[benellis58]

A convicted felon should be in prison, not in the White House. What has happened to the USA that it elects this piece of trash as its president?

[mycroft]

Anybody else wishing that, if the Republicans *were* going to do an end-run around Article II, Section 1 by installing a proxy, they had gone with Ahnold?

[pilowsky]

The Times of India reports that one of the DOGE 6 previously worked at SpaceX where:
"...amidst rocket fuel and relentless ambition, he interned, absorbing the ethos of innovation like a sponge in zero gravity."

Out of interest, does a sponge absorb ethos better or worse in zero gravity?

[benellis58]

Maybe it didn't turn out so great that 70 million fools were stupid enough to vote for a narcissistic, greedy, vengeful, lying clown supported by a political party filled with a bunch of stumblebums too stupid and/or spineless to ever contradict him.

[thepossum]

Not sure that it is just the US that has been trumped

Apparently war and ethnic cleansing is just a real estate development project for the Trump family

Let's give one of the little ones a cruelly destroyed place full of unwanted people to be disposed of first

While not wnting to disrepesct any assistance by allies to deal with the Nazis in Europe maybe the overkill was real estate too

Send a million or so Palestinians from their flattened city to some out of the way new town a long way from home and build Mar el Lago two on the sunny shores of the Mediterranean. Land of the setting sun perhaps.

Some of us have always put a lot of respect and trust in the USA and what they stand for

How is Ukraine going. Biden or Trump enterprises got their plans drawn up already

I still have trust and hope in the people and institutions of the USA

Edit. Funny how often forums go offline for a while after I post. Hope I don't cause consternation with free speech. There is a thing called rhetoric too. Maybe BBO lawyers need to be consulted occasionally

Edit 2 I remember reading an alternative interpretation of Capitalism sowing the seeds of its own destruction. Its cyclical. But look at the endless possibly contrived conflict and cruelty that goes with it

Edit 3 world war two was just a load of stories and myths to my generation. Now we see the truth of that evil being repeated

[thepossum]

Anyone have any self respect left

If you won't give it to me I'm going to buy it or take it

It belongs to me

I wants it. My precious

No surprise that POTUS has an estate in Scotland

For some reason he appeals to poor workers

Just like driving people off their terrible islands. Such terrible hard places to live. But seemingly attractive to the wealthy and tourists

Maybe the world always did work this way but to see it all out there

You don't do what I say or give me what I want. I have the power to destroy you until you do what I say

A bit different from the USA we thought we knew and trusted. Helping people out

According to a recent headline in the Scotland Herald poor Sir Keir is the wrong man at the wrong time. What does that make POTUS

[barmar]

benellis58, on 2025-February-01, 00:05, said:

A convicted felon should be in prison, not in the White House. What has happened to the USA that it elects this piece of trash as its president?

Not only did we elect him, but now 53% think he's doing a good job letting Musk and his DOGE minions run roughshod over all the agencies and rounding up undocumented immigrants.

None of this is making any dent in supermarket prices, which is supposedly what they elected him to do. But I guess renaming the Gulf of Mexico is an OK substitute, right?

[shyams]

Assuming all of you are around in the year 2040, this question is for all you US-citizen posters here who voted for Mrs. Clinton, Pres Biden, Mrs. Harris in successive Presidential elections.

At this moment, how certain are you that you will vote for the Democratic Presidential Candidate in Year 2040 (whoever that candidate may be)?

This is a variant of a question posed by a friend of mine recently on our WhatsApp group (he was talking about a different country & a different/shorter time horizon).

[mycroft]

I realize I'm posting from outside, but I appreciate all the people from Alta California, Tejas(*), Nuevo México y el resto de México Histórico who are celebrating the name change of their Bay Area - and of their states.

(*) Yes, I know that the orthographic reform came after the Mexican-American War. Don't care, it's how the old spelling was pronounced too (viz. my Axixic t-shirt).

[kenberg]

shyams, on 2025-February-12, 21:13, said:

Assuming all of you are around in the year 2040, this question is for all you US-citizen posters here who voted for Mrs. Clinton, Pres Biden, Mrs. Harris in successive Presidential elections.

At this moment, how certain are you that you will vote for the Democratic Presidential Candidate in Year 2040 (whoever that candidate may be)?

This is a variant of a question posed by a friend of mine recently on our WhatsApp group (he was talking about a different country & a different/shorter time horizon).

