stevenkesslar

The intentional and almost aggressive lack of respect for what would now be considered mainstream and iconic Gay and Black leaders is kind of amazing. Since a lot of it is coming out of DOD, I assume it stems from the fact that stupid Hegseth has a roaming cock bigger than his idiot and inconsiderate brain. What a worthless stupid ignorant Straight piece of shit that man is. I hope someday we name a radioactive waste pit after him. Moron!

After 2024 I'm not particularly confident in anything. If almost 50 % of Americans can vote for Trump, what would I base confidence on? That said, it's clear it was the economy, stupid. And the rent, stupid. And the inflation, stupid. I really don't think the working class is particularly into owning the libs. Or The Gays. There are some wedge issues that clearly resonate - like anything trans. But I don't think working class people are against same sex marriage, for example. So the question is what kind of economy will Trump deliver? And what will Democrats offer as an economic populist alternative? Since I don't think the working class particularly feels like they need tax cuts for Elon Musk. Or cuts in their health care. I'll keep bringing it up. We have a wildly successful economic populist model right next door in Mexico. Si se puede!

No shit. The only question in my mind is whether I am more into politics than 99 % of people, or 99.9 % of people. Especially now I have to be careful. Most of my friends and family are Democrats or Democrat leaners. And they really don't even want to talk about this shit anymore. They are either enraged, and it just gets them worked up. Or they just want to tune out a situation they can't stand and will change as quickly as they can next year. I am pretty sure lots of people have a good reason to vote against this shit, and will. You and I do reach slightly different conclusions about the people who vote for Trump at the margin. Meaning NOT the core voters, but the ones that deprived him of the votes to win in 2020 but gave him the votes to win in 2024. My point is that people driven by racism voted for Trump in 2016, and 2020, and 2024. There is no question who they will vote for, and no way to change their minds. There just are not enough of them to ensure he wins. Studies have proven that, I think. And if they were 50% + of Americans, Trump would have won by 50%+ in 2016 and 2020. We agree that most people are not going to pay a whole lot of attention to politics. And especially in close races like 2024 the winner often gets decided by the people who care the least about politics, and are least likely to vote. That was definitely true in 2024. The people who care least about politics and are least likely to vote did vote for Trump, and gave him his narrow edge. So the hard core racists were always for Trump, and always will be. The hard core lefties or Gay activists will always be against him. It's these people who are disinterested and may not even bother to vote who we can largely thank for Trump 2.0. So mostly to me what it means is that Democrats better not create a situation like that, if we can avoid it. But if we create a situation where people who are not interested in politics and may not even vote end up thinking anything else would be better than this shit, that is what allows Trump to get just enough votes to win. Which he did. To me that is a pretty simple explanation.

