All Things Trump: The Return Of The King

[Tero]

Mother of rape victim offers proof that the senator and Garcia are both criminals:
Rachel Morin was a Maryland resident, as is her mother, Patty, who said that Van Hollen had not reached out to her since her daughter was murdered.
Fox News

[Tero]

[Cunt]

You would prefer an illegal alien to the duly elected president.

Demoocracy!

[Svartalf]

democracy demand that a tyrannical criminal be sent to jail

[Cunt]

lol
are you talking about the MS-13 guy? Or Trump?

I say put em both in a cage match. Winner takes Washington DC

[Tero]

Trump has 1 billion in crypto. So what?

According to Bloomberg News, the combined paper value of these crypto-related initiatives is approaching $1 billion, even after factoring in recent market volatility fueled by escalating trade tensions.

what do they do with it? Can you buy Greenland for the Trump family?
https://www.investing.com/news/cryptocu ... rt-3982425

[L'Emmerdeur]

That's a good point. Why indeed. As if anybody on this site thought you're here to present verifiable information or engage in good faith discussion.

The verifiable information is at covid.gov

You seem very sure of that. Such certainty would come from verifying the information yourself, you being such a skeptic, somebody who's not willing to simply accept what so-called authorities claim. Show me how it's done then. We'll go with the first item:

The virus possesses a biological characteristic that is not found in nature.

The floor is yours, maestro.

Did you follow the 'Twitter Files'? Got an idea of who was telling them to suppress stories and such?

Yes, I'm well aware of the 'Twitter Files.' Did you simply accept what Musk's hand-picked troupe of pet reporters claimed, or did you look into what less credulous people in the tech world had to say about them?

For example, from TechCrunch:

In each Twitter Files thread, we see unfounded assumptions, insinuations and personal interpretations given equal weight as facts, more or less establishing these as opinion pieces rather than factual reporting. That alone will have spiked a great deal of coverage, as however salacious the theory, little of what is actually provided satisfies editorial standards in many a newsroom.

It must also be obvious by now that this ostensible act of transparency was conducted with a definite goal: to discredit the previous moderation and management teams, and advance a narrative of systematic anti-conservative activity at Twitter. This has resulted, both deliberately and by neglect of basic best practices, in harassment and targeting of individuals.

Plainly this is all orchestrated by Elon Musk, whose spite is equally plain in the wake of his botched purchase of the platform — an event that has been catastrophic to his wealth and reputation. But catastrophe loves company, and he seems insistent that all receive a portion of his ruin.

[JimC]

https://www.theage.com.au/world/north-a ... 5ls90.html

An excellent article from one of my favourite Melbourne Age journalists, questioning the US alliance in the context of current American politics. He pulls no punches on Trump!

In a world as disordered and dangerous as ours is now, we ought to be thankful for the monotonous nature of Australia’s election campaign, where so little happens that fevered analysis is applied to a prime minister falling off a stage and an opposition leader trying to duck questions about using some of his millions to help his son buy a house.

Dull though it may be, we can be pretty sure the government chosen by our voting system will abide by most of the norms of democratic behaviour.

Is it time to rethink Australia’s relationship with the US in the time of Trump?

The crucial question facing Australia, however, is much more important to our future than any tax break. The urgency in solving it sits far above today’s interest in whoever might win the May 3 election.

Who, we must ask, will we rely upon now that the United States is turning away from democracy and its friends in the free world?

It is a question that goes beyond the current howling confusion about Donald Trump’s on-again, off-again crazed obsession with tariffs on everyone except Russia and North Korea, and the resulting trade war with China.

Trump has sent a wrecking ball through old alliances. The implications for Australia are severe
It goes to the very heart of who we Australians consider ourselves to be, and what values we hold to be essential.

Are we prepared to continue a special friendship with a nation that has handed itself to a corrupt cabal of kleptomaniacs who make the robber barons of old look like amateurs, and chiefs of defence, security and intelligence who run a military strike via a leaky mobile phone chat group?

Can we retain any respectful relationship with a nation led by a megalomaniac bully intent on upending his country’s Constitution, ignoring the courts established to place limits on the presidency, flirting with a warmongering dictator like Vladimir Putin and talking openly about deporting American citizens for life to a hell-hole concentration camp in El Salvador, a country run by a brutal dictatorship?

We haven’t had to ponder such questions with such urgency since prime minister John Curtin declared in the depths of World War II that “without any inhibition of any kind, I make it clear that Australia looks to America, free of any pangs as to our traditional links and kinship with the United Kingdom”.

The declaration sits within Australian myth as the high point in the history of our decision-making about international alliances.

We had shifted from our historical ties with Britain to the great and good embrace of the United States.

Hadn’t we?

Not so fast.

Curtin’s “historic declaration” was merely a line buried in what was supposed to be his new year’s message to be published in the Melbourne Herald’s magazine pages.

The news editor, Cecil Edwards, spotted the line and decided it should become the front-page news lead.

It caused outrage in Britain, unsurprisingly.

