American Politics from 2019 on

[Tero]

We will have to deliver our help now by air craft carrier then.

[Svartalf]

Given that Trumpatine and Dark Elon are as evil as they come with that kind of power, and they are doing all they can to destroy any goodwill toward them and the US, I'll say it couldn't happen to a nice couple of catamites.

[Svartalf]

We will have to deliver our help now by air craft carrier then.

what aircraft carriers, musk will surely send those overly expensive toys to demolition so the new, small and lean, government doesn't have to levy money to maintain such useless things, all military strength is to remain to defend the Fatherland, not to project soft power to the other end of the world.

[Tyrannical]

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-02-08/ ... /104908708

Mr Trump's cost-cutting tzar, the world's richest man Elon Musk, has said "USAID is a criminal organisation" and "USAID must die," foreshadowing a major overhaul of an organisation that distributes $US72 billion ($115 billion) of American government money around the world each year.

Highly visible US aid programs in 3rd world countries are disappearing. Disliked in many parts of the world for its arrogance, the US probably had offset much of this dislike in the past by solid aid work all over the world. There is nothing now to dissuade much of the world's population from viewing the US as the Evil Empire...

I hate to give spoilers, but 3rd world countries are going to love Trump

tldr; Trump is going to pin covid on China and encourage 3rd world countries to recoup belt and road loans through legal damages caused by covid.

Not paying loans back and nationalizing Chinese assets in their country while encouraged by Trump could prove very popular.

[Svartalf]

It might, but trump won't provide new loans or aid when the 3rd class dictators have alienated china....

[L'Emmerdeur]

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-02-08/ ... /104908708

Mr Trump's cost-cutting tzar, the world's richest man Elon Musk, has said "USAID is a criminal organisation" and "USAID must die," foreshadowing a major overhaul of an organisation that distributes $US72 billion ($115 billion) of American government money around the world each year.

Highly visible US aid programs in 3rd world countries are disappearing. Disliked in many parts of the world for its arrogance, the US probably had offset much of this dislike in the past by solid aid work all over the world. There is nothing now to dissuade much of the world's population from viewing the US as the Evil Empire...

It's overtly so. Making imperialistic land grab noises (Lebensraum, anybody?), ostentatiously cutting off humanitarian aid, it's a clear message. If anybody had a mistaken notion otherwise: 'No more Mr. Nice Guy.' Rather the opposite.

[macdoc]

unreal

[macdoc]

[macdoc]

John Pavlovitz‬ ‪@johnpavlovitz.bsky.social‬
·
5h
ICE:

Oppose them.
Deceive them.
Obstruct them.
Deny them.
Defy them.
F*ck them.

[macdoc]

Athena Scalzi @athenascalzi.com
·
12h
I take back every time I’ve ever called a dystopian novel unrealistic because I thought there was no way the world could ever actually get THAT bad.”

[pErvinalia]

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-02-08/ ... /104908708

Mr Trump's cost-cutting tzar, the world's richest man Elon Musk, has said "USAID is a criminal organisation" and "USAID must die," foreshadowing a major overhaul of an organisation that distributes $US72 billion ($115 billion) of American government money around the world each year.

Highly visible US aid programs in 3rd world countries are disappearing. Disliked in many parts of the world for its arrogance, the US probably had offset much of this dislike in the past by solid aid work all over the world. There is nothing now to dissuade much of the world's population from viewing the US as the Evil Empire...

I hate to give spoilers, but 3rd world countries are going to love Trump

tldr; Trump is going to pin covid on China and encourage 3rd world countries to recoup belt and road loans through legal damages caused by covid.

Not paying loans back and nationalizing Chinese assets in their country while encouraged by Trump could prove very popular.

You're delusional.

[Tero]

"It's just Trump. We won't let it happen in our state."

[Tero]

Editorial Board of the "New York Times." The headline reads, "Now Is Not the Time to Tune Out."

"Don’t get distracted. Don’t get overwhelmed. Don’t get paralyzed and pulled into the chaos that President Trump and his allies are purposely creating with the volume and speed of executive orders; the effort to dismantle the federal government; the performative attacks on immigrants, transgender people and the very concept of diversity itself; the demands that other countries accept Americans as their new overlords; and the dizzying sense that the White House could do or say anything at any moment. All of this is intended to keep the country on its back heel so President Trump can blaze ahead in his drive for maximum executive power, so no one can stop the audacious, ill-conceived and frequently illegal agenda being advanced by his administration. For goodness sake, don’t tune out."

