Now that we have a new thread, in order to ensure that this thread continues to meet TL standards and follows the proper guidelines, we will be enforcing the rules in the OP more strictly. Be sure to give them a complete and thorough read before posting!
NOTE: When providing a source, please provide a very brief summary on what it's about and what purpose it adds to the discussion. The supporting statement should clearly explain why the subject is relevant and needs to be discussed. Please follow this rule especially for tweets.
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On March 17 2025 21:34 Sadist wrote: Jimmy. What countries in the world can protect themselves from the US or China besides a select few? Is that an excuse for the US and China to take over the globe? What the fuck is wrong with you.
i am just fine. Canada is the 2nd largest nation on earth and requires military resources to protect itself. Canada is not Finland.
The world is about making babies , developing them into adults, along with military force and the ability to apply it strategically for maximum impact. That is all we're here for. Once that is established you can then build a civilization.
Protect itself from who? It has a population of 40M. Its not protecting itself from the US (330M) or China (1.5B). The globe works together to keep morons who are expanionist in check. Are you a US citizen or on a green card? If you arent a US citizen you know you can be shipped back and have to deal with an aggressive US right? Even if you received citizenship I wouldnt put it past the Trump admin to try to revoke status.
I have already cited that it needs protection from China and Russia. Also, it must enforce its land claim others do not agree with.
It is a tough world out there. Justin Trudeau's "sunny ways" are a fantasy.
I am have Canada//USA dual citizenship. My wife is American. We've been married over 10 years.
On March 17 2025 21:48 Uldridge wrote: Russia, come on. How many boats do these guys have? Who's living in Siberia esque land at this moment. You're delusional.
Do you have any evidence Canada's Navy can defeat the Chinese and Russian navy? perhaps you are just making up stuff.
again, its up to Canada to enforce its disputed claims. I've cited sources about the topic.
Canada needs the US Navy. Nothing wrong with Canada just paying the US Navy outright for its services. I am pretty sure the UK has an arrangement like that.
Justin Trudeau is a moron for not addressing this situation years ago. Even the CBC, his personal cheerleading squad, tried to nudge him along.
On March 17 2025 21:58 Gorsameth wrote: Ukraine, without a navy, defeated the Russian navy and send the black sea fleet running. Those that didn't get a submarine conversion anyway. I'm sure Canada will be fine.
LOL, nice hand waving. China has a better navy than Canada.
Canada won't be fine with yap like this... "The Northwest Passage is Canadian waters, period," Trudeau said, responding to questions along with Stoltenberg on Friday.
If Trudeau is going to talk like this... he requires military force to back that claim. Military force costs money. Canada has big plans for the Arctic. That is great. Step 1 is protecting it.
I don't claim anything about defeating. Who is going to live there? Let alone to gruesome work extracting resources for whatever reason and then transport them back to make whatever it is they're making. The "potential" doing things over there is nothing but that, talk about potential. 40m people aren't suddnely going to explode into ovet 200m and they're not going to start extracting resources en masse. And neither is Russia or China. It's all just symbolic in nature.
If Canada needs military protection it's within America's intrest that it's their protection and not china's protection. Tell me how betraying and extorting Canada about its sudden lack of protection will influence them to remain aligned with America and not China?
If you want to embrace mob mentality you need to understand what that means. If China offers Canada a better deal why shouldn't they take it?
On March 17 2025 21:01 JimmyJRaynor wrote: Canada can keep its national anthem while still being a 51st state says Trump. He is already angling towards exchanging zero% tariffs for partial oil, mineral, and natural resources rights.
Mafia shakedown. How can any of my fellow Americans be ok with this?
If Canada had the capacity to protect its own arctic borders it would not need the USA's protection.
In chief. It’s a twist on commander in chief which is one of his titles.
It feels like you’d know this if you consumed more print journalism or were more familiar with the United States generally. This is the kind of error you make from hearing it said on Fox News or conservative radio without understanding the cultural context.
On March 17 2025 21:48 Uldridge wrote: Russia, come on. How many boats do these guys have? Who's living in Siberia esque land at this moment. You're delusional.
Do you have any evidence Canada's Navy can defeat the Chinese and Russian navy? perhaps you are just making up stuff.
again, its up to Canada to enforce its disputed claims. I've cited sources about the topic.
Canada needs the US Navy. Nothing wrong with Canada just paying the US Navy outright for its services. I am pretty sure the UK has an arrangement like that.
Justin Trudeau is a moron for not addressing this situation years ago. Even the CBC, his personal cheerleading squad, tried to nudge him along.