But it was also unwelcome in Washington and treated with such suspicion that Curtin was considered almost treasonous.

One of Australia’s finest commentators on foreign affairs, Graeme Dobell, writing in the Australian Strategic Policy Institute’s The Strategist magazine in 2016, related that then-US president Franklin D. Roosevelt called in Australia’s ambassador, Richard Casey, to deliver Australia its comeuppance.

Casey kept the secret until it was discovered in his papers eight years after his death. Roosevelt’s message was “that if it was thought that such a statement as Mr Curtin had made would help Australia with the United States, he assured me it would not”.

Casey’s wife, Maie, related later in her memoirs: “President Roosevelt sent for Dick and told him if it was thought that this statement would ingratiate Australia with the US, he assured him it would have the opposite effect. It tasted of panic and disloyalty.”

Six months later, the US general and south-west commander-in-chief, Douglas MacArthur, told Curtin to his face that Australia didn’t much matter to the US.

Minutes of Curtin’s war cabinet in June 1942 quote MacArthur as saying: “The US was an ally whose aim was to win the war, and it had no sovereign interest in the integrity of Australia. Its interest in Australia was from the strategical aspect of the utility of Australia as a base from which to attack and defeat the Japanese.”

In short, from the very start of our so-called “special relationship”, the US wanted to use Australia for its own interests.

Happily, the US, with Australia’s assistance, was victorious in the Pacific.

Ever since, Australia followed the US into Korea (as part of a United Nations force) and onto failures in Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq, always to our cost; always for US interests.

The most cringe-making cry of an Australian prime minister was Harold Holt’s “All the Way with LBJ” while troops were dying in Vietnam for no rational purpose.

It took former Australian prime ministers like Malcolm Fraser and Paul Keating to leave parliament before decrying the costs of the relationship.

Fraser, in his 2014 book, Dangerous Allies, called for Australia to break its alliance with the US and become a “strategically independent” country, ending the US presence in northern Australia and closing Pine Gap. He even warned that the ANZUS Treaty had become possibly the biggest threat to Australia’s security, rather than its major protector.

In 2016, Keating declared Australia should “cut the tag” with America’s foreign policies now Trump was president, and concentrate on relationships within Asia.

Prime minister Scott Morrison, however, merrily blew up Australia’s friendship with France by breaking a massive contract to pursue US nuclear submarines under the much-ballyhooed AUKUS agreement.

The Albanese government went along with it.

In 2022 Defence Minister Richard Marles proposed that the three AUKUS partners (Australia, the UK and the US) should move from “interoperability to interchangeability”. This meant the three country’s defence systems should effectively operate as one.

And here we are, with the most powerful of those partners run by an erratic authoritarian who says he wouldn’t defend Europe if Russia invaded, and who openly muses about continuing as president after his term expires.

It’s surely getting to the time we should consider declaring that “without any inhibition of any kind, we make it clear that Australia looks to itself, Europe and Asian partners, free of any pangs as to our traditional links and kinship with the United States”.

[Cunt]

That's a good point. Why indeed. As if anybody on this site thought you're here to present verifiable information or engage in good faith discussion.

The verifiable information is at covid.gov

You seem very sure of that. Such certainty would come from verifying the information yourself, you being such a skeptic, somebody who's not willing to simply accept what so-called authorities claim. Show me how it's done then. We'll go with the first item:

The virus possesses a biological characteristic that is not found in nature.

The floor is yours, maestro.

I'm satisfied.

If you aren't, why not say what your theory is. Where the US officials have it wrong, I mean.

Did you follow the 'Twitter Files'? Got an idea of who was telling them to suppress stories and such?

Yes, I'm well aware of the 'Twitter Files.' Did you simply accept what Musk's hand-picked troupe of pet reporters claimed, or did you look into what less credulous people in the tech world had to say about them?

For example, from TechCrunch:

In each Twitter Files thread, we see unfounded assumptions, insinuations and personal interpretations given equal weight as facts, more or less establishing these as opinion pieces rather than factual reporting. That alone will have spiked a great deal of coverage, as however salacious the theory, little of what is actually provided satisfies editorial standards in many a newsroom.

It must also be obvious by now that this ostensible act of transparency was conducted with a definite goal: to discredit the previous moderation and management teams, and advance a narrative of systematic anti-conservative activity at Twitter. This has resulted, both deliberately and by neglect of basic best practices, in harassment and targeting of individuals.

Plainly this is all orchestrated by Elon Musk, whose spite is equally plain in the wake of his botched purchase of the platform — an event that has been catastrophic to his wealth and reputation. But catastrophe loves company, and he seems insistent that all receive a portion of his ruin.

The government was directing censorship of individuals. Pretty plainly.

The moderation team is pretty predictably upset about having their private business aired in a non flattering way. Still doesn't change who was directing the censorship.

[L'Emmerdeur]

The verifiable information is at covid.gov

You seem very sure of that. Such certainty would come from verifying the information yourself, you being such a skeptic, somebody who's not willing to simply accept what so-called authorities claim. Show me how it's done then. We'll go with the first item:

The virus possesses a biological characteristic that is not found in nature.

