Early Monday morning, Butselaar was to be released from Danbury federal prison in Connecticut after serving his sentence for committing tax fraud. His release, however, did not go as expected. He was met by agents of the ICE. Because Butselaar was extradited to America from Italy, he is in the country illegally after his release and does not possess a residence permit.
His American lawyers opposed the arrest. They tried to make it clear to ICE officials by phone that the taxman was precisely planning to leave the U.S. as soon as possible. In fact, he already possessed a plane ticket to return to the Netherlands on Monday evening.
Their rules are infamously very different from ours. In the Netherlands there's an obligatory 6 weeks of paid leave after giving birth, to make sure the mother recovers properly. In Belgium it's an obligatory 1 week before estimated birth and 9 weeks after birth. (That's a minimum, not a maximum.)
It seems unlikely that the underestimate is directly related. That's presumably more about future forecast improvements, which now of course won't happen, or at a much slower pace. Communication is quite plausible though.
I'd guess/hope that anything not in the general south of the Caspian Sea area was just pointing completely randomly without even trying, while hitting northeast Iraq for example could be understandable if embarrassing on a map without borders.
Yes, all of Belgium (or really all of the world) used to be completely accessible by tram, but the regional tram lines have mostly disappeared. In Belgium and the Netherlands specifically most of the rails were stolen by the Germans to aid with the war effort in the east,[1] so after the war the replacement buses were considered close enough while rolling out the red carpet for King Car.
Wikipedia also has a map of the situation as it was in 1940.
1 From which to some extent they were taken by the Russians in turn, so there's a small chance you might still have some of those rails in operation in Estonia. I suspect it's more likely to simply be overgrown and forgotten in Poland though.↵
They're probably not nearly so inconsistent if you consider whether it enriches Trump and friends, regardless what it does for America or what the stated policy goals are.
While I find precariously little of value in that article, it doesn't resemble what the Trump administration's doing much if at all.
Quote
Most notably, Russia seeks a sphere of influence in Eastern Europe and potentially beyond.47 But gains in Ukraine notwithstanding, Russia has struggled to turn that vision into reality and lacks the economic or military power to aim far beyond its periphery for the foreseeable future. Russia’s gross domestic product (GDP) is approximately 10 times smaller than that of our allies in Europe and Canada,48 and although Moscow has generated significant combat power in Ukraine, as long as this economic imbalance persists, Russia will be unable to generate and sustain the military power required to seize control of large portions of Europe as the Soviets did or otherwise impose its will on Europe in the face of determined resistance.
[…]
However, NATO has weakened considerably in recent decades as a result of allied free-riding. This is evident in the collapse of NATO allies’ defense spending after the Cold War.
[…]
The United States must therefore work closely with its allies to strengthen NATO so that the Alliance can do what is required to defend Europe even as U.S. forces focus first on defending the U.S. homeland and denying China’s imperial ambitions.
It does share the typical deranged delusions about non-existent free-riding, it's about a long-term plan to move troops and equipment over to Taiwan. In their view, it doesn't make sense for their allies to assist in the Pacific. Such a plan would take at least a few years, not a couple of weeks. Presumably MAGA will claim that siding with Russia and North Korea is a brilliant move to speed things along, but given that the alliance itself is henceforth effectively in tatters there's basically no scenario in which that would help America in the Indo-Pacific theater. Because it's not just support in battle that's on the line, but the notion support itself.
Quote
Finally, NATO has spoken in recent years about doing more in the Indo-Pacific64 —but this is folly. NATO’s priority is and must remain Europe’s defense. Moreover, even if NATO allies wish to help the United States in the Indo-Pacific, the best way for them to do so (with very rare exceptions) is not by directing their own attention and resources to that theater at Europe’s expense, but by taking primary responsibility for Europe’s conventional defense while the United States focuses its own forces on the China threat. The United States should urge NATO allies to act accordingly.