In 2040 I will be 101 so let's not place a large bet on me being around. Both parties have changed a lot. I voted for JFK in 1960 and I was a 13-year-old supporter of Adlai Stevenson in 1952, although in 1956 I was more inclined toward Eisenhower. And yes, I voted for Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden and Kamala Harris. I can't say I was wildly enthususiastic about any of these last three, I liked Biden the best of the three, and I guess the voters agreed since he is the one who won. I could, and perhaps in 2040 would, vote for a Republican. I hope the country has better choices in the future, compared to our recent options. Something has gone very wrong if Trump can be nominated, let alone elected.

[akwoo]

kenberg, on 2025-February-13, 09:25, said:

In 2040 I will be 101 so let's not place a large bet on me being around. Both parties have changed a lot. I voted for JFK in 1960 and I was a 13-year-old supporter of Adlai Stevenson in 1952, although in 1956 I was more inclined toward Eisenhower. And yes, I voted for Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden and Kamala Harris. I can't say I was wildly enthususiastic about any of these last three, I liked Biden the best of the three, and I guess the voters agreed since he is the one who won. I could, and perhaps in 2040 would, vote for a Republican. I hope the country has better choices in the future, compared to our recent options. Something has gone very wrong if Trump can be nominated, let alone elected.

Honestly, I'm not at all confident that in 2040 there will be a United States of America.

Here is a low but significant probability way the US could fall apart over the next year - add in all the possibilities over the next 15 years and all those low probabilities could amount to something:

The administration continues to ignore the court order requiring them to pay out federal grants. As a remedy, the court sets up a special fund to pay the grants, allowing entities to pay taxes to that fund rather than the IRS. (Ultimately, it's courts that enforce tax laws, so the administration can't get around this.) Tax receipts drop precipitously, and everyone agrees a national divorce is better than a default on the debt.

[barmar]

What I find most incredulous about the way all these funding cuts are happening is that they're doing everything with no advance warning. Even if the cuts were justified, they need to give the recipients some time to adjust their processes and try to find new funding sources.

And it's not just funding. From NY Times (paywalled):

Quote

The stop-work order on U.S.A.I.D.-funded research has left thousands of people with experimental drugs and devices in their bodies, with no access to monitoring or care.

Do these people give no thought to the immediate ramifications of their actions?

[akwoo]

barmar, on 2025-February-13, 16:45, said:

Do these people give no thought to the immediate ramifications of their actions?

A well-known quote:

If the car industry had developed like the computer industry, the car today would cost $100, get 1000 miles to the gallon, and blow up once a year, killing everyone inside.

People don't think about the consequences of their actions, especially if they're not completely predictable, not intended, and happen to other people whom you don't particularly care about. Also if most of your life has been like a computer game where you can always reload your previous save file, maybe minus a small percentage of your wealth.

[pilowsky]

barmar, on 2025-February-13, 16:45, said:

Do these people give no thought to the immediate ramifications of their actions?

No, they learned ethics here: https://neal.fun/abs...olley-problems/

[kenberg]

barmar, on 2025-February-13, 16:45, said:

What I find most incredulous about the way all these funding cuts are happening is that they're doing everything with no advance warning. Even if the cuts were justified, they need to give the recipients some time to adjust their processes and try to find new funding sources.

And it's not just funding. From NY Times (paywalled):

Do these people give no thought to the immediate ramifications of their actions?

Much of what is happening is bizarre but yes, I agree that abrubtly cutting ooff jobs, funding, research etc is horrid. There is no notification and there is no certainty either. Tragedy compounded by chaos.

I was listening to a discussion of the views of those who often voted D in the past but now voted for Trump They seem to be saying that there is movement and movement is good. I say that is glib. Change can be good, thought out, planned change, but that is not what is happening.

The two possibilities as I see it:
1. I am a total moron who understands nothing
2. There are a large number of Republicans in positions of leadership who are total cowards.

[mycroft]

"Move fast and break things", when it does work, makes a lot of money for some people. Usually at the cost (socially or financially) of the people that use or would use what's being broken.

We're "moving fast and breaking things", and the relevant userbase is 400 million that live in the US and at least that many that "sneeze when the US gets a cold".

Good luck, and cui bono? But other references from Roma (of that period or later) may be surprisingly relevant in the near future.

[PassedOut]

The US replaced the spoils system with the civil service for very good reasons after the Garfield assassination.

Yes, Republican leaders are cowards, but understandably so. The J6 thugs that Trump pardoned are at large and so are the yet-to-be thugs calculating reasonably that Trump will take care of them if they act violently in his behalf. So now those who oppose Trump get swamped with threatening calls -- and any lawyer in the Justice Department with integrity has been or will be fired.