jakee

Not guidelines - laws. He’s breaking the law. And damn if the lawsuits and payouts aren’t going to put more than a dent in any ‘efficiency’ gains.

So again, exactly what Trump and Musk are not doing.

And of course one of the best ways to do that is to cripple the revenue generating arm of the organisation. Yeah, it's for sure all about that balance. Totally.

So tell me when GM employees voted to be laid off? Which circles back nicely to the point of the thread, which is that Trump and Musk lied to their voters about what they were planning to do, and now a lot of people are regretting believing them.

Yeah, what's that about? Like, literally why is vegemite? Just sits there on the shelf making the world around it a slightly worse place. From a European and particularly UK perspective there is a growing silver lining. Joe was right that Europe needs to get it's head around generating the ability to stand completely alone when needed, and I think that the positive moves in that direction will take some of the wind out of the far right sails across europe. Most of the far right parties and politicians in Europe have disappeared entirely up Trump's arse, while Trump himself is very successfully alienating all but the most hardcore right wing voters, so suddenly the traditional middle ground looks a lot stronger. Starmer is growing into a leadership role with Europe, and given that the biggest pro-Brexit voice Farage is the most pathetically obsequious Trump sycophant you could imagine I think the terror that liberal politicians in the UK have felt about doing anything that might lead to closer ties with Europe will rapidly start to receed and we can get some common sense cross border cooperation back. Meanwhile Emmanuel Macron is damn near having a Churchill moment (which is ironic given France's rather lackluster material support for Ukraine in contrast to their status as Europe's largest arms manfuacturer) and that again is very welcome in staving off the growing threat of National Rally and Marine Le Pen. (Leader of National Rally and daughter of founder, 40 year leader and holocaust denier Jean-Marie Le Pen. Why is it all these 'power to the people' right wing populist movements are actually completely closed shops? Almost as if they're not really representing anyone's interests but their own. Anyway, I digress...)

I have never taken a course in economics but even I know we’re not talking about business.

You are far too generous to him because you want to make excuses for your support. Remember in this same speech he said the US would take possession of Greenland ‘one way or the other’. Territory of an allied sovereign state. He’s not cosying up to Russia because he doesn’t understand what they’re doing. He knows exactly what they’re doing and thinks it’s a brilliant idea worth copying. He sees Putin as far more of a kindred spirit than any democratically elected western leader because he himself hates having to operate within the constraints of a democracy.

Why are you using a different name, Winsor?

I certainly agree it is fascinating… so why are you still doing it? You know for an absolute fact that the source articles do not back up your position, so why do you keep insisting that it’s dishonest for people to disagree with you? Why are you so vehemently opposed to the idea that someone else can possess a different opinion to you about what may or may not have happened inside a secret meeting?

It was a beautiful deal, a perfect deal! Everybody says so.

He is at least a knob. JD accused Zelensky of disrespecting the USA by lecturing then about conditions in Ukraine. A couple of weeks ago JD came to Munich and disrespected the entire European community by lecturing us on how to run our own internal political systems. A guy who has spoken extensively about the need to replace US democracy with a single far right leader accused Europe of betraying democracy if they we don’t invite the far right into government. The shallowest of hypocrites. As for Trump - dis anyone ever think we’d see an American President display such weakness on the world stage? It is now blanket administration policy to not even acknowledge that Russia invaded Ukraine in the first place in case the Kremlin takes offence at the truth. Alongside dismantling protections against Russian cyber warfare, halting aid to Ukraine and proposing the lifting of all sanctions on Russia and the Russians it seems that the White House believes it’s only ploy in these ‘negotiations’ is to give Putin absolutely every single thing he could ever want and hope he decides to throw them a bone in return.

Ironic that this thread started with you being incredibly angry that other people didn’t automatically believe every single word of what Burchett said happened behind closed doors. Now you’re incredibly angry because you refuse to believe any of what Bill said happened behind closed doors

Or maybe there's a single line of code that wasn't working quite the same as it used to in this resurrected site and Bill didn't realise that at the time? Either that or the conspiracy against you goes just as deep as the one against your friend with the supersonic underwater alien bases.

You can't get more compliant than dead. Chauvin refused to let go even when Floyd was already dead. But sure, any act of non-compliance with an officer is an irrevocable death sentence, no matter how quickly you change your mind. As I said, you don't care that Chauvin murdered him, you're just sad you didn't get to help do it.

Interesting. I did think you sounded an awful lot like a Winsor sock puppet for some reason. Thing is, apart from the stuff about making it harder for black people to get an even break, he’s not really doing any of the stuff you want - least of all fiscal responsibility. The damage they’re doing to the government is going to be hugely expensive to repair. As for running it like a business - the 28 year old programmer overseeing the IRS told the staff he’d run it like a tech startup… despite presumably never having worked, much less managed, a tech startup. Still, most startups fail so there’s probably more than a grain of truth to it. His first act? Axing the department in charge of making it easier for people to pay tax because rando on X told Elon it was a hotbed of leftists. I guess tech startups hate revenue?