The Chinese navy has extreme force projection off the coast of China, not over at Canada. Like it could probably fight the US navy at Taiwan because it's custom built for that. But it's not meant to go halfway round the world to fight. If it's within aircraft range Canada could do a lot.
“We recently received notification of LEONARD A. JOHNSON’s passing,” it began. “We offer our sincerest condolences …”
At first she figured it was a scam — her husband, after all, was sitting right there. But then the bank got to the point.
“We know this is a difficult time, and we’re here to help,” the bank wrote. “We received a request from Social Security Administration to return benefits paid to LEONARD A. JOHNSON’s account after their passing.”
“There’s nothing you need to do — we’ve deducted the funds from LEONARD A. JOHNSON’s account.”
Uh oh. It itemized how $5,201 had been stricken from their bank account, on the grounds that Ned wasn’t justified to get those benefits — because he was dead. That was for payments he’d received in December and January.
Ned found that his February Social Security check hadn’t been paid, and he’s yet to receive his March check, either. His Medicare insurance had been canceled. He also learned that when you die, your credit score gets marked as “deceased, do not issue credit,” which makes it tough to get a loan.
“The good news is I don’t think it can go any lower than that,” he said cheerfully.
“We recently received notification of LEONARD A. JOHNSON’s passing,” it began. “We offer our sincerest condolences …”
At first she figured it was a scam — her husband, after all, was sitting right there. But then the bank got to the point.
“We know this is a difficult time, and we’re here to help,” the bank wrote. “We received a request from Social Security Administration to return benefits paid to LEONARD A. JOHNSON’s account after their passing.”
“There’s nothing you need to do — we’ve deducted the funds from LEONARD A. JOHNSON’s account.”
Uh oh. It itemized how $5,201 had been stricken from their bank account, on the grounds that Ned wasn’t justified to get those benefits — because he was dead. That was for payments he’d received in December and January.
Ned found that his February Social Security check hadn’t been paid, and he’s yet to receive his March check, either. His Medicare insurance had been canceled. He also learned that when you die, your credit score gets marked as “deceased, do not issue credit,” which makes it tough to get a loan.
“The good news is I don’t think it can go any lower than that,” he said cheerfully.
Cancelling people's Social Security and Medicare is just... sinister.
I mean keep interrupting medication and doctors visits for half a year with 80+ year olds and the probably are dead by the time you "correct" your mistake.
I mean you can go full Dinotopia and introduce "Hurling Day" for anyone at 80 depending on public social payments and hurl them off a cliff.
LibHorizons: Democrats are losing support from the public by failing to adequately oppose Trump.
CNN on Sunday released new polling of 1,206 U.S. adults carried out by SSRS that showed the Democratic Party's favorability rating standing at just 29 percent. According to CNN, that's a record low in the media outlet's polling data going all the way back to 1992. It also represents a 20-point drop since the end of Trump's first term in January 2021.
Comparatively, the Republican Party's favorability among the American public, while not strong, stands somewhat higher at 36 percent....
Among Republicans and GOP-leaning independents, 79 percent view their party favorably. When it comes to Democrats and Democrat-leaners, that number stands at just 63 percent, which is a large double-digit decline from 81 percent at the outset of former President Joe Biden's term in January 2021
One of the priorities for Elon’s team was to delete a black Medal of Honor winner’s citation and change the url to deimedal.
Rogers ran through a hail of exploding shells to rally his dazed crewmen into firing their howitzers back at the much larger enemy. Despite being hit by an exploding round, he led some of those men in a ground battle against enemy soldiers who'd breached the howitzer's position. Rogers was again wounded during that foray, but he continued fighting, killing several enemy soldiers and driving the rest back.
Rogers refused medical attention and instead worked to get the defensive perimeter set back up.
When more enemy troops poured through a different section of the defensive line, Rogers directed that artillery fire, too, and led another successful counterattack on the charging forces, encouraging his men throughout the difficult endeavor.
At dawn, the enemy tried to overrun the base a third time, so Rogers continued directing his unit's fire. He even joined a struggling howitzer crew after several men were hit by enemy fire and the gun had been rendered inoperable. Rogers helped the crew get the massive gun operating again, but in doing so, he was hit a third time. He could no longer physically help his men, but he continued to direct and encourage them.
Rogers' valor helped push back the enemy that day, which finally retreated for good. Twelve U.S. soldiers died and dozens more were wounded; however, Army records show that the casualties on the enemy's side were much higher.
Rogers' wounds were eventually treated, and he returned to the U.S in August 1969. On May 14, 1970, he received the Medal of Honor from President Richard M. Nixon during a White House ceremony.
He’ll never be more than a DEI to these people. The erasure of his Medal of Honor is somehow a priority.
