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Making America Irrelevant Again
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 Making America Irrelevant Againwww.bbc.com One key point is Europe providing all the equipment and intelligence it needs in case some future U.S. President decides to turn off the tap as Trump recently did to Ukraine. "Germany's new Chancellor-in-waiting, Friedrich Merz, has said Europe must make itself independent of the United States. And "Europeanising" NATO will require the build up of an indigenous European military-industrial complex capable of delivering capabilities that currently only the United States has." Just think what the reduction in sales to Europe will do to the profitability of the Ameican defence industries! No longer will they be able to hit other countries for R&D costs, nor will economies of scale be so effective unless America itself buys more. Effectively, every Euro that Europe spends internally on its own defence will be a Euro less that America gets; and that will increase the cost of the same amount of gear to the U.S. Defence Budget because proportionately more of the R&D will NOT be available for equipment. We might see the situation in ten years' time of America buying European equipment! Think of the jobs and expertise that will be lost! |
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Stronger Europe Just think of it—the UK under the dominion of a foreign king! The EU was created to screw the US, according to the greatest president who ever lived. www.reuters.com So they want to go to war with us? Let us just see how long those effeminate European pansies can stand against the might of the US military—which they will be forced to do if they choose to arm themselves with non US weapons—MAGA! Just so long as we can avoid texting them our invasion plans—should be no problem. We showed Elon the war plans on China, so he could inform Beijing to protect his business empire there. www.reuters.com We know it must be true since Groper denies it. |
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Agent Krasnov But it must be said that America wasn’t duped by Putin into electing Agent Orange—instead Americans decided he needed a second chance to finish J6ing our nation. |
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DJIA Did you have a retirement fund? Now you don’t. |
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jonheck 04-Apr-25, 00:37 |
victory for democracy |
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1600 Yesterday, 1600 More Today Trump’s announcement last night that he was placing high tariffs on countries around the world came after the stock market closed, but it drove stock futures dramatically downward. Overseas, global markets also plunged. Today, before the stock market opened, Trump posted on his social media site: “THE OPERATION IS OVER! THE PATIENT LIVED, AND IS HEALING. THE PROGNOSIS IS THAT THE PATIENT WILL BE FAR STRONGER, BIGGER, BETTER, AND MORE RESILIENT THAN EVER BEFORE. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!!!” Fittingly, it was former Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani who rang the bell opening the stock market today. Giuliani represented Newsmax, the right-wing media channel with ties to Trump. As soon as the market opened, stocks fell straight down. By the end of the day, the Dow Jones Industrial Average had dropped 1,679 points, falling about 4%, its biggest fall since the coronavirus pandemic took hold in 2020. The S&P 500 fell 274 points, or 4.8%. The Nasdaq Composite fell more than 1,050 points, or almost 6%. The losses wiped out about $2 trillion. Trump justified the tariffs by declaring that the U.S. is in the midst of a national emergency, but this afternoon he left the White House for a long weekend in Florida, where his private Doral resort outside of Miami is holding the first domestic golf tournament of the season of LIV Golf, which is financed by the sovereign wealth fund of Saudi Arabia. Trump’s tariffs are not an economic policy. Tariffs are generally imposed on products, not on nations. By placing them on countries, the White House was able to arrive at its numbers with a nonsensical formula that appears to have been reached by asking AI how to impose tariffs—a suggestion so outlandish that I dismissed when I saw it last night, but economist Paul Krugman today identified it as being a likely possibility. CNBC’s Steve Liesman said: “Nobody ever heard of this formula. Nobody has ever used this formula. So I’m sorry, but the conclusion seems to be the president kind of made this up as he went along....” Today, former treasury secretary Lawrence Summers posted: “It’s now clear that the [Trump] Administration computed reciprocal tariffs without using tariff data. This is to economics what creationism is to biology, astrology is to astronomy, or RFK thought is to vaccine science. The Trump tariff policy makes little sense EVEN if you believe in protectionist mercantilist economics.” Editor of The American Prospect David Dayen notes that there is no apparent policy behind the tariffs, no thought, for example, as to whether it is even possible for the U.S. to ramp up the kind of domestic manufacturing Trump claims to want. While Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick told CBS, “You’re going to see employment leaping starting today,” in fact, both automaker Stellantis and appliance manufacturer Whirlpool announced layoffs because of the tariffs. Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo points out that building and establishing a new plant in the U.S. will take a minimum of three to five years even if investors are inclined to support one, but Victoria Guida reported in Politico that corporate executives are saying they cannot invest in manufacturing until they can project costs, and Trump is far too unpredictable to enable them to do that with any confidence. Dayen writes that Trump’s tariffs are essentially sanctions on the rest of the world. His behavior is, Dayen says, “no different from a mob boss moving into town and sending his thugs to every business on Main Street, roughing up the proprietors and asking for protection money so they don’t get pushed out of business.” Dayen notes that Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent argued last year for using the extraordinary power of the U.S. economy to force other countries to do as the U.S. wants, creating a U.S. sphere of influence through economic pressure. Extending the comparison to a mob boss, Dayen notes that “protection money” could take many forms: “curbing migration, taking in more U.S. farm exports or weapons systems, reducing industrial capacity in China and forcing more consumption, buying long-dated U.S. debt on the cheap, siding with a war strategy against Iran, literally anything the White House wants.” Trump’s son Eric appeared to confirm that the tariffs are a shakedown when he posted: “I wouldn’t want to be the last country that tries to negotiate a trade deal with [Trump]. The first to negotiate will win—the last will absolutely lose. I have seen this movie my entire life.