"The Republican-led Congress has so far abdicated its role as a coequal branch of government, from allowing its laws and spending directives to be systematically cast aside to fearfully assenting to the president stocking his cabinet with erratic, unqualified loyalists. Much of civil society — from the business community, to higher education, to parts of the corporate media — has been disturbingly quiet, even acquiescent."

"But there are encouraging signs as well. The courts, the most important check on a president who aims to expand his legally authorized powers and remove any guardrails, so far have held, blocking a number of Mr. Trump’s initiatives. States have also taken action, with several Democratic attorneys general suing over Mr. Trump’s attempts to freeze federal grant funding and end birthright citizenship and vowing to fight Elon Musk’s team’s access to federal payment systems containing personal information."

"None of this is to say that Mr. Trump shouldn’t have the opportunity to govern. Seventy-seven million Americans cast ballots to put Mr. Trump back in the White House, and the Republican Party, now fully remade in service of the MAGA movement, holds majorities in both houses of Congress. Elections, it is often noted, have consequences. But is this unconstitutional overhaul of the American government — far more sweeping, haphazard and cruel than anything he campaigned on — really what those voters signed up for?"
"America faces a new reality, and it demands wisdom, endurance and courage. The United States is now led by a president who appears willing to stampede over any person, law, congressional statute or country that stands in his way. He is driven by impulse and is disinterested in rules, history or reality.

"How Americans and the world handle such a president will determine much about the next four years, and it will ask much from all of us. We must meet the moment. Mr. Trump won the election fair and square, but his position is that of president, not king or god-emperor. Every time Congress allows him to exceed his constitutional role, it encourages more anti-democratic behavior and weakens the legislature’s ability to check further erosion of the norms and values that have helped make this nation the freest, richest and strongest in the world."

NYT, paywall

How Democrats lost the DEI war
Conservatives won the culture war by riding the backlash to Black Lives Matter protests.
https://www.politico.com/news/2025/02/0 ... 54?cid=apn
"How Democrats lost the DEI war."
“What a storytelling win for Trump,” said DeRay McKesson, a progressive activist who rose to prominence during the Black Lives Matter protests in Ferguson, Missouri. “That is a failure of storytelling on the left and a huge win on the right.”

On his first day in office as part of a conservative wishlist outlined in Project 2025 to assert more control over the federal workforce, Trump declared DEI programs discriminatory and ordered them to be uprooted from government agencies and programs.

Five years ago, it was Democrats who were leading the pro-diversity push, even taking part in photo ops donning kente cloths and kneeling inside the U.S. Capitol to show solidarity with Black Lives Matter protests. Now it finds itself without a cogent plan on how to best stop the president’s DEI blowback at this moment — or how to win back those very voters they needed to stop him.

[Sean Hayden]

Sure the courts blocked it—after the fact.

[Tero]

We don't do now stinking science anymore! RFK Jr will put them back in their place.

Medicinal chemist and longtime blogger at Science Derek Lowe wrote, "(2) I have a report from someone who had a paper already reviewed, accepted, and posted at a Sage journal who received an unexpected communication from a staffer at the publisher. They asked that the paper be revised at this point to replace any of "gender" with "sex" and to delete all mentions of words such as nonbinary, inclusivity, etc. Otherwise, they said that they would pull the paper, citing the provision of EO 14168 (which is the one going after transgender rights). The faculty member who got this notice was taken aback, since the study that the paper describes was not federally funded in any way (!)...(3) The situation around NIH and NSF study sessions and advisory panels remains chaotic. I frankly have been unable to put together a coherent picture amid the freezes, cancellations, postponements, and reschedulings that are being reported."

https://www.science.org/content/blog-po ... is-part-ii

In an earlier post Derek Lowe wrote, "And if the NIH granting apparatus is "paused" for as little as two months, things will indeed begin to fall apart as the effects roll down to the universities and research groups involved, disrupting the entire biomedical academic research structure across the country." Dr. Lowe has been employed by industry his whole career if I am not mistaken.