On March 17 2025 02:42 Impervious wrote: Honestly, from my perspective, Trump seems to want to have as much power and control of the government as possible, and he's challenging things and pushing boundaries everywhere. It's not always working, but he's definitely securing more control as the leader of the executive branch than he previously had.
Based on all of the crazy shit going on, especially with funding (which in the constitution is supposed to be up to Congress, and not the executive branch), I can see a bit of a strategic play here.
He's spoken about a soverign wealth fund. This type of thing has been successfully been used in other countries. It's a useful tool for the government to use to generate long-term wealth growth. There's a variety of ways to fund this. Nationalization of key industries would do it, but I suspect this would piss off enough people where it's off the table. This is kinda what some oil-rich nations have done. Another way that's been mentioned is selling off of public assets, including land. This money could go into that soverign wealth fund to kick-start it. I believe he is trying to ensure that the executive branch of the government is in control of this fund.
I suspect that the plan is to get these new tariffs in place, while simultaneously start this new soverign wealth fund, then find a way to send the money directly to this new soverign wealth fund, which would be under his control. This way a large chunk of money would directly bypass congress and be under the control of the executive. If I'm right, this is really quite a brilliant way to boost the power and reach of the executive branch. And it's fucking terrifying to see one person with that kind of power.
Given that Trump just turned the White House into a private showroom for Musk/Tesla, I don't see how anyone can think it's a good idea for him to have access to this amount of money and power. He's clearly willing to use the power he has as President to enrich his family, his friends, and his allies. He's shown us who he is already.
The entire purpose of the government split powers is to allow the different branches to fight against each other, to prevent any one branch from doing something destructive. They are all meant to hold some kind of power over the other branches. As a Canadian, I can see exactly why you would want your government to have split powers like this, and your founding fathers were quite brilliant with their execution of splitting up the power of the federal government. They saw how destructive a monarchy could become before the country was founded, and took steps to ensure it couldn't happen again in the USA.
Except now we seem to have the rest of the government bending over backwards to enable a new authoritarian. He may not be a monarch, but he's doing what looks like irreparable damage to the country..... Those that have the power to stop him are enabling him instead.
A sovereign wealth fund is created when more money is pulled in from tax revenues than is spent on government operations and the difference is accumulated as a balance from which interest is generated. If I put my accountant hat on for a second it doesn't actually make a difference whether it's a positive or negative balance, it's still functionally the same animal. So the idea that the US should have an interest bearing balance from the accumulated gap between revenues and expenses is kind of silly, it already has one of those. In absolute terms there's almost $37,000,000,000,000 in it. And Trump has done more than almost any other president to make that number as high as it is.
Sure, technically it's a negative number but it still functions the same way.
What Trump is suggesting is that despite being massively underwater in credit card debt which is spiraling out of control irreversibly perhaps they could open a savings account. I mean sure, perhaps they could, but they're quite a long way from having $0 to put in the savings account. About $37,000,000,000,000 from $0.
Also his plan for getting back out of the hole seems to involve giving government a pretty drop in revenues.
Basically the sovereign wealth fund idea is nonsense, what he's actually proposing is to create a deficit funded slush fund under his control.
A soverign wealth fund should be created when more money is pulled in from tax revenues than is spent on government operations. That's clearly not his goal, and you're right that it is more like a deficit funded slush fund under his control than a true soverign wealth fund. He's selling it as the ability for the government to make investments that get market-rate returns, while the government pays a lower interest rate on its debts. Additionally, the government is not leveraged with credit card debt, it's more along the lines of a really good mortgage rate.....
Sure, government funding right now can be looked at as a single giant bucket, which Congress controls. Money from a variety of different sources flows in, and they take money out to do things. Currently the rules are that Trump gets access to a small bucket and gets to fill his bucket from that bigger bucket. Congress tells him how big his bucket is, while they get to control the rest.
It looks like Trump is trying to make his own new bigger bucket which is much bigger than the one Congress told him he can have, and divert money that should be going into the big bucket directly into his, bypassing Congress' big bucket. In the grand scheme of things it doesn't make a difference to the overall financial state of the government, however, he gets direct access to more funding.
This looks like he's trying to run the government as a business. It looks like he's trying to leverage debt to create more growth, which outpaces the cost of that debt. That's a fucking terrible idea for a country imo. If a business fucks up and goes bankrupt, at least there are other businesses for people to invest money in, work for, buy things from, sell things to, etc. Bankrupting an entire country would be devastating, and we've seen that happen.....
On March 17 2025 02:42 Impervious wrote: Honestly, from my perspective, Trump seems to want to have as much power and control of the government as possible, and he's challenging things and pushing boundaries everywhere. It's not always working, but he's definitely securing more control as the leader of the executive branch than he previously had.
