Nerd Reich is a good term he has come up for the current regime in USA. An ideologist (as opposed to operative like Musk right now) for it is Curtis Yarvin.
There is a gang called Paypal Mafia. Thiel, Musk and Andreessen are among its insiders. Paypal is an online payment service kind of thing. However, the gang does not want to comply with the regulations for the financial sector, things like don't let scammers loot your platform (or when an intruder gets in, detect them, out them, ban them) and don't be a scammer yourself.[1]
The hallmark of this mafia is to scoff at the regulations, not acknowledging what the regulations aim to achieve, and going on to do what they want while not really knowing what they are doing. This was evident in Musk's weed-smoking interview with Joe Rogan, when Rogan asked Musk "Getting those permissions must be hard. I mean, you need permissions from the authorities to dig (the tunnel under LA), right?" and Musk looked at him with glassy eyes, not understanding the question and mumbling about something totally different. Musk is not the kind of guy who asks permission. He is also not making apologies after the fact. He just does stuff and lets the public (usually the government) cover the costs regardless whether it goes right or wrong.[2]
It was also evident in Rogan's interview with Andreessen when Andreessen explained PEP's to Rogan while not knowing what they are. I figured out why he mentioned PEP's: Andreessen had tried to set up another online payment service kind of thing, but it did not pass. Obviously, when you do not know what PEP's are but operating a payment service requires you to know what they are then you don't pass. With Musk being the real ruler now, everything Andreessen gets into his head to do passes, regardless if he knows what he is doing or not, and insofar as payment services are concerned he evidently doesn't know even though he is a Paypal Mafia insider.
1 Remember that Honey scam was Paypal's latest project, so they are eager to scam.↵
2 Trump says Musk has his permission. Fat chance. There is no executive order about it and at this stage even if Trump issues an executive order to stop Musk, Musk can just laugh at it. Trump (and entire government of USA) have been doged by Musk.↵
Then Joe Biden and most of his relatives, a good many Democrat legislators, much of the Biden Department of Justice and FBI (and perhaps CIA and other alphabet-agencies) might receive prison sentences!
Do it. Go ahead. What is stopping you? Oh, it's the justice system that is not working...
Lucky for them, the current administration has more important goals.
Goals such as demolishing the laws and institutional framework of the country? This is a purely destructive goal. The most positive thing to say about it is that clearly Musk is enjoying it. But this is not how it is supposed to be in a functioning country. Musk is supposed to pay taxes, but instead he appropriates government documents, data and assets to enrich himself.
You've heard the old advice, live and learn? Well, ersi, just watch...
Why don't you do according to your own advice? Some years ago you seemed almost up there at the level of maybe a 15-year old, but now you are at the level of a max 9-year-old. Why don't you learn anything as years go by?
Project 2025, i.e. making Trump the despot, was bad enough idea, but this is so much worse that even the Project 2025 people, such as Russell Vought, did not foresee and cannot prevent. Your constitution is null and void. You are living in a free-wheeling dictatorship. You are of course blind to it, because for another two weeks or so this is slightly more veiled than the far more obvious election theft riot+coup attempt four years ago that you also failed to see.
Trump thinks he is performing a successful coup, but actually it is Musk reaping all the benefits of Trump being a submissive idiot. Trump gave Musk the keys to wreak havoc in the coffers and archives of all government agencies, and he (Trump) has no control over what is happening. In a few weeks it will already be a done coup. Next step for Musk is to pull the rug from under Trump, if Trump gets into his head that he has any power over him.
It has been interesting to guess which one would trump the other, Musk or Trump. Congratz, Musk.
Different from you, I know history. Very similar events occurred when Hitler took power. Hitler's muscle was SA, which he got rid of once the power grab was complete. But no executive order will get rid of Musk, not anymore. It is now in Musk's power to flush down the entire administration of USA either simply by deleting all government records and technical functions[1] or by giving them over to Putin, Xi, Jong-un or ayatollahs. It will be fun to read in the history books later: A president who was elected on the ticket of getting rid of illegal immigrants granted all the power to an illegal immigrant and thus USA was finished by a self-inflicted hack job. Foreign spies did not need to lift a finger to get absolutely all the information and accesses.
