
So Putin's presidential candidate
Was working for China all along?
Gutting the Cyber Safety Review Board as it was probing how China's Salt Typhoon breached American government and telecommunications networks was "foolish" and "bad for national security," says retired US Navy Rear Admiral Mark Montgomery. Last week, two days after President Donald Trump returned to the White House, Montgomery …
No Trump just doesn't care about cyber security. He'll blame everything on Biden regardless of what they find, and won't have appointees competent enough to make any of its recommendations happen so it probably doesn't matter that they were disbanded.
He likes to talk about things that average person can understand (including an average (and I'm being charitable) intellect like his) so he talks about building an "Iron Dome" for the US like Israel's. It'll be Reagan's Star Wars all over again. Long on promises, short on results, but lots and lots of pork laden cost plus contracts to hand out to those who bribe him sufficiently.
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For every Kash Patel in Trump 1.0's cabinet there were 10 John Boltons. Now I disagree with a lot of what Bolton stands for but no one could doubt his qualifications for the role he was in. The difference is in Trump 2.0's cabinet there are 10 Kash Patels for every Marco Rubio. Who again, I disagree with a lot of what he stands for but no one can doubt his qualification to be Secretary of State.
Trump is threatened by competent people who in a role they are fully qualified for, because they might say or do something he doesn't like. Worse, they might criticize or correct him when he's wrong. Incompetent people appointed to a role they are wholly unqualified for on the other hand know the only reason they are in such an important position is due to Trump, and thus will agree with / go along with whatever Trump says regardless of how insanely stupid it is. They'll never contradict him because they aren't any more knowledgeable about national security, military, health, cybersecurity etc. etc. than he is (which is hard to find, given that he knows almost nothing about any of those subjects) so they have no basis for thinking anything he says or does is wrong.
Yes sorry, the sarcasm wasn't quite as obvious as usual, she is obviously qualified
I think a lot of real people slipped through under Trump 1.0. They won't be making that mistake again, not now there are so many Fox newsreaders and pillow salesmen available for cabinet positions
Vance is a robot remotely operated by Peter Thiel. That's why he's in that position.
He's also entirely devoid of charisma, just like Pence. I think that's the most important quality Trump sees in a VP - because he can't fire the VP he wants to make sure it is someone who won't steal even a single microlumen of the spotlight from himself.
For everyone else, they know if they start getting too much attention he'll can them and start talking them down so that threat keeps them in line (except for Musk, who craves the limelight every bit as much as Trump but probably has a higher bar to meet before getting cut because Trump likes the feeling of having the world's richest man in his pocket)
Never forget that Donnie doesn't do details. Remember his Pentagon briefings? A single page, one side only, with pretty charts and graphs - a bulleted list at best. All these orders he signed were out of Project 2025. He may have been given a more, or less, accurate overview before signing, maybe not. He didn't have a clue about the details or consequences, and won't care about any of it unless it blows up in his face. (It's obvious now, that the authors of the orders didn't know or care about details either.)
The revenge orders are the only ones he cares about and pays attention to.
It's become increasingly obvious that most of the XOs are for show - to appeal to the base, to make the "libs" scream and pull hair because their buttons have been pushed, and to overload the media with click-bait headline material so that they ignore the really important things going on.
Right now, the things being done by President Elon, mostly out of sight, are what's really important. Implementing an Orban-style coup by taking control of funding and the personnel system. Taking the power of the purse away from Congress would have provoked immediate action in the past. Same for claiming to have shut down an independent agency that operates under Congressional authority (USAID). Today - the Dems are still in shock from the election, and the GOP isn't lifting a finger to stop it. The unitary presidency is being created before our eyes.
