Politics

[WAB]

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So USAID stops discretionary funding over the weekend and Politico can't make payroll on Tuesday. The Politico CFO must have had a real tough time juggling his cash flow the past couple months. Wonder when this will start happening to other media companies.

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You can’t make this stuff up! The corruption is beyond imagining.

 

[Wheels]

The quality of people Trump has brought into his administration in 2025 vs 2017 can be visibly seen in his Press Secretaries. The difference between how a 27 year old Karoline Levitt and Sean Spicer handles and deals with the press corps is night and day.

 

[sgt_zim]

Brilliant summation, I'm afraid. Andrew says it better than me.
Andrew Coyne.....
“Nothing mattered, in the end. Not the probable dementia, the unfathomable ignorance, the emotional incontinence; not, certainly, the shambling, hate-filled campaign, or the ludicrously unworkable anti-policies.
The candidate out on bail in four jurisdictions, the convicted fraud artist, the adjudicated rapist and serial sexual predator, the habitual bankrupt, the stooge of Vladimir Putin, the man who tried to overturn the last election and all of his creepy retinue of crooks, ideologues and lunatics: Americans took a long look at all this and said, yes please.
There is no sense in understating the depth of the disaster. This is a crisis like no other in our lifetimes. The government of the United States has been delivered into the hands of a gangster, whose sole purpose in running, besides staying out of jail, is to seek revenge on his enemies. The damage Donald Trump and his nihilist cronies can do – to America, but also to its democratic allies, and to the peace and security of the world – is incalculable. We are living in the time of Nero.
The first six months will be a time of maximum peril. NATO must from this moment be considered effectively obsolete, without the American security guarantee that has always been its bedrock. We may see new incursions by Russia into Europe – the poor Ukrainians are probably done for, but now it is the Baltics and the Poles who must worry – before the Europeans have time to organize an alternative. China may also accelerate its Taiwanese ambitions.
At home, Mr. Trump will be moving swiftly to consolidate his power. Some of this will be institutional – the replacement of tens of thousands of career civil servants with Trumpian loyalists. But some of it will be … atmospheric.
At some point someone – a company whose chief executive has displeased him, a media critic who has gotten under his skin – will find themselves the subject of unwanted attention from the Trump administration. It might not be so crude as a police arrest. It might just be a little regulatory matter, a tax audit, something like that. They will seek the protection of the courts, and find it is not there.
The judges are also Trump loyalists, perhaps, or too scared to confront him. Or they might issue a ruling, and find it has no effect – that the administration has called the basic bluff of liberal democracy: the idea that, in the crunch, people in power agree to be bound by the law, and by its instruments the courts, the same as everyone else. Then everyone will take their cue. Executives will line up to court him. Media organizations, the large ones anyway, will find reasons to be cheerful.
Of course, in reality things will start to fall apart fairly quickly. The huge across-the-board tariffs he imposes will tank the world economy. The massive deficits, fuelled by his ill-judged tax policies – he won’t replace the income tax, as he promised, but will fill it with holes – and monetized, at his direction, by the Federal Reserve, will ignite a new round of inflation.
Most of all, the insane project of deporting 12 million undocumented immigrants – finding them, rounding them up and detaining them in hundreds of internment camps around the country, probably for years, before doing so – will consume his administration. But by then it will be too late.
We should not count upon the majority of Americans coming to their senses in any event. They were not able to see Mr. Trump for what he was before: why should that change? Would they not, rather, be further coarsened by the experience of seeing their neighbours dragged off by the police, or the military, further steeled to the necessity of doing “tough things” to “restore order?”
Some won’t, of course. But they will find in time that the democratic levers they might once have pulled to demand change are no longer attached to anything. There are still elections, but the rules have been altered: there are certain obstacles, certain disadvantages if you are not with the party of power. It will seem easier at first to try to change things from within. Then it will be easier not to change things.
All of this will wash over Canada in various ways – some predictable, like the flood of refugees seeking escape from the camps; some less so, like the coarsening of our own politics, the debasement of morals and norms by politicians who have discovered there is no political price to be paid for it. And who will have the backing of their patron in Washington.
All my life I have been an admirer of the United States and its people. But I am frightened of it now, and I am even more frightened of them.”
Written by Andrew Coyne.
Andrew Coyne is a highly respected Canadian columnist with the Globe and Mail and a regular panelist on CBC's The National, who has previously worked with Macleans Magazine (Senior Editor) and the National Post.

Just spit-ballin' here...does Andrew Coyne by chance wear skinny jeans and have purple hair?

 

[John Wasmuth]

Leftists and the MSM are freaking out about Musk, Doge, and the collapse of USAID.
They have labeled Musk as public enemy #1, and the media is stirring the hate pot.
How long before one of the lefts unhinged sycophants take a shot at him?