The floor is yours, maestro.

I'm satisfied.

What is it about this assertion that satisfies you as to its veracity? Is it because it supports the hypotheses you favor?

If you aren't, why not say what your theory is. Where the US officials have it wrong, I mean.

If you'd been paying attention to what the majority of the scientists who've spent their lives studying viruses say, you'd know that while the evidence tends to show a natural origin, it still has not been conclusively ruled out that a virology lab had something to do with its jump to our species. There are those who insist that it very likely occurred without human intervention, just as there are those who insist with equal vehemence that it came from a virology lab.

As I said, the scientific evidence (DNA, the known host, naturally occurring inter-species jumps made by other closely related viruses, for a start) shows that the COVID virus could have made the jump from its original animal host to our species without any assistance from people. Again, as yet there has been no absolutely conclusive evidence that I'm aware of that rules out a virology lab being where the jump occurred.

On the other hand we have an intelligence service (we know how much you trust those fellows) that claims the virus likely came from a lab, and some politicians (you find them very believable as well, of course) who say that it certainly did come from a lab. Your faith in those sources (and some attention whores you like) is touching.

Did you follow the 'Twitter Files'? Got an idea of who was telling them to suppress stories and such?

Yes, I'm well aware of the 'Twitter Files.' Did you simply accept what Musk's hand-picked troupe of pet reporters claimed, or did you look into what less credulous people in the tech world had to say about them?

For example, from TechCrunch:

In each Twitter Files thread, we see unfounded assumptions, insinuations and personal interpretations given equal weight as facts, more or less establishing these as opinion pieces rather than factual reporting. That alone will have spiked a great deal of coverage, as however salacious the theory, little of what is actually provided satisfies editorial standards in many a newsroom.

It must also be obvious by now that this ostensible act of transparency was conducted with a definite goal: to discredit the previous moderation and management teams, and advance a narrative of systematic anti-conservative activity at Twitter. This has resulted, both deliberately and by neglect of basic best practices, in harassment and targeting of individuals.

Plainly this is all orchestrated by Elon Musk, whose spite is equally plain in the wake of his botched purchase of the platform — an event that has been catastrophic to his wealth and reputation. But catastrophe loves company, and he seems insistent that all receive a portion of his ruin.

The government was directing censorship of individuals. Pretty plainly.

The moderation team is pretty predictably upset about having their private business aired in a non flattering way. Still doesn't change who was directing the censorship.

If you accept the Musk crowd's interpretation of the selectively released information, and its assertions as to the meaning of that information, certainly. Having read more than one examination of the information that doesn't jibe with what Musk had his hired guns produce, I have doubts regarding how much I should trust the story they tell.

[Brian Peacock]

Trump has 1 billion in crypto. So what?

According to Bloomberg News, the combined paper value of these crypto-related initiatives is approaching $1 billion, even after factoring in recent market volatility fueled by escalating trade tensions.

what do they do with it? Can you buy Greenland for the Trump family?
https://www.investing.com/news/cryptocu ... rt-3982425

You have to create financial structures and institutions that allow you to trade it for real money, at which point it becomes a currency (real money) and is instantly devalued to virtually zero because there's nothing to regulate or control its creation or injection into the market.

[L'Emmerdeur]

https://www.theage.com.au/world/north-a ... 5ls90.html

An excellent article from one of my favourite Melbourne Age journalists, questioning the US alliance in the context of current American politics. He pulls no punches on Trump!

Yes, the US isn't a reliable ally any more, to the extent that it ever was.

Say that despite the efforts of the Trumpists, a Democratic president is elected in a few years. That by no means ensures that in another four years some absurd goon like JD Vance or Don Jr. doesn't take back the White House and carry on the MAGA project of sucking up to dictators and scorning long-time allies. When a country shits the bed by choosing a wilfully ignorant, authoritarian, compulsively dishonest grifter and narcissist megalomaniac as its leader (for a second time no less) it's time to reconsider the nature of connections with that country.

[Brian Peacock]

...a wilfully ignorant, authoritarian, compulsively dishonest grifter and narcissist megalomaniac...

Yeah, but how do you really feel about Trump?

[Tero]

Fake astronauts! screams Trump. Transporatation secretary ordered to tell Bezos that there were no DEI astromauts.
https://arstechnica.com/space/2025/04/s ... t-or-what/

"The last FAA guidelines under the Commercial Space Astronaut Wings Program were clear: Crewmembers who travel into space must have 'demonstrated activities during flight that were essential to public safety, or contributed to human space flight safety,'" Duffy wrote. "The crew who flew to space this week on an automated flight by Blue Origin were brave and glam, but you cannot identify as an astronaut. They do not meet the FAA astronaut criteria."

[Tero]

Doge personnel have a salary, apparently. I guess out of the White House staff budget?
They are hard at work cataloging immigrants.
https://www.wired.com/story/doge-collec ... eil-track/