51 ex-Feds signed a letter which we now know was disinformation (at best!) about something they KNEW to be true - the sort of crap Trump is falsely accused of all the time and yet you still expect him to have confidence in the installed deep state to not be working against him? I'd be sacking people left/right and centre too - they ARE out to get him - if this isn't blindingly obvious by now then you have your eyes shut. Just as federal sharp shooters failed to see a man in plain sight on the only rooftop for miles armed with a long rifle! The past 6 years has proven beyond doubt that the globalist deep state exists and that Trump is a threat to it. This is 100% why DeepSeek has suddenly appeared – they want to ruin the economy before Trump gets a chance to put his anti-globalist measures in place – the US economy, recession, your future and US investments mean nothing to these people – they have bigger fish to fry – it’s not about money – they can print all the money they want. It’s about power and control, they are so blinded by their power they think they own the CCP - and that’s the real threat. China is playing along and playing the long game.
Languages evolve, new words are created, old words get new usages, some go 'out of fashion'. Shakespeare introduced us to 'Schoolboy', 'bedroom', 'eyeball' etc.
https://www.shakespeare.org.uk/explore-shakespeare/shakespedia/shakespeares-words/
As an old codger, I suspect that I resent the new usages ('invite' instead of the correct 'invitation' etc.).
One cannot stand in the way of progress, but in some cases one can watch it go past with a sigh as it leaves you behind.
One wonders how many of the people who complain about the bastardization of English realize what percentage of the language has been borrowed from other languages over the years.
Hint: Only about 30% is derived from Old English[0], the rest are bastardized loanwords, mostly French and Latin.
[0] And of course Old English itself was mostly Old Frisian mixed with Old Saxon and a smattering of Old Norse.
Well the history of the British Isles can be summarised as:
"trifle is a more specific combination and arrangement"
I hear you ... but is it? Is it, really?
https://duckduckgo.com/?t=ffab&q=trifle&iax=images&ia=images
Yes, I have made, and have been served trifle many times in Blighty ... and made/had it here long before my family started traveling when I were a nipper. In all that time, no two trifles have been identical.
However genetic studies show that British citizens as of <1948 stock shared a 75% common ancestry ooing back thousands of years - even the Romans only left a single digit genetic footprint - similarly the Normans tended to breed amongst themselves. One of, if not the most genetically homologous groups in the whole of Europe.
"I do wish people wouldn't just assert stuff without any indication of a source."
Especially politicians. Make it a law that if you are caught in a lie more than twice in a day, or five times in any given 7 day period, you are no longer eligible for political office at any level.
Actually James Nicoll
To be fair on the shrub, he wasn't that dumb - he just realised that playing dumb gets you elected by Republicans (if only we knew)
I suspect he saw the phrase "shame on me" heading toward him and realised the chance of it becoming a meme-clip and tried a hurried verbal swerve
You don't have to be smart to get into Harvard or Yale - or Oxford or Cambridge. Having rich parents generally makes you a shoe-in, especially if they themselves are alumni, having got in by the same method. Once there, you are almost guaranteed to achieve a degree in some fatuous subject like PPE or law without having to do any real thinking. It has to be this way if we're not going to run out of "qualified" senators & MPs, of course.
Only poor people have to be smart to have a chance at elite universities, and they also have to take on a lot of debt to do it.
Interesting side comment, despite its repeated claims to be the land of opportunity, the USA is one of the least socially mobile countries in the western world. Even the UK has better statistics. (Look 'em up yourself by the way. This is a rant not a scientific paper!)
""No one was kicked off the NTSB, the National Transportation Security Board, in the middle of investigating a flight that crashed here, or a flight that crashed there," Montgomery said. "
We shall see.
Trump has already indicated that he wants DEI to be seen as the reason for the crash, and as we all know, if you're not a Trump sycophant, you have no place in the current federal system. Will the existing NTSB kiss the ring[0], or will they be allowed to produce an honest report?
The mind absolutely boggles that this kind of thing seriously exists outside a bad Hollywood script.
It's traditional to kiss the ring on the finger to show fealty, but these days it seems to be in fashion to kiss the one he sits on ...
