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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 September 03 2025 02:41 RenSC2 wrote:Show nested quote +On September 03 2025 02:16 Billyboy wrote:On September 02 2025 06:41 LightSpectra wrote:
Rudy Giuliani is getting the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Reminder that in the filming of Borat 2 he started masturbating in front of a woman he was told was 15 years old. This is a strange one even for Trump, maybe he is back to being "cool" again but I thought he had fallen out even to the right wing. Also, with the right being so mad about Epstein list and even being the first thing to stick to Trump. Why do guys like Gaetz, who it is completely proven he paid for sex with a underage girl get a pass? Is it the island that bugs Maga people or what? @oBlade Why is Gaetz still "cool"? I think a large part of it is that "the cover-up is bigger than the crime". I honestly think at the beginning of the Epstein scandal, if Trump had come out and said, "Yeah, I banged 15 year olds. So what? The lying media is just jealous and they wish they had too." the majority of his fanbase would give him a pass. As long as his crimes are out in the open, his fans don't care. It's only when he tries to hide his scandals that they turn on him. If it's hidden, then it must be nefarious. If it's out in the open, then it must be fine. People have stopped caring about objective truth and their sense of morality is warped.
On September 03 2025 02:44 LightSpectra wrote:
Republicans are more pissed that they circlejerked themselves into thinking they'd see a hundred high-profile Dems in handcuffs for being child molesters than they are that Trump himself is a child molester. i.e. they're more mad that their revenge fantasy was dashed and they look like fools.
Both sound pretty plausible.
On September 03 2025 11:31 Vivax wrote:Show nested quote +On September 03 2025 11:24 Sermokala wrote:
Of all the things america has done in its interactions with central and southern america blowing up a boat suspected of having drugs is a really really low level. Americans have done horrific things for its access to the banana.
Taking it out is apart of a blockade tho, idk what else the military vessels would be for in the area. Most drugs come out of South America, a lot of different countries. Venezuela has thicc oil reserves though… Probably a coincidence. I was under the impression that the country was under Russian protection of sorts.
Venezuela should be by far the richest country in South America. Sadly Maduro is so incredibly corrupt that they stole EVERY thing, even the basic maintenance money so it produces almost nothing. Now it is just a giant drug cartel with some illegal gold mining with slaves, and kids working at it well they speed run destroying the environment.
Absolute travesty what has happened to that country and its people.
Russia does have security guarantees with them, I expect them to honor it just as they did with Libya, Syria and Iran...
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Northern Ireland27460 Posts
On September 03 2025 23:28 Velr wrote:Show nested quote +On September 03 2025 22:51 WombaT wrote:On September 03 2025 21:20 Velr wrote:
Nice analysis by the resident "US/West BAD"-Expert. Stay tuned for more thrilling and not at all expected top level analysis from deep within the tankie complex. I mean he’s not entirely off-base here no? What base? He delivered no base. He delivered the simplest talking points you can find if you work fromt he premise "west bad". But for what it's worth: India is hamstrung by it's caste system and religious infighting within itself. They still haven't managed to get indoor plumbing to large areas of the country and these are just the most obvious issues. They are also led by a strongman and still love to just throw their trash on the ground/into rivers whiteout a second thought. China has just as much problems as "the West", is actively pursuing a geonicde of the Uighur population and judging how it's "partnerships" in Africa and elsewhere are proceeding, no better than "the West" in any shape or form. They are also led by a strongman facing demographic and ecological troubles. Russia is basically a Gasstation with nothing else to offer. They are also led by a strongman facing huge external struggles and the mother of all demographic struggles. I mean, sure let them partner, but I don't see what any of them offer that "the West" isn't, outside of pesky annoyances like human rights, safety and ecological standards and so on. Cheap labour? They all allready got that in spades. It remains to be seen if they even manage to not be at each others troaths for a few months due to various border disputes. If looking at the various issues these countries face, you would probably wish to have "the Wests" issues. They don't have the toddler in chief at the table, which is working tirelessly to transform the US into another authoritarian state... I guess before the US decided to go full retard (twice) this wasn't even a real question.
The basic observation that the US is seemingly hell bent on pissing away a bunch of its soft power, a vacuum that China especially is all too happy to fill in some areas still has something in it.
Some may regard a wider pivot away from the US/‘West’ to be a good thing, wouldn’t be my personal position like.
