Drill Baby Drill...the US Politics Thread (Part 3)

This surely isn’t serious? Not that I’m surprised that Trump is the megalomaniac c*nt we know he is. What strikes me is that he seems to get away with it all the time. We know that he has surrounded himself with similar idiots, but they can’t do much on their own. It means that there is a wider circle of support for these things. If this project goes through, it will be really pathetic. ‘Arc of Trump’, give me a break… :see_no_evil_monkey:

I think this is true. But it can also be true while being meaningfully different from the things we appropriately condemn of the actual Nazi sympathizers on the right.

Part of me thinks there is a good case for Dems to pick fights where they show they arent going to Kowtow to criticisms of them, but Nazi tattoos isnt the fight to pick.

He did an interview with Pod Saves America this week and it was shockingly bad. They gave him an open forum to get out his case and he shocked even the host by how bad his answer was about his past history of comments about black people not tipping. The response people are obviously looking for here is something along the lines of “I made comments based on dumb stereotypes that were a result of me not having much worldly experience. I now know better and I do so because people gave me grace to be young, dumb and wrong and helped show me a path to being a more rounded adult.”

Instead his answer was “yeah it’s cool, a black guy explained it to me so now I know the answer. I wasnt trying to be inflammatory I was just genuinely curious why they dont tip.” :rofl: It stopped Tommy in his tracks. He gave him the chance to chance to salvage his answer, but he just reiterated it. That is very Fettermanish

2 Likes

He talks about the ‘Arc of Trump’ in this clip… Regards the WH, he mentions he didn’t need approval/planning etc to demolish some of the building, because he is the President..!!! :0)

1 Like

And Donald will march his victorious army under it

upon there return from invading Greenland and Canada

1 Like

There were pics released a couple of weeks ago of a model they built of where the Arc is in relation to another monument, I think the Lincoln Memorial. I dont know enough to verify this, but the consensus of the pic was that the design was based on lincoln memorial facing a completely different direction than it does in realty, which seems believable

4 Likes

He’s making the vanity moves of a despot. The sooner this passes, the better.

I’m hoping there will be stuff in the Epstein files that they can’t suppress and it will be bad enough to sink him.

3 Likes

It’s literally laugh-a-minute stuff now.

1 Like

Trump is piling up these monuments in the hope he is never ever forgotten… I really do hope he is finally shitting himself (more than normal), about his mortality

1 Like

https://x.com/kenbensinger/status/1981067279824802063

1 Like

https://x.com/NotWoofers/status/1981123274185855357

I wonder how far they intend to go, if it’s going to be decapitation strikes and regime change or just cartels (doubt).

1 Like

Without secondary sanctions this will not in reality mean much, I fear.
Lukoil and Rosneft sells mostly to India and China. But Russian finances will feel this, but it all depends on how these are enacted. Secondary sanctions critical for effect.
https://x.com/AmbDanFried/status/1981111303835177118
But at least EU coordinates.
https://x.com/vonderleyen/status/1981109768581243195

Yeah, you waited forever and contributed to Russian land gains
https://x.com/front_ukrainian/status/1981108778276896937

1 Like

Rubio wants regime change in Cuba. I am convinced that he has gone into an administration to advance an agenda against everything he has ever said he stood for on the bet that Trump was disinterested enough in doing the job that Rubio would get enough rope at State to enact his plan as long as he threw enough scraps at Trump to let him get tough guy credit. Regime change in Venezuela is their first domino (in a geopolitics theory that has been falsified over and over again but they Neocons never learn)

That is my take at least.

4 Likes

Good take.

I know Rubio wants that (Venezuelan opposition in hiding also have good relations and contacts with him), but it’s unclear to me if Rubio has managed to get everyone, including the likes of Trump and Vance onboard for such a large and potentially messy operation. It’s risky. Hmm.

It also runs counter to their isolationist ideology and it needs to be fast if Americans are going to cheer this. But perhaps I am wrong. That having been said, Maduro’s regime is so utterly unpopular and authoritarian that the international political risks are relatively low, I think. But domestic political risks seem crazy high.

1 Like

I suppose I should be much more outraged at the extremely dubious legality of this. I suppose I should. But it sort of pales compared to Ukraine and Gaza and I am a bit disturbingly blasê about this. I know it is very wrong though, if it escalates and really hopes it does not. Very ideally, there is another way to get rid of Maduro’s regime than a fucked up regime change operation that has little chance of working as intended.

Also it’s Trump admin…

Ja, okay. Final according to Washington Post
https://x.com/AlexandruC4/status/1981104483708129393

I am extremely torn. Do I wish them complete and rapid success, or utter failure or something in between ? Failure is rather horrible too if they actually roll the dice, because it means protracted military engagement with an authoritarian regime in Venezuela likely reacting as authoritarian regimes under threat do. More brutal crack-downs.

A secondary and less important point, is that Venezuela, if looked at through a geopolitical Western lens, is in Russia’s camp and one of the very few states who are deeply embedded in it. Theoretically any weakening of any state friendly with Russia is a positive on a macro scale during these dark times, but…

I struggle with the morality and ethics of using such a Cold War Prism. I am not sure I can defend it. Because means to an end must be justified by it’s importance to the enemy, just like military targets in war if there are civilians around a military installation, or else it is immoral. Is Venezuela important enough for Russia economically and politically for me to morally justify wishing it invaded for that reason alone. I think not.

2 Likes

Even that is malleable. We have an attitude here where we can be bombing 20 countries simultaneously and people will still accept we’re not in war as long as we have no troops in active conflict. In trumps first term he claimed credit for reducing our footprint in Afghanistan and the ME even though it was largely official troops scaling back while mercenary troops filled their gap…often the exact same men just now earning 10xpay on contracts still paid by the same us government

4 Likes

All fair points. Perhaps it will have little impact on Trump’s standing among those who are in favour of isolationism.

A strong-man peace-loving bomb-dropping isolationist

6 Likes

Read somewhere earlier that he thinks he can authorise the payment to himself, in his mind he is dog so he can, but surely not?

We live in bizarre times when the word salad you wrote there is actually accurate, but it kind of is.

2 Likes