Heh, something for the Musk thread: Musk's deadline to get to Mars was end of last year. He could not do it. So instead he is now making Earth into Mars.
1 This could happen by accident, since Musk's assistants are noob techies.↵
Turkey is sabotaging Greece's Eurovision song. Turkey thinks the song is about Pontic Genocide which it does not want anybody to know about (but by Turkey's raising riot of course more people will know about it). Turkey's Radio-Television company is a member of EBU, so they have a word, even though they are not participating in the song contest.
Thieves poached about 100,000 eggs from the back of a distribution trailer, authorities in Pennsylvania said.
The theft occurred around 8:40 p.m. Saturday at Pete and Gerry’s Organics LLC in Greencastle, police said in a report. The eggs are worth about $40,000.
Actually, I had to teach you about impeachment back in 2019. Unfortunately you did not learn anything. You are more behind now than ever.
And I see that the impeachment went smoother than I expected back then. What if law and due process happens to score an actual win this time? Nah, much less chance for it now than back then.
Looks like ersi's using that on-the-cheap Chinese chat-bot — such silly conglomerations of adjectives! (Is Chinese that way, as a rule? )
Are you trying to figure out how Chinese works or are you just being racist? Yup, you are just being racist. You think that I should somehow feel associated with Far East, but instead I feel pity that your monocellular brain cannot fathom the world outside the porch of your trailer house geographically, linguistically, economically and whatever else it might be.
But not to worry: By the time he catches up, everyone else will have come to understand Trump...
The only one who does not understand Trump is yourself. Everybody else understands him for the anticonstitutional criminal Führer wannabe that he is. You were wrong about everything during his first term and also wrong about everything during Biden's term.
Most crucially, you were wrong about EVERYTHING with regard to your pet topic: Law. You thought Trump did things legally, constitutionally, so as to not be worth impeachment and prosecution, and Biden did something illegally. However, Trump is the Twice-Impeached One (and was worth more) plus he is now the First Convict in Office.
You did not even know the date until which presidents stay in office. You have not caught up how clueless you are about American political system, the law, about how economy works, etc. Your inadequacy is bottomless, yet you never question yourself.
Trump has already managed to commit impeachable offences again, faster than last time. The revocation of birthright was the first and cancelling budgeted funds was the second. Releasing terrorists and making airplanes fall out of the sky sounds serious enough, but is probably a mere "official act" of neglect. Firing Trump-voting women who just found out they were hired under DEI programmes, deportation of family members of Hispanics who stupidly thought that Trump would not touch *legal* immigrants, letting Musk (an actual illegal immigrant and billionaire robber baron) run amok against government agencies (including their internal secrets and probably state secrets), and ever-increasing price of eggs has already turned everybody at the grassroots level against him, except the cultists. I wish legitimacy mattered more than popularity, but this is America we are talking about.
There are no more sanity checks for you. But keep posting. From the clinical perspective it is fascinating whenever your Q delusions and bigotry come to light.
The combination of a 25 percent tariff on Mexico and Canada and a 10 percent tariff on China goods could cause U.S. economic output to decline by 1.5 percent in 2025 and 2.1 percent in 2026 as higher prices dampen consumer spending and business investment, said Gregory Daco, chief economist at EY-Parthenon, a division of the accounting firm Ernst & Young.
Economic decline a few percent would be a mild consequence. Historically tariffs mean trade war, often preceding actual hot war. This means that Trump does not see immediate neighbours as allies. Those who are not allies are enemies, and relationship with enemies is closer to war than to peace.
Immediate congressional reaction was split along party lines, with Republicans praising the move as a sign of Trump’s resolve to secure America’s borders and pressure the three countries to address U.S. concerns about unfair trade practices.
What possible concerns about unfair trade practices can USA have when Trump in his first term abolished NAFTA and negotiated new agreements, citing that NAFTA was unfair and that he was the art-of-the-deal man to fix it, and Biden did not change the new agreements? Republicans love to swim in their lawless and factless brainwash propaganda nonsense and mindlessly praise Trump's scummy fascism without any reservation.