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That summit in China was basically a dictators convention. Pretty wild
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On September 04 2025 03:55 Billyboy wrote:Show nested quote +On September 03 2025 02:41 RenSC2 wrote:On September 03 2025 02:16 Billyboy wrote:On September 02 2025 06:41 LightSpectra wrote:
Rudy Giuliani is getting the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Reminder that in the filming of Borat 2 he started masturbating in front of a woman he was told was 15 years old. This is a strange one even for Trump, maybe he is back to being "cool" again but I thought he had fallen out even to the right wing. Also, with the right being so mad about Epstein list and even being the first thing to stick to Trump. Why do guys like Gaetz, who it is completely proven he paid for sex with a underage girl get a pass? Is it the island that bugs Maga people or what? @oBlade Why is Gaetz still "cool"? I think a large part of it is that "the cover-up is bigger than the crime". I honestly think at the beginning of the Epstein scandal, if Trump had come out and said, "Yeah, I banged 15 year olds. So what? The lying media is just jealous and they wish they had too." the majority of his fanbase would give him a pass. As long as his crimes are out in the open, his fans don't care. It's only when he tries to hide his scandals that they turn on him. If it's hidden, then it must be nefarious. If it's out in the open, then it must be fine. People have stopped caring about objective truth and their sense of morality is warped. Show nested quote +On September 03 2025 02:44 LightSpectra wrote:
Republicans are more pissed that they circlejerked themselves into thinking they'd see a hundred high-profile Dems in handcuffs for being child molesters than they are that Trump himself is a child molester. i.e. they're more mad that their revenge fantasy was dashed and they look like fools. Both sound pretty plausible. Show nested quote +On September 03 2025 11:31 Vivax wrote:On September 03 2025 11:24 Sermokala wrote:
Of all the things america has done in its interactions with central and southern america blowing up a boat suspected of having drugs is a really really low level. Americans have done horrific things for its access to the banana.
Taking it out is apart of a blockade tho, idk what else the military vessels would be for in the area. Most drugs come out of South America, a lot of different countries. Venezuela has thicc oil reserves though… Probably a coincidence. I was under the impression that the country was under Russian protection of sorts. Venezuela should be by far the richest country in South America. Sadly Maduro is so incredibly corrupt that they stole EVERY thing, even the basic maintenance money so it produces almost nothing. Now it is just a giant drug cartel with some illegal gold mining with slaves, and kids working at it well they speed run destroying the environment. Absolute travesty what has happened to that country and its people. Russia does have security guarantees with them, I expect them to honor it just as they did with Libya, Syria and Iran...
No argument there. Even Trump could do better than Maduro.
Using warships to destroy canoes isn‘t the way to get it though.
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On September 04 2025 04:57 Vivax wrote:Show nested quote +On September 04 2025 03:55 Billyboy wrote:On September 03 2025 02:41 RenSC2 wrote:On September 03 2025 02:16 Billyboy wrote:On September 02 2025 06:41 LightSpectra wrote:
Rudy Giuliani is getting the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Reminder that in the filming of Borat 2 he started masturbating in front of a woman he was told was 15 years old. This is a strange one even for Trump, maybe he is back to being "cool" again but I thought he had fallen out even to the right wing. Also, with the right being so mad about Epstein list and even being the first thing to stick to Trump. Why do guys like Gaetz, who it is completely proven he paid for sex with a underage girl get a pass? Is it the island that bugs Maga people or what? @oBlade Why is Gaetz still "cool"? I think a large part of it is that "the cover-up is bigger than the crime". I honestly think at the beginning of the Epstein scandal, if Trump had come out and said, "Yeah, I banged 15 year olds. So what? The lying media is just jealous and they wish they had too." the majority of his fanbase would give him a pass. As long as his crimes are out in the open, his fans don't care. It's only when he tries to hide his scandals that they turn on him. If it's hidden, then it must be nefarious. If it's out in the open, then it must be fine. People have stopped caring about objective truth and their sense of morality is warped. On September 03 2025 02:44 LightSpectra wrote:
Republicans are more pissed that they circlejerked themselves into thinking they'd see a hundred high-profile Dems in handcuffs for being child molesters than they are that Trump himself is a child molester. i.e. they're more mad that their revenge fantasy was dashed and they look like fools. Both sound pretty plausible. On September 03 2025 11:31 Vivax wrote:On September 03 2025 11:24 Sermokala wrote:
Of all the things america has done in its interactions with central and southern america blowing up a boat suspected of having drugs is a really really low level. Americans have done horrific things for its access to the banana.