…” Foreign affairs journalist David Rothkopf was more graphic: “These aren’t tariffs,” he wrote. “They are a horse’s head in the bed of (almost) every world government and business leader.” Hedge fund manager Bill Ackman suggested that if a government refused to negotiate with Trump, that country’s major companies should deal directly with Trump, exempting that company’s products from tariffs in exchange for a new factory or some other investment Trump wants. Trump is overturning the past 80 years of global trade cooperation in order to concentrate power in his own hands. Congress began to take down the tariff walls of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries when it passed the 1934 Reciprocal Tariff Act enabling the president to lower the high tariff rates Republicans had established with the 1930 Smoot-Hawley tariff. That tariff had worsened the Great Depression. With the turn away from tariff walls and toward international cooperation, global trade has fostered international cooperation and created the rising prosperity of the twentieth century. “The global economy is fundamentally different today than it was yesterday,” Canada’s prime minister Mark Carney said today. “The system of global trade anchored on the United States…is over. Our old relationship of steadily deepening integration with the United States is over. The 80-year period when the United States embraced the mantle of global economic leadership, when it forged alliances rooted in trust and mutual respect and championed the free and open exchange of goods and services is over. While this is a tragedy, it is also the new reality.” Ending systems of global free trade dovetails with the idea of getting rid of the international rules-based order created after World War II. After that horrific war, world leaders decided to create a system of international institutions, like the United Nations and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), to provide ways in which countries could protect their sovereignty and work out their differences without going to war. Trump’s threats against other countries, including Greenland, an autonomous territory of NATO ally Denmark, are a direct rejection of those principles. That rejection reinforces the Trump regime’s embrace of Vladimir Putin’s Russia, which invaded Ukraine first in 2014 and again in 2022 and is trying to justify grabbing Ukrainian territory. Under Trump, the U.S. is siding with Russia rather than Ukraine in this war in a stunning rejection of the institutions and principles that have stabilized the globe since World War II. Putin is now threatening NATO countries, prompting them to prepare for defense. “We are not at war,” NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte said recently, “but we are certainly not at peace either.” Some of those advocating tariff walls and forcing our allies to maintain their own defense suggest that creating a U.S. sphere of influence is the best way to counter a rising China, but there is no doubt that the concept of such spheres caters to the worldview of Russian and Chinese leaders. As scholar of authoritarianism Timothy Snyder points out, weakening the U.S. and its allies also benefits Russia by increasing Russia’s power relative to other countries, making it easier to establish the multipolar world Russia wants. The Trump administration is also undermining post–World War II democracy at home. Last night, Senator Chris Murphy (D-CT) identified Trump’s tariffs as “a tool to collapse our democracy. A means to compel loyalty from every business that will need to petition Trump for relief.” Murphy pointed to Trump’s shakedown of prominent law firms, four of which he has attacked with executive orders. He also pointed to Trump’s attacks on universities, withholding government funding until their administrators bow to MAGA’s ideological demands. Sarah D. Wire of USA Today reported that earlier this week the Institute for Museum and Library Studies was effectively closed, and over the past two days the administration told libraries across the country that grants awarded last year have been terminated. Today the administration cut federal grants for arts and humanities across the country: museums, archives, historic sites, educational projects, and so on—all defunded. It also cut this year’s funding for National History Day, a popular history program in schools that is already underway. On Tuesday, the Department of Health and Human Services slashed jobs and programs in the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), even as measles continues to spread and two Louisiana infants have died of whooping cough. Today, news broke that the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) is implementing a hiring freeze even as flash floods and tornadoes just today have killed at least seven people in the Midwest to the mid-South. The plan, as Vice President J.D. Vance explained in a 2021 interview, is to destroy the current government, business, educational, cultural, and scientific pillars of the United States in order to replace them with a new system, although there is tension between the Project 2025 wing of MAGA and the technocrats’ wing over whether that new system will be a theocracy or a technocracy. In either case, it will be an authoritarian government in which power and money concentrate in a very few hands. The administration’s crusade against the state of Maine shows what this looks like. After Maine governor Janet Mills told Trump the state would follow state and federal law rather than bow to his demands, acting Social Security Administration commissioner Leland Dudek canceled contracts permitting Maine parents to apply for Social Security numbers for their newborns from the hospital and for Maine families to report deaths from funeral homes. Told such a change would risk identity theft and wasteful spending, Dudek told the agency to do it anyway in order to punish Mills. After an outcry, Dudek backtracked, but yesterday the Secretary of Agriculture, Brooke Rollins, announced she was freezing federal funds for Maine educational programs. The Trump administration