People before the election: "Stop being alarmist - Trump won't set up actual concentration camps if he wins. You just compare everything you don't like to the Nazis."
Although, I suppose in fairness, he's not setting a concentration camp up, just expanding the one that the US already had in case of emergencies/suspicious foreigners, so technically speaking they're still correct.
Puja
I'm sure the detainees will have nothing to worry about, America always respects international law.
Obama should have shut the place down.
Obama should've done a lot of things more ethically, but that one is pretty high on the list.
In retrospect, he should've used his incredibly short time (24 working days between illnesses, death, appeals over elections, special elections, etc) with a supermajority to fix US democracy rather than pass the Affordable Care Act. The latter was hugely more important in terms of the impact it had on American lives and his legacy, so I understand why he made the choices that he did, but with 20:20 hindsight, over the long-term, life would've been a fuck of a lot easier for Democrats if he'd used that time to get rid of the electoral college, and get DC and Puerto Rico in as states. An additional 4 votes in the Senate would've made it easier to pass legislation later (not to mention preventing the Mitch McConnell fuckery over judge confirmations) and Trump could not have won 2016 without the electoral college.
Puja
Agreed there are more important things (fixing the Supreme Court too, in addition to your list), and more difficult things. Getting rid of Guantanamo would have been far easier (as far as I'm aware), as it wouldn't have required a supermajority, not even sure it would have needed a vote in the houses at all? Isn't it like declaring war, just a decision for the President?
Of course, closing Guantanamo as a detention centre/gulag wouldn't stop a future Trump or Bush from reopening it or building one elsewhere (Greenland, perhaps?) but it would have made it more difficult, it would have pushed back the excesses of the far-right, which is, kind-of, one of the jobs of the left (or what passes for it in the states).
Son of Mathonwy wrote: ↑Thu Jan 30, 2025 11:32 am
I'm sure the detainees will have nothing to worry about, America always respects international law.
Obama should have shut the place down.
Obama should've done a lot of things more ethically, but that one is pretty high on the list.
In retrospect, he should've used his incredibly short time (24 working days between illnesses, death, appeals over elections, special elections, etc) with a supermajority to fix US democracy rather than pass the Affordable Care Act. The latter was hugely more important in terms of the impact it had on American lives and his legacy, so I understand why he made the choices that he did, but with 20:20 hindsight, over the long-term, life would've been a fuck of a lot easier for Democrats if he'd used that time to get rid of the electoral college, and get DC and Puerto Rico in as states. An additional 4 votes in the Senate would've made it easier to pass legislation later (not to mention preventing the Mitch McConnell fuckery over judge confirmations) and Trump could not have won 2016 without the electoral college.
Puja
Agreed there are more important things (fixing the Supreme Court too, in addition to your list), and more difficult things. Getting rid of Guantanamo would have been far easier (as far as I'm aware), as it wouldn't have required a supermajority, not even sure it would have needed a vote in the houses at all? Isn't it like declaring war, just a decision for the President?
Of course, closing Guantanamo as a detention centre/gulag wouldn't stop a future Trump or Bush from reopening it or building one elsewhere (Greenland, perhaps?) but it would have made it more difficult, it would have pushed back the excesses of the far-right, which is, kind-of, one of the jobs of the left (or what passes for it in the states).
I think the issue was partly the political capital it would've cost him (in a post 9/11 America, being "soft on terrorism" loses you votes in Congress, even Democratic ones), and partly the actual logistics of doing it, because closing it would mean finding a place for all the people who are there, a lot of whom have not been through any kind of legal process that could result in them being imprisoned anywhere else (not to mention that, if they tried to go through the legal process, they don't have the evidence for them).
Easier to promise that you're going to close Guantanamo when you're running for re-election than it is to actually get into the 100s of small, difficult decisions that would acutally be required for it to happen.
Obama should've done a lot of things more ethically, but that one is pretty high on the list.