I used my bandwidth, but I will add this. Sorry folks. All of these issues are very complicated. With someone like Kissinger, especially during his official career when he had power and it mattered most, there is a strong case to accuse and convict him of war crimes. That said, he was mostly right on Ukraine. Maybe this was an older and apologetic Kissinger seeking redemption. But he met with Putin a lot, and saw Ukraine for a long time as a bridge of peace between Russia and the West. Meaning, specifically, Ukraine in NATO should never have been on the table. Every effort should have been made to keep Ukraine neutral and prevent a war. I think it is fair to tie some of the blame for this on W, yet again. He was the one who let the cat out of the bag and insisted Ukraine should eventually join NATO. Ukraine was the one time I willingly signed on with the US military industrial complex. And the reason I did is all the reasons Biden gave. Which was a near consensus among Americans for at least a while. By the time the war started, meaning once Putin invaded a sovereign country based on a whole bunch of bullshit - same as W did in Iraq - Kissinger himself changed his mind as the facts changed. At that point Kissinger said it was too late, and the only way to keep Ukraine safe was NATO. The other unsung hero in this picture is Mark Milley, who spoke out in Fall 2022 that Ukraine should sue for peace while Russia was on the back foot. Milley was also the guy who said Kyiv would fall in 72 hours, so he was hardly unblemished. But at least with 20/20 hindsight whatever deal could have been put together then would be no worse than what could be put together today. Arguably, it would be the difference between Bush 41 and Bush 43, as seen through the lens of the Powell Doctrine. At least Bush 41 had measurable and limited goals that he objectively won. The equivalent with Ukraine is we stopped Putin in his tracks and now we will negotiate some kind of neutral territory blah blah blah. It would have been weak. But it would have been a way, again like Bush 41, that Biden could have declared victory, even if it was a stalemate. No shit! Here's another sad fact about history. The last decade can be seen as a battle between left wing populism (Sanders) and right wing economic populism/nationalism (Trump). Not just in the US, of course. It was always predictable in the US that in a conflict like that, right wing populism/nationalism would probably win. In every survey, moderates outvote conservatives who both outvote liberals. Liberals are a minority. So all my life, being a liberal political whore, I have known that liberals only win by building coalitions with moderates. Hence, Joe Bidenism. As POTUS Biden tried to manage a wave of left-wing populism, and did some good things. This is my mantra. Had he pushed like hell to keep a child tax credit that for one year lowered child poverty by 50 % and put money in the pockets of tens of millions of working class people, many of them Trump voters, that one single thing might have been enough for Harris to win. Meaning we fought like hell for the working class. And there is no fucking way we will give tax cuts to Elon Musk so your child can be poor again. We will fight like hell! That is why AMLO and his movement came to dominate Mexico. Instead Biden was painted as weak and woke. And unlike Clinton in particular I don't think he had a strategy. Biden acted more like Senator In Chief. You can say he had history against him, with inflation he could not stop. But AMLO governed in Mexico under the same circumstances, and came out smelling like a rose. You can argue these are two very different countries with two different sets of circumstances. But to a great degree it was the Mexican working class that elected AMLO, and the Mexican American (or at least the broader and diverse Latino) working class that weighed in just enough for Trump to allow him to re-infect the nation. Had we had a better political leader, like AMLO, things could have turned out better I think. Oh, the folly!

I agree with everything you said. I will add three thoughts. First, in hindsight Biden is the kind of guy who should have been a US Senator. As you said, he is a conciliator. He was not a great wartime President - assuming there even is such a thing. But Churchill comes to mind. As does Putin, actually. If you want to fight and win a war you probably want someone like them. It for sure hurt Democrats politically that Biden just quietly let Bibi The Baby Killer get away with genocide. Second, until 2020 I had this idea that it it is a good thing that everyone who was clearly for the Iraq War lost the Presidency, from 2008 on. McCain was for Iraq, and he lost. Romey was for Iraq, and he lost. Obama rode his opposition to Iraq to primary victory in 2008. And it did not hurt him in either the 2008 or 2012 general election. If anything he could kind of paint Romney as a warmonger as well as a fat cat. In 2016 Hillary lost. Trump's actual history on Iraq is clouded, I think. But he never voted for it, like Hillary did. Biden did vote for the Iraq war, which I think was one of his worst decisions. And one reason he was far from my favorite in 2020. He of course tried to explain it all away. So arguably that came back to haunt Democrats. 2024 was mostly about the economy, stupid. And immigration, stupid. But I think all your points add up to something. A lot of people were tired of the forever wars. Including a lot of Democrats or Democrat leaners who did not vote, or voted for Trump in protest. And Biden kind of was the official spokesman for forever wars, from Afghanistan to Iraq to Ukraine. Third, Biden's smartest move, as Veep, was to practically beg Obama to get out of Afghanistan early in his first term. In retrospect, I think Biden was right. Obama was known to have said that he thought the DC Establishment has a bias toward war. And he did not know what to do about it. I'm guessing Obama felt that going up against the military industrial complex, who wanted and got a surge in Afghanistan that ended disastrously, would have ended badly for him. So Obama on the surge was kind of like Biden on Ukraine. He split the difference. Which seems to work better in politics than in war. Had Obama pulled out of Afghanistan in 2009, it would have saved Biden from the embarrassment. Not to mention the lives of many Americans and allies and Afghanis. That said, no one is arguing that Afghanistan sealed Biden's fate. Lichtman would argue that Gaza and Ukraine were the foreign policy/war issues that mattered in 2024.