would stand against “a leftist social agenda,” Rollins wrote. The problem for Republicans is that while the sort of inflammatory language Rollins used has been a staple of the party for decades, the MAGA agenda itself is not popular. Only about 4% of voters who knew about Project 2025 wanted to see it enacted, and billionaire Elon Musk, who runs the “Department of Government Efficiency” that is slashing through government programs, is so unpopular that his support for a candidate in Tuesday’s Wisconsin Supreme Court election actually appeared to have hurt, rather than helped, that candidate. Now party members have to deal with the fact their president has tanked the economy by enacting what the National Review says is likely the largest peacetime tax hike in U.S. history. Now countries around the globe are imposing reciprocal tariffs on the U.S. while also negotiating their own trade agreements that cut out the U.S. Those agreements are not only for products like soybeans, but also for weapons, a development the administration is protesting. Republican members of Congress could stop Trump at any time. In the case of tariffs, they could simply reassert their constitutional power to manage tariffs. If they choose not to and the economy doesn’t recover and thrive as Trump keeps promising, voters can be expected to hold them, as well as him, to account. Right now Republican leaders appear to be hoping that Trump’s attempt to extort other countries will work and the tariffs will be short lived. But their enthusiasm for that strategy seems to be well under control. Today, Bill Ackman resorted to defending the tariffs by posting: “Sometimes the best strategy in a negotiation is convincing the other side you are crazy.” |
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Shiva 10:28 Note in particular "Victoria Guida reported in Politico that corporate executives are saying they cannot invest in manufacturing until they can project costs, and Trump is far too unpredictable to enable them to do that with any confidence." Trump's style of dancing from one foot to the mother might be good tactics for keeping an adversary guessing, but it's not effective in getting people to commit money. Even Bill Ackman defending the tariffs by posting: “Sometimes the best strategy in a negotiation is convincing the other side you are crazy.” supports this. Trump might convince other nations to humour him, but it doesn't convince corporations to invest billions of dollars in his thought bubbles. At most they might announce plans to hopefully win the Great Man's appreciation and perhaps an immediate benefit, but then drag their feet in actually performing until they see what happens. A good planning stage, complete with market projections, supply chain investigations, etc can take up to four years! And why would corporations invest in plans that will only turn a profit if the same policies are kept in place for the life of the investment (say, 25 years), when "right now Republican leaders appear to be hoping that Trump’s attempt to extort other countries will work and the tariffs will be short lived." My theory is that Trump really doesn't care about the national interest. He wants no more than to prove how powerful he is but slapping the other kids around. Or like a cruel child, kicking over the ants' nest to see the ants react. I'm reminded of a conversation in Schindler's List. The labour camp commandant boasts that he has the power of a god over the inmates. He has a hunting rifle and can kill any of them with a single shot. "I have the power of life and death!" Schindler replies that a wild animal has the power of death. A god is one who has the power of life. Which is Trump? |
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I cant even imagine that he's doing it on purpose, but maybe he is, huh.. My opinion is that trump would likely have been a drunk in the New York slums if daddy hadn't been rich --- What a selection for POTUS, huh? MAGA |
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Bob 15:32 You’ve been saying the same thing. But only because it is also very true. It should be obvious, but when explaining simple facts to MAGA hats one must belabor the obvious in excruciating detail. “If you stick a knife in the electrical outlet there may be current flow of an uncomfortable nature.” There isn’t much mystery here, but still I hear earnest MAGA cultists insist the current market decline is all Biden’s fault. Sleepy geriatric Biden brilliantly set Groper up for failure. www.ft.com |
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Mo 17:15 |
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Shiva 21:50 <still I hear earnest MAGA cultists insist the current market decline is all Biden’s fault.> 1. MAGA cultists neither understand nor want to understand. They have their lines in the script, and that's all they need. The best way to talk to a MAGA is NOT to try to convince them, but to use it as a pretext to convince 'undecided' types who might overhear what you are saying. 2. We have something similar over here in the Land of the Excuse Echidna. The chorus line in every Conservative song, no matter how long ago the last Labor government was, is "It's all Labor's Fault!" Perhaps the most famous was Tony Abbott promising in 2014 that Labor's 'Debt and Deficit Disaster!!!' was something that had to be stopped immediately (this was after the GFC, by-the-way, when everyone was running a stimulus package). Tony promised to match Labor's stimulus spending, not increase taxes, and still return the budget to surplus 'from year one!'. Nobody was quite sure how, but he PROMISED it! Six years later the Conservatives had used good economic times to INCREASE the debt by more than Labor did in the tough times, and not one surplus budget had been seen. But that was because the Labor government had stuffed things so badly it was going to take another term to fix. (But didn't you say you would "fix it from Day One, Tony?") Even after cutting all the spending that Tony promised not to cut! Two years further on from that, and the new Labor government has already produced two surplus budgets while providing better services to the public. How? By cutting the stuff Tony wouldn't; the 'Corporate Welfare' sector, with its myriad of subsidies and corporate tax loopholes. Strangely, I don't hear the conservatives chanting 'Debt and Deficit Disaster' quite so much these days. They're not even claiming to be 'better economic managers' any more, because it is obvious that they were not. This election is turning out to be a combination of culture wars and 'Who can offer the best bribes?' pure