Based on all of the crazy shit going on, especially with funding (which in the constitution is supposed to be up to Congress, and not the executive branch), I can see a bit of a strategic play here.
He's spoken about a soverign wealth fund. This type of thing has been successfully been used in other countries. It's a useful tool for the government to use to generate long-term wealth growth. There's a variety of ways to fund this. Nationalization of key industries would do it, but I suspect this would piss off enough people where it's off the table. This is kinda what some oil-rich nations have done. Another way that's been mentioned is selling off of public assets, including land. This money could go into that soverign wealth fund to kick-start it. I believe he is trying to ensure that the executive branch of the government is in control of this fund.
I suspect that the plan is to get these new tariffs in place, while simultaneously start this new soverign wealth fund, then find a way to send the money directly to this new soverign wealth fund, which would be under his control. This way a large chunk of money would directly bypass congress and be under the control of the executive. If I'm right, this is really quite a brilliant way to boost the power and reach of the executive branch. And it's fucking terrifying to see one person with that kind of power.
Given that Trump just turned the White House into a private showroom for Musk/Tesla, I don't see how anyone can think it's a good idea for him to have access to this amount of money and power. He's clearly willing to use the power he has as President to enrich his family, his friends, and his allies. He's shown us who he is already.
The entire purpose of the government split powers is to allow the different branches to fight against each other, to prevent any one branch from doing something destructive. They are all meant to hold some kind of power over the other branches. As a Canadian, I can see exactly why you would want your government to have split powers like this, and your founding fathers were quite brilliant with their execution of splitting up the power of the federal government. They saw how destructive a monarchy could become before the country was founded, and took steps to ensure it couldn't happen again in the USA.
Except now we seem to have the rest of the government bending over backwards to enable a new authoritarian. He may not be a monarch, but he's doing what looks like irreparable damage to the country..... Those that have the power to stop him are enabling him instead.
Wealth fund is when a country has paid off their debt; it's the excess you have left over. If you open up a credit card and spend $100000 on hookers and blow, then open a savings account and put $100 in it, you haven't set up a wealth fund; you are still $999900 in debt.
How you go about paying off your debt is the same way you go about getting a wealth fund: You need go collect more money than you spend.
Edit: better explanation
He's not treating it like a traditional soverign wealth fund though.
As a smaller example, If I take out a 1 million dollar loan at ~5% interest and invest it in something that gives me a ~10% return, then leveraging that debt made me 50k.
That's how he's selling the soverign wealth fund, just on a much bigger scale.
Rogers ran through a hail of exploding shells to rally his dazed crewmen into firing their howitzers back at the much larger enemy. Despite being hit by an exploding round, he led some of those men in a ground battle against enemy soldiers who'd breached the howitzer's position. Rogers was again wounded during that foray, but he continued fighting, killing several enemy soldiers and driving the rest back.
Rogers refused medical attention and instead worked to get the defensive perimeter set back up.
When more enemy troops poured through a different section of the defensive line, Rogers directed that artillery fire, too, and led another successful counterattack on the charging forces, encouraging his men throughout the difficult endeavor.
At dawn, the enemy tried to overrun the base a third time, so Rogers continued directing his unit's fire. He even joined a struggling howitzer crew after several men were hit by enemy fire and the gun had been rendered inoperable. Rogers helped the crew get the massive gun operating again, but in doing so, he was hit a third time. He could no longer physically help his men, but he continued to direct and encourage them.
Rogers' valor helped push back the enemy that day, which finally retreated for good. Twelve U.S. soldiers died and dozens more were wounded; however, Army records show that the casualties on the enemy's side were much higher.
Rogers' wounds were eventually treated, and he returned to the U.S in August 1969. On May 14, 1970, he received the Medal of Honor from President Richard M. Nixon during a White House ceremony.
He’ll never be more than a DEI to these people. The erasure of his Medal of Honor is somehow a priority.
There was also the story about Arlington cemetery removing content related to black and women veterans from their website. And various teachers forced to take down any poster implying that empathy or equality are good things.
We were far too nice to the Nazis when they were crying crocodile tears about being correctly identified as racists and bigots.
Even now the only backlash to Trumpism from his voters comes in the form of people being upset in town halls about them personally losing some service or benefit. Still no qualms on moral grounds on behalf of other people.
Forced is a very interesting word. How about they just start not complying en masse. What would happen? Termination? What aboht tens of thousands of terminations at the same time? I think people need to start standing up to this. If your workplace isn't actually trying to be decent in its basis, I suggest you look for another place asap.
EPT