In retrospect, he should've used his incredibly short time (24 working days between illnesses, death, appeals over elections, special elections, etc) with a supermajority to fix US democracy rather than pass the Affordable Care Act. The latter was hugely more important in terms of the impact it had on American lives and his legacy, so I understand why he made the choices that he did, but with 20:20 hindsight, over the long-term, life would've been a fuck of a lot easier for Democrats if he'd used that time to get rid of the electoral college, and get DC and Puerto Rico in as states. An additional 4 votes in the Senate would've made it easier to pass legislation later (not to mention preventing the Mitch McConnell fuckery over judge confirmations) and Trump could not have won 2016 without the electoral college.
Puja
Agreed there are more important things (fixing the Supreme Court too, in addition to your list), and more difficult things. Getting rid of Guantanamo would have been far easier (as far as I'm aware), as it wouldn't have required a supermajority, not even sure it would have needed a vote in the houses at all? Isn't it like declaring war, just a decision for the President?
Of course, closing Guantanamo as a detention centre/gulag wouldn't stop a future Trump or Bush from reopening it or building one elsewhere (Greenland, perhaps?) but it would have made it more difficult, it would have pushed back the excesses of the far-right, which is, kind-of, one of the jobs of the left (or what passes for it in the states).
I think the issue was partly the political capital it would've cost him (in a post 9/11 America, being "soft on terrorism" loses you votes in Congress, even Democratic ones), and partly the actual logistics of doing it, because closing it would mean finding a place for all the people who are there, a lot of whom have not been through any kind of legal process that could result in them being imprisoned anywhere else (not to mention that, if they tried to go through the legal process, they don't have the evidence for them).
Easier to promise that you're going to close Guantanamo when you're running for re-election than it is to actually get into the 100s of small, difficult decisions that would acutally be required for it to happen.
Puja
Not a simple thing but entirely doable. Shameful that it was still in place after 8 years.
Similarly shameful for Trump l and Biden, not to mention Bush, obviously.
Son of Mathonwy wrote: ↑Tue Jan 28, 2025 10:04 amBut then no doubt there were some high up in the Third Reich who happily went along with all the horrors for nothing other than personal gain.
Historians have a special name for people like that - "Nazis"
Personally, I'm not a fan of labelling people as nazis - that's one specific flavour of fascism, and flavour of fascism is unacceptable, and I don't see the need to offer any wriggle room whatsoever. Franco and Mussolini weren't better people, just because they weren't technically nazis
Fash scum, MAGA, nazis, white supremacists - what's the fucking difference?
Karoline Leavitt, MAGA Press Secretary wrote:When you're flying with your loved ones, do you pray that your airplane lands safely and gets you to your destination or do you pray that the pilot has a certain skin color? I think we all know the answer.
And now we have a trade war between the USA and Canada, all to solve a non existent trade deficit. Four years of wasted time as countries negotiate this buffoons ego.
Re: America
Posted: Sun Feb 02, 2025 1:42 pm
by Which Tyler
No, no, it's not "to solve the trade deficit" it's "to solve the national emergency of Fentanyl smuggling"
Elsewhere in USA, in Tennessee, it's now "illegal for lawmakers to vote for policies perceived as opposing President Donald Trump's agenda."
Because nothing says "healthy democracy" like imprisoning people who vote against you https://www.newsweek.com/tennessee-bill ... es-2023749
Re: America
Posted: Sun Feb 02, 2025 6:03 pm
by Son of Mathonwy
Which Tyler wrote: ↑Sun Feb 02, 2025 1:42 pm
No, no, it's not "to solve the trade deficit" it's "to solve the national emergency of Fentanyl smuggling"
Elsewhere in USA, in Tennessee, it's now "illegal for lawmakers to vote for policies perceived as opposing President Donald Trump's agenda."
Because nothing says "healthy democracy" like imprisoning people who vote against you https://www.newsweek.com/tennessee-bill ... es-2023749
Yep, Russia used to be a democracy too. Americans don't believe it could happen to them.
Re: America
Posted: Sun Feb 02, 2025 6:09 pm
by cashead
Face-eating leopards will be eating well for a while, I see.