The EU can handle tariffs, but it cannot handle a hot war. The EU has handled atrociously every hot conflict close by, every conflict that in geopolitical terms was absolutely their duty to handle. Sometimes the EU tried and failed so badly that it made things worse. Now the EU has Trump helping to make things quickly far worse.
Edit: Trump's big plan is to take USA back to the good old 1800's but he may very well succeed to take us all back to 1400's
English has always been bad at meanings of words, particularly when it comes to Trump cult English.
"Pictures are not cartoons" <-- is this supposed to mean anything? It hardly made any sense back when it was first said and it makes even less sense now.
Additionally, the world has evolved meanwhile. An AI generated image may very much look like a photo, but its essence is closer to a drawing or cartoon.
"Flow" from Latvia has been nominated for best foreign movie and best animation. People say good things about it.
I myself recently watched the pope movie, Conclave, which was a bit of a disappointment. It was set up as a thriller, i.e. old men in red capes going through a voting procedure with a thrillerish musical score in the background. There were some bedroom/dorm scenes where the director decidedly missed all the opportunities to show the red socks of the cardinals. There were a number of intrigues appearing at regular intervals in a deus ex machina plot device manner, and they were kind of muted to make the story (originally a novel) safe. I find regular news about Roman Catholic Church much spicier than the supposed intrigues in the movie. There were some good roles though, especially the guy who played the dead pope.
In 1828 Congress passed a tariff that increased the rates on imports into the United States to as much as 50 percent. This was the largest increase in the country’s history. The aim was to protect American manufacturing in the North by making importing foreign goods more expensive. There were strong feelings about the Tariff of 1828. Reactions were divided by geography, and the country split in a way that would later be echoed by the division between the Union and the Confederacy in the Civil War. People in New York, New Jersey, Delaware, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Missouri, and Kentucky generally supported the tariff. Meanwhile, Southerners nicknamed it the “Tariff of Abominations.” Support of the tariff was one of the issues that helped decide the election of 1828. John Quincy Adams lost to Andrew Jackson.
I agree insofar as only trade war is concerned. Last time Trump slapped very few tariffs (steel, affecting car industry; anything else?) so it was easily manageable. This time there may be more tariffs, and the hardest point to manage would be access to gas and oil.
Which leads to the next point, supporting Ukraine. Under Trump 1.0 there was no Ukraine war. Until maybe the middle of last year, the largest contributor to Ukraine's front materiel was Russia via their losses. Then USA became the largest, but under the circumstances where the Congress was working against Biden the EU finally became the first. This did not happen by ramping up the EU support, but by diminishing American support. The EU has not been fulfilling its role dutifully here. All the ammunition and other provisions that Ukraine is lacking is directly the fault of the EU. Can we keep Nato functional without USA? We must, but can we?
The EU can handle tariffs, but I do not see that the EU can handle the Greenland/Denmark debacle and Ukraine war while at the same time securing its gas and oil supplies without falling victim to Putin or Trump or both. The Middle East option means trading with even worse kind of dictators. Any direction you look at, the diplomatic integrity is lost. Of course, it can be realistically noted that the EU had no diplomatic integrity to begin with.
From the point of view of EU's diplomatic integrity, the EU would be expected to slap America with sanctions in response to Trump's plans for Canada, Greenland and Panama. And from the point of view of American diplomatic integrity, Trump would not be the president, definitely not for the second time.
The deadline for Trump's first official (insofar as there can be anything official with Trump) actual foreign policy decision is February 1, 2025, i.e. right now. All stock market indicators are going down, except oil.
Markets (and the world) on edge as Trump’s tariff deadline approaches
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt on Friday afternoon said the plan for 25% duties on Canada and Mexico and 10% rates on China remain in effect, and "those tariffs will be for public consumption in about 24 hours tomorrow."
Last time when Trump was president, I remember how the first-world countries got together and quasi-isolated Trump. I hope they get their act together this time too. And get their act together about Putin also, this is long overdue.
At her previous press conference Trump's press secretary invited "new media" to sign up as White House reporters. 10k applications came in. The White House accepted a Ruthless Podcast representative to show up. The first question from this representative (and the very first question from any "new media" representative), "Last time the media immediately started attacking this administration. Do you think they are out of touch?" Answer, "The media out of touch? Yes, certainly..."
