But the powerful people behind the scenes who are using him as a figurehead learned a lot from his first term and have been developing their plans for years since then. Biden winning a term just gave them more time to work on it. Though there’s still chaos like last time (so we don’t pay attention to the Project 2025 actions ), we see the lightning-fast implementation of their agenda from Day One: Schedule F (getting rid of civil service workers to be replaced with loyalists), firing the inspectors general to remove a major obstacle to implementing, the rash of executive orders for everything from the shibboleth “Gulf of America” to declaring a national state of emergency to clear the way for everything else. Trump’s impulsivity can sometimes get in the way, but he’s otherwise the perfect figurehead because he also agrees with the agenda.

Going back in time to mess with things can create all kinds of unintentional butterfly effects.

omg, maybe this timeline is a butterfly effect!

Not so sure how many republicans in office aren’t Russian assets at this point. There’s a bunch of them though, have been for a while.

Believe it. Sure, that may not be the only purpose of sowing this chaos, but it’s a nice side gig for the billionaires who scooped up stocks on Monday and Tuesday while they were “on sale”.

Merrick Garland was Biden’s biggest mistake. By far. But it’s still ultimately McConnell and the other repub senators’ fault. They had the power and more importantly the constitutional responsibility to stop him. They violated their oaths and failed in their duty. It was their cowardice and corruption that allowed this.

Well said.

You may be right, it’s certainly been that way so far. It’s amazing how they never blame him for anything. But also, so far they’ve never experienced real negative consequences from his actions either, other than maybe a few small things they could easily dismiss as not related to trump (even if obvious to others). So we’ll see what happens when they and their friends and families start feeling some real pain. Obviously some still won’t be hurt much and some will never be able to admit trump screwed them no matter what, but others have already realized it and more of them will ‘find out’ as things keep getting worse for them.

Does anyone actually know why we are putting tariffs on Canadian goods?

I think his objective is to try and damage Canada’s economy, but I’m not sure exactly why. Apparently he really is serious about the “51st state” thing along with the Greenland and Panama thing. He’s just that megalomaniacal. He wants to be like Putin.

Shit, I was thinking about getting one but my brain didn’t make the connection that I needed to get it before this. Maybe it wouldn’t be a bad idea to get it anyway to support some of these companies that may be taking a sales hit because of all this. Or I could just wait a while, maybe it won’t be very long until Mangolini backs down.

As someone who grew up before the negative effects of computer/internet technology became apparent, and who was excited and impatient for it to develop, I agree with the points made in the article. It didn’t have to be this way; in a different kind of society it could have been a boon to everyone. But in our society all the benefits of good things are appropriated by the powerful so they can more readily exploit the less powerful for profit.

So many wonderful possible benefits that might have come from these technological advancements, to help people lead better lives, to address many of society’s issues (hunger, climate change, disabilities, education, etc) simply never happened, because in our society money must be invested to develop them, so only things that would make more profits for the greedy were able to be developed. Yes, some things did get funded by governments or foundations, but they’re only a drop in the bucket to what could be done.

Plus McConnell as leader could have gotten R’s to convict, at least in the second impeachment after Jan 6th, which was a short window when they would probably have gone along with him. It would have made trump ineligible to run again. So I place a large part of the blame on McConnell.

The SCOTUS ruling is just icing on the cake for trump, because once he got into power again, SCOTUS isn’t going to be much of a problem for him no matter how much they might rule against him. He’ll just ignore it and no one will do anything about it because the entire repub party supports him–they are the ones who would have had to check his power but they’re completely on board with him and they have the trifecta, total control.

That’s why I’m worried about the midterms–they aren’t going to give up that power willingly which means they’re more than prepared to do whatever it takes to stop a free and fair election in 2026.

The USA manufacturer can increase the price to $120, and still be cheaper than their Canadian counterpart.

Unless there is no USA manufacturer, or there is but they don’t make nearly enough of the product to satisfy demand. More importantly, if the manufacturers we (USA) have buy much of the needed raw materials to make their products from Canada or other places with tariffs imposed, then a USA-made product becomes that much more expensive.

It’s stupid, and hard on everyone but the blame is entirely on trump. Canada (and hopefully Mexico) imposing retaliatory tariffs is basically the only way to get trump to back down. Like with MAD (mutually assured destruction), the assured part has to be there or it doesn’t work. Even though it causes pain to everyone, retaliation is the most effective way to end this madness sooner–it will hurt the US economy, raise prices, and turn trump’s supporters against him. The more it hurts, the sooner people will be out in the streets.

Not random, masks make it harder for the facial recognition cameras.

Exactly.

Oh, we don’t use that outdated piece of paper any more, haven’t you heard?

Officially? Jan. 20, 2025

Great show!

I just installed Librewolf today, using it now. Being a fork of FF it makes a very smooth transition.

One good thing to come out of that meeting is that it is now totally clear with no doubt that trump was never going to support Ukraine. Europe and the other allies now clearly see that they can’t trust or depend on the US again, at least as long as trump or a trumpian leader controls the US government. Don’t despair because although it will be more difficult, with all the other allies’ unwavering support Putin can still be stopped.

The meeting was a setup to put on a display demonstrating to Putin that the US is now on Russia’s side. No matter what President Zelenskyy would have done, their goal would be achieved. By defending himself and his country against their lies they could call him ungrateful and disrespectful, and if he had not done that but sat and let them promote Putin’s talking points unchallenged, they would portray him as confirming the Russian propaganda as well as being corrupt and/or weak. So IMO he bravely did the right thing, and it was not a mistake because no amount of capitulation to trump is going to get any aid for Ukraine from the US.

🇺🇦 Хай живе Україна 🇺🇦 Long live Ukraine 🇺🇦

That fucking wormy-brained piece of shit.