Taking it out is apart of a blockade tho, idk what else the military vessels would be for in the area. Most drugs come out of South America, a lot of different countries. Venezuela has thicc oil reserves though… Probably a coincidence. I was under the impression that the country was under Russian protection of sorts. Venezuela should be by far the richest country in South America. Sadly Maduro is so incredibly corrupt that they stole EVERY thing, even the basic maintenance money so it produces almost nothing. Now it is just a giant drug cartel with some illegal gold mining with slaves, and kids working at it well they speed run destroying the environment. Absolute travesty what has happened to that country and its people. Russia does have security guarantees with them, I expect them to honor it just as they did with Libya, Syria and Iran... No argument there. Even Trump could do better than Maduro. Using warships to destroy canoes isn‘t the way to get it though.
Yeah, trying to out do the bad decisions with worse ones is not the right strategy.
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Trump illegally cut $2.6 billion of research grants from Harvard's federal funding package:
"U.S. District Judge Allison Burroughs ruled the cuts amounted to illegal retaliation for Harvard’s rejection of White House demands for changes to its governance and policies.
The government had tied the freezes at Harvard to delays in dealing with antisemitism on its campus, but the judge said the federally funded research had little connection to antisemitism. “A review of the administrative record makes it difficult to conclude anything other than that Defendants used antisemitism as a smokescreen for a targeted, ideologically-motivated assault on this country’s premier universities,” Burroughs wrote."
https://apnews.com/article/harvard-trump-federal-funding-bdde8f529f01b96d5521d0e248e8fc6c
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United States44355 Posts
It’s hard to believe that Trump would use Federal funding as a slush fund to be paid or withheld to pursue his own agenda. Again. After the impeachment for doing exactly that.
Wait, not hard. The other one.
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People should use the rule when it comes to democracy, do I think the other side should be able to do this when they are in power, or do I think they should have to follow rule X Y Z. That alone would make US politics so much more sensible instead of this speed run to the bottom.
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On September 04 2025 10:47 Billyboy wrote:
People should use the rule when it comes to democracy, do I think the other side should be able to do this when they are in power, or do I think they should have to follow rule X Y Z. That alone would make US politics so much more sensible instead of this speed run to the bottom.
Republicans have no notion of the future. The party's been taken over by MBAs who live and die by quarterly profits. It's why they've hitched their entire future to a demented 80 year old.
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United States44355 Posts
Disagree. The MBAs are smarter than this. Remember how Tillerson used to try to manage Trump and ended up saying he was the dumbest motherfucker he ever met. Nobody is in charge now. They’re just riding the tiger wherever it takes them because they have no clue how to get off.
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On September 04 2025 10:47 Billyboy wrote:
People should use the rule when it comes to democracy, do I think the other side should be able to do this when they are in power, or do I think they should have to follow rule X Y Z. That alone would make US politics so much more sensible instead of this speed run to the bottom.
This idea is funny because the saying I've quoted before is still true, "Republicans act like they will never have power and Democrats act like they will never lose it." I remember in younger days Dems didn't pretend to have so much reverence for the Constitution, in ye olden days they were justifying why Obama had to do X Y Z with his "pen and his phone" because Republicans wouldn't work him. Democrats control the actual machinery of the state at the personnel level. it's why "Dear Colleague letters" never got a hyperventilating reaction when Democrat administrations use them. Because all the dems on power agree with them. Your rule is one I've advocated for quite often, but don't pretend this attitude started with Trump. Trump is a reaction, an escalation. Gee, I wonder where he learned things like using the law to go after his opponents? A real mystery. And now we are here, because one side refused to give up their monopoly on the way government works and the other side stopped caring.
I have far more contempt for the people who had the power and refused to let democracy take it from them.
There is only one thing that will change where we are. A crisis of some sort, when everything hangs in the balance and compromises must be made. More and more I think it has to get worse before it gets better. Congress will have to be where things change, but they won't do it willingly.
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On September 04 2025 13:40 Introvert wrote:Show nested quote +On September 04 2025 10:47 Billyboy wrote:
People should use the rule when it comes to democracy, do I think the other side should be able to do this when they are in power, or do I think they should have to follow rule X Y Z. That alone would make US politics so much more sensible instead of this speed run to the bottom. This idea is funny because the saying I've quoted before is still true, "Republicans act like they will never have power and Democrats act like they will never lose it." I remember in younger days Dems didn't pretend to have so much reverence for the Constitution, in ye olden days they were justifying why Obama had to do X Y Z with his "pen and his phone" because Republicans wouldn't work him. Democrats control the actual machinery of the state at the personnel level. it's why "Dear Colleague letters" never got a hyperventilating reaction when Democrat administrations use them. Because all the dems on power agree with them. Your rule is one I've advocated for quite often, but don't pretend this attitude started with Trump. Trump is a reaction, an escalation. Gee, I wonder where he learned things like using the law to go after his opponents? A real mystery. And now we are here, because one side refused to give up their monopoly on the way government works and the other side stopped caring. I have far more contempt for the people who had the power and refused to let democracy take it from them. There is only one thing that will change where we are. A crisis of some sort, when everything hangs in the balance and compromises must be made. More and more I think it has to get worse before it gets better. Congress will have to be where things change, but they won't do it willingly.