Won’t be long but the leftist communists will rewrite everything to make the bad guy look like a RP, I think also that the USSS better be on their A game constantly…..

 

[John Wasmuth]

Just spit-ballin' here...does Andrew Coyne by chance wear skinny jeans and have purple hair?

Rainbow tattoo on his forehead?

 

[WAB]

[emoji6][emoji6]" data-quote="sgt_zim" data-source="post: 0" class="bbCodeBlock bbCodeBlock--expandable bbCodeBlock--quote js-expandWatch">

Just spit-ballin' here...does Andrew Coyne by chance wear skinny jeans and have purple hair?

He’s one of the new breed of Canadian journalists. I grew up in Ontario when it was a great place to live. You couldn’t pay me enough to go back now. Our family there can’t even see how they’re being brainwashed by this crap, and the policies of their lunatic provincial government.

 

[Newboomer]

Brilliant summation, I'm afraid. Andrew says it better than me.
Andrew Coyne.....
“Nothing mattered, in the end. Not the probable dementia, the unfathomable ignorance, the emotional incontinence; not, certainly, the shambling, hate-filled campaign, or the ludicrously unworkable anti-policies.
The candidate out on bail in four jurisdictions, the convicted fraud artist, the adjudicated rapist and serial sexual predator, the habitual bankrupt, the stooge of Vladimir Putin, the man who tried to overturn the last election and all of his creepy retinue of crooks, ideologues and lunatics: Americans took a long look at all this and said, yes please.
There is no sense in understating the depth of the disaster. This is a crisis like no other in our lifetimes. The government of the United States has been delivered into the hands of a gangster, whose sole purpose in running, besides staying out of jail, is to seek revenge on his enemies. The damage Donald Trump and his nihilist cronies can do – to America, but also to its democratic allies, and to the peace and security of the world – is incalculable. We are living in the time of Nero.
The first six months will be a time of maximum peril. NATO must from this moment be considered effectively obsolete, without the American security guarantee that has always been its bedrock. We may see new incursions by Russia into Europe – the poor Ukrainians are probably done for, but now it is the Baltics and the Poles who must worry – before the Europeans have time to organize an alternative. China may also accelerate its Taiwanese ambitions.
At home, Mr. Trump will be moving swiftly to consolidate his power. Some of this will be institutional – the replacement of tens of thousands of career civil servants with Trumpian loyalists. But some of it will be … atmospheric.
At some point someone – a company whose chief executive has displeased him, a media critic who has gotten under his skin – will find themselves the subject of unwanted attention from the Trump administration. It might not be so crude as a police arrest. It might just be a little regulatory matter, a tax audit, something like that. They will seek the protection of the courts, and find it is not there.
The judges are also Trump loyalists, perhaps, or too scared to confront him. Or they might issue a ruling, and find it has no effect – that the administration has called the basic bluff of liberal democracy: the idea that, in the crunch, people in power agree to be bound by the law, and by its instruments the courts, the same as everyone else. Then everyone will take their cue. Executives will line up to court him. Media organizations, the large ones anyway, will find reasons to be cheerful.
Of course, in reality things will start to fall apart fairly quickly. The huge across-the-board tariffs he imposes will tank the world economy. The massive deficits, fuelled by his ill-judged tax policies – he won’t replace the income tax, as he promised, but will fill it with holes – and monetized, at his direction, by the Federal Reserve, will ignite a new round of inflation.
Most of all, the insane project of deporting 12 million undocumented immigrants – finding them, rounding them up and detaining them in hundreds of internment camps around the country, probably for years, before doing so – will consume his administration. But by then it will be too late.
We should not count upon the majority of Americans coming to their senses in any event. They were not able to see Mr. Trump for what he was before: why should that change? Would they not, rather, be further coarsened by the experience of seeing their neighbours dragged off by the police, or the military, further steeled to the necessity of doing “tough things” to “restore order?”
Some won’t, of course. But they will find in time that the democratic levers they might once have pulled to demand change are no longer attached to anything. There are still elections, but the rules have been altered: there are certain obstacles, certain disadvantages if you are not with the party of power. It will seem easier at first to try to change things from within. Then it will be easier not to change things.
All of this will wash over Canada in various ways – some predictable, like the flood of refugees seeking escape from the camps; some less so, like the coarsening of our own politics, the debasement of morals and norms by politicians who have discovered there is no political price to be paid for it. And who will have the backing of their patron in Washington.
All my life I have been an admirer of the United States and its people. But I am frightened of it now, and I am even more frightened of them.”
Written by Andrew Coyne.
Andrew Coyne is a highly respected Canadian columnist with the Globe and Mail and a regular panelist on CBC's The National, who has previously worked with Macleans Magazine (Senior Editor) and the National Post.