Quote
"It's traditional to kiss the ring on the finger to show fealty, but these days it seems to be in fashion to kiss the one he sits on ... "
This is how trumpty views himself... as Don Corleone extracting favours from people wanting help and dominating his rivals into submission. whereas he's really just a jumped up bully forever trying(and failing) to win his daddy's love and respect
We are ignoring the real reason why these boards were terminated.
Trump is the greatest.... asset that's the Russians and Chinese have ever cultivated.
They were both backing his campaign. Either monetarily or through social media manipulation.
He is singularly the most disruptive cyber asset that both countries could ever dream of. Single handedly, he is doing more to actively destroy US interests than all of the spies caught in the last 20 years... and he is still free to keep causing destruction...
And we can't talk about it...at least not is you're American.
You have apparently missed several of the latest Supreme Court decisions. The most blatantly unconstitutional was giving him immunity from prosecution for committing crimes. Supposedly he would be held accountable by impeachment but given his recent attempted impeachment history that is clearly a stupid assumption.
You have the Supreme Court's interpretation of what freedom of speech and the Constitution are. And when you're hitched to a wagon being pulled by the likes of Thomas, Alito, Gorsuch and Barrett, you can predict which direction you'll go and I don't think it's the one you want.
Ah, but we have the Holy Second Amendment beloved by Republicans and their stooges on the Supreme Court and lower courts like the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, which just ruled that it’s unconstitutional to stop teenagers from buying guns. Texas Stupid, is it bigger than even Florida Stupid?
For extra irony, the second amendment (unusually) contains a rationale, which is to allow folks to see off bullies like Trump if they ignore the other bits of the constitution egregiously enough.
It's like the US Constitution actually has a civil war built-in as a feature.
While I don't disagree Trump certainly had help from both China and Russia, who at a minimum find him a useful idiot to work with, I think most of us forget Trump, and to a lesser extent Musk, are the symptoms, not the disease. There were other choices, even within the Republican party, and none of them gained any traction. A free and fair election (which is what we had) is just a set of fancy words for mob rule. Right now, although only a small percentage of the Trump voters will say the quiet part out loud, they really are racist, homophobic and anti-intellectual and are cheering all of this stuff along, even if it hurts them personally. There is no other reasonable explanation. You can blame Harris, and Biden all you want, but that wasn't the only other choice the voters had. The only difference between Trump and the other Republican candidates was Trump was blowing racist, homophobic dog whistles and the others weren't (or were not as effective at it). The majority of the people in this country are getting exactly what they asked for and if it wasn't Trump it would have been someone else.
You can look at the rise of the KKK after the civil war and in the 1920's. Hell, you can look at Truman's second election and McCarthyism. People are tribal. People are creatures of fear. This is what they do. I wish I knew how to solve this problem, but I don't. I am certainly not going to suggest we find a benevolent dictator. I do know replacing the orange idiot won't change anything. America will just grow a replacement.
Very true, I am one of the never ever ever Trumpers. The problem is that he has tapped into a very large portion of the American voting public that would vote for Mr. Hilter (obligatory nod to Monty Python, who knew they were predicting the future of American politics) in the blink of an eye.
What a country.
Nowhere else can a guy talk about stealing the election, with the help of your North Korean buddies making bamboo ballots for four years, and nobody looked for bamboo ballots when he won.
Those weirdo trips to swing states at the last minute, was to deliver the ballots.
Trump saluted the North Korean general for a reason.
Unfortunately, he won the popular vote this time round, so MOST Americans who expressed a preference can be tarred with that brush.
the real reason he got into power though, is not his supporters, it's the misogynistic Old World US that would rather have the Chetto in Chief back or any man than have a woman president.
The US is a relic of its origins, the people that moved across the ocean rather than evolve with the reformation of the church.
if you look at the majority of Western democracies that are thriving they are run by women under 35, and neither of those criteria has ever been US president, in fact, Obama was the youngest president ever when he took office, and the average age of the candidates last time round was twice that
And then those people discovered that life was really, really rough on this side of the pond, and so moved back to Blighty, founded The Royal Society and pretty much took over the government.