and simple. On the bribes, the Conservatives are offering to halve the tax on petrol (but only for one year). Labor is offering better pre-school education and improvements to health, built-in to be permanent. So it's a matter of whether the voters go for the short, sharp sugar hit; or opt for structural improvements. It's basically an intelligence test, and Labor is betting that Australians are smart enough. On the culture wars, every three-year election cycle sees the demographics of the culture war swing further to the progressives; we have a vocal Ratbag Right wing here, but they add up to only a few per cent. The Rational Right is going for the Teals, who are highly intelligent and competent ex-Conservatives but now Independents, who want the policies that could be called economically conservative but socially progressive. If we end up with a hung Parliament (which I think is as likely as not), then I would expect the Teals to be a non-committed crossbench who would provide the current government with continuing confidence and funding to serve as a minority government, but force them to negotiate everything else. |
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I do not follow the tariffs closely, but these tariffs are alienating the USA from the rest of the world economy. 145% for certain countries can only be described as utter madness. There is absolutely no sense in this- more than doubling the price of certain products/materials, which the citizens will have to pay. And as always it is the poorest of the poor who are going to feel the hurt the most. I believe European car manufacturers are also targeted- Mercedes being one. Maybe the rich people in the USA will start to complain when their luxury brand vehicles are too expensive to replace every year. The thing is, it is my understanding that the USA has a consumer economy, not a production economy, and therefore the US consumers will be the ultimate victims. Production of US vehicles, for instance, is very little compared to the rest of the world. There are more vehicle brands on the road today than ever before, and most of them are more competitively priced than US brands. Even something as mundane as isolation tape used to cover connections in electrical cables is all made in China, because US products are just too expensive to manufacture. The fact is that a consumer economy is still going to need products imported from other countries, many of them the target of huge tariffs, because it is a fallacy to ever imagine that the US can manufacture similar products competitively. In fact I venture to postulate that even heavily taxed products will still be cheaper than products manufactured in the US. |
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Riaan 01:15 There are a few aspects that might help understand what's happening. The first is to consider the 'SEP Field' as described in 'Hitchhikers' Guide to the Galaxy'. The SEP field can make something invisible by making it 'Someone Else's Problem'. In this case, higher prices mean nothing to Trump. If he wants something, he buys it from the change in his bottom drawer. What matters to him is income with at least one comma. That's why he has taken every opportunity to turn his Presidency into a merchandising festival. The second consideration is that (in Trump's mind) the only people who matter are those who can help or hinder his own ambitions in some serious way. In other words, the wealthy. These guys share Trump's view of retail prices being irrelevant. If their business costs go up they pass them on to the customer, but if their income goes up that's a Good Thing. And pushing up the costs of imports means their own products can suddenly add 10% to their prices and still be competitive, which greatly increases their profit margin. The third consideration is the macro-economic effect. If the IRS can collect billions more from tariffs (which is essentially a consumption tax), then that allows more scope for cutting top marginal income tax rates and company taxes. A re-distribution of the tax burden away from the wealthy and onto the wage-worker. What's not to like? Unfortunately, this doesn't work in the long term. By progressively impoverishing the bottom 90% of the population, they are destroying their future domestic markets, and protectionism diminishes their ability to compete in world trade. They lose both ways in the long term. But so what? We all know this Happy Hour won't last forever, and some future President will have to set things straight before too long. The aim is to make a killing in the short term that sets the wealthy up with all the assets to manage the long term more profitably. |
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US Mfg Integrated Circuits are a national security concern and Biden sought to restore manufacturing here. My sister and brother-in-law both worked in a chip plant in Idaho (RAM, not potato). The concern is that when China seizes Taiwan all our high tech military equipment will become unavailable to us. Already China has determined the US does not qualify for Chinese rare earth elements, which will instead be shipped to any of the better nations. “Two Dolls” Donnie is an economic imbecile. There are two types in his administration, which has been hard pressed to find competent people. Servile loyalty is inversely proportionate to intelligent competence. The two types are those who failed economics, and those who never studied it. But the American public was eager to increase import sales tax in order to finance bigger billionaire tax cuts and corporate subsidies, MAGA. The only drawback is the tariffs or apt to evaporate in Groper’s protection racket. “Nice little trade deal you all got there. Be a crying shame if something awful happened to it.” For concessions Vietnam gave Groper $1.5 billion in luxury hotel/golf resort contracts, icing the deal with Starlink contracts for Elon. No word yet on what Groper will demand next month. The UK apparently agreed to buy $10 billion in Boeing aircraft. Not sure how that impacts EU’s Airbus, I guess is French. We’ll see what happens there. Groper insists these gifts are tribute to his lordship, that no concessions have been made. The Saudis put $2 billion in Groper’s meme coin, personally netting him many millions in SCOTUS approved bribes. The corruption is palpable. That was on top the billions they doled out to Groper’s son-in-law. Jared apparently made quite a bundle from insider trading off Groper’s market manipulation. |
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Influence Peddling www.theguardian.com |