Re: America
Posted: Mon Feb 03, 2025 10:33 pm
by Puja
Elon Musk and his highly amusingly meme-named department have been given complete and unfettered access to the US Bureau of Fiscal Service, which is the US Treasury's financial payment system. This has happened through several long-standing and well-respected civil servants standing up to Trump and refusing to hand over the keys to the kingdom, and then being forcibly removed from their positions by security and being forced to resign, until there was no-one left in the way.
To confirm, DOGE is not an official government department, Musk has not been confirmed by Congress as any formal agent of the government, and he has no legal authority other than Trump's ear. And he now has access to a system which controls nearly 90% of all government payments (including social security, the wages of civil servants, and grants and tax credits that go to Musk's companies and to his competitors), $5.47 TRILLION of government income, and which contains the confidential financial information of hundreds of millions of Americans. He has the capability to stop payments on pretty much anything he likes (or doesn't like, probably more accurately), including the wages of government employees who disagree with him, funding for departments he disagrees with, and his business competitors.
To say that again, because I can't take it all in with just one repetition, Musk has literally no authority and now has power to decide what the US government spends money on, regardless of Congress's wishes.
Even if we require no malevolence to the man who spent $44billion buying a tech empire because he was upset that people insulted him on it (and who has now declared that criticising the Trump administration will be a bannable offence going forwards on said tech empire) and assume that he has no ill intentions at all, this is also the same dude that tried to make Twitter "more efficient" by firing a bunch of people based on facile assumptions that he knew what he was doing and caused massive outages. That kind of "I don't understand what that's for, so therefore we can get rid of it" attitude is not something that should be interacting with the US Government's ability to make financial transactions.
And, while we're at it, let's not bother with assuming that he has no ill intentions at all. He's a paper billionaire, with Twitter being bought on credit and losing money hand over fist and Tesla massively overvalued and trading on his reputation, and he is absolutely planning on looting the fuck out of the USA to bolster his fortune and "win" the prize of becoming the first trillionaire.
Puja
Re: America
Posted: Mon Feb 03, 2025 11:31 pm
by Son of Mathonwy
Puja wrote: ↑Mon Feb 03, 2025 10:33 pm
Elon Musk and his highly amusingly meme-named department have been given complete and unfettered access to the US Bureau of Fiscal Service, which is the US Treasury's financial payment system. This has happened through several long-standing and well-respected civil servants standing up to Trump and refusing to hand over the keys to the kingdom, and then being forcibly removed from their positions by security and being forced to resign, until there was no-one left in the way.
To confirm, DOGE is not an official government department, Musk has not been confirmed by Congress as any formal agent of the government, and he has no legal authority other than Trump's ear. And he now has access to a system which controls nearly 90% of all government payments (including social security, the wages of civil servants, and grants and tax credits that go to Musk's companies and to his competitors), $5.47 TRILLION of government income, and which contains the confidential financial information of hundreds of millions of Americans. He has the capability to stop payments on pretty much anything he likes (or doesn't like, probably more accurately), including the wages of government employees who disagree with him, funding for departments he disagrees with, and his business competitors.
To say that again, because I can't take it all in with just one repetition, Musk has literally no authority and now has power to decide what the US government spends money on, regardless of Congress's wishes.
Even if we require no malevolence to the man who spent $44billion buying a tech empire because he was upset that people insulted him on it (and who has now declared that criticising the Trump administration will be a bannable offence going forwards on said tech empire) and assume that he has no ill intentions at all, this is also the same dude that tried to make Twitter "more efficient" by firing a bunch of people based on facile assumptions that he knew what he was doing and caused massive outages. That kind of "I don't understand what that's for, so therefore we can get rid of it" attitude is not something that should be interacting with the US Government's ability to make financial transactions.
And, while we're at it, let's not bother with assuming that he has no ill intentions at all. He's a paper billionaire, with Twitter being bought on credit and losing money hand over fist and Tesla massively overvalued and trading on his reputation, and he is absolutely planning on looting the fuck out of the USA to bolster his fortune and "win" the prize of becoming the first trillionaire.
Puja
This is the US with its famous checks and balances. The state is crumbling like a banana republic. I thought the UK was bad under Johnson, but this is next level stuff. Trump has no one responsible in his cabinet to tell him no, so he just demands everything. And so far, he seems to be getting it, whether it's legal or not.