Trump could have curated his press conferences the way Putin or Lukashenko have, but no, it has to be a totally meaningless circus with Trump, a media circus where the word "media" is being tossed around with no clarity who the addressor or the addressee is. And any potential for an actual topic is dead.
Trump is serving as an awesome inspiring example. According to TASS, Mikhail Myagkov (called историк Мягков when TASS suggests him to be taken seriously) proposes to rename the Gulf of Finland to the Gulf of Saint Peterburg (Санкт-Петербургский залив) because Finland and Sweden are russophobic countries so it would be "logical" to rename the gulf to harmonise with "historical and political reality" because it is Peter the Great and Russia who developed the gulf area since ancient times.
Very much like Trump: If you don't like Gulf of America, then you hate America! (Nevermind that there is no Gulf of America...)
How can one talk to someone who's "sources" are so uninformed? (Although I don't think these are proper words): Your gullibility is yuge!
The sources are Trump and his press secretary. Yes, they are very uninformed, but they won't fool me. They thought they were doing something, a thing, but the fact is that they had no idea what they were doing.
Of course it is very difficult to talk about the madness of a madman with a mad propaganda cultist like yourself, but unfortunately the madman is the president and the madness is his administration, so we have to watch out for the reverberations.
Trump shut down all budgeted government services to the people, such as Medicaid (reimbursements for medical costs), child support, grants and loans for education (that the public school system and universities depend on) etc. It may or may not include social security and pensions, not sure, because if there is any point in this decision, then confusion is the point.
Trump may have done it accidentally, but a feature of his accidents is that when the accident becomes public, he doubles down on it. These were budgeted funds already allocated by the Congress, so Trump cannot do it according to the constitution and all laws that regulate the relationship of the legislative and executive branches, but the order went into immediate effect because this time his minions do not care about law and order and due process whatsoever. They now unthinkingly follow Trump's orders, only that.
U.S. District Judge Loren AliKhan said she was granting a “brief administrative stay” that preserves federal disbursements at least until Monday at 5 p.m. EST after a group of nonprofit and public health organizations filed a lawsuit.
The judge will hold another hearing Monday on whether to grant a longer pause.
However, we know that courts are fighting an uphill battle trying to uphold the law and basic functions and operations of the country, since SCOTUS already granted absolute impunity to the president. The judiciary branch as a whole is not yet on Trump's leash, but SCOTUS is.
The birthright EO is not "part of a discussion". It is an unconstitutional overreach striking down a section of the constitution. Also the freeze or pause on congressionally allocated spending is unconstitutional overreach, for now rescinded but who knows for how long when confusion is the point.
OakdaleFTL's federal dole is done. If his lowly state of California does not bail him out, then
Et helt nyt fund af danekræ kan ses på Geomuseum Faxe i vinterferien. Det er en klump af 66 millioner år gammelt opkast, som er fundet på Stevns Klint og netop erklæret som danekræ.
Translation: Scientists say that somebody puked 66 million years ago.
The Department of Justice took down a database that had provided details on the nearly 1,600 cases brought against defendants in the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol. The FBI pulled down its “Capitol violence” page as well.
A “Capitol Siege” page run by the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Washington, which prosecuted the cases, has also been taken down on that office’s website.
January 6 was so embarrassing that Trump wants it forgotten. And the rioters are embarrassing. They just cannot act sane after getting pardons. (No wonder, as the January 6 rioter-in-chief is not sane himself.)
RENSSELAER, Ind. (AP) — An Indiana man was fatally shot by a deputy during a traffic stop just days after he was pardoned by President Donald Trump for a misdemeanor related to the 2021 U.S. Capitol riot.
Matthew Huttle, 42, of Hobart was killed Sunday by a Jasper County sheriff’s deputy, authorities said.
State police are investigating. They said the deputy tried to arrest Huttle when “an altercation took place between the suspect and the officer, which resulted in the officer firing his weapon and fatally wounding the suspect.
Some guy on the internet figured out how Deepseek from China beat the crap out of ChatGPT so that American AI stocks crashed.[1] Different from common AI hype blather, this presenter actually explains how AI operates, "trains", arrives at responses, where the money is for the companies who develop it and what to do about it.