Ok, so that was horrifying that they treated it so lightly, but this headline seems slightly inaccurate.
It seems they were not blowing it up for a ‘gender reveal’, but instead were blowing it up otherwise and something in the building produced blue smoke, and they found the resemblence hilarious.
He says he’s not dead yet …
I agree, the third big single powerful person is certainly Xi. I suppose one can say the “sociopath” is more evident with Netanyahu than Xi, because for now China is able to sit back and let Russia and USA self sabotage to a weaker position while mucking with the rest of the world, while China gets to play comparative good guy in foreign policy. This is of course grading on a curve, they aren’t saints either.
Actually, I’d wager it isn’t even about the money. Ffor his reality it’s a vague abstract number. He never really has to worry about running out and can live as extravagant of a lifestyle he wants. To the extent the details matter, it’s more of a ‘high score’ than anything that actually materially impacts his life.
The real punch in the gut is that he has gone his entire life with the masses either kissing his ass and worshipping him as the greatest tech guy ever, or people who just don’t care about him either way. He of course earned some personal vitriol from people who knew him personally, maybe more than the average but he always felt vindicated by his adoring masses.
Since every random person that he actually ever heard express any opinion put him on the highest of pedastals, then surely every one will be relieved if he forced himself and his ideas over their lives? Suddenly he has to face the judgement of so many mililon people that were previously content to largely ignore the hell out of him. This is probably really hard to cope with after 50 years of unrelenting ass-kissing.
Agriculture probably hurts a little. China could not care less about American digital services ( they largely banned them anyway) and if it comes down to it, they can totally ignore patent protection. They do have some issues with actual chip design and manufacturing, though that will likely see them improve if they have to.
Don’t know that China is a better place to be for the citizenry or anything, but the government and business leaders are in a better supported position than American counterparts in an economic split.
It might have been one thing if the US had continued to fixate on China and maybe isolate China, but he is simultaneously screwing with everyone in the world and tarnishing our image as comparatively “good guys” on human rights undermines our position. China may still be viewed as a bad actor, but our bad behavior might make them the lesser of the few evils.
I’m not sure.
We are here mainly because the business leaders sold out the core of our economy to enrich themselves thanks to cheap labor of an at the time backwards China. They had the hubris to think the workers replaceable but the leadership somehow magic.
Now they increasingly see China business leadership clearly emerging as an independent force that puts pressure on them.
They spent decades helping China gain independent capabilities and it’s too late to claw that back
About the only thing they are really hurt by are the export controls on chips and chip manufacturing technology, but they are getting there. Yes there’s a crunch in their export business that will hurt, but it’s easier to cope with that than just not having the facilities to build the stuff you want or the expansive labor force.
Yep, and then pause them claiming, like he did this time, that somehow magically every nation in the world managed to negotiate with him to his satisfaction within a couple of days…
Or claim that no one but China threatened retaliatory tariffs (and of course a lot of them did) and that’s why he gave them a reprieve to reward them for not retaliating.
Or to claim that China is a bad actor because they imposed punitive tariffs and that’s only something that bad actors do…
But then you need to buy into the conspiracy theory that the earth is round
It’s worth a shot, but by and large the more reasonable conservatives are generally no where near those communities. Certainly the moderation of those communities are fanatic about Trump. The conservatives that you might have hoped to call Trump on his stuff have calculated that they can’t afford to challenge Trump even if they personally think he is in the wrong. The ones that have calculated otherwise have been pushed out of the conservative community.
They should, but anecdotes featuring a person you somehow know beyond the specific situation are more potent.
If I had a nickel for every time that has happened over the last century… Well I’d have ten cents but it’s weird that it’s happened twice.
McConnell basically stated that Trump deserved conviction, but didn’t want congress to be the ones to do it. He wagered that it’s a problem that would take care of itself without having to be the ones to piss off the MAGA people he hoped to keep energized and aligned to the GOP even as Trump went away.
Then the SC basically said it’s the job of congress, and not the courts (although they reserved the power to specifically declare something as not a duty of the president, so the courts could proceed if and only if the supreme court signs off on it).
To the extent that it could have maybe had the SC ultimately rule that January 6th was not an official duty, DOJ slow walked the process so that it was way too late before the SC would have even had the chance.
Because ultimately, those armed MAGA people’s faces are just too delicious for the leopards to resist. There’s already been discontent that they aren’t seeing the improvements they wanted, and some of them directly getting screwed by Trump and Musk.
Both Putin and Trump are 80s relics and so it matters little how much the wor[l]d has changed, the cold war facet applies to the blindly pro-russian stance of Trump.
Of all the stances to take, this one is insane. Almost every violent conflict has shades of gray, nuance rather than unambiguous good and bad. The Ukraine-Russia conflict is one of those supremely rare straightforward ones where Russia is just straight up the bad guys.
That’s certainly the trajectory Project 2025 wants to really drive home. That’s not exactly a defense of Russia.
Yeah, it’s amazing. He’s not a “Republican” he’s Trump. He’s not your friend/ally/supporter no matter who you are, he only supports himself. Your welfare is only vaguely relevant so long as it directly supports his status, the instant you aren’t useful, you will get backstabbed hard.
Unfortunately that’s not a particularly useful fact to highlight to republicans, and democrats bet too heavily on that being a talking point and it won them no favors.
Sure, that lets people vote for who they want and still vote for someone that will actually win in a larger election, maybe pick up some more local offices.
Frankly Democrats should be big on RCV. The hard right and moderate right vote together, but the progressive is more split and a larger chunk refuses to vote strategically, at least if that is their only vote. RCV gives then the ability to vote the way they want to and still vote for a candidate with more broad acceptance.
Not sure it would have done anything in this presidential race, since there’s no sign of third party vote being enough to change things in any remotely close state. It might have at least relieved the vitriol between would be allies over Democrat voters refusing to vote with the harder left versus the further left refusing to vote strategically with the Democrats.
There would remain the hopefully miniscule but very loud progressives that think either the electorate goes perfectly for their perfect candidate, or else someone like Trump should win to teach those voters a lesson, and maybe break things so hard that a path forward for their favored leaders to get in power.
Nah, this wasn’t democracy dying on live tv. They are saving that for 2026.
So long as we have strict elections of a singular position like president, you are pretty much going to have to vote for lesser evil. It doesn’t matter how many parties are running, the president is a singular office.
Other nations with more robust parties sidestep this by having an elected body figure out the executive, rather than direct elections of that office.
if you want those third parties get them into the house and maybe the Senate, where the task is feasible. For the singular president of the nation, whoever is doing the voting will have to be strategic. I’m disenchanted when I see those parties just make a presidential run without really investing much in the down ballot races.
The fixes are either removing direct presidential election, or severely curtailing the practical powers of the office. We shouldn’t be so subject to the whims of a singular position.
Actually, if I recall it was ultimately still slightly less than half (after the massive excess of California votes that don’t count came in). He still had the most votes of the candidates, but no candidate garnered more than half.
Which is really just splitting hairs on a technicality, ultimately 77 million people voted this way, and it would have still been a deep problem even if Harris had won the popular and electoral votes.