I'd say it was a coup but since the Democrats aren't even fighting back it hardly counts as such. It looks (as some have said) like Vichy France, the Dems offering no resistance. What if he just didn't hold elections in 4 years' time. Would anyone resist?
Musk can just pay himself and Trump, and Trump can just pardon the two of them for the theft. Not that anyone would have enough of a spine to make an arrest.
This all seems so chaotic that I can imagine a general installing a 'temporary military government just to stabilize things'.
Re: America
Posted: Tue Feb 04, 2025 4:32 am
by cashead
Re: America
Posted: Tue Feb 04, 2025 7:27 pm
by Sandydragon
Puja wrote: ↑Mon Feb 03, 2025 10:33 pm
Elon Musk and his highly amusingly meme-named department have been given complete and unfettered access to the US Bureau of Fiscal Service, which is the US Treasury's financial payment system. This has happened through several long-standing and well-respected civil servants standing up to Trump and refusing to hand over the keys to the kingdom, and then being forcibly removed from their positions by security and being forced to resign, until there was no-one left in the way.
To confirm, DOGE is not an official government department, Musk has not been confirmed by Congress as any formal agent of the government, and he has no legal authority other than Trump's ear. And he now has access to a system which controls nearly 90% of all government payments (including social security, the wages of civil servants, and grants and tax credits that go to Musk's companies and to his competitors), $5.47 TRILLION of government income, and which contains the confidential financial information of hundreds of millions of Americans. He has the capability to stop payments on pretty much anything he likes (or doesn't like, probably more accurately), including the wages of government employees who disagree with him, funding for departments he disagrees with, and his business competitors.
To say that again, because I can't take it all in with just one repetition, Musk has literally no authority and now has power to decide what the US government spends money on, regardless of Congress's wishes.
Even if we require no malevolence to the man who spent $44billion buying a tech empire because he was upset that people insulted him on it (and who has now declared that criticising the Trump administration will be a bannable offence going forwards on said tech empire) and assume that he has no ill intentions at all, this is also the same dude that tried to make Twitter "more efficient" by firing a bunch of people based on facile assumptions that he knew what he was doing and caused massive outages. That kind of "I don't understand what that's for, so therefore we can get rid of it" attitude is not something that should be interacting with the US Government's ability to make financial transactions.
And, while we're at it, let's not bother with assuming that he has no ill intentions at all. He's a paper billionaire, with Twitter being bought on credit and losing money hand over fist and Tesla massively overvalued and trading on his reputation, and he is absolutely planning on looting the fuck out of the USA to bolster his fortune and "win" the prize of becoming the first trillionaire.
Puja
To call this disturbing just doesn’t capture the full gravity. Musk is operating unlawfully. And no one seems to care.
If Trumps starts a trade war with the UK, the UK shouldn't start a trade war by standing up for itself, but bend over and take it, because we don't have the economic might of Canada or Mexico
Re: America
Posted: Tue Feb 04, 2025 8:18 pm
by Mellsblue
Canada and Mexico did bend over re Trumps demands. Sadly, we don’t have a border to bend over.
Also, from what I’ve read, UK govt policy is to bend over unless Trump gets far too aggressive. Luckily, it sounds like we’re along way down his list.
Re: America
Posted: Tue Feb 04, 2025 8:24 pm
by Which Tyler
Define "bend over re Trumps demands"
From what I can tell, Canada continued doing exactly what they were already doing - with maybe a name change.
Mexico sent some troops to sit around in a different barracks.
Re: America
Posted: Tue Feb 04, 2025 9:34 pm
by Puja
Which Tyler wrote: ↑Tue Feb 04, 2025 8:24 pm
Define "bend over re Trumps demands"
From what I can tell, Canada continued doing exactly what they were already doing - with maybe a name change.
Mexico sent some troops to sit around in a different barracks.
As I understand it, both of them are taking actions that had already been agreed in a deal with Biden and are allowing Trump to believe that he's forced them into it. Smart play.
Which Tyler wrote: ↑Tue Feb 04, 2025 8:24 pm
Define "bend over re Trumps demands"
From what I can tell, Canada continued doing exactly what they were already doing - with maybe a name change.