The folks left behind in the colonies went on to found the United States, and were quite vocal in their distaste for the concept of religion ... Thus explaining Article Six of the United States Constitution. (If you've never actually read the document, it says "no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States" ... Which tells you how many of the MAGA crowd have actually taken the time to read and understand the Constitution ... but that's a rant for another day.)
Yes. He won the vote.
But he did not win with a plurality of votes. He barely squeaked by, receiving less than 50% of the total votes cast. It was not the "great, resounding victory" that most republicans are claiming. They are barely hanging on by a thread. The mid-terms are coming.
Oligarchs don't want to be accountable. They wanted Lina Khan out of the job even if Democrats won. Now the panel has been disbanded after grilling Microsoft, even if they were so kind to grill an underling, not Nadella himself, as they should have been, since that abysmal security stance was due to the very CEO decisions.
All this “Trump ate my hamster” stuff is hilarious. Funny how nobody was worried about “national security” despite the Biden family taking over $4m dollars off a Chinese energy company with no discernible goods or services going back the other way, was Biden’s subsequent dismantling of America’s Energy independence a coincidence? Nobody was worried about national security when, week two into office he pushed the Saudi’s into the arms of the Chinese – complete with state-of-the-art European weapons after cancelling a major arms deal (which is why they also refused to pump more oil when Biden begged them.) Nobody was worried about national security when Biden spent the strategic oil reserves (that are supposed to be for times of war) in a failed bid to control the gas price surge his geopolitics created. These reserves have been allowed to drop so low, many of the mines holding the oil will have collapsed losing that storage capacity forever. If WWIII broke out tomorrow, the US is xxxxed – they have no oil to run their military machine. Biden’s administration was an absolute disaster for national security – I won’t even bother with low-hanging fruit such as borders.
Yes Trump is an orange buffoon – but the west is in much safer hands with him at the helm rather than the usual pwned cookie-cutter globalist puppets.
The thing that fascinates me is what big ticket item "they" will pull out the bag (this time) to bring the second ever anti-globalist administration down.
"Tell me lies
Tell me sweet little lies
(Tell me lies, tell me, tell me lies)"
I just watched a Jon Stewart video where he bent America's "mainstream media" over his knee and gave them a royal butt reddening for repeatedly using such phrases as "we live in two realities now" and allow the lies to slide on by. As he rightly pointed out we live in only one reality and trump and his hoard aren't in it. I'm beginning to think that the movement of Earths magnetic pole is being caused by the near relativistic spin of Walter Cronkite.
Yeah, well fuck Jon Stewart. He's one who was calling out Kamala as not being a unicorn, while reassuring people on his first show back that "no matter who's elected, we'll be fine." Yeah, rich folk like you will do great no matter who's in office, Jon. I think we're seeing how wrong you are, and how people like you and Bill Maher and George fucking Clooney should shut your goddamned face holes.
Seriously, are you Trumptards OK with what he's doing? His complete choice of incompetents for his cabinet. Are you really too stupid to see that he promised various things, when he saw he couldn't do them, started trying to distract with more moronic ideas? Are you really OK with him? Do you think he's doing a good job, gutting the FAA, then when a crash comes, blaming it on DEI? If you want to see why nothing's wrong with DEI, look at his cabinet appointees? Are you people in red states really OK, with your senators and congress people (Hey you stupid morons, some of them are women! What happened, DEI take over? )
Are you ok with his attempts to hurt news services that didn't praise him? Suppose BIden had used the powers given him by the court of Trump bootlickers to shut down Fox. He should have. They admitted they made things up to get viewers and were still allowed to call themselves news.
Or are you beginning to see how stupid you were? Are you beginning to be ashamed? Silly question, Trump supporters don't have a sense of shames.