Yes and no. On this one, I will just make it personal and talk about my own family. I have a sister and a niece, my sister's daughter, who have both proven to me time and again that they respond very well to race-coded emotional appeals. They'd both insist they are NOT racist, of course. But when I asked my sister why she voted for Trump in 2020, it was all this stuff about Black college students who were protesting and breaking windows and blah blah blah. She viewed BLM as a threat. I visited her daughter in Michigan last Summer and planned to take a Greyhound bus back to Chicago. She insisted I take the train instead because it was Juneteenth and there were going to be race riots on Juneteenth and the bus station is near where Blacks live. None of what I just wrote makes any sense. There were no race riots. But it teaches me there are people in my own family who are more racist than they think, or want to admit. Meanwhile, the other daughter of this sister sent me a text of her and her daughter at a Kamala Harris rally last Fall. And that niece and I - who are both Democrats - joked about her budding young activist of a daughter. It's complicated. The fact is that all four people I just described were going to vote how we voted, anyway. We have very fixed views on race and politics. At least three of us do. Two hard Democrats, one hard Republican, which we just accept. My one niece is always going to vote Republican and harbor a lot of ill feelings about Blacks who, she disdainfully says, look up to Oprah and Michelle. She looks up to Gutfeld. That says it all. My sister is more the type of tuned out person who knows little about politics and is kind of lab-designed to respond well to race-coded arguments. But she would not respond well to her White brother saying she is "not Pro-woman." Let alone being called an ignorant racist. Even though I love her, and my brothers and I do see her as an ignorant racist. 🙄 This is exactly where I really like Lichtman's theory. Everything I just said is true. But it was not sufficient for Trump to have won in 2016 or 2024. It took more than having a lot of racism and sexism around. It took a verdict against the incumbent party, which is what Democrat got. Back when I was a kid growing up in the Chicago burbs there is no way in hell that a talented Black woman like Lauren Underwood could have run and won as Democrat for US House in the mostly White Chicago burbs, in the House district my sister lives in. That is a huge sign of lifetime progress of people electing her neither for nor against the color of her skin, but based on her talent and passion. So in 2024 we had something interesting. Black men and Hispanic women voting for Donald Trump. And also lots of young White men who grew in a racial melting pot I never grew up in, in my all-White Chicago suburb. So I do think it was the economy, stupid, and the inflation, stupid, and the immigration, stupid. There are a lot of studies that I think have documented that the people like my sister and one of her daughters, who harbor what I think can be called racial animosity or White grievance, were always going to vote for Trump, anyway. Thankfully, there were not and are not enough of them to get to 50 %. So Lichtman's theory says that 2024 and all elections are a referendum on the status quo. And if people don't like it, they will go for whatever alternative they have. In theory the Republican Party could have offered a better alternative. But they are captured by Trump and his racism and sexism and raping and lying and bullshit. . A two party system is better than tyranny. But in this case it failed us, and a lot of people feel that way. So I agree with @PeterRS. We got exactly what we deserved. To reverse the race argument, I will end with this. Why are DEMOCRATS so fucking RACIST and STUPID? What the fuck is OUR problem? Harris herself did a very noble job running as the incumbent party at a time when almost every incumbent party all over the world was being punished for inflation. But just south of the border, there is this guy named AMLO who is so popular that he got a Jewish progressive woman elected in Catholic culturally conservative Mexico. WTF???!!! Sheinbaum is a great leader in her own right. But she for sure won on AMLO's coattails. So why the fuck are we not all literally moving to Mexico to learn from their success? What the fuck is OUR problem? Harris sure could not win on Biden's coat tails? So what is the difference? In a nutshell, AMLO focused like a laser on raising wages and standards of living for the working class, reducing poverty, and literally putting money in the hands of seniors. His coalition was ideologically impure and tolerant on all the culture war issues. So a lot of college-educated Mexicans think AMLO was impure on fossil fuels and LGBTQ wedge issues and many other things. But working class Mexicans in Mexico like cheap energy. Just as much as Mexican Americans in Pennsylvania who work in the fracking industry like their jobs and cheap gas for their trucks. Sheinbaum is an environmentalistand did the green stuff way back when AMLO was Mayor of Mexico City. So it will be fascinating to see whether she can pursue green things without the kind of massive political backlash we have seen in the US and Europe. So my point is: this is on us. Yes, Trump is an evil racist piece of shit. And, yes, my sister and niece will always be racists who vote for racists like Trump. I love them, anyway. And that was not sufficient for Trump to win. Unless we Democrats fix these other problems, we are creating a situation where really shitty and racist alternatives like Trump actually seem like the lesser evil.