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Shiva But one very obvious contradiction is Trump's emphasis on being the 'Law and Order' President. A man with dozens of felony convictions, who has been found in civil proceedings to have committed sexual assault, who has repeatedly deprived people of their constitutional right to Due Process and has clearly breached other Constitutional provisions still dares to say his actions are being done to uphold the Law, except that the courts keep blocking him! George Orwell could not have imagined a better example of Newthink! Ah, America! Such a promising beginning, ending in self-delusion and self-harm! I just hope Europe gains a greater sense of urgency in time to pick up the baton. |
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Patz 19:41 Getting rid of the 'Man of Lawlessness' solves nothing so long as the causes for his first emergence remain in place. Even a civil war tends to do no more than change who is in control of the same corrupted paradigm and often for a great deal worse. In the history of other nations, this has rarely been achieved except by military conquest by outside enemies. I really don't want this to happen to USA. |
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Why is Microsoft help desk personnel based in India? Why are microchips and entire PC boards for iPhones manufactured in China? Who does most of the medicine used in the western hemisphere come from the Philippines? Because labor is cheap there. I often think these countries have a point in suppressing human rights. In South Africa our official unemployment rate is almost 45%, but once a person is employed they immediately complain about minimum wage, working hours, working conditions, benefits and promotion. And to top it off, only in South Africa, there are the equity and empowerment legislation which is going to be enhanced again soon! Nobody wants to employ in a country where civil rights are being used to abuse the employer and the system on the one hand, and government effectively strangles any attempt at business with Black Economic Empowerment-, Broad Based Black Economic Empowerment-, Employment Equity-, Affirmative action and the as yet unnamed new legislation that is on the way, directed at forcing employers to appoint only suitable candidates with a suitably high melanin content in the epidermis. (By the way these are some of the reasons that Mr. Trump allowed South Africans of European descent to go to the USA as refugees. But Australia also made the same offer several years ago.) The general population USA with the high demand of consumerism will almost immediately feel the effect of the tariffs, for two reasons: China's biggest market is the USA, and the USA's biggest trade partner is China. If the USA suddenly distances herself from human rights, and create massive ranks of slave labor for production, maybe- just maybe- the USA will survive, but barely. In all reality we know it won't happen. She is after all the bastion, the land of the free. But in the last decade or so I also think the land of the idiot. |
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Love the way she writes!!!! The deal, first reported by ABC News and then rapidly walked back by panicked Qatari officials, is exactly what it looks like: a gleaming $400 million bribe, wrapped in enough red, white, and blue legalese to pass for a “gift to the Department of Defense.” The aircraft would serve as a temporary Air Force One, because the sitting president needs a new ride from a monarchy he once vilified, and later be handed off to Trump’s “presidential library,” which exists so far only in PowerPoint form and gold-plated fantasies. Even more brazenly, the arrangement was greenlit by Trump’s own DOJ under Pam Bondi, the same Bondi now caught on undercover video admitting the FBI is sitting on a massive cache of Epstein evidence. That’s right: the woman waving off sex trafficking coverups at brunch is also signing off on foreign aircraft “gifts” to the president. Naturally, Trump took to Truth Social to froth at the mouth about the “FREE OF CHARGE” nature of the jet, blaming “Crooked Democrats” for daring to suggest that the Constitution might have something to say about accepting a private airliner from a foreign power. “World Class Losers!!!” he shouted into the void, before pivoting to a post about drug prices, the Middle East, or possibly shark attacks, it’s hard to keep up. Meanwhile, the U.S. press, accustomed now to treating Trump corruption as a weather pattern, shrugged. USA Today tucked the story under a business-style lede. The Hill treated it like a procedural oddity. Even Politico, which broke early coverage, defaulted to the word “gift” as if this were a silver platter from Tiffany’s, not a geopolitical IOU from a wealthy Gulf state that houses the largest U.S. military base in the region. Compare that with non-U.S. media, where the coverage is far less deferential. Al Jazeera, based in Doha, ran a headline emphasizing the potential for diplomatic fallout. European outlets, from Le Monde to Der Spiegel, framed it as the kind of transactional sleaze normally reserved for tinpot despots and FIFA officials. British headlines effectively asked: “Is the U.S. presidency now available for charter?” Back in Washington, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt offered the usual Word Salad of Compliance™, assuring reporters that “any gift given by a foreign government is accepted in full compliance with applicable laws”, which is a bit like saying “the check cleared” when asked if you paid your taxes. Congress, to its credit, has at least pretended to notice. Rep. Jamie Raskin called the jet “a grift,” reminding the nation that the Constitution prohibits gifts “of any kind whatsoever” from foreign states without congressional consent. Sen. Chris Murphy took it a step further, pointing out that the mere fact this deal is “under consideration” tells other countries exactly how to curry favor with MAGA America: buy the man a flying palace. It’s not just the corruption, it’s the pageantry of it. A Trump-branded aircraft from an oil-rich monarchy, timed just before a goodwill tour of Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE. You could almost hear the plane whispering “Emoluments, baby” as it taxi’d into the narrative. And just like that, American global leadership morphs into something more familiar to the developing world: governance via gift basket, loyalty for sale, and luxury in exchange for silence. If the Qatari jet didn’t make it clear enough, the new Trump Doctrine is simple: power is performance, and governance is a