Wow! That sounds like something straight out of Putin's playbook puked out by one of his flunkies.

 

[MD Driver]

 

[John Wasmuth]

View attachment 663456

Exactly

 

[John Wasmuth]

Hilarious how what one man says can drive an entire industry batshitcrazyinsane to the point it makes them cry……… TDS is a real thing lol!!!

 

[Corey0372]

Pretty Good stuff from Jordan Peterson

 

[DillonG]

 

[1dirthawker]

You would think. But not a federal employee.

unless it is a military federal employee.

 

[Jeff505]

If anyone knows and understands the meaning of “soft power projection”can also easily understand why the USAID exists.
In the absence of US, China and Russia always fills the void.

It is possible that the USAID was responsible for actually providing financial assistance to fight Americas enemies in the past, this has not been the case for a long time. This agency had been hijacked long ago and it’s unaccountable and nefarious support of all things un-American seems to be entrenched. The election results clearly shows that America has rejected this liberal garbage that has been dragging our country away from its core values. I find it interesting that organizations that spew liberal rhetoric such as Politico, NYT and BBC were recipients of tax payer dollars. USAID is a cancer that should not be supported with the hard earned money of American citizens. As we all know Liberalism is a mental disorder, I see the support for this waning.

 

[Red Leg]

unless it is a military federal employee.

I don't know. It seemed to take a lot of effort to unload chapter 10's.

 

[1dirthawker]

Unfortunately I admit ,this take-over" Gaza" is the dumbest thing to come forth from Trump, Ive ever heard, I had heard of this about 6 weeks ago on redacted and dismissed it as speculation or conspiracy stuff. why do we want to stick our nose into that vipers nest Ive no good reason. And no lets no dismiss Lebanon, oct23 1983, 241 marines killed,18 navy, and 3 army soldiers, big mistake by REAGAN. OR LEST WE FORGET JUNE 8 1967, Isreal bombed and strafed the USS LIBERTY ship killing 34 and wounding 174. It was no mistake. whqat I wont mention is IRAQ, the wounds of that war are still healing, Ive 2 friends who lost both legs, One was in Afghanistan. Dang it, will we never learn! This will not go down in history well, I hope Trump gets so involved with Mexico he forgets about GAZA. and IM all about MAGA and not at all about MGGA OR MIGA, LET THEM FIGHT THEIR OWN WARS. this will backfire on Trump.

completely disagree. all the people freaking out about what trump is doing, relax, he is just throwing out a big number or bold idea out and waits to see what happens.

in canada and mexico, hmmmm, worked pretty good. oh yeah, venezuela and columbia too.

in Gaza, all it does is bring attention to the other arabs that do not want their "Palestinian brothers" in their country. so do Palestinians come home to rubble and more hatred of jews? if even a small portion of trumps idea works, it is a relative win.

hang in there and see how this goes, i guarantee, this is not the end of the story!

 

[1dirthawker]

"All my life I have been an admirer of the United States and its people. But I am frightened of it now, and I am even more frightened of them.”

I am not familiar with Mr. Coyne. He does not sound like anyone I'd want to share a hunting camp with.

All my life I have been proud to be an American. There have certainly been any number of things in recent years to cause me some level of embarrassment - here's looking at you Uncle Joe. But the first few weeks of the new administration? I can feel that pride welling up inside me again, rejuvenated. And it's not just me - I have had colleagues at work say the same thing to me. We feel like we are starting to see the darkness receding, and dawn beginning to provide light once again.

100% well said!

oh yeah, and he brought home prisoners from venzuela a couple days ago that have been there since biden, hmmmm.

 

[Corey0372]

If anyone knows and understands the meaning of “soft power projection”can also easily understand why the USAID exists.
In the absence of US, China and Russia always fills the void.

The woke nonsense, cultural undermining, and disruption of internal affairs USAID is responsible for inside countries around the world is a big reason these countries turn to China for development.

Kamala Harris visited Zambia in 2023, she landed at an airport built by China, drove on a highway built by China, to an event venue built by China, to try and convince them to stop working with China.

I'm not saying the US needs to be building all the infrastructure in Zambia, but perhaps we could start by not lecturing a country that by it's Constitution is a Christian Nation on why gay marriage is what they really need to focus on and adopt, before of course trying to convince them to castrate their children 10 years after that.


https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/24/world/africa/zambia-ambassador-gay-rights.html

 

[flatwater bill]

@Longwakker...........what Andrew Coyne failed to acknowledge, or even recognize, was that the alternative was far worse..............FWB