So inquiring minds want to know. I assume you are referring to Biden being a rotten President. What "actions overseas" are you referring to? I think I could guess based on your comments on some of the other debacles of the past century. But I'm curious. As you said, you are an outside observer. So how do Biden's actions fit into your global parade of follies? I have some thoughts about Biden's entire history on foreign affairs, including as Senator and Veep as well as POTUS. But I will await your comments before I weigh in. I will make some observations about Biden's role in the 2024 election that I consider to be neutral, wonky, and interesting. I'm still a big fan of Alan Lichtman and his Keys to The White House. Up until 2024, he used them to correctly predict the winner of every Presidential election since 1984. Including Trump in 2016. Even though Trump himself didn't think he would win. There is an asterisk on the record because Lichtman predicted Gore in 2000. But Lichtman maintains a fair recount would have showed Gore won Florida, and thus the electoral college. That Florida thing was so close that either way I'm not going to judge the Keys system based on a razor close mess in one state. Mostly, what I find flattering about the Keys is they presume voters are not stupid. And they make reasonable decisions based on real issues like the economy, and war and peace. Now on to 2024. The Keys system is based on the idea that every election is a thumbs up or down referendum on the party in power. If 6 of the 13 keys are false answers, it is in effect six nails in the coffin, and the party in power is dead. Any less that six strikes against them and the incumbent party wins. Lichtman decided Harris/Democrats had four keys against them, and would win. So it's possible to just throw out the whole system and say it was always hogwash. Or it's possible to say Lichtman made a few bad calls. I believe the latter. In my mind, the no brainer one Lichtman got wrong was that we are not a recession. Technically we were not. But every poll said a huge percentage of Americans felt we were. And I am so wonky on this stuff that I know in 1992 Lichtman predicted accurately that Clinton would win, and his Keys cited the 1990 recession as a nail in the elder Bush's coffin. Lichtman argued in a 1992 interview that even though the recession was over by election year, people still felt like it was a recession. So he kind of flip flopped on his own rule in 2024. Lichtman did count Gaza as a military failure, which was another strike against Biden. But he also argued that Biden had a foreign policy success: the Ukraine War. His argument was that in the long run history would view what Biden did as a success, defending democracy and a sovereign nation from Putin. So if I had to argue what Lichtman got wrong, that would be the second bad call. In order to count against Biden, the Ukraine war did not have to be considered a failure. Simply not calling it a success would have been sufficient for a sixth and fatal key to fall. So the way I think about 2024 is that by electing Trump voters were in effect saying, "We do not see this war as a success." The obvious big issue was the economy, stupid. But it makes sense to me that both Gaza and Ukraine probably hurt Biden at the margins. Trump and his campaign manager have both said he won because of inflation and the border. That's true, and I think most people would agree. And of course incumbent parties all over the world got slaughtered thanks to inflation. But underneath that the election may also have been a referendum on how people were simply tired of America's Forever Wars.