series of flashy, empty gestures designed to distract from the kleptocratic dismantling happening just behind the curtain. Over the weekend in Geneva, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent did his best impression of a man who hadn’t just been publicly pantsed by the world’s second-largest economy. After Chinese officials reportedly walked out of the talks on Saturday, a dramatic gesture of diplomatic side-eye, the negotiations quietly resumed, and by Sunday, both sides were all smiles and euphemisms. The U.S. agreed to slash tariffs on Chinese goods from 145% to 30%, a stunning reversal for an administration that once claimed tariffs were the secret sauce of American greatness. China, in turn, graciously agreed to lower its tariffs from 125% to 10%, and everyone called it “progress.” This so-called “90-day pause” is meant to buy time for more negotiations, or as Bessent put it, to implement a shiny new “economic and trade consultation mechanism”, which is exactly the sort of bureaucratic mumbo jumbo you deploy when you have no actual deal, but still need to announce something before the markets open. They also claim to be addressing fentanyl trafficking, because no Trump-era press release is complete without one vague nod to the opioid crisis as moral cover for a bad trade concession. Markets, ever the optimists, soared on the news because nothing says “stability” like your top trade partner storming out of a summit, then returning to extract unilateral concessions and a press conference. But critics, economists, and anyone with a memory longer than a goldfish noted the obvious: no enforcement, no structural reforms, no wins. Just a hasty de-escalation disguised as diplomacy and a pile of talking points, Trump will surely forget by Thursday. In short: Beijing got what it wanted, Trump got a headline, and America got the Geneva Mechanism™, a fancy name for letting someone else write your homework and still calling it leadership. And where does all this “savings” from the tariff rollback go? Not to the poor. Not to working families. Not to anyone trying to heat their home or get their insulin filled. Which brings us home to the brutal elegance of Trump's domestic budget. No sooner had the ink dried on Bessent’s “deal” with China than the Trump White House dropped its new budget proposal, featuring a now-familiar pattern: tax cuts for the rich, austerity for everyone else. Among the first targets: Medicaid and LIHEAP, the last remaining federal lifelines for health and heat in low-income America. The Medicaid portion of Trump’s tax bill, unveiled late Sunday by House Republicans, includes new work requirements and eligibility hurdles, designed to bump people off coverage without technically cutting them. No per-capita caps (yet), but make no mistake, this is a bureaucratic war of attrition, waged against the poor in the name of “savings.” The Energy and Commerce Committee has been instructed to find $880 billion in Medicaid cuts to help fund Trump’s proposed extension of his 2017 tax cuts. Not to be outdone, the administration also proposed eliminating LIHEAP, calling the program “unnecessary.” Never mind that it provided heating assistance to over 6 million households last year, or that it’s often the difference between freezing and surviving for elderly and disabled Americans. Trump’s team already fired the entire LIHEAP staff, rehired one person temporarily under pressure from Senator Susan Collins just to disburse the remainder of this year’s funds, and then proposed zeroing it out permanently. All while citing a debunked 2010 fraud report as justification. So here’s the emerging picture: luxury jets for Trump, tariff relief for China, tax breaks for billionaires, and icy silence for anyone who can’t afford to keep the lights on. It’s a worldview rooted in spectacle, enforced by cruelty, and sold with all the subtlety of a campaign ad shouted through a bullhorn at a foreclosure auction. And still, the media pretends it's normal. And because no Trumpian tableau is complete without a bit of snake oil, Monday morning brought us a dramatic Truth Social proclamation from the president himself: a new executive order, he declared, would soon slash drug prices by “30% to 80%” through a “most favored nation” policy that would peg U.S. prices to those in other wealthy countries. He hyped it as “one of the most important and impactful [truths] I have ever issued,” which, coming from the man who once live-blogged a hurricane path with a Sharpie, is at least consistent in tone if not in substance. The irony, of course, is staggering. This exact same policy, literally the same framework, was part of the Biden administration’s Inflation Reduction Act, which Trump killed in January as one of his first acts upon returning to office. The Biden plan, scheduled to go into effect in 2026, would have empowered Medicare to negotiate directly with pharmaceutical companies on drug prices. It was real, legislated, and enforceable. But that was too “socialist” for Trump and his pharma donor base. So he axed it. Now, under pressure to look like he’s doing something for everyday Americans, he’s reintroducing Biden’s policy as his own, wrapped in self-aggrandizing buzzwords and with no clear mechanism or legislative teeth. It’s not a policy, it’s a branding exercise. Worse, it’s one that the pharmaceutical industry already torpedoed during Trump’s first attempt to implement it in 2020. Back then, the courts tossed it. This time, they’re already sharpening their knives. Naturally, Trump offered no details, just that prices will fall “immediately,” and that Americans will finally “be treated fairly.” His version will apply to a broader set of drugs than the original Biden policy, yet it lacks any oversight, legal structure, or clear enforcement mechanism. It’s a soundbite, not a strategy. Pharma lobbyists responded on cue. “Government price setting in any form is bad for American patients,” said Alex Schriver of PhRMA, because, of course, they did. These are the same voices who hiked prices on over 250 drugs just this January, including life-saving medications that cost a fraction in Europe or Canada. And so the Trump administration now stands for eliminating federal health coverage, canceling heating aid, and then proposing to lower drug prices through a recycled executive order he previously dismantled. It's like lighting your house on fire, throwing a bucket of lukewarm water on it, and demanding a Nobel Prize in firefighting. Meanwhile, 67 million Americans on Medicare wait, watching their out-of-pocket costs soar as Big Pharma roars ahead with quarterly profits, and Trump jets off to the Middle East, possibly aboard that gifted Qatari plane, to celebrate the art of the deal with people who don’t need coupons for insulin. follow me at marygeddry.substack.com and @magixarc.bsky.social #ScottBessent #tradewar #Medicaid #qatar #grift #tariffs |