At some point you are going to need an amendment that forces congress to balance the budget.
Something like when electing the pope, lock them in and they can't leave until the budget is either balanced or the new budget is not balanced but spending in (actual number, not % or adjusted for inflation) is 5% lower than last budget.
Balancing the budget is hard which is why it's a long process, but getting it balanced is easy, it's just forcing the politicians to do their job.
Look at Greece, fucked 10 years ago, surplus today and growing faster than most EU countries.
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On September 04 2025 12:10 KwarK wrote:
Disagree. The MBAs are smarter than this. Remember how Tillerson used to try to manage Trump and ended up saying he was the dumbest motherfucker he ever met. Nobody is in charge now. They’re just riding the tiger wherever it takes them because they have no clue how to get off.
Trump is in charge.
Tillerson rose in-house in Exxon because of his ability to survive and adapt to an existing structure. He has no MBA, and is the opposite of an MBA, which is someone who buys a networking experience over years at great cost to become an expert in no particular field whatsoever and try to get placed in business top-down using their meaningless credential, when they could have saved time and achieved the same contacts with a weekend at Trump University.
The preposterous notion that Tillerson is supposed to "manage" someone higher in authority than him is also why Tillerson allowed himself to be "managed" by the career bureaucracy at State that constantly told him what he wanted to hear, which is that the boat can't be rocked in any way. This is why Rubio accomplished in a few months what Tillerson couldn't in the entire year he lasted before getting canned.
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United States44355 Posts
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Finland965 Posts
"Trump is in charge" kind of missing a lot of crucial information.
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On September 04 2025 16:27 KwarK wrote:
Lol
oBlade's an expert on management, he was the one who came up with the brilliant idea of canceling out tariffs by firing your social media manager. Maybe we should listen to him despite almost every sentence immediately contradicting the previous one.
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To be fair, I think marketing is an unethical practice so if countering tariffs could be done by abolishing this department from companies I'd be all for it.
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United States44355 Posts
Tillerson lacked the experience and confidence to lead the state department and was routinely bullied by his own staff. It took a man with the strength of character of Marco Rubio, who Trump famously described as incapable of running one of his smaller companies, to get the state department in line. That is why the state department was able to achieve as much as it identifies as having achieved. Rubio has achieved so much boat rocking, the boat is rocking all over the place, it’s taking on water, people are grabbing life jackets, we’re winning so hard.
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On September 04 2025 13:40 Introvert wrote:
This idea is funny because the saying I've quoted before is still true, "Republicans act like they will never have power and Democrats act like they will never lose it." I remember in younger days Dems didn't pretend to have so much reverence for the Constitution, in ye olden days they were justifying why Obama had to do X Y Z with his "pen and his phone" because Republicans wouldn't work him. Democrats control the actual machinery of the state at the personnel level. it's why "Dear Colleague letters" never got a hyperventilating reaction when Democrat administrations use them. Because all the dems on power agree with them. Your rule is one I've advocated for quite often, but don't pretend this attitude started with Trump. Trump is a reaction, an escalation. Gee, I wonder where he learned things like using the law to go after his opponents? A real mystery. And now we are here, because one side refused to give up their monopoly on the way government works and the other side stopped caring.
Even as Trump is deploying the navy to Venezuela, exploding the debt and blackmailing universities who don't want to quell their students free speech this guy is "but democrats".
Yeah buddy, they aren't in power, they aren't controlling squat, your guy is destroying the USA, it's international reputation and is going to start a new war, that's on you, congratulations!
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On September 04 2025 21:09 Uldridge wrote:
To be fair, I think marketing is an unethical practice so if countering tariffs could be done by abolishing this department from companies I'd be all for it.
You can also avoid tariffs by not selling anything at all. Maybe this whole ordeal was just Chairman 特朗普's masterstroke to transition us to a Maoist planned economy. He already got the ball rolling by ordering the United States to acquire part of Intel.
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EPT