Forget about Walmart. The insolent racist raping pig Trump is at war with Black small businesses and Hispanic small businesses and Asian small businesses. Why does Donald Trump want to assassinate the very same moderate Black and Hispanic and Asian small business owners that in many cases helped elect him, because inflation not only hurt them but hurt their businesses? Walmart will survive tariffs. For many small businesses Trump may as well put a gun to the head of a Hispanic business owner and pull the trigger. He will kill them with tariffs. He is such a dumb racist fuck that he does not even care. But it is a fact that a huge percentage of Blacks and Hispanic and Asian-owned businesses are small businesses. And depending on where they get their products and materials - not to mention labor - from, tariffs and deportations of law abiding and employed undocumented immigrants could be fatal. Plus, the ignorant racist piece of shit is tearing down any effort to specifically help Black small businesses, or Hispanic small businesses, or Asian small businesses, or women-owned small businesses. What a racist sexist raping insolent pig! He is on a rampage to kill small businesses. If the tariff bullet doesn't kill them, his attack on anything that helps businesses that are not White or male like him and his fat cat donors will. All to give tax cuts to his mostly White rich donors! The racist piece of shit Trump has shit all over the efforts of Republicans like senator Tim Scott to build Black capitalism and Black small businesses. There are polls saying most Americans, and even most Blacks and Hispanics, are not for defunding the police or for illegal immigration. On equal opportunity, most polls say that most Americans want to move away from racial preferences. But I have never seen a poll that says that most Americans are against a thriving Black Main Street, or a thriving Hispanic Main Street, or a thriving Asian Main Street. And now Trump is out to kill their path to wealth creation.

I am. In retrospect, it actually looks more like culture war battles and payoffs to right wing interest groups that bought the US Presidency. Elizabeth Warren's Consumer Financial Protection Bureau was an early and prime target. I bring that up because I'm guessing if we knew the political affiliation of the millions of Americans CFPB defended from financial predators, we would learn many of them are working class Trump voters. And then of course there were all the attacks on "woke" pro-LGBTQ things in the military or USAID. It was culture war and political payoffs disguised as government efficiency. Meanwhile, the US credit rating goes down because Team Trump will again blow up the deficit, this time from about 6 % of GDP to a projected 9 % of GDP. Moody’s downgrades US credit, citing rising debt How efficient is that? More tax cuts to Elon Musk, please!

I think we may actually have stumbled on a way to manage Trump. He may just need a good hand job once in a while. Despite her lovely accent, he apparently ain't getting it from Melania. In addition to their lovely accent, it's a well known fact that the French give the best hand jobs in the world. It's also a big ask. But maybe Macron needs to rise to the occasion, and do the world a favor every month or so. Trump is old, so he doesn't need it so often anymore. Kidding aside, we should get Trump out of the US more often. Democrat Jim Hines said it. The international version of Trump is more palatable. In addition to pushing commerce, he's trying to figure out how to stop Bibi The Baby Killer from bombing Iran and come up with a nuke deal. And now that MBS has learned that turning journalists into sausages is a reputation killer, maybe the Gulf can be an anchor for political stability. And Trump basically denounced the US Forever War Doctrine. I still view Trump as a traitor on Ukraine. But even on that issue he is now saying nasty things about Putin, rather than just throwing Ukraine under the bus. This is progress. More hand jobs, please. 🙏🙏🙏

What Democrats Can Learn From Morena The Mexican left combined ideological diversity on cultural issues with a shared, populist vision on material concerns. Another great article about the success of Mexico's working class Morena Party, and what Democrats can learn. AMLO is definitely an amazing leader. FDR is the suitable comparison. He spent his life changing the country, probably forever. And now he goes off to his farm in Chiapas with his wildly popular successor continuing his reforms. Fellow Liberal Patriot author Ruy Teixiera recently gave Democrats D's and F's on a lot of the issues discussed here: being against fossil fuels, a seeming obsession with identity politics, and immigration policies that are all out of touch with the US working class. AMLO is living proof of concept that Teixeira has a good argument. Because he pretty much did the exact opposite in Mexico. It was wildly popular, and his political movement is dominant. But more than anything it was the populist economics and a focus on wages and poverty that Democrats should embrace. There may be hope for a US version of this, perhaps with a Mexican American flavor. Like Ruben Gallego talking about how he is a patriot, Hispanics are not for illegal immigrants, and what every Mexican American man wants is a big ass truck and cheap gas to put in it. That has potential.

Did you read about her immunity argument? Judge arrested by Trump administration cites Trump immunity ruling in defense I wasn't sure whether to laugh or cry when I read that. I'm not a lawyer. So I assume part of this is some lawyer may think this legal argument was simply the easiest way to get the case dismissed. I keep reading there was a similar case about a different judge allegedly helping some undocumented immigrant escape ICE, and that was dismissed. But I can't find an explanation of why it was. I wonder whether Dugan is intentionally trolling Trump. Or a conservative SCOTUS. The whole thing is just getting more and more bizarre. I'm not posting to resurrect a debate on Dugan we disagree on and beat to death. I'm mostly saying it's like a dark comedy now. Nobody deserves immunity: not Trump, not Dugan, not anybody. Yet here we are.