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Afrikaner Refugees www.npr.org I had heard Groper was taking only whites from “s*hole” countries (his word), but did not realize this was actually a thing. We are only deporting brown skinned people, and apparently Liberia will take our Latin American immigrants. I know El Salvador grants a lifetime prison sentence to anyone we deport—I guess so long as Groper continues footing the bill (currently $6 million a year). Not sure what life would be like in Liberia for people who speak only Spanish and perhaps limited English. But the US prolife crowd is excited about having a dumping ground for human detritus (nonwhites). The Argentina solution had been short flights from Argentina, Chile, and Guatemala out over the Pacific or Gulf of MEXICO. They were often given “vaccines” that were actually morphine or other powerful soporifics to make them docile and easy to ditch out the cargo door. Hitting water from 1500 feet is not terribly different from smacking concrete from that elevation, especially if you’re just tumbling unconscious. Not sure why so few ever washed back ashore. But the last time “prolifers” cared about you, you were still a fetus. After that you’re on your own, and the slightest inconvenience you pose is reason to celebrate your untimely demise, MAGA. |
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Afrikaner Refugees "Wow! You certainly don't ask the easy questions! First of all, Australia has also offered white South African farmers similar status, and that a number of years ago. So Mr. Trump is not the first to offer sanctuary to white South Africans. Second, the non-profit, non-government civil action group Afriforum (it could have been Solidarity, I can't remember exactly) has made a case for a silent genocide against white South African in the UN many years ago, and their argument was accepted and it was officially labelled as such. They proved the case. So the offer by both Australia and the USA is desirable and not out of place. The fact is that there is a silent genocide of white South African farmers, but our government denies it vehemently, and I suspect because many of the top politicians are actually involved in this. When a farm is vacated by whites, the government can gobble it up with the land appropriation act, without paying a cent, and it is 'redistributed' to the politicians, their friends, and syndicates. Once again the government denies this is happening, but it does. Organizations like Afriforum and Solidarity, who have the proof, are dismissed as right wing extremists and vilified in the national and international media. It must be said that Solidarity made a watertight case at the White House- The ANC didn't dispute their case, but attacked the organization and person of Dirk Herman himself, because they cannot dispute the facts presented. So I am glad for those who get the opportunity. It is a pity that they won't be able to return, though. Also the families of those who applied are already being victimized. The person who collected the information and assisted in facilitating the process, Neil Diamond, is an old ANC cadre, and this only came to light weeks after he collated all the information and handed it over to the ANC headquarters at Luthuli House. Some people have already been reporting harassment and victimization at state organizations or institutions, such as school teachers." That was my answer. It had to be abbreviated in the game chat. I can add the following, for which there was no time nor space in the game chat next to our game in progress: Some years ago Major General (Dr) Chris de Kock resigned over the issue of changing the description and definitions of some crimes. I know him personally, he is a man with great integrity. In the media it was mentioned as retirement. Dr de Kock was extremely unhappy about the changes to the crime statistics that he had to make and implement, and has lamented to me that his legacy has become one of shame. Dr de Kock has since moved to the private sector where is is a very successful consultant and analyst. www.crimefactssouthafrica.co.za Some of the definitions that changed were, for example, the description and definition of robbery. It is commonly accepted that robbery implies the forceful separation of a person from his property/goods/interest. That would of course include when a person breaks into a house by damaging a door or window, and then with the threat of violence or harm to the body of a person (here in South Africa often a child or woman) insist on handing over property/goods/interest such as cash, firearms, vehicles, cellular devices, jewellery, bank cards and so forth. This particular crime described here has changed from Housebreaking and Robbery to Theft from domestic dwelling. Robberies and murder on farms, following the same basic pattern described above, but very often involving senseless torture of old people, children and women before murdering them, and most often the rape of any female between ages 6 to 80, has been changed from Robbery (with the additional charges of possibly murder and rape) to simply Theft and possibly Assault with the intent to do grievous bodily harm. No mention of rape and murder any more. Other crimes have been devalued or de-escalated in similar fashion. In this way the South African government has been able to hide the true statistics for murder, rape and robbery, in what we as Afrikaans speaking people know simply as Farm Attacks. Using the words Farm Attack inherently includes murder, rape, torture and other atrocities that we have come to associate with these crimes as a matter of course. The unofficial network and grapevine of farmers themselves, journalists who are often discredited as rabid right wing propagandists, civil rights organizations focusing on the plight of white Afrikaans speaking people and security companies who often voluntarily patrol and do their best to keep farmers safe, this grapevine and network brings the truth to us, but the truth cannot be published in the media due to recently enacted legislation. This media handcuff legislation states something to the effect that any publication of these incidents in the public media can be construed as treason and the entire media house and the journalists individually can be tried. It was enacted in 2023. I can go further with enlightening you all about such incidents, but I am toeing the line here. I have to be careful how much not to say. But do yourselves a favor: get in touch with any ex-South African and ask them why they left. Ask them how old women are tortured with clothes irons, boiling water down the throat, how men's throats have been cut with a pair of scissors, how a pistol was put against a pregnant women's stomach and the trigger pulled but the mother left to survive with the farewell words "That is the last one you will have". Find out how women and children were drowned in bathtubs full of scalding hot water, and how grandmothers of 70+ are hog-tied with wire coat hangers before being raped and sodomized by as many as 8 men. Because this is why the people are fleeing South Africa, and if I had the means and opportunity, I would too. |
