me wonder
MAGA's a coalition, it's not just Fox News, MTG, Boebert et al are certainly going on about it enough.Quote:
Originally Posted by Loki
Fox is on nonstop in over a million homes. Most people aren't chronically online, checking MTG's Twitter feed.
Weekend at Donnie's
What are the odds the Supreme Court strikes down Trump's tariffs? I believe they should, if they were performing their role in US government, but, they haven't done much of that this year so far. Assuming they do, what does it mean for, idk, *everything* that shit-for-brains government has done economically this year? The government will have to refund the money I'm assuming and all of a sudden all the dumb shit Trump's been doing to all our trade partners stops? Just like that? I can't wrap my brain around what happens after that. Any chance the Trump Admin will just tell the Supreme Court to go fuck itself? I mean, why not? Nothing Trump does is illegal - SCOTUS already ruled that.
Any bets on when the government reopens? The Democrats have absolutely no reason to fold. Trump is 100% all about never giving in, so, can't see how it ends. I'm very interested to see air traffic restricted though. Never seen anything like that before. And so crazy that the people the Democrats are holding out for are largely red state probable Trumpers. And Trump holding poor people's food hostage is also pain on his own supporters. This madness is so fascinating. Maybe he'll use the whole thing as a reason to invoke the insurrection act and have the military arrest the Democratic Senators, then tell the Republican's to vote to open the government. I feel like anything can happen.
And how about all those drug boats Trump's had the military destroying? I mean, I *guess* they're drug boats, though the government hasn't provided any evidence at all, to say nothing of issuing what amounts to the death penalty for drug smuggling with no due process or even underlying law supporting it. And I believe they blew some up thousands of miles away from the US coast, not sure how they can justify that. And when they captured some of them alive, they just sent them back. I mean, if they are drug runners, don't you want to arrest and try them? So, how is that not lawless murder/ assassination? WTaF?
About 70% according to betting markets.
How SCOTUS is gonna come down on tariffs is a pure guessing game. They've got plenty of material from their backgrounds to justify both sides, and even if they rule against them they've got a huge amount of leeway in how far they go in doing so and what sort of relief is to be provided. The one sure thing is we the consumers won't be getting any money back for the way they've increased prices to pass the cost on to us. Also, if SCOTUS does rule against the tariffs, Trump is just going to immediately reimpose them citing another legal authority and begin the process all over again.
Government reopening is also highly speculative. The Dems are gonna fold, there are enough moderates who just hate this chaos and bother (and the pain the shutdown is causing, in fairness) to guarantee that, but they're gonna get some sort of concession from the Congressional Republicans. No idea how far that will go, but it will almost certainly be meaningless because Trump will ignore it, just like he stabbed them in the back on the last CR with his recissions list. The moderate Dems just plan on trying to run using that as a talking point, which no one in the electorate is going to be bothering about by mid-terms next year. We'll have fresh material to stew about.
The "narco-terrorism" thing pisses me off so much. It's straight up murder, and the Republicans in Congress refuse to do anything. Spineless cowards who are content to pretend that Article 1 of the Constitution doesn't exist anymore, at least with a Republican in the Oval Office.
The ones with a backbone or moral compass have long retired or left the party. Just to be replaced by a new generation incel Nazis.
I just don't understand it. Ambition alone should at least have them be jealous of their prerogatives
Long past time for Dems in Congress to start calling their Republican colleagues by their true names - cowards and traitors. Schumer offered to let the GOP shit in his mouth in exchange for an end to the shutdown chaos, and was turned down within minutes :) the House's Epstein vacation looks like a permanent arrangement. In unrelated news, brownshirts arrested a couple and then kidnapped their toddler
Most don't have ambition. They're afraid of Trump (and more so of his supporters) and are happy to do his bidding as long as it means a chance to be above the law and the money/social status that goes with that. Pretty much the only constituency work they do nowadays is reach out to the executive branch when it affects a major donor. Then you have a minority of Christian nationalists who want to replicate the Taliban (see Johnson and several SCOTUS justices) and believe Trump is the best way to get there.Quote:
Originally Posted by LittleFuzzy
A big motivator for quite a few congressmen, democracy-be-damned: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/11/08/b...s-wealthy.html