Sweetie! You're not supposed to say that. Pam Bondi says Trump has saved '258 million lives' Why, just this morning, I woke up to learn my life had been saved by Donald Trump. I think I was supposed to die of fentanyl or something. Not to be an arrogant American. But I do feel pity for every other nation. Every day now, in the grand old USA, we wake up knowing that out jobs and our lives have been saved by Donald Trump. How did we ever get to be so lucky?

This is actually a great example of why I don't see Trump as awful as Bush. Have to say this first. These Tik Tok videos are annoying, and more important often completely untruthful. It's hard to understand what the digital voice in this video is saying. Let alone whether it is true. So I checked a more reliable news source, Fox Business. Reuters and others say essentially the same facts. WH announces $1.2T in economic commitment with Qatar, including significant Boeing order The Boeing deal with Qatar Airways marks the largest-ever order for Boeing jetliners The US lost about 4.5 million manufacturing jobs from Jan. 2001 to Jan. 2009. Another 1 million+ were lost in the first year of Obama's Presidency, thanks to the Great Recession he inherited but clearly did not create. So that should be blamed on a set of Republican policies that encouraged it and gutted working class jobs and communities. That did not happen under Clinton. We had MORE manufacturing jobs in Jan. 2001 when Clinton left office than in Jan. 1993 when he started. This is on Bush, and Republicans. So I'm glad that Trump is reversing that Republican policy. And this makes a hell of a lot more sense than tariffs, which mostly so far have simply created chaos. Hopefully it means Trump is learning something, too. Thanks, bond market, for educating Donald Trump. Like Jim Carville, I want to be reincarnated as you. 😉

Duh! There's an obvious solution. Bring Elon and Chad along. They'll figure it out when they get there. And if for some strange reason Musk and Trump and Chad are not the geniuses they appear to be, it may be okay. Honestly, @lookin, it is a very tough ask. But I think the world can somehow manage without Elon Musk. 🙄

Thank you. That confirms what I read, although I worded it differently. In bumper sticker terms, independence is a no go zone. The status quo works. And the last part you said reinforces this idea that a real invasion and war with Taiwan would not be easy for China. Or the Chinese people. This is getting into obscure but interesting corners. There is a guy named Edward Luttwak whose claim to fame is a few books on war strategy. So he thinks he knows a lot about war, at least. I've watched a number of interviews of him because he is bellicose and fun to listen to. Like you, he has a lot of fun stories about idiots like Bremer who know shit about the people they are supposed to subdue or rule. My point is in one interview Luttwak went into this long story about the four Chinese soldiers who died in a border clash with India in 2020. If he is correct, first there was a news black out. And then the Chinese government launched this massive PR campaign to turn them into iconic heroes for the people of the China. Luttwak is clearly the kind of guy who relishes war, and is proud he has killed people in war. He says he kept their helmets as souvenirs. He would probably have their heads mounted on his wall as trophies if he could, I imagine. So his point, in his bellicose terms, is that China fighting a war is a joke. This is not a country like the US, or UK in its imperial heyday, that has oodles of Pete Hegseths ready to go kill for their country. Or, at the very least, they have not gone out and killed for their country in great numbers. And when a few of them actually die, it had to be turned into something like a fairy tale. I have no idea whether what Luttwak is saying is true. It was interesting to listen to. But, again, hopefully China and Taiwan and the world never have to learn what China is really like when it gets into an awful, deadly, bloody war.

Well, I have to say thank you. Somehow, amazingly, you made me realize we could have a worse Secretary of Defense than Pete Hegseth! 😉

On the plus side, it would at least show that Trump has a sense of irony.