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America is falling. www.abc.net.au |
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Riaan If you could see your way clear through our legal immigration process I would be willing to assist in funding the movement for you and your family to safety. I doubt you would have any problem with gainful employment here. |
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Thumper 07:55 But you ask "Why do the good people in your country allow or tolerate that?" I would suggest that South Africans 'tolerate' an intentional homicide rate of 455 per million for much the same reason as the good people of the U.S. Virgin Islands (under American jurisdiction) 'tolerate' a rate the even higher rate of 496 per million. Namely, they have no say in the matter. One could ask the same question as to why the good people of the United States 'tolerate' an intentional homicide rate of 57 per million while Switzerland (with guns every bit as freely available as in the USA) has less than 6 per million and Netherlands less than 7. Even here in Australia, where we have to defend ourselves against carnivorous kangaroos and Dreaded Black Wombats, we still have less than 9 per million. The answer isn't what 'good people tolerate', but in what their governments tolerate; or at least, what priority they put on maintaining civil peace. How well they train their law enforcement officers as protectors of the innocent rather than the hounds of those in authority. That's a HUGE psychological difference for a police force! How much they value the lives of the innocent over the liberties of the elite. (Who was it who said "Give me liberty, or I'll give you death!"?) Here in New South Wales, anyone wanting to become a police officer needs to complete a course at the Police Academy AND PASS TESTS, not just attend. And to get into the Academy, they need a tertiary qualification as a pre-requisite. Very few of our police officers are ex-military, unlike in America where a military background seems to be automatic entry. And those ex-military bring to their policing the same attitude they had when on patrol in Afghanistan; they see themselves as being in 'enemy territory' and are ever-ready to use deadly force to 'protect themselves' from any perceived danger, whether actual or not. In terms of law-and-order, America shoots at shadows while ignoring white-collar crime. Celebrities can do whatever they want (as Trump correctly boasted) and not be held to account, while the poor are brutalised. Remember O.J. Simpson? Now the situation is even worse, with investigations of major crimes being suspended if the suspect has the correct political affiliation; and even when convictions are delivered, Presidential pardons overflow towards those whose political views are approved. The key is whether or not the government passes laws to ensure public serenity, and upholds those laws without fear or favour. That's what happens in Europe, Australia, New Zealand, etc. It doesn't happen in dysfunctional nations like South Africa or the United States. |
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@ thumper @ bobspringett Also, I do not lie when I say that the politicians are actively involved in crime and corruption. Let me post a link to an event that happened last week- this general is under the same command as myself. He is also the nephew of the former minister of police, Beki Cele. www.citizen.co.za Politicians place friends, family members and syndicates in positions of authority to continue their corrupt and criminal enterprises, to actively sink investigations (or do you say tank investigations?) and to insure that no successful investigation or court procedure takes place. The general in this article has long been involved in major corruption, and it has been reported in the media over and over, but nothing was done until the firearm and laptop was stolen. One can only hope that the corruption that took place under his tenure will be investigated now, as well as our national head who had to know about these things, as he has to sign off on any expenditure. This colossal corrupt enterprise on a national scale is inherent of the ANC government. Things have started to change slowly since the last national general election when the ANC could not get a outright majority and had to get coalition partners. The few departments under control of legitimate politicians or political parties have suddenly improved: Correctional Services and Home Affairs being the most prominent, and Education as well. Prominent politicians like Panyasa Lesufi are making public announcements about education, although he has nothing to do with it any more. The vice president Ace Magashule, widely known for his participation in various corrupt endeavors in the province of the Free State, still interferes with the running of the province where he used to be the premier, to cover up, direct, coerce and steer his ongoing corrupt enterprises. (I have a book in PDF format about him if anybody is interested.) One cannot voice anything against ministers, some of whom do not hesitate to turn to "wetworks" to conceal their involvement in these syndicates. I want to close this post with the following observation. Before the media legislation was tightened up, we used to have graphic descriptions of how people were murdered. Since the media legislation became active, these descriptions have vanished from the media. We now rely on the unofficial grapevine I mentioned before to get the true stories of horror. Also I neglected to mention that we hardly hear about rape any more, but rather molesting or sexual harassment. We have learned to read between the lines and know what is actually being said. |
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