Mexico sent some troops to sit around in a different barracks.
As I understand it, both of them are taking actions that had already been agreed in a deal with Biden and are allowing Trump to believe that he's forced them into it. Smart play.
Puja
Certainly Canada - I can't find a figure for the troops Mexico were going to send anyway, so having that may or may not be a new thing.
I'd add Trumps huge win over Columbia by threatening tarrifs, then not applying them because... he agreed to everything Columbia demanded, and got nothing at all in return (except some liberal tears, and to dominate another news cycle).
I suspect that those around Trump knew about the deals Biden had done with Mexico and Canada, and probably told Trump (whether the blancmange he uses for a brain could hold onto that information though...). It was about being seen to throw his weight around, be strong, and get a win. Reality never has all that much to do with Trumpian pronouncements.
People, and media, fall for it - and will continue to repeat the lie for years to come (see Mandela effect). "We used to say a lie was halfway round the world before the truth had got its boots on. Now lies are like decrepit satellites that circle the Earth for ever" GNU Sir Terry
Re: America
Posted: Tue Feb 04, 2025 10:30 pm
by Mellsblue
Not how it’s being reported by the BBC, The Times and a few others but hey ho. The general consensus is that Columbia caved over accepting deported migrants.
Who knows who’s falling for what.
If Trumps starts a trade war with the UK, the UK shouldn't start a trade war by standing up for itself, but bend over and take it, because we don't have the economic might of Canada or Mexico
Nothing like a has-been suck-up of a Tory to undermine our bargaining position.
Re: America
Posted: Tue Feb 04, 2025 10:55 pm
by Which Tyler
Mellsblue wrote: ↑Tue Feb 04, 2025 10:30 pm
Not how it’s being reported by the BBC, The Times and a few others but hey ho. The general consensus is that Columbia caved over accepting deported migrants.
Who knows who’s falling for what.
They always accepted the deportations.
They rejected two(?) aeroplanes' worth because Trump did a publicity stunt, and sent them handcuffed etc on a military flight, instead of not handcuffed, and on civilian flights, as they always had been before, and we're again after the stunt.
I believe I mentioned about the press falling for it.
They also fell for the Canada and Mexico caving in line as well.
And so many lies from so many politicians.
Re: America
Posted: Tue Feb 04, 2025 10:58 pm
by Mellsblue
From Trudeau’s X account:
‘In addition, Canada is making new commitments to appoint a Fentanyl Czar, we will list cartels as terrorists, ensure 24/7 eyes on the border, launch a Canada- U.S. Joint Strike Force to combat organized crime, fentanyl and money laundering. I have also signed a new intelligence directive on organized crime and fentanyl and we will be backing it with $200 million.’
For a 30 days pause.
Mellsblue wrote: ↑Tue Feb 04, 2025 10:30 pm
Not how it’s being reported by the BBC, The Times and a few others but hey ho. The general consensus is that Columbia caved over accepting deported migrants.
Who knows who’s falling for what.
They always accepted the deportations.
They rejected two(?) aeroplanes' worth because Trump did a publicity stunt, and sent them handcuffed etc on a military flight, instead of not handcuffed, and on civilian flights, as they always had been before, and we're again after the stunt.
I believe I mentioned about the press falling for it.
They also fell for the Canada and Mexico caving in line as well.
And so many lies from so many politicians.
Reuters, NYT and CNN all reporting it differently but hey ho. Everyone’s fallen for it, seemingly.
Re: America
Posted: Wed Feb 05, 2025 7:34 am
by Which Tyler
Moving on from a discussion where no-one's going to convince the other...
'We'll own it' and 'long term ownership'. So he's actually talking about annexing it for the US, not Israel. No way would Netanyahu be happy with that. Maybe he's just cut a deal where Donald Trump becomes owner of significant parts of the strip? Or it could be a Hong Kong type thing where the US gives it to Israel after a very long period.
Anyway, what a piece of shit war criminal.
Not sure how having US troops coming back in bodybags is going to go down with Trump's supporters though.