I agree on that part. So that it is clear, my reference to Republicans wanting war with China was not about Trump himself, or a trade war. Trump appears to be loving his role as a peacenik. And maybe he is angling for a Nobel Prize. I do believe he does not want a war, least of all on his watch. I think the militarists are the ones that feel that an invasion of Taiwan, or China's overall hostility and aggressiveness and unwillingness to play by the rules (in their view) is what will ultimately trigger a war with China. So it's funny to hear examples I did not know about regarding the West (meaning the UK in this instance) being the one to break the rules. Why am I not surprised? 🙄 I've read a few things enough times that they sound plausible to me, even though these ideas are outside my experience and above my pay grade. One idea I have read a lot is that for most Chinese (mainland) the idea of unification with Taiwan is so deeply felt that it is just a matter of time and method. The argument usually goes like this: Westerners who think this is even negotiable for China basically have no clue. So the best hope is to just keep the status going for as long as possible. The other idea I have read that surprised me at first, but also seems plausible, is that a maritime invasion of Taiwan will be very difficult for China, especially if the US is involved. It is true that, regardless of how advanced China's military technology is, they have not fought a war in a long time. And the experience of Russia in Ukraine (or Afghanistan) suggests that these things are not as easy as they seem on paper. Hopefully, the world will never have to find out. Your points about the economy in China suggest that the US and China have every reason to make some kind of trade deal. Which is what I suspect Trump, Xi, and the world all want.

I think we are all right, in different ways. What you are talking about is that Trump is an asshole and criminal who has no respect for the Constitution or the rule of law. All true. If I had to decide who is a better person, I would probably say Bush. And obviously if you are the "leader of the free world" what kind of person you are has an impact on everyone. But this is not really a personality contest. The main reason I pick Bush is his actions, not his character. He did tremendously bad and stupid shit in a way that Trump has not done yet. Again, Exhibit A is the Iraq War. Bush started that. It was on him. Exhibit B is subprime and the global financial crisis. Bush did NOT start that. But I do blame him for letting it fester and blow up on his watch. All those loans were made when he was POTUS. And an army of do-gooders was screaming that this is predatory, and it will end badly. Here is an interesting question. What is Trump doing now that is most likely to end badly for the US, or the world? I'm not sure. If the US did suspend democracy, I would say that is the worst thing. But we are not there yet. And even a Trump appointed SCOTUS is pushing back and setting limits. I think my pick is that Trump is the king of bankruptcy. I'm a liberal but a deficit hawk. And Trump is just going to fuel a massive debt crisis that he certainly did not start. But it may blow up on his watch. Check back with me in a few years.

That was a very thoughtful post. I assumed you were responding to me, but you did not quote me. So I had to go back a page to re-read what I wrote last month. I'll add a few things, around one theme: there is a direct causal link between Bush and Trump, I think. In at least two ways. As that article I quoted cites, Trump learned a lot of his bag of dirty tricks from Bush. The article goes through W's post-9/11 attacks on civil rights in detail. In my view it was an uglier time. In part because people were legitimately freaked out by 9/11. Bush had a sort of mandate, at least in opinion polls on civil rights issues, that Trump has never had. Basically, while Bush came off as a nicer guy and perhaps is a nicer guy, his actions were far more egregious. So far. (Big exception: the Jan. 11 Jubilant Patriotic Cop Beating. Hanging chads is nothing compared to Trump sending a mob to the Capitol to stop a peaceful transfer of power._ On an even deeper level, I see Trump as a direct reaction to Bush and his failures. A part of the Republican Party, which now seems to be the majority of the Republican Party, basically said "No more of this shit." No more Iraq Wars, no more globalization, and more working class flavor. As one Republican Senator said, kind of distastefully, his party is now the truck driver party. If I had to choose, I would take this Republican Party in a heartbeat - so far. The worst two things Bush gave us were the Iraq war and the subprime lending crisis. The global economic meltdown happened on his watch. And since he ran all the regulatory agencies that looked the other way while Wall Street and Mortgage USA drove the global economy off the cliff, I do believe Bush has blood on his hands for that. Granted, MAGA is ladled with contradictions. They still pander to fat cats like Elon Musk with huge tax cuts, while they cut Medicaid and SNAP for the working class. But I think it is better that they now feel at least some accountability to the working class and moderate Hispanics. They know they have to pander to them now, too. So now it is Republicans who want a $500 increase in the child tax credit for working class families. And no tax on tips. So it is not just Elon Musk. Even though of course Elon is THE GUY who matters the most to Trump, since he paid for his election. Trump's recent speech about the nation builders actually being the nation wreckers was a good speech. I'm a lifelong liberal Democrat. And I mostly agree with what he said, which some speech writer obviously wrote. My Dad fought in WW2 and was a Reagan Republican. He was fully on board for the Iraq War and how these Iraqis would throw roses at our feet to thank us. Oops! They threw bombs at us and slaughtered each other, thanks to us opening Pandora's Box. So if this Republican Party now has it in their brain that these misadventures like Iraq are now verboten, that's mostly a good thing. That said, I feel Trump and MAGA have betrayed Ukraine and are empowering Putin. But that is a different issue. If we just stop launching stupid wars, that would be a plus. Assuming this new MAGA GOP means it. Because some of them sound like they still want a war - with China.