Did you ever think through the implication of the fact that the only President who's ever been willing to do the things you want is a dumb, revolting sonofabitch? Call me crazy but I can't help thinking that might say something about the merits of the policies. Nah, you're right - it's probably just a coincidence.

It isn't. There isn't. 1) It can't. Europe is already giving a lot of aid, but it is not capable of replacing US arms supply. Ukraine needs weapons from both sides of the atlantic. 2) That's not the goal. As things currently stand, doing business with Russia is the goal.

I'm sorry but I think you're falling into the trap laid by extremist politicians of setting impossible standards for anyone else to follow. The system isn't broken. The system is not robust enough to stand up to malicious actors like Trump, but it can't ever be, really. There will always be a case that if you elect enough people who don't care about the law, the leadership will be above the law. But the answer to this is literally as simple as voting for grown ups with some sense of public service. That's all you need. Now ideally (IMO) this person would be willing to have serious conversations about the consequences of 40 years of increasingly pure neo-liberal economic policies and the need for imposition of responsibility for content onto the tech/media giants... but that's a wishlist for another day when the choice is between two grownups who haven't stated their intent to destroy the system. When the choice is between one normal person and one wrecking ball, under the normal person everything will work just fine. Maybe a little better, maybe a little worse, but absolutely fine. Handwringing about exactly who is the perfect person to oppose the wrecking ball has them laughing all the way to the ballot box. You'll see this template from the extremists time and time again - create a problem and force the conversation to happen on their terms that the problem now independently exists and who can give you a perfect plan to solve it.... when the real answer is that we just need to stop enabling them. One of the best examples is election security in the US. The extremists lied and lied and lied about utterly absurd schemes - dead Venezuelan presidents hacking in via satellite FFS - then pushed through sweeping reforms to weaken what was in fact an extremely robust system on the basis that too many people had lost faith in election security. Again in that case anyone engaging in a conversation with those people about how the system can be better protected has already lost because they have accepted the fraudulent worldview.

Did you though? Did you really? "We don’t track why legislators miss votes, but it’s often due to medical absences, major life events, and running for higher office. Legislators running for president or vice president typically miss votes while on the campaign trail — that’s normal." And since you held up Klobuchar as a contrast to Harris in the Senate, I'm guessing you never looked at her record for the same period before the election. Or you did, and you're just being slippery again. If she'd become the Dem nominee at any point, even against Trump, you'd just have used the same bullshit attack lines against her.

Trump and Vance really showed the true depth of their depravity today. Petulant scumbags putting their own fragile egos above global security and the life and death of tens of thousands of people.

It’s curious to find a traditional Republican declaring that only beltway insiders and career politicians are able to showcase their leadership qualifications. Real work just… doesn’t count? She was the California AG, right? She was the leader of that entire organisation. In what way does a Senator actually experience leading anyone, in comparison? That means you think she was actively incompetent. Why? You have given no reason whatsoever for this allegation. Just as you have given no reason for claiming she would be a puppet. Of course you’ve given no reason for that claim because you know it’s absurd. Why would she be a puppet? The President doesn’t have to do what the party tells them, the President sets the agenda of the party. If any party insiders disagree the President tells them to go fuck themselves.

A Supreme Court ruling. If the briber doesnt explicitly say 'I am only giving you this money so you will do the thing I want' and the bribee doesn't explicitly say 'Ok I will do the thing but only because you gave me this money' then it's not a bribe.

Now Trump isn't just spending time on his golf game while he's on holiday, he's literally making golf his job too. He's personally spent less time on Gaza and Ukraine peace deals than he has mediating White House meetings between the PGA Tour and LIV Golf, something that is quite definitely not a government issue. So why's that going on? Well the Saudis will pay him a shit ton of money to host events on Trump courses again if he helps them out.

Amazon has billions of dollars worth of government contracts that now exist at the whim of Jeff Bezos's greatest rival. Amazon has just agreed to pay Melania Trump $28M (seriously that's just her personal cut) for a documentary about her - over bidding the competition by three times the closest offer. Does that matter anymore? Do James Comer and Jim Jordan give a shit? Is it because they support Trump that he gets a pass on cash for access, or does literally no-one care about corruption that happens out in the open? It seems more and more that people only care about the stuff they think is being hidden from them, so only the fake allegations of corruption ever get any traction.

After personal intervention by Trump's envoy his administration has successfully pressured the Romanian government into letting serial rapists and incel influencers Andrew and Tristan Tate travel to the US, essentially letting them off scott free from their numerous criminal charges across Europe because like fuck are they ever going back for any court date. This is the family values Republican party. Celebrating and defending despicable individuals about whom the absolute best, least controversial thing you can say is that they are professional pimps. Everyone down the chain even remotely involved in actioning this is fucking disgusting. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cg4kkv3e1v9o