[…]
This does not mean that the United States should abandon other theaters or allies, however. Instead, the United States must find ways to defend U.S. interests in those theaters without jeopardizing the ability of U.S. forces to defend the U.S. homeland and deny China’s imperial ambitions, which are higher priorities. To that end, Washington should empower allies and partners to lead efforts to defend against Russia, Iran, and North Korea with critical but more limited U.S. support. This will allow us to avoid cascading escalation by ensuring that allies and partners can deter opportunistic aggression even if key U.S. forces are drawn away from their respective regions, for instance, to deter or defeat Chinese aggression. And it will leave U.S. alliances and partnerships far stronger than they have been at any time in the post–Cold War era.
In late January, Ricardo Prada Vásquez, a Venezuelan immigrant working in a delivery job in Detroit, picked up an order at a McDonald’s. He was heading to the address when he erroneously turned onto the Ambassador Bridge, which leads to Canada. It is a common mistake even for those who live in the Michigan border city. But for Mr. Prada, 32, it proved fateful.
The U.S. authorities took Mr. Prada into custody when he attempted to re-enter the country; he was put in detention and ordered deported. On March 15, he told a friend in Chicago that he was among a number of detainees housed in Texas who expected to be repatriated to Venezuela.
[…]
Mr. Levey said that he, too, had repeatedly tried to obtain information from ICE. Eventually, he said, an officer told him that Mr. Prada had been deported but refused to share further details, he said.
Ms. Vega, told that Mr. Prada appeared to be in El Salvador, expressed frustration at the government’s claim that he had been involved in a criminal gang.
“How can they leave us in the dark for so long and then accuse him of something without proof?” she said. “God knows he doesn’t belong to any gang.”
Trump calls judges "liberal" or "Obama-appointed" whenever he does not like the rulings.
I sometimes get the impression that those who call themselves Republican most enthusiastically attack and tear down the legacies of GHW Bush and GW Bush (and even Reagan for that matter).
[Checking Wikipedia:] Hitler had at least nine months of maneuvering with and around other party leaders and politicians in 1932.
Von Papen (vice-chancellor and fairly important with regard to Hitler's initial appointment in '33) was even acquitted of all charges after the war, on account of leaving the government and becoming anti-Nazi pretty quickly.
Oh, sorry, I remember now that Trump had a prior four-year stint.
I was just reading this article saying Orbán, Erdogan and Modi took 10 years to do what took Trump 3 months and that was my first thought: he also started about a decade ago.
An important detail in the breakdown of the rule of law, the professor emphasizes, is Trump's attack on the law firms that assisted his political opponents. "That's of enormous importance, because the courts can't act against the government until someone files a case. And to do that successfully, in the American system, you need those big law firms. If those no longer dare take cases from people whose rights are being violated, there are no limits to what the government can do."
Lindberg's conclusion: the U.S. is changing before our eyes from a democracy to an "electoral autocracy. “In this, multi-party elections are still held, and on paper there is media freedom, freedom of speech and freedom of association, but in practice all of that has been undermined to the point where you can no longer speak of democracy.”
It's the familiar process from Orbán's Hungary, Erdogan's Turkey, and Modi's India. But the big difference is that in the U.S. it happens much faster. Lindberg: “What they did in 10 years, Trump does in three months.”
For starters, there’s little obvious connection between the U.S. trade balance and economic output (gross domestic product). As shown in the chart below from a recent Cato essay on the trade balance, the relationship between higher trade surpluses (or smaller deficits) and higher GDP growth is practically nonexistent. Economist Don Boudreaux and former Sen. Phil Gramm dug through additional periods in a recent Wall Street Journal column and concluded that “etween 1890 and 2024, it is impossible to find a statistically significant correlation between America’s trade balance and its economic growth.”
The grid concept looks interesting and makes sense to me if you have an allergy to your hands ever leaving the keyboard. I'm inclined to think some variation is likely to be better for you. It may be worth pointing out that move mouse to center (of focused window) and move mouse to focus(ed button) are standard functionality that perform a task somewhat similar to the grid concept. And of course that a pointing device needn't be anything like a mouse.