States bear the brunt of House GOP Medicaid plan We now have an initial estimate of how many working class people Republicans will screw. All so they can pander to Elon Musk and other deserving billionaires who need government help with tax cuts. Meanwhile, the Republicans will argue that these 8.6 million people are just not deserving. How many of these people voted for Trump? It's one thing for Elon Musk to kill the poorest children in the world by taking life saving medications away. Why kill Americans? But the insolent pig Trump is willing to do so in order for Musk and the other fat cats who paid for Trump's Presidency to get their tax cuts. If Republican House members vote for this American Cruelty Plan they deserve to be slaughtered at the ballot box next year.

I think this belong here, too. Bill Gates to give away $200 billion by 2045, says Musk is 'killing' world's poorest children As far as I am concerned, Elon Musk deserves to burn in hell for all eternity. Some part of me hopes this evil pathetic excuse for a human being, who is filled with his own hubris and sickness and cruelty, burns in agony for the rest of time. He is a sick evil fuck who considers his own child dead because that child is queer. This is a sick evil man. Truly evil. In my own mind, if anyone deserves to burn in hell forever, in agony for all time, it is this sick evil fuck called Elon Musk. Just because it made me feel good, I rewatched Invictus last night. It made me feel sad that we don't have that right now. Nelson Mandela was never Pope. But I'd argue he was as beloved, if not more beloved, than any Pope in my lifetime. I'd also argue he embraced a philosophy of leadership that has not been matched by any President of South Africa since. But these people don't come along every election. My point is that it made me think about Elon Musk. Mandela represented the best South Africa had to offer the world. And that was intentional on his part. Musk represents the worst South Africa has to offer the world. And that is not intentional. He is just a sick evil fuck. Trump represents the worst of America. Our new Pope represents the best that America - the US, and Peru - have to offer the world. The fact that he was born in the US and embraced the poor in Peru is itself a powerful symbol. I'm not God. So I don't get to decide whether Musk and Trump deserve grace. But I can decide they are cruel, evil men. In the interview, Gates trolled or baited Musk and said maybe Musk will create some great new charity. He should. If Musk wants to be a decent man, and a good citizen of the world, he could work with Gates and Pope Leo to replace some of the USAID money cut that saves the lives of poor children all over the world. But he won't.

Everyone in the world wants one thing: to NOT be like our stupid piece of shit Trump. The insolent pig changed the course of the election in Canada and got Carney elected. Stupid pig! Very stupid pig! The insolent pig helped get the Labour Party re-elected in Australia. Sheinbaum won in Mexico before Trump on a mandate for the progress made for the poor - "First, the poor!" and the Mexican working class. But her approval ratings in Mexico are up to 80 % in part because she is NOT the stupid raping insolent pig. She is a great leader. And now the raping loser Trump, who prefers retribution and hate, gets a new Pope elected, with a particular passion for the poor and a life of service Trump could never understand. Just like he can't understand why American military die for their country. Robert Prevost Criticized JD Vance Months Before Becoming Pope Hopefully this means the world can distinguish between their contempt for Trump and their respect for the best of the United States. God bless Pope Leo. God bless the world. God bless abundance. Especially an abundance of love.